Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
It’s a new year and a time when a lot of people become ultra-focused on health, fitness, and losing weight. It’s also a time when a lot of people will try some new fad diet or a new exercise …
Continue Reading about 210. Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 210 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked. So it’s a new year. And it’s a time when a lot of people become ultra-focused on their health, fitness and losing weight.
It’s also a time when a lot of people will try some new fad diet, or some new exercise routine that promises instant weight loss with minimal effort. I’m definitely not going to do that here today because I’m a big fan of the slow and steady approach to losing weight and being able to keep it off for good.
So in this episode, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked, I’m going to clear up some of the most prevalent misconceptions about weight loss and offer up some helpful tips on what you should do instead.
But first, I share a lot of information here on the podcast about proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength. If you’re new to the podcast, it might seem a little overwhelming. And you might not know where to even start with all this stuff.
And if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming a Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re gonna learn the basics of proper nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
All right, let’s get into today’s topic, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked. I was thinking about this as we start the new year here it is now January of 2024, Happy New Year to all of you. And I was thinking about what people tend to do at the beginning of the year like this, they tend to jump on to some fad diet, or or do something they read about on social media to lose weight and maybe improve their exercise or start running or something like that.
And it usually ends up being something that is very short-lived. That’s why the gyms are full in January, and they’re empty again in March. So we need to take a different approach, okay? And some of the things that are spread out there in the world, some of the conceptions that people have around weight loss are confusing, and they’re not always correct.
And I want to clear up some of these common myths, you know, some of these common principles that people tend to think are the truth that really aren’t. So just sit back and enjoy this episode today, because I’m going to debunk some of these common weight loss myths.
Now, the first one is going to be that it’s all about calories. And this is one of the most common weight loss myths out there where it’s just all about calories, you just have to eat less, and you will lose weight. That’s it that is the one principle that most diets out there adhere to whatever the diet is, they typically are trying to get you to eat fewer calories like that is the principle of most diets.
Also with weight loss drugs, weight loss surgeries, these are all getting you to not eat as much. And the issue with this is that yes, you can lose weight by reducing your calories, it is a very effective way to lose weight. Look at shows like The Biggest Loser, they restrict calories for these very obese people. They have them exercise like crazy, and they do lose a lot of weight.
The problem with this approach is that it is not sustainable. They have done many, many studies. In fact, there was a big meta-study that was done that looked at all these other studies that showed that calorie restriction diets are the most effective at short-term weight loss.
They are also and this is the important part, the least effective long-term weight loss approaches So when you restrict calories for a period of time, what happens is your body goes into starvation mode. So your body will think that you are starving, basically, you’re not getting enough calories to satisfy your energetic needs throughout the day.
And so your body will actually slow down your metabolism over time to match the calories that are coming in. So let’s say you’re somebody that normally eats 2000 calories a day, and you restrict your caloric intake to 1000 calories a day, that’s gonna be fine for the short term, but over time, your body will slow down your metabolism to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.
So now, instead of burning 2000 calories a day at rest, that’s your resting metabolic rate, your body’s like, nope, we’re only going to burn 1000 calories a day, because that’s all we have ever coming in. So what happens is now the 1000 calories a day is not a deficit anymore.
And so the weight loss stops, and actually, you start gaining weight, because you’re still eating the, you know, the 1000 calories a day, and maybe your metabolic rate drops even more. And you can’t lower your caloric intake, you can’t keep lowering your caloric intake to match your slowdown in metabolism.
So this is a very bad approach to weight loss, like just cutting calories and thinking that that is the answer. Again, it does work in the short term. And that’s why so many people promote this type of diet where you know, just don’t eat as much. The problem with is not sustainable, it is not something that you can do long term because your body will go into that starvation mode.
And as a runner especially, you do not want to reduce your caloric intake, especially long term, this can dramatically affect your running performance, because as you ramp up your mileage, you ramp up your intensity levels, and your caloric intake needs to match that.
So you actually need to a lot of times you need to increase your caloric intake as a runner, especially as you’re getting toward the late stages of a training cycle. Another thing to consider is caloric restriction, a lot of the caloric restriction diets will cause you to lose weight, but that weight is in the form of fat and muscle and connective tissue and bone density. This is not good.
As a runner, you do not want to lose muscle, you don’t want to lose bone density. A little bit of a
side note here, there are a lot of new weight loss drugs out there and people are talking about drugs like Ozempic, right? And they’re showing oh, these are so effective at people losing weight.
What they’re not telling you though, is about 40% of the weight that people are losing, you know using drugs Ozempic is muscle, bone, and connective tissue. You know, connective tissues are ligaments and tendons. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to sacrifice muscle, bone and connective tissues just so I can lose weight.
It’s not about weight loss where we want to focus on fat loss, right? It’s not about just restricting calories, there’s a lot more going on that you really have to consider here. Okay. Instead of focusing on just restricting calories, try focusing instead on eating real food eating nutritionally dense foods, foods that are satiating foods that when you eat them, you feel satisfied.
A lot of the calorically dense or I’m sorry, the the foods that are not calorically dense, or the the empty calorie type of foods that are a lot of the processed foods, a lot of the foods that are full of sugar and refined grains and things like that will actually hijack your hunger signals and make you feel super hungry even though you’re eating a ton of food.
You can feel super hungry in between meals, and they actually cause you to overeat. So we want to be eating foods that are satiating that fill us up and that don’t mess up our hunger signals.
So what I recommend is eating food, real food that still looks like food, meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, dairy, all the stuff that is just the normal stuff you see on the outside of the grocery store.
Stay away from processed foods. Stay away from sugar, stay away from refined grains. These foods make you feel super hungry. It’s hard to lose weight when you’re eating mostly processed foods and sugars.
Those things will mess up your hunger signals. They won’t make you feel full and satisfied when you do eat. And if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re hungry all the time, that’s a bad combination right there. That’s where you start to get hangry right? Angry and hungry at the same time.
So there’s a lot more going on here. And it’s not just about calories. In fact, just reducing calories is not a really good way to lose weight. And it’s really not a long term, definitely not a long term approach that’s going to work for most people. Okay. So that’s number one. It’s all about calories. I think we busted that myth right there.
The next one is that we just need to exercise more. So exercise more, that’s all you need to do. It really doesn’t matter what you eat. As long as you’re burning it off, you’re fine. It’s okay to overeat. It’s okay to eat whatever junk food you want. Just run more, just exercise more, get your cardio in every day, and you’ll be fine.
Here’s the thing, right now we are exercising more in this time in human history than we ever have as human beings. And we are more overweight, more obese, and have more metabolic dysfunction than any other time in human history.
Clearly exercising more is not the answer. I talk to people literally every single day who tell me, Patrick, I gain weight, I’m running more and I keep gaining weight. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. Every time I increase my exercise, I end up gaining weight.
And I’m like, yeah, I know, this was me, too. For years there, I was running at least two marathons a year, I was running several ultra-marathons every year. And in that process, I was gaining weight consistently.
And over a few years, I gained something like 40 pounds. And this was you know, when I was doing that pretty typical training for me at the time, which was running a few marathons and a few ultra marathons every single year.
So I was training a lot, I was running a lot and I was doing other types of cardio and cross training and strength training and things like that. So this concept of exercising more, it just doesn’t hold up. Okay.
Never in human history, have we needed to, quote-unquote, like exercise to maintain a healthy weight, to maintain a healthy metabolism, to maintain good health and fitness. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, they did not like intentionally exercise, they weren’t out there, you know, doing calisthenics every day.
They actually were focused on energy conservation, they did not exert themselves excessively, they rested whenever they didn’t have to go out there and, and walk distances, you know, and hunt prey or gather, you know, fruits and vegetables and things like that.
So they were actually focused on conserving energy, you know, they probably walked a few miles every day. At times, they may have done more than that, but they weren’t like running consistently all the time. They did some running. But it wasn’t something they were doing, like running ultra marathons for fun. Like, you know, they just didn’t do that. It was stupid to like, you know, use that much energy, you don’t see any animal ever, you know, just exercising for the heck of it. You know what I mean?
We actually see this today in modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes like the Hadza in Tanzania, they have been a well-studied group of people. They are super fit, they’re healthy, they’re lean, they’re strong. They don’t have all the metabolic diseases that we have in the Western world here.
They don’t have diabetes, they’re not obese, they don’t have heart disease. So all that stuff is really not present with these people. And they are a hunter-gatherer triad, very similar to our ancient ancestors. So, you know, humans have evolved over two and a half million years.
And for the vast majority of that time, we were hunter-gatherers, and living in tribes, and we were super fit healthy, lean, and strong people. The only time we started to experience all this metabolic dysfunction and disease is, is within the last few 100 years, really, you know, maybe 500 years, 1000 years, even like 2000 years.
You can go back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, when we started to see them using more grains and eating a lot more refined grains in the form of flowers and things like that. So they started to you know, perfect agriculture and they were eating a lot more grains and you can see that the distended bellies of the mummies because they actually have the actual whole person preserved as a mummy.
And their teeth are all messed up. You know, they have a lot of tooth decay from the sugar and the grains they were eating and they have lives distended bellies, which means they were starting to gain weight, even that was 2000 years ago.
So in the long span of human history, there’s only a short amount of time, where we actually are starting to experience all these metabolic diseases. And they’re all really based off of our diet, you know, so we see tribes like the Hadza. And we can kind of look at them and say, like, yeah, they’re pretty close to what our ancestors used to be like.
And what’s interesting about the Hadza, is that their metabolic rate, so how many calories they burn at rest is about the same as the rest of us in the Western world here. For men, it’s like 2500 calories a day. For women, it’s 1900 calories a day, that’s pretty similar to where we are here in the Western world.
So you can’t say like, oh, well, they just exercise more, they don’t, they’re doing about the same amount of exercise we’re doing, they get in some steps every day they walk in, they might be getting in 10 to 15,000 steps a day, which is, you know, what we’re supposed to be getting anyway, you know, it’s kind of recommended.
And for the vast majority of us, you know, we’re getting around 3 or 5000 steps a day, without any intentional exercise. So we’re just in our daily lives, you know, we’re getting about a third, you know, half to a third of that, in the amount of steps we take on a daily basis anyway.
And if you’re a runner, you’re definitely getting that 10,000 steps a day, you know, so these people who are really about the same as us in most aspects, they, they don’t exercise exceedingly. They are extremely healthy, fit, lean, and strong, and their metabolic rate is about the same as ours.
So it doesn’t mean, like you need to exercise more, you know, so please understand this, like the answer is not doing a ton of cardio and trying to burn off the food, you can eat a bunch of junk food, and then think that you’re gonna burn it off. It just doesn’t work that way. Okay. So let’s just put that one to rest.
The next weight loss myth that I want to debunk is that the XYZ diet is all you need. So whatever that one diet is, right? There are so many crazy diets out there, there’s literally thousands of diets. And in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I started looking at some of the weirder diets that are out there. And I cannot make this stuff up.
But there’s a diet called the cotton ball diet, which is where you soak cotton balls in different liquids, you know, like, cabbage juice, or fruit juice, and then you eat that, right? And you actually, it’s supposed to make you feel more full because you’re eating these cotton balls, and it gets you past the cotton balls or whatever. And you’re getting a little bit of nutrition from the juice or whatever the soak in there, but don’t do that. That’s crazy.
Another one is called the werewolf diet. And I was like, oh, what is that, where they eat people? Like what? What is the werewolf diet? And no, it has to do with like fasting around the lunar cycles. Okay, great. I love that one, actually.
And then there’s one that I cannot make this up, this is called the breatharian diet. And these are people that believe that you can subsist on spirituality in sunlight that you only need air to get all the nutrients that you need, that you don’t really need to eat or drink anything, including water. And obviously, if you try this, you will die.
Okay, so the people that are saying they’re practicing breatharians they’ve actually shown them sneaking liquids and food and stuff because you can’t do this, this is not sustainable. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I’m like making this up or reading these out of some sort of like, you know, comedy show or something like that. But no, they are things that people have actually done in the past. Okay.
Every diet out there claims to be the answer for everyone. And listen, I’ve tried them all, not the cotton ball or the breatharian diet, although the werewolf diet sounds interesting, I might have to give that one a try. But I’ve tried like most of the diets that are out there, the big popular ones, right?
And to some extent, they all worked. The problem is that nothing I ever did was ever sustainable for me. For example, I started reading about vegetarianism and veganism. And for about five years or so I went and I started cutting out my meat and I started cutting out more and more meat and then fish and then eventually so I went vegetarian then eventually I went plant-based and I did that for like 10 years, so about 15 years I was like vegetarian and vegan essentially.
You know, I stayed away from meat, stayed away from dairy, that stuff is bad for you. And at the beginning, it was okay, like I did lose some weight. But I have to tell you, for me, I gained a lot of weight eating that kind of a diet. Because if you think about it, that diet is mostly almost all 100% carbs, fruits, and vegetables, and that’s 100% carbs.
So for me, that did not work. For me, over 10 years, I steadily gained weight, I gained like 40 pounds in that process of eating a plant-based diet. For me, this was not healthy, and it was not sustainable, gaining weight on any kind of diet, that shouldn’t be the case that’s not good for you, whatever you’re doing.
And I know a lot of people who do really well on a plant-based diet or vegetarian diet, and they love it. And they do it for ethical reasons. Or they do it for reasons that work for them as individuals. And I’m not saying it’s a bad choice for you, I’m just saying that it didn’t work for me.
