1.19.16

All right. Let’s rock and roll here. All right. Here we go. So, what we are going to do here is I got a few questions coming in beforehand that I wanted to answer. First we’re going to try to keep this to 90 minutes. So, 90 minutes is what we’re going to do. We are going to get through—I’m going to crank through, we got some feedback, I’m going to crank through every single question. I’m going to have to go a little bit faster, but I’m going to get every question answered. If by some chance we could go out on a big back and forth and we don’t get to your question, which we should, always post it in the support group or shoot me an email afterwards and I will follow-up on it.

 

What else? Yes, so, that’s all goodness. Yes, and let’s increase the back and forth if you don’t mind in the chat box. I love that. And it also helps to make this little bit more fun. So, feel free to post follow-up questions. I see Rebecca, as I already said when will the grocery list for the weeks come out? Rebecca, those come out like once every week. There’s not a fixed day. So, if for some reason yours haven’t arrived yet, please, let me know, or let our customer support know. Make sure they get to you, but there is not like a fixed day they come out. It depends on kind of your rotation. So, sorry I couldn’t give a better answer there. But, hopefully everyone can see and hear everything now. And let’s rock and roll. So, here we go with the goals just to get started with.

 

I like to start every session just recapping the goals for each one of these sessions. And the first goal, and possibly the most important is for you to understand—I mean, I know there is a lot of wonderful people who are chatting here, but even if you’re not chatting and even if you are chatting, please understand that you are part of a deeply appreciative and loving SANE community here. It’s been just awesome in the support group recently and I’m going to thank everyone for your amazing contributions there. I don’t have as much of a chance to post in there as I would like, but I read veraciously and I love it. I love seeing that love in that community and I really want to make these session just a highlight of your week. They’re highlight of my week in terms of feeling that sense of love and community. I want to make sure that we get some specific and immediately actionable takeaways from this session and I’m going to answer obviously, some very specific question, but as always, I’m going to try to make those generalized. So, even if like for example we’re answering your question that seems like it doesn’t at all apply to you I promise I’m going to do everything in my power to explain the why behind it and that that will really, really help you long-term because you understand the why behind these things. That’s really where the long-term difference comes into play. And then we’re going to cover some macro stuff, and then of course, I want to have a lot of fun and I want to smile and I want to challenge everybody. I want more participation in the chat box this week. If you don’t mind I can’t chat and type, but I will be keeping an eye on the chat box because I love that interactive dynamic. And I am actually going to read the questions verbatim this week. Got some feedback on that. Folks did want to know the questions a little bit verbatim. So, I’m going to go through them pretty quickly.

 

So, let us start with questions that were written in and then hopefully we’ll get a bunch of interaction going and I do have some fun to share with you. And also, wanted to share some great news in terms of announcements. If you haven’t seen this yet, a lot of good stuff to celebrate. We got more recipes. I think by the end of this week believe it or not, we will have over a thousand recipes in the SANE searchable recipe collection. A thousand recipes. And just to put that into perspective, we were at like 500 a couple of months ago. So, we are committed to continuously adding awesomeness and I’m really hoping you’re loving those recipes. I also hope you have seen, and I’m incredibly excited about this, we are launching a new line of recipe books and cookbooks. And as an incredible member of the Ignite family, you will be given all of them free of charge. And they will actually be delivered to you one per month in electronic format via email, work on all your devices. And I hope that makes you as happy as it makes me. I always love to try to find ways to show our love and out gratitude to you for being with us. And I hope that will put a smile on your face. Awesome updates are coming to your app very, very soon. In fact, Apple’s reviewing them now and I think they’re one of the Android app today you’re going to have the delete a meal. Hey, you can delete a meal now. I’m so sorry that took so long. It was surprisingly difficult because it requires recalculation of your SANE score.

 

There’s a bug which I so appreciate folks reporting. It’s great to get that feedback. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. Never makes us feel bad, it helps us to do better for you. Where people’s SANE scores were clear, you weren’t seeing an actual score, that’s getting fixed. It’s going to be faster and cleaner. Same thing for the website. So, lots of good stuff there. All right. Got some chat coming in here. Let’s take a quick look at some of these chat messages. Scrolling. All right. Kathy asks: I have the whey and cocoa powder and other items that are not necessarily clean, is it okay to use those until I get products in the SANE store? Yes, Kathy. So, that’s a great question. So, I will—just for what it’s worth, just to give you a little bit of context. There is quite a few people that are not actually able to make some of the live calls. So, because of that however I want to make sure these are super valuable for them. So, that’s why sometimes we have to give—I want to make sure I get to some of the questions that were written in because for folks that can’t make the calls they can still write in their questions and then see the session recording afterwards.

 

However, I love the interaction. So, I’m going to balance that, but Kathy, you asked the—yes, so, if you have things like whey and cocoa powder and other items that aren’t necessarily clean is it okay to use those or do you need to—are they going to destroy your efforts? So, this is a very great, specific question with an awesome specific answer and then also general learnings we can take away from it. So, the short answer is unless it’s just complete garbage, which I don’t think it is, like if it was Nestle Quick for example, which isn’t really cocoa powder. So, it’s probably something maybe like a Hershey’s cocoa powder that you might have, you know if it was Nestle, Nestle Quick I’d say throw that away because that’s not even cocoa powder that’s just sugar. But if it’s just general store bought stuff which is going to be reasonable SANE, hey, that’s not going to just completely ruin your efforts. And I want to make a quick general point here which is I would really encourage everybody, and this is really, really important. To think of your metabolic system a little bit like your immune system. Now, what do I mean by that? So, the way your immune system works is not that—so, your immune system is resilient, right. Like if you get a cold or if you get exposed to a virus or bacteria your immune system, if your immune system itself is healthy will bring your back. Right. That’s the job of your immune system and that’s why diseases such as HIV or AIDS are so terrifying because they attack your immune system itself.

 

So, why am I saying this? Well, also, for example if we were to say, “Hey is it okay to ever have any viruses or any bacteria enter your immune system?” Well, absolutely. I mean, that’s what you immune system is for. Life, we can never be perfect, we can never completely avoid sort of any of those disease causing agents, but we have to make sure we have a strong immune system, so that if we do exposed to something which is less than ideal we can come back from it. That’s the same thing, that’s the same mindset we want to have when it comes to our metabolism. So, your metabolism—we talk about the set point. We talk about it’s an established system and we talk about how when your set point is elevated or when your sink is clogged your body’s essentially fighting to keep you heavy. So, you can think of having a compromised metabolism like having a compromised immune system. So, when someone’s immune system’s compromised even like the slightest little thing can cause life threatening problems. But, when you have a strong immune system if you get a little bit of virus or bacteria, hey, you know you’ll bounce back in a week, you’ll bounce back in two weeks. You want to make sure you don’t intentionally expose yourself. Like you don’t want to have anyone coughing in your face, but you’re not worried if just a little bit gets in there. The same thing applies to your metabolism. Once we heal it from the inside, once we make sure you have a safe and strong metabolism a little bit of exposure to things that aren’t perfect for a lack of better terms, is really just going to be like water off a duck’s back.

 

And a good example of this is actually children. So, sometimes we think, unfortunately, and our society tells us—hey, you know, kids, if you look at a children’s menu, it’s so sad and it’s heartbreaking because it’s essentially a litany of inSANity. In some ways the definition of children’s food is that which is packed with processed nonsense fats and sugar and salt. I mean, of children’s menu or children’s cereal, if you think about it, those are the least SANE items in the world and we’re told by big food that that’s okay. I mean, they’re kids. Their bodies can handle it. And that’s really—that’s not at all true. I mean, it does the same level of damage if not more damage to children than it does to adults, but one of the reasons we don’t see it doing as much damage as immediately to children is a child’s metabolism is fresh. It hasn’t gone through cycles of yo-yo dieting, it hasn’t been exposed to a toxic food environments for 40, 50, 60 years. So, if a child gets exposed to consistent low doses of inSANE foods it’s going to have potentially less of a visible or immediate impact on them than it would an adult, not because it’s any less bad for them, but just because you know, their immune system, their metabolic immune system hasn’t been, let’s say you know, beaten down as long. Now, unfortunately that’s of course, we’re seeing nowadays that that’s not necessarily true in the sense that even though a child’s metabolism is fresh, you know it’s fresh the toxics stuff that’s being put into their bodies by schools and by food manufacturers is overwhelming them.

