Ep. 19 - Why "Eat Less, Move More" diets fail for fat loss? | How do cardio, The Biggest Loser, and cognitive dissonance affect results? | Cravings, Addictions, Willpower, Nutrition, Hormones, & Fasting Science | Start With Your Free Fasting Plan

In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the Eat Less, Move More paradigm of dieting and losing weight. This model has been shown to fail time and time again, and they give their perspective as to why that is. Their clinical and personal experience led to the realization that there has to be a better way. A varied psychological approach combined with a review of the science has allowed for great results that are achievable and sustainable, even with a substantial amount of weight to lose! Will power is finite and the low and slow calorie burn is unsustainable. Come join us on the journey!

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Hello, I'm Dr. Scott Watier. And I'm Tommy Welling, and you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness and live the life you truly deserve.

Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives, and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Watier and I am here with my good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good evening, sir.

Good evening, Scott. How are you doing?

Awesome, man. Looking forward to another good conversation tonight to continue the momentum that we've been building with fasting for life. Some I'm ready to rock and roll.

Yeah, absolutely. And get some good feedback in some e-mails out there, talking to some people, you know, getting some suggestions for four topics. We got the Q&A days. A lot of good stuff.

Don't don't forget that you have been working behind the scenes on some pretty exciting new tools.

So we are driving it from a content perspective, but also from an action perspective. So just amazing stuff coming from fasting for life. So can you talk about kind of what the future looks like in terms of tools and things are going to be having coming down the pike?

Yeah, sure. So we've been talking to just everyone that we can, trying to figure out what's on everybody's mind. What are the pain points? What are you guys thinking about? How can we best use the platform that we have to help you guys? So. So we've been building tools out and we're really working on the customization for those so that they can help you guys get to the next level, because what we realized is people are coming in with a lot of different experience levels and expertise and a lot of different kinds of goals to some of them bigger, some of them smaller. And so we're developing tools that that can take all of that into account to really get you guys to the next level. So we're really excited about it.

And just to further that, too, is the accountability side. So we've got the Facebook group, just a great place where you can take the knowledge and the information and the action and go and know that you're going to be supported in a way and you're gonna be having a conversation with people that are on the same page with you, which makes it so much easier.

I don't know about you, but whenever you go to an outing or a social function or, you know, you start having a conversation about different things like Kitto or low carb or, you know, somebody says, oh, hey, you know, you look great. You know, how you been? I'm doing great. Hey, how'd you lose all the weight? And you say, well, I've been doing Kito, let's say. And they go, oh, no, no, no. I heard my doctor said, Akito mean instantly you pull out, you go, you're LDL is gonna go up.

Yeah. And it's like, okay. All right Sally. From from accounting. That's right. So let's chill. I shouldn't have been talking about this again. Right. What's my fault about. Shouldn't have said it. So really, we want that group, in all seriousness, to be a place where there's the community and accountability.

So, yeah, I'm super excited about the tools. We've got our course.

That's a little bitty little town outside of there. If you don't mind. So the Facebook group, that's that's today's forum. I remember several times doing some just life changing kind of life, focusing work. And the camaraderie and community that I found in a forum was was just hugely beneficial for the the concentration of resources, the support, the guidance, being able to bounce ideas and questions off of somebody in real time without without having to search high and low for some expert that I don't have much access to. That's why we wanted to put together the group. So, you know, everyone who's who's coming and listening, you know, wanted to get advice, wanting to hear like minded people talk about this stuff because not all of their friends and family understand or can relate. That's why we're doing it. And it's gonna be awesome.

And I want to I want to segment right into the topic for tonight based off of that, because we're going to be talking about eat less. Move more. Right. So this old adage that has been ingrained into us and our action step we'll talk about, it's exactly kind of where those beliefs come from and why.

