Scientific Proof: A Calorie Is NOT A Calorie


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Jonathan: Hey, everyone, Jonathan Bailor, Carrie Brown, actually a tan Carrie Brown. Carrie Brown is back from vacation, and we’re here living the Smarter Science of Slim. Carrie, how are you doing today?

Carrie: I’m doing great. I am tanner and blonder and thinner since I was last here.

Jonathan: Thinner. You must have Smarter Science of Slimmed it up while you’re on the beach.

Carrie: I was so SANE. You’d have been so proud of me.

Jonathan: SANE. Well, the folks listening may not know what SANE means, but they will find out in the next series of podcasts because we’re ready to move on to what a lot of people think is the backbone of the Smarter Science of Slim and that is debunking the myth that a calorie is a calorie. In fact, we will show that a calorie is not a calorie and that science has proven there are four factors that determine the quality of a calorie; and those are abbreviated, using the acronym SANE, which Carrie was over vacation since then.

Carrie: I was very, very SANE. I am actually quite proud of myself for being so SANE while on vacation.

Jonathan: And still enjoying yourself?

Carrie: And still enjoying myself. I had a blast.

Jonathan: Fabulous, and folks I have to apologize. I have a little bit of a lost voice, so hopefully it doesn’t compromise your enjoyment of your time here today too much but…

Carrie: I’m loving your new voice.

Jonathan: You like my new and improved voice. We will get started. Last couple podcasts, were all focused on — it’s not about manually regulating calories in, calories out, talking about how calorie certainly matter. It’s just like breathing matters, breaths in, breaths out matters. That doesn’t mean we manually regulate calories. When we take care of our body with the right quality of food and exercise, it will automatically regulate our calories. Now, we’re moving on to the next big section of the Smarter Science of Slim. So dispelling calories in, calories out, now dispelling the myth of a calorie is a calorie. Carrie, how does that sound to you?

Carrie: I love it. I love dispelling all these myths that have been bombarding us for the last 40 years.

Jonathan: Dr. Fineman over at the State University of New York puts it very well. He tells us, attacking the obesity epidemic will involve giving up many old ideas that have not been productive. A calorie is a calorie may be a good place to start. Carrie, the question here is, why do we think… I mean we’ve all heard this. We’ve all heard calorie is a calorie is a calorie, why? Why are we told this? Why is this the pervasive theory?

Carrie: Because they all want to make money.

Jonathan: That is one explanation, another explanation.

Carrie: If we believe that a calorie is a calorie, we will keep doing more exercise and eating less, which ultimately will not get us where we want to be.

Jonathan: I love it. Yes, yes. I like where you’re going here. If we believe that all calories are created equal, then the whole quantity, the idea of it’s just about cutting calories and just about burning calories off makes sense because that’s really the only variable we can play with. If calories are all the same, well quality is off the table, and all we have to work with is quantity, so we end up trying to eat less and exercise more; which doesn’t work we end up spending a bunch of money. Was that kind of what we’re talking about?

Carrie: Right. Exactly.

Jonathan: The reason we have this belief it goes all the way back to our earlier podcasts where we talk about the mindset that we’ve been told our body works like a balance scale where we have to manually balance calories in calories out, and if we believe that, it makes sense that a calorie is a calorie. The problem is that’s not true. On a balanced scale, if you put 300 calories of Twinkies on one side of the balance scale and 300 calories of broccoli on the other side, it balances out, because balance scales only measure quantity. Quality is irrelevant.

Now, the catch, of course, is that our body isn’t a balanced scale at all, and we all know this intuitively. We know that if we drink 300 calories of soda, we feel very different than if we were to eat 300 calories of say a high-quality protein and some wonderful sautéed non-starchy vegetables of 300 calories, but we know intuitively that has a much different impact on our body. Why does this matter? Why are we talking about this? Well, again, let’s circle back to earlier podcasts where we talked about everything is about our set point weight, and our set point weight remember is a factor of two things, our genetics and our hormones. We can’t change our genetics. We can’t change our hormones, and here’s the key thing, Carrie.

