The New Science Of Rapid Muscle Growth - Menno Henselmans

1. 0:00 – 5:10

   How Much Protein Can Your Body Absorb?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How much truth is there that your body can only absorb 20 grams of protein per meal? Because this is something that's been floating around for a very long time.

   2. MHMenno Henselmans0:09

      So this myth has a kernel of truth behind it, but the idea that the body can literally only absorb 20 grams of protein in a meal is outright ludicrous. The body can easily digest and absorb basically infinite amounts of protein in a meal, there is no practical limit. You'd have to be doing, like, massive food challenge, hot dog eating contest stuff. Even then, it's probably not really a limit. So the problem is that after the digestion and absorption of the protein comes the metabolism stage, and there is a limit to how much muscle protein synthesis the body can stimulate with a single meal, and that's called the muscle full effect. Now, it seems that if you ingest something like whey protein, which is very rapidly absorbed and very high-quality protein, in resting conditions when you are fed, 20 grams of protein seems to pretty much maximize muscle protein synthesis over the span of a few hours. However, when we start looking at mixed meals, when we start looking at post-workout conditions, protein sources that are not super high-quality, not whey protein, things that are matched with fiber, you know, meat, for example, which is much more slowly absorbed, then we see that the absorption limit changes, or the, the maximum productive amount of protein that we consume in a meal goes more up to 80 grams, at least 40 grams, and in a recent study, seemingly even 100 grams, at least if that's pretty much your only meal for the day. So it seems that the body's quite flexible in how it handles protein. If you fasted beforehand, if you had a workout beforehand, the body can use more protein because it wants to build more muscle. So in that sense, the body has adapted, evolutionarily speaking, well to using the protein when there is indeed a demand for muscle protein synthesis. Like, you can't just eat your way to the Olympia. You have to actually stimulate muscle growth, and then the protein will be used for muscle protein synthesis.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:12

      Right, so when people were saying you can only absorb 20 grams of protein per meal, what they meant was that was what your body can utilize for mus- muscle protein synthesis, and that seems to have a ceiling which is raised through exercise, through a scarcity of protein over the last period, 24 hours, 20, whatever, 30 hours, something like that, uh, and also presumably androgens, whether or not-

   4. MHMenno Henselmans2:38

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:38

      ... you're on testosterone.

   6. MHMenno Henselmans2:39

      Yes. So we have this thing called mTOR, which is a master enzyme, and it integrates all of the signals for protein synthesis. Essentially, it looks at all the factors that govern whether this person needs to get very jacked or whether we are okay with minimal jackedness. And if this person is on a boatload of testosterone, there are lots of amino acids floating around in the blood, and you have thoroughly trashed your muscles with a workout beforehand, then mTOR is maximum effort. If, on the other hand, you are rested, well-fed, you have not worked out, then mTOR is like, "Eh, we're gonna keep it at this level."

   7. CWChris Williamson3:22

      Right. What is the takeaway for people who are probably training moderately hard, not doing aggressive intermittent fasts once per day? What do you think is an acceptable protein target to hit per meal?

   8. MHMenno Henselmans3:37

      I think as long as you distribute it roughly equally over at least three meals per day, and you are sandwiching your workouts within a five-hour intermeal window, meaning that your workout has to be sandwiched between two workouts within that five-hour period, so you can shift them, you know-

   9. CWChris Williamson3:57

      Your workout has to be sandwiched within two workouts? Workout has to be sandwiched between two meals?

   10. MHMenno Henselmans4:00

       Two meals, right, yes.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:01

       Yeah.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans4:01

       Sorry. So you can have a pre-workout meal, workout, five hours after another meal, or you can have five hours before the workout, four hours, say, if your-

   13. CWChris Williamson4:10

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MHMenno Henselmans4:10

       ... workout is one hour, you have the meal, and then right after, you have another meal. That counts in terms of the, the sandwiching requirement.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:16

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MHMenno Henselmans4:17

       And then one other meal somewhat, um, removed from these two other meals. You're probably gonna be okay, and at least those meals should all have at least 20 grams of high-quality protein or .3 grams, um, protein per kilogram body weight, so that's usually gonna be 20 to 40 grams depending on your size. You're probably fine. If you want to, to really optimize muscle growth, maybe you want that fourth meal and to distribute your protein more equally and some protein, more protein after the workout versus before. Not just right after, but in the, the periods between the workout and sleep. That s- seems to be the most, uh, important period. Then there's some optimization there. But for the average gym-goer that's not counting every gram of food, three b- three roughly square meals per day, you're pretty good.

2. 5:10 – 10:45

   How Much Protein Do We Actually Need?

   1. MHMenno Henselmans5:10

   2. CWChris Williamson5:10

      Okay, how much protein do you actually need? Because this seems to have been thrown up in the air. Is it 0.3 grams per kilo? Should we get up to two grams per kilo? It, it's all over the place.

   3. MHMenno Henselmans5:22

      I conducted the last big meta-analysis on this, uh, together with a true all-star team in evidence-based, uh, circles, um, as far as that niche goes, and we have stars. (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson5:35

      (laughs)

   5. MHMenno Henselmans5:36

      We, um, found that in, in, in line with pretty much every study that's been done, and we have a lot of research on this, that the ceiling, the maximum effect, seems to occur at about 1.6 gram per kilogram per day. That's total protein intake per total body weight, which is, in freedom units, .7 grams per pounds.

   6. CWChris Williamson5:58

      (laughs)

   7. MHMenno Henselmans5:59

      So... (laughs) Um, that's pretty much the point at which research no longer finds increases in lean body mass if you increase protein intake further, holding meal frequency and the like constant. A recent meta-analysis also verified that for strength development, that is also sufficient. They came at 1.5, so almost exactly the same number. I reviewed all of the data on this as one of my very first articles, which actually ranked on- number one on Google for a long time, because I was one of the first in evidence-based fitness that (clears throat) just looked at the data and threw out everything that we thought we knew about how much protein you need, and most of the recommendations came from supplement companies and the like. And I concluded, actually, the number doesn't seem nearly as high as almost everyone recommends. Like, one gram per pound was kind of the minimum that was being thrown around, recommended, and it seems that quite a bit less, um, is also gonna maximize your gains. Now, I typically recommend, for maximum gains, 1.8 gram per kilogram, which is .82 grams per pound. That will surely maximize muscle growth, assuming, again, you have those three meals, roughly square meals-

   8. CWChris Williamson7:05

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   9. MHMenno Henselmans7:05

      ... that, uh, and you are not training fast, that you have a post-workout meal within at least a few hours after your workout, you're pretty much gonna maximize muscle growth.

   10. CWChris Williamson7:14

       What happens if you eat over that for protein? Does it just get excreted away, or do you actually, are you risking maybe gaining unnecessary weight that you don't want?

   11. MHMenno Henselmans7:22

       Most of it gets oxidized. The body doesn't store protein directly as fat, but protein can still contribute to fat gain in the best controlled research. Metabolic ward studies by Bray et al., for example, find that if you increase protein intake far above requirements, it's simply the calories that counts, not the protein per se, but the protein does contribute towards fat gain. There have been some studies that, um, contest this, but they are in free-living cons- in free-living settings rather than a controlled metabolic ward, so I put a lot more stock into the most controlled data. Uh, it's just practically difficult though to really overeat on protein, because if you go up to, like, four gram per kilogram, you get, um, people around you do not like it, you yourself-

   12. CWChris Williamson8:01

       (laughs)

   13. MHMenno Henselmans8:01

       ... don't like it. (laughs) Yeah, it's just impractical.

   14. CWChris Williamson8:06

       Dude, no one has ever accidentally fallen into doing more than a gram per pound.

   15. MHMenno Henselmans8:13

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson8:14

       No one accidentally does that, unless this is the one day where you go to a Brazilian steakhouse, one of those things with the fucking ping-pong paddles that's green, and they just keep bringing you meat. No one does that by accident. Like, you have to work hard-

   17. MHMenno Henselmans8:27

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson8:27

       ... to think. You don't, you just don't tumble into that much meat. So, okay, well, I mean, that's, I guess a kind of a stress alleviating for a lot of people that were, you know, I- I'm probably pretty average weight for most of the guys that are watching, like 84 kilos, which I think is like maybe 180, 185, something like that in terms of... But for me to think, okay, I need to get at least one gram per pound of body weight, like 180 grams of protein per day is, to be honest, unreasonable to expect that you're going to get it from food, which means that you then, okay, well, I'll put a shake in. Oh, maybe I'll do a double scoop shake. Okay, well that's 40, but that's still 140. I'm like, right, okay, so I have three meals, the, of 40 grams, which is a lot, that's a ton of meat each time, three times throughout the day, which means I've got a big breakfast and I'm still under. I'm like, right, okay, well I better have, and then you start looking at stuff that, mm, should I really be using this as like the basis for my nutrition, protein bars and stuff like that? So, uh, reassuring for those of us-

   19. MHMenno Henselmans9:31

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson9:31

       ... trying to hit our protein goals.

   21. MHMenno Henselmans9:32

       It's, it's interesting that you say that. I fully agree with that. Funny enough, when you mention this to most people that are, uh, that I would consider serious lifters, they're like, "Oh, it's super easy." But it's only super easy because we as serious lifters have pretty much revolved our whole lives around getting that protein. So-

   22. CWChris Williamson9:51

       No, we've gaslit ourselves into believing-

   23. MHMenno Henselmans9:53

       Yes.

   24. CWChris Williamson9:53

       ... that 180 grams of protein per day is an acceptable way to live a dietary life.

