Hi! I'm your SANE concierge. What can I help you find today?

11.24.15


Jonathan: Alright, so there actually was a couple things that we can do here. What’s up Fran, we’re just getting started! Alright. So if you take a look in the little chat box to the right of the screen there’s a couple cool things it can do. Obviously you can chat there; there should be a few little controls there; you can actually request to speak. That’s not a hugely popular option but it’s there if you want to try it out. So we can actually dialogue. I think we can actually see each other if you really want to. If you really want to share video and you’ve got a webcam, we are always trying to do neat things. So that will work. Alright so. It sounds like everyone can hear me. Where are we at in terms of time? Yeah, we’re three minutes over, so we’re going to get started. Grab my little sticky note; grab the awesome questions everyone sent in, which I very much appreciate. Then if anyone can’t hear me or can’t see me, or you have any feedback or anything, please just go ahead and drop that into the chat box. Alright. Cool beans. We’re going to get stated officially!

Hey what’s up everybody? Thank you very much for joining us for the coaching call tonight. This is going to be awesome. As you know from previous sessions, we heard the feedback and we’ve actually done everything we can to split these sessions up so we have a little bit smaller of a group, so we’ve got a bit more of a – oh I’ve got something happening here. What’s happening here? Oh, sorry. I thought I had someone requesting to speak. So we’re going to have a smaller number of attendees so we can have a little bit more intimate of a conversation, which is always awesome. We’re going to try to keep that up as long as we can. In the new year it might be a little bit hard. January’s a very busy time for everyone with the New Year, New You, but we’re going to try to keep it as intimate as we can and as long as we can keep the sessions small.

I’m so sorry about the confusion earlier today with scheduling. That was my fault. I apparently don’t know now to add. So all good, all good. So yeah, we got a pretty intimate group here tonight, which will be great. We’ve got the holiday coming up. As always, a little bit of house cleaning at the beginning. You can see this in the chat box, hopefully there’s a Q&A. You should see something that’s kind of green. If you could let me know if you don’t see that I would appreciate it. Just please keep in mind that we are going to absolutely go over all the questions you have. I’m going to give you all the value that I possibly can. I’m here as long as you want, within reason, and it’s going to be awesome. I’ll answer specific questions, and I’m also going to do everything that I can to make my specific answers also genera. So an example I like to give at the start of these sessions is someone might ask a question about athletics. You might say I’m 75 years old, this is a waste of my time, we’re talking about athletics. I’m always going to try to not only provide those specific answers, but what you’re hopefully going to see is it’s all always going to tie back to the core principles of Sanity. With those core principles of Sanity, even if the specific topic doesn’t apply to you directly, it will help you to master your Sanity, which is always the goal here.

Hopefully it’s not too distracting what I’m looking at. I need to read the questions and read the chat while I’m going here. so I might look at the camera sometimes like this, and I might look away from the camera. If that starts to bother you just throw it in the chat and I’ll try to do a better job. Please also keep in mind I’m going to get as specific as I can without getting, as always, into specific medical concerns or medical diagnoses. That is not only irresponsible for me to do, because I don’t have your full medical history, but it’s actually illegal to do. Believe it or not, even if I was a doctor, which I’m not, it’s actually illegal for doctors to provide medical consultations outside of the state they’re licensed in. So you just want to be careful with that in general. So I’m going to provide as much value as I can without jeopardizing your health. My goal is to help your health, but if I don’t know your full medical history, I cannot and should never – no one should provide medical advice.

With all that said, please also note that we’re recording this and we’re recording it so that you can access it in the future, which is great. But that said, please don’t use your last name. Please don’t say anything you wouldn’t want shared anywhere. So stick to first names. You can of course say anything you want about me. I want to respect your privacy. My life is already an open book, so that’s kind of a lost cause. Alright cool, that’s all taken up. We’ve got the house cleaning, we talked about a little bit of the disclaimer. We’re going to go specific but always keep it general so we can all get value out of this. And we’ve divided these sessions up so that we’re going to have a bit more of an intimate setting so we can dig into stuff. So please again, even if you didn’t submit questions beforehand, please free to shoot them in the chat box. Take a look in the upper right-hand corner of your window, you should see some tools there. You can request to speak, you can interact, we can do fun stuff together. Man, it’s going to be good! I always enjoy these, this is the highlight of my week. It’s been a busy week and hopefully everyone has wonderful Thanksgiving plans for the members who are in the States. So that will be cool.

Alright. So first thing, I always like to start these calls, sessions, whatever they are, web virtual meetings, with a goal statement. So the goal for this call, and for all these calls, is I want you to always know that you have a home and you’re not alone. Honestly, this is a week of Thanksgiving here in the States, and I honestly, from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for being here. I want to thank you for being a part of the Ignite family. We’ve seen a tremendous uptake of the new Ignite program, and that’s thanks to you. I just want to thank you so much for sharing your time, for sharing your resources with us to enable us to spread this SANE message, and I want you to know that I’m going to do everything I can here, and in any other interaction we have, and any other interaction you have with SANE, to make sure that you have an incredibly delightful experience. So, if that’s ever not the case, let me know personally. I can’t be everywhere at all times, but I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure we, the SANE team, serve you because as you hopefully know, this is my life. This is what I do. I’m just so thankful that you have enabled me and enabled the entire SANE team to do that. So thank you very much.

Alright. So the goal, what’s the goal? The goal is obviously you’re going to get something…. The goal is smile, be motivated. These are coaching calls. So after you work with a coach you should not only have some actionable steps that you can take, but you should also feel motivated, and you should also feel like you’re at home. You should feel like you’re part of a family, part of a team because you are. So if you haven’t yet jumped in the SANE Support Group, please let’s keep this going. This can’t be the only time we interact. We’ve got to interact in support group, we’ve got to leverage all the SANE Ignite tools we have. So hopefully that’s helpful. The goal for today, you should leave more informed. You should leave more excited. You should leave more educated, and you should feel a sense of community and a sense of belonging. So if we haven’t reached that goal by the end please let me know. And if we have, please let me know, because I want to make sure our time is good together here.

With that said, we are going to start to dig into some specific Q&A that was sent in, then if we have time at the end I always like to throw in some additional stuff. Remember, please don’t tune out if a specific question doesn’t apply to you. I’m going to try to make all the questions apply to everybody. I know that doesn’t make sense if this is your first call, but hopefully it makes sense soon. This first question is a great example of a very specific question. I’m actually going to do these in the order they were submitted, so let me invert these actually. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about right now, before all these calls I send out a scheduling survey email, so you can submit questions via that survey email. The questions get answered on a first come first serve basis. You can also submit questions during the session here.

The very first question here is, just reading verbatim: “I am adopted, was taken from my natural mother at birth and seemed to struggle with very visceral need to eat, particularly when stressed.” Ah, so just very strong need to eat, particularly when stressed. So emotional eating, a very important topic and I’m so happy we get to talk about this because I want to go into this in a little bit of depth. The first thing to keep in mind about emotional eating, and if you cannot hear or see me please post something in the chat box. So the key thing to keep in mind about emotional eating, first and foremost, is most people will say that emotional eating is something that is bad and should be avoided. I have two problems – I actually have a problem with that whole statement. That it’s bad and it needs to be avoided. One, emotional eating isn’t bad. Emotional eating is actually synonymous with eating. Very few people, unless maybe you’ve seen the movie the Matrix, and in the movie the Matrix they eat this white goop that just provides amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, and there’s no emotion.

So, all eating is emotional, right? One of the key things I love about the SANE lifestyle, the SANE journey that we’re on together is if you try to take the emotion out of eating, you’re in some ways taking the emotion out of life. You’re reducing enjoyment in general. So what we need to do is not take the emotion out of eating. That can’t happen. That’s like saying if only I didn’t get tired. Right? Like you’re going to get tired; you’re going to get thirsty; you’re going to get hungry; you’re going to be emotional. When you do get emotional you’re going to look for ways to quell those emotions. This is also when you’re in positive emotions. What we have to do is we have to figure out the right foods to eat in those moments. Right? What a lot of people are going to tell you is to rely on willpower. The big difference with SANE eating is that we’re not going to rely on willpower. We’re going to rely on information; we’re going to rely on science, because willpower is a finite resource, whereas knowledge really isn’t. We can continue to expand our knowledge. There isn’t a finite amount of knowledge that we can have. There isn’t a finite amount of support and resources that we can get. We do have a finite amount of willpower. So, if our approach to emotional eating is that we’re just going to will our way through it and we’re just going to say either one, “I’m not going to get emotional” which is not possible. Obviously we can do deep spiritual work to help to control our emotions, but that’s not the topic of this conversation.

So, if we assume that we are going to feel emotions and we assume that we are going to eat as a result, again the key is not to emotionally eat. I emotionally eat every single day. I’ll be very honest with you. The number one thing that I look forward to every single day is in the evening, spending some time with my wife. We sit down, we watch some Netflix, and I’m eating. I’m eating SANE snacks. Actually, we have a new SANE snack that we’re going to be rolling out in the New Year, which is something that I really enjoy but don’t want to turn this into a commercial and it’s not even available yet, so I don’t want waste too much time on that. But I’m focusing on my SANE foods, and I’m enjoying them, and I’m loving them, and I’m ensuring that what I’m eating is SANE. I’ve been known to just have a big bowl of sugar-snap peas, or a big bowl of shredded cabbage, which I know might sound ridiculous if you’re new to Sanity. But as you start going SANE and as your taste buds change, when you bite into a sugar-snap pea, it’s going to be about as sweet to you as a Cocoa-Cola would be for a normal person. Or let me say a typical person. So that’s going to seem less strange as time goes on, I promise.

So, emotional eating, one being considered as something that is abnormal or wrong, I disagree with that. I think that all eating is emotional and I think that to try to take the emotion out of eating is impossible. I think instead of trying to take the emotion out of eating, we need to put sanity and correct information back into eating, so that when we eat we can experience positive emotions. We can experience sweet, salty, bitter, all the different flavors, and we can enjoy those with confidence, and we can enjoy those with [inaudible 0:12:38] so that we don’t overdo it. This is also another reason why staying so full of SANE foods that we’re too full for insane foods is so important, because we are going to hit those emotional roadblocks. We are going to run out of will power, independent of eating, right? Life is hard.

