Dr Rupy: On today's episode, I'm diving into the science of weight loss. This episode is all about how to lose weight in a healthy way, maintain that weight loss and live a healthier life. Now, we haven't discussed weight loss in detail on the podcast before with just myself, but enough people have asked me about it, so I thought we could do a deep dive into some common questions as well as misconceptions about weight loss and answering some of those questions specifically around diets and which diets work and which diets do not work and how they do work if they work, if you see what I mean. So we're going to talk about the science of weight loss in and of itself, what leads to weight loss, why do we lose weight and what do I mean when I say weight loss? Am I talking about weight from your muscles, weight from your bones, weight from fat? Spoiler alert, I'm talking about fat. We also talk about whether there are certain diets that are best for weight loss. Are there foods that can aid weight loss? Are there foods that can burn fat? That's something that you might commonly see online. Can you target weight loss in specific areas of the body, whether it's around your abdomen, belly fat as it's also known, thigh fat, fat around your shoulders or back, for example. And are there specific exercises that can help you do so? These are just some of the common questions that we get. We're going to dive into weight loss in a lot more detail. I'll also discuss calorie restriction, popular weight loss diets like keto, low carb for example, the mechanisms behind fasting and why that might be a pragmatic strategy for some people, the impact on the microbiome. Plus, I'm also going to discuss some uncomfortable truths around lifestyle factors that can lead to weight gain and weight loss. I discuss obesogens, the effects of sweat, stress and poor sleep on weight gain, as well as the evidence-based supplements that I can actually say hand on heart may help you lose weight as well. So this is, as you can tell, it's going to be a bit of a deep dive into weight loss. If you have more questions about this, leave a comment on YouTube. That's where I'm going to be diving into more comments and trying to refine the types of pods that we do because we're getting a lot more interaction on YouTube and that's the best way I can actually feel through questions of podcast listeners better as well. So if you have comments on it, let us know on YouTube and I will try and do more podcasts just like this. If you find yourself struggling for inspiration for what to eat, sometimes you're just stood in front of your cupboards and you're like, what can I do with this jar of harissa or peppers or artichokes? Do yourself a favour, download the Doctor's Kitchen app or go to the desktop version, which is web.thedoctorskitchen.com, and try out the Doctor's Kitchen. Just go to the search bar and type in whatever ingredient you've got, whether it's artichokes or whether it's an onion or a pepper, and just see the selection of recipes that we have. We've got over 800 now and you can filter them according to your allergens, dietaries and health goals. We're also adding a lot more information so you learn the more you cook. And we're going to be adding things like plant points and fibre calculators so you can see the improvements in your diet over time. This is what we need to be doing. We need to be teaching people to unprocess their diet and become more confident in the kitchen, eating well every single day. That's why I created the Doctor's Kitchen app and you can get a 14-day free trial. So go check it out. There's 1500 people who've rated it five star, I was going to say five star or above, but five star at least on the app and Google Play stores and it's available on iPads and other devices as well. So do me a favour, go check it out. It's the Doctor's Kitchen. Just type it into Google and I think you're going to love it. I really hope you enjoy this podcast. We did our best to provide visuals as well. So if you want to check those visuals out, I highly recommend you check this out on YouTube as well, but I will describe the diagrams as I go through them. Please enjoy my podcast all about weight loss. Before we get started, here is a quick word from the people who make this podcast possible. Today I'm going to show you how to lose fat in a healthy way and maintain that weight loss to live a healthier life. Hopefully, you're not going to have to diet again after listening to this advice and I'm going to answer the questions that so many of you ask me. Now, first off, when we talk about weight loss, we should actually be talking about fat loss because most of us don't want to lose muscle weight as it's so important for ageing, but we do want to shift fat from our belly and our legs and obviously visceral fat as well. Now, you have tons of diets and amazing anecdotes from different programmes. So how do you know which one is best for you and what is going to give you the best result? And you can really break down weight loss into a few categories. Now, if you look at this slide that I'll describe for the folks listening on the podcast, you've got simple calorie restriction, macro-restrictive diets, you've got fasting diets, but you've also got some uncomfortable truths, other things that will influence whether you can lose weight easily or gain weight as well. And I'm going to address each of them. I'm going to address each of those different diets and explain the science behind them, plus the pros and cons so you can make an informed decision as to which one you want to follow, so you have the power. And like I said, I'm going to discuss calorie restriction, popular weight loss diets that you've probably heard of like carnivore and keto. We're also going to discuss other things that fitness influencers, researchers, trainers don't really like to discuss because it doesn't fit their model of how they like to think about weight loss. So, let's start off with calorie restrictive diets, perhaps the most popular method of losing weight. And you've got companies like Weight Watchers or WW, Noom, you've got a ton of Slimming World, you've got a ton of these sort of calorie restrictive diets out there. Low calorie diets are essentially in line with the law of thermodynamics. You can call this the thermodynamic theory of eating and it's perhaps the simplest way of thinking about body composition, weight loss as well as weight gain. And the science is pretty simple. Our bodies require and burn a certain amount of energy that we measure in calories to perform all of our daily functions from breathing and thinking to exercising and even digesting food. Now that total consumption is referred to as total daily energy expenditure. Surplus to that energy over time generates weight accumulation. So we're having too many more calories above the amount of calories that we are expending, we will store that excess energy generally as fat. Deficit to that energy, so if you're under-consuming calories, again, over time that will generate weight loss and our body has to tap into stored fat for energy, which leads to weight loss. Stored fat is your body's primary energy source. This state is called a caloric deficit. You've probably heard that as well. And during this caloric deficit, so if you're under-consuming calories, your body increases the breakdown of fat stored in those fat tissues via lipolysis. So the fat cells release their fatty acids into the bloodstream where they're transported to the liver and muscles and they're used as energy. These fatty acids are broken down into what's called ketones and these ketones can be used as an alternative energy source to glucose. Your body actually prefers glucose, that sugar, as its energy source, but in a caloric deficit where you don't have enough of the glucose, that sugar, to satisfy your demands, your body has to start burning fat for fuel. Now to explain this, I would say think of your total daily energy expenditure kind of like a burning fire that you need to keep alight. The logs represent food that you eat and the house represents your fat energy stores. Now, if you run out of logs, you've got to keep that fire burning, then you have to start pulling wood from the house structure and using that as fuel. So if you think about those logs, that's the food that you eat, that's kind of like the sugar in a very, very simple terms. If you don't have that sugar, you've got to switch to what you have available to you and you've got to start pulling logs from that house structure which represents fat. And as long as you consume enough protein for your requirements in this caloric deficit, you should lose weight from fat. Now, it begs the question, what are your caloric needs every single day? To figure out what your calorie needs are and how to create either a deficit or surplus, you need to figure out what your total daily energy expenditure is, the TDEE. Now, if I explain this slide for folks listening on the podcast, your total daily energy expenditure is made up of a number of components. There's three main ones. There's your basal metabolic rate, which is most of what your energy expenditure is composed of. There's the thermic effect of food, which