Podcast Transcription: Exercise vs Nutrition: What's More Important for Longevity?

Ted Ryce: What is up my friend and welcome back to the legendary light podcast. I'm your host, Ted Ryce, health expert and coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high performing professionals. Today in this episode, we're going to get into exercise versus nutrition. What's more important for longevity. So if that's something you're interested in, you're in the right place. 

You're going to want to listen to this episode because, um, it may just contradict some of your beliefs and definitely some of what you're hearing on social media from health and fitness influencers. So before we get into that, I just want to say that we put on this, uh, this show for two reasons. Number 1, I want to give you the best information on the internet with regards to fat loss, longevity, and long term health optimization. 

The second reason is that we have coaching programs, and if you're a high performer, an executive, Entrepreneur and you want to fast track your success with your health because it's so hard to figure out the information on the internet. What's right? What's wrong? And you want the fastest possible results and the best possible results. Not only fast, but something that'll last for the rest of your life, you'll know I'm the guy to hire.  

So let's get into it. When it comes to living a long, healthy life, there's a common debate is exercise or nutrition more important. And this Is something that people argue with me about all the time on social media. 

And it's so funny to see. In fact, I've done polls on Twitter or X asking, what's more important for longevity exercise or nutrition. And before we get into this, obviously they're both important, but what I want to do, this isn't just an episode to create some drama. It's not an episode to be polemic. It's really about help you get more clear about how to get better results and how to think more critically about the information that you're receiving on the internet with regards to health and longevity. 

So, when I asked this question on X, it's always so funny because the people, most people say diet. There's a few that say exercise. And when we see who says exercise, it's usually someone who is in the actual field of, of health and fitness versus people who aren't, entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, software engineers. 

Everyone else seems to think that diet is super important. And so, what I want to do is I want to dive into what I think, why I think it, and why other people believe something different. So, let's hop in. And if you've listened to this show for a while, you already know what I think. Exercise trumps diet for longevity.  

Now, why do I say that? Is that my opinion? Is it because I've been listening to people who say it and I'm just like, well, these smart people said it. So I'm going to say it too. No, in fact, for most of my career, 25 years over 25 years at this point, 25 and a half years. I believed that there was something so special about diet, so special about it. 

And it was the most important thing that you could focus on. And I made a shift and that shift came when I got fat on low carb diets because I was listening to all the stuff that you hear these days.  

It's so funny. A lot of the things that people say these days, they're just parroting. What was said 10, 15, 20, even 25 years ago, carbs make you fat. Insulin's a fat storing hormone. What else? The seed oil debate that was popular 25 years ago, not as popular because now we have the viral virality or the viral nature, let's say of social media, but I made a shift and the shift came when I got fat on low carb diets and this pissed me off because I was like, I'm doing everything that these gurus have told me to do and it's not working. 

Actually, at 1st, I didn't think that at 1st, I thought I was doing everything right. I was listening to all these smart people and I was doing what they said. And then I said, you know what? There's something wrong with my body. I'm 35 or 36 years old, and I'm thinking to myself, this is literally what I thought I must have broken my metabolism somehow. I'm really struggling to lose fat. Maybe I went out and party too much. That was a potential. That was a hypothesis.  

I had no evidence backing that up, by the way, but just I thought maybe I broke my metabolism. And then I was like, you know what, maybe I have a hormonal issue, but then I got my testosterone and estrogen tested and my testosterone it wasn't bad. It wasn't amazing. It was like in the five hundreds and my estrogen was a little bit high, but it just, it wasn't pointing out. It wasn't like, Oh, this is the reason this is the issue. And I was really confused.  

Then after challenging myself and say, you know what, maybe I don't know what I, what I think I know. There's this great quote that I'm going to totally mess up, but it's basically, it's not what you don't know that is the issue. It's what you know, for sure. That's wrong. That's the issue. And that's the shift that I made because all of a sudden I'm like, you know what? Calories matter at first. I didn't believe it. 

But then I started to get results and I was like, Oh man, really? So, it didn't have to do with the carbs and I was eating way too much fat. And that's why I got fat. Not because fat is fattening, but if you eat too many calories from any source relative to how many calories you're burning, you get fat or you gain weight. 

And there's going to be a, uh, if you gain weight fast enough. There's going to be a substantial amount of that, that weight, that's fat. Unless you're training hard. And even then you'd put on muscle very slowly, separate topic. But the, the point is this, I started getting results and after getting those results and then helping my clients and my clients got better results, I was like, all right, I need to stop listening to people because a lot of the people that I was listening to, they're wrong.  

