Changing Your Health With Nutrition

Introduction to Nutrition Confusion 0:00

All right, guys, this is something that I was perfectly looking forward to, because it's the thing that I've been the most confused by. Because there's nobody that knows how to tell me what to do. We're trying to understand nutrition. And we're blessed today to be joined by JJ. Thank you for joining us today. Hopefully, I'm not going to just add to the confusion. Well, that I met you in person, and you look like the personification of proper nutrition. Like, your skin is glowing. You look healthy.

You look like you're full of energy, like the world is at your fingertips to explore. I try to explain it, but I felt the vibe like someone's doing it right. There's something working there. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. And this is where I've heard so many times that, you know, it's not enough. You need supplementation. Any medication, you can't eat yourself to health. But it's because what we have offered to us as choices often are the right things, and the guidance often is incorrect. But so, first of all, you know, it's awesome to have this conversation today and not start there. Can you eat your all right.

And for the record, I love supplements, I must say. But we gotta remember what the name is, right? Right. I mean it's like hello, there's supplements. So I started out I don't know if you probably don't know this. I started out as an exercise physiologist, and I was one of the first personal trainers in the United States. I think it started in L.A. and it was me. Body by Jake and Marxism. And what I discovered very quickly was that you cannot out exercise a bad diet like, you know, because I had people coming in, they go, I don't want to change my diet, but I want to lose weight, and I'm just going to do it with exercise.

So I'd be like, all right, you know, doesn't work, does not work. So and but man. And if you really want to change your health, you've got to change what's at the end of your fork. And that's awesome because think about what kind of control that gives us. Right? The problem is that there is so much misinformation out there and we are duped by it, you know? And so I think back to when I very first started to pull people off of gluten, and this one gal came in to my office and was so proud of herself because I pulled her off gluten because and this was a crazy story.

She was this Indian gal. Her dad was super, super successful guys, and she was going to all the top doctors,

Why Diet Matters More Than Exercise 2:26

and they all thought she had an eating disorder because she was really skinny and she was a dancer. But you know, she's sharing what she's eating and she is like stuffing her face. And I go, anyone ever tested you for celiac? Like, something's up here? And, so I pulled her off of gluten. It was like, bam, right? Changed right away. But she comes in and she's so thrilled with herself because she'd gone and found gluten free cupcakes and cookie. I was like, no, no, no, no, no junk food. So I do think it's really challenging because there's so much misinformation out there.

I've had the good fortune to interview tons of people on food, and I will share that. There are some common things that we all like. You could put ten doctors and nutritionists in a room. What? We'll probably fight about a lot of stuff, but there's some basics that we can talk about today that we pretty much all agree on, whether we're keto, paleo, carnivore, vegan, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah. You don't see much agreeance online these days. You know, it's always everyone's got their sort stick because that's how you stand out.

And often we find that it's more about that than it is the the value they're trying to provide. How do I break out of the noise and become a thought leader with my sort of focus and that focus often becomes too narrow, right. If it's just carnivore or a carnivore. Carnivore. Yeah, that might work for somebody. But, you know, how do we so how do you get away from that sort of generalization? How do you figure out what works for you? Exactly? And here's the thing that I, that I've noticed being around and having, you know, all my friends are in the business is I have noticed that people will get a diet that works for them and then they are like, you know, yeah, in it to win it.

With everyone learning, that's the diet for everyone. I'm like, no, that's the diet for you, right? Right. And there there are some foundational things that are important which we can talk about. And I call it eating by the plate. And then there's going to be that variability. And it's like it's your genetics. It's your lifestyle. It's your goals. It's your tastes and preference. It's your microbiome. Like there's all these different things that can come into play. And what you ate in your 20s. To feel great may not be what you want to be eating in your 50s to feel great.

And it's not just, of course, what you're eating. It's also when you're eating it and how you're eating it. Because there's a big difference between, you know, rushing to an appointment, being stressed out and scarfing down food in the car versus, you know, saying, saying a little intention before you eat and calmly eating and putting your fork down between bites. Something I have to remind myself to do all the time. So, you know, there's more to the picture with all of this stuff. But there are some fundamental things that don't change for anybody.

