How to Lose Fat with Science-Based Tools

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.880 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.680 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.660 | This podcast is separate from my teaching

00:00:17.460 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:00:19.280 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:00:21.560 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:00:23.680 | about science and science-related tools

00:00:25.960 | to the general public.

00:00:27.760 | In keeping with that theme,

00:00:29.020 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:00:32.240 | Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.

00:00:35.040 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

00:00:37.840 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

00:00:40.500 | to help you better understand your body

00:00:42.200 | and help you reach your health goals.

00:00:44.600 | I've been getting my blood work done for many years now,

00:00:47.680 | and that's for the simple reason

00:00:49.100 | that only through quality blood work,

00:00:51.980 | and now through the advent of DNA tests,

00:00:54.320 | can one really get a clear picture

00:00:56.120 | of what's going on with their health.

00:00:58.080 | Things like metabolic factors and hormones,

00:01:01.020 | all the various triglycerides,

00:01:02.860 | these are things that can only be measured

00:01:04.580 | from a quality blood test.

00:01:06.280 | And now with DNA tests,

00:01:07.520 | you can get an additional window

00:01:09.220 | into your current health status

00:01:10.860 | and the trajectory of your health.

00:01:12.840 | What's really wonderful about InsideTracker

00:01:15.060 | is that you don't just get numbers back

00:01:17.160 | about the specific levels of various hormones

00:01:19.600 | and metabolic factors.

00:01:20.880 | You also get a lot of information

00:01:22.320 | about what you could or should do

00:01:24.100 | in order to adjust those numbers

00:01:25.960 | to put you on the course to better health.

00:01:28.500 | So for instance, it will give recommendations

00:01:30.900 | about particular foods to eat or avoid,

00:01:33.520 | particular exercise regimens that you might want to adopt

00:01:37.000 | and the frequency of those regimens

00:01:38.560 | in order to move those markers in the correct direction.

00:01:41.760 | InsideTracker has also added a new feature

00:01:45.500 | that makes tracking your progress

00:01:47.840 | and analyzing your data even easier.

00:01:50.240 | For those of you that use a Garmin fitness tracker

00:01:52.640 | such as the Garmin watch,

00:01:54.160 | that's now compatible with their platform.

00:01:56.220 | So you can couple your data from your Garmin

00:01:58.040 | with your blood and DNA for even more personalization

00:02:00.600 | and insights on your health.

00:02:01.940 | However, if you don't have a Garmin device,

00:02:03.960 | there's still a lot that you can get

00:02:05.640 | from InsideTracker and their tests.

00:02:07.820 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

00:02:09.340 | you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman.

00:02:12.440 | And if you do that, you'll get 25% off

00:02:14.880 | any of InsideTracker's plans.

00:02:16.640 | Use the code Huberman at checkout.

00:02:18.580 | That's insidetracker.com/huberman

00:02:21.320 | to get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans

00:02:24.380 | and use the code Huberman at checkout.

00:02:26.880 | Today's podcast is also brought to us by ExpressVPN.

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00:06:01.700 | Today is the third episode in our series of episodes

00:06:04.580 | about physical and athletic skill performance

00:06:08.040 | and skill learning in general.

00:06:10.200 | And today we're going to talk about the science

00:06:12.880 | of tools for fat loss.

00:06:15.540 | And fat loss is something that interests

00:06:17.820 | a large number of people.

00:06:19.600 | Many people want to lose fat.

00:06:21.440 | Many people are athletes who need to lose fat.

00:06:25.260 | And in general, we know that having body fat percentages

00:06:28.840 | that are too high is unhealthy for us.

00:06:31.560 | And most people struggle to lose fat.

00:06:34.520 | Most people struggle to lose weight generally,

00:06:36.580 | but most people especially struggle to lose body fat

00:06:40.040 | or what we call adipose tissue.

00:06:42.440 | Now, this is a huge topic on the internet.

00:06:44.840 | There's a lot of controversy.

00:06:46.820 | Today we're going to talk about some things related

00:06:49.680 | to fat loss and that are powerful for fat loss

00:06:52.740 | that I'm guessing most of you have never heard about before.

00:06:56.680 | You may have heard about a few of them,

00:06:58.840 | but I'm guessing you haven't heard about all of them.

00:07:01.200 | This episode is going to be rich with science-based tools

00:07:05.320 | that are gleaned from a variety of aspects of the literature

00:07:08.440 | including the use of cold, including brown fat,

00:07:12.440 | including something called beige fat.

00:07:14.480 | We're going to talk about something called neat.

00:07:16.540 | We're going to talk about all sorts of aspects of fat loss

00:07:19.720 | that are governed by your nervous system.

00:07:22.440 | And this is, I think, an important gap

00:07:24.680 | that's missing in the discussion about fat loss.

00:07:27.540 | You can hear a lot of information out there

00:07:29.960 | about the role of things like insulin and various diets

00:07:33.320 | like ketogenic diets or vegan diets or Mediterranean diets.

00:07:37.400 | And there's some great stuff out there

00:07:39.100 | and there's some really terrible information out there

00:07:40.980 | and there's a lot of controversy.

00:07:42.880 | We did a number of episodes talking about

00:07:45.500 | the role of hormones on metabolism

00:07:48.180 | and the role of food on mood and wellbeing.

00:07:52.560 | So if you're interested in those topics,

00:07:54.280 | please check them out.

00:07:55.580 | I will touch a little bit on hormones today,

00:07:58.240 | things like insulin and leptin, just a little bit.

00:08:02.200 | But today's episode is mainly going to be focused on

00:08:05.240 | how the nervous system, neurons,

00:08:07.760 | and some of the cells they collaborate with

00:08:10.040 | like glia and macrophages,

00:08:12.260 | how those encourage or can encourage accelerated fat loss

00:08:17.080 | because it turns out they can.

00:08:18.600 | Remember your nervous system,

00:08:19.800 | which includes your brain and your spinal cord

00:08:22.260 | and all the connections that they make

00:08:24.160 | with the organs of the body, governs everything.

00:08:27.820 | It's the on switch and the off switch for your immune system.

00:08:31.800 | It's the on switch and the off switch,

00:08:33.520 | it turns out, also for fat burning.

00:08:35.680 | And so the nervous system and the role of the brain

00:08:38.840 | and other neurons has been vastly overlooked

00:08:42.320 | in the discussion about losing fat.

00:08:44.820 | Now, I would be remiss

00:08:46.420 | and I'd probably come under a pretty considerable attack

00:08:48.740 | if I didn't just acknowledge upfront

00:08:51.060 | a core truth of metabolic science

00:08:54.940 | and also of neuroscience, frankly,

00:08:57.140 | which is that calories in versus calories out,

00:09:00.440 | meaning how many calories you ingest

00:09:02.740 | versus how many calories you burn,

00:09:04.700 | is the fundamental and most important formula

00:09:07.560 | in this business of fat loss

00:09:09.440 | and weight management in general.

00:09:12.260 | There's simply no way around the fact

00:09:14.220 | that if you ingest far more calories than you burn,

00:09:18.440 | you're likely to gain weight.

00:09:20.840 | And a good portion of that weight

00:09:22.360 | is likely to be adipose tissue, fat.

00:09:26.080 | It's also true that if you ingest fewer calories

00:09:28.620 | than you burn, that you will lose weight

00:09:30.420 | and that a significant portion of that

00:09:32.060 | will come from body fat.

00:09:33.660 | What portion depends on the number of factors,

00:09:36.040 | but that simple formula is important.

00:09:39.180 | On a previous episode, I mentioned the complications

00:09:42.060 | with the statement of a calorie is a calorie.

00:09:45.120 | And indeed, there is evidence from, for instance,

00:09:48.000 | Robert Lustig, who's a pediatric endocrinologist

00:09:51.260 | at UC San Francisco,

00:09:53.200 | has talked about how highly processed foods

00:09:55.260 | change the way that we utilize food

00:09:57.780 | and can lead to higher incidences of obesity

00:10:02.100 | and other metabolic syndromes

00:10:04.300 | that go against the idea that a calorie is a calorie

00:10:07.520 | and that's it.

00:10:08.360 | So a calorie is a calorie as a unit of energy,

00:10:11.920 | and we need to accept and acknowledge this calories in,

00:10:16.800 | meaning calories ingested versus calories burned formula,

00:10:20.160 | but the calories burned portion is strongly influenced

00:10:24.840 | by a number of things that you can control

00:10:27.800 | that can greatly accelerate

00:10:29.960 | or increase the amount of adipose tissue

00:10:32.840 | or the proportion of adipose tissue

00:10:34.760 | that you burn in response to exercise and food.

00:10:37.820 | So your hormones are important.

00:10:40.160 | Your thermogenic milieu,

00:10:44.320 | meaning how warm or how cold your body is,

00:10:47.560 | how cold you make it, how warm you make it,

00:10:49.220 | but also your level of metabolism,

00:10:51.160 | your levels of thyroid hormone,

00:10:53.160 | and something that's hardly ever discussed,

00:10:56.880 | but is well supported by the scientific literature,

00:11:00.280 | how much innervation,

00:11:02.000 | meaning how much connectivity there is

00:11:04.200 | between your nervous system and fat.

00:11:06.780 | Today, we're going to talk about the fact

00:11:09.300 | that your body fat of various kinds,

00:11:12.140 | and there are several kinds of body fat,

00:11:14.480 | are actually innervated by neurons.

00:11:16.680 | Neurons connect to your body fat

00:11:18.480 | and can change the probability

00:11:20.680 | that that body fat will be burned or not.

00:11:23.200 | So your nervous system is the master controller

00:11:25.360 | of this process,

00:11:26.800 | and it plays a strong role in the calories out,

00:11:30.200 | the calories burned component.

00:11:32.180 | So as usual, we're going to discuss a little bit of science.

00:11:35.800 | I promise I won't go too deep into lipolysis

00:11:39.020 | and all sorts of things related to fat oxidation.

00:11:41.720 | We're going to break down that process

00:11:43.700 | into two important steps.

00:11:45.960 | And if you can understand those two important steps,

00:11:48.380 | then the rest of the tools will be very straightforward

00:11:51.440 | to understand and manage.

00:11:53.480 | And I do believe that today you will walk away

00:11:57.200 | with many new tools that you could incorporate

00:11:59.820 | into any kind of fat loss regimen

00:12:02.160 | that will greatly accelerate that process

00:12:04.520 | because it's grounded in quality peer-reviewed science.

00:12:07.440 | Throughout the episode,

00:12:09.460 | I'm going to talk about some behavioral tools.

00:12:11.940 | In fact, I'll mostly talk about behavioral tools.

00:12:14.380 | I will also talk about compounds, supplements.

00:12:17.460 | Many of you are into supplements.

00:12:19.400 | Some of you aren't, and that's fine.

00:12:21.180 | For those of you that are into supplements,

00:12:23.180 | an important issue in a discussion about supplements

00:12:26.320 | for fat loss or otherwise

00:12:28.120 | is going to be the quality of those supplements

00:12:30.420 | and the accuracy about what's in those supplement bottles

00:12:33.640 | and tablets, et cetera.

00:12:35.600 | I usually mention this at the end of the podcast,

00:12:37.580 | but this podcast, we've partnered with Thorne,

00:12:40.720 | T-H-O-R-N-E, because Thorne, we believe,

00:12:43.360 | has the highest levels of stringency

00:12:45.120 | in terms of the quality of the compounds

00:12:47.640 | in their supplements and the amounts of those compounds.

00:12:50.300 | If you want to see the supplements I take,

00:12:52.040 | you can go to thorne.com/u/huberman.

00:12:56.400 | You can see the supplements that I take.

00:12:58.120 | That will also allow you to get 20% off

00:13:00.060 | any of those supplements

00:13:01.200 | or 20% off any of the other supplements that Thorne makes.

00:13:05.600 | Thorne has partnered with the Mayo Clinic

00:13:07.560 | and all the major sports teams,

00:13:09.260 | so there's a very strong basis for their stringency.

00:13:13.040 | Again, you don't need to use supplements.

00:13:15.220 | I'm certainly not encouraging anyone to use supplements

00:13:17.760 | if that's not your thing,

00:13:19.180 | but if you're going to use supplements,

00:13:20.520 | make sure that your supplement source

00:13:21.920 | is one of very high quality.

00:13:24.140 | With that said, I want to get started

00:13:25.880 | and talk about the various tools for fat loss

00:13:28.820 | and how neuroscience, neurons, control fat loss.

00:13:32.440 | Before I do that, I want to set the context correctly

00:13:37.240 | and extract some of the key takeaways

00:13:39.600 | from previous episodes,

00:13:41.300 | because if your foundation of health

00:13:44.120 | and your foundation of hormones

00:13:45.760 | and your foundation of metabolism isn't right,

00:13:48.480 | it's going to be very hard to get the most

00:13:50.800 | out of any kind of exercise or fat loss protocol.

00:13:54.920 | In previous episodes, I talked all about the science

00:13:57.600 | and the details going into particular protocols.

00:14:00.260 | We don't have time to do that now,

00:14:02.560 | and I want to get to the new material.

00:14:04.240 | However, there are a couple bins,

00:14:05.960 | a couple items that you should make sure

00:14:08.080 | you're getting correctly.

00:14:09.520 | And if you're not perfect about these,

00:14:10.960 | don't worry about it.

00:14:11.840 | Most people are not perfect about them.

00:14:13.460 | I'm certainly not perfect about them,

00:14:15.360 | but we should all be striving to get quality

00:14:18.760 | and sufficient sleep.

00:14:20.280 | I did four full episodes on sleep

00:14:22.180 | and how to get better at sleeping

00:14:23.920 | through things like light exposure, temperature,

00:14:26.840 | timing your sleep correctly for your so-called chronotype

00:14:29.720 | if you're a night owl or a morning person.

00:14:32.200 | That's the first four or I think five episodes

00:14:35.120 | of the Huberman Lab podcast.

00:14:36.760 | Get your sleep right, get your light exposure right,

00:14:39.660 | avoid bright light in your eyes

00:14:41.440 | at times you want to be asleep,

00:14:43.440 | and get bright light in your eyes

00:14:45.280 | at times you want to be awake.

00:14:46.920 | So get your sleep right.

00:14:48.560 | The other thing is essential fatty acids.

00:14:50.920 | I talked about this in the food and mood episode,

00:14:54.660 | but I also talked about it during the hormones episodes.

00:14:58.640 | We need fatty acids.

00:15:00.120 | They are vital to so many aspects of our health.

00:15:02.920 | You don't have to get them from supplements.

00:15:04.680 | You can if you want to,

00:15:05.560 | but you need to get them from your food.

00:15:07.360 | They are essential.

00:15:08.600 | There's a reason there's an E, the essential part there.

00:15:11.940 | Of the fatty acids, there are multiple kinds,

00:15:14.460 | but for the antidepressant effects

00:15:17.140 | or the levels of fatty acids that will promote good mood

00:15:21.220 | and also healthy metabolism

00:15:23.140 | and will start to shift the needle in the right direction

00:15:25.540 | on bloodborne cardiovascular factors,

00:15:28.900 | the key thing is to get the levels of EPA that you ingest

00:15:33.060 | above 1,000 milligrams per day.

00:15:35.600 | So that doesn't mean just taking 1,000 milligrams or more

00:15:38.440 | of say fish oil or krill oil

00:15:40.620 | or whatever your preferred source is.

00:15:42.520 | It means getting above 1,000 milligrams of EPA,

00:15:46.140 | which may require that you ingest more essential fatty acids

00:15:49.480 | than just 1,000 milligrams per day.

00:15:52.500 | That of course can be done through food sources,

00:15:55.660 | things like fatty fish,

00:15:56.980 | or if you're not into eating fish,

00:15:59.460 | you have quality meats that are grass-raised can do that.

00:16:01.940 | There are other sources of essential fatty acids,

00:16:04.240 | of course, also from plant sources.

00:16:05.720 | So look those up online.

00:16:07.020 | It's really easy to find,

00:16:08.300 | but the research and the literature shows

00:16:10.360 | that you want to get above 1,000 milligrams of EPA per day

00:16:14.820 | because that's when you can best support your metabolism

00:16:18.360 | and position yourself for good fat loss.

00:16:21.820 | As well, for people who have cravings issues,

00:16:24.700 | they crave sweets all the time.

00:16:26.420 | I talked about this in the gut brain episode

00:16:28.980 | and hormones and food,

00:16:30.260 | that you have neurons in your gut that are craving,

00:16:32.220 | they're seeking essential fatty acids

00:16:34.300 | and they're craving and seeking amino acids from your food.

00:16:38.340 | Now, these are not supplements that they crave per se,

00:16:41.160 | they're craving those things

00:16:42.400 | because that's what your body needs and your brain needs.

00:16:45.080 | But those same neurons will respond to sugars.

