Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 54, of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and 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 a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is a q&a episode where we will be talking about whether a calorie surplus is needed to build muscle. We'll also be talking about how you can build muscle and lose fat at the same time without a calorie deficit, and how you can build muscle while being in an energy deficit, and why this comes at a major cost, and is not a great idea. Additionally, we'll be talking about whether eating sugar will cause a candida overgrowth, and whether refined sugars affect candida overgrowth or other overgrowths of bacteria or other microbes differently than the quote, unquote, natural sugars from fruits, for example, if you have a question 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 and 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. If you are new to this podcast, then after listening through today's episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen through episodes one through seven, where we took some time to build a foundation as far as the bioenergetic view of health is concerned. To check out these show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to the studies articles and anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode, and if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, whether they're related to what we're talking about today, as far as muscle building or losing body fat, or intestinal overgrowths, or any other low energy symptoms, like chronic cravings and hunger, chronic pain, other digestive symptoms, brain fog, poor sleep, or modal imbalances, or any 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 from the diet and lifestyle perspective to maximize your cellular energy, and also explain why this is the key to resolving 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.

So legita asks, Do we really have to be in an energy surplus to build muscle? From my own experience working with women years back as a personal trainer, some women were able to gain muscle when eating in the deficit is a particular hormonal state, perhaps high insulin and testosterone and a particular training stimulus needed for this to happen. If we were to continue lifting heavy weights regularly while undernourishing, would our body's preference be to hold on to muscle as much as possible to improve survival. So obviously, a few different questions in here. But the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because we had just talked a lot about building muscle and improving body composition and hormones on the recent men's Hormonal Health Series, and so this was actually something that we didn't touch on as much, which is the idea that you need to be in a calorie surplus to be building muscle, and you can't, because of that. You can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time because, of course, to lose fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. And those things are mutually exclusive. You can only be in either a deficit or a surplus. And we've talked about why this notion of caloric surplus or deficit is not really relevant, and is kind of like a circular definition, like you can't really define them well, when you actually break it down enough. And I want to touch on that really. I mean, I'll link to the articles and episodes where we really dug into that, but I do think it's helpful to at least make a couple of clarifications here and highlight some of some aspects of this question. The first one being that I do, again, want to separate the this idea of nourishment and energy and calories, because she had mentioned an energy surplus for building muscle, and then then talked about a deficit, like eating in a deficit, and then talked about under nourishing. And so I just want to, I don't know exactly what she meant by all these terms, but I want to at least get on the same page with them from what we mean. So that way we're not, you know, there's, there's no misunderstanding there, where, when we're talking about calories, I think a better way to think of that is, is as basically fuel or potential energy. Where, of course, we can't literally. Use the food as it is, we have to convert it into usable energy. So to equate calories and energy is missing all of those steps that happen in between those two things. So I definitely would want to separate that and when you know, and we've talked again about how you how you can lose body fat, for example, while being in an energy surplus, because, again, that the energy is determinant is determined by a lot of factors, but it's basically that conversion from food to energy, and when we're optimizing that process, it tends to reduce the conversion from food to fat. So you can have those things at the same time and again. We talked about that in those previous episodes that I'll link to. But with those, you know, those kind of clarifications in mind, do we have to be in an energy surplus to build muscle, or do we have to be a calorie in a calorie surplus to build muscle? And in short, I would say no, but part of that again, kind of comes back to the language here. But I would say that, as we pointed out before, an energy surplus is the goal, and is again, somewhat separate from the conversion from, like, the production of muscle, right? When we're thinking about muscle, there is no like energy is need, is needed for the actual building of the structure of muscle. But muscle is not made up of energy, right? It's, it's protein which made up of amino acids, which we're getting from the food that we're taking in, so that food is never actually going through the energy producing processes. It's, you know, if you have that proteins broken down into amino acids, those are kind of cycled and recycled and then used as structural components to build up the muscle. And that does require energy, and it is dictated by certain hormonal states, which are also determined by energy. But in short, I wouldn't say that an energy surplus is, well, I guess on a local level, it is right, because if we don't have enough energy available, we literally can't build the muscle. And if we don't have enough energy available, we'll also end up tending towards breaking down the muscle for building for producing energy is kind of that, that backup fuel, backup energy system. So I'll let, I guess. I'll let you go for a minute and see if you maybe want to clarify anything, and we'll come back.

Mike 7:11
Well, as you said, I think we're just doing an energy surplus. And a calorie surplus, energy surplus literally means that you're converting your food into that energy, and you have, well, you have an ample amount of energy, whereas a calorie surplus is just looking at how much food you're taking in and saying, Oh, I have enough calories.

Jay Feldman 7:27
Compared to some arbitrary number that you're determining is how many calories come out, which is, that's how you're determining that surplus. But again, that's kind of, it's kind of an arbitrary number that's not based in the reality of how many quote, unquote calories your body's...

