I know we left him like you talked about left. And then there's some people who are deficient in leptin. So leptin, it's another hormone your fat secretes, and it helps you feel satiated. Right. And so when we have healthy levels of fat, we're overall pretty satiated. Of course, we get hungry at meal time. But overall, you're not constantly seeking food because you have high levels of left him because you have a normal fat layer. Once people start to lose a lot of weight, they also have lower levels of levels. And once you get to lower leptin levels, you actually start feeling a lot more hungry. And it's a concern in your background. So people who lost 10% of their weight or so, they're constantly looking for food right now. They'll always hungry and when they study them, they put more, more food on their plates and they feel hungrier after they've just eaten, In effect, The parts of the brain that that have to do with satiation are very low. When we do have MRI images on them and parts of the brain that have to do with willpower and self-control are diminished. It's a very interesting thing. And this is part of your body's coordinating response to want to put fat back on. So it's not just hormones, it's not just one like we talked about women, but for everybody, male, female, any age, as you start to lose weight, your body goes through this effort to regain it and one is your appetite. But secondly also controls your muscles, right. And how your metabolism is leading controls, thyroid. So you also will burn fewer calories as you start to lose weight. Doctors, kitchen recipes, health, lifestyle before we actually get into it. So I work as a doctor. So clinically, obviously I'm interested in nutritional medicine and and everything else in that arena, but I'm really interested in how people come to study and be, you know, passionate about the nutrition area. And your background is fascinating because your scientist, you know, trained as a biochemist, you Ph.D., but you've also got an MBA from Wharton. You used to work for McKinsey and Company. Like tell us a bit about you as a person and and your history in your career. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess my family was always kind of academically oriented, if you will, right? Kind of, you know, high achievers. My dad had gone to Harvard. He was a chemist as well. And so he was a Ph.D. in chemistry, too. And I guess I was just interested in it. I always loved the science of I thought I would be a doctor for a while until I realize how much training the decade of residency time was We've got to get and I get to work. So I was always interested in that from the very beginning, and I was interested in the business side of it too, which is why, you know, the MBA and McKinsey and I've always worked on biotechnology or to drug development diagnostics as well. And so but at the same time, I had my own battles with facts, right? And I gained very easily. And what am the number of diets? And they didn't work the way they did for other people. Sometimes I'd even gain weight on a diet. They had me eating much more than I usually eat. And there was that philosophy for a while to remember about. You have to eat more to burn calories, otherwise you slow your metabolism. And it didn't work. And I was about to go on another diet, try another form of dieting. And I thought, Why am I constantly following someone else's advice? I said, There's something amiss with my body. It's gaining weight fast. It's losing it very slowly. I have to figure out what this is. And I remember when I was starting my Ph.D. program, someone told me that unless you have a burning question, don't go into research because you won't like it. And maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't I didn't go to research as a career because, you know, I didn't have a burning question. But I think when it came to my own body and what's going on and why can't I lose weight, I had this burning, burning question of what is going on. And so it propelled me for five years then to research fat. You know, what is fat? How did we lose it? Were all the components involved in gaining and losing fat? And I started learning things that were just really shocking, right when I got to the real biology of fat. And it's that fat isn't just fat. It's not what we all think of it as. We think of it as blubber. It's unsightly. We need to get rid of it at all costs. It's a detriment to our health. It has such a negative reputation. But if you actually study fat, it's critical. It's not even just storing calories. It's doing so much more than just storing calories, right? It's secreting hormones that it primarily makes. It's the only source of some of these hormones, and it's just vital to our overall health. So in some ways, I had a whole new respect for fat, like, oh, my goodness, how have I been treating my fat right? Just the way we talk about how we treat our hearts or our lungs or, you know, how we work out. It was like I've been abusing it because I've been like sometimes eating too much, too little, losing weight, going back and forth. And my fat been there this whole time, trying to stay steady and help me. At the same time. I learned about a lot of wily tricks that fat has, right? And I wrote about all of those all these different ways you can gain fat that no one ever talks about or knows about. So for me it was just a personal mission. But I use all of my scientific training, right, or for this mission to really uncover it. And then then write about it in a way that I hope is accessible to people. Right? It's digestible. It's not like a scientific text, but it's stories that people can get through. Yeah, I think the story element is is really important. You do that really well in your book actually by looking at people like Randy, and I think Kathy is one of them. And you know, and relating the science behind their journeys. And I agree with you, I think fat needs almost like a rebrand. Yeah. And I love talking about science and medicine through the lens of business sometimes, because I actually also did a master's in business and entrepreneurship during my medical degree that not a lot of people actually know about. I never really talk about it that much. And I think it's fascinating to have that lens of sales and marketing and entrepreneurship with science because I think we need to be able to, you know, get used to those different tools, especially when it comes to communicating science to the wide audience, which you've done so well. And the other thing I wanted to say actually on the first part of your book is you talk a little bit about your own story that I think a lot of people can relate to in the way of abstinence. And I think you said that you were age 12 when you went on your first day, is that right? Yeah, I gain weight very easily. And I gained before them. But I think you're on puberty is when it really became more significant, right? It was more visible. And so, yeah, that was my first diet, you know, I yo right after that I remember losing about £10 and, you know, I was never like grotesquely obese, but I always had like £15. And I think after kids and all that, that it