Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
Brad Johnson is your typical American teen. He grew up playing baseball, watching MTV, and taking two Adderall pills each day for his ADHD.
Brad first showed signs of hyperactivity in kindergarten, where he often lost his daily recess because he, “couldn’t keep his hands and feet to himself.” During story time, he’d be flopping his legs from side to side, or playing with the braids of the girls sitting in front of him.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?
Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.
Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.
So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)
You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.
This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.
The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.
During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.
After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:
One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.
Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.
There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.
Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.
Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.
Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.
That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.
We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.
Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.
References:
Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.
Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968.
Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.
Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.
Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.
The post Can Keto and Cardio Mix? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
http://www.thealternativedaily.com/
Do you routinely have a shower before bed and hit the sack with wet hair? If so, do you worry when people tell you it is a bad idea and that you are going to get sick if you continue doing so? Going to bed with wet hair and a number of other popular myths […]
Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/
The past 7 months have been really eye-opening for me.
In May of 2018, after spending the past 33 years of my life trying to get bigger…
I decided to go in the other direction:
I was going to make a concerted effort to get as lean as possible while still having a life.
After 6 weeks of very focused effort (counting calories) and seeing NO progress, I made a few key adjustments.
Since then, I’ve lost 22 pounds AND hit strength training personal bests:
Sure, we’ve featured success stories from people in our community who have lost 100+ pounds in a year, 50+ pounds in a year, and other amazing transformations.
So, who wants to hear about an in-shape guy who got more in shape?
BORING!
However, I want to share my story for a few reasons.
For starters, I want to show that 15+ years later, I still practice what I preach and I’m still learning every day.
Next, I want to share the things I did that might seem counterintuitive:
Whether you have those final stubborn 10-15 pounds to lose, or you have 80+ pounds to lose, I promise the lessons I share here can help you level up.
Note: We all have our challenges, and we all find certain things easy and other things brutally difficult.
As you read, you’re NOT allowed to say the following:
And instead, you’re ONLY allowed to say:
“How can I make this lesson work for me in my situation?”
Deal? Deal.
Here are the 7 biggest lessons I learned while losing 21 pounds and leveling up my workouts…
If you are trying to lose weight, calorie restriction is King (or Queen).
In order to lose weight consistently, my body needed to be in a “caloric deficit”: burning more calories than I ate, consistently.
Most people attempt to do this by out-exercising a bad diet.
I instead put 95% of my effort into fine-tuning my nutrition.
Specifically, I ate more calories on training days (to help rebuild muscle), and fewer calories on non-training days (to force my body to pull from fat stores).
However, the average between the two was low enough to force my body to start burning stored fat which led to overall weight loss.
As a 6 foot tall, 190 pound male who trains 4x a week, here’s how I ate:
I followed the above calorie strategy with a 90%+ compliance rate. In other words, I did not let perfect be the enemy of the good. (Calculate your own caloric intake estimates here.)
I knew one bad day wouldn’t screw up any progress – it’s total calories consumed over many weeks and months, so as long as my average day was good, I would get results.
I’ll get into what those calories were composed of and how I trained below. But my strategy allowed me to build strength and minimize muscle loss despite the deficit (yes, you can lose weight and build muscle at the same time).
LESSON: Start with calories – know how many you eat daily, and adjust the number down. You can vary your calorie count for training days or rest days – as long as your total average number is low enough to induce weight loss.
Tracking calories and not getting results? Check your tracking – see #4 below.
I strength trained 4 days per week for about 60 minutes each workout without fail.
This is something I truly prioritized in my life. I can count on 1 hand the number of times I did not hit the gym 4 days in a week.
Each day composed of a heavy barbell lift:
I also did lots of body weight training and gymnastic ring work:
So, despite the fact that I was losing weight and eating a caloric deficit, judging by the pictures and my measurements I was able to maintain most of my muscle, and even build strength strategically.
I got stronger at a lot of lifts throughout this experience.
I hit a personal best deadlift of 420 pounds – a 30 pound record, at a weight of 172 pounds.
By lifting VERY HEAVY weights while also eating a caloric deficit, my body was forced to adapt.
It diverted as many resources as possible to “rebuild muscle stronger to prepare for the next weight training session,” which didn’t leave many calories for “store as fat.”
I cover this extensively in both “Why can’t I lose weight?” and “Can you build muscle and burn fat at the same time?”
Not only that, but because I was in a deficit my body started pulling from the “store as fat” pile to fuel myself and my workouts.
So this strategy really crushed it for me:
LESSON: Most people go about weight loss by creating a calorie deficit and doing a bunch of cardio – this means their body will burn both fat and muscle for extra energy. Weight can be lost from both places.
If your goal is to build a muscular, lean physique, you need to teach your body to preserve as much muscle as possible – and you do that by training heavy!
For the past 6 months, I’ve been batch cooking up a storm.
1-2 times per week, I batch cook trays of chicken breast, potatoes, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and/or cauliflower.
Most days, my dinner looks like this:
And most weeks, my fridge looks like this:
To answer your next question: That’s SodaStream sparkling water (much cheaper than buying bottles or cans), and homemade cold brew coffee. Yes, I’m a weirdo who drinks cold brew in the dead of winter!)
By batch cooking just once a week, aka making ONE big effort just once, it essentially changed my default behavior for the rest of the week and set me up to succeed.
I had developed this nasty habit of ordering delivery multiple nights per week – which practically everybody does in Manhattan.
Here’s why: compared to cooking a meal, it was just easier to a hit button on my phone and have food show up 30 minutes later.
However, once I started batch cooking, the “lazy” option WAS the healthy (and far less expensive) option.
Every evening, I could either:
Here’s what I batch cooked:
Once a week or so, I’d go out to dinner with friends or family and eat whatever the hell I wanted. I’d also drink whiskey (neat). I went on multiple trips and vacations
I knew the more diligent I was with my weekly behavior, the more ‘fun’ I could have with my ‘occasional’ behavior and still not get derailed.
The most important part of this: by eating the same foods each day, I knew exact portion sizes without having to calculate or figure out much. I just did the same stuff over and over.
That is…once I figured out how much I needed to eat!
LESSON: Your default behavior is the reason you are where you are right now with your health. So change your default. Consider batch cooking to make the easy, lazy, default option the healthiest.
Learn to cook one thing. Literally one thing. And then expand from there once you build up some confidence!
For the first 6 weeks of my weight loss journey, the scale didn’t budge.
I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going wrong.
If you’ve ever tried to lose weight and the scale didn’t go down, it’s easy to assume, “my metabolism is broken” or “it’s because I’m eating carbs” or “my body is unique and different. Damn my parent’s genetics”
I was counting calories accurately (or so I thought), and the scale didn’t move which made my head hurt.
Clearly I was broken, right?
All those years of ‘bulking’ had ruined my body and I was no longer able to lose weight.
Welp, as a firm believer in things like “science” and “logic,” I decided to test my assumption that I was actually eating the amount of food I thought I was eating.
So I bought a cheap ass $10 food scale.
And it rocked my world.
EYE OPENING EXAMPLE: I eat 3 servings of oats each day, blended into my post workout and post dinner smoothies. A serving of oats is described as “½ cup or 40 grams.” So I used ½ cup of a measuring cup and thought that was pretty close to accurate.
I then WEIGHED half a cup of oats, and it came out to 60 grams!
Which means that for 6 weeks, I consumed an extra 225 calories without realizing it.
The same thing happened with my lunch from Chipotle: I weighed out the portion of rice in the serving, and compared it against the weight that Chipotle says is a serving, again I was overeating by 50%.
Realizing that I was overeating my carb portions by 50% multiple times per day, NO WONDER I wasn’t losing weight.
I was accidentally eating hundreds of calories without even realizing it.
So I adjusted my food intake accordingly.
And for the next 5-6 months, my weight steadily declined.
Part of me was frustrated, embarrassed, and angry that I didn’t realize I was overeating with every meal of every day.
The other part of me is SO THANKFUL I was tracking everything and dug deeper when I wasn’t getting the results that I should have.
For starters, I stepped on the scale every morning at the same time of day.
I kept a rolling 7-day average to make sure the trend was moving in the right direction, but didn’t sweat variations from day to day. After all, water weight, sodium, one unhealthy meal – can really make the day swing.
I’m very thankful I educated myself on the exact macronutrient breakdown of the foods I ate regularly.
I also took weekly pictures from the front and side. Week to week I couldn’t see changes.
But month to month, especially with the scale moving down, I started to see differences and was encouraged with the progress.
LESSON: Educate yourself on the food you’re eating, and how much. Every online calorie calculator will give you a different answer, and should be considered just a starting point.
And then start tracking your progress! Take photos. Take measurements. Write down the number on the scale. And then make small adjustments based on the results you’re seeing. Adjust your calorie intake down or up.
Not getting the results you’re expecting? Consider tracking your food more closely to educate yourself even further!
Want to know my favorite ab exercises that allowed me to get a 6 pack (with those final 2 abs poking through?)
I actually didn’t do any cardio or ab exercises over the past 7 months.
Another note: I also didn’t do any bootcamp or “muscle confusion” or any of that stuff.
And yet here I am with 8-pack abs and healthy and happy.
What gives? Why didn’t I do those things?
Because I hate ab exercises, I hate bootcamps, and I hate cardio.
You also can’t spot reduce fat, and a flat stomach comes from a low body fat percentage (aka – how you eat!)
Sure, I went for walks, often long ones through the city. Sometimes through the course of a day I would walk 5+ miles.
But I never went for a run, or got on a treadmill, or did the elliptical.
Instead, I just focused on getting stronger, eating a caloric deficit, eating enough protein, and getting enough sleep.
I trained my body to think: “I better build muscle, because I know I’m gonna need it again soon.” My body then diverted as many resources to muscle building as possible, pulling from fat stores for energy, and helped me lean out while staying strong.
Abs aren’t made in the gym, as they say – they’re made in the kitchen.
Everybody has ab muscles, they’re just hidden under layers of fat.
So to get my abs to ‘pop’ it simply required me to cut my body fat percentage low enough to remove the fat on top of them.
LESSON: Everybody has abs, they’re just hiding under layers of fat. Cardio isn’t a prerequisite for weight loss. To build a certain type of physique, you need to eat and train in a certain way.
These days, it’s easy to assume carbs are evil.
Paleo says “booo” to carbs, while Keto says “GTFO” to all nearly all carbs.
So what’s the real deal?
Is the choice REALLY:
Nope. Thermodynamics still apply. I do 100% agree that certain people are affected differently by carbs and sugar and fat (check out The End of Overeating for a deep dive into this).
At the same time, vilifying carbs doesn’t get to the root of the problem, or set you up to live a sustainably healthy, happy life.
Carbs can still be a valuable part of a nutritional strategy, provided they’re used strategically!
I ate rice, oats, and potatoes most days:
Notice anything missing from my list of ‘approved foods above?’ Liquid carbs.
I didn’t drink any sugary beverages – I stuck to black coffee, tea, or water. I occasionally drank alcohol, but that was 1 or 2 drinks, once a week or so.
So how do carbs fit into a weight loss plan?
Carbs help replenish the glycogen stores in my muscles (which get depleted during a workout), provide me with fuel, and help me not be miserable while staying in a caloric deficit most days.
They’re also delicious.
The reason carb heavy foods get a bad rap is because most people don’t know true serving sizes.
They’re easy to overeat, and people can’t stop themselves once they start. This is why these foods are notorious for causing people to gain weight.
I still eat plenty of carbs in potato or rice form, I just make sure I have the correct amount, and made sure the rest of my plate is filled with protein and veggies.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with carbs – you just have a smaller margin for error if you plan on eating them while trying to lose weight!
If you accidentally eat 2 servings of broccoli, you might consume an extra 30-50 calories. Accidentally overeat candy, soda, pasta, or cake? It could be hundreds of calories.
So – yes, you can eat carbs. You just need to plan for them. And know that you have a smaller margin for error if your goal is weight loss – especially as you get down to lower body fat percentages.
LESSON: Don’t eliminate carbs completely if doing so will cause to go off the rails and give up on your miserable diet.
Continue to eat them, just eat them intelligently!
For example, a portion of pasta is probably 30% of the size of what image you currently have in your head.
Some other tips:
I have a coach.
I could say it’s “expensive,” but that’s relative. He’s worth every penny.
Either something is worth it, or it isn’t.
We all pay $12/month for netflix and $60 a month for a phone and $80 a month for internet because it’s worth it to us.
