The Diary of a CEOThe Calories Expert: Health Experts Are Wrong About Calories & Diet Coke! Layne Norton
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,226 words- 0:00 – 2:40
Intro
- LNLayne Norton
I remember when ... Sorry. Ooh, I did not think I would cry on this podcast so much. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Lane Norton.
- LNLayne Norton
Scientist, record-setting bodybuilder...
- SBSteven Bartlett
And is one of the most respected voices in the health and nutrition space. Who debunks all the different fitness and nutrition myths out there. Let's go to the technical stuff.
- LNLayne Norton
Ooh, yeah, let's do that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Calories in, calories out.
- LNLayne Norton
So, the first point of confusion. A lot of people may think they're in a calorie deficit, but they're not, because one, people don't really understand portion sizes. If you've never had the experience of like weighing out your food, you will be shocked. And the other thing is...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Artificial sweeteners. I've wondered for a while whether Diet Coke is healthy or not.
- LNLayne Norton
If we look at the randomized control trials, they saw six kilograms of weight loss just from switching people from regular soda to diet soda. Now when they compare it versus water, this is gonna be the most commented thing about in this entire interview, I'm sure. They found that...
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the big misconceptions about intermittent fasting?
- LNLayne Norton
Is it okay if I get deep into the weeds on this one?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Go ahead.
- LNLayne Norton
In studies, people in the intermittent fasting groups tend to lose more weight. But it's not because of anything magic about intermittent fasting. It's because...
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's your thoughts on Ozempic?
- LNLayne Norton
Overall I think it's a net positive, and here's why.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When it comes to weight loss, people are googling how to lose belly fat.
- LNLayne Norton
Practically, it's kind of irrelevant because...
- SBSteven Bartlett
And um, is sugar addictive?
- LNLayne Norton
This one's gonna get me in trouble too. So...
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show, um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have five million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend, and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the Diary of a CEO just over three years ago now, and in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week, um, and spend some time with us. So thank you. And I made a deal with you. I made a deal that if you subscribe to this show, that we would continue to raise the bar, and in 2024, we're gonna raise the bar like never before. I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show, and I'm very excited to deliver that for you. The production's gonna change. We're gonna go even further with our guests, and we're gonna tell even more global stories. So as always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple free favor I'll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let's get on with the episode.
- 2:40 – 6:47
Making Fitness Accessible to Everyone
- SBSteven Bartlett
Lane, who are you and what is the mission you're on?
- LNLayne Norton
I'm trying to make fitness information more accessible, fitness more accessible to everyone, and trying to act as a bridge between academic research and your average person, because so much gets lost in translation. Because social media, the news, it is a fire hose of information, a lot of which is misinformation or you only get part of the story. And so I have noticed people are so frustrated because they feel like they understand what it is to eat healthy, and then a new documentary comes out, a new podcast comes out, a new article comes out and says, "Oh, nope. You're doi- Whatever it is you're doing, it's wrong and here's why." And I just wanna help clear up some of that confusion and help people understand the big stuff that really matters versus not getting lost in the weeds of the stuff that just doesn't matter that much.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And when you say fitness, w- how do you define that? Because you talked about, you then talked about diet and food, so what is the sort of bucket that you put yourself in? What are the categories that you really focus on?
- LNLayne Norton
Great question, but, you know, I would say that my wheelhouse is nutrition, so I did a PhD in nutritional sciences, and I also feel pretty equipped to interpret exercise information as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what is your... So that's your academic sort of background.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is your lived experience? What experiences have you had as a coach to people, as a, as a trainer, in your own personal life that have added to that academic information that you have?
- LNLayne Norton
Great question. So I'll try to give the abridged version of this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
Um, I got bullied a lot, uh, growing up. I was a really skinny kid, hyperactive, weird, you know, and so when you're young, what makes you stand out is actually, you know, not such a good thing. And, uh, I got bullied a lot and I started lifting weights to... I thought if I got bigger muscles, you know, girls would pay attention to me and I'd stop getting bullied. It didn't work for either of those two things, but I did gain more confidence, not because I built bigger muscles, but because the process of lifting and getting through plateaus and moving through setbacks and all those sorts of things, that's what built confidence. And I started lifting when I was 15, and when I got to college, I changed my major because I decided I was gonna do my first bodybuilding show. I did it, I won the team division and I was hooked. I was like, "This is the thing I wanna do." But back in, you know, this is 2001, I was 19, I'm 42 now. The avenues to make money in fitness were basically be a personal trainer, open a gym, start a supplement company, try to be Mr. Olympia. And I, I didn't know how feasible any of those were, so I started looking at a PhD literally for no other reason. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I figured if I delay the real world by four to eight year, four to six years, maybe I'll have it figured out by then. But in that meantime, I had started posting on different bodybuilding message boards, and so...I would get a bunch of emails about my articles and people asking me questions. And I was, like, basically doing full-on diets and nutrition for people for free 'cause I just liked it. And then when I got to grad school, I was like, "Man, I... You know, this is a lot of my time now. Maybe if I just, like, charge people a little something, I can do this instead of a teaching assistantship, make a little bit of money." You know, didn't really think much of it. And so I took my first online client back in 2005, and within three years, I was making a full-time income from it with no advertising, just word of mouth. And then in my fourth year, I think was the first year I ever made, like, six figures from it. And I remember thinking, "W- what is happening?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
I wanna take one step back-
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, because
- 6:47 – 13:23
My Bullying Experiences Is My Driver to Help People
- SBSteven Bartlett
it's clear from what you said there but also clear from a lot of the research that I did on you and your backstory that much of the driving motivation behind why you are what you are today and why you help people and why you do the work you do and make the content you make was because of this early experience with bullying. And I've sat here with so many people who are real anomalies in their lives for a variety of different reasons, you know, maybe in business or, or in science or, um, in sport. And I so often find that the, the reason why they're brilliant is also fundamentally interlinked to the reason why they struggle, or they struggled, shall I say. And in your story, that seems to be very pertinent. I read a quote you said on a video you made seven years ago where you said, "I had intense and sustained emotional bullying. I would be put in a corner by four to five people and be obliterated repeatedly."
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I... I'll tell people, like, the, the reason I started lifting weights and bodybuilding, it was not the noblest of reasons, you know? It was very much, y- you say I'm worthless, I'm gonna prove you wrong, you know? And, uh, even... I mean, I, I would love to say that it, it has no remnants today, but I would be... that would be a lie, right? Um, some of the stuff I still struggle with in terms of I have a hard time trusting myself a lot of the times because I got told for so long... Or trusting some decisions I make. I got told for so long, "You do it wrong," you know, "You suck, you're worthless," you know, those sorts of things.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you went to therapy, you were diagnosed with a form of PTSD, bullying PTSD they, they call it today.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, my, my therapist, she diagnosed me, and I remember saying, "I'm, I don't have PTSD. Like, that's, that's for soldiers. That's for police o-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And she goes, "First off, Layne, you don't like it when people correct you as a professional in your field. Don't correct me. And you're right, you didn't witness people die, nothing like that, but trauma is trauma." And her explanation of it was it is all relative. And it may not have been, you know, horrors from war, but for your brain it was traumatic. And the way she explained it is trauma is something that causes you to react or act in response to something even after that event has passed, right? So for me, for example, I've struggled in personal relationships where either partners or friends trying to give me feedback, and I immediately get defensive.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Very defensive. And if you read about relationships, that's not great, right? (laughs) It's one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse for relationships. And I never underst-... I just thought, "Well, I'm just explaining myself. I'm just..." And then now I understand it's, oh, it's because that was my response to the bullying, because feedback or criticism to me feels like bullying even though it's not.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you have a defense mechanism, 'cause you had to defend yourself back then.
- LNLayne Norton
And it's so interesting. The, the things that we adopt to survive when we're young become maladaptive when we get older.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm. It's difficult to unpick all of that when you're an adult, isn't it? Because it's... As, you know, it's very hardwired. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I've, we've... I've got my own trauma responses that I'm still trying to work through, and I'm now aware of them, but they still... On a bad day, on an unslept day, they can still come to the surface.
