Calorie Myths, You Are Beautiful, Disease is Optional, A Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Carrie: Hi everyone, this is Jonathan Bailor, well, actually this isn’t Jonathan Bailor, this is Carrie Brown and that is Jonathan Bailor.

Jonathan: Yes, folks, I have not gotten a significant surgery and moved to England over the past year.

Carrie: Hi Jonathan.

Jonathan: Year, past week. It feels like it’s been a year, a week…

Carrie: Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hello, hello.

Carrie: How are you?

Jonathan: I am quite well. It is incredibly warm in our studio right now, warm! Oh, goodness. You know what else makes me feel warm, it sounds awkward.

Carrie: What are we talking about today Jonathan?

Jonathan: So, I want to start, I’m literally wiping the sweat off of my face right now. I want our listeners to start by drawing something.

Carrie: Do you have pens and paper lovely people?

Jonathan: Lovely people, if you’re driving, don’t do this but if you have or if you have a tablet computer, you can do anything with it, you can draw with it, please do the following. Draw a circle on the left hand side of whatever you’re using and now, I want you to draw a second circle but I do not want it to touch or overlap with that first circle at all. I will do it over here, so that Carrie can see what I’m doing.

You’ve got two circles, it should look like two eye balls, they’re not connecting. Then above, the circle on the left, above right, ‘does not contain calories,’ so you’re writing the words doesn’t contain calories and then above the circle on the right, write the words ‘does contain calories.’ I can’t spell the word ‘does.’ Thank God for Microsoft Word and spell check. So, now, you have two circles that do not touch or do not overlap in any way. One of them represents all of the things in the world that do not contain calories. The other one represents all of the things in the world that contains calories and they do not overlap because they are mutually exclusive, so they can contain and cannot contain calories at the same time. You’re with me so far, Carrie?

Carrie: I am because you drew the visual for me and I didn’t have to do that, thank you Jonathan.

Jonathan: So, the reason I’m doing this folks is that if you look at the circle that represents all of the things in the world that don’t contain calories like rocks and cars and computers. There’s lots of diverse things in the world that obviously do not contain calories and certainly no one would say, well, those things are all the same Carrie because they all just don’t contain calories, they’re all the same but with crazy people, is that if you look at the circle on the right, the circle that represents things that do contain calories.

` It seems like the fact that in the mainstream, just because all of the things in that circle, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, meat, fish, little bitty snack cakes, anything soda, because it contains calories, it’s all the same and if we just eat 1,200 of them, we’ll be slim and healthy for the rest of our lives. How is it, it’s absurd to equivalence class everything that doesn’t contain calories. We get that, obviously, a computer is not the same as a race car but for some reason, it does make sense to say that 300 calories of spinach is the same as 300 calories of soda, just because they both contain 300 calories?

Carrie: For some strange reason, it doesn’t make sense to me anymore.

Jonathan: I don’t know if I went too far off the wrench there but I was thinking about, I was laying in bed and was like truly because this is, where I’m going with this Carrie, for example, medication. Pills are incredibly highly regulated and you can’t, like a child, can’t just go to the store with $5 they got from their parents and buy pills, over the counter medication. Now, what is the difference? We know, there are studies that show that that child can go to the store and buy a can of Pepsi and that can of Pepsi contains calories.

It’s edible just like pills are edible and it contains way more damaging chemicals and substances than that bottle of pills that they can’t buy but it’s because one contains calories, it’s called food and we’re led to believe that you have to eat and you need calories or you die. So, therefore, anything that contains calories is going to be treated different than anything that does not contain calories. I’m just trying to figure out why there is such a huge disconnect. We regulate the heck out of tobacco and pharmaceuticals but if you call something edible, if it contains calories…

Carrie: It’s a free for all!

Jonathan: You’ve got to eat, so… So, if you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat. You can’t compare eating to smoking because, you can’t just not smoke.

Carrie: You see people, this is what Jonathan Bailor thinks about at night.

