 Next question is from Danny Burdick. How does poor gut health affect the metabolism and your ability to efficiently lose body fat? Okay, so I'm gonna change the question just so that the answer becomes more obvious But then we'll get more specific to this particular question. So the question now is how does poor health affect? Metabolism and your ability to lose body fat, right? If you're unhealthy Your body isn't gonna adapt as well to anything It's going to want to hold on to body fat because body fat is an insurance policy, right? If you have stored body fat on your body, that is just in case something goes wrong Just in case you don't have enough food just in case you get sick, right? You've got all the stored energy by the way our body does store glycogen in our liver and some in our muscles But it pale even lean ripped athletes have far more energy stored as body fat than they do as glycogen So it's this wonderful insurance policy. So if you don't feel good if you're if your metabolism I mean, excuse me if your health is poor your body is gonna want to store body fat It's also gonna want to not build Energy expensive muscle, right? So if you have poor health, you're not gonna build as much muscle So now let's talk more specifically about the gut. Although that falls under this category It's there's some pretty interesting specifics when it comes to gut health number one nutrient deficiencies become much more Prominent so if you have poor gut health, you're not absorbing nutrients In fact nutrient deficiencies are quite common even in people who supplement When they have poor gut health because their body's just not absorbing enough nutrients Does that affect your hormones and your metabolism? Absolutely poor gut health also strongly contributes to overall systemic Inflammation, so if you're gonna work out and get inflamed and have to heal from that Well now you're even more inflamed and it's gonna be it's gonna take you even longer to recover This is a big issue that a lot of Athletes start to run into later on because we tend to hammer ourselves with food We tend to hammer ourselves with exercise Lots of stress on the body can also make the gut more susceptible to having issues We eat right after we work out which is often a good idea But sometimes not a good idea, especially if we worked out really really really hard It can cause gut, you know imbalances then we take lots of supplements with you know artificial sweeteners Which there's debate as to whether or not it's okay for the gut or not I think that it's probably I lean more towards a probably not good for the gut And so then you see all these athletes who've been working out for a long time and they find in the 30s Can't digest food like they used to all of a sudden foods that they used to eat now They can't eat anymore and then their bodies are just not just not responding like they used to but like way differently Than they used to so this is a big deal, but so is your overall health So if you're unhealthy you can pretty much kiss, you know burning body fat and building muscle on stuff Goodbye, it's just not gonna happen as much. Well, I think there's an even simpler way to put this So and I think I remember it was I think it was Paul checked the first time we interviewed him that I really loved the way that He talked about this and I don't think I'd ever communicated it This way before and it's really this simple is your body has like 11 major systems in it And if any of them are off it affects all of them. They're all connected. They're all your one thing That's right. And it's it's and the reason why this is even a question or why there's some in somewhat of a misunderstanding Around this is because in Western medicine. We isolate we take, you know, you're you're there's a digestive system the hormone system Yeah, we're educated that way around it our professions are around that you go see a specialist for each one of those There's unless you're going to see like a holistic type of doctor. You're not you're not getting that You're getting someone who's talking to you about the central nervous system You're trading somebody who's talking to you about the skeletal system You're getting somebody that's talking about the digestive system But the truth is they all they all work together and if one of them is not running optimally It is going to negatively affect all of them now Maybe it negatively affects one system more than the other But they're all being impacted and that your your body has to prioritize To try and get that running optimal if it's prioritizing any of its energy and resources To try and fix that area that's not doing well the gut in this situation Then it's not going to be able to put as much resources to other systems It's like looking at a couple it's like looking at a car and saying Which one of these affects the car's ability to drive the the the pistons right the exhaust system the fuel injection Or the tires like all of them if all if any of one of those are off Yeah, you are which one affects the speed of the car. Yeah, they're all going to affect the car So they're all they're all going to have an issue. So if you have poor health anywhere Then it's going to make everything uh much more challenging Well, I do think though too. This is one of those overlooked areas And now it's just starting to get light because of like new science and you know We're getting more information in terms of like, you know, how to better address like gut health, uh, especially in athletics like In in what we're consuming and like how that really affects the overall System of the body and so I think that it's good that it's getting highlighted now people asking questions like this Because it's it's pointing to that fact that this is also something to really consider when when you want your body to perform at its best And and to be able to get the kind of results that you're looking for So if something like this needs to be addressed you need to look into I remember when uh, we started the podcast about six years ago Nobody in this space was talking about gut health. I mean you had the very Holistic wellness side that talked about it, but nobody in sports performance Fat loss or muscle building was talking about gut health And I remember we would bring it up We were kind of the first people in the space to really talk about it quite a bit And I remember all the messages I was getting from people who were like, oh crap It was mind-blowing to me. Yeah, even like I was I was never exposed to information, you know going through all the certifications and Uh through athletics and you know, obviously you knew that you wanted to kind of eat Better food just because you don't want to get like fatter But that was really the the the gist of what kind of information Well, it's again, it goes back to what I was saying that we just we were not educated that way We're educated in a way that breaks up all the systems And when you're thinking of like the digestive system and you're in the business of building muscle and burning body fat You just don't think about how much those those are actually connected to each other and You know, I think that's the mistake we make a lot of times is realizing that and I mean even like Mental stress will affect all those things. There's so many there's so many things that Affect your ability. That's why it's so complex too. And not always it's never a simple answer for someone Is like, oh, I'm having a hard time losing body fat even though I'm doing all these things She's calories in calories out, bro. Yeah, no, it's way more complex than that. Totally