Transcription
You can actually lose 20 pounds doing almost nothing at all. I just went through hundreds of research articles to figure this out. But you know what the funny thing is? I was actually trying to figure out the most efficient deep focus routine ever because as a doctor, I got to stay sharp and constantly improve my skills, right? Well, I think I figured out an amazing system on the focus front.
Something weird also happened on the health front. I haven't set forth into a gym in ages. And yet, because of this mysterious system, I've never been in better shape than I am now, along with other side effects like more energy, less brain fog, and the stamina to make sweet, sweet love even when you're 80 years old. Cuz that's what we really care about, right? And it starts with one key idea. In your house is a modern death machine. In fact, you probably own a few of them. Statistically, this one thing is more damaging to your health than anything you own. But it's not your crackpipe. It's your.
Before we talk about what it is, we first have to lay out the context here. To start, have you ever seen the show The Biggest Loser? It's this reality TV show where obese people lose weight, right? Danny Cahill was 430 lbs at the start, but in just a few months, he cuts it down to 191, which is incredible except for one small fact. He destroys his metabolism as a result. Not only did he regain 100 lb back, his resting metabolism remained 800 calories slower per day than expected, even 6 years later. His metabolism was so slow, even to maintain a weight of 300 lb, he had to eat 800 calories less than usual. Anything more turns to fat immediately. Same pattern happened to almost everyone else on the show. And that got me curious. What is going on? Was it too extreme? It's Hollywood, right? These producers probably lace all their protein shakes with cocaine, steroids, and hookers or something. But after diving into the research, I realized it was much worse. It's called metabolic adaptation.
Your body has no idea what you're supposed to weigh, right? It's like the squirrel storing nuts all winter, except it has no idea how many nuts are enough. Whenever it loses a few nuts, it starts getting nervous. It starts getting stingy. It starts hoarding its remaining nuts with even more ferociousness. As far as the body knows, losing fat is a biological emergency akin to starvation. And so, it puts into motion a highly coordinated evolutionary survival mechanism designed to slow down further weight loss. You know those powerful butt muscles you have that Bob and his ex-wife were checking out the other day? Yeah, that's the first to go. These type two fast twitch muscle fibers are like the Lamborghinis of the body. Nice to have, but super expensive to maintain. And so your body starts shifting to more efficient type one slow twitch muscles, which unfortunately don't guzzle as many calories like your ass muscles do. And because your type 1 muscles are more efficient at using energy, you burn less calories with each exercise, which means you have to work out harder each time if you want to burn the same number of calories. When you come back from the gym, you're exhausted, right? Subconsciously, you end up moving less in the rest of the day. While it doesn't cancel out the workout, it does reduce the impact of the gym on your overall caloric burn. All while fighting against these insane cravings, your body has a very sophisticated hormonal system when it comes to hunger. It's a battle between ghrein, the hunger hormone, and leptin, the um full hormone. When you lose weight, your body shifts the balance and floods your bloodstream with ghrein. All while leptin, the signal that says you are full, basically becomes non-existent. Hence why you become this ravenous bottomless pit of hunger. And so what do you do? You work harder, right? You bust more nuts at the gym. You try another random fat diet. All which does what? Agitate your stupid squirrel to be even more stingy. This is why the first few pounds are the easiest while each subsequent pound lost only gets harder to lose and even harder to maintain. This is what I call the asymptote of impossibility. It's like an invisible glass floor. The closer you get to it, the more messed up your metabolism becomes. This is not a willpower problem. You can't fight your own biology any more than you can fight your addiction to cocaine or your love for thick thighs.
Let's switch gears and talk about how to combat this. But before we dive into it, one quick thing I want to talk about is the importance of knowing how many calories you're eating. Habits only work if they're frictionless, right? That's why you need to start using Cal AI. This app makes calorie tracking easy as snapping a picture. It's simple and effective and perfect if you're too busy to track it yourself. Just take a photo and it instantly calculates your calories. Look how easy it is. Boom. There it is. You also autotrack how much protein, carbs, fats, and fiber you're getting. For my experience, it's very accurate, but I always double check the ingredients in case it misses something like cooking oils. If it does, you can quickly add them using the food database in just a few taps. My favorite feature has to be the barcode scanner. It makes logging those late night snacks as easy as pie. Uh-oh, where'd my pie go? Make sure to hit the link in the description or the pin comment to download Cal AI and use code spoon to get 3 days on me.
