Why Your Diet Isn’t Working: Metabolic Myths Debunked

In the world of weight loss, distinguishing between myths and science-backed strategies can be daunting. 

In this episode of Ultra Life Today, Todd Scarborough, five-time Mr. Arkansas, shares insights on sustainable fat loss and fitness, debunking common misconceptions. Co-hosts Josh Bellew and Kyle Drew explore the significance of regular, balanced meals and the role of exercise in maintaining a healthy metabolic rate. Scarborough highlights the power of an hour-long, post-dinner walk for effective fat burning and addresses the considerations of intermittent fasting. 

This engaging episode challenges the extremes of fad diets and provides practical advice for lasting weight management and health.

List to the full episode here or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fQatvCn5sn8

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Todd Scarborough): The single best fat burning exercise that we know of is an hour walk at a slow pace that you can hold a conversation with, that you can talk to your spouse and go for an hour right after dinner. All of my, all of my people, when they're dieting and they hit a wall on their weight loss, I say do this after your last meal, go for a walk for an hour listening to educational stuff, books, whatever it may be, talk to your partner, whatever it may be, but go for that hour slow walk. And what that does is it sets that metabolic rate before you go to bed. It helps digest your last meal, it ramps the metabolic rate and it starts the fat burning process which goes throughout the night.

0:00:41 - (Todd Scarborough): It's by far the best secret that anybody has ever shared with me is that long walk right after the last meal. The most effective fat burning exercise that we know about.

0:01:03 - (Josh Bellieu): Hey, it's ultra life today. I'm Josh Bellew. You know, summer's right around the corner. People do these event things as it relates to their weight. I've got to look good for my wedding. I've got to look good for my class reunion. We're talking to a guy today, Kyle Drew and I, his Name's Todd Scarborough, five times Mr. Arkansas. This is a guy that has gotten ready for events many times in his. But we're going to talk about something that's lifestyle related, not event related today so that you can look good in your swimsuit this summer. Kyle, what's up?

0:01:35 - (Kyle Drew): Yeah, Todd. Hey, Todd, how's it going, man?

0:01:38 - (Todd Scarborough): Hey, I'm doing great. And what a great topic because it's, it's, there's so much confusion around it. I see so many marks, so much marketing hype and misinformation that it just makes me cringe. I want to throw things at the TV when I see these weight loss commercials.

0:01:54 - (Kyle Drew): Well, and so let's talk about this. We're starting with the, that we're talking to a bodybuilder, a five time Mr. Arkansas and what that means, just give people a hint, not a long explanation, but a hint of how long it takes to prepare for a contest and how much scale weight you're trying to lose. And what is your percentage of body fat on that day. I just want to give people the impression that you might know what you're talking about. Okay.

0:02:27 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, the game of bodybuilding is about fat loss, about muscle, but you also have to, at contest time, pull off the fat. So, you know, bodybuilders haven't contributed a whole lot to the world Except a bunch of dumbbells, maybe. But as far as. But as far as weight loss is concerned, fat loss, we're the pros at it. That's what we do. When people say they want to lose weight, I say, no, you don't. You want to lose fat.

0:02:52 - (Todd Scarborough): Come on, you don't want to lose weight. You lose muscle, you lose metabolic rate, you lose shape. And actually, the ideal is to have muscle and lower fat. So that's what we do. We're trying to lower our fat. At contest time, we get down to. I got down to 4.9%, and it's a lonely place, let me tell you. You don't want to be there. You know, the one thing that people have to realize being in shape is looking good in your clothes, being conditioned is what athletes look like. Like we look like, like boxers and fighters look like at the time of their competition.

0:03:22 - (Todd Scarborough): These guys are in immaculate shape. And in order to get to that level, you have to put in a lot of work. But the. What applies to us? Fat loss. We do to lose fat is the exact same thing that everyone else should do. It's the only way to lose weight and lose fat effectively and keep it off. And every other way is going to come back. It's going to have these cycles of people going up and down in weight.