If I kept doing that, I’d probably be like 300 pounds by now. All right. And I have clients and I work with people who are vegetarians and vegans, and they do well, we can make it work, okay, but we have to stay away from some of the refined foods, and the processed foods and things like that, okay.
The truth is, here’s what I’m trying to get to here, there isn’t one diet that works for everyone, you need to figure out the right formula that works for you. Because you are an individual, you have your own metabolism, your own genetics, your own lifestyle, your own family, your culture of origin, your own food preferences, your own likes and dislikes, you have your own health and fitness goals.
Maybe you’re training for ultra marathons, maybe you want to run your first 5k, or maybe you don’t exercise at all, all these factors, put together mean that you are an individual, and you need to approach nutrition and exercise with this important principle in mind.
That is, you have to figure out what works for you as an individual. And it’s going to look different from what everybody else is doing. And it probably isn’t going to be some preconceived diet that, you know, it’s published in the New York Times or whatever, all right.
This is why I do coaching. And I don’t just prescribe a diet for everyone that I work with. Coaching is a process of figuring out the best approach for you, of figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. And then modify it as needed until you get the results that you want. It’s simple. It’s a feedback system. Let’s see what’s working, let’s see what’s not.
And we’ll adjust accordingly. But honestly, most people are not willing to put in the time and effort to do it this way. Sorry, but there’s no quick fix here. It takes time to figure these things out. And you have to be willing to invest the time in yourself because that’s what’s required to get the results that you’re going after here. Okay.
So the right diet is not the one that’s out there, it’s the one that works for you, the one that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, you’re not going to stick with it, and it’s not going to work long term for you, you’re gonna go back to doing what feels comfortable, and that’s probably eating the junk food because, hey, that’s what feels comfortable, right?
So don’t think that there’s some diet out there, that’s going to work for you that, you know, everybody is talking about these days, because there just isn’t such a thing. Okay. All right. I think that weight loss myth is debunked.
Here’s another one, your metabolism slows down as you get older, so why even bother? And I hear people say this all the time, they’re like, hey, I’m just getting older. So I’m not even going to try to lose weight, you know, I’m not even going to worry about it, because it’s just, it’s not going to work for me because my metabolism just is getting slower and my metabolism slowed down now, and we losing weight is too hard.
And people use this as an excuse to not start or to not change their diet or not to eat healthy foods or whatever. There was a study published a couple of years ago, that suggests that this is just really not true at all. So, your metabolism the rate at which your body burns energy, has long been thought to decline during middle age and then to keep declining as you get older. So for this particular study, researchers looked at metabolism by measuring the total energy expenditure, which includes energy burned at rest, you know, and you know, in order to perform basic functions, like digesting food and energy burned during physical activity as well.
So they looked at exercise and you know, your resting metabolic rate. And they did this study on like 6400 people, ranging from eight days old to 95 years old, along with their height, weight, their body fat percentage. They looked at their average metabolic rates for men, women, and people in different age groups. And they found some very interesting results here based on four distinct periods in people’s lives.
So from infancy to one year old, the metabolic rate surged until it was about 50% higher than it will be during adulthood. So that’s pretty common you like your metabolic rate is going to increase a lot at the beginning of your life, right? And then from the ages of one to 20, the metabolism decreased by 3% per year. Okay, again, very normal.
The one big surprising thing is that from 20 to 60 years old, people’s metabolism doesn’t really change at all. And then after age 60, your metabolism does decrease slightly, but only by about .7% a year, so not as much as people think it does. And definitely not in that middle age. So people think that you know, once you turn 40 like this, it’s all over. Like no, it’s not true at all, like your metabolism really doesn’t start to decrease until you get to about age 60.
So, studies like this are showing us that our metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as we get older, and that it’s much more likely that changes in our behavior are causing us to gain weight as we get older.
Changes in our diet are what can help us to prevent the slowing down of our metabolism. So people want to use this as an excuse as to why they can’t gain weight, but they don’t want to look at their actual diet, you know, their lifestyle choices.
So your lifestyle choices are going to go a lot further in helping you to maintain a healthy weight and even lose weight as you get older. And you can’t use the metabolism as an excuse anymore. Okay, so that myth is totally busted.
Another one that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately is cleanses and detox diets, like that’s all you need to do. You just need to do a cleanse every now and then and you’ll be fine. And listen, almost none of the cleanses and detox diets that are out there today have been proven to be effective on short or long-term metabolic health.
This is another case where people are trying to justify a crappy diet with some sort of a detox or a cleanse. Yes, it is true that today we are exposed to more toxins than probably ever before. But what you need to understand is that most of these toxins you are choosing because of your poor diet, you’re eating processed foods loaded with chemicals, industrial seed oils, deep-fried foods, foods loaded with sugar, and refined grains, all these things are contributing to health problems, all these things are making it harder to lose weight.
So the idea of a cleanse, it’s a good idea. And we should absolutely cleanse our systems of these toxic ingredients. Okay, but you can’t just do it like once a year, the best way to cleanse your body of toxins is to stop eating the toxins. The best cleanse is actually a diet that just eliminates all these terrible ingredients from your life permanently.
So people think that they can eat whatever they want for months, and then just drink a bunch of detox tea or take a bunch of supplements and pull the toxins out of your system. And these things might work. For the short term, they might have some short-term benefits, they might make you feel a little better in the interim, but it’s not a long-term solution.
I was talking to some friends recently, this couple and they’re taking all these expensive supplements to pull all these toxins out of their system. And they were telling me about this whole system of things that, you know, use all these different ingredients. I can’t remember the names of all this stuff, but they, you know, grab the toxins and they pull them out and it takes like six months of this protocol in order to do this.
Meanwhile, they’re taking all these expensive supplements every single day. Okay, that’s great. And I applaud you for trying to get healthier. But what happens after the six months? What do you do? Like do the toxins just come back? Like wouldn’t it be wiser to just eat clean and healthy foods void of all the toxic ingredients in the first place and just keep doing that?
Anyway, never in human history have we needed to go on a cleanse. For two and a half million years as humans, we’ve thrived simply by eating real food. We haven’t had to drink a bunch of detox tea or like you know, eat all these crazy supplements and things like that just to read our bodies of the garbage just stop eating the garbage.
Your body is really good at cleansing itself. Your body is really good at detoxing itself. We have an incredibly complex system to remove toxins from our bodies, let your body do what it’s supposed to do naturally just stop eating the junk food. Okay. So that’s another myth busted, by the way.
So the biggest takeaways here that I want you to have a look at here is like looking at our ancestor years, ancient human civilizations were incredibly healthy, lean, strong and disease free, much like that Hadza tribe today, okay.
They did not count calories. They did not restrict the caloric intake. They didn’t need to exercise like mad every day to stay lean and healthy. They actually were trying to conserve energy. They didn’t have to go on some crazy fad diet. They weren’t eating cotton balls soaked in cabbage juice to lose weight. Their metabolism didn’t suddenly stop working when they hit a certain age. And they didn’t do some weird juice cleanses or take a bunch of detox supplements, right?
What did they do? They ate real food. They ate food that today still looks like food, food that our ancestors would recognize, that their ancestors recognize that’s just food, just eat food. Stay away from the processed foods stay away from the Frankenfoods.
Try to eliminate sugar and refined grains. Those things have only been around for a short period of time in the course of human history. Stay away from seed oil. Stay away from toxic ingredients. Stay away from fried foods. Yes, exercise, and keep on running, but don’t do it to try to lose weight.
Do it because it’s good for you. It’s good for your mental health and emotional health. It’s good for your heart. It’s great at helping you to manage stress, just don’t run a bunch to try to lose weight because that doesn’t work. Okay, so those are the common weight loss myths debunked.
I hope you got something good out of this episode today. If you did shoot me a message and tell me what you liked about it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
I recently sat down with Dr. Marvin Merrit and had an awesome conversation about what it means to be a healthy human being. In the world of health and fitness, there is a lot of information out …
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 201 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, reversing disease through nutrition and exercise with Dr. Marvin Merrit.
So I recently sat down with Dr. Marvin, and we had this awesome conversation about what it means to be a healthy human being. In the world of health and fitness. There’s a lot of confusing information out there. And it can feel pretty overwhelming. And a lot of this information can even be contradictory.
Okay, so how do you know what you should be doing? Well, rest assured that Dr. Marvin and I break it all down for you. And we offer up some very clear strategies for reversing disease, using nutrition and exercise so that you can become the healthiest version of yourself yet.
But first, I know I talk a lot about losing weight, and improving your health and fitness. And I know that all the stuff that even I talk about here can feel a little overwhelming.
That’s why I created a free training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. I wanted to make it easy for you, I wanted to break it all down, put all the stuff that I’ve been talking about here on the podcast for over 200 episodes now and give you some really actionable strategies.
So in this training video, you’re going to learn how to fuel your body properly so that you can lose weight and improve your running. You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner.
You’re going to learn how to make changes that are actually sustainable, because that is what it’s all about. We’re not interested in short term fixes. We want sustainability with our diet, and so much more. So if you’re ready to get leaner and get stronger, run faster and run longer than ever before. If you’re ready to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then check out this free training.
It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You can find it by going to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, without further ado, let’s just get into this conversation. So much fun talking to Dr. Marvin, reversing disease through nutrition and exercise with Dr. Marvin Merrit.
Okay, today, I’ve got Dr. Marvin here, Marvin Merrit and Marvin reached out to me on Facebook, right?
Dr. Marvin Merrit
Yes.
Patrick McGilvray
And you were sharing with me that you teach a lot of the same concepts and principles that I talked about on my podcast, and I share on social media and things like that. And you said, hey, this would be a great kind of collaboration, or maybe we can have a conversation about this.
So we got on a call and you and I had a great conversation where I thought, man, we should really record this, you know, and do a podcast on this because you come out with this healthy eating and healthy lifestyle, from a little bit of a different perspective, being a doctor.
And I typically don’t talk a lot about, about the health, I’m sorry about the medical side of things because I’m not a doctor. I do quote a lot of doctors and I read a lot of the research and I and I understand a lot of the concepts.
And I absolutely know how a lot of these healthy principles can help us with medical conditions. But it’s you know, I don’t like to talk about that stuff, because I don’t have that MD after my name, you know. So that’s where you come in. And I want to just kind of talk to you about, you know, those, the medical side of things and how healthy eating and exercising can help us.
So first of all, before we get into all that stuff, just give us a little bit of background on who you are, and how you got to where you are today with all this stuff.
Marvin Merrit
Sure. Well, basically I’m a kid from New Jersey. I went to college as an undergrad at a small liberal arts college in Iowa. Upon graduation from there, I attended Life University where I got my Doctorate, and I’ve been a practicing physician for almost 40 years.
My practice has taken many manifestations over the years. And now I kind of focus a lot on treating my patients very well. realistically very naturally, through exercise through diet and through nutritional supplements to manage what we call metabolic syndrome, which is type two diabetes, hyperlipidemia, which has high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and hypertension, which we commonly refer to as high blood pressure.
And being that these are all lifestyle diseases, people can go ahead and make that conscious decision. Do I want to live healthy? Do I want to eat healthy? Do I want to increase my exercise?
Because all of those combined together will help with the better control of all of these diseases that many people suffer from not just here in the United States, but around the world and just about all modern countries.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and when you say that lifestyle diseases, I think that is spot on, because these are things that are caused by lifestyle. Right?
Marvin Merrit
Exactly, exactly. You know, you, you eat poorly, you know, it’s the old story garbage in garbage out, you eat poorly, you’re going to end up with high cholesterol, there’s just no way around it.
You eat too much saturated fats, too much greasy foods, the fried chicken, the French fries, you’re going to end up with high cholesterol levels.
You eat a lot of products that have hidden sodium in it. And I say hidden sodium, because it’s okay to add a little bit of salt at the table, especially if you’re working out, you’re sweating, you want to replace some of those electrolytes.
But there’s so many foods that have hidden sodium in it because sodium for ages has been used as a preservative. And when you start reading things that are in a can, or things that are in a jar, you see all of this hidden sodium in there in its chemical names, such as, you know, sodium benzoate, you know, people don’t know what sodium benzoate is, they just see that it’s another chemical.
But without fully understanding the labels that are on the containers of the foods that we eat, they don’t realize what they actually have. So that’s where it all comes into play.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I’m gonna reel it back here in just a second. But I have to tell you, I saw this very funny meme once. And I love this, it really sums it up. It’s a guy, you know, talking to his doctor.
And the doctor says, well, you have all these lifestyle diseases. And the guy says to the doctor, okay, I guess I need to change my lifestyle. And the doctor says, oh, no, here’s a pill.
And I think that sort of sums up the medical, the general medical answer to these lifestyle diseases, which is take this drug, take that drug, don’t change your lifestyle, don’t worry about that. That’s all fine. Just, you know, take these drugs.
What’s your take on that? Like, how do you approach things differently than just prescribing medication for people who have these issues?
Marvin Merrit
What it really comes down to and it’s something that that you talk about is people have to be willing to be uncomfortable, they have to be willing to change their diet, they have to be willing to cut out the starchy carbohydrates, the breads, the cakes, the cookies, that candies, the ice cream, you know, the things that are the comfort foods, they have to be willing to get up off the sofa and move, whether it’s run, walk, ride a bicycle, you know, whatever the case, may be getting the pool and swim a couple of laps, just do something physical every single day, they have to be willing to do that.
And, and it’s, it’s all changing that comfort level, people have to be uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with okay, you go out for dinner with your, you know, whoever on a Saturday night and you want to have a little bit of something that you don’t normally eat, that’s okay.
