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How to Lose Weight the Right Way
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Do you need help with your health? Would you like to increase your longevity while addressing existing health issues?
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How to Actually Live Longer is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
chrisyzen
Hey, it's Christian Jordonov. Thanks for tuning back into the How to Actually Live Longer podcast. I'm a functional health practitioner and coach. I'm also a longevity author. My latest book is How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1, available on Amazon. And my health optimization and longevity program is live longer formula link is down below you can check a little bit out about it and schedule a free one-to-one metabolic function assessment where we can dive deeper into any existing health issues you have any health goals you have and together we can make a winning plan for you and if we're a good fit to work together we can enroll you in my health optimization and longevity program and we can help you meet and exceed your health goals that's always my goal for every client
Dangers of Popular Diets
00:00:49
chrisyzen
Today, I want to talk to you about what the right way to lose weight is. And I'll tell you, I will be direct and upfront right now. If you try to lose weight with intermittent fasting, water fasting, cutting calories, low carb, keto, carnivore diet, you will destroy your health.
00:01:11
chrisyzen
you will destroy your health just don't do it the reason these things will destroy your health is actually there's actually a few reasons right it's not even one reason but the most important reason that actually that's two major reasons right i'm gonna cover so the the first super important reason why you should i believe you should not use these interventions to lose weight is Yes, you will lose you will lose weight. with Some of them you lose weight quite quickly. But the thing is, the faster you lose weight, all that indicates is that you've just put your body through more stress. And what does that mean? You've aged yourself. You've damaged yourself.
00:01:50
chrisyzen
right So the the reason these these interventions, low carb, dieting, cutting calories, starving yourself, ah intermittent fasting, carnivore, keto, the reason they are so harmful in the long term, even though you might get some gains, quote unquote, is because they signal famine, starvation, scarcity to your body, and that kind of stress invariably results in the body lowering its metabolism as a survival mechanism.
00:02:27
chrisyzen
okay um So what what happens is, okay, you might after let's say two, three months on keto or whatever else, you might lose some weight, but let's let's just use very rough numbers here. Let's say you were eating 2,500 calories consistently, and then you went, let's say on a keto diet, and the satiation that the fat from the diet or carnivore diet, the satiation that you get from eating a lot of meat,
00:02:59
chrisyzen
help to stay fuller for longer which which helped to feel satiated so you cut the calories right
00:03:07
chrisyzen
Over those three months, if you're resting, let's say your whole metabolism was 2,500 calories. Let's say it's lowered by just again, roughly by 20% down to 2,000 calories. What does that mean? It means that if you then resume the previous calories you were eating, you're going to start accumulating fat because your your entire metabolism is lowered. And by the way, we've seen from like a ten eight to 10 day fast that the resting metabolic rate of people drops by easily 10-12% in like just over a week. So a 20% drop in metabolism, doing something stressful over months and months, god forbid years, it's very plausible that a ah metabolic rate can drop that much, right?
Impact of Stress on Metabolism
00:03:59
chrisyzen
so that's a bad thing because you think about it this way what what will the body lower and down regulate when it's lowering it's metabolic rate it surely won't you know it take rub you know the the heart the kidneys the the vital function it will rub nice to have functions what listen by the way
00:04:24
chrisyzen
I've said this before I think on the podcast but why do you think so many jacked dudes nowadays are bald? Have lost their hair. Do you think it's genetic? I don't think it's that that that many that many people it's genetic. It is a result of so much stress that some of the things that are nice to have to go are for women fertility, of yeah ovulation menstruation, for guys it would be things like hair,
00:04:54
chrisyzen
Eventually libido, right the older you get, the less resilient you become to these things. Libido, testosterone will be lowered, good mood, sleep.
00:05:06
chrisyzen
yeah and people like I've worked with enough clients to see this is the reality out there. Now, a lot of young people are doing well on these things because they're coming off of a very crappy diet.
00:05:18
chrisyzen
Moving on to like intermittent fasting eating being more intentional with their diet and um Whatever else So they definitely improve it to step in the right direction But super suboptimal long-term and they will only feel that when they get to our age quote-unquote, you know use that or just not and So that's the biggest reason why these and these stressful interventions are a terrible strategy long term. And what i the the sort of phrase I use is, if you use strategies like that to lose weight, you are painting yourself into a metabolic corner.
00:05:52
chrisyzen
and then eventually like I've had some clients big guys that are eating like some days a thousand calories and their weight doesn't budge that's that's indicating very very low metabolism but I think some people get that already here's the other issue of losing weight quickly, right? um There's a couple of issues there. So when you put yourself through ah on a very stressful regime regimen like ah water fasting or cutting calories significantly like a thousand calories or a keto diet with a caloric restriction, which is what a lot of that's how a lot of people lose weight is because you're eating less calories on a keto diet.