   25. MHMenno Henselmans9:57

       Yeah, that's a nor- normal regular amount, (laughs) but only indeed when you have, um, set your whole life around a meal being protein. Like, we think, oh, we need a meal, and the first thing you think about is, oh, how do we get protein? And with that mindset, it's, it's not so difficult. And the difference between, you know, 0.82 gram per pound or one gram per pound is not massive, but I find in practice for a lot of people, especially people that are not super, um, hardcore about going to the gym-

   26. CWChris Williamson10:28

       Mm-hmm.

   27. MHMenno Henselmans10:28

       ... it makes a substantial difference. And also, it introduces some fattier foods, maybe even cheese, as potential protein sources. Yeah, so it actually makes a significant difference in terms of what you can eat ins- and it doesn't just have to be tilapia, filet, and chi-

   28. CWChris Williamson10:43

       What's, thing about, I,

3. 10:45 – 18:16

   The Protein Placebo Effect

   1. CWChris Williamson10:45

      here was a study that keep, people keep on bringing up to me about how, um, participants are given a shake of some kind, and they're told that it's either high calorie or low calorie, and their expectation of the caloric amount contained within this shake has a, um, effect on how they metabolize it, how their body uses it. How much truth was in that study?

   2. MHMenno Henselmans11:09

      It has a significant effect on the satiety or the satiation of the shake. It can also influence energy levels, but depending on how motivated and serious you are as a lifter, it has minimal effect on actual exercise performance and those more, um, objective measures.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:25

      So the reason that I was thinking about that was if bodybuilders, every bro listening for the last decade has been thinking, "Oh, another day not hitting my protein goals. I only managed to get 160 grams of protein in per day," uh, I have to presume that there's a little bit of cortisol that's gonna get released from that. If nothing else, just the texture of your own sort of phenomenological existence is going to be like, oh, God, I, I don't feel like I did the thing today. I didn't tick the box. I'm not feeling, like, as satisfied as I should be, because you have this potentially, according to science, wildly fucking unreasonable goal of one gram per pound of body weight. And it's like, it's, no-

   4. MHMenno Henselmans12:11

      I think the most interesting study of placebo and nocebo effects, which is most effects that you're touching on here, right, is when they give people fake steroids.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:21

      (laughs)

   6. MHMenno Henselmans12:21

      And this is a mind-blowing study, uh, probably wouldn't pass ethics committees anymore, it was, it's quite old. But they gave a bunch of already well-trained lifters essentially fake Dianabol. So they told them it was steroids-

   7. CWChris Williamson12:34

      Yep.

   8. MHMenno Henselmans12:34

      ... and like androgenic anabolic steroids were in there. In reality, it was a placebo, and the gains they got were massive. So these were well-trained lifters, and they got very serious additional gains in a span of eight weeks, essentially the level of what you would expect from low dose actual steroids.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:55

      Wow.

   10. MHMenno Henselmans12:56

       So the mindset and the effect of believing that you can make greater gains or any other place-

   11. CWChris Williamson13:04

       It's all in your mind, Menno.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans13:05

       Yeah, has huge effects for sure.

   13. CWChris Williamson13:07

       Stop lifting these weights. Stop going into the gym and sweating and spending all your time around men. Just believe that you can gain, and that's what you need. No, it's, there's a book called The Expectation Effect by David Robson, and, uh, it's outstanding. My two favorite ones from that, um, gluten intolerances have 10Xed in the last sort of 30 years. Unbelievable increase, and you know, that maybe there's more gluten in food. I'm open to that as a potential explanation. Uh, maybe the type of metabolic sort of environment that people are in means that gluten, uh, they're more susceptible to glutony problems, something like that, I don't know. Maybe it's degradation of our microbiome, or maybe it's all of the news articles telling you how bad the gluten is for you. So the researchers brought participants into the room, sit them all down, feed everybody the same meal. They tell everybody in the room that this meal's got gluten in it. There isn't gluten in the entire building. Five minutes later, people are breaking out in hives, they're running to the toilet with diarrhea, they're vomiting, they've got inflammation, they've got headaches, they're unbalanced, they've got vertigo. No gluten in the entire building. So that was the first one, but the second one, this is the best one, and it relates to, I guess what you do. Uh, participants were split into, um, two groups. 50% of each group had an equal proportion of people who do and don't have a particular genetic mutation that allows them to blow off CO2 more effectively. Apparently, this is not that uncommon in the population that people are, they tend to be more efficient breathers basically, which is also correlated with their ability to be good at cardio. Group A, half and half do and don't have the, uh, genetic mutation, and they're told, "You do have the genetic mutation. You should be really good at this." Group B, half and half do and don't have it. They're told, "You don't have the genetic mutation. This might be a little bit tough." Shock horror, the group that was told that they did have the genetic mutation, they outperformed. Interestingly, the people who didn't have the mutation, but were told that they did, outperformed on average the people who did have the genetic mutation, but were told that they didn't. So David coined this term, which was your expectations are even more powerful than your genes in some instances.

   14. MHMenno Henselmans15:24

       Yes, there's similar research actually on caffeine, where the effects of believing you are on caffeine is stronger than the objective effects of being on caffeine-

   15. CWChris Williamson15:33

       (laughs)

   16. MHMenno Henselmans15:33

       ... but not knowing it.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:38

       God, that's so funny. The Dianabol one's wild. Well, I mean, there's also, um, there's a justification, I think, for why you should always buy the name brand painkillers, because even though you know that the literal makeup of the drug is the same, the expectation of it being Nurofen as opposed to CVS own brand is so great that it's actually worth buying it because the painkilling effect will be increased.

   18. MHMenno Henselmans16:08

       Yeah, I personally actually drink Red Bull, uh, or energy drink in general, even though research quite clearly shows that it works no better than just anhydrous caffeine, just caffeine powder. In fact, it might work a little bit worse according to some research. But I per- prefer the taste and subjectively I do feel, which is most likely a placebo effect, but I do feel more and it's, it's very persistent. So I'm sticking with the energy drinks.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:34

       Rory Sutherland has this idea about Red Bull, and he says that they purposefully dialed the taste back of Red Bull to make it taste a little bit worse than it needed to, because humans associate poor-tasting liquids with medicinal properties. Like there's no medicine that you are used to having that tasted like-

   20. MHMenno Henselmans16:58

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:58

       ... strawberry Dreamsicle unicorn dust or whatever, you know, new Bang flavor gets released, and the fact that Red Bull does, it's kind, it is kind of herbal. It's a little bit bitter. It probably could be a little bit sweeter. Like it's, you know, you get to know the taste of it, but it's, you wouldn't go as far as to say from first principles, "Oh, this is like a, an optimal human fucking palate-tasting drink." And uh, yet he thinks that, and I think he's probably right, the oddness of the taste kind of played into the magical, we-don't-know-why-it's-working-but-we-think-it's-working properties when it first got released.

   22. MHMenno Henselmans17:33

       It could be. Uh, I personally wouldn't say it about Red Bull, but I know that there are products where that is actually being done. For example, Paradontax toothpaste is horrible, absolutely horrible, and they made a big deal out of it being, uh, I think it's also natural and whatever, um, some other stuff that doesn't really matter for your teeth, but mainly it's disgusting. It's, it's absolutely horrible. Uh, but they had a doctor saying it's better than the others and the others are chemical and whatever-

   23. CWChris Williamson18:00

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MHMenno Henselmans18:00

       ... and this is how natural toothpaste tastes like, and it was a wild success for some time, and I think eventually people realized that, uh, it just wasn't worth it. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson18:10

       Well, I, yeah, like the enjoyment, dude, of having minty fresh breath. Yeah. Uh,

4. 18:16 – 24:18

   Thoughts on Flexible Dieting

   1. CWChris Williamson18:16

      okay, so something else that I guess during mine and your...... uh, trajectory of bro-lifting on the internet has come and gone, and I wonder whether or not it's going to come back, is flexible dieting or if it fits your macros. What is your post-mortem on if it fits your macros as a diet methodology?

   2. MHMenno Henselmans18:40

      If it fits your macros, which is the idea that only the macronutrients you eat count, it doesn't matter where they come from, whether it's McDonald's or protein shake or super healthy Whole Foods paleo meal, uh, in the end, all that matters for at least your gains, like fat loss and the like, is your macronutrients intakes, like the amount of protein in particular and the amount of total calories in particular. That has largely been validated in the sense that those are by far the most important factors. And there have been numerous studies and individuals showing that even on a absolutely terrible, super unhealthy diet, you can still lose fat, at least theoretically speaking, uh, as long as you get that low energy intake. It's just a whole lot harder to do it with junk foods, because it's so easy to overeat on them. You want a high fiber intake and the like for satiety normally to make it long-term sustainable. And in general, I think that has been a very, very positive development. It ended for at least some parts of, uh, fitness, the debate between high carb, low carb, all these things. They are not nearly as important as total energy intake. You know, whether you consume super blueberry superfood or whether you're eating Twinkies, your total energy intake is by far the most important factor that influences whether you lose fat or not. If you are in energy deficit, regardless of your diet quality, you are most likely going to lose fat. So in that sense, I think if it fits your macros, and what later became flexible dieting, has been a godsend for the fitness community as a whole. But a lot of people certainly took it to extremes. And, um, it is not the case that the effect is exactly the same. Like fiber does have some thermic advantage. Um, protein does also have a thermic advantage. The type of carbohydrate, it seems that there are some effects. There was a recent study that probiotics, prebiotics, and the like may also have a few percent effect, but even if you add all of that together, you're getting maybe 5%, 10% total difference in fat loss. So for most intents and purposes, it's just how much protein are you consuming, what's your total energy intake across the week even, not even across the day or whatever-

   3. CWChris Williamson20:48

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MHMenno Henselmans20:48

      ... and that determines your fat loss. So that's the, um, the positive legacy of if it fits your macros.