 

But, the macro point here, Kathy, to answer you question, is if you think about for example, maybe some whey and some cocoa powder that you got from your grocery store from G&C or something like that as being you know, not completely toxic, but something that’s suboptimally SANE, if you’re working to heal your metabolism you know, that’s just going to be like just a little bit of like a cold bug and getting into your immune system and as long as we heal the system itself it’s going to roll right off. So, is it great? No. Is it going to really help you? No. Is going to completely derail your efforts? No. And please, another good thing to keep in mind is there is really nothing you can do in one day—and man, this is a really important point actually, there is nothing you can do in one day that is going to completely derail your efforts. And I think that’s actually really important. Maybe even write that down like even on your worst day or our most inSANE day nothing you did that day ruins everything. Your health doesn’t work that way. So, by way of analogy, it’s really easy to lose all of your money in one day, right. If you look at the financial meltdown that happened a little while a lot of people lost all of their investment, or all of their 401-K, all of their retirement in one day.

 

Now, when it comes to our fat metabolism system, when it comes to neurological inflammation, when it comes to our hormones and our gut there is nothing that we can do in one day that just completely destroys that. That’s not how that biological system works. It’s not either/or. So, we’ve got to always remember to be kind to ourselves. Right. Like if something happens, you go to a party, you go a little inSANE. Look, it happened, you learn from it, you’re going to do your best to not let it happen again. But, the worst thing is not actually being inSANE in that moment. The worst thing would be to let that isolated event contaminate your lower case SANity. Like, it happened. Like, if you’re an athlete, you had a bad game, it’s cool. You know what? You know what the most important thing is that we learn from it and that we move on. So, whether it’s store bought whey, store bought cocoa powder, whether it’s a meal out with friends or whether it’s really anything in life in general I would urge you to give yourself permission to learn from that event, to make a commitment that it will never happen again or you will do everything in your power not to let it happen again, but to never let shame or guilt contaminate you. Because that’s hey, more than anything you’re going to find in processed foods, more than anything you’re going to find in that whey or that cocoa powder you bought from the store, Kathy, and every other member of the SANE family that’s on this session or watching it, none of that will derail your SANity even to close to as much as shame or guilt or feeling any of those sort of sensations towards yourself will.

 

Okay. Like please, don’t do that. All right. I mean, you’re here. Kathy, the fact that you even had that thought is a huge win. It’s a huge, huge win. Okay. So, lots of stuff there. Hopefully that was helpful. Let’s see what else we’ve got here. Yes. Salad in a jar. All right. Rebecca, I know we’ve got some great questions about how to get veggies in on the go. For sure we got some questions actually written in on that one, so we’ll cover that. Okay. Cool. Beans, all right. So, I’m going to jump in some of the questions that were written in here. So, the first question we’ve got here is how do you set goals to shift from inSANE to SANE? Add one vegetable per day, cut inSANE foods one per week? What do I change first? How fast do I go?

 

Hey, that’s an awesome question. So, thank you very much, that’s great. The general question here is how do I work my way into this? How do I set SANE goals? Well, let me first answer that by saying what I really don’t want you to do. And this is after years and years of experience in working with thousands and thousands and thousands of people and reading a lot of research. So, two things. First is do not set a goal, and I know that this is going to sound strange, but I’ll explain why, I want you to if at all possible, to give yourself permission to set what’s called process goals rather than results goals. Let me explain that. With process goal your goal is exactly what is illustrated in this excellent question here. Like, “I am going to eat one more serving of vegetables this week than it did last week.” And the reason that’s an awesome goal is because you can control it. As much as you can control anything in life. Right. You can control whether or not you eat one more vegetable. You cannot control, no matter how much calorie counters want to make you think otherwise—right. Oh, eat seven less calories per day and you’ll lose exactly this much weight in this much time. Which all of us have tried. It’s never worked because that’s not how your body works.

 

You cannot control how quickly your metabolism heals. You can control how much you stack the deck in the favor of your metabolism healing, but actually how long it takes your metabolism to heal is unfortunately not up to us. Right. If it was totally up to us I can imagine hey, you know, you get the flu going, back to that immune system analogy, [inaudible 00:21:24], “I want to be better tomorrow.” But, unfortunately I can’t do that, but what I can do is of course, get some rest. I can drink some tea, I can make sure that I’m taking some vitamin C. I can do all the process steps so that I facilitate that result, but my goal is always on the process. And please, like that, if you didn’t do—if you got nothing else from this call or this session, that in it of itself, focusing on process goals rather than results goals is so important. I mean, that’s such ancient wisdom. That’s not my idea. That’s from long, long ago. Right. There is a famous quote, I’m paraphrasing this from the Buddha, who says, “As long as you’re facing in the right direction just keep walking and eventually you’ll get there.” Obviously I kind of screwed it up a little bit, but the point is that you know, just take another step, take another step, and take another step. Eventually you will get there. And so, process versus results goal super important, but what are those process goals? Look, let’s keep this really, really simple. Really, really simple. Because it can be simple. To focus—I mean, it’s—it can be simple. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy, but it can be simpler than it’s been made out to be. Vegetable process goal: track, whether it’s using the SANE app, whether it’s using the SANE paper tracker how many servings of vegetables you ate on average this week. Next week take it up by one or two. That’s an epic goal. Another epic process goal, if you’re not drinking SANE green smoothies, start, maybe not every day, but if last week you did zero maybe this week you do one. Next week you do two.

 

Write that down. You know, I went from one to two. I went from two to three. And that in it of itself is so encouraging because we’re here for the long-term. Right. If you’re on these calls that means you’re here SANE Ignite lifetime. Right. So, those small process steps make such a difference over time. And that’s what we want, right. We’ve all yo-yoed in the short-term. We want those long-term results. Nutrient dense protein. Same thing, just think of it in terms of servings. You know, maybe last week you did a great job of getting your nutrient dense proteins in at lunch and dinner, but you struggled with breakfast. So, maybe you say next week I’m going to make sure I get it in at breakfast. And just something simple. Right. Focus on the food groups. What can I do this week in terms of process for my vegetables? What can I do this week in terms of what one thing can I do this week in terms of process for my proteins? What one thing can I do in terms of my whole food fats? Now, what one thing can I do this week to maybe stand and move my body more? What one thing can I do this week to get more familiar with eccentric exercise? What one thing can I do this week to maybe get a little bit more sleep? What one thing can I do this week to drink a little bit more water? Or to swap more water and green tea instead of any sort of inSANE beverage?

 

But, that like, it’s hard to put into words how deeply empowering taking on the mindset of small process goals and having that success and sharing that success—like, even if it’s not perfect. Write that down in the SANE support group, in your journal, “This week I’m going to focus on this one process goal, this one process goal, this one process goal.” Three things most. And let us know how you did. Holy moly. Those gradual steps in the three main food groups, and then when it comes to movement I think that in it of itself is going to be hugely powerful. And then maybe in terms of recipes like this one, this week can you find one SANE recipe that you enjoy so much that you—it’s just something it’s a go to recipe. You say, “Oh, my gosh. One recipe in a week that’s nothing.” But, think about it. If you just keep that up at the end of the year, one year, right, we’re all going to be here for longer than a year, after one year you would have 52 recipes that you’ve mastered that you love, that maybe you know your family loves. Fifty-two. I mean, how many different recipes do we make over the course of a month today? Imagine if a year from now you had 52 perfectly SANE recipes that you and your family love. Does that sound crazy? Well, if you found one per week consistently you’ve got it, but that’s not what we’re told to do, right. We’re like I’ll do everything right now versus do this one thing consistently. Do that one process thing consistently and holy moly, like the Buddha said, and I butchered, that’s facing the right direction and if you just keep walking oh, my goodness. SANE, you will be super SANE. You’ll be super SANE.

 

All right. Let’s see. Here we go. Yay, the [inaudible 00:26:22]. I love this. All right. We got here, got some good chat coming in here. Thank you so much, Kate. And Rebecca, Kathy. Kate’s got some good questions. Epigenetics, yes, Kate, I have done some research on epigenetics. If you have a specific question, please feel free to type it there in the chat box. I’d be happy to help. Will changing my eating help me with Hashimoto’s? What’s up, Alison? And I love how you spell your name. That is a fantastic way to spell your name.

