Dr. Bill Campbell on the Science of Food and Weight Tracking

The one study that again that has really informed my opinion on tracking and success was there was 100 people, they were overweight and researchers said, we want you to track your calories for three months. The consistent tractors lost 10 pounds of body weight and they didn't do body composition in the study.

10 pounds versus only 4 pounds. So a 250% if you want to play that game, 250% greater weight loss.

Hello, I'm Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode, a new interview with my friend Dr. Bill Campbell on the science of food and weight tracking and specifically macro tracking and weight tracking macro meaning macronutrient meaning protein carbohydrate fat

And in this episode, Bill is going to dive into the science of macro tracking of food tracking. He's going to talk about its psychological impact. He's going to talk about its physiological impact. He's going to talk about how it can support long-term health and fitness goals. And that doesn't mean that you have to track food forever. He's going to talk about that as well. And then in the second half of this interview, Bill is going to talk about another powerful tool for improving body composition, maintaining,

an improved body composition, and that is tracking your body weight. And just like with tracking food, many people are averse to tracking their body weight, but as Bill explains in today's episode, that's unfortunate because if you go about it correctly, it can make the process of transforming your body composition easier, not harder, easier psychologically and physiologically, not harder.

And in case you are not familiar with Dr. Bill Campbell, he is a friend of mine, a repeat guest on the show, as well as a professor of exercise science and the director of the performance and physique enhancement laboratory at the University of South Florida. Bill has published over 200 scientific papers and abstracts, three textbooks, and 20 book chapters in areas related to physique enhancement, sports nutrition, resistance training, and dietary supplementation.

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Mr. Campbell, it's good to see you again. Yeah, good to see you. Yeah, looking forward to today's discussion. Good topic. We're going to be talking about tracking today, tracking macros. But also, as we were talking about offline, I think we should also talk about tracking body weight because these two things go hand in hand often if people are tracking macros or calories, they're trying to lose weight, in which case they may or may not be tracking their weight.

Or maybe they're trying to gain weight, maybe they're trying to lean bulk. That's why they're tracking their macros and their calories, but they may or may not be tracking their body weight. Yes. Yep. Just been doing some reading on that on both of these topics recently. So this is great timing.

Let's start with tracking food, which is always a matter of controversy. You'll see one camp, one school of thoughts saying how great of a tool it is, and then you have the other camp.

saying that being very resistant to it, even claiming that it can increase your chances of developing an eating disorder or that it's somehow kind of perverse behavior almost. What are your thoughts?

It seems like whenever I get arguments against tracking or resistance, it always goes in the direction. Same thing for body weight for that matter. It goes into the mental health segment, which maybe there's data to support that. My response is, I communicate with a lot of coaches.

Like I fully respect intelligent fitness professionals to use their best judgment on clients that may have trouble with that. But to make blanket statements, which is always the resistance, don't ever do this causes this. I'm like, well, no, that's definitely not true. And can it happen in some people? Yes, but is that because of tracking? I don't know. I would say that's just what they, you know, if it weren't that it would be something else in my opinion.

that would be obsessive. But I just think use your best judgment if you think that's an issue with somebody that you're working with.

I mean, anecdotally, I can say now, having been conversing with a lot of people over 10 plus years now, I probably have, I don't know, 300 or 400,000 emails sent received, for example. And that's excluding the spam, right? And then you factor in interactions on social media and so forth, that the rule seems to be actually the opposite. The rule seems to be that tracking calories or tracking macros

will increase your chances of success in reaching your body composition goals significantly with actually no downsides whatsoever, aside from maybe the logistics of how you're going to go about it. Are you going to use an app? Are you just going to make a meal plan and do it kind of more by portion size? Or are you going to weigh and measure everything?

And so that's just my comment now having seen a lot of people have a lot of success over the years. This is one of the consistent common denominators is that for at least some period, they tracked macros or they tracked calories or they followed a meal plan, which is the same thing and it just kind of in a different fashion. Yeah, it's speaking to the research.

There is no question. It's a significant mover of success for weight loss. What's the medical term? When I fail to do something, I'm not liable. What's the term? It's a legal term. Do you know what I'm trying to get at? If you're a coach and you're hired to help somebody lose weight and you're not having them weigh in every day and track their macros, it's

Negligence. Yes, you're you are being thank you. I got that word was not coming. I look at it as being negligent because the data is very clear of and again, I can share a study in a few minutes.

Some of the studies that just kind of stick out of my mind that helped inform my opinion. But yeah, you're being negligent if you're not using these strategies for somebody that's paying you to help them with weight loss, because you're not giving them the tools they need.

And so then where do you think these criticisms are coming from exactly in like you said i've seen the same they often speak to some sort of mental or psychological emotional problem or problems that are supposedly much more likely to occur if you track.

Yeah, I have and I don't know where it's coming from, but I have to think they're seeing one or two people that have had mental health problems that tracked and they're attributing it to tracking as if that just gave birth to this OCD or whatever. But again, that there was an underlying issue.

not that I'm a psychologist, but it was just manifested in tracking. And again, if it wasn't tracking, it would be some other health behavior or some other outlet in their life. So I think that's probably where it comes from. They're trying to apply an end size of one or two to everybody. And without a distinction of, or one, ignoring the research that it's beneficial in two, also ignoring, which I have a lot of feedback and having,

students in my program that have struggled with or have had clinically defined eating disorders and how they have told me tracking and being on top of this has actually brought me out of that. I don't have to be as obsessive with my mind when I have data to look at. So there's also that argument as well.

interesting. And then many other people are maybe receptive to the negative messages because they don't want to track. That's it.

