LEVELS – A Whole New Level

You can’t outrun a bad diet—but it turns out you might not even be able to outrun a good one. In this episode of A Whole New Level, evolutionary anthropologist Dr. Herman Pontzer joins Mike Haney to dismantle the "armchair view" of metabolism and explain why more exercise doesn't necessarily mean more calories burned.

Drawing on his groundbreaking research with the Hadza hunter-gatherer community and global meta-analyses, Dr. Pontzer explains the Constrained Energy Model: the phenomenon where our bodies hit a metabolic ceiling and begin "trading off" energy from vital systems like immunity and reproduction to account for physical activity. This conversation reframes weight loss not as a simple math problem of "calories in vs. calories out," but as a dynamic, evolutionary balancing act.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

In this episode, we cover:
The Myth of Additive Energy: Why adding a 300-calorie run to your day doesn’t actually result in 300 extra calories burned over the long term.
The Hadza Paradox: How hunter-gatherers who walk miles every day burn the same amount of total energy as sedentary Westerners.
Metabolic Trading: How your body "pays" for exercise by dialing down inflammation, stress responses, and reproductive hormones.
The Business of the Body: Why the human body acts less like a simple machine and more like a corporation reallocating a limited budget.
The "Set Point" Debate: Whether our bodies are tracking pounds on a scale or the flow of energy in the gut.
Practical Weight Management: Why diet is the primary tool for weight, while exercise is the primary tool for everything else.

🎙 What Dr. Herman Pontzer & Mike Haney discuss:
[0:01-0:52] The Additive Model vs. The Constrained Energy Model
[1:24-2:48] Dr. Pontzer's Book Burn
[3:33-4:21] Defining Energy Balance
[5:15-6:50] Where the "Armchair View of Metabolism" Breaks Down
[7:07-8:50] Comparing the Additive Model to the Constrained Energy Model
[16:14-18:12] Energy Accounting: Where Daily Calories Go
[18:13-20:57] The Body as a Business Metaphor
[22:13-23:47] Specific Ways the Body Compensates for Increased Exercise
[24:19-25:27] Modifying the Constrained Energy Limit (Diet and Weightlifting)
[47:54-51:23] Diet is Key for Weight Management

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

🔗 Helpful links
Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/6GUWQuT-vRc⁠⁠
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠

📲 Connect
Connect with Dr. Herman Pontzer on X: https://x.com/HermanPontzer

Heart disease risk isn’t just about cholesterol. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Dr. Matthew Budoff explains why coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring may be the most important test most people aren’t getting—and why imaging your arteries directly can reveal risk that blood tests alone can miss.

Drawing on decades of research and data from the landmark MESA study, Dr. Budoff explains how calcium scoring predicts real cardiovascular events, how plaque actually forms and progresses, and why some people with high cholesterol never develop plaque—while others with “normal” labs do.

This episode focuses on how to measure your actual cardiovascular risk, not just estimate it.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

In this episode, we cover:
Why CAC scoring is one of the strongest predictors of future heart events
Why cholesterol is critical—but only explains about half of heart disease risk
Why some people with very high LDL have zero plaque—and others with normal labs have dangerous plaque
Why CAC is best understood as the “tip of the iceberg” of total plaque burden
When to escalate to CT angiography and advanced imaging
How plaque regression is possible—and what interventions actually drive it
The future of cardiac risk prediction: Lp(a), inflammation, and AI-driven plaque analysis

This conversation reframes heart risk around what’s actually happening inside your arteries—not just what shows up in bloodwork.

🎙 What Dr. Matthew Budoff & Mike Haney discuss:
[01:35] — Coronary calcium is the strongest predictor of heart events
[02:38] — What a high calcium score actually means for risk
[04:00] — Why rising calcium is not “healing.”
[11:07] — The role of fat tissue and inflammation in plaque formation
[16:37] — Why do many people with high cholesterol have no plaque
[17:55] — Why imaging is the only way to truly know your risk
[37:07] — Calcium as the “tip of the iceberg” of total plaque burden
[~52:00] — Why CAC is the practical first step before advanced imaging
[~1:02:00] — When CT angiography adds critical information
[~1:14:00] — How plaque regression actually happens in the real world
[~1:22:00] — The next frontier: Lp(a) and inflammation as treatment targets

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

🔗 Helpful links
Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/os-RNhIS3jQ
Find us on YouTube: ⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠

📲 Connect
Connect with Dr. Matthew Budoff on X: https://x.com/BudoffMd
https://www.calciumscan.com/

In this episode of A Whole New Level, Christopher Gardner, PhD, joins Mike to discuss his decades in nutrition research, the challenges of conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on diet, and how to communicate complex science to the public. Gardner has led some of the most rigorous research ever comparing dietary approaches in real-world conditions, so his insights about what works (cutting processed food and sugar) and what doesn’t (obsessing about macronutrients) are worth a listen.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: https://levels.link/wnl

