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Elective 4 / Lesson 2

How To Develop a SANE Mind


Carrie: Welcome everyone; this is Carrie Brown and Jonathan Bailor from a very wet and drizzly Seattle.

Jonathan: Very wet and drizzly. In fact, Carrie and I were supposed to get together yesterday to do a podcast recording session, but I live in Bellevue and it was so rainy and so windy that it was just not even passable on the roads, not a good time.

Carrie: It was funny, I am going to out you now Jonathan about your funny comment because Jonathan called me and said could we meet tomorrow instead. He said because there are these people with umbrellas on the street and they are blowing inside out. To which I responded, you clearly didn’t grow up in England.

Jonathan: Apparently, England is a delightful place to live because that happens all the time.

Carrie: We walk around with our umbrellas inside out.

Jonathan: That’s awesome, that’s awesome. This week I wanted to talk about really pick up where we left off last podcast, we were talking about most common question I get asked about the Smarter Science of Slim and that’s what kind of results can I anticipate and when can I anticipate them and we covered that in detail. So what I wanted to talk about this week was really five steps we can start taking to achieve the more health and long-term fitness related goal, that’s the Smarter Science of Slim is after. How does that sound Carrie?

Carrie: That sounds awesome.

Jonathan: We all like steps.

Carrie: But then I love everything you talk about.

Jonathan: Yay. So, the first step is and this is not a sexy step, but it is step number one and I do think it is foundational. I don’t even think this is going to be popular, but hopefully people understand why I am recommending it and that is to understand the science and the reason this is so important is that once you truly understand the science of how your body works, eating SANEly and exercising eccentrically really becomes the only option that makes sense to you. Like once you get that your body works to automatically balance you out things like “oh I just burned 500 calories on the treadmill” well then you realize “okay my body is going to slow down and burn 500 less calories later in the day or cause me to eat 500 more calories.” So, why would I ever do that or “if I starve myself now and my body is just going to slow down and compensate for me. So now I am hungry and I haven’t gone anywhere forward.” So you see how it is like having that scientific foundation is so critical to freeing ourselves from the traditional approach.

Carrie: You know, it’s interesting you bring this up because I’ve thought about how staggeringly different my experience with this has been to any other thing I have done in the past to try and lose weight, lose fat and I have kept on going over what is it, why is this been easy, why has this been such a different experience and I thought about the fact that well I have access to you and I have this kind of built-in accountability conscious staring at me every week, but it is not that because there is no guilt been attached to it at all.

There has been no “Wow I can’t eat that because Jonathan will know” there has been none of that and what I think for me is that what really made the difference was understanding the way our bodies worked and you described it in such a simple, easy to understand way that once I had that knowledge, once I knew what was going on, I didn’t want to eat the old way anymore. It was like there was a huge paradigm shift in my brain which made it so much easier to go “well why would I want to do that, that’s dumb”, which I never had before because I couldn’t workout why exercising more and eating less didn’t work. I couldn’t figure out, I didn’t know what was going wrong, I didn’t know where I was failing. I no longer have any of that and so I just armed with the knowledge that you have given me, I now don’t want to be like that and that for me has made it very easy to stick to.

Jonathan: I am so happy to hear that Carrie because I really do think that’s what’s different and frankly I am going to be very transparent, that’s what I think is unappealing to some people about this Smarter Science of Slim like this podcast is based on a book called The Smarter Science of Slim which came out in early 2012. There is another book coming out which is going to build on that called The Calorie Myth which is coming out in 2014 and there is a lot of science there and a lot of people aren’t willing to sit down for few hours and read. I have gone out of my way to make it simple and I have yet to really hear anyone that just said like “Oh my God, this is so confusing,” like if you can read, you can read the book and it will make sense to you, but I continue to encounter people in my life where it is just like just tell me what to do, just tell me and I will do it.

That will never work because that’s like you trying to learn math by memorizing the sum of every possible combination of numbers, like that’s not how the mind works. You have to understand…like algebra, the law like 1+2 and why it equals 3. Once you understand the why, the what you do and the how you do it forever in any circumstance you find yourself becomes simple and you feel empowered because you know it is right, you don’t have to trust and you don’t have to hope. It’s just like, “oh you have Strep throat, okay the way you cure that is by taking penicillin”. We can use science to empower ourselves for the rest of our lives and because it is proven that has the confidence that empowers us to take those actions and I think that’s really helpful.

