Charles Poliquin Training: Title: NEVER Skip a Workout When You're Feeling Down!

So when people body fat and stuff. Some of the things I've worked because I've been through several of your workshops, you know, like multi day trainings and stuff is people's ability to. Because so many people, it's a vanity thing, they just want to lose weight, they want to look good, you know, and it's almost like secondary or circulatory system or how your heart's going to be or how your brain's going to function. I mean it's like we live in a culture that is so much about how they look. And what I've learned so much from you is hormone levels. And so that people can really have maybe good workout rituals and stuff, but their hormones are all jacked up. So if people are really putting forth a lot of effort and they still feel lethargic or they cannot lose weight, or they don't feel strong, or they're mentally foggy, what should they do to discover how to fix it and what is causing that? I mean other than obvious things like the environment. If you're working your ass off and you're giving your no time to rejuvenate. I think what you've talked about a lot is stress. Human stress can cause so much of. So what should someone do if they're either in a state of like, I want to work out, this sounds good, I've always wanted to, but I can't stick with it. I can't stop carb cravings, I can't stop sugar or I'm like tired. I have no motivation. I mean just being in a place where they're stuck. How do you get unstuck?

Okay, the first thing is I always tell people to do this. The best day to change a habit in North America is Saturday. So you don't have to rush to go to work. So you say, okay, I'm going to commit. But I think people over commit. So I say just go to the gym, 10 minutes. Okay, so it's better to undersell, right? And then after that they could work it out. But the thing where people should, where they would have the most impact is actually sleep. Do you really need to send that extra email? Do you really need to watch the news? Do you really need to watch that TV show? Okay, you could tape it. You could buy a Netflix subscription. There's a lot of research out of Germany that shows that the earlier you can go to bed, the actually the better it's going to be for your hormones. And one of the problems we have with our lifestyle is actually lights the More we can offset lights. And there's a lot of technology out there for controlling the effect of light on your brain. But also gradually diminishing the amount of lighting in your house as you prepare to go to bed makes a huge difference. There's stuff you could put on your computer screen so that there's less stress on the brain and your eyes. So managing the electronics in your life will do a lot for your sleep. And simple things like don't watch CNN before you go to bed. I mean, have you ever seen great news on CNN? It's usually 99% tragedy. And the thing that the.

Yeah. TVs in bedrooms, I think, are incredibly unproductive sort of devices, especially for entrepreneurs. If you have nothing going on in Your life and TVs your biggest highlight, then maybe. But, you know.

Yes. And then, you know, simple reading and book reading and journaling will do a lot for your sleep. Because one of the things with sleep is that people can't shut off their brain. One of the most common disorders I see in executives is the inability to shut off the brain. So journaling is one of the best ways to get out of your system. And I like people to journal before they go to bed. But having a grateful log, in my opinion, is probably the biggest step for sound sleep. And you have to have what we call a sleep routine. So you have to have a countdown of what you're going to do and the activities you choose before going to bed. And if you go to my website, strengthsassa.com, i've got lots of sleep strategies. But for example, there's a botanical called reishi mushroom. And one of the names in Chinese means the mushroom for the professor who lived too much inside his head. So reishi mushroom is actually an anxiety lower. It's an anti anxiolytic. And then if you consume reishi mushroom extract before you go to bed, you actually have better sleep. There's a lot of different amino acids that can make a huge difference on the quality of your sleep. Like theanine. Okay. That comes originally from green tea. How much magnesium you take before going to bed makes a difference. A lot of people have inflammation because of stress. So, for example, taking a probiotic would give glutamine an hour before they go to bed, lowers inflammation, and they sleep better. I mean, the amount of sleep strategies that are possible for anybody are limitless.

Okay, so I have a person who is in this room that I've been trying to. I'm not going to say who it is that I'VE been trying to encourage them to quit drinking sodas because sodas are pretty much like Liquid Satan. And I don't consume hardly any sugar unless they sneak it in the foods. And I don't eat dairy, and I try not to eat processed foods. I like eating foods that have a single name, like broccoli, not Doritos, because that's not the same thing. So let's take soda. A lot of people just consume a ton, and there's a ton of sugar, water, juices and stuff. Good or bad?

I mean, horrendous.

Horrendous.

Okay, so horrendous is the best word. The thing is that Americans consume 50% of their calories through liquids. So I think that one thing we should do is tax the hell out of.

Tax the hell out of liquids.

Sugar liquids. Yeah. So if it costs $97 to buy a bottle of Coke, the consumption will go down pretty quick.

Well, and that's where many of the health care costs are going to people that are consuming.

Exactly, exactly. And then so basically, water teas. I'm really big on coffee, but it's the timing of your coffee that makes a big difference. Right.

When you said first thing you eat in the morning, I was going to ask you, what about coffee?

From what the research shows with MRIs, you can see which areas of the brain lit up when you consume certain foods. I recommend that you eat solid food before you take your first sip of coffee.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because I know many people that the first thing they do is they drink coffee in the morning, then they get to the other stuff if they get to it.

And.

And if they're too busy, the coffee becomes the way that tides them over. And these are the same people that are usually stressed out of their fucking minds.

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so going back to soda, what does it actually do to the body?

Well, one of the things it does is changes the alkaline balance in your body. One thing that, for example, a very good orthopedic surgeon from the valley showed is that the more the kids drank soda, the weaker the bones are. Okay. Because it contains a lot of phosphates, and if you consume too many phosphates, you actually leak calcium of your tissues. So when I was a kid, I never heard of a guy playing football who broke his patella. Right. But Nowadays, since the 2000s, kids who break their patella playing American football is an epidemic. And the main factor associated with broken bones in teenagers is actually soda consumption. So besides. And then the thing is, there's all sorts of artificial sweeteners and additives that we're not even sure if they're healthy. I mean, I would like to see the science behind it, but there's not such a thing as a. Well, one of the things we know is that one of the most common additives in soda is sodium benzoate, and it is the chemical most associated with prostate cancer. So if you consume a lot of sodas, you're more likely to get prostate cancer. So that's enough of a reason not to drink them for males. So they're quite evil to be fair.

Right, yeah. That's good. Now, by the way, so Tim Ferriss has written about you in his latest book, which is Tools of Titans, and he basically considers you like the guy. So there's a bunch of pages of stuff which is kind of funny. And he has a quote from you. What you put in your mouth is a stressor. And what you say, what comes out of your mouth is also a stressor. And so, yeah, so it's a very good book.

600 pages. And you got. Basically, it's the top 30 of his most downloaded podcast.

Yeah. So listen to the episodes with Charles.

They've downloaded already over a million copies of that podcast. It's the 10th most downloaded podcast of the Tim Ferriss series. And I still get emails every day about that first podcast. I just did another one and I think they already downloaded 700,000 copies. So it's a very good medium to deliver the information.

Totally. If you were to get in a physical fight with Tim, you think you could take him?

Yeah.

I'm going to say someone could tag Tim Ferriss so he could watch whatever. However far. Is that still going?

Yeah, yeah.

Is it? Okay, good, good. Awesome, awesome. So what we're going to do, we're going to take a couple of questions from the audience. Just talk really loud if you could, so that people can hear it.

So what is your drink? You said you take a shake after your workout. What is it?

What do you.

Well, what you consume post workout will affect how fast you recover from the workout. But what is in the drink is a function of how lean you are. Right. So if you take your shirt off and you shape it, it's like a melted can handle. Well, you got to stick to proteins and some amino acids. And if you're very lean and you have a lot of muscle mass, then it would be a combination of carbohydrates, maybe five different types of carbohydrates like pentacarb from ATP labs and the protein, but one of the things we see clinically is a lot of people are actually intolerant to whey protein. So I prefer to use straight amino acids. Or some people are allergic to dairy from cow but not from goat. So you could have gold protein. I'm not big on plant proteins because about as nutritious as the cardboard box. So I prefer to use straight amino acids if I'm not going to use dairy based protein.

Have you ever had a shake or anything like that?

It's not a green shake.

It's literally you're just taking mixed proteins. It's more of a manufactured shake is what you're saying.

Correct. I mean there's also now the technology for beef protein Shakespeare. And they've actually worked on a taste and they're very good.

Yeah, that's what JJ Virgin's latest shakes are, is it's organic beef protein shake and a steak.

Basically it's a steak shake shake.

Yeah. Okay, awesome. Jennifer. And then we'll go to Paris.

