Hi! I'm your SANE concierge. What can I help you find today?
What’s up everyone? What’s up Fran and Laura? Everyone is here. Yes, and indeed I did not get hit by a windstorm. So we are here, non-wind stormed, which is actually great. We had a horrible windstorm just recently. We lost power for 48 hours. It’s one of those things where you can’t even check or open your fridge, which is no fun, because when you’re going SANE, just about everything that you eat is in your fridge.
Let’s see here what is being broadcast and what I’m seeing is a little bit different. We’ll do just one adjustment here.
All right, so it looks like, depending on folks’ screen resolutions, we’re all seeing different things, but that’s okay. Always need the first couple of minutes to do a little bit of adjusting. Nothing wrong with that. Here’s what we’re going to do. I think we got it and we’re going to change this ever so slightly. I think that should be good. All right. Cool.
I forgot to put up the Happy Medical disclaimer. Here we go. Post. All right, I have to stick that up there. All right, cool. Hope that’s not too distracting. See if I can delete that out so we have enough room here. All right.
Welcome everybody to the December 3rd, Ignite Group Coaching Session. I’ve got the family here. Have a lot of great questions. So I’m going to try to plow through these and of course, feel free to drop questions in the chat box because we’re going to do everything we can to answer many questions and provide awesome value.
Little bit of housekeeping as we start this session as we always do. That is, quick disclaimer up front. Can’t provide medical advice and sometimes I’m going to look in the wrong place. Forgive me because I have to read the questions, look at the chat box and look at the camera at the same time. I’m going to provide as much support as I possibly can in the limited amount of time that we have, although I am here, as long as I possibly can be. Going to crank through stuff.
If your questions don’t get answered in this session, we’ve got another session a week from today, so hopefully we can answer it there and of course you’ve always got your 24/7 SANE support group, which is awesome. Saw some new people joining up there, which is great. I know it’s kind of a slow time now with the holidays, but things are going to get crazy in January. January is the New Year, new you, very busy time if you’re in the wellness industry. Get your questions in, if not today, if not in the support group, Thursday and then we’ll be back with the live coaching sessions in January, back to the disclaimer, can’t provide medical advice, but we’ll provide awesome advice that will hopefully help you to maximize your SANEity and as always, try to provide specific answers to specific questions and also make them generally applicable so please, do not get discouraged.
For example, there’s a question about athletic performance and you think to yourself, hey, I can barely walk. Don’t worry, we’re going to make it applicable to you. I’m going to try my best to make it applicable to you.
Also, we’ve got feedback, based on the intimacy or group size of the session so as long as we can, we are going to keep trying to split these sessions up so they are a bit more intimate. We’re going to try to keep it up as long as we can and I think we’re going to have a great session today, so that will be great. January, we usually see an influx so we’ll do the best we can, but as always, if you are not 100 percent delighted, let me know, let your SANE support team know and we will figure out how to make it work. We are here for you.
Shall we start? We shall. All right. Cool. As always, this coaching session and every coaching session is to ensure that you know how much, how powerful what you’re working on is, how inspirational the efforts you are taking on are and how supported you are.
People don’t realize this, but the knowledge that you are supported and the knowledge that you are part of a community and the knowledge that you are not doing this alone, has actually been shown clinically to radically improve your wellness outcome.
I have a really strong goal, not only with these calls, these sessions, but with everything within that program that you know you’re a part of a proven and caring community.
Again, welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the SANE family. So I want you to feel that sense of motivation and community. I want you to believe with a smile, because after all, wellness is about being well. We live in a culture where health and actually surveys have been done where when you say this is healthy, people think negatively. They think that’s a negative connotation. How backwards is that? By definition, health is happiness. Health is smiles. So I want to make sure we’re smiling at the end of this session I want to make sure you have actual feedback. I want to make sure you’re motivated. And if we don’t hit those goals, if we don’t give you motivation, actual feedback and a sense of community and a sense of support, please let me know because we will get that fixed up for you. All right? Awesome.
With that said, let’s do it and let’s make it happen. Let me zoom in here in a little bit on my questions, so I can see them. Of course, if you can’t hear me, or you can’t see me, yes, I have less hair. That is a good observation. If you didn’t know, I shave my head completely bald once every five weeks. It’s the most efficient way I’ve seen. Some people like me with more hair, some people like me with less hair. I like myself more with less hair. It’s cold, though, so we’ll see. Enough of that nonsense. Let’s jump in the questions here.
As always, you see the disclaimer up on the screen, but remember these calls are recorded and will be rebroadcast for easily being referenced. They will also potentially be transcribed, so please do not share anything you wouldn’t want shared. So keep everything first name only, no personably identifiable information and I will also not reveal any personally identifiable information about you as I read these questions, but I will read them verbatim.
All right. So question number one, are there special eating considerations when going through menopause for people who have had digestive issues with animal products, how to tell a good supplement, protein, vitamins, minerals, if needed that isn’t in the same store. I have disliked all completely red, the peel or skin being red, and learned how to like them, how big of a concern is it not eating an entire color of food?
I love it. There’s a bunch of great questions here and a lot of them are going to be applicable to all of us and I will make sure that they are applicable to all of us and as I say in all of our sessions, one thing that will be really cool with your new SANE lifestyle is a year from today, but even sooner than that, people will ask you questions about SANEity and because we look at this very holistically and because it’s not like, hey, here’s this top ten list of things to do and just eat this for breakfast, this for lunch and this for dinner, you’re going to be able to answer and know the answers to questions that you might not even know you have yet. Let me give you a quick example of what I mean by that.
It’s the difference between what’s called chauffeur knowledge and actual knowledge. As you know, knowledge is power, not to be trite, but if you have knowledge and you know the new science of eating and exercise, you’re going to be able to do this for the rest of your life. You’re going to be able to transform your life. That’s really the difference here with SANEity versus other programs. Other programs, while they may have the sex appeal of the quick fix, just do this, just do this, they don’t work. That’s not how life is. Life isn’t just do this, here’s how to be professionally successful. Just follow these three steps. It’s a little bit more nuance than that. If you have the core knowledge, you can be successful in any context.
Back to the difference between actual knowledge, what you’re going to gain through your Ignite Program, through these calls and through everything you do with the SANE family and concierge’s knowledge. Quick story.
I don’t know if this is actually true. There was a Nobel Laureate back in the early 1900s. This was before the Internet obviously, this was before all of those kinds of things. He would just go around doing his shtick over and over again and presenting his findings. He had a chauffeur who would drive him everywhere. The chauffer just heard this Nobel Laureate give the same schpeel over and over and over again. Pretty soon, the chauffer has not only heard the schpeel, but heard all of the questions. People were asking the Nobel Laureate about his scientific theories and such.
After a year or so, this chauffer, the individual who was driving the Nobel Laureate around, had heard the presentation so many times and heard so many questions that the Nobel Laureate was actually sick and couldn’t present and asked his chauffer to present for him.
