Episode 371: Nick Norwitz, PhD - Keto Advocacy Gone Too Far?
Dr. Nicholas Norwitz obtained his PhD in ketogenic metabolism and neurodegenerative diseases at Oxford University and is now working towards his MD at Harvard Medical School. Nick follows a ketogenic diet, and has been heavily involved in research and the public conversation around proper application of low carbohydrate/ketogenic ways of eating.
For this episode, we address the question of how far is too far when it comes to advocating for this way of eating. As low carb and ketogenic diets become more popular, what responsibility do advocates have when speaking to the application of these dietary protocols.
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Episode Transcript
Nick, welcome back to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah. No, I think this will be a fun one. I was actually I mean, we were chatting offline a little bit. You've just had kind of a lot of activity with what you're up to with Dave Feldman, with your lean mass hyper responder stuff. And I've been meaning to reach out to you and just get a gauge of whether it was a good time to have you come back on to chat about that. But, you know, our conversation was more initiated by some other stuff. So we thought, well, let's wait for maybe some updates to come with some of the other stuff and do a podcast down the road. But for this one, just chat about some other things. Yeah,
yeah. No, I think we're doing this impromptu, but I would love to have a conversation. I think we both would about messaging and, you know, productive messaging versus non-productive messaging. As for the work, me and Dave keep saying the year 2024 is really going to be a big year. So we'll have some stuff drop and I'll, I'd love to come back and chat about that then, but could definitely put a put a pin in that one for now. Yeah right on. I'm blanking on what the nber of the episode was. Were you and Dave came on last, but I will absolutely put that in the show notes. So for listeners, you're new to the show and you want to check that stuff out and kind of hear where things were last time we chatted. They can go and listen to that one. Or if you are a frequent listener and want to listen to it again, it's probably worth it. I'm sure I could probably remind myself of a few things going back and listening to it. 1.6s
It's been a fun evolution. , you know, I'll briefly say where we are right now with some of the, , the Dave's study, the one that's going on at UCLA. All the baseline scans are done for the lean mass hyper responder cohort. And right now they're matching to a similar group to see baseline baseline being these people have had these elevated levels for on average four and a half years is their elevated plaque. And then there's going to be a one year follow up and we'll report on that. And then we have some other studies going on. It's been really exciting to see what traction it's gained. In fact, we met Dave and Adrian this morning, were on a zoom call with a PhD student who's going to do his PhD, probably only mass hyper responders. So we were helping to design that protocol. And there's definitely interest that's growing in this space. So I think after our next couple projects drop,
, which will hopefully be some heavy hitters and it'll just be the moment that will carry it. So we're only at the very beginning of this, but I think it is very, very fascinating research. So I look forward to coming back and chatting to you about that. But for today, I think, uh, we'll just talk a little bit about messaging, social media politics. Yeah, yeah. And I'll
do the listeners a little bit of a background with this. And some of this won't be like overly new information to frequent listeners of the podcast, because I've sort of been like, I've been I've been speaking this to, to a large degree just with my own messaging and. Just for background, we're talking specifically about low carbohydrate nutrition. So, you know, for me, I've been following a low carbohydrate diet for 12 years, actually, I believe, in November. And when I first kind of got into it, it was kind of in that phase of the Volk and Phinney years. Like Dr. Dominic d'Agostino is starting to get some recognition for some of his work. And it felt like this sort of. I was obviously aware that this wasn't a new thing, like low carbohydrate ketogenic diets had been around for a long time, but it was sort of like this next wave of that sort of way of eating, getting a new, fresh set of interest in presumably some new topics, one of them being in categories, I should say, one of them being endurance sport. And it was kind of like, this is cool, this is exciting. I've got a lot of curiosities. It seemed to work well with my lifestyle. So then I was invested from a personal standpoint as well to kind of keep learning about it. And it just seems like it has grown and gone from something where like if you said ketogenic diet 12 years ago or even low carbohydrate diet, you'd probably have to follow that up with a lot of information. Whereas now I feel like if I just pulled a random person off the road and started talking about low carbohydrate ketogenic diets, they may have a lot of inaccuracies in their mind, but they would be familiar with like the basic idea of that, and it wouldn't be something they would know someone. They'd have a friend. Oh yeah, my buddy so-and-so, they follow that diet or, you know, it's not that uncommon anymore. , so through that, like, I guess, time frame, one thing I've started to kind of notice and this is probably also just as much like a coincides with just the increase of usage of things like social media, you know, apps that kind of favor short form versus long form, where it feels like there's been a shift from our focus is on. The Wallach, Finney D'Agostino type people and their research too. There are these recognizable figures that are very much seen as low carb ketogenic advocates. But it's not Finney, Volk or D'Agostino talking. It's someone who is going to be a lot more polarizing, and they're going to use a lot of what I would consider kind of like half the story at best type rhetoric. And that scares me because my thought about it is, if I was coming into the diet today with no information or very little information, and I started just digging in, I'm probably going to find Finney, Volk and Gastineau later. I'm going to find the person on social media who's telling you that, you know, carbs are evil carbs or the devil like everyone should follow a ketogenic diet. That real kind of one sided, absolutist type of view. And my fear is like, if you start out in that camp or in that view of it, your likelihood of failing is very high, and we're going to end up with more casualties than success stories. And then the true value of low carbohydrate ketogenic or for whatever population, percentage of the population, that that way of eating tends to actually work better for, we're going to end up missing a huge percentage of them and ending up in the long term in a worst case scenario, because of people having bad first impressions, I guess is maybe the way to summarize my my kind of overview of the landscape right now. And then the follow up to that would just be like, what is the proper way to go about kind of re re steering the ship, so to speak, because I do see new people like yourself who I would say is an excellent communicator for the for if I would come across you, I would probably be successful in my opinion, because I wouldn't be fed things that are necessarily inaccurate and I would likely be a lot more structured with it in a sense that it would be like something where I wouldn't be overthinking things that don't really matter that much, or underappreciated. The actual big components that go into successfully, like following the protocol. And I guess my to summarize that, like how do we promote more of you and less of the absolutist so that when new people do come and get introduced to have what I would consider a good chance of figuring out whether it actually works for them or not. Yeah. Before providing an answer, I just want to kind of build on some things you said, because it was interesting to hear you take it from a basically a clinical perspective, like, what is the information people are going to latch on to, and how is that going to translate to success or not?
