Giles Yeo: The #1 Reason You’re NOT Losing Weight (Follow THIS Diet and Start Losing Weight TODAY!)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why is it so difficult to lose weight.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Because your brain hates it when you lose it, you're
finding biologuist.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Doctor drives a well top, Thank you so much. So
if calories is such a myth, how come so many
people have used it as a strategy for weight loss and.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
People get so obsessed with just the number that when
they're cutting calories, they're considering the quality of the food
that they're eating. The major issue is not the quantity,
it is the quality.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
So what truly is healthier? How do we know what
healthy actually is?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Calories are not all equal. For every one hundred calories
of protein you eat, we are only ever able to
use seventy calories. Protein counts are thirty percent wrong everywhere.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
So if you could encourage people to change part of
their diet, what should they be focused on?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Those are the three numbers that would use deploy it
to your culture, your type of diet. If you actually
focus on those three numbers, your diet will automatically become healthier.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
So we have to go do some shopping, which my
wife will be very mad at me for that. I've
brought things into this house that she would never allow
me to have.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
You see here parts These are called incidental virtuous foods
automatically made everyone lower their calorie estimates by ten.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you're predisposed because of your genetics to being overweight,
are you stuck? The number one health and wellness.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Podcast, Jay Sheety, Jay Sheddy Jesus, Hey everyone, welcome back
to On Purpose, the place you come to become the happier,
healthier and more healed.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm so grateful that you tune back in. Make sure
you subscribed if you haven't already. And today's guest, I know,
is going to be someone who's going to answer a
lot of your questions. We've been reading the comments. I've
been reading all of the things that you've been asking about,
posting about when you're sharing the podcast, and this episode
is dedicated to you. Today's guest is Charles Yo, a geneticist,

(02:01):
author and professor at the University of Cambridge, where he
studies how our genes influence hunger and body weight. He's
the author of Gene Eating and Why Calories Don't Count.
This is the book that we're discussing today. If you're
listening and you're loving the information, go and grab your copy.
And he's one of the leading voices in challenging diet

(02:23):
myths through science. We all know there's a ton of
diet myths out there right now. Today we're going to
bust them. And Charles also hosts the podcast Choose the Fat.
Go and subscribe. If you haven't already, please welcome to
On Purpose Charles. Yo, Charles, it's great to have you here.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Jay, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, I'm so grateful for the work you're doing and
excited to be educated and illuminated. Surprised today with everything
you have to share. But the first thing I want
to ask you, that I want to dive in with you,
is do calories actually matter?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
The book obviously says why calories don't count, And every
time I say that, people think I'm antiphysics, but particularly
the Jimbros, the guys who are all counting counting calories,
they think I'm antiphysics. I'm not antiphysics. I know that
two hundred calories of chips is twice the portion of
one hundred calories of chips. I do understand that, But
so is two hundred grams of chips twice the portion
of one hundred grams of chips. And no one is

(03:19):
trying to compare two hundred grams of chips to two
hundred grams of carrots. I think ultimately that is it.
So we eat food, our body then extracts the calories,
and depending on what we eat, your body has to
work more or less hard to extract the calories.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
So when does our body have to work more hard
and when does it have to work less hard?

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Primarily if food has more protein in it, and if
food has more fiber in its fiber only comes from plants, obviously,
then your body has to work harder in order to
get you know, to get out the cards, get out
the fat, and get everything out of there. If there's
less protein and less fiber, then your body finds it
far easier to actually extract us calories put simplistically.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
But that's not always good for us.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Now, that's not always good for us, that's not so.
So I think it depends why you need the calories,
how healthy or unhealthier you are as you are actually
eating to get the calories. It probably was good for
us fifty thousand years ago. As so you can imagine
if you've taken down the antelope, okay, and you're sitting
there and eating raw meat. Okay, You've taken really a

(04:23):
lot of energy to take the antlope, and you're eating
the raw meat, and so you're getting a certain amount
of calories from it until someone suddenly invented fire okay,
and so when you then put the raw meat into
the fire, you suddenly have a kebab okay, and you
eat it. The cooking makes it easier for your body
to extract the calories. So in that sense, for the

(04:43):
x number of energy you've taken the chase down the antelope,
you now getting more energy, more calories. So in that sense,
it kept us alive. In fact, people think that at
around the time when we had fire and then suddenly
we're able to cook food, that is when our brain
began to grow more, okay, because we then had time

(05:03):
not to always think about food, but we could then
get more energy from the food that we were currently eating.
So at that point excellent today, le's good.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
So if calories is such a myth, how come so
many of the jimbros and the people have used it
as a strategy for weight loss for so long?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
You know, calorie counting has been around for a long time.
It has been around since the early nineteen hundreds, there
was a doctor called lou Hunt Pizzas based yeah, Los Angeles, okay,
Los Angeles based clinician in nineteen whatever time, I right
right after World War two, larger lady, and she began
to realize that actually she needed to lose weight. Okay,
and I realized obesity wasn't a problem at a time,

(05:43):
but she began to say that, you know what, you
can't imagine yourself lighter. You have to really begin to
think about about how much you're eating. And so calories
were a new science at the time. And what she
did was she decided that and I read the book.
It's a good books if you look up Lulu Hunt Pezzas,
and what she would say is, don't think about eating
a slice of pie. Don't think about eating bacon. Think

(06:05):
about eating one hundred calories of pie. Think about eating
one hundred calories of bacon. And she published this book
New York Times bestseller for five years running okay, in
nineteen seventeen or something like that. She was the first
calorie counter. The thing about calories is sure, okay, if
you are cutting calories in a balanced way, so say,
your diet is actually fine. But you're eating too much

(06:27):
of the diet pence you have obesity. Well, then if
you don't take a sort of a balanced way of
reducing your calories, it does work. The problem we have
today is people get so obsessed with just the number
that calorie four hundred, five hundred and six hundred that
when they're cutting calories, they are no longer cutting it
either evenly. But they're also not even considering the quality

(06:51):
of the food that they're eating, just thinking, Okay, if
i only have to have four hundred calories, I'm gonna
have it as a shake, I'm gonna have it as
this as that, rather than thinking more in terms of
nutritional quality of the food. That is my major issue with.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Calories, right, So it's almost like the age old quantity
versus quality issue.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Absolutely, quantity does matter to a degree, clearly, of course,
but I think today the major issue to my mind
is not the quantity, it is the quality. I think
our diets on average have not improved, so in fact
they've gotten worse as the quality of diet. We get
far more calories. Now, calories have never been cheaper in
the UK, which is which is where I'm based. You

(07:30):
can get you can get a thousand calories of chips
French fries okay for less than a pound okay, which
is what a dollar about thirty or something like that.
Excuse me, really, so it is very cheap. But are
they good for you? Okay? Well? Are the dudo's calories
really really matter? Are you getting all the micronutrients? Are
you getting everything that you actually need? Think about the

(07:51):
quality of the food. The quantity matters, but it's a
secondary concern to me.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
What is different between five hundred galories of French fries,
because that's probably what it is, right if it's fried
as well, and the oil and everything that you add
to it versus what would you compare that to in
our head? What are the mistakes people are making when
they're just calorie counting, when they're only looking at quantity,
What are they comparing to be equal? Almost that isn't

(08:17):
really equal from a micronutrient level.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Let me give you a more an extreme example. First, okay,
the same food corn on a carb sweet corn. Now,
if you had one hundred calories of and then you
looked in the blue the next day, is quite clear
you haven't absorbed anywhere close to hundred calories of free corn.
But when you take sweet corn exactly the same corn,
you desiccate it. You know you you sort of you
turn it into a muscle, You make a quanto tia,

(08:42):
you make corn bread. Suddenly a far greater percentage of
the calories are made available to you. But you always
started with a one hundred calories of sweet corn. Okay,
So that is the two thing where processing gets you
more calories. Think about a steak, okay, where you have
a steak, just a normal steak for and calories of
a steak. Say you cook medium rare, so five minutes,

(09:03):
eight minutes to cook. Imagine that same steak murdered, okay,
So you then mince it up, you put it into
a regue bolonnaise sauce, which you have to cook for
two hours. Then you layer that into a lasagnia. You
cook it again for another three hours. Suddenly the same
four hundred calories has been cooked for three hours before
you eat it. You're gonna get more calories out of that,
not more than four hundred calories. You just have to

(09:24):
work very hard to get the four hundred calories compared
to getting something which has been cooked for three to
four hours. So it's not when you take the same
food and think about how you prepare the food, then
the different calorie counts then begin to matter the moment
you then cross compare food. If you're trying to compare
chips to a steak, that is very very difficult to

(09:47):
do because now you're talking about this iron and steak.
You know, there's obviously a lot of protein and steak.
There are some fat and steak as well, all all
these things that have happened, Whereas if you're now looking
at a French fries, there's a lot of fat. Obviously
there's a lot of carbo hydrants. There's nothing wrong with carbohydrates.
We need carbohydrates. But comparing four to five hundred calories

(10:07):
of each of them very very very different.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
And you're saying that most of us look at them
as the same because we're looking at quantity. We're ultimately
saying five hundred calories of this and five hundred calories
of this, Now you've got to go.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Certainly is true in the UK as well. I think
it's true here in the US. You goner any of
the big food manufact not manufacturers, the restaurants, Okay, big
chain restaurants and you open it up and you see
the calorie counts. Now, when you see the calorie counts
by the meal, you're going, no, this is a thousand calories.
I don't need that. Oh wait a minute, I'm going
to go with this one. It's got eight hundred calories.
Is two hundred calories. And most people just look at

(10:43):
that and don't even really consider, well, is it eight
hundred calories of a salad versus this? How much dressing
in a salad? No one is thinking about these things
when they're just comparing the eight hundred versus one thousand
in thinking I'm going for eight hundred because that is
healthier because there's a smaller number, and a lot of
us do this. That's the danger of obsessing over one

(11:03):
individual number.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
So what truly is healthier? How do we know what
healthy actually is?

