5.17.16

What I want to do in these calls is I want to offer something that you are not going to be able to find anywhere else.  I want these calls to be uniquely beneficial and motivating for you.  There are some topics that are extremely important that we are not going to cover here.  I know that might sound a little bit funny but there are topics that are so important and so common that that’s sort of why Ignite Program exists.  Things like emotional eating, eating on the go, these things that are eating SANE with your family, these are such important huge topics that they are covered in huge detail in your Ignite Program and in the step by step program.  I want to reserve those for the step by step program and use our time together here to have a conversation, an interactive conversation and to go deep on some really important cutting edge stuff that just — it can’t be covered any other way.  I want to make this uniquely valuable for you.

We’ve got some awesome questions that people wrote in which we are going to be quick but I’m going to try to turn them into something that is a little bit more advanced and useful and interactive.  Please if I say something that doesn’t make total sense or if you are like “Oh man that makes me think of this other question or Jonathan can you elaborate on that or I didn’t really follow that,” let’s please see this as a dialogue.  We have got opportunity to chat here in a way that we don’t have that same opportunity anywhere else.  And as you know your SANE coaches like Raina here are doing a fantastic job in your support group which rocks.  That’s again another venue to get some other questions answered, let’s rock this time in a unique, unique way.

You can ask me anything you want.  It doesn’t even have to be about eating or exercise about anything.  No holes are barred.  The only thing that I ask is no we can’t give medical advice here or anywhere else related to SANE and this recorded and it will be transcribed so please don’t share anything that you are not comfortable being available to other members of the Ignite Family because of course we are going to record this in case you can’t make to one of the calls.  You can send in your questions beforehand, I will answer them then you can watch the recording.  You can also use the recording for future reference.  That is all good stuff.

And again if you are just joining us now, I see a lot of folks are just trickling in.  a lot of new folks this week, so again welcome and please feel free to use that chat box in the lower right hand corner if you’d like and if you don’t want to that’s fine too.  It’s okay to be shy but know that you will be welcomed with love if you do choose to post.

To get us started I want to give a quick shout out and I apologize because I have been gone for a little bit here and I will tell you a little bit about where  have been later in the call.  We are going to go for 90 minutes or until I pass out, that’s the general rule of thumb.  I also want to give a quick shout out to the amazing individuals who have been the top contributors over the past week in the coaching and support group.  if you haven’t been into the coaching and support group, please pop over there because it is such an amazing place, your SANE certified coaches like Raina who is on this call are there as well as just amazing other member of the family and that’s available for you 24/7, 365 so it’s awesome.  Again shout-out to all the SANE coaches, Lori, Rebecca, Wednesday, Raina who is here with us now and then Lynette Stork, Jerry Rich, Kim Calls, Mary Dua, Megan Williams, Kate Bosco and Ticky Ford have been just doing a stellar job recently in the support group.  Everyone is rocking but I wanted to give a special customized shout-out to those individuals because they have really been rocking and rolling.

Shall we kick it off?  Let’s do it.  We got 90 minutes and it’s going to be a lot of fun.  If at all possible I’m going to prioritize some questions that we get submitted here, I’m then going to jump into some quick questions that we get sent in.  And then there are some really meaty topics that I want us to talk about.  They are cool for me because we get to geek out and go advanced together.  Hopefully they are fun for you as well.

What’s up Tom, Dona, Fran is in the house.  Fran, yes we will talk about the trip for sure and welcome Tom, welcome Debra and again please feel free to introduce yourself if you are just joining in now.

Alright, let’s do it.  Let’s get started by chat with Tom and everyone else here.  One quick thing, if you are new I forgot to mention this sorry is part of my standard steeple.  If a question seems like it doesn’t apply to you please don’t tune out or disconnect the call.  I’m going to answer these questions in a way that will shockingly make them apply to you believe it or not.  So if someone asks a question about running a marathon you might say, “I’m never going to run a marathon in my live” but I promise that if you listen the answer will actually have some key takeaways for you as well.  because I’m going to answer them in a way that will help to show you the difference between the SANE methodology, psychology eating and exercise and the conventional approach that has failed us and continues to fail us in all these context.  So it’s going to be helpful I promise.  If it’s not, post in the chat box and say, “that’s not helpful” and I will make it — I’ll try.

Tom has got the first question here.  He says, “looking for whether the app as the ability to edit an existing entry.  I’m new to the app and haven’t found an alternative to having to delete.” Tom, that’s a great question.  Right now there is no way to edit an existing entry.  You do need to delete and re-enter.  I do apologize for that.  Editing existing entries is something we are looking to enhance in the future but for right now it has just delete and reenter is what’s available to us.

Fran, I’m going to get to the trip here in a second and let me jump into some other questions that were sent in here.  First question I want to talk about is cream, the question is cream.  Is it dairy or is it fat?  A very specific question but I want to give a globally helpful answer here for you.  Just heavy cream dairy cow based — obviously there is many there is coconut cream, there are all sorts of other cream.  I’m going to assume to assume this is the conventional daily cream.  They are asking, is it dairy or fat?  So I’m assuming is that a whole food fat or is it other dairy or is it other fat?  Because you could sort of say, it could fall in one of those three categories.

Coconut cream will be a whole food fat because coconut cream is just taking coconut and perforating it a way where the vast majority of the whole coconut and all the nutritional value is still intact plus the type of fat that is provided in coconut is fundamentally different.  Just it’s a totally different type of fat than the fat that’s provided in cow’s milk cream.  So coconut cream is the preferred and SANEst source of cream on the planet.  If you were eating coconut cream that will count as a whole food fat and will therefore be a great SANE choice.

Dairy cream will probably count as other fats just because you are not getting fiber, you are not getting protein and the type of fat that is provided in it is not the most therapeutic type.  Of course we are not here to be scared of fat in any sense of the word but just like we talk about eating the highest quality protein available, the highest quality carbohydrate and the highest quality fat available, that’s the sort of high quality fat is what we are talking about here.  And my encouragement to you or my recommendation to you would be for the SANEst — cream doesn’t have to be dairy nor other fat.  If you use coconut cream it could count as a whole food fat and that will give the best results to you.  Other than that it will count as other fats.  Simply because it is essentially pure fat and the fat is coming from just not the ideal SANE sources.  Hopefully that’s helpfully.

What’s up Julie and Sharon?  I think I jumped the gun a little bit here.  I’m excited.  It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had one of these calls.  So I’m just like, “I want to answer questions.” But the point here, let’s focus on the coconut cream, I think it’s going to be very, very helpful.

Next is good old Bulletproof Coffee.  So hey Dave A. apparently is doing a great job marketing because we are getting quite a few questions about Bulletproof Coffee.  I’m going to give a short answer here because previous SANE coaching calls we covered this in quite a bit of depth in one of those calls and you can find those always.  The recording for this one will be up in 72 hours and previous ones down at the stay motivated footer section of the website.  But Bulletproof Coffee is not SANE.  That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it is not SANE.  The easiest way to think of something or is it SANE or not?  We talk from scientific perspective of satiety, aggression, nutrition and efficiency.  But to bring it home and to give you the quick rule of thumb we say is it high in protein, water and fiber are the three common denominators that affect satiety, aggression, nutrition and efficiency.