There’s other things that are going to tax our will power. I don’t want to spend our will power on what we’re eating. So, if we’re starving, and then our will power is taxed, then we emotionally eat, it’s going to be really hard to make SANE choices. Right? That’s when insanity and INSANITY happens, when we’re out of will power and we’re super, super hungry. So we’ve got to stay full of our SANE foods, have to know what sane foods are. Then, when it comes time to emotionally eat, we just need to make sure we’re emotionally eating on the proper SANE foods. Again, if you’ve got follow-up questions please just put them in the chat box. But the need to eat, particularly when stressed… Again, you’re in the right place, right? I love eating. SANE lifestyle is for people who like to eat.

At the end of the day, this is an example of taking a specific and making it general. What’s the difference between a SANE lifestyle and a calorie counting Weight Watchers type of lifestyle? Weight Watchers says explicitly on their website and in their ads – this is not a criticism, this is just a fact – you don’t have to give up anything. Nothing. You can eat whatever you want, just don’t eat more than 1200 calories, or don’t eat more than 1400 calories. If you choose to eat cake for breakfast, which might sound ridiculous, but that’s what most muffins are. They’re just cake for breakfast, they’re just called muffins. Then you can do that, but you just can’t eat dinner, because you only have a certain number of points.

In a lot of ways, SANE is the opposite of that. We say, in the Weight Watchers model is eat a limited quantity of unlimited foods, many of these things aren’t even foods. In the SANE model, we say “Eat an unlimited of a specific set of foods.” Actually, this is why sometimes we don’t get to all the questions, I’m sorry, but I hope this is helpful. Sometimes I get a little riled up. If I start to get too off track, just put it in the chat box please.

We’re talking about the difference between calorie counting – when you calorie count emotional eating is a huge problem because at the end of the day you only get a certain number of points, you’re done. Food is thought of as the bad thing. If you calorie count food is the enemy. In Sanity, food is your friend. It’s like your metabolism is on fire, in a bad. I guess Ignite we shouldn’t – that’s a bad analogy! Let’s say your metabolism was on fire in a bad way and you want to put it out. The way you put it out is like dousing it with more and more of the right SANE foods. Now in that model of an unlimited quantity of a specific set of foods, the number one thing that some people are going to say as an objection is there is a choice that has to be made here. The Weight Watcher’s model is eat whatever you want, just less than 1200 calories. The SANE model is eat as much as you want, just from non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits, in that order.

So if you want to emotionally eat, not if you want to, we all emotionally eat all the time. Emotionally eat on non-starchy vegetables first. Then emotional eat on nutrient dense protein. Then it will be impossible for you to emotionally eat any more. What I mean by this, and we’re going to get to this in a bit because there’s another question about athletics, you hear these stories about Michael Phelps, or you hear these stories about me when I was younger. People who are trying to gain weight, people who are trying to do athletic things. It’s impossible to overeat calories when you eat calories when you eat SANE properly. You cannot do it. It would physically hurt to put 4000 calories of SANE foods into your body. You can’t do it.

Most body builders, or most athletes don’t eat a huge number of vegetables, simply because they can’t – like that would crowd out the macro-nutrients, or calories they need. We don’t need an excess of calories if we’re trying to lose weight. We already have a bunch of calories stored in our body. Now, what we need to do is restore our body’s ability to burn those calories. We don’t need to starve ourselves. We just need to restore our body’s ability to balance calories for us.

This is all to say that in the SANE model, in the SANE model it’s all about an unlimited quantity of a specific set of foods. The disclaimer that I want to give to you, “Oh that’s limiting” like you’re not really enjoying life. You’re only eating a specific set of foods. In all honesty, the natural state of humanity is to only eat certain things. Right? Even at the most basic level. Like let’s not get into religious dietary restrictions, let’s just talk about the fact that we don’t just eat all mushrooms. We don’t just eat all berries. We don’t just eat all plants. Human beings can’t digest grass.

Just anecdotally, cows eat grass. Cows can digest grass. Humans can’t. So, it’s a plan that humans can’t eat. Just because we can ingest something doesn’t mean we can or we should. Quite honestly, a lot of us would be better off eating grass than eating a lot of the edible products that are served to us now days. So just because something’s called food doesn’t actually mean it’s something that we should eat, and it doesn’t meant that by avoiding it, or rather by eating so much of SANE foods that we’re too full for it, that we’re in any way depriving ourselves. Right? If you live your life without ever taking horribly deleterious illegal drugs, I don’t think you’ll lay on your death bed saying, “Man, I never knew what it felt like to smoke crack.” I know that might sound like an extreme example, but more people die per year, and more people suffer per year due to lifestyle diseases associated with eating improper foods than due to illegal drugs and criminal violence combined. So it might seem crazy, but when you look at the data it’s actually not.

So, emotional eating. Emotional eating is fine and I would encourage us to be happy and to experience all the emotions when we eat, as long as we’re emotional eating on SANE foods. Now I will mention one potential downfall here. Whole food fats are SANE foods. Do not… Do not emotionally eat on just whole food fats. Do not – if you are having a tough day and if you’re very hungry, do not sit down in front of the television with a two pound bag of macadamia nuts. That’s not going to work out well! So again, it’s non-starchy vegetables first. Nutrient dense proteins second, then when you get your allocated servings of those, then we move on to the whole food fats. Right?

Okay, so hopefully that was helpful for the question about emotional eating. If it wasn’t please post a follow-up comment. Alright, we’ve got some more here. This one says, “While I know advice must be limited because of liabilities, I feel it’s critical that I get specific advice on how to address the efficacy of a program, and any modifications necessary, to my diagnosis of end-stage liver disease.” Goodness. “I am making every attempt to extend my life. I really need help in the form of knowledge to make this possible.”

This is a great example of a questions which I’m going to try to help with. So obviously the person here already notices that I can’t provide a medical diagnosis, but I think the important thing to recognize in this question is that everything that we’re doing here with Sanity has to be – hopefully you took this away from the Master Class, which is what we’re doing here is a compass. It’s a road map. Now, let me give you a simpler example. People will often say as you get further into the SANE program, you’re going to start to learn about eccentric exercise, and I think we have some questions hopefully we can get to today about that. Because you learn eccentric exercise doesn’t meant that a qualified personal trainer couldn’t help you. They could absolutely help you because they can do things that the information and the tools that SANE provides can’t do. They can be there watching you while you exercise.

Now, when it comes to specific medical conditions, what’s really neat and what you know about SANE is SANE is the single most medically supported lifestyle eating and exercise program in the history of the world. What you can do, and what I’d highly recommend, especially for this individual who I’m so sorry to hear that you’re diagnosis of end-stage liver disease, is take the Calorie Myth book. Take the e-books, the startup guides that you discover in your Ignite program, request that your physician or your specialist takes a look at them. They might not be able to read the whole book, but they might be able to read one of the e-books for example.

Or look, you can also just tell your physician, talk to your physician and say, “Hey, I’m going to try to change my way of eating to be focusing first on non-starchy vegetables.” Non-starchy vegetables are those that could be eaten raw, not necessarily, and maybe highlight to your physician some of your favorite non-starchy vegetables. Maybe you say, “Hey, I’m really trying to eat more spinach. I really like spinach. I’m trying to eat more kale. I enjoy carrots. I like to eat a lot of mushrooms, and I’m eating a lot of them. I’m eating a lot of them doc. I’m eating more humanely raised seafood. I’m eating more humanely raised animals. I’m eating some more eggs. I’m eating more low-sugar dairy. I’m eating more raw nuts and seeds, not the honey-roasted type. And I’m eating a lot more of low-fructose fruits, like berries and citrus. In fact, I’m eating so many of those foods I just mentioned doctor that I’m often too full for starches and sweets, and I’m really trying to avoid drinking sugar. So I’m really just trying to eat more vegetables, nutritious sources of proteins, lower sugar fruits, and I’m trying to get most of my calories from whole food sources of fat, rather than from sugar. Now doc, how should I custom tailor that based on my diagnosis of end-stage liver disease, or any other condition?”

That’s going to be extremely helpful. I think having your doctor go in there, because for example sometimes there’s conditions – you’re on oxalates, sometimes there’s some conditions you’re on thyroid disease where certain green vegetables that aren’t cooked can cause problems. Obviously, so peanuts or legumes – legumes are in the zero to two servings per day category. So according to the general SANE compass, the general SANE template, it would be fine generally to eat a serving of peanuts per day. I love shelled peanuts. One of my favorite things in the world. But obviously if you have a peanut allergy don’t do that. If you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock, trust your medical diagnosis. Trust your individual circumstance more than the general SANE guidelines, but use them as a compass.

Let’s continue that compass analogy. If the compass says go north to get to your destination, but you look up and you’re walking and north the road is cut out. So there’s a bridge and the bridge is broken. Even though the compass says go north, you’re not just going to keep walking north and fall off the face of the cliff, right? So same thing here. See SANE as that template. See SANE as that starting point and coach along the way. But when it comes to things like end-stage liver disease, or for example parents who are trying to help children with certain – like autism, things like that – we can certainly talk about things that will help there. But I work with a physician and specifically end-stage liver disease, that’s something that you definitely want to talk to the physician about because that which is taxing the liver is something which is going to – it’s just really contingent on where you’re at personally.

Hopefully that helps a little bit. I apologize that I can’t provide a specific medical diagnosis for you, but please just take that template, consult with your physician. Do note that a lot of sugar and excessive starch causes all sorts of liver problems. That’s all the super high fructose diets, that’s going straight through your liver. That’s taxing the heck out of your liver. So what I can tell you is that by dramatically releasing the amount of fructose in your diet, which is going to happen automatically if you just eat SANE. When you start to get away from the packaged and processed nonsense, and start moving towards the whole foods. The amount of fructose in your diet is going to drop radically. It’s going to drop to natural levels. That in and of itself is really going to help your liver function. Also, obviously with the reduction of sugar and starch in general, that’s going to help avoid fatty liver disease, things like that. So generally lots of good help to the liver, then obviously keeping your body in a non-acidic state, keeping it alkaline with the green vegetables also a good thing. So hopefully that is helpful.

Next question here. “Are there special considerations that either male or females need to take to keep SANE?” The number one thing I like to say about the male / female question is while there are certainly differences between men and women, obviously. Sometimes that gets overstated from a dietary perspective. Let me give you an example. Food is medicine. I didn’t come up with that, nobody in the modern age. Hippocrates, the father of western medicine said, “Food be thy medicine.” So that statement’s been around for a long time. When you think about medicine, when you think about anything you put into your body, if you have a headache, we don’t have women’s aspirin and men’s aspirin. If you get strep throat we don’t have female penicillin and male penicillin. There’s the human genome, and obviously there’s going to be some differences between men and women.