It’s the quality of the calories we eat, and the quality of exercise we do that allows us to change our hormones. In order for us to do that, in order for us to lower our set point weight, we have to understand what determines the quality of a calorie; so we can eat the highest quality calories possible. Again, that’s all irrelevant if a calorie is a calorie, so we have to disprove that myth. We have to identify what differentiates high quality calories from low quality calories; and that’s what we’re going to do over the next couple of podcasts.

Carrie: When I first read your book, this was one of the things that just got me so excited; and it was also one of the things that made it really easy for me to eat SANEly as opposed to inSANEly; because it just made so much sense. Understanding that a calorie is not a calorie made it much easier for me to make smarter choices just because I understood that.

Jonathan: I love it, and I also think it’s potentially very empowering for people because now, instead of saying sort of dogmatic statements which can be very polarizing for people such as meat is bad or these sort of global statements, like fat is bad. We don’t need to make these kinds of statements, we can simply say, okay, the four factors that determine the quality of a calorie are satiety, aggression, nutrition, and efficiency. We can look at individual foods.

We can rate them on each of those four factors, and then we can essentially stack rank foods and again, there are no biases. There are no general statements. We just get a criteria by which we can see science has proven these are the four factors that determine the quality of a calorie. Evaluate foods one by one using those criteria, and enjoy a wide array of food, rather than sort of cutting off entire food groups or food sections from ourselves.

Carrie: It’s factual, it’s not fad based. It’s not kind of weird, and it’s just facts. That made it a lot easier for me to choose what foods to eat.

Jonathan: Yeah, and it doesn’t come from… This maybe put better… what I was trying to say earlier, it doesn’t come with any preconceived notion. It simply says here are four criteria, apply them. It doesn’t come from any theories. It’s just four objective criteria, and let’s see how that plays out. An analogy I like to use again to drive home the impact of the quality of calories. We’re all about quality here at the Smarter Science of Slim. We know quality matters, right? For example, breathing in 30 years’ worth of smoke filled air is going to do something different to our respiratory systems than breathing in clean fresh air for 30 years. Pouring a cup of water on your hand does something very different depending on the quality of the water.

For example, boiling water will do something that isn’t very positive; so quality really matters when it comes to bodily systems, and our metabolism is no different. For example, Carrie, let me give you one study here. We’ll have a bunch more but this is my favorite. It was done at Marshall University and actually looked at children, which is fascinating because childhood obesity is obviously a tragedy in this country and all across the western world; and the researchers divided children into two groups.

One, where the kids went on a traditional low calorie diet. Let’s call this the cut-quantity group, and then another one where kids were allowed to eat unlimited calories, but they went on a low-carbohydrate diet. No, we’re not here to advocate low-carbohydrate diets necessarily, but the study is interesting because we have a cut-quantity group; and then we have a change-quality group. Make sense? Okay, so after two months, it was a pretty substantive study, as well. The change-quality kids — remember, they could eat whatever they want as long as it was low carbohydrate — lost 11 pounds, and the cut-quantity kids gained five pounds.

Carrie: That’s pretty wild.

Jonathan: It’s very wild and it’s not to suggest that we all need to go on low -carbohydrate diets, but it is an excellent example of how critical calorie quality is. People can eat and eat and eat and still burn body fat because they’ve changed the quality of their calories; therefore, they’ve changed their hormonal balance; therefore they’ve changed their set point; and therefore their body will work more like the body of a naturally thin person, which is what we’re all after because that’s long-term fat loss and health.

Carrie: Even children.

Jonathan: Even children. Fundamentally, if you have a diabetic child treated the same way as a diabetic adult, it’s just a smaller person. This is not different for children than it is for adults. Foods that are healthy for adults are healthy for children, and vice versa.

Carrie: It just goes for me. I was naturally skinny until I was about 37, and then suddenly I was not naturally skinny anymore; so, it’s just I’ve always thought that hormonal change happened in later life was where I started to struggle, but obviously this works for children who have that struggle earlier in life as well.

