This episode I describe the science of fat loss, including how fat is
mobilized and oxidized (burned) and how to increase fat burning by
leveraging the nervous system. Most people don't realize it, but our
neurons connect to our fat and release epinephrine/adrenaline to
facilitate fat oxidation. I explain how this can be accomplished with
non-exercise movements such as fidgeting to burn thousands of calories
of fat a day-- a practice is rarely discussed but very well supported
by the science literature. I also discuss an optimal fat loss protocol
using cold to create shiver, and how specific types and timing of
exercise impact fat loss. I discuss if exercising fasted indeed
increases fat oxidation-- it turns out the type and duration of
exercise really matters. And I discuss the use of caffeine, GLP1 from
Mate or guayusa and emerging new prescription compounds for fat loss.
The episode includes a lot of tools, links to cost-free resources and
explanation of the science underlying each tool for fat loss.
- Introduction
- Fat Loss: The Key Role of Neurons
- The First Law of Fat Loss
- Neurons Connect To Fat! (& That Really Matters)
- 5 Pillars of Metabolism: Sleep, Essential Fatty Acids, Glutamine, Microbiome, Thyroid
- Mindset Truly Matters: Amazing Examples of Beliefs on Fat Loss
- Our Brain Talks To Our Fat
- The Most Incredible & Dangerous Fat Loss Agent
- Losing Fat Is a Two-Part Process: Mobilization and Oxidation
- The Critical Role of Adrenaline/Epinephrine, But NOT from Adrenal Glands
- Fidgeting & Shivering: A Powerful Science-Supported Method For Fat Loss
- How Fidgeting Works: Promotes Epinephrine Release into Fat. “N-E-A-T”
- Two Ways of Using Shivering To Accelerate Fat Loss
- White, Brown & Beige Fat; & Using Cold-Induced Shiver To Burn Fat
- How To Use Cold Properly To Stimulate Fat Loss: Succinate Release Is Key/Shiver
- Exact Protocols: (1-5X per week); Don’t Adapt! Submerge and Exit “Sets & Reps”
- thecoldplunge.com see “protocols” tab Cold-Shiver-Fat-Loss Tool (cost free)
- If Fat-Loss Is Your Goal, Avoid Cold Adaptation: Remember Polar Bear Swimmers
- Irisin: Underwhelming; Succinate Is The Real Deal
- Brown Fat, Why Babies Can’t Shiver and Becoming a Hotter Furnace, Adding Heat
- Ice On Back of The Neck, Cold Underpants: Not A Great Idea For Fat Loss
- A Key Paper For the Aficionados: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2826518
- Spot Reduction: There May Be Hope After All. Targeting Specific Fat Pads.
- Exercising For Fat Loss: What Is Best? High Intensity, Sprinting, Moderate Intensity?
- Exercising Fasted: Does It Truly Accelerate Fat Loss/Oxidation.
- The 90 Minute Rule: After 90 Minutes, The Fasted Exercisers Start To Burn More Fat
- If High-Intensity Training Is Done First, The Benefits of Fasting Arrive Before 90min.
- Post-Exercise Metabolic Increases: How To Bias This Toward Fat Oxidation
- A Protocol For Exercise-Induced Fat Loss; Adrenalin Is The Effector
- Supplements/Compounds For Fat Loss Part: Caffeine Fidgeting, & Caffeine Adaptation
- Ephedrine, Fenfluramine: Removed From Market Due to Safety Concerns
- GLP1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide 1), Yerba Mate, Guayusa Tea, Semaglutide
- Berberine, Metformin: Glucose/Insulin Reduction, Increase Fat Oxidation: But Caution
- Gardner Lab Results: What You Eat May Not Matter, But Adherence Is Key Tool
- examine.com & Enter “Yerba Mate”: Lowers Heart Rate Even Though Is a Stimulant
- Acetly-L-Carnitine: Facilitates Fat Oxidation
- Summary List of Tools & How Nervous System Controls Fat Loss
- Cost Free & Other Ways To Support Our Podcast, Making Sure We See Feedback
-- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and
science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a
professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of
Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles
at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero
cost to consumer information about science and science related tools
to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank
the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.
InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data
from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and
help you reach your health goals. I've been getting my blood work done
for many years now, and that's where the simple reason that only
through quality blood work, and now through the advent of DNA test can
one really get a clear picture of what's going on with their health.
Things like metabolic factors and hormones, all the various
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quality blood test. And now with DNA tests, you can get an additional
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Today is the third episode in our series of episodes about physical
and athletic skill performance and skill learning in general. And
today we're going to talk about the science of tools for fat loss. And
fat loss is something that interests a large number of people. Many
people want to lose fat, many people are athletes who need to lose
fat. And in general, we know that having body fat percentages that are
too high is unhealthy for us. And most people struggle to lose fat.
Most people struggled to lose weight generally, but most people
especially struggled to lose body fat or what we call adipose tissue.
Now, this is a huge topic on the internet. There's a lot of
controversy. Today, we're going to talk about some things related to
fat loss, and that are powerful for fat loss that I'm guessing most of
you have never heard about before. You may have heard about a few of
them, but I'm guessing you haven't heard about all of them. This
episode is going to be rich with science-based tools that are gleaned
from a variety of aspects of the literature, including the use of
cold, including brown fat, including something called beige fat. We're
going to talk about something called NEAT. We're going to talk about
all sorts of aspects of fat loss that are governed by your nervous
system. And this is I think an important gap that's missing in the
discussion about fat loss. You can hear a lot of information out there
about the role of things like insulin and various diets like ketogenic
diets or vegan diets or Mediterranean diets. And there's some great
stuff out there, and there's some really terrible information out
there, and there's a lot of controversy. We did a number of episodes
talking about the role of hormones on metabolism and the role of food
on mood and wellbeing. So if you're interested in those topics, please
check them out. I will touch a little bit on hormones today. Things
like insulin and leptin, just a little bit. But today's episode is
mainly going to be focused on, how the nervous system, neurons, and
some of the cells they collaborate with, like glioma and macrophages,
how those encourage or can encourage accelerated fat loss. Because it
turns out they can. Remember your nervous system which includes your
brain and your spinal cord and all the connections that they make with
the organs of the body, governs everything. It's the on switch and the
off switch for immune system. It's the on switch and the off switch.
It turns out also for fat burning. And so the nervous system and the
role of the brain and other neurons has been vastly overlooked in the
discussion about losing fat.
Now, I would be remiss and I'd probably come under a pretty
considerable attack, if I didn't just acknowledge upfront a core truth
of metabolic science and also of neuroscience, frankly, which is that
calories in versus calories out, meaning how many calories you ingest,
versus how many calories you burn is the fundamental and most
important formula in this business of fat loss and weight management
in general. There's simply no way around the fact that if you ingest
far more calories than you burn, you're likely to gain weight. And a
good portion of that weight is likely to be adipose tissue fat. It's
also true that if you ingest fewer calories than you burn, that you
will lose weight, and that a significant portion of that will come
from body fat. What portion? Depends on a number of factors. But that
simple formula is important. On a previous episode, I mentioned the
complications with the statements of a calorie is a calorie. And
indeed there is evidence from for instance Robert Lustig, who's a
pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco has talked about how
highly processed foods change the way that we utilize food, and can
lead to higher incidences of obesity and other metabolic syndromes
that go against the idea that a calorie is a calorie and that's it. So
a calorie is a calorie as a unit of energy, and we need to accept and
acknowledge this calories in, meaning calories ingested versus
calories burned formula. But the calories burn portion is strongly
influenced by a number of things that you can control that can greatly
accelerate or increase the amount of adipose tissue or the proportion
of adipose tissue that you burn in response to exercise and food. So
your hormones are important. Your thermogenic milieu, meaning how warm
or how cold your body is? How cold you make it, how warm you make it?
But also your level of metabolism. Your levels of thyroid hormone and
something that's hardly ever discussed, but is well supported by the
scientific literature, how much innervation?
Meaning how much connectivity there is, between your nervous system
and fat. Today, we're going to talk about the fact that your body fat
of various kinds, and there are several kinds of body fat are actually
innervated by neurons. Neurons connect to your body fat and can change
the probability that that body fat will be burned or not. So your
nervous system is the master controller of this process, and it plays
a strong role in the calories out, the calories burned component. So
as usual, we're going to discuss a little bit of science. I promise I
won't go too deep into lipolysis and all sorts of things related to
fat oxidation. We're going to break down that process into two
important steps. And if you can understand those two important steps
then the rest of the tools will be very straightforward to understand
and manage. And I do believe that today you will walk away with many
new tools that you could incorporate into any kind of fat loss regimen
that will greatly accelerate that process, because it's grounded in
quality peer-reviewed science. Throughout the episode, I'm going to
talk about some behavioral tools. In fact, I'll mostly talk about
behavioral tools. I will also talk about compound, supplements. Many
of you are into supplements. Some of you aren't, and that's fine. For
those of you that are into supplements, an important issue in a
discussion about supplements for fat loss or otherwise is going to be
the quality of those supplements and the accuracy about what's in
those supplement bottles and tablets, et cetera. I usually mention
this at the end of the podcast, but this podcast we've partnered with
Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E. Because Thorne we believe has the highest levels
of stringency in terms of the quality of the compounds in their
supplements and the amounts of those compounds. If you want to see the
supplements I take, you can go to www.thorne.com/u/huberman. You can
see the supplements that I take, that will also allow you to get 20%
off any of those supplements, or 20% off any of the other supplements
that Thorne makes. Thorne has partnered with the Mayo Clinic and all
the major sports teams. So there's a very strong basis for their
stringency. Again, you don't need to use supplements. I'm certainly
not encouraging anyone to use supplements if that's not your thing,
but if you're going to use supplements, make sure that your supplement
source is one a very high quality. With that said, I want to get
started and talk about the various tools for fat loss and how
neuroscience, neurons control fat loss. Before I do that, I want to
set the context correctly and extract some of the key takeaways from
previous episodes, because if your foundation of health and your
foundation of hormones and your foundation of metabolism isn't right,
it's going to be very hard to get the most out of any kind of exercise
or fat loss protocol.
