Warning. The following presentation contains information that might contradict what you have previously heard or believed to be true about how the human body works and contains material that is not suitable for closed minded individuals.
Enjoy.
So recently a student asked me about the truth behind some messages that they saw in an advertisement for a program known as VSHRED
And so here is a soapbox on the content within the advertisements. This is not going to be on any test, but it's very important to understand.
VSHRED, like many other programs, appear to be nothing more than a latest form of a snake oil.
A program or a supplement or something else that may or may not be as scientifically true as what the people pitching it pretend it might be.
Issues that come about with sales pitches for things like VSHRED, as well as for other of these mass marketed programs, include things like overexposure to the"renowned" fitness expert.
The involvement of social stigma in terms of what type of diet to follow or what type of exercise program to follow. Or utilization of logical fallacies such as the bandwagon effect or ad populum,
in terms of what is the best for someone to do or someone to follow application biases within the program development.
False associations, either or fallacies that can come about over reliance on single study and more importantly, with most of the mass marketed advertisements.
The utilization of anecdotal evidence and anecdotes leading to post hoc fallacies and hasty generalizations.
Most of the mass marketing programs that we see.
Want you to think that their program is somehow unique among all the other programs they tend to discuss similarities and differences based on absolutes of things that are highly dissimilar.
They tend to misapply concepts that have allowed us to use exercise in prevention programs that we typically refer to as exercise as medicine.
So, let's take a look at some fallacies that we might have.
Key mistakes that we need correcting, starting with the logical fallacies.
Logical fallacy one.
The reliance on anecdotes.
The trust me, it worked.
The my experience is the proof that it works.
The just look what I did statements.
Just because it works for you doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody.
Anecdotes are not empirical evidence.
We have to rely on the empirical evidence that we get from objective observations, not subjective reports from the individuals doing it.
The post hoc fallacies.
The it was the last thing that I did, so it must be the thing that caused the responses that I must have.
What we have to remember is that everything is going to work.
Any change that I have within my exercise or within my diet is going to lead to changes in both body mass as well as with my overall physical health and overall physical fitness.
We cannot and should not attribute it to a single thing that we're doing within the avenues of rehabilitation or the avenues of exercise.
The observer and the performer biases.
The misapplication of the Hawthorne effect.
Where behavior change leads to other behavior change, which leads to other behavior change based off of the psychological and inherent identification of being observed.
Will lead to additional changes.
What we fail to do with many of these mass marketed programs is realize any change in one health behavior will typically to changes in other health behaviors.
When I start making changes in health behaviors, going from an anti-health perspective to a pro health perspective, or more importantly, increase my pro health behaviors, it stimulates the use of other pro-health behaviors.
Because of this, we can become blinded to why changes might be occurring.
Where we attribute specific changes to the interventions at play, ignoring all of the other variables that can and do influence my overall body composition and my level of fitness and health.
What we have to remember is that body image does not indicate metabolic rate.
There are there might be differences in metabolism based off of the level of activity that person happens to be doing when they are active and when they are recovering.
But this doesn't mean that we have fast metabolism and slow metabolism.
Metabolism, physiologically speaking, is the sum of all of the biochemical reactions in my body.
The more active I happen to be, the higher my metabolic rate will be at the time of activity.
If I am doing strenuous activity, the need to recover from that strenuous activity will also increase my metabolic rates.
But that doesn't mean that I happen to have a fast metabolism or a slow metabolism based off of what my body looks like.
The Calorie in - Calorie out misnomer.
Calorie and Calorie outs do not attribute anything to weight.
When we look at this Calorie in - Calorie out fallacy, we have to look at what is the definition that we're looking at in terms of caloric balances.
And it's off for a number of reasons.
We've talked about this in a different podcast.
You can read about it in a number of the articles that I've published in peer review journals.
One of them that comes into play is the fact that the BMR equations are not accurate for everybody,
which means that we're getting a false baseline estimate for energy use per day for the person.
Because we don't know the exact amount of energy being expended, nor do we know the exact amount of energy being consumed.
Just because there are identified values on labels doesn't mean that is the actual energy being consumed in terms of energy,
potential energy within the foods that we happen to be eating.
But more importantly, and what is usually forgotten in most of the balanced equations as relates to Calories,
is that everything that is being consumed is going to cells for use as energy.
We need nutrients in order to build and maintain the body.
