There are so many myths related to body composition and fat loss. In our early media career, we got many of these myths wrong and, unfortunately, propagated things that were not true. In our Things I Got Wrong episode and subsequent episodes, we covered some of these. In this episode, we cover some of the prevailing myths regarding losing body fat and then present what we found in our data analysis covering each myth.
Episode Transcript
Dr. Richard Harris MD 00:00
Welcome back to our third edition of Mythbusters. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about some really pervasive myths around fat loss myths that we even propagated, unfortunately. So we’re going to dive into these myths, we’re going to dive into what the studies actually show. And it’s going to give you some actionable tips. If you’re trying to change your body composition. Are you ready to boost your health, EQ and IQ Cue the music.
Dr. Richard Harris MD 00:29
Before diving into our Mythbusters fat loss edition, we’re going to talk about melatonin. This is our update. Previously, I can’t remember if it was on the podcast, or if it was during speeches, I talked about melatonin and how I don’t like for people to use melatonin continuously for long periods of time. And the reason was, for possible impact to sex hormones. And also suppression of endogenous meaning our own melatonin production. Well, there’s a couple studies I found that looked at short term use. And by short term, I mean about a month with melatonin. And these doses were between 0.5 to six milligrams per day. And they found in the short term, melatonin does not seem to alter sex hormones, and it does not seem to suppress our own melatonin production. Now, I couldn’t find any long term studies on this because what we know with hormones, is that sometimes it takes some time for long term adaptations to happen if you’re taking endogenous hormones. So in this regard, I still would not recommend taking melatonin every single night for long periods of time. I do like it for jetlag, I do like it for if your shift work, like if you have a night shift stretch, and you’re trying to switch back over, get your circadian rhythm set. I do like it for occasional sleeplessness, occasional insomnia. And the thing about melatonin that I find really interesting is, is there was an article that was published recently about how we have a dark deficiency, because melatonin really is the hormone of darkness, that’s its main trigger to be made is darkness. And if you think about it, most people are exposed to bright lights from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. Now we don’t get enough sunlight. And we don’t get enough UV light. We’ve covered that extensively. But I started to think Do we have actually a darkness deficiency. And one of the things that we try to do when the sun goes down in our household is minimize the amount of light of course we want to be safe. We don’t be running into walls, but we want to minimize bright lights, and especially overhead lights when the sun goes down. And this really goes into what the article is talking about is about how we have a darkness deficiency that we’re not exposed to enough darkness and melatonin really is that hormone of darkness. So interesting update there. Let’s dive into these fat loss myths. Okay, the first myth, and I think we covered this somewhat already, or maybe we didn’t I don’t know, there’s so many episodes. But number one myth and you hear this all the time is people blaming high insulin levels hyperinsulinemia as being a primary driver of gaining adipose tissue, and you’ll see the carbohydrate the CI M the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity. And we talked about that, and how about how energy balance is king. So this is going over some things that we’ve already talked about. But the data shows that macronutrient composition for most people is pretty stable, meaning that most people are not changing around that the amount of certain macros protein, carbs, fats that they’re eating, sugar intake overall has decreased while whole grain intake has actually increased. So if it was a pure model of hyperinsulinemia, making people obese, you would expect that this wouldn’t be the case you’d expect sugar intake to continue to increase and we know that whole grain intake is correlated with a bunch of very positive things. We talked about oats on the last episode. The reality is it’s all about energy balance. And the brain regulates body weight through integration of external and internal signals to regulate energy intake based upon the body’s needs. And we talked about grelle And we talked about leptin and the appetite podcast. The availability of energy dense Ultra processed foods high in fat and sugar and low in protein and fiber is one of the key drivers Because of the obesity epidemic, in fact, if you look at it, food is everywhere, it’s really