was more like 30, right. It was more but yeah, around £10 when I was 12. And it just set me on this path of like gaining, losing, gaining, losing. So I'd been dieting for a really long time. And then I think the older I got, the more some of those tricks didn't work anymore. And that's what's at the end of there's so much business around, you know, like the the diet industry. It's all about selling you a dogma, selling you a philosophy. And the louder it's gotten, the more that business has gotten bigger. There's a loud voices coming at you and they make you feel stupid if you're not following this diet, right? Certainly you are doing something wrong. And it's usually not like that. Right? It's very individual. And so it sends you on this confusing message of, Oh, I'm supposed to be doing this, I'm supposed to be doing that. And the whole time it's either working or it's not or you're gaining. And so, yes, I own up and down a lot and one of a number of different diets. My old tricks weren't working, and it sent me to this like plateau where just it felt like nothing was working. So that's how I got there. So, yeah, you took we talked a bit about rebranding fat. Why don't we talk about the different types of fat first? Actually, because I know I've got a few things that I definitely want to talk to you about. Four things in particular. But why don't we start off by talking about the different types of fat and how they relate to each other? Yeah, and this is an important one too, because, you know, there's different types of fat. They have different functions in your body. And I feel like we're just at the tip of really understanding fat. And the more research gets done on fat, the more we're going to learn about what it's actually doing. But you know, there's that white fat, that white fat that you're the time you want to lose when you want to lose weight. Right? It's right underneath your skin. It's in your buttock area, your legs, right. Maybe underneath your you know, in your abdomen right there on your skin. But then there's also brown fat. And this is fascinating because brown fat is around the clavicle areas around your spine, right in your heart area when you're young and it actually burns calories to produce heat. Right. So it's heat generating material. And then there's beige fat that's been discovered more recently, and that's fat that can turn brown when exercise. So you have a capacity to create more brown fat that would then burn calories. And then there's visceral fat as well. And that's the fat underneath the stomach wall. I think people are more aware of this now. That's the fat that tends to get very inflamed, correlated with diabetes and correlated with heart disease. And so you can have fat, right? You can actually be a bit overweight and be healthy if you're fat in the right place, if it's not in your particular area, if it's in your legs and your arms, you're better off than if it's underneath your stomach wall, in your gut. And so there's the different types of fat and they do different things as well. So it's important to know about that. Yeah, the beige fat is something that I've only just come across recently and how that relates to brown fat. So there is a way in which you can change your lifestyle to generate more brown fat. Is that correct For that? Is that is, that is so. So exercise is supposed to be something that turns up beige, fat, brown, white. Do that to the enzymes and the brown fat. And I know some people do this. Actually, my husband started doing this after I read about it and wrote about it. Is that exposure to cold right will activate brown fat as well. And I know we had a pool and he starts swimming in a cold pool every morning. He's always a thin guy, but he actually got really skinny doing this and he was eating like a force. Right. So whereas if you can stand it, this can actually help you. I know what? I've tried it. It made me hungry all day. And so it had a counter effect and so I didn't. Plus, I hate cold water. In the morning I wake up, but it works. And so, yeah, you get and you know, it's really this early stages of all that research. There might be more ways. I know with mice they've tried injecting brown fat into white fat. That has also worked. There's also, you know, very lots of interesting studies in mice, you know, has limited applicability to us sometimes. But yeah, the the different types of fat and how you use that and there's also something just about body mass. There was one article I read recently where your body wants to maintain a certain mass. So when you get to a certain amount of fat, it's trying to stay that way. And there's this one experiment where they put like a weight. They saw it into the abdomen of a mouse and those mice lose weight faster, not just from carrying that around, but because their body thinks that they've got this mass and they want to get back to homeostasis and they want to get back weight. So and this is another important thing to know is once you have that amount of fat, you can lose it. You can I my book is not to discourage anybody, even though I write about all the different ways to get fat, it just takes longer. There's different tricks you have to use depending on what stage you're in, depending on how stubborn your fat is. We all have a different fat blueprint. So I write about it and I have a course on that now. And you have to understand your own fat blueprint, right? The genetics that go into it, your hormone level, your age, your gender plays them a lot as well. And once you understand that, you can get a sense of how stubborn your fat is, how tough of a fight it's going to be and how hard you have to go with the dieting effort. Right. There are some people that can have to cut out carbs, maybe exercise a bit. They can lose their weight. But then there's other people. We're we're now talking about intermittent fasting or full day fasting. Right. And exercise as well, you know, down the road. So know what you're in for because I think that'll help people get on a diet and stay on a diet and not be frustrated that that diet's not working for me. Therefore I'm going to stop. There's nothing I can do about this. There's absolutely something you can do about it. It might be a harder effort for some versus others. Yeah, I think and this is something that I think hopefully people will gather after listening to this and also after reading the book that the predominant dichotomous thinking in the fitness industry really does need to be recognized and adjusted to appreciate just how varied the mechanisms are behind weight gain and weight loss. We've, you know, been fed this dietary dogma of calories in, calories out. And I think what you've done quite nicely is discuss all the multiple ways in which that's just not true and how you can try and personalize it for for you as well. And you also have a curious sort of section on the health of sumo wrestlers that I found particularly interesting. I had no idea that. I mean, I knew that a lot of calories, like 8000 calories, but I didn't know they used to nap after eating to try and increase weight gain, but also the types of fat that they have as a result of their