So when we look at Bulletproof Coffee we say your coffee is non-caloric.  Coffee as a beverage is neither SANE nor inSANE, it’s non-caloric so we can’t really evaluate.  SANE evaluates the quality of calories.  If something doesn’t have calories in it we can’t call it SANE or inSANE.  So, technically water is neither SANE nor inSANE.  It’s inapplicable because it has not calories to be measured on the SANE spectrum.  Then what we have to say for Bulletproof Coffee really is butter SANE.  And butter is a fine flavoring mechanism, like if you can leverage butter to help you eat more vegetables that’s brilliant.

But Bulletproof Coffee is not SANE in the sense that if you were to drink Bulletproof Coffee or alternatively if you were to take a cup of coffee and a part of a stick of butter and eat that for breakfast, that would have a very, very low SANE score simply because you are taking a no protein and you are taking a no fiber and you are taking in few if an essential vitamins, minerals and amino acids.  It doesn’t have those core SANE components.  Am I saying that Bulletproof Coffee is horrible and I am against it?  No.  The key thing that I’m saying is just that it is not SANE.  It’s really important to keep in mind that there are these different protocols and regimens out there.  There is low carb, there is bulletproof, there is vegetarianism, there is low glycemic.  And they all have different goals.

For example low glycemic the goals of that is to regulate insulin secretion.  It doesn’t say anything about nutrient density for example.  Paleo, the goal of Paleo is to eat in accordance with the way our ancestors ate.  That’s obviously a much different goal for example that the goal of minimizing insulin release.  The goal of the Mediterranean diet is to eat like individuals in the Mediterranean have.  The goal of the low carb diet is to minimize the intake of carbohydrates.  Why am I making that obvious point?  The reason I’m making that point is because we have to look at what the goal of SANE is.

And the goal of SANE again is to maximize satiety, minimize aggression, maximize nutrition and minimize efficiency.  And we do that by maximizing the protein and fiber intake of foods and eating foods that are in the non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats and low fructose food groups in that order.  And the reason we do that is because the goal of SANE in addition to those mechanistic goals I described but more from an impact goal is to help you to heal your metabolism as sustainably and enjoyably as possible.

For example the goal of Bulletproof is not that.  The goal of Bulletproof in my understanding — Dave is my buddy, I know him personally.  Bulletproof covers things like smart drugs and hooking up gadgets to your brain to make it work better.  I’m not here to say that’s good or bad.  What I am here to say is that that is a totally different goal than what we are doing here with SANE.  My strong recommendation if your goal is to heal your metabolism to maximize the nutrient intensity of your diet, to maximize the satiety of the foods you are eating and to do that in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable for life, bulletproof coffee would not even be on my top ten list of things you should be drinking with your breakfast.

I would strongly encourage you to take the calories the four, five, six, seven hundred or eight hundred calories that you could be getting from bulletproof coffee and get that from whole foods for breakfast.  Maybe something with eggs, lots of vegetables.  Again, nutrients less in protein, whole food fats, low fructose fruits, non-starchy vegetables.  Because we have to remember eating is a zero sum game.  So, if we are drinking bulletproof coffee instead of eating six doughnuts, absolutely that could be a SANEr choice.  But if our choice is between drinking a cup of Bulletproof Coffee and eating an immensely satisfying, unaggressive, extremely nutritious and non-efficient whole foods meal, I would strongly encourage you to eat that whole foods meal if your goal is in line with the SANE lifestyle.  Hopefully that makes sense.  It wasn’t too esoteric but if you are getting great results and you are drinking Bulletproof Coffee, keep doing it.  Results are really always all that matter.  But if you are not seeing the results you’d like, I would really strongly recommend that you eat a SANE whole foods breakfast rather than drinking Bulletproof Coffee and if you are not drinking Bulletproof Coffee already, I can promise you that you will not increase the SANity of your lifestyle by stopping eating nutrient dense whole foods for breakfast and instead drinking Bulletproof Coffee.

It’s really important to keep in mind that you might hear some people say — it’s interesting I was listening to some audio books.  I generally don’t listen to health audio books, I like to read.  As you know the firsthand pure reviewed research and speak with the researchers directly.  But in a lot of these books they were talking satiating nuts were.  And they are totally spot on.  Nuts are extremely satiating but they were comparing a handful of nut to a handful of pretzels.  They were like, a handful of nuts is so much more satiating, absolutely, if you eat a handful of nuts versus a handful of puffed rice.  Handful of puffed rice will have 11 calories in it.  A handful of nuts which could be extremely SANE and healthy has 10 to 20 times more calories in it.  Again calories are by no means the enemy but is not sort of some magic property of nuts.  Nuts calorie for calorie are much more satisfying than a lot of other foods.

But the key point to make here is comparing 11 calories of puffed rice snack which is inSANE and you shouldn’t eat to 20 times that or 220 calories of nuts.  Of course the nuts are going to be more satisfying because we just took in 20 times more calories.  it’s not necessarily that nuts are the most satisfying thing, it’s that eating 20 times more calories is going to be more satisfying as long as those calories are not coming from inSANE sources which nuts are SANE so that will make sense.

Why am I talking about this?  The reason I’m talking about this is, you may talk to someone or you may search for something on the internet and they may say, “Hey when I drink coffee that has a bunch of fat added into it, I’m not hungry.” That is not magic.  The reason that’s happening is because if you take a cup of coffee and drink it that has no calories in it.  Black coffee I believe has no or less than 10 calories in it.  That’s not going to fill you up.  It is not going to trigger any satiety signals in your body at all.  If you take that same cup of coffee and you add 700 calories to it, of course it’s going to be more satisfying, right?  So it’s not a magical property of adding calories to coffee, that’s what calories do.  Calories are fuel and they tend to fill us up in less.  They are the addictive calories such as sugar and starch which we can talk about later if you’d like.

Again if you were to take the — this is 100 percent true.  It’s very hard to say that in nutrition realm but from a pure satiety or satisfaction perspective, there is no debate, none.  And this is really hard to say in the nutrition realm.  Statements like this will be very rare.  But there is no debate that from a pure satiety perspective calorie for calorie protein is the most satiating macronutrient in fact to really understand what I’m talking about here it’s extremely easy to add 5, 6-700 calories of non-whole food fats to your breakfast.  That’s what some people are doing with bulletproof or fatty coffee or these other things out there, try to 700 calories of nutrient dense protein from whole food sources to your breakfast, it is nearly impossible.

So not only is it extremely satisfying but eating let’s say we were talking about chicken breasts here, a medium sized chicken breast has approximately 25 grams of protein in it, there is 4 calories on a grand of protein.  So you would have to eat 5 chicken breasts for breakfast — that’s going to keep you full too.  Don’t do that.  But again that hopefully gives you some important context and really again the key with SANity and long term health and wellbeing which is our goal here is to maximize the quality of our calories and the quality of our calories is going to come from those whole food sources.  Hopefully that’s helpful.  Please post follow up questions if I went too far off the rails there but hopefully that was helpful.  I promise you will never hurt my feelings by posting follow-up questions here.  That’s what these calls are for.