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That is a very difficult question because it depends now clearly,
if you are a child, clearly, if you are an
Olympic athlete and exercising, or if you are an old
person in a hospital in bed, you know, and you're
trying very very difficult to absorb calories. Then from that
specific scenario, you need a lot of energy that you

(11:33):
can metabolize easily. Okay. Now, if you're Joe Schmoe like
me sat on a couch okay, or if you're doing
or you're an office worker, well then your needs what
is considered healthy then becomes very very different to someone else.
So what is healthy really does depend not only on
who you are in terms of your age, your ethnicity,

(11:53):
you know, your sex, right, but it also does matter
what you're doing at the time. So it does depend.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
When did a B city start to become a real
problem and why.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
It's obviously a spectrum. I don't think suddenly one day
we woke up and said, ah, it's obesity. I think
people began collecting numbers the United States in particular, in
around nineteen eighty four. So if you go back and
look prior to nineteen eighty four, they were there was
not a great deal of data. Obviously, some people were
still collecting data. There had always been people who had
OBCCE this is not a unique thing, but very few

(12:24):
around nineteen eighty four. And coincidentally, that's also when Domino's
Pizza made it to the UK. We'll leave that alone, okay,
from that, but nineteen eighty four appears to be the
ground zero for when people begin to collect data. And
so I think that most people accept that the mid

(12:45):
eighties was when we begin to see a problem, and
it's only gotten worse and worse since the mid eighties.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
When was the rise of fast food? When did that
really begin? Do you know? I'm intrigued now.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
So I think the first true well depends what you
mean my fast food, right, I mean, because I feel
like when we.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Just started to be able to go buy a burger
or buy a pizza in the same way as you said.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
So the first, the first of the big fast food
manufacturers was obviously well, one of the first was McDonald's. Okay, McDonald's,
And I think there's a movie about that, right, a
great movie, you know. How It's fine how they work
it out. But he didn't set out to make unhealthy food.
He was setting out to make a consistent product that

(13:26):
people could afford and enjoy to eat, Okay, and at
the time, oblically wasn't a problem. So trying to increase
access to foods that at the time were only available
to people with more money, you know, was a positive thing.
As we begin to value convenience more and also oddly enough,
begin to value portion sizes more. I like a big

(13:47):
steak like anybody else. But now portion size has also
overwhelming become you know, part of the goodness of a meal.
So it's very very difficult to to to say, but
I think when drip drip, dripped up drip, and as
suddenly we're in a situation, we are now then boosted.
I want to point out, completely boosted by the deliveroos
and uber eats of the world, where suddenly where at

(14:10):
least okay, in fact, let's back away. First of all,
you could drive through okay, so that was probably the
first of the true conveniences. Oh I can drive through Okay,
you don't even get out of the car. Then I think,
then we obviously had this situation. Then that supersized me.
There's you know, can I where it actually use a
marketing kloy where you can add that, and then you

(14:31):
have delivered uber eats where now you don't have the
get off your couch, I can peep and someone will
actually deliver the food to my door. It has been
ample So each step has amplified it more till today
we're sat here. If we wanted to eat whatever I
mean we're doing it twenty minutes, suddenly we'll have a
whole fast food you know, feast in front of us.

(14:52):
So I think it wasn't one single thing, but each
of these each of these things suddenly increased our ability
and ea of getting of getting these foods. The foods
also became cheaper. Yeah, that's the problem today.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, and so since we've started measuring, we are putting
on more weight. We are, Yeah, we are as a whole,
on the whole, we're just pretty humans are just putting
on more weight.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
We are putting more on more weight, and not in
an unhealthy and exactly and not the good weight. You know,
we're not putting on we're not putting on muscle. Interestingly, actually,
if you go back to the time when we were
working more physical jobs, none of us really works physical,
you know what I mean, where we sat on our
backsides and doing things. We have dish washers and stuff
like that. Actually, if you go around to the turn
of the eighteen to the nineteenth century Victorian times, people

(15:39):
were probably eating more calories than actually physically more. But
people were doing coal mining. They were working in you know,
in the steel mills and et cetera, et cetera, So
they would probably be on average. Certainly, in Victorian era
in the UK, people were doing three thousand average calories
a day. But that's because they were coal miners, that's
because they were washing clothes, that's because they were doing

(16:00):
everything else. So we on average are probably eating fewer calories,
but where they come from have really really changed, right,
the type of food we're eating, So calories are not
all equal.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, you say, the body digests obviously carbs, fats, and
proteins absolutely differently, correct, why is that important and tell
us the difference?

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Okay, there three things, So these are obviously fats, the macronutrients. Okay,
so fat, carbs, and protein are primarily made. In fact,
fats and carbs are only made of three atoms. Okay,
so carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen, but in different configurations. Okay.
Protein however, has carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, but it's also full
of nitrogen. About sixteen percent of protein is nitrogen. So

(16:41):
whenever our body is dealing with the stuff, it is
far easy easier for your body to digest and then metabolize,
which is two different steps. Right, So digestion means the
food is converted. Fat is converted to fatty acids, protein
is converted to amino acids, and carbs are converted to
sugars unless you sugars and then it passes across the

(17:02):
gut wall. That is digestion, that's where that's when that happens.
Metabolism is when those individual amino acids, fatty acids, sugars
are transported to the cell and your cell then converts
it to energy. That's metabolism. So each of those two
stages takes time, takes energy, and your body has to
invest energy into it. So protein is the most complicated.

(17:24):
So for every one hundred calories of protein you eat
pure protein calories, we are only ever able to use
seventy calories seven zero. So protein CONTs are thirty percent
wrong everywhere because we give it off as heat as
part of the energy we put in to sorting out.
To sorting out protein fans is nearly one hundred percent available,
so to speak, because because it's very very dense carbs,

(17:47):
this is where the fiber comes in. So if you
have refined carbohydrates, now if you have sugar, if you
have sugar, that's ninety eight ninety nine percent available Okay,
so let's not ignore sugar. But sugar is a very
simple carbohydrate. But if we have something starchy. Now, if
you had white bread so polished where the fiber has
been stripped out, then it probably takes five calories for

(18:09):
every hundred so five percent to deal with carbohydrates without fiber,
Whereas if you put in fiber, if you have whole meal,
if what have you, then it takes ten percent of
energy to deal with it. Your body's just dealing with it.
So calorie counts are probably five to ten percent wrong
everywhere because of the amount of energy it takes to

(18:31):
metabolize these macronutrients.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, I think you said that. You're right that we
absorb fewer calories from almonds than the packaging actually says.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yes, far far far far far few explain that. So
because almonds are you know, there're eight our whole food.
You've got to bite through them. There's obviously fiber in them,
there's all kinds of things, and so what Okay, in fact,
let's back away, So how do you count calculate how
many calories there are in a product? Okay, a guy
called Atwater, and this Atwater was a professor of biochemistry

(19:04):
in Connecticut between eighteen eighty and nineteen hundred. This is
a while ago, Okay. He used a technique called bomb calorimetry.
And in effect, what you do is you take food,
you burn it in a sealed container, and then you
measure how much heat it gives off through a water
and a temperature, so how much heat it goes up.
So one calorie is the amount of temperature it takes
to raise one liter of water one degree celsius at

(19:28):
sea level, So that's a calorie. And so what he
did at Water did was he took almonds, celery, carrot, steak,
he burnt them and figured out how many total calories
were in there. He also knew how much fat and protein.
He then fed the almonds, carrots and two people and
then he burnt their pooh, okay, for twenty years he

(19:49):
did this and from there that is where he came
up with the atwater general factors. So, for all of
us who have done high school biology, four calories for
a gram of carb, four calories for a for a
gram of protein, and nine calories for a gram of fat.
So that came from atwater and and and you know
what he was doing The issue is obviously that when

(20:10):
you actually burn all of it, everything goes away, and
so all the calories are there. Whereas when you have
to metabolize it and it goes into your body, then
your body begins to metabolize. Energy has to go in
in order to extract stuff out. I'll give you another example.
Actually celery. Okay, Now, celery famously people have said has
negative calories. That's not quite true. So like a medium

