Dean interviews Yuri Elkaim, Author of the New York Times Bestseller "The All Day Energy Diet" - #182

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast, Everybody, it's Dean Jackson and no Joe Polish. Today you get a break from our buddy Joe. But in his place, we have somebody that I am very excited to talk about, Mr. Yuri Elkaim.

How are you, Yuri? I'm doing great. How are you, Dean?

I am fantastic. So this is going to be people's kind of introduction to you. And I want to set this up because I've known you for a few years now and I've been anticipating the arrival of this book for a while now. And I have to say you have in this title and just we could spend a whole episode just deconstructing the title of this book, the All Day Energy Diet. I mean, that says it all right there. That's great. But the subhead even look better, feel younger, double your energy in seven days. Now, can you imagine a more benefit packed title than.

There's your 90 minute book right there. It was a little bit more than 90 minutes, but there were actually elements in the book that were 90 minutes. But yeah, like for me, I mean, it's like I've obviously I've been able to learn from the Buddha himself, and I spend a lot of time thinking about angles and positioning and marketing and the title is everything. Like it's. I mean, you guys have talked about this several times. I mean, how something, how like the first impression that somebody gets from the title of a product or a book, I mean, it can make or break, you know, it can make or break that book or product. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that title and I'm happy that it worked out.

Yeah, I mean, you know, just the lesson to be learned there is. It's not like, it's not the Elk Game Protocol or something, you know, I mean, it's not all about you. It's completely, it's all cheese title. The All Day Energy diet. Look better, feel younger, double your energy in seven days. So while we're getting started here, I mean, I've known you for a while, but I think it would be cool to kind of tell your story and tell people. Who is Yuri Elkin?

Sure. So I'll give you the, hopefully the quick rundown of this. So I grew up with a very active component to my life. I was very active playing soccer right from a very young age. And I was actually, I think at about 10 years old, I realized I was really good and much better than a lot of other, a lot of other kids. So I decided to set a goal for myself. I said, by the time I finish high school, I want to play or pursue professional soccer. So I spent all of my teens playing and training and competing at the highest level possible at those various ages. And. And I was able to go to Brazil and I trained with Sao Paulo, which was the number one club in Brazil. I was able to go to Italy and play over there against some of the Serie A teams. For anyone who follows soccer, that's kind of like the first division in Italian soccer. So I had a lot of really cool experiences when I was younger playing soccer. And when I was in my early 20s, I was able to eventually play professionally for three years, which was awesome, until I realized I no longer wanted to do that anymore and that there was this other calling that I had, which is essentially what I do now, which is helping people dramatically improve their health, energy and fitness, but along that path. So being active and fit was actually a bit of a cover up because I was very unhealthy and I didn't realize it. So I had a lot of digestive issues growing up. I had really bad eczema. So I was a goalie and I used to wear goalie gloves all the time. So especially when it was getting hot and sweaty. Just like the sweat from my gloves would make my eczema like, really terrible on my hands. And I remember going to school in the springtime and I'd be wearing like winter gloves to cover up my hands so that people wouldn't see them. Just like, really terrible stuff. Had really bad asthma to the point where I would have to run it. Like, especially when I was, you know, 10 to 15 years old, I would have one of those Darth Vader masks, like those ventilators that you'd have to like hook up to a machine and kind of, yeah, like, really bad. And the thing is, the doctors thought I had like a corticosteroid deficiency, right? It was like a Ventolin deficiency. It wasn't something related to maybe the foods I was eating. So none of this really made sense to me. And to boot, all of, like, on top of all that, I had really low energy. So I was spending 10 to 12 hours a night sleeping. I would often, like, fall asleep on the couch after school. So I was spending about half of my life sleeping, which is not a great use of time. So that was up until, like, I was 17 and even beyond actually up until I was about 23, 24. And when I was 17, in my last year of high school, I noticed that I was. I got home from soccer one night, I was taking a shower, and I remember running my hands through my hair as I was. As I was washing it, and I noticed that my hair was in my hands. Like, I had, like, a clump of hair in my hands. And I was like, what the hell is going on here? So, toweled off, noticed some hair in the towel, started to get worried. I went to bed, woke up the next morning, saw more hair on my pillow. And just to give our listeners some perspective, my dad's Moroccan, so there's a lot of hair in the family. So I was relatively well groomed and had a good head of hair before.

All this happened, as they say.

Exactly. So within about six weeks, I had lost all of my hair. So everything on my scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, the whole bit. And my doctor told me I had an autoimmune condition called alopecia. So they had no solutions, nothing. It was like, we can inject her head with cortisone, that's about it. But it'll come and go, and we can't do anything about it. So for eight years, I had no solutions. No. Like, I did acupuncture, Chinese medical herbs, all sorts of weird stuff. Nothing really helped until I went back to school. So I had gone to the University of Toronto, did my degree in kinesiology and health sciences, went over to play pro soccer in France, came back and went back to school to study holistic nutrition and very quickly realized that all of these issues were related to my diet. And when I realized that, I very quickly turned it around and noticed dramatic improvements. And probably most notably was the increase in energy that I had within about two or three days of cleaning out a lot of junk. Just to give perspective, I grew up on a diet that was standard American diet, very processed, lots of going out to eat because I was always playing soccer. So a lot of microwave dinners, very few fresh foods. I would easily survive on bread and cheese or hot dogs and just nonsense like that. So it's no wonder I had all these health issues. So when I was 24, 25 again, I kind of pursued these studies in holistic nutrition, dramatically transformed my health, regrew most of my hair within the space of a couple weeks, even though it's kind of come and gone a few times since that time, just like autoimmune diseases do. But for me, it was really about having the energy, because when you have energy, you're able to do. You're unstoppable. And I was able to, instead of sleeping 10 to 12 hours a night. I was now sleeping, I would say on average about seven hours and waking up feeling great, having more focus and just kind of productive drive throughout the day to get more done and really accomplish some big goals. And I was like, you know, if I didn't have this energy, then there's probably a lot of other people who don't. And I remember in my early 20s, taking the bus and subway to work. I started off as a personal trainer and noticed like people are falling asleep on the subway and falling asleep on the subway after work. I'm like, am I, like, am I living in the twilight zone here? So it became a big mission of mine to really figure out why so many people are so tired all the time. And then why not just show them how they can very quickly get out of that without ridiculous stimulants or concoctions, but actually do it through real simple changes and improvements, dietary wise and lifestyle wise and just dramatically change the way they live or I guess change the way they experience life in the sense of coming back to life and really living a life that's fully charged. And that's really what I've been doing the last 14 years, is helping people do that very seamlessly, very quickly. And the only disclaimer here is that you have to be a human being on planet Earth because the principles I talk about only work for human physiology. So if anyone's listening who is an alien, this is not going to work. But yeah, so that's kind of a rundown of my story. But it's been great. I mean, like in the past 14 years, we've helped more than half a million people to better health through all my programs and services and YouTube videos and all sorts of awesome stuff. And it's been a great ride.