   5. CWChris Williamson20:55

      What about the, um, negative legacy of it?

   6. MHMenno Henselmans21:00

      I think it's scared or it drove a lot of people away from healthy eating. And when you look not short term but long term, most people, like, in decades, not, you know, months or years, which is long term for a lot of people in fitness, but really in what we are interested in as individuals, uh, or at least that what I try to teach clients and students is, you know, how are you going to live for the next 20, 30 years, your, the next decades of your life? How are you going to age? And if you look at it that way, even calorie tracking in general is not the most sustainable strategy for most individuals. It is great to develop calorie awareness, but long term, you probably want to transition away from that and actually start thinking of food choices that allow you to eat ad libitum, as much as you want, without having to track every single gram of food that you're eating and making sure that, oh, yes, I can be super flexible now because my macros are correct. But you are being exceedingly inflexible in the sense that you're literally weighing every gram of food that you're eating. And that has, I think, done some damage, and it's also why things like paleo do work quite well for a lot of individuals, even though in the end, yes, it's all about calories and protein. It- it does work when you instruct people, you give them relatedness and a frame of, uh, mindset, certain foods that are better than others, these are satiating foods that they can as, eat as much as they want out of... Of course, people also take that to extremes and start making paleo cookies and stuff, but that aside, uh, it gives a frame of reference, some foods that are better than others, and most people long term do well on that and it's quite sustainable. So I think we have to strike a bit of a balance between what is theoretically the answer and what works in practice long term.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:44

      Yeah. I mean, all of me and my friends when we found out, "Oh, you mean I can get shredded on Haribo?" We were, like this is-

   8. MHMenno Henselmans22:52

      Haribo it is.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:53

      This is- this is magic. You mean I can do, like eat, I get to eat cheesecake and I can get leaner? Uh, but practically, you know, it's one of those things, fantastic works in theory, but does it work in practice? Uh, and I just struggle with it, you know. You're- you're playing with fire. It's like dicking about with nuclear grade weapons uranium, because, like, all right, if you're going to use Haribo as part of your carb source for the day, that's fine, but it's really hard to stop eating once you've started. And you only need to go over by three Haribo, and that's like an- a non-insignificant amount of fucking sugar that you've gone over your very tight amount of calories for the day. So yes, I think, uh, it was fun. It was a fun period to be involved in where I would have birthday cake on an evening time. Dude, carb backloading. Carb backloading, another one. When I thought that... Or skip loading, do you remember that? You remember skip loading? Every Sunday I'd go to Waitrose, oh dude, skip loading was crazy. So skip loading was basically like carb night, but once per week.

   10. MHMenno Henselmans23:53

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:53

       And the goal on the Sunday was to maximize as many c- like half a kilo of carbs if you could do it on a Sunday, and it was like a metabolic reset, you know, so that your metabolic base rate didn't drop too low because you were going to keep on-

   12. MHMenno Henselmans24:06

       Like refeeds.

   13. CWChris Williamson24:06

       Yeah. Like, but, like just a single really fucking aggressive refeed once per week. Um, ah dude, so much, like, horse shit experimentation in my background. Um,

5. 24:18 – 31:23

   Is Caffeine Effective for Building Muscle?

   1. CWChris Williamson24:18

      well, okay, you mentioned caffeine earlier on. What have you learned recently about caffeine?

   2. MHMenno Henselmans24:24

      I think that most of the effects of caffeine, in, in light of that earlier study that we talked about, and most research in general, suggests that caffeine is, by and large, a psychological aid. Uh, it does very little long-term. If you look at studies, uh, where people are given caffeine for a period of weeks, and you look at how much muscle they're gaining, how much fat are they losing, how much strength are they gaining, in the vast majority of research, there was no effect on those measures. Even if acutely, if you give people a boatload of caffeine, they do perform a little bit better in certain conditions. And it also seems that if you narrow it down to, like, which individuals respond better, it works better when you are sleep-deprived. It works better in the morning. It works better in individuals that are not as well-trained. Which all shows that, you know, or all trends in the direction of if you are well-rested and you are super motivated, then the effect is probably not really there. Maybe you can use a little bit of a kick in the ass, but for most individuals, uh, it's gonna be a marginal effect, and long-term, it's pretty trivial. So I think y- people should use it that way, as a psychological aid, and it's very easy to overdo it on caffeine. The main problem for a lot of individuals is that caffeine seems like magic, and therefore, you can, uh, solve a lot of life's problems, including the ones created by caffeine, with more caffeine, or so it seems.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:45

      (laughs)

   4. MHMenno Henselmans25:45

      And you run into this negative spiral where caffeine starts interfering with sleep quality, and the effect of that in the latest meta-analysis is present for 13 hours for the average individual if it's a good dose. Some seven hours, even at a low dose, and some research even finds that a strong double espresso in the morning, like 200 milligrams caffeine, still affects objective mea- measures of sleep quality at night, which is long after the subjective effects have waned off. And then you enter into this spiral where you consume more caffeine, worse sleep, more caffeine, worse sleep. And in the end, you're just consuming a lot of caffeine, and it feels like you're functioning better than you were before. But in reality, the caffeine is simply keeping you at baseline. So you are not improving your cognitive functions, your life, or anything. You are simply using the caffeine to be where you would be if you were well-rested and not using any caffeine. I'm not saying don't use any caffeine. I'm just saying it's a drug. Most people don't even realize it's a drug. Use it as a drug, not as a supplement or not as food, where it's just, like, use it just to use it. Actually see whether you get an effect out of it. Monitor if you're still getting a similar effect, or if you're not getting massive tolerance. Can you function after one day without caffeine, or do you get massive headaches, and now you're intolerable? Those are indications maybe dial it back. And the good news is only a few days will resynthesize your receptors to almost 100%. It's nine days after massive tolerance. So just a few days for most individuals, and massively -Nine days? Nine, nine days for someone who is completely dependent on caffeine will reset them back to baseline? Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson27:23

      Wow.

   6. MHMenno Henselmans27:23

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:24

      So you're... Why is that so fast? Is that the, it's just acting so directly on the, the adenosine receptors, and they, they just seem to be quite robust at, at kind of going back to baseline?

   8. MHMenno Henselmans27:38

      Yeah, it is a relatively safe drug in that sense, compared to, say, heroin. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson27:43

      (laughs) Right. That's the, that's what I want all drugs to be compared to. It's a relatively safe drug... Compared to heroin.

   10. MHMenno Henselmans27:52

       Yeah, it just, it's still easy to abuse, but the abuse effects are not nearly as bad as that of the drugs that are commonly banned because people would abuse them.

   11. CWChris Williamson28:00

       Right, yes. What about, um, the difference between caffeine and pre-workouts? I haven't used pre-workout for quite a while, probably five or six years. Uh, did for a long time, the world of Jack3D and NO Xplode and, and stuff, and then dipped out. Presumably, the technology, whatever that means, uh, behind pre-workouts has continued to get comp- I know there's no stim pre-workouts now. I don't even know what that means. Um, w- talk to me. What, what's the science say about pre-workouts for improving performance, that versus caffeine? If you are using a pre-workout, what should you look for? Et cetera, et cetera.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans28:41

       We never advanced past Jack3d. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson28:44

       (laughs) Right. We peaked. We peaked in 2011.

   14. MHMenno Henselmans28:46

       Jack3d was peak pre-workout. (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson28:48

       Okay. Okay. Okay.

   16. MHMenno Henselmans28:50

       Um, yeah, Jack3d was not so safe, actually. But, um, (laughs) caffeine, uh, is pretty much as good as it gets. And funny enough, most comparisons involving caffeine with pre-workouts find that anhydrous caffeine, which is caffeine powder or pills, works a little bit better. It also works a little bit better in at least a few studies than coffee, and it works better in at least some research than pre-workout formulations. It seems that there are some negative interactions there. They're small. And if you like your pre-workout, it's fine, because in the end, it's almost a psychological effect anyway. But there is some negative interaction, it seems, between at least caffeine and creatine, and possibly between caffeine and citrulline or beta-alanine, uh, one of the more pop- popular pre-workouts that are at least somewhat promising in terms of supplements. So by and large, I would say just consume what you feel best or what you like best. But you don't have to spend a lot of money on fancy pre-workouts. They're absolutely not essential. In fact, they are pretty much useless (laughs) for the vast majority of products.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:57

       (laughs)

   18. MHMenno Henselmans29:57

       So if you like your coffee, if you like your Red Bull, uh, or if you want the, uh, theoretically best, just anhydrous caffeine, I don't care about the bitterness, and, uh, uh, I care about my wallet, then, you know, just use caffeine powder. You can dose it, uh, super accurately. Uh, so that is the theoretically optimal solution, I suppose.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:17

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MHMenno Henselmans30:18

       But yeah, no, pre-workouts, I have very, uh, little, uh, r- regard for their efficacy.

   21. CWChris Williamson30:24

       What about fat burners? Do fat burners work?

   22. MHMenno Henselmans30:27

       Uh, no. Uh, there have been a couple reviews, uh, which all essentially concluded that fat burners don't actually burn fat. Uh, at best, they increase energy expenditure a little bit and maybe decrease your appetite. The best ones are illegal, though, and they are decidedly worse than, for example, fiber supplements, and even those are not great because of the digestive side effects, so you're better getting it from foods. But, for example, fiber supplements somewhat reliably result in fat loss because when people supplement fiber, the- it decreases their appetite, it makes them fuller, they eat less, and therefore they lose fat. Fat burners maybe increase energy expenditure a few percent over a few hours until you become tolerant to them, and that goes for caffeine and pretty much everything else that works, uh, is now illegal, like jacked.

   23. CWChris Williamson31:17

       God dammit.

