On Metabolic Toggles – Ep. 168

In this episode, Dr. Jade shares the audio version of chapter 5 of his book ‘Next Level Metabolism’. In this chapter, Dr. Jade explains how your metabolism will respond to each one of the combinations you can make with training and dieting. There are four toggles when it comes to metabolism: eat more and exercise more, eat less and exercise less, eat more and exercise less, and eat less and exercise more.

Each one of these four modalities serves a specific goal, works with specific types of metabolism, and is better for specific types of body compositions. Understanding and comprehending these four aspects and how they can work for you is the best approach when it comes to weight loss and muscle gain. The fifth modality, ‘eat some, exercise some’, works as a maintenance phase and can also be extremely effective health-wise. 

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Website: www.jadeteta.com

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Podcast Intro: [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

Episode Intro: [01:18] what's going on everybody, welcome to today's show. Today we are going to be doing another excerpt from The Next Level metabolism audio book. That book next level metabolism is now available on Audible and I got great feedback from you. In episode 166 two episodes, go on Chapter One of the audio book that I shared with you. And so I thought since I get so many questions on my metabolic toggle concept that including chapter five of next level metabolism, which covers the toggles in a little bit more detail would be useful for all of you, especially those of you who are interested in getting the book giving you a little bit more of a taste of what exactly is in that book. And for those of you who are not interested in remember that book is mainly for professionals and advanced health and fitness enthusiast. It is not a diet book, it is more like a manual for metabolism or a textbook, it does go through all of my work. It's sort of all of my work in one place. And I'm just giving you a taste gave you a little taste in Episode 166 of chapter one and this Episode 168. I'm giving you a taste of sort of the metabolic toggle concept which is talked about throughout the book. But this is the major chapter that covers it in more detail. So thanks for the feedback and letting me know what you want to hear. And that you wanted a little bit more of the book. And so here it is for you and I hope you enjoy it. And I will see you at the next episode, chapter five, the metabolic engineer. See if this sounds familiar, you decide it's finally time to drop those last 10 pounds. So you start a new low calorie diet and begin exercising harder than you ever have. You're really motivated for the first few weeks and you start to see some minor results. Then things plateau you get frustrated and fed up and before you know it you're back to snacking around the clock and veg on the couch. After a few weeks of that your pants don't fit anymore. And it's back to dieting and exercising soon enough your battery is completely drained again. And out comes the ice cream and the Pringles. Have you ever found yourself caught in this vicious cycle most people have. It's extremely common to bounce back and forth between being a dieter and a couch potato over and over and over. Never seeing any real change in your body or watching the weight pile on as though stints on the couch get longer and longer. In this case, the very thing dieters are trying to do to lose weight is also the thing causing them to regain the weight. In other words, the Eat less exercise more e l e m approach almost always leads to eat more exercise less or E M E L. So who is putting more stress on the metabolism the Dieter or the couch potato. Unfortunately, it's a tie. Remember that metabolism is a stress barometer. And one of the sources of stress it's always measuring is calorie intake versus output. If that gap gets too wide in either direction the metabolism runs into problems. The couch potato has too much intake, not enough output. The Dieter has too much output not enough intake. Think of your body like an apartment. If there's nothing in it you can't function. But if you're a hoarder and you fill up your apartment with way too much stuff, you also can't live in it properly. The Dieter is the extreme minimalist, the couch potato is the hoarder. Both will throw heck and schmuck out of check and all but guarantee you'll never see real lasting results. You need something in between that makes life more livable metabolic toggles. You have to find a way to close the calorie gap and come convinced the metabolism it does not need to be stressed out. And there are specific ways you can do this. By understanding the four metabolic toggles you can use to increase or decrease stress on your metabolism, you can determine what state will be best to help you achieve your goals. Eat less exercise more to the typical Dieter who is using the Eat less exercise more approach, everything looks like calories. The only thing they are concerned about is cutting out as much of those calories as possible, either by practically starving themselves, or by totally overdoing their workouts. They are in no way paying attention to the language their metabolism is speaking. Instead, they are trying to force their own will on metabolism, which we know by now is completely pointless. They believe all they need is willpower. And failure is only for the weak minded. These are the same people who wake up the first warm day of spring and head out for their first run of the year convinced they're going to instantly burn off all the fat they've been carrying around all winter. Inevitably, they end up hurting themselves and laying right back on the very cows they had to peel themselves off of. But don't worry, they'll try again and again and again. In fact, they'll continue to ping pong back and forth between being a dieter and a couch potato indefinitely until they wake up and realize their metabolism is really the one running the show. The Dieter thinks of willpower as a fully charged cellphone, they have a full battery, so they believe they can keep going