The ONE THING That Can Transform Your Health | JJ Virgin

Thank you. Thank you, Billy. This is my favorite audience. Now, am I going to get slides up? Oh, I've got them up, but not here, just so you guys know. So why is it my favorite audience, besides the obvious? Two reasons. Number one, because you guys get it. Wouldn't you agree? Right. Not only do you get it, here's the number two. So I'm a nutritionist, and when you take chiropractic and you put it with nutrition, it is not one plus one equals two. It's one plus one equals 1,000. So we have a huge opportunity today, because I'm going to share with you the one thing, the little hinge that can swing a huge door for your patients and for you. Because it always starts with us, right? Like, you would never have your patients do something you weren't willing to do yourself, would you? No. No. Thank you, Billy. So I'm going to share with you the one thing that you can do if maybe your energy's not quite there or you're getting sick more often than you want to, or your mood's a little off, or your focus, or this is happening with any of your patients, this shift that can change all of that. Because for so many people, the thing that holds them back is their health. And it's the little thing they do every single day that makes all the difference. Now, when I wrote the Virgin Diet, the number one question I got asked about was sugar. And it seems like people fell into two camps. They were either confused by it. Anyone thinking, what about agave? What about honey? It's natural. Or maple syrup? Or, how about aspartame? It's got no calories. Or worse yet, they were controlled by it. They wanted to get off of it, but they just couldn't. Because sugar is our number one recreational drug of choice. And so I set out to change that, because as you saw with that poppy slide, my nickname growing up was Poppies. But not for those flowers. It was for this. It was for Pop Tarts. Because I literally was raised on Pop Tarts. Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs. Anybody? Anybody admit to this? Yeah, I know. And, you know, it's so funny. I was doing this talk and my mom was sitting in the audience. My mom never comes saying this stuff. And I'm doing this and my mom's looking and she goes, not all the time. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Sunday we had donuts. So it's all of us that this is happening to. And if you look at the stats, it's absolutely crazy what has Happened turn of the century, we were eating 5 pounds of sugar and we didn't even hit 1% obesity. And then 1994, 26 pounds of sugar a year, 10% obesity. I remember going to school and there was like one overweight kid in the class. Now one in five kids are obese. Obese. And now you look at it, 152 pounds of sugar per person per year and nearly 35% obesity. And I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. Not me. Is anyone thinking up that person next to me must be eating 300 pounds because not me. But I'm going to show you where sugar is sneaking in. Even if you think you are doing everything right and it's going to blow your mind, and if it's happening to us, it is super happening to your patients. And the reason this is a problem is it doesn't just make you tired and cranky and overweight. It drives all of the diseases, 70 different diseases it's driving and the big majors it's playing a starring role in heart disease and diabetes and cancer and dementia. Heck, it feeds cancer. So we're eating less table sugar than ever. I mean, I'm trying to think of the last time I went to someone's house and there was a little bowl of sugar cubes. Like you can't even find sugar cubes, right? You can't even find them at the store. I was trying to get them for a display. I'm like, where the heck are the sugar cubes? But sugar is sneaking into places that you would never expect. And that's the problem is we're going out there and we're getting that green drink with the boost of greens that says no sugar added on the label and has 56 grams of sugar in it. More sugar than a soda. You get the fat free yogurt with fruit, fruit you sweetened. It's got more sugar than the same amount of ice cream. So your patients are out there and they're trying to do everything right. And yet sugar is sneaking into places that they would never expect. So they have no hope here. Because when they try so hard and they see no results, what do they do? They give up, right? They say, oh, I guess I'm just getting older, it's my genetics. But the problem is they've been following the wrong set of rules. They've been following the wrong framework. This framework of the glycemic index needs to be blown up. It has created the problem because what it's done is, is Taken one thing, blood sugar, and it looks at a 50 gram dose of a food and how much your blood sugar rises in response to it. Now, tell me, do you usually sit down and say, I'm going to have 50 grams of carrots. Nope. Nothing else, Just carrots, right? Who