Why do we have such a hard time with losing weight but more so keeping it off because of obese people six out of every seven obese people will lose a significant amount of body weight in their life so why do we still have an obesity problem they don't keep it off why don't they keep it off when you look at the research basically what it suggests is because people think about I'm going to do a diet I'm going to lose this weight and they do not give anything thought to what happens afterwards right it's like think about if you have some kind of chronic disease or a diabetic right you can't just take insulin once and that's it right you got to take it continuously otherwise you're going to have problems if you do a diet and you lose you know 30 pounds fantastic but if you then just go back to all your old habits you're going to go back to where you were if not more you can't you can't create a new version of yourself while dragging your old habits and behaviors behind you so what I'll tell people is because people say well I'm doing a carnivore diet or I'm doing this diet or that diet and I'll say that's fine do you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life and if the answer is yes if you if you really believe that that's going to be sustainable for you and plenty of people low carb intermittent fasting whatever they say felt easy you know I could do this forever great what if you're going to lose weight you have to invoke some form of restriction whether it is a nutrient restriction like low carb low fat a time restriction intermittent fasting any form of time restricted eating or calorie restriction tracking macros whatever so you you get you get to pick the form of restriction so pick the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive to you as an individual and also do not assume that it will feel the same feel the same for everybody else because I made this mistake where it's like I track things and so I allow myself to eat a variety of foods I allow myself to eat some fun foods but I track everything and I'm able to modify my body composition and be in good health doing that now doesn't feel hard for me part of it's I've just been doing it for so long but to other people that's very stressful they don't want to they said well I'd rather just not eat for you know 16 hours if that feels easy for them do that because the one thing that there was a couple of people that there was a couple of people that there was a couple of meta analysis on popular diets and basically what they showed was they were all equally terrible for for long term weight loss but when they stratified them by adherence and none of them were better for adherence overall but when they stratified people just according from lowest adherence to best adherence it was a linear effect on weight loss so really what it says is what is the diet that's going to be easiest for you to adhere to in the long term and you should probably do that and people again this is where I step back and take the 10,000 foot view somebody will say well I'm going to do ketogenic because I want to increase my fat oxidation and I want to do this and they're talking about all these mechanisms and everything and that's great can you do it for the rest of your life right is that is this going to be something sustainable for you and if the answer is no you probably need to rethink what your approach is going to be it's incredibly important message basically that you know if I could highlight you know if there was a version of highlighter boldface and underline in in the podcast space I would highlight boldface and underline what you just said um and for those of you that heard it uh listen to it twice and then go forward because it's absolutely key I think it also explains a lot of the so-called controversy that exists out there I think um it also crosses over with the placebo effect I almost want to say um pick the the nutrition plan that you think you can uh stick to for for a long period of time ideally forever and pick your placebo too because there's there is a lot of placebo woven into each and every one of these things intermittent fasting uh keto probably even um vegan versus omnivore versus carnivore well they even talk about um you know the diet honeymoon period right where like you go into a diet and you're all fired up about it and like you're very adherent and then what happens with every single diet without exception in research studies is once you get past a few months adherence just starts waiting and going off here we are really talking about a form of relationship you know I'm not I'm not saying that to be tongue-in-cheek actually we had a guest early on in the podcast Dr.

Carl Diceroth he's a psychiatrist psychiatrist and um bioengineer at Stanford um tremendously successful Alaska award winner etc and he talked about love as a sort of a an interesting aspect of our psychology where it's a story that you co-create with somebody but that you live into the future of that story you know when you pair up with somebody that he's referring to romantic love that there's a sort of mutual agreement to create this this idea that you're going to live into so it's not just about how you feel in the moment it's also that you project into the future quite a lot I'm seeing a lot of parallels with um a highly functional and effective diet and um and I love it I'm not setting this parallel up artificially I'm setting up because I think that ultimately it was down to what you said earlier which is that the brain and our decisions about what we are going to stick to are tremendously powerful and I think one thing I will say is like keep in mind um when you look at the research data the meta-analyses on say time-restricted eating versus non when calories are equated doesn't seem to be a difference in in weight loss fat loss and most biomarkers of health same thing for low carb versus low fat if you equate calories and protein there was a meta-analysis done by Kevin Hall back in 2017 where they looked at the and again actual loss of body fat and another important point was there was I think there was 22 studies in this but all of them provided food to the participants right that's important because that makes ensures that adherence can be much higher in those studies whereas like various free living studies sometimes you can see funky results people are sneaking food or or they're just not really it's very eating the way that the study would ideally have to unless unless the person is getting like continuous support like studies where they have a dietician talk to people like every week tend to actually have pretty good adherence but I mean that's expensive to have done a study and again like what limits studies money money and money right um but the low carb versus low fat when protein and calories are equated basically no difference in fat loss now some people get upset about this but it's like what to me that's like this is great because you get to pick the tool you want the one tool it doesn't seem to be that much better than another so pick the one that works for you right whatever lever you've got to pull you've got a bunch of different options you mentioned picking something you can stick to for a period of time is there ever a case for someone saying look I like to eat low carb or even keto for six months and then switch to a more standard omnivore caloric maintenance type diet and then switch back is there any downside to doing that for sake of health or weight loss over time or weight maintenance over time because I realize not everyone is trying to lose weight um and I definitely want to talk about at some point how to eat to maintain weight because I think there are a significant um fraction of people out there who are trying to do that but is there anything um is there any downside to being a dabbler you know keto for a few months and then omnivore for a few months etc I think that's actually a great thing especially to like maybe find what you feel is easiest for you right um but in terms of like as a strategy I mean I guess you know some people uh this might get into dopamine but like oh change and get something new and like you know you feel a bit more positive about it partner model yeah yeah exactly so I don't think it's how I would usually set things up initially for somebody but if somebody said hey I just like to have some variety and change it up as long as they're still like you know their behaviors and they're doing portion control or whatever it is and they're able to sustain a calorie deficit or you know depending on whatever their goal is I don't think there's really any downside to it *music*