 

Yes, it will absolutely help you with Hashimoto’s. Anything that is going to increase the nutrient density of your diet and reduce the inflammation that you encourage is going to help with any malady. And we talked about this in the last session, but there is no medical condition—like so, if you think about disease, one way to think of disease is the body not being in its desired state. So, we have vitamins and minerals and proteins and fats that we call essential. Essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals are essential. If we don’t eat enough of them we get things like scurvy, rickets so on and so forth. If you don’t eat enough B vitamins your spinal column deteriorates. Not good. Why am I saying these things? Well, disease is caused by a breakdown of something in the body. Now, it only makes sense that if we give the body an abundance of that which it needs to thrive and to heal itself—because remember, the only way we ever heal is the body healing itself. That’s not like woo-woo mystical crystals. That’s science. That’s eastern medicine, western medicine, common sense. The only way disease ever goes away is if the body heals itself. Like that’s what putting a bone in a cast does. It allows the body to heal itself. The flu only goes away if the body heals itself by providing your body with the foods that give it the most of what it needs and in fact, an abundance of those things. You’re not eating less of everything, you’re eating more SANE things, so much so that you’re crowding out the inSANE things.

 

Any disease of the body will get better. It has to. We’re giving the body more of what it needs to heal itself and less of what causes it to breakdown in the first place. That’s going to help and that’s going to help globally and really, really powerfully. And that’s why this is so much different than just counting calories and eating less because eating less just gives you less of everything. You don’t need less of everything. You need more of good things. So much so that you’re too full for the inSANE nonsense. So, hopefully that’s really helpful.

 

Why is whole wheat bad for us? Great question. So, let’s keep in mind here that whenever we’re talking about food, food is a zero sum game. So, what I mean by that? It’s kind of an economic term. It’s when we eat one thing we’re not eating another thing. Which I know sounds a little bit stupid, but it’s actually important to think about. So, if we put a bunch of whole grains on our plate by definition we are not putting something else on our plate. So, it’s taking up space. Now, when it comes to is something good for us or is something healthier, is something SANE that’s really like—as you know, we have the spectrum. Right, we have the non-starchy vegetables on end of the spectrum, we have liquid sugar on the other end of the spectrum. Whenever we say is something good or bad for us what we’re really asking is like is this better than that or is this better than everything else I could be eating right now? So, for example is whole wheat bad for us relative to sugar? No, absolutely not. And in fact, the reason that have heard that whole grains are good for us is because they are better for us than refined grains. If you had to choose between eating Wonder Bread and eating bread that was made from Einkorn wheat which is, the Einkorn and amaranth wheat is the wheat that existed in Biblical times versus the dwarf mutant wheat that we have today which is the totally different species of wheat. It’s got like 42 chromosomes whereas the wheat of Biblical times was back in the teens, like I think it had 12 or 14 chromosome. Totally different—it’s a totally different plant. It’s literarily like apples and oranges. So, amaranth wheat compared to dwarf mutant wheat, totally different thing.

 

So, if we’re eating whole wheat, even dwarf wheat instead of eating sugar that’s a good choice, that’s better for us. Much like eating—smoking one pack of cigarettes per day is better for us than smoking two, but the key thing to keep in mind is just like smoking one pack of cigarettes per day versus smoking two doesn’t make smoking one pack of cigarettes just objectively good for us. Especially when we could be breathing in even cleaner air. So, let’s go back to the whole grains. What people, a lot of people use whole grains for is to fill themselves up. So, often what happens is whole grains are used to crowd out vegetables. So, they’re just like rolls or filler or rice. I mean, they’re usually just things to fill you up. Now, when it comes to filling ourselves up we now know, oh, my goodness, from a hormonal healing perspective and just from a satisfaction perspective and health and a fat loss perspective, whole food fats they are satisfying and they are so hormonally healthy for us. And they also don’t contain any sort of inflammatory substances. Like for example, there is like amylopectin A is a very addictive substance that’s found in whole wheat. Whole grains can cause gut permeability issues because they have a lot of various substances that can irritate gut bacteria. This is why you hear so much about celiac disease. This is why you hear so much about a gluten intolerance. There is just a lot of things in whole grains that are not nearly as beneficial for us as some of the other foods that we can be eating.

 

So, it’s not like, “Oh, my Gosh, the reason we have obesity epidemic is because people are eating whole grains.” No, no. I mean, that’s not the reason we have an obesity epidemic, but the reason whole grains are not considered SANE, in addition to being relatively low satiety and low in nutrition and aggression—the factors that contribute to SANity is just because man, I’d so much rather you’re eating your vegetables. And actually I had—I interviewed one of the, someone who used to be the head, she was the speaker, the public face for the like the national dietetic association or something, some big organization. And I just asked her, I asked her point blank, you know, “If you had—if a person was eating whole grains in place of vegetables would you recommend that?” And of course, not. Right. There is nothing that is unique about whole grains that we can’t get in greater abundance in vegetables and low sugar fruits as well was like without all the like gluten and other stuff. Like there is no amylopectin A or gluten in kale.

 

So, whole grains, it’s not like, “Oh, whole grains!” It’s just that whole grains do some damaging things to quite a few people. They can stimulate appetite, they could cause a lot of insulin to get released in your body which can contribute to pre-diabetes. They can make you hungrier rather than satisfying you, but most importantly, often they’re preventing you from eating SANEr foods. And I want you to eat so much of the good stuff that you’re just too full for things that are less SANE. So, hopefully that is helpful. All right. Let’s see here. Let me catch up on a little bit of the chat. All right. Good stuff. Oh, goodness, now there’s lots of chat. Julia and Fran and Allison. Julia, I haven’t seen you on chat before. Welcome. Julia is not being shy. I like that. All right. Let’s go. Tell me your problems are going to be sugar and gluten [inaudible 00:34:40] anything inSANE. Never felt so great. Oh, thank you so much, Fran. That’s good stuff. Fran. Fran is just dropping positivity in here, I love it. I love it.

 

Salt. Alison, do we need to limit salt because to me that’s what makes veggies taste good. Good news! Salt has been given a bad rep. So, here’s the situation with salt. The reason salt has been given—when you think salt you probably don’t think super healthy. I don’t know what you think, but you probably don’t think super healthy. The bottom line is that salt is definitely an issue when you’re eating inSANE foods. When you’re eating inSANE foods what you’ll find is that the amount of salt in processed food—right, salt is a preservative. So, when you take soy and corn and wheat and other processed mono crops and you strip out all the nutrients you got to make them taste like something because you know what? Soy by itself with everything stripped away just does not taste good, neither does wheat, neither does corn. You got to do something with it. What you can do with it to give it a really stable shelf life and to make it taste good for very little money? You pump it full of trans fats because trans fats stay shelved, stay stable. You pump it full of a huge amount of salt and you pump it full of sugar. Right. If you read—what’s the guy’s name? I forget his name. But, the title of the book is Fat, Sugar, and Salt. And talking about the three major weapons of the processed food industry. And of course, we all know that it’s not that like fat is bad, it’s the fat found in processed food is bad. Same thing with salt.

 

Salt when used like—when we would normally use it is not going to be bad. The way you would naturally and normally use salt, not bad, but when we put our trust and our health frankly and our lives in the hands of companies whose only interest—they’re not evil, right. They’re not evil, but Nestlé’s job, right, people who own stock in Nestle are not interested in the blood pressure or other people. They’re interested in making money. That’s their business. Right. That’s not evil, right. We all have jobs and we’re all able to use computers because businesses exist. So, there’s nothing wrong with business. It’s just that we have to understand that processed food manufacturers are not in the business of our health, they’re in the business of making food that costs them very little to sell, that they could charge a lot for and that tastes good. Adding a heck of a lot of salt, adding a heck of a lot of a sugar and adding a heck of a lot of unnatural fats causes that. And it kills us. So, just like everything else if you do it the way nature intended it, it’s all good. It’s all good. So, yes, if you are just sprinkling some sea salt or my favorite is pink Himalayan salt that has a wonderful flavor to it, it’s got some essential minerals in it, that’s a great way to help with the veggies. And as a general rule of thumb anything within reason, within reason that you can do to get yourself and your family to eat more vegetables, boom, it’s worth it.

