Georgie Fear on habit-based nutrition for staying lean

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Okay. Hey Georgie. Thanks for coming on the show. 

Georgie Fear: Thanks for having me here. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited to talk to you because the subject of I guess, I mean, I, I kind of just call it intuitive eating, I guess. It’s something I get asked about fairly. Often like, cause once people start learning about energy balance and learning about macronutrient balance, they start learning how, you know, how does it, how does dieting actually work?

It then kind of dawns on them. Or [00:04:00] so is this like planning and tracking my numbers is something I have to do my entire life or like, how do I, what if I don’t want to do that for a bit? So I’m excited to kind of dive into that and some other stuff because I, something that it’s kind of on my list of things to write about, but I haven’t really gotten around to it yet.

Georgie Fear: Super. Well, that sounds awesome. That is exactly what I work with people on. I don’t call it and I don’t call it intuitive eating because that tends to have a slightly different connotation. 

What 

Mike Matthews: I don’t even know what to call it. That was just my own. I’m like, I don’t know what it was. I guess I just kind of call 

Georgie Fear: it a habit based nutrition.

Mike Matthews: True. 

Georgie Fear: And yeah, most of the people that come my way don’t want to count calories. You know, there’s a certain amount of people that it really works for and they even enjoy the process. But I kind of I like it 

Mike Matthews: for fat loss purposes, I like it because you know that you’re not screwing it up basically.

If you just make a meal plan and stick to that and weigh and measure your food or whatever and then you just, there’s just no way that you’re going to accidentally overeat, which is obviously the number one reason [00:05:00] why people don’t lose weight. 

Georgie Fear: Bingo, yeah, when you can remove all of the sources of 

Mike Matthews: human error.

Georgie Fear: Yeah, you’re eliminating all the variables that could mean spinning your wheels. 

Yeah, 

Georgie Fear: the downfall is not everybody’s as organized or inclined to measure accurately. And some people just get downright neurotic when they start counting calories and it becomes emotionally upsetting, so having an alternative is a nice thing.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s very true. Alright, so before we get into all the fun stuff let’s just quickly, just in case the listeners don’t know who you are you know, so what’s your story? How and what do you kind of specialize in? You have a book. So if you want to talk about that. 

Georgie Fear: Sure. Well, come on, who doesn’t want to talk about their book?

It’s like my baby. My name’s Georgie fear. I guess most people on the web know me from askgeorgie. com and I run a nutrition coaching company. So I of course coach my own clients. And then we also have other. Fabulous coaches who have trained with us and work for us at one by one nutrition. My husband, is that 

Mike Matthews: [00:06:00] spelled out or is it numeral?

Georgie Fear: Oh, we spell it out. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. 

Georgie Fear: One by one nutrition. So we have a website and a Facebook group, but I do, or a Facebook page, but I do most of my stuff currently through ask Georgie. com. My book is called lean habits for lifelong weight loss, which is a bit wordy. But it’s basically for people that have decided that calorie counting may not be for them or is definitely not for them.

And that doesn’t mean just giving up on your weight and eating everything in sight. You know, there’s certainly a lot of built in signals that you can learn from your body in terms of. How much to eat as well as what type of macronutrient splits are going to give you the most satisfaction per calorie, right?

So my personal background, I did, I am a registered dietitian. So I did an undergraduate degree in nutrition, plus a one year clinical internship through Cornell University. And then I went back to school and started working on a PhD and spent five years doing that. And I studied two main fields. I studied [00:07:00] perceived barriers to health behaviors.

So kind of like the psychology of health change. And the other thing I studied was really nitty gritty lab science. And it was about the mechanisms of appetite regulation in the brain. So how the nutrients that we eat impact neuron firing in the brain that tell us, like, hey, maybe I’m done with that sandwich or Hey, maybe I want to go get another sandwich.

So Can 

Mike Matthews: I interrupt you and ask a question? Please do. Here’s a question that I, and I’ve asked some pretty smart people and they they, I just never, never really get an answer to it. So I don’t get hungry. It doesn’t matter if I eat or don’t eat. I could not, I could fast for 20 hours and I do not feel hunger.

I will feel maybe lower on energy. Like if I go a while without food I’m not really into intermittent fasting as a thing. Sometimes I’ll just kind of. tend to do it on the weekends because because of how my diet is set up, I do my weightlifting during the week. So I’m eating a bit more food during the week, probably in a slight surplus during the week.[00:08:00] 

And then on the weekends, I’ll usually cut my calories back a little bit. Cause I’m not weightlifting and not kind of like a little bit of a deficit to make up for that surplus during the week, just to kind of maintain my. My body fat percentage. But I, I, it doesn’t matter. Like I can go, you know, I’ll fast let’s say 16 hours and, you know, break the fast over the weekend.

I just don’t get hungry. I can eat a very small amount of food, a large amount of food. Do you have any, I’ve asked, like I said, this is like, this is like something that sits in the back of my head. And when I come across people, like I’ve never been able to find something in my own research that really explained it beyond just, you know, I don’t know left in sensitivity or just good hormones or what, I don’t know.

Georgie Fear: You could I mean, yeah, you probably are very leptin sensitive, given your athletic background and regular exercise. It may also be that, if you’re trying to eat at a surplus during the week, That, that kind of carries over. Could be. It could also be that if you, but regardless 

Mike Matthews: of that, it doesn’t matter.

Like that’s just what I do right now. But sometimes I change that. It’s not always, I could be in a deficit and I just don’t get hungry. Like I could be in a deficit all week, all [00:09:00] week long. Like when I’m cutting, it’s always a joke through my friends. ’cause they just, they just, you know, like, fuck you with you.

Like, because I’ll be like, I could be in a deficit seven days a week and just not get hungry. It just doesn’t matter. 

Georgie Fear: Super interesting. Yeah, it’s tough to say what it, what exactly it is. Some people are more sensitive to it than others. Some people also have gotten good at ignoring it. And by that, I mean, you may not be intentionally ignoring it, but after just getting your body and your mind used to eating what’s on your plan, you can really separate yourself from the 

Mike Matthews: psychological, I need food or I want food kind of thing.

Georgie Fear: No, I mean, you can separate yourself because you’re not eating by hunger cues. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure. 

Georgie Fear: So, you just get used to not listening to it. It’s kind of like if you have a, a co worker or someone that’s like constantly chatting at you. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: You just tune them out. Ha ha ha. Well, if you’re not eating according to hunger cues, they can tend to fade because you’re not paying attention to them.

Oh, sure. The 

Georgie Fear: people, the people that most often say they’re not hungry ever are either obese. Yeah. And they’ve been in a chronic positive energy balance. Which is [00:10:00] It’s having its own effect on, you know, neurotransmitters and leptin, or the chronic dieters or patients that have anorexia nervosa, 

they 

Georgie Fear: have gone so long fighting and ignoring and not responding to their hunger cues that they don’t feel them anymore.

And both of those populations do recover hunger cues. When you start, you know, working by them. So, I don’t think you’re missing out on anything, because clearly what you’re doing is working. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I mean, my, my, my intake is, I probably average this out to about 27, 2800 calories a day, and that’s around my T.

100. E. I mean, for, for how lean I am, I’m not mega lean, I mean, I’m Maybe about 8%. That’s what I maintain. And I’ve found that lower body fat levels, like I do have to reduce my food intake a little bit. If I were, let’s say, hanging out in like the 12, 13 percent range, I would probably be eating maybe upwards of 3, 000, 3, 100.

But yeah, I’m not, there’s no chronic diet. It’s not like I’m, you know, I’m in a deficit when I want to get leaner and otherwise I just kind of [00:11:00] like to stay the same. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. I, I’m a big fan of sustainability myself. I I kind of hang out around, I don’t know, I’m estimating 17 percent maybe. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, which is very lean for, obviously.

