Podcast Transcription: Metabolism & Weight Loss: Does Metabolism Matter In Weight Loss? (And What To Do About It) with Ted Ryce (Part 1)

Ted Ryce: Nearly 70% of Americans have it. About 50% of Americans are trying to change it. It costs Americans nearly $150 billion a year. It’s been closely linked to over 60 chronic diseases, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, and early death. What are we talking about? We’re talking about being overweight, or being obese.

What is up, my friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Legendary Life podcast. I am your host, Ted Ryce, health expert and coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high-performing professionals. What we do here on the Legendary Life podcast is we break down science-based information on how to lose fat, prevent disease, and live a longer, healthier, legendary life.

So, let’s get back to our episode today, which is about obesity. And let’s talk about it.

We’re obsessed with fatness, and to a lesser extent, fitness. But this obsession has done little to stop what’s been called “the epidemic of obesity”. And in fact, this is a problem that is happening all over the world. Now, I use a lot of stats from America because America does a lot of research. But we’ve got good statistics from Australia, from the UK, and from Canada as well.

So even in spite of all these statistics, all this obsession, it’s done little to stop what, again, has been called the epidemic of obesity. And have you ever wondered with all the diets, gyms, weight loss programs and more, why do we struggle so much with fatness? And what is going on? Is it the hormones in our body? Did we break our metabolism? Is it our genes? Is it the estrogen? Is it the endocrine disrupting chemicals in my shampoo that I lather my hair with every day?

Well, I’ll tell you one thing. One thing we know for certain is that we know that obesity ultimately comes down to a simple equation: energy in versus energy out. That, we know. And that is how I get great results with my clients. That’s how all diets work, as a matter of fact. But if the concept is so simple, though, why do we struggle? Why do so many of us struggle with losing fat? And today we’re going to dig a bit deeper and do our best to answer this question.

What we’re going to look at today, and this is going to be at least a two-part episode, it may even turn out to be three parts, depending on how long I talk, so I’m going to try to keep it short and punchy. But if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I tend to go off on tangents, or at least I’d like to explain the details. Because I really want you to understand this. I really want you to understand the nuances.

In our society today—and here comes a tangent, right—we love the extremes. We love the extremes. But the extremes don’t usually represent what’s really going on. There’s a lot of nuance, a lot of nuance. So today, we’re going to talk about what obesity is. We’re going to define obesity. And we’re going to share how you know whether it’s something that you have or not. And we’re going to talk today about the biological factors that contribute to obesity.

So, if you’ve ever wondered about genetics, metabolism, hormones, we’re going to cover that today. Because there’s a lot of misconceptions, a lot of people, a lot of influencers: “Influencers, I’m a fitness influencer, how many followers on Instagram do you have? Oh, you’re not an influencer yet. You have to have at least 133,000 followers before you can call yourself an influencer.”

So, a lot of influencers and podcasters, especially in the health space, they toss out a lot of sciency-sounding information. And it’s my job here to help you figure out what’s really what here, right? Because a lot of poor jobs are being done. And I’m not going to name names, but I am going to tell you, I use that as an example of what not to do. Because I want you very clear on what the best evidence says. I don’t want you confused.

And so we’re going to be talking about the genes, the hormones, the metabolism, the biological factors about obesity today. And in the next installment, we’ll talk about the social environmental factors. So, let’s first define obesity. Obesity is defined, the most common way of defining it if you go to your doctor, he’ll take or calculate your BMI. BMI, as you probably know, stands for Body Mass Index.

It’s your weight in kilograms, divided by your height in meters. So, if you’re like me, and you don’t use the metric system, there’s no need to do the math. All you have to do is go to a search engine, Google or DuckDuckGo, whatever you’re into, and put your height, your weight, and the letters BMI into the search bar, and you’ll get your BMI.

And if you do that, you’ll quickly find out that if your BMI is between 25 and 30, you’re considered overweight. If it’s above 30, you’re considered obese. And if it’s above 40, you’re considered morbidly obese.

Now, just to clarify here, more recently, scientists have started classifying obesity into class one, class two and class three, just in case you see that or hear someone talking about obesity and talking about it, in instead of like, “Oh, they’re morbidly obese, or they’re obese,” there is class one, class two and class three.” So just FYI.