eats like that? When you eat carbohydrates, fiber, protein, fat, it's going to change the way your blood sugar responds. And people don't eat foods in isolation. Moreover, when you eat carrots, same amount of carrots as potatoes, that 50 gram dose, it makes the carrots look like the glycemic index of potatoes. And we know that's not the case. So the deal is, we cannot look at sugar that way. We cannot look at food as calories in, calories out. We've got to look at food as information and sugar for its impact on our chemistry lab. Is it making us have great energy or crash and burn? Stop the aging process or age faster, store fat, burn fat. And this is a simple switch to do once you realize that all sugar is not created equal, that we've got to change the way we look at it. And here's the deal. All carbohydrates, except for fiber, are sugar. It's just a matter of whether you're eating straight sugar and mainlining it, or you're eating carbohydrates and your body's going to make sugar from the carbohydrates you eat. And it's a matter of how quickly or slowly your body does that. But in order to look at this and really understand the impact that these sugars have, we have to create a new framework that makes sense. And the first part of that is to understand that, yes, we have to look at how much a food raises blood sugar. But you may have something that has no calories, like an artificial sweetener that can raise blood sugar and insulin. So the first part is to look at its impact on your blood sugar. The big challenge with the glycemic index is it forgot the worst sugar of all. Because bottom line is, all carbohydrates are going to turn into glucose or fructose. If they start out as fructose, they finish as fructose, or they're going to turn into glucose. Glucose raises blood sugar, which triggers insulin and leptin and ghrelin, which tells your body you ate. Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver, so fructose doesn't trigger any blood sugar response. And that's why we thought it was so great. That's why we started giving it to diabetics. But in reality it's terrible because when you don't trigger a blood sugar response, your body doesn't hear it, so it doesn't know that you ate. No appetite control mechanisms have been activated. So instead that fructose is going to go straight to the liver. Now, if there was any space in the liver, it could go to glucose and get stored as glycogen. But the liver is not a big place, so most likely it's going to be turned into fat. And the more fructose you eat, the better your body gets at turning it into fat. That's why it's crazy that we have a USDA MyPlate that makes fruits and vegetables the same. Could we all agree that kale is a little bit different than apple juice? Right. And if you have someone looking at these recommendations, they go, well, I could have some apple juice or I could have some broccoli. What are they picking? I could have a banana, I could have kale, right? We've gotten into this mindset that fruit is free food and that juice, dried fruit, they're all okay because they're all natural or fruit juice concentrate. That plus processed food has given us this bombardment of fructose. And when the more fructose we eat, the better our body gets at making fat and transporting it straight to the liver, raising triglycerides, making us hypertensive, aging us. Plus, fructose is super sweet. So. So you've got to look at fructose differently than any of these other sugars. So you've got how much something raises your blood sugar, you've got fructose. And then you contrast that with nutrient density and fiber. And that is the new way of looking at sugar. And I broke these sugars into seven different grains, roots, fruits, no fat, and low fat dairy and diet foods, dressings, drinks and sweeteners and added sugars. And then I went and I took what I just talked about. I took the blood sugar response, fructose fibrograms, nutrient density, and I rated every single one of these foods, which was just as much of a pain as it sounds like to do. But I knew that people aren't going to go to the store. If you look at the latest recommendations on sugar, you're supposed to cut your calories, your sugar intake down to 10% of your daily intake of calories. But if you know about what most people do when they eat, they don't know anything about calories. And if they do, they tend to underestimate them. So there's no way they're going to be able to do the math to figure this out or to figure out what six added teaspoons of sugar is. And that's not actually the problem anyway, because that doesn't even look at the fact that wheat bread, two pieces of wheat bread, raise your blood sugar more than six teaspoons of sugar. Anyway, you've got to look at the impact. So I went through all these different foods, and then I ran 700 people through a program, so they gave me foods they wanted to know about, too. And. And I rated them in those. Red, no