RE-RUN - Flexible Dieting with Alan Aragon - The Ultimate Guide to Nutrition for Women

Back by Popular Demand!

In this episode, we chat with one of the leading experts in nutrition, Alan Aragon, to explore the principles of Flexible Dieting. Alan breaks down how this approach to nutrition isn’t just a trend, but a must-have for women looking to maintain a balanced and sustainable relationship with food. He shares valuable insights into how flexible dieting can fit into your lifestyle, improve your body composition, and promote overall health without restrictive eating habits. Whether you're new to dieting or looking to optimize your nutrition, this episode is packed with expert advice you won’t want to miss!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Body Pod everyone. For our summer rerun,
we are reintroducing the Alan Aragon Flexible Dieting podcast, which
was one of our most popular in season one. So
if you aren't familiar with Alan Aragon, I'm going to
do a quick rundown. Alan is a nutrition researcher and
educator with over thirty years of success in this field.

(00:22):
He is known as one of the most influential figures
in the fitness industry's movement towards evidence based information. He
is the lead author of the ISSN position stand on
Diets and Body Composition. Alan is the Chief Science Officer
of the Nutritional Coaching Institute and the founder and editor
in chief of Alan Aragon's Research Review, the original and

(00:45):
longest running research review publication in the fitness industry. Alan
is also the author of Flexible Dieting, which we will
be covering in this podcast. And Alan maintains a private
practice designing programs for recreational and professional athletes and of
course regular people striving to do their best. So we
will jump right in and learn from one of the

(01:08):
pioneers in the fitness industry, Alan Aragon. Hi, everyone, my
name is Haley and this is Lara and welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
To the body Pod. Welcome back to the body Pod everyone.
We have the Alan Aragon here. We are so excited,
the man of the hour and we are going to
dig into all things nutrition. So welcome Alan.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Hailey and Laura.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
It is an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you
so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, we can't wait to dive in. We have we've
had people send in questions and we have a bunch
of our own. But as you know, you're kind of
known as the pioneer and the evidence based nutrition space,
and let's just start there and talk about like, well,
you have this book that we already we already introed you,

(02:06):
the Flexible Dieting, And this came out two years ago?
Was it two years ago?

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Alan?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Roughly two years ago?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's right, Yeah, Because I was promoing it, I was
like as one of my twelve days stocking stufferst it
was like, everyone needs to get this. So your book
Flexible Dieting, What does that? What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (02:28):
It? In a nutshell, it means individualizing programs instead of
cookie cutting programs. And that is really the essence of
what flexible dieting is. And a lot of people mistake
the term flexible dieting with They actually conflate it with

(02:49):
counting macrograms, when nothing further from the truth. Counting macrograms
is one of many dietary approaches. Flexible dieting is all
about being flexible with the dietary approach that you take,
and also not having a dichotomous view of foods and dieting,
in other words, not looking at foods or diets as

(03:12):
good or bad, black white, all or nothing type of mentality.
So that's that's really what flexible dieting is. And and
the book is actually mistitled, I think, because I think
a more accurate title for the book would be evidence
based nutrition or you know, evidence based non clinical nutrition.

(03:35):
But yes, you know, but but Brett Brett told me
I have to title the book flexible Dieting in order
for it to be it.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
So so yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
Brett Coultrest knows how to make hits, so I listened
to him.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, I love it well. So different than if it
fits your macros, because I know some people kind of
intertwine those two. Flexible dieting if it fits your.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Macros, absolutely, yeah, they're totally different things. Flexible dieting is
when you go back into literature in the late nineties,
it is a cognitive style of dietary restraint. So there's
rigid restraint and there's flexible restraint. And rigid restraint sees

(04:25):
foods and dieting and the dieting process in black white,
all or nothing good bad terms, whereas flexible dieting sees
a gray scale. And as long as you're doing most
of your stuff right and you're trending forward in your progress,
you didn't blow it if you just had a bad

(04:45):
day or you know, a bad moment. And so that's
really what flexible dieting is, and it's rooted in a
study of different types of restraint that goes back to
the seventies in the psychological literature. Has nothing to do
with if it fits your macros or counting macrograms.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
Yeah, it's more what ends up working for you, which
I think makes the most sense because different people thrive
with different like a different prescription. I think some people
really do well with the all or nothing, no wiggle
room at all, and other people blow it in the
first week and give up because they kind of need

(05:24):
that great area.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I feel like, do you find that.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
Oh absolutely, And I even think with a single person,
their needs whether it's a rigid approach or a flexible approach,
can vary across the course of a year, depending on
the season of training even and so so yeah, totally agreed.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
So Alan, why is like I only work with women
over the age of thirty five, most are like late forties,
early fifties, And I just started like this, this program
that I launched a few weeks ago, and there's you know,
thousands of women in this group and they're just so

(06:09):
confused about nutrition. So why is the general public? Why
is it so confusing? Like it's food.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, you know, when you've been in this for as
long as as as we have, it just seems easy
and intuitive. But the fact of the matter is, like
we have had an extensive education that safeguards us against misinformation,

(06:38):
and so most of people's nutrition knowledge is gained from
just randomly on the internet, and it is an absolute
mindfield of misinformation out there. The majority of articles are
just really poorly written, they're just very non rigorous and

(06:58):
sometimes they're just flat out vs just trying to sell something.
Usually they are, and so the public is faced with
just waves and waves of misinformation, and then I guess
that would be one of the main reasons. And then
the other big reason that the public is so confused,

(07:19):
and this is sort of a kind of an intuitive reason,
is that they just don't have the critical thinking skills
when it comes to nutrition. They might have critical thinking
skills when it comes to their own job, their own occupation,
their own family relationships, but when it comes to nutrition,
they just literally don't. They don't have the science literacy

(07:44):
to deal with these bits of news that float through
the media. They just have no idea what to do
with it. And if it comes from an MD, or
if it comes from their favorite guru, then well, of course,
oh well it's got to be true. They just don't
have the skills to critically analyze these things. And then
the third reason why everybody's so confused about what to

(08:07):
eat is because everybody has to eat, and so therefore
a lot of people just think they're an expert at
this nutrition thing just because they've achieved a certain amount
of success with either their own body composition or their
athletic performance or both. And when people experience personal success

(08:29):
with something, then they form this emotional attachment to it.
And they end up preaching it through. It's almost like
me calling myself a marriage and family expert because I've
had a successful marriage. Okay, so now I'm going to
go preach the universal gospel of how to how everybody
needs to treat their marriage. You know, it's like no, no, no,

(08:53):
it doesn't work that way. So I think those are
the main reasons why everybody's so confused about what to eat.
It's misinformation, lack of science literacy. Everybody's got to eat.
And then maybe a fourth reason is that the body
is genuinely complex and it's easy to miss the big

(09:15):
things that we consistently see as being true. It's easy
to focus on the fringes and the weeds and blow
those up in bigger proportion than they deserve. So so yeah,
that might be a fourth thing is just the complexity
of the body and how it's people focus on.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
The wrong things.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yes, well, and the you know social media, as you know,
I love when you when you call people out. The
debunking is so good because it's like the social media
is like the wild wild West, like anyone can get
a big following, anyone can preach anything, and it's really confusing.
For the consumer, because you're like, do I believe this

(09:57):
medical doctor that has a million followers or do I
believe this person, you know, for whatever reason. And so
it really is like I'm always referring to people who
are much smarter than me. You you know Tony Battaji,
who I partner with Stacy Simms. I just launched a
course with like people that know way more than me,

(10:17):
and then I kind of refer off of that. But
for someone that is, do you think that there's any
because the literature and the journals, if you're not in
this space, it's like where do you even start? Do
you feel like there's a good place for people to
go and like do the research like something that isn't overwhelming?