So when it comes to even some.

Of your like the athletes that you've.

Worked with, I'll show the Facebook Live.

Crew to view beautiful audiences.

You talked a lot about like the.

Yin and some of the mindset and so how have you been able to get to people to be more consistent with their workouts and some of these things as far as like stopping drinking pot when for the most part it's probably like an emotional thing for them that's stopping them from working out or emotional thing, a trigger that gets them to drink that pop.

I don't give much credence to that because if people don't control their food intake, then it's easier for them to make bad choices. So the emotional part somewhat, but I think a lot of it is solvable by managing your brain nutrition to a T. Right. For example, a lot of ADD is malnutrition. So you fix the kid's diet, then suddenly you can concentrate.

As are addiction.

Yeah, yeah. And addictions and so on. So I think that if you. There's a lot of papers that have been published mainly out of Toronto and Boston where they look at the composition of the breakfast and how it impacts cognition, but also food choices throughout the whole day. So it does really set you up as far as discipline. If you have a proper breakfast, I think that, you know, one of the best ways to solve America's health issues would be to have a federal breakfast program. Right. And then you don't have to feed your kids at home. You bring them in half an hour earlier and they have the right nutrition. Right? So if I was emperor of all galaxies, I would standardize the breakfast because that would be a way to fight things like obesity. And you know, kids don't pay attention in class. And any. Ask any school teacher, you can tell if kids eat breakfast and a proper breakfast by the attention span in class. Okay. Because it sets you up for the whole day.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Yeah, awesome. And we'll go to Paris.

I want to clarify the point on.

The post workout shake. A lot of people say you have a shake with grape juice in it and it causes you to get insulin, which builds muscle. I don't understand that.

You're not a proponent of that. I'm a proponent of it. If you deserve it, write this down. You need to deserve your carbohydrate. Okay? So if you're not lean, like, you know, tell men if you don't have penis skin on your arms, you're too fat. Okay? So you pinch. It has to be really lean. If it's not, fuck. Stay away from cardboard dates. They're not your friend. Right. But I think that's really good to be vulgar because it raises dopamine levels and people actually pay attention. Right. But the thing is that, that we. I'm for spiking some post workout if you deserve it. Okay? So you have to be sub 10% body fat for a male and sub 16 for a female. Cool.

All right, so if you could say it real loud, Ed too.

Sure. I wonder if Charles, if you talk.

About the difference, especially on a guy's hormones with respect to doing isolated workouts versus compound workouts, is, you know, full body movements versus isolation.

Is there a difference?

Yeah. If you look at the research, the larger the muscle mass you recruit, the more hormones, I mean beneficial hormones you produce. So if all your exercise are single joint, you're not going to be able to lot of muscle mass, you're not going to lose a lot of fat. So if you center your first 70% your workout around big compound exercise, you're on the right way. I have a friend who's set 76 world records and powerlifting. He says work on a Christmas tree, not the ornaments That's Ed Cohn. So I think it's really important that you. It's what I call most bang for your buck exercises. So squats, deadlifts, chin ups, bench presses. I really like a lot of dumbbell work because it keeps you balanced. And I really like fat handle type of dumbbells. Joe has done a video on that. Yeah.

Watson's Gym in the UK make the best dumbbells in the world for sure. Designed by Charles.

Yes. So, you know, nothing beats the basics. And the thing is that basics are hard work. And people like to avoid hard work. Right. I mean, they do tricep kickbacks and they don't forget to purse the lips. Okay. That's not going to do much for you. Right. But if you vomit a lung because you did a set of 20 in a squat, you're going to make progress. Right.

It's real great advice.

Just the goal of the workout is that your spleen should come out through the left eye. If it does come out, not the right eye, but the left eye, then the workout was hard enough.

So we'll take two more. So summer and then Dan and then we're done.

What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting?

Thoughts on intermittent fasting for people watching.

Okay.

If you look at the research, you'll find that intermittent fasting is beneficial in the very obese. Research on intermittent fasting is looking at the world through a straw. Okay. They don't look at other things, but in the labs where they look at things like cognition and muscle performance, they found that intermittent fasting was harmful. So I think that you should take care of your brain. Right? So I'm not big on intermittent fasting. There's different conditions. It depends how you do it. There's a lot of. But one thing they found in women is that it does really mess up the endocrine system. And one of the things I find when people do intermittent fasting, they become food obsessed. It's like another 52 minutes, another 48, and then they compensate by drinking more coffee. So I think that because I'm a big believer in a breakfast, I'm not so keen on intermittent fasting. Some people are very. But I think a lot of it with intermittent fasting, if it works for you or not, is actually genetics. Some people, for example, if I did intermittent fasting, I would be for the first time in my life on CNN because I've killed 76 persons in a parking lot, okay. On my way to work, because I get extremely irritable if I don't Manage my protein intake in the morning. Some people don't have an appetite at all. So I'm not 100% against intermittent fasting. It's conditional, but I'm not a big fan of it either.

Okay, Dan, you brought up breakfast being the most important, I guess, meal of the day. I have 11 and nine year old, you know, they're important to me and also for me. I'm curious, what are the foods that you recommend at breakfast that the best that we could look at either for ourselves or our kids?

I think what you have to look at is a very high quality protein. Now, I prefer to eat only wild meat. So when I live in Colorado, I can get elk or yak or bison, possum, gerbil. That's the uk in Kentucky. But the quality of the protein is very important. And then I would like to have a type of nut. The reason why I like to have different types of nuts for breakfast is that they provide choline, which is a precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. So it helps you with paying attention and brain speed, which is important in our lives. And then if you can afford it, berries is a good source of carbohydrate. A very simple rule is the thinner the skin is of the fruit naturally, the more phytonutrients it has, because, for example, a raspberry doesn't want to be sunburned. So how do you protect yourself from the sun, which is an oxidant? You make antioxidants. So if you look at, for example, grapes, the grapes that have the highest amount of phytonutrients are the ones harvested in hills, like in Sardinia and in Spain, as compared to, let's say, German wines, which are in valleys. And they don't have that angle of the sun. So berries are a very good choice. And any thin peel fruit is good.

Do you advocate green shakes?

Green shakes are very good. One of the problems though, in the industry is a lot of them are loaded with heavy metals. So there's some companies that are good and some, you know, might as well drink a liquefied bumper. Okay. So the quality of the product really.

Matters, like if you make it yourself, like spinach.

Okay, that's even better if you make your own green drinks. But I thought you were asking about powdered greens. Powdered greens. There's a lot of countries out there, but usually if you can buy them to a regular store, you're drinking a green liquefied bumper because it's full of heavy Metals.

What about juicing versus, like, blending like greens in smoothies?

The problem with juicing is that you cut away the fiber. And the fiber is very important to stabilize your blood sugar. So I prefer to use. Use a powdered green versus a juicing.

Okay.

Anything that I should have asked you that I did, not that you would like to say?

Well, I'll take an extra question on that. I don't know. I mean, there's so many things we could talk about.

Is this the most important book you've ever read?

The pre release.

Well, so since we live in such a culture and I have a friend, Dave Kekich, who's in a wheelchair. He's very involved in health, and he's in incredible shape. He's in his 70s, and in spite of being paralyzed from the chest down, he works out, he eats very well. He's studied health and nutrition his whole life. And he told me about when he would go and do talks. He would talk about the benefits for your circulatory system by doing cardio, exercise and vitality. Just things of how exercise and nutrition create longevity and allow you to feel better. He's like. And the audience would be interested. But then he would talk about how to tight and saggy skin or anything related to vanity. They would light up. It's one of these things to where I've always, as a marketer know that sell people what they want, give them what they need, because people want to look better. And so guys, typically, from just a physical standpoint, will say, I'm generalizing here. Will gain weight around their bellies, and they would have love handles, whereas women would, you know, their butts or their thighs. And if they start exercising, their boobs disappear and their butts are the last thing to go. And guys like to say, what is going on in the physical. How does the body, when it comes to weight loss, respond to it that way? Like, for instance, why does a guy have, like, love handles? Why does some women have, you know, it's thighs and butt? Because we could talk all day long about all these wonderful benefits, but it's like, if we can make my butt awesome, or if we could make ripped abs, life would be perfect. Right? But I'd love to just get your explanation from understanding what does the body do? How does it process this and the different types of fats?

