SANE Peanut Butter Pie, Getting Stuck, Speed of Results, and Goals

Jonathan: Hey everyone. Jonathan Bailor here with none other than the Carrie Brown with another Smarter Science of Slim Podcast. Folks, I’m going to give a little disclaimer. Carrie got some really good news today, so she is in a state of euphoria and mad euphoria. I might have to do some reeling of Carrie in here. She is in quite the unique state, so Carrie, welcome to the show.

Carrie: Hey everyone. I am here, but my brain is somewhere else, or rather it’s in my head, but the synapses are just not meeting up right now. I’m just too excited to think straight.

Jonathan: Well, excellent. We’re very, very happy to have Carrie in a happy state. I think, Carrie, we’re going to get our listeners in a happy state here because the first thing I wanted to talk about today was — and I know you’re going to mock me a little bit potentially here, but — an example of my “baking.” This is one that you got to give a little bit of props to, because I’m going to give some assembly tips; and I hope, Carrie, you can then help people to do more with, since you are the expert. I continue to get questions about my SANE Peanut Butter Pie, and I want to geek out about my SANE Peanut Butter Pie here for a second and why I’m proud of it; and then you can tell me all the bad things about it. Is that okay?

Carrie: That’s just fine, sweetie. You go right ahead and talk about your peanut butter pie.

Jonathan: For folks who have not seen my peanut butter pie recipe, I would encourage you to go to thesmarterscienceofslim.com and just do a quick search for SANE Peanut Butter Pie or just go to your favorite engine search and search for SANE Peanut Butter Pie. The reason I’m pleased with my peanut putter pie is that the filling of the peanut butter pie actually makes your peanut butter pie as good of a source of protein as salmon and a superior source of protein than eggs. A vastly superior source of protein. Peanut butter pie filling, Carrie. Are you wondering how that could be possible?

Carrie: No, I’m wondering if I should railroad you. Okay.

Jonathan: Folks, do understand that, certainly, Carrie will propose ways to make this far superior from a culinary perspective, but I just want to share how we are not going to be living a life of deprivation when we are SANE, especially when you take the flaccid attempts at baking that I can offer and compound them with the structure that Carrie adds. Let’s just break this down here for a second. SANE Peanut Butter Pie filling, which is composed of essentially non-fat plain Greek yogurt, a bit of peanut butter, about two tablespoons’ worth of a xylitol or a stevia, but of course you can’t use two tablespoons of stevia. Carrie’s going to freak out. Some of that stuff — Carrie is literally just biting her lip so hard right now.

Carrie: You might be happy that I’m not in thinking mode today.

Jonathan: You throw some vanilla protein powder in there and some vanilla extract, and what you end up with, Carrie, is something that is, of course… let’s be honest here. It’s not going to taste as good as regular peanut butter pie. I would argue that it will get you 80 to 90 percent there, and what we just talked about is 44 percent protein, 42 percent healthy fat, and 14 percent carbohydrate. To put that in perspective, salmon, which everyone is like, “Salmon is glorious, and it is 48 percent protein. So this peanut butter pie filling has a nutritional profile almost of a freaking salmon, and it’s peanut butter pie. What? Carrie, now…

Carrie: That’s awesome. I am so proud of you, Jonathan.

Jonathan: So if you want more details on the actually recipe in its pathetic Jonathan Bailor format, please just search for SANE Peanut Butter Pie. I think it’s good now if you are more into actual baking and less of what Carrie would call it — which is fair — assembly, which is what I do. Carrie, tell us about some better ways we could make SANE Peanut Butter Pie.

Carrie: There’s one really easy way to make your scrumptious SANE Peanut Butter Pie even SANEr…

Jonathan: Even SANEr.

Carrie: And have an even better profile than what you’ve just described.

