An Evidence-Based Guide to Weight Loss Without Fads (and Why It’s So Damn Hard) with Dr. Eric Williamson

In today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, we will be chatting with Registered dietitian and PhD Dr. Eric Williamson. Eric is a fellow registered dietitian specializing in fitness, performance and longevity, with a PhD that focused on the intersection of exercise nutrition and metabolic health. He’s also the director of nutrition at Canyon Ranch wellness resorts and has been a key scientific advisor for my supplement brand, Neue Theory. Eric and I discuss the compensatory mechanisms that come into play when we try to lose weight (which makes it seemingly impossible). We talk about the importance of muscle mass for helping to “boost” metabolism. We discuss the role of women’s hormones in making weight loss more difficult. And we discuss calorie counting, and alternative gentle methods that are not restriction-based. Topics: 00:37 - Weight Loss New Years Resolutions 05:25 - The Futility of Calories In - Calories Out 08:37 - Compensatory Mechanisms in Weight Loss 10:41 - How the Brain Reacts to Weight Loss 14:48 - How Metabolism Affects Weight Loss 20:19 - How Hormones Affects Weight Loss 24:09 - What Actually Matters for Weight Loss 32:18 - Getting Out of the Restrictive Mindset 36:20 - Do You Need to Track Calories? 42:41 - Why Weight Loss is a STRUGGLE References: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6058072/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK572145/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3718776/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3649463/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9875820/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8235588/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16469977/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31256714/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34538033/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-022-03054-z https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5639963/ Check in with today’s amazing guest Eric Williamson: Instagram @eric.williamson.phd Website: www.unlockedfitnessandnutrition.com Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. Trigger Warning: We will be discussing weight loss in today’s episode and mentioning calories, so feel free to skip this video if that is not supportive to your journey. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:04Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 0:15Speaker 03

  And if you'd like to get into how we go about setting those targets, because it's not the ones in MyFitnessPal, I'll tell you that. It's not the targets that the app sets.

• 0:26Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.

• 0:42Abbey Sharp?

  We are halfway through January, which probably means a good chunk of folks listening have already kind of taken a kick at the can on some kind of new, exciting weight loss journey. And at least if we're talking statistically, most of those attempts have brought you right back to the starting line. And honestly, I get it. It is so hard not to hop on the whole New Year's resolution weight loss bandwagon. Like, we all woke up on January 1st, many of us probably a little hungover, to an unrelenting flood of diet culture messages,

• 1:24Abbey Sharp?

  each seemingly more extreme and yet also kind of more enticing than the last. It often feels impossible to know what or who to trust online, especially because weight loss advice has become as divisive as politics and religion. You know, it's like, one day, the key to weight loss is like six mini meals a day, and the next, it's fasting until 2:00. This clash of perspectives often leaves people bunny hopping between extremes while holding on to this promise that the next hot diet will be the one. It is giving Netflix speed dating show and we all know that those relationships rarely

• 2:06Abbey Sharp?

  work out. So it's no secret that as a dietitian, I am decidedly anti New Year's New You and kind of like all the quick fix fads that come with it. I also am not a dietitian that would ever tell a person that they need to or should lose weight. That said, I believe in body autonomy. And for a multitude of reasons, none of which are really my business to judge, there will always be people who want to lose weight. And while so much of my personal experience has framed intentional weight loss as an act of self-destruction, for so many others,

• 2:48Abbey Sharp?

  it is often experienced as an act of self-care. So if you yourself want to lose weight, I wholeheartedly support your choice. My job as a dietitian is to put my bias and personal experiences aside, meet people where they are in their journey, and help them make the most evidence-based decisions that weigh out the risks and benefits for physical and emotional health. My guest today, Dr. Eric Williamson, is really one of the best of the best for doing just that. I like to call Eric like the ultimate nutrition encyclopedia, but he's also someone I have been so lucky to call a colleague and friend. Eric is a fellow

• 3:32Abbey Sharp?

  registered dietitian specializing in fitness, performance, and longevity with a PhD that focuses on the intersection of exercise nutrition and metabolic health. He's also the director of Nutrition at Canyon Ranch Wellness Resorts and has been a key scientific advisor for my supplement brand, New Theory. He certainly has a very impressive CV and he has a keen interest in supporting people who want to lose weight in a gentle, evidence-based way. So settle in for this one, folks. You are guaranteed to learn a lot. A quick note that we are going to- Be talking about weight loss and will be mentioning calories in this episode. So please feel free to skip this if it's not supportive to your journey.

• 4:18Abbey Sharp?

  Also, my general reminder that the information in this episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only and is never a replacement for personalized healthcare. Nor is this episode insinuating that you should or need to lose weight.

• 4:40Abbey Sharp?

  Eric, thank you so much for joining me. Always a pleasure. I am so excited about this because I feel like I always learn something new from you. And you know, the weight loss world is so, you know, so contradictory, so confusing. People are highly susceptible to grifty, bad advice. So I'm very excited that you're here to help set the record straight.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  On as much as we can cover today, I'm excited for that too, because there's constantly those gophers popping up. It's like whack a mole.

