Set-Point Simplified, Healthy Sugar?, Sardines, Self-Love

Jonathan: Hey everyone, Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown coming at you with another living the Smarter Science of Slim podcast. We are excited to be here. Carrie how are you doing?

Carrie: I’m doing awesome.

Jonathan: Well, today Carrie, we have a bunch of awesome subjects to cover the first of which, it’s going to be interesting, actually, I have two topics to start today’s show which are – I might get a little excited about it, I’m going to be honest.

Carrie: Am I going have to reel you in?

Jonathan: You may have to reel me in.

Carrie: I haven’t had to do that for a while, so…

Jonathan: I know, well I have to give you two great opportunities here. So the first one has to do – this is a minor thing, but often times we talk about reset point.

Carrie: Mhmm.

Jonathan: Right, now that is so critical to redefining the way we think of our body because once we understand that our body works to automatically balance us out we start to work on our body and healing our body so that it can balance us out, rather than us trying to manually balance calories.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: It fundamentaly changes our approach to health and fitness. So the thing that is still funny and sometimes a little…I sometimes get a little – if I was a cat, my hair on my back would stand up a little bit, is sometimes people refer to this as the set point theory.

Carrie: Okay.

Jonathan: Focusing on the word theory.

Carrie: Okay.

Jonathan: And let’s, I just want to unpack that a little bit because that’s a little bit like calling the world being round a theory at this point, like it’s not a theory, right. It has been demonstrated. So, let me give a quick analogy. If you look in any text book or you talk to any physician about how blood sugar works in your body, it’s the body works to automatically regulate it, right? There is a set range in which blood sugar should exist and if you eat foods that cause your blood sugar to rise, your body automatically takes steps to bring your blood sugar down, or if your blood sugar falls to low, your body automatically takes steps to bring it up.

Carrie: That’s awesome.

Jonathan: And because of that, because of that fact, people understand and it is widely accepted that there is a homeostatic regulation of blood sugar also know as there is a set right range the blood sugar should existed and the body works to maintain that range. Correct?

Carrie: Correct.

Jonathan: Correct, so the criteria for something being a set point or having this homeostatic range is that, if it goes up, the body automatically takes steps to bring it down, and if it goes down, the body automatically takes steps to bring it up. Right?

Carrie: Correct.

Jonathan: Makes sense?

Carrie: Makes perfect sense.

Jonathan: And it also doesn’t mean that it can’t go haywire right? The set point and homeostatic regulation means the body tries to keep things in balance, but it might fail right? If it gets beaten down or the system breaks. Blood sugar, that’s what diabetes is, the body looses it’s ability to naturally regulate our blood sugar, then we have to intervene manually with insulin therapy and such if we don’t fix the underlying issue. Okay, so, it’s not a theory that blood sugars automatically regulated. It’s fact.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: So, let’s look at body fat mass. We know and clinical studies are unambiguous that if we eat more calories, our metabolism speeds up, meaning, if we eat more our body automatically burns more and if we eat less, then demonstrated repeatedly in clinical settings that metabolism slows down, meaning our body burns less.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: So, if we go up, our body automatically takes steps to bring us back down. If we go down, our body automatically takes steps to bring us back up.

Carrie: It’s pretty clever when you think about it.

Jonathan: So, for the exact same reasons that it’s not a theory that our body automatically regulates blood sugar, it’s not a theory that our body automatically regulates body weight.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: That’s the way the body works is it tries to keep all of these life sustaining functions in a range and if our breathing is too shallow, our body takes steps to normalize it. If our breathing, is too…whatever, again, our body always takes steps to normalize it, so…

Carrie: Unless it’s broken.

Jonathan: Unless, it’s broken and that’s the exact – I think that might be what throw people off is that if the body is working to automatically regulate this, why are there so many obese people? Well…

Carrie: Because it’s broken.

Jonathan: Because it’s broken. Certainly we don’t take diabetic people as proving that – well clearly we all have to manually injected insulin and monitor our blood sugar levels. We don’t right?

Carrie: Yeah.

Jonathan: Unless the system is broken and when the system is broken you might need to – so I just thought that when you do that comparison to glucose and when you think about really the only things that need to be demonstrated to show that a system, that the body works to keep us in balance automatically is conduct a clinical study where you take it higher than then normal range, does the body do anything to bring it down, take it lower than the normal range, does the body do anything to bring it up and if the answer is yes, which it absolutely and unequivocally is for body weight, we don’t think controversial here.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: [indiscernible 05:48].