is about 10-15%, and then there's physical activity, which is broken down into two other, two main parts. Starting off with basal metabolic rate, BMR, this is the amount of energy that your body needs at rest to maintain vital functions. That's breathing, it's circulation. So basically what I'm doing right now, sat in my chair, these are all things that my basal metabolic rate represents. Cell production, temperature regulation. I'm regulating my temperature right now in a room that's actually air conditioned. And this, like I said, accounts for the largest portion of your total daily energy expenditure. This is typically around 60 to 70%. Now, there are a few things that are out of your control that will influence your basal metabolic rate. Age, gender, genetics, body composition, so how much muscle you have versus fat mass, hormonal balances, all affect basal metabolic rate. For example, muscle tissue burns more calories at rest than fat tissues. So individuals with more muscle mass tend to have a higher BMR. You've also got thyroid problems. There's lots of other clinical scenarios that will also affect BMR as well. So, just as an aside, that's BMR. Not really something that you can have too much impact on. Then you've got the thermic effect of food or TEF. This refers to energy required to digest, absorb and metabolise the nutrients that you consume from food. And this accounts, like I said, for about 10% of your total daily energy expenditure. Different macronutrients have varying thermic effects and I'll talk about this a bit later because that will also give more credence to this idea that calories in doesn't necessarily mean calories out. Physical activity energy expenditure or PAEE. There are varying terms that you probably come across, but physical activity. So this is the energy expended during all forms of physical activity. That can be from structured exercise to everyday activities like walking, gardening or even fidgeting. I'm actually quite a fidgety person. I'm always like moving around in my in my seat and I'm inadvertently spending more of my energy every single day. So that can be a natural thing that people do to regulate weight, but it's not something that you have voluntary control over. And it can vary significantly depending on the person's lifestyle and activity level as well. And this contributes anywhere from 15 to 30% of your total energy expenditure every single day. Like I said, it's composed of structured exercise, that's planned workouts, running, weightlifting, yoga, and then something called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, also known as NEAT. And this includes fidgeting, the small movements throughout the day, walking, gardening, cleaning, typing even, thinking, these are all things that will contribute in some way to your energy expenditure as well. Now, you can calculate your total daily energy expenditure in various ways. You can either use a lab or you can estimate it using the plethora of free calculators online like this one that I'll link to in the show notes as well at calculator.net. I've actually done both. This calculator is pretty simple. It, you know, you input your age, gender, height, weight, activity level and it gives you a very general overview of what your TDEE, your energy expenditure is likely to be. I've done both and I'm actually going to pull up my results from my resting metabolic rate test. This test costs anywhere between 120 to 150 pounds. To estimate your BMR, you can use the equations like I've just mentioned. They use things like the Harris-Benedict or the Mifflin-St Jeor formulas, which factor in age, gender, weight and height. But the results are pretty similar. So I'll just give you my one. So the resting metabolic rate test, you literally go into a lab, you lie down on the floor for about 20 minutes, you put a mask on, it is constantly monitoring your heart rate, your CO2, the amount of oxygen and CO2 that you're consuming and expelling, and it gives you a much more accurate measure of your your your basal metabolic rate. And you'll see here that my expenditure every day varies between 2,200 and 2,500 calories. That was calculated using the the lab test. And if I use the online calculator, my calculation is 2,570 calories per day. Pretty much the same. So, if you want to save yourself some money and just get a general idea of what your calorie expenditure is likely to be, I would just do the online calculator. If you want to be a bit more accurate, like I like to be, then just use a test. You don't need to do it more than once. So using this information, you can structure your diet and exercise plan according to your calorie requirements. You can do an aggressive calorie deficit, which I do not recommend for reasons that I'll go into a little bit later, or a mild calorie deficit. Conversely, if you're looking to gain weight, you want to be eating more than your calorie expenditure and that's how you'll lose weight over time. If you're looking to lose weight, as long as you maintain that calorie deficit, you will lose weight. Very, very simple. Now, let's talk about the pros. Like I said, very simple, effective, probably has the most evidence based behind it as well. It is very well established as a mechanism for losing weight. Calorie restriction is also particularly effective for losing visceral fat as well. There is a plethora of studies that show that if you are looking to reduce visceral fat, so this is the metabolically active type of fat that coats your organs that puts you at more risk of metabolic disease, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, even dementia as well, then this is a good way of reducing that visceral fat pretty aggressively. However, there are lots of different cons with this. Now, this is really popular as a method of cutting for motivated people, athletes, bodybuilders. This is why you find a lot of fitness influencers who are absolutely shredded, who are all about the calorie deficit lifestyle, this thermodynamic theory of eating. Because you need a lot of motivation to make this work. Practically, these can be very hard and very restrictive, which is why a lot of people can do it for a couple of weeks and depending on how aggressive that calorie deficit is, they'll fall right off after a couple of months as well. So you have this yo-yoing effect and because it affects your basal metabolic rate that I'll talk about a little bit later, it can lead you to gain the weight again. When you calorie, when you do an aggressive calorie deficit, it will slow your metabolism over time. So your body may try to conserve energy by slowing down your metabolism. This is a natural response as the body tries to maintain its energy balance. It's fighting against this calorie deficit. Hence why you tend to see this plateau and then a regain of weight afterwards after consistent calorie deficit. And this is because your body has evolved to maintain weight as a protective mechanism from our times during famine. We've not got the updated hardware for our modern environment. So as a an evolutionary protective mechanism, because we would have gone through periods where we didn't have enough food, our body was like, I'm going to hang on to as much food as possible. If there's less food coming in, I'm going to maintain that energy balance by reducing my basal metabolic rate. And there's nothing really you can do about that apart from adjusting the aggressiveness of that calorie deficit. The other thing that I think is very, very important to mention is people can get hyper-focused on calories instead of the quality of calories. You need protein to preserve muscle mass and reduce hunger. You need fibre to keep you fuller for longer and support your digestive health and provide nutrients. You need healthy fats to support hormone balance and immune health. And a lot of people just blindly go by the calories and they will eat processed food as long as it fits within their calorie balance and that is the wrong way to think about it as well. And it can perpetuate eating disorders. At the extreme, it can lead people to hyper-focus on any element of calories and unfortunately, this leads to a spiralling of an improper relationship with food that is quite hard to shake because once you know the calorie count of a banana or a calorie count of a handful of nuts, it's very hard to forget that information for a lot of people. So it's just something to be aware of as well if you have a propensity to an unhealthy relationship with healthy eating or weight balance. All right, so that's simple calorie restriction that's given you an overview of that. Let's talk about macro-restrictive diets. Now this is where you restrict a specific macronutrient, so either fat, low fat diets, so used to be really popular in the 80s and 90s, low carb, that's a lot more popular now in the 2000s, 2010s, or even low protein. That's become more popular with the longevity crew for want of a better word, who are sort of fixated with this idea that protein leads to inflammation, that leads to unhealthy ageing, etc, etc. Now, this may be good for weight loss, but in reality, your body, like I said earlier, requires each of these nutrients for proper functioning. So long-term