Brian (0s):
This week I interviewed pro metabolic health researcher and health coach Mike Fave. We discussed the pros and cons of the sugar diet, along with Is FGF 21 beneficial, the Benefits of Glucose Metabolism, How Mike Constructs your Ideal Pro Metabolic Dietand. Much, much more really enjoyed my interview with Mike Fave. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn and I had Mike Fave on welcome to the show.
Mike (29s):
Thanks, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here. Appreciate the invitation.
Brian (32s):
Yeah, I feel bad. I mean, I've had Jay on like five times, so you've been, this is your first time. I know you and him do a lot of work together, so welcome. Yeah,
Mike (42s):
It's, it's, it's kind of, I think it's kind of par for the course. 'cause Jay, Jay is the face of energy balance. I think people see that podcasts, they see Jay and then, and then for a while when I was working in the ICU and basically had no online presence at all besides just being on energy balance. And so I've had people that I worked with and they're like, you know, I tried to find you for a couple years, but I couldn't find you at all. And all of a sudden Now I found you. But yeah, that 'cause when I was in the icu, like I didn't have time to do Right. I didn't have time to put up the website and do socials. And then now I'm getting, you know, starting to make more of a platform for myself as well as still doing energy balance.
Mike (1m 23s):
It's still an important thing that I do. So yeah, I I don't, I don't blame you. It's, it's partly just 'cause I was doing the, during COVID and all that, I was doing the 60 hours in the hospital.
Brian (1m 32s):
Right, right. And then you'd show up for the podcast And now you, you know, I got a, you got a professional setup and, and your website looks great, Mike Fave dot com and I, and I'm, I was just saying before we got on, like I, I'm loving the YouTube videos, your con the content you're putting out. And it's not always so easy. I mean, I have a YouTube channel and like get getting out relevant content that, you know, people that's informative but that people, that's entertaining as well. So, and, and we discussed a few topics that we're gonna jump into, but before that, why don't, maybe just like a brief, you know, 62nd overview of like sort of where you're coming from and your background that'll give some context around, you know, just our conversation.
Mike (2m 18s):
Yeah, so I basically have, just to, I guess to keep the picture short for my own story, I was pretty sick for a while trying to figure out all this diet stuff. Hopped into it, I think like most people tried all the different diets, wound up getting a surgery that really messed up my digestion and my health. And then I was realized pretty quick, I need to figure stuff out myself. So I went down the rabbit holes, keto, carnivore, plant-based, all this type of stuff. And I settled into bioenergetic was kind of like the, the final stop for me. And then now it's not really, I don't fall into a dietary camp per se. I kind of take principles from each one. And along the journey I spent time, as I mentioned, working in the ICU and then building up the podcast energy balance with Jay.
Mike (3m 4s):
So really my passion is getting into the research, understanding what's going on and trying to translate that for people to help them have implementable solutions to improve their health. So it's not like, here's just the problem, here's this research. Like what exactly do you do? So that's what do you do about it? So that's what I started to try to do and get better at with my own channel. The approach that I work through is centered around how do we optimize cellular energy, how do we make sure that we're taking the fuel that we bring, bring in, digest it, well bring it to the cells and then convert it into energy. How do we make sure all of that works? And there's a lot of things that go into that, but that's kind of the central point within that bioenergetic lens.
Mike (3m 44s):
And then I, I incorporate a variety of different components from all of my experiences, whether that was working the ICU for the six years or that was going through the different diets. I bring all that together Now. I would say I am, I'm pretty heavy on the clinical side so I really like to get into the numbers, the labs, the research and make pretty specific adjustments for people and take a comprehensive approach. So that's kind of, that's where I'm coming from. That's the gist of that, my story. But hopefully that that lays it all out.
Brian (4m 15s):
Yeah. And and then how long have you been in sort of this pro metabolic like lens and when you start implementing it?
Mike (4m 23s):
I would say I transitioned from low carb, keto, paleo, cyclical keto type of stuff. Somewhere around 2015 or so. Okay. So I've been in the bioenergetic stuff for like 10 years now. When I first jumped in as most people who are kind of skeptical of carbs, when you come from low carb, I didn't go full orange juice, honey, maple syrup, sugar in my milk type of thing. I went, I went, I can only do starches. And then I had some problems with the starches and then I fully like, I like worked my way into oh sugar's. Okay. And then I went full like high sugar, which is, well actually mirror and we could talk about it for this podcast.
Mike (5m 6s):
But I went fully high sugar, like 50 to 75 teaspoons of sugar a day. A gallon of orange juice, really low fat. So I ran a sugar diet, it was back around 2016 a sugar S diet. It wasn't necessarily low protein. And then I kind of like worked through the different iterations of bioenergetics until I started to take a more personalized approach. So starting to take my reference experiences from the different diets I've tried, the different lab values, I had these different components and build out a diet that was specific for my physiology that worked for me. And then now that's what I apply to clients. But the bioenergetics has been the principles and finding Pete's work is like, I first found Danny Roddy who pushed me with Ray Pete and then Jay were, Jay and I were going through it together at the same time.
Mike (5m 49s):
So we, that's where that chemistry that you guys see on energy balance came from. 'cause we were going through the diets together basically. That was around the 2015 timeframe.
Brian (5m 58s):
Okay. So you were doing the sugar diet before, you know this recent craze that's been going on? Yeah, that's
Mike (6m 6s):
Why I was able to make, I made a video talking about the four key problems, which I got semi eviscerated in the comments. 'cause I think it was, it was coming out, everybody was excited they're dropping weight, right? Right. But it's like, I ran this diet like an iteration, a semi semi similar setup of this diet back in 20 16, 20 15 timeframe. And I was like, oh man. Like people are gonna, they'll, you'll see it takes a little bit of time to unfold, but there's some problems that you run into. Not that it's like a horrific diet or well some of this sugar diet stuff is questionable, but Right. The, the, the general, some of the general idea is fine. It's just when you bring fat really low or you start using refined sugar sources, there's some problems that you run into.
Mike (6m 49s):
That was the point of the video. And those were, those came out of my personal experiences doing that diet and then researching after like, well why did this happen? Why did that happen? And kind of going through PubMed and pulling together the studies to, to make sense of the stuff.
Brian (7m 3s):
Yeah. And, and for people that don't know like this, this sort of sugar diet craze has come on. I don't know, it's been the last couple months almost seems like when at least it was for me, it was starting to come up on my YouTube channels. Maybe ma mainly 'cause of Mark Bell, Cole, Rob is another one that, that got going with it. And I guess for people to understand it's very low protein, low protein, low fat, you know, like high sugar diet. And I mean maybe with that, you know, what kind kind of problems can people run into? I mean the first thing that came to my mind when I started watching these videos is, you know, and people are losing weight.
Brian (7m 44s):
One is nutrient deficiency was my first thought. I'm just thinking like, if you're eating candy for half the day or 70% of the day, like what are you really getting from that? And also satiety I thought would be an issue as well. What were some of the key problems that you, you run into or that you ran into or that you, that you're seeing with it?