And there's the fundamentals are we have to protein, fat and water to live. We cannot live without those three things. We can live without carbohydrates. Right. And what's really bizarre is that, you know, in the United States, they build this food guide pyramid that's now called my plate. And, when I call it eating by the plate, I'm not talking about that plate. And, they built it around the one thing that we can live without. So I'm always going there. There was like, no people group in history that ate the way the Food guide pyramid was created.

And it's so it's kind of a head scratcher. But what's happened when we look at what's happened now with people following that, if they really have, is that we now have more disease than we've ever had. So clearly something's not working. And if you really look back, like when I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet, I did a historical view of sugar and, and discovered that a lot of the shifted, and it's based on misinformation from this one guy who misread like, you know, misinterpreted the, the, seven sisters cholesterol study decided that, fat is what makes us have high cholesterol.

Fat is bad. And, you know, we're on the other side. You know, you had, like, sugar is the problem. Sugar is the problem. And I forget his name, but he got I think it was Bruce was. No. He got completely blown apart that he was like crazy quack. And this whole like idea that fat was bad got out there. And I think, you know, you see, now we've got, approaching now 80% of the population in the US is overweight or obese, 40% is obese. Only 12% before the pandemic were metabolically healthy.

Protein First and Body Composition 7:00

That means that we probably have eight. And by the way, the parameters they gave for metabolically healthy, I don't think are where they should be. They're not optimal. So we have a big problem on our hands. And the way we start to fix it is with food, which is, you know, if we can kind of sift through the noise is fantastic. And one of the things I think we really have to look at is, we need the there's a couple problems. The first problem being that the word diet means some very different things.

It means the way someone might eat, you know, based on their ethnicity and traditions. It means going on some, you know, the carnivore diet or it means what we eat every day and we kind of need three different words, right. And what I see with a lot of people is that dieting becomes a hobby, right? And they jump from thing to thing to thing instead of using diets therapeutically to learn something about your body or make that change you want to make, and then figure out what has to come from that diet into your everyday life to make you live, you know, so that that you feel great, that weight loss is effortless and that you have good metabolic health.

And so I approach the whole thing as the very first thing that you should do once you've committed to your health is the single most important thing. Because if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. Right. You've heard that saying, right, that if you he who has his health has a thousand dreams and he doesn't has one, right. So obviously, you know, and having had a child who nearly died, health is your there's there's nothing else that's more important. And the single most important thing of course would be changing what's at the end of your fork.

So once you decide that you are important and worthy enough to do that for yourself, right. And then if you really want to go out and change the world and do things in life, you got to then make healthier number one priority. Then the first thing that I think people should do is start to add before they think about what they can't eat, think about what they should be eating. Because the minute you start to take things out, you know, and I don't know about you, maybe I'm just rebellious or naughty, but like, you tell me I can't have something.

That's what I get fixated on. And what you focus on expands, right? Yeah. For sure. And people are. It's much harder to give up than it is. You're going to eat anyway. You might as well be eating something that you. Yeah. So start eating the good stuff to crowd out the bad stuff because, you know, look at little kids. They get full time. And now I can't eat dessert like no adult ever says, oh, no, I can't eat dessert because I'm full. You know, this is like, what? So I think that the first place to start is to go, all right, what if we just started to think protein first?

Because, you know, we need protein, fat and water to survive. And I got to give you something I got from Doctor Gabrielle Lyon that I think is just the craziest thing ever. And she's going to put this in her book. So it's going to get out everywhere. So she practices muscle centric medicine. And she was looking at, protein requirements. And what she discovered was during World War two when they were doing food rationing, they changed the protein recommendations in the United States because they needed to be able to have more protein to send to the troops.

Oh, they never changed it back. And so you'll hear like, there's all this protein phobia in the United States. There's all this look, don't have too much protein. It's hard on your kidneys. Right. And yet, you know, we've got osteopenia. You know, like, if you look at what happens is people age. The most important thing you can do is protect your lean muscle and have great bones, and you need protein to do those things. And you get a little protein resistant as you age. So, you know, especially with people trying to lose weight, protein is 20% more thermic and it's way more satisfying than the other foods.