In previous episodes, I talked all about the science and the details
going into particular protocols. We don't have time to do that now,
and I want to get to the new material. However, there are a couple
bins, a couple items that you should make sure you're getting
correctly. And if you're not perfect about these, don't worry about
it, most people are not perfect about them, I'm certainly not perfect
about them. But we should all be striving to get quality and
sufficient sleep. I did four full episodes on sleep and how to get
better at sleeping through things like light exposure, temperature,
timing your sleep correctly for your so-called chronotype, if you're a
night owl or a morning person. That's the first four or I think five
episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast. Get your sleep right, get your
light exposure right, avoid bright light in your eyes at times you
wanted to be asleep, and get bright light in your eyes at times you
want to be awake. So get your sleep right. The other thing is
essential fatty acids. I talked about this in the food and mood
episode, but I also talked about it during the hormones episodes. We
need fatty acids. They are vital to so many aspects of our health. You
don't have to get them from supplements. You can, if you want to, but
you need to get them from your food. They are essential. There's a
reason there's an E the essential part there. Of the fatty acids,
there are multiple kinds, but for the antidepressant effects where the
levels of fatty acids that will promote good mood and also healthy
metabolism and we'll start to shift the needle in the right direction
on bloodborne cardiovascular factors. The key thing is to get the
levels of EPA that you ingest above 1000 milligrams per day. So that
doesn't mean just taking a thousand milligrams or more of say fish oil
or krill oil or whatever your preferred source is. It means getting
above a thousand milligrams of EPA which may require that you ingest
more essential fatty acids than just a thousand milligrams per day.
That of course can be done through food sources, things like fatty
fish, or if you're not into eating fish, you've quality meats that are
grass raised can do that. There are other sources of essential fatty
acids, of course also from plant sources. So look, those up online.
It's really easy to find. But the research and the literature shows
that you want to get above a thousand milligrams of EPA per day,
because that's when you can best support your metabolism and position
yourself for good fat loss. As well for people who have cravings
issues, they crave sweets all the time, I talked about this in the
gut-brain episode and hormones and food. That you have neurons in your
gut that are craving, they're seeking essential fatty acids and
they're craving and seeking amino acids from your food. Now, these are
not supplements that they crave per se, they're craving those things
because that's what your body needs and your brain needs. But those
same neurons will respond to sugars. And so many people who are
craving sugar can satisfy that sugar craving by giving the neurons so
to speak what they actually want, which are amino acids and essential
fatty acids. That includes EPA, but also things like glutamine and
amino acid that can really reduce sugar cravings if you take a
teaspoon of that, or even a tablespoon of that a few times a day. You
have to ease into that a little bit, because some people can get a
little bit of GI distress from too much glutamine. But glutamine has
also been shown to improve symptoms of leaky gut. It's a powerful
amino acid. And yes, you can also get it from food. Things like
cottage cheese are high in glutamine, et cetera. And then finally you
can't really position yourself to have a strong metabolism if your
iodine levels aren't correct, and your thyroid levels aren't correct.
You can overdo iodine. So you don't want to do that. A lot of table
salt has iodine added to it, but some people need to add iodine, by
ingesting things like kelp, et cetera.. But one of the best ways to
support the thyroid system and metabolism in general, is to make sure
you're getting enough selenium. Sometimes called selenium each day.
Simple way to do that is to ingest the highest concentration of
selenium food that I'm aware of, which is Brazil nuts, one or two or
three of those per day. You'll have more than enough selenium to meet
the thyroid needs. You don't want your selenium to be too high, you
don't want a diet too high in anything. So again, sleep, sufficient
EPAs, glutamine if you have issues with leaky gut or sugar cravings
can really help. Get your gut microbiome, right? I may have missed
saying that, but get your gut microbiome right. That does not
necessarily mean you need to ingest probiotics. You can, if you want
to, but you can also just simply ingest a serving or two of fermented
foods per day, that can greatly assess. So things like sauerkraut,
kimchi, every culture has a different source or sources of fermented
foods, those can really help the gut microbiome, and then make sure
that your thyroid hormone is supported through the ingestion of
sufficient iodine not too much and sufficient selenium, not too much.
Okay? Sleep, EPA, glutamine, fermented foods, iodine and selenium.
That sets the basis for how things like exercise, cold and some of the
compounds and other things that we're going to talk about today that
are I'm guessing going to be truly new to many of you that can really
increase the burn factor in the equation of calories in versus
calories burned. Okay? So on the one hand we have this reality of
calories in, versus calories burned.
However, I would also be remiss if I didn't mention an incredible
study that was done by my colleague, Alia Crum at Stanford. She's a
faculty member, professor in the psychology department. Looking at how
belief affects, just thinking can impact the effects of things like
exercise on weight loss. These are just incredible results. What they
did was they took subjects who were hotel service people that would
clean the hotels and come in and change the linens and so forth.
Divide them into two groups. One group, they were told moving around
and doing your duties for your job, meet the standards for US
guidelines for activity and movement, et cetera. And a basic lecture
about how movement is good for you, et cetera. But mostly just that
their daily activities met the standards for the US. The other group,
however, was given a bunch of information about how movement and their
daily routine was very good for cardiovascular health, it could be
good for weight loss, et cetera. And then they tracked these subjects
over a period of many weeks. The take home message from this study was
that simply being told that movement is good for you can lead to
weight loss, et cetera. Led to significantly more body fat loss,
waist-to-hip ratio changes in the direction that most people would
want. But essentially a slimming down, if you will. And all sorts of
other positive effects on things like cardiovascular health. Simply by
the knowledge that movement and exercise can help various health
markers. So this is remarkable and it speaks to the power of the
nervous system and the power of belief in governing aspects of our
body and our physiology that one would otherwise think we're outside
our conscious control. Now, of course, any of you that think
scientifically which I imagine if you watch this podcast or listen to
this podcast is all of you by now probably thinking, well, maybe they
just moved around more, or maybe they stood up and sat down more,
maybe they did something else that was different. And indeed there's a
strong possibility that they did things differently than the other
group, but the mere knowledge that exercise is good for you, that
movement is good for you, shifted their behavior and their physiology
in the direction of enhanced weight loss, fat loss, et cetera. So how
we think about a given set of activities affects how we perform those
activities. And how we think about and perform those activities has a
real effect on our physiology. So somewhere between the hard and fast
rule that governs fat loss and weight loss, which is if you ingest
more calories than you burn, you'll either maintain or gain weight.
Typically, you'll gain weight, although not always. If you ingest
about as many calories as you burn, you'll maintain weight, typically.
And if you ingest fewer calories than you burn, typically you'll lose
weight. That's the kind of rule of fat loss. And yet we also have
these belief effects which show, and this has been replicated again
and again, that how we think about a process, whether or not we think
it's beneficial can change our physiology in ways that can be
beneficial to us. Somewhere in between those two extremes of hardcore
metabolic science and belief of why a bunch of protocols that are
grounded in quality peer-reviewed science and in physiology that you
can leverage to increase the rates of fat loss. And so that's what
we're going to talk about today.
I love this topic and it's not that I'm so obsessed with fat loss, but
rather the first the project I ever worked on in science was
thermogenesis and fat loss. I joined a laboratory as an undergraduate,
and the guy I worked for loved to explore new compounds and how they
impacted thermogenesis. And so we looked at how things like
MDMA/Ecstasy, how antipsychotics, antidepressants, various weight loss
drugs that were on the market. How those impacted body temperature and
fat loss and metabolism? And we just had so much fun doing it. So if
you detect a smile on my face, that's what that's about. And I also
learned a lot, and I also came to really appreciate that this tissue
of our bodies, adipose tissue and fat, we think of as just this
unfortunate thing that's like we're told it's a core energy source if
we ever entered a famine and that's all true, et cetera. You come to
realize that the cells in our body, they are there as fuel for the
furnace of our body, which is our metabolism. And there's a third
player. And that's where it really gets interesting. That the nervous
system, neurons has the opportunity to turn up the intensity of that
furnace. It has the opportunity to increase the amount of heat that we
produce and therefore the amount of energy that we burn. And I was
also really intrigued by something which is that, growing up, I think
we all know people who can eat a tone and never seem to gain any body
fat. Or people who seem to eat very little and seem to gain body fat
very easily. And I was always intrigued by that. And it turns out
there are a number of different factors that relate to that. But the
nervous system is the one that we can really control. Both through
behaviors and what we eat, but also in terms of this thing that we
call thermogenesis.
There was one particular story I want to relate to, that does not
suggest any protocol. In fact, I'm going to discourage you from
following this protocol. Please do not try the compound that I'm about
to describe. One of the favorite things that we like to do in that lab
was to find rare compounds and test them. And at the time I was
reading about thermogenesis and I learned about a compound that was
actually discovered in the armory factories of World War II. And it
was discovered because women in particular who were working in these
factories would take a brush and dip it in a compound or a paint
rather, and they would then paint the numbers with a stencil onto
things like bombs and ammunition of various kinds. And they were
losing weight like crazy. It turns out that occasionally they'd lick
the brush, and then they would go back just to get a sharper point on
the brush, and then they would paint onto these various bullets and
missiles and so forth. Bombs and so forth. And they started shedding
all their body fat. And many of them losed, excuse me, lost a lot of
weight, a significant portion of their weight without changing
anything else that they were doing, what they were eating, et cetera.
It turned out that that compound is something called Dinitrophenol,
DNP. And over the years Dinatrophenol, DNP has gained popularity in
some niche cultures, mainly bodybuilders, athletes even in the
modeling industry. It is a absolutely terrible compound for anyone to
use, because it's highly fatal if your body temperature goes too high.
Hyperthermia will kill you. And indeed many people have died using
Dinatrophenol as a weight loss drug or attempting to use it as a
weight loss drug. But Dinitophenol really illustrates a principle
which is that your metabolism includes things like thyroid hormone and
growth hormone, et cetera. But your body temperature and the way you
utilize energy is controlled by your nervous system. And the way
Dinatrophenol works is by changing the neurons and the way that the
neurons that connect to fat change the way fat burns up. So we are not
going to suggest, I am not suggesting that you use Dinatrophenol.
However, there are other things that you can do that can change the
relationship between these neurons and the fat of your body in ways
that can powerfully accelerate fat loss.
