The 4 Paths to Micronutrient Magic: Jonathan Bailor interviewed by Jayson and Mira Calton

Mira: Welcome back and thank you so much for joining us again for another edition of The Ten. It was called nutrition. I’m Mira Calton.

Jayson: And I am Dr. Jayson Calton. Together we are the founders of Calton Nutrition and the authors of the books Rich Food, Poor Food and Naked Calories. As you know The Ten is a place where we learn about the inspirations and the dreams of the leaders, visionaries, and innovators that affect your world and your health. Today we are going to be here with Jonathan Bailor, a great friend and colleague of ours. He is a lifelong exercise and fitness devotee, he’s registered over 25 patents, and he’s a senior program manager at Microsoft.

He also runs a wellness consultancy as well as a speaker business in Seattle, where he lives with his lovely wife Angela [crosstalk 01:06]. He’s the author of a book that’s really shaking things up. I can’t tell you how important it is to go out and preorder this book right now. It comes out December thirty-first. It’s called The Calorie Myth. I think the information in there is something that everybody listening right now needs. Without further ado, let’s welcome our great friend Jonathan Bailor to the show. Welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hey Jayson and Mira. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Mira: Oh, absolutely. Like Jayson said, it’s not about calories. We definitely can say that we’ve seen Jonathan eat and eat and eat, and he’s got a very healthy appetite. He’s not watching his calories, but he’s staying extremely thin-thin. We all want to share some of those tips later today with some of the people listening, okay, Jonathan?

Jonathan: My pleasure, absolutely.

Mira: We’re going to just jump right in to The Ten, we’re going to ask you the first question. Why did you start this company? Or why did you write this book? What brought you down this path that you are on now?

Jonathan: I’ll start way back. When I was a little, little, little guy, I was raised in a very academic household. Both of my parents are college professors, and I also have a much older brother who is very, very athletic – ten years older than me, so you can imagine them going, “Be like your big brother.” So I was a naturally skinny geeky kid. That was my natural proclivity. I was one of those people that is naturally thin, and that’s part of the reason I am able to stay thin. That’s also the backbone of my research, which we will get into in a second.

In growing up I wanted to get bigger. I wanted to be like my older brother. So I went the traditional route. I read everything I could in popular literature; I read all the body building magazines; I became a trainer at Bally Total Fitness. That’s how I paid my way through college. I even went so far as to eat upwards of 6,000 calories per day in an effort to get bigger. I was doing double shots of olive oil because that’s the only way to get that many calories in your body. In doing that and becoming a trainer, I had a really shocking and disturbing realization, and that was when I became I trainer I was working with people that were in no way shape or form like me.

In a sense, they were the opposite of me. They were females, and they were trying to get smaller while I was a male who was trying to get bigger. My approach of “eat a lot of calories” wasn’t making me bigger, and the approach I was taught to tell these women, which was to starve themselves and exercise obsessively or to reduce calories, wasn’t making them smaller. In fact, we were both getting sick and sad. Anyone who’s in the business, as you guys know, of trying to make people feel great and to be healthy, if what you have been taught and what you’re doing professionally is actually making people and yourself worse, you’re compelled to figure out something else, right?

I know Jayson that’s what you did with Mira, right? You literally felt compelled to figure out something, and that’s what lead to nutrients and all the great stuff you guys are doing today. So, I felt compelled and I didn’t know what else to do because I was already a trainer, I was already supposedly an expert. So that’s when I tapped into my geeky side and my really academic parents. I said, “Well, where did this information I was taught come from?” And, actually where did that information come from and where did that information come from? So I traced it all the way back to the primary sources.

The hardcore academic research. These are research journals that nobody reads other than academicians, and you can’t read even if you want to because they are usually incredibly expensive. Or you have to have access to university libraries, things like that. Upon beginning to read the actual experts’ information – when I say “expert,” I mean people that do research for a living, not people who necessarily wear spandex for a living.

Mira: There’s a difference.

Jonathan: Exactly. There’s people on the frontlines, and then there’s primary care physicians and surgeons, and you have to just trace it like – where’s everyone getting their information from? It’s all coming back to these researchers, who are often PhDs – they’re not even MDs. They are PhDs; they do research. I started to see this giant disconnect between what I was taught as a trainer and what the primary scientific research actually showed. For about three years I just kept looking and looking and looking because I didn’t believe it. I said, “Nope. Like any good researcher I’m going to keep doing research until I find data that confirms my initial hypothesis,” which is that eat less and exercise more has to work. It’s intuitive.

