The Most Important NON-NEGOTIABLES for Fat Loss - Researcher Alan Aragon Explains

We're going to talk about the five pillars of fat loss, ranging from nutrition to exercise. I'm here with Alan Aragon. Who is he, my man?

Hey, take a couple seconds just introduce yourself, and then we'll kind of get into the meat and potatoes of this.

So I am a professional footnote at the end of uh, People's College term papers. That's that's essentially what I am. So my colleagues and I, we do the science that forms the practice guidelines for coaches, for personal trainers, for dietitians, and uh, yeah, a lot of sitting at the computer, a lot of sitting at PubMed.

So you're like almost a literal translator of research?

I mean, really, in a lot of ways that you optimize it, you put it in somewhat layman's terms, and you oversee a lot of it.

Yep. Yep, a lot of it. We, we just as a community of researchers, we peer review each other's work, we report on it, and on occasion we put together trials ourselves, and you know, we investigate different questions and stuff. So on my end, a lot of the primary research with my colleagues and I was on the post-exercise anabolic window, immediate post-exercise versus immediate pre-exercise, and and then just doing meta-analytic summations of the existing body of work in this area where you take all of the studies, all the relevant studies, and you try to make sense of uh, what we think we know.

Nice.

And then you do that, you publish that, narrative reviews in systematic reviews and in um, just editorials, so and try to put it out there to the research Community as well as the public. And so we just try to figure out what do we actually know here, you know, and how much of this can we take and make it useful for the general public?

That's a tough part. That's a really tough part because it's, you know, we're in an era where information is everywhere, people can go out in information about being able to put it in a way that's pragmatic and practical, can this actually be used? And I remember, you know, back in the day reading your stuff back on bodybuilding.com forums, way back when, and I think, you know, who doesn't like a little bit of drama? I think we should kind of start with how we actually met um, you know, five years ago or so when our uh, well I'll let you tell the story.

Is it only five years ago?

About man, it seems a lot longer than that.

It might have been more like seven.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. So uh, I heard about you, if I may incriminate my friend Lane Norton, I heard about you through Lane ranting about like something you posted. Yeah, and I think that I don't even remember whether it was on Facebook or whether it was on Instagram, it was just kind of back at a slightly different era. And so I'm like, what what do you say? Let me add him, let me let me go get him. So I I was already mad at you by the time I like arrived at your doorstep, and and um, I I just made a post criticizing your post, and then you came into the comments section, which is rare to begin with, right? Like a lot of people if they they see somebody like doing something in opposition or just coming at them online, they either just just avoid it completely or they come in there and just start throwing it right back. And so you came in there really respectfully, and you you said this comment, I don't remember exactly what you said, but it made me go, oh damn, this is a respectful and open-minded human being. I I freaking came at him all wrong, you know, this isn't the way that we move the field forward, and I gave it some more thought, and I honestly I I took down my post.

I rarely do that.

Yeah, I really even yeah. So that's kind of how we met. It's it's cool. The reason I always kind of wanted to start with that is like we we met through being on sort of opposite ends of the spectrum, and out of sort of this constant fight that's happening in the world of nutrition, I'm right, you're wrong, and reality is it's, you know, we're all trying to move everything forward the same way. But let's kick off kind of the fun part of this video. I wanted to say, okay, you mentioned something earlier about, you know, how many carbohydrates you think I eat in a day, and yes, so we'll have some fun, and then we'll get into the five pillars. So okay, if you had to look at me, how many grams of carbohydrates would you say that I typically have in a given day or a week?

Okay, so I had some prior knowledge that you were the keto guy, but I look at the amount of muscle mass that you carry, and I just look at the, you know, the fullness of the muscles, and I'm like, he's not under 100 grams of carbs. I would guess like, can you just lowballing it at like 120? And I would not be surprised at all if he's like like hovering around 200 even. So I I want to say 120 to 120 to 200. So that was my guess. And then yeah, yeah, it's, you know, right now not being strict keto, right now I'm yeah, in the ballpark of 90-ish, maybe 120 on a higher carb day, and then some days, some days even less. You know, I try to kind of move it back and forth depending on what I'm doing. And the funny thing is, and I think people that are interested in the training side of things will find this interesting is I actually am generally fuller when I'm keto, and it probably has to do with just glycogen just re-synthesizing through gluconeogenesis like a little bit more aggressively for me being so what's called keto-adapted or fat-adapted. Like I actually hold more glycogen in my muscles seemingly when I'm on keto then when I kind of go into this gray area of lowish carb. I actually kind of deflate, and then if I do if I do start having more like 200, 300, then I fill up a lot more.

