This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. It's fun Friday, my name is Jeff Sanddu, and yup Friday means fun here on BFM. Once we get the next hour out of the way, we can start looking forward to the weekend. That's right, it's time to throw some poop out of the window because it's time to mess plain with Matt.
So Matt, what are we talking about today? Hey Jeff, well some of our listeners will be getting themselves prepared for their reunion dinners next Friday, which of course means that we will be off the air, so that means they have less chance of getting into justion, because they won't have to listen to me. I have come here today though with a message of hope, to say that despite all that saturated fat, the bin bags full of cholesterol, the mountains of sugar and alcohol, Matt's blamed can save you and get you back into shape. I can't help you with all the money you're going to lose to my John, but by golly I can do something about your waistline.
You know Matt, I've heard that listeners say that that's what they love about you the most, your compassion and humanity. I know sometimes I have to check myself and remember how humble I am. It's another one my positive attributes. If there was a Nobel Prize for services to radio, I think I would probably win it every single year.
So try and beat me there with your super brain nail to grass, Tyson. Now whenever I get the feeling that you're going to be talking about food, I get that butterfly feelings in my stomach, because it feels like we're going to spend the next 20 minutes talking about meat grown in labs. So Matt, are we going to talk about meat grown in labs for the next 20 minutes here? No, not at all.
We're going to talk about the next best thing, which is my new diet plan. I think it was over the Christmas break while I was watching somebody else exercise for me as I ate my fries. I'm watching bad Santa for the 28th time that I had an epiphany. Now, most celebrities either follow a celebrity diet or they come up with their own celebrity diet.
So suddenly now you're a celebrity. You've got to be objective about these things. The one end, you've got your A-list celebrities. And at the other end, you've got your Z-list celebrities.
Well, I'm using the Khmer alphabet, which has 75 letters. So I may not be in the top 28th letter, Latin alphabet of stars, but I am there somewhere in Khmer. And I don't really like following diets, so I thought that therefore I should come up with my own celebrity diet, which I'm calling Matt's Magic Diet. And of course, to get a buy-in from the venture capitalists, I've had to build in some kind of lockout mechanism or lock-in mechanism rather.
So when you subscribe to this diet, you'll receive food packages through the post, which can only be unlocked with a pair of smart scissors, which cost $300 a pair, US, not ring it, and they have an RFID sensor built in for them. The blades of the scissors only come apart when they detect the tag in the food package, and then you can use them to cut the package open. Can't you just use a normal pair of scissors or knife to open the package? I thought about that, because progress is all about knowledge and learning, and I've learned from JuCera.
If you attempt to open the package without pairing it with the smart scissors, a sensor inside the food package releases a small bag of horseradish which then soaks into the contents. This ensures that people will pay me an awful lot of money for food. Sounds like a wallet diet plan instead of a tummy, but anyway... I think the same thing.
What can people expect from your meal plans? I wanted to keep it simple. One of the things that I find pushes people away from their diets is that feeling of well-being and hope that they get from doing that. So I want to emphasise the monotony and the regularity and the dull, futile ache of depression.
So by keeping every meal the same, it makes it easy to monitor your progress and to understand which parts of the diet are having an impact, because you've got to look at the whole picture. Every person is different. We react in different ways to different foods. We have different metabolic rates.
So if there's a lot of variety and a lot of different foods, it's very difficult to be sure what is having a positive or a negative effect. This way, it's very, very clear. You know, instantly what kind of impact this diet is having on your health. I don't think anyone's dying to know, but I am, so what's in the food package?
Well, it combines two things that I'm very passionate about, which are recycling and making up seen amounts of money. So when it comes to food and recycling, we tend to think about the packaging and not the food itself. I want to change all that. That's why Matt's Magic Diet is as much a nutrition disruptor as it is a meal.
When you open one of my packages, you can congratulate yourself that you are helping to lower your carbon footprint and get healthy. So everybody wins. So what's in the package, as you asked? Well, if you look at the fast food industry, all those deep fat fryers generate a colossal amount of waste.
They have oil that has to be collected and disposed of, so some of it will go towards creating biofuel. But most of it ends up in landfill and storage dumps. And that makes it very, very cheap. So what I've done is combine that waste oil with dough, specifically highly absorbent white bread.