Now, some people, especially those who work out a lot, and have higher amounts of muscle mass, complain that BMI cast too wide of a net. Like, “I’m not that fat, bro. I’m just jacked.” And we’ll talk about that in a second. BMI is actually pretty solid for most people, and you probably have a lot less muscle on you than you think. But some good options are to use the waist to hip ratio, or as I like to call it, the gut to butt ratio.

So, if you’re a man, it should be less than 0.95, and if you’re a woman, it should be less than 0.80. So, what I like to do for my clients in my coaching program, is I have them weigh themselves. I figure out their BMI, for sure. It’s just another data point. But I also have them weigh themselves. I also have them take photos and I also encourage them, if they can—and not a lot of people can, due to the Coronavirus.

I was about to say Coronavirus and COVID together, but the Coronavirus/COVID situation where they may not have access to this but doing a body fat test, get your body fat test done.

The two that I liked the best are DEXA scans and something called Inbody. A DEXA scan, you’ll find that universities—and usually gyms won’t have it, it’ll be like a wellness facility.

So, universities, they use it for studies and wellness places, they use it for what? To figure out your body fat percentage and also your bone mineral density, that type of thing. Those are the two I liked the best. The DEXA scan is probably the better of the two. But the Inbody tends to be found much more readily available, it’s more readily available, so easier to find, and also less expensive, though it usually cost you about 50 USD, 50 bucks in American.

So why do we care so much about obesity? Well, despite what you might hear out there by some strange groups like, HAES, Health at Every Size, or at least the more extreme elements of that, I don’t know, philosophy? Health at Every Size? There’s good evidence that links obesity to a number of different health problems, for example, being obese quadruples your risk of having diabetes, increases your risk of having high blood pressure by a factor of 5.6 times, more than doubles your risk for having high cholesterol and increases the risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke. Poor diet and a lack of exercise has been linked to 25% of cancers.

In fact, one of my first public talks that I’ve ever done was on how exercise, and not even that much exercise, but just ‘getting up off your fucking ass every once in a while’ exercise can help with preventing cancer and also help preventing recurrence of cancer.

And in my talk, I compared exercise against the best drug at the time, and exercise just crushed it. And by the way, I jest about getting up off your butt. So don’t get too triggered out there. I know it’s a triggerable time, very heightened, tense time. And we’ll talk about why you might not be most so motivated to get off your butt.

So, obesity is also linked to osteoarthritis, heartburn, gastro esophageal reflux disorder, and even more recent evidence has showed us that obesity is linked to depression and earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease. One other thing I’ll throw in there is that, again, more recently, obesity has been linked to less activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is the place where all the executive functioning happenings, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

So you could say, “Well, I’m Ted, I have these goals, I want to make a certain amount of money, I want to have children. I want to be involved in charities and give back to society.”

So that’s all my goals, right? Well, the part of our brain, where that happens is our prefrontal cortex, more specifically, our left prefrontal cortex. And what we found with obesity is it takes away the activity from that area.

So, obesity messes up your brain. If you want to change...And I’m kind of jumping ahead here, but I think it’s worth mentioning now.

So, if you want to change yourself, you need a solid functioning executive system and your left prefrontal cortex, right? You need your prefrontal cortex to work as well as it can. And obesity seems to take away from that. Stress also, chronic stress, not any stress, but chronic stress also takes away from that as well. We’ll be talking about that later.

So, like I said, down to, technically speaking, more energy in, than the energy that’s going out.

But in reality, what we deal with is that obesity is really a complex health issue, where your genes are involved, your physical activity, or how inactive you are, what you choose to eat, what you have available to eat, what medications you use, also your education, your stress levels, your skills, and the types of food marketing that you’re exposed to, all are going to influence you.

Now again, today, we’re going to be talking about the biology of obesity. So, we’re going to be talking about genes, and let’s jump right into it. Now, a potential explanation for obesity is genes. And the genetics explanation has a lot of appeal, because many people—it matches what we see. It’s like, “Oh, look, fat parents have fat kids. It’s pretty obvious. Obesity runs in families.” And yes, obesity does run in families.