restriction is unlikely to yield a healthy outcome. It might help with weight loss, but it's probably not the best in terms of health optimisation. Being deficient in quality fats, quality carbs, quality protein is likely to be detrimental in the long run. But if we're just talking about weight loss, and we refer to low fat, Atkins, South Beach, carnivore diets at the extreme, why do these work? Well, they're just really easy to follow. It's cut the carbs or cut the fat or cut the protein or lower the protein, whatever it might be. They're just super simple and for a lot of people, that's a lot easier than what I just described earlier of figuring out your calories and figuring out how much calories you've got to come in on breakfast, lunch and dinner and making sure I've got enough protein. If you just cut the carbs, it's very simple. It's like, oh, meat and veg, great. It's kind of hard to overeat on those things. It's possible, but it's kind of hard to overeat on those things and that's why people find it just intuitively makes sense. They get more energy from the calorie deficit, etc, etc. The elephant in the room is that the more restriction you have in terms of low carb or low fat, the easier it is to consume less calories. And that, unfortunately, is probably the reason why a lot of people find success with weight loss with these diets. It's not because of some funky hormonal milieu of changes, the simplest Occam's razor approach to all of these diets is that you tend to just consume less energy. It's easier for you to consume less energy as well. In addition, if I'm specifically talking about those low carb diets, so Atkins, South Beach, paleo, they're high protein and protein is satiating, so you tend to consume less calories as well. And in addition, there's the high thermic effect of protein. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier. If we go back to the breakdown of how we expend our energy each day as part of your total daily energy expenditure. So if you think about this graph, you've got BMR right at the base of this bar chart, you've got the thermic effect of food as a slim slither, which is about 10%, and you've got physical activity which is about 30% on top of that. If we're just talking about the thermic effect of food, as part of your energy expenditure, 10% of that energy comes from simply processing and digesting food, the thermic effect of food. And some calories in the food you eat are used to digest, absorb and metabolise and store that food. And protein has the highest energetic cost of processing. So that is to say, your body has to work harder and actually use more energy in the form of calories to break down the protein, requiring around 20 to 30% of the calories from protein to be used purely for digestion and metabolism. So if I bring your attention to the chart next to this for the folks listening on the podcast, you've got the thermic effect of food on the x-axis, you've got protein, carbs and fats, different bar charts, and then on the y-axis, you've got the thermic effect of food in terms of percentages. Protein has by far the highest thermic effect. It's requiring 20 to 30% of the calories from that protein just to be used for digestion. For the others, carbohydrates, they have a moderate thermic effect of food. That only takes around 5 to 10% of the calories from carbohydrates to break them down. And fats have the lowest, requiring only 0 to 3% of the calories for processing. So all this is to say, when you're consuming high amounts of protein, you're actually going to be using a lot of the energy from that protein to actually digest the protein in itself. Hence why it's easier to maintain this calorie balance and not overeat on a low carb diet. So when people say they've gone on a high protein diet and they've found it's wonderful and the weight's slipping off them, those thermic effects, those small but significant thermic effects can compound into meaningful amounts of weight loss over time, which is why it's I I I agree. I think, you know, for some people, a high protein diet as a short-term strategy is not bad. It's not a bad thing. And and depending on the individual and their risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and what their cholesterol is saying and where they're getting their protein from, I think it can be a good strategy. Overall, when you compare these macro-restrictive diets with simple calorie restriction, as long as the calories are equal, there does not appear to be a benefit of either one. So in head-to-head comparisons of these diets, neither low carb or low fat, there doesn't appear to be a significant difference between them and when looking at them against calorie deficit diets, when looking at weight and fat loss alone. The determining factor appears to be adherence and calorie control. So if you enjoy that low carb diet or you enjoy even the low fat diet, I don't know why anyone would enjoy a low fat diet to be honest because I love fats, but if you enjoy either of those diets and you can maintain said diet, then that's the best diet for you. At the extreme, however, I do want to mention carnivore diets. So the carnivore diet is built around consuming only animal-derived foods, including meat, fish, eggs, animal-based fats like butter and lard. All plant-based foods, including fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds are completely excluded from the diet. It's essentially a zero carb diet and it emphasises proteins and fats as the primary macronutrients. Now, I don't want to dismiss people's experiences with this diet, but it's not the best. Now, proponents claim that eliminating these plant foods reduces inflammation caused by anti-nutrients such as lectins and oxalates found in some plant foods. Some individuals report relief from digestive issues such as bloating, IBS, when following a carnivore diet. And as a short-term diet, it may actually provide some potential therapeutic benefits for people in specific circumstances, such as those with genuine intolerances to food. However, a recent paper looking at mouse models suggested that long-term adherence to either keto or carnivore style diets may be pro-inflammatory and pro-ageing. They actually observed changes in key organs such as heart and kidneys where the accumulation of something called senescent cells contributed to systemic inflammation and toxicity. Senescent cells are sort of like aged cells that are like hanging around and they just basically produce a lot of inflammation and they don't get cleared away by the immune system. These are the kind of cells that you don't want in excess and they can contribute to overall systemic inflammation that can be pro-ageing as well. Other studies have shown that it's promoted cardiac fibrosis, so fibrosis of your of your heart and disregulated mitochondrial function due to chronic inflammation. So now if you've got damaged mitochondria, that's going to lead to a more inflammation, but that's going to lead to less energy as well. And if you're feeling sluggish or you're lacking energy and you're on a carnivore diet, this is the time to take a break. And actually, a lot of people who are advocates and proponents of a carnivore diet have actually started including more carbs, fruit and dairy into their diet. I'm actually talking about one guy called Paul Saladino who's a psychiatrist. I don't think he's a nutritionist or anything like that. There's also Dave Asprey from Blueprint. No, blue, bulletproof coffee. A lot of these and others have publicly talked about the detrimental impact on their sleep, on their energy levels, on inflammation, joint pain, brain fog, and they've since gradually weaned off the strict animal-based only diet to actually include a variety of other foods as well, like fruits and berries and a number of other ingredients that are very healthy. And I guess we all regress to the mean over a long enough time period. I think humans have evolved to require all those different food groups, including carbohydrates and fats from plant-based sources. So berries, vegetables, starchy carbohydrates. And if you want to continue a keto lifestyle, my advice would be to take keto breaks regularly. So I've got this graph up here. The extreme, you've got, you know, animal-based only, and then at the other extreme, you've got like raw fruitarian. You know, and ultimately, if you follow those diets for a long enough period, you'll start to realise that you're missing nutrients and you'll go back to the mean. So you'll go back to what is essentially a Mediterranean style diet that includes animal-based products or proteins from from larger plants if you don't want to consume animal-based products, fruits, vegetables, good quality fats, olive oil, like we're all trending towards this. This the answer is staring us in the face and sometimes I think we lean into the extremes because it makes us feel good, it's a bit revolutionary, perhaps it's a bit, you know, it appeals to our anti-establishment side perhaps. And and you know, people genuinely have improvements to their their lifestyles and and their symptoms as well. So I don't want to dismiss that, but ultimately that's the general trend that we should be heading