MM#289--The Obesity Epidemic + Isnt a Calorie Just a Calorie? = Nutrition 101 + How to Not Diet

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Last week I told you that exercising isn't my number one reason for not being in peak physical fitness any longer. So you might say, okay, mister, well, please spill the beans on why you are not in peak physical fitness. And with that pun intended, if you saw what I did right there, let's go to the book of the day, because I will bring you along with my journey to help you see how the story is playing out. Going to our first poll quote Obesity isn't new, but the obesity epidemic is. We went from a few corpulent queens and kings like Henry VIII and Louis VI, also known as Louis Legros or Louis the Fat, to a pandemic of obesity, now considered to be perhaps the diarist in most poorly contained public health threat of our time. Today, 71% of American adults are overweight and 40% of men and women appear to have so much body fat that they can be classified as obese. And there's no end in sight. Tragically, earlier reports had suggested the rise of obesity was at least slowing down, but that doesn't actually appear to be the case. Obviously, we had thought we were turning the corner on childhood obesity after 35 years of unrelenting bad news. But the bad news marches on. Child and adolescent obesity rates have continued to rise. Now into its fourth decade. Over the last century, obesity appears to have jumped tenfold from as few as one in thirty people to now one in three. But it wasn't a steady rise. Something seems to have happened around the late 1970s, and not just in the United States. The obesity pandemic took off at about the same time in most high income countries around the globe in the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that the rapid rise appeared almost concurrently across the industrialized world suggests a common cause. And that quote comes to us from Michael Gregor's gigantic tome of a book. The book's title is how Not to Diet the Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, permanent Weight Loss. Now, like I said, it is a tome, a behemoth of a book measuring out at some 570 pages, without counting the footnotes and references and the audio version coming in in just under 24 hours of listening time. Holy smokes, holy smokes. Indeed, this book is thick, I mean super thick, as thick as one of those McDonald's Big Macs and speaking of Big Macs, I have had too many of those over the last eight years, you see some. 14 years ago I lost over 50 pounds by doing that super intense workout program on video at the time, p90x, which we talked about in the last series of Mojo Minutes. Well, my weight has come back on, and then some. I'm now considered to be obese and one possible solution is to dust off the P90X videos, but they might just be a little too intense for me these days, especially as I close in on my 50 year old body. But having lost one, having lost weight one time before, I understand that exercise is not the real needle mover of weight loss. Nutrition, however, is the real needle mover. So, to get the focus off me and to help everyone else out, that's, listening on how we as a society and as a world got into this situation, let's go back to the book and, more importantly, ask that typical Socratic question to get us closer to the truth what might have triggered all of this? Since the 1970s, any potential driver would have had to be global nature and coincide with the upswing of the epidemic, so the change would have had to have started about 40 years ago and been able to spread rapidly around the world. So how do the various theories stack up? Some have blamed changes in our quote, built environment, for instance, pointing to shifts in city planning that have made our communities less conducive to walking, biking and grocery shopping. But that doesn't meet our criteria for a credible cause, because there was no universal, simultaneous change in global neighborhoods within that timeframe. If you do a survey of hundreds of policymakers, most blame the obesity epidemic on the lack of personal motivation. We've all heard that one before, haven't we? But that doesn't make little. That makes little sense either. Here in the United States, for example, obesity shot up across the entire population in the 1970s. Are you telling me that every sector of the US population experienced some sort of simultaneous decline in willpower? Each age, each sex, each ethnic group, with all their different attitudes and experiences, coincidentally lost their collective capacity for self-control all at the same time? More plausible than a global change in the nature of our characters would be some global change in the nature of our lives. Bingo, dr Greger is hitting the nail on the head with these types of questions. If there was a foremost authority on all things nutrition, it would be the very doctor, michael Gregor, that we are reviewing in this mojo minute Now. You might know this guy from the great videos he has been putting out for over a decade at nutrition facts org. I'll put a link in the show notes. You can grab that link there and go check him out. But if you don't know dr Michael Gregor, please allow me to tell you he's an internationally renowned Nutrition expert, physician and founder of nutrition facts org, which I just mentioned before. He is the author of the mega selling, best-selling book how not to die, which is a book just about as big as this 10 pound behemoth of a book that I'm holding here. I Thought that the book was quite morbid, that book. So we're starting off with a book that actually applies to me. It might need for weight loss. Now, what I love about this book is it offers us the latest research on the leading causes and remedies of obesity. Beyond the optimal criteria to enable weight loss, dr Gregor also considers how these foods actually affect our health and longevity. He lays out the key ingredients of an ideal weight loss diet factors such as Calorie density and the insulin index and the impact of foods on our gut microbiome. Yes, all weight loss, 200 and 300 level type stuff. So we're not there yet, but we are building up our knowledge base right now with this nutrition 101 Mojo minute and, speaking of nutrition 101 and, more