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The Good, Bad and Ugly of Diets, Weight loss programs, Intermittent fasting, Keto, Game Changers with Matty Lansdown
Diets, weight loss programs, intermittent fasting, ketones, game-changers, are all the buzz at the moment as we slowly emerge from this COVID slumber. But do they work? Are they sustainable? Are they for you! Where do you start and how should you start on your health journey? In this episode, we discuss all this and more with Scientist, Nutritional Therapist, International Speaker, Health and Nutrition Coach, and Consultant Matty Lansdown.
Matty is an in-demand Nutritional Therapist, International Speaker, Health and Nutrition Coach, and Consultant for high-level corporate clients, business owners, and 9-5 workers.
As a scientist of biology at a major Melbourne hospital and having worked in the fields of Cancer Research and Vaccine Formulation, Matty developed the core belief that ‘genetic diseases’ are, for the most part, a result of misinformation and bad food consumption habits passed down from generation to generation, rather than a result of genetic predisposition to an illness.
Matty’s medical knowledge, combined with extensive research and self-testing of non-traditional dieting and safe fasting methods have made him an internationally recognised voice in the field of intermittent fasting and nutritional optimisation. He is regularly invited to international wellness events, retreats, and conferences as a coach, panelist and speaker.
So buckle your seat beats and tune in for another insightful episode of me&my health up with Matty Lansdown.
Episode Resources & How to connect with Matty
Join Matty’s Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IntermittentFastingForHealth
Matty’s podcast episode on Debunking ‘Game Changer’s’ documentary: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0aJvqzfCJPlVn6MKAu3WoX?si=Axgca__cTiu88ucZmR7zKg
About me&my Health Up & Host
me&my Health Up seeks to enhance and enlighten the wellbeing of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food is medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.
Credits
Podcast editing: Ivan Saldana
Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more
Anthony Hartcher 0:03
Welcome to another insightful and in particularly exciting episode of me&my health up with your host Anthony Hartcher. A healthy man, according to my children, aka clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your well being. And today we'll be chatting with a scientist, nutritional therapist, international speaker, health and nutrition coach, and consultant Matty Lansdown on weight loss with a particular focus on metabolic flexibility and intermittent fasting.
Matty is an in demand, nutritional therapist, international speaker, health and nutrition coach and consultant for high level corporate clients, business owners, and nine to five workers. As a scientist of biology at a major Melbourne Hospital, and having worked in the fields of cancer research and vaccine formulation. Maddie develop the core belief that genetic diseases are for the most part a result of misinformation and bad food consumption habits passed down from generation to generation rather than a result of genetic predisposition to an illness.
Matty's medical knowledge combined with his extensive research and self testing of nontraditional dieting, and safe fasting method methods have made him an internationally recognised voice in the field of intermittent fasting and nutritional optimization. He is regularly invited to international wellness events, retreats, and conferences as a coach and panelist and a speaker. Likewise, weight mats weekly podcasts on how to not get sick and die provide his followers with a deep dive into developing sustainable healthy habits. And it's a fantastic podcast I've I've had the joys of listening to it myself, and it's really entertaining.
So without much further ado, I'm really keen to learn from Matty on how to shed those COVID kilos. So welcome Matty, how are you today?
Matty Lansdown 2:15
I'm great. Thanks, Anthony. I really appreciate you inviting me to be on the show.
Anthony Hartcher 2:20
It's such a pleasure to have you on because you're a great entertainer. So I really looking forward to you entertaining me and my followers.
Matty Lansdown 2:28
I'll always have a crack.
Anthony Hartcher 2:30
So I'm really keen to, you know, find out just as I asked all my guests is how you have arrived at what you're doing today, I'm really excited to hear about your journey.
Matty Lansdown 2:42
Yeah, sure. So I guess I came along a sort of different path. I think most people in the health nutrition space or wellness space often arrive here, through the system failing them at some point that maybe they had an illness or a disease. And they you know, try it went from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist until nothing worked until they reach the point where they finally tried some ridiculous idea like nutrition, or acupuncture or you know, insert alternative therapy and saw some progress. And then they became a coach or a consultant or went and got a degree in that field.
And, and that's most of my colleagues are sort of in that category. However, for myself, it was a little different. I'm very much blessed to have lived a very healthy life. But it was through extreme frustration that I ended up here. And what I mean by that is that I sort of grew up in the country, typical Ozzie family, blue collar, working hard, you know, and I was virtually the first person in my entire family to have an opportunity to go to university. And so I went to the, to the big smoke to the city to go to university and study and, and then I learned about science and medicine, and then into research and cancer research.
