This Protein Trick Changes Fat Loss Forever!

I look at protein as a fat loss nutrient. One that makes you feel fuller and two, protein helps the body burn more calories. The energy balance would say if you eat more calories, you're going to gain weight. Well, that's not true in all situations because Dr. Bill Campbell is a worldleading expert in fat loss and protein science. He's published over 200 papers and spent decades uncovering the truth. Today, he's revealing the missing link to real results.

How much protein do people need to eat every day? So, my recommendations are twofold.

One, it's going to optimize for fat loss, and two, it's going to optimize for gaining as much lean mass as possible.

So, oh, my body's different or this isn't working. I mean, fat loss, it's slow.

It doesn't happen. And I know this because I struggle with this and I go all over the world and speak about fat loss. And when we talk about losing body fat, there's two processes that have to occur.

One is we have to liberate caffeine. Is that really good for fat loss? I'm going to go with What do you think the number one mistake is that people make if they want to lose fat? If you do that, I will promise you you will have noticed fat loss. And if I'm wrong, there's something wrong.

Most people think that fat loss is all about restriction, drastically cutting your calories or maybe even endless cardio. But what if the opposite were correct?

What if you were able to eat more but more of the right foods to allow your body to burn its own body fat? And at the center of it all is protein, the most overlooked nutrient for fat loss.

And this strategy will work even if you're carnivore, even if you're keto, and even if you're low carb. My guest today is Dr. Bill Campbell. He's a leading researcher on fat loss and he'll explain how protein can accelerate your fat loss results, exactly how much you need every single day and the number one food that will drive your results as well as protein timing.

So, Dr. Campbell, my first question, as a fat loss scientist who understands this area very deeply, do you think that people can lose more fat faster on a high protein diet? Yes, I look at protein as a fat loss nutrient. And I don't just say that because I like protein. Um I I actually wish protein I actually wish proteins were carbs. I like eating carbs a lot more than protein.

And it's it's difficult for people to consume higher amounts of protein. So again, I don't like saying that because it's it's it's more difficult to have people eat higher protein, but we have enough research and enough mechanistic data and enough outcome data where people lose more fat when they optimize their protein intake or even in studies when they're even eating optimal, even if they eat more in in certain studies, they lose body fat. Very exciting. I mean, I love protein.

I don't have a problem eating enough protein, but I get it that many people cannot eat enough protein, which we'll talk about how much we actually need a bit later. So, question for you. If we had the um choice of the different macros, fat, protein, and carbs now, which one out of that is the most important that people need to focus on if they want to lose fat? I'm going to go with calories first.

So, make sure that you're not overeing. And once we have that clarified, you anchor your diet around protein. So you set your protein first and then based on your preference, carbs or fats for for and again this is a body composition perspective. We're trying to lose body fat.

So pro I anchor with protein. I'm a protein anchored flexible dieting advocate. Okay. I just thought I'll ask that question because you know how some people favor more low carb or ketogenic, some people favor more high carb, but this conversation is really about the emphasis on protein and why it is so important and not many people talk about the importance of protein. Let me add one thing to that which which is interesting and it builds off that statement. A lot of people when they discuss or let's just say when they fight about the the major cause of obesity related to diet, you have people that that that say it's about the fat and you have people say it's about the carbs.

Nobody ever argues or puts forth a hypothesis that protein is part of the obesity epidemic.

And there is evidence or there's a theory that places protein at the forefront of the obesity epidemic as well. So I I agree with you and it's it's an interesting thing that people just skip or ignore protein despite the research that we have. Absolutely. I think the more of a a uniform consensus that we have on health and the more that we can be in agreement, the better it is.

So protein and probably um eating unprocessed foods. So I want to understand why why is it that protein is so good for fat loss. What's the mechanism behind it? I don't fully know and I don't think anybody fully knows but it essentially addresses just broadly speaking it essentially addresses addresses everything you would want it to do for the energy balance equation. So what do I mean by that?

So if you optimize protein intake, one that helps people consume less food and two, protein is the most thermogenic nutrient, meaning that it helps the body burn more calories. And in a way, one of the benefits of of low carb or ketogenic diets is, and I think this is one of the primary benefits, it suppresses appetite better than any other type of diet. Well, protein as a nutrient does the same thing. Protein makes you feel fuller so that you eat less food. So there's the energy inside of the energy balance equation. And it also burns more calories because protein has it's the only nutrient macronutrient that has nitrogen elements or amino bonds within its chemical structure.

And when you consume protein, the body has to work very hard or harder to break apart these uh peptide bonds, these nitrogen atoms. they have it works harder. So it takes more energy to digest, absorb, transport protein compared to carbs and fats. So not only are you eating less calories, you're also burning more calories when you have an optimal protein diet.

Interestingly, so is it that also that if you eat more protein relative to fat or carbohydrates that you are essentially eating more food? Maybe it's less calories and that's another debate that people talk about.

Is it calories? Is it not? Is it hormones? But nevertheless, if you're eating more protein, you are physically eating more food that has potentially lower calories. Is that also part of it? Um, I think that depends on where the where the person's choosing to get their protein sources from.

So, if they're getting it all from a protein supplement, well, then they're not eating as much food. Um, and I'm when I say that, I'm not denigrate. I I rely on protein supplements to meet my pro my my daily protein goals. So I'm not saying that that's that's a bad thing. But if it's if somebody's focusing on food only for optimizing their protein, then yes, I I would agree with that.