And it's not going to give you that big insulin response. So I always tell people like, first thing is, is to make sure you're getting quality protein at every single meal. And I think that you need at least one gram per pound of lean body mass. That's the lower that's the least amount. And so that means you should know your body composition. So you need to get a scale and know how much of your body is muscle lean lean tissue and how much your body is fat, with the goal of always optimizing that lean tissue.

Because if you do that, you'll burn the fat, right? Instead of focusing on like all this, you know, like gotta lose weight, you actually don't want to lose weight. You want to hold on to or build muscle. Like, you just want to make sure you do not lose any of that. And if you do that, then you'll start to lose some fat. So you got to prioritize protein to do that. So that's the first place that I always start is like, let's make sure you use enough protein because then you'll actually be satisfied and satiated and you won't want to overeat like you do on carbs.

That's you know, the interesting thing about what you're saying. So my first thought when you started was getting all the right stuff, but how do you do this without the trial and error? Because there's so many options, there's so much noise, there's so many opinions on what to do. Is that but there's no there are some tests, like you said, there's genetic, there's blood markers that can drive you. But if you don't have that, it's kind of your testing what makes you feel good but doesn't make you feel good.

But you're breaking it down to the very, very pillar fundamentals of eating, which is let's start with protein fat and water. Yeah. Right. So well but then they actually those are the things we have to have. But I'm going to tell you some of the ways like if I'm adding. So I like to do add before you take away detoxify heal your gut, balance your blood sugar like so. I have a whole process I go through. But I think if we're just going to focus on a few things, because I'm a big, you know, I love testing, so love testing.

And, and I also believe in daily monitoring of your sleep, of your blood sugar. You can see I've got a little neutral sense on and and your body composition. Because if you optimize your body composition, making sure that you're holding on or building lean mass,

Using Food as a Therapeutic Tool 13:10

which is how you become more insulin sensitive so your body's able to burn fat. And by the way, 50% of people who are look normal weight are actually something called toffee thin outside, fat inside. If they're just trying to control their weight through diet and they're aging, they're losing muscle. And if they're losing, like you can never look at just your weight. In fact, I just had a guy I started working with, and I love weight loss resistance. So people cannot lose weight. They're my people. I love working with them.

So it comes in and he's been working with all these top doctors. Nothing is changing. So I start tweaking his diet, right? And messing with it. And, and he's already exercising. He's doing cold exposure. And, the cool thing is he was going and doing a Dexa body scan once a month, so I could see not only how much body fat in lean and lean tissue he had. So you basically look at two compartments in the body, fat and everything else. Right? The Dexa is going to not only tell me that, but it's going to tell me exactly where the fat is.

So I'm seeing where he's losing it. So I'm tweaking, tweaking, tweaking and taking him into a ketogenic diet and messing with him. Right. To see which things are working. And he his weight is not changing. He is getting so frustrated and his weight is not changing. And over three months his weight went down a pound. But over three months he put on 10 pounds of muscle and he lost 11 pounds of fat. That's phenomenal. At 58 like that is crazy amazing. Yeah, that is phenomenal. And that's what people don't get.

That one number that one metric here. What's my weight. Right. Composition. And it's easier. No I understand he used to be challenging a few years ago. But like you said there's equipment and now it's easy. Yeah. No, no it's possible. And there used to be a challenge. You know, it's made easy. So take advantage. So what what do you do with a person like that when they're 50? The hormones are there to support it. The metabolism isn't there to support it. But yet you made it happen. Yes. Well, you know, again, I, I, I have so, you know, I have food and lifestyle as my tools.

Right. That's what that's what I got. So I, you know, I'm going to of course go work with some doctors to get them hormones and peptides and all that if they need it. But I always start because I want to see how far you can go with food and lifestyle. Right. Because maybe you won't need any of the other stuff. And, and I love putting some genetics in because then I can know if there's things that I have to include right away with supplements because it's I've got to push a pathway right. But I love I love the fact that I can only use those tools because if I'm starting to work with someone with diet and going, wow, like, if that's not changing, then I know I'm going to have to look at some hormones, but a lot of times you can do so much with diet and exercise and meditate and sleep that will improve all these other things that you may not have to go there.

