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Low Carb Cruise, Liver, Inflammation, and Sardines


Carrie Brown: Hey everybody, it is Jonathan Bailor…

Jonathan Bailor: And my voice has changed dramatically.

Carrie Brown: Over there, and this is Carrie Brown.

Jonathan Bailor: Yes, we are back in action with the Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Carrie, how are you doing?

Carrie Brown: Well, I think that we are a little bit out of practice, so…

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, I don’t think we can be out of practice. This is just second nature at this point. We are living the smarter science of slim. You don’t need to practice that. We are just having fun. Carrie and I have been out of commission from podcasting for a little bit because I left. I didn’t leave for bad reasons. I left for a good reason. I went on the low-carb cruise. That was fun.

Carrie Brown: It looked fun from your pictures.

Jonathan Bailor: It was a wonderful group of people. About 175 folks. We went on Carnival Cruise Lines and the boat didn’t lose electricity and it didn’t sank, so it was good. Sanity abounded, actually. We ate more, but smarter. We ate lots. In fact, there are some stories about how much second supper Angela and I had. We had second supper almost every night and we became infamous for the amount of food that we were consuming.

Carrie Brown: Good job, sir.

Jonathan Bailor: It was quite lovely. There were some excellent speakers, I got to meet a bunch of really cool people – I met Jimmy Moore. Jimmy was the emcee of it. He is a super positive inspirational guy. It was wonderful to meet him. I met a bunch of other really neat people so it was cool.

Carrie Brown: Sounds like a great week.

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely. The only money exchange was from me to Carnival Cruise Lines, and I would highly recommend, folks, if you need a vacation, I’m almost certain they are doing it again next year. The thing that my wife that I really liked about it – we had never been on a cruise as adults – and we generally like a relaxing vacation. Vacations we don’t really have to do anything. We like our autonomy on vacations. But this cruise showed us the best of both worlds. There are seminars – I gave a talk, a lot of other wonderful people spoke – and you can go to that if you are on the “low-carb cruise” or you don’t have to. You have this group of people that you can hang out with, and you have these activities that you can do, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. The option is there. You can either just chill out or you can learn and network and talk to people. If you want to sit alone at dinner, you totally can.

Carrie Brown: That would be me. “There’s Carrie Brown over in the corner”.

Jonathan Bailor: In terms of just vegging out, you can of course chill on the boat, but we also stopped at various ports. You can walk around, go back on the boat. It was cool, because you could just chill out and be alone or you could be with the group. It was a little bit of all worlds. I really couldn’t think of a nicer vacation. Here, here to the low-carb cruise organizational board. Thank you Mr. Jimmy Moore. If you are not familiar with Jimmy, he’s the most of many, many podcasts – most notably the Livin’ the Vida Low-Carb Show. He’s an awesome guy. It was fun.

Carrie Brown: That sounds great. I almost want to go. I only have one issue. It is on a boat.

Jonathan Bailor: We had that fear two, Carrie. The boat had capacity for 3600 people. If nobody ever told you that you are on a boat, and you stayed in the lower cabins, you would not really know that you are on a boat. It is like a floating city. It’s not just getting tossed around. There was one day when we were coming back when we could tell – but it was never really an issue.

Carrie Brown: I might take a bit more convincing than that. I don’t swim. Just the thought of being out in the middle of absolutely nowhere surrounded by five gazillion trillion million billion gallons of water – yeah.

Jonathan Bailor: Encouragingly enough – and I will start talking about exercise – is that the lifeboats are now these super elaborate things. They look like spaceships. They don’t look like boats.

Carrie Brown: They are like pods?

Jonathan Bailor: Yeah, they are like pods. It was actually kind of nice.

Carrie Brown: That’s actually quite good. Maybe you could go sleep in a pod for night.

Jonathan Bailor: They were not lifeboats. There were more like floating like pods. They were pretty cool. Hopefully nobody will ever have to actually experience there was, but it was fun.

Carrie Brown: Good, I’m glad you had a good time.

Jonathan Bailor: If you want a saner vacation, it is definitely a good option.

Carrie Brown: Yay!

Jonathan Bailor: Yay!

Carrie Brown: I love options.

Jonathan Bailor: Speaking of options, Carrie, that was a great segue. Terry, one thing that I wanted to talk about because it has come up in a couple of our guest podcasts and there has been some talk about it in the smarter science of slim support group recently. That is being sane while being a vegetarian or a vegan. I want to give a high-level responsive to this. Sanity – remember, it is just a framework. It is just saying “eat satisfying, un-aggressive, nutritious, efficient foods from whatever set of foods that you choose to eat”. If you are low-carb, you can be low-carb and you can be sane low-carb. If you are vegan, you can be a sane vegan. If you are a vegetarian, you can be a sane vegetarian. If you are South Beach, you can be a sane South Beach. Kosher. Whatever. It is not a mutually exclusive thing. It is a framework that allows us to optimize the quality of however we choose to eat. Does that make sense?

