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Real-Life Insights and Takaways

  • I can promise you that force-feeding yourself will not increase your results. Simply because force feeding you will make you feel uncomfortable, and anything that is going to make you feel uncomfortable is going to increase the amount of willpower you need to use. The more willpower you need to use, the lower your chances of success because this can’t be based on willpower. Willpower is a fixed resource and our willpower, long-term, has to be spent on things that are way more important than counting calories or anything like that.
  • If you were to say, ‘I want to increase my results and I’m going to do that by focusing super hard on going from 9/3/3 to 12/3/3,’ (servings of vegetables). At the same time, if you’re extremely stressed on a scale from 1-10 where 10 is the most stress and 0 is no stress at all and you’re at a 9 and you’re getting 4 hours of sleep per night…I promise you, that if you were to take your stress level from a 10 to a 6 and you were to take your 4 hours of sleep per night and increase them to 6, you would get radically better results. In terms of your mood, your appearance, your mental performance, your sexual health, your health in general, your fat loss, your waistline—everything—than you would from just slightly tweaking your eating. That’s so important.
  • We have to make sure we are looking at all the different levers at our disposal. We have eating as one. Exercise is one. Social support is another BIG one that is often neglected; completely. Like, at a scale from 1-10 where 10 is complete social support a lot of us are sometimes at a 0 or a 1 or maybe even negative. Not only do we not have social support but if people in our lives are holding us back then it’s almost like we are negative there. We can’t make that perfect overnight, but the support group can certainly help. We got eating, we got exercise, we got social support, we have sleep, we have stress, we have—social support and meaningful relationship sort of go together—but we have that human emotional connection is super important. We have all those levers, which are important to us. How much water are we drinking? There is another lever that your doctor might change after you go SANE for a while. Certain forms of medication differently have an impact on us. For example, certain medications that affect our hormones, such as birth control, insulin therapy, our eyes, and other things along those lines. Also, whether or not someone is smoking. Those are things you would want to dabble with, but the main point here is that if you’re looking to increase your SANEity please don’t make yourself feel like you have to eat more. If you want to mess with eating increase the quality of the servings you’re eating and then focus on the other factors.
  • Moderate SANEity that you enjoy and can continue enjoyably forever within the context of a beautiful, fulling life will, of course, give you better, long-term results than perfect SANEity that makes you so crazy that in 12 weeks you’re like, ‘Forget about this, it’s crazy making.’ Which is how most of these other diets work, right? Eat exactly this. Follow these rules. Robot. That’s why they don’t work because we are not robots. Life is not robotic. We need to be flexible and adaptable.
  • Ask yourself, “How far can I walk today with a smile on my face?” Then tomorrow you’re going to do that and a little bit more. That’s it. Then a little bit more. Then the day after that you’re going to do it a little bit more. Which one of those approaches, 30, 60, 90 days from now is going to yield better results? Think about that in terms of eating now. What can you do enjoyably now? Granted, that might not be where you want to be, but if you rock it and nail it consistently for a week, then the next week the next level is going to be a bit easier. Then the week after that the next is going to be a bit easier. So that consistent, gradual progress is the secret. That is the secret to, not only eating and exercise—to be clear I definitely need to take my own advice, but we are here for the long term. I don’t think any of us want to be in a worse position a year from today then we are now. By definition, none of us should be doing anything over the next 12 weeks that we couldn’t be doing consistently a year from today. Because if we can’t do it consistently we are just going to yo-yo.
  • You can absolutely prevent the yo-yoing in three ways. This is not an exhaustive list. Stop weighing yourself. Measure body fat percentage instead. Even more important than that; gradual. The faster you lose weight, the more likely you are to gain it back. Because rapid weight loss is not safe and it’s not sustainable and it’s not solving the underlying problem. Anything that is done too rapidly, losing weight is likely damaging the system itself and that will cause weight rebound. Take this with the long-term, patient, caring, gradual, self-loving mindset. Do that while throwing away your scale and instead measuring waist circumference or use skinfold caliper. Even better, just eating and exercising and sleeping and letting your body take care of itself. Just give it that time. The third thing to do is to make sure that you are not ignoring that of which can actually cause you to gain weight in the short term, which is the amount of protein you’re eating and doing your eccentric resistance training.