You know what's super interesting about that is um, and you're probably aware of this research Thomas um, this was the faster study by Jeff Volek and the oddest and strangest thing, and I you know, I actually asked Jacob Wilson about what he thinks is going on with that, and he had his own hypotheses and stuff, but um, these elite endurance athletes who were on legit keto had the same glycogen, well statistically non-significantly different glycogen storage as the conventional high-carb, low-fat group, elite endurance athletes carrying the same glycogen levels, and and to this day it is kind of a mystery as to uh, you know, how how they actually are carrying that amount of glycogen um, but it also makes me not too damn surprised at what you just said because we actually have some data looking at that yeah, that phenomenon.

It's bizarre. I mean, I really do find it's like if I yeah, if I go if I go all the way, we talked a little bit before the cameras are rolling about sort of that low-carb gray area, it's like I always say this quote, so you know, forgive me for saying again, but you know, with great power comes great responsibility. It's like if you're going to go low-carb for me, it's almost better just to go all the way and get the benefit of at least having some ketones, so I have some glycogen-sparing effect and things like that. If I'm sitting in this kind of gray area, you know, then I'm glycolytic, and I only have 100 grams of carbs to spare, but you know, and it's like I can bonk a lot easier. So I find I either have to go all the way and increase my carbohydrates more or go all the way the other way or be okay with sitting in this sort of I don't know, I guess it's a certain level of hormesis that's happening here because it's like I'm transitioning back and forth all the time. But anyhow, with that, you know, we want to kind of talk about what we would consider the five pillars of fat loss or what you would consider the five pillars of fat loss and things and practical things that people can do with what we know today. And what's interesting is uh, you know, you were sort of the Godfather of flexible dieting, so to speak, which is funny because people that watch my channel are probably going to think they automatically hate you because of that, you know, and it's funny we've talked about how like flexible dieting and you know, being able to have flexibility with what you eat as long as you're within a certain uh, you know, calorie range and this and that, there's more than meets the eye to it, obviously it's not just that simple, but that would make people believe that okay, well there's only one equation that we're looking at, we're looking at calories, and that's all this guy's gonna say, nothing else matters. I think there's a much more nuanced discussion with pillars of fat loss that we could talk about, like so starting off just off the top of your head with no rehearsal whatsoever, what would you say like the number one pillar of fat loss is for people that are in that stage of their life?

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Oh, that's huge, man. Yeah. Okay, so number one pillar of fat loss would be to individualize the approach. And so there are various programming elements that you can individualize, and those might end up being at least a few of the pillars, right? So um, a non-negotiable pillar would be to get enough protein, and maybe the other non-negotiable for fat loss would be to by the end of the week make sure you impose a net caloric deficit. It doesn't have to be a daily thing, it can be non-linear throughout the week, or it can be linear, as long as that caloric deficit is imposed by the end of the week, and then you string a bunch of weeks together. Um, so so yeah, that we're individualizing the approach comes in is you have to individualize the proportion of carbohydrate and fat to what the individual prefers and can sustain and can adhere to. And then another aspect of individualizing would be to individualize the food selection um within the food groups, and how much you cover each food group is is another topic of uh, conversation and debate, but you do have to individualize the food choices. You can't just tell person A that all right, you have to have rib eye for your protein, and you have to have asparagus for your, you know, your vegetable, you know, got to individualize that. And then maybe uh, a final tidbit of individualization would be to individualize the hedonic approach, the hedonic allotment or the junk food or fun food or indulgence food allotment. How are you going to manage that? How are you going to incorporate that? Is it going to be a daily thing? Is it going to be a weekly thing? And that can be individualized as well. So um, I guess pulling back the most important uh, pillar of fat loss would be to individualize the approach, and then somewhere maybe be, you know, being another pillar would be get protein right, and make sure you are netting a caloric deficit by the end of each week.

Yeah, and there's there's more I could add.