yellow, proceed with caution. And green or low sugar impact. And then I built a framework, because when I looked at what was going on with sugar and how many people here feel like sugar is kind of hard for them to give up? Anybody want to admit it? Like, yay, yay for honesty. And, you know, sugar is our number one drug of choice. They did this study with rats where they gave rats morphine, and it lit up the pleasure center of their brain, and then they gave rats Oreo cookies, and it lit up the same pleasure center of their brain, and then they gave rats the choice. What do you think they went for? The Oreo cookies? Not only did they go for the Oreo cookies, they, like, cracked them open, they went to the middle. And anyone here. Can anyone tell us what the middle of the Oreo cookie is? Anybody? The mystery. The mystery, whatever that is. Goo in the middle. So if sugar is a drug and it is our number one recreational drug of choice, does it make any sense for you to tell someone just to stop it? Just stop it doesn't make any sense. It's setting someone up to fail. So what I did, and this is. If anyone's writing a book, here's a great takeaway. I went and read all the books that were written on sugar, and then I also went to Amazon and I read all the negative reviews, because my sense was no one had ever created a plan that really worked because they didn't address sugar as a drug and taper things. And that's what their negative reviews showed. So the first thing that I have people do is I have them test, because what you measure, you can improve, and what you measure and record, you improve exponentially. And I have people start with the sugar impact quiz. And I like things that people can do where they start to connect the dots with the. Between what they're eating and how they feel, because so many of the things that high sugar impact can do to Your body are things that we just think are normal for us, right? Oh, my energy's down in the afternoon. I've got sugar cravings. I'm hungrier than I should be. I'm a little cranky. I'm feeling bloated. I can't lose weight. And I especially can't lose around my belly. We are taught that that's just normal. I'm getting older. I mean, if you go to the drugstore, you just see what's being marketed there. But I can tell you that when I ran 700 people through this program, I watched people change this in a matter of weeks, who had struggled with this for years and years and years. Now the other thing I have people do is I have them take a sneaky sugar inventory. This is all the high and medium sugar impact foods. Because what you tend to say is, I'm not eating any sugar. But you don't think of things like the fat free dressing that has a teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of dressing and people are slathering it on because it's fat free. They're turning their salad into a sundae. Or the balsamic vinegar that is in reality syrup. That usually gets a big, oh, I guess you guys already knew that one. The marinara sauce has got as much sugar as Oreo cookies. So you go through and you start to look at all these things because the deal is it all adds up. It all adds up. You can't just have a little bit of these things. And the other challenge with sweet is the more sweet you eat, the more sweet you want, right? Exposure equals preference. That's why these little kids foods where they're putting in artificial sweeteners and, and high fructose corn syrup and fruit juice concentrate, the way they super lie on the label, by the way, fruit juice concentrate on the label and they can put no sugar added. That is criminal. Makes it super sweet. We've got kids whose taste buds are so distorted now they can't even taste natural sweetness anymore. Then of course, we do weighing and measuring. And I have people always check their waist and their hips because if you lose weight but you don't lose your waist, you didn't make yourself better. So you've always got to be checking your waist and hip measurements. The single biggest difference between what I've done, besides creating a new framework for looking at sugar, is to teach people to taper and to not to go cold turkey. And depending on where they were on the sugar impact scale, I'll have them do this for one to two weeks. And this is where I do a couple different things. Number one, I have them go from high to medium sugar impact. And I've built both the virgin diet and the sugar impact diet all on swaps. The number one question I get asked just every day is what do I eat? Right? You cannot take things away from people without giving them something. They will find worse things if you do that. Trust me. So if someone was eating potatoes, they go to sweet potatoes. If they were eating white rice, they go to brown rice. If they were eating wheat pasta, they go to quinoa pasta. So simple little swaps that are just like the foods they were eating, but a healthier choice. And then the next thing I teach them to do is to