Jonathan: So just basically, everything you just heard, folks, ignore and listen to…

Carrie: No, no. Brilliant base, but if you want to make it even SANEr and even off the charts that makes salmon look like candy, just whip up some egg whites. Take the xylitol, add to the egg whites to make a meringue and add that to the mousse, so it will do two things. One, it’ll change the profile. It’ll add a whole bunch more protein, but also, it makes a much lighter, more moussey than — Jonathan’s is very dense. so this just makes a lighter, fluffier version.

Jonathan: Which is great, because I think a lot of this, Carrie, we know that sometimes eating a nice big piece of something or a nice big bowl of something, that just fulfills a need that sometimes you’ve just got to have. You’ve just got to eat that big bowl or that big piece, and if you can add some fluff, and if you can enable thus to enjoy more of something without doing metabolic damage to ourselves, go Carrie!

Carrie: When I first made yours, and then I modified it with the addition of the meringue with egg whites, I could eat more of the meringue version than I could the straight version. Yours was very heavy, very solid, so I could eat more of mine, plus it had the extra protein in it.

Jonathan: Which is glorious. Actually, and just riffing off that, Carrie, the idea of finding ways to make the same amount of food or to be able to enjoy more of a taste, because that’s really what we’re talking about here. Instead of having two bites of it, you can have twelve bites of it or ten. Exactly. One thing that I’ve been doing recently — I know you’re working on making the real version of this — is traditionally, I would make puddings. A pudding would be like a cocoa and a casein-based protein powder and maybe some nut butter, and I would just make that into a pudding. Now what I’ve started to do is add, first of all, guar gum has changed my life, so thank you, Carrie Brown. Literally, I now put guar gum in everything, even if it doesn’t need guar gum. I just put it in there. No, I’m just kidding.

Carrie: Jonathan, you are just so driven when you get an idea, aren’t you?

Jonathan: I am. If you don’t know what guar gum is, Carrie has an awesome post on her website marmaladeandmileposts which describes this and other unique ingredients that she uses, and the more you use, the happier you’ll be if your experience is anything like mine. Throw some guar gum in there, which I never used. Throw some more water in there, and I throw a bunch of ice in there, and I put it in the Vitamix. To be clear, it doesn’t really become ice cream as you would think in the traditional sense, but it does start to take on more of a Wendy’s Frosty type of consistency.

Carrie: Don’t swear on our podcast. Wendy’s Frosty.

Jonathan: Carrie, you’ll be proud. I actually got some almond extract and some coconut extract, put a little bit of that in there, woowoo!

Carrie: I’m going to have to reel you in the kitchen…

Jonathan: I had this giant bowl of it, and it just shocked me, because the volume of the pudding would probably fit in two shot glasses, but the volume when I added a little more water and a little bit more ice was then this big old’ bowl, which I just nom-nom-nom with my big spoon. I actually got a brain freeze, which is not as nice.

Carrie: One of these days, I’m going to come over, and I’m going to have your lovely wife help me take pictures of you doing some of this stuff, because that would be funny.

Jonathan: It would be funny. We will certainly have to do some kind of podcasting in our copious amounts of free time, building off of our segment from last week. We have a list, folks. We do have a list.

Carrie: We’ll get back to it in 2016.

Jonathan: None the less, SANE Peanut Butter Pie. Fun ways to eat more without clogging ourselves and enjoying taste, so that’s positive, I think.

Carrie: Yum!

Jonathan: Yum! Next, Carrie.

Carrie: Yes, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Next. Are you ready for this?

Carrie: I am so ready. I have no idea what for, but whatever it is, bring it on.