No, I like that you mentioned the week thing. I have something as like a recurring mantra on my channel is especially when we talk about intermittent fasting a lot. I'm like, I we can talk about different benefits, different this and that until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, if you look at your calories at the end of a week, it might make people that are doing intermittent fasting's life a lot easier because hey, you know, maybe you are only getting 1000 calories on the day that you're doing 16/8, but maybe you're getting 3000 calories the next day. And I also think that that's very, very important in order to not end up in this chronic caloric deficit all the time, right? Like it's like that's a an issue that people that are fasting run into all the time is they start doing 16/8 every day, they lose weight for a while, and then next thing you know, you've put yourself just right back into caloric restriction in the first place, you're just not having breakfast, you know. So if you at least look at it at the end of the week, okay, I need to get 14,000 calories at the end of the week, I don't care if I get 1000 calories on Sunday and 3000 calories on Tuesday, I'm netting it out over the course of the week, and that includes even if you're someone that's doing longer fasts, 24, 36-hour, even 48 hours, like if you just let that go away and not try to recoup a little bit, so you're at just sort of this net sort of balance or slight deficit or slight surplus or whatever at the end of the week.

Yeah, I mean, that is I don't want to say damaging, but it could be damaging or at least damaging to your goals.

Sure, sure, you know, and there's a the way to look at a caloric deficit um, it really starts kind of crystallizing when people run into these weight loss or fat loss plateaus. So um, when you hit a plateau, there there's like the obvious things that people think of doing, right? They're just cut calories back further, and then some of the less obvious stuff would be, okay, cut calories back further, and or increase energy out by just adding more training volume, and then um, the third thing that is kind of an interesting approach too is is just about is by raising total calories at the same time that you either purposely or unintentionally raise physical activity or training output, and um, this would be raising energy flux. And so that would be, you know, the third kind of um, forgotten lost art. Yeah, instead of just progressively restrictive trick. And then the maybe a fourth solution to a plateau would be just to take a break from the diet, take a mental and and physical break from the diet, so that's a whole other topic, and there's evidence on both sides of that from the mental side and from the physical side. And coming back to to that G flux, that energy flux that we're just you just mentioned, I've talked about a little bit on my channel in videos that have never really gone anywhere because it's such a it's a hard topic to really grasp, but and you said something that was very, very key there that I don't know if everyone caught, but it was like whether it's unintentionally, and I think what you're probably alluding to is sometimes when you start increasing calories, you have this increase in your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, you start moving more, you start maybe you're fidgeting more, literally little things like that you don't even realize, you increase your calories, and suddenly maybe it's lighthouse work, maybe it's doing this kind of thing, bouncing these things that you don't take into consideration where your net energy balance is actually better off. So with that, can you give the most basic sort of layman's explanation of energy flux because I think this is a really big thing? I've talked about it when with people with doing diet breaks like, hey, like guys, increase your calories and increase your output, try that, it can potentially add to, sound cheeky, rekindle your metabolism a little bit.

Yeah, energy flux. So somebody had a low energy flux would be this hypothetical person who is on bed rest and consuming enough calories to just maintain their body weight and body composition on straight ahead bed rest. That is a low energy flux person. A high energy flux person, and maybe an archetypical example would be an Olympic athlete. So they're consuming double the calories of the bed rest person, and they're expending double calories of the of the bed rest person. And so yeah, they're both at a net energy equilibrium, but one of them is generating a spectrum of physiological adaptations to be able to deal with that level of uh, dynamic energy flux, and these things would include increased bone density, increased muscle mass, and then at the kind of a more micro level and increase mitochondrial activity, and just you know, at the neurological level, better proprioception, more functionality in terms of the whole musculoskeletal integration, and even you know, brain work as well. And so there's a whole bunch of different adaptations that person that somebody had a high energy flux has to maintain physiologically, behaviorally, everything uh, compared to somebody who's at a low energy flux who's just essentially sedentary and eating to maintain their body composition, and it's just two different worlds with frankly, you know, two different sets of risks.

Yeah, on both sides, of course.

