[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:01

Eric Trexler, welcome to Learning Bayesian Statistics.

[Eric]: 00:00:05

Thanks. Yeah. Great to be here.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:07

Yeah, thank you for taking the time. I am really happy to have you on the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:12

show for a lot of reasons. The main one is that you work on really interesting

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:20

topics, at least to me. I've been nerding out on your content for the last

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:27

few months, and I really love it because it's basically scientific breakdown.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:39

of the sports and nutrition sciences literature. So I am pretty sure that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:44

my listeners will at least appreciate the very nerdy sciences side. This is actually

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:51

the very first podcast I'm doing about fitness topic, which I discovered as

[Alex Andorra]: 00:00:57

I dove into the literature. It's actually a very nerdy topic, so I'm really

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:01

happy about it. And so I would encourage. all of my listeners to actually

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:07

pay attention to it a bit more if they are not, because it's extremely interesting.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:11

And it's also good for your health and body. So several birds with just

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:16

one stone. So let's start. Lots of questions for you. But as usual, let's start

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:24

with your origin story, Eric. So yeah, basically, how did you come to the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:32

world of? sports and nutrition sciences and what was the egg and the chicken?

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:39

Did sports come first or did science come first in your interests?

[Eric]: 00:01:43

Yeah. I mean, so like a lot of people in my field, uh, the sport came first. And

[Eric]: 00:01:49

then at

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:49

Uh-huh.

[Eric]: 00:01:49

some point you have to figure out what you're going to do with your life. And then

[Eric]: 00:01:52

the science becomes a little bit more pertinent, uh, unless you're going to become

[Eric]: 00:01:56

a professional athlete. Uh,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:01:58

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:01:58

which not, not particularly likely based on the, uh, based on the percentages there.

[Eric]: 00:02:03

So I started out, um, really enjoying sports, uh, mostly football, baseball and wrestling.

[Eric]: 00:02:11

So.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:02:12

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:02:12

Those are all in different seasons, so it'd keep me busy all year. Football got

[Eric]: 00:02:17

me really interested in wanting to get bigger and stronger.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:02:21

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:02:21

And then later I started wrestling and had to do weight manipulation. I had to lose

[Eric]: 00:02:25

weight, stay lean, try to maximize not just total strength, but strength relative

[Eric]: 00:02:30

to body mass. So I started different types of, you know, strategies to, to lose

[Eric]: 00:02:37

body fat while keeping muscle and then,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:02:40

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:02:40

you know, weight. You know, water related strategies, kind of adjusting hydration based

[Eric]: 00:02:46

on when weigh-ins are and, you know, trying to dehydrate for weigh-ins safely and

[Eric]: 00:02:51

rehydrate when I needed to really be at my best. So yeah, I just kind of became

[Eric]: 00:02:56

fascinated with these topics and really tried to be very analytical about what I was

[Eric]: 00:03:02

doing. Even I mean, I was obsessed with fitness by 12 and by 16 was starting to kind

[Eric]: 00:03:07

of dig into the nuances of nutrition. And so my career trajectory really kind of

[Eric]: 00:03:13

took off from there.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:03:15

Yeah, that's extremely early. Were your parents already into fitness topics

[Alex Andorra]: 00:03:22

like that? Or did you meet someone that was really into that and introduced you?

[Alex Andorra]: 00:03:27

Or was it just you at 12 starting to look into all that?

[Eric]: 00:03:32

Yeah, I mean, it was when I was 12, I just love sports. It was not something that

[Eric]: 00:03:38

was really emphasized by my family. My parents were not like fitness enthusiasts

[Eric]: 00:03:44

by any means.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:03:45

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:03:45

So for me, it was just, I just wanted to be better at football, which I loved. And

[Eric]: 00:03:49

I was the only person in my family that really cared that much about football.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:03:54

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:03:54

Um, when I was wrestling, I will say there was a particular coach. who was a really

[Eric]: 00:04:00

avid fitness enthusiast and we would train together and he would kind of give me,

[Eric]: 00:04:07

he was a subscriber to Muscle and Fitness Magazine and when he was done with an issue,

[Eric]: 00:04:12

he'd say, here you go, you can have this one. And that kind of, the way that we

[Eric]: 00:04:17

approached training, it was the first time, for four years, from 12 to 16, I was

[Eric]: 00:04:21

just really doing it alone. Didn't even have a

[Alex Andorra]: 00:04:23

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:04:23

training partner really. but probably around age 16 when we started training together.

[Eric]: 00:04:30

I feel like then he kind of really took a passion for fitness that I had and really

[Eric]: 00:04:37

developed it into something more where it was not just passionate about fitness, but

[Eric]: 00:04:41

passionate about digging beneath the surface and exploring different strategies.

[Eric]: 00:04:46

It kind of planted that seed. It wasn't rigorous science that he was

[Alex Andorra]: 00:04:50

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:04:51

giving me, but it was at least that fundamental concept. of exploring, hypothesizing,

[Eric]: 00:04:58

testing, reassessing that kind of iterative process that I think planted the seed.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:05

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and I, I found that also fascinating when I started digging

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:12

into that, um, so yeah, like one of the, one of the things I thought about

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:16

when you said as, um, like, like a lot of people in your field, sports,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:22

uh, came before science. And I finally have the directed acyclic graph now,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:28

because I was always wondering, you know, like, of course, science doesn't

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:32

have as a general. You know, in the general population, when you say you're

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:37

a scientist, people don't think you're extremely fit. Like they mostly think

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:41

you're very like kind of nerdy and stuff like that. So, but then you look

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:46

at the world of sports science is really, you know, on its own because people

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:52

are extremely fit. They do a lot of sports and they are scientists, which

[Alex Andorra]: 00:05:56

if you go to other fields, I can confirm it's not the same. So it was always

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:00

like. But I'm wondering what the causality here, like the direction of the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:04

causality is. You know, is that because these people applied those strategies,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:08

then they became very fit or were they fit already, and then they became

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:13

interested in the science. So.

[Eric]: 00:06:15

Yeah, I will say though, it can go both directions in the sense that more conventional

[Eric]: 00:06:23

team sports got me into embracing a more scientific approach. But then

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:27

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:06:28

as I pushed further in that, it created an interest in bodybuilding for me.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:34

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:06:35

So sports like football and wrestling brought me to science and then science and

[Eric]: 00:06:40

physiology brought me to bodybuilding because I was so fascinated by how physiology

[Eric]: 00:06:47

changes under these extremely unusual constraints that we see with high levels of

[Eric]: 00:06:52

muscularity, low levels of body

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:54

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:06:54

fat, severe caloric deprivation, things like that.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:06:57

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely the application of the scientific principles

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:05

then enhances also your training and makes it more efficient, in a way. I mean,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:12

most of the time, that means you're not losing too much time at the gym,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:17

and you're not leaving gains on the table, which I guess everybody wants.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:23

But not everybody thinks about it in a scientific manner, where it's like,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:27

I just do the stuff, and then I grind at the gym. But actually, I'm losing

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:30

time and gains on the table. But here, that's also the thing I really love,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:35

is applying these little experiments on myself, and then seeing the science replicating

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:42

itself is always, for me, incredible.

[Eric]: 00:07:44

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:49

I forgot what I wanted to ask next, but that's really cool. I love your...

[Alex Andorra]: 00:07:56

path and passion, basically. Like you always, in all of your content, we

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:03

can refill your passion for your topics. And so I'm wondering basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:13

from what you're saying, I guess what the answer is, but would you say your

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:17

path was very random or was somewhat clear to where you are now? And basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:23

I'm asking you if... Your career is replicable, Eric, which is what we all care

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:29

about in this podcast.

[Eric]: 00:08:32

I would say that it is broadly replicable, you know, in the sense of, you know, from starting

[Eric]: 00:08:40

point to outcome. I don't think that there's anything particularly special or unique

[Eric]: 00:08:44

that I have accomplished in my career trajectory. But I will say that zooming in

[Eric]: 00:08:50

a more granular way and looking not just at, you know, point A and point Z, but

[Eric]: 00:08:56

looking at the intermediate steps in between, that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:08:59

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:08:59

was all random. Uh, it would not be, I don't think you could replicate it. I, there's

[Eric]: 00:09:05

just

[Alex Andorra]: 00:09:05

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:09:05

a bunch of anyone who looks back at, you know, how they, uh, went through life.

[Eric]: 00:09:10

It's a bunch of random, random choices. Most of the best mistake, the best decisions

[Eric]: 00:09:16

that I've made have been, uh, decisions that I made for the worst reasons possible.

[Eric]: 00:09:21

Right. And so like,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:09:22

Haha.

[Eric]: 00:09:23

I can look back and say, wow, what a great decision and give myself credit

[Alex Andorra]: 00:09:26

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:09:26

for the outcome. But

[Alex Andorra]: 00:09:27

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:09:27

I know that the, the reasoning for it. was completely dissociated from, you know,

[Eric]: 00:09:32

why it turned out to be a good decision. So yeah, it's life's weird like that. You know,

[Eric]: 00:09:37

you, you think, you know, when you're making an important decision, you rarely do.

[Eric]: 00:09:41

You know, when you think something is a really important decision, it usually isn't,

[Eric]: 00:09:44

and then the mundane stuff turns out to be the most pivotable, most pivotal, uh,

[Eric]: 00:09:49

turning points in your entire life. So it's been weird. It's been random, uh, wouldn't

[Eric]: 00:09:54

change it. Like where I'm at. Um, And yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing with

[Eric]: 00:09:59

the path, zooming out a lot and just saying, you know, you like fitness and you

[Eric]: 00:10:05

like science, of course this has been the path. It's easy to do that in retrospect.

[Eric]: 00:10:10

And so in the broadest sense, I'd say, yeah, totally predictable. I'm gonna do something

[Eric]: 00:10:14

involving fitness and science,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:16

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:10:17

but I've been surprised every step of the way in terms

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:19

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:10:19

of what that has looked like.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:23

Yeah. And I mean, perfect. This is a show about uncertainty and randomness

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:29

and how to estimate it, but also how to embrace it to better live with

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:34

it. So, you know, that's perfect. We love random path here. And mine is definitely

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:41

very random. So, you know, I definitely can relate to that. So now let's

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:49

turn a bit to what you're doing today. And basically, first, a general perspective

[Alex Andorra]: 00:10:57

is that now you're part of Herman Ponzer's lab at Duke University. Some listeners

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:04

may have heard of Herman Ponzer's because he wrote a pretty well-known book called

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:10

Burn, which I put in the show notes. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:17

reading list. I've been introduced to it. Thanks to your writings mainly Eric,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:22

and especially the metabolic adaptation manual that is in the show notes

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:27

also. And of course, we're going to talk about metabolic adaptation because

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:30

it's one of your babies. But first, more generally, can you tell us what

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:36

you're studying at Duke University? And yeah, what's your job nowadays?

[Eric]: 00:11:44

Yeah, it's really crazy to, like I said, didn't predict exactly where I'd end up professionally.

[Eric]: 00:11:52

It's crazy because over the last several years, one of the things I do is the mass research

[Eric]: 00:11:57

review. It's

[Alex Andorra]: 00:11:58

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:11:58

every month we review current research in exercise and nutrition. We get pretty nerdy

[Eric]: 00:12:03

with some of the stats. Depending on your experience level, you might say, wow,

[Eric]: 00:12:07

this is pretty thorough. But if you're like a bona fide stats expert, you'd say, okay,

[Eric]: 00:12:12

this is... adequate, you know, but, um, but we, we try to make the, the fitness

[Eric]: 00:12:18

and nutrition information very practical, very applicable. And sometimes, you know, we'll

[Eric]: 00:12:23

see a meta analysis that everyone's talking about and say, no, we need to re-crunch

[Eric]: 00:12:27

the numbers and we'll

[Alex Andorra]: 00:12:28

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:12:28

actually, you know, we'll do it, uh, begrudgingly, cause it's a lot of work sometimes,

[Eric]: 00:12:32

but, um, anyway, so in mass, I had been reviewing Herman's work. Um,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:12:37

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:12:37

I had reviewed several of his papers in recent years and I, I just kept saying,

[Eric]: 00:12:41

man. this guy in this lab is doing some of the most fascinating research that's happening

[Eric]: 00:12:47

in our fields. And it happens to be right down the road from me. Like

[Alex Andorra]: 00:12:52

Oh yeah.

[Eric]: 00:12:53

I was living, yeah, I was living like 20 minutes from his lab and had never met him,

[Eric]: 00:12:58

had never talked to him. And I was just like, you know, this is the most fascinating

[Eric]: 00:13:04

research that I'm seeing in the last five years or so. And so a position opened

[Eric]: 00:13:10

up in his lab and I said, let's do it. You know, let's go for it. And so that's where

[Eric]: 00:13:14

I am now. Um, it's great working with Herman and, um, just getting started there

[Eric]: 00:13:19

actually. But we have some cool projects going on. I mean, Herman, he's, he's really

[Eric]: 00:13:23

known for his work on the constrained energy expenditure model, which,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:13:27

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:13:27

uh, is kind of the focus of the book, burn. Which basically indicates that there's

[Eric]: 00:13:32

kind of a surprising, uh, what appears to be a ceiling effect on total

[Alex Andorra]: 00:13:36

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:13:36

energy expenditure such that. when people are doing a ton of exercise and thinking, man,

[Eric]: 00:13:41

I'm burning all these extra calories, they are increasing their total energy expenditure

[Eric]: 00:13:47

in the vast majority of cases, but a lot of people underestimate the compensatory

[Eric]: 00:13:52

mechanisms by which, as you increase exercise energy expenditure, your body tends

[Eric]: 00:13:58

to do some very subtle things to reduce your basal or resting energy expenditure to

[Eric]: 00:14:04

kind of offset some of that. energetic cost. It's kind of like if you increase expenditures

[Eric]: 00:14:10

in one area of your budget, it would be a nice conservative choice to reduce expenditures

[Eric]: 00:14:14

elsewhere to kind of make the budget work. So that's what we're, that's kind of

[Eric]: 00:14:20

like the main primary focus of the lab is kind of testing out these different constraints

[Eric]: 00:14:24

on energy expenditure and looking at what's really going on during various models

[Eric]: 00:14:30

of increased... energy costs. So looking at fairly intense exercise, looking at things

[Eric]: 00:14:38

like pregnancy, which are

[Alex Andorra]: 00:14:40

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:14:40

very energy intensive and looking at the combination of the two. So

[Alex Andorra]: 00:14:44

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:14:44

that's kind of one consistent line of research is looking at those constraints on

[Eric]: 00:14:48

energy expenditure across many different species. So we don't, in our lab, we don't

[Eric]: 00:14:53

only do human research.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:14:55

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:14:55

You know, there's some animal research in the mix as well. So that's one thing that's

[Eric]: 00:15:00

going on. currently is mostly in some of the applied ramifications of energy

[Alex Andorra]: 00:15:08

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:15:08

expenditure regulations. So I'm working on a project now where we're looking at folks

[Eric]: 00:15:14

in a fairly high stress occupation and

[Alex Andorra]: 00:15:18

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:15:18

we're doing a very comprehensive study to explore a variety of outcomes that are remarkably

[Eric]: 00:15:26

wide ranging and comprehensive in nature. So physical activity and energy expenditure

[Eric]: 00:15:30

are a component of the research. but we're also looking at relationships with stress

[Eric]: 00:15:35

and diet. And, um, you know, we're looking at a lot of psychological outcomes on top of

[Eric]: 00:15:40

our physiological outcomes to see, you know, when we look at a total picture of someone

[Eric]: 00:15:46

in a stressful occupation, and we look at their sleep, their physical activity, nutrition,

[Eric]: 00:15:51

uh, their stress management, how do

[Alex Andorra]: 00:15:53

Hehe.

