How to Lose Fat & Gain Muscle With Nutrition | Alan Aragon

28:05So could you please discriminate between those two? Yeah. Okay. So picture this. Picture two people eating the exact same amount of exact same diet, identical diet by the end of the day. Same macronutrition, same food selection. Everything is identical. One person or one of the groups will say we're running a study. Okay. One of the groups trains in a genuinely post -absorbed, fasted state eight to 10 hours, eating nothing. They will burn more fat during the training. Body fat? Yes. They will burn more body fat. They will burn more intramuscular fat. They will just their net fat oxidation will be higher than the group that has a breakfast.

29:03And the group that has the breakfast will essentially be, you know, burning their breakfast during the training. So yes, during the training, there is greater fat burning in the fasted group. But once again, we're looking at two groups who are consuming the exact same diet. So the group who consumed their breakfast is going to consume less stuff, less food, a one less meal in the later part of the day. So their fat oxidation is going to be higher in the later part of the day. And so it all comes out even by the end of the day. So that is the kind of the big issue and the big principle with with a fasted training having.

29:49Yes, it does burn more fat during training, but you're looking at a snapshot of time within the course of the day. You're not looking at the course of the day. But you know what, this was a huge idea that persisted throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Even into the 2000s when Bill Phillips came out with body for life and stuff he has been on the fasted cardio and stuff. And so this kind of lore is really cool. If you know scientists who are able to rope you in and help you, you know, investigate this stuff. So once again, you know, I got to give Brad Schoenfeldt a lot of credit. He wanted to test this hypothesis out.

30:34And so we took college age subjects, women, and we compared fasted cardio with Fed cardio. And the predominant lore at the time was the fat burning zone, right? So we're talking low moderate intensity cardio, which they carried out for a little less than an hour. And we compared immediate an immediate pre pre cardio meal, which was a standardized, it was like a meal replacement type of thing with the same meal consumed post cardio. And then we measured body composition over it. People criticize the study for being four weeks. But look, I don't run human studies. I've done it. I've done a clinical trial and humans have, it's very hard to run long term studies, especially in humans, especially when it involves nutrition and training.

31:35Yes, it's brutal. So a hat tip to you for tackling it at all. You're not going to catch any heat from me on the floor. But I appreciate that you mentioned the duration of the study because in thoroughness, which you're characterized for in thoroughness, people should know it. Yep. So this is one of the only existing studies that looked at this question and controlled, you know, hypocaloric conditions. I actually put together all the studies by hand for each of the subjects, the kind of customizing it to their needs and making sure things were hypocaloric, making sure protein was optimized. Interestingly, there was no resistance training involved with the study.

32:14They were just doing their cardio. They all subjects in both groups maintained their lean body mass, but both groups lost a significant amount of body fat. No difference in body fat reduction between groups by the end of the study, whether they did their cardio fed or whether they did it fasted. And that's because we equated the total nutrition between the groups. And you said, again, the subjects were college age women, college age women. And what was the cardio? What was the workout? And the reason I'm asking is that it's impressive that they all lost body fat. As long as they ate the appropriate amount of calories, didn't matter when they distributed those calories relative to the exercise.

32:54And they maintained lean body mass. And if they weren't doing resistance training, I'm impressed that the cardiovascular training was sufficient to allow them to maintain lean body mass. What was the cardiovascular workout? It was low moderate intensity. What might be cold zone two type of type of cardio where you can still hold a conversation, but you know, it's not necessarily a waltz. And so the whole idea was to be in the fat burnings that we want to exploit the whole fat burning zone concept to keep the intensity low moderate. So we can give the fasted cardio condition a chance to show whatever magic it might have.

33:39And so we didn't see that magic by the end of the trial. And yeah, but here's the practical takeaway from that is number one, we didn't see a bunch of lean mass loss in the fasted cardio group because there's this lore saying that, hey, you better not trained fasted, no matter what, you better not do cardio faster because you're going to lose muscle. Well, they didn't lose any any lean body mass. And when you form practical takeaways from the findings, we can say that if you prefer to train fasted, and you just feel better doing your cardio in a fasted state, great, do it fasted. And if you can't stand doing fasted cardio and you'd rather have a breakfast beforehand, then go ahead and do that.

34:27Just know that that's not going to necessarily hinder your fat loss efforts as long as your net hypochaloric by the end of the day or the end of the week. And I mean, that those recommendations can change with the type of cardio you do, especially higher intensity stuff or certainly competitive types of sports that involve endurance performance elements and stuff. But that's the takeaway from our study that fasted versus fed cardio doesn't matter, do it based on personal preference. I love it. After so many years of trends coming through train fasted don't train fasted. It seems like just as with protein, what I'm learning from you is that there's a lot more flexibility in time than we might have once thought, but that the absolute calories, of course, matter prioritizing protein matters.

35:23And I'd like to end that you still have to train you got to do something and can I add this because I know you'll appreciate this. I'm not going to cherry pick our study and say that this is the end all result that that is gospel. So there's actually a later meta analysis a few years later by I think it's haggstroman hackett who looked at fasted versus fed training. And they overall found no significant differences or significant advantages in terms of body comp improvement fat loss in the fasted versus the fed conditions as long as total nutrition is equated between the groups. Love it. This is music to my ears and I'm sure it's going to be music to everybody's ears because it just says there's flexibility.

36:08There's flexibility. There's flexibility. There's flexibility in life is complicated. So more flexibility is good. And if you're looking for magic, if you're looking for that special little thing you can do that. Well, maybe the magic is in the training consistently. The nutrition, including protein and the knowledge that there's flexibility. I have this saying in my mind lately that the things that make 90 % of the difference like sleep, exercise, nutrition, light, stress management, relationships, etc. in our health are the things we have to do 90 % of the days of our lives. And that's why there can continue to be so much discussion around them.

36:44This is why it isn't just like here the basics. Okay, you're done. It's because the things that we have to do every day, we often have to be reminded to do every day. But along those lines, why is it in your opinion that protein is so critical that you know that protein be treated as as like the cornerstone of good nutrition, especially if one is attempting to consume calories to maintain or perhaps even lose a little bit of body fat, maybe simultaneously maintaining or gaining muscle. But let's set aside muscle gain for the moment. Let's just say like maintain muscle, but many people want to lose a few percentages of body fat.

37:28Why is it that protein is so critical to that process? Why is it that indeed calories in versus calories out, rains true, law of thermodynamics, but that protein is so crucial? It's mainly just a couple of things to keep in mind and potentially a third little thing. So the big thing about protein and body comp is number one protein directly supports lean body mass. It directly supports all the lean tissues in the body. Skeleton muscle, especially, and Skeleton muscle is our basically our metabolic engine that we can control. It manages our bodies fuel use. And so it's super critical to support skeletal muscle protein does that directly.

38:19And protein is more satiating than carbohydrate and fat. And so it's the most satiating macronutrient. The third little detail, well, it's got the highest cost of metabolism or cost of processing within body. So it's the most energetically or chlorically expensive macronutrient to process within the body. So it has a higher so called thermic effect. And so those are basically the three main reasons why protein is so critical to things like body comp improvement, high quality weight loss, fat loss. Those are great reasons. And what about the hierarchy of protein quality? I think of protein quality in terms of quality of protein, meaning the type and ratios of amino acids, the availability of those amino acids relative to the amount of calories one has to ingest to get them because I frankly have grown tired and slightly irritated at the, oh, you know, these plant -based foods have a ton of quality protein in them.

39:23And I go, really, you have to consume 2 ,000 calories of that plant or grain in order to get the equivalent amino acid profile from, you know, a four ounce piece of steak, for instance. And this is not an argument that animal proteins are better ethically. I'm just saying at a quality as a function of calories ingested. I feel like animal proteins are superior, but tell me tell me what their data say. Sure, sure. Man, this is a lightning rod of a of a topic here at this strong audience. They can handle it. They can handle it. All right, you guys, guys buckle up, brace yourselves, please. So, gram for gram.

40:09As a group animal proteins are higher quality. They're more anabolic. They have a higher proportion of essential amino acids. They have a higher amount and proportion of the anabolic driving the most anabolic driving amino acids, the branch of can amino acids, losing specifically. And in the majority of the literature, when you compare animal versus plant proteins head to head, you see greater muscle protein synthesis. Now, with muscle protein synthesis being sort of the short term indicator of what might indicate a growth trajectory over time, we have to see if we can corroborate that with these longitudinal trials where you drag the experiment out for weeks and months to see if there's any superiority with the animal versus the plant protein for kind of where the rubber meets the road, which is increasing muscle mass and or strength.

41:02So, there have been a lot of studies comparing animal versus plant proteins and interestingly, okay, so the animal proteins do have the edge in that department and that's been reported in a couple meta analyses now. One of them compared way in soy and didn't find a staggering difference between the two and a ballically so we can call soy actually a high quality protein, but when you look at the individual studies, there way still has an edge in terms of because meta analyses just like take the data and cram it all together into a single conclusion. And so it's also important to look at the individual studies to so here's where the story gets interesting.

41:51There are two studies now that compared a and this is what's been missing from the literature, usually we take two groups of omnivores and we supplement them with let's say way protein and then we supplement the other group with some sort of a plant protein. P protein yeah P protein and interesting thing about P protein it actually outperformed way in one study of so in this 2015 study where P protein supplementation outperformed way for increasing muscle thickness. It was really sad I was really sad to see that because I was weighing it up and I was like oh god yeah, what are we doing is that study has not been replicated but okay, so the interesting part we finally have studies where we're looking at completely vegan regimen.

42:35A group was totally vegan, no animal products at all in the diet versus an omnivore group and put them on a resistance training regimen 12 weeks. This was done by Lorraine and colleagues and this was a few years back and so they optimized protein or at least made it at the bottom of optimal at 1 .6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day in both groups. Okay, and so but the unique thing about this study was the first time ever were comparing vegans with omnivores so there were no significant differences between groups in muscle size and strength gains by the end of 12 weeks where I put on a progressive resistance training program it was a so caloric so I so caloric meaning for those that don't know what that means is total number of calories ingested per day same in the vegan versus omnivore group.

