Zack Arnold

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Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work

About Episode

“Eat less and exercise more” is the diet advice we’ve all been following for the last 50 years, but I have bad news for you…science has proven that calorie counting doesn’t work 95.4% of the time. Our bodies have evolved for thousands of years to naturally balance energy input (eating) and expenditure (activity). So then why is that only AFTER discovering the concept of the calorie have we begun to see the epidemic rise of obesity worldwide in developed countries?

In this episode I have a rapid-fire conversation with New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Bailor, author of “The Calorie Myth” and one of the foremost experts in the health industry on the concept of the calorie. We talk all about the diet myths we’ve been fed for the last fifty years and why they are wrong. And then we talk about the solution to reshaping your diet if what you desire is long term health, energy, and longevity.

Click here to learn more about The SANE Solution in this FREE 4 Hour Webinar

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Jonathan Bailor, the author of The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better and he is also the creator of The Sane Solution And I’m going to be perfectly honest and tell you that if I had Steven Spielberg on the other end of the microphone, I would be less excited than to be talking to you. I’ve been trying to make this happen for two years, so thank you for being on the show, Jonathan Bailor.

Jonathan Bailor: Well, you know, I asked them to not put any brown M and M’s in the bowl in the in the dressing room, but they put the brown M and M’s in there, so we had to reschedule this like eight times. No, I’m just kidding. A diva here.

Zack Arnold: It’s funny. I actually go into in depth when I talk about productivity and efficiency about why the brown M and M’s are actually so important, but that’s another rabbit hole. I won’t go down that one, but as long as we’re talking about rabbit holes, here’s why you’re on the show today. About two or two and a half years ago, I decided that I was going to go on a quest to figure out how I could optimize myself, and I’ve spent the last decade trying to figure out is it possible to be healthy working in my industry, which is film and television post production. Two years ago, I started discovering podcasts, and one of the first podcasts that I listened to was the Bulletproof Radio podcast that you did with Dave Asprey before your book came out. And I said, “Wait a second! You’re telling me that I shouldn’t be counting calories, and it’s not a simple thermodynamic equation of the amount of calories I bring in and the amount of calories that I burn by exercise, like this to me was a revolutionary concept. So I just want to start going down one myth at a time because your book is called the Calorie Myth, and the first myth that you talk about is that you have to count calories to lose weight. So let’s just jump right in and start beating down these myths one at a time.

Jonathan Bailor: Shall we start with the science, or shall we start with sound bites and anecdotes?

Zack Arnold: I want you to start with whatever is going to convince my audience in the least amount of time possible, because whenever I talk about this at seminars or other podcasts, they’re still skeptics, and I want people to walk away in 30 minutes saying, “Oh my God, all of this is BS, and I need to change the way that I live my life.

