Why Some People Find Weight Loss Harder Than Others

Why can two people follow the same weight loss plan and get completely different results?

In this episode of the All or Something Podcast, we dive into the science of interindividual variability and explore why some people find losing weight and body fat much harder than others.

We discuss the research showing that people can respond very differently to the same diet, exercise program, or lifestyle intervention. From differences in appetite and hunger to energy expenditure, genetics, behaviour, and biology, we break down the many factors that influence weight loss outcomes.

Topics covered include:

- Why average results can be misleading
- Individual differences in fat loss and weight loss
- Appetite, hunger, and food cravings
- Genetics and biological variability
- Metabolic adaptation and energy expenditure
- Why some people are 'compensators' and some are not

If you've ever wondered why weight loss seems easier for some people than others, this episode is for you.

P.S., If you want to support us and would like monthly lifting workouts, you can join the Momentum by Sohee fitness app. http://momentumbysohee.com

If you are interested in fat loss science, you can purchase Ben's best-selling comprehensive fat loss book, Everything Fat Loss. http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Some people find it difficult to lose body fat, but why is that?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

So we actually did this as a presentation on stage, big screen behind us, all fancy. But I decided why not bring this to you for free? You would have had to have paid for this, but not today.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Free ninety nine.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

It is free ninety-nine.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Which by the way, I I really didn't understand that when I first heard it. Free ninety-nine. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Is it because you don't pronounce three as in TH? You're like, free? Free ninety-nine? $3.99 and then $3.99.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

And then you'd be like, Oh, is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Okay, it's not, it's clicked for me as for recording this.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Strong strong start. So we have talked about some of these concepts previously, but we are going to do a bigger deep dive now on why some people find it harder to lose fat than others. And as a super quick recap, we know that if you look at lots of people who diet, there is a strong likelihood that people regain some, sometimes most, sometimes all of the weight they have lost. So if someone starts at 100 kilos and they diet down to 90 kilos, over one, two, three, four, five years, they often start regaining weight back up towards 100 kilograms. That is seen very reliably and consistently in research. Doesn't mean that everyone who diets can't maintain it, but it is a very, very, very common phenomenon.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Now you may have known of a coach, a fitness coach, who would say something along the lines of, Well, it's easy for me, so why can't you do it? Or maybe you're that coach right now. And but the reality is for that person, they enjoy working out and they don't have appetite regulation issues.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

And let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're gonna go into all of these details. We don't want too many bullet points.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

But if you give them a calorie target or macro targets, they have no problem adhering it adhering to them. So for them, they might then assume that it's similarly easy for everybody else. Therefore, if you are not able to do what they're doing, it's because you're lazy or it's because you lack discipline. But obviously, as we're gonna dive into, it's a lot more complicated than that.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

So one of the reasons that that bugs me so much is because I think I have worked with regular folk. I was never working in like a high-end athletic center or with high-end celebrities, for example. I was working with regular Joes in commercial gyms. And it doesn't take long before talking to clients before you realize that a lot of people have dieted a lot throughout their lives. So, based on research, say in America as an example, because getting the rate of this globally would be very difficult. But generally speaking, in America, approximately half of all adults diet every single year. Once per year, someone is on a diet. So if half of adults go on a diet per year, it shows how many people have been trying, often consistently, to lose weight. And normally I would say this at the end of the episode. I like asking questions. But if you are a listener to this and you're listening to this at the moment, obviously, how many times have you been on a diet throughout your life? And the idea that people who struggle to lose weight don't have willpower, to me, it's a little bit of a kick in the teeth for all of the people who are like, hang on, I'm dieting all the fucking time. I'm struggling all the fucking time. And you're making it sound like I'm lazy. I just don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah. As a bit of tangent, well, related tangent.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

I love tangents, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Well, it made me think because I I I experienced that exact thing in my teens and then in my early 20s when I was the most strict I was with my dieting. And I talk about this actually in in my episode, which is I forget the number, but it's when we interview my history and my eating disorder history and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Probably like episode five, maybe I reckon.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

It was basically the most rigid I've ever been with my dieting, and yet I had the hardest time adhering to said diet. And but I was uh getting straight A's, I graduated at the top of my class, I w I got what you know, was accepted to my dream university. Oh my god. So I knew I was like, why don't I have willpower in this area, even though I have I'm so successful in other areas of my life? And it took, and that's actually where my interest in uh behavior change and health psychology stemmed from was trying to understand oh, it's not a matter of willpower. There has to be something else happening here. So that's kind of where it came up.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