 

So, bacon is not particularly SANE to just eat strips and strips of bacon, but to use bacon as a seasoning for vegetables do it, do it. Whatever you can do to get that nutrition into your body do it. Salt has been given an overly bad rep in general. Number one, number two, you will not overdo it with salt if you don’t consume inSANE processed food because you would never—just like for example, right, soda has 11-15 teaspoons of sugar in 12 ounces which is ridiculous. If you were going to make yourself a beverage, even if you were going to sweeten it you would never sit there for yourself or for someone you love and say, “I’m going to make my five year old the beverage here. Here, let me get some sugar. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” You would never do that, ever. But, food manufacturers will. So, as long as we stay away from the processed nonsense we’ll be all right in terms of that.

 

All right. Good stuff here. Right. Rebecca, to sweeten I use Trivua a lot, is it okay? So, Truvia is—you got to be careful, Truvia is better than sugar, but it’s one of those things at grocery stores, if you notice Truvia is marketed as if it were Stevia. Right. They named it Truvia because it sounds like Stevia. If you look at the label it’s like a little bit of Stevia and a lot of other stuff. So—but, again, remember, we’re always talking about progress rather than perfection. We’re always talking about like if you’re—if the choice is between eating sugar and eating Truvia then yes, eat Truvia. I’d love for you to move to something that is even cleaner like actual Stevia or [inaudible 00:40:01] or Erythritol or pure Xylitol. These are things that are going to be just way, way cleaner. The ingredients say, Stevia, [inaudible 00:40:09], Xylitol, Erythritol whereas if you look at the ingredients of Truvia it looks like a chemistry experiment. So, hopefully that is helpful. I’m going to go to some of the written in questions here really quick and I’m going to grab some water. Oh, this I a good one. It says how do I stay permanently motivated when those around me are enjoying foods that are not on my plan? And then, when traveling I feel uncomfortable always making a fuss about what I eat? How do I handle this on a consistent basis not one off, but all the time? Yes. That is a fantastic question. So, let’s do it, let’s break it apart in a couple of things. How are we on time? We’re doing real well.

 

How do I stay permanently motivated when those around me are enjoying foods that are not on my plan? Let’s answer this with some examples. I’m extremely impressed by—there are people and there are groups and even individuals who are able to do things that a lot of other people don’t do. So, what the heck am I talking about? So, from an individual perspective. Vegetarians, now, I’m making now judgment as the SANity or inSANity of vegetarians, I am simply saying that when someone is a vegetarian they often for a long period of time, if not their entire life do something that not a lot of other people do. Or even someone who’s kosher, or someone who’s halal. Or even someone who has like a peanut allergy, or someone who’s diabetic. Or someone who—maybe it’s during lent and they’ve given something up for lent, or maybe someone who’s either pregnant and you know, avoids things that they’ve enjoyed their entire life instantly. They’re just done.

 

The reason I bring up these examples is because those individuals—and obviously there is more or less elegant ways, right. I’m sure we all have had experiences with people that are say vegetarian that are just awesome, great people, want to just give them a high-five and a hug. Great example are the two years ago for Thanksgiving I was at my in-law’s house. My brother-in-law brought over someone and she was a vegetarian. And oh, my goodness, like she was just amazing. Like, she brought food that was obviously did not contain any animal products. It was delicious, everyone ate it, and we loved it. She wasn’t anything like holier than now. She was just like, “Hey, I’m going to bring this vegetarian food and it’s delicious. And now everybody likes it.” And she just added. Like, it wasn’t about taking away, it was about what I can add. And I’m sure we all know people who have maybe a lifestyle choice or a dietary habit and they’re, “I’m better than everyone else and you should all be like me.” And that doesn’t go as well.

 

But, what do we see in individuals in these groups that I just mentioned in common? And usually oh, my gosh, it’s always they’ve got a deeper meaning. Right. It’s never like—people are not becoming vegetarians because society tells them that they need to be skinny or because of like. I mean, it’s always because of like a deep, almost spiritual thing. And it is a spiritual thing when you think about it for people who are lent or kosher or halal or anything. Like, Hindu, a lot of obviously, not everyone who’s Hindu is vegetarian, but many people who are Hindu are vegetarian and that’s because of a deep spiritual belief. And I mean, obviously SANity isn’t a religion, but it is a deep seated belief that you and everyone else on the planet should not have to live a life that is not fully lived. I mean, if we are walking around and we are not fully alive. And if we have any sort of disease, if we’re carrying around a bunch of extra fat that’s slowing us down and sapping us of energy. I mean, that’s just not being fully alive. And like we matter. You matter, you were put here to do important meaningful work. There are people in your life that depend on you and that love you and that need you to be around. And if you’re saying, “I’m going to eat so much of that which enables me to be the beautiful, like just rocking person that I was put here to be. And I’m going to eat so much of that food that I’m too full for anything that would stand in the way of me giving the most of myself to this world and to all of the people who need me.” That’s motivation. Right. That starts to get into the realm of why, how a vegetarian is able to give up all meat or how vegan is able to give up all animal products. Or how someone who’s kosher or halal, how their entire family lives this way and they go to school and their children go to school and they’re still able to do these things, it’s because it’s for like, it’s the opposite of the biggest loser, right. Like the biggest loser, even that name, it’s degrading. I’m the biggest loser. Are you kidding? If you’re here, you’re the smartest winner.

 

And what we’re doing is we re saying this is like this is the opposite of vanity. This is about if you look at the global, the things that cause suffering in our world, our modern world, McKinsey, the consulting company actually did a report on this. Number one and two are as you would expect, they are violence and tobacco. Those are the two leading causes of suffering at about 2,1, I believe 2,1 trillion dollars per year globally, but guess what number three is? Number three is obesity at around 2 trillion dollars per year. So, us having disease, and obesity is a disease, us not having the fullest, most energetic passionate mentally vibrant lives we could have is, like we are called to solve that problem. We live in a country where one out of every three children are overweight or obese. And we know that 70-80% of those kids are going to struggle with that their entire lives. Because once we have a fat cell it never goes away. We can shrink it, but it never goes away. That’s why it’s hard to keep weight off. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard.

 

We have a moral imperative, I believe, and I know you believe too, otherwise you wouldn’t have made the commitment to go SANE to solve that problem. Now, once your mindset starts to go from the opposite of the shame based, “You need to be thin because (…)” [Inaudible 00:47:34] the scale. I mean, it’s the last socially acceptable form of misogyny in the world if you think about it. Like—because it’s focused a females. Let’s be very, very clear here. Men are always told, “You eat, go to buffet. Be a man, eat a lot.” But, oh, women, no, “Don’t eat much because you need to be small and you need to shrink into the background and no, no. And definitely don’t weight train. Don’t weight train. Actually, you need to do endless cardio because you need to be small and shrink and fade into the background.” Hopefully you could—like, that’s nonsense. That’s not, it’s all like children suffering needlessly is nonsense, obesity causing just about as much suffering around the world as all armed conflict and tobacco is a moral thing that we have to address.

 

So, like how do I stay motivated? I stay motivated because I don’t have a scale. I don’t ever look at a scale. I could care less about what the scale says. What I care about, and what I would—I think you would feel so empowered is if you could take this on as the beautiful empowering mission that it is. And even if people give you a hard time, like if you come at this with love and graciousness, right, like if you go out to eat and instead of making a fuss, you say, “I’m so sorry. I’m pre-diabetic. So, is there any way we could, like could you maybe just double the vegetables and hold the starch just because that spikes m blood sugar?” Nobody is going to make a fuss out of that. And you’re not lying. We’re all—if you’re not already diabetic, we’re all pre-diabetic by definition. If you don’t have diabetes yet you’re pre-diabetic. And chances are, even if you’re undiagnosed you very well might be pre-diabetic because so many of us are because of the nonsense information we’ve been getting.

 

So, feel that noble motive, feel that noble motive and then communicate that noble motive graciously and thankfully. Just you know, “Hey, this is what I’m doing. I’m not holier than [inaudible 00:49:46]. I’m doing this to avoid—I’m pre-diabetic, or you know heart disease runs in my family, so I need to be very careful.” Always for yourself it’s about something deeper. For other people tie it to something deeper. No one’s like, “Oh, you’re a vegetarian bla, bla, bla.” We accept it. It’s almost like a religion. It’s a deep spiritual belief. I dream that some day just like when you get on an airplane it can say you know, “Do kosher meal, halal, vegetarian some day will say SANE.” Because when you’re vegetarian you’re saying I have this value. When you’re kosher you’re saying I have this value, when you’re halal you’re saying I have this value. When you SANE you have the value of saying, “I believe that I am worth so much of that which heals and helps me that I am too full for that which harms me. And those who I love deserve that as well.” I mean, I think that’s how you stay motivated is you got to tie it to something deeper and you have to have that sense of humility and always tying it to something medical when you speak to others.

