Glucose Revolution Founder: Glucose Goddess – Balanced Eating, Motherhood, Mental Resilience, & Fuelling Your Ambition

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Thank you for having me.

The goddess of glucose.

In person.

Glucose goddess in person, in the flesh. How's your spike today?

My spike is pretty good. It's pretty good. I had an omelette for breakfast, so I'm very steady. Second coffee, no sugar, no oat milk, obviously cow's milk.

Yeah.

Your team asked me what kind of milk I wanted. I was like, cow's milk. Obviously, yes. It's a it's a very controversial topic. I don't know if we want to get into that this early in the morning.

We can.

It's a heavy one, huh?

It is. It is. I actually had the same breakfast. Nice. I had an omelette.

Mm-hmm.

And two coffees.

Very nice.

I had almond milk.

Unsweetened.

Unsweetened.

Yeah.

Actually, I don't know. The hotel could be sweetened. Tasted a bit sweet.

Could be.

Maybe I'm spiking right now. Maybe I'll crash halfway through and it's game over. Around the world with your host, the Stadguy. We welcome you back to the Stadguy podcast. Sharing stories of excellence with those in the know, for those who just know. We had the pleasure of meeting for the first time at Brilliant Minds in Stockholm.

Yes.

I was very impressed by you.

Thank you.

And your amazing talk.

Thank you so much.

And I approached you and said something that you tell me a lot of your fans and followers tell you. It's, hey, I love your content. But also, my mom loves you.

My mom loves you. Yes, I get that a lot.

My mom is a huge fan.

Hello, Mom.

Hello, moms of the world listening today. Why do moms love your content so much?

I think because my content is about easy stuff you can do to feel better. And so the demographic of women age, you know, 40 to 70 is really hungry for nice health information that makes sense. And also they've been a victim of diet culture and, you know, the '90s and all the low-fat diets. And generally people's moms have suffered through lots of dieting and yo-yo cycles in their life. Today, I think when you grow up as a woman, you have a little bit less of that messaging that's trying to victimise you into dieting. But our moms, you know, I remember my mom when I was growing up, my mom looks like me, right? And she would say stuff like, oh, I feel so fat, I need to lose, you know, 2 kilos, 3 kilos. There was this obsession. I remember the magazines when I was younger. on the COVID would say, lose 10 kilos in a week. And that was what people wanted and were craving. So I think moms just see— are refreshed by actual science information that's helpful to them and that's not trying to scare them. As soon as something is scary on the internet, especially when it comes to health advice, you should run.

That's true.

Because scariness is all about clicks. It's not about actual wellness. So hi to your mom and to all the moms listening.

I like that. Hi to all the moms. Thank you for listening. Well, to all the listeners who are eating while watching this, I'm sure there's lots having lunch or who are going to eat today.

We're going to eat at any point.

I think most will eat at some point today while listening. My message is pause. Pause and listen to what Jesse is about to tell you. How can they improve the way they're about to eat? Today?

Well, the plate that is in front of you, that is going to be in front of you, it's not just energy, it's not just calories, right? With every item on that plate, you're actually giving your body specific molecules, and these molecules are going to have an impact on you. Some of them are going to make you feel good, and some of you are going to make you feel like crap. So if on that plate there are any vegetables, here's my tip. Have those vegetables at the beginning of the meal because vegetables contain a molecule called Fiber. And fiber is our bestie. We love her. We were talking about fiber just before we started. But when you eat her at the beginning of a meal, she has time to create this sort of mesh in your upper intestine that's going to slow down the arrival of the rest of the meal into your bloodstream. And this is key. No matter what you eat, you want it to arrive more slowly into your blood so that you feel better. So veggies first, super easy hack. Try it at your next meal. It's going to help you feel more energized and have fewer cravings and sleep better that night too.

And then it's protein second.

Yeah, proteins and fats second. And then the key thing to remember is that when you eat a meal, you should try to have the carbs and the sugars last because the carbs and the sugars. So for example, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and sugars, that's anything sweet from like a cookie to a banana smoothie. Those foods contain what's called glucose. And glucose is the molecule that increases your blood sugar. And that's the one we want to stay very cautious about. So we want to have those foods containing glucose at the end of our meal so that the glucose arrives in our bloodstream more slowly. And so we have less of what's called a glucose spike, which is a quick increase in your blood sugar and then a drop. So that's really what my universe is about. It's about helping people manage their glucose levels. I mean, that was my main focus for the past 5 years. Now I'm talking about other subjects, but blood sugar regulation is so important for all of us, not just for the moms listening, for anybody to feel good in their brain and their body. So that's what I've had the privilege to talk about for the past few years.

Well, speaking of sugars towards the end of the meal instead of at the beginning, we are in a city where people have a lot of sugar at the beginning. We're in Paris.

Yes.

At the Crillon. And the beautiful Karl Lagerfeld suite.

It's very fancy. It's very fancy. The sink is marble.

Have you seen that other bathroom?

The whole bathroom is marble. Yeah.

It's a really special bathroom. Karl Lagerfeld. I guess he loved lots of marble. But at a beautiful hotel like this, of course, you can order whatever you'd like. But generally, in a city like Paris, I see a lot of people waking up and just eating pastries for breakfast, especially in a city like Milan. Actually, Milan and Paris.

I was going to say the Italian breakfast is way worse, way more difficult. So in France, we have— yes, there are sweet foods, but also people are used to having savory foods like omelets. In Italy, it's very, very difficult to get into the habit of having a savory food because that's another one of the important hacks to manage your glucose levels, it's to have protein and something savoury or salty in the morning. So yes, it's a big deal. But I would say the Italians who come up to me, their main complaint is that it's very hard to have a savoury breakfast in Italy, whereas for the French, the transition is a little bit more obvious and easy to do.

Yeah, the Italians, they call it croissant and brioche, and they have just a sugary Nutella-filled croissant first thing in the morning.

Did you always have an omelette, or did you used to be a sugar breakfast person?

Oh, as a kid? Yeah, I was a big sugar breakfast person. Yeah, I, my mom, great mom, and she really worked hard to make sure she was very careful about what we did have. So I always had to have the healthy food, but she never really cared about what we had on top of that. She's like, as long as you have the healthy, if you have anything else, at least you're full from the healthy first and whatever.

It's not a bad move.

Well, it was a bad move, and we always had Oreos stacked in our house. We always had like Nutella and Oreos and all this stuff. So I'd wake up in the morning and sneak in some Oreos and Nutella. Wow. Pretty much every single day growing up. Yeah, it was not good.

I had a Nutella crepe every morning until I was 16 years old for breakfast.

Yeah, I had a tartine. Yeah, every—

it's basically the same person. We are so many parallels.

You know what I actually did as well once? Well, I would say once, it was like a 3-year phase of my life. You know, the Oreo Minis? They come in the UK. They come in a cup because they're, they're made to fit in the cup holder while people are driving. Yeah, they sell them in gas stations. So you put this Oreo Minis cup in your cup holder and you're just snacking while you're driving. I used to remove the lid and pour milk in it and have an Oreo Minis cereal, which is probably 300 grams of sugar.

Nice move. I would love to see the glucose spike of that.

That's probably massive.

Probably massive and crazy.

Yeah, but I was 12, so it's different times. You're a mom now.

I am a mom. Been a mom for 6 months now.

There's a Mr. Glucose.

There's a Mr. Glucose. There's a baby glucose.

Baby glucose.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. How's that? So, so many things. It's everything. It's the most incredible. It's kind of boring because all the clichés are true. It's like the most incredible love I've ever felt. And it's has filled my life with purpose. It's also very, very hard, and I'm very sleep deprived. But I would say the main thing for me that is resonating. So before I had a baby, I always had this sort of 10% of sadness or spleen in my life, sort of feeling like, should I move cities? Am I happy in what I'm doing? Just a little bit of discontentment as a subtitle. Very, very light. Not to the level of depression or anything, but just a slight feeling of, could my life be better? Would the grass be greener? And I was thinking about this a lot. And since having a baby, that's been completely— it's just gone. It's just completely gone. So I'm sure it's a function of not having enough time to actually think about that. And also just feeling like, well, taking care of another human fills your life with so much purpose that that just has disappeared. And so I don't know, for me, that's something that I keep coming back to, even when a day has been long and hard. I'm like, yeah, but I feel I feel deeply joyful and serene, and it's incredible. It's so cool.