  • If you’re super hungry at night and you’ve only eaten four servings of vegetables and one serving of protein and one serving of fat and to not eat anymore would make you feel hungry, tired, and terrible, because of some don’t eat after 6:00 pm rule. Can you see how that is inSANE for so many reasons? It’s inSANE because it’s preventing you from eating the satiating, aggressive, nutritious and efficient food that will heal your body. It’s also inSANE because it’s going to make you feel miserable. It’s going to make you waste your willpower. Eventually, you’re going to say forget it and you’re just going to eat a pint of ice cream because you have no willpower left. That’s what happens when we run out of willpower. All of us; me included. If I’m spending my willpower on nonsense I don’t have willpower left over to spend on meaningful things.
  • Consistency + patience + gradual + SANEity + self love = long-term success. That’s the secret formula. All this other stuff that distracts from that formula is counterproductive. Please eat SANE food when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full.
  • There is no right answer for everybody. Just like there’s no best car. If your house is on fire, a fire truck is certainly a more useful car than a minivan. But if you have to take a bunch of kids to the beach, a minivan would be way more useful than a Ferrari. There is no best car. There is a best car for this person in this circumstance who has these goals. The same thing applies to meal frequency, all this kind of stuff. There is no best meal frequency. If you’re a bodybuilder your goals are totally different than if you were a 65-year-old individual who is struggling from severe depression and diabetes. There is no right meal frequency. What we can do is find the right number of meals that make us feel great within a SANE framework.
  • One thing that is really important to keep in mind is that the serving guides for SANEity—the thing that is absolutely true, no matter what and without any qualification, is that we want to eat predominantly non-starchy vegetables, then nutrient dense protein, then whole-food fats, in that order. Now, if you are incredibly full and totally satisfied eating—I’m going to use numbers and the numbers are always in the pattern of vegetables, protein, and fats. So, if I say 9/3/3 that means 9 vegetables, 3 proteins, and 3 fats. If you are eating that and if you are totally full and satisfied you are succeeding. Please don’t feel that you need to overeat or eat till you’re uncomfortable to increase your SANEity. If you are feeling very full what you’re experiencing is what we will all experience as we begin to heal our body, which is what the research community calls a spontaneous reduction of caloric intake.
  • Think about how hard it is to take a toxic, standard American diet, which usually takes about 3,000 calories, to fill us up. Because if we’re eating, for example, Pringles and soda, there is a reason that you can drink 600 calories of soda and it actually makes you hungrier. Or you eat 300 calories of Pringles and they tell you, “Once you pop you can’t stop.” Right? Pringles is advertising that if you eat those calories it will make you hungrier. So if we eat unsatisfying calories, inSANE calories, we have to overeat to become satisfied because those calories are so unsatiating. They can also change the way our brain processes hunger signals, and the way our digestive system releases hunger hormones so that we don’t actually feel satiated, and even if our hormones are telling us that we should feel satiated our brain, specifically our ventromedial hypothalamus—SCIENCE! SCIENCE!—won’t be able to respond to those signals appropriately.
  • The 7 Days of SANE e-book has a breakdown of the SANE food groups. Within each food group, there are normal non-starchy vegetables, for example, an optimal non-starchy vegetable. Regardless of how many servings you have of each food group you’re eating, you can always increase your SANEity by focusing on optimal choices rather than normal choices.
  • Could chromium be good for blood sugar health? Maybe. Is Chromium something that you want to take for the rest of your life? If the answer is no, I don’t know if I would start taking it. Because whatever chromium does for you it will only keep doing it for you if you keep taking chromium. So, unless you want to take it for the rest of your life, I don’t know if I would start taking it. You might say, Well, Jonathan, by that logic what should I do? Here’s what you’re going to do. You ready? You’re going to eat delicious SANE food. You’re going to get great sleep. You’re going to develop deep loving relationships. You’re going to do work that you’re passionate about. You’re going to move your body safely and sustainably for the rest of your life. It sounds pretty good. When you think about it that way it becomes so my much simpler. Like, Yes. It’s absolutely true. Maybe chromium is good but it’s only as good as long as you take it. So unless you plan on taking it for the rest of your life I don’t know if I would start.

