Hormones, genes & deficits - What we need to know
Good morning, everybody. So as we've rebranded the Turtle Method, was thinking, are we gonna call you Turtle Methods? I think it's got a ring to it. What do reckon? But today's podcast really is about recapping a few important things.
Speaker 1:So I put a put a stories up yesterday about the macros up. Had a few questions coming through about macros and nutrition and stuff and various some very important stuff. So just to recap on the exercise part that we do take exercise into consideration when we work out your macros because we ask you where your average steps are, how much you work out, what your lifestyle is like. That is those combined with your weight and all the other stuff gives us your estimate total daily energy expenditure, okay, as an average. So we've already taken into consideration how active you are overall.
Speaker 1:So when you do a workout, we don't eat back those calories because we've already looked at it on as a much wider picture. We've done a bird's eye view and gone right. Okay. So if you work out a week, this active, all that. So the average total daily energy expenditure on average for that week will be this.
Speaker 1:So they might have higher late days or lower days. Now when we do have a higher day where we do maybe do a workout, that doesn't mean we should eat back those calories because we've already accounted for that. Right? So when we eat back our calories, there's two major flaws. The first flaw is actually the energy we burn through activity trackers are between 20 to 90% inaccurate.
Speaker 1:So we can't really use them as an actual number for calories burned. They might show trends, but you can't take the number seriously because it's so off that it's pointless. The second thing is if you burn 400 calories in a workout, that doesn't mean you'll net burn 400 calories more that day. Your body is very clever. It will adapt and there's energy compensation that happens.
Speaker 1:Other parts of the day you reduce your energy expenditure and actually your net might not be 400, more like two fifty or even 200. So there's two major flaws is we think we just burn more, we don't. And then we think the numbers we see in the activity track is accurate, they're not. So when apps like MyFitnessPal just say eat back your calories you burn, it's just a completely forward flawed way of doing it, and we won't do that, guys. As many as much as people wanna see I burn this amount of calories and eat it back, we're not gonna do it ever, ever, ever because it doesn't it's not right.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make sense. That's the problem. Hopefully, that's clear. The second thing is talk about hormones for a bit. Now the human body is unbelievably complex, and no living person knows everything about the body.
Speaker 1:It's it's just completely mental, the body, the brain, the gut, all the processes. Like, one guy who's looked at human behavior, Robert Sapolsky, one of the geniuses in the field, has written a book called Behave. It's a big book, but it's an amazing read. And he in many segments, he's like, look. The body's mad.
Speaker 1:Like, we don't actually know why some things do this and that. And, you know, the one of the stuff he brings up is, does testosterone make you more aggressive? People think testosterone equals aggression. Testosterone doesn't equal aggression. There's people with higher testosterone levels that aren't as aggressive.
Speaker 1:There's people with lower testosterone levels. It's way more complex in there. Right? So there's a lot of these things that people are black and white. Right?
Speaker 1:Now whilst that may confuse you because you're like, well, the body is complex. It's not black and white. Some people then will say, well, calorie deficit or the energy balance equation, the law of thermodynamics can't be true because the body is so complex that doesn't actually make sense because it's so complex. It can't be as simple. Well, it is overall in the grand scheme.
Speaker 1:It is as simple as if you are in an energy deficit to the body must find that energy from your fat stores for it to function that day. You know it has to do it to survive. Okay? We know that. So we need an energy deficit.
Speaker 1:Now to get into an energy deficit or a calorie deficit, there's a huge amount of things that impact that. Hormones influence many things. How hungry we are, how fill how full we feel from eating, our stress level, everything, testosterone, estrogen, all these things will play a role in certain behaviors and they can impact if we eat more or move less if you think of it that way. Now do we need, and I'm speaking to Doctor. P about this because we have some of these chats a lot because we are trying to throw in questions that are like hardball questions and we end up coming up with some really nice, take homes.
