Layne Norton (scientist and bodybuilder)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Rathers.

[2] I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse, the Duchess of Duluth, who's in Duluth being the Duchess currently.

[3] Yeah, I ran into some armcherrys.

[4] In Duluth.

[5] I ran into one in Duluth, two in Athens.

[6] You know, they showed one of the football players that was a standout at the game.

[7] I think their running back is really incredible.

[8] The dog's running back.

[9] Uh -huh.

[10] From Duluth.

[11] Saw it on the screen, got really excited, yeah.

[12] I didn't even know that.

[13] Yes.

[14] Well, now I'm a super fan, so I'm going to educate you on the dogs.

[15] Please do.

[16] Go sick them, roll tide.

[17] I almost had it.

[18] Actually, you really can't do that now.

[19] You really can't because we might play.

[20] I don't know what's going to happen, but we might in the SEC championship.

[21] So you really do have to stop saying that.

[22] Okay.

[23] Well, by the way, it worked.

[24] Whatever I was doing worked.

[25] You guys blew out Tennessee.

[26] We know, but Tennessee has nothing to do with Bama.

[27] I know, but me saying roll tight a lot, got the fire in their guts.

[28] All right, stop.

[29] I'm going to get in trouble.

[30] Okay, go on.

[31] Okay.

[32] We have someone today that I am obsessed with.

[33] This was a very fun interview for us to get to, well, for me to get to do because I follow Lane and have, and he's kind of, he's my Dalai Lama.

[34] If I, I don't have a guru, but maybe he would be my guru.

[35] Because he's a scientist, a full -blown scientist.

[36] He breaks down all these studies that are being totally weaponized and reported wrong.

[37] And he debunks tons of these diet fads and crazes and workout fads and crazes.

[38] And he himself is a power lift champion and a bodybuilding champion.

[39] All natural, no juice.

[40] He's not dirty like me. He's not on testosterone.

[41] own.

[42] Yeah.

[43] So I totally admire this guy.

[44] He's so wonderful.

[45] I was kind of like, this is going to be so boring.

[46] You thought I had like my bodybuilding buddy coming, right?

[47] Yes.

[48] And I was a little annoyed.

[49] But he was awesome.

[50] He was so interesting, very smart.

[51] He's to me very similar to Huberman.

[52] They're two peas in a pod in the way that they communicate and the way that they, I think, approach things.

[53] They're very lab -labby guys.

[54] They're very.

[55] Yes.

[56] Yes.

[57] Okay, it delivered beyond all my expectations.

[58] I love Lane Norton.

[59] This was so much fun.

[60] You're going to love it too.

[61] He's going to debunk so many things that you hear talked about at dinner parties and around dinner tables and at grocery stores.

[62] He's a great source to debunk all things.

[63] Go to biolane .com.

[64] If you want to check out his recently launched reps, research explained in practical summaries, B -I -O -L -A -Y -N -E, Biolane .com.

[65] enjoy Lane Norton.

[66] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[67] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[68] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[69] What happened?

[70] Spilled.

[71] I had to clean it.

[72] Did you get what you wanted, though?

[73] Yeah.

[74] Okay, good.

[75] Why did you stuff?

[76] with it.

[77] You're probably tempted to bail out.

[78] I was too late.

[79] I was pot committed.

[80] Lane, it's important you know because you should always be aware of what you're walking into.

[81] Monica just had a very traumatic experience inside trying to use the Insta hot.

[82] Making tea.

[83] And she spilled it everywhere.

[84] I spilled it.

[85] And then there was a cleanup.

[86] And now there are floaties.

[87] And also I also I opened a oat milk.

[88] I don't know if I'm allowed to do that.

[89] What do you mean?

[90] It was unopened.

[91] At my house?

[92] I know, but like, what if it was going to go to a party?

[93] Oh, geez, come on now.

[94] You never know what things could go to parties.

[95] That is some women's stuff right there.

[96] They think about next level stuff.

[97] A dude just opens that up, you know.

[98] You put his lips on the container, suck out of it.

[99] I mean, you're lucky if a dude doesn't grab something out of a trash can and be like, you know, smell good to me. That's really right.

[100] I'm being too thoughtful.

[101] You're being very thoughtful.

[102] I'm not going to say too.

[103] There's a judgment in T. Lane, welcome.

[104] For me, Monica, now.

[105] This is as excited as I've been for a guest.

[106] I interview crazy scientists, crazy professors, so lawyers.

[107] That's the exact name I want to impress you with.

[108] No pressure then, right?

[109] No, no, it's not to say that.

[110] But if we're talking about what I spend the most amount of time in my life doing, other than caring for my children, it's in Black Mold Paradise, lifting weights.

[111] And you are my unicorn.

[112] I am so into what you do.

[113] And my good friend Charlie, Perfect Hand, Charlie, he's obsessed with you.

[114] I'm obsessed with you.

[115] Half of our conversations are, oh, do you see what Lane posted about this?

[116] Oh, my God, yeah, and this.

[117] And we're both trying to figure out more about you that's not available publicly.

[118] He'll pick up a scrap here.

[119] So this is a trip to Disneyland for me that you're here.

[120] I mean, I'm genuinely so excited.

[121] I'm genuinely very excited as well.

[122] I hope I deliver and don't suck, you know.

[123] You're going to be great.

[124] We edit.

[125] So anytime you're like, oh, that took me three minutes to remember that, it won't be on the day.

[126] Even if you're bad, you'll be great.

[127] Yeah.

[128] That's the thing.

[129] I won't be bad.

[130] You have a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry.

[131] Okay, and then you have a PhD in nutrition.

[132] Yes.

[133] All right.

[134] I'm representing that correctly?

[135] Yes.

[136] Okay.

[137] Does it matter where?

[138] Yeah, University of Illinois, which is currently one of the top five universities for nutritional science.

[139] I think it was ranked second when I was there.

[140] But honestly, what made the difference is I had a fantastic PhD advisor named Don Lehman, a great mentor and just made a huge difference for me. Okay, great.

[141] Can you chime in real quick?

[142] Yes.

[143] When I looked you up today, I was like, oh, wow.

[144] Okay.

[145] First you're thinking I'm just having one of my mom.

[146] muscle guys come in, right?

[147] Yeah, I'm like, oh, okay, all right.

[148] I see how this is going to go.

[149] But then I saw the PhD.

[150] I was like, okay, this is appropriate for the addict.

[151] There's some major substance happening here.

[152] Yeah, and I appreciated that.

[153] Yeah, you thought I was having like a Jay Cutler type.

[154] Should I just say I can't make it?

[155] Yeah, I would have understood that.

[156] There would be a lot of grunting and ugs, you know?

[157] Exactly.

[158] It shorts off within five minutes.

[159] Okay, now the other really relevant thing is that in addition to having this academic background and being a full -blown scientist, you're also a many -time gold medalist power lift champ.

[160] At the Olympics?

[161] Powerlifting's not in the Olympics.

[162] So the organization I competed is called the IPF, and they are IOC recognized.

[163] So it's in the world games.

[164] So I was a two -time national champion in the 93 kilo class in 2014, 2015.

[165] Which is what, 208 -ish?

[166] 205.

[167] Okay.

[168] And then in 2015, I got a silver medal overall at Worlds and actually got a gold medal in the squat and set what was at the?

[169] a time, a world squat record of 668 pounds.

[170] 668, Monica.

[171] That's you, that's me, that's Rob, and then that's a bunch of the equipment in the room.

[172] And he's only 205 at the time.

[173] Wow.

[174] I can't even wrap my head around this.

[175] He's my dream guy because he's a meathead who's a scientist.

[176] You invented him in a lab.

[177] You know, Dax, it's funny because when people ask me to describe myself, I'll say two ways.

[178] First way, I'm a geek who loves to lift heavy shit.

[179] Okay.

[180] Second way is I'm a meat head.

[181] who loves science and you can pick whatever you're more comfortable with as an entry attraction we call that mixed messages here yeah we really love a mixed message we live for mixed messages okay so I don't think you could have better qualifications for me to listen to you about transforming your body a you've actually done it and we've been duped a couple times sure we've had a couple guests on yeah that sounds right I guess and they left and we're like ooh I think we just got a hoodwink we can say one you had a video and you were kind enough to not comment but but Dave Asprey's in a grocery store, and he's telling all the reasons why this thing is going to promote aging.

[182] Oatmills.

[183] Yeah.

[184] Yeah.

[185] He's on a fucking warpath against oatmeal.

[186] He's one of the anti -aging guys now.

[187] We had him on before he was doing that.

[188] Yeah, he hadn't fully gone there.

[189] Anyways, you know, you just very gently said if he's the master of anti -aging, do we think he looks much younger than his age?

[190] So someone's not walking the walk, you lose a little credibility for me. Could I give you one more example?

[191] There's a big conspiracy theory that Bill Gates has been.

[192] kidnapping children and draining their body of adrenal chrome to keep him young.

[193] We've interviewed him a couple times and I say to people, it's not working.

[194] He doesn't look young.

[195] He's aging appropriately.

[196] That was happening.

[197] It's not working.

[198] Luke's his age.

[199] Usually what I say to people about that kind of stuff, I guess it's possible, but it's also possible that there's a teacup orbiting Saturn.

[200] I have a pretty high level of confidence that there's not a teacup orbiting Saturn.

[201] You can take that for what it's worth.

[202] Okay, so my entry, we're making him obsessed with you It was two of your issues.

[203] You have many, many issues.

[204] I urge everyone to follow you on Instagram.

[205] My therapist would agree.

[206] At Biolane on Instagram.

[207] The first was this guy came and he was an internet sensation.

[208] His name is Liver King.

[209] Do you know Liver King?

[210] I'm excited.

[211] No. Doesn't seem like someone I'm...

[212] Oh, you would be so put off by Liver King.

[213] It was probably what you were picturing when you were coming in today.

[214] Oh, okay.

[215] Yes, he's what you were picturing.

[216] His premise is he lives like his ancestors did.

[217] Okay.

[218] He's telling you all about Neolithic people regularly and how...

[219] he claims that they ate organ meat and that through this eating of organ meat and lifting logs you will look like him now he is by all accounts jacked beyond belief he's fucking enormous i don't know how tall he is i have a hunch he's way shorter than i he's very short okay that helps if you saw monica at a beach you go oh that guy's a professional bodybuilder he is fucking enormous i don't want to get sued by him so i'm not saying i have any knowledge of what he puts in his body but it appears to me that he's on every single steroid that's ever been invented Okay.

[220] Okay, he's inordinately jacked the way humans just don't get jacked.

[221] And he's selling a lifestyle of eating fucking raw livers and eating liver capsules.

[222] Paleolithic liver capsules, you know.

[223] Yeah, everyone knows about those.

[224] They just hunt him out in the woods.

[225] You throw axes.

[226] That's how you get as jacked as him.

[227] He's entertaining.

[228] I'll give him that.

[229] The first video I think I ever saw of yours on Instagram was you kind of going at Liver King.

[230] Yeah.

[231] And Monica, that's a dangerous road.

[232] I appreciate that.

[233] People love the Liver King.

[234] There's dudes all over the country.

[235] Because he's fucking veins are exploding out of it.

[236] Because if you look like a cartoon character, people will worship at the altar of your life, unfortunately.

[237] I think you have stuff about muscles and stuff.

[238] No. I have questions about why any of this is appealing.

[239] That's coming.

[240] Okay.

[241] I promise.

[242] I have a lot of theories on that.

[243] Yeah.

[244] So just for a second, your first volley at Liver King, what were you letting people know?

[245] So first of all, people started sending me this guy, probably about 18 months ago is when I say when I first saw him.

[246] Honestly, my first initial thought was, that is so stupid.

[247] Nobody is going to actually believe that.

[248] And then I forget that people are insanely gullible and they want to believe in bullshit.

[249] The idea that you can change somebody's mind, you really can't.

[250] They have to be open to it.

[251] And people just tend to default into whatever bias they have.

[252] There was actually a study done where they took Republicans and Democrats.

[253] For both camps, they gave them information that would either refute a position they held or support a position they held.

[254] And for everybody, this was the same across Republicans and Democrats.

[255] Both things were equally as effective at just further increasing their preconceived bias.

[256] Even if you had something that was actual legitimate proof, it didn't matter.

[257] That's how cognitive dissonance works.

[258] And so people become very tribal about these sorts of things.

[259] Liver King's kind of in this carnivore crowd that's come up.

[260] Roughly paleo.

[261] Now they're like, well, just get rid of the fruits and vegetables because that's what's making you sick.

[262] I remember being on a podcast where I was debating somebody on carnivore.

[263] And my Ph .D. research was in protein and was funded by the National Dairy Council, the National Cattleman's Beef Association, all these protein -heavy associations.

[264] And I said, in all my life, I never thought I would be up here defending plants.

[265] I'm just not willing to buy into insanity, okay?

[266] You put me in a corner.

[267] Yeah.

[268] So he had like 20, 30 ,000 followers and somebody first sent him to me. Now he's got like 2 million followers.

[269] Yeah.

[270] So I drastically underestimated how much people wanted to buy into bullshit.

[271] According to the stuff I saw and by his own account, his company made like $100 million last year.

[272] Trust me, there's part of me that's like, God, if I just didn't have morals and ethics, why?

[273] Yeah, the Liver King, who lives as our forefathers, our ancestors, our paleolithic friends, flies private.

[274] So a lot of his videos are him shirtless on a private plane.

[275] It's pretty spectacular theater.

[276] Now, okay, the next thing that I loved is I'm a huge drinker of Diet Coke.

[277] When you hold a can of Diet Coke, other people think you've invited everyone's opinion on this thing.

[278] Like, no one would be holding a Budweiser.

[279] And then a person after person would come up and be like, that's a shitty beer.

[280] I'll tell you why that's a shitty beer.

[281] You would just go like, oh, I prefer Miller.

[282] Diet Coke, they're going to save your life if they see you with a can of it.

[283] And I had been so sick of debating people.

[284] In fact, the thing I like most about Bill Gates is he drinks about three dozen a day.

[285] And I was like, well, this is the smartest guy on the planet.

[286] He's drinking three dozen days.

[287] But he's not claiming to be the healthiest guy on the planet.

[288] No, he's not.

[289] He took some comfort in the fact that one of the smartest guys in the world is drinking so many of them.

[290] But you remind people of all these different studies about artificial sweeteners and often aspartane.

[291] So, A, why did you even pick up this cause?

[292] And thank you.

[293] I've changed my mind on so many things over the years.

[294] So when I first got into bodybuilding, circa 2001.

[295] somebody had told me, hey, don't drink Diet Coke because it's basically the same thing as just regular Coke.

[296] In fact, it's even worse for you because of these chemicals.

[297] After having advanced chemistry courses, nothing is more triggering to me than when people say, well, that has chemicals in it.

[298] You mean like everything?

[299] Yeah.

[300] Like the air you breathe?

[301] Everything is a chemical.

[302] Side rant.

[303] And so a few years went by, I didn't really think about it.

[304] And then I was getting into graduate school and just the process of graduate school where you think you know something and then you get crushed because you actually don't know it.

[305] Because then you find out there's five different studies that have actually disproven what you held to be true.

[306] That experience of grad school led me down this whole path of like, I wonder what else is bullshit.

[307] So I started looking at these studies and I'm like, wow, every single study that supports the notion that artificial sweeteners are bad for you, it's basically one of two kinds.

[308] Either it's in rodents where they just give insane doses and they're like, well, look, look what happened.

[309] I'm like, yeah, if you take four times amount of Tylenol, you're supposed to take your die.

[310] You're telling me you fed a thousand times a normal amount of aspartame and something weird happened?

[311] Okay, let's follow this under the no shit category.

[312] Here's the thing with studies and people is stories.

[313] So whoever makes it depressed first can somehow control the narrative, sometimes for decades.

[314] So I think the very first study that freaked everyone out was that it increased the rate of liver cancer in lab mice.

[315] And then what I later found out was that 50 % of all mice get liver cancer anyway.

[316] So that's their prostate cancer.

[317] So they're already super prone to liver cancer.

[318] And so maybe it's not the greatest example.

[319] Most of my research was actually in lab animals.

[320] So, like, I have no problem against animal research.

[321] But I'm also very conservative with how I talk about that research, right?

[322] And it actually later got validated in humans.

[323] And especially when you're going to use animals, you have to pick the right animal for the right model.

[324] Lab rats are actually a really great model for human protein metabolism.

[325] So for that particular question, usually it will carry over.

[326] But if you want to do it for digestion, they're terrible.

[327] For digestive, for the most part, you want to use, like, pigs or dogs or something like that.

[328] Those are much better animal lines for those particular questions.

[329] They do research in cows.

[330] Well, cows have four stomachs that are ruminants.

[331] So if you want to do, like, insulin research in cows, this is a really bad model.

[332] They're not obligate glucose users like that.

[333] Getting back to Aspartame, so you see these studies, they feed it to lab rats and they get a ton of problems.

[334] And then the other kind of study you see it is what's called epidemiology, right?

[335] So where they say, well, we look at this population who has these characteristics versus this population has these characteristics, and we see if there's a correlation.

[336] I don't want to say something cavalier like epidemiology is garbage.

[337] It's not garbage.

[338] That's how we kind of determined that smoking wasn't good for people, right?

[339] Like you can't do a randomized control trial where you're like, okay, well, we're going to have you smoke a pack a day, but not you.

[340] No internal review board is going to approve that.

[341] But it is a very consistent effect.

[342] So you have significance, which tells you if an effect is real and not due to random chance.

[343] And then you have effect size, which basically tells you how powerful the effect is.

[344] So then when you look at the effect size of something like smoking, I mean, it's massive.

[345] You're talking like sevenfold risk of certain cancers.

[346] But when you look at things like artificial sweeteners, I mean, you're looking at a relative risk of some of these diseases of like 0 .1, which basically means a relative 10 % increase in risk.

[347] That sounds scary, but let me put that in context.

[348] That's not you have a 0 % chance of getting cancer, now you go to 10%.

[349] That's your basal risk is about 5 % and now you've gone to 5 .5, right?

[350] Okay.

[351] Again, it's not a consistent effect.

[352] And when we look at the, I usually say this very, I'm like, the human randomized control trials where they control these other variables, you don't see these effects.

[353] And the issue is when you're looking at populations, the best kind of epidemiology is probably what's called cohort studies.

[354] So this is where they take groups of people and they track them for several years.

[355] There's no intervention.

[356] They just say, do whatever you do.

[357] And then they look at how many of these folks got sick and then what are their character?

[358] but the problem is people don't just do one thing in isolation if they're drinking more diet coke whatever those are also wrapped up together with possibly other behaviors and you can correlate crazy things there's a website out there if you search spurious correlations i don't know if you ever seen this no it'll blow your mind it's like the spending on space and technology has like an r of 0 .96 which is almost a perfect correlation with the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bed sheets wow and there's all kinds of consumption of cheese and divorce rates in Maine are correlated.

[359] So when I was a smoker 18 years ago, here was my little bit of cynicism about even the lung cancer data.

[360] It was like, you can't look at smoking.

[361] People who smoke, I think it'd be safe to say probably also might drink more.

[362] They might also eat worse.

[363] They're stuck in this dopamine degeneration cycle where they're trying to add things nonstop to it.

[364] Trying to isolate any of these things, even within a cohort, is a little tricky.

[365] How could we determine something like that is causative if we don't have randomized control trials, right?

[366] Well, it's just that consistent effect, that we see it consistently, and we do have a mechanism for it.

[367] You see this with any form of smoking, essentially, like even vaping now they're finding.

[368] It's probably not as bad as smoking, say, tobacco, but it's still not great because, you know, just that smoke has some sort of damage to the endothelium.

[369] If we have enough evidence in epidemiology, we can say, okay, we're.

[370] we think these things are causative.

[371] But like when it comes to artificial sweeteners, I mean, the effect is not powerful when it's even there, which it's not always even there.