start the day with a shake. You know, so many people start the day with a dessert, that muffin. What happens with a cupcake if you take off the icing, what do you have? What is that? What is it? It's a muffin, right? And then they had a mocha, but it was a skinny mocha. They had a skinny mocha, they had a cupcake. That's how they started their day. And then they don't understand why two, three hours later they are crashing. Because their blood sugar went up, their insulin went up. If insulin's up, blood sugar comes back down. But if insulin's up, you can't access stored fat for fuel. So you're hungry again. But then of course, you're told that you should be eating every two to three hours, because if you eat every two to three hours, you keep your blood sugar up. The idea of that is crazy because if you eat every two to three hours, every time you're eating, you're bumping up your blood sugar, you're bumping up your insulin. Blood sugar comes down, insulin doesn't. It acts slowly, you eat again, insulin's staying up. So when you're eating every two to three hours in an effort to keep your blood sugar stable, you're not keeping it stable. You're keeping yourself as a sugar burner, not a fat burner. So I teach people to start the day with the shake. A good high fiber, good protein, healthy fat shake. I'm always working on getting people to up the fat in their diet. My diet's over 50% fat. And then to eat by the sugar impact plate. And I teach people to add before they take away. Get in the clean, lean protein, grass fed beef, wild fish, pastured pork and chicken. Get in the healthy fats like avocados and Raw nuts and seeds and coconut and macadamia nut oil. Get in loads of non starchy vegetables and a small amount of slow, low carbs. And that's where, by the way, the fruit fits in. And then, of course, the clock. I teach people to eat within an hour or so of waking up, eat every four to six hours, stop eating three hours before bed, do not go to bed three hours later. I had to learn that one the hard way. I'm like, why did you go to bed at 3? So one of the most amazing things that you can do is do a kitchen lockdown after dinner. Because that time between dinner and breakfast, that's why it's called Breck Fist. Break the fast. 12 to 14 hours is hugely important. There is actually one diet doctor out there that has you have a snack before bed and he says you could have chocolate covered pretzels with a diet soda. Because it's not the diet soda that's the problem, it's the habits around it. I'm like, no, it's the diet soda, dude. It is the diet soda. But when you eat before bed, you drive up blood sugar, you drive up insulin. You're now digesting, you're lowering ghrelin. You want to not do that because if ghrelin's down when you're sleeping, you're not raising growth hormones. So you really want to have that nice overnight fast. But I teach people because a lot of times people will come in and they've been eating every two to three hours and I'll have them stretch from three to four and then from four to five, and I have them put water in between. Do you know if you just added some ice water into your patient's diet? If they just started drinking ice water between meals, not hitting a bunch of water with meals and diluting stomach acid, but between meals, they can raise metabolism. Every hour, they drink water as much as 30% just with water. It's so simple. Now, the second cycle of the program to me is the most exciting because this is where all the changes take place. It's really, really a reset cycle because this is where you're going to reclaim the sensitivity of your sweet tooth. And this is where I take fructose to zero. No fruit, except for things that really aren't fruit, like limes and lemons and tomatoes, things that don't have fructose in them. But by taking fructose out entirely, your body gets bad at transporting fructose. You lose that sweet tooth. We're adding in sour. Sour actually takes Your sweet tooth away. We're adding in savory and spicy and sea salt. All things to amplify taste. And because we've done that tapering and we're helping make that transition from being a sugar burner to a fat burner, people are not crashing here. Now, there's a couple of tools that I use here. Number one thing I use is a journal. And back when I used to see clients one on one, if they wouldn't journal, and I don't care. I had rock stars, billionaires, they all journaled. If they wouldn't, they were fired. Journaling is the single biggest determinant to a success on a program. Journaling. So everybody journals. I now do big online programs. Everybody has to have their journal. And then we have support groups and accountability partners, and they write down their goals. If you write down your goals, you're 40% more likely to do them. But if you share them with someone else, that success rate goes up to 80%. 