Welcome everyone to the Noble Just Bacon podcast.

I'm your host, Dr.

Allen, and with me here today is Coach Beth to answer all of your burning health and fitness questions from around the social media world.

This is a rapid fire episode we have for you today with a ton of great topics to cover.

So let's get rolling.

Starting off with the first question is someone who built the majority of their muscle in their prime years.

She lists teens and 20s at a greater lifetime advantage than someone who builds their muscles after 40.

By lifetime advantage she means the amount of muscle being able to be built in overall strength gains.

There is a benefit to building muscle and strength younger.

Now I would not say that prime years are teens and 20s.

I would say prime years are between 20s and maybe or early 40s to mid 40s and some people genetically.

So her shift was a little bit younger.

Is there an advantage?

Yeah, there probably is a lifetime advantage because once you start to get older, you start to have some anabolic resistance and it's probably harder to build more lean muscle and more strength.

Whereas if you did it during the years that it was easier, you could probably have a higher ceiling.

And it's certainly easier to maintain than it is to build.

So if you started younger, you likely have a bit of an advantage.

And part of that comes from the fact that as you are building lean muscle, you add more myonuclei to the muscles.

And these myonuclei allow you to both retain and bounce back from extended periods off a little bit easier.

So even in your later years when we tend to have a little bit more nagging injury, we tend to have other things crop up in life where, you know, we're we're busier than we were in work in our 20s.

Having some of those added benefits there just from, you know, building muscle without anabolic resistance in play, having more myonuclei, you probably have a slight advantage to a moderate advantage over people that start later.

Now, not to discourage anybody because you can always improve from where you are, especially if you're starting later in life.

And if you haven't done it earlier, it might be even more important for you to start later in life than it would be for somebody that had built it up earlier.

They've got more room for error.

You have less room for error.

If you're starting later, that's not to scare you, but that is to say the benefits are going relatively, they're going to be higher for you than they are for the person that has that has built it up throughout life.

You're going to prevent yourself from falling into osteoporosis and sarcopenia where they're probably not in the risk category for that.

So yes, there is probably an advantage.

No, it's not something you should worry about because if you didn't work out in your 20s and you're 50 or 60 now, can't do anything about it.

So this is more of a mental exercise than it is a practical thing.

But if you have kids, grandkids, you know, that are in their teens and 20s and they're and they're on the fence about getting into fitness, yeah, I would be suggesting that they start to get into this type of thing because it's going to pay off for decades to come.

Next question, I'd like to add some AB exercises into my routine.

I'm not sure where to start, whether I should use machines for crunches for example, whether I should increase weights, planks, or increase time.

How do I do this?

When people talk about adding AB exercises in, for the majority of people that bring this up, they're doing it because they want a more aesthetic midsection.

Obviously, that is mostly determined by body fat levels.

So nutrition is going to be #1 There are benefits to doing direct AB work, and there are three main modalities that I would look into doing AB work, depending on what you want to work, where you want to get stronger, or if performance is part of your goals.

If performance are part of your goals, I would target all three modalities of AB work.

That's some form of crunch, some form of reverse crunch, and some type of oblique work.

Whether that is a crossover type of crunch, whether it's rotational type of movement or similar to hit those obliques.

If you're purely looking for an aesthetic standpoint, I might downplay as a ratio wise the oblique work, because that oblique work can sometimes if you, if you respond really well to it, could slightly thicken the appearance of your midsection.

Now you get a ton of transverse abdominis work.

That's that AB musculature underneath what you can see from standard bracing.

And this is where that confusion comes into play, where people say, oh, you don't need to train ABS directly, You're getting enough from doing things like deadlifts and squats.

That is not necessarily true because that rectus abdominis, that sheet of muscle over top that you actually see does not get significantly trained in these bracing movements.

So when you're talking about bringing these things in, my recommendation would be to do at least one crunch type movement.

A movement where you pull your shoulders down towards your hips, one reverse crunch type movement where you bring your hips up towards your shoulders.

And from there you can customize it based on how you are performing, how you are responding, and what your other needs are.

And certainly there are a lot of different examples of these types of things, but to be honest, people really over complicate AB work, in my opinion.

You know, your your ABS literally do these very simple motions and you don't need to get fancy.

You, you know, we can program things for clients and we do program things for clients like V UPS and, and you know, some more elaborate types of things.

But it's not because a person has to be able to do AV up.

It's because, hey, this could be something that might be fun to do as opposed to always doing a crunch and a reverse crunch.

But I would start there with a crunch.

Reverse crunch and AB ball is a great thing for doing crunches on.

It makes you focus on actually the crunch movement as opposed to the full setup movement, which I would probably tell people to stay away from unless they've got a performance reason to be doing that.