intense exercise regime. Can you speak about that for a bit? Yeah. And that gets into the different types of fat we have right now are wrestlers. We all know they're they're obese, right there of these. But the thing is they they exercise a lot, too, right? They have 6 hours or so of intense exercise every day. And so there's a hormone that fat releases called adiponectin. And it's interesting. And Fat is the primary producer of Adiponectin. And what Adiponectin does is a guide fat in your bloodstream, right to the healthy deposits of fat. So it will put it in your arms, it'll put it in your legs, your buttocks right underneath your skin, on your abdomen there. It'll keep it away from your visceral area. Right. So it's almost like it's telling fat where it goes, like saying fat, come to me. Come to where you belong. And when we exercise, it's actually produces more adiponectin our fat cells will eat more of it. So sumo wrestlers exercise for 6 hours a day and so they have high levels of adiponectin. And so what that does is it causes the fat to go to the healthier deposits of fat. So they have it on their legs or buttocks or arms, the belly, they don't have it in the visceral section. So are CT scans underneath the stomach wall. There's not a lot of fat. And so they're metabolically healthy, believe it or not. Right. They don't have high levels of heart disease and diabetes or things like that. But interestingly, when they retire and they're no longer exercising all the time, they get metabolically unhealthy fast because they no longer have that neck. Then they start to get visceral fat and they just start to get unhealthy. So it's very interesting. You can be fat and fit, right? I mean, it's best not to be overweight, but if you're going to have some extra pounds as long as you have it in the right deposits of your fat, you can be you can be okay metabolically. And, you know, the thing is, though, it's exercise and it's not a light amount of exercise. It's like really about six, 7 hours a week of exercise. Right. Some aerobics, some intense weightlifting. So it's not an easy thing to do either. But it's possible if you're really struggling with those extra £15 or so. Mhm. Yeah. The vast majority of, of listeners to this podcast, we have hundreds of thousand listeners every week, but the vast majority of them are female. So and this is something I certainly see clinically, but certainly I hear from a lot more women and whether that's because women, as in a sweeping generalization or a bit more conscious about the way they look or their weight in particular, or whether it's because some of the things that you discussed in your book, I'm not too sure about is is fat more likely to be a problem for women? Your entire female audience is now screaming, Yes, it's yeah and no. I always noticed it too. And so I did a whole chapter in the book about male versus female and how females gain weight versus men. So women that are always fatter, even from probably before birth, right? When they measure girl babies, surprisingly, they're fatter than boy babies, almost like right after birth. So they pack weight on more. And there's all kinds of reasons thought to be about this new one is that there's something called nutrient partitioning, like a forced savings program, if you will, is where you eat a certain amount, say, 100 calories. Some of it will go into your fat almost no matter what your body partitions, a certain amount of the fat versus other tissues. Women partition a bit more into fat versus men. But then there's all kinds of other reasons. Some are obvious to me. One is that, you know, men have more muscle mass, more bone mass, more of those tissues that burn calories versus women. You know, women also, they compensate a lot more for fat to their bodies react differently as well. When they when they exercise, they feel good. They burn off five, 600 calories or so. So good to exercise. They actually produce more ghrelin in their stomach. And ghrelin is a hormone that causes hunger. So women are hungrier after exercise and they tend to compensate more when they study. They're really looking to buffet men and women. After that kind of exercise, women will put more on their plates, right? They'll want to eat for longer after exercise. And so that's an important thing for women to know. You know, either exercise late at night and just go to bed or really watch your eating after you exercise. You know, And obviously, it's it's the hormones, right? Testosterone is fantastic. Fat burning hormones. I know people who do hormone therapy, right. Some women who take some testosterone, they burn fat quickly. They can get through this. And it's not always advisable. You need to talk to your physician to understand the risk of that, but also like transgender. So so women going to men, right, starting to take more testosterone blocking estrogen. They lose weight rapidly. Testosterone is a very good fat burner. And so that's an interesting one. And then, you know, also with age, you know, you think we lose testosterone with these estrogen, with age, and that that factors in as well. And so there's there's a whole, you know, a whole number of reasons why it and even the fat distribution will change as well like with women and men. So we have receptors on our fat for estrogen, testosterone and growth hormone. And as our hormones change with age, so do the receptors of the receptor distribution. Right. And so you'll start to get other places that you didn't have before. But there's just a lot of differences between men and women in particular. So so women are somewhat designed to be a little bit heavier and they they gain they actually utilize fat more. So after exercise, we talked about that just to follow up, they'll actually utilize for fat more. They'll burn more fat during exercise, but they'll get on at 2 to 3 times the rate that men do as well. So although our bodies, you know, use fat, they'll burn it. They also really want to keep it and they want to make sure must make sure you have it. So it's an extra battle that women have and is is due to hormones, is due to the tissue distribution is due to nutrient partitioning. It's due to our reaction, our bodies reaction to losing weight where nature doesn't really want that to happen. A number of reasons. I mean, one is that it's also a producer of estrogen or fat. And so menopausal women, that's when you start to gain the fat becomes very stubborn around menopause. And when one hypothesis is that your body is now relying on your fat for estrogen, your ovaries might slow down when they stop producing so much of it. And also leptin, Right. Estrogen leptin are very important for reproduction. If women go below a certain weight, they start, they stop menstruating. And there's these interesting studies about malnourishment in certain developing countries and the girls masturbate later or they don't menstruate regularly. Right. So there's nutrition and fats is linked to reproduction. And so we have a different battle. And especially in the menopause time. Right. That's when it's really tricky. That's when you're working and that's where you have to get a lot more clever about your