[372] Can I just say the dumbest stuff people say?

[373] Yeah.

[374] Okay, so your body thinks that the aspartane is sugar.

[375] It can't tell the difference.

[376] So then you get a huge insulin dump.

[377] People say this all the time to me. Tell me whether or not that's true.

[378] They've had studies looking at the effect of aspirate on glycemia, and they don't really see an effect.

[379] And if that were true, one of two things would have to be, happening.

[380] So if you pump out a bunch of insulin with no change in blood glucose, because aspartame doesn't contain glucose.

[381] And keep in mind, aspartame, you're not getting, like, if you're drinking a Coke, you're getting like 40 grams of sugar.

[382] You're getting, I think it's like 200 milligrams of aspirate because it's many times sweeter than sugar.

[383] A thousandth of something.

[384] So you're getting a very small amount and there's no glucose.

[385] It's actually a peptide.

[386] So it's a combination of a couple amino acids and then a chlorine molecule, I think.

[387] There's no pathway for it to bump up your glucose.

[388] But if you're bumping up insulin, well, what does insulin do?

[389] It drives down blood glucose.

[390] So if this was actually creating this effect, you'd have people drink a Diet Coke and just pass out from hypoglycemia.

[391] Right.

[392] That doesn't happen.

[393] Especially if you drink 12.

[394] They'll have been dead decades ago.

[395] Yeah.

[396] Right.

[397] The other thing is, okay, well, maybe it's activating glucagon because glucagon can stabilize blood sugar and raise blood sugar.

[398] That's the function of glucagon.

[399] Well, glucagon counteracts the effects of insulin.

[400] So even if that was the case, what are you worried about.

[401] And again, they've shown in studies, it doesn't seem to affect glycemia.

[402] There was a recent study that came out that got a lot of press.

[403] It came out and sell.

[404] It was actually a really well -designed study.

[405] So they took people who basically had avoided artificial sweeteners.

[406] And so they started with like 1 ,400 people.

[407] And I think at the end, they had less than 130.

[408] They went through very cautiously to make sure that they had not consumed artificial sweeteners.

[409] I got you.

[410] And people don't realize artificial sweeteners are so ubiquitous.

[411] They're in so many things.

[412] In the emergency pack.

[413] Like, it's in everything.

[414] Yeah.

[415] So they took these people who had never had them before.

[416] and they had them consume them for two weeks.

[417] And for some of them, I think aspartame was one.

[418] They did see a change in the gut microbiome.

[419] And I can't remember if it was aspartame or one of the other ones.

[420] I think it was sucralose that they saw an increase in blood sugar in an oral glucose tolerance test, which an oral glucose tolerance test is basically you drink like 75 grams of glucose and then you watch how long it takes your body to clear it.

[421] Okay.

[422] Get back to baseline.

[423] Usually it's like two, three hours.

[424] Again, I don't want to slam the study because all this stuff could very well be valid, but it's just one study.

[425] and I'm very cautious about how I interpret one study, and there's a few problems I had.

[426] One, they had the subjects administer their own oral glucose tolerance test.

[427] They were wearing continuous glucose monitors, and so they had them drink it.

[428] It doesn't sound like much, but when that's your primary outcome measure in a study, you really should be doing that supervised, in my opinion.

[429] The other thing is they were not able to blind the participants to the treatments.

[430] Meaning no one was taking a placebo in this study.

[431] They did have a placebo.

[432] I think it was sugar.

[433] but the problem is if you've never taken in artificial sweeteners before you're used to regular sugar and you start consuming it I mean you're going to know I got you so the researchers said we couldn't blind the study because of that they see these effects but part of me is very concerned that what they might have been seeing is a placebo effect now people think about the placebo and what they typically think about is oh I felt something placebo is not just feelings placebo will actually change your physiology I was going to say we've had a lot of sciences on here say placebo is real absolutely real it has, in some cases, a similar effect to pharmaceutical drugs.

[434] Yeah.

[435] So I'll give you a great example of this.

[436] One just came out.

[437] So there was a study on creatin.

[438] We know creotin works.

[439] Creighton is the most effective sports supplement out there.

[440] Increases the water content of your muscles, increases, strength increases your lean body mass. Part of that's just through putting the water inside your muscle cell.

[441] It also increases your phosphocreotin stores, so you have a high -energy phosphate donor, which can increase your workout performance.

[442] So they did a really cool study where they basically had four groups where it was didn't get creotin, told they didn't get creotin.

[443] Didn't get creotin told they got creotin.

[444] Okay.

[445] Got creotin, told they didn't get it.

[446] Got creotin told they got it.

[447] It didn't matter what they got.

[448] What matters is what they told them.

[449] Your beliefs about what creotin does are actually more powerful than what it does.

[450] And there was a study where they told subjects they were giving them anabolic steroids.

[451] And they saw that group get significantly better gains than the other group that they didn't tell that, even though they were just getting a placebo.

[452] that?

[453] Because then they're working out more because they're like, I need to maximize this time.

[454] They're training harder.

[455] I think they actually standardize the workout programs.

[456] Really?

[457] Yeah.

[458] So it is powerful how it will change your physiology.

[459] I'll give you one more examples.

[460] I hope I don't butcher the study.

[461] But I don't know if you guys have ever heard of a hormone called ghrelin.

[462] It's basically a hunger hormone.

[463] If you raise ghrelin, it will raise your appetite.

[464] Sounds like Kremlin.

[465] It sounds like nicely.

[466] Yeah, I know.

[467] Don't feed them after midnight.

[468] Exactly.

[469] So we know that based on genetic polymorphisms, you can have people who naturally secrete higher or lower levels of ghrelin, right?

[470] Meaning.

[471] Meaning they're hungrier or less hungry.

[472] Yeah.

[473] It's a baseline.

[474] Well, it can be a little bit tricky because sometimes a higher level doesn't necessarily mean hungrier if that's your normal baseline, right?

[475] Like, it might be the change is actually more important.

[476] But so they did a similar thing.

[477] So they tested their genetics and then they tested their ghrelin levels.

[478] But what they told them was random.

[479] So you had four groups again.

[480] Low -grelin told they had low -grelin.

[481] Low -grelin told they had high -grelin levels.

[482] High -grelin told they had low -grelin and high -grelin told they had high -grelin.

[483] Once again, it didn't matter what their genetics were.

[484] It matters what the researchers told them.

[485] It's not like you can just sit there and think and be like, okay, secrete more grelin.

[486] You know, like it doesn't work like that.

[487] So getting back to this study, it's like, okay, if these people had been purposefully avoiding artificial sweeteners, and that's really the only way that you could not be consuming at least some during the course of your day, that's probably because they perceive that there's some negative to that.

[488] The other thing is this study was two weeks, And again, they tested a lot of stuff.

[489] So I will never call this study a bad study because it wasn't.

[490] What my problem is is the overinterpretation of studies.

[491] So this is why I always tell people, don't tell me about one study, wake me up when they've got 10 in different labs in different countries and replicate these results.

[492] This could be something where they had never been introduced to this before.

[493] And so it caused a change.

[494] But it's possible that that change would actually abate over time as well.

[495] So that is the one thing about the placebo effect.

[496] It seems to have an arc. So it's real, but it tends to dissipate.

[497] quicker than the pharmacological answer to it?

[498] I actually don't know the answer to that.

[499] So here I go, being intellectually honest.

[500] This is something I talk about a lot.

[501] People have a really hard time picking out who actually is an expert in something.

[502] Okay, you could say, well, the person has a PhD.

[503] Okay, well, I bet some PhDs that were cognitively dissonant.

[504] In fact, intelligent people tend to have much worse cognitive dissonance because they use their own intelligence to justify, like, well, I wouldn't believe in bullshit.

[505] It's like, nope, anybody can get sucked into it.

[506] In fact, everybody believes in bullshit.

[507] There is actually a long history of Nobel Prize winners who, in other fields, believed in absolute quackery.

[508] And so you've just got to be very careful.

[509] And one of the things I tell people is if you and I are having a conversation, like if we start talking about cars, it is going to be very obvious to me, very quick, that you know more about cars than me. But if you're debating about cars with somebody who also knows more about cars than I do, of the two, I'm not going to have any idea who is more knowledgeable.

[510] And this is why debates can be a waste of time as well.

[511] So A, I agree with you.

[512] This happens all the time.

[513] We used to listen to Sam Harris a lot.

[514] And there'd be points where he and another brilliant, well -spoken person are really hashing it out.

[515] And at some point, you're like, well, fuck, I don't know, because I don't know enough about neurology to see who's full of shit.

[516] Now, within that, I actually do think, and this goes back to a conversation we were having before this interview started, I actually think there's big tells in humans.

[517] when they are clearly being bested or outwitted or out -foxed.

[518] And so I got to say, I've often been lost in the details of some of these debates, and I've been like, no, my spidey sense is no right now.

[519] This guy is getting his ass -wipped.

[520] But getting your ass -wipped in a debate is also just telling of how well somebody can communicate or how good they are at debating, not necessarily...

[521] Lane has that same point of view.

[522] How smart they are or their knowledge level.

[523] Yeah, I mean, I've had a debate with some.

[524] somebody where the consensus was that I lost, but I was just so blown away that their position was so insane that I just couldn't really recover from it, to be honest.

[525] The smartest man in the world might not be the best on Jeopardy.

[526] There's a timed component, right?

[527] There's a televised component.

[528] There's all these other factors.

[529] And a confidence component as well.

[530] Yes.

[531] It's actually the opposite of what you'd expect.

[532] If you want to find somebody who's a real expert, because a real expert is going to use words like, Probably, maybe, possibly, might.

[533] You attributed that observation to someone you know.

[534] Look for people who seem unsure if you want to find out someone knowledgeable.

[535] Yeah, Alan Levinovitt said that.

[536] Yeah, I love that.

[537] But you said the opposite the other day about essentially.

[538] About essentially.

[539] Yeah, you said the word essentially is a give that they don't know what they're talking about.

[540] I stand by that.

[541] I think you see as someone starts losing footing in their...

[542] Never use the word essentially in a debate?

[543] I think it's fine.

[544] I'm just going to plant the sea.

[545] Just look for it because it's ubiquitous.

[546] The word essentially has replaced literally as the pop word everyone says.

[547] It was essentially 10 to 1.

[548] What that means is I don't know if it's 10 to 1, but I remember it was big.

[549] It's a mitigating word that basically says this isn't exact.

[550] That's why I'm saying essentially because I don't know what it is exactly.

[551] And as you watch people ramp up how often they're saying essentially, to me it's when I can detect they've run out of info and data.

[552] Wow, we're now saying essentially like every third sentence in this debate.

[553] It's just something to see if you anecdotally observe it and it clicks for you at some point.

[554] I think it's fascinating to clock people's use of the word essentially.

[555] One of the things I try to do is qualify a lot of my statements with my level of certainty.

[556] You're very ethical about this.

[557] You've got to watch him with Peter Attia.

[558] Do you know who he is?

[559] No. Huberman just had him on.

[560] He's like a longevity doctor.

[561] He's an incredibly smart physician.

[562] He is very smart.

[563] Yeah.

[564] Every accolade, one of you know.

[565] could win as a doctor, and now he has this practice.

[566] He's super knowledgeable.

[567] He and Huberman geeked out.

[568] There again, I love Huberman.

[569] You've been on, I assume.

[570] He's going tomorrow.

[571] Oh, that's so much.

[572] You guys are two peas in a pod.

[573] Yes, and we've had Huberman on.

[574] Another qualification I'll give you is you one time called Huberman out.

[575] This is probably why you guys know each other.

[576] And he had enough integrity to say, I'm glad Lane called me out.

[577] He's right.

[578] I was quoting a study that was kind of incomplete.

[579] It actually kind of shocked me, to be honest, like, oh, I'm not used to them doing that, you know?

[580] Yeah, good for it.

[581] So I think this is a great segue into how people don't understand quality of evidence either, right?

[582] So somebody will cite like a mouse study.

[583] One, they don't know as a study in mice.

[584] And two, they give it the same weight as a randomized control trial for six months in humans that had 200 people.

[585] No, these two things are not equivalent.

[586] But people get really caught up in the weeds, the mechanisms.

[587] I understand because as a biochemist, that's what I was like.

[588] If we just take this pathway and we do this and then we do this, then we'll get this.

[589] What you have to realize is a mechanism looking at a pathway.

[590] That's just one pathway.

[591] And your body is like a symphony.

[592] So if the French horn's a little bit out of tune, I mean, you're probably not going to hear it that much unless you really, really know it, right?

[593] Yes.

[594] But if the entire orchestra is a mess, then you're going to notice it.

[595] Mechanisms, what you see as an outcome, for example, muscle hypertrophy would be an outcome.

[596] What does that word mean?

[597] Muscle growth.

[598] That would be an outcome.

[599] Well, we also know that part of that is increasing the rate of muscle protein synthesis.

[600] But just because you increase the rate of muscle protein synthesis doesn't necessarily mean you're going to grow more muscle because it's also balanced with other things, right?

[601] So mechanisms are interesting, but what you see as an outcome is the summation of hundreds, if not thousands of mechanisms, right?

[602] So you can't just pick one and then say, well, we did A to B, that means we'll get this.

[603] So getting back to Huberman's statement, he was talking about how alcohol...

[604] He's so against alcohol and weed.

[605] hates alcohol so much.

[606] I think he hates me more.

[607] He was like, okay, well, increases the aromatization of testosterone to estrogen.

[608] Sounds really bad.

[609] Meaning it increases how often testosterone converts to estrogen.

[610] Right.

[611] The aromatases the enzyme that catalyzes that, et cetera, et cetera.

[612] There's me using my big fancy thing.

[613] I like it.

[614] So I have to do the Ph .D. thing occasionally.

[615] Alcohol mechanistically, it does that.

[616] But let's look at, do we actually see differences in testosterone levels?

[617] Do we see differences in estrogen levels, right?

[618] Because if this is a powerful effect, we can measure those things, right?

[619] And so what you see is when you look at like low or moderate levels of alcohol intake, you just don't see a change in testosterone or estrogen.

[620] In fact, in a couple of studies, they actually saw a small increase in testosterone with alcohol consumption.

[621] Because you're at a bar and other guys are fucking...

[622] You're getting angry at everybody.

[623] Testosterone's a weird thing too because people get really caught up in like short -term changes in testosterone.

[624] And really, it's the long -term basal level of exposure you have that tends to make the biggest difference.

[625] It's an attractive metric to look at because you can alter it very quickly.

[626] I'm on testosterone, full disclosure.

[627] It's the easy metric to tinker with, so it's the most appealing.

[628] Yeah, if you're taking testosterone, I mean, that's a big difference than just adjusting by like 10 % in your physiological range.

[629] That's not going to have an effect on muscle building, but taking it is going to have an effect because you're talking about doubling it or whatever.

[630] I must be double of what my natural state at 47 would be.

[631] So when they measure...

[632] Oh, I was hoping you'd have a sexy look, but you just thought, I'm going to throw up.

[633] No, it's just not throw up.

[634] Well, Lane will tell us if it's dangerous.

[635] I haven't looked into specific testosterone because I've always competed, drug tested.

[636] I mean, people will watch this and they'll be like, oh, he's lying because everybody lies.

[637] I need to preface that for you.

[638] You were in your first bodybuilding contest at 19 years old.

[639] Yes.

[640] And it was a clean bodybuilding contested.

[641] Tested.

[642] Because here's what's tricky.

[643] And this is why people are right to be suspicious.

[644] You will often see someone competing in some kind of event.

[645] Now, you could very easily pass the drug test for the event, but you could have been juicing for nine straight months and then just clean out.

[646] So it's right to be suspicious of people making that claim.

[647] You, I believe, for numerous reasons, one is you've never even gone long enough to really go through a huge cycle where you wouldn't have been competing or wouldn't have been being monitored.

[648] And you're not even anti yet.

[649] I love hugging dudes and kissing dudes.

[650] I didn't get a kiss, though.

[651] Well, I hugged you right away.

[652] That was step one.

[653] At the end, we're going to kiss.

[654] Yeah.

[655] Absolutely.

[656] People will be like, why don't you just come out as bye?

[657] And I just always think, of all people, you think I would have a problem admitting I'm by.

[658] If anything, I couldn't be more accepting than promoting of anyone.

[659] And you are not judgmental about juicing at all.

[660] No, I look at it like, that's a personal choice.

[661] For me, I love to compete.

[662] And if I wanted to compete non -tested, I mean, now you've got to take a lot that's not safe to be competitive, right?

[663] But what I'll tell people is, hey, just look at my progression over the years.

[664] My body really hasn't changed in 10 years.

[665] So if I'm on gear, it's some pretty crappy gear.

[666] Right.

[667] I'll say to my wife, that guy's juice.

[668] Well, how do you know?

[669] This is the easiest thing for people to now have going forward.

[670] Go look at Lane, Bio Lane's page.

[671] This is a man who set a record for deadlift.

[672] This is as strong as a person can be at 205 pounds.

[673] I mean, sure, there's probably some outlier above you.

[674] But this is the maximum of a human body.

[675] You've dedicated 30 fucking years to it.

[676] You do it scientifically.

[677] You're setting world records.

[678] So when you see a guy that's 2x the size of Lane, one must conclude there's another thing on the table.

[679] I have been around people who I was quite sure we're on drugs, who were so impressive, who were genetic freaks.

[680] So I always say, it wouldn't surprise me if they were.

[681] It wouldn't surprise me if they weren't.

[682] High percentage change.

[683] But, again, I look at time course.

[684] I mean, there's a guy named Doug Miller, who's one of the best natural bodybuilders in history.

[685] If you look at him now, you're like, there's no way.

[686] But then if you look at him 20 years ago, he was also really jacked 20 years ago.

[687] So what I look for is, okay, that dude looked like.

[688] that a year ago and now he looks like this.

[689] Yeah, rapid change.

[690] Look at me two years ago.

[691] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[692] We've all been there.

[693] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[694] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[695] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[696] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[697] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[698] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[699] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[700] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[701] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[702] What's up, guys?

[703] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[704] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[705] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[706] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[707] And I don't mean just friends.

[708] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[709] The list goes on.

[710] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[711] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[712] Back to the Huberman statement.

[713] When you look at alcohol, basically I tell people if you're drinking enough to where you're feeling drunk, that's when you're starting to get some of the negative effects.

[714] But if you're having like a glass of wine or a beer with dinner or whatever, even a couple, it's probably not that big of a deal.

[715] At least in the randomized control trials, they just don't see negative outcomes.

[716] They don't see negative outcomes for fat loss as long as you're accounting for the calories.

[717] The one thing I would say is sleep.

[718] And depression.

[719] I haven't looked at that literature specifically, But my guess is when they look at it, if there are randomized control trials on it, if it's a modest amount of alcohol and they're controlling for other lifestyle factors, my guess is it probably doesn't make a big difference.

[720] The issue is, so you look at cohort studies and you say, well, we looked at people who averaged more than four drinks a week versus those that had less than four drinks a week.

[721] And then we see, okay, more than four drinks a week, we see increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of this, increased risk of that.

[722] But once again, people who drink more, probably smoke more, exercise less.

[723] Eat shittier at 2 a .m. when they're going on from the bar.

[724] And I'm not trying to, like, alcohol doesn't appear to have any positive effects.

[725] No, you're saying if you drink, you're a piece of shit.

[726] It makes you very fun.

[727] Oh, yeah.

[728] And horny, too.

[729] Yeah, some people need that social lubrication.

[730] When I introduce myself to people, it's so funny.

[731] Sometimes I tell people I wish I was like an astrophysicist or something because since I say, well, I have a PhD in nutrition.

[732] A few things happen.