When it comes to your core, core biology the big things, like the things in Sanity that we’re really focused on – non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, low-fructose fruits. That is one 100% the same for females as it is for males. The reason I just want to stress this is not because there’s no difference between men and women, but only because the difference between men and women has been over exaggerated and it’s over exaggeration has done a disservice, especially to women. Let me give you an example.

Resistance training has been demonized in sort of the females, to females. So females have been told don’t weight train. If you weight train you’re going to build up the bulky muscle, you’re going to look like a man, you should work out like a woman needs to work out, and not how like a man needs to work out. This has done a horrible disservice to women, and actually for men as well. For example, a lot of men will be hesitant to do yoga because they’ll think it’s more of a female type of exercise. So this is a perfect example. Exercise is a perfect example. Yoga would be thought of, generally, as a female form of exercise. Whereas weight lifting, or strength training, would be thought of as a male form of exercise. Now, hopefully you can see why I get amped up about this because that is absolutely wrong. Yoga is as beneficial for men, arguably maybe more beneficial because of men’s general challenge with flexibility, than it is for women. So men are getting a disservice there.

Then for females, for any human being to not strength train is literally – that would be like saying I’m just not going to walk. I’m never going to walk. Strength training is literally – it’s like breathing. I hope by the time that I leave this earth that strength training is just thought of as a core part of everyone’s existence. Strength training is the only thing that’s ever been shown in a clinical setting to literally reverse aging. When I say that, there’s these things called telum years [0:29:07] on the edge of your chromosomes. We’ve actually seen in studies that when people do resistance training, this was studies done on elderly individuals, people who are past the 70 year mark, they would actually see on a chromosomal level signs of reduced aging. That’s crazy right? It’s extremely powerful.

So, is there a difference between men and women? Yes. Our focusing on the difference is going to do more harm than good? I honestly think until you get to like a world – like if you’re at a 9 out of 10, in terms of health and fitness, then we can talk about the differences between men and women, both in terms of exercise and in terms of eating. But, until you get to that point, and here’s a good example of taking a specific question and making it general. We’ve already heard this. One of the quickest ways to derail your sanity is to try to do too much too soon. But the second, or equally quickest way to derail your sanity is to let minor things get in the way of major things. I think it was Wayne Dyre, awesome self-help guy. He said, “Don’t major in minor things.” Or the ancient philosopher, Goethe said, “That which matters most must never be put second to that which matters least.” Of course, Steven Covey’s third or second law of Highly Effective People, “Put first things first.” The same thing here.

So are there differences between men and women? Yes, they’re probably the last 5 to 10% of the puzzle, and anyone who tells you otherwise I’d look at that at a deeper level. Eating vegetables first. Eating protein second. Eating fats third. Eating low-fructose fruits fourth. Moving your body, strength training, sleeping, reducing stress. Those are equally important for men as they are for women, and 99% of Americans have so much progress they can make in those fields, that if they could master those fields first. Like get a 10 out of 10 on – there’s a good way to put it. Let’s be a 10 out of 10 on the things that are absolutely the same for every person. Man, woman, child. I don’t care if you’re three months old or 103 years old, if you’re a man or a woman. Non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, low fructose fruits, move your body in a safe way. Move your body eccentrically, sleep, destress your body. Let’s nail those things first, and let’s move on to the more advanced things second, because worrying about those advanced things first…

In some ways you may have heard this analogy before, but it’s a bit like you were to walk outside. So actually this might be a helpful thing to write down because it’s kind of funny. The differences between men and women, while they’re true, they can be a distraction. Differences between young and old, while they’re true, they can be a distraction until we get to a certain level of fitness. By way of analogy, imagine you stepped outside of your house and you looked over into your neighbor’s yard and you saw that your neighbor’s car was on fire. Like what? My neighbor’s car is on fire. Then you saw your neighbor run outside and they had Windex in their hand, and they had a rag. They sprinted out and while their car was burning they started to clean this smudge, or let’s say a bird pooped on their windshield. So they started to clean off the bird poop.

Now, let’s be clear. Is it good to clear bird poop off your windshield? Absolutely it’s good. It’s absolutely good to have a bird poop free windshield. But, if our car is burning, we should put our car out first, before worrying about the bird poop on the windshield. So 99% of what you’re going to hear about in magazines, or in the popular press, that’s the bird poop. There’s the analogy. That yes, yes it’s good. I mean, is there – what is one of the more recent things – I don’t’ want to pick on anything… well I’m not going to pick on anything. But eating free-range this versus non-free range this. Of course free range is better. But, do we have an obesity epidemic because we’re not all eating free range chicken? No, we don’t. But is it good to eat free range chicken? Absolutely! Like if you get everything else done, let’s go ahead once that’s done, get the free range chicken. Once the cars not on fire and you get it all fixed up, get that bird poop off the windshield. Let’s put the car out first.

So, that is specific to general way of saying special considerations for either male or female, the only other actual, maybe more concrete answer to that question is the key thing to keep in mind for men and women is often times women are going to have a harder time losing weight. Not because women are somehow genetically predisposed to weight gain, but there’s two very important differences societally and culturally that women experience that makes weight loss later in life harder. So let’s unpack that here for a second. First of all, obviously giving birth to children has a major hormonal impact on females that males will never experience that. So, after you have children that is going to change the way your body works, and that is going to make weight loss a little bit harder. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but I’m sure anyone who’s on this session who’s had a child can attest to the fact that it is just harder to lose weight once you already have a child. So, that’s going to be a difference between men and women.

The other big difference between men and women is obviously the menstrual cycle. The menstrual cycle is going to do things with hormones, it’s going to do things with appetite that men don’t have to deal with, so that can be a challenge for women that men don’t have to deal with. But again, what is the response to that? The response, the solution is always the same. SANE eating and eccentric exercise. So the challenges faced – it is harder, it is harder to be slim as a woman than it is to be slim as a man. That’s just a fact. Women have the deck stacked against them, in terms of the menstrual cycle. They have the deck stacked against them in terms of not having to have children, but having had children. Then societally, woman have had the deck stacked against them in the sense that chances are the females on the call can attest to this, and can certainly the pressure to eat less. The pressure to exercise more. The pressure to constantly be thinking about food. If you take the average female and you were to ask her how many times she’s yo-yo dieted in her life, it’s going to be 5X that of the average man. As you know from what you’re learning in this same program, every time you yo-yo diet that’s not doing any favors to your metabolism. So that’s going to be a challenge as well.

So with females we got to say what the unique situations are? I think the unique situations are that females need to understand that they need to be extra loving to themselves. They live in a culture and a society that’s like oh females, don’t weight train. Oh females, eat less food. Oh females, you should weight less. And all of those things are absolutely false. If you strength train you’re going to develop calorie hungry muscle, and that’s going to slim you down, but it’s actually going to make you weigh more. If you lose 10 pounds of fat and gain 12 pounds of muscle, you will look phenomenally better, and you will feel phenomenally better. But, you’ll be two pounds heavier. Society will say you’re doing something wrong. If you eat a gigantic salad with a big serving of salmon on it and then you put the half an avocado, people will be like “You ate a whole half an avocado Mary? Oh my gosh!” They’ll never say that to Mark. They’ll say that to Mary.

So the only difference between men and women is I would say that women – really reach out to the SANE support group. Reach out on these calls. There’s a lot more nonsense for you to deal with out there. In some ways, men have been told to strength train. Men have been told, “Be a man! Eat! Finish your dinner.” That’s true, we should all finish our dinner, our SANE dinner. We should all strength train, but sadly the beautiful females and wonderful capable females in our society have been told the opposite. So, I would say the only real difference that I would focus on personally, the first half of the answer was why not to focus on this. The second half of the answer is why to focus on it. I need you, especially if you’re in a heterosexual relationship, what you’ll often find is that sometimes the female will be a little bit more excited to go SANE. So she’ll go SANE and her significant other will lose weight faster than she does. She’s like what? He’s not even trying to lose weight. He’s accidentally losing weight and I’m not losing weight, what’s going on?

So the special consideration is please don’t get discouraged. Please don’t get discouraged. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just he likely hasn’t yo-yo dieted fifteen times in his life. He hasn’t been given the same level of bad information you’ve been given. So please don’t feel bad. Please be hyper compassionate and hyper diligent about keeping your lower case sanity in place and understanding that it’s not about being smaller, it’s not about fading into the background. It’s about strengthening the body and strengthening the body through strength training, through more of the right kinds of foods. Look, it’s 2015. It’s not 1925 anymore. This misogynistic nonsense needs to go away. So I’d say there you go!

In summary, the difference between men and women. Eating is basically the same. Exercise is basically the same. Focus on major versus minor things, but as a woman I need you to be extra cautious around the expectations that society’s going to put on you. In some ways, if you’re a female who’s going SANE and getting eccentric, your female friends might give you a harder time than if you’re a man who’s doing those same things with your male friends. That’s just something to be sensitive to and that’s why we’ve got these support groups, that’s why we’ve got these calls. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Alright, that is one I get fired up about! I have a back story with my wife involving that, but I don’t think we have time for that today based on some of the other good questions we’ve got coming in here. Alright, so hopefully this is good here.

This next question is long so I’m going to read it. I might try to summarize it or I might just read it as I go here. “I ran track and cross country during college. Running and cycling has always been important to me. In the past two years I’ve diverted attention away from fitness to other priorities. I’m 50 years old and weighing in at about 180. I want to get to 160 through this program and want to return to competitive running, sub 20-minute 5K would be great, or dare I say get back to sub 5-minute mile one more time. How about I alter my eating if any, if I’m running, cycling, or pool running four to five hours per week to hit my 5K target? What if I like running–” This is great. This is fabulous.

If you’re hearing this and you’re like I don’t ever run. If you see me running you better start running too because there’s probably a bear chasing me. Don’t worry. This is going to be applicable to everybody. This is a great series of questions. “What if I like running? It’s an especially nice way to catch up with a buddy. Just go for a run and have a visit. Do I need to through my life-long training routine and cut over to the SANE exercise program? It’s hard for me to see how I could reach my running goals without my usual training program. Where does alcohol fit into my life? It’s like one or two cold beers or a glass of wine once a week. This is the kind of thing I look forward to on a Friday night. Is this totally out?”