hard to not run into food. In fact, when I leave my apartment and walk my dog, I walked past four restaurants. So there’s food everywhere. There’s there’s signals there smells, and so we live in a very calorie dense environment. And so the energy balance model, diet composition, and calorie intake are important. The composition meaning the quality, the type of nutrients that you’re eating, can play an important factor in the central nervous system control of food intake. We know that things that are high in fat high in carbohydrates high in sugar, high and salt tend to increase dopamine because our body likes these things. Because those are typically signals that we’re eating very nutrient dense or calorie dense food. Hormones, like insulin do play a role in storage and release of triglycerides from adipose tissue, they do play a role in nutrient partitioning, but they don’t actually change our metabolic rate. And we did talk about that. Now, what is energy intake, that’s what we take in, you know, food drink, what is expenditure? Now, this can be our basal metabolic rate, which is about 60% of our total caloric expenditure of physical activities about 10% thermic effect the food’s about 10%. And meat is about another 20% thermic effect of food is something that can vary so can meet and eat can vary a lot. We talked about that previously, the thermic effect of food decreases with age and diabetes, it increases with physical activity if you have higher protein intake. So if you have a purely protein meal, that thermic effect of food goes up to 17%. And then things like caffeine and capsaicin have a small increase in thermogenesis. We’ll talk about those in a minute. So what’s important in the energy balance model, the things we tend to focus on the most are our basal metabolic rate. I got mine tested, just so I know, if I just laid there and didn’t do anything. What would I need to keep myself alive. And our basal metabolic rate can be determined by lots of different things our age, our genetics, our sex, our race, our emotions, climate hormones, like catecholamines and thyroid hormones can impact our basal metabolic rate. And then things that can change with NEET or non exercise Activity Thermogenesis things like standing things like periodic movement breaks. These are the things we talked about in the show the 22 method, we talked about the hodza tribe and how they spend about 30% of their time in active rest. So that was I believe it was 18%, squatting, 12% kneeling, and so those are things that can increase neath. One of the myths we hear about the time is genetics. It’s just my genetics. Oh, you know, my mom, my dad and all my parents, you know, my, my grandparents, everybody has obesity. And the reality is, it’s probably not your genes we talked about in the leptin podcast that there’s about 3% of severe cases of obesity are due to leptin resistance. But as far as adipocytes, the fat storing cells go, and insulin go only rare mutations in leptin gene result in obesity. Most genetic variants identified affect brain genes, meaning the effect is on intake. But the effect on fat mass itself is so small, it’s hard to tell if it’s food intake, energy expenditure or energy partitioning. The exception is a gene called the FTO gene, and that increases appetite and food intake. So if it’s not the genes, what is most likely it’s how you interact with your environment. It’s what are you eating? It’s how are you sleeping? It’s how much exercise are you getting? How much neat Are you getting? Are you being very sedentary? All these things can matter. And we talked about in the
Dr. Richard Harris MD 09:18
well, I forget which podcast but we talked about how neat can vary by up to 2000 calories per day depending on the person. Myth, I was in a calorie deficit and nothing changed. The actual reality is your energy balance was not negative. This is just a thermodynamic principle. There’s numerous reasons for that. normal weight adults overestimate exercise energy expenditure by 300 to 400%. And underestimate energy intake by 200 to 300%. What this means is we tend to overestimate how much we burn through activity, and we tend to underestimate how much we’re eating by significant amounts. And this is even worse for obese adults. They have a poor ability to estimate energy expenditure during exercise, and calories. And the range was astronomical from a 760 Calorie under estimation to a 468 Calorie over estimations study said I looked at. So that’s significant. What that means is just really bad at estimating our calorie intake and our calorie expenditure. Only 25% of people had an error rate of less than 15% in estimating calories and foods. 