JJ Virgin: You Are Stronger Than You Think!

Hello, this is Joe Polish, and I'm here with the very awesome, amazing JJ Virgin, the author of many books. But jj, how are you?

Good to be here.

You know, I'm going to act real professional because we are friends. You know how much of a goofball I am. But this is a really important interview because it is going to give insight and direction to a lot of people that have been so misinformed, that have had so many struggles, so many challenges. And you are one of the best people on the planet to speak to this because not only do you walk the walk and talk the talk, but I know so many people that you've transformed their lives where all kinds of other things related to food and exercise, diet, nutrition, have failed. So for people that don't know who you are, you're a New York Times best selling author, you've written the Virgin diet, you have a brand new book, Sugar Impact Diet, which everyone, hopefully, by the time they are done listening to us, is going to be compelled to want to go and get this book because it is awesome. Who are you? Who are you? What do you do?

So I'm an author and a speaker. I've been really fortunate to do some cool TV over the years. Dr. Phil, freaky eaters. Freaky Eaters. I'm surprised that we didn't somehow get you on that. But I'll tell you, those have been great. And it's great because being able to get the word out and really increase the impact of the message. But what I'm most proud of is being a mentor and being a mom.

So what's your mission? Why this book? Why all these books? You know, other than, oh, I want to sell diet books, I want to run a.

That's what I woke up thinking one day. I want to sell diet books. Really what I see is so much pain and so much pain around misinformation and people are losing their hope and they're losing their lives because they're being duped by this information out there and they think that it's their fault and that this is as good as it gets. And so, so what my big goal is is to just empower people to know the truth. Because what they'll find out is that it's so much easier than they think it is. I see people struggling so much, trying so hard, knowing so much, and they're just following the wrong set of rules. And when you get this dialed in, all of a sudden that dieting that you've been doing is a hobby, which drives me Crazy is a thing of the past. And now you can really focus on the things and you'll have the energy and focus to do. Do so that are really important that we are put here to do.

So what would be like the elephant in the room? All of the excuses where someone could say, okay, I'm going to maybe watch you, Joe, talk to JJ right now. But in the back of my mind, I've tried a million things. I have a fat gene. I am too old. I am too young. I am a mother. I am a whatever. I don't have time to work out. I don't make enough money where I can afford. I mean, what are all the things that get in the way of people being able to do it? So we can simplify this a little bit.

Well, you know, I think the number one thing that gets in the way is that they've tried things in the past. They haven't worked, so it just has hit their beliefs, so they no longer think it's possible. And that is the number one problem. And then all of a sudden, you really don't want to commit because you think, oh, it's just not going to work. Because all of those things you told me were just excuses. If you had a big enough wife, you knew this was going to work and you had a big enough why, those all go away. So at this point, what I would say is, listen to what I have to say. It's going to be different than anything you've heard before. You're going to all of a sudden start hearing these things and go, oh, my gosh, I've been eating this, thinking I'm doing the right thing. No wonder I've been having these problems. It all makes sense now. You'll connect the dots and you'll be able to transform your life literally in a matter of weeks. And that's what's so important. When I did this program, I was determined to show people and take the most die hard. I took 700 sugar addicts. I didn't take the easy people. I took people who tried and tried and tried and failed and failed and failed. People were just like, I cannot give up the sugar. I have a major sweet tooth. And I wanted to prove that I could take them in two weeks and get rid of their sweet tooth forever and get rid of those cravings that were controlling their life.

Well, let me talk about a couple of these books. Then I'm going to put them down because they're sort of weighing me down here. But the Virgin diet. Okay, what was this book about. And why did you write this one?

