Sep 18, 2023
For years dietitians have used formulas to estimate (imperfectly) a person's metabolic needs. But a new company using well-established technology is taking the guesswork out of metabolic testing using doubly labeled water. Today's episode talks about the precision of the science and the implications for unmillennial women in midlife who want to gain a better understanding of their bodies and overall calorie needs using the best at-home metabolism test.
podcast, umillennial, unmillenniallife, Gen X, podcasts for women, women over 40, women over 50, metabolic testing, at-home metabolic testing, doubly labeled water, Calorify, best at-home metabolism test
(transcript generated through AI; may contain spelling errors)
Regan Jones 0:00
Hey there podcast listeners. Today's episode is brought to you in
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Hey there podcast listeners. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to do a little bit of housekeeping briefly, to let you know that if you were a subscriber via email for podcast notifications, there is a good chance that you have accidentally been moved over to a mailing list that is exclusively for my new baking website. And I will tell you upfront, I am sorry about that in trying to segment lists and get the people that wanted to be receiving notifications about the baking website, this baking life.com. And people who want to receive notifications about the podcast is a millennial life.com. There's a little bit of overlap there. And so what I want to ask you to do is that if you want to be sure that you are getting notifications, email notifications, anytime I release a new episode, please click the link in the show notes. It'll direct you to this a millennial live.com/subscribe. Or you can just put that in your browser, this unmillennial lifecom/subscribe. I have tried to do my best to clean that list up and make sure that you are where you want to be. But there's nothing like you making sure that you're getting those notifications. So if you've not been getting email notifications from me that episodes have been releasing, please go ahead and sign up. Now let's get on with today's episode.
If your skin doesn't know whether to breakout or wrinkle, if you're caught between planning the third grade class party and researching retirement plans, or if you want to work out but the idea of CrossFit makes your 40 Something knees a you've come to the right place. Welcome to This Unmillennial Life.
Regan Jones 3:10
I'm your host, Regan Jones and welcome to today's show. So at some
point, when you're listening to today's interview, you're gonna
hear me say something to the effect of this is probably one of the
most enlightening interviews that I've done in the seven seasons of
doing this podcast. And I tell you that is the honest truth. I did
not know anything about doubly labeled water for metabolic testing.
When I went into this interview I had briefly been told about it
from one of today's guest, Jenna Braddock. I'll tell you more about
Jenna in just a second. But I just really didn't know anything
about the science and had no idea what a tremendously powerful and
accurate measurement of metabolism it is. You'll hear us talk about
that, as dietitians. Jenna and I both were educated on a total
different system of not actually measuring metabolism, but
estimating metabolism. And so what you're going to hear today is
the science behind how we can actually now truly test someone's
metabolism and other things through this technology that glorify is
bringing to consumers. It's been around the technology. I've
learned this through the interviewer for many, many years, but it's
now something that's accessible to us. So you're going to hear all
about the technology, the implications for us as unmillennial men
and women who may want to participate in this metabolic testing. So
what the implications are and then of course, we'll make sure that
you understand how you can do this for yourself if you're
interested. Okay, so this is a pretty lengthy interview. I am not
going to do and odds and ends ending of today's show. I'll tell you
that upfront, but I am going to take a few minutes before we jump
into the interview to to introduce both of my guests. Alright, so
the first guest is Jenna Braddock. You've heard Jenna on the show
before we have discussed teen athletes in the past. We You have to
we have touched on the Enneagram. And most recently she was on the
show, talking about creatine for women and I will of course place a
link in the show notes to all the episodes that Gemma has done with
me I know that you're going to enjoy her she's just a really good
interviewer. She just covers things really well and in an easy to
understand why and I'm so thankful for to her for bringing to my
attention, this opportunity in this testing. If you aren't familiar
with Jenna, briefly, let me give you a little bit of her bio. She's
a performance dietitian. She's located in St. Augustine, Florida.
And she specializes in sports nutrition, and helping everyone that
she works with perform at their best. She says that her mission is
to make healthy easy. And you can also find her all across social
media and on the internet under that kind of brand name make
healthy easy, and she really likes to equip people to fuel for
energy, trust their body and live with purpose. Okay, so that's
Jenna. You're also going to hear Jenna probably in a future episode
as she and I talk about something totally different and talk about
our experience with a faith-driven entrepreneurs group. That's
really how Jenna and I have kind of cultivated and deepened our
friendship and I just appreciate her so much. Okay. And then the
other guest on today's show is Hari Mix. Hari is the CEO of the
company that we're going to be talking about that's doing this
technology. The company is Calorify. Hari holds a BS and PhD from
Stanford. He was a faculty member at Santa Clara University prior
to starting Calorify. During his time at Stanford Hari was one of
the fastest distance runners in the world. And this is so
interesting following his running career Hari's drive to climb the
world's highest mountains without supplemental oxygen, ultimately,
is what led to a passion for metabolism and the idea for Calorify.