And they would rather follow some sort of kind of looser, maybe rule-based type of diet like keto or any of the other diets out there that put much more emphasis on what you're eating, maybe the quality of what you're eating, even the number of ingredients in what you're eating, those types of things, and they de-emphasize, well, how much are you eating, protein, carbs, fat, calories? Again, I think

This is maybe me just being cynical, but I think it's just a marketing ploy more than anything else because there's a famous quote from Carl Jung, something along the lines of what we need most in our lives to improve ourselves will be in the places we least want to look. That's certainly true in fitness. It's like if you're struggling to lose weight, the place you least want to look is your calories and your macros because

You're just eating too much food, and a part of you probably knows that. If you haven't accepted that yet, then somebody coming along saying that, well, getting very particular with your calories, getting very particular with your macros, that's obsessive behavior, that's neurotic behavior, and that's diet culture and so forth, as opposed to the reality, which is that it's a very effective tool. Maybe it's not for everyone, but

The baseline assumption should be that anyone listening if you haven't done it yet Your baseline assumption should be that it's going to work very well for you. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah, I would agree and let me let me give

just a counter, a counter argument to what we both agree with. I've always stated a utopia would be somebody who doesn't have to track and they can, what do you call it, intuitively eat where, hey, I'm lowering my calories naturally. I don't track anything. That, that would be awesome because it's just less tasks on the day. But while I acknowledge that utopia,

My personal story is when I track, I'm able to achieve and maintain a body composition that I like. When I don't track, I cannot do it. Am I weak? Am I undisciplined? I don't know, but I know if I'm not tracking, I will gain body fat. And I'll explain.

What I think's happening if I'm not tracking and oh there's Halloween perfect example tonight's Halloween I will take you know two of these little fun size milky way bars. I'm not tracking it so maybe it's five but if I'm tracking one I might not have any but I'll have one or two and I'll track it so just the.

Whatever that is, I know from my own life, which by the way, because of these things, it's why I'm in my opinion, a very good fat loss researcher, I can relate to a large segment of the population who's not perfect and is not totally off the rails. But I always reflect on, hey, how am I approaching this? And when the research is clear and to my life experience tells me if I'm not tracking, I'm setting myself up for failure relative to body fat accumulation.

I've had that experience as well, and I haven't explicitly tracked food in a while, but the reason why it has worked for me is I eat more or less the same foods, every meal, every day, even on the weekends where I'll change it a little bit, but it's still consistently the same thing. And so at some time in the past, I actually have worked out, there was a time when I was tracking

My meal plan so to speak and so i've already kind of set a baseline that i know works for my goal which is to maintain body comp and i know what portions look like and so it doesn't matter that my calories are fluctuating by 10% let's say up or down because over time.

It all just evens out. And if I have noticed that I've gained a bit more body fat, and the reason that that would happen is if I'm deviating from that plan because I'm traveling or whatever's going on, and now I'm not eating stuff that I eat every meal every day. And in some cases, like if you're eating out a lot, tracking becomes impossible. And so that's probably another benefit of tracking is it discourages you from eating foods that have a lot of quote unquote hidden calories like

when you go to a restaurant and, of course, like rule number one for making food tastier is add fat, add butter, it gets tastier, right? But you don't know that you think you're just eating mixed vegetables, but you don't know that it's mixed vegetables with like 300 calories of butter. And, but if you're making that at home, maybe you don't add the butter. And so in my personal experience, intuitively eating has worked well if I basically just eat the same stuff.

all the time and if i prepare most all that food myself yeah then then it works it works fine but if i have to deviate from that that's when it becomes much more difficult and so if i if i did gain some body fat and i want to just lose fat can i do that intuitively sure but that comes back to because i know.

Okay, the pile of rice that I include in my dinner vegetable meat slop. I'll just leave the rice out and I'm going to cut down on my portion of oatmeal that I eat. There's my deficit. I'm going to run that for a week or two, lose a bit of fat and then add it back in and I'm back to my baseline.

And do you prep all your meals? Do you do a meal prep service? How do you handle this? Because again, you're living in the right. You eat very consistent meals. What's your strategy? So the meals are pretty simple. So I don't do any special meal prep. I don't use a service. I just

Make the meals every day, but I mean, it's very simple in the morning It's it's some fruit. It's like a hard-boiled egg Maybe a protein shake at lunch is a salad with chicken so I do prep the chicken actually so I have chicken I just microwave it toss it in my salad, but I mix

some 50-50 spring spinach mix, some arugula, some cucumbers, some goat cheese, just a little salad that I like, make dressing that I like. So that's five minutes. Put the chicken and eat that. And then usually add some fruit for some extra carbs. And then in the middle of the afternoon, it's a protein shake.

Often some more carbs either in the way of fruit or that's usually fruit like have another piece of fruit and then dinner is is vegetables just like a kind of vegetable medley with some lean like ground beef and and some rice and then around 930 or 10 before I go to bed or maybe 30 minutes or so before I go to bed I have some overnight oats which is is a cup of dried oats a cup of almond milk some

Some salt, some protein powder, and so I do prep that. I prep two cups at a time. That's two days, and then I read. It's minimal. That may sound very boring to a lot of people listening, but I genuinely like everything that I just said, I look forward to eating every day.