So that book is about food intolerance and how food intolerance is the real cause of weight gain. What I discovered over the years, my passion has always been weight loss and a bigger issue, weight loss, resistance. Because what I saw early on in my career is that the people who are struggling with their weight now, we would believe that they're undisciplined and just lazy, but in reality they were trying harder than the people who were not struggling with their weight. And the things that we were taught, that your body's a bank account to lose weight, you just have to eat less and exercise more. I was working with clients as a personal trainer and I saw it didn't work. So instead of being insane and making them eat less and exercise more, I started looking at all the things that could get in the way of your body as being able to lose weight and actually could even cause weight gain. And it all starts with what's at the end of your fork. And what I discovered is there's foods we're eating every day, usually in an attempt to be healthy. We don't even really like them. I mean, does someone like soy milk? I don't think so. But we're eating the whole grains and the non fat milk and the tofu, trying to be healthy. And in reality they're causing weight gain and cravings. And so that was the first book and it was awesome because I focused on weight loss. But in reality I had people who had one woman with psoriatic arthritis so bad she had to stop working, she couldn't play with her grandkids, the medications were taking her immune system down. She turned it around and throw three weeks and story after story after story of that.

You know, this is going to sound weird and it may be off subject. The prisons here in Arizona, where I live, we have kind of a crazy sheriff. And one of the things that he has done in the prisons is take away, like made it all vegetarian, lot of soy, lot of tofu.

He's making women out of the men.

So here's the thing saying, oh, it's healthy for you. And you know, why should we feed that? You know, we can really lower the cost of what it costs to produce food if we feed people this sort of food. And not realizing what that does to someone on a mental level, you're already taking people in an enormously challenging situation and you're feeding them stuff that messes with their bodies, messes with their minds. And the sickness factor. I Think it's just going to dramatically increase the cost of these prisoners.

Well, what's the most frightening is if you go give a bunch of male prisoners soy. I mean, in a way, it might be a great thing because it lowers testosterone. It also can shrink men's brains and lead to dementia. So it could be really scary in there soon. But maybe the lowering testosterone is a good thing.

I want to point out that food is a coping mechanism and how you fuel your body. It's not just about weight loss, but I think from a vanity standpoint, most people, they just want to look good, but how they feel and how they function and all of these other aspects, I want to get into all that.

Well, you know what's really interesting? It's great you brought that up, because what I found in the Virgin Diet is people came in for the weight loss, but they stayed because of how different they felt. And it was sort of like biohacking for beginners. What I had them do was connect the dots between what happened when they had that pizza. How do you feel? Which is a very different conversation than, oh, I think I'm going to have a cheat day. All of a sudden, if, you know, you eat that pizza and your joints are swollen the next day and your face breaks out, you. You think twice about it.

This book. Well, let's talk about the cookbook first and then we'll go into your newest book, the Virgin Diet Cookbook.

Well, here's what happened on the Virgin Diet. So it's drop seven foods, lose seven pounds, just seven days. But in reality, it's a three week cycle. I just saw the average person was losing seven pounds in seven days. But for three weeks, I have you pull all these foods out and then one by one, you try them back so you can connect the dots between what you're eating and how you feel and what you weigh. And, well, what happened was no one wanted to go back crazy. In fact, I had to say, I had to explain why you had to do this. Not that I want you eating gluten, but I want to know how bad it is when you eat it. 90% of the people I pulled off gluten were like, wow, I cannot believe how bad I feel when I eat this again. Right. So then they said, we need recipes. There were two things that came out of the Virgin Diet. Number one, people wanted more recipes because they didn't want to leave. And number two, they said, you know, still I'm having trouble with sugar. And what I found from the Virgin Diet was the Number one question I got asked was about sugar and sweeteners. And people were either controlled by sugar and consumed with their cravings, they just couldn't get past it, or they were totally confused. And they were like, well, can I have. Can I have Splenda? Can I have stevia? Can I have agave? Right? And so that's why I had to write the next book.

Okay, so now you got the Sugar impact diet drop. Seven hidden sugars lose up to 10, 10 pounds in just two weeks. So you decided to take on what you're calling enemy number one, sugar in a big way. And you're creating this into a movement.