I personally pay hundreds of dollars a month for an online coach because the return on investment I get for my health, my confidence, and outsourcing my workout programming is a no-brainer for me.
Here’s why:
Then, I simply followed the instructions. I know that I never would have been able to lose this weight or hit my deadlifting goals without him: picking up 420 pounds at 172 pounds of bodyweight.
I can’t wait to see what I’m capable of next, and I hope my coach (Shout out Anthony!) will work with me for the next decade!
LESSON: Every day, whether you realize it or not, you prioritize what you invest in with your time and your money. I used to invest my time and money in ordering takeout, travel, and nights out at the bar.
I minimized a lot of those things to instead focus my investment in two key areas:
How are you investing your time and money? It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that shows your true priorities.
If you are serious about your health, if you have specific goals you want to reach, or you’ve tried multiple times to get in shape on your own without success, consider hiring a coach.
It’s a serious investment, but I’ve found it to be the best money I spend each month. I found so much success with it, and we had so many people requesting Nerd Fitness instruction, that we built our own coaching program.
You can learn more about our Coaching Program and speak with our team by signing up in the box below:
Everybody asks, so I figure I’ll just tell you the exact portions. You’ll notice that I ate a LOT of protein. Because I was eating a caloric deficit, my goal was to eat plenty of protein, which helped me feel full (not hungry), give my muscles enough fuel to rebuild themselves, AND not lose my strength.
Training days: 2,600 calories
Non-training days: 2,115 cal
TRAINING DAYS:
REST DAYS
SPECIFIC SUPPLEMENTS
Any other questions? Leave them in the comments below and I can expand this section!
My weight loss and strength gains weren’t effortless, but they also weren’t impossible or unsustainable.
My largest investment each month is my coach, and he’s worth every penny.
Otherwise, my days are fairly boring and consistent:
Sure, I don’t look like an instagram fitness model, and Marvel Studios won’t be calling anytime soon.
That’s okay with me!
This is what 7 months of focused effort, calorie counting, and consistent strength training results look like for somebody trying to get lean.
Although I enjoyed the occasional adult beverage and slice of pizza, spent plenty of time playing video games (I just finished the story of Red Dead Redemption 2), and still took vacations and trips to visit family.
I was also damn focused and really dedicated to my efforts over these past 7 months.
They say “happiness equals reality minus expectations.”
We’re sold quick fixes by beautiful people, and assume in just 7 minutes a day, or with a pill or powder, we too can look like them.
This is my reality: a guy who lives and breathes this stuff, trying to build a better physique sustainably, while also enjoying life.
Make sure you have the right expectations matched with what you’re willing to sacrifice and focus on to get those expectations!
Here’s what it required:
I know I know, this isn’t very sexy.
Measuring stuff isn’t effortless. And saying no is hard. But damn it, I am so proud of the past 7 months and can’t wait to see what the next 7 months hold.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: This feels sustainable to me.
I didn’t crash diet. I didn’t put myself through misery and manipulate water intake to look “ripped” for my “after” photo.
It’s more like a “before and now” instead of “before and after,” because this is me as I am.
I feel like I can eat like this for the next 10 years. I can make small adjustments to build more muscle while staying lean, and start working towards hitting a 500 lb deadlift.
To recap:
I hope this helps you make your next steps. And I’d love to hear from you and answer any questions you might have!
-Steve
PS: If you have the money to invest in yourself, I would recommend you looking into hiring a coach. Whether it’s an online coach with Nerd Fitness, or an in-person trainer to help you perfect your movements, the right coach is a game changer!
###
All photo sources can be read right here.[1]
http://chriskresser.com/
In this episode, we discuss:
Show notes:
[smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/thehealthyskeptic/What_the_EAT-Lancet_Paper_Gets_Wrong_with_Diana_Rodgers.mp3″ title=”RHR: What the EAT-Lancet Paper Gets Wrong, with Diana Rodgers” artist=”Chris Kresser” ]
Chris Kresser: Diana, thanks so much for joining me again on the podcast.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Chris Kresser: So, we have a lot to talk about.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: This is an annual event, where there’s some big news story that comes out or study that’s published that demonizes meat and animal foods and purports to be the final nail in the coffin for anybody who’s eating animal products. In fact, as you know, I just went on the Joe Rogan show, my third appearance there, to debate Dr. Joel Kahn about the merits of animal foods in the diet and eating a vegan diet. And I spent a lot of hours preparing for that and wrote a lot of articles. And the debate itself was almost four hours long, and admittedly I was a little tired out after that experience. And I just couldn’t muster the energy and strength to write a rebuttal to the EAT-Lancet paper that was published. But you did, and several other people did.
And so I’d love to dive in and talk about that, as well as just stepping back a little bit and discussing some of the environmental impacts or the purported environmental impact of eating meat and what’s wrong with the traditional narrative there. Because I didn’t get to talk much on the Joe Rogan show about that. And then some of the difficulties of addressing this, and how I know you’ve been working on a film to try to get this message out that we’ve talked about. So why don’t we just start first with the EAT-Lancet paper, since this is what’s really making the rounds now and bringing this to the forefront of everybody’s attention.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, definitely. So there’s, they were really attacking red meat on a nutritional and environmental angle. So, I know your arguments on the Joe Rogan podcast were purely nutritional. I think that the main narratives are always nutrition, environment, and ethics. And ethics were kept out of the EAT-Lancet. Very long paper that took me quite a long time to read. But there’s definitely a lot of misinformation in there about meat.
I mean, they’re using observational studies to basically tell us that we cannot have any processed meats at all, lumping them all together, and that we can only eat less than half an ounce of red meat per day. We can only have less than one ounce of chicken per day. But yet we can have eight teaspoons of sugar per day.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, and plenty of corn and rice and wheat. Let’s talk a little bit … I think most of my listeners are pretty familiar with the nutritional arguments. I and others have written a lot about that, and most recently my … in preparation for the Rogan show, I published a whole cornerstone page with everything you need to debunk the nutritional arguments. So, that’s at ChrisKresser.com/rogan, if you want to look it up.
But I just want to briefly talk about the nutrient density of this EAT-Lancet diet. Because if you just look at it from that single perspective, nutritionally you’ll see very quickly that it falls short. And our body needs micronutrients to function properly. And if a proposed diet doesn’t offer those micronutrients in sufficient quantities, I think we can safely say it’s not a good diet for humans to follow.
And I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this, so I’m just going to go through this really briefly, and then I want to switch over to talking more about some of the environmental issues. Because that’s, I know, an area where you have a lot of expertise. And I really love what you have to say there. So, Zoë Harcombe did an analysis, and I think you had mentioned, Diana, that Marty Kendall did too. So we can talk about that. But Zoë’s analysis, it’s not publicly accessible. You have to be a subscriber to see it. But I can share this part of it. She analyzed the EAT-Lancet diet using food tables and found that it was well below the RDA for several nutrients: B12, retinol, vitamin D, vitamin K2, which wasn’t even studied separately, but 71 percent of the K in the diet came from broccoli.
So we know that there’s probably very little K2 in the diet. Sodium, potassium, calcium, and iron. So that’s a lot of the essential nutrients that we need, and in some cases it was providing less than 20 percent of the RDA of those nutrients. So, to me, that’s pretty much case closed on that basis alone. And then we can look at all the other problems that observational studies on red meat and all of that entail. And I just think it’s … there’s really nothing to be alarmed about. This study doesn’t add any new evidence that meat and animal products are harmful.
Diana Rodgers: Not at all. And another thing she didn’t mention in her paper or her review is the conversion rate of some of the vitamins, like beta-carotene to vitamin A, and almost half the population can’t make that conversion easily. And so even though on paper it my show that the vitamin A was adequate, actually not.
Despite what the EAT-Lancet paper says, meat is still a healthy addition to your diet. Check out this episode of RHR for my discussion with Diana Rodgers about what a real healthy diet looks like. #nutrition #chriskresser #wellness
Chris Kresser: It’s the same with all of these other nutrients. I actually wrote an article. I addressed this in my article on nutrient density you can find at the ChrisKresser.com/Rogan link. Iron, 94 percent of the iron in the EAT-Lancet diet is from plant-based forms of iron. And we know that heme iron that you get from animal products orders a magnitude better absorbed than most plant forms of iron. And the same with calcium, that is better absorbed from, in most cases, from animal products. And virtually every other nutrient, zinc, long-chain omega-3 fats, only found in animal products. So it’s really, yeah, that conversion and bioavailability piece is almost never addressed in these kinds of studies.
Diana Rodgers: Right, and you also write a lot about B12 and how these plant-based B12 analogues actually increase your need for a real B12.
Chris Kresser: Exactly. Yeah, so, really nothing to see here from a nutritional perspective. But part of why it’s making such a big splash is in addition to the highly coordinated launch campaign that is driven by celebrity, very wealthy celebrity type of people who are behind this, is the argument that not only should we avoid red meat and animal products for these nutritional reasons, but they’re destroying the planet. So let’s really dive into that and unpack that from the perspective of the paper. I think you wrote an article, something like 20 reasons or 20 points against this. So we don’t have to go through all of those, but let’s cover the highlights.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, well, I think the number one thing that people need to understand is that we can’t just assume that if we’re not raising animals that it will automatically free up land for more crops. So, agricultural land isn’t interchangeable. Most of the agricultural land on the globe is not suited for cropping due to water availability. It’s too rocky, it’s too steep.
So, I think a lot of people, especially that haven’t traveled much, look around and just see the nice flat land and just assume that everywhere in the world is like that. I mean, picture Iceland, Norway, picture many parts of Africa, Mongolia. I mean, there’s just so many places that really will only support grazing animals and not wheat and corn and soy production. And so that’s a huge thing that we need to consider, and if we are to not graze animals on that land, not only will we lose that for food production, but the land will also desertify. Because we just don’t have those wild herds and the numbers that we used to any longer.
And ruminants are actually incredibly beneficial. Their impact on the land helps increase water holding capacity; their grazing actually stimulates new growth in a good way. So you can’t just have these fenced-off acres with nothing on it. You actually need grazing animals as part of healthy grassland ecosystems.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s a point that is really misunderstood. I see a little bit more discussion about it certainly, at least in our realm. But I’m having kind of a hard time thinking of a mainstream article that really did justice to that point. Do you know of any?
Diana Rodgers: Well, I’ve written a few blog posts on it and have talked a lot about it. I think Allan Savory does a really good job.
Chris Kresser: Certainly.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, in his Savory Institute work that they’ve done and also his TED talk. But I think that’s definitely the number one point that people need to understand. And it’s funny because I am working on a book as well on this topic, and my publisher actually has published a ton of vegan books, and he was skeptical. And once he read my environmental argument and specifically wrapped his head around this very topic, I won him over.
Chris Kresser: That’s amazing.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, people just, because we’re so divorced from nature, you and I have talked about this before just off-line, but that’s the number one problem is that people just have no idea how food is produced and what makes a healthy ecosystem. And a lot of the vegans will, the ones who do accept that not all land can be cropped, just want it turned over to be rewilded.
So let’s just crop everything we can possibly crop and then we’ll just rewild all the pastureland with deer or something cute. But then what are we going to do because we’ve eliminated all the predators? I mean even in the town I live in outside of Boston, we have a massive deer problem. And nobody wants hunting because they don’t want to see dead animals on their beautiful hikes around the conservation land here in my town. And if we eliminate the predators, we need to be responsible for how these populations of wild animals are managed. And so the other option, if we’re not going to hunt them, I suppose would be to bring back wolves. I don’t know how.
Chris Kresser: I don’t think that would go over well.
Diana Rodgers: I don’t know how my waiting for the bus in my town with wolves swirling around at dawn will go over. So it quickly backs them into a very uncomfortable corner there.
Chris Kresser: I think another thing that you point out that people don’t realize is that 90 percent of what cattle eat is, at least in a natural grazing state, not in a CAFO type of arrangement, is forage and plant leftovers that humans can’t eat.
Diana Rodgers: Right, exactly. And even in, I mean, I’m not an advocate for feedlot beef, but I think one thing people don’t understand about even cattle that are raised on feedlots, or that are finished on feedlots rather, is that they’re not raised on feedlots.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: So 85 percent of the beef cattle in the US are actually grazing on land that can’t be cropped. And even if they do end up on a feedlot, 90 percent of their total intake is non-edible food to humans. And so they’re eating, for example, soybean cakes. But that’s left over from the soybean oil industry.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: They’re eating large amounts of distiller’s grains, lots of foods that would normally emit greenhouse gases and decompose anyway. Ranchers are also grazing cattle on spent wheat and cornfields. So you know that corn would just decompose and emit greenhouse gases either way. So why not run it through a ruminant gut and make protein out of it?