   24. MHMenno Henselmans31:18

       Yeah. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson31:19

       The FDA ruining the party, as

6. 31:23 – 39:02

   The Importance of Optimising Appetite

   1. CWChris Williamson31:23

      per usual. Isn't it interesting that so many of the things that we've spoken about so far today have to do with satiety, that there's this, you know, it's such a, like, principle, such an underlying fundamental principle of y- you have a degree of hunger, how much is that going to make you eat? And then what are the foods that you're choosing? How calorie-dense are they? How palatable are they? How sick do you get of eating them? I had a conversation with Johann Hari about his new book, uh, Magic Pill, uh, about Ozempic. And, um, it- it's crazy just how much of modern human weight gain, health- downstream health problems, heart disease, stroke, all of that stuff is just food is way easier to overconsume because of how palatable it is and way more calorie dense than it was typically, and designed so. And, like, what pretty much everything that we're doing now is to try and, like, "Oh, well, if you eat more fiber, fiber actually takes up room and real estate in your stomach, and that means that you can't take it up with Pringles or whatever." Like, so much of what we're doing is just basically trying to compensate for this evolutionarily mismatched, uh, diet environment.

   2. MHMenno Henselmans32:38

      Yes. Uh, a good frame of mind that I like to use is that you have a certain amount of appetite units every day, and you have to fill those up because realistically speaking, long term, you're not just gonna be hungry every day, right? Nobody is six pack lean, and they're like, "Yeah, I've been hungry for 10 years, bro, but look at these abs." Nobody wants that.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:01

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MHMenno Henselmans33:01

      So in the end, not being hungry, at least up to a certain point, is essentially a long-term requirement to be sustainable and happy. So, you want to fill up those appetite units, and there are different foods that have s- a certain different number of units that they fill up. So if you have Haribo, it fills up very few units, but it has a lot of calories. And that there are other foods that fill up a lot of those units, uh, vegetables in particular, for very few calories. And that in itself, or that by and large, is- is it the puzzle that we have to solve for fat loss. Like, you want to get your protein in, and you want to fill up those appetite units. And I like to have the frame of reference that most meals should have a protein source and a filler, something that fills you up without having a lot of calories, and you want to get your protein in. Protein also helps itself as a filler, but usually you want something like vegetables, potatoes, depending on preparation, something with, um, fiber and some more volume to fill you up. With that mindset, I think for most individuals, you can have very good fat loss diets that are long term sustainable without even necessarily tracking your calorie intake and weighing every gram of food that you eat.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:10

      Mm. Yeah. Well, I suppose what you're trying to do by weighing the food is to reverse engineer the environment that you would get into if you did what you're talking about in any case.

   6. MHMenno Henselmans34:21

      Yes. And it is exceptionally beneficial to count your f- macros, to weigh your foods for at least a few weeks, if you've never done it, to develop calorie awareness. And you will, it will blow your mind. And when you have that calorie awareness, then eventually when you have created a sustainable meal plan, which is also extremely beneficial, one of the most, uh, important predictors of long-term diet success, people having a m- s- a meal plan that they created that they like, which is satiating and satisfying. And when they have that, then transitioning away from counting is essentially as simple as not doing it anymore. Because when you have a fixed meal plan and you know that what you're eating, then you don't have to track it anymore because you're eating the same things anyway. Now, then you can change the portion sizes and the like a little bit, but by and large, when you found that with calorie tracking, these foods fill you up without resulting in overeating, then you don't actually have to track anymore.

   7. CWChris Williamson35:16

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MHMenno Henselmans35:16

      So, tracking is a great first step to allow you long term to transition away from tracking, because I think most individuals will not want to track their macros over the next decades of their life.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:27

      Yeah, I, uh, I feel like two other areas that you need to pay the price upfront at some point is time blocking or some kind of sort of calendar tracking, Pomodoro Technique, I need to learn the physics of how productivity works thing. I think that's important. Even if, you know, you end up coming full circle around to, "I just do what feels good, bro," on- on each day, but you actually understand what deep work is, and you kind of understand that time times intensity equals work done and so on and so forth. Like, you need to, what are the constituent parts, kind of. Uh, and the other one is, I'm a huge fan of sleep trackers. If, uh, for nothing else than to red pill you on, "Hey, you're not getting as much sleep as you thought you were." And it's like 70% as much sleep as you thought you were. It's way less. It's the same as, "You thought you were in a surplus. No, you're n- uh, you thought- you thought you were in a deficit. No, you're not. You're in a huge surplus, like 500 calories off because you forget about that banana that you had and that little bag of chocolate, and you got to some crisps from the drawer earlier on." Um, but yet with sleep, it's exactly the same thing."Well, I was in bed for eight hours." No you weren't. You were in bed for seven hours 15, and of seven hours 15, you were asleep for six hours 20, so you got six hours 20, and you told yourself you got eight. And that's just like a, like a sniper looking down the scope of his rifle. It's an adjustment that you need to kind of really only make maybe once every couple of years to just remind yourself of, "Oh, yeah, that thing about I don't sleep anywhere near as much as I thought I..." Or, "Oh, yeah, that thing about I eat 500 calories more than my brain told, tells me that I did."

   10. MHMenno Henselmans37:04

       Mm-hmm. Sleep is another one of those things where we have kind of come full circle with sleep-tracking technology, where now we have all of these smartwatches and a lot of tracking devices, and before that, we just had gold standard polysomnography, which measures your brain waves and heart rhythm and a lot of different things, and that's the gold standard. And when you really look at what the, the validity of all those devices is, then in the end, it aligns up pretty well with, do you wake up naturally and do you feel refreshed? If you wake up naturally and you feel refreshed, then you can do this with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index or anything less informal. Literally, do- just ask yourself those questions.

   11. CWChris Williamson37:45

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans37:45

       And if the answer is yes, then your sleep quality is probably good. And if you wake up with an alarm indeed after six and a half hours of sleep and you're like, "Oh my God, no."

   13. CWChris Williamson37:54

       (laughs)

   14. MHMenno Henselmans37:54

       And, uh, and you're like, "Yeah, I had enough sleep," um, no, you didn't.

   15. CWChris Williamson37:58

       Yeah. Yeah, there's a, a really great study that was done where they paid people to fall asleep faster, and the control group was people who weren't paid to fall asleep, and the control group that weren't paid fell asleep more quickly than the group that were.

   16. MHMenno Henselmans38:13

       Yes, um, happiness, sleep, and productivity, to an extent, are extremely deceptive areas to optimize because the process of optimization itself deters from attaining the end goal.

   17. CWChris Williamson38:26

       Yes. Yes, yes, very... Uh, there needs to be a name for that, like, uh, like it's inversely, uh, inversely productive or something like that because it is, it is. The harder that you try to achieve these things, often the more difficult it is. And in some ways, there's very little that benefits from more cortisol.

   18. MHMenno Henselmans38:44

       Hm.

   19. CWChris Williamson38:44

       There's not much stuff where you think, "Oh yeah, my outcome in X domain would be improved if I was more stressed." And the very act of applying pressure to yourself to achieve the thing induces the stress, which probably makes the achievement of almost anything harder.

   20. MHMenno Henselmans39:00

       Definitely.

   21. CWChris Williamson39:01

       Okay, talk

7. 39:02 – 42:54

   Sleep’s Impact on Fat & Weight Loss

   1. CWChris Williamson39:02

      to me, given that we're on sleep, talk to me about the relationship between sleep, fat loss, muscle gain, w- beyond I want to wake up feeling rested and not like I want to shoot myself in the head-

   2. MHMenno Henselmans39:13

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson39:13

      ... what happens to our bodies based on the amount of sleep that we get?

   4. MHMenno Henselmans39:19

      So, the traditional kind of bro mindset to that, which is also how I used to think about it, is that sleep is somewhere quite low on the hierarchy, where we know it's important, but not nearly as important as how many sets of biceps curls do I do and how much protein am I consuming at lunchtime? Right? In reality, that hierarchy is completely upside down. Sleep has massive effects on, well, everything, but also fat loss and muscle growth. So there have been at least four studies, to my knowledge, that have found very significant effects of sleep restriction, in particular, on reduced fat loss, reduced muscle growth, reduced strength development, and the effects in multiple of those studies are over 50%. So there was one study where they contrasted, I believe, seven and a half and five and a half hours of sleep, and the group with just two hours of sleep deprivation essentially lost essentially half the amount of fat and double the amount of muscle. So, the effects on your body composition during a f- fat loss diet, which is how most people or how most of the studies have looked at it, is massive. It's not on the scale of, "How many grams of carb do I have at lunch?" It's on the scale of, "Am I even going to the gym?"

   5. CWChris Williamson40:34

      Wow.

   6. MHMenno Henselmans40:34

      So sleep is right up there with just the big effects, like high protein diet, resistance training, decent number total volume or decent total volume of resistance training. Sleep is pretty much right up there with the pillars, the fundamentals. It's not something to optimize. It's one of the pillars.

   7. CWChris Williamson40:52

      It is the thing, yeah. Wow, sleeping five hours instead of seven and a half hours reduces fat loss and increases muscle loss by over 50%. What... And so that's in a fat loss phase. Presumably, the effect is exactly the same. Like that, that doesn't matter whether you're in calorie deficit or calorie surplus, your muscle, mm, would it reduce muscle gain by... I'm trying to, I'm trying to work out what the converse-

   8. MHMenno Henselmans41:22

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson41:22

      ... of this would be.