[733] either they get like super insecure about whatever they're eating or whatever they're doing or how they look right yeah they'll say yeah i'm no i'm eating like a pig and this is they're confessing to you and i'll be like i literally don't care and then i'm like yeah i'll have the burger with fries thank you yeah you know i'm like the most laid -back fitness person you'll probably ever meet because your life is also important too honestly some of the most unhealthy people i've ever met my entire life mentally as well are some of the most gorgeous physiques you've ever met trying to live an overall healthy lifestyle which there's some big rocks that you can pick up to do that I'll talk about those but you also got to think about like every once in a while I post a picture I mean I'm smoking a cigar right people are like you know that's bad for you right you don't say oh my god thank you for telling me I never do that yeah I'm like yes but I understand that there is a downside to this it's not something I do all the time I am offsetting that with it's an experience for me that allows me some sort of mental clarity and I value that.

[734] It might lower your cortisol levels to a healthy.

[735] We don't know all the things that could be resulting in.

[736] That's different than somebody who's smoking two packs a day and different than somebody who's like binge drinking themselves.

[737] Again, the problem with some of these cohort studies, it's difficult to pick that out.

[738] In my opinion, if you wanted to like improve your health, there's a few big things you can do.

[739] Don't eat like an asshole.

[740] I'm not making a judgment on that.

[741] I'm just saying I'm all for not shaming people's bodies.

[742] I'm all for people being allowed to be autonomous and their food choice.

[743] I have no problem with that.

[744] But also don't tell me it doesn't negatively impact your health because we have quite a bit of research that it does.

[745] So when I say eat like an asshole, I mean basically portion control.

[746] Number two, exercise.

[747] And it doesn't have to be a high barrier to entry.

[748] People think, well, I can't go to the gym for two hours day.

[749] You don't have to.

[750] Go do 30 minutes of movement.

[751] Just walk.

[752] Just walk around.

[753] There's a lot of data showing that from 2000 to 8 ,000 steps a day, that there is a precipitous drop -off in your risk of mortality.

[754] Yes, years of your life.

[755] Oh, yeah.

[756] Yeah, yeah.

[757] Not like a few months.

[758] Yeah.

[759] Most of the research on exercise shows that if you just basically get like 150 minutes a week, you get almost all the benefits.

[760] I could argue that exercise in some ways is more important than nutrition.

[761] Because it's one of the only things where you can have absolutely no change in your body weight and your insulin sensitivity, inflammation, all these things will improve.

[762] And also what it does for depression, your self -confidence.

[763] Weightlifting taught me so much about self -confidence.

[764] So those two, don't smoke or limit it, don't drink too much, get enough sleep, and limit your stress.

[765] And one of the things I'll tell people is you realize that the stress you cause yourself by worrying about all these little micro things is probably worse for you than if you just stopped worrying about that thing.

[766] You got people worried about like, should I eat at 2 .30 or 2 .45?

[767] You know, and it's like, dude, that is a very small pebble that you're worried about there.

[768] Probably doesn't matter.

[769] Yes, in taking you backwards in your overall goals.

[770] So I think we're there.

[771] There's another aspect of what you often talk publicly about that I think is dangerous at this moment.

[772] There's been this very interesting societal shift warranted for many reasons.

[773] 80 % of jokes on TV in the 80s were fat jokes.

[774] Right.

[775] There's a pendulum that needed to swing for sure.

[776] It's crazy when you watch older stuff.

[777] Also, you and I are both aware of the ACE study, right?

[778] So the crude childhood adversity, the reason we have that is this scientist in San Diego, I think, started working with obese women and came to find out almost all of them had been sexually molested.

[779] And then this gave rise to this whole ACE score and what kind of predictable outcomes you'd have if you had a score of four or five or six or whatever above.

[780] There's 10 things.

[781] I'm very high on the ace.

[782] I'll have you know.

[783] I'm proud of it.

[784] So you have to factor that in, right?

[785] There's also this whole other element that's going on.

[786] and that needs to be observed, recognized, and honored.

[787] And I think you do a good job of that.

[788] Okay.

[789] Where the pendulum is swung that I think is a little bit dicey is that to embrace everyone, we have to kind of lie a little bit about whether or not it's just healthy.

[790] And this is what I'm frustrated about.

[791] I always bring it back to alcoholism because I'm a recovering addict.

[792] So I don't give a fuck if someone drinks.

[793] I'm so pro -drinking.

[794] I'm pro -drug use.

[795] I'm pro -everything.

[796] It stops when you tell me that it's good for your health or that it's something that should be aimed at, I'm just a little bit like, just do your thing, but we don't need to pretend it's a healthy choice.

[797] And that to be self -actualized, one should just learn to love that they're a fall down drunk.

[798] So there's a really dicey middle ground here.

[799] And I get it.

[800] People feel very shamed publicly.

[801] I'll tell you, we had this great show called Race to 270.

[802] I had one friend who's 315, who had just gotten sober.

[803] He's been living like a fucking trash can for 25 years being an alcoholic.

[804] He's 3 .15.

[805] My buddy Charlie is in Adonis.

[806] He's 220.

[807] You look like Charlie.

[808] I'm noticing it a lot.

[809] Him.

[810] Yeah, gorgeous.

[811] Like face.

[812] Yeah, yeah, fucking gorgeous.

[813] It's maddening.

[814] I said, I'll give 10 grand to whoever gets to 270 pounds first.

[815] Charlie, would you be up for gaining 40 pounds?

[816] I guess he was 230.

[817] He likes doing weird shit.

[818] He loves changing his body, right?

[819] He's like, yeah, I'd fucking love to do that.

[820] So these two raced, it was.

[821] an incredibly entertaining show.

[822] The most improbable thing happened and they tied.

[823] Oh my God.

[824] And I had to pay both guys.

[825] It was a blast.

[826] Aaron has somehow...

[827] You know, they set that up on the side?

[828] No. I don't think they could have it.

[829] I'll tell you why.

[830] It wasn't set up like it required Aaron getting COVID at one point and then going off of testosterone.

[831] It was a fucking blast of a show.

[832] Aaron wanted to do it.

[833] It has resulted in Aaron, he's fluctuated from 270, but he's never gone up past 280 since then.

[834] So ultimately two years out, it was kind of a great thing.

[835] People were up in arms that I was promoting diet culture, that I was making a sideshow out of Aaron, taking it very personal, what was happening between three best friends, right?

[836] And so I've waded into that water.

[837] Now, what I've appreciated about your approach is I think you're really fair at acknowledging all the different reasons.

[838] It's not the same for everyone losing weight.

[839] It's much harder for people.

[840] Just like addiction is harder for people.

[841] There's childhood trauma.

[842] There's genetic stuff.

[843] There's all kinds of things.

[844] But the truth you will not ignore is that when you consume more calories than you expend in a day, those calories are going to get stored.

[845] Yeah.

[846] So I think just what you said, people insert judgment that doesn't exist with that.

[847] At a mechanistic level, at a fundamental level, obesity is caused by a sustained calorie surplus over time where you're consuming more calories than you are burning or you're expending.

[848] What people here is, you're lazy, you're a sloth, you're a glutton, and we need to be very careful about using those.

[849] Like I had somebody tell me like, well, I've never hire an obese person because they're just obviously lazy.

[850] I'm like, that's a really dumb thing to say.

[851] There are obese people who are incredible business people and brilliant minds.

[852] You see one characteristic of somebody and then you go, okay, you go in that box.

[853] People are way more complicated than that.

[854] Yes.

[855] So you're absolutely right.

[856] And the pendulum did need to swing.

[857] And I'll be honest when I got to grad school, I was kind of of the mindset of, yeah, obesity is definitely the fault of the individual.

[858] And then I think fault and responsibility get mixed up a lot.

[859] is a big problem.

[860] So just what you said, there was a study that came out that showed, okay, people who have experienced trauma are much more likely to become obese.

[861] We've also got brain MRI imaging showing that obese people get a much stronger reward from food compared to like a lean person, right?

[862] So like the craving for you isn't the same as the craving for an obese person.

[863] All is not equal, yeah.

[864] And some of them use it as comfort.

[865] It's maybe their addiction or their habit.

[866] How they regulate their internal feelings with an external item.

[867] I do it with cocaine.

[868] Some people do it with gambling.

[869] You know, there's a bunch of of stuff out there, right?

[870] It does it with shopping.

[871] I do.

[872] I love shopping.

[873] But I'm not spending more than I have, so it's not unhealthy.

[874] You don't have wreckage.

[875] But you can be in a bad mood and change that mood with some shopping.

[876] Like, it works.

[877] For like 30 seconds.

[878] Get that dopamine.

[879] Exactly.

[880] Isn't it how dumb is the human mind?

[881] It has the ability to make you happy.

[882] Just give you dopamine.

[883] It's like, nah.

[884] I know.

[885] It's stupid.

[886] You can just sit there for a while and stew.

[887] So where I sit, is I am all for you should love your body, for sure.

[888] And if you're obese, it doesn't make you a bad person.

[889] There's no reason that you should feel down on yourself for that.

[890] I don't think anybody has the right to say, hey, you should lose weight.

[891] Right.

[892] Now, this gets kind of sticky with doctors and whatnot.

[893] I think as a physician, it's fine to say, hey, here are the risks associated with obesity.

[894] If you want to mitigate these risks, here's some options for you.

[895] In a very non -judgmental way.

[896] Yeah, yeah.

[897] And so really what people have a hard time understanding the concept of what we call an independent risk factor.

[898] So independent risk factor means regardless of anything else in their life, having this characteristic increases your risk for something.

[899] Right.

[900] Okay.

[901] There was this concept a while back called fit but fat.

[902] It's kind of like healthy to every size, right?

[903] Okay.

[904] I'm going to have healthy behaviors.

[905] The idea that you can have healthy blood work being obese, you can.

[906] There are some people who are that way.

[907] And even if you're exercising as an obese person and you have healthy biomarkers, you're healthier than an obese person who has, you know, poor insulin sensitivity and some of these other things.

[908] But when they have taken studies and they compare obese versus non -obes and rates of mortality, cancer, heart disease, with both groups having healthy biomarkers, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, the people who are obese still have a higher risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease and cancer.

[909] Could we, if we're going back to isolating factors here.

[910] Could we say that's potentially a stress marker of feeling bad in the world?

[911] That's the argument.

[912] Who you guessed the argument?

[913] Good job.

[914] I love guessing.

[915] So the issue is, based on what we know about stress, the effect sizes we see of obesity on this are way too powerful to really be explained by a stress response.

[916] And then if we look at, and again, their blood markers are normal, so their cortisol is actually normal.

[917] So that's a stress hormone, not necessarily indicative of psychological stress necessarily, but I feel really confident that obesity is an independent risk factor.

[918] Now, that being said, if you're obese, still exercise and, you know, you don't have to beat yourself up about this kind of stuff because, yes, you will absolutely be healthier.

[919] Yes, you're going to move within the latitude as well.

[920] Let's say you were supposed to die 10 years earlier on this chart and you got in pretty good cardiovascular shape.

[921] You might shave that down to five.

[922] You could have a huge improvement, but overall, you're probably not going to escape that actuary.

[923] Yeah.

[924] And, you know, people will cherry pick out examples like, well, I know this person who's obese and they live to be 100.

[925] Genetics are powerful.

[926] You can always find a single example.

[927] Risk is not an absolute.

[928] Yeah.

[929] Risk is just saying, on the average, this characteristic is more likely to result in this.

[930] Now, again, you could be an obese smoker who drinks like a fish every single day and live to be 90.

[931] Yeah.

[932] But it's a pretty low probability compared to somebody who's exercising and living an overall healthy lifestyle.

[933] You got to pretend you're in a casino.

[934] You can play this game with a 70 % outcome of winning or this one you give 12%.

[935] We can argue all day about the 12 % who won or just when do you want to put your money on?

[936] Right.

[937] That was the first analogy I said that he liked a lot.

[938] Do you see the smile, Monica?

[939] It was great.

[940] I talked about mixing up fault and responsibility.

[941] When something is not someone's fault, they don't want the responsibility to be theirs to fix it.

[942] It wasn't my fault.

[943] It shouldn't be my responsibility.

[944] Yeah, sure.

[945] The problem is, okay, maybe you had all these other things that set you up and made you obese prone.

[946] Actually, metabolic rate doesn't seem to be on average different between obese and non -obes.

[947] One thing that does appear to be different is they get a bigger reward from food.

[948] And they tend to have less fidgety movements and what we call neat, which is non -exercise, activity thermogenesis.

[949] So if you ever seen somebody who is tapping their foot a lot or they pace a lot, they pace a lot, you know, like that's actually extremely modifiable.

[950] Just to show you how why the variance is, there was a study probably 30 years ago now where they had people in a metabolic chamber.

[951] and they overfed them by like 1 ,000 calories a day for six weeks.

[952] Most people gained weight.

[953] One person barely gained any weight, only like 0 .8 kilograms.

[954] They should have gained like 7 pounds, but they only gained like a pound and a half.

[955] And what they found was they didn't tell them to increase their activity, but just spontaneously, this person started moving more.

[956] Right.

[957] So those energy stores, they have to burn.

[958] Those people are what we call obese resistant because they tend to just spontaneously get more active, whereas obese prone tend to not increase their spontaneous activity in response to overfeeding.

[959] And there's also some evidence that if you're more active, that you actually have a better sensitivity to satiety signals, telling you you're full.

[960] There was a study in Bengali workers in the 50s where they actually looked at people who were sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, and heavily active.

[961] What they found is, in terms of intake, it was like a J -shaped curve.

[962] Basically, when they were between lightly active and heavily active, they mostly just compensated for their activity by increasing their calories appropriately.

[963] Okay.

[964] Whereas the sedentary people increased their calories, we're eating more calories than people who are lightly active or moderately active.

[965] Interesting.

[966] And so what that tends to suggest, and we do have some mechanistic data now to support this, exercise tends to improve your satiety signals.

[967] So you burn more calories from exercise.

[968] Some people say, well, then you're just going to eat more.

[969] Tends to be the opposite.

[970] People actually tend to be more satiated by exercise.

[971] you get sustained dopamine release from exercise so you're not antsy and itchy and wanting to regulate this bad feeling so that could also be in the mix it's like you have a satiated feeling from the extended dopamine release it's possible there could be psychological where like now you're being active and you're oh i'm going to start paying attention to my nutrition more but there does appear to be something that happens with the brain and some of these hormones and the hypothalamus where your body just becomes more sensitive to them it's Very interesting.

[972] When you're on a medication and you're like, I've gained weight, this has happened to me. And when I'm off of it, I've lost the weight.

[973] So I do recognize, I think it's based on the medicine, but what's happening in my brain?

[974] Give the exact example, because I think it's helpful.

[975] An antidepressant.

[976] Yep.

[977] And SSRI, also a birth control.

[978] So some of those can affect appetite regulation.

[979] You know, I don't know the specific ones.

[980] And again, people hear that, a lot of times ago, you're telling me I'm a glutton or this or that.

[981] No, no. Most people, when they're overeating, it's not a conscious thing.

[982] They're not a psychopath like me where I'm like weighing stuff.

[983] I think what people really struggle with is there's all these things coming together that may make them more obese prone that aren't their fault.

[984] But if they want to lose weight or change their lifestyle, the responsibility is theirs.

[985] So for me, eight out of ten ace, probably not my fault.

[986] I turned out to be an addict.

[987] Everyone that gone through what I have, eight out of ten chance you're going to be an addict.

[988] Yep.

[989] Now.

[990] Essentially.

[991] Essentially.

[992] I missed it was.

[993] Well played.

[994] Essentially, seven out of ten.

[995] Point is, now what?

[996] So I agree.

[997] I didn't go shopping for an addiction.

[998] It probably just happened to me. I probably was the victim of that.

[999] But no one's going to come around now and fix me. The only person, unfortunately, that can address it is now me. Whether or not I deserve it or not, doesn't really matter.

[1000] I'm the only person around to take responsibility and deal with it.

[1001] And I think it's easier for some reason in addiction to recognize.

[1002] that because you're going to die.

[1003] Or you're going to destroy everything in your life.

[1004] Yes.

[1005] And if you talk to addicts, it's almost ubiquitous.

[1006] It got better when I decided to.

[1007] My brother was an addict for a long time.

[1008] By the way, you're one side of an addict coin.

[1009] You have a different addiction.

[1010] Yeah, I have a healthy addiction.

[1011] You've got the brain.

[1012] I kind of define addiction a little bit different.

[1013] If it negatively impacts your day -to -day life or if you go, I'm not going to do that today.

[1014] And then you find yourself still doing it, that's a problem.

[1015] Okay.

[1016] I have a different one, which is if you compulsively do something, something to regulate your emotional state, you have an addiction.

[1017] Now, there's great ones and there's bad ones.

[1018] I would just argue you have a good one.

[1019] The aliens looking at all the monkeys, right?

[1020] The aliens are above.

[1021] And like, this guy is doing this repetitive thing.

[1022] Yeah.

[1023] Most of his life.

[1024] It's clearly compulsive.

[1025] But the outcome's lovely.

[1026] So who gives a fuck?

[1027] It's fine to have addictions.

[1028] You just got to have the right ones.

[1029] Okay.

[1030] Your brother.

[1031] Yeah, I asked him, I'm like, what made you decide to change?

[1032] And he said, you know, it wasn't anything anybody's said to me, I just realized that I lose everything I've got.

[1033] He's like, I'll get a little bit of money and I'll lose it.

[1034] I'll get a relationship and I'll lose it.

[1035] I lost my family.

[1036] He's like, honestly, I just got sick of losing everything.

[1037] And he's like, and I just decided that I wasn't going to do that anymore.

[1038] They say we got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

[1039] Yeah.

[1040] I think it's much easier to address alcohol and drug addiction than it is food addiction for two huge reasons.

[1041] One is it's not actually acutely life -threatening.

[1042] I have ODID.

[1043] It was pretty obvious death was on the table.

[1044] that's a great motivator I don't believe in God I don't want to fucking do step two I don't want to turn my will over to a higher power but I want to do that a little less as much as I want to die so the threat of death got me willing to do shit I just would never have been willing to do secondly I don't have to do cocaine three times a day that blows my mind anyone can confront a food addiction because you do have to eat you have to interact with your drug of choice three times a day minimally my mind's blown when people can conquer that.

[1045] It's so admirable.

[1046] One of my close personal friends.

[1047] He has a great podcast.

[1048] His name's John Deloney.

[1049] And he's a mental health expert and just a lovely human.

[1050] He talked about that exact same thing.

[1051] He said any kind of food addiction or eating disorder is one of the most difficult things to beat because you can't just stop eating.

[1052] You can't abstain from food.

[1053] What if a guy had to use a slot machine three times a day who's a family addict?

[1054] If anybody out there struggling with disorder eating, people will in my Q &A say, what should I do?

[1055] I'm struggling with binge eating or this or that.

[1056] say go get professional help the likelihood is you're not going to meet it on your own and if you can't afford professional help then read books and there's a national eating disorder hotline there are things in place to help you but if it's going to be i'm going to do this on my own it's very unlikely that things are going to work out back to the statistics things yeah you're in the 8 % success rate yes yes it's very very low a sucks at like 30 but it's a lot fucking better than the 2 % doing it lone wolf.

[1057] Exactly.

[1058] Well, and then I do think part of the conversation that we have about obesity being unhealthy, which it is.

[1059] You're afraid to say that.

[1060] Everyone's afraid to say it, but I will say it.

[1061] It is.

[1062] So is depriving your body so that you look a specific weight.

[1063] They're both unhealthy.

[1064] The one might be even worse.

[1065] Low body weights actually have a higher mortality rate than obesity does.

[1066] The people who are kind of trying to spin obesity as being healthy will say, well, look, you know, it's like, well, yeah, but that's the other side of the J -shaped curve.

[1067] There is also this healthy range, which, by the way, most things sit there in physiology, is it's like, too little, bad, too much, bad.

[1068] I just want to have one more thought on this topic because I was walking with Aaron.

[1069] We're talking about this, I think because I knew you were coming.