Only because when full setups come into play, people tend to swing and they tend to bring their hip flexors into the movement rather than keeping it focused on the crunch itself.

So when you ask how should we do this?

How should we start?

I would start out with something like 3 or 4 sets of crunches or reverse crunches or variations of the two two to three times per week whenever it's not affecting your other lifting.

Like I would not put one of these things the day before doing really heavy squats because of how sore you could be and, and how that could affect that movement.

But I would add these in when you have the ability to throw them in and they're not going to significantly affect recovery or significantly affect your performance in your standard lifting sessions.

Beth, thoughts there.

I'm sure that you're going to have some since there's a lot of performance focus in the work that you've done in the past.

I mean, I actually don't really have a lot to add to that.

I I personally don't do a ton of direct AB work because I just hate it and I don't really care what my stomach looks like.

I don't care to have like a six pack.

So I weight lifters.

I mean, we do a lot of like static holds, like hollow body hold, like a heavy front rack barbell hold because that's positional strength there that you need for standing up a really heavy clean.

And we just sort of, we do overhead barbell holds like a lot.

That's sort of the, the AB work that a weightlifter would do because it's all positional strength outside of that.

Like I'm a, I'm just a basic crunches girl when I do them or GHD sit ups girl when I do them because that's what we do in CrossFit.

So I don't like AB work is kind of lost on me, I'll be very honest with you.

Well, I mean Rossford brings in some of the other modalities.

Well, because you've got toast to bar, so you've got a reverse type crunch in there.

I mean there there are a variety of of things in there.

But this is what I was talking about specifically.

When we have a sport or a performance reason to do some of these things, you're going to get more variety then you know, if you play baseball, if you play golf, rotational.

Rotational stuff.

Would make a lot of sense.

Now am I going to program that and mass for a physique or pure strength person?

No, probably not, you know, And so really try to figure out what your needs are and then program specifically for that.

And of course, you, you can always reach out to reach out to a coach and get some coaching if you need some help being able to dial that in specifically for you.

But AB work.

I, I got to tell you, my personal opinion is that people really overcomplicate this when literally what you need to do the, the issue isn't that you don't know the right exercise is that you don't fucking do it.

And you know, if I'm saying do four sets of a crunch and then four sets of a reverse crunch two to three times per week, just take those sets to failure.

This is literally one that I don't really even think about even my in my own training, I'll do body weight or like a lightweight and I will literally take it to failure.

And I do not feel bad about having like 25 or 30 reps in in this work because the ABS they recover so quickly and like even with a 25 and 30 Rep work, I'm only resting like a minute A.

Minute at the most.

Yeah.

And then I'm just pounding this out and I only lift this way for like ABS and calves maybe and and maybe maybe delts at times because they recover so well.

But but even then, it's not the majority of that work.

But I think that people really overcomplicate it and just like calf work, because the the same thing holds true for calves.

If you really want to improve the aesthetics of your calves, the issue isn't you don't know what to do.

It's the people don't do them regularly enough or consistently enough or in high enough volume to actually get it to respond.

You know, doing three sets of calf work once per week, you're going to see some modest benefits when you first start, but you you might slow down your progress over time.

You might require more, more volume.

And so that's why I'm saying two to three times per week, don't go nuts.

Cover your bases where you've got that reverse crunch and that crunch oblique work.

If you've got a reason to do it, sports, boxing, MMA, football, anything where you need it to have full core stability and strength, certainly you can do that.

And there's nothing wrong with that as long as these movements don't take away from your standard strength training, which is going to provide a lot of that, you know, core bracing type work to begin with, which gives you function in everyday life.

All right, next question, Thoughts on grounding sheets?

Are they a waste of money?

I'm not entirely sure what they mean by grounding sheets.

I understand the concept of grounding and I think that this is one that depending on what circles you run around in, you might be very familiar with this or not familiar with this at all.

Grounding has taken off in the woo woo world, the pseudoscientific world over the past two or three years.

I think it was because of either, it might have been Dave Asprey.

It might have been, I don't think it was Brecca.

It was, it was one of the the pseudoscientist guys.

I think it was Asprey started pushing the idea of grounding.

And the idea of grounding is that the earth has energy.

And if you, and one of the reasons that we have health problems in this life is because we don't have enough bare skin touching the earth anymore.

And yeah, it's, it's really funny.

But there's they're making a lot of money off of this and the scientific rationale that they put out because saying energy sounds like absolutely ridiculous.

So you need to give some bit of scientific rationale.

It's, it's bullshit, but this is what they give.

They say that there's a transfer of electrons between the ground and your feet.

I'm sorry.

It the, the I know you've said this are absolutely wild.

And I, when I saw this question, I was like, I'm absolutely covering this because I thought it was hilarious that this is we could ask this question quite a bit.