That's awesome. You know, the whole thing, just energy. I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot. That energy is just so important as entrepreneurs, especially if you're self directed and you're trying to achieve things, you're trying to get stuff done. I, I've, you know, found for me I need three things in order to get things done. The first one is that I have to have clarity on what it is that I, that I want to do. The second thing is that I've got to have the energy to, to do it. And the third is the focus, the focused time set aside to do it. So if, if I'm not accomplishing something, it's usually one of those three things. It's either that I'M not crystal clear on, on what it is I'm trying to do or I don't have the energy for it right now and, or, or I don't have the, the focused time set aside. But you know, yourself, I mean, when you're feeling energy, when you're feeling energized, that is just like a moving sidewalk in the direction of getting stuff done. And if you're, if you, even if you are clear on what you want to do and you set aside the focused time to work on it, it's. If you don't have the energy, it's just, you know, it's a frustrating time because you, you've fallen asleep or you're not able to focus or you're cranky or, you know, I mean, but energy just makes everything, everything work. So I'm excited to hear kind of what your discoveries were and what some of the changes that you made and some of the things that. Well, let's talk first of all about kind of breaking down the vital components of energy, because I know you've done a lot of research into this, and so everything that your whole protocol is based on, on some basic foundational stuff.

Yeah. So what I love about this work is that it's very different from what anybody else talks about when they talk about energy, because when people talk about energy or when you read like the latest post on some website, it's all about like, eat some more nuts, have some more protein, you know, because you're not going to feel hungry and you're going to feel energized, and that's fine. But there's things at a more fundamental level that a lot of people are not aware of. And that's why I kind of put together the seven commandments of energy, which I think are a foundation to everything. So if you understand these, they make a lot of sense. So the biggest one actually is really understanding that your blood is everything. Like, the health of your bloodstream is the foundation of how you feel. And the reason for that is because our body, our cells, our body is composed of trillions of cells, and each one of those cells requires oxygen to produce energy. So how does the oxygen get to those cells? Well, it gets to the cells on the highway called our bloodstream, and they travel in these taxi cabs called red blood cells. But the problem is that based on the foods that we eat, we can create traffic jams in our bloodstream. And the way I was eating for 20 years of my life, I was literally living in my bloodstream wise it was like I was living in New York City in rush hour all the time. So if your blood is sluggish, if your red blood cells are not able to get around your body and deliver oxygen efficiently, then you're not going to feel very energized because your cells are not able to produce energy very efficiently because they're not getting the oxygen inputs that they require. So how does our blood become sluggish? Well, I'm not going to go too scientific here, but essentially our blood needs to be slightly alkaline, which on a scale of, on the ph scale means that it's just past neutral. And when we eat a lot of the traditional foods in the North American diet, so processed foods, anything really in a box or package, lots of fast foods, take it, lots of grains, sugar, alcohol, a lot of animal products. Those are all foods that once they're metabolized, are broken down into acidic metabolites. And essentially what that does is it changes the physiology of what happens in the blood with the blood cells and they end up kind of sticking together so they're not able to move around as they would if they were on kind of a Highway at 2 in the morning. And the simple way to reverse that, and the cool thing is that a lot of studies show that you can really reverse or improve the quality of your blood in the space of a couple hours. Which means that if you had like a terrible day of eating yesterday and you woke up today and you said, today's a new day, I'm going to start off fresh, you can do things like bringing in more alkaline forming foods, which are essentially predominantly vegetables, fruit and nuts. And there's a lot of amazing things you can do with that. And it's not about saying you can never have meat again, but the whole idea is to be able to incorporate those foods in specific manners so, so that you allow your body to do what it's supposed to do naturally. Because our natural state of being is not tired. Just from an evolutionary standpoint, if we were tired all the time, we would be dead. You know, as a spirit.

Oh yeah. You know, so in the, in our natural state, we weren't like, you know, so many things. We're trying to often mask this low energy by pumping caffeine and, you know, energy drinks and, and artificially kind of pump that up and then at the same time taking, you know, sleeping pills and all this stuff to, to get to sleep. So we're chemically sort of trying to manufacture that energy. You were, you were joking about our, you know, we'd be dead. There was. I was just listening to a comedian on the radio talking about all the pharmaceuticals and things that we put in our bodies now. And for. He's saying some of these things that we have, we're supposed to have. We're supposed to feel stress and anxiety. We're supposed to be nervous about. Worry about paying the rent, because that's how the rent gets paid. If our. If our. If our caveman ancestors had access to the pharmaceuticals that we do, we would be extinct. And he said the last thought of the last caveman would have been, wow, that tiger looks like he's coming right up on me. Just calm and relaxed. But yes, our natural state, if you look back, it's not. It's. Our natural state is to be. Is to have energy, to be able to run and chase things.

