Podcast Transcription: How to Achieve Sustainable Fitness Results Without Being Perfect with Eric Williamson

Ted Ryce: Eric Williamson. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Excited to talk to you again, man.  

Eric Williamson: Ted Rice. It's a pleasure to be back.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And we've got a good show planned for the listeners today because we're going to get into some important, let's say perspectives when it comes to fat loss. And how to approach it and what strategies to use. 

We're going to talk about habits versus tracking when to use what and who it's appropriate for. But, uh, just just before we dive into that, what's been going on with you in your world in terms of business, personal, your own health goals.  

Eric Williamson: That's a big cliff to jump off of. There's been a lot going on business wise. 

I've still been managing my own business recently switched to my own personal brand. You can find me on Instagram at Eric dot Williamson dot PhD, enjoying creating content for people as per usual, working with other content producers. Working here as the director of nutrition at Canyon Ranch stationed out of the Tucson location. 

If anybody's ever able to come visit me. I also traveled to some of the other locations here and there. That's a health and wellness resort. If anybody's ever heard of Canyon Ranch, if you haven't be sure to check it out. Personally, I have been juggling a lot lately. Recently got married and 

Ted Ryce: Congrats. 

Eric Williamson: Thank you very much. I've been working on my career and.moving forward with what our future looks like with maybe some family planning and that has added some other priorities in there that I've got to juggle with my fitness. So, my priorities lately with my exercise routines and my nutrition has really been maintaining and having a balance between both aerobic and strength conditioning as per usual, making sure I hit the gym sometimes. 

 Got to be a little bit shorter, maybe a little bit more half assed, but making sure I'm getting in there and still making some progress with it.  

Ted Ryce: You know, Eric, that's it. That really is going to play nicely into what we're going to talk about, because When you were talking just now and talking about like, congrats on all your success and the business growth and running, you know, at your position over at Canyon Ranch and getting married that throws people off. 

Right. Even the good things. And I think, I think there's two important things. One is people don't, I feel like some people tell themselves like, Oh, I'm such a loser. I got out of shape and I, you know, I got fat and I got married. Um, does that mean my marriage isn't healthy? Or, um, do I have an unhealthy relationship with work? 

And like, uh, I've done really bad for myself. And the truth is sometimes we just get out of shape because we didn't have the skills and mindset. To handle the additional challenges, uh, that come with, let's say a, a changing career or a change in lifestyle, meaning getting married. And so could you speak to that a little bit in terms of maybe not for yourself, because you and I, we, this is what we do, but for some of your clients and how you help them understand the challenges that they face and also help them set realistic goals. 

Based on the level of let's I hesitate to use the word stress But like the level of, let's say responsibilities that they have.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah, sure. Well, I can actually can use myself as an example, because if I think back to my early mid twenties, I was able to go really hard at fitness. I was able to be in the gym for certain periods of my life, two hours at a time, really gaining muscle, staying super lean. 

And as I've become busier in other ways, especially in my career and really have had that as a priority. Coming up more frequently than not in the past few years. I've had to learn how to scale back a little bit. And I believe that this has actually made me a better professional. It's maybe a better provider because it helps me to understand some of my clients. 

You and I, like you just said, we live fitness we live health and fitness. It's, we're surrounded by constantly. Sometimes I tell people like, don't act like it's not my day job to tell me how you look, you look great or whatever. Oh, that's impressive that you're able to to perform that way, I just,  

Ted Ryce: We're financially motivated to be in shape, even though you don't get paid to be in shape directly, but it affects the perception of your, let's say your knowledge, even though it's not related necessarily. 

Right.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah, plus I'm surrounded by it. All of my colleagues are into it. So I'm talking to them about it. We're able to go on hikes together. My friends are interested in being active. When you're surrounded by it, it makes it a lot easier. That's something that can also help people maybe accomplish. Maybe they're able to surround themselves with certain people in their lives more frequently that can be this positive influence where you can. 

Basically check off to two priorities in life at a time where you're spending time with family and friends, you're developing relationships, but you're also being able to be, to be active and take care of your health. I'm able to have people over and have healthy meals and they appreciate it because they also cook nutritiously for themselves. 

And sometimes if you don't do that, you don't know how much more difficult that can be sometimes. And people will appreciate that more and you can discuss it. So. There are those advantages to being in our position. Mind you, there are still times just like my clients where I have to turn down the dial. 

And I tell this, I have this conversation with people all the time. A lot of people are waiting to start. They want to give 110%. They're ready to be fully committed. And that's the version of them. I'm getting in my office at that time. 