Believe it or not, whenever I throw Q&A's up probably every other week, I get questions about grounding Lord.

And so The funny thing is they have claims that are all over the place.

It's claims of it will, it will, you know, lower stress in your life.

There are claims that it will remove toxins.

There are claims, I mean, they even have like these pads that you put your feet on and it's supposed to pull the toxins out through the pads.

And because the pad is so thin that it can pull the energy from the earth and pulls it and you stand up and the pad that you were standing on is like brown.

It's because you've got dirty ass feet.

It has nothing to do with any toxins.

And so it's really funny, but I actually do believe there is are benefits in the practice of grounding.

But hold on.

Now that I've bashed this, let me let me get into into what it probably is and why some people do grounding practices and say it benefits them because I do believe that there is some benefit there.

When you talk about grounding sheets or grounding mats, it's absolute bullshit.

Anything that they're going to sell you to aid you in grounding is absolute bullshit.

Putting your feet on the earth is not.

There's nothing that's going to happen there that is going to provide the benefit through a flow of electrons or whatever it is.

However, in the practice of grounding, what they tell people to do is go away from the city, go away from the suburbs, find a secluded spot in nature and just stand there and like, you know, meditate and do all that kind of stuff.

Well, we actually have some pretty compelling evidence that getting out into nature is beneficial.

There is, it oxygenates your body.

It is calming.

It is a meditative state.

There's, there's a lot of benefits.

I mean, this is one of the reasons that I actually really like hiking because it's soothing.

It can relieve stress, it can cut anxiety.

And so in this attempt to sell these pseudo scientific like they'll sell a bunch of shit that you have to take to the to nature to make this work the best.

It has nothing to do with any of that.

It has everything to do with the fact that you have gotten off of your computer where you've been watching all political news that has been riling you up.

You're out in nature.

You might be walking around in nature.

You are enjoying, you know, life as it is and being mindful and in the moment.

It's this mental experience in being out in nature that seems to provide the benefits that they're telling you you need to buy these grounding products for.

So does grounding work?

Kind of grounding works to the extent that nature and hiking and all that kind of good stuff works and it really does.

And so if you are being sold on the, this idea, you can take what's actually beneficial from this that's free and find some benefits.

And Beth and I, we spend a lot of time hiking and I don't know, I don't know how she feels about it, but for me, it's, it's very good.

Like I, I mentally, I like getting out and I like doing it.

Not only is it a physical thing and you know, we're always preaching, get more steps, you know, improve your life through activity, that kind of stuff.

So there's that benefit there.

But the the physical fact of being in nature, I find is really nice.

Plus it's a good way to tire out your dog.

So there are a lot of benefits there.

I've lost a lot of weight.

I don't know what my goal weight should be.

Can you give me some advice?

All right, goal weights.

We should never set goal weights.

Goal weights are problematic for a lot of reasons.

It encourages short term thinking.

And as many times as we've said this, we still have to say it more and more.

This is a lifelong thing, and so having a goal weight suggests that there's an end.

There's never going to be an end.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

It always gives you something to work towards.

It always gives you this sense of fulfillment and challenge that you are continuing to succeed.

It creates this false finish line and it's a poor indicator of progress.

To begin with, your your body weight doesn't distinguish between body fat, muscle, water, glycogen, even digestive contents.

I mean, you could build muscle and lose fat and stay the same weight.

You know, we've talked about in the past, if you tell me I'm 180 lbs and I want to be 150 lbs, I'll say why?

And you'll say, well, it was because what, it's what I weighed in college or high school or that's what I was a prom or whatever it was.

And to me that that makes me think, well, don't you want better than than that?

Don't you think that you can do better?

You know, what if instead of £150, what if you look best at 155 or that's the best place to be able to make it sustainable.

So it can be mentally discouraging because you either get there and you lose that drive to continue forward, or you don't get there and you feel like you're a failure and that becomes a really problematic thing.

I mean, it, it feels great to have that goal to be working towards.

And when things are working nicely, you know you're seeing those one or 2 LB drops on the scale every week.

It feels wonderful until it doesn't.

And then you've got real problems.

And this is one of the reasons I, I bring this up.

We've talked about this on the podcast in the past and I, I wanted to touch on it because it needs to be reiterated.

And it's something that the people that get stuck on that diet roller coaster for the rest of their lives, they always, they keep doing this and they keep doing it and it throws them off.

And then they're like, well, it's the only way that I can stay motivated.

And then it throws them off and then they say that and it's a self fulfilling prophecy that this is going to be a problem.

So setting goals based on behaviors and routines seems to be a much better idea.

You know, can you get to the GMX many times per week?

Can you be this adherent with your diet?

Can you drink this many ounces of water per day?