Chris Kresser: And fertilizer, as you pointed out.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. I mean, it’s so much more nuanced. This is a theme that will probably come up in our conversation a lot is, and I know Robb, Robb and I commiserate about it, and I know you do as well with him. But the vegan narrative is so simple in a lot of ways and it plays into a lot of assumptions, even if they’re wrong, that you don’t really have to explain it to people. It just, people have heard things over and over again. “Meat is bad for the environment, it’s bad for us, therefore eliminate meat from your diet and the food system, and everyone will be healthier.” That’s so easy to understand.
But as Robb has pointed out many times, the counterargument is nuanced and complex. And is not quite as simple to understand and requires that you actually pay attention to some of these finer points. And I think that is one of the challenges that we face in this struggle. But it’s not incomprehensible. I mean, if you just get a few of the simple points like this, it starts to become a lot easier to understand.
Diana Rodgers: Definitely. And now my point was … oh, I was going to say too that there’s a lot, 50 percent of the carcass of a cow is not eaten but used for other industry uses. So we’ve got leather, we’ve got insulin, we’ve got footballs, we’ve got lots of medical applications, fertilizer. So eliminating all animals from our food system, there’s a great study I think I sent you this morning that was published in PNAS about what would happen if we eliminated all animals from our food system.
So the greenhouse gas emissions would only decrease by about 2 1/2 percent. But our overall caloric intake would actually go way up, and our nutrient deficiencies would go up. So we already have a problem in our culture where we’re over-consuming calories and not getting enough nutrients. So we would just be making the problem worse for about a 2 percent emission reduction.
Chris Kresser: And those numbers don’t assume any improvement in how cattle are managed, right?
Diana Rodgers: Right. That was just typical cattle.
Chris Kresser: Right. So if we actually made improvements in how cattle are managed, do you think there could be a net sequestration of carbon?
Diana Rodgers: Oh, definitely. So there’s been some research coming out of Michigan State showing the difference between continuous grazing and what they term “adaptive multi-paddock grazing,” which is similar to Allan Savory’s method, so basically when you intensively graze an area and then move the cattle off quickly.
So, this is how, for example, herds in Africa naturally move because of predator pressure, so it’s much worse for the land to have, let’s say if you have a 10-acre field and have 100 cattle on that land for the whole summer, as opposed to tightly bunching and moving them frequently and allowing that land to rest. Because that’s when carbon gets sequestered, in the regrowth phase of the grass. And so the grass is going through photosynthesis, it’s pulling down carbon and actually exuding carbon sugars to bacteria and to fungal networks that are then passing that grass nutrient. So the fungus is actually mining rocks and getting the minerals from that and feeding it to the grass, and that’s how carbon is sequestered. And that process is most effective and actually is a net carbon gain when cattle are managed in this way.
So that’s why I like to say “it’s not the cow, it’s the how,” because there’s just many different ways of raising cattle. Just like there are many different ways of growing broccoli. We can do it in a monocrop system, or we can do it in a more rotational system where we’re integrating it with other crops. And what we need is less monocrops because that’s just not how healthy ecosystems work, and farmland is not natural. Like, when you fly over the United States, all those squares you’re looking down at, that’s not nature, that’s man doing that.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. I know from your article, you did also a podcast with Frank Mitloehner—is that how you pronounce it? We’ll include a link to that in the show notes because I think people should listen to that. He’s an expert in greenhouse gas emissions and animal agriculture. And you guys talk a lot about what’s really going on there and why some of the typical numbers that are thrown around are not accurate. And if anyone’s interested in a deeper dive, I’d definitely recommend listening to that.
So, greenhouse gas from beef cattle represents, just as it’s currently done with no improvements, like you just mentioned, is 2 percent of emissions. And by contrast, transportation is 27 percent. So, yet when I go to WeWork, which I have an office at—
Diana Rodgers: Oh, gosh.
Chris Kresser: You probably know this.
Diana Rodgers: Oh, no.
Chris Kresser: But some of my listeners might not know that WeWork is a company that has committed to this idea that eating a vegetarian diet will save the planet. And they, I think, so, I was there two days ago on Monday, and they have meatless Monday at WeWork, where they served veggie burgers in the main lounge. And then they print these cards that they post around there, around the office, that say, “If everyone was just a vegetarian for,” I can’t remember, “one or two days a week, we would save 450 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.” And again, this goes back to the simplicity thing.
Most people get in the elevator, they see that and they’re like, “Oh, wow, okay. I guess I should become a vegetarian.” So how does this continue? I mean, it’s not surprising that there’s a disconnect between actual science and what we see in the media. We know that from the nutrition world and everything else. But how do you think this got started? Was there a lot of misunderstanding initially which led to these numbers and then later science kind of brought more clarity? Or what do you think? How have we gotten here?
Diana Rodgers: Well, I actually just released an amazing podcast on Tuesday of this week, so maybe you could link to that one too, with the guy from Brussels, Frédéric Leroy.
Chris Kresser: I read some of his papers. You sent them to me awhile back before the Rogan debate.
Diana Rodgers: Oh, he’s so fantastic. Yeah, so, his opinion is that meat is unfairly absorbing a lot of our worries about our health, our state of our health and the environment, because meat is so powerful and can absorb it. But it’s unfairly the scapegoat for our stressors. So, everyone just, it’s much easier for us to blame meat than it is to perhaps look at our transportation industry and be uncomfortable about that. I mean, the main funder of that EAT-Lancet paper has a private jet and transportation was never mentioned in the EAT-Lancet.
Chris Kresser: I don’t know if this is accurate, but I read something about how just the jet trips for the reporter would have a bigger impact on the environment than the diet changes that they were talking about.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And so, in Livestock’s Long Shadow, that’s when a lot of this all started. The mass information about the emissions with cattle. And unfortunately, when they did that study, what they did was they looked at all the emissions, the full lifecycle of ruminant animals. They looked at production of the feed, all the transportation, all the emissions, everything. And when they compared that to transportation, they only looked at tailpipe exhaust. So they didn’t even factor in transportation, for example, in the transportation numbers.
And so when you look at the global numbers at emissions of cattle versus transportation, you’re looking at apples to oranges there. So you’re looking at the full lifecycle of a beef animal compared to just the tailpipe emissions from transportation. So that’s not fair. And also in other countries, the percentage is a little bit higher. But that’s in places where maybe transportation plays a lesser role where there are less cars per cow. And so, their relative emissions may be higher. But that’s again not taking into account the fact that cattle can actually sequester carbon and many, many other factors. And so the authors of Livestock’s Long Shadow did reduce their numbers, I think, from 18 to 14 percent and did admit that their numbers were still off because of the transportation. There are no global lifecycle papers on transportation.
But yet that 18 percent, I’ve heard even 50 percent. I don’t even know where that number comes from, but that, the 50 percent is the number that’s often cited by this group called Green Mondays and they are the ones that have worked with Berkeley to make all of the government meetings meatless on Mondays. That organization, I’ve looked into, and they’re actually funded by an organization out of Singapore that produces plant-based pork.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: And so there’s a lot, the environment and ethics and even the nutrition argument is very convenient for large food companies to profit, because processing means profit.
Chris Kresser: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that, and since we’re on the topic, I do want to come back to some of the other ways that an animal-based food system or food system that includes animals can actually benefit biodiversity and things like that. So yeah, follow the money. We talk about that a lot on this show. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but on the other hand, you’d be very naïve and misguided to assume that money doesn’t play a big role in setting food policy and coming up with these laws. It always has.
And it probably always will. And if you look at the EAT-Lancet diet, I think this is from Marty Kendall’s analysis, you’ll find that 32 percent of calories come from rice, wheat, and corn, and 14 percent come from unsaturated oils. So these are highly processed foods.
Diana Rodgers: Right.
Chris Kresser: We’re not talking about corn on the cob.
Diana Rodgers: Or wheat berries.
Chris Kresser: Wheat berries. Or even, like, in some cases, just the whole-grain rice. We’re talking about highly processed corn and wheat and rice derivatives, and then highly processed industrial seed oils that comprise almost 50 percent of calories. And who does that benefit? This study was sponsored by a basically hit list A-team of—
Diana Rodgers: Processed food companies.
Chris Kresser: Global processed food companies—DuPont, PepsiCo, Dannon, Nestlé, Cargill, Kellogg’s. So, like, food and agricultural companies that make their money by selling processed and refined foods. And so that’s very revealing.
And then the other thing that Marty Kendall pointed out, which is directly tied to this, is that this diet, when you work out the macronutrient ratios, it ends up being low in protein and moderate in fat and carbohydrates. And there are really no foods in nature that fit that profile, or very few. You have breast milk and acorns, I think, are the two that he pointed out. And this is a recipe for, that macronutrient mix of low protein and then higher fat and carbohydrate is a recipe for highly palatable and rewarding food. So if you look at the foods that are on this list that fit that profile, there are things like chocolate milk, potato chips, French toast, waffles, ice cream, pancakes.
Diana Rodgers: Kit-Kat.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, biscuits, Kit-Kat, Twix, chocolate chip cookies, pie crust. I mean, are you kidding me? This is the macronutrient profile that we should be following? Oh, who does not benefit? All of the companies that make these processed foods. So it’s really revealing when you look at it from that perspective.
Diana Rodgers: I know. And I think it’s really irresponsible to promote a diet that’s about 10 percent in protein when we have, I mean, just in America, more than 50 percent of Americans are metabolically broken and really benefit from much higher protein levels.
Chris Kresser: Increasing their protein. And we know that of all the macronutrients, protein is the one that has the biggest impact on satiety.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly.
Chris Kresser: Which it will reduce the likelihood that people overeat, which many Americans are doing.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: And any clinician or dietitian like yourself who’s worked with people knows if they’re struggling with weight, putting them on a higher-protein diet is probably the most important thing you can do. And there’s even some, if you look at the studies on low-carb diets, I think probably one of the reasons, if not one of the main reasons, that they’re so effective is that they’re higher in protein.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and I have to say too, so I actually have recently been following Marty Kendall’s NutrientOptimiser diet personally, just as an experiment to try to maximize my micronutrients. And I eat really well. I live on a farm. I have a lot of education in nutrient density. I have access to all these foods. It’s really hard to get all your micronutrients in the day. But it’s really easy to feel satiated when you have a high percentage of animal protein in your diet. So whether that’s oysters, which I know I can beat his leaderboard if I just eat a ton of oysters in one day.
Chris Kresser: That’s right. That’s right.
Diana Rodgers: But liver, and then just regular old animal protein. Filling the rest of your diet with colorful vegetables is the way to go. But it still, I still was low, actually, believe it or not, in iron, even with all the protein I’ve been consuming on this diet.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, I’m always talking to my patients about a lot of, especially if they’re favoring like chicken and fish, and not eating shellfish or organ meats, is that some muscle meats are not that high in iron. So it’s organ meats and shellfish that are really the powerhouses from that perspective.
And this brings up another question about bioavailability, right? Because we’ve both talked about this a lot. It’s not at all the case that protein from plant sources like legumes is going to be absorbed in the same way that protein is absorbed from animal foods like meat and eggs and fish and dairy products. There is something called the … there are various scoring systems that are used in the scientific literature to assess the bioavailability of protein. And no matter what scoring system you use, animal proteins come out ahead of plant proteins, and usually by a very large margin.
Diana Rodgers: And, I mean, trying to get your protein from beans and rice, if you’re trying to do the combining in order to get the right profile of amino acids, you would, so I did the calculations. So in order to get the right amount, the same amount of protein you would get from a four-ounce steak, which is 181 calories, you’d need to eat 12 ounces of beans and a cup of rice. So that’s 638 calories and 122 grams of carbs. And you’re still not getting the same beautiful profile of amino acids that you can get from this 181-calorie piece of steak.
Chris Kresser: Right, which goes back to Marty Kendall’s point where you’re basically, if you eat a low-protein diet, it’s going to be a much higher-calorie diet in most cases.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and higher carb and just setting people down to the road towards metabolic disorder.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. So let’s go back now. I want to finish up talking about the impact of animals in the food system. Because I think there’s still some other points that are worth going into here that a lot of people may not be familiar with. So one is, we talked about how not all land is suitable for grazing. But let’s talk about maybe the flipside of that is what happens when you use a lot of land for crops like corn and rice and soy and wheat?