—NEXT ACTION—
Use your blender to make SANE smoothies and make them a part of your life.

SANE Soundbites

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01:36 – 02:56  Here is another mindset that we can have. The mindset is, how far can you walk today with a smile on my face. Then tomorrow you’re going to do that and a little bit more. That’s it. Then a little bit more. Then the day after that you’re going to do it a little bit more. Which one of those approaches, 30, 60, 90 days from now is going to yield better results? Think about that in terms of eating now. What can you do enjoyably now? Granted, that might not be where you want to be, but if you rock it and nail it consistently for a week, then the next week the next level is going to be a bit easier. Then the week after that the next is going to be a bit easier. So that consistent, gradual progress is the secret. That is the secret to, not only eating and exercise—to be clear I definitely need to take my own advice, but we are here for the long term. I don’t think any of us want to be in a worse position a year from today then we are now. By definition, none of us should be doing anything over the next 12 weeks that we couldn’t be doing consistently a year from today. Because if we can’t do it consistently we are just going to yo-yo.

09:50 – 10:56  I’ve seen a lot of data that says after yo-yo dieting the metabolism slows and you need few calories to maintain. Is there data proven that SANE eating will change that? That the amount of calories to maintain will return to normal. Fantastic questions. In fact, if you haven’t seen there is a recent New York Times article about how The Biggest Loser style of starvation and excessive exercise is horrifically damaging people’s metabolism, such that they require so few calories now, that yo-yo weight gain is nearly impossible to avoid unless they were to essentially go back to The Biggest Loser Ranch and starve themselves for the rest of their lives. In fact, if you have gone through your step-by-step program, or as you continue to go through your step-by-step program, you’ll see studies that were done in the 80s—that’s heartbreaking, it’s like the scientific community has known this stuff, literally for decades, it just hasn’t been shared with us.

20:50 – 22:29  We talk about “S”-Satiety, “A”-Aggression, “N”-Nutrition, “E”-Efficiency. The “E”, Efficiency talks about how many calories we burn just digesting food. For example, protein is very inefficiently processed by the body. It’s not an energy source. It’s a structural component. When you eat there is something called DIT or Dietary Induced Thermogenesis, meaning how many calories do you burn per day just taking the food that you eat and turning it into metabolizable energy by your body. Going SANE increased Dietary Induced Thermogenesis because it causes you to eat more nutrient-dense protein, which burns more calories just by the act of digesting.

If you have heard of a negative calorie food like celery. That’s true. It actually takes more calories to digest celery than celery contains. That doesn’t mean you’ll lose 100 pounds by eating more celery because you have a set point and your body will balance it out automatically. But what I can tell you is that, Hey, eating protein is great because not only will it help you to develop calorie hungry, lean muscle tissue, which will prevent your base metabolic rate from falling, but in addition to your base metabolic rate there are other things that determine the number of calories you burn in a day. One is Dietary Induced Thermogenesis. Dietary Induced Thermogenesis goes up with the more protein you eat. All sorts of way that we can avoid this starvation dieting nonsense. Hopefully, that helps.