towards. There was another study actually that looked at self-reported health status among people consuming a carnivore diet. And the survey was distributed on social media. So obviously you've got a self-selecting audience here. The behaviour and actually the outcomes showed that people enjoy consuming these diets and they felt that they were very wedded to this idea of an animal-based only or a carnivore style diet, whatever you want to call it. But they did find that most of the folks had elevated LDL cholesterol, which is something that I think we would concern me that people would be putting themselves at risk of cardiovascular disease and even dementia as well. To their credit, they were found to have optimal glucose and HBA1C levels. And I think that's sort of expected, you know, if you're not taking any carbohydrates, your glucose is going to be absolutely flat. But to maintain such an extreme diet takes a lot of motivation as well, as well. And I just think this is playing with fire considering we don't have long-term studies of people consuming these diets in modern environments and everything that we do know about raised low density lipoproteins and apoB smacks to me of of you're putting yourself at severe risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and everything else that comes with that as well. So, that's my that's my warning to the the carnivore folks. Okay, so that's macro-restrictive diets. What about these other diets that have been popularised by, I don't know, LA folks, like gluten-free diets, dairy-free diets. There's obviously vegan and vegetarian diets, which are based on as much about morals as well as they are about health. There's also no sugar diets, no refined carbs, that kind of stuff. They're very, very popular and I think they work again because they're super easy to follow, really, really simple, just, you know, get rid of the gluten or don't eat meat and those tend to be quite calorie rich as well, what what people tend to to like eating. They all reduce processed foods. So if you're removing gluten from your diet, you're going to be removing bread, pasta, cookies, a lot of things that sneak gluten into our into our processed food environment. So it's no wonder if you're reducing your processed foods, you're going to be consuming less calories as well. And they're higher in fibre. And if you know anything about Doctor's Kitchen, you know we don't sleep on fibre. There is nothing about fibre that we don't like. There was actually a study published in nature where calorie intake was controlled across two different diets, but dietary fibre was increased in one of the diets and this was called the microbiome supporting diet. So what they found is that participants on this microbe supporting diet that was higher in fibre, they absorbed fewer calories. So specifically, they absorbed 90% of the ingested calories on this high fibre diet compared to 95% on a Western style diet. And that doesn't sound like that much, but actually over time, if every single day you're consuming 5% less of the calories from your chosen diet, that's going to compound and that's going to lead to weight loss as well. And generally the current evidence supports this idea that greater intake of fibre generally promotes weight loss. And therefore it can't just be about calories in, calories out. The gut microbiota plays a crucial role in determining calories absorbed from food and individuals with different microbial compositions may absorb calories differently. We're actually going to talk about this in some of the uncomfortable truths a little bit later on as well. So the dietary restriction, I think works again through, you know, it's less calories as well, but it certainly can increase the quality of the foods that you're consuming because you're removing a lot of the products that are ultra-processed. And if you just simply remove ultra-processed foods from your diet, you'll be really, really surprised at not just the weight losing effects, but also the effects on your mood and your your general state of well-being too. Okay, let's talk about fasting and intermittent fasting schedules. These have become really, really popular and there's so many different names out there. You've got time restricted feeding, intermittent fasting. These are all dietary approaches that involve alternating periods of eating and fasting. And there's various methods that you've probably heard of, 5:2, alternate day, 16:8. Strictly speaking, intermittent fasting involves severe calorie restriction on specific days. So that's like the 5:2 model where you're eating a normal amount of calories on Monday to Friday and the weekend you drastically reduce it to something like 7 or 800 calories depending on your individual requirements. So that's that's intermittent fasting. Time restricted feeding involves simply changing the feeding window with no change to your calorie intake other than maintaining an isocaloric way of eating. I.e. you're not overeating, you're not under-eating. So it simply involves when you eat your calories, not how much you should be consuming at all. Now, which mode of fasting is best for which person? Super hard to ascertain. There's likely to be huge variability in individual responses. So it's a bit of trial and error. Now we know it definitely works for weight loss. It's definitely something that probably has some metabolic benefits. There is a question as to whether fasting has longevity benefits. We don't really have a clear longevity marker. We don't have a marker of like how fast you are ageing that I think is particularly accurate. There are some epigenetic clocks out there and and various other methods, but I just I don't have that much confidence in them. So there is a question mark over these longevity benefits. But in general, they tend to work on similar principles, these fasting mechanisms. Why does it work for weight loss? Well, insulin sensitivity is one thing that definitely improves with fasting. And this can enhance your body's ability to utilise glucose and store less fat. So during a fasting period, your insulin levels will drop because your insulin is released from your pancreas in response to food that you consume in the form of carbohydrates. So when you consume food, your insulin level goes up so you maintain a steady state of sugar level in your blood and it drives the insulin will drive the sugar into cells where it's required to be used for energy. So your muscle cells, your liver cells, etc. During fasting periods, your insulin level flat lines. Therefore, the body has to access stored fat for energy and it encourage it encourages this switch. And this brings me on nicely to metabolic switching. This refers to the body's ability to transition between different sources of energy based on availability and demand. So during this fasting period, or even in scenarios where you have very low carbohydrate intake, i.e. you're not spiking your insulin level, the body shifts from burning glucose, which is its primary and preferred energy source. So this is the sugar that you get from bread that you've just consumed, let's say, to burning the stored fat. And this switch enhances that fat oxidation that can lead to greater fat loss over time. You have also something called glycogen stores. These are the stored form of glucose that you hold in your liver and your muscles. And these actually also deplete during a fast. Usually after around 12 hours. So if you've got like a, if you're not having any food and it's been 12 hours time, not only do you not have sugar in your bloodstream, but you're also going and and searching through all the different rooms in your body, in your liver and your muscles to look for any stored glucose that you've packed away just in case, you know, you didn't have any food coming in. Once those stores are depleted, that's when your body undergoes this metabolic switch to maintain energy. It's a very well-established mechanism of shifting to that alternative fuel source such as fatty acids and ketones. What are the things that affect this metabolic switching? Well, the dietary composition. So like I said, even with low carbohydrate diets or high fat diets like a ketogenic diet, in addition to fasting, these can promote that metabolic switching by encouraging the body to utilise fat and ketones for energy. And the length of fast and the period of fasting can also influence the metabolic switch as well. Generally, the switching occurs after 12 hours, but there is individual variability as well. It depends on what your last meal was as well. So that's why when you find athletes who are preparing for a long run, let's say, they will start what's known as carb loading colloquially, where they're trying to pack in as much glucose into their body so they store that glucose into their liver and into their muscles for when they're doing that massive bout of exercise, generally endurance exercise. They will have to have a longer period of fasting to deplete those glycogen stores to make the metabolic switch into fat. Now with with different people and depending on genetics, that switching effect can be changed, can be can be different and there's individual variability in that as well. Another thing