The secret to weight loss isn't to work harder. It is to understand the biology of what's going on and to build an entire system to defeat it. It all starts with the first step, getting rid of the most vile invention ever invented, the modern death machine, aka the chair. According to a major meta-analysis, a daily sitting time is directly associated with a greater risk of dying from all causes. All causes. According to the data from this research, each hour you sit on average increases your chance of dying by 2%. At the 7-hour mark, you hit an inflection point where each additional hour increases your chance of dying by 5%. At 10 hours a day, the risk of dying increases by 34%. You know what the scariest part is? Some studies suggest exercising doesn't even reverse the damage. This Lancet meta-analysis of over 1 million people found only those in the top 25% of physical activity. We're talking people who putting in pretty intense 60 to 75-minute workout every single day on average. Only those folks seem to be able to reduce some of the increased risk, but even they could not eliminate the increased risk of death associated with high TV couch time. It's sort of funny actually. For decades, the public health message has been simple. Exercise equals health. You got your 10,000 steps people, the calisthenics bros, the ultramarathon masochists, and then you got this dude over there, a certified professional upstairs neighbor. You know it's serious when he has to wear a bike helmet and hold weights to stop himself from blasting through the ceiling. Anyway, a growing body of scientific evidence confirms uncomfortable truth. Sitting is really bad for you. Probably one of the deadliest things we do every day. And even worse, sitting is one of the most important reasons why you can't lose weight. What this all means is it's no longer enough to shame those who don't exercise. We now have to shame those who do exercise, too. But it's not just about dying or getting fat. Spending lots of time sitting is also a significant independent risk factor for getting dementia, Alzheimer's, and overall poor metabolic health. To show you all the terrible things that happen to the body when you sit, for the next 72 hours, I'm going to sit in this chair and not get up. Not even for a single second. >> Hey, what are you doing? Time lapse. Sir, your test results are back. You now have a blood clot. You've aged 50% faster. Your brain is 20% dumber. And your metabolism has aged by 40%. >> Oh, okay. That's it. That's not too bad. >> Oh, and you were 27% fatter, too.
What actually happens when we sit? Why is it so bad? Before we get into that, I want to answer an even simpler question first. How much time do we actually spend sitting? I actually had no idea until I sat down to figure this out. I used this fancy chest timer, right? Each time I sat, I'd click it on. Each time I stood up, I'd flip the switch. I call it the daily sitting audit. And wow, I thought I was a pretty fit guy. I mean, I did just plank 15 minutes for invisible internet points and YouTube clout. But it looks like outside of planking, I'm pretty much on my ass for the rest of the day. And according to science, I'm what scientists call a lazy piece of. Sorry, this is actually the Christmas card my ex sent me. My bad. Scientists call people like me an active couch potato. It's actually a real term. An active couch potato is someone who meets or exceeds the daily recommended exercise guidelines, but spends the rest of their day pretty much just loafing around or doing nothing. According to science, an intense workout apparently does not undo all the harmful effects of sitting. Even if you exercise regularly, how much you sit is still directly linked with having a fatter gut, higher blood pressure, diabetes, high triglycerides. Hm. That's definitely unfortunate because where else are you supposed to put your butt cheeks if not in a chair?
