Using Body Temperature as a Dieting Metric

if they're going to pull a lot of calories out, then it's probably going to be beneficial to throw in some refeeds, right? And so one of the tools we'll use for that is basically a thermometer. We'll have them track their afternoon temperature And if that really low then we overfeed them until we get the temperature higher and then we start a deficit um if they if they cruising along we see a trend in their body temperature going down it's time for a refeed or it's time for a diet break what are you so what would you say is a significant drop in body temperature so typically what we see is we see girls in the high 34s low 35s and that's when and then then you know it's the typical symptoms like i'm cold all the time cold hands and feet they usually have super low blood pressure they have no energy to do anything they're just surviving on sheer willpower that's something we see what we like to do is let's try to get you around you know 36 4 to 36 8 and then then we'll start chipping some calories away but if we see that that that temperature starts to tank we're going to need to do a diet break or a refeed well yeah yeah i like that i've not heard of that actually using like those metrics to kind of indicate when we do a refeed i know a lot of people might do every three or four weeks or eight weeks or something like that just you know in a refeed because they know that they've been in a kind of deficit for a while but having a metric there to kind of indicate when your body is actually starting to lose some of that functions it's great you know because we've got the data data is so important isn't it it makes more sense to do it that way right so it makes more sense to not use ambiguous time periods because everybody's totally different, right? When I was teaching at Pollock and Group, our thing was deload your workout every third workout if you're doing heavy strength work. But not everybody needs that, right? If I can use a metric like resting heart rate and HRV, if I have somebody in their third week and resting heart rate is starting to go up and their HRV is starting to tank, I already know they're overreaching. It's time for a deload at that point or it's time to switch emphasis on what they're training same thing with the thermometer the only problem is there's not a lot of data like if you talk to people who are evidence-based they're going to go oh well you know there's not a lot of literature out there with the thermometer stuff but like we use it with a lot of success um you know that's something that uh and you've probably heard you know i don't know when you did foundations but it's kind of what when we started doing our level two foundation we started talking about thyroid and thermogenesis stuff that was kind of a point to watch people's temperature if it starts to drop and they're feeling cold then they probably don't have enough energy intake to ramp up thermogenesis we probably want to take care of that because that's going to be super important and that's a good indicator that you've pushed it too far yeah super super interesting i think that is a that's a bit of a game changer for a lot of people who are probably trying to lose weight and maybe struggling to lose weight they've been in a calorie deficit for a long time things have kind of slowed down and it's like where do you go from that you cut yourself your calories down from 2,000 to 1,500 to maybe a thousand and you're saying what I can't cut it down anymore and you see people you know with the best of intentions giving this advice that your weight loss is stalled you know it's time to pull your calories down because calorie deficit is the most important thing and it's like well how far do you know what point yeah stop doing that I mean do you just do you just keep pulling it down to you're at zero calories and you're like doing a 40 day Jesus fast. I don't know. Or do you eat, you know, celery. So it's like negative calories or whatever people say, right? It's just, at some point you got to look at it and say, you got to look at it and say, I feel horrible. I'm not losing weight. Something's not working. Maybe I try doing the opposite of what I'm doing. Maybe I go back to maintenance for a period of time. See if things, see if I feel better. Maybe I cut the training down a little bit or try a different type of training and see if things, see if things work out. The only problem is that for a lot of people, that initial weight gain kind of screws with them. And, you know, when people are desperate, the thinking portion of their brain kind of turns off and they start thinking very limbically and very emotionally. So if I have someone who's been dieting and, you know, they're not seeing a lot of success, if I tell, if I say, hey, Karen, look, we're going to pump your calories up like 800, you are going to gain a small amount of weight. This is not fat. It's most likely just water, glycogen and fecal matter. That's all it is like that. You take a good solid poo. It'll come right off. You get in a really hot bath and sweat it off like an MMA athlete. It'll come right back off. But the minute they get on the scale, one of the issues is they're identifying their identity surrounds that scale. Right? So the minute they get on the scale and it goes up, their feeling of self-worth goes down and they see that as a negative and then they starve themselves the next day okay so in a lot of cases it takes a lot of time coaching and saying look you gaining this weight is okay that does not define you and if you want to get better you're going to have to gain a little weight initially and what crazy is the most I typically see people gain I don think I ever had a girl gain more than about three kilos in weight with refeeding even doubling their calories Because once you start adding those calories back all those systems that have been dormant now turn on Their body heat goes up. They burn more calories when they train. They're sleeping better. Like the body has a really good, it's very efficient at moving itself up and down depending on what you're doing to it. So it's very good at keeping you alive when you're doing dumb shit to it. It's just the psychological aspect of convincing them that it has to get a little bit worse before it gets better because you're at 900 calories. I'm not willing to take you to 600 calories, and I'm not willing to add five more training sessions because that's not going to provide a long-term solution. and it's it's the whole experience is just it's just really having an impact on the nervous system as well i imagine you know that more more training less and less food and this is one of the things that really you know would strike a chord with me when i did the foundations course was how or the impact of the nervous system and you know being in that kind of stress response for long periods of time the impact again that that is having on our on our health on a broad spectrum of different areas of our health um is so powerful and there are things that we just wouldn't expect there are certain aspects that you know that increased cortisol that we just wouldn't expect and i don't know if you want to dig into some of that stuff so i know it's a big thing that we're looking at nowadays in the industry yeah