103: The Magical Disappearing Fat - Nuts As a Weight Loss Food

Anita: 0:59

The Power On Plants Cookbook Bundle is now available and ready for you. It's our premier go to collection of over 50 simple whole food plant based recipes that actually tastes great and are done in a flash. So you can have more time, more energy and more joy every single day. These are our family's favorite recipes that you're going to love, because they'll actually love you back. Our friends and clients tested them gave rave reviews. And then I gathered them all into one powerful collection just to share with you go to get dot power on plants cookbook bendel.com to be the first to get your coffee. That's get.powe onplantscookbookbundle.co where you can get your hands on our quick and easy recipes t at make living a healthy l fe. Not just possible, but real y enjoyable and super deliciou to get your copy today. People just assume because nuts have re high in fat, for the most art, they're higher in fats and other plant foods. Then if you re gaining weight on a plant ased diet or a vegan diet, then you're probably just eati g too much of the higher fat foo s. And then one of the first t ings that comes to mind is n t so then people start teach ng, that's gonna cause you to avoid all

Jarrod: 2:17

the nuts. But it's actually not true.

Anita: INTRO: 2:20

And you're liste ing to the Smarter Healthy Living Podcast where we firmly elieve that getting healthy should never feel like torture We're your host, Jarrod a d Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, an health professionals who elp you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a wh le food plant based lifestyle. I's time to hear from the exp rts and learn the best tips an tricks that helped others ge beyond the overwhelm, to reate a vibrant life they ove. If you're sick and tired f being sick, and tired, you'r in the right place. So p ll up a virtual chair, grab you matcha latte, and let's get

Jarrod: 2:56

All right, Anita, what would you say is one of your favorite aspects about podcasting?

Anita: 3:02

I think for me, it's just being able to connect with new friends all around the world that I normally wouldn't even be able to meet.

Jarrod: 3:08

While your answers better than mine. I was gonna say one of my favorite things is dispelling myths. And that's what we're gonna do today. Now, we can do both, yes, doesn't have to be an either or, yes, no one or the other can be all together. But if you listen to the last podcast episode, we gave you a little bit of a teaser and said that we're going to talk about how nuts don't necessarily make you gain weight. And actually, the opposite has been found to be true.

Anita: 3:40

Yeah. And it's so funny because you hear these things, and we latch on to them as though they're real, and they're truth. But they're really not, we just hear these things in passing, because people just assume because nuts have are high in fat, for the most part, they're higher in fats and other plant foods, then if you're gaining weight on a plant based diet or a vegan diet, then you're probably just aiming to mention the higher fat foods. And then one of the first things that comes to mind is not so then people start teaching, that's gonna cause you to

Jarrod: 4:10

avoid all the nuts. But it's actually not true. And so we want to share with you some stuff that we have found that I just think is very exciting. So in 2007, there was an article written where they took 20 different trials, 20 different studies that they looked at, about nuts, and weight. So this wasn't just one or two wasn't just a few people. I mean, this was looking at a lot of studies. I love

Anita: 4:35

the studies like this, where they do studies of the studies, which is called a

Jarrod: 4:39

what we would call it a meta analysis. Yes.

Anita: 4:41

Well, I couldn't get that out meta annina?

Jarrod: 4:43

Well, that's a little bit of a tongue twister. So with that, going into it, you're gonna think, okay, nuts are high in fat, there's going to be a lot of weight gain, right. But what they found was that the weight that they saw was much lower than what they expected, and that some of the studies even showed no weight gain, or even weight loss. It's amazing. You heard that right, even weight loss. So in some of the studies, and I'll go with this first one here, they had people and they took two groups of people. And a good study, you do that you have one group that keeps doing the same thing that they're always doing your control. Then you take the other group, they were eating the same amount of food, they didn't restrict anything. They just added 40 to 50. Almonds a day.

Anita: 5:32

Yeah.

Jarrod: 5:34

And that's a pretty good amount. 40 to 50.

Anita: 5:37

That's a lot. I mean, I can't I can't remember. I really don't think we eat that many in a day unless we're eating something that has all my flour, which is just ground nuts in it. And that's very rare. And I don't think there'd be very many. If you did that. We think we need to eat more nuts.

Jarrod: 5:54

Well, we don't know we probably do. We probably should go back and take a look at it. I felt like we ate quite a few. But they do it daily for six months.