He's a fascinating individual. And also, just like Jenna, an
excellent, excellent interview, he was a wonderful guest. And I
just appreciate them both taking the time to share this information
with me. And you. And with that, I'll say, Jenna, and Hari welcome
to the show.
Jenna Braddock 7:10
Thanks, right. Here.
Regan Jones 7:12
Yeah, well, I was just telling you guys that this will be, even
though I'm in my seventh season for the unmillennial life, this is
a first and having two guests on at one time. So we're gonna play
this by ear and see how it goes. I know it's gonna be wonderful.
And I'm thrilled to have you both on one because I think you both
bring unique knowledge to the table Hari, you as the founder of the
company, Jenna, you as a dietitian, who, you know, has had the
opportunity to do the testing and are using it in your own
practice. So I appreciate both of you. Joining me today, I think
the way that we need to open this up really hard is a question for
you about metabolism. So that's kind of how I have pinned this
episode about metabolic testing. And you know, we're gonna talk
about what doubly labeled water is. But let's first just start with
a basic definition of metabolism. And then maybe you can address
some of the common myths, women especially have about metabolism in
middle age.
Hari Mix 8:09
Okay, excellent. Yeah, that those are great questions. And I think
they're really valid questions, because people oftentimes hear the
word metabolism or even use the word metabolism and don't
necessarily have have the best understanding of what it is. So we
each have 37 trillion cells in our body. And this is, you know, the
the set of all of the chemical reactions that sustain life in your
body, that's metabolism. So everything that your body is doing to
stay alive. When we talk about metabolism at the company, we're
oftentimes talking about energy metabolism. So each one of those
cells requires energy. And so metabolism is basically you're
burning that fuel, you're burning that energy to sustain life. And
so that's what we mean when we talk about it. So we're talking in
you know, in this case, a lot of this conversation is going to be
talking about those, those units of energy calories, right? So how
many calories per day? Are you burning, things like that? That's
what we mean, when we talk about metabolism. Sometimes other people
are talking about a specific aspect of metabolism. So you might see
a, you know, a magazine in the checkout aisle. And this kind of
speaks to some of the myths you you brought up maybe. So a lot of
those are people talking about maybe you know, your glucose
metabolism or maybe some other aspect of it. And I think there's a
lot of misinformation out there. And there are a lot of ways to get
kind of lost in the weeds. And so I think hopefully this
conversation is a way to kind of step back and look at the big
picture. In terms of common myths. I think that we all kind of
still tell stories about ourselves and about our bodies. We all
like to kind of create narratives. And the problem with just
creating the narrative is that nobody's actually been kind of
measuring anything. When when we actually do measure metabolism and
this has been done at really large scale in the scientific
literature actually is Scientific Adviser Hermann Ponsor at Duke
has done a lot of this work, we really see that there are mainly
two controls on metabolism. One is basically how big you are. So
how much lean body mass not fat mass, but how much lean body mass
everything else in your body that you have. So the bigger you are,
the more calories you burn, not not too big of a surprise there.
And then the other thing that shouldn't be too surprising is, you
know, the second factor, which is your activity level. So the more
active you are, the more calories you burn. I think that there's a
lot of of mythology there about getting into middle age, maybe
having kids is when you noticed that your your weight changed, your
body composition changed. And a lot of people attribute that to
metabolism. When we look at the literature, we see that people tend
to have pretty stable metabolisms through adulthood. So they
basically, you know, it increases at birth, and then you know,
oftentimes peaks in late adolescence, pretty stable throughout your
life. And then it really starts to drop off and kind of later
middle age, so kind of postmenopausal for women kind of age 60, or
thereafter, is where things tend to start to decline for
people.
Regan Jones 11:12
Okay, that I'm gonna say, I'm gonna raise my hand and say yes,
myths, I, these are facts that I did not know. So I'm gonna be the
one that's going to be learning a ton today as well. Were there
other myths that you wanted to go over? Because I have a question
for Jenna, just about, you know what this what this means for us in
terms of measuring it,
Hari Mix 11:31
I would say the other major kind of category in terms of people
saying, well, my metabolism slowed down after fill in the blank
would be that there are things that you can take, like certain
supplements or whatever, that will boost your metabolism. And there
are some things out there that are snake oil, there are some things
out there that are illegal wouldn't recommend either of them.
Basically, the best way to boost your metabolism is to either put
on lean body mass, which is to say build muscle, for example. And
then also to increase your activity level. So no, no, no silver
bullets and their shortcuts really sadly.
Regan Jones 12:10
Okay, so that's a pretty good myth to dispel for people right
there. I will ask one clarifying question. You also would put
thyroid medicine in that same category. And that's one of those
that I wonder about, because I hear people say, you know, oh, well,
once they started taking thyroid medicine to to improve, you know,
a hypothyroid condition, they seem to have an easier time keeping
their weight where they wanted it to be myth that what do you think
about that?