And I actually think that this kind of perfect pervasive, this is slightly sleep-deprived brain. If I say things wrong, just you know, forgive me. Part of the reason that this is such a pervasive myth is I think a lot of people think it themselves. So I remember I had a client who said, you know, I just I'm not, I'm struggling to get to the gym as much, and you know, I just feel like maybe I'm I don't have the willpower, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was one of the hardest working people I've ever met to this day. She was one of those people that set her alarm super fucking early. The type of time where the only reason I ever set my alarm for that time is if I'm going to catch a flight. And she was setting her alarm super early, building uh what is now a multi-million pound business from day one where it was worth nothing, and she wasn't sure she could do it. And she was one of the hardest workers I've ever ever met. But because she was doing so much that she struggled to get to the gym, and she's like, you know, I've gained a bit of weight, maybe I'm lacking discipline. I was like, you do not lack discipline. It's just discipline in one area of life does not necessarily translate to discipline in other areas. That is a myth.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yeah. Let's talk about why losing weight can get harder for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Yeah, so before we go into why it can be harder for some people, we'll just establish a couple of general concepts. So, on a very simplified overview, weight gain and weight loss is a result of calorie balance. So calories in versus calories out, the amount of food you eat versus how much you exercise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's a lot more complicated than that behind the scenes. But for the moment, let's just present a very simple CSOW. So let's say if someone is struggling to lose weight, let's look at the calories inside first. So, for example, there is research where they try to establish how much people's appetite changed in response to weight loss. And this is important because if someone goes on a diet on day one and they start losing weight, and then 12 weeks later they're struggling for whatever reason, they start feeling hungrier, it's harder to adhere to their diet, all of these things that you might resonate with. These researchers wanted to know how much your appetite changes in response to weight loss. Now, this is going to be slightly nerdy, I'm gonna do it really fast. This is actually very difficult to study because if you tell people to go on a diet and then monitor their appetite, the fact you've told them to go on a diet actually changes their psychology, which can then change their cravings. So, for example, if I say, I want to see what happens to Sohi when she loses weight, and I say, okay, don't eat any chocolate, don't eat any junk food, blah blah blah blah blah, if she starts craving chocolate and junk food, that's a variable and it makes it more complicated. So what they did was they stealthily gave people uh medication, so people with type 2 diabetes that increased um glucose excretion. So what it did was basically put them into a covert calorie deficit. They didn't know that was going to happen, they weren't intentionally losing weight, they had just increased the calories out aspect of the formula. And long story short, what they concluded was for every kilogram of body weight, so 2.2 pounds, that someone lost, their appetite increased by approximately 100 calories per day. So it doesn't necessarily scale linearly. We don't have the research to conclude that, for example, but that would mean that if someone lost 10 kilos or 22 pounds, that their hunger would be 1,000 calories per day higher than it was when they started. Yeah. Would that make weight loss more difficult over time? Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yeah. And it sounds unfair and it's not very nice. Yes. Yeah. This increase in appetite was found to be the main reason that their weight loss eventually slowed down, not energy expenditure actually changing in this case.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah. And this was followed up by a similar research paper, just to reiterate that this wasn't a random false finding. So they looked at the same thing where people who lost weight via calorie restriction or diet, and they found that it was probably in the region of about 80 to 100 calories per day for every kilo of weight lost. And when they compared that to people who were taking GLP1 medications or people who had bariatric surgery, they found that the increase in appetite was not so much, which is part of the reason why if someone goes down the road of one of those interventions, the weight regain might not be as fast or um as much as someone who had gone on a diet.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah. Then we have calories out from the calories in calories out equation, talking about metabolic rate. Now, even when you are not dieting, let's say you have two people of the same body weight. It is entirely possible for both people to have completely different metabolisms. For example, let's say you might have 300 calories per day faster metabolism than me, but we weigh the same amount.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah, so this is actually a really important concept, which this concept is so nerdy that I didn't want to lead the episode with this. But what I would like you to know right now, because it will help you the whole way through, is imagine that you are looking at 100 people and you pull all of their results together and you're like, oh no, their metabolic rates are exactly what we would expect. Compared to predictions, their metabolic rates have a deviation of zero. But sometimes the average hides the group the differences within group. So for example, we might say, oh no, everyone is about the same when you were doing it as an average. But you might find that one person burns 300 calories more per day than you would expect based on their body composition. Another person might burn 300 calories less per day based on their body composition. So, although in general, I think the whole kind of slow metabolism thing is um overblown. Yeah, I think it is often misattributed, if you will. But generally speaking, if you look at lots of people, you will find variance in the metabolic rate, and some people will have a slightly slower metabolism than other people. Yeah. That actually isn't very controversial if you look at lots of research literature, and I can put some examples on the screen with some sexy images for people to look at.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

We're going to talk about what we think is a really cool study, Rosenbaum from 20, uh, 2008. And for this one, they want to compare the resting or the energy expenditure of people who had lost weight and people who had never lost weight before.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, so think of three groups of people. Imagine these aren't the numbers, but I just like using easy numbers. So let's say someone weighed 100 kilos, or let's say someone weighed 100 pounds, either or, doesn't matter. Then say they have always weighed this. They haven't dieted, they're always at that 100, whatever weight. Then another person weighed 115 and they dieted down to 100 recently, and then another person also weighed 115 and they dieted down to 100, but they have sustained that. So basically, what it's comparing is people who are at their usual weight, people who have dieted to that weight recently, and people who are sustaining that weight over the long term. So basically what it is looking at is do people who diet have a suppressed metabolic rate compared to people who haven't dieted, essentially?