0:03:50 - (Todd Scarborough): The way we lose it is the most sound and most effective way. And it's something that happens very quickly. When I hear about these different medications, weight loss skills, losing 50 pounds over a year and a half, well, I can take people and bring off £50 in about six months, if not sooner, just by applying regular meals, working out a little bit. It's not that hard. It's a very simple thing as far as weight loss is concerned, as far as the equation to do it. But as far as pulling it off, it's hard because you have to change your lifestyle and all that. But as far as the process of fat loss, it's very easy. It's not that hard.

0:04:31 - (Kyle Drew): Well, you've trained an awful lot of people and obviously you've done it yourself. What is the biggest challenge that people have, or maybe the biggest misconception about the process of losing weight? Because I know that you've seen a lot of people doing it wrong. What makes it wrong and what do they go in with? That really is just not the way to do it?

0:04:57 - (Todd Scarborough): The biggest misconception is by saying, I'm going to restrict my calories, I'm not going to eat. You know what happens when you don't eat, your metabolic rate is further suppressed. Most people that are overweight, they go, well, I don't get hungry. And I go, that's a terrible thing. That tells me that your metabolic rate is totally shut down if you are not hungry. If you don't get hungry, then that means your metabolic rate is shut down. What we have to do is reignite that hunger, reignite the fire.

0:05:27 - (Todd Scarborough): And how you do that is how we do it, is small meals every three and a half to four hours, right amounts at the right time. And what that does, you're giving the body these small meals. I had one lady that couldn't eat four times a day. She said, I just. I can't do it. I said, okay, three and a half hours in, after your last meal, I want you to take a shake, mix it up, take two drinks of it. I don't care. I don't care. If it's just two sips, fine, that's all you can take.

0:05:52 - (Todd Scarborough): But do it on a clock, do it, and start getting pattern. Well, the next thing you know, she's drinking all of that shake. And the next thing you know, she's taken in twice the calorie intake that she was, and she's losing weight and she has more energy and her metabolic rate is flying because she started. She called me one day and she said, I'm getting hung. My stomach is proud. I said, do you want me to give you a standing ovation?

0:06:16 - (Kyle Drew): So is that what's happening, Todd? Is that. Is that what it's happening? When you are visiting with someone who obviously has a lot of weight to lose but are reporting to you that they're not hungry, you're saying that in your experience, that's a real sign of metabolic rate breakdown.

0:06:38 - (Todd Scarborough): Yes, but physiologically. Physiologically, that's what's happening. Because what happens when you. When you are starved, the body starts shutting off the appetite. I mean, it's saying, okay, we're not getting food. Why don't we keep sending this impulse? Why not only keep sending. So they're professionals by that point of shutting off that impulse of hunger and just going right through the day. But what. That's. That's not doing anything but lowering their metabolic set.

0:07:03 - (Todd Scarborough): It just continues to lower, lower. Now, all of a sudden, 1100 calories a day is enough to get fat because you just lowered your set point to such a low level that you can't eat as much as you used to. So every day that goes by, you're continually slowering and lowering that set point of Your metabolic rate, how do you get it back? Simple. Start eating, start getting the metabolic rate back. And when that hunger starts coming back, that's a good sign. When your stomach starts to grow, that's something to celebrate for sure.

0:07:33 - (Kyle Drew): That's a fascinating. I think that I hope that a lot of people are listening to this who are experiencing that problem of being overweight but still not real hungry and maybe even saying, golly, I don't eat very much. What the. What's the problem? That's a really interesting perspective, Todd. I appreciate that. Is there. Were you about to ask a question.

0:07:59 - (Josh Bellieu): Josh, when you're taking somebody through this idea, let's say a person did want to lose 50 pounds in six months. And of course, you mentioned exercise being a component there. But when a person is going to be eating every three and a half to four hours to lose weight, what percentages of fats, carbs and proteins might make up one of those meals? Because I'm a little confused because I could see a lot of people going, I'm going to start out with, you know, two bowls of oatmeal in the morning and.