But when you do it every day, that’s what gets them into the position that they’re in. And by doing that, that’s the way they’re able to lower and eventually get off some of these medications like the Metformin and the Glipizide. And, and that’s just for diabetes.
Or you know, the medications that we use for high cholesterol, the statins, which are horrible drugs to start out with, because people have so many side effects with them.
And then the hypertension medications, the ACE inhibitors that yeah, great. So it’s going to help lower your blood pressure, but it’s going to give you a chronic cough for the rest of your life. Why put those into your body when you can put natural healthy foods into your body and reverse all of these situations that you have?
And it’s like I always tell my patients, you know, you can keep a diary, and you can fudge that diary all you want. You can come in and talk to me and you can tell me any story you want. Blood doesn’t lie. When I run your blood, I know the truth.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. So you see a lot of these metabolic syndrome issues with people and you treat them naturally and you see good results. Do you see a lot of reversal of these diseases?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, I actually do. If you if you get them off, you know, again, the starchy carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables are okay, but you get them off those starchy carbohydrates, all of those carbohydrates turn to glucose, that’s how we metabolize them, the glucose gets in the blood, and that’s going to raise your blood glucose levels.
Now when it gets a little bit too high, that eventually is going to get stored in the liver. And that’s going to get stored as glycogen. Glycogen is good, because we break that down between meals, we break that down when we exercise.
However, if you don’t do that, then that glycogen is eventually going to turn to triglycerides, triglycerides will get them back into the blood, those can clog some arteries, specifically arteries in the heart.
And that’s how people end up with myocardial infarction, heart attacks, they end up with blockages in the carotid arteries, and it just becomes a vicious vicious cycle.
So what I tried to do is change their diets, get them off the carbs, get them off the fats, get them taking some good healthy supplements to help alleviate some of these problems, such as red yeast rice. Red yeast rice is a natural statin. It’s been used for hundreds of years. Okay.
But most doctors don’t want to use it. And I don’t want to get into the whole theories behind, you know, drug reps and you know, and drug labs and things like that. But they are more prone to prescribe a medication than to use something natural because there’s an incentive there to write that prescription.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I hate that it works that way. So you mentioned like lowering fat intake. What do you mean by that? And like, what do you consider like good, healthy fats?
Marvin Merrit
Okay, so good, healthy fats. Good healthy fats are going to come from things like olive oil. I use a lot of olive oil when I personally cook, because it’s a good healthy fat because you can’t deep fry in it, you just saute in it. Other good healthy fats, avocados, good healthy fats, all your nuts, good healthy fats. Okay, those are all things that are healthy for us.
What’s not healthy is all the processed oils, all the seed oils, while those seed oils are these heavy oils that we just don’t digest well. And because we don’t digest them, well, now they end up getting stored.
And that’s how people also end up suffering from what we call fatty liver disease. The too much of the saturated fats, the fats get stored in the liver, and the liver becomes filled with fat.
It’s reversible, because the liver is one of the most versatile organs that we have in the human body. So we’re able to reverse that. But again, it’s getting off those fats and changing the diet up.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I tell people, generally speaking to stay away from those seed oils, canola oil, you know, that kind of stuff. Whatever is considered like vegetable oils, you know, because they were designed to be something that was like heart healthy, and they’re sold and marketed as being heart healthy. But I think there’s other implications that eating that stuff. There’s like some long term studies that have been done that have shown that this stuff is just toxic for your body.
Marvin Merrit
It’s extremely toxic. You know, if you remember years ago, they used to say, oh, stop eating eggs, eggs are high and cholesterol. But when you take a look at an egg, an egg is almost the perfect food.
It has protein, it has some fat, okay, it has a little bit of carbohydrate in it. And again, in moderation eating a couple of eggs a week is almost the perfect food. So there’s nothing wrong with that.
Where again utilizing these these vegetable oils, the corn oils. Canola oils. You know, those, those just do not metabolize well in the body. And one of the other things I tell my patients, olive oil aside, the lighter the color of the oil, the healthier it is for you, because it’s not as heavy.
So if you use something like sunflower oil, sunflower oil is a very, very light colored oil. It’s good for you, you can utilize it. It metabolizes well in the human body. You can’t fry in it, deep fry in it, because it won’t hold up, it’ll break down. So those types of oils, those are the oils that tend to be more healthy for us.
Patrick McGilvray
And then how do you figure olive oil and things like that play in? Because olive oil is pretty dark, usually.
Marvin Merrit
Olive oil is pretty dark, but olive oil is purified. And that’s the nice thing about it, you get that extra virgin olive oil, which is the better of the olive oils. And that’s been purified. And that because you can’t deep fry in it. You can only saute like some vegetables or a chicken breast or something like that. It’s not going to be soaked in that oil.
Whereas you take something like a vegetable oil, or an animal based oil like lard and you drop your chicken breast covered in you know whatever coating you put it in and you fry it in there for 10 minutes or so, that oil just soaks right into the meat. It soaks right into that breading. And now you’re eating that oil on top of it. And that’s where the downfall comes.
Patrick McGilvray
Gotcha. Gotcha. And so let’s talk a little bit about the exercise side of things. So tell me a little bit about your history because I know you’re a runner, right?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, yeah, I run, I cycle. I actually, I was a wrestler. I wrestled in college, I wrestled in high school. I was a lifeguard on the Jersey Shore. That’s the way I worked my way through college.
I’ve always been very, very active. You know, and I picked up running probably about 10 years ago, I got this bug to, I started out walking. And I said, you know, I’ll let me try a little bit of running. And one thing led to the next and before I knew what I was doing, 5K’s and 10K’s and then a triathlon and said, Well, that’s a lot of fun.
So I started doing more and more, I’m just letting through the whole lifestyle of it. And, you know, realize that, you know, you can’t smoke, you can’t drink heavily, you can’t eat poorly, to participate in these sports, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work with our bodies.
Although oddly enough, I’ve seen some weird things on some of these courses that I’ve run with what people do. But, you know, nonetheless, you know, it’s all part of that healthy lifestyle.
And by exercising, that helps you metabolize all of these good foods that you put into your body into energy. And that gives you the energy to go out there and run 5k, to go out there and run 10k, to go out there and jump on a bike for 30-40 miles. And you don’t feel tired afterwards, you feel energized. On top of that, you get that dopamine release on top of it. And it all just ties together. And that’s what I try to get my patients to do.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you have like a running group that you do there. And you’re in Florida, right?
Marvin Merrit
Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, what I do is on Saturdays, I know it sounds crazy for a doctor to work on Saturdays. But on Saturdays, I go to my office and where my office is located in Pompano Beach, it’s in an office building kind of off the beaten path, which I kind of like and it’s a beautiful lake right across the street.
So my patients, I have two groups of patients, I have my walker patients and I have my runner patients. My walker patients, I meet them early in the morning. And we’ll go out for a two or three mile walk, a brisk walk and get their heart rate up and exercise and stretching beforehand.
We walk, come back, stretch again, we talk a little bit about our nutrition and any challenges that they face during the week.
And then I get my running group and a little bit later on. And we’ll go out for a 5k a three mile run, not too hard of a pace, running about a 13 minute mile give or take. Because some of them are a little bit slower.
And I don’t like to leave anybody behind. So we’ll slow the group down if we have a slower runner. And same thing stretch beforehand, go for a run stretch afterwards, you know.
And everybody says oh, we should go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, no let’s not go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, let’s go get something healthy to eat. The coffee is okay, but the Dunkin Donuts isn’t gonna work. And that’s what I tried to do with them at least two to three Saturdays a month, we get together and we do that.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s cool because you’re building this relationship with people where you can share more than you can in a you know, 14 minutes that you have with your patients, you probably spend more time with your patients than a lot of doctors, the traditional doctors that are working for these big insurance companies, they get, you know, certain amount of time they’re allowed to spend with each person. Right?
And that’s it, and then they’re done. But you’re creating these relationships, and you’re having these conversations with people and you’re actually out there running with them. You’re actually out there having breakfast with them. I think that’s really cool.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, you know, my philosophy has been and to give you a little bit more of the background of how this generation of my practice manifested. Sadly, my mom died from complications of type two diabetes.
And going forward from that I said to myself, I said, you know, and she didn’t take care of herself. That was all part of it I said, people need to be educated. People need to understand because it’s a hidden disease. People don’t really know that they have type two diabetes until something goes really wrong.
Or they just go to the doctor for their annual checkup. And they do blood and they’re, you know, their fasting blood sugar is like 190 or they give a urine and their sugar is like 800 milligrams per deciliter or something like that.
So that’s when they find out about it. For the most part, it’s a silent disease. And because it’s a silent disease, people don’t even realize that something is wrong.
Once they realize something is wrong, then we can get them on the track to doing better, getting better, feeling better, feeling stronger, and reversing most of the symptomatology of type two diabetes. And again, type two diabetes goes hand in hand with high cholesterol, high blood pressure. They all three seem to go together all at the same time.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you mentioned that diabetes as being sort of a hidden thing and I know a lot of the visceral fat that people have, you know, visceral fat is that internal fat, it’s growing around your organs and things like that’s the really the bad kind of fat.
And people don’t know that they’re, that they’re getting, they don’t know that they have that. Right. I think it was Professor Tim Noakes, who was a long distance runner, and he was running all these marathons he had done like, I forget how many 72 marathons or something crazy like that.
And went to the doctor and was diagnosed with diabetes. And he was like, that’s impossible. You know, I run all these marathons and, and he sort of, I don’t know if he coined this term or not, but he calls it tofi T-O-F-I, thin on the outside fat on the inside. You know, that is like people who are fit and they’re exercising, and they look pretty good from the outside. But inside, there’s stuff going on, they need to get fixed, you know?
Marvin Merrit
Right. Right. And that’s exactly it. The thin on the outside, they’re fat on the inside, because yeah, you carry this layer of visceral fat. We all do, because we use it for insulation when it’s cold. And you live up there in Ohio, you know about cold
Patrick McGilvray
This week for sure, yeah.
Marvin Merrit
You know, it’s, yeah, it’s that body fat, that does help keep us a little bit warmer, which is very, very important. Also, in times of crisis, our bodies will tap into that, you know, internal body fat, but we shouldn’t be carrying enormous amounts of it.
You know, it’s interesting in my, in my, I’m also a college professor, as you know, so when, when I teach, when I teach about the heart, we do dissection. And for years, we used to do these sheep heart dissections.
And one of the things I remember about the sheep hearts is they were very, very fatty, they did some research and sheep actually carry a lot of visceral fat. Granted, they don’t have to worry about diabetes and things like that, like we do, but they carry a lot of visceral fat.
And I still have one of the sheep parts in my lab, and I show my students the sheep part, as compared to a pig heart, which is what we dissect now. Now pigs, they don’t carry visceral fat, they carry body fat, which is a little bit different.
And we take a look at the differences between the two. And I say, can you imagine a human being that has such a poor diet that eats a lot of fat, and they have a heart that looks something like this?
Because they do, they will build up that visceral fat on the heart, which can also compress the heart, which now can result in cardiac conditions. So it all begins to tie in together. It’s how you take care of yourself. How do you choose to live your life? And that’s the bottom line.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so interesting. So what are some of the main I guess, what is the right word for it, like complaints or whatever the people are coming to you with? Like, what’s the main things people need fixed? And why are they coming to you?
Marvin Merrit
Okay, basically, my practice is straight referral. I don’t advertise. I don’t belong to any insurance companies or anything like that. In fact, I take absolutely no insurance in my practice.
The reason why I do that is because I want my patients to have a commitment. I feel that if an insurance company is paying for them to come, they don’t really see what the insurance company is paying other than their copay, whether it be $5 $10, whatever.
So I want them to have commitment and commitment comes from them paying me, I make it very reasonable for them. But the thing is, is that when they come in to see me their referral, usually from a friend that has seen me or a relative that has seen me, and yeah, their complaint is, yeah, I’m a type two diabetic, I keep going into my medical doctor, all they do is they keep on increasing and increasing and increasing my medication.
And I don’t feel any better. I’m tired. I’m sluggish and rundown. I’m hungry all the time and drinking, like I own the water company, you know. And those are all the symptoms that you see. And then you have to try to fix that.
So the first thing I always do with these folks is, you know, keep a diet diary for me, okay, I want to know everything that goes in your mouth for the next seven days.
I don’t care if you think it’s minuscule, like a piece of gum, I want to know what it is. And then we start taking examination of that we start breaking it down to see what can we replace it with? What changes can we make?
How can we okay, you like gum? Well, I see you’re chewing bazooka bubble gum, which is high in sugar? Well, you know, let’s, let’s see if we can change that to something that’s a little bit less caustic on the body.
Okay, I’m not a big one in artificial sweeteners and things like that. But I’d rather have them chew a gum that has no sugar in it than a gum that’s all sugar. Okay, so these are just the little changes.
And like you do in your podcast, you know, you make these little steps with these people and make little changes in the diet and make little changes in their exercise. And we just start looking at this week after week, month after month.
And what’s really amazing they see it because they’ll see it in their blood work that hemoglobin A1C went from 11.2 to 9.7 they’re not, you know, normal yet they’re still diabetic. But that’s a significant change. And they feel better.
They get on the scale, and they’ve lost 10-15 pounds, they feel better, the clothes fit better. They realize that when they go out to dinner, they don’t have to eat half a basket of bread, you know, they can walk away from the bread.
And again, that is that psychological motivation that happens with these folks. And really what I do with them, Patrick is I give them 90 days, okay? If in 90 days, they can’t comply with my recommendations, I can’t help them. And I very politely, I verbally discharge them, and I send them a certified letter that they’re discharged, that there’s nothing more I can do for them.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s hardcore man.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, you gotta be, that’s the only way to be because, because otherwise, you’re going to go on to another doctor, and they’re getting another pill, and they’re getting another medication and another prescription.