Carrie: It really is and I thought since we have been working together on this, I have thought about it’s the way you’ve presented it that makes the difference because let’s be honest you are not the first person in the world who said “eat lots of green leafy vegetables, make green leafy vegetables the focus of every meal, eat lean protein, chicken, fish.” You are not the only one to have said that. You are not the only one to have said sugar is evil, stop eating it. You are not the only one who said wheat will kill you, stop eating it. None of the how to do it is new. For me, one you have more how-tos, many programs have some of the how-tos, I don’t think any of them have all of it, which I think yours does.

Jonathan: They are not complete.

Carrie: They are not complete, which yours does. That’s one difference, but for me I really think the key is the why because without the why do I need to eat all those vegetables, it just was hard to stick to. I felt deprived, I felt like I will have to give up this to have that or well I am not allowed to eat that. The way you have explained it with the science and the way you’ve presented it made it a no-brainer and once you have a no-brainer attitude or mindset, it’s easy to follow. We could actually tell everybody the how-tos in half an hour. If we sat down and went okay this is how you do it, half an hour would be done, see you, bye. It would not be you would not be getting all of these mails and comments from people that I am now getting on my blog too saying” this is the only thing that works, this has made such a difference. This was not hard. This was easy. I just eat your food and I lose fat. This is awesome.” We wouldn’t be getting that if the why wasn’t there.

Jonathan: There are so many directions to take the importance of why. This is very trait, but we have all heard the phrase “Give a person a fish, you feed him for a day; teach the person to fish, you feed him for the rest of their life” and we know that our goal over at the Smarter Science of Slim is to enable health and fitness for the rest of our lives that’s why teaching this underlying why is so important. The other thing that’s really important is that when you understand why you are doing something, it truly is easier to do it.

Let me give you an example, let’s say the world doesn’t work exactly like this, but imagine the world kind of works like this. You go to school and if you go to school, which isn’t fun, like as a kid you’d rather be outside playing and doing other things, but you go to school, you put in your work and you put in work so that you can get a job someday and you do, you sacrifice something now so that something better happens later, but if you just had to sacrifice stuff because people just told you, like just stop. I am not going to tell you why and I am not even going to dignify you by explaining the why. That’s why it doesn’t work. We read these magazines everyday and I continued to have this struggle because the way you get publicity and I continue to struggle with this because everyone keeps telling me “what are the 10 quick tips for weight loss” and that is like” what are the 10 quick tips to financial success.” Nobody who is wealthy has ever gotten wealthy because of the top 10 list. They have gotten wealthy because they understand the principles of developing wealth and they live them consistently over a long period of time. The good news is biology isn’t a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact and we can simplify it and we can understand it and when we do that we can change our lives forever and not feel like we are doing something weird and arbitrary and unnatural.

When your parents just say “eat your vegetables”, it is easy to say “I don’t want to eat my vegetables, it’s disgusting,” but when you understand that eating vegetables is almost like taking a medication that heals you from the inside out and after 21 days they are going to start to taste so good, you are going to want to eat them, “well okay I’ll eat some vegetables,” you know what I am saying?

Carrie: I absolutely do. One of my biggest criticisms, no let’s not use that word. One of my biggest observations as a child of my parents was there was never any explanation for anything and it drove me nuts and it certainly never got me to behave, just saying ‘do this’, ‘why?’ ‘Because I said so’, never worked with me.

Jonathan: It can be dangerous. Let’s use another example of understanding how systems work before we go engage in trying to manipulate that system is very important. We all at least hopefully try to get a basic understanding of how traffic laws work and how to drive a car before we get behind the wheel. If you want to drive from point A to point B, it is generally good idea to know how the overall system works, however, many of us, and I personally would love to see this change before my time on this earth is up is, are never taught really how our bodies work or if we are, it’s wrong. We are taught our bodies work calories in and calories out, right? Oversimplification, which misrepresents the truth.

