Dhru Purohit Show
Are You Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Goals? Expert Sheds Light on the Key to Becoming Leaner and Stronger in 2025 with Dr. Mike Israetel
Wed, 15 Jan 2025
This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, One Skin, and Cozy Earth. Sticking to a healthy diet isn’t always easy, and it can feel almost impossible when you’re just starting out. While some may see this as a sign of weakness, today’s guest explains that our bodies simply haven’t evolved to keep up with modern lifestyles and the constant availability of ultra-processed foods. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Mike Israetel to discuss how our modern food environment taps into our evolutionary drive to consume and store calories for times of scarcity. Dr. Mike explains why punishing yourself or approaching weight loss with self-hatred is counterproductive and shares a practical guide for sustainable weight loss, no matter your goal. If you’re considering semaglutides, he outlines the key factors for a successful experience. Ready to crush your weight loss goals in 2025? Tune in for these expert tips! Dr. Mike, PhD, is the co-founder and Chief Content Officer of RP Strength (Renaissance Periodization) and the face of its popular YouTube channel. With a doctorate in sports physiology from East Tennessee State University, he is a seasoned expert in fitness and performance. As a former sports nutrition consultant for the U.S. Olympic Training Site in Johnson City, Tennessee, Dr. Mike has shared his expertise at global scientific and performance conferences, including seminars at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. He has coached countless athletes in nutrition and weight training and continues to push his limits as a competitive bodybuilder and professional Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu grappler. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Mike dive into: Why the human body is good at storing fat and why it has been a key part of our survival as a species (00:28) Forgiveness and acceptance of your current body while empowering yourself to make changes (10:06) How to lose stubborn fat in a sustainable way (17:13) A balanced and practical approach to fat loss (32:02) The role of obesogens, calories, and seed oils in weight gain (38:45) Hidden calories in foods and how easily we overeat without realizing it (48:34) Weight loss and appetite-suppressing drugs (57:19) Key cultural and genetic differences in obesity levels between the USA, Japan, and other countries (01:10:33) Are semaglutides appropriate for individuals trying to lose less than 30 pounds (01:26:30) How diet can help reduce addictions (01:34:57) The difference between business meals and fun meals (01:41:30) Also mentioned in this episode: Learn more about Dr. Mike and access free guides from RP Strength here For more on Dr. Israetel, follow him on Instagram, X/Twitter, YouTube, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, One Skin, and Cozy Earth. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Right now, One Skin is offering my community 15% off; just go to oneskin.co and use coupon code DHRU to save 15% and give your skin the scientifically proven, gentle care it deserves. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is fat loss difficult for many people?
Dr. Mike, welcome to the podcast. You know, fat loss is tough for a lot of people or can be tough, but actually fat gain is really easy for most of us. And there's a reason for that. And I was wondering, I'd love for you to take us down a little bit of evolutionary history as to why the human body is so good at putting fat on and how it's been a key part of our survival as a species.
You know, the animals, and humans are animals, animals survive with a couple of like non-negotiable needs. One of those is to acquire enough hydration, water. One of those is to stay away from predators. And another one is to acquire food in some capacity. And that's actually true for animals that even that don't reproduce.
So it's true to say that your desire, for example, for something like air, what's called air hunger, is higher than your desire for water. If someone said, listen, I'm either going to not let you breathe for the next 30 seconds or you just don't have to drink water for the next 30 seconds. You'd have to be unbelievably dehydrated to actually prefer the water more.
And you got air hunger, you got fluid hunger, aka thirst, and then you have food hunger, aka hunger hunger, and that drives you to consume calories and any kind of food you can get, really. There are gradations of food that you prefer more than other foods.
And that evolutionary drive is probably about as old as nervous systems, like all of them, worms and flies and parakeets and monkeys and humans and everyone. And so the drive to consume calories being one of the fundamental animal drives is also a fundamental human drive. And that means it is ultra, ultra deep drive. And it has a function, which is to make sure you get enough food.
But if we look at how humans evolved over the course of, let's say, just last common ancestor several million years ago, we split from primates, or actually technically still primates, I guess, we split from the great apes lineage. And what was our environment like in the interim? And it's almost completely true to say that it was largely an environment of pulsatile moments of
Lots of food availability here and there, you know, some running into a few trees which have a ton of apples on them sort of situation or felling a large mammoth and, you know, eating as much of that as possible. Interspersed with probably longer and more severe times of food is either just not much of it is around or none of it is around.