43:32Yes, that's right I so caloric I so macro nutritional you know I so proteic everything everything is equated between the groups new macro nutrition wise. No significant differences in the size and strength gains and um they're suspecting out and by the way the vegan group their protein intake was boosted up to 1 .6 grams per kilo or 0 .7 grams per pound it was boosted up by a soy protein supplementation. So apparently I mean we're beginning to see that at a dose a total daily protein at 1 .6 grams per kilogram of body weight the totally vegan group was able to hang in there against the omnivore group for muscle size and strength gains at least within the conditions of the study at least for those 12 weeks at least for the the subjects that that reuse who weren't necessarily you know these high level of protein.

44:30So you can if you construct it properly you can follow a vegan diet as long as you get 0 .7 grams per pound of body weight and the weird thing man is the vegan diet overall had significantly less essential amino acid content and significantly less branch chain amino acid content but apparently the resistance training stimulus is robust enough to make protein effects almost second. So it's a very secondary interesting getting right back to exercise probably being the major lever and in everything. Oh, I'll sleep I would argue is the major lever over time higher degree man. Yeah, but I will say this because then people think if they get one bad night sleep to not trained I don't know if you're familiar with these recent studies showing that you can offset the inflammation that arrives from getting five or fewer hours of sleep the previous night with exercise.

45:26Yeah, you just don't want to get into a habit of it. So, but if you're easier said than done. I know if you're on the fence about whether or not to train because you're sleep deprived train but don't do that more than one to two days per week ideally and even better would be to get great sleep and train but I know you're you're during up to hit hit the next thing I want to mention that this study I just talked about was not a one off a couple years later. Monteen and colleagues did the same thing. But they used micro protein for the vegan group micro protein. It's a fungus based protein. So you've seen that that that I think is on is it on Netflix or HBO at the last of us.

46:11Where that fungus makes people anabolic. I haven't seen that that's what this is based on this. I'm doing a joke about a fictional show some of the audience will chuckle or just think I just busted the most terrible dad joke ever. But it's a fungus based protein commercially it's called corn so Q U R N. Okay, it's one of these weird types of products that is unfortunately expensive. And so the plant based or the animal free group their protein intake was boosted with this micro protein. And then they were compared against omnivores with mixed mixed protein sources. And by the end of the study I believe it was a 12 week study.

47:01No differences, no significant differences in increases in muscle size and strength and they progressive resistance training regimen. And once again, not necessarily highly trained people, but we basically saw the same thing as long as total daily protein is where it needs to be. Then apparently the animal free group can hang with the omnivores at least for the conditions of that study. So I always look at these things skeptically. But the micro protein also outperformed milk protein for muscle protein synthesis and this acute study that preceded this longitudinal study. And so there's some weird stuff that we can look at aside from animal protein that could be just as anabolic.

47:50So yeah, that's the story with animal versus plant and or fungus based protein. And so, so yeah, I just I just had to throw in the the mountain. That's very interesting. You know, I think when people hear soy, you know, there's been this, you know, kind of assault on soy for years. And I've avoided it not for any specific reason, but because I prefer other sources of calories. I like meat and berries and eggs and this kind of thing. But it's interesting that some of these engineered proteins and soy protein and pea protein when you really put them to the test under the right conditions. You know, they seem to gram for gram.

48:32They seem to perform just as well as the animal proteins. You did mention, however, that satiety rather is a key factor. So I'd be curious in this study. I don't know if they measured this whether the people in the vegan group felt that they were happy with what they were eating as compared to the animal protein group. You know, at the end of the day are they still craving more food? Do they feel like they desperately want to rib eye steak in order to follow a fairly strict diet of any kind, but in particular plant based one has to have a good reason. You know, I think that otherwise you just kind of fall into the availability issue.

49:14You know, it's a lot easier to fall to eat and I'm going to or diet. Yeah, yeah. That wasn't measured in either of the studies. And I always look at these things skeptically when you use essentially untrained subjects. Because untrained subjects are always going to kind of incur this newbie gains effect for the training regimen where the the gains that you get from the resistance training alone are going to just mask any potential advantage of either protein type. And so, you know, people would, well, Stu Phillips will argue with me on that all day long. We did it two day long. Twitter argument about that.

49:59You spend two days on an argument on on X. Stu is a is a frickin legend. Man, he is he is a legend in the protein research area, but he will argue with two to three days on Twitter. And so, you know, we always end up at the same spot where look, we need more research to see whether and this wasn't about this wasn't about vegan versus animal proteins plant versus animal. This was about just total daily protein intake period. We just need more research on highly trained highly resistance trained subjects to see whether in fact, a completely plant based protein regimen that's optimized, chlorically and totally daily protein amount wise can really run with the animal based stuff like the high quality animal based proteins.

50:55And so, it almost depends on where you want to place your bets and where you where you want to take your risks. So, if you're if gold is on the line, if first place at a professional and national level is on the line. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I would. But everybody's ideology is what it is and some people are just kind of governed by what they want to stick to. So, it really depends on the population and what the goal is. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health and performance.

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54:10Again, that's Davidprotein .com slash Huberman. I'd like to talk a little bit about body recomposition. Simple question to start off. Is it possible to, quote unquote, gain muscle while at the same time losing fat? Yes. Great. That will be reassuring to people. Does it require a caloric deficit? This is the weird part. No. No. No. And just super interesting, man. My friend and colleague, Chris Barakat, he collected all the studies that witnessed this recomposition phenomenon with a recomposition we call it recomp. You know, with simultaneous gain in lean mass and loss and fat mass. So he collected all the studies.

54:58He collected 10 studies, and this was a five, this review was put out five years ago. So you can imagine there's probably a few more studies that have shown recomp now. So we can say at least a dozen studies have shown this phenomenon, which we didn't necessarily think was possible like 10 years ago. You know, we thought, okay, you need a caloric surplus to gain muscle and you need a caloric deficit to lose fat. But what happened in these studies is the recomposition phenomenon is I think seven out of the 10 studies was a lean mass gain dominant. Recomposition. So in other words, more lean mass was gained than fat was lost.

55:40So there were net gains in body mass by the end of these, these trials, which would at least very strongly imply that fat was lost in a caloric surplus. If you were going to suggest to somebody the best way to approach this. Let's say somebody loosely speaking, yeah, this is not a competitive athlete. This could be a man or a woman assuming that the same advice would pertain to both is willing to do resistance training three to four times per week. Let's say three times per week, do some cardio three times per week for about an hour each session for for those. And they are willing to eat maintenance calories or slightly over it and their goal is to gain some muscle and lose some fat.

56:31Where would you set the calories relative to their needs? Would it be an extra two to 500 calories? I realize that's hard to say because you should talk in percentages. Let's just keep it broad for sake of a broad audience. How much more than maintenance should somebody ingest? And let's assume that when they go in the gym, they know what they're doing. They warm up for five to ten minutes and then they train hard. They take a sets close to failure. They're doing three to six sets per body part. They're training with meaningful effort. And when they do their cardio, they're somewhere between zone two and maybe they throw in a max heart rate workout once a week.

57:08They do some sprints in them in all of their zone two and go back to it. You know, this I think is pretty typical of what a lot of people are willing to do or currently doing. I would say sort of the simple and direct answer is to try to keep the caloric surplus pretty judicious. So 10 % ish above maintenance conditions, which could which could be for somewhere between 200 possibly 300 calories above what you see as maintenance. And the common thread amongst these recomposition studies was that protein was very high. Protein was somewhere between a gram to a gram and a half pound of body weight.

57:50Interesting. So now we've upped the protein intake. Yes. Could we even say that the caloric this 10 % above maintenance should come from quality protein? Exactly. Yes, yes. And there's a series of studies done by Joanne Toneo and colleagues where they fed the subjects for to 800 calories above and beyond their habitual intakes just in protein. And either recomposition happened or no significant change in body composition happened. Were they training? They were training. They were resistance training. And so what protein apparently does when you consume very high amounts of it up to you know a gram a gram and a half per pound of body weight is it just sort of spontaneously does the magical things.

58:39It'll drive down your intake of the other macros. It will potentially increase your exercise energy expenditure and or your non exercise energy expenditure. It will do odd things like I talked to Joanne Toneo when he got some feedback from the subjects on his very high protein study where he subjected them to two grams per pound for an eight week period. And he had subjects come into him saying, hey, I'm like sweating while I'm sleeping when you say two grams of protein for pound of body weight. Are we talking about increasing total caloric intake or just using more of one's daily caloric needs to devote more of that to quality protein.

59:24See that's the super interesting and kind of mysterious part. They're literally saying, okay, maintain your usual dietary habits. And then just add 50 to 100 grams of protein on top. So you're eating the next chicken breast in a couple of scoops away protein or maybe some eggs as well. And you're just adding more quality protein. Adding more quality protein. On top of what you're already eating. On top of what you're already learning that we can distribute that pretty much wherever we want. Just do what's most comfortable for you relative to your training and other needs. And you're saying then, but they're sweating in their sleep.

59:56They're sweating in their sleep. Actually 80 to 100 grams of protein just add it. And it's a, look, it's a, it's a free living study. So we're not surveilling people in a metabolic ward. So the increase in protein could have translated to greater energy expenditure through a, you know, a number of pathways, non -exercise pathways or exercise pathways. It could have put more power to the ground during their training. They could have been some, you know, just sort of some magic thermic stuff going on. Who knows? But, and also we can't discount the fact that when you're telling people to add, let's say, 80 or 100 grams of protein to their habitual intake.

1:00:40The weird thing about subject self -reporting is they tend to overreport the healthy stuff that you assign them. And underreport the unhealthy stuff. The good pupil phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there could be some misreporting going on there. But over a series of like five -ish studies now just stack the protein on top. Nobody gains fat and some people lose fat. Awesome. It's, yeah, it's, it is pretty freaking awesome. Now here's the thing that needs to be said. Okay, so there was a metabolic ward study done in 2013 -ish by Bray and colleagues where they subjected to the same protein.