Of course. Yeah, now I'm not an anthropologist, but you know, I I've tried to research as much as I can and that to understand somewhat even historic, I say this with air quotes because who knows historically accurate ways of eating, right? Because there's such a I'm all about eating meat, I'm all about eating animal products, I am I'm not a carnivore, but there's obviously this big ancestral eating movement that's kind of happened in the last couple of years where which quite honestly, I mean, I like a lot of attributes of it, would I say that's the way to go? Not necessarily, but I'm sure I love animal products. The reason I bring this up is I think we forget, I had Dr. Tommy Wood, I'm not sure if you uh know of Dr. Tommy Wood on the channel a while back, and we talked offline about this, how like if you look back at our ancestors, like we today, an athletic person today or an active person today, I think he said it was something like is probably five to six times more active than an active person back then, from what we know. And the reason he said that is to sort of cast a little bit of give it a little bit of amnesty towards, hey, like the carbohydrates and stuff for an active person today, we can't be having the same discussion about, well, our ancestors never ate these carbohydrates because our ancestors were more than likely in a completely different activity level than active people today. That's the operative word here, we're talking active people, athletes, right? So an Olympic athlete that is training hard and eating a lot, you can't say that they're a bad person because they're eating 500 grams of carbs when their training is literally demanding that, and there is not necessarily much evolutional or historically accurate situation where they would really need that before because again, I'm not an anthropologist, I don't know how much I don't know if this is making sense, but from a level of if I had to go out and hunt down a grizzly bear, that's a pretty acute like spike in energy demand, like you know, once that bear is caught, I'm probably going back to being pretty sedentary. And again, it would be interesting to start interviewing anthropologists on this because I think sometimes the nutrition community is taking it a little too far out of their lane to be having these discussions. We don't know what the heck they're eating, but there's a reason why I bring this all back full circle, and that's just the fact that it's this energy flux again. It's like someone that isn't an Olympic athlete or someone that is a high-level CrossFitter, it's it's okay for them to eat a lot and burn a lot, and sometimes the nutrition community makes it so cut and dry about deficit, deficit, deficit, deficit, we get into these people just shrinking how much they're eating and

They're slowly becoming inactive people that just start wasting away, right, and not preserving the most important thing that we could have, in my opinion, Russell, for sure. So yeah, that that's that's 100 man.

And when you think of the the practical implications of high versus low energy flux, I mean, they're at the point of diminishing returns, right? Like, where is that? I mean, people have careers as Olympic hopefuls for a block of time in their lives—five years, ten years—you know, running around there. And and then you look at the different types of injuries in the different types of athletes. So strength and power athletes would tend to have more um catastrophic uh injuries at the muscle level, whereas like competitive bodybuilders will have a bit more wear and tear at the uh the joints and the tendons. And then you have the regular weekend warrior, Regular Joe, the guy who subscribes to Men's Health and like wants to look like the guy on the cover, right? And so he's trying to get there; he's maybe like a quarter of the way there. And where is that point that's actually healthy? Because he doesn't realize what what the Men's Health reader guide does not realize is that the guy on the cover of Men's Health has favorable genetics and he's fluxing really high, usually. I mean, so yeah, it's interesting to to take these ideas and think of uh how can we translate this to the regular person who's reading the magazines and kind of wanting that health and fitness level of frankly somebody like yourself. So that's really cool that you are kind of delivering it straight from the horse's mouth.

I try to give people—I call them bricks in the wall—right? Because a lot of the things that I talk about, if you were to look at them each individual piece, it would be paralyzing, right? There's a lot of stuff that I put out there, and it's like, "Oh, Thomas, one day you're talking about, you know, carbs, and another day you're talking about keto. Like, what the heck is it that you're actually doing?" Now I'm giving tools that you can have in the toolboxes. My personal mantra has always been like, you know, with education comes adherence; at least that's how I operate. I have a hard time—I always have—it's why I struggled in school. Like, I struggled, and literally struggled, in PE class because I was fresh because my PE teacher was obese, and I'm like, "I have a hard time listening to you." And that's how I've always been. Like, I have a hard time respecting or listening to someone that doesn't walk the walk. And so I've always wanted, okay, I want to learn for myself, and you know what? I'm gonna do it myself, and I'll figure it out. So I try to apply that, right? I try to—like these are little bricks that you have in the wall—and if you watch 20 of my videos and you take away one thing that sticks, and that is the impetus for you to make a positive change, then hell yeah, we've got a win, right? And you may agree with one, disagree with 19 of the other things that I say, but one thing stuck with you, and you may hate me by the end of these 20 videos, but you watched one thing that changed your life—my job's done. Okay, yeah. So it's been—I mean, so with that, uh, speaking of the person that's looking at Men's Health and stuff like that, a lot of times they're looking at supplementation too. Let's let's talk about this as one of the pillars of fat loss, because I think it's important. I think obviously a big industry—are there any supplements that you would consider important for fat loss?

