On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I help unlock the secrets to a holly, jolly metabolism. Prepare to unwrap my top five tips that could have Santa—and indeed, anyone—dashing through the snow or life with health and performance in their sleigh. The Flex Diet Certification will be open again in mid-January 2024. I will have the exact date coming out very soon. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can get more from me at MikeTNelson.com/podcast. You can see all the other podcasts and guest episodes I’ve done. Then if you scroll down, you can subscribe to my Fitness Insider Newsletter.
On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I help unlock the secrets to a holly, jolly metabolism. Prepare to unwrap my top five tips that could have Santa—and indeed, anyone—dashing through the snow or life with health and performance in their sleigh.
The Flex Diet Certification will be open again in mid-January 2024. I will have the exact date coming out very soon. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can get more from me at MikeTNelson.com/podcast. You can see all the other podcasts and guest episodes I’ve done. Then if you scroll down, you can subscribe to my Fitness Insider Newsletter.
Episode notes:
[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex The Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. And on this podcast, we talk about all things to improve your performance, add muscle, better body composition, all without destroying your health in a flexible framework. And today on the podcast is just me.
[00:00:21] A couple announcements and wanted to wish all of you a very happy holidays. Merry Christmas. thIs one I'm getting out just a day or so after Christmas, holidays got pretty busy so hopefully your Christmas and holiday season was good. And today I wanted to talk about my top 5 tips to Santa if he's trying to increase his health and performance in The coming year so that he is all ready for Christmas next year.
[00:00:58] I also want to let you know that the Flex Diet certification will be open again in mid January 2024. I will have the exact date coming out very soon. You can get those via the newsletter, which is just miketnelson.com/podcast. Scroll down there, and you'll be able to get on to the newsletter with all of the great information.
[00:01:22] I sent out a preview of an article about can you use a hundred grams of protein at once? Some very cool brand new study from Jorn Tromlund's group over in the UK. So that went out to the newsletter this past week and a bunch of other stuff. So you can still get onto the newsletter for free, go to MikeTNelson. com.
[00:01:44] And if you find on the main page there, you can find a way to get onto the newsletter or you go to MikeTNelson. com forward slash podcast, see all the podcast interviews, everything I've done there, scroll down and you'll be able to hop onto the newsletter for free. So here we go. My top five tips to Santa.
[00:02:06] Number one. Load up on more protein. We know that protein is very, what they call, thermogenic. Meaning that if you compare it to carbohydrates or fat, protein takes more energy in order to use it. So that's a good thing. It's also very filling, has a higher ranking of satiety, especially compared to carbohydrates and fat.
[00:02:34] And in general, it's literally impossible for you to turn it into body fat. Now, I know at some point that might be a possibility, but they've done some very interesting studies. The main one I've talked about before is from Dr. Jose Antonio, where They fed subjects hundreds of grams of protein a day.
[00:02:55] They went up to one gram per pound of body weight and well beyond that. Now again, there might be some self report issues there because trying to eat 350 grams of protein a day consistently is extremely hard. But in that study, which was a longer term study, I want to say it was six weeks, That they did not see any increase in fat in the group that was eating massive amounts of protein.
[00:03:23] So tip number one to Santa, load up on more protein.
[00:03:28] Tip number two, you can keep the milk and cookies, but only on Christmas. So as and throughout the Flex Diet Cert, I am not a huge fan of just white knuckle restriction. Yes, in theory, if you only ate vegetables and protein, would you lose weight?
[00:03:47] Of course you would. The downside is that trying to be compliant on that day after day, week after week, month after month is very difficult. And also, for most people, your performance is going to drop. So even if you're just trying to add or retain muscle, the main thing that's driving that is going to be your performance in the gym.
[00:04:09] This could be volume, this could be doing more reps, lifting a little bit heavier weight. You need to give your body a reason to add more muscle, or at minimum, hold on to that muscle. And if you are taking out all carbohydrates, or at least a good swath of them, it's very hard to keep that level of performance, even though you may not be a performance athlete per se.
[00:04:35] So number two is you can keep the milk and cookies, but limit them to a particular time. Yes, if you are eating all of the Christmas cookies in your house, that of course is going to have a consequence on your waistline. But if I told you do not think of a pink elephant, the first thing you thought of is a pink elephant.
[00:04:54] So constantly telling yourself not to eat the cookies usually is not going to work well for most people. Again, maybe remove them out of your house, have them on a special occasion. Figure out some constraints where you can still have them, but maybe not all the time. So, for example, one of the things I teach in the Flex Diet Certification is increasing protein.
[00:05:18] As we talked about with step number one here, if you eat more protein, you are less likely to fall into an entire birthday cake. It does happen at times, but if you set up your nutrition correctly, With the correct amount of protein, fats, carbohydrates, what they call the macronutrients. Also, the micronutrients play a huge role.
