22 The Secret Life of Fat with Dr. Sylvia Tara

The secret to losing 20 pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it.  Here in Episode 22 on The Inform Fitness Podcast, Adam Zickerman and his team are joined by biochemist and author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara.Dr. Tara explains how you can outsmart your body fat, with cutting-edge research and historical perspectives to reveal fat’s true identity.   Once you understand it…you can beat it. For The Secret Life of Fat audio book in Audible click here:  http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_IFF_PodcastTo purchase The Secret Life of Fat in Amazon click here: http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_AmazonDon’t forget Adam's Zickerman’s book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it from Amazon by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo find an Inform Fitness location nearest you to give this workout a try, please visit www.InformFitness.com.  At the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg and RestenIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to [email protected]. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. The Transcriptions for the entire episode is below:22 The Secret Life of FatTim: Hey InForm Nation, thanks for joining us once again here for episode 22 of the InForm  Fitness Podcast, twenty minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I’m Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting network, and a client of InForm Fitness, and after some time off, excited to finally get back behind the mic with our team. Let’s start with Sheila Melody, the co-owner and general manager of the Burbank location. Sheila, nice to see you again.Sheila: Hey Tim, great to be back with everybody again!Tim: It’s been a while, and the rest of our team as always, still joining us via Skype from the Manhattan location in New York City headquarters for the InForm fitness empire. General manager Mike Rogers and the founder of InForm Fitness, Adam Zickerman. What’s up gents, good to see you again!Adam: Hey guys.Mike: All is good.Tim: Adam, in your book Power of Ten: The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, you described the three pillars necessary to achieve maximum success with the slow motion, high-intensity strength training system. For those who are just joining us for the first time, Adam please remind us of those three pillars.Adam: Exercise, rest, and nutrition.Tim: And nutrition. We spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing pillar one, exercise, and our special guest today also joining us via Skype, will allow us to dive deeper into pillar number two, which as you just mentioned Adam, is nutrition. We’re pleased to welcome our guest who has a PhD in biochemistry and is the author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara. Glad to have you with us today.Sylvia: Great, thank you. It’s terrific to be here.Tim: All four of us have spent the last couple of weeks digesting this book. I think Adam and Mike read the book, and Sheila, we listened to the book via Audible. It really helped us all change the way we look at fat, which I know is the point of the whole thing, but before we get started, Adam, I know you were the one who introduced this topic to the team here. What is it Adam that made you want to bring Sylvia on, to discuss The Secret Life of Fat?Adam: Well it was back in 2007 that I read this Scientific American article, that was called, if I remember correctly, What Fuels Fat, and it was then that I saw that Scientific American article that I realized how complicated fat is, and how complex it is. It was the first time that somebody had referred to fat as an organ, and then, recently, I’m listening to NPR and there’s Dr. Tara talking about this book, which I thought the title was amazing. The Secret Life of Fat, and it reminded me of back in 2007, ten years ago, about this article I had read in Scientific American, and I was like oh my god. I had forgotten all about that, I’ve got to get this book and read it. You did such a great job, Dr. Tara, as far as breaking down such a complex subject and making us understand, quite honestly, how difficult it is to understand fat and we’re in the personal training business, high-intensity exercise business, and all of our clients, most of them, are struggling with fat loss. I thought maybe we can use your book to prompt conversation and be honest with our clients and basically tell them what the facts are. What to expect when it comes to battling the bulge.Mike: What they’re up against.Sylvia: That’s a great idea, and that’s also why I decided to go and do all this research, because I’m one of those people who has a lot of trouble managing weight. I always gain weight very easily, even as a child, I packed on pounds much easier than my friends who ate candy and ice cream all day long, and as I got older, it just got worse. Some of my old tricks stopped working, I had all these tricks in my twenties where I could take weight off pretty quickly if I had to, but then after having two kids, after launching a career and getting very busy, being stretched and traveling, my old tricks weren’t working anymore. I went on a number of diets, there’s always this new diet, and I tried a number of them every year, and sometimes they would work, they would work temporarily. Sometimes I could even gain weight on some of these diets, and I’d worked with personal trainers too, and they’re all really — just [Inaudible: 00:03:59] their dogma, they have a certain philosophy they follow and one of them is you have to eat enough calories to lose weight. They were always stunned at how little I actually had to eat, and even then, I wasn’t skinny, so I was about to go on yet another diet; I think paleo was all the rage and I said let me try this, and I started reading about just how complicated it was and I thought you know what, forget it. I said before I go on even one more diet, I’m going to understand everything there is to know about fat. I’m a biochemist by training, and if anyone can understand fat, I can. So I read everything, I think I pulled over a thousand articles out of the scientific literature, I read them all, and I talked to over fifty thought leaders, leading researchers around the world about this, their cutting edge research on fat. What I was finding out, which was so interesting, so astounding; it turned out that fat wasn’t anything I thought it was, it’s not just a reserve of calories, it’s not just holding energy, waiting for us to use it. It has a whole life of its own underneath there. It can fight back when we try to lose it, it controls our thoughts about food, it controls metabolism. It can divert blood supply to itself, it’s doing all these really strange things. It’s as if it’s another person inside of you, and if you’re not equipped, if you don’t understand what fat really is, you’re just about bound to keep going on diets and regaining and regaining. The diet industry tends to make you think you’re doing something wrong. If this diet doesn’t work for you, it’s real...