00:16:47.300 | And so many people who are craving sugar

00:16:49.860 | can satisfy that sugar craving

00:16:52.320 | by giving the neurons, so to speak,

00:16:54.440 | what they actually want,

00:16:55.680 | which are amino acids and essential fatty acids.

00:16:59.240 | That includes EPA, but also things like glutamine,

00:17:01.680 | an amino acid that can really reduce sugar cravings

00:17:04.700 | if you take a teaspoon of that,

00:17:06.100 | or even a tablespoon of that a few times a day.

00:17:09.280 | You have to ease into that a little bit

00:17:10.560 | because some people can get a little bit of GI distress

00:17:12.720 | from too much glutamine.

00:17:14.120 | But glutamine has also been shown

00:17:16.460 | to improve symptoms of leaky gut.

00:17:18.460 | It's a powerful amino acid.

00:17:20.300 | And yes, you can also get it from food.

00:17:22.220 | Things like cottage cheese are high in glutamine, et cetera.

00:17:25.100 | And then finally, you can't really position yourself

00:17:28.840 | to have a strong metabolism

00:17:31.220 | if your iodine levels aren't correct

00:17:33.180 | and your thyroid levels aren't correct.

00:17:35.380 | You can overdo iodine, so you don't want to do that.

00:17:38.280 | A lot of table salt has iodine added to it,

00:17:41.880 | but some people need to add iodine

00:17:44.680 | by ingesting things like kelp, et cetera.

00:17:46.640 | But one of the best ways to support the thyroid system

00:17:49.000 | and metabolism in general

00:17:50.280 | is to make sure you're getting enough selenium,

00:17:52.200 | sometimes called selenium.

00:17:54.180 | Each day, simple way to do that

00:17:55.860 | is to ingest the highest concentration of selenium food

00:17:59.680 | that I'm aware of, which is Brazil nuts.

00:18:01.760 | One or two or three of those per day,

00:18:03.540 | you'll have more than enough selenium

00:18:06.000 | to meet the thyroid needs.

00:18:08.400 | You don't want your selenium to be too high.

00:18:09.900 | You don't want a diet too high in anything.

00:18:11.920 | So again, sleep, sufficient EPAs.

00:18:14.920 | Glutamine, if you have issues with leaky gut

00:18:17.320 | or sugar cravings can really help.

00:18:20.020 | Get your gut microbiome right.

00:18:21.920 | I may have missed saying that,

00:18:23.120 | but get your gut microbiome right.

00:18:25.080 | That does not necessarily mean

00:18:26.480 | you need to ingest probiotics.

00:18:28.500 | You can if you want to,

00:18:30.040 | but you can also just simply ingest a serving or two

00:18:33.320 | of fermented foods per day.

00:18:34.800 | That can greatly assist.

00:18:36.080 | So things like sauerkraut, kimchi,

00:18:37.600 | every culture has a different source

00:18:40.520 | or sources of fermented foods.

00:18:42.400 | Those can really help the gut microbiome.

00:18:45.400 | And then make sure that your thyroid hormone is supported

00:18:48.440 | through the ingestion of sufficient iodine, not too much,

00:18:51.960 | and sufficient selenium, not too much.

00:18:54.880 | Sleep, EPA, glutamine, fermented foods, iodine, selenium.

00:18:59.040 | That sets the basis for how things like exercise, cold

00:19:04.040 | and some of the compounds and other things

00:19:06.720 | that we're going to talk about today

00:19:07.800 | that are I'm guessing truly going to be truly new

00:19:10.680 | to many of you that can really increase the burn factor

00:19:15.320 | in the equation of calories in versus calories burned.

00:19:18.840 | So on the one hand, we have this reality

00:19:21.800 | of calories in versus calories burned.

00:19:24.960 | However, I would also be remiss

00:19:26.960 | if I didn't mention an incredible study

00:19:29.160 | that was done by my colleague, Alia Crum at Stanford.

00:19:32.600 | She's a faculty member, a professor

00:19:34.720 | in the psychology department.

00:19:36.720 | Looking at how belief effects, just thinking,

00:19:40.040 | can impact the effects of things like exercise

00:19:44.200 | on weight loss.

00:19:45.480 | These are just incredible results.

00:19:47.600 | What they did was they took subjects

00:19:50.380 | who were hotel service people that would clean the hotels

00:19:54.040 | and come in and change the linens and so forth,

00:19:57.340 | divide them into two groups.

00:19:59.200 | One group, they were told moving around

00:20:03.320 | and doing your duties for your job,

00:20:07.000 | meet the standards for US guidelines

00:20:09.300 | for activity and movement, et cetera.

00:20:11.800 | And a basic lecture about how movement

00:20:14.400 | is good for you, et cetera.

00:20:15.900 | But mostly just that their daily activities

00:20:18.760 | met the standards for the US.

00:20:22.600 | The other group, however, was given a bunch of information

00:20:25.880 | about how movement and their daily routine

00:20:30.040 | was very good for cardiovascular health,

00:20:32.640 | it could be good for weight loss, et cetera.

00:20:34.840 | And then they tracked these subjects

00:20:37.500 | over a period of many weeks.

00:20:39.760 | The take-home message from this study

00:20:41.280 | was that simply being told that movement is good for you

00:20:46.020 | can lead to weight loss, et cetera,

00:20:47.620 | led to significantly more body fat loss,

00:20:51.880 | waist to hip ratio changes in the direction

00:20:54.260 | that most people would want.

00:20:55.760 | Essentially a slimming down, if you will.

00:20:58.600 | And all sorts of other positive effects

00:21:01.600 | on things like cardiovascular health,

00:21:03.340 | simply by the knowledge that movement and exercise

00:21:07.320 | can help various health markers.

00:21:09.760 | So this is remarkable and it speaks to the power

00:21:12.480 | of the nervous system and the power of belief

00:21:15.060 | in governing aspects of our body and our physiology

00:21:18.760 | that one would otherwise think

00:21:20.360 | were outside our conscious control.

00:21:23.160 | Now, of course, any of you that think scientifically,

00:21:26.600 | which I imagine if you watch this podcast

00:21:28.660 | or listen to this podcast is all of you by now,

00:21:31.800 | probably thinking, well, maybe they just moved around more,

00:21:34.120 | or maybe they stood up and sat down more,

00:21:38.320 | maybe they did something else that was different.

00:21:40.680 | And indeed there's a strong possibility

00:21:42.680 | that they did things differently than the other group.

00:21:45.640 | But the mere knowledge that exercise is good for you,

00:21:50.720 | that movement is good for you shifted their behavior

00:21:53.380 | and their physiology in the direction

00:21:56.180 | of enhanced weight loss, fat loss, et cetera.

00:21:59.000 | So how we think about a given set of activities

00:22:02.860 | affects how we perform those activities

00:22:04.760 | and how we think about and perform those activities

00:22:08.200 | has a real effect on our physiology.

00:22:10.440 | So somewhere between the hard and fast rule

00:22:12.920 | that governs fat loss and weight loss,

00:22:15.360 | which is if you ingest more calories than you burn,

00:22:18.480 | you'll either maintain or gain weight,

00:22:20.000 | typically you'll gain weight, although not always.

00:22:22.660 | If you ingest about as many calories as you burn,

00:22:26.120 | you maintain weight typically.

00:22:29.120 | And if you ingest fewer calories than you burn,

00:22:31.160 | typically you'll lose weight.

00:22:32.240 | That's the kind of rule of fat loss.

00:22:34.660 | And yet we also have these belief effects which show,

00:22:37.960 | and this has been replicated again and again,

00:22:40.080 | that how we think about a process,

00:22:42.080 | whether or not we think it's beneficial

00:22:43.600 | can change our physiology in ways

00:22:45.920 | that can be beneficial to us.

00:22:48.040 | Somewhere in between those two extremes

00:22:50.880 | of hardcore metabolic science and belief effects

00:22:55.640 | lie a bunch of protocols that are grounded

00:23:00.460 | in quality peer-reviewed science and in physiology

00:23:03.400 | that you can leverage to increase the rates of fat loss.

00:23:06.540 | And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

00:23:08.900 | I love this topic and it's not that I'm so obsessed

00:23:11.720 | with fat loss, but rather the first project

00:23:15.320 | I ever worked on in science was thermogenesis and fat loss.

00:23:19.120 | I joined a laboratory as an undergraduate

00:23:22.160 | and the guy I worked for loved to explore new compounds

00:23:25.940 | and how they impacted thermogenesis.

00:23:28.800 | And so we looked at how things like MDMA, ecstasy,

00:23:32.680 | how antipsychotics, antidepressants,

00:23:37.160 | various weight loss drugs that were on the market,

00:23:39.700 | how those impacted body temperature

00:23:42.240 | and fat loss and metabolism.

00:23:43.940 | And we just had so much fun doing it.

00:23:45.400 | So if you detect a smile on my face,

00:23:47.920 | that's what that's about.

00:23:49.960 | And I also learned a lot and I also came

00:23:51.760 | to really appreciate that this tissue of our bodies,

00:23:56.400 | adipose tissue and fat,

00:23:57.800 | we think of as just this unfortunate thing,

00:24:00.220 | this like we're told it's a core energy source

00:24:03.320 | if we ever entered a famine and that's all true, et cetera.

00:24:06.440 | We come to realize that these cells in our body,

00:24:08.840 | they are there as fuel for the furnace of our body

00:24:13.980 | which is our metabolism and there's a third player.

00:24:17.820 | And that's where it really gets interesting

00:24:19.180 | that the nervous system, neurons has the opportunity

00:24:22.740 | to turn up the intensity of that furnace.

00:24:25.740 | It has the opportunity to increase the amount of heat

00:24:29.380 | that we produce and therefore the amount of energy

00:24:32.480 | that we burn.

00:24:33.500 | And I was also really intrigued by something

00:24:35.300 | which is that growing up, I think we all know people

00:24:38.400 | who can eat a ton and never seem to gain any body fat

00:24:42.780 | or people who seem to eat very little

00:24:44.620 | and seem to gain body fat very easily.

00:24:46.340 | And I was always intrigued by that and it turns out

00:24:48.600 | there are a number of different factors that relate to that

00:24:51.480 | but the nervous system is the one that we can really control

00:24:55.300 | both through behaviors and what we eat

00:24:56.880 | but also in terms of this thing that we call thermogenesis.

00:25:00.260 | There was one particular story I want to relate to you

00:25:02.380 | that does not suggest any protocol.

00:25:04.800 | In fact, I'm going to discourage you

00:25:06.420 | from following this protocol.

00:25:09.020 | Please do not try the compound that I'm about to describe.

00:25:13.300 | One of the favorite things that we like to do in that lab

00:25:16.260 | was to find rare compounds and test them.

00:25:20.220 | And at the time I was reading about thermogenesis

00:25:23.860 | and I learned about a compound that was actually discovered

00:25:26.580 | in the armory factories of World War II.

00:25:29.880 | And it was discovered because women in particular

00:25:33.860 | who were working in these factories would take a brush

00:25:37.980 | and dip it in a compound or a paint rather

00:25:41.040 | and they would then paint the numbers with a stencil

00:25:44.100 | onto things like bombs and ammunition of various kinds.

00:25:48.820 | And they were losing weight like crazy.

00:25:52.440 | It turns out that occasionally they'd lick the brush

00:25:54.420 | and then they would go back

00:25:55.420 | just to get a sharper point on the brush

00:25:57.500 | and then they would paint onto these various bullets

00:26:01.140 | and missiles and so forth, bombs and so forth.

00:26:05.020 | And they started shedding all their body fat.

00:26:07.300 | And many of them lost a lot of weight,

00:26:10.860 | a significant portion of their weight

00:26:12.540 | without changing anything else that they were doing,

00:26:14.380 | what they were eating, et cetera.

00:26:16.120 | Turned out that that compound

00:26:17.380 | is something called dinitrophenol, DNP.

00:26:21.180 | And over the years, dinitrophenol, DNP,

00:26:25.460 | has gained popularity in some niche cultures,

00:26:29.020 | mainly bodybuilders, athletes,

00:26:30.900 | even in the kind of modeling industry.

00:26:33.140 | It is a absolutely terrible compound for anyone to use

00:26:36.980 | because it's highly fatal

00:26:39.680 | if your body temperature goes too high.

00:26:42.020 | Hyperthermia will kill you.

00:26:43.460 | And indeed, many people have died

00:26:45.620 | using dinitrophenol as a weight loss drug

00:26:48.940 | or attempting to use it as a weight loss drug.

00:26:51.380 | But dinitrophenol really illustrates a principle,

00:26:54.800 | which is that your metabolism

00:26:57.860 | includes things like thyroid hormone

00:26:59.380 | and growth hormone, et cetera,

00:27:01.180 | but your body temperature and the way you utilize energy

00:27:06.780 | is controlled by your nervous system.

00:27:09.820 | And the way dinitrophenol works is by changing the neurons

00:27:14.520 | and the way that the neurons that connect to fat

00:27:17.380 | change the way fat burns up.

00:27:21.160 | So we are not going to suggest,

00:27:23.360 | I am not suggesting that you use dinitrophenol.

00:27:27.120 | However, there are other things that you can do

00:27:30.980 | that can change the relationship

00:27:32.780 | between these neurons and the fat of your body

00:27:36.040 | in ways that can powerfully accelerate fat loss.

00:27:40.880 | And I don't know why we don't hear about these things more,

00:27:42.860 | but probably because most of what you see out there

00:27:45.520 | on the internet focuses more on what you could eat

00:27:48.200 | and should eat or shouldn't eat.

00:27:50.020 | It concentrates on exercise regimens,

00:27:52.400 | which we will also talk about.

00:27:54.300 | But the burn factor, your thermogenic environment

00:27:59.300 | is one of the, if not the most important factors

00:28:03.860 | in this business of fat loss.

00:28:05.980 | And since I'm a neuroscientist,

00:28:07.400 | that's what we're going to talk about.

00:28:09.100 | So let's talk about fat utilization.

00:28:11.240 | Let's talk about how fat is converted into energy,

00:28:15.020 | which is sometimes also called fat burning.

00:28:18.100 | What I'd like you to know

00:28:20.780 | is that this is a two-part process, okay?

00:28:23.820 | In reality, there are many biochemical steps.

00:28:27.220 | And if you log onto the internet or you open up a textbook

00:28:31.080 | and you want to learn about fat utilization,

00:28:34.800 | you're going to see a lot of chemistry.

00:28:37.340 | And I'm happy to go deep into that chemistry if you like,

00:28:39.960 | but I think most of you are probably interested

00:28:42.240 | in what are the leverage points?

00:28:44.480 | Where can you exert control over this process

00:28:47.060 | in ways that benefit you?

00:28:48.320 | So I'm going to focus mainly on those, okay?

00:28:51.080 | This is not to upset the aficionados

00:28:54.280 | and I will put in some nomenclature, but here we go.

00:28:57.800 | There's two parts to this process.

00:29:00.520 | One is fat mobilization.

00:29:03.640 | And the second is fat oxidation or utilization, okay?

00:29:08.640 | So the first thing that has to happen

00:29:11.640 | for body fat to get burned up or used and reduced

00:29:16.360 | is that it has to get mobilized.

00:29:18.960 | And that's a process called lipolysis.

00:29:21.360 | But I actually don't care if you know the name lipolysis,

00:29:24.320 | you just have to move that fat

00:29:26.920 | out of the position that it's in.

00:29:30.340 | You have to get it out of the fat cells, all right?

00:29:32.660 | Fat cells can be visceral around our viscera, our organs,

00:29:36.120 | or they can be subcutaneous under our skin.

00:29:37.880 | Most people are thinking about subcutaneous fat

00:29:41.140 | when they think about fat.

00:29:42.920 | So here's the deal.

00:29:45.300 | And if you want more detail, great.

00:29:49.120 | I'll touch on that in a bit.

00:29:50.580 | But basically stored fat has two parts

00:29:54.280 | that are relevant here.

00:29:55.600 | It's got the fatty acid part

00:29:57.240 | and that's the part that your body can use.

00:29:59.480 | And that's attached to something called glycerol

00:30:01.680 | and they're linked by a backbone.

00:30:03.500 | So already probably too much chemistry for both of you.

00:30:05.460 | But what you want is you want to break the backbone.

00:30:07.780 | So if you just can remember to mobilize fat,

00:30:09.920 | you got to break the backbone

00:30:11.200 | between glycerol and these fatty acids, okay?

00:30:14.000 | That's accomplished by an enzyme called lipase.

00:30:16.640 | But you can forget all that if you want.

00:30:17.920 | Remember, we're just trying to mobilize fat.

00:30:20.180 | So the first step is to get those fatty acids moving around

00:30:24.460 | in the bloodstream to get them out of those fat cells.

00:30:27.600 | And then they can travel and be used for energy.

00:30:32.600 | And that second part, remember, first part is mobilization.

00:30:35.700 | The second part is oxidation.

00:30:37.720 | Is then those fatty acids, those are potential fuel.