Can you get this many steps?

Things that you can't control?

You can't control the scale weight change, but you can't control those things or have goal feelings.

And this is something that I've, I've recently started adding in when I'm talking about goal setting work with clients and other people.

And I think the goal setting is potentially one of the most important things that you can possibly do.

But by having goal feelings, I mean, do you want to have more daily energy?

Do you want to feel more confident in clothes?

Do you want to feel more confident in being able to go to the gym?

All of these things can be really good signs of progress that you can use to continue to motivate yourself over the long term.

That isn't something that is completely arbitrary and that's the matter of fact is that a goal weight is completely arbitrary.

So when someone says what is your advice for a goal weight, for me, it's to not use the goal weight because it is flat out arbitrary.

People hate hearing that.

And I don't know about your experiences, Beth, with some of your clients, but I've had clients where we have this conversation and in the beginning, they swear it's the only way that they can stay focused.

This is the only thing that gives me any sort of drive.

And I'm like, so your entire focus, your entire purpose for this journey is to weigh 150 lbs or whatever it is it, you know, dig deeper.

Is it to have the confidence?

Is it to feel better in a bathing suit?

Is it to, you know, live longer?

Is it to be healthier?

There's always a deeper meaning to these goals.

It's never the weight itself because nobody cares what they weigh.

If I ask a person, if you look the your absolute goal, are you going to be angry if you're 7 lbs heavier?

And there's not a single person that will say, no, I need to weigh.

I don't care what I look like.

I just need to weigh that weight.

Nobody's going to say that.

But in practice, we tend to think that way.

And you know, that's why we stay focused on the scale as our only sign of success.

And it becomes a very frustrating thing for people.

So this is me asking people, move away from the goal weight.

It will make your life a lot better.

Is resting metabolic rate accurate if measured on a calibrated metabolic cart?

Yes, that's actually how you do it.

You cannot use things like the aura ring, things like watches.

None of them can tell metabolic rate.

What you have to use is something called indirect calorimetry, which is a mask, a breathing device.

And they will, they will measure the output of of gas exchange and if the metabolic card is calibrated, that's how you get the accurate reading.

How much steak is too much per week?

This is a good question because there's a little bit of nuance here.

If you look at the research, it's somewhere around 250g or more of red meat per week.

You can start to see slight increases in certain mortality markers and certain certain other markers, but I think that this is one of those things that I would not worry about.

Specifically, I would be focusing on getting more whole minimally processed foods in my diet.

Lean minimally processed red meats I would not be worried about very much as long as I had fruits and veggies in the diet.

This is not something that I think is a significant enough risk to make you change your diet.

If you're able to stick to something that is the right calorie amount is whole, minimally processed foods you're cooking yourself.

This is missing the forest for the trees.

And so you can certainly see, and I've had, I've had guys researchers that push veganism quite a bit get, get really uppy in like a huff over this topic.

They're like, if you get more than 250 or 350 grams, depending on whatever the study is that they're looking at, they're like, you know, health outcomes kind of go downhill.

And it's like, right.

But like, what's the relative risk increase?

And they're like, well, it's like 1%.

And that's not like an absolute risk increase.

It's like a relative risk increase.

It's like somewhere between like 1 and like 5%, assuming that you have a decent overall diet.

And if you have more fruits and veggies in your diet, it's even less.

And so why are we losing our minds over this type of thing when the biggest issue that most people have is that they're constantly eating fast food?

We don't need to create more barriers to make people feel bad about eating well.

And so when when people talk to me about this and and they're like, well, you know, the data says this.

And what do you think I'm like, could be worse, could be eating fast food a lot.

You could be doing take out all the time.

The relative risk increase is so small that it's not there are certain things in life that the the sustainability is more important than actually living your life and being sociable and and, you know, enjoying some of the things that you eat within the guidelines of a healthy lifestyle.

And this is just missing the forest for the trees for me.

Any suggestions for lowering LDL and increasing HDL when overall diet is already low in saturated fat?

So when you're trying to improve overall blood lipids, there are a few things that you can do beyond just saying, OK, well I'm eating low saturated fat.

Getting more fiber in your diet, especially from plant sources, is a huge one.

I mean, that should be #1 that's the number one thing that most people need because most people are getting.

10.

15 grams of fiber per day.

And I think that Beth and I can both speak on that, that when we first start working with people, we're typically working with people that are getting meat, maybe 15 grams of fiber per day.

If they're lucky.

If they're lucky.

And so that's, that's a really big problem when you're talking about fats and replacing saturated fats in your diet with monounsaturated fats and, and omega-3 fatty acids tends to work really, really well.

You know, olive oil, avocado oil, nuts, they raise HDL and lower HDL.