But there really was no data at all, none, zero. Although it is intuitive, it’s wrong. The world is flat is intuitive, but it’s wrong. So I spent about ten years looking at over 1,300 studies, collaborating with top doctors and researchers at Harvard, John Hopkins, UCLA, all around the world to find and fill this giant gap between what I was taught as a trainer and what they’ve actually proven over the past forty years. When you think about it, we don’t use the same phones we used five minutes ago; we don’t fly in the same airplanes we flew in five years ago.

We continue to get told the same eating and exercise advice we were told fifty years ago in the face of the largest health care crisis the world has ever seen. There’s been vast technological progress; it’s so sharply different from what the mainstream is telling us. So now it’s my life’s mission to end the suffering associated with that.

Jayson: Yeah.

Mira: We love innovation. Obviously with nutrients and everything we totally agree. Like when you know something is better, it’s your opportunity, it’s your drive, you have to do it, you have to put out this information to share it with others. We’re thrilled that you did because we obviously agree that calorie in, calorie out is not all it was ever cracked up to be.

Jayson: Yeah, we can definitely vouch for the fact that – you know, what’s really interesting is that so much of this information that we’re coming out with and that you’re bringing to the forefront is information that’s really been out there for quite a while but it’s really been buried. Somehow or other these kind of faulty ideas have taken center stage. But when you go back and really look at it, like at the calories you’re looking at now and what you’ve mentioned earlier what we’ve done with the anti-competition technology. That information is out there but just people aren’t listening. Mira and I we…

Mira: No one’s reading those papers.

Jayson: No one’s reading those papers. Mira and I eat 3 to 4,000 calories a day, and I know you’re way up there as well. A lot of people think you got to eat less in order to lose weight, and that’s what I really love about this. Your book just shatters that myth. If I hear “eat less and exercise more” one more time I’m just going to – I don’t know what I am going to do.

Mira: I don’t want to see it.

Jayson: That this message is getting out there. I applaud that and we can’t support you enough in that endeavor. So, our second question to you is – what I want to find out is, name one thing that you’ve learned about yourself this past year that you didn’t know before.

Jonathan: Just this year?

Jayson: Just this year.

Mira: Just this year.

Jayson: Please, something recent. Or it could be last year.

Jonathan: Really recent would be that chia seeds are a gastrointestinal – they are like one of the most therapeutic foods I’ve ever eaten in my entire life in terms of helping with digestive situations. Chia seeds – not only do they grow awesome little fun pets, but they make you have a much better gastrointestinal health.

Mira: I’ll ask you real quick, how do you like it? Do you like it as a pudding? Do you like it… how are you making your chia seeds?

Jonathan: I put them in a – Carrie Brown is my cohost of our podcast The Smarter Science of Slim show, and she’s a former English pastry chef gone SANE, as we call it. So she works to find ways to create – we talk about SANE-atizing people’s diets, which it’s not about you can’t ever eat anything ever again and it’s super restrictive. It’s more – just do it smarter. For example, people really like oatmeal and cereal. You don’t need to give up oatmeal and cereal in our opinion. You just need to do it smarter.

You would use a chia seed base and that’s what I do. I make a sort of chia seed oatmeal for breakfast, which consists of chia seeds, eggs or egg whites, usually powered and pasteurized, and then a vanilla, coconut, guar gum, cinnamon and that is I think it. I blend it the night before in my Vitamix with water and ice and then I eat it in the morning and it’s just delicious.

Jayson: Sounds great.

Mira: There you go.

Jayson: For those people who are listening that don’t know, chia seeds are one of the highest sources of omega-3 in the plant world. That’s what’s really great about it. Lots of ALA in there, and I think it is actually even higher than flax seed when we looked at the research.

Mira: I like it like a chocolate pudding. I mean there is nothing better than having a chocolate pudding.

Jayson: Yeah.

Mira: We can move on, enough about chocolate pudding. So what’s your favorite part – I could talk about food forever. What’s your favorite part of your job? What do you enjoy most?

Jonathan: So I didn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter page until the beginning of 2012 when my first book The Smarter Science of Slim released, because I just did research and I am a senior program manager at Microsoft, so I had a lot of other things going on. When I got out into the public and started sharing this message – which is shocking but completely proven and endorsed by top doctors at the Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, such and such, and experts such as yourselves – which is eat more and exercise less but smarter.