Jonathan Bailor: All right. Well, the science often takes longer than 30 minutes, so I’ll start with anecdotes, and then if we have time, we can go into the science. So the couple anecdotes. So the first is that so the science underlying very simply is that it’s not that calories don’t exist, right? Like some people in the past, there were books that came out 60 years ago that say like calories don’t count, and if you press certain quote unquote experts on questions like if I ate 10,000 calories of butter, that wouldn’t release any insulin. Are you saying I wouldn’t get fat? Like I’m not one of the people who would say no, you will not get fat. Like you would of course get fat if you ate 10,000 calories of butter, and that’s what the science shows. What the science shows is not that calories don’t exist or that counting calories is sort of a mythical concept. What the science shows is that your brain, specifically your hypothalamus, counts calories for you if it’s not dysregulated by the improper types of food and substances in your body. So what I mean by that is just like your brain automatically balances blood pressure, like you don’t have to think about increasing or decreasing your blood pressure, you don’t have to think about whether or not you need to start sweating because your body temperature is rising. You don’t need to think about whether or not you should go to the bathroom more when you drink more water. You’ll notice that your body automatically tries to maintain a state of balance, or as we learned in high school biology, homeostasis. Right, life only exists within a narrow range of conditions, so your body has all these automatic systems in the earlier phases of our brain that we share with all other species on the planet that maintains that balance. Energy works the same way. Your body doesn’t want to starve and it doesn’t want to carry around a bunch of excess weight. Neither of those things are helpful for a species’ survival. So just like your body automatically regulates blood pressure and blood sugar, your body is supposed to automatically regulate energy balance. However, when you eat the wrong quality of stuff, you’ll notice that all three of those homeostatic systems can break down, and when they break down, you have what’s called the disease. So let’s go through those really quick. The disease title for my brain can no longer balance my blood sugar automatically is called adult onset or type two diabetes, and we know that’s not that’s not caused by eating too much. It’s caused by eating the wrong kinds of stuff. Blood pressure. When the system around blood pressure breaks down, what do we call that? We call that hypertension. We don’t cure that by eating less and exercising more, we cure that by changing what we eat, and the disease, as acknowledged by the American Medical Association, of my body can no longer count calories for me, is called obesity, and that’s the key distinction. Because once this is understood as a disease, we understand that just like you don’t reduce a fever by, for example, putting yourself in a ice-filled bathtub, which will make your body temperature go down. It doesn’t cure the disease. To cure the disease that is obesity, we need to fix the underlying system. We need to re-enable our brain to count calories for us, and the way we do that is by changing the quality of what we eat. Rather than the quantity of the junk which caused the disease in the first place.

Zack Arnold: Okay, so that having been said, this whole concept of eating less and exercising more-it just, frankly, it just makes sense. It seems like common sense. It seems like well, the calorie counter says that I’ve eaten this many calories, and my Fitbit and my heart rate monitor say I burned this much. So this should work. Why doesn’t it?

Jonathan Bailor: So two things. It well, it works, but works is in quotations. So if you are contestant on The Biggest Loser, and if Jillian Michaels is screaming at you, and if your contract depends on you losing weight, regardless of its impact on health, regardless of the long-term effects, regardless of whether or not you’ll yo-yo diet and gain it all back in a year, let’s be very clear: there are all sorts of crazy things that you can do to lose a lot of weight really quickly. Starving yourself is one of them. Exercising obsessively is another one. And there’s a bunch of like drugs and chemicals that you could also pump your body with that will help you lose weight fast. But I think most people’s goal isn’t rapid, short-term weight loss that makes me miserable and sick and fatter in the future. I think most people’s goal is long-term slimness and health in a way where I don’t really have to think about it and I can do things with my life rather than consciously counting calories. So, if your goal is to win the biggest loser, or if you’re a professional athlete, need to make weight for an event, and you do not care about your health, just by one example, there was actually a survey done of Olympic athletes which said if you could take a substance which would guarantee you a gold medal and also guarantee that you would die in five years. Would you take it? I think like 80% of Olympic athletes said yes because their goal isn’t long-term health. Their goal is winning the Olympics. So we have to get clear on our goals. If your goal is to win The Biggest Loser with no respect for anything else, please starve yourself, take amphetamines, and all that other stuff. I don’t endorse that, but that’s the way to win the Biggest Loser. That’s why I don’t like that show. If your goal is to be healthy long term, we need to take a much different and much saner approach. And when people say, “Hey, just eat less and exercise more, just to unpack the absurdity of that advice, imagine that you were watching a news broadcast after one of your favorite sporting events and your team, let’s say it’s football. I live in Seattle, so let’s say it’s the Seattle Seahawks to make it a concrete example. Let’s say that we’ve got the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks on the news talking about why they lost the Super Bowl a couple years ago. So sad. We’re like we’re ready for the coach to give us the answer. The coach gets on stage. The lights are flashing. They say, “Coach, what happened? And the coach goes, “Well, you know what? We didn’t score enough, and the other team scored too much. And then he walked off the stage as if that was a valid answer. Now let’s be clear: what he said is true. The reason the Seattle Seahawks lost the Super Bowl a couple years ago is because they didn’t score enough points, and the other team scored too many. But the real question we’re asking is why did that happen, and how do we prevent it from happening in the future? So telling someone who’s struggling with their weight, “Hey, there’s more energy in your body than can be burnt off, isn’t particularly helpful. What we need to understand is why some people can eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full and treat themselves occasionally and stay slim for their entire life, whereas some people do the exact same thing and get fat. Right? It’s not like if you go to an elementary school and the slim kids are over in the corner eating kale and seltzer water and the heavy kids are overeating fast food. They’re all eating fast food, but some remain slim. So we need to understand the underlying biology and treat this like a scientific issue rather than a moral issue.