Interestingly enough, the chauffer did so well, and could regurgitate answers to questions that he had heard in the past so well that folks actually thought that the chauffer was the Nobel Laureate, in fact, this individual wasn’t. This was before media and such. The chauffer could recite the knowledge and could answer many, many questions. It seemed to the audience that the chauffer had this Nobel Laureate level of knowledge, but sadly he didn’t. He just knew how to recite or parrot back correct answers to correct questions.
What we’re after in your SANE program is not that. I don’t want you to just parrot back information. I want you to know the actual fundamental reasons behind things, know the why, know the basis behind it because that in and of itself is what will determine your long term success.
Knowing how to act, how to eat, how to exercise, in the myriad, different context that you’re going to face in life, that’s true knowledge and that’s true success. So what we’re going to do with these specific questions in these sessions is you’re going to see how they always tie back to the core fundamental SANE principles and that’s going to help you establish true knowledge rather than this chauffer knowledge and that’s why you’re going to be able to be successful long term.
Back to the questions. Let me change my set up here a little bit so I can see things a little bit better. Forgive me. Many monitors here. All right. Cool beans, here we go.
Back to that first question. Are there special eating considerations when going through menopause for people who have had digestive issues with animal products? Yes, there are a couple of things here. One is just menopause, the other is digestive issues with animal products. When you say animal products, if you asked this question, feel free to clarify it in the chat. If we’re talking about dairy that’s very different, than if we’re talking about meat or fish. I’m going to assume we’re talking about dairy and then maybe we’re talking about protein more globally because I haven’t heard too much about people having too much trouble digesting fish and there’s actually a reason for that. There is a reason fish and seafood is a preferred source of protein in the SANE lifestyle. It is extremely nutrient dense and it is often easier for the body to assimilate which is great.
When it comes to dairy, certainly a lot of people have problems with dairy. Dairy can actually be inflammatory as well, so please do not feel that dairy is a required part of the SANE lifestyle. It is absolutely not. You can be SANE. You can enjoy an abundance of nutrient dense protein while being completely dairy free. If you’re lactose intolerant, no problem. So, you definitely don’t need to eat dairy.
If you have trouble digesting protein, and that sometimes happens with age, for sure, and there is a reason for that. So let’s take it back more generally. The SANE acronym, is an acronym, so there’s the four factors that determine the quality of a calorie, Satiety, how quickly a calorie fills you up, how long it keeps you full, Aggression, the hormonal response caused by the calorie in the food, nutrition, the amount of nutrients it provides, and Efficiency.
Efficiency is how easily your body can convert it or store it as energy. Protein is the least efficient. This is good from a fat loss perspective. It is the least efficient of all the macro nutrients and that is because the most difficult for your body to digest. This is part of the reason why you may have experienced some problems with animal foods in the past. It’s just the challenge of digesting protein. Now two things, one is that a SANE lifestyle is going to radically improve your digestion globally, so as we heal, your gut microbiome, you’re going to have an easier time digesting everything and that’s great. So that’s going to help. Also, there are different types of nutrient dense protein which are going to be easier or harder for you to digest.
For example, egg whites are going to be much more easily digested. They are extremely biologically available. Same thing with fish or seafood. So if you have problems in the past with protein digestion, try to stay a little bit more with the seafood egg white variance versus say conventional red meat. That’s going to be helpful for digestion. Also there are various digestive aids you might want to try, un-distilled apple cider vinegar. It might sound a little bit weird. It’s not vinegar, but undistilled apple cider vinegar, added to water or added to a green smoothly, it just tastes like apple cider that isn’t sweet. That could really help with digestion as well. You can also purchase digestive enzymes. You can take it in supplement form. Some people have success with those. I personally find that the undistilled apple cider vinegar is the way to go for me.
Forgive my voice a little bit. I’ve been doing alot of talking this week. I may have to drink water a little bit more than I normally would and I may sound a little bit different than I normally would. I’m looking different and I’m sounding different.
That’s protein digestion, and that’s protein digestion for anyone, not just if you’re going through menopause. Do keep in mind that things like whey or any diary derived protein can sometimes cause issues for individuals, however, note that the issue is with the lactose, or with the sugar found in dairy. There are many different components, like milk has water in it. The majority of what milk is, is water and it also has whey in it. It is a form of protein, it has casein in it, which is a form of protein. It also has lactose in it, which is the form of sugar that’s found in milk.
If you have problems digesting dairy, that’s indicative of lactose intolerance so you’re not intolerant of whey, you’re not intolerant of casein, you’re not intolerant of water, other constituent components of dairy. You are intolerant of lactose. For example, whey protein, which has the vast majority of lactose removed from it, is going to be easier for you to digest than would milk or something that doesn’t have the lactose taken out. So that’s an important distinction.
While we’re talking about dairy and the ratio and what makes certain dairy SANE and not SANE, if you look at a glass of milk, for example, a glass of fat free milk, 8 ounces, will have about 1 gram of protein per ounce, so 8 grams of protein in an 8 ounce glass, and 12 grams of sugar, so 1.5 grams per ounce of sugar and that sugar is coming from lactose. You’re getting an 8 to 12 protein to sugar ratio with a glass of milk.
Contrast that with a serving of clean whey protein, which you find at the SANE store. You’re going to get over 20 grams of protein and 2 or 4 grams of sugar and that’s because again, the sugar, lactose, has been reduced, the water has been taken out and it’s just concentrated down one of the constituent protein sources in the dairy. Even if you have a slight lactose intolerance, some people can still handle casein, which is another form of milk protein or could handle whey which is the predominant form of milk protein, dairy protein.
Menopause in general we could have a 90 minute session, but the key thing to keep in mind when it comes to menopause is menopause is right on par with puberty with the magnitude of hormonal changes that take place. For all of the gentlemen who are listening to this, there is an equivalent thing that happens to men as well and it’s called Andropause or sometimes it’s called men-o-pause, but that’s more of a colloquium, it’s not the actual term. The actual term is Andropause. The male sex hormones change much like when female sex hormones change with menopause.
I’m sorry about my voice, hopefully it doesn’t get too raspy. I may have to talk a little bit slower than I normally would which is going to be hard for me.
With menopause, SANE eating is just about eating food that is the most satisfying, that is the most horomonally healing, that is the most nutrient dense and that is the least efficient stored as body fat. That is the same whether someone is pubescent, post pubescent, pubescent, pre-menopausal or Andropause or post-menopausal or post-andropsausal.
Obviously, there are many differences between individuals and in fact there was a study released which showed huge changes in the glycemic or insulin response to various foods by various individuals and obviously people have peanut allergies and some people can eat peanuts with no problem, but when it comes down to it, non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats and low fructose fruits, in that order, are going to be the general formula for long term health and wellbeing for any homo sapien for any member of our species regardless of their gender or age.
Post menopause, what we are going to notice for a man, it’s very difficult, or it’s harder for a man who is pre-pubescent to build muscle. Why? Because that male’s hormone levels are not optimized for muscle building. A 12 year old boy can weight lift plenty and if you take that same boy and then they’re 18 and they do the same level of weight lifting, you’re going to see different results. Why? Their hormone levels are different.