Georgie Fear: It’s lean for a woman. I don’t really have much fluctuation because I just kind of do the same habits, 365, and it’s, it’s nice and easy for me. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: exactly. All right. So anyways, sorry for the interruption back to your, back to your book, which it’s, you know, whatever, at least our tangent was, was relevant.

Georgie Fear: We sent you a copy, didn’t we? Did you get 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I looked through it. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I was like looking through all the main points and I like it’s I’m going to go through it in more detail because like I said, I want to, it’s in a subject I’ve been meaning to write about because it’s just a, I feel like it’s a gap in the content that I offer on the website.

So I have it on my list of things to read in depth. It’s just that list is long. 

Georgie Fear: I’m impressed that you even cracked it, you know? 

Mike Matthews: No, no, I, yeah, I do. I, I, I mean, I’m, [00:12:00] I read probably one to two books a week on average, but I have a list and a lot of that also is, I’m big on audio books because I listen to them when I make food, when I drive, when I, if I’m not, you know, I spend time every night reading on my Kindle, but otherwise I’m kind of listening to audio books.

So that also helps. Rad. Awesome. Is yours available as an audio book? I didn’t. 

Georgie Fear: It is not. I’ve considered I’ve considered looking at you know, Amazon’s audio book creation thing. I just haven’t You 

Mike Matthews: should do it. 

Georgie Fear: ACX. 

Mike Matthews: com. I Yeah. Did 

Georgie Fear: you do that yet? 

Mike Matthews: Oh yeah. For sure. I sell a shit ton of audio books.

Audio books are, it’s a very like podcasts. It’s a very rapidly growing medium. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You should definitely do it. And I 

Georgie Fear: will be picking your brain about that after we finish 

Mike Matthews: recording. Sure. Sure. 

Georgie Fear: So let’s see. So Bye. So you were telling your 

Mike Matthews: story and that’s so that, that’s your book and and then you’re getting into the, what the book kind of goes over and then I interrupted you.

Georgie Fear: It’s all good. Yeah, so that’s me, science geek, nutrition pro I work over exclusively over the [00:13:00] internet. So I do all email and phone based nutrition coaching, which is kind of fun. It enables me a really big. I talk to people in Europe and the States and Canada and got a couple Australians and so that’s a ton of fun.

And yeah, my basic population is people that are done with what they think of as diets. And they’re like, all right, I just want to get some healthy behaviors, habits in place. They become my routine that I do for the rest of my life. And then I can pay more attention to other things. So the, the book is basically my coaching system.

You know, I can’t coach everybody personally, and not everybody can afford, you know, having the one on one coaching program. So, this is like a little Coach Georgie for your bookshelf, as I say. The most important part is the core four habits. And that’s the first section of the book. And these are like the big rocks.

And a lot of people in fitness and nutrition and a lot of other areas, too, we want to get into the details. We all want to be advanced and start with carb cycling and [00:14:00] Yeah, fancy 

Mike Matthews: workout routines and 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, fancy supersets and 12 supplements and Yep. Meanwhile, people might still be eating when they aren’t hungry.

And if you’re trying to lose weight, eating when you’re not hungry is just completely maladaptive most of the time. So, the core four habits that we talk about are First, getting your meal timing down to a more satisfying breakdown. By that I mean, if somebody’s doing You know, frequent small meals, and they consolidate them to get larger meals with some more space between them.

There’s a number of benefits to that. One is, you get to eat a full plate of food instead of, you know, 300 calorie mini meal. But the other thing is, even if you take the same number of calories, and you distribute them into more substantial meals with more space between them, people report more satisfaction and they actually get food off of their mind for a number of hours after the meal.

And I know that you [00:15:00] said you personally don’t experience hunger, but maybe you’ve heard of this before when you, that 

Mike Matthews: weird thing called hunger. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. And I’m sure you’ve heard your clients say that when you reduce calories pretty low, they’re kind of thinking about food all the time. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m not a big fan of a big calorie deficit, especially not like, I mean, and you’re probably the same way I’m more of a fan of using exercise to drive that deficit as opposed to cutting actual intake, you know, where, where you just kind of go, all right, let’s just start at BMR or something like that.

I’d much prefer that somebody exercise. I mean, obviously there’s a point where you just can’t, You can overdo it, but to let’s, you know, if they can, if they can be exercising four to six hours a week, I much would prefer that because then they just get to eat more food and we get to, you know, start off several hundred calories above BMR, which gives us some room to move down if necessary, as you know, but.

Yeah. I mean, generally speaking I think in my experience with when you most people like that I hear from [00:16:00] and I, and I, you know, just email with and stuff, the first week or two can be a bit of a, like they have, they have that issue. And then as their body adapts, it seems to be not so much of a problem.

Georgie Fear: Yeah. Not a big, I don’t do huge deficits either. I mean, when you work in, in hunger and satiety, your body’s pretty good at not wanting you to go into this massive deficit, but it does let people accumulate, you know, enough of a deficit to, you know, lose a half pound to a pound a week on average. And, you know, I’ve got data on thousands of clients at this point and we never really know when they will start losing weight as they go through the habits because we.

We’re very consistent with just one habit at a time. Let’s do one thing, and make sure you do it enough that you get good at it, and it becomes relatively easy. And then we’re going to stack on a second habit. So, if somebody’s first habit is, Oh, let’s say I’m going to eat four times. And I’m not going to graze in between.

I’m not going to eat the samples at Costco, I’m going to try and steer clear of the candy [00:17:00] dish at work. I’m going to try not to eat my kids crust from their PB& J sandwich. You know, that’s a really, that’s a significant habit change for a lot of people who may be eating. You know, lots of small. And 

Mike Matthews: that can be a lot of calories too.

A lot of those, you know, I kind of call them hidden calories, quote unquote, because they don’t really realize. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. They like sneak under your radar. So, that is For some people, if they’re consuming a lot of calories and the grazing between meals, they’ll start losing weight right off the bat. Other people will clean up their.

Meals, they’ll combine their six meals into three larger ones and they’re feeling more satisfied, but they’re not necessarily eating fewer calories. So then the second and third habits in the book, you know, I don’t use the same habits in the same order when I have one on one clients, but for the sake of the book, you have to commit to an order.

So in the book, habit two is to practice feeling hungry. Because many times especially people that have been in the diet game and trying to control their weight for a long time, [00:18:00] we can almost start to fear hunger, like it’s this disastrous thing that’s going to kill us. When really it’s a, a perfectly normal physiological response, and it’s actually a really good thing to be in touch with if you want to naturally regulate your calorie intake.

Because your body will do the math. And it’ll send you that hunger signal for most people when you’re getting into when you’re getting, you know closer to, you know, using up the fuel from your last meal and start, your brain starts to pick up on the signals that you’re breaking down some energy stores.

So my recommendation for people that want to lose one half to one pound a week is simply practice feeling hungry for 30 to 60 minutes before each time you eat. And the 30 to 60 minutes is definitely not random numbers. If somebody is, well, clearly if someone’s eating when they’re not hungry at all, cause they’re bored or it’s lunchtime or somebody brought in donuts, that’s going to be a problem for weight loss.

And if you [00:19:00] don’t necessarily wait through any hunger, people tend to end up at about a maintenance. So when I work with people who want to maintain their weight, we usually say, well, just. Make sure you’re feeling legit stomach centered hunger, and then it’s time to eat. To create that deficit, that’s where we say, you know, get comfortable sitting with hunger.

Tolerate it for 30 to 60 minutes. It’s not It’s a disaster. It’s, it may be frightening at first, but if you are really scared of it, take five minutes first, you know, baby step into it. It’s something that feels comfortable for you. And I raised my hand. I 

had 

Georgie Fear: to start with five minutes. I was not interested in feeling hungry when I first kind of, 

yeah.

My 

Georgie Fear: husband actually takes full credit for convincing me of the benefits of our, our natural hunger system, because even with all my research background, I was still not interested in feeling hungry. I wanted to prevent it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And that’s also, I like that habit because basically what you’re doing is because for, for most people, the dieting experience does come [00:20:00] with some hunger.