And then what are my thoughts on intermittent fasting.  This is a great question.  I love talking about intermittent fasting.  There are health benefits in intermittent fasting.  For me we do not have an obesity epidemic and we don’t have a 95.4 percent failure rate with conventional dieting because people aren’t intermittent fasting.  The key to your long term success and happiness has nothing to do with eating less.  And Intermittent fasting can be a euphemism for just eat less.  In fact there are entire books written that basically say don’t worry about what you are eating, just worrying when you are eating.  Meaning that if you don’t eat anything from 8pm in the evening to 4pm the next day and you only have a 4 hour window, you can eat whatever you want because the amount of calories you can consume during that time period is so low that you can eat a garbage low quality diet.

Now, that’s not healthy, right?  Let’s be very clear you can lose weight eating 600 calories of anything but that’s not healthy and we are going to talk much more about later on in our time together here today if we do have time.  So intermittent fasting is a highly, highly and advanced technique that I would only recommend for very advanced individuals who have already reached their weight and fat loss goals and I would recommend it only for health benefits not for weight loss benefits.  there are some health benefits to intermittent fasting very infrequently once you are already weight stable, had a healthy weight.

But using it has a weight loss tool — there is a difference between losing weight, losing fat and being healthy.  There is all sorts of things we can do to lose weight that don’t make us healthy and things we can do that will help our health but don’t make us lose weight.  Easy examples.  Most forms of exercise.  Most forms of exercise will not help you lose weight but will help increase your health.  Things that will help you lose weight but will not increase your health, smoking.  Cigarette smoking has been shown to act directly on a lot of the regions of your brain that affect your set point and that affect your weight.  Smoking has been shown to help with weight loss.  Please don’t start smoking to help with your weight loss because we want to maximize health and we want to maximize that loss.  So, intermittent fasting is not something I would recommend until you have reached all of your weight and fat loss goals, and then if you want to do it, do it only from a health perspective, doing it frequently.  And hopefully that’s helpful.

Let me know if it’s not.  Again I will take the lack of questions coming in as a sign that I am doing a good job.  Not that questions coming mean that I am doing a bad job.  But sometimes it’s lonely here.  So, feel free to post if you want, but if you are shy that’s okay too.

Alright, next question here Fran we will get to the trip.  Julie, thank you for posting something, I’m so lonely.  we’ve actually gotten quite a bit of feedback that folks have written in afterwards says they were shy or they are just getting started with the program and they don’t know what to ask or what some people have said and I need to do a better job at this, is they just like when I do my rant thing.  Anyway, I will try to do all of it.

Julie says, “Is it better to eat in the morning whether you are hungry or not?” Julie the most important thing — and please tell me if this is not a helpful answer is to reach your SANE servings goals.  It’s not about intermittent fasting, it’s not about I have to eat in the morning; I have to eat in the evening.  Don’t eat it in the evening.  It’s about double digits servings of non-starchy vegetables 2 to 6 servings of nutrient dense protein and 2 to 4 servings depending on where you are of whole food fats.  If you can do that, I want you to do that in a way that makes you feel awesome and that you can do for the rest of your life.  There is absolutely no causal research that shows that you have to eat breakfast.

Yes there are observations, because if you go to the national weight loss registry, you will see that there is correlations between people who say that they eat breakfast also tend to have greater success maintaining weight loss.  That does not mean eating breakfast causes weight loss.  Obviously when it gets sunny outside more people wear sunglasses.  Certainly that does not tell any of us that if we put sunglasses on we will make the sun shine.  The core thing is to find something that is in line with the SANE food quality principles that works for you and to have that success.  Because I promise you that to the extent that you depend on white willpower there is inverse relationship between the amount of willpower that you have to use long term and your likelihood of long term nutritional SANity and happiness and success.

Here is what I can tell you with 100 percent certainty, I servings goals non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole foods fats low fructose fruits at a rate that makes you feel great and feel energized and that you can do consistently for the rest of your life, doing that is radically more important than whether or not one of those meals happen in breakfast.  Does that make sense?  I really want to focus on those core principles rather than like oh my gosh I didn’t do this breakfast rule right.  What we know for sure in the scientific literature has to do with what you are eating.  When you are eating it is absolutely going to be function of what works for you and works in your life, it’s definitely going to vary by person.  Hopefully that’s helpful and great question for sure.

Next question here, “How does alcohol, wine or wine spirits fit into the program?” Alcohol in general is not a SANE source of calories, and again the rule of thumb that can make it really easy is does it have a lot of protein in it, does it have a lot of fiber in it.  The answer is no so therefore is not a SANE source of calories.  Does is it have a lot of nutrients in it?  No.  Therefore it’s not a SANE of calories.  Does that mean you can never drink alcohol?  No, it doesn’t mean that at all.  What we can do is we can say alcohol as a whole if you look at the SANE spectrum one way to think about it is we have foods that we want to intentionally eat more of, non-starchy vegetables nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, low fructose fruits in that order.

Then we have foods which are not something we need to go out of our way to eat more of but if we happen to eat them zero or 1 or 2 servings per day that’s fine.  These are things like legumes, other dairy products, some other fruits.  Again, one serving per day not a huge a deal but it’s not something that we are going to go out of our way to eat.  So sort of like green light, yellow light and then red light.  And the red light of course are things like processed fats, starches and sweets which we should try to be so full of those other foods that we are just not tempted to eat those.

Alcohol it has to be categorized on the more orange-ish red end of the spectrum.  Now, what we can do is we can make the SANEst choices for spirits that we can.  And the best rule of thumb is wine is going to be much better than beer.  Beer is one of the worst choices of beer multi-liquor if you are really wanting to see results that’s going to make it really, really hard.  Beer and multi liquor are essentially starchy carbs plus alcohol that have been shown to specifically add visceral fat or belly fat.  Like beer belly is not a myth.  There is a reason for that and that visceral, that abdominal adiposity.

If you want to drink alcohol, your purest SANEst choice will be clear liquor.  So clear liquor and then next would be wine which you definitely don’t want to drink at all is multi-liquor or any sort of sugary mix drink.  And that’s just because the patch of sugar taking a Pepsi and then adding alcohol to it is even worse than just drinking a Pepsi.  Or coke, because you can add Rome to coke.  I don’t if people roman Pepsi.  It’s certainly not something I’m familiar with.  But again it doesn’t mean you can never drink alcohol, it doesn’t mean you are failing if you are drinking alcohol at all.  We need to get those thoughts out of our mind.  We need to give ourselves permission to make this gradual transition into SANity.  The answer isn’t I’m giving up all alcohol.  You don’t need to start drinking alcohol if you don’t already but the answer would be how could I increase this SANity of the alcohol like beverages that I’m drinking and hopefully the guidelines I just provided will be helpful in doing that.

Questions around pumpkin seeds [unintelligible 00:32:28] dried chickpeas; these are great questions around SANE convenience foods.  This is a question I’m actually going to defer to the Ignite Program and to your support group if you don’t mind simply because we have got some amazing resources in terms of ready to eat SANE snacks.  Check that out in your step by step program for sure, eating away from home, talk about that in the support group.  That’s a great question and it’s universal.  So you got some great resources that will help you there for sure.

