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3.3.16


Ninety minutes of good times.  Please post in the chat box.  I love the live questions.  I got a bunch that was sent in.  I also have some cool stuff planned.

As always we’ve got the four goals of our Group Sessions together, which is to literally celebrate the amazing and loving SANE Family and the community, and to make sure that you feel supported and loved because you are.

This has been a little personal disclosure here.  It has been a uniquely challenging week.  I’ve got to tell you this-I was looking forward to this call, because it’s always fun and everyone who is here is just so loving and caring.  So I want to personally thank you for that, because to be able to look forward to something like this is amazing for someone in my position and I have you to thank for that.  I really do appreciate that, and I want to re-offer you that sense of community and support during this session.  I’m going to make sure to give you some cutting edge and immediately actionable information, but I also want to make sure to give you some macro level things.  That helps to teach you the global and overarching principles and everything.  I’m also going to make sure we have a really fun time here.  Again, please feel free to use the chat box.  If you don’t want to use the chat box, that’s okay too.

So let’s get started, shall we?  All right let’s do it.  Thank you Rita.  By the way, no one said anything about my facial hair.  What a surprise.  Maybe we have some shy people who don’t want to say anything about my facial hair.

I think I’m going to actually create a poll.  We’ve never done this before.  How does this work?  ‘Do you like my facial hair?’  I actually only have this because I hit my lip on a door.  Don’t let me tell you the story, it was embarrassing.  I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t want to look like I have a busted lip during our Group Coaching Session.’

So I just let my facial hair grow to try to cover it up.  Let’s see if this works.  You might see a poll in your chat box.

Fran says, ‘It makes you look thinner.’  Goodness, Fran.  What are you trying to say?  How did I look before?  Just kidding.  Don’t you love it when you give someone a compliment and they just take it as an insult to their prior state?  Oh my goodness.

Remember, the poll is anonymous so you can feel free to vote.  We have no No’s.  That’s interesting.  We do have a few Maybe’s.  And we actually have a few Yes’s.  It’s split.  If you haven’t voted yet, make sure you vote, because right now it’s fifty-fifty between Yes and Maybe.  We got a No.  We got our first No.

We ought to do more polls, right now especially with the election coming up.  ‘Yes’ surges right ahead at 57 percent, ‘No’ is at 14 percent and ‘Maybe’ is at 29 percent.  It’s balancing out.  ‘Maybe’ is taking the lead.  I’m going to close the poll here in 5 seconds.  Vote now, if you haven’t voted.  Five, four, three, two, one.  The results are in.  Do you like my facial hair?  We have 60 percent ‘Yes.’  We have 10 percent ‘No.’ I think, that ‘No’ is my wife.  She’s not a huge fan, but I don’t think she’s tuned in.  We got 30 percent ‘Maybe.’  60 percent ‘Yes,’ 10 percent ‘No’ and 30 percent ‘Maybe.’  That’s fun.

Alright.  Let’s get back to the SANity.  Well, having fun is actually part of the SANity.  If we have time there’s some stuff about Mind Set that I wanted to cover.  Let me just make sure we have Mind Set.  Of course if we don’t get to it today, we’ll cover it in the next session.  It’s going to be awesome.

First question that came in is someone who said very kindly, ‘I’m finding these Coaching Classes very helpful.’ Which is very nice.  ‘How would you handle eating at someone else’s home regularly, like maybe a weekend’s worth of meals that is not necessarily SANE?  She’s a close friend who hasn’t heard my numerous diets over the years.  I would like to find a routine that used to be pretty SANE but not too disruptive to the mealtime flow at the same time.  We might eventually live together, so I would like to figure this out without a lot of drama and attention to my food choices, if possible.’

That’s an excellent question.  Just from a more global perspective, how do we handle ourselves in social situations in which not everyone else is going SANE?  I personally find two things to be the most helpful here.  The first is to say there are almost always – unless you have had some corporate events or experience in your life such as continental breakfast where everything in inSANE – is really just to focus on taking the SANEst choicest that are there, and saying, ‘That’s the best that I can do.’

For example, you’re going to a barbecue.  This is going to be a little bit easier in places you’re going to be able to get some vegetable. And maybe you’ll just have it without the bun.

I totally understand the saying, ‘Make the SANEst choices.’  Isn’t particularly helpful?  At the end of the day, there are two ways this is can work out.  One is, if all that’s available are inSANE choices, you can either bring your own food, you can not eat, or you can try to kindly enable that same situation through half-SANE choices.

That third option, is an option which seems hardest like how do you tell someone what to serve you without seeming rude or as this individual asking the question says, disrupting the mealtime flow which you don’t want to do.  Totally understandable.  What I found at least from the US, and I’m sure we’ve got Family members from 15 different countries, so this may not be applicable to other countries, but in the US at least there are certain lifestyles, religions and medical conditions–let me put it this way.  If you go to a friend’s house and you say, ‘Please! I cannot eat that, because I am on a diet and I don’t eat that kind of stuff.  You can take your cookies and–‘

That is one way to approach the problem, and that’s never going to go over well.  Often times that’s the perception we have of diets, because that’s how diets are.  With the SANE lifestyle, I really feel that it is much more similar to something like vegetarianism, or if you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes.  In both of those situations you have a dietary restriction which-dare I say, hopefully this is not offensive-anyone worth spending time with won’t mind.  If you have a peanut allergy, or if you are a vegetarian for moral reasons or religious reasons, or you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes and therefore you need to make dietary adjustments–anyone who is worth your time, if you share that with them in a loving way, will make accommodations.

In airplanes and corporate events, if you say, ‘I’m a vegetarian, or I’m diabetic, or I’m pre-diabetic, or I’m kosher, or I’m halal.’  They will make special accommodations for you.

My wife and I are big fans of cruises.  What we do is, when we register for a cruise which is All-you-can-eat and glorious.  We can be super-SANE is we say we’re pre-diabetic, because we are.  We’re all pre-diabetic.  When you don’t have diabetes yet, you are pre-diabetic.  So you can say that without any qualms.  So if it possible for you to–it’s not about being on a diet, because you come off as Holier-Than-Thou, it’s going to go poorly and you will absolutely disrupt the mealtime flow.

What’s up Janet?  Janet says, ‘Awesome here.’ Woo-hoo! She likes it.

If you can take on the mindset and try to the help to communicate the mindset with a spirit of love and compassion and medical necessity, which is the opposite of Holier-Than-Thou.  You’re in that position.  I don’t mean to go into too much about human psychology and power dynamics, but when you say, ‘I have this medical thing.  I’ve realized that I’m pre-diabetic,’ which all of us can say.  I can say.  We can all say, ‘I’ve found that I’m pre-diabetic and I’m trying to nip that in the bud.   Can you help me?’

You’ve changed the power dynamic.  You’re the opposite of Holier-Than-Thou in that dynamic and you’re saying, ‘I need your help.’ Because I’m at a position of weakness, because of that the sort of human dynamic you flip it.  You’re not like, ‘I’m on a diet, I’m better than you.’

You’re like, ‘I have this medical issue that I’m trying to get to the bottom of.  If you could help me, I would so appreciate that.’

Personally, I found that to be transformative.   It’s a lot more helpful than just saying, ‘Pick the SANEst option,’ which is certainly what we can do and we can be at ease with being inSANE on occasions.  Bu if this is something that is going to happen very frequently, then taking that approach I just mentioned which is pre-existing medical condition with love and compassion, and swapping the power dynamic, putting yourself in the position of ‘I need help,’ rather than ‘I’m better than you.’  I think that is really very powerful and helpful.  I hope that’s helpful, if it’s not please post a follow up question.  Personally, I’ve found that to be helpful.

And with your help, and with continued SANity I hope that someday it becomes way easier. Right now if you go on an airplane, or you go to the restaurant vegan options, or vegetarian options or gluten free options.  Some day they will have SANE options and you could just say, ‘Hey you know what? I’m SANE,’ which is cool to say in general. Then you would say, ‘Okay, You’re SANE.  Cool.  What adaptations do I make for you? Hey, I’m kosher.  Hey, I’m halal.  Hey, I’m vegetarian. I’m diabetic.’  And so on. Hopefully that is helpful. Let me know if you have any follow up questions.  Please, please, please.

Next question is a good one.  One that I like hearing because it is the opposite of the conventional dieting mindset, which is great.  So the question here is, ‘Does the SANE lifestyle require eating all that food.  I am 68-years old and just don’t eat that much, although I am probably 20 pounds overweight.  Is it sufficient just to eat SANE food when I am hungry?’