Yeah, exactly. And that's not to say that you can't feel tired. I mean, obviously, if you've been running around all day, you're going to have to rest. But when people are waking up and then requiring coffee just to function, that's not normal. And caffeine is the number one drug in the world. And it's one thing. If you enjoy the taste of coffee, that's fine. I would recommend switching to a decaf. At least you start moving away from caffeine. That's probably one of the biggest things you can do in terms of having more energy. And I'll be very honest. It' syou're gonna feel like crap the first couple days because youryour body's literally physiologically addicted to a drug, and you're gonna go through those withdrawal symptoms, and that's just. You just have to be on. It's like working out. If you'd never worked out before. You're gonna have soreness. It just. You just have to be realistic about it, about that. But the thing is, we turn to. The very things we turn to for energy are the very things that are robbing us of energy. So caffeine and sugar are two of the biggest stimulants that we turn to if we think about our morning meal. If you go to Starbucks, you just look at it. It's like coffee and pastries just loaded with sugar. And a lot of people start their days like that, and it's no wonder that they end up going through these up and down roller coasters with their energy all day, because caffeine and sugar do things to us hormonally, for instance, with our adrenal glands and our adrenal hormones, but they also wreak havoc on our blood sugar. So we have this spike in blood sugar and these adrenal hormones. We feel like we can take on the world. And then an hour later, we're, like, falling asleep at our desk, and that'll refuel.

You got to redo it again and get more sugar, more caffeine. Right? Just to get through the day.

Exactly. So it's about getting off the roller coaster and getting onto a path that is more sustainable, because going down that path is really how you end up wreaking a lot of damage to your body over time. And it's amazing to see what can happen when you remove those stimulants and bring in real nutrition again. Seven days. Seven days is actually a very long period of time. And for most people, it's like two or three days, and they feel like new people. It's amazing.

Yeah, I mean, I recently went through a. Like this when I got back from my world tour here. I got back in September, and I, you know, again, had been on the road for four months and eating in restaurants, eating on the go, Eating, you know, in hotels, all that kind of. All that kind of stuff. And I came back and realized, man, I'm like the outermost shell of a set of Dean Jackson nesting dolls, you know? So I really got to, you know, turn that around. So I did exactly that. Cut out sugar, cut out caffeine, cut out wheat, cut out dairy, cut out all the things that you're talking about. And you are absolutely right. Like, for the first two or three days, I was really, like, you know, going through withdrawals, and I had to really, like, you know, be careful to plan my, you know, plan my meals and stuff. But even I remember I was telling JJ Virgin on. On day three, I. That there was a. One of those six packs of Oreos in my office that I found, and I was eating. I mean, all day three, I was eating those like a crack fiend. I mean, it was just like, it literally. And as I'm doing it, and I was just able to laugh about it afterwards, but saying, like, really, that is, like, that's a powerful drug, sugar. And I was able then to, you know, over the next couple of days, get that off. But you're right. After seven days, I. It's like flipping the switch, and I shift from being, you know, a sugar burner to being an, you know, a real fuel burner or fat burner. And I've lost £16 in the first 30 days here now.

So that's amazing.

And now, you know, just. I do feel great.

Yeah, it's. And JJ is awesome. I mean, she's a great friend, and she. Obviously, she knows what she's doing. And the cool thing, like, you know, just to kind of piggyback on the Oriole story, I think it's. You know, I've been doing a lot of research in this area of environment versus willpower, and this is especially important when it comes to food because, you know, one of the things I try to get people to do, even in an informal fashion, is just a food journal, is to keep a journal of what they eat and how they feel. Because a lot of times we turn to foods because of conditioned responses or because of situational things. You know, we eat at our desk or whatever. And here's the big thing is we've been led to believe from. I don't even know where this came from, but that all habits and all change require willpower and discipline. And if you can't do it, then there's something wrong with you. You just need more of it. But the reality is that environment is everything. Environments will always trump willpower. And there's a lot of research that shows this. Whether you call it ego depletion or willpower, there's a lot of research that shows that the more decisions we make and the more temptations we resist on an ongoing basis throughout the day, the more we lose that kind of charge in our battery, if you will. And by the time dinner comes around, that's when most people fall off the bandwagon. They just don't have anything left in the tank to be like, oh, my God, what am I going to have for dinner? Yeah, exactly. So that's why it's all about having the decisions made for you ahead of time, having a meal plan in place, having an environment set up in your kitchen where you don't have. For me, it's chocolate. So if there's, like. The other day, my wife comes home with 10 chocolate bars, like, really good chocolates. And I was like, what are these for? She's like, oh, we're going to. We have a nanny staying with us from Denmark. And she's like, yeah, we're going to send these home with Laura. I was like, well, unless they're going home right now, then some of those will be eaten. Yeah. So it's about setting up an environment where you. You don't have those temptations because we're just as human beings, eventually we're going to give in. And so I just wanted to kind of mention that as well.

We were just talking a couple of episodes ago about exactly that. That's exactly what I had found. I actually looked it up because I'm a wordsmith and actually looked up and there are two definitions of the word discipline. There's discipline, the verb, which is exercising discipline, like, you know, willpower, essentially. And then there's discipline, the noun, which is a discipline, like a system, a routine, a, an environment. And the more that you, if you focus on, you know, creating a discipline noun, that it replaces the need for the discipline verb. So that's exactly what you're saying. An environment replaces willpower and environment always wins.

Yeah, that's such a great distinction too. I mean, you come up with so many elegant ideas. It's awesome. Yeah, you should really have a series of books just on your elegant ideas. I mean, that's amazing. It's great.