forever. But they forget that eventually that battery's going to drain and they will have to recharge it. After so long, they find themselves with no power left and suddenly that couch is looking like a great spot to hang out while they wait for the battery to power back up. Rarely is eat less exercise more effective. Most often it leads to failure and does nothing but convince your metabolism it's starving, which makes it compensate and therefore undo any of the hard work you think you're doing. If for some reason you feel the need to try this toggle, do not do it for much longer than two weeks and definitely not more than four. If you do you may end up doing more harm than good. The good news is that when you use the Eat less exercise more toggle sparingly for short periods with long breaks in between, it starts working the way we all think it should. There is nothing inherently bad about eating less and exercising more. It's just overused. Think about it. Your metabolism is an adaptive system. If you try to do the same thing day in and day out over and over again the metabolism will adapt and conserve. By now you know how to spot this, the metabolism is always talking to you. And when HEC and SHMEC go out of check, you can be sure that eat less exercise more toggle is no longer going to be effective. Likewise, if your weight loss results slow or plateau, you know you have engaged this toggle for too long and it's time to give it a break. The eat less exercise more toggle has you pulling on the metabolism from both sides, you are creating calorie deficits through food and exercise. That large calorie gap between intake and output is what causes the metabolism to become more rigid and stingy in its fat usage. By giving yourself breaks from this metabolic toggle and using it intelligently and sparingly you will be able to benefit from it once again. Eat more exercise less eat more exercise less is the couch potato toggle. It is the opposite of eat less exercise more it to generates a large calorie gap, but it just does so in the opposite direction. Isn't it interesting that the under eating over exercising Dieter and the over consuming under exercising couch potato both have issues with HEC and SHMEC. That's because both of these toggles when done for extended periods of time caused a rigid dysfunctional metabolic state. That being said the couch potato toggled does have some utility and should not be abandoned altogether. When very short lived it can provide some benefit toward recovery from training. It also can provide a much needed break from eat less exercise more. For athletes and those wanting to gain muscle it can be a useful toggle to employ. Just like eating less can slow metabolic rate eating more can elevate it. This has led many coaches to use refeeds a period of time usually a few days of eating slightly more than normal, and cheat meals with their clients to get their metabolism moving again. This approach can work but it also has tremendous potential to backfire. Although eating more can raise metabolic rate, it typically does not do so to the same degree that dieting lowers it. Also, eating more usually means eating large amounts of highly palatable foods rich in the combinations of fat, sugar, starch, salt and alcohol. Think burgers, pizza pastries and pasta these foods can cause more cravings for the same types of foods later. This is why cheat meals often turn into cheap months, and why a refeed can turn into a feeding frenzy. Again, you know, it's not going to do much for you in the long run. So if you are a person who's trying to lose weight or maintain a loss, this is a toggle, you will use sparingly. Think of a brief four day vacation, or the occasional day on the weekend, or a recovery day from extreme sport or exercise the day prior. The max amount of time you should spend in this toggle is four days, and definitely not longer than seven. Anything more is likely to start working against you. But the interruption but I want to jump in real quick and tell you about one of my favorite new products. And to start out, I want to ask you a question. If you had to follow your friends around who are not the healthiest in the world, and see what they are doing what would be the number one thing you would probably tell them to do to start. For most people that's going to be drinking more water, right? This is something that we talk about all the time in health and fitness. It's almost as if we think of it as an afterthought now, because obviously water is so crucial. However, we oftentimes get this wrong. For example, did you know that when it comes to hydration, just drinking water can make things worse, most people don't know this. Why? Partly because most people are over drinking water. And under consuming the electrolytes that help water do its job. What we don't realize is that hydration is not just about water, it's about electrolytes, the minerals in there as well as getting that water into the cells. And so you do not want to be over consuming water if you're not getting your electrolytes, right. And this opens up a whole new discussion because most people are not getting their electrolytes, right. For example, did you know that low sodium to low sodium is an issue just as much if not more so than high sodium. In other words, what we want if we're going to get the right electrolytes is to get the right amount of sodium and potassium and magnesium in the Goldilocks zone. We don't want too much. We don't want too little. We want it just right. This opens up a whole other thing here too, because people who are exercising, doing sauna therapies doing low carb diets are disrupting and losing lots and lots of their electrolytes. For example, when insulin is not around and low carb diets, you will excrete lots of sodium. In other words, the under that state, exercising low carb diets, all these things, you actually need more sodium. And so if you're somebody who has been just drinking water, not paying attention to electrolytes, and also feeling fatigued, feeling like you're underperforming, not sleeping, right getting cramps, twitches, headaches, any of these things, then you are probably dealing with an electrolyte issue.

