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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. Have you heard about the sugar diet? To be honest, I've seen it in social media over the last couple of months and I sort of dismissed it as like, what is this sort of fad diet? And let's be clear, it is a fad diet. And I thought surely no one of any note is really taking much notice, giving it a go, et cetera. And then I start seeing influences that I have

00:36
followed wellness influences and they are not only doing it, they are talking about it, they're talking to others who are doing it about it. And I'm like, how is this even gaining traction? Then I come across a video by Nick Norwitz that talks about a potentially surprising mechanism that gives some insights into why people are seeing some success on the sugar diet that is not just to do with calories in, calories out, which of

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is the main mechanism with which we see people lose weight on particular fad diets. Some good, some not so good, because it always comes down to the calorie deficit. So I wanted just to share a little bit of insights into the research that Nick Norwitz sort of uncovered when he was looking at the sugar diet and the potential mechanism for it. Also, you know, what is the sugar diet if you've not heard of it? Are you a candidate for trying something like this? Spoiler alert.

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I don't think so and I'll explain why. just summarize some of the things that I found out about it, albeit this isn't going to be a 40 minute podcast on it because there are a few key influences such as Mark Bell who are doing it or a version of it. And I think that's what this is. It's not like there's a particular protocol. I think there are different ways of doing it. And I've sort of come across his information and just give you my thoughts.

02:02
just to give some clarity over what I think of it. So, interestingly, when I was diving in, where a lot of people get their initial information from isn't in fact Mark Bell, who is known in the sort of hybrid athlete, bodybuilding, powerlifting space. He's an enhanced athlete, and I think he's very open about that. He's on testosterone, and a lot of his content is sort of in and around health and fitness and wellbeing. And he was previously 300 pounds.

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and he's now, I think, holding about 200 pounds. But I do believe his weight loss success largely comes from a ketogenic carnivore diet. However, of recent times, he's been investigating something else, because he was talking about how his weight loss sort of stalled at about 230 pounds, and he was looking for something else to move into. And he came across something called the snake diet by a man called Cole Robinson. I jumped on.

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Cole's Instagram feed was very strange. He was yelling a lot and calling everyone fat. Might be ex-military actually, or marine. But apparently the snake diet and the sugar diet is very similar. So I've just decided it's sort of been popularized, gotten out there, not necessarily by Cole Robinson, but much more so with someone like a large platform like Mark Bell. And he's got something called the Smelly Protocol. Smelly comes from his older.

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brother Chris Bell who's a filmmaker behind their bigger, stronger, faster film. And when they were kids, Chris, his brother, just started calling him Smelly, partly as a teasing sibling nickname. And it sort of stuck. Anyway, he's got something called the Smelly Protocol, which is his sugar fast protocol. And essentially his weekly protocol was days one and two were a sugar fast, which is essentially hundreds of

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grams of sugar a day, up to 800 grams of carbohydrate, where the foods and beverages you eat and drink are fruit, fruit juice, maple syrup, sugar, candy, and honey. And there are multiple reels of him and others holding up bags of Sour Patch Kids saying that they just smashed a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids when they went to the movies or just during the day or whatever. So there are days where this is literally what they eat and it's not a calorie deficit.

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either like it is you know fruit juice etc and then on day three you have a sugar fast and then you have lean protein and starch at night and then that is repeated and then you get like a cheat day or a cheat meal and that is essentially bringing you back to the uh the start of the next week so most days are a sugar fast day a couple of days a week you have sugar fat and lean protein and starch and

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From there, you move on to essentially just having those foods during the day, the sugar throughout the day. And then at night you have that lean protein and some vegetables. So from a macronutrient perspective, we are looking at about 0.5 to one gram of protein per kilogram, which is quite low. I probably don't need to tell you that, but the RDI for protein is about 0.8. Protein metabolism experts suggest around

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1.6 grams per kg body weight. For fat loss, it's often recommended you go a little bit higher, up to two grams per kg body weight. Whereas this sugar fast protocol has your protein at half of that amount at the most. So one gram per pound body weight, one gram per kilo body weight. Fat is under 30 grams per day. And again, hundreds of grams of sugar a day, up to about 800 grams of carbohydrate.

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And if you look at his videos, he says he doesn't count his calories. Other people have done a bit of an analysis and suggested that his calorie intake is roughly around 3,870 kilocalories a day. 83 % of those calories coming from sugar. And despite that high calorie intake, there is rapid weight loss is occurring, which is super interesting, right? So it's not even a palatability issue. Typically when someone goes on a

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on an elimination diet like the rice diet or carnivore diet, the proposed mechanisms with which people lose weight is literally because you cannot eat that many calories in a day. So you're creating this calorie deficit that is not occurring on the sugar diet. And if we consider energy availability on a diet like this, he's having around 16 and a half cals per pound, roughly around 36 cals per kilogram, which

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certainly doesn't put him into that sort of calorie deficit model, which is often used for leaning out. Now, Mark himself carries a lot of muscle and we have to remember that as well. So 200 pounds might sound like a lot, but if you look at him, he is extremely lean. So he is carrying and able to maintain quite a bit of muscle on this protocol. So what is actually happening? And this is what Nick Norwitz went into, which I found super interesting. The sugar diet isn't

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necessarily about the sugar per se. In fact, it's about what you're not eating. And on a diet like this, as I alluded to just before, there's a lot of protein restriction. And in fact, the protein intake itself might be around about 9 % of calories. And what this does is this increases something called fibroblast growth factor 21, or FGF 21. And this is a protein released by the liver in response to the protein restriction.