Thank you. So when we're looking at this now, so that you were talking about the foundational stuff. So our blood is affected by the things that we eat. And the good news is that it's affected usually primarily for the next few hours after what you've eaten. But fundamentally you can sort of reset it within seven days. You can get back to a natural state. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, totally. And I mean the cool thing is like certain systems in the body take, they can adapt quicker than others. The blood is obviously one of those ones that can do things pretty quickly. Another area that I think a lot of people need to understand with respect to energy. This actually relates to kind of the post lunch, like sleepiness. And this is actually, it's so funny like when you go to an event and I always feel sorry for the person who's speaking on stage after lunch because that's when you start to notice people nodding off and you know, so if anyone listening, like if you feel tired after lunch, then this is another big foundational element is that digestion is arguably the most energy intensive process your body has to go through. And if you think about, well, we just had Thanksgiving up here in Canada, so this past weekend was not as debaucherous as previous years for me. For Thanksgiving. I remember when I was growing up, I would have Thanksgiving dinner, then lunch and then like just leftovers. And I'd be like falling asleep at the table. There's just so much food. And that's because your body has to use all of this energy to break down food and digest it and absorb it and then distribute it and and when it does that, it's funny, because in the body, what I've realized is that energy is really a zero sum game, whereas it seems to be in the universe. There's this whole kind of law of thermodynamics that says energy is not created nor destroyed, just transferred from one form to another. But in the body, it seems that if your body requires a lot of energy for digesting, for instance, then it's not able to use energy for movement as an example. So that's why we feel like laying down when we're tired or when we're full. Another thing I tell people is that low energy is a warning sign that something more serious is happening inside your body. For me, I didn't realize when I was in my teens that having low energy was my body's way of trying to scream at me to say, hey, clean things up in here. Because the immune system is going crazy. It doesn't know what to do anymore. And so it's really interesting when we start to look at this a little bit differently. Digestion is one of those things where it's like, if you're tired all the time, maybe you shouldn't be eating all the time. And what we found is that when you actually eat less, for instance, if you take a day of not eating, you actually feel a lot better and you free up a lot of energy for your body to break down immune complexes and repair cells is a process called autophagy. And it's one of the only, the only ways we know of, of extending lifespan without doing all these, without doing all the Singularity University stuff.

That's interesting. I met a guy who's the world's leading biogerentologist, and he talked about this idea of the things that can extend our lifespan. And one of the things that's the most predictable, the thing that is the most, you know, that you're most able to predictably determine extending somebody's life is with the, with calorie restriction. That's the number one thing that they can do. They have a. He's actually founded something called the Methuselah Prize, and it's awarded to the scientist or team of scientists that are able to extend the life of mice beyond their, their expected lifespan. So most, like mice, live to be three years, and the rules are that you can't intervene until their second birthday. And the prize is for extending the, the life of the mouse beyond that expected three years. I think the, the record right now is up to five years and something. And the, the Thing that's the protocol that's most predictable and repeatable is caloric restriction.

Yep. It's so funny because, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, like a big buzz supplement is resveratrol, right. Which is like the component in grapes, red grapes from red wine. That's been, you know, so amazing for all these different things. And one of the things that resveratrol has been found to do has been this very same thing in terms of extending lifespan. But the thing is, you need so much of it that it would not even be practically for anyone to use. But on the flip side, you can just eat less for free and actually save money. And it makes sense because, again, if your body is not spending all of that time digesting food, then it's able to use that energy to repair damaged cells, to do what it has to do to allow your body to function as it should.

So it's okay. It's okay to not have a meal?

Absolutely. That's a huge myth, like people saying you have to eat five or six times a day. That's a big, big one that I'm on a mission to debunk. And my next book will be talking more about that. But that's a big one for sure.

Yeah. Well, because I guess it's true. I mean, I don't know certainly as much about as you do, but what I do know is that every time you eat, that triggers the whole adrenal response and this whole digestive system kicks in. So if you're eating five times a day, it's causing all those spikes or whatever. Right. Rather than eating fewer times.

Well, it's funny because the only situation in which I would suggest somebody eats a little more frequently is if they're a diabetic with blood sugar issues. But how does that even happen in the first place? Well, blood sugar is a response to eating predominantly carbohydrates. When you eat, you're digesting food, and if they're carbohydrates, they're going to raise your blood sugar. As a result, your body secretes insulin, which is a storage hormone that takes the sugar out of the blood, the protective mechanism, really, and stores it in your fat, muscle and liver. So if you're constantly eating, then you constantly have high levels of insulin, more or less, depending on what you're eating. And we know that one of the biggest problems as a kind of a root issue for a lot of, like, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stuff like that is insulin resistance. And the way our body becomes resistant to insulin is, is simply as a result of having too much insulin to begin with in the blood. It's like just to kind of bring this back to marketing for a second. If you have somebody cold calling you every single day at six o' clock and you just know, you're like, there's no way I'm going to answer the phone if this person keeps calling me. It's like you get this banner blindness or it's kind of blindness to that and the same thing in the body. If your cells are constantly exposed to high levels of a specific hormone, they will no longer respond to it. And that's essentially what happens with insulin resistance. And that's why eating all the time is not a good thing. And it's, I think it's probably one of the bigger causes of things like insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

Oh, that's amazing. And I mean, like, I guess the reality is, and you've proven it, that a lot of type 2 diabetes, especially adult onset or is reversible by this kind of getting the blood sugar under control.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna make any medical, I won't make any medical papers, but I would say it's probably one of the, you know, for anyone who's listening, if you have, you know, blood sugar shoes, optimistically, like, optimistically speaking, it's probably one of the best conditions you can even call that conditions to have because it's very reversible with diet and exercise alone. And it's amazing what you can do very quickly.

That's awesome. So, okay, that. Now let's talk about some of the specific foods. I mean, are there foods that are more, you know, energy givers and energy drainers or is it that simple?

Kind of. I mean, the big thing is, you know, I like to get people to think about energy through tranquility instead of energy through stimulation. So if you think about caffeine and sugar as the two big stimulating foods or ingredients in our food supply, those are the types of foods we want to move away from. Instead, we want to move towards foods that provide, first of all, nutrients that a lot of us are deficient in. So by eating real foods that are naturally found on planet Earth, which would be things like vegetables, low glycemic index fruit, so that would be like berries, apples, pears, nuts, like walnuts and almonds, some cashews, pecans, not in copious amounts, but in a decent amount. And then you can have some good quality animal products if you want. You don't have to have meat but you can if you want to. So you might have grass fed beef, some wild caught salmon, and you know, that's looking. And these are foods that don't really surge you, they don't give you a surge of energy, but they provide the nutrition and the alkaline properties that allow your body to achieve its natural level of vitality. So they give you a sustained energy as opposed to a quick spike and then drop. And what I would say is, you know, there's no single food that's going to override your overall diet. But I would say the single most important food group that you should really focus on on a day to day basis is greens. So green vegetables. So the simplest thing anybody can do is make a green juice. If they have a juicer or if they don't have a juicer is make a green smoothie to start their day. It's a great way to just kind of get the ball rolling or, you know, if you're just having what you're eating already, just have a side, a side salad, a big green salad. Make some steamed broccoli or some steamed spinach, some steamed kale. Just think about whatever. Like without going, if you just did nothing else to your diet but just started adding more greens in, that would make a huge difference for, I would say, everybody listening to this.

