Eat More to Lose Weight, Rethinking “Essential” Nutrients (Omega-3s) | The Bioenergetic Diet

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode.

Nick Urban [00:00:38]:
Is it possible that carbs are not the demons they’re often portrayed to be? In fact, that possibly a high carbohydrate diet could be superior for overall long term health and performance. What about the downsides of carbs? Things like perhaps, are glucose or ketones the brain’s preferred fuel? If there are no such thing as essential carbohydrates, do they deserve a spot in the human diet? What about the so called essential fatty acids? Things like omega 3 and omega 6 particularly? Are they the miracle supplements and dietary nutrients that they’re cracked up to be? In this episode, we also talk about the practical side of a high carbohydrate diet, how to implement it, tips to get started, why you’d wanna get started, how to determine your ideal macros for this bioenergetic diet, the best and worst sources of fats and proteins, and the importance of self experimentation, all that and a whole lot more. This is the second part of an interview I did with Jay Feld to get the basics and the theoretical underpinning carbohydrates and their role in the human diet, go back and watch the previous episode, which you can find at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber172. The show notes for this one, you’ll find at mindbodypeak.com/173. For a quick refresher, Jay is a health coach, independent health researcher, and the host of the Energy Balance podcast. He has degrees in neuroscience and exercise physiology. Jay decided to forego medical school after realizing that the conventional medical approach was not the solution to the health problems that so many of us face. After extensive research and him trialing many different diets, he ultimately landed on bioenergetic nutrition.

Nick Urban [00:02:45]:
Now he uses this approach to help men and women around the world maximize their cellular energy, optimize their health, and achieve freedom from low energy symptoms and chronic health issues. If our interview today catches your attention, I suggest you go back to his podcast and start at the beginning. That’ll give you all the tools you need to be successful on this kind of diet. Again, it’s called the Energy Balance podcast. To learn more about pro metabolism and bioenergetic nutrition, you can also check out the work of doctor Ray Peete and his newsletter archive, which is published and available online for free. Alrighty. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the second part of my interview with Jay Feldman. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:03:34]:
Absolutely. Well, Jay, I wanna talk more about actually transitioning and implementing some of the principles we’ve learned here today because it’s one thing to have the knowledge and the actual life experience, feeling the difference is another thing entirely. And I followed low carb for a long time. And then about a year ago, I no longer kept running off doctor Ray Pete’s work, and I started, like, looking back into it and considering some of his ideas. And then I started actually testing them out myself, and I gradually transitioned. But if people want to test stuff for themselves, how do you recommend they go about it?

Jay Feldman [00:04:16]:
Something you’ll hear you’ll hear a lot from someone who’s been on low carb is anytime I ate carbs, I felt bad. And normally what people are thinking of is the times they had pizza or donuts or cheat days or cheat meals when normally, a, it wasn’t good quality foods and b, it wasn’t even carbs per se in most cases, you know, those things are pretty high fat foods anyway. So those are some considerations is when we’re thinking about our past experiences, we might have blanketed it all as sugar and carbs, but maybe there’s actually other things there that were causing us not to feel good. But then also, it can take time to properly make some shifts so that we do respond well. And and there’s an adaptation process in the same way that, you know, there is with keto. Normally, you’ll feel pretty bad initially. Your body has to shift toward using those fuels so that it can at least get by in that state. And so there’s a a shift here as well into using carbohydrates from from relying on fats and and ketones.

Jay Feldman [00:05:09]:
And so normally my recommendation, 1st and foremost, is slow and steady because the less slow and less steady, the easier it is to make mistakes, the easier it is to bring something in that maybe we don’t digest well. It feeds endotoxin. We have all these issues and we’re blaming the carbs, but it was the specific food alongside our digestion that was causing the issue. So normally I would say try to start with just 1 or 2 carb sources to begin with. Some great options would be whole fruit, maybe some fruit juice, depending on our gut health. If you have whole fruit and or any carbs, if you’re bringing carbs in and you’re noticing bloating or irritation, gas, changes in motility in a negative way, those are probably signs that we’re not digesting it too well. We might wanna back off, maybe try a different source or go a bit slower. And it and it’s it’s worth mentioning that the same way that our mitochondria have to shift over their enzyme production to use more carbs, digestively, we have to shift as well into being able to absorb carbohydrates better and that takes a bit of time too when coming from a low carb diet.

Jay Feldman [00:06:07]:
So again, it’s another reason to go slow, and and start with just 1 or 2 sources again. I think whole ripe fruit is normally a really great place to start. And if that doesn’t go so well, then then ripe fruit juice would be, I think, the next best one. And I would say that’s the first step and, like, just slowly increase from there and see how it feels.