And then before you know it, they’re taking, I have a friend of mine, sadly, he’s, he’s my age, I’ll be 64. In January, he just turned 64. And he’s a type two diabetic, with all the problems, he will not listen to me.
So he goes to another doctor, he’s on four different diabetes medications, he’s on two different blood pressure medications, and a statin. And that’s just to start out with. And, you know, it’s just, it says, he doesn’t want to be uncomfortable, he’d rather, you know, go out and eat half a pizza.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, there’s this whole mentality that I think we really have to shift and you’re doing a great job of starting to shift this mentality of, I can just do what I want is I just go to the doctor and get a pill or get, you know, get on some kind of drug that’s going to that’s going to allow me to leave this lead this great, crappy lifestyle.
You know, I was talking to an older woman recently. I think she’s in her 70s. And she’s a type two diabetic and is on diabetes medication, and the doctor wanted to up her medication. And she was eating, you know, some cookies or something like that.
And this is a family member, and my girlfriend was like, hey, you shouldn’t be eating those cookies. You know, you got to go on this. If you got to take this medication, you shouldn’t be eating those cookies. And she said, oh, it’s fine, because the medications are free anyway. And so I don’t have to pay for it. So it’s fine. You know, that’s kind of like that is the wrong mentality. Right?
Marvin Merrit
And that’s why I take no insurance.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, exactly. And I love that. And the other thing I wanted to say, and one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you is because of that approach that you just talked about that you take with your with your patients, which is the same approach that I take with my coaching clients, which is, we’re going to look at what you’re doing today.
And we’re going to make a few modifications, and we’re going to see how you feel. And then we’re going to make a few more modifications and get your body adjusted to those changes. And then we’re going to like, see how you feel.
And then we’re going to just keep going with that process. I don’t have a diet that I’m going to hand over to them, because there’s no way I can know what’s going to work best for them.
Now, of course, I have guidelines like you do, and I have suggestions. But at the end of the day, everybody’s a little bit different. And everybody approaches this a little bit differently.
Yeah, we lower the carbs, Yeah, we tried to get off sugar, we want to stop using sugar as an emotional management tool. Yes, we need to increase the protein intake, especially if your activity levels are pretty high.
But for the most part, this is going to be very individualized for the person I’m working with. And so many doctors or coaches or, you know, trainers, whatever they have this like one diet, you know, in mind, and I just don’t think that works.
And so that’s what I really like, it was kind of refreshing when you and I talked about that, that, you know, you do take a very individualized approach and you work with each person, you treat them, like an individual because they are and you work around where they are and make a few changes and then continue with that process.
Marvin Merrit
And that’s absolutely, you know, I don’t just hand them a diet. I mean, you can go online and there’s a million diets for diabetics. Oh, do this diet. Oh, do that diet. Oh, do the keto diet, do the Atkins diet. You know, and we can go on and on about that. Oh, do Weight Watchers.
But that’s a cookbook, okay. We can’t do a cookbook. We have to make the recipe, individual to everybody’s lifestyle to everybody’s tastes, so to speak. And that’s what I tried to do because what might work for one patient may not work for the other patient.
And we have to find, you know, what’s that happy medium for that particular patient? What are we going to slowly begin to tweak in their diet? What is their, you know, their level of being able to exercise?
Some of them haven’t gotten off the sofa in 20 years, you know, I certainly can’t have going out and running, you know, 5K’s from day one. But you got to find out what their level of activity is.
I deal with a few patients, unfortunately, they’re either widows or widowers, and you know, they’re at home. And, you know, they don’t get out a lot. And I tell them, you know, what, get a dog. The dog needs to be walked. If you get a dog and you walk the dog, well, now you’re getting out there, and you’re doing some exercise.
And sometimes it’s as simple as easy fix as that and now they also have companionship, something that they’re responsible for, and they’re able to go out and do that. And that’s, that’s just a little easy fix that I do with some of our patients, not all of them, because they all can’t have dogs where they live. But those that can, that’s something that I strongly recommend.
Patrick McGilvray
Not everybody likes dogs, Marvin, okay. You can walk your lizard if you need to. There you go. Yeah. Well, from an exercise standpoint, what do you see as sort of the best types of exercises that kind of across the board, most people should do or get the best benefits from doing regularly,
Marvin Merrit
There should always be a balance between aerobic or cardio exercise and strength training. Again, very similar to the things that you talk about in your podcasts, you know, we talked about, you know, cardio exercise, again, it doesn’t have to be running, but walking, walking at a good pace, you know, not walking, like you’re going through the mall, shopping, but walking at a good pace.
And then some strength training and strength training doesn’t necessarily have to mean, you know, go to the gym and spend hours and hours on end in the gym. All it means is, go on Amazon, get some bands, you know, and, and start doing that.
Some of my patients, I’ll actually, you know, I have the bands in my office. I want to say I sell to them, I sell them for what I paid for it off of Amazon. It’s just a convenience thing. It’s like, here, let me show you how to do this. And I’ll show them a half a dozen exercises to do with the bands, maybe some arm curls, maybe some overhead presses, some, you know, deltoid work, just some things like that.
And I have them worked with bands, sometimes they’ll come to the office on the Saturday sessions, I’ll have them bring their bands with them. And as a group, we’ll do some band exercises. And that’s it just something to get them physically moving again.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. And I’m a big fan of strength training, especially like actually being intentional about getting stronger muscles. Because as we get older, and I know you probably work with a lot of older people that, you know, one of the biggest issues with older people is that their muscle mass really declines, you know, they start getting very weak.
And then their bone mass also gets pretty weak. And then they fall and they have complications. And that leads to all kinds of issues because now they’re completely immobile, they can’t do anything. So building muscle, building strong muscles, building a strong skeletal system, skeletal muscle and bone sport. It’s so huge. Oh my god, it’s gonna put years and years and maybe decades on your life.
Marvin Merrit
It’s sustaining. You know, without getting too scientific, we have what’s known as Wolf’s law. And Wolf’s law states that the more stress you place on your skeletal system, the healthier your skeletal system is going to be.
And this is something that I find with my female patients is that as they get older, they suffer from what’s known as osteopenia, which is a loss of bone mass. Okay. So I put them on calcium and magnesium that helps with the with the bone mass a little bit from nutritional standpoint.
But they get that way because they haven’t done much in the way of exercise. Now you start putting more stress on the skeletal system by having them exercise a bit, and it’s not so much that you reverse the osteopenia, slowly osteopenia, so it doesn’t progress to a severe case of osteoporosis. And that’s what you really want to prevent. Because you don’t want this poor woman stepping off the curb and the pressure is just right. And boom, she breaks a hip. That’s the thing you don’t want.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, what’s the difference between osteopenia and osteoporosis?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, osteopenia is when you start losing bone mass. Osteoporosis is where the bone actually gets eaten away, and you lose all of this calcium. And it almost looks like in osteoporosis, if you look at it under the microscope, it almost looks like moths have eaten away at the bone, like moths will eat away at a cloth. That’s what it’s like. Osteopenia, you just start seeing on an x-ray, how the bone mass is getting thinner and thinner and thinner. And then it can lead to the next.
Patrick McGilvray
Wow, okay, interesting. Just learn something. That’s cool. So yeah, I think strength is like so huge. It’s like one of the best things you can do for yourself. And I think that if as we get older, if we continue building strong muscles and supporting strong bones, then you’re you’re going to live longer, you’re going to have a better quality of life, you’re less likely to get injured from doing normal day to day things, especially those of us who love to run. And you can run as you get I know people who run marathons in their 90s, you know.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, there’s a video that I showed to my students when I’m teaching. It was done by PBS, and it showcases an 87 year old man doing the triathlon Escape from Alcatraz. I mean, that’s one of the toughest triathlons because you’re swimming across San Francisco Bay for a mile and a half, followed by I think it’s 20 miles on the bike, and then an eight mile run. And he’s 87. I mean, that’s pretty big. I want to be back. I want to be him. That’s my goal.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s no joke right there. That’s,
Marvin Merrit
That’s my goal. Yeah. That’s my goal.
Patrick McGilvray
That is amazing. Yeah, that San Francisco Bay is brutal. That is brutal. It’s a little stretch of ocean swim. Can’t imagine. People swim in that and they get seasick from this swimming because there’s so much up and down movement. This has been really good.
So let me ask you this. If people wanted to try to find you, how could they reach out to you and, and be able to find you and learn more about you and how they might be able to hook up with you?
Marvin Merrit
Sure, they can email me and marvinmerrit@bellsouth.net. But that’s one way they can call me. And I can give you my cell phone number. I have no issue with that. I always ask though, if you want to reach out to me text me before calling.
I’ll always get back and my phone number is 954-649-5280 Just text me before calling tell me what you need me for. And I’ll be more than happy to, you know, if I’m with patients or teaching, I’ll just politely text you back that I’ll get back to you. But I’ll always get back to people and I always do. That’s just the way I am. That’s the two easiest ways to get hold of me.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. And do you work with people that are not local to Pompano Beach area?
Marvin Merrit
Yes, absolutely. I can do it. You know, via telehealth, you know, no problem with that at all.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Cool. What’s next for you? I know you just did a race about a week ago. Right? What did you do?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, I did the Danger Point 5k I had a personal best that 3550. Which I was pretty happy with in my ripe old age. I think next I’m probably going to do the jingle bell jog on Christmas Eve. Okay, I’ll do that next.
And I’ll keep training but I’ll take a little bit of time off from from racing because I want to do the In April the Los Olas Triathlon, which is down here that’s, well it takes place on Fort Lauderdale beach and they call it the Los Olas Triathlon because it crosses Los Olas Boulevard which is pretty famous down here.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Is that a sprint triathlon? Yeah. Cool. You swim in the ocean?
Marvin Merrit
Oh, yeah, swimming the ocean. And then we’ll see where the spring in the summer takes me. There’s usually a couple of events that pop up. Last year I did the July 4 triathlon. It was a great weekend. Actually a great couple of weeks, I did the Memorial Day 5k followed by the July 4th triathlon, which was on July second, followed by the July 4th 5k, on July 4th, so it was a nice quick couple of weeks and then finished up the end of August with the Iguana Man 5K.
So I try to stay active. I tried to do you know, 5675 k’s a year, two, three triathlons, maybe a duathalon depending on how the water is.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. You are an example of what is possible, Marvin, I love it. Keep up the good work seriously. You’re doing some work in this world. And you’re helping people get healthier and helping people live longer and helping people figure out how to do all this because it’s confusing.
And there’s a lot of information out there that’s just like, it’s a lot of conflicting information, a lot of confusing information and it’s very overwhelming for people. So to have somebody like you where people can go and, you know, do a consult with you like even you know, over Zoom or however you do it. That’s awesome.
Because that gives people an opportunity to start to see that things can be different for them and they don’t have to be on medication for the rest of their life. Just because you have one of these lifestyle diseases, it’s not a death sentence. It doesn’t mean you can’t improve with the right diet and exercise.
So hats off to you, my friend for doing good work. Keep it up. Thank you for taking some time to chat with me here today. It’s been really fun.
Marvin Merrit
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. Patrick, thank you so much for having me.
There have been some eye-opening discoveries recently around dietary advice doled out by influencers on social media. It turns out that the food and beverage industry has been paying registered …
Continue Reading about 195. Taking Control of Your Food Choices →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 195 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, taking control of your food choices.
There have been some eye opening discoveries recently around dietary advice doled out by social media influencers. And it turns out that the food and beverage industry has been paying registered dietitians to promote diet soda and sugar and supplements on Tiktok and Instagram. And while this may not come as a big surprise, it speaks to a much bigger issue.
The food industry is deliberately confusing us into eating more junk foods, so they make more money at the expense of our health and well being. In this episode, I’m going to shine a light on this quite alarming topic, in my opinion, and explain why it’s important to know who’s paying who to say what, and encourage you to take control of your own food choices.
But first, if you want a little bit of help getting started with all this stuff that I talked about here on the podcast, with improving your body composition, maybe losing some of that fat weight and gaining some muscle, getting stronger, running faster, running longer.
I’ve put together a brand new training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. In this training, I’m going to teach you how to lose weight the right way and how to keep it off for good without running a million miles a week.
You’re gonna learn why running more and eating less really doesn’t work when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off. I’m going to talk about one thing runners don’t do when they’re trying to lose weight, that they should be doing the fuel to use to improve your endurance and weight loss. The mind shift sets required to make these changes last and more and more and more.
So if you want to learn how to crush your weight loss goals and your running goals, then you’re ready to get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. Check out this free training it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Super simple. Cool.
Okay, so taking control of your food choices. So I came across a really interesting investigative article recently that showed that the food industry is paying influencer dieticians to shape our eating habits. Registered Dietitians are being paid to post videos to promote diet soda, sugar and supplements on Instagram, and Tiktok.
So the food beverage and dietary supplement industries are paying dozens of registered dietitians that could collectively have like millions of social media followers to help sell their products and deliver industry friendly messages on Instagram and Tiktok.
According to this analysis by the Washington Post and the examination, which is a new nonprofit newsroom that specializes in global health reporting. So the analysis of thousands of posts found that companies and industry groups paid dieticians for content that encouraged viewers to eat candy, eat ice cream, and downplay the health risks of highly processed foods and pushed unproven supplements.