Mike 7:39
Probably some estimated calculator, some estimated of metabolic rate calculator, with an activity modifier. But the question is, is like, are they, are these people really gaining muscle? Are they recomping? If they're and recomping by later, bodies recompositioning, right? So they're losing some fat, and they're and then they're supposedly gaining some muscle, or they're increasing lean mass but also decreasing fat. It's like, it's possible that they are, but it's like there's still, in this situation, you could still technically be have enough energy or calories on board if you are burning that that fat and then moving and then basically using that to muscle to be converted. The fat doesn't be converted into muscle, but using the energy that you are creating from burning that fat, as well as having, obviously adequate protein to build muscle tissue, can recomp. But there's only so far that you can go with that, right, so you can read and usually what this happens, I think, with more novice people, when you first get them, you can recomp them pretty easily. You can lower some of their body fat, and then you can your you can increase muscle a little bit easier, just because they haven't ever had the training stimulus before. So when you first put that training stimulus on them, they'll they their body, like, makes a quicker adaptation, I guess, versus somebody who's been training over, like, a period of time. So, but I think there's a limit to all of this. I think that while you can recomp initially, for somebody who's a like, a rank novice or more in the novice area, they're just starting exercising. I think there's it only goes so far, and at a certain point, then you start to break the individual as far as their other processes go, whether it's their digestion, whether it's their Hormonal Health, whether it's their energy, whether it's their sleep, a lot of other things start to fail if you run this too long. So I think the recomp initially may be helpful, especially depending on what the situation is, you know, what's that person's metabolic what's their health and whatnot, but at the end, like, there's only so far you can get with that. And so the Our idea was to basically move the metabolic profile so that you can make continued sort of gains in that. Direction, and that included basically raising the metabolism and then also providing ample energy, which means having adequate calories that were actually able to be converted over into energy. That's sort of where I sit with this. And I seen this happen with I've just seen this happen with rank novices or beginners or people who were newer to training, the recomposition happens pretty fast.

Jay Feldman 10:25
Can you explain what you mean by recom? Just for some people understand...

Mike 10:28
So recomp is essentially, I alluded to it earlier, but it's losing losing fat, and then so getting leaner and then increasing lean mass. But the thing is kind of hard with recoms to unless you're doing some type of bod pod or electrostatic or any type of more in depth measurement of lean tissue versus fat tissue versus water weight, anything like that, it's kind of hard to actually determined if you actually had people gaining significant amounts of muscle versus, versus just taking off the fat and uncovering whatever muscle was there. So it's, it's kind of hard to tell, right? I mean, you and but I think there are circumstances where there are people who lose some fat and then put on some muscle. I just don't think that doing that in a surplus goes continuously. And I I mean bodybuilders, and anybody in the field who's actually trying to optimize muscle gain know that as well. So usually the recomposition occurs with, I think, more novice people, or guys who just had a bulk, who are now cutting down. So bulking, mean, just like trying to put on as much body tissue as in fat, muscle, everything is possible. Usually it's prioritizing muscle, but fat obviously comes along when they get off their bulk and they go on a cut where they're trying to lose the body fat but maintain their lean mass. I think there's and there's some elements of recomp that may initially occur, but there it is a diminishing process. There is diminishing returns in that process, just because the more you hammer that, that, uh, I guess that deficit in the harder, the worse it affects the hormonal profile, the harder it is to maintain lean mass, and it sort of digs your metabolism into a hole. So can you do it initially, sure, can you do it for a short period of time? Have a recomposition? Sure? Is that actually increasing lean mass? Do we have measurements on that? Well, that's a different story, right? Because something that people don't realize, when you take off a lot of body fat, and you start to look very lean, and you get very lean, you actually appear bigger than you are, and that's just from all the cuts that you have within your muscles and shading everything like there's and people have shown this online and different, different Instagram and whatnot, and before and after pictures, basically, and particularly with bodybuilders, guys who are pretty big, pretty jacked, but have a lot of fat over that. When they cut that fat off, they actually look bigger, even though they weigh significantly less, and they may actually be weaker. So I think it's hard to tell if we're actually getting an increase in lean tissue. And then if we are, I would say it's, it's not like a massive increase in lean tissue, and then with that, there's still diminishing returns from that process.

Jay Feldman 13:28
Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't, actually, for the most part, I don't necessarily agree. I mean, I when we look at the factors that drive muscle gain, and we look at the factors that drive fat loss, from the bioenergetic view, when people are doing things, quote, unquote, properly, or from from this view, I think that those factors tend to coincide pretty well. When we consider what leads to building muscle, we know that there has to be a training stimulus there, or not even training, but there has to be some sort of stimulus there. There also has to be adequate amino acids available, and it has to be adequate energy available on the local level. And I'll get to what I mean by that, as opposed to energy on a systemic level. And along with that, the things that are kind of going to drive the actual production of muscle beyond just the stimulus, are also going to be the anabolic hormones, things like insulin and testosterone and androgens, thyroid hormones, and then the things that, and then when it and then decreases or lower amounts of the stress hormones, low amounts of cortisol, low amounts of adrenaline, all of that. And then when we're looking at fat loss, it tends to be very similar, where we need to make sure that we have enough energy available to keep those that same hormonal profile, the same low stress hormones and high anabolic hormones and pro metabolic hormones tend to happen as well. So I don't see I mean, as far as like, whether these two things happen can happen together, I think they should. I think ideally, one should at least be able to build muscle without gaining body fat.

Mike 14:58
But she's talking about specifically in. Deficit?

Jay Feldman 15:01
Well, I'm going to get to that,.

Mike 15:03
And that's the difference, though, I think.

Jay Feldman 15:05
Right, Yeah, but again, I think deficit is, is mostly a worthless term, right? Like, when I'll get to that in a second, because that's kind of what I was getting at, as far as locally versus systemically when it comes to a quote, unquote energy deficit, because I think that, I guess we'll get to it now. Basically, I think that if you force enough of a training stimulus, stimulus to the point where you know, because this kind of goes with that last question she asked about what our body's preference to be to hold on to muscle in order to improve survival. And basically, if you are putting such a strong stimulus on the muscles that you are telling your body that this needs to be prioritized, then it will exist in a deficit. It'll take that energy from other places and use it to maintain or build muscle. And it might be losing body fat in that process. It's definitely going to be taking energy from, you know, the health like organ systems and brain and whatever else. But it will prioritize muscle if there's enough of a stimulus there as an adaptive response.