That's it that that's my my standard that I maintain I don't have to be I don't need variety just for the sake of variety so long as I'm still enjoying the meals and eventually I do get sick of something like take the salad Eventually, there's just a point where I I don't look forward to it anymore I don't want to eat it I'm forcing myself to eat it so then I change it and so that means I'll change the dressing or I'll change the

Something that is going into the salad like the goat cheese was kind of a newer thing that adds a new taste a new texture And then that'll last me for a while I might go six months just eating that until and I don't overthink it I just it's just purely by emotion like I'm about to eat this salad and do I want to eat it and I'm eating it out

How do I feel like I'm enjoying this or not? And once it's a no, then I just change. And same thing with my dinner. So I still want to eat a variety of vegetables. I want to have a serving or two of whole grains every day. So that's my meal and my rice. So I want the basic type of meal, but there are a lot of different ways you can prepare vegetables. So for a while, it was kind of an Asian vegetable slop dish. And then I got sick of that. And now it's for some time now, I'm not sick of it yet. It's kind of a Thanksgiving

themed vegetable slop. So think of how you make stuffing with the base and then the spices and the herbs. And it's basically, it's kind of like that, but for vegetable meat, rice, slop. And so I'll do that, I'll do that until, again, one day I'm gonna be eating it and I'm just gonna be done with it. And then I'll just find another recipe. What's another flavor profile that I like? Cool, we're doing that. And rinse and repeat.

Yeah, and you actually have cookbooks, right? You've authored one or more, I think. Yeah, so I've done one. I've actually done two. One was the most popular is called the shredded chef. And so that has a lot of simple recipes that are kind of fitness friendly, so higher protein, lower calorie, but still tasty.

I enjoy making different types of food and eating different types of food, but I don't enjoy it enough to give it any time these days. And that's it, because especially in the middle of building a house, and it takes a lot of my wife's time. So I'm now, she has to be at the construction site, helping, telling them how to

hang the lights and do various things. And so for some time now, I've been in charge of more domestic things. And so with the added, I just don't care to take the extra time to make extra tasty food, because my time is so stretched. So when I want to,

Spend as little time as possible on food. I do exactly what I just explained and then if I'm going to if I want to have something special that would usually be on the weekends So that might be a time where I am gonna make I'm gonna sit down with the recipe and make something that I like or maybe I'm gonna go out to a restaurant But during the week I just stick to my my meal plan so to speak and then just intuitively quote unquote follow it

Yes. Let me go into one of the studies that has, it's the one that I always rely on for tracking, like the effectiveness of tracking. Yeah. And that was the next question I wanted to ask to bring it back is let's talk about some research on how effective this actually can be.

Yeah, so one way I have to appreciate, we're all embrace a fitness lifestyle. Most of this research is not in fitness people. In fact, I think my lab was one of the first ones to even, well, I think that the only flexible dieting like tracking back in 2016. So a lot of the research we're relying on is coming from overweight or with people with obesity. So there's the one study that again, that has really informed my opinion on tracking and success.

was there was 100 people. They were overweight and researchers said, we want you to track your calories for three months. And they did that. They monitored their weight loss. Actually, no, they actually gave them some parameters. They said, in order for you to be considered a consistent tracker, you have to track your calories six out of seven days per week.

75% of the time. And that would be like, for example, like nine out of the 12 weeks, they had to track their macronutrients, their calories, six out of seven days. The subjects that did that were categorized as trackers or consistent trackers. Everybody else was categorized as an inconsistent tracker. So something less than that threshold.

At the end of the 12 months, the consistent tractors lost 10 pounds of body weight and they didn't do body composition in the study.

10 pounds versus only four pounds. So a 250%, if you want to play that game, 250% greater weight loss. They did one other variable as well. They looked at how many of these subjects lost 5% of their body weight, which is a clinically significant amount of body weight to lose. Half of the consistent trackers lost 5% or more.

Less than 10% of the inconsistent trackers lost 5% or more. And the other thing, it's impressive, yeah, tracking helped in that study. They didn't even have to be perfect. They just had to be consistent a lot of the time.

And practically speaking, just so people know, what are we talking about exactly when we say tracking? Are you thinking, okay, my fitness pal and you're logging everything that you eat? In that particular study, that's exactly what it was. I think they actually educated them on my fitness pal that exact. So in that study, yes, it was

tracking macros, calories with a with an app or technologies, what the researchers call it with, you know, a technology based application smartphone. So yes, that that's but that particular study, that's exactly what that was.

And a common, I guess, point of protest that I've heard about tracking is this idea that you're going to have to track everything forever.

to really make it work and to really be able to use it to achieve and maintain a body composition. That's just something that's an idea that is out there that, well, if you just do it for a period of time, it might work for that period. But then when you stop, it's not going to work anymore. And so a lot of people, they don't like the idea of

tracking everything they eat forever. And so what are your thoughts on the best use cases for it? And just on that idea that many people have that makes them resistant to tracking.

Yeah, that's a very, that's a wise question because I think there is some truth to that. First, my argument against that would be if you, and this is what I tell my students, this is kind of like one of my philosophies of nutrition and fitness.