And so growing up in the Country Mom was a nurse, I very much had this idea that medicine was you know, the be all and end all of human creation. And you know, wow was so impressive. We've created this behemoth of an industry that just helped so many people. And it wasn't until I worked in that industry, that I realised how few people it actually helps, and which obviously for the listeners can be a bit of a triggering situation. But after working for many years in disease research, I realised that we help very few people. And I had an epiphany one day where I was in a sort of what they call a death audit or a morbidity and mortality meeting which I used to be a part of every single Monday for seven years, basically and early on in the pace I had a realisation that nobody ever talked about how the person had gotten cancer.
And then I sort of put two and two together. I was like hang on. So they're out in their normal life. They eat and live in a way that means they end up obese and then they get a disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, dementia, you know, insert disease, then they come here, we give them some type of therapy, and then we send them back into the environment that created the disease. And at no point was there ever a discussion about the environment at home that the person was living in, that created the disease. And I was like, This doesn't make any sense. We're not talking about causation. And so for me, the thing that really stuck out was that diet and lifestyle and the World Health Organisation website says that diet and lifestyle are amongst the top three, top three causes of cancer, and the hospital doesn't deal with it virtually at all.
And so I was on a mission, I was just angry, I was like, it's out there. We know this. Doctors aren't educated and nutrition to be able to deal with it or lifestyle. And, you know, if you mentioned eating carrots, or whatever, in any type of therapy, people think you're crazy. So I was fired up, I was super fired up to be like, nutrition is making people obese, and obesity is the second biggest precursor to disease. So why don't we go back all the way back to the source and get people's food right. And so that's how I sort of ended up in this space today working with weight loss, because if you can get that part, right, if you can learn how to eat, it might not change the outcome of your life, but you will spend far less time dying.
Anthony Hartcher 6:20
Wow, that was one journey. And I can see how it all has come together for you in terms of your you know, your experience in, in the medical field and how it's, you know, you've had insight into research. And the evidence is, you know, it's compelling there that there's a causation that's sitting there, that big white elephant in the room that, you know, it's being ignored, and, and you're on a mission to address that white elephant.
We're gonna paint that white elephant pink today. So you mentioned obesity, and, you know, it's becoming more prevalent. And, you know, I certainly remember my time of, you know, going to school, there was few and far between, you know, kids my age, at the time, that were, you know, you consider overweight, but now you look around schools, and it's like the norm.
And then, you know, we've just been going through this COVID, where we've been isolated and locked down. And, you know, if you're locked in your house with just wine and, you know, your treats that what are you going to do just
Matty Lansdown 7:30
Yeah,
Anthony Hartcher 7:31
Consume away. So I'm really keen to delve into helping the listeners around weight loss because I get lots of inquiries about this question of weight loss. And what's the best approach? And is there a secret sauce? So I want to hear Matty Lansdown, secret sauce recipe for weight loss?
Matty Lansdown 7:51
There are so many source options, also the free obviously, no, but I think I think it's important to preface this conversation with the fact that everybody's different. And we go through different chapters in our life. And if you go onto Instagram, the diet wars are a real thing. Like everybody's diets are better than everybody else's diet. And, you know, there's so many influences that are just bashing other diets. And, and I'm not I'm really not a fan of the idea, either, that, you know, if your diet can't last your entire life, that it's virtually useless.
Because that's like saying, one set of tires should last, you know, your entire life on your car, you know, they were down, things change, the terrain changes, you go through different experiences. So when it comes to clients, I think, and anyone, I think the universal thing that people need to understand in order to get any diet to work for them, or to find the right diet is actually their psychology. What I've found from working with people is that the way that they see themselves and what they believe that they deserve, is the biggest driver of successful outcomes. As you know, Anthony, the recidivism rate of weight loss is like 98%. Like it's monstrous. And that's not because all of the diets even some of the ridiculous ones make no sense. They all work for somebody because the person's psychology was in the right place at the right time.
So the biggest the secret sauce, the biggest secret sauce that sort of covers everyone is having the right mindset about what you deserve, what you know, what you should go through in order to get what you need to change the mindset, a big thing with parents and parent guilt and mum guilt is a real thing. But a lot of mums particularly that I work with, you know, they've been putting everybody else first their entire lives. And so of course, their body is suffering, you know, and so it's changing the psychology behind self care is actually really the best form of parenting. And I take this idea back to when I was a teenager was actually similar that you know, there's not really many overweight kids around. But I remember my sister and I, we used to walk to high school. And we'd walk past this house. And we knew this woman that lived there, because I basically wasn't super common at the time. And this woman was really obese. And everybody knew that that was the woman, you know, we lived in a small country town, but she had a daughter that went to high school with myself and my sister.
