Episode 181 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition's "We Do Science" podcast! In this episode, I (Laurent Bannock) discuss "Flexible Dieting" with Alan Aragon MS (California State University, USA).
Discussion Topics Include:
Key Paper(s) Discussed / Referred to:
Related Podcast Episodes:
Check out our other podcasts, publications, events, and professional education programs for current and aspiring sports nutritionists at www.TheIOPN.com and follow our social media outputs via @TheIOPN
Episode 181 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition's "We Do Science" podcast! In this episode, I (Laurent Bannock) discuss "Flexible Dieting" with Alan Aragon MS (California State University, USA).
Discussion Topics Include:
Key Paper(s) Discussed / Referred to:
Related Podcast Episodes:
Check out our other podcasts, publications, events, and professional education programs for current and aspiring sports nutritionists at www.TheIOPN.com and follow our social media outputs via @TheIOPN
EPISODE 181
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LB: Welcome to Episode 181 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition’s We Do Science Podcast. I am the host, Laurent Bannock. Today, my guest was Alan Aragon, who, of course, has been on this podcast quite a few times, as I mentioned, when we get into the actual discussion, I say, of course, if this is your first time, or you're a recent listener to the podcast and welcome, of course. I know you'll be in for a treat. I encourage you to listen to our previous conversations over the years, where we've got into all sorts of topics, like diet and body composition and protein and all sorts of stuff.
It's always a good chat that I have with Alan, and today was no exception. We talked about the topic of flexible dieting. It's a really interesting area, as I think you'll also find. We talked about why people are so confused about what to eat, the difference between a rigid scientific perspective about something and how that may well be better translated into real-world context, with a degree of flexibility that takes into account individual needs and preferences for those that you're looking to apply your nutrition strategies to, but also the reality that there's a wide range of different factors that essentially boils down to, there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to achieve a result. Compliance is really what matters, enjoyment, longevity and the protocol, these sorts of things.
Obviously, there are occasions where that's not as important. There may be more acute term goals where you find a different strategy. Ultimately, as you know, my approach is always about looking at these tools in the toolbox, the proverbial toolbox, understanding the strengths and weaknesses, our strategies, and tackling those bodies of knowledge with a degree of critical thinking and context.
Anyway, you're going to get into that. We will get into dichotomous thinking. We talk about discretionary calories. We do talk a lot about the scientific method and issues of how that is approached, how that is translated. Of course, differences of opinions will come up, as has done in this conversation today. There are differences of opinions between experts, between leading practitioners and experts, and so on. But it all has value, and that's why I enjoy doing these podcasts.
Before you get to listen to the conversation I had with Alan flexible dieting, please go to our website at www.theiopn.com, where you can access our other podcast episodes, including notes, the book and the papers and so on that we talked about today. Whilst you there, check out our new, totally new version of our The IOPN diploma in sports nutrition. It's the latest version of what we do, very unique in its positioning in the educational market as an advanced level post-graduate level program, but entirely focused on the practice of sport and exercise nutrition.
You can learn about that program at our website. Also, all the other things that we're doing and there's going to be many more things that we do in the near future. Very excited to say, we've got a number of massive projects we're about to unleash upon you all. Let's not forget our software platform, SENPRO. That is there to help support you in your work with your individual clients, or group clients, teams, athletes, online group coaching, that sort of thing ,that fits in very well actually, with the approaches that we've discussed today, where individualization and coaching perhaps, is more important than rigidly adhering to numbers and logging things in apps ironically, since it's an app.
Anyway, I hope you get as much out of this conversation, all about flexible dieting with Alan Aragon as I did. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:04:13] LB: Welcome back to the Institute OF Performance Nutrition’s We Do Science Podcast. I am very happy to bring back, probably. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Probably one of the most frequent guests I've had on this podcast, albeit it's been quite a few years since you were last here, Alan. But welcome back, Mr. Alan Aragon, your highness.
[0:04:36] AA: Laurent. Laurent, correctly this time. Man, it is so freaking wonderful to be back in so many years. It's really great to see you. Great to hear your voice, man.
[0:04:48] LB: Yeah. Well, you too, mate. I've known you for quite a long time. I've learned a lot from you over the years and I've even had the opportunity to collaborate with you as well. That's always been a pleasure. The topic we're going to get into today is a particularly interesting one. It's not an area that I've spent so much, well, especially in the last 10 years, so much of my life in elite pro sport, that sort of thing. I'm very interested in what's of interest to recreational athletes and bodybuilders and so on. That's why we've delved into various topics over the years. Although, a lot of what we've done in the past is just as relevant to elite pro athletes, as is today's topic, on the basis of something I mentioned a lot, which is, athletes, however, wish to define what athlete is, they're still human beings. There's still issues with how people interpret and translate information and combine that with their desires in life and their ease of influenced by the various things that exist in our complex, chaotic lives.
