Build More Muscle, Live Longer & Look Amazing - Dr Gabrielle Lyon

1. 0:00 – 4:17

   Life Quality Depends on Muscle Health

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You say the quality of your life is a direct correlation to your muscle health. Why?

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon0:06

      Because muscle is the organ of longevity, and your capacity to show up and execute anything and everything that you want in your life depends on your strength. And in order to build physical strength, it requires mental strength. It requires fortitude. It requires resiliency. And right now, we have this conversation about longevity and health span. What does that actually mean? That actually relates to the tangible plasticity of skeletal muscle. And by the way, you know, we were kind of joking around, podcasters in Austin, but when you think about skeletal muscle, you often think about bro science. You think about the big dudes. Skeletal muscle is so much more than that, and in fact, the health of your life depends on the health and the quality of your tissue.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:54

      Interesting. Obviously, the by-product of building muscle, uh, discipline, resilience, being able to overcome hard things, consistency, motivation, so on and so forth, somebody quite easily could say, "Well, I get that with distance running. I get that with rowing. I get that with doing yoga." What is it specifically about muscle building that is important for longevity?

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:21

      Well, when you think about skeletal muscle, there's, there's a couple of things that you have to think about. Skeletal muscle is the primary site for glucose disposal. Right now, if you look at the CDC, and they'll give you a list of causes of death, it'll put, uh, cardiovascular disease, it'll put cancer, it'll put diabetes. It won't put obesity on there, and it won't put lack of skeletal muscle. It'll also have Alzheimer's. What you'll see is that these diseases, at the root, all have its place in skeletal muscle, first and foremost. So if you care about any of the top eight or nine causes of death, you have to care about skeletal muscle. Now, what's the next level to that? Could endurance running be great? Yes, it's amazing. Is yoga great? Sure, absolutely. You have to also train for strength and train for life. Having skeletal muscle is like your body armor. We've all had friends, family members that have gotten sick. If they were amazing in endurance training, but had very little skeletal muscle, what is going to protect them in those moments of catabolic crisis? And we don't age, Chris, we don't age linearly. It's not as if there's this slow decline. What happens is there's an insult, and then there is a rapid decline, and then depending on your capacity to step back up is based on your ability to have healthy skeletal muscle, in part. It's called catabolic crisis.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:48

      What, what do you mean when you say insult or catabolic crisis?

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon2:51

      So for example, if you fall and you're injured or you get sick and you have pneumonia for a week, when you're younger, your ability to get back up to baseline to be more physically active is more flexible. As you age, we've all seen it. As you age, an individual, um, grandmother breaks a hip. She'll never be able to rise back up to her baseline level of functioning. Potentially she could, but as she gets older, the ability to return to a more youthful baseline decreases, and that has to be trained for. You have to be able to be strong. You do have to be able to build muscle, and skeletal muscle is interesting. The skeletal muscle is a nutrient-sensing organ. Skeletal muscle is an organ system. It's a nutrient-sensing organ system that senses the quality of the diet, and specifically these amino acids, specifically leucine. I'm sure we'll get into it, but that efficiency goes down as we age. If you train and eat and do the things you did in your youth, you're not evolving. Um, you know, there's, you know, mental evolution. There's all kind of more esoteric evolution, but you also have to keep up with an evolving physiological process and a biological process, and that's where focusing on hypertrophy and strength... Obviously, they're not the same, but focusing on skeletal muscle as a tissue as it relates to medicine is paramount.

2. 4:17 – 10:33

   What is Skeletal Muscle Doing to Our Health Span?

   1. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon4:17

   2. CWChris Williamson4:17

      So I understand definitely from the literal physical body armor perspective, somebody falls, if they have more muscle that is supporting around their joints, it means that there's going to be less atrophy. It means they're going to be able to get back to function more quickly. But you went through this whole litany of other things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, uh, you know, heart disease. Talk to me about the mechanism of what having skeletal muscle is doing that helps to mitigate the onset of that or delay it.

   3. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon4:49

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson4:49

      What, what, what's skeletal muscle doing to our health span?

   5. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon4:52

      Well, can I start with, uh, just a very short story, a very short story to bring the listener in? Because they're thinking, "Dude, Chris is jacked. He's bringing in these tough big dudes talking about muscle." You've had my friends-

   6. CWChris Williamson5:04

      That's correct. Everyone is thinking that.

   7. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon5:05

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson5:05

      Everyone that's listening, they can't stop thinking it. They try-

   9. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon5:08

      They, they can't. Look at you. They can't.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:09

       ... and they can't, can't.

   11. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon5:10

       You've had Stan Efferding. You've had Chris Blomstedt, people that I just know and love. Let's talk about muscle from a different perspective, and I promise I'll make the story short. I did, um, my fellowship in nutritional sciences and geriatrics, and I did that in, uh, at Wash U. For those, uh, the listeners that don't know, it's a very rigorous program. It's considered the Harvard of the Midwest. It's very challenging. And I actually didn't want to do geriatric medicine. The deal was, in order for me to study nutritional sciences and obesity medicine, I had to get funded. And the way that I was gonna get funded was through geriatric training. So during the day, I was working with individuals that were over the age of 65, and they were, the majority, not healthy. Um, on the Alzheimer's unit, in nursing homes, end of life, palliative care, it gets extremely depressing when you're seeing 30 patients a day, talking to their families about what their wishes are, et cetera, right? And I think any doctor would attest to that.... and then early mornings, you know, when you're a fellow you, uh, have very minimal quality of life, especially if you're a combined research fellow. Waking up at 4:00 in the morning, doing fat and muscle biopsies, and then in the evening doing cognitive testing. Um, and I fell in love with one of the participants, and she was in her mid-50s, a mom of three, and she was like so many women that we know. She always put herself last. She yo-yo dieted, Weight Watchers, you name it. She did everything, every single thing that we told her was the right thing to do. I imaged her brain, and her brain looked like the beginning of an Alzheimer's brain. And I realized that we failed her. We failed her. The medical community had failed her. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. I needed to find a solution that how was it that we were giving this information, um, move more, eat less, follow a food guide pyramid, how were we not getting this together? What is happening? And then I started thinking as I'm rounding in the nursing homes and I'm seeing these patients and I'm seeing them die and I'm watching kind of this spectrum, and I realized that it wasn't that they were overfat. It was that they were under-muscled, and that we have been trying to fix the wrong paradigm for the last 50 years. And that the diseases and the disease process that I was seeing in, we'll call her Betty, was beginning in her 30s. Like, this began in her 30s. And this constant iteration and plethora of information of focusing on what we have to lose, the "obesity epidemic." It's not an obesity epidemic. Obesity is a symptom of unhealthy skeletal muscle. Obesity, and like you mentioned, Alzheimer's, the things that ride along with it have roots in skeletal muscle decades and decades before they become an issue. And I wanted to frame that for you because that's what's critical to understand. We have a whole population focused on what they have to lose. We have over 40% of the population focused on the wrong thing. We are setting themselves, th- we are setting them up for failure. It's not an obesity problem. Skeletal muscle is at the core. Skeletal muscle, skeletal muscle insulin resistance. There's some great data, um, that one of the hallmark studies came out of Yale looking at 18-year-old ind- college students that had no outward signs of insulin resistance. When they became sedentary, pathology in skeletal muscle started. Skeletal muscle is a primary site for glucose disposal. You know, I know that we've got a lot of mutual friends. When they're running and doing a, a million miles, skeletal muscle, where they're gonna put their carbohydrates is, it's gonna be stored as glycogen in skeletal muscle. People talk all about carbohydrates. Nutrition is more electric than probably religion. Skeletal muscle is, again, this site of carbohydrate disposal. It is a site of fatty acid oxidation. We have 40 million people on statins. Why not focus on the health of skeletal muscle prior? We have, um, a mitochondrial density in skeletal muscle. When skeletal muscle contracts, it releases myokines. Skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ system, interfaces with brain for neurogenesis, you name it. Skeletal muscle interfaces with the immune system, uh, and in multiple different ways. It releases interleukin-6, which is a myokine, the most famous one. Also releases glutamine. Contracting skeletal muscle releases glutamine, which directly feed lymphocytes, cells of the immune system. So, if we are truly going to change the paradigm of health, we have to frame the question correctly. So, that's what skeletal muscle does. And then, of course, you look good naked, and all the other dating things that you-