- LNLayne Norton
I tell people, "I don't know if you can, like, completely undo your default setting, right? But I think what you can do is get mindful of it and learn tools to manage it," right? And, I mean, it's interesting how this ties into obesity because I used to be somebody who... I've, I've never been obese, never been overweight, nothing like that. When I got to grad school, I was very much more towards the side of, "If you're obese, it's 'cause you're lazy. It's your fault," you know? And then the more I just observed, I realized that that can't be true because look at all these ob- There's so many obese people that are successful in other areas of their life where they apply a lot of discipline. What is it about this thing, right? And I remembered... I read a study, and I, I, I... Hopefully I get this correct 'cause it was a while back, but they looked at obese women, and they found that obese women were 50%, I believe 50%, more likely to have, uh, sexual assault trauma in their past. And you also look at the obesity literature, and people who are obese tend to have a greater reward response from food, whereas people who are lean or normal weight, it's, it's not like that huge reward that they get. It's like some people, you know, they, they can, they can have a drink, they can have a beer, and they go, "I like the beer," you know, and other people become alcoholics, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And so, so much of this stuff gets tied up in...It gets wired in as a, as a kind of coping mechanism. If you look at, like, for example, binge eating. What's happening during a binge is that person is getting a flood of dopamine, right? They're, they're, they're masking, they wanna mask that feeling of whatever made them feel uncomfortable. I always tell people, I'm like, "You don't really find people binge eating after they've had eight hours of sleep at 10:00 AM in the morning when they're low-stress." Right? It's at 10:00 PM at night, after a long day, they've been fighting with their spouse, their kids are driving them nuts, and they just, they wanna turn it all off. Right? And I think staying mindful is one of the hardest things we have as humans. I mean, I know what my addiction is, unfortunately, based on my, um, current job. I get way too into social media. You know, I just end up, you know ... It kinda started as, "Well, I'm, I'm doing work, right? And I'm responding to comments and all that stuff." And pretty soon I'm looking at my screen time and I'm going, "Oh my gosh." Right? And so that was something for me to numb up and turn my mind off, right? But for other people it's food. For other people it's gambling. For other people it's alcohol. For other people it's some other drug.
- 13:23 – 17:26
How to Overcome Our Food Addiction
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what do we do with that, then? So if h- do we first have to figure out what our relationship is, on a psychological level, with these addictions? With, with our food, for example. If we're just focusing in on weight loss to start with, when you're, if you were to be coaching someone, would you try and understand their, um, propensity to binge, to, to have that sort of in-, like dopamine craving? Or, or do you focus somewhere else?
- LNLayne Norton
I kind of say, all right, like, "Walk me through a, a typical day for you. Walk me through a typical week. Where, where is, where are your struggles really at?" Right? And one of the things I, we call it the Biolane way, when we, when we kind of teach our coaches, is we do coaching with, you have to have two things are critically important. Accountability with empathy, because if you're just the accountability coach, the drill sergeant who's, you know ... Most people, if they screw up, they've beat themselves up more than anybody else. I know I'm that way, I'm sure you're that way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
So you don't need to beat 'em up again. The empathy portion ... So, so if you're just beating somebody up, if you're just holding them accountable without empathy, you just become the drill sergeant, and what happens is people end up tuning you out or they're not honest with you anymore, because they don't want to constantly feel like they're failing, right? The empathy portion, if you just have empathy, and you're just saying, "I'm so sorry that happened. That's so hard, I understand," but you're not holding them accountable, there's no impetus for change, right? So it takes, it takes both.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And so the way I'd often coach, like let's take, uh, somebody had a binge, something like that. The first thing I'd say, "I understand why it happened, you know, that's really hard. Where, what was the antecedent to this? Like what, what started this?" Right? "Okay, now let's look at, if we had to go back and do it over again, what are some things we might be able to do to put some, to put some barriers?" Right? So I had, I had one client, he's a, a hedge fund manager, and when he started with me he was binging pretty much, I would say, almost every day. And I said, "Okay, w- where do you find that this is happening?" And he said, "Well, usually it's after everybody's gone to bed and, you know, um, I just find myself in the kitchen and it just happens." "So, okay. So it's not reasonable to lock yourself in your room, right? But what if we just did a few things to increase your mindfulness, right? Put a Post-It on the cabinet where you, where you keep that, the junk food, right?" Not saying anything nasty or anything, but I just said, "Write down, am I hungry or am I just upset? Then on your, on your door, right, lock it from the inside. It's not, you know, it doesn't keep you from going out, but you have to unlock it, right? Like you're having to turn your brain on, right?" And it, the more barriers you can put there, the, the better it gets.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The more sort of mindful moments you can have where you make, you have to kinda make a decision and you don't, you come out of autopilot.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause I notice when- whenever I have my binge moments, which happens once in a while, it is like unthinking.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's just like a robot has taken over. (laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
Exactly. And with this p- like, this particular client, right, he'd have a rough day at work, hedge fund manager, very stressful job. I say, "Okay, if you've had a rough day at work, first thing to do when you're driving home, say, 'Man, I've had a tough day at work. This is usually where I'd have a binge session.'" Like say it out loud, like name it, you know what I mean?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Sometimes just naming it is enough to stop it. I mean, I, not the same thing, but I struggle with, I'm sure you know as ADHD, during conversation, "I have something to say, I have something to say. I w- I wanna say it, I wanna say it, I wanna say it." Right? And I'll end up cutting people off and making them feel bad, and so I still have that inclination, but now I'll go, if I start, I go, "Oh, I'm, I'm sorry. I jumped in. Please finish." Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And so just, like, calling it out to yourself can make a huge difference on changing the behavior. That which gets monitored gets changed.
- 17:26 – 24:09
How to Build Motivation and Discipline
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
I really wanna focus on this point of the psychology of both exercise and weight loss, because, uh, in all the research that I do on even your conversations and other conversations, clearly the, like, fundamental that sits underneath doing all the things we're gonna talk about is, like, having the motivation, the discipline, and mastering one's own, like, mind. Because as you kinda said, we can have all the diet plans in the world, and m- m- many or all of them might work, but without the psychology of how to lose weight and to motivate ourselves to get to the gym, none of it really matters. So what else do we need to think about when we're trying to understand how to master, like, the beast within our mind?
- LNLayne Norton
There's a lot to unpack here.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Good.
- LNLayne Norton
I'll start with this. Um, do you know Ethan Suplee? You familiar with him?
- SBSteven Bartlett
No.
- LNLayne Norton
So Ethan is a actor. He was in, uh, My Name is Earl, he was in American History X and he was in Remember the Titans, some of the big movies he's been in. Uh, Wolf of Wall Street as well. And he was over 500 pounds, like he, and, like, everybody knows him as the, the really big guy in those movies and those shows.Now he's, like, 220 pounds and looks like he would play a military operator in a show. Right? And he said something that really stuck with me. He said, um, "If the house is on fire, just get out of the house. We can worry about why the fire started later. But just get out." And there's so much, like, paralysis by analysis out there that people don't end up actually starting. And if I put two plates in front of you, you know, with different food, yeah, we can quibble but for the most part if I'm sitting something out with the cheeseburger, fries, and all this kind ... Okay. Versus lean meats, vegetables, w- we know which one is more conducive to, to health. Right? People will argue about these little things, low carb, low fat, those sorts of things. Just get out of the house. Stop, stop eating so much of this very energy-dense, hyper-palatable food. Start moving away. And Ethan, I, I think it was Ethan, he has this, he has this thing he says when he, um, when he, uh, whenever he posts a, a picture in the gym. He'll say, "I killed my clone today." And I never, I never quite understood it, and then I read a, um, a systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers. Now what that means is weight loss ... We know diets can help you lose weight. But they don't tend to work long-term because people, uh, their adherence wanes and they just kinda regain the weight over time. And if we look at, like, out about three years after initial weight loss, it's like depending on the statistics you use it's anywhere from 90, 95% of people end up regaining almost all the weight they lost. And this study was about people who had successfully kept it off for a long period of time, so this is the unicorns, right? The five, 10% of people who actually had that long-term success. And there were things on there that you would expect, um, you know, they, they practiced some form of cognitive restraint, they, uh, did ... Cognitive restraint being, um, counting calories or doing low carb or time-restricted eating or some form of restraint. But the thing that stood out to me that really grabbed my attention was so many of them specified and pointed out they felt like they had to develop a new identity, and I texted Ethan and I was like, "Is this what you mean by 'I k- killed my clone'?" And he goes, "That is exactly what I mean." And so one of the things I'll tell people now is think of the person that you want to become. Picture them. Think about what do you think their habits and behaviors look like on a daily basis? Now reverse, now start to reverse engineer that. Right? And you mentioned motivation, and I have, my thoughts have changed about motivation. A lot of people wait to get motivated or inspired, and hey, like, I think all that stuff's great. But in the course of anything, and I'm, I would bring it back to you in, in building a startup, I'm guessing there were days where you were not motivated to do what you were doing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, most days.