Okay, so the first one that comes to my mind, and this would have an indirect effect on fat loss, and that would be protein powder. Um, if there was like a a somebody asked me like, "What what diet hack is out there? What diet hack would you say?" Yeah, like, what food? And I'm thinking uh protein powder, because it combines the um nutrition, the convenience, and in some cases, you know, the economicalness of meeting a crucial uh pillar of fat loss and and health, frankly, is just getting your protein needs in. And so a lot of people as they go through the life cycle, as they get older and whatnot, and they can't chew very well and everything, and you know, it's either protein powder or eggs, whole eggs. Um, so eggs are bad now, by the way. I know, I know—eggs are bad. I've been having four eggs a day on average for the last 10, 15 years, so I've got the paramedics on standby. Yeah, I'm ready, man. I've got total cholesterol of like 172, and I've been having four to eight eggs pretty much every day, every past 12 years. We're done, bro. We are done. So ladies and gentlemen, this might be the last time you see us. So really want to thank you all for me. So um yeah, so fat loss supplements—I would say protein powder is up there for the reasons I stated. And honestly, I mean, the the data on caffeine is solid, the data on green tea catechins is solid. Uh, coffee and coffee is a staple in my diet. I think it's a good bonus that caffeine and fat loss has kind of done well in in the literature, and also green tea has done fairly well. Um, I've I'm on this matcha kick where I man, I I make shakes out of it. I I just I just dump it, and it's just, you know, I've always liked green tea ice cream, and I'm like, you know, make—I want to make protein shakes out of this damn thing, you know. And so um yeah, that's as far as I would go with respect to supplementation and fat loss. It does kind of boil down to caffeine. I I'm not a huge fan of popping nootropics pills. I I would almost encourage people to go for the win-win of either drinking tea or drinking coffee. And I know there's some controversy around coffee and health, but I think on balance it's a net health positive, as long as you're not drinking two pots a day. Yeah, like some people end up doing. As long as you can kind of manage your your total caffeine intake by the end of the day and you're aware of that. Um, as far as adults go, the the statistical average upper healthy limit for caffeine is—they're kind of boiling it down to 400 milligrams a day. However, this is an average, you know; there are some people who will do just fine on 600, and some people who will, you know, 300 will be kind of putting them up over what they can handle in terms of maintaining good sleeping cycles. So yeah, you got to individualize that too. And uh yeah, those are those are the first things that would jump out at me as far as supplementation and fat loss. I mean, I guess we get the added benefit—I'm a huge matcha guy and green tea guy myself. I mean, that's like my jam. I mean, you get—for people like myself—I get a little bit wired up with coffees. I mean, the theanine, you get some of the other effects with green tea that at least make it so that and also just the caffeine concentration isn't quite as high, so I mean I don't get as strung out on it as I as I would otherwise. Um, if people just take straight up EGCG, you know, straight up straight up catechins, there's is there some fat loss benefit there, or does it seem like based on the research it has to be in tandem with the caffeine? It's most of the research that's in tandem with the caffeine. Yeah, there might be some special stuff going on with those catechins, but um it's usually in tandem with caffeine, and it usually there usually has to be some sort of CNS stimulation going on, yeah, for that thermogenesis to occur and to a meaningful enough degree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's—I mean, it's generally my intro workout drink is green tea. I just sip on that; it's pretty awesome. But um okay, then we bring it into—let's kind of like give one pillar that's maybe geared towards more exercise, right? Um, I've always been a proponent of cardio personally, whether it's fasted or not. Like, I'm a big cardio guy. I know right now there's interesting movements out there—I've probably seen them floating around—where people are—it blows my mind how much weird demonization of cardio there is out there right now. Um, what is your stance on cardio from a fat loss perspective?