importantly, this notion that exercise can Offset bad nutrition or even make it a 50-50 balance. Let's go back to the book and keep going and what we were reading, because dr Gregor is getting very close to the truth on these things. Going back to the book Fast food versus slow motion. The food industry blames inactivity. If all consumers exercise, if all consumers exercised, said the CEO of PepsiCo, obesity would not exist. Coca-cola went a step further and spent 1.5 million dollars to create the global energy Balance network to downplay the role of diet in the obesity epidemic. Leaked internal documents show the company Planned on using the front group to serve as a quote weapon to change the conversation about obesity in its war With a public health community. This tactic is so common among food and beverage companies. It even has a name called lean washing lean Washing you've likely heard of greenwashing, where companies deceptively pretend To be environmentally friendly. Lean washing is the term used to describe companies that try to position themselves as helping to solve the obesity crisis when instead they are directly contributing to it. For example, nestle, the largest food company in the world, has rebranded itself the world's leading wait for it nutrition, health and wellness company. Yes, that Nestle. Of Nestle Nests quick fame makers of cocoa crispy cereal and More than 100 different brands of candy, including Butterfinger, kit Kat, goober's, gobstoppers, runts and nerds. Another of its slogans is good food, good life. Its raisinettes may have some fruit, but the company seems to be more Willy Wonka than wellness. Let's just say that on its what is Nestle doing about obesity webpage, we quote, read about our Nestle health kids program. The link gave me a page not found air. Hmm, the constant corporate drumbeat of over emphasis on physical inactivity appears to be working. In response to a Harris poll question, which of these do you think are the major reasons why obesity has increased? A large majority get this 83% chose a lack of exercise, while only 34% chose excessive calorie consumption. But blaming couch potato nests has actually been identified as one of the most common misconceptions about obesity. The scientific community has come to a fairly decisive conclusion that the factors governing caloric intake far more powerfully affect overall calorie balance. Did you catch that nugget of wisdom? 83% of us believe that the lack of exercise is the major reason why we are fat, me included. Until some 10 years ago. After losing my 50 pounds, I begin to understand very quickly that exercise has some small effect on weight loss, but it certainly doesn't make up for 50% of that equation, 50% of weight loss. Nor does it even make up for the 80% which I have read in some studies. That's simply crazy talk. But then again, we live in a crazy time. So, just like I said in our last mojo minute, exercise is at most accounts for 20 to possibly 25% of weight loss. Yes, you should do it. There are many benefits, but you should do it for other reasons, and that is for another mojo minute, at another time. So all of this leads us to the plain talk at the very core of weight management the notion of isn't a calorie, just a calorie. Like I said in our last mojo minute. And to keep things simple, is a calorie a calorie? Well, not really. You see, the world is quite a complex system and our bodies are quite a complex machine. And who said there's no God to make all of this stuff and happen the way it does? But we are talking about the central notion of just isn't a calorie a calorie? That central question is what we will end this mojo minute on. Let's go back to the book. Let's take the example of carrots versus Coca-Cola. While it's true that, in a tightly controlled laboratory setting 240 calories of carrots, 10 carrots would have the same effect on calorie balance as the 240 calories in a bottle of Coke. This comparison falls flat on its face. Out in the real world, though, you could chuck down those liquid calories in less than a minute, but eating 240 calories of carrots could take you more than two and a half hours of constant chewing. It's actually been timed. Not only would your jaw get sore, but 240 calories of carrots is about five cups. You might not even be able to fit them all in your stomach. Like all whole plant foods, carrots have fiber, which adds bulk, while without adding net calories. What's more, you wouldn't even absorb all the carrot calories, as anyone who has eaten corn can tell you. Some bits of the vegetable matter can pass right through you, flushing out any calories they contain. A calorie may still be a calorie circling around your toilet bowl, but it's not going to end up on your hips. How about that for a visual? Who says that these mojo minutes are not richly rewarding in many facets of life? So in today's mojo minute, I think we have finally put to bed the question is an exercise on par with food intake for losing weight, and that answer is flatly no. Best estimates to understand the human body is anywhere from 60 to 40% or 80 to 20% of food intake over exercise in the accounting equation. And our final question isn't a calorie, just a calorie? And the answer to that question is not really why? Because we do live in a complex world and our bodies are quite complex. So, yes, if you're starting out trying to lose weight, you should understand a calorie is just a calorie, to keep things simple. But to move to our optimal weight for each of us, we will have to take the next step of understanding that a calorie may still not be a calorie. As Dr Gregor points out, even if you eat and absorb the same number of caloriesa calorie may still not be a calorie. As you'll learn, the same number of calories eaten at a different time of the day and a different meal distribution or after different amounts of sleep can translate into different amounts of body fat. It's not only what we eat, but how and when. So come back next time and we will talk about some prisoners of all people yeah, you heard that right? Uh-huh, talking about some prisoners next time. And eventually, what are some solutions to get our diets right while creating a flourishing lifestyle.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.