I don't need to enrich it because of all the food that's already been cooked in the oil. It has trace elements of all kinds of proteins and minerals. It's rich in essential nutrients. And the bread acts as an edible sponge and a digestible delivery system.
So each package contains two pieces of this magic suspension, and that will meet all of your calorific needs for the day. You know, Matt, this show is all about science and facts. So what about the scientific basis of this diet? Well, sometimes I think we talk about science too much on this show.
This diet is actually all about belief. You eat the food and you believe yourself healthier. Sure, I paid some experts to come up with a study for me. They said most of my test subjects died, but I said, you know, that's just a coincidence.
It's really easy to find a dozen 25-year-olds who all experience massive heart attacks in this space of a month. If anything, it was actually better that they died because it's a lot more expensive to cover the medical bills of someone who might live for another 70 years. So I think we got a big win there. And because my diet is just food, I don't need any approval from health regulation.
Have you had many sign-ups? Hundreds in our beta phase. We're tweaking the calorific values as we move into our mass production stage because it is a subscription model. So it doesn't really make sense for me to kill off most of my customers in the first 30 days.
No, I assume all behind all these silliness, there is some kind of point, something that does have a basis in science or fact or technology, preferably all three. No, I'm entirely serious. My evil hair needs repainting, and Matt's magic guy is how I'm going to cover the cost. No, OK, we usually do one of these personal betterment shows early on in the new year.
I thought this year we'd keep it for Chinese New Year because traditionally, this is a period where people start thinking about renewal, making changes, getting healthier, all that kind of stuff. So we start to think about being happier and wealthier and fitter, and of course, as I said, healthier. And it's easy to start falling for all the latest fads. So for example, I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago where a biochemist and chef called Anthony Warner was talking about all these various food fads.
And in particular about the current vogue for so-called clean food and things like coconut oil. He pointed out that when colleagues of his in the research field want to induce heart failure in the barreque dreamites, they feed them coconut oil because it's saturated fat. Yet we're being sold this for its miracle health benefits. But that's not what today's about.
I want to talk about scientific health positives rather than negatives. But if you would like to listen to what Anthony Warner had to say, because it is really interesting, you can check out the Modern Man podcast. That's Man with two ends, and the episode is stated January 2nd. So let's kick off with some good news.
Well, for those of us who might describe ourselves as somewhat jimiverse like me, there is a lot of good news. As usual, I'd like my chum-sover at New Scientist to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me on this show because that goes to show how clever I am, because who needs to lift heavy things if somebody else can do it for you? I don't think that's in the spirit of today's show about your healthy lifestyle, is it? Humbug.
A massive study came out last year by a team from McMaster University in Canada. Now the research tracked to more than 130,000 people in 17 countries. And the results suggest some movement away from some of the orthodox thinking we've had about health over the last few years. One of the things we've heard regularly for years now is that exercise has to be regular and constant.
There's no point being a trails runner at the weekend if you stare slack-jawed at the TV all night every night from Monday to Friday, even if there are new episodes at the ranch to catch up with on Netflix. The McMaster study actually suggests that you can do that. You can do all of your exercise in one or two blocks and it will still have the same benefits in terms of cutting your risk of early death. It also suggests that moderate activities such as walking to work, doing chores around the house, will also cut your chance of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, etc.
As long as you do a minimum of two and a half hours of them per week, which is not too bad. I have to say that that has certainly made me feel better. I've started lifting my own teacup to my mouth instead of having an intern do it, although I wasn't expecting the compression fracture in my wrist from that overfilled mug. Now we're going to take a short break while Matt disappears into his oxygen tent.
When we come back, more fitness, less fatness. Come on Matt's playing B5.9. Bringing fresh meaning, BFM 89.9. Welcome back, my name is Jeff Zandu and today we're talking about taking a scientific approach to getting fit and healthy.
Matt Amat obviously doesn't listen to his own advice. If he was blue, he'd look like a violet bull regard. As it is, he looks like King Edward, the potato. Now, Matt, before the break we went...
Thanks, Jeff. I did not write this now. FYI. Before the break...
He did. He plots these things and he launches them on me and I have to sit here and just take them. Before the break, Matt, we were talking about some evidental changes in the way we view exercise and its effects. But what about the exercise itself?
