539: Avoid These 7 Nutrition Myths If You Want To Lose Weight with Danny Lennon

Podcast Transcription: Avoid These 7 Nutrition Myths If You Want To Lose Weight with Danny Lennon

Ted Ryce: You were just listening to Danny Lennon. What’s up, my friend? And welcome back to another episode of the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, international speaker and high-performance health coach, Ted Ryce. This is a podcast for men and women who are looking to boost their energy and upgrade their health. So, get ready to learn proven health, fitness and mindset strategies to unlock your full potential.  

Now, let me tell you about today’s guest, Danny Lennon.  

Danny is someone that I’ve been following for several years now. And I’ve listened to his podcast, Sigma Nutrition, regularly. In fact, I was so excited and honored to connect with Danny and have him on the show because I’ve heard so many of his episodes, and they’ve had an impact on what I share with you on the information that I use to back up some of the approaches that I take, some of the methods I use in nutrition, in training, and more.  

And the cool story is that Danny and I connected over Facebook recently. I made a post, and he was very moved by it. And I talked about my brother and overcoming tragedy and what I had done to get past those tragic events in my life, and he reached out, or he made a comment. And that led to me reaching out to him on Facebook. We ended up on a Skype call, and we just really hit it off and it was an honor.  

In fact, he had me on his show, which I’ve got to tell you, when you listen to his show, and you hear all these guys with PhDs or medical doctors, and they’re talking about all the things that they’re an expert in, and then I’m a guest on the show, I had a little bit of an impostor syndrome moment, but I’m really glad that I went on because I had great feedback from being on his show. It’s a fantastic show.  

Again, that’s Sigma Nutrition. You can find it at www.sigmanutrition.com. Definitely you should check it out, especially if you want to hear from some of the people who are doing research. And instead of hearing it from secondhand like even me, you want to hear from the guys who are actually conducting it. Danny’s Show is a great place for that. But Danny is super knowledgeable as well.  

In fact, in my mind, he’s one of the smartest up-and-coming people in nutrition, period. He’s got an open mind. But he’s also very based in evidence. And he’s got an interesting story about how he got there, and why we should care about science and about research, especially when making decisions about what we do with our health. So, if you feel like you’re a bit confused about who you should listen to, or what information is good, Danny is going to help get you clear on how to evaluate information more critically, as well as things that you can use today to start getting better results with the way you eat, with your diet, with your nutrition. So, without further ado, let’s get to the episode with Danny Lennon.  

Danny Lennon, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for doing this today.  

Danny Lennon: It’s an absolute honor. I’m delighted to be on the show. And I really appreciate you asking me, Ted.  

Ted Ryce: Absolutely. Man, we connected recently, but I have been a fan of yours. I’ve been a fan of your podcast, Sigma Nutrition. It’s one of the podcasts I was just telling you, I keep coming back to because when there’s so much misinformation out there, and people are trying to promote their viewpoints, their ideologies about nutrition, about health, about fitness, I know I can always go to your show and take away a more nuanced perspective, I can take away something that will help me see what I do with my clients different. Or maybe even something that I can use right away with my clients.  

Like, one of the things that I learned with your interview with Keith Bar, about taking 15 grams of collagen an hour before exercise, that whole thing and reading the research and experimenting with it came from your show. So, it’s going to be exciting. I’m excited to have you on here and dive into maybe some other things that you haven’t talked about on your show. 

Danny Lennon: For sure. Yeah, that’s great to hear. And it’s always good to hear that the show is helping in any small little way that it can. So, to hear that is super positive. So, appreciate hearing that.  

Ted Ryce: Cool. Yeah. And if you’re listening, you’re probably wondering, well, I don’t know, Danny, I haven’t listened to Sigma Nutrition before. Danny, can you talk a little bit about who you are, how you got into the field and what you do with Sigma Nutrition?  

Danny Lennon: Yeah, absolutely. So, I will try and distill it into some of the kind of main points that might be relevant for today. So, first thing is from an academic point of view, I have an undergrad degree in biology and physics. After getting that degree, I went back and taught that as a science teacher in high school for a year before really deciding that, actually, this nutrition thing is what I’m spending most of my free time doing, so let me go back and study this.  

So went back to college, got my master’s degree in Nutritional Sciences. And really just it’d been a long process of many years of just trying to read research related to nutrition and health, and a lot of it to do with performance because that was kind of my main way into nutrition of like: how can I help myself and my gym performance and my athletic performance, playing various different sports as I grew up.  

And so after getting my master’s degree, I started coaching some people, built up my kind of coaching consultation business, started writing some articles, and then founded the company that’s there now, Sigma Nutrition, which is probably about four and a half years old, I guess now. And when I started the company, the idea was to try and put out evidence-based information via various different forms of media.  

But probably what it became most well- known for is the podcast, Sigma Nutrition Radio, which launched in 2014. And like you mentioned, it’s a weekly show where I try and talk to as many practitioners, researchers, dieticians, doctors, that are an expert in a specific area and dive in depth into that and try and pick out what stuff can we take from their research or their experiences and start applying it.  

And outside of that, the company—I tend to term it as an educational media company. Because I think what I’m most passionate about and what I think the big vision for the future is to try and create various different pieces of media that are going to be educational in nature, and beyond the podcast, even. So I do a lot of speaking and talking at conferences. We run our own annual Sigma Nutrition conference in Dublin the last three years. This will be year four. 

And then we have a coaching side of the business as well where we coach to various different number of people, which we can get into, if you wish. So that’s where it’s kind of adds this kind of two sides to this evidence-based educational media company, based on, I suppose my early interest in learning more about nutrition. So, I’m sure there’s plenty of things in between that and precede those particular details and in the backstory, so if you want to get into that, I’m more than happy to talk about it. But I think there are some of the few things that might be relevant for people listening.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I want to dive into something in particular with you today. And that is: we’re in this situation, in this environment, this media environment, where there’s inundation with different perspectives, with people spouting off their views. I mean, I do that here. You do that on your show. And I even had a client, who I was—I forget what exactly we were talking about, Danny, it was something about nutrition, and I it to do something with cards and ketogenesis, most likely, right?  