00:06:43
chrisyzen
because the fat is satiating you. ah What happens is you start to liberate more fat. That's obviously how part of how you lose the fat is you liberate fat and that fat gets burned. So you increase lipolysis, which is the breakdown of fats from your fat cells. And here's the here's the problem. In our ah most, of at least most Americans or if not more, I think most Westerners in general have the majority of their fat store this polyunsaturated fat, PUFAs, right? Omega-6s and stuff like that. Why is that a problem? Well, if you start liberating those fats, they're very fragile, very reactive and very easily peroxidizable, very easily damaged. And when a fatty acid like that gets damaged, it causes a chain reaction of
00:07:35
chrisyzen
peroxidation reactions that has to be stopped by a terminal antioxidant like an enzyme, vitamin E, vitamin C, whatever. And that when these things are in circuit, so they get released from your fat because you're increasing lipolysis through a stressful activity like ke keto fasting, low carb, endurance exercise, whatever.
00:07:58
chrisyzen
Then these things are circulating in a bloodstream and this is where they start to cause damage. They can they can peroxidize and damage our vascular lining, our our blood cell lining, the vascular endothelium. They can damage organs. They're circulating and the liver has to process them, right, and they can damage the liver. That's why two thirds of Americans have some kind of liver disease from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and and and you know a few other things. I think just non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is like 25% or 30% to a third, right, depending on where you look. So this is a big issue because people's
Supporting the Liver for Longevity
00:08:45
chrisyzen
livers
00:08:45
chrisyzen
in part because of these PUFAs are in um in a rough state, not because of the carbs, it's because of the PUFAs, which means their livers are fairly dysfunctional, which means that if they start doing this weight loss like this without taking care of the liver first, they're going to damage it further.
00:09:03
chrisyzen
And the liver is like after the brain, the second most complex organ in the body. It does so many things. It freaking basically keeps the brain alive. Its job is to keep the brain alive by drip feeding it glucose consistently throughout the day. So that's, that's one thing. So you can already probably understand why liver support, like getting the liver working, it's so unsexy, right? Nobody gives a damn about liver, you know?
00:09:32
chrisyzen
like when I start talking about the liver people just like just let's talk about some cool stuff like ice baths and biohacks and red light therapy and stuff but if you don't support your liver you are basically shortening your life because you understand that the podcast is about longevity so this is the end goal I think for most of us at least once you get out of the kind of younger years 30, 35 onwards you start to creak a little bit most people because we accumulate quite a lot of damage because we just nobody taught us how to really take care of ourselves so once you get to this sort of age 35 plus you're like thinking longevity so this is why you have to start thinking not the sex it's like um it's like ah ah going to the gym back to the gym for the first time or you've never been to the gym
00:10:28
chrisyzen
we all go for like the the sexy stuff like the you know the bench press and stuff but like my chiropractor he he's worked with the US Olympic team and like I think 40 years now he's he's doing what he's doing and he just always tells me like yeah you have if you're going to the gym like the first thing you have to do is like just work on the stabilizer muscles you have to get the ah the biomechanics right of the supporting muscles, strengthen those so that when you do compound movements, big movements, you you don't sort of overcompensate and then injure yourself, if you know what I mean. A similar thing with health and longevity.
00:11:07
chrisyzen
we we might want to lose weight. But if you do it, the cookie cutter sort of approach that the mainstream tells you cut calories and blah, blah, blah. ah That is like very sledgehammer approach, ah brute force approach.
00:11:26
chrisyzen
but We need to be much smarter and strategic with it. And I'll explain why in a second you'll see why and it might shock you. But ah ah we need to do the support system. So in terms of again, liver, but it's also the hormones, the sleep, right? Because the hormones are out of whack. You don't sleep well, right? Then you feel like crap. You gravitate towards foods that are not optimal.
00:11:53
chrisyzen
And then you feel bad about yourself. And then the hormones get out of whack because of your thoughts. And then the sleep is disturbed because of the hormones. And then this vicious cycle has to be interrupted. right So we have to tweak the sleep. We have to support the sleep. like We have to lower the stress hormones. We have to support the protective hormones. so at the same time supporting the detox system, supporting the liver, cleansing the liver and decongesting the liver, because most people's livers are actually congested. They have stones in the liver. They're called intrahepatic stones, right? That's the medical term. So it's not quackery and bollocks. And then we also have a thing called cholestasis. Cholestasis is where the bioflow is diminished. So it's reduced bioflow. And what that means is that is what actually causes these these stones to develop in the liver.
00:12:43
chrisyzen
It's even worse for women because estrogen slows down bioflow. You can even look it up on Wikipedia. It's a well-known fact. i'm not just It's not some woo-woo quackery. right um it just the medical system haven't put they All of these things are easily available out there. They just haven't put the pieces together but because there's not not nothing profitable about that. They want to wait for you to have a disease and then they treat the disease and make money off you.
Risks of Rapid Weight Loss
00:13:09
chrisyzen
right The other reason, oh, so the other thing that happens when you start liberating a lot of fat is what are known as persistent organic pollutants start getting released. So we have a lot of these quote unquote Pops, persistent organic pollutants, which are lipophilic, right? So they are fat loving. They have an affinity for fatty tissue.
00:13:31
chrisyzen
And they're basically like ah stuff from like this 50, 60, 70s, these organochlorine pesticides and the PCBs and a bunch of other like plasticizers and various other chemicals that so some of some of these have been phased out. They've been kind of banned. But the problem is because they're persistent, because of this lipophilicity, they are very difficult to make water soluble to break down. They basically accumulate up the food chain. So like, let's say simple example, cows eat grass, that soil was contaminated, cows eat the grass.
