All right, so welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am here with Matthew Stratton. Recently, I guess we should call you Dr. Stratton now. Yes.
SPEAKER_01No, technically, yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes, fantastic. Congratulations. So he just finished his dissertation at Texas Tech, and we are talking all about intermittent fasting. So, Matthew, give us a little bit about uh yourself and your interest in this topic, and then tell us about your dissertation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um we had kind of been dabbling around with a couple of intermittent fasting ideas. And so I was like, hey, why don't I take this over? And so uh that turned out to be still to date the only study that has been looking that has looked at uh people trying to lose weight while lifting and how intermittent fasting affects that, when especially when you're everybody's eating the same amount of food, so that way we can actually look at is intermittent fasting doing anything or is it differences in food consumption, um, which is a big thing in a lot of the literature, is they don't necessarily control for actual food consumption, they just look at fasting. And then a guy who was the on my thesis committee was a professor over at Texas Tech. And so he called me up after that and said, Hey, we're starting a doc program out here at tech. Um, how would you want to be one of my first doc students? And so again, can't turn up down free grad school again. So I packed up everything from uh Georgia and moved out to Scenic Lubbock, Texas, which um anyone who's been out there can tell the sarcasm in my statement right there, uh, where I just spent the last uh three years doing a lot of body comp supplement research, and then as well, because uh it's for my dissertation. Basically, what we looked at was the effect of breakfast consumption on afternoon resistance training performance. So if someone eats or skips breakfast, does it actually affect their ability to perform exercise later in the day once they start eating again? Um and we did that in resistance training performance, um, not only because myself I'm more of a strength athlete, but also because um ironically, it had been somewhat done in endurance performance already. It just hadn't been done in it with lifters. So we decided to look at it with lifters. And um, so that was the last the six months of my life, which is which was a fun time.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's rewind a little bit. We we heard a little bit about what you're researching as it relates to intermittent fasting and lifters, but what specifically is intermittent fasting? Because it's one of these things, it's been around for eons, but I feel like it's definitely making a bit of a resurgence. It's kind of trendy, if you would call it that, right now. So um give us the research digest version of what it is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so like you mentioned, it's been around pretty much as long as mankind has been around. Um, like you can find references to it even in the Bible. Uh, there are in pretty much every type of religion, there's some version of fasting. In essence, what intermittent fasting truly is, because like not what most people think. So if most people, what you talk to them about, they think about one particular protocol, which I'll mention here in a second. But intermittent fasting is actually a very broad blanket term for a ton of different protocols that basically split everything into different periods of fasting and feeding. So you have a fasting window where, just like it sounds, you consume no calories. And that's the big thing there is no calories where, depending on the type of fast you're doing, whether it's what we call a dry fast or a wet fast. So a wet fast, you can still have things like water or anything that's non-caloric. So if you still want to have like, you know, di coke or something like that, cough, black coffee that's no calories, that's completely fine. Versus a dry fast is no food or liquid whatsoever. So uh for instance, something like Ramadan is typically more of a dry fast versus what most people do with intermittent fasting is what we consider a wet fast. Um, so you have the fasting period and then the feeding period or feeding window, whichever you want to call it. And all the different protocols, all they do is just kind of mess with either the frequency of how often you fast or the length of the different fasts. And so the most common ones that we see, uh the most common one up until very recently in the literature is what's known as alternate day fasting, which I kind of stress my students a lot. Scientists aren't very uh original. So we like to name stuff after pretty much exactly what it is. So alternate day fasting is kind of exactly what it sounds like. You you know, eat one day, don't eat the next day, and eat the next day, like eat Monday, don't eat Tuesday, eat Wednesday, don't