Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 38 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, poor sleep, brain fog and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach, an 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 will be sort of a q&a episode, but we'll only be getting to one question, which is actually a question that I get pretty often in all sorts of different variations. And this question has to do with the physiology of fat loss, specifically from the bioenergetic perspective, which, you know, includes losing fat without focusing on a calorie deficit or cutting carbs or cutting fats or anything like that. So we'll be discussing that view of bioenergetic fat loss. We'll also be talking about why insulin doesn't cause fat gain. We'll be talking about where excess calories go if they aren't stored as fat. We'll be talking about why it's nearly impossible to accurately measure calories in and calories out, and we'll also discuss how an energy surplus can lead to healthy fat loss. If you have a question that you'd like us to answer on a future Q and A episode, you can send those in to Jay. At Jay Feldman wellness.com that's j, A, y at Jay Feldman wellness.com or if you're watching this episode on YouTube, feel free to leave those questions in the comments 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 and articles and anything else that We discuss throughout today's episode, and if you are looking to lose that in a healthy way through this bioenergetic perspective, or maybe you're trying to improve all sorts of other low energy symptoms like fatigue or joint pain or chronic cravings and hunger, or maybe insomnia or poor sleep or brain fog, gut issues, hormonal imbalances or any sorts of other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions. Then 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 do to maximize your cellular energy in terms of diet and lifestyle so that you can resolve all these symptoms and 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.

All right. So legit is asking about the processes of fat burning and fat storage in detail, and specifically the physiology there and then. She's also asking about the difference between the typical fat burning that people try to achieve these days versus a healthier way to lose weight, basically from a bioenergetic perspective. And this is a question that I get all the time in all sorts of different iterations. Basically, the question being, how do you lose fat without, you know, burning fat or increasing lipolysis, increasing the release of fat from storage. If I'm, you know, the kind of alternatives here too, or, you know, if I'm eating enough calories, or if I'm eating enough carbs, or if I'm eating enough fat for what my body needs, then how would I, you know, how would you lose fat? Don't you need some sort of a deficit here in order to have fat loss? And obviously, deficits are something that are talked about a lot in terms of calories or carbs or fat, or whatever it is, as far as trying to achieve fat loss. And you and I have talked in a bunch of previous episodes talking about fat loss. Why that's really the, the worst way to go about it, from the health perspective, and especially from the bioenergetic perspective. So, you know, and the alternative that we've proposed often includes eating more food, just changing the types of foods and how this can actually result in more fat loss. But I don't, I don't know if we've actually dug into the the physiology of what that can actually look like. So, yeah, do Do you have anything to add in there before we dig in?

Mike 4:29
No, you can go ahead, get started.

Jay Feldman 4:31
Okay, so the first and most important point, I would say, is, is that, I guess, like the first kind of part of the question is, what is the process of of losing fat look like? And so what we basically have is this fat that's in our fat stores, and it has to be released from the fat stores and sent elsewhere in the body where it can be either oxidized or burned so used as fuel to produce energy, or it could even be just kind of packed. Aged in some other form and released in some other way. So some of that could be if the fat is used to produce certain hormones, or if it's used for the production of bile, and then gets, you know, released through our digestive tract. And, yeah, I mean, there are, there are a few other, like, kind of very minor pathways here, as far as, like, what actually happens to the body fat. And then on the other side too, and this is a side that's really not talked about as much, is the actual amount of food that becomes stored as fat so and we'll dig into this more, but so many people are focused on wanting to increase the release of fat from fat storage and increase the burning of fat. But what's not often acknowledged is that those the things that generally drive fat oxidation, or fat burning and lipolysis, which is fat release, the things that drive those things also tend to drive fat storage. So what? Basically, the things that drive those things kind of switch the general currency, or the general general fuel, from glucose to fat, and when we do that, we also end up storing a lot more food as fat. So as far as kind of the the first piece of the physiology, what we want to be looking at is fat release versus fat storage. And another important point here is that the fat that gets released and is not used will then also end up kind of recirculating and ending up back in storage. So considering fat release versus fat storage kind of accounts for all of those possible uses of fat. And so then the next question is, all right, well, what kinds of factors affect fat release and fat storage? And normally, when people are saying, you know, don't you need a deficit of calories or a deficit of fat or a deficit of carbs, what they're saying is that those are going to be all the things that drive the release of fat from our fat tissue, the drive lipolysis. And that's true. Basically, anything that is stressful helps to shift from sugar, carb metabolism to fat metabolism. And in order to do that, or when that happens, fat is mobilized from our fat tissue. So yes, it's true that a deficit in all of those things, you know, deficit in calories or carbs or fats will lead to fat release, and so will any other type of stress, whether it's exercise or starvation, which is kind of a major deficit in calories or carbs or fats or other stresses like radiation or alcohol or various poisons or toxins, basically, anything that is stressful is going to shift to that fat kind of burning state, which is that backup state, and will therefore increase fat release. And of course, these are, for the most part, things that we don't want to be doing, but and part of the reason why, part of the reason why we don't need to be doing these things is is because there's always going to be some amount of fat release going on at baseline without any of these stressors. So there's, there's actually a good study looking at a 180 pound man, just without any excess stress during the day, like or throughout a day, that they found that as far as lipolysis goes, there's about 190 grams of stored fat that gets released throughout the day. And so that's, I mean, we're getting kind of close to half a pound there, which is a pretty considerable amount, you know, to be releasing per day, without any stressors. And along with that too, there's always some amount of fat oxidation going on as well. Even if you're on a very, very low, low fat diet, you're still going to have some amount of fat oxidation. So that's kind of the first part here as to why we don't need to be using any of those stressors to force extra fat releases, because there's already going to be a decent amount being released at baseline and some amount being oxidized to.