Interesting. Okay, let's understand fat loss and how the body actually burns fat.

I think people would love to learn this because I have so many people in my ketogenic group saying, I want to burn fat. How do I burn fat? Um so how does the body if you have fat cells that are circulating in the body and they work fun uh functionally when you want to lose fat body fat what's actually happening in the body I like to break this down into two main processes and I just literally talked this talked about this in my my graduate sports nutrition class like three days ago so fresh on my mind so we we have fat tissue atapost tissue is what scientists call it all throughout our body. The goal is to reduce that and burn it for energy so that we end up losing fat. So when we talk about losing body fat, there's two processes that have to occur.

One is we have to liberate the fat from our fat cells. That means we have to break it down so that later it can be burned for energy and that's when we actually will lose body fat.

So that first part is called lipolysis. Lipolysis is happens in the fat tissues, the fat cells, and it's breaking down, literally breaking down or liberating the fatty acids.

And I'll explain what that is in a moment that can later be used for energy. So in our fat cells, we store fat as the the primary constituent is a triglyceride. So I always use this as an example.

I put up my fingers like this and we the body can't do anything with the triglyceride.

It can't burn triglycerides. So this is we have one, two, three fatty acids and then they're attached to a a glycerol backbone. And what we need to do is take off each of these fatty acids so that they're free.

So we call these free fatty acids. Once that happens, now they're able to be burned for energy and ultimately fat loss. Now, the process of doing this, taking off the first, the second, and the third fatty acid, we call that lipolysis or fat breakdown. Now, that at this point, we haven't lost any fat yet. We've liberated it. We've we've set the table or we set the condition where the body can burn it, but nothing has been burned yet. So, this is where I love like exercise or dieting, a caloric deficit. These situations now will take or they attract these fatty acids and let's just say muscle since I'm an exercise person. other organs do as well. But in a caloric deficit state or if you're if you're moving your body, your body needs more energy and it will I'm going to say attract these fatty acids to the muscle. They make their way into the mitochondria where now they're effectively just chopped up for energy. That process is called beta oxidation.

And what that's doing is that's just using the fat that used to be stored in our fat cells, but now it's saying, "Hey, I need energy. You're eating less calories. I need to get energy to keep you alive from somewhere. Let's use the fat that you store since there's a ton of energy there.

" And it literally just breaks apart these um fatty acids. So, just to get a little more technical, a fatty acid chain, the ones that we took off the the triglyceride, they're typically like 18 carbons long. And when they go through this process called beta oxidation, they just go through a circular um system where they just get chopped down into smaller and smaller pieces.

And as that's happening, we're creating ATP or energy to keep us alive. So, that's that's the the general two-step process. Lipolysis, then beta oxidation to lose fat. Now, real quick, we're also um we also have lipogenesis occurring at the same time where we're also um building fat.

So if you're not in a deficit or you're not living a you're not physically active at the end of the day you might be building just as much as you're breaking down which is why again um energy balance really has a large role in dictating whether you're going to lose fat or gain fat. Interesting.

Now I have spoken to many different experts in the field of fat loss and your theory and your explanation primarily revolves around being in a calorie deficit or exercising which is the energy model.

But then you have other people that talk about the aspect of hormones particularly insulin.

Now my audience is going to say Dr. Campbell it's all about insulin. It's not about calories.

But if you speak with Dr. Jason Fun, which I'm not sure you know him, but he says it's about the hormones first that feed the calories. And I'd love to get your take on that in terms of where does insulin and hormones fit in the piece of fat loss. Yeah. So, I I would start by saying I'm I'm no fan of a highly processed carbohydrate, high carbohydrate diet. Um especially in sedentary people.

So the worst type of diet someone can eat would be one that is very high carbohydrate and that's highly processed based on the insulin um I'll just say the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity using that as as a guide. Um and and let me also say I like ketogenic diets. I I've used ketogenic diets myself.

So I'm not by any means anti- ketogenic diet. I just don't see the evidence for saying that the hormone that the insulin itself is causing fat gain. So my evidence would be every single study ever published whether there's 4,000 12,000 30,000 studies when they put people in a caloric deficit on average every single study ever published the people lose body fat. Now, I just to um and I haven't published this yet, but I did a case study on myself and it was like 18 months of my life. I purposefully lowered my protein, increased my carbs, eating very high processed foods.

I tracked every gram of carbohydrates. So, I essentially tried to keep insulin as high as I could, but I was in a caloric deficit and I lost significant amounts of body weight.

So, I did the experiment on myself, which I again I think that that that's further evidence that no, it's the calories that are the most important. And again, so I would cite all of the studies done.

That doesn't mean cuz I don't I don't ever want to be, oh, I'm anti- keto. No, a ketogenic diet is the best diet to control hunger. What's the main contributor to obesity epidemic?

People overeat in this obesoggenic environment. So, if you're able to adhere to a ketogenic diet, I think that's the best choice for a lot of people because of the fact that it lowers it lowers hunger and ketogenic diets typically tend to be higher in protein intake, which is I know the main focus of our of our conversation today. So, you get all of those benefits as well. Perfect. I hope that makes sense for people. Um understanding that from the endpoint of fat loss not talking about health not talking about insulin resistance or visceral fat just fat loss this is a key distinction and when we are in the health space we have to be very un very um understanding of what is the end point is is it body composition is it fat loss is it muscle gain or are we talking about health and that's where we have like people like Lane Norton can say you know just eat mostly unprocessed foods but you can have some processed foods but control your calories, but he's not talking about just your ultimate health.