Ted Ryce: Exactly.  

Eric Williamson: I'm not getting the version of them when they are at home after a long day, tired and stressed and don't have any food prepared. 

That's a different mentality. And they're going to be far more tempted. They're going to be, they're going to have urges to do things that make choices that may not be supportive of their, their health goals. And I want to make sure I work with that other version of them that I'm not seeing in my office. 

So big part of this as well. Is being okay with not being a hundred percent. Sometimes, sometimes we might have to be 70 percent or 80%, or maybe we're really sick and we need to be 30%, but getting away from, from turning on and off being a hundred or zero and waiting to start to be a hundred again, getting comfortable with being in that middle zone, but always thinking about how you can continue to strive to make progress or at the very minimum maintain. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. It's not a light switch. Yeah. Or if you approach it like a light switch, you'll never figure this out. It's a continue or a dial. Let's say it's a dial that you turn up, turn down, but it is, it cannot be a switch, it cannot be an on and off switch because, or at least I'll say it like this. Any fit person and I mean by fit person, I mean they got in shape and maintained it. 

Well, let's say we're, you know, maybe they were always in shape, but have maintained it. It's always It's always this one of my clients told me something eric. It was a good it was a good lesson This is maybe two years ago And even though i've been in this business for a long time It still was like the first time I had heard it and the way he said it He's like had I I thought you always had to be like you were always perfect You And I always put up photos of me eating junk. 

And I don't do that because, well, you know, I do it for a variety of reasons. One, it gets more attention on social media, but the other reason I do it is to show people, look, this is what I do. Now. I also eat egg whites and low calorie soup with a little bit of hot sauce and some sauteed mushrooms. And I need to put those up more too, but I try to show people, but they have, to your point, people have this idea, like, oh, man, I, I was perfect. 

And then I screwed up because I had a tough day. And so now the light switch off, uh, who cares? Let's just give up. And, um, what else would you say about that? How do you coach clients through that?  

Eric Williamson: Well, I think you bring up a really important point. I, I think it's important to show people that we do have these meals and that they're not completely off limits. 

Because a lot of people are looking for short term fixes and I, I've had this feeling, or I have a response from people that I talked to and clients where, when I say that there's no short term solution, they'll, they'll often agree and they, Oh yeah, yeah, I know. But they act as if they're not searching for one, but they're still doing the intermittent fasting. 

They're still doing the no carbohydrates, no sugar. They're still trying to never go to a restaurant. Or have any junk food, for example, and these hard rules aren't something that's going to be sustainable. So in the case of fat loss, especially, but almost any fitness goal, but especially fat loss, most of what you need to do to achieve it, you need to continue doing to sustain it. 

So if we don't know how to work in restaurant meals. Or some of those meals with family and friends that aren't exactly going to align with our nutrition targets occasionally, then we're not going to be able to sustain that indefinitely. That's why it's so important to be able to work with someone who understands this and is able to help you find that balance, able to help you work in these meals that don't maybe need to have nutrition as the top priority, but overall, we're still able to stay on track with making progress. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, 100%. And I'll share another story. This is actually from someone who didn't become a client, but really should have. I could probably say that about most of the people I've talked to. But anyway, what I remember about this individual is he came to me because he was acquainted with a client who got amazing results and he wanted those same results. 

And he was talking to me about something that him and his wife did, and they did the whole 30, which of course, you know, Eric, because you've been in this business for a while and we've seen it all right. But for those of you who don't know, it's like, no, like what you're saying is these hard rules. 

It's like no sugar. No, it's, it's basically an eating disorder, right? Or you could say maybe an elimination diet if you wanted to be nice about it. But it's what I remember what he said. He's like, well, we're great for fat loss, but my wife and I, we couldn't go out to eat at all because none of the. 

Restaurants are whole 30 approved and it's just the whole 30 is just ridiculous. Like, when it first came out, I was like, yeah, okay, I get it. Yeah. But now I'm just like, if you wanted to do it for 2 weeks. Or a month or something to kind of, you know, shift your brain chemistry away from the, the food reward that you've been indulging in. 

Okay. But past that, it's like, you need to, you need to understand you can't be the, the nutrition weirdo and like, enjoy life if you like other people, if, you know, what are your thoughts on that? You know what the whole 30 is, of course, right? Have you ever had clients do it or it's something similar and 

Eric Williamson: Yeah, it's been a while. 

Ted Ryce: Thankfully, it's not popular anymore.  