Mike 8:43
Oxidized in general, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's always going to be, there's always fat oxidation going on, there's always a degree of lipolysis going on, and then there's also always a degree of carbohydrate metabolism going on. And so the ideas, and the thing is, is not that you won't lose weight if you go on a super high, like super high deficit in your diet, or you go on a deficit, or you exercise more, all those things can. Can cause weight loss. The problem on the back end is, will you be able to maintain that weight loss? And will you be able to and will, what will be your hormonal profile be on the back end? So and there are, you can, there are better ways to create a deficit, if you if that's the way you want to go about it, to induce that weight loss. But the question that we, that I think both of us would would want to present, is, do you need to go on a extreme deficit to induce that weight loss? Is it possible for especially because, I mean, and the question here is weight loss for what if you're talking about a health perspective, if you're overweight, if you're obese, and you want to get down to a healthy you know, average? Well, I guess average in the United States is questionable, but a healthy weight in general, then, then can you be can you do that without having to go on extreme deficits? I think that that's likely. I think that that's. Possible if you want to get down to lower than 10% body fat and have your eight pack abs showing year round type of thing, I think for a lot of people, that might include having to use stressful means, because I don't think the body wants to be set at eight six, and this is particularly for men, at that low of a body fat percentage. I think a lot of I think our bodies, at least in my experience, tend to hover, for a lot of men, between, I guess, 10 to 16% especially healthy younger men. So it really depends on, you know, on what your goal is. But from a health perspective, it it's the idea is to elevate metabolism and not really try and force deficit. And the problem with a lot of these deficits is that in doing so, in force, in creating the deficit, especially with low carb like really low carb diets or really low calorie diets, you wind up running on hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that basically lead to a hibernation or starvation, hormonal profile that causes when you start to eat again, weight gain. Because they're they're forcing fat storage. That's basically putting the brakes on metabolism and inducing fat storage overall or or when you start to eat again. And that's why you start to see people when they especially when and good populations to look at are people who are dieting down for bodybuilding shows, because they're really dieting. They're really on on the ball, that they're really on point, but they, what you see with them is that they have to keep lowering calories consistently to get that weight off. And then when they when they're done with that, it's very easy to put the weight back on when after their show or whatever's going on. And the other thing that they have to do, and a lot of them are started doing, from the current research, is having refeed days where they basically cut the stress hormones by having days where they're allowing themselves to basically gorge themselves to some extent, and they're planned, depending on what's going on, depending on how they're feeling, basically, to cut that stress response and allow the body to have a break so that, and it allowed to help with the metabolic response in general. So with the if you're not gonna this, I guess after that, after we talk about that, then that leads into the idea of, well, if we're not going to create a deficit, whether it's in carbs or whether it's in fats or whether it's in calories in general, what, how are we going to get the metabolic rate, how are we going to lose the weight that we want to lose, or get to the state that we want to get? And a lot of this, from my opinion, goes when you start looking at research on the different hormones, and you start looking at their effects and different excesses and different conditions. And so when you look at a syndrome like Cushing syndrome, which is a cortisol excess, you start to see the signs and symptoms of obesity, particularly abdominal obesity. And with comparison to that, when you start to look at people who are either hyperthyroid or they're running high amounts of androgens parenthesis, particularly for men, what or even for women, if they have a higher a higher amount of progesterone or a different balance between progesterone and estrogen, then you start to see deposition of the fat in different ways. But for men, when you see higher androgen profiles, you see leaner bodies with higher lean with higher lean mass. And then with hyperthyroid people, you tend to see people who are on the thinner side in general, and like a lower, lower, lower body fat mass. And so for my and the thing is, you can give people exogenous hormones. And I'm not saying this is the route to go, but you can give exogenous hormones, and regardless of whether or not you like, the hormones will make a larger difference than just going into a deficit. You can have somebody lose weight just by altering the hormonal profile, regardless of whether they're in a deficit or not. And so I think that is indicative for me that the hormonal profile is much more important to the overall, the overall energy balance and the overall, I guess, weight in general, or because it's not really about weight, the the goal is basically body composition. So the overall body composition is improved with the improved hormonal profile. So the goal would be to move towards that improved hormonal profile and not get mixed up into the ins and outs of, into the specific minutia or ins and outs of well, how exactly am I going to release this fat and then burn that fatty tissue off and then, because it's a very reductionistic point of view, to sit there and be like, Well, I have this bat, and so I just need to release it, and then I need to burn it all off. And the only way to do that is to lower my my intakes that I'm forced into a starvation perspective. It's like, if you adjust your hormonal profile, and it doesn't, I know I'm not talking about taking exogenous hormones to a large extent. I'm talking about. Changing your lifestyle to adjust that hormonal profile, then you can get the effects that you want and the low lipolysis that you need, or whatever you're going to shoot for to get that specific body composition. And I think you and that will come about by increasing basal metabolism, by increasing lean mass, by lowering fat deposition. In general, all these hormones have this play, and the hormonal profiles, I think, is much more important than the basic ins and outs of oh, we're going to just like, how are we going to stimulate lipolysis? It's okay. How are we going to alter our how are we going to change our metabolic rate, and how are we going to because it's not just about releasing fat and burning it. It's about storage of fat as well. It's about conversion of food into energy so it doesn't have to be pushed into fat. So all those things come into play. And those are, those are, that's a broader perspective. That's way more important than just the idea of, I just need to burn the fat. To burn the fat is very simplistic, and I don't think it really gives the total picture of what's going on.

Jay Feldman 15:59
Yeah, not at all. And so, so I appreciate you bringing up that what we're offering is an alternative to the kind of mainstream idea of dieting, which, I mean, it's kind of mainstream and alternative. It's, it's kind of like the main model of of weight loss, which is just eating less than you're taking than you're expending, and as you mentioned, there are so many other factors that affect these situations. You talked about hormones, which are a good example and and you also alluded to the problems with that mainstream model. And using bodybuilding as as an example. And you could also use like MMA fighters as an example, where both of these situations, people are cutting down to very, very low body fat percentages by those mainstream diet deficits, and then are very susceptible to weight gain after. And what one thing that isn't focused on, there's all of the other costs that come from dieting, as far as not just the increased likelihood of gaining weight after which, as you mentioned, a lot of a lot of that comes with because of the effects on hormones, but it also, what it basically does when you push your body into a stress state, a famine state, is that it begins to conserve energy, and so you begin to, instead of converting your food to energy, you begin storing it all as fat. And as you mentioned, that's dictated by hormones, and that's kind of what we were talking about earlier, as far as fat storage versus fat release, where hormones are some of the major regulators there, which are affected by things like stress. So when you have the stress of dieting over time, you then start to change the signals that are going to increase the conversion of food to fat, increase the storage of food as body fat, as opposed to burning it. And again, not only does this lead to weight gain in the long term, and that kind of vO dieting, where you gain bait, you gain back more than you lost in the first place, but it also leaves your body with less energy for all of its other functions that are the main like factors driving your health, your your brain health, your immune system, your digestive system, all of those things. So there's a huge cost to that mainstream model, which is why we've kind of offered an alternative. And I'll link to all those episodes where we really talked about why, like, some of those major problems with the mainstream dieting and what the alternative looks like in practicality. So I'll link to those episodes. But to turn back to the physiology side again, as you mentioned, the hormones are some of the main dictators of of fat storage versus fat release. And one good example of this, as far as the this is in particular talking about the low carb side. So there's a study by Kevin Hall where they're looking at subjects or participants in a metabolic Ward, and they had one side that was low carb and the other side that was, I think, moderate or higher carb, and the low carb group had less insulin secretion, which in general would mean less fat storage. Although that doesn't actually necessarily. It doesn't, no it doesn't actually work that way. But that's just kind of in the mainstream view that, and especially the low carb view, is that insulin drives fat storage and yeah, so the low carb group had lower insulin secretion and significant, like major increases in fat oxidation. So they're more fat burning less insulin relative to the high carb low fat group. Yet they lost less body fat, and they lost greater amounts of fat free mass, meaning like lean body mass, like like muscle. So basically more fat burning less insulin, which is supposed to mean less fat storage, and yet they lost less body fat than the other group, which had higher insulin and less fat burning. So this is just a very clear example that, as you mentioned earlier, this focus on fat oxidation and the focus on excess insulin are incredibly reductionistic and don't actually represent what what's going on physiologically in reality.