And if you do have to go there with, with any kind of hormones or prescriptions, you can use a lot less because you've got the body working correctly. Otherwise you're just putting in a big Band-Aid. So I always start I like to push protein because I know it's going to help with satiety and metabolism. Everyone wants to speed up their metabolism, right? And I want to make sure we're getting a lot of water in between meals. I mean, just if you're just even 1 or 2% dehydrated, you're raising stress hormones.

So I want to make sure we got that water to detoxify, to keep metabolism up. And then the next thing I add in is, a lot of non-starchy vegetables. Because most people are not getting that. Like if you took potatoes and ketchup out of the diet, people would not buy like them. The average American would have no vegetables, you know? So you're like, oh boy. Yeah, our our vegetables are iceberg lettuce and pickles and. Yep. Right. So that's the next place I like to add is start adding in some non-starchy vegetables.

And then of course, making sure that we've got those good healthy fats that's, you know, when you look at like what will people agree on? One of the biggest dangers to our health now are these damaged, bad oxidized fats. They're so much so inflammatory, so problematic. And what's really discouraging is you can walk into a health food store and, you know, think that you're getting everything good, and they've got canola oil, right? Right. And it's like and and and you know, like you think that you're in a safe place.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that education I mean that's where you can take for granted that the, the packaging. And I don't just mean the packaging, but even the packaging of the store. You're walking, right. You said right, right. You have to learn and know what what the how to read labels. Very basic thing. But people don't do it right. So how do you show this guy, for example, even that one skill or trait he's working with you. He's blessed to be able to work directly with you, but eventually he's going to go on on his own.

And that's where people sort of fall off and they don't comply. How do you get it to stick? So this is someone who's super duper wealthy, has not one but two planes and, a chef and but he travels all the time. He's like, and and I'm like, it's easier when you travel. You know, I'm kind of like your big baby. Stop it, you know? But what we did this is, was the chef's idea. And I went, all right, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard. I'm stealing it. Is he like, I gave them exactly like I like when you break your fast each day, I like to break the fast with what I call a loaded smoothie, which is protein.

First, in your smoothie. And so good. Protein powder, extra collagen. So we kick that up some good healthy fats with maybe coconut milk, a little avocado, and then, depending on what you're doing that day, like, I don't really do any fruit or anything in the morning because I just feel better being like super low carb in the morning. So it depends on if you're doing that or not. But so the smoothies were easy for him to be compliant with. But all we did for his meals was the chef had this card made that said what he couldn't eat.

Because I pulled out I in the Virgin diet, I have you pull out gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, and of course sugar and artificial sweeteners. And then we're challenge. I knew I want to keep him off gluten and turns out he did have gluten dairy. Obviously he had sensitivities to both of those gluten. I gluten I don't think anyone should be on. And then, he, you know, obviously I don't want him on soy. He's a man. And they didn't want him on corn, so I just we just wrote out a thing that said what he couldn't have at the restaurant, and you know, how to make his food so he could have simple grilled fish or grilled, you know, grass fed beef and loads of vegetables.

Could use olive oil or avocado oil or coconut. So there's plenty of stuff that he can have. Right. And so the chef just knew to make sure that he was. And it's so much easier now. Like it used to be.

Sweeteners, Sugar, and Blood Sugar Balance 20:30

Like fewer couldn't have gluten. It was like really challenging. But now it's not. So that's what we did for him. And I think here's the thing. You know, it sounds like you went let's let's just take okay, we're going to pull out bad oils, gluten and sugar. Because if we just did those three things, huge stuff would happen. Most people go, oh my gosh, there's nothing left to eat. I'm sad. All we pulled out is gluten, bad oils and sugar. Like we have berries, avocado, fish, grass fed beef, wild rice, you know, butternut squash.

I mean, like lentils. It's tons of food. Yeah, the majority of everything else that was left. Yeah. You just can't have Oreos. Yeah, yeah. And I think that the thing you know what I listen to, it's kind of what you did for this gentleman is you gave him like an identity shift, meaning that the habit was hard wired to the point where it's almost like, here's my identity, this is my card. This is what you got to do for me. And and people got to realize that they get to that, you know, again, you can have a culture guide you through it, but it takes weeks.