   12. CWChris Williamson10:12

       (laughs)

   13. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon10:12

       ... will be talking about. There's all that other stuff, okay? So there's look good naked, and then be strong and capable and age well and be able to do the things that you love so that you can show up for the life that you've created in a strong and capable way.

   14. CWChris Williamson10:31

       I often think about my

3. 10:33 – 19:50

   The Relationship Between Fat & Muscle

   1. CWChris Williamson10:33

      kind of heritage training in my 20s, and how I was 18 years old and I got to the Center for Sporting Excellence at Newcastle University, and I was, I think I was about 63 kilos, which is just not heavy. I'm built to be very small. I'm built to be very, very slight. And, um, I remember the first day, it was about two and a half years later, I hit 70 kilos, and I was like, "I am massive." Uh, and (laughs) now I walk around at like a, a portly 88, and I'm like, "Oh, God, I wish I was 70." It was so much easier to move around when I was 70. But I think about the fact that the reason I started training is because I wanted to be more attractive to girls and I wanted to feel more powerful. I wanted to look and feel like a man, right? Even though you've still got the body, if you're an, like, ectomorphy kind of guy at 18 years old, you've still got the body of a teenager. You don't have the body of a man. And I didn't want that. I wanted to change.

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon11:23

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:24

      But it's kind of like, um, come for the gains, stay for the longevity, right? That you arrive because of how it makes you look and how other people respond-

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon11:34

      Mm.

   5. CWChris Williamson11:35

      ... to you and the progress that you see in the mirror, but it seems, as you're saying here, that downstream from this, the benefits that you get from a physiological perspective, from a longevity, health span perspective, uh, are pretty drastic. So, if it's the case, right, if there is an unseen mechanism which we could be using, a pathway physiologically which would mitigate people from getting ill and help us to defeat disease more effectively and blow off glucose and, and i- improve insulin sensitivity, all of the things that you've just listed, why is it the case that there is such an obsession with BMI, with losing weight, with reducing fat? I spoke to Stan Effening. Stan Effening said on this very podcast, he was talking about the pivot between, um, moving from sugar to aspartame, uh, aspartame, uh, on, um, uh, diet drinks, and he said, "What people don't consider is, the sheer impact of the weight loss itself will be so beneficial that any increase that you are concerned, even though the concern about..."... like, aspartame is, is, like, 8,000 Cokes a day you'd have to drink in order for you to hit some sort of threshold that would be dangerous. Even him, the strongest bodybuilder on the planet, was telling me weight loss is very important. So, uh, t- talk to me about this relationship between obesity, like being overfat and under-muscled, as you call it-

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon12:54

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson12:54

      ... like, what, what's this relationship? Where is it important, and what, what kind of gets missed off in this conversation?

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon12:59

      Well, first thing I think it's really important to recognize is that we don't directly measure skeletal muscle mass routinely. Again, this flies in the face of, have we been asking the correct question? And in my mind, the answer is no. We use a DEXA, which is a dual X-ray. We've all heard of DEXA. And that actually measures, uh, bone and fat, and then there's lean body mass, and lean body mass includes everything. We've been directly measuring adipose tissue and bone, but not skeletal muscle, first and foremost. So we have to recognize that when we talk about skeletal muscle, when we talk about how much, w- we haven't had a consistent way of looking at it, just one that i- which we will eventually. So there is, uh, something called D3 creatine, which will eventually come out. It's a tagged... it's a deuterated creatine. It's tagged. Uh, you'll take a pill. You'll be able to pee on a stick and see how much muscle mass you have. But up until that point, CT, MRI are not really feasible for everybody b- to be doing, and especially tracking over time. So the big, the big picture is we haven't been directly measuring skeletal muscle mass. We have estimations at best. Secondly, we measure body fat because that seems to be, at a certain level, we know that that can cause implications, whether it's 30% or more body fat. We know that there is an increase in infl- inflammation, potentially triglycerides, hypertension, uh, et cetera. That is important to know. But again, this just goes in the way of thinking of looking at th- wait until a problem comes and we know that this is the problem. There is data to support that it actually, it is the loss of skeletal muscle versus the increase in body fat that may be more detrimental. And again, um, I think that we're gonna start to see an emergence of more data as we begin to directly measure skeletal muscle mass, but you will see that the survivability of an individual, they will have a greater survivability the more healthy skeletal muscle mass they have.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:06

      Do, uh... uh, you know, whatever it is, 50% of Americans are obese. Maybe more than 50% of Americans are obese or overweight. Presumably, someone that has to carry around that much surplus fat-

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon15:19

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:19

       ... has to... if you were to lean them out, they must have an okay bit of muscle underneath. Surely, is that not the way it works?

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon15:25

       Um, well, in the data it says that they have more muscle, and I'm so glad you brought this up. Have you ever had a rib eye steak?

   13. CWChris Williamson15:32

       Many times.

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon15:32

       Many times. Have you ever had a filet?

   15. CWChris Williamson15:34

       Yes.

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon15:35

       Okay. Um, individuals that have obesity, not all of them, but typically what happens is you get fat in- infiltrated into skeletal muscle, intramyocellular fat. While an individual may have more muscle, it talks nothing about the quality of that tissue. You want your tissue to look like a filet. And actually, when we talk about pathology of tissue, what skeletal muscle really requires is flux. It requires activity. It requires stimulation, not just walking. I mean, walking is great, but people are, are saying, "Well, just walk. You'll do that." It's not frankly enough, um, but it's that flux, that utilization of glycogen. You know, fatty acids are used primarily by skeletal muscle at rest, which is interesting. The health of skeletal muscle is determined by its activity. While an individual could be obese and have potentially more muscle, one has to ask the question, is it healthy skeletal muscle?

