Challenges common misconceptions about weight loss, arguing that the focus should shift from losing weight to losing fat while preserving muscle. He explains that the traditional “calories in, calories out” model oversimplifies how the body processes food, failing to account for the differences between sugars, proteins, and fiber. The importance of muscle mass is emphasized, as losing muscle diminishes metabolic function and makes it harder to maintain a healthy weight long-term.

The speaker also addresses the profitability of managing diseases like diabetes, suggesting that healthcare systems focus more on treatment than prevention. By understanding the body’s biochemistry rather than relying on calorie counting, individuals can make more informed decisions about their health, leading to better outcomes in weight management and overall well-being.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Introduction to the issues with semaglutide and calorie counting.

01:10 – Problems with focusing on weight loss over fat loss.

02:24 – Flaws in the calories in, calories out model.

03:47 – Fiber doesn’t contribute to calorie intake.

04:10 – Sugars directly turning into fat.

05:10 – Muscle loss from dieting and the yo-yo effect.

06:31 – Importance of lifting weights for fat loss.

07:59 – Calories as a measurement, not a real substance.

09:35 – Diabetes, insulin, and the profit-driven healthcare system.

12:14 – The impact of weight loss failure on mental health.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] The questions I’m hearing more and more. Are silver semaglutide and the calories thing. I’ll go through the calories things. Many times you guys are asking about it. The big question is what’s my big issue with calories when they work out the calories in, calories out when it’s worked so well for so long, it does not work for very well, very, very long. The number one issue we have in the country is obesity, number one. Number one, health issues that people are too fat and we’re not even talking about fat. We’re talking about weight. Got to lose weight. Got to lose weight. That’s another key part of the problem. If you guys are focused on weight, you have no idea. Metabolic function. What’s going on is the issue with those impacts. The issue The GOP will tie these two together. Since I got questions about both of these, the issues is if we’re looking at weight loss, not fat loss, then when you lose a bunch of muscle, you lose some water weight. You don’t. Your outlook to scale went down. Yeah, I’m successful. No, you lost a bunch of muscle. You lost your your source of your metabolic function. You lost the source of your motion. You lost the source of your safety and stability.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:10] If your joint function had joint health, spinal function, balance, coordination, you know, the things that protect your bones from breaking. You’ve lost all of that. Like the worst thing in the world you could do is lose weight. If you’re going to lose muscle like it’s it’s the worst thing you could possibly do. Loss is hard to gain. So, you know, we need to start focusing on the actual functional stuff. Like, I get it, it’s easier to be lazy and just be like, Well, we’ll just eat less. And if the weight comes down, then I guess we’re taking that success. No, it’s crappy goals. Lose the fat, maintain and grow the muscle. You can do them about the same time if you understand the chemistry. The issue with the calories thing is that you’re not differentiating between sugar, which goes directly to fat protein, which goes to muscle or goes to burning fat and fiber, which never gets in the body at all. Like the idea that they’re all equally the same as far as how fat you get or how healthy your is absurd. It’s like legitimately there’s a lot of this that we’ve been taught wrong. I’m going to tell you on purpose. But here’s the thing. What goes in your mouth doesn’t go in your body. Let’s just start there. Right? So this like you had a thousand calories on your plate and you ate 2000 calories.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:24] And so now you have to you have to figure out how to deal with 1000 calories is trash. First of all, fiber doesn’t get in your body. I don’t care how much fiber you put in your mouth, it’s coming out your butt. It’s not going inside your body. What is goes inside. Your body is across. The intestinal lumen is absorbed into your bloodstream. Fibers never going to be absorbed. So those four calories are really zero calories because they never get absorbed in the body by definition like that. Here’s the literal definition of insoluble fiber. So you can’t count those. And so that those that by itself just that one thing, that one fact throws off the entire calories in calories out model. Just that one. Now, the other thing is, is that sugars go directly to fat. Like there’s a there’s a direct biochemical pathway. So sugars can turn into fat carbohydrates, certain sugars, sugars are going to turn into fat if we have more sugars than the body is using at the time. So that is a very long conversation that I will spare you because you guys can’t we’re still stuck on this. You know, calories of of sugar, protein and fiber are all equal. And we work. That’s not really how that’s a 100% what it means for is equal to four is equal to four. Like if you’re doing the calories in calories out there is no eat high protein. That’s not the calories in. Calories out. Thank.