15% is a significant, and only 25% of people had less than that. And even posting calorie counts has not resulted in consumers eating lower calorie meals. So you see, these calorie counts on foods all the time, the thought there was that people would be more cognizant and more aware, but most people have no idea what a calorie is. So they just kind of speed over that. So we see this all the time. And there are great tools out there, like the carbon diet app for tracking your macros and actually coaching and adjusting because if you hire a coach, they’re going to do some things, they’re gonna do some calculations to get a ballpark base estimate. And then you look at metrics, you look at waist circumference, you look at measurements, you look at DEXA scans and see if it’s actually moving, and then you adjust those targets. Another myth I see is my device track calories accurately. Reality, it does not even the gym equipment that you see you’ve ran and you think you did awesome, because you burned 600 calories while running, you’re probably didn’t. The studies show that the wrist activity trackers for estimating oxygen consumption and energy expenditure are not valid when they’re compared to the gold standard. And the gold standard is what we call direct calorimetry. But it’s really hard to do, no one really does that. There’s indirect calorimetry, which is getting breath measured for carbon dioxide output and estimating your metabolic rate. That’s actually what I did. There are places all over that do that. Now the risk trackers or your Fitbit or Apple Watch or whatever, they can over or underestimate your calories based upon pace and the type of metabolism whether it’s a robic which is running versus anaerobic, typically, they tend to underestimate in low intensity states and overestimate in high intensity states. No way. They tend to underestimate in high intensity states, and they tend to overestimate in low intensity states. Other studies show that overall, these wristwatch trackers can overestimate calorie burn by 28 to 93%. So that’s very significant. And that’s why typically when I’m doing this, when I first start a plan for people, I have people just eat to their basal metabolic rate and adjust based upon response. Because trying to figure out your need and how many calories you’re burning during exercise, that can be really difficult. However, eating to your BMR is the quickest way to ensure that you’re in a calorie deficit. And then you can kind of adjust up and down depending you don’t want people losing weight too fast, because that probably means you’re losing muscle as well as fat. If you’re losing, you know, half a pound to a pound a week. That’s that’s definitely doable. I prefer around the half a pound because I don’t want people losing muscle while they’re doing this. There’s another myth I need to burn wood I just ate at the gym. The reality is it’s really hard to do that. Because like we talked about physical activity is not the majority of our daily calorie expenditure. And more physical activity doesn’t necessarily equate to more calorie expenditure. Also, there’s a compensation effect. So what happens when you exercise is your body is not trying to starve, right? There’s, if we go and expend a bunch of energy, your body is going to try to conserve energy the rest of the day. And this compensation effect as you burn less calories throughout the day. And some of this can be in our basal expenditure. Some of this can be through meat. And the crazy thing here is obese people, the compensation effect can be 28% to 50% of the calories expended during exercise. So for the average person, it’s around 28% of a compensatory effect in calories. In obese people can be up to half. So if you’re obese and you burn 500 calories, it means your body is going to try to compensate to overcome that deficit, it means your body’s going to try to compensate by reducing expenditure throughout the rest of the day by about 250, which would be half of the 500 do burn. And the major thing here is this creates a negative relationship with food if you start looking at foods as good or bad, that Oh, I ate a doughnut that was really bad, I gotta go burn off those calories, that can be extremely harmful. And there’s a myth that I’ve seen that says that eating disorders are the number one mental health disorder that causes mortality. That’s not true. They’re actually number two. But that’s still pretty significant. So disordered eating leading to eating disorders can cause significant, significant health issues. And so we have to be careful about how we look at foods and how we approach foods. And that’s why I personally use a calorie budget. i If I eat a doughnut, and there have been times where I’ve eaten four donuts in one sitting, then I say, Okay, I’ll just adjust what I eat later. To account for those calories. I don’t ever deny myself anything, I’ll delay it. But there’s really nothing that I don’t eat except for fast food, mainly because it just wrecks my stomach. Now I just can’t eat it. Next myth weekend, calories do not count. Reality, they count. People have higher energy intake on the weekends