And so I got really fed up with this and I thought, you know, I'm a scientist by training,
And if someone can understand fat, I certainly can.
So I thought I'm just gonna research fat, everything there is to know about fat.
We are here with Dr. Sylvia Tara,
So thank you so much for being here with us.
And what first got you interested in learning more about fat?
Yeah, what a great question.
I have struggled with weight my whole life, really, since I was a child, really.
I gain weight faster than most people, and I have more trouble losing it than most people.
And I went on a number of diets.
I tried all kinds of things, worked with coaches.
And sometimes I'd lose weight.
Sometimes I could even gain weight if it was the wrong diet.
And so I got really fed up with this and I thought, you know, I'm a scientist by training.
And if someone can understand fat, I certainly can.
And so I thought I'm just gonna research fat, everything there is to know about fat.
And I spent five years.
And I pulled out a thousand papers out of the scientific literature.
I think I talked to about 50 scientists around the world about their research on fat.
And what I was finding out was just so astounding that I decided to collect it all and put it
in a book and share it with everyone.
But fat is not just fat.
There's much more to it.
Absolutely.
What did you learn through your research that surprised you most?
I think that fat's not just sitting there.
It's not just reserve of excess calories, right?
Fat is actually an organ.
It is releasing hormones that our body depends on.
In fact, one hormone it releases is called leptin,
and leptin has direct control on our appetite and our metabolism.
So when we lose fat, we lose leptin.
Our appetite goes through the roof, and our metabolism plummets.
And in this way, fat is trying to come back, right?
Your body loves fat even though we don't,
and through leptin it controls appetite and metabolism in an effort to get fat back.
If you don't know this, you can end up yo-yo dieting your whole life.
You know, it's hard.
And I think knowledge is power.
So knowing this and knowing what fat really is, it just helped me pick the right diet
and helped me stay on it for the long term, yeah.
Yeah, that's amazing because a lot of people don't realize that our bodies are always trying
to maintain that state of homeostasis.
And many times we mess with that balance and we don't know what we're actually doing.
It can be hurting us.
At IIN, we teach about a concept we call bio-individuality.
So what works for one person won't necessarily work for another.
This seems especially true when considering weight.
Or on a similar diet, what makes one person gain weight and another person lose weight.
Most definitely.
You know, the whole book I have, it's about how we are individual.
And different people have different obstacles to weight loss.
So it's not even just what you eat and how much you exercise.
That's a simple answer to it.
You know, in truth, our genetics play a role in our fat.
And what we inherited has a role.
Bacteria has a role, viruses even.
You can actually catch fat, believe it or not.
So if you have had some of these resident viruses, it just makes it harder to lose.
Not that you can't lose, you can.
And gender and hormones, our age, all of that factors in.
So where you are on the stubborn, on the spectrum, rather, of stubborn fat will differ depending
on what stage of your life you're in.
But not only that, just depending on what you've inherited, what your environment has
been as well.
So fat loss is incredibly individual, and I do document that quite a bit with all the
research behind it.
And so it could be easy for you to lose weight.
Or it could be that you have to be very patient, very persistent and just stay with it.
Be very careful about what you do.
Mm hmm, and that's really important for people on their wellness journey, just to understand
themselves and how their body operates just so they don't stress themselves out in the
process and just knowing that understanding of what works best for them.
Yeah, and I wish I knew what I knew now right then, because I think I figured out the fat
blueprint.
Like, we all have a different fat blueprint, if you will.
And it's, yeah, it's very individual.
And I learned what to do for me, and hopefully my book will help others learn that too.
- Yeah, it's fascinating.
So so many people end up going through cycles of dieting, which often makes weight loss
even harder.
What advice do you have for helping people break that diet cycle?
Yeah, so you really have to understand yourself.
And the other thing is you have to be very persistent.
For some people, weight loss takes a long time.
If you're older, your hormones, your fat-busting hormones like testerot, sorry, can't talk,
testosterone, estrogen, growth hormone, they're lower than they were when you were young.
So you're gaining more weight.