Oh, and just another thing.
Calories can't be burned.
It's a unit of heat.
It's a unit of heat that's based on specific heat of water.
That's right.
It's a unit of heat.
That's right.
It's energy.
And here's the thing.
Energy can't be burned.
Regardless of how we want to talk about it, energy cannot be burned.
When we talk about calories, it depends upon how we're going to discuss it.
More often than not, we are talking about what's referred to as a dietary calorie.
That is, how much energy is being used to generate heat, the release of energy to the external environment
due to thermodynamics, to increase one liter of water, or one kilogram of water, one degree centigrade,
which is based on the specific heat of water.
That is how much energy needs to be absorbed within the water in order for its heat value to increase.
In this case here, we are using about 4.1868 kilojoules of energy for every dietary calorie that we have.
That's how much actual energy is within the calorie that is being used in order to increase the kilogram or the liter of water, one degree centigrade.
Now, when we go to the gym and we look at the caloric expenditures, and that's the better way of talking about it.
We're not burning energy. We are using energy. We're expending energy.
The way which we look at this is more often than not based off what's referred to as a metabolic equivalent.
That is, how much different is my energy expenditure doing the activity relative to being at rest?
At rest, my metabolic equivalent is one.
That means that for every hour that my body is functioning, I'm expending approximately one dietary Calorie per kilogram of body mass.
Oh, just one more thing. Calories don't have mass.
Which means we cannot use Calories to determine weight balance.
In order to determine weight balance, we have to determine it based off of nutrient balance.
That is, what am I intaking versus what am I expending?
What am I using? If I'm eating more nutrients than my body is using and expending, either for energetic purposes or for other purposes, then I'll gain weight.
If I am expending more nutrients than I am taking in, then I'm going to lose weight.
We tend to balance this nutrient balance based off of a caloric balance.
However, utilizing the Caloric balance to explain weight gain and weight loss is a misleading discussion for the simple fact that Calories have no mass.
Oh, and the whole discussion about body types leading to an explanation for why people have specific metabolisms, that's a misnomer.
We've known for a long time that there are a continuum of body types and body labels that we can have.
And it's not a correct view in terms of what type of body image I might present as to what type of metabolism I might have.
It's not going to indicate that if I happen to be a "ectomorph" I have a fast metabolism, or if I'm a "endomorph" I have a slow metabolism.
What we're seeing when we look at this continuum of body images is how fat might be stored around the body in subcutaneous tissue.
And we look at fat mass in terms of health issues.
It's not about subcutaneous fat, more about visceral fat, more on that in a different topic.
Well, what about eating foods that somehow are going to stop my testosterone or the muscle building hormones that I have?
Once again, this is a big NO!
There is no food that we know of that's going to reduce the hormone responsible for muscle building.
There is a association with overfatness leading to a reduced testosterone, a lower "T-value" as it goes with overfatness.
But that's simply because overfatness tends to lead to increased non-esterified fatty acids in circulation, sometimes referred to as dyslipidemia.
But it also is associated with increased inflammation signals.
When we have high amounts of fat in circulation, dyslipidemia, along with high amounts of inflammation,
we tend to inhibit the ability for the gonads, the ovaries and the testes, to produce testosterone.
Yes, ovaries produce testosterone, just like testicles do.
It's just how much of the steroid hormones will convert into testosterone is the big difference.
When we look at what's going on on the male side, as what we see here within the feedback loop.
When we have high amounts of adiposity and dyslipidemia combined with large amounts of stress,
what we tend to do is we tend to block androgen responses and we tend to stimulate inflammation responses.
We tend to stimulate the macrophages, immune cells, that are found within the testes, which is going to increase inflammation signals,
the IL-6, IL-1, IL-2, and TNF-alpha, which is going to block the steroid production signals.
It's going to reduce the progesterone, it's going to reduce the androstenedione, it's going to reduce the converting enzymes,
which is going to lead to a reduction in testosterone, where even though we are reducing testosterone in circulation,
it's not in very high quantities if we happen to have high amounts of inflammation coming about from excessive stress and overfatness.
So when we talk about having a reduction in testosterone for individuals who happen to be overfat,
it's not because of the fat that they might have in circulation, it's about the inflammation signals that come about from the overfatness.
But wait, there's a little bit more to that.