But the last move, more has been around for for for a long time. And typically, most people do not succeed with it. And some people say, oh, no. Well, my my coaching clients, they get great results. OK, great. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But the reason I want to segway out of that, that, you know, that customization, the Facebook group is a new form is because one of the things that we've tried to do in this is based off of our personal experience, the a psychological approach to the cues and the habits and the things that that cause you to go back into those old patterns. The clinical experience from being in private practice and doing all different types of testing and coaching programs and nutritional weight loss. And then, you know, the last piece is really the scientific interpretation because there's so much stuff out there. So we're going to go into each one of those. But really, it's creating the community, creating the forum, creating the tools to look at look at it strategically, but also make it very specific and customizable to the person that is looking for help, because what's out there when it comes to eat less and move more is.

How do I want to say it?

It's outdated and it's garbage. Perfect. Thank you.

Terrible. Yes, the worst. Now you said that. Great. Just putting all of those pieces together is not easy. That's why we're not seeing it more prevalently, you mainstream media and things like that. There's just so much misinformation out there. So many people still talking about eat less, move more. So many people just die hard. Willpower, people saying, oh, well, if. If. Eat less. Move more. Didn't work for you. You must have just run out of willpower. Try it again. Just a little bit harder this time. Eat a little bit less. Move a little bit more and just do it for longer. And you'll get there. You'll get there.

And that's part of it, too, is, you know, I follow Adak on Facebook. He's got a great virtual practice. He's insulin based in his teaching and his programs and his metabolic weight loss programs, which aligns exactly with what we teach is not about the calorie and calorie out. Eat less. Move more.

Or the you know, the low glycemic index, low fat, low carb. It's not about that. It's about the the the the insulin and the hormonal balance on your body. Right. The hormonal response that's allowing you to get the results. So what happens is willpower. You just talked about it. And it is. It's finite. Right. So you only have so much willpower if you hate running and you tell yourself. I have to get up every morning and run. You may do that for a few weeks. You may even be one of those people. I can do that for a few months. But that willpower is finite because we're dealing with hormonal changes. And I don't care how strong of a willpower you have. Eventually, your body's physiology will win.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. The rebound effect. The bounce back. The fact that we use the term yo yo diet because it goes up and down. You can you can put this into rats. You can give them whatever sort of nutrient dense liquid you can. You can feed them, crack with the food or you can make it terrible. It doesn't matter. The physiology always comes back to the set point, which is going through a hormonal feedback loop from the insulin and into the brain, back into the body. And so it's there. So without removing that insulin response for a prolonged period of time, you're not going to be able to move that set point. That's what you have to do it. It's physiologically impossible to change it. And the other way. So if you do get short term results of eat less, move more, either it's because the insulin resistance hasn't gone up. You basically you haven't been overweight long enough to to feel the long term effects or the fact that the body compensated by making a small change. But it's very likely to rubber band and come back or you had a drop in in muscle at the same time, which is counterproductive.

And when it comes to the the hormonal side of things, too, it's you know, everything is governed by hormones. So if we're constantly fighting against our own body, we're going to lose. Right. So Dr. Dawn came out, Dr. Dawn came out and said he was like, OK. Listen, if you're still following the eat less and move more model, it's time to move on. And if that's like really what you still believe, then you're just way behind the times. And I was like, it was Allen out dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Not just, you know, patients or.

But he's he's calling out doctors. So he's he was having some conversations back and forth with.

With some of the people that were commenting and one person was like, well, oh yeah, must just be in the water in my town because all my clients, you know, 30 pounds in 30 days. And I'm like, yes, you can lose weight in the short term. But when you look at the long term studies or the long term effects of low calorie restriction. Right. And the long term hormonal effects and that feedback loop. Right. Like it. It just doesn't work. And the thing for me is that it's almost too simple.

Right. Like the first guy? No, no, the first time you said too simple, I thought. But fasting is simple, you know. But so unpack that a little bit more. Well, you say it's too simple.

So.