Jonathan: Yeah, well and some people are sadly not as fortunate, Carrie, as yourself or even myself who I was a naturally thin person, where we have that wonderful hormonal balance in a lower set point; but it changes as you age. That happens for everybody, but for some people, they are not born with that same hormonal state, so… Certainly, anyone even if they’re born with that hormonal state, and they ate a horribly low-quality diet — which I don’t think you did — you just kind of ate normally, they can compromise even that hormonal state.

Carrie: I feel very lucky now that… looking back I grew up in a household that was actually very healthy by your standards, and we only ate chips and candy and pop for two weeks a year; and that was the weeks over Christmas and New Year. We didn’t have it all year. It was a treat, and I now, looking back, I feel really lucky that that was the kind of house I grew up in. My mother didn’t really know what she was doing, but I grew up on meat and vegetables, most of which were grown in the garden; so I actually had an incredibly healthy start to life, which I am now very grateful for.

Jonathan: That is wonderful because, it’s a little known fact; but one of the reasons childhood obesity is so heartbreaking is that we actually can’t get rid of fat cells once they exist on our body. We’re born with a fixed number of muscle cells, and we can expand their size; but we can develop and do develop new fat cells. When someone gains fat, even if it’s in their youth, those fat cells are always there. They can sort of dehydrate. Yeah, they can dehydrate those fat cells, but it is sadly going to be more challenging for them for the rest of their life.

Carrie: Because they have more fat cells to start with.

Jonathan: Exactly. They have a higher propensity. I love another thing you said, Carrie, and that’s where it doesn’t mean you are strict all the time, but when these inSANE foods — as we we’ll define them in a moment — were consumed as treats, so people often ask me, “Jonathan, when you have kids so are you not going to let them trick or treat?” I say “No, I would let them trick or treat, but it would be a treat.” It wouldn’t be what they’re consuming all day, every day, and that’s true for adults, too. The Smarter Science of Slim isn’t about being perfect. It’s about eating consciously, and if you want to have a treat, it’s your birthday, have a treat; but, don’t just eat it because someone brought it into the office unconsciously.

Carrie: Yeah, and I did, I must admit. Although I ate SANEly on my vacation, and I’ve come back smaller, there was sort of second half being away when I was on vacation. There was ice cream every day, but it was okay because I eat SANEly most of the rest of the time; so not only did I enjoy the ice cream a lot more, because it is not something I regularly eat, but it really had no effect.

Jonathan: You are on vacation, and I would pause it that since because you’ve been eating SANEly, you were in control when you were eating ice cream. Let me quickly define that. We will talk about that more later, but starch and sweetener addiction is a clinically proven phenomena; and many of us are addicted to starches and sweets, so we start eating them. We can’t stop eating them, and then we crave them even more. I would suspect, Carrie, that since you have been SANE, while you could enjoy ice cream, you could enjoy it and then step away; and not now feel like “Oh my God, I have to eat ice cream for the next three weeks.” It’s the control. You have that power, frankly, that’s because you have. You’ve changed your wiring to not have that addiction anymore.

Carrie: Right. Yeah, and it just eat was my treat when I’m on vacation. Every afternoon I have an ice cream, and that’s just something I do on vacation; but now it doesn’t have the adverse affect that it may have had before I eat it SANEly the rest of the time. It no longer has the adverse effect for me which is really cool.

Jonathan: It is really cool, and even cooler, folks, if you want to try some SANE ice cream, which again these are satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious and inefficient calories — and we will define that in a moment. One of my favorite things to do is to take either strawberries or blueberries, the frozen kind, put them in a really nice blender, add some ice cubes, add some vanilla whey protein, add maybe a little bit of Greek yogurt, maybe a little bit of water, blend that up, and you get a SANE and surprisingly delicious ice cream.

Carrie: I’m going to try that.