- LNLayne Norton
Right, right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So many days.
- LNLayne Norton
So motivation's great. When it come, I say that's like nitrous on a car, right? Give you a quick boost and it'll make you go a lot faster. But discipline the, is the gas tank. That is, it doesn't ... I tell people, "Detach your feelings from the process." Okay? I have a very cold calculus when I look at my goals. What is my goal? What will it take to get there? Some form of work and time, right? No matter how you slice it. Let's, let's take, um, so I won, uh, the Master's World Championship in powerlifting in 2022.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Congratulations.
- LNLayne Norton
It took me ... Thank you. It took me, I went to open, uh, worlds in 2015, set a world squat record there but then went through a lot of different injuries and a lot of pain. It took me seven years to get back and, and win. But there were times where I was very unmotivated to go to the gym because I couldn't lift heavy, I was, you know, in a lot of pain, but I knew if I wanna get back there, this is what it's gonna take. And so it was, it doesn't matter if I'm motivated, I have to do the things that I said I was gonna do. And I tell people, "Try to detach how you feel from the process it takes to get there." And that's really hard for a lot of people to do, but here's the thing. As you do the process, you start to see the results, and then the motivation becomes more sustained. Right? The, the hard part is when you are down in the ditches and you, you aren't seeing that progress. So when I'm coaching people on this stuff, a lot of it is trying to build their confidence, and so many people, they'll start a New Year's resolution, let's say, 'cause it's beginning of the year, "I'm gonna go to the gym five days a week." I'm like, "Stop. You haven't been going at all. How about this? You're gonna be active at least an hour for three days a week." Let's start there. If you go five days, fantastic. Right? But it's different if you s- said you're gonna go five days, you only go three, you feel really bad about yourself. You say you're gonna go three and you go three, feel really good about yourself.
- 24:09 – 26:50
Setting Big Goals Stop You from Achieving Them
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's the harm of feeling bad about yourself? So there was a year, 2017, where I said ... I called it Every Day Steve because like I'm gonna go to the gym every, every day-
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... of 2018, I believe it was.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I'm not gonna tell you what happened 'cause I think you know. (laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I, I want to ask the question, what is the harm of setting a huge goal and then failing and feeling bad about yourself?
- LNLayne Norton
You know, there's a lot of different versions of, like, what builds confidence, but I think one of those things is keeping the promises you make to yourself. Right?... and also just doing the thing you said you were gonna do. And that's why I tell people, like, "Hey, for me, if I say I'm gonna go four or five times a week, that's not a problem." 'Cause for me, it takes discipline to keep me out of the gym, right? Like, I love that. That's fun for me. But if you're somebody who hasn't been going, just start with something... Like, I'm not saying don't be ambitious overall, but you have to build confidence in increments, right? Like, uh, so for example, I'm gonna go back to my own personal experience. I s- in 2015, I set a world squat record, 668 pounds at 205 pound body weight class. But when I first started lifting, I was horrible at squats. I've got long legs, um, I am... In fact, uh, um, one of the world powerlifting coaches looked at the video of my squat and said, "I- I don't know how you did that." And squats were very intimidating to me. I would get really scared trying to do it, my back would hurt, you know, all these sorts of things. You know, eventually I ended up squatting 668 pounds, but the first time I went in the gym, I wasn't able to do it. The first five years, 10 years, I couldn't, I couldn't even imagine that, right? And one of the things I tell people about confidence is, I thought when I, if I squatted that amount of weight, 400 or 500 pounds would feel easy. It still feels heavy, I just got better at handling it, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And I kind of use that euphemism for life, that analogy for life, because life doesn't get easier, but you can get better at handling those things. And the confidence that I built to be able to do that came through the repetition, doing it over and over and over again, and that's what people need. The problem is they don't get the repetition in because they do things like you were talking about, which is, they start too... It'd be like me going in the gym my first time saying, "I'm gonna squat 400 pounds."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
I'm gonna get crumpled into a heap, right? But if I do it, if I do what I can do at the time and slowly build that confidence, that can wind up in me doing something that I never thought possible for myself.
- 26:50 – 28:59
The Psychology of Taking Small Steps Really Work
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think it was Jordan Peterson that said to me, when he deals with some of his clinical patients, the starting point for them is so small that it almost makes them feel shameful, so they don't do it.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So he says he's dealt with people who literally can't get out of bed because their depression is so severe and telling someone that their goal is just to walk down the hall and walk back feels so small and inconsequential, and so full of shame, that-
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that they just think, "No, that doesn't matter. I'm not gonna do that." And there are a lot of people out there that are listening right now, and they think about where their starting point might be, and it might literally be getting out of the house, putting their trainers on, and going for a five-minute walk. But in their heads they'll go, "That's not gonna do anything. That's not gonna get me to that mountaintop that I, that I know I need to get to, so I'm not gonna bother."
- LNLayne Norton
A lot of people are like that, and I mean, you know, you can take your cliche that you want t- you know, journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I mean, it's cliche, but it's very true, right? And I think if you're climbing a mountain, if you're only looking at the top, you're gonna feel like you're getting nowhere, right? So if you wanna climb a mountain, have in mind the mountain that you wanna climb. But when you're climbing it, look at the next ledge and just do that as the checkpoint, right? So somebody asked me once, "If somebody had a lot of weight to lose, like over 100 pounds, where would you tell them to start?" I'd say, "You know, I'd look at where they're at right now. What are their habits, their behaviors? What are they doing exercise-wise? Let's get 'em to the next ledge," right? So let's, let's just, you know, and we can go into this too, but you know, if they're drinking a bunch of soda per day, trying to get them to go straight to water, that might be very daunting for them, right? Okay, well, diet soda's better than, than regular soda. And, and people will argue about it, but I can cite the studies on this. Okay, they're, they're, um, you know, they're eating certain foods. Can we do something somewhat close to what they're already doing, but find a way to cut out some calories from that, right? Let's, let's try and... I'm gonna try and meet them closer to where they are, and then slowly pull them back this way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When
- 28:59 – 34:36
What Takes for a Person to Decide to Lose Weight or Go to the Gym?
- SBSteven Bartlett
you think about what it takes for someone to make that decision to change their life, so often it seems that there's some kind of adverse event. Like, I'm talking here about the why that sits behind the reason to, to ch- to change, to lose the weight, to build the muscles. Do you see that often, that there's some kind of catalyst moment?
- LNLayne Norton
You actually see a lot of parallels between like the way addicts talk and people who have lost a lot of weight, uh, in terms of they had to develop a new identity, they often have to get a new set of friends. Not on purpose, but if you think about if you were hanging around a certain type of people and you became... and you were very overweight, you've probably fallen in with people who have similar habits to you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
And even if you still care about those people, as you start to come out of that, there's a few things that are happening. One, if they're not joining you in the things you're doing, that creates a gap. And, uh, people can also be very insecure when people they know start improving themselves, and they start trying to pull 'em back in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Crabs in the bucket. That one comes up a lot.
- LNLayne Norton
Right. "Why, why, why, why do you gotta eat that? Why can't you enjoy this? Why can't you..." You know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's because you're holding up a mirror to them by changing your life, right?
- LNLayne Norton
Correct, correct. So, you know, I... uh, I don't think he minds me talking about this. My, uh, my brother, um, was an addict. And, um, he, he, like, he went to prison for a period of time. Um, he had a lot of really bad stuff go down in his life, and, uh, one day I asked him, I'm like, "Was it, was going to prison, was that like your rock bottom?" And he goes, "No." He goes, "Honestly, I just woke up one day and realized I lose everything."I get a job and I lose it. I get some money and I lose it. I get a relationship and I lose it. I just got sick and tired of losing. And, not always, but you hear a lot of similar stories from people who drastically changed their lives, is they just got to the point where they were sick and tired of being that way, and they just realized that, "If I don't make some kinda change, this is gonna continue." And I think, one, that takes a self-awareness that- which is hard, and having that mirror brought to you is really hard. Um, I can relate in other areas of life. But that why really is at the core of it, because at the end of the day, if you don't have a really strong why, it is hard when you start to lose motivation. You know, I- I was- was watching a story of a guy who had a heart attack when he was, like, in his 40s, and then he lost 150 pounds, and he's like, "Whenever I started n- whenever I didn't have motivation or I started feeling like I wanted to fall back into bad habits, I thought about my kids growing up without a dad, and it made it very easy for me." And so when you have that really strong why, it- it- it makes it easier to get through it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm not saying either me or you are gonna be able to figure out an answer here, but I feel like maybe there's something we can offer to the question about how to cultivate the why. Is there anything that you do on those days, any disciplines you think you can put in place that will just keep the why, um, front and center? I'm gonna throw out one.