If we go back to the things, the personal experience, to the psychological cues and the approach to, you know, the whys and the the you know, the habits and the belief systems, and then we look at the clinical experience and then the scientific interpretation.

If you look at all of those different things, right, there is sublevels and multi subsets to all of those things that are important in figuring out what works for one person compared to another. Right. But it's all rooted in physiology. So if we have been told eat less fat right in our diet back in the 70s and 80s, which has resulted in 42 percent of the population being obese and 70 percent of the population being obese and or overweight. So that is like two two thirds of the population. Right. So two out of every three people are overweight or obese. Right. This model, this. Oh, just go ahead and start moving more and eating a little bit less. They've simplified it to the fact where you think that's going to get you the results. And this is just for normal people, not people that have in some resistance or have extra weight or have other co fat comorbidities or problems or health issues that are going along with that that they're dealing with at the same time. Right. So it's too simple to just say eat less and move more.

Yeah. And we we hear it so often. The doctors are hearing it. The nutritionists are hearing it. That's that's what they're saying. They're saying it at every turn. Everyone just keeps hearing it over and over again. You can't help but think it must be right. There must be some truth to this. And then and then you say, well, it's not working for me. Well, the most common response to it's not working for me is. Well, you must not be doing enough.

So here comes here comes some blame for you. And so I just I don't even know where to go with.

And so Dr. Fung was one of the first people that I came across and I read his book. You know, when when you started telling me, you know, to fast and. You know, when he talks about, you know, in his own practice, he he started finding himself blaming the patient. Right. So the patients are wrong because my care is right. He was treating you as treating diabetics in Europe. Patients that a kidney disease and kidney failure with dialysis.

And, you know, we're talking very metabolically sick people. And he realized he's like, well, OK, maybe it's not the patient making bad decisions, having no willpower. But then we talked about the willpower thing where it is finite. Right. And it's hormonally driven. But he started looking at it and it kind of made sense to me was is like the cognitive dissonance that goes along with it is because we are so ingrained in believing that this is the way it's so simple. This is what we need to do. This what we need to do. This is what we need to do that eventually. You know, we just accept that, OK, this is it. And then it's my fault because I felt like I just didn't I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't, you know, on point enough. I didn't I put myself in a bad position by buying the potato chips from my food. I had that issue that I said it wasn't the cheap meal, that vacation meal. All that stuff. Right. Yeah. So my thing is, is, you know, we know some of the things and there's a couple of things I want you to talk about in a second. But we know that.

I don't believe that 70 percent of the population wakes up in the morning and says, yeah, you know what, I'm good within being overweight, fat possibly on it. Right. Love it. Yeah. I love not being comfortable around the pool. I love having to buy bigger clothes. I love being warm and sweaty. I love having to go to my doctor. I'm just speaking from personal experience here. I love going to the doctor or getting my life insurance. You know, blood worried it up. Yeah. Yeah. Check done in there. Like, do you have cowboy boots? Because you're going to need to put those on because you're really wide and thick.

And if your blood pressure is just slightly for your height, your BMI is going to be too high. I'm like, what? So with all of that being said, I don't believe that everybody wakes up and says, you don't want there are some people that are fine. Right. They've just decided they're going to live life. They're going to enjoy it. They're going to indulge. It's Krischer.

Right. And I'm listening.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. And for me, it's I just don't believe that everybody wakes up and says, yeah, I'm good with it. There has to be something else going on. Right. And it's the model. It's the habit. It's I mean, it's that just compounding effect. Year after year, if you hear that this is what we're supposed to do.

Yet it's it's all we hear. It's what we're conditioned to hear. It's what everybody knows. And so it's just accepted as the norm. But, you know, do you think that the problem might be that a lot of the practitioners have never had 30, 50 or 100 or 200 pounds that they've had to lose or they've never had to reverse 10, 20, 30 years or more of insulin resistance. So they've never been on the other side of the table.

And play devil's advocate. Go ahead. I like this game. You've been to a health care facility recently.