And we're was about the same age. And we watched her over the course of our high school years, become her mother, literally in every possible way. And this is why I come back to this where I come back to self care is actually the best form of parenting. Because in the context of health, because your child will be you, they will grow up to model you in every single way, you'll get the odd black shape, and you'll get the odd rebel, but mostly your children will become you. So if you don't show them that self care, and health is important, if you just tell them, but you don't do it yourself, you don't live it yourself, then you're not creating, you know, a great family environment, you're, you're doing the leadership form of do, as I say, not as I do, which is arguably a terrible form of leadership.
And so it comes back to that psychology, you're then not just doing it for yourself, but building in your children as well. So if anybody takes anything away from this podcast today, I think it's that you need to build psychology that makes you feel worthwhile of going on a health journey that makes you feel better, you know, transforming your body into something you feel you deserve. Because a lot of people get somewhere with their health check, like challenges or journey. And they're so unfamiliar with being in a body that's 10 kilos, lighter, or 20, or 30, or that they sort of sabotage themselves back all the way back to where they began. And that's a psychological thing. So, you know, self care is really important, but you need the psychology to support being does like deserving of that experience.
Anthony Hartcher 11:52
Absolutely. I totally agree. It all starts, you know, with the mind and the attitude and, and certainly you know, prioritising that health. So what is it? You know, when you're working with your clients, you know, how do you get them to shift that psychology around self care? And, you know, walking the talk, as you said, it's so important. So is there a particular process that you take your clients through in terms of shifting their psychology?
Matty Lansdown 12:17
Hmm, absolutely. I think now, nowadays, that sort of, you know, mental health is really coming becoming a big part of a normal conversation and tools in order to, you know, change, the state of your mind is becoming quite normal, you know, people go to yoga, meditation, these are, these are really starting to be normal parts of the conversation for people and what that does, tools like that, and hypnosis, and even just chatting to a psychologist, directly, all of these things open up the possibility for you to change the way you see the world and the way that you see yourself.
And so most people haven't actually begun that process or begun the, or learned the art of being able to do that for themselves. And so with all my clients, the first thing we do before we talk about food at all, is we learn the art of Self observation, learning how to get outside yourself and observe what's happening, take the emotion out of it and be like, Oh, okay, so when this thing pops up, and triggers me, I then go to the cupboard. And then you know, a bag of Doritos is knocked over and a bag of Tim that packet a Tim Tams. And, and then you know, our world will start again tomorrow. And nobody's you know, not nobody, but very few people have this skill. And so developing that skill is step one, because once you can objectively see all the parts moving, without your emotional attachment to the process, you can be like, Okay, I can start experimenting with these different parts.
Most people think, you know, getting the right mindset is like hustle culture, you know, it's like, just get up and be better, just get up and be stronger. Like, and that's, you know, that works sometimes, but it does not really sustainable, there's got to be some empathy and some understanding. And, and I think the key is, you know, learning the art of Self observation or learning to, you know, experience your emotions as they come up and put them over there and put them out of the way and deal with them in different ways. It's about approaching that kind of thing with curiosity, not anger and judgment, that you're not good enough and shit. You know, again, I suck at this, you know, because all of that's just beginning to spiral down.
So I think beginning with the art of Self observation, and just observing what's happening for yourself is the perfect place to start.
Anthony Hartcher 14:31
Yeah, so it's really that yeah, becoming aware of yourself, your activities, what you're doing, and what triggers those from the environments. And once you have that level of awareness, then you can instigate change. Yeah.
Matty Lansdown 14:45
Yeah absolutely. You can't interrupt a process that you don't know about. So if you just try and you know, just go to the supermarket and just buy healthy food and you know, you're not acknowledging the cause of what's going on when you buy unhealthy food or when you behave in a way that's not optimal for yourself, if you don't know what's wrong there, you can't fix it. Just ignoring it never works.
Anthony Hartcher 15:07
Absolutely, totally agree. It's not that you know, ignorance is bliss, it's .
It'll come to bite you on the bum.
It will catch up, those COVID kilos will creep up on you.
Yeah. So, in terms of weight loss, I hear a lot. This is questioning around I should I do intermittent fasting? You know, I you know that, what should I do? Why does it work? Is it going to work for me? What's your thoughts on intermittent fasting?
Matty Lansdown 15:38
As you know, I'm a massive fan of intermittent fasting. I think one of the things I identified from working in a hospital was that people over the last, you know, 100 years basically have been progressively increasing both their meal size and their meal frequency. And now we have a population that's basically fat, sick and nearly dead.