Jonathan: What I want to talk about right now, Carrie, is what I think is a really — so I’ve gotten some feedback over the past couple of weeks of whenever we start a new lifestyle program, diet, exercise, whatever or just trying to go to school or learn anything new, it’s intimidating right at the start. It can seem overwhelming, and that’s true. Another thing that’s true, though, is I found especially when it comes to changing how we eat and how we exercise, that while the very beginning may be the most intimidating in some ways, it’s the time that holds the most promise, because you will see more change more quickly right when you start any kind of lifestyle program. Right from the get-go, assuming you have the correct information — again, if we’ve been told to eat less and exercise more, it isn’t going to work no matter where in the cycle you are, but if we’re eating smarter, and we’re exercising smarter, try, if at all possible, to counterbalance the negative momentum of just, “Oh my gosh”. It’s the status quo, and it’s always hard to make a change, and it’s always easy to just maintain the status quo with — if you do this properly with science on your side and with your heart in the right place and with your brain empowered with the right information, the amount of results you can see in the first couple of weeks are truly profound.

Carrie: That was my experience.

Jonathan: I think it’s in no more obvious a setting of especially strength training where individuals who strength train, who have started to strength train are able to find that — let’s take the pushups, for example. Someone who can’t even lower themselves down for an eccentric pushup finds that the amount of progress they’re able to make in literally just weeks with correct information, they can now do something they have never in their life been able to do. The reason I mention that is because I’ve heard that there can be some challenges, certainly, the further you get, so the further you get towards your — whether they be weight loss goals or health goals or any kind of goal in life — the better you do, the harder it gets to get even better at it.

Carrie: Better.

Jonathan: Right. We all know this is called diminishing marginal returns, where the further you are along, the harder it gets to make additional progress. When we start a program, we have that promise of just incredible results in the first couple of weeks if we have the right information. I mention that only because in some ways, starting this lifestyle is the hardest part, because once you’re doing it, and once you’re on it, and once you’re seeing the results, and once you’re feeling better, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a virtuous cycle, but if you need that extra push to get started, understand that in the first three weeks, you have the potential to see more results in those three weeks than in any other three-week segment you will ever see. If you do the same things. If you wildly improve your diet, then of course, you could see better results in the future, but assuming the same amount of effort, you will see more results in the first three weeks than in any other three-week period.

Carrie: I think that is true for most people, however, your brother, for example, did not have that result. He stayed stuck for two months and then had the big results, so if you are one of those people for who that is not true, don’t give up. Don’t think it’s not going to work. It will.

Jonathan: I’m so glad you brought up that contrast, Carrie, because you’re right. What I said is very true for strength training. I actually don’t think its physiologically possible to have an individual who doesn’t — you lift a certain amount of weight, nothing happens. You lift a certain amount of weight, nothing happens. You lift a certain amount of weight, oh, and then in week three, something happens. So with weight training, it’s a little bit different, or even cardiovascular conditioning. It is going to be a bit more linear and then trail off at the end. No one will ever be able to bench press five thousand pounds ever, because the human body levels out.

Carrie: Not even Jonathan Bailor?

Jonathan: Not even close. To Carrie’s point, which is spot-on, a lot of people do experience that from a fat loss and diet prospective, but there are a good number of people who don’t, and what I’ve called this is the delayed landslide effect, where it’s a bit like the metabolism is broken such that nothing moves until your metabolism hits a threshold — let’s call it fixed. Imagine your metabolism is like a broken ankle. You can’t walk on that ankle until it’s fixed, and then once it’s fixed, you can walk on it, and you’re good. That’s what Carrie’s describing happened to my brother. He really didn’t see any results for two months. He thought I was full of it, and then in thirty days, his body just transformed itself. He wasn’t doing anything different, and we actually have many, many reports of that in the Smarter Science of Slim support group. You will potentially see dramatic results in the first few weeks. If you don’t, understand that your body is healing below the surface, and that you’re going to expect to see a waterfall effect, assuming you are in fact being SANE and not just thinking…

Carrie: Playing.

Jonathan: Exactly. Wanted to share some expectation setting with the good listeners.

Carrie: That’s great. I just think we always need to mention that there’s always going to be some people that fall outside the norm, so don’t freak out if you’re one of those.