Fatty fish is really good things like flax, chia, not as great, but they are, they are fiber sources and they can be used effectively for some people.

I would hesitate to really push flax and chia seeds, though.

I think that a lot of people push them because it's kind of a trendy thing.

But I find that with a lot of clients that I work with, when they're big into like the flax and chia seeds, they're taking up an exorbitant amount of their daily calories.

In flax and chia seeds, they're taking up a lot.

And so I would be people.

Realize how calorically dense they are.

Yeah.

And so I, I would be, I would be careful because, you know, even when we talk about all these different foods that you can add in, weight management is still #1 you know, even if you're eating more saturated fat, if you're not obese, that's more important than the saturated fat.

The obesity is really one of the biggest issues because that causes a host of cardio metabolic problems down the line.

And so I would focus more on that first.

How do I lose the excess body fat and, and then start to really hone in on some of the other things on top of the fact that, you know, exercise helps a lot, avoiding smoking, alcohol is a really big factor in this.

You know, it's, it's, it's problematic with how much and how frequently we do these kind of things and how they affect your life.

But you know, if you're looking for an overall recommendation, anybody switching to like a Mediterranean diet is probably the right move because that's going to, to be very rich in those monounsaturated fats.

It's rich in rich in fish, rich in vegetables, and it has the strongest evidence of any eating style for, for improving overall blood lipids.

The DASH diet is pretty good as well for lowering LDL.

And so those are the two that I would look into outside of, you know, customized nutrition.

Those are the two kind of branches of, of, of eating styles that have been shown to do the best work.

And I know that there's going to be people out there that'll say, well, you know, my one vegan diet says this, my one that's great if they don't seem to work quite as well as these other diets, even though they they probably work better than the standard American.

Diet a plug here for cardio will increase your HDL.

So I know you said exercising, but cardio like?

In particular, yes.

Absolutely 2 type of work is does wonders for lowering for for increasing your good cholesterol, your HDL.

So a plug another plug for that cause none of y'all do any damn cardio.

That is great way to not you know, non diet intervention.

Start doing your frigging cardio.

We're going to guilt you into this somehow or other.

Can't stand it.

Is a deloading week necessary?

A deloading week is not necessary as a planned week.

You, you should technically auto regulate these things, you know, based on how you're feeling.

Are you rundown?

Do you need a little bit of a break?

Now, having said that, in our group training, we actually do a sort of a deload in the first week of a cycle, but we do that strategically and other people who want to do a deload in this manner in a, in a regular cycle, this is how I would do it.

The way that we do it, we lead into these deloads by really pushing it the couple weeks before, you know, to the point where like you're pushing balls to the wall, right?

And so we're building up that fatigue and we're lowering the fatigue when we go into these deload weeks.

Now, these deload weeks serve 2 purposes.

1, we can do that overreaching phase right before, which if you're doing an overreaching phase, a deload week usually comes sometime after that if, if you're really hitting it hard.

And it allows us to introduce a new training regiment with people that may not have done those exercises before.

And so when you go into the deload week, you're working at 50 percent, 60% of your your maximum capacity, maybe 50 percent, 60% of your total volume and your training through these new movements.

And so it allows you to get a feeling of where your reps in reserve or your intensity should be for the following weeks.

It allows you to get some form down by getting into the groove of a new training routine and training regiment.

And even if you're experienced, you know, if you're getting completely different movements, maybe it takes a week to just kind of get back into the groove of that movement and then you're off to the races.

And so strategically, you can add them in.

Now, would I have a hard set?

OK, well, every four weeks I have to do this for purely recovery purposes.

And you're just doing a standard training routine?

Probably not.

I would probably ought to regulate in that case.

And when you start to see things like multiple weeks of distinct drops and strength, not just like one week, OK, I feel kind of bad, especially if you've got reasons to feel bad.

You didn't sleep, you were overly stressed.

Yeah, your lifts are going to be down a week.

But if it's 2-3 weeks in a row and you're consistently off your Marks and significantly off your marks, not like I'm 5 or 10 lbs down, It's like I'm dropping 3540% on my lifts and I can't seem to get it back up.

If you've got nagging injuries, you know, your elbows just don't feel really great.

Your knees just don't feel really great.

You're losing your motivation to actually want to go to the gym emotionally and mentally.

Yeah, it might be a reason for a deload.

And, and that's a good way to be able to use these.

Now, luckily life allows us to use deloads pretty organically because we have holidays and people visit and vacations and sometimes those are the perfect times to be able to take a deload, say, hey, look, you know, I'm feeling OK.

I'm feeling a little bit rundown.

Maybe I'll lighten up my load this week.

Maybe I'll go one or two less times into the gym and, you know, just enjoy my vacation or whatever it is.

And that can serve as your deload as well.

