Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Here we go. Four,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      Here we go. Four, three, oh, two, one. (claps) And we're live. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Um, let everybody know who you are. Layne?

   2. LNLayne Norton0:15

      Uh, I'm a meathead who likes science. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      (laughs)

   4. LNLayne Norton0:17

      Uh, got into bodybuilding when I was young. Uh, and then did a BS in Biochemistry, PhD in Nutritional Science. Um, kept lifting, did power lifting, won two national championships, got silver medal at worlds, set a then world squat record, and did also bodybuilding and won a natural pro card. They actually have natural bodybuilding, believe it or not. (laughs) And, uh, throughout that time just, you know, when I first got into it, one magazine said one thing and even in the same magazine, they'd have an article one month and the next month it would contradict it.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LNLayne Norton0:50

      So I was like, "I'm just gonna try and figure this shit out for myself." So-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:54

      Which is the place that a lot of people listening are at right now.

   8. LNLayne Norton0:57

      Yeah. And it's, it's tough 'cause it's kind of like, who do you trust?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00

      Right.

   10. LNLayne Norton1:00

       Because no, not everybody has the time or the energy to go and do a degree in this stuff. So, but that was me. I kind of got down the rabbit hole of, all right, let's try and figure this nutrition stuff outAnd of course, the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. But, uh, yeah, it just became a passion for me to and to this day, I'm still very... I, I love this stuff. This is what gets me up, gets me going.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Well, guys like you are very important, guys who actually train very hard and really understand the science. This is 'cause it's usually one or the other.

   12. LNLayne Norton1:30

       Absolutely.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       Yeah.

   14. LNLayne Norton1:32

       And I, like, when I was doing it, I, I graduated my PhD in 2010. When we started, we actually both knew each other from the bodybuilding.com message boards. So this was back before social media.

   15. DDDom D’Agostino1:43

       Trained together back in 2006 or 7, yeah, yeah.

   16. LNLayne Norton1:46

       7 at Experimental Biology.

   17. DDDom D’Agostino1:47

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. LNLayne Norton1:47

       So this big, there's a big symposium every year for science geeks.

   19. DDDom D’Agostino1:51

       (laughs)

   20. LNLayne Norton1:51

       And, uh, we were both going to it and we found out about each other on the forums and we went and trained together and he's a, he's a beast. Uh, and, uh, yeah, we really hit it off and we've been friends since then. So for everybody-

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:03

       Awesome.

   22. LNLayne Norton2:03

       ... who's looking for a fight, so- sorry.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:06

       (laughs)

   24. LNLayne Norton2:06

       We're probably gonna be pretty friendly.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:08

       Well, it's gonna be a conversation. We don't need to have a, a fight. And Dom, uh, you've been on the podcast before, but for people who didn't listen-

   26. DDDom D’Agostino2:14

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:14

       ... to that one, please tell them who you are and what you do.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino2:16

       Yeah. Uh, um-

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:17

       Keep this sucker glued.

   30. DDDom D’Agostino2:18

       Yeah, yeah, sure. Uh, I, well go, getting back, I, I majored in nutrition actually as an undergrad, but didn't actually see a career in it that much. (laughs) So I went into neuroscience. The ni- '90s was the decade of the brain and, uh, my, my, you know, formal training is in neuroscience and it got steered towards basically changing the neuropharmacology of the brain with nutrition. And that's what the ketogenic diet does and it has tremendous benefits, I think, for military personnel, which is, um, funded by the Office of Navy Research and the Department of Defense to develop ketogenic strategies to enhance readiness, uh, resilience and, and performance and safety in military personnel.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Not necessarily the ketogenic…

   1. LNLayne Norton15:00

      If... 'Cause if you look at, uh, meta-analyses, uh, uh, for our listeners, meta-analyses are- are kind of a study of studies. So they take... Researchers take studies that have similar parameters and they kind of lump them together, and they look at, okay, what's the consensus amongst these studies? And they have advanced statistics they use to run this. If you look at low carb versus low fat, there's no difference in adherence overall on the whole. There's no difference, and there's no difference in weight loss. There's no difference in, uh, blood lipids, even glycemic control. So there was a study where they... a meta-analysis of I think it was 23 studies, over 3,000 people, where they looked at, okay, if you control calories, so calories are equated, does low carb versus low fat make a difference on weight loss, glycemic control, those sorts of things?

   2. DDDom D’Agostino15:52

      Not necessarily the ketogenic diet.