Speaker 1:And one take home Paul said to me and I think and he shared it to all of you is like, you need to think of the fat loss process as an ATM machine. So or a cash machine. So you put money in and you can pull money out. It's a very simple transaction. You've got a balance on the screen.
Speaker 1:You can pull money out. You can pull money in, and you can either go up and down. Very simple on the surface. Right? But behind the scenes, do you know how encryption works?
Speaker 1:Do you know how that cache is then gone into the back of that machine, gone into that bank, and then how it works updating bank accounts across the world? No. But do you need to know the exact mechanisms behind that bank cache machine for you to understand that if you take more out, you're gonna be with less, and if you put more in, you're gonna be with more. Does that make sense? So we don't need to overcomplicate energy balance because it is a law of thermodynamics.
Speaker 1:It's a law of physics, basically. But what we do need to remember is like we can get bogged down in the complexity of the human body forever. There is so much you start reading stuff about the body and this receptor, now receptor, this enzyme, this gene and all this stuff. Right? And they play roles.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, if we can look at what we control, we can control the amount of calories we consume per day and the macros we eat. We can do it. It might be harder for some of us than others due to different hormone levels, different genes, of course. Right? But at the end of the day, we have to look in inwardly.
Speaker 1:What am I struggling with? What am I what am I aware about with my behaviors? You know, do I need to sleep more? When I sleep more, do I tend to snack less? You know, when I'm training, do I feel better?
Speaker 1:When I go on walks, this is all about internal looking because there is no person a and person b. We are human beings, very complex beings with different levels of different genes and this and that. But at the end of the day, we all abide by the laws of the universe. You know? It is that simple when you look at it, as as complex as you want it.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to pass it off. Like, you might people will say, like, oh, it's up to hormones, not calories if you're gonna lose weight in this actual bollocks. If you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. Now where does that weight come from? Where's the weight being lost?
Speaker 1:Well, the body can break down body fat. It can break down muscle tissue. Right? What we want to do, we want to do only break down body fat essentially. We don't want it to break down muscle tissue for energy because we wanna conserve muscle mass.
Speaker 1:How do we stop the body in a deficit from taking using muscle for energy, breaking muscle down for energy? Well, the first thing is to ensure we're doing some weight training. You know, we turn that signal for the body to, you know, hold on to that muscle or even grow more muscle, stronger muscle. And high protein intake, having the amino acid, the building blocks of muscles there. You know?
Speaker 1:And then in the deficit, we can maintain as much muscle as possible. Some cases, add muscle whilst losing most of the weight of the losing fat mainly when we lose actual body mass. I know water intake isn't. Is just water intake is there. Water retention is there, but the actual mass we lose, that's converted into energy because water doesn't actually have any energy.
Speaker 1:You know I'm You know know what I'm saying, guys. You know what I'm saying. All I'm saying is pears. Guys, I just wanna what last time I have a top of pears. Do not eat conference pears.
Speaker 1:It's those it's it's the pasar cassan, I think it's called pear. Someone said as well if the Williams pear is good. But the the conference pear, get them out of sight. What are they? No.
Speaker 1:They give pears a bad name. They got terrible genes. But let me go into this study now because I'm gonna cover I'm gonna cover this topic off. So for anyone listening in the future and all this stuff, we can refer back to this. And this study looks at, do these genes make me fat?
Speaker 1:There's a question. We all got different genes. Okay? And Robert Sparksky talks about this in the book if you wanna go into it deeper. So in 02/2001, researchers identify one reason why, some people gain weight easier than others.
Speaker 1:Okay? So what the researchers call the thrifty phenotype, meaning the metabolism is wired to store more energy when they overeat and burn less of it when they stop eating. The opposite is the spendthrift phenotype or phenotype, whatever. If you're lucky enough to land on that end of the metabolic spectrum, your metabolism speeds up when you take in too many calories, thus limiting weight gain. But it doesn't slow down very much when you cut back, making it easier to get lean and stay lean.
