There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Fat Facts: Debunking Diet Myths
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...
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Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name there is a Method to the Madness. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. 886-451-2412.
Speaker 1:What was the biggest health and fitness nutrition trend that you can remember, going way back? What was the very first trend you can remember? So for me it was in the 80s and the fit or fat books were coming out and all of the low fat, non fat living styles were like really big. Now, I was alive before the 80s but I was too young to really pay attention to what the trends were at the time. But the biggest one I can remember, when I started to really pay attention to health and fitness because I was now getting into it was the eat fat and you will get fat trend fat trend. Now that has been drastically replaced with the eat carbs and you will get fat trend. But the first one I remember is the fat. So that's the one macronutrient I haven't covered in the last two weeks, so I'm going to pick up with that. Today. Let's learn all about fat more than you maybe wanted to know. But this shouldn't be the case, because we really should want to know about the foods that we eat.
Speaker 1:Now, before I get any further, I want to clarify something. Both of them are trends that were pushed in marketing, but it's not like the dieticians suddenly did an about-face. That's just not true. I want to clear that myth up really quick. When you hear people say, well, they keep changing their mind on this stuff. You know fat's good, fat's bad. Carbs are good, carbs are bad. No, they don't. Marketing finds an edge to sell you things We've known and when I say we, it's the people who have been educated in the field or very experienced in the field know right from wrong when it comes to this stuff. So let me say there's no truth to fat will make you fat other than the fact that it's more calorically dense, and there's no truth to carbs will make you fat unless you eat too many of them. So I know well I shouldn't say that, but I think you want to hear something come out differently eventually from me that will say that there is a magical macronutrient that you can eat all you want of and if you just avoid this. But you know what? I don't think so, and I know it's not going to come out of my mouth now because it's just not true, because it's just not true. There is no miracle macronutrient that you can eat all that you want of and all you have to do is not eat this other thing. No, we do have to learn moderation and some form of self-control or control with getting help, but there is no magic and there is no evil macronutrient either. So let's talk about fat.
Speaker 1:Fat is one of the big four macronutrients, with carbohydrates, protein and water being the other three, and it's macro essential nutrients. Not because we need them we do, but that's not what the essential means. Not because we need them, we do, but that's not what the essential means. The essential means that they have to come from outside of the body, because your body just won't make it. So those are the big four. I've covered protein recently. I have covered carbohydrates. I'm now going to cover fat. So it is one of the big four.
Speaker 1:Its primary purpose is to provide long term energy. That's what adipose tissue is. So adipose tissue is fat. It's fat that we store and we store it for long term energy. Energy All right, that's what it's there for. It gets broken down and utilized for fuel.
Speaker 1:Now we mostly use fat for energy during rest. So right now, as I'm sitting in my home office making this podcast and I am leaning on my knees because that's how I like to kind of relax when I speak into my microphone, I'm sitting in my good old fashion farm style kitchen chair and that's the amount of the work I'm doing. You know I'm bobbing back and forth a little bit because I like to move a little bit when I talk, but I'm not exactly at high intensity, so I'm using fat for fuel. We use fat at no resting intensities no intensity or resting intensity and at very low intensity. So when we're out on a walk and our heart rate is staying down, we're using almost complete fat for fuel, like 99% fat for fuel, with some carbohydrates to spark it. The higher we go up the energy ladder or the intensity ladder, the more we start using carbohydrates for fuel. So we use fat at low to resting intensities.
Speaker 1:That's the primary purpose of fat. The other purpose of it, the other main two, is simply protection cushion. We need it, we need to protect ourselves. And the other is we need enough fat to help a type of fat. So steroids is a type of hormone, right? So that's short for, well, not short for, but that's a synthetic version of testosterone, which is a hormone. So we need fats to help us produce hormones.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when we're having issues in our endocrine system, we might be too deficient in fat. Now, in the United States that's not as common. We tend to eat a pretty high fat diet compared to other parts of the world. Alaska yes, alaska, which of course is part of the United States, but at the same time it's a very different culture than us actually consume some of the most dietary fat in the world. So you know, there's that little, you know, maybe useless piece of information, but I think it's pretty cool when we look at what people eat. So sterols is a type of fat. So just think of steroids, think of hormones. I'm just trying to put it all together for you, so you can understand that we need enough fat to help us with our endocrine system. But again, the note here from the United States is we tend to eat enough of that. So may or may not be your issue Not really sure on that but that is the purpose of fat.
Speaker 1:Fat has nine calories per gram, whereas carbohydrates only have four calories per gram. Protein has four calories per gram of protein. Alcohol has seven calories per gram of alcohol. Now, alcohol I hate to break it to you, ladies and gentlemen is not an essential nutrient. We don't need it. Okay, so there is that, but it is calorically dense. So the reason why that's important and the reason why I stress that is because early on in the old 80s, as I spoke on, and when I first got to college and started working on graduate school, we were coming out of that a little bit, but it was still very prevalent. And the thought was that we were coming out of that a little bit, but it was still very prevalent.