[Eric]: 00:15:53

these affect the broader picture of overall health and wellness? Um, so it's fat.

[Eric]: 00:15:59

It's really fantastic because I, have always loved energy expenditure regulation,

[Eric]: 00:16:04

but one of the things that I think erroneously talked me out of diving straight into research

[Eric]: 00:16:12

after my PhD, I've been doing a lot of research in my PhD, took four or five years,

[Eric]: 00:16:18

did more private business related things, and now I'm back in the research game. One

[Eric]: 00:16:24

of the things that kind of dissuaded me from starting my own lab right away, was

[Eric]: 00:16:31

I felt like I was perhaps too much of a generalist to really sink my teeth into a

[Eric]: 00:16:35

very narrow line of research.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:16:38

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:16:38

I kind of looked at where are my passions? What is my training background looking like?

[Eric]: 00:16:44

How will I make this all work in a cohesive line of research that is narrow and focused

[Eric]: 00:16:50

enough to make incremental progress in the field? And I was really coming up short

[Eric]: 00:16:54

to be totally candid. And I said,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:16:55

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:16:56

well, if you can't... really paint that picture, it's probably best to not go and start

[Eric]: 00:17:02

a lab and kind of try to figure it out at some point along the way. After taking a

[Eric]: 00:17:09

few years and embracing the idea of being a generalist and having multifaceted

[Eric]: 00:17:13

interests, I feel totally reinvigorated as a scientist and as a researcher. And this

[Eric]: 00:17:19

is a perfect project to allow me to integrate all those general generalist things

[Eric]: 00:17:25

that I've been kind of exploring over the last several years. I've been writing about

[Eric]: 00:17:30

not just physical activity and energy expenditure, but nutrition and sleep and stress.

[Eric]: 00:17:35

To be able to wrap those all up into a big project is tremendously lucky. Again,

[Eric]: 00:17:40

just totally random, but really fortunate.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:17:43

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so thanks for this introduction. We're going to dive

[Alex Andorra]: 00:17:49

into these topics, but yeah, like something I learned also by reading your

[Alex Andorra]: 00:17:57

content is how broad basically is the whole field. And it's not just looking

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:06

at exercise basically in training, but it's also about sleep, about nutrition.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:11

Um, something I discovered myself is that nutrition is extremely important. Uh,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:17

and, and not that much talked about in, in the end, like people really emphasize

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:22

the training, but, um, if you forget nutrition, it can really, really hinder

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:28

you or, uh, on, on the contrary, really help you. So that's definitely something

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:33

I learned, like basically having that holistic approach to, um, to the. to the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:39

training and not only the exercise part for sure. And to relate basically what

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:46

you said about the constraint energy expenditure model, which I found fascinating

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:52

also. Basically, it would be for my listeners, if you folks have worked

[Alex Andorra]: 00:18:59

with, for instance, a multinomial model, that could be like that. Multinomial,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:04

you have to use a softmax link function and the Toft Max makes it a zero-sum

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:09

game in a way. So if one category increases, then one other category has to decrease.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:18

I'm not sure the constraint energy expenditure model is exactly a zero-sum

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:23

game in the sense that would mean you cannot make some games after some

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:27

point, which if I understood correctly, it's not really the case. So you

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:30

could say, I don't know if it's a one-sum game. So you still make gains, but

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:34

very small. because the body basically has all these checks and balances

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:40

to basically prevent you from starvation, which in a way, it's pretty cool.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:48

But I found really interesting because nowadays in our current environment,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:19:53

we don't really face that risk a lot, at least in our societies and what basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:03

made us to the... One of the things that help us go to the top of the food

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:08

chain is today something that really prevents us from making the most muscle

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:14

gains that we could. I find that kind of ironic. I'm sure Darwin would

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:19

appreciate it.

[Eric]: 00:20:20

Yeah, and it's funny that you mentioned Darwin because the department that I'm in now

[Eric]: 00:20:25

is evolutionary anthropology. So when we explore these topics of innate inherent

[Eric]: 00:20:33

physiological constraints, a lot of times we do come back to what is the evolutionary

[Eric]: 00:20:39

purpose? You know, in what way would this make sense within an evolutionary framework?

[Eric]: 00:20:45

And when it comes to regulation of body weight and, you know, by extension, energy

[Eric]: 00:20:50

balance, you know, body

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:51

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:20:51

weight and body composition are basically a long-term expression of energy

[Alex Andorra]: 00:20:55

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:20:55

balance over time. Um, it's really fascinating because the two major constraints, we have

[Eric]: 00:21:01

constraints on both boundaries. One is starvation and the other is, uh, thought

[Eric]: 00:21:06

to be predation, you know,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:21:08

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:21:08

uh, becoming prey of a hunting animal. And it's really fascinating to see how those

[Eric]: 00:21:15

two, I think they're really elegantly described in the dual intervention point model

[Eric]: 00:21:21

by John Speakman, who does a lot of research on energy expenditure regulation.

[Eric]: 00:21:27

And it's really fascinating to look at that and to say, you know, we're now so

[Eric]: 00:21:31

far removed, fortunately, in a lot of developed areas and areas

[Alex Andorra]: 00:21:36

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:21:37

with, you know, a surplus of resources. It's not true everywhere in the world, but

[Eric]: 00:21:41

in many places, we are very much removed from these two important constraints that really

[Eric]: 00:21:47

dictate everything that we're looking at in terms of energy expenditure and body

[Eric]: 00:21:52

composition.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:21:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find that super interesting. That also makes me wonder,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:21:59

if homo sapiens manage somehow to not destroy the planet and stick around

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:09

for long enough, would evolution catch up at some point? And we wouldn't see

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:14

these constrained energy models. But then, who would live in a world where maybe

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:19

that would be way easier to put on some muscle gains because muscle is

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:22

not going to be such a drag on your probabilities of surviving. Do you

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:31

think about those kind of stuff? Or am I the only nerdy guy here thinking about

[Eric]: 00:22:34

Well,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:35

that?

[Eric]: 00:22:35

I think largely in the field of evolutionary anthropology, we look at the timeline of

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:42

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:22:43

evolutionary history and I think it kind of creates this perspective of perpetually

[Eric]: 00:22:48

looking backward, because you say

[Alex Andorra]: 00:22:50

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:22:51

if we divide it up into the kind of modern applications and then all of the data

[Eric]: 00:22:56

before it, you look at it and you say, well, the vast majority of what we can learn

[Eric]: 00:23:00

from this is all from the past. It's kind of making sense of the present by looking

[Eric]: 00:23:06

through the prism of the past. So I must admit as a clear blind spot, I don't spend

[Eric]: 00:23:14

a lot of time necessarily looking forward far enough to incorporate changes in evolutionary

[Eric]: 00:23:21

constraints. Because you're talking many, many

[Alex Andorra]: 00:23:25

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:23:25

generations. And like you said, I think before we get there, we have some... very pressing

[Eric]: 00:23:32

applied questions to answer within the next two or three generations, before we start

[Eric]: 00:23:39

thinking about that stuff. So

[Alex Andorra]: 00:23:41

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:23:41

it is fascinating though, on times when you're not quite as busy getting projects over

[Eric]: 00:23:47

deadlines to maybe ponder that and take some time to think through it.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:23:53

Yeah, I mean, that would definitely make for a science fiction novel. I would read,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:23:58

you know, like a world where

[Eric]: 00:23:59

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:00

these kinds of constraints have shifted. I don't know. I imagine me being a

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:04

scientist at that time and, you know, having the constraint model in mind

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:08

and I like, basically we have figured out more or less how to do those things

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:13

and then you find some specimen from Homo sapiens, which who do not have those

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:19

constraints and then they can just... build some so much muscle because they

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:23

have adapted. That would be a fantastic side fiction novel. If

[Eric]: 00:24:28

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:28

anybody wants to write it, please contact me. We'll get you on the show right

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:32

now.

[Eric]: 00:24:32

Yeah, but it even is like, it's really fascinating. We don't have to go that far to

[Eric]: 00:24:39

entertain some of these really exciting and thought-provoking questions pertaining

[Eric]: 00:24:44

to evolution and the challenges we face as humans, because you think about something

[Eric]: 00:24:50

like space travel, which

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:51

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:24:51

theoretically could become much more relevant in the next several generations.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:56

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:24:56

Maybe, I don't know. I'm not an expert

[Alex Andorra]: 00:24:58

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:24:58

on that, but looking at physiological responses to uh, to microgravity, uh, it becomes

[Eric]: 00:25:06

so abundantly clear that this human machine really assumes that you're going to

[Eric]: 00:25:11

have a particular amount of gravity and it affects a lot of different systems in

[Eric]: 00:25:15

the body. And once you remove gravity, I mean, when people come back from space, their

[Eric]: 00:25:19

bodies are tremendously different and there is a significant recovery period. And

[Eric]: 00:25:24

some things I've seen some recent research indicating that some changes in the brain,

[Eric]: 00:25:29

uh, take a very, very long time to restore back to kind of baseline characteristics. So

[Eric]: 00:25:35

very, very fascinating stuff that, yeah, we can only really answer those questions by

[Eric]: 00:25:40

looking back and saying, well, how did we get here in the first place? Why do our

[Eric]: 00:25:43

systems function the way that they do?

[Alex Andorra]: 00:25:46

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:25:46

Which is, I think that's my favorite thing about transitioning from being in exercise

[Eric]: 00:25:50

science departments to being in evolutionary anthropology now

[Alex Andorra]: 00:25:55

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:25:55

is that The questions are so much, they're the things that kind of inspire so much imagination

[Eric]: 00:26:02

and creativity. I mean, you still have to then dig in and do the less imaginative,

[Eric]: 00:26:08

more robust, you know, actual science. But just that kind of initial hypothesis generating

[Eric]: 00:26:17

conversation, the questions are so big. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:21

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:26:21

so, yeah, they just kind of make you smile when you think about the possibility

[Eric]: 00:26:25

and and the overall scope of some of the questions that we have to answer.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:30

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I really love that field also for that,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:35

evolutionary anthropology. And I think only physics also bring those kind

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:41

of questions to mind for me also, where it's like, some might read something

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:45

about evolutionary anthropology or physics, and like at some point, I'm gonna

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:49

end up asking myself some very existential philosophical questions, which

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:54

is

[Eric]: 00:26:54

Yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:26:54

super interesting.

[Eric]: 00:26:55

I don't know if you've been reading up on it, but physics is really heating up

[Eric]: 00:26:59

right now. There's some muon research that people are

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:04

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:27:04

getting really, really excited about and they're thinking some chapters of textbooks

[Eric]: 00:27:11

might need to be rewritten relatively soon,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:13

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:27:13

which is not too often that you get to even entertain those kinds of ideas.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:19

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so I think it's a perfect, thank you, Eric. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:24

I swear people, we didn't prepare that, but that's a perfect plug because I told

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:30

listeners that there was a very special episode coming in and I didn't say

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:33

what it was about. But this summer I was lucky to be invited to CERN to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:40

the Collider and I filmed over there. It's gonna be the first video documentary

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:46

episode we're gonna have. here, and we were actually lucky to see the control

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:54

room of the Atlas experiment at CERN, which is one of the experiments which

[Alex Andorra]: 00:27:58

is looking to muons, as you were talking about, Eric. So yeah, it's definitely

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:04

fascinating. And I'm working on editing that episode, folks. It's going

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:09

to take a lot of time because I'm not a video editor. So it takes me a lot

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:13

of time to do it, but it's really fun. And I hope you'll enjoy it. It's going

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:17

to be a very long episode. I think the longest of the whole podcast, but

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:23

super fascinating.

[Eric]: 00:28:24

I just want

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:24

Thanks

[Eric]: 00:28:24

to say,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:25

a lot for. Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:28:26

getting back, that's awesome, but getting back to the randomness of careers, this,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:30

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:28:30

for years I would go on podcasts and I'd be one person in this kind of rotating

[Eric]: 00:28:34

cycle of like fitness professionals. This year, you know, I've been on two podcasts

[Eric]: 00:28:40

where one person says, hey, by the way, next week we've got Noam Chomsky coming on.

[Eric]: 00:28:44

And I was like, what,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:28:45

Nice.

[Eric]: 00:28:45

what do you mean? How did this happen? Why am I on the same podcast as, you know,

[Eric]: 00:28:50

like, how is, how is there any overlap whatsoever? And now, you know, hey, by the

[Eric]: 00:28:55

way, we're going to, you know, show you Inside CERN in a few weeks, like, or a

[Eric]: 00:28:59

few months. I don't want to rush your video editing, but

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:01

Yeah, thank you.

[Eric]: 00:29:02

yeah, just weird. Just weird. Exciting, though.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:06

Yeah, I mean, common denominator here, Bayesian stats. Everybody needs them

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:11

and use them. But yeah, no, thanks for this amazing plug, Eric. It was

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:17

perfect. And let's go back to you now and talk about metabolic adaptation.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:24

So we've talked a bit about it now. You've written a very extensive guide

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:30

that I'll put in the show notes. So maybe can you tell us a bit about what metabolic

[Alex Andorra]: 00:29:37

adaptation is and why that's important?

[Eric]: 00:29:41

Absolutely. Yeah. So dieting is hard. If you ask someone who's trying to lose weight

[Eric]: 00:29:48

and lose body fat, it is really difficult and there are many, many reasons for that.

[Eric]: 00:29:53

But one area of research is very interested in kind of unraveling what those specific challenges

[Eric]: 00:30:01

are and why they arise. So kind of uncovering some of these things that make dieting a little

[Eric]: 00:30:07

bit more challenging than we think it ought to be. Because on paper, it's very simple,

[Eric]: 00:30:12

right? You know, when there's too much energy, when there's a surplus of energy, you

[Eric]: 00:30:18

produce the intake or you increase the expenditure and there you go. Now you're back

[Eric]: 00:30:22

in, you've got energy balance where you want it to be. So it should be conceptually

[Eric]: 00:30:27

quite simple, but in application, it's tremendously challenging. One of the many challenges

[Eric]: 00:30:33

relates to metabolic adaptation, which is that when people start to... lose weight

[Eric]: 00:30:39

via caloric restriction, we tend to see that basically their energy expenditure

[Eric]: 00:30:47

goes down more than we would predict. So what I mean by that is if a person, let's

[Eric]: 00:30:52

say a person is reducing their energy intake so that they can lose 30 pounds, we

[Eric]: 00:30:59

would expect that a person who weighs 30 fewer pounds would burn fewer calories throughout

[Eric]: 00:31:05

the day. broadly speaking, everything else staying equal, smaller bodies ought to

[Eric]: 00:31:12

burn fewer calories on a daily basis, but we should be able to generally predict

[Eric]: 00:31:16

what the magnitude of that change should be.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:31:20

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:31:21

What we see in practice is that the reduction in energy expenditure during dieting

[Eric]: 00:31:25

is considerably larger than we would mathematically predict based on changes in

[Eric]: 00:31:29

body mass alone. And what it essentially identifies is an adaptive mechanism. where

[Eric]: 00:31:37

the body reduces to some extent, you know, resting or basal energy expenditure,

[Eric]: 00:31:44

but to a larger extent, non-exercise activity energy expenditure. We're seeing that

[Eric]: 00:31:50

these are being reduced disproportionately in a way that basically applies a little bit

[Eric]: 00:31:55

of a break to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:31:56

Hm.