Eric Williamson: I think basically what you just said with the, I feel like the benefits are, if there are any for people, it's mainly psychological. It's mainly to show you that you can go. Without these foods, you can ride the wave of cravings at times. You can be more structured. 

You can plan your meals in advance. You can make conscious choices that aren't overrun by cravings. I feel like the psychological impacts of that, proving to yourself that you can be more regimented, you can be more structured, add more value than the actual physical, mental, physical. Benefits of doing that approach and of course, we have to be mindful of the fact that even if somebody does lose weight, what are they going to do after we might get into metabolic adaptations we did last time, for example, with this physiological adaptations that take place that literally are there to prevent losing weight and keeping it off. 

Evolutionarily, couple that with not having an approach that suits your lifestyle when things get busy or stressful taking approach where, you know, you're going to be switching off of that one day. It's just a recipe for ending up right back where you started just faster.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And, um, you know, when it comes to approaching fat loss, when you and I work together, and for those of you who don't know, Eric is the coach that I hired to help me back in that 2019 when I was. 

I was in, um, that's the reason I wanted to work with you is because I, I, what I was doing was, it was okay, but I was in Southeast Asia. I was living in Bangkok, I want to say at the time. And it was really, I didn't want to, I didn't want to be on a Western like broccoli and chicken diet. I wanted to eat the pad thai and the pad seo and the curries and all the amazing food that was available because it was just, it was part of the whole experience. 

And I didn't want to forego that just so I could be leaner. What you helped me with, And it forever changed the way I did coaching. I don't know if I told you that or not, but probably I'm a little jet lagged at the moment, speaking of traveling in Lisbon now, but, uh, it changed the way I did coach my clients. 

And, um, so like I was able to eat all those things. As long as I stayed in my calorie budget, but some people when they hear about it, and you and I, we track macros when some people hear about that, it stresses them out. Oh, my gosh, I don't want to be like, uh, you know, it stresses me. I mean, people, none of my clients tell me that because I feel like they're ready and I've talked about it. 

So I don't hit them. They're not walking into my coaching system blind. Right. But I only do habit approaches for, for one on one clients, but not the group. So, like, but some people maybe shouldn't do calorie tracking and let's put aside the eating disorder because that's a, that's beyond neither one of us treat or work with those types of people. 

Right. Or you don't, right. Or you do  

Eric Williamson: Not the extreme of eating disorders very rarely now and not without working with a another either clinic or dietitian that is focused on eating disorders, but certainly see plenty of disordered eating.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. So, so let's talk about that. Let's. Let's push aside. Let's be specific anorexics, bulimics, people who gorge and throw up. 

You shouldn't be listening to this podcast, right? You should be listening to like being professional help, whatever it is. I don't work with those people. So maybe you can speak to that a little bit, but let's talk about the people, um, who don't have, let's say a diagnosed eating disorder, but they're not sure. 

Should I just cut out sugar? Should I? Um, you know, what should I do? Should I start tracking calories? How would, does someone choose the right approach for the right time for them when it comes to fat loss,  

Eric Williamson: Right. Well, I think that response that you gave where people are intimidated by it. Or overwhelmed at the thought of tracking is probably not an appropriate time to start tracking if we can take a different approach. 

And 1 thing we also need to remember is that just like not being 0 or 100 with being on or off approaching our fitness goals with nutrition and exercise. We don't need to be zero or a hundred with tracking some people. The only time that I'll have them track is the most challenging times is, is what are the, the time that is being, bringing up the biggest barrier to their fat loss goals. 

Ted Ryce: What do you mean by that? Like the weekends, cause they feel like they eat well on the week, but the weekends...  

Eric Williamson: If somebody, if somebody says, yeah, yeah. Weekends restaurants, sometimes in the evening. A lot of people have that answer themselves. They're aware of when during their day is the greatest barrier. 

Or during their week when they're out with friends, when they're in airports, sometimes when they order takeout, when they have an evening snack, there's many times where I'll just have somebody track that. That's usually the time that people would choose not to track if they were going to track at all. 

If they got into tracking themselves, or if I tell them to start tracking, if they say they're interested in it, then they. We'll often track everything, but those times, but if those are the most challenging times that we want to bring the greatest level of awareness to, then tracking helps to snap people in. 

It has that Hawthorne effect. If you've heard of that. 

Ted Ryce: Just say what that is again.  

Eric Williamson: It's called the Hawthorne effect, where if you're being watched, if you're, if you're tracking anything, then you're more mindful. It automatically increases awareness in that moment when you have to measure something. In a certain capacity, and I don't mean necessarily getting out of scale or getting out the measuring cups. 