You have lower metabolism.
You have less lean mass.
It's really hard now.
One thing you need to know is that once you've dieted, your body's never really the same.
So, like, after we've, say, lost 10% of our body weight, we now have lower leptin levels.
And when you have lower leptin levels, you actually have a lower metabolism than you
did before you dieted.
And especially if you've yo-yo dieted, you have a lower metabolism than before you ever
started.
So the key to know is that you're not on a diet just for six months to lose weight.
You're on this diet permanently.
'Cause you do have a caloric penalty once you've dieted, meaning that you can't eat
as much.
And what we find is that people, after they've lost, say, 10% of their body weight, they
have to eat about 22% fewer calories-- than before,
Which equates to 250 to 400 calories less or they have to exercise more.
And the effect lasts a long time.
It's been studied for six years.
It might be permanent.
So if you want to break the cycle, find a diet you like.
It works for you biologically, socially, psychologically.
And stay on that diet.
It's just the new normal.
Yeah, consistency is key.
Yeah, and knowledge is power.
I don't see this as depressing.
It's like once you know what's going on, you can do something about it.
And so there's good positive examples of people who did that also that I write about, yeah.
Very empowering and gives people a lot of hope.
Diet obviously plays a major role in the amount of fat an individual stores.
But diet aside, what role does lifestyle play in our weight?
Yeah, I think so much.
I mean, there's always things in lifestyle that you can change that are good and better
for weight loss.
One is sleep, for example, right?
I mean sleep, you just take it for granted.
I'm gonna sleep.
Sometimes I don't sleep enough, whatever.
But people who have chronic inadequate sleep, they actually have higher ghrelin levels.
Ghrelin's a hormone that causes hunger.
They have lower leptin.
Leptin's involved with satiation.
And they're overall a little less healthy.
They tend to be more obese.
And they also, you know, when we sleep we get growth hormone, another hormone that helps
us with weight loss.
And they're also disrupting that.
So you can do simple things in your lifestyle that promote healthy living and promote weight
loss, too.
And so that's one example, but there's a number of 'em, yeah.
So as health coaches, how can we use this new understanding of how fat works to help
our clients reach their weight goals?
Yeah, really good question.
I think you have to understand where your client is on their fat-loss journey.
What kind of fat do they have?
Is it genetic?
Is there a genetic component to it, a family history of it?
Are they young?
Is this gonna go quickly, their hormones are high?
Different things to think about.
You know one, primarily, is what's their dieting history?
Have they yo-yo dieted?
Because that will cause disruptions in leptin that makes it harder to lose weight.
Are they older?
Are their fat-busting hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, estrogen, are they lower?
That's gonna make it harder.
Some kind of genetic component, perhaps, will make it harder.
So take all this into consideration.
And you're either at the easy end of the spectrum to lose weight or the harder one, right?
And I think you have to coach them.
They might be very patient if they're at the harder end, right, the more stubborn fat end.
Or maybe not.
If they're easier, you know, it's less effort, more food latitude, more latitude in how you
lose that weight.
But really, my book is really about stubborn fat.
When you have fat that won't leave you, what are the obstacles?
What are the myriad of things you can do to try to address that?
Yeah, and just to be that partner just to help them work through that, 'cause that can
be a very difficult thing for some people to accept.
Yes, it's very powerful.
Actually having a coach, it's really powerful.
It's holding them accountable and helping them when they get down at the same time.
There's something called dichotomous thinking.
It's where people feel if they go off the diet, they've failed now, right?
And there's no point in staying on and actually is associated more with women than men.
So having someone there saying it's okay, forgive yourself.
Just get back on.
Absolutely.
For a lot of health clinics, it makes all the difference of a successful diet versus
one that's not.
Yeah, and that's so important to hear from a practitioner who sees this on a daily basis.
You speak about willpower in your book in regards to weight maintenance.
So research shows that the more restrictive we are with our diets, often the more preoccupied
we become by them and the less control we tend to have over our food choices.
So how do you balance the idea of being intentional about your diet without being overly restrictive?
