Lane, welcome to the podcast, bro. I'm so so excited to have you on today. Thank you for coming. Thanks. I'm excited to be here, man. Yeah. I I don't know how I found you. It's probably through Gunnar, in LA, who's a who's a buddy of mine. And, you know, whenever he likes something, he, you know, it's it's usually super legit or very high technical things. But I'm I'm so jazzed to have you on because I have struggled for my entire life with weight image, all that
type of stuff. I was trained by a professional bodybuilder, but, you know, getting into the diet craze, obviously, as you know, there's just so much disordered eating, lies, damn lies, and just all kinds of bad shit out there about food. And it's like it's like worst in religion, you know. And I just wanna say before we get started, you know, coming across your work is amazing because it's evidence based. And I personally lost £30 on carbon, since November, end of November. Awesome. Yeah.
And the best part is I've had tacos every night. Okay? Every night and including at least 1 pork belly taco a day. So it's just like anyway, I just had to say that out loud and because it's it you've helped me find, like, emotional regulation around food. And I just have so many questions. But I just wanna state that because
your shit works and it's not a fad. So could you help me understand my understanding of observing your content is that you basically think that people can do effectively whatever they want more or less than what feels good for them as long as there's energy balance, which we'll we'll get into. And that the fads, the claims, the this is or that's is kinda these the marketing tricks to kinda trick people
who are very susceptible. But it seems like you have a very pragmatic approach around food and you're not just like a keto guy or a paleo guy or this guy or that guy. It's kinda whatever works with you within basically a budget, basically. Yeah. I mean, you know, at a at a kind of a 10,000 foot level, you know, we've all heard the advice, like, eat less, move more. Very about as helpful as telling somebody who, is trying to save money, hey you should spend less than you make.
Right. Yeah. You know that's it's not I think part of it is a knowledge problem, but it's a knowledge problem in terms of habits and behaviors because we looking at it from energy balance can seem kind of cold, calories in versus calories out. But the reality is is that it that is effectively kind of what it boils down to. Now there's a lot to unpack there because Yes. While it sounds very simplistic, what makes up energy in and energy out is not simplistic at all. Right.
But you I mean, we've seen this. Like, people who try to promote that they, you know, that there's their way to lose weight and all these other ways are trash. I mean, we we just know that's not true just if you just look, you know. Yeah. There's people who have lost, you know, weight on every different type of diet you can think of. And so what we know is that a lot of different diets will work. Now why why is that? Well they
they create an energy deficit one way or another. Now people What you hear people say a lot is I tried every other diet and this, you know, whether it's intermittent fasting or keto or whatever. This one is what worked for me. And when they say that, what what they think that means, and what a lot of people think that means is there's something special about their DNA that just made that light up and it was like a lock and key. Right.
And the evidence for that is extraordinarily weak. In fact, there was a long 12 month diet fits trial where they looked at polymorphisms of carbohydrate metabolism and fat metabolism, and essentially tried to see, you know, it was part of a larger trial, but they they wanted to kind of examine that. Does that actually matter? Like if we line people up who are, you know, quote unquote fat metabolizers with a higher fat diet, does
it and they found it didn't make a difference at all. Right. Yeah. That's that kinda old school. Are you a carb burner, a fat burner, a protein guy? Like that kinda old school thing? Yeah. But what we do find, what I think this boils down to, and it's I guess it's less sexy for people, and that's why they they don't like talking about it. But I think individual psychology is what matters most. Yes. Totally.
Yeah. So when people say that, what what what really truly happens in most cases I'm not gonna say always because, I mean, I I leave it open to the idea that there could be outliers. But what happens in Mastin cases is that somebody finds a diet that felt easy for them, that feels less restrictive for them. I I hear this a lot. I say, well, I started keto and I I just I never it never even felt hungry. It never even felt like a diet. But other people do a low carb diet and they think I'm
ravenous. Yeah. You know, I miss my carbs. You know, right. Right. So what I always tell people is that whatever you should probably focus on finding the methodology, No matter what you're gonna do to lose weight, you it will require some form of restriction. Right? So for example, you know the app Carbon Diet Coach kinda functions on sort of a flexible dieting sort of principles. Can't by the way, I
cannot recommend the Carbon Kipp enough. I don't recommend jack shit. I don't and it, like, Lane didn't pay me to say this, but, like, it is the most amazing simple app to understand what the hell to eat no matter what your preferences are. And we'll talk about reverse dieting in a second. But it's it's it's amazing. And it's like MyFitnessPal, all those shit, like, I'm, you know, concerned for
them. But I just it is such a I just wanna I wanna be clear because, you know, I I I I can sell I I can say these things because I've I've impacted. I'm a fan. That's why I'm coming to you, this is a fan. But, yeah. Anyway, so continue carbon app. You guys gotta get that. Yeah. So, you know, a flexible dieting model, it's basically like you said, the budget. Right? And it's kind of like a little bit more advanced form of calorie tracking. I mean, and it's basic level. Calorie traffic
tracking, I would say, with an emphasis on protein and consistency. Yep. So you have a budget. Well, that means you can eat, you know, you can eat whatever you want. You just can't eat however much of how of what you want. Right. That's that's the Now some people find that extremely tedious, difficult, they don't like doing it. Well, that's fine, But now the restriction is gonna be, okay, you can't eat everything you want. Okay? So whether you're doing a whole foods, or you're doing, you know,
keto, or you're doing a low fat diet, whatever. With intermittent fasting, you have to find whatever feels the least restrictive for you. That's right. With intermittent Mastin. I hear some of the people who love intermittent fasting say, you know, I just I get I was never even hungry, you know. Great. Awesome. The problem is I think the idea of personal preference is so unsexy Yep. That it doesn't sell well. Yes. And so what tends to happen am I allowed to curse?
Fuck yeah. Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Yeah. No. Yes. Fuck here. Fuck yeah. I like that. Fuck yeah. So, what what I always say, what tends to happen is people find what worked for them in terms of compliance. And then because they really like that, 1, they assume it's gonna work the same for everyone else, and 2, they retroactively try to do fuckery with the science in order to explain why their diet is physiologically
the best diet. What I always say is, I don't think like, you know, flexible dieting or or or calorie tracking is any better than any other diet necessarily. But it would be like me saying, well flexible diet boost your metabolism 20%. Right. And no, I'm not gonna say that because it doesn't do that, You know?
Right. Yeah. When The research is pretty clear. If you if your calories are equated, what really makes it what does make a difference for increasing your metabolism or energy expenditure is your protein intake, that does make a difference, possibly your fiber intake, And there may be, like there's some evidence that polyunsaturated fats may make a minor difference compared to like saturated fats, but it's not very much at all. Right. Yep. And and then your exercise. Your your exercise is your
best metabolism booster out there. Right? Yeah. Totally. Yeah. What I can't remember who said it, but someone was like, if exercise was a pill, everyone would take it. You know what I mean? Like, because it's so good for you, you know? For sure. I mean, I always tell people, I think I said this on Rogan's podcast that, you know, if you're if you're all a lot of these people who are fighting about diet and nutrition and like really in the weeds, don't even resistance train. And I'm
like Yeah. Yeah. You are literally the amount of time you're spending. What do you just go and lift something up. Totally. The I mean, if you look at the benefits of resistance train, not to go on a side tangent, but, like without so diets, we know they work. You can get a little bit of benefits without weight loss depending on the diet you're on. But for the most part, the the benefits of diets are almost completely tied to how much fat you lose. Because Yep.