And I don't know why we don't hear about these things more, but
probably because most of what you see out there on the internet
focuses more on what you could eat and should eat or shouldn't eat. It
concentrates on exercise regimens which we will also talk about. But
the burn factor, your thermogenic environment is one of the, if not
the most important factors in this business of fat loss. And since I'm
a neuroscientist that's what we're going to talk about. So let's talk
about fat utilization. Let's talk about how fat is converted into
energy which is sometimes also called fat burning. What I'd like you
to know is that this is a two-part process. Okay? In reality, there
are many biochemical steps. And if you log onto the internet, or you
open up a textbook and you want to learn about fat utilization, you're
going to see a lot of chemistry. And I'm happy to go deep into that
chemistry if you like. But I think most of you are probably interested
in what are the leverage points? Where can you exert control over this
process in ways that benefit you? So I'm going to focus mainly on
those. Okay? This is not to upset the aficionados and I will put in
some nomenclature, but here we go. There's two parts to this process.
One, is fat mobilization. And the second is fat oxidation or
utilization. Okay? So the first thing that has to happen for body fat
to get burned up or used and reduced is that it has to get mobilized.
And that's a process called lipolysis, but I actually don't care if
you know the name lipolysis, you just have to move that fat out of the
position that it's in. You have to get it out of the fat cells. All
right? Fat cells can be visceral around our visceral organs or they
can be subcutaneous under our skin. Most people are thinking about
subcutaneous fat when they think about fat. So here's the deal. And if
you want more detail, great, I'll touch on that in a bit. But
basically stored fat has two parts that are relevant here. It's got
the fatty acid part, and that's the part that your body can use. And
that's attached to something called glycerol and they're linked by a
backbone. So already, probably too much chemistry for both of you. But
what you want is you want to break the backbone. So if you just can
remember to mobilize fat, you got to break the backbone between
glycerol and these fatty acids. Okay? That's accomplished by an enzyme
called lipase, but you can forget all that if you want. Remember,
we're just trying to mobilize fat. So the first step is to get those
fatty acids moving around in the bloodstream to get them out of those
fat cells. And then they can travel and be used for energy. And that
second part, remember first part is mobilization. The second part is
oxidation. Is then those fatty acids, those are potential fuel.
They're just potential fuel, but you haven't burned the fat yet,
you've just moved it out of your fat cells. They're going to go into
cells that can use them for energy. And once they are inside those
cells, they're still not burned up. You need to oxidize them. Think
oxidation is the burnup part. They need to be moved into the
mitochondria and then they can be converted into ATP into energy. So
just to really zoom out again to make sure I don't lose anybody. You
got to mobilize the fat, then you have to oxidize the fat. In other
words, you have to mobilize it, then you actually have to convert it
into energy. If you just mobilize it, and you don't convert it into
energy, you don't oxidize it, it can be returned to body fat. And many
of the things that the nervous system can do, is to increase the
mobilization of fat, but also the oxidation of fat. Okay? So you have
two opportunities to burn more fat, and both of those opportunities
are governed by your nervous system. By neurons that literally send
little wires that we call axons into fat and release chemicals that
provide a stimulus for more of that fat to be mobilized, and then
later for more of that fat to be burned up. Okay? So we could go
really deep on this, but I'm not going to go much deeper than that,
because this isn't a biochemistry of fatty acid metabolism lecture.
This is about how to burn fat using your nervous system. But remember,
there's a mobilization step, and then there's an oxidation step. I
think anyone of you, all of you should be able to internalize that.
Mobilize then oxidize. Okay? Mobilize then oxidize. So what are these
neurons that connect a fat doing?
What are they releasing exactly? How do they actually increase fat
mobilization? And how do they increase fat oxidation? Burning of fat.
Well, there are a couple of things that they release that encourage
that process. And the main one that you need to know about is
epinephrine or adrenaline. The conversion of these fatty acids into
ATP in the mitochondria of cells is favored by adrenaline. Okay? And
adrenaline is released from two sources. Adrenaline is released from
the adrenal glands, which set a top our kidneys and our lower back.
And it's also released from the so-called sympathetic nervous system.
Although that name is a bit of a misnomer, because it has nothing to
do with sympathy, has to do with stimulating alertness and promoting
action of the body. There's a big mistake in the literature that is
finally being corrected among those who know. The mistake in the
literature is that the adrenal glands and the release of adrenaline is
what stimulates fat loss and fat oxidation. In fact, it was thought
for a long time that adrenaline swimming around in your body of when
you're fasted, because fasting can increase adrenaline or when you're
engaging in intense exercise or when you're stressed is going to
promote fat oxidation. That's actually not the case. The adrenaline
that stimulates fat oxidation, the burning of fat is coming from
neurons that actually connect to the fat, not hormones like adrenaline
that are swimming around in your system. It's a local process. And
this is very important because it means that, what you do, the
specific patterns of movements and the specific environment you create
that can stimulate these particular neurons to activate fat, meaning
to release fat, to mobilize it and then to burn it, is going to be a
powerful lever that you can use in order to increase fat loss. So what
have we said so far? We've said that you've got to mobilize and you
got to burn fat and that your nervous system is in control of that
process. It's not just about calorie deficit.
Okay, so let's talk about how to activate the nervous system in ways
that it promotes more liberation, movement, mobilization of fat and
more oxidation of fat. So one of the most powerful ways to stimulate
epinephrin which is also called adrenaline from these neurons that
connect to fat and to thereby stimulate more fat mobilization and
oxidation is through movement. But I'm not talking about exercise. The
type of movement that I'm referring to, is extremely subtle. And some
of you may be familiar with this type of movement, but I'm guessing
you're probably not familiar with what I'm about to tell you, which is
that shiver or shivering is a strong stimulus for the release of
adrenaline epinephrin into fat and the increase in fat oxidation and
mobilization. But shiver is not just induced by cold, and there are
other subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase fat
metabolism and fat loss. There was a group in England during the 1960s
and 70s that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement
can greatly increase fat loss. This is the work of Rothwell and Stock.
It's very famous in the thermogenesis literature. And I learned about
this early on, when I was an undergraduate and I asked, how did they
come across this? And here's how the story goes. They were aware that
some people overeat and yet don't put on weight. Other people overeat
even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate extra adipose
tissue. Now, this is long before all the discussions about microbiome
and hormone factors, you know it was long before many of the hormone
factors besides insulin had even been discovered. What they did was
they examined people who overate and did not gain weight. And what
they observed was that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement
throughout the day. In other words, they were fidgeters. And that's
what they call them. I'm not going to do the British accent version of
fidgeters. But Roth and Stock were British. What they found were
people that overeat but don't gain weight as a consequence. And in
fact, many people who had low levels of body fat had a lot of resting
tremor, not of the Parkinsonian type, but they would bounce their knee
while they were sitting, when they would talk, they would engage in
very angular movements, they were sort of electric. In fact, now in
science, I was chuckling about this as I was diving back into this
literature, because the other day I heard a wonderful lecture on a
totally different topic from a colleague of mine and we all adore him.
He's over in Europe and he's this tremendously successful scientist.
So we like to poke fun at him. And every one of his movements is
incredibly electric and staccato. And he's rail thin and he eats like
a horse. And so it fits very well into the discovery of Rothwell and
Stock who discovered that fidgeters people that bounce their knee,
people that have a head bob while they're listening, people that nod a
lot, people that stand up and sit down a lot throughout the day, and
people that pace burn anywhere from 800 to 2,500 calories more than
the control group in the experiments that they looked at. And indeed,
there's been a modern look into all this, and these numbers check out
that simply moving around a lot, even if those are subtle movements,
greatly increases the amount of energy that you burn. And people who
overeat, the people who can have the second or the third doughnut or
doughnuts at all and don't seem to put on weight to the same degree,
they are people that move around a lot even when seated. They're are
people that will often move their limbs very quickly as well. There
even have been studies that have explored other things that correlate
with fidgeters. Fidgeters stand up very quickly at the end of a
lecture or they start to gather their things very quickly, whereas non
fidgeters don't. So dogs like my bulldog Costello, definitely not a
fidgeter. Every movement is incredibly slow and deliberate. Sitting
down as a process, if you ask him to sit down and sort of a slow
motion. You ask him to get up and he kind of looks at you sighs and
stands up. The fidgeter is the opposite of that, right? You say, how
are you doing? They go, great. So even sometimes their speech will be
accelerated although not always. But staccato movements, fidgeting, et
cetera. And in 2015, and again in 2017, there've been studies that
have explored this, using some modern metabolic tracking and indeed
simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter, bouncing your knee, standing up
and pacing several times or many times throughout the day led to
considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss when people were
ingesting the same amount of food, if they overate, they were able to
compensate and burn off that food. And if they were trying to lose
weight and they incorporated this fidgeting protocol of deliberately
trying to fidget more and move around during the day, pace, stand up
more quickly, sit down more often, sit down and stand up more often
rather. They found that they greatly increased their weight loss
anywhere from 20 to 30% increases. And in some cases, you know, there
always those few people who burned a lot more. It seems to work best
in people who are already slightly overweight. So for people that are
overweight, who are kind of averse to exercise, fidgeting might
actually be a good entry point. And 800 to 2,500 calories is a
considerable amount of calories when you really think about it. Now,
why am I telling you this? Well, there's clearly a tool to export from
this, which is that you can increase the amount of calories burned
without having to go on additional long runs. I do hope that people
are exercising regularly because it's so important for other aspects
of brain and body health. But nonetheless, we are all time limited and
we are not all so ready to embrace exercise. I have a family member
who has been slowly coaxed into exercise, but if I were to tell her,
for instance, you need to fidget more, she'd probably go for it. So
this is a powerful way to increase the calories that are burned. Now,
that's great. And you can think about the protocols. But I want to
nest that protocol in what I said before, which is that, fat is
controlled by these neurons and the epinephrin they release.
You might say, well, how could these little micro movements lead to so
much caloric burn? And that's where it really gets interesting.
Rothwell and Stock and others that they worked with, subsequently
found that these little fidgety movements, the engagement of certain
aspects of our musculature that are nothing like exercise. It's not
these large coordinated or rhythmic body movements, but rather subtle
little bits of fidgety movement. And here I am doing a lot of fidgety
movement as an example, tapping the pen, this kind of thing. I was
probably that kid in class most of the time. And I was like, I try not
to do it to irritate people, but I was definitely a knee bouncer. I'm
not particularly lean or not. But I was definitely... This is a common
activity for me. People that do that sort of thing, it turns out that
it's not the kind of caloric burn that we normally think of, of like,
oh, you'll running, lifting weights, swimming, yoga, et cetera. Those
subtle movements of our core musculature, not just the core, but all
our limbs and our musculature, those low level movements, they trigger
epinephrin release from these neurons, and they stimulate the
mobilization of fat. And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates.