It's a different subject. So, I hope that makes sense for people. But you're in favor of a ketogenic diet, which is awesome. I'm on a ketogenic diet. Um, and so it it really helps me control my calories without overly thinking about it. But this conversation is about protein.

So, I appreciate that um point of view. So, question for you. You mentioned how we break down fat.

Now, when we talk about eating more protein, controlling the calories, where does the fat come from?

Is it body fat? Is it visceral fat or like liver fat? Where does it come from? So the body in a caloric deficit or or let's just say a negative energy balance because you could be exercising to put yourself in that state. It it's relying on stored body fat. So where do we store body fat?

Three main areas. Adapose tissue or just you know it's the fat that we can pinch under our skin.

That's where like 97.5% of all stored body fat is. Then we have IMTG stores. So that's intramuscular triglyceride stores.

That's like 2.4% of all the body fat is stored in our muscles.

And then a very very small amount is just I don't even think you would call it storage, but it's it's free fatty.

It's plasma free fatty acids, plasma triglycerides. It's the amount of fat in the in the blood.

Now the liver is the major organ for all metabolism. So the liver processes all in you know incoming food uh creating fat lipogenesis um gluconneogenesis when you're on a low carb diet.

So the liver is involved in all of the metabolism of this but the fat that we're burning is mostly coming from stored body fat. Okay. I think many people would love to burn the stored body fat.

Let's talk about then protein and understanding how protein can aid in fat loss. So first question getting a deep dive into protein. How much protein do people need to eat every day? So I live in a world where I prioritize muscle or I look at the the body as a whole. So body composition.

So I'm I'm I'm factoring in people who embrace a health or a a physically active or fitness lifestyle.

So, let me let me say that. So, if somebody's sedentary and they never exercise, they never lift a weight, my recommendations may not apply to them, although I can make the argument that they still would.

So, my recommendations are twofold. One, it's going to optimize for fat loss, and two, it's going to optimize for gaining as much lean mass as possible. So, I recommend a range of protein intakes, and that range is 1.6 6 to 2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight.

And for our American friends, that's 75 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Easy. Okay.

Now, is there a maximum like is there an amount that is too much that is not safe that you should never go past? Because some people might be able to eat a lot of protein. Yeah. In healthy people, there's no evidence that higher protein intakes are are unhealthy. Um, and again, me being a I'll just say a a protein advocate, I don't ever want to tell somebody to consume something in higher amounts than typical if there's if there's a chance that it's harmful to their health. Like I don't I have daughters. I don't want to tell them, hey, eat, you know, let's make sure we get protein in this meal if it's potentially harmful. So, I spend a lot of time trying to find harm from higher protein diets. And occasionally and I have people reach out they'll say hey this study shows it's very unhealthy and it's before I even look at the study which I always do I just you always I just predict this is a correlation study where I could have found 29 things if I if I wanted to any interventionbased study when they have high protein diets.

So not just spurious findings from intervention stud or from from correlation studies.

When you give people high versus low protein and you follow them for a year or longer and you take blood work, you're looking at clinical health markers, you're looking at kidney function, you just you never see adverse health outcome. So those that's the best science. That's a science that you want to rely on. I'm also suggesting that the my recommendations are for healthy people.

If you have endstage renal disease, maybe not. So, again, my audience is a physically active healthy population.

So, zero evidence of higher protein diets being unhealthy. In fact, I tell my students in my sports nutrition class um and in my weight management class, if they can show me find one study where it where it showed health harm or or yeah, adverse health outcomes that they get an A.

Like you're you're done for the semester. You you you can go home now. Well, they probably can't find anything.

I mean again I would love to know if that study exists but it again it only exists in the studies that you can I'll just say you can make them find whatever you want to find generally now let me also say this those are also the studies that we rely on for like that smoking is bad for our health so I don't want to say that all correlation studies are garbage but when you whenever you find weird findings they're always from those studies. I just happen to believe that the smoking studies but again we have plenty of data in smoke intervention studies um not with lung cancer per se you have to rely on correlational data but it increases inflammation etc etc. So now as Dr. Campbell mentions protein is so important for fat loss and also for your health but you might be thinking well Reena what else do I need to be eating? Do I eat carbs from my protein or do I eat fat with my protein or is it a mixture of both? Now, according to doctors that you would know, like Dr. Eric Berg and Dr. Kenberry, if you are metabolically damaged, meaning that you have high glucose, elevated insulin, the best strategy for people like you would be a low carb to a zero carb diet. So, under 50 gram of carbs or even close to zero gram of carbs. Now with a zero carb or a carnivore diet, I have seen so many success stories.

People losing so much weight and even reversing chronic conditions like heart failure, thyroid issues, diabetes, insulin resistance, all while eating more food and more calories. And I experienced this myself when I went carnival 5 years ago. But what I found kept myself and all my community on track was medical support through all of the carnival doctors, including the ones that you see on this health podcast. And that's why I created a private online community. It's called Go Carnival.

It's completely off social media and this is where you can get support from these medical doctors and ask all of your questions. One of the best things about the community are our monthly challenges.

We do things like our highfat challenge, our protein challenge, and our dairyfree challenge.

And this month is our step challenge. And this is where our members get the best results.

So, if you want to try Carnivore and get the medical support, just head to go carnivore.com and get your free 14-day challenge and your free meal plan. Okay, so very evident that high protein is safe for a healthy, active population. And just for my audience, if they're sedentary, we don't want to be sedentary. We want to be walking and moving at the least.