Of adipose tissue, when you have too much, you secrete more cytokines, you have higher levels of systemic inflammation, it impedes all these different signaling days, you have lower insulin sensitivity. It's almost completely tied to the amount of adipose you have. So when you lose when you lose adipose, you get healthier And that's why I'm saying I mean just for example, a friend of mine, Doctor. Mark Halb at Kansas State, he's a professor. He had a bet with his students like this is like
10 years ago. He said, I want you to design me a junk food diet of 1800 calories and watch me lose weight. Yeah. I think 70% of his students thought he wouldn't lose weight. I mean, I think he was all, like, 1800 calories. He lost £27 and all his blood markers improved. All constant amounts improved. I'm not advocating for that because Of course. For most people that's not a most people, you know, hyperpalatable foods are not easy to moderate, but it just shows that the benefits to diets
are tied to their ability to help you lose weight. Exercise doesn't have that. If you start exercising, you get healthier with 0 weight loss. Yep. So I think part of that is, you know, it's it's hard. It's it's uncomfortable at first. It takes time to get used to. I say the same thing for exercise I do with diet. Find something that you can adhere to. You know, a lot of people they have this like paralysis by analysis. Yes. Definitely. Yeah. If I don't have everything just
perfect, you know, it's it's useless to start. It's like that's like getting a flat tire and going out and then slashing your other 3 tires just because it wasn't perfect. Right? Yeah. Totally. Like, put the spare on and Yeah. That little nub, you know. Totally. If all you can do is go out and walk, you know, every day for 30 minutes, hey. Great. Start there. Yeah. Exactly. I remember when I was training with Gunnar in
LA, I asked him because, you know, he trains everybody. Right? And he gets him in great shape. And I was just like, alright, dude. What is the, like, best cardio to, like, lose weight? Like, what it like, give me your like, what's your Hollywood whatever, you know, movie ready secret. Right? And And he looked at me. He he he had to be playful. Right? He looked at me. He goes, are you ready for this? He's like, whatever cardio you'll fucking do. You know?
And it was, like, the beginning of this paradigm shift out of that, like, fad type thinking. And I I find you guys to have very parallel sort of common sense values in that way, you know. One of the things that I always I always tell people, you know, think back to, like, if you've ever started a program and and and stopped, or if you ever failed a program, or, you know, in terms of like failing to lose weight or failing to keep
it off, Think about why you failed. You didn't fail because you didn't have the perfect cardio routine or your interval session wasn't right or your sets and reps were, you just stopped doing it. Like that's why you failed, right? So if we know that and actually looking at the the if we go back to diet nutrition there was actually a recent meta analysis which for my for the listeners who aren't familiar, a meta analysis is basically a study of studies. Yep. They
try to Like a body of data. Right. So they look at studies Which is the most the most verified highly regarded thing. Because it's not just, like, one person's opinion. It's like a body of words. In fact, I think I may have learned that in your membership site. I think I think it was where I learned that. Yeah. So so now it's important to so meta analysis are kind of like on the hierarchy of evidence. They're like
the tippy top. Right? Because it's not just empirical, it's amassing, you know, different studies that kind of asked a similar question, And now I will say you can, based on how you do inclusion criteria, there are bad meta analyses as well. Sure. But it's for the most part we consider those the highest tier of evidence. Now, there was a meta analysis that was looking at, 14 different types of diets. So anywhere
from low carb to low fat and everything in between. Right? And this was a follow-up meta analysis to one that examined 4 different diets. So these different diets, any studies they've been in looking at, okay, did they did any of them produce better weight loss? None of them did. The low carb had an advantage for the 1st 6 months, but most of that was because of water, because low carb water more quickly. Which is super healthy for you to be dehydrated. Right? And then and then at but
at 12 months and on, there was no difference. And then they looked at compliance. Where there was their compliance any difference between these diets and they worked. There wasn't really a difference in compliance. In fact, what they showed was the people who had the best compliance tended to be in studies where they were getting consistent nutrition counseling. Right? Yeah. Makes sense.