Messages that run counter to decades of scientific evidence about healthy eating. The review found that among 68 dietitians with 10,000 or more social media followers on Tiktok, and Instagram, about half had promoted food, beverages or supplements to their combined 11 million followers within the last year.
One particular registered dietitian from Vancouver, British Columbia, posted videos of herself eating ice cream and peanut butter cups, while telling people that denying themselves sugary foods will only make cravings worse.
These and other posts were paid for by the Canadian Sugar Institute. The trade group, which is funded by sugar producers, includes the videos on its Instagram page to in one video This woman held a glazed doughnut and chocolate chip cookie and she mocked advice to reduce sugar intake.
She said, “The best ways to cut sugar are with a knife with my hands and even with my teeth.” Another Dietitian with a large social media following from Vancouver posted a video on Instagram where she added a lollipop to a dinner plate.
And she told parents the strategy will prevent sweets obsession, and to help kids develop healthier eating relationships with food. And another Instagram video she told parents that they can make Halloween less stressful by allowing kids to eat as much candy as they want when they’re done trick or treating.
And she said this helps decrease the stash and makes it less of a big deal she wrote in the text alongside the video. Yes, they may barf but that’s a great life lesson for them. She was also paid by the Canadian Sugar Institute to promote these posts to create these posts and promote them.
Since last year, The Sugar Group has paid at least a dozen registered dietitians to post videos about sugar on Instagram. One person said if your kiddo is obsessed with sweets, they likely need more access to sweets rather than less. Wow, okay.
The food and beverage industry has for years nurtured a close relationship with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AMD). This is the trade group that oversees registered dieticians, which has accepted millions of dollars in donations from leading producers of soda, candy, and ultra processed foods including Coca Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle.
The Academy has allowed these companies to provide continuing education courses to its dieticians and has invested in food industry stocks to the academy sponsors are American beverage, and Tate and Lyle, one of the world’s largest producers of high fructose corn syrup, and other sweeteners.
So I just read a few blurbs from the article that came out about a week ago or so in the Washington Post, and I was really blown away by this. Like I know that registered dieticians AMD has been funded by these sugar companies and by the food industry, I’ve known about that.
I’ve also known that they teach their registered dieticians and give them courses on proper nutrition. And I’m using finger quotes proper nutrition meaning like, eat lots of sugar, it’s fine for you sugar isn’t bad. You know, you know, drink diet soda, that’s fine.
Kids should be eating more sugar, like all these things, in my opinion, are kind of crazy, right? The sugar, the food industry, sugar industry, food industry is blatantly influencing our food choices. They have billions of dollars to spend on marketing, and advertising. And they’re very influential.
They are supporting the community of registered dieticians out there. And now listen, not all registered dietitians buy into this. There’s a lot that don’t, but a lot of them do. The food industry also pays scientists to write research papers to promote their products as the healthier choices.
And the idea here is to keep us confused, right to make it impossible, for you really know what’s healthy and what’s not. Because if they keep us confused, then we buy more of their junk food. And I’m just going to call soda diet soda and sugar industry a bunch of junk food because I think it is because they make more money and it’s all about the bottom line.
And so they’ll spend billions of dollars, you know, in marketing and advertising and influencing to make it really confusing for us as human beings who are concerned about our health, right? They just want to sell you more of their foods so they make the food hyper palatable by loading it up with sugar and grains and vegetable oils and they don’t care about your health.
They just want to sell more food and they know this hyper palatable food. This highly processed food is amazing, tastes amazing and it’s really hard to stop eating it once you start and they know that you are going to crave this stuff so they make more and more and more of it. And you know they are just concerned about making more money regardless of whether it’s good for you or not.
Over the years, they’ve convinced us that things like meat and eggs are bad for us. And sugar and grains are good. So they don’t make money off of meat and eggs, right? I mean, there are companies that do, but it’s not highly subsidized like the sugar industry. Highly processed foods full of sugar and grains sell like crazy and they’re super cheap to make. This stuff is super cheap. So the profit margins are a lot higher than a steak or eggs or whatever.
A lot of these companies receive subsidies from the government to grow more grains to the federal government, at least here in the US has long subsidized America’s farmers, significantly affecting our food supply and what we eat as a whole.
The most highly subsidized crops corn, soy, wheat and rice are the most abundantly produced and most consumed, often in the form of these ultra processed foods. Sugar is also highly subsidized, which drives up prices even though sugar is widely over consumed.
Fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, receive very little subsidization. And Americans eat much less produce than recommended, we eat much more sugar than we should and much less fruit and vegetables than we should.
So this is all to say, listen, if you think that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has your best interests in mind, think again, if you think the US government considers your health a priority, think again.
Even the healthcare industry here in the US is highly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. Your doctor’s job isn’t to get you as healthy as possible. It’s to sell more drugs. Hey, Doc, I’m suffering from all these diseases of lifestyle, should I change my lifestyle? And the doc says, hey, no, here’s a pill that you can take every day for the rest of your life instead.
Listen, the cards are stacked against us. Okay, it’s time that you take things into your own hands, it’s time to take back control of your own food choices and your own health. How do you do this? You’ve got to make your own decisions about what you feel is good for you, and what you feel is healthy for you and what isn’t.
And if you’re paying attention to people on social media, fine, but no, who’s paying them to say what they’re saying. Now, full disclosure about me, I have zero paid relationships, I do zero advertising of any kind of food products or supplements or anything like that. I don’t receive any money from anybody.
I have this coaching business that I freaking love. And that’s it. The only thing you’re gonna hear me talk about from a promotion standpoint here. I have on occasion mentioned certain supplements like LMNT, which is a sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I mentioned it because I use it. I like it. And it works great.
But I don’t have a paid relationship with them. I don’t advertise their products. You know, like I said, if I mentioned something, it’s because I recommend it to my clients and I use it.
And by the way, there’s another electrolyte drink that I really love. It’s called Redmond Real Light. And it’s by Redmond, the salt company. And so they make this electrolyte drink that is really tasty. And it comes in a little tub. So you can scoop out the amount that you want, which is a little bit different than LMNT which comes in packets. So they’re like pre portioned packets.
Anyway, that’s about the extent of my promotion right there. So you got to pay attention to who’s paying who to say what, right. Someone mentions a study, be sure to see who funded the study. I recently came across a study on the health benefits of canola oil. And then I skipped to the end and I see that this study quote unquote study was funded by The Canola Council.
And listen, canola oil, it’s a highly refined industrial seed oil. It’s been linked to higher inflammation, negative impacts on memory and heart health. It’s just not something I believe is healthy. Even if some of the stuff they’re talking about isn’t quite true. There’s enough evidence out there to say it’s probably best to stay away from canola oil and other industrial seed oils like that.
So pay attention to who’s saying what. Pay attention, who’s paying for the study? Who’s paying for the message? Who’s paying for that health care advice that your doctors are giving you? Is it the pharmaceutical industry? Does he have a certain number of, you know, prescriptions he has to write for pills every month? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
But I’m just telling you, we have to take things in our own hands. Right, you have agency in your life, you’re in charge of your own health. If eating candy for dinner, giving your kids candy with their dinner sounds like a bunch of BS to you then go with your gut on that one. Okay?
If you think eating steak and eggs for breakfast sounds good, and that feels good. It helps you to stay lean and strong, keeps you full all day, helps you lose weight and improves your blood markers. Do that, okay?
My suggestion is always like, let’s eat more like we always have been as human beings. You know, two and a half million years of evolution, humans have been eating kind of the same things, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, dairy, nuts, seeds, legumes, and we’ve we’ve not had highly processed foods loaded with sugar, and grains and seed oils, those things are new, those things have only been around for 50 to 100 years or so. Maybe less in some cases.
And so for the food industry to say this stuff is really awesome for you, you should be eating more highly processed foods that have sugar, grains and seed oils in them. I would just say like, I don’t know about that. And I would just question that. It doesn’t mean you can never eat a piece of pizza again, or never eat a candy bar or whatever. Like it’s okay to do that.
I mean, but geez, we got to be careful. And don’t confuse like the occasional Snickers with thinking that that’s healthy for you. Right. And a lot of these messages that they’re promoting out there are saying, hey, this stuff is actually healthy for you that canola oil, the refined grains, the sugar, and I just I don’t I don’t feel good about that doesn’t feel right to me.
And listen, it doesn’t matter what like diet you follow, you know, if you want to eat more plant based, and that feels good to you, and that works for you. And that promotes good health for you do that if you want to eat more of an animal based diet, and that makes you feel good. And that promotes good health for you, do that.
That part to me is less important than staying away from the stuff that is clearly junk food that is clearly processed that is clearly not healthy for you. The right diet is one that works for you, you know the one that you feel good about, but you have to take control here.
You can see what people are talking about out there on the internet. But be mindful and be skeptical. I think having healthy skepticism is really good for you. You know, it’s a good thing to look at who’s paying for these people to say these things, right?
Take back control of your health, take back control of your food choices. Do what feels right for you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. Okay. That is your charge for this week. Take back control.
Okay, and as always, if you’re looking for help with any of this stuff, we can talk about coaching, just head over to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me, fill out an application, we’ll have a conversation and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is great. If not, that’s cool, too. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
One of the most confusing topics in the health and fitness world today is…what should I eat? There is just so much noise out there on social media, in the news, and even on podcasts. And almost …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 169 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what should I eat? One of the most confusing topics in the health and fitness world today is what should I eat?
There’s just so much noise out there on social media, in the news, even on podcasts. And almost every one of the principles someone says you need to follow is contradicted by some other principle that someone else says you need to follow. And just about every person that I talked to tells me how frustrating all of this is. And honestly, it’s probably the number one reason why I do what I do.
I became a coach to help you navigate around all the BS, and figure out exactly what you should eat and shouldn’t eat, so that you can achieve your own personal weight loss and running goals. So today, I’m gonna explain why what’s out there in the media is so confusing and what you should do instead.
And by the end of this episode, you should have a much better understanding of the complexity of the question, what should I eat? And I have a few simple steps you can take right away to help you get started on your own weight loss journey. But first, losing weight, getting stronger, running faster; all of these things require a high level of commitment, not a half-assed “I’m sort of in sort of out” type of commitment, but an “I’m all in no matter what” type of commitment.
Because whether you’re fully committed or not, your own health and fitness journey will be riddled with challenges, you might progress slowly or your progress might be minimal. You might lose motivation. You might slip back into old habits or behaviors. You know, you might have a really bad run or you might gain a few pounds, whatever, these things will happen.
If however, you’ve made a real commitment, none of these things will really matter. Most people don’t do this though. Most people come face to face with one of these challenges and they just quit. They give up. In order to get through this tough stuff, you have to have a solid commitment and then you have to recommit to your goals daily.
When you make a daily recommitment to accomplishing your goals, you stay laser focused, you stay motivated, you keep making progress, you gain massive confidence in yourself. So a couple things I want you to consider. Two questions I want you to ask yourself, number one, what are your goals? And then two, how are you recommitting to these goals today?
And if you’re looking for a little help setting goals and staying committed, join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project where we’re all about supporting each other to accomplish big goals. Okay, just learn more at runningleancoaching.com/join.
Okay, arguably one of the biggest questions I get is, what should I eat even with the people that I’m working with my coaching clients, we talk about this extensively, especially at the beginning. Why? Because there’s so much freaking confusing information out there. Sugar is good. Sugar is bad. Carbs are fine. Don’t eat carbs, keto, carnivore, low carb, no carb, all carb Mediterranean, South Beach, vegan, paleo, plant based, Whole 30. And on and on and on, right?
What are you supposed to do with all of this? Which one of these diets is going to work for you? Seriously, like which one? Do you know? How do you know? How do you know if you choose the right one? And then people will say well, you know, this study came out recently that says an insert diet here. Insert diet here will kill you, whatever that is, you know?
There are some things we have to understand when it comes to these studies that we see out there. Sometimes these studies are pretty poorly done. And they make the news anyway. You got to look at a couple of things like number one, how many people are in the study? How long did they do the study?
Is it a randomized controlled trial or is it just a what they call an observational study where they just ask people some questions? You know, are they actually like monitoring these things directly? Who paid for the study? Big food, Coca Cola, some big pharmaceutical company, you’ve got to like look into that kind of stuff too.
Okay, so recently there was a couple of studies, I’m going to call out a couple of these because I want to show you what I’m talking about here. There were a couple of studies that came to my attention. One of them was a study they did on one of the sugar alcohols, so it’s a sugar substitute called erythritol. And, you know, I’ve eaten this stuff before, it’s okay. I don’t really do much of it anymore. It doesn’t really agree with me too much.
But the headline said this, “Zero calorie sweetener linked to heart attack and stroke, study finds.” So this was the CNN Headline. And I was like, wow, that sounds terrible, like a big attention grabbing headline, right? Basically, you’re gonna die if you eat erythritol, okay, or some other sugar substitute, so I looked into this a little bit.
And the actual study, and I use that term loosely, was done on eight people, eight people who were eating erythritol, and they were eating the amount that can be found in a pint of low carb ice cream, or like, no sugar ice cream, okay. Kind of a lot, but you know, whatever, but it was eight people, okay.
And then this was kind of buried in the text of the article. It said, “And while the study found an association between erythritol and elevated cardiovascular risk, it did not prove that the compound itself causes strokes and heart attacks. The study includes observational research that requires further validation.”
So if you read the actual article, it will tell you that this doesn’t prove anything. But we see this headline, and CNN puts this headline out there, and they’re just trying to get clicks, right? They’re selling advertising, they want to get clicks, they put these sensational headlines out there.
