These are facts and numerical facts. Hope you get motivated and inspired to lose that weight and be healthy.
Read the transcription below after the video:
[00:00:00.250] – Speaker 3
Okay.
[00:00:00.450] – Speaker 1
So imagine one pound of your own fatty flesh.
[00:00:05.570] – Speaker 2
So if you burn that amount of flesh, that sounds kind of weird, but if you were to convert that into energy, you would get about 3500 calories, which is quite a lot of energy.
[00:00:14.900] – Speaker 1
Be talking with Dr. Carson Chow, an MIT trained physicist and mathematician, and he’s explaining to me why we should care how much energy fat has in order for you to live and function.
[00:00:26.160] – Speaker 2
You need to burn energy to keep your heart feeding all your organs going and also to move around.
[00:00:31.460] – Speaker 1
But energy doesn’t come for free. So if you’re not consuming enough calories, you’re going to burn that energy with your own fat. And so a lot of diet books like to teach people this rule. But the problem is it’s wrong. And here’s why.
[00:00:45.900] – Speaker 2
Let’s say I eat 500 calories less a day. So after one week it would be 3500 calories and I would lose a pound. Right? Because I’d have to burn.
[00:00:53.630]
Yes.
[00:00:53.820] – Speaker 1
And if I stayed on this diet for a year, I would burn through £52.
[00:00:58.200] – Speaker 2
Be great if you keep taking this thing well, after two years, I’d lose 104. And after ten years, I’d lose £500. So obviously at some point this rule is going to break down. It will actually break down before you get to a year.
[00:01:11.530] – Speaker 1
So to understand the real math behind losing weight, Doctor Chow wanted me to imagine a leaky bucket.
[00:01:19.010] – Speaker 2
You have some water in the bucket and that’s the amount of body fat or tissue in your body.
[00:01:24.120] – Speaker 1
And the leak represents the rate at which you’re burning energy.
[00:01:27.320] – Speaker 2
In reality, what you’re doing is you’re adding water at the top. That’s like eating food. And when you’re in steady state, the amount of water you add at the top exactly balances the amount of water you lose at the bottom. If you’re pouring in more water than it’s leaking, then you’re going to gain weight.
[00:01:41.280] – Speaker 1
Now, if you think about the physics of a leaky bucket, the more water that you pour into the bucket, the faster it’s going to leak.
[00:01:49.020] – Speaker 2
So your leak rate scales with how big you are. And this is a well known fact that the larger you are, the more energy you burn, you’re going to burn more energy because it takes more energy just to move a larger mass. You have more tissue. And just to keep that tissue going, it takes more energy.
[00:02:05.820] – Speaker 1
Congratulations. You have a new steady state. But let’s say you don’t want to stay this large person that you’ve become. Well, the opposite is true as well. You could pour in a lot less water than you’re leaking.
[00:02:16.520] – Speaker 2
But as you start to lose weight, you start to get smaller and you burn less energy. You start to metabolically adapt to your new diet.
[00:02:24.930] – Speaker 1
And so you’re never going to lose weight at one constant rate. It’s always going to curve from one steady state down to another.
[00:02:33.540] – Speaker 2
Which means when you go on a diet, the 3500 calorie rule is the wrong rule.
[00:02:38.280] – Speaker 1
There’s a new rule. Wait for it.
[00:02:40.560] – Speaker 2
The new rule is for every ten calories, you eat less, you will lose a pound, but it will take you about three years or more to see the full effect of your diet, which is still pretty good. All you have to do is eat 100 calories less. You lose £10. It’s like a can of Coke. So you should expect the diet to be extremely slow, right?
[00:03:01.200] – Speaker 1
But nobody wants a slow diet. We all want to lose £20 for this summer. What’s wrong with just focusing on losing weight rapidly?
[00:03:09.900] – Speaker 2
The problem is once they’re down at that new weight, they have to be vigilant for the rest of their life. Because losing weight is slow. Gaining weight is also slow, but it slowly creep up. And then two, three years later, bang, it hits them. They’re back to where they were.
[00:03:22.930] – Speaker 1
So the mathematically approved rule for weight loss for every ten calories. I don’t eat a day. I’ll eventually lose one full pound, which means changing your steady state is a marathon and not a sprint.
[00:03:38.030] – Speaker 3
Hey, guys, this is Todd. Thanks so much for watching. If you want to have lifechanging epiphanies like this one delivered automatically every single week, make sure you subscribe also through Facebook, Twitter, and Google. We ask you, what would you advise people who are trying to take the slow path to losing weight? And here’s what some of you said. If you have any additional thoughts or comments, make sure you to leave them in the comments section below and make sure you join us next week. We’re going to talk about the differences between white bread and sugar.
[00:04:25.440] – Speaker 3
Or are there actually any differences? We’ll find out. See you next week.