Nick Urban [00:06:29]:
Yeah. I guess even before that first step, based on the name of your podcast, the energy balance, I would assume that the first order of operations is to make sure that if you’re eating under your maintenance calories, you’re in a calorically deprived restricted state. It’s the first match. Like, figure out what you’re burning in a day using, like, an simple online calculator or, like, better yet, in a lab, you can do that. And then determine, like, after you know how many calories and to break it up into very specific or, I guess, not even necessary specific, just break down the macros into particular ranges so that you can do this because what you can do is keep fat super high and bring up carbs to also be super high because that just doesn’t work.

Jay Feldman [00:07:14]:
Yeah. And it it can really vary because some you know? And I know this was the case for me when I was doing low carb and keto, my total calorie intake was really, really low and, you know, relative to now. And so, and that’s just because I wasn’t, you know, that was how much I needed to maintain my kind of metabolic state at that time. But as your metabolism increases, that value ideally will increase as well. So sometimes at the start, if you’re just talking about increasing, we’re trying to get up to, let’s say, you know, as a start, just 50 grams of carbs a day, we’re only talking about 200 calories. So to increase by that much, you know, not a big deal at some point. Yes. We’ll probably need to be trading some of that fat and protein, you know, trading both of those down for for carbs.

Jay Feldman [00:07:53]:
Not that we wanna be on a low protein diet, but normally it’s excessively high if we’re on carnivore or low carb. If we’re on keto, then normally it’s it’s more moderate. So, yes, the that that’s always helpful for getting an idea of of what we need. Another thing too is appetite can tell us a lot about where we’re at relative to our calorie needs. If you’re not hungry, I wouldn’t be forcing extra food. If you are hungry, then it’s probably a sign that that you do need to have some more calories. So, and and looking at, you know, some people are so dysregulated and stuck in a restriction mindset with their hunger signals that it can help to look at a calculator just to get a general idea of what what should an average person of my height and weight and activity level be consuming, and what am I doing? Just so I know maybe am I way undereating and I can have an idea that I might I might hunger might be suppressed or I might not be able to listen to it so well, but I I need to eat more.

Nick Urban [00:08:48]:
Yeah. What are the approximate macro breakdowns that someone wants to shoot for? And, of course, it’ll be variable based on a lot of factors. But when I was looking into this, I discovered what you have talked about many times, and that is the Randle cycle. And if you have your fat too high and you increase your carbs over the long term, it’s not gonna be the efficiency that you’re looking for, and you won’t get the benefits as if you meet certain criteria.

Jay Feldman [00:09:17]:
The way that I think of macros are that we’re talking about nutrients. Right? They’re called macronutrients for a reason that they provide benefits. We wanna have them. If we don’t consume them, we’re gonna produce them anyway. And so we want to treat them as nutrients. And what I would say is we want to get enough of each of them for our optimal needs. If we’re in an optimal state, how much of each of these do we need? And that’s how much we want. Now with protein, that’s not going to vary too much.

Jay Feldman [00:09:43]:
Normally it’s going to be in the range of 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. You could tweak that down a little bit if you’re considerably overweight looking to lose a lot, then that number might give you a bit of an overestimate. But in general, that’s going to be about our protein needs. When it comes to fat and carb needs, those are gonna vary a lot depending on things like muscle mass and activity levels. Because if we are pretty active, let’s say we walk 10,000 steps a day and we go to the gym a few times a week or we do some other forms of movement, those will increase our carb needs, but they’ll also really increase our fat needs. And that’s because when we’re doing low level activity, we’re mostly relying on fat as a fuel, like walking, you know, our muscles are mostly going to be using fat as a fuel. And with lifting, we’ll we’ll be using, you know, a bit more carbs. So it just depends on what activities you’re doing and how active you are.

Jay Feldman [00:10:30]:
But generally, if we’re more active, especially with low level activity, that’ll increase our fat needs. And then also muscle mass. So at rest, when our muscles aren’t doing anything, they’re using fat as a fuel. And then when we are doing any low level activity, the more muscle mass, the more fat we’re using. So if we have more muscle mass relative to our body size and we’re more active, generally our fat needs would be higher, maybe in the 30 to 40% of total calorie range. If those are not the case, if we’re if we aren’t as muscular, we’re not as active in terms of low level activity, Our fat needs could be considerably lower, could be in the 20 to 30% range. And we don’t want to get more fat than we need because as you’re saying, that can cause excessive fat burning and that can interfere with how well we use carbohydrates. So we want to try to get into a range that’s that fits our needs and then the carbs will kind of fit in in opposite of the of the fat.

Jay Feldman [00:11:27]:
So if we’re closer to the 20% range of fats, then we might end up higher in the carbs, like closer to 60%. If we’re higher in fat at, like, the 40% range, we might end up around 40% in terms of calories from carbs. So couple of sliding scales there that we can make some guesses, you know, on based on our activity or muscle mass and things like that, and we can also do some experimentation and see how we feel. What we wanna remember if we’re coming from keto and we’re thinking, alright, I need to get to 50% carbs and 20% protein and 30% fat, we don’t wanna jump to that. You know, we wanna go there incrementally slowly because, if you just jump in, it’s way more likely that we’re gonna run into issues.