I just mean actually visually looking even at how much you're consuming of what you're consuming, stamping that level of awareness into that situation and also learning from it. You learn how these foods can have such a profound impact on, in this case, caloric intake. Because they are incredibly dense, we're not saying never have them, but when you're aware of how much they are contributing, that will automatically, in many cases, change people's behavior, and we can learn from that, and then we can maybe set some goals around that. 

So that's just an example of how we don't necessarily need to take tracking from 0 to 100 all the time, every single meal, getting out of food scale. Just one example of that. And there are some people that we do start with a habit approach. Go ahead.  

Ted Ryce: There's something I want to say about that, because I think. 

Some people come in with a mindset, like they only want to track the mules that they're being good. And it's a way of, it's a way of saying, Oh, look at how good I am, but it's the wrong approach. And I often have had this conversation with actually not so often recently, thankfully, but in past years, clients have said, yeah, you know, I didn't want to track it because I felt bad about what I was doing. 

I was like, this is not a moral judgment on yourself. This is just to tally just like if you were spending money, you want to know how much you spent so that you can budget later because that's all you have to do with calories. Thankfully, you just have to be a better budget or calories. Right. There's no judgment or there there's no wrong foods. 

And I, I think it does come from that like, Oh, I eat the bad foods, right? That's where I think it comes from. It's like, ah, but I don't want to, I feel less pure and holy by, you know, having to put down that I had, uh, five Oreo cookies or whatever it is, or some ice cream when in reality, I mean, it's just. 

It's just not that important if your diet is good most of the time. Can you speak to that a little bit?  

Eric Williamson: Yeah, part of bringing more awareness to those situations that are actually the greatest barrier when we aren't being this, the perfect child that our parents would approve of. Right, that's what it is, right? 

Our brains actually have a difficult time dealing with, That, um, ambivalence where part of our brain is saying we don't want to do this and the other part of our brain is, is still making that choice to do it and human beings actually struggle with that. So we've actually seen in research where people write down what their. 

Biggest issues are or their challenge and the challenges are in their life before they go to bed. Some interesting research on this. They actually tend to overcome those challenges. On a more successful basis than people who do not bring that awareness into their life every single day and acknowledge it. 

Because it it's difficult for our brain to accept that ambivalence. And we automatically think about how we can start to solve that problem. And that's basically what we're doing here. By no means am I saying that We're necessarily restricting those foods at that time. We're actually not aiming to, we're not setting a goal of not having those foods. 

I'm in, in a lot of those cases where I'm setting that as a goal is to, to track those foods, that's it, that's all I'm doing. And we see that change in behavior. And it's part of that is in any case, in any opportunity I have to set a goal that is not restrictive. I'll take it because when we're being restrictive, when we're saying we can't have this amount of food, we can't have this many occasions eating junk food, not saying that never happens, but when we do that, the first thing the human brain wants to do is to express its own independence. 

That's the first thing it's going to want. If we can't have a certain food when we're stressed, that's the food we're going to want to have. So if we can just increase awareness, if we can instead pursue having foods that are going to keep us full and reduce those cravings naturally, if we can, if we can have goals that add more nutritious filling foods in that in a roundabout way leads to having less of those foods, those other foods, the junk foods, the ones that are so calorically dense that they're really holding back progress. 

So in any case, I can just increase awareness or change of behavior where we're pursuing something rather than restricting something. I'm going to take that approach psychologically easier.  

Ted Ryce: I want to get to the habit versus tracking in a second, but I also want to say this because you bring up junk food and. 

One thing I used to talk about junk food a lot and then I don't talk about it as much anymore. And the reason is the clients I usually work with don't some of them have some, like I had a client who, uh, like to watch TV at night and drink white wine and popcorn. I had another one who liked to watch TV after, you know, these are guys who are running their business. 

So millionaires, uh, entrepreneurs. Right. And so, and this one guy. You would eat handful handfuls of caramels, but the vast majority of people that I work with, it's more like red wine and ribeye steaks and baked potatoes at the state house. And I wanted to bring that up because. I've gotten into come back and forth on social media with people who don't get this. 

It's like, oh, if you're, if you're obese, it's junk food, you eat like crap. And the reality is if you do a full, a few glasses of wine, and even if you go to a place and have a 1200 calorie salad and that, that salad is like, it's the best cheese flown in from Italy and the best, uh, olive oil. Although there's a few tablespoons and each tablespoon is 120 calories. 