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Yeah. And unfortunately, yes, they did find this was the case. If you have a history of dieting at any given body weight, you're going to have a lower metabolism compared to someone who at the same body weight who has never dieted before. And they actually found that the differences in the metabolism or the differences in the energy expenditure came down primarily not to resting metabolic rate, but to non-resting energy expenditure, um, which can be explained by activity, right? So it can be uh something like the exercise you do, or even something we call NEAT and EAT, non-exercise activity femogenesis. So that's where the main differences were found.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, so I think the research on that can be a little bit complicated. And I think if we were going to dive into that, we should probably give it its own episode because it's a little bit um conflicting and a bit confusing for people. But a general thing that I want people to understand is as a rule, if all else is equal, if you weigh less, you don't require as much energy as if you weigh more. And what that means is if someone starts dieting and they require three and a half thousand calories to maintain weight, let's pretend I require three and a half thousand calories to maintain my weight now with my current level of physical activity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if I then weigh 10 pounds less or 10 kilos less or whatever, I don't require as much fuel. And a lot of people hear that and they're like, wait, so you're telling me I need to eat less food forever. Yes, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Or increase your energy expenditure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah. And I know that sucks. I know that sucks because it's like telling people they're going to be on a diet for the rest of their life. It isn't actually very controversial when you think about it. So this rule applies to lots of other things in our world. So, for example, if you are driving a big heavy car, its fuel economy tends to be worse than driving a small car because it takes more energy to move that thing. If we have a small dog and we have a big dog, the big dog tends to require more food. When we go to the vet, that's a great example. Another thanks, babe. If we go to the vet and the vet says, your dog is actually slightly on the heavier side, we reduce its food intake. Yeah. And if we reduce its food intake a little bit, at some point its body weight will go down and then it will stop. Yeah. And if we wanted to make it lose more weight, we would then have to reduce its food intake again. So one of the things that I think a lot of people get tripped up by is let's say they start a diet, they make an initial change to their uh nutrition or their physical activity, they lose weight, they hit a plateau, and they're like, fuck, it's not working anymore. But that's actually very normal because if you're that's expected, yeah. If you have made one change and then you get results and then it stops, you wouldn't expect that one change to continue for the rest of your life. You are going to then need to make another change, another change. It would be like if someone is sedentary and they say, Okay, I'm gonna walk for 20 minutes a day, to begin with, they might notice that they feel better after that time, they might notice certain things improving, but if they keep doing 20 minutes a day for the rest of their life, they're not going to continually get fitter to the point they can run marathons. They would have to scale up accordingly.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yeah. And the important thing to remember here is that when we are determining calorie needs for an individual based on their goals, body weight is going to be one of the biggest factors that determines what your calorie needs will be. So of course, if you if you set a deficit for yourself, like a 500-calorie or 300-calorie deficit, and you lose the weight, eventually that deficit is no longer gonna it's actually going to be your maintenance intake. And that doesn't mean that calories in calories out is invalid. That's that that's the nature of how it's supposed to work.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

I remember years ago, it was like a carnivore guy, which admittedly carnivore diets have become a kind of the the butt of the joke, so to speak. Not necessarily that I have some.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

I thought you were gonna say the butter of the joke. Oh, no, that's the one. I was like, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Oh, that would have been good. I wish I'd said it now. Can we rewind? Uh, kind of the butt of the joke. And in some ways, I don't actually care so much about the carnivore diet itself. It's just so many people in there promote so much misinformation that it's just become a kind of laughing stock, which I is a bit of a shame for any carnivore folk who might actually be scientific based, if they exist. Anyway, many years ago, there's this guy that said something along the lines of calories are bullshit because if you reduce your calorie intake and you lose weight, eventually you'll stop losing weight. And I replied and said, that isn't something that disproves that calories are bullshit, it's showing that your body adapts, and when you are no longer in a calorie deficit and you stop losing weight, like that's not evidence that calories are bullshit, that's evidence that the calorie deficit worked whilst you were in the calorie deficit. And I know it's two different ways of looking at it. It's a bit like if it worked for a short period of time and it stopped, does that mean it's working? And it's like, well, it worked while you're on it, or blah blah blah blah. Anyway, let's move to the next section, which is why do some people find it harder to lose weight?

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah, and we've actually divided this section into different stimuli.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Why?

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Why we're fancy.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah. Well, I think it's nice.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

A lot of prep goes into these episodes. I hope you like it. Many hours.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Okay. The first stimulus is going to be overfeeding. So when you intentionally put someone into a calorie surplus, meaning that they're eating more energy, they're consuming more energy than they expend, what happens and how does that vary between people?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

So I wanted to put this in because I think most of us will know that there are some people who are quote unquote naturally lean or naturally thin. And I think if we can all agree that some people find it harder to gain weight than others, I don't find it very controversial to be to accept the idea that some people find it harder to lose weight than others. That to me seems like a weird asymmetry. So, like years ago, I remember one of my friends, he was a thin guy wanting to gain weight and build muscle, and he said to me, I didn't do a dietary audit or any of that, I'm not pretending I know exactly what he was eating, but he said to me, I really struggle to gain weight, I feel like I'm eating a shitload of food, I've got to the point where I'm literally increasing how much junk food I eat because I feel like I need way more calories than I'm getting, and I'm still not gaining that much weight. And I think if you said to someone they're going out of their way to eat junk food every single day, just to try and get in the calories that they need to start moving the scale just a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

And it feels like hard work for them.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

And a lot of people would hear that and be like, go fuck yourself, because they feel like they have to avoid junk food or, you know, be really strict with their diet to try and lose weight. So the idea that someone is literally cramming junk food into their face to try and gain weight, I think, you know, if we can accept that some people find it hard to gain weight, it shouldn't be controversial to think that some people find it harder to lose weight.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Yeah. That actually reminds me, similar uh anecdote of a industry colleague who, um, similar as to your friend, was do they call it like a hard gainer? You know? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

So in the bodybuilding world, it's a hard gain.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