 

And I think gradually that will help. Hopefully that’s helpful. Sorry, I got a little loose. I got a little [inaudible 00:51:03] boxy out on that one. But, it means a lot to me obviously. But, let me kind of check on the chat here a little bit. Yes. All right. So, good stuff. All right, yes. All right, thank you. You got some good feedback here, so that’s excellent. Question here, how do I stay SANE when traveling and I’m unable to cook for extended periods? This is a great question. When you’re traveling the key thing I find is grocery stores are your new best friend. One of the neatest things I think is happened in our culture is that grocery stores have started to become almost like restaurants. Not all grocery stores do this, but a lot of them do. And that is that they serve prepared foods and their prepared foods are—they’re probably not as SANE as if you made it at home, but it’s going to be way better than if you went to a fast food restaurant. So, if possible, start to see grocery stores as almost like you’d see a restaurant because they almost always have a prepared foods section and you can go in there and you can get a bunch of sides of vegetables. You can get your nutrient dense protein, you can get rotisserie chicken if need be, you can eat that, you can enjoy that, you can get pre-made salad, you can get pre-made vegetable mixes, those are fabulous, but of course, if you do need to go to fast food restaurants I mean, there are SANE options, right.

 

Anytime you’re at place like McDonalds they always have chicken salads. If you’re at a place like Chipotle [inaudible 00:52:26]. Easy, super easy to go SANE. I love eating at Chipotle, right. You just get a salad and you get it without the cheese, but you get a double, double the meat, definitely enjoy lots of lettuce on there, get some guac if you want, get some salsa. Just again, so much of the good stuff that you’re too full for everything else. Asian restaurants again, super easy. You just eat all of the main dish and get it served over vegetables and getting it served over rice. So, I mean, there is always some great options there and of course, we do provide an entire suite of things in the SANE store, whether it’s the vanilla almond meal bars, the cravings killers, the whey powder, powder vegetables. For me, the powder vegetables are the most helpful because those are the hardest things to get on the go. And I actually take little baggies of like Garden in My Glass with me and I just mix it in my water bottle at the airport, shake it up, and drink it. That’s super helpful, but yes, so, grocery stores making the SANE choices at fast food restaurants. And then if need be, you know nuts are great on the go source of whole food fats, but don’t eat them by themselves because it’s very easy to overeat nuts. Always eat them with a nutrient dense source of protein. So, maybe a vanilla almond meal bar, maybe some all natural jerky. Hard boiled eggs are great. Obviously, you can’t take those out for too long, but those could be very helpful. Also, a trick that a lot of people enjoy is if you can’t take a cooler with you or a refrigerated bag you put ice packs in it, but even better is you can actually freeze components of your meal, put it in an insulated bag and then by the time they thaw out, like if you’re not going to eat something for six hours, if you take it, freeze it the night before, put it in an insulated bag it will then thaw out over the course of six hours and be ready for you to eat later in the day.

 

So, that could sometimes be a great option. You can also use frozen food. I sometimes will freeze my smoothies and I will use my frozen smoothie as the ice pack in the travel bag. So, lots of fun options there. Hopefully that was helpful. And lowering my blood sugars [inaudible 00:54:29]. Yes. And Cynthia says that lowering her blood sugar is the reason to give others for making SANE choices and I totally agree with that. And obviously, everything I just mentioned from a traveling perspective is going to help with blood sugar as well. So, and really guys, that’s the key, I think that’s really the key thing here is that I think in our heart of hearts everyone knows what you’re doing is amazing and on some level if they do give you a hard time it’s just because they know they should be doing it too and they’re not. And eventually, your example will inspire. It will. I’ve seen—I’ve never—this is going to sound weird, it’s a double negative, I’ve never not seen it happen when if an individual is consistently and graciously saying that the people who are around them just it permeates out and they accidentally become SANE because when they not only see the results, but when they see the grace with which you carry yourself and how totally aside from physical appearance it changes your mood, it changes your attitude it’s going to give them all the more reasons to go SANE themselves and that’s when this becomes really exciting. Like, it’s really cool to unclog your metabolism, but it’s even cooler when you start seeing that your SANity is empowering other people to be sane, and that’s why I encourage folks to participate in the support group so much, that’s why we have the ability to share from the mobile application because teaching others and being that example is so, so powerful.

 

So, let’s see. Couple of good questions here. Oh, thank you very much. Cynthia likes the bars. I appreciate that very much. And Fran’s got homemade beef jerky. That’s delicious Fran. If you could share that in the support group, at least I know I would love to see that recipe. Yes, and Cathy also wants to see that recipe, Fran. So, we’re going to put you on the spot here. The question about [inaudible 00:56:32] my glass is not very tasty for me, yes. So, the I mean, the Garden in My Glass, so this is the fun challenge that we have in the SANE store is that it’s really easy to make food taste good. You just add a bunch of salt, sugar and fat. It’s not as easy to keep foods clean and super nutrient dense and as tasty as the foods we’ve become used to. Now, we can absolutely acquire taste. I do not—I mean, there are some like you don’t want to ever, there are certain things like kelp that you never want to eat on its own. It’s just not very tasty. But, most people when they drink beer for the first time think it’s disgusting, however quite a few people drink beer and enjoy it. So, beer the example of how that which tastes gross at the beginning can taste delicious later. I don’t think anyone who smokes was ever like for the first time, “Oh, this so good.” It’s an acquired thing.

 

So, with Garden in My Glass and with anything else in the SANE store the trick is to ease your way into it. So, if there is something you do enjoy drinking like if you have found a green smoothie that you do like, don’t add three tablespoons of Garden in My Glass to it, add a teaspoon. And then two days later add another teaspoon, and then two days after that add another teaspoon. Or if you have a relatively SANE beverage that you enjoy drinking—I personally don’t think this sounds good, but I’ve heard people do it, some people put stuff in their coffee. To me that does not sound appealing at all, but the point is add it to something else that you enjoy. Also, there are things you can add to drinks that are so powerful in their taste that they will overwhelm everything. What I mean by that specifically is things like lemon and things like un-distilled apple cider vinegar. So, if you take for example, Garden in My Glass and you took a bunch of lemon and then you did some SANE sweetener in there the SANE sweetener and the lemon are going to so overpower the Garden in My Glass that it’s going to help with the taste. And then hopefully what you can do is you can slowly decrease the ratio of the other stuff, and increase the ratio of super foods. And that will help. Hopefully that’s helpful.

 

Question here from Nancy. How long do green smoothies stay nutrient dense? I’m not talking about of, but still usefully SANE. Nancy, a long time. They’re—I mean, until the vegetables are rotting and disgusting super nutrient dense. Again, this is a great example of please, give yourself permission not to let perfect discourage you from doing great things. Right. Like, we—it might be true that the fresher the vegetable is the more nutrient dense it is. I say it might be true because like it might be more nutrient dense, but there could be other things that we don’t understand yet. Like maybe your body can absorb all those nutrients. The point is that eating vegetables after they’ve sat in your refrigerator for three days is better than not eating those vegetables. Right. Like doing something that is SANE IS better than saying, “Well, because this isn’t perfect as we are perceiving perfect I’m going to feel bad.” Like, please, don’t let—there’s two rules here. Rules (…) One is please, don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress, ever, ever. Like, please, please don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress because the idea of perfection when it comes to health just doesn’t exist first of all. And progress rocks. Like, that’s all we can expect form ourselves is to do better this week than we did last week. And then the other thing is to not let things that—if there’s a lot of things that you might not know yet, right, if you’re just getting started with SANity, if you’re just getting started with your step by step program, if you’re not super familiar with the app, if you don’t understand everything about eccentric exercise yet don’t let what you don’t know stop you from rocking with process goals, process goals, not processed, process goals, what you do know. Right.