Jonathan: It’s very, very good. It’s a wonderful treat here during the summer months. Let’s dig into it, Carrie. The four factors that determine the quality of the calorie or the sanity of a calorie are satiety, so we will go into this in detail later; but satiety is how quickly calories fill us up and how long they keep us full. The second factor is aggression. These are how likely calories are to be stored as fat. The third factor is nutrition or how many nutrients things like protein, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids calories provide us; and then finally, the least known of these four factors efficiency or how many of the calories we eat can be stored as body fat. The more satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious, and inefficient a calorie is, the higher its quality or the more SANE it is. Another way to think of this, the SANE satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious, and inefficient calories trigger body fat burning hormones when we eat them.

They clear our metabolic clog and prevent us from overeating. They’re a bit like metabolic Drano — going back to that sink analogy — whereas when we eat unsatisfying, aggressive, not nutritious and efficient or inSANE calories, those are lower quality. Those trigger body fats storing hormones, they encourage us to overeat. They create a hormonal clog, and again those are like putting hair down our sink drain. They are what cause that clog and our set point to rise.

Carrie: It’s interesting. I was reading the other day online somewhere where somebody was saying that food was not a drug, but what you’ve said quite clearly indicates that it really is.

Jonathan: Oh, it absolutely is. If a drug is just something we ingest to cause a reaction in our body, I don’t see how they could possibly say it’s not a drug. It absolutely is. The key thing again, Carrie, about this, not only understanding this quality paradigm but understanding the difference between SANE and inSANE calories makes it very clear why eating more but smarter isn’t crazy; because as we start to see food and SANE foods as basically metabolic Drano, enabling us to clear that hormonal clog and restore our body’s natural ability to be slim and healthy long-term. We can kind of see how eating more of them is important.

Carrie: Right, or if you see them as a healing medicine, a healing drug, if you like; therefore, the more you have, the faster you’re going to get better.

Jonathan: Not only that, but the more you have, the less likely you will be to eat inSANE food, simply, I like to say, be too full for dessert. We have all been too full for dessert at times, and that’s because we ate so much of our main dish, maybe we had an appetizer and a main dish and a salad, and we’re just like “Oh my gosh, would you like a piece of cake?” “No, I’m too full.” What if we were just like that more often? It’s much easier to say no to a sundae when you’re so full that you couldn’t imagine eating it than if you’re starving and been counting calories all day.

It’s all about SANE calories, and I like Dr. Joel Fuhrman who was the author of a book called Eat to Live which is a fabulous book. We disagree on some things, but by and large, we agree on many. He puts it very well when he says, for the vast majority of people being overweight is not caused by how much they eat, but by what they eat. The idea that people get heavy because they consume a high volume of food is a myth. Eating large amounts of the right food is your key to success, and, Carrie, you put it so well. Going back to, I believe it was Hippocrates who said this, “Let food be thy medicine.”

We need to put an abundance of nutrition into our body that prevents a starvation response, enables us to preserve muscle tissue, and it enables us to preserve our metabolism and it makes us feel amazing. We’re energetic, and when we feel amazing and we start to look amazing, that is something we can sustain; and especially since we won’t be hungry so again, it’s eating more but smarter. I know this may sound too good to be true, so shall we bring in some studies, Carrie?

Carrie: Yes, I love your studies.

Jonathan: Some studies. In all of the studies that follow, this is very, very important, in all of the studies that follow, every single person or every group ate the exact same quantity of calories, so abstracting this: two groups of people. They both eat, say 2000 calories, so everyone, same quantity. The variable is the quality of calories consumed. Okay, so again, at the end of these studies, you will see, without a shadow of a doubt, that if anyone tells you, “Well, if it’s a 2000 calorie diet, it’s a 2000 calorie diet and that’s the bottom line…” is just patently wrong, and here’s many, many studies that prove that to be the case.

Everyone’s eating the same quantity of calories. First one, study done at the University of Florida. Actually this was what’s called the meta-analysis because the researchers looked at 87 studies, all of which fall in the criteria we just mentioned and found that those who ate more SANE calories lost an average of 12 more pounds of body fat, not weight, but body fat, compared to those who ate the exact same quantity of inSANE calories. 12 more pounds of body fat. Now, let’s keep going.