- LNLayne Norton
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Something that kinda helped me a little bit was just changing the background on my phone to, um, an image that reminded me of who I wanted to be.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it just meant that even if it gives me a 1% psychological reinforcement in the dir- so that I fall on the correct side of a decision-
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... relating to diet or fitness, maybe that would help. You know, because it's- it's there.
- LNLayne Norton
A couple things I think about. Um, I think about the people I care about in my life and wanting to make them proud. Think about my kids, you know. Um, how would I want ... now I'm gonna get emotional. How would I- how would I want them to remember their dad, you know? Um, I can remember, um, coming back from all these injuries and- and, uh, I was lifting in the garage one day and my daughter, she was, uh, six at the time, and she's such a little spark plug, and she would watch me and sometimes she would come in and, like, do some lifts with me and stuff, and, uh, sh- I was kind of explaining to her why I do this stuff and why it was important to me, and I said, you know, "Dad almost was a world champion. I got really close, and, you know, I- that would be something that I would r- I would- I would really treasure if I got the chance to do that." And she said, "Are you gonna try and be a champion again?" And she said it in the kid way that, like ... but, oh my gosh, when she said that, whenever I felt tired, whenever I felt down or whatever, I just remember my daughter saying, "Are you gonna try to be a champion again?" Made it easy, you know? And so I had my, like (laughs) it's gonna sound goofy, but at Worlds in 2022, I was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time, and, uh, I had a picture of my kids on my phone and I was looking at that, and I was almost in tears before I'd go out for lifts because I was so amped up and psyched up and- and that was- that was my why. So I'm thinking about my kids and then I also think about, you know, my parents and, like, great people, wanting to make them proud, and then honestly, like, my- my personal hero is my grandfather. So my grandfather is part of the Greatest Generation. Um, he was the funniest person I ever met with the most integrity of anybody I ever met, and so so many times when I think about the person I wanna be, I- I think about my grandfather. And, um, you know, still to this day, I'll think about him before I- if I feel, like, low motivation or if I've really screwed something up, um, you know, like that sorta thing.
- 34:36 – 37:29
Calories In/Calories Out
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
Let's go to the technical stuff.
- LNLayne Norton
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Let's start with, so we're talking here about dieting and weight loss. If I'm trying to lose weight, should I be counting my calories?
- LNLayne Norton
Ah. So, the first point of confusion, people assume calories in, calories out is the same thing as counting calories. That's like saying the law that in order to save money you have to earn more than you spend is the same thing as keeping a budget. Keeping a budget can help you save money, but it's not the same thing. So let's break down calories in, calories out. Calories inside, pretty straightforward, it is the food you eat, right? The calories in the food that you eat. Now, I would add one caveat to that, the metabolizable energy. So when we say calories, calories is literally a unit of energy. And so I'll have some people say, "Well, calories aren't a real thing. You can't look at calories on a microscope." You're right. It refers to the potential energy contained in the chemical bonds of food, that through the process of digestion, absorption, and metabolism, that energy is captured in one way or another. So that's the energy into the system. Calories out is more complicated. So that involves a few different, uh, energy outputs, the first one being your basal metabolic rate. So your BMR is basically the cost of keeping the lights on. So if you just laid down, didn't move, that's how many calories your body would burn. And that's actually the maj- for most people, the majority of the calories they burn per day, it's around 50 to 70% depending on how active they are.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it fluctuates between- person to person so m- as- as a man with fairly big muscles there, your- your-
- LNLayne Norton
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... yours will be bigger than mine because-
- LNLayne Norton
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you have more going on over there, so.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, there- there- you can tie about, at least based on the regressions, you can tie about 90% of the variance in BMR to someone's lean mass.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LNLayne Norton
I- i- if you look at the studies, it's very tightly correlated with lean mass, right? Because lean tissue is more metabolically active than non-lean tissue.So BMR's one bucket. Then you have what's called the thermic effect of food, so your TEF. Um, our bodies are kind of like, for lack of... A, a poor analogy, but an analogy that works, is cars. Like, internal combustion engine. You don't just put petrol or gas in your car and all of a sudden it just spontaneously starts up. You gotta start it. The battery puts in energy so you can get energy out of the fuel, right? Your body has to put in energy to extract the energy out of the food that you eat. And so a lot of the confusion, people say, "Well, calories in/calories out assumes that all calories equal." It doesn't because TEF accounts for this, because, for example, protein has a higher thermic effect of food than carbohydrate or fat. So if you look at, um, t-
- SBSteven Bartlett
So
- 37:29 – 41:25
Thermic Effect of Food
- SBSteven Bartlett
i- protein requires more energy f- to basically process it?
- LNLayne Norton
Correct. So if you, if you look at, um, like say fats, for example, TEF is about 0% to 3%, meaning if you eat 100 calories from dietary fat, you capture about 97 to 100 calories of it. Carbohydrates, about 5% to 10%. So if you eat 100 calories from carbohydrate, you capture about 90 to 95 calories from it. M- a lot of that depends on the fiber content. The more fiber, the lower the metabolizable energy. So fiber actually has a higher thermic effect of food as well. Then protein is about 70%, 80%. So if you eat 100 calories from protein, you capture about 70 to 80 calories. So some people out there will say, "Well, there's negative calorie." No, those don't exist. Um, you're always getting more energy out of it than you put in, but some are lower than others, right? And so that TEF is about 5% to 10% of the energy you expend per day. So now we've got BMR, TEF, and then you have your physical activity, which we can further break into two different buckets. The first one is obvious, which is exercise, right? You go to the gym, burn some calories, and that's energy out. The second one is less intuitive. It's called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT, and that is the small unconscious movements that you make per day. I'll give you an example, like when I'm doing it. Like now, it's not subconscious-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
... because I'm thinking about it. But fidgeting, um, when you're talking with your hands, uh, pacing, right? In fact, they've actually shown that people who have a more, they call it obese resistant phenotype, when they eat more, they tend to just become spontaneously more active without realizing it. And so people who are more obese prone, when they eat more food, they tend to not compensate by becoming more spontaneously active.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, interesting.
- LNLayne Norton
And people... It's kind of pedantic, but it's important to understand the difference. I'll ha- uh, I'll hear people say, "Well, I'm gonna take the steps and get my NEAT up." No, no. You made a decision, that's exercise, okay? The reason being NEAT really isn't consciously modifiable, right? And so I, I'll give you an example, a, a, a, like a extreme example of this. So when I was getting ready for my last bodybuilding show back in 2010, um, the fatigue that you deal with is unbelievable. It's hard to describe in words. Um, soul-crushing would be a way to describe it. And, um, I had gotten done... You know, I'd trained two hours at the gym that day. I'd done an hour of cardio, got home, and I remember I sat down on the couch and, uh, my, my ex at the t- u- my wife at the time, uh, she had like Real Housewives of whatever county on the TV. I hated those shows. But the remote was about seven feet away. I watched the entire show.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
I did not get up and move, because I was so fatigued. That's an example of NEAT, and NEAT is very modifiable. So they've shown that even a 10% reduction in body weight can reduce NEAT by up to 400 or 500 calories per day.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- LNLayne Norton
So you're just... A lot of people end up moving less without even realizing it. So here's the rub. This... So you've got your calories in, you've got your calories out, BMR plus TEF, plus NEAT, plus exercise. People think of these two things as static. They're not static. And that's what I talk about in the book a lot. We have various adaptations that fight us for weight loss, first of which is on the metabolism side. When you lose body weight, your BMR drops, but part of that is because you're carrying around less weight, right? So if y- if I'm 200 pounds and I drop down to 180 pounds, I just have less mass to carry around, and so your BMR goes down a little
- 41:25 – 43:38
Metabolic Adaptation
- LNLayne Norton
bit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is again... Which, again, is your base metabolic rate.
- LNLayne Norton
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is the...