[00:05:38] The odds of you seeing success are much, much greater. So you can still have the milk and cookies, just keep them limited. Tip number three to Santa, get those boots a walking. We know that NEAT, non exercise activity thermogenesis. Super important for overall health and especially body composition. If we look at something called the TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure, how many total calories you expend per day, most people think that exercise is number one.
[00:06:17] And exercise is actually not even number two. It's actually usually number three. Unless you are training for a massive triathlon or some huge amount of volume sports event or feat. Exercise is typically number three for the total number of calories burned per day. Number one is your resting metabolic rate.
[00:06:37] Just how much energy it takes to keep the lights on. And number two is actually neat. Non exercise activity thermogenesis. How much you twitch, you walk around, you're moving. That is the way to drain more calories out of the system. Or I like to think of it, you're trying to sneak calories out of the system.
[00:06:57] You want to burn more calories. But in a perfect world, you don't really want to trip your appetite to have you eat more of those calories. So what we find is walking, which is very low intensity, is a great way to get more movement, burn more calories, and it works really well to sneak the calories out of the system.
[00:07:16] There's only so much high intensity intervals and weight training you can do. Both of those things are great and have their place. However, what I find for body composition especially, Getting more movement. You can monitor this via a step count, which almost all watches will do now, makes it a relatively easier way to go about and do it.
[00:07:37] Which is why in the FlexDiet cert, NEAT has its own module where we only talk about just how to get more NEAT. Number four, lift heavy presents. Prioritize picking them up, squatting down with them, putting them overhead. Some form of strength training is going to be best in order to add some muscle, or at a very minimum, keep as much muscle as possible.
[00:08:04] While adding more muscle won't dramatically increase your resting metabolic rate, it is a movement in the right direction, and over time, We know that adults can lose muscle mass, something called sarcopenia, so loss of muscle mass, and that will negatively affect them. It does affect their resting metabolic rate, although probably less than what people realize.
[00:08:29] But the bigger thing is it affects your ability to actually move. If you don't have a lot of muscle, or especially after an injury, then movement becomes very difficult, and that can result in kind of this downward spiral. where it's even harder to burn more calories. So keep some lifting in there as best you can.
[00:08:49] It's going to be helpful. Number five, it's going to be cardio. So doing your cardiovascular training is extremely beneficial. Now again, my bias here, which I talk more about this in the Level 2, which is a Physiologic Flexibility Certification. We do cover this briefly in the Flex Diet Cert Level 1. I like to program cardio more for the adaptations on the cardiorespiratory system that you would get and not so much just to burn calories.
[00:09:20] Yes, it is good for burning calories. Yes, I am a fan of lower intensity fasted cardio. I do think it does have its place. However, when programming these, I'm actually looking to see what are the positive changes to different aspects of your cardiovascular metabolism we can make. The big thing there is going to be your VO2 max, which is like your one rep max for lifting, but for your cardiovascular system.
[00:09:46] This is the maximal amount of volume of oxygen you can use at any one time. Very good study showing that this is highly related to longevity also. It also makes everything else sub maximal. So what you find is if their VO2 max up to a point is higher, their aerobic conditioning, aerobic base is higher.
[00:10:08] Your recovery is faster. This could be recovery from one set to the next exercise set in the gym, one day of training to the next day of training, and so on. So spending some time doing cardiovascular training is also extremely beneficial for health reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes, blood pressure, etc.
[00:10:29] So I typically like having clients, athletes, do some type of cardio, probably two to four times a week. That'll vary depending upon what their goals are, if it's just general health, or they have some specific goal that they're trying to achieve. But either way, I like to program that for the adaptations that I want to see from it, not just haphazardly as a way to drain calories out of the system.
[00:10:54] So there you go, those are my top five tips to Santa, looking to get in better metabolic shape, be more metabolically flexible, better body composition. for Christmas next year. So if you enjoyed this, feel free to send it to a friend. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast for going on the past two years.
[00:11:16] Now really appreciate it. We've got a ton of very cool guests coming up next year. A couple of them have already been recorded. So stay tuned for that. We'll have a new podcast out every week as we have for the last two years. Any questions, please let me know if you can place a review or just any stars you feel is appropriate.
[00:11:41] That always helps us out with a lot of the podcasts that are out there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We'll talk to all of you next week.
[00:11:51] what do you suppose they call that? A novelty act? I don't know, but it wasn't too bad. Well, that's a novelty.
[00:11:59] Nancy: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use the information on the podcast for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease or prescribing any medication or other treatment.
[00:12:15] Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider before taking any medication or nutritional, supplement, and with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this or any other podcast.
[00:12:31] Reliance on the podcast is solely at your own risk. Information provided on the podcast does not create a doctor-patient relationship between you and any of the health professionals affiliated with our podcast. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
[00:12:48] Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to therein.
[00:13:06] If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.