[1070] I said, I understand the cognitive dissonance for a lot of people because they have an image of someone who's overweight and how they eat.

[1071] And what they underestimate is cumulative lifestyle, right?

[1072] So if I only eat 100 calories more than I expend a day, that's almost unnoticeable.

[1073] That's not crazy binge eating.

[1074] That's not anything you see in a movie.

[1075] Exactly.

[1076] And if you consistently seven days a week, eat 100 calories more than you burn, that's 700 a week times 52.

[1077] You're talking about 35 ,000 calories a year.

[1078] Now you do wake up without ever having been, quote, reckless or something you saw.

[1079] TV, and now you are carrying 30, 40 extra pounds.

[1080] So I'm going to push back on this just a little bit.

[1081] Please do.

[1082] One of the really interesting things that we've discovered about metabolism is it's actually quite adaptive.

[1083] So in your scenario that you talked about like 100 calories overeating, yes, you would gain some weight, but it would likely plateau relatively early because your energy expenditure would increase.

[1084] So actually, what tends to happen, this idea that people kind of gain weight literally throughout the year is not true.

[1085] There is a specific period of time when people put on most of their weight.

[1086] Holiday.

[1087] The six -week period between November and January 1st.

[1088] Ding, ding, ding.

[1089] Ding.

[1090] We're coming up.

[1091] Yeah, perfect timing.

[1092] The average weight gain in the adulthood is around three to five pounds.

[1093] And on average, people don't take it off.

[1094] They mostly maintain the rest of the year.

[1095] So on average, people actually do regulate well.

[1096] And again, I'm kind of generalizing.

[1097] I knew you were anti -Christmas.

[1098] You're the henchmen for the war on Christmas.

[1099] I'm the bridge, yeah.

[1100] So think about it.

[1101] Like those are times when we're purposefully overfeeding ourselves.

[1102] It's encouraged.

[1103] Yeah, right?

[1104] A lot of people are trying to diet through the holidays.

[1105] I'm like, that's going to be miserable.

[1106] Just try to maintain.

[1107] If you maintain, you're actually ahead of the game.

[1108] So how does someone maintain?

[1109] I wrote a book called Fat Loss Forever.

[1110] I really tried to tackle the fundamental question of why do we have such a difficult time losing weight and keeping it off?

[1111] Because six out of every seven obese people will lose a significant amount of body weight in their lifetime.

[1112] Almost all of them will put it back on.

[1113] And in many cases, they put on more than they lost.

[1114] And when you look into the literature, your body fights so hard for that homeostasis that there is just a multitude of things that happen to try to drive you back towards your preexisting condition.

[1115] When you start dieting, one, appetite increases over a period of time.

[1116] But also, people eat for a lot more reasons than just being hungry.

[1117] That's what a lot of people don't address.

[1118] Bortem, societal cues.

[1119] When was the last time you went to an event that didn't have food, sitting down watching TV, okay, it's time to have some snack food.

[1120] There's a lot more stuff that goes into this and what people think.

[1121] And so you have these physiological pressures trying to drive you back because your BMR will drop, so your metabolic rate will reduce.

[1122] It's not a ton, but it does reduce.

[1123] Your non -exercise activity thermogenesis will go down.

[1124] And people's motivation to exercise sometimes can drop when they're losing weight as well.

[1125] You're decreasing your calories outside of things.

[1126] And at the same time, your appetites increasing, trying to drive more calories in.

[1127] And here's the more fundamental reason is that people diet in a way that is not sustainable.

[1128] You said, like, what's your exit trail?

[1129] I was just reading one of your posts.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] The best weight loss is the one that A is easiest for you to adhere to.

[1132] Two, do you have an exit strategy?

[1133] Absolutely.

[1134] So they give zero thought to the diet after the diet.

[1135] It's like a finish line, right?

[1136] Yeah, yeah.

[1137] So think about medication.

[1138] Most medications for a disease.

[1139] chronic diseases.

[1140] You can't just take one pill and you're done.

[1141] If you want to keep off the weight that you lost, you have to sustain those behaviors.

[1142] So when you look at the overall body of research, one, there isn't a single diet that emerges is better than other diets in the long term, whether it's keto, plant -based, weight watchers, whatever.

[1143] There was a meta -analysis of 14 different popular diets, and they were all equally terrible for long -term weight loss.

[1144] Another great reason to follow you on Instagram, because, is you take aim at every one of these diets that you are being right now.

[1145] Someone's proselytizing to you about keto, about paleo, about low carb, about meat only, about plan only.

[1146] This is a great resource to have a defense against this.

[1147] Ultimately, if they work, it ends up being a calorie restriction.

[1148] It is.

[1149] Now, people get it a little bit crossed up because while I went low carbon, I was eating way more food than before.

[1150] No, your perception is you were eating more food because you're eating more voluminous, high satiety foods, whereas before you're eating junk food.

[1151] So when you switch to these other diets, it probably felt like you were eating more, but the fact is you were consuming less calories.

[1152] There's no one diet that sticks out as being better.

[1153] But when they did a breakout in this study, they looked at, okay, what if we stratify with adherents, right?

[1154] So regardless of diet, we go people who are least adherent to most adherent, and then you see a linear effect of how effective the diet is.

[1155] The conclusion of the researchers, which is what I said, is choose the diet that fuels easiest for you.

[1156] Because they all work if you're super religious about that.

[1157] Right.

[1158] You have to use some form of restriction, whether it's calorie tracking, macro tracking, cutting carbs, low fat, intermittent fasting, whatever it is.

[1159] You've got to have some form of restriction.

[1160] But you should choose the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive for you.

[1161] I'm somebody who, like when I got into bodybuilding, I actually struggled with binge eating because I would like try to eat clean.

[1162] By the way, there is no objective definition of that.

[1163] I hate the term.

[1164] I tried to eat clean.

[1165] And then on the weekends, because I was in college, I ended up, you know, binge eating, you know, because my buddy's order pizza.

[1166] I had this epiphany.

[1167] I'm like, you know, I wonder if it's not the pizza per se that's the problem.

[1168] It's the fact that I eat the whole thing.

[1169] Yeah, right, right, right.

[1170] So then I just was like, okay, I'm going to start trying to track and just eat this stuff as it fits in my macros.

[1171] For me, that felt easy.

[1172] My form of restriction was basically portion.

[1173] I don't weigh every single thing anymore.

[1174] I would never tell somebody they've got to do that forever.

[1175] But if you've never had experience weighing stuff, you will be shocked.

[1176] You want to be depressed.

[1177] Go away out like a serving a cereal.

[1178] Or go way out of serving a cereal.

[1179] Or go way out of serving a serving.

[1180] of ice cream and then you'll realize, oh wow, I'm having three or four servings of ice cream when I ate ice cream.

[1181] I had a tablespoon of peanut butter.

[1182] You had four.

[1183] Yes.

[1184] And so if you look at, again, this is where things can feel really attacking for obese people.

[1185] There was a study, it's very classic study in nutrition where they brought in people who self -reported that they could not lose weight on low calories.

[1186] On average, they reported that they were eating 1 ,200 calories a day.

[1187] Now, the researchers tracked them, and they tracked their BMR, they tracked their total daily energy expenditure using something called doubly labeled water, which basically is an isotope that allows them to estimate within a reasonable amount how many calories you burn per day.

[1188] Because the in products of metabolism are CO2 and H2O.

[1189] You know, you breathe it out and you pee it out.

[1190] So if you've got this doubly leveled water, you can collect their breath and you can also collect their urine and you can actually figure out how many calories they're burning per day.

[1191] It's not perfect, but it's pretty good, unless it's a low carb diet and then it doesn't work.

[1192] Because the equation will underestimate the amount of CO2 you're going to produce, but it's very technical.

[1193] So they told the subject, We want you to be honest about this.

[1194] And if you are underreporting, we will know.

[1195] They underreported by about 50%.

[1196] Well, what that tells you is that they believed it themselves.

[1197] That's what's important.

[1198] Right.

[1199] This is a great example.

[1200] So people hear under report and they think, well, I'm not a liar.

[1201] I don't think people are lying.

[1202] No way.

[1203] They knew they were being observed.

[1204] If you've never had that experience of looking at what a serving actually is, you would think that you're eating $1 ,200.

[1205] Well, I eat a salad.

[1206] You know, meanwhile, they're putting oil and dressing on it.

[1207] You know, I just had a handful of nuts.

[1208] 64 servings.

[1209] You don't really know.

[1210] And again, I'm not saying you have to weigh and measure, but you've got to practice some form of restriction in some way.

[1211] Again, I like macro tracking.

[1212] I developed an app that's based on nutrition coaching with macros.

[1213] It gives you macro targets and then adjust them every week.

[1214] Well, it's macro.

[1215] I know what the word macro means.

[1216] Yeah, protein, carbs and fats.

[1217] Yeah, so you're macronutrients.

[1218] For some people, tracking is actually very stressful for them.

[1219] They'll say, yeah, but I did intermittent fasting and it was easy.

[1220] Then do that.

[1221] Absolutely.

[1222] So you've got a few different levers you can pull.

[1223] or you can do nutrient exclusion where you're saying, well, I'm just going to do low carb, I'm going to do low fat.

[1224] Any of those can work.

[1225] So find the lever that's easiest for you to pull, but just keep in mind that it is something you'll need to be able to sustain.

[1226] And there was a study that came out that they took people who had lost weight and kept it off and tried to identify some common characteristics of them.

[1227] And some of the things you would expect, they tended to exercise more, they tended to practice cognitive restraint, they tend to self -monitor more in terms of taking their body weight and whatnot.

[1228] But one thing that really struck me that I never thought about is they identified that they had to develop a new identity.

[1229] And I'm sure this will vibe with you as a recovering addict.

[1230] They had to develop a new identity because you're literally trying to become a different person.

[1231] And you cannot drag your old habits, behaviors behind you.

[1232] You have to shed them.

[1233] And people struggle with that because if you're an addict, you've been hanging out with people who also do this stuff.

[1234] Right.

[1235] And you've been developing your whole lifestyle around it.

[1236] And now you've got to totally change your lifestyle.

[1237] That's really hard for people.

[1238] They don't think about just how much is going to change.

[1239] You can't hang around your old friends.

[1240] You can't go to the same places you used to go to.

[1241] So do you know, Ethan Supley?

[1242] He's one of my best friends.

[1243] I love Ethan.

[1244] He's a great guy.

[1245] He's the greatest dude ever.

[1246] He has a phrase, he says, which is, I killed my clone today.

[1247] And I actually messaged him.

[1248] I asked him, I'm like, I think this is what you mean.

[1249] And I talked about, like, forming a new identity.

[1250] And he said, that's exactly what I mean.

[1251] Yeah.

[1252] Because there's still the old me somewhere in there.

[1253] And I got to go up and do this every day and make sure he doesn't come back.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] Wow.

[1256] Wow.

[1257] Well, and this is more of a social science thing, psychological, even somewhat maybe mystical, which is the power of stories.

[1258] So we have any IM statement, right, as an identity statement.

[1259] And so it's a declaration of your theory about yourself.

[1260] It's a declaration of the story you believe in.

[1261] And people don't realize how active their brains are all day long at confirming the story they believe in and excluding all contradictory information that would threaten the story.

[1262] So if you don't change your story, you'll only see all these things that are the common reasons it can't be done.

[1263] The story is fucking embarrassingly important.

[1264] And your reasons, too.

[1265] You have to have a very powerful reason as to why you're doing something.

[1266] We have a Facebook group for our app.

[1267] Our participants in there.

[1268] It's a really great community.

[1269] Sometimes I'll get somebody saying, you know, I'm just trying to lose this last five pounds.

[1270] I just can't seem to do it.

[1271] And I say, why are you trying to do it?

[1272] What's your why behind this?

[1273] And it's like, well, I just feel like I should.

[1274] I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It has to be something where there is no other option for me. It's win or go home, you know, and I'm not saying everybody should lose five pounds.

[1275] Only if that's your express goal.

[1276] Right.

[1277] I get into this with buddies all the time.

[1278] I want a family.

[1279] Okay.

[1280] Do you want one in theory?

[1281] Absolutely.

[1282] Or do you want a family?

[1283] Yeah.

[1284] Because there's very specific steps one has to take to have a family.

[1285] There's a specific criteria by which you're going to evaluate potential partners if you want a family.

[1286] You can't just want a family.

[1287] Yeah.

[1288] And it extends to everything.

[1289] Pro tip, fucking strangers doesn't generally result in this.

[1290] I just want to say it as a public service phenomenon.

[1291] Yeah.

[1292] There are anomalies.

[1293] But in general, it doesn't lead to families.

[1294] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[1295] I think it's one of those things that people just don't think about that.

[1296] Well, I should lose this weight.

[1297] No, no. Ethan can tell you exactly why.

[1298] Oh, it's the crazy.

[1299] Sitting on an airport.

[1300] plane.

[1301] It's the best fucking origin story ever.

[1302] Or getting into the bathroom.

[1303] Yeah, him talking about, you know, I met who would go on and become his wife and he's like, she was active and I wanted to do stuff with her.

[1304] When it gets tough, if your reasons are good enough, you can keep coming back.

[1305] But if your reason's just like, well, I should probably do this.

[1306] We don't do our shoulds.

[1307] Even if your reason is vanity, that's fleeting.

[1308] I hear so often people's diets are revolving around an event.

[1309] It's a wedding.

[1310] It's a trip up to the beach.

[1311] You better in perpetuity be at a beach.

[1312] beach or this approach probably isn't going to work.

[1313] And that's where the power of habit formation is really important.

[1314] So I was hanging out with some friends a few years ago and she's really into psychology and I spent the weekend with him.

[1315] And she was like, it was really interesting to observe your habits.

[1316] And I was like, oh boy, what you?

[1317] When a psychologist tells you she's been observing you, it's like, oh boy.

[1318] She's like, when we had breakfast, you selected to have egg whites.

[1319] I'd also made bread pudding and you didn't turn it down either.

[1320] We went out to dinner and you picked a lean cut of meat, but you also had fries.

[1321] The things you can control, you pick low calorie options so that then you can therefore have the flexibility to include something else that's a little bit higher calorie.

[1322] And I never even thought about that.

[1323] I'm like, well, when I go and I get eggs, I just get egg whites.

[1324] This is something I've just been doing for so long.

[1325] I see this nonstop.

[1326] We love binary thinking, right?

[1327] Everything's all in or all out.

[1328] So it's like if you fuck up on the bread pudding, your inclinations go, well, it's over and I blew it, so let's go fucking Denver omelet.

[1329] I'm like you.

[1330] Any time I can make the right decision and it's painless, I'll do it.

[1331] And there's some that are quite painless to me and others that are very painful.

[1332] But it is a sum total.

[1333] Yeah.

[1334] It's not this one meal.

[1335] It's not the one decision.

[1336] Again, human brains are so dumb.

[1337] Yes.

[1338] Well, I can't do it perfect.

[1339] So fuck it.

[1340] That's like you get out of your car and your tire's a little bit flat because there's nail on there.

[1341] Oh, fuck these other tires.

[1342] And then you go stabbing those as well, you know?

[1343] And it's like, no, you still have three good ones.

[1344] Just get the spare out.

[1345] When I talk about coaching, we have a lot.

[1346] have a team by a lane coaching team.

[1347] And one of the things I talk to our coaches about a lot is accountability with empathy.

[1348] And I think this is so critically important for good coaching.

[1349] And just in general, like even for yourself, it's important to be empathetic to people because otherwise if you're just the drill sergeant that's beating him over the head every single day, one, they're going to start lying to you.

[1350] So they're not getting beaten over the head.

[1351] And two, they're just going to tune you out because like, oh, there goes Lane.

[1352] He's yelling again, you know?

[1353] They don't understand me. And once you've determined someone doesn't understand you and that you're unique, now you get to have a whole different set of rules.

[1354] This is like an A thing as well.

[1355] It's called terminal uniqueness.

[1356] People need to recognize that you actually have taken the moment to understand how they feel, and then maybe the suggestion becomes different.

[1357] Right.

[1358] That's why the empathy piece is important, but you can't just have empathy, right?

[1359] Because then there's no impetus for change.

[1360] Yes.

[1361] So I always tell them it's empathy with accountability.

[1362] I still have a few one -on -one coaching clients.

[1363] I don't take on very many at all, but I have a few.

[1364] Me, Monica, obviously.

[1365] Obviously, obviously.

[1366] I love limited edition stuff.

[1367] Of course.

[1368] See, it's just a ruse.

[1369] Now I can take my prices up 15 times.

[1370] So she had said, well, you know, I had a really rough week.

[1371] I found out my parents had been the victims of fraud and they said somebody's still a bunch of money.

[1372] I said, oh, that's really horrible.

[1373] I totally get it.

[1374] This was not your priority at the time.

[1375] Where did you feel like you kind of fell off track?

[1376] What was the situation?

[1377] And now let's see if there's any.

[1378] like low pain things that we can institute to try to buffer that.

[1379] As opposed to just saying, well, I don't care about your situation, no excuses, no days off, you know, like that's not going to do anything.

[1380] Life's not going to stop coming at you.

[1381] Yeah, that's always my favorite.

[1382] Like the single 25 -year -old trainer telling the single mother of three that she just needs to want it badly enough, you know?

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] It's like, all right.

[1385] It's like these two things are not equivalent, right?

[1386] But I talk a lot about priorities.

[1387] I do this not to shame, but actually to make it apparent what.

[1388] should be priorities.

[1389] Some of us say, well, I want to lose weight.

[1390] We'll start.

[1391] They may have had some few stumbling blocks.

[1392] I'll say, you're telling me this is what you want, but your actions are not in line with what you're saying your priorities are.

[1393] Single mother, two kids, working nights, going to school.

[1394] Maybe diet should not be your priority right now.

[1395] Like, it's probably a good reason.

[1396] Some people don't have bandwidth.

[1397] Yeah.

[1398] Okay, let's try to just, you know, do what you can with what you got right now.

[1399] That's okay.

[1400] There's no judgment on that.

[1401] I'm kind of a big fan of what I call fat loss sprints.

[1402] So I have a client who's a very, very successful guy like worth multiple billions of dollars.

[1403] The rock.

[1404] Not him.

[1405] Okay.

[1406] But if he's listening, I mean, if he need help, bro, you know.

[1407] Get into black mold paradise and let's let a rip.

[1408] His lifestyle is quite unique.

[1409] He's traveling every week.

[1410] He's going to all these events, you know, those sorts of things.

[1411] And he's like, you know, when I'm home, it's easy.

[1412] Yeah.

[1413] You know, but when I go to these things, I say, well, instead of like feeling like we're beating you over the head, Let's just focus on maintenance, okay?

[1414] Let's focus on maintenance those weeks.

[1415] And then when you're home, we're going to go hard, right?

[1416] Because you're regimented, you're in your environment.

[1417] If one week out of the month, we can go hard, but you lose one or two pounds that week and we can maintain it.

[1418] Over the course of the year, we're going to have 15, 20 pounds off, right?

[1419] So I think people have just thought about, well, I'm starting this diet.

[1420] I've got to be on this diet.

[1421] You can break it up.

[1422] Ethan said that was actually kind of a big game changer for him was like the idea that, oh, I don't have to be on a diet perpetually.

[1423] And he's a fucking addict on top.

[1424] Which is great.

[1425] Yeah, he's like monitoring his nicotine intake like I am.

[1426] There's a lot going on.

[1427] Yeah, well, I felt bad.

[1428] We went and worked out when I was out in California.

[1429] Oh, you did.

[1430] He was in Florida now, by the way.

[1431] He does.

[1432] We're actually kind of talking about a project together, which I would love to do.

[1433] Oh, good.

[1434] But obviously he's busy, I'm busy.

[1435] We're trying to work it out.

[1436] He's not fucking busy.

[1437] He's not busy.

[1438] He's living in Florida.