- LNLayne Norton
The, the, the cost of keeping the lights on, basically. But there's actually what's called metabolic adaptation, which has shown that with a 10% body weight loss, on average you can see a reduction beyond what you would expect of 15% for BMR. So let's take an example here, 'cause people will say, "Well, calorie deficit didn't work for me, because, you know, I was eating this many calories, I was exercising this much period of time, and I was, um... You know, so, so, uh, like, what happened?" Well, you thought you were in a calorie deficit. But let's take me, for example, okay? My BMR, I've had it measured. It's about, it's about 2,000 calories, a little bit lower, about 2,000 calories. My total daily energy expenditure is around 3,400 calories per day. So that's all this stuff added up, right? But if I lose 10% of my body weight, for me, 2,700 calories per day is a pretty significant calorie deficit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
But if I lose 10% of my body weight, if I drop my BMR by 15%, 15% of two hu- 2,000 calories a day is 300 calories.... drop my NEAT by 400 calories. That's 700 calories. All of a sudden, that deficit is no longer a deficit. That's now maintenance. Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Now, this doesn't happen all at once. This is a progressive thing over time. But there's a reason, like I tell people, I'm like, "If it was a calorie deficit, as soon as y- like from the time you did it indefinitely, you would starve to death."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Right? But all of us, most of us had the experience of starting a diet, losing some weight, and eventually, even though you're eating the same way, doing the same exercise, it plateaus, right? And then you have to do something else to further establish that deficit. And the other way, so that's on one side, where that's kind of working against you to try to bring you back to your original body weight, right? We're talking about weight, weight regain. The other side is, your hunger hormones go up as you diet. Right? So they've actually, th- they- they have shown, obese people who
- 43:38 – 52:36
Can You Lose Weight in Calorie Surplus?
- LNLayne Norton
lose weight to become normal weight, when you compare them to normal weight people who were never obese with the same, uh, similar lean body mass, the formerly obese people have a lower total daily energy expenditure, and they have higher markers of hunger. They have higher appetite. So it's working on both sides of that equation to push you back. So the devil's advocate argument is, "Well, you know, I ate this amount of calories that should've been a calorie deficit, and I didn't lose weight." Or it's the, you know, all calories are created equal. I'll tell people, "All calories are created equal," because saying a calorie is not a calorie is like saying, uh, second hands on a clock are different. No, they're just a unit of measurement. All sources of calories are not equal. So let's take, um, budgeting, right? I used that earlier.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hm.
- LNLayne Norton
Sports car, okay? So let's say somebody makes a million dollars a year, right? If they wanna spend a hundred- and let's assume no loans, just for sake of ease. If they wanna spend $150,000 on a sports car, but they're still able to pay their mortgage, they can take care of the responsibilities, and they can put money away for retirement, can they buy that sports car? Sure they can. Right? Uh, uh, is it a bad investment? I guess you could argue it's a bad investment 'cause they could put that $150,000 in those investments, but maybe that sports car makes them feel good and gives them a little carrot on the end of a stick to, you know, keep working and whatnot. But if I take somebody who makes $200,000 a year, should they buy that $150,000 sports car if it means they can't pay their mortgage, they can't, um, you know, save for retirement? Oh, no, of course not. Right? Similar thing with energy, right? So if I'm, you know, somebody who's very active and I burn a lot of calories, is it a big deal if I have a Pop-Tart, say? Um, if I'm still getting enough protein, I'm hitting my target energy, I'm, uh, getting enough fiber in in my, my, my micronutrients, if that gives me that little carrot on the end of the stick to keep being consistent, not a big deal. But if we're talking about a smaller woman with less lean mass who needs to eat 1200 calories a day to lose weight, that's not a very good investment. Right? It's not a very good use of funds. So what I'll tell people is, you know, people will say, "Well, how do I know what a deficit is? How, how do I know how many calories to eat?" Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause also just on that point, I, I heard you talk about food labeling as well and how inaccurate that can be.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah. So you can, you can have up to a 20% error in food labeling. Right? So some people will u- so what that means is it could say 100 calories. It could be 80, it could be 120.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Now, I will say if it's coming from a big food company and they have pretty rigorous standards, it's probably not that far off. But they're allowed up to that, right? Because they recognize that some food sources are very heterogeneous, it'd be difficult to like get it exactly on. So you'll have some people say, "Well, see, calorie counting is useless because you can't know exactly how many calories you're taking in." And are you gonna get your BMR measured? Are you gonna get your NEAT measured? Are you gonna get this measured? It can be much more simple than that. Again, financial analogy. I could make the argument that keeping a budget is useless because you never know what inflation is exactly doing. And if you have investments, you can get differential, you know, returns on it. And on the output side, you have unexpected expenses. You have fluctuations in expenses. Your power bill is gonna be different from month to month, right? Your car breaks down one month. But if you look at the average over time, you can get a pretty good idea of on average what your expenses are like, right? And you can get a pretty good i- idea over time un- well, entrepreneurs like us, but even like us, you c- you can start to kind of see the trends and get a relatively good, good idea of what it's gonna be. So when it comes to calories in and calories out, yes, tracking exactly can be very, very difficult. But if you are monitoring your body weight, and you're being consistent with how you track, you'll know if you're in a calorie deficit. And I think another thing that's crossed some people off, this actually showed up on that, um, that review of the successful weight loss maintainers, they actually talked about one of the things that, um, was a barrier for them or hard for them was the weight fluctuations, because you know if you've ever, if you've ever weighed in every day, have you ever, have you ever done this where-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
... you weight every day?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
Even first thing in the morning, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Up, down, up, yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
Bounces all over the place, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
So actually, when we, w- with our coaching and then with our app, we're not just looking at one weight. We encourage people to weigh, as long as it doesn't cause them a lot of stress and anxiety, um, weigh in daily, and then it's taking the average of those because...... day-to-day changes in weight are much more dictated by fluctuations in fluid, but week-to-week and month-to-month averages reflect loss or gain of mass. So, for example, if you're monitoring your body weight, you know, taking averages and looking at that over time, you'll know if you're in a calorie deficit because on average, you're seeing it go down, right? Now, I wanted to make one more point, which is, you don't have to track calories to lose weight. Absolutely not. It's just one methodology, because no matter what you do, you have to have some form of restraint, right? And my friend, Peter Attia, actually breaks it down nicely into a couple different... Three buckets, right? You can have dietary restraint, which is low carb, plant-based, um, whole food, you know, whatever it is. You're, you're restricting some sort of food group or type of food, right? Then you have a time restriction. You eat within a certain timeframe or a certain window. Then you can have just straight up calorie restriction, where you're tracking and monitoring. What you choose to do, I think a lot, in terms of what is best for an individual, boils down to their psychology and what feels easy. So this is where a lot of the diet wars start because somebody will do, say, low carb, right? And they'll get results from that, and they'll say, "Man, it felt like I wasn't even dieting." And for whatever reason, that clicked with the algorithm in their brain and felt easy, and they got progress from that. But then they assume that everyone else will have the same response. Somebody else does low fat. Uh, somebody else does intermittent fasting, whatever have you, and you have all these stories. Me personally, I was the kind of pers- I'm the kind of person that if I tried to restrict certain foods, I end up getting that binge response, right? But if you tell me I can eat whatever I want, as long as I'm tracking it, I become ridiculously consistent. And I mean, I'm still eating mostly, like, whole food, minimally processed foods, you know, those sorts of things 'cause they're better for satiety. But I don't stress out about having some snacks here and there that are, you know, bad.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Consistency.
- LNLayne Norton
Because I'm, I'm being very consistent, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
How important is that consistency, do you think?
- LNLayne Norton
It is the most important thing. So, there is actually a, um, meta-analysis, and for... When I say meta-analysis, think a study of studies. Okay? So it's not a new study. It's... What they're trying to do in a meta-analysis is, they are trying to take studies that are similar and compile them together to see w- is there a consensus here? Is there an overall effect here, right? So, there was a meta-analysis of, um, where they looked at 14 different, like, popular diets, and these ranged from low carb to, you know, high carb, low fat, right? And what they found is, on the long term, none of them were better than the others for weight loss. But when they stratified them for adherence, from least adherent to most adherent-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does that mean?
- LNLayne Norton
Uh, so people who were consistent, basically. So when they stratified them for, I think, compliance, another way to put it. When they stratified them that way, regardless of diet, a linear effect of adherence on weight loss. So, what that tells me is, actually the best diet for the individual is the one that they consistent- they can consistently execute. They all function the same way, which is, you know, creating some sort of calorie deficit. Now, some people will say, "That's not true. I did a low carb diet and I was eating more food." You probably felt more satiated because you were eating less calorie-dense food. You probably were eating a greater quantity in terms of weight of food, but you were eating less calories.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there
- 52:36 – 59:25
Artificial Sweetness
- SBSteven Bartlett
any way to lose weight in a cal- calorie surplus?