   17. CWChris Williamson16:33

       Mm. That's interesting. Yeah, 'cause I remember seeing this, uh... it's, uh, an illustration of a, a normal-sized person and a really, really overweight person, and it's an X-ray of the inside-

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon16:46

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:46

       ... of them, and you see that the bones that both people's bodies are scaffolded by are exactly the same, and yet you look at the amount of mass that is scaffolded upon them-

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon16:55

       Mm.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:55

       ... and you go, "Wow, that is crazy to think that somebody that's, you know, 500 pounds or 600 pounds is only being held up by the same buttresses that a person that's 120 pounds is."

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon17:09

       Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think what's so fascinating is that it goes to the, the point that this is very plastic tissue. You can change it. It's very, uh, pliable, and you literally can add mass to an organ system in a healthy way. Last time I checked, you can't grow your liver. I'm not talking about alcohol. But by attention and awareness, you can make very specific changes that have a measurable outcome. And 50 per-

   23. CWChris Williamson17:42

       Yeah.

   24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon17:42

       And by the way, Chris, 50% of Americans don't exercise.

   25. CWChris Williamson17:46

       Yeah, well, g- explain, given that we know however many percent of people are overweight, so on and so forth-

   26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon17:51

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson17:51

       ... what's the stats, when you look at it from your lens, right, the bros' lens-

   28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon17:56

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson17:56

       ... what is it (laughs) , what is it that people are or are not doing when it comes to protein intake, resistance training, muscle mass, uh, grip strength, ability to pick something up? Is it like some ungodly percentage of fathers can't lift a, a daughter after-

   30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon18:11

       Yeah.
4. 19:50 – 25:13

   How Mother & Father’s Fitness Impacts Offspring

   1. CWChris Williamson19:50

      I think I read in your book, something about the relationship between a mother's fitness and the health of her children?

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon19:55

      Yes, yes. Ladies, train. Women need to train, and you need to also continue your activity while pregnant. You're not just departing and deploying behaviors, but there is some epigenetic change. The healthier and more fit the mother is, the better their offspring will be.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:15

      Wow. Yeah, what, um, what's the 30,000-foot view of, uh, training while pregnant?

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon20:22

      Well, first of all, they say continue to do what you do. There's very little data and literature on training while pregnant. I can tell you what I did, and I can tell you what I tell my patients to do. Throughout my pregnancy, I swung kettlebells. I lifted heavy things. I wasn't trying to do a one-rep max, but I was incredibly active. By the way, I also had hyperemesis gravidum. Do you know what that is?

   5. CWChris Williamson20:46

      That sounds like some Egyptian pharaoh. No.

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon20:48

      (laughs) Something that you will never experience and thank goodness, it's basically where you're throwing up all day long. I mean, it is-

   7. CWChris Williamson20:56

      Okay, yeah.

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon20:56

      ... impressive. It is aggressive. It is a, something that they don't sell you on pregnancy in the beginning. But number one, you have to understand that you're going to feel bad, so you might as well train anyway. I felt terrible. I would swing kettlebell, throw up, swing kettlebell, throw up.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:10

      (laughs)

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon21:11

       I mean, it was a sight to see. Man, when I went into the gym, uh, instead of having a water bottle, I had, like, a- a barf bag.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:17

       Sick bucket. Fantastic.

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon21:18

       It was just, it was the worst, yeah. Uh, I think they lost a lot of gym memberships that month.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:21

       I bet they did.

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon21:22

       Yeah, you know.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:22

       Doctor over the far side, hurling everywhere. So, is there anything, uh, are there any movements, uh, intensity levels that you would say, you know, there's a- a girl that's listening or a guy that's having a kid with her, and it's like, "Darling, don't do what, uh, like, d- don't try and pull sumo." I don't know. Like, is there something that you would try and, uh, avoid people from doing? Hand them to burpees maybe? I don't know.

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon21:44

       I mean, a lot of... Yeah. I mean, it depends, right? So they'll s- they'll say that, um, activity and walking and moving and lifting will actually can induce labor later on. Again, obviously, people have to figure out how it's going with their pregnancy and what their individual provider recommends. But listen, giving birth is- is like a sport. So doing squats, doing those things, it's very difficult to deadlift, uh, pregnant and swing kettlebells. But you should be able to carry. You should be able to move. Um, and again, it just depends on the individual. But my best advice is be fit going into pregnancy and continue it.

   17. CWChris Williamson22:18

       Is there anything that you've looked at to do with dad fertility? Uh, let's say that there's a- a guy and a girl who want to get pregnant. A bunch of my friends have had, what do they call it, conception moons, which is kind of like a baby moon, but it's before. It's like for, like, "We're gonna go-" One of, one of them was really, really keen to give his daughter a French name, so went to Bordeaux in an attempt to conceive. Didn't happen. I'm pretty sure it happened when they were on, in Nashville or something on the way back, like all right, hey-

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon22:47

       In, yeah, in the airport on the plane.

   19. CWChris Williamson22:48

       ... call a kid, call a Kid Rock. Um, so what about for dads? You know, I- I've heard a lot of my friends, they'll go, like, um, dialing in the diets, adjusting these sorts of things. Is there anything that you've seen for improving fertility, improving the quality of- of sperm for men?

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon23:05

       Yeah, certainly diet plays a role. Diet plays a role in fertility and these, this is also multifactorial. It's not one thing. You can't just have a good diet and all of a sudden your, um, you don't even know your- your children's names. Like, that is not happening. But I would say that the obvious would be have a good diet, have foods that are rich in zinc and proteins. The other thing that I would say is we do know that the better body composition an individual has, the better their sperm potentially, the health of their sperm is. Resistance training is, plays a role in that. Um, the other aspect that I will say, 'cause I'm a physician, is Clomid or enclomiphene. I don't know if you've heard of that. So selective estrogen receptor modulator, very safe, been, it's been used for quite some time. It's typically used in women, but we use it a lot for men. Um, and it's... it can help improve sperm volume.

   21. CWChris Williamson23:59

       How long can guys run enclomiphene for before you get, uh, before you would start to be like, "Yeah, it's time- time to back it off now, mate"?

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon24:08

       You could, the way that there's- there's multiple ways in which, uh, you could run it, but we run it for, we'll run it for 25 days on and five days off.

   23. CWChris Williamson24:17

       Mm-hmm.

   24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon24:18

       And we could run it for every day. Um, so my husband actually, I don't know if you know this, but my husband was a SEAL for 10 years and now is a urology resident. So he works at Baylor and-

   25. CWChris Williamson24:28

       Right.

   26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon24:29

       ... he's in urology, which is where men's health was born. So Lipschultz, have you heard of Lipschultz?

   27. CWChris Williamson24:34

       No.

   28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon24:34

       What? You got to get him on. Or Mo Hedara. These guys are major in andrology. These were the guys that created, you know, where we talk about TRT, these are the guys that created this medical practice. And, um...... I, I could say a really inappropriate joke when I'm on.