[15:35] let’s get back to the show. Eat less, exercise less, eat less exercise less is the hunter gatherer toggle. Think back to the early days of man. People were nomadic and only ate what they foraged. They moved all day every day. No, they weren't swinging kettlebells or running marathons. They simply were moving from place to place. Their NEAT was hugely elevated and they ate relatively sparingly, food wasn't readily available and highly palatable, calorie dense foods were scarce. People were hard pressed to take in a predictable number of calories from day to day. And because of the unpredictability of their environments, they created calorie deficits through food mostly not exercise. All the walking they did sensitize the body to insulin and reduced cortisol levels. The lower calorie state forced the body to use up its fuel reserves meaning fat, but because the body doesn't want to start using up all of its reserves of other things like protein and amino acids, it becomes naturally motivated to move in order to find food. This is why hunter gatherers are relatively lean. They're not super muscular because they're not exercising a lot, but they are slender. In today's world the best example of a hunter gatherer is the 70 year old woman you will inevitably see walking around the city if you ever go to Paris, she's holding bags of groceries full of fresh fruits and vegetables she's picked up from all the markets she visited that morning. When she gets to her building, she walks up three flights of stairs to get to her fourth floor apartment. She's very thin and healthy, but not overly muscular. She's not thinking about exercise. She's just living her life the way she knows how to live it. And her lift frame reflects that. Parisians living the more traditional European lifestyle eat pretty much whatever they want. They just eat small amounts. They wake up and have coffee and a pastry. They have a small baguette sandwich for lunch, or perhaps some cheese and meat with a little bit of wine, then they have a sensible dinner. They don't deprive themselves of rich, delicious foods, which be a true travesty in Paris, but they know that just a little is enough. You can live in eat less, exercise less indefinitely, as long as HEC and SHMEC stay in check. Eat less exercise less macronutrient ratios. There are several ways to calculate the calories and macronutrients for an eat less exercise less metabolic state, you can set the calories exactly as you might with an eat less exercise more approach, multiplying 10 by your body weight, you can then use a macronutrient ratio of 30 40 30 of carbohydrates, protein and fat respectively. Why this particular ratio, it most resembles the hunter gatherer macronutrient ratio, and is typically what you will get when you focus on low fat, low carb, high fiber and high protein soups, salads, scrambled shakes and stir fries. An even better approach would be to calculate the Eat less exercise less date, prioritizing the most satiating macronutrient protein, eat less exercise less naturally produces a low calorie intake. Anytime calories are lower, it can trigger hunger and cravings. Eat less exercise less reduces this risk by decreasing exercise which is a known stimulator of hunger. Unlike eat less, exercise more, eat less exercise less achieves calorie deficits through decreased food alone, it does not increase exercise as well. It is wise to raise the protein intake as a proportion of total calories because protein is a powerhouse in reducing hunger. It also signals the body not to lose too much muscle. This is why we set the protein percentage to 40%. Higher protein with decreased exercise is a powerful one two punch in controlling hunger and cravings. To make this more objective we set protein grams to the lean body mass of the individual. The lean body mass is the body weight after subtracting out fat stores and consists of muscle bone, water and organ tissue. You can calculate your lean body mass by understanding your body fat percentage. A 200 pound person with 30% body fat has a lean body mass of 200 minus 60 or 140. In the Eat less exercise less approach. This would be the number of Protein grams consumed. From there we can back calculate the number of calories that 140 grams of protein is 40% of. So we multiply 140 times four, because there are four calories per gram of protein, that gives us 560 calories of protein, then we cross multiply by dividing point four zero 40% into 560, which gives us a total of 1400 calories. From there, we calculate the fat grams by multiplying 1400 by point three zero 30% fat, which gives us 420 calories of fat. There are nine calories per gram of fat, so we divide 420 by nine to get 46.66 grams, or 47 grams of fat. We then repeat this process with the carbs 1400 times point three zero or 30% carbs, again yields 420 calories. There are four calories per gram of carbohydrate, and 420 divided by four gives us 105 grams of carbohydrate. This leaves us with 1400 calories, with 105 grams of carbohydrate, 140 grams of protein, and 47 grams of fat. Many will look at these numbers and question the calorie level. It is important to remember that low calories coupled with extreme or prolonged consistent exercise is very different than low calories with just walking and