00:14:06
chrisyzen
then we eat the cows or we drink their milk or their dairy products, we eat those. And that's how we then at the top of that food chain, we accumulate those PCBs. But the body is so brilliant that it's able to at least sequester them into the fatty tissue so they don't run rampant in the bloodstream and they don't damage organs, including the brain, which is like 50% fat, like it's mostly fat.
00:14:32
chrisyzen
So the body is brilliant in this. So what we, what I, as I've said on previous podcasts, uh, accumulating fatty tissue in this toxic modern world, especially if your diet and your detox and protecting yourself from toxins isn't dialed in, which for most people it isn't dialed in. That's why it's another important part of what I teach my clients. Uh, if you don't dial that in, you're accumulating with the fat, you're accumulating a lot of toxins and sometimes the body is resistant to the weight loss because it knows that it's gonna be harmful for the body. So if you just try to brute force yourself into losing weight, you are releasing the polyunsaturated fats and the persistent and organic pollutants. And this is why, and I have this quote in my book,
00:15:23
chrisyzen
the This is a quote from a paper that says, evidence suggests that the highest mortality rates occur in adults who either have lost weight or have gained excessive weight. The lowest mortality rates are generally associated with modest weight gains. And that sometimes people hear that they're like, can I be talking gaining weight? It's because of the modern world, you have to understand,
00:15:51
chrisyzen
This is a different environment from our ancestors. So if you don't adapt, you die sooner. So the reason modest weight gain is associated with the lowest mortality rate is because that is a protective mechanism, right? So the folks that, again, have accumulated a lot of fatty tissue, let's say 30 pounds plus, and they want to ah shed that the worst thing to do is just to go like January 1st I'm gonna intermittent fasting with keto with lots of exercise because you are shortening your life okay so the this is again why I go back to the whole we gotta do the other stuff first because
00:16:39
chrisyzen
I could go on and on for hours on this topic, right? It's very, very sort of deep, but just briefly, ah and I touch on this in the book, but cortisol, whilst it breaks down lean tissue to raise blood sugar, that's its main role, and to suppress the immune system as well. It's an anti-inflammatory via suppressing the system, so not a great anti-inflammatory.
00:17:04
chrisyzen
What it does is it stimulates deposition of fat around the trunk and the face. And this is evidenced by there's a condition called Cushing's ah cushing syndrome, which is a high cortisol condition. And um those people are invaably invariably have like a um ah trunk,
00:17:31
chrisyzen
central obesity and and they have ah the moon phase right that is what cortisol does so that's another and another reason why these stressful activities they're actually ah stimulating the body to store more fat again it's this thriftiness this survival mechanism because you're stressing the body doesn't know you're trying to just lose some weight it thinks it thinks it's under pressure and it has to lower the metabolism and store more fat when you eat ah because it doesn't know that it thinks it's like war a war in a famine situation. And when it when it's a war famine situation, you want to expend as little energy and store as much as possible because that guarantees the longest survival. So these these are like the main reasons why the current paradigm is destroying people's health
00:18:21
chrisyzen
Right. So to do it the right way, first of all, you have to just get it out of your head that if you, if it took you 10 or 20 years to let's say gain those 30, 40, 60 pounds to get it out of your head, that you're going to lose this in three months. And, and, uh, it's, it's going to be good for you. It's just like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to tell you, but that's just the way it is. And I've had to turn away clients that just don't want to play the long-term game.
00:18:50
chrisyzen
If you're smart and you want to play the long-term game and you want to get your metabolism working, you want to get your inflammation and your cortisol and your hormones dialed in and your supplementation strategies and, you know, you get your your body detoxed and detoxing better and your liver in better shape.
Long-term Weight Loss Strategy
00:19:08
chrisyzen
the body will naturally start to shed the weight without you cutting calories just by just by lowering inflammation from for example if we do like that food sensitivity test that i do where they expose the the blood to the ah various foods and chemicals and just removing all the most inflammatory things out of a person's diet had one client over the weekend ping me She said she the prior 10 days, she was eating a bit more decadent. She's very clean, like cleaner than absolutely most people, but by her standards, she said that she was not eating super clean for the 10 days prior. Then she started the the food sensitivity plan. So all the most inflammatory foods, she removed them out of the diet.
00:19:57
chrisyzen
And she told me like, I think like overnight or over the weekend, she lost like, I think she said six or eight pounds. I think six pounds she said. So that's just from reducing inflammation from foods that are inflamming on a daily basis, because usually the most inflammatory things that we find are staples because over time, the the immune system becomes, um,
00:20:23
chrisyzen
ah reactive to things, especially if there's a gut issue going on that's unaddressed which for for many people there is. So yeah I just want to repeat the quote. Evidence suggests that the highest mortality rates occur in the adults who have either lost weight or have gained excessive weight. The lowest mortality rates are generally associated with modest weight gains. There was another there's a few studies that have done this kind of research. One of them was in Harvard Alumni. And um excuse me and there was and another one that
00:20:55
chrisyzen
They found also people that had weight fluctuations. that That's another high risk factor for you know increased mortality. And you can imagine why because you you destroy your metabolism and release all these toxins with ah the the big diet phase. I know people that have done this. Then you regain the weight because youre like then you you go back to the old way of eating and you indulge because you've been depriving yourself. and you kind of regain a bunch of polyunsaturated fats and whatever and then that cycle keeps repeating and man I tell you someone I know um we did a hormone test he kind of there's been this on this yo-yo diet throughout his entire adult life and we did this hormone test one time
00:21:42
chrisyzen
and um And not only was the testosterone like way below the range for someone in his age group, but the estrogens, all of the, because there's three estrogens there on the test, the Dutch test, the hormone, comprehensive hormone test that I run sometimes on clients, all of them were super high.