• 5:08Abbey Sharp?

  For sure.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  But happy to cover as much as we possibly can today. And thanks again, Abbey, for having me here. I'm always excited to chat with you.

• 5:16Abbey Sharp?

  Amazing. Okay, so let's jump in because like you said, there's just so much we could talk about. And I feel like if we're going to talk about weight loss, we kind of have to talk about what is physiologically necessary for it to happen, which is a calorie deficit.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:29Abbey Sharp?

  So in the simplest terms, this is kind of what people say calories in versus calories out equation, where you need to eat fewer calories than you burn or burn more calories than you eat or a combo of both. People say it's just math, right? Should be easy. Math should be easy, but it's clearly a little more complicated than that. Otherwise, this wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry. So can you talk to me a little bit about some of the physiological adaptations that are kind of happening? When you put yourself on a diet and you create a calorie deficit to lose weight?

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Right. It sounds like a simple equation calories in minus calories out equals your caloric balance. If you're in a deficit, you lose weight, should be plain and simple. But the reality is, is that. It's about as useless to know it as it is to not know it for a lot of people. Because there's so many things that go into calories in and go into calories out.

• 6:24Abbey Sharp?

  Sure.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  With my background in research, it's hard enough to measure in a lab, let alone measuring that yourself with no training in science.

• 6:34Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  As some examples with calories in, first of all, there's pretty wide variation within products. So even an apple, there's a 40% variation. So that means that one apple could be 100 calories, another one could be 140, another one could be 60.

• 6:53Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  The exact same type of apple. So that's one aspect of it. There's also when we have almonds versus almond butter. You have 100 calories worth of almond butter, basically 100% of that is absorbed. You have 100 calories versus from almonds because of the fiber. And when we're chewing that, we swallow these little pieces that are calories, carbohydrates and fat trapped within that fiber that we can't absorb. So you only end up absorbing about 75%. So that's not exactly 100 calories for calories in when it impacts weight loss.

• 7:37Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  So that's difficult to measure. And then calorie expenditure, there's all of these things which we might get into that can impact that. As soon as we enter a deficit, our body adapts, things can change physiologically that can prevent us from burning as much as we might anticipate. And then within measuring caloric expenditure, I mean, that's incredibly difficult.

• 8:01Abbey Sharp?

  So true.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  A lot of these devices these days are off by 30 plus percent. So yes, it is something that's physiologically necessary for weight loss, but extremely difficult in practice.

• 8:16Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. And, and, and, you know, talk about like the, the physiological adaptations, like in the sense like when we do put ourselves in a calorie deficit, when we do lose weight, you know, our NEAT, which is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, that is also kind of gonna reduce. Can you talk about some of those things? You know, ghrelin, leptin, all that kind of stuff?

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's the expenditure side of things, which is what you're referring to with NEAT, N-E-A-T, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And we identified quite a while ago that that was primarily the, that was the main driver of that reduction in total daily caloric expenditure that people are experiencing when they enter a deficit or lose weight.

• 9:02Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  However, it's not clear whether that is primarily because of people moving around less. We do see that within other research, but we also see that people actually expend a little bit less for those movements. So just walking around, fidgeting, people expend a little bit less. Our bodies become a little bit more efficient.

• 9:24Abbey Sharp?

  Sure.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  So NEAT encompasses both of those things. And then when we're discussing hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin, that's the intake side of the equation. And quite honestly, that's something that I am always thinking about when I'm working with people as a dietitian, because what we know, we have data to suggest that that's about 75% of the reason why it's difficult to lose weight. And especially why it's difficult to keep it off is because of those changes in ghrelin and leptin.

• 9:58Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I would say leptin being the primary driver there, the one that signals to our body that we're, we're full, isn't being produced at as high of a, a rate as it was before we lost weight and we don't respond to it as well.

• 10:13Abbey Sharp?

  So obviously, you know, all of these things combined make that calories in versus calories out equation a little more difficult than just calculating this perfect calorie, you know, calorie equation, because there's all these compensatory mechanisms kind of like working against us to, to kind of allow for that weight loss. But you kind of talked a little bit about the, those physiological pieces. How does the brain react to deprivation?

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, I'm glad you brought up the brain. I'll mention that when we look at genetic testing, this is just fascinating, want the listeners to hear this, that genes associated with different health conditions are almost always found to be from that organ system itself. So if we look at genetics that are related to diseases of the pancreas, we often see that those genes come from the pancreas.

• 11:11Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  For looking at diseases that affect the kidneys, we often see that those genes that tend to be associated with kidney disease come from the kidneys. For weight gain or obesity, those genes aren't coming from adipose tissue, they're coming from the brain.

• 11:28Abbey Sharp?