First of all, I want to say thank you to whoever asked this because this is the kind of thing that’s great for us to talk about on these calls, because this is like a scenario. So scenario questions like this are great because we can unpack it, then we can find things about this, which this specific scenario is like a case study. If you ever did case studies in school, this is like a case study. So we’re going to see how do we take the SANE lifestyle and eccentric exercise and apply it to this? I can already tell that no matter who you are, where you are in life, some of the stuff you’re going to hear about because we’re going to apply this knowledge. Okay, like eat vegetables, I get it. But how do you apply it in different contexts? This is a context where we’re going to apply it.

Let’s just take this in order. This person ran track and cross country in college and they’ve always been important. So the very first thing I want to take away from this question is hey, a form of physical activity, other than eccentric exercise, or yoga, or the other things that are talked about, is something that I enjoy. It’s a hobby. Are you saying that I should stop doing that? Thank you for asking that question. That’s extremely important. Here’s key principle to write down: If something brings you lasting joy and makes you feel good long-term, lasting joy. There’s all sorts of things that are going to bring us temporary joy, which aren’t going to cause lasting pain. But if something causes lasting joy that’s what matters. SANE eating and eccentric exercise is about allowing you to thrive and be happy. If running allows you to thrive and be happy, run your brain out. Just don’t do it to the point where it makes you unhappy.

So two scenarios just real quick. One is let’s say the common scenario, which is person wakes up one early, they’re already sleep deprived. So they already only get six hours of sleep per night. They wake up one hour early and now they’re only getting five hours of sleep per night so that they can go run. They’re 60 pounds overweight, which this person isn’t, because this is a male I believe based on the pronouns used. They weigh 180. If someone ways 240 and they’re ideal body composition is like 160, they should never run. That’s going to put horrible stress on your joints, especially if you’re a female based on the way that weight is distributed.

So, they’re getting less sleep. They’re taxing their joints. They’re miserable, it makes them feel terrible. It makes them crave sugar and starch. So don’t do that. But if you run, and running’s always been a big part of your life, it makes you feel great and it makes you feel vibrant, and it makes you feel energized, oh my goodness! Again, SANE is the compass. So what you could do in this scenario is two things: use eccentric training as a compliment. So if you train eccentrically properly, it will impair your ability to run. For example, if you wanted to run a sub 5-minute mile, that’s incredible. Especially I think this individual says “I’m 50 years old” – that’s awesome. But, understand that fitness goals are goal specific. So you can’t train to be a marathon runner and a power lifter at the same time, because they’re fundamentally different energy systems. One’s going to be explosive bursts and – sorry, I got a question that came in there – one is going to be longer distance.

What you could do is use your eccentric exercise as – do it if it’s super good for your health; it could be super good to help you get your weight down, or excuse me, your body fat levels down. I hate talking about weight. Then, if it starts to say like, “I can’t train, I can’t run, my legs are too sore.” Then maybe you need to scale back on the eccentrics, but not because eccentrics aren’t good for you. Simply because for you, in your situation running, roller blading, playing basketball, playing tennis, mountain climbing, or whatever, that’s actually just more important to you. Right? So it’s all about where those priorities lay. So what I would recommend is maybe incorporate some more burst-based interval training into your running. Incorporate eccentrics where you can, then you need to figure out for yourself where you’re going to make that tradeoff, as to what’s more important. Me hitting my sub 5-minute mile, or me just adhering to the eccentric exercise principles as much as I can. I think you can find the perfect balance there.

The key is you’ve got to do what works for you. If I tell you that kale is good for you and you eat kale and you break out in hives, please stop eating kale. Right? SANE is a guide post, it’s a compass. Hopefully that answers that. If it brings you joy do it. How would I alter my eating? This is a great, again, specific question that we can make general as well. Think of food from a science perspective. So take the emotional aspects out of eating. Obviously there’s wonderful emotional components to eating. But we eat, just in geek science terms, for two things. We need energy. We actually need calories. Calories are a measure of energy. We need calories to move our bodies. We also need a central nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and a bunch of other stuff we’re discovering, like phytochemicals, things like that.

Athletes need more energy than non-athletes, bottom line. For example, if you’re going to run a marathon, or if you’re going to do the intensive running training that this individual’s going to do, if all you ate was vegetables you’re not going to be able to do that. You need more raw energy. So vegetables are extremely poor sources of energy. The best source of everything else basically, vitamins, minerals, those types of things. But they’re the worst source of energy. You aren’t going to get enough energy to run a marathon from vegetables, no matter how many vegetables you eat.

Protein, also not a good source of energy. Great source of essential amino acids. Great source of satiety, great source of calorie burning metabolic functions, like muscle protein synthesis, blah blah blah. But not a great source of energy. So, what you’re going to need to focus on more if you’re doing you endurance training is you’re going to have to bump your calories up and you’re going to want to bump your calories up from SANE sources, so that you don’t become diabetic at the same time that you become a great runner. So, instead of just pounding sugar, what you’re actually going to want to do is just focus more on your whole food fats. So focus more on your macadamia nuts, avocados, eggs, and things like that. In fact, when it comes to endurance training, that could be especially helpful. When it comes to burst-based training, like sprinting and power-lifting, sugar has a role. We can probably talk about that in a later coaching session. Just if you don’t have enough energy, just increase more coconut, make a delicious rich smoothie with a bunch of shredded coconut in it. More avocado, more macadamia nuts. I mean, you could put 500 calories of energy in your pocket with macadamia nuts and coconuts. So that’s how I would increase that.

“Do I need to throughout my lifelong training routine so that I can do SANE exercise?” No, absolutely not. Again, it’s always a question of your priorities. What’s more important to you? Learning and doing the SANE exercise routine perfectly? There really is no perfect way to do it. You just learn it and use it to your purposes. Hopefully that’s something you’re going to see in these calls, you’re going to see throughout Sanity. The SANE program, me the entire – we’re here to serve you. Right? If doing eccentric exercise, like “Oh this stinks!” It’s like obviously, if you’re trying to learn the piano, the first couple of years you take it are going to be miserable, but then you’re going to get good at it. Right, there’s a balance here. But if you love running and it makes you happy, I don’t want you to stop doing it. I just want you to take the principles you’re going to learn about eccentric exercise and merge it in.

Alcohol fit. So where does alcohol fit? Alcohol is not SANE. That doesn’t mean it’s something we can never indulge in, as a general rule of thumb. Excuse me one second, this is water. Not gin or – speaking of alcohol. When it comes to alcohol, alcohol is just like anything else that’s insane. Look, it’s a lifestyle choice. If you want to burn fat faster drink more water and green tea and less alcohol. If you don’t want to burn fat as fast, you can drink some alcohol. The alcohol you want to focus on is alcohol that’s going to provide you the least amount of insanity. For example, sugary mixed drink is the worst form of alcohol to drink. Not only is it alcohol, which does things to your liver and does things to your metabolism, there’s a reason they call it a beer belly. Alcohol actually selectively helps you to store tummy fat, but it’s got a bunch of sugar in it. Same thing with beer.

Beer is like alcohol plus starch put together. Does that mean you can never drink beer? No, it just means though that maybe if you’ve done everything else and you’re not where you want to be, maybe you switch from beer to clear liquor, or wine. So like a white wine especially, the less sugar the better. So clear liquor is going to be better than darker liquor. That’s the general rule of thumb. It’s going to sound strange, but basically the lower calorie that the alcohol, the more SANE it’s going to be, because all the calories from alcohol are insane. So to minimize, just like if you were to eat cookies. If you were to eat an insane food, the less of them you eat the better. So all things considered, a lower calorie cookie is better for you than a higher calorie cookie, because it’s a lower quantity of the low quality. So you want to look for alcohol that is basically just the lowest calorie form of alcohol you can find, and that’s going to be the best alcohol for you. Not because you’re counting calories, but simply because those are all insane calories, and we want SANE calories, not insane calories. Hopefully that makes sense.

So one to two cold beers, or a great glass of wine once a week – hey, great glass of wine once a week, oh my goodness. Like I would consider you a 10 our of 10 Sanity if you’re nailing everything else and having a glass of wine once per week. I think there’s even some research that might suggest that that’s a good thing to do. So I think you’d be fine there.

Alright. Hopefully that’s helpful. We’ve got some questions coming in here. I always like to get some of our live questions here. These are coming from Beth, because I love participation. It gets lonely over here sometimes. –are we on time? Oh, we’re doing good. We’re doing good. Alright, cool beans.– Beth, what is going on? Thank you for your questions.

Beth says, “I know you cannot give medical advice, but I am hoping through this program I may ween off my medications” – for what it’s worst, you will not be the first or the last person who has gone off medications after and while doing this program. “I’ve been on antidepressant medication since I had my first child nine years ago. Also off and on for several years. I can already see how much better I’m feeling eating all the vegetables. Are you aware of participants who have been able to ween off…” Okay, Beth. I’m personally grateful that you asked this question because I’ve been blessed with an amazing family. This is great because we’re all family here, part of the SANE inner circle, so I feel comfortable sharing this stuff with you guys. I don’t talk about this stuff publically.

People aren’t having heart attacks in my family. They’re not having strokes in my family. But mental struggles run in my family, severely. Multiple suicide attempts. Personally, I am very fortunate to not have the severity like this, speaking about other members of my family. Certainly I have my own highs and lows, but I’ve been very fortunate to not have the diagnosed challenges. But institutionalizations, high dose – I mean, people in my family, you know, lithium, all of it. In fact hospitalized because of like lithium poisoning, and blah blah blah. Okay, so it’s a very serious thing.

First thing I’m going to say is do a search in the Ignite site for Elizabeth Brondolo, B-R-O-N-D-O-L-O. She was a wonder physician that we spoke with about this topic, and she gets into wonderful depth about the impact of pharmaceuticals, the impact of antidepressant medication. It’s just a brilliant interview. So just in general, on your program.sanesolution.com, the SANE concierges, search for antidepressants. Search for all that SSRIs, so on and so forth. There’s a huge amount of wonderful resources, and yes as you probably recall from the master class. I can speak to this from personal experience. There was a period of time in my life where I was going through an exceptionally hard time. This is when I was transitioning, when I was still at Microsoft fulltime, and I was transitioning to being the CEO of the SANE Solution, or the formal name of the company is Yopti, LLC. So I was working literally working two 60+ hour jobs per week and I like started shaking and just couldn’t – like TOO MUCH!