0:08:30 - (Josh Bellieu): And they may end up with all carbs. So how would you, how would you suggest somebody do that?

0:08:36 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, and the first thing I do with people, whenever I start telling them every three to three and a half to four hours, I have to hold their hand and deal with it psychologically because it flips them out. They're like, I can't do that, you know, so I have to encourage them there. But as far as you bring up a great point, Josh, because it's the what I tell people, it's the frequency of the meal, it's the size of the meal, and it's the ratio of that meal, meaning the makeup of it. What is it? Protein, carbs and fats.

0:09:03 - (Todd Scarborough): This has been argued and debated. Pritikin says we need 10% fat and 90% carbs and no fat, which is ridiculously stupid. And then you have the Atkins diet, which is nothing but protein and fats and no vegetables. That's ridiculous. And so when you look at the extremes of these ratios that are out there, I really believe that how you determine that is based on the intestinal tract of that mammal and the teeth profile of that mammal. A cow versus a human. I mean, it's different digestions, all of that, different protein needs, different carbohydrate needs, all of those things.

0:09:38 - (Todd Scarborough): We, I think, are a 40, 30, 30 creature. Basically 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 30% fat. That's kind of the ratio that I tend to think for average people. Now for me, I do 40, 40, 20 at the end because I'm bumping the protein a little bit more, reducing the fats just a touch. But if you're eating that ratio and you're still overeating your calorie consumption for the day, you're still going to get fat. It' the ratio necessarily. You still have to count the calories and you have to, in my opinion, balance them over about four meals. Because the ideal. Guys, the body's a machine. It's an elaborate machine. It reads input and it adapts to it. That's all we are, is adaptation machines. You every single time.

0:10:26 - (Kyle Drew): Boy, I got to tell you, Todd, you said something that a lot of people are going to hate. And a lot of people out there who are marketing themselves as weight loss gurus are going to say, man, that Tod Scarborough doesn't know what he's talking about. You don't have to worry about calories. Why? Why do calories count? That's an old fashioned idea. Talk about it. Because I think that this is ridiculous when people say, oh, calories don't matter as long as they're all blank, as long as they're all fat calories if you're on a ketogenic diet, or as long as they're all carbs if you're on a 1980s low fat diet.

0:11:04 - (Kyle Drew): This has been the story for decades now, the debate over whether calories matter. You a bodybuilder says, yes, they do matter.

0:11:19 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, let me just bring them back to the law of physics. It's just the law. Of course it is. You overeat. If you eat more than you burn, of course you're going to store it no matter what it is. If it's fat or it's protein or it's carbs. The body can store that in the fat cells. Of course it can. And so the over consumption of protein hurts the liver because it has to go through there to be excreted. The over consumption of carbohydrates do devastating things to the body. Triglycerides go through the roof.

0:11:54 - (Todd Scarborough): Fat levels go way up. Everything the marker. So it's the over consumption of calories that has us here. I mean, that's a fact. Look, back in the 70s, you did not have these concentrated fuels. Sugar was a condiment. It was added to E to sweeten it or something. Now people are existing on sugar. They're eating sugar for breakfast and drinking sugar all day long. And it's this, it's a scourge. I think it's one of the, the one thing. And to me, I, I'm, I mean, I, my mother fed me fudge. That's how she showed me love when I was a child. I have a mouthful of fillings to prove it. And, and so that's, I'm still a sugar addict, but it's something that, it's the over consumption of calories that has us here and mostly the over consumption of simple sugars.

0:12:41 - (Kyle Drew): In your opinion, what is the most important part of the equation? Is it diet? Is it exercise? Is it some other third thing? There are lots of people who believe that they can out exercise a junk food diet and be okay. So how do you put, how do you weigh the importance of those different factors?