I love that.

Yeah. Do you ever feel like— are you a very happy person? What's your baseline mood, mental health situation?

I think I'm baseline a happy person.

Yeah.

But I see that, oh, that one thing, grass is greener, is It's kind of like a fuel for ambition as well. So I don't resent it so much. Like thinking, oh, the grass will be greener when I have kids one day is healthy because it helps me not be a bachelor for my entire life.

Do you like kids?

I love kids. Yeah, I think kids are cool, but it's a lot of work. As you said, you need to be very mindful when taking that step.

For sure.

For sure.

I think kids, I mean, it's incredible, but it's just, it adds another full-time job to your life.

Yeah.

And you don't really know how to fit anymore. You don't watch Netflix as much as before, basically. I've just— and, you know, you talk about fuel for ambition. I mean, yes, I think that slight discontentment is a fuel. But also today I actually feel like I'm working better and I have more fuel because I have less time. And so I'm much more focused. And I think even taking care of a baby, I'm actually probably more productive and efficient today than I was A year ago. Counterintuitive, but yeah, everything feels more Technicolor.

That makes sense. Before we turned the cameras on, you were telling me about the new book you're writing.

Yeah.

You've written a couple of books already.

Yes, I've written 2 books.

2 books. And you briefly mentioned that you effectively started caring for your son before he was born. Yes. By caring for yourself.

Well, by caring for him when he was in my womb, right? Because when I fell pregnant, because my job is scientific research, I'm always on the lookout for what I could do to optimize things. And I spoke to my doctor when I was pregnant and I asked him, is there anything I can do, you know, to help the development of my baby? And he said, ah, just take folic acid, which is a very common supplement. And I was like, nothing else?

He said, no.

I was like, hmm, that's interesting. So I went home and I did what I do best. I opened PubMed, which is this website where you can find scientific studies, and I spent, you know, few weeks looking through all the research on how what you eat during pregnancy could have an impact on your baby, because there's this big myth that says that your baby will take whatever he needs from you. Turns out science says the complete opposite. What you eat when you're pregnant is actively programming your baby in your belly, and this can have consequences for life.

Wow.

So it blew my mind, and I completely changed everything I was eating. I figured out the main sort of hacks to put in place that have links to lower risks of obesity, asthma, mental health disorders, allergies, small muscle mass, obesity. I mean, it's really remarkable. So with my diet as I was pregnant, I knew I was doing what was best for him.

Mm-hmm.

And it became pretty obvious to me that this information needed to reach more moms because the science is there. But once again, there's a problem of communication and a problem of translation. So I wrote a book and it's called 9 Months That Count Forever. How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby for Life. And you can preorder it now. And I'm very excited about it. And I think it has a real public health implication. And we need to be giving people better access to scientific information because doctors don't have time to read the studies. They need to treat diseases. They have a lot of very serious work to do. But there's a missing— there's a missing layer between all the science that exists today and where the people are. Which honestly today is on social media. So my work has always been translating the complexity into something that is easily digestible for people. And I'm really excited to have done this with this new topic, and I hope I'll be able to do with many more in the future.

I think you do a very good job at that.

Thank you.

Making something intimidating in language and in message more digestible. Oh, I learned this new thing and it took me 5 seconds to learn it.

It's— you're basically— my brain thinks about marketing science and marketing, not in the dirty sense of it. Like, I'm not trying to sell you something, but marketing to me is how do you make something relevant for someone? So how do you take a scientific study that's very hard to parse and how do you turn that into something somebody is going to take home and understand in 5 seconds? And I'm so passionate about that. I think it's so— I don't know, I just love it. It's And I'm so lucky that today that's what I do. Yeah, it's so cool. So yeah, I agree with you.

It's very cool. And you also, I mean, make it more digestible verbally, but also more enjoyable when you talk about the foods you can have and enjoy. Can you give us a quick tip? People will read the book.

Yeah.

Listening today are going to jump at that.

Sure.

But just a quick sneak peek of what are some foods people should— who are pregnant right now listening, possibly. Should be eating.

Okay. There's a molecule called choline, and it forms your baby's brain and brain cells in the womb, and it creates the connection between brain cells. And it's very important. It comes from foods like eggs, animal liver, meat, fish, to a lesser extent from plant foods like broccoli. It's very important, and your body actively concentrates choline and sends it to your baby. The thing is, today, only 10% of pregnant moms are eating the required minimal baseline amount of choline during pregnancy.

Whoa.

10%. This has been established for decades. We have the American Association of Pediatrics that says this is an emergency. Nobody's talking about it. No doctor talks about it. Only 6% of healthcare professionals say they even know what it is. So how do you counteract this? Very simple tip. You have 3 eggs every morning during pregnancy. That gives you all the choline that you need, and it's going to help your baby's brain form in an ideal environment. So my book is full of that simple stuff that has been in the studies for a while, but that nobody's talking about. And it drives me mad because we have incredible knowledge, incredible scientists doing all this research, and then we have a such a systemic lack of communication of this research to the general public. And so I'm hoping more people will do what I do so we can all join forces and make sure people get the information. So choline is a simple one. 3 eggs every morning through breastfeeding also, because choline also goes through breast milk.

Wow.

And it's to the extent that today any baby formula contains choline because people know choline is important, but nobody tells pregnant moms Anything about this. Well, anyway, it's driving me crazy.

In the yolk?

Yes, it is in the yolk. So if you don't want to eat 3 eggs, you could just have 3 yolks.

Well, I see a lot of people ordering egg whites.

Yeah, but that's because in the '70s, we were told that cholesterol from egg yolks was going to increase cholesterol in our blood, was going to lead to heart disease. That has been debunked for about 15 years now. Yet people still have in their minds, oh, if I order a white an egg white omelette, it's better for me. It's just not true.

No.

Yeah. And it takes so long to undo these very sticky myths that have been pervasive. Like today, doctors will still say, ooh, 3 eggs a day, that's bad for your heart, even though we've known for a long time it's not the case anymore. So we've got work to do.

We do.

We need people to have access to better information. And I've been doing this through Instagram, through my books. Also, we also need governments and policymakers to help get this message across. We all need to work together. together. I mean, Instagram and YouTube and books are one thing, but we need a bigger conversation in society about this information because it's very easy, it's simple, and it can have a real impact on people. For example, there are studies that show that when you supplement pregnant moms with choline during pregnancy, you can measure an increase in the cognitive ability of the child at 1 year old and 3 years old.

Wow.

Just by supplementing while they're pregnant because the brain is forming. I mean, this is the hypothesis, right? The brain is forming in a better environment.

Well, yeah.

So today, you know, our brains— our moms had no idea about choline. If our moms had eaten more choline, maybe we would have better brains today.

It's true.

That's, you know, it's an interesting thing to think about.

It's very interesting.

Basically, when I learned about choline, I called my mom and I was like, Mom, it's your fault. All my brain problems are your fault.

No eggs. Not enough eggs. Only egg whites.

Exactly.

Only egg whites. Can we do a rapid-fire debunking?

Yeah.

What are the most common misconceptions you're hearing about food in the glucose world that you can debunk?

That glucose only matters if you have diabetes. That's like saying that brushing your teeth only matters if you have cavities. Not the case, right? You have to think about prevention, that anything that comes from fruit is good for you. So a fruit smoothie, a cake sweetened with fruit juice, all these Marketing tactics, so that's not the case. Sugar from fruit is the same as sugar in a can of Coca-Cola. What matters is the matrix and how it's packaged. So those are two big ones. I think another one is like sugar gives you energy. It actually gives you pleasure, dopamine, but not energy. What else? That the vinegar hack is not based on solid science. It is actually. So having vinegar, a tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before you eat carbs lowers the glucose spike of those carbs by up to 40%. And this is not an Instagram wellness trend. This is like solid, double-blind placebo clinical trials that show this.