1:01:18And then they did the participants to escalating amounts of protein. And it was a protein overfeeding study. There were three levels of protein intake. There was 5 % protein diet, a 15 % protein diet, and a 30 -ish percent protein diet. The calories, total calories escalated to. There was no exercise involved with this metabolic ward study. And the subjects gained both lean mass and fat mass with the escalating protein amounts. So there's different stuff going on when you lock people up in a metabolic ward and they can't train. And then you're escalating their protein intakes and calories. They will gain fat and lean mass.

1:02:02But in free living conditions with resistance training, if you just overprotein the subjects, they actually have a tendency to lose fat. And it's a really interesting phenomenon because it's been seen repeatedly. With men and women. Men and women, yes. The message I'm getting is if you're going to add calories, add quality protein, make sure your resistance training here I'm building on the previous things we talked about. The distribution of the protein probably doesn't matter as much as just getting the total protein correct. And I find it very reassuring that I can train faster or not faster.

1:02:42Mostly because very few of us have total control of our schedule. So sometimes we need to train first thing in the morning and we've got to catch a flight or head to work. And sometimes people only have time in the evening and this kind of thing. I want to make sure that we talk about some of the other macronutrients. Sure. Because carbohydrates do exist. We won't talk about fiber just now. I think can we actually put fiber on to the shelf quickly by saying fiber is good, right? Yes. Okay, fiber is good. Get fiber. The short answer is it's good. Get fiber and get it through fruits and vegetables.

1:03:25And if you're not doing that, get it through some supplement. But ideally through fruits and vegetables, right? Vegetables, legumes, grains, grains are a double -aged sword. Because they're high calorie. You got the refined grains, the flour foods, and then you have the whole grains. But even some of the whole grains, such thing as whole grain, goldfish crackers. So a bit of a treacherous little area there for people who are trying to economize on the junk and the calories that they consume. You can still have a whole grain diet that has just a bunch of crap. Right. So fruits, vegetables, get your fiber, fiber fibers key.

1:04:01But when we talk about carbohydrates, let's divide them crudely into starchy carbohydrates. So stuff that basically will melt in your mouth. That's the way I think about it, right? A piece of cooked potato, a piece of cooked yam. Yes, if you put a piece of cooked pasta in your mouth long enough or even uncooked pasta, eventually dissolve. Are you just inhaling? Right, or it, well, don't do that. Or a piece of broccoli, which most of it is not going to melt in your mouth. You'll be waiting several weeks for it. Because there's a lot of fiber there. So this is the crude way of distinguishing between fibers and non -fibres.

1:04:38So starchy and non -starchy carbohydrates. Starches, in some sense, are a great fuel. They've put glycogen in our liver and muscles. They can fuel things like resistance training. They can help us think. All the ketogenic folks are like, I think best fasted or I think best keto. But brain -like glucose, what is your take on carbohydrates with respect to maintaining or losing body fat? Do carbohydrates make it harder to do that if one is doing everything else equally? Meaning you're getting exercise, you're not exceeding your daily chloric intake. Is it, or starchy is inherently bad? That's a great question.

1:05:24I defer to the evidence. You've got, and of course evidence is its own thing. You've got research here, and then you have observations and anecdotes here. Well, let's talk primarily about research. And I mean, anecdotes is great. But it generally tends to circle around to what people find has worked best for them. And I'm happy to talk about them. I'm sure you're happy to talk about them. But I think what I like to emphasize on this podcast and what you do so beautifully is to talk about, like what does the best possible set of controlled studies say when kind of lump together? Unless there's one study that rises above the rest because it's done so well.

1:06:02I mean, I think it's so hard to do quality studies in humans. So we have to have that caveat. The more you control, the less natural the conditions are. The less can be controlled. This is why there will never, there will always be jobs for people in nutrition and fitness. That's right. Ultimately, you bring people into a metabolic ward. It's very unnatural. You let them free range and just tell you what they ate. They lie or they forget or they, and they cheat. They like sneaker, they sneaker, some starburst and they don't tell you about it. So that's just life, you know, even clients who are paying you a lot of money.

1:06:41You can't necessarily trust 100 % of what they're reporting to you. You know, much less like a group of subjects in a study. So, yeah, the carbohydrate thing starts with whether it's starches, whether it's sugars. I mean, either one. So the body of research on carbohydrate and fat loss. You can distill it down like this as long as between the two groups. You have equated total calories. And you've equated protein intake between the groups. Then body fat reduction by the end of every well controlled trial in existence, basically, shows no significant difference in fat loss between the groups. So protein is kind of the great equalizer that protein and total calories.

1:07:29Now, here's the little wrinkle to that answer. If you take somebody who's on a standard Western diet, and you put them on a ketogenic diet, or if you control the experiment with like kind of a high carb low fat type of regular run -of -the -mill control diet versus a ketogenic diet, and you don't equate protein, then the ketogenic diet will beat the crap out of the control diet every time with fat loss and weight loss because it has more protein. And in some cases, if you go as extreme as carnivore type diet and stuff like that, then you're looking at a narrowing of your options. So the reduction in variety and possibilities also leads to less total clark intake.

1:08:17So with ketogenic diets, there routinely is when it is an adlibitum ketogenic diet that you put the subjects on. You may be explaining adlibitum to people who's lacking or haven't worked in a lab. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, no, thanks for that. So adlibitum means that you are not consciously calculating or restricting. You are just eating as desired. And so when you assign somebody a ketogenic diet where you say, hey, avoid this, this, and this, and that carb food, avoid carbs. And you can eat as much as you feel like with the proteins and the fats. No, go do it. What happens when you assign somebody that is they spontaneously eat across the range of studies, somewhere between four to all the way, 900 calories less per day compared to their habitual intakes or compared to the control diet intakes.

1:09:15That's just what happens. That's interesting, right? Because they could eat more if they want. They're not being restricted. Yeah. I think this speaks to how satiating protein is and especially how satiating protein and fats are in combination. I mean, I mean, if I'm hungry on a long drive and I can only eat one thing, assuming I've water, which I would want with me, I would like, I'm out on the road. I'm on interstate five. I got no food with me. Everything's closed. It's Christmas day, but there's a in and out burger. They're probably closed too. And I can get two hamburger patties. That's my pick.

1:09:50Not the french fries. Even though calorie for calorie, I'd probably landing about the same place more or less, because there's just something so inherently satiating about protein. So it makes sense that the keto diet makes sense. The issue I have with the keto diet is that until pretty recently, it was tougher to remain in the general social context of life. I mean, you can't have a cracker. You can't, I don't like crackers, but you can't have a piece of sourdough bread. That's a rough, rough, rough sourdough around here. Yeah. And then people struggle a lot with holidays. I think the keto is tougher people around the holidays.

1:10:36As long as we're in this category of discussion, what are your thoughts about inflammation? And here's why I ask, and I ask it this way, is I know many, many people who struggled with their weight for a very long time. A lot of male friends, some female friends, who, when they adopt a diet of the following things, meat, fish, eggs, parmesan cheese as the only category of dairy, or so hard cheese, fruit, and vegetables, olive oil butter, coffee tea, fine, but no sodas or anything, except diet sodas. They lose significant amounts of body fat, probably some water too. So they're not eating any starches, no rice, no oatmeal, no bread, no pizza, nothing.

1:11:25But they have all managed this is anecdotes, but they've all managed to lose anywhere from 25 to 50 or even 60 pounds. They're exercising typically, sometimes just cardio. So significant amounts of a body weight and they keep it off. And the number of their health challenges seem to resolve themselves, perhaps secondarily to the weight loss. But I often wonder whether or not this quote -unquote, what some people call a low inflammation diet, because there's so few processed and highly processed foods in this regimen, has additional benefits that start to synergize with the fat loss. And it's remarkable how much better they look, how much better they feel, and they can maintain that pretty well, because you can say, I'll pass on the bread and the pie, but I'm going to have double serving of turkey and Brussels sprouts.

1:12:18And it's kind of remarkable what can be accomplished with what I just described. And yet I don't know a name for that diet, and it's not mine, it's not what I follow, I eat starches. But what are your thoughts on inflammation and how certain macronutrient profiles, perhaps are pro -inflammatory or anti -inflammatory, or something people rarely talk about, which is inflammatory neutral, kind of keep you in a neither high nor low inflammation state, which is kind of a normal fluctuations in inflammation. Long question, but I feel like it's the one I've wanted to ask for a while, and you're the guy to ask.

1:12:52Okay, so I'm going to speculate a little bit. I think that any diet that facilitates substantial fat loss is going to lower the amount of inflammatory cytokines, circulating and emanating from the adipose tissue. And so if you can get that body fat down, then you can get chronic low grade inflammation down. If that body fat is reduced from everywhere at the subcutaneous space, especially the visceral space, then you're going to do a lot of good things for long -term health. The reason why the diet that you described is so effective at this is because it lacks hyper -palitability. And so the way that you create hyper -palitability, hyper -palitability is basically the tendency for food to be very flavorful, very delicious and very easy to passively over -consume.

1:13:48And so the formula for hyper -palitability is basically refined carbs, fat mixed together, salt it, and or make it sweet. And there's your formula for food that is easily passively over -consumed. And the diet that you describe doesn't have these ultra -processed, highly engineered fat carb, refined carb, and fat combo foods that we are just kind of driven to just inhale down. And so I think that my view could possibly be a little bit too simplistic, but I think the inflammation issue is really tied to an excess body fat issue. I'm very grateful for that answer. And again, I've seen so many friends that will lose significant amounts of body fat and stick with this diet.

1:14:51It's also one that if one were to have a slice of cake or a piece of pizza, you're not really deviating that far from the total contour of the nutritional plan. It's not like you're suddenly out of keto or something, and they don't tend to cascade into benches and things of that sort. I will say that most of these people also quit drinking alcohol at the same time, which probably has its own benefits, will return to alcohol a little bit later. And there are some nutrients that are directly anti -inflammatory. Like omega -3 fatty acids, huge literature on their anti -inflammatory effects. Do you supplement with those personally?

1:15:28I do. You take for sure. I do. And I know that there is some controversy and some infighting with the idea of supplementing with visual. Now people are afraid of atrial fibrillation and things like that. But you know, I've been doing it. And if you look at the literature, especially the randomized control trials, it is mostly good stuff, man. I mean, you could find negative literature on almost anything that you do. Sure. But on balance, I am still comfortable with supplementing with fish oil at this point in time, regardless of the mounting evidence that, oh, it might not do anything or oh, it might have this or that potentially adverse effect.