When you have an individual who is going through menopause, the same person, but what you have on the other end of menopause is just a different hormonal makeup and because of that you’re going to see not so much a difference in what you need to do, but a difference in what results you’re going to see based on the effort you put in. You’re going to have a little bit slower of results than you would pre-menopausal, but you can still have results and you can still have great results. So when it comes to menopause, the biggest thing is not dramatically change your efforts in certain ways, but we talk about natural and the beauty of eating whole natural foods. What is natural?
Let’s keep in mind that a lot of what our society tells us to do and to look like is very unnatural. Having a six pack, visible abs for 99.9 percent of the population is not natural. It’s not natural to be able to dunk a basketball for most people. It’s not natural to have the same level of body fat when you’re post-menopausal than you did when you’re pre-menopausal. It’s not natural to have fewer wrinkles on your face post-menopausal when it is when you’re pre-menopausal, just like it’s not natural to be as wise as you are post-menopausal than you were pre-menopausal.
There’s things we gain with age and there’s things that become more of a challenge when we age. If I could turn the clock back ten years in terms of my life, I never would. I hope you wouldn’t either. I find that life gets sweeter and sweeter as we age and certainly the things we don’t like about aging we can somewhat reverse with SANE eating and smarter exercise.
Again, the key thing about menopause is it changes what we should expect as natural and as healthy for us as individuals, whether it’s menopause or Andropause for men, that which is natural, that which is healthy is different than what you would have experienced before then. That’s the key thing. The key thing is not changing what you do. I would say changing what you expect and really having that serenity to understand that as we age, like fine wine, most things are going to get better, but there are some things that are going to become a challenge.
I don’t think anyone is going to look back on their life and say, I wish when I was 70 I could see my abs. That’s the biggest thing that’s going to change is not what you need to do, but I would say what your expectation should be, the love and compassion you show yourself. I think I belabored the point a little bit. So hopefully, that’s helpful.
How to tell a good supplement if it’s not already in the SANE store. Thank you for the call out on the SANE store.
One thing I will mention is the supplement market in general is completely deregulated and most people don’t realize this, but you could technically take coconut flour from your pantry and you could put them in gel capsules and you could start to sell them in the Internet and say it’s a supplement and the FDA wouldn’t come after you.
Now, if you made specific health claims about what your magic capsules could do, then they would come after you, but the supplement industry isn’t regulated. So I generally am very cautious with supplements. This is actually why we don’t sell supplements in the SANE store. What we sell are super foods. So if you had spinach you buy in the grocery store, it’s obviously they’re leaves, but if you buy spinach and you take all of the water out and you powder it, it’s spinach powder, it’s still spinach, it just doesn’t have water in it. That’s what we sell in the SANE store or we sell certain foods that are just dehydrated that you can’t find at your grocery store. You’re not going to find kelp easily at your grocery store and it’s super healthy from a thyroid perspective.
How do you tell a good supplement? First, focus on whole foods. Focus on super foods versus a multivitamin. Now, if you have to go the supplement route there are things called supplements, which I don’t consider to be supplements, cod liver oil, is called a supplement, but it’s the oil from cod liver. To me, it’s less of a supplement. Now, synthetic vitamin E that is made in a lab, that’s a supplement. Totally synthetic. When it comes to things that are straight up synthetic, usually you pay for what you get. There are very few exceptions to that rule.
On these calls, we’re going to share and talk about things that I don’t share publicly, this is just for people who are in the family. I’ve been to conventions where they sell wholesale supplements and they’re from various countries, various suppliers, various regulations, or lack thereof. If you see, for example, a Vitamin D 3 pill that is ten times less expensive than another Vitamin D pill, you’re going to pay for what you get to some extent and taking low quality supplements is not only not effective, but it’s just dangerous because you don’t actually know what’s in the supplement. It’s not regulated. It’s an un-regulated market.
The only thing you have to go on is brand reputation and trust or you can just transcend the supplement game entirely, which is what SANE has tried to do and say look, instead of taking a multivitamin and worrying whether or not the multivitamin is made of synthetic garbage and you just urinate it all out, let’s just take whole foods and powder them so you’re actually getting a super high natural concentration of vitamins and minerals. So the rule is you pay for what you get. It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing that’s more expensive than ill health, so if you’re going to go the supplement route, you pay for what you get.
If you’re in the market for supplements and we don’t sell them in the SANE store, because we don’t sell supplements in the SANE store, Amazon is a pretty decent place to start and you’re going to want to look at reviews, generally speaking, the more ridiculous the marketing is, the more hesitant you should be. I would make sure to look how long the company has been around.
For example, if you’re looking to do athletic related things or fitness or figure competitions, there’s a company called Beverly International which most people have never heard of because it’s what the pros use. It’s a high end car, like a Bentley or a Massarati. Those aren’t brands that everyone is familiar with, but people who are familiar with cars are familiar with them because they are the highest of the high end. Beverly International, for example, who I have no affiliation with, has been around since 1967. They’ve been producing supplements for the fitness and body building community since 1967. That says something. I think that’s really important. Hopefully that helps.
If that doesn’t answer the question, let me know, but again, the high level takeaway is why are you taking supplements and can you do that and more from foods?
Let me just give one anecdote. Garden in my Glass, maybe my favorite thing that we sell in the SANE store. It’s a compilation of 20 plus of the most powerful super fruits and veggies in the world, not a supplement, doesn’t say supplement, facts on the back says nutrition facts.
If you were to take six tablespoons of that in a day, your urine would not change colors. If you were to take one vitamin pill or a half a vitamin pill that you buy at Costco or CVS or Walgreen’s. Your urine is going to change colors.
Your urine is changing colors because you’re urinating out the synthetic vitamins. Your body can’t actually do anything with them. It doesn’t recognize them as things they can do stuff with, however, you took six tablespoons of Garden in my Glass, and your urine is not going to change colors, just like your urine doesn’t turn florescent no matter how many green vegetables you eat. It doesn’t turn florescent because your body can do something with those vitamins and minerals. So it’s not so much about what you’re taking in to your body, it’s what your body can use. That’s why whole foods are so important.
Let me take a quick pause here. Thorne Research is great. Here’s another analogy. I love Costco. I do all my shopping at Costco. I went to Costco today. I love Costco for buying food. Costco is buying food and some clothes and other things.
Let’s talk about Safeway, or Kroger or Piggy Wiggly or ones of these types of places. I bet you would never try to buy a wedding dress at Piggly Wiggly or Safeway or a place like that because that’s not where you buy a wedding dresses. It’s not where you buy a tuxedo or a formal suit. You would go to a tuxedo shop or you go to a wedding shop. You go to a place that specializes in that. Thorne research 30:35 is generally only sold through licensed practitioners. You’re not going to find Thorne Research, or Beverly International, you’re going to find those in places that specialize in selling supplements.
That’s not always true if you to GNC, so just don’t shop at GNC. If you wanted to see why, find anything, find any product at GNC and immediately pull out your phone or write it down, go on the Internet, go on a search, you’ll find it for literally half the price. There is no need to shop at GNC, but the point is, like you wouldn’t buy a wedding dress or a tuxedo at Kroger or Piggly Wiggly or a grocery store, buying supplements at a grocery store, is not the place to get the good stuff and what you put in your body needs to be good stuff.