Apple cider vinegar works?

Any kind of vinegar.

Nice.

Except the very syrupy Italian balsamic. The Italians again.

What about vinaigrette on your salad?

Yeah, it's perfect. And so when you look at some traditions, for example, in France, having a salad with a vinaigrette at the beginning of your meal, turns out we were doing 2 glucose hacks in one, veggies first and vinegar without knowing it.

Vinaigrette is actually my favorite dressing.

Nice.

So that's perfect.

Yeah.

I don't like the American creamy dressing.

Yeah.

Not for me.

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Very cool. Well, I know that now you package all this information in a very fun and easy to digest way, but I know that initially your driver to get into this world actually came from an unfortunate circumstance. You had a back injury. When you were 19 years old.

Yeah.

Can you tell us more about how that got you started on this path?

Yeah, jumpstarted.

How this jumpstarted you?

Well, so I broke my back jumping off a waterfall. Bad idea. Don't jump off a waterfall. I didn't even like touch, you know, hit any rocks or anything. It was just the water on my tailbone. One of my vertebrae went poof into 13 pieces. So I had to have intense surgery. I was pretty young, so physically I healed quite fast. But then I started developing a lot of mental health issues, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, depersonalization, which is an awful feeling of when you look in the mirror, you don't recognize yourself. It's really scary. And so out of this very dark phase came a clear message, which was that I needed to fix myself and my brain. That became my number one priority. And over the years, I studied biochemistry to try to understand the body. I worked in genetics to try to understand genetics. And then I came across glucose. Sort of randomly by putting on a glucose monitor in a pilot study that was happening at the company I was at. And I didn't think anything would come of it, but it changed my life because I saw that the days where I had big glucose spikes, I had more panic attacks, more depersonalization. And the days where my glucose levels were steady, I felt better. So that was the beginning. That was the first clue. And I developed a deep passion for the subject, first to heal myself. And I never thought that I would create an Instagram account. I never thought I would write books. I never thought this would be my job. It happened sort of randomly despite me. I started putting this information on Instagram and I was just obsessed with the topic. I thought it was so interesting and so cool. And that obsession really drove me. And I kept getting feedback that it was helping other people and that it was interesting. And I found this passion for explaining complex science. And I just kept pulling that thread and kept wanting to— I wanted to do more and more about it, and I had the opportunity to write a book, etc. So now it's my full-time job, but it happened. I never planned it.

Amazing. And that was a 7-year journey?

Yes, pretty much. 2019 broke my back. 20— no, sorry, 2011 broke my back. 2019 started my Instagram account. So I would say almost a decade. Before I started. Yeah, it was a long time. A lot of suffering. It was very, very dark. But today I'm so grateful that I came out of it. People often say like, oh, aren't you grateful that you broke your back and you went through that because now you're here? I'm like, no, actually, I would have preferred to not go through that. Yeah, I prefer that hadn't happened. But it's really nice to have been able to transform that into something that's useful for people.

Yeah, that's very cool.

Yeah, thank you.

And would you say that today you're social media first?

Yes, because that's where the community started. That's— I think that's the hardest medium. It's easy to write a book in the sense it's easier to write a book because you have more pages. Making a single post that people are going to download or, you know, understand in 1 or 2 seconds that actually delivers a message, I think that's the hardest. The constraint of the format, I think, is also what made me a very good science translator. Do you think you're a social media first?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like through and through.

Would you ever write a book? Is that something you're interested in?

Yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to write a fun book. I think people read less and less generally, so I wouldn't necessarily place a bet on the category. Yeah, probably bet against it if I could. But I think like a fun coffee table book where you could Jump to any page when you have a friend over and have a laugh. I think there's still a market for that. Nice. Of course, there's still a market for normal books, but I don't think there's a market for normal books written by the Stad guy. I think there's a market for funny books written by the Stad guy. Yeah.

So that's a great exercise. It's really amazing. And for somebody, I think, I mean, I wouldn't want to speak for you, but I think you're somebody like me who loves the visual aspect of things and you're obsessed with how things look and the design, etc. It's really incredible to write something and then to see those words words come alive in a book format. It's incredible. It's really, really cool.

So as well as being a scientist, researcher, author, and social media personality, you're also a founder of the Anti-Spike Formula.

Well, I'm a founder of Glucose Goddess, and one of our products is Anti-Spike, but we have lots of other stuff going on.

Can you tell us more about the other stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, Anti-Spike is my flagship product, but we also sell the Recipe Club, which is an amazing, amazing community of people who get my recipes every month. So that's been going on for almost 3 years and it's all digital and it's really wonderful. That was our first product actually. Anti-Spike is the second big one and Protein Prodigy, which is my third product, has just come out also. So it's a protein powder for people who want to put protein in their coffee and for it to not be disgusting. So it took me 2 years to find the right powder, and I'm obsessed with the products. I'm not trying to make a ton. I'm not trying to have dozens of products. I'm trying to make very excellent single things that solve a particular use case. And I love this aspect of my job as well. It's really interesting.

It's very cool. So how do you balance the whole thing, being a mother as well, and A wife.

I think I'm blessed with a brain that can multitask and that remembers a lot of stuff. So I'm able to have lots of threads open in my brain at all times and it kind of works. How do I balance it? I don't know. I just, I just kind of do it, I guess. And I have an amazing team. And I think that's the biggest— that's been one of the biggest levers of the success of what we're trying to do is working with other people who are obsessed, who understand the mission, who are super, super good at what they do. And that's been able to really increase the productivity and increase the outputs significantly. So for example, I have somebody on my team now, Elisa, who does a lot of the scientific research that I used to do. So we work really closely together on that. And for every part of my business and of what I'm doing, whether it's books or it's my YouTube show or it's a new product or it's a new science newsletter, I now have specialists inside the team That I work with on these topics. And at the beginning it was just me. And so now having the opportunity to grow and have more people join, and it's all bootstrapped, right? I never raised any money. It was all bootstrapped from the beginning based on the income from the books. I feel super grateful for that. It's really nice. Yeah.

What I love about what you do on social media, particularly with the research, is that thing we spoke about briefly of making it more digestible. I think knowledge and the process of learning something used to be very intimidating, like especially growing up when I think of learning something new, you'd imagine a classroom or you'd imagine scary looking books.

Or going to the library.

Going to the library, speaking to an angry teacher who didn't want to speak to you. This is all a horribly intimidating process. And then YouTube came in and slightly—

Changed the game.

Changed the game slowly. Things like Khan Academy.

Khan Academy, I was going to say.

Khan Academy changed my algebra trajectory. I know you're a mathematician, actually. So that's a nice—

I studied math.

You studied math. I didn't, but I used Khan Academy just to get by. And I said recently on a— I was on a panel at the Business of Fashion, something that I had discussed with the CEO of Business of Fashion, Imran. And it's people are getting smarter and products are getting dumber.

Yes.

And the people are getting smarter part is really a note on consumers just becoming more knowledgeable about what they're consuming. And I think for the first time in history, people are actually accidentally becoming more knowledgeable because Back in the day, you had to make a decision to go to a library, pick up a certain book and read a certain book. But now you can be on your toilet and scrolling.

I think about that a lot, actually. That's where people read my content.

You know, they're just on the toilet scrolling and, and the algorithm feeds them a Glucose Goddess post, which they would have otherwise had to very intentionally go to a library and learn something. And now, or maybe not even, I think it wasn't even published at the time. And now it goes to them and they learn more, they become more discerned. And consumers have those desires. I think where the lag is, is something you touched on briefly of the authority in the establishments actually haven't kept up with the consumer knowledge and demands, which actually leads to what I was saying about dumb products. I think the businesses haven't actually realized just how knowledgeable their consumers are getting. And they still try to say, oh, you know, we'll let it slide and let's cut some corners here and there. And I think this is across every industry. So for the audience listening today that are founders or restaurant owners, chefs, anything consumer-facing, where the knowledge of their consumers will impact their business, if not today, but tomorrow. What do you think they can be doing better as the people who have some degree of authority and they're actually competing in a race against those who are acquiring more and more knowledge thanks to people like you?

