Episode 17: Dr. Clyde Wilson on How to Be Your Own Nutritional Engineer
Metabolic nutrition series
Clyde Wilson, PhD
Sessions Title
1 Caloric timing: fasting versus caloric restriction
2 Nutrient timing: it’s not just about calories
3 Nourishment: how food quality elevates metabolism
4 Nutrition Engineering: refining your personalized program
SESSION 1
CALORIC TIMING: fasting versus caloric restriction
WHAT WE WILL COVER: Using a simple estimate of hourly metabolic rate, this webinar will show you how to easily estimate when and how much you should eat, enabling a targeted, informed strategy for eating versus not eating.
BACKGROUND: Aesthetics, fitness, mobility, and disease prevention have made weight loss a widespread goal. The obesity epidemic continues unabated in spite of intensive effort, characterized mainly by caloric and macronutrient manipulation, and most recently caloric timing i.e. fasting. Fasting provides theoretical benefits for type-2 diabetes and weight loss [1], but no conclusive benefit over caloric restriction in humans [2,3] and can reduce lean mass by as much as 27% in 12 weeks [4]. Our body compensates for caloric deficits by reducing its metabolic rate regardless of diet type [5], making the personalized diet that inhibits a loss in metabolism for an individual the most sustainably successful. In athletes, who can have large calorie deficits within their body due to hard workouts, both metabolic rate and physiological function are compromised when deficits are only a quarter of their resting metabolic rate for a few hours [6,7]. Using a simple estimate of hourly metabolic rate, this webinar will show you how to easily estimate when and how much you should eat, enabling a targeted, informed strategy for eating versus not eating.
Scientific links
1. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6416/770
2. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/10/2442/htm
3. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11892-020-1295-2
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5371748/
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2012109
6. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13030
7. https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijsnem/28/4/article-p419.xml
SESSION 2
NUTRIENT TIMING: it’s not just about calories
WHAT WE WILL COVER: In the previous webinar you learned how to estimate when and how much you should eat. In this webinar you will learn how much of much of each macronutrient you should eat to protect your metabolic rate.
BACKGROUND: Cortisol and adrenaline are routinely highest in our body as a natural part of waking up from sleep, and in response to exercise. This natural fight-or-flight response to waking and exercise inhibits hunger perception, for many to the point of a complete loss of appetite. For those looking to reduce Caloric intake, it seems to make the most sense to avoid eating when you do not want to eat, and eat when you do want to eat. Unfortunately, the rest-and-digest response to increase feeding is when we need nutrients the least, as we relax into the end of our work day and then again relax into the end of our waking day i.e. mid-afternoon and late evening. Eating earlier “like a king” and later “like a pauper” comes down to us from the Middle Ages and is in direct conflict with the typical intermittent fasting patterns practiced intentionally and unintentionally in modern society. In this webinar we take no stance on when we should eat the majority of our Calories, but rather on what minimum amounts of key nutrients protect our lean tissue to drive metabolic rate for long-term weight-loss and physiological (functional, healing, fitness) success. Those asking the question about how they should eat to achieve their goals are likely candidates for change being difficult since their current eating is apparently insufficient and possibly contributing to the opposite of their goals e.g. disease risk. The obesity paradox that cardiovascular disease is higher in individuals not simply from higher body fat but from lower muscle mass [1,2] is paralleled in low muscle mass likely playing a key role in diabetes [3] and other metabolic disease risks. Minimizing change so as to maintain a sustainable program, while creating sufficient change to achieve physiological goals, requires replacing over-simplified targets such as “eat breakfast” with the more specific target of protecting lean tissue (PLT). PLT is not best achieved by necessarily eating equally healthy with even calories throughout the day, but rather maintaining blood sugar, blood protein and hydration levels evenly throughout the day, which can be mostly achieved with small snacks instead of meals most of time as best fits someone’s schedule and appetite patterns. While protein needs are higher to protect lean tissue during weight loss [4], it is more the even availability of amino acids through the day that determines amino acid availability for healing and growth [5,6]. Likewise, independent of weight loss, metabolic disease risk is curbed by having an even blood sugar, not simply by eliminating carbohydrates but rather eating them together with vegetables or a mixture of other foods instead of snacking or feeding on carbs by themselves [7,8]. Since hydration status strongly influences both the digestion of nutrients as well as systemic inflammation levels, these observations beg the question as to how much water, protein and carbohydrate we should be eating at the times that best work for us to eat a snack (if not a meal) in order to protect (or grow/heal) lean tissue i.e. PLT. Going beyond PLT in the future webinar next week, we will shift gears to dietary fats and vegetables to nourish your body and how that directly contributes to metabolic rate.
Scientific links
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033062018301300
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3496010/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881330/
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261561415000746
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899900704001005
6. https://www.karger.com/Article/PDF/12817
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3882489/
8. https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/6449539
SESSION 3
NOURISHMENT: how food quality elevates metabolism and immunity
WHAT WE WILL COVER: In the previous webinars you learned how to estimate when and how much you should eat to protect your metabolic rate. In this webinar you will learn how to take your nutrition to the next level: nourishment is more about the quality of your food, particularly with respect to unsaturated fats and vegetables.
BACKGROUND: In the previous webinars you learned how to determine when to eat and food portions. In this webinar you will learn what aspects of food quality matter and which do not so you know how to nourish your body. Nourishment takes your nutrition beyond just making your body functional, transitioning your state from being merely healthy (slowing disease risk) to being well (curbing disease risk). Our immunity benefits from not eating (1st webinar), eating (2nd webinar) and nourishment (this webinar); it is the balance between these that is best. The trick is knowing how to manage these to harvest the greatest benefits and least detriments. Aging [1] and comorbidities (including hypertension and type 2 diabetes) [2] are correlated to increased COVID-19 symptoms, likely in part due to immunosenescence i.e. the natural aging of the immune system. With elevated and/or accumulated stimulation over time our immune system function changes, including a slower recognition of new threats [3] and potentially elevated positive responses to nutritional interventions, in particular by avoiding T-cell death by maintaining their fuel reserves [4,5] by maintaining a consistently sufficient and stable blood sugar (neither low, high, or highly-processed carbohydrate). It is therefore timely to re-evaluate how well our nutrition [6], exercise [7] and other lifestyle factors might be supporting our immune strength. Nutrition for immune system support is not as well defined as popularly believed, but is known to interact strongly with our gut microbiota and therefore the quality of our diet, how much we eat, and specific dietary components (fiber, anti-oxidants, polyunsaturated fats, and hydration) play significant roles. We will overview how these factors can be managed.
Scientific links:
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930566-3
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220301363
https://jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1189/jlb.3RI0716-335R
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/875a/b06bfee69fe17eaa19199bd4bdde2a456392.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karsten_Krueger/publication/339775058_Can_exercise_affect_immune_function_to_increase_susceptibility_to_infection/links/5e66ad0fa6fdcc37dd15c30e/Can-exercise-affect-immune-function-to-increase-susceptibility-to-infection.pdf
SESSION 4
NUTRITION ENGINEERING: refining your personalized program
WHAT WE WILL COVER: In the previous webinars you learned how to design the core elements of your diet, but succeeding in the long term demands the flexibility of creating meal and snack options targeting multiple personal goals.
BACKGROUND: This session will be designed based on the dynamic discussions in the previous sessions. This will include snack design, how to push dieting benefits to their maximum, and how to manage unhealthy meals. Examples of nutrition programs with extreme eating frequencies (once versus a few versus a dozen feedings per day), caloric manipulation (restriction, fasting), and macronutrient manipulation (low-fat/carb/protein, Mediterranean, ketosis diets etc.) will be contrasted to help anyone follow any path they feel most comfortable with.