00:30:40.880 | They're just potential fuel,

00:30:42.040 | but you haven't burned the fat yet.

00:30:43.560 | You've just moved it out of your fat cells.

00:30:46.000 | They're going to go into cells

00:30:47.600 | that can use them for energy.

00:30:50.760 | And once they are inside those cells,

00:30:53.200 | they're still not burned up.

00:30:55.200 | You need to oxidize them.

00:30:56.520 | You think oxidation is the burnup part.

00:30:59.780 | They need to be moved into the mitochondria

00:31:04.120 | and then they can be converted into ATP into energy.

00:31:07.440 | So just to really zoom out again

00:31:08.820 | to make sure I don't lose anybody,

00:31:09.980 | you got to mobilize the fat,

00:31:11.240 | then you have to oxidize the fat.

00:31:13.320 | In other words, you have to mobilize it,

00:31:14.620 | then you actually have to convert it into energy.

00:31:17.120 | If you just mobilize it

00:31:19.600 | and you don't convert it into energy, you don't oxidize it,

00:31:22.540 | it can be returned to body fat.

00:31:25.040 | And many of the things that the nervous system can do

00:31:28.480 | is to increase the mobilization of fat,

00:31:32.360 | but also the oxidation of fat, okay?

00:31:35.440 | So you have two opportunities to burn more fat.

00:31:39.040 | And both of those opportunities

00:31:40.760 | are governed by your nervous system,

00:31:42.960 | by neurons that literally send little wires

00:31:46.340 | that we call axons into fat and release chemicals

00:31:50.280 | that provide a stimulus for more of that fat

00:31:54.100 | to be mobilized and then later

00:31:57.080 | for more of that fat to be burned up, okay?

00:31:59.640 | So we could go really deep on this,

00:32:02.360 | but I'm not going to go much deeper than that

00:32:04.120 | because this isn't a biochemistry

00:32:06.360 | of fatty acid metabolism lecture.

00:32:08.640 | This is about how to burn fat using your nervous system.

00:32:11.460 | But remember, there's a mobilization step

00:32:13.680 | and then there's an oxidation step.

00:32:15.580 | I think any one of you,

00:32:17.360 | all of you should be able to internalize that.

00:32:19.200 | Mobilize, then oxidize, okay?

00:32:21.960 | Mobilize, then oxidize.

00:32:24.220 | So what are these neurons that connect to fat doing?

00:32:27.100 | What are they releasing exactly?

00:32:29.020 | How do they actually increase fat mobilization

00:32:31.420 | and how do they increase fat oxidation, burning of fat?

00:32:35.880 | Well, there are a couple of things that they release

00:32:39.020 | that encourage that process.

00:32:40.660 | And the main one that you need to know about

00:32:43.060 | is epinephrine or adrenaline.

00:32:46.100 | The conversion of these fatty acids into ATP

00:32:49.420 | in the mitochondria of cells is favored by adrenaline.

00:32:53.780 | Okay?

00:32:54.660 | And adrenaline is released from two sources.

00:32:58.300 | Adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands,

00:33:00.420 | which sit atop our kidneys and our lower back.

00:33:03.380 | And it's also released

00:33:05.500 | from the so-called sympathetic nervous system,

00:33:07.580 | although that name is a bit of a misnomer

00:33:09.780 | because it has nothing to do with sympathy,

00:33:11.900 | has to do with stimulating alertness

00:33:14.320 | and promoting action of the body.

00:33:16.760 | There's a big mistake in the literature

00:33:22.300 | that is finally being corrected among those who know.

00:33:26.160 | The mistake in the literature is that the adrenal glands

00:33:29.360 | and the release of adrenaline

00:33:31.100 | is what stimulates fat loss and fat oxidation.

00:33:35.320 | In fact, it was thought for a long time

00:33:37.900 | that adrenaline swimming around in your body

00:33:40.100 | of when you're fasted,

00:33:41.400 | because fasting can increase adrenaline,

00:33:43.460 | or when you're engaging in intense exercise

00:33:46.300 | or when you're stressed is going to promote fat oxidation.

00:33:50.220 | That's actually not the case.

00:33:52.060 | The adrenaline that stimulates fat oxidation,

00:33:56.360 | the burning of fat,

00:33:57.980 | is coming from neurons that actually connect to the fat,

00:34:02.640 | not hormones like adrenaline

00:34:04.940 | that are swimming around in your system.

00:34:06.340 | It's a local process.

00:34:08.460 | And this is very important

00:34:10.820 | because it means that what you do,

00:34:13.980 | the specific patterns of movements

00:34:16.360 | and the specific environment you create

00:34:19.660 | that can stimulate these particular neurons

00:34:22.660 | to activate fat, meaning to release fat,

00:34:28.520 | to mobilize it, and then to burn it,

00:34:30.320 | is going to be a powerful lever that you can use

00:34:33.140 | in order to increase fat loss.

00:34:35.140 | So what have we said so far?

00:34:36.300 | We've said that you got to mobilize, you got to burn fat,

00:34:38.520 | and that your nervous system is in control of that process.

00:34:42.820 | It's not just about calorie deficit.

00:34:47.100 | So let's talk about how to activate the nervous system

00:34:49.700 | in ways that it promotes more liberation, movement,

00:34:52.700 | mobilization of fat, and more oxidation of fat.

00:34:56.620 | So one of the most powerful ways to stimulate epinephrine,

00:35:00.040 | which is also called adrenaline,

00:35:01.340 | from these neurons that connect to fat

00:35:04.420 | and to thereby stimulate more fat mobilization

00:35:07.740 | and oxidation is through movement.

00:35:10.940 | But I'm not talking about exercise.

00:35:13.600 | The type of movement that I'm referring to

00:35:15.460 | is extremely subtle.

00:35:17.780 | And some of you may be familiar with this type of movement,

00:35:21.820 | but I'm guessing you're probably not familiar

00:35:24.840 | with what I'm about to tell you,

00:35:26.540 | which is that shiver or shivering is a strong stimulus

00:35:31.540 | for the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, into fat

00:35:36.620 | and the increase in fat oxidation and mobilization.

00:35:41.060 | But shiver is not just induced by cold,

00:35:44.820 | and there are other subtle forms of movement

00:35:47.700 | that can greatly increase fat metabolism and fat loss.

00:35:51.800 | There was a group in England during the 1960s and '70s

00:35:56.500 | that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement

00:36:01.500 | can greatly increase fat loss.

00:36:04.900 | This is the work of Rothwell and Stock.

00:36:09.180 | It's very famous in the thermogenesis literature.

00:36:12.260 | And I learned about this early on

00:36:13.620 | when I was an undergraduate.

00:36:15.260 | And I asked, how did they come across this?

00:36:17.460 | And here's how the story goes.

00:36:19.000 | They were aware that some people overeat

00:36:24.660 | and yet don't put on weight.

00:36:26.680 | Other people overeat even just a little bit,

00:36:29.180 | and they seem to accumulate extra adipose tissue.

00:36:32.860 | Now, this is long before all the discussions

00:36:34.900 | about microbiome and hormone factors,

00:36:37.360 | and it was long before many of the hormone factors

00:36:40.240 | besides insulin had even been discovered.

00:36:43.220 | What they did was they examined people

00:36:45.260 | who overate and did not gain weight.

00:36:48.660 | And what they observed was that those people engaged

00:36:52.880 | in lots of subtle movement throughout the day.

00:36:55.580 | In other words, they were fidgeters,

00:36:58.060 | and that's what they called them.

00:36:59.300 | I'm not going to do the British accent version of fidgeters,

00:37:03.400 | but Rothwell and Stock were British.

00:37:05.600 | What they found were people that overeat

00:37:08.540 | but don't gain weight as a consequence,

00:37:12.220 | and in fact, many people who had low levels of body fat

00:37:16.540 | had a lot of resting tremor, not of the Parkinsonian type,

00:37:21.500 | but they would bounce their knee while they were sitting.

00:37:24.020 | When they would talk,

00:37:25.280 | they would engage in very angular movements.

00:37:27.700 | They were sort of electric.

00:37:28.900 | In fact, now in science, I was chuckling about this

00:37:31.460 | as I was diving back into this literature

00:37:33.180 | because the other day I heard a wonderful lecture

00:37:35.380 | on a totally different topic from a colleague of mine,

00:37:37.700 | and we all adore him.

00:37:38.980 | He's over in Europe,

00:37:39.980 | and he's this tremendously successful scientist,

00:37:42.280 | so we like to poke fun at him,

00:37:44.500 | and every one of his movements

00:37:45.940 | is incredibly electric and staccato,

00:37:48.340 | and he's rail thin and he eats like a horse,

00:37:51.060 | and so it fits very well

00:37:52.160 | into the discovery of Rothwell and Stock,

00:37:54.780 | who discovered that fidgeters,

00:37:57.080 | people that bounce their knee,

00:37:59.260 | people that have a head bob while they're listening,

00:38:02.740 | people that nod a lot,

00:38:03.980 | people that stand up and sit down a lot throughout the day,

00:38:06.820 | and people that pace burn anywhere from 800

00:38:11.300 | to 2,500 calories more than the control group

00:38:16.300 | in the experiments that they looked at,

00:38:18.420 | and indeed, there's been a modern look into all this,

00:38:22.080 | and these numbers check out

00:38:23.900 | that simply moving around a lot,

00:38:26.460 | even if those are subtle movements,

00:38:28.780 | greatly increases the amount of energy that you burn,

00:38:31.700 | and people who overeat,

00:38:32.860 | the people who can have the second or the third donut

00:38:35.460 | or donuts at all and don't seem to put on weight

00:38:37.620 | to the same degree,

00:38:39.100 | they are people that move around a lot even when seated.

00:38:43.180 | They're people that will often move their limbs

00:38:46.940 | very quickly as well.

00:38:48.340 | There even have been studies that have explored

00:38:51.820 | other things that correlate with fidgeters.

00:38:53.500 | Fidgeters stand up very quickly at the end of a lecture,

00:38:55.900 | or they start to gather their things very quickly,

00:38:57.860 | whereas non-fidgeters don't,

00:38:59.900 | so dogs like my bulldog Costello,

00:39:01.860 | definitely not a fidgeter.

00:39:04.220 | Every movement is incredibly slow and deliberate.

00:39:07.300 | Sitting down is a process.

00:39:09.060 | If you ask him to sit down, it's sort of a slow motion.

00:39:11.940 | You ask him to get up,

00:39:12.900 | and he kind of looks at you, sighs, and stands up.

00:39:15.260 | The fidgeters are the opposite of that, right?

00:39:17.220 | You say, "How are you doing?"

00:39:18.220 | They go, "Great."

00:39:19.300 | So even sometimes their speech will be accelerated,

00:39:22.060 | although not always,

00:39:23.060 | but staccato movements, fidgeting, et cetera.

00:39:26.000 | And in 2015, and again in 2017,

00:39:29.740 | there have been studies that have explored this

00:39:32.400 | using some modern metabolic tracking.

00:39:34.780 | And indeed, simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter,

00:39:39.020 | bouncing your knee, standing up and pacing,

00:39:42.100 | several times or many times throughout the day,

00:39:45.380 | led to considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss

00:39:49.800 | when people were ingesting the same amount of food.

00:39:52.820 | If they overate, they were able to compensate

00:39:54.880 | and burn off that food.

00:39:56.640 | And if they were trying to lose weight,

00:40:00.620 | and they incorporated this fidgeting protocol

00:40:03.660 | of deliberately trying to fidget more

00:40:05.320 | and move around during the day,

00:40:07.020 | pace, stand up more quickly, sit down more often,

00:40:09.640 | sit down and stand up more often rather,

00:40:11.660 | they found that they greatly increased their weight loss

00:40:14.260 | anywhere from 20 to 30% increases.

00:40:17.480 | And in some cases,

00:40:18.580 | there are always those few people who burned a lot more.

00:40:21.480 | It seems to work best in people

00:40:24.180 | who are already slightly overweight.

00:40:27.000 | So for people that are overweight,

00:40:28.820 | who are kind of averse to exercise,

00:40:31.500 | fidgeting might actually be a good entry point.

00:40:34.460 | And 800 to 2,500 calories

00:40:37.100 | is a considerable amount of calories

00:40:38.560 | when you really think about it.

00:40:40.140 | Now, why am I telling you this?

00:40:41.360 | Well, there's clearly a tool to export from this,

00:40:44.320 | which is that you can increase the amount of calories burned

00:40:47.540 | without having to go on additional long runs.

00:40:50.580 | I do hope that people are exercising regularly

00:40:52.560 | because it's so important for other aspects

00:40:54.460 | of brain and body health.

00:40:56.080 | But nonetheless, we are all time limited

00:41:00.680 | and we are not all so ready to embrace exercise.

00:41:04.920 | I have a family member

00:41:06.280 | who has been slowly coaxed into exercise,

00:41:09.640 | but if I were to tell her, for instance,

00:41:11.200 | you need to fidget more, she'd probably go for it.

00:41:13.400 | So this is a powerful way

00:41:15.960 | to increase the calories that are burned.

00:41:19.600 | Now, that's great and you can think about the protocols,

00:41:23.640 | but I want to nest that protocol in what I said before,

00:41:28.640 | which is that fat is controlled by these neurons

00:41:33.420 | and the epinephrine they release.

00:41:35.280 | You might say, well,

00:41:36.120 | how could these little micro movements

00:41:38.320 | lead to so much caloric burn?

00:41:40.960 | And that's where it really gets interesting.

00:41:42.900 | Rothwell and Stock and others

00:41:44.600 | that they worked with subsequently found

00:41:46.960 | that these little fidgety movements,

00:41:49.200 | the engagement of certain aspects of our musculature

00:41:52.040 | that are nothing like exercise.

00:41:53.840 | It's not these large coordinated or rhythmic body movements,

00:41:57.300 | but rather subtle little bits of fidgety movement.

00:42:01.440 | And here I am doing a lot of fidgety movement.

00:42:04.180 | As an example, tapping the pen, this kind of thing.

00:42:07.200 | I was probably that kid in class most of the time.

00:42:09.400 | I was like, I try not to do it to irritate people,

00:42:11.160 | but I was definitely a knee bouncer.

00:42:13.520 | I'm not particularly lean or not,

00:42:15.680 | but I was definitely, this is a common activity for me.

00:42:20.240 | People that do that sort of thing,

00:42:21.840 | it turns out that it's not the kind of caloric burn

00:42:25.280 | that we normally think of, of like,

00:42:26.640 | oh, you're running, lifting weights,

00:42:28.240 | swimming, yoga, et cetera.

00:42:30.560 | Those subtle movements of our core musculature,

00:42:34.240 | not just the core, but all our limbs and our musculature,

00:42:37.480 | those low level movements,

00:42:39.880 | they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons

00:42:43.720 | and they stimulate the mobilization of fat.

00:42:46.880 | And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates.

00:42:49.920 | And I find this fascinating.

00:42:51.480 | I wish more people knew about it,

00:42:52.840 | which is why I'm telling you about it today.

00:42:54.780 | This has nothing to do with exercise

00:42:56.820 | in the traditional form.

00:42:58.200 | And yet 800 to 2,500 calories per day,

00:43:01.240 | that's a considerable amount of fat oxidized.

00:43:04.760 | If you are in a calorie maintenance mode

00:43:07.840 | or if you're sub caloric,

00:43:09.240 | that's going to add to still additional fat loss.

00:43:13.040 | The data on this are tremendous.

00:43:14.240 | I'll link to a few studies.

00:43:15.420 | If you're really interested in learning

00:43:16.920 | about what's called NEAT, N-E-A-T,

00:43:19.960 | which is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT.

00:43:24.940 | So what's the protocol?

00:43:26.460 | Fidget.

00:43:27.920 | If you're really interested in burning calories

00:43:30.060 | and you already exercise, you want to burn more,

00:43:32.840 | or you don't have the opportunity to exercise,

00:43:35.340 | or you're a versed exercise for whatever reason,

00:43:37.640 | fidgeting movements, staccato movements, standing up,

00:43:41.800 | walking around, pacing,

00:43:43.760 | all the sort of nervous activities

00:43:45.500 | that we're so critical of in other people

00:43:47.220 | and sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing

00:43:51.140 | and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy.

00:43:54.980 | And while this probably won't compensate

00:43:57.560 | for chronic overeating,

00:44:00.140 | the caloric burn from this is considerable

00:44:03.000 | and very likely can offset a meal

00:44:07.320 | that had excessive calories

00:44:08.920 | or a kind of steady state of eating too much.

00:44:12.900 | And it also starts to open up all sorts of thoughts

00:44:15.260 | and discussion about when you travel,

00:44:17.720 | you tend to eat foods that are outside your normal ones.

00:44:20.960 | We tend to eat foods that aren't so great for us.