Mike 19:51
Yeah, and I think it's important to point out here that, and I know a lot of people focus on insulin, because with diabetics, you have high you have high amounts of insulin. And with. Obese people you tend to have, or pre diabetics, who generally obesity and pre diabetes go tend to go together, and diabetes and obesity tend to go together as well. You see high amounts of insulin, and so people automatic, Oh, it must be the insulin is the problem, and it's, it's, instead of looking at it as an actual symptom. And then, and when you also put that in context with the fact that a lot of bodybuilders use insulin as anabolic agents to grow their lean mass as well. It you have to keep in mind that insulin just isn't just the hormone that pushes any type of glucose or or or sugar that you intake into fat tissue. It moves it into other tissues as well, which includes your muscle tissue, which includes your organs, which includes all different parts of the body. And so it's, it's important to to keep in mind that it's not just about fat storage. And when you start making a reductionist insulin isn't just about fat storage. Yeah, insulin just isn't about fat storage. When you start making reductionist claims or or looking at things from a reductionist point of view, well, insulin high in diabetes and insulin is high in obesity, then, therefore it must be causing these diseases. It just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. It doesn't. There's no it doesn't stand up to it, especially when you start looking at the research, and you start seeing that in states of obesity and diabetes, you have high amounts of endotoxemia, and the high amounts of endotoxemia are number one. Endotoxin directly impairs cell mitochondrial function and causes a glycolytic shift. And then besides that, you see that it also induces the immune system to release inflammatory cytokines that force number one, fat production by the liver. So hyperlipidemia and then also impair with the hyperlipidemia directly impairs the cell's ability to use glucose appropriately. And so you have this, you have this shift where you have the cell moving towards glycolysis with endotoxemia, and then the cell, then the body, is up regulating the lipids in the blood, which impair the ability to use glucose together. And then, therefore, insulin is elevated in conjunction with that, because it's the cells need, still need glucose, so the insulin gets elevated to try and force more glucose into the cells that it's available to take it, and especially if you're eating glucose, and then what winds up happening is, in that case, it goes into the fat tissue as storage because the cells can't oxidize it. So the problem in that situation is not that you have too much insulin. And it's not that carbs are causing too much increases in insulin and making people fat. Is that you have a component of the system. You have a component that is completely deranging the system and forcing it down a different pathway. It's not just that carbs are and that's it's not just that carbs are causing people to be fat because of insulin, but it's because you have, you have another modifying factor that's completely deranged in the system. So to look at it in this reductionist light, it doesn't rectify situations where you see and you get these paradoxical results where it's like, oh, this high carb diet cause weight loss. Even though insulins were insulin was a lot higher, it's like, yeah, because insulin is not causing causing fat gain. Like, it's not a paradox. You just don't understand it. That's what it comes down. And I don't mean you as the listener, but just in general, like anytime somebody starts to talk about a paradox, generally, there's missing information that hasn't been discovered yet, or the person doesn't understand what's going on fully. So then you think, oh, it's paradoxical. It's like, no, because insulin isn't necessarily the problem, and the sugar in the blood isn't necessarily the problem. What the problem isn't, especially in obesity and diabetes, is you have a chronic low level endotoxemia, impairing glucose utilization by the cell and causing hyperlipidemia, and then forcing the sugar to be disposed into the fat tissue. That's one mechanism going on, and so you have to, you have to keep in mind that there's other factors at play. And the other thing is, this is where cortisol and hormones become important, because in those states, you also have elevated cortisol and you have lowered thyroid function. They have direct impairments of the of the neuroendocrine system from these from these inflammatory mediators. So it becomes important to look at, what are all the factors at hand playing, and then why you have to sort of weave the needle through the different, the different things that you see, where you see different what's what want to say, different native cultures eating high carb diets and not having an issue. And you see different different cultures that aren't even native, like even in some of the Asian cultures with high amount of glucose intake from white rice, not really having diabetes and obesity until, obviously modern Advent, which is now they're increasing in diabetes obesity too. But prior to that, those things were relatively unheard of, or they were significantly less than what we have in our current population. And so it becomes important to start saying, Well, if this, if the carbs aren't causing it here, why are we thinking it causing it here? What is actually going on? And you got to find the modifier. There has to be a modifier in there that explains it.

Jay Feldman 24:57
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I know you mentioned endotoxemia as one of those primary drivers of insulin resistance, and wake in of course, there are others. I know you mentioned, like it's one possibility. We've talked about a lot of those other possibilities that are involved, as far as puva, you know, excessive amounts of stressors, not enough fuel.

Mike 25:18
Low carb diets cause insulin resistance. Physiologic. Physiologic insulin resistance as if all the other cases of insulin resistance aren't physiologic. You know, the other reasons are not done on purpose. It's like they are done on purpose. To some extent. They're a chronically validated states. But even with low carb, you have insulin resistance. That's why, when people eat carbs on their low carb diet, and they report back like, oh, look, it raised my blood sugar levels X amount. Like, it's the carbs are so dangerous. It's like, No, you're insulin resistant because you're you're running on fatty acids all the time.

Jay Feldman 25:54
Which inhibit carb utilization through the retinal cycle or gloss over I know. Well, we've, we've talked about it before. I'll link to some of those previous episodes talking about blood sugar regulation, a little bit about insulin, fructose, sugar diabetes, insulin resistance, that kind of stuff, articles, too. One other, one other thing that I think is important to mention is, as far as insulin goes, I don't know if we've talked about, I think we've talked about this a little bit, but it's also really effective at bringing stress hormones down. You know, there's kind of an opposing activity between the glucocorticoids and catecholamines and insulin at the level of the liver, and so they're kind of.

Mike 26:32
Which is the master regulator of the whole system, right? It's, I mean, it's an interplay between liver and the cells, but the liver is sort of like the regulator of everything going on, to some extent, in terms of gluconeogenesis and...

Jay Feldman 26:46
Blood sugar regulation, yeah, yeah, and yeah, obviously a lot of other factors too. Thyroid Hormone conversion, yeah, it's one of those main interfaces. And one of the main ways that it's doing that is by judging blood sugar levels as as far as, as, like, a as a mediator of fuel levels, or as an estimate regulator, yeah, but, but it's using blood sugar levels as an estimation of fuel availability and carb availability, and when that's low, and when it's, you know, evaluating that there are too few carbs and sugars available, then It creates, you know, creates that whole stress cascade. But so circling back a little bit to the, you know, the actual physiology of what it looks like with in terms of fat loss, you know, we kind of got on this tangent as far as insulin. And, you know, it's an important one, but, you know, I guess on one hand, so we have, we've kind of talked about the fat burning side not being the goal. Things that drive stress are all going to drive lipolysis and fat oxidation. And that does not mean that they're leading to fat loss, and especially in the long term, it doesn't mean that they're leading to fat loss, as we talked about, in the short term, it can or long term, if you stick to it for a long time and continue on a caloric deficit, but it's it still comes at a cost. Now, you also talked about the hormones as being one kind of piece of this puzzle, and they are. But I want to point out too that when people are talking about deficits, the kind of counter argument is that, okay, well, obviously hormones are going to affect whether something's actually whether it puts us in a deficit or not. You know, it's going to affect whether we're burning more fuel or or not. And so because of that, that still kind of fits into a deficit. You know, you're just causing a deficit by increasing testosterone, for example. And it's a very circular argument, because the amount of food that you take in, and how many carbs and how much fat and all of that is going to affect our own hormone levels without taking any exogenous hormones. So you kind of have this circular argument here where, which kind of doesn't lead anywhere. But even if we were to take that to the side and just say, okay, hormones are the same, everything's the same, we are not in a deficit. We're just, you know, eating the exact right amount for how much fuel we're using. It still does not mean, like, we can still lose body fat in that situation. We can even lose body fat when we're in what you could call a surplus, if you want to think of it that way, where, you know, kind of taking the opposite situation of of what they saw in the Kevin Hall situation, kind of the situation we're discussing, where you can maintain that normal amount of fat release and fat oxidation, just the amount that's at rest. And then, of course, there's always going to be some more, because we're always exposed, exposed to some amount of stressors throughout the day, whether it's exercise or a conversation or the, you know, temperature outside, or pathogens, whatever it is, we're always exposed to some stressors. But so just on that baseline amount of stressors and fat release, you know, there can be some fat oxidation going on, some loss of body fat. And then if we are supplying the, you know, the necessary nutrients to keep the stress hormones down, then we can end. Up with less less fat storage at the same time. And the next kind of question is, okay, well, where does that, like extra fuel go, though, and if it's not being stored as body fat? And you know, it's kind of funny, this is obviously tying in with the calorie equation argument. And so I'll link to Article I have on that, and we've discussed too in the past, so I'll link to those podcast episodes. But there's a lot of places for fuel to go that's not body fat.