activities of daily living. If one were to consider the actual caloric availability of living as a hunter gatherer, eating only what could be killed or gathered, one would realize that consistently achieving calorie intake much above 1500 to 2000 calories per day would be relatively difficult to do. Consider that five chicken breasts along with nearly unlimited salad greens and a few cups of berries would constitute the same type of diet calculated above, and would not exceed much past 1200 calories despite being extremely nutritious and hunger suppressing the Eat less exercise less intuitive approach. Not everyone is a calorie counter or likes to obsess about macronutrient balance. For those types, it is fine to use a more intuitive or subjective starting place as it pertains to eat less exercise less. Think of the macronutrient and calorie specific calculations as an approach that begins by prioritizing the quantity of food. Think of the intuitive approach as leading with food quality. The intuitive approach I like to use with eat less exercise less is called the three to one approach. This is a system I devised over many years in the clinic to quickly and easily give an introduction to quality nutrition. It's a formula that efficiently prescribes eating frequency along with quality targets for food. The first number three designates how many meals or feeding opportunities the person will have daily. The second number designates the number of those meals that will be fat and starch reduced, i.e. consisting only of lean meats and vegetables. The last number is how many of those meals will include fat and or starch. In this case, three to one means three meals per day to without starch and fat and one with fat and or starch. This same three to one designation can be used to quickly visualize what that last mixed meal should look like three parts vegetables, two parts lean protein, and one part starch and or fat. As you can see, this is a very quick and easy approach to prescribe a metabolic meal plan that excels at calorie reduction, hunger, control and nutrient density. For those who hate counting, weighing and measuring it provides a solid beginning structure. If they are able to achieve results with it, there is no need to change this more intuitive approach to eating. However, if results are slow or nonexistent, moving to a more data driven quantity tracking method may be necessary. Eat less exercise less exercise. Although eat less exercise less is not a protocol that addresses exercise, it does not mean exercise can't be done. In fact, three weight training sessions or less per week helped turn this protocol into a far more efficient fat loss toggle doing three full body weight training workouts per week on this protocol as a mechanical stimulus and hormonal effects that help the body maintain lean muscle mass and accentuate fat loss. Exercise should not be emphasized in this toggle. Walking is really the only thing required but up to three weight training workouts per week are acceptable and may provide enhanced benefit. Eat more exercise more. Eat more exercise more is the athlete toggle. Athletes need to eat enough to fuel their activities. No athlete in their right mind is going to eat less and exercise more if they want to perform and win at their sport. Athletes don't train to look good. They train to excel at the game they play. Looking good is just the natural outcome of a well fueled body undergoing intense training. The idea that you can do eat less exercise more to look like an athlete is absurd. Athletes don't starve themselves. Rather, they eat more because they need to fuel their training. Eating Less is not something that would aid athletic performance. In fact, it would impede it. It's why every few years when the Olympics rolled around, you hear the commentators talking about the insane amount of food each athlete eats. Whereas eat less exercise less creates a calorie deficit with food. Eat more exercise more manipulates the calorie gap with exercise, the eat more exercise more toggle is great for fat loss or muscle gain. If it is being used for fat loss than exercise is ramped up to slightly exceed the amount that is being eaten. If it is being used to gain muscle than exercise is kept just below the food intake. So extra calories are driven towards muscle gain just as a calorie deficit and hormonal balance are required for fat loss, calorie excess and hormonal balance are required for muscle increases. This toggle is not exclusive to professional athletes. Maybe you're someone who just loves to exercise. If that's the case, you have to up your calorie intake to compensate for the deficit. How much you up your intake will depend on the kind of exercise you do. For example, cardiovascular exercise burns the most calories while you're doing it. If you go for a run or take a spin class, you're going to burn a ton of calories, but the second you stop, so does the burning. There is little after effect. However, if you do weight training, you'll burn fewer calories during the actual session. But in the hours and days afterward, you're going to use energy to recover repair muscle and adapt by perhaps synthesizing new muscle. This toggle also does not mean all you are allowed to eat is health food. Food is fuel, and