Carrie: Yes.

Jonathan: I love it! I didn’t get too excited about that one.

Carrie: Slim is simple.

Jonathan: You didn’t even have to reel me in.

Carrie: I didn’t even have to reel – I was thinking about it.

Jonathan: Just artificially…

Carrie: I was getting a bit dry there, but we’re good.

Jonathan: So second one certainly has an opportunity to type some color commentary here Carrie and I am not joking. I was contacted by a reader who said that they have been seeing things flying around on Facebook talking about how sugar is good for you. The newest internet nutrition sensation is…

Carrie: …is sugar?

Jonathan: Is sugar, is sugar…

Carrie: Oh, I want to here the spin on this.

Jonathan: And oh, it gets better and that you should avoid green vegetables, because of the oxalate issue that we brought up many, many, many podcasts ago. So sugar good, green vegetables bad.

Carrie: The world has gone mad. Mad.

Jonathan: So, point number one, Carrie has said this on numerous occasions just because someone posts it on Facebook or just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it…

Carrie: Doesn’t make it true.

Jonathan: Exactly, exactly, and here I’m not going to obviously waste people’s time even acknowledging the argument that processed sugar is good and wonderful nutrient dense green vegetables are bad for you. Here’s what I would recommend for anyone who questions this. Stop eating vegetables and dial up the amount of sugar you’re eating

Carrie: And see how you feel.

Jonathan: And see how you feel and get blood work done and see how it goes and frankly, if there’s a group of us that have a genetic mutation which makes us run better on processed sugar than on vegetables then by all means, eat processed sugar, but all the research I have done and all of the biochemical pathways in your body and just the way they work seem to suggest pretty clearly non-starchy vegetables such as spinach, something you want to eat more of; processed sugars, something you may want to avoid. I don’t know, well I know I’m getting a little controversial here, but crazy talk. I think that’s actually the problem. The reason we have an obesity crises in this country is because people are eating too many green leafy vegetables and not enough sugar. That’s definitely the problem.

Carrie: There is something I want to say but I label this [indiscernible 08:13]. So, I’m going to stay quiet at this point.

Jonathan: You’re going to refrain?

Carrie: Yes I am.

Jonathan: Alright Carrie, well we…

Carrie: He is talking nonsense people just in case anyone has just just dialed in and [crosstalk 08:27] Eat your spinach lovely people.

Jonathan: Eat your spinach…

Carrie: And ditch the sugar.

Jonathan: And ditch the sugar.

Carrie: It’s no good for you.

Jonathan: Correct. Next subject Carrie and the area is going to hit home with you because I know you are a fan of this I want you to talk about the glories of it. Read or write in claiming that they had discovered the ultimate SANE convenience food. I thought it was too good to be true, but I read more about it and I thought about it and I tried it and I said, that was pretty darn close to the ultimate SANE convenience food and it is…

Carrie: Wow. Sardines.

Jonathan: Sardines.

Carrie: Yes. Ding, ding, ding. Big gold star to MetsyFE.

Jonathan: Tell us about sardines Carrie.

Carrie: Sardines are awesome.

Jonathan: Well they have – they don’t get good press though. They don’t get good press so we’ve got to defend them here.

Carrie: I grew up with sardines and look how I turned out. Don’t say it.

Jonathan: No, I have things that I could say.

Carrie: I grew up in England. Sardines is like a staple.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Carrie: We eat them on toast. Okay, I don’t eat the toast now, but I still eat the sardines because you know when I was six, I’m eating sardines on toast, my – I wasn’t home [indiscernible09:38] now, not so much. Anyway, sardines are full of healthy fats.

Jonathan: Oh, absolutely.

Carrie: Absolutely chalked full of them and they are also particularly for road trips. They’re brilliant because you just, you don’t need anything. You don’t even need a car opener, you just peel the top off, dig your fork in and off you go.