  Right. That's so interesting.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  So we know that the brain plays a huge role in our likelihood to gain weight. It's the, the largest genetic component that influences somebody's propensity to be at a higher body weight or be in a larger body. So the brain plays a large role and it's not just that these people might be hungrier.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  It's also that certain people might be more likely to emotionally eat. They may be more prone to using eating as a coping mechanism. And I think it's really important that we're aware of this so that we're working with the brain and we're taking into account other lifestyle factors like stress and sleep, for example. Whenever we're discussing the topic of waking or loss, because it's not just only about food and and exercise.

• 12:28Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And I kind of, you know, I often think about this like delicate dance, right? And creating enough of a calorie deficit to see weight loss, but not so great that you start to see all these compensatory mechanisms kick into high gear. And before we kind of dive into that a little bit further, I'm sure everybody wants to know, like, what is an appropriate calorie deficit to kind of be safe, prevent those, like those, those compensatory mechanisms from kicking into high gear?

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Well, the deeper the deficit, the higher those compensatory mechanisms will typically be.

• 13:04Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  That doesn't mean that if you go too deep into a deficit, that you're not going to lose weight and then by increasing your caloric intake, you lose weight. Now, some people have had that experience. We don't actually have the science to support that. So I would suggest that it's more likely that they are increasing their intake to a deficit that is easier for them to maintain.

• 13:32Abbey Sharp?

  Sure.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Especially given the compensatory mechanisms that affect appetite.

• 13:38Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  So the deeper the deficit, the harder it is going to be to maintain. And when you're asking about an appropriate rate, I can, I can put a number on it. It's about 20% that somebody should be in a deficit to lose about 1%, 0.5 to 1.5%. I usually say right around 1% of their body weight each week is what we're targeting. And that's, that's only one of the reasons is to help to keep these adaptations at bay, keep them manageable, but also muscle mass. It helps to preserve muscle mass. The faster the rate of weight loss, beyond that, the more at risk you are of losing lean mass. We don't want to trade.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  One solving one metabolic health issue for creating another one.

• 14:27Abbey Sharp?

  Correct, yeah.

• 14:43Abbey Sharp?

  And I feel like this is a good segue because I do want to talk more about metabolism. And, you know, I feel like for decades, we've been obsessed with the idea of metabolism and how to prevent it from slowing down and how to speed it up and all these hacks and supplements and meal plans and, you know, diet culture has basically turned the word metabolism to mean, how many calories can you burn or like, how many calories can you eat now versus what you could eat when you were in high school? But I love how you describe metabolism because it's so much more than that. Can you just kind of give us like a quick, what is, what is metabolism in your words? Like, what does that encompass?

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Well, metabolism encompasses everything from the digestion, utilization, excretion of nutrients. So encompasses a lot and there's a lot more to metabolism than just calories. I know that that's what the lay public thinks of when they hear the word metabolism is they think burning calories and that's one aspect. One thing we have to keep in mind when we're considering metabolism in that way being our, our metabolic rate and in particular, our resting metabolic rate is if we go even deeper, what many people are referring to and they're thinking of increasing their metabolism or if they feel like their metabolism is slow, they're usually referring to the resting metabolic

• 16:00Speaker 03

  rate, which for many people, that's like 60% or more of their total daily caloric expenditure. So it is the largest piece of the pie. And what I say is that we have to keep in mind that this isn't just a burning fire for no reason.

• 16:16Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, for sure.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  It's not just they're burning things off, throwing logs on the fire because.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Of whatever, it's not, not for no reason. It's, it's, it's actually, it's literally our organs functioning.

• 16:31Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  So if somebody actually has a slow metabolism, then oftentimes we're seeing that show up in certain ways. We are seeing that organ systems are not functioning to the level that they should be. For example, women often lose their periods.

• 16:50Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Men will have low testosterone. If we have the opportunity in a lab, like what the type of research that we used to do, the lab that I came from, we'll see that muscle protein turnover is a lot slower. So we're not, we don't have the capacity to build. We don't have the capacity to repair and recover muscle as well. Same thing has been found in bone. Also digestive issues often come up. We often see that there's slower motility, which can cause things like gas, bloating, constipation. So if metabolism is lower, it's usually showing, showing up in some other way affecting our organ systems.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Cause that's really what our resting metabolism is. It's our organs functioning.

• 17:39Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no, and I, I love that you can, you've explained that because people just basically completely skip over the fact that that is, it, it's so much more important than just like, how many slices of pizza can you eat without gaining weight? Which is basically what diet culture has taught us metabolism means. And is there anything realistically that actually works to quote, quote, boost metabolism, or at least prevent metabolic declines while losing weight?

• 18:04Speaker 03

  The best thing you can do is to maintain your muscle mass.

• 18:08Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, for sure.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  And people don't give that enough credit.

• 18:11Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Because it's often said that a pound of muscle mass only.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Only adds, if you add a pound of muscle mass, you're expending six more calories per day.

• 18:23Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  And people go, that's not very much. Why even bother? Well, that's resting metabolism, like we were talking about before.