So by extending that out. You are going to eat a bit a bit less food by the end of the day, your, your calorie intake is going to be a bit lower by just waiting out that hunger as opposed to feeling hungry, eating right away. And then let’s say whatever calories you eat, they’re going to keep you full for three hours, let’s say, and that hunger is going to hit again.

If you, if it’s hunger, weight, eat you know, hunger, weight, eat, then by the end of the day, you maybe have shaved off 10 percent of your calorie intake by doing that. 

Georgie Fear: Perfect. Which for somebody eating 2000 calories is approaching half a pound a week. Yep. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that makes 

Georgie Fear: sense. Brian Wansink talks about the mindless margin.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I read his book Mindless Eating. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, me too. And you know, your body will kick and fight if you cut its calories by half. But if you cut it by 10%, you’re not going to feel all that different. And it’s enough to see a steady weight loss. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. 

Georgie Fear: So so 30 to 60 minutes. Now The reason that we don’t say, well, just feel hungry for half the day is because if you start to push hunger for more [00:21:00] than an hour Bad things start to happen.

Often it becomes tougher to eat slowly at the next meal. If you’ve been hungry for, you know, way too long. I think we’ve all had the experience of Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: you just, once it starts, it just goes downhill. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, when you get too hungry, it’s like, oh man, the standards come down, the speed goes up, and we’re more likely to eat until we have a bellyache.

Yeah. So that’s something that, again, as you can imagine, a lot of people need to practice. And those first two habits can be Life changing and earth shattering in a not disastrous sense. It shakes up so much of what people are doing. If they’re trying to eat mini meals all day long, grazing on 100 calorie yogurt, and then a piece of fruit, and then an hour later, a half cup of cottage cheese, and then three ounces of chicken.

It’s really different to shift to substantial meals. and wait to get hungry between them. It also helps kind of free people from what I call hunger [00:22:00] purgatory, which is what happens when you’re eating on that, you know, little, little, little meals. You’re never all that hungry and you’re never all that full.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. 

Georgie Fear: In this middle ground. Yeah. So it clean, it cleans up the signals. to get all the way hungry, all the way satisfied. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I can definitely see that as a just, just a benefit of fewer, fewer meals. Because especially when you’re dieting, especially when you, when you’re, let’s say, I don’t know, 68 weeks into, into a deficit.

And that’s when these types of things I think start to matter more. Whereas the first few weeks, I mean, it’s kind of just. It’s, it’s pretty easy if you know what you’re doing, but eventually your body is not liking it so much. And then something like that. How do 

Georgie Fear: you help your clients if they run into that, I don’t know, compliance issue?

Mike Matthews: Well, let’s see. I’m in a kind of a interesting position where I don’t do any one on one coaching [00:23:00] because I, I just don’t have the time to give it and where I feel like I could really do do it justice for, and, and I run also into personal, like how much with my time and the things that I’m working on, like I don’t even necessarily feel comfortable Charging what I would charge.

And so basically I just kind of, I just help people for free. But I, so I answer a lot of emails and just answer people’s questions. So you know, I’ve worked with a lot, a lot of people. And to be honest, the vast majority of, I mean, the vast majority of people that I speak with are, they don’t really run into any issues.

They kind of just do their thing. And if they ever run into any little things, they write me and we sort it out. The only problems, the reason why I was saying on the coaching thing is so I’m not like Dave, I’m not like inside people’s lives every day. I just kinda, you know, I’ll talk to somebody and then I’ll hear from them a couple of weeks later and they’ll be like, all right, cool.

So this is what’s been going on for the last couple of weeks. Or maybe I won’t hear some people. [00:24:00] It’s funny. I’ll talk to them once. And then I hear from them two months later and they just send me pictures. And now they, you know, they’ve lost like 15 pounds of fat or something. Yeah, so it’s just like, Oh, cool.

That’s like a lot of those people that are up on the website on, I have a lot of success stories up on my website. That’s a lot of them. They’re just people. A lot of them just come to me. They just go, they read the book. So 

Georgie Fear: you’re admitting you sent them one email. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. So it can be one email.

They read the book, you know, and they’re like, all right, I’m gonna do the program. Here are my questions. And I’m like, all right, cool. One email and then they come back to me two months later and they’re like, check it out. I’m like, well, 

Georgie Fear: damn good book in email. 

Mike Matthews: Well, shit. That’s 

Georgie Fear: cause I talk to my people every day and exactly that’s names.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. So, so I’m in a different, I’m in a different position, but I just have a different setup. However the, the only like thing that I kind of run into or have, have, it would be the most common issue that people run into. And because of. I, you know, I write a lot of content on muscle for life and my books contain a lot of, a lot of content.

They, it’s usually just like, they know. the weekends come, let’s say every week the weekends come and [00:25:00] they just overeat. And so, you know, they’ll run into something like that where, and then we’ll have to either rework their meal schedule. So some people, you know, they, for, for whatever reason, they thought they had to eat a big breakfast every day.

So they were forcing themselves to eat a big breakfast every day, but they don’t really like, they would prefer to just skip breakfast and eat a big dinner. And they didn’t really know, quote unquote, no, they could. That’s okay because some other, you know, quote unquote guru said breakfast is the most important meal, blah, blah, blah.

So it’s usually just that it’s usually stuff of reworking their meal scheduling and and then sometimes it’s also just giving themselves a break like just reverse dieting for a little bit go for the next four weeks and you know Increase your your daily calorie intake by a hundred every seven days or so or every five days and That, that can work wonders for people, obviously, it’s like if they’ve been in a deficit for eight, ten weeks and they’re just not feeling good, they’re just like low energy and their training is not, not that great.

And then it’s like, okay, let’s just work your calories back up for four weeks and just give your body a break and then go back at it. That, that’s also I found just a [00:26:00] simple you know, a way for, for people to just get back on track. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, you can’t go hard all the time. We’re only human. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly.

Georgie Fear: So so are 

Mike Matthews: there any other, so those are two habits. Are there any other habits that, cause this was like next on the list to talk about what are some of these, these positive habits that people can develop? 

Georgie Fear: Those were the first two and then number three and four, which round out the kind of four biggies number three is about eating just enough and that’s stopping when you’re satisfied.

Basically a lot of us have gotten into the habit occasionally or frequently eating until we’re uncomfortable eating until we’re stuffed And that is requires, you know, very once in a while, 

Mike Matthews: I’ll eat like, like come holiday, like come Thanksgiving. I always do. I’ll eat until I just can’t move basically until I’m in so much pain.

I can eat so much food. I’m like a weird snake, human person or something. I, I can go probably, I think this last Thanksgiving, it was like. [00:27:00] It’s five or six full plates of food until I was like, it’s absurd. It doesn’t make any sense. Like I’m just weird. So I don’t get, I don’t get hungry if I don’t eat. I just get low energy and I just know that I need food, but I don’t ever, ever have hunger pangs.

But then I’ll go out. If I can go out to a restaurant and eat 4, 000 calories and feel like, eh, I guess I eat, I feel 60 percent full. I’m, I’m an alien. I don’t know. I’m a robot or something. Hey, 

Georgie Fear: we all have superpowers. That’s my superpower. I’m glad you have found yours. It’s like put that on the resume. I have bestselling books and I can eat six plates of food.

Mike Matthews: My hunger hormones. I have, I have, I’ve mastered mind over matter with my hunger hormone. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. The human stomach is remarkably expandable. 

Mike Matthews: Yes. I know that. 

Georgie Fear: And again, that’s the type of thing that people practice if they’re not just doing it at holidays, but doing it every night at dinner. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: Then it certainly becomes an issue for their weight.

You [00:28:00] know, nobody’s body reflects what they do once a year. Unless you’re, you know, getting a tattoo or something. But in terms of what you eat. 

Mike Matthews: Right. 