[Eric]: 00:31:56

the weight loss process. It just adds

[Alex Andorra]: 00:31:58

No.

[Eric]: 00:31:58

some friction that makes it more challenging. And so of course, this is important to understand.

[Eric]: 00:32:06

I don't want to frame it as the most important constraint on weight loss because

[Eric]: 00:32:10

I don't believe that to be true, but it is an important element of understanding

[Eric]: 00:32:15

why weight loss is so challenging, which is of critical public health importance at

[Eric]: 00:32:19

a time where rates of overweight and obesity are higher than they've ever been in

[Eric]: 00:32:27

a historical perspective. As we see that, they are quite high in contributing to...

[Eric]: 00:32:34

health challenges and even population level burdens with regards to keeping sustainable

[Eric]: 00:32:41

healthcare systems working effectively. It's very important to understand these challenges

[Eric]: 00:32:47

that are associated with weight loss so that we can become more effective in managing

[Eric]: 00:32:52

obesity and the health-related implications of obesity.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:32:56

Yeah, exactly. And to make that even more concrete, so that means that basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:04

as you lose weight, you're going to decrease your energy expenditure. I mean,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:09

your body is going to decrease its energy expenditure, as you were saying,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:12

this could be simple physics, lower volume, so lower energy expenditure.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:17

But you're noticing with that model that basically people lose the people's

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:27

energy expenditure decreases more than what's predicted. And so concretely,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:31

that means if you still want to lose weight after that inflection point,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:35

you have to reduce even more the caloric intake because otherwise you're

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:40

not going to lose weight anymore. Is that what that means concretely for people

[Alex Andorra]: 00:33:44

and what makes it even more challenging to lose weight?

[Eric]: 00:33:47

Yes, it means that the dieting process will become more restrictive than it otherwise

[Eric]: 00:33:56

would be. And what's really to make matters worse, so we lose weight by creating

[Eric]: 00:34:02

an energy deficit, right? So we're consuming fewer calories than we're burning on a daily

[Eric]: 00:34:07

basis. So we introduce this deficit and being in a deficit alone causes a reduction

[Eric]: 00:34:14

in energy expenditure. Our body can kind of tell with that short term shortfall

[Eric]: 00:34:19

of energy intake, oh, let's kind of slow down some expenditure, power down some

[Eric]: 00:34:27

processes that aren't totally essential. So being in a deficit causes a reduction in

[Eric]: 00:34:31

energy expenditure. And let's say that works and now you're losing weight. Now you

[Eric]: 00:34:37

are a smaller person, which reduces energy expenditure. And then you add on top

[Eric]: 00:34:42

of those, this adaptive reduction in response to decreases in fat mass, and now

[Eric]: 00:34:47

you have three separate factors that are contributing to this reduction in energy

[Eric]: 00:34:51

expenditure, which means instead of dieting on, you know, perhaps what might feel

[Eric]: 00:34:56

like a comfortable diet of 1900 calories per day, you're pushing considerably lower

[Eric]: 00:35:02

than that into caloric ranges that are much lower than you're comfortable with. And

[Eric]: 00:35:06

now you're, you know, ability to get through the day with a suitable energy level

[Eric]: 00:35:13

is threatened. Your hunger is considerably increased. It creates a lot of challenges in

[Eric]: 00:35:18

that regard.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is really fascinating to read about. Also to live

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:29

is quite interesting. I've been myself on a cut lately, and that has been definitely

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:35

at some point at the end of the cut was very challenging, these kinds of

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:38

things where you're like, you have days where you like literally think about

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:41

food all the time

[Eric]: 00:35:43

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:43

and you're like, you're like trying to. You know, optimize the macros and

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:48

so on and like trying to find, I was literally food hunting in some of the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:52

shops here. I was like trying to find the best foods, like the most protein,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:35:57

the less fat or the less carbs. Which is kind of fun, but yeah. If you do it

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:03

in a controlled way, that's interesting. But otherwise that definitely

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:08

puts a challenge on, on top of already a challenging situation. And what

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:13

I found also really interesting is that. metabolic adaptation. I don't know

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:19

if you still collect metabolic adaptation in that case, but that also kicks

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:23

in these mechanisms that make sure your energy expenditure basically doesn't

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:28

go too low and doesn't go too high. These they kick in also if you're in

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:35

a caloric surplus. So if you want to gain weight because you want to put

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:39

on some muscles, for instance, so that would be the case for athletes, or

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:42

for a lot of people in the general population, These mechanisms also kick in,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:36:47

right?

[Eric]: 00:36:49

Yeah, yeah. And so when it comes to metabolic adaptation, I'm glad you frame the

[Eric]: 00:36:53

question that way because there is considerable debate or heterogeneity, whichever way you

[Eric]: 00:37:01

view it, in terms of the terminology.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:37:03

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:37:05

Some people talk about adaptive thermogenesis, which is

[Alex Andorra]: 00:37:08

Meh, yeah.

[Eric]: 00:37:09

specifically the reduction in energy expenditure that we've talked about up to this

[Eric]: 00:37:13

point. But when I talk about metabolic adaptation, some people use that synonymously

[Eric]: 00:37:18

with adaptive thermogenesis. It's a very narrow scope of focus that looks just

[Eric]: 00:37:23

at energy expenditure fluctuations in response to weight loss, or conversely, perhaps

[Eric]: 00:37:29

weight gain. When I write about metabolic adaptation, I like to take a more holistic

[Eric]: 00:37:35

approach, and I talk

[Alex Andorra]: 00:37:36

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:37:36

about not just energy expenditure, but the entire milieu of endocrine and even neuroendocrine

[Eric]: 00:37:43

changes. that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:37:44

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:37:44

affect many body systems. So of course, energy expenditure goes down. That alone, honestly,

[Eric]: 00:37:50

is not that big of a deal.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:37:52

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:37:52

It's not helpful, but it's not catastrophic by any means. The larger changes that we see

[Eric]: 00:38:00

typically are just being in a deficit reduces expenditure and being smaller. So

[Alex Andorra]: 00:38:06

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:38:06

if it were only an energy expenditure problem, I don't think it would be so important.

[Eric]: 00:38:13

It matter, but to a lesser degree. But with metabolic adaptation, the way I like to

[Eric]: 00:38:17

talk about it holistically, we see reductions in sex hormones

[Alex Andorra]: 00:38:22

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:38:22

as a response of this. I mean, the hypothalamus is coordinating this widespread set of consequences

[Eric]: 00:38:28

across many different body systems. So reductions in sex hormones that can impact

[Eric]: 00:38:34

potentially body composition, potentially the reproductive system. These are things that

[Eric]: 00:38:42

impact quality of life. And then when we look at the neurophysiological changes related

[Eric]: 00:38:49

to hunger and appetite regulation, I think those are the most important adaptations

[Eric]: 00:38:54

that we see during weight loss

[Alex Andorra]: 00:38:56

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:38:57

in terms of just recalibrating our hunger and desire to eat and the types of food choices

[Eric]: 00:39:03

that we're inclined to make. So you could set, you know... cut those up into individual

[Eric]: 00:39:09

components and study them all separately, but I don't think it makes sense to do so,

[Eric]: 00:39:13

which is why

[Alex Andorra]: 00:39:14

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:39:14

when I write about metabolic adaptation, I think a very fair criticism is some people

[Eric]: 00:39:19

might say, you've gone beyond the scope of metabolic adaptation. And my response would

[Eric]: 00:39:23

be, you have too narrow a scope for metabolic adaptation

[Alex Andorra]: 00:39:26

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:39:26

because you really cannot uncouple these things from one another. So yeah, I definitely

[Eric]: 00:39:33

want to acknowledge that, metabolic adaptation the way I view it, not only is it

[Eric]: 00:39:40

very wide ranging across body systems, but it also does apply, like you were saying,

[Eric]: 00:39:45

in two directions. So we see adaptations to underfeeding and weight loss,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:39:51

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:39:51

but we also tend to see adaptations to overfeeding and weight gain. So there's

[Eric]: 00:39:56

fascinating experiments where we bring people in, not I didn't do it, but when scientists

[Eric]: 00:40:01

bring people in. overfeed them intentionally to a considerable degree.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:40:06

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:40:06

And there are tremendous adaptation, adaptive mechanisms that lead to dramatic increases

[Eric]: 00:40:13

in energy expenditure to maintain a relatively stable body weight. And what we

[Eric]: 00:40:18

see is that appetite goes through, I mean, just to the floor, just no appetite whatsoever

[Eric]: 00:40:23

when people are dramatically overfed intentionally. But

[Alex Andorra]: 00:40:28

Hmm.

[Eric]: 00:40:29

The really fascinating thing, the unfortunate thing, because I'm sure a lot of people are

[Eric]: 00:40:33

listening saying, no, your science is wrong.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:40:36

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:40:37

The variation between individuals is immense. And so they're even in these studies

[Eric]: 00:40:42

that are tightly controlled, we'll see some people defend a body weight quite effectively.

[Eric]: 00:40:47

Other

[Alex Andorra]: 00:40:47

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:40:47

folks, you know, their body weight just changes quite readily, right? So there are

[Eric]: 00:40:54

a lot of folks who say, When I overfeed, I don't increase energy expenditure. My appetite

[Eric]: 00:40:59

doesn't drop. I just gain weight. And so

[Alex Andorra]: 00:41:01

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:41:01

that observation is not at odds with the science. It's very much compatible with

[Eric]: 00:41:06

it. But what we do find is, you know, there is a lot of variation in people's adaptive

[Eric]: 00:41:11

mechanisms in both directions. So there are some folks who, when they do a weight loss

[Eric]: 00:41:15

diet, they just lose the weight and it goes fine. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:41:20

Thanks for watching!

[Eric]: 00:41:20

other people will look at them and say, how is this possible? Like, you feel like you're

[Eric]: 00:41:23

from a different planet. when you look at the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:41:25

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:41:25

difference in responses. And that I think is another reason that it's so important

[Eric]: 00:41:30

to understand these, um, you know, metabolic adaptation in general is. I think first of

[Eric]: 00:41:37

all, there's the practical benefit of understanding what it is and what to do about

[Eric]: 00:41:40

it to facilitate, uh, folks who are trying to gain or lose weight, uh, to, to find

[Eric]: 00:41:45

a healthier body weight range for them. But

[Alex Andorra]: 00:41:48

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:41:48

also I think it, I think if you. interact and engage with this literature seriously and

[Eric]: 00:41:55

you do so with a very critical eye You're almost forced to kind of decouple obesity and

[Eric]: 00:42:06

weight gain from Some of these inaccurate and counterproductive assumptions that are

[Eric]: 00:42:13

really common in health care and really common in society you know a lot of people

[Eric]: 00:42:17

will look at obesity or weight gain and inherently mentally connect them to essentially

[Eric]: 00:42:24

character flaws like gluttony or laziness. And I think if you look at this literature

[Eric]: 00:42:32

and you do so critically with an open mind, what you tend to see is there are so

[Eric]: 00:42:37

many factors impacting body weight regulation that appear to be innate. These inter-individual

[Eric]: 00:42:43

differences are immense. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:42:46

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:42:46

what you start to see is as someone who has... generally in my life had success

[Eric]: 00:42:50

gaining and losing body weight very readily. When I was younger, I used to assume

[Eric]: 00:42:57

that there was, you know, oh, I'm so much tougher. I can push through these

[Alex Andorra]: 00:43:00

Thanks for watching!

[Eric]: 00:43:01

things that other people can't push you. That's not the case. As I've looked at

[Eric]: 00:43:05

the literature more, I find that I am just a better responder to some of these weight

[Eric]: 00:43:11

regulation interventions. You know, I

[Alex Andorra]: 00:43:14

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:43:14

lose and gain weight intentionally. while encountering far less friction than other

[Eric]: 00:43:19

folks do. And so that was unfortunate. At first I thought I was really special and

[Eric]: 00:43:25

just had this ability to push through things. But I think metabolic adaptation, as

[Eric]: 00:43:29

we understand these barriers to weight loss that are very

[Eric]: 00:43:39

inconsistent from one person to another, it helps us look at things like obesity and

[Eric]: 00:43:44

weight gain and weight management. in a much more empathetic way, in a much more

[Alex Andorra]: 00:43:50

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:43:50

accurate way, you know, so I think that's really important.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:43:55

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you can still be special in the sense that you

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:00

have a special genetic component.

[Eric]: 00:44:02

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:02

You chose your parents, right? Well done, Eric. So many questions.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:13

So what you were talking about, basically, that there is a huge inter-subject

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:17

viability. Yeah, I'm not. surprised about that. It's something I've noticed also

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:24

in that literature. Hopefully, we'll have time to talk a bit more about that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:28

later on in the show from a more statistical point of view. Face dance,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:35

whispering. Something I'm wondering is, do you notice a correlation between the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:42

people who can gain weight easily and then lose weight easily? And then you have

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:47

basically you... that you would call responders in this case, and then people

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:51

who respond way less. And so if you have trouble gaining weight, then also

[Alex Andorra]: 00:44:56

probably you will have trouble losing weight. That would make sense to me,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:45:00

but is that something that you also see in the data?

[Eric]: 00:45:04

Yeah, so what we tend to see if we're looking specifically at physiological responses,

[Eric]: 00:45:10

so like changes in energy expenditure that we can kind of measure with physiological

[Eric]: 00:45:15

tools,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:45:16

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:45:17

if we look at that, then we can broadly define people or kind of categorize them into

[Eric]: 00:45:22

two major phenotypes. You know, thrifty versus spendthrift are the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:45:27

Hehe.

[Eric]: 00:45:27

terms that are used. So there are some folks who if they're overfed. You know, they,

[Eric]: 00:45:33

they gain weight really easily, but then when they try to lose weight, they run

[Eric]: 00:45:38

into a lot of friction, right?

[Alex Andorra]: 00:45:40

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:45:40

So they're kind of nudged toward these, um, you know, if overeating and then trying

[Eric]: 00:45:47

to diet, you know, they would readily gain weight and then kind of struggle to lose

[Eric]: 00:45:50

it. There are other

[Alex Andorra]: 00:45:51

Hmph.

[Eric]: 00:45:51

folks who are, who are the inverse where, um, if they try to overfeed, it will be, uh,

[Eric]: 00:45:57

you know, we'll see a lot of those physiological. adaptive mechanisms that kind of keep them

[Eric]: 00:46:02

from or resist their ability to gain weight readily. But they don't seem to run

[Eric]: 00:46:08

into as much friction when dietary intake is reduced. And what's really fascinating is

[Eric]: 00:46:14

you can kind of look at these over very short time scales. You can just do in a crossover

[Eric]: 00:46:19

study, you can look at overfeeding and underfeeding or even fasting responses over

[Eric]: 00:46:25

the course of just 24 hours each. And you

[Alex Andorra]: 00:46:28

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:46:28

can kind of broadly categorize people and say, okay, if you, you know, had a huge

[Eric]: 00:46:33

increase in, um, energy expenditure when we did overfeeding, we can already start

[Eric]: 00:46:40

to make some inferences about, you know, the fact that, you know, a huge increase during

[Eric]: 00:46:44

overfeeding probably means that we're not going to see a lot of friction during underfeeding

[Eric]: 00:46:49

versus, you know, folks who, you know, when, when they overfeed, they just gain fat

[Eric]: 00:46:53

mass, you know, the, uh, energy expenditure doesn't really move much. Um, You know, when

[Eric]: 00:46:58

they go into a fasting or underfeeding stage, we expect a pretty considerable amount

[Eric]: 00:47:02

of friction in the sense that energy expenditure will drop. So there there's kind

[Eric]: 00:47:07

of. It only seems fair in the context of bodybuilding, you know?