And studies with different diets that did nutrition counseling, it basically was almost completely tied to how frequently the subjects had nutrition counseling. So, and the researchers in both of these meta analyses said, hey, basically, the their conclusion was the diet should be suited to the individual or whatever there is best
for their individual compliance. So we always like to say, compliance is the science which again we're building Carbon that's that's why we made Carbon so simple and flexible because we wanted we wanted people to get past the idea that they had to be perfect. You know? Totally. To be like, okay. This is something simple that I can do, versus try to Kipp it. I think a lot of people out there it's it's tempting to as a as somebody who's trying to make it in the fitness industry,
it's tempting to overcomplicate things because it makes it easier to sell. Because if you ask anybody who does marketing, you don't sell the solution, you sell the problem. That's right. You sell the problem. And some outcome that is because of your process, not necessarily because of a process. Right. And I've seen every I've seen every type of food makes you fat than you can imagine. I see one type of egg white. This is why egg whites make you fat. Oh, god. Like, every
single thing you can imagine. I mean, I've seen, like, more recently with the carnivore movement. They've, you know, said that, you know, it's polyunsaturated fats and and vegetables that are making us unhealthy. Uh-huh. They're just I'm just like, my god. Like, do do. And the funny thing is you'll see people ping pong back and forth towards the between these different diets that all oppose each other, never putting together that it's actually the fact that they're ping
ponging and not being consistent that's actually the problem. Totally. Which, by the way, brings me to another that sort of a this is a great segue into something that I'm really curious about. Right? So, you know, you talk about, like I remember, like, when I really started getting into, like, okay, what the fuck is the biochemistry of my body and why is it
like this? Right? And I we get into, like, the idea of insulin resistance, which is a very good start into understanding, like, some type of mechanism of action that was happening in my body. Right? And that got me into Fung's work, which I know you're a major fan of that guy. Just kidding. Which I I I was happy to see your take on it because I've had it my I went through that process and then there's my experience. But but as I
started getting, like, all these things in service, okay, now it's insulin. Now it's this or that. You said something somewhere. I follow you. I feel like I know you. Where you were basically, like, talking about these claims about even, like, the health levels of food, but it was something about in the context of calorie restriction. I'm not gonna say that you said the rules change, but it feels like my takeaway was there's a different context of what a food means when you're in a caloric
surplus versus when you're in a caloric deficit to the body. Because the body is ultimately the master regulator of whatever the fight needs to happen to keep us alive. Right? So can you help me understand when someone's trying to evaluate, I don't know, insulin resistance or the inflammatory properties of something and kale versus, I don't know if I can know, like, a snicker bar. Right? Assuming you talk about equated calories of
all that being equal, protein is equal. In the context of a caloric deficit, do you have any concept about, like, what happens like leptin, ghrelin, insulin resistance? What happens to, like, I don't know, c reactive protein inflammation markers? You know, like because I think so many people are, like, it's not about balance. It's not about energy balance. It's about your chemistry. Right? But, like, I feel like you're telling
like, I'd love to know more about how you think about this guy. You haven't quite figured it out. How do you perceive biochemical markers of hormones in the context of a caloric deficit versus a surplus? And based on the food, because it seems like that that would be an interesting question for you to answer, for sure. Yeah. So what I would say to those people is that, you know, energy balance is
biochemistry. Calories in, calories out is biochemistry. But I I think a lot of the confusion comes from people not understanding the difference between a short term acute response, to food intake, versus what actually happens in the long term. So I'll give you an example. If you eat, sugar or a sugary meal your insulin will go up more than if you ate a high protein, or or fatty meal. Let's just
say fat. And if you read a textbook on nutrition or physiology, it will tell you that well insulin, it it inhibits fat burning, it inhibits glycolysis, it increases fat storage, all these sorts of things. And so when you look at that from a short term perspective, you would say, well, insulin makes us fat. I mean, this is Gary Taubes argument, you know, insulin makes us fat for this because of the what the textbooks say, because it's putting fat into fat
cells. Okay. Alright. But this is so this is something I struggle with because I was a Biochemist. I did my 4 year degree in Biochemistry, And I was this is what we call mechanistic thinking where you're looking okay, a a does this, and then you got b, and then C. And you draw just kind of a linear line. So that's that sort of thinking. And it took going through a PhD in nutritional science
for me to go, who? In the body things are a lot different in the context of the entire body because you realize that systems are extremely redundant. That's right. So let me give you an example. If we look at 2 diets and we equate them for daily
calories. Right? And one diet is a high fat diet, one diet is a, low fat high carb diet, Both of them equal in protein because it's very important to equate protein if we're looking at this from a physiological perspective because protein is 1, satiating, and 2, it also increases energy expenditure. We do know this. Meaning meaning, does that basically mean it's thermogenic? Like it like it Kipp of like it burns more calories by consuming it, but not this as
many calories as it is itself? Is that Kipp of what you're saying? Yeah. Correct. Correct. So there's something called the, just a side a side tangent, there's something called the thermic effect of food, which is basically how many calories does your body have to expend in order to extract the energy from that particular food. And for protein, it's about 20 to 30%, For carbohydrate, it's about
5 to 10%, and for fats, it's about 0 to 3%. So for example, you eat something that's a 100 calories of protein, your diet is about 70 to 80. And I mean, again, I don't wanna be dogmatic about those numbers. Different studies will say different things, but that's that's about where it lies. It's a good it's a good approximation. Yeah.