Yeah. Okay. Uh-huh. It depends on the individual's level of non-exercise activity. So across the spectrum of individuals, regular working stiffs, you're going to get folks who are like, for example, servers at a restaurant, and even people at, you know, at the cash register at Costco, you know, uh, people stocking shelves at like, you know, Foot Locker—any anybody with a job that involves just physicality throughout the majority of the shift—any non-desk worker, their non-exercise activity is going to be significant. It's going to be—especially if they're working an appreciable amount, like let's say full-time or or close to it—those folks just kind of by default, they are maintaining a level of physical activity that meets and exceeds like the standard guidelines for what is considered to maintain health and and even optimize it. So with that, with those populations, they don't necessarily need to add formal cardio on top of what they're doing, unless they use that formal cardio as a hobby or a sport or just to kind of get out of their head as they, you know, navigate life. They want to take a moonlit walk on the beach or at the park or around the neighborhood—it's fine. But those people don't necessarily need cardio. Now you take somebody who works at a desk all day and then comes home and what they've got is Netflix and not necessarily the the basketball court, you know, at the park or whatever, then that individual may want to consider forcing some formal cardio into their lives—getting something uh getting into some physical activity they enjoy, or even if it's just what a lot of people are doing now is just kind of getting on a on a treadmill while they're watching, you know, Netflix, for example. So yeah, I think it really depends on the individual's level of non-exercise activity. I I like to bring my wife up in this conversation because from the moment she gets up to the moment she goes to bed, she doesn't sit down, and she doesn't stop moving. So she literally—I mean, she just she cooks two amazing meals a day, like every day, and she cleans up, she manages the house. And as I say this, I am slowly incriminating myself as a lazy bastard, but um she doesn't need to do cardio; she's moving all day. And I would have to say that you really have to assess these kind of things on on an individual basis. If somebody has specific endurance goals for a specific endurance endurance sport or just recreational activity, by all means, do the cardio, but um not everybody needs to do it. And and I see I see this thing with the fitness industry now—they're kind of sort of swinging the pendulum back. Like, there was this cardio backlash um maybe 10 years ago where people like, "Screw cardio, man. I'll just freaking do more reps," you know, and this, you know, whatever. And um now it's like everybody's got to do cardio. We got to keep our hearts healthy. If you don't do cardio, no, you're just gonna die. That's not true either, you know. Yeah, I think that where things get very discombobulated is there's correlational data with VO2 max and longevity and all these things, but people sometimes put the cart before the horse too. Fitness community aside, because fitness community is, as you know, it's such a small cohort really. Like, when you look at the big population, you're gonna do—you're gonna be better off for longevity just getting the weight off than you are having an isolated period of cardio to improve your VO2 max to improve your longevity. Sure, which again, I'm all for cardio, and I'm all for doing cardio for cardiovascular benefit and for potential just again that decrease in all-cause mortality that is shown with increases in VO2 max, but that doesn't mean there's a very strong argument that if you just were to lose 30 pounds, that would be an even stronger reduction in all-cause—

Dude, absolutely. There's there's levels of magnitude to to the the effects of these different lifestyle factors, right? So when you look at the longest-living populations in the world, you think of, well, the Blue Zones, you know, and when you think of the Blue Zones, you automatically think of the the Okinawans, and the cardio that they're doing is like no intensity—they're either gardening or they're walking or they're getting on a bike and going to the freaking market and they're biking back; they're not like uh spending all day hunting down game, you know what I mean? Uh, so but they're just lean, and they're psychosocially healthy as well. Yeah, so you know that that combination of a certain amount of physical activity and strong family friend ties um yeah, and of course diet has has some influence in there, but I I think that we can get the Okinawans more more jacked and more functional. Yeah, I think we can add a little bit of muscle to them—maybe they'll lift to 150, you know what I mean? No, it's—I've done a lot of content surrounding trying to identify common denominators of the Blue Zones, because when we look at the Blue Zones and we look what's out there in the mainstream, it's it's sort of—it's misleading because the common denominators is—you and I probably both know—is that social, and they're active, and you know, healthy relationships—those are the solid common denominators that really are—because each of the Blue Zones has very different styles of eating. They really do. There are a few common denominators, but you know, when you look at protein quantities, like they vary widely too. When you look at fructose quantities, like, you know, Costa Rica obviously much more fructose intake than Okinawans and much different than Sardinia. And so it's so wild to look at that. I did a video a while back and actually performed very well where I was like trying to identify—instead of looking at these common denominators, let's look at the strong suits of each Blue Zone and try to combine—a longevity diet would be—and you know what it ended up coming down to—it ended up coming down to like a decent amount of like polyphenols and stuff from from fruit and vegetables, a good amount of fiber, like, you know, and like purple sweet potatoes and things like that—like Okinawans—that's a huge staple, obviously fermented soy, which people did not want to hear, but that is—there's very pretty decent data on that being good for them. Yeah, uh, and it's different from—I mean, not all soy is the same, but anyway, I guess my point in saying this is that you know, protein was also this piece that was higher in certain regions that had longer life expectancies, and so it's like rather than say, "Oh, let's try to find this common denominator and say that this low meat, almost plant-based angle is the way to go," no, that actually isn't it when you look at what is working in each respective region. And I also think that we're starting to find that the Blue Zones aren't exactly the gold standard anymore either, like so it's very very interesting. Obviously, you can go down different rabbit holes with that.