So it doesn't take a genius to think we're probably eating too much food. The question is, why aren't we feeling full? Right? Why aren't we feeling full, and that comes down to the quality of the food. So intermittent fasting is something that we all practice every single day for all of human history, it's not a thing that you decide to do one day, and you don't, because as long as you go to bed at night, you're intermittent fasting, you're having a period of the day where you're not putting food into your body. And so it's just this ratio between feeding or eating, and not eating or fasting.
And there's a difference as well, between fasting and starving, starving is completely involuntary, and leads to chronic malnutrition and all sorts of things. Fasting is a totally voluntary thing that you do in a safe setting in a body that's, you know, should be well, you know, well conditioned with nutrition, and then the right types of foods. So I think it's a bit of fasting is a very useful tool, because it starts to take us back to the days where our gastrointestinal system had a day off, and not even just the day off, but even more than 12 hours, most people in my sort of practice that I see, well, they basically are about 12/12, roughly. So they're eating for 12 hours of the day, and they're fasting for 12 hours of the day. And so we then begin to move that needle.
So it's not about calorie restriction, that can be an important component, you can utilise that as a tool. But mostly it's just about moving those calories into a particular window of the day. And as well, in that fasting window, as that fasting window gets bigger. The reconstruction of cells that are sort of cell lining of the gastrointestinal system has more of an opportunity to repair and recover because it's not doing work. And imagine going to work every single day until the day you died, you probably could have lived longer if you took a few weekends, right?
It's the same same with your with your gut with your stomach with all of the mechanisms that partake in digestion is that we're just giving them more recovery time each day. And that also allows our body our metabolism to switch into burning the body fat that's on our body as a form of energy. So normally, obviously, most people are eating sugar and carb rich diets. So we've got enough fuel in the blood or in the glucose stores the glycogen stores to fuel the body. But once those are depleted, a lot of people have the idea or marketing sales as the idea that if we don't eat every two hours or six times a day, will pass out and die. Or if your blood sugar drops, you know, if that had if that was true, humans would have never made it past year one about a million years ago. Right?
It's very normal, your genetics have a condition for this fluctuation between feasting and fasting. And by the way, in those days, fasting could was days and weeks on a very regular basis. And so we've got this memory in our DNA. And that's where metabolic flexibility comes into it. So the idea of metabolic flexibility is that intermittent fasting allows us to fast just long enough that we start transitioning from this sugar burning into this fat burning. And then depending on the diet that we have, on the other end, the nutrition we have on the other end, we can actually continue that whilst we eat as well. But the idea is with this flexibility is that we start utilising different fuel sources, which has multiple benefits in the body.
Anthony Hartcher 19:25
Wonderful response. So you know, really, there's so much in there that you shared. So I thank you, Matty, it's awesome. Just I have some follow on questions in relation to that first mentioned the quality of foods so I'm really keen to delve into that a bit more. And then secondly was, you know, is there a rule ideal timing around this intermittent fasting because you know, you said most people doing is 12 and 12 and then you gradually increase that needle so they're fasting for a bit longer. Do you find there's a, you know, a better point at which they get better results. Yeah, so just like quality and that timing.
Matty Lansdown 20:04
Yeah, the quality is a really good question because, like, if we go down to the foundational reasons why we eat, there's obviously nutrition. But actually in the first world, there's very few people unless you're orthorexic, anorexic or bulimic, you're very likely that those people should not be experimenting with this, by the way, and there's no research about pregnancy either. But everybody else is, it's very unlikely we're going to be so severely malnutritioned that we shouldn't, you know, start experimenting with this.
So the reasons why we eat apart from needing nutrition to run our body. There's two reasons beyond that in 2021. And the two reasons beyond that, are emotions, and we all found that that's why a lot of people have COVID kilos is because we had nothing to do, we had very limited human experience or human interaction. And so we ate our emotions. And then a lot of people were doing that beforehand, anyway. And the second reason is that we don't feel full. So we're not satiated when we eat. And that comes down to the quality of the food.
So the first one is the emotions, that's that's totally different work. That's the That's the mindset work that we were talking about before, and understanding your relationship with food and why you use that as a resolution to a particular emotional experience. And then the second one is the quality of the food. So if we're eating protein, foods that are lacking protein that are really high in sugar, and carbs, so they're energy dense, they're very high calories, but they're nutrient poor, we're going to struggle to feel full, it's that situation where you're at the end of like some kind of dinner, or some kind of binge and you feel stuffed, but you still find yourself being looking and swinging on the pantry cupboard or the fridge you're like, I feel like I couldn't fit anything else in but I'm still looking for it.