Zack Arnold: Well, and when it comes to science, I know that I’m sure plenty of people are listening right now saying, “Well, this all sounds well and good, and anecdotes are great, but what what kind of science do you have to back this up? We’re not going to go into any of that because we don’t have the time. But luckily, you have 314 pages of the science that proves this. And I’m a big fan of science and analysis, and not just thinking, “Oh, this sounds good, so I’m going to try it. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “I really want to know the science behind this-you’ve done your homework. You have 314 pages of it in your book, and I don’t want to hit that anymore. But I really want people to understand the theoretical concepts behind

Jonathan Bailor: This. I saw a great tweet. I don’t remember; it was a couple of months ago. I have no idea where I saw it, but it’s one of the best encapsulations of why this doesn’t work. And maybe you can expand on this a little bit more. But it said the reason that calorie counting doesn’t work is the assumption that it’s a thermodynamic process. When in actuality, it’s a biochemical process. So I want to talk a little bit about that and go into your idea of the set point, so people understand why they have such a hard time regulating their weight when they’re doing the eat less, exercise more philosophy. Just to avoid needless internet debates, because I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and if if one if people are arguing two different points, there’ll never be a resolution, right? So if a vegan is really at the end of the day arguing about what is the most humanely way to treat animals, and another person is arguing about what’s the best way to lose fat, like we’re talking about two totally different things. So, if one person on the internet is saying, “If you eat less and exercise more, like last week I starved myself and I lost weight, so don’t tell me that’s not right. They are right. What we’re talking about is the difference between short-term weight loss and long-term slimness and health. So the reason that starvation will only work for short-term weight loss is that your body, your brain, your hormones isn’t a passive repository of calories. Right? Calories were originally used in a scientific context of a bomb kilometer and was not used in a biological system. They were used in closed systems rather than open systems. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about science. So the body, the assumption with calorie counting is that if you eat less, the body just says, “Oh, okay. So that’s 500 fewer calories. I guess I need to burn 500 calories worth of fat. That has been clinically proven false in every single study that’s ever tested it, ever. What happens when you eat less is the body tries to again balance you out, so you will automatically burn less. Every singles you want science. This is a very difficult statement to say, and there’s not many things you can say it about. But here’s one of them. Every single scientific study ever that precisely monitored calories in and calories out has disproven the calorie math theory of weight loss, meaning that if people ate like 100 fewer calories per day, and you say, “Oh, in 35 days they must have lost a pound because there’s 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, that has been proven wrong by every single scientific experiment that has ever tested it, and the reason for that is, is when you eat less, your body does three things. First thing it does is it burns fewer calories. This is why when you starve yourself, you get cold and cranky and tired. You don’t have enough energy, so your body runs slower. The second thing that happens is your body starts to figure out ways to burn fewer calories long term because it thinks it’s starving, so it’s going to burn off muscle tissue. You want to get fat long term, burn off your muscle tissue. It’s not a good thing, and that’s why people yo-yo diet. So first you slow down, second you burn off muscle tissue, and then, if there still is a calorie deficit, you will burn some fat. But the problem is, is if you ever stop starving yourself, which you will because hunger is not sustainable long term. It’s a little bit like saying just go to the bathroom less. It’s not something you can do long term. When you start eating a normal amount, you will then regain all of the weight and more because your metabolism has slowed down and you have less lean muscle tissue. And that’s why the issue really isn’t weight loss. Like I would bet 99.99% of people who have ever tried to lose weight have lost weight. However, the statistics show that 95.4% of those people will then gain all the weight back and more because starvation dieting actually will cause weight loss short term, but then will cause more fat gain long term for the reasons I just mentioned.