I went to go see my doctor. I had to take medical leave from Microsoft. I’m better now though, but the physician told me there’s three things we can do for you right now. We can put you on medication. We can have you see a counselor, or you can start exercising, or some combination of the three. Now, first and foremost I want to highlight how cool it is that even the most conservative of mainstream medicine standard of care, physicians have to practice with what’s called standard of care or they can be sued. Standard of care for anxiety and mood related disorders are starting to really recognize the importance of eating and exercise choices. In fact, Dr. John J. Ratey from the Harvard Medical School, you’ll notice he’s one of the big endorsers of the SANE program and the book on the website. He has these incredible books, just look him up. Dr. John J. Ratey. I think one is called Spark, it talks about the immense amount of beneficial impact that smart exercise has on the brain. Literally, clinical studies where you give someone a Zoloft, have someone do smarter exercise, do an FMRI. Wow! They have equal impact. I mean just amazing stuff.

In addition to in a culture where we eat so much sugar and so little healthy fat, I mean, obviously the vegetables do phenomenal things for your brain, but as you start to give your brain the fuel it needs, in terms of the omega-3 fatty acids to sort of lubricate your neurological junctions and such, and you take away the sugar that causes all this inflammation. That’s just – it’s so transformational. You can actually get prescription strength omega-3. This might be something good to talk to your doctor about because good omega-3 supplements, such as like a cod-liver oil are not cheap. But, if you can get your insurance to cover them, and you can get your doctor to prescribe you pharmaceutical grade omega-3 fatty acids, that can be really, really helpful and awesome. It’s great because you’re not counting calories anymore, so now you don’t have to be like oh no, this medicine has calories in it, I can’t take it. So everything we put into our body is medicine. Food is medicine. Diet coke doesn’t have calories in it. Zoloft doesn’t have calories in it. It doesn’t matter. It goes into your body, it has an impact. Avocado has calories in it. If you put it in your body it has an impact.

So yes, the way you eat, the way you exercise can absolutely have huge impacts on your mood. There is no better way… there is absolutely no better way to eat and to exercise for your mood and for psychological conditions. I say this with the utmost confidence because how deeply these conditions have affected me personally, and my family personally, and now much I’ve seen diet and exercise benefit them. Get rid of those sugars, replace them with the healthy fats, the vegetables, the proteins, and making sure you’re doing that smarter exercise, especially the restorative type. So the yoga, the stretching, the almost more spiritual realm of exercise and physical movement. Man, that’s powerful stuff. I’m hopeful that will be helpful. But of course, obviously always talking with the physician going off any sort of medication that involves the brain, or any kind of medication in general. It’s something you want to talk to your physician about. Hopefully that is helpful and yes, so some resources to further look up that specifically, Dr. John J. Ratey with the Harvard Medical School and Elizabeth Brondolo. Just do the searches in your SANE Concierges for depressant, anxiety, blah blah blah. A bunch of good stuff about that on the site. There’s also a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Drew Ramey, but I would go with Brondolo and Ratey.

Alright. Beth is happy with my answer, thank you Beth! It’s nice to get some real-time feedback, I appreciate that. Let me do one more question here from the chat box. Fran: “Are we supposed to eat when we’re not hungry?” That is a great question. “How do you feel about skipping breakfast?” Alright. I love, and I hope you come to love, if you don’t already, the SANE lifestyle and the SANE way of thinking and approach to life because I think it makes sense. I think it’s very fortuitous of SANE, as you know it’s not a marketing term. It’s actually an acronym for the four factors that determine the quality of calories. Satiety, Egression, Nutrition, and Efficiency. When eight, nine, ten years ago at this point when I realized, I was like oh my goodness! These four factors in the research actually spell out SANE. I said, hum, something’s up here because it really is a sane way of living and thinking.

So, what I mean by that is Fran says are we supposed to eat when we are not hungry? Two things that are really important to not here. One is that as you start to go SANE, you are going to restore your body’s natural ability to balance calories. That may seem obvious, but a couple things that are really important to understand. It’s not that calories don’t exist, right? It’s not that in order to burn fat you don’t need to burn more calories than you take in. That’s not – the calorie myth is that focusing on calorie counting and that just eating fewer calories is the right thing. That’s the myth. Or that calories are all that matter. That’s the myth.

Calories in versus calories out matters. If it was physically possible to eat 10,000 calories worth of vegetables in a day, you would gain weight. You would, because you’d be taking in more energy than you’re burning. Fortunately, that is impossible. You’d have to eat literally a ton of vegetables just about to get that many calories from vegetables. But what’s going to happen when you start to go SANE is you’re going to experience the medical term, or the technical scientific term for it is called a spontaneous reduction of caloric intake. So you may have seen in some of the SANE literature, or even some of the marketing material that we talk about how people who go SANE, when they eat a higher satiety diet, they will effortlessly just – they’ll accidentally eat six, seven, eight-hundred, up to a thousand fewer calories per day. And you’re like hold on! I thought eating less is bad. Well, what we’re talking about here is not starving yourself.

What we’re talking about is you’re not hungry. You’re full and what’s really happening, it’s not actually that you’re eating less. Now bear with me here for a second. There’s actually two different ways that you can fuel yourself. We’re going to get a little technical here, but you can fuel yourself exogenously. What that means is externally. So you can take in calories from the external world, you can put them into your body. So you’re feeding yourself exogenously. Spontaneous reduction of caloric intake, or saying that a person accidentally consumed a thousand fewer calories per day, what that’s actually saying, in scientific terms is I took in a thousand fewer calories exogenously. I took from the external world a thousand fewer calories into my body. Now, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t actually consume a thousand more calories. Let me explain what I mean.

There’s endogenously. So within the body. Let’s say that somebody, just a random name, let’s see, I have a book on my desk here… Wayne. Let’s say that Wayne has a hundred additional pounds of fat on his body, way beyond what Wayne needs to be a healthy, happy individual. Let’s say that a pound of fat contains 3500 calories. That means Wayne has 350,000 calories already in his body. That means that Wayne, without taking in any exogenous energy already has 350,000 calories in his body already. That doesn’t mean that Wayne should stop eating at all. We know that’s not going to work. In fact, Wayne would die of malnutrition because while your body can store calories, it can’t store essential vitamins, minerals, and it will start burning off your muscle tissue. That’s why you need to eat protein. So Wayne can’t just stop eating. But what Wayne can do is restore his body’s ability to say, because this is what’s going to happen when you go SANE is the inflammation in your brain, the hormones in your gut, will go down. What will happen is your brain will start to say, “Wayne, I’ve got all this energy already in my body, and I see that you’re taking in all this nutrition. You’re eating these vegetables, you’re eating this protein.” And we already said vegetables aren’t a good source of energy. If you need 5,000 calories to go run a marathon, you’re not going to get that from vegetables, and you’re not going to get it from protein either, because as you know from learning about SANE, protein is very inefficient. You can’t burn amino acids as energy. You have to convert them, blah blah blah.

So, you’re eating your vegetables, eating your protein. Your body needs calories, but it says look around Wayne. I’ve got 350,000 calories already in the body. So when we say there’s a spontaneous reduction of caloric intake, I’m not hungry. While you may be eating externally, while a thousand fewer calories may be passing through your lips. What is actually happening, or also happening, is that that same thousand calories is still being burnt, it’s just coming from your hips. So instead of coming from your lips it’s coming from your hips. It’s already in your body. I know it sort of makes the brain freak out a little bit here, but just because you’re not eating, doesn’t mean your body’s not fueling itself. In fact, that’s exactly what SANE eating and eccentric exercise does. It restores your body’s natural ability – sorry, there’s a fly – to count calories for you.

So if your body say, and your brain says, look my name is Wayne, hypothetical man, and I need 2500 calories to function, and to be awesome, and to thrive. Well, if you starve yourself consciously before healing yourself, and you only eat 1500 calories, Wayne’s body slows down, gets cold, doesn’t function because Wayne’s body’s like look, I need 2500 calories. You’re giving me 1500 calories of processed garbage, I don’t have enough nutrients, I don’t have the ability to burn fat because I’m flooded with sugar and I can’t burn fat when I’m flooded with sugar. So I just have to slow down. But imagine a world where Wayne takes in 1500 calories of vegetables, protein, and whole food fats. You take in 1500 calories of vegetables, protein and whole food fats in that order, that’s a lot of food. Getting 500 calories from vegetables in and of itself is a lot of food. So what Wayne will probably experience is Wayne might be full, but Wayne’s still eating 1500 calories. He’s just supplementing the 1500 that are going through his lips from a thousand that’s coming off his hips, and that multiplies out over time.

Pretty soon, Wayne’s like look, I’m never hungry. I eat until I’m completely full, but I’m burning fat, how does that work? Wayne! Your body’s finally balanced calories for you. It’s doing it for you. Your ventral, medial and lateral hypothalamus in your brain is doing its job. It’s saying I don’t need to take more calories in, I’ve got them in my body. So yes, it is absolutely okay to not eat if you’re not hungry. In fact, you should expect that as you continue to increase your sanity, your hunger levels will decrease until your body fat level gets so level that your body can’t supplement. If you’re a female and you have 20% body fat, your body’s going to say look, I need this. I need this level of body fat, so I’m not really going to want to burn this off. So, I would rather you eat food. But if you have 40% body fat, your body will say ah, I don’t need 40% body fat, so once you heal yourself it will burn that off.

So, should you force yourself to eat when you’re not hungry? No, with one caveat. I would say there’s somethings that we do need you to eat. We do need you to eat the non-starchy vegetables no matter what. That has to happen, because you can’t get vitamins and minerals. For all intents and purposes they’re not stored in your body. So the non-starchy vegetables, non-negotiable. Non-negotiable, being all hard core. But yeah, make sure you’re eating those. Make sure you’re at least eating three servings or the nutrient dense protein because I don’t want any of the body composition changes to be from cannibalizing muscle. That’s the last thing you want to do.

In fact, just anecdotally, when professional physique people, like these people you see ripped up in magazines, they’ll go on extremely low calorie diets to get down to 3% body fat, where they’re eating 60% of their calories from protein. Not because it’s healthy to eat 60% of your calories from protein, it’s not. But they know that even if they’re going to cut their calories way down, they’re still eating – if it’s a man, he’s still eating 200 grams of protein. So he’s getting 800 calories per day from protein, and if he’s only eating 1600 calories because he’s trying to cut down to 3% body fat, that means 50% of his calories come from protein. Protein calories and vegetables, non-negotiable. But you don’t have to just say hey, I have to eat more macadamia nuts, or I have to eat this whole avocado. Absolutely not, don’t force yourself to eat those whole food fats if you’re not hungry. But certainly if you are, the order you eat non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense proteins, whole food fats.