Speaker 1:Simply put, thrifty ones are more likely to save calories and the spendy thrifty ones are more likely to spend them. Not sure about you, but we find these terms thrifty and spendthrift hard to keep straight. Yeah. This is from the study. And then subsequent studies have confirmed that people with thrifty do indeed lose less weight when cut calories and gain more when they consistently eat too much.
Speaker 1:Okay? Not really fair. Not really fair. But it looks at involves energy imbalances. So the 2001 study, for example, overfed participants for forty eight hours, giving them twice as much food as they needed to maintain their current weight.
Speaker 1:It compared those results to the same participants going forty eight hours with no food at all, yet zero food. So what happens when people are in an energy balance, eating about the right amount of food to maintain their current weight? So what happens when you do maintenance? The prevailing belief was that people with either phenotype burned about the same number of calories relative to lean body mass. Researchers at the US National Institute of Health set out to see if this is actually how it works.
Speaker 1:So the scientists recruited a 108 healthy volunteers for a less grueling experiment than the one we just described. So for twenty four hours, the participants lived inside a respiratory chamber where they were fed three meals designed to keep them in energy balance, so at maintenance. For another twenty four hours, they lived inside the chamber whilst fasting. The researchers also drew blood from the participants before and after each part of the experiment to assess hormone levels. What the study found.
Speaker 1:During the twenty four hour fasting period, those identified with the thrifty phenotype had much steeper drop in energy expenditure when they were fasting. The energy expenditure declined 11% while their counterparts with the spendthrift group had just a 4% decrease. So when you weren't eating at all, the thrifty buggers had a bigger drop in energy expenditure. So they dropped they they were burning less calories, so 11% less, whilst the spendthrift ones were burning 4% decrease. That part was more or less what the researchers expected.
Speaker 1:But what wasn't expected, the two groups burned calories at the same rate whilst fasting. How could that be? For starters, there was a big disparity in the group two groups metabolic rates when they were adequately fed. The thrifty group burned a 124 calories a day more than the spenders when they were in energy balance. Thus, they started from a much higher baseline energy expenditure.
Speaker 1:That raises a logical follow-up question. Why did the spendthrift group have a smaller decline in energy expenditure whilst fasting? Because there was another big disparity between the groups. Hormone levels. The spendthrift group increased adrenaline 4.3 times as much as the thrifty group during a twenty four hour fast.
Speaker 1:And you've probably heard adrenaline described as the fight or flight hormone, something you need when you're in danger but don't want too much of in everyday conditions. That's because adrenaline raises your heart rate and blood pressure and shifts your met metabolism to give you to give your brain more fuel. It also opens your airways and blood vessels, allowing you to take in more oxygen and provide more nutrients to your heart, lungs, and major muscles. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that some people would get a dose of adrenaline when they're out of food. That heightened sense of alertness combined with physiological readiness would help them find something to eat before they starve.
Speaker 1:But it also makes sense that some people would downshift metabolically, preserving their resources for what could be a long hungry winter. Ultimately, human evolution appears to have selected for both phenotypes. Some wanted to take action even at high metabolic cost whilst other better suited to wait out a rough stretch. Right? So most of the participants in the study, thrifties and spentries alike decreased their energy expenditure during the twenty four hour fast and did so in a way that was uniform and predictable for the phenotypes.
Speaker 1:Even though a day without food would barely put a dent in your body's vast energy reserves, you'd still slow down your met metabolism as precaution until you knew where your next meal is coming from. Right? But four of the participants actually increased their energy expenditure during the fast. There's no obvious logical reason why their bodies would do that. It's like getting laid off from your job in the morning and then going out that afternoon to buy new furniture for your house.
Speaker 1:We wouldn't do it, but it's probably some people who would human behavior, like human metabolism, doesn't always go the way you'd expect. Okay? So what we really take away from this is the difference between the two genes is a 124 calories difference at at at maintenance. And they say that's a lot scientifically. Right?
Speaker 1:But if we really think about it, a 100 odd calories difference with two diff vastly different genes. One is for your thrifting. One is more like your risk taking. I'll spend more when I'm in danger. When I'm not on food, I'll spend spend more.