Well, something that comes to mind as you talk about this is that, yes, you acquire more and more knowledge on the internet these days, but There's also a lot of noise and there's a lot of people screaming at you from your Instagram app saying nonsense.

That's true.

So it's not as if you open Instagram and everything there is peer-reviewed, super solid-backed science. Like, actually, you're getting a firehose of random data and random opinions. So yes, consumers are becoming more knowledgeable, but I think also more overwhelmed. And I'm not sure the education that you find on the internet is always good. In fact, I know for a fact it's not. So I think consumers— I mean, there's more information online. So people— and people trust what they see on the internet. So we do also have an issue here where people are being influenced potentially towards the wrong pieces of knowledge. So for example, in my field, right, in health, you have a lot of people who are just trying to do clicks on their Instagram reel. So who are fearmongering, talking about you should never eat this, you can never do this, You're going to die if you do this, all this kind of stuff to get clicks. And it actually works and people watch that. And so then people believe the wrong stuff. So I don't have a solution to this issue. I would just say like public service announcement, if somebody on the internet is telling you something about your health and is making you feel scared, they're not doing it out of the kindness of their heart to make you feel better. They're probably doing it for clicks. So the fearmongering stuff, we need to cut through it. Then for people who are on the forefront, as you mentioned, like directly connected to consumers and trying to educate and teach, I would say just do more. I think there's a sense of, oh, Instagram is already saturated. I'm never going to find a place. I'm never going to be able to do anything. It's not going to have an impact. People have always felt that way. Like when I started my Instagram, there was already people talking about glucose on Instagram. So I thought, I'm never going to have a voice. I'm never going to find my place.

space.

Well, it's not true. You can. There's always space. And today, as you know, Meta always talks about this too. People are just consuming. Very few people are creating. You have a big, you have like a, you have a niche of creators and then you have just people looking at the reels and sharing the reels. So if you have even the smallest inclination that you want to communicate something, go for it. I know it's hard and it's terrifying, but we need more people making more content. How did you start? Did you ever feel like you wouldn't have a voice? Do you ever feel like it was going to be hard to actually make a name for yourself? Like, what was that process?

I had that fear in the podcasting world, to be honest. On the social media, I didn't feel like there was anything close to Stadtkern when I started, to be honest. So I always felt like, okay, there's a big niche here because also I was video first.

Yeah.

And I was Instagram only. And at the time, no one was video first.

What year was this?

This was 2019.

Yeah.

Instagram didn't even have reels or a good feature for in-feed video. It was something called IGTV, which was like competing with YouTube.

Yeah.

It's like these wide format, 60-second-plus movies. And I, I just felt like I was in a unique place, so I was fine on Instagram.

You were like, I'm going to do great.

I wanted to cry. On the podcast world, I was like, oh, there's so many people with podcasts. Why should I start my own podcast?

So why did you?

A friend of mine who's also my agent, her name is Shelby. She said, it's just a medium. Yeah, it's not a product.

Yeah.

And because it's just a medium, there can never be too many by definition. It's just a way of expression.

So, but that's shifted because podcasts used to be more like products. And now it's just another channel. 100%. It's like saying, oh, I shouldn't start an Instagram account because there's too many Instagram accounts already. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, exactly. Just go for it.

It's just a vertical now. It's just the content.

Exactly. It's a way to share a message.

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I want to go back to that authority. What do you think people who serve food versus the people who are ordering food can do better for their customers?

Are you talking about restaurants or like industrials?

Both.

Both. I think restaurants have less of an issue because when you go to a restaurant, you're not getting a marketing message with each of the dishes that are served. You get a menu, right? But you don't get like somebody trying to emotionally hook you. When it comes to food in supermarkets, every packaging is competing for your attention. You're almost in an Instagram landscape of just food. And so every package is trying to be an Instagram post, scaring you, exciting you, cholesterol-free, gluten-free, good for your heart, vegan, made with real fruit, low calorie. And you're like, what's going on? So I'm not sure that the people making the foods are going to be able to change the game very drastically because they need to sell their products, right? They have shareholders to answer to. So it's a bit complicated. I think we need consumers to be slightly more educated that when you have a health halo or something screaming a marketing message at you on a packaging, it's probably because it's trying to hide something. But listen, if I had a magic wand and I could get the entire food industry to do something, I would cut by 50% all the sugars in various categories, for example, in breakfast cereal, in dairy. The issue we have is that even if one brand wants to do better and reduce the amount of sugar, consumers will just then jump to the other brand that still has more sugar because people like sugary foods. So we have a bit of a push and pull here. But if I had a magic wand, I would just say across the entire supermarket, everybody has to cut sugar by 50%. That would change everything. And then in terms of how they market the food, I would love for us to have approved marketing messages and then some that we're not allowed to put on a packaging because they're deeply trying to mislead people. So for example, if you have, I don't know, like a fruit smoothie and it says cholesterol-free on the package, if you're like me and you understand food and molecules, you would say, obviously it's cholesterol-free because cholesterol is only in animal foods. But to a consumer that is is simply trying to buy something healthy for her kids and is just genuinely concerned about her kids' health, if she sees cholesterol-free on the packaging, she might think, oh, I guess that means it's good, right? There's just so much manipulation going on on these packagings. I mean, listen, if I had another magic wand, I would remove all of these health halos that you have on packaging. It would just not be— you would not be able to say any of these things. And then it would put a bit more pressure on the consumer to understand what foods they want to buy and understand how molecules work. But you can't, you know, it's not just like a, it's not a single, we all, everything has to work together. People need to have better information about food that starts in schools, that starts with doctors having leaflets in their offices that educate people about what's protein, what's fat, what's fiber, what's glucose, et cetera. And then with the industrial food complex to also, just blanket be able to reduce the amount of unhealthy stuff they put in their products. And then I also think we need better public health campaigns. We need to make prevention more sexy. So in France, we had this thing which was 5 fruit and veg per day. That was like the guideline. And it was trying to make people healthier. The problem is then food manufacturers making, for example, fruit smoothies said, hey, this is 3 of your 5 a day. So again, you have a mom who's just trying to make sure her 8-year-old kid is healthy, buying this thinking, oh, the government said, you know, 5 fruit and veg per day. This is 3 a day. Perfect. What she doesn't know is that there's as much sugar in there as in a can of Coke. So we need better public health initiatives that cannot be abused and that are a bit more sexy, because I think prevention has a big marketing issue. It's not sexy, so people don't want to do it. If I tell you, Dude, just like, you know, eat better, exercise more. It's going to be really good for your future health. It goes through one ear, not the other. You're like, okay, yeah, sure, Jesse, whatever. If I tell you at your next meal, have your veggies before the rest of your food, you'll remember that, you'll want to do it, and you'll actually be able to sustain it.

Specific.

It's specific, it's easy, and it sounds fun, and it sounds doable. A very generic— even the 5 fruit and veg per day comes from a good intention, but it's it's still a bit overwhelming. I'm like, well, if I eat zero, I have to go to 5. Like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that. So, so many things to do, so many things to do. And a lot of people are doing great work and we need more of that. And I have limitless energy and passion to try to make a change on many levels of this humongous issue.

Are there any countries or governments that you've seen do a good job in this category?

There have been a lot of interesting initiatives. For example, in Mexico, they now put warning labels on sugary beverages, almost the same ones as you see on a packet of cigarettes. And what's been going on is that, yeah, so in a can of Coke, you see like very high in sugar and it's this black and white thing and it looks super scary. And what's been interesting about this initiative is that it hasn't actually stopped adults from buying the products, but now children who see their parents drinking or eating that are like, Dad, Mom, don't eat that. It's bad for you. So everybody's trying different things. You know, in the US, we had all the move more movement, but that was also hiding the fact that movement does not erase a poor diet. It's complicated. I don't think a single country is doing great. I think everybody's trying in different ways, and I think we have to learn from each other and just keep going and keep advancing.