Alright. “How do you feel about skipping breakfast?” Breakfast, lunch and dinner – Myths! They’re all myths! No, in all honesty they are. I don’t know – breakfast, lunch and dinner. What? I don’t… What? I mean that’s… there’s seven days in a week. I mean, yes there are, but there’s only seven days in a week because we say there’s seven days in the week. It’s not like bears walk around in nature and the bear is like well, I have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the rabbits are not nervous around the bears because they’re like you know, it’s 2pm and that’s in between lunch and dinner, so this bear is probably not going to eat me now. I’m just being a little bit silly now, but breakfast, lunch and dinner, those are completely societal constructs. So are they helpful in the sense that restaurants can now know when more people are going to come in? Yes.

Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. Radical departure, but a lot of this… Women shouldn’t strength train. Women should eat less and exercise more, and men, you need to show that you’re a man and that you have hair on your chest, so you should drink beer, and blah. Yeah. That’s societal nonsense. If we want to get to science and common sense, eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. I’m not hungry at all in the morning. I’m famished at night. So what do I do? I end up eating a bunch at night, but you know here’s the brilliance of the body. I eat a bunch at night. Well, okay, when I wake up in the morning I’m not hungry. So chances are part of the reason I’m not hungry in the morning because I’m eating a lot at night. Then when I do eat in the morning, I have terrible gas – excuse me, but it’s true. So, I don’t eat a lot in the morning, and I feel great. When I do eat in the morning I feel like garbage. What did we talk about already today? If I say it’s okay to eat zero to one servings of peanuts for a day, and you had a peanut allergy and you go into anaphylactic shock if you eat peanuts, please don’t eat peanuts.

The key, the non-negotiable parts of Sanity are non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, low fructose fruits in that order. You’ll notice that nowhere, anywhere, on the SANE site or in your program is it like you have to eat at this time of day. There’s a reason for that. I want you to eat SANE foods, when you eat them is about what works for you, because the science is pretty ambiguous about when to eat. What to eat, much less ambiguous. Hopefully that is helpful.

Let’s do some questions here. Let’s go Matt: “If you’re SANE on everything else, can you still have a daily cup of coffee without blowing–” of course Matt. Of course. I want to take this specific question, I’m going to give the specific answer is of course. Black coffee, technically you can eat caffeine up to 300 milligrams per day has shown very little of any dilatory side effects. In fact it can really help with mental performance. It can help with neurologic retention, athletic performance, so up to 300 milligrams of caffeine per day fine, just don’t put insane stuff in the coffee. Don’t put what we would categorize in the SANE spectrum as other dairy, or other fats. Don’t put that in your coffee. Now coconut milk, for example, or coconut cream, that’s SANE fats. You can put that in your coffee. Black coffee in and of itself is neither SANE or insane. It doesn’t really contain calories. Because it doesn’t really contain calories it doesn’t really fit on the spectrum particularly. So yeah, coffee totally fine. I had some coffee today. I was up at 4:30 this morning, so in order to have enough energy to be useful in this call I certainly had some coffee. I also had some green tea.

Absolutely, a daily cup of coffee. You can have more than a daily cup of coffee if you wanted. Just don’t put a bunch of insane stuff in the coffee, and that’s a general rule. Kale is good for you, but not if you put a bunch of toxic, transfat, hydrogenated, fake cheese dressing on top of it. So the baseline coffee totally fine. Just don’t turn that which is either neutral or SANE into something that’s insane. That’s the number one challenge with salads right now. Salad, super SANE. However, people often will take salad and put horribly insane salad dressing on top of it. That’s not what we want to do.

Certainly, vegetables put some butter on them, put some bacon drippings on them, sauté them with some coconut oil, use those SANE fats, that’s great. I sometimes describe vegetables, especially as you’re getting started with Sanity and vegetables taste nasty to you because you’re pallet is so desensitized to sugar, that anything that isn’t like hyper sweet just tastes super bitter. Of course your taste buds will adjust. The first time you drink beer or wine it tastes terrible, but then your taste buds adjust and it actually tastes very, very good. Same thing happens with vegetables.

Anyway, before we get to that point, I sometimes like to describe vegetables as an excellent butter delivery mechanism, or an excellent bacon fat, or coconut oil delivery mechanism. Try to serve, in fact April Perry, who’s the pod cohost of the SANE Show, I was at her family’s house and she was like, “I can’t get my son, Spencer, to eat kale. Just can’t do it, you ain’t gonna be able to get him to do it.” And I said, “Before I come over,” because we were shooting some video, “Just buy some all natural bacon. No nitrates, no nonsense. Give me some kale, that’s it.” Put the kale in the pan. Put the bacon in the pan. Cubed it up. Cooked the kale with the bacon. Didn’t tell Spencer what he was eating. I think he’s like 9 or 10. He ate it and was like, “It’s good.” Because it is! It’s delicious! You can think of vegetables almost as a fat delivery mechanism. Just make sure they’re healthy fats and hopefully that is helpful.

Oh cool, I’m getting lots of good feedback, so that’s good. Thank you guys, I really appreciate that. I do, I love the write in questions ahead of time. I also love questions in real-time because it’s kind of lonely here. So I like the interactive feedback. Thank you, it’s cool. This is awesome.

Matt, the one thing also I will mention, and anyone who’s listening. I just want to say this. Obviously we’re spending a little bit more time on marketing these days because this is how we pay salaries. I personally haven’t taken a salary, thank God for my wife. Actually hold on. I have to show you guys something. Give me one second. My wife is going to be totally embarrassed that I’m doing this, but I don’t use the term family lightly. Check this out. You saw – this is Seattle Business Magazine. My wife Angela serves as the CFO of our company, but because I’m not taking a salary, she still has her day job. I don’t take a salary so we can do the good in the world. So she is actually supporting us. I also have some savings from the time that I was at Microsoft. So we got this magazine, just spam magazine, we didn’t subscribe to it. I was getting ready to throw it away, then I turned it over. I don’t know if you can see this, but it’s kind of hard not to see. So that’s my wife, and neither one of us knew that this was happening. She was just like oh. This is just happened. This is the December. I don’t know if you can see it, but this is the December – everything is in reverse when you do this.

Anyway, so we’re getting some more of these, we’re going to take them down to our family’s house. So yeah, that’s my wife right there. Why did I start talking about this? Oh! The marketing! Marketing. It’s not just marketing, it’s truth. Then I was going to tie that back to something else… It was something that we said in the marketing. I totally lost my train of thought. I wish I could watch the recording back now. Alright just give me a second here… It’s all gone now. It’s all gone. Maybe it will come back. I’m sorry. Oh yes! I said we would talk about things that we don’t talk about in other places in these calls. So in the Master Class, oh we’re going to talk about things, super-secret things that we don’t talk about anywhere else. So it’s true, we are going to talk about things we don’t talk about anywhere else. Woops! I’m not showing that anywhere else. But what was the thing that I was going to tell you that we’d all talk about everywhere else? Oh yes, the tea, coffee thing. See that when you start to lose your mind but then it kind of comes back. That’s the Sanity there.

Coffee. So the high or the kick that you get in coffee, if you don’t drink green tea – you know we’re a fan of green tea in the SANE lifestyle. It’s extremely good for you. It doesn’t mean you have to give up coffee, it just means that maybe you can drink some green tea in addition to the coffee. Anyway, super good for you. What you’ll notice is that – so there is caffeine in coffee. There’s caffeine in more than just coffee. There’s caffeine in chocolate, or cocoa excuse me. There’s caffeine in green tea. But what you’ll find is that in green tea, this is also true in cocoa, this is why we have the mood boosting cocoa on the SANE store. So coffee is just caffeine, so it’s just boom, you drink some coffee and you’re like hey, I just drank coffee. It’s immediate. It’s like a bottle rocket. Boom! Got the caffeine.

With cocoa and with green tea, there’s less caffeine, but there’s also a substance called theobromine. And theobromine in some ways kind of counteracts caffeine. It doesn’t really counteract caffeine, but you know how people are like there’s complex carbs and there are simple carbs, and simple carbs just get dumped into your bloodstream… As you know, that’s sort of old science, but we do talk about aggression. So there’s aggressive foods, which just dump energy into your bloodstream. There’s unaggressive foods. So theobromine essentially makes caffeine like conceptually less aggressive. It like drips the caffeine into your bloodstream. So, some people, what they like to do is when they wake up in the morning, if they drink coffee it will be like boom! I’m awake. But then, in an hour or two it’s like – in some ways it’s like I just ate sugar. You eat sugar you’re like hey sugar! Then you’re like oh, I’m out of sugar.

Whereas if you eat healthy whole food fats, you’re like okay, I’m tired, I have a bit more energy, I’ve got energy, I’ve got energy, and it’s 10pm at night, okay, time to go to sleep. Versus, oh my gosh, hey now, up down, oh craziness! Coffee is kind of like that. Coffee… BOOM! Like when you need to get up, Boom! Coffee, get you up. But what some people like is with green tea, or even with the mood boosting cocoa powder. Drinking that, it’s going to help gradually bring you up, keep you up, because you’ve got the caffeine and the theobromine kind of counteracting each other. So, it’s going to give you a little bit more of a mellow kind of… versus a boom! Anyway, so a little bit more advanced there if you want to change the impact. Where you get caffeine from actually matters very much.

Good stuff, good stuff here. We’ve got some other questions. Scott says he has MS. I’m sorry to hear that Scott, and that he can do a recumbent bike at full level, but it’s not enough, like doing a regular stationary bike. Can I do smart exercise with my recumbent – this is a great question. Again, this is a perfect example of how we can take a specific question, give a specific answer, but then show how it generally applies to all of us.