   3. LNLayne Norton15:54

      Right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DDDom D’Agostino15:55

      So by definition, we have an objective biomarker that defines the ketogenic diet. It's the only diet that actually has something that you, you know, you can measure in your blood to say you're on this diet. And when your ketone levels are elevated, that confers many different benefits, uh, that I believe can enhance adherence to the diet.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:13

      Before we get into the woods here, uh, I wanna clarify one thing.

   7. LNLayne Norton16:17

      Yep.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      The difference between, uh, someone being on a diet and being able to sustain it and not being able to sustain it and gaining all that weight back, isn't that a discipline issue?

   9. LNLayne Norton16:26

      Well, partly, but we kinda have to start looking at, okay, if we- if we go and... Let me re- let me re-circle. We have to find what requires the least amount of discipline for somebody to stick to because discipline is- is... While some people have more, some people have less. Um, it is a- a f- finite resource. So when do we normally find that people, like, kind of drop off whatever they're doing? It's when they're stressed out, work's stressing them out, uh, they're going through a divorce, those kinds of things, right? That's where our- our discipline kind of wanes because we're trying to be so disciplined for this other thing.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:05

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LNLayne Norton17:05

       And it's draining us. So what happens w- with- with diet is, you know, people who are busy, people who have a lot of stress in their life, that's where they really start overeating. So we have to find something that require... I look at it as, let's find something that requires the minimal amount of- of discipline for a person so that when your life goes to absolute shit, you can still stick to it. And so for some people, that is a very, very individual thing. And they see this in the dietary studies, that what works for one person to create a deficit and sustainable isn't the same way for another person. And Dom even commented on this about his wife, Chilla. Um, she does much better on a higher ratio of carbohydrates to fat.

   12. DDDom D’Agostino17:49

       Yeah, I- I mean, early on, it was obvious that she wasn't gonna change her diet. I... The time that we met, like, 10 years ago almost-

   13. LNLayne Norton17:55

       (laughs)

   14. DDDom D’Agostino17:55

       ... we- I was really getting into this, and I really felt that, for me at least, uh, but she would stop at Checkers and, you know, get a burger and with a-

   15. LNLayne Norton18:03

       (laughs)

   16. DDDom D’Agostino18:04

       ... sugary drink in. And she's tremendously carb intolerant. She was very skinny as a kid, and, uh, she tolerates-

   17. LNLayne Norton18:11

       You mean intolerant?

   18. DDDom D’Agostino18:12

       ... uh, carbohydrate... She's very carbohydrate tolerant.

   19. LNLayne Norton18:14

       Yes.

   20. DDDom D’Agostino18:14

       Did I say intolerant? Okay.

   21. LNLayne Norton18:15

       Yeah. (laughs)

   22. DDDom D’Agostino18:16

       Uh, yeah. Uh, so- and- and, you know, if-... the diet, low carb I feel and maybe-- and ketogenic, putting it under that umbrella, works, I think, for up to 25 to 30% of people, uh, especially if they're carbohydrate intolerant. And I believe that it does that by virtue of elevating ketones, shifting your, uh, the neuropharmacology of the brain. For example, it works through ghrelin, it works through... There's new science emerging right now showing that appetite regulation is influenced, uh, positively by, uh, nutritional ketosis in ways that we're just starting to learn now.

   23. JVJamie Vernon18:56

       Well, you can certainly feel it. It's one of the weirder-

   24. DDDom D’Agostino18:58

       Oh, yeah, yeah.

   25. JVJamie Vernon18:58

       ... things about-

   26. DDDom D’Agostino18:59

       Yes.

   27. JVJamie Vernon18:59

       ... the ketogenic diet. When you're in that state, y- all of a sudden you're just not hungry the same.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino19:03

       Yeah.

   29. JVJamie Vernon19:03

       It's- there's not a, an overwhelming need-

   30. DDDom D’Agostino19:05

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Because you give them…

   1. LNLayne Norton30:00

      if you tell them, "Hey, you can have that cookie every once in a while, if you track it, work it into your macronutrient intake, that that's fine," that that actually improved their adherence to diet-... so-

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:10

      Because you give them a reward?

   3. LNLayne Norton30:12

      No. Not a rewards system. You're not a dog. Don't reward yourself with food.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:15

      Oh, okay. (laughs)

   5. LNLayne Norton30:16

      Be- because, because increased flexibility, uh, actually usually improves adherence.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      Oh.