Zack Arnold: Well, one area, and I know you’re the expert, but I’m gonna have to disagree with you adamantly. The diets don’t work because they do work for one group of people, and that’s the people selling them.

Jonathan Bailor: Well, yes, they work in that context for sure.

Zack Arnold: So there’s a reason that this idea is perpetuated because there’s this giant chasm between science and research and the information that we as the public are receiving, and I know this is something you are very very passionate about.

Jonathan Bailor: Well, and Zack, I don’t want to interrupt you too directly here, but one thing, just if you’ve noticed this recently, the biggest diet selling company in the world, Weight Watchers actually doesn’t really say that they’ll help you lose weight anymore. Like if you look at their new marketing campaign, they’ve basically internalized that it doesn’t work, and now they’re saying like it’s about the whole you. I mean, they’ve they’ve basically updated their entire marketing campaign to be like this really isn’t going to help you lose weight long term, but that’s okay. Look at all these pretty graphics, and Oprah’s happy! Yay!

Zack Arnold: The thing about things like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig is that the whole process is built on math. It’s all about points and math and adding things up. And we were not meant to do math at the dinner table. That’s a saying that I’ve taken from you. I mean, like that-that’s craziness.

Jonathan Bailor: That’s exactly right, and we can’t do math at the dinner table. The idea that you have to count calories is absurd for at least three reasons. Here’s three anecdotes for you, but they’re also based in science. One is, if calorie counting was required to maintain a healthy weight, how did that work prior to anyone knowing what a. Calorie was, which in the mainstream was about the 1970s, and even in the scientific community, we didn’t know what a calorie was until the mid 1800s. So energy balance somehow worked out prior to us knowing what a calorie is. Anecdote number two: every other species on the planet somehow is able to avoid an obesity epidemic without having the mental capacity to conceptualize what a calorie is. Like if a cow is left to its own devices and not fed starch and is just allowed to eat what it eats in nature, it will be lean. That’s the difference between grass-fed beef and corn-fed beef. Grass-fed beef is lean. Corn-fed beef is fatty because it’s not eating the right kinds of food. It’s not eating any more food. It’s eating the wrong quality of food. The third anecdote is, if you do need to count calories, why is that the only thing you need to count? Like, why don’t you have to consciously monitor vitamin C in and vitamin C out? Or what about like any of the essential amino acids or any of the essential fatty acids? Like, do you have any idea how many milligrams of omega three fatty acids you consumed yesterday or defecated out? No, but somehow your body is able to make do. How does that work? Well, and I think that that’s that’s an excellent point. And I this is a rabbit hole that seriously, if I had you for two to three hours, you and I just wouldn’t shut up. We would just go on forever and ever and ever. But I know that our time is very very precious. So again, I want to implore people if they want to dive deeper, go into the book. But where I want to go now, with the remaining time that we have, is explaining what are the four things that people should be focusing on if they decide

Zack Arnold: I’m done counting calories, I’m done worrying about Weight Watchers, I’m done worrying about points. What should I be focusing on? And this is the core of your entire Sane Solution program.