So, movement is so important for health and also to liberate fat and and your fat cells. Um, so question, you mentioned your studies. So you do um studies in your labs. So is it high protein irrespective of calories because I'm I think you did a study in people that even though their calories were higher they increase their protein they lost body fat. Yes. Yeah. Not just my lab has found this.

So earlier we talked about the energy balance equation and the data that I've some of the some some of the studies I published or some of the other studies that I rely on. It's almost like there's a protein caveat or a protein condition where the energy balance would say if you eat more calories, you're going to gain weight. Well, that's not true in all situations because when the nutrient that is being overconumed or increased in the diet is protein, we have multiple studies reporting no gain in body fat and some studies a loss of body fat. even though you've eaten more, consume more calories. It's fascinating. It shouldn't it it shouldn't work like that.

But we have multiple studies that report that. I think if more people would understand that, they'd probably eat like overeat on your protein. Go have a steak and then overeat on your calories versus fat or carbohydrates. And not saying that fat or carbs is bad, but if you want to achieve fat loss, overeat your protein. So, question about timing of protein. Um, if you eat your protein in one big bololis in one day, let's just say it's 100 grams of protein, does your body absorb all that protein?

When I get asked that question, I think historically people when they say the word absorb, what they really mean is can that protein be used for muscle protein synthesis? Now, that might not be the case in all situations, but as an exercise scientist, that's those that's usually what I think the context is because when we say absorb, your body's going to absorb whatever you give it.

If I eat, you know, a,000 gram of protein, my body's going to absorb it. Doesn't mean it's going to utilize all of it. Doesn't mean that it's all going to go to my muscles. If I eat a thousand or 10,000 grams of carbs, my body's going to absorb it. It's going to process it. So I always want to set the set the the context for what do we mean by absorb. So let's assume that the person means if I eat all my protein in one meal will my body use that for building muscle and the answer is the more and more protein we eat the higher and higher muscle protein synthesis response we get.

So the answer generally is yes. you eat more protein, you get more of a protein synthetic response.

However, the more and more protein you eat, the less and less of this benefit that you get.

So, if you see this curve, the best benefit is when you go from the lower to the moderate and then from the moderate to the optimal. And as you keep going above optimal amounts, the benefits are just so little.

So yes, um we we had a study that they gave subjects 100 gram of protein versus 25 in one sitting.

They had them resistance train and they they had four times more protein. So 400% more protein, but it was something like a 30% increase in muscle protein synthesis. So that that's it's it was a really well-designed study. loved the study, but it really highlighted, yes, if you have one big meal, you get a lot of benefit, but it's not it's not proportional to the amount of protein.

So, it wasn't like everything muscle wasn't 400% greater in muscle protein synthesis.

So then if you have a big bowls of protein as opposed to have protein um dispersed in um meals so like three to four meals then can the body use that protein better if the goal is to for muscle building?

What we know is that an approximately equal distribution of protein across the day is better than an unequal distribution. So I'll phrase it like this. three breakfast, lunch, dinner is better than the same amount of protein in one meal. And here's where here's here's some context to this. I love food. So, I have to I designed my eating lifestyle around more so around preventing hunger and trying to lose body fat or not gain body fat. I prioritize that over building every ounce of muscle that I could build. and I still build muscle hopefully or maintain it.

So what I'll do if I know let's say that four four protein feedings per day is optimal for building muscle but I also know if I do that if I have four moderatesized meals per day and I'm I'm just hungry all day but I do much better on two large meals. That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to I want a huge meal around 11. I want another huge meal around six. Maybe I sacrificed a couple grams of lean tissue, but what I've done is I've not I I don't feel as hungry throughout.

I'm less likely to overeat on that. So, I I I put this in the context of let's say a a a nutrition coach or health coach. What's your client's goals? What are their struggles? And let's try to come up with the best plan around there is a perfect plan. A perfect plan is probably three to four protein feedings throughout the day. But I know for myself that's not ideal because then I'm hungry all day.

Okay, that makes sense. I think that's very much my audience because they mostly eat two meals a day if they follow low carb to ketogenic diet because they're simply not hungry. As you said, it's the most satiating lifestyle that you can have because the protein is higher, the fat is higher, and you're having less ultrarocessed foods. So having said that, now the question about fat loss. Would it be more optimal than to have eat when you feel hungry? So if it's twice a day and that makes you feel really full, do that. Does it mean that you should eat once a day to fuel more fat loss? Does that make sense? My my question. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

And I I'll give just some practical u a practical response to that. Um I do think well I know I know um when you research meal frequency and you so I always ask my students this too. So let's say the the research study is and let's not talk about carbs or fat. So everything's just the same here.

So carbs, fat, protein is the same throughout the day. You give people six meals per day or three meals per day. The research would suggest based on just hunger levels. Half the studies will say that eating six meals per day makes people feel fuller. The other half of the studies say no.

Eating smaller or less frequent larger meals makes people feel fuller. When I ask my students this question, it's almost always, and I've been doing this for over a decade, I ask them this question.

Are you fuller eating smaller meals throughout the day or the other way? And it's about 5050.

So back to your question, I think there's a individualistic variable response to meal frequency and meal size and controlling hunger. So very practical example, I grew up in my life reading constantly how important breakfast is to to to your to starting your day. So my whole early adult life, I would always eat breakfast. I wasn't really hungry, but I would eat breakfast cuz that's what I thought I should do. And I'm, you know, I I already admitted I have whatever ompic is supposed to help, like lower the food noise. You're so lucky. I don't have that at all.