And now, well, now and what we've just been going through in the spring of 2020. It's probably not the best time to play that game. But a couple of years, a couple years back. Sure, the health care workers are not exactly healthy themselves. True story. And there's not hundreds of thousands. Well, there might be hundreds of thousands of doctors.

I don't want, you know, speaking out of turn here and not have any clue on the numbers I'm talking about.

But, you know, there are doctors that need to lose the way. Sure. Yeah.

So is it the system and the people in the system? Or is it the understanding of. What true weight loss and how insulin plays a role and what the hormones are. Right.

Like, yeah, so.

Well, I don't know, it's not being this stuff's not being taught directly like this, at least very often. So I wonder what that overweight doctor would say. I've never asked an overweight doctor what they thought about their own eating plan or how they were going to lose the weight or if they're trying to lose the weight. I probably want to do that from at least six or eight feedbacks. So I don't get just punched, but I've never done it. I would be curious to hear what they would say if they would spout out that eat less, move more model or willpower or just the fact that they weren't worried about it themselves.

Right. And I think it's kind of a part of all of it. Right. And that's that's kind of why I want to have this conversation with you tonight, because it's like when you think about eat less, move more, it's like, oh, it's simple. What? No, it's actually not simple. They're trying to make a complex problem. Simple. Then you add in food subsidies and, you know, nutritional recommendations and snacking and marketing and, you know, companies that want to sell you, you know, the high the high, refined, processed foods because they're cheap to make. But they're you know, they taste great. The kids love them. Right. So, you know, and then you just look at it like you put like the bigger biggest loser on TV. Like that is not how to be successful. Like, go look up the people that have come off of that show, what happened that day on the way back, just like everybody else. So I'm not saying every one of them does, but like that's like you just got to be tougher. You just have to be stronger. You just have to be more willing. You just have to be more fit, more determined. And it's like, well, no, let's really talk about simplifying it. So let's take the problem. Let's analyze the individual. Let's customize a plan.

Right. Yeah. And then let's tweak it as we go.

Yeah, let's let's see what the goals are. Let's see what kind of timeframe we're looking at. And you know, how to how to keep everything at optimal levels and lose the weight as safely and quickly as possible. I mean, there's there's just just no better way to do it.

Well, the last thing I'm going to say that that grinds my gears. If you're a, you know, Peter Griffin fan back in the day, is that show still on? Does a runaway if it is unbelievable. I can't think of the name right now. It's an old guy. Thank you. The, you know, just adding more into like the weeding through the B.S., leading through the, you know, the interpretation out there. Like, that's what I love about Dr. Don. Is he just like he posed Stephanie and people like come Adam. And he's like, it's not my job. Do the research for you. It's my job to give you my entire life's work of expertise and decision making and personal experiences, and then to put that into a little distilled bit where you can then start thinking differently and go find stuff for yourself. Right. Sure. He rarely will post an article in today's world. It's like you show me the proof. You know, so one of the things that I saw other day was the low and slow calorie burn like, you know, just do some more cardio. I think you have a story about this, Tommy.

Like, let's do more cardio. Yeah. Oh, you just need to add a little bit more cardio in the morning and you'll get it, right. Yeah. There's like 300 blathered. Yeah. Yeah. I'm only doing I'm doing 30 minutes. Oh. Well, you should be doing at least an hour to an hour and a half then. Right. And then you have to get a workout in the afternoon. Like that's not sustainable. So especially if you have insulin resistance or some other factors that are contributing to it, like bad sleep or high stress, you know, all of those different types things.