[Alex Andorra]: 00:47:13

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:47:13

Um, so what

[Alex Andorra]: 00:47:14

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:47:14

I mean by that is bodybuilders will go through phases where they really want to

[Eric]: 00:47:17

gain weight. And then when they really want to lose weight, you know, they want to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:47:21

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:47:21

build all their muscle, gain a bunch of weight, lose fat. And so bodybuilders usually,

[Eric]: 00:47:27

you can kind of count on having one or the other. You know, you can say, oh,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:47:29

Yeah

[Eric]: 00:47:29

I can bulk up really well, but I struggle when I'm cutting. Or

[Alex Andorra]: 00:47:33

Hmm.

[Eric]: 00:47:33

some people will say, you know, it's really challenging for me to gain weight and

[Eric]: 00:47:35

put on muscle, but when I want to lose fat, it usually goes pretty smoothly. So in

[Eric]: 00:47:40

bodybuilding, it seems fair. Outside of that world, I think most folks in the general

[Eric]: 00:47:45

population feel like it's very unfair and they want to be the person who can lose

[Eric]: 00:47:49

weight easily and struggle to gain weight when intentionally overfeeding. But I did mention

[Eric]: 00:47:55

the caveat that I was speaking really about physiological responses there, because

[Eric]: 00:48:00

I think one other important factor that I've not seen really studied all together comprehensively

[Eric]: 00:48:06

very frequently is we've got that kind of regulation system of these physiological

[Eric]: 00:48:11

parameters. But I also think that there is work to be done in the kind of neurophysiological

[Eric]: 00:48:18

regulation of appetite and desire to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:48:19

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:48:20

eat. And I think part of that is reward responses to feeding and those kind of hedonic

[Eric]: 00:48:27

responses to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:48:27

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:48:28

feeding. And I think for me, one of the reasons that I'm able to kind of do weight

[Eric]: 00:48:32

gain and weight loss relatively easily is that, you know, I think I probably do experience,

[Eric]: 00:48:42

I'm more of the thrifty phenotype, meaning that I can gain weight intentionally quite

[Eric]: 00:48:47

easily. I do have reductions in energy expenditure, pretty considerable ones when

[Eric]: 00:48:52

I diet. But I

[Alex Andorra]: 00:48:53

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:48:53

think the way that I respond to food from a neurophysiological perspective, I'm

[Eric]: 00:48:59

just not as into it as most people.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:01

Mm.

[Eric]: 00:49:01

So I don't

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:01

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:49:01

run into the really tremendously challenging appetite and desire to eat challenges when

[Eric]: 00:49:08

I'm dieting. So my energy expenditure goes down plenty. It's just not that big of

[Eric]: 00:49:12

a deal. Because if I need to cut calories more, that doesn't feel based on my neurotransmitters

[Eric]: 00:49:19

basically. like it's too great a sacrifice to make. So there are these competing systems

[Eric]: 00:49:25

going on that make things really quite fascinating.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:30

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I really love also that you're talking about

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:34

the neurological aspect because that's something I've seen also is, yeah, first,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:41

one of the things like when you go on a fat loss diet and then go on a

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:47

caloric surplus, you kind of have to have to change your mental thinking

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:52

about food. It's really weird. Whereas when you're losing fat, you have to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:49:57

be very... intuitive about the way you eat and being very aware of the society

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:04

cues that you have and that actually often you can stop eating before you

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:10

do. And being very aware of those stuff, eating very slowly and all those

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:18

things like that where meditation helps and so on. And then when you want to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:22

gain weight, you have to kind of throw all that out the window. And basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:27

eat even though you're not hungry. Continue eating even though you're not hungry.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:32

It's really a mental shift. That's really weird. And also you have to change

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:37

your habits. And it's something I've really dove into a lot because basically

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:44

how to build better habits and how to pair basically these incredible power

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:49

that the brain has, which is creature of habits because these are shortcuts

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:54

and it makes just like... life easier for the brain. Well, that can be a very

[Alex Andorra]: 00:50:58

bad thing if you have really bad habits, but then you can change those habits.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:03

How do you change them for the better? An extremely good book that I found

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:07

about that, I've read a lot of things about that, but the main one I would

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:11

recommend for someone who's digging into that would be the one from Kathy

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:16

Milkman, How to Change the Science of Going from Where You Are to Where You Wanna

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:21

Go. This is a really good one. really good breakdown of the current literature.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:27

And it helps you also pair, basically what we're talking about with, okay,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:31

how do I try to develop that into routines that help me? So developing cues,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:37

for instance, me, I'm really a coffee nerd and addict. So when I started

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:43

going to the gym, well, trying to find a coffee shop that's on the way to

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:46

the gym so that, and not having coffee at home, so that I have to get to the

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:51

coffee shop to get the coffee. And while the gym is just there, well, might

[Alex Andorra]: 00:51:56

as well get some training. And then after the gym, well, you get another coffee

[Alex Andorra]: 00:52:00

because it's a reward. And

[Eric]: 00:52:01

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:52:02

then at some point, the brain does the stuff automatically. This is really

[Alex Andorra]: 00:52:05

a fascinating part also of that research. But I think that I think also we're

[Alex Andorra]: 00:52:10

just starting to explore.

[Eric]: 00:52:13

Yeah, yeah. And I love the behavioral components because having worked with a lot

[Eric]: 00:52:18

of clients who have weight loss goals, it's so fascinating to see this fine line where

[Eric]: 00:52:24

an intuitive assumption is that you should make the most minor, tiniest, most feasible

[Eric]: 00:52:31

change as possible if you want to start reducing energy intake and losing weight. And

[Eric]: 00:52:36

in many cases, that is true. But in some cases, individuals are so locked into

[Eric]: 00:52:42

habits and routines that it's almost harder to do the same routines and same kind

[Eric]: 00:52:46

of things and just make these little changes within that. Sometimes it is a lot

[Eric]: 00:52:51

easier to just completely restructure a day and just to say, let's create a completely

[Eric]: 00:52:56

different series of habits, a different schedule, a different routine. Let's start

[Eric]: 00:53:01

from scratch and very intentionally bundle some of those things like you mentioned,

[Eric]: 00:53:05

where it's like, okay, yeah, we're going to... create this association, this coupling

[Eric]: 00:53:10

between gym time and coffee. And I know you want

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:13

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:53:13

your coffee,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:13

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:53:13

so you will get to the gym. Um, and I do those same kinds of things right now.

[Eric]: 00:53:18

Like I, my favorite thing to kind of just, um, it's the least productive thing I

[Eric]: 00:53:24

do. It's anti-productive, but, uh, when I really just want to turn my brain off and

[Eric]: 00:53:30

hang out. I love football. I'll play like

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:31

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:53:32

a football video game. And my. Video game system where I play my football game is

[Eric]: 00:53:38

right in front of my treadmill.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:40

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:53:40

If I'm playing it, I'm walking. If I'm walking,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:42

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:53:42

I'm doing

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:42

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:53:43

something positive for my health. Just finding those ways to couple those things because

[Eric]: 00:53:47

I noticed my step count was too low. It's like, well, how do we make that work in

[Eric]: 00:53:50

a way that doesn't feel like a chore? We couple

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:52

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:53:53

walking with one of our favorite things to do that when we get a chance, we're going

[Eric]: 00:53:56

to do it.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:53:58

Yeah. And also that I find that helpful in the way that it also gets us out

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:05

of the, most of the time, unhelpful mindset of, you know, no pain, no gain, that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:11

you have to just grind through. And if you're not, then that means you're weak,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:18

you have weak character in all those things we were talking about, you were

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:21

talking about, before,

[Eric]: 00:54:23

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:23

about weak gain and obesity.

[Eric]: 00:54:25

And the weirdest thing though, like one of the, I almost, if I wasn't going to

[Eric]: 00:54:29

join, uh, Dr. Ponser's lab, I gave serious consideration to doing another PhD in the social

[Eric]: 00:54:37

sciences and, uh, you know, health psychology, because one of the weirdest things I find working

[Eric]: 00:54:43

with clients, you know, cause all the theory goes out the window when you're actually

[Eric]: 00:54:48

out in the field working with people.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:54:50

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:54:50

For most people, I fully agree, and based on the textbooks, I fully agree, you

[Eric]: 00:54:55

know, the no pain, no gain thing, forget about that, let's make things approachable,

[Eric]: 00:55:00

let's make them feasible. There is a certain percentage of the population where

[Eric]: 00:55:05

if they cannot link what they're doing to an internal narrative, that they are grinding,

[Eric]: 00:55:11

and they are doing

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:12

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:55:12

the hard stuff. Like, there's this entire narrative that... makes them excited to do

[Eric]: 00:55:17

it because it feels like it sucks. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:21

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:55:22

I want to understand better what that is and how we can sort the people with what

[Eric]: 00:55:27

I would consider a more typical average response, which is let's make it not suck.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:33

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric]: 00:55:33

I think most people like that. But I'm very intrigued by, you know, early in my coaching

[Eric]: 00:55:39

career, I would try to fit people into that mold. And I found enough of these people

[Eric]: 00:55:45

that I said, we have to have at least two molds, where some

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:48

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 00:55:48

of these people do want to be grinding and they like the fact that it is hard. That's

[Eric]: 00:55:52

what excites them about it. And sometimes they wanna make it seem, to be totally honest,

[Eric]: 00:55:57

even harder than it is,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:59

Yeah,

[Eric]: 00:55:59

which is

[Alex Andorra]: 00:55:59

yeah.

[Eric]: 00:55:59

very fascinating to me.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:02

Yeah, this is super interesting. I mean, like, and in a way, also, you could,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:09

like, I'm sure there are some tactics to make them think they are grinding,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:13

even though it's just a bit more friction, but it's actually no harm. Like,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:18

it makes me think about, do you know about the IKEA effect in this literature,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:24

which is where basically the idea is For instance, in France, you have these

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:31

all-made, pre-made crepes that you can buy in the supermarket. And when they

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:38

started selling those, it didn't sell as well as they thought. And then they

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:44

did all their studies and so on. And they understood that it was because

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:48

everything was made and then people couldn't basically claim that it was

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:53

their own crepes that they were doing. And so they just removed the eggs. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:56:59

now when you buy that, you have to put the flour on

[Eric]: 00:57:02

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:02

all made and so on. And yet you just put the eggs and you bake it like

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:06

you whisk them. And then cells went through the roof because basically like

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:12

people feel that they are part of the process and that, you know, they, they

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:17

belong in the process. And so that's called the IKEA effect because like

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:20

you go to IKEA, it's not done. You have to put your own furniture together.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:24

And so

[Eric]: 00:57:25

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:25

basically, even though it's a really small thing, then that makes a derance

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:29

to the program, which is of tremendous importance in sports science, much

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:34

higher and in the end that makes the program more effective.

[Eric]: 00:57:37

Yeah, I never heard it framed as the Ikea effect, but I heard that same kind of

[Eric]: 00:57:41

story about cake mixes in the United States where they

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:44

Exactly.

[Eric]: 00:57:44

said, okay,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:57:45

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:57:45

you got to put the egg in. And that does make sense. And sometimes, you know, I'll

[Eric]: 00:57:50

even take it a step further and have clients, you know, design a little part of

[Eric]: 00:57:56

their program themselves that I set enough constraints that whether they pick,

[Eric]: 00:58:02

you know, red or blue.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:03

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:58:04

it's going to be equally efficacious, right? So there's

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:07

Yeah.

[Eric]: 00:58:07

nothing at stake here, but it does increase that, um, that feeling of ownership and kind

[Eric]: 00:58:12

of having that autonomy and self-efficacy to really make an imprint on what we're doing.

[Eric]: 00:58:17

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I'm loving all that discussion and like I want

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:24

to dive into more stats, but I really love it. So just to continue a bit

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:28

on that and on the grinding part that you talked about, also to me that

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:36

resonates with a lot of stoicism. I'm really interested in stoic philosophy.

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:42

And so like you see a lot of that where basically the idea One of the ideas

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:47

and principles of stoic philosophy is sometimes make you a bit more uncomfortable

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:53

than you need to be, because that way it makes you more resilient in a way,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:58:57

and that shows you that you can do it basically if you have to. For instance,

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:03

when it's chilly outside, well, get out with one layer less than you would

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:07

be comfortable. And actually, that makes you a more stronger and resilient

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:13

person. And I really love that. that part of the stoic philosophy. I put a

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:18

link to the one of the best books about that I've read, which is called

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:21

the stoic challenge by William B Irvine, really, really good book. I'll put

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:28

that in the show notes. And about the, like the pleasure that comes from

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:32

pain makes me think about another book I read recently, which is called the sweet

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:37

spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning by Paul Bloom. And

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:42

yeah, it's a bit about what you talked about where basically for some people

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:48

and for some endeavors, the suffering is part of the experience. And if

[Alex Andorra]: 00:59:55

you're not suffering at least a bit, then for some people that is not worth

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:00

it.

[Eric]: 01:00:01

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:02

Yeah, really, really fascinating. So before we dive a bit more into the statistics

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:08

side of things, I'm wondering about, to close up on metabolic adaptation,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:15

what are the current frontier regarding that field? Basically, what are the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:20

questions that you and the people who are studying that, what are the questions

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:25

you really want to know the answer to these days?

[Eric]: 01:00:29

I mean, there are a few, some of them are boring. They're about methods. So, unless

[Eric]: 01:00:34

you're researching in the area, you don't care. But one of the things that's really

[Eric]: 01:00:37

challenging with this area is that

[Eric]: 01:00:43

when we predict changes in energy expenditure,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:46

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:00:46

we typically have to use fat-free mass as one of the main predictors. But

[Alex Andorra]: 01:00:51

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:00:52

when you look at fat-free mass, you have tissues with very different energy expenditure.

[Eric]: 01:00:57

amounts, you know, if you look at the rate of energy expenditure in the kidney versus

[Eric]: 01:01:01

the liver versus the heart versus muscle tissue,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:01:04

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:01:04

you can't just say it's all the same per kilogram. And so that one area of research

[Eric]: 01:01:09

is how much organ mass is lost during dieting and is it possible that is explaining

[Eric]: 01:01:17

at least some of this reduction in energy expenditure that seems disproportionate. So

[Eric]: 01:01:21

that's an

[Alex Andorra]: 01:01:21

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:01:21

active area of discussion. Some of the more practical questions, you know. Is there

[Eric]: 01:01:26

anything that we can do feasibly

[Alex Andorra]: 01:01:29

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:01:29

to attenuate or mitigate these changes in terms of metabolic adaptation? Do we essentially

[Eric]: 01:01:38

reach an equilibrium after we've maintained our weight loss for some amount of time? And

[Eric]: 01:01:43

if so, how much? So

[Alex Andorra]: 01:01:44

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:01:45

far we've got longitudinal studies up to six years, I think, of follow-up where we

[Eric]: 01:01:49

say, yeah, it doesn't really look like there's much changing here. It looks like it's

[Eric]: 01:01:54

a fairly persistent thing. So that's another open question that is always top of

[Eric]: 01:02:01

mind. And then the one that interests me the most is how do we...

