Getting Ready for the Festive onslaught of Food and Drink
Good morning everybody. Before we get started I just want to tell you that my Spotify review was revealed. I listened to one of the soundtracks of Cobra Kai eleven forty eight times and that's not even in the entire year, I've stopped listening to it now. So I must have listened to it about 10 times a day and repeat. I had a problem guys back end.
Speaker 1:Back in our striking soul challenge, was, I lit, I was Cobra Kai. I think they just signed me up, like, get me on, get me on, no doubt, and breathe in their way of life. Do you what mean? I even wrote this, I didn't even I wrote an article with 36 life lessons from Cobra Kai. That's so into it, also anyone who wouldn't read it, you can go to scottfleer.com and have a read of that, see if there's any life lessons there for you.
Speaker 1:But I've got some lessons for you today. Got some lessons. But before I get into lessons I wanna shout out Maria who, bumped into a elbracom yesterday going for a walk. He's like, Scott? I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1:She's like, I'm Maria. And I was like, boom. Clicked. I know who you are. Well, I didn't know sort of way, but then when she said she's on a five week challenge, I recognized the name.
Speaker 1:So Maria, shout out to you. Enjoy your walks. And then hopefully, you'll have a safe journey to Columbia when you go back, I think you said, at the end of this week or next week. But it's good to it's good to speak to you guys and get, like, you you know, it was a nice chat as well, and, you know, how's it going feedback. And I welcome feedback, all sorts of feedback, amazing feedback, the bad feedback.
Speaker 1:All of it comes in because we I never think we've got everything perfect, never. There's always stuff we can do to improve. And one of the things that Maria mentioned that I've already taken action on is she mentioned that, you know, there's a lot of mothers who do struggle with the timings and stuff like that and getting stuff in. What help do we have for mothers in specific as like, know, a great point I should speak to all the mammies of Turtle and on the challenge and you know consolidate all of the advice what doesn't work for them or what they struggle with and put together like a report essentially. So every new mother, mommy, mommy sounds better, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:In Wales we say mommy. All the new mommies joining will have this kind of report, be like, look, this is what our members say works, this is what doesn't. Give them a go, anything that does work for you is add the ultimate guide. So Maria thank you for that idea, I am executing it with pace because we work fast. We work fast.
Speaker 1:Okay, on to today's topic. So good study, this is very important to make sure you understand this before Christmas because this study tells us it's looked at low fat versus low carb. It's a huge study, it's over 600 people, that's not huge but it's decent by Stanford University with the help of the US National Institutes of Health. They wanted to look at low fat versus low carb and is there a difference? They want look at the genetics as well and insulin and stuff like that, does it play a part?
Speaker 1:So he was looking at genetics, insulin production. It was a randomized controlled trial, so 06/2009 actually and it was over twelve months. So it was about two sixty three males and three forty six pre menopausal women free of major health conditions, so no diabetes, cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc. And the average BMI was thirty three which is classed as class obesity. Average age 40 years old.
Speaker 1:That's what we're dealing with low fat, low carb, twelve months, less fight. Let's go. So they said to them first, guys you're all going to start on the fat group, low fat group, you're gonna start eating 20 grams of fat a day and the low carb group you're gonna stop eating 20 grams of carbs a day. Really low. Mean that is a crunch of an apple, maybe just half an apple.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. It's not a lot of food anyway. But they weren't expecting them to stay those levels. They were basically like, listen guys, you can go and consume higher to what you feel you're more comfortable with. So the fat group went from 20 grams a day to 42 grams of fat a day as like where they felt like they could stick to that.
Speaker 1:The lowest one they could stick to and carbs went from 20 grams of carbs up to 96 and they felt like they could stick to that as well. And 96 to 100 grams of carbs is like it's a decent amount but it's not like a huge amount. Okay, it's not huge amount. So let's have a look what happened to the study. One of the limitations is there was no calorie targets given they just wanted to see how someone on a low fat and a low carb would you know generally eat afterwards, didn't stick to a calorie total or a protein, total which is a limitation but this study is still important.
Speaker 1:So they were told to maximize veggie intake of course, minimize sugar, minimize refined flours, trans fats, all that stuff. And they would do random assessments on them, turn up to the house. Hey, what are you eating? Now you see what's on your plate. Have you been eating the last twenty four hours and trying to get that?
Speaker 1:But the results. The low carb group lost on average 13 pounds over twelve months. The low fat lost 11.7 pounds over the twelve months. So a difference of hardly anything, the difference of 0.1 pound per month. Now weight loss and fat loss are different.
Speaker 1:So I would expect a low carb to have more total weight loss just because with less carbs you've got less water in your muscles and you do drop more water in terms of your weight. It would probably would have leveled off after a while and it would have the initial drops or what would have happened in this study was in the first three or four weeks the low carb group would have shot ahead in terms of total weight just because water would have dropped and they would have been losing like five pounds and low fat would have been like one pound down, maybe nothing. And then people be like, yeah, low carb wins. It's like, no, it doesn't. It just as soon as you drop your carbs, you drop a lot of water weight.