So planning these organically is one of the best ways to do this if you are writing your own programming and trying to incorporate this in everyday life.

What is the latest evidence on fast versus slow metabolisms?

This is actually a really good question and this is one of the topics that I have changed my mind on in the past five years.

Originally I used to say, you know, there's no such thing as a fast or slow metabolizer.

The main difference between the two is non exercise activity, thermogenesis, the movement that we do throughout the day.

Now that is probably the biggest thing.

So it's still true.

Your activity levels, your step count, your movement, all those different types of things is the biggest determinant of whether you consider yourself a faster or slow metabolizer.

By far the biggest.

But there are variances in resting metabolic rate.

And when people really talk about I metabolize something fast or I metabolize something slow, what we're really trying to get at is my body just sitting around either burns more or less calories than the average person.

And this is where I've changed my mind a little bit because although a lot of the, the majority of the research shows that it's really not that significantly different.

Like you're usually within about 200 calories per day of the, of the, the, the predicted values.

Now that can be significant for somebody like a smaller female, because if your total daily intake is, you know, to, to maintain your body weight is only 1500 calories.

Well, you could be at 1300, whereas your friend could be at 1500.

And that could feel very different.

Even though in the, in the absolute scale, it's not a whole lot different in larger people.

And in some rare cases it can be, it can be about 500 calories per day.

Now that is decently significant in my opinion.

And so are there fast and slow metabolizers.

If you're roughly 500 calories less or 500 calories more than somewhat of an equivalent body size, I would say that that would be something that you would probably feel like on a daily basis, like I feel like I can get to to eat a significant amount more food or, or I don't.

500 calories can be a whole of the full meal if you're planning the meals correctly, 200 calories.

And that's, that's even within like the normal bell curve of variance.

I mean, that's probably not a full meal for most meals.

That's like a large snack in most cases.

And so you probably don't feel that one as much.

But if you're on the very outskirts and if you're beyond the bell curve on the, the far cusps, you probably feel it, You know, now, having said all this, having it acknowledged that they can be around 500 difference, that's probably not why you're struggling.

If you're like, OK, he just answered it.

That's why I'm struggling.

That's statistically probably not why you're struggling.

And I say that because habits and routines make up far more than anything else.

Regardless of where you are genetically assuming there's not like pathology in play.

And when we look at the research that are looking at people that are struggling with lifelong obesity, it's not really the RMR that's holding them back.

Even when there is this variance.

It's typically the fact that they're eating far more calories than they think.

You know, they're even when they're tracking the people that are in obesity category tend to underestimate by about 1000, up to 1000 calories.

And so if you're underestimating 1000 calories, I mean, that could be like a third of your daily intake.

It's huge.

And then on top of that, the NEAT, the non exercise activity thermogenesis, like we talked about in the beginning, that is huge because in a, in a, something like an agricultural job, you work on a farm, that's a 2000 extra calorie burn per day compared to somebody who sits on the couch all day.

And so if we're going to say like 500 is the real problem, but then we're counting 1000 off and then we're not moving at all.

So we've lost another 2000.

You know, those two will shift things far more than that RMR will.

And if you correct those two, you'll probably be OK.

And so yes, there are fast and slow metabolizers for the majority of people were roughly similar.

But you can't control what your wrestling metabolic rate is anyway.

So you control whether you you get into the gym, you control your daily step count, you control what you put in your mouth and you do it to the best of your ability and you're going to give yourself the chance to improve.

Now, even for those people that are on that, let's say that you're the slowest of the slow metabolizers and you're 500 or 600 calories lower than comparative body composition.

As you start to gain more muscle, as you start to take control of your nutrition and, and things start to Rev up a bit, that's going to improve.

And so there are ways to make this improve, but you have to take the steps there to begin with.

And, and really worrying about whether you're a faster slow metabolizer is probably more due to what you're doing than genetics itself.

They're far more impactful than those things.

So yes, we can acknowledge that there are these issues, but we still focus on the same things because you're not going to be able to do anything about that wrestling metabolic rate itself.

How to determine if you're overtraining or just going hard at the gym?

OK, assuming that you have a good program in play, overtraining is going to feel a lot like what we just talked about with the deload in the needing.

The deload and overtraining tends to come with some distinct drops in strength, loss of motivation, higher injury rate.

And if you're continuously seeing nagging injuries coming into play, you might have too much volume in play.

And if you're basing your training routines off of something like ChatGPT or Muscle and Fitness, funny story, ChatGPT pulls its training programs from muscle and strength workouts from the past.

If you're basing it off of those, your volume is probably too high because those were old pro bodybuilder style routines when they used to do massive amounts of volume.

And we've kind of moved away from that as the better and better research has showed that that's completely unnecessary, even in people on steroids.