with lower expenditures. What do we like to do on the weekends we’d like to chill. We’d like to rest we’d like to catch up on eight hours and Netflix. Typically, people aren’t working out on the weekends. People have different eating schedules, they tend to go to bed later, they tend to have their first meal later. And their last meal later in the day, there was a recent study that have just published in cell that looked at meal timing. And what they found was if you eat later, and this was a really well done story, it was isocaloric. They controlled for physical activity, they basically put them into a lab and monitor them, they made sure sleep and light exposure, dark exposure, all of that was the same very well controlled study, it was a short duration, I believe it was like six days. And then they crossed over to the other group after a time period. And what they found was that the people who ate later burned 60 less calories the next day, they also found changes in gene expression that people who ate later had more gene expression for genes that promoted fat storage, and less expression for genes that promoted fat burning. So that’s pretty significant. And what I talked about that eating lag that people tend to do they eat their first meal later, there was a study that found that that eating lag of 3.5 hours or more is more associated with obesity. So if you’re looking at this data holistically, we’re starting to see that meal timing does matter and in manipulating our meal timing can be another tool in the toolbox to help us maintain our body composition. Myth, I always have to be in a deficit reality have strategic refeeds
Dr. Richard Harris MD 18:38
one study showed a 10% weight loss reduce total energy expenditure by about 550 calories, calorie restriction decreases leptin increases ghrelin, fat loss also decreases leptin. Do we have adaptive thermogenesis overfeeding, especially carbohydrates increases leptin. So fats and protein have a minimal effect. So overall, what this means is that you’re going to feel more hungry as you lose weight, and that’s just part of it, you’re going to feel hungry, but having that refeed every now and then can increase those leptin levels to help you feel more full. And in your refeed, it should be high carb, high protein, low fat. And you can do that maybe once a week, every three to four days. Sometimes what we’ll have people do is if they hit a plateau, and they’re starting to feel stressed, they’re first starting to feel worn out from being in a deficit, they’re starting to feel tired, then go you caloric for two weeks and then restart the restriction. And that strategy has been used by coaches for a long time with successful results. Because being in a calorie deficit all the time is going to be hard, you’re going to be tired, you’re going to be hungry and prolonged it can start to affect levels of certain hormones, which is why you shouldn’t be in a deficit all the time, you should have these scheduled breaks where you get out of that calorie deficit, go to maintenance for a while, those will also help you maintain your muscle mass, and then go back into that deficit. And what that schedule is, can be different for every person. But that’s what a good coach is going to do for you. And the other thing we talked about this is the mental aspect, it feels less restrictive, to be able to take a break, you can’t work 24 hours a day, we take breaks, and it should be the same thing with our calorie deficit. So it feels less restrictive, you get improved performance that way as well. The refeeding is less likely to encourage binge eating, it helps to satisfy cravings, and refeeding is associated with improved athletic performance, probably because like we said, it can help you maintain your muscle mass. Intermittent fasting, a lot of people say you have to do intermittent fasting to lose body fat, the reality is intermittent fasting, and it can do continuous energy restriction are equivalent for fat loss. And for several cardio metabolic markers. Some Some studies show statistically significant improvement in insulin sensitivity that is not relevant clinically for intermittent fasting. And the results are the same for patients with hypertension and diabetes. At the end of the day, the calories are king and whichever method is better. If you prefer to do continuous energy restriction, basically, I’m going to eat less at each meal, do it if you want to skip a meal completely or shorten your feeding window, do it whatever increases your compliance and consistency is the main thing. Consistency is the main thing. That’s why most people fail is that they’ll be consistent for a month off for three months, consistent for a month off for six months. That’s not going to get you results, daily consistency. And so whichever method helps you be consistent is better. And there was a study that was just published in JAMA. I think it