The red foods since earth, how big of a concern is not eating an entire color of food? It’s not huge. If the color was green, then we might have a problem because if you could only eat one color, you’d be eating the color of my shirt, you’d be eating green. You should only eat green.
If you had to eat one color you’d eat green and if you had to avoid one color you’d probably avoid white. Not to throw cauliflower under the bus. There’s a lot of great stuff in red foods. It’s not a huge deal. So for foods that are entirely red it’s not going to be a huge deal. Some powdered superfoods could be help for you, beet powder, currently out of stock, but it’s a great resource on the SANE store. I wouldn’t say it’s a huge concern.
Green vegetables, other types of vegetables, the whole eat the rainbow and this is a side note here. There’s a lot of conventional wisdom like eat the rainbow. Eat the rainbow and eat darkly colored vegetables. Darkly colored vegetables is certainly true. Eat the rainbow is a near cousin of eat a balanced diet or balances is defined as some of everything.
We’ve talked about this before, so I won’t belabor the point, but I know we get different people on each of these calls. That logic, as intuitive as it sounds, just eat a little bit of everything. Eat a diversity of food is nonsense. It seems common sense, but it’s nonsense.
Let me give you an example. In any other area of life, we don’t say about eating or drinking, make sure you just drink a diversity of things. Drink a little bit of everything. Make sure you haven’t had a balanced day unless you drink coffee and some tea and some milk and some orange juice and some vodka and some Everclear and some Jack Daniels and some lighter fluid and some dishwashing detergent. The point is no, just because we can eat something or drink something or inhale something, doesn’t mean that inhaling or eating or drinking all of it is good. That’s ridiculous, we don’t use that logic anywhere. We’re always discerning. We always say what is better than other things and let’s enjoy the better things. Have I had an unbalanced life if I never smoked cigarettes? Of course not. Have I had an unbalanced life if I never take illegal drugs? No. Do I have an unbalanced diet if I don’t eat Snickers bars? No.
The idea of like hey, eat a diversity of food and eat a little bit of everything, that is absolutely not true. Eating a variety of healthy SANE food is a great idea, but criteria number one isn’t eat a lot of different foods. Criteria number one is find things that are not addictive and toxic. Find things that are SANE and then enjoy them and of course, diversity is important within that framework.
In fact, anecdotally, the way the SANE store algorithm works, and the thing you see in the app and on the website, and one of the things we have out patents on is for example, if you just keep eating like your sixth serving of spinach, even though spinach is more nutrient dense than carrots, your sixth serving of spinach would be less beneficial for you than your first serving of carrots, because by the time you’ve eaten five servings of spinach, there is very little additional vitamins and minerals you’re going to get from that sixth serving, where your needs weren’t met by the first five. So, that’s why it’s important. You want to get a couple of servings of green vegetables. You want to get a couple of servings of other vegetables, but you don’t want to say oh, the first serving of refined sugar is better for you than the 13th serving of spinach. That’s never true. So hopefully, that is somewhat helpful.
Let me take a quick pause here and look at some of the real time questions that are coming in.
All right. Cool. Now, we’ll get to some of these questions in a bit. I just want to get to some of the questions that were written in first. I’m reading your question Laura, “I have always taken supplements, but when eating SANE I’m thinking I could stop with supplements. When would supplements be indicated?”
There are two things I would recommend that you keep in mind. Prior to the obesity and Diabetes epidemic, nobody really took nutritional supplements. None. There were some, but there were these weird fringe things, 1920 vitamins were a relatively new thing. They’re less than a 100 years old. They’re in that ballpark and people were healthier. It doesn’t mean supplements weren’t needed, but supplements are supplements. They’re called supplements.
Until we’ve got the basics down and until we’ve got the non-starchy vegetables down, whole food fats, stress. Sleep, hydration, smart exercise down, to me the supplements, they could be useful in terms of radically nutritional therapy. So if there’s a specific ailment that we’re trying to address, but again, the things that I recommend, the powdered super foods, the cod liver oils, desiccated beef liver, which sounds delicious, I know, desiccated just means dried and beef liver is one of the most nutrient dense substances in the world and most people don’t eat it. You could actually buy desiccated or dehydrated beef liver. Is that a supplement? It’s beef liver, it’s not really a supplement. It’s extremely high in B vitamins. It’s extremely high in iron. It’s great for you.
My personal recommendation is you just make your lifestyle extremely nutrient dense and then if you have specific medical conditions that you’re trying to address with additional supplementation, I think that’s great.
Truly synthetic supplements, there are two scenarios in which they are useful, one is if you’re trying to be superhuman. So if you’re trying to be a super athlete, like you should absolutely take Creatine. Creatine is natural. Creatine is found in red meat, but if you want to be better than normal, if you want to be super normal, you’re going to have to take a super level of Creatine. Vitamin C, if you are sick there is some research showing that if you were to take 2,000 milligrams of Vitamin C, while sick to help you get better and that will be a good idea, but to always take 2,000 milligrams of Vitamin C, not a good idea, because it could throw off balances of other vitamins and minerals.
The two scenarios in which the supplementation could be useful if one, you’re trying to temporarily heal something, but think of it more like putting ibuprofen or something like that. You don’t want to take ibuprofen forever. You want to take it to treat something, then you want to get off it and get back to normal and natural and if you’re going for athletic performance, it’s a totally different goal, so it would be good there, but hopefully, you can get off it at some point and just rely on whole foods and the super foods.
The other thing to keep in mind about supplementation and this is a great example of how nutrition is extremely complicated and anyone who tries to say that we have a full understanding of it, run the other direction. Here is what I mean by that.
There are certain receptors for vitamins and minerals in your body and they compete and this is not true, but let’s say that Vitamin A and Vitamin E use the same receptor. If you were to just supplement the heck out of Vitamin E, you could potentially block the absorption of Vitamin A because the receptors would be tied up. So taking a huge amount of one vitamin could block the absorption of another vitamin.
It’s a little bit like a biblical story of the Tower of Babel, if you’re not familiar with the story, it was this idea that people said they could build a tower up to heaven. So humans thought they could outsmart God and eventually, the tower came tumbling down. The more we try to outsmart God or nature or biology or whatever you choose to believe in, it doesn’t work. That’s why, instead of saying, hey, I’m going to take 2,000 milligrams of synthetic Vitamin C all of the time, I would much rather you take foods that are naturally high in Vitamin C because you’re going to get Vitamin C in the natural package you were designed to get it in and you’re going to get other things along with that Vitamin C which helped to buffer it and that your body has been designed or evolved, depending on your belief system, taking in sugar with fiber, like you find in fruits, has a totally different reaction than taking in refined sugar.
Similarly, taking ascorbic acid or Vitamin C separate from an orange causes a much different response in your body than taking in ascorbic acid in the natural context of an orange. So you always want that natural context.