So that's why it's important to to understand that because a lot of the original research on like a low fat versus a low carb diet, the low carb diets had higher protein, and came out looking much better. And then once studies started equating protein, it turned out, well this is actually a protein effect, not a low carb effect. Right. So, but let's say you take those those 2 diets, and one one is high fat, one is high carb. Both in the context of a calorie deficit. Well,
we've done these studies. There's actually over 20 controlled feeding trials, that have looked at that have examined, different levels of carbohydrate and fat while protein is equated. And, the summation of those trials showed that actually there was a favoritism for fat, actual body fat loss towards low fat by about 16 grams of fat loss per day. Now that being said, I don't I don't tell people you should do low fat because you'll get 16
grams fat loss, but I don't care about that number. That's Right. Well, it could be a data artifact. What I take away is there's really practically no difference between the two diets. And people say, well, well, how could that be? Because of insulin. Because insulin drives stuff into fat. Exactly. But not the calorie deficit apparently is what you're saying. Well, correct. And consider this.
So you, for the most part, they've done these these trials that we have what's called, stable isotopes, which are kind of what we use, I I use them in my research, but they're basically metabolic tracers. So you can examine the food you eat, where it goes. Oh, wow. Okay. That's a that's a new thing. Very cool. So basically, they did a several feeding trials and looked at, okay, if you eat fats, where does the fat wind up? If you eat carbs, where does the carb wind
up? And there there was one study in women where they overfed them by, I think, a 1000 calories per day, and either from either from fat or from carbohydrate. And what they found was that of the people over first off, both diets equally increased their body fat levels to the same amount. Right. Kipp off, when they traced it, what they found is that, they store on average about 280 grams of fat per day. Of that, every single gram except 4 was from dietary
fat. Wow. Carbohydrates, in order to store a carbohydrate as fat in adipose, you can't just shuffle a bunch of carbs in there. Right. It's a carb is, hydrophilic like water. An adipose tissue is basically just a bunch of triglycerides. It's not all triglyceride but it's about 87% triglyceride. So you have to store as triglyceride which means you have to go through a process called, de novo lipogenesis which is the conversion of carbohydrates to fats.
So that process doesn't really happen under noble dietary conditions. Now, so basically the fat that you store in Adopost is mostly from dietary fat. Now, why do carb Now so if that's the case why not just eat a, you know, all carb diet if you can't store carbohydrates and fat? I can hear a bunch of people going, exactly, Lane. Give me my bagels. You know? Right. You know, keep in mind that, it's very hard to get your fats low enough to to to to actually
practical. And also if you get your fats low enough and your carbs high enough your body will ramp up de novo lipogenesis to cover the difference. Now, so when it comes to carbohydrates, even though they're not stored as body fat, what they do is they provide a caloric cushion, let's say, for the fats that you intake to be stored as fat. Right? So here's here's kind of the rub. And this is actually in my book, fat loss forever. I kind of lay this out very simply.
If you eat a high fat diet, so that the amount of body fat you're going to lose is a what's called fat balance. Yep. And it's a balance between the amount of fat you burn versus the amount of fat you store. Right? So Remember seeing this equation and my brain being like, okay this is like this is like quantum physics here for a second. Let me let me read this 3 times. So if you if you burn more than you store you're gonna be in a in a def in a fat deficit essentially, and
you're gonna lose body fat. If you store more than you burn, you're going to be in a fat surplus and you will store body fat. So when we when we actually look at this, if you're doing a high fat diet, and this is Kipp of the rub that keto people say. Well, you know, it turns you into a fat burning furnace and you burn a ton of fat. And yes, that's true. The studies do show that. You you burn much more fat when you're on a low carb diet but you also store more fat. That's hilarious.