Jonathan: The other thing to really keep in mind, and I think we’re actually going to dig into this much more in some future podcasts, but I wanted to touch on it briefly right now is that when it comes to strength development, when it comes to body fat loss, when it comes to anything with our bodies, we really can’t compare ourselves to other people. That’s a bit like saying — to be very clear, there are people that are genetically fast. Let’s look at a different area of physiology. I played sports when I was younger. I’m not that fast. I’m relatively fast, but there are fast people in the world, like Olympic sprinters are fast. There’s nothing I could do to become an Olympic sprinter, ever. I just can’t do that. My body is not constructed that way, and there’s a reason. There’s a percentage of fast verses slow twitch muscle fibers and blah blah. I cannot change the type of muscle fibers I have on my body to be like a body of an Olympic sprinter, let’s say.

Carrie: Jonathan, we’re just finding out all this stuff that you can’t do. We thought you were Superman. That’s like twice in five minutes. You’re just ruining our hope here.

Jonathan: We could fill up many, many podcast episodes with that which I could improve dramatically, but I don’t want to bore our listeners. I say that only because the reality — it kind of stinks. I would love to be an Olympic sprinter. I would love to play in the NFL. It would make me very happy, but that’s just not in the genetic cards for me. That’s okay; I can do other things well. There are people, for example, if you are a postmenopausal woman who lived through, I’ll call it the great depression of nutrition, meaning you lived through the era where you were told that as long as it’s low in fat, it’s good for you. So you ate the Wonder Bread. You ate the sugar in everything. You lived through the great nutritional depression. Something happened to your metabolism because of that. It’s more analogous to smoking. When you smoke, something happens to your lungs, and you can certainly stop that from happening. You can fix it to some extent, but that’s why we’re like smoking is bad; because it does, in some ways, irreparable damage to your lungs. Now this is not a message of get depressed, get sad, but understand that if you’re a postmenopausal woman who for thirty years yo-yo dieted and was subjected to deficient and in some ways demonic nutritional guidance that even if you did the exact same things as a 23-year-old man, you will not get the same results as a 23-year-old man. Just like if you wanted to run faster, even if you trained as hard as a 23-year-old man, you will not be as fast as that 23-year-old man. There are just differences in our bodies, and I say that because we always talk about natural and just healing our body and a healthy body. Carrie, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that naturally, a 60-year-old woman does not have a six pack. Naturally. If we wanted to have six pack abs, for most people, that isn’t natural.

Carrie: At any age.

Jonathan: At any age, so to expect that we can just eat food and exercise occasionally like that’s a natural thing, we will not get an unnatural result from a natural approach. So if I’m a postmenopausal woman who eats when I’m hungry, stops when I’m full, enjoys treats every once in a while, and exercises intelligently, you will achieve health. You will achieve a level of fitness and robustness which is natural and awesome, but just like that 23-year-old fitness model has to dedicate her entire life to looking the way that gets her on the cover of those magazines, it’s unreasonable for us to think that one, even if we did dedicate our entire life to it, that we could achieve the same results of someone who has a completely different genetic makeup than us, and two, that if we’re not interested in exerting that much effort, which I know I personally am not, that we’re also not going to see those kind of results, right?

Carrie: Plus if you’re postmenopausal, this sounds terrible, but your body is in decline. You’re just never going to get to the same place as a 23-year-old. You can’t.

Jonathan: At the same time, mentally, you will be in a place with your self-confidence, you will be in a place with your relationships and potentially with your career success that that 20-year-old could never hope to be in, so play up your strengths. Enjoy your strengths. Embrace where you are in your life and also understand that I know that our goal here living the Smarter Science of Slim is about allowing us to achieve health, nutrition, and fitness serenity. That means we don’t think about it. We’re able to focus on other stuff. We get this set. We figure out how we want to eat. We figure out how you want to exercise. We try out to figure out what works with us with a baseline of science founded in non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense proteins, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits, and then we don’t have to think about it anymore.

Carrie: It’s just autopilot.