I love the marketing analogy. And so with an economic analogy, we could have a real estate investment. We could have, you know, stocks and bonds. We could have gold coins hidden in the backyard. You know, so the body works that way too. And whenever we have adequate resources to survive, we want to put the surplus somewhere. And if times are secure, if we're stable and steady, we might buy a rental property, we might make a long term real estate investment. So that's muscle mass, that's for guys, the chest and the biceps for women, that's healthy toned legs. Now, on the other hand, if someone says, hey, your business might go under, you're going to lose your job next week and you've got some cash, that's not time for the rental property. That's maybe cash under the mattress. That's like gold coins buried in the backyard. So that's like security. It's like quick access. It's liquid cash. So that's belly fat.

Got you.

That's stuff around the butt and the thighs and around the waist. That's the cash under the mattress.

So your body's just simply trying to.

Survive, just trying to get by.

So all of the. So take a vanity out of the picture. The way your body's responding to stuff is it's simply trying to survive. So this is really a conversation about how to perform, how to thrive, not just survive and reset it. So when you say reset, it sounds like with all of the toxins and all of the weird things that are going on out there, how much of this can we truly control versus, if you could even explain that, I don't know, in percentages or whatever, how much of this is controllable versus how much of this is like we have to pick the right place to live. We have to be lucky we're not under electrical lines, we don't carry our command, our computers and electronic devices. I mean, how would you respond to that?

Sort of.

Yeah. Short of living in the wilderness in a cave or something. Right. So the cool thing is that all these things affect a rhythm, they throw it off. But by and large, our bodies are gravitated towards thriving. We're really meant to not stay in that mode for long. It's meant to be like you're talking about the tiger thing to where you survive and then you're back on track again. So we want to thrive, we want to go back to homeostasis. And in terms of time frames, the measurable disruption of our bodies and the storage process, it can fix in a month or two. And when it's fixed, when it's back on track, it's easier to keep it there than it was to get it there because it's really the natural state. So it's Very recoverable in the short term.

Okay, so now you were talking about the animals, and you're talking about children, and then the current state of where we're at. Well, and you've already been talking about it, but what are the causes of weight gain? I mean, how much of it is food? How much of it is other stuff?

Well, the big things would be fructose as far as a type of sugar. That's important. Processed food, that's one part of it. Another big thing are a category of chemicals called obesogens. There's actually a category of chemicals that we know make us gain weight. So that's another big part of it. The next big leg is things that throw off our daily rhythms. So our lack of sleep, artificial light exposure. And then the last one would really be the very real mental, emotional stress. And you mentioned how, yeah, times are smoother now, but in reality we've gotten more things nagging us. We're adapted to have that tiger almost kill us, and then we survive. We're bored. Life is pretty simple, but it's not that major, but it's more continual. So collectively, those are the factors that shift us. And we go into storage mode when we're storing. Our fuel is being made into a physical deposit. It's not burning, so that leaves us hungrier. It's kind of like you're feeding a parasite. There's something that's taking your fuel away from you.

That's very interesting. I can only see the world through my own lens, through my own perspective. My opinion and my experience is that the world is more stressed out and angst ridden with all of the wonderful benefits than I've ever seen it, than I've ever experienced. And. And that being said, I live in a great country and I have a pretty awesome life. So I'm not complaining. I'm just saying from the standpoint of the sheer volume of decision making and technology, I just think it's stressing people the hell out. And people aren't disconnected. Now, you mentioned artificial light. How does that affect weight?

The biggest single factor is, is the lack, actually the lack of sunlight. And especially early in the day. Our day's rhythm has many cues that can bump it back into alignment. And the biggest one is just morning sunlight. So we're used to waking up when the sun comes up.

We should be videotaping this outside on the lawn. So if someone wakes up. So let's talk about that morning ritual. What would be like your morning ritual?

The most important one is to get some really Bright light, you know, the sunlight, the measured intensity of it is so much greater than anything indoors. That's not even imaginable. You know, bright areas with very, very bright lights could be maybe 1000, 2000 lux lux unit of light intensity. Outdoors on a Cloudy day, it's 50,000 lux. So our brains wait for that. And it's not a matter of like bronzing or even like the vitamin D on your skin. It's just that light intensity to register in your brain to, to know that now is morning.

Well, I've been working on improving my vision without glasses. And one of the things that I've been learning about is that a lot of poor vision has nothing to do with the eyes, it has to do with the brain, it has to do with your stress level, it has to do with how you take in light. So there's so much to be said that I'm starting to learn about just light and how we seclude ourselves in modern life in ways that we never have been ever before in history, which is pretty fascinating. So is there a common thread among all of the causes of weight gain? Like how does it all tie together.

To be very specific. So the adrenal glands make different hormones that govern our stress response. Cortisol is the big one. And we make it and we have a rhythm with it. So all those factors, they goof up the rhythm. And that rhythm affects the adrenals, but it also affects how the visceral fat responds to those hormones. So they all push that rhythm off and the body goes into this mode of storing away fuel. So the double whammy is you're gaining more easily. But then also that's fuel you were deprived of burning. So that's fatigue symptoms, that's more fatigue physically, mentally, at the same time that weights being more of a strength struggle.

So go back to cortisol, because I've heard that a million times. What is it? What does it mean? Like when your body produces cortisol and what's the other one? There's two of them.

Cortisol, cortisone, the two that are related.

What is the difference? What are they, what do they do? And to whatever degree, it would be useful for anyone to know and understand this. Please explain it that way.

You know, super easy thing, you, you got a built in coffee machine, you've got a thing inside of you that come about an hour before your wake up time, you release a batch of cortisol and that circulates and you're like, oh, I'm Kind of bored of being in bed. I'm going to get up to the bed.

What releases it? Where does it come from?

Primarily from the adrenal glands. They put it into your bloodstream. It gets into your brain. You become alert, awake, and engaged. And then throughout the day, you gradually shut it off. So when that rhythm's bad, though, you store things. Your adrenals also make cortisone. So cortisol is the strong hormone. Cortisone is the weaker cousin of it. Now, the thing about the fat and the clock, and the fat clock, to be precise, what's happening is the fat is juggling cortisol. Cortisol, back and forth. So your fat is actually making weak stress hormones into strong stress hormones. And when you're healthy, that goes on for a little bit and it stops. But when these things are not working right, it keeps going and going. So independent of your life experience, this stuff actually creates more stress hormones.

So these are a balance. It's not good or bad, correct?

Totally.

Okay. It's all how your body produces it and when it produces it. And you can gauge and control this, or how hard is it to do that?

Not too hard. You know, simple quizzes. We made Adrenalquiz.com. you can know what level of control you've got for that and if it's off, to which degree. But there's medical measurements for that, too, that have varying degrees of usefulness, but it's quite measurable. And there are diseases. There are disease states in which what you ask these glands to do just doesn't happen. They're just not working right. Those are rather rare, and they're quite exceptional. But apart from those rare disease states, your body cycles can come back rather promptly.

Since your book is about resetting, and you call it the adrenal reset diet, which I know is more of a. This is like a way to live. I mean, the way, you know, I've had dinner over your house. I kind of know how you eat. Right. And so why would our bodies be programmed to gain weight? So if someone's out there and it's really not their fault, it's not their habits, there's something in the programming. Why would their bodies be programmed that way? I mean, is there a difference between people living in Africa versus New York versus Phoenix, Arizona? What causes the programming? Because I want people to understand that this can be changed.

It's distant stuff. So much of how we work makes no sense in the context of the world in which you and I live. I drove my car across town to come and see you. And that is not the world that we adapted to. Our genes, our brains, our cycles, they're adapted to a very different world, one in which there was a lot of time spent negotiating three dimensional terrain, identifying food sources, identifying dangers to stay clear from. So the whole idea was that our body's gain is a protective mechanism. They hold onto fat to protect themselves physically from just falls and fractures, like on the hips for women, and then also like the cash under the mattress to prepare for times of famine. Our ancestors who weren't innately able to do this, they did not survive as well and they had fewer offspring. But our ancestors who did store things very easily and held onto it, you know, when a famine did come, they had something to get by on and they survived and they had babies, they put more genes out.

So how do we turn off the survival mode?