 

So, maybe you don’t yet know how to exercise eccentrically perfectly, but you do know that standing and walking are really good. So, you do more of those. You don’t let—you can’t say, “Oh, I can’t eccentric exercise. Oh, I can’t do anything.” Please, give yourself permission to not feel that way and to celebrate. Take what you do know, process goals, rock it. Progress, not perfection. Give yourself, please, give yourself permission to do that. All right. Good stuff here. Yes, and then, yes, I mean, freeze, if some people say, “Well, why are you freezing green smoothies? Doesn’t that degrade them?” I mean, maybe, but if the only way that I can eat green smoothies is if I freeze them or if I make them in bulk over the weekend—like, just from a health perspective, what would be better making all your green smoothies in one batch on a Sunday and then you know, you have green smoothies that have sat in your refrigerator for five days or like getting super stressed out and not being able to go to sleep because every night you have to blend a batch of green smoothies? That latter scenario, that’s why people stop, that’s why people lose motivation and that’s why people are like, “Oh, I just can’t do this.” Because that pursuit of perfection is so hard that we’re like forget this and then we end up doing nothing. So, might it be better to have fresh from the farmer’s market vegetables blended on the spot at the farmer’s market? Probably, but would the effort and time it takes to do that be worth it in a cost benefit way? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So, the key thing is to just maximize the cost and benefit and just celebrate doing better, just celebrate doing better.

 

Sherry has—oh, look, and Sherry you did the question feature in the chat. I like that, I like that. It’s a big question mark. Sherry says: if you use a green powder does it count as a vegetable serving? Absolutely. In fact, if you go to the SANE store and you click on How to Use on the tabs it will tell you the exact, like one tablespoon of this equals one serving of that. So, absolutely yes. Cucumber, great suggesting in the chat. Cucumber is another great taste masker. Other things you can do—oh, you inspired me. Thank you so much. They use it in spas all the time, it’s infused water. So, instead of eating or drinking fruit juice which is super inSANE in a blender just take like one frozen strawberry with water or a half of a peeled lemon or cucumber or like, three blueberries and blend that up. It makes a huge, huge difference. Huge, huge difference. Just a little bit of fruit to mask the taste. So, lemon is just super powerful because it’s bitter. All right. So, a question here, which is quite long. It has to do with oxalates and basically someone got a kidney stone analysis, it says limit foods that are high in oxalates. And so, what do we do with that? So, with this one actually—oh, my goodness, I had a link that I wanted to share so that we actually have a list of foods and where they are in terms of oxalate perspective, like high oxalate, low oxalates in the eating section of your Ignite website.

 

So, if you search for oxalates there’s a huge wonderful list there from one of our SANE team members, doctor Kathy Bertal who you may have seen on some of the videos, licensed physician, awesome guidance there. And in fact, the green has actually shown there are some indications that it helps to bind to certain substances that cause kidney problems. That can be helpful. Also, SANE diet is extremely high in calcium which helps you, but I will refer you, if all possible just search for the word oxalates on the site, you’re going to get some amazing, amazing lists and there are green vegetables that are low in oxalates such as broccoli and cooking helps as well. So, hopefully that is helpful.

 

And Beth asked is anyone tried making the Garden in My Glass more concentrated like taking a shot of it? Beth that is a great suggestion and a great idea. I think sometimes we have a mindset for example that if I sometimes say to drink like 10 bags of green tea per day and people think that means 10 eight ounce glasses of green tea per day. It doesn’t. It means you could take 10 bags of green tea and you could brew them in a four ounces of water and you could just shoot the water so that you get the antioxidants in the green tea and the water. Beth, beautiful idea, beautiful idea. Like if you don’t it’s a little bit—I hate to use this analogy, but like we’re—if you’re on this call, if you’re able to be part of Ignite program you’ve done some awesome things in your life. Right. Like you are an accomplished person. I say that because like a little bit of eccentric exercise like it’s hard, it doesn’t feel great, but you can do it.

 

Garden in My Glass is it the most delicious thing in the world? No, but Beth is suggesting here could you take it, could you just mix it like literarily a shot glass worth of liquid? Little bit of Garden in My Glass in the morning when you’re barely awake, just take it boom, Garden in My Glass down. You know, it’s like you used to do with cough syrup. It doesn’t taste too good, but you know, boom, down the hatch and it’s just maybe over time you develop a tolerance to it. And think of it almost as an immunization. That’s the analogy that I didn’t want to use from 30 seconds ago which is we’ll take a shot, a physical shot and it’s painful right now, but we know that it’s just like it’s very temporary and it pays dividends. Same thing applies with taking a shot like if a Garden in My Glass or of things like that, just do it real quick. You don’t need to sit there and savor it, just get it into your body and let it heal you because that’s literarily what it’s doing. So, grab a little water here.

 

There’s a question here about balancing hormones through SANE eating and it says, please, explain more about balancing of hormones through SANE eating. Is there something to help the process? Well—and then there’s a GEAELIC, I don’t know, maybe someone in chat can help, but I don’t actually know what this GEAELIC. But, what you can do to help this process? The number one thing, just eat [inaudible 01:08:04], done. Okay. Sugar, starch and processed fats are essentially what make your hormones go crazy. Obviously, there are additives and chemicals that do it too, but nowhere near, I mean, like that’s 90% if it, if you are increasing your vegetables, if you’re increasing your nutrient dense protein and you’re increasing your whole food fats so much so that you are too full for starches, sweets and processed fats. I mean, done. You got insulin levels, ghrelin levels, leptin levels, these adiponectin—I mean, it just works. And your hormones, it’s not magic, it’s just when you remove the toxicity and you flood your body with just beautiful nutrition the body, it achieves the state of stasis or homeostasis that is intended to have. Right. Like people used to—the causes of death when we think of like what did someone die of it used to be very common to say just natural causes. AKA the person didn’t die of something. They just died of natural causes.

 

We’ve almost lost that concept. Right, I mean, how many times have you heard recently of anyone who died of natural causes? They died of cancer or they died of heart disease or they died of complications from diabetes like my grandfather. We don’t have to die from disease. We can live a life of robust health and eventually our body just says, “I’m good. Thank you.” Like, I did what I was put here to do and it’s time. No disease, no suffering. That’s the natural state. So, I mean, sometimes it’s like, “This is too good to be true.” It’s actually the opposite of that. We aren’t supposed to die of disease. Like our bodies don’t want to have cancer. We have mechanisms in our body that naturally defend against it. We have mechanisms in our body that do their darndest to prevent us from becoming obese or to prevent us from becoming diabetic or to prevent us from developing Alzheimer’s. If we didn’t we would have died off as a species a long time ago. Well, if like our species, like if we had the rates of heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes that we have today all throughout human history there would be no homo sapiens. Right.

 

We would have died off as a species a long time ago. But we have developed beautiful immune systems and homeostatic systems that if just left to their natural state, just they protect us from these things. That’s what our immune system is. Right. All of medicine, eastern or western is just designed to aid in the body’s natural processes. With the exception of certain things where you have like a pacemaker for example. But hopefully you understand my point and hopefully that helps in terms of balancing hormones.

 

So, next question here is getting started with the exercise, please help me to get motivated by explaining why this is so important and how to get started squats, do I add weights to my body to keep me from staying up? I originally thought it lowered slowly, but then you say to try to stay up until you are able to. Please, explain it and possibly demonstrate. Thank you. I definitely get motivated just listening to you. So, I cannot demonstrate because this camera does not allow to show you, but there are a bunch of videos up on the website where you can see me doing demonstrations. But the reason eccentric exercise is so important, and I do want to give a quick disclaimer that eating sanely is priority one. Right. That’s a priority one. You can never out exercise, and anyone worth their salt in the wellness world will confirm this, you cannot out exercise an inSANE lifestyle. Eccentric exercise is so important because it’s essentially it’s like a turbo, it’s like a catalyst. Right. By doing eccentric exercise you trigger a hormonal cascade in your body that is very difficult to have happen any other way. For example, releasing hormones like growth hormone, a flushing insulin out of your muscle tissues, doing things like triggering muscle protein synthesis, adrenalin, noradrenalin. A good way to think of this, and stick with me here because it’s going to sound a little bit weird, but just—because I want to give you the full picture in these calls.