Mike (8m 3s):
So yeah, so I actually have some clients right now that I'm working with in my program who are trying iterations of the sugar diet. Now I'm not necessarily, I don't necessarily promote running the sugar diet, but they're like, Hey Mike, I'm really interested in trying this thing. Can you help me set something up that will minimize the downsides? And so I set up iterations of the diet that can minimize the large portion of the downsides. The problems that you'll run into with the sugar diet is there's, there's, it gets into quite a few, but you have to kind of get into the mechanisms a little bit. But sure, essentially you're gonna be hungry in the sense that you're gonna want to eat like pretty consistently throughout the day when you don't have the fat and you don't have the protein and you don't have, well depending on how you set up the diet, you don't have the fiber, you won't have satiety.
Mike (8m 59s):
And then you'll have a circumstance where you'll eat the sugars, they'll go in your sister, your system kind of plows through those carbohydrates, the blood sugar drops and then you're gonna want to eat again. So when I did this diet, I was eating every hour, every two hours or so to kind of try to keep my blood sugar stable. So they, you have this, this specific concern, this is something I've seen with clients as well. They have to have some fruit or some juice or some honey or something like this pretty consistently throughout that first portion of the day. And we'll talk later at night they do a, a whole meal. So it's kind of more of a honey diet type setup. Then the next thing that you run into is longer term running this. And I mean within a couple weeks if you don't have the bile acid releasing from the, from the gallbladder via the stimulation of fats into the small intestine, then you can create, especially with a very high amounts of refined sugars and overgrowth the bacteria or a bit of a dysbiosis in the gut because the bile acid's job is to clear out some of those bacteria from the small intestine and also the very refined sugars in large amounts.
Mike (10m 4s):
Like if you're doing tons of granulated sugar can select for certain types of bacteria in the microbiome that basically rapidly digests those carbohydrates. And they tend not to be commensal species of bacteria. They tend not to be or bifidobacteria your lactus, your akkermansia, stuff like this. So they tend to come more from the proteobacteria class. These types of things are, th this is a big problem and I, there's some of the clients that that have run this and even when I ran it I started to get some digestive issues. The other thing is the bile acids trigger the motility in the, in the intestine. So when the bile acids release they can help to trigger intestinal motility. If you don't have that, it could also potentially back you up.
Mike (10m 45s):
The other thing that you'll run into is the bile acids releasing from the liver help with the detoxification process. 'cause the liver drops whatever it detoxifies into the bile acids. So if everything's just sitting in the gallbladder and there's no stimulus to release, 'cause there's the lack of fatty acids, then you basically just can get either some people maybe by biliary sludge or or gallstones if it runs for a longer period of time. And then the, the liver can get tapped a little bit. There's multiple angles we can talk about that because it's not able to actually detoxify appropriately. So you have the blood sugar swings and then you have the effects in in digestion and you have the effects detoxification at the liver. There's also the oral health concern.
Mike (11m 28s):
So the high amounts of refined sugars, granulate sugar, honey, maple syrup, there's a couple things that happen. So the first thing that happens is the sugars themselves, when they go into the, to the mouth, they can allow for bacteria to grow and the bacteria that grow can actually produce acids locally on the teeth that can degrade the enamel. Which, you know, we all kind of know this hypothesis. You go to your dentist, they tell ya this and, and that there is truth to some of this, especially certain species of bacteria. Now the relatively unknown hypothesis is that there's an axis from your hypothalamus to your parotid gland, the hypothalmic parotid to hypothalmic pituitary parotid axis.
Mike (12m 7s):
And what this axis does is it stimulates the fluid flow through your teeth. So your tooth structure actually is a bunch of tubules. They're like little tubes all arranged in a vertical fashion with each other and you get a fluid flow, it's called a dal fluid flow. And the that fluid flow remineralize the teeth and so the sugar signaling lowers that axis and then it adjusts that fluid flow in the saliva flow in the mouth. And then that can create issues with a regeneration of the teeth. And for me, I almost rotted the teeth outta my head when I did that high sugar diet. Like I really destroyed my teeth 'cause I ran it for quite some time and I had eroded all the bottoms of my teeth and it took some time for those to recover.
Mike (12m 49s):
Vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, not having very frying sugar sources. The other component with this diet that I think, and if you wanna stop me at any point, Brian, I, I keep listening now you let me know. No
Brian (13m 3s):
Problem.
Mike (13m 4s):
Yeah, do you want me to
Brian (13m 5s):
Hold you? I was, I well I was gonna say, so just to rehash, you mentioned obviously dental could, potential dental issues which you had. Yes. Digestion issues, gut motility. And the third one that you mentioned so far was that Well the liver detox. Yeah, yeah, the liver detox. Right. And
Mike (13m 29s):
Then you have blood sugar components as well, the
Brian (13m 32s):
Up and down and then and then also, yeah, the blood sugar issues. Yeah, I did notice, like I've, not that I've like done a sugar diet but I tend to go, like I'll do like berries and some yogurt so I'll, you know, there's some protein right there. But, so I'm not like going just no protein but I, I don't do crazy protein throughout the day and my biggest meal is my, is towards the end of the day not too late, but you know, that'll be more of a higher protein meal. But, so I wasn't running a sugar down on myself but I was like sort of, you know, having a lot of fruits during the day and then a bigger protein meal towards the end of the day. But I could see like especially with the juices, just like wanting to just continue just having juice or like, you know, creating no satiety at all.
Brian (14m 16s):
I mean are you are getting some fiber when you juice? I'm assuming most of the fibers just taken out.
Mike (14m 22s):
Yeah and it's even, it's be the, the fiber's important but one of the big things that will determine how long somebody lasts between meals, at least in my experience is the fatty acids in your meal. So you can throttle the amount of fats you have per meal. I usually am running people between 10 to 30 grams per meal somewhere in there, depending on their size, their caloric targets, their macro targets, all of these components. Because if you do like a zero, so say you do a zero fat meal, even if you have chicken and fruit or chicken and rice, you'll probably get hungry pretty fast. 'cause it's like the gastric emptying the rate at which food leaves the stomach isn't decreased quite as much as when you have the fat.
Mike (15m 3s):
So you don't get, it's basically like a delayed release. Mm. It's like a nice drip of the food dripping the fuel into the small intestine to absorb. And so if you put like 20 grams, 30 grams of fat, you'll feel fuller for longer. Which is why people who are running keto or carnivore or low carb and they're smashing a ribeye and egg yolks and butter, like I don't have to eat for eight hours. It's like yeah you just put like 60, 70, 80 grams of fat in your one meal and yeah and you got the protein as well, which gives you that, the satiety, you're not gonna be hungry. So the with the sugar diet though, you don't have fat and you don't have the protein and then you are running sugar 'cause the starches are a little bit more satiating as well. Right. Depending on, especially depending on which starch you use, then some of the sugars and so you get into the circumstance where like there's no satiety mechanism for, there's a, we'll get into that, there's some nuance there but there's not really that same satiety mechanism ability to last.
Mike (15m 57s):
And so you even see the sugar dieters on their podcasts, on their shows like they're eating constantly having sugary substances while they're doing their podcasts and while they're talking about things because you it, you basically have to maintain that steady supply of sugar. Which for me, like when I was doing the diet, the big, one of the biggest problems was logistically like I'm working in the hospital, I can't do that. I couldn't work a 12 hour shift and eat throughout the whole shift. Like I don't, I barely even get one break. So to sit there and have access to food, like it wasn't gonna happen. So it becomes a little bit difficult depending on how your, like what your work setup is, what your lifestyle is. Plus the sugar crashes are pretty uncomfortable. They don't start out so bad.
