Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 35 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for quite a while now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode, we'll be kicking off the two part series discussing the holiday anti diet, and in today's episode, we'll be talking about how to put an end to dieting, binging and restriction, and we'll talk more specifically about how to get through the holidays without binges and weight gain without resorting to restriction. We'll be talking about why eating more, not less, is often the answer for healthy weight loss. We'll be talking about how to prevent binging by ensuring that you have enough cellular energy. We'll also be discussing why weight gain and the lack of energy often go hand in hand, and how to stop cravings and hunger without resorting to restriction and dieting. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies or articles or anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode, and if you are dealing with constant hunger and cravings, or if you are stuck in that cycle of binging and restriction and constant dieting, yo yo dieting, or if you're dealing with low energy and chronic fatigue, chronic pain or joint pain, weight gain, poor sleep, gut issues, or any sorts of hormonal imbalances or any sorts of other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions. And head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for free energy balance mini course, where I'll walk you through the main things to focus on, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy and get rid of all of these low energy symptoms and chronic health conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

Up until this point. I mean, we've talked a lot about dieting and and weight loss and some of the problems there, and there's always more to dig into there, and we'll definitely continue to but with, you know, especially with the season now, you know, with the holidays coming up, you know, we've got Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and New Year's resolutions, and so dieting and weight loss is always a pretty huge topic on people's minds, especially when they're around family, also, but, but also when they're around a lot of food. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of value in kind of digging into some of the perspectives there, as far as why we don't want the like, why we might want to try to avoid some of the the dieting mindset, and how to work through that, and how to get through these next few months kind of comfortably without falling into some of the dieting mindset. And, you know, really, I mean, a huge part of this is, is creating a lifestyle that is really based in the long term as opposed to the short term. You know, so much of the dieting side is based on short term results, quick fixes, you know, losing 10 pounds in a week or 15 pounds in a month, or whatever it is, at the at the expense of our health. And really, in any sort of, you know, if you want to call it a diet, but in any sort of way of eating and way of living, these sorts of things shouldn't really be, you know, being around a lot of food and a lot of food that you like to eat or that tastes really good shouldn't be a problem. You know, it should be a good thing, if at all, or if anything. And same thing with spending that time with with family too. And a lot of times this becomes really stressful, especially when it comes to people who are concerned about gaining weight or wanting to lose weight. So just to start, I mean, just to kind of reiterate some of these things that we've discussed before, really the fundamental idea that all of these diets are coming from is that, is this idea that our bodies are fighting against us and that they want us to be, in this case, overweight or unhealthy, and so because of that, we have to always be fighting against our own body's signals. In this case, we're talking more specifically about hunger and cravings. And so if we're hungry for whatever food is available, or we're craving it, or we're really enjoying it, or we want to eat a lot of food, that becomes a problem because, you know, we're being told that we don't want to listen to that, and if we do. It will end up being, you know, end up overweight and unhealthy. And that's really not at all the case. But when you're looking at it from this perspective, the only solution to these scenarios, you know, when you're stuck at the, you know, at the table with all this food in front of you, the only solution is just restraint and using willpower to restrict and to prevent yourself from eating too much, you know, it's, you know, I'll have just a small serving of this, just a little taste, or whatever it is that you know, you don't overeat. And you know, both of us have, you know, as we've talked about, both of us have experienced that for for huge parts of our lives, in various ways. And sometimes it might have been, you know, just restricting carbs, you know, other times it's restricting other groups of foods, but also as far as just restricting food overall and not allowing ourselves to eat as much as we we as much as our bodies needed, as much as our bodies were telling us that they needed. And so many people live that way, in a really extreme way, for much of their lives, often, you know, their entire lives. And that's one of the most tragic things about this is that so many people, especially, I mean, it's especially the case for women when they're really, really young and, you know, really starting this kind of diet cycle from, yeah, like, extremely young ages, you know, sometimes before the age of 10, and then that, that sort of stuff becomes so ingrained and really drives their perspective and relationship with food for the rest of their lives. And obviously men are are experiencing that stuff as well. So.