Diana Rodgers: Right, I mean a lot of, and most of this is not organically grown and using animals to graze in all of that. So the large majority of our monocrops are heavily sprayed with chemicals that leave a residue on the leaves that we’re ingesting. And also completely sterilize the soil and create runoff that then ends up in the Mississippi River and creating massive dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
So there are just so many problems with monocropping the way we’re doing it today. We have created an insect apocalypse. And so we’ve lost pollinators. We’re killing fish, which in turn then kills the animals that need to be eating the fish. And so we’re annihilating biodiversity both above and below ground. And so one teaspoon of soil has more microbes in it than all of the humans on earth. And when we spray it with things like Roundup, we’re completely killing all of that. And so we’ve destroyed just so much of our soil and so much of it is also just blowing away and running off.
So, I mean, the Dust Bowl was a good example of that, and we’re headed for another one right now. So according to the United Nations, we have about 60 harvests left, at the rate we’re going.
Chris Kresser: This is alarming. This is like an emergency thing on the level that’s part of climate change, of course, but also on the same level as potential for water shortages. People, I don’t think, are … I mean, some people are aware of it, of course, but we’re talking about some very, very serious implications here.
Diana Rodgers: And when the soil is compacted and we’re constantly just stripping away the biodiversity of the soil, when rain comes, it just washes all the topsoil away into rivers, and that’s how we get these really cloudy rivers. Because rivers in general should be clear. And in a system where we have healthy ruminants managed in a proper way, the soil acts like a sponge and can actually hold a lot more water from rain, instead of allowing it to just wash off and take the topsoil with it. My husband is so into topsoil that even we have two border collies, and they sleep in our mudroom at night. And they come in, they’re black and white, but their white parts are really dirty-looking at the end of the day.
Chris Kresser: Brown.
Diana Rodgers: And in the morning they’re totally white and they leave massive amounts of soil on the ground. And I literally have to sweep it up and put it in the field because that’s how into topsoil he is.
Chris Kresser: Well, yeah, and how precious it is too.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And just nobody is looking at our farmland as a biological system. It’s been reduced to this reductionist chemical, let’s produce as many calories as possible, which is ruining our health and our land.
Chris Kresser: Let’s talk a little bit also about how ruminants can improve biodiversity. I mean, we touched on that just briefly, but water is a big issue, and I know that cattle can improve water holding capacity of the land. And that has a whole bunch of downstream effects.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. And also too, even the worst-managed cattle on overgrazed grass is still a better system than monocrop grain. So you still, I mean, and even in a better system, you’ve got butterflies, you’ve got birds, you’ve got all kinds of life above ground and below ground that are teeming.
The whole goal, what people don’t realize, is that we want as much life as possible. And our current system is actually making sure that we’re annihilating as much life as possible. So if we look at the extinction process that’s been happening over the last 50 years, again, it’s something completely alarming. I know Silent Spring came out and people were all up in arms. But the solution is not a vegetarian solution. So Diet for a Small Planet is outdated information, and what we need is more better cattle, not no cattle.
Chris Kresser: It’s not the cow, it’s the how.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly. And not only that too, another thing I brought up is what these rich white people in Sweden were not paying attention to is that livestock are really important to the majority of people living in poverty in the world in places where, what are you going to do in Kenya where it’s super arid and the Maasai have been herding cattle forever and ever? And we’re going to tell them that they need to go grow soybeans? With what seeds? Are they going to have to go buy them from Monsanto? Where are they going to get the water to irrigate? Where are they going to get the fertilizer if they can’t have animals? So I think it’s bordering on racist to have a grain-heavy diet as a global policy for the entire world.
Chris Kresser: But we can just make more Cheetos.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly.
Chris Kresser: That’s probably the plan, part of the plan here. It’s really—
Diana Rodgers: Well, to get them reliant on our aid. I mean, we’re already ruining Haiti with our rice that we’re giving to them. We’ve ruined their local economies, we’ve ruined their health. Now rice is a much higher percentage of their diet. Very few Haitians are actually growing their own food anymore. And it’s a really great way that we can control governments. I mean, that’s a whole other thing that we don’t have to get too much into. But it really makes me mad, the idea that we’re taking away people’s innate ability to be self-reliant.
Chris Kresser: Not to mention the very clearly documented health impacts that are observed when traditional peoples adopt the Western food system.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And I have an image on my post. So, the Canadian government decided that they knew best, advising a local Inuit population that they should be eating a Mediterranean diet. Which I think is just, I mean, this one image of this igloo showing all of their nutrient-dense traditional foods in the red category and bananas and oranges and orange juice in the green category. I mean that just sums up exactly how wrong we’ve gotten our dietary advice just in this one image.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely. And if those poor kids start following that diet, they’re going to become morbidly obese.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: And this is seen. It’s been documented in so many different areas where traditional populations start to follow the government-sponsored diet, including Native Americans in the US.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly.
Chris Kresser: So, like the Pima, for example.
Chris Kresser: So let’s talk about some of the other proposals that are floating around that are based on this idea that meat is bad for us nutritionally and bad for the environment, which as I hope we’ve shown in this podcast, is misguided and others. But why not just make meat in a lab? Let’s say you accept that meat, animal protein is more bioavailable and so we do need meat, which some people seem to have accepted. But then why not just grow it in a lab and—
Diana Rodgers: Reduce suffering.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, reduce suffering and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All of that. Yeah. And of course, make billions of dollars from the companies that are successful at doing that.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and I think another thing.
Chris Kresser: Nothing wrong with that per say, but yeah. There’s some financial motivation there perhaps.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. I’m so glad I don’t live where you live. I was actually just out there a couple days ago, and I’m, like, so happy that I’m not living there. Because that’s, like, the hotbed of all of this.
Chris Kresser: Sure. You just have to be a hermit like me and live up on my hilltop.
Diana Rodgers: And just go to WeWork and get mad at WeWork in the halls and elevators.
Chris Kresser: Yep.
Diana Rodgers: So, I mean, it’s really interesting, the lab meat thing, because I had a woman on my podcast about a year and a half ago who was a big vegan animal rights person telling me how great lab meat was. And I asked her if she knew how it was made, and she had no idea. But she was like, she’s like a really big deal animal rights activist and very vocal about how lab meat is a good solution. And interestingly, most vegans actually won’t even accept it because you’re using fetal bovine serum in order to make it, which is not “vegan” anyway.
But what folks aren’t realizing, number one, is that it relies on this horrible monocrop system, which is ruining our environment and a completely inefficient way of producing food on so many levels. But then the lifestyle assessments I’ve read are a lot based on projections because they haven’t built the bioreactors yet. So they’re making a lot of assumptions, but even the assumptions are so bad that the energy required in order to transform what they’re using right now as the substrate.
So corn and soy, sometimes wheat, into protein, the amount of energy required for that is enormous. And when we have animals that can actually just do this on their own without having to be plugged into an outlet is really amazing. Plus, what they’re not taking into consideration is the amount of antibiotics that they’ll need to prevent bacterial overgrowth because they’re growing these at just the perfect temperature for meat to grow. But of course that’s also the perfect temperature for bacteria to grow as well.
Chris Kresser: Everything else.
Diana Rodgers: Cancerous cells, all these things. They had not figured out how to striate the meat with fats. There’s a lot of input that we’re running out of that you need in order, there’s a lot of minerals that are being mined in war-torn countries that, actually the US military is, like, guarding these mines in order to get those raw materials in order to pump it into these cellular meat company facilities. So the whole system is energetically ridiculous, and it’s not even causing less harm.
So that’s my big argument, too, is that when you look at how many lives are lost from the loss of biodiversity, of taking a native ecosystem, plowing it up to make it into a cornfield, and then spraying it to make sure that nothing other than corn, not even mice or anything can grow there. The amount of life lost for that system versus one animal, one large ruminant animal. A cow can provide almost 500 pounds of meat. I just don’t think the trade-offs are worth it at all from an ethical or environmental perspective.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, another situation where the devil is in the details, right?
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: Because on the fact of it, lab meat sounds, “Hey, why not?” Like, if we can do that and we can make it taste the same … But clearly including that woman that you interviewed on your podcast, that was kind of the level that she was approaching it on, without actually looking into the details. It sounds pretty good on the surface, so why not advocate it. But then when you look into it, you find it’s a little more complicated.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. I’ve been really loving The Wizard and the Prophet, Robb sent that over to me.
Chris Kresser: I read that just recently.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, I think he told me.
Chris Kresser: I sent it to Robb.
Diana Rodgers: Yes, exactly, so I’m thanking you. I’m thanking you for the chain because I have my hands on it. And I’ve been not only reading the book, but then when I’m in my car or at the gym, I’m listening to it. So it’s really fantastic, and I think that that is at the crux of what we’re dealing with right now. Do we look at this, what some would call Luddite perspective of nature through Hoyt, or … I’m sorry. What was his name? Now I’m forgetting.
Chris Kresser: Vogt.
Diana Rodgers: Voight. Vogt.
Chris Kresser: Vogt. Yeah, you want to say Voight because it’s usually an i in there, but it’s V-o-g-t, so it’s Vogt, yeah.
Diana Rodgers: Or do we look at this more wizard tech solution? And that’s just where most people are right now.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s the dominant cultural paradigm is we’ve gone into wizardry, for sure.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, yes.
Chris Kresser: No question about that. Back when Silent Spring was written, I think there was more, Vogt was more in vogue. There was a little bit more concern about the wizardry and the impact it would have. And now we are 100 percent in wizardry.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. And the problem is, everyone’s just sort of hoping that more rabbits will be pulled out of the hat. But we don’t know for sure.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah. I highly recommend this book. This is Charles Mann, who wrote 1491 and 1493, which, if anyone has read those books about … it totally changed our view on how the New World was discovered and colonized and what was here when those people arrived. Which is much different than what was previously believed. He’s a fantastic writer and this is I think, one of the most compelling views on where we are as a society now and what our future might hold. So highly recommend it.
Getting back to the topic, I mean, that’s obviously germane and relevant here, but I want to talk about a few other proposals that are being floated around here. Which are again, if you accept what we’ve talked about here and in other podcasts, are off base. But the meat tax. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm for this because there’s some research that, beverage tax, soda taxes have been effective in terms of reducing consumption. So this is now something that’s being seriously proposed in the EAT-Lancet. I think that’s part of the agenda of the EAT-Lancet paper and authors and reporters.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and actually they released another paper just on Sunday night of this week that goes even more strongly into the meat tax. I think the goal is to make it basically impossible to eat meat moving forward. And effectively, I’ve looked at the models. There was a good paper that looked at what would happen, just kind of projected out, what might happen in this situation. And, actually, red meat consumption wouldn’t go down at all.
And it basically is just a poor tax is what this is. And when you look at, I actually took a picture. I had to run into a typical grocery store and pick something up one time, and I noticed the shopping cart of the person in front of me. And it was soda and donuts and whoopie pies and all stuff like that. But her deli meat and her bacon were actually the most nutrient-dense things in her cart.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, so that would be encouraging even less healthy choices in people who are of limited economic means. And you mentioned this in the beginning about the private jet people who are founding this study, and you brought it up in your article. There really is a classist kind of thing that’s happening here that’s not part of the popular narrative. Because if we really wanted to reduce carbon footprint, you pointed out a meta-analysis that suggested that doing things like avoiding one round-trip transatlantic flight, more of a car-free lifestyle, having one less child in an industrialized nation would have by far bigger impact than reducing your consumption of beef.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. Or changing your diet in any way.
Chris Kresser: And who’s doing a lot of round-trip transatlantic flying? People who are at a certain socioeconomic level. And so, yeah, a lot of these proposals are like, “Let me continue to live my carbon-emitting lifestyle, and then let’s introduce changes that won’t effect that but actually will impact people who are poor and in a really adverse way without really me having to change anything as a privileged person.”
Diana Rodgers: Right, and, I mean, in order to do vegan right, you kind of do need to be a celebrity or an uber-rich person that, if there is a way to do vegan, right? But, I mean, to … there’s a lot of food prep involved, there’s a lot of time involved. There’s a lot of time spent eating.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, chewing.
