In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explore how the nervous system impacts fat loss and how certain behaviors and supplements can accelerate fat burning. I explain how non-exercise movements like fidgeting and shivering trigger adrenaline to boost fat metabolism. I also examine the impact of exercise intensity and fasted workouts on fat burning, and how supplements such as caffeine, GLP-1 and berberine can further support fat loss. These science-based tools go beyond traditional calorie counting to enhance metabolism and improve body composition. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes (approximately 30 minutes) focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials will be released every Thursday, and our full-length episodes will still be released every Monday. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. We want to hear from you. Take our quick survey to help improve Huberman Lab. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Fat Loss 00:01:00 Calories In, Calories Out; Nervous System 00:02:57 Fat Burning, Nervous System & Adrenaline 00:06:31 Sponsor: David 00:07:45 Increase Adrenaline, Shivering, Tool: Fidgeting 00:11:25 Shivering & Fat Loss, White & Brown Fat 00:14:42 Tool: Deliberate Cold Exposure Protocol 00:16:43 Sponsor: AG1 00:18:38 High, Medium vs Low-Intensity Exercise, Exercise Fasted? 00:24:30 Tool: Exercise for Fat Loss; Adrenaline 00:27:18 Sponsor: LMNT 00:28:34 Caffeine, Dose, Exercise & Fat Loss 00:30:17 GLP-1, Yerba Mate, Exercise; Semaglutide 00:33:16 Berberine, Metformin, Insulin 00:34:12 Diet, Adherence, Carbohydrates & Insulin 00:35:52 Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures
Chapter 1: What are Huberman Lab Essentials and who is Andrew Huberman?
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about the science of tools for fat loss.
Chapter 2: How does the nervous system influence fat loss?
Today's episode is mainly going to be focused on how the nervous system, neurons, and some of the cells they collaborate with like glia and macrophages, how those encourage or can encourage accelerated fat loss, because it turns out they can. Remember, your nervous system, which includes your brain and your spinal cord and all the connections that they make with the organs of the body,
governs everything. The nervous system and the role of the brain and other neurons has been vastly overlooked in the discussion about losing fat.
Chapter 3: Why is the calories in vs calories out formula important for weight management?
Now, I would be remiss and I'd probably come under a pretty considerable attack if I didn't just acknowledge upfront a core truth of metabolic science and also of neuroscience, frankly, which is that calories in versus calories out, meaning how many calories you ingest versus how many calories you burn is the fundamental and most important formula in this business of fat loss and weight management in general.
There's simply no way around the fact that if you ingest far more calories than you burn, you're likely to gain weight. And a good portion of that weight is likely to be adipose tissue, fat. It's also true that if you ingest fewer calories than you burn, that you will lose weight and that a significant portion of that will come from body fat.
What portion depends on a number of factors, but that simple formula is important. So a calorie is a calorie as a unit of energy, and we need to accept and acknowledge this calories in,
meaning calories ingested versus calories burned formula, but the calories burned portion is strongly influenced by a number of things that you can control that can greatly accelerate or increase the amount of adipose tissue or the proportion of adipose tissue that you burn in response to exercise and food.
Today, we're going to talk about the fact that your body fat of various kinds, and there are several kinds of body fat, are actually innervated by neurons. Neurons connect to your body fat and can change the probability that that body fat will be burned or not. So your nervous system is the master controller of this process.
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Chapter 4: What role do neurons play in fat burning?
And it plays a strong role in the calories out, the calories burned component. So let's talk about fat utilization. Let's talk about how fat is converted into energy which is sometimes also called fat burning. There's two parts to this process. One is fat mobilization. And the second is fat oxidation or utilization. And that's a process called lipolysis.
Fat cells can be visceral around our viscera, our organs, or they can be subcutaneous under our skin. Stored fat has two parts that are relevant here. It's got the fatty acid part, and that's the part that your body can use. And that's attached to something called glycerol, and they're linked by a backbone. To mobilize fat, you got to break the backbone between glycerol and these fatty acids, okay?
That's accomplished by an enzyme called lipase, but you can forget all that if you want. Remember, we're just trying to mobilize fat. So the first step is to get those fatty acids moving around in the bloodstream, to get them out of those fat cells. And then they can travel and be used for energy. They're going to go into cells that can use them for energy.
And once they are inside those cells, they're still not burned up. You need to oxidize them. They need to be moved into the mitochondria and then they can be converted into ATP, into energy. So just to really zoom out again to make sure I don't lose anybody, you got to mobilize the fat, then you have to oxidize the fat.