Mike 16:04
Only to a point, though it's diminishing. That's, that's, that's my point was, like, you can do it for a while, and then you get diminishing returns, where you don't actually get returns, starts to become a negative.

Jay Feldman 16:15
Sure, or you just keep degrading elsewhere. It depends on how much of a stimulus you force in that way. Like, I think that if you you know, if you then add on exogenous hormones, for example, you're going to drive that even further. But again, that none of these things are cost free, as we've talked about before, like there's a direct transaction there, and that energy is not created out of nothing. And so if you're not taking it from your food, and you're still maintaining and building muscle, you're taking it from other areas in your body, which is not generally a good idea. So sure you could say, yeah, it's diminishing returns. If you're keeping the same stimulus, and if you keep forcing the same stimulus, and you keep adding exogenous hormones, or exogenous, I guess, stimuli, basically to force it, it's just going to continue to come into further cost. So yeah, you're right, and that eventually it will not.

Mike 17:00
I don't think it'd be maintained. And I think you clearly, I think you see that pretty clearly with people, like, they get into overtraining, like, pretty easily when you start to do this type of stuff. And that's basically where you see that the fatigue and damage from focusing on muscle gains at these things starts to take a toll on the nervous system, other body systems, and that's where you start to see things like the female triad, where you have, like, complete basically, like a period of infertility from training too hard, you get amenorrhea and all these types of issues with it so, and that's just from elevated cortisol and and so, like, females that are in the female triad tend to look good, right? A lot of them tend to be very muscular, lean, right? Um, from a fitness standpoint, yes, from a fitness standpoint. But the other thing that you start to see with them is like some of the symptoms are, besides loss of period is like loss of breast tissue and things like that. So it's a you're literally that's an example of reprioritizing your musculature over your fertility to some extent. So I like and the other thing is, when you get into female triad, like a lot of women, will actually wind up crashing so and then when they come out of it, they have, they have really hard time actually losing some of that fat tissue. And they, some of them, put on weight really fast. Like, if you ever seen somebody who's competed in professional sports, or, like, professional gymnast, if they don't maintain what they were doing before, and they go back to a normal lifestyle, sometimes they can blow up, and that's just because of digging in that that profile for so long. So like, it's a combination of both of what we're saying, I think, and or we're both kind of saying the same thing, where initially you can pull from your body's reserves, but you're depleting other areas to prioritize the muscle tissue, but there's only so much of that you can do. And bodybuilders, and anyone who's at the elite level, as far as like and the reason I use bodybuilders because their ultimate goal is to maintain muscle. But elite bodybuilders know the importance of recovery and know the importance of not being in that deficit and not maintaining that it be because there's only so far you can get with that, even using drugs, right? So, and that's when they go on stage, and they step on stage for competition like they know that as soon as they start going into deficit, they're going to lose muscle tissue. And so they're using all hosts of drugs and different compounds, basically, to inhibit that process while cutting down fat tissue and that, and that's the reason they're doing that, is because they know you can't just run the deficit and you won't lose muscle tissue. And there's very like, there's a limit to what the body's going to do there. So like, and that's why I prefaced it with beginners, right? If you take a frank beginner off the street who has a lot of fat tissue, or ample fat tissue, and hasn't built up a lot of muscle tissue, and then you put that stimulus on them for training, then they may have an initial effect where their hormonal profilers will switch and prioritize the muscle tissue, and they'll start to pull from fat stores, and they can lose some of that fat and maybe gain. Some muscle tissue, or they just get leaner in in general, and then that's what you're seeing, right? Because we don't, like, what's, what is the standard here for determining that they gained lean mass versus just losing fat tissue? That's why, like, there's, that's why I tried to, like, preface it specifically with, you have a beginner, they lose some fat, maybe they gain a little bit of muscle, but there's only so far you get with that. And then, yeah.

Jay Feldman 20:26
I just didn't realize you were talking about all this in the context of a systemic energy deficit to start. So that was why it was descrete.

Mike 20:31
Yeah, my I was, do we really have to be in an energy surplus to build muscle? Is what I was primarily focusing on. Because then her next part is, she saw women. What she's saying is, from her experience, she saw women were able to gain muscle when eating in a deficit. So my first question is, were they actually gaining muscle, or were they just getting leaner? Like, how are you determining this, right? Did you put them in a bod pod and have them electrostatically tested for lean mass and things like that?

Jay Feldman 20:57
I understand what you're saying. They definitely also, like, as you were saying, also they can build muscle and lose fat at the same time and be in a systemic energy deficit, but it's going to come at a cost. It's not going to last too long, as you said, there's going to be diminishing returns. Yes, totally agree there and, and to clarify, like, I have seen, I mean, maybe not in a bod pod, but I have seen it, like, using skin fold tests and everything that there is, you know, and you know, the change, yeah, yeah. Like, they can actually build muscle while being in this in a systemic energy deficit. And when you consider that most people are already in some level of a deficit just because they're not converting fuel to energy very well, of course, like, there are people who build a lot of muscle when they're in that state. But as you're saying, it just comes at a cost.