Yeah, you know, when dieting you have to give yourself breaks, right?
There's even research that shows us people are constantly exerting themselves.
As time goes on they just, they give up.
Hospital workers, say, who, they're told to wash their hands after everything they do
and towards the end of the day they don't wash their hands anymore.
They get tired of it.
Wow.
But if you give them longer breaks in between, they'll continue to wash their hands.
Dieting is the same.
You have to give yourself a break and don't beat yourself up if you went off.
Just get back on.
So think of something you can do like go buy clothing.
Go do something fun.
Give yourself this mental release.
You know, one interesting piece, too, is an exercise where they have people hold hand
grippers for a long time.
And they take half of 'em, show 'em a happy movie, another half show 'em a sad movie.
They come back and say, okay, hold the hand gripper.
People watch the happy movie can hold it for longer.
Wow.
People watch the sad ones, they just give up.
Put happiness in your life somewhere that you want and forgive yourself when you go off.
It's almost good to go off once in a while 'cause you need that break.
And that's also important to reflect on, again, as a health coach, to be able to be that guidance
if somebody does need a break but to also help them get back on track and to keep that
positivity in their life, 'cause it is easy to fall into that negative way of thinking
when things feel like they're not going right.
Yeah, and the new things like help them engineer in the happiness.
What can they do that's fun at least once a week, really fun?
Go take a trip.
Go buy clothes, whatever it is that they like.
Go do this thing once a week.
And that even can affect us hormonally as well--
Probably.
Which can have a direct effect on our fat stores.
So we're exposed to so many images each day that favor tall, thin models, which is a body
type that many of us don't have.
Many of these images have been Photoshopped and project unrealistic expectations that
suggest we should look a particular way.
So how do you think the media contributes to our experience of body fat and how can
we make peace with our bodies?
Yeah, what a great question.
So the media absolutely contributes.
They're always trying to show you something you're supposed to be that's impossible to
attain.
And think about it,
if they didn't do that, they couldn't sell, right?
If it was attainable, there's nothing more to sell.
So they have to show you something off the spectrum that's really hard that very few
people, their genetic makeup can actually match.
The key is to be healthy and to be happy with yourself.
Do you really need six-pack abs?
Do you really have to be a bikini model, look like a bikini model?
The key is to be healthy.
Is your fat stored where it needs to be stored?
Is it in the subcutaneous layer right underneath your skin and away from your belly?
We're all at different stages of life, and there has to be some self-acceptance in the
end, that I accept myself for what I am.
This is the healthy level I want to go to.
If I don't attain the impossible, I'm gonna be okay anyway.
And I think the more people can do that and do it faster, having a rational approach to
dieting, a kind of meaningful goal, I think they're gonna be better off.
When I interview some coaches, what I hear a lot is when people have a goal that is meaningful
to them, like I want to stay alive.
I've got diabetes and I have to stay alive.
Or there's a trigger that's happened to them, like they've either seen themselves in a picture
and they look obese or they've gotten a diagnosis.
Meaningful goals are when they'll actually go and change something about themselves.
If it's more frivolous like, hey, that model's cool, I want to look like that, they don't
stay on those diets.
So you can have that goal all you want.
It's not gonna, unless it's meaningful, truly has meaning to your life, you're not really
going to stay on it.
So find something meaningful.
Have a rational approach to it and accept what comes out at the end.
Yeah, and really understanding your why behind it.
Yes.
Because so many people, like you said, chase after these goals that after a while they
have to stop and think why am I doing this and what is this really bringing me in life,
you know?
Yeah, and how many years do you want to stay at it and not get it
Right, absolutely.
Before you're willing to be rational?
Yeah, most certainly.
So when it comes to fat, what do we still not know?
Oh, there's so much to know about fat.
I think one thing that we don't have down yet is how do we change people's set points
quickly, effectively, and permanently in a way that is livable for them?
So set points are where our body wants to stay at a certain weight.
So even when we lose fat, our body wants to bring it back to where we were, through different
hormones it has, through leptin, through a coordinated effort that it has.