Speaker 1:And the thought was that, well, the thought in the marketing department was that if you eat very, very low fat to nonfat, you will lose weight. And the thinking was again, because it's so calorically dense and it is. So, basically, there's two times the amount of calories in the same size level of a carbohydrate or protein. So like if you open up your hand and grab a handful of lettuce, for example, just grab a handful of lettuce right, or spinach, flip your hand over and however much that is is going to equate to maybe like 20 calories, right? I mean, just think of it this way.
Speaker 1:Very simple, what we mean by chlorically dense. Now take the same hand, reach into the old almond bowl and grab a handful of almonds, flip your hand around. That's most likely dependent on the size of your hand. It's going to be two servings, so that's going to be about 360, 370 calories in just a handful of almonds, right? So, man, there's no comparison between the caloric density of fat compared to carbohydrates or protein or fiber, which is basically non-caloric. So that was the thought process behind it. So if we just don't eat any fat, we're going to lose weight and it's going to be better for our heart. I'll get to the heart thing in a minute.
Speaker 1:But as far as the weight loss thing goes, that was well said. They were off on that too, because what happens is in a perfect world. That's true, that if you eat very low fat, you're most likely going to eat lower calories, but not if you replace it. And that's what people ended up doing, because they just didn't understand the message. And I can't blame them for not understanding the message, because the marketers Nathan Pritikin, who famously is a processing carb company, pritikin's they jump all over that and start putting everything on their boxes. You know, no fat, no fat, no fat. I don't know if you're old enough, but you remember snack wells, the non-fat cookies. It's like oh man, great, I can eat all these and I won't get fat. Well, people started getting fatter through the 80s and 90s, right, and they're like oh, what are we doing wrong? Well, again, the experts already knew what you're doing wrong.
Speaker 1:It's human nature wants to be satiated. I mean, we just do. It's partly in our biology. That's why it takes a lot of discipline and mind control to say I've had enough to eat, this is all I'm going to eat, because we are kind of geared towards eating more than necessary.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you own pets, I shouldn't say own pets, I don't want to go off on my soapbox and that. But why do we get it? You know why are? Why do we own them? Don't they have their own lives? Anyway, little side note here you can tell I'm kind of an animal lover here, but when you have pets and you put down the dog food for them, I can speak for Hazel, my dog, right, my dog. See, I did it again. So for Hazel I'll put the food down. It is gone in 10 seconds. And if I put down another cup full of her kibble and then another tablespoon of her wet food because that's kind of how I do it with her she will eat all that. I don't know. And I'm not willing to do the experiment to see how many she would do, because it's not good for her. But when would she get tired of that? I don't know. I mean, would she not get tired of it? And please don't try this at home.
Speaker 1:But the point is we are kind of geared, biologically speaking, to eat as much as we can because we don't know. We come from hunter-gatherer roots. That's just what we come from. So we don't know. So again, it takes willpower and discipline to say that is enough and, as I've always kind of said, weigh and measure. If we really know how much we're eating probably helps us quite a bit. So humans going to gravitate towards oh, I'm allowed to eat as much as I want. Well, again, we got fatter.
Speaker 1:It's not that like carbs became the bad guy. It's we replaced the fat with simply nonfat products, which are typically going to be either extremely lean protein or carbs. Right, that's where your low fat comes from. So we just simply replaced one for another and, as I've said before, carbohydrates are just easy to eat. A lot of, I mean, they're the go-to. Ever since I made this comment on one of the podcasts about carbohydrates a couple of weeks ago, I've been getting so much grief. In a joking way, I said I want to see you eat six bagels in a row, because I claimed I could, and I have a friend coming in from out of town and I said I'll do it. So they're easy to eat. I mean, carbohydrates are easy to eat, so there's nothing evil about food. So we have to understand that.
Speaker 1:Going back to another important point, with too much fat in the diet, too much fat adds to too many calories. That's its problem number one. Problem number two high saturated fat diets are linked to heart disease. They just are, because they produce more cholesterol in your body and then your cholesterol gets into your bloodstream and it starts to form plaque in the arteries. Okay, that's what saturated fat does. There's not any truth to if you eat higher cholesterol, that it's going to raise your cholesterol. No again, cholesterol is a sterile, it's a fat. When we eat saturated fats, it increases the amount of cholesterol in our body, which increases the amount of cholesterol in our bloodstream, which causes plaque. Okay, and there absolutely is the data from the Framingham Heart Study to prove that too much saturated fat, regardless of calories, will lead to potential heart disease. When I say potential, we don't know what that would look like Heart attack, stroke. It will definitely lead to cardiovascular disease, unless you have some kind of freakish gene to protect you from it. But it is not good when we eat too much saturated fat. So that's another thing about fat.
Speaker 1:Now, when you consume the fat again, what you don't utilize right away, so what you're not using for your energy, which is at rest or very low intensities, right away You're going to store it in the form of adipose tissue, which is fat. Cellulite, by the way, is not magical skin fat. It is literally just fat that you can see underneath the skin. That's all cellulite is. It's a myth that it's this mystical kind of fat. Oh, I see cellulite. Okay, you're seeing fat. That's what it is. So when fat gets broken down, it gets broken down into free fatty acids. Ffa is free fatty acids and that's what gets used for energy.