eat Thursday, and so on and so forth. However, you know, that's likely not going to be the greatest for long-term adherence. You know, if you ever like get a client and be like, hey, guess what? You don't get to eat at all tomorrow. Um, you might be able to do that a couple times, but you know, after a while, so they came up with this thing called modified alternate day fasting, where you find the exact same thing, except you have a really small meal on um those fasting days around lunchtime. Typically, it's about three to five hundred calories. So a little bit, and they found a little bit better adherence, but up until uh the late 2010, so like 2017-ish, that was the predominant one that we saw in the literature. Um, there's another one we don't see in the literature quite as much, but I see it pretty frequently in the field. Um we term uh periodic fasting, which that's where we're again, like I'd say, where someone is fasting periodically. You're not fasting every day, you're not fasting every other day, you're just doing it every so often. So the most common versions of that we see are things like um colloquial term for like eat stop eat is a really common one, also known as um whole day fasting, where someone might do one 24-hour fast. Uh, nice thing about that was you know, despite you know it being 24 hours, nice thing is you can still eat every single day. Um, because if you think about it, um, you know, let's say you start fasting at 6 p.m. one day and then you fast till 6 p.m. the next day, you can still you know eat kind of breakfast, lunch, and like really early dinner or something like that on one day and then eat dinner the next day. And so you're still being able to eat every single day, which is nice. Um, and then the most common one that most people associate with intermittent fasting is this one called um time restricted eating, is what we call in literature or TRE. If you look at older literature, so it's kind of funny that it says, but older literature around like 2016. So if you go back then, it's time restricted feeding. Now, more commonly we call it time restricted eating. Um, but if you ever see the TRF versus TRE, it's the exact same thing. And what that is kind of mostly referring to is what again, what most people think about frame rate fasting. So that's those daily short term shorter term fasts. Um, so like the most common protocol you'll see is the 16 and 8 protocol, which is fast for 16 hours and then put all your food in an eight-hour window, which for most people sounds like a lot. But if we break it down, you say that's eating between noon and 8 p.m. for most people. Now keep in mind you can move that window wherever you want in the day. It doesn't have to be noon to 8 p.m. It's just the most common one you see in practice is noon to 8 p.m. And um what I taught, you know, I deal with a lot of college students and stuff. So I say, like, you know, initially mention it, they're like, I don't think I can do that. Like, well, if you think about it, okay, so people like to sleep until the very last second before you have to run out to class. And so wake up the alarm, you gotta be out of the house two seconds later, then likely go to class, go to work, whatever. It's been a little while. Next, maybe didn't really eat that much or at all because you just haven't had time to like sit down. And next thing you know, you're not eating until lunch. And guess what? You have a dinner a little bit earlier, and you're intermittent fasting. Yay!
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, so it's it's pretty close to actually what a lot of people do kind of inadvertently. Um, the the there we do have some more extreme examples of it, and like the what's sometimes known as the warrior diet, uh, is the 20 and 4. So most, so it's the same thing fasting for 20, putting all your meals um in a four-hour window. And then there are some um more kind of niche variants that are starting to show up. So we have one called like early TRE now, which is uh some people are kind of pushing for it. A lot of the work for that is coming out of Courtney Peterson's lab, who does a lot of really good work, especially in clinical populations. Um, and I believe she's still at uh University of Alabama Birmingham. And they uh and that's basically doing the same thing, just kind of moving that window too earlier in the day.
SPEAKER_00And you mentioned clinical population, right? So is she working with like diabetics or heart disease or something along those lines? Yes. You're working with athletes, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I deal mostly with um healthy athletic populations, uh, because any time of literature like this, typically the population we don't see it in as much is in healthy athletic populations. Um, but yeah, doing like the main uh one of the key early TRF studies, it was in pre-diabetics. So it's the Sutton 2018 paper, which was in pre-diabetics, which we like to talk about a lot. Um so cool.