(20:35):
stick of celery like you might get with buffalo wings
or something, right that is, probably you may get raw,
you may get six calories out of the your lucky
if you cook that stick. However, you chop it up,
you put into a stew, what have you? Suddenly cooking
it you get thirty calories from it. Clary, that's exactly
the same stick as celery. You're not adding energy to it.
It's because the fiber and everything like that. It's just

(20:55):
very difficult to extrac calories out. Whereas when you cook
it and you process it, okay, suddenly it's easier for
you to get that calorie out. So therefore, an almond,
which is not a process item, right because the only
thing you've done is to take it off the skin, okay,
and then you eat it. Now, if you make almond milk,
if you if you if you actually put down and
and and and put an almond powder and do things

(21:18):
like that, then you begin to get more calories out
of the out of the almond.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Got it. So I have to ask you this because
every summer a lot of people from the States will
go to Europe and they'll say, I ate pasta, I
ate pizza, and I lost weight. But when I eat
that in America, it's never gonna happen. Is that true? Like,
why is it that people feel when they go to
Europe they can eat all the things, they can eat bread,

(21:43):
they can eat pasta, and they're not putting on weight,
They're not feeling the same.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
I think they're probably two different reasons for Okay, okay.
So I think, first of all, I think they're walking
more because because when you go when you go to
Europe and you're doing thing, you're not gonna drive around Rome, right,
I mean, you're gonna be You're gonna be walking, You're
gonna be doing this. So I think there's a walking
element here. Try and walk around here in La impossible.
So I think there's probably that as well, but everything
there is made by hand and from scratch. No, that's

(22:09):
not a lot. That's obviously you can go to fastwood
places as well, But if you're going to Rome, or
you're going to Sicily, you're gonna go to the mom
and pop shop, you're gonna go to what they're doing exactly,
the local places. And so they would have cooked the
food for less, they would have used other techniques and
so things just you are going to get less calories

(22:31):
out because they're less processed processing of food. There's nothing
wrong with processed foods per se, because everything that you
do to a food is processed. So cooking is a process,
fermentation is a process. Ultra processing, the super processing of food,
that's another story entirely because obviously what that happens is
those are industrial processes. And I think a lot of
the food that we eat, fifty percent of the calories okay,

(22:53):
that we get, certainly in the UK as well and
in the US, fifty percent come from prepackaged foods okay,
are so called quote unquote ultra processed foods. This is
less so in somewhere like like it, say, they're more
likely to make the pizza from scratch. You're more likely
no one's going to serve you a frozen pizza. You're
gonna get it. It's gonna come out of the oven,
it's gonna be fed to you the past that's going
to be dried in a specific way, that's going to

(23:15):
be doing all kinds of things. So I think the
way they make the food does matter. But you need
to then take that into account that if you're on
holiday in Europe, you're probably walking as well.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, yeah, no, because I think it's you just hear
it all the time and I'm like, wait, this is
this thrue And even even my wife says, I mean
when we saw the difference in water quality even in
England versus here. Food quality for sure, so much bread quality,
bread quality for sure? Is it that everything here is
being ultra processed? Is that your challenge? Like are just

(23:44):
normal foods being like what about tomatoes? And they taste different?
But first, here's a quick word from the brands that
support the show. All right, thank you to our sponsors.
Now let's dive back in. I remember one year I
was in when I spend more time in India, I
remember that vegetables just taste different. Like they have flavor,

(24:05):
whereas here every cucumber tastes the same you won't notice
anything different.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Okay, So I think that flavor really really does matter.
I think nutritional need. I mean people say that the
vegetables here, or if you grow them in a certain way,
you get less nutrients from them. That's probably overstating it.
I don't think that's necessary.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
I do think, however, that if you are if you're
growing vegetables first of all, using more natural techniques rather
than intensive techniques, you are going to get less pesticized
and less things. So just on that that's better for
you already, right, because you're not eating so many chemicals.
I do think that they are more intense in flavor, okay.

(24:42):
And does flavor mean more minerals and more and more things.
Probably a little bit of that. But ultimately I don't
think the vegetables here are bad for you. They just
are not as tasty, and depending on what you're eating,
I think are going to be full of pesticize and
other things that we probably don't want to eat that
much of. I don't think that actually there are fewer
good things in the vegetables here. They just don't taste

(25:03):
as nice.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, how is it that? Another thing I hear a
lot is Hey, I'm eating the same exact thing as
this other person over here, but they have a six
pack and I can't even lose weight. Why is that happening?
I'm sure you hear this too.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
I do. I do hear this. So there is an
element of truth there that we deal with calories differently,
So there are two There are two elements of it.
So obviously there's this. You can break down why someone
gains weight into a number of different things. First of all,
how much do they eat? That is my expertise, that's
primarily what I study. But even if you ate exactly

(25:38):
the same thing, once it gets into you, there are
two elements as First of all, your efficiency, so in
other words, for every given calorie, how many amount of
protein for what have you? How efficients are usually at
releasing the calories? That's going to differ between you and me.
That's the first thing. The second thing is what we
call nutrient partitioning. So when it comes in, how much
do you burn, how much do you store? And crucially

(26:01):
when you store it, where do you store it? And
so all of those have genetic elements to it, which
means that they explain differences between different people, and so
undoubtedly it's going to be a case where some people
can eat more than someone else and not actually gain
as much weight. The six pack element to it probably overstated.
The six pack element would would be obviously be a

(26:22):
more of an exercise and thing. But yes, it is
true that people can eat more and maintain the same
weight as other people.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Okay, and what do I do about that? Because that
obviously doesn't feel good when you're like, hey, I'm trying
to do the thing I'm trying.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
To I think it is not the reason for the
obesity epidemic that we're facing that is down to eating.
I think that the energy expenditure and metabolism, these things
play a small role, and that we have nothing that
we there's very little we can actually do about it,
right because the only interestingly, the easiest way to increase
your metabolism is to gain weight. And people think it's

(26:56):
counter intuitive, right, right, But if you take a mini,
a small time, tiny mini car, it is always going
to have a lower fuel consumption than a big suv. Okay,
Ultimately that's the case. So the easiest way to increase
your energy expenditure is to gain weight, but then that's
not the aim of the game. And the other thing
is when you lose weight, your body also reduces this metabolism, right,

(27:17):
so that is going to be an issue. So the
only way is to try and increase your metabolism temporarily.
There's no there are no foods that can increase your metabolism.
Coffee probably does it briefly, Okay, chilis, don't do that, Okay, briefly.
Exercise is probably the thing that most effectively increases your metabolism,
at least temporarily, so when you're doing it, and then

(27:39):
there is a tail off as you stop, so you're
continuing burning. That's the first thing. And second is building
muscle mass, because your muscle, your lean mass, is more
metabodically active than fat mass. So you could be of
the same weight, but if you have more muscle in
your body as a ratio, then you will have a
higher metabolism. But your underlying metabolism. You divide your metabolism

(28:01):
by the amount of muscle you're carrying. That cannot change
that that won't change until you get older. So ultimately
that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to say, well, okay,
I've got a lower metabolism than you, for example, Well
then maybe I need to make sure I gain a
bit more muscle to sort of to sort of mitigate against.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
That card it. So, how does someone get rid of
that stubborn belly fat?

Speaker 2 (28:23):
See, there's an excellent question. And you cannot direct where
you lose fat. It's very very very very very frustrating.
So you know, you go to classes and there's booty
busting and there's whatever you and and you know what
the deal is, the only way to get rid of
the belly fat is to eat less and probably exercise
more as well. And people are going whatever, I'm coming

(28:44):
onto this podcast to hear that it is because it's
because it's it's physics. Okay, it's difficult to do, but
it's physics. No, your weight will go on to where
genetically it's going to go and will come off from that.
You know, what the size of your boob for society
of your bum, what's the size of your belly? People
wish they could direct where they get the weight loss from.

(29:06):
I want it from my tummy. You know. For example,
when I gain weight, I know I get a bit joury. Okay,
this is where it goes on first. My wife always
tells me why, no clue, no clue, And it's also
it does go off first when I begin to lose weight.
But so it's very difficult to get rid of the
stubborn fat by trying to do situps. But what you
have to do is you do actually have to sort
of shift your eating patterns in order to lose belly fat.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Let's talk about the genetics piece, because I think that's
the hard part. If you're predisposed because of your genetics
to being overweight, are you stuck?