Georgie Fear: One meal a year. That’s 

Mike Matthews: why I don’t care exactly. It’s like once or twice a year. I’m like, I don’t even care. I’m just going to eat so much food because it’s going to taste good and it’ll be fun.

Georgie Fear: I love that Aristotle quote where he says We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’m all about routines as well. So if you got 

Georgie Fear: good habits, eat until you can’t move on Thanksgiving and Christmas and it won’t matter. So for the day to day, just practicing for some people it’s eating literally three bites less.

Really, really small touches here and there. And. You know, going in a small, non scary fashion, again, not slashing your intake by 50%, but seeing if you need you know, six ounces of meat, or if five is just as satisfying, or if instead of, you know two thirds of a cup of oatmeal, maybe half a cup is fine. So just, you know, practicing dialing back portion sizes a bit so that [00:29:00] you’re still satisfied.

I don’t want, I don’t want people to push away from the table still hungry, but there’s no need to eat a margin of safety. After getting satisfied because there’s not a salmon coming. 

Mike Matthews: And is there, is there I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this in the literature. Of course, it’s just one of those things.

I don’t know if there’s like good science behind it, but that it takes what, I feel like if you read it, maybe it was even Brian’s book as well, so it might just be legit. It takes whatever that, that standard 20 minutes for your body to register, for your brain to register, and for you to start feeling full from, from food that you’re eating.

Georgie Fear: 20 minutes is a good ballpark. There’s actually different pathways and I go into this a bit in the book. It’s right in the beginning. It says like warning science ahead. So people who don’t want the science can skip it. But there’s four main pathways to satiety that your brain picks up on. The most rapid one is the stretch receptors in the stomach.

And the signals get relayed along the vagus nerve directly to the brain. So there’s no [00:30:00] metabolite that has to accumulate in the bloodstream or reach a certain concentration. Your stomach stretches out, zap, signal goes right up to the brain. 

Mike Matthews: And that’s where the food volume research comes in and it’s the volume that matters for satiety.

Bingo. Yeah, more than the calories, yeah. 

Georgie Fear: So in terms of volume, like Barbara Rolle’s research, volumetrics, that type of thing is quite rapid. That’s why if I drank a liter of seltzer water with all those bubbles in it, I’d be like, Whoa, I need a few minutes before lunch. Right. Just doesn’t come, it’s not comfortable.

Right. 

Georgie Fear: Your body’s not going to be fooled, though, by a liter of seltzer water. It’s going to sort through that signal and go, Wait, wait, there’s no calories here. Nice try. 

Mike Matthews: Nice try. 

Georgie Fear: Nice try. You can’t have diet coke instead of lunch. You need to actually give me some food. So the other signals are based on the nutrient content of the meal.

So the other, some of the most other powerful signals come from protein, which triggers the release of various [00:31:00] hormones, and they circulate via the blood up to the brain. So that, as you would expect, takes some time. Fat digestion also releases some I don’t want to get too like jargony here, but fat, fat digestion also triggers the release of some compounds such as OEA, which is short for oleoethanolamine.

I knew it, I was going to have to drop a long word in there. And that reaching the brain also triggers a delay in hunger returning. So, the fat signal is actually the slowest pathway to register. So, if you’re eating Because if it’s 

Mike Matthews: like quick satiety then it would be carbohydrate and protein, right?

Georgie Fear: Right. Carbohydrates don’t They do directly get 

Mike Matthews: Especially fibrous ones. 

Georgie Fear: Well, the, the fibrous ones are going to trigger more of the volume 

Mike Matthews: receptor, 

Georgie Fear: Or the volume pathway. Carbohydrates aren’t, well, so carbohydrate concentration is sensed by neurons in the brain. But I think what’s more powerful in turning off appetite is the insulin release.

So it’s not [00:32:00] the carbohydrates themselves, but the resulting insulin rise. So that’s going to be sensed by the brain as well. So. Well, I mean, dietary 

Mike Matthews: fat won’t produce that insulin reaction though, so I mean, you gotta get it from protein or carbs, right? 

Georgie Fear: Oh, okay. So you’re talking about after the stretch pathway.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I was just saying like, just, just on that insulin point, cause a lot of, you know, there’s low, low carb dieting is very trendy right now. And I think one of the downsides of it, you’ve probably heard from a million people that have tried it and I I’ve heard from. At least a thousand people over the last, I don’t even know, six months or so that have come off low carb dieting because they just don’t, it, it, they don’t, they’re hungrier than usual, their energy levels are lower than usual and there’s, there’s a bit of research out there that shows that it, it, you can’t say it’s gonna be for everybody but there’s a better chance of, of just general satiety on a higher carb intake when you’re in a calorie deficit than a lower carb.

Georgie Fear: Agreed, agreed. A lot of that has to do with the fat percentage of the diet as [00:33:00] well. Because by default, there’s only so many nutrients. So if you, if you drop carbs really low to get enough energy, Most people increase their fat intake, 

Mike Matthews: do you 

Georgie Fear: agree? 

Mike Matthews: Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it depends on how educated they are, I guess, because you kind of cap protein at some point.

It’s there’s no need to be, yeah, you don’t, you’re not going to be eating two grams of protein per pound of body weight or something. There’s just no need to. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. And it’ll just gross you out. I mean, when I’ve done that before 

Mike Matthews: in the past when I used to think that like you have to eat a ton of protein to get anywhere, like it was, it was, it was not enjoyable.

Georgie Fear: Yeah. You know, 9pm at night, you’re holding your nose, putting the cantina down like, 

Mike Matthews: Oh God. Or, or another double scoop protein shake. Oh my God, I have to drink this. 

Georgie Fear: Yes. Oh, I laugh because I’ve done it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I know. 

Georgie Fear: So yes, you know, protein tending to be self limiting because it just starts to gross you out after a while.

So that high fat intakes actually starts to cause a problem. If you have too high a fat intake and too high looking at somewhere [00:34:00] above 40 percent of total calories, it actually weakens the satiety pathway from fat. 

Mike Matthews: Just from over saturation. Just from 

Georgie Fear: overdoing it. Furthermore, it impacts your brain so that your brain becomes less sensitive to leptin.

So, you know, this kind of leptin is, as many people know, a hormone that is. Created by fat cells among some other tissues, and it circulates to the brain and in general turns down appetite and turns up energy expenditure. 

Mike Matthews: Right, because it tells the body that it’s fed, right? 

Georgie Fear: It tells the body that you have fat stores and energy is on board.

Mike Matthews: Yes. 

Georgie Fear: So, this is a hormone we definitely want to have its full capacity. It does lots of good stuff for us. And if your fat intake is too high, it actually suppresses your brain sensitivity to leptin. So, for people that are low carb, high fat, and it’s not working for them, I start bringing down the fat, replacing it with some good, fibrous carbohydrates, [00:35:00] nutrient rich fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, and sweet potatoes.

People start doing a whole lot better and best of all, they have energy again. 

Mike Matthews: Yup. And that’s, that’s exactly what happens when I hear from so many people when they, a lot of times they’ll just contact me because I don’t, I, in a, in my kind of flagship books, as you say, one for men, one for women, that’s, you know, I go over this and so I’ll hear from people saying, Hey, I was doing this low carb dieting for a while.

I was really scared to add carbs back in. Cause I thought I’d be fat. I thought I’d get fat. But I, you know, just did what you said. And not only am I like losing weight again, but I feel 10 times better. Well, yeah. 

Georgie Fear: And I can have toast again. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also a quality of life. I mean, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice, you know, every, every food you like for any reason whatsoever.

Georgie Fear: Yeah, I’m with you. High on, high on life enjoyment and food’s huge for that, for me. 

Mike Matthews: For everybody. I mean, there’s no, there’s no question about that. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. So we talked about, you know, the society pathways and eating just enough. The [00:36:00] fourth habit is a really obvious one and that’s eating mostly whole foods.