that can influence this metabolic switch is exercise. So this can actually enhance the effects of metabolic switching by depleting those glycogen stores more quickly and promoting that fat oxidation. So let's say you're at the end of a fast, it's 12 hours and you start going to the gym and then you start on the treadmill or you start on a bike, you're going to rapidly encourage your body to rapidly search through all the different areas in the body where there's glycogen stores, utilise that glycogen and then you're going to have to rely on fat stores if you've got fat stores. Everyone's got fat stores, but that's when you get that metabolic switch to fat and you start burning those fats and ketones for energy instead of the glucose that you don't have. And like I said, there's individual genetic factors, metabolic rate, individual physiology, these can all affect the efficiency and timing of that metabolic switch. So, this is all to say, fasting is another environmental trigger to make the switch and to encourage that metabolic switching a lot easier as well. When you make that metabolic switch, you're essentially tapping into what's known as ketosis. So this is where you produce or you mobilise the fat and you create the ketones and you utilise those ketones for energy. And that leads to ketosis. This is where the body produces ketones from fat and they use this as energy. And this further promotes fat burning and weight loss as well. The same thing happens with calorie restriction methods. It's the same thing that I mentioned earlier, but it's just something that people find easy to tap into with a fasting. It can certainly be very, very effective for certain people as well. And to be honest, the reason why it works, super simple. It's a very simplified eating plan. Having designated eating and fasting periods, times when you eat and times when you do not eat, or the alternate day or intermittent fasting methods where you just do not eat for an entire day, individuals might find that really easy to avoid the mindless snacking and emotional eating or just, you know, counting calories in general. It's just a very, very simple plan that a lot of people have found success with as well. And obviously, the whole thing, if you even if you're doing time restricted feeding, you're going to be putting yourself most likely in a calorie deficit. The reason why is because up to 25% of calories every single day comes from snacking. And if you're having these designated eating times and fasting times, individuals might find it easier to avoid the mindless snacking and emotional eating that occurs usually at the end of the day or in front of the TV or just out of boredom as well. So you're probably putting yourself in a calorie deficit just a lot more effortlessly than the sort of more rigorous calorie counting methods. So when you compare this to calorie restriction methods, research shows that these fasting methods can lead to 3 to 8% weight loss over a 3 to 24 week period with significant proportions being lost from fat. It does improve health markers, probably because of the fat loss, but, you know, that aside, it can improve things like blood sugar levels, it decreases your insulin resistance, lowers cholesterol, reduces inflammation. It's very hard to disentangle this from the weight loss effect itself, but those are what the the studies definitely show. And in comparison to traditional traditional dieting methods like calorie restriction methods, some studies suggest that intermittent fasting may be as effective or more effective than those methods for weight loss as well, probably because it's quite easy to adhere for some people. And actually, there was a 2023 meta-analysis comparing traditional dieting, calorie restriction methods to intermittent fasting, and they found comparable effectiveness for weight loss. Overall, many studies looking at fasting methods have found that on average, people who stick to a time restricted eating method or intermittent fasting regime consume less calories than traditional calorie restriction methods. So it could be helpful if you've been on diets before and have not been able to stick with them, this could be a more helpful way of promoting the the the consumption of less calories overall. There's a very simplified way of looking at it. You know, you can talk about the benefits of autophagy, which is this process of cell cleanup, and the those longevity benefits that we're talking about, the the the mindfulness benefits. There are probably a lot more reasons to to explore with intermittent fasting, but you can also get those autophagy benefits from calorie restriction as well. So it's definitely up to the individual and I think I've seen a lot of patients and colleagues utilise these methods to to great success. And so I I I think it really depends on the individual. You've also got to be aware of eating disorders when it comes to time restricted feeding and intermittent fasting methods as well. Now, you're probably thinking that, you know, I'm hellbent on just reducing calories, whatever your choice of diet, counting calories is all that matters. But I want to address some uncomfortable truths to be aware of. And I don't think this gets much attention from the dieting industry who are just trying to sell you a very simplified method of counting calories, reducing calories and plans and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot more than just the calories. I know it seems like I've just gone on about calories and that's all I care about. There's a lot more than that as well. There's some uncomfortable truths. So, these are the things that you probably don't hear too much about, particularly from fitness influencers who are just, oh, just reduce your calories, that's all. You know, it's it's not as simple as that, unfortunately. So, individual absorption of calories varies greatly. Food processing can affect the absorption of said calories. The labelling of calories is particularly inaccurate. All this means is a calorie eaten is not necessarily a calorie absorbed. So, first off, why don't we just talk about calories as well? I've talked about calories this whole time. I didn't want to give you this history lesson, but I will just take you down memory lane for a little bit because I think it's important. So in the 1800s, Wilbur Atwater and his colleagues, they devised a system to figure out how much energy, that is how many calories, that's how we measure the energy, various foods contain. And they use something called a bomb calorimeter. And this bomb calorimeter basically allows you to burn food samples and record the energy release that they have in the form of heat. One calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1° Celsius. There is no debate about this, okay? So every calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1° Celsius. There is absolutely no debate on that. Everyone uses this calculation. Using Atwater's calculations, 1 g of fat is generally 9 calories. That's how much energy is produced and that's how much you consume if you have 1 g of fat. And 1 g of protein and 1 g of carbs is 4 calories. We still use these same exact numbers for calorie counts in foods today. Nothing has changed. But the issue is, you won't absorb 100% of those calories that you consume. And here's why. A lot of these calories will simply just pass out of your body undigested in faeces and urine. And there is a lot of variability between how people absorb calories differently. Research has shown that people absorb wildly different amounts of calories from the same foods due to various factors like your gut microbiota composition, your digestive enzyme levels, genetic differences. There is a real big difference between how much you will absorb from, let's say, if you imagine an apple, some people will absorb 95% of the calories in said apple. Some people will absorb 60% of the calories in that apple. There's a big difference. And that's just one ingredient. And there'll be variations on different ingredients over the entire course of a day as well. So, that's an uncomfortable truth that we need to get a lot more comfortable with. How processed a food is and the fibre content of an ingredient can also change the calorie absorption as we've discussed. So, in the example of an almond, the size of the particles of an almond determine the absorption of the energy. So if you look at this very simplified diagram that I've got that I'll explain for the podcast folks, on one side you've got whole almonds that is raw, skin on, there's 100 calories of that. In the middle, you've got ground almond flour. So this is a lot more broken up, the particles are smaller than the whole almonds. And on the far right, you've got almond butter. This is pureed to the point where it's almost like a an oil and actually you'll get some oil separation from that. They're all 100 calories of almonds, but you will absorb the more processed almond butter, you will absorb more of those calories than the whole almonds at the other end of the spectrum. And that is purely because of the food matrix, the processing that that same amount of calories of almonds has undergone. This is something that is undeniable. There's lots