Nick Urban [00:12:08]:
One thing you just mentioned that I think will have some people raising eyebrows is that you don’t wanna raise fat too much because then you’ll be burning too much fat. And I think when most people hear that, they’re gonna be saying, why would I not wanna burn too much fat? It sounds good to me. What are your reasons for not wanting to burn too much fat?

Jay Feldman [00:12:27]:
Yeah. So on the surface, burning fat is something that we’ve learned to equate with fat loss. And those things are very different because fat loss, there are two sides to that equation. Right? How much fat is leaving that opposed issue? How much is coming in? Fat burning is is almost independent of that. We could just be burning fat from our diet. It has nothing to do with burning fat from our fat stores. We can still be burning fat from our diet and storing fat in our fat stores. The these are independent things.

Jay Feldman [00:12:53]:
And so that’s kind of the first caveat. We want to try to untrain that relationship in our minds. As we were talking earlier, fat burning is a sign of a low metabolic state, so we don’t want to be excessively relying on fat or it will provide the signal of turning our metabolism down and shifting away from glucose burning, shifting away from a high thyroid state. So we do want to be careful of it from from that standpoint. And when it comes to the actual question of fat loss, there’s a lot more that goes in there in terms of our hormonal state and our metabolic state, how well we’re converting the fuel to energy. And remember, that’s, you know, that’s our whole focus here. And so the more efficiently that we’re converting food to energy, you can almost forget the macronutrient for this for this point, but if we’re converting that fuel to energy really well, there’s none left over to be stored as fat. That’s generally what we’re going for.

Jay Feldman [00:13:42]:
And if we’re in a high anabolic state, we’re using fuel efficiently, our engines are running at a high level, that’s the kind of state that we’ll be in. So that’s the general idea.

Nick Urban [00:13:50]:
Mhmm. Okay. So you’re helping your body burn more fuel at a higher rate, and that will eventually lead to weight loss or body fat loss specifically rather than trying to just get your body to use a suboptimal fuel and eventually tap into its body fat stores because that has other issues.

Jay Feldman [00:14:10]:
Right. And it and it long term does the opposite. Right? Long term will slow down our metabolic state and then make it really easy to put on fat, which is the other unfortunate thing, whether we’re coming from low calorie or low carb, if we’ve lost weight doing that, we’re normally very prone to putting it back on because we’ve lowered our metabolism in the process. And that’s another reason why we want to go slow is we’re increasing the carbs. This is a it gives our body some time to turn the stress down, bring our thyroid up, bring our metabolism up so that we’re minimizing any weight regain until then we can lose weight in a healthy way.

Nick Urban [00:14:41]:
Yeah. It’s a pretty incredible idea to be able to increase your calories done properly, this approach, and actually burn fat while you’re eating more calories than you’ve ever eaten before. You’ve mentioned certain foods that are really helpful to get started with this, such as fruits and fruit juices, especially fruit juices if you have any kinda endotoxin issues, LPS issues, and you want to try something that’s easy to digest and assimilate. Are there any other foods you find almost universal either on the good side and the other side to avoid or reduce?

Jay Feldman [00:15:17]:
Yeah. It’s a good question. There’s always caveats. So we can say whole fruit or juices, but there’s exceptions there as well. When it comes to digestion, one of the biggest concerns is that if we have an imbalance of bacteria or bacteria that aren’t used to fibers coming in and we introduce a lot of fermentable carbohydrates, meaning ones that we don’t consume and absorb and digest, but rather we consume them, but then we can’t break them down and they feed bacteria, we might need to be more careful with those, depending on the state of our gut microbiome. So long term, we might be able to bring these foods back in, but short term, I’d be careful with them. And this includes some fruits and fruit juices. The main ones would be apple and pear juice or the whole foods of apples and pears.

Jay Feldman [00:15:57]:
And then other foods to keep an eye on would be stone fruits, like, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, cherries, and then also watermelon. Not to say any of these fruits are bad, they’re some of the, you know, they’re really great and long term could be a really good option, but I’d be a little bit more careful with those early on because they have a lot more fermentable carbohydrates that are going to feed bacteria. And if we have bacterial issues, that’s going to make us feel worse, could cause weight gain and other issues. So we want to start with the ones that are easiest to digest there. Some other, you know, alternative examples would be oranges and other citrus, pineapple, mango, berries, bananas, if they’re really ripe. If they’re not ripe, then you end up getting a lot of raw starch that can be hard to digest. Other melons like honeydew, cantaloupe. So, you know, there’s still a lot of options that are really good starting places.

Jay Feldman [00:16:47]:
Grapes are another one.