And I find this fascinating. I wish more people knew about it, which
is why I'm telling you about it today. This has nothing to do with
exercise in the traditional form, and yet 800 to 2,500 calories per
day. That's a considerable amount of fat oxidized. If you are in a
calorie maintenance mode or if you're sub caloric, that's going to add
to it still additional fat loss. The data on this are tremendous. I'll
link to a few studies. If you're really interested in learning about
what's called neat. N-E-A-T which is non-exercise activity
thermogenesis. NEAT. So what's the protocol? Fidget. If you're really
interested in burning calories and you already exercise, you want to
burn more or you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're
averse to exercise for whatever reason, fidgeting, movements, staccato
movement, standing up, walking around, pacing, all the sort of nervous
activities that were so critical of other people and sometimes in
ourselves are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot
of energy. And while this probably won't compensate for chronic
overeating, the caloric burn from this is considerable, and very
likely can offset a meal that had excessive calories or a kind of
steady state of eating too much. And it also starts to open up all
sorts of thoughts and discussion about when you travel, you tend to
eat foods that are kind of outside your normal ones. We tend to eat
foods that aren't so great for us, we also tend to be a little bit
more sedentary when we travel we're on the plane, et cetera. But all
of that aside, just the use of something like low-level movement. And
it's almost like a tremor, but also these select short, small fidgety
movements. I'm intentionally doing a lot of these today. So you have
examples that you can use to select from if you like. These can have a
major effect on fat loss and it raises a second tool. If these low,
meaning these small movements that we engage in trigger epinephrin
adrenaline release from these neurons of the sympathetic nervous
system that innervate fat and increase fat mobilization and oxidation.
Now, it should make sense why shivering is one of the strongest
stimuli that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss. Now, shivering
is almost always associated with cold. We think shivering, we think
cold, because when we get cold, we shiver. And there are two ways that
shivering can increase fat loss. And there are several ways that you
can use shivering, you can leverage shivering and you can leverage
cold to accelerate fat loss. But you have to do it correctly. And most
of the people that are using cold and frankly suggesting cold as a
means to increase metabolism fat loss are suggesting the exact wrong
protocol. In fact, the one I'm going to recommend is 180 degrees in
the opposite direction to the typical protocol that you'd hear about.
So let's talk about how to use cold and how to leverage shiver as a
particularly strong stimulus to increase fat loss through mobilization
and oxidation of these fatty acids. So in recent years there's been a
growing interest in the use of cold for various things like, improving
stress tolerance, improving metabolism, recovery from exercise. I've
talked about a number of those things and the uses of cold on this
podcast. In fact, did an episode on how to supercharge performance
through palmer cooling, cooling the palms in specific ways or the
bottoms of the feet. And if you're interested in that, and how to
improve performance in endurance and strength, you can check out that
episode. But most people out there are using cold exposure typically
by taking cold showers or by getting into cold water of some other
kind, a lake or a river or a cold bath or an ice bath. And they are
doing that probably with mixed goals, meaning they both would like to
increase their metabolism and burn fat, as well as improve mental
resilience. Since today, we're talking about accelerating fat loss
through the use of science-based tools. I want to emphasize a study
that was published in nature just a couple of years ago, showing
exactly how cold increases metabolism and fat loss. Okay? So we have
several kinds of fat. Three kinds in fact.
We have white fat, white adipose tissue, and we have brown fat or
brown adipose tissue. And there's a third kind which is beige adipose
tissue. White fat is the type that we traditionally think of as fat,
subcutaneous fat. And it is not particularly rich in mitochondria. It
is there as an energy storage site and we have to mobilize the fat out
as we talked about before and burn it up elsewhere. Brown fat largely
exists between our shoulder blades and on the back of our neck,
between the scapulae. And it's rich with mitochondria which is why
it's called brown fat. And brown fat has a particular biochemical
cascade whereby it can take food energy, it can take food, basically,
break it down and convert it into energy within those cells. And
there's some additional steps involved, but unlike fatty acids from
white fat which have to travel elsewhere get broken down in
mitochondria and convert into ATP, et cetera. Used by the mitochondria
rather. Brown fat is thermogenic. It can actually use energy directly.
It skips a step, and I don't want to get diverted by going into all
the biochemistry of it. Beige fat is sort of in between. It's white
fat that could be brown fat, because it has some mitochondria in it,
but not as many as brown fat. Now, cold exposure does several things.
Making ourselves cold can allow us to build up mental resilience
because getting into cold of any kind, doesn't matter if it's a
cryochamber, doesn't matter if it's a cold day and you forgot your
sweater or your parka. It doesn't matter if it's an ice bath or you're
lying down in the snow. Cold causes the release of adrenaline from
your adrenals. And it causes the release of epinephrin from these
neurons that connect to fat. Now, the big effects of cold on
metabolism and fat burning are going to be through two routes. One, is
that if you expose yourself to cold, you have the opportunity to
trigger activation of brown fat as well as to convert more beige fat
into true brown fat. So you essentially create a stronger or a hotter
furnace. That's the way to think about brown fat. It's like a furnace.
And so with this principle that we started with a calories in versus
calories burned. What you're doing is you're increasing the amount of
burning, you're increasing the burn of energy by increasing the
intensity of the heat inside you so to speak. Okay? I'm talking here
kind of metaphorically. Now, how can you do that? Well, if you get
into cold water or an ice bath or a cold day, and you try and remain
calm and resist shivering, you actually short circuit this mechanism
for increasing brown fat thermogenesis.
The paper published in nature shows that it is shivering itself that
causes the brown fat to increase your burning, your burn rate and your
metabolism. And it works like this, when you get into cold and you
shiver, the shivering that low level movement of the muscle, those
small movements triggers the release of a molecule called succinate.
S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate. And succinate acts on the brown fat to
increase brown fat thermogenesis and fat burning overall. It actually
increases body heat through this brown fat thermogenesis pathway. And
it also over time can increase the amount of brown fat by converting
beige fat into true brown fat. Now, how much cold exposure and how
often? That's the key. But before I give that detail or set of
details. Remember if you resist the shiver, you are not going to get
the increased metabolic effect, because you are not going to get the
succinate release. So if you want to get your body heat, your
thermogenic level to go up, you need to shiver. So now we have the
NEAT, the non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So low levels of
activity as I described before, which are done away from cold, maybe
do them in cold as well. As well as shiver in response to cold. And so
the shiver itself is valuable for triggering the release of succinate.
In fact, succinate is being evolved now by various drug manufacturers
as a potential treatment for obesity. Although it hasn't really hit
the market in its final form yet. Succinate is powerful for its
effects on brown fat. So how many times a week do you need to expose
yourself to cold?
Will depend on how much fat you're trying to lose, and how much you're
trying to increase your metabolism. There are studies that describe
positive effects on fat loss of exposing yourself to cold, either
through cold shower or through ice bath or other cold water. It
doesn't have to actually have ice in it, provided it's cold enough for
anytime, anywhere, excuse me, between one and five times per week. But
it turns out that just one exposure per week can be valuable. The
question then is how long to get into that cold environment? And how
cold should that environment be? So first let's talk about how long to
get into that cold environment? The answer here might be a little bit
different than you might imagine. Most of you might think, oh, well if
one minute is good, three minutes is better, and if three minutes is
better than 10 minutes is best. But remember the goal is to get the
shiver induced release of succinate, so that succinate can trigger the
brown fat. It turns out that if you want to trigger the shiver, what
you want to do is to get into the cold and then get out of the cold
and typically not dry off, and then get back into the cold and out of
the cold, that will definitely stimulate more shivering than just
getting into the cold itself. So what I'm not referring to, is getting
into the cold environment like an ice bath and waiting until you
shiver and staying there shivering. Okay? You also don't want to get
hypothermic. And I want to be clear. You want to get approval from
your doctor before you do any of this. When you get into cold water,
there are two factors that will dictate whether or not you shiver.
Probably three, but let's just talk about the main two. One, is how
cold it is. So how cold should it be? And look, if you get into water,
that's very, very cold. It can actually shock your heart. It can
actually give you a heart attack if it's truly, truly ice cold, and
you're not adapted to that. So proceed with caution, please. I'm not a
physician and I don't want to see anyone get hurt. Just cold enough to
be uncomfortable is a good place to start. So for some of you that's
going to be 60 degrees, for some of you that's going to be 55 degrees,
for some of you it's going to be high thirties, right? Depends on how
cold adapted you are, and people vary in terms of how well they
tolerate the cold. So what you need to do is find a temperature that
you can get into one to five, probably one to three times a week. If
you really want this to accelerate fat loss. And you want to get in
until you just start to shiver, and then you want to get out and not
dry off, wait anywhere from one to three minutes and then get back
into the cold. Now, you'll notice when you get back into the cold,
it'll almost seem soothing, it might actually not induce shiv... It
might take away the shiver that you had. So here's a potential kind of
sets reps protocol that you can play with. Find a temperature then
induce a shiver for you. That's going to vary depending on your cold
tolerance and how cold adapted you are. One to three, maybe five times
a week, get in until you... Or get under the shower or whatever it is,
until you start to shiver. Genuinely shiver. Then after about a minute
or so, get out, spend one to three minutes out, but don't dry off, get
back in for anywhere from one to three minutes, but try and access the
shiver point again. And you might do three repetitions of that. So
it's three times in and three times out total. Okay? That's a great
starting place. And what you don't want to do is build up your
tolerance to cold so fast, that pretty soon you're able to resist the
shiver, because remember the shiver is the source of the succinate
release that will trigger brown fat thermogenesis. So if you'd like to
see this protocol spelled out, you can access it zero cost at a
website which is www.thecoldplunge.com.
