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Jonathan: Welcome to the SANE show. Get ready to eat more and exercise less to burn a whole lot of fat and radically improve your health.
Carrie: Eat smarter, exercise smarter, live better. I am so ready for that.
Carrie: Lovely listeners, this is Carrie Brown and Jonathan Bailor and we are bringing you the SANE show.
Jonathan: Carrie’s all excited because we just recorded the outro that you’ve heard in the previous two shows and we’ll hear at the end of this show and she had a little tongue-twisted action going on with it and she freakin’ nailed it and it was glorious so I’m very happy.
Carrie: You want to know why I’m really excited?
Jonathan: Why is that?
Carrie: Because not only am I wearing your socks but I am wearing your beanie and you told me it looked really cute.
Jonathan: Well, I have this horribly ugly — I don’t know where I got it from actually. It looks like something from the 1970s. It’s this wool hat that is just — I don’t know why I like wearing it when it’s cold. I wear it inside because I always keep my windows open in my office when it’s absurdly cold — I don’t know, it’s just comforting. Hats generally bug me but something about this hat makes me feel comfortable. And now you’ve taken that from me making me feel uncomfortable as always.
Carrie: I feel like Superwoman because I’m wearing Jonathan Bailor’s hat.
Jonathan: Is that like that — what is that? There’s that old story…
Carrie: Like Samson and his hair.
Jonathan: Yeah, Samson and his hair. That’s what — SANE minds think alike. Well, listeners, we have got either a treat or a nightmare for you this week. We’re not really sure how it’s going to go. We’re going to try something new. So the idea here is that if this goes well, we might try to do it every four to six weeks — or four to six shows, excuse me — and this is going to be a little bit less about eating or exercise necessarily and a little bit more about behind the scenes with SANEity. So behind the scenes with what’s going on with Carrie, what’s going on with me, sharing a little bit more about what’s going on in our lives, and just seeing how that goes. So if it goes horribly, let us know. If it goes great, please let us know and we will do that which makes you happy.
Carrie: All right. Let’s do it.
Jonathan: So, Carrie, why don’t you start by telling us — by telling us some questions for me so that I can talk since clearly the expression on your face made quite clear that you did not want to go first.
Carrie: You’re so astute, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Carrie is about as subtle as a chainsaw over here. So here’s the thing that Carrie said at the beginning of the show. She said — so if you haven’t gone to CarrieBrown.com, please go over there. Carrie’s got an amazing blog and my mother put it very well when she said, “Jonathan, you know, Carrie’s recipes are just so wonderful. But you know what I love even more? Everything else that she writes.”
So Carrie is just a wonderful writer, she is just a wonderful person, and she’s got a bunch of great stories but she is an open book in terms of what’s going on with her life. And with the yin and yang dynamic that is typical of our partnership, most people are like, “What’s Jonathan’s last name?”
Carrie: We know you’re a boy and you’re married to Angela. We know nothing else about you.
Jonathan: So, okay, let’s break down these barriers, Carrie. You are the channel for all of our listeners so break down this armor apparently that I have that I’m not sharing enough.
Carrie: I want to know…
Jonathan: All right, here we go. See, this is going to be — and people can go to your blog and be like, “Ask Jonathan this. Bust him out.”
Carrie: I want to know what you and Angela do for a date on a Friday night.
Jonathan: So context for new listeners — Angela’s my wife. So, just a random — there’s this girl named Angela. Angela’s the name of my dog actually. No, Angela’s the name of my wife and my best friend and also my business partner over at SANE Solution. And what we do on Friday nights — so we do the same thing every single Friday night. Well, it’s actually — here you go. Here’s how lame I am. Here’s how — goodness, this is probably a bad idea. Well, all right, here we go.
So up until a year ago, so for the past — since I moved out to Seattle. So I moved out to Seattle to work at Microsoft and when you work at Microsoft, one of the benefits of working at Microsoft — it’s an amazing place to work. One of the reasons it’s amazing — one of the smaller reasons it’s amazing is — one of the benefits is you get this thing called a Passport Unlimited card which is this “Buy One, Get One Free” card you can use at a bunch of restaurants around the Seattle area.