Speaker 1:In general, sometimes if your water intake is decent, that'll happen. So you can test this out yourself. If you've been eating a diet of moderate carb which we put you on or you want to go a bit higher and then you drop your carbs for a few days, watch your weight drop. That's not fat loss, that's just total weight. And actually we want the water in the muscles.
Speaker 1:The nutrients going into the muscles and stuff like that. So having less water doesn't mean it's better, just means you can easily manipulate it by lowering your carb. Doesn't mean your fats going down. Does that make sense? So overall it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:So do you prefer a diet higher in fat or higher in carbs? Which one do you prefer? Like low carb is difficult. You know, there's bend there's there's there's negatives to both. You know, low fat, you're not gonna get enough fat for all important hormonal processes.
Speaker 1:When you go low carb, same thing happens. What is interesting is when we look at how our hormones replenish after we try and lose weight, it seems that increasing our carbs has the biggest impact on that. When your T3 is down and your leptin is down and your ghrelin is down, all this stuff is down due to dieting. When you do eat carbs that tends to be the reason why it bounces back. So a moderate carb approach in general is the best.
Speaker 1:Doesn't mean the best for everybody. It's definitely what I'm saying. But it seems to be the best overall just because we're kind of negating as much as those like long term kind of hormonal changes possible. So don't be scared of carbs, okay? Trust you have to blitz through what the media has been telling you for so many years.
Speaker 1:Like no I gotta go low carb. It's a trick right, it's a trick. You can trick yourself into thinking it's better by dropping four or five pounds in a few days because you're dropping your carbs. But deep down it's not fat, okay. And can you maintain a low carb lifestyle?
Speaker 1:Well all of us can't, the pint of alcohol is equivalent to about 57 grams of carbs. An apple or banana has about 30 grams of carbs. Like there's carbs in everything alien, obviously fat's well but carbs you know who doesn't want a tall piece of toast man? A bagel, you know oats, guys potatoes, versatile. So versatile, don't want potatoes.
Speaker 1:So why don't we accept that actually let's overlook the initial head start it gets as the hair flies off and the tortoise is coming up behind. But at the end the tortoise eventually does take over and the fat and the calve, probably just finished the finish line at the same time at the end of the day. So yeah, mindset change is needed because we're going into winter now. Well, we are now, we're into December, I can't believe it but we are into December. And what are we gonna do now about all the temptations that come our way?
Speaker 1:There's a few things to do really. If we really knuckle it down there's option one, do not turn up to the social functions and hope that works. Probably won't because you end up feeling bad and then you'll probably just eat junk foods or home anyway because you'll be like well it's Christmas. So we got this mindset first of well it's Christmas, fuck it is Christmas let's go boom boom. That's fine like you know if that's how you wanna let loose of a Christmas and see your friends that's fine like I don't think that should be a negative.
Speaker 1:It's just a negative when you start thinking you should get results when you don't do that but when you do it. Does that make sense? So you start oh I'm not getting results now. Well no shit. Well but is it worth it?
Speaker 1:Well for some of us it is. Like if you have a few drinks and you eat out and stuff like that and for December you put a few pounds on, listen you're gonna put pounds on because it's going to be water weight mostly from carbs. I think Jackie sent me a post on Instagram that was a really good visualization is if you gain three pounds of fat, that's the same as overeating above your maintenance 17 Big Macs. So unless you ate 17 Big Macs plus your maintenance calories in one day you have not gained 17 pounds of fat. Even then you probably have to eat more than that on the Big Macs because it's not an exact process.
Speaker 1:So think about it, you're gonna have to, this is what you're gonna have to do. If you accept that this Christmas, if we're hopefully locked on free, we're enjoy with the friends and family, what we're gonna say is, if you're on the challenge, we've got to next Friday. Let's get to the next Friday. Let's keep it steady until next Friday. Let's keep it going.
Speaker 1:Let's track. Let's be well. Let's be good. Let's be curious. Let's scan what's the macros are.
Speaker 1:Let's have a look how much macros are in the foods I'm gonna probably eat out. Are in these drinks and stuff like that, what's best? Like do this work upfront, be curious about it because if you can make better choices and still enjoy your head off, that is the best way. But what I don't want to see people doing is I don't want you to start losing your heads and catastrophizing when the answer in front of you. So you say, yeah well I'm gonna have a few drinks and eat and whatever and go, oh Scott I've gained four pounds in one day I can't believe that all my work is undone.
Speaker 1:No it's not, no it's not. Four pounds of water, did you eat, I don't know 24 Big Macs? No you didn't. So the first step I believe in this entire process is to accept your weight will go up but that doesn't mean your fat is going up. You might feel a bit fluffier.