The Cold Plunge is a company they make cold plunges, and they were
kind enough to gift one to the Human Lab Podcast. But I want to
emphasize that these protocols are free of cost. The folks at the Cold
Plunge are not just interested in marketing their product, but one of
their main interests is encouraging people to engage in cold exposure
for particular end points and goals like fat loss, resilience, et
cetera. Resisting inflammation. But their main focus is providing
people protocols and encouraging people to use cold exposure of
various kinds not just through their products, but through cold rivers
and jumps in the ocean and things like cold showers, whatever is most
convenient and accessible for various people. And so we needed a place
where we could house these protocols in a permanent way, and not just
for this episode. But so what they've agreed to do is, to post the
protocols there, they should be very easy to find on their website.
This particular protocol we're referring to as the fat loss
optimization protocol for lack of a better name. And it's really
grounded in how cold it can be used to induce shiver. And again, it
doesn't really matter how you're accessing that cold, provided you
access to the shiver, and you're moving from the cold environment to a
slightly warmer environment. So getting out of the cold shower or
getting out of the ice bath, et cetera, or out of the cold plunge, and
then back in. Because it turns out that the cooling and rewarming
process of the body is where shiver kicks in. And so that's distinctly
different than just trying to get into the cold and stay in the cold
for as long as possible. And if you zoom out a little bit and think
about some examples in life, you'll understand why that must be the
case.
For instance, people who do a lot of cold water swims, you have these
polar bear clubs, I think they call themselves. They do these cold
water swims.
I would sometimes see these people swimming back and forth to Alcatraz
and stuff like that, which it seems risky. and they tell me it's very
stimulating for the mind and body. Great. Sometimes those people are
very lean, oftentimes they're not, and they're getting a lot of cold
exposure. And one of the things that happens is, if you expose
yourself to cold over and over, you adapt, you become cold adapted.
And when you do that, you no longer get the epinephrine, the
adrenaline release from the cold and therefore you don't get the
succinate release and the shivering and the brown fat thermogenic
effect quite as intensely. So if you want to use cold for other
reasons, and certainly cold water swims can be fun. And there's, you
know, long as you can do them safely, they're great. I've gotten into
cold water swimming for some period of time. You can use cold for
resilience, et cetera. But if you want to use cold to increase fat
loss, then getting this shiver process going the cooling and rewarming
which accelerates the amount of, or increases the amount of shiver.
That's going to be the way to go. One note about cold and some of the
factors that it releases. A few years back there was a lot of
excitement about this hormone called irisin, I-R-I-S-I-N, which was
associated with cold. And there was a lot of excitement about its
potential role in increasing metabolism so much so that people were
starting to explore this as a potential fat loss drug. To my knowledge
that went nowhere. The science eventually shifted over to succinate as
the main factor in cold induced thermogenesis through this brown fat
pathway. But if anyone out there is aware of any positive effects of
iricin or of any signs of irisin that I'm overlooking here, or that
I'm speaking about incorrectly, please let me know. I'd be very
curious to learn.
Now, I want to just talk about brown fat a little bit more, and talk
about a period in your life in which you were rich with brown fat, you
had a ton of brown fat, and that's when you were a baby. Babies can't
shiver. These neurons that release epinephrin into fat are not wired
up and really aren't present at sufficient levels or in sufficient
numbers when you are a baby. And therefore you can't shiver as a baby,
and you can't warm yourself up in cold environments very well. To
compensate for that, mother nature installed in all of us an excess of
brown fat early in life that exists again in the upper back, and the
middle of the back and the back of the neck. Over time if we don't
expose ourselves to cold environments or do other things that make a
shiver, we lose a lot of that brown fat, but what's interesting about
brown fat is that there's some evidence that brown fat just like white
fat can both increase in size, but that you can also add new cells.
Now, there's a little bit controversial. People always say you can't
change the number of fat cells, you can just shrink them or increase
their size. Well, it turns out that epinephrin released from these
little nerve endings in brown fat and succinate circulating in the
body may and I want to underscore may have the effect of increasing
the amount of brown fat cells probably by converting these beige fat
cells into brown fat. So that allows us to become much as we were
early in life, where we metabolized like crazy and we'd heat ourselves
up without shivering. Some people have taken the cold thing to the
extreme, putting ice packs on the back of their neck throughout the
day.
Did a episode all about testosterone and estrogen, and there's this,
let's just call it a very niche, I have to imagine very, very niche
culture of people who are wearing literally, I'm not joking. They are
these cool pack ice pack underpants. They go by a name that I'm not
going to repeat on here, but you can find them on Amazon. Those are
people that are using cold packs on the body and on the groin to try
and increase things like testosterone. But as well to try and increase
thermogenesis and trying to increase their metabolism. Just remember
if you become cold adapted, you're not going to get the fat burning
effects to the same degree. So cold is a powerful tool for fat loss,
but you don't want to adapt. This is reminiscent of a rule that you
hear about in endurance exercise and in strength exercise as well,
which is, that you want to use the minimal effective stimulus to
promote growth or progress. So growth of a muscle or improvements in
endurance. If you go 10% further on a run or 10% faster, you will
likely see an improvement in performance provided your recovery the
next time you come back and do that same round of exercise. You'll be
able to do more work or complete the work more easily, et cetera.
You've adapted. If you do 20% more distance or 20% more weight, you
won't necessarily see the same commiserate level of gain or
improvement. And so likewise with cold, if you're quickly moving from
30 seconds of exposure to 10 minutes of exposure, you're overlooking
the opportunity to get the most fat loss and increase in metabolism by
stepping it up in smaller increments. Okay? And this also speaks to
the rationale for using cold exposure to accelerate fat loss for
certain periods, but then maybe not doing it year round. If fat loss
is your goal, maybe use it for two, three months at a time and then
stop for two, three months at a time, because it is such a potent
stimulus provided you engage in the shiver. Next I'd like to move to
exercise and how particular timing and types of exercise can vastly
improve fat loss.
Before I do that, I just want to mention a really important reference
for those of you that are interested in learning more about how
neurons connect to fat? This is certainly a paper that you'd want to
look at, if you're interested in diving deep into the literature and
reading all the various studies. It's a review. And the title of the
review is neural innervation of white adipose tissue and the control
of lipolysis. That's neural innervation of white adipose tissue and
the control of lipolysis. It was published in Frontiers in
Neuroendocrinology. You can find that free online. They have the full
text available. The first author is Bartness, B-A-R-T-N-E-S-S. It's a
great review. And I've talked about a number of things that are
mentioned in the review. Follow the references in that review and the
reference trail as we say, if you're interested in learning more about
also how neurons control brown fat. And before I moved to exercise, I
also just want to highlight something that comes up every few years
and has largely been considered myth now, but that is actually more
interesting than most people might think, which is this issue of spot
reduction.
You know, in the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of commercials, late
night infomercials, where they would talk about spot reduction. If you
do sit ups, will you lose abdominal fat? If you do hip raises or glute
raises, will you lose gluten hip fat. And I think everybody knows now
believes that, and understands that fat metabolism is something that
happens systemically throughout the body. That some body fat is quote
unquote more stubborn than others. Everyone varies in where they tend
to store fat or lose fat last. Number of factors that influence that,
and in particular hormone receptors. But now at least in the
scientific literature, spot reduction and the possibility of real true
spot reduction reductions in fat in a targeted way, a body part or
body area targeted way is becoming more of a reality and may be a
reality soon, because exercise that triggers the activation of these
nerve fibers, these neurons that innervate fat. In theory, if you can
increase the amount of epinephrin released at those particular fat
pads as they're called, they're actually called fat pads in the
scientific literature. In theory, you could increase mobilization from
those particular body fat sites. Okay? So because the new view that
the modern understanding is that it's not adrenaline released
systemically kind of bathing all your fat tissue, but rather its
neurons releasing adrenaline epinephrin locally that in theory,
exercise that stimulates the release of epinephrin or exercise coupled
with things like shiver or low grade shaking movement, or the NEAT,
the non-exercise activity thermogenesis could in theory lead to local
enhancement of mobilization of fat tissue. So I think that spot
reduction actually will soon be something that's possible using the
appropriate technology. What does this mean for you now? What could
you possibly do with this information now? Well, I think it speaks to
the fact that if one is going to engage in exercise that doing
exercises that involve lots of different body parts and movements is
likely to encourage the maintenance and or growth of these neurons
that innervate fat throughout the body. What this means is changing up
the pattern of exercise, engaging in novel types of movements may
actually be one way that one can access these so-called stubborn body
fat pads. Now, there's a little bit of speculation in the statement
that I'm making, but if you think about it it makes sense. If you
become very adapted to a particular pattern of exercise, whether or
not you're subcaloric or not, you're on maintenance calories are not,
you are oxidizing some fat always, and you're utilizing the neurons
that innervate fat in a regular way. And pretty soon this innervation
is going to shut off, because there's no reason why this neural
innervation of fat should continue to release epinephrin unless you
give it a strong stimulus like cold or the fidgeting or in this case
to do novel forms of exercise. And there's some anecdotal evidence and
I don't even want to call it data, but anecdotal evidence that people
who have, quote on quote stubborn body fat, if they start to adopt new
patterns of exercise, they can start to access those stubborn fat
pads. And again, fat pads is the correct way to refer to these in the
scientific literature. So what we're focusing on today is the fact
that fat indeed will be mobilized and oxidized in response to a
deficit in calories. But that the way that neurons control those fat
pads and those body fat stores, affords you a lot more control than
perhaps you ever previously thought.
So let's talk about movement. And the more traditional kinds of
movement, aka exercise has been shown to lead to increases in
metabolism and fat loss to greater degrees depending on whether or not
for, instance you're fasted when you do it or not, whether or not you
do your cardio first or your resistance training first. And this is
again in the literature for which there's a lot of controversy, but in
digging through all the studies on this, we're finally starting to
arrive at a consensus of, when is best to do exercise? And what types
of exercise to do if your goal is fat loss? The topic of exercise is a
kind of controversial one, not as controversial as nutrition and diet
which we will talk about in a few minutes. But it's a particularly
interesting one, because different types of exercising gauge the
musculature of the body and the heart and the lungs in different ways,
and can have vastly different effects on things like hormones and
metabolism depending on whether or not it's of high intensity,
moderate intensity or low intensity. So rather than think about weight
training versus cardiovascular exercise, I think the most simple way,
the most fluid way to have this conversation about exercise and fat
loss is in terms of three general types of training. Whether or not
it's done with weights or body weight doesn't really matter. And those
are high intensity interval training. Something that's seems to have
gained a lot of popularity in recent years. So-called HITT, H-I-I-T.