There are three phrases in this question, and all three of them allow us to not only answer this question but talk about some really important stuff.  I want to just that the batch of questions that we got this week-you guys and gals, actually mostly gals, the SANE Family is 100 percent awesome and within that awesomeness it’s about 80 percent female and 20 percent male.  Just some interesting statistics on the SANE Family, if you’re curious actually.  The median age of a SANE Family is around 50.  In case you’re interested, that’s the demographic breakdown of the SANE Family.  As of this morning we did a team exercise on how we can better tailor our message to individuals and that was the data we discovered.

Anyway, this individual is a wonderful member of the SANE Family.  ‘Do I have to eat this much food.  I don’t eat this much.  I’m 20 pounds overweight.  Is it sufficient just to eat SANE food when I’m hungry?’

So I’d like to go from specific to general, if that’s okay.  The specific answer is ‘Is it sufficient to eat SANE food when I’m hungry?’ Absolutely, yes.  I do not want you to ever be uncomfortably full, just like I do not want you to be uncomfortably hungry, unless you’re exercising eccentrically then I want you to be extremely uncomfortable for a very short period of time in a safe way.  I’ll talk about that separately, it’s a good thing.  That’s what triggers growth.

Is it sufficient to eat SANE food when I’m hungry?  Yes, with the caveat that we do-since this individual said, ‘I’m 68, and I don’t eat that much although I’m probably 20 pounds overweight.’

Again this is what led me to dedicate the past fifteen years and the rest of my life to this.  It is individuals who are just like this.  My mother is like this.  All the people I worked with fifteen years ago when I was a personal trainer were like this.  Where the reality is that they are not eating that much and they are still overweight.  My mother who is 68 or 69, she doesn’t eat.  She visited me.  I’m trying to give her food and she said, ‘Not hungry, not hungry.’ She is probably in a similar position to the individual who is asking the question here in terms of her weight.

So how do we explain that?  If you’re eating a thousand calories per day, that’s what I can imagine my mother eats per day you would think that you would be starving on a thousand calories per day.  Yet the weight still remains.

That’s why SANE exists- to get to the root of this problem. The root of this problem is we do need to heal some disregulation.  The technical term for it is metabolic disregulation.  It’s caused by a lifetime of stress, yo-yo dieting and inSANE dietary recommendations, that are put up on us which trigger our brain, our hormones and our gut to regulate our weight inappropriately.  If we’re eating only a thousand calories we could still be a hundred pounds overweight.  Is it sufficient to eat SANE food when I’m hungry?  Yes, if you’re getting the requisite amount of non-starchy vegetables.  The non-starchy vegetables are key.  Otherwise we’re not healing.

This is a mindset shift here.   In itself the following mindset shift can save your life.  Literally.  SANE food is therapeutic.   Think of it as nutritional therapy.  The conventional dieting approach is to take in less food.  If food is therapy and if food is medicine-which it is, then taking in more of the right type of food is therapeutic.  We do need to go out of our way to make sure that we get those double digit servings of vegetables.

If you just don’t have room for them, smoothies are very helpful.  If you just can’t do smoothies, you could do the powdered super foods available at the SANE store.

If you don’t want to do that, then please make sure you listen to the entire thing I’m about to say next.  The first part of it if it’s taken out of context, is completely inSANE.  If you can’t do smoothies because the fiber fills you up too much, and you don’t want to do the powdered super food.  They are using only green leafy vegetables.  Juicing can be helpful.  Because you are going to still get a lot of the vitamins and minerals from things like kale, spinach, Swiss chard, arugula, so on and so forth.  But it’s not going to fill you up at all because there’s no fiber.

However, the only context, the only reason I would ever recommend juicing is if it’s one hundred percent green leafy vegetable.  And two, if it’s impossible for you to take in enough vegetables through whole food vegetables.  Smoothies are whole food vegetables.  If you’re taking the whole food, that could be helpful.  Especially the protein’s really essential.

If you are 68-years old I want to make sure that you are maintaining your lean muscle tissue.  It is important for all of us, but it is especially important once we’ve hit menopause and andropause for men and beyond.  Extremely important.

If you’re always full, really try to focus. Don’t be uncomfortably full, but do know that those vegetables are really very important.  Do know that protein is really important.  So if you have to go and get the whey protein, the clean rice protein and the clean pea protein- to do a liquid feeding it is important.  Simply because if what you’re doing is: I’m just going to continue to eat, when I’m hungry; I’m going to stop when I’m full; I don’t eat very much; I’m still 20 pounds overweight.

What that’s telling me is that we need do to more to heal your metabolism and the only way you can do that is to increase the quality of that limited quantity of food that you’re consuming.  That’s why then those vegetables and proteins become so important because these are the essential components of the SANE lifestyle.

As long as you are eating at least 1200 calories per day which I hope you are, especially if you are only 20 pounds overweight.  Getting the sufficient vegetables and proteins should be easy.   Just like after someone has gastric bypass surgery and the stomach is tiny.  They can’t eat a lot.  They don’t eat optimally SANE they can die from nutrient deficiency.  It happens every year.  People go and get a gastric bypass surgery done, or any sort of gastric surgery and then they don’t modify the quality of their eating.  Then they come down with nutrient deficiencies.  I even had a personal friend who had a gastric bypass surgery and then had to have it reversed.  It totally destroyed their life.

Anyway, if you cannot eat a lot of food it is okay, but it’s extremely important that what you do eat is extremely SANE.  And can I just say how much I love questions like these, because the mindset of: ‘Hey, not am I not eating a lot of food and not gaining weight but I’m eating a lot of food and it’s helping me lose weight.  And in fact I can’t eat all this food, and I’m losing weight.’

How much different of a mindset and a dynamic is that: ‘Food is therapy.  More of it is better.’  Thank you for the fabulous question here.  Hopefully that was helpful.

Here we’ve got some questions coming in.  I see the big red question marks.  Janet says, I think it’s Ja-net.  If it’s Ja-nette—smack me. But I think it’s Ja-net.  There is this thing about me.  Reading sometimes can be kind of hard for me.  Not that I can’t read.   Ja-net versus Ja-nette wouldn’t think it would be hard for me to tell the difference but sometimes it is.

Okay.  ‘I’m getting ready to take my family on a cruise.  What do they do and who do we tell we’re pre-diabetic?’

We used to book ours through Costco, because we love Costco.  And no, I do not own stock at Costco.

When you make reservations for dinner or whatever, you can just tell them, ‘Hey, I’m pre-diabetic.  So anything like starches and sugars, I better be very careful about them.’

You can also tell them, ‘I’m lactose intolerant.’  That’s very helpful too.

Often times-not that there’s anything wrong with cooking with butter at home- but sometimes in restaurants and such they do things.  Restaurant is in the business of making the food as delicious as possible.  It’s not that butter is bad.  It’s just that the restaurant is going to indiscriminately use butter and cooking oils.

Just tell the front desk of the cruise.  Then when you’re at the buffet, there is an abundance of them on a cruise.  You’re in total control there, which is excellent.  You really get your money’s worth. When you go on a cruise and go to any buffet you’ll notice that they always put the inSANE stuff right in the center because that’s the stuff which is really cheap for them to make.  They want you to fill up on that bread and that rice and that pasta and those sweets.  You’re going to go right head over to the sea-food, the delicious meats and the vegetables and all that kind of fun stuff.  Really just enjoy a lot of that.  It’s delicious and awesome.

I love cruises.  I love all-you-can-eat buffets, because it disproves ‘You go on a cruise, you gain five pounds.’  Not the case if you go SANE.  You go on a cruise; you’re going to have a great time.  Enjoy a lot of really yummy food.  Hopefully that was helpful.

Bobby has a question here.  What’s up, Bobby?  ‘Hey Jonathan, could you talk a bit about what modifications one needs to do SANE eating if you are dealing with Metabolic Syndrome.  I am wanting to reverse it, the best way.  I’m at 46 if that makes a difference.’

I used the term earlier called Metabolic Disregulation.  That is a synonym for Metabolic Syndrome.  It is sometimes called Syndrome X.  The good news, Bobby is no, there are no modifications you need to make to SANE eating to deal with Metabolic Syndrome.

Metabolic Syndrome is a constellation of metabolic issues which usually happen at the same time or frequently at the same time.  And they all have the same cause that’s why they happen in clusters or in constellations as research papers like to say.  The solution-only modification I would say, in any context in which we are trying to do to treat a medical condition, so for example if we are trying to manage diabetes, or get to a point where if we are on diabetes medication and we want to drop our A1C levels so our primary care physician may someday take us off that medication. This has happened countless times with individuals within the SANE Family.  Clustral medicine or heart medication or any kind of medication and so forth.

