Chapters:
00:00 1. What is the best way to lose weight?
01:20 2. How much protein do I need?
02:29 3. Can I lose weight without exercise?
03:04 4. What are the best foods for weight loss?
03:58 5. How to shred belly fat fast?
05:05 6. What should I eat before the workout?
07:15 7. What does a preworkout do?
08:44 Outro
Transcript:
First question: What is the best way to lose weight? That is a bad question because you should be thinking of how to lose fat, not weight. And that distinction is crucial because actually it turns out that the best way to lose fat is strength training, not cardio. So going to the gym, lifting weights is actually better on average in research, at least in the long term, than doing cardio. And that’s because it helps you retain muscle mass and retaining muscle mass and even building muscle mass also speeds up your metabolism for the future and also generally increases your energy expenditure because you’re lugging around more mass. So probably for most people, at least 2 hours per week of strength training and more if you have the time and dedication to it and then you can maybe add cardio to it later. Cardio, I would say is primarily beneficial for health purposes. And it can, of course, help people burn calories, which put you potentially in greater energy deficit, which can also create additional fat loss exactly to the same amount as you would get if you ate less food. So the best way to lose fat in research is a high protein diet, strength training, to make sure you retain muscle mass or preferably even build it, and then on top of that, you could do any other type of exercise that you want that burns additional calories. But the most important elements are actually strength training and a high protein diet that puts you in consistent caloric deficit so that you burn more calories than you consume and therefore, the body has to burn up some of its own tissues. That will burn fat if you’re doing strength training and that’s how you lose fat.
Second question: How much protein do I need? If you’re not training, and you probably are, otherwise you wouldn’t be watching this channel, then probably 1.2 grams per kilogram per day of protein is all that you need. That’s still higher than current recommendations because there are some benefits to higher protein intakes for satiety and health. If you are doing strength training or any other type of exercise, but especially strength training, as you should, based on the previous answer, then you should be consuming at least 1.6 grams per kilogram per day, which is about 0.7 grams per pound. That’s total protein intake, including all sources, but assuming that at least half of that comes from high quality sources and it’s per total body weight, not just lean body mass. It’s very simple to use total body weight and the additional accuracy that you could possibly get from using lean body mass is usually offset by the fact that most people don’t know their body fat percentage with any degree of accuracy. So I typically recommend 1.8 grams per kilogram per day, which is 0.82 grams per pound. And if you want to go into the exact details of, like, protein requirements for vegans or a protein requirement for concurrent athletes, which may be a little bit higher, people on the juice- also higher protein requirements, you can check out in this video, I discussed that with Mike Israetel just recently.
Third question: Can I lose weight without exercise? You can certainly lose weight, but that might also be part of the problem. You’re going to lose more weight than you should because you’re not just going to lose fat, you’re also going to lose muscle. Most people, when they go on a diet, whether it’s via a new GLP-1 agonists or whatever, they lose about 25% of their weight as lean body mass. So you’re going to lose some muscle that’s going to decrease your metabolic rate, which makes it harder to lose further fat because your energy expenditure goes down, so you need to consume far fewer calories. And that is actually a significant problem, which is why it’s so important to do a form of strength training when you are cutting or when you are in energy deficit to lose fat.
Question four: What are the best foods for weight loss? There is really no such thing. The best foods for weight loss are simply foods that help you create an energy deficit. So they are usually high in protein, high in fiber, high in volume, so low in energy density. They help you fill yourself up and get enough protein in without consuming too many calories and without going hungry. Those are the types of foods that you want. So that’s usually: vegetables are great, fruits are great, lean protein sources are great, chicken, lean meat, fish, egg whites with some whole eggs in there, all great for fat loss. There is no such thing as some magic foods. It’s not blueberries or whatever the hell you get recommended by your favorite influencer. There is no such thing as a uniquely fat loss creating food or anything. It’s just foods that help you create an energy deficit, which means, again, they’re low in calories, high in protein, high in fiber, and relatively satiating relative to amount of calories that they have. And that’s all there is to it.
Question five: How to shred belly fat fast? Again, shredding belly fat is the same as losing fat in general. Your body fat distribution is largely fixed. It’s essentially fixed in a genetic blueprint that you have, you can think of it that way. Some people are naturally more curvy, like women in general. They have more of a pear shape and men in general do have more of an apple shape. You can improve that shape to a certain extent by being healthier in general from both exercise, better lifestyle, better diet… Typically you will get a more decentralized body fat distribution, which is also healthier itself because there is less fat around the organs, less visceral fat. Other than that, your body fat distribution is largely genetically fixed. So it will come off at a certain point. But where you lose the fat is fixed genetically and most people have stubborn fat regions. These just take longer to get the fat off. For most men it’s the lower abs, for example. To get those lean you just have to get very, very lean. It’s just a matter of time. There’s nothing particular that you have to do differently to get to that level of body fat than you would get to 15% versus say, 10% body fat. It’s the exact same process. It just takes longer to get the fat off the stubborn areas.