And how do we really do that expediently, permanently for people?
How do we change that set point?
Right now it's brute forced, right?
We just have to work at it.
We have to be persistent.
And we have to have a lot of willpower we throw at it.
How do we make that easier?
So I think that's one.
I think another question is is what else is fat doing?
We're just now learning so much about what fat is.
Who knew it was an organ?
Who knew it was releasing all these hormones into our blood?
Who knew it was part of the endocrine system?
What else is going on in there, right?
It's implicated with the immune system, implicated with a lot of things, with wound healing,
with brain size, right?
Oh, absolutely.
There's so many things that your body needs your fat for.
And so I think we have yet to find out so much more about how fat is functioning and
what it's doing in our body.
Yeah, and even in the different stages of our lives, you know.
That's absolutely right.
I mean, when you're newborns, we love our fat.
Brown fat, we have lots of it to keep us warm.
Fat is implicated in puberty.
You can't even go through puberty without sufficient fat.
It is implicated in reproduction.
You can't have babies if you don't have sufficient fat, and that's because fat is a source of
estrogen.
And it's also a source of leptin.
You know, and then as we age, fat is actually somewhat protective.
There are some studies that show it prevents mortality from various diseases, some of the
diseases it's accused of creating, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
There's something called the obesity paradox where for some reason some studies at least
are showing that it's a little bit protective in old age.
So it's a fascinating organ, if you will.
It's doing a lot more than we think it is.
It is, and I think it deserves more credit than it gets.
Yes.
Where do you see the research heading in the next few years?
Yeah, I think one thing is I think there needs to be a lot more education about preventing
fat gain, you know, excessive fat gain.
Where I live in my research is that once we have fat, our bodies want to keep it on.
In fact, our fat has ways of growing back, you know, despite our eating and exercise
and all of our effort.
And so once it's on there, it does not want to come off.
I think a lot more with children and just nutrition counseling, exercise counseling.
Don't gain that weight.
You know, it's very hard after that.
I think there's other things, looking at the effective leptins.
When you lose weight, lose fat, you lose leptin.
Is there a way to get that leptin back?
It's shown that when people are injected with leptin after, say, losing 10% of their weight,
they actually are able to maintain their weight-- a little bit better.
Wow.
So I think a lot around weight maintenance.
After you've lost it, how do you help people maintain that loss for a long time?
And there's interesting things like people talk about injecting brown fat into people
'cause brown fat burns calories.
It doesn't hoard calories, not primarily.
Lot of things, cold exposure.
I know people are jumping into cold pools now-- to get their brown.
Cryotherapy, yeah.
I will not ever do that.
But to get their brown fat active again.
So I think there's a lot of ways to go.
And personalization, I think that's the key.
We're all so different.
And I know research groups are looking at that, looking at the microbiome, the genetics.
How do we personalize diets for people?
So that'll be another way to go.
'Cause it's all interconnected.
Yeah, and it's very complicated.
No two people have the same experience trying to lose weight.
I'd say if anyone's having a really hard time, be really patient.
Give a diet about, you know, three, four weeks.
If you're not losing weight, it's probably not the right diet for you.
You might have to ratchet it up.
If we've had issues like we were older, hormones are impacted, or if we've had that yo-yo dieting
in our past, you might have to eat a lot less than people.
And that's what coaches won't tell you, a lot of people won't tell you, right?
But you might have to really ratchet it up if you want to lose weight.
So be informed about your weight.
Be smart about it.
Knowledge is power.
I try to document everything I've learned about fat in the book.
You set as a guide and make your own fat blueprint.
Absolutely.
Well, I can't thank you enough for all the insight and the knowledge that you've imparted
onto us.
So thank you so much for being here to share that with us, and I can't wait to see where
this research takes us further.
Right, thank you so much.
Thanks so much.
For more infomation >> Audio horror story - Visions ep 4 - [OC] [2019] - Duration: 5:54. 
For more infomation >> How to maintain a healthy gut | HOUSTON LIFE | KPRC 2 - Duration: 5:56. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét