Nutrition Scientist’s Diet Advice For Lean Muscle & Longevity - Dr Layne Norton - #798

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Layne Norton. He's a doctor of nutritional science, a power lifter and an author. Choosing the right diet and training plan for health can be complicated. The internet offers one view, while your jacked friend with a suspiciously high blood pressure suggests another. Fortunately, we have actual scientists like Layne to provide all the expertise you need to find the optimal diet, foods and lifestyle for you to build the healthiest version of yourself. Expect to learn why people so often fail at sticking to a diet, if there is such a thing as a best diet for overall health and wellness, Layne's thoughts on the new wave of Ozempic drugs, whether the Carnivore diet is actually healthier for you, the top health foods you should be eating more of, how bad soy is for you, whether you can build muscle on a vegan diet, Layne's thoughts on Gary Brecker and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Layne Norton.
Why do diets fail so reliably over the long term?

**Layne Norton** (1:21)
A lot of different reasons, but if we zoom out and take a 10,000-foot view, the main reason is because people view it as a diet instead of lifestyle change. So if we dig into the statistics of people who lose weight, or sorry, of obese people, seven out of every eight will lose a significant amount of body weight in their lifetime. So why do we have an obesity problem? The problem is almost all of them put it back on, and in many cases, actually put on more than they lost. So if you look at the weight regain statistics, and you go out like a year, depending on the stats you use and the inclusion criteria for regain, 50 to 70% will have regained what they lost. If you go two years, it gets closer to 80, 85%. And if you look at three years, I mean, you're looking at 90% plus.
And so slowly, the weight came back on. And so I tell people, it's hard to... If you're going to lose a lot of weight, it's hard to change your life while dragging your old habits and behaviors behind you. And for whatever reason, this doesn't seem to like click with diet and lifestyle, because, you know, I looked at a systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers. So you're basically talking about the 5%, right? Like the people who lose it and keep it off. What do they have in common? And this was a review by a researcher named Maurice Breckley. And it really stood out to me because some of the stuff that you would expect is on there, which is cognitive restraint, meaning they're either tracking calories or limiting carbs or time restricted. Some form of restraint, right? Like you have to have some form of restraint. But then, and then there was exercise on there, self-monitoring, meaning they're weighing themselves frequently. You know, that's obvious, like feedback. If you start going up, you change your habits again. But then there was something on there that like really kind of it made sense, but I was like, huh, I never thought of it that way. And it was a lot of them, almost down to a person, identified that they had to form a new identity. Like they had to become someone else. And do you know Ethan Supplee?

**Chris Williamson** (4:06)
Yes.

**Layne Norton** (4:07)
So Ethan is a Hollywood actor who lost over 300 pounds and has kept it off. And now he, I mean, he went from being basically like your prototype fat guy in a movie to like, he looks like he'd play a Navy seal.

**Chris Williamson** (4:18)
He's the prototype hard guy in a movie.

**Layne Norton** (4:20)
Yeah. Yeah. He looks like a badass. And he always would put up something when he posts his gym photos, which was, I killed my clone today.

**Chris Williamson** (4:31)
I've got a t-shirt with that on. He sent me a t-shirt.

**Layne Norton** (4:32)
Yeah. And I was like, I thought it was a cool saying, but it didn't really register. And then when I read this review, I texted them immediately and I was like, is this what you mean? Like forming a new identity. He said, that is exactly what I mean. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If you're, I don't want to say that there's like food addiction because the actual research for that is kind of convoluted. It's more about what they call food dependence, which there are subtle differences, but regardless, if you're an alcoholic, you can't live the same lifestyle you lived. You can't just say, well, I'm going to stop drinking, but I'm still going to go to bars. And I'm still going to be around a bunch of people who drink. I mean, I guess you can try, but it's going to be really hard for that to be successful, right?