So just just in the fact that we now know and it is now being accepted that just doing cardio doesn't actually help you lose weight and build lean muscle and not do that. Yeah, but that's not what people know. Right? I know. You know, so it's crazy. So that's part of it, too, is that when we want to when we decide to talk about this tonight, you know, the less move more. It was like, all right, conversationally, there's a lot to go through here. But actionable key, you know, is that a word actionable? I think that word I would definitely call if not just I don't know why to it. It's fun. Yeah. You know, part of the reason why we decided to take on. We have it this has been so much fun, but it's also been a lot of work. But like, it's been enjoyable to get to this point where we're starting to finally roll out those customizable tools. And the future metabolic program and the clinical program and all of that stuff that's coming. But what can we do now for the people that are coming on board? You know, as an action step in terms of they're just starting with fasting, they've been kind of on and off. They don't really understand what we're trying to do with the fasting for life method yet because we are still building it out. But we do have our core principles. So what what can they do? Just off of this conversation?

Well, no matter where you are in your journey, if you're if you're hearing this, you've heard eat less, move more before, it's hard to imagine that you would find us without having heard that message. So you've tried it dozens of times? Probably. Yeah, probably so. Because, you know, unless you're just really young trying to lose the weight, fasting is one of the last things you kind of run into on your on your journey, because it's it's it's like the the road less traveled. So what we're going to encourage you to do as an action step here is think back, think deep, OK, go back into your history, into your psyche and think about the patterns that you have and where they came from. When did you start being conscious of being overweight or having some issue where you wanted to change your body composition in any significant way? For a lot of people, it may have been early teens or, you know, in college or right after that when they started working or gotten a serious relationship or maybe you was a little later in life. It doesn't really matter. But go back and think to where that because our habits came from, from something some ingrained. Part of our life, and then we kept practicing those habits over and over again. Well, if they're not working, it's time to try something different. And I encourage you to go back and think about it so you can reconcile that and convince yourself, you know what? That might not have been the right advice. And maybe I can still do it better now, even if it's years or decades later.

Yeah, that.

That's huge because, you know, when we look at our our mindset, motivation, the method, the mastery of fasting. The beginning part, you know, is that mindset. So it's it's being able to self reflect and identify a lot of that stuff. And that's the stuff that people don't really think about in this. It's. Oh, he loves Moomaw. OK, good. I got to go work out. I want to get to you better. Right. So let me let me let me pick up this bag of chips or let me not get the chips. Let me get to make kale chips at home. Right. Like those times of things where you're talking about goes way, way deeper than that.

And that's part of the success that we've seen with all these people that are coming on board, is that the process is there and it's making. I mean, you and I hold each other accountable for the most part pretty well, too. But it's going back and thinking about that stuff. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's just that's awesome.

Well, if you're if you're planting things in your garden and you need to pull a weed, you don't just pull the leaves right off the top. It's not going to do any good. You have to go deep. You have to get it from the roots. So do that psychologically as well. And you'll find yourself much more empowered and ready for the next step.

That's awesome. Awesome. All right, let's wrap this up sewed up. This is anything else you want to add?

We want to go over and I want you guys to head over to the Web site. So it's w w v fasting for life. Dot com ww w dot d fasting for life dot com. Top of the page. You'll see a couple different things we want you to do. There is a downloadable it's a fast start guide and grab the guide. It'll give you the outline of exactly how to get started. If you're kind of newer to this and then the quiz is going to be part of the initial rollout and then eventually the main tool that we have to identify where you are, what goals you have, what you know, habits, what struggles, all the different pieces of that that algorithm that that Tommy is working on building out behind the scenes to be able to give you that customizable plans. We want you to take the quiz because it's going to help us make the tools better. But it's also going to give you some really great insight. So download the fast our guide. Take the quiz. Tommy, anything to add on on the quiz? No, no. I said it better myself. Perfect. Perfect. I'm learning. I'm learning from you. Jump. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, we have a pretty cool dynamic if you guys have been listening for a while. I think it's cool. So maybe it's, you know, pat ourselves on the back. But I like to get all fired up. And then Tommy comes in with his logical, just beautiful way to kind of land the plane and make it all kind of hit home.

So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start? Head on over to thefastingforlife.com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

While you're there, download your free Fast Start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting For Life.

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