Cornell University split people into three groups. Each person in every group ate 1,800 calories per day, but at different levels of SANEity. The most SANE group lost 86.5 percent more body fat than the least SANE group. I am going to keep going. In the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Benoit compared a reduced calorie inSANE diet to a reduced calorie SANE diet. In 10 days, the SANE group burned twice as much body fat. Carrie, we could be here all day, because there are many studies. I’ve got seven more here. I am not going to go through all of them, but they all show that people who ate SANE calories lost an average of 22 percent more weight than those who ate the exact same quantity of inSANE calories.

Carrie: That is so exciting. It’s amazing when you’ve spent 30 years listening to calories in, calories out, a calorie is a calorie. It’s amazing, but it’s the most exciting thing for me anyway.

Jonathan: It’s incredibly inciting, and it just unlocks so many things, Carrie. What we have to do now is to dig into what these four factors are because, again, if we think that a calorie is a calorie this are just bananas but it is point blank true folks. It is irrefutable that a calorie is not a calorie, and that if you eat 2000 calories of SANE foods versus if you eat 2000 calories of inSANE foods, you will have a much different metabolic, mental and even physical experience with that. The key thing to keep in mind is that this doesn’t mean we always have to be SANE.

We always talk about it’s not about being perfect, but when you eat SANEly or when you go SANE as I like to say, you can really choose to burn as much body fat as you want to. For example, if you want to burn up to, let’s say, two pounds of body fat — again, we’re not about weight we’re about body fat loss — want to burn up to two pounds per week? Well, eat so much SANE food that you’re always too full for inSANE food, but if you want to be a little less aggressive, then just when it’s convenient replace inSANE foods with SANE foods; and you’ll notice say things like ‘replace. ‘

It’s not about deprivation. It’s about replacement, so please don’t think in terms of “Oh my God, I can never eat inSANE foods,” or, “I can’t do this.” Think about, you are going to give your body so much goodness that you’re going to be too full for the bad. What you’ll notice is that as you start to do that your, taste will change; and after about 21 days of SANEity, on the 22nd day, the temptation to be inSANE just won’t really be there, because you will have broken that habit.

Carrie: It really does, and I know for anyone listening, Jonathan wrote the book, and he’s the poster child for this; so you would expect him to say what he’s just said, but I am not the poster child for anything. I can tell you that it really… and I’m an awkward cuss at times, and I like to prove everything wrong if I possibly can; but it really does. I was amazed at how quickly I stopped being hungry and how my cravings for sugar and starchy pasta carbohydrates, those kinds of things literally just disappeared in a matter of days. So hopefully, maybe me saying this has a bit more weight than Jonathan, because he’s supposed to say it.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Well and hopefully when we get through the following couple of podcasts, we really won’t have to take anyone’s word for it; because we’ll understand the science to the level that, well let’s just dig into the first factor, Carrie. I think we have time here, and that’s satiety; and we’ll see that again once we replace the old model, the disproven theories of a calorie is a calorie, and we understand that a calorie is not a calorie well, then it just makes sense that if you eat a higher quality calories you got a better result than the lower quality calories. We don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. We can look at the science. We can look at the data. and we can know with confidence that we’re working based on the most rigorous research out there. I think that’s encouraging as well.

Carrie: It is.

Jonathan: Let’s talk about the first factor. We’ve got four of them. Let’s cover one today, and maybe two more in the next podcast. The first factor is satiety, and if that word sounds odd, it’s the same word essentially as satisfaction. The question here is, how much do calories satisfy us? To dig into this a bit… so again, satiety, we want to eat highly satisfying foods, foods that fill us up quickly and keep us full for a long time. When we eat highly satisfying foods, we will get full faster, so there is much less likely of overeating when we eat satisfying foods, simply because we need to eat less of them in order to feel satisfied.

Carrie: Talking about that just reminded me, because I’ve just been on this epic road trip that the thing that keeps me going on the road is beef jerky. I don’t have to eat a lot of it to be full, which is great when you’re driving on your own. You don’t have to stop. The effect of all that protein has been amazing to me.