Mike 30:29
Well, if it, if you're not using it for energy, then it must just be body fat, right? That's the only two options that your body has for all the food that you intake, it either turns it to energy, where it goes to body fat, because we function just like cars, and everything can be discreetly organized, just like machines.

Jay Feldman 30:47
Right, And of course, we do use that car example a lot because it is a helpful, you know, example or analogy. But yeah, there's obviously a lot of other places for fuel to be used. For example, every single tissue has structure, you know, whether it's our muscle or our brain or our bones, all of those things need to be constantly regenerating, and so fuel will be used there. Of course, the idea here too is that we would be dramatically up regulating the amount of fuel that is used for energy, which helps with all these things. It helps to increase brain function and increase our ability to for muscular work and for our liver to function properly and detoxify endotoxin, for example, which you mentioned earlier, or any other pathogens or toxins that we're exposed to that our immune system needs to handle, and, you know, making sure that we're producing enough digestive enzymes. All of those things are very much energy dependent. Some people talk about them being thyroid dependent, and thyroid is just kind of a way to to measure energy, yeah, yeah. It's kind of a, yeah, an indicator of our energetic state. So, but yeah, again, even in the context that there's no actual deficit there, that extra, you know, fuel that isn't getting stored as body fat can be stored as anything else you know, whether it's brain tissue.

Mike 32:00
Not even stored, just created. So it does not even have to be fuel, because your brain tissue is a combination of carbohydrates, fats and proteins in whatever structural form is. So if you're going to regenerating it, maybe it's not fuel a lot when you're taking in a certain amount of protein to maintain a certain amount of lean tissue mass, in general, that's why a lot of people don't consider protein to be a fuel source so much, especially within the bodybuilding community, it's like the protein is supposed to go towards the lean mass and then the carbs are supposed to spare my protein and provide my energy. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 32:33
Yeah. I should have said substrate, though. So thanks for the clarification. So substrate that we're taking in protein, carbs, fats, any kind of building block that, as you're saying, the purposes are not only fuel. I mean, hormones are another situation, yeah, something that can be produced from these things. So I think that that's kind of the overview as far as some of that goes. And then there's a couple other nuances that I think are important to mention. So one, and we, we talked about this a little bit in those that holiday anti diet series, but talking about the calorie equation, and this idea that we could even measure whether we're in a deficit or a surplus is absurd. I mean, it's just there's like, you know, we talked about the effects of hormones, and how every type of food that we eat, the amount of all those foods that we will affect our hormonal state. When we eat the foods will affect our hormonal state, how much sunshine we get will affect our hormonal state, whether we had an argument with significant other, will affect our hormonal state. Like there are, you know, any supplement we take, so many factors that will affect, not only you know, either our hormonal state orders directly affect energy production. That to think that we can get any sort of accurate gage on how much energy we're producing in a day is pretty ridiculous. And then, you know, unless, I guess, we're monitoring CO two production in a metabolic Ward, which I think most people are not doing. And then on the other side too, is the calories inside which we think that we have a good measure of, you know, I can weigh, you know, even if I'm not going to eyeball my food, I'll weigh it on the scale, and I'll know exactly how many calories I'm taking in, and just compare that with this estimate of how many calories are going out. But we can't measure that either, at least with any accuracy, because those are all based on estimations as well, and there are so many factors that affect how many calories are actually in a food that include cooking and digestion and like, to a pretty significant extent. So there was a study that was looking at almonds, where they found that the estimation for the amount of calories per serving of almonds was off by just about 25% so if you're eating a serving of almonds and you're saying, like, Oh, I'm maintaining my weight because I'm, you know, perfectly balanced, but you're not counting the fact that those two servings of almonds left you with 100 calories, you know, you're actually in 100 calorie deficit. So how could you be maintaining your weight? You should be losing weight, you know.

Mike 34:58
Because I'm going to eat chocolat covered almonds to make up the other 25% haha.

Jay Feldman 35:02
There you go. And there's another thing too, is that there's even just regular digestion. There's some you know, a decent percentage. I think it's typically an average of four or 5% of food that is does not get absorbed, that just gets lost in, just through our stool alone. And then there's also a certain percentage that will be lost in the urine, which is typically around 3% so how many people are accounting for, you know, for the 3000 calories they take in, or two, more likely, 2000 let's say the 5% that ends ends up going through stool, and 3% in urine. So that's 8% less, which is what 160 calories. So like, who is accounting for that when they're determining how many calories they're taking in compared to the amount that they're expending, or who's including on the expenditure side. One other example, just real quick go ahead, is looking at the example of like cooked versus processed food, and how much energy is expended or on the digestion of those things. So there was just one other study where, well, one was looking at like raw versus cooked beef and raw versus cooked sweet potatoes and rats, and it showed a pretty significant difference. There was one that was looking in people, and they were looking at Whole wheat with cheddar cheese versus white bread with processed cheese product. And the difference in calorie expenditure, energy expenditure, but just for digestion of one versus the other was 10% which is, again, huge. I mean, we're talking a pretty like, if you're thinking a 10% difference just based on the type of foods that you're eating, just just their effects on digestion, not effect, not including their effects on hormones and whatever else. Like, how can you like? How could we possibly have a good, accurate idea of how many like, calories we're expending or taking in.

