Uncover the secrets to becoming a fat burning machine! Dr. Bryan Joseph and Dr. Jason Hamed introduce the idea of becoming a fat burning machine. Discover how you can lose weight and keep it off. Dr. Jason Hamed debunks a common myth that you were ‘dealt’ certain genes that keep you from losing the weight.
Click to listen to ” How To Make Your Body An Effective Fat Burning Machine “
Introducing the fat burning machine
Dr. Bryan: Today is a fun day, we get to talk about a great subject going into the new year that seems like it surfaces every year, which is how people become a fat burning machine, how they get their metabolism spiked up. As always, I’m here today with Dr. Jason Hamed. Dr. Jason: Hello, everyone.
Dr. Bryan: So a place to start today would be this. I remember, Jason and I went to school together, and one of the first things I thought of that popped in my mind when I was talking about what we were going to talk about today, was how you used to show up at school, in chiropractic school, with a sack lunch, and you would bring a meal for every 15 minutes, right?
Dr. Jason: That’s right. That’s true, that’s very true.
Dr. Bryan: And I would look on the side, like,
“Man, that guy eats a lot, but he’s so skinny. How does that work?”
Right? Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Metabolizing well
Dr. Bryan: And over the years a lot of patients, including, know each other, we’ve had comments made say, you don’t always eat the best food, but you’re eating a lot and you’re staying so fit. So I thought today would be a great, great way to share some of the things that you’ve learned and that I’ve learned that have allowed us to stay thin and lean, and burn fat and metabolize well, versus people that struggle with that.
Dr. Jason: Yeah, it’s so true, though, right? There’s so many people out there that just, they struggle, but yet it’s really within front of them. They have so many things they could do that they’re probably just not aware of, that would absolutely just turn their body into a calorie-burning machine.
No-one want so be overweight
Dr. Bryan: So I don’t think anybody walks around in life thinking, okay, I really want to be overweight, right? Or I really want to struggle, and I really want to feel tired, and I really want to have everybody look at me and call me names as if I’m chubby or overweight. But people end up there, right? People end up in that situation, so if you’ve ended up there, it’s okay. We’re not judging you, but we hope to offer today some things that may be little ways for you to consider incorporating into your life that might just tighten things up a little bit and get your metabolism spiked.
Life gets in the way
Dr. Jason: Yeah, I mean, listen, it happens, right? We’ve seen it. And it’s never intentional, right? But life is stressful, and then you’ve got your kids, and you’ve got work, and you’ve got obligations with the kids, and then trying to be good in a relationship. Before you know it, you’re spinning, you’re going 1,000 miles an hour, and out of convenience, in many ways out of survival for the lives that we’ve created of stress, we reach for things that temporarily satiate us, right? They get us through a sugar, or the caffeines, but unfortunately, as that habit adds up, we just end up getting in a spot where you can look back and go, “Whoa, how’d this happen?” You know what I mean? We’ve seen it in the practice, right? Dr. Bryan: I do, I do.
Dr. Jason: And it’s not judgment, I mean, heck, I get it. At the same token is, is just from some small action, just being aware, and then taking some small, decisive action, given enough time, I mean, you can absolutely change the metabolism and change your body composition.
A common myth about genetics
Dr. Bryan: They’ll be some fun stories that we can share, but let’s dive in a little bit in regards to one of the common myths that we hear is that your weight is solely about your genetics. What’s your stance on that?
Dr. Jason: That’s BS. Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: And why do you feel that way?
Dr. Jason: Oh, well, first of all, first and foremost is, just because someone has a gene doesn’t mean that someone else has got a gene that’s going to express that gene in the first place. So what I mean by that is this: It’s like if, just because your parents were heavier, it means that if you do the same things they did, then yeah, you probably are going to have the same body composition.
But with those same genes, if you give those genes what they really need, and the body what it really needs, there’s no evidence that’s going to say you’re automatically going to be heavier.
You still have the chance to become a fat burning machine
Slow metabolism genes are not lost cause
Dr. Bryan: So, truth be told, both of our parents were a little bit overweight, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: And both of us are lean guys, so genetically, yeah, we have the same genes that our parents gave us, but choices that we’ve made over the years have allowed us to not necessarily be struggling with weight the way they did, right? Dr. Jason: Right.