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (10:40):
God, that is I almost can never properly answer that
question other than directing people towards just a handful of
professionals out there. It's like, there really is no roadmap
of where to get the good information. And it's tempting

(11:04):
to say, you know what, go straight to the position
stands of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Go straight
to the position stance. In other words, the consensus papers
of the Academy of Nutrition and dietetics, go straight to
the position papers of the National Strength and Conditioning Association,

(11:28):
and go straight to the position papers of the American
College of Sports Medicine. So when you think of a
topic that you're confused on, like ketogenic diets, for example,
the International Society of Sports Nutrition is right about to
publish a position stand on ketogenic diets and how they

(11:51):
affect strength performance and endurance performance and body compositions. And
I know this because I'm on the paper, and so
we're working hard. We're working hard to get this thing
done and published. But that is going to be a
go to resource on ketogenic dieting for those purposes. So

(12:12):
I would say go straight to the position stance of
maybe the Big four, the ISSN, the A n D,
the ACSM, and the NSCA, and then you get the
consensus knowledge basis for things related to nutrition and things
related to exercise. Now here's the problem with saying that

(12:32):
you can't necessarily tell the layperson to go ahead and
read a consensus paper in the peer reviewed literature and
expect them to understand it. So here we are back
again with oh gosh, where does the lay person go?
So me writing my book was my attempt to take
a stab at benefiting the lay audience, who you know,

(12:56):
they don't have these technical skills and this jargon knowledge
required to understand the language that we speak. So I
guess I would just want more of the evidence based
professionals to write more books and like like what you
guys are doing, reaching thousands in the in the lay public,
in the masses, and hopefully that has a trickle down,

(13:20):
trickle out effect in terms of making a dent in
the collective knowledge of the general public. That's the best
that we can hope for, either that or all of
us here just blow up in popularity and get millions
of followers each and then and then people will get
sweat better information en mass.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah, well it's great. I mean, your book is fantastic.
And what I love about it is it was easy
for me to understand, but I'm in the industry. It
was when I know that my clients read it, like
whenever they read it and they report back to me,
they understand it because you really lay it out for everyone.

(14:05):
It's not just for people in the industry. It really
has a good broad approach to everyone can kind of
understand it. And that's what I love about it because
there's very few books it's either too science y, too
nerdy people are going to understand it, or it's too basic.
So this really encompasses everything.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
So I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
I'm a big fan, big fan. So how do you
feel about do you when you teach people? Do you
still train people in person as far as like nutrition
helping with nutrition?

Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, I still maintain very small handful of clients, and
I don't put it out there. I don't advertise that
I'm working with people because I would have to just
continually turn people down. But I always maintain a small
stable so I can tak one one foot one pinky
toe in the trenches at all times, because I think

(15:02):
that when you stop working with people, you sort of
lose it. It's sort of like I use it or
lose it type of skill thing. Yeah, and even though
we've been doing this for decades, I think it's still
important to be able to work with people right now
because then you get the real time feedback of the
trends that are going on at the moment and the
challenges that people are facing out there in the current time.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
So yes, good point.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
So what would you say like, percentage wise, I'm so
curious because you clearly know it all. We're all learning
from you. So I mean, what percentage of people, like
would you say over your career? What like everyone has
the ability to lose weight? Yes, yes, so, but how

(15:47):
many people is this?

Speaker 5 (15:49):
Like?

Speaker 2 (15:50):
I look at it and in percentages anytime, Like Tony
and I are running a fat loss course right now,
and there's always about a third of the people that
crush kill it, a third of the people that are
pretty good, and then a third of the people that
kind of drop off, and you're like, where did they go?
Do you kind of find that? Like what do your

(16:11):
percentages look like? I mean, I know you have a
smaller group now, so maybe it's more like streamlined, But
do you find that everyone when you give someone macros
and information and all of this at first, they just
like take and run and everyone succeeds right off the bat.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
No, definitely not. And that's that's why our job, our
profession is so incredibly difficult. It's extremely valuable, but it's
extremely difficult. And I think, I mean, percentages wise, it's
really tough to say. I mean, I would love to say, hey,

(16:51):
nine out of ten people I work with our spectacular
success story, but that would probably be a bias to
that would be a biased figure. I think that, and
this is something that we as professionals come to grips with,
like you know, a little late in the game, where
we come to grips with the reality that we won't

(17:13):
be able to help everybody, like there are some people
that we just won't be able to help. And I
think that that is a combination of physiological and psychological reasons,
with the psychological reason being maybe the stronger one, because

(17:34):
if you cannot help somebody change their behaviors, if there's
some kind of roadblock there, then you know that. Unfortunately,
there's a lot of cases like that where the buck
kind of stops at irreconcilable behaviors and the inability to

(17:56):
change certain behaviors. I do acknowledge the fact that some
people have more in quotes stubborn metabolisms than other folks.
There is a range there of a metabolic adaptation that
happens across individuals, and this is just recent data that's

(18:18):
come out. Vilay Eso La is the lead author who
looked at what happens with resting metabolic rate in male
and female physique competitors over the course of a pre
contest dieting cycle, their drop in resting metabolic rate can

(18:39):
be up into the one hundred I want to say,
one hundred fifty or so calories, Like their resting metabolic
rate will drop one hundred and fifty calories below what
RMR drop would be associated with drops in lean body mass.