So high intensity interval training. Sprint interval training. So
that's going to be very high intensity or SIT, or moderate intensity
continuous training, M-I-C-T. So we've got HIIT, SIT and MICT, M-I-
C-T. And we can get a little bit more precise if you'd like. I'm not
somebody who measures my VO2 max or anything while I exercise. I
generally know whether or not I'm doing something I could continue for
a very long time, or whether or not I'm doing something that I realize
is going to be of short duration high-intensity. But if you'd like to
map this to VO2 max SIT, this sprint interval training was defined as
all out greater than 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that lasts
eight to 30 seconds intersperse with less intense recovery periods. So
this would be sprinting downfield for eight to 30 seconds, then maybe
walking back for about a minute or two and then sprinting again and
then continuing. So that would be SIT. HIIT, H-I-I-T is defined as
submaximal, so 80 to a hundred percent of VO2 max bursts of activity
that lasts 60 to 240 seconds intersperse with less intense recovery
periods. So on a standard 400 meter track, just to give this a little
bit of a visual, a four minute mile would be fantastic for most
people, although people run faster than that of course. So that's four
60 seconds laps, but that's back to back to back. I think in my best
shape or maybe it was in my dreams, I don't recall which I was able to
do 60 seconds around the track, but of course I couldn't get that on
the second or third or fourth if I did that was certainly in the
fantasy land and not reality. But 60 seconds would be about one
revolution around the track, maybe 90 seconds, depending on how fast a
one is running. So 60 to 240 seconds. MICT okay. This moderate
intensity continuous training is steady state cardio sometimes called
Zone 2 cardio these days on the internet, which has performed
continuously for 20 to 60 minutes at moderate intensity of 40 to 60%
of VO2 max or if you prefer heart rate 55 to 70% of max heart rate.
Okay? So we can think about high, medium and low intensity exercise.
Although low intensity usually means that you could carry on a
conversation, or maybe you have to gasp every few steps or so, while
trying to talk and run. That's I think going to be the most useful way
to have this conversation that we're having now, because there's so
many different forms of exercise that people do and intensity is
important. Let's ask the question that I think many people are
wondering about, which is, is it better?
Meaning do you burn more fat if you do your exercise fasted? And
fasted in this respect could be that you wake up in the morning,
you've been fasting all night, you just hydrate and you exercise or
sometimes people will ingest caffeine, there's controversy as to
whether or not that quote on quote breaks the fast. It has to do with
whether or not your caffeine adapted something for another episode. In
any case that would be fasted. So probably not having eaten anything
for anywhere from three to 24 hours or maybe even more. As you could
also be fasted in the afternoon. If you had lunch at noon and it's
four or five or 6:00 p.m. Is it, will you burn more fat if you
exercise without an eating anything first, without ingesting any
calories first? And people have tried to really split hairs on this,
every which way people say, well, you can fat fast, because fat and
protein doesn't lead to as great increases in insulin as other things,
maybe you can have a few almonds and then still train. And indeed
insulin will prevent fat oxidation. I want to be really clear. The
burning part of fat in the cell, the movement of the fatty acid and
into mitochondria and the conversion ATP, insulin inhibits that
process. However, it's been shown that it least for short periods of
training, it doesn't really seem to matter whether or not you eat
before training or you don't, if your goal is fat oxidation. Now, I
want to put an asterix near that, because there are some exceptions.
But there were several studies done that, and the kind of the classic
ones of these, I'll read out to you. What they basically did is they
gave people glucose, sugar, to increase their blood sugar before
training or not. And the kind of classic study of this is Al Borg at
all. So in 1976, so it goes way back, which is that glucose reduces
fat burning and exercise. And then some other studies if you want to
look these up, they're very easy to find on PubMed. You put in
Horowitz 1999, [indistinct] is another one where they have people
drink milk with glucose in it. So sweet sugary milk before exercise,
et cetera. And you can find a number of examples where eating before
exercise reduces the amount of fat that's oxidized during the
exercise. And you can also find a lot of studies showing that, eating
during exercise or prior to exercise will not reduce the amount of fat
that is oxidized. However, the types of exercise whether I was medium
intensity or high intensity or low intensity is all over the map for
these studies. So it's very hard to target an ideal protocol. And then
if you look really deep in the literature, you start to find meta
analysis where people have actually aggregated all the findings and
some modern studies where it points to some very specific and useful
protocols.
And so here's the rule that or the protocol that I extracted from that
literature. At a period of about 90 minutes of moderate intensity
exercise, I want to be clear, at about or after 90 minutes of moderate
intensity exercise. There's a switchover point whereby if you ate
before the exercise, you will reduce, excuse me, you will burn far
less fat from the 90 minute point onward than you would if you had
gone into the training fasted. So let me repeat that. If it's moderate
intensity, so-called zone two cardio type exercise, at the 90 minute
point, if you happen to have eaten before the exercise within one to
three hours prior to the exercise, then you reduce the amount of fat
that you will burn from 90 minutes onward, whereas if you had fasted
prior to the exercise, you hadn't eaten anything for three hours or
more prior to the exercise. At the 90 minute point, 90 minutes of
exercise you will start to burn more fat than you would had you eaten.
Now, 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercises is a lot. So that's a
pretty long run. Even if you're running at a pretty slow pace like a
10 or 12 minute mile, that's a lot of running, that's a lot of
swimming. So that's a lot of walking, that's a lot of hiking. However,
there are people who are going out hiking all day or running all day
or walking all day. And if you want to burn more fat per unit time,
you want to oxidize more fat then you would do that fasted. Now, there
are also studies that pointed the fact that you don't have to wait to
90 minutes in order to get this enhanced fat burning effect.
The studies I was able to find and that looked to me like quality
peer-reviewed studies with no company bias or no product bias of any
kind. These are studies that were largely funded by the federal
government in the university context pointed the fact that if one does
high-intensity training, or even the very high intensity forms of
training like sprints or squats or deadlifts or any kind of activity
that can't be maintained for more than these, you know, eight or I
would say up to 60 seconds. So a set of lifting weights repeated,
repeated, if that's done for anywhere from 20 minutes, so weight
training or power lifting or these kinds of things or kettlebell
swings or up to 60 minutes, we'll then the switchover point in which
you can burn more fat, if you go into that fasted comes earlier. And
this makes sense because there's nothing holy about the 90 minute
point for a medium intensity Zone 2 cardio. That 90 minute point is
the point in which the body shifts over from mainly burning glycogen,
basically, sugar that comes from muscles or the liver and realizes
this is going on for a while, I'm going to shift over to a storage
site fuel that is in reserve like body fat. This is going to happen
for a while, so I'm going to start tapping into body fat stores. Now,
fat doesn't have a little brain there. It is innervated by neurons,
but it doesn't have thoughts. And you don't actually control this
switch with your mind. This is something that has to do with the
milieu of various hormones. What has to happen is insulin has to go
down far enough. So if you ate before the exercise, you'd have an
increase in insulin, if you ate carbohydrates you'd have a bigger
increase in insulin, fat and proteins indeed you'll have lower amounts
of insulin and fasting will give you the lowest amount of insulin.
Well, then that switch over point is going to come earlier in the
exercise. And if you think about if you were to do something high
intensity for 20, 30, 40 minutes, so maybe lift weights and then get
into Zone 2 cardio. If you are fasted, the literature says that you're
going to burn more body fat per unit time than if you had eaten before
or during the exercise. So what does this mean? This means if you want
to burn more body fat, if it's in your protocols and you have been
approved to do this safely, exercise intensely for 20 to 60 minutes,
the higher the intensity obviously the shorter that about is going to
be, and then move over into Zone 2 cardio. And if you do that fasted
or the medium intensity cardio I should say. And if you do that
fasted, then indeed you will burn a higher percentage of body fat. If
you need to eat or you like to eat before you train that also can
work. And if you train very intensely, you're likely to shift over to
the fat burning pattern more quickly as well. So again, this isn't
really an issue of how long you exercise. It's an issue of how
intensely you exercise and therefore what fuel source you're drawing
from. So hopefully I've made that clear, but basically you need to
deplete glycogen or through high intensity exercise and then move to a
steady state exercise that will allow you to burn more fat. Or you
need to perform a medium intensity or low intensity type exercise for
a long period of time before you shift over to burning fat. And indeed
it seems that going into all that fasted will facilitate the burning
of more fat overall. But if you can't even get to the exercise, if
you're somebody who just can't do the training at all, you're
unwilling to or you're incapable of training, unless you eat
something, then obviously eating something makes the most sense. And
what you eat prior to exercise, that's a whole other biz that people
argue about and fight about whether or not you should go into it with
low carbohydrates or higher carbs, all of that. But in general, the
theme there is very simple. Which is that you want insulin levels to
be pretty low if your goal is body fat reduction, if you want to
oxidize body fat. So fasting in some cases, fat fasting and other
cases where you're just ingesting fats. Fat and protein, in some cases
or for some people it will be eating carbohydrates. I'm not here to
dictate a particular nutrition regimen. That's just how the hormone
balance of these things and fat oxidation works. Now, one thing that's
very interesting and cannot be overlooked is this issue of how much
energy you burn during and after the activity.
And some of you probably already know about this, but the whole
business of calories in versus calories out, and people counting the
number of calories they burn during their aerobic session or during
their whatever session is only one half of the equation and it really
eclipses the more important issue, which is how much of an increase in
metabolism does a given exercise create after the exercise? And we
could talk for hours about this, but the simple way to view this is
that, high intensity training, anaerobic training of weight training,
sprints, burpees, any kind of thing. I don't know these days I hear
that you're not supposed to do burpees that people think burpees are
dangerous. So I'm not suggesting any particular movements here. You
have to decide what's right for you. I do burpees. I don't seem to be
injured from them, but I hear that they're terrible for some people.
So anyway, push-ups, sit-ups, whatever it happens to be that anaerobic
exercise that's of higher intensity or sprints taps into glycogen
stores during the movement and we'll burn more energy per unit time
than moderate intensity. High intensity burns more than modern
intensity. That's straightforward. What's interesting is that all the
studies that I was able to find on what happens after that type of
exercise showed that the percentage of fat that you burn after high
intensity exercise is actually greater. In other words, you burn a lot
of glycogen during the high intensity exercise. And then after the
exercise, the post exercise oxygen consumption as it sometimes called
goes up. We know this after you train intensely that post exercise
oxygen consumption goes up sometimes for up to 24 hours. And it is
during that period of time that you oxidize more fat not glycogen.