fat. On the subject of gender reassignment, does that work the other way as well? So for men transitioning. Yes, women, yes, yes. They'll gain weight, right, Because they'll have testosterone blockers now and they'll start taking more estrogen. And I write about one in the book. It was very interesting because not only did I interview some and like now that they gain weight, but they also get more emotional. They also get more self-critical like so the behaviors are linked to our hormones as well. And so it's an interesting one. And there's certain health, of course, consequences related to that, but it's something that to be very watchful of, you know, for transgender and for anybody but the female gender is designed to have a bit more fat for a number of reasons. And when we try to take it off, nature doesn't like it and it wants to compensate. It'll make you hungrier. It'll, you know, pack it on faster than it will. So for women, it's a longer haul. And I think that's one thing we can observe anecdotally. And I know I've worked with a number of weight trainers, you know, for weight loss coaches, and they always say this like men can can take this awfully quick, like within a month they can be at their target weight. Whereas for women, it's longer. It's a more emotional journey. There's more tied emotionally to food than there is for men. Women also have more dichotomous thinking. So if I didn't, if I didn't, you do perfectly today, I failed and I might as well just go off my diet now. So there's a lot more emotional coaching for women in these weight loss programs. And so so women, you know, to to get through this really one is know that it's not easy. It's actually really hard. So when people are telling you it's supposed to be easy, especially if you have these male weight loss coaches that I've had from time to time. You're not in your battle, right? They are not experiencing what you are for women, depending on your age, your Herrmann, your dieting history. If you use your diet a lot, this is going to be very difficult, right? Pat yourself on the back. If you lose half a pound a week. Right. It can be that slow sometimes. And that's not failure. Right? That's still a win. It's going to take you much longer and you can't go off. You can't have as many cheat moments as other people can. So even just going off one day a week. Right. Can can really slow down weight loss and even stop it. So know where you are on the spectrum of weight loss, Right. What is your hardship going to be? And I actually have a course now that people can download where I try to help people diagnose, Right. How hard is your fat going to be to lose? And then once you know what you're in for, knowledge is really power. Really arm yourself, right? With what? With the knowledge about fact and the knowledge of what you're, you know, headed for prepping yourself will help you stay on it and help you through the endurance and then figure out what times you need to fast. I find fasting is really good for very stubborn fat. If you really having trouble with it and it doesn't have to be torturous, it doesn't have to be a three day fast. It can be intermittent, fast, right. For part of the day you stop eating right. I know for me what has worked and you have to experiment with this is stopping eating after about 3:00. Right. So it's like a 16 to 18 hour fasting day. Yes. It's hard to get through night. Yes, it is. But I do also learn is that your diet has to fit your personality. And so there's some diets are very restrictive, just like I don't know what 20 ingredients you can ever eat in your life. It takes a lot of food prep time. You always have to be ready with the special food, right? And they can work. Those diets can work for me. It's not my personality, it's not my lifestyle. So you have to find a diet that works for your lifestyle because you'll be on this for a long time. If you have stubborn fat, this could take a year, right? And longer. And once you find that, you have to stay on, so you have to like it enough. What I find with intermittent fasting is that I have more food latitude in the times I do eat right. So if there's something I'm really wanting right, if I really wanted this chocolate or, you know, half a cookie, whatever it is, I can have it and the world doesn't. And I still lose weight as long as I don't eat at night. So for my personality, right from my level of stubborn fat, that was just something that worked really well. Yeah. And you know, your fat is looking for ways to come back. And so, you know, somewhere in here which why we also talk about the way fat comes back because that's that's really critical because it also highlights the fact that you can't stop dieting necessarily. You might have to stay on this a really long time. Forever, possibly. And I think that's why like finding a sustainable option in which you can eat, that you enjoy and as convenient and as appropriate to your lifestyle is very, very important. But I think just pausing there a moment, I think it's fantastic. We're talking about the emotional aspect of eating and why that might be more important for women as well. The other element is I think a lot of people listening to this will just think, well, this is super unfair, right? So you call it if I'm female, I've got my nutrient partitioning is different. My response to exercise or my my ghrelin response to exercising to be hungry after exercise is different. The distribution of my fat is different. All these things appear to be conspiring against you and and basically are geared towards you, making you regain the fat. But the way I like to talk about it one on one anyway, it's harder to do it on a bigger platform, I guess. But it's a biological necessity, a necessity for you to have fat because we use fat for energy, for breast milk production. I say we not make, but breast milk production is what does a whole bunch of other important evolutionary biological mechanisms. Right. So so maybe reassessing why you put on fat can make us a little bit more accepting of the fact that fat isn't something that we should be ashamed of. Am I right in saying that. Everyone needs a healthy level of fat? So it's one of the the conversation needs to shift from get rid of fat at all costs. Fat is bad, too. We need to maintain a healthy level of fat and healthy fat, a healthy distribution. So you want fat and healthy deposits and you want a nice normal amount of it. That doesn't mean obesity is okay either, because that has a whole bunch of other health consequences. So actually too little fat or too much fat is not healthy. So if people get too little fat, there's a lot linked to your fat, right? So like brain size shrinks, like when they look at people with anorexia or people have defective fat, you can actually have genetically defective fat that is not producing all the hormones you need. Right. And so for for those those people, there's a number of problems. One is they don't mature. So the very underweight women, they don't menstruate. They they can't have children. And I know I talked to some reproductive specialists and they have to kind of coach these women to to start gaining weight. It's like