   7. LNLayne Norton30:21

      So, a- we see this actually with training too. Uh, athletes, uh, when you do a flexible training model, uh, where they have to get in a certain amount of training but they kinda can pick and choose their self which days are hard and which days are a little bit ... They actually do better. Diet is very similar to that. So, now you always have to sacrifice something in order to, uh, if you wanna lose weight, right? So if you're doing a ketogenic diet, what you're sacrificing is saying, "Well, I like the spontaneous reductions in appetite, so I don't mind eating not these foods so I can get that." If you're doing, like, k- kind of what, I don't wanna say I popularized it, but myself and some other people on the message boards popularized something called flexible dieting, where you can eat essentially whatever you want as long as you hit your protein, carbohydrate, and fat targets. Now what you're sacrificing is, okay, you're tracking every day, right?

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:09

      Do you do that through an app?

   9. LNLayne Norton31:10

      Through what?

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       An app?

   11. LNLayne Norton31:12

       Uh, no, I'm old school. I actually just do it through Excel. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Okay.

   13. LNLayne Norton31:15

       I've, I've t- I, my girlfriend, Holly, she has a, an app on her phone and, uh, like, she, uh, she has me, like, if she's driving, she's like, "Oh, will you put in what I just ate?" I'm like, "Babe, I don't even, uh, know."

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:25

       (laughs)

   15. LNLayne Norton31:25

       "I have no idea how to work this thing." You know? So, because when I went to do my graduate studies, I mean, I wanted to find magic foods. I wanted to find something that would s- 'cause h- how else can you make a living? You have to set yourself apart. I mean, if I'm over here saying ... It's hard for me to sell what I, what I do, 'cause I'm saying, "Well, you, everything in moderation and, and you gotta be diligent and you gotta have these behaviors," and that, that doesn't sound sexy when there's another guy over here saying, "Nah, bro, it's just carbs. I know metabolism's complicated and everything, but i- i- it's just carbs." You know, when I started working with people, and I've worked with, uh, over 1,500 people coaching in nutrition online over the past 13 years, which actually probably taught me more than my, than my PhD did. Um, what I found was is that people were so different individually in terms of what, what made them tick. You know? Uh, now I feel like I should probably go back and get some kind of-

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       What makes them tick? Biologically, what makes them tick or psychologically?

   17. LNLayne Norton32:22

       S- both. Both.

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Yeah.

   19. LNLayne Norton32:23

       So I can't sit here and say by the research that, that carbohydrate versus fat makes a difference on fat loss. But what I can tell you is that some people just seem to do better on lower carb, higher fat. But also, some people I worked with just seemed to do better with higher carb, lower fat. Now whether that's a psychological thing or a physiological thing, it's hard to tease out.

   20. DDDom D’Agostino32:46

       Genetically too, I think. I mean-

   21. LNLayne Norton32:47

       Yeah.

   22. DDDom D’Agostino32:47

       ... we all have different SNPs, you know, that-

   23. LNLayne Norton32:49

       Yeah.

   24. DDDom D’Agostino32:50

       ... you know, some people have suppressed fatty acid oxidation pathways. Others are, like, screaming fat metabolizers, you know, or, or fat or sugar metabolizers.

   25. LNLayne Norton32:58

       Yeah.

   26. DDDom D’Agostino32:59

       You know?

   27. LNLayne Norton32:59

       So but if you look at, l- like ... I remember I had a conversation with, um, with w- the re- the, the researcher, uh, Dr. Nakamura at Illinois who was doing, uh, some of that fructose, uh, stuff when I was a, when I was a first year grad student. I said, "Well, it's this, this high fructose corn syrup, this is what's causing obesity, right?" And he's like, "Well, it's easy to overconsume. You know, like if you take a, a di- uh, a soda and you drink it, you're not less hungry than you were. It's not very satiating." He said, "But if you're, if you're controlling your calories, it doesn't seem to be more lipogenic than comparable carbohydrate." You know, and I thought, remember thinking, "Well, that can't be right. I, all these people say that high fructose corn syrup is like the worst thing in the world for you." There was, there was a few studies that really changed my opinion on sugar. Now, the listeners are gonna hear this and think that I'm advocating for sugar. I'm not.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino33:49

       So you're not talking about in the, in the context of a calorie surplus-

   29. LNLayne Norton33:52

       Mm-hmm.

   30. DDDom D’Agostino33:53

       ... uh, a surplus-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   And you're obese. …

   1. LNLayne Norton45:00

      have... They've done studies on this on BMI versus insulin. Now, BMI is a... We can debate about how useful of a measure it is, but in general, it reflects body fat in the average population. Not in lifters, but in the average. Uh, BMI, by the way, for people who are listening, is a, a ratio of your, your height versus your weight that generally reflects obesity.

   2. DDDom D’Agostino45:18

      And you're obese.

   3. LNLayne Norton45:19

      I'm obese.

   4. DDDom D’Agostino45:19

      And I'm obese.