And like, like from a physiological standpoint, that's often an insufficiency of protein in everything that you have consumed. So when we talk about the types of food we need to eat to satisfy the satiation in our stomach and our brain, we want to eat whole real foods, we've got sufficient protein on the plate, we want to have healthy whole real carbs. So we're talking you know, sweet potatoes, we're talking, any type of vegetable basically, is going to be a great carbohydrate source. And then of course, your fat so your avocados, your coconut, or it can be meats, meats, the cover the protein and fat, you know, like ground beef. So having these whole real food sources is in particular, making sure you've got the protein component in there is going to allow you to feel satiated, so you're less likely to go and consume excessive nutrient poor but energy rich calories in the way of you know, Tim Tams, Doritos, those kinds of foods ice cream, so Yeah.
Anthony Hartcher 22:46
Awesome. And in terms of the protein, you said, adequate amount of protein, have you got any rules of thumbs around how much protein should be with each meal.
Matty Lansdown 22:56
I personally with the clients I work with recommend about 30 grammes of protein. Because above 30 grammes, we struggled to utilise it, all of it, we often excreted through the kidneys. But I would aim for most people, I would aim for about 30 grammes of protein. And actually, so the if you work out a lot as well, so on workout days, 30 is good. But you might even be open to pushing it up higher on the non workout days, which is potentially counterintuitive. But the idea is that it actually because your workout didn't kick start the protein synthesis process that overloading the well, it's not quite overloading, but putting excess protein into the system on your non workout days can be a thing too, but we're really starting to split hairs of that conversation.
Anthony Hartcher 23:42
And you got any, like IDEAL quality sources of protein. You know, you mentioned a few, but you got any go twos around, you know, good protein sources.
Matty Lansdown 23:52
Well, yeah, so a lot of people cringe at this. But I grew up in the country. So this is pretty normal for me. But particularly for people that are looking for lean protein that are looking to lose weight, and they're looking for good healthy sources. I often go to venison, kangaroo, wallaby and crocodile, now why why those foods I know listeners are gonna be like, I have never eaten those foods in my life. Why those foods, so that we kind of get into a detox conversation here.
But most of those animals actually hunted in the wild. And so they don't they're not factory farms. They're not living single feed lives. So they're not living on grain. They're not being hidden from the sun where they would normally get their vitamin D from the sun. Like all animals, they're living their natural life. And they're lean sources of protein because those animals are very active, and they don't overeat. They don't get viral and you know, antiviral injections or B 12 injections and all of these artificial and synthetic compounds put into their bodies. So it's not only it's a leaner protein source, it's net. It's like a healthier protein source because it hasn't lived a factory farmed life.
Anthony Hartcher 25:03
Yeah. Wow. Hi. I certainly I enjoy all those words. As you mentioned, I've had the ball and they're lovely. They're, they're, you know, they've got a unique taste, I must say, crocodiles probably best, you know, best like chicken or closest to chicken.
Matty Lansdown 25:18
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for listeners, you know, some of that meat can be a little bit expensive. So, you know, going to your grass fed ground beef, or even just any ground beef or mince, you know, from a red blooded animal is is ideal, you're going to get all sorts of great protein and nutrition in those types of food.
Anthony Hartcher 25:35
I'm keen to get you know, you as a scientists perspective on these game changes, because we've, you know, we've just touched on, touched on, sort of the quality protein, what is it and you've mentioned, a meat sources, essentially, you know, good, lean, high quality meat sources that live naturally in the wild. And as this game changes, that keeps coming up in conversations that people are going, you know, this, it's all about plant based, only plant based. So I'm really keen to get your perspective on this game changes plant based, and it's the way to go.
You know, so what's your thoughts?
Matty Lansdown 26:16
This is, this is a good way to get me fired up.
Anthony Hartcher 26:19
Good.
Matty Lansdown 26:20
So. So I guess the first thing is that as a scientist, the game changes was a really, really terrible documentary. And I did an episode of my podcast, essentially debunking this because in many of the instances, they used elite athletes and who listening is an elite athlete, like, you know, 1% of the listeners or less, right? Elite athletes, and they were tested randomly in a group of three, that's not a clinical study at all, it's it's not representative of the population.
And overnight, they, in one day, they fed them a burrito one day, and then not a bird, like, it's, it's ridiculous, like, and they tested their erections as well, again, the three elite athletes, like overnight, we're talking a timeframe of what, 48 hours, 72 hours, maybe maximum, none of that reflects the reality that you or I or any of the, you know, the listeners are likely living in. And so it was very much to me propaganda, a vegan propaganda film. And it's important to acknowledge that James Cameron, who directed it owns one of the world's biggest p protein companies. So there's some, you know, politics in the background going on there too.