Carrie: And the aquarium.
Jonathan: I mean, you can go to the freakin’ IMAX Theater which is normally like twenty-four bucks for a movie ticket. I think it’s 350 [??]. I mean, it’s like having a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket in Seattle. It’s pretty amazing. So anyway, kudos to you, Microsoft. Thank you for a wonderful nine years or however long it was. Anyway, so for the time I was at Microsoft, Angela and I would always go — while it was still open — to this Thai restaurant in Bellevue every single Friday. It’s called King & I. It was actually the place we had our first date.
Carrie: Awww.
Jonathan: So we had our first date there and then we’d go there every single Friday and she would order one of two dishes, I would order one of two dishes; then we’d usually go for a walk; and then we would watch a Netflix movie every single Friday.
Carrie: Please tell me it wasn’t the same movie every Friday.
Jonathan: No, but it was — that is our — we are as — some people call it — my brother calls it boring, I call it simple. I think that’s a more polite way of putting it. We do the same thing every Friday and Saturday night, which is — well, not anymore because I don’t work at Microsoft anymore so —
Carrie: So you have to pay for all the food.
Jonathan: Yes, so I’m like, “Well, we just can eat at home.” Because if it’s not buy one, get one free, that’ll also — so you’re learning all about me. So I’m boring, cheap — so a bunch of different things here. So that’s what we used to do. So we used to go out to eat for some SANE Thai food, then watch a Netflix movie. And then on Saturdays, we would go to this place called Basil’s, which is in the Hilton in Bellevue. They have just fabulous food. Buy one, get one free so we could justify going. We don’t go there anymore because we can’t get buy one, get one free which is awesome. So now it’s generally — actually, now what we do –
So our new tradition — so we still watch Netflix movies Friday night, Saturday night. So, props, Netflix, for entertaining us. So we eat at home on Fridays, and on Saturdays — I think I mentioned this in a previous show — we still go out to eat but we go out to eat at this Afghan buffet that’s actually down the street. We now live in Kirkland, not Bellevue. Both are five, ten minutes outside of Seattle and so we enjoy that. So it’s basically the same thing. It’s go for a SANE meal, go for a walk, watch a movie. Boom. Same thing every week. Boring or simple — depending on how you look at it.
Carrie: So where are you going tomorrow night?
Jonathan: Tomorrow night is — so we don’t anymore. No mas, in terms of Friday nights. It’s just Netflix movies and eating at home because we can’t buy one get one free.
Carrie: And a big bowl of pork rinds.
Jonathan: Well, actually — so this is good. See, this will inspire also. You know what I started doing?
Carrie: Uh-oh. Oh, please tell us, Jonathan.
Jonathan: No, this is actually quite delicious. So the reason — so we talked about pork rinds in a previous show as a wonderful salty, crunchy snack but if you just want something that’s salty — so pork rinds, quite a few of their calories are from protein. They’re quite SANE when compared to other snack foods but they’re an incomplete protein source, meaning they don’t have all the essential amino acids in it so no matter how many pork rinds you eat, you will never trigger the muscle protein synthesis that we so desire in a SANE lifestyle because it rebuilds you and that’s — we want to rebuild and transform ourselves so we want to eat complete proteins.
Well, you know what is a complete protein? A complete protein is ham. So of course you want to get ham that doesn’t have all the nitrates and garbage in it but what I’ve been doing is I’ve been getting nitrate-free ham and spiral sliced and I just put it in a pan and you cook it like bacon. And then, for me, I found the key is — so you cook it — I do like five minutes, flip it, five minutes — and then you let it sit for about ten minutes and then I like to dab it in a paper towel and then it’s like Bacon 2.0 just in the sense that it’s still delicious, it still has that bacony, savory, salty, pork rindy goodness but it’s also got a lot of great high-quality protein in it. So it’s a little bit like the best of both worlds. So that’s been like my Pork Rinds 2.0. Instead of just eating the rind, I’m actually eating the whole pork.
Carrie: So even for Friday night date night, Jonathan Bailor is thinking about maximizing his protein synthesis, people.