I was very surprised to see that the people this resonated with the most were people over the age of 40 and especially with women. Because women over the age of 40 have tried for decades to eat less and exercise more, and they have tried the gimmicks. They’ve tried everything and they know it doesn’t work. So they are looking for something with more substance. So, having something that’s so evidence-based, they try it. They’re not hungry for the first time in their life, their husbands are often no longer resentful of these tasteless disgusting dinners and they are like, “Oh my gosh, I can eat food again.”

Hearing stories of people who have struggled for decades, who have lived their life in a state of hunger and emotional pain, who now don’t think about it. Not only are they not crying but they just don’t even think about it. They just eat whole, natural, SANE foods, and they do a little bit of smarter exercise, and they feel better and they’re automatically shedding pounds. They’re doing things they have never done before. I love hearing stories also about what has been deemed by some of my wonderful fans, collateral or accidental weight loss, which often happens for husbands because husbands don’t care.

But they eat whatever is served to them and often females are the health CEO of the household. These stories of husbands and wives having to go out together and buy all new pants – I just love hearing these. Or a story of someone walking out a grocery store with their arms full of groceries, and their pants start to slide off, and they’re like, “Ah, what do I do?” I just – I love – because it’s like they’re not trying. We shouldn’t have to try to be healthy; healthy is the default state. Nobody knew what a calorie was, let alone counted them, when we were all slimmer and healthier.

It’s people getting back to that simplicity and that enjoyment, which is what health and fitness should be. That’s really the most rewarding for me.

Mira: I don’t think we’ve ever asked anyone this question, but it would have been fun when we were traveling to the tribal regions, to ask them what a calorie was. I am sure they would not have known and would have been clueless to what that word meant. But it would have been actually interesting to get to do exactly that and have a whole bunch of different tribes going, “Calorie? What’s that?” It’s not important.

Jayson: Well, it just makes so much sense, doesn’t it? If you’re in a state where your body isn’t getting enough of the calories, which is typically what we do when we diet or before we started coming up with our concepts and your Calorie Myth book. The body just kind of goes into a starvation state, doesn’t it? It kind of holds on to that fat, and it wouldn’t stand to reason that if we ate less we’d just start peeling off all of that important fat. We really want that body to have the nourishment it needs and be put in the right state to lose weight.

I know your book is going to do that for people. This is all evidence-based stuff. So when people listening now – this isn’t theory that we’re just talking about – oh, I can eat more and exercise less. This is really evidence based.

Mira: It’s not eat more of everything either.

Jayson: No, it`s not eat more of everything either. You`re going to have to read the book to find out exactly. It is great food like you said, and it`s easy to do, so that`s really important for people.

Our next question is, what`s the least favorite part of your job?

Jonathan: Without question it’s – healthy is supposed to be about health and celebration and living better. There’s too many people in the health community that are more concerned with being right than with helping people. Our job is to help people. If I met someone on the street and they said, “I used to eat non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, whole fats, low fructose fruits, and I felt terrible. My blood markers were all terrible, every clinical piece of data that you could have indicated that I was unhealthy. Then I switched to a diet of soda and cheese puffs and all of my biomarkers got better, and I feel better and I live better.”

I would say that that person has an amazing genetic mutation and that if it’s in fact the case that eating processed edible garbage helps them to live better that’s what they should do. That’s what they should do. We are not in the business of being right; we are in the business of helping people. So often it turns into more of these religious debates which are so pointless, because 99 percent of the population still thinks that, for example, drinking a can of Coke which only has 140 calories, as if that means anything to anybody, is better for you than an avocado. Because an avocado has more calories in it.

People are arguing about these pedantic religious nutrition issues when people are dying because they don’t know the basics. I would love for us to be able to focus on saving people’s lives rather than being right.

Jayson: Love the passion there. That’s exactly what we need now. We need to stop this ridiculous conversation that has been happening in nutrition now and really look at the facts. The facts are exactly as you pointed out in the books that there are specific foods and there are right and wrong. I always say nutrition has been the red-headed stepchild of science in general for the last thirty, forty years. Now nutrition is coming to the forefront and we are saying, hey, we are not going to listen to any more of this, it’s not because Coke has 140 calories – if you think that’s better than avocado because it’s got fat and higher calories, we need to completely retrain your brain when it comes to what is healthy in this country and what’s going to be healthy for you. I love that you’re doing that; I love that you’re bringing this to the forefront.