(19:00):
So even if we if we round up to let's
say two hundred calories. And this was a kind of
a disturbing thing that was seen in the female competitors
who kept their lean body mass, even though they didn't
lose any lean body masks, their resting metabolic rate still
dropped about one hundred and fifty calories.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's not my.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Sucks, that really sucks. And and yeah, so these kind
of things do happen with the dieting cycle. And when
you also consider that there's a wide range of variation
across individuals in their drop in non exercise activity or

(19:44):
their spontaneous movement. So on average with dieters, and this
was a six month study that that's coming to mind,
the average drop in non exercise activity thermogenesis was two
to three hundred calories. So you know, if you add

(20:05):
those things up. If you add up the drop that
metabolic adaptation, that drop and resting metabolic rate, let's say
it can be up to two hundred calories in you know,
extreme circumstances, and then you add the two to three
hundred calorie drop in non exercise activity, then you're looking
at burning four to five hundred calories less than you

(20:26):
once did and at the end of the dieting cycle.
And then add together whatever other calories less you're burning
as a result of having a lower total body mass
just to move around through the course of the day,
and it adds up. You can add up to I
want to say four four to six hundred calories that

(20:46):
you're screwed out of at the end of the dieting cycle.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
So that happens with some people. And when you combine that.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
With just the psychological aspect of how people respond to
dieting emotionally and how some people will not consciously or purposely,
but they will misreport calorie intake, they'll misestimate, they'll misreport,
and or they will not tell you about binging or

(21:21):
mirar binging episodes. So you have a lot of variables
you're working with their You've got to keep an eye
on the physical, the physiological, the psychological, and that's why
our job is just so incredibly incredibly difficult.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah. So, if somebody were to come to you and
they had been dieting pretty much their whole life, Like
I have women that are like, I can't remember the
last time I wasn't trying to drop calories and diet.
Would you start them? Would you say, okay, cool, we
can start tomorrow and we're going to take you in
a deficit or would you make them wait for a

(22:00):
few weeks and like eat at maintenance and kind of
see what that looks like.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
That's a really darning good question. It kind of varies
with the individual. But what is really an interesting exercise
that you can do is just have the person commit
to reporting exactly what they eat. And sometimes people prefer
to do it with pictures. And if you do the

(22:27):
picture method, and make sure that you have them put
you know, keys or something that you know the actual
size of next to the meal, just for accurate scale,
so you know they're not having this tremendously.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Huge bowl versus little bowl.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
With no with no point of reference. Have them put
some damn keys next to it or something it's smart,
and then just say, eat how you would love to eat.
For the next two to four weeks, eat how you
would absolutely feel happy and satisfied with your life eating.

(23:04):
Just do that, but I want to see every little bit,
every little drink, every little piece of food, everything. And
then you know, surprisingly, like nine times out of ten
when you do this, they freaking love it. They're enjoying it.
They're not restricting that and their weight barely budgets. And
so you both learn something. You both learned that A well,

(23:29):
most importantly, they learned that A they can eat how
they ideally want to eat and not just throw pounds
on their body. And then B you learn exactly what
their preferences are, what their patterns are, what their proclivities are.
And then at the end of the four weeks that

(23:50):
they're just having this commitment to be accountable. And you
know what, sometimes they lose weight because people automatically eat better,
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
More more diligent.

Speaker 4 (24:02):
You know, like they feel like they're being judged in
a way, but you have to assure them, I'm not
going to judge you. I want to see how you
would eat if you were to eat how you want
to eat, and sometimes they lose weight, and so it
can be this big epiphany by the end of the
two to four weeks, depending on how big of a
risk you want to take with this method. But a
lot of the times, you know, you have to find

(24:23):
these things out with people when they come to you
and say, I've been dieting my whole life, I've been this,
and I just haven't lost weight and all this stuff. Okay,
let's take a good look at how you eat, and
not only that, but how you would love to eat,
and how and eat the way that you think you
would be able to eat for the rest of your life.
And you know what, when they either maintain weight or

(24:43):
lose weight, which is a common thing after this exercise,
then it's a huge bonus for both of you, guys,
because then you can start from there and individualize their
program from there and tweak things and adjust them from
there without imposing too much of your references and values
on what they kind of know and love. And so

(25:05):
it's a pretty cool exercise if you're willing to take
the two to four week if they have that time,
you know, if they're not gunning for a family reunion
in six weeks. You can do this kind of thing.
So yeah, that's something that more people should try. Well.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I love in your book when you say you use
the you know, teach people how to fish instead of
just handing them a fish. And literally, I mean, like
I said, I only run courses for women the second
part of their life, and they all are just like,
just tell me what to eat, Haley. Just this includes
a mill plan, right, And I'm like, nope, don't do

(25:44):
mill plans a out of my lane, Like I'm not
a registered dietitian can't prescribe a mill plan like technically,
and then you don't learn anything, and it's really hard.
It's fun to see how someone is at the start
of the course because it is questions and emails and
frustration and I'm failing all over the board. But then

(26:07):
by the end they're like these butterflies that they're like, Okay, well,
you know I might not be perfect, but like, wow,
am I different than I was ten weeks ago? And
if you hadn't had to struggle, I'm like, you have
to know what makes up the food on your plate,
because if you don't, you know, of course, you're not

(26:28):
going to lose weight because you have no idea what
even is in that food. So do you like, do
you prescribe? Do you believe in a magic macro number?

Speaker 3 (26:42):
No?

Speaker 4 (26:43):
No, no, no, And I gotta say it, it depends
on the individual and the population and the situation. So
if somebody will take an extreme example, which you know
you've dealt with and I've dealt with, of an entertainer
who has to look a certain way for either a

(27:04):
photo shoot or a movie shoot at a certain time
that is fast approaching, then maybe you can justify this
is what you eat, lock in and let's make sure
that this is nailed. So there are those scenarios. But
for somebody who wants to make lifestyle changes and they

(27:26):
have kind of the rest of their life to get
it together, I think it's super important to explain to
people that I can't just hand you a diet and
I hand you a script and expect you to follow
this thing from here on out. Yeah, it's just things
have to be sustainable. It's got to be sustainable. And

(27:50):
once again, one of the reasons why the statistic is
eighty percent of dieters gain their weight back. Only twenty
percent of dieters in the general public are able to
keep their weight off for more than a year. Okay, so,
so long term weight loss is defined as keeping five

(28:12):
to ten percent of your body weight loss that weight
loss keeping it off for a year or more, and
eighty percent of the people who try that they fail.
And one of the big reasons for that failure is
because of cookie cutter plans that are not individualized to

(28:32):
what the person can sustain. I firmly believe that to
be successful in the long term, you have to almost
look forward to the meals that you have in your day.
You have to there has to be a very positive
outlook on what am I eating today? Oh, I'm looking

(28:53):
forward to meal one. I'm looking forward to meal two.
I love meal three. Oh I just love my pre
bed you know, whatever it might be, and it can it.
Really the goal really should be to be able to
look forward to your meals, hey, because if you're not,
you won't be able to sustain the program.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
I agree that sounds terrible, No, I mean I love
food so much like I would hate it if I
didn't like the food that I.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Was eating or deciding to eat every day.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
So in your book you talk about obviously anyone listening
to this podcast, they're hearing about protein and strength training
all the time, so most of them are like, oh, okay,
I get it, I get it. I get it. But
in your book you talk about protein overloading, like on
if we were look at a week and we have

(29:45):
X amount of protein to get every day, and that's
kind of what we're shooting for. And I have a
question about that in a second, But do you like
what is protein overloading? Is that what you called it
in the book, or.