Mike (16m 38s):
But over time and, and it just based on context, right? If you're a guy, you're active, you're pretty lean or you're a lady, you have a decent muscle mass, pretty lean, pretty active, the effects this effect, this blood sugar dropping and then the anxiety and some of the symptoms that come with it are way more pronounced than somebody who has quite a bit of body fat. They can get away with a little bit lower fat intake, they can get a wet, they can last a little bit better. Whereas for me, after like two weeks in that, like especially after I did it for a month, I was having panic attacks and I couldn't sleep at night because the, the adrenaline rushes, the catecholamines were really ramping up and that part of the FGF 21 does create that response.
Mike (17m 20s):
So these types of things are important. This is why even in the sugar diet, like a lot of people aren't using caffeine because I think it could even amp you up further. And you can even see this in some of the people presenting for the sugar diet. Like they're amped, like some people are manic and I think it's related to the dietary setup. And I'm not saying this is a shot to these people 'cause it happened to me too. I was outta my mind like I couldn't relax, I was working out three times a day, I couldn't sit down and then I couldn't sleep at night because of, I think of some of these components with the diet, diet, the blood sugar stuff, we'll talk about some of the other mechanisms you want to, but these are things that I am seeing play out for myself and then some of the clients I'm working with. And then also I'm watching the presenters like hey I used to have that experience as well.
Brian (18m 3s):
Yeah, well Cole looks like he was lit on fire half the time, but why don't we from there talk about this FGF 21 because I think that's mechan mechanistically the reason why people maybe are getting some of this weight loss and maybe some of the pros and the cons behind that.
Mike (18m 22s):
Yeah. So that's a, this is a great segue 'cause it gets into the rest of some of the mechanisms with the sugar diet. Yeah. And it's not necessarily all bad, right? So let, let's get to the pros first so that it's a, like it's pretty balanced and then we'll get into some of the cons.
Brian (18m 36s):
Okay.
Mike (18m 37s):
From a pro standpoint, and this is, this is a slight slightly separate from the FGF 21, but kind of goes hand in hand to some extent. When you don't have a lot of fat and you don't have a lot of protein and you have a bunch of carbs that can actually improve insulin sensitivity because you basically, the fats, the free fatty acids, the fats going around in the bloodstream can impair insulin sensitivity directly and people are holding quite a bit of body fat. Their body fat's constantly leaking free fatty acids into their bloodstream that is then impairing their insulin sensitivity directly. And part of it's through the Randall effect, part of it's through directly impacting some of the insulin sensitivity pathways.
Mike (19m 16s):
So when you lower the fats and you have a bunch of carbohydrate, bunch of sugars, then you have, you create an insulin response, you're keep pushing sugars into the system And now you're kind of forcing that carb ation that glucose oxidation. And this even in studies in type two diabetics I think is up to 85% of carbohydrates in a diet improve insulin insulin sensitivity. So this is a kind of a, this is a benefit of the setup. The next thing is the lack of protein because of some of the, as particularly in the sugar diets branched in amino acids, which is isoleucine, leucine and valine, they, and there's other amino acids as well, but they can trigger or drive gluconeogenesis. So the production of glucose from am amino acids from proteins and you have a low protein intake.
Mike (20m 2s):
So you're kind of, you can lower, particularly in people with metabolic dysfunction, lower that gluconeogenic response. So you're not producing this, the glucose from the liver, you're just taking in from what you're getting from the diet. So you're lowering the gluconeogenic response, you're lowering the free fatty acids and you're just pushing carbs. So you can see improvements in insulin sensitivity doing something like this, which is the part of it can be through FGF 21, 'cause FGF 21 will increase the burning of substrate at the fat tissue as well, which kind of clears out and makes room for you to use the, the sugars and it kind of clears out some of the excess sugars as well. So it, it's allowing you to kind of streamline your fuel source. You're not trying to toggle between diesel and gasoline.
Mike (20m 42s):
You're like, All right, we're just running gasoline right now. We're moving all the diesel outta the system. And so it can be helpful in that circumstance. Although I think the level to which people are doing with the sugar diet is quite extreme. If I have clients with metabolic dysfunction type two diabetes, some of these components, I will bring their fat down, I'll moderate their protein intake and then I'll use certain carbohydrate sources and appropriate amounts within their caloric target to help improve their insulin sensitivity and adjust their body composition. But I'm not bringing protein rock bottom or fat rock bottom. 'cause again, it creates problems even if it does have some specific benefits. So, and I think, I think the problems outweigh those benefits when you get too low. So that, that's, that's one of the pros is improvements in insulin sensitivity.
Mike (21m 26s):
And you did see this in, there's a human study where you did see that the high carb low protein diet improved insulin sensitivity while boosting FGF 21 compared to the high fat, low protein diet, which also boost FGF 21 but did not improve insulin sensitivity in the study. So these are things that 'cause FGF 21 doesn't have to be high sugar, right? It can just be low protein and you can still do high fat. So a keto diet can still drive an FGF 21 response, But it may not improve insulin sensitivity the same way that a high carb low protein diet does.
Brian (21m 59s):
And that was that study recent, like was that recently done from all this or was that, has that been around? It
Mike (22m 5s):
Was, let me see if I can if I have it up here. The study was done in, let's see, 2025 actually. So the study is titled dietary protein restriction Elevates Is FGF 21 levels and energy requirements to maintain body weight in lean men.
Brian (22m 27s):
Hmm, okay. So recent.
Mike (22m 29s):
Yeah, very recent. But there's a caveat with this though. People who have metabolic dysfunction, they are, some of them already have upregulated FGF 21 signaling 'cause their body already tried to push FGF 21 to adapt to the stress that was going on at the liver. And so what they find in some of these individuals that they actually are resistant to the effects of FGF 21. It's basically like the body saying, hey, like we already tried to deal with this and it we're like past that point guys. Mm. So this study was done in lean men but if say you take people who are obese and have type two diabetes, there may be a circumstance where some of these people may not respond to trying to push up FGF 21 for this outcome.
Mike (23m 13s):
And then when you look in some of the other studies, they require pharmacological analogs are basically drugs that have effects similar to FGF 21 but more potent or last longer to ha to see the, to see the effects that you're looking for partly because of the FGF 21 resistance. So this is a kind of a place to be careful with if you're dealing with metabolic dysfunction, you try to push this up 'cause you may not respond to the diet the same way somebody who doesn't have type two diabetes, obesity, heart failure, kidney, kidney disease. These disease states are typically characterized already by increased FGF 21 signaling and potentially resistance.
Brian (23m 49s):
Hmm. Yeah. 'cause FGF 21 is somewhat of a stress response is, right?