, which was an interesting place to start, because what comes to my mind, actually the frustration, despite the fact that right now I'm in my clinical training as a medical student, is actually the scientific end of it that I see so much potential for ketogenic and low carbohydrate diets, for scientific advancement. And I see that massively hindered by the simplistic rhetoric, which creates a really negative stereotype of the community as a whole, and that the scientific progress which will then translate into the medical progress is really like given a taint by the people who. 1s
Do come off with really extreme messaging that largely is just inaccurate. And it's interesting because on the few occasions where I've been able to know these people in real life, for example, I can maybe name some names later on, stop them and kind of try to explain. Look, when you say this, this is the perception. And here I was literally blocking our ability to perform research and or because of the taint that is now associated with you, which is completely your fault because you said X, Y, and Z. I actually don't feel comfortable working with you as a collaborator. And they're like, they're not even defensive. Usually they're like, yeah, I get that. 1.1s
With respect to, you know, what you mentioned about just the, let's say, dilution of the low carb space on social media, it becomes very difficult because you have the, you know, the Dom D'Agostino is the Philly Infineon Volks who are doing the research. And then they want to communicate that research, which is great. But research studies take a lot of time to conduct, a lot of time to translate it along, a lot of time to read. That often goes into the like. Tldr category too long didn't read. Whereas things that, you know, vole and simplicity get a lot of engagement. And so the latter is very easy to wash out. The former,
, and it's just a self-perpetuating cycle. 1.3s That said, I do find there is an undercurrent of people like you and me who appreciate the more moderate stance, like, look, I'm going to tell you about all the benefits, but with the appropriate caveats and giving the double use. Where
they're deserved for things that aren't in the low carb sphere. Because that's actually a more convincing way to kind of progress, the science and the broader acceptance of low carbohydrate diets. And what I found is people are actually generally really receptive, even when you push back on their tribe, so to speak. Like I had a tweet about fiber this morning. He read my carnivore tweet before where I'm like, look, there are benefits here and the things to be explored. But here is where we go wrong in communicating this message. And pushing so hard sometimes actually creates a hindrance. I don't know if you ever, as a kid, played with oobleck. I'm thinking about that now, but it was like that green substance that, you know, if you like your hand in it, it would just melt in. But if you tried to punch it, it would be very solid. Yeah. This weird mechanical property I think about Twitter is kind of like communicating low carb. It's like if you just kind of gently provide the information in the science, people are usually pretty receptive, even if they're on the other end. But if you try to punch them in the face. So the message like sugar is poison. And by, you
know, the transitive property of food, fruit is poison, then you've completely lost that, you know? Audience member yeah, you know. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. You have more to go.
Oh, I was just going to say so, finding a way to, like, balance that middle ground about providing content that's engaging and a little bit of the bait. To then transition into nuance is something I'm trying to work on social media, and over time, I'm finding things that I do think work and we can talk about them versus don't. But it's definitely very hard. And it takes a lot of reflection and iteration. You know, the interesting thing about that and I agree I agree with you. There's a very delicate balance there. And the one thing I kind of thought about, or one thing that got me thinking about this more because I've had a more of a moderate stance or I guess to say like a non absolutist stance for pretty much the entirety of I'm just not that controversial of a person in general. So it's like I'm not really probably going to like to gravitate towards the right, let's make this big, wild statement that is going to polarize things, because it's probably not the environment that I prefer to be in myself. So like, I've tended to kind of have a little bit more of a moderate explanation when asked about it. And the thing that I find interesting about that is when you do get into just like the conversation online, like you said, there is that like there's that initial like that if you finesse it in, I think you have this situation where people who are already curious. They're going to be able to sort of like weed through some of that and be like, okay, that's a little extreme. Like sugar isn't inherently going to kill you if you even look at it, which is an extreme example of an extreme example, I guess. But they're going to kind of know how to navigate that versus the person who's completely unfamiliar with the approach to a large degree. And their first impression is coming from the counter where they say, all these low carb, keto carnivore folks are so deranged, they say this, that, and the other thing, and that person is like, well, I'm not even going to attempt to engage to get that tiny bit of curiosity that would help them navigate that a little bit better. So in my mind, I'm thinking, like, if I just took inventory about my own rhetoric over the years, it's going to be very positive towards a low carbohydrate diet. And. 1.3s
I also kind of appreciate, like in order to kind of have that moderate stance, I probably need to share also the potential downsides of the approach or where it could potentially go wrong, or the way I talk to my coaching clients is like, we need to look at this with through a lens of there are going to be some positives to this. There's going to be some things where it's like, oh, this would be a great input for you, but that may come at the consequence of something else. So we need to balance those, whether that new input is going to be a net positive as a whole versus looking at it as like, let's get your fat oxidation rates as high as we possibly can and ignore any potential downsides to that. Where is that kind of balance where, you know, if we're looking at performance versus just health and longevity, you know, all that sort of stuff. So to me, I kind of thought of what I, what I sort of consider too is just like, what all what, what on average I'm putting out there in terms of if someone thinks about me, as someone who communicates for this, am I21 sided or am I giving enough? Like, well, here's the downside, or here's where the rhetoric around low carbohydrate really does fail to actually do good things. I think there's a balance there too, where if someone sees me like, well, Zach is willing to push back on some of the absolutist claims, or he's able to appreciate that someone may actually find success with a moderate carbohydrate diet, then if I come to him with a question, he's going to give me the honest answer versus just try to guide me to the direction he wants me to go or wherever his preferences go. Does that kind of make sense?
Absolutely. And I agree entirely. The annoying thing is that I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about it too, no matter how hard you try to take that approach. And I do as well, because you're going to be associated with a particular diet group. The taint of those who are extreme is going to rub off on you such that those who don't spend enough time with you. Will take those generally pro low carb things you do say because I mean, that's probably where you lean, like where I lean and kind of track it towards the more extreme view and the things that you say that are pushbacks. Like, here are some positive things about fruit, which I'll say every now and then are positive things about fiber. Those kinds of things disappear and don't get amplified, you know?
So just by virtue of what gets amplified by your own party and by what or perceived party, I should say, and by what they're saying. Like it? 1.1s
It changes the lens through which what you say is said, and to be mindful about that as well as like a whole nother level of problem. It's not one you can't. It's. I don't even know that it's that addressable. But it's just one to consider.
There's a certain number of uncontrollably that you're just not going to really be able to do much about. And then the question just becomes how much time and energy and potential conflicts do you create by trying to address those versus just kind of trudging forward on the path you find to be the best path and sort of ignore? And I mean, I think like what generated this podcast was essentially that, right where, like I made a post on, on, on Twitter, are we able to call it X yet with people understanding what we're saying, or is it just better to call it can? It's weird. I think the thing that's preventing X from taking on is it's not a verb. Oh yeah,
say I'm going to X, but then I say, I can't say I'm going to send an
X. Yeah, yeah I'm going to tweet. And so because I keep saying I'm going to tweet it just bleeds back over into Twitter. Yeah. You know what I mean. It does. There's no verb version. I think X will take off when there's a verb. Yeah.