Hari Mix 12:35
I would say fact now, just to be completely clear, I'm not a
medical doctor. But yes, I mean, if you have a medical condition
that's affecting your metabolism, like hypothyroidism, and then you
get that treated, yeah, your metabolism is going to rebound. The
other thing is we have and this may be can come up later in the
conversation, we have worked with a variety of people that have had
medical conditions affect their metabolism. And so just to tease
that topic, things like anxiety, and stress can affect your
metabolism, things like autoimmune diseases can affect your
metabolism. And actually, even my wife is on cancer treatment right
now on chemotherapy, and that clearly affected her metabolism as
well. So yeah, there are other things related to kind of medical
conditions, but I would say for somebody who's healthy, kind of No,
you know, no magic out there.
Regan Jones 13:30
Yeah, there's nothing they're ordering off of Amazon. It's just
gonna base their base their metabolism. Okay. So wonderful
definition. And we've talked about some of the common myths. Jenna,
a question for you, especially since I understand you are either
currently using this in your practice or plan to, you know, from a
dietitian perspective, and especially a dietitian, I know that you
are working with some on millennial women. Why do we want to
measure metabolism?
Jenna Braddock 13:58
Yeah, that's a great question. So what I'm seeing very commonly in
women in their 40s, and 50s, particularly, is that's when they
really struggle to feel like they can trust their body, and feel
confident about how to fuel themselves as a result of these
physiological changes that are occurring. And so that can lead to a
lot of traps, it can lead to under fueling, it can lead to over
exercising, it can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety about what
they're doing as well. So I recommend color five, metabolic
testing. When a client is feeling really frustrated or really
disconnected from being able to trust their body. Maybe they've
been working on their mindset. They're trying to learn to listen to
their body, they're trying to fuel their body for energy. They
looked at their behaviors and lifestyle. And in a lot of cases with
my clients. They really like what's happening. They feel like
they've grown they've they have a healthier diet. They're feeling
good, but their body composition just doesn't seem to be
responding. And so this is have really easy tests to complete. And
we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And what I
appreciate about this type of metabolic testing is that it's an
accurate measurement. It's not an estimate, a lot of the other
options that are out there for metabolic testing may take a
baseline number, but then they estimate a lot of the other data
that they're giving you. And this one's actually a measurement of
what's happening. And I think that can shed a lot of important
light on a person's body, so that they know what's really happening
inside of them already referred to the narratives we sometimes
create. You know, I work a lot with behavior, change and mindset
with my clients. And so when we have like true data on what's going
on in your body, we can then look at some of those narratives and
begin to ask, well, is that serving you? Well, is this the right
way that you want to be thinking at this time of your life based on
what we know about your body, and it can really empower them then
to really decide, am I overworking my body, my overtraining do I
need to add more rest to I deserve more rest here, or maybe they're
not feeling enough, or maybe they're feeling their body more than
what they require? Maybe they need to break up with their
smartwatch or their tracker as a result. So it can really give us
such good insight into the body of what's actually happening
happening. So that we can then tailor behavior change, lifestyle
modifications, eating changes, to really support that unique person
to perform better in their life.
Regan Jones 16:28
Yeah, you know, when you shared with me kind of a little bit of
this, what you've just shared when we talked about it personally,
and I started thinking through what you said about accuracy versus
estimate. I mean, you and I both know that as registered
dieticians, part of our historic education was trying to determine
the absolute best formula to look at someone. And even if we knew
something as detailed as their body composition based on a DEXA
scan, you're still just making an estimation. And it's one of those
things where you think like, gosh, for so many decades, that's
that's the tool that dieticians have had to use. And while I'm sure
we've all been using the best tool available, it strikes me that
this is obviously a huge evolution in being able to really
understand what's going on with somebody. So let's talk about the
evolution of the science because, you know, there's this, this term
that goes along with glorifying what you do. And that's doubly
labeled water technology. I mean, that's essentially what you're
using for this metabolic testing Hari question for you. I have no
idea what that is how that works. So walk us through what that
is.
Hari Mix 17:43
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, simply put doubly labeled water is
the only way, not just on the market, but the only way ever
actually discovered in science to measure real world, you know,
calories being burned, you know, in total. So how many calories per
day are you burning, which is kind of that number that you are
mentioning with these formulas that everyone's trying to get after.
And so first let's talk about the competition. Competition are
these formulas and they take your age, height, weight, and sex, I'm
sure you're both aware of these, and you're gonna get some estimate
of your basal metabolic rate, how many calories you're burning at
baseline. And then you're gonna have to estimate how much activity
that person is doing. You might ask them some basic questions about
how active they are at work or in their daily life. And you
basically multiply these two guesses together and get this even
bigger guests. And when we compare that to the only actual
measurement that's doubly labeled water measurement, those are only
about 50%. Accurate. Wow. And then you look at the whole smartwatch
thing smartwatches and wearables you know everything from Fitbit to
whoop or Garmin, Apple Watch all that stuff. Everybody thinks just
because it's on a watch. And it's real time data. And it's a cool
interface that it must be super accurate. And the answer is no,
they're doing the exact same thing that you've been doing with
those calorie equations. It's just that maybe they'll add a little
bit of, you know, accelerometry, they can tell how many steps
you're moving or whatever they might tell tell your heart rate,
they only add about 5% more accuracy. So only about 55% accuracy.
