5.Minute Facts- Caloric Restriction

This is episode 188 of the Empowered Team podcast. Hey there. Are you looking to grow as a leader or grow leaders on your team? If so, then our leadership series is for you. It's running all year long. It's free webinars to teach you about various topics in leadership that can really expand your growth, elevate your leadership, and be able to really serve those around you. If that's something for you, then opt in into our leadership series, our free webinars that will be going on all this year. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now, your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Okay.

Hello. Hello.

Welcome to Performance Power. This is where we dive into all things training, nutrition, performance, you name it. And today we have an incredible cool topic. It's caloric restriction. So what we do on these five minute facts is I dive deeply into some of the research and I try to pare it down into something that's really digestible into five facts. So here are our five minute facts for our performance power. First of all, the definition of caloric restriction. Caloric restriction is reducing the average daily intake below what is typical or habitual without any malnutrition or deprivation of essential nutrients. So that's a key definition of caloric restriction. There is no deprivation of essential nutrients and no malnutrition, but it's lowering the caloric intake. So here, here is fact number one. Caloric restriction extends both median and maximal lifespan in a variety of species. So this was first researched in rats in 1935. And this was crazy because the first person who restricted the calories for rats found that they would live up to 33% longer. Now, as more studies were done in different species, they would find that some species were living as much as 50% to 300 longer than they would ordinarily live. So this is kind of crazy. So, of course, more research went in towards humans as well. So this is an interesting topic. So here's fact number one, extends both median and maximal lifespan. Now onto fact number two. It decreases or provides resistance to oxidative damage, diabetes, and other physiological conditions that are associated with aging. So that's pretty powerful since diabetes and oxidative stress overall is one of our real depleting causes to our health. So number three, and this one's contradicting, it increases or decreases reproductive span. So it changes within men or women, it changes in species if there's too much of a caloric restriction for too long, it'll decrease reproductive span. However, if it increases the health markers, it will increase the reproductive span. So that's an interesting one. In most of the research that I looked at, the caloric restriction was a 25% caloric restriction. So that meant that whatever someone was eating or whatever animal they can, whatever food they consumed, the restriction was 25%. So fact number four, caloric restriction delays vascular aging in both rodents and humans. And this is key for cardiovascular disease, congestive heart failure. So any of the cardiovascular diseases that's really, really powerful because it also, not only will that help with aging, but vascular aging specifically, but it also increases or improves age related blood pressure as well. So last fact, fact five, so cardiovascular, sorry, caloric restriction done for long spans of time, it improves fat mass, so goes more towards an ideal fat mass. It decreases LDL cholesterol, that's low density lipoprotein cholesterol. So that's the bad cholesterol versus the good cholesterol, which would be hdl, the high density lipoprotein cholesterol. And so it also decreases triglycerides in your blood. That's like the fat in your blood and it lowers blood pressure overall. So as a summary, as a wrap up to these five minute facts, these five facts that I'm putting out there, those overall in the studies, whether it was animals or humans, if people already ate moderately, then the amount of health improvements was less. If someone already overate or if an animal already over consumed, then the caloric restriction would have a greater health benefit. Now that seems kind of maybe logical. However, this is what there's no assumptions in the research. The other part of the research as well is that it's very hard to replicate the research because one study, this is a noted study, often noted study, it's called the calorie study. And what happened is they'd take a control group and they'd take a calorie restricted group and they monitored those two groups for two years. Now that's a long time. But when you're making research deductions that are based on health span and lifespan, 2 years is not a long time at all. So in this two year study, the 25% caloric restriction for those who are in the calorie restricted group in two years, it turned out that they really only reduced their caloric intake by about 12%, not the 25%. And then the control group was just the control group. But even though they didn't reduce it by the 25%, they only reduced it by the 12%. They still had a whole bunch of the health benefits and health markers that were indicated with caloric restriction in other research. I'm going to open this up to questions in just a moment. But in other research I've heard repeatedly by different. If you look at Dr. Valter Longo, there are other notable researchers who go into this for their entire lives. What they note is that at any given time, for our best health or our best longevity, we should either be having restriction with foods, restriction in time or restriction in calories. So what that means is that you are either choosing not to eat certain types of foods, like say fast food for instance, or you might be intermittent fasting or you might be reducing your calories at any given time. But one or all of those things should be done at any given time in order to increase our health span and, and our overall health at any given time. So that is the five minute facts for caloric restriction. That was the topic for today. So I would like to open up Q and A. You can either unmute yourself or you can pop a question in the chat. Oftentimes we do the questions on the topic that we've brought in and then we open it up to whatever you want to ask, whatever you want on any of your topics that is curious to you within your workouts, within your recovery. So open it up.

Go ahead.

Who's got a question? Where are we at?

I have a question.

Okay. Where are you? I gotta see. Oh, is I gotcha. Okay, go ahead.