Read the Transcript

Jonathan: If your mind is asking you these questions, Should I do this? Will I do that? If? Then? This? The answer is always, which you can do consistently and enjoyably for the rest of your life. You know what? It might not be perfectly SANE right now, but you know what will happen? Once you do it consistently for 30 days the next step will be so much easier. So think about it in terms of exercise. If your goal is to be able to walk a mile. Let’s say you can barely walk a block right now without struggling. One approach would be to say that you know you need to walk a mile. So tomorrow you’re going to try to walk a mile. It’s going to be brutal and horrific, and you may not be able to do it, and then you’re going to get really discouraged, but you’re going to just grit your teeth and you’re going to keep trying to do it. Then after four days, you’re going to say forget about it, and then you’re going to be depressed and sad because you will feel like you put all this effort in and it’s just another thing that didn’t work for you. That’s one approach. That’s the approach that a lot of these mainstream, Biggest Loser type things tell us to do. That’s toxic and I’m so happy that you’ve made this inSANE nonsense.

Here is another mindset that we can have. The mindset is, how far can you walk today with a smile on my face. Then tomorrow you’re going to do that and a little bit more. That’s it. Then a little bit more. Then the day after that you’re going to do it a little bit more. Which one of those approaches, 30, 60, 90 days from now is going to yield better results? Think about that in terms of eating now. What can you do enjoyably now? Granted, that might not be where you want to be, but if you rock it and nail it consistently for a week, then the next week the next level is going to be a bit easier. Then the week after that the next is going to be a bit easier. So that consistent, gradual progress is the secret. That is the secret to, not only eating and exercise—to be clear I definitely need to take my own advice, but we are here for the long term. I don’t think any of us want to be in a worse position a year from today then we are now. By definition, none of us should be doing anything over the next 12 weeks that we couldn’t be doing consistently a year from today. Because if we can’t do it consistently we are just going to yo-yo.

That influences a lot of this stuff and on one level it makes it easier, but it also makes it harder because our brains are programmed for that short-term, but our life is lived on the long term. Right? It’s all about the long term. Of course, it’s about the long term. So that gradual, what’s working for you, what is following the same template and then how can I become gradually SANEr over time, I think can be very helpful. That is an example of a medium to long answer to a simple question, but hopefully, it is helpful.

Danielle posted a question here—LIVE—just want to make sure I get to Danielle’s question. Can you review how you view ketogenic eating? Danielle, you can be SANE ketogenic. You can be SANE ketogenic. You can be SANE Kosher. You can be SANE Halal. You can be SANE vegan. You can SANE vegetarian. You can be SANE Paleo. You can actually be a SANE calorie counter if you wanted. You can say that I’m only going to eat 1200 calories of SANE food per day. SANE just helps you—as you can see, even from this call, that SANE is more than just eating. It’s about the quality of the food we put into our body; all based on science, not on anyone’s philosophies or some guru’s theories. It’s about the quality of how we move our body rather than just the quantity. It’s also about the quality of our thoughts and of our emotions and how we approach eating and exercise. Some of this guidance that we have been given is just bogus thinking.

For example, let’s just say if—this is an example of SANE logic. I’m not saying whether this is good or bad, I’m just giving you an example of SANE thinking. If processed white flour is bad if someone says that and then that person says that whole wheat flour is good. Whole wheat is this. Processed wheat is a subset. So if eating this subset is bad, if you eat this whole wheat you’re still eating everything that was in the subset. If white bread is bad then how does adding something to it—it’s like everything that’s bad is still there. If I were to drink a coke and you said, Jonathan, that’s inSANE, and I said, Hold on let me fix that and you saw me take a vitamin pill and drop it in the coke and say, Well now it’s got vitamins and minerals in it, you say, Jonathan, you are ridiculous. Because everything that is bad about the coke is still there. You just put a vitamin pill in it. If processed wheat is bad for us and then we add things to it, everything that is bad about processed wheat is still in the unprocessed wheat. That is an example of SANE thinking.