80% crazy. So after they go through this, one of the other big questions I get asked is, how much sugar can I eat? And I said, well, I don't know. It really depends on you. Now, I know that once you break free of your sweet tooth, you probably won't even want it. But when I tell people this, they can't believe it. The biggest thing that happened when I ran 700 people through the pilot testes program in two weeks. In two weeks, the average person lost 10 pounds. They lost 2 inches off their waist. That actually was not my goal at all. I wanted to see if in two weeks I could take people who'd had sweet tooths, sugar cravings their entire lives and break them free of them. Because we can't rely on willpower. Willpower doesn't work. If you are addicted to sugar, you are being held hostage. So my goal was to break people free of this so that it would never be an issue again. So at the end of those two weeks, I have people do this. I have them go back and start incorporating in every day some of the medium sugar impact foods. And they're journaling, and they're also taking the sugar impact quiz. So they're checking out and connecting the dots between how they feel and what they're eating. Because now they basically reset. They basically detox. They're starting from a clean slate, and they can see how they feel. This is what I did in the virgin diet, too, with gluten and dairy and soy. And, you know, we don't connect the dots that we ate. Something and we feel rotten. I will never forget, I got a call when one of my sons was, I think six from school and they said, you need to pick up your son. And I go, why do I need to pick up my son? He goes, he's climbing the walls. And I go, why is he climbing the walls? And they go, well, he won this contest. He sold the most holiday wrapping paper. So we gave him a pound bag of empty M and Ms. So he's climbing. Let me get this straight. Let me just clarify. You gave my 6 year old a pound bag of M and Ms. And now you want me to come get him? No. Nope, you earned that one. I'll come to take him home. Right? Isn't it amazing when you go to those places? Parties like my kids are now about to be 18 and 19. Yay. Anyway, but when they were 5, 6, 7, and you'd go to those little parties at school and they'd have juice and they'd have cake and they'd have fruit and they'd have cookies. I'm like, what is this? You want to take these kids home after this? Crazy. Anyway, so I have people test it out, see how they feel. And then they have one high sugar impact food and they check in on their energy and they check in on their gas and bloating and they check in on their weight. And you know what's so amazing? The number one thing I heard from people when they did this is that sweet tooth sweet food just tastes gross. And these were people who were lifelong sugar addicts. I had one gal who was on glucophage who could never control her blood sugar. It was always 140. She went through the program during the reset cycle. It came down to 90. It stayed. She went through cycle three. It started going to 117. She had a high sugar impact food, 140. So now she knew. She connected the dots. And what's so cool about that is you will never have a patient ask you again about doing a cheat day. Who here believes in cheat days? Because they make me insane. Insane, because no one has a cheat day on grass fed beef, wild salmon and brussels sprouts, right? I mean, and a cheat day or a cheat meal or a cheat snack is just a gateway to you're off. So you're never going to hurt that again because once you know how it feels, you don't want it anymore. And once you've broken that cycle of that sweet, you don't want it. It just tastes gross and you start to realize when you're out how much sugar is in everything that they're dousing on our food. So here's my buddy Jeff. This was a very funny story. I did not know Jeff. I was talking to him on the phone. A friend of mine, Joe Polish, and introduced us, and we were going to do this deal together because we had complimentary businesses. And he goes, you know, I've got your book, but I haven't done anything with it because I don't know what I'd eat. And I go, but, Jeff, you own a wild seafood and grass fed beef company. Like, what are you talking about? Jeff had been. He was 316 when I met him. I think now he's around 2:50 and going down still. But what's so cool is Jeff sent me a picture of him standing in a sea of cheesecakes because he's in the food business. And I'm thinking, all right, I get it. You're standing in a sea of cheesecakes and you're going to tell me how you lost your mind and give me some lame excuse about this. But that wasn't the case. He said, you know, I'm standing in the sea of cheesecakes and jj, I feel nothing. No cravings, nothing. That is amazing. Because now he's no longer held hostage by sugar. That's what I want for you. That's what I want for your patients. Because the number one biggest thing that you can do is to lower their sugar impact. You put that together with chiropractic, you can transform the world with this. Thank you.