So when you're going hard at the gym, it's going to feel really difficult in the moment and you're going to feel like you did something at the end.

But eat up, sleep well.

By the next day, you're not going to feel too bad if you're overtraining, you're going to consistently feel rundown.

You're going to notice those long drops in strength.

You're going to become irritable.

You're going to have, you know, issues with injuries.

And then you start to identify, OK, well, does my volume need to be adjusted?

Am I losing sleep?

Am I having all these other problems that need to be taken into account because I'm just not recovering?

Why does zone 2 cardio burn more fat than zone 5?

The lower intensity work that you do exercise, the more you're in an energy system that will burn fat for fuel when you get up.

In higher intensities, glycogen stores are used.

Glucose stores are used.

Exotic glucose glycogen stores are used because it is more easily broken down into energy.

You have to do a conversion when you do fatty acids because it needs to convert it to glucose and when your body has the time to do it, you're not as intense.

It does that and it saves the glucose stores.

When you're in a super high intensity type of movement like cardio, it will grab the most easily accessible energy source to use.

It'll use lactate, it'll use muscle glycogen, that kind of stuff.

So that's why it burns fat at the lower intensity levels and carbs at the higher intensity levels.

Having said that, it's important to understand that fat burning and fat loss are two completely different things, because if you're burning more fat as fuel during an exercise, but you're taking in the same amount of calories as burning carbs as fuel, you're still going to store those extra calories potentially in adipose tissue.

Unless you're burning more total calories, burning more fat doesn't matter.

Burning more total calories matters because the calorie count is what determines whether something's going to be stored or whether something's going to be used.

If you are bringing in more calories than you're burning, you've got excess calories in the system.

It'll store it and it'll store it preferably in skeletal muscle if you've got some glycogen reserves to be able to be filled.

And then it'll store it as fat tissue if it's not being used towards rebuilding some muscle.

And so people really try to maximize fat burning for whatever reason.

You know, this is where you get that whole, I'm going to hop on a, a treadmill or a stair stepper and I'm just going to walk for 45 minutes to an hour.

And you don't do that because it burns fat.

You do that because it burns the most calories, 45 minutes.

To an hour on a stair stepper is going to burn more calories than 10 minutes in HIIT endurance work.

It's just the way that it is.

Volume burns more than intensity does, but intensity burns more in a set amount of time.

You just, you just burn out quickly because you, you can't maintain a like high intensity interval training for 45 or 60 minutes.

You can't do that.

It's.

Not high intensity and interval training.

Yeah.

And that's one of the big issues is that people will do HIIT and it's, it's not actually HIIT because they're doing it for so long.

But the reason that we, we, you know, in these situations where we want to increase overall calorie burn will push people towards walking or, or a stair stepper or whatever it is, is because it's recoverable and it's something that you can do for long periods of time.

And so it's not going to destroy you for tomorrow's weight training workout.

I mean, if you try to do HIIT, like legitimately try to do that for 45 or 60 minutes, you're going to be out for like 2 days because it's going to wreck you.

And so that's why people lean towards these lower levels or like the slow jog or, or the quick walk, you know, to do these kinds of things because it's it's both recoverable and it's efficient in burning calories.

So don't get caught up in trying to micromanage fat burn when it doesn't matter.

Because if you burn more fat during your training, you'll just burn less fat throughout the rest of the day.

And you're still going to store based off of your calorie amounts.

So your body does a shift based on where it stores are being tapped and tends to shift between carbs and fats based on what's available and what energy systems being used.

So this is a very confusing thing for a lot of people and it's how a lot of trainers and and online gurus sell different things.

You know, up your fat burning by following my protocol, but it really makes no difference long term if you understand what's actually going on there.

All right, last question for us today.

What are your two best tips to get started on fitness for health and longevity?

Beth and I will, we'll both give our tips and I, there's probably going to be a little bit of overlap of course, but you know, we can get some ideas this way.

One, if I'm talking to a person that is just starting out on a fitness journey and they want to do this for the rest of their life, they want to improve their health.

The number one thing that I would say is build consistency in activity and movement in whatever way you enjoy the most.

The single biggest predictor of the perfect workout is something that you can stick with.

And so, you know, I, I, I work with a lot of people and you know, they, they come to me and they say, Hey, I, I really like F45 or I really like CrossFit or I really like Orangetheory or, you know, I'm, I'm just naming circuit type workouts, But they'll, they'll have different things.

I like tough Mudder, I like to do all these different types of things.

Cool.

Let's not take that out of out of your training.

Let's lean into that.

Let's do that as as a significant portion of your training.

Stay with the community that you enjoy.

Stay doing the things that you love.

You know, you like playing pickleball.

Great, let's keep that in there.