So that was the thing. I went through this whole evolution of seeing what this crisis was, seeing how the current model just really was not doing it justice, seeing how there's a lot of causative factors that we can't all control, we can't steal from all of it. So that was the big question, was how can you efficiently do this? And I also thought it was important to get some clarity on food. I think that it's a double whammy. We need to eat something and at the same time we can stress about our eating. Food can be a direct source of stress from all the confusion. Do we have to do zero carbs or low fat? Or what about the gluten? So what I realized was that you could use the way that cortisol, the adrenal hormone, the way that it interfaces with your blood sugar, that we could use that to strategically time foods to fix that rhythm back again.

So the way that I currently eat is more. Now I'm not super religious, hell bent on any particular method of eating. And I've interviewed people on every type from raw foods to vegans to, I mean, you name it, to Paleo people to, you know, whatever. And my current diet is close to like a paleo sort of diet with very healthy food in the sources of where they come from. And so what is. Is gluten the devil? Is dairy the devil? I mean, like how do you now certainly. And I don't eat processed foods. I mean the. But it's very rare that I will eat something out of a can or a bag unless I'm stuck in the airport. And if I do, I'll probably get nuts or something.

Like that. Right.

And so how do you recommend people eat? And what are the things that you 100% know to be healthy? Or is that even too much of a stretch? I mean, because it seems like every decade. I mean, look what happened to coconut. I mean, I remember going and seeing Tim Allen, the comedian. We had a backstage pass and he did this whole skit. He's like, kale, everyone's eating kale. He's like, when did kale get an effing publicist? I won't say. There's so many things about food. So what do you know are just, this is the way to eat or does it depend? I mean, how does one answer this? Because there's so many different, different opinions about this. And I've interviewed very smart people that.

Look very divergent ideas.

Yeah, they're intelligent and they are healthy. It appears completely different opinions.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

So there's really two questions that you had in there. I would like to tease those apart, one of which is, is this the devil? And the other one is, what's the solution? Right. They're actually separate. So I don't argue that any one simple food caused the crisis that we're in. I don't find that evidence compelling. I don't see the timeframe of 1990 to 2000. I don't see evidence saying that we suddenly consumed too much animal protein and that was the culprit, or that that's when we first discovered wheat. It's probably not when we first discovered wheat, nor was that when we first discovered dairy foods, nor was that when we stopped eating. Eating animal protein. It's not starting or stopping it. So I don't think any of them are clear single causes. But I think food can be a solution and we've got to eat something anyway. So I would argue probably the simplest step is to really avoid processed foods. You know, things that have weird chemicals. And I think few would debate about that. Another thing I think everyone would agree upon is that we're served by getting a variety of produce, you know, lots of colors, fresh leafy greens, the paleo and the vegans, they're in alignment on that. The part where I really kind of forge off on my own really comes down to carbohydrates. So people tend to be in the nutrition world either all for or all against. Back in the 80s, I was a runner and this was like the low fat craze. And I remember being in a friend's house.

Lots of sugar, but low fat, lots.

Of sugar, but Low fat.

Yeah.

So I was at a friend's house, totally fit gal, and she served us these snacks and it was jelly beans and pretzels because they were fat free. So this is like all good food and you have all you want, you don't worry about it. So now we've kind of gone the opposite way to where bacon and coconut are the new health foods. And chocolate.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I would argue that carbs are a tool. It's not carbs. Fat, protein, neither good or bad, they're all tools. And carbs have a unique effect upon our daily rhythms. There's so much data showing that. And intuitively imagine if you have pancakes, syrup, some waffles, some fruit juice for your breakfast and then you want to go be productive, you're going to crash, you know, you're going to feel tired. So when you have a lot of carbs, what happens is your body makes a lot of insulin. No mystery, no debate. So that insulin causes you to lower your cortisol output. Cortisol raises your blood sugar, insulin lowers your blood sugar. So if you eat carbs, insulin comes out to lower your blood sugar. Well, that makes you have to not make as much cortisol, otherwise your sugar would go back up again. They fight each other. So in the morning, when you shut down your cortisol, you're not mentally alert, you're not energized, and you're going to want to take a nap after a little bit. On the other hand, in the evening, you really need to have a good suppression of your cortisol. That's how you sleep. Everyone knows that because you write about.

In your book, like, if you're not getting enough carbs, some people, they just can't sleep.

Right. There have been studies on that. If you drop your carbs in even just a couple of days, the quality of your sleep suffers. And there's really well known chemical pathways by which our neurotransmitters that allow us to sleep, our serotonin and our melatonin, they depend upon healthy carbs. We need some carbs to drive them to be made and to get into our brains.

Well, what I've noticed, like when I go and lift weights, if I will eat some brown rice or even white rice, the strength I have when I'm working out is just greater.

Sure.

And I'm a pretty clean eater and I'm always trying to test things. Again, as much as I've interviewed people and I've read a lot and I think I know a lot more than the average. You know, I'm always trying to fine tune it and try to see what works with me for me. And there's obviously what you very much describe in your book. There's other factors than just the food you're putting in your mouth. It's also timing, too, because one of the things that I've learned from you about eating carbs, it's not even eating carbs when you do it. Or some people be like, don't eat any carbs. Eat them in the morning. And you say the exact opposite. Right. Do it. Explain that.

Yeah. So in the morning. The logic behind that idea is that, well, if you eat them in the morning, you can burn them throughout the day. And the reality is we burn fuel in different ways. And our very best fuel source is stuff called glycogen. That's a stored type of carbohydrate in our liver and our muscles. Now, that's our best fuel. So when you're training hard and you have the rice, you generate more glycogen. That's our greatest, most powerful fuel source. It takes us a long time to form it. It doesn't go from our mouth to our leg in a matter of minutes. It's more like about eight to 14 hours at the quickest, maybe a lot longer. So the meal you have in the morning is actually a super important thing for your brain chemistry, for your energy, for your blood sugar, but it's not your fuel for that day. You're not really burning it for fuel that day that you ate it. But the stuff you have in the evening, the night prior, that can form glycogen, that can form this good, good muscle energy that you can get the most power from.

Okay, so across the board advice that you would give for anyone listening to this on the podcast or watching the video, because we're obviously recording this on video also. What advice would you give them about, starting today, how to look at eating food? I mean, obviously read your book if they want a deep understanding of all of this. But what are some basics that people would be well served to hear?

You know, simple foods, unprocessed foods, solid breakfast protein for breakfast, and have some healthy carbs. They can be from vegetables such as squash or sweet potatoes or turnips or parsnips. I actually really like beans and legumes and I love intact whole grains. They've really got a place in the intestinal flora and they work better in the body in the evening as opposed to earlier in the day.

I can't remember who I asked this to, but gluten is a whole attack on gluten and stuff and lots of books with a lot of evidence. It appears that wheat and gluten is a bad thing. And I'm pretty much wheat and gluten free. What is gluten? I mean, people hear it, but I also see how a lot of packaged food companies are using it to produce really crappy food that is gluten free. So what is gluten and what does it do to the body and who does this apply? How do you find out if you're gluten intolerant? I say this playing devil's advocate here because I've done a lot of tests and I know certain things in my body responds to and what it doesn't. But I'm asking this question more for the listeners.

So gluten comes into a category that I call the sticky proteins. So you make dough and you, you need flour and eggs and milk. They will make it all stick together and bind up with it. So some proteins are just really hard to pull apart. And yeah, gluten's a very sticky, almost like snot, so to speak. It's very tenacious and holds onto things.

That's very exciting. I like this description.

The downside is that if we're not all the way digesting it, it can hurt our immune system. It can activate our immune system, trigger inflammation. And you're right, it's hard to really divorce the effects of it from processed foods. And I would also agree that many could focus on just that one issue and still not be in a healthy diet. There's a lot of gluten free crap nowadays. I talked to someone earlier that I diagnosed for the first time having very advanced celiac disease. And I told her, I said, you know, this gluten free thing, it is very popular right now. The good part about that is for those to whom this is a real condition, there are more resources, more options, and they're not all healthy. So you always want to think big picture. And I'm really a fan of just simple foods intact. Whole grains, vegetables and fruits as they come, fresh meats, nuts and seeds. And really building your diet around those. Not even the packaged things you get from the health food supermarket, just not even packaged things in general.

Well, certainly. I mean, one of the best pieces of advice, I don't know if I heard it from Michael Pollan or whatever, is just eat foods that have one name, like broccoli. Doritos is not one name. Doritos is Like a bunch of chemicals with just not eating processed foods. That alone will change your life. Do you have to have money and be rich in order to eat really well and to do all this stuff strategically?