And he was a really stringy guy when he was younger, who was desperate to gain weight, gain muscle, and whatever. So what he would do is every morning he would have an entire sleeve of bagels, which I think is probably six bagels, and we know bagels are pretty calorie dense. And I believe he would slather every bagel in tons of a lot of butter or sorry, peanut butter specifically. And his goal was to eat the entire sleeve of bagels with peanut butter by the end of the day. And he did that every day.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So, fun fact, I have always been naturally on the slimmer side. I think if you saw my parents, I won't put a photo on the screen because it'll it'll look like a weird kind of body comparison thing. Yeah. But if you looked at my parents, both of them are definitely on the thinner side. But when I was younger and I was trying to get in calories because I was finding it harder to gain weight, I literally had what I described as a blender bomb where I'd be like, put oats in there and then whole milk and then a massive blob of peanut butter and a banana and protein powder. And it was to try and get easy calories into me in a way that wouldn't affect my appetite so much. So there are some people who literally go out and buy weight gainers because they're like, I'm struggling to gain weight. I need extra calories, extra calories, extra calories.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

And I know that a lot of people listening to this would be like, that's great for you. I can never I've never been able to relate to anything like that in my life. Also, reminds me of the go mad trend. Do you remember that back in the day? Gallon of milk a day.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Oh, I forgot.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

It's all for the hard gainers. You would literally that's a lot of flu is, first of all.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I actually know someone who did that.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Was it successful?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Uh, I can't remember. I remember them telling me that they thought it gave them acne. And I'm not making any claims about that. It was just that is what they've done.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

I'm also not sure it is great for their digestive. Either way, they weren't super happy with the results.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah. The point is there are some people for whom gaining weight is legitimately hard work for them.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah. So let's move on to some research examples. So there is a very classic example that I'll let you kick off with.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

There was a twin study from the 90s, and they took 12 pairs of male twins, identical twins, and they, first of all, they established what their maintenance intake was. So this is the number of calories you need to maintain your current body weight. From there, they then overfed them a thousand calories a day for 84 days. What they found was the weight gain actually varied by quite a lot, but the average weight gain, um, let me pull up my document so I get it right.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Before you do average weight gain, something that I specifically want to kind of interject briefly is if you tell people how much food to eat, there is always a margin of error. If you if you say to someone you need to eat a thousand calories a day, some of them won't do that, some of them don't know how to track calories, some of them eat too much, some of them eat too little. This wasn't like that. It was very meticulous, very controllable where they had people living in a facility under 24 hour supervision. So the diets that they were given were very precisely controlled, which removes all of that margin of error.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah. And actually, uh kind of makes me wonder should we do an episode on underreporting sometime in the future? That'd be a good episode, yeah. Calorie underreporting is a very big everyone's doing it to some degree, probably.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

What they found was This is why our episodes take so long because everyone is everything is tangible.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Reminds me of this. Reminds me, reminds me of that. Okay. Average weight gain was 8.1 kilos. However, the range was 4.3 to 13.3 kilograms. So that would be approximately nine, nine to thirty pounds was the range of weight gain by the end of the study. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So because they were looking at pairs of twins, the variance within twin set didn't tend to change as much as variance between twin sets. Yeah. The idea being that maybe genetics have an impact on how people gain weight. We don't necessarily know why, but for some reason, some twins gained weight faster than others, and the difference between them was essentially threefold. So some people can gain body weight or body fat threefold faster or threefold more than others for the same number of calories. For whatever reason. We're not sure yet, but we have some possible reasons why.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Yeah. And I want to read out this quote from that same study. Our results strongly support the view that there are individual differences in the tendency toward obesity and in the distribution of body fat. And they suggest that these differences are partly related to undetermined genetic characteristics. Basically, the entire point of the study was to drive home the fact that genetics is at least partly to explain for the weight gain in response to a calorie, a sustained calorie surplus.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah. That's really basically what it's saying is there are reasons why some people gain weight more than others. We're not sure why, but the fact that we've studied twins and twins seem seem to relate closely. Pardon the pun. That was all I should have done, that was better than the butter one, I think. Twins tend to relate closely, whereas sets of twins don't. There has to be some kind of genetics, even if we're not quite sure what it is yet.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Yeah. Uh okay. Now we're going to go on to a perhaps even more well-known study called the Levine, well, that's the lead author, Levine study, which is looking at neat, what we'd mentioned before, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. That essentially refers to anything that burns calories that is not formal exercise, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Yeah, so yeah. I mean quite literally that. So if I uh walk to my car, if I get in my car, if I'm carrying a shopping bag, if I'm fidgeting if I'm fidgeting while I'm in this chair, anything outside of formal exercise is non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Yeah. Uh okay. So in this study, they took 16 adults, they overfed them a thousand calories above their maintenance intake for eight weeks straight.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Yes. And they concluded that there was a tenfold difference in fat accumulation ranging from 0.36 kilos to 4.23 kilos. How good are you at kilo to pound conversion? We're looking at what, like 0.7 um slightly higher than that. 0.7 pounds to like 10 pounds-ish.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Maybe like, yeah, 0.8 pounds, whatever. Doesn't the differences don't matter.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Whatever. There's a tenfold difference in fat accumulation for the same calorie surplus. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

However, what diff what was different from the twin study was in this one, they attributed a lot of the weight gain to differences in meat levels between people. So another quote. The average increase in meat, which was 336 calories per day, accounted for two-thirds of the increase in daily energy expenditure. And the rate of change in neat in our volunteers was large. So anywhere from this is kind of sad, minus 98 to plus 692 calories per day, which means that there's some poor fellow out there who, when you fed that person a thousand calories above their baseline, they became, they moved less.