If we look at what we refer to as the upper reuglatory cascade of events here,
where we are attempting to get a psychological drive to increase exercise stimulus that's not there,
combined with our nutritional status, our inherent gender and age factors, as well as our level of adiposity,
we're going to have an impact on our level of fitness.
If I do not get the psychological drive to the correct exercise,
I'm going to have low levels of physical activity, which is going to have an impact on my nutritional balance,
which is going to have an impact on my adiposity, which is going to have an impact on systemic responses,
which is going to feed down onto the organ cells and tissues of the body,
which is going to change how the hormones are going to interact at those levels,
which is going to change how the cells function.
The cellular response within this cyclic phenomenon, within this feedback loop,
what we refer to as upstream and downstream regulation,
the cells influencing the things that come before it and the things that are influencing the way we should behave,
influencing how the cells function, is going to lead to what's referred to as an anabolic dysregulation.
We get low growth hormone, we get low androgens, we get low thyroid hormones.
We get blocking of receptors, we get more of the hormone binding proteins.
We get an increased stress response.
We get high amounts of inflammation taking place.
Those anabolic dysregulation effects lead to all of the impacts where we feel lethargic,
where we have things like dyslipidemia, which is going to further impact my anabolic responses,
where we have increase in fat mass, which is going to cause even more inflammation, inflammatory response,
which is going to impact the ability for me to use various types of metabolites to do the various types of metabolic processes necessary
to get the energy that I need for doing normal physiological things, normal daily activity things.
The high amounts of inflammation with all of the stresses that come about from the anabolic dysregulation leads to a quote unquote diseased health status.
This doesn't necessarily mean that you have a disease, but this could be things where you have increased lethargy.
You're always tired. You don't feel like you want to work out.
You don't feel like what you're doing is going to have a positive impact on making positive changes within the body that you happen to have.
Now, we have to remember here is that all of these things are going to form various cogs within the machinery
that leads to overall health. It is not one simple thing, the nutrition or the exercise stimulus
or one specific hormone that's going to cause a drastic change in everything.
It's a machine. And with the machines, we have various cogs that will all lead to the various methods and various means
by which health can be reestablished. And so if we can use something to cause selection to increase physical activity
and by increasing physical activity lead to dietary modifications, we're going to see a change in that cyclic nature,
the change in the upstream downstream modifications. Notice we no longer have the stop sign. We no longer have this.
I don't want to do stuff. And as we start doing stuff and start changing things,
but what is happening is that by changing all of the signaling due to extrinsic factors, the modifiable factors,
what I'm able to do is change the cellular responses to take place, change the signaling in the upstream downstream fashion
where I get a reversal of that dysregulation that I had with the overfatness issues.
Where what is the happens, I start having increased signals from muscles and from bones,
increased anabolic and androgen hormone and hormone responses. I get normalization of my anabolic responses.
I get a reduction in my stress. All of that does is that changes the way in which we end up having our cellular responses
where I start becoming metabolically flexible. As I start becoming metabolically flexible, I start having more energy,
quote unquote energy. I still I feel more energetic. I feel like I can do more.
And as I feel like I can do more, I start to do more. And as I start to do more, I start getting a better normalization
of my anabolic responses. And that leads to the overall feeling of health.
I get better arterial functions, I get better cardiovascular function, I get normalization of all of my hormone functions.
All of these normalization factors come into play to allow me to once again become healthy so that I can reverse
any of the issues that might have come about from the period in which I was inactive or the period in which I happened to have
any types of stimulus is related to overfatness. Now, before we go any further, one thing we have to talk about.
Overfatness is not obesity. Overfatness is where I have increased amount of fat mass due to sedentary behaviors.
It's not necessarily where I appear to be fat or appear to be overweight or obese.
But what I have is I have abnormal fat signaling that leads to a diseased status.
If I can reverse the nutritional aspects and the exercise aspects of my life.
What we do know is that I can reverse that issue of overfatness.
Now, the other thing that seems to be sold here, for lack of a better word, is the fact that you're going to now have this program
that you're not going to want to stop. But there's a problem.
And the problem is that there's a whole bunch of reasons that individuals will stop intervention programs.
Stop diet and exercise programs. Even this one, this VSHRED.
And what are some of those reasons? We'll look at them based off of the impact that coercion versus self-selection happens to have in terms of intervention programs.