   29. CWChris Williamson24:52

       Ah, okay. Right. So-

   30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon24:54

       Yeah.
5. 25:13 – 33:44

   The Religious Fervour of Diet Culture

   1. CWChris Williamson25:13

      It's interesting to me to think about this pivot now from what has been quite an obsessive diet culture for 40 years, 30 years, something like that?

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon25:23

      At least, at least.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:25

      Yeah.

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon25:26

      At least.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:26

      And now thinking, well, what are the reasons why, what are the reasons why the diet culture is so much more fervent and, and religious, as you mentioned, compared with training culture? Like, the 5x5 and the 5-3-1 and the GVT and the push-pull legs and the five-day split guys aren't-

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon25:48

      They're all friends. They're all hooking up.

   7. CWChris Williamson25:49

      ... like, dueling it out on the internet. The only people that they all hate together are CrossFitters, right? So that's fine. But it, it's very interesting to me, and I wonder whether this will become a battleground as more people plant a flag because they're very passionate about, "My training modality is an important part of who I am as a person," and it's, I think, a big chunk of the nutrition, uh, argument comes from almost like a fear of death. A lot of people that are into this are doing it-

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon26:17

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson26:17

      ... because they want to improve their health span, improve their longevity, and me attacking your approach when it comes to a nutrition foundation is kind of the same as me saying, "You think you're going to live a long time, but you're not, and I know that you're not." So it's, it hits very, very deep and I don't know whether people have that same amount of existential attachment to their training modality, but if-

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon26:42

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:42

       ... what you're saying here, muscle-centered medicine continues to grow as it has been, it's gonna get to the stage where you are gonna have r- religious fights over what split should we do.

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon26:56

       You're absolutely right, and I think that it's interesting when you think about training and you think about nutrition, part of the reason why people, uh, again, this is just my opinion, are so at odds with each other is because they are unaware of the lens at which they're viewing something through. It's almost as if they're pawns. So if you look back at the history, let's say you look back at the history of nutritional sciences, which by the way isn't that old, you look back at the history, and after the Great Depression moving into World War II when the backs, the Americans, their backs were against the wall and we're going to lose the country, they drafted the first million men, and the first million men were unfit for war. 38%... I'm sorry, 38% of the first million drafted were unfit for war. They said things like they had flabby muscles, they had poor eyesight because of vitamin A, they didn't have any teeth. Obviously because of the Great Depression, there was a lot of undernourishment. This became a real threat. This was the first time that the US really identified that nutrition was a real threat. They issued a series of, I don't wanna say propaganda, but a way of educating, and what they issued was w- in one hand they said, "Are you going to support Uncle Sam? And in order to support Uncle Sam, here's what you're gonna do." And what they said was, "You're going to eat high quality proteins. You're going to eat liver and eggs and beef and dairy because you need to have strong muscles." This is in ni- this is in the '40s. No idea. They said, "You're gonna minimize processed foods and you're going to eat, uh, fruits and vegetables and even have some, uh, like, uh, it was like sodium electrolytes." They, I was really shocked when I, when I saw that part. And then they said, "Are you gonna help Hitler?" And th- and they showed an individual who was skinny and scrawny and, "Here, here is the way you're going to help Hitler. You're going to not eat high quality protein. You're going to eat processed foods. You're going to eat white bread." In the '40s, they established these guidelines and they started this whole campaign about how we could be stronger and more capable and vibrant and courageous and that's what we needed. Then, obviously, all these high quality foods were shipped overseas to the soldiers. There started to, um, for need, uh, increase in processed foods. You have Sylvester Graham and John Kellogg. Sylvester Graham was a minister. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he was kind of the move, the, the godfather of this what you would call vegan movement, and he started to talk about the idea that in order to be a moral person, you needed to reduce any kind of animal products, you shouldn't drink, you shouldn't have sex, you should eat very plainly. And he got, um, a really influential follower, and that was, uh, Kellogg, who then made granola and a graham cracker. And this-

   13. CWChris Williamson30:02

       What's the story, how much legitimacy is there around the Kellogg origin, trying to soy the men, cook them into low testosterone? Give me your, put your tinfoil hat on and let's go, let's go full-

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon30:15

       Okay, fine. Well, I mean, I wasn't-

   15. CWChris Williamson30:16

       ... Alex Jones on it.

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon30:16

       I wasn't around at that time. (laughs) I wasn't there. But I think what happened was there was an early recognition that high quality foods were imperative to health and wellness, and when we were gonna lose the country, this became a high priority. Then, obviously, we have a nation to feed and ultimately a global, a global industry and a, just a global feeding zone, right? We have to do those things. Processed foods, which are under two dis- different jurisdictions and commodities in these whole foods, um, require money, they get money, they make money....whoever has the money controls the narrative. So whatever the agenda is, whoever has the most fortitude behind that gets to control the narrative. And this is kind of circling back to the question of why is it so crazy? I wake up and I choose violence, Chris. I post something and I go, "Oh man, I cannot wait just, just..." I... And I have to do it. See, we talked offline before and if you have a certain skillset, then you have a responsibility to share that. Is that true?

   17. CWChris Williamson31:24

       I think so.

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon31:25

       I've been a physician since his- since 2006. I've seen a lot of life and I've seen a lot of death. And so why I even started talking about this is because I saw so much misinformation, and here I am as a geriatrician at the bedside of like, oh, signing this death certi- certificate and then this death certificate. And all these people are talking about how, you know, going plant-based is gonna save the world and all this other BS and not thinking about, uh, how that is going to influence the midlife people and what that end result is going to be.

   19. CWChris Williamson31:58

       What is the impact of going plant-based on people that are no longer 23?

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon32:07

       I think that we are going to see an epidemic of osteoporosis and sarcopenia like we've never seen before.

   21. CWChris Williamson32:13

       What is that for people that don't know?

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon32:15

       Uh, sarcopenia is a loss of skeletal mass and function, and osteoporosis is bone density. And could you be young and plant-based? Could you get all the protein? Again, this is a very, um, just like a very small perspective, this idea that plant and animal foods, that it's all just about protein. Protein we talk about generically, but protein, that's 20 different amino acids, nine of which are essential. Those nine essential, those are individual nutrients. These things are not interchangeable. We're not just talking about dietary protein. We're talking about food as a food matrix and the things that ride along with it. For example, if you're eating high-quality protein, you're getting creatine, you're getting carnitine, you're getting taurine, you're getting L-serine, iron, B12, iron. These things are necessary for young children and women. And as you age, it's not like your appetite increases. The lower your quality of protein or the lower your diet is in protein, the higher it needs to be animal-based because you're not just eating for dietary protein, you're eating for other nutrients. And so what do I think? You could be plant-based and healthy. I think that you can... I think that the body is very adaptable. I think we're gonna start to see, um, ways in which maybe the gut microbiome plays a role. But do I think it is an ideal diet for an aging individual? Absolutely not. I don't. And this is based on experience.