But if you’re somebody who’s trying to find a good, you know, sugar substitute and erythritol, has been shown to be fine up until whatever this study on these eight people, eight people, really? That’s a study? I just don’t understand how you can call it a study with eight people.
There was another one that several of my clients brought this to my attention, because we do kind of a lower carb approach, typically, for most people. Now, it’s not what everybody does, but we typically don’t eat a ton of carbs. Some people like to go a little lower carb and do things like keto, carnivore or whatever, which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. But I’m not trying to say like you have to do this or that. But the program that I teach is not about any particular diet. And I’ll get more into that in a second.
But there was a study that said, and here’s the headline on like Fox News or whatever, “Keto diets could increase risk of heart attack and stroke, says news study.” So the things you have to understand about this study, is it says the participants self-reported their food intake via a questionnaire at only one point in time, which could impact accuracy. With only one day of food choices reported, there could be a lot of variation as to what diet these subjects actually followed on an ongoing basis.
Again, you’ve got to read through even the news article, if you just read the actual news article, it basically says these people reported one day of food choices, right? One, one day, one day.
And somebody replied to this with a comment that I thought was really good. And I’ll just read what they said. They said this quote, unquote, study was a really poorly done observational study of 305 people. So 305 people is a very small study group, okay, but better than eight, right?
They gave them a one time 24 hour food survey. That’s right. They asked them what they ate over the last 24 hours. And that was it. That was the quote unquote, study. Okay. And then here’s the part that doesn’t make any sense at all. They labeled anyone eating less than 25% of calories from carbs, and more than 45% from fat, they labeled them the Keto group. Yeah, so 3000 calories a day. That’s up to 187 grams of carbs a day. That is like 10 times what typically people say is Keto. Okay.
So basically, the group that they’re calling Keto is a high fat, high carbohydrate diet is what they were actually doing. Okay? So labeling something like this as dangerous is irresponsible, in my opinion. Now I’m not saying like, oh, keto is amazing and everybody should do it. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But we have to look at these studies, and really like read not just the article, but even go into the study itself and look at who’s funding the study. How many people were they really talking about? Was it eight people? Can you actually publish data on a study done with eight people? I guess you can, right.
But calling this high carb, high fat diet keto, having test subjects report on one day’s worth of food, is this really a study? No, this is an abomination. This is like, this is fleecing us. It’s fleecing. It’s whoever’s writing these things, or doing these studies has some kind of an agenda to make this stuff more confusing for us. Right? So.
Okay, my point with telling you all this, is to say that making a decision about what you should eat can be challenging, and confusing, and somewhat stressful. And by the way, I’ve tried all these things. You know, before I’ve tried all these diets that I mentioned before, you know, the Whole 30, and the vegan and the whatever. I tried all this different stuff until I finally figured out what works for me. And what I’m doing today doesn’t look like any one of those particular diets, right?
The best study that you should follow is the study of one. And that’s you what works for you, you need to figure that out, you need to figure out what actually works best for you. And if what you’re doing improves your health, helps you to lose weight, makes you feel amazing, improves your running; but it doesn’t line up perfectly with some rando study out there. Don’t worry about it, right?
You know, if you’re getting good markers from your doctor, and like everything is looking good, and you’re feeling good, you’re losing weight, don’t worry about it. You do you, okay? So I just wanted to frame this conversation, like there’s a lot of confusing and a lot of misleading information out there.
And what people come to me and they say is, “just tell me what to eat”. So here’s where I’m going to give you like the bad news, okay? Because no one can do this. Not really, ethically, right? Because there’s no dietician, or nutritionist or doctor out there, that’s going to be able to tell you what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat, and know for sure 100% certainty that this is going to work for you no matter what. No one, right? Including me. And you just have to accept this fact. Okay, so I just want to start there.
You’re asking, a lot of people are asking, for someone to just tell them what they should eat, and what’s gonna work for them and work forever. And it just doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t. The human body is a complicated organism. With a lot of interconnected systems, we’re not steam engines where the amount of energy we put out is exchanged exactly for the amount of energy we put in, it’s not like that it’s not all about calories in calories out, there’s a lot more going on. Okay.
We’re all very different individually, we’re fundamentally different from each other, which is good. This is a good thing. As humans, we are all unique. And this is beautiful, we all have our own goals. For example, some of us want to lose weight, some of us want to gain muscle, get stronger, fit into our clothes again, see our abs again. Look better by the pool or look better by the beach, or run a faster marathon or run an ultra marathon or just run. Or just feel better about ourselves, have more energy, not feel so bloated all the time, whatever, we all have our unique goals.
And your goals will influence how you structure your particular nutrition plan. Okay, so that’s one factor we have to think about. Another factor is that we all have a unique metabolism. Some of us can eat more processed food, some of us can eat more sugar and we still like lose weight or we don’t gain weight. Some of us like me, if I just smell pizza, I gained a few pounds.
I’m very carbohydrate sensitive. When I eat carbs, I gain weight, so I keep my carb intake pretty low. And I had this friend some years ago, who was a small guy, he was probably like 140 pounds soaking wet. He was a short guy, thin guy. He never exercised, he never ran, he didn’t lift weights, he didn’t do anything like that.
But this little guy could eat more food than anybody I’ve ever seen. More bread, and pasta, and cake and sugar and whatever. And this guy never gained an ounce, ever. He just stayed the same. So is he a freak of nature? I don’t know, maybe I was always jealous. I’m like, dude, I would try to keep up with him eating and I would just gain weight like crazy.
So, your unique metabolism will make a huge difference in what works for you and what doesn’t work for you, some of us have to be a little more conscious of things like sugar and in, you know, refined carbohydrates and things like that, right? Okay, so we all have a unique metabolism that we have to factor in here, we all have our own genetics, like genetics does play a part in your, you know, weight loss, or, you know, your ability to, let’s say, you know, metabolize carbohydrates and things like that.
But it’s not the whole story, because many people have the gene for obesity, but they don’t become overweight, right. So your genetics might play a part here. And we have to kind of factor that in as well. And then we have things like cultural influences, right? Sometimes your family of origin and the culture you grew up in will dictate some foods that you eat and some foods that you definitely need to avoid. And we have to factor this into the equation as well, right.
And then we have our own likes and dislikes. Some people love Brussels sprouts, others hate Brussels sprouts, some people prefer mostly like an animal based diet and other people are more like on the vegetarian side of things. So your personal food preferences, your personal likes and dislikes have to play a part in this equation as well. Right? Because if you don’t like the food that you’re eating, you won’t stick to the plan.
I don’t care how great you think the plan is. If you don’t like it, you’re not going to stick with it, it’s not sustainable for you, right? So it has to be a consideration. Other things that we need to consider is like how much food should you be eating? How often should you eat? What should your particular macronutrient breakdown look like? Like how much fat, protein, carbs should you be getting? What should that breakdown look like?
Your hydration, your supplements, electrolytes, all kinds of stuff, right? So all those factors right there. Just think about those factors, there’s probably some I’m not thinking of right now. But all those factors right there, create a super unique plan that doesn’t really follow any one of those diets that I mentioned before. There is not one diet out there, that is going to hit all of those things perfectly for you. Or if it does, that’s pretty rare and pretty amazing.
And so do that, if that works for you, whatever. But pretty much no quote unquote, like fad diet or whatever out there is going to be the perfect plan for you out of the gate. It just isn’t, you know, some of this stuff may be a good place to start. Okay, start with Whole 30 or whatever feels good to you. Start with like paleo, maybe and then go from there. You know, you can add in more vegetables or more fruit, or maybe you do more carbs or fewer carbs, whatever.
The number one reason why I am a coach is to help you navigate all this stuff and put together a plan that’s actually made for you. And that works for you. Is it going to be keto or carnivore or vegan or paleo or Whole 30? Probably is going to include some aspects of some of these things, or all of them, but it’s not going to be one of those. Right?
So you’re probably thinking right now like, great, so you can’t tell me what I should eat then, right? Yeah, that’s exactly right. Because I can’t, even with my coaching clients, they have to fill out like a food questionnaire, I need to see like kind of where they’re coming from today. That way, we can start moving them in the right direction, right?
So they fill out a questionnaire of like, what does a typical day look like for you? What kinds of foods do you like? What kinds of foods do you not like? And then we get into some conversation about what their goals are and what they’re trying to accomplish with all of this. Right?
So and then we start them out on a plan and I have some frameworks that I can use some blueprints that we can use to get you started. But as we go, we keep track of things, right. This is the beauty of coaching, by the way, because it’s a feedback system. So if the plan is working, then we can like layer on the next step. And if that continues to work, okay, cool, then we kind of move on to the next step, and so on.
But if anywhere along this process, things stop working, we need to address those things, we need to find out why they’re not working. And then we need to make some corrections here. And this is where the custom plan that does work for you really begins to take shape. Right, it’s not some cookie cutter program, you know that you bought a book and read it, and then that’s what you’re going to do, and it’s going to work for you, you know.
And then all my clients, they don’t all do the same thing everybody does, that does something a little bit different, because we factor in all these different things, okay. But I don’t want to leave you hanging here today, I do want to give you some general guidelines to get you started on this, because there are a few things that pretty much work for most people, not everybody, but pretty much work for most people.
So I’m gonna give you a couple of places where you can start. And I think this will start moving you in the right direction, whether you’re trying to gain muscle, lose weight, improve your running, all of these kind of apply across the board. And this is generally where I start with, with most people I work with, again, everybody’s so different, we have to like, create a custom plan for each person. But here’s some things that you can do.
Number one, you’ve got to start with where you are. And the way you kind of figure out where you are is to do a detailed food inventory, like what are you eating. So you got to write this stuff down, like you got to keep track of what you’re doing right now. That means write everything down, you can write it down in a notebook, write down on a piece of paper, write a note on your computer, write on your phone.
There are apps that will help you track all this stuff. So you can actually see detailed data of like macros and things like that, My Fitness Pal, Carb Manager, Lose It. Those are three apps that all work to help you enter your food and keep track of what you’re doing. So step one is just what are you doing? Right? And it’s important that you track everything every BLT – bite, lick, taste, track everything.
And this first step might surprise you. Because you might start to notice some trends. Oh, I do notice that I do like snack on a bunch of junk food at the same time, every day, I really didn’t realize I was doing that. Or I’m eating like, you know, 10 times a day, is that normal? What’s up with that?
Or, boy, I sure eat a lot of these meals. So just keep track of what you’re doing. That’s step number one, you’ve got to find out where you’re starting, because you can’t change it if you don’t know where you’re starting from. Okay, so step number one, track everything. Do this for, I don’t know, a week or so that’s probably enough time to gather enough data. So you can kind of see, that’ll get you through a work week and through the weekend.
And if you want to do longer, that’s fine. But I think a week is a good amount of time to track just to see like where you are with all this stuff. Okay. A lot of times just being aware of what you’re doing is enough to elicit change. You know, this might inspire you to take some action that you didn’t even think about before you started tracking. So definitely track. Okay.
And then the next thing and the next easiest step is to eliminate a couple things, okay. And there’s a few things that I think work for most people if we can eliminate these three things. The most problematic for most people are going to be sugar, refined grains and seed oils. Seed oils are things like canola oil, and anything labeled like vegetable oil, corn oil. Refined grains are flours, you know, soy flour, if you just eliminate sugar, flour, and refined I’m sorry, sugar, flour and seed oils, you’re going to eliminate a huge, the three biggest contributors to metabolic dysfunction in the human body.
Okay, so most people can eliminate these things safely. My suggestion is try to eliminate these three things and see how you feel. My guess is that you’re going to feel better, pretty quickly. One caveat, if you give up sugar and you do this, like kind of cold turkey or like, Oh, I’m just gonna like give up sugar. You might experience a little headache or lightheadedness. This is normal. This is like withdrawal from sugar. Okay?
So make sure you’re drinking enough water, get enough electrolytes and you’ll you’ll do fine. You need to increase your salt intake a little bit when you when you stop eating sugar. Okay, so that’s kind of step number two first step just track everything for a little while. Try eliminating these three problematic foods and see how you feel.
All right now, after a week or two of doing that, like no sugar, no refined grains, no seed oils, you might layer in the next step would be like maybe stop snacking. Snacking is never a need for fuel. It’s never a need for like a whole meal. It’s always some emotionally driven event. So you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out, or you’re anxious, or you’re lonely or whatever. And these are all emotions. And snacking is just a way of dampening these negative emotions, right?
Eat, and you feel better, works like magic. And you do feel better for a minute, until the effect of that food wears off. And then you feel like crap again, right. And what are you snacking on? My guess is it’s not the Brussels sprouts, right? It’s probably chips, and cookies and crackers, and pretzels and leftover pizza, all the carbage By the way, pretty much all these snack foods out there are made with three ingredients sugar, refined grains and seed oils. So if you’re not eating that stuff, then snacking is pretty much like off the table anyway, right?
Okay, so these steps right here, these three steps, track everything. eliminate those three problematic foods, stop snacking, they’re very simple, right, but they’re also powerful. They will definitely get you started on your weight loss journey and help you get fat adapted. So not eating all the sugar and junk food will help your body turn to stored body fat as fuel and you’ll adapt to being a more efficient fat burner. If you want to lose weight, you’ve got to do what?
That’s right, you got to burn fat. And the right nutrition plan should do two things. It should help you regulate your blood sugar and help you burn fat and help you become a fat burning machine. Okay, so those are some things you could do to get you started. And if you ever want help with all this, if you want to make all of this way easier, join the coaching project, we’ll put together a custom plan that works for you and gets you to that most badass version of yourself. Just head over to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Cool.