If we don’t understand how our bodies work, we are subjected to be tricked in any number of ways and actually harm ourselves because we can’t evaluate anything, we just have to take people’s words for it and truly the way our bodies work, that’s one of the few areas in life where we don’t have to take anyone’s word for anything, it’s biology, it can be studied and if we can get that basic and correct understanding, we can protect ourselves from people and pills, and potions and powders that otherwise would have us do things which may be profitable for those people, but really aren’t helpful for us.

Carrie: You are absolutely right, you are preaching to the choir over here.

Jonathan: So, it is all about understanding the why first and that is not sexy because sitting down and learning the science again isn’t going to make you lose 10 pounds in two weeks.

Carrie: But, it will make you look sexy if you follow it.

Jonathan: Exactly and it will enable you to transform yourself for the rest of your life and to feel good about it while you are doing it.

Carrie: Plus, I have to say, you can sit there and blush if you like, but it is a very easy read and we have had a lot of comments from so many people about how easy the science is to understand because of this gift you have to your use of analogies and the way you explain it is so simple. It’s just an easy read, it may be all science but it reads almost like something fun and enjoyable. It’s very understandable.

Jonathan: Thank you. My goal was to make it not just a nonfiction book but like a narrative nonfiction book, so it’s almost like there is a story to it and the other thing I will mention is mental technique, I love to use when thinking about making a change in my life, whether it’s health related or professional or whatever, is the difference…like if I want something different, I have to do something different. In our culture, today we have more top 10 lists and more magazines with quick, easy 50 ways to ‘X’ than we’ve ever had. We also have more obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, weight gain, blah, blah, blah, than we have ever had.

The solution to this problem is not more quick fixes. It can’t be. I promise you that there is not some secret board in Hollywood that celebrities go to that give them this little sheet of paper which is like the secret path to health and fitness because if anything really works, it’s in everyone’s best interest to share that, like keeping things a secret isn’t the way, of course like Coca Cola keeps the formula for Coke secret, but the fact that Coca Cola is “delicious” they don’t keep a secret. It’s not like they intentionally limit the distribution of that information.

Good example is the Atkins Diet. The Atkins Diet is very effective for a lot of people. We have all heard of the Atkins Diet, why? Because it works. It is not a secret. If something is effective, we’ll hear about it. Point is if we want something different that we currently have, I promise you, you are not going to pick up a magazine and read five tips and it is like “Oh my God, tip 3, that’s what I have been missing.” It’s much more of a foundational paradigm shift of taking your brain away from “I have to manually battle against my body by depriving myself of calories in and by exhausting myself with calories out” and you have to shift your entire mind into the actual science which is your body is designed to regulate itself. This is why your body temperature stays at 98.6 degrees unless your body breaks down.

This is why your blood sugar stays in balance unless your body breaks down, aka diabetes. This is why your heart continues to pump blood without you trying unless your heart breaks down. Your metabolism will keep you at a healthy weight unless it breaks down and the only way to break it down is to put things in it that it was not designed to eat and it was not designed to eat foods that didn’t exists until recently. So, it is a complete paradigm shift, it is not about eating less and exercising more. It is about eating the right kinds of foods and doing the right kinds of exercise and that different approach will yield a different result, not another top 10 list of things, quick fixes to change about your life.

Carrie: Folks, listen I can’t stress enough to you how for me being girl off the street who just randomly tried this program. I can’t stress enough to you how much of a difference this whole mental thing played for me in this. I have really thought about it. It was the why that made it easy to follow.

Jonathan: I am harping on this so much because we still so for the Smarter Science of Slim support group or in the Smarter Science of Slim Facebook page or even you can email at the Smarter Science of Slim, we are not able to respond to them because we get so many, but the number one type of question we get asked comes from individuals who may be have just heard one episode of the podcast or heard about Smarter Science of Slim through a friend and they are just like, “what do I do, just tell me,” and the standard reply is “read the book”, it’s not because I want to sell the book, buy it used, I don’t care.

Carrie: That’s the key.