If you can get everybody to develop the skill or the habit of tracking their food for, let's say, six months, they will have an education on food that will last them the rest of their lives. You have this general population who doesn't know what a carb, where a carb comes from, or what a protein is, or a fat. If they are educated on tracking,

I like to say macros, tracking macros, they're, again, an education for life because you don't unlearn. Oh, butter is fat. Oh, vegetables are peanut butter is mostly fat. It's not a good source of protein. For example, like per calorie, it actually sucks for protein. And you get the using peanut butter, you start to have an appreciation for serving sizes as well that you would never have

Without developing that discipline of tracking so there's the first thing this and in fact I mean I do this in my classes I would love it for our education system would Mandate that you know in sixth grade every student is going to try like that again. You can't beat the education It's practical. I could just see the the horrors out of that mandate

Well, I mean quickly, just to speak to that idea, I think it could work quite well if you have kids who are learning the fundamentals of nutrition and learning about energy balance, so learning about macronutrients, and then the practical application is to track, not for the purpose of changing their body composition at all, but just to your point, so they just can start seeing it in reality, in the foods that they eat.

And so if they were learning, for example, that it's important to eat enough protein, and here's why, especially when you have a young body that's growing, and they then start looking at the foods that they're eating, and they start understanding the macronutrients in those foods, that just like we see it in the fitness sphere, it is very enlightening, especially with women. Over the years, I've heard from so many women who

Didn't realize just how little protein they're eating until they started tracking where you have a woman that maybe weighs a hundred and twenty hundred and thirty pounds and or more whatever and she's eating 40 grams of protein per day and she didn't realize that until she started tracking in the end. So I think if it were done in the right way it could be very positive and again like you said it can. It can give somebody an education that is going to benefit them really for the rest of their life.

And then the other part of that, what about the argument? Hey, if I start tracking and it does provide success, well, now I'm, I'm on the tracking train for life. So to me that that is, or, or that, yeah, that it doesn't, you only, as if it's like, oh, Zen pick, it only works when you're taking it. And when you stop your appetite returns and then what, you know,

Yes. So one, my, my, my thinking is that is not true for everyone. There will be some people that naturally can shift to an intuitive eating lifestyle because now they have the education. Oh, I see that a serving size of peanut butter looks like this and not five times what I thought it was. So one, that is, I don't believe that's true of everyone. And

For me, it is true. Again, I've been in this, I'm nearly 50 years old. When I don't track, I make poor decisions. When I track, I make better decisions. Again, call me lazy, call me undisciplined, whatever it is, but it doesn't change truth. And for me, that's just the truth. So if I want to not be obese,

As I age, I'm gonna have to track. That is my reality, and I would rather know than just make a blanket. I don't like that.

And how do you go about it? What's your system? Well, oh, for tracking or just, okay. So one thing, let me say this, I'm very wise in my own mind, because when I stop tracking and I gain weight, then I go on a diet where, because I'm a fat loss scientist, I'm always experimenting on myself about, does this work? Does this work?

Now I'm getting the point where I'm, you know, getting case study data on these things. So I don't necessarily like, I use this to my advantage to, to again, just to make me a better fat loss researcher. My strategy for when I'm tracking is pretty, it actually has evolved. So it used to be my fitness power was the first one I've used. And then they started charging. So I'm like, I'm not paying for this. So now I use, um, what do I use? I use another, just another app, Macrosfer.

So is it macro tracking or is it calorie tracking? And that's another thing I wanted to ask you about because people may be wondering why the emphasis on macro tracking in particular? Yes. So I do, I track macros, and when you track macros, by default, you're getting calories because every app that I've ever used tracks that the reason macro tracking in the fitness space makes a lot of sense is because oftentimes we have a protein bias.

to build muscle to recover from workouts. So when you're, if you're just tracking calories, you're, you're not getting very important nutrient data intake, which is protein. So that's why tracking macros, I think is, it makes a lot of sense. Now if I had to define my philosophy, I have a protein anchored flexible dieting system for myself. And what that means is let's say I'm

I'm trying to lose some body fat. If my maintenance calories are 3,000, so let's just make the math easy. I'm going to eat 2,000 calories per day. I'm going to say, okay, I need to get 200 grams of protein, a gram per pound. That I know will maximize my muscle mass, give me some feelings of fullness. So that's what I mean by protein anchored. Before I start each day, I know I want to get 200 grams of protein. So that's 800 out of my 2,000 that are already accounted for.

Now this protein anchored flexible dieting philosophy, the flexible dieting says, OK, I've got 1,200 other calories to fit in. I don't care where they come from. They can come from more carbs. They can come from more fat. Maybe tomorrow I want bacon. Maybe the next day I want more rice.

And I would suggest that it doesn't matter the carb fat breakdown for weight loss, as long as you don't go into extremes. When you start going into the extremes, then I can start giving you some scientific evidence that you are sacrificing some things. So that is kind of my system. So it's very focused on protein and total calories without much of a much of a consideration for carbs or fat from day to day.

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And how do you make sure that you don't run out of calories before you hit your protein target?