6. 33:44 – 40:18

   Principles to Improve Body Composition

   1. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon33:44

   2. CWChris Williamson33:44

      Uh, looking at the, the way to improve your body composition, what are the principles of optimizing body composition in your opinion?

   3. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon33:54

      Well, nobody likes to hear this, but you track your money and you track your speed, right? Say yes, Chris.

   4. CWChris Williamson34:01

      Sometimes.

   5. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon34:03

      (laughs) Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. You gotta track your food. It's just a reality. I know people wanna do intuitive eating. I'm sorry guys. Just get a sense of what you're actually doing and it's annoying but if you have goals and you know that you need to hit those, you have to be able to track. Like-

   6. CWChris Williamson34:17

      Okay, what is your... I'm gonna stop you and get tactical each step of the way. What is the most seamless way that you have found to track food? Because it's not MyFitnessPal and I will fight you if you say so.

   7. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon34:28

      (laughs) So what I do is different than what I think is the easiest thing.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:32

      Right. What's the easiest thing?

   9. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon34:34

      Um, Cro- like Cronometer, just an app. It-

   10. CWChris Williamson34:38

       What's your favorite? What do you tell your clients to use?

   11. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon34:40

       Cronometer.

   12. CWChris Williamson34:41

       Why?

   13. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon34:42

       Because it has just like nearly everything in there. All these different nutrients. Again, typically the, the label only has 14 different nutrients.

   14. CWChris Williamson34:51

       Is that... Is Cronometer the one where you can take a picture of your food or you can speech it in and say like, "One, uh, slice of toast with three eggs, hard-boiled, blah, blah," and it-

   15. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:01

       Well, again, I haven't been using it because I, I didn't t-

   16. CWChris Williamson35:03

       Oh.

   17. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:03

       I didn't tell you what I do.

   18. CWChris Williamson35:05

       What do you do?

   19. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:06

       I, I haven't used it in the last three months.

   20. CWChris Williamson35:06

       I wanna know, I wanna know what this, this Tapped into the Matrix version is.

   21. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:10

       It is called pen and paper.

   22. CWChris Williamson35:12

       Oh God, that's lame.

   23. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:14

       Oh no. Are you kidding?

   24. CWChris Williamson35:15

       Super lame.

   25. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:15

       What are you talking about? You can write it and then you can look at it. I'm old school. I'm old school, man.

   26. CWChris Williamson35:20

       Yeah, I can tell. Oh.

   27. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:21

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson35:21

       Okay, so, uh-

   29. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon35:23

       I write it down, but then I know exactly what I'm doing and also, by the way, my food diversity is not huge. And you're gonna be talking to our good friend Bedros Keuilian. I want you to ask him what he had for lunch three weeks ago on a Wednesday. He'll be able to tell you.

   30. CWChris Williamson35:38

       Is it because it's the same thing that he had for lunch every other day?
7. 40:18 – 51:35

   How to Increase Protein Intake

   1. CWChris Williamson40:18

      it comes to people who say, "Dr. Lyon, that sounds great, but I get to 90 grams of protein a day and I'm just sick," what do you advise to your clients or what are your best hacks for increasing that protein intake? Are there any recipes, any food types, any... What is it, what is it that you give to people?

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon40:41

      Well, the question is, why are they really struggling to get that? It is very satiating. You know, it does influence GLP and PYY, gut hormones. The question is, why are they so full? Is it because potentially their metabolism, they've had some kind of adaptive thermogenesis, or is it that they just don't have a protein appetite? So, the first thing that we do is we get a sense of what their total calories are. That's the first thing that you need to do. You have to know what you are ingesting. Again, like you said, what you measure, changes, tracks, blah, blah, blah. Understanding that hitting that first meal of the day and hitting it early on... Again, a lot of people talk about fasting and pushing that fasting window later. I think that there is something to be said for eating after you are coming out of an overnight fast. Your muscle is primed to be stimulated, whether it's an hour to two hours after you wake up and then stopping eating later on. So, you begin to retrain your body through feeding patterns. The fastest way to increase dietary protein would be a protein shake, whether it's a whey protein shake, that's my favorite, or even a whey concentrate. So, it doesn't have to be an isolate, a concentrate. Concentrate has immunoglobulins, lactoferrin, alpha-lactalbumin, other... Again, thinking about food more than just the macronutrients. I think the old school way... And, you know, uh, we could tease Stan about this. He's kind of evolved more into the more nutrient-dense foods, but the old school way is just thinking about the macronutrients. The new school way is thinking about the other low molecular weight molecules and things like anthocyanins and, and other compounds that have metabolomic properties, nutriti- uh, other intermediate properties.

   3. CWChris Williamson42:18

      One of the things that I used to do was... I got into fasting when David Sinclair first came on the scene probably five years ago-ish. I went to go out to see him in Boston, and he tells me all of this amazing stuff. And I'd... You know, I still think there's a lot of there there with it. But I noticed that my composition suffered. I didn't... I felt soft. Uh, I looked soft comparatively. Um, and one of the other thing. I've been through every...... bro science diet. I did carb backloading, then I went into carb night, then I did skip loading. Did you ever do skip loading? Do you remember that one?

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon42:55

      No, this is impressive. I've never even heard of that one.

   5. CWChris Williamson42:57

      Right. So skip loading was go carb free throughout the week, and then on a Sunday eat as many carbs as possible. It was advised to try and have a full box of cereal just for breakfast.

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon43:07

      Uh-huh.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:07

      And it was like, "If you can get yourself to, like, a kilo of carbs by the end of the day," that was considered a win. Um, and it just... E- every single different one. What I realized was I'd kind of inculcated this, um, sacrifice/reward dynamic. I often cheat. If I'm gonna cheat on my diet, I'll do it on an evening time, very rarely in the morning. Right? I think this is quite common. You know, how many people are picking up a Mars bar first thing in the morning, but they'll maybe do it on an evening, their willpower's depleted, they're in the house, whatever, whatever. But my sleep is really, really negatively impacted when I eat even within, like, two and a half hours of going to bed, which is awful because out here in Austin everyone wants to go for dinner at 8:00 at night. I'm like, "Right, okay, dude." But by the time I've finished eating, that's 9:00, which means that I can maybe get some good sleep by midnight, and it's a Tuesday, right? So, yeah, I- I'm- I'm coming round to the idea that, um, still, you know, ha- have the window if you want, do like a- a 16:8 if that's what you like the sound of, or, like, you know, even an 18:6. But I think that pivoting that window a little bit earlier and then trying to maybe cut off calories at 6:00 PM at night, something like that sounds like a- sounds like a pretty good way to start it.