unknown 26:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Or you know, their meat actually dropped from before. Whereas someone else, they they would burn up to almost 700 calories extra a day, which is pretty significant.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

So basically, this helps establish one possible mechanism why some people are more resistant to weight gain than others. So what this means in practical terms, I know this sounds a little bit nerdy, and some people might be like, blah, blah, blah, too much. So let's say there are two people and you tell them to eat a lot more food. Some of them, one of them, will respond to that without being told they're not suddenly going to the gym more because they're trying to burn off calories. They will just naturally respond to that surplus of food by moving more. They might feel more energetic, they might be on their feet more during the day, they might be less inclined to sit down, they might be less inclined to put their feet up on the couch at the end of the day when they're tired or whatever. So you can give one person a lot more food and they can be resistant to fat gain, whereas you can give another person a lot more food and they find that they are actually very susceptible to fat gain.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Yeah. Maybe they feel more lethargic and they end up sitting on the couch more. Yeah. Who knows what the reason is, but whatever it is, they're less active.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

I would like to drive home that this is not a conscious decision. Right. This isn't they gained less weight because they decided to start going to the gym. This isn't a willpower thing. It's just biologically, some people respond to that without being told, just by moving more in everyday life.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Now let's move on to the next stimulus. First section we talked about uh how people respond differently to a calorie surplus or overfeeding. Now we're gonna flip it and go to what happens when you put them in a calorie deficit. Okay. So first thing is we're gonna talk about metabolism. Cool study you're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, so very I'll I'll gl I'll kind of gloss past this and go fast because I know that this can be a little bit nerdy and a bit hard to understand. So, similarly to one of the studies I discussed earlier, which is you look at people who are at their usual weight or people who have dieted. So, unlike the previous study, they found that there was no consistent evidence, quote unquote, of metabolic adaptation, meaning someone who has dieted isn't guaranteed to have a lower metabolic rate than someone who hasn't dieted. But even though there was no consistent evidence of metabolic adaptation, they found that metabolic rates varied from minus 250 calories-ish, like 257 calories, to plus 163. So what that means is based on your body weight and your body composition, there will be calorie formulas where they'll be like, okay, we think this person should be burning 2,500 calories per day. But it is possible that you might actually burn 250 calories fewer than that per day, or 160 calories more than that per day. So again, the average can hide the variance. Some people will have slightly slower metabolic rates than other people. Yes, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah. That actually reminds me of, I feel like, no, it's too noticed an episode to do. The whole point we've been reiterating the same point. Research reports averages. So when we say, for if there's a study that says the, you know, this study found no differences between groups in XYZ variables, that does not mean that there will be no difference for you as an individual. It means that on average, amongst all the participants that they studied, they averaged out to zero. So as you said, there can be a negative 50 and a plus 50, and that would be net zero.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

And you can actually see this in other areas of research. So when we talk about this, a lot of people are like, oh, you're making excuses for fat people. I know because I get that comment so much so. Or you're um, what do they say? Spoils my piss.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

You're enabling obesity, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Spoils my piss because I'm not. I am literally discussing what is seen in leak research literature. And you can see this with other things. So, for example, if you look at muscle growth literature or strength training literature, you will find that if you put people on the same program, some people will gain more muscle than others, some people will gain more strength than others. Same stimulus, different response.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

And there was actually a study where they found that, and of course there could be some measurement error, but they found that after, let's say, like an eight-week training study, there was a couple people who actually lost muscle at the end of it. So that not yeah, not ideal. I'm like, am I is that me?

unknown 30:24

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

That would suck. Um, let's move on to the next point, the next stimuli, if you will. So this is specifically aerobic training. And the reason that I like this is well, many reasons I like this. I love that we're passionate about this when we talk about this. One of the reasons I like this, were you gonna say something?

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Well, but the only thing I was gonna add was that when you said we're passionate, this is what happens behind the scenes, okay? We always do an audio test before we record every episode, and we're like, oh, the volume is great. And then when we start recording, we both get so much louder when we're our actual volume is so much louder than our test voice because we get excited and then we start speaking higher, higher up.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Also, we occasionally interrupt each other and sometimes we don't realize until we're watching the episode back, and I'll be like, I didn't let you finish your point. It's just a passion.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

We get excited and carried away.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yeah. Anywho, where was I? Aerobic training. So aerobic training, the reason I like this, one reason I like this, is because if you tell people to lose weight or someone decides they want to lose weight, more often than not, they start by doing aerobic training. It isn't common for people to go, I want to lose weight, I'm gonna start lifting weights. That tends to be synonymous with muscle growth. I saw your tongue come up. I I'm not I'm leaving it in. That tends to be synonymous with synonymous with muscle, fucking now, sleep deprivation, new father sleep deprivation, tends to be synonymous with muscle growth. Yes. Good job. Yeah, thanks. So because people are like, okay, I want to lose weight, I'm going to start running. There are a few research papers where they will get people to do the same aerobic training program to try and understand why. Point one, not everyone loses weight in response to aerobic training. Aerobic training is a surprisingly poor stimulus for weight loss. But point two, why is there a difference? So if you get loads of people to suddenly do lots of running, why do some people lose weight and some people don't? Yeah. Essentially.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah. And they found that the average oh wait, we haven't even talked about the study yet, have we?

