You can become a better fat burner. If you are overweight, if you have regular cravings or feel like you’re hungry all the time, I’d bet that your body isn’t very good at burning your stored body fat.
We can change that.
In today’s episode we’re talking about how you train your body to either be carbohydrate dependent or an efficient fat burner.
If your body can’t efficiently access your stored fat as fuel, you’ll have to eat more than someone who can efficiently access & burn fat. Plus, you’ll be more hungry & have less energy.
We’re going to address what ketosis is, what ketones are and how you can begin to train your body to become a better fat burner.
We’re also chatting about an upcoming masters class on creating motivation & building consistency. Honestly, none of these nutritional strategies matter if you don’t have the discipline to build the habit in the first place. I hope you’ll join me! Here’s the link to register:
Ketosis is a state of metabolic efficiency where you are able to burn stored energy in the form of body fat and ketones & not be dependent on regular high carbohydrate meals to sustain your energy, mood and cognitive focus.
Ketones are an energy source just like carbs, fat & protein are energy sources. Ketones can be used by your brain, your heart, and your muscles. Ketones are produced by the liver as a byproduct of fat metabolism.
Ketones produced under certain conditions:
blood sugar is low
insulin is low
muscle & liver glycogen stores are low
To understand more about this, listen to the following episodes of the Primal Potential podcast:
In October 2019, our relationship with Thrive Market changed. They decided to put their marketing dollars in avenues outside of podcasting but we still think they’re a good choice if you’re looking to save money on health & personal care products.
Today was a big day for me! I interviewed Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, for the podcast! He has a new book coming out in October called The Keto Reset Diet.
His team sent me a copy in advance of our chat today and I fell in love with the balanced approach to doing keto right (as opposed to all the crazy marketing-hyped fad diet approaches to doing keto wrong).
If you’d rather listen to this blog than read it, click here.
I was inspired by the book & fired up by the opportunity to chat with Mark and found myself saying, “I’m going to do it, Mark. If you say it’s the next level of primal, I’m ready to try!”
I love trying new things and seeing how my body reacts to different approaches and I’ll be sharing the journey with you. This is not a diet. This is not a hack or quick fix.
This is an opportunity to learn and improve my metabolic machinery.
My episode with Sisson will air this week and the approach will probably make more sense then but I’ll do my best to explain here.
First, pre-order the book. I read a lot and don’t recommend most of the books I read but I highly recommend this one.
Second, understand that the book recommends at 21-day primal eating phase before anyone transitions into the keto reset. Since primal is the way I consistently eat, I’m going into the keto phase. Please don’t do that without a primal phase if you aren’t already consistently eating primal. Okay? I’m so serious here.
I will be limiting my carbs to 50 grams per day. This is a total number, not a net number. I’m not subtracting out fiber. That 50 grams includes fiber. Nothing is “free”.
I’ll be eating 0.7 grams of protein per pound of lean mass. This is not 0.7 grams of protein per pound of total body weight! It’s just lean mass. For me that’s a little over 110 grams per day. He recommends less protein for people who are not active. Since I do CrossFit workouts 5-6 days each week, I’m going on the higher end of the protein spectrum.
The rest of my daily energy intake will come from fat. Yes, it’s a lot of fat.
I won’t be frying cheese or consuming artificial sweeteners – I think the “hacks” to make keto junk food are just that – hacks.
I also don’t have a daily target for grams of fat – I’ll let my hunger and energy dictate that. My fat intake will come from avocado, macadamia nuts, eggs, bacon, meats like salmon & beef and some convenience products like Primal Kitchen Chipotle Lime Mayo. (Yes, that’s one of Mark Sisson’s products, no I don’t get paid to promote it.)
I’ll document the journey here – sharing what I eat, how it impacts how I feel & what I notice in terms of physique changes. I’ll also be really candid about my struggles or choices to eat something that isn’t aligned with the standards I just described. I’m not married to perfection, I’m here for progress & learning.