- LNLayne Norton
Not... If that's the... So what I'll tell people is, all right. You take in food. It ha- The carbons that you take in, they have to go somewhere, right? And if you are, if you are not in a surplus, what you are saying is you are creating energy out of nothing. If that's the case, NASA needs to study you because we figured out how to not worry about fuel on long space flights, right? We have a perpetual motion machine. Um, again, a l- a lot of this, the confusion becomes when you have, you know, for example, metabolic adaptation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
So, you know, people, they may think they're in a calorie deficit, but they're not, or they're overestimating how many calories they burn. And here's the other thing that people don't wanna talk about, 'cause this gets down to the mirror, right? So there was a classic study. I think it was from 1992. Um, and I think the title, I may butcher it, but it's Discrepancy Between Reported and Actual Calorie Intake in Obese Subjects, I, I wanna say is the, is the name of the study. And so what they did was they had people... They screened for people who said that they could not lose weight even though they were eating low calories. And the, the average calorie intake that was reported by participants was 1,200 calories a day. And so they measured a bunch of different stuff. They measured their lean mass, their fat mass. They measured their BMR, they measured their total daily energy expenditure. They found that their BMR was very average when it was, when it was for... when it was based on their lean mass, right? And actually, if you look at obese people, they actually have a higher BMR and higher energy expenditure, typically, than lean people. But on average, it's 'cause they have more lean mass, because when you have more mass to carry around, your body has to create more locomotive mass. But when they... So they, and they told the subjects, "We will... We are gonna monitor you, and we will know if you're eating more than you say you are." The average in the study was they under-reported their calorie intake by about 50%.... and they over-reported their physical activity by just under 50%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jeez.
- LNLayne Norton
Now, and some of the participants argued with the researchers about it, right? Here's where people miss the message. The message a lot of people take from that is, "Oh, see? They're lying." And that's a really hard thing to take to somebody to be like, "Well, you're probably under-reporting your calorie intake," or, "You're probably eating more than you think you are." That feels very, you know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
... aggressive. And I don't think it's lying. I think that, one, people don't really understand portion sizes. If you've never had the experience of, like, weighing out your food, you will be shocked. Like, weigh out a serving of cereal or a serving of ice cream, or if you wanna be really depressed, weigh out a serving of peanut butter, because the tablespoon that you're grabbing, I promise you, is probably two or three servings. And then, you know, like, if, the first time I weighed out ice cream when I s- when I started weighing my food, I was like, "Th- this is a serving?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
It's like two bites, you know? And so I don't think people have a really good understanding of serving sizes. And even, I'll, I'll remember... I, I'll never forget. This was an Instagram DM, and this lady was saying that she was eating 1,600 calories a day and not losing weight. And we kind of, you know, had a little back and forth when we were talking, and I said, "Well, how..." She's like, "I am measuring my food." I'm like, "How are you measuring it?" She's like, "I'm, I'm doing volume measurements." So she was doing cups, tablespoons, that sort of thing. I said, "Do me a favor. Do, do exactly what you've been doing, but weigh out each one." A day later, she came back and said, "Oh my God, I'm eating 2,700 calories a day."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
And so even dieticians under-report their caloric intake in studies by about 10%. And these are the experts, right? So you have on one side people are eating more than they think they are, and then on the other side, they think they're being more active than they really are.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
But again, that's a hard conversation to have with people. And even as such, telling people, "Hey, you need to move more, eat less," mechanistically, that's true, but that's like telling somebody, "Hey, if you wanna save more money, just earn more and spend less."
- SBSteven Bartlett
With all of this, you know, I was, I was adding up all these discrepancies, right? Discrepancies as in, like, you're weighing it wrong, the label's got 20% wrong. And I, and then, um, my head went back to your budgeting analogy. As an entrepreneur and as a CEO, if (laughs) my accounting was 20%-
- LNLayne Norton
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... 20% off, I'm dead. (laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But if my... But, but then if it's 95% off in the till, like how much money we're getting into the till, and then w- I'm using a cup instead of a scale, so that's, I don't know, 30% off as well, no wonder, you know, the business would go bust.
- LNLayne Norton
Right. I thi-
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's complicated. Like, what, what the fuck are we gonna do?
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, it i- it is complicated. But I, I would tell people, you know, again, if you get back to the, the basics of monitoring your body weight consistently, which is one of the... I have to be careful about this, because there are some people where monitoring their body weight consistently ends up being, like, really anxiety-provoking for them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Disordered eating and stuff.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, that sort of thing. So that's, you know, I try to be sensitive to that. But it is a very consistent thing in the literature that people who lose weight and keep it off tend to monitor their body weight pretty regularly. And it's a, it's a self-correcting thing, right? Like, if you're keeping a budget very regularly and you see, "Oh, man, I spent, you know, $5,000 more this month," what happens?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
You correct, right? And so I, I would use that more of... Instead of the accounting variation, I would say, "Well, sometimes your business has unexpected expenses, right?" Or sometimes you have less expenses, right? And so those are gonna fluctuate and can be hard to anticipate, right? And so what we're looking for overall is, okay, let's look back at, you know... I think a lot of businesses operate in quarters, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
Let's look at this quarter. Okay, on average, here's, here's our month-over-month what we're profiting, right? Okay, well, we can start to budget based on these sorts of things and expectations. We'll try to project out a little bit. I kind of look at that with people. I'm like, "All right, well, how much weight did you lose on average, like over the past month? Okay, how much were you eating? Okay, you lost six pounds over the last month. You're definitely in a calorie deficit, right? It's working, keep going. Maybe you're eating 2,000 calories, maybe you're eating 2,300 calories. Who cares? It's working, right?" Now, what happens is, eventually once you plateau, again, maybe you're eating 2,000, maybe you're eating 2,300. Doesn't matter. Whichever it is, if you've plateaued, it means you have to reestablish the deficit. So you either have to reduce your calories or you have to increase your activity or a combination of both. You know, those sorts of things.
- 59:25 – 1:05:43
Is Sugar Addictive?
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about... One thing I heard you talk about at the very start of this conversation was, um, artificial sweeteners, specifically-
- LNLayne Norton
Ooh, yeah, let's do that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... specifically in things like Diet Coke.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've, you know, I've wondered for a while whether Diet Coke is healthy or not.
- LNLayne Norton
Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And there's a lot of s- you know, people talking about this at the moment. So what's your answer to that?
- LNLayne Norton
Okay, this is gonna be the most commented thing about in this entire interview, I'm sure.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, gosh.
- LNLayne Norton
Um, okay, so first off, let's just talk about weight loss and fat loss, okay? And, and leave out the other stuff. Um, if you look at the epidemiology and the cohort studies, you tend to see that people who consume more artificial sweeteners or diet soda are heavier in body weight. And so some people have said these things cause weight gain. But the problem with that is, again, lifestyle behaviors. And so one of the things they've sh- shown is that people who consume more artificial sweeteners actually tended to be more overweight to start with, obese to start with. They didn't cause them to become that way. They're consuming more of them because they're trying to get to a less obese state, right? So there's a correlation there. But if we look at the randomized control trials, right, where they say, "Hey, you are used to... You guys drink soda, regular soda. You guys drink diet soda." There was actually one that just got published very, very, really rigorously controlled one-year study.... way more weight loss in the diet soda group. Um, and I'm thinking of another randomized control trial, I think it was six months where they saw, like, 6 kilograms of weight loss just from switching people from regular soda to diet soda. Or, it might not have been soda specifically, they call them sugar-sweetened beverages versus, you know, non-nutritive sweetened beverages. Um, so, when you replace for, for soda, it seems to be very effective, uh, all things being equal. And people will say, "Well, it ma- you know, it activates the, the sweetness in the brai- and y- and you get hungrier from it." Well, if that's the case, then these studies would suggest that artificial sweeteners are actually the best fat burners known to man, because if people are eating more and still losing 6 kilograms, that's amazing. They're not, that's, they're not fat burners. They, they're replacing that sweet taste. And then people will say, "Well, it's not better than water. You know, water, people should just drink water." Shoot the alligator closest to the boat, right? Like, okay, hey, if you can drink water and just drink water, cool, do that, right? But if somebody can lose ... And I have people all the time, when I do a post about this, somebody will say, "I lost 30, 40, 50 pounds, all I did was stop drinking regular soda and drink diet soda." Literally the only change they made in their life. Now, when they compare it versus water, they either see the same results or the diet soda group gets a little bit better results. And yeah, now, it's not because of any kind of fat burning effect. What is likely is when somebody switches from regular, you know, sugar-sweetened beverage to water, they may try to fill that gap of that sweet taste somewhere else. Whereas if they're just consuming the artificially sweetened or non-nutritive sweetened beve- We can't say artificial because, um, like, uh, stevia is actually, you know, natural, so to say, so they call it non-nutritive sweeteners. But if they're consuming the, the non-nutritive sweeteners, they're filling that gap.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Compensation again.