• 18:33Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  But we move throughout the day and every movement we make costs more when we have larger muscles. So now we're talking thirty to perhaps as much as fifty calories per day, per pound of muscle mass that we maintain or gain.

• 18:55Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Compared to if we don't consider exercise, especially resistance exercise when losing weight, and then we're at a far greater risk of losing muscle mass with that. So that's the number one thing, I would say, to maintain our metabolism and our caloric expenditure during that time. And of course, it has many other benefits too.

• 19:16Abbey Sharp?

  Of course. Yeah. So obviously putting in the time, strength training is very important. Getting an adequate protein, especially because protein, you know, expends more calories during digestion as well and is super saturated and helps support that muscle mass. So yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Lots of reasons.

• 19:33Abbey Sharp?

  Lots of reasons, very important all stages of life, but especially if you're in a calorie deficit because you are more at risk of cutting into your muscle mass. So yeah. Now, for women especially, you know, I feel like discussions around metabolism often go hand in hand with discussions around hormones. And if you look online, like there are so many people claiming you can quote, quote, "reset your hormones." And if you do that, you'll just drop the weight. First of all, for women specifically, what kind of impact are we talking when it comes to weight loss resistance from hormones?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  I can't even put a number on that. I don't know if a number exists.

• 20:13Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  But it's not something that for the vast majority of people is what the main barrier is to their weight loss.

• 20:22Abbey Sharp?

  Totally.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  And even in that sense, even if if hormones are influencing their likelihood of losing weight or not, it still is impacting one of the sides of that equation. It's either reducing expenditure or in most cases with any impact on hormones or impacts of drugs. When we see that drugs lead to weight gain or make it more difficult to lose weight. It's affecting appetite. So we're still working with the the the same drivers of this equation to produce that result that people are aiming for.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  In most cases, it's actually that weight loss will improve hormone levels, especially for women, because adipose tissue can synthesize, it creates estrogen. And excess adipose tissue can lead to excess estrogen levels. And that increases risk of certain diseases and certain types of cancer. So by losing weight, they can correct their hormone levels. So it usually works in that direction rather than the other.

• 21:33Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Now, there are certain things that we can still do to influence your hormone levels without weight loss.

• 21:41Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  But at the end of the day, an overall nutritious diet, lo and behold, as with almost every condition, is going to produce the best results. So we see that that helps to regulate hormone levels. We see that if somebody is deficient in something, if they're deficient in a nutrient, then that can help to correct hormone levels.

• 22:01Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Not exercising will influence hormone levels. Increasing exercise from when someone who is deficient, as I like to call it, deficient in exercise, that can influence hormone levels. We do know that certain compounds for women, like phytoestrogens from soy primarily, also lignans found in primarily flaxseed. That can actually have a pretty pronounced impact on hormone levels because these compounds look like estrogen. They don't act entirely like estrogen. The effect is overwhelmingly positive for the receptors that they do act on. But they can lead to the body producing less estrogen if it is producing too much.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  So we help, we see that some of these compounds can help regulate that. So to summarize that, it's not that there's nothing we can do about sex hormones without weight loss.

• 22:54Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  It's typically not the hormones that are the primary barrier to losing weight, but losing weight can influence the hormones.

• 23:03Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, that's so interesting because of course, like diet culture has sold it to us the other way, that there's a diet to solve the hormones. And you know, you, you see always these quote unquote hormone reset programs making the rounds. And every single time I see one, I think this is such a red flag because what hormones do you even mean? There's like, there are so many different hormones at play and no one food or supplement is going to magically adjust all of them. So yeah, I think that that's something to be mindful of is that there is no one size fits all protocol that's going to kind of put all the hormones into play. If there's a specific hormone that needs adjusting for whatever reason, menopause and you know,

• 23:45Abbey Sharp?

  hypothyroidism, like, you know, there's different points of our lives or stages of life that we come into different hormonal challenges, but there's no one food that's going to just like put them all into place.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 23:58Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, like you mentioned, like hormones are not necessarily the reason holding women back from losing weight. What is the biggest challenge that you typically see from a lot of women? If it's not hormones, if it's not slowed metabolism.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Well, I'll come back to something that's not my opinion from the data that we have today, which is a lot, there's a ton of it. It's demonstrating that it's appetite, not expenditure that we should be focused on. That's what I call a red herring. It's intake that is the main driver of our body weight.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  And if we're aiming to lose weight, then we need to target that side of the equation. Of course, I'm not saying skip exercise. That's incredibly important for health and it still benefits us. By far the biggest lever that you can pull when aiming for weight loss. Because if we don't take that into account, then just boosting our caloric expenditure is just going to drive up appetite. And of course, well, what do you do with that?

• 25:00Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  So the next thing that we see that is primarily driving somebody's consumption of calories. And it's not the only thing. I want to make that clear, but it is the largest piece of this puzzle is the caloric density of foods. So choosing foods that are very calorically dense. And then we can go deeper than that. Okay.

• 25:22Abbey Sharp?