I’m really excited about the process.
Let’s talk about today! I didn’t make it to the gym today (hate that!) but I did 100 kettlebell swings for time and a 15-minute Airdyne bike EMOM. I was away all weekend and had some major deadlines to hit today so I chose to workout at home instead of at the gym.
On the food front:
I’m gonna miss the cabbage salad bowl during this experiment but I’ll have to either make it smaller (less cabbage) or use a lighter green like spinach or arugula. I’m cool with that though. This morning’s cabbage salad bowl was cabbage, 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon and a tablespoon of Primal Kitchen Chipotle Lime Mayo.
Lunch was leftovers from last night’s fajitas. Steak and veggies, eaten cold. Easy peasy!
For dinner I’m making up a big bag of cauliflower rice to go along side a burger without the bun, topped with avocado.
The Keto Reset bonanza will begin tomorrow. Can’t wait!
For more on Mark Sisson’s books and products, check these out. I highly suggest getting his nutritional products from Thrive Market because the prices there are by far the best.
In October 2019, our relationship with Thrive Market changed. They decided to put their marketing dollars in avenues outside of podcasting but we still think they’re a good choice if you’re looking to save money on health & personal care products.
Calorie counting is not an effective fat loss approach. It is a significantly flawed model that overlooks how fat loss actually happens and what your body truly needs to get results. As Mark Sisson says, calorie counting is overly simple & dangerously inaccurate.
This is part two of Why Diets Don’t Work (And What Does). You can read part 1 here.
Yet, lots of people count calories because it’s an easy thing to track. I get it. I mean temperature is also an easy thing to track but it’s completely ineffective if your goal, for example, is to monitor windspeed. Are they sometimes related? Sure! But tracking something because it’s easy doesn’t matter if it’s ineffective.
That’s the predicament we’re facing with calories. We track them because they are easy but for our goal of fat loss, it’s highly ineffective.
What are calories?
Let’s begin with what calories actually are. They are not magical mounds that pile up around your waist line and make you bigger. A calorie is a unit of measurement, just like an inch, mile or degree.
One calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1kg of water by 1 degree Celsius.
When we say “one calorie is the amount of energy required…” that tells us that calories refer to the amount of energy in something. Calories measure energy potential. They tell us how much energy would be released from something if it was burned in a closed system.
Different foods generate different amounts of heat, based on their energy potential (or the amount of calories they contain).
Do you know when this matters most? When you’re burning your food to keep you warm. Like, when you bring a trailer of food to a fire as your only source of heat. Which is basically never.
One hundred calories of cookies and 100 calories of ground beef burned in a closed chamber will release the same amount of energy in the form of heat. But our bodies are not closed chambers where we are setting our dinner on fire and measuring the heat released.
Calories aren’t taking into account the impact of the fuel type on critical fat loss factors like digestion, metabolism, absorption, hormone balance, usage potential, storage and so much more.
When seeking fat loss, it’s the impact of the fuel type on our body that matters most, not the amount of calories.
Unfortunately, too many people take one piece of information and then make all sorts of incorrect assumptions. This is what happens when we take the fact that calories tell us how much energy is in the food we’re eating and then we assume that if we consume less energy, we’ll lose weight.
First part true, second part inaccurate assumption.
There is way more to food than the energy it contains.
Overlooking this huge shortcoming of calorie counting is why so many people fail when counting calories. Focusing exclusively on calories usually leaves people hungry, tried and craving any number of foods that aren’t fat loss friendly.
The type of food we eat and when we eat it has a huge impact on all these things – fat burning, energy, cravings, mood, sleep, hunger and more.
The calorie paradigm of “eat fewer calories and burn more of them” overlooks the most fundamental keys of fat loss.
Let’s consider some of the research.
Calorie Inequality Research
In one study, two groups consumed the same number of calories but from different sources. One group was getting the number of calories from candy. The other group consumed the same number of calories but from peanuts.