Mike 21:37
Well, I was just trying to layer it right. Do we know that there's lean mass first? And okay, if yes, then my next statement was, Well, I'm sure it's possible, but there's, like, there's a limit to it. So I'm not saying that she's wrong. What I'm just trying to get at is, like, because I've seen people like, oh, I gained all this muscle and or like, guys like, they get more muscular, and it's like, after they did one on a cots, like, No, you just got leaner. Yeah, right. And that happens all the time. Like, you see people like the transformation videos, like, from X number of pounds to where they are now. It's like a lot of what happens they got leaner, and, like, getting leaner makes you look a lot better.

Jay Feldman 22:12
Sure, yes, yeah. And that's definitely true. Like, that's definitely true. Also, I've definitely seen people gaining muscle while in what I would say is clearly an energy deficit, yeah, for sure, yeah.

Mike 22:25
And, and that's recomposition, sure. That is literally what they define it as in there is like a, uh, increasing a muscle tissue and decreasing a fat tissue, so the body is recompositioning, yeah, yeah.

Jay Feldman 22:41
And I was saying I've seen it in an energy deficit, not necessarily where they are losing body fat, but just gaining muscle while being in an energy deficit and just and the reason why I'm making that clear is because the and whether they're losing body fat or not doesn't really change the situation, but it's just the idea that there's enough stimulus to direct that energy towards wherever it's being forced, wherever your body's needing to adapt. But that comes at a huge cost. And we've talked about that before, where adaptation, or building a lot of muscle, which building muscle is just an adaptation, is not necessarily a good thing. So yeah, yeah. And so to circle now, around, I guess, to the alternative, right, which is what I was like, what we were trying to get to as well, which is that you can have an energy surplus and be losing body fat and be gaining muscle. And that would be the goal that would be, I would say, like, the sweet spot that you'd be looking for. And we've kind of laid out that picture in, like we took a whole episode to kind of lay it out, but as I was mentioning earlier, low stress hormones, High Pro metabolic hormones, some amount of stimulus on the muscles, which doesn't even have to be very much and adequate, actual energy and efficient conversion from fueled energy can allow for that state. And most of the time, the biggest problem that I see is a spillover from fuel to fat, as opposed to fuel to energy, because, I shouldn't even say spillover. That makes it sound like it's because there's excess or there's adequate energy, but it's not a spillover. Instead, it's there's some inhibition there. There's some blockage, that conversion is not 100% it's not very efficient. And instead, there are energy needs. So you like, there's continual fuel needs, and we keep putting fuel in, but for every 10 grams of fuel that's taken in, a couple grams are shunted towards body fat because the process isn't very efficient, because various factors are blocking it, which are all the factors that we talk about, whether it's nutrient deficiencies or excess psychological or emotional stress, or lack of sleep or, yeah, endotoxin, any many other sorts of things that are going to make that are going to make that process less efficient and shunt that fuel towards body fat?

Mike 24:46
Yeah. Another thing I want to point out is that I think the ultimate goal is talking about thriving what again, we shouldn't be pushing ourselves to the extent that we want to have to have our bodies decide between. Be just surviving by, like, shunting all resources to muscle or, like, having resources available for your for your organs and other tissues and right that just doesn't it doesn't make any sense to me to to prioritize that. Like, why am I going to work out at the expense of my health just because I want to look a certain way in the long run, you're going to dig yourself into a hole, and then you're not even going to look how you want to look anyway. And I think people see that with the yo yo dieting and all that type of stuff.

Jay Feldman 25:30
Yeah, definitely. And, and along with that too, a good example of what you were talking about earlier is any sport, whether it's bodybuilding or wrestling or MMA, where there's a lot of cutting involved, you tend to have a huge weight gain after and that's that is the that is a short term example of the like, pushing somebody into that survival state and then seeing what happens, like seeing what the cost that it comes at, and then what happens after that, which is you have, like, the opposing response, because your body is still anticipating that survival like need. It's anticipating the famine. It's anticipating the lack of energy. And so then it starts to hold on to body fat, and it does that through down regulating the pro metabolic hormones, which happens when you're quote, unquote cutting and up regulating the stress hormones, so which also happens when you're when you're in the deficit, if you're in that survival state. So yeah, as you're saying, Why would, like, the goal should never be to get to that survival state, even if it, even if you're giving yourself enough stimulus to hold on to muscle or even build muscle, that's just coming at even more of a cost, or it's just, yeah. I mean, it's just driving that energy deficit even further, which, as you're saying, yeah, that that would never be the goal.