depending on your specific goals, you might need to introduce some junk food. For example, most people think a Snickers bar is an awful food. And I would agree that it is in most cases. But if you are starving, a Snickers bar is actually a healthy food. Similarly, people think broccoli is the best food on the planet. However, if you've already consumed 4000 calories that day, broccoli is doing nothing for your health. If you eat an extra cup of broccoli at that point, all it does is add to your calorie load. Furthermore, if you're an athlete who's burning massive amounts of energy, you can't only eat chicken and broccoli, you're simply not going to be able to get the number of calories you need. Even the hunter gatherers of days past knew they needed things like fat and nuts for the energy they would provide. In today's world things like peanut butter, cheese, burgers, pizza and even candy bars can serve a purpose to an athlete. In fact, if you're going to include those things regularly in your diet, the eat more exercise more toggle is the only appropriate way to do so. If you eat those things regularly, while in any other toggle, they can end up stalling your progress. Eat more exercise more is best done in blocks of eight to 12 weeks. When in eat more exercise more your calorie intake should be 15 times your body weight and pounds. Your macronutrient ratio should be 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat. Because carbs are like high octane jet fuel for performance, the body will use the extra amount both to build muscle and fuel activities. If you're a hard gainer, meaning you're super lean and have a tough time gaining muscle, you may need to go as high as 20 times your body weight to determine your ideal calorie intake and set the macros to 40 30 30. Keep in mind these ratios are just suggestions for a place to start. There is no magic in these formulas, you will still have to use the AME process to analyze what your metabolism reacts to and make adjustments. Your body will tell you how many calories and macronutrients you need, you might end up with a 50 30 20 ratio. This structure exists only as a starting point, tweak it to reflect your unique needs. Eat more exercise more macronutrient calculations like with eat less, exercise less. Eat more exercise more can be done in a very intuitive way or a very math oriented way. Let's deal with the more specific quantity approach first. Remember, with eat more exercise more we want to elevate food intake in general and carbohydrate intake. In particular, intense athletic training requires a fueling strategy that includes more glucose. Although there has been a renewed interest in low carbohydrate approaches to fueling sport over the last few years. Almost all of the research in this direction has reaffirmed the primacy of glucose as a preferred performance fuel. The extra glucose is also a prime stimulant event. Insulin, which is arguably the most anabolic hormone in the body as cells don't get fed without it these considerations are the reason eat more exercise more, adjust the macronutrient ratio with higher carbohydrate levels of 40 30 30 carbs, protein and fat. The simple and dirty way to calculate calories would be to use body weight times 15. For the average person looking to feel exercise while focusing on getting leaner, i.e. burning body fat. Scaling up to body weight times 20 would be for those most interested in gaining muscle. Of course, as you've learned, these numbers are always just best starting places. The proof of the numbers will be apparent or not based on results, they eat more exercise more approach can be used to create a calorie deficit for fat loss or a calorie surplus for muscle gain. To get even more specific, protein again can be used as the basis for the calorie calculations. Given the strong demands on the metabolism for recovery and adaptation, protein levels should be elevated even further in the eat more exercise more toggle. To account for this, I set the grams of protein two pounds of body weight. For example, I'm 225 pounds. If I were to move into an eat more exercise more toggle 225 would be my target for grams of protein intake. From there, I can back calculate to determine the calories and 40 30 30 macronutrient ratio 225 pounds means my protein grams will be 225 grams, there are four calories per gram of protein. So I multiply to 25 by four, giving me 900 calories of protein. Next, I cross multiply and divide 900 calories by point three zero, giving me a total calorie level of 3000. From there, I can take 40% of 3000 for the carbohydrate calories of 1200. There are four calories per gram of carb. So 1200 divided by four gives the grams of carbohydrate 300 I can do the same calculation for fat 3000 multiplied by 30% Fat gives us 900 calories of fat. Fat has nine calories per gram. So 900 divided by nine is 100 grams of fat. This yields 3000 calories at 300 grams carbs, 225 grams protein and 100 grams fat. If you're a savvy, you will see one issue with doing calculations in this way. What if you are someone who is obese, normally an obese person will not be able to sustain the type of activity required for the eat more exercise more protocol without putting themselves at risk for injury. But that is not a hard and fast rule. So