Mira: For us also we just like to see the communities come together, being able to talk with each other about what health is for different people and be open to other people’s perspectives on it as well. For example, on the GMO fight I don’t care if you’re a vegetarian and you are worried about it being in your zucchini and in your corn. Or if you’re Paleo and you’re worried about it getting into your meat and your primal and your dairy. It’s just coming together in a conversation where we can all try to make people healthier. That’s why we love having conversations like this one on The Ten where we can bring people we think are just impressive in their own right, with their own beliefs that we want to share with our tribe.

Jayson: Absolutely.

Mira: Here’s just a great one, what’s your favorite food?

Jayson: It can’t be one of your own products or recipes.

Jonathan: No, that’s good because I…

Jayson: What your favorite food is.

Mira: What’s your favorite food if you could eat anything?

Jayson: Healthy or not.

Jonathan: Salmon. Easily, wild caught salmon.

Jayson: Really?

Jonathan: I love it.

Mira: Grilled, I’d make salmon cakes instead of crab cakes all the time. What’s your go-to?

Jonathan: I’m very simple actually, I am also very lazy when it comes to cooking. This is not my ideal, but this is my go-to because it’s simple. We do a lot of soups in the Smarter Science of Slim and in the Calorie Myth just because it’s a really great way to consume a lot of non-starchy vegetables. Put a bunch of things in the Vitamix, blend it up, you can even leave it raw, you can cook it if you want. I make a bunch of that for my base, then I put salmon – they sell these salmon patties at Costco, which are wild-caught Alaskan salmon, and I don’t know how, but they are wild-caught, and it breaks down to about $5.00 a pound for wild-caught salmon. Which is amazing and it’s available all across the United States so everyone can enjoy it.

It does have a little bit of canola oil in it, which is not ideal but you know, progress not perfection. Minimally processed, I take those, I just cook them up, I mash them into little pieces. I put them in my soup and I enjoy my soup that way. I also just eat them as patties with all-natural corn syrup.

Jayson: All-natural?

Jonathan: Hey, it’s natural so it’s good for you, right? With all-natural pasta sauce on top. I use them like most people would use chicken, which is just put it in everything. I love it.

Jayson: I like smoked salmon. We eat salmon all the time. The great thing about soup, you know a lot of people…

Mira: We just did a video on it.

Jayson: We just did a video on it. The great thing about it is that that liquid is used by the body very differently than if you ate a meal and drank water. When you make it into soup, the body actually sees that soup as food in general, even the water portion. So not only does it make you full and keep you satisfied for longer, but the body will absorb the nutrients a lot better. That’s a great tip.

Jonathan: Well, thank you. In terms of the soup as well, so I’ll just give a quick plug to my podcast cohost Carrie Brown. She does all of our cooking and she’s just released a book called something-Soups. So just look for Carrie Brown.

Mira: Carrie Brown, soups.

Jonathan: The reason I mention it, though, is because soups have transformed my life. I never really ate soups before, not because I don’t like them, just because unless it’s something I can do easily and in bulk on the weekend, I don’t do it. With soups, one, it’s incredibly easy. You can do a massive amount of raw veggies if that’s what you want or you can cook them. But what I like even more about them is they enable me to consume foods deliciously that I would never eat otherwise. One example is clams, oysters, and other mollusks where you can actually buy them canned, fresh not farmed, and you can buy them canned in a very affordable fashion.

It’s very difficult to just eat clams. Like what do you do with clams? They’re not the easiest thing in the world. But you can dump them into soup, now that’s your protein. Non-starchy vegetables you use like a coconut milk or coconut base for the soups so you have your healthy fats and you get your healthy fats from the seafood and this protein. It’s hard to think of anything more micronutrient dense than soup with a base that’s made of coconut, super-healthy fats, a bunch of non-starchy vegetables, many of which are consumed raw, and then mollusks. That is like the ultimate meal.

Jayson: That’s great.

Mira: We had soup for dinner last night. We actually did.

Jayson: Now do you have that recipe in this book?

Jonathan: Yeah, so Carrie actually has it. It’s either thirty or forty soup recipes, so you can do almost a different one every single week and they are awesome. They’re – clam chowder, there’s lasagna soup, there’s creamy casserole soup, there’s a chili recipe, there’s green bean casserole soup. What I do, I don’t actually follow the book to a T, I like to make the soup base and then I’ll have salmon, oysters, clams, grass feed beef, just all these different proteins and it’s almost like my own Mongolian grill in my kitchen.