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
For decades, we’ve been taught that saturated fat is bad, it causes all kinds of health issues like obesity and coronary heart disease, and that the solution is to replace all the “unhealthy” fats …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 34 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about oil. What I know is the ultimate guide to oil. For decades we’ve been taught that saturated fat is bad AND to stay away from it.
It causes all kinds of health issues like obesity and coronary heart disease and that the solution is to replace all those unhealthy fats like lard and butter with hard healthy fats like vegetable oil. The problem though, is that ever since we’ve increased our consumption of vegetable oils, we’ve just gotten fatter and sicker.
So what the heck is going on? In this episode, I get to the bottom of this issue, and I explain why vegetable oils are actually pretty bad for us as humans, and what oils are better options and what you should use instead.
So if you liked this podcast, then I think you got to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic informative group that goes hand in hand with the podcast. So it’s a fun group of like minded runners who all share common goals. Goals like wanting to run their first marathon or just make running easier or living a more vibrant life or losing weight.
And in that group, I do a series of live trainings on topics related to the stuff I’m talking about here on the podcast, things like running mindset, nutrition, weight loss, all kinds of fun stuff. And actually one of our members, one of the members of the Running Lean community, Melissa, asked this question recently.
She said, “You’ve mentioned a couple of times that canola oil is poison/garbage.” Yes, that sounds like me. “Can you do a podcast episode on fats and oils? I’m fairly well educated on general nutrition principles and good fats. But I would be interested to hear more of your perspective on which oils are best and why. Thanks.”
Well, yes, Melissa, that’s what I’m doing today. That’s a very good question. And so I’m devoting this whole episode to answering that. So come and join us in the Facebook group in the Running Lean community on Facebook. And you can get your questions answered, too. So just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community, and you’ll find us also.
Did you know that I do one-on-one coaching? I do. Listen, doing this stuff, trying to figure all this nutrition out, especially as a runner becoming fat adapted, you know, knowing what to eat, when to eat, and all that other stuff can be kind of challenging to try to do it all on your own. So that’s why I’m here to help you.
Listen, we’re all different. We all have different nutritional needs, different genes, different values, different lifestyles. And when you work with me, I help you develop a eating program, a nutrition program, a weight loss program that works for you. You get my help and guidance. You get my personal attention, you get a step by step action plan, you get to be held accountable for all your results, which is awesome.
And then I help motivate you and help keep you moving forward and give you tools and skills to help you improve not only your nutrition and your running but other aspects of your life as well. Just imagine how much easier it would be to lose weight when you have somebody right there walking you through it step by step showing you exactly what to do and holding you accountable.
Just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, all one word, and you can apply for coaching with me. I’d love to talk to you about it. Okay, let’s get into this. This is the ultimate guide to oil. And in doing my research for this podcast, I realized that the whole vegetable oil industry kind of was birthed right here in Cincinnati, Ohio. No.
So back in the 1800s Cincinnati was known as porkopolis because there were a lot of pork processing plants around here. So they did a lot of rendering of animal fats. And a lot of pork was being consumed. There’s a lot of slaughterhouses and all that stuff. So Cincinnati was known as porkopolis. That’s why we have the Flying Pig marathon. It’s kind of a play on that and some other things but anyway.
Oh, and another really cool thing is the pork. This may sound gross but the pig disassembly lines in the slaughterhouses. So they would have these kind of factory lines where they would disassemble pigs for different purposes.
Henry Ford actually took that idea and reverse engineered it, basically reverse the process to create the first assembly lines for cars. So even like the whole assembly line thing, got it? Started from Cincinnati and porkopolis. The things you learn, I’m telling you, it’s amazing.
So anyway, Cincinnati, late 1800s, lots of pork being, you know, rendered and stuff like that, lots of animal fats being consumed. And there are these two guys, William Procter and James Gamble that had this little soap and candle company called Procter and Gamble.
And at the time, and just another side note, if I look at my apartment window, I live near downtown Cincinnati. And if I look at my apartment window, I see the Procter and Gamble global headquarters building right there. So like I live kind of in the shadow, this whole Procter and Gamble thing.
And so when I was doing this research, I was just like, this is really hitting close to home. Anyway, okay, enough time digressions, I’m gonna keep moving forward here. So at the time, they were making soap and candles, right, Procter and Gamble, and animal fat, the lard that they were using, from the animal fat from the pork rendering facilities and stuff was expensive.
And so they started trying to find a cheaper alternative. And so they were using like palm oil and coconut oils instead. And they made this soap that floated in water using these oils, and it’s called Ivory soap, right. And, and so this was going along pretty well.
But even that was kind of expensive coconut oil, palm oil was kind of expensive. So they found an even cheaper alternative. And it was a waste product from the cotton farming industry, cottonseed oil. And so before processing cottonseed oil is this cloudy red, and very bitter oil.
And it has this toxic chemical in it called and I don’t know if I’m gonna pronounce this right, but gossypol, and it’s toxic to most animals. It causes dangerous spikes in the body’s potassium levels, it causes organ damage, and it causes paralysis.
Okay, so they had this very toxic cottonseed oil. And they decided, at some point they were going to use this to feed to humans. Now, an issue of Popular Science at the time kind of sums up the evolution of cottonseed oil. Here’s what they said. They said, “What was garbage in 1860 became fertilizer in 1870. Switch to cattle feed in 1880 and then table food and many other things in 1890.”
So it slowly entered our food supply. And then there was this new invention that took cottonseed oil to the next level that really got it into America’s kitchens and restaurants in our homes. And this is in 1907 when Procter and Gamble started using this new chemical process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation that took this liquid cottonseed oil and produced a solid fat.
Okay, so the company’s researchers had been trying to produce a more solid form of cottonseed oil for a long time. And it was very important for them in the soap manufacturing business. They wanted an oil that was solid at room temperature. So the company’s scientists took this hydrogenation. And they created this new creamy pearly white substance out of cottonseed oil to use in soapmaking.
And it looked a lot like the most popular cooking fat of the day, which was lard. And so Procter and Gamble, grabbed onto this stuff and said, you know, this kind of looks like lard, I mean seems innocent enough. And so they sold this new substance. And today we know this is hydrogenated vegetable oil.
So they sold it to home cooks, as a replacement for animal fats. And they called it Crisco, short for crystallized cottonseed oil. Okay, so they took this stuff and they were really intending to use it for the creation of soap. And they actually got a patent for this stuff in 1910, for Crisco, and in the patent, it says, a food product consisting of a vegetable oil, preferably cottonseed, oil, partially hydrogenated, and hardened to a homogenous white or a yellowish, semi solid, closely resembling lard, the special object of the invention is to provide a new food product for a shortening in cooking.
Okay, so they just had this idea, let’s just start feeding this to humans. No real research went into this about the deleterious effects of this stuff, or about the health consequences of eating this stuff. But they started selling this now food product. And it was unprecedented at the time.
They sold 2.6 million pounds of this stuff, Crisco, in 1912 2.6 million pounds. And then just four years later, they were up to selling 60 million pounds of Crisco. So this new, quote, unquote, food bolstered the bottom line of Procter and Gamble. Keep in mind, their only products at the time were things like Ivory soap, Lennox soap, White Napa, laundry soap, and star soap.
This was their contribution to the, you know, dietary nutritional needs of America and the world really. And this sort of ushered in this whole age of vegetable oils in low fat foods later on, but this was all marketing. Okay, it wasn’t healthier by any means. Like, they didn’t have any science to prove any of this stuff. They didn’t do any real deep scientific testing.
They were just like, well, I mean, you can eat it, I guess it’s okay. You know, but it was all marketing. So they were like, hey, this seems like it’s probably better than animal fat. So, you know, it’s healthier for you. And so that’s why they marketed it, it’s just a marketing thing. Okay.
But this stuff, Crisco, you know, remember it was made for the soap industry, it was 50% trans fat. And we know that trans fats are very bad, right? It wasn’t until the 1990s, really, that we understood the health risks of trans fats. But they estimate that for every 2% increase in the consumption of trans fats, which are still found in many fast foods and processed foods today, your heart disease risks increase by 23%.
So every 2% increase in the consumption of trans fats, the risk of heart disease increases by 23%. What’s interesting, though, and surprising is that animal fats, the fact that, you know, people have said that animal fats increase your risk of heart disease is not supported by science. Okay, that’s very important to understand.
So they took this stuff that they wanted to make, whether we wanted to make soap cheaper, and quote unquote, better, and they started feeding it to humans. basically selling it as healthier than animal fats. And this was the birth of the vegetable oil industry, everybody started to get in on this, okay. And it birthed the whole new era of cooking oils.
So prior to this time, you know, we used to cook with tallow, which is beef fat suet, which is like lamb or sheep fat, and lard from pigs, and then butter, right, that’s what we used to cook with. And for thousands of years, humans, wow, I’m gonna go back millions of years, humans used an eighth of those for saturated fats, mostly from animals as part of their diet, with no of the health issues that we experience from eating vegetable oils.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of years of eating this stuff, and that we, you know, we also consumed in certain parts of the world, you know, back, you know, a million years, a few 100,000 years, we also consumed coconut oil, palm oil and olive oils in some of the tropical more Mediterranean regions. But seed oils, these things like we’re talking about here, cottonseed oil, safflower seed oil, stuff like that, were not eaten by humans.
It wasn’t until the modern era and the industrial revolution that the seed oils were produced at all. And actually they are produced to be used as lubricants and machinery. And did you know that you can use vegetable oil in a diesel engine? Like you can pour in vegetable oil? I think you have to modify something.
But my understanding is that you can run a diesel engine perfectly fine on vegetable oil. Why are we eating this stuff? It just seems so bizarre, right? Okay, so that’s kind of the history of, you know, where this idea of eating these industrial oils comes from.
And now I want to talk a little bit about you know, why these are bad for us. Okay. But I gotta before I get into that, I need to talk about a couple of sciency type things, just so we understand. The first is like, the vegetable oils we’re talking about here are the polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Okay, that’s kind of the bad part of these things, or PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are the oils like corn oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, safflower seed oil, sunflower seed oil, peanut oil, canola oil, which is made from rapeseed, and grapeseed oil. So these are all the what they technically call seed oils, or industrial seed oils.
And the USDA, or the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that we eat around two tablespoons of these oils every day. Okay, so they’re basically just saying, like, eat this stuff. It’s good for you. So, polyunsaturated fatty acids, that’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about here.
And then there’s a difference between saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats are or saturated oils are typically very stable. They’re solid at room temperature, like lard, butter, coconut oil. And then the unsaturated types are very unstable. They’re liquid at room temperature and when you heat them up, terrible things happen.
But anyway, in order to make these seed oils edible, they have to go through a massive refinement process. Okay, so this is where things get pretty weird with this oil. Okay, so think about something like coconut oil which is so natural or even olive oil.
To get olive oil, you just smash some olives and the oil comes out right and they do it at a cold on a cold press, you know, they don’t have to heat it up. And there’s basically zero refinement involved at all. So you just squeezing olives and olive oil comes out. And it’s beautiful. It’s delicious. And very, very healthy, good for you, right.
But these see these seed oils in order to get the oil out of them, and to make it edible for humans have to go through a massive amount of refinement. So for example, let’s look at how they make canola oil and pretty much all the seed oils are made the same way.
Canola is made from grape seeds. Grape seeds are almost entirely GMO genetically modified, they are heavily treated with pesticides. And then they take these seeds and they have to heat them to super high temperatures just to get the oil to start to get the oil out of them, so they are under high heat and pressure to get the oil out of them and get the oil out to have to use a chemical solvent.
It’s a petroleum based chemical solvent called hexane. Hexane actually causes nerve damage to humans. But anyway, so they have to use this industrial solvent to extract the oil from the seeds. Okay? The resulting sludge that comes from this process is this rancid, super bad smelling and gray sludge.
And it’s inedible at this point, it’s actually very toxic for humans. And so they have to heat it again to remove the toxins, they have to deodorize it so they go through another heating process to get that odor out of it. And then they bleach it to remove the gray color.
Okay, then they add some enhancements, like artificial colors, and some synthetic vitamins. So by this time, we have something that is an industrial oil. And it’s great for running diesel engines and really good for lubricating machinery and stuff like that.
If people were to like just come up with this idea today and propose that we eat this stuff today, there’s no one in their right mind that would say like, this is a good idea. But because you know, industry got behind this, you know, 100 years ago, it’s just stuck with us. And oh my gosh, this stuff is just, it’s horrible.
And when I say this stuff is garbage, slash poison. This is what I’m talking about. We’re taking something that is unfit for humans to eat. And we’re not only, not only are we suggesting people eat it, the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest we eat it and suggest we all eat this stuff. And it’s just causing all kinds of problems, all kinds of heart or health and heart problems for us.
But you know what, there’s a lot of money going into this stuff. There’s a lot of profits. And there’s a lot of like bad science that is promoting this stuff as being healthy, even though they’ve never really proven to be healthier at all. So just as an example. And there’s so many studies out there, I’m just going to mention a couple of things here.
But there’s like so many good studies that prove that these vegetable oils have not helped at all. But just think about it this way. Animal fat consumption went from around 12 pounds per year in 1900 to around five pounds per year in the year 2005. So in roughly 100 years, we’ve lessened you know more than halved our consumption of animal fats.
The polyunsaturated fats consumption went from around 10 grams a day in 1900 to basically almost zero to around 40 grams a day in 2005. So we’ve quadrupled the amount of these vegetable oils that we’re eating. The problem though, since 1900, is that heart disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, cancer, all of those have steadily increased along with the consumption in it tracks very nicely.