[Eric]: 01:02:10

How do we put together a unified model that includes the constrained energy expenditure

[Eric]: 01:02:16

model and like exercise energy compensation

[Alex Andorra]: 01:02:20

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:02:20

and metabolic adaptation at the same time? What

[Alex Andorra]: 01:02:23

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:02:23

I mean by that is we know that as people are dieting, restricting energy intake to lose

[Eric]: 01:02:29

weight, metabolic adaptation will reduce their energy expenditure. But we also know

[Eric]: 01:02:35

that if people do extremely large amounts of exercise... we often see an attenuation

[Eric]: 01:02:42

of resting metabolic rate. And so the question is, most interventions will include

[Eric]: 01:02:49

energy restriction and extra exercise. So how do we kind of parse those two things

[Eric]: 01:02:57

that are almost certainly happening simultaneously? And one hunch that I have that

[Eric]: 01:03:02

I'd like to explore in upcoming years is, I personally think that Exercise energy

[Eric]: 01:03:09

compensation is greatest when we're in a caloric deficit. So when we are under

[Eric]: 01:03:15

eating relative to

[Alex Andorra]: 01:03:16

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:03:16

our energy expenditure.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:03:17

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:03:18

So I expect that in programs that involve weight loss and dietary restriction, or I mean

[Eric]: 01:03:24

exercise and dietary restriction for weight loss, we are seeing not just an additive

[Eric]: 01:03:30

effect of the two things, but perhaps even kind of an amplification of that effect

[Alex Andorra]: 01:03:34

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:03:35

because

[Eric]: 01:03:38

exercise energy compensation in line with the constrained expenditure model, it

[Eric]: 01:03:44

does seem to vary based on the energy status of the individual, whether they're in

[Eric]: 01:03:51

neutral, positive, or negative energy balance. So that's a frontier that I think

[Eric]: 01:03:56

is really important to explore.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:00

Yeah. And that, that's a really fascinating one. I found, um, like from a statistician's

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:05

point of view, basically, like, like everything we're talking about since the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:08

beginning makes me think like I have stuff in my head, like interaction effects

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:13

all over the place, basically. That's what you just talked about, like interaction

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:17

between dietary restriction and, um, and then, um, the exercise compensation,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:23

um, and, and also like, I just have you know, logistic and logit curves in

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:29

my head and logarithmic curves, basically where it's a lot of nonlinear effects

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:35

combined to interactions, which make everything much more complicated, at least

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:41

for a homo sapiens, normal homo sapiens brain. I'm guessing if you put that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:47

in a model in the computer, that will make much more sense, of course,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:50

but that's why we're doing that, right? But... Yeah, and actually, energy compensation

[Alex Andorra]: 01:04:57

is something you also worked on. And I really find that super interesting.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:03

So to try and make that more concrete for people, that would mean that,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:07

and that makes weight loss even more complicated if I understand correctly.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:12

Because that means that basically you're trying to lose weight and mainly lose

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:17

fat. So you're going to have a deficit, calorie deficit. And on top of that,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:24

you're going to add exercise, most of the time cardio. And let's say you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:28

go for a run and you expect to lose 100 calories from that run. Basically

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:33

what energy compensation coupled to calorie deficit means is that, well, at

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:38

the beginning of the weight loss, maybe you're going to lose 100 calories,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:41

but then the bigger the deficit, the bigger the energy compensation. And so

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:48

that means that let's say that your body compensates. So maybe I'm missing

[Alex Andorra]: 01:05:54

the sign here, but if the body compensates 80% of your exercise, that means

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:00

you're only gonna lose 20 calories from that exercise bout instead of losing 100,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:06

which makes weight loss even more challenging. And in a way that makes sense,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:11

right? Because if your body thinks you're beginning to starve, well then

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:16

it's starting to put all those barriers so that you don't die.

[Eric]: 01:06:20

Right.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:21

So yeah, had I summed up that thing well? And yeah, basically, can you talk

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:28

a bit about that energy compensation and how that relates to what you're studying?

[Eric]: 01:06:33

Yeah, absolutely. So energy compensation really is the key factor underlying the constrained

[Eric]: 01:06:40

total energy expenditure hypothesis, meaning

[Alex Andorra]: 01:06:43

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:06:44

right now our best estimate is that if all we know about someone is just the bare,

[Eric]: 01:06:51

the most simplistic information, which is that I'm a person, I'm a human being, and

[Eric]: 01:06:57

I'm going to do an extra 100 calories worth of exercise per day.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:07:02

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:07:02

Our best estimate based on that minimal information would be that their total daily

[Eric]: 01:07:07

energy expenditure will only go up by about 70 calories

[Alex Andorra]: 01:07:11

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:07:11

per day instead of 100, because 30% of that will be compensated for by reducing

[Eric]: 01:07:19

resting factors of metabolism, trying to offset some of that energy cost. But we

[Eric]: 01:07:26

really need to do a lot more work to unravel. what makes a person compensate more

[Eric]: 01:07:32

or less.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:07:34

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:07:34

And so for example, if we look at the energy expenditure of competitive athletes

[Eric]: 01:07:39

who are intentionally eating a lot to try to replace their calories, we do see that

[Eric]: 01:07:46

their energy expenditure is considerably higher than a sedentary person who's weight

[Eric]: 01:07:51

stable. So it's not to say that we cannot change our total daily energy expenditure at

[Eric]: 01:07:58

all. But there is certainly some degree of compensation that occurs and my suspicion

[Eric]: 01:08:03

is that it is largely, the magnitude of compensation is largely dictated, not exclusively,

[Eric]: 01:08:10

but largely by energy intake. And I expect

[Alex Andorra]: 01:08:13

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:08:13

that, you know, when we're in a situation, I mean, we're seeing, you know, if we look

[Eric]: 01:08:18

in a vacuum, let's say you're not exercising, you're just reducing calories to lose weight.

[Eric]: 01:08:24

You're gonna get extra friction from metabolic adaptation, right?

[Alex Andorra]: 01:08:27

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:08:28

We know

[Alex Andorra]: 01:08:28

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:08:28

that to be true. And let's say in a vacuum looking elsewhere, you're not doing

[Eric]: 01:08:34

any energy restriction necessarily, but you're exercising. Well,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:08:37

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:08:37

you know, there is gonna be probably some degree of compensation where you're, if

[Eric]: 01:08:42

the goal was to lose weight just by doing exercise, you're not gonna lose as much

[Eric]: 01:08:46

as you thought because some of that is gonna be compensated for. Now, when we put

[Eric]: 01:08:51

those two together, In light of observations that compensation seems to be greatest when

[Eric]: 01:08:56

energy intake is, you know, when there's a caloric deficit or negative energy balance,

[Eric]: 01:09:02

we don't just see, I would expect, I don't expect that we would see just an additive

[Eric]: 01:09:09

combined effect. I think we might see something that's more kind of synergistic in

[Eric]: 01:09:14

a way that the two kind of amplify each other in the context of a weight loss program

[Eric]: 01:09:19

involving diet and exercise. So all of that is to say, yeah, when you're doing

[Eric]: 01:09:27

a holistic weight loss program with diet and exercise, a lot of folks say, why

[Eric]: 01:09:33

does this feel so hard? And the answer is there's a lot of friction to be encountered

[Eric]: 01:09:36

along the way.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:09:38

Yeah. And also it makes more sense that these kicks in more in a deficit,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:09:43

a caloric deficit than a caloric surplus, right? Because then if you're in a

[Alex Andorra]: 01:09:46

caloric surplus, why would the body try to compensate for the extra, extra

[Alex Andorra]: 01:09:51

bout of exercise that you're enjoying?

[Eric]: 01:09:54

Yeah, yeah, the one exception though, the one exception that I would say is,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:09:58

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:09:59

I mean, of course, from an evolutionary perspective, when we're looking at starvation

[Eric]: 01:10:04

as the limiting factor, that all makes

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:05

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:10:05

sense. And we'd say, yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:06

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:10:08

in a caloric deficit, you see a lot of compensation, otherwise maybe not so much,

[Eric]: 01:10:13

but they've done some really fascinating work in athletes who are just spending tremendous

[Eric]: 01:10:18

amounts of energy on exercise. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:21

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:10:21

I think that over the long term, there are some upper boundary constraints that are

[Eric]: 01:10:26

limited just by the amount of energy that we can feasibly extract from our diet

[Eric]: 01:10:30

on a daily basis.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric]: 01:10:32

So I think they were working with like really competitive cyclists doing tremendously

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:37

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:10:38

arduous races

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:39

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:10:40

and finding that like, you know, there are some constraints on those absolute upper

[Eric]: 01:10:45

boundaries but those are constraints that most of us mortals are never gonna encounter,

[Eric]: 01:10:49

right?

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:50

Yeah,

[Eric]: 01:10:50

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:50

yeah, yeah. Yeah, it feels a bit like you only feel the effects of relativity

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:55

when you go really fast. Well, it feels a bit like what you're talking about

[Alex Andorra]: 01:10:59

for these kind of like, yeah, really, really

[Eric]: 01:11:02

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:02

hard endurance athletes. Yeah. I know we're running a bit long here. Are you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:10

okay to continue a bit more or do you have a

[Eric]: 01:11:12

Sure.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:12

hard stop?

[Eric]: 01:11:13

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:13

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:11:13

Yeah, I'm

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:13

Okay.

[Eric]: 01:11:14

good.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:14

Awesome. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, because I'm having too much fun. So I want

[Eric]: 01:11:17

Yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:17

to continue.

[Eric]: 01:11:18

it's always good if it runs long and you're right now saving me from getting back

[Eric]: 01:11:22

into writing, so I'll talk forever.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:26

Well, I'm happy to do it. So yeah, let's turn a bit more to the statistical

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:36

side of things here, because of course, you're using statistical models

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:41

for all this work to make sense of it. So I'm wondering what are the main modeling

[Alex Andorra]: 01:11:48

challenges that your field is facing?

[Eric]: 01:11:52

Yeah. You know, when I first got into the field, I was

[Eric]: 01:11:59

coaching a special Olympics powerlifting team and the head coach was, he's a dear friend

[Eric]: 01:12:07

of mine and he had been doing research for decades before I was born. I mean, he was

[Eric]: 01:12:12

probably about 70 years old when we met and he was a statistician and so he would

[Eric]: 01:12:17

work with a lot of different fields and I remember expressing frustration to him

[Eric]: 01:12:23

about the way statistics were approached in my field, and he kind of calmed me down

[Eric]: 01:12:28

about it. He said, listen, different fields grow up at different rates, and the

[Eric]: 01:12:32

more mature a field gets, the more rigorous its science gets, the more it starts to embrace

[Eric]: 01:12:39

more nuanced statistical approaches, and people get better at it. It comes down,

[Eric]: 01:12:44

it starts with the demand for rigor in... know, the publication process, then it

[Eric]: 01:12:48

trickles down into the training that's received for folks that are coming up through

[Eric]: 01:12:53

the field. And so I think my field right now is at a really cool inflection point in

[Eric]: 01:12:59

its growth where there are a lot of people who are really lifting the tide for

[Eric]: 01:13:04

statistical analyses in exercise and sports science. So that's good. I'm happy to

[Eric]: 01:13:11

see that. And I don't want to be a hypocrite. It's not like I was, you know, a first year

[Eric]: 01:13:16

master's student and I had this like innate expertise in statistics and said, Oh,

[Eric]: 01:13:22

I'll do it all perfectly. And everyone else is dumb. I knew that it should be done

[Eric]: 01:13:26

better, but of course I wasn't capable of doing it. And part of my frustration was

[Eric]: 01:13:30

I want to get trained in the good stuff and no

[Alex Andorra]: 01:13:32

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:13:32

one seems to know the good stuff around here. You know what I mean? Um, and who knows

[Eric]: 01:13:37

if I would have even picked it up if I was exposed to that training, you know, I'm

[Eric]: 01:13:40

not, I'm not, uh, not claiming that expertise before developing it. So there are

[Eric]: 01:13:46

many challenges in our field and we're encountering them more as we kind of go through

[Eric]: 01:13:52

this growth process, to be honest. I think aside from the fact that our field has

[Eric]: 01:13:58

not prioritized statistic previously, so the training reflects that in a lot of programs,

[Eric]: 01:14:04

I think that's a big challenge. It's just that people are not being exposed to...

[Eric]: 01:14:08

really nuanced in-depth statistical training. And so a field, we got to start doing

[Eric]: 01:14:16

more of that training in the master's and PhD programs. But more to the point of

[Eric]: 01:14:21

probably what you were getting at, I think we have two main challenges in exercise

[Eric]: 01:14:25

and sports science. Number one, sample size.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:14:31

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:14:31

I think a lot of folks in other fields, they think we work with small samples because

[Eric]: 01:14:36

we're dumb. and we don't get it. It's like, why don't you do more? And it's like,

[Eric]: 01:14:41

well,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:14:42

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:14:44

if you're doing these really, really resource intensive study protocols, you'll

[Eric]: 01:14:50

get it in both directions. If you do exercise protocols that can be feasibly scaled

[Eric]: 01:14:57

to large samples, people will say that your measurements are so imprecise as to be

[Eric]: 01:15:02

worthless. And they'll say, you can't even make the inferences you're trying to make

[Eric]: 01:15:05

because you use the cheap measurement. that you could actually use 400, 500 participants

[Eric]: 01:15:11

in the study. So you get a lot of pushback if you go the route of saying, well, let's

[Eric]: 01:15:16

do the less intensive measurement protocols that are more affordable and more feasible

[Eric]: 01:15:20

and get a bigger sample. On the other end, if you want to do the really nuanced measurements,

[Eric]: 01:15:26

the time cost, the labor cost, the financial cost, it starts to get so... remarkably large

[Eric]: 01:15:38

that the idea of bringing in more than about 22 people, it starts to become completely

[Eric]: 01:15:43

infeasible. And so of course, money would help. Money tends to help a lot of things

[Eric]: 01:15:49

in the research world. So if people wanted to dump all their money into these studies,

[Eric]: 01:15:53

then sure, we could take six years and run 300 people through the protocol. But right

[Eric]: 01:15:59

now, a big constraint on our statistical development and one that I think is fair, like...

[Eric]: 01:16:04

I could imagine the chair of a department who's been studying, doing research since I

[Eric]: 01:16:10

was not even born yet, 30 years before I was born, they could have been doing research.

[Eric]: 01:16:17

They would look at me and say, all right, hotshot, you think you know it all, but go

[Eric]: 01:16:21

learn all your stats. Why doesn't our department teach all this nuanced stuff? Because

[Eric]: 01:16:25

you can't even do it. Some of this, the really... nuanced statistical methodology,

[Eric]: 01:16:33

especially in the frequentist world, you need such large sample sizes to even really

[Eric]: 01:16:38

observe the benefit of doing a lot of those things. So sample size is a limiting

[Eric]: 01:16:43

factor that I think unfortunately is also holding us back from embracing some of

[Eric]: 01:16:47

these statistical approaches because people are saying, well, I could train you

[Eric]: 01:16:53

on that, but what are you going to do with it? Your

[Alex Andorra]: 01:16:55

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:16:55

biggest sample is 30 people.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:16:57

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:16:58

So... Yeah, that's definitely, I would say, a big challenge. And then another challenge

[Eric]: 01:17:02

is a lot of the questions we explore have a lot of inter-individual variation or

[Eric]: 01:17:08

at least we expect them to based on biological and physiological theory. And it's

[Eric]: 01:17:15

really challenging for us to try to really parse out what is a genuine difference

[Eric]: 01:17:20

between individuals versus... measurement error and all the other sources of error and

[Eric]: 01:17:26

randomness that find their way into real world data, especially for metrics that

[Eric]: 01:17:31

change day to day. And I mean, if I measure some of these parameters, it's going

[Eric]: 01:17:37

to be different at 8 a.m. than it is at 11 a.m. for the same person on the same

[Eric]: 01:17:40

day. So there's

[Alex Andorra]: 01:17:41

Yeah,

[Eric]: 01:17:41

so much

[Alex Andorra]: 01:17:41

yeah.