Well, the bodies are a wonderful and complicated thing, but when we look for exercise trends, we're often looking for very simple solutions. And often that means assuming that our body will always react in the same way. So, a guy called Dylan Thompson at the University of Bath in the UK ran a test to see if it's better to exercise on an empty stomach or a full stomach. He put a bunch of obese guys on a treadmill, half of whom had skipped breakfast and the other half who'd eaten a very carb heavy breakfast.
Tissue samples were taken from everyone after the session. And yes, it was found that those who had skipped breakfast burned fat to fuel their workout while those who had eaten merely burnt off some of the breakfast. However, that may not be the full story. A sports scientist at the University of West Scotland called Chris Easton suggests that for more high-intensity exercise, this approach may actually be counterproductive because the lack of carbohydrates in your body may reduce the intensity of your performance.
So, you won't end up burning as much as you would if you load up on the carbs. So, I guess if you're a slow burner like me, skip those cooked breakfasts. But if you're planning a 15-kilometre run, you better load up on the carbs. I think the intensity of the exercise is one of the things that confuses a lot of people.
Do you have to get a good sweat on to use me? The easy answer is no. Next question. Right.
No. As I mentioned before the break, the Canadian Exercise Study, the McMaster Study, found that even moderate exercise like vacuuming is beneficial to you. We've all seen those burnouts at the gym, the ones who are deliberately wearing heavy sweats to make themselves perspicable. It does as well.
No, I know. But there's no evidence to suggest that heating yourself up is going to help you to get fit or to burn fat because we all sweat at different rates. All you're doing is making yourself a haven for microbes and making the environment smell for everybody around you. You may make yourself a little bit lighter because you've reduced the amount of water in your body, but that's dehydration.
In any case, as soon as you drink some more water, that weight goes back on because it's just absorbed back into the tissues. Of course, if you're the kind of person who sweats buckets when you do any kind of physical exercise, that's just the kind of person you are. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just your body doing what it needs to do to maintain a safe temperature. And yes, men do sweat more than women, but I think that's one area that women will be happy not to be looking for equality in.
And you're out of that. Anyways, while we're talking about rehydration, what about all those energy and those electrolyte drinks? We probably won't be too much of a surprise to hear that science doesn't really see the benefit. There were tests carried out last year where swimmers, again, were divided into various camps, some were given energy drinks and others were given water.
There was no improvement noted in the group that consumed the energy drinks. In fact, because of the sugars and the carbs in the drinks, it's possible that you could end up consuming more calories than you've burned. So you end up with a net gain. The International Olympic Committee's own guidelines suggest that it's unlikely that your body will dehydrate if you're exercising for an hour or less, so you don't really need those drinks in the first place.
And as far as the sodium levels go, most of us already have diets that contain too much sodium. So it's unlikely that we'll reach a state of electrolyte depletion after just 30 minutes on cross-strain. That said, and this is my advice rather than that of the scientific community, if you're consuming the drinks in moderation and they help you to feel better about your workout, then they're probably not really doing a lot of harm. I mean, you've got to be aware of the sugars, but that's about it.
If they're helping to make you feel better about yourself, if they're helping you to exercise more regularly, then the only real loser is going to be your bank balance and you've already signed up to Mat's Magic. So you don't care about money. You know, this stuff is all expensive. Yeah.
So you've touched on motivation there. How can we keep ourselves motivated? Should we listen to music? Is it better to exercise indoors and outdoors?
And how much do I need to do to feel the burn? Well, we'll start with the burn. It's pretty simple. If your muscles hurt straight after you've exercised, then you've probably pulled or strained something and you need time to rest.
Stop. If your muscles hurt the following day or the day after or even the day after that, then you have what's called delay on set muscle soreness or DOMS for short. It's a good thing. It is a good thing.
DOMS is a good thing. While you exercise, you're causing small amounts of damage to the muscle tissue, tiny little tears and the pain in the aches, the tissue repairing itself. But not only is it repairing itself, it's actually making itself stronger. So this is part of the process of building big muscles, but you still have to give the body time to repair.
Don't go for another workout while you're still feeling the soreness. Work on something else and let those acy parts do their thing and get stronger on their own. There's always a lot of debate about whether exercise in a gym or outdoors, which is better and no real surprises here. Outdoors is actually better.
One of the reasons it seems that gyms fatigue sets in so quickly is because of that monotony. When you run on a treadmill, you run at an even pace, but when you run outside naturally on the ground, your pace is constantly changing. You're adjusting for the terrain in front of you because it's not perfectly flat. So you tend to be a lot more engaged.