And so intermittent starvation is pretty much a thing for almost all animals, definitely a thing for humans during our evolutionary past. And so evolution doesn't design you necessarily for the future. It really only designs you for like the here and now. And it also works very slowly. And we're roughly the same biological creatures that we were, gee, 100,000 years ago, 500,000 years ago.
And the way we were living then is of periods of intermittently, you would just not have enough food.
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Chapter 2: What evolutionary factors contribute to our fat storage?
like pizza and cookies and ice cream, and you are losing weight to the point where your face looked gaunt, 100% go to the doctor, and he's probably going to do a bunch of screenings, including for cancer. That would be your body malfunctioning. You're eating lots of tasty snacks, and you're gaining weight. This is not a difficult thermodynamic mystery.
Yeah, I guess when I say forgiveness, really what you're talking about is acceptance and the sense of acceptance of this is the reality. There are things that contributed to this reality, no judgment, and no judgment that you want it to be different. Now let's actually look at what we want to do that's been proven in the evidence base to take us in that direction.
I think forgiveness though is such a great point because to me, the forgiveness can be best applied to earlier versions of yourself that berated yourself for having a body. You can forgive yourself for being mean to yourself because it's not nice to be mean to yourself. You could say you're, you're your number one biggest ally.
And there are times to be strict with yourself, but mean and berating and disparaging. You don't want to live inside of a mind that hates itself. So when you look at the love handles and you look in the mirror and you, you want to try to hate yourself a little bit for it. Look at hating things. Doesn't even help them change all that much.
You know, like can you imagine looking at like, you know, the, the outcast golf teen at school and is not doing his homework. And someone's like, you know, if we just hated him more and really let him know, he'd really fix his ways. I mean, I just don't think reality works that way. What you want to do. Cause you're ultimately your number one teammate is love yourself in a way.
That's not like, you know, weird Hollywood dystopian, like self-love where you just stay in a mirror for forever with those wide cult eyes, but love yourself in a way like, look, I'm on my own team. I want to live in a better body. It's a mechanics problem. How do I get the body that I want?
So we have things right now that are easier to get and easier to fix, but here it's just a matter of work and effort. It's not a matter of mystery. So for example, if you're in an outfit that you don't like, it's unlikely you're going to hate yourself for it. Like, look at you in this dress, Linda, you ****.
Like in the mirror to yourself, like you really thought you were going to look good in this dress. Almost no one does that. They go, oh, I look like, man, I don't like this. And what do they do? They go on Amazon. They do the returns. They return the dress. They get a better dress and they like it. They put it on. They go, boom, problem solved. They never have to hate themselves.
I would ask people to treat their bodies as kind of a style of clothing that they're wearing. It's just like robot thing that you exist in and you can change it just similarly to how you buy clothes. But what you'll be having to pay instead of money is diligence, effort, and time. Not a magic and psychotic amount of those.
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Chapter 5: How do calories and obesogens affect weight gain?
I hate that. All that stuff is valid. But like most feelings, at the end of the day, when you want to change something in the world, You kind of get a little bit, you rest with your feelings, you let them express themselves. You're not trying to like suppress anything. But then you ask the question of, how do I change the situation for the better?
And then that is really very straightforward process instead of having to cycle through your emotions and try to find who you really are deep down inside or something like that.
So I'll set you up for some of the mechanics with a question that often gets sent in where people want me to ask experts like yourself. So the question often goes like, Someone who's listening to this conversation says, I want to lose 20 to 30 pounds of stubborn fat. Stubborn is always in there in typically like a four to six month window.
So I would add in for somebody who's asking that, what would you say are like the three to five non-negotiable principles that have to be kept in mind if somebody wants to go down that path? You know, for the last few years, I've been really prioritizing my muscle strength. With that comes soreness, tension, and just general aches and pains that come as a natural part of the recovery process.
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Chapter 6: What role do appetite-suppressing drugs play in weight loss?
And it's also true to say that because the human body has certain fundamental constraints on how quickly it's willing to lose fat while still keeping you sane and upright, it is highly unlikely that you will lose 25 pounds of fat in that amount of time, in four to six months. it is much more likely that you'll lose about half of that fat.
But if you try to shoot for losing that much, just like shooting a rocket into space without doing your calculations, you're likely to have a bad time. You're likely to burn out of the diet. You're likely to rebound out of the diet. Even if you don't burn out, you're likely to regain all of your lost weight or the vast majority of it while doing a whole lot of suffering.