Dried fruits, please don’t eat fruits dried fruits are extremely inSANE.  Generally speaking the fruit is offered dried is already the higher sugar so they are not low fructose fruits, they are actually higher fructose fruits and then when you dehydrate them and you take the water out, you can eat way more of them than you would normally ever eat.  So you are essentially eating candy that has some vitamins and minerals but that sugar is still going to wreak havoc on your metabolism.  Please really be careful about that.

I know it sounds a little strange but your pancreas does not care if the glucose in your blood stream came from natural or unnatural sources.  Your pancreas has no knowledge of the source of sugar in your blood stream.  All it knows is that hey there is a bunch of sugar in my bloodstream and if I don’t release a bunch of the hormone insulin to take this out of the bloodstream the individual will die.  That’s why diabetics have to take insulin shots, right?  Because their blood sugar gets too high and if it gets too high, they will die.  So your pancreas isn’t like oh this sugar came from honey it’s okay.  It’s like, sugar I have to get this out of the blood stream so I’m going to release a bunch of insulin.  What’s better to eat?  Strawberry starburst or dehydrated strawberry, certainly a dehydrated strawberry.  But eating a fresh strawberry would be even better.  So hopefully that’s helpful.  Dried fruits though as a snack is totally inSANE.  So please stay away from that as much as possible.

Next question here is, how much cocoa powder is harmful for the bowl?  I am not aware of cocoa powder being harmful for the bowl.  Cocoa powder is one of the SANEst, healthiest most antioxidant rich awesome substances on the planet.  I personally have been known to eat a half cup or more of raw cocoa per day just because it puts these other super foods to shame in terms of antioxidant and therapeutic properties.  It’s also a vessel dilator so it helps with blood flow.  It is therapeutic; it can help boost your mood.  There is a reason that we have SANE mood boosting cocoa powder.  This is a therapeutic food.

Certainly if you double your intake and it cause gastrointestinal distress, if anything causes gastrula intestinal distress just scale it back.  And we talk about this with vegetables as well.  It’s often not the total quantity that can cause digestive problems.  It’s the rate that you consume it.  For example when it comes to vegetables if you were to eat 12 serving of vegetables in 5 minutes, you are going to have crazy digestive problems.  But if you were to eat 3 servings of vegetables spaced out every three hours, digestive problems are going to be little if any.  Because is much different intake.  Same with cocoa powder I would space it out if you are having any problems with it because it is extremely good for you.

Looks like there is a question in here from Ticky, sorry I have seen a couple of things here.  Is says what’s the best way to start eccentric exercise when out of shape?  How often and how intense?  Ticky, the number one thing I would recommend is if you have not already please checked out, I think its step by step course 201.  The one reason I say this is because eccentric exercise is a big topic and I want to make sure that we do 100 percent justice for you.  In that I believe it’s a SANE step by step 201 course.  We have got some amazing demonstrations videos and eBooks that are going to teach you those foundational fundamental elements of eccentric exercise.  And then if you have refinements that we can help you with we would love to do that for you in the support group and here if that makes sense.  But I want to make sure that you are equipped for success and those aspects of the program are something that we definitely cover in detail.  I do hope that that’s really helpful for you.  If is not please do let me know and I will provide some follow up here.

Since we are talking about eccentric exercise, there was a question written in that I do want to tackle specifically here because it’s not covered in the program as stated.  There has been some great questions.  And this relates to your question for sure.  Which is can I do more eccentric exercise and will that yield more benefit?  What you will see in the step by step program is the recommendation of one intense eccentric routine per week and then one complimentary smarter interval training exercise for every workout, there you go, whatever` you want to call it.

If I ever want to get faster results can I just do more of that?  we can talk a lot about this for sure, however I think the easiest way you understand why the answer is no you will not get better results if you just do more of it is to think of this form of exercise as extremely powerful.  Eccentric exercise, smarter interval training is one of the most potent — is almost like medicinal exercise.  It’s so powerful in your body.  And more isn’t better when you are dealing with really powerful things.

I said it’s therapeutic; it’s almost medicinal exercise so let’s talk about medicinal.  Talk about medicine.  If you are sick and your doctor prescribes very powerful penicillin.  Your doctor will never say, hey take all of this penicillin on day one to get the fastest results.  We might be laughing or smiling because you are like no that’s crazy.  Even if you have a headache it’s not like, I have a headache if two help my headaches go away, 4 will help it to go away twice as fast and 10 will help it to go away five times faster.  And actually this whole bottle will make it go away instantly.  So I’m just going to take all there is.

The way we have to think about exercise is super similar to that.  Because what the right form of exercise does is it triggers what’s called hormonal cascade in our bodies.  And what that hormonal cascade does is it then sort of tells our body to mobilize other hormones to release stored energy from fat cells and the magic is that once you trigger that you then just need to let your body do its thing.  The benefits of eccentric exercise, the smarter interval training — this is going to sound a little bit silly but stick with me.  You don’t get them while you are doing the exercise; you get them afterwards when your body responds to that stimulus.  That’s really where the benefit comes into play.  So at the risk of mixing metaphors just think about — trying to not mix too many metaphors.  I like metaphors but I don’t want to have six metaphors going on simultaneously.

Let me wrap up one exercise metaphor and then I will move on to the next one.  The first exercise metaphor is smarter exercise is not more is better.  Just like medication, is not more is better.  It’s about finding the optimum dose that will trigger the body’s natural healing responses and then to let the body do its thing.  Its right dose, optimal dose plus time for your body to react to that equal success.  More is not better.  More is not better; in fact more can actually make you sick and worse like it would in the medicine case.

Speaking of more is not better it’s worse, let’s do another analogy here and that will be part of what happens when you train eccentrically or do smarter interval training is you break down your body in a positive way.  One thing that’s amazing about our body is that it responds to the right kind of stress by becoming stronger.  If you ram your car up against a wall and it gets all crinkled up, your car won’t heal itself and it certainly won’t become stronger as a result of getting broken down.  But what your muscles for example will do is when they get broken down in a safe way, if you give them the proper nutrition and rest, not only will they heal themselves but they will heal back stronger.  And that’s amazing, and that’s the core to healing, that’s the core to our help here.  Which is yes we have damaged metabolisms but with proper time, factor number one and proper nutrition our body can not only heal itself but it can actually become super better or even better than it was prior to the damage in the fast place.

By way of the analogy when you cause that damage — I’m scared to use this analogy because the damage that you cause when you exercise smarter is good.  And the example I’m going to use is bad damage.  So please take this the way I mean it rather than the way it might sound.  Imagine you got a cut on your hand, that’s damage to tissue and when you do eccentric exercise that damage to tissue as well but if it’s healthy damage, its damage to your muscle tissue that’s desirable.  Getting a cut on your hand is damage to tissue but it’s not desirable.  But what happens after damage to tissue happens?  Your body puts a scab in place.  I know this is a little bit gross sounding but imagine of you said, I’m going to pick that scab off.  That’s certainly not helping your body to heal.  The stimulus has already happened.  The stimulus was the tissue got damaged now the body just needs to heal and any interference with that healing is counterproductive.