Okay, so we've covered these five pillars, but there's one that we just kind of touched on briefly that I want to end on. And I'm all about strategically being able to use food as a reward responsibly without creating a binge-like mentality. You know, I still think that as humans, from a dopaminergic standpoint, food is reward, and we're biologically sort of ingrained to just work towards food. So I don't think that it's a problem to occasionally set, like, "Hey, I'm going to enjoy this meal," or "I'm going to work towards this meal," as long as it's not put on this pedestal of like, "This is your life," you know? Yeah, like, yeah—"Oh, I'm I'm not going to enjoy my life at all because I get to have a Twinkie on Saturday." But what can people do? Like, how should they go about a cheat meal? How should they go about sort of indulging now and then without messing up their their psyche? B—yeah, causing damage?

This is this is kind of the messy answer that doesn't have a nice like bow tie to it or a nice universal two sentences that you can apply to everybody, but some people genuinely do better without a junk food allotment, you know. Some people are comfortable just kind of avoiding anything that resembles a dessert, you know. Um, and honestly, that's fine; that's fine for those individuals. But the majority of the population, if they're presented with the idea that it's okay to have this stuff, but just keep it at a low roar, then it almost removes the uh the psychological um power that those foods have over the individual. And so like with people with binge eating disorder, they obviously have some dopaminergic dysregulation, and they they get a much stronger response, a much stronger reward response from certain foods than people who don't have binge eating disorder, but they also as a group have—they're sort of miseducated on the idea that certain foods are to be avoided completely, no matter what. Like, they've got this dichotomous view of foods: like, "These are the good foods that will contribute to my health, and these are the only foods that I'm allowed to have, and these foods are—these foods will kill me, you know, either slowly or quickly, and I've got to avoid them at all costs." When the reality of the matter is—I mean, even like tying the the Blue Zones back in, right? Even though the Blue Zones are an observational thing, and Dan Buettner probably, for all we know, just enjoyed visiting—he just enjoyed visiting those five spots, and there's like 10 other places we need to report on, right? But even the Blue Zones, they have their indulgence allotment, whether it be their own versions of desserts or whether it be their their home-brewed alcoholic beverages um and just various indulgence type foods. If people can keep them at a low roar—which admittedly, subjectively, 10 to 20 percent-ish of total of your total caloric intake—you can still have an overall healthy diet that's 80 to 90 percent, you know, wholesome. And so if people can kind of embrace that idea that the diet as a whole can still be healthy even if you have certain foods that are stereotypical junk, then you still are increasing your chances of living as long and as as vigorously as the person who goes like 100 percent, in quotes, clean and zero percent junk. So and the data behind that is pretty interesting and pretty consistent too. Yeah, and you see these—I mean, I noticed with myself, if I go very very clean, it's sort of this law of attrition where, you know, then it's like a a little snack of a piece of junk here and there, and then a couple little snacks of a piece of junk, but you never really log it figuratively in your brain because it's just like, I don't know if it's if it's you know, if you're snacking out of the pantry, it's free food; it doesn't count, right? And eventually you realize that like you're actually doing more collective damage over the course—like when you count that grazing. And so I'm one of these people that need to—I I like having a defined period where I can just let my hair down a little bit. And left to my own devices, I don't usually go totally ham; like I'll usually just maybe I'll go have some gluten-free pizza or something and have a couple slices and call it a day, and then I feel feel good. And I want to end it with something that's very important again because it's such a big intermittent fasting audience, right? But fasting—it can be—I caution people because it's become a very slippery slope of very much so a binge and purge type—like binge and then fast, binge and then fast. And sometimes intermittent fasting becomes a license for people to do that and to live that lifestyle, which is probably detrimental in many ways. You're going with uh, you know, extended periods without food, and then you're becoming a smorgasbord of not-so-good food, probably having a, you know, series of inflammatory cascades that come from just having junk, you know, and never giving yourself optimal eating periods to get adequate nutrition and micronutrients in, right? You're just eating, you know, Pop-Tarts and lasagna or something—it's not gonna work. That sounds kind of good, but the the caution—like it's okay to occasionally use intermittent fasting as a tool to be able to enjoy a cheat meal. The one recommendation that I have that has worked well for me is to have the fasting occur after the cheat meal versus leading up to it, because I feel like it instills this insane

Reward of fasting? Yeah, that is almost, you know, backwards from what we should be doing. It's like, if you're going to enjoy this cheat meal, then you'll probably be satiated enough the next day to probably fast anyway, and you'll probably feel better about the situation.

I find that when people do a fast and then just indulge and go crazy, it just solidifies this like, okay, the fasting was good, and this was the reward. I'm just going to continue to starve myself. And, and I've seen that time and time and time again.

Yeah, and that's—there's no data to back that up other than my experience, you know, anecdotal experience and working with people. Yeah, but it's a slippery slope, you know. Um, there's a there's a decent body of research showing that uh, sort of the regular consumption of certain foods, um, or rather the avoidance of certain foods—certain junk type of high-reward foods—it kind of deadens the craving for it over time.

And my issue with that is, well, when you look at weight regain, it's usually via these kind of foods that people were avoiding that whole time. And so there's—it's almost like a setup for backlash for the majority of folks. So if you do like certain junk type of foods, I think that there's always a healthier version of it. Um, I just—I mean, just using myself for example, I love chocolate. I mean, I love anything remotely chocolatey, you know. So I—okay, so I know that their chocolate gate just happened with uh, with the heavy metals and then all that stuff, so now I'm like a little bit tiptoeing around that. But in any case, I have chocolate almost every day, but it's in these pre-broken little chunks—those Trader Joe's um, uh, pound-plus, the 72 percent cocoa things. And to my taste, that that's some of the best-tasting chocolate like ever. I mean, I've had it all, and that's that's my favorite. And I love peanut butter. And so seriously, like knowing that I can have that every day as long as I don't eat the whole jar and I don't eat the whole like pound of chocolate, I'm totally good. And uh, and I I rarely exceed two squares of those chocolates in a day, and I rarely exceed two, you know, round teaspoonfuls of peanut butter in a given day.

And what I'll what I'll do is um, just if I'm craving the chocolate, I'll have a square of that and a handful of almonds, and it's honestly as good as any damn chocolate bar out there. And um, a late-night snack that I've been getting into, which you you might appreciate because I love Greek yogurt, so um, I I take Greek yogurt—about, you know, two-thirds of a cup of it—and then a teaspoon of uh, peanut butter, and then I just dump like I don't know an illegal amount of honey on top of it, and I call it Brodin Force instead of Odin Force. It just looks like this amber glow—the honey just drowning this freaking thing—and I'm like, yeah, it's Broden Force. So like it's a light—it's a late-night snack of mine, and uh, the thing is I'm aware of how it contributes to my entire day's intake, and I mean it fits right in. It's an elegant and yummy snack. And I think that people, when when they have this idea that junk food's got to be super junky—like a freaking Pop-Tart or a Ho-Ho or a freaking Twinkie—it doesn't have to be. There's extremely delicious, desserty stuff that actually contributes decent nutrition to your day without wrecking the whole diet. And I think in a lot of cases, it's just kind of knowing what these things are.

Yeah, Broden Force, for example.

Yeah, no, I do a similar thing with Greek yogurt. I'll use the Lakanto monk fruit drops, so I'll get like unsweetened, put some Lakanto monk fruit drops in there, and then I'll put uh, usually like a scoop of like unflavored unsweetened whey protein in there—just that—and then I'll put a little bit of cocoa powder, and then if I'm feeling frisky, I'll put some blueberries or something, and then I use those ChocZero chocolate chips, so those are like, you know, sugar-free chocolate chips, to put those in. And that's—I mean, honestly, if I'm using the zero percent Greek yogurt, we're not talking that many calories anyway. We're talking very minimal carbohydrates. I don't feel guilty about it. Again, I'm aware of the calories in it. Sure. Point is, something I look forward to, and it actually keeps me on the rails. Like, you have to have these little vices, depending on how you are. But anyway, man, where can everyone find you?

alanairagon.com. My biggest platform is probably Instagram. Yeah, Facebook is just dying for some reason, man. It's just Facebook. I don't know what happened, but it's just uh, yeah. But yeah, alanairagon.com is where you can find my stuff. And uh, I just want to thank you so much for having me out here. For anybody who doesn't know, Thomas has just the most amazing gym setup over here. It's better than a lot of commercial gyms, and it's his own personal thing. So super impressed, man. Like the whole the whole thing is amazing. So yeah, awesome.

Yep. As always, keep it locked to here, my channel, and I'll see you tomorrow.