Jonathan: Protein synthesis, baby, so yeah. And the other thing is, so that the protein synthesis is going good and we enjoy the simple things, so nothing too crazy.
Carrie: I’m just thinking about the last show or maybe the one before that where you said you thought you were relatively self-disciplined. I think that’s a bit of an understatement.
Jonathan: But, see, I think there’s subjectivity there because if I had to not eat something that tasted salty and fatty, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I just feel very — I feel incredibly fortunate to have been exposed to the research I’ve been exposed to. That’s why I’ve tried to share that with people in the Calorie Myth and in these shows and in SaneSolution.com because I honestly do not feel like I am exercising self discipline because what I eat — when I want something sweet, I eat something sweet and I don’t eat a bite of it, I eat it until I’m satisfied. And if I want something salty and fatty, I can eat something that’s salty and fatty, it’s just SANE. And I think that is so — it’s amazing.
It’s literally like being able to have your cake and eat it too. We joke, “You can have your cake and eat it too as long as you make your cake with coconut flour and xylitol and the icing with” — I don’t — Greek yogurt and whey protein powders. But, yeah, so if doing this required discipline, like you were talking about a couple of shows ago — it doesn’t take discipline for a vegan to not eat animal products. I think when we go SANE and we have the knowledge to go SANE and to be SANE and to enjoy what modern science has shown us about eating and exercise, discipline might be required for the first twenty-one days or so but then it’s just the way we live.
Carrie: Hmm.
Jonathan: Carrie’s speechless. How is that? See, I shared. I shared.
Carrie: You did. Well done. Good job, sir.
Jonathan: And Angela, my wife, will be envious of you because we joke — so my brother — funny story — so my brother is awesome. My brother is actually a big reason we’re here today because — my brother is much older than I am but we are very — if you meet us, you’ll be like, “Oh, look. It’s two Jonathans.” Or two Tims, depending on who you met first.
Carrie: Heaven help us. Two Jonathans — I’m not sure the world could cope with that.
Jonathan: Yeah, the incredibly successful medical device salesperson in Chicago and a dear friend and when I was growing up — so he’s obviously still ten years older than I am. That hasn’t changed. But when you’re five and your brother’s fifteen, he would be like your big brother. So he played football and I wanted to be big and strong like him so that inspired this journey, blah blah blah. Where was I going with this? How did this start?
Carrie: I have no idea.
Jonathan: Oh, yeah, so my brother — okay, so we were talking about you getting me to open up. So my brother actually stayed with us a while back. He’s in Chicago. Obviously, we live in Seattle so we don’t see each other nearly as much as we’d like. He stayed with Angela and myself for about three weeks a couple of years ago. It was a wonderful time and my brother joked with me. So he would be at our house because he was on vacation, but we were working, when Angela would get home and Angela is much more — she talks about things other than science and business more than I do.
Carrie: Unlike Jonathan.
Jonathan: So if you want to talk about ideas and concepts, I’m your guy but if you want to talk about how your day was —
Carrie: Or life.
Jonathan: Or life — what you’re going to get from me is, “Things are good,” and that’s about it. So my brother would say, “Jonathan, I learned that when Angela comes home, you can’t say, How was your day? You have to say, Did you have a good day or did you have a bad day?” Because Angela’s the opposite of me. She’ll just go until you stop her so we complement each other very well. So all I’m saying — bringing this back home — is that Angela will be envious that you have gotten me to talk more than just “things are good.” So there you go. Good job. You’re doing a good job. Boom. See, you did a good job, Carrie. So now, do I get to ask you a question? Is this like Truth or Dare?
Carrie: You do. Well, you know, how much of my life is not out there already but —
Jonathan: Well, what I want to know, Carrie, is —
Carrie: Uh-oh.
Jonathan: So you have this — I have called you a radiant element before and I will call you a radiant element again. And you’re very much — you’re extremely SANE but you’re not always around SANE people. So how do you —
Carrie: You mean, in the eating sense.
Jonathan: Yes. How do you manage to be this — pseudo celebrity is probably underselling it a little bit, I think you’re a straight-up SANE celebrity — but how do you –? Do people ask you questions about this kind of stuff? Do they put you on the hot seat? How do you live this almost kind of double existence?