ballerinas, gymnasts. I think they're all muscle, no fat, which is something that like bodybuilding and some of these weight loss companies they put up as as the Holy Grail, like this is what you should look like. But it's not right. You need to have like 22% fat or so if you get somewhere like 17, 18% for women, a lot of functions will stop and there's a lot of other things linked to healthy fat. So so another hormone that's really important that fat produces is leptin. And it's a primary producer of leptin. And leptin is linked to so many critical bodily functions. Right? So even your immune system is linked to your fat. So people with anorexia, if they start losing too much fat, the wound healing slows down, Right? Thyroid activity slows down. So your ability to generate heat and maintain homeostasis slows down, bones get thinner. This is really important for teenage girls. If they start losing too much weight, they don't they don't develop the same bone mass. And it's critical in that time of life because you can't go back. There's like a certain bone mass you start with in a time like that, you build up. So so that healthy weight, healthy level of fat is really important. And what we know biochemically is that fat and bone kind of talk to each other. They both release hormones, right so fast, releasing a hormone telling bone to get bigger. Bone actually releases some things, some hormones that like produce insulin that help fat get a little bigger. They depend on each other. And so it's really fascinating. And, you know, and like I said, even like for anorexics, their brains start actually shriveling, right? They start shrinking the volume goes down. So there's so many bodily functions linked to your fat. Think of that of how do I have healthy fat, a healthy level of fat, and I keep fat itself healthy. So there's all these campaigns for keep your lungs health healthy, you know, a healthy heart. You know how important it is. We actually need to campaign for healthy fat because it is that important of an organ. It's not just a tissue, it's not just blubber. So that will help you appreciate it and also appreciate for women, although we gain fat more readily, we tend to be healthier, right? So so one thing is that our bodies will clear nutrients out of our blood. We'll partition, will pack it away, we'll put it into our fat much more fast and quickly than a man will for men. They kind of float around a little bit longer a lot of the times. But it's a reason that men are more prone to heart disease, right? They're more prone to some of these other problems, some of those fats, nutrients and some of the positive factor depositing in liver and heart and other places they shouldn't be because their bodies are less efficient at putting those nutrients into fat where it actually belongs. For storage. So although you might have an extra five, £10 compared to what you think you should have or compared to a man, you're probably a little bit healthier for it. Right. So so there's reasons for all of this and the nature's quite efficient. I find that the matrix matrices to know what it wants to do and what's important for it to produce. So there's benefits at the same time, you know, especially during as we get to menopause, when we get to menopause, we really have to watch it because now some of these functions are starting to break down. The fact is getting a bit more out of control. You have to work harder at it. So respect your fat, but at the same time, know what fats tricks are and your body's mechanisms for keeping it on you, even making you gain and then really work hard, use endurance, right? Find a diet like and can stay on and don't get overly emotional about this. Right. This is not a sign of failure. If you're having trouble losing weight, it's not even a sign of failure. If you go off a diet and you have a sweets every now and then, it is completely normal and human. You have to accept that and accept that it's going to take perhaps longer to lose that weight. So if we stay rational about it, we stay factual about it. And in a way you can use your emotions, right, to to lose weight. I write about my own story at the last chapter, and I remember after reading all of this, I just felt mad, right? I felt really angry. Maybe this is an emotion some of your viewers have is like, but it gave me a certain kind of vengeance of I'm going to get this now that I know what you're about, that I know what to do, and I'm going to get this. And if you will refrain in those six months or so were I was like, no, I'm going to win. I'm going to win this. So use your emotions in that way, Right? Not just to sabotage yourself. Right. And flog yourself, but use it against this effort. Yeah. Convert that energy into something positive that's going to spur you forward. I love that. On to something that perhaps is less within our realm of control is this concept of viral obesity or viruses that can induce obesity, which I found fascinating. And again, something I don't think I would have believed ten years ago, but the curious story of Dr. Nicole down Under who gave up his practice in India, even though he had like three clinics and he like took a 90% pay cut to come and study in America like, it sounds amazing, but why did we talk about this concept of viruses potentially inducing obesity? It sounds bonkers. Yeah, it is. So it's like that can actually be contagious. Believe it or not, your fatness, how easily you gain weight can be contagious. So there are certain viruses that they're linked to. Fatness, and it's actually not so novel because I think, you know, in the past people knew that canine distemper virus cause fatness in mice. Researchers knew that. They knew that rats associated virus caused fatness in chickens. So, like, it's not that much of a leap then to think, well, these viruses can cause fatness in humans. And sure enough, they killed her. Andrew was studying this in India, and he noticed this s one virus that it was causing fatness in chickens, and he wondered if it could cause fatness humans, and finally makes his way to the U.S. because he really wants to make this his career to to study this. And you couldn't import that virus, this man, because of rules and regulations. But he did find a virus in the US 8036 that was actually linked to fatness in people. So people who have had a D 36 infection, they tend to be fatter, right? So they have a higher obesity rate, like I think it's like 20 to 30% higher probability of being obese than people who have not ever had the virus. And this virus, interestingly, it kind of works like glucose, right? It helps. Oh, sorry, like insulin, I meant to say. So it helps you absorb more glucose. It allows your body to create more fat molecules and ultimately more fat cells. And last I talked to our doctor director, he was actually doing some research to see if this could be, you know, kind of substitute for insulin because it's working very much the same, which is helping you internalize create more fat molecules. And then, you know, but like like we just talked about for women, it's helping you take nutrients out of your blood and putting it into your fat. So you just have