Nick Urban [00:16:49]:
So those are the fruits and then also, like, white rice or other foods that are low in antinutrients that are good to incorporate?

Jay Feldman [00:16:58]:
Yeah. So then we can try some starches as well. Some people do better on the fruit side, some people do better with starches, and most do better with some combination or do best with some combination. So on the starches side, yes, we wanna make sure that we’re having starch sources that minimize antinutrients. Some good options would be squashes, white rice, and then potatoes or sweet potatoes, especially if we’re peeling the skin and cooking them really well, that’s going to minimize anti nutrients and so those could be good starch options as well. Other starches are normally grains, legumes, and those are ones that we, you know, beans, those are ones that we generally wanna be pretty careful with. If our digestion is really good and we prepare them well, you know, we do some soaking and sprouting or fermenting or other traditional preparations, it can make those foods digestible enough that they might be okay, you know, based on the individual. But most of the time, those are ones that I would be leaning away from when it comes to carbohydrate sources.

Nick Urban [00:17:54]:
And then do you have any preferred fats and proteins?

Jay Feldman [00:17:58]:
Yeah. So on the fat side, you know, very similar to probably what a lot of people are used to if they’re in the low carb, keto, carnivore, paleo world where we wanna minimize the polyunsaturated fats, so that’s gonna leave us with, you know, butter, tallow, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil. Avocado and olive both have about, on average, around 10% fat from PUFA, so they’re not quite as good as those other ones, but they’re they’re decent. Macadamia nuts are okay as well, very low in PUFA and same with cocoa or cacao, you know, the the fats from cocoa butter are very saturated as well. So those are some decent options when it comes to fats, you know, as far as cooking goes. And then when we’re talking about fats and and protein that often go together, you know, we want to minimize any high PUFA sources there. So pork and chicken are ones that people don’t often recognize as high sources of PUFA, of omega sixes especially. And, you know, a lot of people are concerned about the seed oils, but we’re not always talking about the fact that chicken and pork are often consuming seeds or seed oils that have all those same fats and they store them and and, you know, inside of their their fats.

Jay Feldman [00:19:07]:
So if you’re eating pork and chicken, you’re eating those same fats that they eat. And so if they’re really well raised on a really good diet and they’re they’re pastured, then they might be okay as far as fat goes. Or if not, I would stick to just the leanest cuts, like chicken breast is not really going to be an issue because there’s very little fat in there, even if it was consuming more, more polyunsaturated fats. So there’ll be some considerations there, but when we’re talking about red meat, you know, beef and bison and goat and lamb, those are all going to be very highly saturated regardless of what they ate. So even if they weren’t fed the best diet, they’re still going to have very, very little omega 6 is very little PUFA and same with dairy as well. So whether we’re talking milk or butter, you know, the or any other, you know, cheese, it’s it’s all going to be mostly just saturated and monounsaturated fats with very little PUFA. So on the seafood side, I would generally recommend sticking to the leaner seafood, you know, shrimp, shellfish, clams, mussels, oysters, all of those, and then also low fat fish, cod and mahi mahi, halibut, flounder, there’s lots of different options there.

Nick Urban [00:20:11]:
Yeah. It’s interesting to hear for most people that you didn’t include salmon and any of the other smashed fish in your list.

Jay Feldman [00:20:18]:
Yeah. So the high fat fish are very high in polyunsaturated fats, specifically omega threes. And we can you’ll have to let me know how how deeply you want to dig into omega threes. But the short answer there, the short, kind of story there is everything that we’re concerned about when it comes to omega sixes is worse with omega threes. Omega threes are very similar to omega sixes except they have extra double bonds and, therefore, they’re even less stable. So they’re more susceptible to damage, to oxidation, or peroxidation, not only on the shelf in a fish oil capsule or in the, you know, in the pan if you’re cooking salmon, but also internally. You know, that’s really the concern with these fats is how easily they’re damaged internally. Also, when they’re used for structural purposes, they’re used just as inefficiently.

Jay Feldman [00:21:03]:
And this is something that is not talked about quite as much with the omega sixes, but the fats that we consume get incorporated into the every cell in our bodies and we want to have very stable cellular structures, right, the walls and the kind of separations, the, what are called membranes in the cells are all made up of fats. And the more unsaturated those fats are, the leakier they are. And generally, leakiness is not a good thing. One place that it’s especially a problem is in the mitochondria and the engines of the cells. Basically, in order to produce energy, we create a a gradient, it’s an electrochemical gradient that allows potential energy that allows us to produce ATP. You can kind of think of it like a hydroelectric dam where we pump a lot of water to one side and then push that water through one specific area that, you know, spins a wheel or turbine or something that allows for energy to be produced. We do something very similar inside ourselves, inside our mitochondria, and the wall is made up of fats. And so whether we’re talking omega sixes or omega threes, they’re they basically are much less stable and they don’t provide a very solid wall.