Jonathan: It’s the mindset of just tell me what to do and I will do it, imagine doing that with your money, just being like trust any random person to invest your money for you, “Oh my God, that’s a recipe for disaster,” why would we do that with our health, just someone tell me what to do, please don’t do that, that is why so many of us struggle so much is we take peoples words for it, don’t. Take the proven sciences “word of it” and you will be healthier and fitter.

Carrie: Caveat, read the book and then come back and we will tell you what to do because the what to do. Because the what to do, you know I have…Jonathan has his blog, I have my blog with all the recipes and ingredients, tips, and all that kind of stuffs, so the how-to is there and it is all free, but the key is understanding the science and the why, so please read that I made nothing off the book. Read the book because that is what makes the how-to different.

Jonathan: It makes the how-to make sense because a lot otherwise, the how-to is going to seem a little bonkers like for example the step two that we are going to cover right now; so step one is understand the science, step two is to use enough resistance while exercising eccentrically becuase again, I still continue to get questions around “Well, can’t I just exercise more?” like “Isn’t it just going to speed things up if I exercise more?” Generally the individuals who are asking me these questions are individuals who do not yet understand the science because once you understand the science, you understand that the only way it’s physically possible to exercise a lot is to do forms of exercise that don’t require a lot of energy and if a form of exercise doesn’t require a lot of energy that means it’s not stimulating enough muscle fibers to trigger a clog clearing hormonal response and if you do not trigger a clog clearing hormonal response, you will never heal your metabolism.

So, to ask the question, “well can’t I just exercise more with less weight”, it’s going to be so hard to achieve success if you don’t know where you are going, let me use an analogy that might work. If you are in Ohio and you are trying to drive to Florida and you do not know where Florida is relative to Ohio, you will never get there ever. You need a map, you need to understand where you need to go and the basic principles of how to get there and then there may be some forks in the road and there may be traffic.

Carrie: But signage in America sucks.

Jonathan: But signage in America sucks, but the point is health and fitness is only confusing when we have no information or we have bad information. For example, step one, we understand the science; step two, once we understand the science, we understand that the way we use exercise to heal our metabolism is to use as much resistance as we safely can. So, please if you are not used to resistance training that is hugely important and it’s not going to make you look like a bulldog. I promise you, just like you don’t worry about picking up a basketball and shooting it around because you are afraid NBA scouts will come draft you up and ask you to play professional basketball, you will not accidentally build too much muscle, you wouldn’t. A lot of people spend their entire life trying to build muscle and aren’t successful. Use resistance, heal yourself and your body will take care of the rest.

Carrie: Again, the people [indiscernible 21:34] that are asking those questions, it can only be because they haven’t read the science, they haven’t had that paradigm shift. I no longer ever think, ‘well may be if I do those crazy exercises twice a week, it will go faster’ because I know that if I can do them twice a week, I didn’t do them properly the first time and what I need to concentrate on is doing them properly the first time, not doing them badly twice, doing them brilliantly once, but you need to read the book to understand that the science and the why that actually works like that before that would really impact you, but once it’s impacted your thinking then the doing takes care of itself.

Jonathan: The step one, understand the science; step two, make sure you are using enough resistance during exercise because I continue to see them as an area that individuals struggle with just because day in and day out it is like exercise more, exercise more, exercise more.

The third step is to make a public commitment and basic psychology has shown time and time again that accountability is just a huge, that’s the number one value I think, personal trainers add is not necessarily because exercise isn’t complicated, so you don’t necessarily need a constant coach to teach you 500 different exercises where you’re hanging from one leg and whatever, but having someone who is going to be there that is counting on you is hugely important.

The good news is there is lot of free ways to do that. Shoot an email out to everyone you know saying, “Hey, I am going to start living this new lifestyle and here are my goals and I am going to reply to this email every five weeks” or may be more naturally use your Facebook page or use the Smarter Science of Slim support group, just make sure, make a commitment publicly, but very importantly make that commitment to people who are going to support you. Don’t go on to WeLoveCalorieCounting.com and tell them you are going to eat more and exercise less but smarter because you are not going to get support there.

Go some place that’s friendly to the new science of health and fitness, tell them about your goals and report consistently even if you fall off the wagon knowing that there are people listening and that you are accountable to them is really going to help you. So, make a public commitment to a supportive community. Smarter Science of Slim support group is a great place to do that, but there are probably other ones.