Jonathan: But it’s true. I was talking to a brilliant, this was literally one of the predominant influencers in mainstream medicine and he was talking about, well, everyone, it’s more complicated because you can’t just not smoke, you can’t just not eat but that’s a false dycadomy. When people say ‘don’t smoke,’ they’re not saying, ‘don’t breathe.’ They’re saying, don’t breathe in smoke filled air and no one over here at Smarter Science of Slim or anyone with a sane mindset, is saying don’t eat. We’re saying, eat a lot, we’re just saying, don’t eat toxic stuff.

Carrie: How sensible is that Jonathan?

Jonathan: Well, I don’t know if this picture is helpful folks, I may have just confused you.

Carrie: You used the heck out of me.

Jonathan: But literally, think about that. The next time someone says a calorie is a calorie, is a calorie, is a calorie, is a car a car, a car, a car? Is a Ford the same as a Ferrari? That myth is so ridiculous for so many reasons that we’re just going to throw it out the window. Gone, is it out the window? Lord knows we could use some windows in here because it’s dang hot in here right now.

Carrie: Stop whining Bailor, what’s the next thing we’re talking about?

Jonathan: The other thing, maybe this is more of a podcast of common sense that is not so common. So, the first bit of common sense, that is not so common is that just like things that don’t contain calories, aren’t all the same, things that do contain calories, obviously are not all the same. Just an interesting thought experiment. The second thought experiment, is, and I’m guilty of this too Carrie, I think we all are because when we start to go sane and we start to eat a diet much richer in things that we do need and not so high in things we don’t need, everything about our life improves.

Diseases go away, we just feel better and everyone, including myself, is like, this is miraculous but when you think about what diseases happen, bad things happen when you take a system and you put things in it that are not designed to handle it. You never get the flu unless the flu virus gets into your body. The flu can’t just spontaneously, you can’t just spontaneously get the flu, something has to trigger that.

Carrie: It might feel like that sometimes but…

Jonathan: The key here is that, and it’s awesome, like when we stop eating choleric sweeteners and just enjoy, whole, hearty, delicious, natural foods, you just don’t get diabetes and you just sleep better. Your skin looks better and your hair looks better and it seems miraculous and it is miraculous but it’s also…

Carrie: How it should be.

Jonathan: If you don’t eat poison, you will not get poisoned.

Carrie: It seemed so obvious.

Jonathan: But it’s not because, here’s the problem. I ask myself, Carrie, why isn’t this obvious? Watch any television station, all you’ll hear is how broken we are, about how much medication we need, about how much clothing we need to buy, about all this stuff we need because we’re fundamentally not good enough, that we are broken or inadequate in some way.

God forbid that if we just don’t introduce poison into our body, that we will stay healthy, we will be beautiful and we will be fully capable because that is our natural state. Our natural state is not one of being broken, that needs fixing and medication and cosmetics and clothing, all this material garbage. Our natural state is to be resistant to disease and resistant to dysfunction, naturally. It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost that but it’s so exciting to bring it back.

Carrie: It’s so simple, when you say it like you just did.