I have the opposite. Like I have this massive appetite and I have to increase honestly my protein really high to feel full. Like I just don't feel full. Anyway, go on. No, no, that's what No, that's I'm sorry.

I have like food like Yes. I'm constantly thinking about food. Like I'm hungry. You eat a cake.

Yes. Got it. Yeah. Thank you. But you're smart because you're at least you follow the best diet to help with that, which is a ketogenic diet. See, I don't I don't I don't eat high carb, but I'm definitely I wouldn't say what I do is low carb either. Um, so for all these years, I'm eating breakfast and then I'm starving at lunch. I'm starving at dinner. And then I then I asked myself, and I remember this, it was earlier in my career. I'm like, I'm going to find all the research on the importance of eating breakfast and how it suppresses hunger. And I couldn't find there was nothing on the importance of breakfast. So I'm like, that's weird. Like told this my whole life.

And so what I did was I said, "Okay, I'm not hungry in the morning. Why am I eating?

I know I'm very hungry around noon. So rather than have these seven or 800 calories for breakfast, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to have a much larger lunch meal and I started doing that and man things were so much and this is to this day I don't eat my first meal until around 11 or 12 every day and it's a it's a large meal. And the other thing which you I think you probably live in your community when you fast or if even if you eat low carbs you're able to focus a lot better.

you don't, you know, you don't have the the lower energy, the insulin spike and uh which then lowers blood glucose.

So, I'm able to focus better with this. Um, my daughter, my wife, they have to have breakfast.

If they don't get breakfast, um, they don't function well. So, I think it it is for whatever reason very individualized. And I think it makes sense. Find out where you are on this.

Do I need breakfast? Do I want smaller meals? are you on this spectrum and lean into that regardless of which meal meal timing strategy you come up with. Let's say you're like me and it's it's two large meals per day or it's five large meals per day, whatever it is for you. There there was a very well-designed study when they had people who ate consistent meal patterns. So they ate, I think it was, let's just say four meals every single day. And the other group, they averaged four.

Sometimes it was two, sometimes it was six, sometimes it was four, sometimes it was eight, sometimes it was one. When they when it was irregular versus a consistent pattern, at the end of the study, they they did a food test to see how many calories they burned from a test meal. There was a significant difference in being consistent or having your meals at regular times.

Your body was burned significantly more calories from each meal such that it you know was a significant difference such that over time you do this meal after meal day after day you get you would get a tangible body fat reduction outcome. That explains a lot because I mean I personally do my first meal around 9 or 10 then about 1 or 2 and then maybe 6:00 p.m. So, and then everyone is different and it would explain why some people even in my community they'll say look I can just eat two meals or one meal but then you have other people that say I just can't eat enough protein so I have to eat smaller meals or I I can't break down the food. So there's all these variations based on what you said. So question for you now if people do fasting I had a previous conversation with Dr. Donald Layman. This question came up in the YouTube comments around well I do prolong fasting so maybe it's over 24 hours or few days fasting. Do you need daily protein to have for the fat loss and for your health and lean muscle or is it an average over a week if you're doing fasting?

based on the acute data of fasting that I'm aware of and and I I'm not going to go into the health benefits of this or health adverse health outcomes because I just don't study those. I study muscle and and fat tissue. Um fasting is a catabolic environment. There there is nothing about fasting that's anabolic.

It's just not. your body will need to break down tissue to help or to address the fact that you're not getting calories. Now, a catabolic environment is a great environment for fat loss. What we don't want is a catabolic environment relative to our lean mass.

So, I'll phrase it like this because this I used to be much more in a bodybuilding community myself in in the my audience.

If your goal is to maximize as much muscle mass as you possibly can every day, fasting is probably not something you want to do for extended periods of time. But if you don't care about maximizing every gram, which unless you're a competitive bodybuilder, I I don't know if you need to live your life like that. It's it's a very demanding lifestyle to do that. I know.

I've I've lived it. I've done it. So extended periods of fasting again there may be tons of health benefits which just make make the the the muscle component here what I'm going to say irrelevant.

Are you actually losing lean mass? Maybe not. Um now again I'm going to speak to my competitive bodybuilder.

Are you gaining as much as you possibly can? I I would say confidently no. Um, let me talk about a study we're doing now, which it's not fasting, but it's it's at least within the realm.

So, what we're doing is we we're putting middle-aged women, so these would be menopausal aged women on a very severe diet for four straight days. And the diet is essentially 100% protein. So we what they we tell them to do is the only calories we want you to eat is protein for four straight days.

And the the protein goal is 1.6 g per kilogram of body weight. So they're eating these women around two to two to 400 3 to 400 calories per day of all protein. Um, we do say, "Hey, if there's some, you know, a few carbs or a few grams of fat, that's fine, but we don't want you adding ketchup or or things like that or getting higher fat meat. So, this is a proteinonly diet to the extent that's that it's humanly possible. And in addition to those four days, we also have them walk six hours per day for these four days. And there's no resistance training. the walking is the only thing. And I would have thought going into this study, we finished nine subjects so far.

I would have thought they're going to lose lean mass on this protocol because one, they're all resistance trained. So, we're removing that for these three day or for these four days.