After two weeks of this isocaloric diet (isocaloric means that the calories were the same in the two groups), we see that the candy group had increased fat mass, increased body weight and increased cholesterol compared to the peanut group. The peanut group saw no change in body weight or waist circumference and had an increase in basal metabolic rate.
In addition to not taking into consideration how fat loss actually happens, the calorie paradigm totally ignores health. I think we can all agree that someone would be healthier eating 2000 calories per day from whole foods than 1500 calories per day from candy & fried foods.
In addition to ignoring health, the calorie paradigm doesn’t take into consideration the metabolic pathway of foods.
Two hundred calories worth of broccoli has a vastly different metabolic pathway & hormonal impact than 200 calories from soda.
It is the type of food that primarily determines it’s metabolic pathway. The metabolic pathway has a huge impact on whether that food is used for fuel or stored as excess.
The combination of type, quantity & timing of fuel determines it’s hormonal impact. And, it’s the hormonal impact that determines if the food is burned, when it is burned and if & where any excess is stored.
Looking just at calories doesn’t tell us anything about the hormonal impact or metabolic pathway. That’s a huge problem & the primary reason I don’t advocate counting calories or macros.
For example, two different types of sugar have dramatically different metabolic pathways and hormonal responses.
Glucose and fructose are both carbohydrates. Both contain 4 calories per gram. Glucose can be used as fuel by every cell in the body. Fructose, on the other hand, can only be metabolized by the liver. Fructose is the most lipogenic carbohydrate (which means it’s the most likely to be converted to and stored as fat).
If we’re talking about 40 grams of fructose versus 40 grams of glucose, they have the same number of calories and they are the same macronutrient but they act very differently in the body and have vastly different fat loss implications. One hundred & sixty calories of glucose is not the same thing as 160 calories of fructose.
Let’s look at a concrete example. I’m going to borrow one that I first heard from Dr. Mark Hyman who compared 750 calories from soda to 750 calories from broccoli. While you could go through this example with anything – almonds, ice cream, chicken – I love this example because we’re looking at the same number of calories but also the same macronutrient – carbohydrate. This allows us to see flaws in both calorie counting and macro counting.
The Fatal Flaw In Counting Calories & Macros
Let’s start with the soda: 750 calories is roughly the calorie count of a Double Gulp from 7-Eleven, which is 100 percent sugar and contains 186 grams (46 teaspoons) of sugar. If you think that’s absurd, it’s easier to consider drinking three 20oz bottles of soda. I’m sure many people have done that in a day.
The soda is pure carbohydrate. The primary sugars in soda are glucose and fructose. The glucose spikes your blood sugar, and triggers a significant release of insulin because insulin is required to usher the sugar out of your blood stream. The insulin can only help with the glucose. The fructose takes a different pathway. It must be handled exclusively by the liver.
The insulin surge from the glucose increases fat storage, especially in the belly region. It also increases stress hormones. It triggers your pleasure center, making you want more.
Your energy will rise for a bit but crash later due to the blood sugar instability.
The fructose can’t be used by your brain or muscles. It can only be processed in the liver where it is likely converted to and stored as fat. To learn more about fructose and how different it is from other sugars, listen to this podcast episode on fructose.
Plus, the fructose doesn’t trigger satiety (feelings of fullness). It also doesn’t suppress hunger.
To make a crappy calorie situation worse, the soda contains no fiber, vitamins, minerals, or phytonutrients to help you process the calories you are consuming.
Here’s the thing we often forget: metabolism has requirements. In order to metabolize what we eat or drink, the body needs a little help. It takes vitamins and minerals to make metabolism happen.
When we consume calories that are totally void of nutrients (like soda or candy), we’re drawing on our nutrient reserves to process empty calories.We become overfed but undernourished.
This isn’t just a problem if we’re trying to lose some weight. This is a big problem for health, longevity, energy, performance, mental focus and just about everything that is really important for us human folk.