Speaker 1:Now you have omega-3 fatty acids and you have omega-6 fatty acids and you probably hear those are good for you. Okay, there's been a lot of studies that implicate that they are good for you, that imply that they are good for you, that implicate that they are good for you, that imply that they are good for you. So omega-3s are good potentially with different kinds of like inflammation, and you're going to get that in your fish and your fish oils and things like that. And omega-6s can be good for like a calming mechanism and protection with heart disease, kind of like taking in with fiber as well, which is also another good benefit to eating a higher fiber diet. But omega-6s are good and you're going to get those more from nuts and things like that. And omega-3s are good inflammation and there's been research on both of them with brain health and things like that.
Speaker 1:It's all true, but we have to remember we can't have too much of anything, so too much free fatty acids means you're eating too much fat. And even though they're monounsaturated, polyunsaturated which I will get to in a second it's still too many calories. So it's not that it's bad for you. It's's not, it is good for you. Study after study have shown that we need our omega-6s and omega-3s, but if we consume too many of them, it just means you're eating too many calories. All right, so that gets me to my final point on fat you get people talking about. Well, I know saturated fat is bad, but unsaturated fat you can eat as much as you want. That's not true. Both of them have nine calories per gram. Both of them are calorically dense.
Speaker 1:Now, to keep it really simple, stupid saturated fats. For the most part, other palm oils come from animal products, so saturated fat comes from animal products. So full fat dairy beef and even the fat which is rare or, you know, not as high on chicken, is saturated fat. Unsaturated fat, which can be in the form of monounsaturated or polyunsaturated, comes from plants, so it's the oil in plants. Yes, it's healthier when you talk about the benefits and when you talk about heart disease, but it is still calorically dense.
Speaker 1:Now I do tell people to really limit their amount of saturated fats, because saturated fats is just not going to do a lot for you. Like at least the monoun polyunsaturated fats and for example, that would be like olive oil, canola oil, things like that and some of the nut oils. I mean again, they help build the hormonal system, they help with inflammation, they help with brain health, so at least there's a benefit to them. But there's not a benefit really to saturated fat other than clogging your arteries. I'm not saying don't eat it, because that's just never my rule. I never believe in never-nevers. I believe in moderation. Should you moderate your amount of saturated fat that you eat? Yes, without question. You should moderate your amount of saturated fats you should eat. So you should cut back.
Speaker 1:Like two different animal products and you know using them in that form are going to be, say, chicken and beef. So chicken's very low in fat and high in protein. I mean, when we're talking white meat and beef is pretty much high in fat and medium in protein. So that's what it means when we say, you know, maybe moderate your amount of saturated fat because you're not going to get a lot out of that beef compared to, say, at least, the protein content in the chicken All right. And also, you know, on a final note on that, you know, unfortunately, with today's society, with how things are produced, you're going to be more likely to get more of the unnecessary steroids that are pumped into meat products these days when you eat meat. I mean.
Speaker 1:So I'm not saying don't eat meat by any means. Again, going back to my rule, I'm not one of those that says don't do this, don't do that. It's just we do have to be aware that the more heavily our diet is focused on meat, the more likelihood we are taking in different forms of hormones and things that we maybe do not want. And I know the same could be said for certain plants with pesticides. So all of that is absolutely true, but we do need to look at both sides of this. So the AMDR Recommended Macronutrient Distribution is what that stands for American Macronutrient Distribution. That was easy to say.
Speaker 1:Anyway, the amount, the percentage that should be fat in your diet is roughly under 35%, no more than 35%, which is still fairly high, and the AMDR typically says between 20 and 35% of your diet should be in the form of fat. Now, when I analyze people's diets, typically the American diet is higher than that and they're very low in carb because they've been fooled by the media. And I typically have to tell people not always endurance athletes, people that have been following health and fitness trends for a long time typically eat more carbohydrates because they've learned their lessons of being on a low carb diet and trying to exercise. It doesn't go very well diet, I will see it way too high in fat and low in carbohydrates Because, again, if it's high in fat, it's probably also higher in protein. But really what we want to do is understand that there's no evil macronutrients and we need them all, and we need them all in their balance. So, again, 20 to 35% of our diet should be fat, 40 to 60% of our diet should be carbohydrates and roughly 15 to 20% of our diet should be protein, because I'm sure you remember from my protein talk that we don't need, as much as we think, too much fat. We store as fat Too many carbohydrates. Well, at least we store a lot of it in glycogen, but then if we fill our glycogen and we still are eating more carbs, then we're going to store that as fat as well. All right, so we just can't get around it.
Speaker 1:People, hope you learned something today. See you next time. See you next time. Daytona Beach, the premier garage door company in Volusia County with the best product with the best service. I can vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people. If you need any help with your garage doors, give them a shout 386-222-3165.