00:44:23.520 | We also tend to be a little bit more sedentary

00:44:25.280 | when we travel, we're on the plane, et cetera.

00:44:27.700 | But all of that aside,

00:44:31.160 | just the use of something like low-level movement,

00:44:34.800 | and it's almost like a tremor,

00:44:36.800 | but also these short, small, fidgety movements.

00:44:39.520 | I'm intentionally doing a lot of these today,

00:44:40.920 | so you have examples that you can use

00:44:42.920 | that to select from if you like.

00:44:45.520 | These can have a major effect on fat loss.

00:44:49.680 | And it raises a second tool.

00:44:53.040 | If these low, meaning these small movements

00:44:57.660 | that we engage in trigger epinephrine,

00:44:59.920 | adrenaline release from these neurons

00:45:01.720 | of the sympathetic nervous system that innervate fat

00:45:03.940 | and increase fat mobilization and oxidation,

00:45:08.160 | now it should make sense why shivering

00:45:12.340 | is one of the strongest stimuli

00:45:15.280 | that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss.

00:45:19.900 | Now, shivering is almost always associated with cold.

00:45:23.040 | We think shivering, we think cold,

00:45:24.320 | because when we get cold, we shiver.

00:45:26.840 | And there are two ways that shivering can increase fat loss.

00:45:30.960 | And there are several ways that you can use shivering,

00:45:34.160 | you can leverage shivering,

00:45:35.700 | and you can leverage cold to accelerate fat loss,

00:45:38.580 | but you have to do it correctly.

00:45:40.720 | And most of the people that are using cold

00:45:44.220 | and frankly suggesting cold

00:45:46.180 | as a means to increase metabolism fat loss

00:45:49.420 | are suggesting the exact wrong protocol.

00:45:52.340 | In fact, the one I'm going to recommend

00:45:53.920 | is 180 degrees in the opposite direction

00:45:56.720 | to the typical protocol that you'd hear about.

00:45:58.700 | So let's talk about how to use cold

00:46:00.680 | and how to leverage shiver

00:46:02.980 | as a particularly strong stimulus to increase fat loss

00:46:07.340 | through mobilization and oxidation of these fatty acids.

00:46:10.980 | So in recent years, there's been a growing interest

00:46:13.280 | in the use of cold for various things

00:46:15.720 | like improving stress tolerance,

00:46:18.020 | improving metabolism, recovery from exercise.

00:46:20.840 | I've talked about a number of those things

00:46:22.460 | and the uses of cold on this podcast.

00:46:24.840 | In fact, did an episode on how to supercharge performance

00:46:29.840 | through palmer cooling, cooling the palms in specific ways

00:46:34.460 | or the bottoms of the feet.

00:46:36.180 | And if you're interested in that

00:46:37.820 | and how to improve performance in endurance and strength,

00:46:40.540 | you can check out that episode.

00:46:42.280 | But most people out there are using cold exposure

00:46:45.820 | typically by taking cold showers

00:46:49.920 | or by getting into cold water of some other kind,

00:46:53.020 | a lake or a river or a cold bath or an ice bath.

00:46:56.620 | And they are doing that probably with mixed goals,

00:47:00.580 | meaning they both would like to increase their metabolism

00:47:04.080 | and burn fat as well as improve mental resilience.

00:47:07.560 | Since today we're talking about accelerating fat loss

00:47:11.680 | through the use of science-based tools,

00:47:14.120 | I want to emphasize a study that was published in Nature

00:47:16.900 | just a couple of years ago,

00:47:19.140 | showing exactly how cold increases metabolism and fat loss.

00:47:24.140 | So we have several kinds of fat, three kinds in fact.

00:47:30.540 | We have white fat, white adipose tissue,

00:47:33.560 | and we have brown fat or brown adipose tissue.

00:47:36.900 | And there's a third kind, which is beige adipose tissue.

00:47:41.700 | White fat is the type that we traditionally think of

00:47:45.500 | as fat, subcutaneous fat.

00:47:48.640 | And it is not particularly rich in mitochondria,

00:47:51.380 | it is there as an energy storage site.

00:47:54.860 | And we have to mobilize the fat out

00:47:56.820 | as we talked about before and burn it up elsewhere.

00:47:59.740 | Brown fat largely exists between our shoulder blades

00:48:04.080 | and on the back of our neck, between the scapulae.

00:48:07.800 | And it's rich with mitochondria,

00:48:09.440 | which is why it's called brown fat.

00:48:11.880 | And brown fat has a particular biochemical cascade

00:48:16.560 | whereby it can take food energy,

00:48:19.660 | and it can take food basically, break it down

00:48:23.740 | and convert it into energy within those cells.

00:48:26.360 | And there's some additional steps involved,

00:48:28.020 | but unlike fatty acids from white fat,

00:48:30.820 | which have to travel elsewhere,

00:48:32.160 | get broken down in mitochondria

00:48:34.300 | and convert into ATP, et cetera,

00:48:36.340 | used by the mitochondria rather,

00:48:38.900 | brown fat is thermogenic.

00:48:42.220 | It can actually use energy directly.

00:48:44.520 | It skips a step, and I don't want to get diverted

00:48:46.860 | by going into all the biochemistry of it.

00:48:49.780 | Beige fat is sort of in between.

00:48:52.180 | It's white fat that could be brown fat

00:48:55.940 | because it has some mitochondria in it,

00:48:58.200 | but not as many as brown fat.

00:49:00.260 | Now, cold exposure does several things.

00:49:03.100 | Making ourselves cold can allow us

00:49:06.500 | to build up mental resilience

00:49:09.060 | because getting into cold of any kind,

00:49:11.180 | doesn't matter if it's a cryo chamber,

00:49:12.940 | doesn't matter if it's a cold day

00:49:14.380 | and you forgot your sweater or your parka.

00:49:16.660 | It doesn't matter if it's an ice bath

00:49:19.300 | or you're lying down in the snow.

00:49:22.160 | Cold causes the release of adrenaline from your adrenals

00:49:26.200 | and it causes the release of epinephrine

00:49:28.900 | from these neurons that connect to fat.

00:49:31.360 | Now, the big effects of cold on metabolism and fat burning

00:49:36.360 | are going to be through two routes.

00:49:40.480 | One is that if you expose yourself to cold,

00:49:44.200 | you have the opportunity to trigger activation of brown fat

00:49:49.020 | as well as to convert more beige fat into true brown fat.

00:49:52.940 | So you essentially create a stronger or a hotter furnace.

00:49:57.620 | That's the way to think about brown fat.

00:49:59.160 | It's like a furnace.

00:50:00.120 | And so with this principle that we started with

00:50:02.580 | of calories in versus calories burned,

00:50:05.160 | what you're doing is you're increasing

00:50:07.020 | the amount of burning.

00:50:08.320 | You're increasing the burn of energy

00:50:11.900 | by increasing the intensity of the heat inside you,

00:50:15.520 | so to speak.

00:50:16.360 | Okay, I'm talking here kind of metaphorically.

00:50:20.040 | Now, how can you do that?

00:50:21.880 | Well, if you get into cold water or an ice bath

00:50:26.220 | or a cold day and you try and remain calm

00:50:30.100 | and resist shivering, you actually short circuit

00:50:35.100 | this mechanism for increasing brown fat thermogenesis.

00:50:38.980 | The paper published in "Nature" shows

00:50:41.040 | that it is shivering itself

00:50:44.280 | that causes the brown fat to increase your burning,

00:50:49.040 | your burn rate and your metabolism.

00:50:51.000 | And it works like this.

00:50:52.260 | When you get into cold and you shiver,

00:50:55.240 | the shivering, that low level movement of the muscle,

00:50:58.560 | those small movements, triggers the release

00:51:00.880 | of a molecule called succinate, S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate.

00:51:05.880 | And succinate acts on the brown fat

00:51:09.840 | to increase brown fat thermogenesis and fat burning overall.

00:51:13.700 | It actually increases body heat

00:51:15.560 | through this brown fat thermogenesis pathway.

00:51:18.760 | And it also over time can increase the amount of brown fat

00:51:23.220 | by converting beige fat into true brown fat.

00:51:27.480 | Now, how much cold exposure and how often, that's the key.

00:51:31.360 | But before I give that detail or set of details,

00:51:37.060 | remember if you resist the shiver,

00:51:39.800 | you are not going to get the increased metabolic effect

00:51:42.880 | because you are not going to get the succinate release.

00:51:46.240 | So if you want to get your body heat,

00:51:50.020 | your thermogenic level to go up, you need to shiver.

00:51:53.960 | So now we have the NEET,

00:51:55.320 | the non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

00:51:57.460 | so low levels of activity as I described before,

00:51:59.840 | which are done away from cold,

00:52:01.720 | maybe do them in cold as well,

00:52:03.000 | as well as shiver in response to cold.

00:52:05.600 | And so the shiver itself is valuable

00:52:08.280 | for triggering the release of succinate.

00:52:09.600 | In fact, succinate is being evolved now by various drug

00:52:12.900 | manufacturers as a potential treatment for obesity,

00:52:15.720 | although it hasn't really hit the market

00:52:17.460 | in its final form yet.

00:52:19.720 | Succinate is powerful for its effects on brown fat.

00:52:22.460 | So how many times a week do you need to expose yourself

00:52:27.200 | to cold will depend on how much fat you're trying to lose

00:52:30.600 | and how much you're trying to increase your metabolism.

00:52:33.900 | There are studies that describe positive effects on fat loss

00:52:37.800 | of exposing yourself to cold either through cold shower

00:52:41.280 | or through ice bath or other cold water.

00:52:43.500 | It doesn't have to actually have ice in it

00:52:44.860 | provided it's cold enough for any time, anywhere,

00:52:48.920 | excuse me, between one and five times per week.

00:52:52.160 | But it turns out that just one exposure per week

00:52:54.380 | can be valuable.

00:52:55.840 | The question then is how long

00:52:58.360 | to get into that cold environment

00:53:00.520 | and how cold should that environment be?

00:53:04.040 | So first let's talk about how long

00:53:05.900 | to get into that cold environment.

00:53:08.440 | The answer here might be a little bit different

00:53:10.280 | than you might imagine.

00:53:12.280 | Most of you might think, oh, well, if one minute is good,

00:53:14.920 | three minutes is better.

00:53:16.000 | And if three minutes is better, then 10 minutes is best.

00:53:19.640 | But remember the goal is to get the shiver induced release

00:53:24.360 | of succinate so that succinate can trigger the brown fat.

00:53:27.260 | It turns out that if you want to trigger the shiver,

00:53:33.440 | what you want to do is to get into the cold

00:53:36.580 | and then get out of the cold and typically not dry off

00:53:41.140 | and then get back into the cold and out of the cold.

00:53:43.640 | That will definitely stimulate more shivering

00:53:46.120 | than just getting into the cold itself.

00:53:48.380 | So what I'm not referring to

00:53:49.640 | is getting into the cold environment like an ice bath

00:53:51.900 | and waiting until you shiver and staying there shivering.

00:53:54.980 | You also don't want to get hypothermic

00:53:57.580 | and I want to be clear,

00:53:58.480 | you want to get approval from your doctor

00:54:01.040 | before you do any of this.

00:54:03.340 | When you get into cold water,

00:54:06.020 | there are two factors that will dictate

00:54:07.740 | whether or not you shiver.

00:54:09.180 | Probably three, but let's just talk about the main two.

00:54:11.420 | One is how cold it is.

00:54:12.620 | So how cold should it be?

00:54:13.620 | And look, if you get into water that's very, very cold,

00:54:16.580 | it can actually shock your heart.

00:54:18.020 | It can actually give you a heart attack

00:54:19.440 | if it's truly, truly ice cold

00:54:22.100 | and you're not adapted to that.

00:54:23.740 | So proceed with caution, please.

00:54:25.900 | I'm not a physician and I don't want to see anyone get hurt.

00:54:31.100 | Cold, just cold enough to be uncomfortable

00:54:33.820 | is a good place to start.

00:54:35.660 | So for some of you, that's going to be 60 degrees.

00:54:38.200 | For some of you, that's going to be 55 degrees.

00:54:40.180 | For some of you, it's going to be high 30s, right?

00:54:44.120 | Depends on how cold adapted you are

00:54:45.740 | and people vary in terms of how well they tolerate the cold.

00:54:49.300 | So what you need to do is find a temperature

00:54:51.100 | that you can get into one to five,

00:54:54.100 | probably one to three times a week

00:54:55.700 | if you really want this to accelerate fat loss

00:54:58.160 | and you want to get in until you just start to shiver

00:55:00.420 | and then you want to get out and not dry off.

00:55:03.780 | Wait anywhere from one to three minutes

00:55:07.240 | and then get back into the cold.

00:55:10.020 | Now you'll notice when you get back into the cold,

00:55:12.540 | it'll almost seem soothing.

00:55:14.540 | It might actually not induce shiver.

00:55:16.660 | It might take away the shiver that you had.

00:55:19.460 | So here's a potential kind of sets reps protocol

00:55:22.840 | that you can play with.

00:55:23.820 | Find a temperature that induces shiver for you.

00:55:25.800 | That's going to vary depending on your cold tolerance

00:55:28.020 | and how cold adapted you are.

00:55:29.540 | One to three, maybe five times a week,

00:55:31.980 | get in until you or get under the shower or whatever it is

00:55:35.760 | until you start to shiver, genuinely shiver.

00:55:38.940 | Then after about a minute or so get out,

00:55:42.360 | spend one to three minutes out, but don't dry off.

00:55:44.820 | Get back in for anywhere from one to three minutes,

00:55:48.600 | but try and access the shiver point again.

00:55:51.460 | And you might do three repetitions of that.

00:55:53.860 | So it's three times in and three times out total, okay?

00:55:57.740 | That's a great starting place.

00:55:59.660 | And what you don't want to do is build up your tolerance

00:56:05.340 | to cold so fast that pretty soon you're able to resist

00:56:08.960 | the shiver because remember the shiver is the source

00:56:11.400 | of the succinate release that will trigger

00:56:12.940 | brown fat thermogenesis.

00:56:14.940 | So if you'd like to see this protocol spelled out,

00:56:17.260 | you can access it zero cost at a website,

00:56:20.260 | which is thecoldplunge.com.

00:56:22.820 | The Cold Plunge is a company.

00:56:24.340 | They make cold plunges and they were kind enough

00:56:26.940 | to gift one to the Huberman Lab podcast.

00:56:29.680 | But I want to emphasize that these protocols

00:56:31.660 | are free of cost.

00:56:32.720 | The folks at the Cold Plunge are not just interested

00:56:35.320 | in marketing their product, but one of their main interests

00:56:38.660 | is encouraging people to engage in cold exposure

00:56:41.460 | for particular end points and goals like fat loss,

00:56:44.340 | resilience, et cetera, resisting inflammation.

00:56:48.780 | But their main focus is providing people protocols

00:56:53.560 | and encouraging people to use cold exposure

00:56:55.540 | of various kinds, not just through their products,

00:56:57.540 | but through cold rivers and jumps in the ocean

00:57:00.700 | and things that cold showers, whatever is most convenient

00:57:04.580 | and accessible for various people.

00:57:06.660 | And so we needed a place where we could house

00:57:09.140 | these protocols in a permanent way

00:57:11.580 | and not just for this episode.

00:57:13.940 | So what they've agreed to do is to post the protocols there.

00:57:16.460 | They should be very easy to find on their website.

00:57:18.920 | This particular protocol we're referring to

00:57:22.020 | as the fat loss optimization protocol

00:57:26.700 | for lack of a better name.

00:57:28.220 | And it's really grounded in how cold can be used

00:57:31.020 | to induce shiver.

00:57:32.340 | And again, it doesn't really matter

00:57:33.580 | how you're accessing that cold

00:57:35.620 | provided you access the shiver

00:57:37.340 | and you're moving from the cold environment

00:57:39.460 | to a slightly warmer environment.

00:57:41.480 | So getting out of the cold shower

00:57:42.980 | or getting out of the ice bath, et cetera,

00:57:45.420 | or out of the Cold Plunge and then back in.

00:57:47.880 | Because it turns out that the cooling and rewarming process

00:57:51.820 | of the body is where shiver kicks in.

00:57:54.660 | And so that's distinctly different

00:57:57.300 | than just trying to get into the cold

00:57:58.860 | and stay in the cold for as long as possible.

00:58:01.380 | And if you zoom out a little bit

00:58:03.300 | and think about some examples in life,

00:58:06.140 | you'll understand why that must be the case.

00:58:09.100 | For instance, people who do a lot of cold water swims,

00:58:12.720 | you have these polar bear clubs,

00:58:14.100 | I think they call themselves,

00:58:15.780 | do these cold water swims.

00:58:17.060 | I would sometimes see these people swimming back

00:58:18.820 | in Vortha Alcatraz and stuff like that, which seems risky.

00:58:22.420 | And they tell me it's very stimulating

00:58:24.800 | for the mind and body, great.