That's the acronym
I could. I hadn't thought of that. So yeah Elon needs to get to that. That marketing campaign didn't think about that branding element. But but but
anyway yeah you were going to. Yeah.
To the point like there was, I created a bit of a stir I guess, because I went on Twitter slash X and I made a post where it was kind of impulsive to a degree where I had been thinking about all these things we've talked about so far. And then I was just having a conversation with someone, and they shared with me like, I don't spend a lot of time on the American Dietetic Association website for, for probably obvious reasons. But like I was in this conversation and they are dietetics. I'm sorry. . 1.1s And they sent me this link of like, oh, here is their actual low carb or very low carb position and statement and resources. And I wasn't actually aware that that was there. So I was thinking about that. I was like, well, here's an opportunity to say, okay, here's an organization where I would imagine the majority of low carbohydrate ketogenic followers and advocates would be they're not happy with the ADA in the sense that they think that they think. One of two things I would say they would think either that the ADA is not doing enough where they should be pushing more of a low carb ketogenic lifestyle, or at least giving more opportunities for people to come across that side of their option table. And then there's the people who think they should just totally turn ship and be advocating nothing but ketogenic low carbohydrate diets. And I tend to fall into that in the former, where I think, yeah, I think the ADA probably could benefit from increased visibility of low carb ketogenic diets. I'm not 100% sure as to whether that's a situation of their threshold of we need to hit this level of science and rigor before we start doing that versus mine. My thresholds are probably lower given that I prefer that way of eating. So I try to think about it like that. If I were, if I stepped away and I was totally neutral on the topic in the sense that I ate just whatever I wanted, would I look at this as, is there enough scientific research towards low carbohydrate ketogenic diets? Being something that we should move from a back seat option to. Here's our primary stance and anything else comes secondary to this. So you try this first. And if that fails, then we move to these other options. But generally speaking the post was basically to highlight that ADA does have some of these options. So if someone tells you it's totally against it, here is a statement that suggests they aren't against it. They may not do a good job of marketing it. I didn't say that. So maybe that would have been a better post where I'd have been like, if I would have added to that. I guess if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have posted the same thing I did. But at the end I would have said, now they may not do a great job of marketing this and hopefully that's something they improve upon, but. There is no complete absence of. It was more or less where I was getting at with that post, and that, I think, probably stirred up a few more of the absolutist side of low carb ketogenic online. And they looked at it as this is a and they look at as any defense of the ADA is a 1.1s like a sign off, they've done everything they need to do to carry on this type of messaging. And so it kind of spirals from there where like now it gets off topic into other things and stuff like that, and then it just becomes like, you know, the your typical online back and forth, uh, like sidebar topics, things that aren't necessarily like. Relevant to the initial post and then now I mean, I don't have to explain to you how it goes, but 1.4s this is such a perfect example. And it might be in part because I don't know if you realize we're the recent stir around the ADA probably comes from on Twitter, which
is actually, I think, me over the past couple of weeks. So I just want to let
go for all this.
So, but I'm going to give you the background because I think this is a great way to hear how while we probably align almost perfectly in terms of our opinions, we end up on basically two different sides of a skirmish. So just to kind of look at present time and see one of your recent posts, you have 1st October eighth from a few days ago. This is what the ADA is getting so much grief over from low carb absolutists. It's a little picture of chicken with mushrooms, a little roasted potatoes, green beans and carrots, and it's like my plate sketch, which looks quite healthy. I mean, you do. I think, you know, potatoes are great. No, but like this is this. If every patient with diabetes ate like this, I'd be extremely happy. And they provide low carb options. Absolutely. And they have in fine print things about low carb that are actually quite positive. And if you go on their website and I've, I've posted this as well. They have some recipes that are very, I think appropriate in low carb. Let me see if I can find the picture I posted on the sixth. It was like a shrimp scampi, a salmon chicken dish, like a meat and onions dish. All like very low carb, like four grams, you know, per serving or whatever. So they provide those options. It's absolutely true. 1.2s
Where I think the whole recent 1.1s issue arose with the ADA. They had a post that I think it's still their Pin tweet actually, they posted something about we're doing everything we can to fight diabetes. They used very strong language. You saw the dance number they had very well choreographed. 1.1s
And so I'll see if I can find my original tweet. But I saw that and then I started reading some of their guidelines and, and what I saw as something that I really take a lot of issue with. Okay, this was September 6th, and I wrote something very clickbaity, which is like eyes open faced. Holy cannoli. The ADA claims we are doing everything we can to stop diabetes, but when you click on their website link straight up, it recommends pizza. And I'm not exaggerating here because what they do, and this is something I find bothersome, which you see in the conversations. You know, we're talking about with the low carb absolutists is they take something and then there's like a logic slippage
and a slippery slope phenomenon where you start with the picture you just showed, which, you know, falls into the myplate schema, but is actually very appealing. You got carrots, green beans, mushrooms with chicken and a few potatoes. 1s
They go off of a picture of health, and they say, here's my plate. Here's, you know, our approach to finding a balanced diet, which I don't think is a great term. And this is actually straight from the ADA. It says, for example, in a slice of pizza the crust would be the carbohydrate, the cheese, and any meats on top would be the protein and the tomato and sauce and any veggies on top would be the non-starchy vegetable. They literally recommend just plain pizza as an option for a well balanced option. So
in my opinion,
the. 1.4s
Bad advice. 1.2s Isn't offset by the decent options. And this is a more extreme example than the earlier. But it's like if you went to a cardiologist and like I'm going to give you the option to eat a healthy diet and exercise and get great sleep or smoke and lay on the couch, here are your two options.
Like the fact that the former is a good option. Does it make the fact that the latter is an absurd and terrible option? It doesn't. It doesn't make up for it. And when you start to dig into, like the ADA's recommendations, it's like they have some great options like I highlighted, but they also have lots of like, you know, apple crisp, like breakfast cookies, peaches and cream smoothies, this, that and the other. And
you
could make the argent playing devil's advocate that, okay, these are some tools and they're going to be better than, you know, certain other things. And, you know, if people actually followed the portion recommendations, which honestly, nobody ever does, who eats like a serving of cereal, then maybe it would be reasonable. But to equate these things to having literally pancakes and syrup right next to eggs for breakfast and having those as perceived equals. 1.3s
On your patient facing information.