Now if you're on a low carb diet you burn much less fat because carbs increase insulin. Insulin kind of forces you to oxidize carbohydrate preferentially so you burn less fat. But you also store away less fat. Right. What determines how much, what that balance is is going to be energy balance. It's gonna be how many calories you're taking in versus what you expend. Now what I will say is people will Kipp of paint me as an anti low carb person, and I'm not. My PhD was from a
lab that skewed low carb. We Mastin, we were kind of low carb advocates in terms of, like, a moderately low carb diet. And people can go look those papers up from our lab, from, from doctor Lehman. What? Pub Pub Med? Type in type in Layne Norton Pub Med. That's where they go? If you go to Pub Med, you type in Norton LE, you'll find my stuff. There we go. Love that. My PhD adviser was, Laymon d k. I fucking love that, dude. I who can say that? Like, I've
talked to so many people. No one's like, yeah. Go to PubMed. Check it out. You know, I think that's just badass. Yeah. That's one of my that's one of my pet peeves when people say someone has done done research. I said, well, really? Where can I read the publications at? Yeah. Totally. Publications, and usually I get crickets. Yeah. Exactly. But, no. So so I mean, essentially, I what I tell people is like, listen, this is great news because that means that whatever
you prefer can work. Yeah. But again, it's it's kind of that misunderstanding of a of a short term rise in some kind of hormone or biomarker versus what actually happens long term. And I'll give you another example. So snapshot versus, like, longitudinal data, basically. Totally. And I'll give you another example of that long term that that, gets used by the Kipp of the other side since I've been picking on low card. Sure. You know, people who are plant based, very
very zealous supporters of the plant based movement. That's a kind way to put it. Yes. So they'll say things I mean, like, I did a really big breakdown of the the Game Changers film. I did a really big debunk of that. And one of the things they talked about was, well, if you eat animal protein, it increases, you know, your your increases your c r p and you know, decreases endothelial function and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, okay.
Yeah. If you eat saturated fat, a lot of saturated fat, it can short term impair endothelial function, but you know, they kinda painted as well, this isn't this is because of all animal products. Well, actually, if you look and and you look at, like, lean proteins, they don't have that effect. In fact, I challenged, people on Twitter. I said, find me one study where a lean protein impaired endothelial function. And again, it was crickets. Yeah.
Yeah. And just so we're clear, I believe what you're talking about is endothelial function. Is that, like, the lining of the arteries of the veins of Correct. So it's the flow basically. Your blood vessels and whatnot. So, and and then when it comes to, Which is like a precursor for plaque and all that stuff. Right? It's kinda what they're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Kinda.
Kinda. We do we we do know that saturated fat can increase LDL cholesterol and despite the LDL cholesterol deniers out there, LDL cholesterol can penetrate the arterial wall and does seem to be positive towards heart disease. That's a whole lot of can of worms because people completely miss
misunderstand that data. But when it comes to something like CRP or inflammation, the the short term rises and falls just don't seem to make a big difference what you're looking at is do you want to see the long term what happens over the long term and, when we look at the long term there's actually a study I want to say in 2019 and I can't remember the author's name but they looked at 4 weeks and of course anybody doesn't like the study will say, well it's only 4 weeks.
Okay. But they they did the study for 4 weeks where they had a tightly controlled feeding protocol, and they had people either consume 30% of their calories from protein from either plant based sources of protein or animal based source of protein, equating calories, equated protein, equated carbs, equated fats. And they saw both groups lost weight, both groups decreased their levels of inflammation, no difference between groups. That's incredible.
Now, again, I don't wanna make this out to sound like, well, because here's the other straw man fallacy that people make up about me is they'll say, Wayne's just saying that it's all about calories, that food quality doesn't Mastin, and that's that's simply not true. We do know that food quality matters, especially when it comes to moderating your intake. We know that like hyperpalatable you know quote unquote junk food is very very difficult to
moderate. But what I'll always tell people is don't assume that your psychology what works for you is what will work for everybody. That's right. For some for some people if you tell them, hey, you can have a little bit of junk food as long as you track it, they'll end up just binge eating on junk food because they have difficulty moderating that. But I've seen many people where if you tell them, hey, this isn't necessarily a bad food. It's just
very expensive on your calorie budget. But if you account for it, you know, if you want to have a little slice of this or a little bit of that, you know, it's not going to kill you. It's not going to be a problem and you could still lose weight. And I I I remember this. I had a, this was back when I was coaching a lot of competitors. I had a bikini competitor, and she was convinced there was no way she could eat sugar and lose weight. And I said, listen, here's what I want you to do.