Because the whole first three can actually not get you into a calorie deficit if you’re living on Ho Hos and Pepsi. Right. Like, you can actually eat three or four times a day, and eat only after you’ve been hungry, and stop when you’re feeling satisfied, and gain weight if you’re eating lots of processed food.

Because they just trick the system. I think we’ve all And they’re also 

Mike Matthews: very calorie dense. Yeah, you bet. You just, there’s so much in, you know, in, you Depending on the foods, it’s so many calories per, you could say, cubic inch of food. So you, you know, you’re not, whereas like vegetables, you can fill your stomach up and get that stretch response.

And it’s not, you know, not very many calories, lots of nutrients, body feels good. But donuts not so much. 

Georgie Fear: Right. Right. So so those are the basic core four habits. And then the rest of the book is Kind of your fine tuning, you know, for somebody that’s it’s basically how to get the [00:37:00] most mileage from your appetite and satiety cues.

So once you’re eating mostly whole foods, and I say mostly, not all, because I don’t want people to get, we all know people that have gone too far into that direction and starts to decrease quality of life because they’re feeling like they have to. I don’t know. Home grow. 

Mike Matthews: Or never eat sugar ever again or never have fried anything ever again.

Georgie Fear: Right, right. So, you know, moderation, you know, a few processed things, really not a big deal. But if it’s more than 10 percent of your diet, I usually recommend, you know, trying to nudge it down. 

Mike Matthews: Right. And by processed, I mean, obviously you mean overly processed because pretty much everything, a lot of the, like, grains have been processed to some degree, but you mean more like the prepackaged crap that, you know, baked goods and stuff like that, right?

Georgie Fear: Yeah, there’s certainly a spectrum of processing. I don’t believe in too many dichotomies of good and bad. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: So some people will start to think, well, I shouldn’t eat anything that came from the middle aisles of the grocery store. Exactly. Well, I get oatmeal from the middle aisles and I get, 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And oatmeal has been processed.[00:38:00] 

That’s not, it’s not. They took it from nature. It didn’t come exactly like that. They had to do something to it. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. This is not the same as carrot cake mix. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. 

Georgie Fear: Talking, you know, different things here. Canned beans. Yeah. You know, jarred peanut butter. You know, yes, technically these are processed, but we’re not looking at, you know, really nutrient empty foods 

Mike Matthews: where I’d say, fat free cheese and stuff.

You’re like, this isn’t food. There’s no way. 

Georgie Fear: Cheetos. Yeah. Granola bars, pop tarts, like, yeah, if, if that’s the stuff that you like for your treats, awesome, rock on. But it shouldn’t be, you know, a significant contributor or the majority of the food that you eat. I have to say for the people that are in my audience that read my book, I don’t know if anyone actually needs Habit 4, because they’re probably already eating mostly whole foods if they’re reading my stuff, but it’s the type of thing that you just have to say.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and also I think it’s a general, I mean, there’s just a general trend and not it’s, it’s, I think it’s only going to get more and more popular toward eating relatively unprocessed foods and people being a [00:39:00] bit more aware of what they put in their body and wanting to eat more fruits and vegetables and wanting to eat organic food, stuff like that.

So I, I think that we’re going to see more and more of that over the next several years. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. So yeah, from there it talks about fine tuning and that for some people means reducing the fat intake if they’re coming off of a super high fat diet, boosting their protein if they’re not having enough protein, tuning down their protein if they’re overdoing it, because some people are just taking in too many calories because they think they need way more protein than they actually do.

Right. 

Georgie Fear: Looking at the carbohydrates in someone’s diet and seeing if it’s proportional to their energy needs or not. Some people need more than others because they’re more active than others. So kind of sorting that out. We talk about treats, the alcohol, the chocolate, the stuff that we eat for joy.

We don’t want to cut out, but we also don’t want to separate us from our goals. Right. So I’m very wide open on the methods to getting your treat intake where it needs to be for your goals, and I offer a lot of different [00:40:00] solutions because, as you probably know, some people will benefit from one style, such as, I’ll just have my one meal a week where I eat, you know, the more indulgent items, or some people will.

Go more frequently with a smaller portion, such as, well, I’ll just have a square of dark chocolate every night and then never really have this. I do. I 

Mike Matthews: have a couple of hundred calories of chocolate every day. Cause it’s delicious. And, but then I’ll also like for me, my quote unquote cheat meal or whatever would be more if I’m going out to a restaurant and I’m just going to eat a bunch of food and I’m not really going to pay attention to you know, I, you know, I’m not, I, I’m maybe a little bit conscious of I’m not going to eat like three orders of macaroni and cheese, but You know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be eating somewhere in the ballpark of two to three thousand calories and restaurant eating out I think is the only thing that if you’re dieting you Do yourself a favor and prepare your own foods because you do not know what you’re eating when you go and eat in restaurants like you make foods taste good by adding cream butter oil and You know, and that’s also how you add [00:41:00] a bajillion calories.

Ha ha 

Georgie Fear: ha. Technical term. 

Mike Matthews: Ha ha. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. So as, as you know, lots of people have different preferences for the treats. I also run into people that really want their wine and they don’t mind giving up the sweets and sugars. 

Mike Matthews: Huh. 

Georgie Fear: And people that really want their french fries every now and then and they just couldn’t care less about dessert.

Mike Matthews: Have you, have you found that regular alcohol like having wine every day beyond the calories of it, just because of alcohol’s fat, you know, blunting of fat oxidation, have you ever found that gets in the way, or so long as the calories are right, someone could drink you know, I mean, obviously there’s a point where it becomes a problem, but could drink whatever that amount is every day?

Georgie Fear: I do think it becomes problematic to have alcohol every day. It’s, 

Mike Matthews: I mean, it’s not healthy for you. That’s clear. I mean, there’s, I know, I know it’s kind of trendy right now to say alcohol is healthy. But, you know, I was listening to a podcast from a guy, super smart guy. He’s a lead researcher of Life Extension, which everybody has probably heard of.

Massive company. You know, Life Extension, right? 

Georgie Fear: I don’t actually. Sorry. [00:42:00] 

Mike Matthews: I know 

Georgie Fear: I’m hanging my head and feeling social pressures. Yes. But no, to be honest, I haven’t. 

Mike Matthews: Oh, they’re, they’re I mean, I think they, they’re like a billion dollar company that produces a ton of, a ton of content and, you know, the very, very scientific, they’re mainly are selling products for the medical community, for doctors a lot of tons of supplements, but they also have a very strong direct customer aspect, but they’re, I mean, if you just go look at their board, it’s like a hundred.

Doctors and PhDs. And so this guy is, is the lead researcher over there. He’s just a super brain and basically he’s talking about alcohol and he, yeah, he was speaking a lot of these things we’re talking about is, I mean, he knows what he’s talking about. So these are the, these are kind of like he knows Anyway, he’s very, very informed and he was, and he was talking about alcohol and this idea that drinking alcohol regularly is, is healthy for you.

And he was saying that something he’s looked into quite extensively and basically none of the research that is commonly cited as, as quote unquote health benefits in his opinion, it’s. It, it’s not convincing at all. And he [00:43:00] said, you know, he was saying that alcohol is, is a poison there, there’s no arguing that and, you know, yes, you could, you and you have that the, the, the theory that, you know, in small amounts it causes a response in the body that strengthens it.

But basically what he was saying. No, in his opinion, that’s, it’s, it just makes for good, it makes for good headlines that you know, and it gives people what they want to hear that they can just drink a much alcohol or drink it regularly and it’s going to improve their health. And basically his take on it was that if your body, it’s not going to improve your health, but your body may be able to deal with it just fine.

And if that’s the case, good for you. If your body can’t deal with it well, if it doesn’t have, if it, if it’s detox pathways and the enzymes involved in that and it’s genetic, really, if it’s if, if you just don’t got it, then you really, you’re better off not drinking at all and kind of interesting take on, on, on that and something that it makes that makes more sense to me than just the standard.