I have my soup bases and I’m like, “Hmm, do I want the green soup or the red soup or the yellow soup? And then which protein do I want to add?” I literally eat that for ten meals a week, just assembling those various components.

Mira: That’s a great way also to work in any of the extras in your fridge.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Mira: If it’s going bad, it goes in the soup.

Jayson: Yeah, boom goes in. It’s also a great way to get fat in, too. We recommend a high fat diet often times for our people, and so it’s a great way to get fat into the soup and you don’t even really know you’re getting it there.

Okay, so here’s our next question. If you could do any other job, now you have to pick one you can’t just say no, I wouldn’t…

Mira: Not one of the other two you’re already doing.

Jayson: Right. Which job would you do other than what you’re doing now?

Jonathan: A lobbyist to revise the USDA food guide pyramid and My Plate. I would be the Thank You for Smoking guy, but for the modern science of eating and exercise. I want to get in front of Congress, I want to undo the damage that has been done, and I want to do that on a societal level because I think there’s 1 percent of the population on the internet that gets it. They just get it more and more and more and that’s fabulous. But the other 99 percent are being so underserved and we need to fix that. So easily I would become the Thank You for Smoking guy for the modern science of eating and exercise.

Mira: That would be a great position if it opens up.

Jayson: Yeah, but you’re kind of doing that now, too. You’re getting your message out there and it’s great when we all get together and we all kind of talk with each other. And that’s great. We’re all kind of preaching to the choir. What’s really important is, like you said, to get out to that other 99 percent of America who hasn’t heard this message yet. For a lot of people listening this might be, “What are they talking about? I don’t think I can exercise less and eat more.” It is absolutely true.

Mira: We should all start a thing like we all, say, introduce a friend to healthy concepts. You have to introduce one person every single day and just spread it that way or something. We should start something around a grassroots effort [crosstalk 22:52]. Get the word out.

Jonathan: What I really appreciate – you guys are a great example of what I think we need to be doing. That’s your message is one that is impossible to argue with. What I mean by that is you’re coming out with things which are true because of science. But they are also intuitively true. It’s just like eat the most nutrient dense, non- hormonally-harmful foods in the world. You’re focused on the end. The end is consumption of these things which everyone agrees are healthy. Now the means, people talk about the means so much, right? Like the way you should do that isvegan or isPaleo or isSouth Beach or islow carb.

That’s when people – I get excited – that’s when people start to get amped up, right? Republicans and Democrats all agree that poverty is bad and that we should solve it. How we solve it is where all the argument comes into play. If you can just help get people’s mindshare that they should care about the end, the means is malleable. I think part of the challenge is so often people focus so much on the means that people say, “Well that means, that technique, that approach, that specific lifestyle doesn’t work for me so I’m not going to listen to you.” Or, “I’m confused because it conflicts with this one.”

But it seems like we can all agree that eating foods that are the most nutrient dense, hormonally helpful and satisfying is the way to go. If that’s the message we’re telling people versus the message of deprivation and complexity and math, then I think we can make a big difference in the world.

Jayson: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying that. That was one of our hardest things we had to get over is how do we stop this infighting within the nutrition community? Because like you said, we get hung up on that and it becomes almost like a religious doctrine. You know I’ve chosen that eating this way is the right way because, and we plant our flag in that, in that emotional state. Anybody else coming up and talking about that as the first thing, we put up a red flag or we jump on the bandwagon just based on that nutritional philosophy. But if we can get past that and say, hey, no matter what we’re eating, if we meet micronutrient sufficiency then that’s ultimately the best way. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Mira: That we all get to that point of health.

Jayson: Yeah, that point.

Mira: Whatever’s working for you. Let’s take a bit of Jonathan Bailor, a bit of the Caltons and a bit of all of our numerous friends we have in common and put together a really great puzzle piece. I think it would help a lot of people. You’re into the whole community thing and working together so we’re thrilled about that.

What’s your least favorite word?

Jonathan: Calories. Boom – there’s a myth about calories. You should get this book.

Mira: [Crosstalk 25:29] and be clear. So this is the new book but…

Jonathan: [Crosstalk 25:36] this is actually an advanced review copy. It’s an uncorrected proof so the actual book is hardback and will be out New Year’s Eve, so please check out caloriemythbook.com.

Mira: Excellent, very excited.

Jayson: Our next question for you. If you could meet anyone in the world alive today, who would it be?

Jonathan: Does it have to be alive today?

Mira: Yeah.