Mike (23m 56s):
It is, yeah. And some of the other pros with FGF 21, and this is where it really I think shines from a weight loss perspective. If you're just focused on weight loss and you're not focused on how that weight loss is occurring, right? But the FGF 21, it will increase in this study for lean men metabolic rate by like 19%. So these guys needed to eat an extra 19% calories to maintain their body weight and they still lost the kilos, like 2.2 pounds. Now the other thing that FGF 21 does in the research is it lowers your drive to eat sweet things. So it decreases the drive for sweet tasting foods.
Mike (24m 37s):
So say you have a weight loss diet and the only foods you're allowed to eat are sugars, you can't have protein and you can't have fat and your metabolism's bumped up 20% roughly. And but your desire to eat sweet things has decreased. It's like caloric deficit, immediate caloric deficit. 'cause what winds up happening is you're des you're like, I'm full. Like I'm good on this sweet stuff. My drive to eat it has been decreased and you have the 20% bump. And so even with the, one of the clients in my program, we basically set up different phases for the the sugar diet. It's not the sugar fasting, it's nothing like this. His whole fruits a hundred percent fruit juice. He has a protein meal at night.
Mike (25m 17s):
But we made different iterations to see what, what changes with the effect. And he tried, he wanted to just try a sugar fast, I'm not a personal fan of, but he tried it and he's like, I couldn't even, he, his deficit calories, he's 20% deficit, which he lost I think, I don't know, somewhere between 15 to 20 pounds just by that itself. Or I think it was like 12 to 15 pounds just by running this like a regular 20% deficit. He maintained his muscle mass, all this type of stuff, lab values improved. But then when he went on the sugar fasting, he couldn't even get to 2,500 calories because without having the add maple syrup and honey and eating large quantities of it, he couldn't hit it.
Mike (25m 57s):
'cause he just didn't, it was not really feasible to do it just with fruits and juices. Yeah. So he wound up being in an increased deficit and if there is a say there's, because he's coming from a state where he has a higher body fat percentage. So he even has some FGF 21 resistance and it only goes up to 10%, like a 10% bump in his metabolic rate. Well, he was already in a 20% deficit. He lowered his calories another 300 and the first day he only hit 2200 calories. So that's another 600 kilo calories down. And then he has a 10% bump on metabolism. It's like, yeah, he, you're gonna, you're gonna lose weight. So his weight loss, we were doing about two pounds per week on average with the setup he had, he had lost an extra, I think a pound or an extra two pounds per week.
Mike (26m 46s):
But his caloric intake had dropped compensator and it roughly lined up with the amount of extra weight that he lost. So now we're gonna see if he keeps calories the same, just restricts isoleucine by changing his protein intake across the day and that bumps up FGF 21, does he then still lose more weight so that we can remove the caloric adjustments as a confounding variable? So these are, we're trying, I'm trying to see, I'm trying to see does it actually bump it up and make a difference or are people just basically eating less because they're only allowed to eat Sweetss Is FGF 21 is, is reducing their desire for those sweets and then they have a met some metabolic bump. And we could talk about the metabolic bump after, but I don't wanna keep going.
Brian (27m 27s):
Yeah, no, no. So yeah, I didn't realize that FGF 21 actually when it, when it and an increase and it makes like your desire to have sugar go down. It's sort of I like ironic or like a Yeah,
Mike (27m 42s):
Well it, it does it for a, it does it for a reason because, so let's contextualize FGF 21, right? Let's put it, let's let, make it make sense. FGF 21 is a stress hormone as you mentioned, Brian. And it's, it's job is to basically when the liver gets put under pressure or there's metabolic stressors, its job is to, to help the body manage those stressors. So in the context of the sugar diet, what happens is you have a really high sugar intake and a really low protein intake and the liver's like, oh man, we're so screwed because it doesn't have the enough amino acids and components to actually metabolize things effectively.
Mike (28m 23s):
So it starts triggering a bunch of stress responses. And then it also has this high fructose load, particularly from the, you know, if you're doing really refined sugar source that's hitting it rapidly and it need it, that high fructose load hitting it very fast is putting pressure on the liver when it doesn't have enough resource. So the liver starts saying, All right, boom, FGF 21, FGF 21 is, is saying, goes to the brain and says, stop eating sugar. Like just please stop eating sugar, but you get this boost in metabolism. Eat more food that's from non-sugar sources so that you can try to get those amino acids in so you're eat more. 'cause if you, if you eat more, we may get more amino acids so that we can function appropriately.
Mike (29m 7s):
And then all this, the bump increase in metabolism is, Hey, you know what, like we can't do anything with this. So we're gonna take it, we're gonna send it to the fat cells, the fat tissue, the base tissue, the brown adipose tissue, and you guys just burn it, just light it on fire in the backyard, just like get rid of this fuel, we have too much. And then it just burns it in either through uncoupling, which doesn't produce a TP or through futile cycling where essentially you have two processes, one that consumes a TP and one that produces a TP. And they basically just like cycle off of each other. So you produce a TP and you use a TP with nothing being produced, maybe just heat. So it's just trying to get rid of the substrate, this excess fuel while you're taking in the food so you can get enough amino acids and the liver doesn't get overburdened by this high amount of substrate coming in and, and pairing its metabolic function.
Mike (29m 57s):
And one of the problems, the way the FGF 21 does this, is it does this through the hypothalmic pituitary adrenal axis. So it does it through the stress hormones like, like cor, like cortisol and also by ramping up the sympathetic nervous system. So it increases sympathetic nervous system activity, which is why I think you have this blood sugar drops plus the increased sympathetic nervous system activity. And it's like the combination of those, like you're, you're just running on adrenaline, like you're manic, you're bouncing off the walls because of some of these mechanisms. And so it's that de desire, that lack of desire to eat sweetss is adaptive to be like, hey, like chill out on the fructose guys.
Mike (30m 37s):
And a bump of metabolism is like, All right, we gotta get rid of some of this fuel so that we can actually get some amino acids for things to function well. So it's, it's increasing metabolism and decreasing the drive to eat sweets, which will help with weight loss for sure.
Brian (30m 51s):
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Brian (31m 34s):
So there you have it. I'll leave a link in the show notes for my stepladder system book now back to the podcast.
Mike (31m 42s):
But it also is doing it through some stress mechanisms, which the question is what is that long-term ramification? 'cause there's other downsides we can talk about as well.
Brian (31m 51s):
No, I mean I think you summarized it pretty well and just on a little bit of different note, like what? Like, let's just say, you know, 'cause I have some clients, a, a, a decent amount of 'em who come from like a low carb space. Yep. And like you said, when you're, and I and I, I was in that camp for a while as well, doing a, a decent amount of fasting. Actually when I met with Jay or just talked with him through the podcast, I actually started implementing more, I don't know, more carb sources into my diet, which has been great. I enjoy fruits and some vegetables, but mainly fruits and some starches. And so I guess, you know, let's say someone comes to you, they're undereating a bit 'cause they've been keto low carb for a while and they wanna start getting into more of, of this pro metabolic way of eating.
Brian (32m 41s):
Like what would you say is the best way to start implementing that? You know, I've had a lot of different indi like kitty, I've had kitty on, I've had a lot of Kathleen Stewart's been on it. So we've discussed it. But I'm just curious to know that your take on that.