In some ways think about it kind of when you train eccentrically you in positive way damage your muscle tissue and to do anything to it before it’s healed is counterproductive.  That’s another reason why we want the appropriate dose and time is the critical factor.  Time is such a critical factor and we will certainly talk about that as we go on.  But more is actually worse in the case of exercise.  Hopefully that’s globally helpful and Ticky hopefully that gives you some context on what you will see in the program as well.

Alright, rock and roll.  Let’s go on to the next question here.  I’m getting some notices here on my end.  Debra wrote in with a great question.  I find it difficult to eat all the food I need to meet my daily SANE goal, any suggestions?  I do use garden in my glass smoothies in the morning.  How does not meeting the daily goals prevent me from lowering my set point weight?  Fabulous question Debra.  If I knew what your goals were that would be certainly helpful.  There are baseline levels you don’t want to fall below but there is a balance here, we know what’s essential and we got to customize it beyond that.

Let me describe that one better.  I know for example and I can tell you the research shows that you definitely want to maximize your results to be in those double digit servings of vegetables.  And if it’s not visible to do that via rash vegetables or frozen vegetables that you find at your local grocery store, that’s why we created many of our SANE superfood powders.  The reason I say that a double digit servings is essential is in order for your body to heal itself which is why we are here we need a therapeutic dose of nutrition and there is no more concentrated source of nutrition than non-starchy vegetables.  We literally need to flood yourself with that nutrition in a lot of ways getting to 9 at a very minimum level of vegetables I would say is essential to reaching your goals.

But if you get to nine or you get to 10 and you are like no mass, and then remember anything that’s going to make you feel uncomfortable or anything that’s going to touch your will power that’s counterproductive.  Maybe you say, alright hey I’m good with 9 now and maybe that changes in the future.  But it’s another helpful technique to remember that this is going to change and evolve as you make progress.  As you make progress with your eccentric training.  You are going to need to use more resistance because you are going to get stronger.  and similarly and I think most people get that, if you are training for any kind of you are doing your multiplication tables eventually you will do your multiplication tables in grade school and then those become easy and doing the same thing won’t better at math you have to move on to something more advanced.  Same thing applies to exercise.  If you can do 10 pounds today and 10 pounds tomorrow on the third time you workout you probably want to do more than 10 pounds if you want to keep making progress.

We are going to have that baseline level of vegetables and don’t feel bad if it’s not 16 because maybe that’s something that you are going to work your way up to.  The other things that are essential is at least three servings of those 30 grams.  Depending on your body size, serving size information is covered in detail in the step by step program.  It’s going to be between 20 and 30 grams depending on your body size but at least three servings of nutrient dense protein to trigger that muscle protein synthesis.  Again I would say that’s essential and that’s required because we do want to provide protein, amino acids are essential.  That’s why we say essential amino acids.  They are essential for your long term health and wellbeing.  I know the metrics and the goals its shoot for 6 that’s also in a world where like if you were eating no inSANE foods at all you definitely are going to need to be eating more SANE foods or else you will be hungry.

But if you are at 3 and you are full and you are good, that’s okay because that’s the sort of essential baseline level and then for whole food fats this is the area that’s most flexible depending on how much fat you have to lose, depending on your protein sources, you might be getting sufficient fat from the protein sources.  For example salmon is a fatty fish; it’s an optimal source of nutrient dense protein.  But if you eat a lot of salmon, that’s going to provide you with a lot of essential optimal fats.  The area I would say if you are too full — and can we just say how awesome it is that we are here talking about fat loss and weight loss and then number one problem is I’m too full for all these food.  How awesome and transformative of a mindset is that?  There is abundance of food, nutritional therapy and that’s why this works.  Because if you are full there is no will power involved.  there is radically less will power involved and the will power that is involved for example I still crave sugar will diminish over time because as you retrain your taste buds that’s goes away.

Whereas the willpower required to starve yourself just gets greater over time.  It’s easy to starve yourself for one day, it’s harder on the second day, it’s harder on the third day, it’s harder on the fourth day and eventually it’s impossible.  Eating more but smatter retrains your test bugs, you are full and it makes it easier to avoid those inSANE substances.  But point being if you are too full and you are eating pure SANity, whole food fats is the area that you can be most flexible with.  I personally wouldn’t drop below one or two servings per day but don’t ever — nutrient dense protein, non-starchy vegetables are really key and essential.  Some tangibility there with the whole food fats and low fructose fruits are totally nonessential.  They do provide some great vitamins and minerals one way to think of low fructose fruits though are sweeter vegetables, they are vegetables with more sugar in them.  They are tastier for a lot of people than vegetables but they are not uniquely nutritional when compared to vegetables.  Let me know if that’s not helpful or if I was a little too wacky on that one.

Let me jump here to some questions that were sent in and actually let me give you a quick heads up here which has to do with long term success.  This is one of the more detailed topics that I wanted to make sure that we covered here today because I think a lot of us have a tendency and please jump in here if I’m missing the mark, is that we sometimes can be our own worst enemy.  I know this applies for me at least.  I don’t know if this applies to you but I will saying things to myself in my mind that if another person said to me I will be like hey that’s not cool.  And I’m not going to let that stand.  But when I think about what I say to myself, like, men, if anyone else talked to me that way I wouldn’t let it stand.

Why I’m I bring this up?  The reason I’m bring this up is when it comes to our goals and it comes to our progress sometimes it can be really helpful to have some objective data.  Not because I’m a huge geek and I love data but rather because it can give us a baseline.  So let me explain a little bit more what I mean.  I know a lot of us are like we’ve been taught for 40 years I want to lose 7 pounds in 7 days.  I want to lose this weight in this time period.  That’s what we have been told.  And actually that’s one of the crazy counterproductive things of the calorie counting model.  is it reduces this to a mathematical equation which fails in every laboratory study that has ever looked at it and it has failed for all of us right where we are told specifically there is 3500 calories in a pound of fat therefore cut 500 calories out of your diet and you are going to lose one pound per week.  apparently forever because if calorie math worked that way then 500 fewer calories per day is 3500 calories per week which is a pound of weight loss per week.  If you want to lose 12 pounds in 12 weeks that’s what you do.  We try it, it doesn’t work that way and we blame ourselves.

That’s because the body does work that way and what should our expectations actually be?  Not a lot of people know this but what is success objectively?  If you look at the actual data, the actual studies, to reduce our body weight meaningfully let’s say a 10 percent reduction of body weight and to keep that off.  To do that in 6 months to a year and to keep that off.  First of all let me just acknowledge that would make for a god reality television show.  I’m kind of kidding but if someone weighs 190 pounds right now and their goal am to weigh 150 pounds, so we can talk separately about fat loss versus weight loss but let’s just simplify here.

Let me pick different numbers to make that number easier on myself.  Let’s say is 200 pounds and their normal healthy body weight would be 150, if after a year they had lost 10 percent of their body weight and let’s say that’s from fat because we are not after burning muscle tissue, we are not after water weight loss here.  So they go down to 180.  the standard that I know a lot of us set for ourselves is — one I am not 150 pounds yet, I didn’t reach my goal weight therefore I am a failure.  If any other human being said that to you say take a hike buddy.  But we will say it to ourselves multiple times per day.  And why do we say that?  We say that because we see television shows and we see magazine ads that tell us that first of all you only lost 20 pounds and if you took this pill you could have done that in 21 days, what’s your problem.