Speaker 4 (30:01):
I call it protein hyper feeds.

Speaker 5 (30:06):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Yeah, it's sort of taking the concept of carb ups
or carb reefeeds and just making it protein. And I
did this on just sort of an experimental basis with
one of my one of my clients. This was back
in two thousand and nine. She was a marine at

(30:31):
one point, and she was actually a semi pro football player,
so she was just a really athletic person who wanted
to gain muscle and wanted to lose fat and was
open to trying some crazy stuff. So back in two
thousand and nine, we didn't have the wonderful research by

(30:53):
Jose Antonio and his colleagues looking at very high protein
intakes and what happens there.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
So I kind of I off the record, did.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Some experiments with my client, her name was Carla Fisher,
and some really interesting stuff happened because what I did
was I had her eat about two to three times
or her bodyweight and pounds in protein grams.

Speaker 5 (31:20):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, And this is.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Kind of what you what you would do with a carbohydrate,
except you would carve up a little bit more if
it were carbohydrate.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
But it's protein.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
So in any case, she would consume about two to
three times her bodyweight and pounds in protein grams. And
we would do this two to three times a week
and just see what happens. And kind of miraculously, what
happened was she recomped. In other words, she gained lean

(31:52):
mass while losing fat mass. And none of us really yeah,
she got the Holy Grail, and none of us really
knew how or why it happened. But fifteen years later
in the research, Joey Antonio and his colleagues are protein

(32:12):
hyper feeding folks, not really in the cyclical way that
I did, but on a linear daily way, and they're
seeing the exact same thing. They're seeing body fat loss
with lean mass gain. And even if they and technically
some of those studies don't show major differences in body

(32:34):
fat loss and lean gain. They basically show that the
extra protein you're throwing at people kind of disappears somewhere.
And there's a number of mechanisms, a number of speculations
we can make as to where that extra protein is going.
But the bottom line is it seems to be a
good tactic for dieters who don't necessarily want to continue

(33:00):
restrict So it can be a tactic for adding food
to the diet without any adverse consequences to the goal
of fat loss. And so that's been an interesting thing
to see across the literature and then many years ago
with clients, and so I think that it's one of

(33:21):
the tools that you can use for people who are
just tired of restricting. You just give them a protein
day or two in the week and just say, yeah,
go for it.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Well, and you were so ahead of the time, like
you called this out fifteen years thirteen, whatever it was
ever many years ago. So can you prescribe protein on
ideal body weight, lean mass or just body like one
grand per pound? Since we're America.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
Yeah, yeah, we don't need those kill grouns out, where's
the freedom and kill grounds? I typically do goal body weight,
or if you want, there's ways to calculate ideal body weight.
But all this stuff is really just a proxy for
lean body mass. It's just hard to accurately estimate lean

(34:16):
body mass. So I tend to use goal body weight
or ideal body weight. And this is congruent with what's
done in the literature because most of the protein research
in the literature is on people who are of a
normal body weight. So yeah, that's sort of the easy

(34:39):
way to do it.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, well, then you get too high when you look
at someone that might be obese and you give them
the number if you're doing one ground per pound, you're like, here,
go have your you know, eight hundred grams or galleries
in whatever it is, I mean, a super high number.
But then they're they're the carbs and fats are like, well,

(35:02):
something takes a hit. But so we obviously we know
the protein. Okay, we go off of that, But does
do carbs and fats change the body composition all that much?
Depending on if your high carb, high fat or vice versa.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
The disappointing answer, which I'm sure you're familiar with is no,
and we know that through a couple dozen well controlled
studies at minimum, and even within the past couple of years,
there was this great study involving Jeff Volek that looked

(35:40):
at a ketogenic diet versus a high carb low fat diet,
and the high carb low fat diet was the carbohydrates
in the diet were fifty percent of them were from sugar,
and they since they equated the protein intakes between the

(36:01):
groups and they equated total calories between the groups, there
were no significant difference in fat loss between the groups
at the end of the diet, which is pretty extraordinary
from number one, because Jeff Bullock was a part of
that and he's been touting ketogenic diets for the last
twenty years. And secondly, you know, you, at least theoretically,

(36:25):
you think, oh, sugar is bad or whatever, but half
of the carbs coming from sugar did not negatively impact
fat loss. So that tells us that the carb fat
proportion of the diet should be individualized according to the
person's personal preference or according to their athleticals if it

(36:48):
calls for a certain amount of carbohydrate in order for
them to perform an endurance or performance type capacity, and
so yeah, it's actually a good thing that the carb
fat proportion can be individualized since we as practitioners can

(37:09):
tailor programs better.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
So there's no I mean because again I'm just using
my experience, but I guess it's just the fixation on
Hayley tell me exactly what macros to eat, and I'm like,
it doesn't work that way. I can give you a guide,
but like, do you have food sensitivities? What do you
prefer to eat? You know, and not get so dialed

(37:34):
in on a specific I mean there's ranges, absolutely, but
not a you know, two hundred and thirty two grams
for this or you know, whatever it is. It's really
the whole flexity flexible dieting approach is just giving people
permission to be like, you get to tailor this to

(37:56):
your life. You get ownership instead of just being told
exactly what's going to work or what's gonna you know,
what's this going to do for you? And you get
to figure it out.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
So, Laura, what was the alcohol question. Let's go to
the good stuff.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
I know all of our questions how do you feel
about alcohol? And how do you track it?

Speaker 4 (38:20):
Okay, So alcohol, How I feel about it? Oh man,
it's a It's something that people have to take really seriously,
mainly because of its addictive potential. That's probably that's probably
the most important aspect of alcohol, because you never know
whether you're somebody who can develop an addiction to it,

(38:43):
and people really downplay that negative potential of it. And
among the general public, about one in ten one in
ten individuals develops some sort of addiction some level of
addiction to alcohol, so one intent people have some degree
of alcohol use disorder in the general public, and that's
kind of an alarming statistic.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
When I read that statistic, I was like, oh man,
that's pretty nighly knowing that one in ten people in
a given rooms has a problem with alcohol. And certainly
the pandemic did not help that, with people self medicating
and people, you know, trying to drink away the stresses
of life, and it's become a growing problem. But if

(39:29):
you're one of the nine out of ten people who
do not have an addiction to alcohol, and you're able
to consume it on a responsible and moderate basis, then
the literature converges on a one to two a day
being not harmful and in some cases possibly helpful depending