Anyway, before I extract as much as I can out of you, Alan, I just wanted to preface this, that folks that are listening might be able to tell that my voice is a bit weird. That's because I got COVID. It's probably no big news, because almost everyone's had COVID. This is the first time I've ever had COVID. It's only taken me almost three years, but there you go. Anyway, welcome back, Alan. Just for folks who may be new to the podcast and haven't yet caught up with the awesome chats that I've had before with yourself and a few double X with Brad Schoenfeld as well with yourself, maybe you could bring us up to date, sir, with what you're doing and what you're currently up to.
[0:06:31] AA: Right now, I'm doing pretty much exactly the same thing as I was doing several years back, which is just doing research collaborations, and then the other part is doing my own research review publication, and somehow fitting in, working with a handful of real people. The handful of real people, the client side of my career has shrank down significantly, ever since the research side, the research and education side really started blowing up.
With COVID dying down somewhat across the globe, the seminar and live speaking circuit has really lit up once again, and so that's an exciting thing. I'm trying to be a little bit more judicious about not filling up my calendar with too many things and going out of my mind, but it's a blessing to be able to be in, well, pretty high demand. I'm happy about that, man.
[0:07:32] LB: Well, it's an honor, Alan. I feel privileged to get you on here. I'm sorry that it's another Zoom conversation. I'm also fed up. I've done so many presentations, spoken at webinars and so on on Zoom. It's like, “Man, come on.” Anyway, it's interesting, because an important goal in this podcast is to access people that you wouldn't ordinarily be able to have these kinds of conversations with. Yet, we can still share this with lots of people, which in this case is a lot of sports nutritionists, dieticians, and researchers and so on.
These conversations aren't just meant to impact consumers of this information. It's also meant to impact the producers of information, people who are in the early stages of research and existing researchers. It's all very well conducting research. We'll get into this in a minute, because it's an interesting topic, about why people think the way they do about certain topics and how that's impacted by knowledge that exists, whether it's a journal, or Twitter, or wherever, it still comes back to where this stuff originates from. Obviously, also how it's translated.
That comes in many forms, like papers, podcasts, and so on, and books. Funnily enough, one of the reasons why I wanted to have this chat with you is because recently, you had published your latest book on flexible dieting. Now, I know you're very much into doing your peer reviewed publications. There's that heightened level of quality control that comes out with peer review and so on. Since I want to talk about this topic of flexible dieting, because it's so interesting, why did you want to do a book? Because I know how much time this must have taken. It's a huge project to bring out a book. What led to you publishing this book on this topic?
[0:09:32] AA: Well, to be perfectly frank and honest, I was asked to do the book by the publisher. They said, “Hey.” In conjunction with my friend, Brett Contreras. He was friends with the publisher. He let me know that they wanted me to write the book on flexible dieting. Brett essentially said, “Alan, you have to do this. Because if you don't agree to do this, they’re going to find one of your students to write the book on flexible dieting.” When I say one of my students, I'm talking about any one of the current crop of evidence-based figureheads, because they basically learn their stuff from me.
When Brett put it to me that way, I'm like, “Oh. Well, crap. Well, I have to write this book then.” I just took the opportunity to write an update of the evidence-based nutrition book that I've been needing to write for many, many years. Even though the book is titled Flexible Dieting, that's really a hook, or how do you call it these days?
[0:10:45] LB: A hook will do.
[0:10:47] AA: Yeah, a hook. It's just a clickbait. It's a clickbait title, because the book is about nutrition for improving body composition, so fat loss and muscle gain, as well as athletic performance, so strength and endurance. Inevitably, there's discussions about health and stuff like that peppered throughout the book, and how to put everything together. It's a mistitled book. I mean, people think they're going to get a book on how to count macros, or something like that. It's really not. It's really everything that I'm interested in with respect to nutrition. It's all non-clinical nutrition, basically.
[0:11:31] LB: Alan, I'm not for one minute going to suggest that you're a master artist, or your work, a Van Gogh, or Monet, or Rembrandt. I'm pretty sure that when people go to museums of modern art and national galleries of various source, they'll see a painting that's titled something and they'll wonder, how on earth did that artists come up with that title? Like you say, it’s a hook, isn’t it? It’s a hook. You're right. When I read the book, a number of things struck me. One of which is you absolutely tackle that topic, except that it's so much more than that topic.
The other thing that really struck me was something that not everyone's actually that good at. That is just generally, the ability to communicate information. I'm quite interested about this, because a lot of people, they love to get into science and start spouting out rocket science at different people potentially misread the audience. To me, sometimes having a little bit of knowledge, sometimes I think, well, they're trying to sound like they know what they're talking about. I can tell, they don't know what they're talking about. Yet, there's plenty of people that they'll be like, “Wow, he's so intelligent. He's got certain letters after his name. He's saying all these big words, but he clearly doesn't get it.”