Mike (32m 56s):
Yeah, so the, the, I go through it in a stepwise process. I'm actually gonna be releasing within this next week or so on the website, a new guide and a new calculator so people can figure out their calorie and their macro targets. And there's a series like a little like a email series that follows it that helps you to make personalized adjustments to the diet. But basically the first most important thing, which this kind of bothers people in the, in the pro metabolic sphere a bit, you need to figure out what your caloric targets are. Now why do you need to do this? Because you need to know you wanna match your energy intake and your energy output to some extent.
Mike (33m 37s):
While calories aren't perfect, there's huge problems with them. It's just a guess. It's an estimate, right? It's like, Hey Brian, I need you to do this contract on my house. Roughly what do you think it's gonna gonna cost? You gonna, I need you to redo this bathroom, it's gonna be 10 Gs, okay it's gonna be 10 Gs. Okay perfect. And then maybe it's 12, maybe it's 11, maybe it works out to being nine, you know, it falls somewhere in there. But we have a rough idea of how much food you want to eat. So you hit the caloric targets, you figure that out. Okay, good. The next step from there is how are you gonna fill those calories? So I, I calculate protein first 'cause it's super important. That's your, it's not an energy macronutrient. You're not trying to burn protein, it's like trying to burn. If your house is made out of like these wood logs, you're pulling out the logs and burning them to keep the house warm.
Mike (34m 20s):
The protein's structural. So we keep the protein set up. I usually slide between 0.64 to 0.82 grams per pound. Next step after that is I usually set fat somewhere between 20 to 30% of calories. And if you're coming from a more low carb background, you don't want to jump right into really low fat, start at 30 and then you're gonna just tweak, titrate a little bit, right? That's where it's like, maybe it's 10,000, maybe it's $12,000 to renovate the bathroom. You don't really know what that amount's gonna be yet. So you start at that 30% intake and you can slowly work down and see where you fill out different targets. Then from there you fill in the rest with carbohydrates and that's gonna be your whole fruits a hundred percent fruit juice and starches.
Mike (35m 3s):
I'm not a big fan of using tons of refined carbohydrate sources. I don't think they do like in high amounts, do good things in a microbiome or in some of the lipid panel values that I'm looking at. And now if you're an athlete, you have a high activity level, you can get it away with it, no problem. If anything, I recommend them there. But if you're coming at a low carb or, and you're trying to manage your weight or metabolic status, like throwing nitrous into the engine may create some problems. You gotta take it easy. So that's where the whole, the whole fruit, the, the tubers like potatoes, sweet potatoes, those tend to work pretty well. Rice and oats are person specific. And then from there you could do like a hundred percent fruit juice if that fits into your target.
Mike (35m 43s):
So the, the carbs are gonna be throttled up to that caloric target. The minimum I'll go to on carbs typically for guys around one fifties, pretty much absolute minimum I like to go for. And then for ladies, if they're a really small lady, not a high amount of lean muscle tissue, not a high activity level, they could probably get away with a little bit less, maybe 1 20, 1 30. I usually don't go there very often. Usually I'd like to just like standard one 50 minimum and then ramp carbohydrate intake up from there. So now that you have your macros and you have your calories, the next step is you figure out your food sources. 'cause you may do, well Ryan with potatoes, but maybe I don't do well with potatoes.
Mike (36m 23s):
You may, I may do great with a hundred percent, you know, pineapple juice, but you may do better with orange. And that's very person specific. You start to figure out on the food guide, I try to like lay out general ideas but the, you have to test it 'cause we all respond to foods quite differently. It's really important to to, to dial that in. So, and then
Brian (36m 44s):
That's great. Yeah,
Mike (36m 45s):
Go ahead. Meal spacing and meal spacing and meal structure are important as well. But go ahead.
Brian (36m 50s):
Yeah, no and the meal spacing, I mean that's something that I adjusted to as well because I used to just like not eat for the morning. It's like Now I enjoy that first meal honestly. Like, and when I was doing fasting, like I, I, you know, you talk about tracking and knowing where you're at, I mean it's so important. Like, like you said, calories aren't the end all. But like it's, it's important to know like where you're coming from. Like if someone's coming to you, like let's say, well a woman that's coming, they're eating like a thousand calories, you know, and they've been doing it low carb a thousand calories forever. What, what do you, what's, you know, what's your sort of implementation strategy with that as far as trying to get her to get those calories up without like sort of, you know, ramping up too quick.
Mike (37m 36s):
So the first thing I'll do for, say she's a postmenopausal woman, she's been eating really low for a while, coming outta low carp. I figure out maintenance calories first, super important. Then I see where she's at and then I gauge based on her goals, if she doesn't really wanna lose any weight, she just wants to maintain her weight, she lost some weight in low carb, she's feeling pretty good with her weight. But she's in a circumstance like, hey, my sleep, my energy, I'm pretty cold all the time. My hormones are, are like, you know, I, I just feel off, I feel stressed. Then I will just gradually get her back up to maintenance and I'll watch. So I'll have her increase usually in like two week increments to see what goes on with her weight.
Mike (38m 18s):
So we have, you know, the two weeks gives me a trend to see like, okay, you're on this, this level of intake for two weeks and you're, you're stable. So then we'll go from there and we'll, we'll adjust foods and amounts and we'll talk about how to structure the meals and how to organize 'em across today. 'cause there's a lot of things that actually transition when you go from low carb to adding in carbs. Just like when you go from having carbs to going into keto or to carnivore. There's quite a few transitions that happen in the body which we can talk about. But basically I will just slowly titrate her up, try to help her or I'll help her figure out which carb sources she tolerates and I'll help her to make sure that I usually have people's lab values. So I'll see where's your A1C, where's your fasting glucose?
Mike (38m 59s):
Where's your fasting insulin levels, what's your home IR score? This type of stuff. And I'll make sure that as we go through that process, that stuff stays, it's good. There may be some bumps up initially and then it comes back down 'cause you add in carbs from low carb, you're insulin resistant, physiologic or pathologic depending on if you were already type two diabetic beforehand. So I'm watching those things to make sure that the person's weight symptoms and their lab values are all tracking in the right direction. Everything is dialed in. So I do it in a progressive fashion and I, they may be, say they're at 50%, say they're at 70% fat intake, I'm not gonna bring them 70 to 30 like this. I will probably go 70, 50, 30 and then and compensator increase carbs while keeping protein stable throughout the process.
Mike (39m 42s):
So the person is able to, you know, slowly transition out of that, out of that space and not get whacked right away with like, oh boom, I just had orange juice three times a day and I'm getting falling asleep after meals and this type of stuff. Because for me that's what I did, right? I came outta low carb and I, and was like all the carbs Pandora's box was open and I was slamming I because insatiable and then I was falling asleep after my meals. Right? And now that doesn't happen. But the transition period was rough. So there's definitely a really, how you transition out needs to be done. Well and one other thing I wanna mention here is that a lot of people, whether men or women who come out of low carb and go to bioenergetic or start adding in carbs or one of the problems that they run into is their fats are still high and then they have their fats stay one, you know, they have the lady, oh she's still at 1 21 40 fats and it's like, yeah now I'm 200 carbs.