You do not. And that's the thing is that the unprocessed foods, many people have done analysis on this, that if you're doing some simple shopping and some batch cooking, no, it can actually be more cost effective and more time effective, believe it or not.

Yeah. At my Genius network meeting, the last one that I did here at my office, we had Dr. Joel Cotton, who's a big heart specialist, writes for Reader's Digest and his specialty is the heart. And he was given a 10 minute time talk. One of the things he talked about is eat vegetables. Eat your vegetables. I know people are going to complain, I don't like the taste of vegetables. He's like, well, I wonder if you'll like the taste of cancer. I wonder if you'll like the taste of chemotherapy. I wonder if you'll like the taste of diabetes. It was a really interesting analogy because a lot of people are like, well, I don't have the money. I mean, if you don't take time out for your health now, you're going to take time out for it later and it's going to be painful and it's going to be costly and your life may not be long. And so you'd be really well served to learn about eating and about something that every human being needs to do day in, day out and understand how it affects your body. So I mean that's of course, that's.

My perspective, that same thing from the opposite angle. I had a long term patient who has a yard maintenance company and he was early diabetes in early diabetes and some dietary change completely cured him of that. He had seen a general doctor and was put on medications. They weren't helping, they were causing him side effects. And he went on a program like I've outlined and he was non diabetic after about a month and a half. And I know he had some favorite foods and his name was Joe, also a coincidence. But I was talking to him and I said, well, how are you doing on staying away from the big swigs and this and that. And he said, are you kidding? He said, nothing tastes better than me being healthy, feeling good and being energy was more pleasurable. It was more positive than what it was he was giving up. And that was his discovery.

Yeah, well, I had this, I used to have it on my refrigerator where it was the saying, nothing Tastes as great as being lean feels. Now, certainly there's things that taste really damn good. There are certain behaviors that are very indulgent but are very distressed. And it's really about building in the rituals because there's a period of time where I think it's like you have to work through the burn. I mean, if you're addicted to sugar, you're going to go through withdrawals. I mean, you're going to make a shift. But that's why we don't have everyone walking around looking awesome, being super wealthy and having great relationships, because all of those things require a certain level of work and commitment. And the challenge that, though, in what you identify here is the road to get there is not guilting yourself into saying, oh, I'm just a bad person and I've got bad habits. It's really understanding that we're a walking biochemical machine. We're a pharmacy, our brain's a pharmacy. And a lot of these things are affected. Your goal here with the adrenal reset is to reset that. So it gives people, okay, shut this thing off and start a new sort of thing. Well, not quite in that way, but it's really about just giving people a new lease on life if you want to take it to that level.

One of the most beautiful things I learned was from very hardcore science. Our body is a mass of tissues made up of organs, made up of cells, made up of molecules made up of atoms. And it's all totally transitory. It's all in a state of dynamic for flux. So right now, who you are, what your physical body is, on the very most material level. If we went back a year prior, none of the same stuff was there, the same identity that you identified as being Joe Polish that didn't physically exist. Less than 1% of those actual atoms have carried through and stayed with you to today. So we're constantly in this process.

Why do I have the same looking nose, though?

All the structural parts come back in the same place, but the building blocks and the actual chemistry of us, it's in a state of dynamic flux. So the cool thing is that if we can identify things that are disrupting us and just change the big blocks, the big barriers and supply the needed pieces, then transformation is normal. It's not mystical. It's just the normal state of affairs.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. Well, you know, you're a real expert on thyroid and hormones. So how do our adrenal hormones relate to body weight? Let's talk about that.

So the adrenal glands are the biggest single factor for the largest number of people for body weight. They control just that, burning and storing stuff. The thyroid gland, it's a big deal for a certain number of people and it may be a quarter or so of the population. So the adrenal glands are affected by just life and by stressors. The thyroid gland can be affected by a disease and that disease makes it not able to generate enough hormones. And these hormones control how much we warm our bodies, you know, how much energy we generate warming our bodies. So when they're lacking, we burn less fuel. And for many, that can be a source of weight struggle as well.

Can diet help correct adrenal rhythm?

It can.

So what does that mean?

So we did a clinical trial on this. You know, I've always been my own guinea pig, and I checked my cortisol via saliva, hair, blood, urine, all these things, and I checked my blood sugar all throughout the day, and I saw that I could change it by shifting the carbohydrate intake. Then I had some patient friends who were early diabetic or had weight struggles. They saw the same things. Then we did a formal clinical trial and we had people that all of whom had had at least three diets just not work for them in the last few years. They were all struggling with their weight and none of them had had an easy time managing it. We measured their adrenal cycle and there was not a healthy rhythm amongst a bunch of them. They all had very poor circadian rhythms. So only by doing diet, there's a lot of things that can help the rhythm that I talk about in the book that are not diet, but I only wanted to see what the diet did. So we just did the diet with them. And a month later, the average rhythm was more than 50% healthier than it was before by just the food thing. So we saw that diet can correct that. And I'm not aware of data apart from that study showing that that can actually happen.

So when you say circadiane, what does that mean?

Thank you. That means things that change throughout the course of the day. So we're awake and we've got one mode of functioning, we're asleep and there's a different one, and we are dead daylight creatures. And there's this bigger rhythm, properly called a diurnal rhythm. And being daylight creatures, we have a circadian cycle. So we wake up with the sunlight, we go to sleep with the darkness. And all these orchestrated events of our digestion, our immunity, our metabolism are all linked to that sunlight cycle.

So if I'm gathering this right, it's our rhythm, our adrenal rhythm that will dictate how weight gain, how we respond, how we think, how we sleep, how we feel. Is that correct?

Yup.

Okay, so what ways other than diet? Because you describe the diet and give recipes and everything in the book, what are other things that people can do to regain or put themselves on the best rhythm?

I mentioned the sunlight is one trick that morning sunlight. And in many parts of the country or the world, that's not an option. It's not bright sunlight. When you wake up, they've got really good light boxes. Nowadays you want ones that generate 10,000 lux or greater.

You mean like the fill up blue light box or things like that? Or are you talking something else?

They're not blue, the ones that are best researched, but they generate high amounts of bright light. And the better ones have stands that allow them to be above the height of your head, like on a table.

Like this video camera behind you that's blinding me just so we get the proper lighting here and hopefully I'll look less attractive or something, I don't know, pretty much.

So you get something like that and in the morning you have your breakfast or you have your tea, you read the paper and you've got a light going like that. Or when you can, you do those same things outside. And of course bonus points to go for a walk or be active. But just the light exposure passively by itself is huge towards that. Another thing along those same lines is temperature changes. So some researchers have argued that another big change that's caused weight gain is the fact that we don't get cold anymore, that we're the same temperature all day and all night. And that was not true for our ancestors. So part of our daily rhythm was burning calories in waves to warm us at night. So when we're not getting cold, that does not get engaged. So a simple habit is to cool your environment by at least 5, preferably 10 degrees greater than your daytime environment for nighttime.

Okay, gotcha. What would you recommend for people in terms of keeping themselves fit, not just getting in shape, losing weight, but just as a lifestyle?

So the best tip I have is you got to discover what it is you like. Is it yoga, is it lifting, is it martial arts? Like, see what vibes with you where you're like, oh, that was fun. Because again, if you haven't been doing something, it's hard sometimes to get that start. So if you're doing something you love, then it's a Lot easier to stay accountable, keep it in your routine. So activity. You just gotta move. People just need to move. Even if it's something as simple as going out for a walk, fresh air, put some good music on. People go to the gym, they may not work out hard, but they're moving and the mood changes. And then, you know, they go to the gym. Oh, I just. I don't have energy to do anything. They put a good playlist on, they get motivated by others around them, and then all of a sudden, they're there for an hour working out. Yeah. So work on your environment. Do something that you love, where it excites you. It's something you look forward to. Grab friends. So that, again, makes it more fun. Those are simple things that I would say that you need to do. But you got to be moving at least five times a week. Fifteen minutes, even if it's minimal. We were talking at the Genus Seg, so Scott and just had a brand new baby, and he's like, I'm getting no sleep and I'm. My business just went public. Like, he's got all these things. I'm like, just do 15 minutes. You know, you got 15 minutes even if it's at your house doing burpees, whatever. And he's like, you're right. I can't make excuses. So make sure you're just moving. 15 minutes is better than nothing.

Right.