In this episode, we cover:
What a nutritional interventionist is – someone who studies people who are asked to change their diet, tracking them and taking samples to see what might have changed.
How to square widely-accepted lessons about nutrition (i.e., junk food=bad) with the high degree of individuality in diets that work.
The concept of "equipoise" in study design, which means making sure both diets being compared are well-represented versions of that diet (e.g., a "kick butt diet A and a crappy diet B" is avoided).
The dilemma of communicating single-study results to the public and the role of the Netflix documentary on Gardner’s famous twin study in making science engaging.
Dr. Gardner's experience on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and the methodology used to reach conclusions.
The focus on ultra-processed foods and the need to message the consensus points of eating more whole foods and vegetables, and avoiding added sugar and refined grains.
The learnings from the DIETFITS study, which compared low-carb and low-fat diets among 600 people for a year, and why there was more variation among people within a diet than between the two diets.

🎙 What Dr. Christopher Gardner & Mike Haney discuss:
[00:33] Nutritional Interventionist Role
[02:17] Shortcomings of Nutrition RCTs
[03:59] Garlic Study Example
[16:48] Concept of Equipoise in Study Design
[21:54] Value of Communicating Single Study Results
[28:02] Industry Funding and Transparency
[33:11] Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Methodology
[38:48] Ultra-Processed Foods and the Evidence
[48:27] Simplicity vs. Complexity in Nutrition
[50:24] Consensus on Foundational Diet Components

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

🔗 Helpful links
Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/ZQ0G_jfwKoM
Find us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Connect
Connect with Christopher Gardner, PhD, on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cgardnerphd/?hl=en

In this episode of A Whole New Level, Dr. Eric Ravussin, PhD, explains the physiology of energy expenditure, metabolic adaptation, and why the body strongly defends its prior weight. Drawing on decades of research, including the Biggest Loser study, CALERIE, and work with metabolic chambers, Ravussin walks through what actually happens when we lose weight—and why willpower alone isn’t enough.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: https://levels.link/wnl

In this episode, we cover:
Why BMI is an incomplete measure of obesity
The difference between preclinical and clinical obesity
How energy expenditure really works (and why larger bodies burn more calories)
What metabolic adaptation is—and why it persists long after weight loss
Why exercise alone rarely leads to sustained weight loss
How GLP-1 drugs intersect with appetite, metabolism, and muscle mass

🎙 What Dr. Eric Ravussin & Mike Haney discuss:
[04:40] — Rethinking obesity diagnosis
[07:00] — Clinical vs. preclinical obesity
[11:38] — What ‘energy expenditure’ actually means
[15:42] — What metabolic adaptation really is
[17:56] — Why bigger bodies burn more calories
[26:16] — Lessons from the Biggest Loser study
[31:19] — What CALERIE taught us about calorie restriction
[40:02] — Why slow, modest weight loss matters
[45:10] — Weight loss vs. weight maintenance physiology
[53:08] — GLP-1 drugs: promise and limitations
[57:49] — Why you can’t exercise your way to weight loss
[1:01:33] — The biggest myth about obesity

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

🔗 Helpful links:
Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/UaE0C_l7GMw
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 More about Dr. Eric Ravussin: https://www.pbrc.edu/research-and-faculty/faculty/Ravussin-Eric-PhD.aspx

According to investigative science journalist Gary Taubes, much of what we “know” about nutrition is built on weak evidence, bad assumptions, and decades of groupthink. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Taubes joins Mike Haney to examine how nutrition science went off the rails—and why he remains convinced the carbohydrate–insulin model still offers the most coherent explanation for obesity.

Taubes explains how observational studies became policy, why randomized trials are often ignored, and why questioning the calorie-balance model remains controversial despite mounting contradictions. The conversation is less about winning an argument and more about how science should actually work—especially when public health is at stake.

⁠Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠⁠

🎙 What Gary Taubes & Mike Haney discuss:
[4:10] — How Gary Taubes became interested in “bad science.”
[9:45] — Why nutrition science relies too heavily on epidemiology
[15:30] — Correlation vs. causation in diet research
[22:10] — The problem with the calorie-balance model
[29:40] — Introducing the carbohydrate–insulin model
[36:55] — Why insulin resistance changes everything
[44:20] — Why low-fat advice dominated for decades
[52:10] — What randomized trials actually show
[1:00:05] — Why dissent is treated as heresy in nutrition
[1:08:30] — How bad science survives criticism
[1:16:45] — What good nutrition science would require
[1:23:20] — Why this debate still matters

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

🔗 Helpful links:
Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/74WAhHgEk_0⁠
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect with Gary Taubes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-taubes-942a6459/
https://garytaubes.com/