   10. MHMenno Henselmans41:24

       I think during a bulking phase, like an energy surplus, the effect would be less, and the most drastic effects are found in the studies where they have weight loss diets. It might be the interaction that sleep deprivation and stress have a very negative interaction effect. Like if you have a certain amount of stress that you experience and you're well-rested, you can tolerate it. But when you're also sleep-deprived, it has a very negative interaction effect-

   11. CWChris Williamson41:47

       Mm.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans41:47

       ... where the s- the stress interferes further with your sleep quality, and because you are not well-rested, you also respond a lot more adversely to the stress.

   13. CWChris Williamson41:56

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MHMenno Henselmans41:57

       And it's probably the same in this sense, but we don't have a lot of research on that, so that's largely speculative on my part. I would suspect that the effects are in significant part mediated by diet adherence, and, uh, no matter how well you try to control it in research, there's always a limit to how, how people actually follow the programs.

   15. CWChris Williamson42:15

       Yeah, because someone who sleeps for five or five and a half hours a night are more likely to overeat the next day. They're going to have a preference for salt- salty and sugary foods. They're going to lean into more highly pr- Their willpower is going to be decreased. Maybe it's because the fact that they're trying to get into the gym, and even just like-for-like, you on five hours sleep versus you on seven and a half hours sleep, what's your training look like?

   16. MHMenno Henselmans42:35

       Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson42:35

       Your training is gonna suck. So, y- we don't need to get into...... the, you know, cortisol sympathetic arousal state of your body throughout the day. It's like, hey, just your training sucks on five hours of sleep.

   18. MHMenno Henselmans42:48

       Yeah, if you don't give it maximum effort, then all the optimization in the world is not gonna matter.

8. 42:54 – 49:43

   How Safe Are Artificial Sweeteners?

   1. MHMenno Henselmans42:55

   2. CWChris Williamson42:55

      What about artificial sweeteners? Has anything new come out recently?

   3. MHMenno Henselmans43:00

      In my view, artificial sweeteners and low-calorie sweeteners in general are, by and large, safe and very effective for fat loss. There have been multiple studies where they found that it can even help with diet adherence, and at worst, they are equal to water. So, they don't stimulate, uh, blood sugar response. They don't affect your insulin. And this is not just me saying, it's actually pretty much all the big scientific institutions that agree with this, uh, just not the, uh, media headlines, which are very keen to take a rat study where they have dosages that are the equivalent of consuming, like, 200 cans of Diet Coke per day. And then if you do that for the equivalent of, uh, a lifetime, then-

   4. CWChris Williamson43:39

      (laughs)

   5. MHMenno Henselmans43:39

      ... there is an increase in the number of, uh, tumors that are found in these, in this group versus the other group.

   6. CWChris Williamson43:45

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MHMenno Henselmans43:46

      Right? So, there have been numerous organizations, the European Union, FDA, that have looked at pretty much all of the popular sweeteners, especially aspartame and sucralose, and concluded that they are safe. Gut microbiome also, in most well-controlled studies, not an effect. Now, are they 100% perfectly safe for your whole life, regardless of dosage? No, definitely not regardless of dosage. And when you consume them for decades, is there potential for harm? Sure. It's still something that we have not fully researched. Like, we don't have st- uh, randomized control trials spanning 50 years, but you also have to weigh the pros with the cons. So, there are potential negative health effects, maybe, not really in the best controlled research, but at least in animal research with super high dosages and stuff. You have to weigh that with the more, with the better diet adherence that you might get, with the higher satisfaction from your diet, with just the enjoyment of consuming foods that, uh, you like to eat more when they are sweeter, with the fact that maybe now you're eating vegetables instead of, uh, something with a lot more sugar because you can sweeten the vegetables and it's now okay for you. So, you have to weigh all of these positives with any potential negatives. And in that sense-

   8. CWChris Williamson45:02

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MHMenno Henselmans45:02

      ... I think for most individuals on practical basis, sweeteners are a net positive. If you don't want to use sweeteners, fine. But if it helps you with fat loss, and that in itself is probably going to affect your... Then that in itself is probably going to more positively affect your health than any negatives of their consumption.

   10. CWChris Williamson45:20

       Yes, the, if the choice is between high-calorie drink containing a shitload of sugar and you getting a trace amount of fucking Ace K or something, uh, we probably take the... This was the, um... I th- I found it really interesting takeaway from Johann on, on that book about Ozempic, and he kind of created a, um, kind of like a taxonomy or, or like he stratified out people into BMIs and said, "Anybody under BMI 20, uh, 27, he thinks there's no real benefit. This is largely for aesthetic reasons, and there's all of these downstream health risks that may be worrying." 27 to 35 is the gray area in which where he said, "Uh, we... You know, it really depends on kind of what you're trying to achieve 'cause you're gonna discriminate, it seems, more muscle loss than fat loss by using Ozempic. You get Ozempic face, which is this sort of new trend that's going around." He said, "Over 35, consult your doctor," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think that the risks of Ozempic seem to be less than the risk of you being a BMI of 37 or something like that. And I think that looking at, you know, this sort of cost-benefit analysis, even when it comes to artificial sweeteners, like what, w- what's the alternative? If you are someone with a sweet tooth and you need to put something away to satiate that desire on a regular basis, the choice betw- I mean, how many... It's like 250 calories, probably 40 grams of sugar in a di- in a normal Coke, something like that?

   11. MHMenno Henselmans46:48

       Mm, it's usually like 50 calories per 100 milliliters, most soft drink products.

   12. CWChris Williamson46:54

       Okay. Yeah, so not far off. Um, what about... What, how effective are artificial sweeteners at satiating our desire for sweet stuff? Because there's an argument to be made that you're conditioning your palate to like sweet things, and by having your Zevia during the day, you're then y- you know, gonna relapse with cheesecake on a nighttime. Have you... Is there anything to do with that?

   13. MHMenno Henselmans47:23

       There is something there, but it's not different between sweeteners and any other sweet food. So, sweeteners don't hijack any of the systems in your brain or anything like that. Uh, they can be very sweet, of course. And in general, humans learn to like what they eat. It's funny, people think that they don't eat things because they don't like them, but research actually shows that we learn to like the foods we eat. So, we like foods because we eat them, in, in part. Of course, we also eat foods because we like them. But you can actually retrain your brain and even your reward pathways in your brain to like vegetables, for example. And you can see that when you do brain scans with people that have eaten vegetables for a long time, the reward pathways actually light up more in their brain when they're used to vegetables. Now, a similar thing can occur with salty foods, sweet food, anything. So, if you eat a lot of sweet foods, you might like sweet food more, and it might increase your, um, what level of sweetness you find agreeable. But it's very context-specific. Uh, it's limited. And as long as you can satisfy that with your sweeteners, there is not really a problem there.

   14. CWChris Williamson48:28

       Mm.

   15. MHMenno Henselmans48:29

       So, I, I don't think that, um, there's anything malicious there in terms of, uh, sweeteners having these negative effects.

   16. CWChris Williamson48:37

       I can't believe that you suggested somebody putting sweeteners on vegetables. That seems like a, a, like a ... I don't know. I've never even, I've never even considered it. Who knew that I could just sprinkle some Splenda across broccoli and it would taste good?

   17. MHMenno Henselmans48:47

       It, it, it's amazing. Broccoli maybe not, but I add sweetener to almost everything.

   18. CWChris Williamson48:52

       You're kidding.

   19. MHMenno Henselmans48:52

       I put sweetener in my s- in my soy sauce, yeah. So ... (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson48:55

       Oh my God. What is wrong with you?

   21. MHMenno Henselmans48:57

       (laughs) It works super well. If you eat, for example, pasta or tomato soup, and what, what is the difference between, like, a super good high-quality tomato soup and a really average one? It's the level of sweetness, by and large. So ... And I've actually tested this with individuals. If you give them, like, canned tomatoes with a little bit of sucralose, they'll be like, "Mm."

   22. CWChris Williamson49:17

       (laughs)

   23. MHMenno Henselmans49:18

       "That is good."

   24. CWChris Williamson49:19

       (laughs)

   25. MHMenno Henselmans49:20

       And then you can tell them, like, "Yeah, fresh from Italy, um, best tomato quality." I, I doubt many people will tell the difference between higher-quality tomatoes that are naturally sweeter versus cheaper ones with a little bit of sucralose in them.

   26. CWChris Williamson49:33

       Wow, I didn't realize everybody that comes round to your house for dinner is now going to know that they're being cooked by Splenda. You're just secretly lining up Splenda in the kitchen and they don't know.

9. 49:43 – 57:57

   Does a High Protein Diet Impact Longevity?

   1. CWChris Williamson49:43

      Okay, one of the other areas that I've been pretty interested in recently is high protein versus low protein for longevity.

   2. MHMenno Henselmans49:50

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson49:50

      Um, you know, there's a, a whole bunch of people, many of whom have been on the show, Brian Johnson, Rich Roll, uh, Peter Diamandis, all of whom are concerned about mTOR activation and the amount of protein that you're having, and ... How definitively, in your opinion, can the science tell us the outcomes of high protein versus low protein diets when it comes to, let's say, health span?

   4. MHMenno Henselmans50:18

      Mm-hmm. I'm personally not very concerned about that. And again, it's a consideration of pros and cons because we know that there are decisive health benefits of high protein diets in fighting sarcopenia, in reducing, uh, diabetes, and a lot of positive effects. So these have to be weighed against any potential negative effect. And I think the, the concerns with mTOR and the like are generally overblown. Most of the best-controlled long-term trials and, uh, cross-sectional studies, so epidemiological research, they do not find that protein intake has a significant relationship with all-cause mortality. And there are health benefits. So that would suggest that there's also no effect on longevity. The research on mTOR and the like is somewhat concerning in the lab, but we have to weigh that against the tissue-specific effects that we get in real life. So just like muscle tissue, just like you cannot eat your way to the Olympia with more protein, the same is true for mTOR activation and other tissues. You cannot just eat more protein and enlarge your heart, for example, right?