Mike 6:30
I mean, I think it's, I think there's, I think there's an importance in some restriction, but I don't think it's in quantity as much as it is in what specific foods are being eaten. I think that's probably the most important area so, and I think that that's where a lot of the misguided dieting stuff comes from. Is this, this model of you need this, this model behind the idea of energy, calories in, calories out, where a lot and so where a lot of people think that if they eat a little bit on the holidays of everything, and they keep all their portions small, and then they exercise extremely hard later on, they've like, somehow balanced the scales of the food gods, where you're not going to gain any weight or anything like that. And just the entire paradigm, I don't think makes much sense, especially if it's viewed in that lens. I mean, you can make the calories in, calories out idea can make sense, but there's a lot of modifiers that go into understanding that, and nuances beyond the fact of I x number of calories today, and then I ran every X amount of time on a treadmill, and it told me that I burned that many calories, so therefore I'm fine. I don't think that makes any sense. And I think that the idea of of needing to diet, or dieting in general, is extremely misguided. And I think it doesn't work, because the idea behind a diet or dieting, or the the implied aspect of it is that it's for a short period of time for a specific result. And I don't think that that makes any sense, and that's not really how the body really works. I think people need to address things from a lifestyle point of view, and it's not. And so the idea is to have the correct paradigm underpinning what lifestyle point of view, particularly related to food, are you going to hold? And I don't think the calories in, calories out, model through which it's current, like the context and the way is currently viewed as helpful, especially for weight loss. And I mean, we've had X number of years of people yo yo dieting and die again dieting. It's not even the it, it's even, it's redundant to say yo yo dieting. The idea of dieting implies periods of of famine and then periods of feast going, alternating with each other. So like to say yo yo dieting doesn't, doesn't make any sense. That there's no the idea of dieting needs to go and the idea of adjusting lifestyle needs to take, take center precedence, and then this idea of calories and calories out where you can weigh the scales with exercise for eating, you know, not so great foods. That doesn't make any sense either. If anything, it makes it worse. If you're going to put a demand on your body with exercise, then you're going to need to fuel your body properly, not only with with adequate fuel sources, but adequate, uh, co factors to allow those fuel sources to function. So going out and slamming 32 ounces of a of a, I don't know, whatever, like an icy or something like that, and then saying, Oh, I'm gonna go run for X number of of hours, or however long it takes to burn off those number of calories, I think, is like doubly bad from a metabolic standpoint, because of not only what's in the icy but also now you have a lack of nutrition to to fuel your exercise. So the whole paradigm is just you. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't, it doesn't, and it doesn't make any it doesn't produce such great results. I mean, a lot of people, there's a high, I guess recidivism would be if that's usually used in regards to going to jail. But as far as, um, like, returning to an overweight state after going on the diet is like that happens for a lot of people. It happens pretty frequently, and then a lot of people wind up in worse issues, and I've seen it with a lot of people, where they diet their weight down, they lose a ton of weight, and then as soon as they stop restricting, they put it back on. And then so then usually the point that I start to see them, or start to have worked with them, is when they've put the weight back on after dieting down, and now we can't get the weight off because they're they're in a metabolic hole because they're they dieted down so hard, they got their caloric intake down so low that when you try and get the weight off by raising caloric intake, the body is just saying, No, we're just going to store this. Because the past famine that we went through was so was so strong, and so you get this perpetual cycle of continually lowering metabolism, lowering metabolism, and depleting nutrients, and depleting nutrients, and then filling up on on garbage diet food, which is essentially just a whole bunch of artificial sweeteners mixed in different foods with high fiber contents. You know, there's no there's limb very limited nutrition in any of this stuff, and it just the paradigm is, and there's some talk about the paradigm being created by industry interests to push a certain narrative, to take the focus off of poor quality food choices and move it towards the idea of calories and calories out, which allows people to justify eating poor food and then moving into exercising or expending energy to to burn off those poor food choices and that just it doesn't work. I don't think, in a long term perspective, it doesn't work for next month, or losing X number of pounds to fit in a wedding dress for just your wedding, and then gaining it all back later. You know that sure you'll lose five pounds by dieting extremely hard X number of weeks before your wedding to get into your dress. But then what happens after? And then the question is, what happens with long term health after that? You know, a lot of and you can look at populations that take the dieting down to an extreme, and you see the bodybuilder populations. The bodybuilder populations diet extremely hard to get to their shows, and they get extremely lean, but that they're known to feel absolutely terrible, as with most people who go on diets. And then they also get to a point where their hormonal levels are castration levels you have full grown 250 pound, 5% body fat men at female levels of testosterone, if they're not using steroids, because of their dieting practices and completely dysregulated cortisol or stress hormone responses and and their thyroid hormone turned off. So the I just it doesn't, I don't see the benefit in the strategy. And so, I mean, we'll talk about what are better strategies. And again, I think the underpinnings here is not calories and calories out. It's food choice, food choice and following the cues of your body and eating to society.

Jay Feldman 13:23
Yeah, yeah. And just to just add in real quick, too. As far as the the bodybuilding side is, of course, the hormonal use there, from their end, is also a contributor to the really low androgens and everything. But the dieting is definitely kind of coupled with the dieting is pretty terrible.

Mike 13:39
The androgens they are using exhaustion when they do the cuts and they go to shows, they're still on a lot of them are still on steroids, unless the show is tested. So if the show is tested, they could, for natural bodybuilders, when they cut down that low, it decimates their hormone profile. So it's it's not necessarily from stopping the steroids before the show. I mean, in some cases, that could be, I know worse, it's putting hairs. But for a lot of them, the dieting itself is causing it. In the natural bodybuilders, the big, the super big guys are on are, you couldn't get a reading on their testosterone, because they're using exogenous steroids regardless, right?

Jay Feldman 14:17
And that I was saying, like, when they get off the steroids, a lot of times, there's a lot of issues.

Mike 14:21
That'll come down. But for NAD, I'm saying for natural guys who are at high level, who are at high levels of muscle tissue, when they die down like that, it completely decimates their hormonal profiles. You have extreme raises and stress hormones like cortisol and the catecholamines, and you have huge drop offs and testosterone and thyroid hormone. And you can ask you, can you can go on YouTube and watch and they feel they'll tell you they feel like absolute crap. And most people who are dieting will tell you they feel like absolute crap. And then so a lot of people will say they initially feel good the first week. And I think that can be easily argued to be or. A raise in stress hormones, which can initially make you feel good, but eventually you start to, you start to exhaust those pathways and crash. And I think a lot of people see that. And then I think part of people seeing that is that's part of what you see with the low carb crowd and the Keto flu and all this stuff. Some people don't do well with the low carb and they they crash a lot earlier than others. And you see it with the flu, and then the constant low energy. And you go into any of those forums, or any of these models for low carb, or the different fat the fasting groups, or the calorie counting groups, or things like that, or the different forms or or groups that are associated around some sort of model, you tend to see a bunch of people trying it out on the forum, you know, hey, I'm having a really hard time. You know, I'm not feeling very well. I keep getting sick. I don't have a lot of energy. And everybody's just like, oh, just keep doing it. Keep doing it. And eventually you'll feel like, the more you have to just keep doing more. You have to cut your calories more, you have to lower your carbs more, you have to restrict your feeding window more and it and it just for some people, for a lot of people, it crashes them. For some people, they seem to be able to manage it somehow. But I think for most people, in long term, you find that it doesn't, doesn't really work. And then you find that in across multiple different strategies, you can even see people, and this is just people do have problems within the peak community as well, but it really depends on what your interpretation of the principles are, and that's why there's not a specific set of you need to eat these foods. You need to eat them this way. It's principles. What are the underlying principles? And that's what we're that's what we're going to get at.