Why is sitting so bad for you anyway? Let's talk physiology. Imagine your brain and muscles are like a fluid reservoir. When you sit still too long, essential elements like blood, glucose, and other biochemical signals pool, becoming stagnant at the bottom of the reservoir, inhibiting the flow of vital metabolic resources and waste removal. I call it metabolic sludge, which is why you feel sluggish, have less mental clarity, and lower energy when you sit too long. Blood literally pulls in your legs due to gravity. Sit for even longer periods of time, like in a car or plane, and your blood becomes so stagnant, it even forms blood clots down there. But when you introduce frequent short bursts of movement, you stir the water, promote circulation, and insulin restore critical biological functions, refreshing both your cognitive and emotional states. This is becoming a whole field of study now called inactive physiology. And it states that sitting is actually not a neutral state of rest. It's an active process with its own unique biological processes that negatively alters your body chemistry. The moment you sit, your body enters a low power mode. Key metabolic enzymes turn off which degrades vascular integrity and acutely reduces cerebral blood flow. Electrical signals to your leg muscles cease, especially your calves, which act like a second heart in the periphery. Working hard to pump and force blood back into central circulation against gravity. With all your muscles dormant, your calorie burning rate craters the lowest gear possible. While the production of crucial metabolic enzymes that help break down fat plummet by 90%. This metabolic multi-system slowdown contributes to a state of chronic low-grade inflammation, a simmering fire linked to almost every major chronic disease. Insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, impaired cognition, and heightened psychological distress. This isn't just a theory. Studies have found a direct link between sedentary time and increased levels of inflammatory markers, substances in the blood that signal systemic stress like IL6 and CRP and C-reactive protein. Another mechanism that impairs weight loss involves the prolonged muscular unloading of the body's large postural muscles. That's your back, abs, butt, neck, and thighs and calves. When you sit, you sort of collapse into yourself and slouch into the most energy-efficient neutral position ever, which feels good in the moment. But this muscular inactivity suppresses muscle LPL activity. LPL is a critical enzyme for breaking down fats in the blood and is also involved in producing HDL, the good cholesterol. When LPL activity is suppressed by long periods of sitting, fat stays in the bloodstream longer, which contributes to plaque in your blood vessels. Where else do all those fats go? That's right. Your ass and thighs. >> My thighs. >> And then you blow up.
When you think about what our ancestors evolved to do, it makes a lot of sense. For the past hundreds of thousands of years, humans were leading very physically active lives. You were hiking miles over a savannah just to get a snack. Next moment you're digging, foraging, fishing, running away from angry wild hamsters. It basically never ends. Sure, maybe for a few moments of the day you'd rest, but the best thing you could sit on was probably just an uncomfortable rock or rotten tree stump filled with spiders. You're not lounging on this thing for hours on end. Our bodies aren't really designed for that. No wonder our health suffers as a result. I mean, can you imagine seeing other animals sitting around in chairs all day? It would look hilarious. Even people who work out regularly can't escape this. In fact, in this fascinating study, researchers categorized two groups of people. A prolonger was someone who sat for long or broken stretches of time, or a breaker was someone who interrupts their sitting time frequently by standing or moving around. Controlling for obvious variables like total sitting time and how much exercise you did, the scientists found that the number of breaks you took was a very powerful factor of health. Those with the highest number of breaks had significantly better metabolic profiles and lower BMI. Not just by a little bit. The difference was insane. Those in the bottom quarter of break taking had on average a 6 cm larger waist circumference than those in the top quarter of break taking. It should make sense when you really think about it. Let's say you work out intensely for an hour a day every single day. That's just 1 hour. There's still like what 15 more hours in the day plus 8 hours of sleeping. If you're sitting for the majority of that time, that's basically 20 plus hours of your body being idle. Muscle is basically the equivalent of a group of jelly. Dormant, inactive, being hit with all the negative inflammatory markers, poor circulation, and metabolic crappiness we all just talked about. That's why the science of weight loss is far more nuanced than eat less and work out more. Your body's energy balance is profoundly influenced by the thousands of small, seemingly minor movements you make throughout the day, not just the hour you go to the gym. This continuous low-intensity activity is actually an even more powerful metabolic engine than what you do at the gym and most people have no clue it's even a thing to pay attention to. This concept is called NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
To understand NEAT, we have to first go over the fundamental equation of human energy. Total energy used equals BMR or the energy used simply to be active, simply to be alive, standing there doing absolutely nothing. Then you have TEF thermic effect of food which is the energy used to digest absorb and store the food you eat. Then you have the third category of physical activity which is actually broken down into EAT and NEAT. EAT is dedicated gym or workout time whereas NEAT is all the physical activity you do outside of the gym in daily life like walking to the bathroom to poop. And so if your body was a car, how does your fuel get burned? Most people think, "Oh, yeah, at the gym, of course, probably like 60 to 70% of all the fuel gets burned by dedicated exercise." Yeah. See, that's a huge misconception. Even if you hit all the guidelines of how much you're supposed to exercise, I took this graphic from the NIH recommendation, by the way, that still translates to only about 100 calories a day, which contributes only about 1 to 2% of the entire fuel tank. That's basically negligible. The NIH even talks about it in their own research. When you crunch the numbers, you'll see that the largest component of energy used is actually your BMR, the metabolism of staying alive. This accounts for 60 to 75% of the gas tank for most people. Energy used to digest your food is around 6 to 15% depending on what you're eating. We'll talk about how to max this out later. And then there's the category of NEAT, which I'm going to argue is the secret sauce to weight loss no one pays attention to. Because with just a few tweaks in your day, you can rev this massive engine and burn an extra 50 to 30 lbs a year without going to the gym at all. All while increasing your ability to focus and get deep work done, too.
