Sugar & Fat Don't Make You Fat, THIS Makes You Fat

All right, here's some interesting facts around nutrition. Many of the negative effects that have been associated with sugar and even fat are really attributed to when you overeat them. In other words, when you look at a diet that is low in calories, even if it's high in sugar, high in certain types of fats, many of the negative effects are actually gone. So you might wonder, well, why then do we attack sugar and fat, and why are they connected to poor health? Well, here's why. Sugar, fat, and salt—salt is another one— together make food hyperpalatable. So if you observe populations that consume a lot of one of them or all of them, what you're probably looking at are people that just overconsume in general. All right, so let's talk about this a little bit. Talking about human behaviors again. That's it. Yeah, a better hook, I think, would have been sugar doesn't make you fat, fat doesn't make you fat. I think everybody knows that, though, right? I mean, I think that's become—when we first started— I don't know. There's still lots of thoughts out there that sugar is the cause of all obesity. Yeah, and this is what's interesting about it, right? You can find studies that find that diets that are high in sugar cause more problems, inflammation, higher rates of cancer, Alzheimer's. You can find studies that show this with certain types of fats as well. And then there have been studies where they have people eat a high-sugar diet, but their calories are low, or a diet that's high in saturated fat, but the calories are low. Or like keto diets, when those first came out and became popular, people were eating tons of fat but low-calorie, and you saw blood markers improve, health improve, and so everybody's kind of confused. And yet we still see these studies that connect these macronutrients, especially salt also, that connect these macronutrients to poor health. But really it's about overconsumption, and sugar, fat, and salt— this is very well-known— those three are the three main components that make food hyperpalatable. And what we've done in modern times is we've really figured out how to engineer foods with those flavors through either real sources or chemical sources to make them so hyperpalatable that you overeat. And here's what's interesting. Sugar consumption has actually dropped over the last maybe decade or so, and yet people are still getting more obese. We're just eating too much. That's the big problem. It's just really difficult to curb cravings when you have all those flavors to consider. I mean, there's still a lot of people out there that literally seek after foods based on their flavor alone, and that's really the amount of thought and effort that's put into a lot of the meals that are created, where when you add sugar into the mix, it really does sort of perpetuate this craving, this longing for more sweet things in the diet, which then the calories really start to add up before you know, and it gets away from you. So how do you feel about health and wellness experts that demonize sugar when you see them post about it? What goes through your head right away? Because you have to know, too, that in the context of overconsumption, which is pretty much everyone, I mean, on average, is overconsuming. That's the biggest point right there. Right. So do you think it's good or bad or indifferent advice when you see something like that? Well, two things. First, health and metabolism are way more complex than what I might have just presented. There's a lot of complexities there, right? But the truth is, like what I said earlier, overconsumption really is what results in a lot of these negative effects. Now, demonizing sugar, demonizing fat, demonizing salt, because a lot of it has to do with overconsumption, I think people might get the wrong message. And so they'll say, oh, I got to avoid sugar, but then they'll continue to overconsume and then not understand why their health is poor. Now, I think if you educate people the right way and say, here's why sugar can pose issues, here's why certain fats can pose issues, here's why if you combine those things with salt, it can pose issues, it has a lot to do with how much it makes you want to eat and you avoid other nutrient-dense foods that maybe aren't as palatable, that don't result in you overeating, because you're going for these foods that are so damn enjoyable to eat. Well, I'm a little conflicted by it because it does immediately sort of address a lot of issues, like in people's diets, if you start just focusing on removing sugar because of just what follows up with that. So to demonize it, it's kind of like, you know, that's not the whole story, but it does help at least address kind of like one of the biggest invaders of bad habits that tends to kind of stack the dominoes in that direction. I'm with you, Justin. I'm conflicted when I see something like this. Like we have our friend, like Lane Norton, who loves to like just destroy the wellness space that likes to do posts like this. But then I also know from experience, like I'm sure both of you, that if I had a client, there's been many times where all I did was, don't worry about anything else, I just want you to reduce your sugar from this many grams to this many grams, right? So I have them track their food, I kind of see where they're at, and I see that they're grossly over consuming in general, but primarily a majority of those calories are coming from sugar. And I also know the behaviors around sugar. And so I know instead of getting into all the nuance and science around what exactly is going on with their body inside by them eating over calories or sugars, I can just go, listen, right now on average, you're eating 90 to 110 grams of sugar a day. I want you to cut that below 50. So let's try and manage that below 50. Don't worry about anything else, we'll get there later on. And instantly I can see a huge difference many times just by doing that. So I feel torn when I see that advice coming because the truth is, that advice probably helps a lot of people. But then I also understand where Lane is coming from because he's right, in the context of low calorie, you could literally, you could eat 500, if you're a maintenance calorie, let's say. Yeah, so long as you eat your essentials, right? Let's say, well, yeah, even if you weren't doing that. Say somebody is 100 pounds overweight, their maintenance caloric intake, so for their body to stay the same is, let's just say 3,000 calories. They technically could eat 2,000 calories of ice cream every day and live off it and they would lose weight. Yeah, but you would see blood markers improve. That's right. You would actually see all the health markers improve in that time period. But would you guys ever recommend somebody eating 2,000 calories of ice cream? No, because you cannot remove how foods make you feel, the kind of cravings that they produce. So yes, you would lose weight. There was this one scientist that in order to prove his point, I don't remember his name, but in order to prove his point, he went on a fast food, processed food diet, but kept his calories low, made sure he ate his essentials. In other words, you still have to eat an essential amount of protein and fats, otherwise your body can't function. And he did that. And just to prove to his students, look at my blood markers, look at my triglycerides, I lost weight, blah, blah, blah. But here's the deal. Can somebody, can most people do that and also feel good, stick to it, not feel like they have tons of cravings? No. So you can't separate the behaviors and how you feel from the, I guess the physiological, what happens to my body effects from eating this way. So I think it's all important, but I do think it's important to understand because here's what happened in the 80s. In the 80s, we were sold, in the 90s even, we were sold that it was fat. Fat is the problem. So what did food manufacturers do? Well, they cut fat out of their processed foods, but now the foods don't taste good. So what did they replace the fat with? Sugar. They added lots of, when I was a kid, there were aisles of fat-free, low-fat foods. But in order to make them enjoyable to eat, they increased the sugar. Did obesity drop in the 80s and 90s? Did health improve in the 80s and 90s with the reduction of fat coming out of food? No, it actually kept getting worse. Well, I have like two thoughts. And this is in the context of like keeping that amount of calories low and being in a deficit, but still like including a lot of sugar in your diet. You know, I'd be curious to see if there's still this sort of degrade in your teeth, if there's like a rotting in your teeth. And also too, how that affects your insulin if you're just inundating it constantly, even with sugar, even if it's at a low calorie volume. Yeah, that's a good question. And like I was saying, it's more complex than what we're talking about. But if you look at the negatives that are connected to sugar, you do dramatically reduce a lot of them just from cutting overall calories. And this is true for all the demonized stuff. The best studies that I can think of are these, are the ones that show that, and these are the best studies that they've done because they're controlled. Because a lot of these other studies are observational. For example, we noticed that people that eat a lot of sugar are more obese, have higher rates of Alzheimer's, have higher rates of cancer. The problem with that is what I was saying earlier, which is they're probably seeking out more hyper-palatable foods, and they're probably all over-consuming as well. So is it the over-consumption, or is it the sugar? So the best studies that I've seen are the ones where they've taken people, and they're crossover studies, meaning they'll take the groups, cross them over to see if the effects still exist. And they'll take these two groups of people, and they'll say, okay, you over here, group A, you have unlimited access to whole natural foods. And group B, you have unlimited access to these heavily processed foods. And they'll even make sure that the macro breakdowns are extremely similar. So the foods all have a similar protein, fat, carbohydrate breakdown. And then they'll observe them. So they're literally in a lab. They can't do anything else, and they're observed. So they count the calories. The scientists are watching. What are they eating? How much they're eating? It's up to them. They can eat as much as they want or as little as they want. Then they'll take the groups, and they'll switch them. Now they'll take B, put them in group A's room, and take A, and put them in group B's room. So it's an excellent study. And they find, on average, people consume 600 more calories a day when they have access to heavily processed foods. So you eat 600 calories more than you're eating or over your surplus. Now you're going to store body fat, and then you're going to get a lot of the negative effects associated with that. And that's from heavily processed foods. And remember, heavily processed foods are foods that food scientists have literally engineered to be as palatable as possible. It's like comparing an apple versus apple-flavored candy, right? It's grapes versus grape candy. I can eat so many apples, but I bet you I would overeat apple-flavored Apple Jacks or candy far more because they've added things to just really tip it over the scale of hyperpalatability, which causes you to overeat. So we're looking at the wrong things, but that doesn't mean we still shouldn't look at those things. So we should still look at sugars, some kind of fats, and salt, but not because each of them are evil, but rather, what's the relationship with those in overeating? And then let's educate people on this and help them create behaviors around overconsuming. The truth is that people don't necessarily want— I mean, they may say they want to be educated, but nobody wants to go through the effort of learning. It's like they want the quick, just tell me, can I have sugar or can I not have sugar? Give me a pronoun, it's just they want the 15-second clip. Yeah, the trick is to figure out what's the easier answer. It's obviously going to be very complex. In my experience, the best results I ever got with people was where I just simply told them to try to avoid heavily processed foods and then go ahead and eat normally, and that would typically result in— now, you're not going to get shredded doing that. When you start to get shredded, you have to count calories and all that stuff. But people would get to a relatively normal body weight if they followed that advice. That was the easiest one for me. I don't know. What about you guys? Yeah, no, I did the same thing, but even the sugar one that I said, that was— I had a lot of success with that. I had a lot of clients that ate well over 80, 90-plus grams of sugar and not coming mostly from fruit, mostly coming from processed foods, and just giving them a number that I wanted them to manage under, and I knew that that would indirectly affect calories, just like the staying away from the processed foods does the same thing. We're not telling them to count calories or reduce their calories, but we know inevitably what ends up happening because we know the behaviors around those types of foods. So I had a lot of success with just limiting people from eating that much. Yeah, and just adding more fibrous-type foods and green, leafy-type vegetables in there, just adding that in and starts to turn and change the palate a bit. Well, that's what naturally happens. Yeah, and then it just— it follows suit to that. And then just trying your best not to drink calories because it happens like— a lot of my clients didn't realize how many calories they were consuming so quickly just by drinking them. Hundreds. Hundreds, sometimes thousands. Yeah, that was— Like a thousand calories of soda. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I still— I mean, we just— so in the— let's see here, what are we? December something, right? So we're in the first week or so of December, and I— every— I don't think I've made— I don't think I've made three days in a row since Halloween that I haven't had some sort of candy, pie, cake, ice cream, some— and since it's been introduced. Before Halloween, I couldn't tell you the last time that I had any of those things. Since Halloween, those things have made their way into my diet so often that I don't think I've strung even three days of one of those not being in a diet. Yeah, same here. And I know that it's— it's available now. It's in my house. I know that I've— you know, I've opened up. I broke the seal. You know what I'm saying? I've had it now. And now at night, I find myself craving that. It creates a feeling that is hard to resist. The best example I can think for myself is this, right? If you put a bowl of plain, peeled, boiled potatoes in front of me, I am not going to overeat them. But if you slice them, fry them, cover them in salt— by the way, adding calories. So you're adding— you're making them more calorically dense. I'll overeat the hell out of them because it does something to my brain that makes me want to continue— eating past the point of being uncomfortable. This is also, by the way, why artificial sweeteners have not done anything to solve the obesity epidemic. You know, artificial sweeteners are sweet, but they don't have calories. There are no studies that are not— Outrageously sweet. There are no— so studies will have people live their daily lives, replace sugar with artificial sweeteners, and nobody loses weight. It's not because they didn't reduce calories. You can very easily reduce calories with artificial sweeteners, but the problem was they would reduce the calories by having these artificial sweeteners, but then, because they're so palatable and because they're not coming with calories, your body actually makes you want more food, they eat more. So they make up the difference even though they've cut out the sugar from their sodas. This is why it's a terrible— for most— unless you're controlling and counting every macronutrient, which nobody does, it doesn't result in weight loss for anybody. Now, do you think the cravings, the overeating, would you attribute that to chemically what's happening inside of my body more, or that it's attached to some old behavior more? Which one do you— because I look at Katrina. She doesn't have the same problem. She can literally— we can have a candy bar in the freezer or something, and she could break a piece off of it for the next six months. That would never happen, especially one that I like. Maybe if it was one I don't like, I would even do that, but if it was something that I— It's like an almond joint? Yeah, right. Something I'm not really into, but maybe. But if it's something that I like, same thing with a little pint of ice cream. She could get it out. She could take two or three bites, put it back. That thing will last a whole damn year in there. If it's in my— if I open it, it's gone. It's done. I'm going to— I think it's both. I think it's all of the above. It's so complex. And here's the problem. The problem is, in all of human history, we've never been presented with this problem where we have all the food, all the potential flavor combinations, all available, all cheap, and all fast. Yeah, 24 hours. So here's the problem. We are now in a position where, dare I say, the solution is like you almost have to go on a spiritual journey, literally, to create this different relationship to food. In the past, you didn't. There wasn't an issue because I could want to eat all the food I want, just don't have it. So the issue is, I got to find it. Now, it's everywhere. It's cheap. It doesn't matter. Nobody starves in Western civilizations, modern ones, at least. Obesity kills way more people. So now, it's almost like I have to develop this relationship with food where it's like abstinence, discipline, valuing food for lots of its different value, developing balance. And you never had to do that before. So I think it's both, Adam. I think it's the behaviors, how you connect to food. When I'm stressed, ever since I was a kid, I would eat food. Now, when I'm stressed as an adult, this is my coping mechanism or it helps me forget things or when I'm sad or every time I watch a movie, this is the types of foods I like to eat or this is how I connect with people. Or I never learned to enjoy food for its other values aside from its palatability. It's a completely different problem and it's very complex. So I 100% believe or know that it's both. The question I think I have is which one is more powerful. Because back to my point with Katrina, it doesn't seem to affect her the same way. Now, I've tied mine back to my childhood. I've told you guys this before that there's always four to five of us kids in the house at all times. We didn't have a lot of stuff as far as like we didn't get tons of treats. So it was a big deal if mom came home with a quart of ice cream. It would be a big deal if we had one thing of Oreos and you got five kids and two adults. And you're all fighting for it. Yeah, we're all fighting for it. And so I knew that if I went to get it, I would over consume it because I knew that it was probably the only time I'd get it. If one thing of Oreos, you got seven people eating out of it. So you learned to binge. Yeah, I knew that I couldn't just have two and then come back three days later because three days later it would be gone for sure. So when I went in to get it, I got to get the serving size that I want because I don't know. And so it created these habits and behaviors. Now, what I don't know is did those habits and behaviors also do something chemically inside me that made me even more attracted or addicted to the foods? Which one should you focus on I think would be the way to ask your question. And I think it's behaviors all the way. I think the physiology, your physiology also affects your behaviors but your behaviors really affect your physiology and your behaviors are the relationship you have with your physiology. So let's say you're somebody that, you know, let's say you're one of those people that says, oh, my blood sugar drops and I don't, you know, I need to eat sugar. By the way, this is not true for most people. Most people who say this, this isn't true. There's very few people this actually happens to. But let's say this is you and you think, if I don't eat, oh, my God, I need to eat some sugar. Your relationship with that might be to eat some fruit or it might be I eat some candy or I overeat, right? So I think it's the behaviors that if you had to focus on anything, it would be that. I think that's the biggest, in my experience at least, that's where I've had the most success. Well, it's the most controllable, right? Once it's ingested, I can't do anything about what's happening inside of me chemically. It is what it is. But I can make the decision whether I put it in my house or if I do have more than one bite. And so, you know, I actually would do things where I've tested that. And there's times like if I go to a store and I go, hey, I'm going to intentionally buy this treat that I normally would and then I'm also going to make sure that I don't eat more than one or two at a time. I've been able to do it but it just takes so much effort. If it's like what's happened to me right now is all these treats have landed in my house without really me actively making that decision. Like if I go grocery shopping and I go, you know what? It's been a long time since I've had some ice cream. I'm going to get myself one little pint and when I get it I'm just going to, you know, I'll wait until a really hard workout day before I have it or I'll just chip away at it slowly. If I do that with that intention I have better success with it. But if it ends up like what's happened right now where it's like, here, take this extra red velvet cake. Oh, here's this pie and I open the refrigerator and I don't even know how it got there and my stomach's already craving something. That's why I opened it and looked for it. Boy, it's hard for me and I'm aware of that. You know, so I can't imagine how many people that are not that self-aware on how easily this sneaks up on you. My favorite tip for that because you just said it right there, you're aware. You're aware enough to know what you need to do for yourself and what's going to be the challenge. That's the key. I think the key is to become aware and then if you are aware that you have a challenge with a particular food or type of food, what I would always recommend and this was very effective and I do this for myself even, is you just create a barrier between yourself and the impulse because an impulse is literally acting without thinking, right, or acting in a less aware state of mind. That's what makes it an impulse. So what you do is you make a barrier. So what I would do with myself and again, I would recommend clients do this as well and it works so well is I'd say, okay, you know, Mrs. Johnson, if you have chocolate in the house, you know what a struggle it is. It's hard for you to just have one piece. You end up eating the whole box. Here's what I want you to do. I don't want you to never eat chocolate again or tell yourself you can't eat chocolate because that typically results in some kind of a rebound where when you are exposed then you go crazy. So what I would tell her is I'd say, you can have chocolate but you have to drive to the grocery store and you can only buy yourself a single serving. So you can eat it if you really want it. You got to get in the car, drive to the grocery store and then buy a single serving. Now what does that do? What it does is it creates space between you and the impulse which allows for, it doesn't guarantee but it allows for awareness to step in. So now as I'm putting my shoes on, I'm getting in the car, now I'm thinking like, do I really want this? You know, I probably don't. Why am I doing this? I'm grabbing whatever. Or sometimes you get it but often times that awareness, that space allows awareness to jump in and then it stops the impulse. So that's a strategy that I would use all the time. I use that for myself. So like potato chips. They don't, they don't ever in my house but does that mean I won't eat them? No. If I really want them I drive to the store and I grab myself a small batch. Hey if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here. And be sure to subscribe.