Right is few tablespoons of olive oil, but it's the best olive oil that you can buy in the world. And then there's these sorted nuts. Which are, you know, another 300 calories in that salads, 1200, pushing 1200 calories. You've got a problem with calories, right? It's just, you can't get around the math, even though like there's a, you know, I read a study where with almonds as an example, like less of the almond gets absorbed. 

I forget how many calories and the details of it, but  

Eric Williamson: Yeah, about 25 percent less. Yeah. And when you, when you eat them as a whole almond, rather than having something like almond butter, because when you're chewing up the almond, some of the carbohydrates and fat, the calories gets trapped. Within the walls of fiber and those calories are now inaccessible by your gut, so it passes through and you excrete it rather than absorbing it. And those little details can add up, even though with tracking, for example, it's still showing that you're having 160 calories per quarter cup from almonds as you would and be 160 calories from almond butter, you're actually absorbing more from the almond butter. Sorry, just went off track, but I know that's an interesting point.  

Ted Ryce: That, yeah, absolutely. And that's a great thing to add in there because it's people will say, well, I had this whole, this special Ezekiel toast and it just added, you know, I put some, um, almond butter on it and that's better than peanut butter or whatever. 

And it was organic. And it's, or, or had the, uh, avocado toast, but it was four or 500 calories. It's like, or I was recently in Brazil and I I'm just firing off examples, but I want to help people right now we're listening, shift their perspective in case it needs it of acai and acai bowl, man. Uh, 500 and 600 calories, depending on, you know, if you put granola and coconut and banana in it, and in Brazil, these guys are eating it now, some of them are super fit, right? 

And they do a lot of exercise, but I've seen other people that are eating it. And they're like, no, this is so healthy, super food from the Amazon. And it's like, okay, for sure. But the calories still matter.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah, and you're getting at a point where it really depends on the person and this is a difficult question or topic to cover on a general sense, because I would I have so many follow up questions. 

If somebody has that, that as a barrier, we might go back to the steakhouse having a ribeye steak and red wine, maybe a few glasses of red wine. How often is that occurring? And what's the rest of the what's the rest of the week look like? I've never seen a case where somebody can't lose weight unless they're maybe getting completely shredded for like a bodybuilding competition during the final stages where they can't have a couple of restaurant meals a week, two or three. 

Ted Ryce: 100%. Yeah.  

Eric Williamson: There should be no reason that we can't be, we won't be able to balance that in. And that's, that's three meals in the week. That's less than 10 percent of their intake, a lot of times less than 5 percent of their meals and snacks. I'm not going to focus my attention really heavily there. 

If or before focusing on the other 90%. And just like you brought up, can we use a tool like tracking to help with discovering how we may be able to balance this? Is that, is that an option? Do we just do that even for a week to discover what, how we can perhaps bank, bank calories like you discussed in a safe manner, just to learn what that looks like. 

If that's off, it's, if that's off the table, people aren't willing to track, that's just too overwhelming for them. Okay. Well, What can, what else can we try? Can we try to have, honestly, you have a protein shake before you go for a meal. You're not going to want, you're not going to have incredible cravings for taste like ordering based on taste. 

You're going to be a little bit full and people are more likely to choose foods based on nutrition. It might be more likely to shove aside the bread. If restaurant foods are coming up really often, it, it is difficult because restaurants are in the business of taste. They're not in the business of nutrition, so they're, they're loading it up with like, the colloquial term is salt, salt, fat, and sugar. 

It's really not just sugar. It's also refined starches as well, because that's what appeals to the human mind. That's what, what brings people back appealing to biological senses. When you can make things very calorically dense and, and have those three components to it. So if we're going to restaurants really frequently, that's a tough conversation to have because there's almost no way around that in a lot of cases, unless we have access to some restaurants that are very nutrition focused. 

For example, Canyon Ranch, we have really high nutrition standards, very possible to do that here. But most restaurants are in the business of taste because that's what brings people back.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Something for everyone to know. So it's not that you can't do it, but you have to be, I mean, I ate out every day. 

I ate at restaurants every day while we were working together.  

Eric Williamson: And you were willing to track, right? So what, what tools do we have available to us? If you're willing to track, then it's, it makes it easier to be able to fit those foods in. Also, I believe, Ted, correct me if I'm wrong, you still had control over your breakfast, and we were still setting targets around having a certain amount of vegetables at those meals, the majority of them. 

There's still a level of control that we can express, and if we can really hone in on those times, and those items that you have full control over, Then it makes the balancing act a lot easier.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Um, uh, and, and you're right. I was, I was only eating one restaurant meal per day and sometimes two, but even then in Thailand, and this, this is another important point. 