Danielle, ketogenic eating, if it’s SANE and ketogenic it can be extremely helpful. In fact, if you look at the clinical research it is quite clear that in terms of speed of weight loss, ketogenic SANEity—you will get great results. The only downside is that it can be very hard for a lot of people. This is again, going to sound obvious, but the number one predictor—here it is. Here’s the secret. Write this down. The number one predictor of whether or not a lifestyle change will be successful—where success is always defined as we don’t stop, ever. Not in 12 weeks or when the end of The Biggest Loser season happens. It’s always about the long term. The number one predictor of success is, will you keep doing it. If ketogenic eating, aka eating fewer than 50 grams of carbs per day or sometimes even less, makes you feel great, and you love it, and it’s all good, and it’s SANE, beautiful. There is a lot of research saying that that is fine and is healthy and can actually help with neurological illness and all sorts of other good stuff.

However, if counting carbs to that level of rigor makes you feel like you’re counting calories but just differently. It makes you tired and you don’t like measuring on ketone strips in the toilet and whatever, whatever. Then I wouldn’t recommend it. But if it’s working for you and you do it SANEly. One of the biggest changes, for example, The New Atkins For A New You book versus the Atkins books from the 60s or 70s or whenever it first came out. Even in the most hardcore part of the Atkins diet, they will say that green vegetables are required. That’s an important thing. Even the core researchers and advocates around the Atkins diet are like, look the initial version of it wasn’t quite SANE enough so now we got to make it a little bit SANEr. We have to make sure we got the green vegetables in there. So yes, it’s fine. There is a lot of research to support it. For long-term safety just make sure it’s SANE. Hopeful that is helpful.

Ann has a question. How does SANEity in the support group work? I have Level 3 but have 31 points. Ann, it is based on—so you get points for when people like your posts, and when people reply to your posts and the number of posts you post. The number of people who put things like, Awesome. The actual level I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head, but when you get to a certain number of points that corresponds to a certain level. I can tell you certainly that the levels are—it’s easier to go from Level 1 to Level 2 then it is to go from 2 to 3, then it is to go from 3 to 4, then it is to go from 4 to 5. If you see individuals who are at Level 4 or Level 5, those are people who are ROCKING IT. Not that other people aren’t rocking it, but these are individuals who—sorry, they are rocking it but more importantly they have done it consistently and persistently. They have been doing it for a long time. There is nothing you can do in one week that would get you to Level 4 in the support group. It’s something that’s going to take a little bit of time. Hopefully, that helps.

I’ve seen a lot of data that says after yo-yo dieting the metabolism slows and you need few calories to maintain. Is there data proven that SANE eating will change that? That the amount of calories to maintain will return to normal. Fantastic questions. In fact, if you haven’t seen there is a recent New York Times article about how The Biggest Loser style of starvation and excessive exercise is horrifically damaging people’s metabolism, such that they require so few calories now, that yo-yo weight gain is nearly impossible to avoid unless they were to essentially go back to The Biggest Loser Ranch and starve themselves for the rest of their lives. In fact, if you have gone through your step-by-step program, or as you continue to go through your step-by-step program, you’ll see studies that were done in the 80s—that’s heartbreaking, it’s like the scientific community has known this stuff, literally for decades, it just hasn’t been shared with us.

There was a study done at Rockefeller University in the 1980s, in which they took individuals who weighed 335 pounds and starved them down to 220 pounds, which you might say, Wow, these people should go on The Biggest Loser. That’s an amazing before and after picture. That’s 115-pound weight loss. That’s amazing. But, unfortunately, what the researchers found in the 80s was that they took people who weighed 335 pounds and starved them down to 220, and then they brought in people who naturally weighed 135 pounds and they measured the base metabolic rates of everyone. So they measured the base metabolic rates of people who weighed 335 pounds pre starvation dieting, then they measured the base metabolic rates of those same people, but when they were weighing 220 pounds after starvation dieting. They also measured the base metabolic rate of people who weighed 135 pounds.