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Definitely do that first. Definitely do that first. Fuck it. It's been a long day. Like this is just parenthood. Okay. We're actually supposed to do this like three days ago. And we're like, can we do it with our baby or will she not nap? It was not possible.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

It's much easier if she's being cared for by someone else while we think out to do this.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Please forgive us with this brain fog.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Basically, in the study, what they did was, I believe it was over the course of 12 weeks, they had everyone exercising, doing cardio five times a week, and in each session, their goal was to burn 500 calories. Okay, so that was the the stimulus, and every person 500 calories, that is your calorie burn. Let's see what happens. Okay. And then they measured their weight loss at the end of the 12 weeks. The average weight loss was 3.7 kilograms, which I think is around eight pounds or so. And uh there's a lot of, I'm gonna read out the numbers because the range was a lot. Okay. One person lost 14.7 kilograms, about 30 pounds, which is a lot over a course of 12 weeks, so around three months. But someone else gained 1.7 kilos, which was uh which is a little bit over three pounds. So you have some we have the same similarness. You guys are all doing the same cardio program for 12 weeks straight. Someone loses 30 pounds, someone else gains weight at the end of it, right? And what they found was we have compensators and non-compensators. So for some people, when they do this amount of cardio, they're actually going to eat more food in response to it, and not only eating back the calories that they burn, but eating more than the calories that they burned off. Therefore, they end up gaining weight as a result. Now you might think of yourself. I know people, I would say even for myself, and actually this reminds me of my marathon training, where I've said numerous times before, when I was at the peak of my marathon training and my running my life, which is very, very high. And at one point I think I was doing nine plus hour hours of running a week. That is when I actually gained more weight. So, I mean, of of course, I was partly I was intentionally trying to eat more carbohydrates, but I'm sure an appetite was a big part of it. So this is why we say, at least in part, cardio is not a great stimulus uh on its own for driving fat loss. Um, especially if you find that you are someone who eats more as a result of doing cardio. So this is not to say don't do cardio because we all know for health reasons it's it's great, but I say you want to judiciously sprinkle it in. So if you find that you're someone who eats more as a result of putting yourself uh in a calorie deficit from doing extra exercise, but then you eat back the food, probably better for you to not do as much cardio. So maybe instead of five days a week, maybe can you do like three days a week? And I would also look at um the effort and duration and modality as well. So because all of those I think can impact how you feel appetite-wise.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

There are actually multiple papers that test the same thing. So there's another one called the e-mechanic trial, because sometimes studies like giving fancy nodes. And they looked at two different doses of aerobic training. So rather than just being like, why do some people lose weight, some people don't, instead of being like burn 500 calories per day, they gave some people a lower dose of aerobic exercise and some people a higher dose of aerobic exercise. And to give you the numbers, because I feel like the percentages are important, uh, in the lower dose group, 58 of participants saw some weight loss. 58%, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Isn't that what you said? 58 of participants.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

58%. 58% of participants saw some weight loss. That means 40% of participants, just over, didn't. But 76% of them were described as compensators who saw less weight loss than expected. So if you are someone who has started going to the gym, started running, whatever it is, and you stand on the scales and you're like, I thought something would happen, and it's not, you would be described as a compensator, in effect. Uh, in the higher dose, 70% of participants saw weight loss, meaning if you exercise more, chances are you will lose weight compared to exercising less. But 90% saw less than expected. And once again, average weight loss in response to the higher dose was 1.6 kilos, which is not a lot, just over probably like three and a half pounds-ish. That's average. But one participant lost around 10 kilos, which is, you know, 22 pounds, and another one gained six. Yeah. Which is more like 13 pounds. So even though overall people lost a little bit of weight, some people will start exercising more and they will lose a shitload of weight. And some people might start exercising more and actually gain weight. Womp womp.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah. Womp womp. And actually, random aside question that I'm gonna Google later after this is be you know, in all these studies they report weight loss and body weight and whatever in kilograms, and on horse we're converting it to the imperial system, right? It's for pounds. And it made me wonder who decided that the pound is the the quantity. I I don't know, I'm not sure if I'm wording this correctly. Who decided the quantity of the pound?

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Anyway. I feel like that's probably not a question for now.

unknown 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Let me Google that. I'm gonna go I'm gonna look it up.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

If you ever get to a point where you're like, let me Google that on the episode, I feel like maybe we'll do it later.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

No, I'm I'm simply wondering out loud, and I bet you there's gonna be at least one person listening in who actually knows the answer to that. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

What I'll put on the screen to try and bring it back slightly is for all of these studies, I will put images on the screen where you don't just see an average like a bar chart where it's like weight loss, fat loss, whatever, but you'll see individual results. So you don't need to look at this now, but I'll put this image on the screen and you can see the person who lost the most weight and the person who gained weight.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

Yeah. And they found there was actually a roughly 1100 calorie difference uh between participants in terms of how much food that they would eat. So for example, uh, there was one person who would increase their food intake in response to the exercise by 700 calories, and then another person who would reduce their intake by roughly 400 calories. So vastly different responses. And in fact, they had uh this several of the participants reported increased appetite, cravings for food, and sleep disturbances, as well as worsening body pain. So basically, they felt worse in response to the exercise stimulus.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

So if you are someone who starts running, cycling, rowing, swimming, whatever, do you increase your physical activity, everything else stays the same, and you're like, oh, I've started losing weight, I've started losing a bit of body fat, started gaining a bit of muscle, everything is hunky-dory. Or are you like, I'm exercising more, nothing's really happening, feel a little bit more peckish, a little bit more snack curious. Generally speaking, I think on average, people tend to get more snack curious when they start exercising more.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah. And then also, I don't know if you know this. When you, when before we started dating, when you said, Are you gym curious? I sat there wondering, what the hell are you talking about? What is gym curious? So when you say nap curious or snack curious, all it means, and maybe I'm the only one who doesn't know what it means, all it means is that does the idea of a snack tempt you? Are you interested in a snack? Are you interested in going to the gym?