00:58:26.220 | Sometimes those people are very lean,

00:58:28.580 | oftentimes they're not.

00:58:30.320 | And they're getting a lot of cold exposure.

00:58:33.080 | And one of the things that happens

00:58:35.260 | is if you expose yourself to cold over and over,

00:58:37.580 | you adapt, you become cold adapted.

00:58:39.380 | And when you do that, you no longer get the epinephrine,

00:58:41.940 | the adrenaline release from the cold.

00:58:44.260 | And therefore you don't get the succinate release

00:58:46.800 | and the shivering and the brown fat thermogenic effect

00:58:49.760 | quite as intensely.

00:58:51.300 | So if you want to use cold for other reasons,

00:58:53.940 | and certainly cold water swims can be fun,

00:58:55.920 | and as long as you can do them safely, they're great.

00:58:59.420 | I've gotten into cold water swimming

00:59:00.920 | for some period of time.

00:59:02.580 | You can use cold for resilience, et cetera.

00:59:04.460 | But if you want to use cold to increase fat loss,

00:59:07.680 | then getting this shiver process going,

00:59:10.600 | the cooling and rewarming, which accelerates the amount

00:59:13.960 | or increases the amount of shiver,

00:59:15.560 | that's going to be the way to go.

00:59:17.840 | One note about cold and some of the factors

00:59:19.920 | that it releases.

00:59:21.340 | A few years back, there was a lot of excitement

00:59:23.360 | about this hormone called irisin, I-R-I-S-I-N,

00:59:27.320 | which was associated with cold.

00:59:29.640 | And there was a lot of excitement about its potential role

00:59:32.760 | in increasing metabolism.

00:59:34.460 | So much so that people were starting to explore this

00:59:37.520 | as a potential fat loss drug.

00:59:39.360 | To my knowledge, that went nowhere.

00:59:41.680 | The science eventually shifted over to succinate

00:59:44.980 | as the main factor in cold-induced thermogenesis

00:59:49.000 | through this brown fat pathway.

00:59:50.680 | But if anyone out there is aware of any positive effects

00:59:53.220 | of irisin or of any science of irisin

00:59:56.360 | that I'm overlooking here

00:59:57.880 | or that I'm speaking about incorrectly,

00:59:59.220 | please let me know, I'd be very curious to learn.

01:00:02.240 | Now, I want to just talk about brown fat a little bit more

01:00:06.840 | and talk about a period in your life

01:00:09.480 | in which you were rich with brown fat.

01:00:12.280 | You had a ton of brown fat.

01:00:13.880 | And that's when you were a baby.

01:00:16.300 | Babies can't shiver.

01:00:18.220 | These neurons that release epinephrine into fat

01:00:23.880 | are not wired up and really aren't present

01:00:27.800 | at sufficient levels or in sufficient numbers

01:00:30.760 | when you are a baby.

01:00:32.280 | And therefore you can't shiver as a baby

01:00:35.100 | and you can't warm yourself up

01:00:36.400 | in cold environments very well.

01:00:38.020 | To compensate for that,

01:00:41.400 | mother nature installed in all of us

01:00:44.140 | an excess of brown fat early in life

01:00:47.240 | that exists again in the upper back

01:00:49.480 | and the middle of the back and the back of the neck.

01:00:52.080 | Over time, if we don't expose ourselves to cold environments

01:00:57.200 | or do other things that make us shiver,

01:01:00.200 | we lose a lot of that brown fat.

01:01:02.640 | But what's interesting about brown fat

01:01:04.200 | is that there's some evidence that brown fat,

01:01:06.760 | just like white fat, can both increase in size

01:01:11.680 | but that you can also add new cells.

01:01:14.240 | Now this is a little bit controversial.

01:01:15.640 | People always say you can't change the number of fat cells.

01:01:17.920 | You can just shrink them or increase their size.

01:01:21.160 | Well, it turns out that epinephrine released

01:01:24.600 | from these little nerve endings in brown fat

01:01:27.400 | and succinate circulating in the body may,

01:01:30.720 | and I want to underscore may,

01:01:32.120 | have the effect of increasing the amount of brown fat cells

01:01:35.360 | probably by converting these beige fat cells into brown fat.

01:01:40.320 | So that allows us to become much as we were early in life

01:01:43.260 | where we metabolized like crazy

01:01:45.560 | and we'd heat ourselves up without shivering.

01:01:48.600 | Some people have taken the cold thing to the extreme,

01:01:51.640 | putting ice packs on the back of their neck

01:01:53.640 | throughout the day.

01:01:55.080 | Did a episode all about testosterone and estrogen

01:01:58.080 | and there's this, let's just call it a very niche,

01:02:02.120 | I have to imagine very, very niche culture of people

01:02:04.760 | who are wearing literally, I'm not joking,

01:02:07.560 | they are these cool pack, ice pack underpants.

01:02:10.840 | They go by a name that I'm not going to repeat on here,

01:02:12.720 | but you can find them on Amazon.

01:02:14.320 | Those are people that are using cold packs on the body

01:02:18.000 | and on the groin to try and increase things like testosterone

01:02:21.020 | but as well to try and increase thermogenesis

01:02:24.840 | and trying to increase their metabolism.

01:02:27.400 | Just remember, if you become cold adapted,

01:02:30.280 | you're not going to get the fat burning effects

01:02:32.160 | to the same degree.

01:02:33.280 | So cold is a powerful tool for fat loss

01:02:36.080 | but you don't want to adapt.

01:02:37.560 | This is reminiscent of a rule that you hear about

01:02:40.920 | in endurance exercise and in strength exercise as well,

01:02:44.000 | which is that you want to use the minimal effective stimulus

01:02:47.760 | to promote growth or progress,

01:02:49.800 | so growth of the muscle or improvements in endurance.

01:02:52.920 | If you go 10% further on a run or 10% faster,

01:02:57.880 | you will likely see an improvement in performance

01:03:00.480 | provided you recovery the next time you come back

01:03:02.480 | and do that same round of exercise.

01:03:05.560 | You'll be able to do more work

01:03:06.900 | or complete the work more easily, et cetera.

01:03:08.800 | You've adapted.

01:03:09.700 | If you do 20% more distance or 20% more weight,

01:03:15.360 | you won't necessarily see the same commiserate level

01:03:19.400 | of gain or improvement.

01:03:21.240 | And so likewise with cold,

01:03:23.420 | if you're quickly moving from 30 seconds of exposure

01:03:25.920 | to 10 minutes of exposure,

01:03:27.280 | you're overlooking the opportunity

01:03:29.400 | to get the most fat loss and increase in metabolism

01:03:33.360 | by stepping it up in smaller increments, okay?

01:03:36.540 | And this also speaks to the rationale

01:03:39.360 | for using cold exposure to accelerate fat loss

01:03:42.020 | for certain periods,

01:03:43.120 | but then maybe not doing it year round

01:03:45.480 | if fat loss is your goal.

01:03:47.120 | Maybe use it for two, three months at a time

01:03:49.520 | and then stop for two, three months at a time

01:03:51.200 | because it is such a potent stimulus

01:03:52.800 | provided you engage in the shiver.

01:03:56.400 | Next, I'd like to move to exercise

01:03:58.720 | and how particular timing and types of exercise

01:04:02.280 | can vastly improve fat loss.

01:04:05.120 | Before I do that,

01:04:05.960 | I just want to mention a really important reference

01:04:08.740 | for those of you that are interested in learning more

01:04:10.900 | about how neurons connect to fat.

01:04:13.780 | This is certainly a paper that you'd want to look at

01:04:16.280 | if you're interested in diving deep into the literature

01:04:19.100 | and reading all the various studies.

01:04:21.080 | It's a review.

01:04:22.280 | And the title of the review is

01:04:23.760 | Neural Innervation of White Adipose Tissue

01:04:26.180 | and the Control of Lipolysis.

01:04:28.660 | That's Neural Innervation of White Adipose Tissue

01:04:30.800 | and the Control of Lipolysis.

01:04:32.300 | It was published in Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology.

01:04:35.640 | You can find that free online.

01:04:37.260 | They have the full text available.

01:04:39.080 | The first author is Bartnes, B-A-R-T-N-E-S-S.

01:04:43.120 | It's a great review.

01:04:44.640 | And I've talked about a number of things

01:04:46.180 | that are mentioned in the review.

01:04:47.720 | Follow the references in that review

01:04:49.680 | and the reference trail, as we say,

01:04:51.520 | if you're interested in learning more about

01:04:53.480 | also how neurons control brown fat.

01:04:56.600 | And before I move to exercise,

01:04:58.440 | I also just want to highlight something

01:05:00.260 | that comes up every few years

01:05:01.980 | and has largely been considered myth now,

01:05:06.260 | but that is actually more interesting

01:05:09.040 | than most people might think,

01:05:10.800 | which is this issue of spot reduction.

01:05:13.800 | In the '80s and '90s, there were a lot of commercials,

01:05:17.880 | late night infomercials,

01:05:19.460 | where they would talk about spot reduction.

01:05:22.620 | If you do sit-ups, will you lose abdominal fat?

01:05:25.580 | If you do hip raises or glute raises,

01:05:27.520 | will you lose glute and hip fat?

01:05:29.540 | And I think everybody now believes that

01:05:33.340 | and understands that fat metabolism

01:05:36.360 | is something that happens systemically throughout the body,

01:05:38.840 | that some body fat is "more stubborn" than others.

01:05:41.740 | Everyone varies in where they tend to store fat

01:05:44.620 | or lose fat last.

01:05:46.560 | Number of factors that influence that,

01:05:48.440 | in particular hormone receptors.

01:05:51.320 | But now, at least in the scientific literature,

01:05:57.120 | spot reduction and the possibility

01:05:59.480 | of real true spot reduction,

01:06:01.740 | reductions in fat in a targeted way,

01:06:03.920 | a body part or body area targeted way,

01:06:06.900 | is becoming more of a reality and may be a reality soon,

01:06:11.720 | because exercise that triggers the activation

01:06:16.720 | of these nerve fibers, these neurons that innervate fat,

01:06:20.820 | in theory, if you can increase

01:06:24.120 | the amount of epinephrine released

01:06:25.620 | at those particular fat pads, as they're called,

01:06:28.780 | they're actually called fat pads

01:06:30.360 | in the scientific literature,

01:06:32.300 | in theory, you could increase mobilization

01:06:35.760 | from those particular body fat sites.

01:06:39.300 | Okay, so because the new view,

01:06:42.760 | that the modern understanding,

01:06:44.220 | is that it's not adrenaline released systemically,

01:06:46.940 | kind of bathing all your fat tissue,

01:06:49.840 | but rather it's neurons releasing

01:06:51.900 | adrenaline epinephrine locally, that in theory,

01:06:55.960 | exercise that stimulates the release of epinephrine

01:06:59.240 | or exercise coupled with things like shiver

01:07:02.920 | or low-grade shaking movement or the NEET,

01:07:05.820 | the non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

01:07:08.560 | could in theory lead to local enhancement

01:07:14.160 | of mobilization of fat tissue.

01:07:16.620 | So I think that spot reduction actually will

01:07:19.280 | soon be something that's possible

01:07:21.200 | using the appropriate technology.

01:07:23.260 | What does this mean for you now?

01:07:24.820 | What could you possibly do with this information now?

01:07:28.860 | Well, I think it speaks to the fact

01:07:33.200 | that if one is going to engage in exercise,

01:07:36.940 | that doing exercises that involve

01:07:39.380 | lots of different body parts and movements

01:07:42.960 | is likely to encourage the maintenance

01:07:46.220 | and or growth of these neurons

01:07:48.920 | that innervate fat throughout the body.

01:07:50.980 | What this means is changing up the pattern of exercise,

01:07:53.880 | engaging in novel types of movements

01:07:56.400 | may actually be one way that one can access

01:07:59.020 | these so-called stubborn body fat pads.

01:08:01.960 | Now there's a little bit of speculation

01:08:03.400 | in the statement that I'm making,

01:08:04.940 | but if you think about it, it makes sense.

01:08:06.440 | If you become very adapted

01:08:07.980 | to a particular pattern of exercise,

01:08:10.580 | whether or not you're subcaloric or not,

01:08:12.660 | you're in maintenance calories or not,

01:08:15.360 | you are oxidizing some fat always,

01:08:18.580 | and you're utilizing the neurons

01:08:21.380 | that innervate fat in a regular way,

01:08:23.260 | and pretty soon this innervation is going to shut off

01:08:27.580 | because there's no reason why this neural innervation of fat

01:08:31.620 | should continue to release epinephrine

01:08:33.620 | unless you give it a strong stimulus like cold

01:08:35.860 | or the fidgeting, or in this case,

01:08:38.760 | to do novel forms of exercise.

01:08:41.180 | And there's some anecdotal evidence,

01:08:44.300 | and there I don't even want to call it data,

01:08:46.020 | but anecdotal evidence that people

01:08:47.540 | who have quote unquote stubborn body fat,

01:08:50.160 | if they start to adopt new patterns of exercise,

01:08:52.760 | they can start to access those stubborn fat pads.

01:08:56.100 | And again, fat pads is the correct way to refer to these

01:08:59.240 | in the scientific literature.

01:09:00.760 | So what we're focusing on today

01:09:03.620 | is the fact that fat indeed will be mobilized and oxidized

01:09:08.140 | in response to a deficit in calories,

01:09:10.460 | but that the way that neurons control those fat pads

01:09:13.820 | and those body fat stores affords you a lot more control

01:09:17.800 | than perhaps you ever previously thought.

01:09:20.520 | So let's talk about movement

01:09:22.700 | and the more traditional kinds of movement,

01:09:24.360 | AKA exercise, that has been shown to lead

01:09:26.940 | to increases in metabolism and fat loss to greater degrees,

01:09:31.860 | depending on whether or not, for instance,

01:09:33.600 | you're fasted when you do it or not,

01:09:36.020 | whether or not you do your cardio first

01:09:37.720 | or your resistance training first.

01:09:39.780 | And this is, again, in a literature

01:09:42.160 | for which there's a lot of controversy,

01:09:43.920 | but in digging through all the studies on this,

01:09:47.020 | we're finally starting to arrive at a consensus

01:09:49.480 | of when is best to do exercise

01:09:51.660 | and what types of exercise to do if your goal is fat loss.

01:09:55.920 | The topic of exercise is a kind of controversial one,

01:09:59.460 | not as controversial as nutrition and diet,

01:10:01.460 | which we will talk about in a few minutes,

01:10:03.740 | but it's a particularly interesting one

01:10:06.820 | because different types of exercise

01:10:08.820 | engage the musculature of the body and the heart

01:10:11.540 | and the lungs in different ways

01:10:13.540 | and can have vastly different effects

01:10:15.300 | on things like hormones and metabolism,

01:10:17.420 | depending on whether or not it's of high intensity,

01:10:19.860 | moderate intensity, or low intensity.

01:10:22.300 | So rather than think about weight training

01:10:24.580 | versus cardiovascular exercise,

01:10:27.060 | I think the most simple way,

01:10:29.860 | the most fluid way to have this conversation about exercise

01:10:33.740 | and fat loss is in terms of three general types of training,

01:10:38.120 | whether or not it's done with weights or body weight

01:10:40.140 | doesn't really matter.

01:10:42.100 | And those are high intensity interval training,

01:10:45.020 | something that seems to have gained a lot of popularity

01:10:47.380 | in recent years, so-called HIIT, H-I-I-T.

01:10:49.820 | So high intensity interval training,

01:10:52.220 | sprint interval training,

01:10:53.980 | so that's going to be very high intensity or S-I-T,

01:10:57.020 | or moderate intensity continuous training, M-I-C-T.

01:11:01.220 | So we've got HIIT, SIT, and MICT, M-I-C-T.

01:11:05.780 | And we can get a little bit more precise if you'd like.

01:11:08.880 | I'm not somebody who measures my VO2 max or anything

01:11:11.220 | while I exercise.

01:11:12.060 | I generally know whether or not I'm doing something

01:11:14.620 | I could continue for a very long time

01:11:16.260 | or whether or not I'm doing something

01:11:17.880 | that I realize is going to be of short duration,

01:11:21.580 | high intensity.

01:11:22.420 | But if you'd like to map this to VO2 max,

01:11:26.340 | SIT, this sprint interval training was defined as all out,

01:11:31.040 | greater than 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity

01:11:34.240 | that last eight to 30 seconds,

01:11:36.960 | interspersed with less intense recovery periods.

01:11:39.100 | So this would be sprinting downfield for eight to 30 seconds,

01:11:43.180 | then maybe walking back for about a minute or two,

01:11:46.460 | and then sprinting again and then continuing.

01:11:48.220 | So that would be SIT.

01:11:49.420 | HIIT, H-I-I-T, is defined as submaximal,

01:11:53.260 | so 80 to 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity

01:11:57.020 | that last 60 to 240 seconds,

01:12:00.300 | interspersed with less intense recovery periods.