Mike (40m 34s):
And it's like, that's not gonna work. You're gonna gain weight with that. You're going into a surplus. Which is why once you know your caloric intake then you can throttle your amounts pretty easily and just say, well if I increase my carbs by 25 grams, well I'm gonna pull back by the fats by 10 grams. And then you keep your protein stable and you're just toggling between two macros. You're not like trying to play with three variables. You, it, it, it makes it much easier to run that transition out of things. And also the food selection. 'cause you, you see all the pro metabolic influencers, orange juice, maple syrup, sugaring your milk. It's like not really great carb sources to start with. You gotta start with the whole fruits, tubers, stuff like this. And then you can get to some of those other sources as your body gets better at processing the carbohydrate.
Mike (41m 18s):
And maybe some people, depending on their health state, their lean mass, their metabolic state, they may not be able to use some of those sources. They may have to stick with these, the whole fruits and, and tubers and components like this because it, their body can't handle that influx of carbohydrate yet. They have to to work on some components to change in body composition or they have some hormonal things going on, remnants from low carb. So there's some specifics that go in there that are important to do appropriately so that you don't have a bad transition and think like, oh I just can't eat carbs and go back to carnivore and like, well Now I don't feel good again. And then you're kind of in limbo should I have worked with quite a few people who reach that spot.
Brian (41m 53s):
Yeah, I can imagine. And when you talk about maintenance calories, like do you have like a specific formula that you use for that?
Mike (42m 1s):
I use the catchment cardle formula. I think that one is one of the better formulas if you can appropriately estimate somebody's body fat percentage. So I usually do it, I use the images show, I'll share images with people So they can kind of estimate where their body fat percentage is. And then a lot of clients work with will do either DEXA scans or bioelectrical impotence scans. They don't have to do that off the bat but down the line. 'cause once people get into it, like once you start doing it, you start adjusting the diet and you're like, oh, like I can actually lose weight like this. And then we set up the resistance training routine, it's like, oh, I'm actually building muscle. Then people are like, oh, I wanna see how my body composition has shifted with this dietary setup.
Mike (42m 42s):
So it's not, initially people are like, oh I don't wanna track, I don't wanna see any of that. And often after a while they're like, oh I can actually like see tangible results with what I'm doing and then they get interested in seeing those things. And then I, I mean I've had ladies, po postmenopausal ladies, one lady I worked with, she lost 20 pounds and gained four pounds of muscle tissue at the same time. But that's 'cause we, we adjusted her caloric intake and her her diet appropriately. And then we set up a reasonable resistance training routine. And since, you know, a lot of people are newbies with lifting, so it's like newbie gains is great. It's like that's the honeymoon period of any type of resistance training. So with that circumstance it's, you know, it's, it's, that's pretty easy.
Mike (43m 22s):
It's just making sure that diet is set up and, and then building a workout routine that people can actually follow. So I'll implement things like this And what happens is when lean mass increases, metabolic rate increases, especially if the diet is set up appropriately and then you just, when somebody's running that deficit, once she hit her target, we reverse diet out and then now she's like eating higher intake than she was before with while maintaining a lower body fat percentage and a higher lean mass and she feels better overall and she has a system in place that she can use to just maintain that perpetually. So trying to systematize it as well is important because if the person can't follow the routine, like can't even start it and then they can't sustain it, it's basically useless.
Mike (44m 3s):
It doesn't matter how much research or whatever else that I know or that I talk about or anyone knows, it has to be sustainable in their lifestyle. Which for me was a lesson working in the ICU because I couldn't eat, didn't really get breaks. Especially during COVID you have all the gear on. And so like I had to figure out systems to be like, oh, I'm sure other people that I'm working with are going through stuff like this. They have kids, they have their nine to five job, they have their commute. So it's like, it needs to be something that they can do in that context, not this like, I'm gonna bodybuilding prep my meals on Sunday and then I'm gonna make them all the time. Like people can't do that. So it needs to be easier than that. And so I try to set things up like that as well so that it becomes the new lifestyle. I'm like, oh, this is not that bad.
Brian (44m 42s):
Yeah. And the DEXA scan, I use that with, i, I, not every client, But it's, it's, it's a nice sort of gives you a, a nice baseline at least body fat percentage and lean mass and visceral fat and things like that when you're starting out. And then what was the method for maintenance? You said that said the, the name of it, but I just wanted to,
Mike (44m 60s):
The, the catch make Arnold formula is what I'll use for catch, well that will give me BMR and then I have activity multipliers for, for the different, the different activity levels. So if somebody's sedentary 1.36 times, if they're lightly active 1.49 and then if they're active one point it's 1.36, 1.49 and an active is 1.63. And those come from those values I pulled from doubly labeled water studies done on people to determine their caloric intake or their BA or determine how much extra calories they're burning or energy they're burning at different activity levels. So that came from those specific studies and they're just, again, estimate it's estimates, right?
Mike (45m 41s):
It's estimates people, I think people need to understand and that, 'cause for me, you have theory and you have practice and you don't want to just have practice but don't have the theory 'cause then you get sugar di or it's like, well I'm losing weight, but you wanna know why it's working. So you have your caloric targets, you understand, okay, this is the rough ballpark and then you test it out. If you run 1.49 times and you're gaining weight, well then maybe you go halfway between 1.36 and 1.49 and say, okay, well now I'm weight stable. So you need to see what happens in practice and apply the theory and then adjust appropriately. And then, and that's, that kind of gets like, there's definitely arguments against calories, but when you think about it, it's like it's a blunt tool to gauge total energy intake.
Mike (46m 21s):
Then it's like, okay, well I'm not gauging the quality of my diet on calories, just like roughly how much food do I need to to take in. And it's very helpful to know that it's like if you're talking about energy metabolism in any capacity, it's like, well don't you kind of want to know how much fuel you need roughly. Like if I have a, you know, nice, if I have a sports car, it's like, well it has a 16 liter tank, okay I need to fill it with 16 liters of fuel. Right? Like that, those are helpful things to know so that I don't like get down the highway because I only filled it up with two liters and I have to pull over and I have to leave my sports car on the side of the highway. That's what people are doing with the, the stuff that they're running, low carb, intermittent fasting, some of these things like you're only eating 1200 calories. It's like, yeah, I don't, I get wiped out in the afternoon.
Mike (47m 3s):
It's like, of course you do because your tank ran on empty and there's only so much stress hormone that you're gonna liberate to pull from your own stores. And there's only so long you can do that because eventually it breaks down the system. And then on top of that it also down regulates a bunch of processes in that process to try to reserve your supply. So you start going into like an austerity mode in your body, which I don't think is very good long term.
Brian (47m 27s):
Like, like like a low battery mode, like, you know
Mike (47m 29s):
Yeah. Essentially low battery mode.
Brian (47m 32s):
Yeah. Well that's a great segue to the, to the last topic we were gonna just touch on was like glucose metabolism, right? Like people are, I think there's just this misnomer and I had it for a little while like you did as well. Like carbs are just inherently bad, right? Like but what, what can we, I don't know, what should we, what sort of, what would you tell someone when they, when you should say that like enhancing your glucose metabolism is something that can obviously help help your metabolic rate but you know, also just like improve your health energy levels and help you from downregulating, you know, certain hormones as well and people are like, well why I thought carbs are bad.