- LNLayne Norton
Compensating, right. So now, again, there's nothing magic about them. People are just eating less, right? And if you can do that with water, you don't have to consume diet soda, you know, I would say drink water. But if you're somebody where, man, you know, you really have a hard time quitting regular soda, heck yeah, drinking diet soda is a lot better. And people will go, "Well, what about insulin? They raise insulin." That is actually one of the biggest myths out there. There are multiple, not just studies, but now I'm pretty sure there's a meta-analysis as well, that shows that these artificial sweeteners do not raise insulin. There is one study, um, I'm thinking specifically about sucralose. There's one study, and th- everybody always hangs their hats on this, and I love to, to break it down, where sucralose did not increase insulin, but they did a s- they did a sucralose group, a carbohydrate only group, and a carbohydrate plus sucralose group. And the results were the carbohydrate plus sucralose group secreted more insulin than the carbohydrate only group, even though they ate the same amount of carbs. And so people go, "Well, see, maybe it's not bad, but if you're, you know, drinking it with carbohydrates, it's bad." And this is where reading the full text and really going deep on a study is very important. So, the carbohydrate only group was sucrose, which is 50% glucose, 50% fructose. The carbohydrate plus sucralose group was maltodextrin. Maltodextrin, if you look at ... Are you familiar with glycemic index?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Loosely.
- LNLayne Norton
Yep. So glycemic index basically looks at, like, um, you know, how quickly glucose appears in your system, and usually you can kind of correlate the insulin response to that. Maltodextrin has a significantly higher glycemic index and causes a greater insulin response than sucrose because it is a ... It actually causes a greater insulin response than even glucose itself because, um ... It's kind of getting into the biochemistry, but because it's like this polymer, um, it is actually a little bit more rapidly digested and absorbed into the circulation. So, it was actually an inappropriate control group-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
... to try to assess that, because if you look at the difference in insulin response, it's about what you'd expect if you just look at maltodextrin versus sucrose. So, based on the research, there's no evidence it affects glycemia or increases insulin, and in fact, in these studies where they, you know, these randomized control trials, where they look at, you know, weight loss, um, you see improvements in insulin sensitivity, HbA1c, you know, because people are losing weight, not because of anything magic with these sweeteners.
- 1:05:43 – 1:07:38
Craving Sugar
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is sugar addictive?
- LNLayne Norton
This one's gonna get me in trouble too. Um, I want to come back to the artificial sweeteners, but I'll answer that. Um, sugar by itself does not appear to be addictive. There are certain foods that appear to create what's called a food dependence. There's subtle differences between that and addiction. But, I mean, kind of the anecdote is nobody's, like, just grabbing the bag of sucrose and just, you know, eating that. And if you think about the foods that really are, like, v- very hard to stop eating, they're usually not just high in sugar, they're usually h- It's a combination of sugar, fat, salt, and texture, okay? Texture matters as well, and mouth feel. People will say, "Well, sugar's addictive. Look at cakes, cookies, ice cream." There's more calories from fat in those than there are sugar in a lot of cases. So couldn't you, by that logic, just argue that fat is also addictive? So, sugar, straight sugar doesn't appear to be addictive per se. Now-It's not very satiating, right? And it's utterly devoid of any other kind of nutrients, so I'm not saying it's a good idea to eat a lot of sugar. But, um, it doesn't appear to have addictive qualities in isolation. But there are certain foods, cakes, cookies, these sorts of foods, hyper-palatable, very great mouthfeel, potato chips, french fries, these sorts of foods may have, like, semi-addictive type properties.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LNLayne Norton
But just sugar itself doesn't appear to. And there's a, there's a study that kinda backs that up. Basically, I think the title was like, uh, No Evidence for Sugar Addiction in Humans.
- 1:07:38 – 1:08:52
How Sweeteners Affect Our Gut
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
So people will say, "Well, you know, when I eat that piece of chocolate or that, you know, sugary thing, I end up just eating more and more and more and more and more and more. And then the next day, I- I feel like I need sugar more." And I can ... I've got my own sort of anecdotal experience of almost call it like a sugar cycle, where there might be a week, you know, once every four months or six months, where I have some sugar, and then the next day, I want more sugar, and then the next day, I want more sugar, and then the next day. And then as ... When I break that sugar cycle, and if I don't eat sugar for like five days, it kind of ... It feels like the craving's gone away.
- LNLayne Norton
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You must hear that from people.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, I mean ... (sighs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like right now, I have no urge to have sugar for some reason.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah. It's so hard to disentangle that from just psychology in general.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
Right? And just, like, it- it ... That could be a self-fulfilling thing, where it's like, you know, people have been told sugar is addictive, or they've heard sugar is addictive, and so they eat something to fill that mood.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It could be mood as well.
- LNLayne Norton
But also, like again, the chocolate, usually also high in fat, right? Like the mouth feels really good. So I'm not saying ... Like that stuff is easy to overeat on. And, and people can have a hard time stopping. But it doesn't appear that sugar, like independently, is addictive. But it can be part of foods that may have addictive-like properties.
- 1:08:52 – 1:14:01
What Supplements Do You Recommend?
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
Artificial sweeteners. You said you wanted to close off there.
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, so now let's talk ... So we ... Very clearly, the research studies show, the ones that are controlled well, it does help with weight loss, um, in a lot of these studies. What about cancer, heart disease, uh, and the gut microbiome? 'Cause that's a- a lot of the questions are out there. So with cancer, a lot of people think, "Oh, there's so many studies showing it causes cancer." Well, first of all, again, we're talking about epidemiology. We're talking about cohort studies, so there's a lot of confounding variables. But actually, so we were talking about consensus earlier. Um, it's kind of a- a, um ... I'm on their scientific advisory board, and it's like, ah, PubMed plus J- ChatGPT. So you can ask it a question, and it will immediately, like, crawl all the research literature and give you a consensus of what the research says, right? And so I- I did this. A- and you can synthesize it too, where it'll show you what percentage of studies say yes, no, and then possibly, right? So I- I- I think I put in, "Do artificial sweeteners cause cancer?" Do you know 80% of the studies say no? But you don't hear about those. And why is that? Because it's much more newsworthy to put out negative news. Because if you hear a study, "This thing doesn't cause cancer," ho-hum, right? But what gets shared a lot, "Oh man, Aunt Deborah, she drinks Diet Coke. Deb, have you seen this?" You know? It's much more shareable. So that negative news tends to get published more, right? And if you look at the- the human studies, some of the- the more well-done ones, like I'm thinking of the NutriSanti cohort in- out of France. The conclusion was, "Oh, it increased the risk of cancer." And I- I looked into that. I think it was aspartame part- specifically. If something's carcinogenic, typically what we see is a dose response, right? So if you smoke more, you have a higher risk of lung cancer. Did you know that the ... Yes, the ... So they compared like l- no or s- like low amount of aspartame users to, like, low moderate and then high moderate. I want to say it was three different groups, so I- I could be butchering this a little bit, but think low, medium, high, right? The medium group had a higher risk of cancer. The high group didn't. It actually, like not, uh, compared to the- the low group, it was not statistically different, but it dropped from the moderate group. So to me, and it- it ... Again, we're talking about an odds ratio of like 1.15, meaning a 15% relative risk increase. Let me put that in perspective. 15% sounds scary when it comes to cancer, but relative risk means if your absolute risk of developing cancer in, say, the next 10 years is 10%, a relative risk increase of 15% says it goes up to 11.5.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
It doesn't mean it goes from 10 to 25, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
So it's important to- to understand the difference. But again, if it's really carcinogenic, we should expect to see kind of a- a dose response, right? We don't see that. So to me, that's ... Especially with all the studies that don't find an association, that's- that's more likely to be some kinda data artifact with, who knows, confounding variables, healthy user bias, what have you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about the gut then?
- LNLayne Norton
So now, there are studies showing that some sweeteners do change the gut microflora, the comp- the composition of it. Um, sucralose appears to, aspartame not so much. Um, I think saccharin also showed a change to the gut microbiome. Now, here's what's interesting. It's hard to know if that is a good, bad, or neutral change in terms of overall health, because, um, I was looking through one of the studies on sucralose, and they were talking about the, a couple of species or- or genuses of bacteria that increased, and one of them that increased-... was actually associated with people who are leaner, have less obesity and better insulin sensitivity, and also a species that produce more butyrate, and butyrate actually is associated with a whole host, uh, this is a, a short-chain fatty acid produced by the gut microbiome. Butyrate's associated with a whole host of positive health benefits. So I've, I, I will say it's worth monitoring because some of these do appear to change the breakdown of the gut microbiota, but there's probably, you could argue just as much that there's a positive effect as you could a negative effect. So what I'll say is, again, if we look back at the, again, shoe the alligator closest to the boat and there are no solutions, only trade-offs, if somebody switches to diet soda, even if it's not the very best thing they could do, maybe water's the very best thing they could do, but if they lose 20 pounds and their HbA1c drops and their insulin sensitivity gets better and their metabolic health gets better, it's probably a worthwhile trade-off.