It's not overnight where you believe. Then you have the confidence even to walk into a restaurant. But, you know, if you had a peanut allergy, you tell people you have a peanut allergy, right? You got to be that level of conviction. This is my identity. This is who I am. And that again, allow it to take weeks for it to settle in and become sort of who you are. There's something you said there that I just want to ask you out of my personal curiosity. You talked about artificial sweeteners, and I've heard so much contradicting stuff there.

Are there any stevia? You know, monk fruit. Are there any that are worth having or that those aren't artificial? Okay. And that's the key critical thing. But there is a caveat with those as well. So there's sugar, there's natural sweeteners and then there's artificial sweeteners. Right. Three different things now with sugar. So so I right the Virgin diet. And by the way when I wrote the Virgin died at first when I first was doing this work with clients, it was pull out these six foods gluten, dairy, corn, soy, eggs, peanuts.

And we're going to take them out. We're going to let your body heal and reset, and we're going to see which ones work for you and which ones don't. Of course, the hardest thing was getting them to add them back in because they felt so good. They're like, I don't need those anymore, you know? And I swapped them with other things so they didn't miss it. But what I discovered was that if I didn't pull out sugar, which was disrupting their gut microbiome and creating some of the leaky gut, that if I didn't pull it out, they just ate more of it.

I'm like, all right. So that's why that it got added in. And there was so much confusion around sugar. They're like, but it's honey. Yeah, I like that sugar like, you know, and here's the thing. All carbohydrates turn into sugar except for fiber. It's just a matter of whether you're mainlining it with, like, apple juice concentrate or, honey or coconut sugar, or if you're making it slowly from, like, an apple, right. Or squash or wild rice. So which is it? Are you slowly doing it or are you like jamming it up?

So we obviously want to make this we want to make it slowly. And so that was the first thing was helping people understand the difference that which is what sugar impact is. But to also understand that, artificial sweeteners have no place in humanity, maybe to kill bugs. So, I mean, they they and I had a great nutrition mentor early on. He said, you know, you've got to look at things like margarine and artificial sweeteners that you can literally put outside and the bugs won't touch them. Like if a bug doesn't want to eat your food, there's something wrong, right?

So or if you can keep your food in, it's fine. Forever. Twinkies. Right? Something wrong? So artificial sweeteners have so many issues. As you know, they disrupt the gut microbiome. They can make you glucose intolerant, lead to diabetes. I mean, just, the, seizure activity, all sorts of crap. They're they're just they're just bad news. But in between, those are natural sweeteners. Things like stevia leaf or monk fruit that are naturally sweet. And so those are my swaps to use with the caveat. There was a study where they took rats and they fed them sugar water and then they allowed them to feed, and they ate exactly what they needed to maintain their weight.

Then they gave them, an artificial sweetener, and they allowed them to eat, and they ate what they needed to maintain their weight. And then they went back to sugar, and they overate because they lost ability, the ability to calibrate, to correlate degree of sweetness with the amount of calories. And so that is my only there's two concerns with with stevia monk fruit. And I will say I use them. But with this word of caution, what happens when you eat something sweet and what you want more sweet, right?

More like. Oh, so the thing with those is you've got to be cautious with them. They're not a free for all, you know, so you use them. But be aware, I really love Allulose because it has a little bit of calories, but it's not it's not absorbed. It doesn't give you gas like some of the things like xylitol can do, but it also helps with insulin sensitivity. So it's actually a pretty interesting one. So I use those sweeteners. But I also think that we need to and this is what I did in the Sugar Impact Diet.

I took people through a process. So they could retrain their tastebuds to appreciate sour and spicy and salty. And it turns out that sour can take your sweet tooth away and I really believe that if you're more blood sugar balanced, you're eating protein, which is more satisfying and slows down stomach emptying so you feel fuller longer. You're getting that with the fiber from non-starchy vegetables and low impact carbs, things like wild rice or lentils, things that take a while to turn into sugar, that give you that fiber that's nourishing your gut microbiome.

And also slow, slow that blood sugar response. And then you have the healthy fats that are also trigger the release of chemicals into your brain to tell you that you've eaten. And they're insulin neutral, and they also are reducing inflammation. So you're putting that stuff together. You should have good blood sugar balance. And then you won't have those sugar cravings that people have when they're, you know, they've been eating more carbs. Their body gets used to handling more carbs as it's getting more carbs, blood sugars up, insulin up.