Jayson: Well, we’d like it to be.

Jonathan: Okay.

Jayson: So we can help you meet them.

Jonathan: Michelle Obama.

Jayson: Michelle Obama.

Jonathan: Because – I would love to share with her the information that has so transformed my life and that is the modern science of eating and exercise because she has such an amazing platform and passion for the ends that we all agree on, which is health. But she just hasn’t been given the modern tool set. She has the tool set from fifty years ago, and if we could give her the modern tool set, we would see a renaissance of health in this country. It would be amazing.

Jayson: Yeah, I can tell you if there was a dinner at the White House and I can think of ten people off the top of my head in our nutrition community that would absolutely change the health of America with one dinner at that table with Michelle Obama. So that’s great, we actually…

Mira: We have some people involved.

Jayson: We will talk to you later about that.

Mira: Anyway, next thing. Next thing is, where would you go and what would you do if you got to stop working so hard for a little while and go on a dream vacation? And speaking on a cruise ship doesn’t count.

Jonathan: I would go to… like, a little log cabin somewhere, secluded with my wife, and I would try to fly as many of my friends and family out as I could because part of the challenge with being so passionate about a cause and a mission such as the one that the three of us have committed our lives to is, in some ways life is a zero-sum game, and I still haven’t really figured out yet how to have as much time with my family and friends as I would like to. But I think that is the burden that people who do what we do face sometimes. So I would love to have the opportunity to thank all of the people and spend more time with all of the people who have enabled me to do this.

I remember because even the week of my wedding with my dear wife, which was about at this point four years ago, just that week where there was family in town and we were all just focused on being together was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life. That was the last time I have seen a lot of those people. It’s less about where we went and what we did but who I was with. That would mean so much to me.

Jayson: That sounds great.

Mira: That does sound nice, honey.

Jayson: It is very true. I think a lot of people don’t see what goes on behind the scenes. People like yourself and us and I know others in our community, would you say it’s abnormal to be doing twelve to sixteen hour days? I mean we’re on the road…

Mira: Books don’t write themselves.

Jayson: Books don’t write themselves. It’s from morning to night. I mean I eat, breathe, dream, talk, everything nutrition. It’s all we do, and it’s very hard to disconnect, and it’s hard to be able to get to spend time with family and friends.

Mira: We’re lucky in a way because we get to do it together and be equally insane on the same exact topic.

Jonathan: Not insane, not insane.

Jayson: Okay. We’re down to our last question here on The Ten. This is where, you know…

Mira: We’re not done.

Jayson: No, we’re not done but we’re down to the last question. This is where we really want to dig deep into kind of what your vision is. The question is, what’s your hope for the future of food and health? Where do you want to see this go in a perfect world?

Jonathan: The way you phrase that question actually has the answer in it. That’s the words “food” and “health,” because if you think about it that’s not what the mainstream is talking about. The mainstream is talking about calories instead of food and weight instead of health. So if the focus was on – this is so simple and it’s not a semantic argument because it reflects much deeper cultural values. Calories trivializes the beautiful brilliance and emotions that go into eating and existing on this planet. You cannot equivalence-class soda with plants with exercise.

Which is technically what calories do, which is absurd. So if we started thinking about food again, just look at certain countries in Europe. They don’t ever exercise, they don’t think about calories, but they do eat food. They eat fresh food and they eat a lot of food but because they’re focused on food, things get a lot easier a lot quicker. Then health instead of weight. If your goal is to lose weight the easiest way to do that is to be incredibly unhealthy. To be very blunt, you would take amphetamines, you would take cocaine, you would stop eating, you would exercise to a point of detriment.

If your goal is around weight you will do things that make you unhealthy. Now, if your goal is around health you will accidently maintain an appropriate weight just like every other person did in history and prior to the current three generations. Health and slimness can’t be hard. If it was we would have died off as a species a heck of a long time ago. But it’s because we’re focused on calories and weight instead of food and health that this has become so complicated and counterproductive.

Jayson: Yeah, I can’t applaud that answer enough. I think you’re absolutely right. We need a relationship with our food again, don’t we? This is one thing we do see in Europe and all throughout the world in the remote tribes that we’ve certainly visited. And then, health.

Mira: Food is precious. It doesn’t just arrive magically. I mean that’s a problem. Most people think it does arrive magically to your table. I mean, someone had to grow it and they had to love the plant and take care of the plants. Nature does all of these incredible things to keep us eating food. It is very sad now. Things come in these boxes and bags and people eat mindlessly. Would really love to have people have that relationship with their food again.