In the SANE lifestyle as we know that it’s very flexible.  Process rather than perfection pace.  If you want to eat inSANEly sometimes, then eat inSANEly sometimes only.  But just like anything else in life, the more you put into it the more you get out of it.  If you want to really grab that syndrome by the hand and shove it out the door; same thing with diabetes; same thing with hypertension; same thing with risk for cancer and all those kind of things.

The only modification I would say, is to treat in lifestyle like a medical intervention rather than something like my Mom’s approach to SANity.  My Mom’s approach is fantastic.  She does not have any medical condition.  She’s fine with her energy levels.  She’s fine with her physical appearance.  SO she says, ‘I like to live SANEr.  I eat more SANEly than I did in the past.’  But sometimes she eats Cheetos, because she loves Cheetos.  ‘The value I derive from eating Cheetos outweighs any cost that I have experienced today, and that is totally fine.’

However, if my Mom got diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome, and she would go like, ‘Jonathan, what modifications do I need to give to my approach to get rid of Metabolic Syndrome.’

I would say, ‘Mom, if you want to get rid of a medical condition, then we need to treat this like a medical condition.  We’re going to do some nutritional surgery on your body.  We’re going to take it very seriously.  So we’re going to focus on the most nutritional vegetables.  The deep green vegetables.  We’re going to focus on the most nutrient dense proteins.  We are going to try to eat more of the meats, even if that sounds weird.  Not more weird than cracking open our chest and doing open heart surgery.

‘We’re going to avoid that so we might do some things that seem a little bit strange. We might eat liver, we might figure out a way to cook liver. And by the way that’s delicious.  We might eat oysters, clams, mollusks, and things that I’m not going to get on a ‘Good Morning America’, because America would go like, ‘Oh that’s crazy!’

‘But hey, is that any more crazy than having a colonoscopy-not that it is crazy, but if I were to describe the medical procedure, you’d go, ‘It sure seems a bit extreme!’

‘Modifications are just that, you’re going to want to optimize your SANity because you’re going to want to approach this with the mindset that, ‘Of course, it’s all about progress rather than perfection.’ ‘

In this specific case, if you want to revert a medical condition.  We’re going to treat it like therapy.  We’re going to treat it like a medical intervention.  And we’re going to give it that level of priority.  Hopefully that’s helpful there.

Let us see, ‘What modifications we need for low thyroid?’

Janet says, ‘Smack.’ Hopefully that’s a smack of the hand, rather than the smack of the face or the smack of the posterior.

‘What modifications are needed for low thyroid?’

Well, for low thyroid the biggest thing we need is two things.  One, if you’re not exercising smarter that is extremely important.  Chronic, moderate intensity high impact exercise such as jogging, absolutely can cause thyroid habit especially in females, such as chronic jogging and things like that.

We just have to understand that any kind of physical activity that we do-if we take up boxing as a hobby, it’s going to give us exercise but there are going to be some side effects. They include head trauma.  If we’re going to run long distances, yes that is going to exercise our heart a bit, but it’s also going to suppress thyroid levels.  It just does. That’s a fact. So, strength training smarter exercise is going to help with the thyroid levels.

The other thing as I would say is there are some specific super foods that do help with thyroid health for sure, and sea vegetables.  Most people would be like, ‘What is this guy talking about? Sea vegetables?’

But no.  Things like sea-weed and kelp-to which you’d go like, ‘Oh wonderful, Jonathan.  Next time I go out and eat, I’m just going to get seaweed.  How do I do that?’

A perfect example of where the SANE store comes in handy.  We do.  Personally, I haven’t been to a grocery store that sells kelp, or specifically rockweed kelp which is some of the most iodine rich kelp on the planet.  Supplementing your diet with sea vegetables-if you can find it in your grocery store rock and roll, if you can’t find them at your grocery store we have them in their purest form.  We have powdered them for you in the SANE store.  Rockweed kelp is my favorite and there’s also [inaudible 32:54] seaweed powder which taste as good as they sound.  I just want to be transparent.

Hopefully the love that the SANE family has for its members is clear in the sense that we will provide food that tastes terrible.  Powdered seaweed does not taste good.  Some things in life don’t taste good.  It’s medicine, food as medicine.   So I’m not going to go in there and have a formulation that contains a bunch of other nonsense in it because if you want to do something that tastes good we can do that separately.  I want these SANE super foods to do their job.  I don’t want to fill them with a bunch of other nonsense.  That’s a little side note there.  ‘Look, I’m going to provide you with something that I openly will tell you tastes disgusting but works really well.  The goal is to heal you, not to delight your taste buds.’

Now we do have some things that will delight your taste buds but I’m confident that with over 1400 recipes we’ve got there, there are plenty of ways to delight your taste buds.  Here we’re trying to heal your thyroid so we’ll try to make sure you get some sea vegetables like kelp and seaweed-very high in iodine.  It’s not an iodine supplement.  I’ve said this before and I will say this again, I’m not a huge fan of supplements.  I’m a huge fan of If-you-want-to-supplement-your-diet-with-iodine-what-we-need-to-do-is-find-foods-that-are-high-in-iodine-what-we-are-going-to-eat-more-of-those-whole-foods, personally.

Do I need to make use? I cook my greens for low thyroid?  Yes, there are oxalate issues, so on and so forth.  It depends on your results.  There are pluses and minuses of both.  My recommendation is eat a lot of vegetables.  Eat a lot of sea vegetables.   Work with your primary care physician to see your progress.

In general, we should not be eating all raw vegetables or all cooked vegetables.  We should be doing a little bit of both.  Cooking does some positive things to vegetables, and also does some negative things to vegetables.  A little bit when we come to the financial stuff, we want to diversify.

Same thing here.  When it comes to the food we’re eating, we want you to diversify.   Eating six servings of spinach is not as good for you as eating one serving of six the different green vegetables.  Even if some of those green vegetables like Germain lettuce are objectively less nutrient than spent spinach.  They have different nutrients so we want to diversify.

Same thing with preparation.  We don’t want to eat just raw vegetables because cooking does have some advantages that go with tomatoes and blah-blah-blah.  So we’re going to diversify in our preparations and in the types of foods we’re eating to maximize our nutrient.  Hopefully that is helpful.

Next question, ‘What is your opinion on intermittent fasting to help control insulin levels and weight?’

Thank you for this question, it’s a great one. There was quite a bit of chat this week which I love.  If you’re not in there please get in there, because it is awesome.  Two things; it had a lot of talk about insulin.  There you go.  One, insulin is a great example of how quickly the nutritional dialogue can change.  Up until about 15 years ago, in the 1990s it was all about weight watchers.  Weight watchers was growing in revenue and everyone was like, ‘Counting calories is a good idea.’

Now, of course it’s been 25 years since the nineties, can you believe that.  We have adults that were born in the nineties.  That doesn’t make any sense, but I digress.  Now everyone is like, ‘Insulin, insulin.’   My 15-year old nephew knows about insulin.

Insulin has a really negative stigma associated with it.  Let me be very clear.  Insulin is not bad.  Any more than estrogen is bad, or cortisone is bad, or testosterone is bad, or adrenaline is bad, or any other hormone is bad.  These things are not bad.  Insulin is a great example, based on the way it is portrayed in the media.  Especially on the internet, which is always a fun place to get nutritional information.  If someone says, ‘Hey I can wave a magic wand and I can reduce your insulin levels to zero.’  I think a lot of us would think, ‘Great.  Insulin is bad.’

So if someone waved a magic wand and made your insulin levels zero, they would have a name for that.  It’s called Type I Diabetes.  Type I diabetics don’t produce insulin.  That’s why up until Insulin Therapy was discovered, and awarded the Nobel Prize.  Babies would just die of starvation, because they had no insulin that would allow them to get energy into their cells.  So, insulin is not bad.

This is just like cholesterol is not bad.  Your body produces LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol to patch up inflammation on your arterial lining.  In that context-don’t worry I’ll come back to insulin-saying LDL cholesterol is bad, is a little bit like saying, ‘There’s a house on fire over there and there are a bunch of firefighters over there.  The problem is that there are too many firefighters.  We need to reduce the firefighter level.’

The firefighters are not the problem.  In fact they are there to help an objectively negative situation.  A house is on fire. The issue isn’t that there are too many firefighters.  The issue is that the house is burning down.  And I know you’d all be like, ‘Of course.’

That is exactly what is happening with cholesterol and your arterial lining. Your arterial walls are on fire, they are inflamed and LDL cholesterol comes and sticks to them to patch them up.  This is an over simplification.  Once they are healed HDL grabs the LDL molecules and recycles them.  That’s why I say HDL is the good cholesterol and LDL is the bad cholesterol, but you can see that it is false, because LDL is doing what it’s supposed to do.  It is patching up holes or inflammations in your arterial lining.  Of course there is a thing called VLDL which is very low or very small LDL particles which can get stuck, blah-blah-blah.