Jonathan: Carrie, you hit the nail on the head where there is really three factors that determine the satiety of a food, protein is one of them. Well, let’s dig into all of them a bit meticulously here so, again, popping back up on satiety as a whole, a fun comparison. Let’s look at some foods versus other foods. For example, a six pack of beer. People will often consume a six-pack of beer just casually while they’re eating pizza, and the funny thing is that the five cans of tuna fish or 30 cups of broccoli have the same quantity of calories; but no one could ever eat that; whereas we can casually consume these foods that have low satiety, and why does this matter?

Well, again, let’s look at some studies so a study in the annals of internal medicine showed that people who ate as much high satiety protein and fat as they wanted — so again unlimited, highly satisfying calories, while intentionally avoiding low satiety starches and sweets unconsciously — they didn’t try to do this. It just happened. They unconsciously avoided 1,000 low quality calories per day and in the study, this people reported feeling just as full as individuals who consumed 1,000 more calories per day.

Carrie: I found that to be true. When I started eating SANEly. I absolutely found that was my experience.

Jonathan: This is a key point, Carrie, because a lot of people talk about again, calorie deficits and eating less. “Oh, my gosh, Jonathan. Is this going back, and what you’re saying about eating more?” There is important distinction to make here, Carrie, and that’s when we talk about eating more we talk about eating more food; and when you eat more SANE food, you will accidentally eat fewer calories. Do not try to eat fewer calories. Do not. That’s starving yourself. Do try to eat more satisfying food. Your body will automatically consume fewer calories, and here’s the even more important thing. By eating more satisfying foods, you will consume fewer calories accidentally, but and this is a big but a big firm but…

Carrie: Okay, I’m saying nothing.

Jonathan: …is you will consume more nutrition, and you will be very satisfied. Now, fewer low-quality calories plus more nutrition, plus more satisfaction is completely different than fewer calories in general, plus being hungry, plus less nutrition, and that is why it’s not about just eat less of your existing diet; but rather it’s about eat more but smarter, eat more SANE foods. Does that make sense? Does the difference make sense?

Carrie: It does, and when you talk about it the way you do, it just amazes me that we’ve been led down this crazy path for the last 40 years of complete nonsense, and we’ve never noticed it before. It’s amazing to me.

Jonathan: Carrie, back to your earlier point of… so let’s look back at the study we just talked about. When they ate more, but high satiety foods, individuals accidentally ate 1,000 fewer calories per day and they felt as full as the other group which ate 1,000 more calories. Now, which is more profitable? People who unintentionally eat 1,000 fewer calories per day and feel full? Or me just telling you “Hey, Carrie, try to eat 1,000 fewer calories a day.” I can sell you all kinds of products, and I can help you; because just trying to cut 1000 calories per day stinks, and you’re hungry; but I can sell you a bunch of products to try to make it easier.

Carrie: Yeah, I wouldn’t like you.

Jonathan: The question of, course, this is all wonderful. Yay, we eat more high-quality food. We have more nutrition. Our body doesn’t detect starvation. We then have less of a hormonal clog, and we have fewer low quality calories because we’re so full of high quality calories that enables us to burn body fat, rather than starving ourselves and burning everything. The question is, what increases satiety and how do we eat more high-satiety calories? Well, three things, Carrie already touched on one. One is protein, the other two are water and fiber. We eat more high satiety foods by eating more water, fiber and protein rich foods such as non-starchy vegetables, seafood, high quality meats, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, eggs, certain legumes, and fruits.

If folks, aren’t super familiar with what fiber is, fiber is otherwise known as roughage or bulk, and it’s in plant foods primarily. It’s basically components of food that your body cannot digest or absorb. Unlike other things such as fats, proteins, or carbohydrate, which our body can breakdown and absorb, fiber isn’t digested by your body; so when you eat fiber, it takes up space in your digestive system until it leaves your body. It’s not stored. Let’s understands why this matters. Why water fiber and protein? We have to get a little bit scientific for a second here.