If you have something like an Apple Watch on those, that means that
those can be off by 1000s of calories per day, depending on who you
are. So you may be average, it might be accurate, or it might not.
And in contrast, doubly labeled water is the way to measure
calories in the real world. So let's go for the name first doubly
labeled water. It's literally water, h2o, but we've labeled the
hydrogens and oxygens on that water. So we've kind of like tagged
them or fingerprinted them. And so what we're going to be able to
do is track hydrogen and oxygen through your body and then out
through your urine. So the way it works for our company, you were
the only one on the market doing this. There's only about 14 labs
in the world that can do this at all. We have the largest fastest,
cheapest and most reliable of them, you're gonna get a kit in the
mail, and you know where to order a kit, get a kit in the mail,
you're gonna get this bottle of this water, it's literally just a
sip of water. And you're going to collect three urine samples over
the course of a week. And what the technique is actually doing it
when you just mail your samples back little box about the size of a
pack of cards, put it in your mailbox and get your results within
24 to 48 hours. And what it's doing is it's tracking hydrogen and
oxygen flowing through your body. And what it's solving for is the
amount of co2 that you breathe out over the course of that week. So
if you've ever done a resting metabolic rate test or a view to max
test, you'll wear a mask. And it'll measure how much you're
breathing in and out how much oxygen and carbon dioxide, what we're
doing is we're getting that exact same signature, but we're getting
it in your urine. So a good analogy would be, we're like a sensor
hooked up to the tailpipe of your car, there's exhaust coming out
of the car, that's like kind of same thing as like your urine. And
we are basically by measuring the amount of exhaust coming out that
tailpipe, we can tell how much gas you're burning. And so that's
what we're doing. We're measuring your personal gas mileage, the
rate at which you burned fuel, with this special fingerprinted
water basically. And it's it's a it's just unbelievable, because it
is relatively painless, it's not invasive, I mean, you have to get
this kit, take a week to do it. But it's it's just a simple at home
process. And then the accuracy is just unparalleled. So for most of
your audience, you know, I'm guessing that they're not the size of
like NFL players, for example, most of them can probably expect to
have accuracy within 100 calories, which is just unbelievable for
you know, the, you know, the actual everything you do in the real
world and how much uncertainty there is with everything that you do
to be you everything that you you do you know, in your normal
lifestyle for the course of a week. It's just unbelievable to be
that accurate.
Regan Jones 22:06
That is unbelievable. And very exciting. Now I'm going to ask two
more questions before I move on to some additional questions. One,
or the first one being about the safety. I mean, you know, people
hear things like we're tagging the hydrogen, we're tagging the
oxygen, walk me through from a safety standpoint, why that's not
something that people should be concerned about at all?
Hari Mix 22:28
Yeah, absolutely. It's a really good question. So this is already
in your body. So you already have this type of oxygen and hydrogen
in your body. It's just rarer than the normal common water. And so
all we're doing is we're just changing that mixture, so we can see
it. So it has no effect on your body. Other than that, it's h2o. So
it's like you took one sip of this water. And this has been done on
humans for 41 years now. And it's been done on all groups of people
with an impeccable safety record. So it's been done on infants,
elderly people with different disease states, it's been done on
pregnant and breastfeeding women. And we've actually, you know,
learned a lot of things about that, through this method. It's
actually really cool what we've learned about motherhood. So it's
been done on every group of people without incident, it really is
as safe as drinking normal water, which is just, you know,
wonderful as well for us as a company.
Regan Jones 23:29
Okay, and you actually answered my second question, which was just
the sort of historical perspective of how new is this technology?
And you said, this has been done for 40 plus years. So if I could,
let me ask why then all of a sudden, now, are we at a point where
it's something that consumers can access?