Carrie Brown: That makes perfect sense.

Jonathan Bailor: In fact, some of the most compelling success stories that we have seen on the smarter science of slim are individuals who do choose to live a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle. Often times, if you are not given the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper and your diet becomes super starch and sugar heavy because you eliminate all animal products, applying sane framework that which incorporates more fruits and non-starchy vegetables and nuts and seeds and natural plant-based fats can cause compelling – really compelling – changes in house. We start incorporating amino acid supplements, healthy plant proteins such as hemp. You get some pretty compelling health benefits. It is all good. Terry, I heard you were thinking about becoming a vegetarian. Is that true?

Carrie Brown: (Laughing). You are on that boat for too long, Bailor.

Jonathan Bailor: I sunburnt my brain.

Carrie Brown: Today’s post from my blog was “how to cook a pork chop”. So what you think, Jonathan?

Jonathan Bailor: Speaking of meat, there was quite a breakthrough – and I’m not going to plug the company yet, because I’m still kind of chatting with them about how we want to do that – but I found this company online. I think they are somewhere in the Midwest. It is a ranch that was started by a veterinarian and they do super hormone free, grass fed, free range, no antibiotic cattle ranching. The cool thing, Carrie, is that they ship all across the country. We order it on a Monday, it comes to us on a Friday. It comes with dry ice. The meeting is literally frozen when it arrives at our doorstep. Here is the cool thing – and this is going to make you super happy – you know what you can get for five dollars a pound?

Carrie Brown: Liver?

Jonathan Bailor: Organic, grass fed beef liver. No hormones, no antibiotics. Carrie, this stuff is the most sane substance you will probably ever find on this Earth.

Carrie Brown: Yes! Order me some, I want some. I want in on the liver.

Jonathan Bailor: Folks, this is true. My wife – we don’t just eat it straight because it has a very unique taste and I’m sure Carrie could make it taste good by itself, but we cannot yet. We make a meatloaf. We use the Vitamix, take the liver, blend it up and turn into liver paste. Then we take organic grass fed ground beef and make a meatloaf of sorts. We had a bunch of seasonings. Garlic, eggs, onions – all kinds of good stuff. We eat this super sane, nutrient dense, awesome meatloaf. Angela was eating it and when she went to the gym to do her training, the amount of B vitamins and iron in organ meat – especially liver – is literally astronomical. We’re talking thousands of percent of your daily recommended value. She gets back from the gym and she goes “Jonathan, I felt mighty at the gym. I went up in all weights. That liver makes you mighty.”

Carrie Brown: If you all saw how tiny Angela is, that is kind of funny. It is cute.

Jonathan Bailor: I love that word. That it made her feel “mighty”.

Carrie Brown: That is awesome. I want to feel mighty. Send me the liver. Send me the link right now. I need liver in my life.

Jonathan Bailor: Folks, I am working something out with the company so that we can actually have a cool discount for you and have packages where you can – it’ll be awesome. Will get in the sane store. If you haven’t checked that out, there is a sweet sane store on the site where we refer you to all of our preferred providers. At the same time, we get 1 or 2%. You can support the smarter science of slam while getting good stuff. Anyway, we ate organic grass fed beef liver, we ate organic, hormone free ground beef, we had some sirloin. It was fabulous. It was nutrient dense, and it made us feel mighty.

Carrie Brown: We love you Jonathan.

Jonathan Bailor: Well thank you Carrie.

Carrie Brown: I can’t think of anything else except beef liver right now.

Jonathan Bailor: You have tips that we can apply to the beef liver consumption?

Carrie Brown: Not off the top of my head, no. Except by it, cook it, and eat it. That would be my tip.

Jonathan Bailor: All right. Another great thing is – and this is not in the same store yet, but it should be – a company called Trinity Hill Farms that creates totally sugar-free, totally gluten-free, totally garbage free barbecue sauce, ketchup, steak sauce sweetened with Stevia. It does not have the weird Stevia aftertaste. It is primarily just vinegar, tomatoes, and spices. Good stuff. It is not cheap, but it is good.

Carrie Brown: Barbecue sauces on my list of things that I need to do on my blog for recipes. It is barbecue season here in America anyway and that is something that I and everybody else does too.

Jonathan Bailor: That would be great of you to make a some sane barbecue sauce. If you need it right now when you have some disposable income just search online for Trinity Hill Farms. It is not cheap, but it is good. If you can find a more economical option for us, Carrie.

Carrie Brown: I will.

Jonathan Bailor: Excellent. Carrie is on it, folks. Next subject. Inflammation.