was like two weeks ago and looked at this question for for diabetics. Oh, I was so different. Nevermind. On to the next one. Myth, it’s better to skip breakfast. And we just talked about this. And if you’re trying to encourage weight loss, you probably want to eat a high protein breakfast. Study support that eating earlier and aligning metabolism circadian rhythm does help reduce body weight and improve insulin sensitivity. We just talked about that cell study. One really interesting study found that isocaloric eating early between eight and two verse eight and eight did not affect 24 hour energy expenditure, but did increase thermic effect of food it decreased ghrelin increased leptin and py y. What that means is smooth out hunger, increased fullness and decreased desire to eat. It also improved metabolic flexibility and fat oxidation. So again, if we’re looking at the overall evidence, it seems to be that for if you’re trying to improve your metabolic health, then eating earlier, and eating high protein is going to help you feel more satiety and also help with your metabolism. And another thing about eating late is we’ve talked about this on the podcast before willpower is a muscle. It’s fatigue double. So people who eat late night often eat up to 500 more calories per day. And that’s because of food choices. When you’re eating late at night, your willpower SAP it’s been a long day, you’re not going to choose the broccoli, you’re probably going to choose the chips and pretzels and all that stuff. And so you typically eat more calorie dense options, we make worse food choices, and we have more alcohol intake when we eat later. And again, this is all because of fatigued willpower. So if you if you switch your eating windows a little bit earlier, you’re going to feel more full more, have more satiety by the time it’s late at night and not pick for these options that are not as beneficial for us if we’re going through if we’re trying to achieve sustainable fat loss. Low Carb is better for weight loss. And the reality is it’s the best diet is what you can stick to when calories and protein are equated. Both work equally well for fat loss and they’re similar outcomes on cardio metabolic markers. So what happens is when you eat more fat you burn in store more fat, when you eat less fat, you burn less, but store less under normal conditions. 98% of fat stored is from fat. So when people gain weight, what happens is the protein, the carbs, the fat? Well, they all are being used for different things. And so when we over consume calories, what we store is the fats that we eat, that aren’t utilized for what fats are used for. And we’ve talked about what fats are used for on the podcast. The most important aspect of what you eat when you’re designing a meal is protein intake. And we’ve talked about adequate protein intake, you want to maintain adequate protein intake to prevent lean muscle loss, and also to improve satiety and increase the thermic effect of food. And this happens in both lean and obese people. There was a study that was just published in JAMA that looked at this, they looked at low carb versus traditional type nutrition for diabetic diabetics, and reducing insulin. And they said that the low carb group was better, but when you looked at it wasn’t isocaloric. So really, when you look at the studies in there, and they’re claiming that low carb is better, you need to look at number one, was it ISIL caloric number two, was protein equated? Because in those studies, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. So how much protein should you get? About 1.6 grams per kilogram to minimize lean muscle loss? While you’re in a deficit, you can also combine with resistance training to increase lean mass. If you’re an athlete, and you’re in a deficit, you need between 2.2 to 3.4 grams per kilogram to maintain muscle mass while in a deficit. At the minimum. I tried to get about 1.2 grams per kilogram, I minimum I tried to stick in around that 1.6 range of grams of protein per kilogram. It will vary like everything else. Another myth diet sodas make you gain weight. Reality, the calorie free beverages can be part of a weight loss plan. We talked about diet sodas before and how I got that completely wrong. So what happened was observational studies showed that diet soda intake was associated with obesity, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. But people with obesity and diabetes drink more diet soda. So it was a reverse causation thing. If you look at randomized controlled trials of actual humans, and meta analyses, drinking diet drinks show improvement in weight loss, they show improvement in BMI body fat, they show improvement in fat content and deliver and they’re better for weight loss maintenance. And one study even showed that they were better than water. We talked about that before. And this is likely through reducing net energy intake.