And so what I started to do is I started to become more what is now known as evidence based. So instead of listening to people, I would read studies and I would rate the level of evidence. And yes, studies have problems and some are underpowered and some are industry funded and there's all types of issues with studies, but the alternative is not having just listening to people who are sharing their opinions. 

That's even worse. There's nothing wrong with clinical observations or observations, uh, working with people. I do a lot of that. I use my experience, but if you're not basing it on a foundation of evidence, I think it's just crazy to do that. You know what that's like? It's like running a business and making changes to your business based on how you feel, for example, you think, oh, you know what? I'm going to change my website because I feel like, you know, it really needs to change.  

It doesn't look that good. And I'm pretty sure like, that's going to be the, a big thing that matters. And then you change your website, but instead of measuring the metrics, in other words, how many people come to your website, how many people click on your click on the link to buy, how many people sign up to your newsletter? 

You're just like, you know what? I like the way my website looks now. It's that crazy. And so using research is like using data in your business. Of course, you want to know what your numbers are in your business. Any good entrepreneur knows their numbers or at least knows they should know their numbers. 

I'm talking about me there. I'm not the best entrepreneur. Luckily, I'm a world class coach, but when it comes to entrepreneurship and running businesses, it's been a tough shift from coach to business owner. Topic for another podcast, but just, but you relate to that, don't you? Or if you're on a budget, you're not, you're not thinking about how your purchases make you feel. 

You're looking at the numbers. You're looking at the numbers. What do things cost? How much money do I have in my bank account? Etc. And that's what using research is. It's using numbers to build a case to believe in something. So when it comes to that, fitness reigns supreme for longevity. For example, leg strength and longevity. 

One of the most surprising metrics linked to longevity is leg strength. And again, this is not an opinion here. There was a, uh, a study done called the association of muscle mass and strength with all cause mortality among us, older adults, and what the study examined was the relationship between muscle strength, particularly leg strength and mortality in older adults. 

The researchers found that the greater muscle strength was associated with lower all cause mortality. In other words, death from any cause. And this highlights the importance of maintaining muscle strength for longevity. Another one, grip strength. So not only do we have this, let's say this evidence talking about leg strength. 

Now we have grip strength and another study published in the journal, the Lancet it's titled grip strength and mortality, a prognostic and diagnostic test. And this research demonstrated that grip strength is a strong predictor of mortality. The study included a large cohort and found that low grip strength was associated associated, sorry, with higher mortality rates from cardiovascular and non cardiovascular causes. 

So grip strength, it's reliable health metric. I want to say one thing about this really quick, because you might say in reading that, if you didn't think deeper, you'd say, oh, well, I'm going to sit on the couch, I'm going to eat popcorn and drink beer, watching TV. And I'm just going to get one of those grip strength. 

You know, one of those, uh, grippers, grip strengtheners, and I'm just going to sit, get fat, squeeze the grip strength. I'm going to stop going to the gym and I'm going to live a long time. What they're really grip strength is really about is how strong is your upper body. Right. How strong is your upper body? 

So it's a good metric. Another one, VO2Max and cardiorespiratory fitness. There's, there's so many studies showing this. So one study in particular cardiorespiratory fitness in all cause mortality, a meta analysis of cohort studies.  

So a meta analysis is a group of studies. So, this is a study of studies, and this meta analysis of cohort studies showed that the higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness measured by VO2max we're associated with lower all cause mortality. so death from any reason,  

The findings underscored the significance of cardio respiratory fitness and reducing the risk of chronic diseases and promoting longevity. So when we're talking about what is this, like, I'll say this, we don't have longevity figured out, but what we do have figured out is that when it comes to when it comes to, okay, sleep, stress management, exercise, diet, what is reigning supreme in terms of what, what does the data suggest that is most important and is, is without a doubt things or the results of exercise. 

In other words, your leg strength or your grip strength slash upper body strength or cardiorespiratory fitness. We know that if you're not, if you're not strengthening your legs, you're going to lose leg strength as you get older. Same with grip strength. Same with VO2 max. In fact, it's even worse with VO2 max slash cardiorespiratory fitness. 

Because even if you're training hard, your VO2 max goes down anyway. Whereas you can maintain leg strength and grip strength. You can, you can be quite strong and even maybe hit peak strength in your forties and fifties. So when it comes to this exercise, at least right now, and I don't think it's going to change folks. 

We're pretty good with what we know. We might get more detailed, but we're pretty good with what we know you must be keeping your muscles strong and healthy and you must be in good cardiorespiratory shape. And it is those 2 things muscle strength of your upper body and lower body and your cardiorespiratory fitness. 