And it also gives us a much-needed break from all the blaming that often accompanies discussions of weight. Because you have on the other side, people are saying, “Hey, listen, this is a moral failing. This is a lack of discipline. This is a lack of willpower. It’s not these other things that are going on, it’s really just you. You’re just a POS, that’s why you’re overweight or obese.” And that’s not true either. There’s a lot of things that happen here. But again, let’s stick with genes.

So rarely, obesity occurs in families according to changes in one single gene. And by the way, what’s interesting about how genes affect obesity, because you’re like, “Oh, it’s in the genes, right? And what we automatically think is like, “Oh, well, there’s something in my genes that affects, like how food affects me, right? So, in other words, I look at a slice of pizza, and I gain weight, right?

But how genes really affect us—and this is, again, a bit of a jumping ahead, a preface for what we’re going to be talking about—is, genes affect your hunger. So, in these single gene variations of obesity, the affected children, and that’s how we know it happens in childhood, these children feel extremely hungry and become obese, because they just overeat. But in most obese people, there is no single genetic cause.

And since 2006, numerous studies have found more than 50 genes associated with obesity –most with very small effects. So, most obesity seems to be multifactorial.

That is, it has to do with your genes has to do with your hunger levels has to do with your environment, it has to do with their stress, it has to do with so many things. And again, I’ve already kind of alluded to this or but you may ask, “Well, yeah, okay, so you’re talking about genes here.

You say that there are these cases where usually, children, they figure it out very quickly. These children have an issue, they do a genetic test, they find there’s one single gene involved.

And you’re also saying, “Ted, genes also play a role, although a small one, in other cases of obesity.” So how do our genes affect whether we’re overweight or not, or obese or not? Great question. And again, a lot of people think, well, you know, it just makes me more susceptible to put on fat. So, I eat a piece of pizza and I get fat and you eat a piece of pizza, and you don’t, and the difference is my genes, right?

Isn’t that what you think? That’s what I used to think. But here’s how it happens: our brain— always comes back to the brain—regulates food intake, by responding to signals from fat tissue, your pancreas and your digestive tract. So, these signals are transmitted by hormones. Leptin is secreted from your fat tissue, insulin is secreted from your pancreas, and ghrelin, which you may or may not have heard of, is secreted by your digestive tract.

Now, the brain coordinates these signals, and responds with instructions to the body, it’s like, go eat more, or stop moving around so much, or do the opposite, right? Eat more or move around more. And genes are the basis for the signals and responses that guide food intake. And small changes in these genes can affect their level of activity. So, it’s not just about whether you have these genes or not, it’s whether they get turned on or not.

And I know this might be getting a bit dense. And I promise you, if it is, I’ll end up simplifying it for you in a second here, but just understand, I don’t read blogs and listen to podcasts, I read studies and learn from university experts— university experts—university professors. I take courses in this stuff, and we dive deep into the science.

But I want you to understand this: energy is crucial to survival. Every single animal, let’s say a lion, on the plains of Africa… I know kind of when we see a lion chasing down a gazelle and eating it. It’s like, “Oh, what a mean, nasty lion,” especially when the lion goes for the old or the young, right? You see that and you like have a moral judgment against the lion. I mean, I do, right? Like, “Lion why you have to be such an asshole don’t go after the children, okay? You don’t need children. And don’t go after the old people. What’s wrong with you?”

But the reality for that lion is that it’s not making a moral judgment. It’s simply saying listen, how hard and long do I have to run versus the food I get back? Because if I have to work too hard to get that food, I’ll starve to death, and my lion cubs will starve to death. That’s the nature of nature, not the sunsets and nice fields of whatever nature, but the reality of, of survival. And so energy is crucial to survival. Humans are no different.

And in the past, we’ve struggled, people used to starve to death. One of the things that I’ve done in the past when people have really challenged me on this, I showed them pictures of starving human beings. There’s no obesity there. And starvation is something that we don’t face as much anymore as human beings, but it’s something that we struggled with a lot in the past.

And we are programmed for Paleolithic conditions. We have a Paleolithic programming, if you will. And there’s a hypothesis called the Thrifty Genotype. And what this hypothesis states is that the same genes that helped our ancestors survive famines are now being challenged by environments in which food is plentiful year round. In other words, you don’t have to go hunting and gathering for your food. You don’t need to worry about okay, how long can I chase that—I don’t even know. I’m such a city, non-hunting person, I don’t even know.

Like, how long do I can chase the deer or the boar down? How many days can I chase it down, or hours can I chase it down before I think, “You know what, it’s not worth it?” We don’t have to make that call anymore. Now it’s like, oh, my gosh, you know, I’ve got to stop myself from grabbing a handful of M&Ms when I walked by my co-workers desk, because there’s food everywhere, right? Not healthy food, usually. Your co-workers don’t keep kale salads on their desk, but there’s food everywhere.

So, you may have heard this been explained as a gene environment mismatch. And that, again, basically means there’s a mismatch between our Paleolithic programming and the modern environment that we find ourselves in. Epigenetics is also at play here. And you’ve probably heard of epigenetics before, so we’re not going to talk too much about it. Because this area of inquiry, and research is still being figured out. It’s at the early stages, but it’s not just about the genes that we have, it’s about the genes that get turned on.

And epigenetics has to do with which genes get turned on, which genes don’t. And epigenetics might help explain how early exposures, such as infant feeding, so when you feed, and how you feed your child, as an infant, influences adult obesity, and things like that. But it’s still really at the early stages here. So, let’s talk about metabolism. So, we know this, your metabolic rate slows down with age.

Beginning in our mid-20s, we lose about 1/3 percent of our muscle mass by weight each year, for the rest of our lives. Unless, of course, we’re doing things to build muscle. So, I want to open this up a bit. So, everyone says, “In 10 years, I’ve gotten fat, and I haven’t changed my lifestyle.” And that may be true. But what’s happening is that your body changes regardless of your lifestyle. In fact, as we get older, it becomes more important.

So, think about that. Think about how many people you know, or if you’ve said this before, you’re saying, “Oh, yeah, I haven’t changed anything over the years. But I’ve gotten fatter. And I don’t know why. I don’t eat more.” So, think about this: if you don’t do any…Let’s say that you don’t work out that much. Or you don’t do it optimally, or let’s say that you’re more into cardio.

And you don’t do that much either, three times and four times a week, which is not that much. That’s what I’m saying, it’s not that much. You lose about 1/3 percent of muscle mass by weight each year 1/3 of a percent of muscle mass. So that’s a 5% decline per decade and basal metabolic rate. So your metabolism does slow down 5% per decade because of this loss and muscle mass. And it reduces the number of calories that you need to maintain your weight.

And let me ask you this: if you’re not doing anything, right, do you say, oh, well, I’m not doing anything. So, I’m not really focusing on resistance training exercise, so I’m going to change, I’m going to eat less. Probably not. In fact, we know people who are less active tend to eat more.

So again, unfortunately, as we get older, we don’t typically lower our calorie intake, and this leads to our weight creeping up and probably even worse, if you tested your body fat percentage, you’d see that you put on a lot more fat than you realize, because it’s not that you’re just gaining weight, it’s that you’ve lost muscle, you’ve lost weight for muscle, but you’ve gained so much fat that you’ve even put on more fat than you’ve been realized.

And some people have even argued that, well, we’ve got an aging population here. And we know that people don’t, in general, they don’t do the minimum amount of exercise that we recommend, which is 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. And if you really want to step that up, you throw in at least two resistance training workouts per week. So we know, most people don’t do that. But even then, it’s not enough to account for the big changes that we’ve seen over the past few decades in obesity.

Another thing that I want to talk about here is fat as the largest endocrine organ that we have in our body. So, in other words, an endocrine organ is something that secretes a hormone. And we’ve already talked about this, but we’ll talk about it a little bit more. So your body fat, what most people think is—when they get to a certain point, they’re like, “I’m storing body fat. Body fat is this energy, it’s just stored energy.”

But it’s not just stored. Body fat is metabolically active. It’s not just a storage device. Fat secretes chemicals. It secretes a hormone called leptin. Leptin is responsible for giving us a sense of satiety. So, in other words, leptin helps you know that you don’t need to eat more.

One thing that we found, because if you’re doing the logic here, if you’re following the logic, it’s like, “Well, if fat secretes this hormone called leptin, which gives us a sense of satiety? How come that I have so much fat. I must be secreting a lot of this leptin. How come I’m hungry all the time?”

And good question. Well, fat secretes leptin. But what happens with people who are obese is that the receptors for leptin become insensitive, similar to—you’ve heard of like, insulin resistance? Well, you have leptin resistance as well, which is arguably a bigger issue. Because what how much we decide to eat, our hunger levels, that’s really the big battle here.

So unfortunately, if you have a lot of fat cells secreting a lot of leptin, you develop leptin insensitivity. So, can you see how this is getting complicated, and we haven’t even jumped into the social and environment influences yet? We’re going to do that next episode. But I want to wrap up, I want to basically sum up what we talked about today. Now I want to talk about how to use this information.

So, number one is don’t blame your genes on your obesity, because your genes are affecting your appetite. It plays a part, but unless you are one of those rare, single or monogenic versions of obesity, in other words, you have a change in this one gene that affects your hunger and you’ve been morbidly obese or class three obesity, however you want to call it, since you were a young child. It’s not a genes thing. It’s a behavior thing. It’s a hunger thing.

Now, you don’t control how hungry you are. That’s your body controlling it. But there are numerous things that affect how hungry you are. So again, if you haven’t been diagnosed with that single gene, or monogenic version of obesity, obesity is playing a smaller part than you think. And even if it is a big deal, which it’s not for most people, it’s affecting your hunger levels.

But again, there’s numerous things that affect your hunger levels, it’s really tough to figure out okay, well, how much of this hunger is being generated by my genes versus some of the other things happening in my life? Poor sleep, too much stress, so many other things, poor choices of foods, because you can’t just eat one potato chip, right? You don’t get full on a bag of potato chips.

So, there’s all these factors at play. So, the thing here is lose the genes excuse, okay? As far as your metabolism, you have to ask yourself, okay, well, if you’re one of the people that has said, okay, well, my metabolism has certainly slowed down. It can be true. But the reason it slow down is because you haven’t done a good job of keeping your muscle mass. Now, I’m not blaming you for that. I’m just saying, that’s what it’s about.

Now, it could be that nobody’s ever told you that, it could be that you hate exercise and you go in there, and it’s so painful to exercise, it could be a lot of things. But the reason is, you haven’t kept your muscle, you haven’t done physical things to keep your muscle mass. So the takeaway here is prioritize strength training, hit resistance training twice a week, and don’t go more than two weeks without using your muscles.

You can’t go without using your muscles, or there are consequences. And it’s as simple as that. It’s kind of like, “Hey, if you go too long without brushing your teeth, you get cavities. And that’s something that I’ve come back to again and again. Of course, when you don’t brush your teeth, nobody for that day wants to talk to you, because they’re like, “Ooh, ooh.” You get immediate feedback. And if you don’t work out, you don’t get immediate feedback. In fact, you don’t even know what’s happening, you have to even get a body fat test to even show how much muscle you’ve lost.

So, it’s much harder, I understand that. But still… I’m not trying to make the perfect analogy here. I’m just trying to get you to get this through your head. And just to say, well, listen, if I don’t want to lose muscle mass, if I don’t want my metabolism to slow down, I need to train with weights. Now, I don’t have to lift dumbbells, I don’t have to lift barbells or kettlebells, or club bells, I don’t have to use the TRX. You don’t have to use bands. You don’t have to do bodyweight exercises, but you have to do something.

And I’ve gone over how to do that in other episodes, I’m not going to go back to how to do resistance training lists. Find my other episodes on that. But make sure just know that you have to do it or else…You have to keep your muscle or your metabolism slows. Because they’ve done studies on people in their 80s and 90s, and you probably won’t even live that long. Actually, we might. They’ve done studies on this, and there’s no difference.

If they calculate, if they factor in how much muscle mass a person has and how much fat mass a person has, there’s no difference in metabolic rate when you’re younger or older. It has more to do with how much muscle you have.

Now, it gets harder to maintain your muscle as you get older, even if you’re training hard. That’s another topic for another time. But just understand that the real issue here isn’t your age. It’s because you can’t control that, aging happens. Time stops for no man or woman. But certainly, you can get up and do resistance training.

Now if you’re having a big issue with getting started or finding that you keep falling off track, we’re not going to cover that today. That’s on behavior change. And that’s something that we’ll be covering very soon. Because that is what is at the root here. I’m just trying to help you understand the more fundamental aspects of why we’re overweight, especially diving into some of this, like hormone genetics thing. So, let’s lose the genes excuse, let’s lose the hormones excuse. Let’s start taking responsibility. Let’s you lose the metabolism excuses.

Well, let’s look at, okay, so even if I have some of these genes, which I haven’t had a genomic test, so I don’t know. And you don’t need a genomic test either. You don’t need any of those, ‘eat right for your genes’ test. It’s all bullshit. You know, there’s some things that you can tell from genetic tests, but we’re not quite there yet. So, if you’ve already taken one of them, one of the tests, good for you. You’re investing in your health, but just know that it can’t tell us a lot.

And stay away from people who tell you, “Oh, yeah, the secret is doing a genetic test.” We’re not going to get into genetic testing. But I have interviewed people about it. Go on my podcast and search for that. You will find the episode with John Berardi, where we talked about genetic testing, and how it really can’t tell you jack. So, let’s lose the excuses.

Let’s understand that even if genes are playing a part here, it’s influencing my hunger. How do I manage my hunger, should be your question. That’s something that I help people out with in the coaching, because that’s the big behavioral in, that’s the part where it’s like, how do I manage this hunger?

The other side is: how do I exercise in a way that helps me maintain my muscle mass, so I keep my metabolism right where I want it, instead of this 5% decline that happens every decade? So those are the things those are the big takeaways, for me, at least when I read this, and when I was putting this together, I want to ask you, what are the big takeaways from this episode for you today?

Have you been using the metabolism, the hormones, the genes excuse? Are you working out enough so that you can say hey, listen, I am in the gym working out with weights a few times a week So I know my metabolism shouldn’t be slowing down, I shouldn’t be experiencing that 5% muscle loss that you’ve been talking about, but I’m still having problems with obesity or being overweight here.

So, we’re going to get into this and more. But it all comes down to this, my friend, it comes down to the energy coming in and the energy going out there. There is no other explanation for it. All things influence that. So, if you have hypothyroidism, what happens? Well, it lowers your metabolic rate. Okay, well, what does that mean? That means that you have to eat less calories because your metabolism has slowed down.

By the way, when we look into it, hypothyroidism, and I’ve had many clients with hypothyroidism, it doesn’t slow down your metabolism by that much, you know, maybe 100 calories or something in there. That’s like eating an apple. So, it’s not like, well, I had that extra apple a day, but because my hypothyroidism, you know, I got fat from eating that extra Apple, or that one cookie.

So what’s at play here with hypothyroidism is that, the sluggishness that happens with hypothyroidism tends to drop people’s amount of activity that they’re doing. So, it really comes down to this energy in, energy out. Listen, and in case you’re new to this, and you’re still skeptical and you think that I bought into a bunch of bullshit here, I used to be a strict low carb, I used to think that my metabolism was broken.

And I even got my hormones tested and found that my estrogen levels were a bit higher than normal. Even though my testosterone levels were okay, not great, but okay. And I got lost in this world for a long time. But eventually, I pulled out of it and figured out, okay, I have a lot of bullshit beliefs here about what’s causing me to be fat and stay fat, I need to dive into this.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the behaviors, and we’re in control of our behaviors.

And if we’re not, then that’s what we’re going to dive into on how to change your behavior. How do you set yourself up? What do you need to change so that you get more in control of your life? Because if being overweight is an issue for you, are you also having issues in your career with your finances? Are you also having issues in your relationships? Do you also find yourself engaging in behavior that you know is not helpful to you and may be destructive to you, but you can’t stop yourself from doing it?

We’re going to be talking about that more in upcoming episodes. But on the next episode that we’re going to do, we’re going to be talking about the social aspects and psychological aspects and environmental aspects that affect obesity as well. So today, I’m going to wrap it up. Hope you enjoyed today. And I would ask you, what is your big takeaway from today? What did you take away from this episode? What did you learn? What are you going to do differently?

Hope you guys enjoyed this. Speak to you soon, and have an amazing week. Speak to you on Friday.