0:13:10 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, and you said, what's the most important? I would say D, all of the above. You know, I mean, it kind of all has to play in. But you don't, you don't diet calories, you don't diet fat off. You burn them off. That's the only way they come off. You have to burn them. And that has to either be through a metabolic rate that has risen or activity. And we know that physical exercise, it goes well beyond what it does for you on the weight loss level. Let's face it, I mean it, there's so many benefits, we couldn't talk about it in two hours as far as the benefit of physical exercise. So that's a part of the system, certainly. But I don't overwork people.

0:13:46 - (Todd Scarborough): I make them go 30 minutes a day, four days a week. That's not hard, that's two hours a week. That's not a lot of time. But the main thing is the diet. The main thing is prepping their foods. I tell people if you don't prep your meals, you're going to fail. If you don't have a plan, you will fail because you will go into some store that has cakes baking and cookies and you just are going to dive head first into them and eat the closest thing there. I mean, I'm the same way. So I cook my meals, prep my meals and have a plan.

0:14:18 - (Todd Scarborough): And that's my biggest asset for people as a trainer is showing them how to set that in place.

0:14:24 - (Josh Bellieu): So I want to go back to you saying 30% fats, because when I think of fats these days, I think of them much differently than I used to. If you'd mentioned that to me, you know, back when I was a teenager, I would have been Going pizza, baby. And I would have been going Big Macs and stuff. So when you talk about 30% fats in the diet as being the right ratio, what kind of fats should people be eating? Todd?

0:14:50 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, look at. There are so many. You know, my dad used to call me a fat head and it wasn't a compliment, but I reminded him the brain is made of fat. And I'm like, okay, thank, it's. Thank you. It's a compliment. The brain is made of fat and there's so many components or the nerves are surrounded by fat. So fat's a very important part of our diet, is a third of it, or at least, you know, one of the components. So how important is it?

0:15:12 - (Todd Scarborough): It's, it's very important. What we get it from. There are, you know, I, I think it was the musician, I can't remember his name. He said, there's two types of music, good music and bad music. And I feel the same thing about fats. There's two types of fats. Good fats, bad fats, and, and so the good fats are obvious. I mean, nuts and, and, and avocados and even cheeses. I, I think animal fats are very good. I, I think even fats off the steak and those type of things are very good.

0:15:40 - (Todd Scarborough): The bad fats, I mean, olies for. Remember that one that they invented to try to sneak through the body uninterested, and it just caused a wreaked havoc in the body, These altered fats, the trans fats, the things that have hydrogenated.

0:15:54 - (Josh Bellieu): Oils, obviously the seed oils as well. Right. We want to avoid the seed oils.

0:16:00 - (Todd Scarborough): Well, yeah, I mean, as far as the, the in concentration, I think, you know, as far as olive oil and things like, that's fantastic. There's some seedles, like sesame seed oil. Okay, that's very good. But I don't think any of it is bad necessarily. It's just the way it's processed, the way it's handled afterwards. And if it's rancid, it could be the best of omega 3 fatty acids. But if it's rancid, it's bad oil.

0:16:23 - (Todd Scarborough): I mean, it's gotta be fresh.

0:16:25 - (Kyle Drew): Well, and the same question that Josh asked about fat, I'll ask about carbs. How do you advise people on the whole carb conversation?

0:16:35 - (Todd Scarborough): Absolutely. And when I start consulting with people on this, this is. Carbs are the, the throttle basically of the body and how the body idles and energy levels and all of that. Too much of it, it'll go to fat Very quickly and we see that often. So what I do with carbohydrates, as far as the types of carbs, obviously it's those ones that are starchy carbs or at least a longer burning car. What gets us in trouble with these sugars, these short chain, they digest so quickly and they go into the bloodstream and they turn into triglycerides, which is blood.