00:22:00
chrisyzen
And I told him, look, just because it's someone like I know I've known for a while, I told him, look, this is just sorry to tell you. And the cortisol was high, of course, of course. I'm sorry to tell you, but if you don't kind of figure out a way to like get this.
00:22:18
chrisyzen
so some kind of way to be accountable to stick with a plan long term. This is a perfect recipe for freaking cancer. High cortisol, high estrogen. This is a perfect recipe for freaking cancer to develop. Obviously don't wish it on anybody or anything. I just want to help them prevent it. But I'm just like, this is not, not the right way to do things. You gotta, at some point you gotta start being the adult that you are.
00:22:44
chrisyzen
So those are some of the reasons why the the current paradigm doesn't work. right But here's the other thing, just one more sort of thing to add, because most people did didn't for a long time know, like all of us, we didn't know how bad these seed oils po and polyunsaturated fats are because we've accumulated so many of them in our tissues. What happens is these are metabolic inhibitors. So the polyunsaturated fats, they actually lower the metabolism and um They've done study. So they, this is another quote I have in my book. Um, so thyroid hormone, which is the kind of the master metabolic regulator is blocked at the production transport and sell cellular action steps by polyunsaturated fats. So some researchers posit that in mammals, when you store the polyunsaturated fats,
00:23:40
chrisyzen
It's like, okay, things are abundant and whatnot. Let's say it's autumn time and there's lots of nuts and you're munching down on the nuts and you're storing this for the winter. And then the winter comes and there's no food and you start to kind of release the fats from your your stores. That's a signal to the body because fatty acids, there're they're like backbones for signaling molecules and hormones, right? So it's a signal to the body that times is tough.
00:24:10
chrisyzen
And it helps us to lower the metabolism so we expend less calories so that we survive these winters and these emergencies, right? So this is what, again, what happens we need. If you've had a lot of these polyunsaturated fats, which mo I'm telling you, 95% of people listening to this right now are loaded up on these polyunsaturated fats. I do ah fatty acid testing with all new clients.
00:24:38
chrisyzen
for the most part, and everybody's um Omega sixes are like 35. If I see that 35%, I'm like, I don't know. That's not too bad. But usually it's like 38 to 40%. Right? Poi and saturated fats in the blood. So, you know, it's that indicates that indicates that they have a lot of ah Omega sixes in their, in their fatty tissues. In fact, I've done studies. So over the last 60 years, the linoleic acid, the omega-6 linoleic acid, the most abundant one in the food supply, that has gone up two and a half fold in the fatty tissue of Americans, right? So we're all, most people are loaded up on these.
Issues with Polyunsaturated Fats
00:25:22
chrisyzen
So these polyunsaturated fats lower your metabolism.
00:25:29
chrisyzen
and the right way to lose weight is to get them out of your diet but you have to again you have to understand that it takes like multiple years for these things to get out of your but of out of your body and to be replaced by better building blocks like saturated fats and monounsaturated fats so again you you just have to understand that you need to play the long-term game because even if you stop eating these and and but you go on a diet still you're going to be releasing them from your fatty tissues and that will damage the the organs and the the vascular system it will slow down the metabolism stress the body and then it will release all of these persistent organic pollutants and if if you haven't done any prep work
00:26:24
chrisyzen
for the liver to deal with the onslaught of polyunsaturated fats in the bloodstream, that the liver will get worse and then you know that's why that's why it's weight loss is associated with ah higher mortality. man it's it's I know it's crazy.
00:26:41
chrisyzen
But again, this is an artifact of the modern world. Maybe 2000 years ago, 2000 years ago, people fasted for spiritual reasons and for whatever other reasons, and they did fine, but they weren't loaded up upon such fats and toxins. So and and you know, people are more resilient, less poisoned by the modern environment and the the pollution and whatever.