Dr. Richard Harris MD 28:30
Other studies do not show an increase in calories increase in food or cravings, or consumption with diet sodas was another myth that’s out there. So I don’t recommend that people drink like five diet sodas a day. But you know, if you want one with a meal, go for it. Another myth we see is about cardio cardio is best for weight loss. In reality, it’s best to do both. Strength training increases muscle mass, which does increase metabolic rate. And the amount varies but in general fats burn about four calories per kilogram muscle burns about 13. So if you change a pound of fat to a pound of muscle that’s going to burn additional nine calories per kilogram. So you can see how that can add up over time. And so studies show that hit and resistance training elevated the resting metabolic rate for longer than moderate intensity steady state cardio, so I tend to prefer resistance training when I do cardio I do hit I don’t like steady state cardio. That’s just me personally. You burn more calories doing cardio. And hit does burn equivalent calories to steady state cardio Mmm, it’s the energy expenditure is equivalent but requires about 40% less time. But you burn more calories in the day with weight training and for about up to 36 or so hours afterwards. There is a randomized controlled trial of cardio weights or cardio plus weights, and the cardio plus weights had the best body composition results, meaning more muscle gain, more fat loss, and one systemic review. There’s 20%, greater weight loss with diet and exercise. So then that brings up a point there was a study that was done recently, where they had people who were diet quote, unquote, diet resistant to weight loss, and they put them on an exercise regimen and the people started losing weight. So if that’s you, if you’ve been trying through diet alone, you’re not getting it done. Start doing some cardio and resistance training. I prefer 70% resistance training 30% cardio. That’s just what I prefer. Another myth, it’s all about diet and exercise. In reality, other things matter as well. Like sleep. Sleep deprivation leads to an increase in calorie intake. One study found 550 more calories per day people were eating after one night of sleep restriction. I believe another one showed about 250 or 300, somewhere around there. Another study showed sleep extension of less than 6.5 hours by 1.2 hours meaning so people who were sleeping less than six and a half hours a day, they extended their sleep duration by 1.2 hours, decrease calorie intake by 270 calories that’s significant. So getting more sleep is a part of a well thought out and well rounded plan for fat loss. Another study found disruption in appetite controlling regions of the brain was sleep disruption, and an increase in cravings for high calorie foods. There are negative changes in ghrelin and leptin levels with sleep deprivation, as well as increased hunger and appetite for like we said high calorie foods overall, that’s not what you want for sustainable fat loss. Stress. prolonged stress can induce changes in glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, change in hormones, and neuro peptides, leptin, ghrelin, orexin, which are all involved with appetite, we’ve talked about that an appetite pathway, it can promote abdominal fat deposition. So it can change nutrient partitioning, basically, where those nutrients are going and are they being stored or are they being burned. People under stress prefer to eat hyper palatable energy dense foods. Because of the stress impacts on the dopamine reward circuits, and it predisposes us to cravings and increased food intake, we’re going to crave things that are highly palatable things high in salt, things high in sugar. Individuals with high BMI show a stronger association between chronic stress and weight gain under similar degree of stress, meaning that if you have someone who’s overweight than someone who’s normal body composition, those with a higher BMI, are going to experience more weight gain under the same amount of stress. A randomized control trial showed mindfulness enhance the effect of weight loss program by about 2.8 kilograms, and improved eating behaviors and dietary restraint. So if you’re someone who’s hungry, while they’re going through the program, and you’re going to be hungry, it’s okay to be hungry. And you’re having problems controlling your cravings. Throw in a mindfulness program to help. Hormones. One hormones obviously can affect what we do, how we do it, and that’s no difference here when it comes to fat loss. hormones can affect numerous aspects including food intake, it can affect craving satiety our basal metabolic rate physical activity by affecting motivation and reward and neat numerous studies show that testosterone replacement therapy improves fat mass, lean body mass, and other Anthro promote anthropometric parameters. This is like height weight. Numerous studies show TRT improves fat mass lean body mass, in other body measures, like waist circumference measures of central adipose tissue deposition. Higher baseline T three and T four thyroid hormones are associated with better weight loss, thyroid therapy and hypothyroidism associated with weight loss and an increase in resting energy expenditure increase in physical activity and hormone replacement therapy and women improved abdominal adipose tissue cardio metabolic markers, but not muscle mass. So for the most part, these hormones can affect nutrient partitioning, they can also affect how we intake food, how we think about food. And then the thyroid hormones can affect actual metabolic rate.