Now, real quick math. A 220-pound person, that’s a much larger person than a 135-pound individual. That’s almost 85 pounds more. But what the research showed was at the end of the study the individuals who starved themselves down to 220 needed 5 percent fewer calories per day than the 135-pound individuals who never started themselves. Now, think about that for a second. A 220-pound person—to physically move 220 pounds around takes a lot more energy than to move 135 pounds around. But because these 220 pound individuals starved themselves down from 335, when we say that their base metabolic rate was 5 percent lower than an individual who weighs a 135 pounds, that means that an individual weighing 220 pounds, just to not gain weight, would have to eat 5 percent fewer calories per day—assuming they’re eating the same types of calories—than someone who weighs 135 pounds. You can see why how we lose weight is so important.

While a 115 pounds from 315 to 220 weight loss is like, Wow, I won The Biggest Loser, or I participated in a study in 1994. If it means that you’re either going to be miserable, and cold, and tired, and hungry at 220 for the rest of your life, or that you’re going to eat a normal amount or at least an amount where you are not going to feel tired, and deprived, and crabby, and have no sex drive, and in a mental fog for the rest of your life; and if you do that you’re going to weigh 350 pounds two years from the time of the study, then that’s nonsense. It is subjectively better to never have lost 115 pounds if you’re just going to gain 130 back. Because yo-yo dieting is worse for you than nothing. Way worse for you than doing nothing. It is infinitely better for your health to stay at 335 pounds then it would be to go down to 220 and then back to 340, or even back to 335. Weight cycling is not good for us. That’s why I am so happy you’re here. I’m so happy you have given yourself the opportunity to make a gradual, consistent progress. To actually answer your question. Yes, there has been a huge amount of research done that shows that the how you lose weight can dramatically affect your likelihood of rebound weight gain because of the change in your hormonal levels, the change in your gut flora, the change in your lean muscle tissues.

Let me give you some concrete examples. If you were to go from 220 pounds and you lose 50 pounds from starvation dieting there is a very good chance that 25 pounds could be muscle. Because your body has a shortage of calories. What does it need? It needs energy. What burns a lot of energy? Muscle. So, when your body needs more energy and it thinks it starving, what’s it going to burn off first? Tissue that’s using a lot of energy or tissue that’s using a little bit of energy? Tissue that’s using a lot of energy. It’s not going to burn off your essential organs, they use a heck of a lot of energy. Your brain is the number one user of energy in your body. Your liver burns 4 to 600 calories per day but it’s not going to burn off your brain or your liver; thankfully. But it will burn off your muscle tissue and it does burn off your muscle tissue. So, you go from 200 to 150, 25 pounds comes from muscle, let say another 5 pounds comes from water weight, and then 20 pounds comes from fat.

Gross oversimplification, to lose 30 pounds of muscle will absolutely destroy your base metabolic rate; completely. If you lost 30 pounds of muscle and 20 pounds of fat, unless you were to starve yourself for the rest of your life, all that 20 pounds of fat is going to come back easily. Because you lost 30 pounds of muscle. If we can minimize muscle loss than absolutely we’re also minimizing the likelihood of weight regain. But here is the catch. This is why I don’t like scales. Right? Let’s take that same example—and by the way, thank you for asking this questions. This is exactly what these calls are for. Because you can see this is not something we can cover anywhere else. I apologize if I don’t get to any more questions. I hope you find this valuable because this is the kind of stuff we can only cover here. Anyway, let’s take that same example, 200 pounds down to 150. Success in the short term. Fifty-pound weight loss. I’m posting on my social media. I’m 50 pounds down! Woohoo!