Brian (48m 16s):
What would you say to that?
Mike (48m 19s):
Yeah, I think it's been pervasive, the low carb stuff, right? Because you had the keto stuff come out paleo and then you had the car, like the carnivore doctors went on Joe Rogan and blew it all up. So this type of stuff I think pushed the culture into this like carbs or bad perspective. And I think the sugar diets actually, you know, as much as there's some problems with it's gonna pull people out. If like Mark Bell goes on Joe Rogan, then you already know that the sugar diet is gonna, it is gonna blow up, blow off. Like it's, people are gonna just be like, like inundated with this 'cause they've been restricting carbs for so long. And it's, the thing is like people aren't like, well I really want some rice.
Mike (48m 59s):
It's like it, I can have sour patch kids and it's like that's where people are gonna go crazy 'cause the sweetness, the sweetness is what I think many people craved. So for somebody with the, with I or that are concerned about carbohydrates, I think the fundamental I, the arguments that get made in a low carb communities that carbs cause insulin resistance and an insulin resistance drives all disease. So it's like if a, A equals B and B equals C and A equals C, right? So if a, if carbs equal insulin resistance and, and all diseases are characterized by insulin resistance, then carbs cause disease. And that's actually, that's not true. So A doesn't equal, b carbs don't equal insulin resistance.
Mike (49m 42s):
And insulin resistance is indeed found in diseases. But since carbs don't cause it, like you can't make that, you can't make that statement. Right? The, the insulin resistance problem is related to a variety of factors, but it's, and we could talk about some of those factors, but fundamentally carbs aren't causing that. It's just that carbohydrates, when you are insulin sistant, you are not using that fuel appropriately. You are forced to run on diesel and you cannot use the gasoline anymore. And even the diesel, you're not burning well. So the fundamental problem is the utilization of substrate at the cellular level. The, the, the cells are not using fats nor carbohydrates very well.
Mike (50m 22s):
And so ba and with, when you go on keto or you go on low carb diet or even sugar diet, you are forcing the utilization of one macronutrient, one fuel source, which kind of for, for a variety of different reasons can take pressure off the system. And then on top it, I don't think that they're gonna be solutions in and of themselves long term for people's problems. But I do think in the short term they actually can help in certain ways, even the fasting components like this. 'cause one of the major drivers of people's insulin resistance or the inability to effectively use the fuel sources is if you have a high amount of body fat, right? So if you have a high amount of body fat, the fat will leak free fatty acids all the time.
Mike (51m 4s):
And then on top of that, the fat is gonna drive the inflammatory response higher and release pro-inflammatory mediators that directly impair energy metabolism as well. So when you take body fat down, when you do keto carnivore, all values improve. If you do it with sugar, diet values are gonna improve as well. People are gonna feel better. But you don't have to go to one of those dynamics to fix that specific problem. And then obviously you're forcing the utilization of one fuel source, which takes pressure off the system, right? Because you have an engine and you're pushing like your body's pushed trying to push two fuel sources in at the same time. And it's not even handling one of them very well. It, it's handling both them problem in a problematic fashion.
Mike (51m 45s):
So when you're, what we're looking to do in a pro metabolic or bioenergetic approach is allow the body to use the fuel sources appropriately. Appropriately again to take the carbohydrate and also fatty acids and convert them into a TP into energy and remove the blocks. Is it micronutrient deficiencies? Is body composition off? Is there problems inside the gut? Is a hormonal system shot? Is there problems directly inside the mitochondria and fix these components? And the way you do that is through diet, through supplementation, through lifestyle modification, through exercise. Some people they're, they're, they're using pharmacologic approaches 'cause some of their disease processes are, are more extreme and then you try to wean them back once they get to a better state.
Mike (52m 26s):
So you're taking the major centerpiece is fixing cellular energy metabolism so that you can use the fuel source as well instead of saying, well carbs are just the problem, it's carbs and then I'll just lower them and then people think that's the solution. And initially like, because there's some changes. The other thing is when you do a low carb diet, right, what do you change? Well you don't eat bagels, bread, pastries, right? Pastas all this crap. And it's like, I'm gonna eat grass fed rib eyes and broccoli and grass fed, pasture raised butter. It's like, well you're not just changing carb content, you're changing nutrient status, fatty acid type, you're changing protein amount, protein sources, you're changing, you're all, you're lowering carbs as well and you're probably going into a deficit as well.
Mike (53m 10s):
So you're shifting so many things simultaneously that makes that will improve health. It's just, is it really just the restriction of carbs that drives the benefit per se? Or is it all these other components? And on top of that, if people are running keto, they may also be pushing FGF 21 stuff as well because of a very low protein intake with the high fat intake. And then that can make some improvements even if it's through stress mechanisms. 'cause the stress mechanisms do come into play. So the goal is to not drive the stress to have this response or minimize the stress as much as possible. So I, I don't know if that encapsulates appropriately, but
Brian (53m 45s):
Yeah, no that was well said. And yeah, like you said, like if you're coming from a standard American diet and you just go carnivore, I mean you're gonna start getting, I would assume 99% of the people are gonna get great results with that. The question is, is like long-term sustainability, I mean you, you we're seeing this in the carnivore space already where a lot of, you know, obviously the big name, you know, saladino and guys are, have thrown honey and fruit back into their diet and they're thriving that way. So, you know, and I, I've talked to Jay about this like initially, especially if you have gut issues, you know, just having one macronutrient, like let's just say protein can sort of help, you know, any gut stressors out, you know, and and sort of like sort of heal the gut a little bit and at least initially but you know, it all comes back to, and that's why the sugar diet I, I was just like this is so inter, it was just so interesting watching these videos and seeing some of these people and just thinking, I wonder how long this is gonna last.
Brian (54m 43s):
You know, I think that's like the big question for all this stuff is like, yeah, maybe initially it can help, but how long is this really gonna last?
Mike (54m 51s):
It's not gonna be sustainable. I think the fanfare is 'cause people lost weight pretty rapidly And I think it wasn't just like people, I don't think were just losing body fat. 'cause when you do, and this is something I have experienced myself when I ramped up my sugar sources in my diet, particularly from fruits and I don't tolerate starch as well personally since they took my gallbladder out from that surgery, I had my digestions build a little sketch. So there's certain things I do well with and there's certain things I don't. But starch is one of the things I don't do well with. So if I eat a lot of potatoes and rice, I hold water more. But if I do mostly a hundred percent fruit juice and whole fruits, the, I think the combination of the sugars versus the starches, the speed at which things move through my GI tract and then the high potassium intake, I'll just drop water so I can literally like shrink wrap myself based on how much water I'm holding from those different sources.
Mike (55m 45s):
And the, I think people are dropping water weight with going on the sugar diet because especially if they're doing with fruits, maybe potassium intake is helpful there. The shift in not having a bunch of starches and foods sitting in your colon, which holds which help, which forces the holding of water weight. You lose stool weight as well. So I think there's a, there's this shift and then I think some people are actually losing body fat as well. But this, like, I lost 14 pounds in seven days. I'm not sure that that's all body fat. 'cause I've all seen people in the common saying, well I lost the weight and then I added in star and I gained it back. I gained some of that back, not all of it. And it's like, that's because I think portion of that is actually water. So I think the initial response people are seeing is like they're seeing this weight loss, they're seeing it work, they've been stalled for the, for a while and like, wow, this is amazing.