Hope you can understand me. My voice is not doing so well. You can see my dedication. Do not let my raspy voice hold us back from spending time together. Lots of stuff there, hope that was helpful.
Would calcium supplements be required for SANEity? No. This is good news here. There are no supplements that are required to be SANE. None. Zero. SANE is about satisfying unaggressive, nutritious and inefficient food. No supplements are required to do that. The things we sell in the SANE store make it easier to do that. They make it more convenient to do that.
For example, if you’re going to get on an airplane, you could absolutely and more power to you, if you are willing to take a two pound bag of spinach on the airplane. If you’re not, I’m not, I’m taking Garden in my Glass. No supplement is required to be SANE. None. Zero. Food, and exercise, is all that is required.
Let me get to some of the questions here. I’ve been trying to drink green tea and have been mixing it with lemon juice and Xylitol, but it literally makes me feel sick. Can I take the same effect/results by taking thiamine, [sp?] capsules. High level, and I really appreciate this question. If anything, with the exception of going off of sugar and I’ll explain that in a second, makes you feel worse, not better. Let me preface this.
For example, when you start exercising, even intelligently, you’re going to be sore. Discomfort isn’t always an indication that you should stop or what you’re doing is bad. The right kind of discomfort is indicative of growth and development in progress. I think we know the difference. Hopefully, the difference between a good hurt and a bad hurt with the exception of sugar detox which we can talk about in a second.
If something like green tea is making you feel sick, it shouldn’t. There is no reason it should. So if it is, stop. There might be something going on there. The question here is can I have the same effect by taking [Inaudible 44:26] capsules. This is a great questions. Thanks for these great questions, because I get to dig into stuff that I can’t talk about in other contexts.
Green tea is more than just EGCG, which is one of the components in green tea. It’s more than the polyphenol. It’s the sum that’s greater than the parts. If you can’t drink green tea, maybe what you can do is take green tea leaves. We sell just actual green tea on the SANE store. If you can’t buy it in the SANE store, that’s fine, just buy it anywhere you can buy green tea. Green tea is essentially green tea, some exceptions, from a health perspective. From a taste perspective there is huge differences in the quality of green tea.
If you can’t straight up drink green tea, you don’t like the taste, or it makes you feel sick. If it makes you feel sick definitely avoid it. what some people can do is add it to your green smoothie, literally the tea leaves so you can take green tea leaves, like a teaspoon of tea leaves, they’re dehydrated, put them in your green smoothie, blend it up, and you’re going to drink it that way. You’re actually eating the entire tea leaf. That sounds crazy, it’s not, I promise. Nothing I say is crazy.
Matcha green tea, which is another form of green tea is just tea leaves finely powdered. You can absolutely eat the entire tea leaf. So if regular green tea gives you problems drinking, you could try Matcha green tea and if you can’t do Matcha green tea, it’s also quite expensive, just try taking an entire green tea leaves and putting them in your green smoothie, thoroughly blended. You could also try white tea. White tea is more expensive than green tea, but it has similar health benefits to green tea. That’s white tea. Hopefully that is helpful.
I would recommend doing all of those things before the capsules. The capsule is saying, this capsule knows everything that is good about green tea and it’s going to take it out and put it in pill form. That will never happen. You cannot deconstruct green tea, or we can’t yet. Maybe someday we will be able to, but we can’t. what we have to do is either the Matcha green tea, find another way to get the whole food into your body because there is not one thing in green tea that makes it work, it’s green tea. It’s not like an active ingredient.
Food is different than medicine. For example, if you buy a prescription or over the counter medication or toothpaste, the active ingredient is fluoride. The thing that makes your teeth hard is fluoride. There is no such thing as an active ingredient in food. Oranges aren’t healthy because of their active ingredient. Vitamin C oranges are healthy because they have all kinds of stuff in it. To those ends, breakfast cereal isn’t healthy because it’s had vitamins injected into it. You have to look at the whole package. This question gives us a great way of saying, how do we look at the whole package?
There is no pill that I’d recommend taking instead of taking green tea. I would recommend the white tea, the Matcha green tea, or the tea leaves in a smoothie if possible and if you can’t do any of those things, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. Green tea is not a required part of SANEity, like vegetables are for example. It’s just a thing that’s been proven to be helpful and healthy for a lot of people.
All right. Next. Question about the app. We haven’t had a question about the app for a while. I like to use the app for logging my food. I would like to be able to log all things like when I drink a glass of wine of a cocktail, which food do I log for that? Sorry, there is no way to log in the app, beverages, unfortunately. Sorry, that is something we could potentially add in the future. The specific answer is no way to do it. The general answer is here is why there is no reason to do it.
The app is designed to help you track your servings of SANE food groups and then to calculate a per meal and a per day SANE score based on your goals and on the same spectrum, SANE food spectrum, you notice alcohol isn’t on that. It’s not a food. It doesn’t fit into the SANE framework. That’s why it’s not logable in the app for example. Like water isn’t SANE or in-SANE. Water is great for you, but it’s not SANE or in-SANE because it’s not how the SANE spectrum works.
Wine or cocktails in general there is no way to log it in the app, however, the general rule of thumb, [Inaudible 49:29] last session, when it comes to alcohol, you want to try to have the least caloric alcohol as possible. It’s not because we’re afraid of calories, it’s simply because alcohol by definition is in-SANE just because is it really satisfying? When you’re hungry it doesn’t really give you the feeling, it doesn’t cause the signals in your brain of satiety, it doesn’t hormonal response—it just doesn’t apply. It’s kind of a different thing. Wine, cocktails in general, moderation, the lower the calories, not because we’re afraid of calories, but I’d rather us get our calories from SANE whole foods rather than from alcoholic beverages. You can certainly drink alcoholic beverages and stay SANE, but just minimize the caloric content of those alcoholic beverages.
Let’s go to some other questions here. All right. Fran, got some good questions here. How do we know when we’re attracted to change our metabolism? Is there any advice we can purchase for testing?
Yes. There are a couple of things you can absolutely test for. One is for hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c. It’s an awesome idea to get a blood test done by your primary care physican as you start going SANE so that you can track your progress over time. The hemoglobin A1c is a track of hormonal regulation or blood sugar control over time and you’re going to see that number change a lot while you go SANE in a positive direction. That’s a great number.
Cholesterol, I would be very careful with unless your physician knows what they’re doing in terms of using like a non-calculated LDL value, there’s a lot of misconceptions around cholesterol in mainstream medicine, which depending in which country you live in they are already starting to change, but it’s useful and more rigorous. Just ask your physician.
I don’t want calculated cholesterol numbers, I want actual cholesterol numbers and I want cholesterol particle size numbers because LDL cholesterol or low density protein is not all the same. There’s very small VLDL cholesterol, there’s big fluffy LDL cholesterol, so just knowing your LDL cholesterol which is a calculated value typically is useless for two reasons, one at calculated value is inaccurate and that means it’s not actually measured, it’s created using a formula, so they’re not actually getting it from your blood. They’re calculating it based on other things.