Jay Feldman [00:22:14]:
So the more of those we consume, it’s basically like the more holes we have inside of this wall, this dam, and the more water that leaks through that’s not actually being used to produce energy. So we lose out on a lot of potential energy in that way, not to mention that those parts of the water are also really susceptible to damage and we’re in a very highly reactive environment. And when you damage those fats, you’re not effectively producing energy. Our body’s actually or the cells will actually turn off energy production there because of how dangerous and damaging it is. It’s like turning the plant off because it’s creating a lot of smoke and exhaust and and pollution, not to mention it’s it’s really dangerous. You know, it could explode or something like that. And so that’s what our our cells will do when they’re producing a lot of reactive oxygen species and a lot of lipid peroxides and the presence of these very unsaturated fats increases susceptibility to that. So those are some of the biggest concerns there.

Nick Urban [00:23:09]:
People hear about omega 6 being dangerous, and omega 3 doesn’t get the same inclusion in that in that list. And it seems that, like, the vast majority, I’d say, like, 95 or more percent of the research I’ve seen talks about how great they are. You already mentioned earlier how inhibiting VLDL is one of the issues might look good on paper to if you’re looking for how it impacts lipoproteins and everything, but it doesn’t actually necessarily have a beneficial effect. Why is it that such so little research determines that this might not be all that it’s cracked up to be? Because you also hear about people using, like, really high dose fish oil and it being compared to antidepressants in terms of their efficacy and helping that condition? And, of course, like we mentioned throughout, perhaps it’s not the omegas themselves, perhaps it’s something else in the fish oil. What are your thoughts there?

Jay Feldman [00:24:10]:
Yeah. Or it’s it’s maybe short term benefit, long term cost, like fasting. There there’s a a few different factors or or pieces there that that generally are happening. So there’s there’s a lot of research looking at omega threes on certain outcomes. When you look at that outcome data, whether we’re talking depression or cardiovascular health or things like that, it’s quite mixed. There’s a lot of studies showing negatives or no benefits and very little actually showing showing much of a positive effect. But there’s a lot of confounding variables to look at in the research, but it is actually really clear and there’s actually a lot of research pointing to them being being negative if we look in the right places. So as an example, one of the clearest ones, the there’s a there’s a number of different, theories and mechanisms pointed to when it comes to lifespan and aging.

Jay Feldman [00:25:05]:
There’s a theory called the membrane pacely pacemaker theory of aging. And what it does it basically is a is studying the types of fats that are used inside of all of our cells in our bodies and looking at this across all animals, all species, and looking at the effects on oxidative stress, on energy production, and on lifespan. And basically, the number one determinant of how long a species is going to live is how much how unsaturated the membranes are. And the most unsaturated fats are the omega threes. And what they actually find is if you were if you take out DHA, which is one of the most unsaturated omega threes, and replace it with linoleic acid, you actually see major benefits to lifespan. And you see this not only when you look at different species, the ones that have more omega sixes and less omega threes in there, but you also see it with interventional studies where you feed rats higher omega sixes versus higher omega threes, and the ones that are getting the less unsaturated fats live longer, have less oxidative stress, less damage, all of that. The ones with the more unsaturated fats have the opposite, and and the omega threes are, again, even more unsaturated and even more problematic. Of course, we’d prefer neither neither omega sixes or omega threes.

Jay Feldman [00:26:18]:
Let’s just go with monounsaturated and saturated fats. That’s even better. But you see it very clearly when you look at the amount of of omega threes and unsaturated fats inside the the cells, mitochondria, all the different tissues of of every species. So and this is, again, something that’s universal. Whether we’re looking at a rat or a mouse or a bird or a human, it’s seen throughout. So that’s one area that I think is very telling. And again, you see as I was saying, you see it in these interventional studies where you add omega threes to an organism and you see increased oxidative stress, increased lipid oxidation, impaired energy production. And it’s just a lot easier to see that in a in an animal than it is in an intervention study with humans.

Jay Feldman [00:27:03]:
And we also get caught up in some selective thing being beneficial, and we create a lot of hype around it, so to speak, and start to look for that in the research. So there’s another example of this looking at people looking at omega threes, and there are some companies that have started testing people’s fatty acids in their in their blood, in their red blood cells, and finding that the more omega threes there are, the healthier the people are. And so they’re starting to use this as an index to indicate if you’re healthy and if you’re getting enough omega threes. Well, we can look at a ton of different examples that actually show that the amount of omega threes in the membranes isn’t just isn’t just influenced by the omega threes you consume, but it’s also influenced by, for 1, the omega sixes you consume. Or basically, the more omega sixes you have that you’re eating in your diet, the more they compete with the omega threes and they’ll decrease the amount of omega threes inside of your red blood cells, your membranes, wherever you’re looking. So just using that variable, basically, higher omega threes is more indicative of not eating a lot of omega sixes, which means not eating a lot of fried food, not eating a lot of seed oils, things that generally are are healthier and better to not do. So and you see this in, you know, play out in I’ve seen it with clients for sure where they’ll have high omega threes despite nearly 0 in their diet, but you see it in in cultures as well, like the messiah that you see the the Messiah or the Hadza or both. I don’t remember, but they both have very, very low omega 3 intakes, and yet their omega threes and their membranes are are particularly high.