Hari Mix 23:51
Yeah, really good question. And, you know, allows me to brag about
what we've accomplished at the company. The test is actually even
older than that. So the math for this was invented in 1949. That's
when the theory was invented by this guy, Nathan Lipson at
University of Minnesota. And then it was first done on mice in
1955, because it was too expensive to do on humans. And the reason
why is that this special water is really expensive. It's a very
rare form of water, which makes it very pricey. And so then it took
a few decades for basically the price to come down to the point
where they could actually start doing human studies in 1982. That
was first I'm at University of Wisconsin, and then it's basically
ballooned into the being this great research tool. The thing is,
it's very laborious and tedious and kind of a one off measurement
and you so you can imagine a lab with one graduate student, you
know, tinkering one vial at a time and you know, like, very, very
laborious and tedious and kind of boutique, and we solve that
glorify a suite of problems to basically make this cheaper and
faster and more scalable. There was some newer technology in terms
of making the measurements that was available starting in the late
90s. Frankly, I'm surprised that nobody did this just a little bit
before us. But I think it does speak to the the size of the
challenge of basically making this test routine enough and scalable
enough that you can commercialize it, and put it into this at home
test package, basically. So we solve the suite of challenges to
bring the test price down. And to make the results fast enough that
for the first time ever, with glorify, you can actually act on your
results. So all these academic labs, they've produced wonderful
quality data. And it's great, you can read in the scientific
literature, these incredible insights. However, there's never been
a moment until now that you can actually take a take a doubly
labeled water test, you know, so now you can do that from glorify,
and you can get your results within one to two days to where, oh,
my gosh, now I actually can know my metabolism and then make a
change or make a decision based on that information. This is the
first time that's ever been possible. So we really are proud of
that achievement. But it's been you know, it's been a long time
coming. The good news is the the test is bedrock science, we didn't
have to reinvent anything there. The test works. And everybody in
the scientific community has known that it works for many decades
now. And everybody in the scientific community has known that it's
safe for many decades now. So we didn't really reinvent any
science, we just really, really improved the process.
Regan Jones 26:37
Okay, that is a really good explanation. And very reassuring,
really, to hear. Because when you when you first even me as a
dietitian, who, you know, certainly does not specialize in any type
of metabolic testing. Even you hear this and you think, huh,
question mark, you know, how can this be as good as it sounds, but
I really appreciate you walking through kind of the history and the
safety, and then the science backing all of it up. Okay. So let's
move on to really thinking about, you know, if you get this
information about your body, what you're going to do with it, like
how does it help you and I kind of have two people in mind, I have
middle aged women, and then I have athletes, because you kind of
mentioned athletes, Hari and so just to kind of continue that
thought, why don't you walk through it from a standpoint of what
you see this information could do to help someone who is an athlete
how it would help them? And then Jenna, I'll throw it over to you.
And you can talk about it from a middle age, you know, unmillennial
women standpoint? Yeah,
Hari Mix 27:35
absolutely. I think a lot of the goals of athletes are the same as
as just everyday people. It's just that they, they really, really
need that accuracy. And they really, really need that performance.
The performance matters. If you're on Team USA Wrestling, who we've
worked with one pound matters, you know, and so they care about
that precision, but they have the same goals as a lot of other
people. So I think the you know, the main one that jumps out to
begin with would be improving your body composition. And when we
say body composition, we mean basically how much lean mass you
have. So things like muscle versus fat. And so they're going to
have the same goals that most of America has, which is they either
want to build muscle without gaining too much excess fat, or they
want to lose fat without losing too much muscle. So like say, you
know, whenever somebody says I want to lose weight, what they mean
is I want to lose fat, nobody wants to lose muscle and keep fat.
And so they want to do that in the most efficient way possible.
What we can do is we can pinpoint how many calories you're both
eating and burning, so your complete calories in calories out
budget. And then we can help you pick a calorie target in terms of
how many calories you should be eating, to meet one of those goals.
So, for example, let's take weight loss. You want to be able to
lose weight, lose fat efficiently. But you don't want to lose too
much lean mass along the way. So you need to be in a calorie
deficit, you need to be eating less than you're burning in order to
do that. But if you go too steep, get too aggressive. And we see
this all the time. We see it in top athletes and we see it in
everyday people. You know, when you're getting started losing
weight, you oftentimes get super aggressive and you start changing
a million variables at once and then guess what it works until it
doesn't something's something breaks, and maybe you plateau or
maybe you yo yo in and out of that goal, that kind of a thing. And
athletes are susceptible to that just like anybody else. So for
example, we had a top NBA player was losing weight. We figured out
that they were training too much modified that was able to get them
into a calorie surplus and they put on a ton of muscle and they've
come back a completely different athletes. So there's there's that
the second thing that we can do for athletes that probably isn't as
big of a deal for everyday people is that we can quantify how much
physical activity are doing. And there's no other way of doing
that. And so what are this most holistic view of basically your
training load. And it's important for top athletes, because they're
oftentimes flirting with the maximum amount that you can train
sustainably. And so we can actually help pinpoint and make sure
that they're training, but not overtraining. And that if they are
overtraining, we can help navigate them out of the red zone. And so
we've done that with a lot of top athletes as well, for example, a
lot of top distance runners we've worked with on this. So yeah,
I'll leave it there. But those are the main two, I would say would
be improving body composition. So either losing fat or building
muscle, or, you know, monitoring their training.