Speaker 1:So, like, at the end of the day, 100 or so calories, I'm not sure that is really much of a difference. So you can say genes can impact things, and we can have two opposing genes there that have they shown in this study. And the impact of the difference, Is it big? Maybe. Is it different?
Speaker 1:Yes. Of course. But biology, we are a little bit different in a sense, you know, with different genes and all this stuff. But we're all we all really lie in the middle ground of the extremes, essentially. So you might find someone with an ex you know, for example, people will look at that Wim Hof guy who can do his breathing techniques and all this stuff and all his breath and they go, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But if we listen to him, we can do what he does. I'm like, what if what if that he had such genes and stuff that were extreme and he was this abnormality like Michael Phelps, like these people that you see, these elites of elites, right, the jackpot of genetics and all this. They that's just how they can do it. For for the average person in the middle ground, me, you, all of us here listening, most of us in the middle ground, we don't achieve those extremes.
Speaker 1:Right? And we shouldn't be thinking in those extremes either. We shouldn't be thinking, well, if I I can't lose weight, therefore, I must have this special gene of the extreme end that that makes me lose weight so much harder. Or do we look at the obvious culprits, which are like, am I actually tracking accurately? You know, am I am I focusing one day at a time looking at my am I being aware of my activities day to day?
Speaker 1:What are my weekends like? You know, what are my weekends like? Am I lying to myself? Am I honest? Am I causing problems between me and food all the time wearing myself out using my rational part of the brain and this is completely worn out?
Speaker 1:And by the time it gets to the end of the night, can't even think I'm just impulse driven. You know? These are things more important than do I have one gene or the opposite gene with a 100 of calorie difference if I'm a maintenance. You know? When we look at it that way, we're looking at the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:We're majoring in minor things like I said before, Jim Roanoke. Don't major. Don't have a degree and put all your effort into minor things. People do this all the time. They're looking at the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:You know, when you people focus too much on salt, for example, or they're like, I don't have enough this and that. And actually, if we look after our total calorie intake, hit to a protein target, right, we go with steps in, everything falls in line over time, such as we improve our choices, what other stuff, it all falls into line from the top down. Know, you start from the bottom, things that don't really matter, then, you know, you might be able to work at the top and then nothing works, nothing nothing changes. And I think, you know, some people will enjoy fasting. You know, some people enjoying intermittent fasting, they feel it's better for them or they just feel generally better.
Speaker 1:And that's fine. Like, if you feel like you better, like, again, it's the breakfast argument. Do you feel better eating breakfast or not? I do not know the answer to that question. It's up to you to check to find out.
Speaker 1:Have oat in the morning for a week. Write use the daily diary in your app. Have no food in the morning for a week, and see what your different energy levels you have throughout the day. See how different you feel. You know?
Speaker 1:That is the test. You do it yourself. But again, you're still abiding by the laws of thermodynamics. You're still abiding by the laws of physics unless you're a god, which if there are gods outside of this, you you know, outside of the powers of physics, then you might be a god. Who knows?
Speaker 1:You might break those laws. And you you you're an abnormality to the human race, essentially. And that's what most of us think we are. Sometimes when things go wrong, we go, well, it's me. I'm special.
Speaker 1:We're different, but you're not a different species. You're still you're still a human being, I think. I think you're still humans, guys. Are we humans? Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's it, really. I hope you have a good day, obviously. Live one day at a time, of course. But get you one big thing done. If we can zoom back in now, use this as a prompt to, like, really think about wash what and what is there anything urgent I need to do today before the weekend comes?
Speaker 1:Is it to get just to get it done as successful, makes my day good? Let me just get it done. Whatever that is, as soon as this voicemail finishes, just go and start moving to do it. Because otherwise, we procrastinate, wait and wait and wait. We just gotta go and do it.
Speaker 1:So that's your one big thing. Think about what it is and get going with it. Enjoy your day, and I'll speak to you all soon.