And get those endorphins flowing. That's going to help you be more creative, gonna help you be happier. It helps stress relief. So whatever it is, even if it's short term, there's always some way to get active anytime you want.

In terms of, like, people that have no energy, mentally, physically. I know. I keep. Because we're in the middle of a pandemic. You've had Covid twice. I imagine that happens. Had to wipe you out for a period of time. What did you learn from it? And how do. How do you regroup yourself when you're literally depleted?

Well, so again, it kind of goes back to the same philosophy I have when I have injuries. Everything's temporary, right?

Yep.

You do have to take the time to heal. So when I had Covid, it was important that I rested, tried to knock it out and not push it and not try to go on runs or get exercise in. It's like, let your body chill. But then you need to be able to flip the mindset to go, okay, I've had my time, and now I need to be grateful that I am feeling better and utilize that again. Making sure that we are not wasting days, not wasting time, not wasting what we are lucky enough and fortunate enough to have. So I remember the first time I got Covid, it was great weather outside, and I was just down for about six days hard, like out on the couch. But then I wanted to get out and go. So I'm like, I'm gonna get on my bike and go and got about two miles in and I'm like, wow, I am exhausted. And normally I can just go for a while, but it was like, okay, well I did it. Now pull back so I don't have some setback and have it like last 10, 12 days longer than it should. But I was still able to drive, do something. Why? Because I was now able to get off the couch. So you've got to be able. It's self motivation. People look for motivation elsewhere all the time, and that is okay. But you can't always be looking for others for motivation. You've got to figure out what it is that makes you tick. So whether it's maybe a challenge. There was one point in my life someone said, oh, you will never do well in this sport. And I was like, oh, yeah, watch me. You know, and. And that drove me for a while. So what is it? You know, maybe it's that you have a vacation coming up and you want to get in shape. Well, that's not going to happen if you don't actually work towards getting in shape. So if you set a goal again, maybe it's a little competition you have with a friend so that you guys can hold each other accountable. Tap into the resources that you have to help you. If you're struggling with that, talk to people. Ask, you know, even Google. How do you get motivated to work out? There's information out there, and it just takes one bit of information that actually impacts you, where you're like, oh, okay, I can do that. Remember what the twist says? You said take what works for you. You know, it's the same philosophy. It's different for everybody, but you've got to take the time to actually truly think about it. And people just want the answer, right? The answer is different for me, for you, for everyone that's in this gym. But you have to figure it out for yourself. And you've got to take the time to think about it. Jot it down again. What is it that makes you happy? Memes make me happy. Okay, well, if I'm find some exercise memes, whatever it is, if that's gonna get me out of my off the couch and outside. Great. But there's something that helps us tick. Yeah, everyone has it. You gotta tap into that and then work with people who can help you utilize what it is that's within you to achieve those goals.

Okay. So all this crazy about, like, hacking and different things from infrared saunas to cold plunges to, you know, I mean, do you do any of that stuff?

Yes, I do. So we actually. I haven't shown you. We have an ice bath back here. And as much as I hate it because I hate being cold, I'm Arizona weather. Arizona winters kill me. So I am. I'm not strong.

Biting.

I'm a wuss. Let's be honest. We call it what it is.

I was gonna say that, but I was like, how do I say this to you?

It's the truth. But, you know, people talk about cryo and ice baths again, what works for me, I've done cryo. I had a company say, oh, you know, we just want to sponsor you. And free cryo. I tried it three times. I've tried it. Different facilities does nothing for me. That's me. I have clients swear by it. I spot works for me. So I think, again, it goes back.

To, what does it do? What's the ice bath do for you when you start?

After I do routine practice, I may be in there doing skills and routines for four hours. My body is heat, and it feels like I got hit by a truck and run over and run over. But I get an ice bath six, seven minutes, and I get out and I'm like, wow, all right, I can do this again. It refreshes me like no other. Takes inflammation down with all the different injuries. It's so important for me to have that rehab. So that works. I do tons of body work. I have mobilities training that I do before I ever work out, before I do my routine practice lift. So I have a whole regimen that I have to do to make sure I can stay healthy. Body feels good. You know, the biohacking stuff, that's still fairly new. Total, totally intriguing. I'm in the mindset of try it. And if it works again, some of it could be placebo, but if it forces you to have an action that's more positive, who cares?

Yeah.

You know, there's fads out there all the time.

There's a ton of that is placebo that works. And if it.

Yeah, if it works, it works. And clients will say, I tried this. If it worked for them, I am never going to tell them no. If it Held them accountable to their goals, to their program. If it makes them happy, game on. Yeah, I'm all for it. But yeah, it's, It's. Try these things. Why not? You're never going to know if you don't try. I tried cryo. It was a huge thing. Everyone was talking about it. Yeah, I do ice bats. And to me, that helps me. So great. You know, I'm sticking with that.

Right. I love it.

Okay.

Because you mentioned, you know, replacing habits, and I, I'm really not a big fan of discipline. I think it's a guilt in a lot of ways. I mean, obviously it's a contextual thing, but if someone says, well, I got really bad habits, I just have a bad habit that I do this, I do that. I think people that are really out of shape, people that really just. Their health is shot, I mean, they're just not in great shape. They have a lot of really good habits that got them there. If you wake up every morning and you guzzle a couple of cups of coffee filled with sugar and cream and you smoke a cigarette and you yell at your wife and you kick the dog, I mean, you just have really good habits of waking up eating a donut. I mean, those are really. So you can replace these habits completely. And there's a friend that I had recommended read this really great book that was written by a friend of mine named Steven Pressfield called the War of Art. Just love that book. And I interviewed Stephen 10 years ago when he first wrote that book. And it's just a great book and I recommend it to. It's about resistance. And I'd asked this person, did you read War of Art yet? And they're like, oh, no, I haven't got around to it. I've been real busy. And I just said this, this is a couple weeks ago. I said, do me a favor, it's a short book. Just don't go on Facebook for two weeks.

Just, you could read it in an hour.

Yeah. I said, I go, just don't go on Facebook for two weeks. The time you would typically. I know this is going to be really hard because you're like a Facebook addict, but just try not to. I just said that, like, kind of even joking. Four days later, she calls me. She's like, that book was awesome. Thank you. And that whole thing about just not going on Facebook and using that time, I still went on Facebook, but I did, I read the book. And so when you're talking about the two week period, if people are like, I don't have the time. I mean, you know what, there are things you are doing, be it watching television or doing this or doing that. Read JJ book, take the. I mean, so the whole thing, we're identifying a lot of the problem. But see, the great thing is you're not the person that just identifies the problem. You actually have, here's what to do, here's how to do it, and you make it very simple.

Here's the thing. I mean, the biggest objections people will ever have are time and money. Really. I think that what's really holding them back is not time or money. I think it's that they failed so many times before. They've tried so hard, they've just given up. I think that's the bigger issue with it because in reality, it actually costs less to eat this way. And I've proven that now. I've gone to the grocery store, I've done it. I know that it costs more to eat the unhealthy way. It definitely costs more financially, physically, emotionally to do it. But time wise, you can open up the book and go to the blueprints, take five minutes to study it and then make the switches. It's maybe an hour to really do it because once you get used to the shifts, it's normal food that you can eat anywhere. So that part of it's a non issue too. It's really more about looking at this and going, well, what if she's right and what could that mean to me? What's holding me back right now? Because I look at it and you know, my story. You know, we never know when something is going to. Either an amazing opportunity is going to hit or a major crash crisis that you have to be all in is going to hit. And when my son got hit by the car and left for dead in the street and I spent, you know, I launched the virgin diet out of the ICU with my son in a coma. And I had to be completely there for him because I am the sole financial support for my family. But I had everything invested in that book. And that book now had to be bigger than I had. Initially. I wanted it to be big, but. But now I had to have it be big for another reason. And if my health hadn't been there, that's what I tell people. They go, you must be superhuman. I go, no, I was just super healthy. I live 95%, but I don't cheat on gluten or dairy or sugar. I just don't. But I was 100%. I got my sleep In, I did stress management stuff. I exercised by running the stairs at the hospital, I had Whole Foods delivering to the hospital. I did everything all in. And so I look at this and the thing is, you don't know when something like that's going to hit or someone gives you the opportunity of your life and you aren't there physically, emotionally. You don't have to focus the energy, take advantage of it. In two weeks you could be there. In two weeks you could be there. That's it. You just take the two weeks, stop letting things hold you back. That as simple as changing what's at the end of your fork.