Let’s take a look at the 750 calories of broccoli. Like soda, broccoli is pure carbohydrate but it is a dramatically different carbohydrate with a dramatically different hormonal & metabolic impact.
Compared to soda, broccoli is high in fiber and low in sugar. For these reasons, it is much more slowly digested and won’t lead to blood sugar and insulin spikes.
Those 750 calories of broccoli equate to about 21 cups and contain 67 grams of fiber.
Can we just pause here for a second and imagine eating 21 cups of broccoli? That would take forever. But three 20oz bottles of coke? NBD.
The 750 calories of broccoli include about 1.5 teaspoons of sugar; the rest of the carbohydrate are the low-glycemic type found in all non-starchy vegetables, which are very slowly absorbed.
There is so much fiber in all this broccoli that very few of the calories would actually get absorbed. Those that are absorbed would be absorbed very slowly. There would be no blood sugar or insulin spike and no tax on the liver. Your stomach would sending signals to your brain that you were full. Hunger hormones would be suppressed. There wouldn’t be a trigger of that pleasure center in the brain, making you seek more of this delicious broccoli.
Bottom line: the same amount of calories from the same macronutrient group has a vastly different impact on your metabolism, hormone balance & fat loss potential.
Critical Considerations Beyond Calories
Whole foods take more energy to process and digest than processed foods.
We have to consider what is called the thermic effect of food. The thermic effect of food essentially accounts for how much work the body has to do in digesting, absorbing, metabolizing whatever it is that you have eaten. It’s looking at how much of that energy you’ve just consumed (as measured in calories) the body has to use up in order to extract that energy and deliver it to the body.
The more highly processed, the less your body has to work to metabolize it. The less energy used up during metabolism. The more “excess” there is to store. Ultimately, what there is to store at the end is really what matters in terms of energy intake.
Research has compared the metabolic impact of consuming two different sandwiches. The sandwiches contained the same amount of calories but one was a whole foods sandwich with multigrain bread and real cheese, the other was a highly processed white bread sandwich with cheese product.
The individuals who ate the whole foods sandwich burned more calories after the meal than those consuming the processed food sandwich.
In the above example, the processed food sandwich had a 50% lower thermic effect of food. That sandwich needed significantly less metabolic energy the digest.
For further example, protein takes more energy to process & digest than fat & carbohydrate. The calorie model ignores this.
If we go back to the soda & broccoli comparison, you body has to work much harder to extract nutrients from the broccoli primarily because of the fiber content and the complexity of the carbohydrate. Broccoli has a much higher thermic effect than soda.
There’s one final issue I want to make sure to address.
Caloric Inaccuracy
Food manufacturers can underreport calorie counts by as much as 20% and still pass an FDA inspection.
Think about that, if even half of the stuff you’re eating when you count calories is under reported by 20%, you are way off in how much you think you’re eating.
Let’s say you’re shooting for 1800 cals a day. If half of what you eat & count is underreported by 20%, that’s an extra 1260 cals/ week. With a pound being about 3500 calories, you’d be gaining a pound every 2.7 weeks when eating what you believe to be “maintenance” calories.
I’ll wrap about with my thoughts on intuitive eating.
I don’t think it makes sense to eat the same amount of food each day. Our needs vary daily. We don’t move the same way each day. We don’t sleep the same each day. Our stress levels aren’t the same each day. Hunger isn’t the same daily.
We set ourselves for failure expecting we can eat the same every day. We get frustrated on days when we’re excessively hungry or tired. Our bodies vary & our food intake should, too.
Be sure to check out the next part of this series on why diets don’t work! If you’re looking for more information on what to eat, how much & when, check out these episodes of the podcast:
This series has one goal: to help you understand the dieting strategies that don’t work and the fat loss strategies that do.
Too many of us are investing our time, energy & hope into fat loss tactics that don’t work or aren’t sustainable. Nothing creates frustration faster.