Jay Feldman [00:28:33]:
And again, it’s an indication here of a much healthier diet with much lower omega sixes, even though they’re having very little omega threes. And their omega sixes aren’t even as low as they could be, but they’re still low enough, and in general, they’re healthy enough to see better outcomes and higher omega threes in the membranes. And of course, we look at that and we say, oh, we all need to be taking fish oil, but really we’re just conflating this marker, this indicator with the actual drivers of it. And there are other confounding variables there as well, for example, when we have more oxidative stress, the fats that are most susceptible to that oxidative stress are the omega threes, So those omega threes get damaged and removed, and so you’re gonna see less omega threes when there’s more oxidative stress. It’s not because of consuming more or less omega threes. It’s just because we’re in a more inflamed, highly oxidatively stressful environment, and that’s why we’re seeing less omega threes. And then vice versa, high omega threes can just indicate less inflammation, less oxidative stress. So there’s a lot of different confounding variables that we have to consider when we’re seeing this sort of research.

Jay Feldman [00:29:33]:
The last thing I’ll say very briefly, kind of like we were talking earlier with lowering LDL and that hap, you know, from omega threes and that happening by causing oxidative stress in the liver. You have a similar or parallel outcome when look when looking at inflammation. So it is true that omega threes can lower inflammation, but the mechanism to risk they’re doing that is actually through immunosuppression. And this is so significant to the point that omega threes are used in transplants and graphs and research to create enough of immunos of an immunosuppressive effect that the, the receiver of the transplant or the graft doesn’t have an immune response, doesn’t mount an immune response to it. So will you reduce inflammatory markers? Yes. So does cortisone, right? So does cortisol. That doesn’t make these things good. It’s do we we wanna be careful, and we’re just looking at an outcome of inflammation and saying that means this is good to take because it’s lowering my inflammations.

Nick Urban [00:30:26]:
How do you respond to people who say the often parroted, there’s no such thing as essential carbohydrates. There’s only essential fats and, essential amino acids.

Jay Feldman [00:30:37]:
This is one of the one that comes up a a decent amount more than I would hope because it’s it’s demonstrative of of really a lack of understanding of nutritional science. And when it comes to this question of essentiality, basically, what we’re talking about is whether something needs to be consumed in the diet to prevent immediate disease and and death. And the the kinds of things that fall into this category of being nutritionally essential are vitamins and minerals. Right? If we don’t consume any x vitamin or mineral, we will then develop disease and death. Sometimes it could take several months or a year or whatever, but, you know, that will happen. There are certain amino acids that we can’t produce and those are essential amino acids. It’s not all of them, right, it’s not even half of them, I think it’s like 9 amino acids of the 20 or so. And then there are certain fats that we can’t produce, which are called also the essential fatty acids.

Jay Feldman [00:31:33]:
These are omega threes and sixes. There is some argument that we can that we they aren’t actually essential at all, but even if they are considered to be essential, the amount that’s essential is very tiny. Just like a vitamin or mineral, we’re talk we’re talking about maybe half a gram here or there, you really don’t need very many. But for all the other nutrients, all the other amino acids, all the other fats, meaning monounsaturated fats, and also carbohydrates, we can produce them ourselves. So what that means is if we’re eating a normal diet, but we took out all of the monounsaturated fat and all of the saturated fat and we provided just carbs, protein, and a little bit of omega sixes and threes, let’s say, for the sake of this, and our vitamins and minerals, we’d be totally fine. No disease would present, no death would present. We would be able to produce those fats from the excess carbohydrates or probably even amino acids as well that we’re getting, you know, we can produce those. The same thing happens with carbohydrates.

Jay Feldman [00:32:25]:
If we’re getting adequate with all the other macaroni micronutrients and we don’t consume carbohydrates, then we can produce our own carbohydrates through a parallel mechanism. So that is all that is kind of nutritional essentiality means is that we can produce this thing endogenously and get by without it, or we can’t. And so of the composition of our diet, most of the things we eat are not essential. All of the saturated fats we eat, non essential. All of the monounsaturated fats we eat, not essential. Most of the amino acids we eat by number, not essential. Most by amount, not essential as well, because the total amount of amino acids that an average person needs for essential amino acids is like 13 grams a day. So if you’re eating any protein beyond 13 grams a day, that’s not essential either.