If you look at it on a graph from vegetable oils, how much we’ve been consuming to the amount of heart disease and obesity and diabetes and all these other things. Today, the average American consumes around, this is crazy, 70 pounds of vegetable oil per year. 70 pounds of this stuff per year. Whoa, that was crazy.
And you don’t have to be like pouring it into a pan or like doubling it to get that much into your body because all fast food almost all processed food most packaged food contains these industrial seed oils, potato chips, granola, fried chicken, french fries, burgers, quote unquote healthy cereals, processed meats, plant based meat substitutes, crackers, pretzels, practically everything you see at a store has vegetable oil in it.
It’s crazy. And so we’re eating like 70 pounds of this stuff per year. And this is not good. So why, why is this bad? Like, why are vegetable oils bad for you? If you’re not convinced already that these industrial seed oils are not bad for you, here’s some more things to understand about these kinds of oils.
So they did these animal studies on rats back in the 1940s. Poor rats, they always get the brunt of these studies. But anyway, these poor rats, so they took these rats and they fed them linseed oil, corn oil, soybean oil. And they realized that eating this stuff was very toxic for these animals that caused them to grow poorly. They suffered massive diarrhea, they had enlarged livers. They had gastric ulcers, heart damage, and they died prematurely.
And then this part is kind of gross. But they had this like varnish like substance that they found in their feces that actually caused these poor rats to actually be like, stuck, like glued to the wire mesh floor of their cages. So they had this like, byproduct of eating this stuff that was like this toxic varnish that glued them to their cages.
Why are we eating this stuff? Right? It’s horrible. So this is done in the 1940s. But these kinds of studies were summarily dismissed. Because it didn’t fit with the agenda of the big food companies that were like, well, you know, we’re trying to promote something heart healthy here, so, and they put big money into studies that showed that this stuff didn’t have those kinds of effects.
Anyway, when you heat up these vegetable oils, they become extremely toxic. So this is like, the worst thing you can do with these vegetable oils is to heat them up. So they break down inside our bodies, they create free radicals, they create aldehydes. Aldehydes cause rapid cell death, aldehydes interfere with our DNA and our RNA.
They basically screw up the way our cells function. They cause extreme oxidative stress to all of our tissues. They cause really terrible effects to our health like heart disease and cancer. In fact, they took one piece of fried chicken from a fast food joint, and they were able to isolate 130 volatile compounds found in this one piece of fried chicken. And honestly, you’re not going to like this part.
Virtually all restaurants use vegetable oil to cook with because that’s what’s recommended. So virtually all restaurants are heating up this vegetable oil, creating this toxic very toxic sludge. And that’s what we’re they’re feeding to all their people. I know that sucks, right? It’s hard to get away from it. It really is.
So polyunsaturated fats tend to, you know, react with oxygen in our bodies and they cause oxidative stress. This is important to understand. So you’ve heard that we should be eating foods that are high in antioxidants, right? Eat dark chocolate, eat blueberries. We should be eating these foods to combat or prevent oxidative stress. That’s why they’re called antioxidants.
But these fatty acids in vegetable oils actually sit in our cell membranes. They increase the they cause oxidative stress increase these harmful oxidative chain reactions. And they actually lead to structural changes within our cells within our fat stores within our cell membranes. These kinds of oils create a very pro-inflammatory state in our bodies, while the mono unsaturated fatty acids like olive oil, for example, are anti-inflammatory. Okay.
One more kind of sciency thing to talk about here is the omega six versus omega three. So you’ve probably heard that we should be getting lots of omega threes and kind of limit our omega sixes, right? I think we all kind of understand that. Just so you understand, like, our bodies need both. Our bodies need Omega sixes and Omega threes, and they just have to be in a certain kind of balance.
And it depends on who you talk to what that balance is some people say four to one, Omega six to Omega three, some say one to one. But whatever it is, we want to make sure we have enough omega threes in our system. So omega threes. The problem is though, when omega sixes are high, it really lowers the amount of omega threes, it throws that thing off balance, okay.
And these oils that I’m talking about here, these industrial seed oils are very high in Omega sixes, and they throw off that balance. And so you want to like limit the Omega sixes, you want to really just eliminate these vegetable oils, and increase your omega threes to get the optimal kinds of fats that you need.
So the only way we can get these two very important types of fats is by eating certain types of foods and fats that can or foods that contain these fats, right. So we want to make sure that, you know, we’re limiting the amount of omega sixes, so limit the vegetable oils basically is the easiest way to do this, and increase the Omega threes.
Omega six oils are very unstable. They’re made of these polyunsaturated fats, and when you cook them at high temperatures, like I said, or microwave them or, you know, cook, fry food in them, they oxidize the fats. And like I said, oxidized Omega sixes damage your DNA, they cause inflammation of your heart, they raise your risk of several types of cancer including breast cancer, they also interferes with brain metabolism.
So, get that foggy brain Omega sixes or inflammatory omega threes or not, you need both, but because of that inflammation factor, you want to maximize omega threes, minimize Omega sixes, okay? Overconsumption of omega sixes, and under consuming omega threes, has been shown to increase all kinds of diseases like heart disease, obesity, type two diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, macular degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, reproductive disorders, hormonal disorders, kidney, liver damage, infertility, cancer, I mean, the list goes on and on and on, of not having these things in balance. Okay?
When you have a diet, though, that’s high in omega threes and low in omega sixes, when you’re eating more natural fats, and I’m gonna get into some of what you should be doing in just a second here, but things like coconut oil, let’s say, that will help to keep your Omega three to sixes in balance. Okay?
Some of the good sources of Omega threes, just so you know, would be things like wild caught salmon and grass fed beef, sardines, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, avocados, walnuts, flax seeds, all these things are really high in omega threes.
And then there was this 2018 study that the title of the study was omega six vegetable oils, as a driver of coronary heart disease, the oxidized linoleic acid hypothesis. And I’m just gonna read you the summary of this paper, it’s really good and really well done. Well, well documented. Lots of experts in the field in science and fats and things like that.
But here’s the summary. It says: “In summary, numerous lines of evidence show that the Omega six polyunsaturated fat linoleic acid, promotes oxidative stress, oxidized LDL, chronic low grade inflammation and atherosclerosis, and is likely a major dietary culprit for causing coronary heart disease, especially when consumed in the form of industrial seed oils, commonly referred to as vegetable oils.”
That’s enough evidence right there for me, and should be for you that this stuff is no good. So I’m going to talk about some better choices for you in just a second, but just really quickly, you know, when I when I start talking about these things, and say, Hey, we need to get off the industrial seed oils and start using just the natural fats.
Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, whatever, carnivore, but this whole idea of eating saturated fats as being bad for us, has just been drilled into our heads and that’s just not true. There’s never been a randomized controlled trial, which is the the actual good science, okay? There are two basic types of studies.
There’s epidemiological studies which study a group of people and what they eat. And then they make conclusions based on that. And that’s okay, it can show it in association but doesn’t show cause. A better type of study is RCTs, or randomized controlled trials. These are where you take groups of people and you separate them, you control everything about their environment, and make sure everything is the same except for certain types of diet, okay?
And when you can randomize the groups and control exactly what they’re eating and study that, that is good science. Okay. So anytime I see association studies, I’m very skeptical, I really don’t go by that, I always want to look at the randomized control trials, okay, that’s important to understand.
And so this idea of like saturated fat being bad for you in the 1960s and 70s, all these governments from around the world got together and looked at all these randomized controlled trials that had been done and, and they, and they did all these studies that included over 75,000 men and women.
And these experiments that they’re talking about these randomized control trials, lasted anywhere from 1 to 12 years. So there’s long term studies, right? Very expensive to do this. The results from all these studies from a meta analysis like looking at all these studies, showed no effect of saturated fats on cardiovascular mortality, or total mortality are sometimes known as all cause mortality.
In other words, these people eating saturated fats were no more likely to die of heart disease, get heart disease, or die from these kinds of problems than the people that were eating the low fat, non saturated fat diet, it’s very important to understand that. So my takeaway from looking at data like that is saturated fat is not bad for you, and never has been proven to be bad for you.
In fact, it’s proven to be just fine. So what are some better choices? So if we want to get away from the industrial seed oils, what should we eat instead? It’s a great question. So stick with cold pressed very minimally processed oils, oils that are produced without high heat or chemical solvents. Okay, this is just standard.
So things like coconut oil, coconut oil is one of the best. It’s a saturated fat. It’s like one of the best things very versatile. You can use it in a lot of stuff. It’s great for cooking because it has a very high smoke point, you can heat it up to very high temperatures and it won’t oxidize so it doesn’t break down.
It’s also solid at room temperature, much like Crisco or lard. And so you know, the coconut oil is very versatile, you can use it in baking and all kinds of good stuff, and it tastes good. So that’s a super awesome alternative to vegetable oil.
Another one is olive oil. Olive oil is very, you know, always get the cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and only use olive oil cold you don’t want to heat up olive oil, so don’t cook with it because it has a very low smoke point, it’ll start to break down if it’s heated up to to too high of a temperature. So I just want to use cold olive oil.
Another great option is avocado oil, which a lot of people love. And it has a higher smoke point than olive oil. It’s great for cooking as well. You can use it cold or hot. So it’s great for salad dressings and things like that. And you can cook with it as well.
Macadamia nut oil is another good one. It’s low in the polyunsaturated fatty acids, it’s good for dressings, and it’s good to make mail out of. Apparently I have not done that but that sounds amazing.
And then one of the best oils you can use would be fish oil, it has tons of great omega threes. It helps to promote proper cell function, good lipid numbers, and actually has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity. Okay, so these are the oils you should stick with. I would say olive oil and coconut oil would be my to go to and I always have that stuff around. And I use that stuff every day.
The bottom line seed oils, these industrial seed oils should not be consumed for humans. They were not created as food. I think they’re unfit for human consumption. They harm your health. They create oxidative stress. They break down ourselves, they damage our DNA. They’re highly inflammatory. They throw off our omega three omega sixes ratio, basically depriving our bodies of the good fats that we need for optimal health.
The solution is to replace these industrial seed oils with good oils, good heart healthy oils, the real hard healthy oils like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, or just used butter. And these things restore the Omega three omega six ratios, they don’t promote oxidative stress. Some oils, like olive oil, are actually anti inflammatory.
And these will dramatically improve your health a little bit of a bigger picture, look at things here like we’re consuming, you know, less animal fat and more vegetable oil than ever before. And yet we’re sicker and fatter than we’ve ever been. And honestly, we can look at vegetable oil as just one of the key players to this and I call the three key players here.
Sugar, refined grains, and these industrial seed oils. I call this the Vile Triumvirate. It’s this horrid toxic concoction of these three things it’s like making us fat and sick and killing us all. And yet, these three things make up most of the processed food available in the supermarket today. These three things are found in almost all processed and packaged food.
And it’s kind of what the United States dietary guidelines recommends we eat. You know, since the induction of the dietary guidelines in 1980, the overall health of Americans has sharply declined. The guidelines have had a profound effect on our health in a bad way. And the guidelines affect more than just like us sitting at home.
Okay, so like all school lunch programs are based on the US Dietary Guidelines, and 19% of school aged kids are now obese. The Dietary Guidelines affect all military rations and mess hall food. And now 7% of troops are obese, not just overweight, but obese. The guidelines effect special nutrition programs for women, infants and children like WIC. And now 15% of toddlers in WIC are obese.
The guidelines determine what food is served in hospitals. The guidelines determine what food programs we give to the elderly, and life expectancy is actually going down. Alzheimer’s is going up diabetes has gone up rapidly. Cancer has gone up rapidly among the elderly. The guidelines affect agricultural production. So they actually because of the guidelines, they incentivize farmers to produce more and more cheap carbohydrates like soy beans, wheat, and corn.
And of course, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans affect what the food industry produces. So the food industry is producing more and more and more of this garbage loaded with sugar, refined grains and vegetable oil. So what’s the solution here? The solution is my favorite thing, eat real food.
Let’s just go back to eating whole food. You know, and I use this example a lot of like, what a caveman eat this or a cave woman? And if the answer is no, then you probably shouldn’t be eating it either. If it’s highly processed, if this thing you’re about to eat has been highly processed, it involves multiple steel, that’s high pressure, high heat, toxic chemicals, deodorizers and bleaches to make it, probably take a hard pass on that.
If it comes in a package, I would say, really examine it carefully before you eat it. Really take a look and see what it is you’re eating. If it’s something deep fried, I would say don’t eat it. Unless they’re using something like, you know, beef tallow or duck fat to fry in, which some places are starting to do this.
Now, if you go to a restaurant and you’re worried about eating vegetable oil and them heating up this vegetable oil, you can tell them you’re allergic to vegetable oil, just say hey, I’ve got a vegetable oil allergy. Do you think you can cook my food in butter? And a lot of restaurants will actually do this for you.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re being super honest about it, they take it seriously and they will. They’ll do this for you. And the ones that won’t, you know, maybe don’t eat there. That’s an option. But honestly just like let’s go back to eating real food, none of this highly processed stuff.
And when it comes to highly processed food vegetable oils are probably one of the most processed and refined foods in existence today. And one of the things that’s making us really sick. So that’s why I say this stuff is poison slash garbage. Okay.
All right, we will be continuing this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So just join us over there jumping on the conversation, it will be fun to have you in there and ask your questions, and I’ll see if I can answer them right here. And if you do enjoy this podcast and if you’ve got something out of this, you can show your support by just leaving a quick review on iTunes. I would super love that.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
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