Diana Rodgers: Chewing, right? Your typical person that maybe gets two 15-minute breaks a day is not going to be able to chew the food or have a staff that can make the cashew cream to make all the—
Chris Kresser: Or buy the cashew cream for $9.49 for a half pint or whatever it is.
Diana Rodgers: Right, right. I mean, this film project I’m working on, we’ve done a lot of filming in Indiana, rural Indiana. And I see what these folks have as options for stores on limited budgets and what they’re buying. And honestly, processed food, processed meats like sausages that are pre-cooked are a lot easier for them to eat and are honestly the most nutrient-dense thing that they’re eating. Because they’re not doing a whole lot of scratch cooking. They don’t have a lot of time or energy at the end of the day. So when life is really hard and you’re working really hard, you don’t have the privilege to push away something nutrient-dense like meat.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about the film. I know it’s gone through a lot of iterations and there’s been some wins and some challenges. So tell me, let’s start with a little bit of the idea and the inspiration behind it. Why we both feel that this is important to get out there and then maybe a little update where you’re at, what you’re needing, what would be helpful. We have a lot of folks who are listening, who I know want to be a part of this movement in some way.
And I’m often asked by people who are not necessarily in the health field, people who are not nutritionists or Functional Medicine practitioners or anything, like, “How can I help? How can I get involved? How can I use my existing skills or connections or resources to move this forward?” So let’s imagine what kind of help we need or could be useful to move this forward, and who knows who’s out there listening.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. So, I was halfway through writing a book on this subject on the nutritional, environmental, and ethical case for meat when yet another vegan film came out about a year and a half ago. And I was like, “If this guy can make a movie, I can make a movie.” And so that’s kind of how it all started. I did a crowd funder that was pretty successful, and we got rolling. At the time, the project was called Kale versus Cow. And we started filming some of these nutrition stories. We hooked up with a doctor who has some amazing clinical trials and is doing really good work in a pretty rural part of the Midwest, conveniently corn country. But there’s also farmers who are plowing in their corn and turning it back to grass.
So there’s some really great stories happening there. And some of the feedback I got from the title Kale versus Cow was that, “This sounds like another vegan film,” or, “It sounds like I’m against kale,” which as you know, I’m not against kale. But I think folks maybe that don’t know me as well just had these misperceptions, and the name was a little bit of a hang-up for them. So we went back to the drawing board a little bit and changed the title to Sacred Cow, which I think works really nicely, also because there’s a double meaning of sacred cow. Because the vilification of beef is just so embedded in our system.
Chris Kresser: Yes.
Diana Rodgers: And, I mean, even when I was going through my graduate program in dietetics, red meat is not okay. It’s just not, even though in biochem it’s totally fine if you just look at it from an objective scientific perspective. And the project has also transformed from a feature film into a docuseries because we felt that it’s a more digestible way, literally, to get this information across, and there’s also more that we wanted to cover that we didn’t feel would fit into the narrative of one film.
And so we were now looking at a multipart docuseries still addressing mostly the nutritional, environmental, and ethical aspects of the reason why we need animals in our food system. I’m also very interested in sort of the anthropology of how meat became such a polarizing topic today and how people identify their whole being around how much meat they consume in their diet. The flexitarian, vegan, whatever.
Chris Kresser: Yep.
Diana Rodgers: And I still am working on the book. So, as you know, Robb is the coauthor on the book project I’m working on, and he’s the co-executive producer on the film project. But the funding has been a little bit of a challenge. I don’t know if people really get how important this is, and I think it’s one of the reasons why the Unitarian church is not funded well. Because it’s, like, trying to extract money out of atheists is a hard thing.
When people are super-passionately committed and religiously committed like vegans, where it’s, like, their religion, they’ll passionately fund things. But then when people are kind of cool with everything and they’re eating meat and they’re like, “Yeah, got my health under control now. That’s great. And if the vegans don’t want to eat meat, fine, that’s more for me.” That’s really kind of the attitude I’m running into a little bit.
Chris Kresser: Yeah people are less identified with it, which is good, in their way.
Diana Rodgers: It’s good.
Chris Kresser: But not as good when you’re trying to raise money for a movie like this.
Diana Rodgers: Right, yeah.
Chris Kresser: And I think the other part of it is, I don’t know that people really perceive the threat fully yet. It’s like you just said, they’re like, “If someone wants to be vegan, fine. No skin off my back and it’s not going to hurt me. So there’s no pressing need to fund a film about this. Because who cares if someone’s a vegan.” Well, yeah, on an individual level, you might say that. Even though we could argue that you should care if someone chooses an approach that’s in many cases likely to make them nutrient deficient.
But, yes, each person, of course, has the right to choose their own approach. And I don’t go around trying to proselytize and convert vegans to eating animal foods unless they ask me what I think they should do if they come see me as a patient. But this isn’t just about individual choice here. Because, as we know, we talked about the meat tax proposition, and this is going to affect food policy. It’s already affected food policy in the US and around the world which then will affect schools. And what happens at schools, which influences our children and the choices that they make.
You know, my daughter is seven and a half, and she comes home with some really interesting things that she’s heard from other kids and even teachers at school. And she doesn’t go to a typical school, but this is, it’s everywhere. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly. And there’s a lot of schools now eliminating meat for health, and I think a lot of parents are kind feeling a little worried about meat consumption. And so maybe they’re thinking, “Well, at least they’re getting a healthy meal at school.” And so that’s concerning to me because for a lot of kids this is the most nutrient-dense meal of their day. And to blame it on meat is just wrong. And I kept telling folks, this is coming and meat tax is coming.
And I, for a while, was feeling like maybe I’m just nuts and I’m making all this up. I don’t know. But then of course, it is really coming. The EAT-Lancet paper is here. Meat tax is being discussed. We’ve got, LA now is trying to force restaurants and LAX to provide, to tell private businesses to provide vegan entrees. We’ve got Berkeley with Meatless Mondays now at all city meetings.
Chris Kresser: WeWork.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, WeWork, exactly. There’s airlines now that are eliminating red meat. And so this is coming at us from our clinicians, our universities, we’re hearing this from the World Health Organization. We’re hearing this from business, from the media. Constant films, there’s more coming out this year.
I think I just sent you another one that’s on its way out that I’m pretty concerned about. Because it actually has people with MD behind their name. And nobody is pushing back and people are just taking this really lightly. And so, yeah, anything that folks can do to help me get this off the ground, I’d want to come out and feature you, Chris. And I’ve got a lot of really great experts in both the sustainability and health space that very strongly feel that red meat is important to our food system.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. And the reality is that a film or in a docuseries can make a huge impact than even a book.
Diana Rodgers: That you can’t do with a book. I know.
Chris Kresser: It doesn’t work. I mean, I’ve written a 400-plus page book with all the science that you need to, I think, get clear that animal food should be part of our diet in addition to plant foods. But how many people are going to read a 400-page book? Not that many. And there’s still something about film that makes it a very viral medium. It’s more accessible, a docuseries is an increasingly popular format, as you said.
It’s easier to cover the wide range of topics that you need to hit on for this, and it’s a format that has been used for vegan and other types of films or media. And it’s something that’s just really easy to share with. People are more likely to sit down at night and watch an episode of this than they are to read a book.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, exactly. And this is pretty dense material. But if I can just show people what a healthy ecosystem looks like and how cattle raised in the right way, what that looks like compared to a 2,000-acre field of soy being grown for lab meat, I think that those are really powerful visuals.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. So if someone is listening to this and the alarm has been raised in their mind, and they’re now aware of the real risk here to our families and communities, and they want to get involved in some way, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Diana Rodgers: So I have more information, and I’m taking donations on sustainabledish.com/film. And for any better meat companies or folks that want to get involved in a bigger way, folks can just message me directly through the site. And we’re working with a few better meat companies and other large donors and foundations. But we still need to, these are expensive, and there are some inexpensive ways of making docuseries.
But in order for us to really get on the mainstream media channels like Netflix, we have to do something that’s beautiful and has a high production value and isn’t a $50,000 handheld camera project. And so, while the budget isn’t exorbitant, it’s certainly higher than some of the other more budget docuseries that have been coming out. And that’s largely because I’m really tired of going to high schools and doing damage control when they show these vegan propaganda films. Because that’s what’s happening right now.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, absolutely. And will continue to happen, as you pointed out. The momentum there is only building. So we need to, I think, step up to the plate.
Diana Rodgers: Thank you so much.
Chris Kresser: Thank you for doing this work, Diana. I really appreciate your advocacy and passion for this, and it shows through in everything that you do. And I hope for all of you listening that this has been up maybe a bit of a wake-up call and you have a little more perspective on what’s going on behind the scenes. And even less left behind, like more out in the open now, I think, more and more. Especially with this EAT-Lancet paper, and you see that science is not objective and dispassionate in many cases, but actually quite agenda driven and that there are often interests aligned behind those agendas that may not represent your interests. Like global food companies that want to sell more of their processed and refined products.
So none of us are not impacted by this in some way. And if you have children and family members who are getting exposed to all of this material, it’s really important to have a counterpoint that we can offer that is well researched and really hits on the most important issues. And people can change their mind. I mean, your story that you shared with the publisher of the China study was really revealing. To his credit, to whoever that publisher editor was, to his credit. He was able to take in that information and open his mind and give this a chance. And we both, of course, know many people that that’s happened with. I have lots of patients, lots of readers and listeners who were vegan and vegetarian at one point. I was vegan and vegetarian at one point, as everybody knows who’s listened to this show for a while.
And it was through exposure to research and information like what we’re talking about on this show and what you plan to present on the film that actually changed their minds. Because I think that may also be part of the resistance in some cases, like for raising money with this film. It’s like the idea that people are just not going to change their minds. That it’s, we can’t really make an impact. But I don’t agree with that. I think we can make a huge impact and already have, and we just need to scale it up so that it can reach more people.
Diana Rodgers: I agree.
Chris Kresser: So sustainabledish.com/film. We will also put some of the links to the podcast and articles that we mentioned, the critiques of EAT-Lancet, Marty Kendall’s and also yours, Diana. And then if you want that big storehouse of information I put together for the Rogan show, which has articles on nutrient density and meat and the effects of meat, and carbohydrate, macronutrients, a ton of stuff, that’s at ChrisKresser.com/Rogan. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Diana.
Diana Rodgers: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Chris. And thanks for all your support ever since I first met you.
Chris Kresser: It’s my pleasure, and I hope we can, with this podcast, move things forward a little bit more quickly and get this out there. Because it really needs to be seen. So thanks, everyone, for listening and please do continue to send in your questions to ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion. And I’ll talk to you next time.
The post RHR: What the EAT-Lancet Paper Gets Wrong, with Diana Rodgers appeared first on Chris Kresser.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a couple of questions from the comment sections of the last couple weeks. First, it’s been established that fasting and exercise both raise growth hormone. What about fasted exercise—does that have an even stronger effect? And what about continuing to fast after your fasted workout? Then, I discuss the inevitability (or not) of wear and tear on the arteries from blood flow-induced shear stress. Is shear stress “bad,” or do certain factors make it worse?
Let’s dig in.
Marge asked:
So fasting raises growth hormone levels? Interesting. So does weight lifting. I’ll bet fasted weight workouts would be pretty powerful.
They do, and they are.
What’s even better is to work out in a fasted state and keep fasting after the workout. This keeps the GH spike going even longer. And in my “just so story” imagination—which is actually quite accurate, judging from real world hunter-gatherers—it mirrors the circumstances of our Paleolithic ancestors. You’d get up early to go hunting without having eaten. You’d expend a lot of energy on the hunt. You’d make the kill, procure the food. And then you’d bring it back to camp to finally eat. Maybe you’d pass the heart and liver around the circle before heading back. And sometimes, you just didn’t make the kill. You didn’t eat at all.
Makes sense, right? Fasting, doing something physical, and continuing to fast shouldn’t be a monumental undertaking. It should be well within the realm of possibility for the average person.
Now, I wouldn’t do this all the time. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. A hormetic stressor can become a plain old stressor if it’s prolonged for too long. Instead, I would throw post-fasted-workout fasting in on an occasional basis.
Nor would I expect huge “gains” from this. Physiological growth hormone production won’t make you huge or shredded. In fact, workout-related increases in testosterone and growth hormone don’t actually correlate with gains in hypertrophy. Instead, I’d expect more intangible benefits, things you won’t notice right away. It’s important in cognition. It helps maintain bone health, organ reserve, and general cellular regeneration. It’s great for burning fat.
Growth hormone does way more than promote overt muscular growth.