Jay Feldman [00:33:11]:
That is based on what is nutritional essentiality. That’s what we’re talking about here. It has virtually nothing to do with what a healthy diet is or how we should construct a diet or whether something is healthy or not healthy. And so this doesn’t mean don’t consume non essential amino acids, it doesn’t mean don’t consume more than 13 grams of essential amino acids, it doesn’t mean don’t consume monosaturated fats, it doesn’t mean don’t consume carbohydrates, even though you don’t have to do any of those things, you can live without them. And the people who are normally saying this, I think, don’t know that saturated fats and monounsaturated fats are also not essential. So they’re saying this as if it’s a reason to not eat carbs, yet most of them are on a low carb diet eating mostly saturated and monounsaturated fats. So I think most people just don’t understand what they’re saying when they when they say that. Hopefully, this clears that up.

Jay Feldman [00:34:01]:
But the the point, you know, the take home point here is that is not something that’s gonna be useful in determining what our optimal diet is. And that doesn’t mean saturated fats aren’t beneficial, doesn’t mean that nonessential amino acids are not beneficial, doesn’t mean that carbohydrates are not beneficial. Mhmm.

Nick Urban [00:34:16]:
And also when I looked into this, I realized that, yeah, you can create carbohydrates via gluconeogenesis in the body, but that comes with its own costs, and those include elevating levels of stress hormones and things that you don’t wanna be doing, and it’s extremely inefficient. And also carbohydrates might not be nutritionally essential as you referenced, but they also are sparing of a lot of other things such as protein and electrolytes. I noticed when I went low carb, all of a sudden my electrolyte need went through the roof because of the way my body was excreting more sodium and other stuff. And so it’s more nuanced than just whether it has an essential label or not. But, also, it sounds like it contradicts what you mentioned about not needing omega threes because those polyunsaturated fats, omega threes and omega sixes, and the other omegas also, those are listed as essential, meaning you have to get them from your diet. Are you just saying that it’s in really small quantities that anyone and everyone can get?

Jay Feldman [00:35:20]:
Yeah. So it’s a it’s a good question. And just to, again, come back real quickly to the cost of gluconeogenesis, the cost of not consuming carbs, there is a major cost there. And that’s a lot of what we’ve what we’ve talked about is that if we need to rely on our own production, it does necessitate the need of stress hormones. It’s extremely inefficient. So we’re missing out on on energy. We’re also not gonna have the optimum amount of carbs. We’re just gonna have the necessary amount because our bodies don’t wanna go through this extra cost of creating more even though we benefit from more.

Jay Feldman [00:35:48]:
So that’s one piece, but also it’s inefficient to produce fats too. We don’t wanna be not consuming any fat and relying on our own endogenous production of fats either because that’s also not as efficient as just consuming them, and it also does induce some stress as well. If our free fatty acids drop low enough, it’ll also induce adrenaline to increase free fatty acid release and production. So, yeah, both sides should be considered here and and, it’s very parallel in both cases. So coming back to the question of essential fatty acids, there’s 2 things to consider. So one is the amount that is considered to be essential is extremely small. And if you’re eating a nonzero fat diet, it’s almost impossible not to get that amount. So if you’re just eating beef and low fat fish and dairy, even if you skip the fish, even if you’re just eating beef and dairy is your only fat sources, you’re going to get enough of the omega sixes and omega threes to cover your needs.

Jay Feldman [00:36:43]:
Even though you’re getting about as small of an amount as you can get, it’s gonna be very small. You know, if you had just a pure coconut oil diet, then you might not, be able to get enough of those essential fatty acids, but that’s not what the typical person is doing. So it’s really not even it really doesn’t even matter whether this tiny amount is essential. However, most of the studies on essentiality were done nearly a 100 years ago, and and when it comes to the essential acid fatty acids, it was about that time, it was about the 19 thirties. And so at that time, the studies were very kind of crudely designed. They didn’t understand, like, a lot of vitamins and minerals hadn’t yet been identified. They would use some sort of food as a source of a vitamin instead of just using an extract. So instead of using just omega sixes, they would use, like, rice bran oil.

Jay Feldman [00:37:30]:
And there’s other things and there’s other vitamins and minerals in there. And so there’s a lot of question marks as to those original studies that are really providing the main support for essential fatty acids. And about 10 years later, there were some other researchers who kind of redid those studies and found that as long as enough b vitamins and zinc were provided, there was actually no issue from a lack of essential fatty acids. There’s been some studies since then that may indicate a very tiny amount of essentiality, but again, it’s tiny and only seems to get smaller as as we do further research. So I would say they’re probably not even essential, but if they are, it’s such a small amount that it doesn’t matter because you’re gonna get that in your food.