SPEAKER_00 39:49

There are a lot of things I say where are you nap curious?

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Do you want to nap? That's all it really means.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

We will check what do you want a snack? Yeah.

unknown 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

So for this, I don't actually think it's very controversial. So let's use an example. There's a friend of mine. He is the closest thing that I would describe as a cyborg, and I say that to him, he doesn't mind. He has the least amount of sweet tooth I've ever seen. I know that's a weird way to phrase it. I don't even read no how to.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

He has no sweet tooth at all.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Sweet tooth. This is an episode. Wowie. He has no sweet tooth. So I have known him for literally 20 years, over 20 years. And up until recently, I had never seen him eat a donut, for example. Every time I went to his house, every single time he made dinner or we got takeout or whatever, he never said, Do you want something for dessert? I've got this in the fridge. He would just have his savory main course and that was it. And this isn't like a conscious thing, like, oh, I don't try not to eat sweet trees. He just does not give a fuck. If you offer him a sweet drink, if you offer him a tasty snack, do you want a Dorito? A Dorito? A bag of Doritos? Do you want an Oreo? Whatever it is, the answer was always no, because he just didn't care. And a lot of people will hear that and just think, hard, hard can't relate.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Yeah. And then there's someone else who thinks about sweet treats all day long. Yeah. You know, and every meal has to be followed up by a decadent dessert or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

So they're actually like really nerdy studies that look at MRIs and food reward activity. Food reward. As in why do some people crave certain things more than others. And again, not controversial seen in research. But if you're a personal trainer who has never read this research, you're just like, you just need to want it more. Fuck off. Get in the C.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Last stimulus that we'll be covering is emotions. Basically, how do people respond differently to the same emotional stimulus?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And I think this is important because calories in, calories out, obviously important. Metabolic rate, important. No one's going to deny that. Appetite important. But appetite isn't just a case of whether you feel hungry or not. Appetite is very multifactorial. And lots of things can influence whether you want to eat food or not. So it seems a bit silly to just be like, oh, some people are hungrier because it's not, that isn't the only thing that affects hunger. It's not just, are you hungry, yes or no? Lots of things will impact whether you want to eat.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Yeah. And for this, we're going to be talking about two studies. Of course, there's more. Two studies. First one is they were looking at how uh people will respond differently after watching a stressful video compared to a neutral video. And they found that 80% of the participants were identified as stress eaters. And then the other 20% were stress non-eaters. And then, of course, the former group, the stress eaters, would eat more in response to watching the stressful video. Okay. So a vast majority of people tend to be stress eaters. That's really it.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

So I am exactly the opposite of that. I am someone that if I go through a stressful life situation, I tend to lose weight. When we were first together, I had been through a stressful life condition, and that was one of the leanest periods of my life where I wasn't intentionally dieting.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yeah. And that was to the point where I remember during that time I looked at you and you had you were actually relaxed and you had visible glute striations.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

From and you were not actively trying to diet down at all.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

So I remember you saying that you were like, you could stand on stage. Yeah. And I I don't look at my glutes often in the mirror, but normally groot glute striations are a sign of very low body.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Extremely, extremely lean to get to that point. And I think we got your body fat measured at a lab and you were around 5% body fat at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

They they estimated uh I think it was 5.7, which I'm not I'm there's a lot of margin of error with that. Like, don't take that as gospel, but that was with uh you know professor.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, and and didn't he say you are the lean. Person that he has ever, whose body comp he has ever measured, and he's measured hundreds of people's body computer.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

So fun fact, not fun ha ha.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

Not funny, ha ha, funny, weird.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Yeah. So, but fun fact, um, when I wrote my book, both books actually, I know this is kind of ironic because they're books about fat loss and stuff, but both times I had so much stress about trying to write to get everything ready on publication day. Um, all of the things that I was in charge of. So with my first book, I was doing things like checking the commas and whether the citations in the bibliography were title case or whatever. Yeah. There was a lot that was going into it to make sure it was as good as possible. Both times I lost a significant amount of weight because I was so stressed to get this project over the finish line.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Yeah. I think there were several days where you would completely skip lunch and then only breakfast and lunch. Yeah, and then you'd only have a dinner, and then you'd have your normal size dinner instead of eating, you know, you wouldn't eat more to make up for having missed the meals, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

So then, yeah, you lost a lot of weight. Anyway, no surprise, these stress eaters were found to consume more high-fat, high sugar foods, hyper-palatable foods. For example, donuts, croissant, or croissant. Um, those were the kinds of foods that you they would tend to reach toward. And I would think that a lot of you can relate to exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

No one is like, oh wow, I'm so stressed. Let me get my cucumber.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