00:27:07
chrisyzen
And the food was more nutritious because you know the soils weren't depleted. So anyone that tells me, oh, fasting, we've done it for aeons or whatever. Yeah, but that was a different environment. We were in a different environment. So if you do things that our ancestors did,
00:27:24
chrisyzen
so Some of them are great to do, but other things are just not compatible with the modern world, you understand? This is this is where we have to blend ancestral wisdom with technological advancements and just thinking thinking what what challenges does the modern environment have that we cannot address and overcome with ancestral practices right for example the you know they they would soak um kind of a tangent here but they would soak sprout and uh ferment grains and they could eat them but the thing is like if you take the the wheat nowadays it's been
00:28:12
chrisyzen
so hybridized that even if you do all of those ancestral things to it there's so much more gluten in it and protein and that's kind of indigestible garbage that protein some really bioavailable protein so it's still going gonna be detrimental or in all the glyphosate in there so you we can't just do what our ancestors did and even if they fasted even if they they were in ketosis a lot we we just cannot handle it. Most people are so depleted that it's just a bigger and even bigger stress around them. And it, it, it destroys their, their health and metabolism even further. Because again, when you're doing these stressful practices, your cortisol increases, right? That, that breaks down your lean tissue. And this is part of why the metabolic rate decreases over time. Because when you lose lean mass, that's metabolically active tissue. And when you've lost that it's hard, it's much harder to regain the fat.
00:29:10
chrisyzen
And you're burning less calories because muscle obviously burns. ah It's a lot more metabolically active than adipose tissue. So yeah, yeah hey what did you think? I was going to give you the cheat codes on the on in one in half an hour.
00:29:26
chrisyzen
it's it's a It's a complex strategy. If you want to do it right, it's a complex strategy, a sophisticated strategy that has to be implemented over over time.
00:29:39
chrisyzen
you know if you if you I think it was from the symptoms. The Simpsons. Comer was asked something like, do you want it done right or do you want it done fast? And he was like, well, I'm an American. so I want to get it done fast, obviously. And it's not just Americans. I think in general, we are all like that, especially this younger generation with we can't even wait for freaking a web page to load more than like five seconds, you know. But um I want to talk to you about that there was one. um There was one paper that they they did a diet study
00:30:25
chrisyzen
just Just kind of go back to why dieting is such a bad strategy, right? But they compared a low carb diet for weight loss to a low fat diet. And here's the thing. So there there were the people were eating about 1500 calories, right, give or take. And um that's quite a lot. So the low carb group consumed only 20, about 30 grams of carbs a day.
00:30:53
chrisyzen
And the low fat group consumer consumed about 200 grams of carbs a day. And there was a bit of bias in the study. So that it was sponsored by a low carb advocate company. But here's the thing. The low carb group lost more weight.
00:31:15
chrisyzen
Right. So, and they were happy about that. They reported that as one of the findings. I'm sure that's what ah they wanted to find with the study. But here's what ah I'm going to go back and say again, the reason people lose more weight on like keto diets and low carb diets.
00:31:34
chrisyzen
is because they just compress more stress into the same period of time. okay It's more stressful and like just to give you a ah very sort of contrasting example, a person with cancer loses a lot of weight very quickly.
00:31:52
chrisyzen
but we don't with an old person that loses weight very quickly, that signifies their inching closer to death. So in non weight loss goal circumstances, a lot of weight loss signifies a lot of stress from disease, from cancer, from old age, which means closer death closer to death.
00:32:19
chrisyzen
Now, in controlled conditions, like trying to lose weight for aesthetic reasons or for health reasons, quote health reasons the way the way that people do it is not exactly healthy. It's the opposite of healthy. um But the again, the reason people lose more weight with the keto low low carb diet is simply because it's so much more stressful, right? Because more glucose has to be created to run the brain because you're still, even in ketosis, you're still producing glucose absolutely every single day, all the time. But, you know, it takes, it takes some time to get into ketosis. So that initial, initial phase is very stressful in terms of your cortisol is always high. Your stress hormones are high. You're producing glucose in the liver via gluconeogenesis, which is driven by cortisol, which is driven by breaking down lean tissue, bones and muscles and joints and skin. know
00:33:15
chrisyzen
So what that study found was that the low carb group, okay, yes, they lost more weight, but they also had a lot more. Adverse effects reported. So they had more constipation. They had more headaches. They had more bread, bad breath, more muscle cramps, more diarrhea, more general weakness and more rashes. Now, why do you think they had more adverse and effects?
00:33:45
chrisyzen
It's because they were putting themselves under more stress than the other group. And they were liberating a lot more fat through lipolysis, and they were liberating a lot more of these poofus, poi, and saturated fats, and a lot more toxins from their fatty tissue. And that is why they had headaches, because the toxins are circulating in your central nervous system. Diarrhea, because the body's trying to excrete them. Muscle cramps could be, you know, just electrolyte issues related. General weakness, when the poisons come, you know, the the chemicals, toxic, persistent, organic pollutants come out of your fatty tissues.
00:34:20
chrisyzen
the circulating, you will feel general weakness. Rash ah because the skin is a detox organ that breath because the lungs are also ah a Pathway to detoxify and constipation just because that could be because the the metabolism is lowered because ah one of the hallmarks of hypothyroidism is ah Constipation right, but but that that's that one we can let's say, you know, it's not super indicative of detox reactions and stuff like that but diarrhea general weakness rash and
00:34:53
chrisyzen
muscle, perhaps muscle cramps, but definitely bad breath and the headache definitely indicate a lot of toxins. And i've I've actually had clients after certain cleanses that I give them report a metallic taste in the mouth headaches. And this was, this was like a while back and that actually prompted me to go even harder on the detox support and the liver support before we we do any kind of more intensive cleansing and and liver decongestion and stuff like that because as part of that you kind of for a day and a half you you you do eat less and that can liberate more fatty tissue which can liberate more toxins.