Well, when I'm on my system, which I'm not always on my system, but when I am, everything's prepped ahead of time. So yeah, so like on Sundays, I do a lot of my grilling for chicken or if I'm doing what I was almost always checking to be honest. So here's a great example of just life. So my daughters are now teenagers. We don't have many opportunities to eat dinner together. So whatever my wife makes, I just said, hey, whatever you make, if we're together, I don't care about my, like,

And this is a phase of life that, again, I want to prioritize time eating together. I don't want my family to revolve around my, you know, I'm not going to step on stage. So that's something that I've like five, seven years ago. I would have said, no, this is what I'm eating. And, you know, you make your own thing for you and, you know, the kids and that, well, I want it to go over well. You got to pick your battles. Maybe that's not the juice is not worth the squeeze.

Yes. So there's a real life implication of, hey, I'm going to track and I'm going to make sure I don't run out. And then I'm just like, hey, not right now. And again, that's not every night of the week. That's actually limited times.

Yeah. And the reason I asked that question is I just know hearing from many people over the years when they were getting calibrated, when they were getting used to tracking, that would happen sometimes where they are eating, let's say more carbs and fat from the beginning of the day, and then three, four, five PM rolls around and they realize that they're 100 grams short on their protein, but they only have 200 calories left because they ate

Too much carbohydrate fat throughout the day and we're paying attention to their protein. I have an answer to that if you're gonna overeat overeat on protein very simple philosophy so if don't overeat on carbs or fat again because that's much more likely to be converted to body fat before i forget i wanted to tie in another study.

that's very related to the power of tracking, essentially. Before you do, can I just quickly, I just want to add a practical comment for people if they're having issues with what I just mentioned. You have this protein achoring. What I have seen work well is just extending that down to individual meals.

So, figuring out if you want 200 grams of protein, and let's say you're going to get all of that in three meals or more or whatever, but you already have that worked out in your meal plan, so to speak. And so, you don't accidentally get to dinner 100 grams short on your protein because you followed your protein-anchored plan where

You had your protein shake in the morning, you had your chicken at lunch, maybe there was another protein shake in the afternoon, and now at dinner you have 30, 40 grams or whatever left just as you wanted. So long as you follow those protein feedings, then like you said, it doesn't matter so much where your carbs and fats fall so long as your calories are where you need them to be by the end of the day.

Yes. No, I love that. Yes. And we know also if you're dividing your protein up approximately in equal doses throughout the day, you're doing everything you can to maximize your lean mass gains from your resistance training program. So there's another benefit of that. Yes, yes. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to share that because I've seen that work well for people who were struggling with running out of calories before they hit their protein target.

So that's another study that's really informed my opinion is a natural extension to the i'll just say the horror of not tracking. So researchers recruited a bunch of people who were overweight or or with obesity who wanted to lose weight.

What they did was they divided them into two groups. So one group, which I call the failure group, not because they're failures, but because they were failing to lose weight. And three things characterized this group that the researcher said, hey, you're in one group and the other subjects are in another one.

One, they claimed they were eating less than 1,200 calories per day and couldn't lose weight. You'll see that all over social media. I've made a tongue-in-cheek post on multiple networks that has always done well where it's like, you know, I've been eating 1,200 calories per day or 1,000 calories per day and not losing weight said somebody who has not been eating 1,200 or 1,000 calories per day and not lose weight. Yeah, correct.

Not losing weight. Now, don't want to go down this rabbit trail, but I do want to mention it. You and I have never talked about this yet, but I do think there is something to this menopause transition population, something's going on where years ago, I'd be like, hey, you're just not, you're not dieting hard. I'm just, in my opinion, I'm acknowledging there's something unique

to this menopause transition phase of light. Now again, we don't we don't have time to go down to that rabbit hole, but I'm making an exception for that group for some of those people. I've actually seen that as well. So I know that that could be another podcast, but

Just anecdotally, I've seen it enough where I've also made a mental note where I don't have maybe have a couple of ideas, but I haven't looked into it deeply. But that does seem to be an actual exception, not to the laws of physics, not to energy balance, but there is something that seems to be uniquely difficult for women for talking about body composition in that phase of life.

Yes. And some, 10%, 20%, I don't know what it is. And just to elaborate, it's not that they can't lose weight. It's just that the level, the number of calories they have to consume become so low that it's not sustainable. It's preposterously low.

So we're both acknowledging, hey, there may be some truth to it. There might be an exception due to that phase of life or that physiological or morphological changing that occurs in that five, 10-year window. But for any women in that phase of life who are maybe newly starting on a body composition transformation, you don't assume that

you're going to have to eat some preposterously low number of calories. Don't assume that it's going to be uniquely difficult for you. Like Bill said, it seems to be a small minority. So again, baseline assumption, the right expectations are that your body is going to respond great and you're not going to have any special difficulties. It's going to be straightforward and maybe it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun all the time, but it'll work.

in your body just as it works in most everybody else's. Yeah, yeah. And again, not doing more research in that area, which you're helping support that. This study, though,

They said, OK, what define this one group, but I'm calling the failure group. That's how I remember them. They're eating less than they claim to eat less than 1,200 calories per day. They had more than two times the amount of dieting attempts to lose weight compared to the other group. And they also were they said, hey, the reason I can't lose weight is because of my they blamed it on metabolic and genetic factors.