So how do you feel about this idea of the traditional, you know, breakfast meal versus, you know, the other meals? Is it, you know, is it sometimes it okay to have like, you know, a meal at breakfast or do you, or you kind of ease into the day or is there anything about, you know, where there's a lot of discussion. I don't know where you stand on it, but, you know, there's a lot of discussion about having, you know, your, your biggest meal in the middle of the day versus at the end of the day? Or is there anything about like stacking the, the way that you eat throughout the day or is it having equal load throughout the day?

Well, the cool thing is the research shows that if you have one meal that's 2,000 calories, or five meals that make up 2,000 calories, there's no difference in terms of weight loss or metabolic effects. So that's interesting.

Snake. Eat like a snake once a day. Put in your 2,000 calories.

Yeah. And I would like. The advice that I give my clients is that you have to listen to your body. Because a lot of people get frustrated when they're like, oh my God, I have to eat and I'm not even hungry. And this is the biggest. I think, you know, the best thing you can do for yourself is to become more aware of what works for you. Because everyone is different. We all have different metabolic needs. And therefore some days will require something and maybe another day we don't feel like that. So breakfast is a really interesting issue because if we look at the word breakfast, it's break fast. We've been fasting overnight. And what determines when or what is breakfast? So a lot of the studies that actually look at breakfast, they'll actually include like, if you have a coffee with cream in that coffee, does that qualify as breakfast? Or do you have to have bacon and eggs or does it have to be cereal? So a lot of the research is really fuzzy with respect to what they actually qualify as breakfast. So I would say first and foremost, I don't have breakfast every morning just because I'm not the type of person that wakes up and I'm like, oh my God, I'm starving. So if you're somebody who wakes up starving, then definitely have a good substantial breakfast versus if you're somebody who wakes up and you need maybe a few hours to get going, then maybe start off with some lemon water or a green juice or maybe a smoothie, something that's not as heavy, and then you can have something a little more substantial afterwards. Because again, if you're not somebody, if you feel sluggish already or full and then you have this big onslaught of food that's only going to make you. It's only going to make matters worse. You're going to get to work and you're going to be like, oh my God, I can't even focus on writing this report or doing whatever I have to do. So you really have to just kind of tune into your body and kind of feel what works best for you. And some days maybe you'll want to have breakfast, other days you won't. Maybe some days you'll go until one in the afternoon before having anything to eat, and that's okay. You're not going to damage your metabolism. You'll actually do a lot of good for helping re establish normal hormone patterns and helping burn more fat. And you'll probably find yourself a little more mentally clear when you're not always, you know, full of food.

Right. Oh, that's interesting. So whatever you kind of go with your thing, it's good to know that you're. It's not like so regimented that you have to have this many calories at this meal and this many here and this much Time in between and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of flexibility in. In the way that you. In the way that you approach it.

Yeah, absolutely. Because, I mean, the way I see it is, like, you know, the best diet that you're on is the one that you don't know that you're on.

Right.

So it's, you know, it's doing things that are. Yeah. You know, it's doing things that are intuitive and natural to you. If you're thinking about counting calories or measuring things or worrying about, oh, my God, I have to have this now. And this, like, it's just. It's too much. It consumes your life, and that's not how we are able to maintain things.

So is there anything else about the specific foods? We had talked about some of the things to kind of, like, eliminate? Is it pretty safe to say that if it's. If it's processed in any way, that it's probably something you could do without?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, really simply, if it comes. If. A couple rules. First of all, if it's advertised on tv, do not eat it, because those companies. That's. That's kind of one of my rules is, like, there's. You've never seen it. You've never seen an advertisement for a commercial for broccoli or pears. You know, like, not that I'm aware of. So that's a red flag. Second is if it comes in a box or package. Yeah, definitely. There's stuff in there that's going to make you want to eat more of those foods, because they chemically engineer their foods to do that. And, you know, realistically, we're all going to. At some level, at some point in our lives, we're going to come across those foods where we just. We're going to have to eat them, and that's okay. I mean. But do your best to really stick to fresh foods. So local farmers markets, the produce aisles, your butcher shop, stick to real foods. Focus mostly on plant foods, more of them in their raw states. So if you can have an apple, a salad, a green juice, a green smoothie, you know, fresh foods that have not been cooked excessively, you're going to get a lot more nutrients from those. You're going to get a lot more kind of life energy out of those foods, and you'll get a lot more water and hydration because you haven't evaporated off a lot of that from the cooking process. So those are a couple things to consider, too.

That's so funny. You know, I have to tell you something. That last time we. We were together at Celebration and you had lunch, and it was. I forget what it was some kind of a curried vegetables and rices, but it was a vegetarian dish, and it was kind of like, I'm like a meat eater. And so I was a little bit, like, concerned that, oh, I'm not sure this is going to get me through. But I remember just having it and I remember thinking just how, you know, it really was. It was delicious first off. But it was also, you know, I felt great throughout the whole afternoon after that, too.

Yeah, that's. That's awesome. And like, for me, I'm like, I have. I have three criteria when I develop foods and recipes and stuff, because I'm naturally lazy and I'm naturally. I love food. I'm a big foodie. But I'm also very pressed for time. So I've got three. Three little boys. I don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So all the recipes in the book, as well as anything that I've ever developed, have to taste amazing. They have to take less than 15 minutes to make, and they have to pass the test of my kids. So if my kids will drink the smoothie or have the dish, then I think most other people in the world will enjoy it as well.