Cholesterol isn’t bad.  Cholesterol is created for many purposes throughout the body.  Dropping cholesterol levels too low is showing to be co-related to cognitive dysfunction because you need cholesterol for your brain to function.  It’s the same thing with insulin.

Bad things happen with our cholesterol levels when we eat non-food, inSANE food products, which causes our arterial lining to become inflamed, which causes a huge amount of LDL to get produced because we have a huge amount of inflammation that the LDL needs to go address.

The LDL is not the problem.  The LDL is the body’s proposed solution to patch up the damage caused by inSANE eating.  Of course if that patching becomes too big, it blocks the artery.  But the problem isn’t the patching.  The problem is the thing that needed it to get patched in the first place which is the inSANE food.

Same thing happens with insulin.  Insulin is great.  Insulin is the key that allows your selves to use sugar. Your selves need to be able to use sugar to fuel themselves.   If you don’t have insulin, you’re Type I diabetic.  Insulin is not bad.  What is bad is non food that spikes the heck out of our insulin levels.

The goal is not to demonize insulin.  Insulin is key.  We have to have insulin or we will die.  The goal is to keep insulin at natural levels.  The way we keep insulin at natural levels is to eat SANEly.

The reason I went on this rant, is because this is a great question, ‘Should I intermittently fast to control insulin levels?’ My question about intermittent fasting, I would argue in some context, is a euphemism for eating less.   It’s a way that people on the internet that say they are focused on food quality, can promulgate eating less.  They don’t say, ‘Eat less.’ They just say, ‘Don’t eat for 16 hours.’  Then they call it intermittent fasting.  There are health benefits to intermittent fasting.  There are health benefits to intermittent fasting-things like [inaudible 42:37] and recycling cells and blah, blah, blah.  I personally would not recommend intermittent fasting as the way to help control insulin levels.  The way you could control insulin levels is not eating less.

This is an awesome question and in fact it’s the awesomeness of the question that is getting me all amped up.  So thank you, this is a great question.  I’m sure someone told you this.  Being told to intermittently fast to control insulin levels aka being told to eat less to reduce insulin, is a little bit like being told to water your garden less to get rid of weeds.

Yes.  Watering your garden less will get rid of weeds, but the problem isn’t that you’re watering your garden too much.  The problem is that there are weed.  How do we get rid of the weeds without killing everything?

Intermittent fasting is the same-Don’t eat anything.  Of course if we don’t eat anything in order to bring our insulin levels down.  But that’s not sustainable.  What we want to do is we want to focus on eating foods that don’t spike the heck out of our insulin.

Going back to Bobby’s awesome question, we might need to take a therapeutic approach.  One of our wonderful family members Nancy Best has some great questions in the support group.  I believe she is Type II diabetic so she is sensitive about insulin levels.

In this case, instead of starving ourselves, I would say if we really want to take control of our insulin levels then you might want to experiment with the SANE Ketogenic Diet.  It’s not about starving yourself; it’s about really focusing on the vegetables that are extremely high in fiber.  Not starchy at all.  Like carrots, they’re SANE but they definitely have more sugar and more starch than green leafy vegetables do.

So if you really wanted to take a truly almost medicinal therapeutic approach on taking control of your insulin levels, I would recommend trying not fasting, but a SANE Ketogenic Diet.

Ketogenic just means your body is just running on ketone bodies, which is a by-product of burning fat for fuel rather than sugar.  The way you do that SANEly is to focus on the highest fiber, lowest carb-which are generally the most nutrient dense vegetables.

Then you’re going to focus on nutrient dense proteins and whole food fats.  No fruit.  No legumes and other stuff, because you’re going to keep under 50 grams of net carbs per day to achieve a state of ketosis.  For some people you need to go even lower than that.

Then you’re going to increase the amount of fats you’re eating because you do need calories from somewhere and fat doesn’t trigger any insulin release.

In that, look up a book like ‘New Atkins for a New You.’  You’re going to be like, ‘Atkins Diet! I can’t believe Jonathan is saying that.’  Look you can do Atkins Diet SANEly.  Just take a SANE approach to it.

Atkins is one of the most rigorously scientifically studied diets out there.  There have been peer reviewed clinical trials done- lots of them, dozens and maybe even hundreds at this point on Ketogenic diets.  So it’s not one of these things you read about on the internet.

Ketogenic diets have been used to help with some psychological conditions.  They’ve been used to help with psychosis, autism, ADHD because they find for some people   having your body truly run off fat rather than sugar can really change the way your brain works.  People are using it with cancer therapy, to treat Alzheimer’s.  There are some very promising results, because switching your body from sugar to fat in ketosis is like running on diesel versus unleaded petrol, but it’s a different fuel source.

If we’re inSANE we’re running of sugar.  Bottom line: We’re running off sugar and we’re going to become diabetic and it’s not good.  When we’re SANE, we’re running off a balance of sugar and fat, which is how 99.9 percent of human being who have ever lived, unless you’re Inuit Eskimos who are eating 90 percent fat, or you’re the [inaudible 47:23] who eat 98 percent carbohydrate diet you’re running off a natural blend of fat and sugar.  When you go ketogenic you’re running off almost primarily fat.  It does change the way your brain works.  It does change the way your body work.  It does have some therapeutic effects.

Really long answer, to the very short awesome question of ‘What is your opinion on intermittent fasting to help control insulin levels and weight?’  In summary, I would not be a fan of intermittent fasting because if you intermittently fast it’s incredibly difficult to eat double digit servings of vegetables.  If you eat double digit servings of vegetables in an eight hour window, or in a six hour widow-you’re going to have all kinds of digestive problems.  That’s a lot of fiber in a very quick span of time.  So not a fan of intermittent fasting.  If you want to control insulin levels, I would say a SANE Ketogenic Diet is a therapeutic approach to that.  Wham! From very long to very short in an instant.

Let’s see, Janet’s got a good question here.  I’m going to do one of the written-in questions here.  I’m going to make sure we have some of those.  I’m going to pop back here into the chat box.

This is a very open ended question.  ‘Anything new and exciting?! Concerning some of your daily foods and process routines has been very helpful as an option to incorporate into our routine. Any additional nuggets of info of your likes and routines would be appreciated.   Thank you, Jonathan.’

You are welcome. Yeah I would be happy, I am going to tell you exactly what I ate today.  Literally, exactly what I ate today in excruciating detail.  So if at any point, if you think this is too detailed go ahead and put that up in the chat box and I’ll speed it up.  I thought this might be helpful.

So please remember and I’m going to disclaim this-I am in my mid-thirties, let’s just say that.  I am naturally thin, if you know my story.  My story is I was drawn to dedicate my life to this because when I was a personal trainer 15 years ago, I was trying to get bigger.  I was consuming 6000 calories per day and double shots of olive oil.  I wanted to be a body builder.  If you’ve watched the Master Class there’s a picture of me there with Jay Cutler who is a four time Mr. Olympia.  You could see if you think I am fit.  I guess, Jay isn’t fit, he is a beast.  It’s very unnatural.  I wanted to get bigger.

I was working with individuals who said they wanted to get smaller.  I put them on a 1200 calories diet, because I didn’t know what I was doing at that time.  I just did what I was taught and I was trained in.  I had to stare them in the eye and say, ‘Okay, you’re eating 1200 calories.  I’m eating 6000 calories.  I can’t get bigger, you can’t get smaller.  Do I just tell both of us to try harder?  Or is there something else going on here?’

The answer to that is that there is something else going on here.  We now know that people who are naturally thin for example have a different type of hormonal makeup.  They have different types of gut bacteria.  Their brains are literally wired differently.  There have been studies on children.  There are children who are super tasters versus children who are not tasting.  What that means is basically there are human beings who are not as sensitive to taste and for them to get the experience of sweet, they have to eat sweeter things than other people because they are just not as sensitive to taste.

Can you imagine that something like that could have long time impact to someone’s propensity to gain weight?  If sugar (sucrose) is half as sweet to person A as it is to person B, who do you think is more likely to gain weight over time?  Because to all of us it tastes like sweet, but one of them is likely to eat twice as much of it to get the same effect.  I’m over simplifying that but this is kind of the really long winded way of saying, This is what I am doing.  I am a naturally thin person, and I know as a naturally thin person that this isn’t a will power problem.  It’s a metabolic problem.  There are fundamental metabolic differences between us.

What we need to do is we need to the quality of our eating and exercise to make our hormones, and our gut bacteria, and our brains work in a way that causes our bodies to preferentially burn calories rather than to store them, which is what naturally thin people do.  Their bodies run faster and harder.  Whereas someone who is predisposed to gaining weight does not.