Anita: 6:04

Okay, so that was the one groups that control group they're eating the same way they've always eaten, right? The second group, they're eating

Jarrod: 6:11

50, same thing, and then they're eat except they're adding 40 to 50. Almonds a day for six months. Now that's about 320 calories extra per day. So if you calculate that out, right, oh, well, you would think with all the added calories, that it should be about an extra 16 pounds of weight added after the six months, it was a quarter pound,

Anita: 6:33

a quarter pound. Well think about that for a minute that that

Jarrod: 6:36

was statistically insignificant.

Anita: 6:39

Right? So we're talking about point two, five pounds, you could gain that drink and a glass of water.

Jarrod: 6:43

Exactly. So that's why they were saying that it was not a significant difference. Yes, they measured it. But in the grand scheme of things, it's could be that maybe one of they needed to go potty or maybe they drank a glass of water, I mean, it would have accounted for that little bit of a weight difference. Okay, but hold

Anita: 6:58

up. So what we've heard is, it's about your calories, its calories in, you know, calories in calories out and balancing that. And that has to do with your weight. And if you're gaining weight, then clearly you're just eating too many calories. So what you need to do is quit eating so many calories, but that's what this is showing. No. So then that leads us to believe maybe it's the types of calories we're eating, not the number of calories. Alright, I'm not getting ahead. But

Jarrod: 7:26

well, you may be but that's okay. That's okay. Because you're right, you're right. Now there was another thing, another study where they took one to two handfuls of walnuts that were done daily for six weeks, and there was no weight gain, it was weight neutral. And again, these were added on top of the regular foods that they were eating per day, there was no subtraction or trying to keep the number of calories the same. So

Anita: 7:52

that's one to two handfuls per of walnut day,

Jarrod: 7:55

per day for six weeks, I can no weight change. They also did a study with macadamia nuts. And this resulted in weight loss after only four weeks. And again, these were added on top they say calories

Anita: 8:09

on the That one wasn't a specific amount.

Jarrod: 8:13

I don't believe so I

Anita: 8:14

can't remember. I

Jarrod: 8:16

would imagine. I don't remember seeing that next day. And I imagine it's like one to two handfuls,

Anita: 8:21

right about the same. But the

Jarrod: 8:22

takeaway was that they added this they more loss and they actually lost weight. Okay, now, three quarter cuts, pecan. So with these different studies, different types of nuts, so we can see that it's not just one particular one, it's it's the nut class in general. But they did a three quarters cup of a cons for eight weeks. So with that, you would have added 25,000 extra calories during those two months. No weight gain.

Anita: 8:49

Where did that calories? Like? Surely they're just like a magic trick. You know, that's a great point actually is like imagine a really great magic trick people use vanished. Yeah, and we want them all learn how to do that. And the beauty of it of it is, is you can there wasn't anything magical about these people. And they weren't upping their exercise. I'm not bashing exercise here. But I'm telling you, they weren't changing anything about their life, everything

Jarrod: 9:14

remained the same between the two groups, except for that one added the extra nuts.

Anita: 9:19

That's a lot of calories just to disappear 25,000 calories. Think about that for a second.

Jarrod: 9:25

All right now, they've done other studies where they tried to get it so that the number of calories were equal, they call they called it ISO energetic, so that you had two groups, one group, they were eating what they were eating. The other group that is the test group, they were adding nuts, but for whatever energy that added they subtracted from their the rest of their daily diet, their their daily intake.

Anita: 9:51

So then the making the calories equal.

Jarrod: 9:54

In that particular study, they were trying to make the calories equal to see what would happen,

Anita: 9:58

but they added nuts as part of those calories to get them up to an E

Jarrod: 10:02

calorie. Okay. And then the subjects lost weight. But the interesting thing is is kind of a little secret behind the scene scenes thing that they noticed is that they went back and recalculated. And they actually found that the people eating the nuts consumed about 100 calories more per day. They tried to make it equal but in analysis after the fact it was actually more calories, but they lost weight, right? So they're eating more,

Anita: 10:26

but lost weight. Amazing. I love these studies. I know. And

Jarrod: 10:31

because it's not anecdotal information, it's not just Well, I tried it or someone in the remote corners of the internet tried it or not. Yeah, these are studies that are looked at by other people. They're peer reviewed. So someone writes it and then other people within that community are also looking at it looking at the data saying your conclusions are valid when and this is solid info.

Anita: 10:55

The other thing you want to look at for a solid study is Who's sponsoring it? And I know a lot of these were not backed by net companies. So those are things to look at to when you're looking at studies. Who's backed it? I mean, it shows that meat so good for you. But is it a meat company sponsoring the ad or not the ad? Well, it does come in at

Jarrod: 11:15

being an ad. But there's already Yes. I mean, that's all information that needs to be looked at.