Then that value, which in and of itself is inaccurate. If you don’t know the size of the LDL particles, it’s bogus. It’s totally different based on LDL particle size. True particle size measures true cholesterol measures is very useful.
For men, knowing your testerone levels is fabulous, for women, knowing your estrogen, your very sex hormone levels is excellent. As a general rule of thumb, just go into your doctor and say, hey, I want to know, just give me the works. Give me the works, doc. And just get it all measured. And you’re going to see it definitely go and the biggest change I think you’re going to go and see changes in your blood markers for a lot of people, also depending on your age.
Before you see the changes in your body composition and that’s what should happen because once we heal your body, that’s when your body will then manifest a lot of those changes on the surface.
Your VLDL numbers, your hormone levels, these internal measures, they change first and then your body, which is healed changes the external measures, like waist circumference which we care about. Personally, I would actually love if you would track those internal measures more rigorously than you track the external measures because if you get the internal measures right, the external measures will take care of themselves and that’s actually a truism for life in general. If you take care of the internal stuff, the external stuff tends to take care of itself.
There you go. That’s a much more metaphysical answer that I intended to give, but hopefully that’s helpful. I think hemoglobin A1c is a great one and I think there’s some guidelines in one of the SANE E-books in the orientation course in the Ignite Program so hopefully that would be helpful as well. All right. Are we on time? All right, we’re doing good.
Let me go into another question that was written in here. I’ll just read this one. Jonathan, if I find it easier to do the SANE change sort of one piece at a time, do you think it’s more important to focus on the food choices first or the exercise choices first? Great question. This is a great question. Thank you for asking this whoever asked this. These are all great questions.
Great people here. This is the cream of the crop, let’s be honest. If you’re in this session, you’re dedicated. You’re doing this. You are like the SANE family inner circle. I’m not surprised, but the quality of these questions which is great. In fact, a lot of really smart people throughout history have said you can judge the intelligence of a person, not necessarily by the answers they give, but by the questions they ask. Put that in a fortune cookie, but don’t eat the fortune cookie because it’s probably got a bunch of nonsense in it.
Anyway, absolutely, if I’m going to do one step at a time, which first, food or exercise? Absolutely food. Without question and in fact, as a company, if you’ve noticed, that’s what we’ve done. There’s way more information available to you and the SANE program is actually marketed as a SANE eating. It’s not the Eccentric exercise stuff. We’re probably going to do more with smarter exercise in 2016, but there’s a reason, even if you read the Calorie Myth book, there’s 90 percent of the book is about eating and 10 percent is about exercise because eating is 90 percent of it.
The thing that’s cools about this, it’s a real easy way, and this is maybe the easiest way to tell if someone knows what the heck they’re talking about because even exercise fanatics, like the people you see on covers of magazines, like body builders and fitness models, they will tell you abs are made in the kitchen. What’s that mean? You do not get a six pack, you do not get washboard abs by what you do in the gym. Whether or not you see your abs is solely a function of your body fat percentage. That’s it. If you’re a man, or a woman and you have sub-ten percent body fat percentage, you’re going to see your abs. You drop body fat by what you eat. Bottom line. You cannot out-exercise an in-SANE lifestyle.
Frankly, if you suffer from MS or if you have many injuries or you’re in a wheelchair, I’ve got great news for you. Physical activity is obviously wonderful for you and we should be physically active, but 90 percent of SANEity, 90 percent of the results are going to come from the eating and then of the remaining 10 percent, 90 percent of that is going to come from just doing the basics of exercise. Standing rather than sitting, walking rather than not walking and doing big movements, like you’re working your leg muscles first and foremost, like your back and your chest. That’s going to give you the additional nine percent. So you can get 99 percent of the way there without ever worrying about what should I do for my abs?
I know from firsthand experience, I did some clinical experience, you could have washboard abs, rock hard, washboard abs without ever doing a crunch or sit up or anything in your entire life. Here’s the easy way to tell if someone has any idea what they’re talking about when it comes to eating or exercise. Ask them what’s more important when it comes to overall health and wellbeing and body fat percentage? Eating or exercise? Bottom line is absolutely eating. Abs are made in the kitchen, health is made in the kitchen.
If you could trade gym time for time making home cooked foods and blending green smoothies, you should absolutely do that. So please tackle eating first. That’s what the research shows, that’s what we’ve done as a company. That’s what common sense shows and honestly, and maybe this is the biggest reason to do it, it’s what history shows. Nobody went to gyms. This idea of exercise and these crazy 60 minutes, 6 days a week exercise routines, like those didn’t even exist prior to the obesity epidemic. People just ate natural whole nutrient dense foods and didn’t eat all of this in-SANE nonsense. They were healthy and fitter as a result. So it’s absolutely about eating. We’re live, folks. I can’t really toast my glass of water. I just did a toast there. I was toasting the air, but instead I spilled water all over myself.
SANE eating first. Get one habit down first, get the eating down first and then move on to exercise.
The next question here has to do with an individual who struggled with journaling, so they’re not good at food journaling. It’s totally fine. I don’t food journal, however, I’ve been eating this way for 10 or 15 years so I don’t really need to. You don’t need to food journal. The bottom line is what you’re putting into your body in whole food fats, and you eat when you’re hungry and you stop when you’re full, you’re good.
The reason that tracking that using the app or paper counter or sticky note is useful is that the number one thing that I’ve seen for years for an individual who doesn’t see the results they want to see and this is borne out in all sorts of studies, that what they think they’re doing and what they’re actually doing are not the same things. So what we’ll see, it is the number one reason why people don’t see the results they want because what they think they’re doing and what they’re actually doing are two different things.
Someone will say, I’m going SANE and I say look, for one week, just actually track what you’re eating and what they’ll find more often than not is they’ve taken in more calories from whole food fats than from sugar or starch, they’ve taken in a little bit more veggies. They’ve taken a little bit more protein, but when they actually look at it, what we talk about in the SANE planner, during the master class, what you see in the app, these double digit servings of vegetables, three to six servings of nutrient dense protein, and three to six servings of whole food fats, it’s just nowhere near that. That makes a big difference.
If we think we’re eating double digit servings of vegetables and we’re only eating six servings of vegetables, then we’re eating one serving of protein, that is of sufficient size to trigger muscle protein synthesis and then maybe another one later in the day and we accidentally eat three or four servings of sweets throughout the week and we don’t really realize we’re doing it, that stuff can make a big difference over time.
Here’s another way to think of it. If you like your results, giving your results time. We’ve talked about this in previous sessions a lot so I’ll be quick about it. Remember we’re talking about healing the metabolism. If you break your ankle, it doesn’t heal overnight so you’ve got to give it time to heal. If you’re not feeling better, just track for a little bit and just use a sticky note, just do something and if tracking everything is overwhelming, just track vegetables intake, that’s it, and if you want to track one other thing, track sugar and starch.
How many servings of vegetables did I eat today? And how many servings of just in-SANE food did I eat? That’s it. Minimum. So if you like your results, you don’t need to track it. I would recommend tracking, especially as you’re getting started, but if you’re having a hard time tracking, and you’re not happy with your results, just track vegetables, and then if you’re willing to track one other thing, track sugar and starch and then see how that goes. Hopefully that is helpful.