And most of this deals with things that are poorly developed. We have poorly developed goals.
Even what is being sold based off of what is visible are poorly developed goals.
We offer unrealistic goals. We offer dreams as being goals.
What we have to remember is that goals have to be specific, measurable.
They have to be realistic. They have to have some sort of time management to them.
They have to have some sort of end point that we can use to see whether or not a goal has been reached.
Or if we have to modify that goal based off of all of the other factors that can come into play that might impact the ability that I for me to reach a specific goal.
When I have poorly developed goals, it leads to a poorly designed program, a poorly designed regimen.
Regimens that can and typically do have bad focusses. They focus on the caloric balance issue.
They focus on the body weight issue without realizing that those factors become negative reinforcers.
They do not allow for the enjoyment of a program to be reached.
They are non-maintainable. We can only do the program when I am purchasing from the person,
when I have the person looking over my shoulder, forcing me to do what I need to do.
If we want to have a program that is going to be for the long term, because once again, we're dealing with is we're dealing with lifestyle changes.
Within lifestyle changes, we're attempting to convert one behavior for another behavior.
We're going to try to change a quote unquote bad behavior for a quote unquote good behavior.
And when we do this, we have to make sure that the change is a maintainable and a self-managed change.
So let's take a look at some of the factors here.
Exercise. We have a misapplication about the need to burn calories.
The misapplication about the need to burn calories makes exercise regimens typically harder than what they may necessarily need to be.
We're going to use forms of exercise that may not appease the person.
And if I make something that is not psychologically appeasable, I'm not going to want to do that.
And we go into that first feedback loop effect of the upstream and downstream interactions.
Where I'm not going to want to do the exercise intervention, which means I'm not going to want to make the other changes in my lifestyle.
This makes me feel like I'm being forced into the exercise.
And if I'm being forced into exercise, I'm going to have adverse responses to the exercise.
I'm going to not want to do the exercise, even though it might be a benefit to me.
Or I'm going to have a program that doesn't change exercise.
The exercise stays stale.
And when we have stale exercise, what we end up doing is we end up not getting responses over the long-term.
So key points we have to remember when we start looking at exercise programs and where some of these mass marketed exercise programs falter.
Is that it's going to take eight weeks for every person in the population to see responses.
That doesn't mean it's going to take me specifically eight weeks.
But within the normal curve of everybody, it's going to take eight weeks for everyone to have the chance to see responses.
Which means that if I don't plan and don't set my goals correctly, if I make body composition a principal goal within that first very few weeks of intervention,
I'm not going to want to continue that intervention because I'm not able to see that goal.
We have to remember is that all of the responses that we see are going to be based off of the physiological concept of the said principle, specific adaptations to impose demands.
We're only going to see responses that are set up in such a way to meet the needs that we're placing on the body based off of what we're asking the body to do.
We have to remember that training exercise is very different than simply being physically active.
Training and exercise is set up based off of changing what we're doing so as to meet specific goals based off of the S.A.I.D. principle.
It's not simply being active or being outdoors or being off the couch.
That's physical activity.
Training and exercise is I'm going to train so that I'm able to run one mile without stopping the run, without having to walk.
I'm going to train so that I can squat my body weight on the bar.
I'm going to train so that I can do a pull up without assistance.
Those are the difference between physical activity and training and when we're doing exercise, when we're setting up exercise programs and exercise regiments, and when we're trying to follow exercise programs and exercise regiments, we have to make sure that the training goals.
And the exercise goals are set up in such a way so that we have reinforcements that are positive in nature.
That are self selective in nature that are appeasing to the exercise or to the person and not imposed on the person.
Okay, well, what about the diet?
And this is where there are a couple of key points that are stated within the advertisement that are actually true.
You don't have to do specific diets.
It goes back to the idea of the nutrient balance, but the problem is that too many diets, including the diets that were mentioned within the advertisement, become too focused on calories and restricting calories.
Or tend to make changes that are excessively restrictive.
Things like the Akin style diet (the keto diet), the low or very low carbohydrate style diet (the keto diet), the bland diet, the carbohydrate loading diet, the caveman diet, the clear liquid diet, the detox diet, the diabetic low glycemic low diet, the full liquid diet, the low fat diet, low potassium diet, low residual fiber diet, the low sodium diet, the Mediterranean diet, the plant rich vegan or vegetarian diet, the proportionality diet or the raw food diet.