I do find that very problematic. And that's coming from a place now transitioning back to the clinical where I see it hurting people. And this isn't like a minority opinion by me. It's like I point this out to other med students. They get angry. I have attended various Harvard hospitals. When they see these things in the hospital or online, they will tweet it to me because they know I'm going to tweet it. Yeah, they want me to because they're angry, too. It's like the physicians aren't making these recipes and actually telling their patients to use them. But these are the resources available to people. And
You know, if you're someone without extensive nutrition literacy, you're not really going to call out the BS. You're going to say, you know what? This, you know, breakfast cookie with Splenda and the peaches and cream smoothie. ADA says it's a great option, so let's go for it. The CDC's retweeting it, so yay. You know, so I think they're falling prey to, you know, this slippery slope logic. That's it. 1.4s
It's insidious in the way it kind of like lets really bad advice, corrosive devices creep in to what on the surface might be actually a reasonable message of options. Does that make
sense? Yeah, it's kind of a Trojan horse. It's here's the way I've got some follow up questions and just kind of thoughts about that. I think one is. 1.1s When you look at just the first part where we talk about the pizza, right. So you can probably make a pizza that actually fits the same general parameters of that plate that I showed, where from a health standpoint, it's I mean, you can make argents about satiety and whether someone is going to feel like they actually had a meal after that versus that first plate I showed. 1.3s And, you know, then we get into the weeds a little bit about like, what is satiety and how is that going to change from one person to the next? I mean, I think we can probably if we wanted to, we could probably get a pretty good answer as to whether one would be better than the other in most cases. But in reality, like the pizza that they're talking about is not the pizza that anyone who sees that marketing piece is thinking about. They're thinking, oh, I go to Domino's and I get a pizza. And they're probably not only not thinking that that piece is different from the actual ingredients on it relative to the pizza the ADA is promoting, but it's also probably they probably haven't even considered serving size at that point, so they're less likely to even if they're not going to follow the right ingredient ratios. And then they're also not going to follow the right serving size. So it is one of those things where I can see it's kind of like. That's problematic, right? So how do we get the average viewer to just assess, like, oh, if the ADA is saying Pete is healthy, they likely have a different definition of pizza than, you know, the fast food chains out there that are selling me pizza. They don't specify, though. They don't say like this much cheese in this much veggie. They literally show a picture of pizza. Yeah. So that's where they could probably improve.
I would say like and here's where I think they probably are or here's maybe another interesting kind of side topic. My guess is the ADA is thinking, how do we get people to even pay attention to what we're doing versus just saying, like just either not seeing it or just ignoring it? So they're using the same marketing tactics that any of these food companies are going to use, which is going to be a healthy amount of sensationalism, a healthy amount of better positioning than it actually is to draw you in. And then I think my guess is their hope is they draw you in. And then once you get in the resources that are more appropriate to what they should be doing. So someone who's willing to dive a layer deeper is going to actually find the right tools to be successful versus someone who just sees that marketing piece and then rushes off to Pizza Hut or Domino's. That would be my guess. But then online, I mean, that's a charitable assumption on my part. There are recipes there. Apple crisp recipe, first ingredient quarter cup brown sugar, then all purpose flour, oats and margarine. Like this is the recipe they're providing, right? Just right. But here's the counter to that. So let's say I see that and I'm like, oh that looks great. ADA is speaking my language. I'm heading in. So then I go in there. Step two for me is, well, what does it mean to have that item that drew me in? And then if I look at their resources and I'm honest with myself, what that's going to mean is I start with that plate I shared. And then if I do pull the lever for that apple crisp, it's probably a much smaller serving size according to what they're going to suggest than what I would envision when I'm coming in. So I may feel like I kind of got tricked. But maybe another way to look at it is I may feel like, uh, or you may run the risk of getting someone who's not going to take that second step because, you know, another layer of friction is going to lower the amount of people that are actually going to get to that spot. And then you have it becomes a question of, are you getting more casualties with a sensational advertisement, but a very different explanation in terms of what the wrecks actually are. Once you get there, then you're getting from drawing in and assigning people are going to take the second step. Does that make sense? 2.1s
I appreciate you trying to make the devil's advocate argent. I do think it's a little bit of a stretch because it's like, do you do you realistically think that somebody is going to like the majority of people are going to come and see, ooh, I look like apple crisp. This is tasty. I'm going to make the recipe that I'm going to have, just the portion they offered, which let's be honest, nobody really does that. And then kind of towards better resources and over time see their onesie come down. Or do you think they're going to take the apple crisp and the cookies as licensed to have those around make the cookies in batch and then go through a tray very quickly? I think they're more likely to go to the store and not even make the cookies, but just buy them pre produced in the most hyper. Say they made the cookies. Let's say they even made them. I still think it's going to be a problem, but I just don't think that this is going to translate into clinical success,
right? No, I don't think so either. And I think that's how we got to where we got with the original food guidelines and the food pyramid and I and this is another kind of part to that where I do think where I struggle here isn't that I think the ADA is doing the right thing. I don't for the most part. I think, though, that in order for us to really win that battle, we have to be very clear about where the ADA is wrong and where they are not wrong, or at least not harmful. So. The reason that I gave so much pushback when people jumped on that thread was because nobody would even dare tell me what the actual recommendations were from the ADA because, well, they knew just as well as I did. If they went in there and looked at what the ADA is actually going to tell people to eat, it is going to be very in line with someone who would have success assuming they follow that, that, that, that actual piece of advice that they get once they get into that recommendation. So to me, it was like in order to get to that part where I was going to agree with some of these people who are chiming in. Or we could get to that question. I was like, first, I want you to admit. 1s That is where we're at with this. I want honesty about where we're at with this and where I see us added with it is we got an organization who's using all the tricks that the big food organizations are doing to draw people in. They have an unrealistic assumption, most likely, about how people are actually going to take that information and use it, and that's going to create problems probably larger than what is necessary if we could find a different route forward. But I don't think we help the situation if we're just throwing them completely under the bus and saying, it's all terrible, don't even touch them with a ten foot pole when there actually are resources on there that could be valuable, and including the low carb, very low carbohydrate dietary options. So I think it's like one of those things where I think you can go a long way in terms of gaining allies by saying, hey, the ADA actually has some reasonable recommendations, but there's this big question you got to ask, which is when I look at that well structured meal, is that something I can stay consistent with and this is where, , where I find it really interesting because you get people who they know from experience that that's just not going to work for them because they're not going to stick to it. They're honest with themselves. They say, I could start with that plate, and I could even have that plate three times a day and just rinse and repeat. Or I could put that on the plan, but I'm not actually going to do that. I'm going to deviate from that because it's not sustainable for me as an individual. That can be true. For you, but not someone else. So I think just this kind of comes back to the beginning where I think, like a lot of times, the online rhetoric that goes straight to demonize everything about the ADA, ignores any positives about it. So then I feel like as a member of the low carb community, that that voice is trending, or I guess the pendulum, as you put it, is swinging too far to the absolute. 1s Demonization side of things. And I feel like, let's bring that back a little bit and let's make sure that all the facts are on the table. Once we get those facts on the table, let's nitpick and criticize as much as we can. But I was being very stubborn in the sense that I'm not going to start the nitpicking, criticizing side of things until you. Get on the same page with me. Not you specifically, but some of the people that were conversing with me get on the same page with me that there are, you know, recommendations on here that for some people are likely reasonable but are very one dimensional. So it's not going to be a population level success story with them. 1.1s Yeah. 1.5s I agree on the whole, I guess this is where it comes to the art of. 1.9s
Uh, engagement. 1.1s Nuance. 1.1s And and taking like. 1.2s
A productive stances, because I do think I have to differ with you with respect to like the ADA examples, because I think it's on them they're making fools of. This is like the parallel to the carnivore person saying sugar causes cancer, vaccines make your head explode and blah blah blah blah blah. And then by association you get tainted. So like a medical body that is recommending apple crisps and pancakes and syrup, they're tainting themselves. This is on them for them to step up and rationalize why they're doing this or improve. I don't see it as. 1.1s
Productive. I see it is harmful. I think that's the prevailing opinion among
physicians I talked to and.