First of all Scott, I want to make sure that you, and everyone else on this call, anyone else who’s affected by MS. I have a dear friend who’s affected by MS and I’m so sorry to hear about that. But I want you and I need you to look up something on the SANE site right when we finish this. That is go to the SANE Concierge, the magnifying glass in the upper right corner and type in W-H-A-L-S. That’s the last name of Dr. Terry Whals. So she’s been on the SANE Show three or four times. Lots. She became well-known because she was MS, like very – wheelchair, not – she was on the last bit there. You see her today. I had the opportunity of meeting her in person. Dr. Whals is like de-de-de! She’s running, she’s biking, she’s like hey life! SANE nutrient dense eating. SANE nutrient dense eating. She now has something called the Whals Protocol, which is essentially a very regimented – like SANE right is more like this, and then you can be SANE Paleo, would just be the subset, or SANE Kosher, or SANE Halal, or SANE Vegetarian. They’re all just subsets within that SANE circle.

There’s SANE, then there’s like low-carb, and they’re overlapping circles, Venn diagram type. Same thing with MS. Just know, please look up Dr. Terry Whals and see how much the SANE nutrient dense diet can have transformative effects on not only the neurological conditions we talked about earlier, but also these physical conditions such as MS. It’s incredibly amazing.

Now, to your specific question about recumbent bike full level. The principles of eccentric exercise can be applied to any physical movement. Now let me explain what I mean by that, and some physical movements are easier to apply them to. Some physical movements are harder to apply them to. So let’s go back to the earlier question about running. So it’s like you have to run. From a metabolic perspective, running – if you’re a runner and if you must run, then doing short bursts of sprints up a hill would be more metabolically beneficial, because that’s more burst training. That’s going to be a higher resistance, it’s going to work more muscle fibers. But, that’s not of course the preferred way to increase resistance, because you’re actually moving faster, you could fall down the hill, that’s not good. On a bike, for example, whether it’s recumbent or whether it’s upright, the same principle applies. Instead of just pedaling on that bike for 30 minutes at a moderate pace, let’s go super high resistance for a short period of time. Rest. Super high resistance for a short period of time. Do essentially repetitions, almost like you’re strength training, and that applies to anything. If you have an elliptical machine at your house. If you’re doing pushups, eccentric pushups are just pushups, except we say take the eccentric principle of slowly lowering on the way down and let’s apply that to pushups.

Eccentric exercise, smarter exercise, isn’t actually a new type of exercise. We have all these new DVDs come out and they’re like you get this special – like there’s a dumbbell and now there’s a kettle bell. Okay, it’s 20 pounds. Like you put the handle on a different side of it and now I can sell you a new product. I mean, this is just me. Like kettle bells, now every gym has kettle bells. It’s 20 pounds of steel. It’s 20 pounds like… your muscles aren’t like oh, well it’s a kettle bell so now it’s – your biceps don’t care. It’s 20 pounds. So anyway, that’s me random.

The point is though with the recumbent bike, yeah, you’re right on when you get really advanced it’s going to become hard on a recumbent bike if you’re really advanced to get the level of resistance you need as you progress, but I mean that’s a good problem to have. That’s like saying my business is doing so well I cannot make enough trips to the bank to deposit all the money, kind of thing. If you get to the point where your recumbent bike doesn’t provide enough resistance let’s talk about that and we’ll figure out a way to solve that. But, whether it’s a recumbent bike or whether it’s a regular bike. Whether it’s a regular bike and you bike to work, I would rather you bike to work burst for a minute, then go slow, then burst for a minute, then go slow, rather than just going at a moderate pace the whole time. So you can again, just like eating, we take the exercise principles, you apply them the best you can to your unique circumstances. Then, once you get to the point where you can’t really use the recumbent bike anymore, I mean, I’d love to talk about that with you when you get to that point because that will be a day for us to celebrate.

So yeah, you can do smarter exercises on your recumbent – you can do any exercise smarter. Some exercises are easier to do smarter. That’s why I like resistance training because resistance training by definition, the way you make it more smart is by adding resistance. But it’s like the only way you can do that with running is by running faster and running faster increases risk, whereas adding five pounds to your leg press isn’t really increasing risk. It’s equally safe if you perform it slowly. Hopefully that helps. Are we on time here? We’re doing pretty good…

Good question here from Michael. “Love the food talk, awesome stuff. Can we focus one of these session on how to go about developing an exercise program?” yeah, these sessions are whatever anyone wants them to be. So if the more – when you get those survey emails that say what do you want to cover, if someone writes a one page document that is super detailed, we’re going to go through it because it’s my responsibility to make sure that this is useful for everybody. I’ll find a way to make the most specific thing – I’m going to tie it back to those principles. That’s mastery. Again, we talked about the SANE Compass. Mastery is when you can tell your driver – you get into a cab in Manhattan and you just say “I need to go to 8th street. Go.” They just know where to go. So even if you’re not training for a marathon a year from today, I promise you that if you stick with this, you stay SANE, you take in all the resources, you take in all the information and one of your friends comes up to you, or one of your grandkids comes up to you and says, “Grandma/Grandpa, I’m going to train for a marathon.” You’re going to be able to give them advice, because you’re going to understand the principles. Just like if they said “Grandma/Grandpa, I need to go to this address” that you’ve never been to. I mean, if you understand the terrain, if you understand the map you can get there.

Michael, absolutely. Write down on the next survey what you want to cover. Everyone else on the call, write down what you want to cover and we’re going to go through it, right? That’s why I’m here. We can talk about anything.

I see some things that say… Oh, well thank you very much. Lots of nice things here. Thank you. This is very kind. Someone said, “Salary?” I don’t know what that means, but feel free. It sounds interesting. Thank you very much for the kind words, that’s very kind of you. So a good question from Lou: “Is bulletproof coffee fasting okay?”

So Dave Asprey is a personal friend. So if you do a search on the website you’ll see that me and Dave have lots of good conversations. I’ve been on his show many times. He’s been on my show many times. He lives up here in Pacific Northwest with me. He has a background in technology. He’s a great dude. I have all the respect in the world for Dave. He’s a great guy. So this kind of gets back to the Master Class. So sweet potatoes, they’re paleo. They are paleo, and if your goal is to be paleo, then yes, you should eat sweet potatoes. Now, if you’re super insulin resistant and you really are having a hard time losing weight, and you eat two sweet potatoes per day, and you don’t really eat any other form of – well sweet potatoes aren’t vegetables, but let’s say like most Americans you think they’re vegetables. Or most people around the world think they’re vegetables. I would say, “Hey, I realize that they’re paleo, but we’re going to try to be SANE here for a little bit, so I’m going to put Sanity above paleo. Not that it’s better, but it’s just a different thing.” Paleo is about X. Sanity is about Y.

Bulletproof is about X. Bulletproof is about optimal mental performance, I’m pretty sure. In my conversations with Dave I’m pretty familiar with his marketing. He’s a bio hacker. He’s saying, “I want to make my brain work at a phenomenal level, and if that requires taking certain pharmaceuticals, I will do that because – I mean, it’s like athletes who take performance enhancing drugs. If you listen to Dave’s conversations with Tim Ferris and all this amazing stuff, I mean Dave has found ways to do things with the human mind that are pretty amazing.

Why am I saying this? Bulletproof Coffee, the science behind Bulletproof Coffee, in terms of neurological function is sound. Intermittent fasting can be good for you. MCT oil can absolutely help neurological function. That’s true. What is also true is that if you’re fasting you’re not eating vegetables. I’m just going to make statements that are true and we can draw our own conclusions. MCT oil can improve cognitive function. If you’re fasting you can’t be eating vegetables. If you’re fasting you can’t be eating protein. If you assume that all the science around that point is true, which it is, then you can only eat a certain number of calories before your brain will tell you that you’re full. So, if you take in 700 calories of MCT oil with your coffee, that’s going to mean that your brain is going to be full on 700 fewer calories of other food. Now the question just says, “Is MCT oil the SANEst source of calories?” It’s not the SANEst source of calories. It’s not a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. 700 calories of spinach contains way more of that which is essential for human life and health than MCT oil. Will spinach improve your neurological function as much? I don’t know. That’s why the goals are important.

I know this might seem ah… but the point of these calls are kind of to be like ah… because we can talk about stuff that we don’t talk about in other places. So, is Bulletproof Coffee okay? If it’s working for you. If it makes you feel great. If you’re really happy with where you are. If when you drink Bulletproof Coffee you feel fantastic, then it’s great. That which works for you based on your goals is great. However, if you’ve been struggling with fat loss plateau – I’m sorry, every time I say weigh loss or weight I have to put a nickel in the jar – if you’re struggling with fat loss and 700 of your daily calories are coming from Bulletproof Coffee, I personally – well you can increase the Sanity of those calories. Oil, by definition, is not SANE. It doesn’t mean it’s bad for you, but olive oil is not as SANE as olives. Coconut oil is not as SANE as coconuts. The whole food is containing more nutrients than the oil. The oil is an extract of the food. It’s a subset of all the nutrition.

So is Bulletproof Coffee okay? Depends what your goals are. If your goal is to be bulletproof, then you should drink Bulletproof Coffee. Just like if your goal is to be paleo, you should eat paleo. If your goal is to be low-carb, if your goal is to be Adkins, it’s totally fine to eat an Adkins bar that has all kinds of artificial sweeteners in it, because it’s Adkins. And if your goal is to be Adkins, that’s what you should do. But if your goal is to eat the most satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious, and inefficient foods in the world – if that’s your goal, Bulletproof Coffee is not SANE. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not SANE. Hopefully that difference makes sense. It’s not a criticism of Bulletproof Coffee. It’s just a point of clarification. Again, Bulletproof and SANE have very different goals. Dave is not primarily focused on weight loss. Dave is primarily focused on neurologic function. SANE is also not primarily focused on weight loss, it’s focused on fat loss, and optimal human health, but those are not the same thing. Taking anabolic steroids will improve your athletic performance, but they will harm your health. So not everything does everything, but certain things do certain things very, very well. Hopefully that last part made sense. Hopefully that helps a little bit.

I’m starting to run a little low on energy here at the end, but I’m going to keep going here, no worries. No worries. Let’s keep going here. Let’s keep going. I’m loving some of these questions that are coming in. Please, of course, if we don’t answer the questions here. So we can save them for next time, or if you’re near the end of your time period, like if it’s near the end, then support group never goes away. I watch the support group. The way the support group works, just so it’s clear, is there’s stats. Every time someone does something good, the system gives you points and blah blah blah. So there are like new people that come into the SANE family and you’ll notice they have like one start. Then you’ll see people in the support group that have like three stars, four stars, five stars. These are people who have been SANE for years. Like right now, we don’t have a SANE certification program. We’re going to have one, but right now we don’t. I’m telling you, you saw Dr. Kathy for example. Dr. Kathy, she’s a doctor, she’s been SANE for four years. She knows Sanity, right? So in the support group you’re going to have peers that are going to give wonderful compassionate support. They’re going to talk about their experiences. Then you’re going to have community leaders. These are people who don’t really have an official title, but nobody really has an official title. Then, as best as I can, I watch as much as I can in the support groups.