But there was very little science in it. And now, I guess, to go to sort of what is the sort of biological reality of a vegan diet, it's important to remember that vegan diets are only found in the Western world, really, because of their diets of privilege. And it's not to say that you can't get all of the things you need on a vegan diet. But the truth is, in order to live an optimal life, like an elite athlete, or like a bodybuilder that's been vegan, is that your supplement collection has to be massive, like you need all sorts of different supplements if you're an elite athlete, living a vegan lifestyle because you cannot get all of the things you need from just plants. And we know that because a lot of people are on vegan diets, in fact, 90% of them need to supplement B 12.
Now, if we weren't in a world where, you know, we've got a relatively okay government that's making sure that we all get food and we've all got enough pay from our jobs to be able to buy food, then, you know, we're fortunate enough to be able to say, hey, I can be vegan because I have moral and ethical issues. Now, I agree that that's okay, but understand that you're in a privileged world already, if your point of view is that I'm choosing not to eat meat because of a moral or ethical issue. If we go down to core human nutrition, you cannot survive on a vegan diet for for very long. And I've interviewed multiple people on my podcast that were nutritionists, naturopaths, and they were vegans for a couple of years. And there's a honeymoon period for everyone. Everyone feels great on a new diet for you know, two weeks up to two years. But for vegans, often start experiencing some type of problem in the two to five year mark. And then you know, beyond that things start to really fall apart.
Some people can if you're supplementing correctly, and you have all of the right supplements and making sure that all your micro and macronutrients are covered by your supplements and your diet, then of course you can make it happen but it is very much a diet of privilege. And most of us aren't elite athletes, with a cohort of doctors, nutritionists, dieticians, making sure that we get all of the things into our diet and into our regime every single day. And I think that's why often people do get sick from veganism. It's a functional problem. In the first two weeks, you really watch the game changes, you're really excited and you're like, let's be vegan. And so in the first two or three weeks, you're willing to drive all the way out to the alternative food shop, that's way out of town to get your things and you're willing to go and do these and then it becomes less exciting. And you're like, Oh, this is a lot of work. So I'll just eat the things I've got immediate access to and can save money on.
And then that restricts the number of foods that you're putting into your body. Right? So, therefore, you're restricting the number of micronutrients and potential, potentially essential nutrients. So, I think, in my general answer is that vegan veganism and vegetarian vegetarians is a bit different. But veganism is a diet of privilege. And if you want to be true to your biology, then being an omnivore is what we're designed to do.
Anthony Hartcher 30:26
I couldn't agree more. Matty, I think you're summed up really well. Just keen to find out what episode that is. And I'll include it in the show notes.
Matty Lansdown 30:35
Yeah, it's a well, I don't remember, I've done 130 odd now, but I'll find it for you and send it over.
Anthony Hartcher 30:41
Thank you.
I'll put it in the show notes. Because I'm sure people want to know more insight in terms of debunking that terrible documentary. So you've really summed it up? Well, anyway, for those there's a time for so I think in terms of the metabolic flexibility, you touched on it earlier, around this, switch over, you know, you're initially your body's burning the sugars, you know, using up the glycogen stores, and then it will revert to fat burning.
And you also touched on, you know, before on that timing point, so really keen to get into this timing as to, you know, going back to the intimate of fasting, as well, as I guess, referring back to the metabolic flexibility, is there an ideal time that you find that people, you know, basically get great results in terms of how long they need to fast for to get into this fat burning?
Matty Lansdown 31:40
Yeah, It's a good question. So I think it's different for everybody, we start from a clinical perspective, you start seeing ketone bodies increase, so the ketones the burning of the fat in the bloodstream, basically, you start seeing that at about 12 to 13 hours. And so it's not necessarily a total on-off switch, we're always burning both. But it's about switching that, you know, moving that ratio in favour of the body fat, burning the body fat, essentially.
So we're often really high with burning sugars and carbs and the stuff that we've eaten in our meals. And there's a sort of, you know, the simmering down the bottom is a low level of burning ketones and burning fat, but it's mainly the, you know, freely available blood sugar that's in our blood. And once we deplete that, we start to shift that ratio, and we start seeing that in the blood increase from about 13 hours roughly. However, if we're just going to do sort of 13/11, as our intermittent fasting ratio, it's going to take a very, very long time, in order for us to burn all of our body fat.