Anita: 11:20

Yeah, absolutely. This is unbelievable.

Jarrod: 11:24

Now, a lot of these studies were done for a few months, a few weeks. But there were other studies that were done anywhere from one to six years out, and they found the same results that it wasn't just that there was weight loss initially, but Oh, long term, it would be gain now, they remained even six years out from the start of the study.

Anita: 11:42

It's incredible. So what's the moral of the story here? What's the take home for you? What can you do if you want to lose weight instead of freaking out because nuts have more calories? Because they're higher calorie as far as the vegan or whole plant foods go? Eat them any way? Why unless your doctors told you not to your you

Jarrod: 12:05

have a solid medical reasons, then please follow that medical advice.

Anita: 12:09

Right? If you know you're allergic to peanuts, or you're super sensitive to the mold that is often found on peanuts, because a lot of peanuts do have mold on them. If you find like I do that your body does weird things when you eat peanut butter. Don't eat peanuts, ate almonds eat Brazil nuts. We talked about that in the last episode. If you're not getting those, get them go back and find out why in the last episode. Get your get the ones that aren't as well known macadamia nuts. This is like anything else you want your variety, get variety in there. These things are great foods for your for you and your body was made to run on them. And it runs best surprise at the things that it was created to naturally eat. And that includes nuts. And we don't need to go nuts over nuts. I mean, being scared and fearful of gaining weight over eating a higher calorie food. There are a ton of health benefits. We're not we haven't even touched the surface scratched the surface on that. We're just talking about weight here.

Jarrod: 13:11

Absolutely. There were actually other studies where they tried to compare candy with nuts. And they took the same number of calories. As you can imagine, the people that ate the candy, their weight went up. Now in this particular one that I'm thinking about they did candy and peanuts, candy weight went up. Peanuts stayed the same. They did pistachios versus pretzels.

Anita: 13:34

Ah, okay.

Jarrod: 13:35

Yes. And the people that ate the pistachios their weight went down. Whereas with the pretzels, it went up. There was a study where they did pistachio against itself versus none. Here's what they did. They took three groups of people on one of them they 120 pistachios a day for four weeks, another group 870 pistachios a day for four weeks, and then one group ate none. So for the 120 pistachios a day, that for weeks, that was 30,000 calories. When they looked at the weight of all three of those and how it changed. It was exactly the same, there was no weight gain, the weight stayed exactly the same. And it was the same for all three groups.

Anita: 14:16

Wow, you've just blown my mind.

Jarrod: 14:18

If if we were doing a video right now, I would do that little mind blown emoji really. Just it's just amazing stuff because it runs so counter to what we would think what we've been told. And we're always equating fat equals weight, which it really was what we teach people, it's the refined fats, it's when you strip it from the foods it changes. It's just different than when

Anita: 14:44

it's the whole food, which is why you need to get more whole plant foods in a way that you absolutely love that taste great. That simple to prepare, and that's going to heal your body and make you feel good. You'll naturally lose weight. I mean, Jared, and I know we've given you the studies. Now I'm going to give you the practical. We have clients who have gone from like a size 14 to a size four. I mean, and what's the

Jarrod: 15:09

drawing, we're drawing like that wasn't their goal.

Anita: 15:11

And the same thing happened for us. We weren't trying to lose weight. I was just trying to heal. I was trying to survive. I was trying to stay alive. I was so sick. And not only did I heal and get my energy back and have a lot of different medical issues reverse. Also, we lost weight and we weren't even trying. I didn't really even see myself as overweight. But now I know that I was I wasn't where I was supposed to be. But we did that. And do we eat nuts? Absolutely. We ate nuts. Do we count calories? No, we didn't count calories to eat food we loved. Yes, we did. And that's why we're still doing it today. Because otherwise I'd be living for cheat days. And that's just no way to live. But my question is for Jared, what are some of the other benefits of eating that's because there's It's not just about losing weight we don't ever want your life to just be about

Jarrod: 16:01

you had mentioned earlier about healing? Well, we've also found that if you listen to our previous episode, that they can reduce cholesterol and triglycerides. But they've also been shown to improve blood vessel function. And blood flows Everything

Anita: 16:16

okay? And this is why my neck, I no longer here when I'm laying on my side. In my neck, I don't have that anymore. There was one side I actually couldn't lay on, because my carotid was starting to get blocked. And we

Jarrod: 16:29

eat that now. Isn't it weird bug her? And I mean, that went on for years.