Question six: What should I eat before a workout? I recently investigated this in a systematic literature review, and the answer was that at least for strength training, you want to get at least 15 grams of net carbohydrates, generally 15 grams of carbs, not including fiber. And if you want to get at least 0.3 grams per kilogram protein. So for most individuals, that’s like 20 grams protein. And beyond that, there are actually no reliable additional further improvements in performance unless you are doing some type of exercise that has particularly high glycol intake requirements. So something that requires you to consume a lot of carbohydrates because your body will be forced to rely on carbohydrates, it cannot rely on its stored carbohydrates alone, and it can also not rely on fat. That is usually the case for workouts that last more than 90 minutes or that are very high intensity interval training type exercises like tabata intervals, soccer actually. But again, only when you get to a certain duration, because up until that point, up until an hour and 90 minutes, generally your body will be relying on its stored glycogen that’s already in your liver and your muscles rather than what you ate right before the workout. In fact, what you ate right before the workout, if it’s a big meal and you truly ate it right before the workout, is not even going to be available during the workout itself because it won’t be digested and absorbed yet, so not all of it will even be in the blood to be used as glucose and therefore energy production. And I would note that this is a good question because it implies that you are eating something before your workouts. It is indeed recommended not to train fasted. Training fasted can hurt performance and interestingly, a much more stronger effect probably is that it can reduce anabolism. So when you are training your body, specifically the mTOR master enzyme is integrating all of the signals it has on how much muscle growth can we stimulate or also how much endurance training adaptations can we stimulate. And these signals include things like how many amino acids are in the blood. So did you consume protein before your workouts? How much energy is available? Is this guy on the juice? All of these factors, they are integrated together and they are used as a signal for how much training adaptations are we getting. And that goes for both endurance and for strength training. So you want to eat before your workouts and that’s why it’s important to get some protein in and also some carbohydrates. This will fuel both the training adaptations and the recovery process, as well as performance during the workout itself.
Question seven: What does a pre-workout do? Well, not much, actually. Pre-workout supplements are very popular, but research generally finds that caffeine is the only active ingredient. Even citrulline, beta-alanine and the like have not been found in long term research to improve strength development and muscle growth. So even the more promising ones probably don’t actually have a substantial effect on your long term gains, which is true for most supplements in general. Moreover, there might be negative interaction effects between caffeine and creatine and some other ingredients that are popular in pre-workout supplements. So it might not be best to combine them in the first place. And in that sense, as I explained in my recent video on caffeine, even the effects of caffeine, which is by far the most established supplement that actually can improve performance, are mental. It’s psychological. Caffeine makes you more motivated to train, which can help you train harder, but it doesn’t actually physically do that much to make your muscles produce more force. So the effect is simply up here, it’s psychological, and if it helps you train harder, then that can improve training adaptations. However, even caffeine in research does not improve long term training adaptations and that’s because of the mental effects which are not that substantial and may wane over time and the effect that if you do get any physical effects, you get tolerance to that effect. So it would negate any physical effect that there is. So in that sense, the best pre-workout is simply that you enjoy taking. It helps you have good workouts. None of the ingredients in popular pre-workout supplements really have a substantial effect or any effect at all on your long term muscle growth, strength development, endurance adaptations or anything.
Alright! Those were the seven most Googled questions about nutrition and weight loss according to Google’s Gemini advanced. I hope you liked it. It’s a bit more novice than my usual content, but I tried to put some advanced concepts in there as well as the basics for novices. If you like this type of evidence based content, I’d be honored if you like and subscribe. If you like this video, you’re probably a serious lifter that appreciates science just like me. You’ll probably also like my online courses them. For fitness professionals, I have the Henselmans Personal Trainer Certification course. For non professionals, my Personal Development Course will teach you everything you need to know to reach your maximum natural muscular potential, at a sustainably low body fat percentage. Moreover, I’ll cover how to optimize your lifestyle to be happy and fulfilled. I cover what the research shows about how to choose your career. Where to live. How to find the best match for your romantic partner, and how to invest your money to build wealth with minimal effort. My goal is to give you evidence based directions to make the most important decisions of your life. Check out the link in the description for more information. I hope you’ll enjoy it.