Jay Feldman 16:39
Yeah, yeah. And as you're saying, it's kind of, it's definitely unsustainable, that whole dieting cycle, whether it's in regard to calories or carbs. And a lot of times, people feel pretty terrible when they're doing it. Sometimes they don't. But for how long, like, for how long do they not feel that way? And as you were kind of getting it too, with that dieting cycle, it's never ending. There's no solution. There's no end point where it's it's like you can go back to eating a normal amount of food instead that the amount of food that you get to eat just keeps going down and down lower and lower until you're barely eating and you just end up coming up with all these strategies to eat less, and you end up starving your body. And as you were getting at as far as the problems with the calorie model, you know, calories inverse, calories out and so many of these other approaches. The the underlying issue with with weight gain in general, comes down to a lack of energy, which is, of course, relatively counterintuitive, and we discussed those things, you know, at a little more length than previous weight loss episodes that I'll link to. But an important point there is that the reason why our bodies have hunger, or are hungry at any particular point is because they don't have the energy they need. And it, you know, and there's, it's so important, but, like, I don't know of anything more important than that, as far as just completely dismantling this idea that we need to be fighting against our hunger and that we need to be dieting like if our hunger is a direct result of a lack of energy, which which it is, you know, shown, shown to be the case in as far as liver ATP levels and ATP levels in certain parts of our brain that regulate hunger, specifically in the hypothalamus.

Mike 18:19
ATB Being a marker of amount of energy being produced.

Jay Feldman 18:22
Right. So assuming that that's the case, which is supported, then the idea that we want to be fighting against hunger makes no sense at all, and it just leads to this never ending dieting cycle where you keep eating less and less, and as you said, you you lose weight. And then eventually you, if assuming that you can't continue to resist and can't keep using that willpower because it's limited, you end up eating more, and then you gain more weight, and you're in a worse place than you started or you don't, which is arguably worse if you just keep eating less and less forever. And then you, you know you are very you know you might be lean, but you're also not eating anything. And then at that point, you end up having all these major metabolic costs too. And as you're saying, it does lead to this metabolic hole that does take a while, or can take quite a while to dig out of. And we see that all the time where, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it can be pretty tough to to work through that and and yet that, and you mentioned the other side of this too, which is the industry side, and and I don't know, I don't know how it happens that every single year you have the same groups of people. And I'm not trying to like, by no means is this blaming the people, but it's like they, they get us, like they get us into believing that this is the year and that, you know, as of January 1, we're going to join whatever program, or we're going to do Weight Watchers, whatever it is, and we're going to lose all this weight and so much, you know, it's, it's, it's like a joke, as far as how many people sign up for the gym and stay there for a month and are gone by February 1, and how busy the gym is during during January. And, you know, the same thing with all the the dining. Spheres where it's known that this is just a short term thing, and as you said, it makes a lot of money for the people who are encouraging that. But even if you want to argue that it works in the short term and there's no cost, which obviously there are huge costs. And so we disagree there, but it's pretty hard to argue that it works in the long term, and at that point, the only argument that you have is that everybody who can't do it is just weak. They're just weak willed, and they're just not trying hard enough, which is not the case. Everything in your body when you're not eating enough is telling you to eat more for good reason. So, yeah, it's a pretty...

Mike 20:33
If you have to try that hard, then you're not doing it. Then it's something is wrong. If it has to be that hard, then something's going on. You know, for most, the body should be able to regulate its weight without an issue. It just really depends on what you put in it. If you put sugar in your gas tank, your gas tank ain't gonna run very well. So if you load up on a bunch of polyunsaturated fatty acid foods and junk food and things like that, you're gonna have a hard time metabolizing things appropriately. And so that's why it becomes down to food choice. Your body, your body was the advent of calories is new. So the idea that you need to count calories, or that you or that you even need to track different macros and things like that. I mean, I know we talk about it as being helpful for certain strategies in certain times, yes, but the idea that you need to track these things is entirely a new concept. There was no concept of these things prior to what the 1900s it didn't even exist. Yeah, yeah. I don't even, I don't these models came out towards the end of this, this last century, to and with the entirety of human existence and the idea that you have, the thing is, is obesity was unheard of prior to this, prior to this past century, obesity was a rare occurrence. Now it's a now it's a very common occurrence, and being overweight was a relatively rare occurrence. So and, and the idea of the calories in calories out model is and the idea of calories in general and macronutrients is new to this century as well. So prior to that, why weren't people becoming obese? Where was their genetic predisposition to be obese? It wasn't happening. It's it's entirely, it's entirely manufactured the obesity and then the models to explain it. This century, this past century, not, not 2000 in the 1900s right? So the idea that you need to count these things doesn't make any sense. The body should be able to regulate itself. The idea that there's a genetic basis for it also doesn't make any sense. You may have a predisposition, but to be all jump fact because of genetics makes zero sense, because obesity was relatively unheard of prior to this past century, and if you understand the genetic model. It doesn't just happen over the course of 50 years. You don't, haven't there's You haven't even gone through one generation. And according to the genetic model, takes multiple generations for a certain gene to become prevalent within a within a population or a species.