I think it's the old adage, isn't it? If you can't explain something complex to your grandmother, you just don't understand it. That is something I can tell you've put a lot of effort into. How have you managed to arrive at this point of communication?
[0:12:57] AA: You know, Laurent, I would say, I was a writer and an artist before I was a scientist. I still marvel at how terrible a lot of researchers are at communicating. Maybe I had an – I actually considered becoming an English major when I was at my early years of college, because I just love the art of communicating properly, and helping people understand stuff. I think that's something that is sorely lacking in the academic world, especially in areas like nutrition and exercise science.
When I write stuff, I really want it to be accessible and comprehensible by the lay audience, actually. For example, the ISSN position stand on diets and body composition, I was hoping that not just academics would read it. I was hoping a lot of professionals would read it, and possibly, those professionals could even forward it to their clients. I think it's really important to broaden the range of readers when we're trying to reach a bigger audience anyway. I think, we really limit ourselves, I think, when we're speaking just to the academics, and just to the people with all the degrees and all the knowledge.
[0:14:27] LB: Yeah, I do. I often find myself thinking about the term impact and what does that actually mean, for those that are involved in publishing, particularly those that are held into that slightly strange place within academic institutions, where their entire career is based on publishing or perish, so to speak. What does impact actually mean? They might use terms like impact factor and various other things. Does that truly impact – You hinted at this already, but what is impact to you?
[0:14:59] AA: I think impact is creating the impetus for people to actually take action after they've read, or learned something. If you present something to somebody, that's what you believe is spectacularly written, and then they read it and go, “Wow, that was really something. That really, I got blinded by science. That's really great.” Then they don't actually have any skills in their pocket that they can take with them and use on themselves, or on their clients, or the patients, I don't think you made an impact.
Even with speaking, even with lectures and stuff, my goal is to be able to deliver information and golden nuggets, but mainly to just hand off some truly actionable skills that the audience can just go home and use immediately. Just real-world things that they can implement. I think that, to me, that's what impact is, is when you can get people to take action on things that enhance either their lives, or their clients’ lives.
[0:16:09] LB: Well, they talk about these things. Depending on who you're talking to, scientist, or a member of the lay public, or whoever, they might start to – somebody might start talking about terms like impact, or a process of dissemination, or process of understanding whatever, that's a top-down approach, or a bottom up approach, which is really rather interesting. There's a lot of stakeholders in this stuff. You've obviously got scientists and they come in varying standards, obviously.
You've got methods of dissemination, books, podcasts, whatever. You've obviously got the other side of it, which is lots of people who think they know what they're talking about. After all, we are blessed to being in a field where everyone feels they know something about nutrition and have an awful lot of perspectives. Actually, I think, to a certain extent, I used to not think this way, but I do think we all have a right to have an opinion about stuff, obviously. However, I mean, you've addressed a section of this in your book about why people think the way they do about this stuff, which is where I'm leading with this.
Like I said, I've known you for nearly 10 years. Why are we still having these conversations so many years later? The likes of yourself are still needing to put out work of such vast levels of effort and work and spend what must be most of your life, disseminating knowledge through publications and podcasts and so on? Why are we still at this point, Alan?
[0:17:37] AA: I think it's because, well, they're at certain levels in different groups. There's different conversations there. We can start at the very top, at the ivory tower. Because this topic is so complex. We've actually not exhausted all of the possibilities and covered all of the gray areas of knowledge yet. There's a lot of disagreement amongst the academics on maybe not the meat and potatoes of the stuff, but on some of the potentially trivial stuff, on some of the small stuff. The arguments are pretty passionate. An example I can give is even the protein conversation amongst – I to bring up Stu Phillips in this, because he and I, our conversation has devolved into Twitter arguing lately.
For those of you who know Stu Phillips, he is a legendary protein researcher. I like to lovingly make fun of him for having taken a decade to agree that we need to have more than 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight to optimize things. It took him a decade to finally agree, okay, 1.6. Now we're trying to get him to go from 1.6 to a little bit more. There are some benefits above and beyond 1.6. When you look at the body of research, he's right. There's no consistent and compelling research existing that has looked at 1.6 as the lower protein comparator and pitted that directly against something higher, like 2.0, 2.2 in resistance training subjects.
Gosh, the closest we've come is, well, there's Longland, having compared 1.2 versus 2.4. But we want to know whether 1.6 is really that limit. There's [inaudible 0:19:45], who compared the RDA, with double the RDA, with triple the RDA, but there wasn't a resistance training program in place. Of course, you know the 1.6 was the superior – what seemed to be the plateau there. That's as close as we come to direct comparisons are those two studies.
We've got a bunch of meta-analyses showing this seemingly apparent plateau point of 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, beyond which there doesn't appear to be any further benefit in terms of fat free mass gains in resistance trainees. We also have Joey Antonio's work, which, in fact, does show benefits of protein intakes beyond 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. Then once again, we don't have that direct comparator of 1.6 being the lower protein arm that we're comparing directly.