Right.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm really excited about showing people how, like, when people think about, like, you know, vegetables. I don't want to just have salad all the time. You don't have to have salad all the time. There's amazing ways of incorporating vegetables. And it's not to say you can't have meat. I mean, I have meat and salmon probably three to four times a week. But there's just so many amazing ways of incorporating plant foods in delicious ways that a lot of people are not aware of.

Yeah. And it's interesting to think about maybe just skipping the meat for one meal, you know, because most of the time it's kind of you. We get into a pattern and you get. I mean, I. It was so funny that I do remember thinking, huh, how's this going to work without any meat? But it was. You know, it did. So what about supplements? And, you know, are there things that are helpful?

I would say there's a couple things that I personally use and recommend. I think for most people just based on the fact that even if you're eating a real good whole foods diet, a lot of the foods based on our soils don't have the same nutrient level they used to. So I think a good multivitamin is probably well served for a lot of people. I also think a fish oil, unless you're on a blood thinner, pretty much anybody else, good quality fish oil is massively helpful in terms of reducing inflammation, providing the DHA that's going to help, you know, your brain. There's so many benefits to fish oil, it's ridiculous. So that I would also recommend digestively, a good probiotic, which is good bacteria, which is just really helpful because our gut is very, very important. Probably very overlooked by a lot of people in respect to how it communicates with our immune system and how it keeps our body healthy. So a good probiotic is really helpful and as a foundational thing, a good greens powder as well. I talk a lot about greens and the importance of alkalinity. We actually formulated a greens powder about a year and a half ago and it's by far the best tasting greens powder on the planet. And it's incredible.

Do you offer that?

Yeah, we do. It's actually, there's a link in the book to it. It's called Uriel Came How Original Energy Greens. And it's a combination of eight raw superfoods. And I took these and this is not something we didn't just white label this from some company. We actually, I got all the raw materials from one of the best superfood companies in the world. And for four months I spent in my kitchen, kind of like a mad scientist, adding a little bit of this, a little bit of that, to find the exact combination that just tasted amazing. So we have everything is organic, it's raw. We use the highest quality grass juice powders of alfalfa, of barley, chlorella, spirulina. But we also added in a little bit of maca, which is a really helpful adaptogen and helpful for kind of hormone rebalancing. And we also added in goji berry juice powder, cinnamon and vanilla, which really brings an amazing flavor to it. So it doesn't taste like you're eating freshly cut lawn. It actually tastes like really, really good. So we're really excited about that because now we're able to get people to drink their greens and not just like chug it back and like, you know, plug their nose. And it's something that they look forward to.

Just scoop it in and mix it with water. Or do you put it in with your green drink or.

Yeah, so we. My intention was it has to be good enough to stand alone with water. So I drink it Every single day with water. You can also put it into a lot of different smoothies. We actually give a really cool recipe booklet with anyone who orders it. So there's 21 green smoothie recipes that really help you amplify the taste, I guess, if you will, some really cool recipes of add this in and it's awesome. So really cool ways to get that in. And it's perfect for people who are on the go. So because we developed this because one of the big questions was like, if I can't juice or if I'm not at home to make a smoothie, what do I do when I'm at the office, what do I do when I'm on the road? And this is the perfect 30 second solution.

Oh, that's great. Cool. I'm going to check that out too.

Yeah. The URL, if you want, is alldayenergydiet.com greens.

Okay.

Yeah, like that.

So what other things are kind of in that foundational realm? Something that you said earlier was kind of interesting to me when you were saying focusing on tranquil energy as opposed to, you know, stimulated energy. And you know, that's kind of. It's interesting, you know, because a lot of it maybe is, you know. Cause our hectic lifestyles can sometimes cause a lot of stress and stuff.

Mm. Yeah. So I like to. So if you think about there's one of the energy commandments, I'm going to relate this back to your question a second. Is a cluttered mind is not an energetic mind. So basically, if you have a lot of stuff in your head, it drains you. It just sucks the life out of you. So this is why, like, I mean, your 15 minute focus finder is a perfect exercise that would tie in with this because it helps get stuff out of your head and you naturally just feel a little bit lighter and more energized afterwards. So doing things to clear your mind is probably one of the most powerful things you can do to feel more energetic. And one of my, one of my biggest recommendations is taking especially when you find yourself spinning the wheels. Like you're just like, you know, for me it's like mid afternoon. I'm just like, go, go, go. I have to catch myself. And sometimes I'll be like, okay, just stop. Go sit down on the couch and close your eyes for five or 10 minutes and just breathe deeply, meditate, whatever you want to call it and just bring things down a bit. It's almost like turning off the stove after the water's been boiling. Right. And that is One of the most powerful little energy hacks I've ever discovered. And it's free. And it's just a matter of catching yourself when you're just in like the thick of it to just step away and calm down. And it's amazing what that does to recharge you, especially in the afternoon when people are kind of like hitting that afternoon slump. Take five minutes to just do that. It'll be a huge recharge.

That's so. I've never heard you say that before, but I'll tell you something that I do prior to doing my 50 minute focus finders is exactly that. I mean, I have. So I sit down and you know, when you come into it, typically our minds are, are always active, they're always busy. There's a lot going on and you've cleared the decks to do this, this 50 minute focus finder. But I find that it's so much more effective if I take the time to create an on ramp for it, you know. And so I, I take off my watch, I sit and I just kind of center on it. And I have a Rolex, so it has a sweeping second hand. And I find that if I have, you know, the dive type of watch, a submariner, so I can move the thing to the minute hand and I just, I watch the, the second hand sweep around just like almost in a meditative kind of way just watching it. And you can literally, you feel the, your physiology releasing and relaxing and all of that just calming coming into you. And that, that all happens in the first minute. By five minutes you are completely, you know, from a tranquil place, ready to, ready to focus. So that's, it's interesting that you say that because that's exactly, that's exactly what I do to ease into those 15 minute focus finders.