01:12:02.840 | So on a standard 400 meter track,

01:12:04.980 | just to give us a little bit of a visual,

01:12:07.020 | a four-minute mile would be fantastic for most people,

01:12:11.220 | although people run faster than that, of course.

01:12:13.200 | So that's four 60-second laps,

01:12:15.300 | but that's back to back to back.

01:12:17.480 | I think in my best shape, or maybe it was in my dreams,

01:12:20.720 | I don't recall which,

01:12:21.560 | I was able to do 60 seconds around the track,

01:12:23.800 | but of course I couldn't get that

01:12:24.740 | on the second or third or fourth.

01:12:26.880 | If I did, that was certainly in fantasy land and not reality.

01:12:32.120 | But 60 seconds would be about one revolution around the track

01:12:36.300 | maybe 90 seconds, depending on how fast one is running.

01:12:40.160 | So 60 to 240 seconds.

01:12:42.620 | MICT, okay, this moderate intensity continuous training

01:12:47.520 | is steady state cardio,

01:12:49.180 | sometimes called zone two cardio these days on the internet,

01:12:52.600 | which is performed continuously for 20 to 60 minutes

01:12:55.600 | at moderate intensity of 40 to 60% of VO2 max,

01:13:00.020 | or if you prefer heart rate, 55 to 70% of max heart rate.

01:13:05.020 | Okay?

01:13:06.060 | So we can think about high, medium,

01:13:07.960 | and low intensity exercise.

01:13:09.560 | Although low intensity usually means

01:13:12.340 | that you could carry on a conversation,

01:13:13.900 | or maybe you'd have to gasp every few steps or so

01:13:16.480 | while trying to talk and run.

01:13:17.920 | That's, I think, going to be the most useful way

01:13:20.320 | to have this conversation that we're having now,

01:13:23.120 | because there's so many different forms of exercise

01:13:25.140 | that people do, and intensity is important.

01:13:28.720 | Let's ask the question that I think many of people

01:13:31.240 | are wondering about, which is, is it better,

01:13:34.960 | meaning do you burn more fat

01:13:36.480 | if you do your exercise fasted?

01:13:38.480 | And fasted in this respect could be

01:13:41.200 | that you wake up in the morning,

01:13:42.520 | you've been fasting all night,

01:13:44.000 | you just hydrate and you exercise,

01:13:47.000 | or sometimes people will ingest caffeine.

01:13:49.700 | There's controversy as to whether or not

01:13:51.180 | that quote unquote breaks the fast,

01:13:52.760 | has to do with whether or not your caffeine adapted,

01:13:54.600 | something for another episode.

01:13:57.200 | In any case, that would be fasted,

01:13:58.960 | so probably not having eaten anything

01:14:00.940 | for anywhere from three to 24 hours, or maybe even more.

01:14:05.040 | 'Cause you could also be fasted in the afternoon

01:14:06.800 | if you had lunch at noon, and it's four or five or 6 p.m.

01:14:10.080 | Is it, will you burn more fat if you exercise

01:14:13.820 | without eating anything first,

01:14:16.840 | without ingesting any calories first?

01:14:18.940 | And people have tried to really split hairs on this

01:14:21.040 | every which way, people say, well, you can fat fast,

01:14:23.680 | because fat and protein doesn't lead

01:14:25.760 | to as great increases in insulin as other things.

01:14:30.760 | Maybe you can have a few almonds and then still train.

01:14:33.000 | And indeed, insulin will prevent fat oxidation.

01:14:38.000 | I want to be really clear.

01:14:39.640 | The burning part of fat in the cell,

01:14:41.480 | the movement of the fatty acid into mitochondria

01:14:45.600 | and the conversion to ATP, insulin inhibits that process.

01:14:49.080 | However, it's been shown that,

01:14:53.420 | at least for short periods of training,

01:14:55.340 | it doesn't really seem to matter

01:14:57.180 | whether or not you eat before training or you don't

01:15:00.260 | if your goal is fat oxidation.

01:15:02.780 | Now, I want to put an asterisk near that

01:15:04.580 | because there are some exceptions,

01:15:05.960 | but there were several studies done

01:15:08.400 | that, and the kind of the classic ones of these,

01:15:12.540 | I'll read out to you, what they basically did

01:15:15.120 | is they gave people glucose, sugar,

01:15:18.200 | to increase their blood sugar before training or not.

01:15:21.900 | And the kind of classic study of this is Alborg.

01:15:25.300 | et al., so 1976, so it goes way back,

01:15:28.040 | which is that glucose reduces fat burning in exercise.

01:15:31.360 | And then some other studies,

01:15:32.880 | if you want to look these up,

01:15:33.720 | they're very easy to find on PubMed.

01:15:35.120 | You put in Horowitz, 1999.

01:15:37.860 | Lee et al. is another one

01:15:40.520 | where they have people drink milk with glucose in it,

01:15:43.600 | so sweet sugary milk before exercise, et cetera.

01:15:47.460 | And you can find a number of examples

01:15:49.920 | where eating before exercise reduces the amount of fat

01:15:54.160 | that's oxidized during the exercise.

01:15:56.780 | And you can also find a lot of studies showing

01:15:59.960 | that eating during exercise or prior to exercise

01:16:04.960 | will not reduce the amount of fat that's oxidized.

01:16:08.480 | However, the types of exercise,

01:16:10.520 | whether that was medium intensity or high intensity

01:16:13.840 | or low intensity is all over the map for these studies,

01:16:16.280 | so it's very hard to target an ideal protocol.

01:16:19.680 | And then if you look really deep in the literature,

01:16:22.520 | you start to find meta-analyses

01:16:24.500 | where people have actually aggregated all the findings

01:16:27.660 | and some modern studies where it points

01:16:30.000 | to some very specific and useful protocols.

01:16:32.400 | And so here's the rule or the protocol

01:16:35.200 | that I extracted from that literature.

01:16:37.380 | At a period of about 90 minutes

01:16:41.560 | of moderate intensity exercise, I want to be clear,

01:16:46.160 | at about or after 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise,

01:16:51.200 | there's a switchover point whereby if you ate

01:16:55.240 | before the exercise, you will reduce, excuse me,

01:16:58.680 | you will burn far less fat from the 90 minute point onward

01:17:03.680 | than you would if you had gone into the training fasted.

01:17:07.780 | So let me repeat that.

01:17:09.200 | If it's moderate intensity,

01:17:10.680 | so-called zone two cardio type exercise,

01:17:13.220 | at the 90 minute point,

01:17:16.680 | if you happen to have eaten before the exercise

01:17:19.340 | within one to three hours prior to the exercise,

01:17:23.120 | then you reduce the amount of fat

01:17:25.580 | that you will burn from 90 minutes onward.

01:17:29.000 | Whereas if you had fasted prior to the exercise,

01:17:32.000 | you hadn't eaten anything for three hours

01:17:33.680 | or more prior to the exercise,

01:17:34.960 | at the 90 minute point, 90 minutes of exercise,

01:17:38.400 | you will start to burn more fat

01:17:41.080 | than you would had you eaten.

01:17:43.040 | Now, 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise is a lot.

01:17:47.640 | So that's a pretty long run.

01:17:49.700 | Even if you're running at a pretty slow pace,

01:17:51.780 | like a 10 or 12 minute mile, that's a lot of running.

01:17:55.400 | That's a lot of swimming.

01:17:56.280 | So that's a lot of walking.

01:17:57.780 | That's a lot of hiking.

01:17:58.920 | However, there are people who are going out hiking all day

01:18:02.040 | or running all day or walking all day.

01:18:03.720 | And if you want to burn more fat per unit time,

01:18:07.000 | you want to oxidize more fat,

01:18:08.300 | then you would do that fasted.

01:18:10.360 | Now, there are also studies that point to the fact

01:18:14.720 | that you don't have to wait to 90 minutes

01:18:16.960 | in order to get this enhanced fat burning effect.

01:18:21.200 | The studies I was able to find

01:18:23.560 | and that looked to me like quality peer reviewed studies

01:18:26.000 | with no company bias or no product bias of any kind,

01:18:30.600 | these are studies that were largely funded

01:18:32.920 | by the federal government in the university context,

01:18:37.920 | pointed to the fact that if one does high intensity training

01:18:42.280 | or even the very high intensity forms of training

01:18:46.200 | like sprints or squats or deadlifts

01:18:48.620 | or any kind of activity that can't be maintained

01:18:51.320 | for more than these eight or I would say up to 60 seconds.

01:18:55.240 | So a set of lifting weights, repeated, repeated,

01:18:57.800 | if that's done for anywhere from 20 minutes,

01:19:01.440 | so weight training or powerlifting

01:19:03.800 | or these kinds of things or kettlebell swings

01:19:06.020 | or up to 60 minutes, well then the switchover point

01:19:10.620 | in which you can burn more fat

01:19:12.240 | if you go into that fasted comes earlier.

01:19:15.320 | And this makes sense because there's nothing wholly

01:19:17.840 | about the 90 minute point

01:19:19.680 | for medium intensity zone two cardio.

01:19:23.120 | That 90 minute point is the point

01:19:25.680 | in which the body shifts over from mainly burning glycogen,

01:19:30.680 | basically sugar that comes from muscles or the liver

01:19:34.480 | and realizes this is going on for a while,

01:19:37.580 | I'm going to shift over to a storage site fuel

01:19:43.380 | that is in reserve like body fat.

01:19:46.460 | This is going to happen for a while

01:19:47.720 | so I'm going to start tapping into body fat stores.

01:19:49.560 | Now fat doesn't have a little brain there.

01:19:51.280 | It is innervated by neurons, but it doesn't have thoughts

01:19:53.480 | and you don't actually control this switch with your mind.

01:19:56.080 | This is something that has to do

01:19:57.220 | with the milieu of various hormones.

01:19:59.900 | What has to happen is insulin has to go down far enough.

01:20:03.820 | So if you ate before the exercise,

01:20:05.700 | you'd have an increase in insulin.

01:20:07.300 | If you ate carbohydrates,

01:20:08.320 | you'd have a bigger increase in insulin.

01:20:09.940 | Fat and proteins indeed will have lower amounts of insulin

01:20:13.480 | and fasting will give you the lowest amount of insulin.

01:20:16.500 | Well, then that switchover point

01:20:17.980 | is going to come earlier in the exercise.

01:20:20.940 | And if you think about it,

01:20:22.740 | if you were to do something high intensity

01:20:24.340 | for 20, 30, 40 minutes, so maybe lift weights

01:20:27.100 | and then get into zone two cardio.

01:20:29.580 | If you were fasted, the literature says

01:20:31.760 | that you're going to burn more body fat per unit time

01:20:35.980 | than if you had eaten before or during the exercise.

01:20:40.320 | So what does this mean?

01:20:41.160 | This means if you want to burn more body fat,

01:20:43.420 | if it's in your protocols

01:20:45.060 | and you have been approved to do this safely,

01:20:47.800 | exercise intensely for 20 to 60 minutes.

01:20:53.160 | The higher the intensity,

01:20:54.380 | obviously the shorter that bout is going to be

01:20:56.500 | and then move over into zone two cardio.

01:20:58.620 | And if you do that fasted

01:21:00.040 | or the medium intensity cardio, I should say,

01:21:01.780 | and if you do that fasted,

01:21:04.420 | then indeed you will burn a higher percentage of body fat.

01:21:07.380 | If you need to eat or you like to eat before you train,

01:21:11.580 | that also can work.

01:21:14.240 | And if you train very intensely,

01:21:15.940 | you're likely to shift over

01:21:16.980 | to the fat burning pattern more quickly as well.

01:21:21.480 | So again, this isn't really an issue

01:21:23.340 | of how long you exercise.

01:21:25.620 | It's an issue of how intensely you exercise

01:21:28.500 | and therefore what fuel source you're drawing from.

01:21:31.420 | So hopefully I've made that clear,

01:21:33.100 | but basically you need to deplete glycogen

01:21:35.700 | or through high intensity exercise

01:21:37.940 | and then move to a steady state exercise

01:21:40.280 | that will allow you to burn more fat,

01:21:42.060 | or you need to perform a medium intensity

01:21:45.420 | or low intensity type exercise for a long period of time

01:21:47.940 | before you shift over to burning fat.

01:21:49.980 | And indeed it seems that going into all that fasted

01:21:53.200 | will facilitate the burning of more fat overall.

01:21:56.620 | But if you can't even get to the exercise,

01:21:59.820 | if you're somebody who just can't do the training at all,

01:22:02.820 | you're unwilling to, or you're incapable of training,

01:22:06.260 | unless you eat something,

01:22:07.140 | then obviously eating something makes the most sense.

01:22:09.220 | And what you eat prior to exercise,

01:22:10.660 | that's a whole other biz that people argue about

01:22:13.860 | and fight about whether or not you should go into it

01:22:16.260 | with low carbohydrates or higher carb or all of that.

01:22:19.060 | But in general, the theme there is very simple,

01:22:21.300 | which is that you want insulin levels to be pretty low

01:22:23.660 | if your goal is body fat reduction,

01:22:26.340 | if you want to oxidize body fat.

01:22:27.900 | So fasting in some cases, fat fasting in other cases

01:22:30.540 | where you're just ingesting fats, fat and protein

01:22:32.740 | in some cases, or for some people

01:22:34.100 | it will be eating carbohydrates.

01:22:35.700 | I'm not here to dictate a particular nutrition regimen.

01:22:39.100 | That's just how the hormone balance of these things

01:22:41.220 | and fat oxidation works.

01:22:43.180 | Now, one thing that's very interesting

01:22:44.820 | and cannot be overlooked is this issue

01:22:47.460 | of how much energy you burn during and after the activity.

01:22:51.900 | And some of you probably already know about this,

01:22:53.940 | but the whole business of calories in versus calories out

01:22:58.580 | and people counting the number of calories they burn

01:23:01.160 | during their aerobic session or during their whatever session

01:23:04.780 | is only one half of the equation.

01:23:07.020 | And it really eclipses the more important issue,

01:23:09.900 | which is how much of an increase in metabolism

01:23:14.060 | does a given exercise create after the exercise?

01:23:18.540 | And we could talk for hours about this,

01:23:19.980 | but the simple way to view this

01:23:21.240 | is that high intensity training, anaerobic training

01:23:25.040 | of weight training, sprints, burpees, any kind of thing.

01:23:29.160 | I don't know, these days I see,

01:23:30.560 | I hear that you're not supposed to do burpees,

01:23:32.080 | that people think burpees are dangerous.

01:23:33.240 | So I'm not suggesting any particular movements here.

01:23:35.040 | You have to decide what's right for you.

01:23:37.040 | I do burpees, I don't seem to be injured from them,

01:23:41.160 | but I hear that they're terrible for some people.

01:23:43.280 | So anyway, pushups, sit ups, whatever it happens to be,

01:23:46.700 | that anaerobic exercise that's of higher intensity

01:23:50.680 | or sprints taps into glycogen stores

01:23:54.480 | during the movement and will burn more energy

01:23:57.880 | per unit time than moderate intensity.

01:23:59.780 | High intensity burns more than moderate intensity.

01:24:01.560 | That's straightforward.

01:24:02.720 | What's interesting is that all the studies

01:24:06.800 | that I was able to find on what happens

01:24:09.240 | after that type of exercise show that the percentage of fat

01:24:12.280 | that you burn after high intensity exercise

01:24:15.440 | is actually greater.

01:24:16.680 | In other words, you burn a lot of glycogen

01:24:18.320 | during the high intensity exercise.

01:24:20.120 | And then after the exercise,

01:24:21.920 | the post-exercise oxygen consumption as it's sometimes called

01:24:25.140 | goes up, we know this after you train intensely

01:24:28.940 | that post-exercise oxygen consumption goes up

01:24:31.200 | sometimes for up to 24 hours.

01:24:33.880 | And it is during that period of time

01:24:35.580 | that you oxidize more fat, not glycogen.

01:24:39.520 | Now what's interesting is that the reverse is also true.

01:24:42.900 | For people that do long bouts

01:24:44.640 | of low or moderate intensity exercise,

01:24:46.880 | so typically this would be things like running,

01:24:48.560 | swimming, biking, et cetera.

01:24:49.680 | So 60, 90 minutes, two hours,

01:24:52.000 | maybe even people that are training for marathons

01:24:53.880 | or half marathons, when they stop training,

01:24:56.900 | they burn more glycogen, more carbohydrate,

01:25:01.600 | even though they were burning more body fat per unit time

01:25:05.400 | during the low intensity exercise.

01:25:07.080 | So there's this kind of inversion.

01:25:08.480 | High intensity burns more glycogen during the activity,

01:25:10.960 | more body fat afterwards.

01:25:13.260 | Moderate to low intensity burns more percentage wise,

01:25:17.200 | more body fat is oxidized than glycogen

01:25:20.120 | during the actual exercise, afterward it's more glycogen.