Oh, this one study showed that drinking [00:44:00] alcohol X number of times a week is good for you. 

Georgie Fear: Right. Yeah, it’s, it’s always tough to, again, here comes that dichotomy of good, bad, you know, good for you, not good for you. And I totally agree that for one person, a given dose may be. Inconsequential and for another person that may be really bad for him.

There’s also different settings, you know, usually when they’re looking at alcohol and saying that it has some benefit, it’s in the cardiac health kind of zone. Personally I’m, I’m better read in the brain health area. It’s more unequivocal that. Every drop of alcohol is bad for your brain. 

Right.

Georgie Fear: There’s not too many people out there saying otherwise. Personally, I leave it up to my clients for where they want to get their treat calories. 

Mike Matthews: Sure. Because as his point wasn’t that you shouldn’t ever drink alcohol. He was just saying like, don’t think that every time you drink alcohol, you’re improving your health.

That’s all. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. Do it because it’s joyful, not because it’s medicinal. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, [00:45:00] it’s my stance with chocolate though. You know, I actually do believe some of the health benefits of chocolate, but , 

Mike Matthews: I, I’m with you on that one. Hey, whatever. 

Georgie Fear: Awesome. So yeah, so, you know, different people. We, we work to keep their, their most enjoyed foods mm-hmm.

And the most worth it ones in so that this is something that they wanna do for the rest of their lives. And most of us can think about pairing out calories that are ho hum. Like, if you think back over the last two weeks and the treats that you ate, maybe one of them was It’s store bought and stale and you were like, ah, after the first bite I realized it wasn’t great but I ate it anyway.

Mike Matthews: Where you feel like you just wasted calories, like you wasted money. 

Georgie Fear: That’s the worst. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: I hate that feeling. I know. Wasted calories. I’ve done it. That’s 

Mike Matthews: why I hate, if I go out to a restaurant, I only do it maybe once a week or so. I mean I work so much I wouldn’t even want to do it more frequently because it takes the whole evening really for you to go do it.

But I hate that, that you go to a shitty restaurant and you’re like, great, just wasted all the calories. No. You gotta wait until next week. So, [00:46:00] 

Georgie Fear: yeah. So lastly, the only other topics that I think I haven’t mentioned are stuff like sleep, stress relief, and the big one, emotions. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And let’s, let’s segue into that.

So emotional eating, obviously a big issue out there. It gets in the way of a lot of people’s attempts to, to lose weight. I have come across it a lot in my work. What I’m going to pass the ball. What do you do? Yeah. What do you do? What’s going on and what do you do about it? 

Georgie Fear: One of the most common queries that I get from coaches or personal trainers or other nutrition coaches is, how do I help my clients with emotional eating?

It is far and away the most common thing that other coaches write to me about. And there’s no real concise answer, but there’s a few tips that I have that are short enough to give on a podcast that may help other coaches and people directly who deal with this trouble. 

Mike Matthews: And first, maybe just define, like, what is emotional eating?

Like, what are some examples? Just in case the listeners aren’t even 

Georgie Fear: Sure. I’d say emotional eating is the eating that we do for non hunger reasons. 

Mike Matthews: So, so if you had a bad day and [00:47:00] you know, you know that some, some of that sugar, whatever, some ice cream would make you feel better. 

Georgie Fear: Exactly. Exactly. That, you know, have the most common things that make people eat emotionally are negative emotions such as being frightened, being depressed, being sad, being anxious, you know, something that they’re really not enjoying feeling.

Will often drive people to eat. Sometimes boredom is a factor. I mean, people really, really don’t like being bored. So, that isn’t per se as much of a strong emotional drive, but it is a non hunger reason to eat. I call it eat ertaining. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, yeah. I know people that, they know that. They know, like, if they’ll, they’ll, if they’re bored and they’re around food, it’s very likely they’re just gonna start eating something.

Georgie Fear: Yeah. And, and we get conditioned to these things so that every time we get bored, we’re like, oh, I feel like eating. We don’t even consider doing something else. So I find the most stubborn ones are where we’re looking for food to modify our emotional state. We’re hurting and we want food to make [00:48:00] us feel better.

We’re upset and we want food to make us feel better. Or even if it doesn’t make us feel better, Okay. Cause many people will just say point blank. It doesn’t make me feel any better. I don’t know why I do it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. But it becomes like a weird addiction. It’s like how people are addicted to technology, addicted to Facebook, addicted to these stupid video phone video games and stuff, there’s just the brain.

Chemistry behind it is, is kind of interesting. I’ve read a bit about it actually, because I’m building an app, a workout app, and I wanted to know, like, how, how are these companies, you know, how do they make these things so goddamn addictive? You’re trying to 

Georgie Fear: addict people, Mike. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, no, I just, I was just, it’s more just curiosity, because if I’m going to get into apps, I start reading, you know, I’m just going to educate myself on that, on the whole thing.

And anyways, the science of it is fairly interesting, like these, There’s, there’s a science of addiction. And if, if you’re listening and you’re one of the people that has to check Facebook 32 times a day, you that’s engineered. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. Things that are rewarding. Yeah. We want to [00:49:00] repeat what gets rewarded.

Yep. And if the reward is a better, you know, emotional soothing, that’s one. Another one is that it just can be numbing. It can give us a feeling of not being 100 percent present in our life. And we can kind of check out and go into the freezer and eat the ice cream. And while we’re eating the ice cream, we’re not thinking about the things that are bothering us.

So, a lot of the tips that help people, and I’ve helped hundreds of people at this point, you know, work through this is trying to first discover what, first you want to learn about yourself. Like, this is not a defect that you have. If you have found that it’s rewarding to eat to modify certain emotional states, there’s nothing wrong with you.

It’s just a habit. It’s like any other habit that we can change. So, if you look into it a little bit more, and you’re observant, you might notice that, okay, it’s particular times of day that I’m more likely to do it. It’s also particular emotional states. You know, when I’m [00:50:00] excited, I may not emotionally eat.

But when I’m So excitement with a little bit of fear mixed in. Then I emotionally eat. Everyone’s got a little bit different triggers. Some people, for a certain company is even a trigger. Like every time they get together with this friend, they overeat. 

Mike Matthews: Right. I guess, I guess you hear similar things from smokers, right?

And like, why it’s really hard to quit. There’s 

Georgie Fear: triggers, right? So once you know what your triggers are, then you, then you’re equipped to take some more deliberate action. So for a lot of times, For smoking, as a great example, you can avoid some of the triggers. So, I don’t know, going to the Cigar shop or the 7 Eleven where you always buy your cigarettes is probably a trigger that you can avoid doing.

You can, like, just not go down that street on your way to work. 

Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: With emotions, you can’t avoid all emotion. You know, I wish that we could Stress proof people’s lives, or if I can cure depression, you 

Mike Matthews: [00:51:00] can get a lobotomy. How about, 

Georgie Fear: right? We can’t rob people of the full spectrum of life experience.

And that includes some pain. It includes some disappointment. So what we can do is work on healthier coping mechanisms. So a lot of times it’s skills like speaking to another person. You know, if we’ve learned to lean on food. It may be because we’ve had a bad experience with leaning on another person who betrayed us or, you know, didn’t honor our trust or, you know, looked at us or judged us like we were weak for being upset about a certain thing.

So, many, many times it’s, you know, recommitting to, I can actually lean on people. There’s people that are honest and care about me and talking to somebody often helps somebody work through an emotion far better than hanging out with Ben and Jerry’s. And that’s just, just one example. Maybe somebody does talk to other people, but they can also cultivate, you know, other ways to let go of stress after a bad day.

Exercise 

Mike Matthews: is a good way to do that. 