However, what we do have is the habitual intakes of the subjects, being right around 2.0. Right around 2.0, maybe a little bit above. Then when you crank it up to three-ish, 3.0 or so, and even a little bit beyond, 3.0 to let's say, 3.2, 3.3. Some very interesting stuff happens with body re-composition, actually. I just got a chance to see Joey talk about this in the conference this past weekend that I presented at. Not two degrees of “statistical significance,” but re-composition nonetheless.
There has even been fat loss with fat free mass maintenance when you go from 2.0-ish, to the low threes. Yes, this is free living research. It's not like Bray and colleagues where they had him in a metabolic ward and escalated the protein intakes and saw lean mass gains along with some fat mass gains and all that. I think, real-world effects are ultimately what matters. It ultimately what counts. Joey has been able to see this over and over again, just replicating these results with protein intakes as high as 2 to 3 grams per kilogram of body weight, showing re-composition, showing fat loss compared to lower protein intakes.
I don't think we can downplay, or dismiss those benefits, just because a bunch of meta-analyses on semi-athletes, recreational athletes and non-athletes show this cut off of 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. I think Stu is being very dismissive about that. I think, he's even being dogmatic about that. Brad gives Stu a little more grace. Brad's like, “No, Alan. Stuart is a – he's a true evidence-based – true science.” I said, “I know he is. I know he is. He's just being a little stubborn with this.”
[0:22:55] LB: Right. I know where you're going with it. I'm a big fan of Stu. He's been on this podcast many times. Very good mate of the late, great, Kev Tipton, who was my – our right-hand man here for many past episodes. I just want to bring us back to a perspective of the different – like this term, evidence-based. I mean, I'm obsessed with it to the point that we're about to submit a paper all about this. It's very topical. It depends on what we’re talking.
[0:23:24] AA: Are you in the process of – Are you battling the peer reviewers on it right now?
[0:23:27] LB: No, no, no, no, no. Literally, about to submit the first thing in a few days. Anyway, you know how that goes. We'll see what happens. See when that comes out. I might have shot myself in the foot, because nobody – Would be like, “Oh, I thought you're going to bring out a paper.” But we have. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because we get into this in what we're doing, is we use terms like, evidence-based. Depending on what context you're in, as a researcher within a lab, or in the chaotic environment of the real world, if you're not the average test participant who weighs a certain amount, averages out in a meta-analyses, you might be a 6 foot, 8, 240-pound American football player, or rugby player, or something. There's all the differences there.
Then depending on you might be eating a steak, but you might have walked it down in three seconds, vomited up later, or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of different things that go on. Nobody is sitting there eating 3.2, or 2.2, or 1.6, or 1.3 grams. I've said this before. In fact, we probably talked about this years ago in one of our previous podcasts. We all appear to be speaking the same language, in this case, science, or English. The reality is we're not. That's why I get rather obsessed in podcasts, where we try and define things before we get into a topic, because otherwise, everyone's getting lost in translation. That's where I think we're at with a lot of this.
Whether it's Twitter arguments, or whatever. If you don't give it enough space and you don't manage to contextualize where the conversation and where it's going to go, everything gets lost in translation, because humans being humans, everyone gets offended, or stressed, or emotional, or angry, or defensive, or territorial, because it's their lab’s research, or that influences perspective.
Again, bringing it back to your role as somebody who's trying to communicate, I don't think the middle ground is the right term, but the appropriate middle ground on this, to the consumer. How do you navigate all this?
[0:25:31] AA: Well, I have the luxury and the convenience of just being mostly in that world. I don't even have one whole foot in academia. I've got maybe one pinky toe, or so. I get a chance to see how people in the lay community communicate with each other and what their pain points and what their concerns are and what their interests are. It helps me maintain a good pulse on what people's barriers and stumbling blocks and what their goals are and what they're trying to do to achieve it. I realized, it doesn't necessarily help anybody when Stu and I are arguing over 1.6 or more.
I mean, it's an entertaining conversation. I try to boil it down to look, we're arguing over what comes down to a scoop of protein powder, or maybe a scoop and a half. You're willing to cut it off before having that extra scoop. I'm willing to have the athlete, or have the client just take that extra scoop. That's what is boiling down to. I do think it's important for us to boil things down to brass tacks, or where the rubber meets the road in terms of application after we've talked about the theory.
[0:27:03] LB: You know what's interesting, though, about this particular situation that you're referring to, is the fact that experts can't agree. That's a challenging place, isn't it? Where I've had numerous podcasts where I've had several experts talk about a topic and I'm thinking mTOR, for example. I've had certain professors talking about it. Then I've had their PhD students come on, and they've had difference of opinions. Now, that's all very well. Actually, it's okay to have differences of opinions. That's what drives this stuff forwards in terms of finding novel areas within gaps in the knowledge. That's what makes all this research novel. However, from a translational perspective, I mean, what we've got is dogfights in the air, between two aircraft that are actually badged from the same perspective. Maybe that's a bit of a difficult place, isn't it?