You don’t change those two types of bodies.  You don’t the system by eating less.  It just makes sense.  You don’t change the way a car runs, fundamentally by increasing or decreasing the amount of gas put into it.  That might change how long it can run but it doesn’t–the way the car runs will never be changed by the quantity of fuel you put into it.  But if you put different quality of fuel into it, if you put kerosene in your cars gas tank it’s going to run a lot differently.  Or if you put premium fuel in your car’s gas tank in place of just regular fuel, it’s going to run differently.  It’s the same thing with the body.  Anyways, the quality matters.

I am unique.  We are all unique, so please don’t take what I’m saying as a recommendation for you.  This is not Jonathan saying you should do this.  This is Jonathan saying for fun.  I try to eat extremely SANE, almost absurdly SANE.  Maybe this will be helpful, if not it’ll be fun.

I eat a lot.  I exercise eccentrically-extremely intensely.  I have single digit body fat percentage intentionally, because I want to inspire people with my life.  I inspire people and sometimes they see me and they say, ‘Hey, this is good.’

Typically I think if you go out and tell people–recommend to people how they can optimize their health, you have a moral obligation to do that yourself.  If you’re going to be a minister, I would hope that you would be morally sound.  If you’re going to preach health and wellness it’ll help if you would be healthy, and all that kind of fun stuff.

Those are my disclaimers because I am hyper sensitive to this because ‘Jonathan said so’ or, ‘Jonathan does it I can do it,’ is the approach which-even though it doesn’t make business sense I don’t care-I don’t want you to do anything because I tell you to do it.  I want you to do it because it’s been proven to work.  I want you to be successful and what will make you successful is doing that which works for you not what I tell you to do.

Biology is a matter of facts, it’s not a matter of opinion.  It doesn’t matter what I think eating peanuts should do to someone who has a peanut allergy.  They have a peanut allergy that’s the truth.

So anyway.  What the hell did Jonathan Bailor eat today? I don’t call things breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I eat when I’m hungry and I stop when I’m full.  On some days I’m a lot hungrier than on other days.  Today is an average hungry day.  We’re going to go super fast here.  When I wake up I’m not hungry.  But because I’m naturally thin and I’m trying to build muscle tissue, I try to eat frequently.  I’m not too hungry when I wake up, but when I wake up I want to get some nutrients in my body.  And this is very advanced.

When I wake up, I drink this concoction of Garden In My Glass, because when I wake up I want to get my vegetable but remember I’m not hungry.  That kind of get back to our earlier question, ‘What do I do if I’m not hungry?’  I’m not hungry in the morning but I want to get my nutritional therapy in there.

So I have two to three servings of Garden In My Glass.  I have a tablespoon of cod liver oil, again this is just delicious.  Put it on the menu, folks.  Two to three tablespoons of Garden In My Glass, a tablespoon of cod liver oil.  I pre-make this stuff and divide the mix.

There’s some desiccated beef liver in there.  There’s some amino acid [inaudible 56:20] as well as some amino acids in there to trigger some muscle protein synthesis.

You’re like, ‘This guy is crazy!’

But hey, at least I practice what I preach.  So I’ve got my non starchy vegetables in there.  I’ve got by nutrient dense protein.  It’s not a whole food fat, but cod liver oil is the only oil that I recommend taking for therapeutic purposes because it is such a high concentration of the best forms of the omega-3 fats.  I drink that and it’s delicious–no, it’s actually terrible.

Instead of coffee in the morning, I have a concoction of SANE mood boosting cocoa powder, peppermint oil, cinnamon and vanilla extract or powdered vanilla bean when we’re not out of it.  We’re recurrently out of it.  So I use vanilla extract instead and I drink a bunch of that.  And then I got hungry.  I pre-make on weekends, many pounds of ground turkey.

Spoiler: I use conventional ground turkey because it is half as expensive as organic ground turkey.  And hold on, funny thing.  I’m Polish.  My last name used to be Bailkovsky, my great-grandfather on my Dad’s side changed it because when he immigrated they didn’t like Polish people.  So he had to make it sound not Polish.  I was taught to be frugal with my money.

Turkey is lean anyway.  The problem with non-organic meat are the toxins involved.  Turkey is extremely lean. Since the toxins are stored in fat, it has a minimal amount of fat anyway.  I boil the ground turkey and put it between these two towels that I have, literally, and I squeeze the fat out because that’s where the toxins are found.  And it’s $3 a pound and I just make it in bulk.

Anyways, why did I say I’m Polish?  Because check this out.  This is a calorie myth in Polish.  I don’t know if you can see this, but check this out.  I actually didn’t know and had to send a picture to my parents and they said, ‘Yeah, that’s Polish.’ Anyway.  If you go to Poland, Poland is going SANE.  So there you go.

I had ground turkey and I love spicy food.  So I had it with some all natural salsa in there, some ground pepper, some cayenne hot sauce and a green smoothie.

My green smoothies are pure vegetables.  They are kale.  They are spinach.  They are romaine.  They are Garden In My Glass. They are the powdered ginger-it’s just ginger root.  It’s convenient for me to get the powdered form so I just get it from the SANE store.  A bunch of cinnamon.  A little bit of gourd gum.  What else do you need to make green smoothies?  I simply just put a beetroot in there.  Oh, a lot of apple cider vinegar.  I love the apple cider vinegar.

And a tip.  Do not get your apple cider vinegar from Amazon.  I discovered if you go to a website luckyvitamin.com- no affiliation-you can get a gallon jug of un-distilled apple cider vinegar for $20.  That’s literally half the cost of what I was paying on Amazon.  So, a lot of apple cider vinegar in there helps with digestion, I think it helps with taste.  I had that. So there you go.

Then I had some coconut manna which we’ve talked about in a previous episode.  It’s like peanut butter but it’s from coconut.  Pureed coconut, optimal fat source.  Fantastic.  I love it.  That’s what I had.

The next time I ate, I don’t know when that was.  That was when I was hungry.  I eat when I’m hungry and I stop when I’m full.  That’s why I love going SANE.  I had a pre-made shake.  I make all my food on the weekend and then I freeze it.  I take it out of the fridge and such.  In this concoction-it’s almost like ice-cream, it’s fabulous-I take a quarter cup of chia seeds and almost a heaping eighth of a cup of coconut flour.  Almost all of this stuff is on the SANE store, so I’m going to stop saying that.  Cinnamon, vanilla extract, peppermint oil, clean whey protein and some Xylitol; I freeze it. It has to be frozen.

I take it out of the freezer and when it half thaws-it’s in a plastic container-so I can squeeze the plastic container.  It’s like a push-pop if you ever had a push pop back in the day of ice-cream.  It’s a lot like a cube of ice.  I take that and put it in the Vitamix, sometimes I add some cocoa powder or some cocao nibs.  Whiz that bad boy up, and it’s like a Wendy’s Frosty.  It’s fabulous.

How do we do that?  We’ve got nutrient dense proteins in there.  We’ve got our whole food fats in there, and of course I have a green smoothie.  I dominate green smoothies, I love green smoothies.

The only times I eat vegetables in the non-green smoothie form is when I go out to eat or with dinner because this is the way this works for me.  With dinner I don’t take green smoothie, because there’s too much water and makes me go to the bathroom when I’m asleep.  Obviously, I wake up.  I don’t urinate in the bed.  Just in case there is any ambiguity.  I don’t like waking up, and I like to stay asleep.  So I try to minimize the liquid I drink in smoothie form or any form.  Alright.  So green smoothie plus that thing I just talked about.

Got some questions coming in.  I’ll answer them in a second.  Fran, apple cider vinegar absolutely helps with bloating because it helps with digestion.  Great question.

Janet I’m going to get your question.  It’s kind of rolled off the screen.  I’m going to make sure I answer it.

What did I eat next?  Next I had got a concoction, I call it my poor person’s cioppino. Cioppino is a seafood stew.  It’s an Italian dish.  I make a very cost effective version of cioppino. Again I’m talking about canned seafood.  I’m telling you, I practice what I preach.  My poor or frugal person’s version of cioppino is I get the canned organic tomato paste from Costco because it’s so much more affordable than tomato sauce.  You just have to add water and seasonings to it.  I buy seasonings in bulk on Amazon.  I like to get Cormick’s Italian seasonings, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper because I like spicy things.

Canned oysters.  Amazon.com they like to quadruple the price so there must be a shortage of oysters in the world. They went from $15 to $45, I don’t understand why, but whatever.  Oysters, clams, tuna, salmon-all canned.  Costco-wild caught salmon for less $5 per pound.  Done. You don’t need to cook it. Yeay, Trident corporation.  Trident is a great supplier of convenient wild seafood with nothing added to it.