[1439] Your buddy's calling you out now.

[1440] Oh, he is not busy.

[1441] I didn't realize that he was a recovering addict.

[1442] I was like, you want to grab beer afterwards, something like that.

[1443] And then I found out later, I was like, oh, idiot, you know, like.

[1444] There's no reason for you to know unless it tells you.

[1445] No. Okay.

[1446] What I love is that you will take these people saying that keto's everything, you'll kind of debunk it.

[1447] Then you'll take the people saying that no carbs is everything.

[1448] Then plant is everything.

[1449] We're not getting away from this kind of golden rule of in and out.

[1450] Taking carbons, they got to go somewhere.

[1451] Right.

[1452] Now, with that said, what would be the difference if someone ate 3 ,000 calories a day of pure sugar.

[1453] You got every single calorie through table sugar.

[1454] Okay.

[1455] Versus 3 ,000 calories of protein.

[1456] What would happen?

[1457] So one thing I will say, I'll push back a little bit, is what we call a false dichotomy.

[1458] Okay, great.

[1459] Nobody really eats like that, but let's say somebody did.

[1460] First off, eventually you would die on the sugar diet because you'd have, I think it's Kusikor, which is basically protein malnutrition.

[1461] If you don't mind me walking it back to it, maybe a little bit more of a realistic example.

[1462] This is literally just, I get curious, like, if calories are calories.

[1463] I do, too.

[1464] And I worked out, and I burned the 3 ,000 calories of sugar.

[1465] I do feel like my body composition would be different.

[1466] Yes, because protein is important for lean mass. You would be losing lean mass if you weren't getting any protein in.

[1467] Okay.

[1468] But let's take protein equated between diets.

[1469] Protein is the biggest lever for body composition in terms of the individual macronutrients.

[1470] Higher protein, we know, better for lean body mass, better for recovery.

[1471] But if we look at diets that are equal in protein and equal in calories, when we look at tightly controlled randomized control trials, sugar doesn't seem to make a big difference.

[1472] Yeah, you just had a pro -sugar post.

[1473] I shot.

[1474] Not pro -sugar.

[1475] I know.

[1476] In defense of sugar.

[1477] Not anti -sugar.

[1478] Again, I was one of those people.

[1479] I was like, oh, yeah, sugar is bad for you.

[1480] It's fattening independent of calories.

[1481] I'll never forget this.

[1482] I was at a graduate school mixer.

[1483] So this is like 2005.

[1484] And one of the researchers who was doing research on sugar, I was overhearing this conversation.

[1485] And this is the time when I was like, okay, you know, sugar is definitely fattening, regardless of the calories.

[1486] It's bad for you, et cetera.

[1487] And I'm listening to this guy who's published these studies in rodents where they showed like these really crazy outcomes feeding high fructose diets, right?

[1488] So I'm like, okay, sugar and fructose bad.

[1489] And he's talking to this other professor and the other professor's like, yeah, I feel like high fructose corn syrup is the cause of obesity.

[1490] The professor who done the research was like, yeah, just because it's really palatable and cast calories.

[1491] And the guys, you don't think that it's fattening independent of calories.

[1492] And he was like, no, we fed these animals, you know, 70 % of their entire calories from fructose.

[1493] You could not get that through the diet if you tried because even things that are high fructose, like high fructose corn syrup, is only 55 % fructose.

[1494] So anyways, I remember listening to that going, huh, I wonder if my thoughts about sugar or bullshit, right?

[1495] Every single study that I've ever seen where they equate calories and protein, same goes for carbohydrate overall, but sugar, they don't see any difference in pretty much anything, even inflammation.

[1496] The downside is fiber is important.

[1497] I'm not saying that there's no downsides, but from a body compositional standpoint, There was a really classic study that I think is the most telling.

[1498] And the meta analyses, so meta analyses are kind of a study of studies.

[1499] So they have specific inclusion criteria.

[1500] And then of any study that fits that inclusion criteria, they all lump them in and they try to see, okay, what is the overall effect?

[1501] And so when you trade out sugar for non -sugar, but calories not created.

[1502] They don't see any difference in weight loss or fat loss.

[1503] So this one study from probably 25 years ago, it was really good because it was six weeks, which is long enough to see differences in body composition.

[1504] They measured a bunch of biomarkers of health, you know, like cholesterol, glucose, insulin, all these sorts of things.

[1505] Both diets that they fed to people were exactly the same.

[1506] So same protein, carbohydrate, fat content, same calories.

[1507] One diet had over 110 grams of sugar a day.

[1508] The other one had about 10.

[1509] And they provided all the meals to the participants.

[1510] So it was very tightly controlled.

[1511] Both groups lost the exact same amount of body weight.

[1512] And body fat.

[1513] All the biomarkers all improved, but they improved the same between, groups.

[1514] The only difference was the LDL cholesterol improved a little bit better in the low sugar group.

[1515] And that is probably because the low sugar group was eating more fiber.

[1516] And we know that fiber combined cholesterol and reduce cholesterol.

[1517] So what I'll tell people is like, don't get so focused on the sugar, focus on eating enough fiber.

[1518] Like if you want a longevity hack, fiber is a longevity hack.

[1519] There was actually a recent meta -analysis that fiber is something that consistently in all the epidemiology, all the cohort studies, better longevity, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, risk of cancer.

[1520] So they found that for every 10 gram increase in fiber in the diet, it reduced the risk of mortality by 10%.

[1521] And there doesn't seem to be a cap.

[1522] Like, if you can get higher fiber, don't worry about your sugar.

[1523] Because the one thing to keep in mind, too, is like fruit is high in sugar, but it's also high in fiber.

[1524] Right.

[1525] It doesn't spike your insulin in the same way.

[1526] Some fruits have a little bit more insulin, but insulin has been demonized too.

[1527] Really, I tell people, like, focus on your overall calories, focus on your protein, focus on fiber.

[1528] Those are the big levers.

[1529] They do carbs and fats, like, oh, you need to do keto or you need to do this or do intermittent fasting.

[1530] There was a meta -analysis of over 20 studies looking at studies where they equated protein and calories, but varied the carbohydrate and fat content.

[1531] The inclusion criteria for the studies was either the food had to be a metabolic ward where they're providing everything and you're basically in food jail, or it was all just provided to them at home.

[1532] So they wanted very tightly controlled studies.

[1533] And the outcome from that was it didn't matter really whether you were low -carb or low -fat.

[1534] or anything in between.

[1535] It was about having enough protein and getting the right amount of calories.

[1536] Now, remember we had this talk about mechanisms versus outcomes, right?

[1537] So people will say, well, if you're on a keto diet, you're burning way more fat, which is true.

[1538] They'll say, like, you run out of glycogen.

[1539] That's what your body wants to burn first, right?

[1540] That's easy.

[1541] Your carbs are building glycogen.

[1542] That's easily accessed.

[1543] But you run out of that, now it's got to go to fat reserves.

[1544] I've heard this, and I think that's true.

[1545] So it is true.

[1546] Okay.

[1547] So if you do a high, fat, low carb diet, you will burn a lot of fat.

[1548] But you're also taking it on.

[1549] that's not a lot of fat, right?

[1550] But you're also eating a lot of fat.

[1551] But the loss or gain of body fat is not just fat burning.

[1552] It is the balance between the fat you store versus the fat you burn.

[1553] People only look at one side of that equation.

[1554] They look at fat burning.

[1555] Well, we don't really store carbohydrate as fat.

[1556] So there have been metabolic tracer studies where they can basically label one of the carbons on carbohydrates.

[1557] Yeah.

[1558] And then they can look at where it goes, right?

[1559] Oh, okay.

[1560] I think it was a study in females where they overfed by double their maintenance calories.

[1561] and they were able to, to the gram, see where the fat in adipose was coming from.

[1562] What's anapose?

[1563] Adipose is fat tissue.

[1564] Okay.

[1565] The average daily deposition over the course of the study was about 282 grams per day.

[1566] Four grams of that came from carbohydrate.

[1567] Oh, no kidding.

[1568] 278 grams came from fat.

[1569] There's a mechanism called the novo lipogenesis where you can convert glucose to fat.

[1570] So what that says is that really doesn't happen much in humans.

[1571] It's a very, very low amount.

[1572] So carbohydrates, when you take them in, you have very limited storage, right?

[1573] You can store it as glycogen, but after you've filled up your glycogen stores, you basically have to burn it.

[1574] Since you're burning glucose, it's sparing the fat you eat that it could be stored as fat.

[1575] So now let's go back and compare these two different diets, high -carb, low -fat versus low -carb high -fat.

[1576] On a low -carb, high -fat diet, you burn a lot of fat, but you're also storing a lot of fat because you're eating a lot of fat.

[1577] On a low -fat high -carb diet, you're not burning much fat, but you're also not storing much fat.

[1578] Right.

[1579] What is going to determine the overall balance is energy balance.

[1580] Are you eating more calories than you're burning?

[1581] And that's why, even though low -carb diets increase fat burning quite a bit, they don't produce better fat loss compared to other diets when calories and protein are equated.

[1582] You asked, is a calorie just a calorie?

[1583] Yes, because calories are simply a unit of measurement.

[1584] If you read the studies about how they came up with the concept of the at -water values for calories, it's pretty crazy.

[1585] It's not a physical thing.

[1586] It's literally the chemical energy contained in the bonds of food, in the molecular bonds of these macronutrients.

[1587] And when you break these things down during digestion and absorption and metabolism, you free that energy and it winds up basically in something called ATP, which is your body's energy currency.

[1588] So, yes, all calories are equal just like all miles per hour equal.

[1589] Going from one mile per hour to two mile per hour is not different than going from 99 to 100.

[1590] All horsepower is equal.

[1591] Right.

[1592] But different sources.

[1593] of calories may have differential impacts on your appetite and on your energy expenditure.

[1594] So there's what's called the thermic effect of food, which is basically how much energy do you have to put into the food you eat to extract the energy from it?

[1595] Something like dietary fat, it's a value of about 0 to 3%.

[1596] So if you eat 100 calories of dietary fat, you end up extracting about 97 to 100 calories.

[1597] Carbohydrate's about 5 to 10%.

[1598] So if you eat 100 calories a carbohydrate, you're extracting, you know, anywhere from 90 to 95 calories.

[1599] Protein is about 20, 30%.

[1600] It's very hard to extract.

[1601] You're still getting a net positive, but it's a lower amount than carbohydrate or fat.

[1602] Because it requires energy to make it.

[1603] Part of it actually is likely the fact that when you eat enough protein, it increases muscle protein synthesis, which is an energetically expensive process.

[1604] This is one of the things that my research supported, that the increase in muscle protein synthesis is part of the reason that eating more protein leads to greater energy expenditure.

[1605] So a high protein diet can be helpful in so far as, okay, your protein tends to be more sadiating compared to carbohydrate or fat, and it tends to increase your energy expenditure, which is why when I'm talking about these studies, I'll always say when they equate protein and calories.

[1606] Because there were some low carb studies originally where they were doing low carb high protein versus the Food Guide Pyramid diet.

[1607] And they were saying, oh, we actually saw more fat loss in this low carb diet.

[1608] And their hypothesis was it was the low carbs, but it turns out it was probably actually the high protein.

[1609] Uh -huh.

[1610] Yes, all calories are equal, but all sources of calories are probably not equal.

[1611] I think beyond all of this talk about weight loss and body composition and strength and all these different things, I think there's a message that's kind of bigger than that.

[1612] I'm going to give you my examples.

[1613] Essentially?

[1614] This one's prepared.

[1615] I got interested about two months ago.

[1616] I just was randomly thinking.

[1617] I thought, oh, I remember Sweden decided to not socially distance and they did not enact a quarantine as their approach to dealing with COVID.

[1618] And I thought, wow, I guess we're far enough away from it now that the truth will be known.

[1619] We'll find out what the right or wrong approach was.

[1620] And I was just genuinely curious.

[1621] Like, how did that turn out for them?

[1622] So I search, how did Sweden's response to COVID turnout?

[1623] I probably saw immediately like 30 really important publications, recognized, esteemed ones you would trust, all had virtually the same headline, which was their mortality rate was 25 % higher as a result of that.

[1624] And so I thought, wow, wow, so it didn't work out for them.

[1625] And then I just, for whatever reason, got a little more curious and I started looking at some of the charts, and then I saw the source of the data and the study.

[1626] And while that was true, it was 25 % higher, it was 25 % higher in that their neighbors, Denmark, Finland, Norway, they had a death rate of four per 100 ,000 people.

[1627] Sweden had a death rate of five per 100 ,000 people.

[1628] So in fact, it was 25 % higher.

[1629] But that is an incredible way to frame that bit of data.

[1630] Because I will say you could have easily had the headline read, Sweden had a rate of 0 .005 %.

[1631] death for their approach.

[1632] In Denmark, had a rate of 0 .004%.

[1633] It's fucking nothing.

[1634] It's so insignificant.

[1635] But boy, the headline, 25 % higher.

[1636] So I just want to say in general, you have an obligation to really see what the other way to look at the study is.

[1637] And I think that's primarily the service you provide.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] So my PhD advisor used to say, if you torture the data enough, it will confess what you want it to say.

[1640] Uh -huh.

[1641] I always tell people, Well, science is perfect.

[1642] It is.

[1643] The scientific method is perfect.

[1644] The problem is it's being done by humans, which are really imperfect.

[1645] Yes, yes.

[1646] I break those down weekly in my videos.

[1647] And then we also just launched a research review called reps to my website where we basically take like five studies every month and review them.

[1648] There's some really good research reviews out there now, but a lot of them are kind of written for scientists.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] We try to write this one for the lay person.

[1651] Here's what the study tested.

[1652] Here's what the results were.

[1653] Here's what we think.

[1654] it means, here's what we think it means for you, if we don't agree with the author's conclusions, we'll tell you.

[1655] Because remember, when you read a conclusion of a study, that's the author's opinion.

[1656] Right.

[1657] The only thing absolute in it was the numbers they put next to it.

[1658] Yeah, exactly.

[1659] Right.

[1660] Which is why actually when I read studies, the first thing I do is I go to the results.

[1661] I don't read the introduction because I don't want somebody's opinion.

[1662] I read the results, then I read the methods, then I read the results again.

[1663] Then I'll read the discussion of the results, the conclusion, and then I'll go back and read the introduction.

[1664] Because I want to see the facts first before I get clouded.

[1665] Right.

[1666] And, you know, I think 20 years from now, we're going to look back and go, there's the world that was before COVID and the world that was after COVID.

[1667] There's this distrust in science now.

[1668] And it really makes me sad.

[1669] Well, it's a bummer right, because there's nothing scientifically that happened wrong.

[1670] It was all the people that wrote about the science.

[1671] And the problem was, typically, you get to form a scientific consensus over decades.

[1672] We were trying to build the ship while we were trying to sail the ship.

[1673] In very stormy waters.

[1674] Right.

[1675] I'm glad I wasn't in charge.

[1676] That's all I'll say.

[1677] What else could they have done?

[1678] They were getting real -time information every day.

[1679] Oh, man, I don't want to get people on this, but it's like, the vaccine's going to kill you and you're going to go throw an arm, and I'm like, eh, data says it's mostly pretty safe.

[1680] But there are some people who get myocarditis from it.

[1681] There's some people who have probably died from it.

[1682] We can't hide that.

[1683] And what's the rate per 100 ,000 versus the rate per 100 ,000, and people are dying of COVID.

[1684] You're just going to make a risk -reward analysis.

[1685] And that is exactly what I'll usually say.

[1686] It does appear on the net to be a net positive, but for some individuals, it's not a net positive.

[1687] The problem is when you're in politics, you can't say stuff like that.

[1688] Yeah, yeah.

[1689] No one has an appetite for...

[1690] You can't say that, right?

[1691] You can't say something like, hey, guys, we don't really know what we're doing and we're just trying to make the best decision we can.

[1692] Yeah.

[1693] One of my favorite phrases when it comes to policy, and I think the same with nutrition, too, is there are no solutions.

[1694] There are only trade.

[1695] offs.

[1696] There we go.

[1697] This is kind of our soapbox we're always on.

[1698] We've interviewed so many hundreds experts.

[1699] They're so brilliant.

[1700] They're smarter than us.

[1701] Literally the conclusion, I guess it'd be the far end of the Dunning Kruger curve is like, all I've learned is that a fucking slam dunk's going to be about 65 % certainty.

[1702] That's where we're at.

[1703] Forget COVID.

[1704] It just extends to everything.

[1705] Yeah, it was tough to watch as a scientist.

[1706] I think a lot of this is just social media and like us being isolated.

[1707] We just start demonizing everybody who thinks differently than us because we sit in our information silos and we don't go outside that because we don't follow people we don't agree with.

[1708] You know, when we were growing up, you would have to be exposed to a human who had different opinions than you.

[1709] Well, and you'd turn on the news that was attempting to put it right in the middle.

[1710] Now you go to your news station and you follow your Instagram accounts and you follow your Twitter and then you start to think, oh, everybody thinks this way and then you'd expose to something different and the reaction is, well, this person must be a bad person.

[1711] Yes, there's always a moral implication when someone disagrees with you.

[1712] Okay, so there's two things I think.

[1713] One is I think it's just a generally great call.

[1714] If you're not even going to attempt to understand the studies better or dig deeper, at least take the studies you're hearing about with some cynicism.

[1715] You also don't want people to think science isn't legit.

[1716] What I'm trying to say is that there is a layer between the science and you hearing it.

[1717] And that layer is either a human being on Instagram, it's a journalist who has an agenda.

[1718] That's what I'm saying is that you need to really delineate the difference between the study and then the message that's built on top of the study.

[1719] That's what people need to be cynical of.

[1720] Yeah, the sensationalist headlines, when I see these headlines, I'm like, I'm pretty sure when I go read the study, that's not going to be what it says.

[1721] Yes, a thousand percent.

[1722] I'll never forget.

[1723] There was one where it was like smelling your partner's farts might increase your lifespan or something like that.

[1724] Right, right.

[1725] And it was like basically like one of these volatile fatty acids that's produced that comes out in gas, right?

[1726] When they supplemented with it in rats, that it increased their lifespan, it's like, yeah, that's a little bit further off and just like, you know, sniffing your partner's farts.

[1727] Yeah.

[1728] All right, honey, it's beans tonight because you know I've got to get my dose in.

[1729] Yeah, you've built a pretty big house on top of that foundation.

[1730] Okay, the second thing I just want to point out, I also think people need to be a little bit suspicious and actually correct me if I'm wrong.

[1731] This is more of a question.

[1732] I often have people explaining to me why their diet makes sense or why they're eating this way or why this supplement works.

[1733] And they tell me, well, what happens is when you take this in your body, this happens.

[1734] I think so many people are talking about things as if they've been observed.

[1735] And unless I'm wrong, we're not there.

[1736] SSRI inhibitors, we're not actually observing the uptake.

[1737] We can measure downstream.

[1738] We can take blood.

[1739] We can have a sample.

[1740] We can put something in the body.

[1741] And then we take this sample out of the body.

[1742] And then now everything beyond that is we're kind of theorizing, right?

[1743] We're doing our best case to figure out the mechanism.

[1744] There is some advanced imaging.

[1745] Well, you just mentioned one.

[1746] There's like an isotope that they followed all the way to the fats out.

[1747] But even that.

[1748] So I did isotope labeling for protein synthesis.

[1749] That's how you measure protein synthesis.

[1750] stable isotope basically means like a carbon, for example, that has an extra neutron or a hydrogen that has an extra neutron.

[1751] So we use what was called a Deuterated phenylalanine for our studies.

[1752] I love Deuterated filalal, man. It doesn't.

[1753] Just to give you an example, like if you want to see the rate of muscle protein synthesis, what you do is you give this deuterated phenylalanine to either a rat or a person.

[1754] It's usually an infusion.