Carrie: I have a great idea for doing that.

Jonathan: What’s that Carrie?

Carrie: Just sign up to be the co-host for the Smarter Science of Slim podcast. If you want accountability people, right there because now and of course now I have now my website and with all my recipes and everything and my stories I tell about how I am doing and then my Facebook page and the podcast and you every week, so I am just like there is nowhere I can hide anymore.

Jonathan: It is really cool too because what a lot of people tell me is when they started doing this, again you are not going to tell anyone else to do anything if you are like look how awesome I am, it is just hey, I am doing this and what you are going to see is that you will see fantastic results over time and other people will see that and your example will inspire them to improve their lives as well and that’s really rewarding like I don’t care how slim you get and how good you feel when you see someone you love feeling better, that’s going to potentially even make you feel like even better.

Carrie: From people who know me in real life, the most common comment I get, because of course I post everything I eat, “is how do you eat so much and yet you are doing this thing and you are getting smaller and your numbers are getting better, but we know what you eat, how do you do that,” so that for me is bit really motivating. People are paying attention because it doesn’t make sense to them what they see what I am eating and yet they know that I am getting healthier. So, you can inspire people without even really trying. You don’t have to persuade them to do it with you or anything like that, but just it will help you to put it out there, but it will also help them because they will see the results and that will be awesome.

Jonathan: Step one is understand science, step two is make sure you are using enough resistance during your eccentric training, step three is to make a public commitment, step four is to be patient. We talked about this last week a lot, but again another common question I get asked is it has been two weeks and I haven’t seen my weight change. If it’s two weeks and you are worried about your weight, I would urge you to continue to listen to these podcasts, continue to review the science because there is a fundamental disconnect happening mentally, be patient.

Truly, if there is something wrong with your body, the only way you are going to get better is for your body to heal itself, like we know this about every area of our physiology except when it comes to our metabolism. If you have a fever, you are going to have a fever until your body decides, for lack of better terms, to fight off whatever is causing you to have a fever and then you don’t have a fever anymore. If you have a broken bone, the bone is going to be broken until the body decides to, I don’t know what it does, but puts more calcium in the bone and rebuilds it, you will be diabetic and overweight, if that’s what is currently afflicting you, until your body decides to regulate insulin more properly and to regulate your energy balance more properly and it will only do that when you give it a proper nutrition, the proper exercise stimulation, the proper rest and the proper time. You can’t rush it, you just have to let your body heal itself and it takes time, but then it will last forever.

Please, if you take nothing away from this podcast, maybe take this away, stop thinking about life in terms of your health and fitness. Stop thinking about the next 30 days, start thinking about the next 30 years. Don’t ask yourself, I can keep this up for 30 days, yeah, ask yourself can I keep up this for 30 years because that’s what you have got to do if you want to be healthy in 30 years. It doesn’t mean you need to be perfect from day one, it doesn’t mean if you are struggling on day one, you say I can’t keep this up for 30 years, it just means our whole culture is focused on the short term. What did we do last quarter, what’s current profit earnings. We’ve got to focus long-term and we’ve got to be patient.

Carrie: It is fascinating sitting here listening to you talk about patience.

Jonathan: We’ve got to be patient for things where patience is necessary for certain things, such as….deliverable…

Carrie: I have to go there because they don’t….shut up! They don’t know this about you and I am going to tell them, you are the most driven human being I have ever met and patience is not a virtue in your world.

Jonathan: That’s why I stress it so much because patience is not a virtue, but hold on let’s talk about my lack of patience biting me in the ass.

Carrie: I am teasing you…kind of.

Jonathan: No, no but it’s true. Jonathan’s lack of patience, I have hurt myself so many times over the years not being patient and I know a lot of people who have had a lot of really bad things happen to them simply because they are not patient. That doesn’t mean sit on your butt. We have got to be proactive. There is plenty of stuff you can be doing, but fundamentally like if you want stuff to go faster, the only way to do that is to eat more non-starchy vegetables, focus on even more nutrient dense proteins and really make sure you are eating the most healthful natural fats possible and make sure your eccentric exercise are as forceful as possible, but there is no other magic thing and of course there is a spectrum, right?