So I get all those cans-I get Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.  I open all those cans with the $50 can-opener.  Hey I told you I’m going to give you all the details here.  About $50 can opener, because I make this stuff once a month.  I tell you, I cook in bulk.

I have this giant bowl.  Someday I will bring the bowl to one of these calls.  So I’m sitting there, I’m talking to my family on the phone, or listening to an audio book, Got my $50 can opener because I use it so much I broke all my other can-openers.  I mix it all together.  I put some mushrooms in there, I put some artichoke hearts.  They are in a jar, from Costco.  Again all this stuff is canned or in jars.  I mix it all together and I put it in containers.  I freeze it and I take it out as I need it.  I ate that.  Guess what else I had.  Green smoothie.  Alright!

I can take this with me when I travel.  I put them in a cooler. They’re portable, when I’m on an airplane.  What did I have next?  I don’t think I had anything next, because that kind of let up.  That was it.

Later tonight I am going to have two salmon patties from Costco.  They are not perfect but they are wild caught frozen salmon patties from Costco at less than $5.

An advanced tip for you, cooking with water is extremely healthy, it’s extremely good for you, because if you’ve ever heard that eating meat or protein causes cancer.  That’s nonsense.  We can get into it if we need to.  One of the reasons I say that is if you cook protein on extremely high heat-on direct, extremely or high heat-it’s gets those char marks on it.  Those char marks are carcinogenic.  You don’t want to eat charred meat.  You can eat fish meat without charring it.  You can eat fish meat without directly exposing it to heat.  Brazing it or boiling things prevents direct exposure to heat.

So I put my frozen salmon patties in a pan.  I put water in the pan in a bunch-like that much.  Lying in the bottom of the pan I then season the salmon patties with Chef Paul’s Magic seafood seasoning-which is delicious-some hot pepper, some garlic powder, and some onion powder.  I cook that down.  It all becomes a delicious sauce.  I break it up in the pan.  Then I have my mandoline.  If you don’t know what a mandoline is-it’s an easy way to slice the vegetables.  SANE store recommended item.  Cabbage–red cabbage. I take my red cabbage.  Bam, bam, bam on the mandoline.  It’s like spaghetti, but better and incredibly SANE and gets my sulfur levels up, which is super good for your health.  Then I put some pureed lemon in it that makes it taste fabulous and put my salmon in there and mix it all up.  I put it in a giant blue bowl.  I have a giant blue bowl of lemon-cabbage-salmony-deliciousness.  It’s so good that I want to end the call early and I want to end it right now.

Then I do have a craving for desert, because I do have a sweet tooth and I need to have some sweet.  Boom.  How is that for details?  More details than you probably ever wanted.

I should have a poll.  This should be fun.  Let me if that’s annoying.   Hold on. Create Poll.  Load.  ‘How crazy was that? Really crazy.  Just crazy.’ and then one more option, ‘Not crazy.’

Start poll.  What were your thoughts on what just happened during this group coaching call?  What I ate today?  Hopefully you can see that there is a poll there.  The results are anonymous, so if you’re shy and do not chat.  It’s all good.  But you are welcome to vote here.  We’ll let the poll going here for about ten seconds.   Please get your votes in.  We’ll go 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Vote now. 2, 1. It’s like American Idol and we’re done.

Hopefully you should be able to see the results.  Look at that.  ‘Really Crazy’ is in the lead at 45 percent.  ‘Just Crazy’ at 18 percent.  ‘Not Crazy’ at 36 percent.  So that was fun.  There you go.  You wanted the poll.  You got it.   Be careful what you asked for.    Just kidding.

Janet has a great question.  ‘I have a history of low back and neck issues.  When I do my work outs, both hurt the next day.  [inaudible 1:10:04] How can I exercise without throwing my back up?’

I would strongly recommend seeing your physical therapist.  In my experience, a personal trainer is not the person you see for something like this.

Chiropractor is going to be decent, but a physical therapist is going to show you how to strengthen the muscles.  See a physical therapist that has a Ph. D. in Exercise Physiology.  That would be my recommendation.

A lot of people do not understand how deeply trained doctors, not medical doctors, but doctorate level physical therapists are.  They are going to know all about eccentric training.  They are going to know all about the stuff we talk about in SANE lifestyle, because they’ve dug into the research.   They are going to be able to show you specifically how you can strengthen the muscles.  And that’s the thing.  You’re going to have to do to continuously keep those muscles strong.  Please go see a physical therapist, not a chiropractor, not a personal trainer, and ensure that the physical therapist should have a Ph. D. level qualification in Exercise Physiology or something like that.  It would be very helpful.

Fran, ‘What about the Fish Oil Soft Gel from Costco?’

I would recommend so they are better than nothing.  As a general rule of thumb, I am not a huge fan of getting supplements from a place like Costco.  Only because you get what you pay for in the supplement world.  They are not at all regulated by the FDA.

As much as we were raised to being cost-conscious, my parents-when it came to medical stuff-were just like, ‘We’re not going to find the most inexpensive doctor.  We’re not going to try to find the most inexpensive surgeon.  No matter how cost-conscious we are.’

I personally think if you are going to go the supplement route–If you’re going to put an unregulated substance into your body, because that’s what supplements are-you’ve got to go for the high end stuff.  I would recommend Carlson’s Cod Liver Oil, it’s not that expensive.  Another problem with soft gel fish oils is to take the amount, unless you really like a lot of pills, the amount of omega-3 is that you need to really see a difference.  You’re going to be eating 10 soft gels, and I don’t think you’d want to eat that many pills.  I don’t think you want as much of the pilled substance in your body as you would be interested in taking that many pills.

So progress rather than perfection.   If the choice is between taking nothing and taking Costco Fish Oils, I would recommend taking the Costco Fish Oil Soft Gels.  If you can, get Carlson’s Cod Liver Oil off Amazon, it’s very affordable.

Then there is the second question.  Carlson’s.  I think there are better kinds, and Carlson’s has the best value to quality versus money.  Please don’t go down the rabbit hole that goes, my fish oil is better than your fish oil and blah, blah, blah.

If you come down to it, you can actually get omega-3 fatty acids prescribed to you by a physician, that’s how therapeutic the fats are.  Lovaza is the pharmaceutical grade fish oil, which is pretty crazy.  I digress.  So yes, Carlson’s would be my recommendation.

Good question here, coming in. ‘I have been using a liquid Stivia product, and it is supposed to be pure. No other ingredient.  I have noticed that my weight loss has stalled and my blood sugar level has remained around 90 or 95.  I’ve been following a SANE Lifestyle since early January and I’ve lost 21 pounds.  Is it possible that Stivia could be keeping my blood sugar elevated and stalling my weight loss? I have servings of non-starchy vegetables on most days, and I also had my protein and whole food fats amounts.  At what point should I be concerned when our weight stalls?’

Great questions here.  Especially about the weight loss plateaus. I apologize, if you’re on the call, please post the follow up questions. If you’re not please post in the Support Group.  It’s hard for me to answer this question.

If you have lost 21 pounds and you are still 100 pounds overweight, I would answer it much differently, than if you went from being a 5’8” and weighing a 170 pounds to being 5’8” and now weighing a 149 pounds.

If you are in your 60’s I would argue that it’s not a weight loss plateau.  That is healthy weight for you to be at, and the reason you’re not losing anymore weight is because your body is saying, ‘Hey, this is a healthy weight for me to be at.’

I’m going to answer the question objectively as if some more body fats to be lost.  You lost 21 pound, but maybe you were originally carrying around a 100 pounds of excess body fat.  Or even 50 pounds of excess body fat.

I do not think Stivia is the cause of your problems.  We don’t want the blood sugar to be at zero.  That would be a problem.  Thinking about the taste of sweet causes blood sugar levels to rise.  Protein cause blood sugar level to rise.  Anything other than fat causes blood sugar levels to rise.  And we need that, that’s healthy, that’s fine.

What we would need to do if you’ve hit the weight loss plateau? We just need you to jump into the Support Group. We need to know exactly what you’re eating because there might be something hidden we need to know. What are the stress levels, sleep levels and exercise like?

For example I’ve seen individuals who’ve a weight loss plateued.  They’ve been SANE but they have not been able to get sleep for hours at night.  You could be 100 percent SANE but if you get four hours of sleep at night, it’s going to be a problem.  If you’re going through a divorce, or if you just lost a loved one, you’re cortisone levels are at a place that’s just going to–It’s such an important distinction it’s really easy to focus on insulin.   There are a lot of other hormones involved here.