Anita: 16:33

Oh, it was awful.

Jarrod: 16:34

And she has all mentioned it in a very, very long time.

Anita: 16:37

It's fantastic. And the reason is we eat these types of foods. So nuts can do this type of thing for you. I'm not saying it was just the nuts, we eat a lot of the other foundational things are

Jarrod: 16:47

some of the things we took out of what we ate. A huge difference. Absolutely. One other thing is that nuts can help reduce inflammation, which is a another huge aspect to the health problems that we have. Yeah, because inflammation

Anita: 17:02

joints I'm hurting, I'm hurting daily. Oh, it's just because I'm getting older Oh, it's just No, it's because you have chronic inflammation all the time. Because the foods we're eating are storing our bodies up. And they have to try to find it off. And then we're hurting all the time.

Jarrod: 17:18

I do want to highlight the point that inflammation is a normal healing response of the body. Absolutely. But it was never meant to be a continuous state constant. Because when there's an injury, your body responds to it to help try to clear away the injured tissue lay down the framework for new tissue to heal. And then once that happens, then that response stops, it goes away. It's kind of like you tell your little soldiers All right, guys, we're not at war right. Now. Let's go back to just normal peacetime civilian behavior, right? I was not actually in the military, I just came off of that off the top of my head. But the inflammation goes away. But when we have these things where like if we eat oils that cause inflammation, the refined oils, or if we have other things that we're doing that keeps us persisting, or we're not

Anita: 18:07

going Are we not doing the things to help it subside either like that,

Jarrod: 18:10

right? Then there's this constant damage that occurs or body's always just in a state of trying to fight stuff. And that creates this damage over a long period of time.

Anita: 18:21

Yeah. And it's a lot of pain, it can lead to disease that can lead to break

Jarrod: 18:26

down.

Anita: 18:27

Absolutely. So it's important, it's so very important to get nuts as part of a well balanced diet. And balanced.

Jarrod: 18:36

Go crazy. Now go and eat two jars of peanut butter every day now

Anita: 18:39

and that's the thing to net betters. I mean you're eating it takes a lot of nets to make a smaller thing of net better. So just eat the whole nets enjoy it. I'm not saying never eat net better either. Just eat it in smaller amounts. Don't go get the jargon. go nuts.

Jarrod: 18:54

Exactly. Now, Greg thing and I just had this idea popped into my head. So like with salads, maybe throw some walnuts or throw some pecans on there. That way that handful, but you're getting it in a more diverse way. You're not just eating the nuts, you're enjoying it, you throw it in a salad or lions movie, or we do pecan milk.

Anita: 19:13

Yeah, nut milks aren't fantastic. But the other thing I like to do is roast them lightly. We eat a lot, mostly raw wheat, mostly raw, but sometimes just see that light roasted flavor. And I don't roast on high temp, I do Low Temp roast in the oven just until they get a little bit of that flavor. That's that cooked flavor of a net. And if you can chop those up and put them in a no tuna salad or a no chicken salad. So it's basically like a recipe for tuna or chicken salad without tuna or chicken in it. It's phenomenal. And you get those same flavors, but you want to think about getting them in in ways that you enjoy that you'll actually do it. Because you'll like it. I mean, then there's trail mix, you know, can't go wrong with trail mix, you're traveling, you got

Jarrod: 20:00

to do that from time to time. lots of reasons.

Anita: 20:03

Yeah. And then just get the different ones that you don't always get and don't leave out seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, they're amazing little powerhouses of healing. Well, if

Jarrod: 20:16

you think about it, this is the whole package that creates a brand new plant. So there's tons of nutrients in there,

Anita: 20:23

get it our house, enjoy it. We are thrilled to bring you all this information, these things that we wish somebody had told us a long time ago. That's what we're passionate about. We're not passionate about making or forcing anybody to come along and adopt this kind of lifestyle. What we want to do is empower you to be able to make really great solid choices for your help. And then know that there are other options available for you that are more natural and have less side effects than some of the traditional ones you hear. Always, always look at them. long term health benefits of what you're doing the way of life you're choosing. Don't choose something just because your neighbor had some success with it for a year. So look at how that lifestyle marches out health wise, over the course of years and years of doing it, because you want something that's going to be bring true healing from the inside out. We have loved hanging out with you again today. Thank you for joining us for another episode. And a special shout out to those of you who take 1517 or even 32 seconds to write the kindness podcast review. Sister, we see them we read them and it means the world to us. Thanks for subscribing.