Jonathan: That literally makes them the ultimate convenience food. You do not need to refrigerate them. You don’t even need a can opener. It’s just; you literally take some of them, put it in your purse, you can put it in the trunk of your car, like in case you get stranded somewhere and you can just pop the top and if your hands are clean, you can used your hands and if not use a fork and you’ve got literally the sanest possible, we’re talking nutrient dense, we’re talking hormonally healthy, we’re talking about the purest form of the anti-inflammatory omega-3-fats and you’ve got some awesome protein there and frankly when you want to experiment different kinds of, there’s different kinds of oil, kinds of water, find a kind that you like, but if you like fish, I was a little scared when I tried the little sardine, but it’s quite delicious actually.

Carrie: And if you’re feeling MacGyverish [sic], what I’d like to do if I’m trapped in a strange place with no fork and a can of sardines so you can…

Jonathan: Which happens to be all the time.

Carrie: It does happen to me all the time and you can just fashion, if you just bend the lid, you can fashion the lid into shovel and just eat them with that and it’s just awesome.

Jonathan: That’s actually quite creative.

Carrie: You see. There you go. You were mocking me.

[crosstalk 11:11]

Jonathan: Now, if I can blow an egg out of the shell, then you can make…

Carrie: A shovel out of the top of the sardine cap.

Jonathan: Exactly.

Carrie: But, the other thing I would mention is have breath mints or gum with you.

Jonathan: Yes.

Carrie: Because, you know, if you’re eating sardines, especially if you’re trapped in a car with other people you probably don’t want that whole sardine breath going on.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: Sardines are fantastic. Eat sardines.

Jonathan: And an additional tip on top of that. So MacGyverish [sic], convenient, SANE, my recommended way to purchase sardines is Amazon subscribe and save. So again, I have no ties with Amazon, but Amazon offers a service called subscribe and save which is awesome. You can get this big pack of sardines, just go on Amazon and search for sardines. They’ve got all the varieties you can ever imagine and then when you are on your check out page, there’s an options, not the check out page, just on the page, there’s a filter, you know, you can filter by four stars, three stars, two stars, Carrie, you can also filter by subscribe and save and this is a feature where you can have any – not any – but a lot of the products Amazon sells delivered to you on a regular basis. Now the reason this is cool is because they’ll waive shipping fees and they give you five to fifteen percent off.

Carrie: [indiscernible 12:25]

Jonathan: Already getting a really good deal because Amazon generally has the best prices that I’ve ever found on perishables plus you get free delivery, plus you get recurring delivery so don’t have to go out and worry about getting more from the store running out and they take an extra five to fifteen percent off the price.

Carrie: That’s awesome.

Jonathan: Sign me up.

Carrie: The other thing I like to do is buy lots and lots and lots of sardines when they’re you know 10 for $10 or whatever it is, so they often have sardines of that kind of crazy price and so I just tend to buy you know 30 or 40, call me crazy, cans of sardines when they are a buck and then it’s just brilliant, brilliant.

Jonathan: I may or may not think that you are crazy independent of the sardine purchase. And now my shoulder has been flicked. Carrie is drinking water and I am making her laugh in an attempt to cause problems.

Carrie: Yes, I will spray my water all over your brand new laptop. Then you’ll all be sad.

Jonathan: That’s true. Carrie, next subject and the subject which is going to segue nicely or tie nicely back to our sugar satire from earlier which is a question that came up from a reader, wonderful reader, about carb cycling. So again, just another thing you might hear about on the internet called carb cycling. Now we’re not going to get into what carb cycling is…

Carrie: Because I have no idea what carb cycling is.

Jonathan: I think it’s, you get on a bicycle and you eat bread….

Carrie: You just [indiscernible 13:58] today aren’t you?

Jonathan: Really not funny, let’s try again, minus three points for Jonathan.

Carrie: He’s tired people, he’s getting delirious.

Jonathan: With any of these things, couple of things, one, people were healthy and slim and happy prior to any of these things existing, right? So they cannot be required to be healthy, slim, and happy. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you have time and effort and want to try these things, that’s fine, try them, if they make you feel good and then if you look good and you like and it doesn’t stress you out, that’s good.

If you feel bad, makes you look bad and it stresses you out, then it’s bad. So much of these things, I think people try to say like “What is the truth?” We all have things obviously a lot in common, but for example, the things that make me happy are not necessarily the same things that make Carrie happy. Those things in general that makes people happy, but we all have those variations. The same thing applies to health and fitness, so if you want to try carb cycling or any other internet thing or fast or intermittent fasting, or two days of fasting and three days of getting on your head, if it makes you feel good and you like it and it helps you get to your goals, then it’s good, but if it doesn’t, it’s bad. At least that’s how I like to look at it.