Dr. Bryan: So genes may play a factor to a certain extent. We’re not saying that it doesn’t at all, but inevitably, I think it’s safe to say that a lot of our choices that we make throughout the course of our life have a lot more impact with the outcome of our weight versus the genetics that we’re given. Dr. Jason: 100% agree.
Dr. Bryan: So myth #1, just because you felt that you were passed down slow metabolism genes, doesn’t mean it’s a lost cause. Things can still change. It doesn’t mean that you cannot be lean, okay? So number two, you have a background in exercise science. Dr. Jason: I do.
Resistance Training helps turn you into a fat burning machine
Dr. Bryan: And I know you’ve done a lot of training in different sports and what not. I think something that would be valuable for people to hear is
How does exercise and weight training have any influence in regards to metabolism, and spiking someone’s metabolism?
Dr. Jason: Ah, that’s a great question. One of the things that I’d love for people to embrace is that when you actually engage in resistance training, like weightlifting or exercise bands, or something of that nature that’s actually developing or creating more muscle, muscle in and of itself requires more calories to be sustained through the course of the day. So there’s a wonderful double bonus when you work out to gain muscle. The first is when you’re actually working out to gain muscle in the gym, like bicep curls, or exercise bands. You’re burning calories, right, so you’re already burning fat. You’re burning calories that would normally not make you feel lean.
Dr. Jason: Now the cool part is, once you develop the muscle, those muscles require more sugar and more calories to be sustained. So literally, you’re burning more calories through your entire day, which is really, really cool. So the comment is, so to answer your question in short is:
Building muscle helps you actually burn calories throughout the entire day.
You don’t have to become a body builder
Dr. Bryan: Is burning muscle, or building muscle, is that … When you think of building muscle, you think of, I don’t want to be like a bodybuilder.
Dr. Jason: Right.
Dr. Bryan: I don’t want to have to go lift weights all day long. There’s different variations of building muscle, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: So in order to build muscle to metabolize fat, we’re not saying that you have to go bench press 400 pounds.
Dr. Jason: Not at all.
Dr. Bryan: So what does somebody have to consider, from couch potato or sedentary person at the desk to beginning to build muscle, what are some ways that they may be able to begin that process?
Resistance bands can work
Dr. Jason: One of the best things I love to give someone who’s really new to this, and this is not in their life at all as far as resistance training or building muscle, is using resistance bands.
Dr. Bryan: Like those TheraBand type of things? Yeah, okay.
Dr. Jason: Yeah, well nowadays you’ve got these ones that are great, they’re like tubes and they got handles on the ends that they’re more functionable, the ones with the handles, and you can do a series of exercises, a series of workouts with these. You can even do them seated, so if some people are really having a hard time standing doing these exercises, so you can do them seated, and it gives you a mild-to-moderate resistance. It’s safe on the joints, and literally, you can get a great workout in anywhere between 7 to 10, maybe 7 to 12, 15 minutes.
Dr. Bryan: Will I end up with a six pack?
Dr. Jason: Ah … possibly. Well, I’m not going, I mean, it might be tough depending on where we’re starting at. It’s depending on where we’re starting at.
New Year’s Resolutions
Dr. Bryan: Yeah. Well, I want to be … look. Every New Year’s, and every start of the new year you always hear people come in and talk about how they want to start this year right, and they want to lose weight, and this is the year they’re going to get in shape. And the starting place is tough for a lot of people, it’s like how do I build momentum? Once you have momentum you can keep going, but okay, maybe TheraBands or the elastic bands that you’re advocating may be a place to start.
Dr. Bryan: So building muscles, in some capacity, has the ability to help metabolize our body so we can burn fat. Become that fat burning machine.
What would be another way somebody can actually start to speed up their metabolism?
Cardiovascular activity
Dr. Jason: Well, actually, one of the ways that we can help to ignite the body to burn fat is with cardiovascular activity. So just for clarification for our listeners, so you’ve got exercise that’s there to develop muscle specifically, and then you’ve got some exercises that are just to, again, use cardiovascular work, or burn fat. I like to separate the two for clarity for our patients, and for our listeners and family and friends. So you’ve got the muscle building, resistance is going to help you all day, but to kickstart everything, cardiovascular work will really start to burn fat very effectively.