(39:54):
on the source of alcohol, with red wine having the
richest body of data.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
On its benefits.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
So if you start going beyond one to two drinks
a day, let's say two to three drinks a day,
then you better be a larger person who can metabolize
that that kind of does. If you start going above
two to three drinks a day four plus, most people
are going to experience negative impacts on both their training

(40:27):
as well as their appetite. And both of these negative
effects are typically going to be rooted in the way
that alcohol or excessive alcohol negatively impacts sleep quality. And
so a lot of times what we see in the
literature with alcohol intake is that people spontaneously eat more

(40:51):
when they lack sleep. They just eat a significant amount
more calories just because the body is sensing some sort
of crisis. It's some sort of energy crisis that is
governed by this lack of sleep, lack of good sleep,
and alcohol can do that. Not to mention, if you

(41:12):
drink enough and you have a hangover the next day,
then there goes your training session. Yeah, yeah, it's a
it's alcohol is something to be highly cautious about and
highly respected.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
Yeah, no, I agree with absolutely I And okay, my
next question is about intermittent fasting. What are your thoughts
on intermittent fasting.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
It is a viable tool for some individuals and the
main thing it's good for is controlling energy intake over
the course of a day or over the course of
the week. So if we look at the umbrella of
intermittent fasting, then there's three main sub types of intermitt

(42:00):
and fasting. There's time restricted eating, where you squish your
intake into a narrowed feeding window within the course of
the day, typically eight hours or less. And then there's
another model of fasting called the five to two method
or twice weekly fasting, where two days out of the
week you're not eating anything or you're only eating very little,

(42:23):
just a few hundred calories and you're netting a net
CLOrk deficit by the end of the week. And then
the other main model would be alternate day fasting, which
can be either zero calorie alternate day fasting, or it
can be a modified alternate day fasting where on the
fasting days you're having about five hundred calories, so it's

(42:44):
not technically a full blown fast. So with those three
subtypes of mind, and of course there are the dangerous
type of fasts that people do, you know, and record
it on YouTube, where they're going to be like I'm
going to go on at forty day water fast and
I'm going to film myself passing out.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Oh man, oh boy.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, there's always that. But the viable models of fasting
are out there. And the interesting thing about these models
of fasting are that they can be done the feeding
phases of the fasting and feeding cycles, they can be
done on an unrestricted basis, So you can restrict somebody
to let's say a six to eight hour eating window

(43:28):
in a day, and they don't have to restrict. And
what ends up happening is they end up netting a
either eucloric balance or hyppo caloric balance, so in other words,
they end up either maintaining or they end up losing
body weight. So that would probably be the biggest pro

(43:51):
of intermittent fasting is that it allows the feeding phases
to be unrestricted, and this freeze people up if they
don't like to be meticulous about tracking. It kind of
absolves people from having to track, which is kind of
a cool thing for some people. So, you know, something

(44:15):
that I don't like about intermittent fasting is there's a
lot of mythology around it. A lot of people who
have become emotionally attached to their special IF through their
pet IF protocol will claim that this is the way
everybody needs to diet because it's the best way for
whatever reasons they give, when that is simply not true.

(44:38):
When you look at the literature on intermittent fasting versus
daily caloric restriction, you look at the body of research
as a whole, they're both on par with each other
in terms of their effectiveness for weight loss and fat loss.
And you know, there's even caveats to be said about

(45:01):
alternate day fasting. There was a study done looking at
lean subjects and putting them through either daily clerk restriction
or alternate day fasting. This was lean men, and they
actually lost more lean body mass on the alternate day
fasting regimen than they did on the daily coloric restriction regimen,

(45:24):
even though the net CLOrk deficit by the end of
the week was equated.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
So there is a.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
Point of diminishing returns for people who think that they
can just fast, you know, indiscriminately. And the other bit
of mythology that really kind of bugs me with fasting
is when people read these speculations by these gurus who
will either insinuate or explicitly say that we have to

(45:52):
put ourselves through periods of fasting in order to regenerate
or rejuvenate our immune system and avoid cancer and you know,
promote longevity. None of that has been demonstrated, none of
that has been in quotes proven. Frankly, I doubt any
of it is true. It's like, yeah, and what the

(46:16):
body of research on this area, looking at changes in
clinical parameters between intermittent fasting models and daily cleric restriction models.
The magic really happens because the person lost weight, because
the subjects lost body weight, because the subjects were able
to control energy intake. And so it's impossible to disentangle

(46:42):
the clinical benefits of intermittent fasting or fasting period time
restrictive feeding included. It's it's almost impossible to separate the
clinical benefits from the weight loss that happens, from the
fat loss that happens. And now kind of getting into
the weeds a little bit here, there are a handful

(47:04):
of studies that show superior glucose control benefits with moving
the feeding window to the earlier part of the day
instead of having this conventional pattern of intake where you
eat from morning tonight. Okay, and there is some literature
showing that if you were to compare two time restricted
feeding models and early time restricted feeding and a delayed

(47:27):
time restricted feeding, so in other words, either skipping breakfast
versus skipping dinner, then the skipping dinner model tends to
show better glucose control. But this is all short term research.
So there's a particular study that stands out by lou
Liu and colleagues where they looked at the twelve month

(47:48):
effect where they compared a conventional eating pattern of eight
am to eight pm with an early time restricted feeding
pattern of eight am to four pm. No significant differences
in body composition improvements, and improvements in clinical parameters like
blood lippets and blood glucose.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
And so once.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
Again that tells us, oh, it's this really unsexy null
effect at the end of the rainbow. But hey, this
is great in the sense that you can tell people that, hey,
we can do this according to your personal preference if
you like to restrict your feeding window and you find
that helpful. Great, If you don't, great, let's go with

(48:31):
what you can sustain. Because there's no meaningful difference in
health improvements body weight and body fat loss improvements between
these two models. So that's sort of the long minding story.

Speaker 5 (48:49):
Because what about if you pick one of these intermittent
fasting models and you make sure to have your correct
protein intake? Is their effect on building muscle as long
as you get the correct protein intake.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
See, this is a damn good question. And we can
really only look at Grant Tinsley's work. He's done most
of the work on time restricted feeding combined with resistance training,
and he's largely seen positive favorable effects with the time
restricted feeding plus resistance training because restricting the feeding window

(49:35):
tends to corner people into eating less overall, and it's
been pretty effective at that, and the resistance training enables
people to keep their lean body mass while they're doing that.
But just kind of panning backward and looking at the
big picture, if somebody's main goal is to gain muscle

(49:58):
and not necessarily just retain it a diet, then all
of the intermittent fasting models are suboptimal for that goal,
because when you think of how muscle is built, it's
just net gains in muscle protein synthesis over time. So

(50:18):
muscle proteins, the synthesis side of muscle protein turnover, has
to outpace the muscle protein breakdown side of that cycle
over a period of weeks and months, and of course
throughout the day too.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
That counts.