What have you learned out of all the years you've been doing this? About where someone just, you know, if someone's watching this, listening to this, certainly there is the possibility that they're interested in it. It doesn't always mean they're going to read the book or take a certain action or change. But my belief is someone wouldn't even be paying attention if they didn't want it. I mean, there's something, you know, they're trying to get better. They're already in great shape. They're looking at someone like, like you as a way to just continually fine tune and continue to give them the edge. And then there's other people, they just feel completely lost, screwed, hopeless. They have no motivation. They're incredibly sick and they just, they're lost. They don't know what to do. What have you learned? How to just really help someone become willing, if that's even, you know, I mean, I have a hard time thinking, you know, you can't motivate unmotivated people. But, you know, I mean, if you paint a picture, sometimes you can.

Yeah, I don't think that it's that they're unmotivated. I think that they've given up hope. I think the biggest thing that makes me sad out there and I saw, you know, again, I've got a son with a brain injury who's amazing. And so many people have written to me saying thank you for giving us hope, showing us what's possible. I think you get what you expect and that people start to give up because, because they've tried. And this is what drives me. They tried these green smoothie cleanses that are loaded or these crazy cleanses loaded with fruit.

I want to ask you about cleansing. We're going to talk about that.

You know, they've tried these things. They haven't worked and they figure this is just, oh, I'm getting older. It's just as good as it gets. And so I feel like they lost their motivation because they lost their hope. And the person that I love to work with the most is the person like a Jeff Moore. Jeff Moore had lost his hope. He'd given up, right? But then he had a glimpse. He had a glimpse into what was possible. He realized everything he'd heard before was wrong, that he'd been following the wrong set of rules. And he grabbed a hold of it like a lifeline. And that's what I say is just, you know, just grab ahold of this and just give it two weeks. It will totally change your life, and you'll be in a totally different place. Just go for that. Go for that. Get your belief back. This is one of those things. People are like, well, I'll believe it when I see it. Now you've got to. You'll see it when you believe it. You have to start with that belief first and just go for it. If you live like a healthy, lean person, you will become one. That's just how it works. I mean, follow them around. They're not drinking diet sodas and eating diet food. They're not having skinny lattes and muffins. They aren't.

You know, I had a big fight. I won't mention his name. He watches my interviews. This is a long time ago. His first name is Doyle, and he said he was drinking a Diet Coke.

That's not a very common name. So you just kind of called him.

Out there, doyle, Doyle. If you're watching, he ordered a Diet Coke. And he said to me, he goes, you know what's funny? He goes, you never see skinny people around diet sodas. He's like, you just don't. So diet sodas versus.

I mean, talk about artificial sweeteners. The worst science experiment that we've done. There are two really bad science experiments we've done over the last couple decades. One was taking the fat out of food. That didn't work. And people still are scared of fat. One of the most important things you can do in your diet is to make an oil change. And you eat good, healthy fats. I eat a load of fat. And number two are these artificial sweeteners. What a dumb thing this is. First of all, they're 300 times sweeter than regular sweeteners. So all they do is dull your taste buds. So you want more sweet food. More sweet food, More sweet food. They cause calorie dysregulation because now you've eaten the sweet food, your body expects calories but none come, which causes you to overeat. They've proven that in rat studies. And the whole thing that we can thought, oh, well, you won't gain weight, but they raise insulin. So if they raise insulin, that puts you in fat storing mode. So that creates a problem. And then there's one other issue with them, and I think this is the most exciting area of health coming up is the whole microbiome. The bacteria in your gut, they feed the bad bacteria in your gut. If you have too much bad bacteria in your gut, because you're always going to have some. There's good guys, bad guys, but too much of the bad guys. Those bad guys actually extract the gut calories from food you eat and they store it as fat. So I had one client, I had Leslie Hamill, who's Suzanne Summers stepdaughter, and she lets me tell the story. She came to me, she was 40 pounds overweight, could not lose weight, exercising, cutting her calories. She had this sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Too much of the bad guys, and all we did was kill those suckers off. Boom. Non issue. Plus she had a couple food intolerances too. She had eggs and dairy, but people don't look at that. And you could be doing everything right, but you're eating these artificial sweeteners, you're feeding the bad bacteria in your gut, and your insulin is up and you will be storing fat. It is not a calories thing. Calories count, but they're not. The absolute where they come from counts way more. Right?

Yeah. So let's talk about juice cleanses, because I remember calling you up and I said, I have a friend who's going on a three day juice cleanse, is picking up juice and cayenne pepper and lemon and all this stuff. And then you went on a rant.

I went on a rant. I went on a rant.

And I was just like, wow, I never even knew that. So for all the people that think they're doing a detox or they're doing.

Cleanse, we need to detox every single day because every day we're getting hit by toxins. So I like the idea of a detox because to me it means a focused time. We're going to do good health habits. But let's just blow one thing right out of the walls right now, and that is that if you take the protein out of your diet to like give your body a rest or some really ridiculous thing, you need the amino acids to transport the toxins out of your body. The amino acids get together with the toxins and shuttle them out. No amino acids. You free up the toxins and you feel worse. So one of the funny things about a juice cleanser is people go, I feel bad. It must be working. I'm like, no, dummy, you just toxified yourself. You know, you just freed up those toxins because you've cut your calories way down. You're freeing up fat. Toxins get stored in our fat. It's one of the areas of weight loss. Resistance is if you're more toxic, if you have a lot of toxins coming in, your body will store the extra. If they can't get rid of it in your fat cells. And then your body cools down and holds onto the fat. So if you're starting to lose fat, you're releasing toxins. You need protein to pull them out. The other issue with a juice cleanse is a lot of these juice cleanses aren't just straight green drinks, which even if you're drinking just a straight green drink with nothing else, you're going to raise blood sugar. But most of the green drinks, just like the one we just saw, are not really green at all. They use a little green to give it the color. But, like, there's one popular cleanse out there right now that's five pieces of fruit a day in this smoothie with, like two cups of spinach. I go, so it's like 50 calories of a spot spinach and 600 calories of fruit each day. And I had one, poor guy. But you can have as much of that as you want. So you can do double. You can snack on some fruit and like, oh, my gosh, you know, Right? Crazy. Especially with the apples. So the big issues with those cleanses is they're pulling the protein out, which means you can't then shuttle out the toxins. And no, you're not getting enough amino acids in the juice. And then most. Most of the juices are loaded with sugar. Like, look at that one that. The maple juice and cayenne pepper. And there's a maple. It's either maple juice, maple, or syrup, or it's molasses. Either one, it's sugar and lemon juice. And somehow that's okay. No, it's not. So they're just ridiculous. And I think the reason people like them so much is they feel crappy. And they think somehow that feeling crappy is good for them. Your body has no way to tell you it can't yell at you and say, hey, dummy, this isn't working. So it just does things like lowers your energy or makes you crave things or makes you hurt or gives you a headache and that it's trying to tell you stop it.

Totally. Well, I think people really learn to tolerate feeling miserable.

Yeah.

Because there's been many times in my life, I mean, when, when I grew up, my typical diet, because again, I mentioned my father, single father, cooked every once in a while, but he was trying to just run a business and raise a couple of kids and struggled. We didn't have a lot of money. McDonald's, Arby's, Taco Bell, Chef Boyardee. I mean, just a lot of crap. I was sick a lot. And there was all these ingrained habits. And it wasn't until I became an adult and then I realized, well, I started reading. I never played sports in school because I had a kind of a sadistic Little league coach that ruined my liking of sports. So I was never around. Health habits. It took a tremendous amount of learning and education to unlearn all of these instilled habits. So talking about, I want to kind of go back to kids. What do you recommend parents do to set them on the right path? Because there might be some that feel really guilted right now based on what you said, and they're like, oh, I didn't realize this, but if you know this now and you don't do it for yourself and you're an adult, that's one thing. But if you know this and you're doing it to your kids, that's just, I mean, you're not setting them up for success. Right.

Once you know better, you can do better. But the issue is if you think I had one client who was a smoker and I said, do you want your kids to smoke? And she goes, oh, no, no, no, they're not going to smoke. I go, they're absolutely going to smoke. They'll go one way or the other.

Right.

But if you want your kids to eat better, eat better.

Right?

Right. I mean, that's the very first thing. Walk your talk. You know, you be the change you want to see in the world.