Dr. Richard Harris MD 35:35
What else Cold Therapy cold therapy is a way that you can actually increase your metabolic rate. One study showed one our head out of water, so you’re submerged in water, but your heads out increased metabolic rate by 93%. At 20 degrees Celsius was 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And then at 14 C, which is 57 degrees Fahrenheit by 350%. A systemic review showed that less than 57 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes showed increased metabolism. But these aren’t randomized control trials. And we also don’t know how long the metabolic effects are sustained for. But it can be something that cold shower that cryotherapy that you can put in your routine supplements. There’s a lot of supplements out there. There’s these are the ones that I tend to focus on when I’m looking at these things. Creating creatine we get from meats we also endogenous recycle about 50% of the creatine that we use is recycled from our own bodies. Vegetarians usually have 20 to 30% lower levels of creatine, we likely need about two to four grams per day, consumed to maintain normal levels. Creatine increases anaerobic energy capacity, it decreases protein breakdown, it improves strength, improves cognition, improves muscle mass and physical performance. It is an indirect antioxidant, it likely what I mean by indirect it decreases reactive oxygen species like we’ve talked about reactive oxygen species on the podcast. It improves lipids it reduces fat accumulation in the liver and enhances insulin sensitivity. And in a study of men greater than 50 showed creatine versus placebo that it improved fat loss. coffee, caffeine. So there’s a slight boost to thermogenesis. We talked about that earlier by increasing brown fat, we’ve talked about brown fat on the podcast, it increases physical performance. So you exercise better it decreases the sense of effort with physical performance. So the the rated perception of exertion which is important, because the quicker you fatigue the so it can help with the intensity of your workouts by decreasing the the feeling of fatigue and how quickly you fatigue. It improves cognitive performance, sense of energy concentration and focus and attention. A 2019 made analysis show that caffeine intake promotes a healthy body weight, BMI and body fat reduction, the dose response is linear. The median dose was about 360 milligrams of caffeine per day, which is right under what we typically recommend as a ceiling which is 400 milligrams per day. For people who aren’t you know super caffeine sensitive protein. Protein can help you achieve your protein goals especially for people who are plant based whey protein increased satiety and obese individuals. Another study with waste supplementation showed more fat loss and less loss of lean muscle. They made analysis of whey for body composition show positive effects on BMI body fat mass, waist circumference and lean body mass. Another study showed improvement in systolic blood pressure diastolic blood pressure, HDL waist circumference, triglycerides, fasting blood sugar in obese and overweight individuals. All of those things are positive effects of metabolism by whey protein. Ketones I like exogenous ketones. One study found that adding exogenous ketones to a hyper caloric diet and overweight patients for eight weeks, they lost three additional pounds of body weight. It was 2.7 pounds for fat loss. There was a 4.4% versus 0.7% improvement in lean to fat ratio, and there was a three centimeter greater decrease in waist circumference. There was also a nine milligram decrease in the Total Cholesterol and a 6.9 milligram higher decrease in LDL. Under secondary conditions ketones, lowers hunger and appetite and combining ketones with caffeine improves high intensity exercise performance and keto adapted and naive individuals. multivitamin a multivitamin can actually help. So if you look at the the names data, inadequate intake of potassium 97% of people, Vitamin K 71% Vitamin C 46% 95% of people don’t intake enough vitamin D 84%, vitamin E, zinc 60%, magnesium 44%, calcium 43%. So these things are very prevalent, the prevalence of nutrient deficiencies is higher and obese and overweight individuals. One study looked at Atkins dash South Beach and these diets failed to provide 100% sufficiency for 27 essential micronutrients. So taking a multivitamin can be a viable strategy. In a study of obese Chinese women. It compared a multi slash mineral supplement, calcium or placebo, the multi group loss eight pounds the calcium group 2.5 placebo 0.5. The multi group also had lower total cholesterol, LDL C and higher HDL and magnesium supplementation and one main analysis was found to lower body weight and patients with insulin resistance hypertension, obesity and magnesium deficiency at baseline. All right. Well, there’s a lot of information there a lot of it we covered before so that’s why I went pretty fast on some of these things. But these are some some fat loss myths that we see all the time. And hopefully you got some tips on actionable material things that you can do if you’re trying to do body recomp you know, body recomp we mean muscle gain fat loss. Well, this has been the strive for great health podcast with your host Dr. Richard Harris. Have a blessed day.