Your body has a lot more stimulus in general. There are the sounds and sights of the outside world, which we lose in a gym, even if we are catching up with episodes of the ranch. What great TV that is? If you are like me stuck in the gym because Malaysia is just way too hot, then vary your speed or use one of those programs on the machine that alters the settings and speeds frequently and that will give your body more of the real world feel and hopefully increase your motivation.
But it is still better to be outside. What about music? Well, this isn't such a new discovery. There was a paper published by a guy called Costas Karagiyogas at Brunel University back in 2012 and he likened music to a performance in Hansing Drug.
It helps you with strength, it helps you with endurance and power, but it's not as simply as just banging on a high energy playlist and cranking up your energy levels. It's a little more nuanced. It's about finding music with a tempo that matches your own movements, whether you're running or cycling or whatever kind of exercise you're doing. Studies have found that runners can keep going for longer with a metronome that is set to their own running rhythm rather than having a runner chasing a rhythm.
So if this machine is going tick at the same speed that you go, you take strength from it rather than chasing one's or trying to tick tick tick tick. Because you're out of rhythm. Some music streaming services like Spotify have a playlist function that matches the BPM to your workout and some smart headphones will work with Spotify to do that as well. So they'll take your pulse rate and find the right ones for you.
We're running out of time, but what about high intensity interval training or hit? Yeah, hit as it's known is based on the idea of forming it workouts where you exercise at high intensity for 20 seconds and then you rest for 10 seconds. I hate it. It makes me feel like I'm about to have a stroke, but it is actually good for you.
The body adapts to consistency, which is why we get that feeling of monotony when we're on a treadmill that I was talking about before. So things like hit help to push you out of your comfort zone. And those frequent bursts of nerve shredding activity actually have major benefits for your heart, your lungs and your circulatory system. And it's also really good for people who are time poor, the people who say, oh, I don't have time to exercise, but I do have time to do something really fast and make myself feel sick.
So hits not for you? You want for me, but I think it's for a lot of people. Yoga? That is a lot more my speed.
Yes. Unfortunately, those studies like a recent one at the University of Colorado have found that yoga is not dramatically good for aerobic fitness unless you're one of those yogis who is doing it for hours and hours. Most studies have so far concentrated on bikram yoga, so it's perhaps unfair to generalize, but it does suggest that you would burn more calories with a walk or a gentle jog. But it does seem that yoga has other benefits, the effects of depression, stress and even eating disorders may all be reduced by yoga.
In fact, I think that if you're somebody who eats too much, then exercise is good in general because it means you've got less time to eat. But in fact, yoga, tai chi, yoga, tai chi and meditation, they may actually help us to switch off genes that trigger inflammation, which is a byproduct of many diseases. Various pieces of research are pointed to yoga, playing a part in reducing the risk of heart disease, improving the quality of life of people with diabetes and some forms of cancer. It may even shrink the areas of the brain that trigger fear and anxiety, which could explain why your yoga instructor always seems so calm because the yoga is literally shrinking their brain.
There's no way we're out of time, but if you want to know more about the things we've discussed today, you can find a lot of this stuff online. You might want to check out the January 13th 13 edition of New Scientist, which covers a lot of things we've discussed today. And there's a whole bunch more stuff there as well, because there are a lot of people in the fitness world who declare themselves to be experts. Some of them really are experts, but some of them are peddling Matt's magic diet.
So check out the New Scientist because it might help you to sort the fact from the fiction, because there's an awful lot of fact and fiction floating around when it comes to health. And just one note, the New Scientist website is behind a paywall because, as we keep saying on this show, good stuff has a cost. Coach Matt, I'm going to take you there with his magic diet. If you want to know more information about these shows, don't forget you can now subscribe to Matt's plane from the comfort of your own pod catcher and also on the BFM app and website.
And of course, if your company is a startup or an SME and you think that Matt can help you, head over to his website. I can help you. Yeah, head over to his website. It's called part with a K, it's called about calm with a K and you'll find more information about his consulting services, his mentoring services and soon his magic diet.
My magic diet and I'm also trying to become the world's first death coach because there's a lot of life coaches, not a lot of life coaches. Well, if you follow Matt's magic diet, that's the first step. Yeah, exactly. BFM 89.9.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, bfm 89.9. The Business Station.