Carrie: Well, I’m not sure it is a double existence in that I’m always consistent. I don’t only eat SANE publicly and then go home and eat crap so I think — yeah, I’m not sure what you meant when you said double existence but, for example, in the office, actually — funny story — when I met my now boss for the first time, I walked in his office and he had all these fabulous photographs on the wall and so my opening gambit was, “Hi, Christian. I’m Carrie Brown.” And then I went, “Did you shoot those images?” And he said yes. And so immediately, we had this fantastic connection because, as most of you know, if you’ve been to my blog, I shoot landscapes and food and I love that.
So we had this discussion about photography and we hung out for about an hour and then I left. The next day I got an e-mail from him saying it wasn’t hard. I Binged your name and all your stuff pops up. Now, I hadn’t mentioned any of it so he just Binged it. He said it wasn’t hard to find, incredibly impressive body of work. And then he said, “Funny. I’m halfway through the Calorie Myth.”
Jonathan: And this was just random.
Carrie: This was just random, right? And he said — This was the next day after I met him and he said, “Funny. I’m halfway through reading the Calorie Myth and it looks like you’re a big fan.” I’m like, A big fan? Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement but anyway — and then the day after that, he sent me a job offer. I didn’t — maybe I shouldn’t say this publicly but I didn’t go through an interview loop. He just offered me the job and so I went to work for him but he looks to me as his SANE — I help to keep him on track.
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah.
Carrie: So in the office, we’re very open but if we eat out together, I’ll order and he’ll say to the waitress, “I’ll have what she’s having” which is the protein with the double of veggies, hold the starch, and he’ll just say, I’ll have what she’s having.
Jonathan: Or is it because when you go out to eat, you’re like that woman in that movie who is just like screaming euphoric sounds and everyone in the restaurant is like, I’ll have what she’s having.
Carrie: No. No. Because, remember, I’m an introvert so I’m typically very quiet in groups in restaurants but anyway — so out of that — everybody in the office knows. Well, they all found out very quickly what I do outside of my day job and so they’re kind of aware that there’s this health thing going on and I’ve done cookbooks and all of that but I’m also the keeper of the team’s snacks.
Jonathan: Nice.
Carrie: And when I joined my office, I have these shelves on the wall and it was filled with, you can imagine, the peanut butter-filled pretzels and the candy bars and the — any kind of crap you can imagine.
Jonathan: And the healthy low-calorie snack packs.
Carrie: And the healthy low-calorie snack packs.
Jonathan: 100-calorie snack packs. It’s just the shorter cigarettes.
Carrie: All of that. And Trail Mix, which was actually M&Ms and — you know? All of that kind of stuff. And I said to Christian, my boss, I said, “This is going to change.” And he was like, “I’m all for that. You do what you want.” So of course, because I had the blessing of the boss, I let them eat all the crap and I let them know that there will be no more. So now the snacks consist of mixed nuts and Protein Bars, the pure protein Protein Bars, and beef jerky and it’s all SANE.
And when the change first happened, people were really like, “What is this?” and of course I was completely unrepentant and so when they used to come in my office to grab a snack and they’d comment about, Well, there’s no candy bars or there’s no this, and I would say, “I will not be a party to your getting diabetes and heart disease.” And I’d give them a big smile and they’d kind of look at me and then I’d say, “But you know, if you do want to eat crap, there’s a vending machine in the kitchen, you go right ahead.” And they would just stare at me.
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s a great way to handle it.
Carrie: And a big smile and so now they know and now they all come and they want jerky and they want nuts and they want Protein Bars and it’s all goodness.
Jonathan: Well, I love that, Carrie, and I appreciate you sharing that with us because I think all of us, when we — going back to some of the awesome insights you had a few shows ago — when we take on that identity of truly going SANE, this isn’t a diet; this isn’t a temporary thing; it’s a smarter, more sustainable, more enjoyable, more smilerific approach to life. We’re going to be outliers at least in the short term. And it’s cool to see how you have taken your radiance and your SANEity and you’ve shined that light on other people without imposing anything and can co-exist and can light up their lives and SANEitize their lives without being like the, I’m the Health Police.