If your cortisone levels are through the roof because you’re stressed and you’re not sleeping.  Chronically elevated cortisone is just like chronically elevated insulin, or   chronically suppressed testosterone in men or chronically suppressed estrogen in women.  So we’ve got to take that holistic view.  It sounds like you’re doing a really good job with your SANE eating, if that’s the case then I would start looking at the other items.  Stress level, quality of sleep, what you are doing with the exercise, maybe we can further refine the SANE eating in the sense that we could go more optimal in terms of the vegetables, and more optimal in terms of the proteins.  I’m not sure where you’re at in the fat range.  If you’re at the six servings and you don’t need to eat the six servings because your body is not fat adapted and it burns your own fat literally.  Maybe it’s easy for you to eat more vegetables and drop the fat level.  The best answer I can give without giving more information is to look at areas outside of just what you’re eating. In some ways this is going to be a change that’s as strong, as it’s the weakest link.  Think about that.

Sometimes it’s useful to think of athletes, because athlete is the embodiment of someone who has to be at peak physical performance.  For them to do their job they have to be at peak physical performance.  An athlete isn’t just focused on what they’re eating.  They are focused on what they are eating but they are also critically focused on how they’re moving their body.  They’re also critically focused on how they sleep.  It’s also extremely important that they keep their stress down.  Going through a messy divorce is not going to be a good thing for an Olympian to experience during the Olympics.

Start thinking of ourselves as performers who are performing in life.  The eating might be perfect, but we might need to take a look at the other areas of our lives.  If that’s not helpful and the other areas of life are not dialed in completely.  Please post, ‘I ate this.  I ate this.  I slept like this.  I slept like this.  My stress level is this.’  Absolutely provide more specific answers in the Support Group.  Hopefully that’s helpful from a general weight loss plateau of perspective though.

Another great question: ‘I would like to know more about dairy products. How much is SANE?  Is Keifer, sour cream, Feta cheese SANE?’

It’s a great question to answer generally as well as specifically.  SANE is not about dairy is good or dairy is bad.  Any more than meat is bad or meat is good, or bread is bad or bread is good.  The SANE approach says how satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious and inefficient is the food, regardless of its source.  If we discovered that there was something on the moon that was really high in fiber, really high in protein and really nutrient dense, moonbeams, those would be SANE.

Vegetables are SANE not because they’re vegetables but because they are extremely satisfying, extremely unaggressive, extremely nutritious and extremely inefficient.  They’re very high on water, fiber and protein.  Dairy as a food group, we can say on average is less SANE than vegetables.  However, we can look at individualized dairy products, just like we can look at individualized anything.  We can say how SANE is it.   In general, whey protein which is dairy is extremely SANE because it’s pure protein.   Casing which is a form of dairy and which is a protein is extremely SANE.  Non-fat plain Greek yogurt is extremely SANE because it if extremely high in protein.  It doesn’t have any toxic substances in it, so it’s got the proteins and water going.  It’s not high in fiber, but it’s still on the same end of the spectrum. Low fat and fat free cottage cheese, low fat or fat free Keifer.

I’m saying low fat or fat free, so you might think, ‘Fat is bad for me.’ It’s absolutely not bad for you.  The fat that is found in dairy is not an optimal source of fat, I’d rather you were getting your fat from other sources.  So if you’re going to eat dairy, I would rather recommend the lower fat variants not because fat is bad, but because the type and quality of fat in dairy is not as high as the quality of fat in other sources.

So Keifer if it’s low fat, ideally organic is SANE.  Sour cream if it’s the low fat or fat free variants, and ideally organic, is SANE.  Feta cheese, cheese in general is not SANE.  It doesn’t mean you cannot eat cheese; it’s not SANE.  It’s low in protein.  It’s low in fiber.  Cheese in general is at the dry end of the spectrum.  It’s not particularly nutrient dense, it’s almost a 100 percent non optimal fat.

Doesn’t mean you can never eat.  Just means cheese should often be used as a topping or seasoning, rather than as like a main dish.  So, I use blue cheese crumble or Feta crumble or a little bit of parmesan.  That’s way different and totally fine.

We eat meals we don’t eat cheese.  That’s a teeny tiny component of an otherwise SANE meal.  The meal is totally SANE, if sprinkling a little bit of cheddar cheese-generally speaking the lighter the color of the cheese the SANEr it is-gets your family to eat broccoli then you know what?  Sprinkle the cheddar cheese.  Because the good in the broccoli is phenomenal, if sprinkling a little bit of any kind of thing on anything that is really SANE makes you love it, makes you want to eat more of it-rock and roll.  That’s a great example of how we can use fat, even if it’s not optimal if it’s combines and allows us to eat something that’s extremely SANE–Go for it.

Dairy is neither good nor bad.  Just like meat is neither good nor bad.  There are toxic forms of meat.  There are good forms of meat.  You have to look at each case individually.  Hopefully that answers your question.

Just definitely stay away from those yogurts and things like that which claim to be SANE.  The Activia brand of yogurt that ‘Helps with digestion’ and ‘ You’ll never find 20grams of sugar in this teeny tiny cup of yogurt.’

Please that stuff is totally inSANE.  Flavored dairy-run in the opposite direction.  But yes, dairy has a seasoning, if it’s high in fat it’s fine.  If it’s high in fat, high in protein and low in sugar, then it is SANE.  That is all good stuff. Hopefully that answers your question.

If you have follow-up questions about dairy, please post it up there.  Just as a quick side note; eggs because they are sold in the dairy section sometimes people think they’re dairy.  Eggs aren’t dairy from a biological perception, that’s just a classification we as human beings have give it.  Eggs aren’t dairy like peanuts aren’t nuts they are legumes.  Eggs aren’t dairy they are whole food fat.  Egg whites are a wonderful source of protein and eggs yolks are a wonderful source of fat.   When you eat the whole egg.  You’re getting about 65 percent of your whole calorie from fat.  We have to consider them whole food fat.  Extremely nutrient dense in terms of fat, definitely something to incorporate them into our SANE lifestyle in abundance, which is good stuff.

All right. We’ve got some awesome questions.  I apologize if I didn’t get your questions.  I’m sorry about that.  I will carry the questions forward into the next session.  If you really want your question answered right away or ever, please post it in the Support Group, because that has just been an awesome place.  There’s been so much love going on in there.  Please post it in there, and we’ll get it answered ASAP.

I want to close this call, because we have five minutes left, with some amazing research.  People want to talk about mental stuff more.  I love talking about mental stuff.  I want to do a balance of answering questions and bringing new stuff in.  So the one thing I want to share with you today is the amazingly powerful amount of clinical psychiatric studies that have been done around a term called ‘Mind Set.’  There have been interventions done where we are taught, ‘Stress is bad for you. Stress is bad. Stress is like high fructose corn starch.  Bad.  Take less of it.’

That’s actually not true.  Stress is a natural reaction, there are a lot of things about stress that enhance performance.  It’s chronic stress, the wrong kind of stress that’s bad for us.  There have been studies with students or with performers where they’ll sit down with someone and they’ll show them six power point slides and they’ll explain the actual science of stress.  How feeling stress before you perform can actually enhance performance.  That ‘Mind Set’ shift of stress is like your body saying, ‘I care.’  Think about that.  If you perceive stress as, ‘I’m terrified.  This is bad,’ versus stress and your body saying, ‘I care about this, and I’m going to turn off my attention.’  How often would you feel stressed and I feel more stressed.  And I’m more feeling more stressed. And it becomes a downward spiral.

Mind Set is extremely important, because that downward spiral I just described-if our Mind Set was that, ‘Stress is a healthy natural response that shows that we care about something.’  Of course, we don’t want chronic stress.   But if we’re about to do something meaningful and we feel stressed.  That’s because our body’s like, ‘This is meaningful.  I want to have all my attention folks.  I am going to dump adrenaline down into your blood stream so that you’re dialed in.’

That’s going to make us perform differently.  If I drink out of this water bottle, am I going to get BPA poisoning.  Not that this stuff isn’t relevant.  It is.  If you look at the actual research, just the mind set of progress rather than perfection.  Meaning that doing anything that’s SANE needs to be celebrated.  As long as you are making steps in the right direction, you are being successful.  That mindset versus ‘Well unless I can do it perfectly, I might as well not do it.’

‘Jonathan said he didn’t eat organic turkey,’ can’t believe that.  You might as well not do that at all.

The Mind Set of progress rather than perfection, these types of things have been clinically proven to have long term transformational effect on your life.  These simple shifts in Mind Set.  We sometimes really focus on what brand of this or type of that.  I want to share with you how powerful and transformative it is.  It doesn’t happen tomorrow.  We’re here for the long term.

One of the mindsets we’ve covered today is, ‘Food is therapy.  Food is therapeutic.’  Think about that Mind Set versus a Mind Set of, ‘This food has this many points, and I’m supposed to eat as many or as few points or calories as possible.  Food in general is the enemy and I need to shy away from it.’