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:47] In the calories in calories out. If you’re telling me that you believe calories in, calories out, pure sugar and steak is exactly the same for that model, 100% the same because four is equal to four. Like, this is how it is, the calories. If you eat less calories than you’re supposed to, you’ll lose weight, which is technically true. But again, we’ve already discussed that. You want to lose fat, not muscle. The vast majority of fat weight user loses muscle. Again, terrible plan. And then you’re like, we’re so much harder to lose weight the second time. Yeah. You know why? Because you lost, say, 30 to 50% of the weight you lost was muscle, which is all your metabolism moves. And then you keep eating trash because you don’t understand how the system works. You got fatter than you were last time because you have less money, you have less muscle mass, same weight. And then you’re like, Well, I’ll just lose it again. But you have less muscle to create the metabolic function required to burn the fat. So guess what? Yeah. It’s harder to lose the weight or the fat the second time because you’re fatter at the same weight. So if you weigh 200 pounds and you lose weight to 180 pounds, then you gain it back to 200. Guess what? If half the weight loss was fat and half was muscle, then the 200 to 180 ten was fat, ten was muscle. Then you went back up to 200. Guess what? The ten muscle. You didn’t gain that ten muscle back yet. 20 pounds of fat on you.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:10] Congrats. And that’s the thing, because you’re going to get fatter if you keep doing that diet that yo yo diet. You’re going to keep being fatter because you’re losing the muscle tissue, decreasing the total amount of ATP created, the total amount of macros burned, if you will. And so as you get fatter, it’s harder to break those things back down. So which is also why lifting weights is the easiest way to lose fat because creation of muscle tissue, you know, maintenance of muscle tissue is going to require more ATP generation than just not having any any muscle to begin with. So. Yeah. This is why. Which is why every single time you look at somebody who’s who’s over fat, the first thing you do is they withdraw testosterone so that he can regain, regenerate and heal. Then then you start lifting weights. And then we can start changing their diets. Typically, your diet is trash and you’re going to have a lot of hesitation going with the trash diet regardless. Like we can change your diet first, that’s fine, but you’re going to have to left. You’re going to have to regulate your hormone function because that’s how the body works. I mean, we can dance around it. Like I don’t want the body to work. It doesn’t matter what you want. Doesn’t matter. The body’s a chemical machine. You give it the chemicals it needs in the way it needs it, and bang, it changes.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:31] That’s. That’s how it works. If you don’t understand the chemistry, which every single person who talks about calories doesn’t understand the chemistry we are showing. Show me one. Just one metabolic function. Cory Cycle. Citric acid cycle. You know anything? Generation of muscle tissue. Regeneration of muscle tissue. Show me one that has a calorie in it. Newsflash, you’re not gonna be able to because calories aren’t a real thing. They’re not, like, so. So fat. Muscle fat is a real thing. You can hold it in your hand. It’s a lipoproteins made out of chemistry. Easy to go through. Calories are not. Calories are literally the definition of calorie is the amount of energy required to heat one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. That’s what it is. It’s like a degree or a Kelvin. It’s a measurement of heat. So tomorrow. Today, when I got when I’m driving the office, it was 60 degrees outside. If it gets hotter, it’ll get to 65 degrees or 70 degrees. That’s how that works. That has. So in the calorie system, if the temperature of the water is five. Five degrees Celsius and you heat it by two degrees Celsius. You’ve had two calories expressed. That’s how the system works. It’s not a real like, these calories come in. And then, you know, if you have to eat them, they come and become fat. How how does it even become fat? Like walk this through. This is this is my argument all the time.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:59] People just stare at me. How how are you taking an energy function and making it into a physical piece of matter? How are we? Energy conversion. Is there some magic thing the body does that nobody knows about? That’s not how it works. It’s not a calories thing. It’s a chemistry thing. If you start looking at the chemistry, you start fully understanding, now I understand how we’re gaining muscle, how we’re losing fat, how you can do both the same times, how to fix diabetes, how to fix half the metabolic function issues that are out there. Yeah, that’s why you don’t understand the metabolic chemistry is because they want you to be second and profitable. Diabetes is super profitable. And here’s the thing. We’re like, how is diabetes profitable? Okay, first of all, all the stuff you go do with diabetes, all that, all the drugs you go take all the doctors appointments you got to go to like all the different glucose monitors and all the insulin injections and all the metformin and all all the pills, everything else. But here’s the thing. All the surgeries, like, yeah, like got to get your toe amputated or your other toe or, you know, part of your foot or, you know, we’ve got, you know, blood vessel issues, high blood pressure. We’ve got cardiovascular issues. We’ve got to do yo, you had a stroke. Like everything in the body deteriorates as we have increased diabetes issues. There’s not just the blood sugar that that’s a problem. It’s the amount of insulin your body produces, which is, again, another reason why I’m telling you that this is on purpose is because how many yummy diabetics I see who’s never had their fasting insulin pulled. This is not a blood sugar issue. It’s a pleasure control issue.