Plus, the more failed strategies you pursue, the more you doubt yourself & damage your metabolism, making each subsequent effort more challenging.
It’s time to work with your body & not against it. It’s time to invest only in what works and let go of what doesn’t.
I know how frustrating it can be to feel like your body isn’t cooperating. Like you aren’t sure what to eat or not to eat, what’s fact & what’s fiction and to be constantly consumed with the pursuit of the right approach.
I know how exhausting it is to want change but fail to create it and have a huge, disappointing gap between your intentions and your actions.
This series will help you change that.
I’m speaking from decades of miserable experience.
I have tried every diet under the sun. I was addicted to finding a new program, plan, detox, strategy, hack, pill or potion.
In fact, I dieted my way to over 350 pounds. You can read my story here.
This 6-part series will set you free from dieting. You’ll understand how fat loss works and you’ll understand the most common dieting flaws that keep you trapped in the yo-yo cycle. You’ll differentiate between fads & facts and find how you can work with your body instead of against it.
In the following parts of this series, we’re going to dive deep into a variety of critical areas:
The Calorie Model Is Flawed
We’ve all been told that the key to weight loss is simply: eat less, move more. That’s not how fat loss happens. In part 2 of this series, we’re going to explore fat loss signaling in the body & what influences it. We’ll talk about the hormonal triggers required for fat burning & fat storage and show how certain foods influence these triggers. Sure, how much you eat matters, but looking at calories and macros as the answer to fat burning ignores how fat loss actually happens.
When you understand the cellular signals required for fat loss, you’ll be free from calorie & macro counting and you’ll get more results with less hunger and fewer cravings.
We’ll give specific examples that show how two different foods with the same number of calories and the same macronutrient breakdown create dramatically different fat loss responses in the body.
All or Nothing Is A Recipe For Failure
How many times have you been “on the wagon” or “off the wagon”? Guys, there is no wagon. Setting a standard of perfection or creating a definition of what “on” looks like means you’ll always have a reason to throw in the towel and start fresh the next day. That’s not going to work.
Your body doesn’t require perfection to generate progress. Plus, the pursuit of perfection is going to leave you frustrated and disappointed, even if you’re making progress.
In this part of the series we’re going to talk about seeking incremental progress so you can establish a strong foundation for sustainable change. We’ll establish how & why to let go of the notion of “on” plan and “off”.
Tools, Not Rules
We have a thing for rules. We love food lists, meal plans and structured diets. However, we usually don’t follow them. Okay, maybe we do for a handful of days or weeks (at best), but when we find a conflicting rule, we’re all confused and we stop trying.
These plans & rules feel good, they give us a sense of certainty, but that feeling isn’t linked to our ability to consistently execute.
Diets give you rules. They tell you what to think instead of teaching you how to think.
This leaves you totally dependent on the opinions of an expert and unable to identify what works and doesn’t work for your body.
Other people will always share their rules and opinions. But your body is unique. Your hormones, lifestyle, preferences, metabolism and everything in between is unique.
Instead of following rules and boxing yourself into someone else’s system, use what you learn as a tool to help you identify what works best for you & is sustainable over the long haul.
This part of the series will help you do just that & give you some tools to do the work.
Follow The Leader Will Leave You Stranded
Diets teach us to find a leader & do what they say. Whether the leader is a company, a book or a person, we heed to their authority and try to do what they say.
There is a much more reliable way to find answers that are true for you: listen to your body.
Most of us know more about reality TV stars and professional athletes than we do about our bodies because we’re so consumed with following someone else’s approach.
“Follow the leader” creates a handful of unfortunate problems.
The sheer number of potential “leaders” is distracting. Every time a new book, shake, program or opinion comes out, you’re hopping on the bandwagon of a new leader.
This alone prevents consistency, which is required for sustainable results.