But again please keep in mind that if it was possible to lose 20 pounds in 21 days by taking a pill and keeping it off I promise you everybody would be on that pill.  So it doesn’t exist.  There is no secret magic thing out there.  Because if that ever existed, you’d hear about it immediately and it will be the greatest medical breakthrough in the history of the universe.  It won’t be a secret and it wouldn’t be sold on store shelves.  It would be probably be handed out for free by the government to help just like if there is an outbreak of a chronic disease.  No one is like hey I have a secret cure for the bird flu and I’m not going to — uh ah, I have a cure to Ebola but I’m only going to sale it for 9799 at info martial.  No, no, no obesity is a disease, diabetes is a disease.  If there were some miracle pill that solved it I promise you would hear about it and you wouldn’t have to buy it from informer show.

If you look at the long term studies, if you are on track to lose 10 percent of your body weight.  Let’s say that’s all coming from fat and to keep it off after a year.  This is a fact.  Remember back in high school or grade school, you take these standardized test and they would say you are in the 90, 70 percentile or you are in the 75 percentile.  Or even if you have a child and you have taken them to their doctor, the pediatrician they will say things like your child is in the 86 percentile for highs.  reality, because if you go saying this is going to happen with 100 percent certainty, if you go saying and eccentrically this will happen.  And you lose 10 percent of your body weight after a year and keep it off; you are in the 97 percentile of proper in terms of weight loss success.  Because as you and I know the issue isn’t temporary weight loss, the issue is long term health weight maintenance and happiness.

So we tend to judge our success in terms of how much weight have I lost right now relative to my goal versus judging ourselves against objective medical data.  Which is if you lose and keep off and I promise, I know this does not make for sexy reality television but we are not here to make sexy reality television and then gain all the weight back and more as we are now seeing whatever New York Times recent story and of course we cover these studies in detail.  15, 20 years ago this was proven by the science.  But the New York Times just decided to cover it now.  Now it’s real.  But the objective data says that if you are on track to keep off 10 percent of your body weight after a year, you are in the top 3 percent.  You are rocking it.  That’s an A+ from an objective scientific perspective.

And here is why that’s also an A+ plus because I know and correct me if I’m wrong which you might be sitting there right now and saying Jonathan, I hear you buddy but I want more.  And here is the good news, that’s totally fine.  But I’m going to ask you to do two things that will make it more infinitely more likely that you will achieve more.  Let’s say that 200 pound example, the goal is 150.  And I promise you that before you can weigh 150 pounds starting at 200 you have to weigh 180.  I know that sounds silly but if you weigh 180 imagine if after a year your body weight dropped 10 percent and you are never hungry, you are not tired, you don’t feel deprived.  You will look radically different.  Even if the scale doesn’t say 150, I promise you that 20 pounds lighter while exercising eccentrically and eating SANEly will look radically better than you think it will.  Because we are not dehydrating you, we are not cannibalizing muscle tissue.  You are flooding your body with essential nutrition.  That confidence and that health will radiate.

Wouldn’t you agree that if one year from today you were down 10 percent body weight that’s coming from fat not from muscle, not from dehydration because you are doing it in a healthy way.  And you feel great.  You are at 180 and you feel saline.  You don’t have to have to think oh my gosh what Am I doing now and I’m so hungry.  What’s the calorie counts of this and it’s just second nature for you to now be 10 percent lighter.  Imagine if then the next year you went down to 160, you might say, oh my gosh Jonathan that’s two years.  Are you kidding me?  We live in the twitter, Facebook microwave era.  Two years is a life time.  But here is the thing.  It’s not a live time.  And in fact if we could wave a magic re right now and say it two and half years you are wind at your goal weight and you love your live you loved what you’re eating.  It required no will power and therefore you maintained that for the rest of your life.

First off all that will put you in the 99 percentile.  You will be in the top 1 percent of every human being in the planet in terms of success.  That’s why like why am I talking about this?  I’m talking about this because sometimes it good to use objective data.  And the objective data says that when you do that because if you stay SANE and you get eccentric you absolutely will.  Is it possible for that not to happen?  To achieve your weight loss goal in two and half years, it sounds like a long time, but to then effortlessly because it’s a habit, it’s a lifestyle.  It’s not requiring willpower to maintain that for the rest of your life.  First of all you are in top one percent.  Second of all, how many two and half year spans in your life have you experienced so far already?

What am I even saying?  if you are 50 years old today and we rewind your life two and half years, and you could have started going SANE and getting eccentric two and half years ago such that on your 50th birthday you will not only be actual target weight but to be able to maintain it enjoyably and effortlessly for the rest of your life, I bet you’d say tell me how to do that.  Tell me how to rewind time because what I are about now is the rest of my life.  Is living the rest of my life.  Think in terms of your future self.  We can’t rewind time but we can fast forward.  We can’t make it two and half years in the future right now but we can live in a way right now we’re two years in the future we are at a place that we have never been at.

If in two years we can get to a place where we will enjoy the rest of our lives not only does that sound good when you frame it differently but objectively speaking, you will be — and again I know some little thing in the back of your head is like I’m just going to tune this off because two years is too long.  But you will have done objectively better than more than 99 percent of people who are trying to take back control of their health.  and it’s not like we are here like I am better than other people but I started out this little rant by sometimes we are harder on ourselves than any other human being ever could be and for me at least — this is just my personal experience.  One of the ways that I have been able to quiet that voice in my head sometimes is to say what is actually reasonable and almost have like an argument with that little voice in my head.

Let me try to think of a good example.  This is totally fictional.  Let’s say I wanted to run a marathon just because it’s an easy example.  No, no, no there is a better example.  Let’s say I wanted to write a follow up sequel to the calorie meth.  And let’s say that I knew the average professional writer writes two pages per day and I knew that intellectually.  That’s average; let’s say the best professional writers in the world can crank out four pages per day of high quality written content.  Let’s say just like everyone else wants fast results.  So I write four pages per day and I’m saying to myself, Jonathan the book isn’t done yet.  You are a failure.  You only have four pages done.  The book has to be 300 pages.  You are a failure.  And then I’m like voice shush, I’m just going to keep adding.  21 days later, 21 times four is 84.  Jonathan, you are not even a third of the way there.  Is only 84 pages, you need 300.  You are a failure.  That’s what the voice is going to say.  And unless we can actually argue with that voice sometimes that voice wins.

What I want to provide here is that data that you can use to argue with that voice.  In this fictional example what I would say to that voice is, hey crazy voice in my head.  Hey crazy split personality self, I am doing what the most successful people in this industry do.” Just like if someone came up to me on the streets and said, Jonathan you are a failure because you are only writing four pages per day.  If I knew this data I will say to them, hey thank you for your feedback.  Just so you know that puts me in the top one percent of productivity for writers.

Similarly why am I telling you all these data?  I’m telling you this data because when your brain says to you, “you haven’t reached your 300 pages yet aka you haven’t reached your weight loss goal yet, you are a failure.” When you know and when you can say to that voice in your head, “voice in my head, you are objectively wrong voice in my head.  The objective scientific data says that if I stay on the path am at right now that I will achieve phenomenal success that over 99 percent of people will never ever experience.” That’s why I find that data to be helpful.  Because it gives you a concrete arsenal of — it’s your success.  None of us can reasonably expect ourselves to do things that no other human being can do.  If you want to win a gold medal at the Olympics in that circumstance your goal is to do something that no other human being in history has ever done and that’s set a world record.