Jay Feldman 22:56
But as we know, that's not the case, and there is a lot of heritability there, so it is worth saying that people do inherit tendencies towards certain things. And there is, you know, with epigenetics that is becoming at least somewhat more acknowledged, that these things are passed down in a very short period of time, even if it's not strictly genetic in the way that it's, you know, conventionally thought of, where takes 1000s and 1000s of years to, you know, create, to have somebody with a random genetic mutation and then have that, you know.

Mike 23:22
Yes, previous previous generations that starve are going to pass an ability to to regulate metabolism differently to the next generation. But again, that's still, that's still an environmental concern.

Jay Feldman 23:32
Yeah, it's still environmental first, for sure. Yeah. And the reason I'm pointing that out is because I don't want, you know, some people are put in a situation where it's harder for them to...

Mike 23:41
Yeah, there's a pre that's why I'm saying there's a predisposition. For sure.

Jay Feldman 23:44
You're just saying it starts at the environment, which is important, it's not purely genetic that you that all of these things just happen randomly, like, there it was environment first, that then led to that heritability of of the tendency to be more overweight or less lean.

Mike 23:58
Yeah, there's definitely a predisposition, but that still doesn't make you genetically fat, right? You may have a harder time. You may have to be. So I think there's a genetic predisposition for many different things. Well, well, people have their genetic predisposition is to put body fat on, whereas for you and I, that's not a case. But for us, we have other genetic predispositions that make it harder for certain things. So it there's every there's genetic predispositions in all different areas, doesn't it's not your it doesn't make it somebody's destiny. You know, the things can be adjusted. You may have a harder time. Some people definitely have a harder time keeping weight off, keeping, or keeping a lower, bad body fat percentage. But again, the question also becomes of health. If you body's fat percentage is set at a certain level, and that's where you are, and you're you feel great, and your your health is all right, you know, you're, you're you're healthy, you're strong, your mental function is fine. All the different parameters that you look at, your libido is doing well and whatnot. And you just have, you just sit at a heavier body fat percentage. I don't see an issue with that. You know, whether, regardless of what. The but the thing is, is general body fatness overall has increased massively in the past. Not even 100 years. It's gone to a ridiculous level from what it was before. And I don't think that that's I think that a lot of that isn't really so much genetic and and even there may be a predisposition there, but there's more to it than just this, this predisposition. There's a lot more going on than just this predisposition. And I think it's related to entirely to food quality and food choices. And I also think that the the these models that are coming out of genetic fatness, from these genetic disorders of dysregulation of leptin and this and that are largely a waste of time. I think it helps to see different pathways in the body. But at the end of the day, like I remember I was in, when I was in in a school, when I was in my higher level, whatever neuroanatomy class, they were going over neural pathways in the hypothalamus, talking about leptin signaling and different genes and things like that causing fatness in people. And just thinking to myself, so you're gonna, you're gonna sit here and tell me that if this person right here switched from eating pizza and donuts and whatever, and they had their they had this over represent, like this, over representation of a gene in the brain that led to an strongly increased appetite, that if they switched all those food categories and started eating a lot of meat and fruit, that they would still be obese. I just I found that ridiculously hard to to to believe, because in all in studies, you we haven't seen any studies that show meat making people obese, or fruit making people obese, and in my experience, and in people that I worked with, those things aren't producing obesity, and they're not producing a lot of body fatness. So you're telling so even if they had dysregulated hunger signals and whatnot, they're going to go out and they're going to eat high amounts of these certain food groups, and they're getting obese. I highly doubt it. I highly doubt it. So even if you have that genetic predisposition, you would have to really, you're going to have a hard time showing me that that's the case. I mean, I need, I feel like it's I just don't think it makes any sense to go there and start like the idea This doesn't make any sense. I don't see the basis behind it. I think it is a food choice, a food choice thing. You may have an increased appetite, but then again, genes still have to be expressed. You can have a predisposition, but if it's not expressed, or it's not induced, whatever, even if you're going to go with a genetic model, then you still don't, you won't have an issue. So even within the model that these, that all of these things are underlying, it doesn't make any sense. That's my point. The model doesn't, doesn't support what, what the real world experience is. I think the model needs to be thrown out at this point.