of studies to demonstrate that you'll absorb less based on this as well. This is something that calorie counting cannot account for, the absorption of the calories that you consume. In addition, calorie labelling on food can be widely inaccurate itself. So the FDA actually allows up to 20% difference between what's on the nutrition label and what's actually accurate. Now, this doesn't sound like a lot, but over time, it will certainly stack up as well. So, this again, I think is another reason why people can't take calorie counting too seriously. The biology, our biology is far too messy to create a process to accurately convey these exact numbers. Let's talk about the other things that can affect weight as well. I'll stop talking about calories so much. Lifestyle, environment, gene influences, supplements, these all affect your weight. Within the lifestyle category, let's talk about stress. Stress can definitely affect your weight. How does it do this? Well, at a neurocircuitry level, chronic stress can affect brain regions involved in motivation circuits. This changes your sensitivity to rewards. It changes your food preference and it changes the wanting and seeking particularly of hyper-palatable foods. So when you're stressed, you can start to crave these comfort foods, the sugary snacks, the doughnuts, the other typically calorie dense foods, even in the absence of genuine hunger signals from your body that you actually need to consume more calories. Why does this happen? Because food has these rewarding properties and it's hypothesised that these hyper-palatable foods can serve as genuine comfort food. It actually acts as a form of self-medication to dispel these the unwanted stress. And studies have actually shown that stressed individuals favour the consumption of these hedonically rewarding foods, the ones that are high in sugar and high in fat. And actually, if you observe what food companies do, they go through multiple rounds of testing with individuals where they ask them to rate food, the crunchiness, the texture, the saltiness, the morishness of it, to reach that bliss point. And they actually call it the bliss point where you just take a crisp or you take a chip or whatever it might be, and you just can't stop and you're just like, this is great, this is great. This is hitting that reward signal. So putting that into an environment or into the cupboards of a stressed individual is going to lead to overeating because you're using that food as a reward mechanism and potentially even a self-medication mechanism as well, which is pretty wild to think about. And considering how many of us are chronically stressed, you can see why this can lead to emotional overeating. Stress can also lead to metabolic changes that promote weight and body fat mass as well. And studies have shown that the role of the hormone cortisol in stress-related eating can lead to weight gain. Chronic stress leads to this elevated cortisol level, which is a normal hormone that pulses up and down during the day, usually has a rise in the morning and then peters out over the day. And what cortisol can do, it has a very important role with immune health and sleep-wake cycle, but what it can also do is promote fat storage, particularly in the abdominal region as well. And there are some animal studies that have shown that stress can lead to these metabolic changes that promote weight gain even in the absence of changes to calorie consumption. So if you're stressed and you're pumping out more cortisol, it can lead to those metabolic changes that lead to more weight gain and fat deposition as well. Sleep, you could argue, is a form of stress. It's a very common stressor that may contribute to the increased propensity of obesity and metabolic diseases. Sleep deprivation can lead to insulin resistance, it can lead to raised blood pressure, it can lead to atherosclerosis, and it's estimated that 30% of adults in the US sleep less than six hours per night, which is wild. And in laboratory settings, they've shown that insulin sensitivity was reduced in sleep-restricted individuals. Plus, ghrelin levels increased, that's a hormone that makes you hungrier. Plus, leptin levels, that's a hormone that signals satiety, is reduced. So the net effect is that you crave more food and you eat more calories as well. So this this this storm of of metabolic changes, hormonal changes can all contribute significantly to the way in which you partition food into fat, as well as the behavioural changes that lead you to eat more calories. Another uncomfortable truth is the exposome. So our environment, toxins in food, pesticides, microplastics, it's a very scary subject, but I think it warrants a lot more attention than it it gets. And this can all be sort of unified into a word called obesogens. Obesogens are a class of chemicals that can disrupt the body's normal metabolic processes. They can lead to increased fat accumulation and obesity. They're types of endocrine disrupting chemicals, EDCs. These can interfere with hormonal systems that regulate appetite, fat storage and ultimately weight. Essentially, they work in some instances by mimicking or blocking the actions of your your genuine hormones due to their ability to bind or interfere with these hormone receptors. And many of these chemicals are actually found in a whole host of different products which humans are exposed to pretty much every day. Plastics, chemicals applied to furniture, electronics, personal care products, baby bottles, waste bottles, and yes, food as well. And I want to bring up a paper that was just published in the International Journal of Obesity this year where they describe a new model of assessing and preventing obesity, which encompasses not only excess energy consumption that I've spent a lot of time talking about already, but also exposure to these obesogens. Now, some of these potential obesogens are shown in this table. A lot can be found in processed foods, but also personal care products. And I'll just go through them in a little detail. So there's BPA, bisphenol A, that's now very well recognised as being an obesogen. There's also phthalates, PFAs. There's also some that are on the fence, so non-nutritive sweeteners, there's a whole bunch that I can't actually pronounce, monosodium glutamate, there's methyl and butyl parabens. There's a whole host of different chemicals and probably more in the pipeline that we just haven't got round to studying at this point. These chemicals have the potential to contribute in some way to weight gain as well as the other detrimental effects on health as well. How do these affect your weight specifically? Like I mentioned, they alter your hormone regulation. So these obesogens can mimic and interfere with the function of hormones like estrogen, testosterone, thyroid hormones. This disruption can affect metabolic rate, it can affect appetite control and the regulation of fat storage. It can also affect adipogenesis. So these chemicals can promote the differentiation of your pre-adipocytes, so these are the precursor cells to fats, into fat cells. This is all to say that it can increase the number of fat cells in the body. There are also metabolic changes as well. It can lead to insulin resistance. So it can these obesogens can impair insulin signalling that leads to insulin resistance, which is a condition that promotes fat storage and is essentially a precursor to type two diabetes as well. It can also interfere with the normal breakdown and utilisation of fats that can lead to fat accumulation. It can affect satiety regulation, so it affects leptin and ghrelin as well. And perhaps most worrying of all, some obesogens can affect the composition of your gut microbiome, affecting the ability of your microbes to extract nutrients and energy from food, which can contribute to weight gain as well. It's a really interesting paper this as well because they also discuss the obesogenic effect of certain processed foods. It's theorised that a food's glycemic index and glycemic load, so how quickly and how much it will increase your blood glucose level, triggers the release of more insulin, which in turn influences energy metabolism and the storage of excess energy as fat. This is the so-called carbohydrate insulin model of obesity. And they've noted some very recognizable Westernized foods that could have this obesogenic effect as well. So, your typical McDonald's, your fried chicken, your ultra-processed foods, so Nova class 4, low in fibre, high in sugar, as well as the combination of said diet with a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables because you're not getting the quality fibres as well to to to mitigate against that. This all sounds very scary. I'm very aware of how scary this all is, but you know, I think we need to have more pragmatic conversations about not just the food that we consume, but the environment in which we consume said food, as well as what we put on the food. Pesticides and other environmental pollutants are likely going to be having a compounding effect in addition to the energy consumption that has definitely increased over the last few decades that contributes to weight gain. Genetic influences. Some of us, genetically, are