Speaker 2 (29:38):
If you are predisposed genetically to eating more because you
are more driven to food for a number of different reasons,
then it will always be harder for you to lose weight. Okay,
ultimately that is true, and there's no need to sugarcoat it.
But I guess the analogy I'll use is this, I
will never ever be able to run as fast as

(29:59):
you say bolt, okay, because it's my genes. But it
doesn't mean that if I train, I won't run faster
than I do now. So I think ultimately that's it, right.
None of us here are gonna become an Olympic athlete.
But if we train, we'll get fitter, we'll get better.
And so you've got to sort of deal with the
genes you have. You can't blame it. You can blame
your parents, that's where the genes have come from. But

(30:21):
ultimately you deal with the hand of cards you have.
I wish I look like Brad Pitt, but there are
many many reasons why that's not gonna happen, right, And
so you deal with the hand of cards you are
dealt But even with a more difficult hand of cards,
so to speak, a more difficult set of genes, when
it comes to being overweight, it doesn't mean that you
can't do anything about it.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
What are you seeing in terms of gene limitations? Do
you see demographics having certain gene limitations and drawbacks compared
to others, Like I know as a South Asian man, generally,
putting on way is easy. Building muscle is hard. And
a lot of South Asian men will have that conversation
with each other and say, hey, it's it's quite easy

(31:01):
for us to be lean and skinny, but it's easy
to put on weight around our stomach. Like you said,
you put on what do you see when you look
at the genes and the genetic research.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
So the genes telling us why people gain weight tend
to be quite universal, so they're eating too much. Genes
where the different ethnicities come from comes into the consequences
of gaining that weight. Yes, there's muscle building. That's you're right, right,
because Chinese people and ethnically am Chinese were smaller framed individuals.

(31:31):
We two cannot get that much weight, gain that much
weight before we actually tilt into disease. So but the
genes underlying why we eat are quite universal, okay, but
why we get specific diseases very very genetically driven, very
ethnically driven. As you said, South Asian East Asians the moment,
we don't have to go anywhere close to a bmi

(31:52):
F thirty and we are suddenly increasing our risk of
a number of different metabolic diseases. So we compared to
white people who can always get a bit more weight,
compared to Polynesians. A colleague of mine, actually, I was
in New Zealand giving a lecture and I saw there's
a big South Asian diaspora in New Zealand, and so
I saw a diabetologist, a diabetes doctor who's who is

(32:15):
South Asian giving a talk in which she was comparing
BMI and rates of tape two diabetes in the local
Polynesian population versus the South. The South Asian diaspora and
the local Polynesian population could get to something like nearly
twice the BMI before actually reaching the same risk of

(32:35):
type two diabetes. It is down to I guess how
much muscle you can put on a little bit, it's
down to how much fat we all can store safely.
And so that is a crucial bit of bit of information.
How much fat can you store safely? Can I store safely?
The safest place to store fat is in your fat cells. Okay,
they're like balloons. They go bigger, they go smaller. You
don't gain fat cells boo boo, boo boo, but they

(32:58):
get full. And the moment when they get full, that's
when the fat goes into your liver, your muscles, places
that are not designed to store fat in large amounts,
and that's when you become ill. So that very very genetic.
And it also comes to body shape where you put
your fat or some matters right, because then you can
look at different populations and realize, oh, my god, all

(33:19):
these people are completely different shapes they are because where
you put your fat also influences how much fat you
can sew safely, so that bit very genetic.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yes, So if you could encourage people to change part
of their diet, what should they be focused on and
what are the mistakes that you think people are making
right now when it comes to what we eat, what
we put into our mouths, What are the mistakes people
are making and what would you encourage people to think
about differently?

Speaker 2 (33:44):
If it isn't calories, then it's very very culturally specific.
But I think there's probably some universal rules in order
to fall you know, like a lot of South Asians
what I mean, there are a lot of vegetarians in
South Asia. People in the Mediterranean eat Mediterranean diet. Try
delivering a Mediterranean diet to Texans. That's just not going
to happen. So culturally it does make a difference. I

(34:06):
do think there's some simp relatively simple quote unquote rules.
I hate to use the word rules. I think we
need to eat enough protein. I think most importantly so
I think about sixteen percent of the energy in your
diet needs to come from protein. It is possible to
eat too much because we have to use the protein
we eat. If we don't use it, we don't store protein. Okay.
All the muscles in us, all the protein in our

(34:28):
body is active. So if you eat a lot of
protein but don't use it, it gets converted to fat. Okay,
and then it begins to stress out your kidneys and
stuff as well. Right, you and your liver unless you're
lifting or doing someone or doing something else. So sixteen
percent protein, okay. We need to eat way more fiber,
way more fiber. We need to double the amount of

(34:48):
fiber we come we eat. Fiber only comes from fruit
and vegetables, so we pretty much need to double the
amount of fruit and vegetables that we that we actually eat,
and we probably need to limit the free show we
eat now. Free sugars are sugars, sugar anything that's been
detached from fibers. So orange juice is a free sugar,

(35:09):
honey is a free sugar, Maple syrup is a free sugar.
We probably need all the good stuff, all the good stuff,
but that the sugar is all the same. It tastes
nicer for any number of different reasons. But all the
good stuff you probably needs a limited limited to five
percent of energy or less. Now, if you take those
three numbers right, sixteen percent of protein, thirty grams, double
the amount of fiber, and keep your free sugars. You

(35:32):
can eat as much fruit and vegetables as you want,
but free sugars from five percent. Unless you can deploy
it to any culture. Because the protein I'm not only
talking steaks, right, I mean this is what people think
here when I say protein steaks, But no, I mean
tofu beans. It doesn't matter the source of the protein.
Those are the three numbers I would use. Deploy it
to your culture, your type of diet, you you wish

(35:53):
to actually eat. Then obviously you can tweak it. But
I think if you actually focus on those three numbers,
I think it's your diet automatically become healthier.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
So sixteen percent protein, thirty.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Percent thirty grams fiber thirty grams, so double the amount
of fibre on average. On average in the United States
and North America, and in the United States and in
the UK, we're probably only having fifteen grams of fiber
a day. It's difficult. I think this is part of
the problem of focusing on calories, is that what does
that mean when I tell you sixteen percent protein and

(36:23):
what have you. So I do these things. I speak
to to people like you, I speak to industry. I
do this to try and push back and say, can
we highlight different things on your prepackaged food? I mean
highlighting the calories useless, right, Whereas if you highlight how
much protein it is, how much fiber is in, and
how much free sugar is in a traffic light system

(36:43):
or something, I think that's easier for you to actually
to actually do.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Let's actually talk about that. So we had to go
do some shopping, yes, which my wife will be very
mad at me for because I've brought things into this
house that she would never allow me to have in
the house. Okay, and so I'm going to make sure
that I give this out to someone else afterwards, but
don't give it to me. She thinks I've been eating
and she'll be mad. But we brought in some products
that people are eating because I think partly the issue

(37:08):
is when you go out and you buy something once
you're educated. So my wife trained me in this, and
I want to help pass it on and learn from
you as well in how to actually read food labels
because I used to just be like, yeah, that's fifty galleries.
I'll have that that's one hundred galleries. It's easy. So
I'm going to throw you some products, and you know,
you can tell us whether this is actually healthy or not,
and just walk us through all the packaging on the

(37:29):
front and the bat.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
So a couple of things about this. So before we start,
I think I see where this is going. Right. One
of the things that annoys me the most about food
and advertising for food is the health halo. Right, this
is what we're talking about, the health halo. No one
thinks that drinking Coca cola and eating things is healthy

(37:53):
for you, but we do it because there's a treat.
We do it. But I'm not thinking I'm having a
health drink, and so most of us take the cautions.
Now if you no one thinks that when you get
a many totilla chip brands are available. Let's look at
this one. First of all, it's green in packaging. It
has this I am green, Okay from all the things. Okay,

(38:15):
Totia style protein chips. What the freaking hell is that?
That's a fac Let's see where the protein comes from? Okay,
where I don't know. Does it tell you where the
protein comes from? They added milk protein, isolate way protein,
so they're trying to increase the amount of protein you
actually get and so hence they're telling you that this

(38:37):
is a healthier option. But you're still eating a totilla chip. Right.
If you look at the it's still fried, right it is.
Let's have a look at the back here. I'm not
it should be fried. I mean sometimes they bake it,
I guess, but totias tend to be fried. Oh, this
one says it's baked. Okay, so that does make a difference,

(38:57):
but it is still it is still But they're trying
to sell this a health food, okay.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
And you would say it's not a health food.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
I am not anti tortilla chips, but I know why
they've done that. The packaging as they've done here so
people will go and says, oh, these are terrible with
tea chips. I'm gonna buy this one because these are
going to be totia chips that are going to be
better for me, because it's in a green packaging and
because it's this high protein, high protein for it. So

(39:24):
I don't know, you know, it's still a totia chip.
And ultimately, so this is the kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
What is the difference between baked and fried? Because I
don't I speak to a lot of people about this,
and I don't think they people even think to think
about that.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
So baked would mean that you use less oil, okay,
And because things like tortilla chips and potato chips and
all the kinds of things you you get are very porous,
so in other words, they absorb a lot of fat
to crisp up. Okay, a fried to tia will taste
better than a baked to tia, So undoubtedly they'll have
they'll have more, more, more fat. I'm not saying that

(39:57):
this isn't slightly better for you. It's still not a
health food though, So that's the difference. The difference is
that when you fry something, it more the fat gets
absorbed into it, whereas you bake it, you sort of
you do put oil in it. You have to because
otherwise it's like using an air fry. Why do you
use an air fry? Use an air fry because you
put in a little bit of oil, it then heats
upthing oil and then misss the oil. So so that
what you're doing is you're frying with less oil. That's

(40:20):
why you're getting You're getting less of the fat that
that that that are actually out there.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Got it? Okay, I'm going to pull out some more
a lot of bags of chips in it.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
But oh, all right, so this is shredded wheat. Okay,
let's have a look at this. Actually, now they're always
oh wait a minute, this is so if you look
at so a couple of things before we go to
the back. Whenever you look at a cereal, you see here,
for example, in the front, berries.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Right, no one ever does no one ever does it.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
I mean I have shredded right. I'm not I'm not
against this, but either do you know what these things
are called within the within the field of sort of
food science, these are called incidental virtuous foods. Okay, So
someone did an experiment where what they did was they
ask a few thousand people, all right, and they put
a burger, just a normal standard burger, and they ask

(41:14):
everyone to sort of estimate how many calories are in
the burger. And you know, obviously you get people getting
it right, people getting it completely wrong. Then they took
the burger and they put a stick of celery next
to the burger. That stick of celery, Sam burger. That
stick of celery automatically made everyone lower on average their

(41:36):
calorie estimates by ten percent, just the presence of it. Now,
if you, in fact, we'll go back to that, we'll
go back to the chip. Okay. So here it's a
toutilla chip. And obviously there is lime, there's chili. I
appreciate they probably flavored it for some nervevertheless, but here
cereal is one of these things. That is why the

(41:57):
berries are there. Go into your favorite supermarket. Look, anything
you buy. Once again, this is not anti shredded wheat. Okay,
anything you buy, they'll always have these things because it
automatically makes it a virtuous food. Why do people when
you watch advertis or something, why is there a little
bit of coriander, a bit of watercress, you know over

(42:18):
the steak? Like really it is incidental virtuous feets. Okay,
So that's that's the first thing.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Great.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Now, now if you're don't look in the back, let's
look at the sugar. I mean, this may be perfectly healthy,
I'm not entirely sure. Okay, soon as this has no
added sugar, which is fine, which is good. So I
do think that that's the one thing you want to
you want to look at.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
So that's when we're reading a label.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
When you're reading a label, what do you want to
focus on? Now, clearly this is shredded wheat. I'm not
eating this for protein, okay, so you can look at
the back of the protein. But the amount of protein
on here or where does it say polyonsaturate? Where's the protein? Oh? No,
there is protein. So seven grams of seven grams of proteins.
That's quite high, surprisingly high for the amount of stuff
that is here. What you want to do, however, on

(43:02):
this is not worry too much about the protein because
you're eating a shredded beat, is to look at the sugar, because,
oh my god, I mean, if you actually look at
some of the cereals, including some varieties of shredded beat,
you may as well be eating a chocolate bar. As
far as I can gather, the amount of sugar, the
amount of sugar that that that's in there. So this
you would look at it and broadly speaking, is probably
a relatively healthy thing to eat, got it, except for

(43:25):
the incidental vigtets fee.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
All right, very good? Well, you spoke about this earlier,
so let's take a look at it. You might as well.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Okay, OJ, Now what makes it light? Very interesting?

Speaker 1 (43:39):
So let me just Seeah, what does it say on it?

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Tell us it's an orange juice. But that tells us
fifty percent less sugars and calories than OJ. Then how
did they make it? Because OJ is OJ should be OJ.
You should take juice, you squeeze it out, maybe you
put some heat in it to make sure it lasts longer.
What have they done to it to reduce the.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Amount of sugar and calorie?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Ah? So what they've done here, first of all, is
they have concentrated the orange juice, so notwids. They have
just this is an effect orange juice mixed with water.
So can I say something? Can I please say something?
Save your cash? Buy an actual bottle of If you
want to drink orange juice, buy an actual bottle of
orange juice and dilute it with water. Same effect, Because
it says, yeah, the first thing on here is filtered water, first,

(44:23):
ingred ingradied list. It's fine, okay, but now you're buying
half the amount of orange juice for the same amount
of cash, whereas you could buy exactly the same amount
of orange juice and use water. Now what else is there? Okay,
Now let's have a look. No pulp. Why is this
a good thing? So here's here's the issue with OJ. Right,
So OJ, the full concentrated OJ has the same in

(44:45):
fact less, we'll read it out just to make sure.
So total carbohydrates here are ten percent. Okay, so so
five percent? So it has five percent because it's half
Coca cola. Has the sugar content about eleven percent okay,
in a in a can of Coca cola, so actually
has the same amount of sugar as Coca cola. This
is diluted. We've already established this, and it's the same sugar.

(45:06):
It's not because it's natural sugar. It's healthier for you.
You've squeezed it out of the you squeeze it out
of the orange. So the pulp was the only good
thing about this. There's probably vineamin c and stuff, but this,
the pulp was the only good thing because that was
the fiber. So what this has said is that we
have made extra sure there is no fiber in this
orange juice. That's what this is selling you. I have

(45:26):
no problems with ojas as a small thing, but people
think it's a health food, and people will then drink
a ton of this, and you have to treat it
like you're drinking a high sugar drink. Eat the orange,
because when you eat the orange, you're chewing it. There's fiber.
Your body takes longer to release the sugar exactly the

(45:46):
same amunt of sugar. Because orange juice actually comes from
comes from there. You get a lot more goodness out
of eating the orange. If you have to drink orange juice,
drink you know, do it in moderation. This is a
waste of money because as it says in about diluted
orange juice, for Pitt's sake, all right, this is fun.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Let's because this.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Because are great. Where did you get these from? This
sense all from? I won't say now, no, just can
I please say dried apricots? These are wonderful for you, okay,
because obviously they're full of fiber and yeah, you might say,
well and behind sugar, yeah, but then they're all tied
up in the fiber. How much of your risks are
you really going to eat? Anyway? Wonderful for you? Okay,

(46:41):
you shouldn't need to enhance it with any probiotic apricots.
Now what have they made it? So probiotic means that's probiotic,
and that's probiotic, and probiotic is adding fiber. Probiotic is
taking the bugs. Because this is what confused me when
I was looking at this. So this is probiotic because
they've taken normal apricots, which is full of fiber and

(47:03):
added bacteria. Now this sounds a bit dodgy because they're
telling me that they bugs cannot be alive. I don't
think because they're in this thing. What is the shoff
life for this? Okay, March twenty twenty six. It's sterile
right in here. So they say they've put the bugs in,
but the bugs cannot be alive. So it is not

(47:24):
going to be probiotic if the bugs are dead. And
they have to be dead because this thing is not
going to rot in a sealed container and it's good
till March twenty twenty six. So this the bugs have
got to be alive. When you're eating yogurt yogurt, if
you're eating you know, kombucha, the bugs are alive. That

(47:45):
is why they work, because they pass. You need those
actually to survive the gut and go in in order
to survive. These are dead bugs.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
They will complete bs interesting. Wow wow, I love how
shock Right now, this is the last okay only other
versions of this.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Okay, litters, let me just let me see, let me
let me see what the back is preserving. So sixty
five grams Holy cow. All right, So this is a bar. Now,
I know what this is. This is for the gym bros. Right,
But but if you actually look at the first of all,
it tells you tomount a protein. So they're selling this
as a health food bar by its very definition, because
we're not. We're not dealing with it. But if you

(48:26):
actually look at the at the back, yes there's more
protein in it, okay for that, but it's twenty two
percent sugar. It's twenty two percent sugar okay, fourteen percent fat,
of which thirteen percent is saturated fat okay. And the
protein amount is thirteen percent protein. So actually I'm saying
we need sixteen percent. It's already below the actual what

(48:48):
you should be eating in your in your total that anyway,
I don't understand this bar. I do understand it if
you are take taking it as a recovery bar fair. Okay,
if you've just done a workout, or if you're maybe
a cycling you you're trying to do that, I can
dig that. The problem is if it's there in a
supermarket shelf and you're coming and thinking this is going
to be healthy for me, but you're not working out,

(49:09):
you're not doing any buy and eat it. This is
far worse for you than eating a chocolate bar, unless
you're exercising at the same time.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yeah, I mean that sugar that's high twenty two, it's
really it's high.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Oh my god, is this even edible?

Speaker 1 (49:20):
I mean I used to so I used to eat
those nearly every day until I looked at the sack. No, no, no,
until I looked at it. Then you went, dude, yeah,
And I realize even when I am working out, I
don't need.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
You don't need. I mean, yeah, you want, you want
more protein.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
I've shifted to one that there's only one gram of
sugar now.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Because you do need some sugar. You need come carves.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Obviously you do, but not that not that good analysis.
So so we'll go through two questions. I have. One
is how can people read food labels better? Okay, what
were you doing? That was making it effective for you
to figure it out that quickly because the challenges we
have little time. We look at the back, there's like
fifty ingredients.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
The major problem I have with this is this isn't
a lack of information problem, because all the information is there,
but you need right lights, I need to have my
reading glasses with me. But what you would do, I
think ultimately, in order to better do it, the industry
needs to change what they label. But I don't have
the power to do that. So I think what I
would do is I would focus on, first of all,

(50:18):
the amount of depending on what you're eating, the amount
of protein, the amount of fiber did they put fiber
they do put fiber, the amount of fiber that's actually
in there, and the amount of.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Sugars protein, fiber sugar, protein fiber sugar, protein fiber sugar. Yes,
And what you don't want is to see an equal
balance of all three. You want to try and see
the percentages.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
You said earlier exactly. That's what I would do.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Yeah, And of course it won't be. You're not expecting
to get all your protein from the bar anyway.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
No, So I think what you want to do as
well is not concerned, okay, not obsessed about one item
of food. What you should do is be thinking about
your diet over a week. A week's a good period
because their work days, their weekend days. You may have
a birthday, you go to a restaurant for your friends
and you're eating on the run or what have you.
So over a week, how much protein, fiber and things

(51:04):
have you been eating. That's better because then that allows
you to go to the pub, the restaurants, your child's
birthday and then then say, well, I had my child's
birthday party last night, so I'm go to do something else.
So you need to consider that, but over the context
of a full week, rather than obsessing over one individual
bar would be what I would say.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
And what are the three hidden ingredients that you think
people should watch out for on food labels.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
I think sugar is probably the big the biggest thing
to look for, because they My wife sent me to
the supermarket to buy She goes, can you get me
some beetroot? I want to make a salad, okay, And
so I went into a supermarket chain in the UK
and I bought their finest because I'm a mug Okay,
I bought their finest item, and I brought it back
and she yelled at me. She goes, did you see
the amount of sugar on here? Why didn't you get

(51:48):
the one made with vinegar? Why didn't you get me one?
And so sugar is the thing that they shuffle in
the most because it's so it improves the flavor so quickly,
and they put it into a beetroot. It's a beetroot.
Why do you have the boil it in sugar? It's
completely ridiculous. Sugar is probably the big is the easiest
thing to shovel in.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
So to watch that, how addictive is sugar?

Speaker 2 (52:09):
I don't think sugar is addictive. I don't think there
is such a thing as food addiction. If you speak
to addiction biologist, they do hijack certain pathways. Okay, so
the part of the brain that makes things feel nice,
you're rewarding part of the brain. It's the same part
of the brain for everything. It doesn't matter if we're
talking about food, sex, or drugs or alcohol. Okay, it
hits the same place. The roots to it are different,

(52:30):
but it's the same. It's the same part of the brain.
And so I think that clearly sugar tickles the nice
part of the brain, because why would it not. But
it is not crack cocaine. People say it's worse for
you that crack where it isn't okay because you clearly
get used to it, you like it. There are addictive behaviors,
but sugar in of itself is not addictive. If I

(52:51):
took sugar away from you, you're not going to go
into Kentucky. Okay, you're not. You might think, oh, I
want to eat that and what have you. You're not.
So it's not addictive, but we need to eat of it.
And clearly there is an addictive behavior of getting used
to eating sugars as well.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from
our sponsors and back to our episode. Is healthier food
more expensive to produce? No? What is the reason that
healthy food has become expensive?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
So I think there's a marketing element to it. So
therefore healthy food they can make money from it. But
then what then happens is their cultural differences as well, right,
Because then what happens is people say lentils are cheap,
which is true, but that's a culturally specific thing. If
you go to India, you got to sell. Everyone knows
how to cook lentsol, So lentils are cheap because everyone
can do it, but other things are not here okay

(53:39):
here or in the UK for that matter. First of all,
do people not a cook lentils who are not South
Asian for example? That's the first thing. The second is
it will always require half an hour on the electricity
or gas, and it's always cheaper to stick a pre
meal into the microwave and put two minutes. And in
order to do so, you have to take the whole
life cycle of the food and also the amount of

(54:00):
time and effort and education you actually have about that
specific food. So it's a holistic view of how expensive
something is.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, it could be expensive in terms of time as well.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Exactly ye some people don't some people don't have the time.
And culturally it does make a difference because like lentils
ar cheap obviously, and you go to some country exactly
those are. But if you buy them from scratch, you
need to know how to soak them overnight. You need
tom boil them for experiod of time. And if this
is part of your culture and you always have always
a beans pre ready to cook, and everything is ready perfect,

(54:31):
and you have the spice makes ready perfect. But for
a lot of us that's not the case.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Great answers.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
That was fun.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
I'm glad we did that. That was really cool. I
wanted to ask about this idea of you say that
weight is biology not laziness. Let's talk about that.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Okay. I think weight is more biology than people think.
How about that? Okay, So if we actually look at
the genetics heritability, okay, so what percentage does genetics actually
play into body weight? And we can use that by
looking at twins identical because of non identical twins, then
actually the heritability of fat mass of weight is around

(55:06):
forty to seventy percent. So numbers, let's take the average
fifty to fifty. So fifty percent is going to be
driven by a biology and fifty percent by non biology.
And in that non biology, it could be socioeconomic status,
how rich or poor you are, It could be your culture,
it could be any number of different things. So weight
is probably about fifty percent. Now, within that fifty percent,
it does clay a pretty powerful role. And I guess

(55:28):
the one example I'll give is this. We do not
gain or lose weight overnight. We just we just don't.
Any meal, no matter how big, is not going to
percent change your body weight. Okay, your body weight is
the function of thousands of feeding the events that have
happened over the past couple of years. Okay, that's okay.
Now imagine, however, if because of your genetic hand of
cards that you've been given, you are slightly less likely

(55:50):
to say no five percent. That's kind of scale we're
looking at. So one out of every twenty times you say,
hang it, I'm going to have the extra slice of
pizza or what have you. Five percent over thousands of
feeding events is hundreds of thousands of calories. So over
the period of time that food intake does begin to
influence your body weight. It is not a choice. In
casino terms, the house will always win if the die

(56:11):
is weighted and set a way. In that sense, there
is a lot of biology. But clearly, if you take
the top twenty percent socio economically versus the bottom twenty percent,
the bottom twenty percent are more than twice as likely
to have obesity and most diseases to be fair as
the top twenty percent. There's no genetic difference between rich
and poor people. It's an accident of birth, and so

(56:34):
there your environment really really really does matter. So even
with the same genes, your same genetic burden and drive.
If I live in a leafy Cambridge village, which I
live so far out that delivery will deliver to my village,
and so this is a true story. Okay, Then if
I'm hungry and I don't have a corner shop, I

(56:56):
have to drive to the next village. If I'm hungry
on a Sunday night, well either I have to get
in my car and drive somewhere, or I have to
open my fridge and eat the carrots or homostice my fridge. Right.
Whereas if I lived in a city, if I live
above a chicken shop, if I live above, then exactly
the same genetic drive will make me go and I'll
make different decisions the different things that we made. So

(57:16):
there's a huge genetic drive, undoubtedly, But the environment also matters.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
How much is willpower involved?

Speaker 2 (57:22):
What is willpower?

Speaker 1 (57:23):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
I think will power is an interesting term. I think
that if we're talking about food intake, which means to
say that, oh, I'm not gonna eat the chocolate bar
or pizza or something today, I think willpower is simply
the physiological manifestation of how much you want that item
of food and whether or not you say yes or no.
So willpower is simply part of the biology that drives

(57:44):
you or stops you from from eating it. So that's
what I think is will power. So if that plays
a role, yes, will power plays a role, because it's
part of your biology.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
It's almost like a sense of I like the word
discipline more so it's someone who grew up eating and
I've spoken about this on the show before. I literally
grew up eating every day a chocolate bar, a chocolate biscuit,
a chocolate yogurt, and a chocolate ice cream every day, Okay,
because that's how I was raised in my house. And
I was overweight growing up, and then my teens I
started playing a lot of sports. I lost lots of weight,

(58:15):
but then still, even when I was at university, I
drank a sugary soda every single day, and I had
a chocolate bar every day. And because of my genetics
or my metabolism, I was lean throughout college and all
the rest of it. But I wasn't doing anything healthy.
And what I found was that I had to create
discipline at one point in my life, because my natural

(58:37):
instinct is to want sugar to solve my fatigue or
energy or whatever it may be, because that's what I've
been taught, or at least trained to believe, is that
sugar will solve my lack of energy right now, not
realizing that actually I could get that from a healthier place.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
I mean, I guess discipline is one is one way.
I mean, I don't like the term lifestyle. A lot
of people go to this as a lifestyle problem because
lifestyle means choice. But I do think that many of
us need to make behavioral changes. So that's the terminology
and I'd like to use because ultimately, this is this
is the issue. It doesn't matter whether or not the
genetic drives makes it easier or less easy for you

(59:13):
to lose weight. It doesn't matter ultimately because if you
carry too much fat, you're the one that's going to suffer. Right.
So I think life's unfair, okay, and sometimes biologically unfair
and what have you. So I think what we've got
to do is for a lot of us, we do
need to think about behavioral changes. And you're absolutely right,
we need to be more educated about certain things. We
need to just this conversation we've had, right, I mean,

(59:35):
just look look looking at these things, and if you
then begin to notice, so even just what I've said,
if you notice a couple of these little things and
you incrementally make a better you buy a better bar,
you buy a better bag of chips, or anything like that,
but then that's a positive thing. These are behavioral changes,
but we need to sort of get the word out

(59:55):
there right where it's not always they're obvious things, but
they're not obvious things also matter.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
I think for me, one of the behavioral changes that
has helped so much is out of sight, out of mind.
Well you just said, like when you walk in and
look at your refrigerator and there's only carrots and hummers,
Like I said, like I bought this bag in today
for this episode, but we wouldn't have this available. So
do I want those chips? Of course I want to
tear chips. I would rather eat your tear chips than

(01:00:22):
any whole foods because that's what I'm conditioned to one.
But when they're not available in our snack drawer, you know,
then I have to think. I got to wait twenty
minutes so.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Now that is very true, right, So I think we
have to control the environment we have control over, which
broadly speaking, is our household. And so same for me.
My wife bans me from buying. So she loves chocolate
and she I mean me me chocolate. I like chocolate.
But if there was a chocolate bar there, for example,
I would eat a piece and then I will continue
talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah I can do that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Yeah, So my wife says, please don't buy chocolate in
the house. So if we go to a restaurant, we
go to a meal, that's different, right because we're outside.
But within our house, like you said, there are no
and I christs. So I don't buy Christmas in the
house because I know that if it's there and I
hear the wrestling, I'll eat it. Out of side, out
of mind is a good way of handling it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Yeah, that's been one big thing for me. And the
other one that really helped me is having a plan
for when that craving comes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Strategy. Yeah, strategy here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Right, Like, rather than feeling like, oh, you know, I'm
in a good discipline mode, I'm not going to have
the craving today. It's like, no, I know that at
eight pm at night, I'm going to get a craving
and so let me have a plan be option available
that is healthier, better, more natural than putting myself and
then grabbing one of the ultra process food.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
So whenever I talk to people and then someone come
out to me and whatever their genetic drive, they says, oh,
you know I need to lose weight, how would you
do it? I said, Look, if you know you need
to lose weight for whatever reason, then what you've got
to do the first the easiest thing to do. Okay,
don't go take a genetic test anything like that. It's free, okay,
is be honest with why you eat when you eat,
and some people eat when it gets stressed, other people don't.

(01:01:57):
Some people have a craving for chocolate. Eight rock. Understand this,
and the moment you understand that, put a strategy in
place to kind of mitigate against against that, and that
is your way into dealing with your biology. Don't worry
about the fact that, well, when I go to my
friend's house anything like that, that's fine because you live
in your house. So fix your house first. That everything

(01:02:19):
else you can you can kind of take it day
by day. Fix what you have in your house.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Absolutely, those two things have helped me outside out of
mind and making sure that I have a plan for
the things I know are going to happen, not hoping
that they don't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah exactly. Don't lie to yourself. Do not lie to yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Yeah exactly, because yeah it's I've lied to myself too
many times and then ended up over eating or over
sugaring or whatever it may be, because I didn't have
a plan, and so I fell to my devices. I
was intrigued to something you write about is why is
it so difficult to lose weight?

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Because your brain hates it when you lose weight. So
it thinks I'm losing weight. This is lowering my chances
of survive in a world where there's not enough food.
This is not true now, but in a caveman brain
that is actually dealing with is thinking, I'm losing weight.
I need to put the weight back on. And so
your brain does everything in its power. It does two things.
It makes you hungrier, as you know when anyone who's dieted,

(01:03:15):
you feel hungry, and more insidiously because this you don't know,
it lowers your metabolism. Okay, so Imagine if I were
I'm an eighty kilo human being. Okay, imagine if I
used to be ninety kilograms and I've lost so I've
lost ten percent on my body weight. Okay, the previously
that me who lost ten percent of the weight versus
me never been ninety kilos. He has to eat less

(01:03:36):
than me to maintain the same weight as me. Okay,
eighty and eighty, but he used to be because he's
lost that weight, and the brain is trying to drag
him back, kicking and screaming, back up to the weight
he was before. Your brain hates it when you lose weight,
and it puts into homeostatic measures the soul to make
sure you gain the weight back again. It's very depressing again,

(01:03:57):
but yeah, you fight you fighting biology.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah, and as we get older, we're putting on more weight.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Naturally, you do for a couple of different reasons. I
think I would have given you a different answer five
years ago. But new work has concast has shown that
actually you don't begin to drop your metabolism per gram
of muscle in you, all right, Just to be clear,
so in no matter words, how much muscle you're carrying
really to your mid sixties, so people thought it happened earlier.
It doesn't, Okay. The problem is when you get into

(01:04:26):
middle age. Okay, is this? First of all, we tend
to get richer, not rich, but richer. We're set on
our backsides. We have more money, we have more money.
We don't we eat richer food. We're not gonna eat less, right,
we're moving less. We tend to exercise less. I'm sorry,
that's true, which means that your muscle mass begins to
it begins to lower. So a mix of all that
you have more money, you eat better food, you exercise less, okay,

(01:04:49):
and that is the toxic mix that then ends up
with you gaining weight middle aged bread, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
How do we stop that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
I think the most important thing if we're dealing with
actually zeroing in, clearly we can say we need to
improve our diets and things. This is all true. The
most important thing about health span rather than longevity, Right,
Who the hell wants to live forever? You know with
tubes and you just don't, okay, but people want to
live healthy for longer. The marker that most predicts your

(01:05:17):
health span is the amount your percent, your ratio, to
muscle to fat heading into your late sixties and into
your seventies, okay, it doesn't matter very many Clearly how
heavy you are matter is okay, but more importantly how
much muscle are you taking into that period of time.
The more muscle lean mass you actually have going in,
particularly into your seventies, the healthier you're likely to be.

(01:05:41):
So do not neglect, do not neglect moving and keeping
your muscles in shape, particularly as you get older, and
that is the way to fight all the bad things
that can happen.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Yeah, what's really interesting is that as a society, I
feel like we've been struggling with weight loss for so long,
and that's where we've obviously seen the rise of weight
loss drugs and especially more recently with the zembic and
it becomes commonplace now, it seems at least I don't
know in the UK, but definitely in the States, and
people are open about their usage. There's a debate over

(01:06:14):
whether it's good or bad, and people have different views
on it for different reasons. But there has been this
almost pressure that we've placed on people, not always from
a health point, but from a vanity point to lose weight. Yes,
whereas what we're talking about today is a healthy Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
We're talking about health. And I think, look, there is
nothing wrong with these drugs as long as the right
people get them. I think ultimately that's true. Now, if
you have a lot of fat, you know, you have
severe obesity, then the drug is for you. Because you're ill,
you are getting diabetes, the drug is for you. The
drugs are not a cosmetic drugs. So these drugs are
modified gut homones. They're modified versions of natural hormones that

(01:06:53):
we actually have. So in one way of looking at things,
we could say that, well, I've only tweaked one hormone
in your body, suddenly you eat less. Then you can
argue that a lot of people with obesity probably just
have a hormonal deficiency that you're trying to fix. However,
the reason these drugs are good is because they're powerful
in their work. The reason these drugs are bad, it's
because they're powerful and they work for everybody. They make

(01:07:15):
you feel fuller, whether or not you're three hundred pounds
looking to lose one hundred, or whether or not you
are a sixteen year old girl who's seventy five pounds.
That is the problem. It will still make you eat less.
So they're not cosmetic drugs. They're powerful drugs. They should
be used as drugs, not at the red carpet tool.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
So you're saying that there are a group of people
who it's healthier for them to use it, yes, and
there's a group of people that shouldn't be using it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Correct, because I think everyone who needs the drug should
get the drug, and these are people who in fact,
there's more nuance about this at the moment. Certainly in
the UK, there are rules where about how what your BMI,
what your weight should be before you're allowed the drug,
and it's above a certain amount, etcetera, etcetera. We've already
discussed for example, they're South Asians and East as we

(01:08:00):
can't get that much weight before we get risk of disease.
So we need to be more nuanced about who gets
the drug and the person The people that get the
drug need to be closing in on their disease state. Okay,
they should get the drug. Okay. So in other words,
you could be a little bit heavier but actually be
perfectly healthy. Do you need the drug?

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
Whereas maybe a South Asian man who's BMI twenty seven
but actually is already close to being type two diabetic,
maybe he should get it. So I think at the
moment people draw a line in the sand about your BMI,
I think we need to be more in fact, just
talking about obesity in general, we need to be more nuanced.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Yeah, it's really hard because people will say, well, I
feel more confident now that have taken it, and you know,
I feel better about myself now they've taken it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
I mean, okay, as a game, if we game it
in our head, do I see if these drugs were
shown to be fully, fully, fully fully safe over a
long period of time, and broadly speaking we know the
right people will get it, can I or do I
think that if I can walk into a drug store
because at the moment, for example, we go in and
buy talent. No, okay, we give it to our kids.