[Eric]: 01:17:42

noise and trying to get through that and say, well, What is, how do we attribute

[Eric]: 01:17:48

this noise to all these various components that can create noisiness in this dataset?

[Eric]: 01:17:52

It can be really challenging.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:17:56

Yeah, I mean, this is very interesting because this is what I've also noticed reading

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:04

some of the literature that we're talking about. And that's also why I

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:10

thought it was super interesting to have you on the show. Because unfortunately

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:15

for now, I cannot really help with the money,

[Eric]: 01:18:19

Hehehe

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:19

but I can help with the statistics and I'm pretty sure what you... Just talked

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:26

about a lot of listeners have started thinking, patient stats, dude, patient

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:30

stats. Because it helps for low sample size, it's perfect for that. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:37

also the inter-subject viability, and we're going to talk a bit about that. Teaser

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:44

for listeners, there is a really cool paper we're going to talk about, I mean

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:49

mention, from someone you know very well. Yeah, so basically that would be

[Alex Andorra]: 01:18:58

my question. So you told me you know a bit about Bayesian stats. I mean,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:19:02

you've heard of it, but that it's still not much used for now in your field,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:19:07

am I correct?

[Eric]: 01:19:10

It is starting to get used more. And I feel that it's been interesting because I

[Eric]: 01:19:17

did my graduate research between 2013 and 2018.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:19:23

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:19:23

And I actually expressed an interest in diving deep into Bayesian statistics. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:19:31

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:19:33

due to various circumstances, just didn't really get the opportunity to sink my teeth

[Eric]: 01:19:37

into it. And one of the things that makes it challenging is As we know as people

[Eric]: 01:19:42

who's published science, you know, there's a great responsibility You you can't just willy-nilly

[Eric]: 01:19:49

say I'm gonna try this new thing and I don't really know how to check if I did it

[Eric]: 01:19:52

Right, but whatever I'll try it and I'll just publish it. It's you don't really

[Eric]: 01:19:57

want to do that, right? I mean, it's kind of a you want to make sure you're doing

[Eric]: 01:20:02

it, right? And you want to make sure that you are kind of learning with the right

[Eric]: 01:20:06

resources or under the right people to kind of uh, help you transition into that

[Eric]: 01:20:12

new skill set. And so I remember approaching my stats professor, uh, during my PhD and saying,

[Eric]: 01:20:19

Hey, I want to get into this class over in the biostats department, but I think I need,

[Eric]: 01:20:23

uh, like a recommendation to say that, you know, that I should do it. And he was like,

[Eric]: 01:20:29

dude, that's, that's like the hardest class in like a PhD level biostats program.

[Eric]: 01:20:35

I don't think you really

[Alex Andorra]: 01:20:37

Nice. Ha

[Eric]: 01:20:37

want

[Alex Andorra]: 01:20:37

ha ha.

[Eric]: 01:20:37

to do that. Like he was like, I like just don't. And I was like, okay, I understand

[Eric]: 01:20:42

that. Like, cause I was looking for an introductory kind of, you know, get your

[Eric]: 01:20:46

feet wet in Bayesian statistics. And he was like, dog, that's you are going to hate

[Eric]: 01:20:50

your life and they're going to be like, who the hell told you, you could come here.

[Eric]: 01:20:54

So, uh, cause you know, Hey, I know, I know a thing or two, but I'm not, I don't

[Eric]: 01:20:58

have a PhD in biostats. Right. Um, and it's really important to, to kind of. understand

[Eric]: 01:21:04

and adhere to your own limitations as an applied scientist who uses statistics, but

[Eric]: 01:21:09

is not a statistician. So I tried that and didn't really work out. I also pitched

[Eric]: 01:21:15

at one idea, at one point, the idea of doing an independent study in a particular

[Eric]: 01:21:20

statistical approach that was popular in sports science. This was when I was like

[Eric]: 01:21:24

a, I think a master student. And my advisor said, yeah, don't do that. And I was

[Eric]: 01:21:30

kind of bummed at the time, boy, was she right. because the approach that all the

[Eric]: 01:21:35

smart folks were using that I wanted to sink my teeth into, it was called magnitude-based

[Eric]: 01:21:41

inferences. And it was something that was being used in our field, and it was kind

[Eric]: 01:21:47

of framed on the surface as like a mixture between frequentist statistics and Bayesian

[Eric]: 01:21:53

statistics, this kind of hybrid approach that allowed us to make better inferences about

[Eric]: 01:21:59

small sample size research while still staying within the frequentist framework within

[Eric]: 01:22:06

which we're most comfortable. Well, in the last year or two, the last couple of

[Eric]: 01:22:11

years, there's been some papers where a statistician heard that we were doing that

[Eric]: 01:22:15

and they dug around and they're like, wait, what have you guys been doing? And so

[Alex Andorra]: 01:22:19

Hehehe

[Eric]: 01:22:19

they looked into it and they're like, yeah, it's better for small sample sizes because

[Eric]: 01:22:25

your type one error rate is like 20%.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:22:28

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:22:28

You're just committing tremendous statistical errors. and just not doing rigorous analyses

[Eric]: 01:22:35

with this approach. So the statistical properties of this approach just completely

[Eric]: 01:22:41

failed and then people stopped doing it. So all of that is to say, I tried to kind

[Eric]: 01:22:46

of poke and prod at it when I was a grad student, but our field just wasn't really

[Eric]: 01:22:50

embracing it yet. But in the last couple of years, I'm seeing more and more papers in

[Eric]: 01:22:55

our field that use Bayesian statistics. And to be totally honest, the thing that's

[Eric]: 01:22:59

really changed it, in my view is a JASP software,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:06

Uh-huh.

[Eric]: 01:23:06

having a point and click user

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:08

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:23:08

interface that opens up Bayesian statistics in a way that feels a lot more accessible to

[Eric]: 01:23:15

folks who don't have a coding background. Cause a lot of folks

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:18

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:23:18

in my field, they do not like any code based stat softwares. They like SPSS. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:24

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:23:24

once they heard JASP was on the menu, they said, okay, fine, I'll try it.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:28

Hmm.

[Eric]: 01:23:29

But yeah, so all of that is to say I've been aware of it and quite interested in it

[Eric]: 01:23:32

for a while. When I was doing more of my own stats on studies, I had an interest

[Eric]: 01:23:38

but not enough proficiency to feel comfortable just jumping into it. And yeah, now that I'm

[Eric]: 01:23:44

back in the research game, I think perhaps I'll have better opportunities to finally do

[Eric]: 01:23:48

that.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:49

Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's super interesting. Um, thanks for that. Yeah. Like

[Alex Andorra]: 01:23:56

lay of the, lay of the ground. Um,

[Eric]: 01:23:58

A little history lesson and yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:00

yeah, I love that. Um, and for sure, like I think, and that's something that's

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:06

really, I see that as something really positive, uh, for a long time, the main

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:12

barrier to using patient sense was not even that. How do we train people?

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:17

Uh, how do we teach them? How do you make that easy to use for them? So like,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:22

for instance, with software like, like JASP. But how do you compute that?

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:29

Basically it was compute power, the main problem, because that integral on

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:34

the denominator is just the devil. So you have to use approximation methods

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:39

and that was very hard. Now we have extremely powerful computers, which

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:45

can do that in just a few seconds. So that... opened a lot of doors basically

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:51

for people who don't know about these stuff to then use the software that nerdy

[Alex Andorra]: 01:24:59

stat people like us develop to actually use patient stat in their analysis

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:05

and that's really cool because now I think the barrier to entry has shifted

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:09

from a computer power issue to a basically manpower issue. Okay. Who do

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:17

I find? to be my mentor, which book should I read, which video should I look

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:23

at, which package should I look at. So that's really cool. There is a variety

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:30

of packages to do it in Python, mainly of course in my, well, PIMC a lot. BAMBEE

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:39

is extremely useful because it allows you to do basically PIMC models,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:43

but instead of writing completely the model, you use FORMULA. Is that how you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:49

say that? It's used in R a lot. So formula syntax, yes, formula syntax. In

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:55

R, I know you use R a lot. So I

[Eric]: 01:25:57

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:25:57

would recommend looking at BRMS, which is extremely good, very powerful, based

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:02

on Stan, which is state of the art algorithms below that. And we have had

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:12

Paul Buechner, the founder, I mean, the main developer of B. the creator

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:18

of BRMS on the podcast. I will link that in the show notes. And also, since

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:23

you mentioned JASP, we had EJ Wagenmarkers on the podcast, episode 61, for

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:30

people who want to listen to that. That was a really interesting one, because

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:34

EJ is one of the main persons developing and coordinating the development

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:39

of JASP. And actually, that episode was really interesting because EJ is...

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:45

really versed into psychology research. And basically, I remember I called

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:50

that episode, why we still use non-Vision methods. That's very EJ spirit.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:26:58

So it's an interesting listen. I'll link that in the show notes, too. So yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:04

to me, that's a really good sign that now this is basically the main thing.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:09

And so yeah, in the R world, I would say BRMS is one of the main things

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:15

to look at. Also, the book and video series on YouTube by Richard McAlrath

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:21

called Statistical Rethinking. Extremely good, very pedagogical. And he's

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:26

actually teaching in Dresden at the Max Planck Institute, so evolutionary

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:31

anthropology. And there is a lot of examples of what that, so that should

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:36

be familiar to you. I send that to you because it's a really extremely good

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:40

resource.

[Eric]: 01:27:41

Yeah, that'd be great.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:43

Yeah. And I mean, so to, and then to narrow down on what patient stats can

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:49

do here. Yeah, I do think that the low sample size thing and also the intersubject

[Alex Andorra]: 01:27:58

variability is tremendously important. And the good thing is that it comes

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:04

out of the box in the patient framework, because, well, you have the priors

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:08

basically. And on that note, I. read recently one of the new papers by Andrew

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:16

Gelman, which people are familiar with, of course, Jessica Holman and Lauren

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:23

Kennedy. I'll post that into the show notes and I sent it to you, Eric,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:27

because I found it really interesting because basically the idea... So you know the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:33

correlation

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:39

So basically a lot of people are familiar with it. Basically, the same correlation

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:46

number can be explained by a lot of different data points patterns. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:52

here, what they do in the paper is that they develop causal quartets, where

[Alex Andorra]: 01:28:59

they basically show that the same average treatment effect can be explained

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:05

by a variety of different causal patterns. where you would have completely different

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:10

data set and data points. But if you just look at the average treatment effect,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:15

you would think that these are the same data points in a way. And it's the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:20

same experiment, even though it's absolutely not and it's explained by different

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:24

causal factors. So I'm aware I'm explaining that in a podcast. But

[Eric]: 01:29:32

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:34

this is very, actually I can, oh, I'm forgetting, but I can. share my screen

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:39

here now. And here, I'm going to do that for people who are watching on YouTube.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:46

Going to share my screen here. And here, I have the paper. And at some point

[Alex Andorra]: 01:29:55

in the paper, you have these kind of quartets here, for instance, where

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:01

these plots are basically explaining the same data. Can you see my screen?

[Eric]: 01:30:08

It's loading.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:10

Ah, it's loading. Okay. So maybe that doesn't work,

[Eric]: 01:30:13

But I did my homework.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:14

but.

[Eric]: 01:30:14

I looked at the paper so I know what you're referring to. Ah, there it is,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:17

Okay,

[Eric]: 01:30:17

I see

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:18

cool.

[Eric]: 01:30:18

it now.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:18

Oh, yeah, there it is. Yeah. So basically, you've seen that, right? Like

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:22

basically,

[Eric]: 01:30:22

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:23

you have four graphs showing different patterns of causal effect, but the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:28

four graphs have the same average effect of 0.1. And so I don't know, yeah, what

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:35

did you think about that paper? Is that something that you think is really

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:39

different for your field? Is that something that you've seen also in your

[Alex Andorra]: 01:30:41

field?

[Eric]: 01:30:43

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I think one of the big challenges that we have in our

[Eric]: 01:30:49

field being kind of attached to the frequentist approach to statistics is that

[Eric]: 01:30:55

we really don't like to mess with the nuances of distributions. You know,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:31:00

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:31:01

we like to condense a lot of things down to, you know, average observed effect

[Eric]: 01:31:07

with a you know, with a symmetrical confidence interval around it. And we like

[Eric]: 01:31:15

to cross our fingers and hope that all relationships are linear when we're looking

[Eric]: 01:31:20

at continuous

[Alex Andorra]: 01:31:20

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:31:20

data. Um, even though we know deep down in our heart that they're, they're probably

[Eric]: 01:31:24

not. Right. So like, you know, we run into so many things, especially in sports science,

[Eric]: 01:31:28

where we talk about, um, you know, how much training volume should you do? Of course

[Eric]: 01:31:34

we know that there's going to be at least a ceiling effect where you reach just

[Eric]: 01:31:40

completely diminishing returns. And if nothing, I mean, if not a ceiling effect,

[Eric]: 01:31:46

more likely we start to see that too much volume. For a while it's more productive

[Eric]: 01:31:51

and then eventually becomes counterproductive as you exhaust your ability to actually effectively

[Eric]: 01:31:56

recover from that training stimulus. And so, if you had a dollar for every paper

[Eric]: 01:32:01

that assumes a linear relationship between training volume and the resulting. training

[Eric]: 01:32:07

adaptations, you'd be quite wealthy. And so, yeah, I think there's tremendous benefit

[Eric]: 01:32:14

in saying, not just, I think there's benefit in branching out beyond this simplistic

[Eric]: 01:32:21

idea of assuming that all of these causal effects we see in the literature can be boiled

[Eric]: 01:32:28

down to, like I said, an average effect with a symmetrical confidence interval or a

[Eric]: 01:32:33

perfectly linear relationship. You know, plus of course the, you know, the error term

[Eric]: 01:32:37

in the model, but, um, yeah, I thought this was a really fantastic paper and a point

[Eric]: 01:32:42

that goes, uh, yeah, it doesn't get discussed as much as it ought to, uh, you know,

[Eric]: 01:32:48

how these different distributions lead to, uh, tremendously different applications,

[Eric]: 01:32:54

you know, cause I mean, if you're in exercise and sports science, um, you're an

[Eric]: 01:32:59

applied researcher almost by default. You know, there's not, not a lot of, not a

[Eric]: 01:33:02

tremendous amount of basic science going on. And so usually the question is, okay, you

[Eric]: 01:33:07

found this, you answered this question, you addressed this hypothesis. Now what do

[Eric]: 01:33:11

we do with it? How does it turn into an intervention for a healthy person or a clinical

[Eric]: 01:33:16

population or a person in a particular set of circumstances? And the actual pattern

[Eric]: 01:33:25

of data becomes quite important.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:28

Yeah. And so thanks. Thanks a lot for taking a look at that paper. That's

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:36

pretty cool. And yeah, to echo what you were saying. Also, I encourage people

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:41

to read it. The paper is really easy to read. It's an easy read. It's not a

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:45

lot of math. Don't worry. It's a lot of graphs actually. And they even developed

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:50

an R package called causal quartets to dig a bit into that. super interesting read

[Alex Andorra]: 01:33:59

and yes, something to really keep in mind each time you see that kind of

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:05

paper only talking about causal average causal effects, treatment effects,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:11

especially in the social sciences, as you were as you were saying, Eric, where

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:15

variability is extremely big between subjects. And I mean, there is a part

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:23

in the paper that was it's just it's just extremely funny to me where They

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:26

call here, they talk about like basically, um, citing from the paper. They

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:32

cite a paper who performed two small survey and they found that women were

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:37

three times as likely to wear red or pink during certain days of their monthly

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:42

cycle and that the result achieved conventional levels of statistical significance,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:48

but then like you dig into that and it's like mainly explained by. by viability

[Alex Andorra]: 01:34:56

between people. Because, well, some people wear a lot of red. Some people

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:00

don't wear red at all. And that viability is going to be huge. But then you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:06

get this kind of average treatment effect, and that doesn't work at all. So that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:11

was a funny part of the paper. And so this is a very pedagogical paper. I

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:16

encourage people to dig into it. Because, yeah, it's something to keep in

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:22

mind. And As you were saying, that's really something I notice also when

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:27

I teach people patient stats, especially when they come from the classic

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:31

ML side. Once they get the posterior distributions out of the model,

[Eric]: 01:35:37

you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:37

the question is always, how do I summarize that? I'm like, no, that breaks

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:44

my heart always, you know, because I'm like, you've worked so hard to get that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:49

posterior distribution. It's not easy to get a whole posterior distribution

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:53

sometimes. And now that you have that, you want to throw away all that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:35:56

information just to get a point estimate. That's a bit of a shame. So try basically

[Alex Andorra]: 01:36:04

to throw away information as late as possible, basically. And try to get

[Alex Andorra]: 01:36:09

used to the distributions. I know that ant dimension. I know our brain is

[Alex Andorra]: 01:36:14

not good for more than three dimensions. But basically, the idea is not

[Alex Andorra]: 01:36:20

throwing information away, especially when it's hard to come by. and try to throw

[Alex Andorra]: 01:36:26

it away as late as possible. And if you really, really have...