Mike 26:37
Yeah. The question is, like, her question is, can, if you were to, can you continue doing that or or do you have to do that? And the question is, why would you not want to be in a state where you can eat as much like as much food as your body like told you or indicated to you that you required? Why would you want to be in the surplus the sur why would you want to be in the deficit? The deficit is known by pretty much anybody who goes into it to be pretty uncomfortable. It's most people don't go into deficits regularly because they don't like it, right? A lot of bodybuilders don't enjoy their cuts. Most bodybuilders probably, I would say, probably loathe their cut. As far as how they feel and like there's tons of videos online of them describing exactly how they feel in these different circumstances and basically saying, I felt like absolute crap. I like, I and I, you hear it from them, I look the best that I've ever looked right? I look this way, I look that way, but I feel atrocious. I feel terrible. And then they go on binges after because their bodies like, they've just dug themselves into hibernation. They they're on and then, depending on what type of bodybuilder you are, right, if you're a natural one, then you just cut calories all the way down, uh, just yourself down with planned periods of refeeding so you didn't tank your metabolism too hard. That's basically what they do now, is like, it's like, I think they have, like, planned refeeding days once a week, or Whenever someone's coach tells them that they can refeed and, and that's so their muscles don't get too fat. They keep flat, excuse me, they keep glycogen. They try and keep glycogen high so they can continue to train while they're still losing fat from the deficit. And but if you're, if you're a like a drug based bodybuilder, then they're on, they're on high doses of thyroid hormone and high doses of non aromatizable Steroids so that they can maintain lean mass without converting that and stop holding water weight, because the honor the aromatizable Steroids basically allow for the conversion to estrogenic products that will cause water weight gain, especially in that state. So you have, like, a combination of thyroid hormone and the the non arosematizable steroids to keep you and also increase your fat burning and increase your metabolism while you're in a deficit and you're working out and doing cardio, etc, etc. And towards the back end, there's water restriction, salt restriction, and the use of diuretics to pull all the water out so that the skin is shrink wrapped around the muscle, like number one, all those things are kind of terrible for you. And a lot of bodybuilders actually get kidney issues. And some of them actually get kidney failure from doing that stuff. And have to, like, get kid. I think there's quite a few prominent bodybuilders who get issues like that. And then I also think there's quite a few prominent WWE guys who get issues from their drug use. As far as blowing out their kidneys, some of them are like in the bodybuilding sphere, I think it's from basically dehydrating and using diuretics and and like not having adequate electrolytes and stuff like that, when they cut all the way down while also being on other drugs and having me maintaining a huge muscle mass. So it's just the they like, it's known the effects of, of not, of like, being in a deficit over extended period of time. It just doesn't make any sense. Like, and then they're, they're. Trying to, essentially, what we're trying to do is use lifestyle to adjust the hormonal profile, to move the body in a certain circumstance. What they're trying to you do is use exogenous drugs to maintain a hormonal profile of an OP of, like, what would stay, oh, where you have an ideal environment, right? High Thorn, high thyroid, high androgens, and then at the same time, run a lifestyle that causes a deficit. So they're trying to exogenously maintain the hormonal profile that says that we want to that we're trying to reach with lifestyle. They're trying to use it exogenously, and then run a lifestyle that causes them to just be in that that hard deficit. So like their approach is the same approach as ours, as far as what the goal is to do, as far as raise metabolism, but then they want to do this other stuff in the in their lifestyle on the back end, to further drive fat loss. And that's because their goal is not health. Their goal is primarily to achieve a particular look, to get to a certain leanness while maintaining a certain amount of muscle mass. So we're what we're saying here is wildlife style and slowly move the hormonal profile to that optimal profile that gives us good thyroid function and higher amounts of androgens to maintain the weight, as opposed to have to drive these, these backup stress pathways to shred fat off.

Jay Feldman 31:18
Yeah, and just to clarify a little bit the I mean, this happens even if you know, even if you're looking at somebody who's trying to build musculature without using exogenous hormones, it's still the same idea where it's very similar to what legita was asking, and that's why it is relevant, where they're trying to basically build muscle in an energy deficit and...

Mike 31:37
Or at least maintain because they know that the muscle is going to be lost In those deficits over time.

Jay Feldman 31:42
I'm not talking about a cut or a bodybuilder deficit. I'm wanting I'm talking about like an energy deficit. I'm saying that the average person who is just interested in fitness is already in an energetic deficit. Oh, okay, okay, okay. And yeah, and so, and so they're trying to build muscle during that, and so they have to add so much stimulus to do that, and it's coming at a cost elsewhere, even in order to build muscle, and then so, so that's just kind of like, even the exogenous hormones aside, they're still trying to do the same thing. They're just trying to override these signals, using this, these excess, you know, the success of stimuli. But and then to clarify, also, as you were saying, like, just to clarify, the bodybuilder, quote, unquote deficit is just, like a is just, you could call it a calorie deficit, but that's not the same as the energy deficit that we're talking about, because, on average, I would say most bodybuilders, most people, are already in an energy deficit, and then if they're cutting calories, they're just becoming, you know, they're going into a more severe energy deficit. So I just wanted to clarify that, but I think that we've hammered the points here.

Mike 32:40
Okay yeah.

Jay Feldman 32:42
So Viv asks whether eating sugar causes candida overgrowth, and this is a question I've gotten quite a few times, and is obviously something that circulates all the time when it comes to the bioenergetic community, where people talk favorably about consuming sugar and sugar containing foods, whether that's fruits or juices or, you know, granulated sugar, foods containing refined sugar, honey or maple syrup, and one of the biggest, I guess you could call it myth, or just, I don't know, faux ideas out there in a lot of the alternative spheres that are anti sugar, is this idea that Candida and fungus thrive, thrives on, uh, on sugar. And so if you eat it, then you're going to increase the, you know, increased fungal growth. And this is such a major issue that everybody deals with, and so it's going to exacerbate all your symptoms. And, you know, on one hand, also, it's just worth mentioning that a lot of people will then look back and say, Oh yeah, when I was, you know, over Christmas time one year, I just ate all this sugar, and everything got worse. And I think it's always helpful to separate sugar from sugar containing foods. And also, what else might have happened when you just kind of let go and ate whatever you wanted. Like, were you just eating a lot of fruit and fruit juice, or even just maple syrup or honey or granulated sugar, or are you eating like cakes and pies and cookies and fried, you know, french fries and whatever else, like a ton of poof oils, a ton of grains, maybe, and..

Mike 34:11
Or find industrial non food ingredients like gums and titanium dioxide and carrageenan and whatever else they've added to these foods to extend shelf life and give texture and whatever else.