[0:28:01] AA: It is. It is. I think it's really important to boil it down to, okay, so what did we get out of this? Where are we at? What can we implement practice-wise to reconcile this, or rectify this disagreement here? What can we actually do programming-wise? Along those lines, Hevia-Larrain and colleagues in 2021 did this, the first ever omnivore versus vegan with a resistance training protein study.
We're asking the question, can omnivores and vegans be on the same playing field as far as muscular size and strength gains, if we get protein at 1.6? Sure enough, there are no significant differences between the groups in muscle size and strength gains at the end of 12 weeks. This is the very first study that didn't merely just supplement either a plant protein, or an animal protein post-workout, or something like that. It was full-blown vegan group versus an omnivorous group. Same level of gains at the end of 12 weeks.
My caveat and my criticism is that, okay, this is some very interesting information. It might be the strongest evidence existing thus far, that once protein is at a certain level, it can indeed be entirely plant-based and show the same level of resistance training adaptations as an animal-based protein, at least within a 12-week period. Then here comes the big but. These were untrained subjects. They were not exercise-trained, not resistance-trained subjects. The training effect, the resistance training effect is always going to be much more robust than the protein effect.
My criticism would be that, well, they weren't trained. What we would need to do is run this experiment in resistance-trained subjects and see if we can still get these null results. Once again, Stu was like, “No, I don't think it would be – I just don't.” I would rather say, well, let's not dig our heels in and set up our camps here. Let's just see if we can run the experiment again. He said, “No, I doubt it. I don't think so. I think it’s 1.6. That's it. Who cares if they're trained, or untrained? We would need a 100 subjects to detect the difference. That's it. 1.6.”
I'm like, they could do – Stu was thinking this exact same way with 1.2 10 years ago, man. In the field, in practice, I always think of experiences that I might be able to compare with what we're seeing in research, because I'm not out to try to legitimize what we see in the trenches. When you see a certain phenomena in the field, and you see it consistently enough, and it doesn't necessarily pan out in academia, you have to wonder, well, what are the differences here in terms of study design, or population used, or the doses used, or the timeframe of the study?
I've just seen time and time again, the whole issue of vegans versus omnivores. People try to boil it down to, what are the differences? Do vegans need more protein than omnivores? Let's talk about vegan athletes for a second. It's been my observation, or at least my own caution that I placed on myself, to give vegans about 20% more protein than omnivores, because I want them to be on the same playing field, as far as, well, at least the essential amino acids. If not just leucine by itself, or the rest of the branched chain. I just want them to be on a level playing field, at least with that aspect of nutrition.
Then, there's the argument that, well, there's Hevia-Larrain and colleagues who cut it off at 1.6. The vegans actually had a lower intake of essential amino acids compared to the omnivores. They were still on the same playing field. Now, I bring it right back to, okay, well, both groups made newbie gains that could mask these actual treatment effects, and that could mask the actual potential differences in the effects of these diets.
Yeah, it's a rabbit hole that I've gone down with various people. It's an unanswered question, and it's gray area. I'm totally fine with saying that. When I'm not fine, is when people say, “Okay, this is a closed door. We don't need to investigate it any further.” I'm not cool with that, because that's not really having a scientific spirit. That's almost like saying, “All right, we know. We finally know, and so we can move on to something else.” I don't think we're there yet.
[0:33:19] LB: Well, you know, for me as a consumer on this, but with a consumer, an observer, but also somebody who has a lot of interest in evidence-based practice, that is, I think all of this has some value to me as a practitioner, that's independent of what you guys are going through. That's why I prefer the term evidence-informed practice. Either which way, where I'm going to steer this conversation is something that actually we've been talking about is – and that is this concept of rigid versus flexible thinking, or approaches to particular strategies, or ideas, when the understanding as is in this case is that there are differences of opinions, differences in interpretations and people will possibly, feel the doors are closed, and many others feel that the door is yet to be closed. Of course, the door can of course, be reopened again. Let's not get stuck in that revolving thing.
I want to talk about flexible dieting. Flexible thinking, flexible interpretations, flexible translations is a very big part of this when it comes to, for example, body composition, weight loss, etc. People get very stuck into this, “Oh, it's calories in, calories out. You've got to get into an energy deficit.” It's all very bland statements that come out of people that does not allow for the individual context of the situation, or the differences of opinions from many great people that exist out there. Maybe you could take us back to this concept of dichotomous thinking and rigid issues and weighing in on what the value of being more flexible with those.