to account for this if I have someone greater than 30% body fat, I typically will not set protein grams higher than 200 on the eat more exercise more protocol. This helps account for the excessive fat tissue and keeps the calorie levels down to a level more in line with what a leaner version of that person would be consuming. This saves us from excessive protein intake, we would not necessarily want someone 300 pounds consuming 300 grams protein given that would require a calorie intake of 4000 and possibly be excessive for fat loss goals. This underscores that need to always think about the uniqueness of each person. A lean 225 pound lifter is different than an obese 225 pound couch potato. This is why the Eat less exercise less protocol is usually preferred for the very obese. If eat more exercise more is going to be used in these individuals your best to limit protein to 200 grams. The intuitive approach to eat more exercise more follows the four to two formula four meals per day two with only lean protein and vegetables and two mixed meals including starch and or fat. The mixed meal plates would also follow half the plate being vegetables, a quarter being lean protein and a quarter being starch or fat going on.

[36:40] and now back to the show. Eat more exercise more exercise. With eat more exercise more exercise is most definitely accentuated. For the eat more exercise more toggle to be effective, at least for long duration and or high intensity workout should be performed per week. Remember, this is an athletic protocol, both movement and metabolic should be utilized. This is athletic training at its best. And the best exercise modalities will be those that utilize intense weight training and cardio in the eat more exercise more protocol any type of exercises game, but weight training should most definitely be the dominant form of metabolics in order to help the body maintain, or even gain muscle while simultaneously burning fat. Metabolism is not a great multitasker. It either likes to be burning muscle and fat or gaining muscle and fat. The eat more exercise more protocol is the one that helps the metabolism multitask better. If you are looking to simultaneously gain muscle and burn fat. This is the protocol for you. The fifth toggle, ESES eat some exercise some there's actually one more metabolic toggle that represents caloric equilibrium. You can think of this as a maintenance toggle. It's the metabolic state where the intake of calories and output of energy are relatively stable and balanced. This is referred to as ISO caloric to distinguish it from hypocaloric low calorie state or deficit and hypercaloric high calorie state or excess. Many people live in this eat some exercise some state and choose never to diet at all, living happily here. In fact most of the people you see eating and exercising and being able to maintain that lifestyle year in and year out are actually in the eat some exercise some state not in the Eat less exercise more state. This is a major point of confusion for people who look at others with healthy lifestyles and assume they are always eating less and exercising more they are not they are usually either in an eat more exercise more athletic state and thereby creating a calorie deficit or excess for fat loss or muscle gain respectively, are more likely they are in the eat some exercise some state you can think of eat some exercise some as your home base. It is the place that keeps your body weight stable and does not result in weight loss or weight gain. In fact, this is a very important toggle to understand as often losing substantial amounts of body fat requires a constant return to this balanced holding pattern of eat some exercise some remember that anytime there is a gap between calorie intake and output, it can possibly create more pressure on the metabolic stress barometer. Do that for too long and then metabolism will react negatively. However, spending only short periods of time in calorie deficits and then returning to ISO caloric levels is one of the most effective strategies I have found clinically to get the weight off and keep it off. This is also a major point of confusion and contention for coaches working with individuals for weight loss. These coaches will often rightly deduce that someone who is eating less and exercising more but not getting results needs to do something different. Often their solution is to have them eat more and exercise less, moving them from one stressful metabolic toggle, eat less exercise more to another stressful metabolic toggle, eat more exercise less. Instead, they should be moving them into eat more exercise more by simply having them eat more to match output or move them to eat less exercise less by having them exercise less to match output. Or it could be even better to simply move them gently back to a diet and exercise approach where exercise calories and food intake are balanced out completely or eat some exercise some this is the best approach to take. This is my version of a diet break and avoids the consequences of the Eat less exercise more to eat more exercise less switch. This is the approach used in the often quoted study on intermittent energy restriction called the matador study, minimizing adaptive thermogenesis and deactivating obesity