And we were talking about it, and she’s like, “But, Ted…” And I was saying, “Listen, this is the way it is, like this is the best evidence that we have shows this, right? Like, for example, if your calories and protein are matched, does it really matter whether you’re cutting fat, whether you’re cutting carbs? The research by Kevin Hall, the latest best research shows, there’s really not that big of a difference. There is some small nuances, and maybe perhaps, someone’s ability to adhere to like eating a particular way.  

But if we’re just talking about the nuts and bolts of the results, and then she was like, “Yeah, but I heard a doctor on another show saying the exact opposite, and, Ted, he’s a doctor.” So my question for you, Danny, and I hope that everyone listening can gain a lot from understanding just what type of environment we’re into, is like, there’s all these people and doctors included or PhDs, and they’re saying all this different information.  

And you and I probably say something different, at least from the people who are promoting low carb, high fat diets and how it’s all about ketogenesis. It’s so popular. Can you talk a little bit about what we need to know? How does a person listening know that you’re going to say, what is truly correct?  

Danny Lennon: Right. Yeah, that’s a big question. And there’s a lot of different kinds of things that are going through mind where we go with this. So hopefully, I get to each one. I think the first thing I would say is that I completely agree that it’s, in some cases, some sometimes impossible for people to be able to decipher what is good information, what is bad information, particularly when you have someone who has supposedly some sort of credential that should make them a credible expert, whether that’s a doctor or whether this person says they have a PhD, or whether this person is in great shape, or whether this person coached X celebrity, and so on, all these different things that can be pieces of the puzzle, to show credibility for someone. 

One single thing on its own doesn’t necessarily mean everything they say is true. And that comes back to a typical logical fallacy that us as humans are just prone to fall into, like, there’s a lot of logical fallacies that we will default to. And one of them can be like an appeal to authority that seeing just because someone is a doctor, they have to be correct. But as you say, you can have various different doctors that will have pretty much any different diet that’s out there, you have a doctor that’s going to be behind it supporting it in some way.  

So, I think the thing that I would come back to for people is the reason why we have this thing called Evidence-Based Practice, or why we try and use science as often as possible to make these decisions is that us as humans are prone to some errors in our thinking, in that, we often think more with emotion than rationality. And that’s just a normal human trait. So, if anyone is familiar with Jonathan Hite, for example, a researcher, he’s talked about how scientific thinking is actually incredibly unnatural for human beings like it. We aren’t programmed to think that way.  

And that is why science really exists. Science is not a thing you do; science is this process to try and determine what is most likely to be true. And it does that by trying to make objective decisions about things by taking the human element out of it as much as possible. And so, rather than getting something where someone is maybe super emotionally invested in a particular approach, or a product based on their own experience, or something that happened with them, we try and use science and say, okay, with as much as we know on this particular topic, and most of the good research in this area, or if we have a large review of the literature or a meta-analysis of most of the good work that’s been done, where does the general consensus fall? And that’s probably the best place to start on oftentimes, particularly nutrition, it tends to be in the middle of two extremes.  

So, often if there’s doubt, I would say, a safe bet most of the time is going to fall in between two extremes, right? Whether…Pick any topic you want in nutrition, and we can pick two extremes on either end of that viewpoint, and most often, the truth is actually in the middle. So that’s what I’d say to people.  

And then the kind of other points your question was, well, how can someone validate what maybe I’m saying is the truth, and then what other people are saying is incorrect? And there’s no way to do that. And I would probably stop short saying, what I say is actually the truth. I think one big slide that I put up in my seminar last year, had this phrase that I kind of came up with the try and describe what I was going to present over that weekend. And it just said, transient truth.” 

“And it’s this idea that what I’m presenting at any one time point, is what I think is most likely to be true at that time point. But isn’t necessarily the 100% truth, because I don’t know everything in the world. There’s research that still needs to be done. There is research out there that I haven’t read, there are viewpoints I haven’t heard, and my mind changes on stuff all the time. So, what I can tell people is, I don’t know if it’s ‘the truth,’ and I don’t know if anyone can ever reach that point of the truth. But what we can do is transiently in this moment right now, on the most objective way I can, here’s what I believe is most likely to be correct.  

And I would say the reason why people might want to listen to that, as opposed to these other viewpoints that are maybe very different to mine, is that as much as possible, I think evidence-based practice is the best foundation for that, because it takes out objectivity, or it puts in objectivity and takes out our emotional, subjective side of wanting to assign ourselves to a particularly dietary approach, because it speaks to us in some kind of emotional level.  

Or we’ve kind of got into this kind of, almost like a cult type kind of tribe, or a kind of sense of feeling that we’ve got from aligning with a certain approach, or we tried a particular approach and it worked well for us. And now we’re going to tell everyone to do it. I think they’re pitfalls, and they are inherently anti scientific. So, I hope something in their answers your question.  

Ted Ryce: No, I think you did a great job, and I appreciate that answer a lot. And I just want to share very briefly like why I care about this stuff, because I’m not into the tribalism. And almost unfortunately, Danny, because I believe getting part of a community, like, if I was so gung-ho about CrossFit, or paleo or keto, the keto diet, I’d probably have more supporters, I’d probably have more of a bigger community.  

And it’s to the detriment of my business that I’m not like that. I think, you know? I believe eventually, I’ll do well, in spite of not riding on the back of a fad or a trend. But I will say this: I got into this whole thing like, “Okay, well, what does the evidence say?” Because I’ve been in the industry for nearly 20 years, 19 years, over 19 years—coming up on 20 sooner than I’d like. But I followed a lot of people, I learned a lot of things, a lot of sciency-sounding things. And I thought I really knew a lot.  

But the results with myself and my clients weren’t reflected in this monumental mountain of information I had in my head. And I got really frustrated, I got really upset. I felt let down, I felt almost deceived. Because it’s like, “Well, you talk such a good game, but I’m not getting results doing this, this is so frustrating when you’re not getting results.” And so that’s what led me to the evidence-based approach and adopting more of that.  

And I’ve got to say, I’m not 100%... I need meta-analyses of, you know, a dozen or so randomized control trials to make a decision about what I do. And I’d like to get into that with you a little bit later. But I find that I can consistently get better results when that evidence leads me to the principles that are going to help me get better results more consistently, with all the people that I work for, work with and that has happened, it’s happened, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it.  

But let me tell you, Danny, bro, it sucks. Science is hard to understand and reading studies is not nearly as good as reading someone’s blog post with a cool story in it. And what’s the answer there? I mean, how do you are. I think most of the listeners of your show and probably the people who hire you are probably in the fitness business, and they kind of look up to you.  

But for the people who aren’t, for the people who are accountants and attorneys and business men and women, how do you get those people to see, like, to stop listening to that, hey, just do keto or low carb—not that I have anything against those things, but just the cult like behavior—how do you get people to stop listening to that and just say, “Hey, just try this. Follow my way.” And what can people listening right now learn from that?  

Danny Lennon: Yeah, I think a lot of this ties into something you actually said, Ted, and it’s not that it’s going to be any magical ability I have to go and convince someone, “You should listen to this now because this is inherently better.” I think a lot of it gets born out of frustration with a failure in a different area or a failure to be able to make a certain change, or they’ve started to kind of come across better quality information, have seen the value in that. And it’s almost like this expression of once the student is ready, the teacher appears, type thing… 

Ted Ryce: I love that. 

Danny Lennon: …where if someone isn’t ready to hear information… I mean, if someone is completely 100% committed to, they want to do a vegan diet, they think that’s going to be the best for their health and the best for their body composition performance, they’ve been reading a ton of stuff and that’s 100% what they want to do, there is nothing in that time point that I can probably say and present to them that’s going to knock them, not want them to at least try that at that time point.  

Whereas if maybe someone is coming from a place of, okay, I actually want help, or I’ve heard about this approach, or I can see the value in an evidence-based approach, then we can have probably a better conversation. So that’s the first point. The second is more where I think that the convincing is going to be done is for people who are kind of on the fence, of people who aren’t aligned anywhere in particular, who are just looking, feeling a bit lost of like, okay, where do I even start with this stuff? 

And the case I would make, again, for finding a trainer or a coach or a nutritionist or whoever they’re planning to work with, who tends to operate by evidence-based principles is that there’s so many different ways and methods out there that people promote. So how do we know what’s going to work? Well, the best way to get the best starting point is if we have a foundation of saying: okay, we’ve looked at the objective science, to kind of see what things definitely don’t work, what stuff definitely does work. And then there’s this kind of gray stuff in between that we can play around with after a while.  

But understanding those three things, we can now at least start you at a point where we’re most likely to be correct. Now on top of that, we can start layering in maybe your personal experiences with different diets and your preferences. My experience as a coach or what I’ve seen work in the real world with people, and you start layering all that stuff on top of the evidence.  

So, it’s not evidence only, it’s using that as a starting point of, okay, this stuff is most likely to get you to where you want to be or close to it. And then over time, we can refine it. That’s much better way in my mind than saying, okay, let’s just pick some random type of diet, let’s put you on it and see what happens. And I think the other thing that I would tend to talk to people through is not so much about, really, physiologically what’s going to happen, because we know quite clearly, particularly if you take the example of someone who wants to lose some body fat, that pretty much any dietary approach can work.  

If that person ends up being in a calorie deficit and they start eating in a manner where they’re expending more calories than they’re consuming, and they do that, they will lose weight. And we’ve seen people who have lost weight on every single type of dietary approach possible. The difference is how many of those people maintain that weight loss versus how many are actually going to regain it.  

And so we know that by far, the biggest factor that’s going to impact someone’s success long term after losing some body weight, is their ability to, number one, adhere to the diet in the first place. So can you comply with this dietary approach in order to reach your weight loss goal? And then two, do you have a method of eating long term that’s going to prevent you from regaining that weight back? 

So, if adherence and compliance and sustainability in the long term are a few of the important factors. Then once we do that, by going on some evidence-based principles, there are literally an endless number of approaches and methods we can use for any one individual. And so you could have 100 clients and most of them could have a very different approach that they’re taking, but they’re all operating with the same principles.  

So, if they’re going to be losing body fat, they might all be, again, eating in a calorie deficit. But some of your clients for whatever the reason, their preferences and work schedule, might like to do some intermittent fasting. So, you have them do some of that, some feel better when they eat lower amounts of carbs. So, some of them are doing that some guys have a lot of training, and they’re on a higher carb diet.  

So, all these different methods are available to people to try at different time points, or at different stages or when they have a different goal. But the fundamental principles are all the same. And you only get those principles when you look at this kind of foundation of okay, generally where is the scientific consensus leaning, on what leads to X, Y, and Z? And so that’s the case I would make the most people that once you do that, now you can understand a few key principles.  

And so we have so much more flexibility in terms of how we set up your diet, versus telling you, you need to eat this specific type of diet. And so when you have that flexibility to pick your method, you’re dramatically increasing your likelihood of adherence and compliance long term. You’re also increasing how and enjoyable your nutrition is going to be far into the future. You don’t have to band specific foods or band specific food groups forever. And so it’s just much more likely to be an enjoyable process, I guess. And a successful one at that, too.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, well stated, Danny. And it reminds me of something that John Berardi has said before, from Precision Nutrition about, like the coaches he tries to foster in his program, he wants to make them a dietary agnostic. And he’s the first person I’ve ever heard use that term, but I knew immediately what he meant. It’s like, nobody use the right tool for the job. It doesn’t make for a great selling point, though.  

Like, if you’re just saying, “No low carb, low carb is the way. Carbs are evil. Sugar makes you fat.” It’s so obvious. “You know, there’s this big conspiracy to make you fat by the government because they put you added sugars and everything. “You’re like, ‘Yeah, man. Yeah, got to cut out carbs. Got to fight the power.” Being like, well, let’s see, what do you do better on, high fat or high carb, or…?” I’m kind of ranting a little bit, but I do have a question for you. 

Danny Lennon: No, it’s important. 

Ted Ryce: Oh, you got to follow? You got to follow up.  

Danny Lennon: No, I was just going to say it kind of reminds me that there’s this great book I read before by a guy, I think his name is Matt Fitzgerald. He wrote a book called Diet Cults, which essentially talks about that, just reminded me when you said, ‘dietary agnostic.’ It totally makes sense of how all these different things kind of resemble some type of cult-like feeling, because a lot of them are not only built around getting people emotionally connected to it.  

But then beyond that, to keep people within it, it’s almost, again, like I mentioned earlier, being part of this group, or part of the tribe, is again, a very, very human thing, and in many cases is super useful, but in some cases, can lead us to say, make poor choices about our diet, if we’re only buying into that because of that the feeling it gives us of: “I can identify as this, it’s part of my identity.”  

And so that’s one of the things where when people start using these things to identify as this is, for them something part of their inbuilt identity. It’s no longer, “Oh, here’s some dietary choices. I choose to make decisions each day on what foods I’m eating.” It’s now, “this is who I am.” And so it’s much more difficult to get away from or to take criticism of that type of approach and so on.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and when you were talking about that, just now I was thinking about some of the Instagram handles that I’ve seen when I’m doing my thing on Instagram. It’s like Keto Brad. And like, you know, all these keto—and keto is in the name and I’m not picking on keto, for any other reason, just that it happens to be really, really hot right now. But it’s just like you see the people and they get a lot of support to you use that #keto, and I can only imagine like, it good feels really good to have that support.  

And it makes me think like, maybe we’re not doing something right. Now, obviously, I don’t want to promote something that I don’t believe in. I don’t want to be disingenuous or lie, and/or go with something just to make money. But at the same time, it’s like, maybe I should be spending more time building a community. Because if people are, you know, we’ve talked about—you and I, not on the show today, but we talked about loneliness, and how it can affect our genetic expression, even in the levels of inflammation.  

And if loneliness is such a big deal and people don’t feel like they belong, it’s like, maybe we are not doing things right. Not me or you, but just the fitness professionals who are trying to bring a more scientific approach. Maybe by being too objective, we’re missing something that—it’s not clicking with people, to make them feel good about doing what we want them to do. What are your thoughts on that?  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting one, because I’ve seen it kind of go in two different ways. I’ve definitely seen over the past couple of years, more of that move of this kind of evidence-based community kind of growing, where people are kind of trying to identify as evidence-based, or people… like, same thing with the #keto, I’ve seen things like #teamscience, which is great, because people are actually building this kind of group or a tribe around wanting to be science-based. That said, it’s not always without its problems. 

So last year, I actually did a talk at a conference in Amsterdam. And I kind of talked about effective coaching and how like this foundational piece of evidence-based practice. But one of the, kind of, warning signs I probably put up there was—because I was talking to a group of people who are largely evidence-based, like most people attending that conference were super evidence-based.  

And one of the points I kind of made, and I’m kind of paraphrasing here was essentially, look, it’s great that this is growing in popularity, and we can kind of get people identifying with this. But let’s not fall into the same traps that we end up criticizing, because these other groups, like I’ve already mentioned, that were using terms like diet cults or these groups of dogmatic cults that will only be within their own echo chamber.  

And because I’d seen it happen. I talked about it a few times, and I mentioned this conference, like, there’s a very real chance that by saying, “Okay, I’m evidence-based, so I’m only going to listen to these handful of people that I know are evidence-based, I’m only going to talk to them listen to their content and dismiss everything else.” Because it happens all the time. Like I’ve seen it with people who are like, these evidence-based gurus and they have like fanboys the same as every other group.  

If you’re doing that, that by nature is kind of this closed-mindedness or this basically unscientific thing that we’re trying to get away from. And just by saying, I’m only going to listen to these people and dismiss everything else, that’s not really remaining open. So, I think there are some pitfalls to doing that. But trying to build some sort of community, I think, is very important.  

And like you say, it’s just again, this fundamental human thing where we do well, within tribes and social support. It’s why most groups that have had like large scale, mainstream success, whether that’s like a Weight Watchers or CrossFit, or whatever you want to point to, the kind of social support networks that are inherently built within them are probably their most redeeming piece.  

So particularly, let’s take a Weight Watchers or any other type of group-based setting, there’s nothing inherently special about what they’re doing. They’re just finding different ways for people to essentially eat less, whether that’s through using point systems or whatever it may be, weekly weigh ins, like there’s nothing magical about stepping on that scale each week. But there’s this aspect of meeting people in person who have the same goal, who are following the same process and building that relationship.  

And that’s something sometimes we can maybe miss out on, for sure, if we’re being too much on this kind of science-based thing of: this is what I need to do. This is how my body will respond to this diet. I just need to follow this. I don’t need any of this other nonsense. We might be missing a piece of the puzzle there, for sure. So, I definitely agree. And I think there’s some caution in there. But there’s also… I completely agree with you, we could probably be focusing a lot more on how do we take these science-based principles, but actually put them to work in a way that’s more appealing or more natural to human beings, I guess.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Because it’s like asking people to do math. Most people hate math. And then you’re asking them to do it instead of listening to something that kind of gets you pumped up and gets though…You hear that story, a great, great book, is Talk Like Ted, I forget the name of the author. But it wasn’t to talk like me, by the way.  

So, my terrible attempt at a joke there, but it was this guy who was analysing all these TED Talks. And he looked into what made them work, why did this person get millions of listens or watches on their TED Talk, and this other person didn’t. And he looked at the top ones, and they all had kind of the same things going, they all focused on stories.  

So, there wasn’t really a question there, just an observation. But I want to ask you about something that can help someone listening. If someone wanted to work with you and you weren’t sure what type of nutrition plan you should put them on or training plan? How would you help them figure it out? And what can someone listening to you right now who’s maybe tried to do keto and they just got butter overloaded, or maybe they tried to do a high carb and they felt bloated all the time? How do you help a person dial things in for them?  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. And there’s, I’m sure different approaches people will take. Typically, I think the first starting point that sometimes people miss out on is actually just taking stock of what they’re doing already. They’re either right now paying zero attention to their nutrition, just eating whatever, you know, just like nonsense, doing things already, they know are not good.  

But then in order to make change, they feel they need to try this special type of diet, instead of actually just doing a few things or cutting out a few things they know they shouldn’t be doing already. So, I think something that’s overlooked, because it sounds so simple, it’s just like, okay, take stock of what you typically do, actually just look over the course of a full week what you would normally eat, and see, okay, well, what are the main patterns here? What’s the lowest hanging fruit here that we can change?  

If someone doesn’t know what that kind of is, I think there’s a few things. One, I’m typically—and again, this could be a bias of mine, but I think it’s hopefully one that’s based on evidence, generally for most people, particularly if they’re trying to improve their body composition over time, and are just generally, I think, there’s a lot of parameters for health as well. And we can talk about things like sarcopenia, and so on maybe later.  

But typically, a slightly higher protein intake, if someone is currently eating a low protein diet, can be extremely beneficial, not only for its impact on the muscle mass and muscle function and strength, but also for its effect on satiety and how far it’s going to affect your food choices later in the day, and how full you feel. So, I think getting people to have a slightly higher protein intake, typically tends to be useful.  

A lot of the time that tends to be correlated when you just tell someone to increase their protein intake with better food choices. There’s not too many out and out junk foods that are going to be high protein, and then low in carbs and low in fat, it tends to be the opposite way around. Most junk foods are high carb, high fat, foods with very little protein and very little fiber.  

So, I would look at that. I would then look at, overall, how much of your food is actually minimally processed. So, it doesn’t have to be all clean food. That’s not what we’re aiming for. Sure, if you’re a busy person, we can find loads of ways to get like relatively good quality meals that are still convenient. But overall, is a good chunk of your diet still coming from minimally processed foods. So, you’re not just eating like, again, what people would, in their mind, think of as junk foods and processed foods all the time.  

And maybe other simple things like, are you struggling to eat an appropriate amount of calories, but then when you look at where those calories are coming from…We could have someone that’s taking a huge amount in from liquids, which is not really going to give them all that much satiety and is very easy to modify.  

So, if this is a person who is consuming large cappuccinos from Starbucks with lots of sugar added into it and having several 100 calories, maybe a few times a day at that, simply swapping that to an Americano can dramatically reduce their caloric intake without any other change. So, there’s lots of things that maybe can be changed, this kind of low hanging fruit idea of first, let’s take stock of what you’re doing, what stuff can we change right now that’s going to have a definite impact. And then over time, we can start to work with that person’s preferences and so on.  

So, when it comes down to things, like you said of, well, should they be like higher carb, moderate carb, low carb? How do we work that out? One thing we typically do in our consultations with clients is we try and just talk through typically their food preferences. So not only like what are your out and out favorite treat foods, so maybe any type of food you want, whether it’s ice cream that we can fit in as a treat now and again, but also of foods that you would classify as fairly healthy, what ones are your favorites? And what ones do you just despise?  

And then we can start giving some sense of idea of where their food preferences might lie. So if this person like says, “Do you what, I’ve started having like eggs in the morning and really enjoy that,” then maybe this person might be better off in a kind of lower carb, higher fat diet, because they can stick to it better because their preferences for these types of meals, versus a person who is doing really well by switching from, like, just having a breakfast cereal, or some toast with some jelly or jam on it have now changed, they’re starting to have some proper oatmeal with maybe some cinnamon and some handful of nuts in there. Maybe that person is just better because they prefer it, and they get more satiety from these higher carb meals.  

So we start looking at their preferences and how they feel on those and piecing it together from there. Rather than saying you need to be on this macronutrient split or this breakdown. Really, it’s not needed at that point at all. It’s like how can we get your overall food intake to an appropriate amount, make sure you’re eating enough protein, and that your food choices are generally from good quality foods.  

If you do those three things, then like I said before, the method doesn’t matter as much. And the exact food choices don’t matter as much. And the ratio of carbohydrates to fat doesn’t really matter, I’d say for the vast majority of people. If you’re not an athlete, or not an advanced level trainee, it just doesn’t matter. So, let’s focus on getting a proper amount of calories, protein, decent quality foods, and then let’s make the changes in your diet right now that are preventing you from doing that. So, it’s not like a clear “this is the answer,” but there are a few things for people to think through, I guess.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and you do have to experiment, right? There needs to be a little bit of work here. Danny, two things came up when you were talking about that. I want to get into health a bit more. Because as you know, most of my listeners are 40s, 50s, and beyond—although there’s some youngins who listen. But I want to talk a little bit more about health and get people clear, because I think it can be confusing how you can be low body fat, but not getting the right nutrients or have like a low carb, high fat diet and your biomarkers are off in your blood work. 

But before I get to that, I want to talk a little bit about satiety because you brought that up a few times. And I think it’s such a powerful point. And it’s a very counter intuitive point. Because why do people eat? Well, they eat because they’re hungry? Why do people stop eating? Well, they’re not hungry anymore. So, it’s like, oh, well, how do I lose fat when I have this hunger that’s telling me to eat, and let’s face it, nobody’s going to win that battle for a long period of time.  

Now, some people are really good at it, but then there’s like, oh, well, protein and fibrous vegetables get rid of your hunger more than like, high fat, high carb, like potato chips or something. And it’s a very hard thing, I think, for people listening to wrap their head around, because you just think, well, you know, I eat until I’m not hungry anymore then I stop eating and I eat when I’m hungry.  

But if you’re making those food choices, those low satiety food choices, you’re going to constantly be hungry, or like you mentioned drinks, even though they may have 500 calories in them, like the Starbucks frappemocha, whatever, chino, it’s not very satiating, and in a couple hours, you’re like, ravenous. Can you talk a little bit about how you explain satiety and making those better food choices, and how it’s not necessarily about the amount of food you eat, it’s about the type of food that you eat.  

Danny Lennon: Yeah, sure. And I think this is an area where there does tend to be some confusion, because I’m sure people have heard, like various different variations of people saying, to lose weight, I’m going to show you don’t need to eat less, you just need to eat the right foods. And I think where this kind of becomes misleading in some way, is that when people say that, it’s not a case of you can eat more calories and lose body fat.  

We know that you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat. What sometimes can happen is people get the sensation that they’re eating way more food because they switched to certain food choices, their calorie intake goes down, but maybe the volume of food they can now eat goes up. So one of the things that plays into that when you mentioned something like fibrous vegetables, for example, you can have a huge volume of those vegetables on your plate for very little calories.  

Whereas if you were to take a teaspoon of coconut oil, it’ll take up a very small volume on the plate and then also in your stomach for maybe a similar amount of calories. And so one thing that kind of can impact their just overall calorie density. So, for a certain volume of food, how many calories are in there? Satiety is kind of a separate piece of that, again, of different foods, and particularly different macronutrients can have a different impact on how fully you’re going to feel in response to eating that meal.  

So like you quite already mentioned, we have some pretty clear data showing that protein is going to have a much more profound effect on satiety than, say, carbohydrate, and then certainly more than dietary fat. And also, high fiber foods can have a pretty strong impact on making people feel less hungry, too. So, making food choices around higher protein, higher fiber intakes can be beneficial on the average for most people.  

So that comes back down to again, the typical things a lot of times we will see when someone’s trying to diet, can you get plenty of lean meats, dairy, fibrous vegetables, lentils, beans on to really increase the intakes of both protein and fiber. And by doing that, now you can still eat quite a good quantity of food at that time point. But like you say, for the number of calories, you’re consuming won’t feel as hungry as if you had the same amount of calories from foods of lower satiety.  

Similarly, we have a kind of related concept of satiation, which is very similar, and sometimes people use them interchangeably. But it’s more related to the kind of immediate effect of fullness that we get when we’re eating, as opposed to satiety being the kind of feeling of fullness you’d get after you’ve digested that meal. So, as you start eating a meal almost immediate, you’re going to start getting feedback from the body of when you want to stop.  

And a lot of this is again related to—there’s these stretch receptors in your stomach, that as your stomach expands, is essentially a cue back to the body. “Okay, we’ve got quite a lot of food in here, we don’t need to continue eating.’ Now, if you’re thinking of that in a dieting context, well what we could do that without having to eat as much calories? Well, again, it goes back to the calorie density having like lots of vegetables where you’re having huge bulk of food for less calories.  

Same with high fiber foods, foods that are maybe water based, so like soups and stews, again, you’re taking up more space in your stomach with that water for zero calorie intake. Versus if you had like very calorie dense foods, it won’t have that same satiation response. So, it gets a bit. There’s kind of different processes like satiation and satiety both at work. But in general, we know high protein is generally beneficial, high fiber. And then where, I suppose, the individual variation comes in from person to person, and this is where it ties back to what we’ve been discussing of why there’s no one approach for everyone.  

Or why you might have clients on different types of approach, or with trial and error, you find one might suit one person best, is that we know that virtually everything is impacted by genetics, and there’s genetic differences between various different people. One thing that can happen is, again, people’s response in terms of their satiety response to different types of foods.  

And so anecdotally, I’m sure you’ve seen this in your own clients, where some people get this great feeling of fullness when they are eating more carbs in their diet. So, when they have oatmeal for breakfast and have, say, rice at dinner, and lots of high carb, low fat foods, throughout their diet, they feel pretty full on that. And they can maintain their calories perfectly, they can adhere to that no problem.  

Other people tend to be a bit opposite. And these are people who say, I started eating a low carb or ketogenic diet and it worked great for me because I never felt hungry or was able to stick to a certain amount of low intake of food or calories, and I just didn’t feel hungry anymore. And that’s great. And then this is what I’m going back to is that I’m not trying to dismiss that that happens. It’s that it doesn’t happen for everyone, to try to say, based on my experience, this is what everyone should do. That’s why that’s faulty.  

But we see that in response to all sorts of different things of how there are differences in satiety response from person to person. But in general, we have some of those clear things that we know we’re going to help, protein, fiber. Certain foods have different satiety values. There’s actually a research paper you can look up where it graphed out different foods and they created something called the Satiety Index.  

Ted Ryce: I’ve seen that, yeah. The potatoes score very highly. 

Danny Lennon: White potato came out the top. So in terms of its satiety, if you just eat a plain boiled potato, that has a super high satiety response, despite people talking, “Oh, the glycemic index,” that has very little impact on virtually anything to do with health, which is the topic for a different day. But that can have a quite a high satiety impact. So again, including things like that can play a role.  

Other little avenues that are probably in my head now, we could talk about in terms of different food choices to try and like hack that second satiety thing and calories. But that’s the general gist of it that, sure. And that’s why I talk about basic, most minimally processed foods, right? I’m not one of those people, that’s like, you have to eat clean all the time, because these chemicals and processed foods are out to get you or again, like the food industry is out to kill everyone. And any amount of something artificial is really bad.  

It’s more so that, hey, if you’re trying to eat healthy and eat an appropriate amount of food overall, not only are you getting micronutrients in these minimally processed foods, but those are the foods that are typically going to be better for like satiety and satiation. And therefore, you’re not going to want to eat as much food over the course of a day, and so you can maintain healthy body weight in a better fashion.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I love that. And I liked the distinction that you brought up there between satiation and satiety, it’s very important. And basically, you just gave a whole clinic on that. Love it.  

Danny Lennon: Hopefully, I didn’t bore people much.  

Ted Ryce: No, well, everyone who listens to this show, they want to learn like the details, I get a lot of very analytical people. And I’m very, I guess, blessed in that respect. And also, I think I attract that, because that’s how my brain works. I just want to know how things work. I want to know how to get results. I get really frustrated if I’m doing something and I don’t get results. It’s really frustrating for me. And I spent a lot of time frustrated in my 20s.  

I’m too old to mess around with like, the bullshit in other words. 

Danny Lennon: Right, right.   

Ted Ryce: Sounds good, but doesn’t work. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about health. And you briefly brought up glycemic index, let’s not go too crazy. But I know, that is something that people focus on a lot. Also, artificial sweeteners is something you’ve covered extensively and people are very confused about. And I’ll tell you dating, I started off having, I guess what you would call a holistic approach. I have my holistic lifestyle and coaching certification from Paul Check.  

And I’m grateful for my experience with him. And he opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wasn’t aware of, although some of it has turned out not to really be true. Can we talk about some of the things that can help with a person’s health who is in their 40s and they want to be kicking ass in 10 or 20 years? Like, what are some things that are really critical to focus on for that? And what are some things that are not as important, like a glycemic index type of situation?  

Danny Lennon: Sure. So yeah, I’m very much in a similar position to you, that starting out along my nutrition journey, I got very deep into the weeds of all the little, small details that now I’ve come to see, either aren’t correct or just don’t matter that much. And I was very much into, like, everything I ate had to be cooked from scratch by me. No grains, nothing like that, 100% paleo starting out. That ended up not being enough, so I had to cut out more foods, the elimination diet, like everything you can imagine. And so yeah, going back to like, if you go back to like, 2011/ 2012, you’ll see like, I was just hanging around all the Paleo circles back then, and that was my jam.  

Ted Ryce: I did not know that. We’ve got to have apart two to talk about that.  

Danny Lennon: Yeah. And I’m like you, there are some good people in those. And that’s why I think I’m kind of in this slightly unique position within this kind of evidence-based circle. And sometimes people that are like super, super into the science or maybe like…  

Ted Ryce: #teamscience.  

Danny Lennon: Yeah, like, how were you talking to this person? But there are some good people there that have some really smart, interesting ideas. And that’s what my point earlier was like, if you go and say, I’m only listening to this handful of people in this evidence-based sphere, anyone outside that, I’ll dismiss them right away—before you listen to their point, then that’s just the wrong thing to do.  

The example I give to people quite a lot is Rob Wolf. I inherently just—because like listening to this podcast years ago, him just generally seeming like a super cool guy. I’ve talked to him a bit on email, he does Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, which I’m a huge fan of and do myself and like, maybe all those biases play into it, but I think he has some really interesting insights. Super smart guy, brings up very nuanced discussions and conversations.  

And there are stuff that some people who are like, trying to be like too sciency can miss out on If anytime they say, like, “Oh, who’s this guy?” “Oh, he is a site or a book.” “The Paleo Solution?” “Yeah.” “I’m going to dismiss that,” as like, you didn’t really read what he was saying. I think it’s different if you want to listen to what someone says and then maybe dismiss it. So that’s a side point anyway.  

But yeah, I’m very much the same. I’ve done every single thing you can imagine in terms of like, super against anything that could be potentially negative for health. So that kind of leads into a good question of like, now where do people draw the line? What should we focus on? And I think that’s been one of the things that talking to enough experts in the field has really shown me, that when it comes to nutrition, at least, there are some things that definitely have a huge impact.  

There are some things that have a bit less, there are some things that probably we don’t need to worry about at all, and then there’s some that completely benign. And it’s trying to pick where to stuff fall on that spectrum. And then how much does any one individual want to sacrifice to try and maximize every single area? So, the big foundational piece is… Just kind of recap over. 

And it’s like, overall, how much are you consuming relative to your goal, so overall caloric intake? Is most of your food intake from good quality foods? What kind of breakdown of those macronutrients? Like, are you making sure you’re having enough protein overall? Is your fat intake not so low, that your hormones are going to go to the pot or whatever? And then making sure you’re getting an adequate amount of micronutrients.  

Beyond that, then there are some of these other issues that you bring up. So, for example, glycemic index, should we be making food choices based on that? I would say it’s almost irrelevant, and just doesn’t really matter. So, the kind of line of thinking people go along as well, if a food as a high glycemic index, it’s going to raise your blood sugar, you’re going to get this crash, and then you’re going to feel really hungry or something bad is going to happen, or you’re going to get these insulin spikes.  

Really, in the real world, first of all, you’re never going to be having these foods in isolation, at least in those amounts, you’re not going to be having a tablespoon of glucose powder, or you’re not going to eat one slice of white bread on its own. You’re going to have mixed meals with different macronutrients, which completely changed that glycemic response. Secondly, we know that there’s, again, a huge genetic variation in how each of us responds to these different foods. 

So, there was a great paper that came out two years ago from Israel, where they looked at blood sugar responses in people. And they did a whole bunch of stuff in this study, it was absolutely amazing. They looked at blood glucose response, they looked at gut bacteria, everything. And one part of it when they looked at the blood glucose response, when you look at some of the individual data points, they compared the consumption of a cookie to a banana.  

And in one participant, they see that when they consumed the cookie, you see there’s quite a big rise in blood sugar and goes back down, and a more stable glycemic response to eating the banana. And a completely different participant had the exact opposite, when you look at their graphs, like just complete switch.  

So, we know different people respond differently anyway. And beyond that, doesn’t make any impact for health. If you are healthy and you consume carbohydrate and get this increase in glucose and increase in insulin and it comes back down to its normal baseline level, which is a healthy number, then you’re good. And there’s other things you need to be focusing on what your diet. And so I just don’t think it’s useful to be making decisions based on a glycemic index, for example. 

Artificial sweeteners, again, where I’ve drawn my conclusion so far is that to date, there is not really any good quality evidence in humans that would suggest to me that they are particularly problematic in any sort of normal dose that someone would consume if they have a can of Diet Coke or Coke Zero now and again, or have some sugar-free orange added to their water or they have anything that you can think of with some sort of artificial sweetener in normal dose, and they’re not going crazy,  there’s nothing to suggest to me that’s going to cause a major health impact right now.  

And beyond that, what I think is more important with any of these questions, whether it’s a glycemic index question, whether it’s artificial sweeteners, anything to do with health, is rather than looking at least things in isolation, what is the net impact on someone’s diet? And an example that comes to mind that I’ve given quite a lot in my seminars, is, let’s say, we put up and we think of a question that someone says, hey, I want to use some tomato ketchup or tomato sauce or whatever people are calling it in different parts of the world with my dinner, right?  

You can look at it in isolation and be like, super like, that health-conscious person saying, “Well, did you know there’s X amount of grams in this ketchup that you’re using, or there’s these different preservatives that they use and so on. So I would avoid using that. It’s going to also kind of have like 45 calories in this tablespoon,” or whatever it is.  

So, in an isolation fashion, you could say, “Well, yeah, like I’m not getting much nutritionally from, it’s got some sugar, preservatives, it’s got calories, so I just won’t use it.” But what if we’re now to think of the net impact, what if we’ve made a meal with some good quality lean meats, some nice vegetables, and so on. And now this person really enjoys some tomato ketchup.  

And by having that, it makes his meal so much more appealing. And it’s much more likely by doing that they’re going to stick to eating these new home-cooked meals that they’re making, because they’re enjoying them, as opposed to having to force themselves very bland foods that they despise. 

The net impact is going to be so much better for making that—what on the surface might look like a poor decision to someone, because for the sake of a gram or two of sugar, they’re now having someone who’s eating way more vegetables. And so that’s one example I try and give to people of like, let’s think of the net impact of different decisions.  

So, by having some artificial sweeteners, does that mean someone’s water intake dramatically goes up? Does that mean now they actually can take care of their sugar cravings, so they don’t want to go and eat sweets or drink cans of Coke, or whatever it is. So, let’s look at the net impacts that are probably more important, and stick to those overriding principles. So I think that kind of covers my thoughts. I don’t know if I missed part of the question.  

But I think that’s the way I would get people to think of this process. For any of these smaller little details, if they’re not as big as fundamental pieces, then ask, well, what is the net impact of making a certain choice. And realize that as these things are smaller and smaller details, their overall impact is probably relatively small, so be aware of that. There’s a lot more you can be putting your focus on, that can have a huge impact on your health.  

And I think what I’ve talked about you that I’ve realized a lot in these past couple of years, particularly talking to experts, but also just seeing it in my own life, is that compared to what I used to do, it’s like everything was hyper focused on nutrition, it wasn’t actually all that healthy of a behavior. And I was missing out on things that actually have a much larger impact on my health of like, social interaction and relationships, and general levels of stress that can I induce from focusing so much on this, or are missing out on things, just generally enjoying an ice cream, like just things that are unquantifiable in the long term. So yeah, hope that made sense.  

Ted Ryce: Absolutely. Danny, I mean, I love listening to you talk, maybe it’s because I’m used to listening to you on your podcast. But you just made some great points there. And it’s obvious that you’re a skilled communicator, and you’ve thought a lot about this, and you have a very nuanced approach. And it’s so helpful to hear that when usually, people are just like, “No, just do this this one way, because this is the way.” 

I’ll tell you, though, I already feel like man, a part two needs to happen here. Because we’re an hour in already, we’re just scratching the surface, but I want to be respectful of your time, and also the listeners. So, I want to wrap things up here. But man, I loved this interview, you brought so much to the table, so much perspective, so much wisdom. 

It’s so obvious that talking to all those experts has really changed you as a person and all the talking and speaking and seminars that you’ve done, you’re such an important person in the health and fitness community. And it’s an honor to have you on the show, is what I’m trying to say. 

Danny Lennon: That means a lot, man, that means more than you probably know. And I hope people found it useful. And I think I have tried to think through some of these things before. I think most of them are probably not necessarily… I don’t know if we even can have an original idea. But a lot of it’s been influenced by different things I’ve tried to think about and from hearing and just, yeah, from trying to untangle my own thoughts, I guess through when I’m speaking or when I’m writing, or doing a presentation.  

Hopefully, it’s been able to articulate some of this mess that’s in my head out in a useful manner to people. But yeah, absolutely up for a part two, and I’m very, very appreciative of your kind comments. They’re very much a big deal, so thank you, man.  

Ted Ryce: You got it, Danny. It’s well deserved. Absolutely. And if you’re listening right now, I highly suggest you check out Sigma Nutrition, it’s just such a great podcast. It’s a bit more on the sciency side, so… even though I kind of go down some deep rabbit holes with some of my guests, but It’s just going to change your perspective. Danny, where else would you like people to go to connect with you?  

Danny Lennon: Yeah, so the easiest place is just www.sigmanutrition.com. They’ll find everything on the website there, a bit more about my background, articles, the podcasts, etc. If they’re looking for the podcast specifically, then it’s just Sigma Nutrition Radio, you can find it on any app that they listen to the podcasts on: iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. And then on social media, I’m relatively easy to find. So, Instagram is just @DannyLennon_sigma, they can find my personal account on Facebook, or the Sigma Nutrition account too, and then Twitter is just my handle is @nutritiondanny. So, any of those places, I’m happy to take questions or just people to say, hey, they enjoyed listening or give me abuse for not enjoying listening. I’m good with either one.  

Ted Ryce: Very cool, man. I’ll have all those links on the show notes for this episode. And Danny, like I said, man, it was such a pleasure. I’m so glad we connected. After we communicated on Facebook, I just knew I had to reach out to you. And I’m so glad we did. So, thank you so much for coming on and looking apart. Looking forward to having you back on the show.  

Danny Lennon: For sure, anytime my, man, it’s been a pleasure.