Mike (56m 33s):
I'm eating sugar and I'm getting these results and I'm, I'm not saying people aren't, I'm sure that they are getting the results right. The question is for me, how is that working? What is the long-term ramification? I think as people run through it, they're seeing like people are gonna start to see, okay, I'm getting some, some, some issues with this. It's not all, it's not all gold. Like there's definitely, there's definitely some, some some copper in there. It's not so good. And that that, that's something I think where you find the diet won't be sustainable. And again, like for me I think it sustainability and implementability is extremely important, right? So I think if I was to tear out the, the dietary approaches, I think setting up a reasonable diet that covers your calorie and your macro targets for your particular goal uses high quality food sources and is very nutrient dense that you can easily run into perpetuity and you just throttle the amounts of things to adjust your body composition top-notch approach.
Mike (57m 28s):
Why? Because it solves a lot of problems while minimizing a lot of other problems. Is it the fastest approach? No, it's not. I'm not, I'm not gonna be lying to people about it. It's like right, you're a pound per week, two pounds per week sugar diet. I think it's pro if it's done right, probably better than keto and carnivore. Keto and carnivore better than standard American diet by far. Especially if they're done appropriately. 'cause you can also run these diets in really dumb ways that can create a lot of problems. But they can be set up appropriately and they're still better than standard American diet. It's just that they're, maybe they get faster results for somebody, but you start introducing new problems and longer term ramifications that you're then gonna have to correct afterwards.
Mike (58m 10s):
So it's like the same, the timeline winds up being the same. Right? Right,
Brian (58m 15s):
Exactly.
Mike (58m 16s):
'cause you create the new problems then you have to solve them. So it's just set up a reasonable intake that you can put into your life and you just adjust things to hit your targets and run with that instead of going, I'm gonna do this extreme sugar diet for the next month, lose all this weight and I'll figure it out after. Because that's the approach.
Brian (58m 32s):
Yeah, I think people got excited about it and I, I think the excitement probably is gonna slow down a bit. And also too, like you mentioned like you know, building muscle is like should be priority number one or one A or one B, right? Like, and that's not really being talked about in any of this stuff. Like, like you said, losing that rapid weight, weight loss, probably some water there and also water weight and muscle loss potentially
Mike (58m 58s):
The, this was some of the cons we didn't talk about with FGF 21, but in the FGF 21 studies, particularly in the some of the animal models, there is a loss in muscle tissue. 'cause the body starts breaking down the muscle tissue to release amino acids that aren't coming in from the diet. Hmm. So the body, like you, you, you think about you have three stores in your body for your backup sources of stuff, particularly for macros, right? Your muscle tissues, your proteins, your fat tissues, your fatty acids and your glycogen source and your liver and muscles, your carbohydrate, the glycogen source in the muscle isn't gonna come out. So what you're doing with the sugar diet is you are saying I'm not having any fat and I'm not having any protein.
Mike (59m 38s):
I'm only gonna have carbs. Like, okay, you have some carbs, the carbs do have some sparing effect on protein, so well I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna pull from fat stores and sure, but you also don't have the protein and protein isn't just used for energy, so yeah you don't have to do gluconeogenesis. But what about repay muscle, ti muscle tissue or, or tissue repair in general. What about all the amino acids that are involved in enzyme production and the different metabolic processes And what about their functions in neurotransmitters and components like this? Like you have an amino acid need in turnover on a consistent basis that's not just for energy needs. Ideally you don't even want it for energy needs. So lowering it, your body's gonna get it from somewhere eventually. So in the studies they see a decrease not only in muscle mass but in bone mass. And you see a lowering in the growth hormone IGF one axis related to anabolism anabolic responses and the liver becomes resistant to it in with the FGF 21 signaling.
Mike (1h 0m 28s):
So the entire anabolic process is muscle growth, bone growth, tissue repair gets down regulated and then protein translation basically taking the, the message from DNA and turning that into a protein that gets turned off at the liver. The liver's like we don't have the building material to, to build this blueprint to follow the blueprint. So we're, you know what this project, we're gonna just put it for, you know, September, 2025 when we get the resources back, you know, when the budget allows for it. So it, it starts to change these, these components and that's not ideal. On the flip side, if protein is kept appropriately, carbs are kept appropriately and then you to throttle total chloric intake, maybe you pull fat down a little bit, maybe a little bit in carbs.
Mike (1h 1m 9s):
The protein maintains your lean muscle tissue, the carbs spare your protein, you have enough fat for satiety blood glucose regulation in your hormonal function and you're just gonna slowly pull off your fat stores while you basically are doing the resistant training and building up your muscle tissue. Slower process, especially on the scale, it goes slower on the scale, but long-term problems much lower, way easier to maintain once the system's set up, way easier to maintain, it becomes just autopilot becomes your new lifestyle and on the back end it's like, oh my muscle tissue's higher, my body fat's lower. I like how I look now. 'cause a lot of people think, oh I just wanna lose weight on the scale. This is not weight on the scale, it's body composition change is the most important thing in terms of how you look.
Mike (1h 1m 50s):
I wanna look how I looked like when I was 20. It's like, well when you were 20 you had peak muscle tissue and then body fat percentage was lower. Not this circumstance where you're like, I just have a total body weight that's low but my body fat is still higher and I still have a lower muscle mass. This is something that, 'cause I have clients, I get them down to their target weights and they're like, well I don't look like when I was 20. It's like, well now's now you need to build muscle because if you want that, you need to put the muscle tissue on. It's not just the weight on the scale doesn't, it's the weight on the scale is like calories. It doesn't tell ya that much about your body composition. It just gives you a general idea of how much mass you have. And that's it.
Brian (1h 2m 28s):
Well Mike, this was, this was great. I think we packed a lot in, in about an hour, a little over an hour. We'll have to get you back on. And normally I ask like some other questions, but I feel like we, we, we've hit a lot. So where's the best place for people to learn about you, Mike?
Mike (1h 2m 48s):
They can find me on my YouTube channel, Mike Fave and also my website Mike Fave dot com. And that the guide and the, the guide and the calculator that I mentioned will be coming live within this next week.
Brian (1h 3m 2s):
Oh great. Okay. So that'll be out by the time this comes out, so. Yep. Yeah, Mike, I, I'm glad, I'm glad I got John and all the information you shared was great. So I'll put links in the show notes for people to find you and we'll have to do a part two down the road. So thanks so much for coming on.
Mike (1h 3m 21s):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate the invitation. It was a pleasure speaking with you.
Brian (1h 3m 24s):
Yeah, thanks for listening to the show. I know there's thousands of podcasts out there and you chose to listen to mine. I will put a link in the show notes if you want to connect with my guest. And if you are looking for one-on-one consulting with me, I will put a free 15 minute link so you can set up a call to see if you're fit for my six month health breakthrough program. So thanks again, feel free to rate and subscribe. I would love that to help support the podcast. And till next time, have a great rest of the day and I will see you on my next podcast. Thanks so much.