Jonathan Bailor: The term Sane is an acronym for when I was doing all the research that created all these things over the past 15 years. I found that science had shown clearly that there are four things that determine the quality of food, which is really the thing we need to manipulate if we want long-term results. It’s not about quantity; it’s about quality. The S stands for satiety. This is how quickly food or calorie fills us up and keeps us full. And there is absolutely no ambiguity in the scientific community or in just anecdote personal experience that certain calories fill us up more than others. By way of example, think about Pringles. Pringles tell you, and we all know, once you pop, you can’t stop. So if you sit down and you eat Pringles, those calories actually make you hungrier, so it is pretty clear that certain calories are more satisfying than others. The A insane is aggression. This has to do with the hormonal response the calories cause. Again, this is not a debatable thing. Anyone who has any knowledge of biology will tell you, for example, that sugar causes different hormones to be released than protein, which causes different hormones to be released than fat. It’s just a biological fact. The third factor is N or nutrition, and again, we all know, right? Different sources of calories provide different essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and the like. So calories and food sources are not the same in the amount of essential nutrition they provide, and then the E is efficiency. This is the least well known in the mainstream, but again, perfectly well established in the biological community, which is that the different sources of calories, from a macronutrient perspective-protein, carbohydrate, and fat-are processed very, very differently by the body and stored as fat, very more or less efficiently by the body. Specifically, protein isn’t a fuel source for your body. Your body can’t burn protein for fuel. Your body, if protein is overconsumed, would take the protein, would convert it into amino acids, and then would have to take amino acids and convert them into glucose, and would then have to take the glucose and convert it into triglyceride, and then would have to take the triglyceride and store it in your fat cells. That’s a very inefficient process. So where you get your calories from a macronutrient perspective can have a great impact on your weight, simply because those calories are processed more or less efficiently by the body. So that’s sane, society aggression, nutrition, and efficiency. And to simplify it all, you can find the sanest calories in the world by looking at three factors: water, fiber, and protein. As a general rule of thumb, the higher something is in water, fiber, and protein, the saner it is, and the lower it is in water, fiber, and protein, the more insane it

Zack Arnold: Is. Okay. So that having been said, now that I know that the whole eat less, exercise more doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and we’re talking about looking at the quality of foods, I want to talk a little bit about this study that you talk about, where you have people eating the same number of calories in two groups and looking at who gains weight and who loses weight. Can you go into that very briefly?

Jonathan Bailor: These are called isocaloric studies, and they essentially make. I’ve stopped participating in internet discussions about whether or not certain things are true, because at the end of the day, people are going to believe what they’re going to believe, and science is clear. If you take people and you feed one group of people 1200 calories from source A, and you feed another group of people. 1200 calories from source B, and you observe different weight loss results-a calories and a calorie-and that’s not-it’s called isocaloric studies. There’s been dozens and dozens and dozens of them done, and every single time they’re done, you take the same number of calories, you feed it to one group, you take the exact same number of calories, and we’re talking like metabolic ward. We’re measuring this stuff precisely, and you see different impacts on the body, and that’s why at this point, I mean, there’s books coming out, there’s articles being published in the New York Times. The concept that a calorie isn’t a calorie and where you get them from being a scientific fact is is pretty much just established now.

Zack Arnold: So then, basically, you’re talking about like with these two groups, like you could feed one group 2000 calories of Krispy Kreme donuts, and another group 2000 calories exactly to the calorie. Give them grass-fed beef and vegetables and carrots and sweet potatoes and all organic. What basically what you’re clearly saying is that a calorie is not a calorie.

Jonathan Bailor: I’m saying you’ll get different results with those two groups of people, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. And I think that’s we need to speak very precisely to avoid nonsense. Because what people will say is they’ll say, “Okay, Zack, that’s a great point, but what about that guy, that professor, some professor, every five years will go on a 1200 calorie McDonald’s only diet and be like, ‘Look, it’s all about calories. Nobody is disagreeing that if you eat, if you starve yourself on junk, you can temporarily lose weight. Truth, I agree with that 100% The other thing, which is irrefutable, is if you take 2000 calories of butter and you feed it to someone, and you take 2000 calories of sugar and feed it to someone, you will observe every single time, 100% of the time, significantly different biological results. So I’m glad that you brought that up. Actually, the idea of butter versus sugar, because that’s the other myth that I wanted to talk about briefly. That I know that you’re also adamant about the way that I am is that fat is not the enemy anymore. People are like, “Well, that’s crazy. Like

Zack Arnold: I have my, I can’t believe it’s not butter, and I’m eating my my gluten free crackers all day long, and I’m having my whole grain, you know, wheat bread, but they’re not realizing that fat can actually burn fat. The