01:25:24.800 | So I don't want this to get too complicated.

01:25:27.020 | The point is you should pick exercise that you like,

01:25:30.720 | that you're going to do regularly,

01:25:32.520 | but it does seem that the high intensity exercise

01:25:36.300 | followed by moderate intensity exercise

01:25:39.280 | is going to be optimal for fat burning overall.

01:25:41.900 | Because when you look at the percentage of body fat burned

01:25:45.380 | and you look at the overall increase

01:25:47.560 | in basal metabolic rate,

01:25:49.440 | moderate and high intensity training

01:25:51.580 | followed by low intensity training,

01:25:54.840 | or even just followed by going back into life

01:25:57.540 | is going to be the best way to continue to burn body fat

01:26:00.660 | because of the ways that it increases basal metabolic rate.

01:26:04.240 | Now, this could be distilled into a simple protocol

01:26:07.700 | whereby three or four times a week

01:26:10.340 | you do high intensity training followed by either nothing

01:26:13.260 | or followed by low intensity training,

01:26:16.560 | especially if you're able to do that fasted.

01:26:19.480 | And I should just mention that none of this stuff

01:26:21.700 | about fasted is about performance.

01:26:23.700 | If you want to perform really well,

01:26:25.860 | this is for reasons of performance and you want to,

01:26:29.080 | it's for a sport or a competition,

01:26:30.520 | it's not for body fat purposes.

01:26:32.160 | Well, then all of this kind of falls away

01:26:34.560 | and is modified by what's ideal to eat for performance.

01:26:37.180 | But what we're talking about today

01:26:38.160 | is how to optimize body fat loss.

01:26:42.520 | So train moderately to intensely to very high intensity

01:26:47.520 | and then moderate to low intensity,

01:26:51.460 | or train moderate to high intensity and then go about life.

01:26:55.120 | And in fact, I have a friend who uses this strategy.

01:26:58.980 | He likes the train intensely and not that often protocol

01:27:01.860 | 'cause he's a very busy person.

01:27:03.140 | So he'll train for 20 or 30 minutes intensely with weights

01:27:05.780 | or just body weight movement doing a lot.

01:27:08.300 | He does burpees and pushups and sit ups and pull ups

01:27:10.580 | and just kind of moving and kind of circuit type training.

01:27:13.660 | But where he's breathing really hard,

01:27:15.140 | the goal he always says is I want to breathe hard

01:27:17.180 | for 30 minutes every day.

01:27:18.820 | And then afterwards he hydrates and drinks coffee

01:27:21.700 | and moves into his day and he's walking around

01:27:23.520 | and taking calls and carrying around his children

01:27:25.820 | and doing all these kinds of things

01:27:26.820 | that keep him really busy

01:27:27.660 | with kind of like low intensity work.

01:27:29.420 | So I think you get the principle now.

01:27:31.300 | But you should all be asking yourselves

01:27:33.880 | as scientists of yourselves,

01:27:36.340 | why would it be that certain patterns of exercise

01:27:38.880 | would lead to more or less fat loss?

01:27:41.960 | I mean, it can't just be about the energy burned.

01:27:44.000 | We already established that.

01:27:45.500 | And again, it has to do with the neurons.

01:27:47.500 | It has to do with how we engage the nervous system.

01:27:50.040 | So while non-exercise activity induced thermogenesis,

01:27:53.180 | NEAT, the fidgeting, and cold can induce thermogenesis

01:27:57.560 | by engaging shiver type movement or low level movements,

01:28:01.020 | big movements that are of very high intensity,

01:28:04.440 | meaning they require a lot of effort,

01:28:05.960 | deploy a lot of adrenaline, epinephrine

01:28:08.300 | from our neurons and signal particular types

01:28:12.940 | and amounts of fat thermogenesis, fat oxidation.

01:28:17.940 | Whereas low level intensity exercise,

01:28:20.460 | low or moderate intensity exercise,

01:28:22.380 | walking, running, biking, where you can do that easily,

01:28:25.120 | there's not very much adrenaline release.

01:28:27.060 | So adrenaline and AKA epinephrine

01:28:31.420 | is really the final common path

01:28:33.620 | by which movement of any kind,

01:28:35.880 | whether or not it's low level shiver

01:28:37.320 | or whether or not it's lifting a barbell,

01:28:39.300 | sprinting up a hill, or doing a long bike ride,

01:28:42.320 | adrenaline is the effector of fat loss.

01:28:46.920 | It's the trigger and it's the effector.

01:28:49.520 | So now I want to turn our attention to compounds

01:28:52.880 | that increase epinephrine and adrenaline,

01:28:55.520 | as well as compounds that work outside

01:28:58.240 | the adrenaline epinephrine pathway

01:29:00.720 | to increase the rates of fat loss.

01:29:03.080 | I almost always save compounds and supplements

01:29:06.160 | and things of that sort to the end,

01:29:07.940 | because I do believe that people should look first

01:29:10.820 | toward behavioral tools and an understanding of the science

01:29:14.220 | before they look toward a supplement

01:29:17.260 | or a particular thing that they can extract from diet.

01:29:21.280 | This is mainly to try and shift people away

01:29:23.040 | from the kind of magic pill phenomenon

01:29:25.180 | or the idea that there is a magic pill

01:29:27.080 | because there really isn't and frankly, there never will be.

01:29:29.660 | But there are some compounds

01:29:30.920 | that can greatly increase fat oxidation and mobilization.

01:29:34.560 | And understanding which compounds increase oxidation

01:29:38.300 | or mobilization can be very useful

01:29:40.960 | if your goal is to accelerate fat loss.

01:29:43.840 | There are things that people can ingest

01:29:46.320 | that will allow them to oxidize more fat.

01:29:50.060 | And that occurs mainly by increasing the amount

01:29:52.560 | of epinephrine that is released from neurons

01:29:55.120 | that innervate fat tissue.

01:29:57.280 | One of the more common ones

01:29:58.720 | is one that you may already be using, which is caffeine.

01:30:02.620 | It's well-established that caffeine can enhance performance

01:30:06.780 | if you're caffeine adapted.

01:30:08.240 | I talked about this in an earlier episode,

01:30:10.180 | so I want to make sure I'm very clear about this.

01:30:12.140 | If you are not used to drinking caffeine

01:30:14.400 | and you suddenly decide I'm going to drink

01:30:17.380 | a big cup of coffee before training,

01:30:20.120 | you will vasoconstrict and you will limit performance.

01:30:24.220 | So that's performance.

01:30:25.480 | If you're caffeine adapted, however,

01:30:28.020 | there's this kind of interesting phenomenon

01:30:29.920 | where ingestion of caffeine serves more as a performance

01:30:33.180 | enhancer, both by increasing alertness,

01:30:36.120 | but also by way of dilating vasculature,

01:30:39.900 | of allowing more blood flow.

01:30:41.300 | Now, caffeine for burning more fat,

01:30:45.840 | for oxidizing and mobilizing more fat is an interesting one.

01:30:48.940 | It can be effective at dosages up to 400 milligrams.

01:30:54.560 | You have to be careful if you're caffeine sensitive.

01:30:56.900 | Some people have just the littlest bit of caffeine

01:30:58.940 | and their mind goes crazy and they're very uncomfortable.

01:31:01.960 | It can have cardiovascular effects for some people

01:31:04.080 | with hypertension, et cetera.

01:31:05.280 | So please check with your doctor.

01:31:07.040 | But 400 milligrams is roughly a cup and a half of coffee

01:31:12.040 | or two cups of coffee.

01:31:13.280 | Nowadays, there's a lot more caffeine in coffee.

01:31:16.480 | So if you go to a typical cafe

01:31:19.760 | and you were to get their medium size,

01:31:22.620 | that would have close to a gram of caffeine,

01:31:25.220 | which is why if you're a regular caffeine consumer

01:31:28.440 | and you don't get that gram of caffeine

01:31:30.280 | in your coffee each day, you will get a headache.

01:31:32.320 | It can cause constriction and dilation of blood vessels

01:31:35.200 | in ways that's complicated, but you'll get a headache.

01:31:38.240 | Some people like the way they feel,

01:31:42.040 | drinking 100 to 200, 300, maybe even 400 milligrams

01:31:45.160 | of caffeine before training.

01:31:46.300 | And indeed that will lead to increased fat oxidation.

01:31:49.360 | It will do that because you will release

01:31:51.280 | more epinephrine and adrenaline.

01:31:53.460 | So let's just place this in the context

01:31:55.700 | of what we said previously.

01:31:56.840 | Let's say you normally do zone two cardio.

01:31:59.480 | So you're going out for a moderately intense run

01:32:02.600 | for 30 to 60 minutes or so.

01:32:05.040 | I think the current recommendation guidelines in the States

01:32:08.100 | are that people engage in 30 minutes

01:32:11.560 | of moderate intensity exercise five days a week for,

01:32:16.520 | so that's 150 minutes, if their goal is to improve

01:32:20.420 | or maintain health of the cardiovascular system.

01:32:24.840 | 80% of people in the United States fail to do that

01:32:27.900 | or anything close to it.

01:32:29.900 | We are way below threshold

01:32:31.360 | for what the government has recommended.

01:32:33.480 | In this case, the government recommendations

01:32:35.020 | I think are pretty good.

01:32:36.940 | One could always do better, of course,

01:32:38.800 | but 80% of people aren't even doing that.

01:32:41.480 | However, just using the logic and the understanding

01:32:45.360 | of how epinephrine, adrenaline

01:32:47.000 | is affecting this fat oxidation process.

01:32:49.480 | If you were to go out for 15 minutes

01:32:51.960 | and you drank caffeine before you went,

01:32:54.380 | yes, you will probably oxidize more fat per unit time.

01:32:58.840 | Can you compensate for the exercise you're not doing

01:33:02.120 | just by drinking caffeine?

01:33:04.000 | Well, probably if you were just talking about fat loss,

01:33:07.380 | if that caffeine makes you fidget a lot, right?

01:33:10.040 | The amount of calories that you burn in a 30 minute run,

01:33:13.220 | unless the run is very intense

01:33:14.860 | and you're wearing a weight vest and it's up a hill,

01:33:16.900 | it's not that great, right?

01:33:18.940 | But you probably get in somewhere

01:33:20.220 | into the 400, 500 calories burned area.

01:33:24.320 | But I said earlier, and there are a lot of data now

01:33:27.060 | that support that fidgeting for a day

01:33:28.560 | can burn anywhere from 800 to 2,500 calories a day.

01:33:31.640 | So you might say, well, fidgeting is better than running.

01:33:33.600 | Ah, but it doesn't trigger the activation

01:33:35.680 | and the positive health effects of the cardiovascular system.

01:33:39.660 | So fidgeting alone can be great,

01:33:42.360 | but you need exercise for other reasons.

01:33:45.560 | Caffeine can enhance the amount of fat that you burn

01:33:48.360 | in any duration of exercise,

01:33:50.120 | and it can shift the percentage of fat that you oxidize

01:33:53.280 | compared to glycogen.

01:33:54.640 | Unless you take that caffeine and it ramps you up so much

01:33:59.360 | that you're training really, really intensely.

01:34:01.600 | The bottom line is if you like caffeine

01:34:03.940 | and you can use it safely,

01:34:05.960 | ingesting somewhere between 100 and 400 milligrams of caffeine

01:34:09.800 | prior to exercise,

01:34:10.780 | somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes before exercise

01:34:14.720 | can be beneficial if we're talking about fat oxidation,

01:34:19.280 | burning more body fat.

01:34:20.680 | So that's caffeine.

01:34:21.960 | There are a number of other things that have existed

01:34:23.640 | over the years that are in this pathway.

01:34:25.560 | Things like ephedrine, which is now illegal in most states,

01:34:30.560 | I think maybe in all states

01:34:32.320 | because people were dropping dead from taking ephedrine

01:34:35.280 | because they were heating up too much.

01:34:37.380 | It's interesting.

01:34:38.380 | It wasn't direct effects on the heart causing heart attack.

01:34:41.240 | It could trigger by way of adrenergic receptors,

01:34:45.920 | if you'd like to know,

01:34:47.360 | increases in body temperature and heat.

01:34:50.520 | Now, those drugs turned out to be dangerous

01:34:53.840 | because people were overheating and dying.

01:34:55.460 | There was also the big fen-fen craze.

01:34:57.580 | There was a drug that was released, fenfluramine,

01:35:01.200 | which actually was quite effective as an anti-obesity drug,

01:35:05.600 | a treatment for obesity.

01:35:07.320 | That had to be outlawed as well.

01:35:10.100 | It was, FDA approval was removed

01:35:13.620 | because again, people were dying

01:35:15.180 | because of cardiovascular effects.

01:35:17.000 | I don't know if people were overheating on it as well.

01:35:19.780 | So what is the solution?

01:35:21.440 | If caffeine is the kind of the entry point for most people

01:35:24.860 | of using compounds to increase the rate

01:35:27.020 | or percentage of fat loss in exercise and even at rest,

01:35:31.180 | what are some of the other things

01:35:32.340 | that are useful and interesting?

01:35:33.940 | Well, in terms of tools that are actionable

01:35:36.500 | and have reasonable safety margins,

01:35:38.900 | I've talked before about something called GLP-1.

01:35:43.540 | This is something that can be triggered

01:35:46.160 | by the ingestion of yerba mate, which is a tea.

01:35:48.980 | And I guess because half Argentine,

01:35:51.220 | they grew up drinking mate.

01:35:52.620 | I think I was drinking mate

01:35:53.640 | from the time I was about three or four years old.

01:35:55.980 | I don't suggest that for kids.

01:35:57.420 | I don't think kids should be ingesting caffeine.

01:36:00.500 | But anyway, I did it.

01:36:01.820 | And I still ingest mate.

01:36:04.900 | Mate increases GLP-1.

01:36:07.460 | GLP-1 is in the glucagon pathway.

01:36:10.660 | So let's just quickly return to our biochemistry.

01:36:13.060 | As you recall, fat is mobilized from body fat stores

01:36:16.500 | and then it's burned up.

01:36:18.860 | It's oxidized in cells.

01:36:20.700 | It actually needs to be converted into ATP.

01:36:24.060 | And those fatty acids are essentially converted into ATP

01:36:28.780 | in the mitochondria of the cell.

01:36:31.020 | High insulin prevents that from happening.

01:36:34.780 | And glucagon facilitates that process.

01:36:38.400 | Glucagon facilitates that process through increases in GLP-1.

01:36:44.460 | The short takeaway is mate increases GLP-1

01:36:49.300 | and yes, increases the percentage of fat that you'll burn.

01:36:52.580 | It increases fat burning.

01:36:54.360 | And that is especially true,

01:36:55.820 | it turns out from the scientific literature,

01:36:57.940 | if you ingest mate prior to exercise of any kind.

01:37:02.020 | So if you want to burn more fat,

01:37:04.020 | drinking mate before exercise is good.

01:37:08.180 | Drinking it at rest when you're not exercising

01:37:11.240 | will also help shift your metabolism toward

01:37:14.440 | enhanced burning of fat by increasing fat oxidation.

01:37:18.060 | Now there's a whole category of pharmaceuticals

01:37:21.340 | that's being developed right now

01:37:22.820 | that are in late stage trials

01:37:25.440 | or are in use for the treatment of diabetes,

01:37:27.840 | which capitalize on this GLP-1 pathway.

01:37:32.040 | They go by various names

01:37:33.920 | and there are people on the internet

01:37:35.920 | who are selling these things.

01:37:37.280 | They are prescription drugs.

01:37:38.640 | And I want to emphasize that they are prescription drugs

01:37:40.960 | and you obviously wouldn't want to use any of these

01:37:42.940 | without a prescription and a requirement.

01:37:45.360 | They, it does seem that they are effective

01:37:47.080 | for the treatment of certain kinds of diabetes

01:37:49.920 | and lead to fairly significant weight loss

01:37:53.940 | and reduction in appetite.

01:37:55.620 | So this is kind of the modern version of GLP-1

01:37:59.580 | is pharmaceuticals of GLP-1 metabolism

01:38:03.780 | are drugs such as somatic...

01:38:07.260 | I can never pronounce this.

01:38:08.580 | Can't seem to pronounce many things it seems.

01:38:11.080 | Semaglutide is the way I would pronounce it.

01:38:14.000 | S-E-M-A-G-L-U-T-I-D-E.

01:38:17.800 | Semaglutide, but that's not the way you pronounce it.

01:38:22.320 | But somatoglide is the way that

01:38:23.920 | it's been described on the internet.

01:38:26.540 | In any case, this compound increases GLP-1.

01:38:30.480 | It's actually a GLP-1 analog in some cases

01:38:33.440 | and they go by various types of trade names.

01:38:37.320 | So the GLP-1 pathway is interesting.