Remember this timer? When I tracked how much I was sitting, I racked up almost 9 hours a day, which is kind of scary given all the mortality statistics I just mentioned earlier. And so, I decided to change things up. A groundbreaking study from Columbia University found that just 5 minutes of walking for every 30 minutes of sitting can offset some of the most harmful effects of it. This short burst of activity restarts electrical activity in your legs and prompts your body to once again produce crucial fat burning enzymes. This 30-to-5 regimen significantly lowered both blood sugar and blood pressure, almost as if you had been exercising daily for the past 6 months. That's literally a direct quote from the lead researcher of this study. And that got me thinking, right? If you can get all this juice simply from breaking up your sitting routine for 5 minutes, how much of a compounding effect would you get if you got rid of your chair completely? To test it out myself, I got myself a standing desk. Two, actually, a regular standing desk and a converted standing desk. And that's when something weird started to happen. I felt more efficient. But it wasn't just me. In this study of 38 workers, those randomized to a standing desk for 6 months had less post-work fatigue, lower back pain, and overall improved well-being compared to those who simply sat and worked. In another study, professors at Texas A&M University studied 200 employees at a health call center. Again, half used standing desks while half sat. At the end of 6 months, the standing desk group boosted daily output by almost 50% with around 75% of them reporting significantly less body aches and pain compared to the sit group. In this third study, scientists at Arizona State University designed an experiment to understand if cognitive performance, i.e. brain fog, is impacted by how you work. Over an entire month, subjects either sat for an entire 8-hour workday, or took regularly short scheduled breaks, either to stand, to walk on a treadmill desk, or to gently pedal on a under the desk bike. They then tested basic reaction time and speed, working memory and attention, and cognitive executive function. Of course, taking short standing breaks boosted cognitive performance. But the most surprising result was that the light cycling produced the biggest cognitive improvements, outperforming sitting, standing, and even walking. But it wasn't even because cycling was a more intense exercise. In fact, scientists were careful to match the energy of the 1 mph walking to the energy subjects used when cycling. The second takeaway of this is that the type of thinking you want to do dictates the type of break you take. If your goal is to sharpen your attention and reaction speed for a routine task and doesn't require a lot of extra cognitive bandwidth, a standing break is a great choice. But if you need to gear up for a brainstorming session or solve a complex problem, a short walk or a cycle on a desk bike is significantly more effective and the benefits are immediate. But effects may start to subside after about 20 minutes. Hence why if you want to maximize your performance, doing multiple short breaks is better than one long one. And that's when I realized building a routine for work that involves optimizing for deep focus and cognitive performance actually optimizes your metabolic health at the same time. The secret to all of this is maxing out what I call your NEAT engine. I try to work in cycles of 30 to 90 minutes depending on my state of flow. But before I get to work, I boost my cognitive performance by doing the quick one-minute cardio blast. My drug of choice is the burpee. If light cycling helped boost your brain, then surely revving the engine with a higher intensity exercise is going to be even better. Plenty of studies talk about the massive increase in BDNF with high-intensity cardio resistance exercises. When I get to work, I don't just stand there. I do what scientists call a fidget. It's a real term. I pulled this table from the NIH. Standing is better than sitting, burning an extra 10 calories an hour. But if you fidget, you dramatically