Jonathan Bailor: Key thing to understand about fat, and this is one of the toughest metaphors to get out of people’s minds, because it is intuitive, right? The concept that if I don’t want fat to be stored in my body, just don’t eat fat, and that that’s like the most intuitive thing in the world. However, sometimes we can’t trust our intuition. Like in most areas of the country, if you look out your window, it really does look like the Earth is flat. And if it wasn’t flat, I mean, wouldn’t the people on the bottom fall off? Just and the world certainly can’t be spinning. I mean, I don’t see everything spinning outside. And if it was spinning, wouldn’t we fly off it? So we can’t. You know, we can’t always trust our intuition. So just like you know, eating green vegetables doesn’t make you green. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. What eating high quality-and that’s the important thing-it’s not just about like go eat processed meats with a bunch of nitrates in them that are high in fat. Eating high quality natural sources of fat, what that does is that actually trains your body to fuel itself with fat versus fueling itself with sugar. Your body’s got to fuel itself some way, and its two primary fuel sources are fat or sugar. Now, the cool thing about training your body to burn fat is that if you have a shortage of calories coming in, then your body will say, “Hmm, I need more energy, and I’m used to burning fat, and I’m good at burning fat. So why don’t I take these calories off my hips, and I don’t actually need to take in any more calories through my lips. So, by getting the majority of your energy from healthy whole food fat sources, you will actually train your body. It’s called becoming fat adapted to burn fat as energy rather than requiring sugar to fuel itself. Because the only way you’re going to get that sugar is by craving it over and over and over again, and overeating junk food.

Zack Arnold: Well, after hearing all of this, if I were a first-time listener that has spent the last 20 years trying to lose weight by doing the “eat less, exercise more” philosophy, I would be thinking, “All right, this is fairly convincing. I’m going to get the calorie myth, and I’m going to read more about the science behind this. But now I want to go to the next level, and I just want somebody to tell me what the heck to do. There’s so much information. There’s so many steps. There’s so many directions I could go, and you fortunately have solved this problem. So can you talk a little bit more about your sane solution program and how that works? The

Jonathan Bailor: Good news is that on the other side of huge neurobiological and gastroenterological and biochemical complexity is common sense simplicity, and we’ve actually got a free blueprint at sanesolution.com where you can get this all written down and print it out for you. Again, at sanesolution.com, and then just click on free blueprint in the header. And what we want to do is focus on four primary food groups. The first is non-starchy vegetables. The vast majority of food that you eat should be non-starchy vegetables. Second on that list is nutrient-dense proteins. So these are generally going to be humanely raised animals and wild-caught seafood. There’s also some low-sugar sources of dairy that can work. Third is going to be whole food. Fats. This is where you’re going to get the majority of your calories, but in terms of volume, it’s third on the list, and then fourth is low fructose fruits. So these are the fruits that give you the most good stuff and the least stuff you don’t need, and which can actually be harmful, such as fructose. So again, that’s in order. If you eat in order, non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits. You will heal your metabolism, radically reduce your risk of all major diseases, and you will reprogram your body to burn rather than store fat.

Zack Arnold: Well, the last thing that I want to send people to that I think could be incredibly beneficial, and I have created a link for this at fitnessimpost.com/sane. So it’s fitnessandpost.com/san-e. This is an actual webinar that you’ve created. So this goes beyond just here’s a document to get you started. You have hours of free information for people, correct?

Jonathan Bailor: That’s exactly right. Yeah, this is our four-hour. It’s a complete half-day masterclass. It’s actually we took our live seminar that we do here in Seattle, and we created an online version of it so that people all around the world could experience it free of charge. And during that, it’s actually going to provide an interactive exercise. Well, we’re actually going to start a personalized program for you based on these four food groups that I just described, and also factor in 11 different lifestyle characteristics, like whether your parents were heavy or not, what kind of medication you’re taking, and we’re actually going to get you started not only with a bunch of science and a bunch of inspiration, but we will actually start. You will walk away with the perfect start to a perfect personalized sane weight loss plan. Once

Zack Arnold: Again, fitnessimpost.com/sane, or you can go to thesanesolution.com. I cannot recommend these resources enough, and I cannot thank you enough for being on this show with the extremely limited amount of time that you have in your day. This has meant the world to me, so thank you so much for being on the show, Jonathan.

Jonathan Bailor: Thanks, brother. You too.

Zack Arnold

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Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work

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