Carrie: Right.
Jonathan: I think that’s really cool. I think that’s really cool.
Carrie: But Christian actually appreciates, most of the time, that I’m the health police for him although yesterday he’d been over to the next building to the cafeteria and he came back and as he got level with my office, he said, “Don’t look at my lunch today, Carrie.”
Jonathan: Yeah.
Carrie: But most of the time, I serve as this kind of SANE smiley beacon, encouraging people to think about what they eat but I also give them the choice that if you want crap, it’s there in the vending machine. I will not spend money giving you diabetes and heart disease.
Jonathan: And it’s cool, Carrie. I don’t want to kind of puff you up too much. I mean, you know I’m a Carrie Brown fan but when you think about great influencers and leaders throughout history, they have the same characteristic where it’s not — they don’t force anything on people, they just serve as such a positive example. When you think of a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Mother Theresa or these people who, they just let — as Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
And I think I’ve shared this story once before but I’ll share it again because I think it personifies this so well. If you go on the Internet, you find a bunch of negativity. You watch the news, you see negativity. You go on the Internet, you find all this about what you shouldn’t do and how you should eat less and what you — negative, negative, negative, negative. Don’t fall a victim to that negative approach. What we need to do is fill our life with so much good that we just crowd out the bad.
So Mother Theresa has this — there’s this wonderful parable about where she was asked — Mother Theresa, we know you’re obviously a big fan of peace — so during the time when the Vietnam War was taking place, they said, “Mother Theresa, will you participate in this march we’re having against the war in Vietnam?” And she said no repeatedly and they were shocked. How could Mother Theresa be saying no for participating in this march against this horribly violent war that’s taking place and they asked her why she wouldn’t participate in this march against the war in Vietnam and she said, “Well, let me know when you’re having a march for peace and I’ll be there.” And I think that’s such –
Like you said, if you want to eat junk, there’s a vending machine right there. I’m not here to make you feel bad but I’m not going to be a party to that and I will make it really easy and I will really support you and I’ll give you a big literal and figurative hug when you are SANE. And that’s great and if we could all take on that approach, I think we could have a much healthier world.
Carrie: But it’s become clear to me that the team realized, by saying it the way I do to them, they realized that I care about them. When I say I won’t be a party to you getting diabetes and heart disease, that clearly communicates to people that I care about their health and that I’m not going to do anything, I’m not going to spend money and I’m not going to do anything that I think is intrinsically harmful.
Jonathan: And that’s such a key distinction too, Carrie, because it’s not about vanity, it’s not about you saying I’m better or worse than you; it’s like, Look, we all know that this garbage is going to give you diabetes and heart disease and we now know — at least, listeners to this show know that just type 2 diabetes — the type that’s caused by lifestyle choices — now poses a greater, a fifty-billion-dollar greater economic burden on this country than tobacco so just like you wouldn’t hand out packs of cigarettes to your team members — not that they can’t smoke; they can smoke all they want but they have to do it outside.
Carrie: And we’re not going to fund it.
Jonathan: And you’re not going to be a party to it. So I think that’s a wonderful analogy and, Carrie, I think — I don’t know. We’ll have to see what the listeners say but I’m pretty happy with the way this show ends. I’m not comfortable about the things I shared about myself but, you know, we’ll have to see how it goes.
Carrie: You’ll get used to it.
Jonathan: Well, I love it. Well, folks, hopefully you enjoyed this chat as much as Carrie and I — well, I did. Hopefully, Carrie did too.
Carrie: I’m still smiling.
Jonathan: Yeah, I love it. Well, folks, remember — eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better, and of course, stay SANE. We’ll chat with you soon.
Carrie: See ya.
Jonathan: Wait, wait! Don’t stop listening yet. If you like what you hear and you want more free goodness, be sure to hop over to SaneSolution.com and grab your free plan. Again, that’s SaneSolution.com and grab your free plan.
Carrie: And for a little bit of crazy and a whole lot of SANE, head over to —