(01:09:09):
Right now, we also know that if I had a
whole bottle of talano, I may endanger my liver. Okay,
so there right, it can be toxic as well. But
now society has accepted that this is something that we
can choose to self medicate with without a prescription. If
we can get to that level of safeness for these
weight loss drugs, why not, I guess please. I am

(01:09:31):
not saying we will get there, and I'm not saying
it's possible to get there for the reasons which I've
told you, But I think as a principle, I don't
mind doing that as long as it's safe and only
the right people get it. Those are the two critical things.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
What are the dangers of weight loss drugs like ZAMBI like,
what are the actual ramifications.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
The ramifications I have the wrong people get it? I
mean think very rarely. I think that there's certain things
that could happen extremely extremely rarely. The biggest danger is
the people who are taking it for cosmetic and don't
have a lot of fat to lose and take too
much of it, and then what that happens is they
didn't lose too much.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Weight, And what are they damaging? What are the consequences?

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Because what these drugs do, because they make you feel fuller,
then the drugs itself don't do a great you know,
they're positive effects to the drugs, They just make you
eat less. So if you are already skinny and take it,
you are in effect starving yourself. That's the one thing.
Starvation is not a good thing. Okay for that. Now, Equally,
if you take the drug and don't improve your diet,
because these drugs also don't improve your diet, they just

(01:10:32):
make you feel full. So if your diet was crap
to begin with and you're eating chips and oreos all
the time, what these drugs will do is to make
you eat less chipscenarios, and so actually what happens is
you could end up malnourished. So even yes, you're losing
weight because you're now eating calorie wise less food. So
I'm losing weight. Look at me, I'm good. But then
if that's all you're eating, you're not doing your fiber

(01:10:54):
or your protein and all that jazz right a micronutrients,
then you're gonna be skinny and malnourished at the same
time on the drug. So the drug is a silver
bullet for the feeling full of it. It doesn't improve
your behavior, it doesn't improve your diet, it doesn't stop
people from not taking you who shouldn't be taking it.
So I'm pro drug for the people who need it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Got it, relieve it clearly. I appreciate that I want
to ask you this question because I think you've alluded
to it. But if you could put a warning label
on one part of the diet industry, what would it be.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Can I have two things? Yeah, so I think that
that we've really alluded to it. I think two things.
The first, which is most important, is don't obsess over
one item of food because look, sometimes life demands a
chocolate bar, sometimes life demands a banana. It depends what
you're doing. Okay, can you make a healthier chocolate bar?
And actually, over a period of time, we don't eat chocolate.

(01:11:46):
We shouldn't eat chocolate bars every day. So that's the
first thing we shouldn't. We shouldn't eat chocolate bars every well,
we shouldn't. Why did we just like saying no, we
shouldn't eat burgers every day.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
It's normal though that people do that, right, that's common,
but we shouldn't. It is common though. I think it
probably is quite common. It is common, I don't I assume.
So you're right exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
So I think what you've got to do is I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
Did up until I was twenty one, so every.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Day, So that's what you've got to do. What you've
got to do is there's nothing wrong with the chocolate bar.
You got to think about your whole your whole diet
with those numbers that are so that's the second. Are
those numbers that were that I were actually telling you
about that the numbers that just focusing on the calories.
I really wish that they've been making in small numbers.
I think maybe the genie is out of the bottle
and we can't get those calories. I think obsessing over

(01:12:34):
the calories is the wrong thing to assess about because
it doesn't improve the quality of our diet.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
To me, the big thing that I think I really
want people to take away is this idea of look
at the protein, look at the fiber, and look at
the sugars. Yes, because that solves it right Like I'm
thinking right now. If someone's feeling overwhelmed right now, they're listening,
they're just thinking right now, like Charles, I want to
do this, but I don't even know how to have
time to Where would you suggest they start? Is that

(01:13:02):
where you suggest they start?

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Yes, me too. I think that's a really clear way
of looking at is think about your diet as protein intake,
fiber intake, and sugar intake. In the percentages that jars
broke down sixteen percent, of protein, thirty grams of fiber,
and five percent sugar or less, and all of a sudden,

(01:13:24):
now you're hopefully going to feel healthier, have more energy,
and naturally eat less or eat less.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Eat less crap.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Yeah, you're going to eat better.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
And you might say that, well, wait a minute. They
don't label fruits and vegetables, and they don't label meat
because they don't need to. Ultimately, if you get if
you're actually eating a piece of meat and some fruit
and vegetables in which there's no labeling, and it's just
how do I know? How don't know? If you're eating
that you don't need to know. That is the point.
Because if you're cooking a steak and you're having broccoli,

(01:13:54):
and you're you're doing the things, and you're peating the
potato and boiling it, and your then concern about I
don't know how much sugar they put in it? What
it's because you have to add sugar if you want
to do it, and you want to do so the
moment you're cooking from scratch. Not everybody can cook from scratch,
which is what versus right. So, but if you are
eating foods with no labels, then they tend to be
fresh stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Then that's a great point, right that the foods that
don't have labels correct is because they don't need the
correct that. I've never even thought about it like that.
It sounds so simple, but it's a really good point.
And if you're eating that way, then generally you're going
to be healthier, safer, more.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yes, there's still danger of eating too much on of course,
but as a general rule, with general rule, I think
that's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Charles, it's been so great talking to you today. We
end every On Purpose episode with a final five. These
questions have to be answered in one word or one
sentence maximum, So Giles, yo yo, you look prepared. Here's
your final five. The first question is what is the
best health advice you've ever heard, received, or given?

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
So you don't want to move more?

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
That's a great one. Question number two, what is the
worst health the advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Count calories?

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Question number three, something you used to believe was true
about health, but now you know it's not true.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
I used to think that the moment you hit your
forties and fifties, your metabolism dropped, and that's not that's
not true. It's only because your muscle mass drop. So
I think this metabolism thing, your metabolism stays stable through
your life. That was a very long un time, so sorry,
but but I used to think that five years ago,
and now I don't think that anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
What's the most recent study or research that you've read
about the work that you do that blew your mind
or fascinated you, or something that made you really curious
and interested.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
When I first learned that this lowering on metabolism when
you lose weight, it's pretty much permanent, right, and so
in other words, this is why it's so difficult for
you to lose weight. This is probably it's probably ten
years old, so it's not new. It's part of the
reason why your brain hates it when you lose but
why it's so difficult to actually do this way. So
once again, that's just so I'm eighty kilos if I

(01:15:59):
used and I'm not I've always been okay, So but
imagine if exactly the same you might twin got to
ninety kilos and then came back down to eighty kilos.
Then from a physics perspective, you think, well, this is
an eighty kilo, gentleman. I'm an ady kilo gentleman. We
should be able to eat exactly the same thing. We can't.
He will always have to eat less than me to
maintain the same body weight because he has a brain

(01:16:20):
that used to be ninety kilos and is dragging him
back up. And I remember seeing the very very first
time seeing those studies, I was going, this is depressing.
But then then you think, well, how do we mitigate
against these things? And how do you do it? I mean,
the drugs do a job for that, for example, people
who exercise. So exercise is terrible for weight loss because
we don't exercise enough, but very good for weight maintenance

(01:16:41):
for that very reason. Right where when you exercise, you
at your expenditure goes up and it mitigates against this
loss of metabolism. So it's not brand new study, but
I found it very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Is there a way to trick your brain?

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
There is a way to trick your brain in a
bad way. So, in not words, if you gain weight
and stay there for long enough time, your brain begins
to defend at higher weight, okay, Whereas if you lose weight,
your brain, from what we know so far, never defends
that lower weight because evolutionarily there is no reason to
do that right, because this is less likely a survival,

(01:17:12):
so your brain can train in the other direction vicious cycle,
not in losing weight.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
And fifth and final question we asked this every guest
who's ever been on the show. If you could create
one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
I think that healthy food should always be the cheaper
option wherever you go at the moment. That's not true,
it's very uneven where at the moment, unhealthy food is cheaper.
And so if we want to cure diseases and obesity
equitably across the world, regardless of how richer poor you are,

(01:17:47):
then by default the food that you eat must be healthy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Charles, thank you so much for your time and energy.
So grateful to connect with you today and learn so
many things from you. You blew my mind multiple times,
and everyone's been listening or watching. Go and grab the
book Why Calories Don't Count. How we got the Science
of weight loss wrong, followed Jiles across his podcast and
social media. If you don't already, and make sure you

(01:18:12):
tag us on TikTok and Instagram and let us know
what you're connecting with what you're experimenting with and what
you're trying. I love to see how you're putting all
of this insight into action. Thank you so much for
angel such a pleasure. Greateful to meet you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier,
live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the
world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia on how to slow
down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting
your physical health.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship
between nutrition and health, and people are going to be
shocked to hear that, because I think most people think
the exact opposite

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