Those are the most important and I want to say something. Because you might say, well, you're pretty biased, Ted. You know what? You're probably just, you're probably just saying this, you're coaching business and you have this coaching business where you help people get in shape. Guess what I do? Mostly about nutrition. 

When people first come to me, it's mostly about nutrition. So here I am someone who focuses mostly on nutrition and I'm telling you. So I would be more, let's say, because I think this is important to mention. Okay. You know, follow the money in other words, right? If you follow my money, what do I sell? Body transformation. 

And it's mostly nutrition. And we'll talk about the role of nutrition and longevity in a second, but it's mostly nutrition is what I do. I mean, I do have my clients do cardiorespiratory fitness tests. So I have them get their VO two max and do other things. But the majority I, and I certainly focus on exercise, but the, the big issue with my clients, it's nutrition, it's nutrition. 

So I'm not, I would be more, let's say it would be, I don't know. I was going to say I would be more successful because I think a lot of people listen to me because I say things exactly like this. Sharing what I believe, you know, truth, what I believe to be the most true thing when it comes to longevity. 

So I built my reputation on that, but let's say it would be more, you could make the argument that it would be more advantageous for me to harp on nutrition, harp on, um, you know, like I, I have some like, Hey, nutrition, nutrition, and that's what I help you with and nutrition and longevity. And I could make some stuff up and market it that way, but I don't do that because I don't believe it's true. 

I believe nutrition is important, but it's much more complicated. In fact, let's talk about nutrition now. Here's the thing. While exercise metrics like leg strength, you can measure that. Grip strength, you can measure that too. VO2 max, you can go get a test and measure that. They're strongly linked to longevity. 

The role of diet is more nuanced. In fact, it's not about following a specific diet, Mediterranean, ketogenic or plant based, but it's about using your diet to achieve health outcomes through your dietary choices. For example, healthy body fat levels. Maintaining healthy body fat is crucial. Excess body fat, particularly visceral fat, isn't linked to numerous health problems, diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, depression, anxiety. 

So, your diet should help you achieve a healthy body fat percentage. What about optimal blood sugar and cholesterol levels? Well, diet plays a significant role in managing blood sugar and cholesterol levels, high blood sugar can lead to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. High cholesterol can cause cardiovascular problems. 

So, diet, you know, when people say diet is so important, it is, but you can even see how both exercise fits into this exercise is going to help you maintain healthy body fat levels. What do we say on this podcast? Lifting weights. It's great for fat loss. There's some research that even shows exercise is more effective. 

At losing visceral fat in particular. So, so it plays a role. Optimal blood sugar exercise plays a role there too. In cholesterol levels, exercise doesn't really play a role from what I've looked at. You're not going to be changing your cholesterol levels much just by exercising more. In fact, you'll see people who are very lean, who are, uh, exercising a ton, And they have high cholesterol levels. 

They're called carnivore, carnivore diet people, and they share their cholesterol levels anyway. So, so you can have a mess with, with your cholesterol levels, but, um, but it's a little bit more nuanced, you know, when it comes to, because what the industry sells us is like, Hey, here's a super food or eat these greens, have this greens powder, or take NADH, Or NAD plus, sorry, or resveratrol. 

And it's like, yeah, we're, we're really, we're really at the beginning of understanding all the nuances of diet and what's optimal. It's very tough to measure what an optimal diet is. We don't like the nutrients, the mineral vitamin and mineral testing. Some things are pretty solid, like vitamin D. What are some other ones? 

There's a few vitamins that you can test for. There's a few minerals you can test for, but you can't test for the vast majority of that stuff, not accurately and figure out. We just don't know like what are the optimal levels of certain nutrients and maybe in the future diet becomes just as important as exercise. 

Although I don't think it will, but certainly we're just, we just don't know that much about diet and it seems way more nuanced versus like, hey, how strong are your legs? Hey, how strong is your upper body specifically, you know, your grip. Hey, what is your VO two max? Because we know specifically what builds that. 

In other words, if you do leg strength, if you do strength training for your legs, your leg strength is going to go up. If you do upper body training or specifically grip training, grip strength and upper body strength are going to go up. If you do specific forms of cardio your VO two max is going to go up, but you know, there's a lot of different ways to get healthy body fat levels and you can even do it in an unhealthy way. 

Like, for example, carnivore diet, sticking on that for long periods of time. Your cholesterol is super high. You can achieve healthy body fat levels. On an unhealthy diet, you know, so it's, it's an optimal blood sugar levels too, but your cholesterol level, your Apple B and your LDL cholesterol is through the roof and basically you're, you know, on the verge of having a stroke or a heart attack it within a few years of, Uh, following that, especially if you're, you know, forties or fifties or sixties, not going to argue with you about that. 