01:38:39.300 | Most people, including myself,

01:38:41.400 | are not interested in taking a prescription drug

01:38:43.340 | to increase GLP-1.

01:38:44.460 | I do it through the ingestion of mate.

01:38:46.420 | I just get the mate leaves, pour water over it and drink it.

01:38:49.260 | What's kind of interesting that's not often discussed

01:38:52.360 | is that you can increase the amount of GLP-1

01:38:57.040 | by, you can essentially reuse the tea.

01:39:00.260 | The first time you drink it, it's going to be very,

01:39:02.800 | very intense.

01:39:03.640 | In fact, some people find that,

01:39:05.480 | mate almost tastes like burnt leaves.

01:39:07.980 | It's too intense.

01:39:08.820 | You don't want the water to be too hot.

01:39:10.540 | But I learned this trick from a friend.

01:39:12.480 | You can reuse the leaves over and over again,

01:39:14.640 | probably for about a day before they go bad.

01:39:16.780 | And in doing that, you start to extract

01:39:19.080 | more and more of the compounds from the mate leaf

01:39:21.640 | that increased GLP-1.

01:39:22.960 | So it's kind of cool.

01:39:23.800 | You can kind of get an increased effect.

01:39:25.320 | So what I'll typically do is make

01:39:27.480 | about 16 to 30 ounces and just sip it throughout the day.

01:39:30.300 | And I do like it before I train.

01:39:32.040 | Some people who don't like mate might prefer something

01:39:35.800 | like guayusa, which is spelled G-U-A-Y-U-S-A.

01:39:40.800 | G-U-A-Y-U-S-A, guayusa, which is from Ecuador.

01:39:46.560 | Despite the USA ending to it, it's from Ecuador.

01:39:49.440 | And it's a sweeter tasting tea.

01:39:52.560 | It doesn't have any sweetener in it,

01:39:54.360 | but the leaf of the guayusa plant is sweeter

01:39:57.140 | than the mate plant.

01:39:58.500 | I sometimes will mix the two

01:40:00.000 | and then make the tea with that.

01:40:02.560 | There's no mate or guayusa sponsor of the podcast.

01:40:05.320 | These are just tools to increase GLP-1 and fat oxidation.

01:40:09.660 | And again, the semaglutide is the prescription version

01:40:14.320 | where it's kind of the heavy artillery GLP-1 stimulant.

01:40:19.000 | And again, should be only explored with a prescription.

01:40:22.080 | So those are the compounds

01:40:23.920 | that really increase fat oxidation directly.

01:40:28.380 | There are going to be a number of things

01:40:30.040 | that impact insulin and glucagon

01:40:33.240 | that are going to shift the body toward more fat burning.

01:40:37.540 | We talked about a lot of these

01:40:39.060 | during the episode on hormones.

01:40:41.420 | We talked about it.

01:40:42.260 | We did a whole episode on hormones and metabolism.

01:40:44.440 | And so for instance, berberine, which comes from a plant

01:40:48.660 | or metformin are compounds that are now in kind

01:40:52.720 | of growing use for reducing blood glucose.

01:40:55.620 | They are very potent at reducing blood glucose

01:40:58.520 | which will reduce insulin

01:41:00.000 | because the job of the hormone insulin

01:41:01.800 | is to essentially manage glucose in the bloodstream.

01:41:05.520 | So there are a huge gallery of compounds

01:41:08.520 | that will reduce insulin

01:41:10.160 | and thereby can increase fat oxidation.

01:41:12.920 | And that's because, as I mentioned before, fat oxidation,

01:41:16.720 | this conversion of fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria

01:41:20.180 | is inhibited by insulin.

01:41:21.480 | So if you keep insulin low,

01:41:22.920 | you're going to increase that process.

01:41:25.040 | Which brings us full circle back

01:41:27.280 | to the issue of diet and nutrition.

01:41:30.140 | There is really solid evidence

01:41:33.980 | from the Gardner lab at Stanford and from other labs showing

01:41:38.280 | that when you look at different diets,

01:41:40.260 | you look at low-fat diets, high-fat diets,

01:41:43.060 | keto diets, intermittent fasting,

01:41:45.520 | provided people stick to their particular diet,

01:41:49.300 | it doesn't really matter which diet you follow.

01:41:52.680 | You can still get a caloric deficit

01:41:54.260 | and you get weight loss.

01:41:55.500 | Adherence, however, is always an issue.

01:41:58.720 | And so what I always say is

01:42:00.580 | that you want to use the eating plan

01:42:02.920 | that is obviously beneficial to your health,

01:42:05.640 | but the one that allows you to adhere to whatever it is

01:42:09.200 | that the particular nutrition protocol is, right?

01:42:12.440 | If you can't stick with something,

01:42:14.240 | then it's not very worthwhile.

01:42:15.980 | But from the purely scientific standpoint,

01:42:19.080 | there's also an advantage to keeping insulin low.

01:42:22.920 | Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you go

01:42:24.260 | to zero carbohydrate.

01:42:25.660 | I've talked before about my preferred way of eating is

01:42:28.200 | to go low or no carbohydrate throughout the day

01:42:30.220 | for alertness, to get that adrenaline release

01:42:32.760 | and the focus that goes with it, et cetera,

01:42:34.660 | and the ability to think and move

01:42:36.540 | and do all the things I need to do during the day.

01:42:38.400 | And then I eat carbohydrates at night

01:42:39.860 | 'cause it facilitates the transition to sleep.

01:42:41.720 | That's what works for me.

01:42:43.780 | But when insulin is low, you do place your system

01:42:48.780 | in a position to oxidize more fat.

01:42:52.080 | And so that's why I think a lot of people do see benefit

01:42:54.720 | from lower carbohydrate or moderate carbohydrate diets

01:42:57.900 | because when insulin is low,

01:42:59.400 | you are in a position to oxidize more fat,

01:43:02.260 | both from exercise and at rest.

01:43:04.640 | And I should mention because I often mention

01:43:07.400 | and it's appropriate to mention that if you're interested

01:43:09.640 | in looking at the effects of caffeine,

01:43:12.360 | of mate, guayusa, things of that sort, GLP-1,

01:43:15.320 | you want to learn more about those,

01:43:16.960 | you can go to this wonderful website,

01:43:18.720 | which is free, examine.com.

01:43:22.320 | You can put in Yerba Mate.

01:43:23.780 | It will describe the three studies

01:43:26.120 | that show increased fat oxidation,

01:43:29.440 | both during exercise and at rest.

01:43:31.780 | And as a consequence, not surprisingly,

01:43:33.760 | an increase in metabolic rate.

01:43:36.120 | One thing that's interesting about mate

01:43:38.920 | is it causes a slight decrease in heart rate

01:43:41.800 | for reasons that still escape me.

01:43:44.640 | There's a single study showing that heart rate

01:43:47.860 | is slightly reduced, which is kind of nice

01:43:50.560 | because if when I drink too much caffeine,

01:43:52.280 | my heart rate goes up,

01:43:53.240 | maybe that would increase my fidgeting and my fat burning,

01:43:55.680 | but I don't like the feeling of having my basal heart rate

01:43:58.120 | being up too high.

01:43:59.260 | I like my heart rate elevated during exercise,

01:44:01.200 | but not when I'm just kind of resting or working

01:44:03.280 | and throughout the day.

01:44:04.400 | And for some reason that I don't understand,

01:44:07.860 | there's an effect of mate of increasing fat oxidation,

01:44:11.800 | but reducing heart rate just slightly.

01:44:14.520 | So that's interesting and it probably lends itself

01:44:16.760 | to my, explains the subjective experience that I've had

01:44:20.200 | of that mate is kind of a nice, even, mellow stimulant.

01:44:24.440 | It's not this really supercharged stimulant like caffeine

01:44:28.440 | from coffee or other sources.

01:44:30.160 | Although if you drink too much mate,

01:44:31.600 | it will also make you jittery.

01:44:33.840 | And there's one more compound

01:44:35.340 | that I think we should discuss

01:44:36.600 | in terms of increasing fat loss,

01:44:38.920 | and that's carnitine or acetyl-L-carnitine.

01:44:41.720 | They lie in the same pathway.

01:44:44.440 | We can return to our basic knowledge now

01:44:47.600 | of fat mobilization and oxidation.

01:44:49.720 | After fat is mobilized and makes it into cells

01:44:54.240 | and needs to be oxidized,

01:44:55.680 | so literally the burning of fat

01:44:57.600 | and conversion of it into energy,

01:45:00.420 | that is accomplished and is facilitated

01:45:04.560 | by the presence of glucagon being elevated.

01:45:08.440 | GLP increases that process and insulin being low.

01:45:14.440 | And we talked about some ways to manage insulin,

01:45:18.080 | both in this episode and in previous episode.

01:45:20.400 | L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine in particular

01:45:26.200 | facilitates fat oxidation.

01:45:29.360 | It helps convert fatty acids into ATP.

01:45:33.000 | And indeed, supplementing L-carnitine can increase fat loss.

01:45:36.880 | That's been shown.

01:45:37.960 | At what dosages?

01:45:40.520 | Well, people ingest anywhere from 500 milligrams

01:45:43.960 | to two grams per day in divided doses typically.

01:45:47.920 | Some people who are really extreme

01:45:49.600 | are taking injectable L-carnitine.

01:45:52.640 | I've certainly not tried that.

01:45:54.180 | I confess I have used it in pill form from time to time,

01:45:58.020 | but in part because of the fat oxidation effects,

01:46:01.120 | but also because of the other effects that it tends to have.

01:46:04.360 | So in exploring the effects that L-carnitine has,

01:46:07.680 | it has a huge variety of effects on cellular metabolism.

01:46:11.160 | It can reduce ammonia in the blood.

01:46:13.960 | That is actually a quite strong effect.

01:46:15.980 | It can reduce things like C-reactive protein,

01:46:18.040 | which is you want C-reactive protein levels to be managed.

01:46:22.120 | You do not want them too high.

01:46:23.400 | Can slightly reduce blood glucose.

01:46:26.320 | It can slightly increase HDLC,

01:46:28.680 | the good form of the blood lipid,

01:46:31.440 | and slightly reduce overall cholesterol.

01:46:33.960 | And as I mentioned, it can slightly modify

01:46:38.160 | the pathway involving glucagon

01:46:40.120 | such that you get a considerable effect,

01:46:41.840 | not a huge effect on fat oxidation.

01:46:44.020 | So it can improve that oxidation rates.

01:46:46.680 | It has a number of other effects,

01:46:48.040 | some of which I talked about during the month on hormones

01:46:51.600 | and that sort of thing.

01:46:53.720 | It has strong effects on rates of pregnancy

01:46:57.080 | and sperm quality.

01:46:58.160 | So clearly carnitine is doing lots of different things

01:47:00.440 | in lots of different cells.

01:47:02.040 | It's impacting sperm motility.

01:47:03.980 | There are a large number of studies supporting that.

01:47:07.040 | Slight reductions in blood pressure.

01:47:09.520 | N has these interesting effects on reducing fatigue

01:47:13.040 | during exercise, reducing inflammatory markers

01:47:15.640 | like interleukin-6.

01:47:17.000 | So it has a number of effects that on the whole

01:47:19.820 | are quote unquote positive,

01:47:21.600 | or at least in the direction of things that you may want.

01:47:24.160 | And I should emphasize may.

01:47:25.480 | You certainly don't need acetyl-L-carnitine

01:47:27.700 | in order to lose fat.

01:47:30.160 | But now that you understand the cellular process

01:47:33.240 | by which fat is mobilized and oxidized,

01:47:36.000 | it should make sense that if L-carnitine is important

01:47:38.960 | for converting fatty acids into energy,

01:47:42.680 | then supplementing L-carnitine makes sense.

01:47:46.880 | Acetyl-L-carnitine is the type of L-carnitine

01:47:50.520 | or the form of L-carnitine, I should say,

01:47:52.400 | that is transported and utilized most easily by the body.

01:47:56.620 | And so that's why sometimes we distinguish

01:47:58.200 | between L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine.

01:48:01.160 | So once again, we've covered an enormous amount of material.

01:48:05.560 | We've talked about the science of fat loss.

01:48:08.540 | And in particular, we've explored this topic

01:48:11.680 | from the perspective of the nervous system,

01:48:14.440 | how neurons, and in particular,

01:48:16.520 | the release of things like adrenaline, epinephrine,

01:48:20.280 | can facilitate fat mobilization and oxidation.

01:48:24.340 | We talked about NEAT, fidgeting,

01:48:27.040 | this non-exercise type movement

01:48:30.640 | that can greatly increase caloric burn and why that is.

01:48:35.600 | We talked about shiver,

01:48:36.720 | another form of non-exercise movement

01:48:39.680 | that can really increase both caloric expenditure

01:48:42.800 | due to the shiver, due to the movement,

01:48:44.760 | as well as increased thermogenesis,

01:48:47.360 | the heating up of the body through things like brown fat,

01:48:50.240 | and even the conversion of white fat to brown fat,

01:48:53.320 | which is a good thing if you want to oxidize fat.

01:48:56.740 | We talked about cold as a particular stimulus

01:48:59.480 | to induce shiver and how to use getting into and out of cold

01:49:04.480 | as a way to stimulate shiver and avoid cold adaptation

01:49:09.380 | so that you continue to oxidize and burn fat,

01:49:12.560 | if that's your goal.

01:49:13.840 | If you want to check out the protocols for that,

01:49:16.520 | they're at thecoldplunge.com.

01:49:19.080 | And in weeks to come,

01:49:20.420 | we're going to be adding more protocols to that website,

01:49:23.220 | not just for fat loss, but for things like resilience,

01:49:26.720 | reducing inflammation, et cetera.

01:49:28.560 | So be sure to check those out.

01:49:29.720 | Again, those are totally cost-free.

01:49:32.020 | Talked about exercise,

01:49:33.860 | how rather than thinking about cardiovascular

01:49:36.240 | or weight training exercise,

01:49:38.100 | that we should perhaps look through the lens

01:49:40.720 | of this adrenaline system

01:49:41.920 | and how it interacts with fat stores,

01:49:44.340 | and think about low, medium, or high intensity exercise,

01:49:48.000 | whether or not we show up to that fasted or not.

01:49:49.960 | Turns out showing up to that fasted can be useful

01:49:53.220 | if you start with high intensity movements

01:49:55.880 | and then move into lower intensity type exercise.

01:50:00.480 | If you're going to go long duration,

01:50:02.240 | it probably doesn't matter

01:50:03.500 | unless you're exercising longer than 90 minutes,

01:50:06.360 | whether or not you eat or not.

01:50:07.860 | We talked about caffeine as a stimulant

01:50:11.980 | and a stimulus for epinephrine and adrenaline release

01:50:16.320 | as a way to access more fat metabolism.

01:50:19.960 | And we talked about compounds

01:50:21.760 | that come from things like yerba mate and guayusa tea,

01:50:25.880 | this GLP-1 pathway that can trigger increased fat oxidation,

01:50:30.840 | so much so that the pharmaceutical companies

01:50:32.920 | are now developing compounds specifically to increase GLP-1

01:50:36.760 | for treatment of diabetes and obesity.

01:50:39.320 | But you can leverage the GLP-1 pathway

01:50:41.820 | through the ingestion of things like mate or guayusa

01:50:44.840 | if that's of interest to you.

01:50:47.000 | And then we talked about L-carnitine

01:50:48.880 | and how L-carnitine itself is critical

01:50:51.800 | for the fat oxidation within individual cells,

01:50:54.180 | the conversion of fatty acids to energy

01:50:57.000 | and why having your insulin low

01:51:00.320 | and things like L-carnitine and glucagon levels

01:51:03.500 | high or sufficient at least

01:51:05.960 | to can facilitate the burning of fat, fat oxidation.

01:51:10.560 | So we covered a lot of material.

01:51:11.760 | That's a lot of protocols.

01:51:13.360 | I realize, and the little list I just gave right there

01:51:16.380 | didn't even begin to get into all the details

01:51:19.080 | and corners that we discussed.

01:51:20.840 | I hope you found this conversation interesting

01:51:23.760 | both for sake of understanding fat loss

01:51:26.160 | and how to lose fat more quickly

01:51:28.040 | and to lose more of it if that's your goal,

01:51:30.800 | as well as simply to understand the biology

01:51:33.200 | of fat metabolism from a different perspective,

01:51:35.200 | from the perspective of the nervous system.

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01:53:00.440 | I've mentioned supplements during the podcast.

01:53:02.480 | If you're interested in taking supplements,

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01:53:08.640 | We've partnered with Thorne

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01:53:24.980 | And you can get 20% off any of the supplements

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01:53:43.100 | And last but not least,

01:53:44.520 | I want to thank you for your time and attention today

01:53:46.980 | and thank you for your interest in science.

01:53:49.120 | [upbeat music]

01:53:51.700 | (upbeat music)

How to Lose Fat with Science-Based Tools

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