   5. LNLayne Norton45:20

      Yes, yeah. Yeah, so if you lift weights and you have-

   6. DDDom D’Agostino45:22

      Lane and I are both obese. (laughs)

   7. LNLayne Norton45:23

      Yeah, I'm, I'm morbidly obese.

   8. TFTim Ferriss45:24

      It seems so silly.

   9. LNLayne Norton45:26

      It is, but if you look at the general population who doesn't exercise, it's actually pretty darn accurate. Um, they-

   10. DDDom D’Agostino45:32

       Gets factored into your insurance though, which is not-

   11. LNLayne Norton45:35

       Yeah, it sucks for me.

   12. TFTim Ferriss45:35

       Is it really? Yours?

   13. DDDom D’Agostino45:36

       It can.

   14. TFTim Ferriss45:37

       That's hilarious.

   15. LNLayne Norton45:37

       It does. Yeah, it sucks.

   16. TFTim Ferriss45:38

       They look at you and say you're obese.

   17. LNLayne Norton45:39

       Some, some insurances will do like a waist-chest measurement, which, which helps, but anyway. (laughs) So postprandial insulin, they've looked at the relationship between people who have... Their BMIs and postprandial insulin. They find that people with higher BMI have higher postprandial insulin, but the opposite relationship does not hold true.

   18. TFTim Ferriss45:58

       Hmm.

   19. LNLayne Norton45:58

       People who have higher insulin do not necessarily have higher BMI, and they've done this in meta-analysis. So what that says is, again, that if you are obese, type 2 diabetic metabolic syndrome profile, that you have elevated levels of insulin because your body's becoming insensitive to it because of all the dysfunction that we talked about. Um, but just because you secrete higher insulin, um, doesn't mean that you're gonna have more body fat. And there was a study done actually by one of the proponents of the carbohydrate insulin, uh, hypothesis, um, that looked at what's called Mendelian randomization, where basically the idea is you have different gene variants, like we were talking about, and if... For example, like they've done this with LDL cholesterol. Uh, or sorry, yes, LDL cholesterol. We believe, most people believe that LDL cholesterol has some contribution towards heart disease. It's a pretty, I would say, it's a pretty strong... Now people can over-

   20. DDDom D’Agostino46:53

       Very controversial.

   21. LNLayne Norton46:54

       Uh, okay, so-

   22. DDDom D’Agostino46:56

       Very context dependent and, and individual.

   23. LNLayne Norton46:58

       When they look at these, these gene variants, people who have gene variants where they run lower LDL have lower rates of, of heart disease. People who are higher, higher rates of heart disease.

   24. DDDom D’Agostino47:07

       Yeah, with gene variants, yeah.

   25. LNLayne Norton47:08

       If you look at that with insulin, at best, insulin explains 10% of obesity. At, at absolute best. And that study actually showed a, a high level of bias. It was between 1% to 10%. So we're not, I'm not putting out the, the idea that maybe insulin has some effect-

   26. DDDom D’Agostino47:28

       Are you talking about fasting insulin or postprandial insulin?

   27. LNLayne Norton47:30

       Uh, overall. Overall. I, I-

   28. DDDom D’Agostino47:33

       Okay.

   29. LNLayne Norton47:33

       ... I'm guessing probably more so fasting.

   30. DDDom D’Agostino47:35

       How do they measure insulin? I mean, we, we have hemoglobin HbA1c for like a, you know-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:38

   That's a bad thing.…

   1. LNLayne Norton1:00:01

      if... We used to think adipose tissue was like a sponge, right? So if you ch- ate too much, you just threw more in there, right? Soaked up extra nutrients. And then if you started, if you were in a caloric deficit, you were losing weight, it just gave up some of its nutrients, you know, like the guy who fasted for 365 days and didn't die because he had so much o- so much fat.We now know that, uh, body fat fits every definition of a, of an-- in the endocrine system. It's a tissue, it is an actual organ because it sends out hormonal signals, it integrates hormonal signals, it talks to the brain, the hindbrain, the arcuate nucleus. It is integrated in all of metabolism in a big way. And typically, you have... The way we gain fat or lose fat is based on the fat cell size. So you have a set number of fat cells and they either expand or they shrink, pretty intuitive. Unless now, you can create more fat cells if you become so obese that the f- you literally can't stuff any more fat in there, right? So obese people have fat cell hyperplasia a lot of times. What's really interesting is people at the end of a diet, when your, when your thyroid hormone is lower, your sympathetic nervous system tone is lower, this unique hormonal melo, if you overfeed too rapidly, there's a researcher named McLean out of Colorado that actually, that showed that you can actually increase your fat cell number if you overfeed too rapidly right after a diet. Now, this was in rats, full disclosure. But it-

   2. DDDom D’Agostino1:01:29

      That's a bad thing.