[1755] And since phenylalanine isn't metabolized by the muscle, if it stays in the muscle, then you can be relatively used.

[1756] confident that it was incorporated in a muscle protein tissue.

[1757] And so we look at what's called a precursor pool, which is the intracellular space.

[1758] But essentially, the way we measure it, we're not actually viewing it happen in real time.

[1759] What we're doing is we're going to take this biopsy, and then we're going to take that, we're going to put it in liquid nitrogen, we pulverize it, we homogenize it, then we separate out the intracellular amino acids versus the peptide bound amino acids by using perchloric acid.

[1760] And then we hydrolyize the peptide bound amino acids with hydrochloric acid.

[1761] We put in a buffer to buffer that.

[1762] And then we do a few other things.

[1763] then we put it on what's called a gas chromatography mass spectrometer where basically it will separate molecules based on their weight.

[1764] So a heavier hydrogen, a heavier phenylalanine is going to come out later.

[1765] And so we can see, okay, there was this much of the label in the precursor pool versus the actual protein bound pool.

[1766] And that will give us the rate of muscle protein synthesis.

[1767] So when you're looking at these studies where they're looking at where things are going, they're usually using stable isotopes to do so.

[1768] But they're not viewing it in real time like you were talking about, like, I think a lot of people have the sci -fi version.

[1769] My overarching public service announcement is when someone tells you that your body sees aspartane as sugar and releases insulin, you must at least remember that's never been observed.

[1770] That's unobservable at this stage of science.

[1771] I'll say one thing about aspiratea specifically.

[1772] So let's look at the breakdown products of aspartame.

[1773] First off, you're getting a very low dose.

[1774] The breakdown products are basically aspartic acid, it's amino acid, phenylalanine, and amino acid, which I find it hilarious that they put like, people with PQ, there's phenolality in this.

[1775] You get 20 times more phenolalaline than a steak.

[1776] Literally any source of protein will have more phenylaline.

[1777] This is the formaldehyde thing with people.

[1778] So then you also get methanol, which can be converted to formaldehyde.

[1779] You get more methanol on a glass of tomato juice than you do from a Diet Coke.

[1780] So if you can just remember one thing from this whole podcast, the dosage makes the poison.

[1781] There is a small amount of cyanide.

[1782] in apples.

[1783] Yeah, it's delicious.

[1784] Right.

[1785] It's great, yeah.

[1786] You're not going to eat a couple apples and die.

[1787] There's things that are bad for you that you can have in small amounts that aren't going to negatively affect you.

[1788] And there's things that are, quote, unquote, good for you that if you have too much of, if you drink too much water, you can die.

[1789] Oh, I'm always scared of this.

[1790] You can die.

[1791] Don't do you access to see in a nightclub.

[1792] Your cells will drown.

[1793] Yeah.

[1794] Okay, great.

[1795] Now, my last question, because you brought up identity.

[1796] And I thought maybe you could relate to this.

[1797] So you had to have watched the Ronnie Coleman documentary.

[1798] Yeah, he's a sweet guy.

[1799] I love Ronnie.

[1800] I've fucking love that documentary.

[1801] I've recommended it so much.

[1802] I'm like, even if you're not into weightlifting, this is a great documentary.

[1803] But what did occur to me, because I think about identity all the time, is, boy, here's a guy that is on a walker, continuing to wake up at 4 a .m. and go to the gym and lift heavy weight when it's clearly killing him.

[1804] I looked at that, and I thought, this might be the most poignant example of your identity where it can lead you.

[1805] By the way, I relate on some level.

[1806] The notion of him of getting small and weak is actually worse than maybe permanent paralysis.

[1807] He's had however many 15 back surgeries, 20.

[1808] He was in Roat to get another one.

[1809] I just was like, man, this is the most poignant display of identity and where it can lead you.

[1810] And I saw it as like something I need to think about.

[1811] I need to be aware of this.

[1812] And so I was listening to you talk about all the different injuries you've got.

[1813] gotten through when you're talking to Peter Attia.

[1814] And you have a great approach to it.

[1815] And you're very scientific and you're methodological about it.

[1816] And it's seemingly safe and it's worked for you.

[1817] But it did cross my mind.

[1818] Can you imagine yourself being weak?

[1819] When you imagine that, what does that feel like?

[1820] The good thing is strength is one of the last.

[1821] Speed will leave before strength.

[1822] To give you an idea, my world squat record got broken by a guy named David Ricks, who was 57 when he broke it.

[1823] Whoa, get him, Tiger.

[1824] They don't call him Superman for nothing.

[1825] He's actually already in the powerlifting Hall of Fame still competing.

[1826] He's 63 now.

[1827] He just competed at Master's Worlds with me. I think he squatted like 628 at Master's World, just something dumb, you know.

[1828] But I think that's why it's important to not just be one thing.

[1829] I look at it as, okay, yes, that's a big part of who I am.

[1830] But it's not all of who I am.

[1831] I'm also a dad.

[1832] I'm also an entrepreneur.

[1833] I'm also a scientist.

[1834] So if one of those things goes away, it'd be really painful.

[1835] But it's not all I am.

[1836] With regards to Ronnie, it is really hard to watch.

[1837] Yeah.

[1838] What's great, too, is when people ask him, like, oh, do you regret the way you lift it or whatever, like the 800 pound squat?

[1839] And he goes, the only thing I regret is I didn't do a second rep because I pushed out.

[1840] You know?

[1841] Yes.

[1842] He lived in life exactly how he won.

[1843] But that guy was eight -time world champion.

[1844] When they interview Olympic athletes, they did a study where I think it was something like, if you could take something that would get you a gold medal, but you'd be dead in five years, would you do it?

[1845] It was like 90 % of them said yes.

[1846] Right?

[1847] What?

[1848] Yeah.

[1849] It was wild.

[1850] Well, yes, your life is singularly focused on one thing.

[1851] This is the purpose of me being alive is to do this thing.

[1852] I would rather die than not get this.

[1853] Yeah.

[1854] You almost have to have that to be at that level.

[1855] Yes, and you can call it disorder.

[1856] You can call it whatever you want, but you're only going to have one life.

[1857] As long as you're not doing something that's harming other people, I am pretty non -judgmental about that kind of stuff.

[1858] Now, I do think Ronnie got some really bad advice when it came to his back.

[1859] And I've seen some of the foremost back and pain specialists in the world.

[1860] We could go for like a two hours on pain science.

[1861] Of course.

[1862] But the consensus that I've seen is do not get back surgery unless you absolutely need it in terms of you have a nerve that's in danger of being deadened from, you know, a disc herniation or something like that.

[1863] Because I've had two herniated discs in my lower back.

[1864] I've had two bulged discs in my lower back.

[1865] I've had two herniated discs in my neck.

[1866] I've torn a muscle in both hips.

[1867] They're about 50 % successful on average, back surgeries.

[1868] And usually it just means you're going to need another one.

[1869] So my thing is like, those aren't the odds.

[1870] Again, I'm sure people, they're totally warranted.

[1871] There's ton of place.

[1872] Well, also, if there's too much pain, I mean, what do you do?

[1873] But just for me, anything that's 50 -50, if you tell me eating a lot of protein is going to work 50 -50, I have no marching orders.

[1874] So I'm going to give you some information.

[1875] And I'm pretty sure I'm characterizing this study appropriately.

[1876] So if I mess it up, I apologize.

[1877] But they did a study on back surgeries.

[1878] I think they also did this with meniscus tears.

[1879] It was a randomized trial where I, either people would get the surgery or not.

[1880] And this was right down to the surgeon didn't know until he got in the room whether or not he was doing the surgery or not and he would open a card and it would say, you know, yes or no. If it said no, they would still cut the person open, they just wouldn't do anything, right?

[1881] And they'd stitch him back up.

[1882] Did you know there was no statistical difference in the long -term recovery outcomes in those studies?

[1883] Because what happens when you get surgery?

[1884] Well, you've got to rest and then you've got to do rehab and all that kind of stuff.

[1885] And again, I'm not a back expert.

[1886] I want to really qualify this with, you should read this literature yourself if you get a chance.

[1887] But the consensus among the back pain experts that I've spoken with is do not open up if you can avoid it at all.

[1888] Like you're better off doing rehab.

[1889] And pain is a really interesting thing too because we used to think about the body as basically a bag of meat that's attached to your brain.

[1890] And if you poke the bag or you cut the bag or you burn the bag or you punch the bag, the brain goes, owie.

[1891] And it turns out it's not really like that actually because How can you explain people who have phantom limb syndrome where they get pain where a limb used to be?

[1892] How do you explain people who get shot in battle and don't even realize they're shot until after the fact, right?

[1893] Unless it's like a mortal wound.

[1894] Your adrenaline's so high, it's such an analgesic.

[1895] So one thing to keep in mind is that tissue damage doesn't necessarily mean pain and pain doesn't necessarily mean tissue damage.

[1896] When you talk about herniated discs, did you know of Americans, I think, over the age of 40?

[1897] People who have no back pain.

[1898] If you put them on an MRI, over 50 % will have disc abnormalities.

[1899] like herniated disc, bulged discs.

[1900] So you can have a herniated disc and have absolutely no symptoms.

[1901] It is very complicated and we're only really starting to scratch the surface of pain science.

[1902] So all that to go back to Ronnie, I wish he had gotten some different advice and maybe done rehab or just taking some time to go light.

[1903] The question is the identity.

[1904] The identity.

[1905] But you kind of answered it in something I think I am always a proponent of on here as well, which is be flexible.

[1906] Have other pokers in the fire to find yourself in a lot of ways.

[1907] You're right.

[1908] If it's not harming anyone else, it's you.

[1909] your decision.

[1910] Oh, yeah, I'm all for Ronnie doing whatever the fucking wants.

[1911] I just, I don't want to be Ronnie.

[1912] I don't want my identity to put me on walkers.

[1913] I've thought about that a lot.

[1914] I'm not going to be able to do this forever, even though they do have like a 70 plus master's group as well.

[1915] Oh, geez.

[1916] But it's one of those things that you have to learn to let go sometimes.

[1917] You also need to learn when to not let go.

[1918] My plan is I'm going to keep doing my heavy lifting and doing this stuff and as long as I can do it and feel good.

[1919] Oh, keep it up.

[1920] I'm watching every frame of it.

[1921] I'm writing on the comments.

[1922] I'm all for it.

[1923] Listen, Lane Norton, you're awesome.

[1924] I want people to follow you at BioLane on Instagram.

[1925] Also go to biolane .com.

[1926] That's L -A -Y -N -E .com.

[1927] You can check out reps, which is research explained and practical summaries.

[1928] It's really, really fun.

[1929] Also, I take your outwork nutrition.

[1930] My wife got the pre -workout.

[1931] Yeah, how's she like?

[1932] She's like, oh, you think you're into him?

[1933] I have his shit.

[1934] Awesome.

[1935] I take it now and she stopped taking it.

[1936] It's so same thing, net positive, though.

[1937] There you go.

[1938] Yeah.

[1939] So check out all those things.

[1940] You're awesome.

[1941] This has been everything I hoped it would be.

[1942] Monica, any parting words?

[1943] Very cool.

[1944] I was wrong.

[1945] You're shook.

[1946] I was wrong.

[1947] I can grunt a little bit.

[1948] Yeah, now, yes.

[1949] Circle it back.

[1950] There we go.

[1951] Break some shit when we take pictures.

[1952] There we go.

[1953] Exactly.

[1954] Yes.

[1955] All right.

[1956] This has been awesome.

[1957] Thanks so much for coming in.

[1958] Thank you guys.

[1959] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica A badman Hello.

[1960] Can you hear thee?

[1961] Yes.

[1962] Are you standing like, who was it that we interviewed recently that was standing?

[1963] Who was standing?

[1964] You know what it was?

[1965] I was watching an interview with Lane Norton.

[1966] Oh.

[1967] Is this his fact check?

[1968] Yeah.

[1969] Oh, my God, ding, ding, ding.

[1970] What a major ding, ding, ding.

[1971] Yeah, when he did his Peter Atia interview, his podcast, which was two hours and 40 minutes, he was standing the whole time.

[1972] Oh, wow.

[1973] Yeah, I'm standing.

[1974] I'm doing standing desk.

[1975] Oh, but are you?

[1976] Yeah.

[1977] Like intentionally or there's just no place to sit or something?

[1978] No, I could have sat somewhere.

[1979] Oh, okay.

[1980] But I chose standing desk.

[1981] Honestly, partly because of Wayne Norton, Wayne, Lane Norton, because, you know, he talked about some people just, like, move a lot.

[1982] Yes, their metabolism goes up through some movement.

[1983] Yeah.

[1984] And I do think that's me generally, but I thought I could up it a notch.

[1985] That's funny, because I thought of him as well when I was driving the motorhome because I found myself just bouncing my legs and knees a lot, intentionally thinking like, let's grab a few extra calories because I'm just seated all day long driving.

[1986] Do you ever stop and walk around because blood clots?

[1987] Never.

[1988] It's all about time.

[1989] It's time and it's trying to get as far between stops as humanly possible.

[1990] I think if I just sit for a few days a year, I'll be fine.

[1991] No, a few days.

[1992] No, you do have to get up every couple hours.

[1993] Well, right.

[1994] I know about the blood clot thing.

[1995] I'm just saying, in general, I'm not driving the motor home for long stretches so many days a year.

[1996] All right.

[1997] Well, I'm in trouble.

[1998] I stepped in it.

[1999] It's like those guys who are held underground in bunkers, terrorists, and then they get blood clots.

[2000] Oh, I didn't know about that.

[2001] There's been a big outbreak of blood clots in my own.

[2002] Okay.

[2003] What, like, Guantanamo or something?

[2004] Yeah, something.

[2005] But I think they can move around.

[2006] It's not like they're chained to chair.

[2007] Well, I don't know what they're doing over there.

[2008] No, they're all cramped up and then they get blood clots.

[2009] Oh.

[2010] How are you doing?

[2011] Congratulations on your enormous victory.

[2012] Thank you.

[2013] That was a dominant performance.

[2014] I know you watched it.

[2015] Every single play.

[2016] And I got so sucked into it.

[2017] It's crazy.

[2018] power of story, right?

[2019] You have two undefeated teams.

[2020] Like, ooh, that just ups your interest immediately.

[2021] Of course.

[2022] Like someone's leaving in heartbreak and someone's vindicated is unstoppable.

[2023] And what they won like 26 of their last 28 games or something crazy?

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] Anywho, you got that element, right?

[2026] Two undefeated teams.

[2027] Yep.

[2028] And going into it, even though you said on the fact check that Georgia was number one, I think in the rankings, people had Tennessee above George in that game.

[2029] It literally, it moved after I said that.

[2030] It was ranked one and two, and then it moved to us being three, which I didn't understand at all.

[2031] But now I'm sure we're one again.

[2032] Yeah, you must be.

[2033] Also, how arbitrary that you guys shot to number three, but also another good bit of inspiration.

[2034] Like the Jordan thing, where he had to decide he hated someone on the opposing team.

[2035] To be called number three right before the game.

[2036] Like, they did Georgia favor.

[2037] Oh, my God.

[2038] It was so fun.

[2039] It was so buzzy.

[2040] Start at the tailgate.

[2041] Start at the tailgate.

[2042] So what time do you get to the tailgate?

[2043] No, I'm going to start on Friday.

[2044] Okay.

[2045] I'm going to start August 24th, 1987.

[2046] Born in a very small town.

[2047] With a big dream of being a state champion.

[2048] Well, that's funny that you bring that up, ding, ding, ding.

[2049] Because, okay, so Friday, I went to Athens.

[2050] I met with shout out Meredith from the Alumni Association who hooked all of this up for us.

[2051] And, oh, my God, she was amazing.

[2052] She picked me up from the house.

[2053] She drove me to campus.

[2054] I did a little video for them.

[2055] Uh -huh.

[2056] And it was so sweet.

[2057] was this awesome shout out to say shout out a lot there's a there's a what do we call or student there was a student her name was sydney and she asked me the questions and she was really sweet oh wait there was a little like town hall Q &A with you it was a video though like it was just an interview that they shot but she asked the questions and she was so sweet and cute and she wants to move to L .A., so I...

[2058] Can you tell her now, too?

[2059] But no. No, I said, call me when you get there.

[2060] Oh, my God.

[2061] Wow, that's very generous of you.

[2062] I'll have a new phone number.

[2063] Okay.

[2064] No, I'm kidding.

[2065] I'm kidding.

[2066] She was so, so sweet.

[2067] Anyway, but one of the questions was, What's Your Proudest Moment?

[2068] And I said, it's a tie between Spotify.

[2069] Uh -huh.

[2070] And the state championship.

[2071] Oh, wow.

[2072] You're putting Spotify up with your state championship?

[2073] Yeah.

[2074] Monica.

[2075] Oh, my God.

[2076] Aren't you?

[2077] Aren't you proud of it?

[2078] I don't have nothing to like, there's nothing I need to even top.

[2079] I've never finished more than third.

[2080] That's not true.

[2081] I won a couple car races.

[2082] Point is, I don't have a state championship, okay?

[2083] Yeah, very few people do.

[2084] I know.

[2085] Let alone two.

[2086] So this is very exciting.

[2087] I feel very honored.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] I mean, it's funny because, you know, most people would think the opposite of what you're thinking.

[2090] Which is who cares about a state championship?

[2091] Right.

[2092] If you've become exclusive to Spotify, that's a big deal.

[2093] But both are huge.

[2094] Those people don't know about what builds character.

[2095] They don't know about life.

[2096] No, they don't know about what it has.

[2097] Where are those trophies, by the way?

[2098] No, they're rings.

[2099] I don't have a trophy.

[2100] Oh, you got a ring, though?

[2101] Two rings.

[2102] Why aren't you ever wearing them?

[2103] I should wear them more.

[2104] I think so, yeah.

[2105] Speaking of ding, ding, ding, shout out.

[2106] When I was at the game, when I was at the game, there was a couple other people in the suite.

[2107] It was also so embarrassing because, you know, Meredith sent out an email, like, here are some other people who are going to be in the suite.

[2108] And it was this person plus one.

[2109] And, you know, whatever email the other people got is like Monica Padman plus eight.

[2110] Yeah, yeah, a little gratuitous No, but I think they were really happy to have us there Because we were rowdy Okay Mainly my friends, they're so into it You know, so they were really like bringing the heat Getting people riled up Right, everyone left their clothes on, I assume Yeah Okay But no one's upset when nine pretty girls come into a room No, it wasn't all girls Ooh, gross, you had some boys with it?

[2111] Get those fucking guys out of there.

[2112] Yeah, now I am mad.

[2113] Eight people.

[2114] I've been fine if it was six.

[2115] Lose those two dudes.

[2116] How many dudes were there?

[2117] Robbie, Matt, Zach.

[2118] Max, four.

[2119] Oh, half the crew.

[2120] Yeah, that's how it works.

[2121] It's all couples and then me per year.

[2122] That's terrible.

[2123] Normally, it used to be all couples and me and Callie, but now Callie has Max.

[2124] Right.

[2125] Right.

[2126] If I was Cynthia, I would have taken back for the tickets.

[2127] So this is just for the girls who are at school here.

[2128] Meredith.

[2129] I'm sorry, Cynthia was a character in this as well.

[2130] Syntony?

[2131] Cynthia.

[2132] Oh, no. Sydney.

[2133] No. Oh, my God.

[2134] Oh, my God.

[2135] Listen, so Malcolm Mitchell.

[2136] Do you know him?

[2137] No. I know Malcolm Gladwell.

[2138] Me too.

[2139] Shout out.

[2140] Shout out Malcolm Gladwell.

[2141] No, Malcolm Mitchell is a football player.

[2142] He played for Georgia, but then he played for the Patriots, so he won a Super Bowl.

[2143] Okay, yeah, that's just my, I'm ignorant on football, so.

[2144] No disrespect to Malcolm and the Mitchell.