So I think most people feel comfortable at about 16/8. And it's a combination, right, we can talk about what's best for weight loss. But if that's the only thing you're working on, great, but most people have lives, they got families, they've got kids, they've got stressful jobs. And there are other things to factor into the equation. So I think a good place to aim towards is 16/8 for most people, and then start experimenting from there, you know, you can even go as far as doing omad and omad is one meal a day, which is literally 23 and one, basically, and but you need to make that meal, very nutrient dense, very energy-dense. So it's a very big meal.
So, but I think 16 Eight, a lot of people feel comfortable there. But it's important to acknowledge that for women, it's very important to navigate this space slowly. Because if you start playing with your nutrient intake, most people's nutrient intake, because life is life, it has sort of been so sporadic and sort of not quite appropriate for so long, that we've got these hormonal problems for women that are really, really sensitive to, you know, the change in carbs coming in, the change in different sort of foods that build neurotransmitters and filled foods to build hormones. And so if you're, you know, you've got any history of having challenges with your hormones or your menstrual cycle, enter into this space very slowly, and I call it one tweak a week is that you, you know, you only make one hour shift or even 30 minutes shift per week at a maximum right?
And you might even go less than that. It might be like three days this week, I'm going to try and do you know, whatever it is 14/10. But figure out your baseline and then move one step from there. Don't listen to this podcast and go right I'm doing. I'm doing omad tomorrow, definitely don't do it that way. Because you need to train your metabolism, train your psychology and train your energy requirement to be able to adapt to this system. And there's a great quote, which is that the slower the adaptation, the longer the stability. And so the opposite is true. The faster the adaptation, the lower the stability, right? So if we just jump into a diet on Monday and try all these extreme changes, not much is going to happen and we'll be back where we started in about two weeks, right.
So we want to make these changes progressive over time one tweak a week. So I think to answer your initial question 16/8 is a good place to aim for. But go there slowly. And once you're there start experimenting with more.
Anthony Hartcher 35:11
So baby steps. I love it. Yeah, one more small incremental improvement. Makes it easier and more sustainable. Fantastic. Yeah. So just on that point of, you know, you mentioned the 16 and eight, do a gradual, you know, 30 minute change from what you're currently doing, whether you're doing 12 and 12, you know, do one week, you know, 12 and a half hours and then go to 13 hours in terms of increasing that fasting period. So do that gradually.
And you mentioned the women population is, you know, someone that needs to really, you know, it takes this words of wisdom in terms of this slow, incremental approach and not radical. Are there any other populations that should I take an easier approach, or it just doesn't work for?
Matty Lansdown 35:58
That's a good question. So I haven't seen a particular population that adjusts doesn't work for, because there's a, there's a few layers, right. So you can not change anything from a nutrition standpoint, and introduce intermittent fasting, and you'll still see, you know, some results, you can then change your nutrition and your intimate fasting schedule, and you'll see further results. And so that the people that have might not work for might have a history of disordered eating, might have a history of Yes, malnutrition, or starvation periods. And so their body and their preservation genes are really solidly switched on. And in that case, we want to be looking at far more than just the nutrition, right, we want to be looking at the HPA axis, we want to be looking at their hormonal profile, doing potentially Dutch tests, and these types of things.
And so, you know, we're getting into much more complicated space in that area. But from a total, you know, from a, from a totally nutrition standpoint, and someone that's just sort of gained, you know, an extra couple of kilos over the years, it should work for most people, however, I think I think it's beneficial to every population to go in progressively, any radical change is gonna, your body's going to remember that you put it under that stress, and you're, you know, your metabolisms not gonna, not gonna be happy about it, basically.
Anthony Hartcher 37:15
And in terms of duration, so is this something you recommend for a lifetime? Or, you know, people have heard about this five and two, you know, so five days normal calories, and then two days really low calorie restriction? So is there like a? Yeah, so what are your thoughts around the duration? How long someone should do it for?
Matty Lansdown 37:35
Yeah, so I think, first, my first started disclaimer is if it works for you, awesome, right? So I'm not I'm not out to necessarily push my idea of how you should do nutrition, if you have something that works for you, you feel good, your psychology supported, amazing. On the contrary, my sort of feeling, and my expertise tell me that five/two is is a battle, because we're picking days where we're, you know, having such a low calorie amount that we're actually going to end up hungry and craving foods.
And so that's what I've found with people that have tried the five two is they can't sustain it, because on those two days, they're still there, they're just there to essentially tease the system. With a little bit of nutrition. It's like, you know, you've got a factory Monday to Friday that's got 100 workers and you're pumping out the goods. And then on Saturday and Sunday, you won't want to pump out the same amount of goods, but you only send 10 blokes into the warehouse, right?