   5. CWChris Williamson51:20

      Okay.

   6. MHMenno Henselmans51:20

      Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. So it's also not the case that just eating more protein, everything's just gonna get bigger and you're gonna get tumors everywhere and you're gonna get cancer.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:27

      Hmm.

   8. MHMenno Henselmans51:28

      Right? So the fact that you get mTOR activation in muscle tissue, nobody gets muscle cancer. So that's, by and large, not a concern.

   9. CWChris Williamson51:36

      Bicep cancer-

   10. MHMenno Henselmans51:37

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson51:38

       ... that everyone's worried about, yeah.

   12. MHMenno Henselmans51:40

       So I, I, in general, I think the, the rationale, the, the mechanisms there, there is cause for concern, but the current research does not point towards negative effects. Uh, in the longest randomized control trials, we don't see negative health effects, and in the associative long-term research, we don't see effects on all-cause mortality. There was actually also, in that study where they looked at, uh, protein intakes up to 100 gram and if that still contributes to protein synthesis, they also looked at, uh, autophagy, and it was not affected, actually, by high protein intakes. That's also tissue-specific. And, uh, by and large, I think, in particular, if protein helps you stay lean, that is going to be worth more than any negative effects of protein intake, because we know that if there's one thing that will extend your lifespan, it's probably caloric restriction, which translates into being and staying lean long term. I think those-

   13. CWChris Williamson52:34

       What-

   14. MHMenno Henselmans52:34

       ... positive effects will be much more i- important.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:37

       ... on the, on the scales of, of time. When you say, "Staying lean," how can someone normal ... What's the adjudication, the metric that they ... "I'm, I'm staying lean. This, I am within a healthy whatever." What's that mean?

   16. MHMenno Henselmans52:54

       At least not overweight by conventional standards. So that would be-

   17. CWChris Williamson52:57

       But what, based on what, BMI?

   18. MHMenno Henselmans52:59

       Yeah, if you're not, if you're not doing f- uh, strength training, then BMI is probably fine. Uh, if you are, if you have some estimate of your body fat percentage, then you want to be below about 21% for men and below 33%, 31% for women.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:15

       Just to interject that everyone that listens to this podcast is jacked. Everyone trains. So, um, given that BMI becomes a more, a ye- a less useful metric, I suppose, because it can't account for where is this weight being held and muscle is pretty dense, how should someone balance off, "Okay, I'm not at 21%. I'm, I walk around at 17% body fat," or something like that. Is there still a consideration? Would you still have a particular consideration when it comes to BMI, i. just the total amount of stress on your system from holding weight? I don't know how many people are going to be high BMI, 17%, at, like, getting into this realm, but there may be some mass monsters listening that would be interested.

   20. MHMenno Henselmans53:59

       Hmm. That's a very good question. For body fat, it seems pretty much that lower is better for most health markers, up to unsustain- up to the levels where people don't go anyway because it's unsustainable. For muscle growth, most of the research is only positive. So in that sense, you would think bodybuilders are going to be insanely healthy, at least the natural ones, because they're, they're jacked and they're super lean. However, there is something to be said about having very high body mass putting stress on the heart. There is ventricular hypertrophy. You are lugging around a lot of meat, and it does put strain on the tissue, so maybe the engine burns up quicker.

   21. CWChris Williamson54:35

       Hmm.

   22. MHMenno Henselmans54:36

       But it also adapts. Like, we know with loading of the spine, for example, that powerlifters lift loads that untrained individuals would not be able to without basically shattering their whole spine apart.... and the spine adapts. It, it can learn to tolerate those loads. And the heart is also very adaptive, and, and that's the most, that's the driver of the cardiovascular health. So, in that sense, I'm also not super concerned, especially not when we're talking about natural ranges.

   23. CWChris Williamson55:03

       Mm. Right, so you're saying that your na- your Natty limit will probably cap out the leanness plus BMI equation that we're trying to come up with here, uh, because, y- let's face it, you're just not gonna get that big.

   24. MHMenno Henselmans55:18

       Right, you're not gonna be a Ronnie Coleman. So...

   25. CWChris Williamson55:20

       Right. That's got-

   26. MHMenno Henselmans55:21

       I think-

   27. CWChris Williamson55:22

       In, in, in one way, that's kind of, I know it's sad for those of us that just want linear growth, uh, across our time, in terms of lean body mass, but it is nice that there's this kind of like a built-in fail-safe, um, that presumably ancestrally would have been pretty rare to have tapped. Like, I don't know how many nomadic hunter-gatherers 50,000 years ago were dying soon because they were just too jacked and lean, um, but that given that we now have all of this luxury time to go and lift things and put them down in the same place in an air-conditioned room, that we still, presuming again that you stay natural, uh, we still do have this kind of ceiling, and maybe that is the thing around about where you go, "Hmm. Like, like, until the time that I start taking androgens, I'm probably gonna be fine." And this, just gain as much muscle as possible, you're probably going to be fine. You don't need to really worry about lugging around all of that extra weight.

   28. MHMenno Henselmans56:16

       Yes, in particular because I would again go back to the cost-benefit analysis. We know that muscle growth is very effective at lowering blood sugar levels and increasing insulin sensitivity. It's like you have a huge sponge where that could always absorb a lot of blood sugar, so being jacked is actually insanely effective at preventing type 2 diabetes. It's almost impossible to get type 2 diabetes without a huge genetic propensity if you are lean and jacked. And indeed in research, we see that people that lose a lot of fat and build muscle, they can effectively cure or reduce all the symptoms of type 2 diabetes, sometimes in a matter of eight weeks. There have been some studies where-

   29. CWChris Williamson56:52

       No way.

   30. MHMenno Henselmans56:53

       Yes. Massive effects. Um, because again, it's both of those things, fat loss and muscle growth, are both exceptionally effective at reducing fasting blood sugar levels and improving insulin sensitivity. That is not just a concern for diabetes because, and this is also why diabetes is such a big problem, blood sugar levels or your average blood sugar exposure and your insulin sensitivity are quite strongly associated with your chronic or systemic level of inflammation. And that in turn is associated with pretty much every health predicament there is. So everything that has passed from you is pretty much associated with, uh, systemic inflammation, all the leading causes of death. And because of that positive effect on, uh, insulin sensitivity and thereby on reducing your systemic inflammation level, I think that the effects of muscle mass, again, in line with most of the research that we have, are positive up to the Natty max.
10. 57:57 – 1:01:25

    New Wave of Glucose Monitor Technology

    1. CWChris Williamson57:57

       is an area that I'm not really too sure why, but continuous glucose monitors, uh, talk of reducing insulin sensitivity, blood sugar levels, glucose monitoring, all of this stuff, that's like a new wave, I think, that I d- I wasn't really hearing too much about. I would say the first time I heard about it was carb backloading, skip loading, uh, carb night, that stuff, because that was the way that you portion off carbs and your insulin sensitivity is- is decreased later in the day, which, you know, you can like partition it more effective or some bullshit, I can't remember. Um, but this is now, you know, like it's a big deal. You've got like Karen, mother of two and a half golden retrievers wearing a CGM. What is, how legit is using that kind of technology to inform us and what- what should people that are using that take away from it? What- what's real and what's rubbish?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans58:54

       Well, I think the- the biggest factor are simply being jacked and lean. So all-

    3. CWChris Williamson59:00

       All comes back, I love the fact that it just comes back to being jacked and lean. That's my favorite thing.

    4. MHMenno Henselmans59:05

       Yeah, body composition is simply a huge factor. So just like with when we talk about where sleep ranks on the hierarchy of like, uh, factors that influence muscle growth and fat loss, your body composition itself has huge effect on your health. That's also why we see in research, for example, to illustrate how effective fat loss is for health improvements, people that lose fat in research almost invariably get healthier regardless of diet quality, regardless of whether they crash diet. There's- there's even been a case of, um, some professor that did the Twinkie diets or something, and he just took some multivitamins and ate some Twinkies and lost a lot of fat over the course of a year or something, and pretty much all his blood work was better despite essentially living on Twinkies. So the effects of being lean, and if you- especially if you add being muscular to that, are massive. And indeed in research, we see with very few exceptions that people that lose fat, their cholesterol levels go down, their blood sugar levels go down, their heart rate goes down, blood pressure can go down. Not as consistent as the other factors, but almost any metric you look at as a health biomarker, it improves the leaner you get. And though there's not even a very clear limit. Like at some point, we know that hormone levels, anabolic hormone levels, they start tanking when you get super lean, but it's even debatable if that is really bad for your health. So by and large, for most people up to the point where they wouldn't go anyway because it's not sustainable to be 5% body fat year round or whatever-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:34

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:00:35

       ... being leaner probably is better.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:38

       And realistically, I guess people are probably going to struggle to hold ... What's the leanest that you've ever been, actually?

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:00:46

       Probably 4 or 5%.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:47

       Wow.What does that feel like?