Jay Feldman 27:49
Yeah, as you're saying, it's environment first. And until, you know you mentioned leptin resistance, and it's also been shown that that comes down to an energy issue too, where, when you have a lack of energy, leptin can't the the leptin doesn't work properly. It doesn't actually have the same effect that it would otherwise. It and it continues to, you know, leptin is supposed to be the hormone just where people aren't aware. It's supposed to be the hormone that tells you to that you're full and to stop eating. And so there's this idea of leptin resistance, where some people, they're producing leptin, but it's just not having it's not working properly. It's not stopping their hunger signal. So they keep eating. And so they call that leptin resistance, and they blame it on like fructose, all sorts of ridiculous things like that, but which we talked about in previous episode that I'll link to. But the point being that leptin resistance occurs when there's a lack of energy. And so which makes sense, because, as we discussed, lack of energy is the reason for the hunger signal in the first place. So you wouldn't want to stop that hunger signal if you're eating food that increases leptin, but it's not actually being converted to energy. And that's the whole point that you're getting at, which is, as far as you're talking about in terms of food choice, but that the food that most of us are eating, that most people are eating now, is not able to be properly metabolized to produce energy, and so you end up with a lot of food, it's not going through that metabolic engine. You're not ending up with with ATP and CO, two and other kind of energetic components. And so the hunger signals remain, even though you're eating a lot of food. That's supposed to turn your hunger off. And then that food, instead of being converted to energy, is being stored as body being stored as body fat. And so that's why you're you're talking about the environmental side. And by environment, I just mean anything that's not genetics, basically being the thing that's responsible for the weight gain where we are being exposed to all these foods that block our ability to produce energy and cause all sorts of dysfunction that further blocks that process. And so that is what is so if we change that, if we eat the foods that don't do those things, then when we eat and we eat enough food, and it's being used properly to produce energy, the hunger signals turn off. And that's it's a pretty foreign concept to a lot. People, and it was for myself at one point to not, not necessarily a foreign concept, conceptually, but in practice, like in in experience, because I think most people don't. Most people have never felt that, and that's why things like the holidays are such a problem when they have all of this, this good food around that they want to eat, and it's and like, there's kind of this feasting mindset. And so the idea that you might start to have a piece of pie and then stop partway through could never happen. For most people, it's like, as soon as you give yourself the freedom to eat it, you're going to eat it because your body is starving. But in reality, when we give ourselves that freedom psychologically, and we're eating the right foods that help to support us metabolically, so we're actually converting food to energy, we are not like the binging experience goes away and so do the cravings right and both of us, and that's and, you know, binging is such a huge part of this dieting cycle, this restriction cycle, where we're under this restriction mindset all the time. We're using our meal power, our willpower, to restrain ourselves all the time, and then we have a cheat meal, or a cheat day, or the holidays come around and it's too hard to resist, or we decide to let ourselves go, and we binge because our bodies have been starving this whole time, and we're just kind of giving them the opportunity to supply themselves, and there's nothing, you know, it's like you're left out of control, you know. And both of us have experienced this. We've talked about it, and, I mean, we experienced it a lot in our low carb days, whether it was bags of banana chips or dozens of cookies...

Mike 31:40
Or higher two pound bags of berries in one night.

Jay Feldman 31:43
Right? Or like banana bread, where we would eat a whole loaf at a time, and we would use, like, coconut flour and stuff. So it was mostly fiber.

Mike 31:52
Which is the same thing as the dieting strategy.

Jay Feldman 31:54
Yeah, it's exactly like one of the main dieting strategies, is to eat, like, fiber and water and protein before a big meal, and you'll get, like, nuts and seeds and things, salads and water. So that way you're not...

Mike 32:06
Super full on literally limited nutrition, right?

Jay Feldman 32:10
Which just makes you even more likely to binge later, because those hunger signals are still just as strong, but you're you're just physically full. So so yeah, we experienced it in our low carb days and prior to that too. I mean, you know, I dieted pretty hard when I was young in an effort to be lean. And I remember any sort of kind of family function where there would be cookies out, or brownies or something if I, if I let my guard down from that willpower and the restraint. And had one, I never had one, it always ended up being like eight and, you know, and I would try to hide it too for myself or from the people around me. And, you know, because there's so much, there's such a judgment on it from yourself and also from other people. Of course, it starts with yourself and, and, yeah, we'll do it. You know, the same thing would be weekends, especially at night, when you're tired and, you know, maybe you're watching TV or something, and open up a bag of chips or chocolate or whatever it was, and then you end up finishing the whole whole bag. And yeah, I definitely did that like to the point where I would feel sick, and I know so many people have experienced that, which is why, you know, I think it's worth mentioning, and I've and that's why I also want to reiterate that that doesn't have to continue when we were talking about these actual long term solutions, things that actually work by changing the foods that we're taking in so that we're actually able to use the food properly, those binges don't happen anymore because you don't have this mismatch between your hunger and the amount of food that you eat. And you know, when you're looking at all of these recommendations for the holidays, like we talked about with the lots of fiber and water and protein before meal, you know, just trying to, like, fight cravings and limit portions where you, you know, instead of just trying to fully abstain from the pie, you just have a give yourself a small slice, so that way you still get a taste of it. And you'll, you'll, you know, as opposed to trying to fight it completely, like it's all coming from that same...