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the cool thing is that there's so many free or inexpensive things that the human body can take advantage of that are going to be 10 times more effective and healthier than getting a shot of espresso or a Red Bull or anything else. That's awesome.

Do you meditate?

I do, I meditate usually every night before I go to bed. And usually my morning routine has been a little bit off because of my kids and stuff, but I usually get another five or 10 minutes in the afternoon. I find for me it's, it's like for somebody who's just like, go, go, go, nonstop thoughts in my head and stuff, it's, it's kind of like my My. My insane asylum Sager.

Right. You know, Joe's. Joe's been meditating now, like pretty seriously for over a year, maybe even two years now. And I've noticed a big difference just in him even, because he's always high energy, lots going on, and just. He just in general seems calmer, even though he's busier than ever. So that. I think you're right. Energy has never really been a problem with Joe.

No, he's pretty gung ho.

Yeah, exactly. What about exercise?

Yeah, exercise is a fun discussion. So it depends on where people are at in the book. I have an adrenal vitality test which gives people a really strong simple at home test. They can do just in 30 seconds, find out if their adrenals are shot. And if your adrenals are shot, you essentially are not able to cope with stress anymore, which means you get very tired after an emotional upset or you get very tired after stress. And exercise is a form of stress. So if you are on the spectrum, on the side of the spectrum where your adrenals are just like toast, then you need to approach exercise a little bit more intelligently than. Come on, let's go, go, go. Seven days, hardcore, like insane workouts, right? The whole idea there is that you have to exercise is very important, but it has to be buffered within the workout as well as between workouts with adequate recovery. Because if you are high intensity, go, go, go. That is a huge burden, a huge stress on the body to a body that can't deal with that properly. And I didn't realize this at the time, but when I was in my early 20s playing soccer professionally, I was like, burnt out big time, adrenally because I was a goalie. I wasn't running around all over the field. In some games, I wouldn't even have any action at all. But I was still exhausted afterwards because I was vocally and emotionally invested in the game. And I was like, why am I so tired afterwards? I feel like I just got hit by a truck after running 10 marathons and it was because my adrenals were burned out. So I think it's an important thing for a lot of people to consider, especially in this day and age where we're almost at the point now where with things like P90X and insanity, which I think are great programs in the short term, people are starting to realize that intensity, these type of workouts are important, which they are. But you can't go high intensity and high volume and high frequency at the same time. That's why? You don't see a lot of Pro athletes beyond 35 because their body is just, it's wear and tear. The ones who do last beyond 35 are the ones who understand that recovery is the name of the game. So even if you are healthy and you don't have adrenal fatigue, but you still want to feel energized, you have to be able to. My recommendation is three workouts a week. And they don't all have to be the same. They can be a strength workout, maybe a higher intensity metabolic go, go, go workout and then maybe a body weight workout. So depending on your goals, what I'm talking about just kind of general fitness and fat loss and that's pretty much all you need to do. In addition to that, walking and kind of moving around should be a daily thing and I would hope, right. But I think the days of two hour workouts in the gym, five days a week, that's going to lead you down a very slippery slope.

You know what's so funny? You're saying walking and all that stuff every day. What would be your target for moving like that? Walking and, you know, being active? What would be a target for day? Do you have a target like that or.

Yeah, I think I do. I mean, for me it's, it's like breathing. It's almost like you just have to do it. So I have, I have two dogs, so I use them as my excuse to walk. At least if I'm not walking at least 30 minutes a day, something is really wrong. So I was, I would say we need to find at least 30 minutes throughout the day to walk.

So we were, you know, so for, for some people, you know, that would be like, you know, getting up and actually doing that, that would be a big improvement. But I was gonna say I was in San Diego before I went to Australia and I was at Frank Kern's house and his wife Natalia is, you know, a former Miss Bikini Universe and very healthy. And so we, we went for a walk one, one of the days and we were walking for an hour. And it was so funny that, you know, she's, she used the term of calling that active rest, it's what they.

Call like the walk.

And you were saying, you know, three workouts a week and. But that's in addition to just the baseline of being active for, for 30 minutes or an hour a day, you know. But it was funny to hear that term active rest because where they live there's, you know, lots of hills and stuff like that. So I was Actively rested after walking for an hour with them.

Awesome. Yeah, so it's, it's very, very true. Sure.

So it, in the remaining time, coming up to the top of the hour here, is there something that you could kind of set the stage for somebody if you were, um, if your, your target was to make tomorrow your most energetic day, that if you wanted to have a, a, you know, all day energy tomorrow, what would you do kind of setting that stage or is it going to be that you've got to get to, you know, you got to go through this seven days to get to where you have the, the all day energy or are there things that you can do to kind of get the optimal amount of energy just starting right now?

Yeah, you can definitely start now and feel a lot better tomorrow. Some things will take a little bit longer like sleep. Sleep is obviously an integral component. The simple thing I would say about sleep is go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. That's the number one thing you can do that'll make a huge difference. I'm telling you. It's massively important for our circadian rhythms and our normal kind of functioning. So I would say 10:30 for sleep. I go to bed. I go to bed. I go to bed usually about 11 o' clock the latest and I'm up at, I would say naturally without an alarm clock. I wake up at 6:45, 7 o'. Clock. So I would say about eight hours I get on average. And so I would say just so putting that aside, what I would say is if you can go to bed tonight at a decent hour, 1030 ish or so, wake up small morning without an alarm clock if you can. And start your day with five minutes of meditation, just kind of start your day, center your body, center your mind and just five minutes of just kind of breathing, whatever you have to do. Then if you have a juicer. Actually let's just assume nobody has a juicer or a smoothie or a blender.

That's a pretty.