Does it matter the type of calories you restrict like from fats or sugars or proteins? Or is it just total calories?

I lost you, Nikki, I'm trying to find you. Hang on. Okay, so does it matter the types of calories when you're caloric restricting? Unfortunately. Unfortunately I'm going to say yes and no. So what happens is that you can still get the same effects when. And this is why there's so much uproar around ketogenic diets, because you can still eat the same calories but change the types of foods or you can restrict the calories and go into a ketogenic state. And this isn't, this topic isn't necessarily on ketones or a ketogenic diet. However, that can be a byproduct of caloric restriction at times. So the answer is complicated and I can't fully answer it all, but it really is individual dependent. And when I say this, this is what fires people up on diet so much in that some people really believe it has to be vegan or it has to be keto or it has to be paleo type diet. And they're so passionate about it because that's what works for them. And so for one person, we've seen this in research studies after research studies when it comes to athletes and performance is that we know that athletes need say a little more protein than the next person. But some people thrive on a plant based diet that has slightly less protein, even though there's still a lot of protein in a plant based diet. So what it is in that caloric restriction, reducing. They didn't reduce just fat. They didn't reduce. They just did an overall blanket 25% of calories. So whatever they, in most of these studies, whatever they were previously eating, they still ate. So that was the foundation of the studies. If they ate a mix of 30% fat and, and 60% carbohydrates and 10% protein, then all of that was the same ratio. They just reduced the overall calories. So that's how these studies were based. But yes, the answer can be very complex. In terms of what works the best for an individual is really trial and error. If one person tells you that this is the best way to eat and this is the best macro ratio and that person tells you that, well, that person isn't your biology. They don't have your particular genome. So that's the kind of, in terms of these studies, they just reduced calories, blanket calories, however they were eating, whatever macro ratio they were eating, they just reduced the calories. Calories. That's how it went on these studies for the most part. But yeah, that can be a complex. Does that help? That just make it more complex. Awesome. Okay, thank you, Nikki. Okay, another, another question here. Let's just see. How do you know how many calories you have reduced overall? I do not really count, Honestly, when it comes to day to day and practical standpoint, I don't recommend my clients count calories. I really don't. Because what happens is that you could. There are great apps that, you know, one of the first great apps around calorie counting was My Fitness Pal. And you could count your calories, you could do all the things, you can look up whatever, anything is online, there are all kinds of resources for it. But still that does not take into account. You could take an avocado, for instance, and one species of avocado is different than the next, is different than the next, and one is larger than the next. And so within one avocado you consumed half an avocado, maybe it was even a small half of an avocado, but that can still be varied by 100, 200 calories based on the size, based on what type of avocado it was and all of those things. So personally, to caloric restrict, I don't practice, I would say that I don't overeat, but I don't caloric restrict intentionally either. Except I know that the way that I build my lifestyle and my eating, that that happens on a cyclic basis. And the reason I say that is because I will eat the same, but I will have bouts of really intense training or activity. And I know that I'll be under caloried because I can feel it, but I'm not under caloried for really long spans of time. The other thing that comes up in the research is that if you are of good body weight for your size or body fat composition for your size and you go for extended caloric restriction, well, you might be reducing your health benefits because you've lost too much weight. You don't want to be losing too much weight if you're already. So for someone like me, I don't want to lose weight, so I have to be really careful about something like caloric restriction. Yeah. And so Angelica, it's really tough in terms of counting to understand that. But here's what we know. Overeating, being too full is going to do all kinds of things. Upright will go your blood sugar, then your insulin is going to spike, then your triglycerides are going to be up, you're going to have all sorts of things. And you know, we've got some amazing people in here. Nikki, who asked the question earlier, she's a nurse practitioner and she is a former elite level athlete. So she's really, really well versed in these things from a health standpoint as well. What is the amount to reduce and is that based on. On what as the baseline? So the baseline would be your average consumption on the regular basis. And the problem that happens now is that when in research, when they're taking average. When it comes to humans, the average human now is overweight. And if you look at specific areas of the world, a lot of the average humans are now obese. So we've got massive problems when it comes to overconsumption and inactivity and over consumption of nutrient deficient foods. So when it comes to Gretchen, she already eats high, high nutrient value foods. I know this about her. And she's low body fat percentage. So she would have to be really careful. She wouldn't be one that would go for long term of caloric restriction. This is my professional opinion. She would be one who would maybe intermittently have lower, lower caloric intake. So it's hard to know what a 25% decrease would be. And for how long would you do this? Is this intermittent every other day? A couple of times a week? Well, I think it goes back to our conversation on intermittent, intermittent fasting. Because what happens is that what works the best, there's what's called, there's a hormesis theory. And what it looks at is it's a therapeutic window, it's a dose response window. We know that if you have too much of, for instance, radiation, you have the right amount of sunshine and you get amazing amounts of vitamin D, you've got all kinds of health benefits from just the right amount of sunshine. You get a little too much, you've got too much radiation, you're at risk for cancers, you're damaging your skin, you're doing all kinds of aging processes. There's this hormesis or this hormetic response, this dose response that there's a right amount for most people. And this is the thing you'll know when you feel, and this is what I want to encourage people to do is and this is why I never have had people calorie count. Well, maybe once or twice. I don't want to say never, but I generally would not advise that because I want people to get in touch with how they feel. When people understand that they're overfull, then they've gotten in touch with their own body. When people understand that it's okay and they feel more energetic when they're calorie deprived or they've gone for 16 hours of a fast and they feel fantastic, then they listen to that. Some people will do a 24 hour fast and they'll keep going for another 12 hours because they feel so phenomenal. And then they might go and eat normally for five days or then they might have a regular condition of a 12 hour fast. For all my clients, I Recommend they go 12 hours at a minimum without eating to give their body that metabolic break. Because as we looked at the research earlier, that oxidative damage, that's free radicals bouncing around in your body, you need time to undo that. And some of that happens when we have a break from intaking food. Another one is, would you mind quickly saying 1 to 4? Oh, this is recorded. So this recording I will have somewhere at some point. One is it extends both median and max lifespan. Two Is it decreases or has more resistance to oxidative damage. Three is it increases or decreases so it could do either depending on the situation reproductive span and 4 is it delays vascular aging in both rodents and humans and which is key for cardiovascular diseases as well as congestive heart failure as well. So I never eat before 11am or 1pm Works for me, but not over Christmas. That is awesome. Ok, open it up some more. Bring some other questions in. What else do you have? And it doesn't have to be on this topic. It can be whatever is occurring for you in your life or your training, your workouts, your injuries as well. Whatever is there for you. What else do you have? You can unmute yourself or pop a question in the chat. What do we have here?