Speaking of Coca-Cola, I see people ordering more regular Cokes than Diet and Zeros recently because they try to say, actually, it's healthier because the chemicals in the Zero are terrible for you.

Yeah, they're not good for you, but they're less bad for you than 30 grams of sugar in the real Coke. Aspartame is not good for you. A Diet Coke is not good for you. But it's less bad.

It's less bad.

That's the problem. That's the problem. And people want to say, well, sugar is natural. It's not true. Listen, tobacco is natural. It doesn't mean it's good for you. So it's complicated. The best thing to do, no Coke, no Diet Coke, water. But that's less fun.

I love a water.

Yeah, me too. But if you're used to drinking that food and that sweet drink, it's difficult to Get rid of it. Yeah.

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He is correct. He is correct. Yes. So when you cook rice and then you put it in the fridge to cool down, some of the starch in the rice does this crazy thing. It basically turns into fibre. And then when you eat the rice that's been cooled and then you can reheat it however you like, you therefore have a smaller glucose spike for the same exact rice and you don't feel the difference. It tastes the same, but it is better for you.

Okay.

Now, you don't have to do this every time. Like, you can eat rice without cooling it down first. It's not a big deal. There's other ways you can reduce the spike of rice, for example, by having it with protein or veggies first. But this is a very, very cool feature of starch. It also works with potatoes, with pasta, with all starches, with bread.

Leftover, cool it down.

Cool down. Yeah. Go make it cold and then bring it back up to hot before you That's very cool.

Yeah, I'll try that. Another thing that makes me feel really good is actually if I skip breakfast and lunch, I feel hungry and I'll have this acidic breath. Most likely I've had a coffee with it as well, so it's not ideal, but my energy is through the roof. I am a man.

You are a man.

I've heard. That men have a different biological response to fasting.

Yes.

Than women do.

Yes. Yes.

Truth.

Truth. And a lot of the studies that had been done on intermittent fasting or on windows during which you eat throughout the day have been done on men and have shown a lot of interesting benefits in women. So a lot of women have taken on the trend of, for example, skipping breakfast or just eating in smaller windows throughout the day. The data is not nearly as good, and it turns out it can actually stress your body a little bit, especially for women who are premenopause. So women of childbearing age who still have their periods, intermittent fasting can be a stressor on your system. After the menopause, it seems to be different. You can actually fast with less stress on your body. And so there's a classic case of a 35-year-old female who does intermittent fasting, who does Barry's Bootcamp 5 times a week, who does sauna, cold plunge, She drinks coffee, she has a stressful job, she doesn't sleep as much as she would like to sleep, etc. That creates a huge amount of stress on the female system. And you might see things like the period disappears or, you know, PCOS or problems with her hormonal balance. So as females, we have to understand that our body is not as good at handling this kind of stress as a male body. It's just biology. We need more food more often.

Yeah.

It's just the case. So if intermittent fasting works for you, that's fine. If you are having symptoms or you feel like your body is a bit out of balance and you recognise yourself in that little bouquet of stressors that I just said, maybe taking away one of them could help. And also, it's important to remember you don't need to intermittent fast to be healthy. You don't. In the studies that are done on animals, they find that fasting is most beneficial when you restrict the number of calories in an animal who had an unhealthy diet. Which makes sense, right? If you eat in an unhealthy way, eating less often the unhealthy food is going to be beneficial. If you have a healthy diet, the fasting doesn't do much to, for example, lifespan. So it's not necessary. It was an amazing trend. And there are things we did learn from it, which is that you don't need to eat 6 times a day. 3 meals is perfect, but going from 3 meals to 1 is just not necessary. So do what fits you and your life, but don't take it as a must-have. for a healthy body and brain. If it works for you, perfect.

What are some nice-to-haves for men and some nice-to-haves for women?

A lot of the glucose hacks, I mean, I would say most of the glucose hacks work for everybody. All the glucose hacks work for everybody because males and females have glucose levels and spikes in both males' and females' bodies lead to consequences. So if I was to run through the hacks, the most important ones, Savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. So go for the omelettes and the proteins. Eating sugar at the end of your meal. So your mom was correct. If you're going to have the Oreos, have them after a full meal, not on an empty stomach. Shout out to your mom again. And then veggies first is wonderful during a meal that's going to be a larger meal. Like, for example, at dinner, having a big plate of veggies at the beginning of a meal is super good. Moving after eating. Very easy. You don't have to go to the gym. You can walk around the block, you can clean your apartment, you can dance to a few songs, move after eating to help your body soak up some of the glucose from that meal. Vinegar is a good hack if you ever want to use it. And then when it comes to females specifically, there's one thing that's helped me a lot, and actually men can benefit from it too, is supplementing with omega-3s. So today we have an out-of-balance omega index in our bodies. Omega-3s come from fish, omega-6s come from processed foods, processed oils, and that balance actually dictates the amount of inflammation in your body. And so today we're all very inflamed because we have more omega-6s than omega-3s. So supplementing with omega-3s, DHA specifically, is super helpful, especially for women who want to have a baby, because during pregnancy, again, that's another hack in my book. 9 months that count forever. You transfer a lot of omega-3s to your child, and if you don't have enough, you're not going to be able to transfer as much as you would like to. So I take a gram and a half of omega-3s every single day as a supplement. It's made a big difference in my gut, my inflammation, my skin, my nails, my hair. It's great.

That's beautiful. I know that you're doing a lot of things for work, and you're also a very cool mom.

Thanks.

I'd love to know more about that balance. I know you're very grateful for it, which you shared. Mm-hmm. But I'd love to know what that's like to make a decision like that, to become a mom while you also are a mom of the Glucose Goddess Empire.

I never thought I would want kids. Like, I had this idea when I was younger, oh, I'm going to get married and have kids one day. But then in my 20s, and I didn't feel the drive at all. And up until 3 years ago, I didn't really feel the drive. And then I just sat down for a second. I said, okay, fast forward to when I'm 60 or 70. Do I think having a family would be important to me if I think about my future self? And the answer was 100% yes. And so that's when I made the decision to try to have a baby. It was a complicated journey. I had a miscarriage at 3 months. The first time, a silent miscarriage. So I didn't know anything had gone wrong. I found out at the ultrasound. It was super traumatic. And I don't know, I just never really felt like having a child was going to slow me down. I didn't have that belief ingrained in me. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and it's been more work than I ever thought it would be. But I didn't have that fear. I knew that if I prioritized things, I would be able to continue working. I didn't know to what extent it would make me more productive, which it has, but it never felt like such a compromise. I would say I felt like maybe I had already compromised so much to build my company and to build what I'm doing that it didn't feel like it was going to be a big extra sacrifice. The obsession of building Glucose Goddess over the past 7 years now, I haven't had a day off in 7 years. And specifically when I go on vacation, usually something really intense happens that I have to manage. So I was already in a state of such deep focus, such obsession, such all-encompassing work that I just knew I was going to find a way to keep it up. I also have a super supportive Mr. Glucose who takes care of our baby glucose a lot. And I love these nicknames.

They're too good.

I haven't said anybody's names. So it's Mr. Glucose and Baby Glucose.

Or Glucose Junior.

Glucose Junior. Yeah. So I'm not alone and my mom is present. I have the great chance to be able to afford a nanny. So I've been able to set my life up, but it's hard. It's hard. But it feels good. It feels great. It feels, it feels super hard, but incredibly satisfying to be doing everything.

Yeah.

When you're on those vacations and you have to put a fire out.

Yeah.

Do you like the process of putting fires out?

Yes.

I think now I feel really good about the fires. I think for the first few years, I remember my first negative comment. This was probably a few months into making my Instagram account. It destroyed me for 3 days.