    10. MHMenno Henselmans1:00:51

        Crap. (laughs) Feels like crap.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

        Wow. Yeah, I, I think maybe the lowest I've ever been, I probably got down to maybe, like, eight, eight and a half, something like that, and I didn't actually feel that bad day-to-day, but just the process of getting there, to me, was so miserable. My body seems to want to sit at maybe, like, between 12 and 15, and it's just, it's sweet doing that, and I can be training or not, I can be active or not, I can be eating well or not, and it kind of just fluctuates around about there. What,

11. 1:01:25 – 1:05:58

    What People Are Getting Wrong

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:25

       what are the things that you wish, when it comes to diet, body composition, uh, and the modalities as well that people are looking at, what are the things that you wish people would pay less attention to? What are the things where people are kind of very unnecessarily manic and focused on that you think, "I, I know this sounds sexy or this is something that you're really bothered about or it's trendy or whatever, but I, I really don't think that it's worth the effort"?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans1:01:53

       A lot of things. (laughs) I think carbohydrate intake is massively overemphasized. Uh, in my latest systematic review of the literature, we found minimal effects of carbohydrate intake on strength training performance. Now, if you are a tennis player or a soccer player, it's a whole different ballgame, no pun intended. But if you are just doing strength training, you go to the gym, you lift weights, your carbohydrate intake has minimal effects on your performance. Most of those effects are psychological, they're nocebo effects, and there's even direct research showing that people that believe they need carbs, they respond more positively to carbs than people that don't have that, um, essential, um, constraint. So carbohydrate intake, definitely very overrated. Supplements, supplements are massively overrated in general. Uh, branched-chain amino acids are still super popular, like pre-workouts we talked about. Uh, most supplements in general are just, they're there fine-tuning, right, at best. Um, other than that, for training, I think exercise order is actually something that is, it's, it's not negative that people pay a lot of attention to it, but they, people are wasting a lot of time and they're being needlessly inflexible with their exercise order. Most research finds that you can be quite flexible and you can, what I do, what I call combo sets with a lot of exercises that stimulate non-overlapping muscle groups, for example, squats, chin-ups, overhead press. You can combine all of those, but you don't have to superset them. So you can take a minute of rest after squats, then do your chin-ups in the same rack, and then take a minute of rest, reduce some of the weight, then do barbell overhead press in the same rack, and it's super time-effective, and it's, it's just as effective for your gains as doing your set of squats, five minutes rest, set of squats, five-minute rest-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:03:39

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    4. MHMenno Henselmans1:03:40

       ... and you're just spending a whole lot more time in the gym.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:42

       Dude, the... I can't remember when it was, I think it was probably about six years ago when I saw that every leg extension and hamstring curl in the gym is next to each other. They're like brother and sister, you know, and next door neighbors, every single one of them. And I rem- I had this, like, the sky opened and Moses came down, and I realized, "Why the fuck have I not just been using these two?" And you actually can superset these two things 'cause you're not, cardiovascularly, you're just not that-

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:04:09

       Yes.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:04:10

       ... drilled. And I, I honestly don't think that there's been any difference other than I've saved myself 15 minutes a session every leg workout for the last, like, half decade, uh, just by moving between those two. And that's one of those things where I, it's, it is kind of like bro science in that this is, look, it's a, um, procedural sort of structural thing that you do when you're training, and you just get into this rhythm of like, "Oh, okay. Like, I know that that's..." Like when you realize that for you, because of the articulation of your shoulders, that actually overhand pull-ups are better than underhand chin-ups and you've always wondered why your, your forearm hurts after this, and it's like, "Oh, I just struggle to get into that position." Or whatever it might be. Or you go neutral and you're like, "Oh, wow. All my shoulder pain goes away." Just accumulating little bits of personal wisdom like that is, that's what training age, I think, is really beyond the, "I have good sort of set point muscle activation, neural drive's good." Um, that's, like, one of the other best things that you compound by getting older in the gym.

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:05:11

       Specifically about the superset of leg curls and leg extensions, there, there is actually a difference, but it's positive. So it's called an antagonist superset because you are basically training the exact opposite muscle functions, and if you do the leg curls first, this has been directly researched, you get a better effect. So if you do leg curls and then leg extensions, then your leg extensions actually have higher levels of muscle, uh, activity. It's, it's a marginal effect, but, uh, you also have higher total performance, so you can actually do more reps. And that's probably just m- more mechanical tension, which should lead to more muscle growth. So you, not only do you save time, you actually increase your performance.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:05:52

       That's why they put them next to each other in the gym. One other thing

12. 1:05:58 – 1:08:19

    Is it Worth Obsessing Over Small Details?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:05:58

       that I've been sort of considering today as we talk about y- artificial sweeteners and continuous glucose monitors and, and the timing of your pre-workout shake and whether it's grass-fed or whatever, how do people that are super obsessed with the small details of training and diet usually pan out as far as getting fitness results goes?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans1:06:18

       You mean how effective obsession is for fitness results?

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:20

       Yes, yeah, the, like, the, the, the f- focusing on the small details of tr- 'cause, you know, a lot of the, people want to, "I wanna optimize. I wanna, like, see all of the things under a really close-up microscope and I wanna get it all right." Have you got any idea whether or not the people that, like, the guy on the left of the midwit meme, like, the, the dude with the Neanderthal brow that's like, "I just lift heavy weight and eat meat," uh-

    4. MHMenno Henselmans1:06:41

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:41

       ... is it, like, the dude on the left or the dude in the middle or the right? Who, who does best?

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:06:46

       Um, it's hard to say on average because you would have to disentangle motivation and obsession. So there are certainly a lot of people that are massive over-analyzers, like, they're not going to the gym, but they are...... you know, worrying about how many grams of carbs to eat, or, um, they're not tracking their calories, but at the same time... Or they are tracking their calories, but at the same time still going to McDonald's since... A- always end up overeating. You know, people have just their priorities completely mixed up. That's definitely a real thing. On the other hand, generally people that are more obsessed are probably also more motivated, and motivation-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:07:23

       Mm-hmm.

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:07:23

       ... is huge. More motivated people just get better results, for sure. So, it probably depends on kind of where you fall on the... Are, are you over-analyzer obsessive type or are you just super motivated, like, "I want to know every lingual- single detail because I will take advantage of every single advantage I can get"?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:07:39

       Yeah. This i- i- That's such a good point to say that the type of mentality that someone has that would cause them to be very obsessive and, and pay attention to the details probably has more upstream effects, which means that they are going to be more consistent with their training, they are gonna be X, Y, and Z. The problem, the, the... If this is a matrix of, like, how obsessive you are versus how much you pay attention to details, the worst one to be in is someone who pays attention to lots of details but isn't obsessive, because that's the person who is going to be bothered about where their continuous glucose monitor is, but hasn't trained twice this week. And that's stepping over dollars to pick up cents, so to speak.

13. 1:08:19 – 1:13:32

    Keeping Motivation to Train High

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

       Talking about motivation to train, what have you come to realize through your own experimentation personally, in the literature, and stuff like that, how can people keep their motivation to train nice and high?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans1:08:35

       You can keep your motivation to do anything nice and high basically by cultivating intrinsic motivation, which means you need relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Those are pretty much the driving forces of both happiness and intrinsic motivation to do anything in life, which means that, specifically for training, you need to have a certain degree of freedom to make your own training program, do things the way you like it so that you're not, um, in some rigid program that you don't understand why it works and you just have to follow it and you don't like the rules, but, you know, this is the diet. So that's the autonomy aspect that you want. And if you can combine it with competence, that you also know why you're doing what you're doing, and you have some basic understanding of human physiology, you can create your own training program, your diet, that is very beneficial. And then you also need some degree of relatedness with the activity. So whether that's being a gym bro, or whether that's just having strong relatedness with the, with being jacked, like-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:36

       Oh, the identity-

    4. MHMenno Henselmans1:09:37

       ... for personal development.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

       ... of this kind of... You, you wear the clothes.

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:09:40

       Exactly.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:09:40

       Like, you enjoy wearing Gymshark or whatever. Uh-

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:09:42

       Yes.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:43

       Right, okay. That's interesting. I thought... When you said relatedness, I thought, um, a community of people... But I suppose this would be a part of that.

    10. MHMenno Henselmans1:09:51

        Absolutely.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:09:51

        Like, if, if, if you're someone who considers your identity p- to be wrapped up in your fitness and training, you're likely to hang around with people whose identity is also wrapped up in it, which presumably is a, a positive flywheel.

    12. MHMenno Henselmans1:10:02

        CrossFit does it exceptionally well, cultivating relatedness to training. Because it's not just that you go to the gym and you exchange your time and effort for muscle growth. No. You are part of a community, you are also following a certain type of diet, you are part of a tribe. You are not just doing your workouts, you are, you know, doing their special workouts-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:10:21

        You have a language.

    14. MHMenno Henselmans1:10:21

        ... with other, other people. Exactly.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:22

        You have a way to dress.

    16. MHMenno Henselmans1:10:23

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:10:25

        Yeah, that's funny. What was that study you posted about talking to yourself making you stronger?

    18. MHMenno Henselmans1:10:33

        So there are a lot of ways to motivate yourself, and most of them are effective, including talking to yourself. So you can do it internally or you can actually do it out loud, depending on what your personal preference is. But if you kind of hype yourself up, then... And you tell yourself, like, "I can do this," or you visualize that you are actually doing it, that's also very effective, those things do actually increase motivation and can help you, you know, set a PR or give it maximum effort for your next set, especially a exercise like squats which have a high kind of anxiety component if you want to perform well.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:11:08

        Mm-hmm.

    20. MHMenno Henselmans1:11:09

        Uh, so pretty much whatever floats your boat, uh, is my conclusion, in terms of getting yourself riled up, is effective, and can therefore be good to, uh, implement.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:11:19

        Have you ever applied that motivation formula to other areas of your life? Uh, w- wanting to become smarter, or wanting to learn something, or become more proficient at a, a hobby or a job, or get a partner, or anything like that? Have you ever tried to use that same formula effectively in different domains of your life?