That doesn't mean that you can't do some other things because the number one thing that I would say is find activities and movement that you can do that you really enjoy.

And then two, strength train for functional independence.

And I say that I literally just made an Instagram post yesterday showing that one of the biggest health problems that we have is immobility.

And strength training is the way around this.

It prevents injurious falls.

It improves bone health, it improves strength and mobility.

People that that that don't have significant lean muscle mass are 6 times more likely to be immobile.

And this is independent of body fat levels.

This is something that is a significant predictor of quality of life and mortality.

And it, it's funny because people always talk about things like VO2 Max and they'll say, well, you need to have really good VO2 Max because you have really good VO2 Max.

That's the best predictor of all cost mortality.

It is, but it's not a sole predictor.

And if you look at muscle mass index and you look at VO2 Max, you get a much better idea.

And the muscle mass index is a much better predictor of mobility.

So when people talk about health and longevity and wanting to actually being able to enjoy a longer life, building some muscle through strength, staying active in whatever way you find most enjoyable and makes it sustainable are the two big tips that I would give on to you, Beth.

I would say start walking more everyday.

Just get up move.

Too many sedentary people out there.

The second thing that I would do is with every single meal that I eat, I would make sure that I'm incorporating either a fruit or a vegetable with every meal that you eat because I can guarantee you not enough people are doing that either.

Those are the two easiest places to start.

That's where I would start.

Yeah.

And I mean, that starts to address a lot of the issues that people have with satiety, not getting enough fiber, not getting enough of those antioxidants that fight cancer.

And certainly if we're talking about that's probably a big one, you know, and in today's atmosphere, we're living longer than we've ever lived before.

And, and that's one of the reasons why you see some rise in certain cancers because if we're older, there's more of a chance that those things can set in.

And so activity levels are certainly a huge part of that.

Fruits and vegetables are certainly a huge part of that.

And I I like that you brought that up.

I mean, a lot of people these days would say eat more protein.

I think that we have an easier time as a general population of eating protein than we do of eating fruits and vegetables.

Agreed.

And and that's not to say that we're not abysmally low on protein, because I think we're really low on protein.

But if you ask the average person like, how many servings of fruits and vegetables do you have each day?

0.

It's like one or two at Max.

It's insane.

Yeah, it's insane.

And so you've, you're going to see a lot of different guidelines out there for these types of things.

And I think that it's a really good thing to start looking into.

And at the, the lower end of the range, I see five to seven servings per day seems to be a, a really good rule.

And at the higher end of the range, I've even seen some recommending 9 to 11.

And I certainly don't expect everybody to be reaching the

9:00 to 11:00 range.

But you know, if you're talking about servings of fruits and vegetables, try to shoot for five per day.

See how things go.

I mean best recommendation of at least a serving at every meal.

Every meal.

We'll get you started.

Every single meal there is a, there's a nutrition coach out there who she has something called the 800 gram a day challenge, which I actually like it because I, I do think it 8:00 and it's 800 grams of fruits or vegetables or a combination of the two.

So it doesn't have to, it's not 800 of fruit and 800 of vegetables.

It's totality 800 grams and you can eat it in whatever combination you want to, but that's her thing.

Like it's 800 grams a day of fruits and or vegetables every single day.

And that's just a really easy metric.

Like if people don't want to, you know, if they're they can't really conceptualize it in the meals and you it's easier for you to conceptualize it in volume 800 to 1000 is probably an easy target for people to hit.

And Allen and I have talked about the big ass salad.

I just for giggles, like weighed out everything that I put into my salad the other night and it was like 1500 grams like just in that salad.

Then that doesn't include all the other fruit that I ate during the rest of the day.

So it's actually a pretty manageable target to to hit.

And I think that's another great way to to look at it.

Now, please, when you're doing this, have a variety of different fruits and vegetables and and don't base this off of like iceberg lettuce.

Yeah, like every time I bring.

You want you want good micronutrients.

Yeah, iceberg lettuce has like, it's basically just fibrous water.

And, and it's, it's not, it's not, Yeah, it's, you want to have a variety.

I mean, get a spring mix, get a get a baby spinach mix, you know, use your bell Peppers, your onions, your tomatoes, like all those different kinds of things.

Make it festive, be a little bit daring if you're not used to this kind of thing, and then, you know, really improve your life long term.

Not only that, you're going to be improving your gastrointestinal health.

It's going to be easier to go to the bathroom.

There's so many different benefits to this type of thing.

And so hopefully that gives people good starting positions to look for for improving health and longevity long term.

All right, everybody, that is it for us today.

Thank you for spending some time with us.

Ask any of your questions where you see us on social media, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, our Mighty Networks community.

We will get to those questions in the future.

Thanks for spending some time with us.

We'll talk to you later.