Regan Jones 30:48
And heart when we talk about athletes, air, quote, athletes, we're
talking about grown adult athletes, not teen athletes, is that
accurate? Because you said something at the very beginning, you
know, about like, when your metabolism sort of sort of settles into
what it's going to be in adulthood. So we're not talking about
doing this with teen athletes, is that correct? We haven't been
Hari Mix 31:09
working with teens, although we are set up to do so I would say
this that like, you know, we would we would want to look at you
know, where, you know, if it is a teen athlete, you know, what
their needs are in terms of still needing to grow. And that's where
we really want to work with people like Jenna, who really
understand that. One of the things about us as a company is that we
kind of view ourselves as a tool. We really like working with
people and their doctor or and their dietician or, and their
strength and conditioning coach or performance nutritionist or
whoever it is. And so we are we are set up to work on younger
people. But when I talk about athletes in my answer just now I'm
talking about professional adult athletes. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Regan Jones 31:55
Okay, so Jenna, then I want to throw it over to you. And you kind
of answer that same question. But as it relates to the and
Millennial or middle aged woman, like what would she do with this
particular information?
Jenna Braddock 32:10
Yeah, one of the things that is really important to understand
about caloric testing is that it's multiple tests in one. So you're
getting a slew of data, which typically, you'd have to go and get
all these different tests, so you're getting your resting metabolic
rate. So that's the baseline energy needs. And that, to me is
really enlightening for women, when we talk about the myths around
metabolism, and how like the 1200 calorie range is thrown out is
what you should be eating to lose weight that is appropriate for
very few people on the whole. So that's helpful information. So we
get that you get the accurate number of how many calories you're
eating each day. So you get the real picture of what's happening,
you get your accurate assessment of how many you're expending total
in a day, which That in itself, I think, is very enlightening. It
was for myself, it has been for a couple of women that I've used
this tool with, because they're not giving themselves enough
credence on the amount of energy that they're expending in a day.
And then we can have a conversation, well, maybe this is one of the
reasons you feel stressed or tired or fatigued or overwhelmed, like
you're doing a lot here. So we get those three. But in addition to
that, we get a very accurate body composition measurement. And we
haven't touched on that super closely yet, but you're getting the
amount of lean body mass and fat mass in your body, which is
typically its own separate, you know, tests on its own. And then
two other things, you're getting your hydration level, so you're
getting an accurate picture of how hydrated you are. And the last
one is that training load, which Hari referred to with the
professional athletes, but that once again, can be a very
enlightening piece of information, especially if women are active
for them to know like, Am I pushing it too much? Do I have more
capacity to give here? Or am I sitting in a nice sweet spot. So all
of this information for me and my practice, the goal is not to then
be like, Alright, here's your calorie prescription, go forth and
track like, actually, that is not what we're doing at all. It's
more for them to be better connected and informed on their body and
what they need in a general sense. And then we can fine tune and
tweak. So if a woman's really happy with how they're eating, but
they're not able to change that body composition, then we can say,
well, you have a lot of capacity here to build muscle or on a
regular basis, you're eating more energy than what your body
requires. We know that now we're not guessing I'm not shaming you
about that. Like this is actually what's happening here. Or on the
flip side as well, which I see in the fitness world is women who
are like, well, I need to do more exercise and eat less. That's you
know, that's the prescription. I've literally had women tell me
like, I can't exercise more and I'm eating as little as possible
and there couldn't be a more perfect storm for like ruining your
life basically.
Regan Jones 34:56
Yeah, no doubt.
Jenna Braddock 34:57
So this gives you like, legit information on your body which when
you then work with a dietitian, we can like partner on this and
say, Okay, here's what we know about your amazing body. And here's
how we can take better care of it with this precise information.
And just like Harvey said, even though athletes are, you know,
their main job is training for us as women, like we still want to
perform. And I know we've talked about this before on the podcast
together, like performance matters for us in our lives, whether
that's in the roles of our lives, or the jobs we carry, or even how
we're managing our home and all the different decisions in our day.
And this piece of information can really help us to perform better
in whatever matters to you and for whoever's important to you.
Regan Jones 35:38
Yeah, yeah, that's really a good way to kind of summarize, like,
why you would want to do this and what the benefits would be. I
mean, who, who, who wants to be banging their head up against the
wall thinking that they're doing air quotes, all the right things,
but really, they just got the wrong formula to kind of get there. A
couple of other questions. And Jen, I'm gonna throw this one out at
you. We didn't talk about ahead of time that I was going to ask
this, but I'm just curious. You sent me your results. And and I
will tell tell listeners, I am planning to do this for myself. And
then follow up in a future episode to kind of walk through maybe
even hopping back home with Jenna and kind of talking about what it
what it means for me, but Jenna was kind enough to share her
results with me. And I'm gonna be honest with you, Jenna, I looked
at it. I was like, wow, that's a lot of calories. Like, were you?