That's the way that I see it. And I think that I think it's more beneficial to be consistent over time to develop a patent, much like sleep, you know, like, it's better to get up at the same time every single day, go to bed at the same time, every single day. And so I think, yeah, if you've, if it's not working for you, or you're finding it challenging, you want to find something that still pushes you out of your comfort zone a little bit, but that's not you know, you're not convincing yourself all day, don't go to the fridge, don't go to the fridge, don't go to the fridge, you know, you don't want to be battling through this process. I think learning you know, to love the journey is really important, but it also shouldn't be painful.
So I think yeah if it works for you, awesome, but if you are having those, you know, you're really struggling on those low calorie days. There's an option actually. And I know a lot of people that I work with end up in this space is that you might get to the point and I myself am in this space. I don't really do actively doing intermittent fasting every day. I don't track anything. But once every eight to 12 weeks. I do three to five day water fasts. Now that's you need again, one tweak a week, you need lots of practice to get there. This takes years to get used to you should not jump into this on Monday.
But one idea is once you've got a really you sort of at your goal weight, maybe you even want to start gaining weight now maybe gain some muscle you started to go to the gym, you want to build that booty, whatever it might be. You might actually be like, You know what because I do workouts in the morning and I need to get my protein in and the hour after that workout, I'm actually not going to track an intermittent fasting schedule strictly. But once every could be once a week, I've done that with diabetic clients that once a week we dive into a 24 hour or a 36 hour fast.
Now, this is just a different approach to the same concept, which is allowing our gastrointestinal system, our insulin, and our hormones and our hunger hormones to come down and experience being down below baseline. You know, conventional marketing and education will tell you that as soon as your blood sugar is low, it's a big problem. I would gladly debate that every single day of the week. But, the point is that you can get to different protocols and different ideas. Again, it comes back to where we started is that, you know, different horses for courses, right, different courses for horses is that you know, depending on the chapter, you're in on what you're trying to achieve something different is likely to apply. Generally speaking, you don't want to be struggling through every day, if it's a calorie based thing, and then counting calories is not fun for most people.
Anthony Hartcher 41:00
No, it takes away the joys of food doesn't it really.
Matty Lansdown 41:03
Totally.
Anthony Hartcher 41:04
And you start labeling and it just creates as you said, all this emotional, well disconnection, and then you know, obviously you feel bad, you start self-sabotaging, and then you go on this spiral, you end up eating probably twice as much. Because yeah, have you got that emotional, I guess disk disconcerting about it. So, Matty, you've shared so much wonderful knowledge. And I really appreciate that. Just how can listeners best connect with you in terms of they want further support?
Matty Lansdown 41:38
Yeah, absolutely. So I've got obviously my podcast which you yourself have been on a great episode. And that's called How to not get sick and die. You can find that on any podcast app. You can find me on Instagram at Matty Lansdown. Also, I have a Facebook group, which I can share the link with you too. So you can you're more than welcome to jump into my Facebook group and ask as many questions as you like.
Anthony Hartcher 42:01
Absolutely, I'll share all those links in the show notes for listeners, and any concluding thoughts or words of wisdom that you'd like to leave the listeners with?
Matty Lansdown 42:10
No pressure, I've just got to be wise now. I think of a wise statement.
I think my final thing would just be kind to yourself, you know, like is that these journeys are challenging like this, you know, irrelevant of what's happened in the past these journeys are challenging and building psychology that is interested and curious about the journey rather than, you know, being forceful and beating yourself up because you've got to do this because society says you should look a certain way is the wrong way to go about it.
You know, find something in your world that motivates you to be you know, like, I'm going to be healthy because I feel better or I perform better at work or I'm a better mother or I'm a better father, you know, and be curious in the journey. I think that's the most important part is approaching nutrition with curiosity rather than because I have to is much more favorable.
Anthony Hartcher 43:01
Absolutely, that Curiosity will bring you to bring out the joys and you'll connect with the joys and keep going on that journey. So I couldn't agree more. And that is wonderful words of wisdom to conclude this episode with. So I really want to thank you, Matty, for sharing all this knowledge and debunking some of these myths, and really uncovering what intermittent fasting really is and how it can work for the listeners. And for the listeners. If you've liked the episode, please like and share it write a review so that it gets to more people and we can get Matty's good words of wisdom out to everyone that you know, could really benefit during this time. So please share it and stay tuned for more insightful episodes and me and my health app.
Matty Lansdown 43:47
Thanks so much for having me.
Anthony Hartcher 43:48
You're welcome Matty. It was awesome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