Or when we talk about when we're going to eat things.
What we cannot do is have diets feel like punishment.
If diets feel like punishment, they're not going to be followed.
That's why diets tend to fail.
The changes become coerced.
When change become coerced, they are not self selected.
They are not self monitored and thus they cannot be maintained.
So what are the key points that we have to remember when we look at.
These advertisements, we read about these advertisements when friends of ours come up and ask us our opinions about these advertisements or when they come and they pitch.
This advertisement to us as something that they need to follow or that we need to follow because they're following it.
Part of the reasons why they're going to come and ask us to follow it with them is for social reinforcement.
Social reinforcement is good. Social reinforcement is nice. Having camaraderie within the activities is good.
It's something that's going to allow us to be held accountable for our actions.
But the problem is that if it's simply because of I'm doing it, you should do it.
We have a logical fallacy that's there.
And so we have to remember is that excessive restrictive things become socially exclusionary.
If I'm only going to eat certain things, I'm only going to hang around with people who are also eating only those certain things.
I'm not going to be able to go out to dinner with friends if we're not going to a restaurant that has food that I can eat.
If we're going to go to the gym to work out, I may only go to the place that offers yoga versus the gym that offers everything.
Those types of social exclusionary activities minimize the ability to have it be a self-maintained long term program.
Excessive restrictions, particularly with food, reduce hormones that are necessary for growth and maintenance.
It is not about thyroid hormone, even though that is how a lot of people will mention the hormones.
We talked about this in a previous podcast, and it's also in a couple of the YouTube videos that relate to what type of diet do I need to follow to be and how diet and nutrition will affect my metabolism.
That's because excessively restricted diets, excessively reducing hormones leads to changes in metabolism that's going to be counter to what is desired.
This is where if I become too restrictive in my diet, I think, oh, I'm quote unquote cutting calories and quote unquote cutting calories and quote unquote cutting calories.
But what is happening is that if that restriction in nutrient intake, because remember it's not about calories, it's about nutrients.
If that nutrient intake becomes too restrictive, too low, the body turns and starts to change the hormone responses that are there that goes into a preservation mode, not a maintenance mode, and not a growth mode.
Where I think, oh, I'm restricting all of my food so that I can reduce body fat.
But the problem is, is that I'm not seeing a reduction in body fat.
And that's because I am too restrictive in what I am cutting.
This is where it's better to start changing your macronutrient as opposed to changing how much is being eaten.
What we have to remember is that no single food and in particular, no specific type of supplement has been empirically shown to independently lead to health or morphological changes.
And the key here is independently shown.
If I make a change in diet and I make a change in exercise, I will see changes in both morphology and in health.
By modifying and by manipulating macronutrients, I may change some of my metabolism, which may change some of my morphology.
But that change does not happen independent of other changes within my lifestyle.
And this is what we have to remember, one change in lifestyle tends to lead to secondary changes in lifestyle.
And it becomes very hard outside of empirical observations, scientific observations in large populations to indicate whether or not we have a single factor or multiple factors.
And most of the time, it's multiple factors.
So what's the take home message that I can take from looking at the advertisements to these mass marketed programs?
And what's the take home message from this podcast?
Watch out for presentations and information that is presented through logical fallacies.
If you get a presentation of extra extraordinary claims, seek extraordinary evidence.
Remember, everything has a chance to work for everyone.
And we need to choose what you would normally select towards wanting to do if you want to do it for a long term and see long term benefits.
In terms of normal population, it takes about four weeks for about one third of everybody to see full responses.
And it takes about eight to 12 weeks for 95 percent of the population to see changes.
And that's the normal population.
There are some people who will not see responses and there are some people who will see immediate responses.
Those are the outliers within the population.
We cannot use the outliers to describe the normal population.
Once again, remember, no single food or supplement will independently lead to changes in health or morphology.
Programs that are periodized are better than programs that are not periodized.
We have to have exercise and diet periodically change over the course of the year based off of goals that are being set by the individual.
If I do not change what I'm doing, the body will interpret that to be my new normal.
And I will maintain everything off of that new normal and I will stop making changes.
Well, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.
Stay tuned and pay attention for upcoming talks and upcoming discussions and upcoming podcasts about topics related to what we just looked at.
Looking more in depth into the science about how we can live a more healthy lifestyle.
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