[2145] Yeah, Malcolm and the Mitchell.

[2146] He's very handsome.

[2147] And he was, I think, illiterate, and then now has his children's book.

[2148] It's a beautiful story.

[2149] Anyway, it's called The Magic Hat.

[2150] Apparently, it's huge and awesome.

[2151] Anyway, he was there, and I was starstruck.

[2152] Oh, you were?

[2153] Was he single?

[2154] I don't know.

[2155] I didn't ask.

[2156] Rob says it does not appear that he is wed.

[2157] Did you guys have any chit -chat?

[2158] Little.

[2159] A little here and there.

[2160] Hi.

[2161] Are you getting the hot dogs?

[2162] He lives in Atlanta.

[2163] He said he was a fan, but I think he just lied.

[2164] Sure.

[2165] I'm sure you said you were a fan, right?

[2166] Yeah, I did.

[2167] Yeah.

[2168] That's just obligatory.

[2169] You got to see.

[2170] That's like you never know.

[2171] You just don't know.

[2172] But he was really cool.

[2173] Oh, but he was wearing his.

[2174] Super Bowl ring.

[2175] And that was exciting.

[2176] Oh, yeah.

[2177] Oh, yeah.

[2178] Were you guys the same age?

[2179] Are you peers?

[2180] Rob, how old is he?

[2181] He's 29.

[2182] Born in 19.

[2183] Oopsie.

[2184] He looked young.

[2185] I thought this.

[2186] I thought, how is he already?

[2187] He's so successful.

[2188] Well, that's the nature of athletes.

[2189] They hit their peak early in life.

[2190] I know.

[2191] I actually was confused by this because the Georgia quarterback is 25.

[2192] Oh, I got so confused by this, too, watching the game.

[2193] They kept talking about people in year six.

[2194] Oh, he's a year six player out of, they're letting them play now for six seasons.

[2195] What does that happen?

[2196] Well, no, I think they're red -shirted.

[2197] It's called being red -shirted.

[2198] And I think it means then you stay longer, but at the first, I don't really know all the details, but I'm pretty sure that's -cunded to find out Neil graduated early.

[2199] Comparatively, yeah.

[2200] He passed to the entire football.

[2201] He soared through.

[2202] He did.

[2203] Consider the rest of the football team's on a six -year plan.

[2204] My brother had a great time at the game.

[2205] He tailgated with us.

[2206] All right.

[2207] So back up.

[2208] So Friday questions, that was a sweet moment.

[2209] Thanks for sharing it.

[2210] Then everyone arrives.

[2211] You have the party at your house Friday night?

[2212] Yes.

[2213] I meet Cali and Max already there.

[2214] We meet downtown.

[2215] We have some wine and beer.

[2216] We go to the house.

[2217] Then everyone else arrives.

[2218] We'll go back downtown for dinner.

[2219] Really fun, good dinner.

[2220] And then we went to a bar after.

[2221] Was it a rowdy?

[2222] Was it a rowdiness all?

[2223] Oh, God.

[2224] I mean, yeah, yeah.

[2225] Okay.

[2226] I will say, I think this is the first time in my life.

[2227] I really felt I was old.

[2228] Right.

[2229] Like this scene is too much for me. No, no, no, not too much.

[2230] I was just looking at all these young kids.

[2231] So I had a similar moment about you too watching the telecast, which is...

[2232] That I was old?

[2233] Well, I think of you as still going there, of course.

[2234] Yeah, me too.

[2235] Right, because, you know, you're 100 years younger than me, so that's confusing in itself.

[2236] But I think of you as a student there.

[2237] And then they were cutting to all the students celebrating in their children.

[2238] You know, the children go to college.

[2239] Exactly.

[2240] Right.

[2241] I know.

[2242] I was standing in the Starbucks line.

[2243] They have a Starbucks now on campus.

[2244] And, oh, my God, so exciting.

[2245] Guess what they had at the Starbucks.

[2246] A Cassie's?

[2247] A Georgia mug.

[2248] Yes.

[2249] A Georgia mug.

[2250] Yes, Rob, Starbucks.

[2251] Now I'm competing with Rob for these answers.

[2252] I'm getting stressful.

[2253] Can you imagine my excitement?

[2254] I can't.

[2255] How limited edition.

[2256] I'm already so excited about them all over the place, let alone in my college.

[2257] And perfect timing because you're feeling old.

[2258] And then all of a sudden you see that mug and you're like, I can't think anything about anything but this.

[2259] Exactly.

[2260] And all these kids are like, you know, in line and they're probably drinking.

[2261] and I'm like, oh my God, a mug!

[2262] Oh, my God, I'm going to have a mug.

[2263] I've been waiting for this mug my whole life.

[2264] A new dog's mug, this will look great with my collection.

[2265] That is really what I thought.

[2266] Okay, so yeah, they were cutting to the gals in the audience, and I was like, oh, yeah, Monica is old.

[2267] That's what I thought.

[2268] That's not what I thought.

[2269] I just realized you're not a student.

[2270] Students are children.

[2271] I am geriatric pregnancy.

[2272] Well, but hold on.

[2273] So you're down to...

[2274] Okay, yeah, so Starbucks.

[2275] Are you okay?

[2276] Yeah, I'm...

[2277] Athletic Greens sometimes gets in the wrong pipe.

[2278] I don't know.

[2279] Like, my lungs want it in there, too.

[2280] It's so healthy.

[2281] Oh, my God, because you're old, too.

[2282] Yeah, but that's not a revelation.

[2283] We've known that.

[2284] No, I still sometimes...

[2285] I don't think of any of us as old, and then it turns out we are.

[2286] Yeah, so I'm in line and then I'm looking at all these...

[2287] Yes, children in front of us.

[2288] and I got really anxious about it.

[2289] I felt so old when I was there.

[2290] Yeah, of course you did.

[2291] So mature.

[2292] I felt so mature.

[2293] And I wanted to ask all these little people like, what are you majoring in?

[2294] How's it going?

[2295] And I'd be like, ugh, whose mom is all up in our shit?

[2296] Exactly.

[2297] Yeah.

[2298] Do you think they had all just been rolling around with each other in their dorm rooms?

[2299] I hope.

[2300] That's all I think about when I think of young people like, oh, are they all just rolling around all day long?

[2301] Like, we all have different things about youth we miss, I guess.

[2302] And for you, it's like declaring your major.

[2303] For me, like, who just rolled around in this line?

[2304] It's a romantic time of year.

[2305] It gets dark earlier.

[2306] You want to get cozy.

[2307] So many leaves.

[2308] It's such a pretty campus in fall.

[2309] It was so nice.

[2310] You're the best ambassador for your school.

[2311] I'm glad they picked you.

[2312] I believe it.

[2313] It's real.

[2314] I love UCLA.

[2315] I love that I went there.

[2316] But I'm also, you know, it wasn't East Coast enough.

[2317] There's not leaves everywhere.

[2318] I don't know.

[2319] I couldn't be the spokesperson for it.

[2320] I would just be like, if you love education, come here.

[2321] If you want to have a good time, go somewhere else.

[2322] I was so grateful.

[2323] I mean, I'm always grateful to have gone there, but really walking around, I was so happy that that's my college.

[2324] Yeah, because I was thinking about UCLA and USC.

[2325] Like, those schools are great schools, but they, who wants to go there?

[2326] Like, boring.

[2327] Well, also, you're just not, and by the way, I think for a lot of people, they were.

[2328] I'm thinking maybe I was rare, but you're not in a college bubble.

[2329] You're smack in the middle of Los Angeles.

[2330] It's like you can see the 405.

[2331] How bubbly can it feel?

[2332] And then Westwood, which is your little town, well, guess what?

[2333] It's also where everyone on the west side is going to go to see a movie.

[2334] So it's not, you know.

[2335] I know.

[2336] There's something about Georgia where you.

[2337] you felt protected and independent.

[2338] It's like the only time in life where you have that.

[2339] But if you're at UCLA, you're not protected.

[2340] Oh, you're a sitting duck, a patsy.

[2341] You really are.

[2342] Without that.

[2343] Anyway, so everyone should go there.

[2344] Okay, so now, tailgate, please.

[2345] How, whose car, who drove there, whose car you got the trunk popped on?

[2346] No, no, no, no, no. That's for pansies.

[2347] Oh, no, no, no. Hold on.

[2348] Now you're starting to say PAN.

[2349] I only got to say PAN.

[2350] sitting duck a patsy i said because that's a line from intolerable cruelty now you're saying pansy which is a straight that's a hansy is like wuss that's a homophobic slur yes oh fuck i thought it was okay well it does it does it is questionable but definitely pansy means a gay weak man oh then i'm i'm cutting it pansy it's a flower it's a flower yeah a little pansy so how is that a gay weak man. That's what they called gays.

[2351] Okay.

[2352] I'm not going to call it.

[2353] I'm cutting that.

[2354] Why don't we learn real time?

[2355] I bet some other people don't know that you can't say pansy.

[2356] It's very rare that I have one that you don't know.

[2357] It's true.

[2358] Okay.

[2359] So we shouldn't say that.

[2360] So it's for, I don't want to say pussies.

[2361] I don't like that either.

[2362] What about dinguses?

[2363] Wimps.

[2364] You're allowed to say whims?

[2365] Wimps.

[2366] There we go.

[2367] Yes.

[2368] Okay.

[2369] So that's for wimps.

[2370] Back in your trunk open?

[2371] Yeah.

[2372] In real tailgates, in southern tailgates, you have tents.

[2373] Pop -ups.

[2374] Cover the whole campus in tents.

[2375] You sometimes have grills.

[2376] We didn't grill, though.

[2377] We got barbecue.

[2378] And then you have your chairs out.

[2379] You have cornhole.

[2380] You have ladder ball.

[2381] Oh, who's lugging all this shit there?

[2382] That's why you brought four boys.

[2383] Yeah, boys kind of handle that part.

[2384] That's the one thing we can do.

[2385] Where do you want me to put this?

[2386] Where does this go, Monica?

[2387] Oh, God.

[2388] Oh, fuck.

[2389] No, I didn't go.

[2390] They went early, they set it up, and then I arrived.

[2391] What a princess.

[2392] Okay.

[2393] That's what the girls do.

[2394] Oh, every girl, not just you.

[2395] Yeah.

[2396] Okay.

[2397] Anyway, yeah, it was just really fun, drinking.

[2398] Well, what time did the tailgate start?

[2399] 10 a .m.?

[2400] Yeah, about 10.

[2401] Oh, what could be more fun than having that first cocktail at 10 a .m. Yeah.

[2402] It's so fun, right?

[2403] It is fun.

[2404] Do you have wine?

[2405] No, you got to have a Bloody Mary or something?

[2406] I had wine.

[2407] Gross.

[2408] For breakfast?

[2409] No. No, I love it.

[2410] I love wine breakfast.

[2411] You got to have beer or Bloody Mary for breakfast.

[2412] No, we had mimosas, but I didn't have that.

[2413] I don't know why.

[2414] I just had wine.

[2415] Well, we were laughing.

[2416] Okay, this is bad.

[2417] So, Max was there, and it was really exciting to have him there.

[2418] But at first, on Friday, he was being a little bit of a coastal elite.

[2419] Oh.

[2420] Coastal elite Tell me how And Callie was getting a little Like, you can't do that How was it?

[2421] How is it showing itself?

[2422] He's just a little bit in culture shock Max is from L .A. It's a different beast.

[2423] So yeah, he's just What things was he observed?

[2424] Like, you know, there's a specific look.

[2425] Cacky shorts, polo shirt.

[2426] Oh, I hate that too.

[2427] Yeah, that's true.

[2428] I know you do.

[2429] But I feel like you maybe like it more because Michigan can have a similar thing.

[2430] It's the part, though, that I didn't like about Michigan, you know.

[2431] Yeah.

[2432] I was to find myself in opposition to the khaki pant crew in the collared shirts.

[2433] I hate it because it's just an attempt to look wealthy.

[2434] I guess.

[2435] I mean, it's also just, but you do what's around you.

[2436] I don't know.

[2437] Anyway, what was I saying about Max?

[2438] White wine in the morning.

[2439] A little bit of a coastal elite.

[2440] And then we, I had wine in the morning.

[2441] And by the time you got into the arena, what time did you enter noon?

[2442] Three.

[2443] No, the game started at 3 .30.

[2444] So what time did you enter the arena?

[2445] Three.

[2446] Oh, okay.

[2447] How many wines had you had?

[2448] How tipsy were you by the time you got in there?

[2449] Not tipsy enough.

[2450] That's five hours of drinking.

[2451] I know, but I didn't do a good job.

[2452] I didn't like drink enough.

[2453] You didn't drink hard enough?

[2454] No. Now Neil was a part of that whole aspect.

[2455] And was he putting the pedal to the metal a little bit?

[2456] He's younger than you.

[2457] He was.

[2458] Yes, he was.

[2459] You know, my dad.

[2460] Yeah, I sure do.

[2461] My dad dropped my brother off.

[2462] I don't want to talk about this story.

[2463] We're talking about this.

[2464] No. He drove my brother to Athens.

[2465] He drove my brother to Athens.

[2466] It's an hour away on a normal day.

[2467] And then he dropped him off downtown.

[2468] He drove back home.

[2469] then at the after the game he drove back at least go to your well I guess he wanted to be with your mom to watch the game but why didn't he just go to your Airbnb he wouldn't have wanted to just stay in Athens all day okay he'd rather drive four hours yes yeah four hours more than that because traffic sure I was like gobsmacked I was like dad you can't what do you mean and he just didn't want Neil to drink a lot of at the game and then drive home.

[2470] Right.

[2471] And that's what dad sometimes have to do.

[2472] Are you prepared for this?

[2473] I won't do something like that.

[2474] I mean, for real, there's a total lack of responsibility, which is like, you're in your 20s.

[2475] If you're going to go to this game and get hammered, you need a plan to either get yourself home without driving or you need a place to sleep.

[2476] You're in your 20s.

[2477] It's not my job to drive four hours to prevent you from making a bad decision.

[2478] I know.

[2479] All right.

[2480] But if you love someone that much.

[2481] If you, you know, what do they call it?

[2482] They call it something.

[2483] Enabling?

[2484] No. He wasn't even, the thing is, I think everyone thought that you could buy alcohol in the stadium and you couldn't.

[2485] So also it was a waste.

[2486] By the time the game was over, he was not drunk anymore.

[2487] So that's a peculiar aspect, right?

[2488] So, yeah, most college arenas, there's no alcohol in them.

[2489] Yep.

[2490] State schools don't have any.

[2491] Which is kind of weird.

[2492] I don't know.

[2493] That's a side note.

[2494] But how rough to get a nice buzz and then go lose it for three hours?

[2495] Are people cranky by the time they're leaving that?

[2496] Well, if we lose.

[2497] Oh, I bet it's a Tinder box.

[2498] If everyone's like got a headache and is drowsy and they've lost their buzz and you guys lost every, oh, what is soup?

[2499] Well, we used to sneak stuff in Well, yeah, and even in the suites, there's no booze, huh?

[2500] No, no, we did.

[2501] We did have.

[2502] Oh, so the sweets do have booze?

[2503] Yeah.

[2504] Oh, then there's no problem.

[2505] Right.

[2506] For us, there was no problem.

[2507] Yeah, okay, great.

[2508] I'm only worried about you guys.

[2509] I don't care about that.

[2510] Oh, no. No, Neil, though, that was the whole thing.

[2511] Uh -huh.

[2512] So he could have driven home fun.

[2513] Anyway, it was really special.

[2514] It was so happy to be with all my college friends and to do it like that.

[2515] It was such a full circle.

[2516] It was really, really special.

[2517] Chearing, cheering, cheering, cheering.

[2518] Well, that's probably the first college game I've ever watched Start to Finish.

[2519] And I told you I liked it so much that when I got to my hotel that night in Sedona, I then watched the UCLA game.

[2520] They're 71.

[2521] I had no idea they were so good this year.

[2522] Yeah, that's fun.

[2523] I told you that's when I knew UCLA wasn't the school for me is that Brie and I had snuck in a ton of booze and we were in the student section and we're like popping beers and taking shots of Jack.

[2524] Everyone's looking at us.

[2525] Well, they are coastal elites.

[2526] They're like, how'd this trash get in here?

[2527] We felt so trash.

[2528] I think we were killing cigarettes and stuff.

[2529] Oh, wow.

[2530] Yeah, we did not feel welcome.

[2531] You would have done great at Georgia.

[2532] Oh, absolutely.

[2533] Yeah, I would have done just fine.

[2534] You would have loved the downtown scene.

[2535] Oh, yeah, and the tailgating.

[2536] Okay, tell me about your, wait, first of all, you said you were going to look for me. Did I show up?

[2537] Dozens of times.

[2538] Now, you could tell they were trying to zoom in on the suites to get a good shot of you, but the glare was such that they kept having to abort.

[2539] But they were trying and trying, yeah.

[2540] Yeah, I think if you would have been out in the stands, the whole telecast would have been you.

[2541] Yeah, I think you're right.

[2542] And the commentators were drawing, like, wax on the screen, like wax pen.

[2543] And they're like, we think she's here.

[2544] They were circling, like, the shadows.

[2545] Yeah.

[2546] Yeah.

[2547] And then Cynthia, Cynthia was like, you know, this is her favorite, you know.

[2548] Oh, my God.

[2549] Speaking of, Meredith, she got me my strawberry cake.

[2550] Oh, my God.

[2551] I know.

[2552] You know what you got this weekend.

[2553] is the thing you've heard me say, I covet it.

[2554] It's the moment in American Idol when they've made it to the finals and they go back to their town for a parade and they sit in a convertible and everyone cheers for them.

[2555] That, you just had that.

[2556] And someone brings a cake, your favorite cake.

[2557] I know.

[2558] To your $20 ,000 of free tickets.

[2559] Ooh, Cecilia's.

[2560] Anyway, okay, so tell me about your trip.

[2561] My trip.

[2562] I arrived in Houston Thursday night.

[2563] I then got picked up by Tile.

[2564] Tile and I drove two and a half hours to Nacadoches.

[2565] Tile.

[2566] Tiles is his name.

[2567] It's such a cool original name.

[2568] We ate at a steakhouse in Nacadoches.

[2569] Did you have a loaded baked potato?

[2570] No. I had a filet with a bernet sauce.

[2571] And he got lobster grits that I got into a little bit.

[2572] That was nice and southern.

[2573] Yeah.

[2574] And then the next day I went to foretravel and I was hoping to leave at 9.

[2575] I didn't leave until noon.

[2576] And then I got on the road and then the challenges started.

[2577] So I was in a tornado warning a lot of the drive.

[2578] Pretty windy, whatever.

[2579] Pull over to gas station.

[2580] The wind's blowing so hard.

[2581] I mean, it said on my iPhone that it was blowing at 45 miles an hour, but I think it was much higher than that where I was at.

[2582] Oh.

[2583] So directly.

[2584] This is reminding me so much of the time that Brie and I were in a tornado.

[2585] Directly to the north of me, sky, pitch, black, and kind of swirling ominously.

[2586] Immediately to the south of me, sunny and nice.

[2587] And I was right on the border at this gas station.

[2588] You know, it's a long -ass walk from the semi -pumps where I got to be into the thing.

[2589] I put a bunch of money on the thing, go out, start pumping.

[2590] Anyways, long story short, the wind shut the pump down like probably seven times.

[2591] Oh my God, ding, ding, ding.

[2592] This is what we were just talking about.

[2593] We were?

[2594] Yeah.

[2595] Last fact check about, I was asking.

[2596] Oh, about the nozzle.

[2597] Yes.

[2598] Well, this was like making the actual pump show error messages all across it.

[2599] Like it had some kind of Wi -Fi connection or something that kept going down.

[2600] Anyways, that was about a 75 -minute stop.

[2601] Oh, my God.

[2602] You know, I'm neurotic about time.