I have another question. It's Nikki again. So I'm I've never done like a restrictive eating while I've been training. Is there an optimal time when you eat or when you train or or what kinds of things to keep in mind when you're doing both of those?

Yes, and it depends on the training too. So this is one of those scenarios where you'll if somebody's a distance runner, for instance, I've had athletes who have performed very well doing long bouts of training and teaching their body how to become more fat dependent when it's more of an aerobic sport. So if it's distance running, just any long, long distance cycling, anything that's more of an aerobic sport. If you're doing something like weight training that has more of a power base in it, if you're doing something like interval work or high intensity interval training, any hiit work, then you're going to find that you're not going to perform as well during that power based work. If you are calorie deprived or you're going in without eating. Now hold tight there to what I said, you're not going to perform as well. So it doesn't mean you can't do, doesn't mean it's not possible. It just means that if performance was the marker to get an ideal time or lift an ideal amount of weight, then that's not going to be the best performance. However, it doesn't mean that you can't still do the workout even if it's more of a high intensity one, you may not feel very good, especially if you're not fat adapted. So what that looks like is that if you are not accustomed to working out on an empty stomach after you've slept. So first thing in the morning and no food. You are going into two possible sources of energy. One is glycogen, your muscle carbohydrate stores or your liver carbohydrate stores or fats. Because you don't have any blood sugar, you're not using fast stores of carbohydrates. The only place that you're getting energy from is going to be your glycogen, that carbohydrate muscle and liver stores. Or you're fat. So you can do the workout on an empty stomach after sleeping. There's no nothing wrong with that. But if you are an athlete and you're going for a best time or you're going for a max lift, you're not going to get it in that environment. That's why you see athletes refueling, fueling peri workout. That means during workout they're having either essential amino acids, branched chain amino acids and some sort of sugar and protein, or immediately post workout, within a 15 to 30 minute window, that is to refuel as most efficiently as possible the glycogen stores and the sugar stores in the body for performance. However, if you care primarily about body composition, fat utilization, then that's a different conversation. And then you can work out fasted for all I care. Just know that if you haven't done it before, you could bonk. You could be if you're not fat adapted, if you're not used to drawing from your fat stores for your workout, it takes time to get there. You have to practice it a little bit, practice it a little bit before your body starts to learn how to utilize that as your stores. I'll give you an example of this. Personally, I get up. I get up and work out every morning, first thing in the morning, and I never intended to have it be fasted. That's just how it worked out. Because sometimes from a timing perspective, within a family of seven people, I hadn't had a chance to eat and I got the workout in and then I ate and then I got to work or whatever it was. But what happened when I was pregnant, on both of my pregnancies, there is not a hope in hell that I could have worked out without a meal in me. So it changes based on your particular biology, your particular scenario. So if you've never worked out fasted and you're trying to get to become fat adapted, then you're probably going to struggle for the first couple of weeks, it's going to feel miserable until your body learns how to utilize your fat stores. A great way of putting it is dining in instead of eating out, having your. For your body, having your meal from your plate. Instead you're dining in, meaning your body is getting its energy from its own fat stores. So I went on a long example and explanation there, Nikki, but does that, does that elucidate some of what you're asking?