to be more careful if you have this. And they did some very big studies, I think it was in the military, actually, where they they looked at everyone's blood types and genotypes, rather, and their fatness level. And sure enough, people who tested positive for 8036 had a higher preponderance of being fat. So there's all kinds of ways we can get fat. And that is the other part I write about, because they're little known. And I think with my own struggles, I couldn't figure out why. You know, I gain weight so much easier than people around me. That's one possibility. But it's not even that that's slim of a possibility. It turns out that the prevalence is a bit higher than we thought. There's bacteria in your gut as well as viruses that might be circulating, and depending on the bacterial distribution in your GI tract, you could be extracting more calories out of your food versus less. And there's ways to shape that fact that bacteria distribution, but you have to eat know the right way. But, you know, there's also genetics is really important. You know, gender like we talked about in age. Right. All of those really factor into how easy is it for you to get fat and find awareness of them. For one, it's good, especially if you're struggling because the dogma of the diet world is just that you're eating too much, that's all. Just cut out carbs. It's all you have to do a little paleo. Those things can help for sure, right? But but if you're still struggling or those those diets aren't working for you in your lifestyle, you now need to get more clever, need to know more is an eye opening to learn about all the different ways we can get fat and even that virus. Even if you've had that virus, it doesn't mean you have to be fat. And I do write about, you know, Randy in the book, who's someone who had the virus, couldn't understand why he had such a battle with weight. He goes into this experimental program with the children and finally figures out he's positive for this virus. He learns all about this virus. And he for him, it's eye opening. He's he's realized why he's had this problem with weight. His whole life. And he uses knowledge as power. Right. So now he's he's on a very strict diet. He's very thin now. Right. He runs every day. He's very careful about what he eats. And he says that I'm not part of the eating world. So he separates. There's the eating world. People can eat whatever they want when they want, and there's people who can't. And he's produce people who can't. So when he goes on a picnic with his family, they'll be eating pizza and hotdogs. He'll bring his boiled egg in his salad. He knows what his battle is. He knows his fat blueprint is, and he knows how to how to eat around it and maintain, you know, a slender body type now. But it's it's work and it's knowing. Right. What your body's about. Yeah, I think I mean, for a lot of people that might sound like super restrictive, but I think certainly in today's day and age when we live in an environment where we are surrounded by calorie rich, nutrient poor options, it's really important to know exactly how your body is going to react to that. And in the case of Randy, you know, someone who has this virus, it's really important to to be that bit strict with himself to prevent chronic disease in the future, balancing, obviously, you know, the negative consequences of too much preponderance psychologically on unhealthy eating and developing an unhealthy relationship with the 8036 being an adeno virus. I don't know if we can test for that in the UK at least, but I think the fact that the mechanisms that you describe in the book as increasing glucose uptake and the creation of fat by fatty acids is very interesting as it mimics some, some of the functions of insulin is one. I wonder if Doctor Nicole was looking at it as a replacement for insulin. Is that is that something he mentioned? He was he was in my last talk with them. He was working, you know, looking for partnerships to develop that, to see if it could be so. It would be an odd kind of contract, I guess you would inject 80, 36. Right. And I was like this in a way, it's gene therapy, right? It's yeah, yeah. And these genes in But then do you need less insulin? And I don't know if he got the funding he was looking for, but was an area of interest and you know, very interesting one. So, you know we'll see. But what we're a composite of all kinds of things. We're not just human. When you get down to it. Right, with the bacteria and viruses, some human cells as well. And so we're this big walking entity. And yeah, it's an interesting thought. And I know we left him like you talked about left. And then there's some people who are deficient in leptin. So leptin it's another hormone your fat secretes and it helps you feel satiated. Right? And so when we have healthy levels of fat, we're overall pretty satiated. Of course, we get hungry at meal time and all that much. But overall, you're not constantly food because you have high levels of leptin, because you have a normal fat layer. Once people start to lose a lot of weight, they also have lower leptin levels. And once you get to lower leptin levels, you actually start feeling a lot more hungry and it's a constant in your background. So people who lost 10% of their weight or so, their constantly looking for food that they'll always hungry and when they study them, they put more, more food on their plates and they feel hungrier after they've just eaten, in effect, the parts of their brain that that have to do with satiation are very low. When we do MRI images on them and parts of the brain that have to do with willpower and self-control are diminished. Right. So it's a very interesting thing. And this is part of your body's coordinated response to want to put fat back on. So it's not just hormones. It's not just rallying like we talked about women, but for everybody, male, female, any age, as you start to lose weight, your body goes through this effort to regain it. And one is your your appetite. But secondly, it also controls your muscles. Right. And how your metabolism is leading controls, thyroid. So you also will burn fewer calories as you start to lose weight, 22% fewer calories than someone who didn't have to lose weight. So if someone is 150, naturally never have to lose weight to get there. Someone was 175. They lost £25 to get to 150. The person to lose weight, they get to £150 is 22% fewer calories than the person who's £150. Naturally, Right? So this tells you why it's important to find that diet you really like, because you might be on it for a very long time. That results, right? It's not necessarily temporary right that that caloric penalty you get for losing weight. It's been studied for six years. It doesn't go away for everybody in that six year time frame. So for some people, they might be able to get back and eat a little bit more equally to the person who's naturally £150. Some people don't always have to eat 22% less. Right? So, again, find a diet that works for your lifestyle that you like. You might have to be on this forever. And ultimately what's really important is deciding what you want, right? So you have to really want to be