I mean there are people who will still eat starches and sweets a couple of times a week and they don’t really exercise that intensely and it is going to take those people a lot longer than someone who eats nothing but raw non-starchy vegetables, super high quality nutrient dense protein like salmon and grass-fed beef and the most optimal fats like we said seafood, coconut, cocoa, flax seeds, chia seeds, those people are going to get results much faster, so there is spectrum, but you got to be patient.

Carrie: That I had to tease you about because it is just funny.

Jonathan: It’s totally fair.

Carrie: There is another thing I love about the book which I think helped my mind shift was that those two pages you have where you have if you want to be obese, do this; right up to if you want to be fitness model, do this and so it was almost like that was giving me permission to figure out where I wanted to go, not the rest of the world, but it also kind of subconsciously let me know that if I had a crazy moment when dipped into this other definition for a day that I was not going to die, wasn’t all going to part, it was then I just pick up the next day and it is all good, does that make sense?

I think that it made it very clear to me that it was not about perfection and that my goal is different to everyone else’s goals and my goal is all that matter for me and that I have the ability to go faster in weeks when maybe I am working from home and I am not in the office and it is easier for me to control the food that’s screaming at me or I can do better that week and not so good the week after and that’s okay.

Jonathan: It’s absolutely right and let’s wrap up here with step five, which is do assess your progress, do set some goals and don’t set a goal around weight loss. Do set goals around waist measurement, body fat percentage, cholesterol levels, fasting glucose, energy level, sexual performance, how your energy level, things that actually matter in your life, look at things that actually matter, things that will actually change the quality of your life.

Tomorrow if you weighed 10 pounds less and everything else was the same, literally everything else is same, the quality of your life would change in no way shape or form, however, if your HDL cholesterol went up by 10 points, you would be much healthier, so that’s good. Set some goals that actually do matter and actually will have a meaningful impact on your life, you will notice that they aren’t weight, they may be having the body that you think a certain weight corresponds to, but focus on then having that body, don’t focus on the weight you think is associated with it, and maybe once every four weeks, see how you are doing relative to that and if you are not where you want to be, just reach out.

Smarter Science of Slim support group is a great place to reach out and we are happy to help, but set those goals, set meaningful goals, eat smarter, exercise smarter and may be once every four weeks or eight weeks, see how you are doing, but don’t look everyday.

Carrie: Also, I think a great measure is how you feel, I mean we talk about emotional eating and all that but I am taking about how you feel in a good way. Do you feel differently, are you more peaceful, are you less frustrated? That’s something that is kind of a gray measure, but you know for yourself and truly with that measurement, nobody else matters but you. It just matters if you feel better on any of those levels emotionally or mentally, physically, just keep a note of that as you go along because I found that to be the biggest help.

Jonathan: So, just to wrap up Carrie, I think we’ve covered these five steps very well, I hope it’s going to be helpful for people. I just want to paraphrase a quote by the Buddha because I think it really captures what we have talked about here well and that’s the following: “If you are facing the right direction, just keep walking, and you will get to where you want to go” and that’s what we have done here folks, we are facing the right direction, we are rooted in proven science, not gimmicks or myths and if we just keep walking, we will get to where we want to go. What do you think Carrie?

Carrie: I think that’s awesome advice.

Jonathan: Excellent well, Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown, we are leaving the Smarter Science of Slim here. We look forward to seeing you next week, have a great one.

[End of Audio 34:41]

This week:
– What you will do differently now that will make you see dramatically different results now (aka practical and permanent fat loss and approved health)
– How “just being told what to do” will never work
– How understanding “why” is more important than memorizing lists of “hows”
– How nobody who is health and fit got that way by following a top ten list
– How understanding how a system works is important before we try to manipulate the system
– How you should never take anyone’s word for it when it comes to your health
– How exercising more, but with less weight, has nothing to do with long-term fat loss
– How you will never accidentally build too much muscle
– How exercising incorrectly twice per week is never better than exercising correctly once per week
– How to easily get help living SANEly and getting eccentric
– How to stop thinking about the next 30 days and to start thinking about the next 30 years