If you don't believe in cholesterol, that's up to you. Not trying to change your mind, but that's what I believe again is the best evidence shows that you've got to, you've got to watch your cholesterol levels. So, when it comes to this diet is undeniably important for your health. And I don't want to say that it's not, that's not what I'm saying here. 

What I am saying is that the number one research backed, let's say, um, surefire way of, of improving your chances at living a long and healthy life. Leg strength, grip strength, VO2max. Now, of course you want to do both. You want to make sure that you're focusing on your nutrition, but I'm, I'll tell you, you're, you're much more, I think with nutrition, you can get away a lot more provided you're measuring your blood work. 

That's what we do with our clients and myself. We measure your body fat levels and your blood work. And if those are good. Okay. Oh, but I'm not eating this or I'm eating this or it's like, yeah, okay. Certainly, there's, uh, some ways to optimize your diet, but again, it's so hard for people living in a place like the United States. 

If you have any type of social life, especially if you are like my clients, you make money, you go to Michelin starred restaurants, you drink red wine occasionally and or maybe every night, hopefully not. It becomes much more nuanced and, um, you can get away with a lot more versus it's hard to get away. Like there will be a point where your, your VO two max is just not high enough, right? 

Your leg strength and grip strength, not high enough. And I'll tell you this, I'll say one more thing about this. You can get away that there's a saying you can't out train a bad diet. I think that's true in extremes, but you can get away with a lot. I would even go as far as to say that the more you exercise, the more dietary discretions you can get away with, you can be more lax on your diet if you're in better shape, uh, like me, but it's still important. 

So yeah, really important there. Anyway, I hope this gets you thinking more critically about your health practices, what you're focused on, because there's a lot of money in, like, for example, if I was going to write a book and I wanted it to be a bestseller and I wanted to make a lot of money with it, I would write a book on nutrition because books on exercise, they don't sell as well. 

It's like the diet book, the diet book, like. The bulletproof diet, uh, you know, gosh, so many diet books, the carnivore code, those are the books that diet people go crazy over diet. But I'm telling you, if you think more critically, if you, let's say lift yourself out of the nonsense, you're going to find that using data too drive your decision making and beliefs, you're going to see that exercise is going to be the thing that you're going to focus the most on that you can have the most control over after a while. It's like, it gets very tough to optimize your diet, meaning like, okay, you can have healthy body fat levels. 

You can get your blood panel tested and make sure all your levels are in optimal ranges. But, you know, does that, do you need to eat acai or blueberries or kind of the same thing because they both have the same types of anthocyanins or purple potatoes and, you know, spinach or kale. It's like you can get away with a lot of, um, variants in, in, you know, there's just a ton of nuance when it comes to diet. 

So hopefully this shed some light on this conversation for you. It helps you. Hopefully listening to this helps you become a little bit more focused on exercise, a little less focused on diet. One more thing I'll say, the people who are like, Oh, sugar is evil, like those types of people. That's actually, that used to be me, by the way, I used to be so crazy about diet only would eat at organic restaurants. 

Things like that. Now, um, you know, I care for sure. I care about my food quality, but I'm much more relaxed about it and I'm much less stressed about it. I don't argue about nutrition when people want to argue with me. Like if you want to argue with me about cholesterol or any, you know, whether you believe that, that I'm wrong here, I don't care. 

I'm not trying to convince you. I'm telling you, I'm, I feel like I'm the expert. I'm telling you what, and I believe that experts have just been doing something for longer than everybody else or more focused everyone else. Right? So, I'm the expert. I get results with all my clients and, um, I don't care about changing your mind, you know, but if you are a person who you're, you're open to challenging yourself and challenging what you believe and asking yourself why you believe the things you believe. 

And usually it's because you heard someone say it. You don't have strong evidence to back it up. It's not like you're reading studies because you don't have time for that. And studies are boring as hell to read, but you heard it enough times. So you just say it too. That's usually why people say it because they're biased and it's not founded on data and just like, you know, you, you wouldn't change your website based on your feelings. 

You would change it based on data or change your sales strategy or whatever based on data. And, um, that's what I've done and it's changed, not just the way I think about things, it's changed my emotional health. As I said, I don't argue with people anymore. I just, I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. I get paid for this. 

I get people great results, not interested in what you think because you feels like you're arguing with, with me just to protect your identity, protect your beliefs. Versus, uh, trying to figure out what works. So, uh, you know, I've just been a much better place about it and a lot healthier as well. So hopefully that helps shed some light on things. 

So, a little bit more off the cuff than I usually do, but I wanted to, yeah, wanted to do this episode for you today. Hope you enjoyed it. Have a great one and talk to you soon.