Do you remember the comment?

No, exactly. It was probably something like, you're stupid. I don't know. Or— yeah, no, I don't remember the comment at all, but I remember it really flooring me for 3 days.

Yeah.

And I was like, I was questioning everything because I'm a recovering people pleaser. So the negative comment really hurt me. And today you need to really go for it to hurt me because I've just seen so much and the level keeps going up. So I feel like once I've— I mean, I'm sure you feel the same way, but once I've been able to manage a level 10 fire and I feel like, okay, I know how to do this kind of fire now, then you have level 11 fire that comes your way. And now I enjoy it. I like the process. It's hard, but it feels like going to the gym. I'm like, okay, What's the difficult thing we have to deal with today? What's coming my way? And again, because I've been able to create a really strong team around me, it gets easier and now it gets more fun. But the beginning years was so tough because I was just this random girl talking about blood sugar on Instagram, and I felt kind of stupid doing it. When you have 5 followers, it's not the same as when you have 5 million. People don't think the same thing of your work.

Of course.

So when you have 5 followers and I'm like, this is a strawberry, and if you make it into a juice, this is a spike. I was like, oh gosh, you know, maybe it's silly what I'm doing. Today it doesn't feel silly. Today it feels like I'm doing great work and I get a lot of validation for it. But the beginning years were the hardest and dealing with the comment and just being alone. I was alone for many years. I was alone for 4 years. I didn't have a team for 4 years. It was just me on my Instagram account making the little graphs on my computer, creating computer software to extract the data from my glucose monitor to make things. Today it's easy to say, oh wow, it's working so well. But the beginning was tough. And I made a pact with myself at the very beginning. I was still working in a company. I told myself every day for 6 months, I'm going to work on this project that really is lighting my soul up, 1 hour per day for 6 months. And only at the end of the 6 months will I assess where I'm at.

Hmm.

Because at the beginning, when you have 17 followers, and you post something and it gets one like, I can tell you, you don't feel so good. You don't want to continue. So that pact was what allowed me to actually take off, I think. And at the end of the 6 months, I had, I don't know, 2,000 followers, and that already felt like enough.

Did you have the fear of being cringe?

Fear of being cringe? Yeah. Yeah. But I live with that. I don't know. It's okay. I can see that fear has a She has a space in my brain and I can hold her. It's okay. She doesn't control me.

That's the question I get a lot from people who really want to get started online. And I guess about me, but they're like, weren't you scared of being cringe?

Like, yeah, but then you'll have 5 million followers and it won't be cringe anymore.

That's, that's the one. I've seen one of those random motivational Instagram things. It's like, you're cringe until you're inspirational. Doesn't— sorry, go ahead.

No, no, I was just going to say, putting yourself out there is hard. I think I credit my mom because she took a lot of photos of us growing up. So I was always in front of a camera. And so I don't feel scared about filming myself and posting a photo of myself. But if you've never done that before, it's a difficult exercise. And then you spend 6 months just being like, can I post this photo or not? You just have to go for it. Just go for it.

How did you realize you were a people pleaser?

Probably therapy. Therapy has been very helpful to me. I didn't even know I was that. I thought it was just part of being a human. You see what I mean? I didn't know it was possible to live without that. And through therapy, through undoing these beliefs, through understanding the patterns, how I grew up and why that turned me into a people pleaser, I've been able to free that part of myself a little bit. And especially, I think, running this business and doing this message, you can't be a people pleaser. And you learn that very quickly. Like, you can't please everybody. You have to make tough decisions. You have to fire people sometimes. You have to do hard stuff. And the people pleasing aspect just has to, just has to disappear. Otherwise you can't grow. And as my business has grown, I've had to also grow personally. Otherwise I can't keep up. So it's been a mutual Growth path. Yeah.

Are you—

were you a people pleaser? No.

No, no, I don't think I was ever a people pleaser. But I think definitions and labels are really good for self-reflection. I think people hear people pleaser and they're listening to this and they're like, oh, that's unfortunate. And they don't even realize that they're people pleasers. So I'd like to briefly define what that meant to you.

Yeah. To me, it meant that I felt better about myself if somebody told me that I was doing something good. So getting external validation, like a comment that said, I love this post, that made me feel really good. And that made me feel like I wanted to continue my Instagram account. Getting a comment that said, you're stupid, that made me want to stop. So placing a lot of value on external validation and on how people perceive you and on getting positive feedback.

And wanting from the world.

Wanting to be liked. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wanting to be liked. And just recently, I think over the past few years now, I quite like being disliked. I'm like, it's okay. It's a flex. It's cool. I'm okay with it. But it takes time to undo these things. It takes time. And I don't think you can— I don't think I could have gotten to where I am today if I had not been able to heal that part of myself. And it's the child part, you know, it's the part that I grew up with my mom and my sister. My dad, my parents were divorced, and so it was a female household. And so the energy was kind of always that, you know, and people would come over, we'd like host and be nice. And my mother never got angry. I never saw anger at home. It was always just happy or sad. Never angry, never frustrated, never trying to flex your agency or your power. Never. So it was ingrained in me that those were the emotions I had access to. The, the politeness, the niceness, the fawning, the sadness. But I had to reclaim anger. And in order to stop being a people pleaser, I had to reclaim my anger, my frustration, and my agency. It's all the shadow work. You know this concept of shadow work? So the concept is amazing. And so it says that when you're born, you're born as a human capable of experiencing all emotions, everything. And when you see a baby, it's true. Like, they go through everything all the time in a very extreme manner. And then as you grow up, some of the emotions throughout how your parents raise you, what happens in school, you put them in a bag behind your back. You don't really access those anymore. They're not okay to access. For men, it's usually sadness. It's not okay to cry.

Yeah.

You put it in your bag behind your back. And then as an adult, the fact that you have these emotions in that bag, which is called your shadow, actually harms you because it shows up as people pleasing. It shows up as uncontrolled anger, it shows up anyway as— and so one of the pieces of work of therapy which I did, which was amazing, was to go and reclaim all that stuff in the shadow and to try to be more whole. And in the context of being online, creating content, having, you know, being exposed to all these people, having a message, trying to change things, it's been very important to reclaim that shadow work because otherwise I would feel more broken, I think, by the experience.

That's cool. Yeah. And now you have what it takes personally to be able to manage these fires in a very different way than you did in the early days. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. 5 years ago, I would never survive a day in my shoes today, I think.

Yeah. No, I've worked on a few startups. Yeah. As part of my, my career. And sometimes I work with people on them who have done the startup life before, and sometimes it's their first time. And it's 2 very different energies because people who haven't done it before, all they can think about is when will this end? Of like, when will the fires stop? Like, when does it get smooth all of a sudden? People have only worked in a corporate environment where there's that safety net, or they've had the big corporate structure where like crazy things don't happen every few hours. But people who have been exposed to startup environments know that's just part of the game. Yeah. And another cheesy Instagram motivational thing that you love those though. They're so good. They're just too good. Sometimes you read them, you're like, it's so cheesy, but it's so true. It's so true. And here's a good one. It's it never gets sorry.

It never gets easier. You just get stronger.

It never gets easier. You just get used to it. You just get stronger. And it's so true about the the whole social media journey. The whole being a founder in general, the whole startup life, and I guess life in general. And what you're saying about being a mom, it's—

You stretch, you find, you find that you have more strength than you thought. Yeah, but you have to have the tools to go through them. You have to have the tools. And I think therapy is huge for this. You have to have the tools to go through the fire. You know, that first comment that knocked me down, I talked to my therapist about it. 3 days, I was back up. Today I have dozens of negative comments a day. I don't even bat an eye to them. It's like the thing hurts you. Can you get through it? Can you process the emotion? Can you metabolize it so that it doesn't stay with you and keep you in a state of anger, basically, or sadness? It's going through them, I think. And that's been a great, great tool that I learned in therapy, how to move emotions through my body, through my psyche.