Mike 34:05
Like austerity measure, yeah, like austere, like extreme austerity, this idea of portion control and limiting calories and eating based because the thing is, is those fiber bars that they have and and a lot of like lettuce salads are just as much crap food as you know, your your your honey buns at the grocery store and whatnot, like they don't none of them solve an underlying issue. You need to have nutrients at the cellular level to oxidize your whatever substrate you're going to use saturated, monounsaturated fats, sugars, whatever it's going to be, and you need to supply those, those fuel sources. You need to have both for for metabolism to function appropriately. So the the problem is not, is not that you're eating too much or that you're that you need to. Control your portions better, or that your cravings are wrong. The problem is that the amount of crap food that we have available to us is essentially poisoning a lot of us. That's what's really going on. And at the end of the day, it's like putting it's like having a, um, it's like having trying to fill your car up with gasoline. And the gasoline is 90% ethanol. You're gonna it's not good for the engine. It's especially for cars that are not made to run on ethanol based fuels. It's it wears out the engine. It makes it function poorly. It's having not having enough oil in your engine to run appropriately. There's a it's and the car analogy is easy, I think, easiest to describe. But on a pure physiologic level, if you're going to oxidize these different nutrients, whether it's the sugars or monounsaturated and saturated fats, you need to have the proper amount of cofactors, B vitamins and whatnot. If you're eating in these dietary fiber foods, there's none of that in there that's not in there. It's just filler. It's literally just, you might as well just eat cardboard. And then when you have a bunch of junk foods or or highly processed basically, junk foods, crap foods, honey buns and whatever else, you're getting things that cause dysbiosis in the intestine and have a high amount of oxidized polynomials that polyunsaturated fatty acids. Both those things impair your ability to oxidize food in general, and so the storing of fat is a protective mechanism. You're going to dump all these any you're going to dump toxins, you're going to dunk dump polyunsaturated fatty acids. You're going to push these other things into fat tissue. And then eventually you start to slow. Your body starts to put the brakes on the system, because you don't have enough nutrients to oxidize things properly. And then you have a lot of things impairing your the system, in general, shutting the system down directly. So it starts elevating cortisol start and then these other hormones that it starts elevating cortisol, the the catecholamines, adrenaline, or epinephrine, norepinephrine, they start to signal your desire for these very nutrient or, I guess, nutrient, macronutrient, dense foods. But the things that's available again is so you're going to have cravings for fat, you're going to have cravings for sugar, you're going to have cravings for salt, because all of those things induce those cravings. And then what are you going to reach for? You're going to reach for a bag of Lay's potato chips and honey buns and whatnot, because that's what's immediately available in our environment. And then the cycle will continue, because those foods are devoid of nutrients and have a lot of toxic components to them. And so it just continues and continues and continues. And your body keeps shoving the toxicity into the fat tissue because it can't oxidize appropriately, then you keep getting more cravings because you're you're essentially starving. In my experience, a lot of obese people that I've worked with are people who are very overweight are starving. They are they are physiologically starving. They're just eating. They're they're not feeding themselves. So their their body is constantly signaling for food, and it's not getting food, honey buns and lays potato chips and Kit Kats and all this stuff is not food. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are not food. That I think this, there's a skewing of what food actually is, and a lot of the stuff that things are moving towards, the more the lab produce stuff, and the synthetic stuff and sure, is not food. None of those things are food. So you can keep putting it in but it's not food. It's not it's not going to have that benefit. It needs real food. Is what people need. It. You need to eat your butter, your steaks, your fruit juice, your fruit specific vegetables, tubers, those types of things. And this has already been shown. This has already been shown in Wesson a price did his anthropological study where he went to the different groups and the groups that were eating their traditional diet when they switched over to eating vegetable oil and canned products and whatnot. They developed all this disease and, and some of them got obese and, and, and all these different health problems, whereas the ones who remain on their traditional diet didn't have the issues. And it happened. It happened within one generation. So you can even discount the genetic predisposition and the epigenetic aspect there is completely diet. It's not a question. So this idea of you can eat whatever you want as long as you have portion control, or you can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard later, is a it's just a fraudulent idea. It makes no sense. It doesn't work. Maybe it works initially, but again, then you refer to work initially, then you and this is what people always say, Oh, when I was younger, it used to work. Well, you didn't deplete your stores. You didn't deplete your body of all its nutrient stores. You didn't deplete your body of its hormonal capacity when you were younger, over time, you did with the these strategies.

Jay Feldman 39:53
And it goes beyond depletion too. It's, it's our bodies are constantly adapting so they start, you know, if it started out in a decent environment, you. It was, you know, it kept the, you know, all of the metabolic hormones, things like thyroid hormones and reproductive hormones, were high. So at that point you could handle it, but over time, as it keeps adapting to starvation, even in a more minor way, even if it's not, you know, complete starvation, but semi starvation, then those stress hormones increase and increase. And as you're saying, nutrients continue to be depleted as well. So you have these, this perfect storm of of signals telling your body to, over time, store more and more food as fat, and you also end up with less and less energy. As you said, the people you know in the obesity state, the obesity or even overweight state, most people are starving and and this is, this is not an idea we're making up that, you know, I'll cite some, some really great studies on this. But this, there's this starvation happening where, again, the food is not like you're ending up with a lack of energy, because the food is not converted to energy, and it's getting stored as fat and so, and as you mentioned, nutrients are a huge component there. And along so along with that, it's so, as you said, the vitamins and minerals are a huge component there, stress is a huge component there, endotoxin from the gut is a huge component there. Polyunsaturated fats are a huge component there. And these are things that we discuss all the time throughout the podcast and but the a really important point here as well, is that the calories are not the problem, the fat is not the problem, the sugar is not the problem, the carbohydrates are not the problem. But the types of foods that you're getting those things from do matter. The types of fats do matter, the type of carbohydrate does matter. So.

Mike 41:33
And a calorie is not a calorie, I think that's important to point out. So the idea of calories is not helpful. It tells you a quantity of food, but it tells you nothing qualitatively about the food, and that's extremely important. You can have 1000 calories of oil, motor oil, you know, but you're not going to do anything with that. You're going to you're going to hurt yourself really bad. Yeah. You can have whatever, whatever the ridiculous thing you can think of that you could burn and produce heat from and measure as a calorie, which is what one how much heat it takes to raise one milliliter of water by one degree Celsius, or something like that, some arbitrary amount of water by one degree Celsius. Yeah, that's, I think that's the definition of one gram, one milliliter. Yeah, yeah.

That's the definition of a calorie. So you can burn a lot of things. I could burn butane, but I'm not going to go and eat butane. What's 1000 calories of butane gonna do for me? Right?

Jay Feldman 42:29
Right.

Mike 42:29
So go ahead.

Jay Feldman 42:31
The point you're getting at is that within the food we're we're measuring, like the this measure of calories is not accurate to what's actually happening when we use it in our bodies. So yeah, as you're saying, like you're using, you know, ridiculous things that we don't consider food. You're considering that those things you could also measure in terms of calories, but that doesn't say anything about what happens when we eat them. It doesn't mean they're going to be converted to fat or that we can use them to produce energy. And the same thing happens with what we're calling calories in food, not to mention that there are so many other like problems with trying to measure things in terms of calories, because, and this is what you're getting at where there's all sorts of steps that affect how much of that food gets digested and absorbed and what actually happens with it when it's used internally, that go way beyond anything that can be accounted for in the calorie equation. And so, you know, the people who are,

Mike 43:18
if it fits your macro stuff, is just it's out of control. It makes it there's zero logic behind it. Just because you have a bunch of study and you can feed rats different amounts of calories of a purified diet and then find that the calories is the only difference, or monkeys, or whatever, says absolutely nothing about the food. Says absolutely nothing about it. If you're comparing the same diets to the same diets and then adjusting calories. It doesn't matter.