[0:35:10] AA: Yeah. The flexible dieting model. I mean, it had its birth in research done in the mid-70s, comparing different types of restraint, not necessarily within the dietary context. It wasn't until the 1990s that restraint – different styles of restraint were compared in the dietary context. Flexible dieting, technically, the definition per the research is a cognitive style of dietary restraint. There's flexible restraint, and there's rigid restraint. Rigid dietary restraint, also called rigid dietary control, is characterized by a dichotomous view of foods and dieting.
Foods are either good or bad. Dieting is either a black or white, all or nothing type of endeavor. That was compared with a flexible dietary control, or flexible dietary restraint, that looked at foods in this kind of a relativistic light and looked at dieting as not an all or nothing thing. There are shades of grey, and there is the possibility to not be perfect, and still succeed on the diet. Indeed, over the next decade or two, there are several studies done. Most of them observational, but still nevertheless, consistently showing superior outcomes from flexible dietary approaches, versus rigid dietary approaches, in terms of not just mitigating the chances of exacerbating eating disorders. Not just the psychological side of things, but also, more favorable outcomes with respect to bodyweight control with flexible dieting versus rigid dieting.
Then another decade later, let's say the 2010s or so, the fitness community started synonymizing flexible dieting with macronutrient counting. That was an era. It's a misnomer to call macro counting flexible dieting, because flexible dieting, like I mentioned, is a cognitive style of restraint. Macro counting is simply a method of tracking that happens to be very micromanaging and very granular, and sometimes very rigid in its nature. That's something that I spent a certain part of the book trying to clear up, that flexible dieting is not a single style of tracking or dieting.
Macronutrient counting, or if it fits your macros type of model, that's under the umbrella of many, many dietary approaches. Flexible dieting, in essence would be the umbrella and they have different styles. Flexible dieting would be flexibility of the approach that you take. Certain individuals are much more quantitative and oriented towards micromanaging their intake. They're almost like dietary accountants. They actually enjoy that and they thrive on that. They can maintain that putting everything under a microscope. That doesn't stress them out. that's fine. You count your macros, use the app, use it your whole life if you want.
However, there are other individuals on the other side of the spectrum, for whom the idea of counting macronutrient grams just gives them anxiety and stresses them out and they’re, “Screw this. I would rather just go paleo, or Atkins, or carnivore if it means not having to count macronutrient grams.” The whole idea behind flexible dieting is flexibility of the approach, depending on the proclivities of the individual and what they can adhere to best.
Sometimes it's seasonal. Sometimes people will want to clamp down on their intake and put everything under a microscope to prepare for either a sporting event, or a contest. While there are other seasons in the year where they're happy with just pulling back and just eyeballing everything. It is a whole flexible thing. Flexible dieting is not just flexibility of, for example, food choices, flexibility of food selection, flexibility of macronutrient composition, flexibility of hedonic approach, flexibility of tracking methods. It's not just those aspects of flexibility. It's actually flexibility of the dietary approach itself.
Real flexible dieting is flexibility of the approach and flexible dieting allows different degrees of rigidity, or inflexibility within that umbrella. That's what flexible dieting is. Since individuals are so different, there's such a wide variation of people's tendencies and abilities to adhere to different approaches. There's no way that we can possibly say, “Okay, this way is best for everybody, or this way is best for everybody, or everybody needs to count portions.” No, no, no. Everybody needs to intuitively eat. No, no, no. Everybody needs to count macros, if they want to know what they're doing. That's not true. It's got to be individualized.
I spent a lot of time in the book talking about individualizing these things. There's a lot of things to individualize, even the little avenue of individualizing macronutrient composition. Some people actually love the keto model, and actually do well on it. That's what they actually should do. Now, there's little nuances to that. You're not going to live the longest, healthiest life if all your fat is coming from, let's say, land animals throughout your entire life, and it's all – a bunch of it is fried, too, a bunch of it is Spam and most of it is processed meat. You're not going to maximize your health span, if you choose to go keto on bacon and butter. There's ways to do keto that will make you live longer. That's another avenue. Yeah, individualization is a huge thing that sometimes it takes a whole book to talk about.
[0:41:55] LB: Yeah, absolutely. It's a key part of the evidence-based model is to take into account the individual needs and preferences. Otherwise, yeah, you're ignoring the individual human. That's when the train goes off the rails frequently. I really liked the way that you approach that flexibility concept. I guess, another angle there, which you talk about in your book right in chapter one, one of my favorite areas of your book, actually, was this concept of discretionary calories. I mean, as such an exciting area. But actually, it's an important one, because you mentioned something a minute ago about calories in, calories out, which you failed to mention, you had something to do with, I believe, or at least you've had an impact on how it's been interpreted.
The idea that calories can be discretionary, I think, really ties in well to that individualization that you've mentioned. Why was that a necessary part of that chapter? What are your thoughts on this generally?