We're essentially starving them and they didn't lose muscle. In fact, most of the the subjects, again, there's only been nine so far, they've actually gained lean mass over over this protocol.

um which is weird but when it happens I think it's and it's it's happened in every single subject after seven days uh we we put most of our reliance once they come back off of the 4 days we we take them back to their maintenance calories for 3 days before we retest them because their water their inflammation is so jacked up that it you're not going to get great body composition data.

So we bring them back to normal get things stabilized and then we test them. We also have them come back a month later telling them do whatever you want during that month. Go back to your training, eat whatever food to make sure that we didn't cause fat overshoot, which is a situation where other research when you starve people, they almost always gain more fat back than what they started with because crash dieting is not a good thing to do. And in every case, they they still have fat loss.

Like they didn't gain the fat back. They're still down with fat. We did have one subject, only one.

She did gain some lean or she lost a little bit of lean mass, but she chose to rerun the the extreme diet again during her 30 days of doing whatever she wanted to do. Interesting.

So, just my audience to understand what you're saying is that not saying that people should eat 3 400 calories a day. It's just to reiterate that in an in a calorie controlled or deficit environment, if you increase your protein um and even if you're moving, you will still maintain your lean muscle mass.

So, it's not a a a recommendation for my audience. It's just to show the importance of protein in your study. Yeah, definitely. This is not a diet that that I would suggest.

I mean, it's under very tight research controlled environment, but I think I was making an a broader argument about extended periods of fasting. Well, well, you lose all of your muscle.

Even though ours wasn't pure fasting, they did not lose muscle. So, I wouldn't be scared that you're destroying your lean mass if you're doing extended periods of fasting. As long as it's intermittent, if you're doing, you know, extended periods of fasting all the time, I think you're going to lose lean mass in that in that situation. Okay, very well balanced answer. I like that. So that people can do their fasting, but they need to be mindful of their protein needs. So your study is great to understand that fasting does not kill your protein as some people might say. Okay, next question.

Well, if we're talking about protein, what is the best protein foods that people need to eat to lose fat? 10 years ago or five five years ago, I would have said they they have to be animal sources of protein. So, um another way to say that is not plant sources of protein.

However, what we we now we have more research on this animal sources are the best. They have the highest amount of essential amino acids, the highest amount of the most branch chain amino acids that say the the ones that are more involved in the anabolic actions of skeletal muscle.

So, animal sources are the best. But if you eat more of the lower quality plant sources, pea protein, potato protein, rice protein, if you if you consume more of that, you get the same benefit as a lower amount of of animal sources. So again, what's the best source? Uh, I I'm not going to ever tell a vet somebody who doesn't want to consume animal protein that they that they have to to optimize their their their body composition, but they just they have to be educated and they're going to have to consume more because plant sources of protein lack uh some of the essential amino acids.

Well, my audience tends to love meat as do I. So, I think animal protein for the win.

What do you think would be the number one animal protein that people can focus on to have the best I guess feeling full and the best fat loss outcome? Best animal protein? Yeah, I would say dairy really.

Dairy protein is casein and whey. We have several studies and again relative to fat loss.

I I'm aware of two studies. Um one of these was this was a dissertation out of the University of Oklahoma.

So whey protein has unique fat burning, fat loss characteristics according to two studies.

Both of these were whey protein hydroxilate studies. Yeah. This other study was in older women. I think they were 50 to 80 years old. Whey protein versus whey whey hydroxilated whey protein, which is basically just means it's enzyatically altered or predigested so that it's so it's digested faster.

they also lost more body fat in under the same research conditions. So relying on this data that whey protein we know it's the highest level of of leucine so it's the most anabolic protein source and having this knowledge of well we have some research which suggests that whey protein also has um unique lipolytic or fat loss characteristics um that that's why and then casein what we know about casein casein has seems to again relying on a few human-based studies seems to be the best source for an anti catabolic protein, meaning that you lose less lean mass or you suppress muscle protein breakdown.

I'm not aware of anybody identifying the exact peptide chains in casein protein that that has done this, but we see it in se in in several humanbased trials. So when I look at this evidence, that's dairy protein. What is dairy protein? It's casein and whey. And then if you look at human breast milk, it's also casein and whey, but the the ratios are flipped.

You have a lot more whey than you do casing. Whereas dairy, it's mostly casein. It's like 7 80% casein, 20% whey.

I personally, and again, I'm a protein researcher. I'm a fat loss researcher.

I make zero effort to go out of my I don't know if any of these events are tangible. If you totally change around your protein strategies to I wouldn't get all this way. I don't think it matters at the end of the day. But if if I'm asked a question and I have knowledge of these studies and I have to say which one's the best, well, I'm going to say whey and casing. But if I love fish and I love chicken and I which I eat most I eat a lot of chicken or I love steak and that's where I'm getting my protein, do that. I I don't think it matters. I think it matters what your total daily protein intake is.

I'm not going to get too uptight about where you're getting that protein.

Unless you're not eating meat and then I already made the statement, you better be getting more of the of the others. It's so interesting because you're a scientist and you probably are so articulate with what you say. It's amazing. You're you're so well balanced. But when you said the dare, I thought what? Like are you talking about yogurt and cheese and people are going to be thinking that? So, whey and casin, but as you said, steak, seafood, chicken, the good old meats and and proteins that people love to eat, eat more of that. I think it's better to have that list of protein sources that you just mentioned rather than a protein supplement if you can do that.

I don't do that. So, I rely on, you know, I take whey protein supplements just out of convenience, etc. But you just mentioned a food first approach, which I like that as the best approach.