Jonathan: If you want to be a professional athlete, if you want to have six-pack abs, if you want to look like someone who thinks about these things a lot, you will have to start thinking about them a lot, and it will become like a job. If you don’t want that, that’s cool. That’s what we’re here for. If you do want that, you’re going to have to take some additional steps beyond the baseline ‘just eat SANE foods when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not and exercise eccentrically,’ because that will get you to natural. That will get you to healthy. It won’t get you to…

Carrie: Track star.

Jonathan: Unnatural and unhealthy. It’s not healthy for a female to have single-digit body fat percent at all. Her menstrual cycle stops. Her hormones are…

Carrie: And that’s a bad thing?

Jonathan: Well, you understand what I’m saying

Carrie: Now he’s going red. Yes!

Jonathan: I just wanted to bring that out, because again, we’re about natural. We’re about sustainable. We’re about practical. We’re about permanent. That is a completely different approach than someone who’s after washboard abs or magazine cover, because you aren’t going to be on a magazine covers forever. You’re not going to have a washboard stomach. I mean, look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, freaking one of the most greatest physiques of all time. I guarantee you he doesn’t look that way now, right? So it’s all good. Let’s celebrate where we are in life, and let’s always play the hand we’re dealt to the best of our ability rather than wishing we had different cards.

Carrie: I think we’ve said this over and over again on many different podcasts is you just have to be clear about what your goal is and then tailor the principles that Jonathan teaches to meet your end goal and where you’re starting from.

Jonathan: Yep, and please do understand that this actually gets back to a great point to end the show on, because it circles us back a little bit. We talked about how for some of us who don’t have this delayed waterfall effect for our fat loss that — I’m going to be an economics geek here. Let’s say you exert two units of effort into eating SANEly and into exercising intelligently, and those two units of effort help you to gain four pounds of compact, beautiful, metabolically healthy muscle and to drop ten pounds of fat, so wildly changing your body composition, wildly improving your health. Just like if you kept just memorizing your multiplication tables over and over and over again, you wouldn’t get any better at math. Once you understand your multiplication tables, you understand them. Rehearsing them over and over again doesn’t really help you. You have to move on to something advanced. You have to move on to maybe geometry or precalculus or calculus if you want to do better. So if two units of effort from a dietary and from an exercise perspective got you to, let’s say, drop your body fat percentage seven percent, two units of effort will not drop you another seven percent

Carrie: It’ll take four

Jonathan: More than two, and I make that point because I think we get that with every other area of life. If you want to become better at math, you can’t just keep practicing your multiplication tables. Once your brain reaches a certain level, if you want your brain to get better, you have to keep pushing it. You have to keep doing more, or you could be like I’m happy with where I’m at, so I’m going to maintain; but please do understand that what you did to get where you’re at today might not be enough if you want to go further. If you’re happy with where you’re at today, that’s awesome, but just keep in mind, for example, if you’re like, I’m stalled. Well, you might not be stalled. Your current effort level may have taken you to where that effort level can take you, and you’re not stalled. You’ve reached the goal that that level of effort can give you, and if you want to go further, it just might be a function of is it worth it to you to put the additional time and effort in that it would take to do that.

Carrie: Got it.

Jonathan: Make sense?

Carrie: Yep.

Jonathan: I love it. Carrie, I want you to close this podcast, because you entered this podcast in such a state of joy and exuberance that I want you to leave us with a nugget. Share your joy with us, Carrie, with some words of wisdom.

Carrie: Oh, I can share joy. I’m not sure I can be wise about it. I can’t, so I’m just going to say ha!

Jonathan: See, when I put Carrie on the spot. Where are you at?

Carrie: My brain wasn’t functioning when we started out. I have just proved that to be true.

Jonathan: Well, folks, as always, thank you so much for joining us, and I hope this week’s show was helpful. Remember, this week and every week after, eat more and exercise less but do that smarter Talk with you soon.