Jonathan: Hopefully, that was Jonathan’s second random musing and it inspired me because my wife, and I continue to, I’ve been, I continue to try to find ways to tweak my sanity Carrie and I know you do the same and…
Carrie: Actually no, I get you to tweak my sanity. I have a personal sanity tweaker.
Jonathan: Both Carrie and myself and my dear wife and the reason I just used the three of us is because we are some of the original sane livers, so we’ve been doing it for in many ways, the longest time. We continue to see these improvements and I personally still continue to be like “This is amazing” and then I say to myself, “Wait self, that’s the natural state for the human body and we’ve just been, I mean how, take a step back folks, I really, I am not …
Carrie: Unhealthy has just become normal, and we don’t even feel the effects of it anymore because it’s just how things are.
Jonathan: Carrie, not only that, and tell me if I go too far out here but in some ways, it’s almost like we’ve been trained to take pride in it. Look at all the, when those commercials for medicine they make it sound like, “Oh it’s an accomplishment to take this medicine or it’s good or it’s whoo, hoo. It’s almost attention, look at all these pills I take. I’m like a, I don’t know but it’s not, it’s almost like, to be sick is almost glorified in our culture and you don’t have to be sick. In fact, your body doesn’t want you to be sick.
Carrie: Right. We just make it very, very hard for it not to be.
Jonathan: That has to be true.
Carrie: Not consciously though.
Jonathan: Exactly and when we say, actually it’s not, we don’t, it’s this, I hate to blame things on the media and blah, blah. The bottom line is, and this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact, there is very little money to be made off of happy, healthy people because if you are satisfied and you have no needs, I’m good.
I don’t need to give you any money for anything, I have no problems that I need you to solve, but if I can convince you that you have all these problems and I can sell you things that make you have even have more problems, well then I can sell you things to solve the problems that were caused by the things that I sold you in the first place.
Carrie: That you didn’t even know you had.
Jonathan: I just think it’s so cool, Carrie because when we realized, not only on a physical level but on a spiritual level that innate worth and that innate brilliance that’s within the body and even that’s why I get so hyped up about this whole manual calorie math idea. The idea that we need to consciously count calories embedded in that, is that our bodies are dumb.
Carrie: I have never thought of it like that, but you are right.
Jonathan: The reason you don’t…
Carrie: We have to control it because our bodies can’t do it on its own.
Jonathan: Yes like your body is stupid. Regardless of someone’s religious beliefs, I have always been taught that whether or not you believe in intelligence design or you believe in evolution, in both cases, an intelligent designer would create something intelligent and evolution would evolve something that thrives in its environment, if we were supposed to be sick and supposed to be diabetic?
One, that’s not an intelligent designer, that’s an unintelligent design and if we were designed, I’m sure it’s by something or someone that was intelligent and if evolution is at play, well then we would not have evolved this far, if all of us got sick and diabetical on the way.
Carrie: Right because we wouldn’t have thrived.
Jonathan: Exactly. Sometime when we re-frame some of this stuff, it’s just like, you don’t, if for no other reason, don’t worry about counting calories because it’s demeaning.
Carrie: That’s true.
Jonathan: It really is, it’s just demeaning, it’s trivializing the brilliance and the beauty that is your body.
Carrie: You’re making me think really hard tonight, Jonathan.
Jonathan: I told you, this is like my profound, Jonathan laying in bed thoughts but they might be bonkers, so I hope at least a couple of them stick. What do you think?
Carrie: My brain’s going a 100 miles an hour now because you’ve made think about all this stuff but it’s good stuff, really good stuff.
Jonathan: It’s good stuff?
Carrie: It’s stuff we should be thinking about.
Jonathan: So I think, popping out a level, stopping for a second… I know top ten lists are sexy and do this trick, and this gimmick but sometimes, just stepping back for a moment and realizing that if, let’s break this down even more deeply, Carrie. Folks probably are familiar a little bit with the way our brains work. From an extremely high level, there are different parts of your brain, like you have the amygdala, which sits at the stem of your brain, which is a portion of our brain that we share with animals, so, your animal brain.
If I were to throw a baseball at your face, you would move without any conscious thought, because your amygdala would be like “Caution, ball flying at face, move your head.” This is also why, if someone were to blow dust in face, your eyes blink. You didn’t think about that, but your eyes somehow know that there are tiny particles approaching it and it needs to close. That’s your amygdala and that’s what we share with animals.