SPEAKER_00This is this is great to get like the very specific information because I originally found you from doing a presentation for the International Society of Sports Nutrition um on this topic. And it was great to see all the literature laid out. And then you have this great picture of all the different books that are out on it. Ooh, let me try this diet. But it sounds like there's a lot of different ways of doing this, and some of them are well researched, and some of them perhaps not so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and especially depending on the population that you're trying to talk about, I would say a lot of it is not not as much as we would um like to think. Uh, because ladies, it didn't really start getting popular until only a couple of years ago.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so, in terms of you know, studies that combine it with exercise, right now I think we're only at about six or seven studies.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah. So let's I'm so excited to hear about your research. So you decided to work with strength athletes, just because you know it sounds like that's a little bit more of an interest for you. So how'd you start? What were your what were some of your methods?
SPEAKER_01Uh the first kind of big one, which was my thesis, that was one where we got it was about 32 people and then put them. So that was the first study in which we were able to actually like control for diet. And so we put them through a uh four-week training protocol where they came in and for supervised training three times per week.
SPEAKER_00And are these men and women?
SPEAKER_01Uh so this study was just men. Okay. The most recent study we did was males and females.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, the reason we actually did it with men was because it had somewhat already actually been done with females. Interesting. Uh it's one of the few times that you can say, like, oh yeah, the reason we did guys is because you we can already kind of point to one that's somewhat similar in females. Um, so now we want to do it males. And when typically 90% of the time it's the opposite. Yep. And uh so we got 32 college-age dudes come in, um, supervise training three times per week. So watched them do every single rep of every single set. I got really good at counting to eight, and then uh basically looked at changes in body composition. So, how much muscle mass did they grow, how much fat mass did they lose, all that kind of stuff using. And this was also the first study to use what we would say the research goal standard, so a four compartment model. Previously, just used DEXA, which there's nothing wrong with DEXA. If you're going to use one device, it's still a very, very good device, uh, but it's not the research gold standard, as well as look at changes in things like resting metabolic rate and all that kind of stuff. And so uh we tested their resting metabolic rate and then put them on a diet in which we wanted them to be about at the 25% estimated calorie deficit to try to get them to lose weight, which was also one of the big things about this one because all the previous ones, the goal wasn't really to actually get people to lose weight. So that's a big thing when trying to like interpret a lot of this literature is think about what is the actual goal trying to achieve. So, for instance, the very first study that did this, which was what I think kind of got it really popular, which was the Moro 2016 paper. They, because people looked at it and said, like, oh, this kind of semi-controlled diet, you know, people who were doing the 16 and 8 protocol lost much, lost weight, but kind of maintained performance over these eight weeks versus the other group didn't. Well, in that study, their goal was actually to try to get them to maintain weight. And so that's why they had a really high calorie intake. If you look at they were eating, they were told to eat about 3,000 calories per day, which is a really big thing with a bunch of these studies is look at the actual how much calories they're being asked to eat. Because the uh dirty little secret about intermittent fasting is typically how how it works is we're just tricking people and eating less. And so there's been uh a couple, there's been a fair bit of studies that show when you put people on these protocols, it's harder to eat more because you know you're putting it into a shorter time window. So people are fuller for longer, so they're gonna they're gonna eat less. And so that's why throughout all of these studies, you know, we kind of see that typically the intermittent fasting group was the one that was generally eating less, whether they wanted to or not. And sometimes that didn't result in what we call in research a statistically significant difference. Um, so for those of you that those of your listeners that aren't familiar with that, basically sometimes if you look at numbers, you might see um there's a difference right there, but if the difference isn't large enough for us to say it's like a significant enough difference for us to say in science that it's likely that's the thing that's causing it or that's a real difference. Um, so sometimes that's why we say that like, yeah, if you look at those two numbers, those two numbers are different, but we won't say it's a statistically significant difference.
SPEAKER_00But uh one of the things that's my least favorite class in grad school, by the way, statistics.