Mike 36:40
There's your supposed requirement for if you're eating 3000 calories a day and you need to less by 500 calories a day, there you go. That just means you're almost at your requirement to lose one pound per week, which is your 3500 calories according to that model. Yeah, yeah. Basically what you're pointing out, or what we're pointing out here, is that the the models just don't work. The idea, they're too simplistic to describe everything that's going on, especially considering all the factors involved, to sit here and worry like, because the the whole idea that, the whole premise that we're going off of is is, oh, there's fat burning. It's like you're burnt. You have to burn through the fat. And it's, I think we need to move away from the idea of burning fat or creating a deficit or so that you can release that, or the whole amount of calories, just because in when you have, when you have the hormonal component, component, and then you have the digestive component, and then you have the individual components of the food, then you start to like it just becomes the whole idea becomes pointless. I mean, not what is the effect of the food on the body itself? If, if you don't tolerate casein Well, or the casein has a strong opiate effect on you, and then you're gonna has a inhibitory effect on your dopamine levels, and then that inhibits your sex hormone production. From, like, from a from a neurological point of view, or, or or a neural point of view. Then, then, regardless of what the caloric intake of the food is it, it's going to change the your hormonal profile, and then change the body composition. So even, even if you lose weight, it doesn't it like, what are you losing? The the idea shouldn't be weight. The idea should be composition. It should be, what is your body composition, meaning like body fat or lean body fat and lean mass, exactly. So the goal, and the other thing is having zero body fat should not be a goal for somebody who's interested in being healthy. If you want to go be an MMA fighter or a bodybuilder, and that's what's required for your sport, and that's your living. And you understand the risk involved. Go ahead. But as far as maintaining health, which is the entire purpose of what we're talking about here, I just, I want to make clear the context, because I know there's going to be, there's always that person who's just like, well, bodybuilders, and it's just, we're not talking about bodybuilders, we're talking about people maintaining health. And that's the purpose of where we are right now. Then you're going to have some body fat. It's just what is the optimal amount? And the optimal amounts that are ranges have been semi described to some extent. And I think for male, like I said, it's something around 10 to 16% for males, and I think it's like 14 to 20 something percent for females. Or even 14 might even be too low, maybe like 16 or something even higher, it's necessary just for optimal function, just for people to be healthy, just for people to deal with stressful situations. So when you're considering the entire perspective of you know, what's the what's the effect of your hormonal profile? What's the effect of the food on your hormonal profile? What's the effect of different mediating factors, like endotoxin or life stress on your hormonal profile and your ability to oxidize or use different substrate? What's your total amount of food intake? What's the effect of digestion on that food when you start throwing in all these variables, and then you start, you want to start. You want to break it down to just calories and calories. Out, and then how do I create a deficit to induce lipolysis? It just, it doesn't make any sense. It like, it's like trying to understand the world through black and white pictures, like you're just, you can't really get an idea of of what the depth is and what and all these different aspects. Or just even silly, it's like even worse, like black and white silhouettes of what the actual of what actual things are, the model is just way too simple and but the thing is, is that just because this model is too simple to describe the process doesn't mean that it be make that. It doesn't mean that losing weight or getting into a healthy state is actually super complicated. Either it just means that we have a crap model or a crap ideology that's been that's been pushed upon us, and I lead a lot of it is marketing, because the basically, the model that they're pushing allows us to say, allows them to sell you whatever crap they want you to eat, as long as you need or not. Well, essentially, we're going to sell you whatever crap you whatever crap you want to eat. And if you're having, like, health issues or what or weight problems, it's probably because you're overweight. And so the goal is to just eat less of the crap that we're giving you overall. So not only are you eating crap, but you're eating less of it. So that's like, that's a marketing and industry thing. To some extent, the ideas, I think, are driven by the marketing and industry stuff, and especially the fitness industry and all this type of stuff. They're super big and these ideas of calories and calories out. But the other thing that they don't, a lot of people don't account for, is when they start to go on diets, they completely change their food. It's like, well before, I was eating honey buns and make Mickey D's, and now I'm having a now I'm having steak and broccoli and white rice with with olive oil and things like that. It's like, okay, so now you're eating less calories, but you've completely changed 100 other factors as well. So there's, there's so many factors involved to break it down into this idea of I need to lower my calories to some extent, so that I can induce adrenaline and cortisol to start releasing fat, and then I'm now burning off fat, and I'm in a better state. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, you pointed out with the low carb article where you had increased lipolysis, and then, I mean, it doesn't even take into consideration the effect of increasing lipolysis on metabolism itself, especially in the long term, exactly, especially in a short term study. Yeah, so the idea is just it again. It just it doesn't. It's not reality. The idea is not reality. I know everybody on the internet loves to repeat, oh, it's just calories in calories out. It's like, okay, sure, it's calories in calories out, but we're gonna go over all the factors that affect calories in calories out, and then you're going to tell me how you're going to calculate that equation effectively. And most people are me like, not because you can't. And so it doesn't even make any sense to go there. And the other thing is the idea of even, and this is where you get it, if you're fit your macros crowd, which is even just as bad as the calories crowd is as if, like all, like all the food can be, can be described in these discrete data particles, as calories or as a macro it's like the protein of beans. What? And this is well established, the protein of beans is not the same as the protein of eggs. It's not there's the nutrient profile is different. The digestibility is different. The effect on your ability to put on lean tissue is different. So there people can say whatever they want. You know you can, you can say, well, I ate this much, I ate beans, and I meet my protein requirement here, but the research shows that you're not going to be able to, you're not going to be able to eat the same amount of protein from beans and eggs and have the same conversion to lean tissue. So you're compare. The comparisons in these discrete packages are sure they're helpful from like, a theoretical perspective, but when it comes to reality, it's just not. It's we don't see that in reality. We're not seeing that there. So the model, if the model in the theory, doesn't relate to reality, well it's not going to work. And we see that with people on their yo yo diets and constantly gaining and losing weight and then gaining back more after they lose it and things like that. It's time to abandon this idea. It's time to abandon this model and start to move to something that makes a little bit more sense, from a hormonal from a cellular level, from a metabolic standpoint, it's time to look at the big picture and start saying, This calories and this, this macro stuff, we can use it in our new big picture? But it's not the defining features that that drive the picture.

Jay Feldman 44:26
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's funny. You know, part of I feel like, while we end up having this conversation a lot, and not to say this is the same as previous ones, but we end up talking about these things so much because the calorie model, a I think we'd both agree is one of the more damaging, if not the most damaging, I guess, mechanism that the system uses to destroy our health, and that you talked about the influence of industry, and I want to touch on that too, but it's and it's so deeply ingrained, and it's so crazy. For anyone to question that physiological fact, you know that scientific fact of calories in, risk calories out, and how? You know that it has to the law of thermodynamics, which obviously people saying that do not have any understanding there of what that actually means. And I'll, again, I talked about this in that calorie article that I'll put in the show notes. But the, it's funny how that's, it's so crazy to be questioning that, and that's part of why, you know, I wanted to take the time to explain that. You know, even the people who think that they're following that model are not, you know, and using the digestion and cooking food versus processed food, all that stuff is just kind of examples there. As far as, as you mentioned, it's, it's like, you know, for the people in that situation, how accurately are you actually counting calories one way or the other? And you pointed out as well, and this is, I think, very important, to make clear, that even if you calculated all those things and calories in exactly equal to calories out, that does not mean that there's body fat like that. There is not any change in body fat, or not any change in weight. Calories are not a measure of weight. Obviously, if you were to drink a gallon of water on top of that, you're gonna weigh 16 pounds more, however much a gallon weighs seven pounds a gallon, I don't know. Yeah, some whatever it is, that's what, 128 fluid ounces. So 128, divided by 16 eight pounds, you're right. So, yeah, so if you were to drink a gallon right there, first off, you wouldn't be too fun, but you know, you'd weigh an extra eight pounds. Obviously, calories and weight are separate, and I hope people understand that. But also that says nothing about what's going to happen as far as body fat, either. Body fat. Either you can be even if you factored everything in, as far as calories, they can be perfectly balanced, and you can still either lose body fat or gain body fat. You had mentioned protein as an example of a situation there, and there's a good example of some research on that, where they fed rats whey protein versus wheat protein. It was ISO nitrogenous, meaning that there's exactly my nitrogen, nitrogen, which is a way of measuring protein content, everything else was the same as far as calories go and and the ones with the that ate the wheat had more of it being stored as body fat, and increases in body fat relative to the ones that had the way where more of it was being stored as muscle mass, exactly. Lean mass. Yeah. So it's, it's important to, like, I want to make that distinction too, that on one hand, the Keller equation is so far from practical, and all of the caveats there, but on the other hand, it's also not accurate. Even if it was practical, it's not even close to accurate. And it then leads to what you're talking about, where you have, you know, it's a perfect, you're saying, mechanism, but it's like a perfect vehicle of industry to, as you said, create terrible food that you have to eat less of if you want to be able to maintain your weight. Then for all the people who can't eat less of it, because everything in your body is telling you to eat more because you're starving, then you have this whole other industry of weight loss, which is just all based around losing weight, you know, whether it's Weight Watchers or, you know, also,