  And Eric, before we do, just so everyone's clear, what does calorie density mean? Like, what is a high calorie density versus low calorie density? What are we talking about?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  It is really, it's a math equation. It's calories per gram of food.

• 25:38Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  And to put that in a way that is a little bit more tangible for people. It's heavier, more voluminous foods that have lower caloric content. And in most cases, the reciprocal of that is the nutrient density.

• 25:55Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  And I actually prefer to talk about that. You know, my philosophy around this, right? Like being more nourishing and approaching certain aspects of nutrition rather than avoidance. But essentially, the caloric density is how much weight, how much volume of food do we have per calorie? Because then you feel more full for less. And we have seen, especially in very recent studies, people want to check it out. There's one that was just published this year in the journal Appetite 2024 by Finlay. Shows that people eat a similar weight of food at meals.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  So if we fill that weight with very calorically dense items like oils and creams and sugar, then we're going to eat a much higher caloric intake. Whereas if we fill that weight with low caloric density foods like vegetables and whole grains and starchy vegetables and lean proteins, then we're going to eat, again, similar weight, similar amount, yet less calories. So we see that that is the primary driver. Again, not the only piece of the puzzle, but the largest one that we know now. And then, then we need to look at, this is going to be different for everyone. Why are people making those choices for higher caloric density foods? If that is the issue, okay?

• 27:22Speaker 03

  And that can be stress. That can be their balance of eating across the day. For some reason, it has become common for women especially to feel that an appropriate breakfast is something like a bagel. And then an appropriate lunch is something like a chicken salad with a light dressing on it. And they've eaten like, you know, 300 calories. And I might not say that to them, but it's something that I'm thinking in my mind.

• 27:53Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  They've eaten a very small amount. And whenever I hear people and they're taking me through their dietary recall, like they're taking me through what they eat in a typical day, say that, I'm like, okay, well, their body's going to want a lot more later.

• 28:06Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Because like you were talking about before, if we enter too deep into a deficit, we're going to see that appetite just skyrocket.

• 28:12Abbey Sharp?

  Rebound.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  So we often see, we see those cravings coming in the afternoon. We see them coming in in the evening time. It's contributing to stress. So if we can balance their intake across the day, if we can have a more balanced breakfast with some protein in there, it's a bit more fiber. We can have that balanced lunch with maybe adding some high quality carbs to that salad, like some sweet potato or squash or quinoa. Then we can often mitigate those cravings and even the stress response later in the day. Because we know that. Not eating enough does cause an increase in cortisol. Yeah, it contributes to stress.

• 28:51Abbey Sharp?

  Oh yeah, it all plays in. And yeah, especially because you know, there's been like this longstanding myth that if you eat after 6pm, you're going to instantly get a store as fat. That's not true, but if you're basically starving yourself all day only to kind of binge or overeat at night when you are tired. So you're not necessarily in the mood to like cook a healthy snack. You're going to go for the chips and the, and the, and the ice cream and the comfort foods and things like that in an effort to quickly make up for lost calories. So yeah, I feel like that is such a, such a common trap that so many women fall into because they're trying to be quote, quote, good all day, only for their bodies to be like, um, I'm still hungry, so I'm going to need to eat now.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  Right. I'm listening to what you're saying and it's very common that someone would mention that they're, they're tired at the end of the day, they're strapped for time. Okay. That's another reason for your food choices.

• 29:50Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  And if we can make things more timely and convenient for you, then we can make it more likely that you're going to make nutritious choices. There are those options out there that can be timely and convenient and still nutritious.

• 30:04Abbey Sharp?

  I know, like it could be a rotisserie chicken and bagged salad.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Totally. Yeah. You gave a great example there. That's exactly what I'm talking about is, is making sure that we're pausing, we're reflecting. Why are people making these choices? Okay. We can look back at the beginning of the day and we see that it's not balanced. We can also look at what they're experiencing. They're choosing foods that are timely and convenient, and they're trying to meet the preferences of the family. Let's work with that. Let's not ignore that and just say, well, I'm just going to start cooking more from home and I'm going to start meal prepping and I'm going to make sure that I'm, I'm always having these foods that, that take an hour to cook. No, that's probably not realistic. Let's look at the reason you're currently making your current choices and work with that to make it as easy as possible.

• 30:53Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, I often find like, you know, we have a tendency to go too hard, too fast, and it always backfires, right? Like, you know, it's the New Year's resolution kind of, kind of situation where we, we have, we come in with these really good, hard intentions. We're gonna eat quote-unquote "clean" every day. We're gonna go on a juice fast. We're gonna go Berry's Bootcamp every single day. And like, that just, it's a lot. And so 99.9% of the time, you just can't keep that up. So I, I think that, you know, your, this, this idea of, of understanding the barriers is very important, and addressing those barriers in like a gentle, stepwise manner. Really important.

• 31:49Abbey Sharp?

  And another thing that you kind of brought up briefly is this nourishing mindset. And I know we, we share a similar approach on this. Can you tell me about what that is and, and how it can support weight loss without kind of strict calorie counting, especially for my folks who are listening, who have disordered eating histories, but who maybe are now in a place where they do want to lose weight?

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Have you brought that up? It's just so important to me, especially for those who have had issues with their relationship with food in the past. But I would say for everyone, it's something that we should be aiming for, because it doesn't come to us naturally. It's a natural human inclination to think of what to avoid. We have a natural threat bias, or a negativity bias. This is why negative news does so well. This is why, evolutionarily, if we consider it, if we're heading towards our family and friends into this area that looks like a lot of fun, there's this nice food there, but then out of the corner of your eye, you see a saber-toothed tiger, you're not thinking about that fun experience that you're headed towards. You're just thinking about the threat that you see.

• 32:56Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  So this has an evolutionary basis that we tend to think of what's going to harm us. What is the thing that I should avoid? When somebody is aiming for a goal and they're going to change their nutrition, that's what I often see is their first thinking about what do I cut out? I gotta avoid sugar. I gotta not go to restaurants anymore.

• 33:16Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  No more carbohydrates, no more junk food.

• 33:19Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Well, what do you replace that with?

• 33:21Abbey Sharp?

  Yep.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Because if one thing leaves our diet, something else is gonna fall in.

• 33:27Abbey Sharp?

  Totally.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  And the opposite is also true, which makes research difficult, but it's very helpful in practice that if you add something in, oftentimes other things fall out. I just told you that we eat a similar amount of weight of food each day.

• 33:43Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  So if we fill that weight with more nourishing foods that are supportive of our goals, in most cases, vast majority, those ones that aren't so supportive fall out. So this nourishing mindset, rather than the restrictive mindset, is setting goals around pursuing consuming more of these nutrient-dense, filling foods rather than avoiding other foods.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  So if we focus on that, it often has the exact same outcome, yet it's far better for our relationship with food. It helps manage appetite much more effectively, which is incredibly important for the sustainability of that approach and of weight loss after we lose it. And it's way less stressful. So we have to fight that natural inclination.

• 34:35Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. A hundred percent. And it's really the backbone of, as you know, of my trademark hunger crushing combo framework. It's, it's really all about getting you out of that scarcity mentality, which tends to just kind of perpetuate this restrict binge cycle that, you know, that makes staying in a calorie deficit long-term to be able to kind of manage your weight very, very, very hard because you're constantly thinking about what food it is that you can't have. What is the forbidden food? You just, you know, you put it too high up on a pedestal. So yes, it really does help to basically when you're adding in these hunger crushing compounds, what I call, you know, fiber, protein, healthy fats, you're just naturally going to edge

• 35:17Abbey Sharp?

  out some of those less satiating foods that, you know, are less nutritious and, and but without kind of getting into that scarcity mentality where you're like

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 35:26Abbey Sharp?

  pining for them because you know, you can have them really just kind of puts all foods on a neutral playing field. And so like I always say, you know, foods may be not nutritionally equal, but we can make them morally equal. And that is really important for helping us kind of to be able to maintain some of these diet changes.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that.

• 35:47Abbey Sharp?

  And so, okay, I just want to hop back to, to weight loss for a second because, you know, we've been talking about when you're trying to lose weight, how not have to do so with calorie counting, which you and I agree is like for, for most people, that's, that's the key. That's, that's really like really helpful for a lot of people to maintain their, their relationship with food, et cetera. But still, a ton of folks, and I'm sure you see a lot of them in your practice, um, want to track calories, calories in, calories out, it's the math equation. They want to know, do you need to track calories to lose?

• 36:20Speaker 03

  It's a complicated answer. The, the, the answer, the short answer is no. There are other ways to do it. And I, I say this in almost every context of weight loss, but especially with tracking, the vast majority of people, almost all of the listeners should not do it on their own because there are too many limitations. I already went over how it's so hard to know exactly how much we're consuming and apps are inaccurate. And we have to understand these limitations. It's a powerful tool. I will admit that. I don't love it. I don't love that

• 37:01Speaker 03

  tracking is a powerful tool, but it is, but only if we have a very good understanding of the limitations. If somebody is first starting their journey, they can often make significant progress with just those swaps that I mentioned, swapping some lower nutrient density, higher caloric density foods for those that are higher nutrient density, lower in caloric density. For example, white rice. I know this one off the top of my head, about 150 calories per cup. You swap that for wild rice, 100 calories per cup. That means you can have the exact same amount of rice on your plate,

• 37:43Speaker 03

  but you're consuming less calories, more fiber and more nutrients. If we can make other swaps like that all throughout the day, those things really add up, can lead to that natural deficit. People are feeling a lot better, great for other aspects of health and muscle gain. And we can make significant progress. Oftentimes, for most people, as we see in the literature as well, that will plateau around five to 10% weight loss. And if that's what somebody is aiming for, then great, that's all you need to do. Let's take the easiest approach we can possible and not get into things like the time and energy consuming nature of tracking. However, if somebody wants to go beyond that,

• 38:26Speaker 03

  many people will require some type of approach like tracking to then get a handle, to get control over their caloric intake. And we do have to be careful because there is that risk to their relationship with food, something I'm extremely mindful of as a provider. And we still need to couple that with the food choices so that we're effectively managing appetite while getting control over their caloric intake. And if you'd like to get into how we set that, how we go about setting those caloric targets, because it's not the ones in MyFitnessPal. I'll tell you that, not the targets that the app sets.

• 39:04Abbey Sharp?

  Which are are real estimations, if we even want to call them that. But they do not represent your actual truths.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Because MyFitnessPal and other tracking apps, don't want to just pick on them, aren't an actual accurate reflection of how many calories you are truly eating.

• 39:21Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Then we can't rely on the targets it sets either.

• 39:24Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no, there's just, there's too many, too many pain points, too many, too many errors, areas of potential errors, like, you know, so I'm always myself, you know, hesitant to recommend like strict calorie counting, counting every calorie, because 10 calories on paper or 10 calories on MyFitnessPal. My fitness app, uh, my fitness pal or whatever could actually be like three or five calories or 15 calories depending on a myriad of factors. And when you just like add up all of those mini errors like, and you're not listening to your body because you're just solely going by the numbers that you've been given. You know, you're setting yourself, you're not setting yourself up for success in any kind of way. In fact, you, you might set yourself in the opposite direction.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  One thing I'd like to add to that too, is that's a really good point. We don't have to go from zero all the way to a hundred. But the area that I actually probably start somebody tracking. If we're just doing a few meals, which can be the next step that we need to take to get them to the next, next level of their progress are probably those meals that are going to bring up the greatest challenges or where we need to bring the most awareness to such as restaurants. If they're eating at restaurants very frequently, if they find themselves snacking in the evening time. Well, that's the time that I actually want to just have them click in. And what I mean by that is that when they're in my office, there's a certain version of them that I'm getting.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  I'm getting that motivated person that's highly aware and reflective and really wants to accomplish this goal. But I know when they're tired and stressed or distracted with friends, that's a different version of that person. But if we can just have them not restrict, not necessarily say that they can't do those things or can't have as much food during those times. But if we can just have them track those meals or those snacks, then that, that brings in that level of awareness. That still allows them to enjoy that experience, but just the mindfulness aspect alone and us learning more from that, from having the data can be enough to get us to that next step

• 41:34Speaker 03

  where we don't have to necessarily track every single calorie and get out of food scale.

• 41:39Abbey Sharp?

  Right, totally. And I think, you know, we, at least we see this a lot with women too, is the patterns around those kinds of meals. Did they starve themselves all day so that they could have this quote unquote cheat meal or go out with the girls or whatever? You know, that is also, you know, play into how many calories and what kind of foods choices they're making when they do eat out that off their kind of eating routine. So all, I think that's all really important data to have. And it doesn't even necessarily mean to mean that you're counting every calorie, but that you're just kind of keeping yourself aware of the patterns here that may be contributing or holding you back. So yeah. You said something to me the other day, and I would love if we could share what you said,

• 42:24Abbey Sharp?

  because you said, "Weight loss is so inaccessible." And I feel this so hard, and I'm sure so many of my listeners right now can identify with this. Can you explain what you, what you meant by that?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. I don't want this to come across as discouraging. It's just a reality that you can actually make a case, first of all, based on data, that your risk of developing a poor relationship with food or disordered eating is greater than your odds of losing weight when you attempt weight loss. And calorie balance is so complicated, and all of the behaviors and emotions and those moving pieces that we just discussed, it is more difficult than a lot of people give it credit for. And because of that risk, because of that health risk, particularly for our mental health, the vast, vast, vast majority of people are not going to be able to do it on their own. There is a community-based study where they asked

• 43:22Speaker 03

  people, "What are your intentions for this year?" And those who responded with either losing weight or maintaining weight, they followed them. And at the follow-up, only 5% were able to actually accomplish what they set out to do. That's what I mean by, "It's unfortunately inaccessible," because you either require the help of a professional, which can be costly, or you have to have a good job that gives you insurance for- Professional that knows what they're talking about. Or you have to be able to afford the, the new drugs. And of course, that's like a whole other conversation that comes with its own risks as well.

• 43:59Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no, it's really refreshing to hear that from a dietitian. And I think a lot of folks will feel validated by that. You know, especially coming from someone who specializes in weight loss because, you know, so many influencers have gaslit us into believing that, oh, if you just make this one swap, you cut out this one food, which is usually sugar or you, you know, then the weight will just melt off. It's easy. If you buy my program, you can do it too. And it's so simple. But like you said, it's actually so complicated and it's so complicated to do it safely. And in a way that's going to, you know, give those, those long lasting results without

• 44:37Abbey Sharp?

  the risk of harm, or at least without the exorbitant risk of harm that we would see from what a lot of influencers are promoting. So I think a lot of listeners will really appreciate that. You've got two dietitians here just validating that real life struggle. So, but thank you so much, Eric. I always learn so much when we chat and I really appreciate it. And I know you only take a few nutrition counseling clients on at a time, but I will be leaving some links below to your social media and where people can get in touch with you if they are looking for that one-on-one support. So amazing. Thank you.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  I would really appreciate that. And I always enjoy our discussions, Abbey. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

• 45:22Abbey Sharp?

  Such a helpful conversation, especially this time of year when weight loss talk is really at an all time high. But I think the big takeaway here is that despite what the TikTok weight loss coaches may lead you to believe, weight loss has far less to do with the minute details of specific foods or supplements or times to eat than it does with the patterns that you weave into your life as effortlessly as possible. And this is really why adopting an additive nourishing mindset is so, so key.

• 45:59Abbey Sharp?

  Eric and my discussion about the nourishing mindset really echoed what we were talking about in my solo episode the other week about my signature framework, the Hunger Crushing Combo. In case you missed it, I highly recommend heading back for the full scoop, but in short, this is an additive gentle nutrition framework designed to serve as an evidence-based alternative to all the rigid rules that have failed you in the past. Rather than focusing on a laundry list of things that you need to remove from your diet, it shifts the focus onto what we can add, namely our Hunger Crushing Compounds, fiber, protein, and healthy fats.

• 46:40Abbey Sharp?

  Each of these components come built in with a unique list of benefits for blood sugar management, satiety, metabolic health, and general nutrition that gives them a massive edge over what I call naked carbs, AKA the candy, cakes, pastries, and refined grains that may provide a lot of pleasure and fun, but not a ton of nutrition or staying power. While the Hunger Crushing Combo is not a weight loss diet per se, the framework can absolutely be applied to weight loss goals with a ton of success, because what it does is encourage you to let go of the all-or-nothing thinking about food.

• 47:22Abbey Sharp?

  The idea is not to tell yourself you're never ever eating sugar again. As we know, that sends us immediately into scarcity mentality, which then triggers a binge, rinse, and repeat. But rather, we want to dress up our naked carbs with foods that keep us fuller longer. That is fiber, protein, and healthy fats. The key here is that we are adding foods to our meals and snacks that satisfy our physical and emotional needs, helping to quiet the food noise that robs us of our full life. And you might be thinking, "Well, Abbey, if I'm just adding foods, won't I be adding calories and therefore gaining weight?"

• 48:04Abbey Sharp?

  I mean, sure, that might be the case if you were only adding naked carbs to naked carbs, because you're not going to be experiencing that sense of fullness. But fiber, protein, and fats are physiologically supersatiating. So when we add hunger crushing compounds, we naturally edge out some of the less satiating naked carbs, which then can help us effortlessly create a calorie deficit. Thinking about food from a perspective of abundance rather than restriction also prevents us from spiraling into scarcity mentality that then fuels cravings and interferes with our ability to respond to our innate fullness cues.

• 48:47Abbey Sharp?

  I want to give you some examples of what this looks like in real life. Say you love sugary cereal and the cardboard brand stuff just will not do. If you were to have a huge bowl of Lucky Charms and like some almond milk, you are going to be hungry again in like an hour and looking for the communal donuts in the staff room. But rather than swearing off Lucky Charms for life, why not dress them up with hunger crushing compounds? Maybe start with a cup of Greek yogurt for protein, add a cup of berries for fiber, a tablespoon of hemp carrots for healthy fats,

• 49:28Abbey Sharp?

  and then add a handful of Lucky Charms on top for sweetness and crunch. Now you've got a meal that helps you feel full until lunch without the blood sugar crash and hanger that makes staying in a calorie deficit incredibly hard. And you've satisfied that craving for rainbow marshmallows. Win-win. As homework for this week, I want you to think about the foods that you really love that you've tried to cut out completely during one or more of your weight loss diet stints. It probably didn't last long, you probably gained the weight back, and you were probably miserable in the process. Now, I want you to think about how you could approach those naked carbs

• 50:10Abbey Sharp?

  from a place of abundance by dressing them up with hunger crushing compounds instead.

• 50:17Abbey Sharp?

  Maybe you're gonna add some chicken and veggies to your white pasta dinner, or you're gonna load up your bagel with turkey and avocado, rather than just eating it with a thin smear of cream cheese. This is a framework that has helped countless fans and followers make positive changes that they can sustain long term. And of course, I love seeing how you incorporate the Hunger Crush and combo in your life. So please feel free to take a picture of your favorite HCC and tag me at Abbey's Kitchen on social media if you choose to share. And on that note, that is all that I have for you guys today. Another big thank you to Eric Williamson for joining me today

• 50:58Abbey Sharp?

  and helping me fight back against the endless stream of weight loss misinformation. And folks, please don't forget to leave the podcast a review and share it with family and friends. As a new podcast, it really does help me get the word out so that I can bring on the best guests and bring you the most engaging content. Signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.