We have this whole other part of our brain which, interesting enough, when a baby is developing in the uterus, it also grows the last. It’s also the last to appear, if you follow evolution. It’s the last to appear in our evolutionary heritage following our neo-cortex. This is the front of our brain and it’s what allows for rational thought and the most advanced forms of thinking, like the fact that humans can think about our thoughts. This is why a lot of us, on some level are neurotic because if you are like me, you think about your thoughts way too much.
Carrie: Yes, you and me both.
Jonathan: So our neo-cortex is what makes us uniquely human. It’s why we can create music and it’s why we can do these things that really have no practical purpose, like art is not required for survival.
Carrie: But it’s lovely, nonetheless.
Jonathan: But it’s lovely, Carrie’s delicious recipes, making food into culinary delights is not needed for evolutionally survival but on our neo-cortex.
Carrie: It sure makes life more fun.
Jonathan: Absolutely, but now here is the key thing folks why I delineate your amygdala from your neo-cortex. Your neo-cortex is what you use for conscious things. If you have ever driven somewhere and been doing fifteen different things simultaneously, which you probably shouldn’t, you’ll notice after a while that you can drive without thinking. You’ll get to work and be like…
Carrie: How did I get here?
Jonathan: So that’s your animal brain which has basically taken over and has put you on auto-pilot. That’s really important because you can only think about one thing consciously at a time. If you don’t believe me, try to say the alphabet in your brain and read a sentence simultaneously. You can’t, you’ll switch back and forth between the two.
Carrie: Now, I am trying to do that and record a podcast and my brain is going to explode!
Jonathan: So you can’t multi-task when it comes to conscious activities but you can walk, chew gum and have a conversation, because, walking and chewing gum are not conscious activities and the conversation though is a conscious activity. Okay, I said all of this…
Carrie: Yes, you did.
Jonathan: Because the core body functions, so I think we can all agree that not starving, core body function, not being overweight, core body function, because it harms your health. Just like having your blood sugar being too low or too high, core body function, blood pressure too low or too high, breathing too little, breathing too much, sleeping too little, sleeping too much, going to bathroom.
If we had to be like, do I need to go the bathroom now? There are people that have catheters, we don’t need that. All of these mission critical bodily functions, animal brain. Amygdala, hypothalamus, animal brain, do not, cannot require conscious control because if they did, we would not get anything else done. If you had to monitor your respiratory rate…
Carrie: We literally couldn’t do anything else if we had to think about that.
Jonathan: Not only could you not, just from a common sense perspective if you had to monitor calories out, calories out is an incredibly… When our body builds new tissue, which it does, how are you going to calculate that? How are you going to calculate how many calories it cost to build 250 grams of new body tissue today, but you can’t, it just doesn’t…
Carrie: I’m sure somebody has worked that out because it will be on the internet somewhere.
Jonathan: But the key point here folks, is that when someone talks about it you need to count calories, in a case of severe metabolic dysfunction, you don’t need to consciously regulate breaths in and breaths out but if your lungs break you might need to. You might need a respirator and if your ability to regulate blood sugar breaks, you might need to.
That’s called diabetes and you may need to take insulin shots but that’s a pain. That’s us having to take over what should be a sub-conscious activity. Again, getting back to the brilliance of our body are neo-cortex our conscious brains. Let’s spend those on art, on poetry, on love, on relationships…
Carrie: Cooking, don’t forget cooking.
Jonathan: On cooking, not on calorie counting!
Carrie: You actually my dear sound quite absurd.
Jonathan: So, anyway, I like people and I think we’re good and I think sometimes we are trivialized and that gets me wound up.
Carrie: Yes I think our bodies are clearly way, way, way tougher than we give them credit for.
Jonathan: Absolutely. Carrie that was like our meta-physical podcast!
Carrie: That was a viewing to how Jonathan doesn’t get to sleep at night ever.
Jonathan: Well listeners, I hope you enjoyed some babblings that were today’s podcasts. We’ll bring it back down to earth next week, don’t worry.
Carrie: Well, I liked that, that was fun. It made me think a bit too much. Now, I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
Jonathan: Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. It’s been a blast all the way, we went a bit out there and remember this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter and live better. See you soon.
Carrie: See ya.