SPEAKER_01It's it's a lot of people's least favorite. Uh, I think I don't think you need to learn all the intricacies of like ANOVAs and T-tests and linear mix models and all that kind of stuff, but learning some of the basics about interpretation and stuff like that, I think, can be really important for people so they can understand differences like statistically significant and all that kind of stuff. But I think we run into a thing of statistical significance versus practical significance. And so, for instance, in some of these studies, the difference might be so small on daily intake that it was uh not statistically significant. But that daily intake, when it's compounded over you know, eight, four, eight, twelve weeks, whatever the length of the study is, results in a meaningful difference, which you know, for some of these studies, there might not have been a practically significant difference in calorie intake, but there was you know just enough that at the end of those eight weeks, you know, it was actually what caused some of the body composition changes. And so that's what we were seeing in previous research. So for our study, that's why we actually were the first to kind of control for that across the board. So everyone ate around 1900 calories, um, 1.8 grams per kg of protein, making sure that they're eating a good amount of protein, um, along with the supervised training. And so we found when diet was controlled, we actually didn't find a difference in strength, performance, or body composition changes. For my dissertation, we kind of did something similar, except more in the acute setting. And so, because the most common meal that is skipped with intermittent fasting is breakfast. We wanted to look at, you know, specifically how does breakfast, you know, once people start eating again, does that potentially impact the uh the session later in the day? And there's been a little bit of there were three studies in that. Um, two of them were in cyclists, and then one of them was in rowing performance. Um, so again, none of them were in in lifters. That's one of the reasons you know we decided to look at that population as well. Also, all of those had been in habitual breakfast consumers. And so people who are typically consuming breakfast, not people who are typically skipping breakfast or fasting, practicing in their fasting, something like that. And that's important because we found with through a couple studies that there's a large psychological component to it. And this one was done actually in both uh cyclists and lifters. So if you want to like look up the actual papers, the cyclist paper is the Mears 2018 paper, and then the lifting paper is going to be the Naha Ruden 2020 paper. Um, but what they actually showed was when they gave people um, so in the initial studies, they basically had them come in, gave them water or carbohydrate breakfast, and then had them exercise. They found when they did that, um, there was a difference in performance. You know, but then if they gave them water versus a placebo versus a carbohydrate breakfast, there was a difference between water and the placebo and carbohydrate, but no difference between placebo and carbohydrate. So that's showing that pretty much all the performance decrements that were shown previous were likely psychological. The person coming in thinking, like, okay, I need this type, and I need to be eating and doing all this. And since I didn't, I'm going to perform less. And so, self-fulfilling prophecy, if you believe you're going to perform less, you perform, you perform worse. So we decided to kind of try to control for that to look at people who habitually follow these kinds of patterns as well. Another kind of big aspect of those studies is they all used what we call time trials. So basically, and that's a best way to kind of mimic, you know, a race, because that's uh how fast you know an individual might be able to go from point A to point B. But uh that's not necessarily very representative of how someone's likely going to train. And especially if you're dealing with athletes, most of the time, I feel like they're not gonna forget to eat on race day. So if they're gonna forget to eat breakfast, it's likely gonna be on a busy training day, or looking at, you know, how if you want to do carbohydrate periodization, you know, if they want to do some version, some various training um sessions fasted or something like that. But those ones aren't going to be, you know, all out time trials. Those are going to be your lighter sessions. So that's why for us, we tried to do something that actually mimicked more of a typical training session instead of the what you commonly see in literature of time trials or time to exhaustion, which is basically where we put someone at a certain intensity and just see how long they can go. Again, very interesting and very good for finding differences, but not very well representative of how people might actually train. And so how these dietary protocols might affect training. Um, and then when we did that, you know, we're still looking at all the aspects of it. Uh, but we again, males and females, and these were pretty strong individuals. Um, so they had to be able to meet various strength criteria to get into the study. And this one we also gave them all the food that we wanted them to eat.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that signed me up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that was great. A lot if if you liked uncrustables, you know, we have a lot of uncrestables.