Now, let’s say that person’s name is Tim. Tim goes from 200 to 150. Let’s say, Tammy, Tim’s SANEr sister goes from 200 to 180. Initially, all of our brains are like Only 180. Poor Tammy. But let’s say that Tammy did that, that’s pure fat loss. She didn’t dehydrate herself, in fact, she is drinking more liquids because she is going SANE. She didn’t burn off any muscle tissue, in fact, she developed 10 pounds of lean muscle tissue. How? She is eating more nutrient-dense protein. She’s doing safe, slow eccentric resistance training. She is actually rebuilding lean, compact, sexy calories hungry, metabolic boosting lean muscle tissue. So, she has dropped 30 pounds of fat, gained 10 pounds of muscle. So the scale has only shown a 20-pound weight loss. First of all, her percent body fat change would be way more significant than Tim’s. Because Tim lost more muscle than fat and body fat percentage is the ratio of lean tissue to fat tissue. So if lean tissue and fat tissue both go done the ratio doesn’t really change and you’ll just look skinny fat. Whereas, Tammy went SANE and yes the scale says she only lost 20 pounds but she’s gain 10 pounds of muscle, lost 30 pounds of fat. So, in fact—there are other reasons for this but this example I think answers the questions—Tammy’s base metabolic rate will be higher.

So Tammy’s lost 20 pounds total gained 10 pounds of muscle losing 30 pounds of fat. Her base metabolic rate is higher, not lower. How? She actually has more lean tissue on her body than she did before. You can see—the deck is so ridiculously stacked against us in The Biggest Loser, Weight Watchers calorie counting model. Even the method of measurement using a scale is reinforcing the type of dieting that will cause you to have a lower base metabolic rate that will cause you to weight rebound. Whereas, last week we talked about body fat percentage. You can’t fake body fat percentage change. You’re either losing body fat—if you’re losing water weight your body fat percentage doesn’t’ change. If you lose fat your body fat percentage has changed. If you gain muscle, which is great—it’s the least appreciated and biggest change maker in terms of our metabolism that we have and that’s why protein and resistance training is so important and getting enough rest, because we need to give our body a chance to heal and rebuild itself. That in and of itself will absolutely—not only prevent your base metabolic rate from falling but it will actually increase your base metabolic rate.

Let me give you another way that this works. Sorry, this is really important. We talk about “S”-Satiety, “A”-Aggression, “N”-Nutrition, “E”-Efficiency. The “E”, Efficiency talks about how many calories we burn just digesting food. For example, protein is very inefficiently processed by the body. It’s not an energy source. It’s a structural component. When you eat there is something called DIT or Dietary Induced Thermogenesis, meaning how many calories do you burn per day just taking the food that you eat and turning it into metabolizable energy by your body. Going SANE increased Dietary Induced Thermogenesis because it causes you to eat more nutrient-dense protein, which burns more calories just by the act of digesting.

If you have heard of a negative calorie food like celery. That’s true. It actually takes more calories to digest celery than celery contains. That doesn’t mean you’ll lose 100 pounds by eating more celery because you have a set point and your body will balance it out automatically. But what I can tell you is that, Hey, eating protein is great because not only will it help you to develop calorie hungry, lean muscle tissue, which will prevent your base metabolic rate from falling, but in addition to your base metabolic rate there are other things that determine the number of calories you burn in a day. One is Dietary Induced Thermogenesis. Dietary Induced Thermogenesis goes up with the more protein you eat. All sorts of way that we can avoid this starvation dieting nonsense. Hopefully, that helps and I do have to get a drink of water here.

You can absolutely prevent the yo-yoing in three ways—more than three. Here are three ways. This is not an exhaustive list. Stop weighing yourself. Measure body fat percentage instead. Even more important than that; gradual. The faster you lose weight—here you go, this is 100 percent true. Write this in stone. The faster you lose weight, the more likely you are to gain it back. Because rapid weight loss is not safe and it’s not sustainable and it’s not solving the underlying problem. Anything that is done too rapidly, losing weight is likely damaging the system itself and that will cause weight rebound. Take this with the long-term, patient, caring, gradual, self-loving mindset. Do that while throwing away your scale and instead measuring waist circumference or use skinfold caliper. Even better, just eating and exercising and sleeping and letting your body take care of itself. Just give it that time. The third thing to do is to make sure that you are not ignoring that of which can actually cause you to gain weight in the short term, which is the amount of protein you’re eating and doing your eccentric resistance training. If you’re doing it right—please don’t sound bite this, I’m glad this is just between us because I can totally see this—what I’m about to say, if taken out of context, sounds terrible. Okay.