1:16:12I kind of think it's a no brainer if you're not somebody who eats fatty fish regularly through the week. Yeah. The high quality sources of fatty fish tend to be very expensive. And they're harder and harder to find. And talk about controversy. You get into this debate about whether like different sources of salmon and it gets really messy. I'm sure there are great sources out there, but that's a whole discussion into itself. I take fish oil also have for many years. I plan to continue doing it. And, you know, so I'm grateful to hear that you do it as well because both on that. We're both on that train.

1:16:46We're rappel. Yeah. So the, yeah, the anti -inflammation effect, if nothing else seems to warrant that. I'd like to, I'd like to talk about sugar. I've had people on this podcast sit where you're sitting. And basically paint a picture of sugar that it is not quite as bad as crack cocaine and meth, but not too far from that. Kind of exaggerating. And I've had people who land in the more kind of tempered response to sugar. But let's define sugar. We're not talking, when I say sugar, I'm not talking about fructose in fruit because in fruit you've got fructose, but you've got fiber and there's a high water content and some, sure, some fruits have higher fructose content than others.

1:17:36Mangoes versus apples, for instance, or something that sort. But when I'm talking about sugar, I'm talking about if one looks at a package or a label and sees added sugars, how bad are added sugars? Because those are really the ones that tend to, you know, fall into this bin of, quote, unquote, bad sugar in a lot of people's minds. Okay, so they dilute the, the nutritive value of the diet and they contribute to hyperpallitability. If you're talking about extrinsic sugars added to the diet, you know, they're only, really only two sources of intrinsic sugars are in fruit and in milk. Everything else, you're just pretty much adding it.

1:18:24The exception of like maybe agave, but that's kind of a rare esoteric thing. But added sugars to the diet should be consumed judiciously. The working recommendation is to try to limit added sugars to the diet to 10 % of total calories. So if you're somebody who likes to put maple syrup on whatever you might do or somebody who likes to put honey on whatever you might do, then you may want to limit that to typical, let's say 2000 calorie diet, you may want to limit to like a maximum of 40, 50 grams a day. It still seems high. It does 40, 50 grams. Who's eating that much sugar? If that may. Oh, really, you have a sweet tooth?

1:19:12No, no, I love honey and I love maple syrup. See, I have a savory tooth. Like if I have to try not eat the entire block of parmesan cheese. I have both, man. I've always joke that I have an inner fat boy within me, but I actually have been technically obese by BMI standards like 10 years this back. How old now? 53. Great. Well, you seem to be in great shape. No hormone augmentation. We clarified that earlier. I asked. This is what guys ask each other nowadays. Are you doing any hormone augmentation? No. So Alan says no and I believe him completely. But yeah, you're in great shape at 53. Thank you.

1:19:52And you have a sweet tooth and a savory tooth. I do, man. How do you contend with that? I do. Oh, okay. So that's a great question because I can dish out something practical here. Protein powder. Protein powder satisfies the heck out of my sweet tooth. And I actually don't have the full 50 grams of added sugar. I might add like a tablespoon of maple syrup to my coffee in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you know those mocha mocha pot thingies? Mocha pot. It's called mocha pot. It's like something. It's a piece of hardware. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the thing where you. It's this odd like. Oh, right.

1:20:34It's like an hourglass shaped coffee. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I have that. And what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to duplicate the. The Thai coffee. Is it Thai? What is it? Thai iced tea. Really freaking good coffee that either Vietnamese coffee. Vietnamese coffee. I love Vietnamese food. I don't drink the Vietnamese coffee. It's too sweet for me. Dude. But I'm trying to do a version of that with the mocha pot. And if I put maple syrup in that tablespoon, it's freaking awesome. And I have that with half and half. It's really good. So you got a fat sugar combination plus caffeine. You do this in the morning before you train.

1:21:15I've been doing it. I go through these phases, but I have that. And so the extent of the added sugar in my diet is that tablespoon of maple syrup. So you know, I do agree that the 50 grams could be a little bit up there. Oh, listen, I'm not here to judge. Like I said, if I had a sweet tooth, what's interesting? I used to have one. I lost it over the course of about a decade. I used to love like sour patch gummies and gummies. And I love the gummy. I love fruity taste and that kind of thing. I lost it by doing something that probably has no scientific basis. But I heard years ago that if I took a teaspoon of algodamine and put it in high fat in half and half in cream basically and took a shot of that twice a day, that it would kill my sugar cravings.

1:22:03And I did that and it weaned me off sugar. And then I increased my protein intake. So it could have been any combination of things or it could be total placebo. I mean, so I want to acknowledge that. Although I've recommended this to some self -professed sugar addicts. Oh, okay. And they're like, yeah, it kills the sugar cravings. But then they always add the, but I still miss my, you know, whatever. They long for the sugary thing. I don't any longer. This is where I headed off the sweet stuff. I make protein smoothies. And they're just, they're artificially sweetened. So it satisfies that, you know, that dessert craving, if you will.

1:22:47Well, along the lines of artificial sweeteners. Why if you want something sweet, wouldn't you just replace the honey with like stevia? Because it doesn't create the same satiety that the maple syrup does for you. Oh, man. Okay. So maple syrup aside. The, you get caloric savings. You know, if, if your protein powder is artificially sweeten, let's say with, with stevia or sucralose or monk fruit or whatever is being used in the product. You get caloric savings and you just kind of get the macro savings, if you will, as well. And so protein powders are like, I mean, in my opinion, they're just such a breakthrough.

1:23:36Because they satisfy the protein requirements or they significantly augment the protein requirements. And they take care of like essentially having something that is the experience of a dessert to me anyway. I make some really good fruit smoothies. I use frozen fruit, protein powder. Sometimes I do like a mocha type of smoothie. Sometimes I do like a tropical fruit type of milkshake. Yeah, it is like a milkshake, right? So you mentioned artificial sweeteners. Let's double click there. Sure. I've seen some literature that points to the possibility that they might be, quote, bad for the gut microbiome.

1:24:14Those are animal data. There are some human data. But I think nowadays saying artificial sweeteners is too broad as we say in science that are lumbers and splitters. And I think we need to split that because there's low calorie sweeteners like stevia, right, that are not artificial. There's sort of technically plant derived. And then there's artificial sweeteners like aspartame sucralose saccharine. And my understanding is that sucralose and saccharine have some bad properties if consumed in excess. What is the deal with artificial sweeteners? So we're talking aspartame sucralose saccharine. Let's just focus on those.

1:24:51Sure. And let's leave aside monk fruit, stevia, et cetera, for the time being. Okay. You can pretty much simplify it by saying out of all the sweeteners that we study, whether they're the natural kind or whether they're the artificial kind, it's saccharine that is showing a lot of the adverse potential. So for example, the negative effects on gut microbiome that have led to impaired glucose tolerance in humans over a short period of time. Of course, they, you know, the dose is debatable that they're flooding these humans with. But nevertheless, it's saccharine that showed these effects with even body weight gain comparing saccharine sucralose and ibulose.

1:25:42I believe it could have been one of the others aspartame. The saccharine group apparently maybe appetite was dysregulated actually gain weight. And so there is something about saccharine that is not great as far as the range of low calorie sweeteners go. But thankfully, saccharine is almost commercially extinct. It's hard to find saccharine unless you go to a denies or some sort of greasy spoon place and you get those pink little pink packets. So now we've got this other range of low calorie sweeteners to choose from. And it's a little bit of a mystery of which of these low calorie sweeteners has the best health and body composition to it.

1:26:31But they're all pretty much in the same boat. You can find a bunch of good stuff with stevia like the dirt on artificial sweeteners. You can find a bunch of potential dirt on aspartame. You can find a potential, a bunch of potential dirt on sucralose. Stevia, it's a little bit harder to maybe some benefits of stevia. Yes, yes, benefits too. Improve glucose tolerance and things like that. So I'm not afraid of stevia. I always call it stevia, but now it's stevia. And that's me. Stevia is a me thing. Okay, so I'll call it stevia. I'll call it stevia for this conversation. Thank you. So tomato tomato.

1:27:12I've heard it's potentially good for us. No good evidence it's bad for us. So if you don't mind the taste and I happen to like the taste, stevia seems like a perfectly fine thing to include in one's diet. Yeah, I tend to be amenable to all artificial sweeteners honestly. Even aspartame, it's the sheer amounts that you would have to consume of these things, even hypothetically to incur negative health outcomes is absurd amounts. It's probably more dangerous to step outside and breathe in the LAA air. Engage in like some aspartame or sucralose on a regular basis that one or two cans a day. I don't think that can affect people in the course of a lifetime.

1:27:57Thank you for that clarification. Very hard to study though. It's not like you can find out definitively. So although my read of the literature are people that drink artificially sweeten soda or stevia sweeten soda, as an augment to their efforts to consume fewer than needed calories per day in order to lose body weight, body fat in particular, is that diet sodas can actually be a great assistance to people. Yes. You know, and I went back and forth on this literature because I thought no water would be better, but they compare water to liters a day or a liter or more per day of diet soda. And it seems like it's a pretty good weight loss tool for people that would otherwise be drinking soda or would otherwise be drinking just water, which really surprised me.

1:28:45I'd love to say water is the best, but for weight loss, maybe diet sodas actually provide an important role for people. Yeah, that was an interesting finding. I do think that most, if not all, of the controlled intervention trials show positive effects of artificially sweetened or low -calorie sweetened beverages on weight loss and all of the consequences of the metabolic consequences of what happens with weight loss. And they're all positive. There's some observational literature that casts some doubt on whether diet sodas are a good thing or not, but then we have the issue of, in quotes, reverse causality, where people who are in poor health are sort of seeking out these diet sodas, rather than the diet sodas causing the poor health.

1:29:35So on balance, artificially sweetened beverages tend to be a net positive for health, but I know that a lot of people have a lot of issue with that because people have just sort of this natural hippie streak within them that would want to preach only water, water, water. And I think it's a good idea to practice drinking plain water to get that experience of it being a positive thing, and I encourage it, but sort of the vilifying of artificially sweetened beverages is just not necessarily founded, especially the controlled intervention literature. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.