I think it's actually very appropriate to, in effect, especially as someone who, you know, is a medical trainee. Throw them under the bus, so to speak.
And I'll tell you, part of the reason I'm willing to do that
Is because I know it'll get traction. And. 1.3s
There's
productivity in that, in that it builds social capital for later expense, if that makes sense.
It does, but it feels like it's just doing the same thing that they did then. And at what point then are we just perpetuating that where like, my assumption is like, I don't think the ADA, the people who are designing this are out to lunch. I think they're thinking, how do we get that social capital, just like other people are thinking that. And I think that what ends up happening is you get like you get like the majority in the middle of that where they're just like, well, where is the actual truth to this? And what or where are the half truths and the full truths and that sort of thing, so that they're actually most people, I think they're just looking for like they're looking for like all the potential inputs. And how it's going to play out for them if they go about this piece of advice. And I think most people come to this thinking to some degree, they're going to get half the story from one side and the other half from the other, and it's going to balance out. And my hope is like, how do we get to a point where both sides are more willing to say, like, here are the advantages of our approach, here are the disadvantages. And then the other side says here are our advantages. Here are disadvantages. And it's not such a canyon size chasm between the two that a person can look at it and be like, okay, well I know myself and if I go this way, I can deal with the potential downsides of that particular approach. Because I know it's sustainable for me to abstain from some of that stuff, whereas the other person can look at it, they're like, they maybe look at the other side where they're like, you know, the downside of this approach is very small for me personally versus the upside. And that's just a really hard proposition for a person to expect to get, given that kind of like more sensational side of the storytelling. And I mean, to be fair, Nick, I think you actually probably do as good a job of this as anywhere your online rhetoric is very much well balanced in the sense that I know you're a fan of the ketogenic diet, and I know that is something you're really interested in. So I have an assumption about you that you're going to probably be much more excited about that way of eating than other ones. So I know that, and I know that the information you're going to provide is likely going to be more in line with that, because it's what you're interested in. But I also know that you're not going to blatantly say you're not going to withhold information from me for the sake of promoting it, and you're also not going to put out information that you know is false to try to get more engagement. And I don't see that from some of the, like, really big names in the low carb movement. I see the exact opposite. I see them thinking, I know how I'm going to get engagement, and it's going to be by withholding this and sharing that, and they just put it on rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. So for me, that puts me in a position where I find myself playing devil's advocate of things where I think in practice I probably wouldn't actually do. And I get stubborn about like, well, I'm not going to answer like this was the example people wanted me to answer this question about how would I recommend the ADA to my family member? And I'm like. We can get to that topic. It's a fun topic, but first you're going to answer my initial question, and they wouldn't answer it because they knew what it would say. And like that was me trying to get to a level where we've got all the cards out on the table about the ADA. Now we can get to criticizing because we've done our justice, our do we've done our due justice and or our due diligence in laying out like what the landscape actually is when it comes to what they're recommending. Because a passer by, if I would have just joined in on the, the absolute view would have come by and thought like, oh, well, I guess the ADA is recommending that, as one person put it, gorging on pastries all day, which obviously they don't advocate. 1.1s So I mean, I find that to be kind of that. That's where I guess I was more or less being stubborn about is like I felt like or maybe if I back way up beyond just that particular thread, I just think, like the rhetoric as a whole within the low carb ketogenic carnivore diet has shifted enough towards where we're we're holding back on stuff that or we're holding back on sharing things that are potentially negative about this approach, or things people should consider about it so that they navigate it properly, and getting really heavy on the potential positives. And I don't see that being a sustainable move for the diet as a whole. I think it would. It's probably going to hurt it long term. If
anything. I agree and I'll just highlight some areas that I see repeatedly and we can maybe delve into whatever you want there. But things like, I mean generally it's demonization of the other. So antioxidants, fiber, seed oils, and fruit are the things I see again and again and again in the climate as well. , so this starts to bleed over into other topics which can become very dangerous. , and it's just it. 1.4s
It weakens the position. When you say something like cow burps, cow farts. Actually, it should be burps. But the person said farts have to do with hand health. And it's like now you come off as just a climate denier. You're not making a productive point. And the same thing is true with like, oh my God, the oxalates in that dark chocolate are going to kill you, or fruit is all fruit is bad or x, y and Z seed oils is another one. Artificial sweeteners is another one, or non-nutritive sweeteners. These are all things that you know if you want to ask my opinion. In one word on non-nutritive sweeteners. Good or bad, I'm going to say typically bad. But I'm not going to say having Diet Coke is going to cause a glioblastoma and you're going to die in a year. I'm going to cite what evidence I have and say, here is the data, and you can decide whether or not this is compelling enough for you to change your, you know, your decisions. And here are the limitations of the data. , you know, and here's mine. Here's what I decided to give a concrete example because I realize I'm talking about artificial sweeteners. 1.3s You
Now, there's a lot of confusion about them. I actually think the data is pretty strong that they have a negative effect, the whole carcinogenic thing. I'm not super sold on. I don't think the evidence is 1.5s
In favor, but things like there were really cool studies. I don't know if you saw me tweet about it, but it was in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS, and it was showing that that low doses of aspartame, the equivalent of 2 to 4 Diet Cokes per day in a mouse model, was sufficient to induce anxiety that was transgenerational transmissible. 1.2s Through the male line such that even the f two generations the grandchildren, so to speak, had an anxious phenotype, which is really interesting. Now, what are the limitations there? Can I claim that Diet Coke is causal for anxiety and hands? No. But for me as an individual, my considerations are well, this provides, you know, basic evidence that it might and quite honestly, whether or not Diet Coke is poisonous or excellent. 1.5s
You know. I'm not I'm not going to say it's excellent and water is better. I don't really care. So I'm going to have water. You as an individual might say, okay, this is a really important tool for me and it's superior to regular Coke. And therefore I'm going to have it. And as an adult human being, like just make an informed decision. I want you to have the data and make an informed decision. A lot of the issues in nutrition don't have clear cut answers, because we don't have the data and probably will never have the data to, you know, come to a conclusion. Especially as you mentioned earlier, longevity. We have no great data on what diets are going to make you live forever. I don't care what people say. Like we really don't. You can make a best guess, but you might be inching out months at best. Yeah, there's no like here's the formula for living to x, y and z. And so it's like. You
can always call out limitations of data. In the end, I think that what's important is to say, "What is the best guess I can get from the data that is available? And what are the limitations of the data? That's what I see. Not happening a lot in low carb, where people just make extreme claims without caveats, along with demonizing the other. That's kind of like the two pillars that really bother me. And I do think it kind of like it just it undercuts the progress and
destroys the ethos in space.