Mike 48:08
Is even worse, because the food you get in the Weight Watchers stuff is just like fiber and synthetic sweeteners, so you literally get absolutely nothing. You don't even get nutrition, and you lose weight, but they're starving you. It's like the gastric banding surgeries right now, most people lose the weight in the first month. It's like, yeah, because they can't eat, they just don't eat for a month. They just live off their body fat.

Jay Feldman 48:32
And then on top of that, the last part of it is that then you have everybody blaming themselves, where, instead of it, it being a product of the poor quality food, or all of these other aspects of our environment that are impairing our ability to produce energy from the food and forcing it to be stored as body fat instead of being able to acknowledge all those things. It's just our own faults for eating too much. We're all just gluttonous, and we just need to work harder and whatever else. And there's nowhere else, you know, we just have it's all of our faults.

Mike 48:59
Your stomach is just too big, Jay, we just have to cut it. We have to cut 80% of your stomach out. And then you won't be hungry anymore, and you won't be a glutton. And then you know all of your all of your friends and family members who are just also blank, lowing, laying the shame on you, they can't do it anymore, because now you know, I got my stomach cut like the ideas are just they don't make any sense. It doesn't it. I just it, just especially because all this is new to this last century. It's not like we had obesity prior to this, right? It's not even when people had access to food. It's not like obesity was a rampant problem until now, going along with every other disease, cancer, heart disease, autoimmunity, etc. And it's just like, oh, people, just in the past century, happened to become gluttonous.

Jay Feldman 49:44
Yeah, that's, that was the shift. I think we answered the question pretty well. As far as the physiology there..

Mike 49:54
The basic just, just to clarify for the basic physiology, because I know we, we sort of. Advanced over that. But the idea is you have an adipocyte, which is a fat cell, and it stores fats in whatever vacuoles, whatever it is, it stores that stores the fats and the atopo sites can expand, or you can also increase the number of adipocytes that you have, and then they can expand, meaning they hold more fat. And then you have certain hormones that cause lipolysis, which is the lysis or the breaking down of these fat cells, or not the fat cells, but the fat within the cells. And then the fat is exported out, and then it's supposedly burned by your body tissues, or used for anything else, or Yeah, or used for whatever or excreted, or whatever it is, the liver can excrete some of it. And so essentially, what you see happening with this is that you have certain hormones that induce this lipolysis, for this breakdown of fat. And a lot of these hormones tend to be adaptive. Hormones tend to be the catecholamines, cortisol, also, which is elevated in dieting, also causes lipolysis or breakdown of fat, but it does it in a certain way, where it causes lipolysis of fat from the extremities and and then, but cause shifts the metabolism that cause a deposition of fat in the in the sentence, the central portion of the body. And so central adiposity is what winds up happening. And this is, this is demonstrated. You can literally give any any mammal cortisol or cortisone or dexamethasone or prednisone or whatever synthetic cortisol derivative you want, and induce abdominal obesity in them with enough cortisol. And this is, this isn't this has nothing to do with calories in, calories out, with the cortisol. They'll you can, you can get five year old kids with Cushing syndrome still eating the same amount of calories, and blow them up to be obese, just with excessive amounts of cortisol. And it's because of the shift in metabolism. But besides that, with the idea you release the fat with these hormones, generally catecholamines and stress hormones, glucagon, cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, noradrenaline, whatever. And then basically the idea is that when you're releasing this fat tissue, then you're going to be as you lower the fat content in the fat cells, then it shrinks, then you get less fat. That's the general idea behind what's going on. Now they've extrapolated that to include adiponectin and leptin and all these different hormones and regulating appetite on top of the general blood sugar hormones. So it came and the picture become really mechanistic and really complex, because you have to then they start looking at the interplay of the different intestinal hormones like cholecystokinin and glucose, like peptide one, and all these random things that they're just continue to discover, and then their interactions with the brain and hunger signals, because the ideas have morphed into what's Stefan Gaines ideas that it's like a It's a neuro, neurologic problem, like, he's, like, making your basically, it's still your fault. You're still glutton, but now it's just your brain's fault because you evolved to be a glutton. So, like the the general philosophy stays the same, but they just find more, I guess, uh, complex or delicate ways, or whatever it is to describe these things or to justify them, instead of it just being a problem with the food, you know, a problem with the quality, quantity food and other parts of our environment, yeah, or the other part, exactly. And so that's the general idea behind lipolysis and fat loss. You we can get into insane detail. Go through the leptin pathway and glucose like peptide one and cholecystokinin and whatever other hormone, adiponectin, all these other hormones that are out there that interplay with appetite and with fat storage and with metabolism, and then that lays on top of what you already have with the glucocorticoids and the catecholamines and thyroid hormones and androgens and progestogens and estrogens and etc. But at the end of the it doesn't need to go there, because, at the end of the day, it's a food problem, it's, it's.

Jay Feldman 54:13
it's an energy problem.

Mike 54:15
It's an energy problem, but in the sense of, it's a quality it's a quality and type of food issue, because, like, it comes down to an issue of an energy Pro and also, obviously lifestyle issue, but it comes which is..

Jay Feldman 54:26
I don't want to discount that. I mean, working, you know, 12 hours a day is not a like it's going to create the same stress that eating too little would. No can, you know.

Mike 54:36
, I just think it's important to point out that the major issue, I think for a lot of people, in conjunction with the lifestyle stuff, is a food quality issue and what people are eating and things. Because even, even in the past, when people were stressed out, yes, you can sure you can get people some overweight people, but obesity and heart disease and diabetes and things are a much newer profile of diseases. They're you. They were around in the past, but not to the prevalence that they are now. And I think a lot of that, a large portion of that, comes down to diet, and it's not about gluttony. And so the other lifestyle factors definitely do play a part. Don't that not you can't discount them at all, like not sleeping and working excess, excessive amounts, and having family life stress, like you're gonna put on weight, it just like you, you're those are, these are all basic requirements for life. If you don't meet your basic requirements for life, you're not going to live well. And we are continually, we're continually being forced to sacrifice our basic requirements of life, these and then and then, things are being justified as being our fault. Oh, you don't. You're not sleeping well at night. I don't know what, what the reasons are, because you have a Trazodone deficit or some ridiculous that's not actually the reason, but it's just, I don't know, like you just have, you have a sleep disorder. It doesn't it's not the fact that you just work 13 hours in blue light, didn't get any exposure to sunlight, and you have a stressful job, and then you weren't able to eat or go to the bathroom on whatever you're doing.