increase your fuel burn by an extra 20 to 50 calories an hour. The most basic fidget while standing is to shift your weight from side to side. This engages the calf pump we talked about and promotes better circulation while reducing your inflammatory markers. To make it interesting, I get a tennis ball and squish it with my feet while I work, passing from one foot to the other. There's a certain satisfaction with squishing it as it becomes a sort of massage, too. Other examples include calf raises, single leg balances, butt clenches while tensing your abs, and mini squats where you unlock the knees a few degrees and hold, or do the holy grail of all moves. Find someone to work across from who enjoys playing footsie with you as much as you do. When I want to get into deeper focus mode and can't afford to lose even a single drop of attention, I stand on a non-flat anti-fatigue mat like this. It makes standard standing much more comfortable. And because of the uneven terrain, it passively forces you to change position, shift weight, and explore without you even realizing. If you don't want to spend money, you can also jerry-rig one by putting a bunch of clothes on the ground and covering with a yoga mat. By the way, this video is going to be useless if you don't take action. To make it insanely easy, I built a free 7-day implementation protocol. For the next 7 days, I'll send you one specific simple action you can do to physically rewire your home, your habits, and your metabolism. This entire 30-minute video is simplified to just seven steps. Link in the description. And when my work cycle is up, I'll take a quick break. Depending on what kind of cognitive performance you want when you get back into it, it can be as gentle as a 1 mph walk break with an under the desk treadmill or something more arousing like cycling. Personally, I do another BDNF cardio burpee blast.
To showcase how powerful this regimen is, let's say you do the 1 mph walk for all your breaks. Forgetting all the cognitive benefits for now. Let's say you convert your sitting to a regimen like this. How much weight do you think you'd lose? Assuming the following caloric burn, 6 hours of a 25-to-5 regimen, that's 25 minutes of working for every 5 minutes of a break, is 5 hours of total fidgeting time plus 1 hour total of walking time. Compared to sitting, the fidgeting would net you 240 more calories a day, while the walking would net you 90 calories more a day. The initial starting burpees cost about 15 calories, burning a total of 345 extra calories a day. How much does an average gym session burn, you think? According to the Mayo Clinic, this is what one hour of dedicated activity in each of these arenas would burn. That's an entire hour of non-stop activity. Most people at the gym are not working non-stop for an hour. They're chitchatting, finding the perfect song, right? Checking out their gains in the mirror, or stealing a glance at the hot guy or girl over there, right? And so, 345 extra calories burned a day simply from working at your desk probably rivals most people's gym regimens. Because it's so simple, you can probably stick with something like this for 5 days a week, if not all seven. 7 days a week means you burn an extra 2,415 calories. As a general rule, you burn about 100 calories for every mile you run. And so, this regimen is equivalent to you running almost an entire marathon every single week without actually running a marathon. Because in actuality, you did basically nothing except hang out at your desk. That to me is insane. In short, maybe you won't be able to stand 5 hours a day in the beginning, but you can certainly work up to it. Definitely a lot easier to do this than actually running a marathon a week, right? Think about the time savings alone since you're actually able to do deep work while you're burning calories. That's how powerful the engine of NEAT is when you structure it well. Do this for an entire year, even just 5 days a week, and you burn an extra 80 to 90,000 calories a year, all while supercharging your ability to do deep work. If this is not a hack for life, then I don't know what is.