- 1:14:01 – 1:17:39
Whey Protein
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are there any supplements that you would recommend everybody to take?
- LNLayne Norton
Mm. (sighs) So I, I always say I have like, I have tiers of supplements, right? Um, my, my first tier, thousands of research studies very clearly has benefits, creatine monohydrate, um, which we've known about the performance benefits for years, we've known about the, um, the strength benefits, the body composition benefits.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You take it every day?
- LNLayne Norton
Yes, I do. Um, now it's coming out that there's cognitive benefits, and I want to say ... Man, I hope I don't, I hope I don't get this wrong, so I will fact-check this and, and make sure you-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure.
- LNLayne Norton
... ask me for the study. I'm pretty sure they did a study that showed that creatine actually decreased depressive symptoms.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting.
- LNLayne Norton
So what I will say is if there was one I would recommend for everybody, it would probably be creatine monohydrate because it's cheap, effective, and, um, I mean, people say, "Well, we don't know what the long-term effects are." It's been around for like 40 years. We, if, if there was long-term effects, we'd, we'd have seen it by now. A- and, and just a quick aside, creatine monohydrate, don't waste your money on anything else. There's ... People try to reinvent the wheel with creatine because monohydrate, it's ... You know, remember when, like, big screen, flat screen TVs came out? Uh, this, I might be a l- I'm showing my age here.
- SBSteven Bartlett
No, I remember. (laughs)
- LNLayne Norton
But I remember when it was like $1,000 for a 40-inch screen TV, and now you can get one for a stick of bubble gum. You know what I mean?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.
- LNLayne Norton
And it's because everybody makes them, they're so ubiquitous, it drove the cost down, right? Everybody sells creatine monohydrate, it drives the cost down, so companies come up with new forms of creatine and make these claims around them to try to, like, get you to spend more money on cre- ... Creatine monohydrate saturates the muscle cell 100%. You don't need to do anything else.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's going on there?
- LNLayne Norton
So a couple things. Um, we don't, we don't fully understand all the mechanisms, but we know that when creatine gets in the system, um, and gets into the cell, it bonds with a phosphate which, uh, produces creatine phosphate. That is a high-energy phosphate donor. So when you're exercising, um, basically you are using what's called adenosine triphosphate, which is ATP, which is the purest form of energy in your body. So this, what we call hydrolysis of ATP, is used to power a lot of reactions in your body. Um, and so ATP, triphosphate, three phosphates, it... To power these reactions, it gets cleaved to ADP, adenosine diphosphate, plus, uh, an inorganic phosphate, right? Creatine can donate its phosphate to ADP, reform ATP. So what we see is, you know, um, especially during anaerobic exercise, uh, better performance with creatine because it's a high-energy phosphate donor, it can help replenish that. Um, and then it also pulls water into the cell, and we think that that's part of the body composition benefits of it because, um, you know, a hydrated muscle cell, I mean, muscle cells are 70% water.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LNLayne Norton
They're, they're mostly water. And people say, "Well, it's just water." Okay, but that's lean tissue, and there's actually some... I believe there's some evidence that actually, uh, hydrating the muscle basically actually increases the, improves the contractile properties of the muscle. So that could explain part of the strength benefits, um, and of course, again, it's gonna show up as lean mass, right? Now, it's not a huge effect. We're talking, you know, couple pounds for most people, something like that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'll take it.
- LNLayne Norton
But, but for a relatively cheap, effective supplement, yeah, take it, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What
- 1:17:39 – 1:18:44
Caffeine
- SBSteven Bartlett
other supplements then are ... Is there anything else in the tier one?
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, uh, I mean, like, for people who can tolerate, whey protein. I mean, you know, it's not, um, it's not magic, but it's a cheap, uh, usually quite tasty way to get in high-quality protein. And, you know, if you get it from whole food, great, but a lot of people struggle to get in, you know, the amount of protein they'd like to get in from whole food, and so whey protein, again, very high quality, usually easily digestible. The caveat is whey protein concentrate, a lot of people can't tolerate it 'cause there's lactose in there, so if you have a lactose, uh, intolerance, a whey isolate, which is usually microfiltered, um, gets out the vast majority if not all the lactose, and so most people could tolerate that. But there are a certain percentage of people who also have a sensitivity to the lactalbumins in whey, the, the proteins in whey, so in that case, there's what's called, uh, a whey hydrolysate, which is predigested whey, and almost all people can tolerate that. But if you don't have any digestive issues with it, a concentrate or an isolate's totally fine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What else-
- 1:18:44 – 1:19:52
Intermittent Fasting
- SBSteven Bartlett
- LNLayne Norton
Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in that tier one?
- LNLayne Norton
A- and then I would say, uh, caffeine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting.
- LNLayne Norton
Ca- caffeine is one of the... It is the original cognitive enhancer. I- if we look at cognitive tests, we see consistently people perform better, and if you look at, uh, performance, people consistently perform better, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
But, before 12:00, a lot of people talk to me about the half-life of caffeine im- impacting sleep and-
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah, so that, I mean, that's the, you know-There's even some evidence that, you know, even if you have, like, a good dose of caffeine in the morning, that it may still affect your sleep later, so again, no solutions, only trade-offs, right? Um, I would say overall, if you are an athlete, um, or somebody who, you know, relies heavily on your brain power to, you know, do whatever it is you do, caffeine, probably a useful supplement. As you said, you know, if you're gonna take it, try to get in, you know, nine hours before you're gonna sleep to cease your caffeine intake because, um, by that time, you know, the majority of it is out of your system, right?
- 1:19:52 – 1:24:00
Does Fasting Help When You're Ill?
- LNLayne Norton
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the big misconceptions about intermittent fasting?
- LNLayne Norton
It, it seems to be a really great tool for a lot of people to be able to control their, their calorie intake. Um, in studies where they don't prescribe calories, so they, they don't match calories, they just tell people either intermittent fast or, you know, follow a, a diet, people in the intermittent fasting groups tend to lose more weight and have better improvements on their blood markers. But it's not because of anything magic about intermittent fasting. It's because it's placing them in a calorie deficit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do they see that in the studies, that act-
- LNLayne Norton
Yeah. So when they, when they, when they do, like, randomized control trials where they're, they're actually controlling calories, and, like, one great extreme version of that would be, uh, there was a study on alternate day fasting, right? So people would do, um, one day fast, complete fast, the next day, um, eat 150% of their maintenance calories, whereas the group that was just doing continuous was doing 75% of their maintenance calories the entire time. Both groups lost pretty much the same amount of weight. Uh, actually, the, the continuous group l- retained a little bit more lean mass and lost a little bit more fat mass, but, you know, that's a pretty extreme form of fasting. If you look at the, like, the more traditional, like, 16:8 or those sorts of intermittent fasting, you see pretty much the same retention of lean mass compared to just continuous kind of eating programs. The, the myths that really get tossed around are a lot of them are around longevity, um, and people saying, "Well..." 'Cause whenever I talk about this, people will say, "Well, I don't, I don't fast for weight loss. I f- I fast for health. I fast for longevity and autophagy." You've probably heard this, this term.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Autophagy, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- LNLayne Norton
So what I'll tell you is there's actually more evidence that, uh, calorie restriction increases autophagy than intermittent fasting. But intermittent fasting, or fasting does increase autophagy. So let's talk about what, what this is. So autophagy is a type of basically lysosomal protein breakdown. So there's a few different ways that the body breaks down, like, old misfolded proteins or just things that need to be turned over. One of them is, um, through this kind of, uh, lysosomal protein degradation, which the lysosome is a, is a, uh, organelle in the cell that can kind of engulf these old proteins and break them down, and then you get the amino acids from those proteins that can then be recycled to make new proteins, right? Calorie restriction increases autophagy. Exercise increases autophagy. Fasting can increase autophagy too, but you'll hear people say, "Well, you gotta fast for X period of time 'cause it's when autophagy turns on."
Episode duration: 2:31:18
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