Steve wrote:
In the linked article it says:
“Endothelial cell dysfunction is an initial step in atherosclerotic lesion formation and is more likely to occur at arterial curves and branches that are subjected to low shear stress and disturbed blood flow (atherosclerosis prone areas) (7,8). These mechanical stimuli activate signaling pathways leading to a dysfunctional endothelium lining that is barrier compromised, prothrombotic, and proinflammatory.
So it seems that endothelial disfunction comes first, triggered by blood flow stresses. It’s common wear and tear in exposed areas. The patched knees on jeans. Managing endothelial health and healing may slow or diminish rate of progression or is it mostly too late for that?
I’m not a doctor. This isn’t medical advice. This is just speculation.
I find it rather hard to believe that healthy arteries are inherently fragile and prone to damage and incapable of weathering the “stress” of blood flowing through them, even at the “susceptible” curves. I find it more likely that poor health, poor diets, and poor lifestyles make us more susceptible to otherwise normal stresses.
Do the mechanical stimuli weaken the endothelium in people with healthy levels of nitric oxide production? Or are we talking about people whose poor nitric oxide status is exacerbating the damaging blood flow patterns, leaving their endothelium vulnerable to atherosclerosis?
Think about how much context matters in our response to stimuli. If you’re shy around girls, a school dance will be a traumatic experience. If you’re comfortable around girls, a school dance will be a great experience. If you’re weak, lifting a barbell will be scary, and you may injure yourself. If you’re strong, lifting a barbell will be second nature, and you may get stronger. The baseline context determines the quality of the response.
I’d argue that blood flowing through your arteries should be a commonplace occurrence. It shouldn’t be a traumatic experience. Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is stressful regardless of the baseline endothelial health and the amount of nitric oxide you produce. Maybe it’s just a matter of time. But:
That sounds like there are a lot of factors that increases and mitigate the effects of shear stress on the endothelial wall. It sounds like some factors make shear stress more damaging, and some factors make it less. There may even be factors, like exercise, that make shear stress healthy.
This topic is really pretty interesting to me. It deserves a deeper dive, don’t you think?
What about you, folks? What’s your take on fasted workouts and GH secretion? Ever try one?
And do you think your arteries are doomed to fall apart at the seams?
References:
Nyberg F, Hallberg M. Growth hormone and cognitive function. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2013;9(6):357-65.
Park SK, La salle DT, Cerbie J, et al. Elevated arterial shear rate increases indexes of endothelial cell autophagy and nitric oxide synthase activation in humans. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 2019;316(1):H106-H112.
The post Dear Mark: Fasting, Training, and Growth Hormone; Wear and Tear on the Arteries appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
http://chriskresser.com/
There are now a few companies that are offering this type of training to health coaches, and I suspect that we’re going to see more of them in the future. So, I wanted to take the opportunity in this article to share my position and explain the reasoning behind it.
But before I do that, I want to start by saying that everyone reading this article has a crucial role to play in reversing the chronic disease epidemic, whether you are a medical doctor, a chiropractor, a nutritionist or dietitian, a health coach, a personal trainer, or even what I’ve called a “citizen activist.”
The scale of the challenge we face is enormous, and we need to work together as a community of professionals and advocates to solve it. I spent at least a third of my recent book, Unconventional Medicine, making this argument, and I haven’t stopped believing it. In fact, I feel more strongly about it than ever.
Let’s begin by clarifying some of the roles that are relevant to this discussion because I think there is still a lot of confusion about them. Frankly, I didn’t fully understand the distinctions between these roles myself until just a few years ago.
Should health coaches interpret lab tests for their clients? What about nutritionists? Check out this article for my take on a contentious issue. #changeagent #functionalmedicine #chriskresser
The terms “health coach,” “nutritionist,” and “dietitian” are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.
This is a critical role since we know that over 85 percent of chronic disease is driven by our behavior and environment—not our genes—and that only 6 percent of Americans consistently engage in the top five health behaviors identified by the Centers for Disease Control: maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, not drinking excessively, getting enough exercise, and getting enough sleep. (1, 2) (I would also add eating a healthy diet to this list.)
We desperately need properly trained health coaches because information is not enough to change behavior. If it were, 100 percent of Americans would engage in the top health behaviors all the time. Most people know that getting enough exercise and sleep, eating well, and avoiding smoking and drinking excessively are healthy behaviors. But as the statistics show, they still don’t do these things.
And this isn’t just true in the general population. Even in my own Functional Medicine practice with highly motivated patients, some people struggle to implement the changes I suggest. And I know from training thousands of healthcare professionals of all types that lack of compliance is an extremely common problem.
Health coaches fill a critical void in both conventional and Functional Medicine by offering more intensive, patient-centered care. When properly trained, they are skilled in evidence-based methods of supporting change, including:
All of the knowledge and expertise in the world doesn’t matter unless someone can apply it in their own life. The support of a health coach can make the difference between success and failure in implementing long-term diet, lifestyle, and behavior changes. So, there’s no question in my mind that health coaches will play a crucial role in reversing the chronic disease epidemic. (For more on the importance of health coaches in combating chronic disease, see this article.)
All of that said, health coaches do not typically have training in health and medical sciences (unless they also have another healthcare license or credential). They don’t need this expertise to be successful in supporting behavior change, which is their primary purpose and role.
Generally speaking, the term “registered dietitian” (RD) is more tightly regulated than the term “nutritionist,” but this doesn’t necessarily mean that a dietitian has more training than a nutritionist.
For example, a certified nutrition specialist (CNS) is a highly qualified nutrition professional with both a bachelor’s and a graduate degree (master’s or doctorate) in nutrition, plus 1,000 hours of a supervised internship and a passing score on a rigorous exam.
Registered dietitians are also highly qualified. They have typically attended an accredited bachelor’s program as well as a 1,200-hour supervised internship, and they may have additional licenses or credentials in specific areas of study.
Both dietitians and certified nutrition professionals have had extensive training in health and medical sciences, such as:
There are many different degrees, credentials, and qualifications within the nutrition field. Some are regulated and protected, and others are not. For this reason, the range of training that someone using the term “nutritionist” has had can vary wildly, from being self-taught, to a 40-hour course, to hundreds or even thousands of hours of academic and clinical education and experience.
It is beyond the scope of this article to explain all the different career paths that a nutrition professional might pursue, but if you’d like to learn more I’d suggest the following two resources:
Let’s begin by discussing blood testing since it is the most common type of testing offered in medicine today.
There are two reasons for this:
It’s important to understand these two reasons separately because even when one does not apply, the other still does.
For example, in some states, the law does not explicitly prohibit a health coach from reviewing blood test results—which is different than interpreting them and making a diagnosis and treatment suggestions. (I’ll explain this distinction further below.) But that does not mean that it is safe or ethical for a health coach without adequate training to do it.
On the other hand, a health coach may have a background in health or medical sciences that would provide a foundation for understanding blood work, but without a credential or license that permits this, she would still be at legal risk.
There is one caveat here. Although I don’t think that a health coach should interpret blood tests, I do think that they should be able to recognize “red flags” and risk factors for chronic disease and then make a referral to an appropriate healthcare professional.
The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) recently teamed up with the International Consortium of Health & Wellness Coaches (ICHWC) to create an internationally recognized credential for health coaches called the National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). Section 3 of the Health & Wellness Coach Certifying Exam Content Outline states: (3)
By definition, health and wellness coaches are not content experts in health or disease; they do not diagnose or prescribe, unless a coach has credentials in another profession that allow expert advice to be given. However, it is important for coaches to have a solid working familiarity of current evidence-based recommendations provided by public health groups such as the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.
Relevant guidelines and recommendations fall in the areas of health promotion, disease prevention, and lifestyle medicine. The coach should be able to identify risk factors for chronic disease, commonly used biometric measures, and current lifestyle recommendations for optimizing health. An important focus for the coach is to recognize potential imminent danger and medical red flags and to know when and how to refer to another health care professional. [Emphasis added]
There is a crucial difference between interpreting a blood test result and making a diagnosis and treatment recommendations (including nutrition and diet suggestions) based on the result, and recognizing a potential red flag and referring to medical professional for further investigation.
This distinction is well recognized in other healthcare professions. For example, a nurse working in a hospital might notice and report signs and symptoms of redness, pain, and swelling at an incisional site but would not diagnose an infection or prescribe treatment for it. Instead, she would bring the issue to the attention of a physician, who could then diagnose and treat the problem.
While “reviewing” lab tests to recognize red flags and risk factors and “interpreting” them to diagnose and treat disease are not the same thing, they are often confused and and there’s a fine line between them that health coaches could easily cross.
This is why we train our ADAPT health coaches to avoid interpretation of lab tests entirely, and take a conservative approach to reviewing them if they live in a state that might permit it. If they live in a state that doesn’t, they must avoid even reviewing lab test results.
Some certified health coaches also have licenses or credentials in other healthcare fields. For example, we have several licensed professionals in our ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, including medical doctors, physical and occupational therapists, and registered dietitians.
In these cases, the health coach does have the training and credentials that would allow them to interpret blood tests. However, most attorneys that I’ve consulted have advised that health coaches that have a license should only interpret labs if they are clearly operating under the scope of practice of their license.
Let’s say you’re a nurse practitioner (NP) and a health coach. If you advertise yourself as a nurse practitioner (that may also incorporate health coaching) and you onboard your patient using the same methods that you would use for any of your patients, you may interpret labs and do all of the other things that your scope of practice as an NP allows you to do.
However, if you advertise yourself as a health coach and onboard the client with only that understanding, then you should operate within the scope of practice of a health coach—not a nurse practitioner.
For this reason, in our ADAPT program we recommend that “dual professionals”—health coaches that are also licensed healthcare providers—advertise and operate within the scope of practice of their licensed profession if they want to be able to incorporate lab testing into their practice.
They can still use health coaching skills and competencies with their patients or clients because, in most cases, the scope of practice of licensed providers (like MDs, NPs, PTs, RDs, etc.) doesn’t preclude them from using these skills along with whatever other activities their licensure enables them to perform.
As I mentioned above, registered dietitians (RDs) and certified nutrition professionals often have hundreds or thousands of hours of academic and clinical training in health and medical sciences. This qualifies them to interpret blood test results related to nutrition status.
According to the CDC: (4)
RDNs in clinical practice: Recommend, perform, and/or interpret test results related to nutrition status: blood pressure, anthropometrics (e.g., height and weight, skinfold thickness, waist circumference, calculation of body mass index with classification for malnutrition and obesity), indirect calorimetry, laboratory tests, and waived point-of-care laboratory testing (e.g., blood glucose and cholesterol).
This is also true in a Functional Medicine context. According to the American Dietetic Association: (5)
IFMNT practitioners use a range of assessment tools in practice. These include a nutrition-focused physical exam and conventional laboratory data along with functional tests to assess the integrity of the metabolic networks and core imbalances that may be present.
Certified nutrition professionals with adequate training, such as certified nutrition specialists (CNSs), are also able to interpret blood tests. Section 3cii of the Examination Content Outline for Certified Nutrition Specialists states that a CNS should be able to “[i]nterpret laboratory data as it applies to nutrition-related conditions and systemic imbalances.” (6)
There are many different career paths and training options for nutritionists, and they can vary significantly in terms of the prerequisites, curriculum, practical supervision (e.g., internship, practicum, etc.), length of study, and other factors.
Moreover, the term “nutritionist” is not regulated or protected. This means that someone could take be self-taught, or take a short course in nutrition (say, 30 to 40 hours) and then refer to themselves as a nutritionist. In these cases, I believe that the individual wouldn’t have the necessary training in health and medical sciences to prepare them to interpret blood testing.
This leads to both ethical and safety concerns and legal and regulatory risk—just as it does with health coaches. A nutritionist without adequate academic and clinical education in health and medical sciences could harm a client if she does not interpret a blood test correctly, and if the client pursued legal action, it’s likely that the nutritionist would not be protected.
It is beyond the scope of this article to address the scope of practice of nutritionists that do not have a nationally or conventionally recognized license or credential. If you fall into this category, please refer to your educational institution or an organization like the National Association of Nutrition Professionals for more information.
As I mentioned above, although interpreting blood tests is not within the scope of practice of a health coach, the NBME suggests that a health coach should be able to recognize red flags and risk factors of chronic disease, including commonly used biometric tests (i.e., blood tests, blood pressure, etc.).
While I’m not aware of a general scope of practice that covers nutritionists without nationally recognized credentials or licenses, I think it’s also important that these providers are able to recognize red flags and risk factors and make referrals to appropriate healthcare professionals, at least in states that permit review of blood test results by unlicensed providers.
Again, there is significant risk here of the line between review and interpretation blurring, so caution is warranted.
So far in this article, I have focused on the interpretation of blood testing. But what about the interpretation of other types of testing like the stool, saliva, and urine labs that are often used in a Functional or Integrative Medicine context?
This is more of a gray area from both a safety/ethics and legal/regulatory perspective. In general, I believe that registered dietitians and certified nutrition professionals should be able to interpret the results of these types of tests, provided they have been specifically trained in these Functional Medicine diagnostics.
The answer is much less clear in the case of health coaches and nutritionists that do not possess a nationally recognized credential or license, and/or have not had adequate training in health and medical sciences.
Using the results of a stool test from uBiome or a functional lab to make recommendations like eating more fiber or consuming probiotics is very different than interpreting the results of a comprehensive blood panel. The stakes are much higher with blood work, since the results can indicate serious and potentially life-threatening conditions like cancer, hemochromatosis, or Wilson disease.
At the same time, although saliva, stool, and urine testing don’t typically reveal serious conditions, some of the treatments that providers recommend based on these results can be dangerous when prescribed incorrectly.
For example, I know of one case from a few years back when an unlicensed health coach recommended a high dose of DHEA, a hormone, to a client based on the results of that client’s saliva hormone test. What the coach failed to recognize is that a high dose of DHEA could exacerbate the client’s preexisting Graves’ disease, a hyperthyroid condition. After taking the DHEA, the patient experienced tachycardia, palpitations, high blood pressure, and elevated body temperature and had to be taken to the emergency room.
The client hired an attorney and sued the health coach—and also the program that trained the coach to interpret the lab results and prescribe treatment based on them.
So, as you can see, the question of whether a health coach or non-credentialed or non-certified nutritionist should be able to order and interpret saliva, stool, and urine tests is nuanced and complex. In some cases, it may be fine provided that they have adequate training to interpret the specific test in question. In others, I see potential issues from both a safety/ethics and legal/regulatory perspective.
The legal and regulatory landscape is not well defined in the case of Functional Medicine diagnostics because it’s relatively new and until recently has not been on the radar of the organizations that are responsible for creating the laws and regulations that govern who can order and interpret laboratory testing.
I suspect we’ll see more developments in this area over the coming years. Until then, the safest approach is likely to apply the same principles that determine which healthcare providers can interpret blood tests to other Functional Medicine diagnostic tools like saliva, stool, and urine tests.
The fact that I don’t believe that health coaches and nutritionists without nationally-recognized credentials or training in health and medical sciences should interpret most lab test results does not in any way mean that I don’t value these vital health professionals.
I know of many skilled and competent nutritionists that are neither RDs nor certified nutritional professionals yet have helped hundreds of people transform their diet and lifestyle, reverse chronic disease, and dramatically improve their quality of life.
Likewise, I’m such a believer in the power of health coaching that I launched a 12-month health coach certification called the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program in 2018. Health coaches have a critical role to play in healthcare because they are working on the front lines to help people change their behavior—and that is arguably the single most important thing we can do to prevent and reverse chronic disease.
So, this article is not about creating a hierarchy in which the providers that can order and interpret lab testing and prescribe treatment are higher up and the providers that focus on behavior change and providing guidance on diet and nutrition are lower down.
That mentality is an artifact of the conventional medical paradigm that values information more than transformation, expertise more than support, and managing and suppressing symptoms more than changing diet, lifestyle, and behavior. It’s exactly the model that got us into this mess in the first place.
It recognizes the inherent and equal value of each type of provider and seeks to maximize his or her skill, training, and scope of practice in service of the patient. For example:
While each of these providers can have a major impact working independently, I believe that they are even more effective when working together in a collaborative fashion:
It truly does take a village to address this growing problem of chronic disease. If you’re reading this, it means that you’re already playing a role—however big or small—in this healthcare revolution, and I am so grateful for your efforts!
As this article indicates, there are still many gray areas and quite a lot of confusion, even amongst legal and medical professionals that have closely studied these issues. What’s more, the landscape is changing quickly, as professions like health coaching and nutritionists become more common and better recognized.
I will continue to study this topic, consult with healthcare attorneys, and gather feedback from the professional community. I’ll update this article with any new, relevant information.
I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, or concerns in the comments.
The post Should Health Coaches and Nutritionists Interpret Lab Tests? appeared first on Chris Kresser.
https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/
Knee discomfort is something that many of us experience during a workout or when performing specific exercises or activities, including squatting, lunging, or running. This experience has prompted many of my clients to ask me what exercises they can do for their “bad” knees.
While there is no clinical diagnosis or specific exercise prescriptions to help “bad” knees, understanding why you might have knee discomfort can help you:
To understand why you might have sore knees, it helps to know a little bit about knee anatomy. Your knee is what is sometimes called a modified hinge joint. It is made up of three bones and is where the bottom of the thigh bone (femur) and the shin bone (tibia) meet. The kneecap (patella) is a small triangular bone that articulates with the thigh bone and helps protect and cover the front of the knee joint.
Within the knee are two cartilage-based pads called menisci (singular, meniscus). These pads reduce friction within the joint when the thigh bone and shin bone articulate relative to one another. On the inside, outside, and within the knee are ligaments, which stabilize the joint and prevent the thigh bone and shin bone from sliding too far backward or forward.
Behind the knee is a small fluid filled sack called a bursa, which cushions the knee and helps the tendons and ligaments glide at the joint. The knee is also supported by tendons, which are attached to muscles, to bend and straighten the knee. These actions are also referred to as knee flexion and extension.
While the knee primarily flexes and extends, it also does small amounts of internal and external rotation. Also, because it is located between the hip and the ankle, it is heavily influenced by how well the joints above and below it move.
For many people, these nuanced rotations within the knee joint, combined with limited mobility or a lack of control in the hip and ankle, can contribute to knee soreness, even if there isn’t anything wrong with the knee itself.
Sometimes there is an underlying condition that is contributing to knee pain. Some of these conditions include arthritis, bursitis, or a ligament tear. If you experience an ongoing sense of instability around the knee, an inability to control how your knee straightens and bends, or ongoing pain and grinding, then it is recommended that you consult your medical provider for diagnosis and treatment.
That said, as mentioned above, it is possible to experience mild to moderate knee discomfort without a knee injury. In these instances, the soreness is often caused by a movement compensation due to limited mobility or a lack of control in the hip and ankle. This happens because much of the sitting and footwear required by modern daily life doesn’t set us up to use our hips and ankles in their fullest ranges of motion or as optimally as we could.
While this isn’t a crisis, it can contribute to inefficient movement patterns and knee stiffness and discomfort during exercise. However, taking time to strengthen and mobilize the hips and ankles can often reduce soreness and promote better movement patterns during activity and daily life.
Additionally, sometimes a person will have knee discomfort because of how they are executing a specific movement. For example, their knees will feel fine, except when they lunge, because they are driving their knee forward, creating additional pressure on the knee. However, if they hinged the hips slightly back and then performed the lunge, it could lessen the pressure in the front of the knee and in turn reduce discomfort.
In this case, sometimes making some small adjustments to how you practice an exercise can resolve the issue. If you are unsure of how to make these adjustments, you may want to consult a physical therapist or fitness professional who is trained to evaluate exercise form.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution or exercise sequence for addressing knee soreness and if you experience ongoing pain or discomfort, you may want to consult a medical provider to make sure there isn’t an underlying issue that needs to be diagnosed and treated. Still, many of us can benefit from movement and self-care approaches to address low-grade discomfort.
While foam rolling, massage, and soft tissue release work won’t create permanent changes to the tissues, they can temporarily reduce soreness around the joint and increase the range of motion in the hips and ankles. This can promote better movement patterns during exercise, which over time could contribute to less discomfort.
In the case of knee pain, it can be beneficial to address the muscles and tissues above and below the joint. This could include rolling the inner thighs, hamstrings, quadriceps, calves, and the portion of the IT band located just above the knee.
Once you have rolled or performed soft tissue release to this area, it can be beneficial to also perform mobility, stability, or strength exercises to teach your body how to use this new range of motion, which can create longer-lasting changes.
Similar to foam rolling and soft tissue release work, stretching can sometimes reduce knee discomfort and temporarily increase the range of motion at the hips and ankles. As mentioned above, in this case, it can be helpful to gently stretch the muscles above and below the knee, paying specific attention to the hamstrings, calves, inner thighs, and hip flexors.
The exception to this is if you suspect that you have an acute injury to the structure of the knee, such as a ligament tear or if you are hypermobile and have found that stretching makes your knees feel worse. If you experience swelling at the joint or suspect that you an underlying knee injury, you should consult a medical provider.
Again, because stretching can create similar results as foam rolling, if you follow up stretching with some sort of movement work to improve stability, mobility, and strength, you may experience better results.
Addressing hip mobility, stability, and strength can promote better knee health, because the muscles of the outer hip and inner thigh play a large role in knee alignment and controlling the impact on the knee during movements, including walking, running, squatting, and lunging.
While everyone is different, most of us will benefit from practicing exercises that allow us to move and strengthen our hips in multiple directions. Some examples of this include leg circles, quadruped rocking, bird dogs, monster walks, and bridging with a yoga block between the knees.
Additionally, for some people, exercises that activate the hamstrings and quadriceps and integrate VMO activation can reduce knee soreness. The VMO (vastus medialis oblique) is a part of the quadriceps located to the inside of the leg, just above the knee that plays a role in kneecap tracking when the knee straightens.
Sometimes stiff or unstable ankles can create movement compensations that affect the knee. For example, limited ankle dorsiflexion, which is when the front of the ankle creases, can cause the feet to turn out and collapse in when squatting or walking. This can create additional pressure or discomfort at the knee.
Additionally, weakness in ankle plantar flexion, which is when the foot points down away from the shin, can create additional impact or movement compensation around the knee when walking or running.
In both scenarios, ankle mobility and strength drills can be beneficial for indirectly addressing knee soreness. Some examples of ankle drills include calf raises with an emphasis on keeping equal weight across all ten toes and ankle circles.
Did you know that strength training exercises such as squats can reduce knee discomfort and even promote better knee health? This is because strength training can increase your tolerance to movement in your joints and the added lower body strength can help you control the forces through the knees when walking and running.
The key thing is to find a way to practice strength training exercises in a way that doesn’t create more knee pain in the moment. This might mean modifying your set up for the exercise or picking a different exercise entirely. For example, some people who experience knee pain during squats might find that taking a wider stance and hinging their hips back allows them to squat without pain. For others, a band around the thighs or elevating the heels may also help.
Again, there isn’t a single solution. Nevertheless, thoughtful exploration or working with an appropriately trained professional can help.
Knee soreness can stem from a variety of underlying causes and there isn’t a single solution. However, knee pain doesn’t mean that you have “bad” knees. Oftentimes, you just need to find an individualized approach and in some cases seek medical treatment to understand and address the discomfort.
Read also: Why You Need Better Ankle Mobility
Learn the most effective strategies for getting the exact results you want — without spending your life in the gym.
Our Girls Gone Strong Formula has helped thousands of women all over the globe get the results they’re looking for.
stand the Blueprint and be willing to trust the process.
The post Common Knee Issues and What to Do About Them appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.
Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/
“Steve, how many calories should I eat every day? I got goals, son!”
Great question!
Knowledge is power, so today, we are going to make you more powerful.
First off, we’ll discuss your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), which are fancy terms for how many calories you require on a daily basis to exist.
I’ll even give you two calculator options below – to determine your personal BMR and TDEE – plus I’ll show you how to use this information.
We’ll end today’s article by giving some practical advice on calorie requirements and weight loss, including a step-by-step plan, because I’m nice like that.
Let’s do this!
We’re going to start off by doing some math.
Don’t worry though, our robot calculator (beep boop boop) will do all the hard stuff for you.
We will need to know your height in inches, your weight in pounds, and an idea on your activity level (Use the metric system? I wish we did too here in the States! Click right here for our Metric calculator).
Although you can adjust it, I want you to set your “Activity Level” as “Sedentary,” (I’ll explain why in a minute):
(Note: we have used the The Mifflin-St Jeor Equation to create this calculator! [1])
Hooray! You now know your BMR and TDEE!
You may be thinking, “Ah, Steve, what do either of these mean?”
I got you boo. Make sure you write down your two numbers.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the total amount of calories needed to keep you alive.
Breathing, cell production, pumping blood, and keeping your body temperature up all require calories to function.
When you sit perfectly still, you use plenty of calories keeping your body in good working order.
“Basal” more or less means “basic,” so you can think of BMR as the number of calories needed for basic daily functions.
Your sex, weight, and height will all affect the number of calories you need, which is why they are variables in our equation above.
The taller you are, or the more you weigh, the higher your BMR will be. There is simply more of you that needs calories. More blood to pump, more cells to produce, etc.
Roughly two-thirds of the calories you need each day go into keeping your body running.
The other third?
That goes into powering your motion. Because going from one place to another requires calories from your body. So does lifting stuff.
Let’s talk about Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) next.
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is an estimate of how many total calories you burn in a day.
Since your BMR calculates the calories you need for a state of rest, we need to factor in movement and exercise to get an idea of how many calories you burn each day.
To do this, we’ll take your BMR and multiply it by an “Activity Level” factor.[2]
Activity Levels can be thought of as the following:
Sedentary. You get up to tell Netflix you are still watching. You don’t intentionally exercise at all.
Sedentary = BMR x 1.2
Lightly Active. You casually stroll through your neighborhood a few times a week. On average, you walk for exercise about 30 minutes a day. Another way to think about this would be 15 minutes per day of vigorous exercise like jogging or lifting weights.
Light Active = BMR x 1.375
Moderately Active. If we called the gym on a weeknight looking for you, they’d find you. This averages out to about one hour and 45 minutes of walking (for exercise, not going around your house) a day, or 50 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Moderately Active = BMR x 1.55
Very Active. You work in construction during the day and you’re on the company softball team. This averages out to about four hours and 15 minutes of walking (again, for intentional exercise) a day, or two hours of vigorous exercise.
Very Active = BMR x 1.725
If you’re following along at home, you may notice that different Activity Levels can make a big difference for the calories burned.
Let’s use some numbers:
Suppose you’re male, 35 years old, weigh 200 pounds and are six foot even (72 inches).
You’re also wearing a Nerd Fitness Shield Tee and it looks great on you. It really brings out your eyes.
Awesome shirt or no awesome shirt, we know your BMR comes in at 1,882 calories given the variables we identified. Which means you’ll need roughly 1,900 calories for basic bodily functions.
This is where things get interesting.
If you’re Sedentary, we’ll multiply 1,882 (BMR) by 1.2 to get a TDEE of 2,258. Which means you’ll need 2,258 calories to support bodily functions and to walk around your house, to go from your car to your office, from your office back home, etc.
Let’s imagine a scenario where you are not Sedentary. Instead, we’ll calculate that you are Lightly Active, meaning you walk around your neighborhood a few times a week.
We take your BMR of 1,882 and multiply it by 1.375 to get a TDEE of 2,588.
The difference between Lightly Active and Sedentary is 230 calories, about what you’d find in a glazed donut.
Let’s keep going.
Let’s say you hit your local gym a few times a week for strength training practice. And on your off days, you do a little yoga and take walks. This will push you into the “Moderately Active” category.
We take your BMR of 1,882 and multiply it by 1.55 to get a TDEE of 2,917.
The difference between Sedentary and Moderately Active would be 659 calories.
That’s an extra meal’s worth of calories! Here are some examples of things that are roughly 650 calories:
A whole meal’s worth of Sicilian fish with sweet potatoes:
Or, one Big Mac® with Bacon:
Or, one large Orange Dream Machine® from Jamba Juice:
People often UNDERestimate how many calories they consume, and then OVERestimate how much exercise they’re doing.
This is why Activity Level could be a “trap” when doing TDEE calculations!
We people are notoriously bad at estimating our Activity Level.
We’re also terrible at tracking calories accurately and almost always underestimate (often by as much as 30-50%+ percent).
Study after study demonstrates that people evaluate their movement and exercise greater than what it actually is.[3]
We think we’re working out “intensely” for 60 minutes. However, when researchers look at stuff like heart rate, VO2 max, and calories burned, they determine that we actually only exercised “moderately.”
What’s this mean for you? If your goal is weight loss, pick an Activity Level below your initial guess.
Take our predisposition to overestimate Activity Level and grab the one beneath it.
Instead of “Moderately Active” pick “Lightly Active.”
This will give you a more accurate estimate of your caloric needs, and give you a larger margin for error when trying to lose weight!
The other thing to consider would be strength training.
As we mention in our “Lose Weight and Build Muscle” article, strength training requires a lot of calories out of your body, not only for the exercise itself, but also for rebuilding your muscle too.
In general, consider strength training to be “vigorous exercise,” which we highlighted above. If it takes 30 mins of walking a day to be “Lightly Active,” 15 minutes of daily strength training would roughly be equivalent.
If estimating your Activity Level and TDEE is starting to freak you out:
Trying to pick and calculate the right amount of calories to consume can be stressful. Especially if you’ve had trouble losing weight in the past. And that’s just the math part – we haven’t even got to the psychological part about how delicious pizza and ice cream are.
It’s actually the reason we created our uber-popular 1-on-1 Coaching Program. We sought to take all the guesswork out of getting in shape, by creating a program to tell you exactly what to do.
If you’re trying to lose weight, adjust your diet, or start a strength training practice, we can help! We work with busy people just like you level up their lives in a permanent and sustainable fashion. If you’d like to learn more about it, click on the big image below:
If you’ve read this far into the article, I imagine you are interested in learning your Total Daily Energy Expenditure for weight loss.
I also imagine you support my belief that The Shawshank Redemption is the best movie ever made:
I started this article by stating that if you are having trouble losing weight, it’s because you are eating too many calories.
The TDEE we calculated above will give us a good estimate of calories you require each day – if your scale is staying constant: congrats! You found your ‘calorie equilibrium.’ This means your body burns just as many calories as you consume each day.
However, I’m going to guess you’re here because your goal is to see the scale go down!
To really be able to utilize this number, we also need to have an idea on the number of calories we are consuming. Without knowing this, the TDEE is really just an arbitrary number.
Many would say the easiest way to assess and track calories consumed is with an app. We live in the future. Use a smartphone and download one of the following:
You don’t have to use the app forever. A solid week’s worth of data will help you get a sense of the food you are consuming, especially if you eat roughly the same food each day. You can then compare this to your TDEE.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you need to have your calories consumed less than your TDEE on average.
Here are some numbers to think about: 3,500 calories equals roughly one pound of fat. There are seven days in a week. If you want to lose one pound of body fat in a week (a sustainable goal for some), you need to create a caloric deficit of 500 calories a day: either through consuming 500 fewer calories, burning 500 more calories, or a combination of the two.
Let’s imagine that your TDEE is 2,500. This would mean you’d have to consume around 2,000 calories a day to lose around a pound per week.
As we discuss to great detail in our “Why Can’t I Lose Weight” guide, sustained weight loss is largely a result of controlling the first half of the equation: “calories in.”
If you’ll remember, your BMR is about two-thirds of the total calories used, independent of movement. And most people overestimate exercise and underestimate consumption.
So controlling calories in is the most effective way to sustain weight loss.
Said another way, it’s much more difficult to increase your Activity Level than it is to reduce the calories you consume.
What’s the easiest way to eat fewer calories consistently? By eating REAL food.
Why? Because real foods are more likely to fill you up and satisfy your hunger while also keeping you under your calorie intake goal for the day!
The Nerd Fitness philosophy on diet can be written in three words: Eat REAL food.
I lay it all out in our Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Eating, but you’re smart – you know what real food is:
Food that grew in the ground, on a tree, ran on the land, swam in the sea, or flew through the air. Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts are all great examples of REAL food.
This is what you should be eating more of.
The fine folks at WiseGEEK did an awesome post where they took pictures of what 200 calories of a certain food looks like.
200 calories of broccoli gets you enough broccoli to fill up an entire plate:
Or half a Snickers bar:
Yeah…
What I’m saying is by eating REAL food, you have a MUCH higher margin for error to stay under your calorie goal for the day.
If you “accidentally overeat Broccoli,” you might accidentally eat an additional 50 calories. If you accidentally overeat candy or soda or processed foods, you can consume an extra 500+ calories without feeling satiated or content.
If you want to create a caloric deficit consistently, REAL food is the answer. Before you get all huffy, I know a Snickers bar is way more delicious than broccoli – it was designed in a lab by scientists to be AMAZING!
I’m not gonna tell you to never eat a Snickers ever again either. Instead, you need to start being proactive about your food choices. If you’re gonna eat a Snickers, just plan for it (or adjust after) by reducing your calorie intake elsewhere.
If the scale isn’t budging – you’re still eating too much!
Should you do the Mediterranean Diet? Keto? Vegan? Paleo?
Maybe.
They all follow the same premise: by changing the foods you eat, you’re more likely than not to eat a caloric deficit without a struggle. Certain people respond better to certain diets than others.
So yes, any of those diets can help you lose weight – but you need to stick with the changes permanently to make the results stick permanently!
I personally follow a mental model diet, that focuses on real food all the time, and occasionally includes some junk food :
Minimize processed food – they’re designed for you to overeat them. Take a look again at that Snickers bar. Do you really think you’d only eat half of one to stick to 200 calories? Of course not. This argument is more or less the rationale for following a paleo diet.
Eat veggies. Vegetables are nutrient dense and light on calories. Because of all the fiber, they are also tough to overeat. Imagine eating all that broccoli. Are you going for seconds? Probably not. So eat your veggies to help keep you full. Hate vegetables? I once was like you. Read how I turned it around here.
Be wary of liquid calories. Cut back on soda, juices, smoothies, and any beverage with calories. Even most coffee orders (with sugar, cream, etc.) will have a ton of hidden calories. All these drinks are sugar bombs since there is no fiber to balance out all the carbs you are consuming. Stick to water, and unsweetened tea or coffee. Here are our thoughts on diet soda.
Prioritize protein. When your body heals itself, like after exercise, your body uses protein as the building block of muscle rebuilding. Outside of repairing your body, protein will also work to keep you full and satiated: 400 calories of chicken will leave you wayyy more full than 400 calories worth of Gatorade.[4] If you prioritize protein on your plate, you’ll be doing a lot of the heavy lifting on proper nutrition. Some great sources of protein include chicken, eggs, beef, pork, fish, nuts, legumes, quinoa, and most dairy products.
These four points will help you on your journey to create a caloric deficit.
Disclaimer: this is all easier said than done. After all, 70% of the country is overweight. Don’t worry though, because most of them don’t read Nerd Fitness. You do. This is like a strategy guide for life.
If you’re struggling with portion control and challenges, jump fully into the NF community. We cover human behavior and psychology to help you improve your environment, fix your habit building, and how to surround yourself with people that make you better (including our free message board community).
We’ve helped thousands of people like you here at NF, and we really focus on nutrition.
Like we said, it’s 90% of the battle!
It’s why we created our 10-level nutritional system. Each level gets a bit more challenging and healthier, but you can progress at your own speed to make your changes stick!
The name of the game here at Nerd Fitness is “consistency.”
You can download our 10-Level Nutrition Guide when you sign up in the box right here:
Let’s recap this whole article for you, with some actionable steps:
That’s it.
You can do this. I know you can because many of our readers have done it themselves.
However, I won’t lie to you, it’s not easy. Human biology is working against you.
But again, it is totally doable.
As I started this article off, knowledge is power. I hope you calculate your calorie requirements today and use this information to make actionable changes.
Knowing your caloric requirements is a great first step for a weight loss journey. You’re on the right track.
For the Rebellion!
-Steve
PS: If you want any help on the way, I’ll remind you of the Nerd Fitness Coaching Program. We can help you calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure and create a workable plan to keep your calories under it.
If you want to learn more, schedule a free call with our team to see if we are a good fit for each other, by clicking the image below:
PPS: Seriously, how great is The Shawshank Redemption? I could quote that movie all day long.
If you don’t agree…
###
All photo citations can be found right here.[5]
Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
In November of 2017 my wife, Neely, and I nervously attended orientation at an adoption agency. We filed into our seats and attentively followed the day’s program, brimming with all the obvious questions:
“How long does it take?”
“How are we matched?”
“How often do matches fail?
For now classes are 6pm and 640pm at 2840 Wildwood st in the Boise Cloggers studio.
Book your class NOW!
click this ==>