Dr. Bryan: So as New Year’s is coming, and I want to start metabolizing some fat, I want to actually lose weight. Genetics is not going to be what holds me back, I have to build muscle. I can do it using some kind of bands as a place to start, or any other traditional type of muscle-building activity. And then when you say cardio, give examples.
It takes at least 20 minutes to get going
Dr. Jason: I will. Love to. So cardio being walking, like a brisk walk, jogging, using an elliptical, maybe getting in a pool and doing either walking the lengths of pool over and over or swimming. Something that’s sustained, continuous movement that causes your heart rate to be elevated. And the key is, it’s 20 minutes or more to truly get tapping into the fat burning capacity.
Dr. Bryan: So we just got to start moving. Dr. Jason: Right.
Dr. Jason: Yeah. With movement, with consistency for at least 20 minutes.
Dr. Bryan: All right. Cardio movement, swimming, walking, jogging, it doesn’t matter, but we got to move, and you’re saying if we can get 20 minutes a day, then we’re starting to increase our metabolism.
Dr. Jason: Yeah, it’s definitely a start.
The coffee hack
Dr. Bryan: Okay. I’ve heard you talk about putting different things in your coffee.
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: What in the world would you consider doing that for if you wanted to try to burn fat?
Dr. Jason: Yeah, that’s a great question. So a little secret I like to share that I stumbled on with some of research and some of my performance. I get all geeky about this stuff, so I got all into how can I maximize how my body energy was working, and I stumbled on a little fact that when we wake up first thing in the morning, since we haven’t eaten anything for six, seven, eight hours, right, because we’re sleeping.
Our body’s in a state of starvation.
So it’s already primed, just how genetically we’re wired, to actually use fat as an energy source. Are you following me on that one? Dr. Bryan: Yes.
Dr. Jason: For all of our listeners out there, I’m not trying to talk too geeky on you, but basically when we don’t eat for a while, our body says, “Well, heck, I need energy. Let’s go to fat cells in our body to use for energy.” So that’s already happening first thing in the morning when you wake up. If someone were to consume a cup of coffee, just a black cup of coffee, the caffeine in the coffee will actually speed up the rate at which the body will burn fat. Are you following me there?
Dr. Bryan: Yeah.
Dr. Jason: So now if we do the coffee, and we add in that 20+ minute walk, bike, swim, whatever the case may be, you’re going to exponentially burn more fat. So that’s a super-easy hack that anyone that’s listening today, right now, could start doing, and they’ll see, they will see massive changes within three to four weeks on their body composition with that alone.
MCT Oil
Dr. Bryan: So let’s make sure we’re clear. When we talk about adding fat to your coffee, you’re not saying, “Let’s go get a big rib eye, cut off the side of the steak and actually dump it into the, dump the fat and the gristle into the coffee?
Dr. Jason: I’m sorry, I didn’t clarify that. So you can do one of two things. One, again, you could just do the coffee alone, which many times I’ve done, or you can actually as you just alluded to, Dr. Bryan, you can actually add something called MCT oil, okay?
MCT oil is a fat derived from a coconut. Now this oil, and put in your coffee, there’s really no taste to it, but also helps speed up fat usage of the body.
You can do either one with that, honestly. I’ve found both, I’ve done both ways, but bottom line is the caffeine in a state of starvation that will help you burn more fat. That’s one of the things that can transform you into a fat burning machine.
Dr. Bryan: That makes a little bit more sense to me now. All right, so just the shortcut tip is to consider a cup of coffee in the morning, and maybe putting a little bit of MCT oil or an oil in the coffee that helps your body to start to burn fat faster, increasing your metabolism, so it’s kind of a shortcut to losing weight.
Eating often
Dr. Bryan: Let’s back up to very beginning of our conversation. In a previous episode, we had a conversation with Dr. Olivia: Discover How Food is Fuel For Your Nutrition And Health [E003]
We were talking about in school, how I watched you bring your lunch in and eat every 15 minutes, and I’m thinking, why is this guy not gaining weight? He’s eating a ton of food. And your background is kind of what let you identify that that was a good way to fuel your body, and I had heard other people say that, “Hey, the key is to feed the muscle and starve the fat.” Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: Right?
But what was the theory behind bringing your lunch and eating as often as I see you are eating?
Dr. Jason: Yeah. All right. Well, there’s two things behind it. The first is the movement aspect. So I was moving my body, so when I move my body, whether it be through cardiovascular work, or through working out in the weight room or with resistance bands, my body needs calories to build muscle. Does that make sense? Dr. Bryan: Yeah.