Those two Mind Sets are so different.  Even on your most challenging day, where maybe you make some inSANE decisions around food.  Even if you sort of realize ‘That wasn’t the highest quality eating I ever could have done.  I’m not going to beat myself about it.  I know food is therapy.  I’m definitely not going to starve myself tomorrow, which is what I would have done in the past to make up for it.  What I am going to do is, I’m going to remember how I feel right now.  Eating that low quality food made me feel really low quality.  I know food is therapy, and in the future I’m not going to deprive myself of the beautiful therapy it needs to thrive and feel awesome.’

If you could have that Mind Set that day, even though there were some inSANE food choices, you’re re-wiring. It’s called neuroplasticity.  Literally re-wiring the way your brain works and it will help you to avoid those things that happened in the future by having that different Mind Set.

This is verifiable clinical science.  Go into an FMRI machine and your brain is actually re-wiring yourself.  I’m going to close on that extremely and exciting positive note, which is even if we’re not able to manifest-if we have slip-ups or something like that in your action-your Mind Set and the fact that you are here listening to this and watching this, going through the Ignite Program, and participating in the Support Group, and seeing food as therapy, and hopefully writing a Gratitude Journal, literally taking on a SANE Mind Set.

Even if you aren’t able to do the SANE eating perfectly or eccentric exercise perfectly.  I want you to know that the SANE Mind Set over the course of months and years, will make the other things happen, because you are literally re-wiring your brain.  Amazing.  So not only are we transforming our metabolism and our hormones and our gut bacteria, but we are literally re-wiring our brain.  I think that is awesome.  Science is awesome.

We’re one minute over.  I’m so glad we got to cover all of this.  I’m so sorry if I didn’t get to answer your question, we will roll it over into next week and of course cover it in the Support Group.  Thank you so much for sharing the evening with me.  I know today’s Call is a little bit later than our previous Calls.

As always I want to thank you with all my heart and with much love.  Thank you for being a member of the SANE Family and I’ve been looking to this all week.  Thank you for blessing me and blessing the entire SANE Support team with your trust.  Thank you again and I cannot wait to see you in the Support Group this week.  So rock and roll and have a super SANE Friday and weekend.  Thank you so much and have a good night.

Click here for a bit more info on the seafood dish I mentioned during the session

 

SANE Psychology

  • How do we handle ourselves in social situations in which not everyone else is going SANE? Focus on taking the SANEst choicest available and tell yourself, ‘That’s the best that I can do.’ Or if all that’s available are inSANE choices, you can either bring your own food, you can not eat, or you can make half-SANE choices. With the SANE lifestyle, I feel that it is much more similar to something like vegetarianism, or if you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes. In both of those situations you have a dietary restriction which if you share with your host or friends in a loving way, they will happily make accommodations for you.
  • We can all say, ‘I’ve found that I’m pre-diabetic. Can you help me?’ You’ve changed the power dynamic. You’re the opposite of Holier-Than-Thou in that dynamic and you’re saying, ‘I need your help.’ Because you are at a position of weakness, you flip the circumstances and put yourself in the position of ‘I need help,’ rather than ‘I’m better than you.’
  • The following mindset shift can save your life. Literally. SANE food is therapeutic. Think of it as nutritional therapy. The conventional dieting approach is to take in less food. If food is therapy and if food is medicine, which it is, then taking in more of the right type of food is therapeutic. We do need to go out of our way to make sure that we get those double digit servings of vegetables.
  • The SANE lifestyle is very flexible as we focus on process rather than perfection. If you want to eat inSANEly sometimes, then eat inSANEly sometimes only. But just like anything else in life, the more you put into it the more you get out of it. If you want to really grab that metabolic syndrome by the hand and shove it out the door; same thing with diabetes; same thing with hypertension; same thing with risk for cancer and all those kind of things. If you want to revert a medical condition then we’re going to treat it like therapy. We’re going to treat it like a medical intervention and we’re going to give it that level of priority.
  • I’ve seen individuals who have experienced a weight loss plateau. They’ve been SANE but they have not been able to get sleep for hours at night. You could be 100 percent SANE but if you only get four hours of sleep at night, it’s going to be a problem. If you’re going through a divorce, or if you just lost a loved one, your cortisol levels are through the roof because you’re stressed and you’re not sleeping.That can cause your weight to plateau. Chronically elevated cortisol is just like chronically elevated insulin, or chronically suppressed testosterone in men or chronically suppressed estrogen in women. We need to take that holistic view.
  • Even if you aren’t able to do the SANE eating perfectly or eccentric exercise perfectly, I want you to know that the SANE Mind Set over the course of months and years, will make the other things happen, because you are literally rewiring your brain. Amazing. So not only are we transforming our metabolism and our hormones and our gut bacteria, but we are literally rewiring our brain.

 

What to Eat

  • The root of this problem is we do need to heal some dysregulation. The technical term for it is metabolic dysregulation. It’s caused by a lifetime of stress, yo-yo dieting and inSANE dietary recommendations, that are put upon us. This triggers our brain, our hormones and our gut to regulate our weight inappropriately. If we’re eating only a thousand calories we could still be a hundred pounds overweight. Is it sufficient to eat SANE food when I’m hungry? Yes, if you’re getting the requisite amount of non-starchy vegetables. The non-starchy vegetables are key. Otherwise we’re not healing. If you just don’t have room for them, smoothies are very helpful.
  • In general, we should not be eating all raw vegetables or all cooked vegetables. We should be doing a little bit of both. Cooking does some positive things to vegetables, and also does some negative things to vegetables. When it comes to the food we’re eating, we want to diversify. Eating six servings of spinach is not as good for you as eating one serving of six the different green vegetables.
  • The goal is not to demonize insulin. Insulin is key. We have to have insulin or we will die. The goal is to keep insulin at natural levels. The way we keep insulin at natural levels is to eat SANEly.
  • I personally would not recommend intermittent fasting as the way to help control insulin levels. The way you could control insulin levels is not eating less. What we want to do is we want to focus on eating foods that don’t spike our insulin.
  • If you really wanted to take an almost medicinal therapeutic approach to taking control of your insulin levels, I would recommend a SANE Ketogenic Diet. Ketogenic just means your body is just running on ketone bodies, which is a byproduct of burning fat for fuel rather than sugar. The way you do that SANEly is to focus on the highest fiber, lowest carb-which are generally the most nutrient dense vegetables. Then you’re going to focus on nutrient dense proteins and whole food fats. No fruit. No legumes and other stuff, because you’re going to keep under 50 grams of net carbs per day to achieve a state of ketosis. For some people you need to go even lower than that. Then you’re going to increase the amount of fats you’re eating because you do need calories from somewhere and fat doesn’t trigger any insulin release.
  • Ketogenic diets have been used to help with some psychological conditions. They’ve been used to help with psychosis, autism, ADHD because they find for some people having your body truly run off fat rather than sugar can really change the way your brain works. People are using it with cancer therapy, to treat Alzheimer’s.
  • We now know that people who are naturally thin for example have a different type of hormonal makeup. They have different types of gut bacteria. Their brains are literally wired differently. There have been studies on children. There are children who are super tasters versus children who are not tasting. What that means is basically there are human beings who are not as sensitive to taste and for them to get the experience of sweet, they have to eat sweeter things than other people because they are just not as sensitive to taste. There are fundamental metabolic differences between us.
  • I’m not hungry in the morning but I want to get my nutritional therapy in. I have two to three servings of Garden In My Glass and a tablespoon of cod liver oil.
  • Vegetables are SANE not because they’re vegetables but because they are extremely satisfying, extremely unaggressive, extremely nutritious and extremely inefficient. They’re very high on water, fiber and protein. Dairy as a food group, we can say on average is less SANE than vegetables. However, we can look at individualized dairy products, just like we can look at individualized anything. We can say how SANE is it. In general, whey protein which is dairy is extremely SANE because it’s pure protein. Casing which is a form of dairy and which is a protein is extremely SANE. Non-fat plain Greek yogurt is extremely SANE because it is extremely high in protein. It doesn’t have any toxic substances in it, so it’s got the proteins and water going. It’s not high in fiber, but it’s still on the same end of the spectrum. Low fat and fat free cottage cheese, low fat or fat free Keifer are also SANE.

 

Exercise

  • If you have a history of low back and neck issues and they hurt after a workout,  I would strongly recommend seeing your physical therapist. In my experience, a personal trainer is not the person you see for something like this. A chiropractor is going to be decent, but a physical therapist is going to show you how to strengthen the muscles. See a physical therapist that has a Ph. D. in Exercise Physiology. They are going to be able to show you specifically how you can strengthen the muscles. You’re going to have to do to continuously keep those muscles strong.