Let's just start. Yeah, let's just say you have a tap and you have decent tap water. So take a glass of water, so it could be as big or as small as you want and take half of a lemon, squeeze the juice into the water. That's going to help move stuff through your digestive system, get rid of some toxins and it's a great way to start the day. First thing in the morning you want to drink. I would say about half a liter of water. Water, just getting hydration in because when you're sleeping, we lose a lot of water vapor just from breathing and we're not even aware of it. So just starting your day with water can be a big thing. Then I would start off with a good kind of fresh food type of cereal, which I'll give you the recipe for. If you take blueberries, you can take a whole pint if you want, or half a cup or a cup, put them in a bowl, put in some chopped up walnuts or almonds, add in some shredded coconut. You can throw in some hemp seeds, which are really high in protein and omega 3 fats. And you can throw in some ground flaxseeds, which are a really good source of fiber and omega 3 fatty acids. And add in, top all that off with some almond milk. That's a really. It's a delicious cereal. I call it the Blueberry Morning. It's amazing. You'll never want to have Cheerios ever again. So that's a nice way to start the day. And if you need something more substantial, you can have, you know, you can have a plate of eggs, maybe some avocado on the side for those who need a little more protein. For lunch, I would have something of the nature for me, natural, because I work at home. So I just go to the kitchen and I'll just make a big smoothie for lunch. So that's again what I'll do sometimes. Other times I'll have. Maybe I'll do a big salad or I'll do a small piece of fish with steamed, like a huge thing of steamed spinach or side salad. And then for dinner we'll do. The other night, my wife Amy made some Moroccan chicken. So it was kind of chicken with green olives and some coriander or cilantro and parsley. And then we had just a big green salad on the side. So again, these are like very doable things for, for everyone. But the thing to remember is that, you know, there's no, there's very limited sugar in there. So there's almost no sugar, no caffeine. And I'm also very conscious of how I feel throughout the day. So if, you know, again, if I'm revving my engine, I'll kind of step away, take five minutes to kind of tranquilize my body through deep breathing or meditation. And I also think, you know, just being active, like, I've got three little kids, so being active and playing outside with them is helpful. But whether it's getting in a quick workout or playing or going for a Walk getting, like Tony Robbins says, emotion comes from motion. So if you want to feel better, move your body around. So go for a walk when you come home from work instead of just kind of sitting down in front of the TV and you know, have a healthy dinner with family and friends. Being in that kind of nice environment with kind of where there's that socialization actually helps your body energetically. It just feels good. So you actually absorbed your food, I find personally a lot better. And then, you know, finish your day with some gratitude journaling. Finish your day before you go to bed. Write down three successes you had during the day or something you're grateful for. And, you know, don't spend a lot of time or try to avoid spending a lot of time in front of the computer or the tv where you're going to be taking a ton of blue light, which is going to totally set off your cortisol and melatonin levels and that's going to impair your sleep. So try to get some good darkness or candlelight, I guess, before going to bed within about half an hour and just spend a little bit of time journaling gratitude or whatever else and then shut her down around 10:30 and then rinse and repeat.

Wow. So. And that's. That's really what it is, isn't it? Is thinking about setting up your.

You.

Know, the, the system, the discipline that's really going to just make it require willpower. Like if you're, you know, the first time you're describing it, I. Most people don't have a pint of, of organic blueberries and hemp seed and, and all those things that, that you listed in their house. So having a stock of those is. Or a system for replacing those that. Having those things around. I've noticed for me, those. That makes a big difference being, you know, having the, the healthy stuff, you know, as an easier thing.

Yeah. I mean, it's again, setting up your environment to win because if you don't have it, then you're not going to make it and you'll rely on something else.

But I do feel like a big difference in terms of the overall steadiness of the. The energy that I feel all day. I think I understand what you mean about coming from a tranquil place. It's not a stimulated energy. But eliminating sugar and eliminating the caffeine and the processed foods has really helped stabilize, I think the way that I feel during the day. I never crash. I never spike or feel like I'm shaky or any of that stuff, which I've come to learn it's all really just blood sugar and adrenal responses creating that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. That's awesome. That's good feedback. I'm happy. I'm happy to hear that.

Thank you, sir. So where can people get your book? And before we wrap up, is there anything else that you wish I had have asked you or anything that they need to know before we wrap up?

Well, they can get the book at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, all the places they can also go to.

Wait a second. New York Times, Amazon.com and Wall Street Journal, best selling book and USA Today and USA.

It's done pretty well. And I think it's because I've never met anyone who doesn't want more energy. So I think it's something that serves especially entrepreneurs. I mean, if you're somebody who wants to do stuff in this world, you know, I, I'm always. It's funny because, you know, Dan Sullivan talks about the gap, right, and how we kind of like a lot of entrepreneurs focus on the ideal on the horizon as opposed to looking back, you know, to where you started from. And it's, I have people remind me, they're like Yuri, like, look at everything you've done in the past, like seven years. It's ridiculous. And sometimes I have to catch myself and be like, wow, you know, that's actually very true. And the only way I've been able to do all that is because I have lived my life to be energized. Whereas if I relied on, you know, a garbage lifestyle, I don't think I would have been able to do half of it. So it's, it's just for me. And my mission is to help 10 million people improve their health and vitality by 2018. So I have the energy to be able to do that. And I think, you know, if more people can feel that way, then they're going to be better entrepreneurs and they'll be able to serve more people. They'll be better parents to their kids. They'll feel better about themselves because they can get more done. And it's just an amazing snowball. So they can get the book at Amazon and all those places. Or we also have, during the launch week, we actually gave away 10 awesome bonuses and we actually set up a page for that, which is alldayenergydiet.com bonuses. So if you go there, you'll have a secret page that you'll have access to and you can see the 10 bonuses that you can get when you order from that page. And it'll essentially just kind of take you to Amazon or Barnes and Nobles and you can come back and put in your receipt number to get those bonuses.

I love it. That's great. Well, I gotta applaud the effort. And it's the best titled book of the year, for sure. The All Day Energy Diet. Look better, feel younger, double your energy in seven days. It's, you know, congratulations. I'm very, very happy for you and I think this will make a big difference for a lot of people. So I appreciate you.

Thanks so much to share. Yeah, definitely. It's been a pleasure to be on an amazing podcast that I listen to every week.

There we go. We hardly miss Joe at all, but we did miss him.

I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks again, Yuri.

Thank you.