Some cuisines are going to be easier. For example, like 

Eric Williamson: Absolutely  

Ted Ryce: One meal I would have in Thailand is boiled chicken with this amazing sesame soy sauce, soy it, I forget the name of it, but it's spicy. It's a little bit sweet. And so, but it was boiled chicken and then also with that, a soup. And so we had this super satiating soup because it had so much liquid in it. 

It was, uh, it was very delicious. The broth was, uh, full of, uh, garlic and then I had this boiled chicken. And so that was like typically one of my meals. And then I would go eat out at a restaurant and have maybe Pad Thai or, you know, curry, you know, the pineapple fried rice, whatever it was, and, uh, Yeah, but some and I remember one other one that uh, you know, I thought about you and you know working while we were working together I was thinking about like I ended up having uh, egg whites and veggies for breakfast and I went to this famous ribs place and it was like I ate the ribs and it was a big it was like a thousand or twelve hundred calories and so I had to be extra dialed in. 

I may have even skipped dinner. But yeah, it, because I was tracking, I was able to budget, but can you talk, if you have any followup, uh, go for it, but then let's talk about the habit versus tracking.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah. So I think you, you provide a really good example of those first couple of meals that you would have. 

You're saying things like boiled chicken and veggies and egg whites. And was there veggies in the egg whites as well?  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. 100%. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

Eric Williamson: Uh, those are extremely filling foods and that's a very natural way of banking those calories. What we've learned more recently is that the energy density, the caloric density of a meal is appears to be the primary predictor of how much, how many calories somebody is going to eat in that meal. and the caloric density of all the meals in the day, how much they're going to eat across the day.  

So if your first couple of meals are extremely low in calorie density, because you're having a lot of non starchy veggies, you're having really lean proteins that are high in water, like boiled chicken breast or really lean like egg whites because people would be surprised how much egg whites you have to reach 30 grams of proteins quite a bit. 

Ted Ryce: It's a lot of food  

Eric Williamson: And it takes a little while to eat and you're full and that gets you to dinner where you might be having these restaurant meals. That are more calorically dense to help balance that out. So I think the example you just gave really helps prove that point. There was a recent study by Finlay et al in, at an appetite at 2024. 

And they demonstrated in their second experiment that people actually tend to eat a very similar weight of food in their meals. You see that they had, it was fascinating. I loved it. They had these baked potato fries and a chili. And they looked exactly the same, but some of the ingredients and the amounts of the ingredients were different so that the low calorie density meal was about 1. 5 times, almost 1. 5 times lower than the high calorie density meal. So low calorie density meal had about 500 calories. The high calorie density meal had about 1300. 

Meals looked exactly the same. It's in the same bowl, same amount of fries. People ate the same amount of chili and same number of fries, whether it was a low calorie density or the high calorie density. 

So they ate about 500 grams of food, no matter what. But if they ate the low calorie density meal, they had about 500 calories. If they had the high calorie density meal, they had about 1, 300 calories. So if we can stay full during those meals that we have control over by choosing these really low calorie density foods, it's going to naturally lead us to be able to budget more appropriately and control our appetite, which to me, after, after creating caloric deficit, It's priority number two. 

That's the second thing I'm really focused on with everyone is how do I manage your appetite appropriately? Considering we know that that's a major, the main barrier to weight loss and keeping it off.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. It's such a, well, I love these conversations. I mean that I don't know how much time you're spending on Twitter these days, but the conversations around all the complicated physiological mechanisms, they're still raging. 

And I want to say this, If you're listening right now, I complain about this stuff. I call it out. It annoys the shit out of me, not gonna lie, but you know what? It's good for business. So I'm not complaining from a business perspective because people are so lost. They think, well, yeah, I can eat. Okay. So fat doesn't make you fat, but carbs make you fat. 

Um, so like I can eat, like I can eat a ribeye and I can shove a stick of butter in my face and then have like, you know, a pound of cheese and, and, and then like eight eggs. And then that's fine because that, that can't make me fat. But if I, if I put a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, like I'm, I'm going to get fat from that because it's carbs. 

Like if you're still, hopefully you're, you're not thinking that anymore, but that is just not, that is so outdated. So left field. I mean, you can even test it for yourself, go on the master's plans, which is basically you only drink lemonade. Yeah. Maple sweetened lemonade and people lose weight because they're only getting 800 to 1200 calories of liquid. 