SPEAKER_00So it really is real food.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so um, yeah, so for this one, uh we provided all food and basically people ate the same exact amount of food. It was just either a breakfast and lunch and then come in and train in the afternoon, or skip breakfast and eat the same amount of food at lunch and then come in and train. And so we were able to control that um a lot more than previous studies. And in that one, we didn't um find any difference, but it was likely again because of more of that sub-maximal nature. So we were doing something that's going to be more well representative of an actual train exception. Now, um, that's not necessarily to say that you know it's never going to affect anything, because like we mentioned with the diet before, those small changes in that might not quite be detectable at with our current statistical methods in one session, if it's compounded session over session over session over session, might make a difference. So to truly see an effect, you'd have to do some of these longer-term training studies. And the longest training study that we have to date is eight weeks with um intermittent fasting. And so, even then, that if you're looking at things like building muscle for hypertrophy and stuff like that, that's typically like the shortest amount of time you'd be able to see anything, like six to eight weeks. And for improvements in things like VO2 max and all that for endurance athletes, you know, it could be even longer sometime, depending on. On the training status of the individual. Um so that's not necessarily saying that um in fact like skipping breakfast isn't going to impair it, but it's not gonna that directly is going to impair it either. So the way that I kind of sum up all the studies that I've done is you do you, you know, it's you if you like if this type of eating fits your style and fits your lifestyle and you enjoy doing it, um, then it shows that you can still do it as long as you're making sure and you're still eating the same amount of calories, protein, carbs, fats, that type of thing that we'd recommend, you can still do it and be successful. It's in, but don't feel like you're gonna get an extra advantage by doing this. Because so far the literature doesn't show that you get an extra fat loss advantage or anything like or performance increase or anything like that when um diet is equated for.
SPEAKER_00I think this also goes to show that you have to stick with it. Whether you're doing something for eight weeks or 16 weeks or a year, or we can't just like snap our fingers and magically, haha, we're thinner. I mean, I'd be a trillionaire by now.
SPEAKER_01It'd be really nice.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, that's and that's one of the biggest things that, and that's one of the reasons I kind of actually like IF a lot, is because I think out of all, because we know pretty much all specialty diets out there work the same way by just by tricking you into eating less. And so with IF, you know, it's there's a couple of reviews out there to suggest on average, when you tell people to eat this way, it gets people to inadvertently cut their calories by about 20%, which is a pretty good deficit. And because people will typically eat more when they first at that first meal when they start eating again, but this is not enough to make up all the calories that they would have missed, like at breakfast. And then um, they kind of go back to normal eating patterns later in the day, and so they still end up eating less overall. And the thing that I kind of like about intermittent fasting is because like uh all it says is about when to eat, not what to eat, but there's nothing that says that um meal window, the feeding window has to be the exact same time every single day. So, you know, let's say you want to do, you know, the 16, 16 and 8, whatever. And then Monday through Friday, you know, you're at work most of the day. And so you want to put yours at like you know, noon to 8 p.m. Because that still allows you, you can have lunch at work and then come home and have dinner with your family, still have good, you know, nutrition guidelines around training, all that kind of stuff. And then, but you know, on Saturday comes up and you've got to go to a birthday party for your kids or something like that, that you know, there's gonna be food there. Well, you can still keep that eight-hour window, you just shift it up a little bit, and then so now you can still have kind of that normal social life, and you can just kind of move that window around a little bit.