[Eric]: 01:36:31

Yeah, I was smiling. You mentioned that the human brain doesn't like to work in more

[Eric]: 01:36:36

than three dimensions. And I, I over, you know, I was scrolling through Twitter and

[Eric]: 01:36:42

I saw someone who had created a, uh, an R package, uh, for like power and sample

[Eric]: 01:36:49

size calculations. And someone had asked them, you know, how come you didn't make it

[Eric]: 01:36:54

easier to use this, um, this R package to, to estimate. the sample size requirements

[Eric]: 01:37:01

for a four-way interaction and he said well if you're able to accurately predict The

[Eric]: 01:37:07

effect size of a four-way interaction in a social science experiment Then you're

[Eric]: 01:37:12

way smarter than me. So you should be right in the program

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:15

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah,

[Eric]: 01:37:18

I Thought

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:18

yeah.

[Eric]: 01:37:18

that was really very true. Yeah, once you're getting into the fourth dimension Our

[Eric]: 01:37:22

brains just kind of implode or at least mine does

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:25

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, and also like four-way interaction. I would say

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:30

that's like in the paper, they really argue for thinking more about nonlinear

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:36

effect. And so that means interactions. But then, yeah, the other caveat you should

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:41

have, then students get really excited about that. And then you're like, oh,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:45

wait, like five-way interactions? I'm not sure you can even interpret that if

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:50

that exists. So it's like, just calm down. It also happens a lot with hierarchical

[Alex Andorra]: 01:37:55

models, because hierarchical models are really easy, I would say, in the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:01

Bayesian framework, because it's just how the framework works. And so you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:05

just put parameters into parameters like Russian dolls, which makes it extremely

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:09

powerful. Hierarchical models are extremely powerful, especially when you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:13

have low sample sizes, because then you can pull information and have basically

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:19

better models. But then it's like, people are like, so can I do a five-nested,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:27

five-dimensional nested hierarchy? You can. On paper, you can. Will you be able

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:33

to identify the top-level hierarchy? And then just also interpret it? I'm not sure.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:41

Start

[Eric]: 01:38:41

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:41

with a two-level nested hierarchy, then we'll see.

[Eric]: 01:38:45

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:49

I put all of that in the show notes. Lots of things in the show notes for

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:53

this episode. That's really cool. I really encourage you to take a look

[Alex Andorra]: 01:38:59

at people. And Eric, you are being extremely generous with your time. I'm

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:06

going to try to start winding down and close up the show. So maybe. Yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:16

something I would like to ask you is more forward looking. I had two questions

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:24

about that, that I'm going to condense into one, and then, uh, and then we'll

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:28

get more practical for, for people to, to end up the show. So, um, looking

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:33

ahead, basically, um, I'm curious about what you are mostly excited about in

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:40

your, in your field of sports and nutrition science and basically like the,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:45

the question if there is one big question that you'd like the answer to

[Alex Andorra]: 01:39:49

before you die.

[Eric]: 01:39:51

Yeah, in terms of what I'm excited about, the field is growing up. I mean, it's crazy

[Eric]: 01:39:58

because I have been kind of on the periphery of the field, I would say, for four or five

[Eric]: 01:40:03

years as I finished my PhD, went out, did some, you know, industry work, started

[Eric]: 01:40:09

some companies and whatnot. Now that I'm getting back into it, it's remarkable.

[Eric]: 01:40:14

I'm excited because it's grown in the direction I had hoped. And I most importantly

[Eric]: 01:40:19

didn't have to do any of the hard work. which is great.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:40:21

Hehehehe

[Eric]: 01:40:21

So I was one of those like hypocrites who just said, you guys ought to do this, that

[Eric]: 01:40:26

and the other thing. And then I got the hell out of there. And now that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:40:28

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:40:28

I'm coming back, I'm like, oh great, you did it all. Awesome, thanks for that. Now

[Eric]: 01:40:32

I'm ready to dive back in now that it's easier to kind of pile on rather than pave

[Eric]: 01:40:36

the path. But yeah, I mean, I remember when I was leaving the, not leaving the, when

[Eric]: 01:40:42

I was taking a little detour, the things I was thinking were, and saying, I was just

[Eric]: 01:40:50

like, man, we need to do low sample size is a problem, right? Why are we not doing

[Eric]: 01:40:55

more multisite trials?

[Alex Andorra]: 01:40:58

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:40:59

It's such an intuitive way. We're all using the same equipment and the same methods.

[Eric]: 01:41:03

We're all

[Alex Andorra]: 01:41:03

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:41:03

making the same manufacturing companies richer by using the same machines. So why don't

[Eric]: 01:41:09

we pool our data in these multisite trials and then we can actually make much more

[Eric]: 01:41:15

robust inferences without having to... land these grants that are five times more

[Eric]: 01:41:21

than we're actually feasibly going to get. So I've been seeing more multi-site trials,

[Eric]: 01:41:25

which is really exciting. I remember thinking, we need to be branching out statistically

[Eric]: 01:41:31

and specifically doing more Bayesian analysis, but also doing more hierarchical

[Eric]: 01:41:39

models, kind of adopting that linear mixed model framework. And I've been seeing

[Eric]: 01:41:45

so much more of that. because, and it's perfect for our field, we had gotten locked

[Eric]: 01:41:50

into analysis of variance being the kind of, the default approach to what we do,

[Eric]: 01:41:58

frequentist analysis of variance. And I'm seeing so many more linear mix models and

[Eric]: 01:42:03

hierarchical models and seeing

[Alex Andorra]: 01:42:06

Great.

[Eric]: 01:42:06

so much more application of Bayesian statistics. So those are things that excite

[Eric]: 01:42:11

me. And one thing that I'd really like to see even more of, which we're getting more

[Eric]: 01:42:16

of, is embracing some of those open science principles in two ways. First of all,

[Eric]: 01:42:21

I'm seeing more preprints, which is very

[Alex Andorra]: 01:42:23

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:42:23

exciting because I just don't think there's any need for us to wait nine, 12 months

[Eric]: 01:42:29

for that thing to get into print. I really like the preprint approach to publication.

[Eric]: 01:42:35

And one area that I'm not seeing quite as much of, but it is happening more, is open

[Eric]: 01:42:41

data, you know,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:42:42

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:42:42

completely open data files, not... not the sentence at the end that says, if you beg

[Eric]: 01:42:47

me, I will send it. And then they never respond

[Alex Andorra]: 01:42:49

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:42:49

to emails. But open data, I think is huge for our field because we're so interested

[Eric]: 01:42:54

in inter-individual variation. A really fantastic way to get at that is by doing, ideally,

[Eric]: 01:43:01

if we could do more participant level meta-analyses, we'd be in really good shape

[Alex Andorra]: 01:43:05

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:43:05

to address some of those things. But you can't do participant level meta-analyses.

[Eric]: 01:43:10

It's very infeasible to do. until you get a little bit more buy-in with open data

[Eric]: 01:43:15

sets. So that's what I'm excited about. And then in terms of questions I wanna answer,

[Eric]: 01:43:21

I have to be honest, like I still am a bit of a generalist at heart. And my overall

[Eric]: 01:43:30

focus is to make sure that we are empowering people to take control of their cardio metabolic

[Eric]: 01:43:36

health if they wish, right? So I'm not into telling anyone what they should or ought

[Eric]: 01:43:40

to do. But for someone who says, hey, I want to feel better every day or, you know,

[Eric]: 01:43:46

change my body weight in the following way, I want to empower people to be able to

[Eric]: 01:43:50

do that in an informed way where they feel like they have a great deal of autonomy

[Eric]: 01:43:53

and self-efficacy. And to make that work, we need effective interventions. And

[Alex Andorra]: 01:43:58

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:43:59

as I look around, I really don't think that we need any paradigm shifting basic science

[Eric]: 01:44:07

to occur in order to make that happen. I think. you know, what we have now in terms

[Eric]: 01:44:12

of understanding energy balance is pretty robust. I think the biggest things that would

[Eric]: 01:44:19

even come close to being like game changers would be just the fact that we now have a better

[Eric]: 01:44:24

understanding of metabolic adaptation, energy, you know, exercise energy compensation,

[Eric]: 01:44:29

and now seeing this new wave of effective obesity drugs on the market.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:44:34

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:44:35

I mean, now that we're seeing how these, you know, these different areas interrelate,

[Eric]: 01:44:39

I'm not sitting around waiting for a huge paradigm shift like we're going to potentially

[Eric]: 01:44:44

see in physics, right? Where we say, oh, now we need to rewrite all the textbooks.

[Eric]: 01:44:49

I think really what I'd like to see is more of the just boring everyday science

[Eric]: 01:44:54

where we make incremental progress towards seeing how some of these pieces fit together.

[Eric]: 01:45:00

I think seeing things related to... Health psychology behavior change appetite

[Eric]: 01:45:05

regulation energy expenditure regulation exercise adherence I think those are the final

[Eric]: 01:45:11

pieces where we just need a little bit more of that Regular old-fashioned boring science

[Eric]: 01:45:16

of incremental progress where we start to

[Alex Andorra]: 01:45:18

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:45:18

put some of these things together And what I'd love to see is a holistic approach

[Eric]: 01:45:24

where we're focusing on Behavior change psychology sleep energy intake, you know diet

[Eric]: 01:45:31

and exercise factors And frankly, right now I'm really optimistic about using those

[Eric]: 01:45:38

in conjunction with some of these new pharmacological interventions for weight reduction.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:45:43

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:45:43

And what I'd love to see is if perhaps we can get to a point with these non-pharmacological

[Eric]: 01:45:49

interventions that they are all introduced at the beginning and we have the aid of that

[Eric]: 01:45:56

pharmacological intervention to kind of do a lot of the heavy lifting at the beginning.

[Eric]: 01:46:01

but then eventually offer an off-ramp

[Alex Andorra]: 01:46:04

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:46:04

where a person can say, yeah, I need to do maybe a six or 12 month stint of this

[Eric]: 01:46:10

pharmacological intervention, then get off of it and use these behavioral approaches

[Eric]: 01:46:16

moving forward to maintain that progress. Whether or not we can do that, I think we gotta

[Eric]: 01:46:22

get better. I think we need to really bolster. some of the interventions that we're

[Eric]: 01:46:28

currently doing, but I do see that as potentially something that isn't implausible

[Eric]: 01:46:34

in the near future.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:46:37

Yeah. Thanks for that optimistic note. And I mean, and I do agree. Like I was

[Alex Andorra]: 01:46:45

actually quite surprised when I started digging into the literature that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:46:50

we have, it's not, it's not, you know, cosmology and like Big Bang physics,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:46:57

like we have that stuff not figured out, but I don't know if the Pareto

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:02

effect is already here, but like really there is some... already solid

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:07

scientific evidence of things we know and reproducible. Like you try it on

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:13

people and it works. So apparently

[Eric]: 01:47:14

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:15

we're there. So that's really good. And yeah, what that made me think is,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:20

eh, that's weird. That will still seem in the general public, so many really

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:26

crappy science and nutrition advice. And basically it's now, it seems to

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:33

me to be at a point where It's more a question of, okay, how do we package

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:37

the science that we actually have and the knowledge that we actually have

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:41

and allow it to percolate into the general audience? And it's more this than

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:50

really paradigm shifting things that apparently we need right now. Yeah, I

[Alex Andorra]: 01:47:55

agree.

[Eric]: 01:47:56

I'm glad you brought that up because I honestly think the biggest failure of nutrition

[Eric]: 01:48:02

and exercise science collectively is, and I'm not even pointing the finger in terms

[Eric]: 01:48:08

of blame or offering how to fix it. Maybe I'll go away for four or five years and

[Eric]: 01:48:12

they'll fix it all and then I can come back. The

[Alex Andorra]: 01:48:15

Yeah

[Eric]: 01:48:18

widespread failure to do some of that. public outreach and engagement in an effective

[Eric]: 01:48:25

way.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:48:26

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:48:27

The fact that right now there are so many knowledgeable folks in exercise and nutrition,

[Eric]: 01:48:33

but the people who hold the megaphone are the influencers on Instagram who are dictating

[Eric]: 01:48:41

the public discourse of what fitness looks like and what health looks like. It is

[Eric]: 01:48:45

such a catastrophic failure. And I don't think our fields view it as their responsibility

[Eric]: 01:48:51

yet. And I hope that changes within the next five or 10 years. I hope that, for

[Eric]: 01:48:59

example, I think it's insane that a tenured full professor has all these expectations

[Eric]: 01:49:07

for what they do with their time professionally in terms of community support or service to

[Eric]: 01:49:13

the university, their research, reviewing papers, mentorship, teaching. They have all

[Eric]: 01:49:20

these different things that are... codified into their role as a thought leader in this

[Eric]: 01:49:25

area in the academic world and it seems like the public outreach the public communication

[Eric]: 01:49:31

science communication is so undervalued and Not incentivized in the slightest

[Alex Andorra]: 01:49:37

No.

[Eric]: 01:49:38

and

[Alex Andorra]: 01:49:38

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:49:38

then everyone looks around and says hey, how come no one listens to us And it's

[Eric]: 01:49:41

like because

[Alex Andorra]: 01:49:41

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:49:42

that communication you have never made it part of the job. You've never incentivized

[Eric]: 01:49:46

it You've never rewarded it in a meaningful way. And now you're wondering why you don't

[Eric]: 01:49:51

dominate the headlines and lead the discourse. And it's because there's no reason

[Eric]: 01:49:56

for that to be the case. And there are people who are spending all of their day just

[Eric]: 01:50:02

on the communication. And they will out influence you every

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:07

Oh yeah.