Carrie: You’re scientific all the time. What do you mean discuss scientific for a moment? You’re a complete geek.

Jonathan: A little bit more scientific. I am going to use words that are very geeky, rather than just moderately geeky.

Carrie: Am I going to have to reel you in?

Jonathan: I don’t know if you’re going to have to reel me in. I feel pretty reeled, but we’ll see so why is satiety? Why makes us feel satisfied? We already talked about calories but why does it work that way? There are two areas of our brain that tell us when we feel satisfied. This is the geekiness, our lateral hypothalamus and our ventromedial hypothalamus. Think of them as our satiety centers. They tell us basically if you’re hungry or if you feel full depending on three factors, basically, how much do the calories we’re eating stretch our digestive organs so our stomach — think in terms of food volume — how much do the calories we’re eating impact our short-term satiety hormones, and how much do those calories stimulate our long-term satiety hormones? How much a food stretches our stomach and our digestive organs is mostly determined by the amount of water and fiber in it. The more water and fiber in a food, the bigger it is. The bigger the food, the more it stretches our digestive organs. More stretch means we get fuller faster and stay fuller longer. Make sense?

Carrie: Our bodies are so freaking clever.

Jonathan: Yeah I know it seems. It’s almost like there were millions of years of evolution to help us do things; and when we do things like eat foods that didn’t exist until 50 years ago, well it doesn’t really fit into that model, and it breaks us down. Carrie, this focus on water and fiber is why, for example 200 calories of wet and fibrous celery is more filling than 200 calories of dry and fiber-free gummy bears, calorie for calorie. The celery is 30 times the size of gummy bears. Why does that matter again if we wanted to get full on gummy bears? We would have to eat 30 times more calories worth of gummy bears than we would to get full eating celery, for example.

Carrie: I have to tell you a little story about gummy bears because you brought it up.

Jonathan: Go ahead.

Carrie: Eighteen months ago, I had major surgery, had a body part removed. When I woke up later that day, minus said body part, do you know what they gave me for dinner?

Jonathan: What do they give you, Carrie?

Carrie: They gave me gummy bears.

Jonathan: What?

Carrie: I kid you not. They bring me the menu, and because I’ve just come out of surgery, I have to have clear foods. They gave me the clear foods menu, on it was gummy bears. I ordered gummy bears. I got a plate of gummy bears. I even have a picture on my cell phone I could show you because I was so amazed that a hospital is feeding me gummy bears as my first meal after my major surgery. Isn’t that just the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?

Jonathan: It’s inSANE. It’s inSANE.

Carrie: Seriously. Isn’t it though?

Jonathan: It is very inSANE. My wife actually just had some oral surgery done last week, and she wasn’t able to chew foods. When she was leaving the office, they gave her a container of Ensure. Ensure on the label says it’s the number one doctor recommended something, something complete nutrition. Of course, the second ingredient of Ensure is sugar, which, don’t get me started, but, yeah! We’ve got a lot of work to do in terms of changing the system, but the first thing we can do is empower ourselves with our dollars; and certainly, we’re doing that here.

Actually, Carrie, I love it. It’s a great place to stop. Next week, let’s pick up the last factor that determines the satiety of calories; and that’s protein. There’s a lot of really interesting science here, so we’ve already talked about water fiber to help determine the satiety of a food. We’ll talk about protein next week, and we’ll dig into the second factor that determines the SANEity of a calorie, and that’s aggression. Carrie Brown, what would you like to say as your final closing remark?

Carrie: I am glad to be back in the studio. I missed you as well while I was gone, and I am really excited to hear about all this SANE stuff.

Jonathan: We’re going SANE here living the Smarter Science of Slim. Eat more, exercise less, smarter.


Learn the exact foods you must eat if you want to finally lose weight permanently. Click here to download your free Weight Loss Food List, the “Eat More, Lose More” Weight Loss Plan, and the “Slim in 6” Cheat Sheet…CLICK HERE FOR FREE “HOW TO” WEIGHT LOSS GUIDES

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