Were you at all surprised when you saw the results? What it
said,
Jenna Braddock 36:31
Yes, I was. So I burned more calories than I thought I did. And I
eat more calories than I thought I did. And I don't mean that in a
negative way. But you and I actually eat in a pretty close to an
energy balance for that. Yes, you do. Again, like, oh, I can trust
my body. Like we're getting the job done here. So yeah, it is
incredibly enlightening. And I mean, Hari can can speak to seeing a
lot of data. And we've had lots of conversations like okay, what do
you see across the board? And this isn't that uncommon? For me to
in the research actually shows that people burn way more calories
than they think they do. And currently, more than most of these
trackers are telling them that they did. Yeah. So it's very
enlightening. In that sense. I think you can really learn a lot and
again, it some women like need permission or being to feel
permission to like relax and rest and recover. Yeah, this is one of
those tools that could like legitimately say, like, no, like you
can have a real rest day. You can, you can take a nap, you can not
go to the gym, and you're going to be just fine. In fact, you're
probably going to be better and stronger for it as a result.
Regan Jones 37:39
Yeah, very good point. Very good point. Okay. So is there anybody
that you think Jenna, from a dietician perspective, that you would
caution? I mean, I know we're not concerned about the safety of the
actual testing. But are there any, you know, population groups or
people that you would have concern with them doing this type of
testing?
Jenna Braddock 37:59
Yes, I mean, I think every, everything is a case by case basis in
my practice. And this is not a test I'm recommending for everyone I
work with. And it's typically something that comes a little bit
further down the line after we've worked together for some time.
But if you have a history of disordered eating, or restrictive
eating, or calorie counting has been something that has been a
really negative piece of your story. And this may not be the right
tool for you or the right tool for you at this time. And that's
something that I'd say you'd want to talk to your healthcare
practitioner and partners with to decide if that's a good option
for you. And I think you also have to be careful if you have more
of a type A personality. And I don't mean that in any kind of
negative way. But just if having more data makes you want to do
more data driven things like you know, you can only handle so much.
So you want to take it with a grain of salt in that sense. So those
are kind of the main red flags, I'd say that you may not be the
best candidate for that. And that's where I'm using it within my
practice, because I think having that practitioner relationship
while you're getting these results, and interpreting them, I think
makes them more powerful. And I do want to say, Hari, and you can
speak more to this, but everyone who gets their test done through
calorifier also gets a console with Hari or his team to run through
your results. So for someone doing that, they'll get the results
from the company, run through them, and then come back and work
with me as well with that data as well. So there's kind of two
safeguards there for helping people understand their information
appropriately.
Regan Jones 39:33
Perfect. Yeah, I think that's a really good clarification.
Hari Mix 39:36
Yeah, you put out so much there to respond to, but I'm really glad
that you brought up the eating disorder one because that's
something that we have thought a lot about, and we do screen for
many things. So I don't know if you've ever used my fitness pal
calorie counting app online, but they won't report your projected
weight change if you're not logging enough calories and we do
similar types of things. Interestingly, with eating disorders, we
are talking to top researchers and clinicians in the field. And you
know, thinking about ways that we can actually make an impact on
eating disorders, it's just that we would probably want to work via
the professional or via the, you know, the clinician, the
researcher, whoever it is, as opposed to giving, you know, people
directly, you know, the information that they might might misuse.
Also, gosh, Jenna, you put out so many things that are pretty
interesting here. So, yeah, you're burning a lot more calories than
you'd think. And this goes back to one of the myths, the 2000
calorie diet is a myth. That number came from nowhere. So when we
look in the literature, and how many calories people are burning,
it's not 2000, we have measured people burning plenty less than
2000. Before, it's just that it's not the average, it's nowhere
near the average. And I think in terms of the the types of things
that we can make an impact on. Because we're measuring your
complete calories in calories out budget, we can take the emphasis
off of the calorie counting alone, and put it onto energy balance
overall, you know, how many calories I'm eating versus burning. And
then Jenna mentioned the at home body fat, you know, test component
of this, this is the most accurate at home body fat test. And and
Regan, you mentioned DEXA, we're very close in accuracy to DEXA.
We're closer to underwater weighing or the bod pod, so you get that
in an at home test. And so because you've got this combination of
your metabolism and your body composition, we can also hopefully,
for people that kind of help reframe things, instead of focusing so
much on the scale, which is this kind of crude tool that we all
have at home, we can focus more on body composition. And I think
that's a really, you know, much better way to look at it, look in
terms of your your calorie, balance your energy balance, calories
in calories out the complete equation, and then look at your body
composition, as opposed to just your weight on the scale. Finally,
you know, Jenna, you're, the reason you're burning so many calories
is because you have a very high physical activity level, that's
something you should be proud of. So that's the other thing that we
can do here at the company is really take a step back, look at what
you do over the course of a week. I know real time data is super
sexy, but it's not always the most useful. And say, here's what's
going on with my diet. And here's what's going on with my exercise.
And so we can quantitatively say, oh, yeah, you're exercising more
than when you tested with us three months ago, well done, you know.