I've actually done it a couple of times, Eric, not for a fat loss, but just to, you know, experiment to see if I could bring the inflammation down anyway. So like, cause I hate fasting, right? So, so anyway, going back to what you said that just to, just so I don't lose the point here. And people don't lose the point people in just in case, just to reiterate what Eric said, people ate the same volume of food, but the caloric density is different that that's why you can eat. 

That's why it's really hard to get full when you're eating a bag of chips, but like our example, like you said, Eric, egg whites and veggies, like 30 grams of protein from egg whites. It's hard to sit there and eat the whole thing. It's not that appetizing, even if you put some salt, pepper, and a little bit of hot sauce on it. 

Eric Williamson: Yeah. And that's just one example of the complexity of the goal of weight loss. It is it's simple, not easy when. We can bring people to the light, showing them that it is coming down to energy balance, calorie balance, and it's not how much carbs you eat, or how much fat you eat. That's part of it, but that's still pretty useless information for most people. 

The first thing that they're going to think about is, oh, how do I, how do I reduce my portions to cut back on calories? Actually, I hate that approach. I think that reducing portions is one of the most ineffective ways to pursue weight loss because we're, we're not considering the main adaptation that prevents us from losing weight, which is B, which is appetite. 

So if you just lower the amount of food on your plate, then we're going to be hungry. You're going to get stressed. You're going to get hangry, baby. And it's going to be a lot more difficult to say no to some of those foods. I even have some clients that I've discovered that when we find a way to look at whether doing nighttime eating can be a barrier that a lot of people don't consider. 

They don't realize that they're getting up in the middle of night and having so much sometimes. If we're not taking into account, staying full with food choices, having some balance to that, having some balance to our carbohydrate intake, fat intake, protein intake, and the types, the quality of those foods. 

Then that information calorie deficiency being important is, is almost useless. It's not something that people can immediately learn and implement on the vast majority of cases.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, exactly. So you have a meal, an example of that would be like, and this is what a lot of people think it is. It's like, Oh, you can eat ice cream. 

Oh yeah. But I can have, yeah, just have one tape, one spoonful of ice cream and you've eaten less calories. Yeah. But that's in who does that? I don't do that. Or, Hey, you're having a, you're having a, uh, an avocado toast, just cut it in half. It's very hard to, um, sometimes you can maybe split dinner and split things. 

And it makes sense from an appetite perspective, but like to your point, the whole idea of like, eat less, move more, right. When it comes to eating less, it's not really about eating less. It's about eating fewer calories, but Eric, it's a little bit tough to wrap your head around that, even for me back in the day, like it took a little while. 

Like, okay, this is okay, so I can eat a huge plate of egg whites and veggies and there's 300 calories in it, let's say. Or I can have two slices of pizza and there are about 300 calories each. And then I'm gonna actually want a third or a fourth slice, uh, if you're, if you're me at least. And so I can easily run up to. 

900, even 1200 calories, uh, with slices of pizza. And so it's, it's not about eating less food. It's about finding those foods with less caloric density. And this it's, it sounds sciencey and stupid or whatever you may. Because, you know, probably many people aren't scientists listen to this because maybe they don't need that. 

But this is the thing that's not sexy to talk about in a TikTok video or YouTube short, but this is what actually gets you results.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah. And what I'm searching for with people is how do we make some swaps? One of the best examples I have is you take a cup of, of fried rice, about 200 calories. Make that white rice, not fried, 160. 

Make that brown rice, not much of a step down from there, 150. You make that wild rice, now we're down to 100 calories per cup. So it's making that swap so that the same amount of rice stays on the plate. But you're just going with a different rice. If you were one, if you went from fried all the way to wild, okay, that's a hundred calories down per cup. 

You make that, that those types of swaps with different foods throughout the day that adds up really quickly.  

Ted Ryce: So what about some more swaps? So we got fried rice or even white rice to wild rice. What are some other swaps that you like? Take notes, everyone.  

Eric Williamson: Yeah. So Things like, like pork sausage, swap that for turkey sausage, and you'll usually cut that in half. 

If you take quick oats that have had some that are flavored with like brown sugar, for example, and make that steel cut oats, you'll cut that in half about. If you just take bread, so even whole wheat bread, I know the caloric density of it's 2. 6 kcal per gram. And there's evidence to suggest that if we can keep our average calorie density below 1. 3, that's typically ideal for weight loss So if you take 2. 6 calories per gram from whole wheat bread. And you swap that even for potato, right? One slice of bread is equal to about a third, a third of a plate of roasted potato. You can take that even further. You can go to squash. Now that's at least half a squash that you would need to eat to reach that amount, or at least half of a, a butternut squash, which is pretty large. 