Eccentric exercise will make you gain weight. Oh my goodness! But the weight it will make you gain is lean muscle tissue, which over the long term will help you to burn more fat. Remember, we want to change the ratio of fat to muscle. You can just burn fat. You can just increase muscle. But if you do them at the same time you get the best results, and the best health, and the best everything else. You want your self-confidence to skyrocket—here’s another example of why building lean muscle tissue is awesome. If you have ever walked up a flight of stairs while talking to someone and been out of breath and not able to continue the conversation, that is a terrible feeling. Right? You’re trying to talk to someone and you’re like, I’m sorry… Not a good feeling. You might think the only way to avoid that is to go become a marathon runner so that you can have better cardiovascular endurance. That’s one way. A SANEr way is, for example, let’s say that an individual weighs 200 pounds; just for a simplicity of math. When you walk up the stairs what are you doing? With every step, you take one of your legs is lifting 200 pounds. Right? So, you walk up 10 steps, each leg has lifted 200 pounds 5 times. Now let’s say that you double your leg strength. Very easy to do. Especially if you never weight trained before. If you never weight trained before you might start out leg pressing 100 pounds and within a month you would probably be up to 200, or two months. As you’re getting started it’s amazing how quickly you can develop strength.

Now, let’s say your legs are twice as strong and you still weigh 200 pounds. Let’s say you lost 5 pounds of fat but gained 5 pounds of muscle. No weight loss. It’s okay! That’s not our goal. No weight loss but it’s okay because we know what our goal is. Our goal is body fat percentage long-term—yadda, yadda, yadda, still 200 pounds, still 10 steps. But now your legs are twice as strong. Just for simplicity of math, if your legs are twice as strong then each time they were lifting 200 pounds before you still weighed 200 pounds but to your stronger legs, that are twice as strong, to them it feels like it’s only 100 pounds each step you take. Because they’re twice as strong. The amount of weight they’re lifting hasn’t changed but their ability to lift weight has doubled. So wouldn’t it make sense that if it required half as much labor to climb up the same number of steps that you wouldn’t be out of breath?

You’ve done nothing, in terms of your VO2 max, which is an indicator of cardiovascular endurance but what you have done is you’ve enhanced your global metabolic conditioning. Meaning that your body’s overall ability to function. You’ve become stronger; right? Not like bodybuilder stronger but like, I’m a stronger person now. Challenges are going to come up and I’m going to take care of them. And, I’ve got a flight of stairs to walk up, but you know what? It’s twice as easy now so I am not out of breath. That amazing—I’ve totally gone off track. Oh yes, doing that is going to help you base metabolic rate not to fall.

Are there any vitamin or minerals supplements that I can take or should take to help reset my body? How about chromium for blood sugar stability that many other nutritional experts seem to think that resistant starch is a good addition for gut health? Great question! There are two ways to answer this. Could chromium be good for blood sugar health? Maybe. Is Chromium something that you want to take for the rest of your life? If the answer is no, I don’t know if I would start taking it. Because whatever chromium does for you it will only keep doing it for you if you keep taking chromium. So, unless you want to take it for the rest of your life, I don’t know if I would start taking it. You might say, Well, Jonathan, by that logic what the heck can I do?

Here’s what you’re going to do. You ready? You’re going to eat delicious SANE food. You’re going to get great sleep. You’re going to develop deep loving relationships. You’re going to do work that you’re passionate about. You’re going to move your body safely and sustainably for the rest of your life. It sounds pretty good. When you think about it that way it becomes so much simpler. Like, Yes. It’s absolutely true.

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