Jay Feldman 56:02
Yeah. I mean, it's the same, like the idea, like the idea that you're, you know, you need to work two jobs, or you're working too hard, or, like you're working too much, and just because you're not working hard enough, you know, if you worked harder, then you would have the money you need, and then you'd be fine, and you can buy the high quality food. You know, it's probably the same thing in every single.

Mike 56:19
Yeah, it's, it all comes down to being our fault. It's always pushed on on the individual as, oh, you're just not working hard enough. You're just not doing this hard enough. And I don't think that that. I think a lot of people are working too hard. That doesn't mean that hard work is a bad thing, but it's just like, what are you getting for it? What is everyone getting for it? You know, you're just because you go running the if working and working hard, in and of itself, is not the goal running, if you have to run two hours in the treadmill every day just to maintain your weight, that's not working hard. That's just, I don't know what that is. That's just doesn't make any sense.

Jay Feldman 56:53
Well, it is working like, it is working hard. It's, it's, I understand, I understand what you're saying. I'm just saying like, like, I know people who are in that perspective, and you know this, what,

Mike 57:03
you're working hard. But for what right?

Jay Feldman 57:05
I mean, every aspect of our society is telling us that those things are the answer, and they don't have to be the answer. They aren't the answer, and it's going to lead to the same cycles that that don't end up with any, any sort of productive result. Yeah.

Mike 57:20
There's people, just, if people, a lot of people, like, they're working hard, but they're spinning their wheels and what they're doing, you know, it's like, I don't know what, what a good it's like, if you have, if, if you have a hammer and you have a nail gun and you have to put all the nails in the house, like, you choose the hammer for the sake of working hard, it's like, no, why don't you just use the nail gun?

Jay Feldman 57:39
Right. But most people aren't in that situation.

Mike 57:42
Most well, they don't know that they have the nail gun. Yeah, you've got the hammer. No nail the house.

So there's that's not to discount working hard. It's just working what are you working hard for? That? I think that's the important question, are you and you know, like, not for war water. What are you working hard for? But if you're working...

Jay Feldman 58:06
it's shifting the perspective away from away from it

Mike 58:10
Working hard for the sake of working hard. But it's if your goal, if you have an easier way to reach your goal, that causes you less stress and less harm than and it doesn't like and you don't have to work hard for it, then why would you not go in that route?

Jay Feldman 58:27
Yeah, it's not I mean, we kind of transitioned from blaming ourselves to working hard in it. And obviously those are two kind of separate things. And so I think what both of us are saying is that it's not in the individual's fault, and it's not our fault that these are the beliefs that are put out there, or that we're in the environments that we're in. But what we're trying to do is, you know, illuminate the other possibilities. Illuminate the other things. You know, the alternatives that will actually lead to improved health and whatnot, without needing to a, without blaming yourself and and B, without, you know, doing all these things that are counterproductive?

Mike 59:02
Yeah, we're trying to, we're trying to give people the, at least, the knowledge and tools to work hard and also get the results from what they're working and for some people, you may not, you may not have to work hard with the paradigm. So it really depends. But I guess working hard is besides the point. It's giving the tools to not have to spin your wheels and to, sort of like, Get get to where you want to get without harming yourself. So we're trying to change the paradigm, the principles behind it, or not even change it. We're just trying to discuss what we've seen in opposition of the current paradigm.

Jay Feldman 59:35
Yeah, and it's, it's noteworthy too. I mean, you know, we've, we've both talked about this before, but often, some of the first things that we do when we're working with people is is encourage them to eat more, because the vast majority of people are under eating right now. And you know, definitely seen it in several examples where eating more, whether it's maybe five or six, you know, some maybe five or 600 calories, sometimes it's more than that every day. Okay? And again, in in juxtaposition with the calorie.

Mike 1:00:04
Foods that are palatable.

Jay Feldman 1:00:06
Right? Yeah, you get

Mike 1:00:07
They need to eat more chocolate. And everyone's like, okay, more chocolate, yeah, you need to eat. You need to eat more fruit or fruit juice. Oh, I can have sugar. Okay, so, yeah, just trying to shake some of these, these, these, these pervasive views that have been around that people keep going through iterations of, and just not a lot of people aren't really getting anywhere with it, or there's spending a lot of time on things that that are counterproductive for them. I feel like, and that's just because of what the current views are. And I feel like a lot of people are being taken advantage of with the current view, and it's kind of hard to see. You know, I have friends who we talked about this before, just that are that are obese or severely overweight, and you'd look at their diets, and they're not even eating 2000 calories, and they're at like, 300 something pounds, and it's just like, how like they're not even meeting their basic requirements for life, even at that weight, and then to tell them that they're eating and then to, like, shame them or blame them for being overweight because they're eating too much. It's just like that's like just pouring fuel in the fire when it's they clearly have a metabolic issue going on. There's clearly something going on that's that's causing them to be, have been such a lowered metabolic state than to turn around and say, Oh, well, it's just because you're a glutton. And then they're like, well, not even eating that much. It doesn't help. That's not the answer. Or then they go to the surgeon and they have to get their stomach cut and just like that, that's harmful. That's not helpful. You don't need to eat less. You don't need to starve.

Jay Feldman 1:01:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah. To consider the calorie deficit as the that's the mechanism for weight losses, yeah? And it's, it's doubly counterproductive, too, when you know we're talking about this alternative where you're eating enough. But I mean, we talked about this, especially in the very first episode of the podcast, or actually the second so it was episode one. We had an episode zero. So this was in episode one. We talked about, basically the bioenergetic view of health and energy in our health. And the what we talked about was how we want to create an energy surplus? And again, this, this is kind of where some of these questions came from, is, how could you have an energy surplus and also have this weight loss? And you know, we talked about the those kinds of circumstances, but it's like, when you have, when you're eating these foods that support energy production, you're adjusting your environment to support energy production and removing all the things that block it, you have this, this kind of feed forward snowball effect to where all of these things continue to raise the amount of energy, or the amount of fuel that you're using, amount of energy that you're producing, you continually see the increases in anabolic hormones, you know, like, like anabolic reproductive hormones and and the thyroid hormones, and continual decreases in the stress hormones that continue to support weight loss while eating more and while eating in that surplus. Again, where that the I mean when I say surplus, I'm talking about an energy surplus which does not is kind of a whole different way of looking at this from the calorie equation. What we're really talking about in is, what we're really talking about in is looking at the fuel we're taking in, and then whether it's being directed towards or being produced as energy, being used as some substrate for some other structure, or anything else, or being stored as body fat, and so doing all these things to help drive that fuel towards energy production, then it has this feed forward reaction where it's even all the more food you're taking in, you're going To be using more and more of it to produce energy. Your basically, your metabolism keeps going up and up, kind of like when you were younger and you didn't have these accumulated environmental insults over time that have tanked your metabolism. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's like, the best of all worlds. And, yeah, so you know, and you even, like, if you're kind of thinking of it in those different directions, where you have the fuel coming in, and it's going towards either body fat or energy or other options when you're doing this, and the hormonal state's good, which, again, is just a representation of energetic availability. So when you have the energy surplus, you have a lot of energy available. You then also see kind of that extra arrow of the body fat going towards energy production and going towards substrate, where, because you have less and less of those fat storage hormones circulating, and less of those fat storage signals, you end up with even that baseline amount, let's say that's the 190 grams being released every day, which is a lot, I mean, just under two or Just under half a pound of body fat per day, you know, that's, that's, you know, it's not being restored. It's being used for all these other things. So, yeah, it's, it makes a lot more sense, yeah. And that's, I guess, that's, I don't know, trying to kind of put those puzzle pieces together and help people maybe have an alternative view, or. An alternative way to conceptualize it, to transition away from this concept of, you know, this balance, this balancing act between how much food you took in and how much went out.