Food first. If you struggle, use a supplement. Me too. Okay, last question about protein. Now, if people eat more protein, they're going to say, "Dr. Campbell, it's going to raise my insulin levels.

" And so, protein related to insulin. Is there a concern around that? I don't think so.

I mean I've if it were a concern for for for me I would address that in all of my in all of my studies.

Now whey protein is insulinogenic but I mean protein also increases glucagon as well. And if we look at let's just say whey protein for a moment. Whey protein does increase insulin but insulin's um anti catabolic. So it suppresses muscle protein breakdown. So that's a good thing for muscle.

Um, the other thing is if you're getting your protein from foods rather than just supplements, that's going to have a uh you're going to get less of an insulinogenic effect when you have, you know, other nutrients with your protein intake. I I just don't see the And again, I appreciate maybe a lot in your community is worried about that. I just don't make a consideration for it. I don't have any evidence to suggest that it that it matters. Understand when you in uh increase your protein, it doesn't necessarily cause more insulin spikes. Um the the level of inflammation in the body is what causes these elevated insulin spikes followed by elevated glucose levels. So, it's interesting that when you step out of the ketogenic realm and you talk to people that eat carbohydrates and they're active, they eat whole unprocessed carbohydrates. Maybe they they might have some processed, but majority is unprocessed. If they eat carbs and some protein, they're healthy.

But if they eat fats and protein, they can also be healthy. It's the mixture of fat, protein, and carb which causes health problems, including elevated levels of insulin. I just wanted to make that point so that people can understand that it's not the protein and high protein causing high insulin.

It's something else. If you have elevated insulin and processed foods, ultrarocessed foods as part of it. Also, eating fat and carbohydrates with the protein like McDonald's is going to cause the problem.

Not not having a steak if that makes sense or too much steak. So, just to give people context.

Next topic, caffeine. Is that really good for fat loss? It's a moderate fat loss agent.

So, I want to start with that. But it does everything you would want it to do to induce fat loss.

So, when I start with that one, people are like, "Oh, let me how many caffeine pills can I take?

" So, caffeine is not a a massive body fat agent or chemical.

It's moderate, but it does it does everything you'd want it to do to lose fat. It's It is awesome. That being said, I don't like relying on caffeine for myself. If I was a bodybuilder, I would. If I was stepping on a a stage, I would. Um but I'd like to just rely on food choices, my movement. Um but again, caffeine does help with fat loss. Yes. And how much caffeine a day is like optimal where it's not too much? I get angry because we don't have we almost have zero research which is surprising on studying caffeine alone for fat loss. So and I've spent a lot of time on this topic because and this is why I'm very optimistic about caffeine. I know what it does. Um the the dosage that I have come up with based on the limited amount of research that I could find is about four milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. So for most people that's going to be around 2 to 400 millig of caffeine in one dose. And then you ask, well how many doses? Well again no research.

I would suggest one to two doses a day being careful if you take that later in the day. Some people then have trouble sleeping. So practical advice would say take a dose in the morning, take a dose in the afternoon, early afternoon uh to maximize the fat burning effects of of caffeine. And caffeine, I will also say it also has a nutrient partitioning effect, which means it not only causes you to burn more calories, but it cause of those calories being burned, it most more of them are coming from fat and less than carbs. So it's it's again when I said it does everything you would want it to do for fat for fat loss, fat burning and fat loss. So remember lipolysis, it's doing that and it's also increasing the oxidation or the the burning of those fatty acids. Okay. Well, I like meat and I love caffeine. Now, caffeine, how much coffee, if I want to have a black coffee, how many of those a day? See, I don't drink coffee. I'm one of those weird people, so I don't I don't have a large Yeah, that's weird. I think most Honestly, I thought that 97% of people drink coffee every day.

You're not one of them. No, I'm I would be one of the 3%. My wife's the same way. Wow.

The Campbell family is a strange bunch, but they're smart bunch, but they're a strange bunch.

So, okay, let's just say that if you have a takeaway coffee, I think it's like a 100 milligrams of caffeine.

I'm really not sure. But let's just give a caveat that it's black coffee. It's not milky coffee.

And don't put lots of butter in the coffee because that's going to negate the fat loss effects.

Yep. Good. Okay. Um, any other notes on caffeine to help the audience around fat loss? Let me just briefly say it it has a mild appetite suppressing effect. So, it's going to make it's going to have it's going to help you not be as hungry. So, eat less food. That's good. And on the other side of the equation, it helps you burn more total calories throughout the day. It increases the amount of calories you're burning at rest. It helps you burn more calories during exercise.

It helps you burn more calories with a meal. So if you have it with a meal, you'll burn more more calories.

Um, so helps you eat moderately fewer calories. It helps you burn more calories and it helps you burn more calories from fat. So it's it is awesome. And if you do use it for exercise, how your body perceives how hard it is. So the the effort that you're doing during exercise, it makes it not feel as hard. So that that ties into you burn more calories if you take it during exercise as well. Perfect. Well, I just have my morning cup of coffee. Just one or two in the morning and that's it. But it's interesting that you're not a caffeine guy. Very interesting.

Okay, last question. Exercise. What is the best exercise to lose lots of fat? Uh cardio. If the goal is to lose fat this week, next week, uh card. Yes. So we we just published a study on this.

Um, and I didn't want cardio to win. I'm a I don't I don't like cardio. I prefer to lift weights 10 to one over cardio. Um, now I would also suggest if you want to if somebody's trying to change their body, you lift weights. That's the only mode of exercise that will change the shape of your body.