But if you aim for roughly half of that amount during that time, then there's a high probability that you'll have great success and be able to keep it off. And keeping it off is good for two reasons. One, I don't suppose you want to just get fatter later. So it's good for the obvious reason. Like someone's like, hey, here's a million dollars. And you're like, great.
And they're like, but you don't get to keep it. You're like, what? So no, thank you. But the other really good reason is that your body doesn't like to lose a lot of weight at once. because of those, again, evolved evolutionary mechanisms, good God, evolved evolutionary, that's a hell of a phrase, those evolved mechanisms that kind of freak out on you and go, dude, we're starving.
I've noted this in my little body's notebook, and as soon as I get around food, I'm gonna blast you back up into the stratosphere with all the fat I can, because we're gonna fix this starvation problem. However, after you maintain your new body weight, let's say you lose weight over the course of three months, let's call it 15 pounds, significantly more reasonable.
You probably need about three months more of just maintaining that new low body weight. And then the first few weeks, your body's like walking up and down the hotel hallway, chain smoking about it. Like, oh God, oh God, how do we get this body fat back on? This is bad. This is really bad. Calling all the calls and all this stuff.
After a few weeks, your body's just kind of sitting in the hallway in like, you know, a little seat like, eh, nothing bad's happened yet. It kind of feels like a little bit normal, but still, if I get some food in me, I'm blown back up. And then about two to three months later, you catch your body in the street and you're like, hey, remember that whole weight loss thing? And it's like, what?
No, I got to go to work, man. I don't even know you. And it walks off and you're like, oh my God, it forgot. It didn't forget entirely because as it's walking away, it's going to be like, ah, I remember that guy. But it's going to be a faint memory. And so your body gets used to whatever weight you're at much more than right after you got there, after a few months.
And then you're able, if you like, to take another chunk out of that journey. So we lost 15 pounds in the first three months. Another three months we chilled. Chilling means you're still diligent about everything and making sure you don't regain the weight, which I have tons of tips on. And we have tons on our YouTube channel, all that stuff.
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Chapter 7: How do cultural differences influence obesity rates?
There's a cost to shooting for goals that are impossible. And here's the worst one. I think probably it's the psychological cost. of having really poured your heart and soul into a plan that most nutritionists could have looked at and been like, you're not, this is crazy. You're not going to be able to do this. You're like, I got it, bro. No worries. You just never talked to anyone.
And then you pour everything into it. You try so dang hard. And then on the end, you just fall apart. It breaks you and you start regaining the weight. And You consider yourself an ineffectual person. You lose a substantial amount of self-efficacy of self-belief. It's good to succeed on average more than you fail in life because it teaches your brain like, I'm a competent person who can do things.
And someone's like, hey, do you want to start a 5K running program? You're like, yes. And they're like, are you sure you're going to be able to stick to it? You're like, well, generally, I stick to most things. But listen, it's not very hard to set so many goals up that are so exotically crazy for yourself that you have almost no chance of achieving them.
And over time, you can teach your brain things
you're just not good at starting things or doing things and then next time you feel like changing your life your brain is going to low-key be like that's not an us thing we don't do that we fail remember and you're like yeah well it's not for me and so a lot of people try dieting but do it way wrong mostly because they take these crazy bites out of this like mouth more full than you can breathe air through type of situation you know a snake consuming the elephant type of goal and and then they burn out of it and then over time they learn that just dieting is not something that works for them but it
does work for them. They've just been doing way, way, way too much upfront. And I know it's crazy. I'm supposed to be telling you all empowerment and stuff, but the best kind of empowerment is being in touch with reality and doing things at a pace that'll require, or sorry, that cause you to have success rather than cause you to have very glorious burnout and failure.
Oh, this is so great because it echoes on all the data that's out there that we've been writing about in our newsletter that people like you have highlighted, which is that most people will actually lose some significant amount of weight in their life. The challenge is 80 to 90% will gain it back. And what you're talking about is having realistic
doable goals that have a history of working for other people, like the mechanics of them, to get to a point where the weight you lose, even though it's a lot less than maybe this 30 pounds you have in your head, maybe it's half that, but you're actually going to keep it off for good because you've changed your life approach. And the other thing that I think is an aha moment for a
is that the body doesn't want to, or the body freaks out when you lose weight too quickly. So I think those are like two big takeaways from everything that you've said for our audience.
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