And the other group, which I will just call the control group, also overweight, but they weren't, they didn't blame their current body composition on metabolic or genetic factors and they weren't making a claim that they're eating less than 1200 calories. So what the researchers did was

Brought them in for extensive testing for two weeks. They wanted to say, okay, you're not losing weight. Well, is it because your metabolism is slow? Is there something to that? Or is it because you're overestimating the number of calories you think you're getting from physical activity? Or is it also because maybe you're eating more than what you think you are? So they tested these things.

And the reason this study was so powerful was very controlled, so they used doubly labeled water, which basically means they knew exactly or to the best technology that we have available today, they knew exactly how many calories they were burning from all categories of metabolism.

Thermic effective food, resting metabolic rate, physical activity, non-exercise activity, thermogents. So they knew everything. So they, I'll just phrase it like this, our summarize. They knew how many calories they were burning each day. Because they were also monitoring body composition, they could tell if they were overeating or under eating. If they gained weight during these two weeks, they couldn't almost know to the calorie, hey, you over ate by this much. It's the only thing that explains this gain in body fat or even lean mass.

So what they did, they compared these two groups and after the two-week intervention, the failure group, the ones that said, I can't lose weight because of these things, let's start with exercise. They realized that they were overestimating their energy expenditure from exercise by 250 calories per day.

The other group also overestimated, but it was only by 125 calories, so only half. Then they also looked at metabolism. Do they have a suppressed metabolism? The answer was no. Nearly the same. In fact, the failure group had a 90 calorie on average, a 90 calorie advantage in terms of how many calories they were expending each day. So this is now the last thing.

And I wrote this number down so I would have it. They said that when they were tracking their food or whatever they were doing, they said that they were eating 1,050 calories per day during these two weeks. And when they use their doubly labeled water, it was actually 2,100 calories per day. Over 1,000 calories more, 1050 to be exact on average.

So, taking this back to tracking. When you're tracking, you're not going to be off by that much. When you're just intuitively eating. Now, this may be an extreme example, but this is published data. The best controlled study I've ever seen on this with the use of the double label of water and body composition assessments. Look at that difference though.

I mean, and that's you could be off by a few hundred calories per day, which is very easy to do if you're just eating intuitively, especially if you have a higher fat diet where one extra tablespoon of oil is what another hundred calories or something, right? So it's just so easy to accidentally overeat by a few hundred calories. But if you have your diet set up properly, that might be your entire daily deficit, three or 500 calories might be your intended deficit.

Is is something that again i would say is is very easy to do even for people who are tracking with really everything that we have to use upon tracking with everything that we're talking about like they're not brand new to all of this and so yes a thousand over you by thousand calories per day might sound ridiculous to people listening but even that depending on what you're eating it actually can be surprisingly easy to do.

Yeah, and again, I think that's an extreme example. Those are general population people not living a fitness lifestyle, but to what you said, many people are going to prescribe for themselves a 300, 400 calorie deficit. And if you're off by that much, you're living this life of dieting and you're getting all those negative. Oh, I'm hungry.

and you're not actually dieting. There's a psychological power to, if you think you're dieting and you're not, well, now I can appreciate, I can't lose weight and I've been dieting all these weeks. Well, have you really? That's true. There very well could be a nocebo effect there. And then there are the very real constraints that come with dieting, even if you're not technically dieting because you're accidentally overeating, but that does mean you probably

have cut certain things out of your diet, maybe things you just tend to overeat so you're just not buying them right now and maybe you're not going out to eat as much as you normally would. And so those are not just in your head. And so that also adds to the frustration of, okay, I've been sticking to this regimen, you think, for months now and I have very little to show for it.

I know we also said we were talking about not just tracking, but just body weight. Yeah. Yeah. This was going to be the, this was going to be the segue. I was like, let's talk about that then. Okay. That's tracking food. What about tracking body weight? I should be moderate. I should be running this podcast the way that. So this was a study that I just read recently and what, what researchers did was they recruited

Over people that were overweight, and there was a three-month intervention, and they told everybody, weigh yourself every day, and they gave them scales that had Bluetooth capabilities, so there was instantaneous feedback to the researchers remotely, which subjects were actually weighing themselves every day versus hardly ever, and then most days of the week.

So what they found was, the way that they categorized the subject in this study was, okay, we're gonna have the subjects that did weigh themselves every single day, seven days per week for three months. And then the other group of subjects was everybody else. So even if they weighed themselves six days per week, the two groups that I call here is the everyday group and the most days group. What was shocking to me was how close they were

in weighing in versus the actual success rate of the weight loss. So the subjects that weighed in an average of seven days per week, and there is no average. You either did it or you did. They lost 20 pounds of body weight. Again, unfortunately, no body composition here, but not a fitness study. They lost 20 pounds over the three months. Everybody else who did not weigh in every day, their average was 5.4 days per week.

So when I just let me just stop there when I think weighing in five days versus seven days, not a big deal, not a big difference. I wouldn't expect there to be much of a difference because it's nearly every day, you know, almost six days per week. They lost seven pounds over the three months, 20 versus seven.

So to me, the conclusion was there's a big difference between weighing in every day and weighing in most days. If this is where this has built my philosophy on coaching, if you have a weight loss client and you're not at least prescribing or making them accountable for weighing in every day, it's negligence on your part as a coach.

And out of curiosity do you remember what the median was in the not everyday group i'm just curious was was that average scued up by a lot of sixes and in a lot of you know the lot of zeros and ones in there but there are enough sixes i'm just curious. Yeah now i know the average is five point four but i don't think that i don't recall reading a median.