00:35:37
chrisyzen
ah So, you know, we've learned how to navigate these things to minimize the suffering and the freaking detox symptoms and the kind of the the the horrible parts. But ah this this study, although most people, they just look at which which diet results in most weight loss in the shortest amount of time. That's the win. That's all they care about. I just thought digging into these little details, looking at it from this perspective, um it just indicates how much more stress the low carb diet is putting on the person. And then there was another 2022 Cochrane review. 61 randomized controlled trials. Okay. 7,000 total participants.
00:36:20
chrisyzen
and they compared low carb and balanced carbohydrate diets this efficacy in reducing weight and quote-unquote cardiovascular risk and they concluded so this is a Cochrane review so 61 randomized controlled trials so these these um papers are like 80 90 100 pages with listing all the antibiotics at the end of the day but the point is yeah it's very very boring reading but the point is that they concluded that there is probably little to no difference in weight reduction and changes in cardiovascular risk factors up to two years follow up when overweight and obese participants without and with type 2 diabetes are randomized to either low-carb or balanced carbohydrate weight-reducing diets. Which means, yes, you will get more weight loss in the near term with keto low-carb carnivore
00:37:14
chrisyzen
but over let's say a year or two years you will have probably gotten the same total weight loss ish if you had done a like a low fat diet or like a just a diet with balanced macros and stuff like that so
00:37:31
chrisyzen
that But it was all that stress to get that quick weight loss worth it when most people rebound and with a lower metabolism, they gain even more weight. So this is what ah I hope I'm trying to sort of hammer home is if you want to stop the vicious cycle of this kind of yo-yo,
00:37:52
chrisyzen
you need to become a strategist. And the thing is, when you are on a ah something like a stressful protocol with fasting, intermittent fasting, exercise, cutting calories, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, carnivore, that cortisol increase, that shuts down longer term thinking, right? Because when you're in fight or flight, it's immediate survival.
00:38:11
chrisyzen
so you you really have to get your cortisol levels ah reduced and the protective hormones balanced to start thinking more long-term, like a strategist, like you're hoping to live to 90, 100 years, not, oh, will I make it to even 80? And if if I do, yeah, yeah yeah no.
Long-term vs Quick Fixes in Health
00:38:34
chrisyzen
if If you want longevity and health, it has to be a long-term game. And I know it kind of sucks, but what also sucks is people
00:38:43
chrisyzen
losing weight, gaining weight, and then some multiple times throughout their lifetime and continuing to be frustrated. So if the old method isn't working and hasn't worked up to now, what makes you think that next time it will be, oh, but maybe I have to do strict carnivore.
00:38:59
chrisyzen
boocks That will be even worse. You'll be even worse off if you do strict carnivore or maybe I have to go into super deep ketosis or maybe I have to like activate super autophagy by doing a 10 day fast or whatever. that None of these things will get the results because the stress causes this lowering of the metabolism. So the best way to do it is to figure out a diet that is still satisfying, that you don't feel deprived. Obviously, ah it has to be a cleaner diet than most people eat nowadays. but we we like mike myself and my My family and my clients, we eat clean diets, but they're still decadent. you know we don't
00:39:47
chrisyzen
We don't like cut out butter or dairy if people tolerate it or cheese or fruit or even like honey jam. like like we can they ah You can eat a very delicious wholesome diet. if you know If you can stick with that, you will be much better off than doing like a specific restrictive thing.
00:40:19
chrisyzen
getting some results and then i'll do like this is unsustainable but because like I'll tell you like I eat relatively few foods but because I like those foods and they are they are truly healthy foods and I get them clean and stuff organic ah I don't ah don't really feel like I'm not
00:40:42
chrisyzen
I need more vari variety and stuff because it's like for to me variety in the diet, yes, it's it's great to have variety if if the food is high quality. But the the the thing about variety in the diet is like when I hear people say that, I'm like, yeah you don't know what you're talking about because it's like Warren Buffett says diversification is only important if you don't know what the hell you're doing investing.
00:41:06
chrisyzen
If you were smart and you invested in 10 stocks that you researched well, and you knew they were going to do well, or in today's world, in 10 shitcoins, right? um You don't need to like have a bag of everything on the exchange to whatever, you know? So, similar with the diet, there's certain nutrient-dense foods that cover bases.
00:41:31
chrisyzen
And then ah over and above and beyond, yeah, okay, you can have this and that here and there, whatever you want. you know like As an example, there's we have a great authentic Italian pizzeria ran by Italians that are friends. We've known them like since they opened. We were with them through COVID. We were their best customers when we used to live near it. And I definitely was a little bit heavier when we were there.
00:41:52
chrisyzen
but ah we go there almost every week and it's not organic or anything but it's sourdough pizza and I get like the other day on Sunday i mine was like with it's called the pizza Christian or whatever there's just ah margarita double ham and pepperoni and that's kind of like my favorite one And I know the pepperoni has like sodium chloride. It's not the real salt and the ham. I know probably could have MSG. i think it Whatever. It's one meal. So i don't we don't um guilt ourselves. And and ah by the way, I eat ah a pizza and then ah my my baby pizza. ah
00:42:36
chrisyzen
The guy that makes the pizza, when I want to tell him to make a baby pizza, he goes, oh, baby pizza. Marco's like, oh, baby pizza. And to to him, a baby pizza is instead of cutting it in eight slices, he cuts it into six slices, the same size pizza, but it's a baby pizza. I love that guy. He's an absolute magician. But ah so I eat half of my kids pizza because she's tiny and my wife eats a bit and takes them home, whatever.