Jay Feldman 34:24
Exactly. Yeah, so, so it's always helpful to separate that when somebody's looking back at their own experiences, because I'll hear that quite often, and I've and yeah, that being said, there are sometimes situations where somebody might have an exacerbation of symptoms when they're eating actually good quality sugars, and that can be due to a decrease in stress hormones, leading to a flaring of symptoms, or revealing of symptoms. But sometimes it can also cause flares of certain of certain symptoms, depending on what somebody's dealing with, what they're you know, kind of their individual circumstances. But I guess that's kind of. Have a bit of a tangent, but maybe we'll come back to it. But it is true that fungi use carbohydrates for fuel, much like most organisms and..

Mike 35:13
Like bacteria as well, right?

Jay Feldman 35:15
Humans? Yeah.

So yes, it is true that that happens, but that does not mean that that's going to cause overgrowths or that that's going to cause dysbiosis or things like that. For one, the carbohydrates that we should be eating should be for us more than any any other organism that happens to be in our gut or elsewhere. So when we're eating sugars, they should be broken down in the small intestine and then absorbed and then being used by our own cells to produce energy. They should never really even be interacting with bacteria or fungi if everything's functioning well. But there are definitely scenarios where there might be intestinal overgrowths, and that can be in the small intestine as well, leading to the feeding of of something like Candida with carbohydrates, in which case one of the really important principles, well, I mean one thing that this, I guess, kind of bigger picture principle here, is this idea of like feeding versus killing, or like the environment that something is in and fixing the environment versus like killing The pathogen. And we talked about this a little bit when you're talking about autoimmunity in the immune system, and how, rather than this idea that we need to be that even, not even that we need to but that our immune systems function on a level of trying to kill non self, trying to kill any sort of invader, instead, it has much more to do with the environment that that we're in, and whether there's damage being caused, and I think that you can definitely apply that to microbial issues, where there are definitely scenarios where reducing the population of some microbe is helpful using antibiotics or antifungals or various other antimicrobials, whether they're pharmaceutical or herbal or anything else, there's definitely a place for that. But the goal in a well functioning organism is instead to have the quote, unquote, beneficial Flora come out, competing the harmful ones, and doing that by having a really good environment where the, again, like the high quality carbohydrates, are digested and absorbed, and they're not feeding the, you know, they're not even available to a point where they would be feeding some sort of microbe. And instead we're digesting our food really well. We've got adequate stomach acid production and bioproduction and digestive enzyme production and all of those things to where that shouldn't even be happening. So that's kind of part one is, is this idea that we want to be we don't want to be feeding anything like any potential invader, pathogen, and instead, we need to be kind of getting rid of it actively, when instead, it can be a more passive process. But the other factor as well is that when these fungi are kind of overtaking the microbiome, and whether it's in the gut or anywhere else, when there are overgrowths, they actually will expand and grow further when they aren't fed what they're basically looking for food. And we'll talk about this in more detail in a second. But the short, the short kind of point here is that sometimes feeding the microbes actually calms them down, and actually reduces the spread and reduces the their activity, and allows them to kind of relax a little bit, as opposed to becoming much more aggressive. But another thing, just circling back to the wanting to build a better environment, one of the biggest factors, beyond just digesting our food well and allowing the beneficial bacteria to thrive, is also having a high metabolic rate and the high body temperature that comes with that. And that's especially important when it comes to fungal issues, where there's been some interesting research looking at how, how much of an impact a higher body temperature has on decreasing fungal growth. And basically that when you have an adequate body temperature of around, you know, 98 six Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius, that actually is a, they say that's like a good kind of optimal trade off between too high of a metabolic rate, which is kind of a questionable concept, but between that and having, like, a fungal static effect, an effect of decreasing fungal growth. And so that's huge. And when it comes to sugar and wanting to avoid sugar, that's a really good way to decrease your metabolic rate and decrease your body temperature. And I've definitely seen that correlation between fungal symptoms and low body temperature before, and so there's some there's some good research as well, just showing very clearly that having more sucrose or fructose or glucose are all you know is a really great way to bring body temperature up and bring metabolic rate up, which would then be a really good way to create an environment that's basically inhospitable for Candida, at least for overgrowths of Candida. So that would be kind of that's some the main points I was thinking of.