SPEAKER_00I think that is interesting that you mentioned that just because so many, I mean, we'll call this a diet, right? So many diets are seemingly restrictive in some way, and people can't really figure out the logistics of how to do something like this, right? So that's interesting that you sort of explained it that way. Like, you know, you can be kind of flexible and also you do you, right? Um, so but it sounds to me like the main overarching theme is you're getting fewer calories. Like you said, you're sort of tricking yourself into, in essence, getting fewer calories. And if you stick with it long enough and you enjoy it, great, you're probably gonna get results. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so, like we we know the number one factor to long-term success is just adherence. And so it's finding something that allows people, allows you to stick to it, that you enjoy doing it. So it's, you know, if if you don't like fasting, it's fine. There are a billion other routes that you can go. Um, that's why I know a lot of people when I present kind of some of the literature showing, like, oh yeah, here's the stuff showing that when you control for this, it doesn't really make a difference. Um, they go, Oh, that that kind of sucks. And the way I look at it is actually, I actually look at it as a very good thing because that means no one's being kind of pigeonholed or forced to do one thing in order to kind of reach the goal that they're looking for. You have a bunch of different options, and this just shows that intermittent fasting isn't is an option. It's just not your only option. So if intermittent fasting isn't for you, you can try one of the other like 12 million paths out there. Yeah. If you like intermittent fasting, it shows you can still do intermittent fasting and be successful.
SPEAKER_00So that begs the question to me at least of what were some of the things that people enjoyed about it from your subjects and what were some of the common complaints?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the common things that some people like about it, and this is why I'd say typically I would only recommend someone do this when they're trying to lose weight. I get that question occasionally. I would never, you know, recommend something like this if someone's trying to put on weight, because you're doing something that is making it harder to eat more, and which is kind of going against the goal of what you need to do to put on weight. But one of the benefits of it is if you are trying to lose weight, because you're able to have those meals closer together, typically you feel a little bit fuller during that eating window. Now, one thing to keep in mind when people start doing this, it's very common that you'll uh feel very hungry, you know, for the first couple of weeks throughout that fasting window. But uh that will typically go away like after like a week or two. People kind of adapt to that a bit. Uh, but yeah, the big thing is because you're putting all that same normal food, that same food fills you up a little bit more because it's in a shorter time period. Like if you have to, if you have to wait from eight o'clock to noon, and then you know, noon to like seven to eat, you're gonna be a lot hungrier in that intermediate time period versus if you're having those same meals at noon, three, and you know, seven or something like that. Some of the complaints that I would see occasionally uh were people that had you know jobs where they'd bring in like bagels at work or something like that. It would be having to remember it's like, ah, I can't really go over there and have that the the breakfast that the office supplied or something like that, um, because it's in my fasting window.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds like more psychological challenges.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's all of the complaints typically I find more the psychological aspect of it. And so that's where I say it's you know, finding one that kind of like fits for you. So if you know that's an issue, maybe and you still want to do it, maybe moving your fasting window to something like 10 to 6 or something. So you have an early dinner, but it's since it's you start eating a little bit earlier, they uh you're able to still have like a late breakfast that some people at the office might not look at you funny for eating.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. So this is this is super helpful. Uh, quick question about your research methods. So you had you're watching these people work out, so they had breakfast. Then when was their workout in relation to their feeding times?
SPEAKER_01So that's that's a good point. Um, pretty much all of the studies to date in terms of specifically looking at intermittent fasting, the exercise has been done within the feeding window. And that's what I would still kind of recommend is to try to exercise within the feeding window. Um, and depending on the type of workout you're doing, it'll impact it a bit more. But in general, just so that we can, you know, make sure you're following good peri-workout nutrition guidelines, exercising within the feeding window is going to allow you to do that the best. Now, if the only time that you can fit it into your day is in the fasting window, that's fine. Just uh likely uh it's going to affect it less if the workout lasts less than an hour. And if the workout lasts more than an hour, it'll affect it a lot more. There's a really interesting meta-analysis by Arian colleagues that came out in 2018, kind of looking at that. Keep in mind that meta-analysis was only looking at aerobic training and found that working out fasted really was only impacted if it was um over an hour. In other words, their time to exhaustion was longer or yeah, so it was things like yeah, time to exhaust, they weren't able to go as long.
SPEAKER_00Or like RPE was higher, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01RPE is typically higher. So that's another thing. Just generally working out fasted in general, typically RPE will be a little bit higher. Um, so when most people work out fasted, if they're on an RPE-based program, they'll self-select a little bit lower intensity or slower speed because RPE will be artificially increased a little bit.
