Understanding Calorimetry and Metabolic Testing

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.

THIS UNMILLENNIAL LIFE PODCAST SHOW NOTES

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE ABOUT THE BEST AT-HOME METABOLISM TEST

• Calorify - use code JENNA for $505 discount

RELATED LINKS

• JennaBraddock.com "Eating for Purpose" Program
  • Previous episodes with Jenna:
    • The Creatine for Women Episode
    • The Muscle Cramping in Teen Athletes Episode
    • The Enneagram Episode (Part 2)

COMMERCIAL LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Wild Grain - get $10 off the first box + FREE Croissants in every box!

EPISODE KEYWORDS

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

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

(transcript generated through AI; may contain spelling errors)

Regan Jones 0:00 Hey there podcast listeners. Today's episode is brought to you in part by Wild Grain. If you haven't heard me talk about Wild Grain before, it is a phenomenal company offering artisanal breads and pastas. While you certainly know by now, given the fact that I've launched a new website, this baking life.com I am most happy when I'm in the kitchen, baking things for my family and friends. But I don't always have time to do that from scratch, even as a baking blogger. And that's where wild grain comes in. Wild grain is a subscription box with bake from Frozen sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pasta. So they sent me a box. And I've got to tell you everything that we've tried out of it so far has been amazing. The breads are super yummy. And it's not just bread, but as I said, they have pastas, and they have pastries, I've made their for science, I've made their sourdough bread, everything has been top notch and high quality. So if you want to try some really good delivered to your door ready to bake items, you're gonna want to give wild grain a shot. And the good news for you as a listener of this unmillennial life podcast is that the first 50 people to sign up through the link that's in my show notes get $10 off their first box plus free croissants in every box. And I've already tried these with my family. They are delicious. Okay, so again, just look in the show notes for Wild Grain subscription. And now let's get on with the show.

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.

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