rebound. The study compared two groups of people, both groups were put through a calorie reduced lifestyle of 30%. Each group followed the diet for 16 weeks. Their traditional diet group simply did continuous energy restriction for the entire time period. The other group dieted by taking two weeks in energy deficit, followed by two weeks in an isocaloric state. In other words, one group did eat less exercise more for 16 weeks. The other did two weeks in eat less exercise more, followed by a two week diet, break and eat some exercise some for a total period of 32 weeks 16 of which were an eat less exercise more exactly the same as the control group. Both groups lost weight, but the intermittent group lost more weight, more fat and less muscle weight loss was 31 pounds in the intermittent calorie restriction group and 20 pounds in the continuous calorie restriction group. Fat Loss was just shy of 25 pounds in the group taking diet breaks, and 17 pounds in the other group. After six months of not following any calorie restriction. The participants were checked again, the group alternating eat less exercise more with eat some exercise, some was still down 18 pounds, while the other group had gained all but five pounds. Although this study was met with great fanfare when it first came out, studies done since have been mixed in terms of the effectiveness of this approach that being said, long before the matador study was published. This approach of diet breaks and alternating patterns of calorie intake versus output had already proven effective in my clinical work for at least a decade. It is important when evaluating effective tools to be aware of both the art and the science of nutritional approaches. The art of nutritional science happens on the fringe of the research where existing understanding meets big gaps in our knowledge. It's in that chasm, i.e. the gap between what we know and what we don't know where new ideas and tactics are explored. Often these tools and techniques work in the clinic despite not yet having scientific support. This is why a savvy coach realizes that science only sometimes to find the approach more often it refines the approach. Timing is everything. As you'll have noticed by now, you should not stay in the Eat less exercise more or eat more exercise less toggles for long periods of time. Eat more exercise more can be done for much longer, but often requires breaks given it is a much more grueling regime, eat less, exercise less and eat some exercise. Some are toggles that can most certainly be lived indefinitely, you actually should be jumping around between toggles because as you do, your metabolism becomes more resilient and more flexible. As it becomes less and less rigid, you have freedom to bounce back and forth. For instance, when you stay in, eat less, exercise less or eat more exercise more for a few weeks, then jump to eat less exercise more, you may actually see results again, I'll be at just for another short period of time. If you stay in one toggle for too long, your metabolism will inevitably adapt and results will cease. The more flexible you are about switching toggles the more flexible your metabolism will be. The easy way to gauge when it's time to switch toggles is to listen to hunger, energy and cravings and sleep hunger, mood, energy and cravings. HEC and SHMEC are always the most efficient way to assess metabolic stress. However, you can also look for other cues as to when it's best to move from one to another. For example, women can choose toggles to coincide with their menstrual cycles. Eat more exercise more is an ideal choice when estrogen is dominating. Whereas eat less exercise less is best when progesterone is in charge. More on this in chapter eight. You could toggle seasonally the way our hunter gatherer ancestors did in that scenario, winter is ideal. For eat less exercise less. Then as the weather warms and animals emerging from a long winter are leaner eat less exercise more is the natural choice. That doesn't last long. However, because the foliage and food sources soon become more plentiful and you begin moving more, which means it's time for eat more exercise more. The last weeks or so of late fall make the most sense for eat more exercise less as animals fatten up in anticipation of winter and days become shorter. You also can do it according to your work week when eat less exercise less might make the most sense during the weekdays. Since you're not exercising, and eat more exercise more works better on the weekends when you are more active. Then if you want to enjoy time with friends and family, you can do eat more exercise less every once in a while. Finally, the savviest fitness enthusiast can use an eat less exercise less style of eating on days where you're not working out and an eat more exercise more style of eating on the days you do work out. In fact, many active individuals have naturally and intuitively adopted this approach. Even using an intermittent fasting approach on the days they travel or are not very active. Again, as is the case with all things metabolism, you have to do what's right for you when it's going to work best for you. Your body will send you the signs when it's time to switch things up. And by now you should know how to look for them.