We allow this to distract us. Instead of objectively facing our inconsistency & lack of follow through, we focus on the fact that we’ve changed our approach due a new plan (leader) when what really happened is that we didn’t follow through.
In this part of the series we’re going to address the leader-leader fat loss model & how you can adopt it in your own life.
Mindset Matters Most
There’s a huge gap between knowing what to do & actually doing it. Too often, our intentions far exceed our execution.
The reality is simple: we have more than enough information to reach our goals, but we’re not consistently acting on it.
Why? Mindset.
Our perspective and propensity to make excuses keeps us from taking action. We justify, defend and avoid more often than we dig in and do the work.
Sure, we’ll do it when we feel like it, but when we don’t feel like it, all bets are off.
You cannot create a different result with the same mindset.
Fat loss is less about your skillset and more about your mindset.
So where do we go from here?
Great question! In part 2 we’re going to completely break down calories, macros and how fat burning actually happens in the body. Most importantly, we’re going to talk about the strategies you can implement to consistently trigger fat burning and prevent fat storage in your own body.
I can totally appreciate thinking about & classifying food based on whether it helps you achieve your physique goals or not. However, that’s a limited perspective that can come back to bite you.
When you only think of food through the filter of weight loss/weight gain or indulging/not indulging, you’re really missing some critically important considerations for your health, energy and vitality.
Food is so much more than fat loss (or fat gain). Food is the raw materials with which your body repairs and maintains itself. Food is one of the most influential factors driving how well, or poorly, your body operates. Food determines if you are creating health or creating illness.
The foods you choose can trigger inflammation or relieve inflammation. That might not sound like a really important thing but it is. If you are ignoring the inflammatory impact of your food, you’re in trouble.
In fact, if you think you don’t need to worry about inflammation, that’s a huge red flag that you need to stop & spend some time understanding what we’re talking about.
Inflammation increases appetite. It triggers cravings. It slows fat loss. It leads to brain fog & trouble focusing. It reduces energy. It causes headaches, joint pain, slow recovery, impaired immune response, cellular dysfunction, cholesterol problems, sexual dysfunction and much more.
You know how you feel bloated sometimes? There’s a good chance that’s not just water but also inflammation!
When people talk about inflammation, they almost naturally default to considering anti-inflammatories. They want to know which supplements and ingredients reduce inflammation.
I don’t want you to think about it that way.
Think about it this way: if you are continually stoking a fire with logs, sticks and kindling, what’s the best way to put out the fire? Stop fueling it, right?
You wouldn’t continue to load fuel into the fire while wondering about the impact of spritzing a water on it, would you?
That’s how we need to think about systemic inflammation that is leaving us hungry, tired, grumpy, achy and sick. We first need to think about how to stop stoking the inflammatory fires.
I went into a bit of detail about this on today’s podcast, episode 376, but I really wanted to write about it here in hopes that you’ll take it seriously, listen attentively and make some changes.
Here are some of the ways I manage inflammation in my own body:
I minimize sugar
I rarely consume gluten
I watch my consumption of nuts – I don’t go overboard like I used to
You don’t have to be a purist, but I want to strongly encourage you to think about the inflammatory effects of food, not just the fat loss effects of food. Please take 25 minutes to listen to today’s podcast! It really matters.
Another way I limit inflammation is by caring for my body after my workouts. Today’s workout was really rough on my forearms and grip!
Instead of leaving the gym feeling achy & sore, I took the extra time to roll out my forearms and stretch. When I got home I iced my knee. I’ll make sure to foam roll again later. To me, this is about working with your body versus fighting against it.
On the food front:
First, I told you guys I’d update you on dinner last night – I had a lamb burger without the bun & some avocado. I drank water.
This morning I had two eggs after my workout. For lunch I made a large salad bowl with cabbage, avocado, bacon and Primal Kitchen Chipotle Mayo.
Dinner is super simple: a wild caught salmon filet and broccoli with clarified butter.