And many of the things that the nervous system can do is to increase the mobilization of fat, but also the oxidation of fat. So what are these neurons that connect to fat doing? What are they releasing exactly? How do they actually increase fat mobilization and how do they increase fat oxidation, burning of fat? Well, there are a couple of things that they release that encourage that process.
And the main one that you need to know about is epinephrine or adrenaline. The conversion of these fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria of cells is favored by adrenaline. And adrenaline is released from two sources. Adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands, which sit atop our kidneys and our lower back.
And it's also released from the so-called sympathetic nervous system, although that name is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with sympathy, has to do with stimulating alertness and promoting action of the body.
It was thought for a long time that adrenaline swimming around in your body of when you're fasted because fasting can increase adrenaline or when you're engaging in intense exercise or when you're stressed is going to promote fat oxidation. That's actually not the case. the adrenaline that stimulates fat oxidation, the burning of fat is coming from neurons that actually connect to the fat.
It's a local process. And this is very important because it means that what you do, the specific patterns of movements and the specific environment you create that can stimulate these particular neurons to activate fat meaning to release fat, to mobilize it, and then to burn it is going to be a powerful lever that you can use in order to increase fat loss.
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Chapter 5: How do non-exercise movements like fidgeting and shivering aid fat loss?
And given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. So one of the most powerful ways to stimulate epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline, from these neurons is through movement.
The type of movement that I'm referring to is extremely subtle, shivering movement. is a strong stimulus for the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, into fat and the increase in fat oxidation and mobilization. And there are other subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase fat metabolism and fat loss.
There was a group in England during the 1960s and 70s that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement can greatly increase fat loss. This is the work of Rothwell and Stock. It's very famous in the thermogenesis literature. And I learned about this early on when I was an undergraduate and I asked, how did they come across this? And here's how the story goes.
They were aware that some people overeat and yet don't put on weight. Other people overeat even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate extra adipose tissue. Now, this is long before all the discussions about microbiome and hormone factors and as long before many of the hormone factors besides insulin had even been discovered.
What they did was they examined people who overate and did not gain weight. And what they observed was that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement throughout the day. In other words, they were fidgeters and that's what they call them.
And in 2015, and again, in 2017, there've been studies that have explored this using some modern metabolic tracking and indeed simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter, bouncing your knee, standing up and pacing several times or many times throughout the day. considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss when people were ingesting the same amount of food.
If they overate, they were able to compensate and burn off that food. So for people that are overweight, who are kind of averse to exercise, fidgeting might actually be a good entry point. Now that's great. And you can think about the protocols, but I want to, nest that protocol in what I said before, which is that fat is controlled by these neurons and the epinephrine they release.
Those subtle movements of our core musculature not just the core, but all our limbs and our musculature, those low level movements, they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons and they stimulate the mobilization of fat. And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates. So what's the protocol? Fidget.
If you're really interested in burning calories and you already exercise, you want to burn more, or you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise for whatever reason,
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Chapter 6: What is the correct cold exposure protocol to increase fat metabolism?
When you get into cold and you shiver, the shivering, that low level movement of the muscle, those small movements, triggers the release of a molecule called succinate, S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate. And succinate acts on the brown fat to increase brown fat thermogenesis and fat burning overall.
And the question then is how long to get into that cold environment and how cold should that environment be? So first let's talk about how long to get into that cold environment. It turns out that if you want to trigger the shiver, what you want to do is to get into the cold and then get out of the cold and typically not dry off. and then get back into the cold and out of the cold.
That will definitely stimulate more shivering than just getting into the cold itself. So how cold should it be? And look, if you get into water that's very, very cold, it can actually shock your heart. It can actually give you a heart attack if it's truly, truly ice cold and you're not adapted to that. So proceed with caution, please. I'm not a physician and I don't want to see anyone get hurt.
Just cold enough to be uncomfortable is a good place to start. So for some of you, that's going to be 60 degrees. For some of you, that's going to be 55 degrees. For some of you, it's going to be high 30s, right? Depends on how cold adapted you are.
So what you need to do is find a temperature that you can get into one to five, probably one to three times a week if you really want this to accelerate fat loss. And you want to get in until you just start to shiver. And then you want to get out and not dry off. Wait anywhere from one to three minutes and then get back into the cold.
So here's a potential kind of sets reps protocol that you can play with. Find a temperature that induces shiver for you. That's going to vary depending on your cold tolerance and how cold adapted you are. One to three, maybe five times a week, get in until you, or get under the shower or whatever it is until you start to shiver, genuinely shiver.
Then after about a minute or so, get out, spend one to three minutes out, but don't dry off. Get back in for anywhere from one to three minutes, but try and access the shiver point again. And you might do three repetitions of that. So it's three times in and three times out total. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was. I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
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