Speaker 4 (50:34):
And so when people are going through fasting periods, they're
simply compromising the amount of muscle protein synthesis that can
occur on a short, mid and long term basis, and
so they're ultimately compromising their rate and potential of muscle growth.
If you're going to engage in any of these fasting.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Regimes, is there a certain how much protein do you
need to get to turn on muscle protein synthesis? Somebody
it's five grams in the morning. Is it the same
as forty grams?

Speaker 4 (51:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:05):
Muscle protein synthesis related to protein dosing is more of
a dimmer switch than it is an on off switch.
So you can see measurable degrees of muscle protein synthesis
with as little as ten grams of protein, but it
just happens to be higher with higher doses and there

(51:25):
happens to be a ceiling of muscle protein synthesis at
about forty to fifty ish grams of protein. So that yeah, yeah, FANTASTICO.
NPS is an interesting story. It's an interesting story with NPS,
and it varies with the population, varies with what's going

(51:46):
on in the protocol too.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Mm hmm. Okay. So I have a series of questions
here about number one is there? What do you think?
And I know this there's not a specific answer here,
but what is like the because I get asked this
all the time too, what's the ideal body fat percentage
for someone that's just like, I don't want to live

(52:09):
like I'm getting on a physique stage, but I also
want to be fairly lean year round and feel good.
You know, Is there an average percentage? Because everyone wants
to know the exact percentage of what is ideal?

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Okay, So there are some interesting recent research that looked
at body fat percentage and mortality. So how does okay,
body fat percent relate to when you're going to die?
And in the general population these percentages are pretty high
and women it averaged about thirty five percent and that

(52:49):
was like the lowest mortality was seen at about thirty
five percent body fat, and with men it was high
as well, so it was about twenty two percent body
fat for men with the lowest more brutality. So but
you know, this research is observational and there's a lot
of other factors going on with this, and you also
have to look at other bits of literature as well,

(53:12):
and so I kind of weigh this against previous literature
showing that normal healthy populations men that body fat percentage
range from about ten to about twenty and then in
women it was about twenty to about thirty. So, you know,

(53:36):
just because this is this new research rolled out showing
that mortality is lowest at thirty five percent men twenty
two percent women, you kind of have to look at
it a little bit skeptically, a little bit critically, And
there's other literature that's been repeated showing that roughly ten
to twenty percent men, roughly twenty to thirty percent women.
Hedges your bets towards living a long, healthy life, you know,

(54:00):
just generally speaking, at the population level, certainly there are
people above thirty percent women above thirty percent who will
live you know, right long, vigorous lives, and there are
women below twenty percent who are going to be very
healthy as well. But just speaking in general terms, it

(54:21):
is a twenty ish to thirty ish thing for women
and a ten ish to twenty ish thing for men,
and this can vary throughout the lifestyle and what athletic
pursuits people are involved in as well. I mean, you know,
I'm looking at Haley, She's probably in the you know,
high teens, maybe mid teens, you know, body fat percent

(54:41):
and doing just fine. But that's that's her as an individual,
and people just people differ in that. So it's important
to keep those ranges in mind, and it's important to
emphasize that I'm talking in general, not at the individual level.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, so is there because this is second question, is
there a specific amount of lean body mass? Now, obviously
this is going to change based on height and weight
and age, but like a good number should someone in
the one hundred and I don't know, fifty ish range,

(55:20):
maybe one forty to one eighty Is that how much
lean mass? Would you say, five pounds someone should have?
Obviously the higher the better for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, it's like.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
That whole question relates to fat free mass index and
fat free mass index is sort of like body mass index,
but you're looking at a fat free mass to height
ratio instead of a total body weight to height ratio.
And frankly, I mean, there's not a lot of good

(55:59):
data telling us how high should our fat free mass
index be in order to maximize health and maximize health
span and lifespan, because it's going to vary with the
individual's goals. There's going to be let's take one extreme
end competitive bodybuilders. Let's look at the drug free competitive bodybuilders,

(56:22):
whose fat free mass index can be anywhere from twenty
three to twenty five. Okay, so the way that you
would calculate fat free mass indexes you would take, well,
you'd probably want to find a calculator online and run
the numbers.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Through there instead of doing your finance.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
But their fat free mass index is about twenty three
to twenty five. The average untrained male their fat free
mass index is about nineteen. So you kind of get
to pick across that range. If you're totally on train
adult male FFMI of nineteen, probably that's probably not ideal.

(57:08):
You don't have to get all the way up to
twenty four or twenty five, because then you'd be a
competitive bodybuilder. But yeah, the answer to this question is
a little bit more philosophical than anything. You know, how
functional do you want to be, How strong do you
want to be? What kind of activities do you want
to be able to execute at a given age.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
You know, as.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
People hit their golden years, most people are happy to
be able to get up and sit down and do
some gardening and not fall and break their hip. Whereas
earlier in the life cycle, when people are like twenty
to let's say, twenty to forty to fifty years old,
they still want to push some weights around, they still

(57:51):
want to do some sports, and you know, it's you know,
it really kind of depends on the life cycle. I personally,
when I hit sixty and seventy, stuff, I want to
be throwing some weights around.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
I want to be able to be stuff. I'm doing that,
and so.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
Therefore there's always going to be in my case, there's
always going to be a push for an above average
amount of muscle that I want to carry.

Speaker 5 (58:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:17):
Yeah, so I love wonder how helpful that answer was.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
But yeah, I mean it's really hard because that's why
I'm always like, there's not it and they're like, well,
so also said on the podcast, I'm like, well, I'm
not as black and white as just like throwing out
a number. But I love when doctor Gabrielle Lyon says
we're not over fat, we're under muscled. And that usually
falls into a lot of the women later on in
life that just didn't get the memo to strength train,

(58:42):
and so they just carry a higher percentage. But if
we're talking about this is the last part of my
series Muscle, So if we're talking about someone new to
strength training, maybe around age forty, what is realistic that
some how much muscle of female best case because in

(59:03):
your book you talk about best case scenario and then
more realistic case scenario that a female can gain that's
new to strength training in a calendar year.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
Okay, okay, And I just looked up the average fat
free mass of an untrained woman and it ranges from
sixteen point seven to nineteen Well, I'm sorry, fourteen point
six to sixteen point eight that's the average FFMI in

(59:35):
untrained women.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
And in men.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
It was about nineteen ish. It's like no, like, yeah,
about nineteen Okay. So you're asking a really good question
because if you consider. Let's so we're gonna start kind
of at the top and then work our way down. Yeah,
most women, from the being adult and from an untrained state,

(01:00:04):
they have they have the potential to put on as
much as twenty to twenty five pounds of muscle on
the high end.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
On the high end, we're talking if you do everything right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
Yeah, and over the course of a lifetime, the course
of a lifetime, the course of a lifetime, yeah, let's
say five Let's say over the course of a five
to ten year training career, that they can focus on
that goal. They have twenty to twenty five pounds of

(01:00:40):
muscle available to them if they have great genetics and
great focus, and all the factors in their life converge
towards allowing them to pursue this goal. So when you
think about that, when you think, let's take the upper end,
Let's take twenty five pounds of meat that you can
put above and beyond your untrained state. If you're looking

(01:01:03):
at a five year period, you're looking at five a
gain of five pounds of muscle a year on average.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
And so.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
I mean, that's really pretty minuscule, especially when you consider
that it'll happen more quickly at the beginning, and then
it'll start diminishing as you reach that potential. So the
first year, who knows, maybe you can actually put on
eight eight pounds, maybe even ten pounds of lean mass

(01:01:36):
if everything goes right. But then it just starts decreasing
with the consecutive years to where at the fourth and
fifth year you're lucky to put on under two two
to three pounds in those in those final years, and
it is kind of I mean, it is kind of depressing.
But when you think about it this way, this way,

(01:02:04):
gaining ten pounds of muscle as a woman is spectacular.
It's freaking spectacular. Okay, so gaining those twenty pounds is
just stratospherically incredible of muscle above and beyond the average
untrained person. So it's a slow grind. People have to

(01:02:27):
understand that there's no gaining muscle too fast phenomenon. There's
no oh my gosh, muscle is just flying on my
body exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
I mean what we've been talking about this all.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Week on the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
Yeah, and with men, it's about double like men can
expect a ultimate muscular potential drug free anyway. I mean,
when we talk about you know, anabolic androgenic steroids and
stuff that just blows the whole that's a whole different conversation.
But drug free men can put on at max from

(01:03:03):
compared to an untrained male, untrained adult male, about forty
to forty five pounds of muscle in the course of
a training career. So you're looking about double the amount
of muscle that that women can put on. And some
some women can come, you know, not necessarily close to that,

(01:03:23):
but there might be. There's more, like, you know, a
thirty thirty percent difference between women, women who have good
genetics and men as far as the muscle gain potential goes.
But yeah, even with men, when you think about like
a five to ten year training career, you're looking at

(01:03:44):
very small amounts of muscle on average per year. And yeah,
and there are special cases we're talking about, like like
Phil Heath. He's been in the in the media a lot,
so he's at the top of my mind. He took
about two years to turn pro when he started bodybuilding

(01:04:08):
after his college college basketball career. It took like two
to three years to win the nationals. So he would
represent the upper end of genetic gifts to be able
to put on muscle mass with enhancement going on. So
I mean, in theory, if you have great genetics, then

(01:04:31):
you can fulfill your muscular potential. And he even went
to put on even more muscle than that. But let's
talk about like the regular mer mortals. In theory, you
can reach your potential for muscle mass in a lot
less than five to ten years if everything in your
life goes well and you have great genetics. But most

(01:04:52):
people will not be able to do that. So you're
not going to be able to see these gains of
what you know can consistent gains across the years of
one to two pounds of muscle a month type of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
It just doesn't happen like that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, well, and it just gets really hard for women
once once they're post amount of puzzle and they don't
have that estrogen. It's I think that the overall theme
that you said, you nailed it when you said it
is a slow grind. Weight loss done the right way
is a slow grind. Muscle building is a slow grind.

(01:05:30):
And living in the I want this now life that
we have access to really anything we want, most things
that we want really quickly. It's it's hard to step
back and just be like patience, longevity, play the long game,
like no secret sauce here, Like that's hard work, consistency

(01:05:52):
and staying in the game. Then just like, yeah, this doesn't.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Work, it's years. It's it's years of consistency. See, Like
it's hard for people to hear that. They want to
they want weeks of consistency to work, but it's not.
You know, it is a years of consistency thing. Because
even if you're able to hit a certain goal within
a matter of weeks or a matter of months, who
cares if you can't sustain that for the next decade

(01:06:18):
or two or three depending on you know, how much
time you have left on the planet, Really, who cares?

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
So it is a matter of the long game. I
totally agree.

Speaker 5 (01:06:30):
It's like committing to your health for your lifetime, Like
I'm in it forever.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Yeah, you never stop. You don't like get to be
to a point where you're like, Okay, well now I
can chill. It's going to chill in life. It's gonna
stay with me.

Speaker 4 (01:06:46):
Wait, the only way you can hold the clock back
is just by you know, making sure you're it's trying
to adapt yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:58):
Yes, Okay, I'm going to ask you one last quick
question and you can give a quick answer. It's for
it's not for Haley.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
What do you think?

Speaker 5 (01:07:08):
Actually that was a joke.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
What do you think?

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
What are your thoughts on diet soda and is it
a death sentence or not?

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Oh man, Well, just just.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
You can say I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
Whoever has uh, you know, Haley's physique can just appeal
to their own authority.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
Basically, That's what I would recommend. That is a good answer.

Speaker 4 (01:07:42):
Okay, So well, with a question like this, the only
thing you can appeal to is the weight of the
research evidence and diet sodas the only caveat to them
is not their artificial sweetener content, because across the majority

(01:08:06):
of experimental studies, it shows that they actually help with
body weight control, weight loss, they actually help with sustaining
a clerk deficit. All of these fear mongering threats about
diet soda leading to you know, either weight gain or diabetes,

(01:08:26):
or heart disease or cancer, all that stuff that's all
speculative and it's all based on very weak in quotes evidence.
So we can pretty much toss out the idea that
that diet sodas are a threat to health if anything,
they're kind of like a they're a key code to
making your your your health health good and sustaining the health.

(01:08:48):
I mean that you would have to drink literal gallons
upon gallons of the stuff to even theoretically incur the
dangers that that that people wave around in the media.
So now with all of that said, there are some

(01:09:09):
some energy drinks or diet diet drinks that contain like
one to two to three hundred milligrams of caffeine per can,
and so people have to be mindful of that that
they're not drinking, you know, three four cans of those
things a day if they contain caffeine. Because at the
general population level, the upper end of caffeine intake that

(01:09:33):
is still healthy or still not harmful is right around
four hundred milligrams a day. We look at if we
just look at population averages and what the threshold of
risk is in non pregnant individuals. With pregnant individuals, it's
it's a little bit lower, but for non pregnant adults,
we're looking at four hundred milligrams on average is the

(01:09:56):
most that you really should kind of start thinking of
cutting things off at Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Okay, I'm nowhere near close to I know we're clear
over here.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Good good, Oh my gosh, okay, Well, last question then
we're going to let you get off. What is this
has been such a fantastic hour, allan, what what is
something that as a scientist that you are, just you
in general, that have been on all of like tons
of these research papers and all of that. What have
you changed your mind on that was shocking or surprising

(01:10:30):
to you that you were like, hard fast rule, this
is what is true. And then all of a sudden later,
you know, years down, months down, whatever, you're like, oh,
well now I'm changing my tune because the research has changed.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
M okay.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
So there's three things that immediately come to mind, starting
from the most recent not epiphany, but like, okay, I
might I might change my opinion on this is the
concept that plant based proteins suck compared to animal based proteins.
We always believe that, We've always wanted to believe that,

(01:11:06):
because we all love our we all love our recent research,
and just sort of a mounting kind of pile of evidence,
short term evidence, and then now two studies comparing vegan
completely vegan group with against an omnivore group, both groups

(01:11:28):
consuming sufficient protein like one point six grams per kilogram
of body weight or zero point seven grams per pound
of body weight in both groups who are resistance training.
No significant difference in muscle size and strength gains between
the vegan.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Group and the omnivore group. And the vegan.