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What it does, it alters fat cell metabolism. It increases mitochondrial proteins in the electron transport chain, which produces ATP, and it makes mitochondria less efficient. Therefore, it increases your energy expenditure. And interestingly, there was research recently published in the Nature and Metabolism publication showing that in a trial of healthy men in their mid-20s, five weeks on a 9 % diet,

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protein diet and with 70 % carbs, they actually needed 19 to 20 % extra calories to maintain their weight. And this was not due to an increase in activity. It wasn't due to a reduction of muscle mass or anything like that. It was purely a metabolic response. And so each day, the healthy men on a diet that only had 9 % protein compared to a control group that had a

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you know, recommended amount of protein, they had to eat an additional 574 calories a day to approximately maintain their weight. And in fact, they lost a kilo across the course of that five week challenge. So on a diet that is that low in protein, we get this increase in that FGF 21 that increases energy expenditure outside of actually doing anything extra on the activity front. So,

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This is purely a metabolic response. And this is thought to be the mechanism behind the success of the sugar diet. This is why people can on a diet that has all of that sugar, but is super low in protein, that it allows them to be able to lose the weight that they're losing and also maintain that muscle mass. Cause this is the interesting thing as well. Like for one thing is this isn't a diet that you go on and then you don't do any exercise. Like in fact, using carbohydrate to...

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be able to sort of be transported into your muscle cells to fill your glycogen stores to then power out some sort of strength workout, actually pretty favorable from that perspective on the short term basis. Obviously I have thoughts long term, but it explains why someone is able to maintain their muscle mass, right? Because you're still able to work out because you're actually not having a small amount of calories. You're still, at least in Mark's case, he's still having 36 calories per kg of body weight.

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So that's actually quite significant. And to the point that I made before, in fact, it isn't necessarily just to do with the fact that they're eating sugar, but it's actually the protein restriction. And in that study that I mentioned, the five-week study, they in fact found a similar result when the participants were eating a diet that was high in fat as well. So under the same metabolic conditions whereby protein was restricted, they were

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able to have that increase in energy expenditure. So there are a couple of things which I think are really worth mentioning before anyone decides that this is a diet to go on. One, the trial that was conducted that found the result was done in healthy, active, young, college-age males. It was not done in an obese or an overweight population. And FGF21 responses vary. If you

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have obesity, you may very well be FGF 21 resistant. And in fact, this is what research shows is that people with obesity tend to be resistant to the effects of FGF 21. And 44.7 % of the population have common genetic variants that affects FGF 21's response. So it isn't going to be predictable. And that is outside of that obesity resistance that I just talked about. Also,

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There are actually people who are just non-responders, people who have a thrifty metabolism, who burn calories more efficiently, and you would not have that same mitochondrial uncoupling that occurs when you restrict protein and up calories from somewhere else. The other thing which I think is really important to mention is that this has been popularized by people on the internet who've been doing it for several months, but several months across a lifetime, still very short term. The trial that looked at this

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FGF21 response was also five weeks, very short term. We don't know what happens in the long term. That high sugar load, the high fructose load may very well overwhelm the liver over time. A diet that focuses predominantly on fruits and some vegetables, but fruits and high sugar could very well be very low in micronutrients over time, very low in essential fatty acids.

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particularly if you're only getting, you know, you're getting less than 30 grams of fat a day, very low in amino acids. So there's that real risk for nutrient deficiency and glucose as a metabolic fuel is not a clean burning fuel. creates a lot of oxidative stress and damage. know ketones for example, is a clean burning fuel source and it's much better fuel source.

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the body to be burning, a lot less oxidative stress and damage occurs with the burning of ketones. And again, this is something long term. This isn't something which you're necessarily going to see over five weeks or a few months. So that's something else to bear in mind. So whilst this is fascinating and it's super interesting if you look at what Mark Bell has done and you sort of follow his videos, like he's

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very open and transparent about it all. It's certainly interesting and food for thought, but I just don't think it has its place in any sort of long-term diet plan, essentially. And for some, it could be pretty metabolically risky, particularly those people who carry excess body fat, who are overweight or obese. It's like, I'm talking about seeing lean people get leaner, whereas if you are resistant to effects of FGF21, then this...

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probably could end pretty badly. And of course, those other genetic variants of which we don't know, unless your genes measured, you don't know which one you've got. So all's very interesting with the sugar diet, but I just don't know that it's necessarily a thing for everyone. I'd be super keen to know though, if you've tried it, like let me know, hit me up in my DMs. I'm on threads, X and Instagram @mikkiwilliden, Facebook at mikkiwillidennutrition, head to my website mikkiwilliden.com. All right, team, you have a great week. See you later.