    22. MHMenno Henselmans1:11:40

        I'm personally very bad at that. Uh, I am... I consider myself a reasonably rational individual, which means I have great difficulty with all of these positive psychology tricks. Uh, I always feel like I'm just fooling myself and, like, it doesn't work. But I know from research that it does work, and it doesn't actually depend that much on your personality. So I'm in this difficult spot where I'm not doing things that I know work because I just feel weird doing them. (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson1:12:11

        (laughs) Yeah. There's a, there's a level of sort of rationality that you get to where you realize that you've made yourself less effective by being more rational. I mean, you know, like-

    24. MHMenno Henselmans1:12:25

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:12:25

        ... a, maybe a p- a perfect example of this would be religion, that people that are religious, they live longer, they have better life satisfaction and happiness, they have all of this other stuff. And, you know, S- Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or someone can come in and go, "Well, that's stupid. Like, you- y- y- y- you can't all be right. And w- we- we mean that Muhammad flew to the moon on a winged horse," or whatever it might be. But then you go, "Look, what are we... What are we... What's the outcome that we're trying to get here? Are we trying to live a effective, happy, fulfilled, flourishing arete life? Or are we trying to be truthful and ultimately rational? And r- really, what is the reason for being truthful and ultimately rational?" Presumably it's to improve the-... tiny sliver of existence that you've got while you're on this planet, and you kind of, like, sacrificed the thing that you wanted for this outcome that is supposed to be able to get it but actually doesn't when you look at it in the cold, harsh light of day.

    26. MHMenno Henselmans1:13:14

        Yeah, so I struggle with the same thing what you have with religion. I think you talked about it in your Q&A, where you want to reap the benefits of religion without actually being religious, and I try to reap the benefits of positive psychology...

    27. CWChris Williamson1:13:24

        (laughs)

    28. MHMenno Henselmans1:13:24

        ... without feeling like I'm tricking myself. Uh, but it's hard. It's hard. It's a tough life.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:13:30

        Yeah. Okay, what

14. 1:13:32 – 1:18:05

    Most Underrated Bodybuilding Food

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:32

       are the most underrated bodybuilding foods? We've got a panoply of different things that we can throw on our plate. What's the most underrated ones for someone that wants to get jacked?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans1:13:44

       Olives. I, um-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:46

       No way.

    4. MHMenno Henselmans1:13:47

       Yes.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:13:47

       Shut up!

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:13:48

       There are some... Olives are just a generally- a generally super healthy, quite satiating food with great fat sources. There is actually some research suggesting that the fats in, or some of the, uh, phytochemicals in olives have also anabolic properties for your muscle, but I wouldn't get your hopes up on that being very significant. But it's just a food that you almost never see in fitness circles, but it's super healthy. It has fiber, it's quite satiating, great fat source. Uh, so I'd put that one up there. And other than that, berries, probably. Berries are also ex- exceptionally satiating for how few calories they have. And you don't hear that much about them. Um, in health circles, yes. In fitness circles, less so. And then I would probably list pangasius filet as, um, also very underrated.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:37

       What- what is that?

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:14:38

       It's a white fish that is actually flavorful. So, unlike tilapia or cod or whatever, which just tastes like nothing, like seawater, uh, pangasius is only marginally more fatty with 3 to 5% fat per 100 grams or 35 grams per 100, uh, grams, and 20-plus gram protein, so a super good protein source, as most fish, and just much more flavorful, and some good types of fat too, like omega-3 fatty acids. So it... Again, all of these things just fall under practical considerations in health things, because If It Fits Your Macros is largely correct in terms of muscle growth and fat loss, that there are no magic muscle-building foods and there are no magic fat-loss foods. It's just foods that you like, that fit into your diet, that are satiating and satisfying for you and are also healthy.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:15:27

       What about eggs? Are eggs healthy?

    10. MHMenno Henselmans1:15:30

        Eggs are not healthy, but they're also not unhealthy. So eggs, in most studies, score essentially neutral. They have no relationship with all-cause mortality in the best research, for example. Effects on cholesterol are also super modest, much more modest than you would think, based on their cholesterol content. Their fatty acid balance is quite good, especially if they're, um, um, omega-3 eggs or flaxseed fat eggs. Then the ratio is a little bit better between the fatty acids. So generally, a very nutritious food, high protein, decent ratio of fatty acids. But in terms of health, like, are you gonna be healthier when you eat them? Which is the case for, say, avocado or olives. Like, we- you can give that to people in a study, and eight weeks later you can see that their biomarkers are better than they were before. That's not the case for eggs. And some people are hyper-responders. They might, um, experience a more significant increase in cholesterol levels, in LDL cholesterol levels in particular, or, um, ApoB, which is a bit the- the better marker than LDL cholesterol. So, in that sense, I would say they're definitely wrongfully demonized because they're a very nutritious food and it has a lot of utility, but they're not healthy in the sense of, you know, health-promoting.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:16:41

        Mm-hmm.

    12. MHMenno Henselmans1:16:41

        I would rate them mostly as neutral.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:16:43

        Okay, what about red meat

    14. NANarrator1:16:45

        ... months before?

    15. MHMenno Henselmans1:16:45

        Similar- similar ballpark.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:16:46

        Right?

    17. MHMenno Henselmans1:16:47

        The latest meta review of meta reviews found substantially no effects. There's a lot of research on- on red meat that it dwarfs the whole, uh, exercise science field. Makes me, uh, very envious when I look at research on eggs or red meat, and I'm like, "I wish we had, like, 10% of this for exercise science." No, just study after study after study. Uh, unfortunately, most of them are really poor, but still, um, mostly neutral effects. Again, very nutritious food, so it's healthy in the sense of having a lot of good nutrients, a lot of protein, but not healthy in the sense of, when I eat this, I can see that my blood biomarkers improve in- in the span of weeks. But also not unhealthy and definitely wrongfully demonized in that sense, especially when you consume it in moderation and it's not processed red meat.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:17:31

        How much magic is in liver?

    19. MHMenno Henselmans1:17:35

        Very nutritious. Very, very nutritious. So in the sense of nutrient indices, liver scores off the charts on a lot of indices. Not just liver, also kidney. Most organ meats score very well. But again, I don't think that you will see objective improvements in your longevity or any health biomarkers when you consume a lot of it, unless you were, for example, iron deficient, and liver is a particularly convenient and rapid way to correct that deficiency.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:18:03

        Mm. It's so interesting, man, the...

15. 1:18:05 – 1:22:35

    The Tribal Nature of Diet Culture

    1. CWChris Williamson1:18:06

       Looking from the outside as someone that... I don't really care about what camp I'm a part of. I've, like, been non-monogamous with my diet approach, and, uh, e- even- even within my non-monogamy, I'm non-monogamous. Like, I- I'm- I don't even stick to diets all that much. But the, like, level of vehement tribal adherence and how aggressive people get. Uh, have you got any idea or theory as to why diet is such a, and nutrition is such a battleground for, like, this semi-religious existential war between different tribes?

    2. MHMenno Henselmans1:18:46

       I do. I believe that as a society, we have become less materialistic due to the digitalization of our society and further increased welfare levels, making it less important whether you wear... Whether you have Prada. I don't even know what they make, shoes or bracelets or whatever. Uh, but whatever. If you have Gucci or just, uh, generic-type clothing.Uh, that used to be a, a big driver of socioeconomic status. But these days, it's more about what you say, because you also don't have to do things anymore, because it's mostly online now, so it's just what you post and what it seems like that you may be doing in life. So, things that signal your identity in some way, which you can display on especially social media, are a lot more important indicators of your identity now than they were before. Because it's less about material goods, it's less about what you actually do. It's more about social media, what you portray. That's why what we are currently... You know, whether you consume Starbucks now is all about whether they support Israel or not. And just like it's not so important anymore whether the diet is right for you, whether it's healthy. Now, it's about, you know, am I a carnivore or am I a vegan? Because, you know, do you care about the environment and do you care about, um, animal welfare? And these things have suddenly become very intertwined with fitness, making it kind of con- confusing, uh, at first glance that a lot of people are now suddenly extremely invested in how many grams of carbs they eat or whether the diet is ketogenic or not. Whereas before that was simply a utilitarian consideration, like what diet suits my needs for dietary purposes, suddenly these days, it has become a lot more of an identity indicator, which is far more important for our emotional, um, welfare than, you know, what type of, um... Like for... It's the equivalent of for our training, for example is nobody cares whether you use a dumbbell or a barbell for your identity. But maybe we'll get to the point that even that matters

    3. CWChris Williamson1:20:39

       Oh, God.

    4. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:40

       ... from what else I should do. Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:20:40

       I mean, there was, there was a... There was a period for a while of free weight versus machine. That was-

    6. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:47

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:47

       ... kind of an equivalent, right?

    8. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:48

       Yeah, yeah. Th- there is, but that's niche, you know, that... Because if you tell-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:20:51

       Mm.

    10. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:51

        ... that to the average individual on the street, they're just like-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:20:53

        What do you mean?

    12. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:53

        Yeah, exactly.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:20:54

        Yeah.

    14. MHMenno Henselmans1:20:55

        But within the niche of strength training individuals and evidence-based fitness, uh, it's like you have the, the natural lifters, the enhanced lifters, the, um, uh, people that are free weights, and, um, people that are strong versus people that just lift for aesthetic purposes. There's that. But diet is definitely on a whole different level these days.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:21:13

        Yeah. I think that, that's probably a pretty good, uh, reason for it, that you s- you self-brand through your diet. It, it, it says something to the world about who you are or what you are or what people should expect of you. I think another element of it, this is my bro-science example, was your diet is, in some ways, supposed to be upstream from your longevity. And by attacking somebody else's diet, what you're basically doing is reminding them of their impending death, that, you know, it's death denialism to, to say that, um, going vegan, or going keto, or e- going carnivore, or whate- focusing on protein or whatever, muscle-centric medicine, uh, all of these things are I am going to live longer because of this thing that I do. And implicit in the not all religions can be right, because they contradict each other, not all diets can be right, "right," whatever that even means-

Episode duration: 1:23:19