healthy and thin in shape if you don't want it and you're going to be flippant about it, you're going to snack and you're going to eat all over the place, and then you want you want to achieve it, and then all you're doing is kind of flogging yourself, feeling like a failure, right? It's just more debilitating towards your willpower. So if you want it, you can get it. But know that there's there's work that has to be done just like, you know, a job, right. Or making money or any other achievement in your life. And you'll have to stay on that day to day throughout your life. But it's all possible, even though we talk about viruses and all these problems and how easy it is to gain weight, every one of these has a solution. Yeah. On the subject of microbes, you mentioned the differences and the microbiota there and the impact on fat ingestion as well as how that's partitioned. There was a an elegant study, I believe, from Washington University, where they looked at germ free mice and then mice that had bacteria. And they found this this sort of I think it's kind of counterintuitive. I whenever I come across this study, it always makes me rethink my knowledge of the microbiota and how the bacteria in mice were causing fat storage. And or maybe I am probably boss advising you or so maybe you could describe exactly what happened in this in this study and what we could take away from how bacteria cause fat storage and how we partition it. Yeah, it's interesting. So they had germ free mice, right? So they had some maestro in this bacterial free environment, so a very sterile environment. So they didn't really have a lot of bacteria in their gut. And they compare that to the mice that do when they grow up in a normal environment and they have bacteria, but the germ free mice, they don't absorb as many calories out of their gut. So so the bacteria in our gut, in our intestines is actually helping us break down foods and absorb foods and then convert those to fat ultimately, or to whatever our body needs as a germ free. They could eat more and they were thinner, and yet they had a lower metabolism, whereas the the mice that were in the normal typical environment, they had to eat 30% less to be at that same weight. They actually they weren't even at the same weight. They 30% less, but they were 50% had to have 50% more fat. So bacteria had such an effect. It actually helps us break down our food and digest that helps us break down polysaccharides and turn it into glucose, basically. And they did even have a higher metabolism. The ones that grow up in the normal kind of bacteria environment that we all that we all have. And so it's doing a lot. And there's different schools of bacteria. So some bacteria actually does this much more efficiently. It breaks down starches and turns it into glucose. And there's others that get more pass as waste. And what they learn is that the more kind of fibrous food we eat, we tilt towards a bacteria distribution that actually lets more pass. So we say in way fat loss begets fat loss because if you're eating more fibrous foods like lettuce and salads and fruits, when you're getting fewer calories and more water, that's more filling, but you're getting less, the fewer calories you know, at the same time, you're tilting your microbiome to be one that's allowing more of that to pass and absorb less calories from the food. You're getting less calories and you're absorbing even fewer calories of that meal, whereas people who eat more starchy foods, right, potato chips, cookies, things like that, their microbiome tilts towards one that actually extracts calories much more readily out of the food. So that bowl of Cheerios that you're getting that says 100 calories is like a bowl of cereal. You know, some people are going to get 120 calories out of that. Some people are going to get 80. It depends on what your distribution looks like. And so one way to shape is to eat a lot more kind of natural fibrous foods, right? Leafy vegetables, things like that, that'll tilt that microbiome help you tilt towards one that is extracting less calories out of your food. Yeah, I think one of the takeaways that I want to dissuade people from thinking, because that was certainly my initial takeaway is, oh, if you have microbes in your gut, that's bad because that's extracting more of the calories in, that's putting fat on versus we just need to get rid of the calories. So it all passes out of you. That's not the thing that you want to have because you need to have the microbes in order to extract the nutrients that you need to support your body's normal processes. But what distribution of bacteria and the distribution of the populations of different microbes is super, super important. So one that is more in favor of bacteroides versus from acute. And you can adjust that using the different patterns of of eating right. And I guess that the last factor that I mean, the number of different topics that you discuss, but one of the things that interested me was the genetic component. And I used some examples of indigenous Americans, but I believe there are a number of different stories of indigenous populations from across the world, whether you're looking at rural India or whether you're looking at Aboriginals in Australia where those native populations come into contact with industrialized food and have a unique issue with obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease amongst a whole bunch of other suite of metabolic problems. What is going on there and what do we know about genetics and how that changes our approach to putting on weight and specifically? Yeah, that's a good one. And I think that's going to be a big area of discovery in the next few decades. But you know, there's there's genotypes, right? So depending on your ancestry and the behaviors of your ancestry, we've all inherited a certain genotype of work for that line of humans. And so some of the, you know, nomadic humans, you know, fasting humans, ones that experienced famine throughout history, they've developed this this genotype that's called the thrifty genotype. Their bodies are very good at extracting calories of sex, hoarding calories in the fat tissue. They produce fat quite readily. And it's to help them get through periods of famine. So, like I said, nature, you know, is very careful, knows how to preserve itself and what it needs for propagation of the different species. And so this is what really helped them get through a periods of famine throughout history. This is their thrifty genotype that allowed them to take in, you know, make perhaps minimal amounts of food, use some, but save a lot for fat for for the future when it was needed. And so what's interesting is when those societies come into contact with, like fast, easy calories, they gain a lot of weight. And then the population I wrote about were the Indians that came to America, right? They were somewhat nomadic. They settled in Arizona and southern Mexico. And when they have their own lifestyle, which was kind of farming and hunting and active and very natural foods, they did okay. They weren't obese. But then when Caucasians started moving into the area at the