Right. Insulin is slow acting. So if you're eating little bits of food all throughout the day, like we were taught to do when they pulled the fat out of our diet and we're hungry all the time, you start to become more insulin resistant because you've always got, you know, you get blood sugar up, insulin comes up, bring sugar back down, insulin slow to respond. So then you eat another little thing. Blood sugar comes back up. Insulin still there. It goes up a little bit higher. This keeps going on.

Your receptors start to get fatigued. They can't hear it anymore. You keep having to push more insulin out to get the same response for your blood sugar. And pretty soon you can't reach your fat stores to use stored fat for fuel. So you're having to eat every couple hours and you know you're like this. If you cannot lose your belly fat and you can't go more than a couple hours between meals and you know you're always a little bit hungry, you've never forgotten a meal in your life. You're a sugar burner, right?

You know, you lose weight, but you don't lose your waist. You're a sugar burner, so you don't want to be that way. So we've really if you can start with that plate of, of getting the protein, getting the healthy fats and getting that fiber. And that really helps with the satiety and drinking lots of water in between meals, because everyone knows you quite often aren't hungry or thirsty. Right. And giving your body that break in between meals that 4 to 6 hours in between meals and that 12 hours plus overnight, hopefully it's more like 12 to 14 hours to 16 hours so that your body has time to start doing some self-cleaning.

Gut Health Basics and Healing Foods 28:30

And it makes a huge difference. So that's the kind of simple things. And I will say that it's rare now. I mean there's there's like some occasions where you have to give people more than 2 to 3 meals a day where they have to add in something. But, you know, if I'm working, I used to work with a lot of, athletes, pro athletes. And when I had to keep their muscle mass on, I had them eat four meals a day every four hours, protein heavy. But for the rest of us, because that's not 99% of the population, right?

2 to 3 meals, lots of water in between. Shut the kitchen 3 to 4 hours before bed and stay out of there. Put an arm guard in there if you need to. Yeah. Let's say you have to have an alarm clock set and you no longer enter the kitchen. You don't get out. Like in the perfect world, this kitchen, which always seems to be the focal point and everyone's hanging out in there, right. It should have some thing like it's a self locking thing at 7:00. That sucker's done. You cannot get in there. Yeah. It's close.

So you know everything. You're just woken up so far. I mean, if anyone were to just say I'm doing everything that JJ said today, I'm sure you're going to be a different version of yourself by the time you come out the other end. A question I have for you is what we've been talking about is, you know, wait, optimal version of yourself. Can you also look at food as therapeutic for somebody who's more suffering from a condition or in some chronic state? Can you use it to heal as opposed to just being optimal in the way you eat?

So when I started all of this, I was obsessed with weight loss and weight loss resistance. And so that was my focus. And then that's where I started working. And then, I discovered this food sensitivity thing because I was teaching for many metrics and designs for health. So I was teaching this lab testing, and part of it was a food sensitivity test. And so then I realized that actually, you didn't have to do the test to figure out the most core areas that you were having issues with. And I was using it because what I discovered was when people food this pulled these foods out that were working for them, they had this fast weight loss, fast symptom relief, and then they felt so good they didn't want to go back.

So it was like lasting. I was like, this is great. What happened, that I didn't expect, you know, because I was using it for weight loss. And then I get a call from someone, they went, wow, I have had this tendonitis in my heel, and I was going to physical therapy three times a week for a year, and it never went away. And then I went off gluten and corn and it went away. And I'm like, what? You know, and then and then as it went out and I did a public television special and people started doing the program, this woman emails us and says, I was on.

I was on these, immune modulating drugs for my autoimmune psoriatic arthritis. Right. And, you know, she could hardly function because her immune system was so depleted from this that she would get sick so easily that she couldn't she couldn't work anymore. She couldn't see her grandkids. I mean, just horrible. And she is not on any medication like this. Like, basically didn't just get off the medication stopped. She starts to reverse the condition and I'm like, well, you know, so what I discovered with this because my focus, you know, my focus had been weight loss.