00:43:00
chrisyzen
and zero zero guilt or anything. So you don't have to restrict yourself to lose weight. The trick is to try to clean up the diet, raise your metabolism lower the stress hormones because that's what they make you thrifty. They make them, but they slower the metabolism and they make the body thrifty. Yeah. So these are, these are the secrets, quote unquote, clean up the diet as much as possible with the occasional indulgence. and We have ice cream quite often as well, cause there's great ice cream places here cause we live by the the ocean.
00:43:36
chrisyzen
lots of tourist places. So clean up the diet, get the polyunsaturated fats out of your diet. But that's, just again, it's a long term game. It's a lifestyle. It's a life decision to not eat a lot of poofers. Then lower the stress hormones, boost the metabolism,
00:43:55
chrisyzen
Okay, and the detox part. Now, some clients choose to do saunas, and I absolutely support sauna use, as long as you don't make it another stressor, right? Because we, especially younger folks, we tend to like get a little bit too competitive. It's like, if you're gonna do 20 minutes of sauna, you're gonna do 40 minutes of sauna. If you're gonna do 40 minutes of sauna, you're gonna crank that motherfucker,
00:44:23
chrisyzen
Up to whatever the hell a hundred degrees or whatever um and then you're gonna do it every day and then we're twice twice a day and the thing is it's sufficient to get just to stimulate if you're sweating in the sauna that is sufficient but it will become stressful if you try to crank it up or go too too long so you're better off doing it more often for a shorter time at a lower sort of temperature than trying to go like really hard and because again
00:44:56
chrisyzen
you You have limited capacity to process fats in the bloodstream, toxins in the bloodstream. You have limited detoxification capacity. You have limited sort of, ah there's only so much that you can do in a day.
00:45:12
chrisyzen
So pushing, pushing any sort of thing too much, even if it's a healthy thing can become stressful. So this is temperance. I know, I know it's kind of like not sexy again, but we have to really, when you're playing the long game, you understand that I've done enough today. You know, I've done enough and then tomorrow will be another day. And similar with the gym, you can absolutely like do,
00:45:37
chrisyzen
a little bit of walking and a little bit of light cardio and a little bit of whatever weights you want to do or more but it's better if you're starting like to increase your exercise routine which will stimulate you know muscle growth which will increase the metabolism that's all great and it will help with insulin sensitivity that is great but do it just do it gradually play the long game because again a lot of people, they turn exercise from what could have been a healthy thing into a damn stressful thing, right? And um I'm going to have ah one podcast scheduled next week for how terrible endurance exercise is for your health. But actually,
00:46:26
chrisyzen
Overdoing the weight training is also detrimental. There's ah but a plateau and then there's a, it's a J shape curve. So there's a diminishing returns and then there's that detriment, right? That takes you the the opposite direction after a certain amount of minutes. I'm going to go with over the study, one of the studies, at least there's quite a bit of research there as well.
00:46:48
chrisyzen
I'm gonna have a whole chapter on this in the next book, but The the key is don't stress your body into losing weight because stress is what cause one of the things that causes the body to Retain weight and accumulate weight because it it thinks it's in the war it thinks it might die Right. So this is so another thing that a lot of people get wrong is going hard and because you you're better off going every day doing a bit of exercise like 20-30 minutes every day than you know even like doing like super hardcore 3-4 sessions ah a week of like just going all out or like running for an hour or whatever treadmill or whatever the hell you're better off doing a little bit every day then
00:47:36
chrisyzen
a lot every day or a lot on four days of the week you know that where you're like panting and like you can feel the lactic acid in your mouth that's too much that's stress and stress lowers the metabolism even even psychological stress because the same hormones are involved even that can lower stress so another reason why people gain weight and also another reason why people stress eat and they gravitate towards sugar when they're stressed is a little bit of a survival mechanism or kind of like ah it's a coping mechanism because the body knows if it eats if you eat some chocolate or some some carbs.
00:48:18
chrisyzen
The body knows that when the insulin bump will the will actually cause cortisol to decrease. So people stress eat um to lower their cortisol, right? So obviously, when you make the wrong choices when doing that, that's that's another way to kind of gain weight. But I think actually having some carbohydrates, this is why I talk about how bad low carb diets are for for people's health long term. But having some carbohydrates,
00:48:45
chrisyzen
um can be really helpful in terms of lowering cortisol you know and actually ah there was a study i forget what year i don't have it right in front of me here but uh the study was called you can you can actually google this it was called um calorie for calorie Dietary fat restriction results in more body fat loss and carbohydrate restriction in people with obesity.
Debunking Diet Myths
00:49:12
chrisyzen
Now, the people in this study, they were confined to a metabolic ward, which is like basically prison conditions.