I know that earlier in this conversation, you very humbly spoke about your career like it was somewhat consequential. Like this thing happened and now I'm glucose goddess. I just know out of experience it's not actually this simple consequential process because you basically have a reason to give up and turn around every single day.

Yeah.

It's like shame is a reason, fear is a reason, failure is a reason.

Yep.

And you have to double down every single time.

Yeah.

And you have to have something that's bigger than you to guide you towards that. For many, it's a problem they want to solve. For some, it's a life they want to lead. If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to know what made you double down over and over again and decide over and over again, no, actually, I know this is the worst day of my life, but I'm going to go for it.

2 things. One is external, one is internal. The external one is once I understand this science, I knew that there were people in the world who desperately needed to have access to it. My archetype of the person I think about the most is the person who has type 2 diabetes, who doesn't know that it's reversible, who's going straight into a wall of amputation, of blindness, of being on medication for the rest of their lives, who is trying to do something healthier, who goes to the store, who sees fruit smoothie, no cholesterol, and thinks, this must be good for me. and they don't know they're making themselves sicker. That person I want to help. I don't want these people to have to go through this ever. I want every single one of those people to know that type 2 diabetes is reversible, that you can do easy things to get back to health.

Forgive my ignorance. Type 1 diabetes is genetic. Type 2 is dietary.

Type 1 diabetes, you're basically, quote unquote, born with it. It's an autoimmune disease. So type 1, you can never cure it. Type 2 diabetes is lifestyle-driven. So after decades of poor diet, etc., you will develop type 2 diabetes. Type 2 is the one that's reversible. Type 1, you have to live with and manage. So far, there's no cure. Type 2, you can reverse.

Right.

And these people, I mean, these people who read my books, who message me every day, they are the reasons I continue. Because there's noise on Instagram, there's people calling you stupid, whatever. There's people dying. Like, we need to do something about this. So I don't know why, it just drives me fully. And then there's a more spiritual also reason. I feel like this idea for helping people understand health and science, I feel like the idea picked me. I feel like I didn't have a choice. This idea has been floating around me for a very long time. When I was in middle school, now looking back, I'm like, whoa, I was a pancreas at a theater play we were doing in school. We were doing the human body. I was the pancreas, which is the organ that manages glucose. I know it sounds stupid, but I have all these little things in my life. This idea was floating around and it picked me and I said yes. And I said, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to bring this idea into the world. And I just made a pact with it. And many times I've wanted to quit. Many, many times. In fact, the week where my agent, my literary agent found me was the week I was coming home to Paris and I was telling my family, I'm going to stop the glucose thing. It's just not working. How can I ever make money from this? It's not going to work. Bam. That week, I get basically signed with a book agent. And over and over again, every time I've wanted to quit, every time there was a fire that felt too big to recover from, something pulled me through. Whether it was a testimonial from a reader, somebody I met in the street, a taxi driver who in London once randomly told me he had no idea about my life. I was having a very difficult day. My first book had come out. I was honestly like, I was I wanted to quit everything. He looked at me in the little river mirror. He said, what you're doing is very important. You need to keep going. Like an angel. No idea why he said that. So the universe has been conspiring so that I keep going with this idea. And that's the best way I can explain it. It's an emotional drive to help people because I think type 2 diabetes should not exist. And today, 1 billion people in the world have it. Huge public health issue. People suffering, kids suffering. Parents dying too soon, people being on medication at the hospital for their whole lives. There's just so much to do, you know, and people need the information. And then a spiritual belief that I need to be doing this. So I'm going to get up and I'm going to keep doing it and fight.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. When I'm doomscrolling and partially because I'm a victim of doomscrolling like all of us, but partially also I'm just trying to learn like What's going on out there? And I see some conversations about young women that are quite polar in view of like be that like boss who like just career and do your own thing. And then there's another camp which is like quite maternal and be a mom and like. Not be the boss, but very rarely do I see the storytelling of both together online.

Well, let's be perfectly clear. I'm not a full-time mom. I have an amazing nanny who takes care of my little boy, you know, nine hours a day. I've had to hire somebody for him to have constant maternal care.

Mm-hmm.

I would love to be a full-time mom, and I would love to be full-time doing this work. It's impossible. So I've had to make a compromise. I think the idea that you can do both is bullshit. You can't do both. I can't. I mean, a baby needs constant care, constant attention, and it's not in the few naps that he takes per day that I could run my business. So I've had to outsource, you know, and I've had to— I've had to— no, I've had the privilege to be able to do that. So you do make sacrifices. And maybe I'm going to look back and say, I wish I had spent more time with him and I wish I had worked less. I don't know.

But do you think you would have been able to do what you're doing now as a mom earlier in your career where you wouldn't have been able to necessarily have the means to outsource and get a second set of hands to help you out?

Impossible. Impossible. I'm very fortunate that my business is at a level today where, you know, I can afford care at home.

So people who say they actually want to wait until they're in a better financial position to have kids is very reasonable.

I don't have an answer, honestly. You know what motherhood has taught me? To be humble. I was like, I've written books, like I do all this stuff. It's going to be easy to be a mom. I had all these grand beliefs. I thought, you know, I thought pregnancy is going to be so easy. I'm going to be a goddess. I was throwing up all night for months. Anyway, it's just super humbling. So I don't think I can honestly give any advice to anybody. I can just talk about my own journey, which is that I feel very lucky today that I can afford to have a nanny to help. And in the beginning, it was very hard because the first 3 months I didn't have a nanny and it was just me and Mr. Glucose and Baby Glucose. And then when the nanny came, it was hard at the beginning. It's really hard to hand over your baby. But now I think I found a good balance.

Nice.

But there's compromises. You cannot do both full-time. That's, that's a lie. It's impossible. So I'm doing my best to keep doing my mission and keep doing the stuff that's driving me intellectually and also to take care of my little boy, which is amazing. But it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And of course, you know, as you said, It's complicated as women. You have all this messaging around you should be a mom, you should do this, you should do that. You can do both. You can't do both. You should continue working. You should stop working. You should do daycare. You should do it's just complicated. People find their own way, but I feel very, very fortunate today that I can do this for sure. And if I didn't have a nanny, I would have to stop work completely.

You did something similar that I did career-wise of having a full-time. Corporate job. Yeah. And then eventually you hedged for a second. You did both.

6 months.

6 months. And then you quit. You did this full time.

Yeah. So I was working 6 months at the company. At the end of the 6 months, I had $40,000 saved and I thought, okay, I can live on this for a year. I'm going to try to do glucose thing full time. So I tried. And at the beginning I was living in San Francisco. So in SF back then, anytime you have an idea, it's raise $1 million and build an app. Which is what I tried to do for the first few months. And I was like, wait a minute, I don't want to do this. I want to make content. And after that first year was the— that moment when I said, how can I live from this? I had run out of money. I was like, okay, I'm going to shut down the Glucose Goddess Instagram. And I had maybe 10,000 followers. I was like, well, I had a good run, you know? And that's when I had the opportunity to sign with a book agent and she found me. So again, the universe was conspiring and helping. And so I kept going.

For the listeners today who are at a desk job.

Yeah.

That they don't like. Yeah. And they have an idea that they do like, but they lack that confidence to quit their job and to go all out on that idea they have that's just been keeping them up at night. What advice do you have for them?

The 6-month deal worked pretty well for me. So work on it 1 hour a day for 6 months. Don't look at what happens every day. Don't look at what's going on every week. Don't be discouraged. Just make a pact with yourself. Put a calendar invite 6 months from now. That's when you assess whether you go for it or not. Between now and 6 months, 1 hour a day, rain or shine, just do that and see where you are in 6 months. Because sometimes it feels so overwhelming that we just don't even start. And if you break it down into digestible chunks, like the glucose hacks, for example, then you can really get somewhere. And I understand completely the feeling that you don't want to quit your job with very little safety and certainty. I think that makes total sense. I did not quit my job. I waited and yeah, I waited until I had a little bit of traction or I felt like, okay, there's something here.