So there's, there's all of these, there's different levels that we can go to. That depending on where the person currently is and what is the most realistic step for them, that's how we choose what swap to make.  

Ted Ryce: Let me throw something in just to put this in perspective for people too, because some people are going to listen to that and be like, I don't like wild rice and I don't like squash. 

I like bread. And what I would say to a person who maybe you just heard some of the swaps. That Eric presented and, you know, had a bit of a reaction to it because it's not your favorite foods and food is something it's not just fuel. It's what we, we receive pleasure from eating. We enjoy food all over the world. 

Only Western English speaking North American fitness coaches are the ones who say food is just fuel, bro. All over the world. People use food for a variety of reasons, right? Different cultures. So like with, if, if you. What I would say is a lot of meals. I find myself in my clients. Sometimes you're just like, I need to shove food in my face so I can get to work and not be distracted by hunger. 

Because as we've talked about, not only is hunger the number 1 thing you need to manage for fat loss, it's very distracting. Um, if you're hungry and you're trying to work or do anything, it adds a level of stress. Which is one of the reasons why I don't love intermittent fasting approaches personally, or even recommended the clients, um, unless the client was like, no, I like skipping meals. 

So, so it, it adds that stress, but so, so there's meals like you're, you're sharing a slice of birthday cake with your daughter on her birthday, or, uh, going out for the anniversary and celebrating your anniversary, or you're not, uh, A restaurant like I was in Positano and you don't, you want to eat the dessert. 

You want to eat the lemon sorbet because you're, you don't know when you're going to be back there again. Those are not the meals where you try to go for the swaps. It's the meal, the mundane meals that you don't care about. And you just need to shove something in your face and so that you can get about your day. 

Those are the meals where you can gain some ground and make those swaps. Go for it. You got a follow up 

Eric Williamson: The way that I, the way that I put the way that I put that is we get many benefits from food. Nutrients is one of the most important benefits for sure. Very important, but it's not the only benefit from food. 

We also get enjoyment. It's part of emotional regulation for stress relief. It's a major factor in celebrations like birthday cake. Or maybe champagne. It's a huge aspect of social relationships and developing social bonds. Human beings share more than any other creature on the planet. We evolved that way and that's been attributed to why we evolved so well is because we have shared resources. 

It's innate to us to share food and to feel closer with people and for that to be rewarding. So if we're going to be having these meals, like birthday cake and pizza, Then it's not best to grab a slice of pizza on your way home from work because you forgot your lunch, you mow it down while you're driving, and then you don't remember what it tasted like two hours later. 

If we're going to have those types of meals, we might as well get other benefits from it. Have the pizza from the place that you love, with the exact toppings that you really like, with family and friends. You're talking about it, and then the next day you look back and you say, wow, that was great pizza. 

Those are two completely different scenarios. And that second one is going to provide a lot more pleasure, really, and a lot more reward to keep us going. With being able to follow through on eating nutritiously, even then that first approach where we barely get any benefits from it, when we're just rushing to eat something quickly, that there's no thought that goes into the level of enjoyment or the social factors of it. 

Ted Ryce: Powerful, powerful, powerful. I love that. Exactly. Get many benefits. So make sure that you're getting the most benefits when you go for those high calorie meals. Instead of the example you used. Love it, Eric. And listen, we're, we're coming up on time right now, Eric. This has been a phenomenal conversation with you as always, where would you like people to go to learn more? 

You gave your, uh, your Instagram, but I know you, you shifted your business. Where should people go and find you?  

Eric Williamson: Sure. You can still find my website online, unlocked fitness and nutrition. com, which was, uh, my previous coaching business where I am currently still coaching myself, although taking on very few, very few clients, but happy to have a conversation with you. 

And perhaps you can hop on my, my waiting list if you're interested. Please do follow me on, on Instagram and Tik TOK, same handle at Eric Williamson, eric. williamson. phd, which is where you'll find my nutrition content. If you're ever at a Canyon ranch, make sure you mentioned my name. And if I'm there, I'd be happy to come and say hello. 

Ted Ryce: And definitely follow Eric. If you're on Instagram or Tik TOK, make sure you go there. The links for Eric's website. And his social media handles will be on the show notes. And just one more time for the website, unlock fitness and nutrition. com. So Eric, it's a pleasure, like always, and you dropped some serious knowledge bombs today. 

Eric Williamson: So thank you, man. Thanks Ted. I always enjoy our conversations.  

Ted Ryce: All right. We got to do it again soon.  

Eric Williamson: Sounds good.