Jay Feldman 43:45
Right. That's not it's not relevant to what's actually happening as far as different. It doesn't say anything about comparing foods between calories. All it's saying is that if you have the exact same composition of food and ate more versus eight less, there's a difference, and there is a difference, and that difference also is not always weight gain, but that's, that's a whole, you know, depends on the types of foods and all that and and I don't want to dig into this too much more, because we've done it in the past, and in a future episode, I want to talk about more detail. But just, just because we mentioned it, the idea that we can even have any accurate estimation of counting calories is absurd. Also, I mean, as far as the equations for what's supposed to estimate our own calorie usage makes no sense, and as that stuff depends on so many different factors, from hormones to sunlight to the types of foods that we eat, how much sleep we're getting, and then same thing with the calories that we're measuring in food, where the difference between the amount of calories in the food before or after it's cooked can can change drastically. How well it's absorbed internally can change drastically. And when you're when you think that there's this idea that you know, 3500 calories causes you know is the equivalent of a pound of body fat. So if you eat 3500 calories more, you increases body fat by a pound you know, if you're off by 234, 5% Every day just based on small things like, you know, cooking the food versus not cooking it, or how accurately you're measuring measuring it, or just the actual calorie estimations where there's there's a study that they were looking at almonds, for example, and they found that the there was in one serving of almonds, the difference between the estimated amount of calories an actual amount of calories was about 25% so that, I mean, that's a that's a massive number. And if you're, like, if you're talking even 5% of a 2000 calorie diet, or, let's say 10% that's 200 calories, you know, in a year of 200 calories per day, let's see, that would be 21 pounds of body fat difference in a day if you were off by by 10% on a 2000 calorie diet. So to think that we're actually able to even if the calorie equation was relevant, which it's really not, and we've talked about why, even if it was, the idea that we'd be able to actually accurately measure the amount of calories in the food that we're taking in, and the amount of food that, or amount of calories our bodies are expending is, is absurd. So.

Mike 46:06
Well yeah, and I would like to see somebody put on 20 pounds of body fat in a year eating an excess of calories of lettuce, right? So they meet their 3500 calories, but they're doing it with lettuce. First of all, probably impossible, but or they're doing it with, I don't know, orange juice or or steak. I don't see, I don't see somebody putting on an excess that. I don't see it equivalating Like or being equivalent like that doesn't make any sense. The other thing I want to point out is you can make somebody obese just by giving them excess cortisol. You can make somebody lean just by giving them excess androgens and or thyroid and thyroid hormones. So the hormonal profile is just as important as the food, but the food dictates the hormonal profile. The food and the environment. There's a combination of factors, but the food does as well. If you have a high amount of endotoxin in the gut, because you're living on, I don't know, honey buns, that's the only example that comes to mind, because I don't really, don't really eat a lot of junk food. But if you're inducing endotoxinia With that, or, like, high amounts of high fructose corn syrup drinks with free fructose available. If you're doing it in high quantities or eating a decent amount of McDonald's fries or whatever, and you're inducing high amounts of endotoxin in the gut, you're going to raise your cortisol, and you can probably account for weight gain changes just from the cortisol itself. I mean, Cushing syndrome is a primary, a prime example. I mean, you can have in four months, you can start to induce obesity in children with Cushing syndrome in four months. It doesn't that's not explained by calories in, calories out, not, at least in the generic sense. I mean, it's it's explained in the modulating effect of cortisol and metabolism, but you can't account for that based on what you're intaking in your food and how much you're exercising. You're not going to fix a cortisol excess and Cushing syndrome and or and then the subsequent weight problem with exercise and dieting, right? So if you're it'll make it worse, exactly. So the hormonal profile is extremely important. Yeah. And so if you're having things that are modulating hormones, if you're lowering thyroid hormone function, if you're depleting your androgens, if you're excessively raising cortisol, that combination, right there, is going to induce abdominal obesity or abdominal fat gain, and visceral fat gain. All of those things modulate that. So there's the calories in, calories out, model is moot. And then also there's so many other factors to consider. And I but the thing is, is, while it may sound super complex, and you can figure out all the different pathways in all different ways, it just comes down to food. What food are you eating? And that's really the question. So when we come back to restriction, you don't need to restrict portions eat, to eat to what you're hungry for. You know, you don't want to overeat and slam an excessive amount of food if past what you're hungry for. But at the same time, you want to eat to society satiety, but eat, eat the right foods. And we've gone over those, I guess, ad nauseum at this point in almost every podcast, and it's not, we're not saying what specific foods you know you need to eat, um, 10 cups of orange juice a day, or some formula or this or that. It's there's general categories of things. There's general principles behind those specific categories.

Jay Feldman 49:37
Yeah, and a lot of what you're discussing has to do with adaptation as well, you know, as far as the the calorie situation and the hormones. And there's a, you know, in the research, this is called metabolic adaptation, or metabolic compensation, where they basically find that when you eat less, the amount of weight that you lose is way less than it's. Supposed to happen based on the calorie model. And then with weight gain, it's the same where, if you so so on the you know, if you eat less or exercise more, the amount of weight loss that you're supposed to have versus the amount that actually happens is as much as 64% off. And then on the weight gain side, if you exercise less or eat more, that's off by as much as 96% so another way of saying that, it's another way saying that our bodies are able to adapt to these things. When we eat more, they use more food, and vice versa, which is part of why this dieting cycle is such a problem and why it's so ineffective.