But if the question is I want to I want to lose as much fat from an exercise mode cardio will burn more fat. Now let me also give one more nerdy perspective on this. If you do lift weights and you build muscle and and you do lose fat, your overall body fat percentage may be improved because of lifting weights compared to cardio. But that's a different question than which one burns more fat or which one will cause more fat loss. It's cardio. And that's not surprising when you look at if I do an hour of lifting and I do an hour of cardio. When I do an hour of cardio, I'm literally moving my body for 60 minutes. When I do an hour of lifting, how many minutes out of those 60 am I actually moving my body? 10 20 at the like you know what I'm saying like resistance training is intermittent in nature you lift you recover you lift you recover so when you look at it like that it's not that surprising it makes sense so question for you if people are thinking okay they want to lose fat so let me do cardio I've experienced this myself where if I do cardio and I used to do a lot of cardio it increases my appetite and I go binge on food so how do you balance that equation is it lift weights eat higher protein and then you're going to have body recomposition, you're going to look better and you're going to have less body fat.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So, I'll say if if your goal is to change your body, which I think that's 99% of the people who who are asking these questions like what should I do to to to be more toned is like the language they would use. My advice would be lift weights. um lift weights as your as your your primary form of exercise. Now, that doesn't mean don't do cardio like walk. I think you should try to get a given amount of steps every day. Um and if you can't I mean if you en enjoy it, do extra cardio conditioning. Um I always try to tell people do something where you get out of breath every day, like where you're like winded like now you're now you're improving your V2 max, your aerobic capacity. Um, but changing one's body, weightlifting is the um that would be the best mode.

And what else do we know about lifting weights? Well, now that I'm getting older, I want to prevent or I'm I'm dealing more with people that are older. And we know we lose bone mineral density.

Well, that weightlifting is awesome at preventing that. We also know that we lose lean mass as we age, and lean mass and muscle and bone mineral density are directly correlated.

So if we can build muscle or just maintain muscle, we're also helping our bone mineral density, makes us more insulin sensitive, etc. So while I'm very pro- resistance training, I I do not want to denigrate cardio, do cardio as well. I think sometimes we hear like don't do cardio and do all the weights or or don't do weights and do all the cardio. I think it's a balance of both.

So question for lifting weights, how many reps should somebody do when they're lifting the weights for women and men, for example? So, just to make sure we're all on the same page, when you when we say reps, we're going to pick up a weight. Let's just say the weight's 30 lbs. And the question is, how many times should I lift this before I put it back down? Is that what Okay. Well, one, find the number that you want to lift it. Do you like it doing it eight times? Eight. Do you like it 20 times?

Do it 20. So, what do you prefer doing? But there's there's a the most important thing about how I answered that is you have to lift that weight until you cannot lift it anymore or very close to that. So if I pick up this what do we say 30 lb weight whatever the exercise is I'm going to lift it until I can lift I cannot lift it for maybe one or two more times. So it has to be very hard to lift whatever weight we're doing at the end of that set. I would suggest as a just a general good number 10 if I'm going to give one 10 reps. 10 is not so light that we're just um we're getting all this lactic acid which burns and makes us feel pain and and it's not so heavy that we're um that we're going to increase like joint pain after the exercise. And again, young people don't ever think about joint pain. older people starting lifting have to consider this. So around 10 reps, but if you like to lift 20, great. Just make sure that by by the time you get to that 20th rep, you can't do an you can't do 22 or 25 reps. If you like to do five reps, great. Just make sure you could do 10 and you just stop at five. Yeah, it's interesting. I think 10 is that really nice sweet spot that it doesn't get too boring like 20 because you really have to push till two reps in reserve until you hit failure. like not not like not failure but 20 it's pretty hard to get there um unless you're doing something like shoulders or like a smaller muscle where you need those lighter weights but I'm interested in weight training so hence why I asked the question but I think that was a really good wrap- up in terms of protein the importance of protein a bit of caffeine and how people can um exercise and move in a way that's designed for fat loss if people do that I think that they're going to get the best results what do you think the number one mistake is that people make if they want to lose fat being impatient just thinking Oh, my body's different or this isn't working. So, just I mean fat loss is it's slow.

It doesn't happen. And I know this because I struggle with this and I'm a I go all over the world and speak about fat loss. So, I know the research. I I would like to think better than almost everybody.

And yet, when I go on a diet, I'm like, what's wrong? I I'm I have those demons. So I can't imagine people who don't read the research. So I would say the most important thing is being patient and and I would say this and nobody I'm going to everybody's going to hate me after I say this.

You can't say that something that your diet is not working and you can't say that your body is something wrong with you until you followed whatever diet you say you're going to follow for four straight weeks and you followed it perfectly. If you do that, I will promise you, you will have noticed fat loss. And if I'm wrong, there's something wrong. There's something wrong with you, the diet, etc. If you followed it perfectly for four consecutive weeks, brilliant advice.

On that note, Dr. Campbell, thank you so much. I'm going to leave all your info in the show notes. People can check you out. Thank you so much for your time. Yes, thank you.

Thank you for joining me today's episode with Dr. Bill Campbell. Now, if you love this episode, check out this one by Dr. Donald Layman. It is all about protein, the timing, and everything that you need to know more about protein, especially if your goal is aging well, fat loss, and your health.

Finally, thank you for your interest in root cause healing and I'll see you next