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:35] It’s an insulin problem. But they never pull insulin because they’re sort of pulling insulin, the trigger out the problem and they can fix it. Because here’s the other side of that. The reason why it damages the brain is because the little receptor that shifts sugar from your blood into your cerebrospinal fluid that’s around your brain is mediated by insulin. So if you have insulin resistance, which means your fasting insulin is sitting higher than it’s supposed to. Guess what? You’re going to have a lot more sugar in the brain than you’re supposed to. And that’s what causes dementia and Alzheimer’s and all sorts of other neurological disorders. We’ve known this for a long time. He learned to do anything about it because it makes the pharmaceutical companies money. Like this is this is the actual argument. This is the actual fight we’re in. It’s not you versus your health. It’s you versus the pharmaceutical companies. And your health is kind of just in the balance. That’s kind of what it is. And so we can start we can keep trusting the government and the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies and all those guys. Or you can start realizing that maybe the government lies to you. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, just I realize it’s crazy talk, but just think about it for just to say open your eyes, open your mind just a second. Be like maybe, possibly not. Everything the government has told me has been 100% accurate. And yes, the FDA is part of the government. So keep that in mind. And who the FDA worked for. They were they worked with and for the pharmaceutical companies. So work that all in your head.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:01] But yeah, if we start getting away from the calories in, calories out, we start actually looking at the biochemistry. You’re going to figure out, this is why I shouldn’t eat these things. This is why I should eat those things. This is how I can replace these things with those things so that I can, you know, stay healthier and leaner. Yeah. That’s. This is where all of it lies. It’s all in chemistry. So, you know, this is why it’s such a big deal for me because first of all, I was a fat guy for a long time running the calories in, calories out, and it would never work. Everyone’s like, well, you’re just lazy. You’re doing the system wrong. You’re not doing it right. Or I was doing it 100% right. The problem is, is if I was doing it right according to calories in, calories out. The problem is, is the calories in calories, that’s trash. And so when I sat down and folks took me several years, when I read through all the chemistry and figured it out, it’s like, okay. And that’s what put me on the course right now. So. You know, it is what it is. Like, you can you can go by the chemistry. You can go by this magical, fictitious crack crap that is really not helping anybody, you know, because if we figured out, we’ve got the calories thing, we’re going to do low calorie and is going to fix everything and we wouldn’t have this giant amount of obesity. That’s just where it is.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:14] Like if counting calories that worked so well, why is it so hard to use? Why is why is her body so fat? So, all right. But that’s kind of where that is. That’s why it’s such just so box of mine because, you know, we’ve got a lot of help on the other side of just learning the chemistry. And we’ve got a lot of mental health, like the amount of people I talked to who are devastated because of, you know, their weight, which you shouldn’t be tracking and because, you know, they’re fat and they’ve been trying so hard and doing so much stuff in the beginning, nowhere. I mean, think about dopamine comes from setting a goal and achieving the goal. So we set a goal to lose the fat or to lose the weight, and you never do. You’re caught in this loop of I can’t win. I’m useless. I can’t do anything right. Like, yeah. And that bores in your head and becomes part of your internal thought process for everything else that you do throughout the week and day.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:07] You know, and people tell me all the time, like, what kind of a person, if I can lose the weight? You’re a person who’s been lied to. That’s who you are. If you’re like, I’ve been here, I can’t lose the weight. I’m in, I’m in, I’m in running the program. I’m just a failure. So the system was a failure, not you. Now, a lot of you are lazy. You’re not doing the job like this. Just like I’m not trying to say that everybody is doing the right thing. Lots and lots and lots of people aren’t because they’re lazy. But the other side of that is that they’ve been trained really is because they’ve tried a little bit here, a little bit there, and it didn’t work because they didn’t get the information they needed to actually do the job. So anyway, I was just so box mine. But if you guys have any other questions, as have questions that Chalmers won’t skycom or drop them in the comments. Thanks for your time.

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