Teaching your body clock not to store calories
Dr. Jason: So there’s an absolute demand that I have to fulfill, otherwise I’m not going to build muscle. So there’s one, and the demand is in the form of calories. The second, though, is something that I’ve taught patients for a long time, and you’ve heard me talk about this. If I’m your dad, right, and I’m giving you an allowance, and I say, “Hey, listen, Bryan. I’m going to give you five dollars every day, but you have to spend the five dollars. And if you spend the five dollars, I’m going to give you five more, right? So I’m giving you five bucks. What are you going to do with that five bucks?”
Dr. Bryan: Spend it.
Dr. Jason: Right, right. But if you don’t spend it, it’s just going to go into this savings account and it’s going to go up over, and over, and over again. Before you know it, you’ve got all this money saved up. Well, what you want to do is you want to be able to trust that you’re going to spend the money. So you know it’s coming, right? So if you know extra money is coming from your dad, then every day you’re like, “Oh, cool, I’ve got five bucks, I’m going to go and spend it.” But if you didn’t know that it was coming, if you never knew when you were getting another five dollars, you would put it away in savings. Are you with me so far in that example? Dr. Bryan: Yeah.
Regularity
Dr. Jason: Okay, so watch this. When you feed your body regularly, your body starts to trust, oh, wait. Bryan just put in some good calories. Let’s go ahead and burn these calories, build some muscle, because we know in a couple hours he’s going to give us some more. But if we don’t do that, the body’s in a state of distrust. It doesn’t know when it’s, “Going to get another meal, going to get another dollar.” So what it does is it starts to save the calories. Dr. Bryan: Got it.
Dr. Jason: And where do you think we save calories?
Dr. Bryan: Fat.
Dr. Jason: Yep.
Dr. Bryan: Got it.
Dr. Jason: So two-fold. Why I was eating so much is, one, I moved my body, creating a need for my body to have the calories to build muscle, but I also was creating a trust in my body that, hey, Jason’s going to put more calories in, it’s okay, burn this, don’t put it in fat, burn it, and then he’s going to feed us again in the future.
Dr. Bryan: So kind of like a bonfire, throwing logs onto the fire, just keeping it burning at a high rate. That’s a great way to achieve optimal health.
Are all calories the same?
Dr. Bryan: Just popped in my mind, but you referenced calories a lot in that little example you just shared.
Are all calories considered the same?
Dr. Jason: No.
Dr. Bryan: So what would you try to, when you were trying to say, “Okay, I want to stay lean, I want to build muscle”, again, I want to actually help people lose weight by learning this information. When you’re packaging small snacks, my standpoint is, I start to think, okay, maybe he was doing this because he wanted to keep his blood sugar steady. It changes the hormone release or the hormone structure in your body when your blood sugar’s level, and that can also be one of the reasons why people stay lean, it’s because they’re able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels.
Varied sources
Dr. Bryan: But when you’re talking about calories, we can get our calories in a lot of different ways. Candy bars are calories, sodas are calories.
What type of foods or calories did you try to take in when you’re feeding yourself in order to stay lean?
Dr. Jason: Fruits, vegetables, sandwiches, protein shakes. Again, you know me, you’ve known me for a long time. I’m a little bit of a robot, right, so when it comes to that stuff, it’s true. So I could get a pound of lunch meat, some good bread, some fruit, some veggies, and I would just pack the same lunch or the same snacks every day, but that was the core. I did not want to fill my body up with candy bars and soda.
Dr. Jason: I mean, openly, I mean, we were in our twenties at that time, so there was times, yeah, I was reaching for candy bars and sodas to get me through. We were staying up late and studying and hustling, and doing everything we had to do, but in general, especially as time has gone on, I still consistently put those meals in but the sugar gets farther and farther away from what I’m doing because I know it just has negative impact.
Dr. Jason: So fruits, veggies, lean meats and proteins.
The number of meals
Dr. Bryan: Protein shakes are something that I see a lot of, but let me back up. Before I even go there, I guess it would make sense to kind of share, since people are just hearing us with an audio format is, when I say he brought a lot of meals, and not just you. When I’ve been around a lot of people who are fat-burning machines and they have high metabolisms, they seem to be grazing or eating all the time.