[2603] It's so stupid.

[2604] I have no reason to care.

[2605] because I don't have to be anywhere, anywhere.

[2606] But I start getting obsessed with how much ground I'm going to cover in a day.

[2607] Where will I stop?

[2608] Blah, blah, blah.

[2609] So get back on the row.

[2610] Ooh, that was rough.

[2611] 75 minutes stopped to get gas.

[2612] And then I start noticing my tire pressures dropping in one of the duly's on the driver's side, the inside tire.

[2613] And I'm supposed to be at like 115 pressure or below 100 now.

[2614] Now it's at 80, 70.

[2615] And I'm just kind of tracking it.

[2616] I'm in the middle of nowhere.

[2617] So there's really nothing I'm going to be able to do until I get to a major thing.

[2618] By the time I get into New Mexico, we're down at like 35 pounds of pressure.

[2619] Oh, my God.

[2620] What are we going to do here?

[2621] I can't change that tire.

[2622] I don't have a spare.

[2623] I need to get it to a qualified, like, semi -tire shop at some point the following day.

[2624] So my plan is I'm going to have to load it with fix a flat when it gets to almost zero and there's no pressure.

[2625] And then fill it up with my compressor to 125.

[2626] Hope that seals it enough.

[2627] to get to a big town where blah blah blah blah by the time i pull off the road at 1030 in a weird town i can't pronounce the name of in new mexico it's now 26 degrees out i buy a fixa flat i go to fill it and the nozzle that's about six inches long because it goes to the inside wheel that breaks right off and now the tire deflates entirely so what had happened was that valve stem was cracked which is why it was leaking all that air.

[2628] And then all it took was me kind of touching it and it broke right off.

[2629] So now I'm like, oh, fuck.

[2630] Go across the street to a loves.

[2631] I left the pilot.

[2632] I went to a loves truck stop.

[2633] A dude was just about to get off work.

[2634] He had seen without a paddle.

[2635] He was very excited.

[2636] He stuck around.

[2637] Oh, wow.

[2638] Thank fucking God.

[2639] And they took the wheels off the bus, put a new valve stem in, back together.

[2640] That's lucky.

[2641] Yes.

[2642] That was really lucky.

[2643] But now that was a good two -hour ordeal.

[2644] Get back on the road, make it.

[2645] I drive to about 1 .30 in the morning.

[2646] Sleep at a Walmart as I do.

[2647] Beautiful night sleep in the bus in the Walmart parking lot.

[2648] 26 degrees outside, but I was cozy inside the bus and felt snug in a rug.

[2649] Hot chocolate?

[2650] Tons of hot chocolate.

[2651] I poured it all over my body and writhed it around in my front.

[2652] Brooklennies and the bus.

[2653] It really made a mess in those Brooklynies.

[2654] Just praying someone would come lick me clean.

[2655] Put the bait out, but no one was taking it.

[2656] So then next day woke up, drove to Enchantment, to Sedona.

[2657] I got to back up.

[2658] When I got to for travel, I saw my Whalen Jennings logo.

[2659] I'm back for the first time.

[2660] I almost started crying.

[2661] It's very cool.

[2662] I can't believe how gorgeous it is.

[2663] I sent it to Aaron and he said, I have goose.

[2664] I think that's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my whole life.

[2665] I agree with him.

[2666] Can I air a little bit of a grievance?

[2667] Sure.

[2668] So you tease that there was something exciting happening on the bus.

[2669] That's right.

[2670] And then we joked that it was a little me. And the murals.

[2671] Big little brown baby.

[2672] Yeah.

[2673] And then I said, okay, is it a mural?

[2674] And you said no. But that's a mural, right?

[2675] It's not a mural.

[2676] A mural is a painting of something.

[2677] something it's like it's a it's a landscape it's a an action scene right it's this is a logo you know this is whalen's flying bird logo okay okay okay but it's so big that to me it is a mural yeah we can call it a mural i don't mind okay but i think technically i was fine denying that it was a mural okay when i think mural i think airbrush image of something right you think a face or a landscape or some horses going across the desert or a pitcher, you know.

[2678] Anyways, so I love that.

[2679] Okay, get to Sedona, pull into enchantment where you would check in before they let you go up to reception.

[2680] On the right side, there's an awning.

[2681] Well, that awning's way too low for Big Brown.

[2682] So I cruise through the exit, and as I do, someone runs out.

[2683] But I'm on the move now.

[2684] Now I'm going to stop the bus, so I just keep blasting.

[2685] Then I see reception.

[2686] Then I'm like, I find a patch of grass next to the river.

[2687] I go, I guess I'm parking Big Brown.

[2688] here.

[2689] As I get out of the bus, there's a couple of golf carts.

[2690] God bless them.

[2691] They knew it was me. I put in my reservation.

[2692] I'm in a 45 foot bus.

[2693] Where do I park?

[2694] Oh, you did?

[2695] It was never answered.

[2696] But when I arrived two golf carts, they knew it was me. They already had my key.

[2697] I followed them.

[2698] There was a lot at the end of the road.

[2699] That was big enough for Big Brown.

[2700] Bob's your uncle.

[2701] Wonderful.

[2702] Go inside.

[2703] Watch it.

[2704] Big Brown is such, I'm sorry, Dax, but Big Brown is such a headache.

[2705] I mean, there's never been a story about Big Brown that doesn't include some anxiety.

[2706] So much.

[2707] Totally.

[2708] I guess that's what makes it great.

[2709] Is it?

[2710] Yes, because the things in life you enjoy, the things in life I've enjoyed, none of them are the things that are just come easy.

[2711] Not one of them.

[2712] Everything I like requires some effort.

[2713] But don't you think it's a little, it's like that's a tiny bit problematic thinking of Like I can't just enjoy something.

[2714] It has to come with some challenges.

[2715] I'm not saying that I have a rule I won't enjoy something that doesn't come with challenges.

[2716] I'm saying when I look at my life, all the things I'm proudest about is like the car I kept running until it got to the racetrack and then it made a good time.

[2717] Or my motor's like, you know.

[2718] Yeah, no, I get it.

[2719] When I put the popouts out at Walmart and I make myself an oatmeal.

[2720] Oh.

[2721] You know, and I got the heat on.

[2722] And I'm like, yeah, this is awesome.

[2723] and it's worth it, and I earned it.

[2724] And I love driving it.

[2725] Okay, next day, wake up, journal, write, blah, blah, blah, and I go on a two -and -a -half -hour hike all around the property.

[2726] Gorgeous, channeled McConaug, while I was up on the rock.

[2727] He hit me, he just took over my body, and then went in the hot tub.

[2728] I had two room service orders, the hamburger both times, delicious.

[2729] It was great.

[2730] And then yesterday, I left there at about 11.

[2731] I got back to L .A. at 6 .30.

[2732] It was a, you know, event -free ride other than it was raining for a couple of the hours.

[2733] But it was, oh, here's a crazy thing.

[2734] I don't you'll know him, unfortunately.

[2735] You should.

[2736] He's a legend.

[2737] Carrie Hart.

[2738] He's a motorcycle.

[2739] I know Carrie Hart.

[2740] Yeah.

[2741] Okay, great.

[2742] Carry Hart's married to pink.

[2743] Carrie Hart is married to pink.

[2744] So I'm in, I'm driving down the road in Arizona and Big Brown.

[2745] And I see two motorcycles coming up hot behind him.

[2746] me and I'm like oh this is cool these guys are fucking blasting through the desert as they pass me I noticed they're both Indians motorcycles but you don't see a ton of I mean it's a big brand but still I don't see a ton especially like totally tricked out gorgeous and as the lead dude passes me he throws up a very like specific peace sign right so I give it to him and I literally I swear to God I thought I wonder if that's Carrie because Carrie has a deal with with Indian the bike looked awesome he's in a full face helmet he's fucking ripping then he throws me a sign and then I waved and then an hour and a half later I look at my text dude coach looks awesome great senior so we're just both out on this stretch Arizona desert flying me and my coach him in his motorcycle and we saw each other and waved at one another isn't that crazy God, Sim.

[2747] Very Sim.

[2748] That's really fun.

[2749] And then you got home and then it's been raining.

[2750] It's been raining.

[2751] There's been a lot of water issues on the property.

[2752] It rained during the game.

[2753] It sure did.

[2754] I saw that, but you guys were inside.

[2755] It was boring.

[2756] I know.

[2757] I've never felt more privileged.

[2758] East Coastal elite.

[2759] Speaking of coastal elites, today's a big day.

[2760] I didn't really realize I'd be here during the election.

[2761] Oh.

[2762] Big day here.

[2763] Did you do your away ballot?

[2764] Oh, yeah, I voted at home, mailing.

[2765] Anywho, but yeah, so the news will be on all day, I'm sure, in the house.

[2766] Oh, sure your dad's going to be glued to it.

[2767] Well, everyone's nervous.

[2768] There's a lot up for grabs, you know, because we could lose a Senate seat to Herschel Walker.

[2769] It's horrifying.

[2770] And it's pretty close, which is so upsetting.

[2771] And then Stacey Abrams, and it's not looking awesome.

[2772] It's not.

[2773] Okay.

[2774] So we should move into facts.

[2775] We should.

[2776] Yes, absolutely.

[2777] Lane Norton, what a delight for me. So he was talking about University of Illinois being one of the top five universities in nutritional science.

[2778] And, okay, according to U .S. News and World Report.

[2779] NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, UC Davis, U. U .T. Austin, University of Illinois.

[2780] Oh, so we got that one right.

[2781] Yeah, and then Case Western Reserve University.

[2782] It's in Cleveland.

[2783] Okay, so there is a website.

[2784] He said it's spurious correlation .com.

[2785] If you type in spurious correlations, it will come up, but that's not what it is called.

[2786] It's Tyler Vigin .com.

[2787] Oh, Tyler Vigin.

[2788] T -Y -L -L -E -N .com.

[2789] And there are some fun.

[2790] One, per capita cheese consumption correlates with number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bed sheets.

[2791] Okay.

[2792] I see.

[2793] So he just finds things that are perfectly correlated that clearly have no connective tissue.

[2794] Total revenue generated by arcades correlates with computer science doctor.

[2795] It's awarded in the U .S. So, yeah, he's just picky.

[2796] Oh, God.

[2797] Age of Miss America correlates with murders by steam, hot vapors, and hot, objects oh wow okay so he also you know he's he gave a lot of studies and a lot of stuff so i can't do them all but he said a coke has 200 milligrams of aspartame that's right not a coke a diet coke yeah obviously regular coke doesn't not have aspartame this is just in that's the whole point okay the aspartame content order from least to most of per eight ounce bottle.

[2798] Sprite zero, Coke zero.

[2799] Pepsi, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and caffeine -free Pepsi.

[2800] Diet Dr. Pepper, diet Coke, and caffeine -free Coke.

[2801] That was going up in percentage of aspirin.

[2802] Yeah.

[2803] So, caffeine -free.

[2804] yummy, yummy aspartain in that Diet Coke.

[2805] Yeah, that's what we're asking.

[2806] Caffeine free and diet have 125 milligrams.

[2807] Mm -hmm.

[2808] I love aspirin.

[2809] I know.

[2810] I want to be the ambassador for aspirin.

[2811] No. I'll be armed with.

[2812] With Lane Norton's science, and I'll just...

[2813] You're not allowed to have a lot.

[2814] You can have some, is what he's saying.

[2815] It's not like they made it seem like if you have a small amount, then you'll die, and that's not true.

[2816] But you can't promote...

[2817] Mass aspartame consumption?

[2818] Watch me. Oh, I found a little backstory on the word placebo.

[2819] Oh, right.

[2820] Because we talked about placebo.

[2821] Okay.

[2822] The notion of something called placebo started with St. Jerome.

[2823] Rome's incorrect rendering of the first word of the ninth line of the 116 Psalm, or instead of translating the Hebrew, I will walk before the Lord, he wrote, I will please the Lord.

[2824] By the 13th century, when hired mourners waited for Vespers for the dead to begin, they often repetitively chanted the ninth line and received the name of placebos to describe their fake behavior.

[2825] Oh.

[2826] In the 14th century in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer named his sycophant, flat, and What's what this word?

[2827] C -O -U -R -T -I -E -R, quarter, cordier?

[2828] Cordier, like someone courting them?

[2829] I guess, yeah.

[2830] A person who attends a royal court.

[2831] Okay, well, he named him placebo.

[2832] Oh, okay.

[2833] Okay, that's a little history.

[2834] That's fun.

[2835] Cool history.

[2836] Yeah.

[2837] Really cool.

[2838] What room are you in?

[2839] There's not enough furniture in it.

[2840] No, I'm in the bedroom.

[2841] Are those piss jugs in the corner?

[2842] Those are my mom's watering cans.

[2843] Okay.

[2844] For her plants.

[2845] Okay.

[2846] You said 80 % of jokes in the 80s were fat jokes.

[2847] I don't think that percentage is accurate.

[2848] No, definitely not 80%.

[2849] But it was very frequent.

[2850] That was the point.

[2851] Yeah.

[2852] I know.

[2853] I know what the point was.

[2854] But whenever you say a percentage, I have to factor you.

[2855] You're obligated.

[2856] It's your duty.

[2857] I really am.

[2858] You're sworn duty.

[2859] Your oath.

[2860] You took an oath.

[2861] I did.

[2862] We talked about ACEs, and you called it a crude childhood adversity, but it's adverse childhood experiences.

[2863] Yeah.

[2864] I think we've done this one before.

[2865] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[2866] Yeah, we sure have.

[2867] I'm going to keep correcting.

[2868] Good, yeah.

[2869] Adverse childhood experiences.

[2870] Yeah.

[2871] It was in San Diego, the study that Dr. Vincent Folletti conducted about...

[2872] An obesity study, right?

[2873] Exactly.

[2874] And then...

[2875] that a lot of the women were sexually abused.

[2876] Like a 70 plus percent of them or something crazy.

[2877] Not to introduce a new percentage.

[2878] I know.

[2879] You always do this.

[2880] Slightly less than the amount of fat jokes.

[2881] No, 55%.

[2882] Follow -up interviews with these patients revealed that the majority, 55 % had experienced some form of childhood sexual abuse.

[2883] And that was of the 50 % dropout rate of the study.

[2884] Okay.

[2885] The ones left.

[2886] No. In 1985, Dr. Vincent Feletti was frustrated by the 50 % dropout rate of patients with severe obesity from his San Diego -based clinic.

[2887] Upon review, Fletti was shocked to find that most dropouts were losing weight when they left the program.

[2888] Follow -up interviews with these patients revealed that the majority 55 % had experienced some form of childhood sexual abuse.

[2889] Oh, I got you.

[2890] The ones that left the study.

[2891] Okay.

[2892] Okay.

[2893] We talked a little bit about the likelihood of becoming an addict.

[2894] So on the site, according to a study on childhood abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, and the risk of illicit drug use, each ACE increased the likelihood of early initiation into illicit drug use by two to fourfold.

[2895] I wonder if you have seven of them.

[2896] Yeah, exactly.

[2897] Okay.

[2898] The word for protein malnutrition, which he brought up, is called quashiorcore.

[2899] Quashiochor.

[2900] Quachioch.

[2901] That sounds like, um, quashia core.

[2902] That sounds like, what was the toys that everyone liked?

[2903] Tomagachi.

[2904] Tamagachi.

[2905] Yeah.

[2906] Or what's the other really popular?

[2907] I've been behind them.

[2908] Anime.

[2909] Pokemon.

[2910] Sounds like a Pokemon character.

[2911] How many back surgeries did Ronnie Coleman have 13?

[2912] Ooh.

[2913] That's an unlucky numbers, you know.

[2914] It is.

[2915] I do know that.

[2916] What if they just called it his 14th surgery?

[2917] Because, you know, when you're on an elevator, you're really on the 13th floor, but they've labeled it 14.

[2918] They skip it, yeah.

[2919] Yeah, it just goes 12, 14.

[2920] That's so dumb.

[2921] So what if they told Ronnie that he was having this 14th surgery?

[2922] Is that every elevator in the United States?

[2923] No, I've seen 13 floors, but it's quite common, especially I think in the older ones.

[2924] In New York, I think it's really common to not have a 13th floor.

[2925] Yeah.

[2926] Coastal elites, they know all that.

[2927] You said, well, you said back surgeries.

[2928] are 50 % successful.

[2929] Uh -huh.

[2930] Repeat spinal surgery is a treatment option with diminishing returns.

[2931] Although more than 50 % of primary spinal surgeries are successful, no more than 30%, 15 % and 5 % of the patients experience a successful outcome after the second, third, and fourth surgeries respectively.

[2932] Yeah, so 50 % for the first and then 30, 15, and then just goes down.

[2933] It also said, this is from a dot -org Mayo Clinic.

[2934] Hold on.

[2935] One sec. Did you get the new quasi -core?

[2936] Mine is blue.

[2937] No, I didn't.

[2938] I didn't get one.

[2939] You got a what?

[2940] Dinky Dino.

[2941] Oh, Dinky Dino.

[2942] Yeah, not as good.

[2943] Okay.

[2944] Back surgery, when is it a good idea?

[2945] Basically try not to get it if you can.

[2946] Yeah, really, really explore all those other options.

[2947] I know several people that just they're not going to do physical therapy, even though the success rate for physical therapy.

[2948] like in the 70s, I'm just keep, I'm going to double down on saying 70 % today.

[2949] It's really high.

[2950] I know that.

[2951] I heard this on NPR.

[2952] It's extremely high physical therapy.

[2953] It has a great, great return on investment.

[2954] Success, right?

[2955] Yeah.

[2956] So do that first.

[2957] Shout out, Allison.

[2958] Hey, Lombardo.

[2959] She wasn't at the game, though.

[2960] No, but she's a physical therapist.

[2961] Should ditch one of those dudes and got her in there.

[2962] There was a physical therapist in there, my friend Gina.

[2963] Oh, okay.

[2964] She was covered.

[2965] Yeah.

[2966] Are you wearing a dog sweatshirt?

[2967] Yeah.

[2968] Oh.

[2969] I got it in Athens.

[2970] Oh, it's very classic.

[2971] You can't tilt.

[2972] I know.

[2973] That's why I like it.

[2974] It's like vintage.

[2975] It's vintage but new.

[2976] Oh, new vintage.

[2977] That could be the name of an improv group.

[2978] New vintage?

[2979] Yeah.

[2980] Or a jazz fusion band.

[2981] Like brand new heavies.

[2982] That's a good one.

[2983] New fusion.

[2984] Sure.

[2985] What was saying?

[2986] New.

[2987] No, new vintage.

[2988] I got to say driving the bus does I turn my brain off in a way that I'm finding it's going to take me a couple days to turn it back on Those are all the facts Well I loved Lane I'm so glad he came and was so fun I got a picture of him in Black Mold Paradise Yes Just a bonus for me You think that was unethical to put him in that situation Like hey you want to come now posing my jam Promote Black Mold Paradise I think it was okay Okay.

[2989] He felt fine about it.

[2990] Well, come home, okay?

[2991] Okay.

[2992] I'll come home tomorrow.

[2993] Okay.

[2994] Have your dad drive you.

[2995] Drop you off.

[2996] He wouldn't have it any other way.

[2997] You know what you could do?

[2998] You could basically manipulate him to do anything.

[2999] You go, Dad, I need you to drive me back to L .A. And you'd be like, no, I don't want to do that.

[3000] And you go, I'm afraid I'm going to drink while I'm driving home.

[3001] And I'll like, oh, fuck it.

[3002] Okay, let's go.

[3003] I know.

[3004] Yeah.

[3005] What a sweetheart.

[3006] I love you, a show.

[3007] I know.

[3008] You deserve better.

[3009] Such a nice dad.

[3010] All right.

[3011] Well, have fun being glued to that TV, you guys.

[3012] All right.

[3013] I love you.

[3014] I love you.

[3015] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcast.

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