So if anything in the support group is not SANE, it will be corrected. So, it’s a monitored community. The reason I say that is I want you to feel confident that – first you go to your SANE Concierge. This has been around for a long time, so like lots of questions have already been answered. So we just try to keep the support group clean. But very specific questions, very nuanced questions, or scenario-based questions. One, we can try to handle them here. If we can’t handle them here take them into the support group. The point is, you’re going to get an answer. Like, if the answer can’t come from the community, if the answer can’t come from the moderators, then it will get escalated to me and I will answer it. But, in some ways I’m the last ditch effort, just because there’s only one of me. Obviously I can only do a certain number of things. Take away is, if we don’t get to your question here, we can try to do it next time, but please, post it in the support group. If you don’t get the answer you like in the support group then we can do it again here. But please, support group’s a great resource.

Good question here from Fran: She says, and I also, just so you know, I tend – I like the questions that come beforehand. I also like questions that come in during the session, because I like when people join us on the calls. So, like questions that come in during the session, they help keep the energy flowing. So I love questions that come in the sessions. You can submit them beforehand or you can keep them queued up. Either way, I’m going to try to do everything I can to help you.

“One of the desserts I’m having for Thanksgiving – I want to stay SANE. I could not find many online. Am I missing them?” Yeah, so there’s a bunch of SANE dessert recipes on the site. If you go to recipes and you just sort by desserts, a bunch of them are up there. The general rule of thumb is you’re just – you can make almost anything SANE. It’s going to take some experimentation because baking is like chemistry. So, if you use coconut flour, which is the SANEst source of flour, it’s totally different in terms of consistency. Then you use a xylitol or erythritol versus sugar. It’s going to change consistency. We’re all adults here, so I’m going to use kind of a bit of a crude analogy. We’re talking about safe sweeteners here. It’s a little bit like safe sex. So is sex bad for you? No, absolutely not. I mean, sex is part of being a human being. Human sexuality is beautiful. So is eating. It’s beautiful. But if it’s done irresponsibly it can kill you. It’s actually a pretty fair analogy.

So when you practice safe sex, is safe sex as enjoyable immediately as unsafe sex? Well you can talk about that. Is just eating random chocolate cake that you get from the hostess bakery, is the SANE cake that you’re going to make the first time you eat it with coconut flour and xylitol as good? No, but it’s going to be 80% as good, it’s not going to kill, so it’s a pretty good trade off. That’s the thing. The SANE desserts, especially as you get used to them, they’re going to get better and better over time. There are a bunch of them online. You can go to the SANE store, there’s some more recipes up there. You’re using xylitol, you’re using erythritol, you’re using your coconut flour or your almond flour, and lots of cocoa. Again, all that’s on the SANE store and also on the site. So lots of desserts are up there. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it, but they’re great safe sweeteners. So for me, what am I going to be having? I am going to a friend’s family’s house. Long story, and I’m probably not going to have any dessert at their house, because I don’t think they’re going to be serving SANE desserts. But, I probably will bring, I have a big sweet tooth. So I probably will be bringing a Cravings Killer along with my favorite on the go sweet. Again, it’s Thanksgiving right? So if you want to have a little bit of insanity and it doesn’t make you go completely insane, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s a treat and that’s okay. It’s just something you don’t want to do all the time. Hopefully that is helpful.

Lots of good stuff about Bulletproof, which is cool. Then yeah, also just try to increase the amount of coconut you’re eating. A lot of people don’t eat – like you can do a lot of good stuff with coconut. Coconut flour especially. Almond flour – people use almond flour a lot but they don’t use coconut flour a lot. Coconut flour is harder to use, but if you like the way Bulletproof Coffee makes you feel, you’re going to love the way coconut makes you feel when you eat it, because it’s good stuff.

Is it okay to use xylitol from non-GMO corn if I can’t find the birch one? Absolutely yes. So this falls into the category of we think that – so remember that the – this is going to sound strange… The air is polluted. No matter where you go, the air is polluted. So every time you inhale, you are taking in pollutants into your body. Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t breathe. There is an unavoidable level of toxins in the world. The reason I say this is because – well two things: one, it’s impossible to avoid everything that’s negative. So what we have to focus on is the big things. Is anyone struggling with their weight or health because they’re using xylitol from non-GMO corn versus xylitol from birch? No. Absolutely not. Are people struggling with their weight and health because they’re like “oh my gosh, I don’t know which xylitol to use, this is so complicated. I give up.” Yes, that happens all the time! Please, just use xylitol instead of sugar. You’re 99% of the way there. It seems like xylitol from birch would better from xylitol from GMO corn, but honestly no one knows. There has never been a study that has shown, and I doubt there will ever be a long-term study that shows that there is a significant – there probably is a difference. Is it the thing that’s going to make the difference in your life? I don’t think so. Everything has a difference. Where you live and the level of pollution in the air makes a difference. Does that mean we all move? No. We tolerate where we’re at. So hopefully that is helpful.

And Fran, we’re always increasing the number of recipes. So when it comes to SANE, there’s like 500 plus. We’re always trying to increase them, but I will give you – there’s a good tip is there not going to be SANE certified, but for example, there’s a huge industry for diabetics. Lots of diabetics. And diabetics are going to be marketed lots of sweets that don’t spike their blood sugar as much as conventional sweets. Now, they’re not necessarily going to be sane, like you’re going to see a lot of diabetic candies use Maltitol, which is not my favorite sugar alcohol. I prefer a xylitol or erythritol. But the point I’m saying is SANE isn’t the only lifestyle that recommends reducing the amount of sugar we take in. For example, if you go on Google and you type in “low sugar Thanksgiving desserts” I want you to be successful, right? Also, I know you’re smart. I know you know that SANE isn’t the only thing out there that says that sugar isn’t great and you should try to find lower sugar alternatives. So diabetic friendly blank.

Here’s a great way to use the support group. Here’s a great way to use the support group. Say you don’t find what you need in the SANE recipe collection. So first of all, telling us that in the support group is really helpful, because then we can try to find it and put it up there for you. Second, if you don’t find it in the SANE recipe collection, you do a search on Google. You find like five possible recipes. You say, “Hey support group, check out link 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Are these SANE?” BOOM! Like that is a great use case for the support group. Then maybe we can also the folks on the SANE side of those will see those and say, “Hey, let’s make a SANE version of those cookies” or something like that. So it helps to keep that dialogue going. So that’s a good use of the support group as well.

Alright, I’m running low here, so I think we can get in one or two more. We have some questions here about sourcing stuff from the internet. Obviously, the SANE store – I appreciate it if you can support the SANE store, that’s nice. But I understand that sometimes – Australia especially shipping internationally we haven’t perfected that yet. So it’s very expensive for us to ship internationally right now. We’re going to do a better job of that in the future. Holy moly, especially in the States, a lot of canned stuff man. Amazon subscribe and save, BOOM! Like canned seafood. Amazon Subscribe and Save. Coconut, Amazon Subscribe and Save. Basically, anything that doesn’t need to be refrigerated or frozen, I get a bunch of that stuff. Obviously a lot of this stuff is on the SANE store, and that’s going to be the highest quality source you can possibly find.

For stuff that isn’t on the SANE store, there’s actually this little subsection of the SANE store that’s Amazon. So there’s a SANE store. Then if you look on the side bar there’s like things we like on Amazon.com because obviously Amazon is much bigger than the SANE store. So that’s going to have even more stuff. It has a bunch of canned seafood, it’s got exercise equipment. Actually when you purchase through those links, like 3% goes back to the SANE cause. So we appreciate that very much. It’s an Amazon affiliate program, so that’s a good resource.

So guys, I have got to get zipping here. But I want to just in closing, I want to again reiterate how much I am thankful for everyone. This is Thanksgiving weekend in the States, how thankful I am for everyone who could make this recording, and then who’s watching this recording, being part of the SANE Ignite family, it means the world to me. I’m only here and able to do this, and the SANE team is only here and able to do this because of you. So from the bottom of our hearts we so appreciate it. Honestly, it is through your example that this mission to end the obesity and diabetes epidemics will success or fail because it’s through – I mean I hope you’ve seen this quote. It’s in the step-by-step program, it’s by Marianne Williamson. It’s a beautiful. It’s something like by letting your own light shine, you let other people’s – you give them the permission to let their light shine. That is so true. As you continue this journey. As you go SANE, as you get eccentric, people are going to see what you’re doing. They’re going to ask about it. They’re going to want to go SANE. If they become part of the SANE Ignite family we certainly appreciate that. If they don’t and they just do it on their own, we appreciate that too, because we need more SANE people in the world, lower case and upper case, to keep the world the way it’s going. You guys are part of the inner circle, you’re part of the family that’s doing that. So I really appreciate that.

As always, in the support group, if there’s things we can do to better support you, to better assist you on this journey let us know. Please, that us, when I say us, this isn’t like the SANE team and then the non-SANE team. We’re the team here, right? So let’s get in the support group. I mean, hopefully you’re starting to see some first names here. I don’t want Jonathan Bailor to be the only – or James Thomas, or Brandon Fields, or Joy Stephens, or all the team members. Hopefully you’re going to be getting on a first name basis with more because there’s only one of me. There’s only a certain number of folks on the official SANE team, but you know, in 2016 we’re hoping to have some in person events. We are – you are part of the SANE team. You are part of the SANE family. Get in the SANE support group. Let’s support each other. Let’s do this together, right?

So hopefully – I said at the beginning of this call, this session, that I had the goal of giving you some actionable information, giving you some inspiration, and leaving you with a smile on your face. If I’ve done those things, I would really appreciate it if you could let me know in the chat box. And, if I haven’t done those things, I’d also appreciate it if you’d let me know. Maybe not in the chat box, maybe some other way, so that I can better serve you in the future.

Again, thank you so much for joining us. If we didn’t get to your question, there’s going to be more of these calls. Of course the support group isn’t going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure for me. Happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the States. If you’re not, have a great rest of your week and I look forward to having another chat soon. Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. See you later.