I really want a dry chicken breast.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Yeah. Please, please fetch me my bag of carrots. I'm so stressed.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Okay. Now you talk about the next study.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Bossy. Wowie. So that means we're getting to the end because she's like, you do this. Uh so there's another research paper that looks at essentially looked at sadness and joy. And there are certain ways to do this because you can't make someone really, really sad and then see how much food they eat. Ethically, that's a quandary. Can't be like, bang, shot your dog. Now go. Then go and eat lunch and we'll see how much food you eat. So, what they'll do is they'll do things like watch this sad video or watch this happy video. By the way, there are some snacks here if you want them. And then they will see the impact that the stimulus had on that. We said stimulus a lot in this episode. And they found that generally speaking, super simplified, there are some people who tend to be more emotional eaters than others. And if you are a so-called emotional eater, you are more likely to increase your food intake when you feel sad. But some people also increase their food intake when they feel happy. Whereas some people don't care either way. You are sad, you eat the same amount of food as you would when you're not sad. You're happy, you eat the same amount of food when you're not happy. Yeah. So some people are more reactive to I feel sad, please can I have ice cream, for example.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

And of course, the important detail to mention here is that the participants did not know that their food choices and food intake were being measured. So that's important because it was. If obviously if you know you're being watched, you're gonna alter your behavior. So they did not know that this was being monitored.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

So conclusions for this episode. We could go into a lot more detail on research, but I feel like this is enough. The biggest conclusions are number one, slightly nerdy, but averages often hide the inter individual differences. And just be aware of that. Number two, it is not controversial to say that even for the same stimulus, some people will lose weight more weight than others, therefore lose weight easier than others, in the same way that some people will gain weight easier than others. That is not controversial. It is seen in lit research literature. It just means that sometimes you have to look a little bit harder and look at the inter-individual differences rather than just reading the abstracts and going, everyone lost weight.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Yeah. So if you put two people in the same degree of calorie deficit, let's say we're both in a 300-calorie deficit, you might be person A might be totally chilling, having no problems hitting their calories.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Shall I be person A? You're person A. I'll be person A. So there's me and then there's person B.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Yeah. And so you We can put an image on the screen. Yeah, you have no issues sticking to your diet, you don't have emotional eating, you're a stressed non-eater, you don't have any appetite problems. Uh, exercise does not make you more lethargic afterward, anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Yeah. I find it killing so one, I find it very easy to lose weight if I want to, to the point that I often lose weight accidentally. Yeah. If I go through stressful life situations, I tend to lose weight. If I um want to start dieting, I can lose a few pounds very, very easily without suddenly feeling hungry. I do get hungrier if I really push the boundaries of leanness, but that's standard for people. Yeah, I don't tend to eat more food when I'm stressed, I tend to avoid food. If I start exercising more, I don't get so lazy that my body holds on to energy, so to speak. Like if I start going for a run, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm gonna spend the rest of the day on the sofa, whatever. Yeah. There are many reasons why me, I, and lots and lots of other people in the fitness industry, especially bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts like anyone who slept on stage, they're often so regimented and robotic that they go through periods where they diet and they're like, that was easy. Right. I got to, I went from 10% body fat to 7% body fat. Super straightforward.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

Yeah. And I know some people are not gonna like to hear this when you say, Well, I'm leaner because I'm more disciplined than you, and I'm like, well, actually, it might be legitimately easier for you. It's not that you're more disciplined necessarily.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

So one of the things that we didn't even really go into here, but we could have gone into genetics way, way more.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

And maybe we maybe I don't I think that warrants its own episode.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Maybe we do that.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

It's a spicy topic.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Maybe we do that in a different episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

Yeah. People get pretty round up. Anyway, let's compare you, person A, to person B, who, for the same hypothetical 300 calorie deficit, for them to adhere to that same deficit, they are fighting an internal freaking battle every single day, right? Maybe they're someone whose appetite increases in response to exercise or increases in response to a calorie deficit. Maybe they are an emotional eater. So they're just stressed, they're more likely to consume more food. Maybe they don't enjoy exercising. They have an aversion to exercise for one reason or another. Maybe they were bullied in school. I don't know. Um, what else? Oh, uh they their non-exercise activity thermogenesis also drops. So all of these things are stacked against them to make weight loss or adhering to that same calorie deficit so much harder for that person. That does not mean that they're less disciplined. That does not mean they're lazier. Simply things are more stacked against them.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Yeah. Let's finish off. If you have got to the end of this episode, apologies, it was slightly chaotic. I feel like anything after newborn has been slightly chaotic. We were stumbling a little bit. Oh, it's a growth. You got the other way around with it. What did I say?

SPEAKER_02 51:12

You said muffle growth. Yeah. And I said, Yeah. Growth. Growth. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Anyway, thanks for making it to the end. But the point of this, the biggest point of this, apart from talking about statistics and all of that nerdy stuff, is to drive home that it should not be controversial to say that some people find it harder to lose weight than others. And the reason why we do so many episodes on this is because it's such a strong myth in the industry where so many fitness professionals just assume that if you struggle, that you're a lazy piece of shit and all of that.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Or have you tried trying harder?

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Yeah, why don't you just try harder and want it more grown?

SPEAKER_02 51:47

They might be actually trying a lot harder than you already.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

There are lots of people who work a lot harder than me to try and get to a body fat percentage that is still.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

That is higher than your baseline.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

Yeah. And I think it's important because when we talk about this on the podcast, this is for the people who are obviously more invested in listening to detailed information. But if we plant the seed with you, hopefully there'll be a little positive ripple of change where we can help break myths like this on a bigger scale in the future.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

So if if if you were that fitness coach that we talked about at the beginning where you said, is easy for me? Why isn't it? Why can't you do it? Hopefully this helps change your mind a little bit to be a little bit more understanding and empathetic of other people's legitimate struggles.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

That's it. That's the end. Thanks for listening. Catch a later. Love you bye.