Carrie Brown: I will never forget how sugar and grains, when you eat them, it is like you are rubbing a grater on the inside of all of your veins and arteries. That is the kind of the fact that it has on inflammation. I will never forget that visual. That was probably the one thing that is going to make me stop eating sugar immediately is because I get that visual every time that I go to eat grains or sugar.

Jonathan Bailor: To add to that list, Carrie, these seed oils – part of the reason that we say globally avoid starches and suites is that they come in packages along with these processed garbage oils like safflower oil and vegetable oil. What is vegetable oil? Angela and I were talking about in the car. We were like “what is vegetable oil?”. That seems so sketchy. It’s like “it comes from vegetables. Don’t ask us what it actually is.”. What does that even mean? Vegetable oil? That also causes much inflammation. I really briefly wanted to cover two quick things that folks can do to help reduce inflammation which, as Carrie mentioned, is now more and more and more being shown to really be at the root of much of the heart disease issues that we are dealing with. It is not about cholesterol. It is about inflammation. For example, when you have inflammation cholesterol can build up, but that cholesterol buildup is the body’s healthy response. It is like a scab. The problem is not “I have a scab on my hand, how do I get rid of this”.

Carrie Brown: It is trying to lubricate what the grater roughed up.

Jonathan Bailor: Right. So how can we stop inflammation? Two things. Garlic. Most people don’t actually realize this, but garlic is one of the most extremely anti-inflammatory foods in the entire world. And it is delicious. If you like taste, which I do, if you can – this is what I do – go to Costco. In Costco’s refrigerated section they have a 3 pound bag of already peeled and ready to go little cloves. I kid you not, Carrie. We put them in our meatloaf. We go through – Angela and I – 3 pounds of peeled garlic cloves per week.

Carrie Brown: You are a freak Bailor. You are a freak of nature, and that is all I have to say on the matter.

Jonathan Bailor: It is delicious. And here is the crazy thing, Carrie. The more you cook garlic, the more its taste goes away. You can do this, and it is not crazy if you actually try it. If you take a half of a cup of garlic cloves and boil them until they are totally fork tender, you can literally top them with an all-natural marinara sauce and just eat it as a snack.

Carrie Brown: You are a freak of nature.

Jonathan Bailor: Folks, if you want to quantify it, just do some quick research on the web. We are talking orders of magnitude more anti-inflammatory properties than other foods which are talked about from an inflammation perspective. We also love seafood, we love fatty seafood. We love salmon, sardines – but we know not anybody can get access to those at this point. Your next best option is going to be a cod liver oil. You know I’m not a huge fan of supplements. You kind of have to squint to call this a supplement. It is just oil in a. If you want to save some money, don’t get in a. Get in the liquid form and add it to your smoothies as a lemon flavor. If you added to a smoothie, just take a tablespoon or two per day. You’re not going to taste it, and I would urge you to get the liquid form because we want therapeutic doses of stuff. We want to go out of our way to eat more natural, super healthy fats. I’m talking a tablespoon or two per day. If you, for example, go to Costco they sell fish oil. They don’t sell cod liver oil. Again, there is no such thing as “fish oil”. Cod liver oil is a step closer to the actual food, so I like that better. It also generally has more vitamins and minerals in it like vitamin D. The number of pills that you would have to take to take in 10 g of cod liver oil – which is what 2 tablespoons would be – as a lot of pills. Who wants to take 10 pills? Not me. Those are two recommendations to minimize inflammation dramatically. Eat more garlic – it is delicious, added to foods. Don’t added to smoothies, that would be disgusting. If you are not already trying some cod liver oil, try some. There are some really expensive cod liver oils out there. I don’t use that kind. I use a more affordable kind. I think you have to look at marginal cost, marginal benefit. I’ll get that up in the same store. Those are two things that I have had a lot of success with that I wanted to share with listeners.

Carrie Brown: Aren’t you proud of me? You saw, I posted a sardine recipe. We have sardine fans now. There are less sardine virgins in the world because of that post.

Jonathan Bailor: Some people sometimes see any type of sanity as restrictive, but in some ways, actually, if you look at the typical person’s diet, they eat about 13 foods. They just cycle them. It is not a high variety diet. Eating pizza, hamburgers, garbage, candy bars – that is not a high variety diet. In fact, when you go sane and you start looking for sane foods – like sardines – you actually eat more variety, not less.

Carrie Brown: I have thousands of leek converts. And now sardines. I am just opening the world of possibilities.

Jonathan Bailor: I love it. Certainly, folks, we have a lot more good stuff to share and we will not hesitate to share next week. Ladies and gentlemen, Carrie Brown and Jonathan Bailor back with the Smarter Science of Slim podcasts. Eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better. Talk with you soon.

Carrie Brown: Bye!

– Everything you ever wanted to know about liver

– How to SANEly reduce inflammation
– SANE superstar = sardines