I'm just we're just gonna do a little experiment. If you promise me you will nail these calories for a week and nail your exercise goals out, I want you to have 1 serving of ice cream a night. Okay? Now for those of you out there, I'm not talking about a bowl of ice cream. Okay? A bowl of ice cream is probably 3 to 4 servings of ice cream. Right. You don't wanna be depressed way out a serving of ice cream. This is Or cereal or whatever. Yeah. So I said, do that for a week and let me know if you
lose weight. She came back. She said, oh my god. I lost £3, and I was eating ice cream. And, you know, again, it was one of those things. Now interestingly, what she said was, you know what? By the end, I actually didn't want the ice cream because I would rather had a really big salad. Yeah. But she didn't deny it so it wasn't this
thing. Is what you're is that what you're yeah. I've I've totally. And and I see that many times where it's like you'll have people they'll try to eat clean whatever the hell that means or you know try to really restrict these different foods and then what happens is they'll do that successfully for a little while, but then once they get reintroduced to them at some point, they just go off the rails and binge eat on them because they they
feel like, well, I've already because there's no understanding of caloric density, they'll they'll feel like, well, I've already told me screwed myself, so I might as well just have how much I want. And I see this kind of all the time where they go, you know, this is the last cheat meal I'm ever having or whatever as they shovel you. Today. Today. They're not so. Y'all see, dude. That is so me. For sure. For sure. And so I'll tell people. I'm like, listen. If it helps you
to be a little bit more adherent. I know for me I struggled with that when I first got into bodybuilding. I would try to eat clean you know as a college student which that's very difficult. Totally. And then with my buddies my roommates were were pizza I ended up shoveling a whole large pizza down my face, right? And so I started, like, just on my own Kipp saying, you know what? I don't think it's the one slice of pizza that's messing me up. I think it's the fact I'm
eating the whole thing. Yep. I tried just, like, letting myself have some of these foods in moderation and see what happens. And what happened magically was I got leaner because I was more adherent. Totally. Yeah. That makes I mean, dude, I have a pork belly taco every night. I I know exactly what you're talking about. And it's like my body's like so something in the psychology is like, thank you for not being a dick to me today.
Right? And, like, and now I will not have cravings. But, like, when I restrict it, it's, like, that's when I some become my own worst enemy in a way. Right? And and the weird thing is I don't want it as much. It's like the rebellion dies in inside. Exactly. That's it's kind of like it's kind of like having kids. You have to be you have to have discipline but you also can't over discipline. Because what happens if you're if if you apply no discipline, the the
kids will be rebellious. But if you apply too much discipline, they'll also be rebellious. Totally. So you have to Kipp of apply structured discipline. Right? Totally. Yeah. And I look at this way. I'm like, you know, just look at basic human psychology. Like, if I took a group of people and I stuck them in a house and I was like like this big Mastin. Right? It's like like this is how every horror movie starts. And and you say, you can vote anywhere in this place you want, but for
the love of God, do not open that door. What is the you're gonna obsess about what is behind that door. You're gonna wanna open that door. Somebody is gonna open that door because they just have to know what's behind there. Yeah. It's not like when you start to restrict certain foods, you know, you're just you you you'll I mean, a friend of mine Sohee Lee, she talked about the first time she did a a contest prep diet. The coach told her she couldn't have cookies. She's like, I don't
even really like cookies that much. But I don't know if they're changing cookies because I couldn't have them. You know? So Totally. And what I'll tell people is like, listen, I'm I'm not saying you have to eat those things. I'm not saying you have to eat junk food. What I'm saying is that having a little treat or something like that within your dietary budget, your goals, if that allows you to feel like you're not having
these cravings and to be more compliant, then guess what? It is better than try be clean all the time where you might, you know, lose your mind. And I I and people will
say, well, you know, the sugar, it can't be good for you. And and what I'll say is again, when you put in context of a calorie deficit, you we have these things where we can I always get annoyed because Wanda Patrick will say things about certain things with no context the day to give it and I think she's a smart person but like she said well this you know sugar has been shown to increase inflammation? Yeah In the
context of a caloric surplus. Right. So there was a study by Cerwin et al. You can find this study back in 2000, and it's been replicated as well.