Mike 1:05:11
The current picture clearly isn't really working, and this picture makes a lot more sense, I think, in reality, but also theoretically. So it's also, you know, just a matter of time, and it's relatively, I guess, newer picture, and I think I see part of it starting to develop too, with the idea of reverse dieting, which is becoming more popular.

Jay Feldman 1:05:33
But the problem there is that so often the types of foods, all the other aspects in the environment, are ignored, and it's still just about calories. It's just in the reverse, as opposed as opposed to focusing on eating less, you're trying to eat more. Yeah. And I think there's some caveat, you know, there's obviously some drawbacks there too, if you're not addressing all these other factors that affect what happens to the food that you take in, including, you know, some of those factors are how much you take in and what types of foods you take Yeah. All right, before we wrap up this episode, I do want to mention a few other things in regard to the physiology of bioenergetic fat loss. And the first has to do with the calorie equation, where there's one pretty major flaw that I think it's you know, is worth highlighting a little bit further, and that's that the argument that the calorie deficit causes fat loss is a circular one, and therefore is inherently flawed. And and when I say circular, basically, what I mean is basically that the calorie deficit is determined to be accurate based on the result. So if you have somebody who has lost weight, then it's supposedly proven that they were in a calorie deficit regardless of what they were eating. And so you have this kind of circular definition of a calorie deficit. And there's a really great quote from an editorial discussing this, and this is specifically in regard to overeating being the cause of of weight gain and obesity, which basically comes from that same calorie equation mindset. And so here's that quote where they said that the folk belief that overeating causes obesity has influenced clinical thinking with remarkable tenacity, despite two fatal flaws in the theory. First, the proposition is logically vacant in as much as the definition of overeating is circular, only if one is fat can one be said to have overeaten. Second, whenever the proposition has been reframed so as to have meaning, and then tested in a well designed experiment, eating behavior has appeared to be the dependent variable rather than the independent variable. And so again, in that quote, you know, it's really the that first flaw that I'm I wanted to highlight here, which is that, you know, they're talking about the definition of overeating being circular. And the same goes for this calorie deficit or calorie surplus being circular, where, as they said, one is only if one is fat can one have said to have overeated, or you could replace that overeaten with achieved a calorie surplus. So it's just a very circular argument there that is basically impossible to prove right or wrong, which, as they said, makes it logically vacant. So I wanted to highlight that. I also wanted to expand a little bit on how an energy surplus actually leads to fat loss. And so first, I just wanted to make a clarification that when we're talking about an energy surplus, again, this doesn't mean a calorie surplus, and it doesn't even necessarily directly relate to excessive eating, but rather, it has to do with the balance of our energy supply and energy demands, and this idea that we want to have an excess of energy supply compared to our energy demands, and that this is, again, what fuels all the functions in our bodies. And we talked through this in a lot more detail in episode one of the podcasts, so I'd highly recommend listening to that episode. But then the second point here is that this energy surplus does not equate with having more body fat. And again, this is coming from that that calorie equation mishap and the idea that any excess amount of food is going to be stored as body fat, and that that's going to be the limiting factor. So I want to break that down just really quickly, where, when we know, we know that food is coming in, and food is representative of is representative of fuel, or is used as fuel in our bodies. And then there's a couple of routes for that fuel. It can either be converted to energy and used for virtually any function, or it can be converted to body fat, or it could be used for some other structure that we discussed, whether that's muscle or brain tissue, or whatever it is. And so to break down this assumption from the conventional view, the assumption, and again, this is that calorie model is that the main factor determining whether the food gets stored as body fat is whether the energy requirements are satisfied, whether we already have enough energy. And as some studies point to, and I'll include those in the show notes, and as we've talked about throughout various previous episodes in the podcast, that's not at all the. Case where normally, when there's a lot of food being stored as body fat, it coincides with a lack of energy, and that's because there's the vast majority of the time. The problem here is that there is something inhibiting that conversion from food to energy. It's a very complex process, and is influenced by nutrition and all sorts of other aspects of lifestyle that we've discussed. And so it's really important to take note of take note that the primary factor determining whether food gets stored as body fat is not excess energy, but rather all of these other factors that are blocking it from being converted to energy and rounding up with basically lack of energy and excess body fat. And you could also kind of think of this as basically spillover. If you were to have a really inefficient process, I need, you know, conversion from one to anything else, you have this huge spillover of excess products that you didn't want in the first place. So that's kind of what's happening here, where the, you know, yes, having enough energy can lead to food being stored as body fat, but that's really rare to see in practicality, because having enough energy will also stop our hunger signals, and we have these really nice feedback systems that prevent us from actually overeating beyond what our needs are, and that's because our hunger is determined by our energy availability, which, again, we've discussed in previous episodes. But so while having enough energy can potentially cause food to be stored as body fat, that's virtually never happening, and that's because, you know, we have these feedback systems to basically stop ourselves from having excess substrate in that way. And normally, when we're having excess body fat, it's because you could call it dysregulation of these systems, but it's really not, basically, it's our body saying that we need more energy. And yes, it's a really inefficient process where we're going to have all this spillover as body fat, but we need that energy more than anything. So we're going to have to have that body fat as a, as a, you know, a byproduct. And of course, that's why our focus is on fixing the conversion from that food to energy, restoring proper energy production, rather than focusing on simply eating less, which is, you know, obviously very far beside the point, and really not addressing any of those issues. So anyway, I hope that that was a helpful explanation for you, and clarified some things as far as the physiology of bioenergetic fat loss goes. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or comment on YouTube or a review and five star rating on iTunes. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast. If you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on a future Q and A episode, you can send those in to Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com that's j, A, y at Jay Feldman wellness.com or if you're watching this on YouTube, you can leave those questions in the comments 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 links to any of the studies or articles that we discussed throughout today's episode. And that also includes previous podcast episodes. You can find those in the show notes, as far as the ones that we referenced today, and if you are looking to achieve bioenergetic fat loss, or if you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms, whether that is chronic hunger, chronic cravings, joint pain, brain fog, gut issues, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, or any chronic health conditions, whether those are autoimmune issues, diabetes, heart disease, whatever it is. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can learn about how you can maximize your cellular energy by making fundamental adjustments to diet and lifestyle, which will help to resolve all of these symptoms and conditions. 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.