[0:43:07] AA: Yeah. In the bigger picture of life, we have just being responsible, good citizens, and we do everything properly and we do everything right. Then, the concept of having a margin of having a little bit of fun, indulging in a little bit of rebellion, going outside of the lines, or letting your hair down as it were, I think that's important to sustaining anything. Like, whether it be a program, or just a happy life, have some dessert once in a while, have a certain amount of indulgence and fun.
I think that the same thing applies with the way that you approach diet. Discretionary calories is the euphemism for junk food. This concept was put forth by the American Dietetic Association in the early 1990s. Then, of course, now they're called the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Discretionary calories, the foods that fell into that category were things like alcohol, dessert, and this was off the heels of the fatphobic 80, so they even put it solid fats into discretionary calories.
By the way, Laurent, there's still a raging debate about saturated fat and cholesterol and stuff like that, but mostly saturated fat. Even to this day, which is an interesting fight that people are just killing each other over. Anyways, discretionary calories, the junk foods. It's a concept that you can have these foods in your diet and you can even eat them every day. As long as you keep them to a low roar, or keep them “in moderation,” then not only can you still have an overall healthy diet, but you could possibly adhere to your diet better in the long-term, if you knew that there's a little bit of fun in the diet.
The discretionary calorie allotment observationally, is roughly about 10%, up to 20% of total calories. As long as the 80% to 90% of your diet is coming from minimally refined, minimally processed, whole type, wholesome “clean type of foods,” then you can still have a healthy diet. This seems to work well for helping people stick to it, versus saying, “Okay, this is the list of foods you're not allowed to ever have.” What happens when you present it like that, then folks tend to look at certain foods as forbidden fruit that they are not allowed to ever have. Therefore, when they do have it, they binge on it, because they figure, “Okay, I'm not ever allowed to have this. Chances are, I'm not going to have this food for another six months, if I can hold out that long. Therefore, I better eat this whole bag, or I better eat this whole box of stuff. Because darn it, I'm never going to have it again.”
Discretionary calories opens up the possibility that, hey, these foods, they don't contribute healthfully to the diet necessarily, other than just giving you a psychological break, which is important. Therefore, since they don't contribute a lot, or they can actually detract from the quality of your diet, we just keep them at a low roar, 10% to 20%. Let's say, two to 400, or 250 to 500 calories, depending on who you are, of literally whatever you want in the diet. Choose whatever. Rotate different foods. Have ice cream one day, have, I don’t know, some deep-fried crap the other day, and have a glass of wine, a couple of glasses of wine the other day, or just rotate it out, or just fit it into that discretionary allotment. You could still have a healthy diet.
It's tough to get people to understand this concept, because a lot of times they see examples in the media of people having “cheat day,” where they're killing themselves throughout the whole week. Then on one of the days of the week, they'd go absolutely crazy. One example that I like to give is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with his cheat days. He's in a pancake house with a stack of six pancakes, or something like that. Even though he calls it his cheat day, that's a misnomer, because that is a highly and carefully planned carb up, basically.
Not only that, he's calling it a cheat day. This sends the wrong message to people out there who think that, “Oh, The Rock is breaking his plan for one day a week.” No, that's actually in his plan. In the research literature, this type of thing is called planned hedonic deviations. That's his plan, hedonic deviation method is a weekly model, a one day a week model. That works for him. Actually, it works for a lot of people, too. It doesn't have to be a daily planned hedonic deviation of 10% to 20%, discretionary calories. It can be a weekly plan hedonic deviation, where you're taking care of your 10%, 20% of your discretionary allotment. You're taking care of that all in one day. That's a viable model as well.
Individualizing the hedonic allotment is another thing I talked about in the book, because some people will be more of happier with the Dwayne Johnson type of model, where it's just once a week, you just have your – stack the pancakes, or your bunch of westernized sushi rolls and you go off for that day. While the rest of the week, you're being Spartan. Whereas, other people will work a lot better with a little bit every day, where each day, they're having a small dessert, or something along those lines. That's another way to individualize things.
[0:49:30] LB: Yeah. The thing is, is there are a number of rules of thumb, whether it's good, old fashioned phraseologies, all the way up to cool rules of physics, like things energy following the path of least resistance and all that sort of thing, which of course, happens with how we think. It overloads the circuits of thinking and it's far too much work to have to do all these other things, when you think, “Right. I'm just going to eat less, and I'm just going to do a bit more exercise and I'm going to achieve my goals.” Of course, it's never that simple, because you're not factoring in the individual situations that we've been talking about here.
Just going back to science and research and publications and how that informs our thinking, and decisions that we make, we must always be mindful that those are very rigid, controlled environments. Most importantly, they're performed over incredibly short periods of time, aren't they? I think, it's relatively easy to say. It's fairly easy to find people who will acknowledge this. It’s not that difficult to lose weight. It's not that difficult necessarily to lose body fat. What’s difficult is keeping that process going, isn't it? For you, is that really where the importance of this truly fits in? It's not about achieving something in the short-term. This is about an actual meaningful long-term outcome, which by the way, isn't just about body composition. It is about sanity and health and all those other things.