How much weight would you lose when burning almost 90,000 extra calories a year? If you treat it as a pure physics problem, to lose one lb, you'd have to burn around 3500 excess calories. 90,000 extra burned calories is around 26 lb. But your actual weight loss may be less dramatic unless you follow a few key strategies to fight the metabolic compensation we were talking about earlier. One reason it gets hard to lose weight is because all that dieting, working out causes you to move less in other parts of your life. You now know this as a compensatory decrease in your NEAT engine. This can even be subtle. You're lounging around more, chilling out on the couch more, fidgeting less. But our routine directly combats this, right? By getting into the habit of standing, fidgeting, and walking while you work. You never have to worry about NEAT ever being low again. The second reason is because you can't stick with your routine. The more difficult an intense a workout is, the less likely you are to adhere to it. Hence why New Year's resolutions always fail, right? And so, if your weight loss regimen is predicated on going to the gym a bunch of times a week and putting in serious work, statistically speaking, you're much more likely to drop out and fail. But if you build an entire routine around simple exercises as easy as standing on a nice cushiony mat and walking 1 mph for a few minutes at a time, this is way easier to stick with, possibly even for life. Because 1 mph is pretty darn slow. You could probably even take a nap while doing it and yet over time it all adds up. That's the beauty of it. Third is the loss of your type two fast twitch muscle fibers, the most metabolically costly muscles you own, right? To preserve your type two fast twitch muscle fibers, you should engage in exercises that push power and speed. Type two fibers respond best to explosive type movements and heavy resistance. That's why I often intermix some burpees and even squats during my breaks. Muscle only sticks around if used, right? Your body is constantly asking, "Do I still need the sexy six-pack?" Because calorically, these puppies are expensive to maintain. This is why when you only rely on diets to lose weight, you lose both fat and muscle. Preserving lean muscle mass reduces the amount of metabolism slowing. These muscles are like Lambos. Remember, a Lambo is expensive, not just because of the initial sticker price, but because of the continual maintenance and calories required, too. Fourth are the insane cravings. There's a famous experiment called the Matador study. 51 obese men were randomized into two groups. One group dieted for 16 weeks straight while the second group did 16 weeks of dieting over 30 weeks. Meaning they would do two weeks on, two weeks off. Diet, rest. Diet, rest. During a diet week, both groups ate 67% of their maintenance calories. While during a rest week, which again only group two could do, they ate 100% of their maintenance calories. At the end of the experiment, the continuous dieters lost 20 lbs on average. Guess how much the intermittent diet group lost? 31 lbs. At the end of the experiment, those who took breaks not only lost more weight, they had significantly higher resting metabolism, too. Is that not insane? When you think about it, taking these breaks basically tricks your brain. During the break, it thinks the famine is over. So, leptin levels come back online. Remember, leptin is the hormone that signals I'm full, right? Without leptin, your brain actually becomes more sensitive to dopamine from food. That's what causes those cravings. This is why a simple slice of pizza feels like a mouth orgasm when you're dieting or hungry, but just meh when you're full. The second way to fight cravings is to load up on protein, especially early in the day. Scientists call this the protein leverage hypothesis. The theory states that the human body will continue to be hungry and crave things until a specific protein threshold is met. So, if you start your day with a high carb breakfast like a bagel, your body won't shut down the hunger signal. It'll continue to look for food to eat, which means what? You'll get the munchies and eat some snacks later, right? But if you eat a high protein breakfast instead, it won't just keep you fuller, it will actually improve your glucose response during even the next meal, too, which prevents the insulin spikes and crashes that cause those intense cravings. Scientists call this the second meal effect. It makes sense because protein slows down gastric emptying. They call it the ileal brake. When that juicy chicken breast hits the small intestine, it triggers the release of a hormone called CCK. CCK signals the pyloric sphincter, the trap door at the bottom of your stomach to constrict because it needs more time to digest this protein, which also means it burns more calories trying to digest it. The slow transit time leads to a prolonged sense of fullness. But simple carbs, they're easily broken down, cheap to burn, easily absorbed, basically fast-track through the GI system, which leads to a rapid blood sugar spike and crash.
Okay, we've talked about a lot. Let's put it all together. Now, here's the ultimate most chill focus/weight loss routine ever. Get rid of the chair. Get a standing desk instead. Work in deep work cycles at a minimum of 25-to-5, but you can stretch that to 90 minutes of work if you're in the zone. Stand on an uneven anti-fatigue mat to maximize fidgeting. Intersperse with breaks where you do a 5-minute 1 mph walk. When you feel a bit sluggish, do some type two muscle movements like burpees and squats to bump up your BDNF. If you want to maximize your weight loss, you then implement some extra steps to fight the metabolic adaptation. Do this by loading up on protein, especially early in the morning. Incorporate two-week diet breaks into your routine. Increase the amount of burpees, squats, and other resistance exercises you do during your work breaks to promote preservation of your lean muscle mass. And that's it. Simple and chill. Optimize focus and productivity, optimize metabolic health and weight loss, but most importantly, longevity. It's tiny habits like this that really promote insane compounding returns over time. If this video was interesting, I encourage you to check out this next video where we talk about the secret science of mental toughness. I'll see you there.