Now, what's interesting is that the reverse is also true, for people
that do long bouts of low or moderate intensity exercise. So typically
this would be things like running, swimming, biking, et cetera. So 60,
90 minutes, two hours maybe even people that are training for
marathons or half marathons, when they stop training, they burn more
glycogen, more carbohydrate, even though they were burning more body
fat per unit time during the low intensity exercise. So there's this
kind of inversion. High-intensity burns more glycogen during the
activity, more body fat afterwards. Moderate to low intensity burns
more percentage-wise more body fat is oxidized than glycogen during
the actual exercise afterward it's more glycogen. So I don't want this
to get too complicated. The point is you should pick exercise that you
like, that you're going to do regularly, but it does seem that the
high intensity exercise followed by moderate intensity exercise is
going to be optimal for fat burning overall. Because when you look at
the percentage of body fat burned, and you look at the overall
increase in basal metabolic rate, moderate and high intensity training
followed by low intensity training or even just followed by going back
into life is going to be the best way to continue to burn body fat
because of the ways that it increases basal metabolic rate.
This could be distilled into a simple protocol whereby three or four
times a week you do high intensity training followed by either nothing
or followed by low intensity training especially if you're able to do
that fasted. And I should just mention that none of this stuff about
fasted is about performance. If you want to perform really well, this
is for reasons of performance and you want to, you know, it's for a
sport or a competition, it's not for body fat purposes. Well, then all
of this kind of falls away and is modified by what's ideal to eat for
performance. But what we're talking about today is how to optimize
body fat loss. So train moderately to very high intensity and then
moderate to low intensity, or train moderate to high intensity, and
then go about life. And in fact, I have a friend who uses this
strategy. He likes the train intensely and not that often protocol
cause he's a very busy person. So he'll train for 20 or 30 minutes
intensely with weights or just body weight movement doing a lot, he
does burpees and push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups and just kind of
moving and kind of circuit type training. But where he's breathing
really hard, the goal he always says is, I want to breathe hard for 30
minutes every day. And then afterwards he hydrates and drinks coffee
and moves into his day. And he's walking around and taking calls and
carrying around his children and doing all these kinds of things that
keep him really busy which is kind of like low intensity work. So I
think you get the principle now. But you should all be asking
yourselves as scientists of yourselves. Why would it be that certain
patterns of exercise would lead to more or less fat loss? I mean, it
can't just be about the energy burn. We already established that. And
again, it has to do with the neurons. It has to do with how we engage
the nervous system. So while non-exercise activity induced
thermogenesis, NEAT, the fidgeting and cold can induce thermogenesis
by engaging shiver tight movement or low-level movements. Big
movements that are of very high intensity, meaning they require a lot
of effort, deploy a lot of adrenaline epinephrin from our neurons and
signal particular types and amounts of fat thermogenesis, fat
oxidation, whereas low level intensity exercise, low or moderate
intensity exercise, walking, running, biking where you can do that
easily, there's not very much adrenaline release. So adrenaline aka
epinephrin is really the final common path by which movement of any
kind, whether or not it's low level shiver, whether or not it's
lifting a barbell sprinting up a hill or doing a long bike ride.
Adrenaline is the effector of fat loss. It's the trigger end, it's the
effector. So now I want to turn our attention to compounds that
increase epinephrin and adrenaline, as well as compounds that work
outside the adrenaline epinephrin pathway to increase the rates of fat
loss.
I almost always save compounds and supplements and things of that sort
to the end, because I do believe that people should look first towards
behavioral tools and an understanding of the science before they look
toward a supplement or a particular thing that they can extract from
diet. This is mainly to try and shift people away from the kind of
magic pill phenomenon or the idea that there is a magic pill because
there really isn't. And frankly, there never will be. But there are
some compounds that can greatly increase fat oxidation and
mobilization. And understanding which compounds increase oxidation or
mobilization can be very useful if your goal is to accelerate fat
loss. There are things that people can ingest that will allow them to
oxidize more fat. And that occurs mainly by increasing the amount of
epinephrin that is released from neurons that innovate fat tissue. One
of the more common ones is one that you may already be using which is
caffeine. It's well-established that caffeine can enhance performance,
if you're caffeine adapted. I talked about this in an earlier episode
so I want to make sure I'm very clear about this. If you are not used
to drinking caffeine and you suddenly decide I'm going to drink a big
cup of coffee before training, you will vasoconstrict and you will
limit performance. So that's performance. If you're caffeine adapted
however, there's this kind of interesting phenomenon where ingestion
of caffeine serves more as a performance enhancer, both by increasing
alertness, but also by way of dilating vasculature of allowing more
blood flow. Now, caffeine for burning more fat for oxidizing and
mobilizing more fat is an interesting one. It can be effective at
dosages up to 400 milligrams. You have to be careful if you're
caffeine sensitive. Some people have just the littlest bit of caffeine
and their mind goes crazy, and they're very uncomfortable. It can have
cardiovascular effects for some people or hypertension, et cetera. So
please check with your doctor. But 400 milligrams is roughly a cup and
a half a coffee or two cups of coffee. Nowadays, there's a lot more
caffeine in coffee. So if you go to a typical cafe and you were to get
their medium-sized that would have close to a gram of caffeine, which
is why, if you're a regular caffeine consumer and you don't get that
gram of caffeine in your coffee each day, you will get a headache. It
can cause constriction and dilation of blood vessels in ways that's
complicated, but you'll get a headache. Some people like the way they
feel drinking 100 to 200, 300 maybe 400 milligrams of caffeine before
training. And indeed that will lead to increase fat oxidation. It will
do that because you will release more epinephrin and adrenaline. So
let's just place this in the context of what we said previously. Let's
say you normally do Zone 2 cardio, so you're going out for a
moderately intense run for 30 to 60 minutes or so. I think the current
recommendation guidelines in the States are that people engage in 30
minutes of moderate intensity exercise five days a week for that's 150
minutes. If their goal is to improve or maintain health of the
cardiovascular system. 80% of people in the United States fail to do
that, or anything close to it. We are way below threshold for what the
government has recommended. In this case, the government
recommendations, I think are pretty good. That's one could always do
better of course. But 80% of people aren't even doing that. However,
just using the logic and the understanding of how epinephrin
adrenaline is affecting this fat oxidation process. If you were to go
out for 15 minutes and you drank caffeine before you went, yes, you'll
probably oxidize more fat per unit time. Can you compensate for the
exercise you're not doing just by drinking caffeine? Well, probably if
you were just talking about fat loss, if that caffeine makes you
fidget a lot, right? The amount of calories that you burn in a 30
minute run, unless the run is very intense and you're wearing a weight
vest and it's up a hill, it's not that great, right? Then you probably
get you in somewhere into the 400, 500 calories burned area. But I
said earlier, and there are a lot of data now to support that
fidgeting for a day can burn anywhere from 800 to 2,500 calories a
day. So you might say, well, fidgeting is better than running, ah, but
it doesn't trigger the activation and the positive health effects of
the cardiovascular system. So fidgeting alone can be great, but you
need exercise for other reasons. Caffeine can enhance the amount of
fat that you burn in any duration of exercise. And it can shift the
percentage of fat that you oxidize compared to glycogen. Unless you
take that caffeine and it ramps you up so much that you're training
really, really intensely. The bottom line is, if you like caffeine and
you can use it safely, ingesting somewhere between 104 milligrams of
caffeine prior to exercise somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes before
exercise can be beneficial if we're talking about fat oxidation
burning more body fat. So that's caffeine. There are a number of other
things that have existed over the years that are in this pathway,
things like ephedrine which is now illegal in most states, I think
maybe an all states because people were dropping dead from taking
ephedrine, because they were heating up too much.
It's interesting it wasn't direct effects on the heart causing heart
attack. It could trigger by way of adrenergic receptors. If you'd like
to know, increases in body temperature and heat. Now, those drugs
turned out to be dangerous, because people were overheating and dying.
There was also the big Fen-Phen craze. That was a drug that was
released fenfluramine which actually was quite effective as an anti
obesity drug, a treatment for obesity that had to be outlawed as well.
It was FDA approval was removed because again people were dying
because of cardiovascular effects. I don't know if people were
overheating on it as well. So what is the solution? If caffeine is the
kind of the entry point for most people of using compounds to increase
the rate or percentage of fat loss in exercise and even at rest, what
are some of the other things that are useful and interesting?
Well, in terms of tools that are actionable and have reasonable safety
margins, I've talked before about something called GLP-1. This is
something that can be triggered by the ingestion of yerba mate, which
is a tea, and I guess because I'm half Argentine, we grew up drinking
mate. I think I was drinking mate from the time I was about three or
four years old. I don't suggest that for kids. I don't think kids
should be ingesting caffeine. But anyway I did it and I still ingest
mate. Mate increases GLP-1. GLP-1 is in the glucagon pathway. So let's
just quickly return to our biochemistry. As you recall, fat is
mobilized from body fat stores and then it's burned up. It's oxidized
in cells. It actually needs to be converted into ATP. And those fatty
acids are essentially converted into ATP in the mitochondria of the
cell. High insulin prevents that from happening and glucagon
facilitates that process. Glucagon facilitates that process through
increases in GLP-1. The short takeaway is mate increases GLP-1 and
yes, increases the percentage of fat that you will burn. It increases
fat burning. And that is especially true, it turns out from the
scientific literature, if you ingest mate prior to exercise of any
kind. So if you want to burn more fat drinking mate before exercise is
good. Drinking it at rest when you're not exercising will also help
shift your metabolism toward enhanced burning of fat by increasing fat
oxidation. Now, there's a whole category of pharmaceuticals that's
being developed right now that are in late stage trials or are in use
for the treatment of diabetes which capitalize on this GLP-1 pathway.
They go by various names and there are people on the internet who are
selling these things. They are prescription drugs and I want to
emphasize that they are prescription drugs and you obviously wouldn't
want to use any of these without a prescription and a requirement. It
does seem that they are effective for the treatment of certain kinds
of diabetes and lead to fairly significant weight loss and reduction
in appetite. So this is kind of the modern version of GLP-1 is
pharmaceuticals of GLP-1 metabolism are drugs such as somatical, I can
never pronounce this. I can't seem to pronounce many things it seems.