Speaker 1:Listen, when you're low carb or you've been dieting, what happens is the subcutaneous water and you drink enough water goes, it kind of reduces and when you touch your abs and stuff like that, you feel oh that's quite firm, that's quite firm. And then you eat a bit more carbs and you get more water retention, feel like oh that's a bit more, but it's water. We're never gonna stay rock hard, lean all of our lives. We're not gonna feel the way we do when we're in a deficit, when we're at maintenance eating carbs. When you're in a deficit and you're losing weight you feel, you wake up in the morning, there's not much food in the stomach digesting.
Speaker 1:You feel like, oh, you feel leaner. You feel it but the fat's not going up when you feel the opposite, when you do eat more carbs and you have a few drinks. But the feeling is very different. And this is the head masher. Last weekend, saw Dino, Dino Leak, went a few drinks, ate food, ate good amount of tacos, had a lot of pints.
Speaker 1:And before that evening, I was on track for a while, I was on my lowest weigh in for ages and I woke up in the morning like, wow, yes, I'm feeling good. And the difference that I felt waking up the day after on the Saturday was mental. I felt bloated, I felt puffy and I felt like it was squishy in my skin. So for me the difference in feel is like 10x, it's like huge. But the reality is that's my body just reacting to what I've just eaten and put it through the day before that will go away in a day or two and I'll go back to how I probably was that Friday morning because I didn't consume 20 plus Big Macs and I get back to that as long as I get back on track.
Speaker 1:So you have to rationalize these things. Because if you leave, if you think what people do is they go out for a few drinks and eat. You've all been doing this for four weeks now, you're feeling awesome, you go for your first drink out on this weekend and you go and eat food. You wake up the next day, you go, Wow, my God, I'm so bloated, look terrible, I had worked down and I've gone four pounds heavier. Then that drives the next action which is fuck it.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna go and eat wherever now, what a waste of time. But that is the crucial moment to rationalize. What does Epic Eater say? The difference between humans and animals is we can be rational. So you either wanna act like an animal and just run off and just eat all the stuff and go, yeah, there's punk less.
Speaker 1:Or you rationalize and go, wait a second, just give it a few days. I understand my water weight's gone up because I've eaten carbs and salty foods and had drinks. Just give it a few days and go back to normal. And guess what? I just enjoyed the weekend with my friends, didn't go too nuts, but I fully enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I rationalized the increase a few days later and I went back into being a healthy person. Well, I'm saying not the weekend's healthy is bad words to use, but go back into the lifestyle I want to be at and ask who I've weathered the storm. If we can do that over Christmas that is it, that is it. I think Katie mentioned it like the definition of resilience is being able to bounce back. And I've mentioned this in a voice mail before, it's not about not tripping up, it's not about not eating out and eating foods and enjoying our friends, it's about how long does it take us to bounce back from those moments.
Speaker 1:Does it take you two weeks? Does it take you a month? Some people take six months. One weekend triggers them off and then they're back six months later. If we can make it bounce back next day, bounce back two days after.
Speaker 1:Don't let one day turn into two days. Like I say, like I woke up on Saturday, fridge full of fruit, waters, already had food there ready cooked. Well, I didn't cook it was pre done, but it was ready to eat. And I was like I'm not worrying about going to Deliveroo, I'm not worrying about going to shop to get shitty food to eat. I've got this ready.
Speaker 1:I'm hungry. I need I need sustenance. I need water. I'm getting it in me. And I know there's a lot of volume there for me to have that's not gonna put me into four, five thousand calorie intake.
Speaker 1:But the next day, people will go, five guys, chips, milkshake, that's just one. And then they do more McDonald's, kebab, whatever it is, like we're talking 4,000 or 5,000 calories, but the volume is less than what I add for 2,000 calories. So guys, that's kind of just my thoughts on what's coming up for all of us. Think hopefully you can take that away and start rationalizing what's going to happen. Think we are in the first Christmas is this the last Christmas kind of Saloon there basically?
Speaker 1:Can't remember. We need to enjoy ourselves. We need to socialize. Makes my day seeing people and having a chat. Being able to be human again, just having a chat, I've overfilled drinks.
Speaker 1:You feel just like back to normal, this is life, like instead of just working and then we're stuck inside and we're not doing stuff like it was for the last year, the year before and people have still been thinking about it now. So I think we all deserve to enjoy this Christmas, but I think we also deserve to treat ourselves with the rationale, be wise and not be like animals and treat our bodies and all the hard work we've done with respect and not throw it away for the sake of it because let's do it, let's throw it away. So yeah, that's my 2p guys, enjoy yourself, enjoy your day, hopefully you listen to us on a walk. I'll be back tomorrow with more wisdom, I'll be doing, sharing more studies tomorrow in relation to Christmas period, how we're gonna get over it, how we're gonna deal with the stress, how do we handle people forcing us to do things like drinking or blah blah blah. I'm gonna share more about stuff, tactics, about that.
Speaker 1:And next week, for all you mommies, I will be doing, voice notes on how all the mamis of turtle have helped, have been have, you know, been doing this and how they've been succeeding and what's not working for them. And hopefully, that will give you more insight as well. But enjoy your day. Remember if you want to do your one big thing write it down get that done your days are ready then a success. Speak tomorrow.