more likely to put on weight in the wrong places. So body fat distribution is regulated by genetics and this distribution pattern varies across ethnic groups independent of whether they're actually obese or not. So as a South Asian myself, I'm more likely to have more visceral fat compared to a European counterpart. And Africans have less visceral fat than Europeans. Consequently, South Asians tend to be more susceptible to type two diabetes even with lower BMIs compared with Europeans. This is a stark reality that we need to get more comfortable with, but I do want to say that genes aren't your destiny and the environment plays a much larger role in your ability to lose or gain fat. And I think it's interesting to know your genes and it will govern your propensity to to be obese or to to lose weight or or struggle to lose weight, but it's just something to be aware of, not something that that sentences you to obesity or type two diabetes and the other detrimental effects of excess weight. I think by now, I've probably beaten you right down. You know, it's easy to throw your hands up in the air and just think, look, this is far too complicated. I don't know my genetics, the carrier labels are all wrong. I don't know how many calories are actually absorbed. I don't know exactly how many calories I burn. My stress affects it, my weight, you know, all these different elements can have an impact on your ability to to gain or lose weight. So look, this is how I would approach weight loss in the most compassionate as well as evidence-based way as possible. These are the things I would do. I would get an idea of my caloric burn. I would actually do that. I would do a test in a lab as I have done that checks my resting metabolic rate, or if I wanted to do it for free, use a calculator that incorporates my activity level to give me a ballpark figure, given all the caveats I've just talked about, about what my total daily energy expenditure is likely to be every single day. I would not take this number too seriously, but I think it is useful for people to know this ballpark figure. Number two, I would get an idea of my caloric intake. So I would actually track calories for around seven days, so everything I eat and everything I drink, and take an average of those seven days using a simple calorie counter, free online, like MyFitnessPal or the plethora of other apps out there. Again, given all the caveats, I would not take these numbers too seriously, but I think again, it would be useful for me to know this ballpark figure. Using this information, I would choose a dietary approach or pattern that I really enjoy. That could be low carb, it could be vegan, it could be paleo, it could be Mediterranean. It doesn't really matter when we're talking about weight loss. And as I've discussed, different diets will work differently for for different people, but the best diets for weight loss will absolutely incorporate two qualities. It will be hypocaloric, so you'll eat less calories than you burn, and it will be sustainable. It will fit your food preferences and lifestyle and it's something that for you will be easy to adhere for. And that's going to be different for different people. So the question you should be asking yourself isn't which diet is best for weight loss or which is best for visceral fat. It's actually which diet is going to better enable you to control overeating in the long run, doesn't restrict nutrients of importance to your health, so vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, and is easy for you to stick to. Those are the criteria that you should be asking yourself when you choose a diet, any diet. Now that I've got my diet, I would calculate using that diet a 10% calorie deficit with that eating pattern. I'm using 10% as a deficit because that's unlikely to shock my body where I'm going to lose too much weight too quickly. That's what tends to happen if people go too aggressive with a calorie deficit. You find this yo-yoing effect and a general trend upwards. It's a very unfortunate situation that a lot of people find themselves in. So a 10% deficit is unlikely to shock your body and it's more likely that you will adhere to that deficit in the long run as well. So, if we use a very simple calculation, if I do my calorie requirements each day that incorporates my height, weight, activity levels using a calculator, and for me, it's two and a half thousand calories. If I reduce my consumption of calories to 2,250 calories, that is a 10% deficit. It's quite easy to adhere to that for me. The fifth thing I would do is ensure that within that calorie budget, I will ensure that I'm getting at least 1.5 grams per kilogram of protein per day or calculate 30% of calories are coming from high protein sources. So using the same calorie measurements as before, this means I'll be having around 700 calories every single day coming from protein or using what my preferred method is, which is using my weight. I would weigh, I weigh about 75 kilograms, so I'd be needing to consume about 110 grams of protein per day using the 1.5 grams per kilogram method. Spread across three meals, that is around 35 grams of protein at each meal. So that's 200 grams of tempeh, 150 grams of chicken breast, 300 grams of edamame, 150 grams of white fish per meal. Quite simple and quite easy for me to maintain. And the reason why I'm having the protein is because, as we've already established, it's satiating, it has a higher thermic effect, and you don't need to rely on animal protein for your protein needs as well. I've said all these things about calories. Again, I would not take these numbers too seriously. These are all ballpark figures. So I'm not going to beat myself up if one day I'm having 100 or 150 calories more than I was proposed to, because there is going to be undulation in terms of my caloric burn every single day as well. Because you're it's going to be an average across the week rather than something that is absolutely rigid every single day because there is so much inaccuracy in the calorie counting methods as we've just described. The sixth thing I would do is I would use a time restricted eating method to restrict my feeding window for my chosen diet, regardless of what that diet is. So at a minimum, it would be 12 hours a day. This stops me overeating, it stops me snacking. And in fact, on average, like I said, 25% of people's calories actually come from snack foods. So any strategy that limits this would be a good thing, aside from the potential metabolic benefits of time restricted feeding as well. It simply allows you to be a lot more regimented with not over consuming unnecessary foods that can contribute to your calorie surplus that leads to weight gain over time. That is generally what I would do. Calculate the burn, calculate the intake, choose a diet, ensure it's 10% calorie deficit thereabouts, make sure I'm getting enough protein and ensure that I'm doing a time restricted feeding method. If you were just to do those things, you will 100% lose weight. In addition to all those things, I would be consciously trying to increase my fibre intake. Vegetables, maybe even a supplement, fruits. I would try and also get most of my protein sources from plants because plant protein is naturally low in calories, it's higher in fibre and contains good quality proteins as well. So tempeh, edamame, tahini, hummus, these are all things that are high in protein, high in fibre as well. Again, it's satiating, it supports my microbiota and it means that my signals for appetite and satiety are going to be a lot better regulated as well because I'm supporting the microbes and they're getting essentially what they need as well. I would also be engaging in stress reduction techniques. So whether that's engaging in therapy or whether it's doing a mindful regime because we know the more stressed you are, the more likely you are to put on weight from the cortisol effect and the more cravings you have as well and cravings for food that will soothe your your stress state. I would ruthlessly prioritise my sleep. I already try and do that as much as possible, but optimising my sleep environment, my go-to-bed time and ensuring that I'm not eating too late as well that can affect the sleep quality. I would avoid processed foods like the plague. It affects your satiety, it affects your ability to naturally regulate eating, and generally it is not good for metabolism as well. I would walk as much as possible to increase my general energy expenditure and I would reduce exposure to obesogens using glass, ceramic, stainless steel and cast iron. These are all the additional things that I would do to the general dietary approach. And again, I just want to labour this point, this is said against the backdrop of me recognising the sheer inaccuracy and many flaws of calorie counting as a method. I do not take calorie counting too seriously. There's lots of inaccuracy and variability from person to person, but as an exercise to recognise whether you are over or under consuming food and as a method of weight loss, I think it's a worthwhile activity. Finally, people ask me this all the time, are there supplements that help me lose weight? These are the supplements I would