So I think we have this like very, very zoomed out view of what's
going on in your body. We're much more like a budgeting app, like
how big is my paycheck? And how am I spending it than we are
compared to like a real time heart rate or real time glucose? Or
how many steps I just took type of measurement?
Regan Jones 42:46
Gosh, I tell you, I mean, I hear all this. And I'm like, I don't
know how anybody could not want to do this. I mean, it's just
amazing. Just again, how we even started this whole episode off
talking about the accuracy versus the estimate estimations. So the
I guess the really the wrap up question is if you know people hear
this, and they think yes, this is something that I want to do Hari,
throwing it over to you, you know, how can people access this
test?
Hari Mix 43:11
Absolutely. So we are live calorifier.com, see, alrify.com, you can
order now, it will ship out the same day. If you use code Genette,
je n N A, you can get $505 off, you can get the test for 495. We
know that's expensive. It's a fact of where we are right now with
doubly labeled water technology. The water itself is extremely
expensive. But as Jenna was mentioning, you get a lot of tests in
one. And there are you know a few aspects of this that are not
available any other way. And so this is really cutting edge
science. If you want to take that Lunch and Learn that more about
yourself. And maybe you're just super curious about yourself. Maybe
you have a body weight or body composition goal that you've been
kind of stumped on maybe something you were trying was working and
it no longer is or you just feel lost. We know that if you take
this test, it will at least take the mystery out of it. It's not a
it's not a hack. It's not a shortcut. Use, it's not magic, you
still have to do all the hard work yourself. It's just that we can
pretty much guarantee that you're not going to make a major
mistake, right? We pretty much know we're a GPS for your body
weight, your body composition, your metabolism, here's where you
currently are. And then here's the most efficient route for you to
head to get to your goal. And that's what we do for people is we
basically demystify What's this really, really fundamental aspect
of themselves. So we would love to have you test, like Jenna said,
we meet with people as well. So this is you know, not just test
results that you don't understand. This is the kind of whole white
glove service that comes along with it. And I think that it really
can make an impact especially If you've been trying something and
struggling for a while,
Regan Jones 45:03
that's a wonderful discount, though I know you threw the pricing
out and then said it, you know, you felt like just making the
caveat, you know, the price. But that's a wonderful discount. And
just listeners know that I always include in all the show notes.
For every episode shownotes are available in whatever podcast app
you're listening to this podcast on. And they're always available
this unmillennial life.com. I'll be sure to place a link to the
glorified.com website. And the reminder that the code for the $505
off is Jenna. Okay, before I let you both go, is there anything
else about the testing or where people can find you anything else
that you think people need to be aware of?
Hari Mix 45:43
No, I'm curious if you have any, any last minute questions on that
front, but I think that I think this this conversation has been
wonderful. I think it's a great place to start. We have a lot more
kind of scientific information and resources and blog posts and all
this kind of stuff on our website. If you'd like to try to figure
that out and get deeper into the weeds. We are happy to take you
there. But But overall, I think this has been a really great
overview of of metabolism and measuring, measuring it and what it
can do for you.
Regan Jones 46:14
I mean, my eyes are opened, I have done a lot of podcast interviews
and I gotta tell you, this has been one of the more enlightening
exciting ones. So I really just appreciate Jenna you and Hari both
joining me today.
Hari Mix 46:26
Thanks so much.
Jenna Braddock 46:27
Thank you.
Regan Jones 46:28
Okay, that wraps up my interview with both Jenna and Hari, I did
want to expand a bit on the opportunity that you have to follow up
with Jenna and work with her one on one even if doing the metabolic
testing is not on your radar right at the moment. Jenna can be
found at Jenna Braddock.com. And I'm going to place a link in the
show notes to a really cool plan that she or group rather that she
has ongoing at the moment. I think it's getting ready to kick off
very soon. It's called eating for purpose. And it's an eight week
group nutrition program for women 40 Plus and over. So there will
be a link in the show notes to Jenna braddock.com. Jenna works with
clients one on one obviously, she mentioned that she uses Calorify
as a tool and her practice with people that it's a good fit for,
but she also has this group program that you may be interested
in.
Regan Jones 47:23
So with that, as I said, I'm not going to do a link the odds and
ends ending for today's show. I toyed with the notion of walking
you through my new website, this baking life.com I know I've
mentioned it here and there. But I really wanted to kind of unpack
how this all happened. And especially because there's been some
conversation that I've shared with you on previous episodes about
my desire to do low carb baking. And if you follow me closely, you
know, well, I haven't been doing as much low carb baking, I've been
doing more traditional baking and I'm gonna unpack all that for you
in the kind of why that website is out there, why I'm doing it, why
I'm passionate about it, what you can expect to find if you start
following it, but I really feel like that's something that deserves
a little bit more space than I'm able to give today. And because
this was a more in depth episode, I'm just being mindful of the
time that you allocate each week for this unmillennial life. With
that I'll say thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you for
listening, subscribing, downloading and most especially sharing
with the brand. Hope you have a great week.