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree 100% there. I have a question. I mean, if this isn't like you, I can appreciate if you're just using this as an example, but I'm curious now if you are familiar with the research enough to answer the with with respect to aspartame, is there because, I mean, like I find the studies interesting, but then it always becomes a thing of like, well, what else is available from a from an evidence standpoint? And do we have any sort of outcome data that would suggest that anxiety is heightened? With that input. That would mean something even as simple
as there's epidemiology, there's associated data. But again, it's not the kind of interventional study you're going to very easily be able to do. So we have epidemiology showing that there's an association with biological plausibility. Because the aspartame breaks down into components that actually change the transport of amino acid precursors into the brain. The aspartame has a phenylalanine component. And then we have animal model data. And we have han data showing disruption of the microbiome
With changes in other physiological parameters like glucose intolerance. And we know the microbiome has associations with, you know, mental health. Sure. So there's a lot there. Do I have an RCT showing Diet Coke causes anxiety? No. And I probably never will. So you can take what it's worth and then make your own decision. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean at the end of the day there's going to be some there's going to be some of that, I think where you have to look at what's available and then make a call based on your own circumstances. I'd be curious, though, if there's any, any sort of study that would look at just here. We have like a group of people who essentially have never touched aspartame versus a group that had frequent usage and their lifestyles were similar enough. I've obviously there's always going to be confounders there, but similar enough where we see some sort of uptick in whatever they would use to assess anxiety in them, in their offspring. That would be an interesting 1.1s piece of evidence if it's out there. 1s
Yeah. Meaning there is epidemiological data. I do not think it would be controlled for other lifestyle variables. You're going to have a healthy user bias. Yeah. You just and again I guess that's the limitation of what evidence you can possibly collect. It's not that, another thing is it's not always clear though I think the lay public like what is fair evidence to ask for a particular question. And with respect to aspartame, I would claim it's unfair to request. Oh, I want a large scale RCT that is controlled in these ways for this outcome, 1.4s you're realistically probably not going to get a study that's powered enough in a free living environment to kind of get those outcomes. So you're limited to your best guess, just like we'll never have a diet RCT showing what prevents Alzheimer's disease because you're never going to randomize two people or randomize two groups of people to diets that they stay on for 30 years. You're just never going to have that data. So we can only guess based on yeah, you know, the aspartame. I love the topic of healthy user bias and kind of how that impacts the, the, the outcome. Because I think this one is important because if you demonize something long enough, healthy people are going to avoid it. So you are going to create that. Then it's like, how do you control or can you control? Aspartame would be an interesting one because I mean, I just don't know. But I wonder, like the history of aspartame, if you could somehow gauge how the public perception has felt about that because there's people who think it's very healthy for them. So that would be like people doing a whole bunch of really healthy stuff, but having aspartame. And then there's people who think it's terrible and they're if they're thinking it's terrible, they're also probably so you may get healthy user bias with that particular example on both sides. I'd be curious. Yeah, just I mean, we probably don't have this evidence, but if there be some way to kind of gauge like, public perception, like poles throughout history of aspartame suggesting like where the public opinion of it was similar to like politicians where we can oh, from the 50s to the 60s, aspartame was seen as this great health input. And then from the 70s and 80s it was seen as this total negative. Or, you know, I'm just making updates for oh yeah, over time as sort yeah, yeah, that would be interesting because you could shift that. What I would say is, in all honesty, it's probably very individual, like one han study which was mostly a rat study, but they had a han component. I think it was in nature. It was from the Weizmann Institute, I think it was Ziv,
the Ziv paper. But what they did was they took individuals who are naive to non-nutritive sweeteners. I actually think they used aspartame in the earlier experience, but then they focus most of the experiments on experiments on saccharin. But what they found was they could induce glucose intolerance within a week of feeding people saccharin. But it was a seven person study, and there were four responders who became glucose intolerant and three who didn't. And it wasn't like, you know, like a graduation. It was like there were very four clear responders with big effects. And then there were four who just didn't touch them in a week. Now, maybe they would have been affected over a longer period of time. But nevertheless, there was clearly a resilience there where it didn't impact them much. And so there's probably, you know, a broader truth to that. Now in the seven person study, you're never going to know, like what the full effect size is. Yeah. But I think there are going to be individuals with sensitivities. The fact of the matter is. Because we don't have broader data. You're kind of gambling. So then it comes down to, again, like individual choice. Personally, I can take or leave. Sweet. So I'm just going to have a glass of water because all things being equal, I think the water is probably going to be a better bet in the end, and I don't really care otherwise. Yeah, you're
probably not risking surpassing the threshold of water. 1.4s That is always there's always kind of the back pocket answer is like, you know, like, oh, it's a dose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dose makes the poison and water's got a pretty high dose to become a poison. But then it comes back to what you're saying before, like for you that's great for someone else. That Diet Coke, two Diet Cokes a day may make everything else forever a reason to stay on track. And then for them, that's going to be a net improvement versus a net deficit. So yeah, I'm not militant on these things. My dad drinks a bunch of Diet Coke and I know I'm not going to sell him on it. So I'm like, alright, worried about the net or the carry.
Oh well he's I'm I exist already. You can't do anything anymore. So to what degree I have anxiety which has really been wrenched up this year. Maybe I should just blame him and his Diet Coke habit.
All your anxiety blaming what I did. I never thought about that. When I'm out for my next Usmle, I'll just tell him that 1.8s maybe. Maybe this is something you thought about when you talked about kind of the pass down effect. There are recommendations against things like aspartame for pregnant women, though, aren't they? That that's not like outside the stretch of what recommendations say is or am I thinking of something else pregnancy. I'm actually not sure if a pregnancy is okay. It's not that it comes up. I can't remember
why I'm thinking this, but I thought I heard recently that there was like there was some research or there was reason to believe that that would be something that would maybe be on to be thought about, but meant for, for particular conditions. So like medicine, phenylketonuria is one like inborn error of metabolism where you can't process the fetal alanine. And so the aspartame gets broken down. So you don't want to have aspartame if you have a baby with fennel ketone, urea, or something like that. But that's your screen for that I. 1.7s And I. Yeah, I.