For now let’s be a little bit easy on ourselves and let’s say that our goal isn’t to achieve a world record in weight loss.  If our goal is to be in the top one percent of people, that means that a stand enjoyable 10 percent reduction of weight.  Which were then compound over time will put you in the upper [inaudible 01:10:00] of success.  I said 10 percent of your body weight in one year will put you above 95 percent.  So could you do 20 percent?  Yeah you could absolutely especially if you are 400 pounds, losing 20 percent of your weight is definitely very different that if you are 100 pounds.  If you are 100 pounds you don’t have 20 percent of your weight to lose.  You will have to be burning off bone because you don’t have weight to lose.  but the point of this is not even to necessarily tell you to revise your end goal but to give yourself permission to celebrate the success you are having because it is success.  Because how do we define success?  Success is a function of our expectations.  If your expectation is to get a C on a paper in school and you get a B it’s a success in your mind.  But if your expectation was to get an A and you get a B then you might say in your mind in that instance, I was a failure.  We can only have expectations that are reasonable.  And we can only have expectations that are in line with what humanly possible.

And when we know and when the data shows, what we are talking about here, I think that can be extremely helpful.  Because then instead of saying — let’s go back to my fictional book example.  Instead of everyday after doing exceptional work, four pages in this fictional example.  That’s exceptional.  In our real case eating those double digits servings of non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, exercising intelligently.  Getting that social support.  Participating in the support group because that’s so important.  That social support is so important doing that.  Objectively taking the right steps that is success.  And if you keep it up over time it will yield a success that none of us have experienced to date.  And it will be phenomenal and objectively wonderful.

I just wanted to share that with you because I know now that type of thinking of saying what really is reasonable?  What really should my expectations be?  Because if we let our expectations be a function of what marketing and advertising in reality TV tells us then we are a failure at everything.  because we don’t have a Ferrari, while having six pack abs while being under PTA, while having a PhD, while we are having a cardiel bag, while wearing 18 curette diamond earrings.  That’s stuff is all nonsense.  what we need to look at is what is objective and what is reasonable and what is healthy, and that’s what I wanted to provide here because I think what you will see is when you get those expectations in alignment with what is true and what is safe and what’s healthy then what you are doing which actually is excellence but you might be perceiving as failure, that voice in your head starts to quiet down.  And what you are doing which is Excellency but that thing in your brain is now perceiving as failure it can’t see it as failure any more.  because it know better and obviously there is so much of the mental aspects that we can’t cover just in this call but we will cover it — a lot on these calls is what I love to talk about in these calls because a lot of the eating and exercise stuff can sometimes be easy relative to the mental stuff but I do hope that is helpful.  Because those expectations.

Again in summary and this might be worth writing down because I tend to ramble.  Hopefully it’s helpful though.  Success is a function of expectations.  If you need a simple example, if you expect to get a C on a paper and you got a B, you will feel successful.  If you expected to get an A on a paper but you got a B, you will feel like a failure.  In both cases you got a B whether or not you felt like success or a failure is based on your expectations.  If your expectation is that you are going to measure your success in the long term you have got 30, 40, 50, 60 more years of life to live.  And if in two years you can get to a place where those 30, 40, 50, 60 years of life are effortlessly slim and healthy that is success.  That’s wild crazy success.  Anyway hope that’s helpful.

I’m going to move on to another topic here.  But that just got me fired up because it breaks my heart when any of us don’t give ourselves permission to recognize how awesome we are and this isn’t self-help, everyone gets a trophy.  But if objectively if — you might be thinking great, Jonathan everyone gets a trophy you are rose colored glasses on everything.  It’s not everyone gets a trophy but what it is let’s say that trophy athletic comparison whatever.  Let’s say running a mile, let’s say you are in the 95th percentile of mile runners.  If you run a mile in 6 minutes.  I’m making these numbers up.  When I talk in this example of I’m trying to beat someone else in a race because we are not competing — health isn’t a competition.  It’s not like your success is contingent on other people’s failures.  Your success isn’t relative to other people.  Your success is relative to an objective measure.

So in terms of the mile race if everyone here on third coaching call ran a mile in 6 minutes, yes we would all get trophies because there was an objective measure.  Is not a zero sum game, is not a competition, we are reached our goal and our goal is reasonable and therefore we do all get a trophy.  And what I’m saying here, what we are communicating, what we are talking about here is thinking about weight loss in terms of 10 percent sustained weight loss in a year is like the freakin gold medal.  So yes if we did that we would all get gold medals and I want you to have permission to wear that gold medal with freakin pride because you should.  Because it’s amazing and you will have achieved something that 95 or more percent of people haven’t.  It’s our mission here to help more people do that and I so appreciate you for doing that.

That’s an example of the three different types of things that we can sometimes do in these calls.  Somewhere I answer quick live questions, somehow I answer written in questions that are medium and sometimes I go crazy.  Hopefully all three of those things are helpful.

We got 13 minutes left so let me see if I can crank out some quick stuff here.  This is a good question here.  That was brought up is called the smoregus board effect.  If you are new or not you probably noticed that the Ignite Program has a lot of things in it.  You got your app and in the app there is a bunch of stuff then you got your website and you got the support group and you got the step by step program and you got all these a million recipes.  Remember and I can definitely empathize with this.  That was definitely raised by very physically smart parents.  The idea of getting your money’s worth was definitely something that I was raised believing in strongly.  And some people when they join the Ignite Program they will feel like I have to do all of these things.  I have to use the app; I have to be doing this.

I would beg of you what you have to do if you want is — I hate saying have to but I’m going to say it.  Here is what you have to do, you have to eat non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein and whole food fats in that order.  You have to prioritize sleep, good sleep.  You have to participate in these calls and participate in the support group because the data shows that social support is as important as these other lifestyle changes you are making.  So just like you say it’s really important to eat SANEr foods it’s equally important to get support.  So non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein whole food fats.  You’ve got to get yourself the support here on these calls in the support group and in the coaching group.  They are the same thing.  And you got to exercise smarter.  And you got to stay active and move your body.  And ideally continue to develop relationships outside of the Ignite Family because in person relationships are important too.  That’s what you have to do.  Everything else is there to serve you.

For example of the app helps you to eat that way because it provides you with feedback then it’s great.  But if it makes you feel neurotic overwhelmed then don’t use it.  It’s not serving you in getting those big things right.  I know there can be a temptation especially like me personally I got to do everything.  I got to get my money’s worth.  You will get your money’s worth by getting the basic things right consistently with support and by continuously filling your mind with correct information.  I would say the other essential aspects will be to work the step by step program.  One step per day, five steps per week.  That is essential because you are going to keep hearing conflicting crazy media nonsense for the rest of your life.  And unless you understand the baseline scientifically proven principles that stuff has potential to confuse you.