SPEAKER_00For those of you guys who don't know what RPE is, rating of perceived exertion, aka how hard are you? How hard do you feel like you're going? Right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So if you know someone tells you to go out for a run at like a six out of 10 or something like that, you know, that um six might feel a little bit higher if you were doing it fasted than if you've done it after breakfast. But again, those most of that stuff again is acute. So if you're doing it consistently, you're likely that that's you get kind of like adapted to that, and that wouldn't be as big of a deal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, there's actually some versions of diet out there called under what we call carbohydrate periodization that kind of actually will promote that. So you do your recovery sessions kind of fasted, but that's a big aspect of that is the fasted sessions that you're doing are your low intensity sessions to follow that. Um, because I see that come up a lot with fasted training. People like, oh, look at look at this literature. Yes, just remember that in that literature, what they're doing, the fasted training is all the low intensity recovery sessions, the actual like heavy, like tempo work, speed work, it heavy intervals, all that stuff is still done in normal, like fed conditions.
SPEAKER_00Good point. I I'm glad that you brought that up because I think so many people, especially in our endurance world, you know, oh, we got we're gonna burn more fat. So we have to do all our workouts fasted. And I encourage people to not do that, just like you recommended, because similarly, do you want to not feel great for your workouts? I feel like part of working out is to feel more confident and feel stronger and feel good about what you're doing rather than the opposite.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and we have tons of leadership to back that up. That people find the exercise more enjoyable, they're more likely to do it more. And so you want to do whatever you can dietary-wise to make that session feel more impactful, more enjoyable, all that kind of stuff. And um, but that's that's the biggest one that I run into with people talking about like fasted training and carbohydrate periodization. And the reason it potentially burns a little bit more fat is because it's at a lower intensity. And so the lower intensity, it burns more fat. But remember, just because it burns more fat doesn't necessarily burns more calories. And so the higher per what we see with that type of exercise all the time, especially fasted cardio and stuff like that, is yes, the calories you burn might slightly be a higher percentage of fat than carbohydrate. However, you burn so many calories less overall because the intensity is a lot lower, that if you're doing that higher intensity work, even though it's a lower percentage of fat, it's still overall a ton more calories and overall still more fat, even though it's at a lower percentage. So doing what you can to still maximize performance within that training session is regardless of the macronutrient that's being burned for it, is going to result in the better body composition outcomes.
SPEAKER_00Good point. Love that. So I always like to finish each episode with two or three takeaways that our listeners can absorb as it relates to diet, fasting, exercise. So let's hear them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the biggest takeaway I would always say is again, the most unscientific way I can sum up intermittent fasting is you do you. So if it works for you and it's something you like doing, the literature showed you can still be successful doing it, provided that you're making sure you're still getting the calorie intake that you want, protein intake and carbohydrate intake. So endurance athletes really make sure focusing on protein and carbohydrate intake, because most people will eat less protein inadvertently when they start intermittent fasting. So start those meals off making sure you're getting the right amount of protein and then build everything else out around that. So if you like doing it, it's completely fine. It's good. Go ahead and do it. If it works for your lifestyle, just keep that caveat in mind. Ideally, I would still say try to put the training session within the feeding window. But if you can't, and it has to be, you know, just because the only time, because you got family and kids and work and whatever, the only time you can get it in is, you know, right when you get up in the morning, that's fine. But if you're gonna do it fasted, just understand that, especially initially, it might feel like you're having to work a little bit harder for those workouts. But if you don't like doing it and you try it and you feel like, no, this just isn't for me, that's okay. Don't feel like you have to because it's gonna make you lose more fat or make you um a lot stronger or run or increase your endurance crazy amounts. Because so far the literature just doesn't show that. So just make sure that you're eating how you should. You can, just don't feel like you have to.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Awesome. Well, Dr. Stratton. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Um, good luck in all of your endeavors and thanks for educating us. Thanks.