Speaker 4 (01:11:48):
Group in this one particular study I'm thinking about, they
used soy protein powder to boost the protein intake of
the vegan group to allow them to hit that one
point six grams per kilogram.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
Body and that was surprising.

Speaker 4 (01:12:02):
I mean, well, maybe not too surprising, But the reason
that it is surprising is because there was a lower
amount of essential amino acid intake in the vegan group
compared to the omnivore group, even though they used a
high quality plant based protein to boost the total daily
intake in the vegan group. Now there's still I'm still

(01:12:28):
skeptical about things. You could still look at things critically
and say, Okay, well, they used untrained subjects for that study,
and so pretty much anything is going to work as
far as gains go for untrained subjects. Okay, But you
also have to face the possibility that okay, well, differences
in protein type might not matter nearly as much as

(01:12:49):
the fact that there is a progressive resistance training program
in place, and so vegans still, I mean, they're not
necessarily doomed to these major compromises and being able to
gain muscle size and strength that we kind of assumed
that they were, you know, traditionally. That was one one

(01:13:13):
thing that was a recent thing. And then another thing
I changed my mind on was the fact that intermittent
fasting is going to really mess up your gains, and
it's going to make you lose a bunch of lean
body mass, and nobody should go more than four or
five hours without eating something. So, you know, having kind

(01:13:34):
of come up during the fitness era of the eighties
and nineties, everybody was eating every like three.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
Hours with their tupperware.

Speaker 4 (01:13:41):
You know, they're like bringing their damn TopWare around to
not only keep muscle from falling off your body, but
keep your metabolism stoked, stoked the metabolic fires with small,
frequent meals that act as kindling on this raging metabolic fire.
This was sort of the you know, the metaphors that
we were taught that happens to be not true. The

(01:14:02):
human body is perfectly adept at apparently not eating all
day and still hanging on to muscle tissue as long
as the resistance training program is in place. And then
another thing that I've changed my mind on. I used
to really believe in the post exercise anabolic window. And
this was about twenty years ago when a bunch of

(01:14:25):
media was put out and a book was put out
by John Ivy and Robert Portman, a book called Nutrient Timing,
where they hypothesized, actually they claimed that if you don't
take advantage of this magic thirty to sixty minutes post
exercise where you have to consume a quickly absorbed protein

(01:14:45):
and carbohydrate, then you're going to compromise your gains. You're
you're kind of like you're not doing all you can
optimize recovery and growth. And they focused on the post
exercise anabolic window. And over the subsequent I want to say,
fifteen years or so, there was a pile up of

(01:15:07):
studies that showed that, hey, as long as total daily
protein is sufficient, then exactly where we place those protein
doses relative to the training about timing wise doesn't seem
to matter wow, and so and so, you know, you
don't have to have this way protein shake waiting for

(01:15:28):
you in the locker room, because way in dextros protein
shake waiting for you and in the locker room in
order to make the same amount of gains as the
guy who just drives home in traffic and has his
you know, steak and potatoes when he gets home. And
then my colleagues and I we did a meta analysis
and that can you know, confirmed this suspicion. A meta

(01:15:51):
analysis for the listeners is a pooled analysis of multiple
studies and sort of seeing what where the evidence leans
on that. And then we did a primary study, a
randomized control trial comparing immediately immediate pre exercise protein dosing
with immediate post exercise protein dosing, and there was no

(01:16:13):
significant difference between those two protocols in lifters. So that
was the third thing that comes to mind that I've
sort of let goal of this whole post exercise anabolic window.
Now this isn't to say that there is some benefit
and some merit to eating some protein and or protein

(01:16:33):
and carbs after training. It's an opportunity to feed. It's
never going to hurt. But I think that for the
goal of muscle growth, people need to focus a little
bit more on well. Number one, total daily protein intake.
That's going to take care of most of you most
of your goal. And if you want a nitpick at
the icing on the cake, then make sure that you

(01:16:55):
are eating protein and at least at least three points
spread through the day. That's pretty much everything we know
that can maximize muscle growth. And if you really want
to get technical and nitpicky, Brad and I Brad Showinfeld
and I we review the literature and came to the
conclusion that if you want to maximize muscle growth, then

(01:17:16):
the distribution of protein intake through the day should be
at least four feedings dosed at about point four two
point six grams per kilogram of body weight, and that
would that would amount to this sort of golden total
of one point six to two point two grams per

(01:17:38):
kilogram of body weight for the total. So yeah, I
just kind of threw that little thing in there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Bill, that was lovely. This is the perfect way to end.
First of all, Alan, you're just incredible and you're you're
so easy to talk to and have the general population,
which is what our audience is be a to understand
so many of the these issues that can be so
complex and overwhelming for someone to just kind of start

(01:18:09):
and not, you know, want to just quit after day
one because there's so much information. So I love your
book and Flexible Dieting, which is the name again for
anyone listening. You can get that at any bookstore Amazon,
I think I got mine on Amazon anywhere that you
can buy books.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
Yeah, it's all over, it's all over the place. It
was even in uh was it Walmart at one point?

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Oh, then you made a big time. You made it
big time exactly well perfect, And you have your website
which is.

Speaker 4 (01:18:43):
Is Alanarragon dot com Allanarragon dot com. And I'm really
proud of my baby, which is my research review, which
I've been doing every month since two thousand and eight.
And so I would encourage people who are in really
into the details of stuff and the science and this stuff,
then that would be a good resource. And yeah, I

(01:19:07):
want to thank you both. I want to see you
both again. That it's great meeting you and you guys
are both really great and I'm just happy to know
that such good folks like yourselves are doing such good
things for the industry.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
So thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
Thanks Allen. We look forward to talking to you again.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
Oh yeah, we will do it again for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Thanks for listening everyone.

Speaker 5 (01:19:36):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star rating and sharing the body Pod with your friends.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Until next time,