Mike 39:50
There's a couple things I think that there's a difference between whole fruit fruit juice and frozen fruit and sucrose. And I think that. But like, as in pure sucrose, as in table sugar, I think that in people who have digestive issues already, like a pure sucrose or very like highly refined things that don't have the plant compounds or the polyphenols that come with fruit or fruit juice can actually make situations worse, because they can allow for the if you have a pathogenic overgrowth, to basically capitalize on the substrate that you're putting into your intestine, which is that that sucrose, and in some people, and a lot of people, this is actually starch as well, right? So there's and I think a lot of Candida diets are like zero carbs or very low carb because of that, but the Candida can capitalize on those starches, like very refined starches, like your pastries and things like that, your refined sucrose, and then also some of the prebiotic fibers that people throw into their system. So it can capitalize on quite a few things. And so can pathogenic bacteria, or so can dysbiotic ecosystems in the bowels. So there's, there's a lot of that going on. So just some something to keep in mind. Whereas, in contrast to that, your fruit juice, your whole fruit, your frozen fruit, your dried fruit, some of your vegetables, some of your fruit vegetables, come with polyphenols, flavonoids, and a whole host of plant compounds, vitamins, minerals, that not only inhibit negative the pathogenic or or eliminate some of the dysbiotic species, but help to stimulate the growth of less pathogenic species in the intestine. So I think this is what we sort of adapted with together, is our general the new, more refined stuff is kind of a newer addition, and so that the process of adaption is obviously present. But I think that we were more exposed to those like, I guess, more whole food sources. Now it doesn't necessarily mean that having a couple tablespoons of sugar in your coffee or adding, you know, making, like, banana bread or whatever it is that you're going to do is terrible. It's just when you're in these states, and this is what I'm going to get to next, when you're in these states, some of these foods can become a problem, or make the situation worse, or, like, feed the issue that's going on. So the next point I want to point out is a lot of this comes down to state and, like, the state of the body, right? And so that's something you alluded to with, with body temperature. But it as far as the immune system goes, the way I like to see it in the gut is when things are functioning well, and when energy metabolism well, and you don't have a nutrient deficiencies and things like that. The immune system sort of functions like a gardener in the gut, right? So it, it kind of, it gets rid of some of some of the weeds and maintain some of the other populations. So there's and there's like a relationship there. But I think what happens is, I think the bacterial dysbiosis is and those issues tend to occur after, and most people, at least after, some type of derangement of state. So it's like some type of lowered metabolic state or some type of insult for IBS, for a lot of people, starts after they get, like, travelers diarrhea or something. They go into a foreign country and they drank their face off. For example, they drank their face off in Mexico, and then they, you know, they ate some sketchy street food, and then they got a pathogen, and then they went, they like, went to the doctor, and they just said, ride it out. And afterwards they have IBS. It's like, well, as a pathogen, still like somewhere latent in the gut or active in the gut, and just not as big as before. So I think a lot of these things, and like another example, I think, is that's good is for people in like keto, who went on keto diets, or really low carb diets, or coming out of those situations, I tend to see a lot of gut issues there, um, or if they grew up on a standard American diet and then they started to get autoimmune symptoms, it's like you have years of just Captain Crunch. That's, I guess that's my food that I'll pick on for today, is like years and years of just endless amounts of Captain Crunch and all these, like refined cereal products with a whole host of like, additives and and rich for enriched wheat and different sources like that that are all problematic that you start to see issues like down the road, and it's like accumulating issues from that. And it's like you probably have nutrient deficiencies from that. You probably have you probably developed some type of latent damage from some of that stuff, and you probably may have given yourself a dysbiosis over time. So it's not just about avoiding sugar, to stop feeding Candida. It's about you need to possibly, need to possibly lower if you have Candida in small intestine, you definitely don't want to keep that there at high amounts. So you're going to have to clear that out. But you also need to adjust the body state. And part of adjusting the body state is making sure you have enough carbohydrate so, and this is why I think you see a lot of people go on Candida diets like forever, like they have to be on the diet for absolutely ever, because they just, they have their keep lowering carbs to get rid of symptoms. And it's like you're you're addressing the you may be addressing with how. Happening in the gut, but you aren't necessarily addressing what's happening systemically, as far as the body state. And it's like you want your immune system to be able to manage what's going on inside the gut. And that is dependent upon having your energy metabolism in your body state and in the proper place. And that involves not only fixing the gut situation, but also having adequate carbohydrate and nutrient on board. And so that does what this would be, practically, it would be focusing on your fruits, your whole fruits, your dried fruits, or your fruit vegetables, or your squashes or whatever. Or for some people, maybe it's like starchier fruits or starchier tubers, although I think, I think starch can tend to make some of those situations worse for some people. So you really got to see how you feel. But I think that would be focusing on those and not focusing on your Mexican cokes or your at even worse than that, like your honey buns, or your captain crunch or anything like those are the things I would say you'd want to take out in favor of the other foods.

Jay Feldman 46:01
Yeah, yeah. And just to clarify, too, when somebody's going on low carb or fasting, they are going to suppress symptoms, but it's not going to fix the issues systemically or gut wise. I mean, it tends to just cause things to hibernate a little bit, until you bring carbs back in. And then, as you said, you have to be on these things for life, because you start to bring carbs back in, and your symptoms are way worse than before, and it took way fewer carbs to get there. And then you just keep going lower and lower carb. And then even at that point, it's not enough, and then you have to go carnivore, because even the small amount of carbs and vegetate, you know, the vegetables you were eating were worse, and sudden, you're on carnivore, and then you become more and more sensitive to the foods that you're eating there, and just goes, just goes on and on where you're suppressing symptoms at still metabolic cost. And, yeah, just snowballs. So while, yeah, so, so that's obviously not the answer, right. As you were saying, fixing the environment and having carbohydrates with the polyphenols and bioflavonoids is helpful. Sometimes, having, you know, sometimes even the foods that have those, as you said, can be too hard to digest depending on your digestive capability, in which case that might be something that you want to address more directly, or just sticking to the really easily digested ones. But yeah, in either case, these sugars is really not the issue. Although, you know, although granulated sugar might not be the best choice, it's still not the problem.