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon44:16

      I think it's a- it's a great way to start. And then understanding the next macronutrient that I think about is... Well, I... Before I say that, I... Number one, the data supports that the 24-hour dietary protein intake is most important, meaning, um, how much protein you have during the day, right? Within a 24-hour period. I would say that protein distribution matters, and there is, uh, kind of cr- two schools of thought. One is that just make sure that you're getting it all in, it doesn't matter how you do it. I would say if you believe that, then you wouldn't believe any, uh, meal distribution study or any study that indicates muscle protein synthesis happens because it happens at that first meal. For the- all- the majority of the literature that I've ever seen, it's always about this first meal, which in my mind means that a meal distribution matters. It's not just about this 24-hour period where you're just having one meal in the day. So, for the listener who's thinking, "Gosh, you know..." They're thinking two things right now. They're thinking, "Does Kris really have 19% body fat?" And then the second thing that they're thinking is, "Well, how am I actually going to move the needle if I wanna lose weight?" And I would say obviously figure out your caloric, uh, intake. I talk about that in the book. There's... It's just super easy. It's a calculator. And then you begin to segment out how you are going to ingest dietary protein. I wouldn't go above 50 grams per meal. You know, for someone like you, I'd probably hit 40 to 50 at that first meal for sure. There's not very much data for that middle meal, and then potentially that last meal, but probably closer, again, 40 to 50, and then-

   9. CWChris Williamson45:53

      Forty- 40 to 50 grams of protein in a food is a massive amount. Like, it's a very, very large amount of meat.

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:01

       That's... It's like two- two scoops of whey protein.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:04

       Oh, that's true if you were looking to do it through supplements. But if you're looking to do it, let's say, that we're having it through salmon or we're having it through, uh, eggs. I mean, how many egg? What's an egg? Eight?

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:15

       Six eggs. That would be six. Yeah, six-

   13. CWChris Williamson46:17

       Yeah.

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:17

       ... eggs would be about 30 grams. When you're gonna-

   15. CWChris Williamson46:19

       Six egg- six eggs is no joke. Okay, hang on, hang on. You brush past this forcing 50 grams of protein. Six eggs. So it's five- five grams per egg-ish?

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:28

       Yeah. I-

   17. CWChris Williamson46:29

       Right. Okay. So, you're- you're talking about 10 eggs. 10 eggs is a lot of eggs.

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:35

       You better get started.

   19. CWChris Williamson46:36

       I- I- I... So it seems. But this is my point, right? You look at this plate and I think even for me now, I see it now in myself, I'm like, "Oh my god, every single..." I think you did an Instagram. You did an Instagram post about this, right? You hit your protein-

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:48

       That's so embarrassing. It's still embarrassing.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:49

       You hit your protein goals for the day and then you realize, "God, I've gotta do it all over again tomorrow."

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon46:53

       So embarrassing. I have a- an amazing team that makes me, uh... They tell me I'm more relatable if I look like an ass, so-

   23. CWChris Williamson47:01

       Uh-huh. Yeah. How's that going?

   24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon47:03

       ... literally. So embarrassing. Oh, it's so terrible. Um, but yes, this is... You are not alone in that. Now, I'm gonna challenge you. Austin... So we live in Houston. I have been down to Austin, and they have a lot of restaurants. I can't even believe... I mean, they have a lot of restaurants. You go and you order in one of those restaurants a, like, filet. And this, my friend, is your eight-ounce filet. That true or not true?

   25. CWChris Williamson47:27

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon47:27

       Eight times seven, I mean, you're getting almost 60 grams of protein in that tiny little filet that you spent $75 on. So it can be done.

   27. CWChris Williamson47:38

       Fair enough. I should- I should go for filet more on-

   28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon47:40

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson47:40

       ... first thing in the morning. Okay. So, we are making sure that we measure because that's the only way that we can manage this stuff. We are prioritizing protein within a 24-hour window. We're aiming for naught .7 grams per pound of body weight or ideal body weight. We're also then considering that there is a little bit of protein timing going on here, in that much more than about 40 to 50 grams of protein in any one meal is probably gonna be a little bit wasted presumably from an efficiency perspective. But just... I'm- I'm pretty sure Stan taught me under 20 grams, under 20 to 15- 20 to 15 grams, it can actually be metabolized in a different way. So it's like the sweet spot appears to be more than 20, less than 50, something like that.

   30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon48:23

       I would say that that i- that is right. When you're getting below 20, again, you're- you're not s- you're not hitting that leucine threshold, and leucine is one of the essential amino acids. It's that branched-chain amino acid. And, uh, my mentor of 20 years was the guy who put the science behind a lot of the, um, literature that we stand on today. This idea of protein dosing, this idea of a meal threshold. This was some of his work that he put out into the world.... which is incredible to see this innovation. Before, they knew that leucine somehow stimulated muscle, but he really connected the dots and then translated it over to humans. Um, and this idea that something below a leucine threshold, so the average leucine threshold for an adult is two and a half grams. By the way, the RDA for, for leucine, and we'll talk about this in another podcast, is, uh, between two and three for the whole day, but the actual ar- the actual, uh, influence and more optimal amount is two to three grams of leucine per meal. This is, it's important.
8. 51:35 – 55:58

   Dr Lyon’s Most-Eaten Meals & Superfoods

   1. CWChris Williamson51:35

      What are... We mentioned earlier on that, uh, your body is the average of the five most common meals that you cook. Um, (laughs) what-

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon51:44

      I've never, never heard that. I'm curious.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:45

      Well, I just made it up. That's why.

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon51:46

      Oh.

   5. CWChris Williamson51:47

      Why... Uh, what are your most eaten meal preps? Like, what, what has most of your body been built on over the last few decades, do you think?

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon51:59

      Uh, eggs, frittata, turkey, beef, dairy. I'm actually a lower fat person.

   7. CWChris Williamson52:07

      Mm.

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:07

      Um, and then I try to add-

   9. CWChris Williamson52:08

      I don't, I don't agree with high fat either. My body really doesn't like it.

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:11

       Yeah. I, I, I don't do well on that. And then adding in a lot of anthocyanins, so acai berry, which is that really rich purple color, um, and I just try to add in, um, whether it's blue algae, spi- I mean, I try to add in really colorful things.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:28

       Why?

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:29

       Because I think that there are biochemical properties in them that, again, we just, there's so many, we just haven't gotten to it.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:37

       Cool. Okay. What about superfoods? If you were to rank order, you want to get the best-

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:46

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:46

       ... uh, protein profile, you want to get the best nutritional profile whilst getting protein in, what's your top five?

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:52

       Well, before I answer this, do I have to actually eat it?

   17. CWChris Williamson52:55

       Mm, no.

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon52:57

       Okay, cool.

   19. CWChris Williamson52:57

       But if it tastes, if it tastes disgusting, then it doesn't count, so yeah, maybe.

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:00

       Okay.

   21. CWChris Williamson53:00

       But not for you.

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:01

       Okay.

   23. CWChris Williamson53:01

       For personal, personal taste.

   24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:03

       Um, liver is disgusting, but it is so high in nutrition. Um, women that are anemic, individuals that need vitamin A, fat-soluble vitamins, liver is amazing, a amazing iron source, absolutely.

   25. CWChris Williamson53:15

       One ounce, two ounces a day?

   26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:17

       I mean, I... Whatever you can stomach without throwing up, holding your nose, eating it however you have to do it, uh, I think it's valuable. I would say you want it-

   27. CWChris Williamson53:24

       Getting tactical. I've got a hack.