[0:51:11] AA: Yes, it definitely is. There are instances where the short-term is important. But in the bigger picture, it really is about long-term. I think, that as a general principle. It's okay to start out with, for example, plugging your macronutrients, or your intake into an app and tracking your macronutrient grams, your calories and all that stuff. I think that can be a valuable, at least a valuable frame of awareness for you to know what amount of calories maintains my body weight. Am I a 2,000 calorie a day person, or am I a 4,000 calorie a day person? I think, it can be useful to know that.
It can also be useful to know that a palm-sized piece of meat is not a 100 grams of protein. It's more like 40, more like 50, depending on the size of the palm. I think it's important to know that if somebody is trying to get their protein intake for the day, and all they're having is a chicken breast at some point in the day, and then maybe an egg and a glass of milk. If they're trying to hit let's say, a 100 grams of protein in the day, then oh, you missed that by quite a bit.
I think those skills are important. However, I think that eventually, it's much more important for people to be able to just live without obsessing over the details of these things. I think it's important to know how to stay in the ballpark of your needs, and maintain a reasonable balance of servings of food, both across the food groups and within the food groups in order to achieve a certain spectrum of nutrient intake that would be conducive to long-term health.
Yeah, the micromanagement of everything, only a small percent of people in the world, who I personally know and have heard of actually put everything into an app every day of their lives and actually enjoy it. There's even an argument that doing that, for some people is actually detrimental. People who are predisposed to disordered eating, plugging things into an app is probably not a good idea in terms of nurturing certain disordered eating behaviors, versus trying to mitigate them.
[0:53:47] LB: Yeah. Well, look, I completely agree with you. I think, we've talked about this for on diets and body composition in a podcast that we did. One issue is that there's what people perceive as facts, versus the reality within nutrition. For example, you go to the supermarket and pick up an item of food, and on the back of it a label that has numbers that tells you how many grams of protein is in that food and how many calories is in it. The reality is, is that is only an estimate. That is not the reality. Then there are other complexities like, well, what happens when you cook it? Did you add something like an oil that adds calories? How much of it do you actually digest and absorb and blah, blah, blah? It’s just such a complicated area.
To have the precision of all that data in something that you log relative to what actually happens in reality and how you put your entire life into micromanaging that is absolutely bonkers, I personally think. Like you say, I do know people where that worked possibly for the short-term, but it does. Again, that comes back to this concept of flexible dieting, flexible strategies, tools. They all have a place. I think you just need to understand the strengths and limitations of these things. Then help your clients understand these things, or help that – make that an allowance in how you construct your science projects, your research, and so on, which is why these conversations are important, because I feel that it helps unpack the information a bit and discuss the different perspectives, the different lenses that we have on these things. Still an open book, isn't it?
Listen, Alan, we could talk for hours as I know you could, but I'm acutely aware that I might drop dead in a minute from my issues with COVID, and I’m taking up my quota of your time. There's just so many thought-provoking things there. Everyone should read the book. I went and bought my own copy, by the way, everyone, because –
[0:56:00] AA: I appreciate it, man.
[0:56:01] LB: I didn't even get. I bought my own copy, because that's how I do these things. It is very well worth a read, as is all of Alan's publications and all our previous podcasts. I'll link to those in the show notes. If people want to follow you, it's not like you're difficult to find, but tell us how people can stay abreast of you and your work.
[0:56:21] AA: Sure. My website is alanaragon.com. You can find all of my stuff there. Right now, my Flexible Dietingbook came out a few months ago. I'm happy to say that it's doing really well in terms of the Amazon rankings and stuff. It was number one actually in the macrobiotic nutrition category, whatever the hell that is, man.
[0:56:48] LB: I don’t know.
[0:56:50] AA: Somebody made it up. Macrobiotics. Okay. It's number one in that category. It's also a number one – it was number one for a while. I think it still is in punk music. In the punk music category in Amazon. If it's not up there in number one in punk, it means they finally categorized it correctly. I took a bunch of screenshots of it being number one in punk music for weeks and weeks and weeks.
[0:57:15] LB: Alan, when we talked about impact, there's no greater impact of that, is there? Well, thank you for sharing your time with me. It's always a pleasure. I look forward to our next chat on We Do Science.
[0:57:28] AA: I’ll tell you what, sometimes I call people a gentleman and a scholar. I only mean it 75%. With you, I mean it a 120%.
[0:57:38] LB: Right. I'll transfer the money now. No, I appreciate it. That's very kind of you.
[0:57:45] AA: Got it, bro.
[0:57:45] LB: Yeah. No, thank you very much.
[0:57:47] AA: Thank you.
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