Semaglutide is the way I would pronounce it. S-E-M-A-G-L-U-T-I-D-E.
Semaglutide but that's not the way you pronounce it. But Semaglutide
is the way that it's been described on the internet. In any case, this
compound increases GLP-1. It's actually a GLP-1 analog in some cases,
and they go by various types of trade names. So the GLP-1 pathway is
interesting. Most people, including myself, are not interested in
taking a prescription drug to increase GLP-1, I do it through the
ingestion of mate. I just get the mate leaves, pour water over it and
drink it. What's kind of interesting, that's not often discussed is
that you can increase the amount of GLP-1 by, you can essentially
reuse the tea. The first time you drink it it can be very, very
intense. And in fact, some people find that mate almost tastes like
burnt leaves. It's too intense. You don't want the water to be too
hot. But I learned this trick from a friend. You can reuse the leaves
over and over again, probably for about a day before they go bad. And
in doing that, you start to extract more and more of the compounds
from the mate leaf that increased GLP-1. So it's kind of cool. You can
kind of get an increased effect. So what I'll typically do is make a
about 16 to 30 ounces and just sip it throughout the day, and I do
like it before I train. Some people who don't like mate might prefer
something like guayusa, which is spelled G-U-A-Y-U-S-A. G-U-A-Y-U-S-A,
guayusa which is from Ecuador, despite the USA ending to it. It's from
Ecuador. And it's a sweeter tasting tea. It doesn't have any sweetener
in it, but the leaf of the guayusa plant is sweeter than the mate
plant. I sometimes will mix the two and then make the tea with that.
There's no mate or guayusa sponsor of the podcast. These are just
tools to increase GLP-1 and fat oxidation. And again, the Semaglutide
is the prescription version of the that's kind of the heavy artillery
GLP-1 stimulant, and again should be only explored with a
prescription. So those are the compounds that really increase fat
oxidation directly. There are going to be a number of things that
impact insulin and glucagon that are going to shift the body toward
more fat burning.
We talked about a lot of these during the episode on hormones. We
talked about it. We did a whole episode on hormones and metabolism.
And so for instance, berberine, which comes from a plant or metformin
are compounds that are now in kind of growing use for reducing blood
glucose. They are very potent at reducing blood glucose, which will
reduce insulin because the job of the hormone insulin is to
essentially manage glucose in the bloodstream. So there are a huge
gallery of compounds that will reduce insulin and thereby can increase
fat oxidation. And that's because, as I mentioned before, fat
oxidation, this conversion of fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria
is inhibited by insulin. So if you keep insulin low, you're going to
increase that process. Which brings us full circle back to the issue
of diet and nutrition.
There is really solid evidence from the Gardner Lab at Stanford and
from other labs showing that, when you look at different diets, you
look at low fat diets, high fat diets, keto diets, intermittent
fasting, provided people stick to their particular diet, it doesn't
really matter which diet you follow. You can still get a caloric
deficit and you get weight loss. Adherence however is always an issue.
And so what I always say is, that you want to use the eating plan that
is obviously beneficial to your health, but the one that allows you to
adhere to whatever it is that the particular nutrition protocol is,
right? If you can't stick with something, then it's not very
worthwhile. But from the purely scientific standpoint, there's also an
advantage to keeping insulin low. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean
you go to zero carbohydrate. I've talked before about my preferred way
of eating is to go lower or no carbohydrates throughout the day for
alertness to get that adrenaline release and the focus that goes with
it, et cetera, and the ability to think and move and do all the things
I need to do during the day. And then I eat carbohydrates at night
'cause it facilitates the transition to sleep. That's what works for
me. But when insulin is low, you do place your system in a position to
oxidize more fat. And so that's why I think a lot of people do see
benefit from lower carbohydrate or moderate carbohydrate diets,
because when insulin is low, you are in a position to oxidize more
fat.
Both from exercise and at rest. And I should mention, because I often
mention and it's appropriate to mention that if you're interested in
looking at the effects of caffeine, of mate, guayusa things of that
sort, GLP-1 you want to learn more about those. You can go to this
wonderful website which is free www.examine.com. You can put in yerba
mate, it will describe the three studies that show increased fat
oxidation, both during exercise and at rest, and as a consequence not
surprisingly and increase in metabolic rate. One thing that's
interesting about mate is it causes a slight decrease in heart rate
for reasons that still escape me. There's a single study showing that
heart rate is slightly reduced which is kind of nice because if, when
I drink too much caffeine my heart rate goes up, maybe that would
increase my fidgeting and my fat burning, but I don't like the feeling
of having my basal heart rate being up too high. I like my heart rate
elevate during exercise, but not when I'm just kind of resting or
working and throughout the day. And for some reason that I don't
understand there's an effect of mate of increasing fat oxidation but
reducing heart rate just slightly. So that's interesting. And it
probably lends itself [indistinct] explains the subjective experience
that I've had of that mate has kind of a little nice even mellow
stimulant. It's not this really supercharged stimulant like caffeine
from coffee or other sources. Although if you drink too much mate it
will also make you jittery. And there's one more compound that I think
we should discuss in terms of increasing fat loss, and that's
carnitine or acetyl-L-carnitine, they lie in the same pathway.
We can return to our basic knowledge now of fat mobilization and
oxidation. After fat is mobilized and makes it into cells and needs to
be oxidized. So the literally the burning of fat and conversion of it
into energy that is accomplished and is facilitated by the presence of
glucagon being elevated, GLP increases that process and insulin being
low. And we talked about some ways to manage insulin both in this
episode and in previous episode. L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine in
particular facilitates fat oxidation. It helps convert fatty acids
into ATP. And indeed supplementing L-carnitine can increase fat loss.
That's been shown. At what dosages? Well, people ingest anywhere from
500 milligrams to two grams per day in divided doses typically. Some
people who are really extreme are taking injectable L-carnitine, I've
certainly not tried that. I confess I have used it in pill form from
time to time but in part, because of the fat oxidation effects, but
also because of the other effects that it tends to have. So in
exploring the effects that acetyl-L-carnitine has, it has a huge
variety of effects on cellar metabolism. It can reduce ammonia in the
blood that is actually a quite strong effect. It can reduce things
like C-reactive protein, which is you want to C-reactive protein
levels to be managed. You do not want them too high. Can slightly
reduce blood glucose. I can slightly increase HDLC, the good form of
the blood lipid and slightly reduce overall cholesterol. And as I
mentioned, it can slightly modify the pathway involving glucagon, such
that you get a considerable effect, not a huge effect on fat
oxidation, so it can improve pat oxidation rates. It has a number of
other effects, some of which I talked during the month on hormones and
that sort of thing. It has strong effects on rates of pregnancy and
sperm quality. So clearly carnitine is doing lots of different things
and lots of different cells. It's impacting sperm motility. They're in
a large number of studies supporting that. Slight reductions in blood
pressure and has these interesting effects on reducing fatigue during
exercise, reducing inflammatory markers like interleukin 6. So it has
a number of effects that on the whole are quote unquote positive or at
least in the direction of things that you may want. And I should
emphasize may. You certainly don't need a acetyl-L-carnitine in order
to lose fat, but now that you understand the cellular process by which
fat is mobilized and oxidized, it should make sense that if
L-carnitine is important for converting fatty acids into energy, then
supplementing L-carnitine make sense. Acetyl-L-carnitine is the type
of L-carnitine or the form of L-carnitine I should say, that is
transported and utilized most easily by the body. And so that's why
sometimes we distinguish between L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine.
So once again, we've covered an enormous amount of material. We've
talked about the science of fat loss and in particular, we've explored
this topic from the perspective of the nervous system. How neurons and
in particular the release of things like adrenaline, epinephrin can
facilitate fat mobilization and oxidation. We talked about NEAT,
fidgeting, this non-exercise type movement that can greatly increase
caloric burn. And why that is. We talked about shiver, another form of
non-exercise movement that can really increase both caloric
expenditure due to the shiver, due to the movement, as well as
increase thermogenesis the heating up of the body through things like
brown fat, and even the conversion of white fat to brown fat which is
a good thing if you want to oxidize fat. We talked about cold as a
particular stimulus to induce shiver and how to use getting into, an
out of cold as a way to stimulate shiver and avoid cold adaptation so
that you continue to oxidize and burn fat, if that's your goal. If you
want to check out the protocols for that, there at
www.thecoldplunge.com and in weeks to come we're going to be adding
more protocols to that website not just for fat loss, but for things
like resilience, reducing inflammation, et cetera. So be sure to check
those out again, those are totally cost-free. Talked about exercise.
How rather than thinking about cardiovascular or weight training
exercise, that we should perhaps look through the lens of this
adrenaline system and how it interacts with fat stores and think about
low, medium or high intensity exercise. Whether or not we show up to
that fasted or not. Turns out showing up to that fasted can be useful,
if you start with high intensity movements and then move into lower
intensity type exercise. If you're going to go long duration, it
probably doesn't matter unless you're exercising longer than 90
minutes, whether or not you eat or not. We talked about caffeine as a
stimulant and a stimulus for epinephrin and adrenaline release as a
way to access more fat metabolism. And we talked about compounds that
come from things like yerba mate and guayusa tea, this GLP-1 pathway
that can trigger increased fat oxidation so much so that the
pharmaceutical companies are now developing compounds specifically to
increase GLP-1 for treatment of diabetes and obesity. But you can
leverage the GLP-1 pathway through the ingestion of things like mate
or guayusa if that's of interest to you. And then we talked about
L-carnitine and how L-carnitine itself is critical for the fat
oxidation within individual cells. The conversion of fatty acids to
energy. And why having your insulin low and things like L-carnitine
and glucagon levels high or sufficient at least can facilitate the
burning of fat, fat oxidation. So we covered a lot of material. That's
a lot of protocols I realize that didn't... The little list I just
gave right there didn't even begin to get into all the details and
corners that we discussed.
I hope you found this conversation interesting both for sake of
understanding fat loss and how to lose fat more quickly and to lose
more of it, if that's your goal. As well as simply to understand the
biology of fat metabolism from a different perspective, from the
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