Georgie Fear: That’s exactly where I was going. Lots of people use their [00:52:00] exercise to decompress, to leave behind the workday. Yoga is another nice one that a lot of people use taking a walk with their dog. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s funny. Those are things like, I mean, I don’t really consider myself a stressed.

person but you know, I go home. That’s why I, I do, I do cardio a few times a week. And so I’ll do it, you know, I lift weights early in the morning. I like, I just, I like it to just start my day, but then after work I’ll go do, you know, 20 minutes of cardio. I’ll walk my dogs, I’ll eat some food and then now I’m good to go again.

Georgie Fear: Nice. Yeah. So it kind of resets you. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: Get your back to baseline. So, we’ve talked about a couple examples and we could, we could make a six hour podcast about all the, all the emotions and coping mechanisms and healthy strategies to manage emotion. But that’s a pretty concise way to think about emotional eating is learn what’s triggering you.

And why you’re doing it without judging yourself 

Mike Matthews: and 

Georgie Fear: then look for alternatives that you can do. And if somebody is struggling to make progress with it on their own, there are so many professionals out there that can [00:53:00] help, you know, not just, you know, dietitians like me, we do have some training in helping people change behaviors and change thought patterns.

There’s also professionals in mental health, you know, counselors and psychologists and therapists that can work with people. Modality of therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy, which teaches people to identify and identify the thoughts that are causing them the elevated distress, and then how to substitute those with more realistic thinking patterns, which enables healthier behaviors.

So, for example, if my boss at the office said something to me that was critical. My thoughts about that are going to determine if I go, Oh, that wasn’t very nice. Or if it destroys my day and sends me home and, you know, into a tailspin. So, the way that we interpret the world has a really profound impact on how upsetting our world seems.

And, gosh, one of my favorite things is watching people [00:54:00] interpret their world differently and it becomes less upsetting and they suddenly realize I don’t need food to keep me numb to my life. My life is handleable. I’m, I’m up to this. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s also, I mean, if you’re there, there are a lot of things you can study in that too.

A lot of books you can read. And that’s, I think one of the easiest ways to just change your. Just change yourself for the better as go, go read. Like if you’re, if that’s, if a listener’s having a problem with that, or somebody’s having a problem with that, there’s a lot of good stuff out there that can do just that for them.

They can learn how to think about it differently, even if they don’t necessarily want to reach out to, you know, a counselor or if they can’t afford it or whatever, you can afford to read good, you know, read. Go, go on Amazon and find 10 books that, you know, have a ton of good reviews and And, you know, whatever the classics are that you’re supposed to read and to help deal with whatever issue and you’re going to come out better for sure.

Georgie Fear: Agreed. There are just so many resources out there to help people. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. [00:55:00] Totally. Okay, cool. So I want to, usually I kind of just try, we’ve, we’ve gone all over the place, which is great. Let’s before, let’s, let’s take one more one more point. Sure. Cause normally I try to keep it around an hour or people complain sometimes.

Georgie Fear: Yeah. Pick a juicy one. What do you want to chat about, Mike? 

Mike Matthews: Let’s, let’s wrap up with metabolic adaptation or damage. Is, you know, Yeah! Should we think, should we think of it as adaptation? Is it damage and You know, this is it’s just, it’s a kind of a hot topic these days and a lot of opinions on it.

So, and I know this is an area that you specialize in. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. So, so what changes when somebody loses a substantial amount of weight? Yeah. Earlier in the podcast, we touched upon leptin and leptin is one of the main drivers of all of the things that happen after somebody loses weight. That’s how your brain picks up on the fact that you’re shedding fat.

So. When leptin drops and the brain picks up on it, it starts to put some [00:56:00] changes in motion to keep you from starving to death. So, one of the things it does is it reduces the level of thyroid hormone that is around in your body. And that has an effect on slightly decreasing your resting metabolic rate.

So, just the basic amount of calories that it takes to beat your heart. Grow your hair, blink your eyes, lay in a bed all day. That number will reduce. Now, the actual size of the reduction is where a lot of people get misinformed. Yeah. They’ll think, oh, I must be burning next to nothing. You can’t get by on next to nothing.

The maximum adjustment that your body can make if you’re under eating is about 10 to maximally 15%. 

Mike Matthews: And you’ve probably I mean it’s probably worth mentioning even the Minnesota starvation experiment there, where what were the, I’m trying to remember, the largest metabolic reduction, like, was, I think, was 40%, but the average was something around 15%, right?

Georgie Fear: I, I’m not aware of a [00:57:00] 40. If we look up, I 

Mike Matthews: just might be remembering wrong. I wrote about it a long time ago. I remember they’re like, if you took the, the, the most metabolic slowdown, they saw was, it was obviously higher than the average, but the average was, am I right in that? They was somewhere around 15 percent or something like that.

Yeah. And 

Georgie Fear: that study was consistent with the average being, I want to say 14%, but I’ll have to look it up, but it was between 10 and 15. 

Mike Matthews: And those were people that they were, I mean, I think their average calorie intake was 1500. Right. And they were like, Hard labor, several hours a day. They were recreating a prison camp experience.

Georgie Fear: It was really extreme. And I think they gave them 50 percent of their calories. So it was just a huge six month long. Which are, yeah, 

Mike Matthews: that sounds about right because they were, but they were burning a lot of energy too. I mean, they were just beating the shit out of their bodies. Basically, 

Georgie Fear: this was people that didn’t want to go to war.

So they did not have all of these subject rights things in place which is why you wouldn’t see that type of study done again today. But yeah, even in really extreme circumstances. Your resting metabolic rate only comes down 10 to 15 percent. [00:58:00] It does not crash by 6, 7, 800 calories. Now, your total energy expenditure can come down by a really big margin.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and this is the, I’m glad you’re going into this because this is a good distinction that I’ve had to make many times. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, this is where we see a big difference. And that is due to decreased spontaneous physical activity. So it’s not your body’s basic metabolism that changes, but the fact that you think twice before getting up to go to the bathroom, and that you may not fidget as much, tap your legs, or wiggle along to the music as much as you normally would, and all this happens subconsciously.

Or you’re not going to take 

Mike Matthews: the stairs, now you’re taking the elevator, or 

Georgie Fear: Oh yeah! You feel tired, you know, lots of, lots of stuff. So, people start maybe bailing on their workouts earlier, but I think the most significant impact is the reduction in daily Non exercise physical activity, which I’ve read can be on the order of three to 700 calories a day.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I mean, there’s research that shows that NEAT can, can vary by, by quite a bit more actually, by upwards of 2, 000 calories a [00:59:00] day among some individuals, making it pretty extreme. 

Georgie Fear: Right. So, so now we see what happens when we’re under eating. Our basal metabolic rate comes down, eh, 10 to 15 percent. But the big factor is that we’re moving less.

So that’s one thing that tells people one way to counteract it is to keep moving. Keep yourself active. I love the, the people that are, you know, monitoring their activity with various forms. The 

Mike Matthews: Fitbit thing and stuff. 

Georgie Fear: If you find it motivating, rock it, you know. 

Mike Matthews: That’s what I sound like. I don’t really have any need for it, but I do understand if it, if it reminds you got to keep moving, then cool.

Georgie Fear: Yeah. Yeah. So, so that’s a really important there. The last thing that I find, you know, personally extra fascinating is that as, you know, you have that leptin adjustment and the metabolism down regulation, really fascinating thing happens that your muscles become up to 20 percent more mechanically efficient.

Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: And so in particular, doing low intensity exercise, like [01:00:00] an easy cycle or jog or walk. You’re going to burn 20 percent less calories than you did before you lost the weight. So, lots of, lots of down regulation there. Now, so the two key areas that we talked about where people might be misinformed is thinking that their basal metabolism shut down when it really didn’t.

It just took a very small decrease. And second, I am completely losing my train of thought. What was I going to say? Oh, there we go. Well, you just have 

Mike Matthews: the reduction in the, you know, in, in the spontaneous activity. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah. And that it’s all started by fat loss. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Georgie Fear: So what that means is if you’re not losing weight, none of this is happening to you.