Jayson: We were in Tibet – one of the most interesting things. We were talking with these Tibetan monks, because you often think that they are vegans and they pretty much just eat a plant-based diet across the board. We said, “So you don’t eat any of this other stuff?” They were like, “What? Of course we do. We are going to take whatever the people bring to us. The food is the gift. They gave that to us. We certainly are not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and say no, we don’t eat that. We eat whatever the people bring us.”

That’s the same thing with the remote tribes around the world. Never did they have some kind of an ability to get food and say, “Oh, by the way we don’t eat that. We just don’t eat that.” No, they eat everything that nature provides for them. They do it in a way that it gives thanks back and it gives respect back to the earth. I think that that respect with food is so important. The other point you brought up was the health. So importantly, what are we losing half the time when people are going on these starvation/exercise diets? They lose weight. But isn’t it often times muscle tissue that they’re losing, which then lowers their metabolism? And it really just denigrates the body in general.

What we don’t want to do is we don’t want to do that. We want to create health.

Mira: I always say you might lose a belt size, but then you’re just going to gain a heart attack and what good is that? I know firsthand because when I was in New York I was a size zero, and I had advanced osteoporosis. I did that because I exercised too much and I stayed out all hours of the night. Worked a million hours, exercised all day long and only ate a lot of junk food. So I realized that a lot of low fat foods, a lot of sugary foods, and I realized that’s where it put me. I love that you want to get the message out that it’s about health and not about weight loss.

Jayson: We’ve come to the end of The Ten but we’re not done. We want to know one juicy tidbit or two, whatever you’d like to share with our audience, that our audience can take home right now, and it will make a difference in their life if they put this into practice.

Jonathan: In my experience the most beneficial dietary change individuals can make is to dramatically augment the amount of non-starchy vegetables they could eat daily. When I say non-starchy vegetables, I mean vegetables you could eat raw. You don’t have to eat them raw but you could eat them raw. So, not corn, for example. Not potatoes, for example. Things you would often find in salads. Green leafy vegetables, cucumbers, mushrooms, asparagus, broccoli, things like that. The reason I say all of that is people can – protein and fat, obviously I am a huge fan of both but those aren’t – people do that because it’s delicious.

Eating more meat is fabulous, eating more salmon is fabulous, cocoa and coconut are delicious. That’s not hard. But the non-starchy vegetables – we really got to go out of our way to do that for at least twenty-one days, and then you will acquire the taste for them and the transformation – you guys know from a micronutrient sufficiency perspective most people have never actually felt what it feels like to be fully alive. I literally mean that, because if you are micronutrient deficient as you guys talk about so well, you’re not fully alive.

Could you imagine the transformational effects that being fully alive will have on you? I’ve found that one of the most important tools in addition to nutrients to doing that is a dramatic, dramatic increase in non-starchy vegetable consumption.

Jayson: Yeah. So give us an example. Like if somebody was to go through a day with you, what would their first meal be? Breakfast.

Jonathan: If they have more time it would be egg-based with a lot of non-starchy vegetables in it. Whether it’s a scramble, an omelet, a frittata, you’re looking at an egg base – my favorite vegetables to combine with eggs, I also like to put some ham in there, are onions, kale, possibly spinach, peppers and mushrooms. Those are my favorite with eggs but you can do any number of them.

Mira: I like asparagus.

Jayson: Yeah, I like [inaudible 35:55].

Jonathan: Avocado is actually really good in eggs.

Jayson: We’re fans of avocado.

Jonathan: If you don’t have a lot of time, I would recommend then doing that oatmeal SANE version, the chia seed oatmeal, and then a green smoothie. For me, my Vitamix is the most transformational, aside from my smart phone and my computer, object in my life. The ability to just throw a bunch of green vegetables in there with maybe some strawberries, maybe an orange, some cinnamon, blend that up and get four servings of raw, pristine, nutrient-dense veggies that I can consume in my car on my way to work is just transformational for me.

Lunch is very easy. It’s just what anyone would normally eat for lunch just SANE-atized. So if you would normally have a sandwich, instead of having a sandwich you have the innards of the sandwich with more vegetables. If you would traditionally have a stir fry, continue eating the stir fry, just more of the stir fry, double up on the vegetables, less rice. Soup is a fabulous option. Again soup is like a smoothie but it’s savory instead of sweet. That’s another great way to get veggies.