Nick Urban [00:38:07]:
Jay, we’ve been going for quite a while, and I know you have a hard stop in a few minutes. If people want to connect with you to pick up your nicely designed energy balanced food guide, which I’ve printed out and been using when I go grocery shopping, how can they either work with you or follow your work?

Jay Feldman [00:38:24]:
Nice. Yeah. So that that’s the place I would direct people to start. Right? We talked about a lot of different possibilities, some first steps, and different things to consider, but when it comes to actually implementing it, starting dietarily, I’ve created a really kinda easy to use 1 page infographic called the Energy Balance Food Guide, and it categorizes food based on how much they’re going to support your metabolism. And also if we’re dealing with any digestive issues, there’s a separate spectrum there, a separate scale that allows you to tweak things so that you’re just focusing on the most digestible foods and it can always expand as our digestion improves. But, as far as that free energy balance food guide goes, listeners can download that at jfeldmanwellness.com/guide, and they can find a lot of other free information on on my website, jfeldtmanwellness.com, links to the podcast episodes, free articles, and also to my services, different programs I offer, and coaching services as well. Perfect.

Nick Urban [00:39:17]:
Now I’ll put a link to everything we’ve discussed, including Jay’s website and podcast in the show notes of this episode. Before we part ways today, Jay, I have a couple more rapid fire questions for you.

Jay Feldman [00:39:28]:
Sure. Sure.

Nick Urban [00:39:29]:
What three teachers have had the biggest impact on your life and work?

Jay Feldman [00:39:33]:
Ray Pete would definitely be at the top of that list.

Nick Urban [00:39:36]:
I hear you reference Hans Sellier quite often in your podcast.

Jay Feldman [00:39:41]:
Yeah. Hans Sellier is great as well. And and there’s a lot of, I mean, Ray was, you know, his work was built upon the work of a lot of others as well. So, even the term bioenergetics comes from Albert St. Georgie, who was a Nobel prize winner. And I think his book titled bioenergetics was, came out in the twenties or thirties, if I remember. But I mean, his his work is great. Hans Holley’s work is great.

Jay Feldman [00:40:07]:
But, you know, a lot of the the people who who Ray was building on, you know, I think they’ve they’ve got a lot of really good information. Yeah. Okay. And there’s

Nick Urban [00:40:14]:
no ultimate guide, the the bioenergetic world?

Jay Feldman [00:40:17]:
I wouldn’t say there’s any ultimate guide. I have tried, you know, with the podcast, the Energy Balance podcast, to create as much of that as possible, but there’s a lot of other people doing great work as well. You know, you mentioned Georgi on this on this call, and he’s, you know, he has his blog with tons of different studies and and great information there. There’s lots of other, you know, good researchers and practitioners in the space. But, you know, the I think the most important thing when it comes to this perspective beyond the physiology of it all and even focusing on energy is is the kind of anti authoritarianism roots and and the idea that we wanna be thinking for ourselves, learning ourselves, not giving our health away to some authority, you know, listening to our own bodies, experimenting. I think those are some of the tenants that are more important than than anything else.

Nick Urban [00:41:09]:
That would be a great way to wrap this, but I have one more question for you, so I’m gonna have to to break that. A supplement to help with the transition or to improve their results from the bioenergetic diet and lifestyle, would you recommend, like, the b vitamin complex to help them create energy more effectively or anything totally different?

Jay Feldman [00:41:31]:
I mean, b vitamins are great, and if there’s one supplement I come back to in so many different, you know, for so many different issues symptoms, a a good b complex is definitely up there. However, it’s something I would be a little careful with early on too, because if we haven’t started increasing our carbs and calories yet, the B vitamins are a bit stimulating. And so we can try very low dose B vitamins or very low dose B vitamin complex, but most of the ones out there are not, so we’d want to, you know, pick 1 accordingly. But we want to be careful that we’re not stepping on the gas pedal too much before we’ve got enough fuel in the tank. So early on, I would say, let’s try to keep it simple one thing at a time and stick to the, you know, some of the food first and shifting away from fasting and maybe not doing the over exercising so much and shifting away a bit from the cold thermogenesis. Those would be probably my first steps. There’s a place there’s a place for supplements for sure. But, I think very early on, I would try to keep a clean slate to start, and then we can always consider those things depending on the issue someone might be experiencing.

Nick Urban [00:42:30]:
Okay. Yeah. A little more advanced. But, Jay, any final words that you’d like to leave people with today if they made it this far?

Jay Feldman [00:42:36]:
No. I think I think that’s it. I think you know, I appreciate you having me on for sure, and, it’s been great chatting. And and, I’ll I’ll leave the the words at the end of the last question Okay. As as some of those final thoughts.

Nick Urban [00:42:50]:
Perfect. Well, Jay Feldman, thank you so much for joining me on the Mindbody Peak Performance podcast.

Jay Feldman [00:42:55]:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:42:58]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.com/ and then the number of the episode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.