But once you have that baseline understanding of the science both eating exercise and psychology you will be immune to that stuff.  So please don’t ever beat yourself up.  I have to do it all now.  The only things you have to do is love yourself and give your mind what it needs to succeed and that’s the proper information the proper social support.  You got to give your body from nutritional perspective what it needs outside essential SANE eating.  And then you have to give your body what it needs from a movement and physicality perspective.  Everything else is a tool to help you do those things and they could be tools that you use in the future.  You don’t have to use them all at the beginning.  Hopefully with what has been called the smoregus board effect.  Where you feel like you have to get your money’s worth and you feel overwhelmed and then that throws you off.

It’s like I can’t do everything, so I want to do nothing.  Which I know is something that I sometimes think.  I can’t do everything perfectly so forget it.  I’m just going to do nothing.  From experience that’s not super helpful way to think.  A much more helpful way to think is I am going to make gradual sustainable progress because I’m in this or the long term and being compassionate towards myself and if I have a hard time being compassionate towards myself I’m going to log into the coaching and support group and I’m going to have the amazing coaches and other family members in there provide that support for me.

Speaking of smoregus boards to close here, I have been away for the first time ever celebrating my 10 year anniversary with my wife on a cruise.  And some people were shocked to hear that I would go on a cruise.  Because like oh my gosh shouldn’t go on a cruise.  Doesn’t everyone who goes on a cruise, you gain one pound per day that you are on a cruise.  I can definitely see how that can be true.  What I love about cruises and why my wife and I do actually go on cruises as our preferred vacation destination is that we actually find that we never gain weight on the cruise.

Because the cruise is actually the perfect place to go SANE, It’s like a SANE heaven because our observation was — for breakfast it’s as simple as I love eggs Benedict, I love it.  So what did I do with my eggs Benedict?  I got my eggs Benedict without the English muffin.  And what I also did is I made sure that I had some egg whites as well.  Because I wanted to make sure I got my nutrient dense protein in there.  And then of course I made sure that I go some vegetables.  But it was delicious and I loved it.  And lunch same kind of thing.  Oh my gosh they had all these amazing vegetables, fresh vegetables already chopped up.  which I know like sometimes chopping vegetables, something that I think we would all wish that if we could hire a little assistant to come in and chop our vegetables for us that will be nice.

We were just having a smoregus board of all these chopped vegetables.  It was just amazing, we made these incredible salads.  And then just enjoyed all these they had, 17 different kinds of fish and this wonderful meat.  Some of the meat was a little bit sketchy so we ate a little bit more seafood than we ate some of the meat but it was just amazing.  We actually had two diners.  We called it second supper.  Because we would go into the sit down restaurant and just choose — again any restaurant with the exception of total garbage restaurants can easily be made SANE.  It’s about saying eat more if the main dish double the vegetables or the starch.  And we would eat so much.  And we will eat so much; we’d often almost two main dishes.  Usually like a sea food and a meat dish and then we just say hold the starch, double the vegetables and then we’d get two appetizers.  The two appetizers were again SANE choices.

So they were equally like a wonderful salad, they had they had shrimps; they had all sorts of fun stuff.  And you can imagine after eating two appetizers, two on trays in a bunch of vegetables we were super full.  So there was not even a thought of dessert because we were super full.  And sometimes we would even eat a second supper.  My wife got too full.  But I was like smoregus board effect, I’m getting my money.  And again it was just more SANE wonderful food.  It’s almost like paying by numbers.  Because we know it’s non-starchy vegetables nutrient dense protein, whole food fats in that order.  Assembling that SANE plate was as easy as you know I’m going to put half my plate these prepared delicious vegetables, I’m going to enjoy my wonderful nutrient dense protein and it was amazing.  And they had yoga on the boat.  We walked around.  I definitely too the week off from smarter exercise because I wanted to make sure that my body had time to recover but men I felt so blessed, in some ways it was proving to myself like this is possible.

And you could see on the ship how transformative this mindset can be as we take it on because what we would absorbed is individuals who were not going SANE like we are here and what they would sometimes do is they would get this very small — you kind of tell they knew they were up some time foolery.  Because they could get one plate for their non dessert and they put little bit of stuff from the salad bar and then a bunch of hydrogenated oil dressing on top of it and then maybe some other foods.  But essentially they were like I have to eat something other than desert because I’m not comfortable just eating dessert.  But what their mind was really saying is this is just about desert.  They would get one small plate of non dessert and then three plates of dessert.

And it makes sense to an individual’s who is making those types of choices would be gaining weight on a cruise.  But it’s not because they are eating a lot of food it’s because it’s the food choices that they are making.  And how much is this to say that if you go on a cruise or all inclusive resort or buffet that you would never eat dessert.  I mean it’s actually amazing.  We went on a celebrity cruise lines and we were incredibly impressed.  They had no sugar added desserts.  So they were only sweetened with the fruits that was used to make strawberry for example, they had lactose free.  Glutton relabeled in all the menus.

But the thing that’s amazing is you could tell that these individuals were in a mind set of certainly I can’t eat more than 4000 calories here on the ship.  So I’m going to minimize the amount of healthy foods that I eat so that I can eat more unhealthy food.  That’s literally the opposite of what we are doing here.  What we are doing here is say that we are going to maximize our intake delicious SANE healing food and in doing that over time it will become effortless because our taste will change to avoid inSANE foods.  Does that mean we never eat inSANE foods?  Absolutely not.  What it means is that we have control as to when and how we eat inSANE foods and the amount of inSANE foods we need for the same effect is radically lower.

And what a lot of people find is those foods are appealing.  Think of that contrast there.  The contrast of the mindset of I am going to eat as little SANE food as possible so that I can eat more inSANE food and still fit within my calorie budget and how that mind set is marketed as healthy.  Because yeah they are still within their calorie budget versus the mind set that’s going to take us to that 95 and 99 percentile of objective scientific success on the long term.  Which is I am going to flood my body with so much delicious whole nutritious SANE foods then avoiding those kinds of things becomes effortless long term.  I don’t want to say it was my favorite part of the cruise; it was actually having the food second only to spending time with my wife.  The food was definitely number two.  The entertainment was actually pretty exceptional as well.

But right up there was seeing first hand — I wanted to go up to these individuals and hang them and say please go to SANE solution.com because I can tell this is something you have been struggling with and suffering with for decades and it doesn’t have to be this hard.  And I don’t require deprivation.  Look at all these crazy foods we are eating.  If you saw us you would never think we were deprived you would think we were gluttons.  The servers that brought food out to our table were looking at us like we were crazy.  We say yes I’d like this, this, this and this.  And they would look at us like we are crazy.  We are the opposite of crazy.  We are not inSANE we are SANE.  Anyway it was a lot of fun.

Thank you for the kind words that came in after I left.  And it’s so great to be back now, I feel so blessed to be here with you.  Hopefully this was as enjoyable as it was for me.  I know there is some stuff we didn’t get to but it’s all good because we will be back next week and you will have your wonderful SANE coaches like Raina and of course Lori, Wednesday and Rebecca in the support group.  So this is just a start not the end.  Thank you again for being part of the Ignite family, such a pleasure to be here with you.  Thank you for letting me into your home and I look forward to seeing you next week.  Thank you so much.  Have a great rest of your week.  Bye.