Yeah, and I think I haven't ever trained fasted, so just knowing that like it's not necessarily damaging or you know, you're might have to adjust your expectations, but I might, you know, it's going to suck for probably a little bit, but knowing that is I think helpful just for. Yeah. What to expect.

Yeah. And that's powerful because most athletes, especially people like you, you needed that fuel all the time. You were that description of what I described in the replenishing, in the making sure you had the calories, all of the things, because you needed that for performance. Most athletes who come out of that, it seems so counterintuitive to not have food before certain things. However, in different sports we find a lot of athletes are low blood sugar going into their practice or their training because they don't want to have too much food in their stomach. But the point there is that your body can adapt to almost anything. It is extremely efficient. It's a matter of telling your mind what is possible and what you are going to endeavor to do and then following that uncomfortable process of doing something differently. So that's very powerful. Thank you for that question, Nikki. That's amazing. Losing some strength in left arm. Should I reduce weight and increase reps or what? When somebody's really right or left dominant, you notice that you do everything with that side. You notice that that side stronger. I'm very, very right dominant and so I actually practice trying to do other things. So what I would advise for Gretchen is to, is to not reduce the weight and to add an extra set. So what's happening when the strength is less than that left side? It's simply that the right side is getting way more reps and sets in the day because you're opening more doors with that side. You might be gardening more on that side. You might be lifting more bags or a heavy backpack with that side. So within your workout, I would ask that you do a couple of things. Number one, you prioritize with the weaker side. That means you start whatever the one sided thing is with that side first and then, then you also finish with the weaker side. That means you do an extra set on that side and finish with that side as well. So you're prioritizing with that side by giving it not only more volume and you may not be able to give it more intensity yet than the other side, but maybe more intensity relative to what you've been able to do on that side. I hope that makes sense. Julie's got a question. Besides consistency with working out, how do you get into fat burning? Is it duration of aerobic workout? Ooh, beautiful question. I'm going to bust some myths on this one. This is amazing. I love this question. So, yes, you know how I said that there's long bouts of activity are fat burning. So you're doing the most fat burning when you're sleeping, when you're walking, when you're sitting around, that's when you're doing the most fat burning.

That's you're when.

That's the crazy part about it. So do not go onto the treadmill at the gym and you see the fat burning program and it says, oh, this is your fat burning program. Yes, it is your fat burning program. As in, that's what will be the low intensity work that will burn fat while you were doing it. But it is not going to be the thing that reduces your overall fat the best. Here's what will reduce the fat the best and it is getting some more intensity via weight training and more intensity of your cardiovascular work. So high intensity interval training. So, Julie, for instance, if you were a runner, and I'm not pretending that everybody's going to want to run or anything like that or say it was elliptical or whatever it is, if you are going to do something really hard for 20 seconds and then ease off for 20 seconds and then really hard for 20 seconds and then ease OFF for 20 seconds. While you're doing that, you're not burning fat, you're burning carbohydrates. However, because that metabolically boosted your system during that exercise bout, your metabolism is going to burn more fat for the rest of the day and the rest of those 24 hours. That's the beauty of something intense. And then you're going to burn more fat on all those other hours of the day because you're metabolically jacked up, stoked up. You stoked the flame with the weight work and a higher intensity of conditioning. Does that answer your question? Julie, did you get that one? I might have lost. Yeah. Thumbs up. I got a nod there. Okay. Okay. So the point with burning more fat isn't to try and do it within the workout. Otherwise you just walk all day long or sleep all day. That's. That's where you're burning the most ratio of fat during any given time. The low intensity things are fat burning. However, what happens is that when we're not utilizing our calories enough, then we're utilizing some of the carbohydrates and we're utilizing whatever we just ate, so we never get a chance to get into the fat burning. And so that's why you burn the most fat when you sleep, especially if you've already digested your meal before bed. And that's why the workouts themselves, yes, do lots of activities during the day, but the workouts that become more intense are the ones that are going to give you more of a metabolic effect for longer. I hope that makes sense. If you have another question on that, please let me know. Okay, I think we have time. Oh, maybe we don't. Okay, we've hit time here and thank you for fantastic questions everyone. I hope this 5 minute facts served you on the topic of caloric restriction and join us next month we will have a brand new topic and we will also serve all your Q and A's. So have a beautiful rest of your day and happy freaking Monday. Bye everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team runs you year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To learn more about our Empowered Leadership coaching for business, our custom online physical training plans, and of course the Empowered Team Group coaching, head to www.theempowered.ca empowered learn more. That's www.theempowered.ca Empowered learn more.