Dinner is the easiest. Most people are already, if they are going to eat veggies, eating it with dinner. It’s probably the most likely place people are already doing it because you’ve got your main dish, you’ve got vegetables, and then you usually have a bunch of starch. So I would just say eat more of the main dish and triple up on the veggies. If you can do three veggies with breakfast-ish, three with lunch-ish, and then three with dinner you are at nine. My goal for most people is ten. and if you supplement with a green smoothie you will accidently eat double-digit servings of non-starchy vegetables and your health will be radically improved and your pants size will start to shrink.

Jayson: That’s great. Great advice. Now we’re not afraid of eating things like eggs and some saturated fat like coconut oil and things like that in your diet, correct?

Jonathan: Correct. In fact, I find that the easiest way to get people started on vegetables is to use them as a delivery system for fat.

Jayson: They are a great delivery system for fat.

Jonathan: Whether it’s in soup, combining them with coconuts, or in a pan combining them with a bacon grease run-off or coconut oil or pork fat or just any of these supposedly bad foods which are not bad for you. But using them to establish that taste, putting a little bit of salt on them, your kids will love them, you’ll love them. You can eat them in mass. I want you to eat them in mass. It’s a great way to get them in.

Mira: Hide the flavor at first under all those other things and then slowly pull back a little bit to not put so much seasoning on them all the time and let the child or let the person who doesn’t like vegetables actually just taste what a vegetable tastes like after a while. They’re amazingly sweet, and they …

Jayson: Oh, they are. They are.

Mira: There’s nothing. First of all, Brussels sprouts – there’s nothing better than a Brussels sprout.

Jayson: Where did Brussels sprouts come from? I mean, we used to make fun of them like twenty years ago. It was the one thing you never wanted served at dinner. (Inaudible) … these served with dinner, I love these Brussels sprouts. They’re great. Mira takes them, puts them in the oven, spreads coconut oil over the top of them and a little salt and pepper and they are ready to go.

Jonathan: People don’t realize how easy it is to eat a lot of non-starchy vegetables. I was looking on the back of my Brussels sprout package, a serving was three Brussels sprouts. I was like, “I just ate six servings of Brussels sprouts with dinner.”

Mira: Absolutely. Just pop them in your mouth and they’re gone.

Well, we have to say thank you so much. First of all, thank you for coming on the show, but a bigger thank you for what you’re doing out there.

Jayson: Absolutely.

Mira: The message that you’re bringing to people and your willingness to work as hard as you do to get this really important message of calories in, calories out not being a reality any more. We wish you all the best success with this book. I know it’s going to be a huge hit. I know our tribe is extremely excited to read it because they heard us say it, and now there’s a hell of a lot more science in your book about the same exact topic.

Jayson: Absolutely. Go get the book The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor. It’s going to be a book that’s going to change your life.

Mira: We’re going to have links.

Jayson: We’ll have links to it. Re-watch this again and re-listen to this again. There’s so much great information in The Ten here. We can’t thank Jonathan enough for coming on and really inspiring us. You do great work, Jonathan. You know we are in your corner 100 percent. We would love to have you back again and good luck with the book. We’ll have you back on the show again soon. Thanks so much.

Jonathan: Thanks, Jayson and Mira. Could I make one quick shout-out regarding the book, which I so appreciate? We’re actually doing a special effort here starting this week up until the book launch, which is – and you guys have this link and can include it. We’re doing a bit of a charity drive. In addition to getting a bunch of free bonuses if you pre-order videos and recipes and e-books, we’ve also set it up so that when you use the link Jayson and Mira will provide, all of the Amazon associate revenue that’s generated, so Amazon will give people cuts of things, will be donated to the typhoon relief effort.

Not only can you help yourself, not only can you get a bunch of free bonuses, but if you take care of this now and maybe get some stuff for the holidays to help your family and friends as well, you will help people on the other side of the world in the process, which is wonderful.

Mira: It’s really great that you’re doing that. I guess now we just want to thank everyone for tuning in again, for spending some time with us, and for being interested in health.

Jayson: Just remember, life’s a journey. Discover health. We’ll see you next time here on The Ten. Thank you very much for joining us. We’ll see you next week.

Mira: Bye.

[Audio Ends 41:11]

Jonathan: Wait, wait. Don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at carriebrown.com.

Jonathan: Don’t forget your 100 percent free eating and exercise quick start program as well as free, fun, daily tips delivered right into your inbox at bailorgroup.com.