[Eric]: 01:50:07

single day of the week if there's no meaningful attempt of these fields to actually

[Eric]: 01:50:14

lead that outreach. So I'm glad that you brought that up because that is a huge

[Eric]: 01:50:18

failure.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:19

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. That's what I saw. I mean, it's hard work for

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:27

sure. This is a hard thing. We've struggled with that in the vision stats

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:31

world for three years. I think we're getting way better now. Surely, almost

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:37

internally, due to this podcast, I think we can acknowledge it. No, but joking

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:44

aside, yeah, it's hard work, but it needs to be done because like, Yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:50

I've seen the same content you're seeing, of course. And I'm like, it's so messy.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:54

I'm like, this is shame because, well, apart from the fact that I still don't

[Alex Andorra]: 01:50:59

understand why people believe what celebrities say, just because they are

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:03

celebrities. You know, I don't know why you would believe it's celebrity because

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:06

they are doing some workout or some diet, even though, you know, they are

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:10

not, they like, they have no knowledge in it. But okay, that aside, it makes

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:16

me sad always a bit, but I'm like, oh, but we know about that. Like, we

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:19

like... science knows about that, this falls, and there is a better way

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:23

to do it. So that would be better for people who are listening to that person

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:28

to actually do something that works for them and not spend their hard-earned

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:33

money on something that we know is not going to work. And yeah, so there is

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:38

definitely a lot of work to do on that. Incentives, extremely important

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:43

for sure. And I mean, that's also related to something you mentioned before,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:49

Also, it's very important on these podcasts, not only because myself, I

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:53

am an open source developer, but like I know a lot of listeners are open

[Alex Andorra]: 01:51:57

source developers and are the people building these open software. And so

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:03

of course, open data for us is extremely important. And I think it's changing

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:08

a bit. I see more and more, you know, academics doing open data and even

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:14

developing packages, open source packages. Thanks to R and Python mainly, which

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:21

are picked up and then it's so common in those languages to have an open

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:25

source package somewhere that yeah, it starts to become a custom, but yeah,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:30

like I think universities could make a better job incentivizing basically investing

[Alex Andorra]: 01:52:36

in open source and open source means also open data. So yeah, for sure.

[Eric]: 01:52:41

Yeah, well, my advice to you, if you want to spread the word of Bayesian stats,

[Eric]: 01:52:45

the thing that sold me on it, at least on a theoretical level, when you make someone,

[Eric]: 01:52:54

force them to interact with the true definition and interpretation of a p-value

[Eric]: 01:53:01

and a confidence interval,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:05

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:53:06

I feel like if they know what they're doing and they know what they want to do with

[Eric]: 01:53:11

their research, that alone

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:12

Mm.

[Eric]: 01:53:12

they should say, wait a minute, there's got to be a better way.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:15

Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:53:16

And I do think Bayesian offers just a dramatically more intuitive interpretation

[Eric]: 01:53:22

when it comes to the final output.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:24

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. That's completely true. Even though in my experience,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:32

the best way to introduce people to patient status when patient status solves

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:37

one of the problems. They have spent, often in like doctoral students, spent

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:43

hours on a frequency software and it doesn't work. And then they switch and

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:49

use, I don't know, BRMS or BAMBi, and then just one line of formula. And that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:54

works. That's the best way.

[Eric]: 01:53:57

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:53:57

That's the best trojan horse. Yeah.

[Eric]: 01:54:00

Absolutely.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:01

Um, so to close up before I ask you the last two questions, um, we've talked

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:08

a bit about that already, and I think it's something I wanted to cover also,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:11

because I know personally, uh, a lot of people, um, these were not in the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:17

same circle. So I'm guessing a lot of people, you know, are really already

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:20

into, into exercise and things like that, but in my world, not necessarily.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:26

And, uh, something I often encounter is. Well, a lot of people who tell me that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:34

they would like to take better care of their health and their body, but basically

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:38

they are a bit overwhelmed and they are intimidated by the amount of discipline

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:44

it requires, at least it seems to them, things like counting your calories,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:49

weighing yourself consistently, all those things. So I wanted to close up the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:54:54

show by being practical and basically, ask you what you would recommend

[Alex Andorra]: 01:55:01

to help get those people on their healthier path.

[Eric]: 01:55:05

Yeah, I would say, you know, if you're just getting started, I'm going to give two

[Eric]: 01:55:10

pieces of advice that seem contradictory, but they're actually complimentary. So first

[Eric]: 01:55:17

you want to choose the strategies or the interventions that kind of feel at the

[Eric]: 01:55:22

starting point to be most feasible or most accessible to you, or I guess most enjoyable

[Eric]: 01:55:28

even, right? So you might be someone who says, I want to lose some weight, but I

[Eric]: 01:55:33

don't want to count my calories. Then don't. Let's just change the types of foods

[Eric]: 01:55:37

that you're eating and do some basic portion control. When I won my professional

[Eric]: 01:55:47

status in bodybuilding, I did not count my calories during my contest preparation.

[Eric]: 01:55:53

You

[Alex Andorra]: 01:55:53

No.

[Eric]: 01:55:54

don't

[Alex Andorra]: 01:55:54

Interesting.

[Eric]: 01:55:54

have to. If you know generally what you're eating, then you kind of have a sense

[Eric]: 01:56:00

of how many calories you're eating.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:56:02

Hmph.

[Eric]: 01:56:02

And even if you did calculate it down to the single calorie, guess what? You're wrong.

[Eric]: 01:56:06

I mean, the food labels are not that accurate. There's variability in the energy

[Eric]: 01:56:10

content of food. So anyway, bit of a tangent, but choose the strategies that feel

[Eric]: 01:56:16

like they're going to be the most accessible, most enjoyable, most feasible and build on

[Eric]: 01:56:21

that. So same thing, if you don't want to change your diet at all, but you kind of

[Eric]: 01:56:25

enjoy doing some physical activities, go play basketball more. Boom. Now you've taken

[Eric]: 01:56:30

that first step. And once you're doing more basketball, you're getting in better shape,

[Eric]: 01:56:35

maybe then that progress starts to fuel additional motivation to chip into some of

[Eric]: 01:56:41

those things that used to seem like they were too much, but now you're like, you

[Eric]: 01:56:44

know, I've already come so far. I'd really like to see what we can do here and

[Eric]: 01:56:47

kind of take this up a notch. The other thing is, number two here, is that you want

[Eric]: 01:56:52

to start with goals that are hard enough to care about, but easy enough. to build some

[Eric]: 01:57:00

degree of self-efficacy. You know, you wanna

[Alex Andorra]: 01:57:02

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:57:02

get your confidence rolling as you go. So, like I said, you wanna choose things that

[Eric]: 01:57:07

are feasible, enjoyable, realistic, but if they're too easy and they're too feasible,

[Eric]: 01:57:13

you're not actually gonna feel like you're doing anything.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:57:16

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 01:57:16

And that can actually be a bit of a dead end because the fact that we are making

[Eric]: 01:57:22

positive improvements and making changes to make ourselves better, that alone becomes

[Eric]: 01:57:27

a source of motivation. So what they find in the goal setting literature is that

[Eric]: 01:57:32

if a goal is too hard, you're gonna fail, your self-efficacy will plummet, you

[Eric]: 01:57:36

will start to believe, I actually cannot do this. But if you set a goal that's too easy,

[Eric]: 01:57:41

you do it, but you're like, am I, it's like playing basketball against a four-year-old

[Eric]: 01:57:46

and it's like, yeah, I won, but do I really feel good? Of course I won, right? It's

[Eric]: 01:57:51

not enough to get you excited and make you feel like you're actually making some improvements

[Eric]: 01:57:55

to feel really. happy about and enthusiastic about. So that would be my recommendation.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:01

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Love it. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Harry. Again,

[Eric]: 01:58:06

No offense

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:06

the first

[Eric]: 01:58:06

to four

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:06

one.

[Eric]: 01:58:07

year olds. I'm sure many of you are good at basketball.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:10

Yeah, yeah. If four-year-olds listen to this podcast, please message me,

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:16

we'll get you on the show. I want that on the show.

[Eric]: 01:58:20

a prodigy out there.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:21

Oh yeah. Oh my God. And yeah, the first point made me think we have that

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:27

saying in French, which is, l'appetit vient en mangeant, which means, I

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:32

don't think it's true for hunger actually, but it means hunger comes as you

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:36

eat. So yeah. Like your first option, like it's basically, yeah, try something

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:41

first. And then you'll see that if you like it, you'll naturally get nerdier

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:46

about it. I would say. Awesome, Eric, I think we're breaking a record of the

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:53

longest episode here. So I am not surprised it's with you because I know

[Alex Andorra]: 01:58:57

you have a history of very long, very long recordings behind you.

[Eric]: 01:59:01

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:01

So, you know, is there any topic I didn't ask you about and that you'd like

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:09

to mention?

[Eric]: 01:59:11

No, it's a me problem. I go on and on. So I, almost every podcast I go on, they say,

[Eric]: 01:59:18

wow, this is our longest one ever. So sorry about

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:20

Hahaha

[Eric]: 01:59:20

that folks, but yeah, we've covered everything that the audience can handle. I'm

[Eric]: 01:59:24

sure.

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:25

Awesome. Yeah. So for people who... Oh, no, wait. I'm forgetting the last

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:33

two questions. Am I crazy? So yeah, before closing up the show, I'm going

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:39

to ask you the last two questions I ask every guest at the end of the show because

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:44

as I always say, it's not the point estimate that counts, it's the distribution

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:49

of answers. So first one, if you had unlimited time, and resources, which

[Alex Andorra]: 01:59:56

problem would you try to solve?

[Eric]: 01:59:59

Yeah, so I don't think that I'm personally equipped to solve really any of the pressing

[Eric]: 02:00:03

problems in the world, but You did give me unlimited time and unlimited resources So

[Eric]: 02:00:09

I would just assemble a team to do it with all my time and resources I wouldn't tell

[Eric]: 02:00:14

them about how much time they had I'd put a fake sense

[Alex Andorra]: 02:00:17

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:00:17

of urgency But I would get together the best and the brightest and try to figure

[Eric]: 02:00:21

out a really Powerful solution in terms of generating clean energy for the world generating

[Eric]: 02:00:29

that energy and distributing that energy effectively. I think when I pretend to know

[Eric]: 02:00:36

more about my specific area of expertise, which is always a bad idea, every time I look

[Eric]: 02:00:41

at the world's problems, for a large percentage of them, I see them as energy problems.

[Eric]: 02:00:48

And I think if we could find a tremendous solution to meeting the energy demands of the

[Eric]: 02:00:53

world in a way that is not... detrimental to the environment and can be distributed effectively,

[Eric]: 02:01:01

I think we'd live in a much better world. I would do my own version of the Manhattan

[Eric]: 02:01:05

Project, but it would be for clean energy, and I'd get

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:07

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:01:08

the best and brightest together and pay them whatever they need.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:11

Nice. Yeah. I love it. And I think we're back to physics

[Eric]: 02:01:16

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:17

then. When I understood like fusion, nuclear fusion, maybe one of our closest

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:23

contenders in this.

[Eric]: 02:01:25

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:28

And second question, if you could have dinner with any great scientific

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:32

mind dead, alive or fictional, who would it be?

[Eric]: 02:01:36

It would be Leonardo da Vinci.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:39

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:01:39

I don't know if that's too cliche. Have you gotten that one before?

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:44

Yes, but not that often. Yeah,

[Eric]: 02:01:46

Okay. So

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:47

less

[Eric]: 02:01:47

the reason

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:48

often than

[Eric]: 02:01:48

for

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:48

you

[Eric]: 02:01:48

that,

[Alex Andorra]: 02:01:48

think.

[Eric]: 02:01:50

I was going on a date with someone many years ago, and I wanted to seem smart and cultured.

[Eric]: 02:01:56

So we went to an art museum. It's always a good choice. Good little conversation starters

[Eric]: 02:02:01

along the way. It's great. Good date idea. The exhibit that they had was actually

[Eric]: 02:02:08

like, you know, they had the normal stuff that's always out, but they had a special

[Eric]: 02:02:11

exhibit where they had some of DaVinci's notes on display.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:02:15

Oh nice!

[Eric]: 02:02:17

and it

[Alex Andorra]: 02:02:17

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:02:17

was fascinating. And I was looking at these notes and reading the summaries of what

[Eric]: 02:02:22

they were, because I'm pretty sure they were in backwards cursive

[Alex Andorra]: 02:02:25

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:02:26

Italian, if memory serves, with all sorts of shorthand scribbles, and it was chaotic.

[Eric]: 02:02:31

And the

[Alex Andorra]: 02:02:31

Yeah.

[Eric]: 02:02:32

notes were just absolutely, some of them were brilliant, some of them were just

[Eric]: 02:02:37

absolutely insane. And if you look at some of his ideas, you look at some of his

[Eric]: 02:02:42

inventions, look at his multifaceted interests, What more could you want from a

[Eric]: 02:02:48

dinner guest? Just fascinating, a little bit insane, can talk about any topic. Yeah,

[Eric]: 02:02:54

that would be a wild time.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:02:56

Yeah, yeah, I know for sure. And such a life also incredible each time.

[Eric]: 02:03:01

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:02

Also a big fan. I'm a big fan of Italian culture and the country also in

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:07

Salso. I often go there and yeah, I was in Rome again a few days ago and

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:14

just, yeah, what a city incredible and

[Eric]: 02:03:17

Yeah, I

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:17

yeah.

[Eric]: 02:03:17

mean, I was looking at looking at his notes and when you're on page like six of the

[Eric]: 02:03:22

ramblings about the

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:23

Mm-hmm.

[Eric]: 02:03:24

lake and river systems on the moon, you're

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:26

Mm

[Eric]: 02:03:26

getting into the good stuff. I'm just like, dude, what are you talking about?

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:32

hmm. Yeah, my main question would be, did you write that clean? Or were

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:36

you on substance? Because if you did that on

[Eric]: 02:03:38

Yeah.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:39

a clean brain, that's even more impressive.

[Eric]: 02:03:42

Absolutely.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:42

Yeah, kudos. Yeah. And yeah, so if anybody is happens to be in France, in

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:50

actually my region where I was born, which is called the Loire Valley. You

[Alex Andorra]: 02:03:56

have one castle, which is the castle of Amboise. And really next to that

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:02

castle, you have a not that small mansion, which is Leonardo da Vinci's

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:07

last house. He died there. He spent his last few years at the court of Francois

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:15

Premier. And yeah, like this is called the Clos Lucé. So if you had the

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:21

opportunity to read it, that's really... Incredible. First, the domain is

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:27

beautiful. He had his own vines. He was making his own wine. You've got some

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:33

of the replicas of some of his inventions, and you've got some notes also.

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:39

His bedroom and so on. That's really a beautiful place to visit. I encourage

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:43

anybody to go there if they have the opportunity. Well, Eric, I think now

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:50

we can call it a show. Thank you so much for your time. It was absolutely

[Alex Andorra]: 02:04:57

fascinating. Learned a lot, of course, and motivated to still learn a lot

[Alex Andorra]: 02:05:03

about all this. As usual, I will put a link to all your websites, socials,

[Alex Andorra]: 02:05:12

and so on for people who want to get in touch with you and also a lot of

[Alex Andorra]: 02:05:16

show notes. For those of you who want to dig deeper, thanks a lot, Eric,

[Alex Andorra]: 02:05:21

for taking the time and being on this show.