go for. Protein. Protein, like we said, improves overall satiety when taken right before a meal. Most studies available look at high protein diets, but we know that if you are more satiated from ensuring that you're getting adequate protein during the day, you're less likely to snack and overeat. And during weight loss, there's also the risk of losing muscle mass along with the fat. So protein helps preserve that lean muscle tissue when coupled with exercise. Important caveat there. When coupled with exercise and you're having adequate protein, it will allow you to preserve that muscle tissue that you want to keep. So, you could try whey, casein or plant-based protein powders. You can go for unflavoured versions. I know these are more convenient options. I would ensure that you're not getting any with sweeteners and I would use those to help you keep full during the day or you can use high protein snacks, edamame, roasted chickpeas, nuts and seeds. These are great protein, high protein additions to your day that will maintain your satiety. The second thing is caffeine. Products that contain caffeine or have fat burning properties. It stimulates the central nervous system to increase the release of adrenaline and that can enhance something called thermogenesis. This process essentially boosts the body's energy expenditure by increasing heat production. That's thermogenesis. And this essentially helps you to burn more calories even at rest. It has a lipolytic effect. So we talked about lipolysis before. This is the release of fatty acids from fat tissues, making them more available for energy use. And this is particularly noticeable during exercise where caffeine enhances fat oxidation, which helps the body burn more fat for fuel, as well as improving performance as well. So this is actually why when I train in the mornings, I fast overnight. I have a black coffee in the morning and not only does that engage the effect of caffeine on my fat stores, but it also improves the performance and endurance of my body during a training session, which would ultimately increase the amount of energy I burn too as well. Green tea. This contains a high amount of EGCG. And I'm going to try and pronounce this properly in one go. Epigallocatechin gallate. This is something that has not only fat burning effects, but also has anti-cancer effects as well. It's also known to lower your appetite. So not only does it liberate stored fat for use as energy or removal from the body, it can also potentially lead you to eat less as well. And the sweet spot for green tea appears to be 500 milligrams. That's the meaningful dose of green tea. So you can either take that as a supplement in a supplemental form or you can enjoy it as a beverage. Two to three cups per day is the equivalent of around 500 milligrams of green tea extract. So I prefer to have it in the more natural way. So a matcha tea or a loose leaf green tea would be a great way to potentially increase the fat burning potential of your your fat stores. Fibre. Fibre can reduce overall energy intake through its effect on appetite. Your gut microbes will generate short chain fatty acids from the fibre fermentation, which can have a number of effects. It improves your ability to regulate your appetite, so you crave less food. It has the physical effect of bulking food, which has a satiating effect as well, and it can slow down that digestion that also makes you recognise satiety signals better as well. I personally would just take more fibre in the form of food. That's pulses, beans, green vegetables, fruits as well. But if you wanted a supplement, you could try one tablespoon of psyllium husk in the morning with plenty of water. Make sure you have it with plenty of water. That could be a great option or even milled flaxseed that you can put on top of stews and or even in a smoothie as well. So that is weight loss in a nutshell. Well, it's not really a nutshell, but you know, we've gone through everything, all the calorie restriction methods, the the popular diets, the reasons why they work, the uncomfortable truths, what I would do for weight loss. We're going to go through some quick fire questions. These are popular questions I get asked all the time. The first one is, is exercise effective for weight loss? Yes, but your diet counts more. So exercise can definitely help you build more muscle and lose more fat and tap into those fat stores, but if you only consider fat loss and weight loss, eating better usually trumps exercising more. So that's exercise. Is keto good for weight loss? By now, you should be answer, you should be able to answer the question of is XXX diet good for weight loss? The answer is always, it depends. It depends how much you're consuming, can you maintain that diet, do you enjoy it? So as long it is as it's fulfilling those two criteria of it's hypocaloric and you can adhere to it for the long term, then it will be good for weight loss. So that that is, you know, the number one takeaway I would say from this is any diet can be good for weight loss, it really depends on you. Can you target belly fat specifically when losing weight? Well, the honest answer is no. There isn't any evidence that you can target specific points in your body around your abdomen or on your thighs when losing weight. You can't choose where to lose weight. But there is some evidence that spot reduction exercises do exist. So as part of a study, they looked at doing crunches combined with endurance exercise and what that seems to do is mobilise your fat stores and when you engage in the crunching exercise or whatever exercise it might be in a certain area of your body, it does appear to preferentially reduce the fat from that area. So spot reduction exercises weren't thought to be a thing, but actually new evidence suggests that there is the potential for that to actually work. But when it comes to food, there is no singular food that I can point to that be like, if you take green tea, it's going to get rid of this belly fat. You need to lose weight more globally, more generally, and there is no sort of evidence to suggest that there are specific foods that you can eat specifically for belly fat. Should I count calories? It really depends. It's up to you. I personally find that calorie counting as an exercise for a week would give me a good idea of whether I am over or under eating. But it really depends on whether you have a propensity toward eating disorders or you have an unhealthy relationship with healthy eating. In that case, I would not recommend you count calories, but as an exercise to figure out whether you are where you are in that calorie balance, I think it might be a one-off exercise to do, but not something that I would recommend doing every single day, every single week. No one wants that. My thoughts on weight loss shakes. Avoid them like the plague. They will give you a very short, sharp energy and calorie reduction that can massively reduce your basal metabolic rate. And when you go to eating even the same amount that you were eating prior, because of your reduction in that basal metabolic rate, you'll find yourself in a calorie excess. And that's what typically leads to yo-yo dieting. So when you yo-yo diet, you tend not to yo-yo in this way, you tend to yo-yo upwards. And you and and you find a lot of people in situations where they've been chronic dieters, chronic crash dieters, and that is associated with increased weight gain over time. So I would avoid weight loss shakes if you can as much as possible. My thoughts on weight loss pills. The dangers of weight loss pills, so the fat burners that have a bit of amphetamine in, they the dangers do not outweigh the benefits. The only weight loss supplements that I've suggested are protein, green tea, caffeine containing products like coffee, and fibre supplements. And finally, are there foods that promote or reduce visceral fat? So overall, energy consumption is what matters. So if you are in a caloric deficit using whatever strategy you like, you will lose visceral fat and the belly fat as well. However, saturated fats can actually preferentially increase the amount of visceral fat that accumulates compared to monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids that you tend to get from plants. So good quality olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds, these are not going to increase your visceral fat. Saturated fats, mainly from processed animal products, bacon, processed meats, fatty cuts of animal-based products, so lots of fat from beef and and turkey, that can lead to visceral fat accumulation. So I would avoid those and focus on plant fats if you're looking to reduce visceral fat. But overall, it is really about energy expenditure and ensuring that you are in that caloric deficit. That is weight loss in a nutshell. I'm sure you're going to have loads more questions. Hopefully that gives you the equipment and the evidence base to assess any claim that you see online about whether something is going to be good for weight loss or bad for weight loss. You now have all the tools to address those claims online. And if you have any comments, let me know on YouTube down in the comments below. I'll see you here next time.