That's what I focused on. All of a sudden. I'm starting to see all these autoimmune people are coming in. I'm like, wow. And then people with chronic gut problems, chronic osteoarthritis, you know, and then when I wrote her Impact Diet, I really wrote that one more for people who had diabetic, you know, anyone insulin resistant diabetes, elevated cholesterol. And I say that kind of I we look at cholesterol so wrong. So that's a whole nother thing. But you know, I really looked at that one because I think we use diets therapeutically.

So when you really look at, virgin diet, it really is for autoimmune conditions. Super duper helpful, super important. Thing to look at. And I had a great mentor early on who said, the sicker you are, the farther back in your ancestry you need to go. So I have a paleo version of the Virgin diet. It's fairly close. Anyway, that, works really well for autoimmune conditions. And then, you know, the next one was sugar impact. Again, I just was going, what was the next problem? Well, the next problem was people who did the Virgin diet.

There was a group of them that couldn't quit sugar. I'm like, all right people, I'll do this. But what I really discovered there is for the person who's really struggling with blood sugar control or cardiovascular stuff, this is the perfect place for them to be. Right? And then, you know, the kind of advanced level of that that I'm redoing the program for. Is that it? It I believe that you should not just step into intermittent fasting. You shouldn't just go do a ketogenic diet. You have to you have to get ready for these things.

You know, when we don't feel good, we want to feel better overnight. But we didn't get to the point of feeling poorly overnight. Like most of these things that we get to have been years in the making. And so, you know, you need at least like a couple months, right? Like people always want I want to be I want to lose weight tomorrow. I want to get rid of my blood sugar issues tomorrow. But we can get you quick wins really fast. But then you have to go through the work. So those, those diets are really set to fix those things.

And, you know, the sugar impact diet prepares your body so you can easily do intermittent fasting because now you have transformed into a fat burner. So you can extend those times without, you know, having challenges. Now you can play around if you want to do some cycles of ketosis, because I believe, you know, in exercise, and I started out as an exercise physiologist and an exercise everyone knows to cross train. That's what you do. You cross train exercise. Why? So that your body continues to progress so that you don't get injured so you don't get bored.

Why aren't we doing that with diet? We should be doing it with diet. And when I say diet here, I mean the way we eat. But what if, like now, I really want to focus on maybe some advanced detoxification? Or maybe I want to focus on, some gut healing or blood sugar balance. Well, then I go and grab, like, sweets, blood sugar bounce. I'd grab, you know, sugar impact diet, go through it and then start. Maybe doing some cycles of, of ketosis. Right. Or doing maybe one meal a day, intermittent fasting.

I'll play around with that. But that's I think we need to reframe how we eat to really look at what do we need to do. And it's not the same thing every single day. You wouldn't do that with your exercise. Wouldn't make any sense. Yeah, it's. Yeah. And that's a very key thing you just said is we're all focused on what we eat. Very few on how, you know, in the how can have such a huge effect. Something as simple as eating schedule, like you said, right in time or an off time, metabolic activity or not metabolic time.

But the how thing is so crucial and nobody talks about the cyclical modality of like, let's shift gears right, get into ketosis, burn some fat, but let's go back to something else and allow your body and what that may do for your gut microbiome in order to populate, you know, a variety of healthy flora as opposed to just one thing. And maybe that's a last thing we'll touch on here. We could go on for another couple of hours, but I know we got to watch the time. When it comes to gut health, we've heard this, and, you know, we've been doing a lot of talks, and a lot of people keep coming back to the gut.

Are there key foods that we can even generalize and say that here's what you should do to heal your gut. Yes. The thing you want to not have, it's gluten, right? You cannot heal your gut. And any gluten containing grains like you just can't do it because gluten triggers the release of something called that makes your gut more permeable. So you cannot heal your gut if you're eating gluten. So, you know, that's step one. Like, I can't we can't do we can't. If you're if you're sitting on a bunch of tacks okay. Yeah.

You know, and you go, well, how do I get my my butt to stop hurting? I'm like, well, you got to take the tax away first. You know, I can give you a pillow, but if the tax are still there, we got a problem. So it's really important that gluten you cannot have a healthy gut any gluten you can't. So there's that. Next. There are so many things that are so good for your gut. Now sleep is one of them for sure. And and mindfulness managing stress. However that means for you like I finally years of kicking and screaming and resistance am now a meditator.