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1:31:31The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and, at the level of cost, it is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth .com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250 ,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth .com slash Huberman to get early access to function. Is there any evidence that coffee or other caffeinated drinks have a thermic effect that allows you to burn more fat?

1:32:12So if I drink, I'm a yerbamaate fan, so if I drink cold brew yerbamaate or hot brew yerbamaate before working out, let's forget fasted. I happen to do it fasted, and then train them. I go into burn, mobilize more body fat by ingesting a stimulant like caffeine prior to working out. Yes. And yeah, it's a pretty consistent finding.

1:32:36The issue is whether the amount that occurs is something meaningful that would be durable enough over time for us to be able to say, hey, we can use coffee and our caffeine as an agent to enhance fat loss. I'm not sure if we're there yet, but the literature on balance shows a modest effect, modest advantage on fat loss with caffeinated beverages like tea and coffee. Great. I don't think that's discussed very often these days. That was kind of more in the 90s, but I think it's a great thing for people to hear because 90 % of adults worldwide consume caffeine every single day. It's the most widely used drug in the world.

1:33:17Man, you know, I just looked at this huge umbrella review on coffee and health effects. It's net positive. I was happy to see what sorts of metrics are. A range of clinical outcomes. Cardiovascular health. Different effects on sort of intermediate markers. Mortality even. So almost everything that we can think of that we generate most people generally care about. Coffee either has a neutral or positive effect on it, but the threshold of benefits sort of cuts off at three to four cups a day. So more much more than that or you know, after that threshold, then we're looking at potential detriment.

1:34:05I suppose the only thing is to remind people to not consume caffeine too close to bedtime because even if you can fall asleep, it's going to disrupt the architecture of your sleep. Okay. I and I am sure so many people are so relieved even delighted to hear that coffee and other forms of caffeine are healthy for us, maybe even pro longevity. Confidenty. Yes. That's sure. Whereas it's been debated and it continues to be debated whether alcohol is good or bad for longevity. Last week, another study is saying champagne was good for longevity. I think it was. But plenty of studies recently showing that alcohol increases cancer risk so much that the federal government now is talking about putting this on any on the label of any alcohol containing drink.

1:34:52I have an issue with that. Yeah. About putting that on the label. Yeah. Yeah. Please share. So we can't lump alcoholic beverages into this single bucket. The literature on red wine specifically. Man, you would be hard pressed to find carcinogenic effects from red wine, either epidemiologically or interventionally. And even down to like the mechanistic in vitro stuff like tumor agenesis anything like that. It actually has anti cancer effects. And you know, even the brain shrinking threat of alcohol intake. Red wine consumers actually in a one at least one controlled trial showed improvements in a neuropsychological tests.

1:35:44And so I don't think we can say alcohol as a group. We have to sort of look at the individual drinks because I'm sure there's differences between red wine versus some other some other alcoholic beverage. But but people study the crap out of red wine and there's almost nothing but good stuff that comes out of the red wine literature who knows how biased it might be commercially or other. But that's another thing. I don't like to dismiss studies based on funding source, but the red wine literature is almost all positive. I feel like I have to push on this a little bit. I think assuming everything about those studies is intact and not biased, etc.

1:36:36I do think that when people are consuming alcohol and thinking about the potential longevity effects of red wine, that there's some questions that come to mind. First of all, what is the color trade off? So if you're drinking glass of wine, you're consuming calories. Perhaps not a problem. Perhaps that's taking up room for quality nutrients that could come from other sources. I have a theory, which is that the controversies around the alcohol literature and longevity in my mind could boil down to something as simple as sleep disruption. For instance, drinkers have more inflammation, but in those particular studies, perhaps I'm speculating here, they're drinking with dinner and we know that disrupt sleep architecture.

1:37:23Reduces REM sleep deep sleep. I mean, this has just been shown over and over again. And chronically, over time, especially on a backdrop of a high stress lifestyle, perhaps leads to more systemic inflammation and poorer health outcomes. In another culture, maybe in Sardinia or something, or in one of these dare I say blue zones, people perhaps are eating and drinking and living longer and have lower inflammation because, you know, they might drink just as close to sleep. But they have a smoother lower stress entrance into the next day. And so the disruption sleep might not be a problem. There's an afternoon nap in many of those cultures.

1:38:00So when I look at sleep as kind of the foundation of mental health and physical health, which is clear, at least one of the layers of the foundation, I then wonder whether or not that the alcohol studies can be evaluated just strictly on the basis of the measures that are being taken. And that if we start to think about the context in which alcohol consumption is occurring, social context, sleep hours, stress and lifestyle, genetic predisposition to cancers, it's a high processed food, you know, and on and on and on. I wonder whether or not some of this is going to shake out in the noise, as we say.

1:38:35I need to qualify. I agree with all that. And here's the thing, like my statements on alcohol mainly had to do with red, white and cancer. So if we look at a typical, what would be considered a moderate amount of drinking? One to two glasses a day for little people. And then let's say two to three glasses a day for larger people. That is sort of the kind of the moderation models for those for those two. Regardless of a red wine or not or something else, there is a degree of disinhibition that occurs with drinking that can make you say, oh, screw it. And potentially have you just wipe out the entire pasta plate, for example.

1:39:19And so there's that the disinhibition piece. And there's also the inherent calories piece to where I don't know a whole lot of guys who I am aspiring to become like body comp wise, who are regular, significant drinkers, most of them barely drink. So that's sort of the observational side of things. And then there's the addiction side of things where you read the stats on the percentage of the general population that has some degree of alcohol use disorder. Staggering percent to 10%. So in a room of 10 people chances are one of them is going to have alcohol use disorder. That's an early. An easiest addiction to mask because you know, alcohol is so freely available.

1:40:09It's everywhere. And people don't exclaim or I said it's the alcohol intake at least until recently things are changing is the one. It's the one drug because alcohol is a drug. Then again, caffeine is a drug. It's the one drug that if you don't consume it as an adult, people often are put off are put off by that. Right. They're like, Hey, like what's wrong with you kind of thing or like I thought real men drink or something like that. And my so I quit drinking a long time ago and I didn't have alcohol use disorder, but I didn't like it because I wouldn't sleep on. I like to train in the morning.

1:40:42So when people would say like you don't drink what's wrong with you. And I said, No, I'd train in the morning while you're sleeping. And then let's check in it. I used to be a little in my 30s. I was kind of cocky. So it meetings. You know, I say they'd be like, Oh, you're going home at 9 p .m. on the first night. I'm like, Yeah, but let's check in on Wednesday of this five day meeting. Let's let's look at how you're hanging in there versus how I'm hanging in there. And so I was always interested in the long arc of things. How I could maintain eight or nine out of 10 performance, maybe even 10 out of 10 performance day after day after day after day.

1:41:12Not necessarily a healthy mentality. But you know, this is what happens if you have, you know, my mentality and I think it's typical of many people. So for me, drinking was a hindrance to life performance. I think for many people alcohol is the way that they mesh with the people around them. And I respect the fact that that exists that it's hard to be the odd person out. It can be socially isolating and social connections important. Here's what I found with with quitting alcohol, a couple of funny things. Number one, I did get shamed. I was in the Dominican Republic and at the dinner table. And I like pinnacle otis, you know, virgin pinnacle otis.

1:41:52So I ordered a virgin pinnacle otis. And the server just like cracked up and it laughed at me. It made fun of me for doing a virgin drink. So I actually have gotten shamed for ordering a virgin pinnacle otis. But one of the reasons that I was was afraid to quit is because I thought that events would lose their fun. I felt like I would sort of lose my ability to, you know, be social and have fun and have the same degree of, you know, it's a weird thing. You don't know until you quit drinking that things are just as fun. You're obviously you're elucid and you take a lot more in and you can, you know, you can enjoy everything moment to moment.

1:42:41And there's no lost patches of time. And the interesting thing and the positive thing about quitting drinking for me and I haven't drank not one, not one drink in almost seven years now, come August. Is that it taught me how to sit in my feelings and cope with the stress and come up with solutions. Whereas prior to that, oh, I know the solution put the alcohol bandaid on it. But I think that that impairs character building. It impairs problem solving capabilities. It impairs coping capabilities and I think those are super important for just basically to be an adult. And so those were kind of the hidden benefits that I experienced from quitting alcohol on top of having better training sessions, having better training recovery, consuming 1000 calories less per day, almost a thousand calories less per day improvements in body composition.

1:43:46And just mental health, all departments of life just kicked up and improved after I quit drinking, but I see I was one of those one and 10 who got into the drinking routine. And I'm one of those guys. If I like something, I'll have it every day. I'll do it every day. Like I'm probably going to have either coffee and or eggs every day for the rest of my life. Same thing happened with alcohol, but the thing with alcohol is you have to try to maintain the buzz, which increases over time because of tolerance, as you know. So that was the issue, you know, with with me and alcohol. Well, thanks for sharing that.

1:44:29Again, we're not here to ram anything down anyone's throat, but I think there are many. And I think that many people can do alcohol and moderation. I just was one of them who was much better off quitting. Great. Well, I appreciate you sharing that very much. So let's talk about seed oils, the dreaded seed oil debate. Should we fear them or not fear them? Let's assume somebody is going to maintain calories. Like they're not adding seed oils as a source of additional calories above what they would normally be taking in. But let's say they have the choice. They can consume a seed oil like canola oil or soybean oil.

1:45:07Or they can consume olive oil in place of it. And let's just compare like which one is better if either and is there anything inherently bad about seed oils? And I want to make sure that we talk about the processing because people will say, ah, the seed oils aren't bad if they come from a quality source, but most of the seed oils are through this high pressure, high temperature, refinement process. And that's the problem. So what's the deal with seed oils? Okay, the big picture is that people over vilify seed oils. One side over vilify seed oils, just like the other side over vilifies. Let's say your standard, you know, land animal fats like deep tallow butter, lard.