That would be a very specific condition. I don't think broadly. Right. 1.1s
You not
population wide. I mean, if I, if, if and or when my partner is pregnant, I'm going to. Push or not to have Diet Cokes. All things being equal, because you're just stating for nine months you might as well give the baby the best chance. Scott. So if you don't know, have a glass of water. Yeah,
you can always default. 1.4s So yeah, I know my mom, when she was pregnant with me, apparently had a lot of macaroni and cheese and root beer. Okay.
That was.
So. But she's been like £100 her whole life. Somehow one of those people. 1.1s So
Hopefully you got her genes, right?
Yeah. No, I, I 1.1s let's just say I've never cut carbs to lose weight. Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
No, it's actually ironic because if I didn't develop colitis. 1.4s I probably would still be smashing fudge and cookies and stuff. Like, you should have seen what I ate in college. 1.1s It was. It was an interesting turn of fate. We like to joke that my MD PhD was actually a backup career. I would have been a baker or something like I loved to bake from like age 12. I used to actually have. I started a baking club in high school , baking for bears. We used to raise money for the World Wildlife Foundation and Polar bear conservation, made like the most sugary, obscene things like those, like seven layer bars with the condensed milk. Yeah, yeah. My God, 1.2s
either it's a good thing you gave current information that you didn't go that path, or you could think of it in a positive way, you're sharp enough, guy. Where had you gone that route? Who knows what kind of like, , options you would have come up with that would be less less detrimental for someone with with that issue, I don't know if it would have been highlighted to me is an important issue, you know, because before you, I mean, there are some people who just like, pick up, you know, metabolic health as something that they're really interested in. You might even be one of those people who never really had, like a serious health condition. I actually don't know your medical background, but I think a lot of people come to it through their own personal struggles. And I was only woken up, so to speak, because I thought I could outrun a bad diet, so to speak. It's like eating a lot of junk along with like after eating my five a day. ET cetera. And I'm like, but I'm going to burn this off. And I thought I could get away with it. 1.1s
I was humbled by it.
By my biology. And then it just opened my eyes to, you know, the power of focusing on what you put in your body. For a wider, wide range of conditions beyond just weight. So that's how I came to it. But honestly, I still love to bake as an activity. Every Saturday morning I bake something low carb, but I just like the activity of it.
I just find it fun. So what's
your favorite thing to bake these days or does it change quite a bit?
It tends to change. ,
my, I'm actually at home right now. I'm moving between, like, a family home, between apartments. So for a few months, I'm home. , and recently, I've been making this bread that I'm fine tuning. I call it fungi bread, because this is going to sound really weird, but
one day we had leftover mushrooms, and I'm like, you know what? These mushrooms are kind of spongy. Might actually make a great base for, like, a moist cake. And it worked so
well. Yeah. With like, coconut Moana and like. Made like a candy pecan topping with a maple allulose. Steve Hanley from sugar sends me, like, tons of RCS stuff. So, like, put it around the pecans and top it with, like, like a lot of dark chocolate. And it's really moist and good. So I've been been fine tuning that. And then I take a little bit of the even take a little bit of honey, because I can actually have honey with staying in ketosis. Just do it right. And have it generally post-workout, mix it with some cream cheese as a frosting. It's great. And honestly, even I don't even care. I would be just as happy eating hard boiled eggs, but I like the activity of baking it. Yeah, and there is culture around food. Like my mom again doesn't struggle with weight. She loves it. So it's like a nice thing to. 1.4s
For me, literally just as an activity to make it and share it with someone. That's not something we even talked about. But like, you know, the culture around food is sure to be big. So yeah, well, and here's
the other thing too, like to go back if we want to circle back to the original topic too. It's like, here's an opportunity where, like if you have a friend or a relative who's like, oh, there's Nick again on his crazy ketogenic diet, they come and visit and you make them this really cool thing that they're like, how is this? This doesn't make sense. And they and they enjoy it and they realize, like, this is one of the battles I chose to try to fight early on in my low carb is like, why are we calling low carb ketogenic unsustainable? We have just an unlimited number of options of things you can create that are low carb, ketogenic friendly. So the argument that, oh, how could you go without this for the it's that that's kind of one of the silly ones on the other side that they tried to pull out that I don't think is really all that accurate. I guess
that does come down. Circling back to the original topic, I suppose, of creating something that's palatable to a new user and that may or may not include a low carb, apple crisp recipe. Like, I'm not against these things as tools, but I do think it requires responsible and appropriate messaging. 1s
. 1.1s
And Yeah, I mean. 1.4s
I think it's fun and creative. Do I think that my pecan and coconut manna and honestly, butter laden
Is chocolate cake the best for weight loss? And what do you recommend for your starting journey? No, but it's like a use case for where you are. Yeah, I have no issues.
Well, Nick, I'm on like a 4 or 5000 calorie diet, so I'll take that recipe. 1.2s Yeah.
How's your training right now? Are you training for something specifically, or is that just. 1.4s I've
got. Usually it's not quite that high. On average, I'd probably like 3 or 4000 on average. But right now I'm kind of on the final phase of training for the 100 miler. So that usually just means a lot more low intensity, high volume. So for some perspective, I did if you look at I'm finishing up the fourth week here, but this is where it'll end up. I went 130, 140 hundred, 150 miles as the last four, and then I'll do a two week taper and race 100 miles. So yeah,
You get a daily diet that looks like I'm sure everybody I'm asking I'm asking for the listener because you were like, that's the question that's going to everybody's mind right now is like, I want him to say what he eats in a day.
You know, the hardest part is like, or one of the reasons that I've kind of gotten, I'll just back up a little bit, like my inputs from a macronutrient standpoint have been pretty consistent since I started. I took about maybe a year and a half, two years to really fine tune, like what I wanted from a macronutrient ratio through different phases of training. And then it became a point of, okay, I know this is what works for me. Now, where do I get these inputs? So I've done everything from mostly plant based to mostly animal based with those inputs. And what I find the biggest challenge is when you get up to like those bigger days like that is. You hit so many things so early. You have to find low volume, high energy inputs so you don't just end up having, like an ungodly amount of fiber on board and things like that. So, you know, for me, it's like, you know, one thing I'll lean on really heavily like this time is like just olive oil, like I'll put out, like instead of adding, you know, I might have something like a stir fry or something for dinner. So if I'm in, like off season, I'll just have the stir fry. But at this point of training, I might be putting hundreds and hundreds of calories of olive oil on it. , yeah. So like a lot of or the other one is like, I'll be making eggs. Well, I'm going to put it like I like, put in some heavy cream or like cheddar cheese on top of that and just load up the calories there. So I'm getting more fat and less extra protein and other calories along the way. Yeah, yeah, people are interested. I actually have a couple of Instagram posts that I did during this training block that go over just what I ate in a day. So I think, I think there's two of them up there right now. And I'll probably do another one this week, because this week it will be a little more. I've got one that's like 3500 calories, one that's like I think 41. And then I'll probably try to get one that's reflective of like, oh yeah, you just ran 150 miles this week. You're probably having some days that are maybe closer to 5000. So people can get a more overall perspective of it. And. 1.1s
That sounds fun, actually.