And when I say that, some people might think, okay, well eating all the time means, what? Grabbing a potato chip or a piece of celery or a carrot stick every couple hours? On average throughout the course of a day, if you had to guess how many meals or snacks you were trying to make sure that you fed yourself, where would that sit? Dr. Jason: Six.
Dr. Bryan: Okay. So that, to me, I grew up in a family where we ate three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I think that’s pretty common for a lot of people. So when I saw six, or when somebody says six, that can seem like a lot of food.
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
The size of meals
Dr. Bryan: But I also noticed, at least in the case where I was spending time with you, is the size of the meals weren’t always huge.
Dr. Jason: Yeah, right. And so when I say six, I don’t mean like six dinners, right?
Dr. Bryan: Right.
Dr. Jason: Maybe if there’s a bodybuilder or power lifter or what not you have to, I get that. But I mean, no, for what we’re talking about, health maintenance and longevity, no. The six is three pillar meals, for sure. A breakfast, a lunch and a dinner, and then there’s three intermittent snacks throughout the course of the day. Now snacks may be a protein bar, or it could be a handful of almonds combined with a piece of fruit. It could be a half a sandwich, just something to keep up, a protein shake I’m zipping in the back and drinking, or at the time, in my cooler, back in chiropractor school. So yeah, it’s six placed calorie intake opportunities.
More frequency, less quanity
Dr. Bryan: So one thing that sticks in my mind is when you think of, again, most of us eat maybe two or three meals, and because we don’t eat as frequently as somebody that’s burning fat, is you end up allowing yourself to get really, really hungry, right? There’s this big gap in your blood sugar, spiking and then going down. You get really, really hungry, and so when you’re in that situation you overeat, and then you engorge yourself and you have this belly that’s sticking out and it’s full, and it hurts and it’s uncomfortable.
Dr. Bryan: And then the idea of adding another snack two hours later sounds miserable, right? So I think that a lot of people would benefit from maybe sizing down the meals and actually increasing the frequency in which they actually take in the food, right?
Dr. Jason: I would agree, yeah, 100%. Your wife was a great advocate and teacher of that, in combining the protein and a carbohydrate. I learned a great deal in just how she communicates that to the public, and that’s been helpful, because if you can just, if your snack was an apple and a handful of almonds, by placing that good, godly sugar in the apple with the good, godly fats and protein in the almonds, it stabilized that blood sugar where it’s enough to satiate you, but not engorge you. I love that.
Metabolizing faster
Dr. Bryan: Makes sense. All right, so really, if we look at some of just the simple ways that somebody can metabolize a little faster and start to burn fat, we shared some good things here. Number one, I’m hearing, move your body, right, which sounds pretty cliché and obvious, but evidently, a lot of people don’t move, right? Move in a cardiovascular way so you’re getting your heartbeat, move in a way where you’re anaerobically pushing yourself with bands, so you’re lifting some weights to build muscle. You mentioned the idea of putting some fat in your coffee, right, to help your body actually burn fat faster, and that’s a little bit of a stretch for a lot of people probably to take in.
Dr. Jason: When you have coffee in the morning, first thing, and then exercising.
Dr. Bryan: And then we talked about eating more frequent meals instead of waiting for your body to get starving and then going back and grabbing these big Thanksgiving feasts. Packing some snacks, maybe five or six meals a day, and then sizing them down a little bit, right?
Anything else come to mind that you think would be beneficial for people to say, “Okay, I want to start metabolizing fat faster.”?
Just start somewhere
Dr. Jason: Just start. Just start. I mean, what I mean by that, just start somewhere.
Dr. Bryan: Right.
Dr. Jason: Just take one of the things that we talked about today, and implement it, and then that literally will create some space mentally that you’re like, “Okay, I could do that.” Or just start down the rabbit hole of understanding some of these things, but just take an action on it. That’s the best thing that I could tell you.
Dr. Bryan: Awesome, awesome. All right, well, that’s a wrap for today. We just wanted to drop some information that may benefit you on how to spike your metabolism. It’s a topic that always comes up. People want to know how to lose weight. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey, you will never stay still, you’re either going to gain weight or lose weight. But if you happen to gain more weight than you wanted to have on your body, then try to incorporate one of these simple tips so you can start going in the right direction as we go into the new year.
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