1:45:53But when you compare those two like seed oils versus the butter, be tell a lot, you compare the evidence base of those two things. You can find more dirt as far as adverse health outcomes from the land animal fats compared to the seed oils. And that is the reality of the matter. Um, it's really weird that seed oils are being vilified right now because that's not the scientific consensus. People who have their nose in the literature are just kind of scratching the heads at the whole seed oil scare thing. And there are some people on the fringe who laser in on their philosophies and ideologies about seed oils, but then all you need to do is ask a short set of questions.

1:46:42And you specified the seed oils and the question, which is great. I mean, that you're ahead of like everybody else. So what seed oil are we talking about? What kind of dosage are we talking about? And what health outcome are you concerned with? And then what trial do you find most compelling that supports your fear of the seed oil? And so everybody like nine out of 10 people immediately will say, uh, okay, you want to know what seed oil canola oil. Okay, great. Let's look at the canola oil literature. And one of the hardest things to do is find dirt on canola oil amidst all of the positive effects in almost every trial of canola oil.

1:47:28There is even a meta analysis comparing directly the effect of canola oil versus olive oil on blood lipid profile. And certain maybe, you know, unsurprisingly to some but surprisingly to most canola oil outperforms olive oil for improving blood lipids in the sense of lowering LDL cholesterol. That's surprising to me because I assumed that olive oil can do no wrong. You know what? I was I was taken aback by that too. I would have been just fine with seeing there's no damn difference one of these anti climatic results. But when you take a look at canola oil's composition, it has a kind of an extraordinarily high proportion of omega three fatty acids compared to olive oil and compared to the rest of the seed oils for that omega three.

1:48:24I thought it was high in omega six. It's it does contain omega six and that is the pre predominant fatty acid in canola, but it has a high omega three content as well. It has a high proportion of omega three. I don't know the exact proportion of omega three, but what makes canola kind of special as far as the vegetable oils go is its high omega three content. Wow. Okay. That's going to surprise a number of people, including me. My sense is that any ill effects to come from seed oils are because of who seed oils hang out with. Yeah. Right. This is already all that if you're old enough like me to remember I'm 49, turn 15 September.

1:49:10So I'm not quite 53, but we're of the same generation. And there was we grew up without the internet. Right. Well, there was a discussion around cannabis. For instance, we've done several episodes about it. We didn't paint it as good or bad, although I do believe that young people, especially young males, spoke to high T. H. C. cannabis can predispose to psychosis. I mean, there's a bunch of debate around this, but back in the day, it was if you use cannabis soon, you'll be using crack cocaine. That was kind of like the argument. Right. And over time, people realize that cannabis has its own potential benefits and its own potential risks.

1:49:44Right. Depending on a number of things, it seems that people who consume a lot of seed oils consume them in conjunction with a lot of starches and perhaps who's added sugars as well. And when you lump those together, you end up with a pro inflammatory often hypercaloric set of conditions and people aren't getting enough quality protein. And then we know what that picture looks like. It looks like the United States of America. Right. Or most of the United States of America. And so I do think that there's something about who olive oil and grass fed butter hang out with that has the opposite effect.

1:50:22Like people go, oh, this is a really high quality olive oil. Generally, in my mind, are the sort of people who are thinking about the quality of the salad ingredients. They're thinking about the sourdough bread as opposed to maybe a more refined sugar containing bread. And the people who talk about grass fed butter are thinking about the quality of the meat sources. And they're not eating other protein sources that are laid in with other preservatives. So to me, I think a lot of this, quote, in what seed oil debate will be resolved when we start pulling apart the individual components. They're writing in the wrong vehicle.

1:50:55Right. Right. And I think that from a cost perspective, you know, this hadn't occurred to me until I started voicing a little bit of this online, in which case you learn a lot quickly. And what I learned was, you know, there were a number of people who said, yeah, I'm hearing all this great stuff about grass fed butter and olive oil. But there are people for whom the cost margins are just too high to consume all organic and olive oil. And, you know, and you have to listen to that and say, okay, well, you know, for people needing to feed an entire family, you know, perhaps some of these other fat sources are more affordable.

1:51:32And therefore, what are the real health risks with those. So anyway, I was a bit of editorializing there, but I have a feeling some of this is going to shake out in the, in the fine parsing of these different diets. I think people oversimplify it. What people do with seed oils is what people do with dairy. They say dairy. As if it's some monolithic thing, you know, with dairy, you've got the hard cheeses, you've got butter, you've got yogurt, you've got milk of varying fat levels, you know, you're kind of hard pressed to find negative stuff on yogurt. You're, you'd be kind of hard pressed actually to find negative stuff on hard cheeses.

1:52:12Butter of all of the, you know, the range of dairy foods butter is the one that you can find the dirt on. Similar story with seed oils, like try to find some negative stuff on flax seed, chia seed, sesame seed. I you can't, I mean, yeah, if you dig hard enough, you can try to find some negative stuff on canola is very tough to. Even things like soybean oil and corn oil, you can look at the literature and it doesn't paint this sinister picture either. And so I think people are missing the forest for the trees in general when they're focused on honestly the cooking oils. You shouldn't be drowning or deep frying your stuff on a regular basis anyway.

1:52:58So, yeah, and, and, and beyond that, when you look at the effects of seed oil that are examined in the literature for various outcomes, you know, everything from the intermediate outcomes like bio marker effects all the way to the includes hard end points like mortality, heart attack, you know, cardiac events and heart disease. So the hard end points as well as the intermediate or soft end points, they're all superior with the seed oils compared to butter, um, large beet. On the whole, so there is a severe misunderstanding and falsely founded scare mongering with respect to seed oils to the point where I just think it's incredibly selling.

1:53:53People just have to get ahold of themselves and focus on the overall quality of the diet and not really get into these absolute, you know, death matches over what oils they used to cook their foods. I am a huge extra virgin olive oil fan. That is my go to that's what I love. I could honestly I could like do shots of the style. I love it. That's much. Delicious. Yeah. And, um, and I love sesame oil, you know, but sesame is a seed oil that could sesame oil has been consumed by very healthy populations throughout Asia for the last 5 ,000 years. And so I don't necessarily like canola oil, you know, like as far as the sort of the stickiness and the oddness about it, but I'll still acknowledge that the literature shows overwhelmingly positive stuff about it in the majority of trials.

1:54:45But I prefer olive oil and I would almost feel more comfortable recommending that if you like olive oil, then that should be your go to rather than oils that are, I guess, maybe Frankenstein or engineered to a degree. And you mentioned the whole idea of how these oils are produced like one of the concerns is hexane use to extract the oils from the seed cakes and stuff like that. So the use of solvents to get these oils out of their native source. There's some interesting literature showing higher hexane levels in olive oil than in I forget it was some some other seed oil, whether it was canola or sunflower.

1:55:30And so, but nevertheless, the hexane amounts were well below established safe thresholds. And so I think I really do think that people are getting sort of lost in the weeds and kind of missing the forest for the trees focusing on the little grains of sand and missing the big golders. Thank you for that. I think it's going to clarify a number of things for a number of people. I also love olive oil. Over the years, I've tried to consume less butter. I love the taste of butter. Can I interrupt and let you know I'm not anti butter at all. I just when you look at the evidence if you butter everything up and you're diet and you really pound like the just eating sticks of butter, then you're hedging your bets in the direction of increased cardiovascular risk.

1:56:17And there's even a really interesting study comparing cream with butter on blood lipids. And so cream actually had a neutral effect on blood lipids, whereas butter kind of skewed things in an adverse direction. Usually it's typically an increase in LDL. The reason why cream had this neutral effect is what they're figuring and this is based on other studies as well is it's got this component called milk fat global membrane MFGM, which gets turned out of butter. And so even within the dairy category, you have very differently behaving types of foods. And once again, I'm not anti butter, but we have to acknowledge that some foods within a given food category are a little bit riskier and you should be a little bit more careful about just the sheer amounts you consume of it over a lifetime.

1:57:11Yeah, years ago when first starting the podcast when I wasn't aware of frankly, how big the podcast was going to grow to I made a joke about like I eat slabs of butter to increase my cholesterol so I hired a star on like and then did I pay for that one. I've always I've always tried to get a little bit of saturated fat in my daily diet either through red meat or through eggs or through you know, tablespoon or to maybe a butter depending on how hard I'm training and how what my caloric needs are. I don't want to drop my saturated fat to zero because I find my skin gets dry. I don't feel as well my blood profiles actually suffer a little bit.

1:57:53So that's just me. I do what but I wouldn't I just want to reemphasize. I don't think people should consciously try and increase their butter intake but between butter and olive oil and the fats naturally occurring in nuts and eggs and red meat. Consuming some omega threes through fish oil or through some fatty fish intake you can get a pretty nice contour of the different lipids that include a bunch of micronutrients too right I feel like. Yeah yeah yeah just emphasizing talo and butter and red meat to the exclusion of every plant based fat or nuts to me seems nuts and I'm friends with Paul Saladino and I'll say that I also think that if you eat a diet that's very low in saturated fat like very very low in saturated fat.

1:58:44Most of the people that I know who've done that certainly myself it leads to dry or skin brittle hair, achy joints I do think there's really something to including some saturated fat in once diet in I would say low moderation right sure sure right especially as one gets older and I know all the carnivore folks are probably like left the conversation by now you know the Mediterranean keto model is legit I mean it's got nothing but positive. The effects that that had been seen in the literature so like if you wanted to go keto but you're instead of eating a bunch of large or butter or beef fat you swap it out with nuts avocado extra virgin olive oil you know some extra virgin coconut oil.

1:59:32Then you have a much better cardiovascular risk profile and you can still be on keto and you can still consume you know the range of protein sources and you're sort of getting kind of like a win win there. You know oddly the government the US government used to recommend and use to dish out this recommendation of your fat intake a third of it so. The government has always been into low fat so 30 % fat 10 % should be saturated 10 % should be mono unsaturated 10 % should be a poly unsaturated so. Had had the right idea there with kind of getting a variety of the fat types in there and i'm familiar with the literature on saturated fat and cholesterol and testosterone levels and and you know as as somebody who is not on exogenous testosterone.

2:00:22Dude i'm going to be grabbing for whatever dietary advantage I can get as far as keeping my testosterone levels up and so I I personally would I would not engage a zero saturated fat diet either. I think that's great for people to hear. Are you aware of any female specific nutrition advice aside from you know adjusting for you know body weight on average women tend to be lower body weight than men not always but and so on lower lean mass etc not always. Is there anything specific about some of the topics that we've discussed thus far that from your experience and I know your your wife is extremely skilled in in the department of training and nutrition etc for clients.

2:01:15That is truly female specific like that they really benefit from doing certain things are not doing certain things that men can get away with or don't have to pay attention to. There's very little in that direction almost nothing almost no meaningful differences that you can sort of universalize about women need to eat this way many to eat that way. The only thing that that I would concede to is that if you're if you have somebody with the goal of um you know what forget about the goal. If somebody is a child bearing age she's going to have a monthly menstrual cycle and during that monthly cycle for about a week out of the month.

2:02:00Her cravings are going to go through the roof she might have lethargy at the same time just feel generally like crap and you know even emotionally things will be kind of just regulated. During that time I don't think I don't think women should totally fight their their cravings and especially if somebody is on a weight loss diet so there's a tactic that we use we can use with clients called diet breaks. So if you're endeavoring weight loss then you can go you know you can go hard for three weeks and then on the week of the menstrual cycle kind of take it easy and then given to your cravings so to speak for that week and I'm not talking.

2:02:48Use that week to undo the progress you made in the previous three weeks but I think that if you're going to diet in a cyclical fashion. And this works quite well with women observationally then your week off or your higher calorie week or your maintenance week just coincide it with the menstrual cycle. And that way you're not fighting mother nature you're sort of kind of riding with mother nature and you can have potentially easier time improving body composition that way. As far as the other claims that float around about the you know the parry menopausal period or the menopausal transition and women have to eat this way they have to avoid this and that and eating you know there's there's all kinds of claims being made.

2:03:39They should be framed as speculations honestly and with the menopausal transition like menopause is a really hot thing right now amongst the influencers and things like that. And there is some research showing that there is fat mass that's gained during the menopausal transition and lean mass that's lost at a general population level. But there's a lot of scare mongering around that as well. And there's a study that was done it's called the swan study it's the it's the longest and largest study on on this topic. And they looked at the four to eight year menopausal transition and that usually occurs in women from like mid 40s to mid 50s and they looked at early menopause mid menopause post menopause and they looked at the effects on body composition or the relationship at least with menopausal transition and body composition.

2:04:45And so that's the average amount of lean mass lost was point two kilograms so about half a pound of lean mass lost. So yes these things occur but the magnitude of which they occur. And this is in the general population this isn't in like fitness people who are really meticulous about high enough protein resistance training etc. I don't think this the scare mongering is warranted. I know that there's very real symptoms associated with the menopausal transition that make adhering to a you know a fitness program or a diet program very tough. You know the hot flashes the lethargy joint pain changes in sexual function the combination of those things how they affect sleep poor sleep affects everything negatively and so.

2:05:39So when you when you work with somebody as a practitioner who's going through the menopausal transition I would grant that maybe you set their expectations at maybe 50 % the amount that you would with somebody who was not in the menopausal transition so whereas you you would maybe set somebody to expect like a pound a week loss if they're trying to lose body fat. Then you should maybe set somebody in the paramedic paul's a period to be okay with like half of that because of the other changes that are occurring that make the rest in recovery more difficult. Yep absolutely. Thank you for that answer.

2:06:21I know it's a topic that's as you mentioned is more frequent these days. I think it's important that it is it's been a topic that hasn't received a lot of attention until fairly recently I think because a the women's health initiative studies weren't. We're completed a lot of them were completed in recent years and so the data quote unquote we're in I think also the the effects on on brain like the relationship between estrogen testosterone and brain function in males and females is something that we're just now starting to really understand with modern imaging tools. And so on so this is an area of course that that's going to evolve quickly in the in the upcoming years.

2:07:03Collagen. I've had a derma colleges. Another deathmatch fight I've had a derma oncologist on this podcast we talked about collagen my read of the date on collagen is that. The amino acid profile in collagen which typically comes from fish I believe that most collagen sources are fish fish based on vine or bovine or. That the amino acid profile is not terrific from the perspective of muscle protein synthesis low in losing and other branch chain amino acids I'm hiring other amino acids but that the amino acids that it. Is high in comprise a significant fraction of what skin and other soft tissues are made of so that ingesting 15 to 30 grams of collagen per day might be beneficial independent and.

2:07:56Separate from the dietary protein for sake of muscle protein synthesis it also so happens if you don't mind me say you have very nice skin so do you take collagen. And you're 53 years old you got nice skin. Do you take collagen and what are your thoughts about people who want to take collagen specifically to improve skin appearance and for no other reason. Okay so I want to start off by saying that fitness professionals in the includes evidence based community. They have almost a pathologically minimalist approach to supplementation so it's almost like if you can avoid a supplement and dismiss it and poo poo it great we want.

2:08:43I'm not like that with a few supplements and collagen is one of them and for one thing of all the proteins in the body collagen is the single most abundant. And collagen comprises about me gosh you know 20 to 40 % of the proteins in the body it comprises a significant amount of bone tissue and not just the joints and ligaments and tendons and so from a very kind of no brain or troglidetic level it's like what is everybody's issue with providing the raw materials to the body. And the thing is that it can use to build these tissues and the pushback on that is the idea that the body takes any protein breaks it down into its constituent amino acids and the amino acids get shuttle to where they need to go depending on the homeostatic need of the body.

2:09:44Or you know whatever need the body has at the moment. Okay well if we go with that logic then we would say okay so then there's really no such thing as better proteins than others as long as we have sort of a basic amount of the essential amino acids. No that that that's not true. And then beyond that the interesting thing about collagen and this is debated as well is its resistance to full hydrolysis where you've got these collagen fragments that can float through circulation and into the target tissues. These dientripeptides right they've been they've been observed through isotopic tracer technology.

2:10:27And they make it into the condro sites or the you know the joint cells and they increase activity in the condro sites that that's been documented and published. But beyond that it's like why would nobody box about consuming enough calcium dietary calcium to maintain the integrity of the skeletal system. But hey you talk about consuming enough collagen to maintain the integrity of connective tissues throughout the body and including skin skin is 80 % collagen by dry weight then people lose their crap you know. I kind of think it's a no brainer to at least be optimistic about collagen supplementation if you're somebody who never eats the cartilage of the meat that the bone the connective tissue parts if you don't eat you know your animal foods knows to tail and you're just eating muscle meats.

2:11:28I think the guy who does that but takes collagen as a supplement is going to have an edge on you throughout the life course. And you know on a related note I think that's one of the disadvantages that that vegans might have until they find a genius way to manufacture a non animal collagen molecule. There are multiple systematic reviews showing the benefits of collagen on various skin outcomes which are debated of course. The way protein always seems to kick collagen's ass for muscle related outcomes but you know that's not what we're taking collagen for. So back to your original question. Oh yeah I do take collagen how much do you take about 15 grams a day to me it's kind of a no brainer just like.

2:12:21You know getting enough you're providing the raw materials that the body is going to use and need anyway and the debate is whether or not the bio availability is meaningful or not. You know what I'm willing to just do the first world thing and take that chance and take the collagen supplement the downsides are basically none existed. Great. What other supplements do you take and what maybe we can establish a hierarchy of supplements or clusters instead like like the top one let's talk about the the um by disposable budget I think this is a real world perspective. Yeah. So let's agree that the main thing is get enough sleep exercise eat well to eat well you want to emphasize what you talked about and to try and get the best quality sources that you can afford.

2:13:16Let's assume that somebody has that the amount of disposable income to be able to buy you know one or two supplements to take on an ongoing basis. And let's set aside food supplements like way protein from vitamins and performance supplements and just kind of put them all out there and say okay let's say I've got it's going to differ by country but let's say I've got 150 bucks of disposable income I could get like one or two supplements I can take on going. What would you place into that category if the goal is keep lean tissue the same or increase lean tissue and keep body fat where it's at or lose some body fat overall vigor overall health longevity.

2:14:02Yeah, the big picture. Yeah, got it got it. Okay, so my answer to this is going to be very bro scientific because it is so hard to study those outcomes that we almost are just you know placing our bets when when we do this supplement thing beyond having a diet that is diverse across and within the food groups and provides all the essential macro and micro nutrients which it often doesn't especially if we're dieting especially if we're training or a combination of both especially if we're caught out and not eating an optimal diet traveling all over the place which we often are. So I personally see a multivitamin multivitamin mineral as a no brainer no freaking brainer like who do you know eats this pristine diet that just nails all the micronutrients in optimal amounts.

2:15:05That's a very rare person and that that person would have to be covering the food groups and eating a whole lot of calories of the different groups and across and within the groups. So I this is the bro science part of me I take two multivitamin and it double dose of the same one or two different ones one of them does not have iron one of them does you take them with meals I take with meals yes in the early part of the day presumably. I take it with dinner that's usually my largest meal okay so good quality multivitamin okay I do that usually with multivitamin they would have to be an absolute horse pill to get enough vitamin D vitamin D3 in that so I do take extra vitamin D3 how many are you per day.

2:15:55Oh that's where I get real bro scientific on you man I take quite a bit the literature cuts off with benefits like below a thousand I use I take 4 ,000 I use that's I don't think that's exceedingly high well you don't you're a bro to yeah I mean I I listen I have female family members who are having some health struggles that for whom the only change the only change was 5 ,000 I you a vitamin D3 per day. And it made a significant positive effect on a number of different subjective metrics and some objective metrics and these were people they were getting their sunlight and and eating very high quality food really putting time and effort into it so I'm a believer in D3 D3 is getting pub medd right now in a similar way that fish oil is getting pub medd and so it's we've verbed.

2:16:53We did so it's now it's a controversial thing to take you know vitamin D3 you know you you have position statements rolling out well we thought you need now you don't really. Okay so good multivitamin with iron especially for women who menstruate right yeah especially you need that vitamin D D3 I take vitamin D3 I take fish oil. I take 3 grams of official not 3 grams combined EPA DHA but 3 grams in 3 1 gram caps. And that's a good amount I would say there's that get you over the 1 gram per day of EPA it's right around there yeah that's what I shoot for to 1 gram per day of EPA which means taking about 3 grams total.

2:17:36Yeah it's it's about 1 gram a day of combined EPA DHA and the atrial fib literature is showing that much above that okay then you're incurring this risk but you know what man I don't. Believe everything I read even in the peer reviewed literature you've been a scientist too long. Yeah yeah dude right there's just certain things you just take it with a grain of salt you recognize the literature evidence base and then you make the judgment call. It's based on your own sensibilities and how you respond individually you know like the regular hierarchy of evidence is one way but I think at the very tip is how do you respond individually to to protocol.

2:18:20So yeah and and so. Fish oil as you take that another thing that would blow up the size of a multivitamin is getting enough magnesium to show benefit so I take magnesium. Which form of magnesium to you. So magnesium citrate I'm cool with pretty much anything except magnesium oxide. Okay oxide is the low bioavailability form but yeah magnesium citrate and I do take creatine about 5 grams a day and I do take another bro science maneuver which which boy I'm really incriminating myself here I take vitamin C extra vitamin C a gram a day. What effect are you seeking with the vitamin C? Effects on immunity plus kind of a potential synergy with the collagen.

2:19:12Oh right and there are some data on this I realize that you're framing all of this very cautiously under the umbrella bro science. And this is just me that I wouldn't tell everybody to do this. You asked me what I think there are good data on vitamin D on on D3 on combining Caught 15 grams of collagen with vitamin C at least in the studies looking at skin elasticity. So I you're not that far out on a limb I I'm realizing in the audience is certainly realizing just how cautious and conservative you are with your words which I believe everyone appreciates. So the 5 grams of creatine some vitamin C anything more esoteric than that.

2:19:52No nothing beyond the multi vitamin D fish oil vitamin C creatine magnesium. How many days per week are you resistance journey? About about fortified and do you do cardio regularly? Okay so here's the thing that a lot of people would ding me on is um I try to make my resistance training cardioe. So I my cardio if you can call it cardio would consist of just just walks around the neighborhood on occasion. Or just really light hikes on occasion and maybe pacing around between sets. I enjoy resistance training I make it fun. I mean everybody wants to wait 2 to 3 minutes between sets to move the maximal amount of loads.

2:20:47But you know what you can do progressive resistance training. You can do progressive overload even within a short rest paradigm. I mean as long as it's it's trending up you know you're you're net tonnage moved is training up over time. It won't move up as quickly as if you were to a freaking rest 2 to 3 minutes between sets but I love short rest. I love high rep. You and I are not training together. I like to lift heavy and slow. Like 3 to 5 minutes between sets. Now I'm in like 2 to 5 repetition range. Anything more than 6 feels like cardio. But I like to run and I do other forms of cardio for cardio.

2:21:27But we should make sure that you at some point you and Cameron Haynes trained together because he does the circuit. His run lift shoot thing that he does every day. You know he shoots arrows so it practices archery. He runs often 10 to 20 miles a day. But he lifts every day and he does the circuit style. Lifting training that I've done with him and it's for a guy like me. Yeah, it's murder. I mean it is so hard. I've never been so sore. I've never been so exhausted. But it sounds like it's very well tuned to what you thrive on. I've been messing around with cluster sets. And I want you to try this.

2:22:01Can you explain what for people what a cluster set is? A cluster set is you basically you're breaking up a set with rest periods that range from anywhere from gosh 5 to like 20 seconds within like a single like set or within like extension leg press and then squat as that. That would be more like a super set or a giant set. So cluster set is like a single I'll explain it. I want you to try this. I think you'll find it funny. So with a given lift let's imagine what's your what's your favorite? I'm talking to you as if you're a bodybuilder. What's your favorite body part? I like to run and I lift to stay strong enough and stable enough to run.

2:22:42What do I like to train the most? Yeah. As far as just as much as I've been doing a lot. I love leg day. I'm a huge fan of leg day. So I'll do I go very heavy on like hack squats or belt squats. Are you a leg extension person? Yep. I do those two. Okay. So let's imagine you pick a weight for leg extensions that you can do your first work set after however however you might warm up your first work set. Pick a load that will enable you to fail out at about let's say 16 reps. Okay. I don't know how about this. How about how about we'll do 12 reps. Okay. 12 reps. Fair enough. Take it to failure. My colleagues would say, oh okay, well, you know, I'll leave like one rep and reserve and what.

2:23:28I like to train to failure all the freaking time. I just it's more fun. I've been training for a long time. I don't hurt myself with training to failure and I wouldn't train to failure with a freaking bench press or squat. But you can choose the exercises you can take to failure. The leg extension is one of them. You can take to failure. It can take to partials. So um, leg extension. Choose a way you can do for 12 reps. Take it to failure and do five slow breaths.

2:23:57That's one and take that five times and then go right back into the set. Don't change the weight. Try to do half the amount of reps you did. And you'll usually hit it. Sometimes you won't, you know, if you breathe fast enough, you kind of won't hit it. If your five slow breaths are slow enough, you'll hit the six reps in this case. Okay, after that, 10 slow breaths. Try to, try to beat your previous set. Try to do, if you can do six great, if you can do seven great. That's a cluster set with failure built into it a couple of times. How many cluster sets would you do per body part? Two. Yeah, and multiple sets.

2:24:40Yeah. This seems like a great thing to do if one is low on time. And perhaps if one has a nagging injury that you need to work around by avoiding heavy weights, I hope to never be in the position to have to do this workout. And you can add a drop set to the second exercise. Yeah. And cut the weight down by 25, 8%. And go right into a drop set. So kind of the point of that and how I'm sort of defending my non -love for formal cardio is a lot of my resistance training, I try to make it, I try to sort of try to gamify it in that sense. And it ends up stimulating cardio respiratory pathways to a greater degree than your typical resistance training.

2:25:30I would never deny the benefit of formal cardio. But just how I navigate my training and sticking with what I enjoy, I do enough volume through the week to where I would say that look, whoever loves endurance adaptations, you know, increases in VO2 max pushing that in. Great, good for you. I just think that there's a limit to how much that will benefit cardio vascular health and or longevity compared to just staying physically active, keeping the body composition. And just being consistent with that. And of course the other lifestyle factors too. So yeah, different conversation I guess. Yeah, but I think it weaves very nicely into what we've been talking about up until now, which is just a real world scenario.

2:26:18Like this is what works for you. You know, touch on what works for me, but this is what works for you and you're able to kind of merge cardio and resistance training in a way that sounds very time efficient. Well, I don't always do the cluster set thing. I love doing super sets. So if I'm at a station where I can super set chest and back work, I'll super set with minimal rest. Also very set and efficient. And or you know, bicep versus tricep work or anything that you can do sort of super setting antagonistic muscles. I take advantage of that. I don't necessarily always do the cluster set thing.

2:27:03You mentioned that your wife is a trainer. Does she train her female clients this way? And do you train your female clients this way? The reason I ask is that in my experience, I realize this is a generalization, but I've had female training partners before. Some of the best training partners have had by the way, female training partners. They they work hard and they were also great athletes. They tended to view resistance training at least at first as something to limit the rest periods between sets. Like they felt like if their heart rate wasn't up continuously, it wasn't exercise. Those people often were pleasantly surprised by doing lower, lower repetition longer rest work.

2:27:44But in general, do you recommend what you just described more for your male or female training clients? Being perfectly honest, it's just what I enjoy doing. It is probably not the most efficient way to make muscle gains. But I just find it fun and I enjoy it. When I was training folks for the specific goal of hypertrophy, I would put them through kind of the standard. Let's rest between sets, move the maximum amount of load. Let's cover a spectrum of loading zones. I think Brad has done the best work in the hypertrophy realm. Training for hypertrophy is one of the best ways to train for optimizing metabolic health.

2:28:40There should be some hypertrophy training included in any program, in my opinion.

2:28:48It's just what I enjoy, man. I realize it does go against a lot of the typical consensus. Thank you for sharing that. I think it highlights if nothing else, that doing what one enjoys in the realm of fitness and nutrition is equally important to what's best because if you don't enjoy it, you're unlikely to stick to things. It's a fine time. Find what you enjoy. Listen, I want to extend a huge thank you for coming here today. This was a long time coming. I always knew from our first in -person meeting that we would do this at some point. And I'm so glad we're doing this now. I must say you have an absolutely staggeringly impressive command of the literature.

2:29:33Anyone that's listened to this realizes that you don't just say stuff. You always precede your statements with the origin of the information you're about to convey, whether or not it's your own personal experience and preference, whether it's from a meta -analysis, whether or not it's from a particular study. And as an academic, I especially appreciate you always credit the authors of the study. I know people heard this, but I want to underscore the scholarly nature with which you present evidence and attribution to the original authors of the work. And it's so clear that you've got your mind wrapped around these massive topics that are of immense confusion to the general public and importance.

2:30:15And to take us back to something I said at the beginning, when I think of Alan Erigan, I think of immense amounts of knowledge shared. And this immense property of clarifying things for people. Today you've taught us that protein is extremely important. What qualities of protein exist in different domains of the different food groups, timing of protein intake, timing relative to exercise, timing of exercise, type of exercise. Talk about college and we talked about calorie surplus deficit. Yes, you can gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously. And you make this information not just clear, but extremely practical.

2:30:54So thank you, thank you, thank you for the immense amount of information you provided us today, and that you continue to provide online and elsewhere. Of course, we'll provide links to where people can learn more about you and from you. And I just want to say, keep going. I value you as a colleague and a friend. And I'm so grateful that you came out here today. And that I said the wrong thing on social media so that we had the opportunity to meet. Those right back to you, Andrew, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here. And I really, really think this will bring a lot of value. Just thank you for everything.

2:31:30Well, you're most welcome. It's been a true pleasure. We'll have you back again. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Alan Eragon. To learn more about Alan's work and to find links to his articles and various other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple.

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2:34:36And as mentioned at the beginning of today's episode, we are now partnered with Momentus Supplements because they make single -ingredient formulations that are of the absolute highest quality and they ship international. If you go to livemomentus .com slash Hubertman, you will find many of the supplements that have been discussed on various episodes of the HubertmanLab podcast, and you will find various protocols related to those supplements.