Mike 47:28
Yeah, yeah. A cure, in this sense, would be not just eliminating your symptoms by constantly eliminating everything, the cure or the place to shoot for or the goal, I would say, would be able to eat a more wide variety of foods without getting those symptoms and well, for some people, and I've seen this, that that means that that may mean that you may never go back to Domino's Pizza every Friday and Saturday night, right? That you may never go back to that, but you may without having symptoms, at least. But you may be able to go back to, you know, you eat rice, you eat potatoes, you eat whatever fruits that you that you want. You're able to have, like, if you whatever, your Mexican cokes here and there, or, or you may, you're able to put sugar in your coffee and you don't. You're not getting symptoms like, it may more be that, because I think for some of these things, like Domino's Pizza and Captain Crunch and some of these, some of these other foods aren't necessarily like foods that you want to be eating anyway, and they may be causing problems by the nature of what's actually in them, right? Whereas, when you have, like, iron shavings added to your cereal with a whole bunch of refined vitamins and additives for texture and this and that, or it's made with like, GMO corn flour and whatnot, like, you're gonna have issues with those, and that's not necessarily because you have Candida on your gut, but it's just because those things aren't food. They're not meant to be eaten. We're not meant to necessarily digest them. And years and years of years and years of eating those things could have caused issues over time, and something that I've noticed people's if you've done something that's really irritated you over a period of time and you broke the system, sometimes, when you introduce those things that broke the system, the response to them is, like, very negative, almost like your system remembers those things. So.

Jay Feldman 49:18
Yeah, yeah, although, again, it's, and I know you, you kind of mentioned in this, but a lot of it is individual. And for a lot of people, having the occasional the occasional domino pizza is not a problem, but it's all. It all depends on where they're at in their individual journey and symptoms and metabolism, and then also one individual versus another, it's really going to vary.

Mike 49:41
Yeah, and not saying that you won't be able to, but I'm saying for some like, I've seen with people that they've drastically widened their variety in their diet, and they have, like, a super solid like, you know, they can pretty much eat almost everything they want. But like, the lot of the foods that, like, those foods that I. Mentions, like, the industrial foods, they still had developed issues from So, and that's I'm not talking about, like, you get banana chips from Whole Foods, or you have, like, Boulder Canyon potato chips that are cooked in olive oil. I'm talking about, like, the a lot of these, like, super industrial stuff that this. I think some of that stuff is just problematic because it's problematic, and it's not because anybody has Candida or has a bacterial dysbiosis or as like an a poor state. I think some of those foods are literally just problematic in and of themselves. Yeah,

Jay Feldman 50:33
I agree. And I just, I guess what I was wanting to clarify is that doesn't mean that nobody can ever like that you should never eat them. I mean, it's, it's a choice, and we've talked about like making certain sacrifices, or making certain choices that come at a cost, and that's okay, if that's, you know, if that's worth it for the social experience, or just it tasting really good, or whatever, you know, the relaxation that comes with it. But it just might not be ideal health wise, but, but as we're saying, also, if not eating it causes a lot of stress, then that also might not be ideal, health wise. So yeah, I know I'm kind of sidetracking, but yeah, I just don't want to get I just sometimes people will hear those things and get dogmatic, or just get highly restrictive and not recognize that each choice can have pluses and minuses, and that it's not always as clear as this, food is an ideal so you should never, ever eat it. Then, yeah, that's all.

Mike 51:25
Yeah. I don't have anything else to add to to this one. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 51:32
I don't think I do either. I mean, as far as somebody who is dealing with Candida issues, there's a lot that can be done. We've talked about a bunch of options and ideas in previous episodes, so I'll just link back to link back to those. But just really wanted to address the sugar in terms of candida issue.

Mike 51:47
Yep, I and I'd want to mention here that the starch can be just as bad as sugar. And I think in some of the media that they actually culture Candida, it's like potato agar, which is like potato starch?

Jay Feldman 52:01
Yeah, yeah, sure, that's a good point for sure. Yep. All right, before we wrap up today's episode, I did want to discuss another aspect that we didn't mention as much as far as the first question is concerned, and that's the relationship between the training stimulus required for building muscle and the energetic state. And so we did talk about how if the energetic state is not ideal, if someone's in an energy deficit, they can build muscle if that stimulus is strong enough. And that can include a really strong training stimulus, by training a lot, or putting a lot of tension and stress on the muscles, or using some sort of exogenous stimuli or hormones to further that muscle building. But it's worth noting the contrary here, which is that if you're in a very, you know, more optimal energetic state, energy where you have a lot of energy available, you're in an energy surplus, and your hormones are reflecting that the stimulus required to build muscle is much smaller. So you might find that you're able to build muscle with, you know, by training much less in the gym or with much less of a stimulus on the muscles. And a good example of this is looking at muscle building in terms of age. So we know that younger people build muscle much easier in their late teens and 20s compared to someone who's much older. And we know that with age, the main things that are happening is, is a decrease in metabolism and and a decrease in energy availability, so and the decrease in in hormones, or the change in hormones that comes along with the, you know, with the aging process, with that decrease in metabolism and and lack of energy so interesting, important thing to consider that, If you're requiring a huge stimulus to build muscle, that might be a sign that something is off as far as your energy availability is going. And then at the same time, if you're in a good energetic state, you might find that you really don't need to put too much of a stimulus on the muscles in order to build muscle. So I just figured that that was something that was worth mentioning in relation to that earlier question. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or comment. If you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening elsewhere, please leave a five star rating on iTunes or a review. All of those things really do a ton to help support the podcast, and are very much appreciated. 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 Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com or you can leave those in the comments if you're watching on YouTube or anywhere else. 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 referenced throughout today's episode, and if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, whether those are symptoms that are related to what we discussed today, as far as body composition and building muscle or losing body fat, or in terms of Candida or other intestinal overgrowths or chronic infections, or if you're doing with any other low energy symptoms. Whether that's chronic cravings and hunger, fatigue, chronic pain, insomnia, hormonal imbalances, or any 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'll explain how these different symptoms and conditions really come down to a lack of energy. And I'll also explain the main things that you can do to improve your cellular energy availability, to resolve 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'll see you in the next episode.