   28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:26

       ... once or twice a week. I, I ca-

   29. CWChris Williamson53:27

       I've got a hack for it. I've got a hack for it. Salt the living shit out of it when it's frozen, throw it in an air fryer for two minutes either side, and it doesn't really taste like liver anymore.

   30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon53:37

       It probably doesn't. It probably tastes like cardboard.
9. 55:58 – 1:01:10

   Relationship Between Sleep & Muscle Building

   1. CWChris Williamson55:58

      fair enough. Talk to me about the relationship of sleep and muscle building of what we've going on here.

   2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon56:03

      Yeah, there's, um... I actually just interviewed Dr. Emily Lance on my podcast, and she is out of the Galveston Group. She's a scientist out of the Galveston Group, and one of the, the studies that she worked on was that, uh, was looking at sleep and muscle protein synthesis. Sleep, one night of sleep deprivation can suppress muscle protein synthesis by 18%. Can you imagine? Cumulative over time, that's not good.

   3. CWChris Williamson56:29

      That's my life. That's me.

   4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon56:31

      Uh-huh.

   5. CWChris Williamson56:32

      That's-

   6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon56:32

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson56:32

      That's being a club promoter for a decade and a half, yeah.

   8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon56:35

      Yes. And I will say one of the other things that we see, so muscle protein synthesis on one hand is suppressed, but there is some data coming out that if you are sleep deprived, then kicking up training, so like the military personnel, they go through four days or five days of hell week. I should know this 'cause I've never heard the end of winter hell week. It's just, you know-

   9. CWChris Williamson56:57

      Right.

   10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon56:57

       Exactly, like, that's hard. Um, but, uh, there is some evidence to support that training during that time, during a, a time of sleep deprivation can help support the tissue, which makes perfect sense. It can mitigate some of the effects from lack of sleep.

   11. CWChris Williamson57:15

       So we hear about, you know, downstream some of the concerns that people have around, uh, you are more likely to like, uh, salty foods, um, more likely to reach for highly processed foods, more irritable, lower willpower, all the rest of that stuff. But what you're talking about here is a much more direct mechanism from even if you go full Bedros Keuilian and, and wrangle your willpower and you don't eat the cookie and you do the thing-

   12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon57:44

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson57:45

       ... you are still creating a glass ceiling on your ability to, uh, build muscle just based on how much time you had to sleep. And, uh, no amount of breath work or meditation or, like, ratchet hip-hop is going to be able to get you past that. So yeah, I think, I mean, and it's just, it's just another, another reminder that everybody is probably forgetting. And again, I... We're getting tactical on this one. I quite like the fact that we're doing this. You need to try a sleep tracker, whether it's an Eight Sleep mattress, whether it's a Whoop, whether it's an Oura Ring. Obviously, if you use Whoop, that would be great because I think that they're an awesome partner, but the main thing that you learn when you use a sleep tracker is you are not sleeping anywhere near as much as you think you are.

   14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon58:27

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson58:28

       Like, that's... I, I can save you from having to buy one, right? It's great if you do it, and it's important to learn this lesson firsthand, but the lesson that you learn as soon as you start using a fitness tracker is, "Oh, I thought I was getting eight hours of sleep, but it turns out I was actually in bed for 7 hours 45, and my active sleep was 6 hours 20. Oh, fuck." Like, that's, that's the realization. That's what you spend most of your time. And now, for me, even if I don't have this on, I know, I'm like, "Look, if I need eight hours sleep, I gotta be in bed for nine hours." Like, I have to. Even if I try and crank my sleep efficiency as best as possible, bit of latency, bit of lost sleep efficiency, some m- micro awakenings throughout the night, it's like, guess what? It's hard to hit.

   16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon59:12

       And by the way, and no offense to the sleep ninjas out there, sleep is annoying. There's a lot of other things that I would rather be doing than sleeping.

   17. CWChris Williamson59:19

       Sleep lane. Yeah.

   18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon59:20

       It is, right? But I will tell you that in... when I was a fellow and we were in the memory and aging clinic, one of the risk factors for Alzheimer's was we always asked about sleep deprivation over time, because when you sleep, this is when the brain cleans itself, these glial cells. That, and actually, sleeping with a phone by your head.

   19. CWChris Williamson59:41

       Yeah. I mean, anyone... No one in my audience still has their phone in their bedroom, Gabrielle. No one at all does.

   20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon59:47

       Not, not, not one person I know. Not one.

   21. CWChris Williamson59:49

       No one at all, or else they are no longer allowed to listen. Okay, so when we're looking at this sort of relationship, sleep to, uh, uh, muscle building, is there anything else? I wanna get into training, but before we get into that, we've talked about diet, we've talked about recovery. Is there anything else we're missing in kind of the milieu that is life beyond now training stimulus?

   22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:00:13

       I think the big picture is eating whole foods. It doesn't have to be complicated. It should be high protein, from my perspective. There's no reason that when you have the luxury to eat that way, you don't. It is a luxury and a privilege to be able to prioritize dietary protein. Other countries don't get that, and it is a highly nutrient-dense source of, um, calories and, uh, a non-negotiable, especially as individuals age. You know, when you had mentioned that when you were really into fasting and, and you were reducing food intake, that that, um... It just... It may not be an ideal mechanism, right? Just might-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:00:51

       Fluffy. I was fluffy.

   24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:00:52

       No. We don't want you fluffy. It would just ruin your image. So-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

       I'm not supposed to be fluffy.

   26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:00:56

       If-

   27. CWChris Williamson1:00:56

       I'm fucking 19.5% body fat compar- according to that DEXA scan in Dallas.

   28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:02

       Ye- that should ruin your day for at least a week.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:05

       It did.

   30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:05

       Like, you have to have at least-
10. 1:01:10 – 1:04:37

    How to Begin & Stay Motivated

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:10

       Here's a question that I've had in my head, actually. There is somebody that's listening who is both...... over-fat and under-muscled, right?

    2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:18

       Yep.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:18

       There is someone who just doesn't have the body composition that they want, and they know that they are off on both ends of the scale.

    4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:24

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:01:26

       If it was me, not knowing your world, what I would do, for me, is I would probably diet myself down because I'm going to get the aesthetics way quicker by becoming leaner first, which I can crack out in the space of six months and then building my muscle up from there. But what would you do? What, what would your advice be? Would you just try and recomp through everything? Like, how, how do you go about this? 'Cause motivation is going to be gauged as much by the mirror as it is probably by anything else.

    6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:57

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:57

       So we need to satiate that in people.