Carrie: I just, and I’m looking at the question on the support group and my mind is just, my whole brain is just glazing over just reading what you have to do – on this day you do this and this…and I just, I don’t know – great if it works for you as Jonathan said, that’s brilliant; if that kind of measurement helps you in any way, it’s all goodness, but for me, I look at that and I’m just like – yeah, no, it’s way to complicated. I just – my life is so crazy, I don’t need…

Jonathan: There is enough complexity already.

Carrie: Right. I don’t need that kind of – so the reason I’m saying this is because you absolutely do not have to do this…

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: To be successful. If it works for you, do it, but don’t feel like if you’re not doing it that you’re somehow failing or missing something or not going to get there. Just eat SANE foods, you’re going to get there.

Jonathan: That’s the reason, for example, I’m not digging in to the argument for or against sugar being better for you than non-starchy vegetables or carb cycling being worthwhile, is so much of this is – you have a person, like any of us, myself, Carrie, you listening to the show, you know your body better than anyone else, so if you – if we met on the streets and you said Jonathan, what do you think about this? And I would say, I think that you should do it, and then you do it and you feels terrible and it does not help you get your results, stop. Like stop.

Carrie: Stop.

Jonathan: That’s like the bottom line is results. We talk about this in Smarter Science of Slim, be a pragmatist. Pragmatists say something is good or bad based on whether or not it works and that’s because it doesn’t matter what I say, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, we maybe able to point you in the right direction, we maybe able to help you understand why you maybe more likely to have success taking one approach rather than another, but ultimately, the buck stops with you.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: Not with me, not with Carrie, not with anyone else.

Carrie: Right, we can give you the principles. Jonathan has spent ten years figuring out how the body actually works and he has come up with principles for how to apply that to your life, but outside of that, there has got to be some personal leeway about how you apply it to your life because, I’m busy in a different way to other people busy. You know I don’t have children, but I always had other stuff going on and so, for me it’s got to be practical and fast, but other people have different constraints so just take the principles and apply them to your life.

Jonathan: And here is what I would recommend.

Carrie: And if it doesn’t work, tweet.

Jonathan: Exactly, exactly, but this individual who is very dedicated and I mean I salute them if they enjoy this, but they start their question off with, I’ve read five books on carb cycling and what do you think I should do? Again, it kind of doesn’t matter, if you want to try it, try it. There are very few things in life – as long as you understand that it’s not bonkers, don’t just try anything, but it doesn’t really matter what the book says, I mean it really doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is if works or not for you, bottom line.

Carrie: Yeah, I mean, we really wouldn’t in all seriousness recommend that you stop eating non-starchy vegetables and start eating a massive amount more sugar than you are.

Jonathan: Correct.

Carrie: In all seriousness…[crosstalk18:48]

Jonathan: We don’t recommend it.

Carrie: If you want to see how it feels…

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: …go ahead, try it, but I’m 99.99999 percent sure you are not going to be happy.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: And you are not going to be any closer, in fact you are going to be further away from your health and weight loss goals if you do that.

Jonathan: That’s exactly right.

Carrie: But if you want to know for yourself, you can try.

Jonathan: This is more, I’m more plugged in to the nutrition community that most of our listeners and frankly I’m actually maybe trying to get a little bit out of it because the thing that bothers me about it is people trying to say like “No, carb cycling is good,” or “Carb cycling is bad” or “No, this diet is right, this diet is wrong.” What is that? That’s like saying this outfit is the best outfit. It doesn’t even make any sense. Well is a tuxedo the best outfit? Well not when you’re going to the swimming pool

Right? There is no best, this is good or bad, you have to say – okay, who is the person, what is the context, what are their goals, what are they doing and like Carrie said, there are principles. Non-starchy vegetables are better for you than sugar, if you define better for you as long-term health and fitness, but if better for you means in that moment, how does it make you feel, well then sugar is probably better for you right?

Carrie: Yeah, at least emotionally.