Yeah. So people that think they’ve crashed their metabolism and that’s why they haven’t lost weight are putting the cart before the horse. You don’t have a slow metabolism. If you haven’t Lost significant amount of your body weight. This is not affecting you. So that just means you need to reduce your calories more.

Mike Matthews: And I mean, I guess you could qualify it and say that metabolisms and, you know, as you know, [01:01:00] research has shown that metabolisms, basal metabolic rates can vary by quite a bit. Some people do naturally have faster, they burn more energy while at rest, you know, more brown fat, more wood, whatever. But yeah, I mean, so what would be quote unquote a slow metabolism?

That’s just probably not the right terminology for it. You could say slower than somebody else’s maybe, but not so slow that it’s like now a huge problem. 

Georgie Fear: Right. I mean, if somebody suspects that they have, you know if they really suspect that the amount of calories they’re taking in don’t seem to be logically appropriate for the weight that they’re maintaining, 

Yeah.

Georgie Fear: Go to your doctor. Get your doctor to run a blood test. There are medical conditions that can interfere with your metabolic rate. You know, I’ve had several clients over the years that, You know, discovered that they weren’t adequate with their thyroid medication or that they were hypothyroid and didn’t even know it.

So, I think, it can never hurt to get checked out by your doctor just to make sure that you’re healthy and all, always. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, makes sense. [01:02:00] So then this idea of metabolic damage then is, you know, what’s your, what’s your thoughts on that? 

Georgie Fear: Oh, I certainly don’t, I don’t use it. And I definitely don’t use the term starvation mode because it’s, oh gosh, all the connotations that come up with that.

Mike Matthews: I mean, the reality is when you’re losing weight, you are starving your body to some degree. You’re, you’re feeding it less than it wants. So you can, you know, it sounds like an extreme word, but it’s really not. And it. That, that’s, that’s what it is mild you know, gradual starvation over time. 

Georgie Fear: Well you know, being in an energy deficit is, you know, I wouldn’t think of it as starvation, but you’re right.

I’m 

Mike Matthews: exaggerating, but 

Georgie Fear: that’s the desired thing. That’s what we’re going for is an energy deficit. But as you said, mild and doing it slowly. Actually, you, you have less of the metabolic adaptation. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

I guess the only downside for that, like in my opinion, it depends on the person, depends on what they’re trying to do.

A lot of the people that I work [01:03:00] with are, they are wanting to build a physique. They’re not, you know what I mean? They’re not, they’re not just trying to maybe get into a healthy weight range and just maintain that. They want to, they’re trying to add X pounds of muscle and they’re trying to ultimately get to a goal of, you know, okay, this is how I want to look and to.

to look like that, I’m going to have to put on, let’s say it’s a guy put on 40 pounds of muscle because I’m skinny and I need to, you know, be about 10 percent body fat. That’s the look I want. So under those circumstances, and I’ve written about this and I cite some research that was, that was done with weightlifters that showed that you can be in as high as a 25 percent calorie deficit and lose very little muscle.

But you lose a lot more fat than somebody in a five or 10 percent deficit. If you’re doing it right, if you are, if your calories well, if you haven’t set correctly and you’re not in an even larger deficit but you know, high protein intake, regular weightlifting. So I think it kind of depends on what your goal is and where are you trying to go?

Because unfortunately, [01:04:00] when you’re in a calorie deficit, you’re not going to build shit for muscle. So when I’m in a calorie deficit personally, I want to get it over with as quickly as possible while still being healthy, essentially. 

Georgie Fear: Yeah, yeah, there, there is and the big thing that you mentioned there that I just want to repeat is the weight training can’t eat your way to a physique.

You have to have the stimulus to build the muscle. You can definitely eat your way through fat loss. That all comes down to the kitchen. But for people that want to build muscle or lose fat and retain their muscle, having that weight training stimulus is. It’s really, really valuable. 

Mike Matthews: So, so this idea of metabolic damage then, I mean, is you, you can’t damage your metabolism by eating too little because you probably, you can’t do anything worse than we were, than in that starvation experiment we were talking about.

Georgie Fear: Agreed. Agreed. And people that do have lowered metabolisms from doing an overly aggressive diet, like people do getting ready for a competition, as you mentioned earlier, just coming out of it, giving your body a break, increasing your [01:05:00] calories Your, your body will adjust and bounce back. You’re not, you’re not permanently damaged in any sense.

And I don’t even think of it as damage because your body’s doing a good thing to keep you alive. It’s kind of a positive benefit. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s true. You know, there’s, there’s a bit of, a bit of research out there, case studies really on bodybuilders that but that’s also like, cause sometimes that research will be.

in terms of quote unquote metabolic damage. Because like I’ve seen, I can think of two that I’ve seen that showed that the the hormonal, the, the, the negative changes in the hormone profile in particular, was it worse? I think it was either six or 12 months later, it was still there. There are two different papers.

I don’t remember which was which might, one might’ve been six, one of them 12. But what people maybe don’t realize is that that’s extreme. I mean, a bodybuilding prep means getting down to. 4 percent body fat where you, I mean, you’re, you’re, if you keep going, you’re going to die basically. And you know, it’s 30, it’s 30 weeks of prep.

It’s a ton of cardio, ton of just exercise, just beating your body, beating it, [01:06:00] beating it, beating it. And that, that just that you can’t take that research and then extrapolate that to the other, to the person that just says, Oh, I just want to lose 20 pounds of fat and you know, be a little bit aggressive with it.

Georgie Fear: Yeah, that’s a great, great point. You know, bodybuilding is certainly an extreme example. There is abundant research that somebody who has previously been obese that, you know, embarks on healthy eating and exercise and loses a substantial portion of their excess weight, that their metabolism does stay adjusted.

You 

know, that 

Georgie Fear: 10 percent does persist even years later. It’s a fact that isn’t comforting if you are somebody who is a weight reduced obese person. But I think it is comforting to know that you’re only dealing with about a 10 percent added challenge to somebody 

Mike Matthews: that never was overweight. Go, go lift weights and go build some muscle and you can make that up.

Georgie Fear: For sure. And definitely like, as we said, 10%, we’re looking at you know, 150 to 200 calories a day. Yeah. [01:07:00] That’s doable for all of us in terms of just walking. Exactly. Yeah. Regular exercise program. I don’t want anybody out there who is. You know, has had success was successfully losing a lot of weight to think, Oh no, I’m doomed.

Now my metabolism is broken. It’s just at most reduced by 10 to 15 percent from your resting rate. 

Mike Matthews: Awesome. That’s perfect. All right. So that’s great. We’ve covered a lot of cool things. I think so much 

Georgie Fear: good stuff today. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that was fun. So where can people go? I know you already said in the beginning, but just in case, you know, they forgot or whatever, where can people find you, find your work, contact you, get your book, all that stuff.

Georgie Fear: My home base is askgeorgie. com and my name is spelled G E O R G I E. It’s like George with an I E at the end. Luckily there’s not too many people named Georgie Fear in the world, so Google if you forget everything else. Yeah, exactly. My book is Lean Habits for Lifelong Weight Loss. You can pick it up at Amazon, Borders, Chapters, and local bookstores too.

Mike Matthews: Cool. All right. So definitely go check Georgia as you know, as you [01:08:00] can hear, she knows her stuff and it’s nice to so it was nice to, to get into the habits and all that, that, that subjects, like I said, I get asked about it, but I didn’t even, until I ran across you, I didn’t really have even a resource like, Oh, just go check this out.

I would just kind of be like, I’m going to write about it soon. Just one day. Yeah. Just hold on. Awesome. So that’s cool. 

Georgie Fear: It was a real pleasure. And certainly for the people that do want to count calories, that it really appeals to them. I think the stuff that you do is, you know, stands above the rest. So you do a great, you do great work.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I appreciate that. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also, head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day, actually, I release kind of like four to six new [01:09:00] articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.