    8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:01:59

       Yeah, if it were me, I would focus on what I have to gain versus what I have to lose. If I had very little muscle and a lot of body fat, then from my perspective, I would not actually be focused on anything aesthetic. I would assume that I was not as strong as I should be and not as physically capable as I needed to be. I would focus primarily on being a human that was physically strong. And I'm not saying necessarily training for strength, but maybe you would train for some strength and some hypertrophy, but I would just start putting in the reps. I would start putting in the reps. I would, obviously see what my baseline diet is, prioritize dietary protein. It's very difficult to store protein as fat. It's very difficult. Like you said, you're like, "Ah, I got to 90 grammes. If I have one more buffed cow, I'm gonna shoot myself."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:02:45

       (laughs)

    10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:02:45

        It becomes very difficult to overeat dietary protein. And there may be some impact on this adaptive thermogenesis. You know, the body's very smart, so if you start reducing calories too rapidly, the body will adjust, but dietary protein, uh, from my perspective, one of the reasons why it has this more thermic effect of food, thermic effect of feeding, is that, um, it's so valuable and it does stimulate muscle protein synthesis, that that, the machinery of that may take more energy than the energy-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:03:15

        Mm-hmm.

    12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:03:15

        ... required to utilize carbohydrates, could be 10%, fats could be 5%, and, and protein could be anywhere between 15 and 20%. Again, depending on the study that you look at, um, and foods are not just primarily one thing. If you are an individual who needs to lose weight and build muscle, could you do both at the same time? You could. Would it be as effective? No. I would say you start with what you have to lose because that indivi- what you have to gain. Because that individual didn't get there by focusing on what they had to gain. I guarantee you they have spent a lifetime yo-yo dieting or having some, uh, feeling of just, you know, it doesn't feel good in your body if you're not feeling well, right? I, I think that we can all agree o- on that, potentially. Again, I don't know, but if this is wha- this, for me, this is what I would do.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:06

        I th- I, I think that... I like your framing around, uh, people are told that there is something that they have to lose. It's all about getting rid, getting rid, getting them out, out of this body.

    14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:19

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:19

        And it really is a, it's like an anti-building mentality-

    16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:24

        Totally.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:04:24

        ... within your physiology, and I don't think that that is particularly constructive. Okay, so we've danced around it, right? We've got all of the things in place, but we actually need to go out there and build some muscle now. We need some,

11. 1:04:37 – 1:19:12

    If Dr Lyon Could Only Keep 10 Exercises

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:37

       we need some training stimulus.

    2. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:39

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:39

       If you only had ten exercises for the rest of time to build and maintain as much muscle as you could, what would they be and why?

    4. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:51

       Ten? (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:04:52

       Ten. That's it, that's it.

    6. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:53

       Okay. That seems like a lot.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:04:55

       So what do you think?

    8. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:55

       I would definitely do a squat, right? I would do a wide-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:58

       Barbell back squat?

    10. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:04:59

        I would. A lower, uh, a lower, lower on my back, wider stance just because, um... Yes, so I would definitely do a squat.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:09

        Why? Like, why, why lo- why low bar, why wider squat?

    12. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:05:12

        Just my physiology, just the way I'm built.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:14

        Okay, okay, okay.

    14. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:05:15

        The way I'm built. So I actually decided, side note, that it was a great idea to do a 50-hour event, uh, that was non-stop. And so, as I was training for that, I tore my hamstring off the b- I avulsed it, around 80-some percent off the bone. It was just a really, uh, it wasn't my smartest decision.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:33

        Oh.

    16. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:05:33

        Yeah, so it's, it's been this process of, uh, repair. Let's just say that.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:37

        Okay.

    18. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:05:38

        So I've had to modify some of my training. So a, a squat, a wider-stand squat, some kind of deadlift, whether it's a sumo deadlift or some kind of deadlift because just the mechanics and also the full-body, uh, movement of a squat. I would also say a farmer carry. We have to also begin to choose... And this is, when I think about this, is I think about all the older patients that I've seen being able to carry groceries, being able to carry a toddler, being able to... You know, it's, it's amazing. When we think about traveling, you know, I, I, I travel a lot. I also have two very little kids. I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. Um, if you want some birth control, I will send them right over to your house.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:17

        Ah.

    20. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:06:17

        Right over to your house. And you'll, you'll see, you know, "Be careful." You'll hear people say, "Oh, be careful about putting this overhead. You, you know, the weight limit shouldn't exceed this." And it's just a whole backwards way of thinking about it. No, no, no. You are afraid to then go into the gym and lift a, a 50-pound, uh, weight, but you will have no trouble lifting your, or struggling to lift your 50-pound toddler to, to put them X, Y, wherever you're putting them.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:41

        Why, given the fact that you've already got a good bit of midline activation with your squat and especially with your deadlift, plus you've got grip work with your deadlift, what are you getting out of the farmer's carry-

    22. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:06:53

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

        ... that you haven't activated already?

    24. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:06:56

        Well, you're getting motion, and you're getting something that translates to real life. It's, y- you know, when we are, if we're really talking about healthspan, we have to talk about the things that will destroy healthspan and the reasons why we require help. Why do we go into a nursing home? What are the things that really affect quality of life? The number one thing that affects quality of life is physical mobility, in my opinion.... and I've seen this. So, not being able to... can you imagine not being able to climb up stairs, not being able to carry your groceries, not being able to put them up? I mean, I was just traveling here to Las Vegas, and there was a couple in front of me that couldn't put their, uh, luggage on, their carry-ons on the conveyor belt.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:07:39

        Have you ever had been? Oh, okay.

    26. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:07:41

        No, on the conveyor belt.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:07:41

        Fucking conveyer belt. Oh, okay, wow.

    28. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:07:42

        And you know what? I was like, "Do I help them? Do I help them?" But if I help them, they're never gonna get exercise. So, I see-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:07:47

        Wow, so you watched this person struggle-

    30. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:07:49

        I w-
12. 1:19:12 – 1:23:39

    What People Are Getting Wrong With Their Training

    1. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:19:12

    2. CWChris Williamson1:19:12

       That's obviously the priority. When it comes to, uh, tempo, rep ranges, set ranges-

    3. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:19:20

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:19:20

       ... what are people getting wrong in your opinion?

    5. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:19:22

       I think there, now first of all, there is a phenomenal paper and that I think that anyone who's really interested in these, uh, this repetition continuum, the paper is called Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength Hypertrophy, hopefully I'll get it right, Local Endurance: A Reexamination of K- the Continuum Repetition.... or the Repetition Continuum.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:19:44

       Very, very sexy title for a paper.

    7. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:19:47

       Th- thank you for-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:19:47

       Please translate.

    9. GLDr Gabrielle Lyon1:19:48

       ... uh, amazing. And really, basically, um, it, it highlights that we've got this strength, hypertrophy, endurance. So we've really put things into buckets and that maybe the evidence doesn't support that, that there's multiple ways to get stimulus. So what do I think that people are getting wrong? Potentially that, you know, if you're just going eight to 12 reps, maybe that's just hypertrophy, but for older individuals, they potentially could do lighter weights and go for longer and still get hypertrophy of e- uh, influence. So I think that this rep range continuum, uh, could be reexamined. I think we need to exam-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:20:30

        Okay. What about, what do y- what's y- what's your thoughts on, uh, TUT, time under tension, um-

Episode duration: 1:33:33