0:17:12 - (Todd Scarborough): So when people have high triglyceride levels, the first thing I say, You're a sugar freak, aren't you? Yes, I am. I mean it's a telltale sign it's just too much sugar in the diet, which in turn puts too much fat in the blood because it's turning fat trying to store basically as long term energy. So it's something as far as the carbohydrate sources again, what's working for you? Does corn digest well or not? Some people corn doesn't. Most people rice digest well. Some people wheat with gluten allergies, those type of things.

0:17:45 - (Todd Scarborough): Find those ones that work for you, stay with them. I'm so boring in my diet. I'm just the same old thing. It's just like when an elf espresso, you think, well, I got peas for a year, I could do that.

0:17:57 - (Kyle Drew): So do you. So when it comes to exercise, and then we'll wrap this up, obviously you're going to have a strength training protocol. Do you also have a cardio protocol? How do you put it all together? For the rest of us, for those of us who are not about to enter the bodybuilding contest, but we might want to enter our pants and not have to squeeze into them eventually, this.

0:18:28 - (Todd Scarborough): Is the best way to end this show and that's the way to lose fat. And people think it's high impact cardio or it's this long drawn out thing or whatever it may be. The single best fat burning exercise that we know of is an hour walk at a slow pace that you can hold a conversation with, that you can talk to your spouse and go for an hour right after dinner. All of my, all of my people, when they're dieting and they hit a wall on their weight loss, I say do this after your last meal.

0:18:58 - (Todd Scarborough): Go for a walk for an hour listening to educational stuff, books, whatever it may be, talk to your partner, whatever it may be, but go for that hour slow walk. And what that does is it sets that metabolic rate before you go to bed. It helps digest your last meal, it ramps the metabolic rate and it starts the fat burning process which goes throughout the Night. It's by far the best secret that anybody has ever shared with me is that long walk right after the last meal.

0:19:27 - (Todd Scarborough): The most effective fat burning exercise that we know about.

0:19:31 - (Josh Bellieu): I'm going to extend this with one more question. I have to get this. So there is a huge trend, as you are aware of, called intermittent fasting. And I've read a lot about it and I know it can do some really amazingly good things in the body. How does someone reconcile the idea of intermittent fasting? When you're talking about eating every three and a half or four hours, is that going to be something they need to avoid or is that something that can be incorporated in and still be able to lose the weight they want?

0:20:05 - (Todd Scarborough): That certainly is a contrast between those two. And you kind of have to pick sides. Here's what it is. Intermittent fasting. Fasting is very good for cleansing the body. No question about that. Giving the intestinal tract a break. I believe in that type of fasting. Certainly intermittent fasting for weight loss will work off the front end just simply because you're restricting those times.

0:20:25 - (Josh Bellieu): Right.

0:20:25 - (Todd Scarborough): So the body is, is burning that fat during the time that you don't have food. However, it's lowering the metabolic rate. Number one, because you're not eating, that fire is only burning for work time. And I don't like that. And, and it plays a great role. After you get the fat burning process, when you get the metabolic rate ignited through frequent meals, then intermittent fasting can be beneficial. It can add a little bit to it. But if you start intermittent fasting right off the front end and you've got £80 to lose, it's going to slow the process down.

0:20:58 - (Josh Bellieu): I am so glad I asked you that question because it was just troubling me.

0:21:02 - (Kyle Drew): Yeah. Like, wow, that is a great question, Todd. Boy, I guess we could spend five more hours with you, but we, we know you. Okay. I see your look.

0:21:14 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay, that's Todd Scarborough, five time Mr. Arkansas, and potentially going to be doing it again. Kyle Drew. Did you hear him say that?

0:21:22 - (Kyle Drew): Yes. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

0:21:24 - (Josh Bellieu): It freaks me out. Okay, well, Kyle Drew, Todd Scarborough, Josh Bellu. This is ultra Life today.

0:21:29 - (Todd Scarborough): It.