Thank you Fran. Fran is saying I have to rest my vocal cords. It’s a crazy anecdote, personal anecdote I’d like to share some stuff with you guys because you’re all family here.
I was doing a book tour and a radio tour for the Calorie Myth. Back to back radio interviews and then do these satellite interviews. And I got lozenges and this stuff called “Throat Coat Tea” and for a week I was just pounding all of this stuff and you just talk for eight to ten hours per day and unfortunately I didn’t do that today and I should have done that today, so I apologize. It’s my fault. Awesome, that’s very helpful, Laura, thank you.
If you like what you hear here, please feel free to let me know privately or publicly. Lou has a great question here. She says, if I have spent years dieting by starvation and now I’m going SANE and eating so much more food, is it normal for me to put on weight until my metabolism adjusts?
Lou, the key thing is it depends on what you’re eating. This is where the food logging becomes so important and so critical. One, if you’re Eccentrically exercising and exercising smarter you should expect a slight weight gain, potentially because you’re going to build muscle, especially if you’re a woman, you’re going to build muscle, especially if you’re post-menopausal woman, you’re going to build muscle faster than you’re going to lose fat. Why? Because chances are you’ve never tried to build muscle before so it’s a little bit like if you try to get good at a sport, you’re going to see the most results early on and then the better you get it’s always diminished margin of return.
So you see results and it’s the same with body fat loss. It’s much easier to go if you have 40 percent of body fat, go with the 39 percent is easier than going to 38 percent and if you have 10 percent body fat, it’s extremely hard to go to 9 percent and if you’re at 9 percent, you’ve got to go 8 percent. It’s even harder like school. It’s much easier to go from a D to a C than it does to go from a B+ to A+, diminishing margin of returns.
You may be gaining muscle faster than you’re losing fat. And again, gaining muscle does not mean you’re going to look like a bulldog, it doesn’t mean you’re going to look like a man, it means you’re going to be tone and lean and healthy. Just to keep in mind that the average female has the same level of testerone, the hormone is primarily responsible for bulky muscles as a 10 year old boy. Just like a 10 year old boy is not going to become big and bulky no matter how much he works out. Why? Because he doesn’t have enough testerone. None of the females on this call or females watching this, unless you’re naturally muscular and some females are. Some females are naturally muscular, they may have to custom tailor their weight training, but that’s often not their problem.
So please do not worry about becoming big and bulky. The quickest way to become big and bulky is not weight train because you know what’s big and bulky? Body fat. You’re going to pre-dispose your body to gaining body fat and so in some ways, your fear of becoming big and bulky will make you become big and bulky because you’re not weight training.
I’m going SANE, I’m gaining weight, and I’m eating more. The thing to really watch out for in this instance, especially if you’ve dieted by starvation as Lou said she has for a really long time, your metabolism is extremely slow. And we know that just demonstrably, thanks to clinical studies and lots of research.
If you have been eating 1,400 calories, 1,200 calories, starving yourself, your body is used to running on 1,400, or 1,200 calories. The thing that is amazing about SANE eating is if we’re doing it with the right proportions and this is why the vegetable intake is so important. SANE foods, when eaten in the proper proportion are extremely satisfying. This is why Michael Phelps, the famous swimmer says that he eats garbage because he’s trying to eat 10,000 calories per day. You cannot eat 10,000 calories per day of SANE food. You can’t.
If you’re eating SANE nutrient dense foods, in the double digit servings, just try and experiment and this why the food tracking becomes so important. A SANE lifestyle, there’s a reason I don’t say put butter in coffee. I’m not throwing anyone under the bus here, but that’s too many unnecessary calories with no nutrition going into your body for a SANE goal of weight loss. We need to make sure that the calories we’re eating is of the highest quality as SANE calorie as possible and if we do that, honestly, it’s impossible to overeat.
If we’re eating double digit servings of the most nutrient dense, non-starchy vegetables in the world, and then we’re eating nutrient dense protein, four to six servings per day. Let’s just break that down really quickly from a calorie perspective because this will also help us tease apart what is the Calorie Myth. I’m saying don’t count calories. I’m not saying calories don’t count. There are two very different things.
If you eat 12 servings of vegetables per day, non-starchy vegetables, that in and of itself will probably amount to maybe 200 usable calories. Essentially, vegetables don’t have calories in them. For intense and purposes, because the fiber at the time, let’s say you’re going to get 200 calories per day from vegetables and then let’s say, that some of those are coming from smoothies, hopefully, but some of them are going to be coming from deliciously sautéed vegetables, so maybe use some butter, some bacon fat, some coconut oil, so let’s say that’s another 200 calories, maybe even 300, so you’re really soaking your vegetables in butter, which is totally fine. That’s 500 calories right there.
Let’s say that you’re a post-menopausal female, so you’re eating 25 grams worth of protein per serving, 3 to 4 servings per day. Each one of those servings is coming from a nutrient dense source, is going to provide you with about 200 calories, ballpark, total ballpark. That’s 800 calories. Don’t take this literally.
That’s 200 calories from vegetables, 300 calories from non-whole food fats that we added to the vegetables to make them delicious, that’s 500 calories, plus 800 calories from nutrient dense protein. That is 1,300 calories right there. So that’s only 1,300 calories. That’s not going to be enough calories for anybody, but that’s a bunch of food. If you put in front of you 10 to 12 servings of non-starchy vegetables, and 4 servings of negotiations protein, that’s actually a couple of pounds of food. You would have to measure the amount of food you’re eating in pounds. That’s a lot.
What I just described is three pounds of food. So you eat three pounds of food and that’s only 1,300 calories. Now, what would generally happen is you would be really, really full and your body will supplement those 1,300 calories by burning off your own body fat, but let’s say you throw some nuts and seeds in there, that takes you up to 1,400, 1,500, 1,600 calories, as you can start to see, if you’re going SANE, really SANE, it’s not easy to overeat calories. You have to go out of your way to overeat calories. On some of these calls, we have more questions about athletics and people are saying, look, I’m really athletic. How do I get enough calories? I can’t actually eat enough calories when I’m going SANE.
Lou, I would say the number one thing to look out for, is if you’re not tracking what you’re eating, let’s just do that in the SANE support group for one week and let’s talk about, what did I eat on Monday? Let me give you one minor example.
An individual a year ago, who was saying they were going SANE and they weren’t seeing the results and we asked them to start food journaling. For example, their breakfast was just their breakfast. Their breakfast was a cup of coffee with butter in it and that was 400 or 500 calories. Then they would eat three eggs, which is 270 calories, and some bacon and no vegetables. So their breakfast, right there, was 1,000 calories, with no vegetables and 3 eggs, depending on your size, that’s whole food fats. So their breakfast had no vegetables and it had no nutrient dense protein and it was 1,000 calories. That individual is not going to see success with their health, they’re not going to see success with fat loss. They’re taking in 1,000 calories without taking in any nutrient dense protein, and without taking in any non-starchy vegetables. So we want to avoid that.