Yeah, I did 2 years of both at the same time, but I guess that's a privilege as well. If I was spending 2 hours a day commuting, for example, then you can't do that. But I was during COVID so thankfully I gained 2 hours a day.

Yeah.

Didn't have to get ready in the morning. I kind of, you know, but not really at home.

But you know this feeling, what you just said, that the idea that's keeping you up at night.

Yeah.

I love this idea of like there's some things that light up your soul and I really truly believe that that's a direction that you cannot ignore. Like, if it's lighting up your soul, that idea wants to be born. And after a little while, if you don't act on it, it's going to go to somebody else.

Yeah, it's—

That's Elizabeth Gilbert and her concept of big magic. Like, ideas live independently of humans. They want to come through. And so the idea is going to circle around you for a little bit and give you the opportunity to try. And then if you don't do it, it's going to go to somebody else. That's why you see people who say, oh, this person launched this thing. I had that idea last year. You're like, yeah, but you didn't do it. So it went somewhere else. It's a bit woo-woo, but I think it actually parallels a lot of experiences that you might have.

I mean, every single restaurant in a major city, you'll have 4 or 5 amazing ideas at the table. Very few people who actually have the patience and care to actually execute on any of those.

And that's okay. And it's good that not everybody executes on this stuff. It's okay. I think the stat is like, 10% of people think of an idea. 10% of those people take the first step towards that idea. 10% of those people keep going. It's tiny, tiny, but it's okay. Not everybody should be doing this or is cut out for this. I mean, it's hard.

For me, actually, I don't know if I've spoken about this before. I don't think I have, but it wasn't actually an idea keeping me up at night. It was my future self. I would just just dream for hours and hours in every classroom, every night before I could sleep, just thinking about future me. I had no idea how I would get there, but I just, I knew future me. I was like, I, I want to be this guy and I want to be his friend. And I don't know how I'll get there, but if life gives me a sliver of opportunity on the way there, like, I'll, I'll grab it, hold on to it for dear life, you know? It was never like, oh, I have to chase this Stad guy thing. It was more like, I have to chase this future version of me. And once Stad guy is presented to me or whatever it is presented to me, then I'll run with that because that's what I can run with.

And have you, quote unquote, made it to where you wanted your future self to be?

No. Now I have a new guy. I have a new future self. So this is very Matthew McConaughey. Have you seen that? Oh, Matthew McConaughey has a great— I think it was an Oscar speech where he said that he dreamt of his future self, and once he became him, he dreamt of his future self. And basically, like, you never get there. You just keep finding that new person. But a really cool exercise that I really enjoy is actually thinking about my past self and thinking, like, what would he think of me?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

You know, which is, I guess, an exercise for gratitude. But I've paused them. Like, I look at old pictures and old videos. Konstantin and I actually did this together last time when we were in Paris. We actually both started crying because we looked at this old video of me getting my first raise at work. And I was so insanely happy. And it would seem so insignificant today. And I was thinking, that guy there would dream to be at breakfast with us. And it's such a really cool exercise because we're also so obsessed with motivation and growth. We sometimes forget about the process of reflection.

Which is such a big motivator.

Honestly, it's the most powerful motivator.

I did something that I highly recommend other people do. I kept a diary. It was called the Glucose Diary. So the first day where I decided to try to turn this glucose passion into something, I wrote, I don't know what day, April 2019. And I wrote like, I'm in this city and I just thought maybe I should build a glucose Instagram account. Kind of weird, but like maybe it'll work. And then every month I would just write a few sentences about what was going on. So after a year and a half, for example, if I hit a rough patch, I would go back to that diary and be like, oh my God, a year and a half ago I hadn't even done anything. Look where I am now. So it's really difficult when you compare yourself to your future self because that future self keeps evolving, but that past self becomes more and more proud of you as time goes on. So that's been a huge, huge help and I still do it. It's incredible. And I compare like first diary entry to this one. And so when I feel like, oh, I have to deal with so much crap today, it's so difficult. I'm like, but this Jessie 6 years ago, she would— she was dreaming of being here today. So the difficulty I have today is actually such a privilege.

Yeah.

It's a privilege to wake up and have a problem, quote unquote, I need to solve because I've helped so many people, because my message has gone so far, because X, Y, Z. So it reframes everything.

I actually do something similar. I love that. I just don't do it on paper because I find writing intimidating. I actually find books intimidating to write in them, to read them. I'm a digital guy, so I actually just send myself videos of myself. I make vlogs with one viewer.

Oh, that's so good.

It's me.

That's so good.

I've been making them since I was like 17.

That's so good.

Random vlog, like, hey vlog, I'm here now. I think I did one the day I broke up with my first girlfriend when I was like 18, 19, whatever. Like, just have all these random videos going through moments of transition.

It's so powerful.

It's really cool.

So cool. So cool.

Yeah. On this episode of the podcast, we'll do something that we do on every episode of the podcast, which is a brief game of À la Poubelle. Versus fantastique. Can you please give us a couple of things you would throw à la poubelle and wish to change about society and the world you find yourself in? And a few things you would celebrate to be fantastique that you wish you could see more of?

Okay, à la poubelle, polarization in the health and wellness world. People fight. I'm vegan, I'm carnivore, I'm this, I'm that. You suck, you suck. We're all in it for the same thing. We all know. How to be healthier? It's not that complicated. Vegetables, fresh food, less sugar, movement. Let's all agree, guys. It's okay. So à la poubelle. Everybody on their soapboxes fighting against each other when we should be working together. À la poubelle. I'm sorry, but it's going to be Nutella crepes for breakfast and Nutella toast for breakfast for kids. Sugary food for kids. À la poubelle.

Tastes so good.

I know, I know, I know.

So good.

I know, I know, I know. À la poubelle. À la poubelle. Okay, I'm gonna get so much hate for this. Oat milk à la poubelle. I know it's hard facts today.

Big Oats is gonna come after you. If Glucose Goddess disappears, guys, it was Big Oats who came straight to her house.

So oat milk à la poubelle. And then à la poubelle telling people that when they have a condition, the only way out is lifelong medication. À la poubelle. That's bullshit. We can solve things. It takes education and work, but à la probé. And then fantastique. I think therapy, fantastique. Highly recommend fantastique. Your vlog idea of creating videos and looking back so you see progress you made or writing down things because people need encouragement. We all have a little thing lighting up our soul, and we should all try to go after it as much as we can.

Best encouragement is your past self.

Exactly. So fantastique, having a process in place that helps you do that. Fantastique, doing shadow work, reclaiming emotions that you didn't have access to when you were younger. Fantastique, all the researchers in the world doing incredible science, advancing our understanding of the human body. Fantastique, all the passionate doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals who do such thankless work, who are there day in, day out, Trying to help people be better, and fantastic people in governments and people in positions of power who want to change stuff, and fantastic to be able to to work with them every day.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to be on this podcast.

It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you for the coffee and for the great talk.

Of course. Can you give the audience a quick call to action? I know you have. A lot of cool things coming. New product, new book.

Call to action. Glucose Goddess Instagram is where everything happens. That's the hub. And so my new book, 9 Months That Count Forever, for anybody who wants to have kids one day, knows somebody who's going to have a kid, is pregnant, wants to get pregnant, it's a real game changer. Very excited about it. And for people who know they should be eating enough protein but don't have time to cook 3 times a day, Protein Prodigy, 2 scoops in your morning drink, froth it, tastes like adding a splash of milk, and it boasts 20 grams of protein.

20 grams?

Yep.

People should be having a gram per pound of body weight.

Exactly. Best protein powder in the world, in my opinion, hands down. Comes from Ireland, grass-fed cows, family farms, processed without heat, without chemicals. It is the shit. It's incredible. Protein Prodigy.

There you go. Protein Prodigy by Glucose Goddess.

Exactly.

Thank you so much, Blue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Stard Guy Podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. À la prochaine. And a big hug from the Your team just added its 67th AI tool, and also your 67th security blind spot.

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