In this monologue, the speaker argues that the quality, timing, and rhythm of light exposure are critical, yet often overlooked, determinants of metabolic health, weight loss, sleep quality, and mood. He explains that carbohydrate metabolism produces more exhaled CO₂ than fat metabolism, and cites a study where office workers under artificial lighting exhaled significantly more CO₂—and had a lower metabolic rate—than outdoor workers eating the same diet. He likens indoor‑lit humans to chickens raised in artificial light, which fattens them, and extends the analogy to livestock raised indoors, suggesting that consuming such animals contributes to poor health. He references research showing that muscle cells retain circadian responses to specific light wavelengths even outside the body, indicating a deep cellular memory of natural light. Practical recommendations include daily outdoor exposure: watching the sunrise for ~15 minutes, taking a 30‑minute walk outdoors (instead of treadmill under artificial light), and avoiding blue‑rich screens at night to preserve melatonin release. He describes how morning orange light stores melatonin in the eyes, blue daylight keeps alertness, and evening red/orange light triggers melatonin release for sleep. Disruption of this cycle by artificial lighting leads to stubborn weight, sleep disturbances, and mood drops. The speaker concludes that maximizing natural light exposure, combined with a healthy diet, is essential for metabolic health, and shares his personal habit of cycling for two hours daily to obtain sunlight and vitamin D.
Chapters
So what's going on with light and weight loss? Is it really a thing? I mean, most people look at diet, exercise, and possibly sleep if they're paying attention, but there's a quieter, more effective reason why people don't lose weight, especially people who live in cities or who work in offices and sit in front of a screen all day. You see, it's not just whether it's dim whether it's lighter, it's the quality and the rhythm of that light that makes all the difference. Hear me out, I'm going to get to a point here that might make a lot of sense to you as to why some people lose weight and some people don't. So, just a bit of information up front on when you're eating carbohydrates and when you're eating fat and protein as fuel. You'll find that when you're eating carbohydrates, You breathe in oxygen and you breathe out carbon dioxide. You breathe out more carbon dioxide when you are eating carbohydrates. When you're eating fat and you're in ketosis, you breathe out less carbon dioxide. This is interesting because in a controlled study, they went into an environment where there was an office and everybody sat inside this office. And the amount of carbon dioxide excreted by the people in the office, the workers in the office, was a lot higher than those eating exactly the same diet but were working outside. The group working outside also showed an extremely different metabolic rate as to the ones sitting inside under artificial light and not getting the actual light that was meant for our eyes. So basically, people who are sitting in an office all day are like chickens being bred for the slaughter. So these chickens are fattened up. These chicken farms don't just do this because it's easy to control the chickens. They know keeping those chickens indoors in artificial light fattens them up a lot more than if they were roaming free Outside. And this is one of the clever tricks that the whole agricultural industry plays on, is keeping animals inside so that they get fatter. This is a well-known fact, and it happens in humans too. So, like, for instance, if I was basically going to be helping someone with our program to recover from diabetes, for instance, one of the first things I would do is put a 30-minute walk on their program every single day. So these guys can get outdoors. Don't sit on a treadmill and do this under artificial light. That's not going to help you as much as if you were outdoors experiencing these actual light wavelengths that are correct for your eyeballs to receive and start to kick in your metabolism. Another study was done with muscle cells of people who spent a lot of their time outdoors. They found that the circadian rhythm still was present within those muscle cells, even outside of the body when they were being studied. So when they were exposed to a specific kind of light wavelength, these muscle cells responded to it. So they actually remembered what was going on outside of the body. This is quite interesting because that means that you can get your body into a rhythm, a circadian rhythm, which is going to help you lose weight, be healthy, sleep better, There are just so many benefits when you spend a bit of time outdoors. Now, one of the major things is, if you wake up in the morning, have a look at the sunrise. Watch the sunrise for about 15 minutes. That kind of light really gets that circadian rhythm going, as is the same as when it becomes dusk and the sun starts going down and you have that orange to red light outside there. During the day, you have the natural blue light that keeps you alert and awake. that you can continue your life throughout the day. But when you're going to bed at night, you want your melatonin to start being released into the body, which is actually being stored in your eyeballs and in your brain, and it starts to be released. Now, the thing with this is, in the morning, when you're watching the sunrise, your body starts to produce melatonin, and it gets stored in the eyeballs. It's actually quite an interesting thing. So now, You have this melatonin that's been stored in the eyeballs because of this orange light in the morning. You go throughout your day with the natural blue light, not artificial blue light, and you get to the end of the day and the sun starts going down, and it's then it releases that melatonin and you start to get sleepy and you have a good night's sleep. When you start messing with this, with like phone screens or computer screens or artificial light, coming from your ceiling, this messes with the circadian rhythm. You'll find that there'll be stubborn weight that you can't lose. You'll find that your sleep patterns are disrupted. You'll find that your mood changes and drops. You'll find all sorts of things start to happen in the body if your circadian rhythm goes out. It is extremely important. It's just a natural fact of nature, and especially in the bodies that we live in, not just human bodies, all bodies. So if you're eating cows that came from a stock farm where these cows were in pens, not just cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, all of these things, they were in pens indoors all day, you're eating a sick animal. And not only because of that, because they're also feeding these animals a bunch of junk that you will be eating as well on a secondary basis when you start eating their meat. So my advice to you is get outdoors as much as you can. Don't go home and sit on the phone or switch on the telly. Get outdoors, go and experience the outdoors, the fresh air, the sunlight. All of that experiences help with your metabolic health. So if you're having trouble with weight loss, do that. And then obviously you need to have a look at your diet. I mean, that just goes without saying. But a good diet would be enhanced if you were getting the correct kind of light. I'm someone that spends a lot of time outdoors. I'm a cyclist. I spend at least 2 hours in the sunlight during the day. Often it's when the sun comes up. Sometimes it's just during the day. But I'm getting my vitamin D. I'm getting all of these healthy aspects that the environment has to offer us.