Jonathan: Right, even saying like is this good or is this bad, those kinds of global non-contextualized or personalized statements are very, very hard and they’re also why this area seems so complicated, because, that which is good for this person in this context might be bad for this person in this context, here is an example. Drinking a super, super sugary beverage immediately after training for a long distance endurance event where the next day you need to perform well, it’s probably one of the best things you can ever do. It’s great for you, it’s great recovery, and it’ll help replenish your muscle glycogen stores. Now if you are someone who works at a desk all day and you heard that you’re like “Sugar is good for you.”

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: No, that’s not. It was in that context for that person. That’s why it seems so confusing because, it is so contextually and individually dependent. Right?

Carrie: Right. So you just have to be aware that you can do anything you want to do, you’ve just got to be clear about what the goal is you are trying to reach and where you are in relation to it.

Jonathan: Yup.

Carrie: So some people who may be not as old as me probably get away with eating more sugary fruits and not gain weight while me being older can’t do that.

Jonathan: Absolutely, and the one thing that’s important to keep in mind is, I also don’t want everyone here to feel like “Oh god, there’s no…why am I listening to this podcast if everything is so general?” The one thing to keep in mind is when we talk about the Smarter Science of Slim, we talk about SANE eating and eccentric exercise, we are targeting that at individuals like lets – in a certain life situation. If you are pretty much very, very busy, you do not have a lot of time to stand on hobby related physical fitness or you don’t have an interest or the ability to do that and you are not into geeking out on nutrition and your goal is long-term fat loss and health, then the recommendations, in their entirety, in The Smarter Science of Slim makes sense for you.

It is important to say, in its entirety right? Again, if you look at the protein recommendations we talk about for SANE eating, that assumes that you are eating the vegetables we described, it also assumes you are doing eccentric exercise. For example, if you were to eat just that protein without those vegetables, you would create a very sick environment in your body. So again, it’s the entire system, and if you didn’t exercise eccentrically, you may not need all that protein, but if you do exercise eccentrically, you do.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: So when people are getting – if you look at just the, let’s call it the protein recommendations around The Smarter Science of Slim in isolation, that’s confusing, but if you look at it in a customized and personalized context of the entire lifestyle, it makes sense.

Carrie: That’s why I love that, that two pinch spread in the book where you’ve got what is it you want to be; if you want to be obese, eat like this, up to if you want to be a fitness muggle, eat like this, because, when I – the first time I read that, it totally gave me a sense of I pick what my own goal is and this program is flexible to get me where I want to be which is different from where Sue wants to be, or what John wants to be…

Jonathan: Exactly.

Carrie: …or where anybody else wants to be.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: So, we give you the principles and if you follow those principles but tweak it fit your lifestyle, then you will get to where you want to be.

Jonathan: And it’s just so important folks, because, if you think about how we got to where we are today, meaning, listening to the USDA’s fat is bad, starch is good, protein is irrelevant guidance, that was looking outside our self, well what works, and then despite the fact that it was making us sick and sad and…

Carrie: …and fat.

Jonathan: …and fat, we still, they were just like just do it harder, just do it harder and we looked outside ourselves. Whereas, if we just turned that around and say, okay, it’s not working, so expert “I don’t care what you are saying,” like if a doctor writes you a prescription and it makes your fever worse, and keeps it up, like it doesn’t just go up temporarily because – and then it comes back down, because that’s how the medicine works, but it like literally makes you chronically worse, stop. Trust yourself and your body, not someone outside you claiming to know you better than you know yourself. Clear?

Carrie: Very clear.

Jonathan: Well Carrie, that one was – [indiscernible 25:10]

Carrie: Let’s talk about something fun next week.

Jonathan: We will, what are you talking about?

Carrie: I know.

Jonathan: We always talk about fun things. Well folks, I hope this podcast was enjoyable for you as it was for Carrie and I, so it was a pleasure sharing our evenings with you because we do these in evenings.

Carrie: Yes we do.

Jonathan: Everyone, it’s Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown, we’re here living the Smarter Science of Slim we’re eating more and exercising less but we’re doing it smarter and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Carrie: Bye folks

Jonathan: Wait, wait, don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at carriebrown.com.

Jonathan: And don’t forget your 100 percent free eating and exercise quick start program as well as free, fun daily tips delivered right into your inbox at bailorgroup.com. That’s B-a-i-l-o-rgroup.com.