 

We’re all familiar with anabolic steroids. If anyone doesn’t know what anabolic steroids are please, let me know in the chat and I’ll explain. But I think we all understand that if generally athletes take testosterone, the hormone into their body without doing anything else, you could inject yourself with steroids or with testosterone, you could sit on the couch and your body would build muscle and burn fat. That’s what it does. Now, if you think about what’s actually happening there you are taking a hormone into your body and that hormone is telling your brain, “Brain (…)” This is what hormones do. Hormones are just the way your body talks to itself. It’s saying, “Brain, build muscle, burn fat.” That is what the hormone testosterone does. When we exercise intelligently we trigger the appropriate amount, based on our gender—so, for example, a male who exercise, an adolescent male who exercise eccentrically is going to cause a way greater release of testosterone in their body and not nearly as much estrogen that a female, a female in her 40s that did eccentric exercise, she’s going to get a slight increase in testosterone, an increase in female sex hormones. And what those hormones are going to do is the same thing. They’re just going to do what they do. They’re going to tell the brain, “Build calorie hungry lean muscle tissue.” Not bulky muscle tissue, but slim, firm, awesome, beautiful muscle tissue and burn fat because that’s what those hormones do. There is anabolic hormones, there is katabolic hormones, there is lipogenic hormones. Right. Insulin is a lipogenic hormone. If someone is diabetic and they go on insulin they always, if they hold everything else in their life constant will gain fat because insulin tells your body to store energy, to take energy from your bloodstream and to stick it into your cells whereas there are other hormones which tell them to do the opposite.

 

There are hormones like testosterone which tell your body to build muscle. There’s hormones, right. We know this. There is like if you inject a person with adrenaline they just become energetic. By exercising eccentrically we can trigger these hormones in a safe natural dosage and that’s like super, super, super powerful. So, it’s the natural way to essentially say, “Okay. I’m going to take this hormone. I’m going to turn it up a little bit because it’s too low. Take this hormone insulin, turn it down. There’s a buildup of insulin in my muscles, I’m going to flush it out.” and then we do that eccentric exercise, does that as safely as possible and it does it for anyone at any level, whether you’re super advanced or just a beginner. Eccentric exercise will allow you to do that. And we want to do that on our biggest muscle groups first. So, in this question the individual specifically asks about squats. The reason you really don’t hear me talk about ab exercise is because you don’t heal your metabolism by working your abs. You’ll strengthen your abs, it’s good to have strong abs, but if your goal is to heal your metabolism, if your goal is to balance your hormones, if your goal is to change those hormone levels you are going to get way more bang for your buck.

 

Like there is no exercise you could ever do with your abs that would trigger the hormonal change that the giant muscles in your legs would trigger. You’re just stimulating way more muscle. So, that’s why the eccentrics work more of the muscle, more of the muscle fibers, the specifically powerful muscle fibers. Like there is four different types of muscle fibers. You’ll learn about this more in the site and the step by step program. But only certain muscle fibers really trigger this hormonal response and it’s through eccentric exercise and the amount of resistance we use that we trigger those hormonal fibers. So, again, it’s just like we’re taking those specific dials to balance out those hormones and exercise just allows us to do that in a very—smarter exercise allows us to do that in a very efficient manner. So, hopefully that is helpful.

 

Next question here is, how do I get enough protein if you’re a vegetarian. And that’s a great question. The short answer is as a vegetarian going SANE it is entirely possible—the SANE lifestyle is best thought of as how to identify that which is the sanest in foods that you’re willing to eat. Now, willing to eat is important. If you are kosher, halal, vegetarian, if you’re low-carb, if you’re paleo, if you’re South Beach, if you do any of those lifestyle choices you could be SANE plus that. Right. So, you would say, “Of all the foods in the world I’m going to take—there’s all the foods in the world and then these are SANE and these are not from animals. And these are SANE and these are low-carb. And these are SANE and these are paleo. And these are SANE and these are kosher.” It’s like Venn diagram. So ,what we would want to do is we would say, “Okay. I’m going to be a SANE vegetarian.” So that means how do I choose again, it’s about progress rather than perfection, so how do I choose the sanest vegetarian options. So, clearly we’re going to choose the less processed grains, we’ll focus more on legumes and we’ll focus on grains. We’ll consider potentially mollusks. I know there are some people that are vegetarian who will—first of all, if you’re a vegetarian not a vegan this is no problem at all because fish and sea food are the sanest sources of nutrient that’s the protein on the planet.

 

So, like I mean, I’m accidentally a vegetarian sometimes. Not because—I mean, I just, I live in Seattle, sea food is delicious out here so I go a long time without eating meat sometimes. Not intentionally, but it’s just because I’m eating a bunch of sea food. So, then in that time period I’m a vegetarian. So, I guess that’s technically called a pescoterian, but if you’re just a vegetarian meaning you don’t eat meat. Easy-breezy, lots of sea food. If you’re more on the vegan realm of things it’s really just about making sure you get the balance of your calories from whole food plants and that’s whether you’re vegetarian or not. We’re really focused on whole food plant fats anyway. Really healthy nuts and seeds. And then you could consider things that don’t have a central nervous system. So, mollusks, they are just—anyway, I know clams, oysters. There are some individuals who are vegan that are comfortable eating those. And those are actually the sanest of the SANE in terms of like things like oysters, clams. These are incredibly SANE options. If those aren’t an option either amino acid supplement is definitely something to look into. So, definitely supplementing with branch chained amino acids. And look, at the end of the day the key thing is if you cannot eat six 30 grams servings of protein a day because you are a strict vegan that doesn’t mean you can’t have wild success SANEtizing what you can eat.

 

So, there is a lot of—actually Joel Fuhrman is famous for talking about vegetarians who actually should be called junketerians because if you know, a Snickers bar is plant based. It’s vegetarian, it doesn’t have any animal products in it, but it doesn’t mean it’s good for you. So, there is room for SANity, there is room for focusing on satisfying ingressive nutritious and efficient foods within whatever set of foods you are sort of already comfortable eating. Hopefully that helps. We can obviously get into more specifics. There is a bunch of guidance on the site. In fact, Christina who’s story I actually shared in the master class, she is—I believe she’s either vegetarian or vegan and she, I mean, she went off her diabetes medication, she lost 45 pounds, she got pregnant after trying for eight years and she’s still a vegetarian. She just SANEtized her vegetarian lifestyle. So, had some amazing, amazing progress there.

 

All right. So, got four more questions and I’m going to try to go through them quickly because I actually have a few things I want to share at the end here, but I kind of promised I’d try to get to everyone’s questions. This says, I hear a lot about balancing your hormones so that your body can work efficiently and then I see information about supplements that I should be using. What are your thoughts on this? How as a non-medical person am I supposed to know which supplements will balance my hormones? Here is the short answer. My thought on supplements are I don’t think you really need a bunch of supplements. I think supplements could be a supplement, but like the nature of this question is that there is all this information about supplements and because of that I’m getting stressed out and am focused on I’m not doing this correctly. Stop. Like it’s not your fault. That anything that is distracting you, like even me, if you hear me say, “Eat 12 servings of vegetables.” and you’re like, this guy is talking about 12 servings of vegetables. I can’t eat 12 servings of vegetables. I’m stressed out because I’m not eating 12 servings of vegetables.” Then take the volume on your computer and just turn it down. Because anything that makes you feel like you’re out of control, you’re not doing this right even though you’re taking steps in the right direction ignore it. Right. There is no supplement in the world that is more important to balancing your hormones than you feeling the sense of nutritional serenity. There is no supplement in the world that is more important than you feeling a sense of accomplishment and nutritional serenity and focusing on those process based goals around non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, and whole food fats, sleeping more, drinking more water, moving your body and exercising eccentrically. Bottom line, anything that is distracting you from that please, give yourself permission to just turn that down and say, “Look, my whole life (…)” Like, I mean, don’t take my word for it, just try it. Our whole lives we’ve been just distracted, but this trick and this tip and you need to take this and do this and don’t do—oh, my gosh! Butter’s good for you, butter’s bad for you. Butter is good for you, butter is bad for you. For 12 weeks ideally longer, but for 12 weeks just as an experiment just turn all that down and immerse yourself in just simple SANity. How can I eat more vegetables, how can I eat more nutrient dense protein? How can I get the balance of my calories from whole food fats? How can I move my body more? How can I sleep more? How can I love my life? How can I develop peaceful loving relationships with people? Just like those big rocks. Just try it, give yourself permission to try it. It’s going to do more for you.