And you know, meditation.

Practical Takeaways and Closing Remarks 37:30

So key critical sleep is so key critical. You've got to have those things for healing your gut. So I'm going to throw those ones in there. But what are important bone broth. Super important. You know, so I actually do a bone broth, a shake made from bone broth protein every day. And I throw an extra collagen. And then if you can drink bone broth, even better. All that helps you seal, heal and seal the gut. And then getting in some fermented veggies, I just, I just, was got off a call with doctor Tom O'Brien.

I was like, oh my gosh. And, you know, I've got to I've got to get my fermented veggies on a consistent basis. That's a fail on my part. So I'm going to say this always I'm always very authentic. I have not nailed this one yet. I just wasn't raised with fermented foods and I just but it doesn't take much for this to make a big impact and really heal your gut microbiome. This is this is how you fuel the flora in your gut. So you want to make sure you're getting in. And it doesn't take much. It's like a tablespoon a day of these eating into some good prebiotics.

So things like artichoke you know, so Google prebiotics to get some prebiotic foods and, and really making sure that you're getting good fiber. Super duper important. So those are some of the ones that I really look at that are key critical. If I had to say the most important things for the gut, and fiber from lots of non-starchy vegetables because all those different colors do different things. And the antioxidants, like if you're if you're monitoring inflammation, one of the ways we know you can do it on lab tests is through something called highly sensitive C-reactive protein.

Now, people with more body fat tend to have a higher CRP because, you know, body fats, it's own little inflammatory, hothouse. So one of the things we found early on is we could lower that CRP by throwing antioxidants at it. Well, you know, ideally we want to lose the body fat that's got the pro-inflammatory cytokines. And ideally we want to put that fire out. And, you know, make sure we're not doing things like inflammatory fats with that. But in the interim, one of the things that can help is, is getting in those antioxidants in the first place to get them is with food, right?

Is with plants and all those plants with all those colors do different things. So deep green leafy and beets and red onions and red peppers, you know, all this different stuff. So those are the things that I like to start with, for food. And then of course some really good anti-inflammatory fats, fish oil, like fish proteins actually. Great for gut healing, pectin from apples, great for gut healing, and freshly ground flaxseed meals. Another one that's really great for gut healing. That's an awesome.

I'm going to start on it very soon. I that's a personal challenge for me were since very early on gut issues nonstop, I've learned that genetically, I'm literally missing key genes that help me detoxify the gut, which is why that works for me and so many people that we see. By the way, that one particular area, this is not like a 2 or 3% problem. This is like a 40% problem. And you wonder why there's so many gut health issues, the key genes that help you protect that gut lining, detoxify. I draw the chemicals and pesticides and all the chemicals that process your food out.

We most of us don't do that. Well, yeah. And then you couple that with, you know, a food supply. That's a disaster. Yeah. You know, just like a disaster, like. And, you know, apples can be great, but they are a pesticide crop. So you have to get those things organic. So we really have to watch these bad seed oils. And you know, I mean if you look at gluten and you go, okay, is it the gluten or the glyphosate? And it's like it's all right, you just have a mess on our hands. Yeah. And it takes a little while to shift and kind of learn new things that you're going to be doing, but then you're just once you got it figured out, it becomes easy, right? Yeah.

But Jesus was awesome. Like, I honestly like, I feel like I could go for another two hours because it just felt like ten minutes that way. I wanted to thank you also and let everyone know that you've offered up your smoothie book, which I'm going to use because I literally just yesterday I threw a bunch of stuff into the Vitamix, press the wrong button, and it all exploded onto my ceiling. We've all done that. Yeah, that's why I switched to a NutriBullet. Because you can't mess it up. You can't pull it off unless you put sparkling water into a NutriBullet, in which case it explodes.

But then. Okay, we also discovered that. Yeah. So yeah, I urge everyone, you know, sign up for that, get the free copy. That was so kind to offer everybody. Thank you again for joining us. This is mind blowing information. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of guts and bodies and minds healed because of this. Thank you again. Thank you. All right.