I would say that’s the number one recommendation is, in this support group, for one week, let’s write down exactly what you eat and let’s break that down. The support group is great for that. Maybe that will help. Cool. Hopefully, that is helpful. Get a little bit of water here.
We have a bunch of more questions and people wrote in, which I so appreciate ahead of time.
I think I’ve got about 15 more minutes in my vocal cords. I don’t want to leave you hanging here and I do want to talk really quickly about holiday stuff. The holidays are upon us at least in the states.
I want to spend the last 15 minutes talking about that if you don’t mind. If I didn’t get to your question, I will get to it in the next session or feel free and we can cover it in the support group. Always keep the questions coming in. Even in my voice, no, I want to have the call. I was hoping the power wouldn’t go out because I really love these calls. Again, I always like to say, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the Ignite Program. I don’t get as much time, to work like this anymore, running the company and such, but I love it. I hope I can continue to do it because it’s really the highlight of my week. Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here and thank you for being part of the family.
Hopefully, you have wonderful holiday plans. A couple of things I want to cover about holidays real quick. Holidays are real stressful for a lot of us and stress is a huge component of weight struggles, huge component for a couple of reasons. One it actually changes our hormonal makeup and it changes our hormonal makeup in a way that causes fat storage, because when the body senses stress, storage, and stress. I don’t know what’s going on. Store. I don’t want to starve to death. Something chaos is happening. Store. So we want to watch out for that.
We also want to watch out for the fact that what does stress do for all of us, especially me? Lots of stress means not only lower case insane, but inSANE foods becomes way more tempting. There is no question at this point that food is like a drug, especially inSANE foods, where we’re seeing responses in FMRI scans of the brain with concentrated doses of sugar which are very similar to those of other opiates like heroin, like cocaine, like morphine.
So, when we become extremely stressed, it not only becomes difficult to stay sane, but also SANE.
We talked about how we’re going to go through the holiday party and they’ve got a bunch of cookies and nonsense. We could talk about that, but that one to me is the easy one. Eat a big SANE meal before you go so you’re not hungry. That’s the easiest way. That’s why we talk about eat more, but smarter. The easiest way to avoid inSANE food is to be too full. If you’re really, really full, if you’re too full for dessert, you aren’t going to eat dessert, or it’s going to be a lot easier to not eat dessert than if you’re starving.
Eat a big SANE meal before you go. Eat a bunch of non-starchy vegetables when you go. If you go and you need to be polite, there’s usually a vegetable platter. Obviously that’s totally SANE. There’s usually meats. Meats are a SANEer option. Of course you’ll have potentially nuts, another decent option. They’re not going to be raw, so don’t go crazy and don’t eat them by themselves. Please never eat nuts by themselves. Nuts, just like any other whole food fats should be eaten in the context of a complete SANE meal. So it should be your nuts and your whole food fats along with protein and along with non-starchy vegetables.
There might even be a cheese platter. Load up on the vegetable platter. Eat a bunch of the meats, maybe there is shrimp, maybe some good seafood, maybe smoked salmon. I love smoked salmon. That’s great. Put a little lemon juice on it. All sorts of good stuff and then go to the nuts. If you have to go to the cheese platter that’s fine too.
More importantly though, is the stress of the holidays. This is not my area of expertise, by any means, but it is something that I’m extremely passionate about and something that I do study in my spare time. If nothing else, I want to communicate during this call that so much of stress and forgive me if this is trite or if you’ve heard this before, but I just want to say it too because it’s important. Stress has such an impact on your wellness and your eating and your fat loss I feel obligated to talk about this.
So much of stress is stuff that we put on ourselves. I am the worst at this in the world. Just between us. You see why isn’t this happening or this should be happening or I should be better at this or they should, should, I don’t know who Tony Robbins is or Anthony Robbins is. I used to listen to a bunch of his stuff back in the day and he used to say this very funny phrase, which is, “We should all over ourselves,” depending on how raspy my voice is, it’s pretty clear what that sounds like. Don’t should all over yourself.
The fact that you’re in this session. The fact that you’re in this program shows in and of itself, you are in the top one percent. You are by definition taking the road less traveled, so you’re making Mark Twain proud and it’s going to make all of the difference. So, as much as you can, during this holiday season, please just try to give yourself permission not to should all over yourself. You are doing a great job. You are making progress. You are facing in the right direction. In fact, I’m just going to mix metaphors and quotes like a champ here.
There’s a really great paraphrase by the Buddha, which is if you’re facing in the right direction just keep walking and eventually you’ll get where you want to go. That is so true. Oh my goodness, how many of us are, myself included, we go through life and instead of focused on being pointed in the right direction and just continuing to walk, there are going to be zig zags in the road and there’s going to be hurdles, but we face this direction, oh, no, now we’re going to do this. Now I’m going to do this. Now, I’m going to do this and we’re making a millimeter of progress in a million different directions, rather than just making it boom—focused on the big things and focused on executing on them. On these minor health issues, how many vegetables am I eating? It’s the same thing globally. I know holidays can be extremely stressful, how an extended family can be extremely stressful and when that happens, I need you to take a second to understand how well you are doing. It’s November, December and you are on these calls. You are in these sessions. You are thinking about your wellness.
Most people are just saying, it’s the first week of January and I’m going to think about it for a week. You’re doing this now. You are doing an exceptional job so know that and play that back and keep a gratitude journal if nothing else because what we focus on becomes our reality.
I need to ask you just like with SANE eating, we focus on so much of the good and focusing so much on the good that we’re too full for the bad. Crowding out inSANEity with SANEity, I need you to do that. I need you to promise me you’re going to do that during the holiday season with sanity and insanity. Gratitude journal.
What went well today? Write down three things you’re grateful for. Do it in the SANE support group if you’re willing. What went well? If ten things went wrong, sit down and let’s come up with a list of the five things that went right. Not because I want you to wear rose colored glasses, but because that’s selective focus, that choosing to crowd out the bad with the good, that is going to lead you to not only SANEity, but sanity. Take care of your health, both mental and physical during this holiday season and know more than anything that you are facing in the right direction and if you will just keep walking, you’re going to get where you want to go.
Thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this time with you and just thank you on behalf of the entire SANE team over here on this end for allowing us to do what we do. We can’t do this without your support and without you sharing the SANEity with your friends and family. So, thank you honestly. You’re our boss. We work for you and we’re here for you. Thank you for giving us that opportunity. Thank you for setting such an incredible example for everyone else out there and hopefully you’ve enjoyed this call despite my hoarse voice as much as I have and hopefully, I lived up to the goals for you that I set out for us in the beginning of the session, which is to not only have some actionable information, but also some general knowledge, also some motivation and also a big smile on your face.
With that, I’m going to sign off. If I don’t see you on our next session, which is going to be a week from today, I wish you a safe and happy and blessed holiday season and I hope to see you back in January and again, remember, man, you’re doing awesome. Right? You’re here, you’re facing the right direction. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a happy holiday if I don’t see you next Thursday, I’ll see you in the New Year. Thank you again. Bye-bye.