   3. LNLayne Norton1:01:30

      ... it was fascinating stuff.

   4. DDDom D’Agostino1:01:31

      It's hyperplasia. You're increasing the total.

   5. LNLayne Norton1:01:32

      So now you're increasing your body's... But it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

   6. DDDom D’Agostino1:01:36

      Right.

   7. LNLayne Norton1:01:37

      Your body's like, "Shit, we had this famine. We don't want to deal with this shit again. We want to make sure that we can store as much stuff as possible, so we're going to create some new... This dude is rapidly overfeeding. We're going to create some new fat cells to make sure we're not going to miss any of this energy. We're going to capture every single bit of it."

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

      I like what you're saying and, and it makes a s- a lot of sense. You're, but you're talking about weight loss and weight gain, but you were specifically discussing hormonal changes in the body due to the ketogenic diet that are beneficial, and that these hormonal changes and the changes to the way that the brain functions would be, uh, a benefit of following that diet versus just working on calories.

   9. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:13

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's that, that book I gave you, The Complete Book of Ketones (laughs) by Dr. Marian-

   10. LNLayne Norton1:02:18

       Ah.

   11. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:18

       Yeah. So, uh, so that-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

       Well, you know it's ... I don't think it's actually out yet, but, uh... Contest prep guide.

   13. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:24

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:24

       You want to get jacked, look at that.

   15. LNLayne Norton1:02:26

       (laughs)

   16. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:27

       So ketones are-

   17. LNLayne Norton1:02:29

       Hands have been on there.

   18. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:30

       ... a, uh... (laughs) They are, sort of by definition, have a metabolic superiority as a, as a fuel source, you know. And they readily cross the blood-brain barrier. They can largely replace glucose as a primary energy source in your brain under periods of fasting, uh, or ketogenic diet. So that, that offers a lot of advantages to someone dieting, because it makes you resilient. Like the guy that fasted 382 days, his glucose was, was like 30 and dipped down to 20. Uh, that would be universally fatal for most people, but his ketones were elevated, so he did not feel hunger. So that, that is tru-... Like the Cahill studies, George Cahill, uh, studies at Harvard Medical School, where they fasted subjects for 40 days, they injected insulin to increase-

   19. LNLayne Norton1:03:18

       What IRB did that get past? (laughs)

   20. DDDom D’Agostino1:03:21

       Yeah. (laughs) I remember presenting this at Layne's camp a while back, uh, and I... When I, you know, read this study, I had to call him on the phone. He was living... He passed away in 2012, but we had a number of conversations before he passed away. And I was amazed that he got ethics approval to do that, because it's basically like killing someone, injecting 20 IUs of insulin. But what was fascinating, that they were asymptomatic for hypoglycemia at a level of hypoglycemia that's typically universally fatal, and they were also, uh, very cognitively lucid. And that was a dramatic demonstration. At the time, it was thought that, you know, the brain could only use glucose. So this is a paradigm shift in the way, uh, we understand sort of fuel utilization, particularly in the brain. So that has major... And I can go kind of on in talking about the different applications of the ketogenic diet, which I did on the first podcast, but from a, uh, perspective of someone dieting to lose weight, dieting as a lifestyle, doing intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet makes intermittent fasting much easier because your brain's adapted to it. That, for me, had tremendous, uh, practical applications that allowed me, I feel, to excel through academia. I was able to do a lot more work, not get hungry. And, uh, and, you know, Layne and I, we haven't trained in a while, but when we train, I re-... Last time-

   21. LNLayne Norton1:04:41

       Is it based? Is it based?

   22. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:42

       ... we did deadlifts. I mean, we were both deadlifting 675 for reps. And I was on, ac- actually, I was on the, the, uh, the classical ketogenic diet then.

   23. LNLayne Norton1:04:51

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:51

       That's when I was just doing it. And it, you know, I would-

   25. LNLayne Norton1:04:54

       Classical versus?

   26. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:55

       ... like 80 to 90% fat.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:04:57

       Super high fat. Super high fat.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:57

       And I was doing that for about a year. And, um, you know, deadlifting like three times my body weight for, for reps, you know, uh, and it didn't hurt me. I can't say that would be the case for everyone, but I also titrated the calories in that. I wasn't really at a calorie deficit. I, I lost a little bit of weight, so I guess by definition-

   29. LNLayne Norton1:05:15

       Yeah. So-

   30. DDDom D’Agostino1:05:15

       ... I was at a calorie deficit.

Episode duration: 2:59:44