So that's, you know, I did a couple weeks ago, I was interviewing Eric Arianna Huffington about all the stuff I've helped her with with her book. And I quoted Dan Quayle because I heard this quote from Dan Quayle. She's like, I haven't heard anyone quote Dan Quayle in years. And he was being interviewed about television, you know, sex and violence on television. And the person interviewing him Saying, well, you know, that doesn't cause people to go out and do things. And he said, well, well, you know, if television didn't influence people, there'd be no such thing as advertising. And I just thought it was a really interesting statement because your lifestyle is your advertisement for your kids. I mean, it is what is the message that's conveyed? And on this video with Arianna, I said, you know, there's a story I heard about a father who went to see a movie with his two children. And one was the child, whatever the limit is 12, 13 years old. And the other one was 13, the other one was like 10. And so the father said, I'd like three tickets, two adults and one child. And the person selling tickets said, well, sir, I never would have known that your other son was not of age. You could have got two child tickets and saved money. And he said, well, you wouldn't have known, but they would have known. And I always love that because it's like, what sort of message are you conveying? And you know, my father smoked. My father died of lung cancer because what I say, he really died of addiction because he was addicted to. And so the thing. So what advice is the very best you could give to parents on how to shift that and what they need to do? Other than, of course, read the book and learn how to do this.

But you know, as a mom, I used to give this a advice before being a mom. And now I go, you know, really, you have to be a mom to understand this because kids are their own people, right? The good news is start as early as you can because exposure equals preference. Don't ever make the dining table a war zone. That's just a ridiculous thing to do. But the more you can involve your kids. My son, this is a really funny one. My 17 year old, I had a friend that said, oh, you should check his computer. I bet he's watching. I go, my baby angel is not watching porn. So I go sneaking in there and I trust my kids. So I never check anything. But I'm like, just to prove a point, I go check his computer. My kid is not watching porn. My kid is watching cooking videos.

Food porn.

He's food porn. Yeah, because he was, he was watching like how to make Mashed Potatoes. So I was like, dude, we have to talk. Right? But you know, the more you can involve the them and make this not a mystery, they'll eat what they prepare because it's fun, right? So that's a big thing. Also you put all this stuff like we have fruit, we have vegetables, we have hummus, we have nuts. We don't keep crap in the house. We never had juice in the house. We have sparkling water that we've always had. We have green tea. So that's the stuff they know now. It doesn't mean they can never have the other stuff, but they learn that you go out to eat. If you want to have a dessert there, you can have it.

Dessert.

But we're not keeping that stuff around. It's not a daily thing. I was raised. I started the day with Pop Tarts or Captain Crunch. And we had dessert every night after dinner. And that was what you did. My mom had a wicked sweet tooth. And all of a sudden, at 12, I realized this was not working for me at all. And I started on my path. But, you know, for my kids, this is just their normal. But I also am like, well, you know, it's not about being 100%, be 90%. So if you go out, if you want to have a dessert, go ahead. So they learn the proper place for these things. They don't become crazy. Because I remember growing up, I had a girlfriend, and she was not allowed to have any of these things in her house. So she'd come over to my house and lose her mind. She'd be like, my mom's like, what happened to the cake? Evelyn Blier was here. So it's really teaching them to eat the good stuff first. Because kids get full. Adults to. Kids don't really get full, but kids get full. And just like I told you with Bryce trying the Oreos and going, oh, my gosh, I can only eat two. Same thing happened with Halloween candy one year. I'm like, go ahead, eat whatever you want. And literally five pieces throwing up. And then we just got rid of it.

Well, see, that's one thing, too. Once you get your body adapted to clean eating, when you start introducing crappy stuff, your body pretty much, it tells you, yeah, and it's kind of cool.

The big thing with kids is you focus on activity and energy and fitness and doing fun stuff in sports. There's so many girls with tweaked body images because of the ridiculous things we see in magazines of a model that literally. I remember standing next to one of these models, I'm like, you weigh like 50 pounds long less than me. You're my height. How does this work? I could knock over with my pinky poof. But I think it's important to really focus on activity and sports and all that. And then they get a Different idea of food as being fuel and they want to have the energy. And one son's a tricker, so he's really careful about stuff because he wants to be able to throw his flips. Right.

Okay, so let's talk about, aside from food, what other lifestyle things help enhance just overall health that are absolute must. What are just the things you really are going to need?

So this is where when I was sitting watching you interview Arianna the other day, I am 100% in agreement. Actually, I think the number one thing you can do for your health bar, anything else is sleep. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be sleep. Because one poor night of sleep, you're going to be hungrier. You're more insulin resistant, your cortisol's higher, you're going to crave more sugar. I always say you're hungrier. And not for salmon, right?

Serotonin flow, you want to eat crappy food, right?

And it starts this bad cycle because then you want to have the latte and the muffin and then your energy drops and all of a sudden you're having caffeine all day long and then you can't sleep. So then you've got to hit yourself with sleeping pills or alcohol. Then you feel like crap the next day and it just like ba boom, ba boom, ba boom. So good sleep habits are huge. Stress tolerance. I hate the idea of stress management because you tell a stressed person they have to manage their stress and they want to slap you, right? But especially from being in the hospital with a near death experience with the child, it really became clear to me that stress tolerance is everything. And so there are so many things that you, you can do to teach your body how to tolerate higher and higher levels of stress, which the more successful you want to be, the better you better be at tolerating stress, right? So it's not most of us can't get the stress out of our lives, so we have to learn how to handle it better. One of the best ways to learn how to handle it better is burst training. So for exercise, I don't believe in endurance exercise at all.

So you don't go for long distance?

Zero. I was a vegan endurance athlete in my 20s. I was about 10% body fat higher, very angry, not happy, angry. Right. So no, I only do burst style cardio training or HIIT training, which means let's say if I was going to go out for a run, I'd walk first and I'd sprint all out for 30 seconds, walk it off For a minute, sprint again for 30 seconds and do that to accumulate four to eight total minutes of bursting three days a week. And then I do a lot of resistance training. And I'm ready for you whenever you want a rematch in the gym. I know you've got some work to do before we do that.

You're so sweet to me. I really appreciate that video.

Even though I know. I know I did that. Now you're like, I don't want to, like, go back at it.

I'm going to embarrass you in the gym. We're going to videotape this.

Let's do that. Let's do. Okay, that's it.

What is that going to accomplish for me? I mean, I'll just still look like a jerk.

Yes, I'm in the total. Win. Win.

Do you mind talking about how old you are?

I am 51.

Yeah, 51.

I am better at 51 than I was at 40, and I believe I'll be better at 55 because we just keep learning more. There's so much that you can do. But honestly, birth style training raises growth hormone. The most aging thing you can do, eat sugar and run a lot and be stressed out. You know, it's like, have a. I have, like a lot of stress in my life. I'm totally happy. And I've learned how to manage, you know, deal with that stress, tolerate that stress. You know, bringing a kid out of a brain injury is a stressful situation.

So you remember Hugh Downs? Like, Hugh's now 93, 94. I interviewed him when he was 87, and I asked him about stress, and he had like, one of the world records of most time on broadcast television on 2020 for years. He said there's a big difference between stress and distress. He's like, we grow from stress. He's like, if you work out, you're going to. Actually, that's how you build distress. Tears you down. And so I think in a lot of ways, when I hear you say.

That.

It'S like weight training for your brain. And then I know that I'm going to get better because now I'm finally have given in. You have pummeled me with this. And I am starting tm, so I'm going to start meditating. And again, I look at health as a journey. And if you don't address all this stuff, it's like a giant snowball picking up speed, going down a hill. But if you address this, you can totally level it out or bring it up. And so I believe we can be at our best, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond. And you just keep looking at habits that you can put in. Right. So my next one will be meditation. I'm always looking at anything I can do to get an edge. And there's so many more things out there.

Yeah, yeah, people. I mean, even as we're sitting here videotaping, there's a couple that are in the room that actually are in the float pod business where you actually float. They manufacture float pods. They have a company called True Rest. And so there's lots of ways that you can handle.

Yeah.

And I'm very excited to try that because if I could, maybe that'll become my new meditation. Maybe I can meditate in the float pod. You can think about that. It's a two for one.

Exactly.

I could take some vitamin C, lower my cortisol, then go in the float pod and meditate.

Exactly. In all seriousness. Yeah. Those are great practices.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.