Yeah. 1.4s So when are you training for an ultramarathon? Is that what I hear? 1.5s
No. What do you mean? Oh, you you've got,
you got Boston already. That's enough. Right. Well, you
Do you know my running history? Medical history. Yeah. I have some bone problems. But yeah, you're more you
do more strength work now, right? Yeah. If, honestly, if I had a genie, one of my first wishes would be to, like, have titan bones be able to run. So I'm very jealous of you that I have a little genetic problem. So no more running for me. But got
I am a little bit busy with other things in life now. So my training, my training has gone downhill. 2023 has not been good for Nick's health.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, you've been busy. That's been clear. So. But it was our main clinical year 1.1s at, at HMS. And then I have my big Usmle exams which I'm taking back to back. So after this year, things should lighten up a little bit. ,
But yeah. , were there other things we wanted to touch on? We kind of I
yeah, I think we hit on all of them , that I had in mind anyway. And anything we missed, I guess we can just fire up when you're ready to come back on if you want to. Yeah.
It was honestly just nice to vent with someone who I think like the same page with. 1.2s
I can't find problematic messaging and I honestly don't have a good answer. You asked the question earlier, like how do you combat? The sensationalist, who are grabbing up a lot of the attention and growing their following like gangbusters. Because you can push back. And I think we both have to some extent. I don't know how effective it's been, either publicly or backchannel like. Yeah,
it's hard to know. I mean, I like it's all just kind of I don't have any good information to suggest one way or the other outside of just what people send me. So I know there's a lot of people who are like that, they'll reach out and say, hey, I appreciate you doing that. I mean, here's the thing. Like someone who's mad about it, maybe a couple of people who say, I'm going to mute or block you. I was like, 1.2s you get that too? But I just don't expect people who disagree with me to necessarily reach out and be like, you're going the wrong direction either. So it's probably a skewed, skewed perception on my part too. But, , yeah, I mean, I think I think you're right. I don't think there is a great answer one way or the other. I think it's good to have the conversation out there so people are thinking about it and that they actually, I mean, people will listen to this and they'll think. Okay. There are, you know, some things to look for or not to look for when it comes to the messaging that I see online. And maybe that will help to some degree drive who they tend to give their attention to versus others.
Yeah. I also think we can help promote people who are, you know, at every level of advice giving, being overall positive and productive. So some people, apart from yourself that I jp to mind are like, have you been following Dave Danna over this past year? Oh yeah. He's so great. And he, like, falls into the same frame as Chris Cornell as like the things that you talk really well to the public. And he's like, look, here's what I'm doing and here's how it's working, but I'm not an expert. Like, and take what you can from this and leave what you don't want.
Yeah. I actually find that a really appealing approach
for sure. Yeah Chris has been doing it for a while. Yeah. And Dave is a phenomenal story so far. You've been helping him with his nutrition, right? Am I mistaken about that? I thought he said something about working with you. Yeah. Well I was the first person to reach out to, I don't know, the very first, but he says that back when he, like, he started his journey, it was earlier, like last year, and I just reached out to him because he seemed like a genuine guy, this one, he had like a few thousand followers and there was something that was special about him. And then he just exploded. Yeah, I think he's like that. 70,000 followers now is
like, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger retweeted him or something like that.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been retweeting him consistently. , but yeah, I mean, for those who don't know him,
Dave, I think it's been 16 months. He's lost £130. , and he's not gone one week in over 16 months without losing some weight and just changed his life entirely. So you just been racking up wins. But he's constantly posting, you know, positive remarks like and showing, you know, what he does and where he slips up. And like the adult just like real life decision he makes, like, you know, what I was with my fiance is like parents and they serve this. So, you know, I ended up eating. This was the best choice. No, but I made the conscious decision because X, Y, and Z and I didn't completely fall off the bandwagon. , so yeah, it's it's that non absolutist approach, you know,
that I think, you know, can be. It can be appealing for the
listeners who are now interested. I'll just share his Twitter handles just at Dave E Dana and that's Dana. So give him a follow if you want to follow that journey because he is well on his way. But I know he is the first to tell you he's still still working at it. So
He's very humble. You should have him on. He's getting married in a
month. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should shoot him a note and have him on. That'd be great. I've had Chris on before, but I think you're right. I think they're very similar kinds of stories where it was like whatever they were doing wasn't working. They recognized that and made some changes and figured out what was going to work for them and then got really consistent within it. And yeah, you know, Chris, the endurance runner and I can appreciate the number one thing, regardless of what training principle you follow is consistency. So finding the one that you can be consistent within is going to rule the day in most cases. Yeah.
No Chris is Chris is excellent. , but yeah. Well we'll have to repeat this and I'll hopefully have some cool data to be sharing with you at some point soon. I wish I could speak about it, but it's probably been one paper under review for five months. Oh
man, I'm sitting there. 1.1s
Another. How long is it? Is it really hit or miss on how long that ends up taking
in most? Yeah. You don't really have any levers to pull. Like it's just sitting there. They just don't get to it. And the editors are on the reviewers and it's like, all right. 1s
And research. I mean, you can pull it and move over, but like, you just you're you're at the you're at the mercy of the process. But this will be a big bomb to drop. Hopefully we get it into general, we want it and then we have some others coming. But all very exciting stuff. I'm really looking forward to next year. , and so there'll be some stirring in the pot. Let me put it that way. 1.4s
Well, I'll be here for it. And you want to let the listeners know where they can find you too. Before I let
you go, I'm Nick Norwood on Twitter. That's where I'm most active. And I've been trying to do some more YouTube breakdowns. I really enjoy reading papers and then posting little digests of them on my cell phone. But a little way to. There's so much interesting stuff coming out and I enjoy reading it. So yeah, no, I think a lot of people would enjoy a Nick Norris long form option to go along with Twitter. Well, Twitter has a long form option. I love that that's true. Yeah. Favorite tweets now are like people really do engage with the long tweets, so credit to the audience there. But
anyway. 1.1s Awesome. Well thanks again Nick. It was great to chat. I think this will be a fun one to get out to the listeners. And yeah, we'll have you back on soon. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much. 3.4s