Okay, just curious, because sometimes the average is again, if you have a lot of sixes and a lot of zeros, then you can get to some average. But regardless, the point stands, and I totally agree on the utility of weighing every day, and then understanding, and I've spoken about this.

I'm sure you've written about this of you don't have to put a lot of importance on your day-to-day fluctuations, but taking that average over, let's say, seven days and watch that average how it moves over time. And then women often, I think it makes sense. If their weight fluctuates a lot with menstruation, then exclude the weak where it's all over the place because that data is useless anyway. So weighing yourself on

on the other call it three weeks or so, and then again, looking at that average weight as opposed to fretting over it being up one pound one day, or if you're trying to gain muscle being down one pound and so forth. Yeah, yeah. I will say though, in that study, everybody in this study

was told to weigh themselves every day. So I don't think there would have been many zeros. And it was a retrospective analysis. I need to say that as well. So it's possible there could have been some zeros, but I don't think there was. I wouldn't anticipate there being many zeros in that study.

What are your thoughts about weighing when you're just trying to maintain? In the context of weight loss, you made your position clear and you've backed it up with just one study of a number that you could refer to and that it's a very useful tool. What are your thoughts in the context of

where you're not intentionally trying to change your body composition other than you're hoping that you slowly gain muscle over time, but you're not trying to lose fat per se. Yeah, I can't cite research on this, but I'll answer this just reflective of my own life. If I'm not doing these low-hanging fruit tracking macros, tracking body weight, I gain weight. I've seen that so many times.

Yes, it's a preventive measure for me. So if I see the world through how I live, I think it would be it's just as effective to maintain your weight. Other than we said, this would be for people who struggle to maintain their weight. Some people don't then have to struggle at all. My wife for many years.

she didn't do anything and maintain her weight. But yeah, my opinion is if you struggle tracking your weight each day and ideally your calories is going to prevent you from gaining excess body fat. Yeah, I agree. I think regular weigh-ins is a highly underrated tool for

Maintaining your preferred body composition specifically for preventing fat gain again something that many people are resistant to. And sometimes it's because it tells us what we don't want to see. We don't want what we don't want to hear. But of course that's also why it's so effective. I think that you've mentioned how you tend to make better food decisions if you're tracking your macros. You probably also are influenced to some degree

In positively if you're tracking your body weight because whether you consciously are thinking about it you know there's there's a cause and effect relationship between eating poorly and seeing that number go up and so it's just another little maybe another just kind of element of reinforcement that positive reinforcement to keep doing the things that you know you want to do.

And then it will you want to face the consequences of weighing more than you want to weigh but then also what i've seen is that it can help people who are accidentally over eating. Correct it before they've gained so much fat that now they're kind of discouraged and now maybe they don't even want to weigh themselves because.

And I've seen this maybe more in women than men, but it's not exclusively a female thing, but where now they've gained because they haven't been tracking and they realize, and I don't know if you've experienced this, but I certainly have where especially over a period of lean bulking where I know I'm gaining body fat, but that's the point I'm trying to gain strength and pushing. But then there's a point where it just hits me. I'm like, I just feel fat now.

I've crossed a threshold from not fat to fat, and so I've seen when that happens and some people, they haven't been weighing, they haven't been tracking their food, they've been accidentally overeating, they've been slowly gaining fat that they haven't really seen because when you look at yourself every day, but then there's the day when they look in the mirror and they realize that, oh, wait a minute.

I have a gut now. That was not a thing. The last image that I have in my mind, but that's where I'm at now. And then not wanting to wait because then not wanting to see, wait a minute, how much have I actually gained? Can't be that bad, can it?

Yeah, correct. And then you're like, well, it looks pretty bad, but I don't want to know how bad it really is because that's going to make you feel even worse. So my point is by regularly weighing and maybe the frequency you can play with that listeners.

If you're trying to maintain and find the frequency that works for you, I would not recommend once a week for what it's worth because if you have a bad way in, like maybe you're just holding a bunch of water, maybe you haven't pooped as much in the last day or so, then you can have a discouraging number that's not really reflective of reality, so more frequently than once a week. But by keeping that in place, then you can prevent the scenario that I just outlined.

Yes. And on the other side of that spectrum, if you're weighing once a week, you might have a day where you weigh in, where you're two or three pounds less than what you think. And now what do you tempted to do?

Yeah, you're like, oh, I have room. I'm going to the fridge actually right now. That is exactly, I'm not saying I would do it, but I am admitting that would be the temptation. If you're only weighing once a week, you're going to be unduly biased by a high or an unexpected low day and both can work against you.

Another point that's worth commenting on with weigh-ins, it's similar to what we were talking about with tracking food, that the claims that that can increase the chances of developing an eating disorder or it's going to harm your mental or your emotional health. Of course, with tracking body weight, then those types of claims are made, but it's about body image disorders and whether it's some sort of

kind of dysmorphia that can occur or where maybe it goes into the direction of becoming grotesquely skinny and becoming obsessed with losing weight and putting too much attention on weight. For example, I know someone, now this is a fringe, but some people, they hear these stories and then they become alarmed where I know loosely

a guy who, I don't know if he still does this, probably does, but I know at one point he would weigh himself several times a day, and if his body weight was higher than a certain number come like three or four p.m., he would just stop eating.

until his bodyweight would put him below. So weird behavior. There's nothing productive about that. And so extreme. And so again, there are claims that if you get into the habit of weighing yourself, it might push you into these extremes. And again, I see these claims more made toward women than men. But what are your thoughts on those types of claims?