00:49:22
chrisyzen
where everything they eat is measured and they kind of like they're they're weighing their poop and like it's really meticulous in terms of how much they're eating calorie-wise, macronutrient-wise, how much they're excreting, what their metabolic rate is, and what they found um is that carbohydrate restriction, so low carb,
00:49:43
chrisyzen
led to an average of 53 grams of fat loss per day but fat restriction resulted in 89 grams of loss on average ah so 53 on low carb 53 grams of fat which is a lot a lot in a day obviously but 89 grams per day with the low fat and here's the thing it's a massive difference but the thing is When you eat fat, so okay so ah low low carb, carnivore, keto diet, if you eat a lot of meat and a lot of fat and butter, you will feel satiated, you can eat less, so and you're eating cleaner, so less less kind of toxic food and grains and garbage.
00:50:31
chrisyzen
So, that that's also a benefit but you eat less and that's why you lose a lot of most people lose weight. But if you do keto diet and you actually eat the same calories, like you are meticulously measuring your calories and you eat a keto diet with the same calories, it's very likely because your metabolic rate will lower because you're in ketosis which is a fasting slash starvation signal.
00:50:50
chrisyzen
the body will within four days already they've measured it in in research that the body will lower the metabolism so you eat the same calories but with high fat diet you actually start storing fat the reason is because fat is super easy to store it just you know you have to like break the the triglyceride into fatty acids, it it's transported across the intestinal cells, and then it's repackaged into chylomicrons, and like the the it's repackaged back into triglycerides. Those triglycerides, then you know they go through the lymphatic system and stuff, but they're ready to
00:51:26
chrisyzen
once they enter the circulation, they're actually ready to store. Whereas glucose, it has to go through quite a number of conversion steps to to become fat. So there has to be a lot of glucose for for in in the body, like hundreds of grams every day and an overabundance of it for the body to start making fats out of glucose. In fact,
00:51:52
chrisyzen
um There was one paper that they kind of discussed this topic and they said, it would be intuitively surprising if humans routinely undertook the biochemically expensive process of fat synthesis from carbohydrate when they have an abundance of preformed fatty acids from their diet. right And they they also stated there is ample reason to associate high fat diets with obesity.
00:52:17
chrisyzen
But at present, no reason to associate high sugar diets with obesity. ah That research was um from the 90s. So you see, ah since then. I believe they just decided, let's use sugar as the scapegoat here to take away attention from the seed oil industry, which is a true culprit, because that's making a hell of a lot more money. And you know, this we want to protect that, but we need a scapegoat to explain why people are sick and obese and and dying early and and have all these health problems.
00:52:51
chrisyzen
So it's like sugar is the scapegoat where um it's BS that sugar sugar doesn't cause insulin resistance. I have episodes on that. ah Sugar doesn't cause cancer. I will have an episode on that. In fact, if you look at the research, researchers use, listen to this, researchers use a high fat diet to make lab animals diabetic.
00:53:21
chrisyzen
okay A 60% fat diet is enough to do the trick. right And it takes weeks. It takes weeks. So I have that study in my book. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I know I was also surprised that every single person that I asked, how do you think um researchers give animals diabetes? Is it with a low carb diet or a low fat diet? um And everyone says, I think, you know, high carb diet is going to give them diabetes. Nope. High fat diet.
00:53:55
chrisyzen
Um, and I do have episodes of this. You can go back. Um, it's kind of a bit of a long story, but the thing is when you eat a high fat diet or you have a lot of like policies going on from, from fasting and, and whatever exercises, stressful activity, that increasing in fat in the bloodstream, that's what inhibits glucose uptake into the cells.
00:54:18
chrisyzen
And that's what actually causes the blood sugar to rise. so when i And many people have reported this, but when I switched from keto low carb but to a higher carb diet, my morning fasting blood glucose level dropped. So why was it higher when I wasn't eating any carbs and stuff? It's because the the cortisol, the stress hormones were stimulating glucose production in the liver, right?
00:54:44
chrisyzen
so there you go i think um i'm gonna end it there i don't want to like Uh, overwhelm with too much information. The book, I don't have specific strategies on weight loss in the book, but I do cover some of the research of, you can see some of the studies and the whole kind of overarching strategy is about cleaning up the diet.
Conclusion and Personalized Health Offer
00:55:08
chrisyzen
Let it be a strategic long-term thing. Um, support the detox organs, support the detoxification. Don't stress your body.
00:55:18
chrisyzen
and bide your time. Because if you if you rush, i I think many people were will regret it one day. you know Anyway, I went there. I hope you found this informative. I hope it will make you reconsider the current things if you're using a low-carb intermittent fasting carnivore. um For weight loss specifically, I think there are much better ways.
00:55:40
chrisyzen
And if you need more specific help in terms of figuring out exactly what you need in terms of diet supplementation, stress reduction, sleep strategies, all that good stuff. If you need more support, feel free to reach out. My link is down below. You can request a free metabolic function assessment session with me.
00:55:59
chrisyzen
we can uncover uncover what's at the root of your current health challenges, can tell me about your health goals, then if we're a good fit to work together, I can explain how I can help you achieve them. So thanks for listening or watching, and I'll see you on the next episode.