To you know, and I want to, you know, I think that what the point that we're kind of hammering home here is that food isn't just calories. Food is not the enemy. We want to make sure that we're eating the right types of foods that are supporting us nutritionally, and that are supporting our ability to produce energy, and that the goal here is not to fight ourselves constantly. It's not to use willpower to restrict ourselves. It's not to fight against the food, because the food is is not the problem. In a lot of ways, the food's very supportive, especially the foods that we're craving and wanting, assuming that they are the ones that are within, you know, these parameters that we've we've kind of discussed, as far as being low in the pockets, right.

Mike 51:12
if it's the right food right, the right types of food, exactly.

Jay Feldman 51:16
Right.

Mike 51:16
And that's really what it comes down to.

Jay Feldman 51:18
Right.

Mike 51:19
And eating enough of them, making sure you're eating enough of them. Because most, most, most overweight people that I've worked with, or I'm sure that you've worked with, are under eating. I've had, I've had people at 300 and men at two, five foot 10, 350 pounds under eating, below 2000 calories a day. And just and being fine with that. That is an obvious metabolic issue to be He. I had him one one day, he tracked for me at 1200 calories. At five foot 10 350 pounds. Yeah, just his muscle mass alone accounted for needing 3000 calories a day. At rest, he's eating less than half that in a day. It's insane. And then to sit there, all you need to eat less calories and exercise more, that's not the problem. That's definitely not the problem.

Jay Feldman 52:04
Yeah, no, no, you're right. I mean, it's normally one of almost universally, eating more is one of the first things that that I have people implement, I mean. And of course, it always depends on context. And of course it also always involves making sure the right types of foods are eaten and all of that, because when you're eating foods that are not supporting you metabolically, and you eat more of them that won't be helpful, that will, that will typically create more weight gain, not always, but typically, but if you're eating the right types of foods, and that's that's often not the case. And yeah.

Mike 52:35
Eating more of the right foods, and on a consistent basis, as for most people, is, is actually the strategy that I know both you and I will start with. You need we need to get you need to be eating enough. And it's not like, Okay, today you're eating 12, you're eating an average of 15, 1800 calories a day. So you need to be at 3000 So tomorrow we're going to start at 3000 it's not that's not the case. It's we're going to start where you are, and you're going to slowly work up, and you're gonna slowly make changes to the food choices that you have on a regular basis, and watch your cravings basically dissipate. You don't need to crave brownies anymore when you're eating, when you're your meal consists of chocolate and steak with butter and, you know, some some fruit and some juice. Your cravings for sugar is gone. Your cravings for salt and fat are gone. I mean, what else? And then the protein craving for some people get goes as well. So when you fulfilling all of the nutrient requirements that you need, there's no need for the craving. If you're eating, if your diet consists of tons of fruit, which is a large amount of sugar and carbohydrate, you're not going to crave it because, because you're already meeting the need. If you're, if you're having enough fat in your diet, you're not going to want to go eat a tub of ice cream or or, uh, super fatty food, or whatever, whatever that is nachos, or, I don't know, whatever it is you, because it's already being met. If your breakfast is eggs fried in butter and and then you're having some bacon. You've just met your salt and your fat cravings and a glass of orange juice. There goes the sugar cravings. You're not going to be sitting there in the office, man, I really need to eat a bag of sour patch and I really want to, I don't know, eat a whole thing of Kit Kats. You're not going to be craving these macronutrients because they're met, but you're also meeting the macronutrients with nutrient dense foods, foods that have nutrients to supply metabolism and that also don't cause metabolic issues. The KitKat may cause a metabolic issue. You have your salt, your fat and your sugar there, but bacon and orange juice most likely won't beef bacon and orange juice will probably cause very minimal metabolic issue compared to a bunch of Kit Kats or whatever else people can eat off the shelf, right?

Jay Feldman 54:51
Yeah, and I've seen that, you know, firsthand with clients who are still, you know, having having trouble binging on, on, you know, like candy like that, or various. Foods like that. But if they instead make sure they're eating enough food, especially earlier in the day, starting off with solid meals and getting consistent meals throughout the day a they don't end up meeting those binges at all anymore, because they're, as you're saying, they're supplied with enough sugar, enough carbohydrates, fats, all of that stuff, enough calories, if you want to call it that. But enough food, and they also end up having a lot better health results too, and experience things like weight loss. All right, I hope you enjoyed part one of our holiday anti diet series. In part two, we'll be talking about how to fix our dysfunctional relationship with food, and more specifically, we'll be talking about the process of removing judgment and morality from health and dieting. We'll be talking about when ice cream can be considered a health food. We'll be talking about why losing weight through the mainstream model often comes at the cost of our health. And we'll also be talking about how the diet and nutrition industries have caused us to develop a dysfunctional relationship with food, as well as how we can transition away from the eat less and exercise more paradigm for fat loss. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review, a like a comment or a five star rating on iTunes that really does a lot to help support the podcast. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the articles or studies or anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode, and if you are finding that you are stuck in that yo yo dieting cycle, the constant binging and restricting, or the constant hunger and cravings you're dealing with weight gain or struggling to lose weight, or If you're dealing with low energy, chronic pain, gut issues, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, or any other sorts of low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I will walk you through the main things that you want to focus on as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can optimize your cellular energy balance and maximize your cellular energy availability. So you can get rid of those constant hunger and cravings. You can end that dieting and binging and restricting cycle, and you can get rid of all of those low energy symptoms and chronic health conditions and optimize your health so to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, I will see you in the next episode.