turn of the century, you know, 1900 or so, they got other foods right, They got flour, they got bacon. And then there was sort of big government sustenance programs where they got even more of these types of foods. Right. These industrialized foods. And they got obese quickly. And it became an area of study for the government of what was going on here. And the theory they keep to is that, you know, there's certain groups of people that have this very thrifty genotype. They're kind of designed to have more fat. And although I know I looked at the team as I think that's probably all over the place, and I know people talk about the growth of America all the time. And, you know, we have a whole polyglot of different cultures here, right? People with different ancestry who come here and food here. It's, you know, readily available. It's highly processed sometimes industrialized. And so certain populations can get away with this, like the Piedmont Indians when they compared them to the Caucasians who were living right next to them. The Caucasians were getting really fat off this food. Only the Pima Indians were. So it's another thing to be conscious of and, you know, another thing to to not measure yourself against someone else. And I think that's the big takeaway from from the book too, that we're all really individual, right. So depending on your ancestry, your genetics, right. Your again, your gender, how much of your your diet except will affect how much you can eat also, Right. You can't compare yourself to what my friends eat. This way I should be able to eat this way. There's no should write in dieting. There's no like I should be able to have this. I should not have to exercise as much. Right. You know, there's no shoulds. It's just what is you know, what does that mathematical equation you're working with and how do you deal with it, that mathematical function. And so, you know, I think the less we start to think of what happened, what should we be able to expect? Not everyone can expect the same thing. And that's why it's important to prep yourself with what is your fat blueprint, What can you expect for yourself, Right. Not for your neighbor, your friend or family member. And then use that to arm yourself to prepare for what that journey's going to look like. And again, you have to walk that right? So if you don't really care about, you know, you have an extra £50, you don't care, you're probably not going to do well on this journey, right? You have to really want that thing because it will be hard work and you can't compare yourself to everyone else. It's your personal journey that you have to figure out. And I'm hoping all the contents in the book, the contents of the course, they help people figure that out for themselves and help them monitor their own kind of weight loss and tailor it to themselves. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, we've discussed like four main things today. You know, gender genes, bugs, viruses. These are all reasons why you can't have that black and white thinking about diet and weight and its effect of my last question for you is, I guess if you're writing the book, are you writing another book in like five years time? What are the things that you think we should be watching out for? What are the things on the horizon of of the science of fat that could come to fruition that you're particularly interested in or excited about? Yeah, I think it's more about learning what's in our food, believe it or not. Like, I don't know that we know what we're eating anymore, right? So when you look at ingredients, we have like highly processed food, highly industrialized farming techniques now, Right. So what are you really eating? That's really important because I don't think we're eating what we think we're eating. I know when I do business travel and I have to be out of an airport, I easily gain a half a pound or a pound weight from that. And I thought I was just having a chicken sandwich, which normally in my own household will not cause me to gain. So. So what is it that we're eating is going to be really important. How are these industrialized foods being processed truly, and what can we do to have kind of sustainable corporate know food supply and at the same time have people be healthy? Educating yourself is going to be really important because corporate interests aren't always aligned right with your personal health needs. And so you have to know what you're putting into your body. Another area of interest I I've developed, this is the emotions around eating right. And so I've talked about it a little bit in this talk. But, you know, you have to want something. What causes somebody to want something? And then when they go down that journey to get that of something, what causes them to lose journey and give up, Right? So our lives are very stressful. And it seemed like throughout history that when there's stressful times like the pandemic or a depression or recession, people tend to gain weight. It's like they lose willpower and candy sales go up, believe it or not. And I think we saw that with pandemic, right, that alcohol sales went up, people gained weight and and no one's immune to that, really. And so what is it about how we think about things that makes us feel sorry for ourselves, Right. Or makes us feel like we can't cope anymore and therefore I'm going to give up and I'm just going to I'm going to relax. And what is it about that food that makes you feel like that was worth it? Right? So there's a whole psychology around why we eat, why we lose endurance, and what will help us stay on a journey. And so this is an area of fascination of mine, and I'm starting to read more about it and research this a bit more because at the end there's always forces that can cause you to eat. Our bodies are designed to eat, you know, our bodies are designed to grab fat. Notes are for our own safety, and corporations are designed to sell you things and make money, right? So so in the end, we're always going to have an onslaught of forces that are going to make us fatter in this case. And so how do you navigate that? Strengthen yourself, empower yourself, and stay on the journey to want to be fit and be able to stay fit, to stay on that regimen that you pick for yourself. And that way, no matter what other onslaught comes on, what other pandemic, what other recession, whatever you're you're armed to, to get through that. Right. Like a big ship sailing through the ocean. No matter what wave hits you, you can handle it because we'll be no shortage in the future of all those those different factors as well that come into to make you want to eat a lot of cane weight. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I think balancing those two, those interests that you have as well as the knowledge of what corporate interests are as well, I think is going to be key to people's health journeys. And your work is fantastic. I love the book and it certainly made me pause a lot and want to do a bit more research in certain areas. So so thank you very much. And I think this is going to be really, really useful for tons of people out there. Right. Thank you. It's great to be here.