 

So, the answer to your question is I would just turn the volume down on that confusion. Just give yourself permission. Like, if it makes you feel better write it down and like right now it’s 1/19/2016, say, “I will think about this five months from now.” Like once you’ve got SANity, once you’ve got started on SANity. That way your brain can sort of say, “I’m good.” Because you’ll think about it. I acknowledge that this is a problem that I will solve just not right now because I’m going to give myself permission to focus on these other things first.

 

Strategies for actually implementing and committing to prep time and planning of meals, making meals and snacks ahead of time to avoid convenience food, how to better help friends and family members understand and see the research behind this in order to break out of the cycle of two hour long strenuous workouts five days a week and the guilt that is result of missing a day in the routine? So, the good news is that the second part of the question hopefully we chatted about it a little bit earlier in terms of the serenity and stuff. Prep time and planning of making meals and snacks ahead of time to avoid convenience foods. The biggest thing we should dig into this more in the support group, the biggest thing is it’s got to be batched cooking. Like, it’s got to be every single time you cook you’re not cooking for just that meal. You’re not ever, if you ever grocery shop for one meal like please, please try to not do that. So, every time you cook like there is a fixed cost associated with cooking. You got to go in the kitchen, you got to chop stuff. Like if you’re going to chop vegetables, chop a lot of vegetables. Like if you’re going to cook nutrient dense protein cook a lot of them. Freeze them. If you can afford it get a stand alone freezer. I have a stand alone freezer in my garage. I think it’s packed. If I’m cooking I do 90% of my cooking on weekends and I’m just cooking, I got my audiobook on, I’m listening to the audiobooks and I’m just cooking away. And I’m freezing stuff and I basically have a little cycle.

 

And if you look at people that are athletes or people that are bodybuilders it’s—they are just Tupperware [inaudible 01:26:30]. It’s just Tupperware. They’ve jut got freezer full of Tupperware, it’s Monday, I take my food out for Tuesday, I put it in refrigerator so it thaws out over night, and I eat it the next day. Boom, we take it out there. So, that’s why in your SANE, a lot of your SANE recipes, your SANE meal plans people like, “Oh, my Gosh! You’re making so much food.” Yes. It’s servings of the main dish, it’s 12 servings of the side because I couldn’t even make this work. If I had to grocery shop and cook from scratch every single time I wanted to eat can’t happen. But if you could set aside four hours on the weekend which sounds like a lot of time, but when you think about driving to the gym and exercising, showering, driving back home. Do that twice a week that’s at least four hours. [Inaudible 01:27:20] if you do it in bulk, if you do it in batches that can help so, so, so much. And obviously there’s a bunch of information in that of the step by step courses on the site, but I promise you batch cooking, bulk preparation is absolutely the key. It’s transformative. Big pans, big pots, Costco, Sam’s Club, buying things in bulk on the Internet. And it saves you so much money. So much money. So, it saves you money, it saves you time, it makes you SANE. Boom, three for three.

 

All right. Strategy needed for green, leafy intake. Finding it difficult to drink smoothies every day, almost nauseous. Do I take a few days break or try alternating days? Absolutely. If you’re feeling nauseous don’t keep doing that. Definitely alternate days. You can also make smoothies with not green leafy vegetables. And I’m sorry. We’re [inaudible 01:28:11] time. So, we got to kind of blow through this show real quick. Let me just give you one example, and that is at Costco they sell, it’s called a Normandy blend. It’s a frozen vegetable mix of cauliflower, broccoli, yellow carrots and orange carrots. And if you take that and you put it in a blender with boiling water because it’s frozen, and you add like a little bit of strawberries to it and cinnamon and maybe some vanilla it’s delicious, it’s fantastic. I know it sounds a little bit strange. Trust me. A lot of stuff sounds strange. You know, eating processed soy and wheat and corn sounds strange, but that’s what 60 you know—prior to going SANE the average American eats 60% of their calories from that stuff. So, just you can make smoothies, you don’t have to always eat green leafy vegetables. You can eat green vegetables in other formats. You can sauté them, eat them with some butter, eat them with some sautéed bacon. But again, like you can make mashed cauliflower, you can make smoothies with non green leafy vegetables. And then of course, you could do the tricks we talked about in our last recording which is available on the website—or two recordings ago, two sessions, three sessions ago we talked about a bunch of smoothie tricks and that can be very, very helpful.

 

One more question. Here we got night workers. How do you do this when you work the graveyard shift? And this is basically what do you do? We can dig into this more in the support group for sure, but as a general rule of thumb, eating non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats and low fructose fruits regardless of when you’re awake or you’re asleep that doesn’t change. So, I don’t know in terms of the general exercise and eating guidelines how when you work would necessarily effect that. I’m not familiar with the research on like circadian rhythms and what that might do to your hormones. I know that human body is a brilliantly adaptive thing. So, I wouldn’t let that get in your way. I would say you know, if at all possible give yourself permission to say you know, you’ve been blessed with the opportunity to, if you’re working the night shift, chances are you’re doing something that’s very, very important. And first of all, you’re a rockstar because if you work from 11 P.M. to 7 A.M. my hat is off to you to begin with. So, you’re already a rockstar and you already do something that 99% of the population can’t even imagine doing. So, if anything I would say here you go, here is my short answer. My short answer, two parts. One, the general eating and exercise guidelines are not changed, but my second part of the answer is that if you work from 11 P.M. to 7 A.M. and you’ve done that for any period of time you have proven that you are making Robert Frost so proud because you are on the road less traveled and it’s making all the difference, you are a freaking rockstar when it come to doing stuff that not everyone else can do. So, if you can do that you can do SANity. All right. Like that’s you know, so many amazing members of our community are mothers and I hear the stories of about you know, getting up late nights and I’m—so, I’m kind of dreading that in the coming years. My wife and I finally have the opportunity to have children, but it’s like think about the things you’ve already done in your life—and we talk about eating more vegetables. Like raising a newborn, eating more vegetables. Whoa. You know, if you raised a newborn, if you can work 11 P.M. to 7 A.M., if you’ve gotten a law degree, if you’ve done you know, all these other things that you’ve done successfully in your life you can do this too.

 

So, on that note I have two things that I want to share at the end here. Where are they? I’m so sorry. Oh, here they are. Okay. So, I’ll save one of them for next time. I don’t want to keep you in suspense, but we’re out of time. So, the—what I wanted to share in closing here is a poem or something that’s actually from Mother Theresa and if you haven’t heard this, of if you have, hopefully it will be very helpful. It means a lot to me and I hope it will mean a lot to you. And as always, thank you so much for sharing your evening with me, thank you for sharing your SANity with me and the entire SANE team. Thank you for the commitment you’ve made to SANity, you are on a noble mission. Right. You are doing something that is meaningful and will form your life, it has to, right. Eating more of that which is essential for life so much so that you’re too full for that which is not essential and toxic has to work. It can’t not work. So, if we can just have our minds right there is nothing that can stand in our way. Will you be perfect tomorrow? No. But, that’s not our goal. Will people give us a hard time? Maybe. Will they come around? Absolutely. And even if you give us a hard time this piece by Mother Theresa is called Do It Anyway. And if you don’t mean I would like to read it to you here. All right. So, here it goes.

 

Fail, right out of the gate. All right. Progress not perfection. Hold on, let me get a drink of water here. Long day. Okay. Here we go. Okay. This is called Do It Anyway. People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank may people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building someone could destroy over night. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you have got anyway. You see, in the final analysis it’s between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. And I mean, those words mean so much to me. Regardless of your spiritual position it’s not about you, them, it’s about you and your purpose and the deeper meaning that you’re here. It’s not about you meaning better or worse than someone else. It’s just about you actualizing the greatness that’s within you and not letting anything stand in that way. Especially not ourselves and these sort of false, unreasonable expectations that we put on ourselves to be perfect and better and perfect at everything immediately and better than everyone at everything immediately. And I’m the worst at this. So, you know, I’m still learning. And I see things out there and I say, “Oh, why aren’t I doing that? Why isn’t it Oprah Winfrey part of SANE instead part of Weight Watchers? I should have done a better job.” But, you know, it’s not about you and them, it’s about you manifesting your unique beauty and talents and I hope that SANE can help you do that. And again, thank you for being here. I hope this was helpful. Little bit different than our previous sessions, but hopefully you liked it. And always I am super happy to hear some feedback. Of course, the show—the show. The session will be up within the next 72 hours and again, thank you so much for your time, for your commitment, for your SANity. And we will chat again soon. See you guys. Thank you so much.