Well, one I would say, just as a counter to that, there may be some negative outcomes from this for some people, but there are also negative outcomes from excess body fat. And those are numerous, and those are known. Those are well documented. So it's not just all negative. We also want to prevent the gain of excess body fat.

But in terms of the, you know, would that drive somebody to extreme behaviors? I would just work with that on a case by case basis, not making any assumptions that that's going to be most people. So here's, I'll give it a perfect example. I was working with a female.

Who didn't want to weigh in every day, but recognize the importance of doing this and what we came to was and it's funny as we just call it like the risk test. Particularly during her her menstrual cycle, there were days when she would be a little more puffy. So if she could put her fingers and touch her fingers around her wrist, I'll weigh in that day. But on days where she couldn't do that, she's like, I'm already not in a good place.

So we had an agreement, yeah, don't weigh in those days if that's three days a month, whatever it is. I think that was a great compromise. And again, I didn't push her to do this every day. It was meeting her, hey, okay, you're telling me this is giving you some anxiety. What can we do? And that was kind of an agreement that I imagine worked for her. That's a great tip. I've never heard that one before, but it immediately makes sense. I like that.

Yeah, and it worked for her because she happened to have the finger lines and the wrist size where that was a good little test for her. Well, we're coming up on time, but I want to make sure that we've covered everything that you wanted to cover on this body weight tracking topic. Is there anything else that you wanted to say on that before we wrap up?

Uh, no, nothing on the, um, the details of, you know, weighing in macros. I think we, we covered it, but I do want to, I want to thank you and not many people know this because you don't ever talk about it, but you, you donate money to my research lab where I get to research all of this stuff about fat loss. So one, thank you for doing that. And you, you give the money in a way that it's at my discretion. So there's no, there's

I know you have your reasons for wanting to support science, but to me, if I owned a business like Legion, hey, study my products, make sure I can get marketing or a lie on this. And you don't do that. So Kareem Halley's facilitates this. And I just want to thank you for donating money, allowing me to use that to any project that I see fit. What we're doing currently with the money that you're donating is we're actually studying weight loss resistance in menopausal females.

And you know that paying for blood work is expensive. So we're using the money that you don't need to pay for some blood work. So we can get these hormone tests that we need. So make sure I would just want everybody, all your listeners to know. Maybe I should do a better job with my publicity or something. I don't know. I just do it not because I'm not looking to get special attention for it.

Do it because i genuinely want to support good research and i feel like it's a way that i can give back to the scientific community that i've benefited greatly from because i'm not a scientist i'm a desk researcher if you want to call it that so i rely on people like you and i relied on people like you to do the hard work so i can write books and write articles and record podcasts.

And even cell supplements because, you know, I've, from the beginning, I've relied heavily on peer-reviewed research for formulating supplements and it's not, other people are doing the work. And there are so, there's so many questions. There's still so many questions that need answers like this weight loss resistance. One is to make some breakthroughs on that front could help a lot of people and a lot more than many people who aren't experiencing it.

Realize because I've seen firsthand the frustration and I'm sure you have particularly in women who are dealing with that issue Yes, and to that point my wife and she's given me permission to talk about this she Experienced exactly this could not lose weight and I'm thinking you're married to a fat loss group

And I, historically, I would help her when she wanted to get real lean. You know, I would monitor everything, bring her into the lab and do these tests. And it was, it was, it has literally changed my professional life because I'm shifting to studying.

Weight loss in young, metabolically healthy people, that it's pretty simple. You pull the levers and they lose weight, and now this middle-aged woman category is not so simple for some of them, and I want to know why. I may never find out why, but I'm going to spend the rest of my career trying to find out.

I look forward to subsequent interviews on that topic, especially as some of these question marks get resolved and the questions may outlive you of ultimately what are all the mechanisms in play, but I think that you don't need to necessarily have a full understanding of why to understand enough to understand what to do and how to get through it as painlessly as possible.

That's a good point. I am an applied researcher. I'm not necessarily the researcher looking for mechanisms. I am looking for applied solutions, whether that be hormonal, diet, exercise, whatever. That's a good distinction. I'm glad you mentioned that.

Well, this was a great discussion per usual and let's wrap up quickly with where people can find you, find your work, tell them about your research review, anything else in particular. If they're still listening and they like this interview, they're probably going to like these other things. Yeah, so finding me is easy. Instagram is the only place that I'm at. It's a Bill Campbell PhD and every study that we talked about

I've featured in my research reviews. So my research review is more than just summaries of studies. It is literally me educating the reader, and I think it's for fitness professionals. That's who it serves the most. If you go to my website, billcambolphd.com, I review research and I have expert coaches come in or expert or physicians or somebody like you. You've been a contributor in the past.

that I summarize the research and these other experts apply it. How would you apply this into the lives of your clients? And it's solely focused on fat loss and muscle gain, muscle hypertrophy. Bill cambolphd.com. Love it. Well, thanks again, Bill. Look forward to the next one. Yeah, thank you.

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