And it didn't start out that way. So I was getting the questions. I felt compelled to address it. I realized that it wasn't enough to put it as one of the seven, that I really had to dig deep into it. And as I really got into the topic, I realized how big this was. And part of it was surprising to me in that I obviously walk my talk, I eat very clean. And as I started to see where sugars are sneaking in, because all carbohydrates become sugar in the body, except for fiber. So whether it's an added sweetener, a natural sweetener that occurs in the food, or a carbohydrate, they're all going to turn to sugar. And it's not about not eating any sugar, not eating any carbs. It's knowing which to choose and which to lose based on sugar impact. And as I was looking at this, I was going, wow, there are things sneaking into my diet, and I think I am really clean. And if it's happening to me, how do some of these other people who don't have that information even stand a chance? And you look at it and you go across the board in every country in the world, starting from the time you're in the womb. Sugar is a drug. It is our number one drug of choice. Little children are not smoking and drinking. They're having juice and cookies. And it is really the number one driver in all the major diseases. And as I saw that, and I saw that we had no program that really helped people handle it. I had to do something.

I mean, I don't know if this statistic is true, but I heard that like 10% of meals in America are eaten in a car. So there's an enormous amount of fast food and drive through. So many kids are raised on cereal. I know growing up, for me, Cap'.

N Crunch, Pop Tarts and Cocoa Puffs, right?

Even fortified with this and that. It obviously has to be crap food if it has to be fortified and so much just packaged preserved foods. And then there's the cost issue and all these other things that go into it. So obviously you lay out a plan and path in your books on how to do this. My goal and objective is to get someone to take that action if they, if there's a sales pitch I want to do with anyone. Listening to this and watching this is first off, get the books first, buy into it, be willing to do it and no matter what sort of failure you've had with it. Because I follow your nutrition advice. I mean, I'm 46 years old right now I feel far better than I did 10 years ago. I exercise pretty frequently and I make a big emphasis. I also focus on sleeping and meditation and other things too. So it's not just one thing. But for people that are out there, where do you actually start with this? I mean, what is the starting point? If they finish watching what we have to talk about, what advice, where do they start?

Well, obviously grab the book, right? But what I wanted to do was lay out a program that was so super simple. I think my real unique ability in the world is to take all this complicated information and put it into user friendly action, actionable items so that you can get into action. And really with this, this is a two week program. There's two weeks where you have to really focus and come on, you can do anything for two weeks. And if you're listening and you think I don't have an issue with sugar, I'm going to encourage you to look at this too. Because what I saw when I did this was even the people that thought they were doing everything right. I had people coming off the virgin diet and my fridge is stocked with great clean lean protein and, and fruits and vegetables. And I was doing gluten free grains. But even then, things are sneaking in places you'd never suspect. So I look at the symptoms and this is really important because you can look at all the major diseases that are driven by sugar, but those happen over time, those don't happen overnight. When you look at the symptoms of what I call a high sugar impact diet, because I've created a new framework for looking at sugar. The symptoms are things that we often face every day that we think are normal, like poor energy. Oh, it's the afternoon, I have to go get a little espresso and maybe a skinny latte and a biscotti. That's okay, right? A skinny latte, you know, A skinny latte has the same amount of sugar as an ice cream cone.

Well, there's so much stuff like that.

That is just loaded so much. It's crazy. So if you have energy that doesn't just stay steady all day long, if you have to eat every two to three hours, you're a sugar burner, not a fat burner. If you, if you have issues with mood or focus, if you have gas and bloating, if you can't lose weight around your waist, your waist just keeps getting better. Or you're just struggling with losing weight, you have cravings for sweet, cravings for carbs. If you're hungrier than you should be, I mean, all those are signs of high sugar impact. And that means you need to start. I created this sneaky sugar inventory of places this could be sneaking in things like balsamic vinegar, which is just syrup, tomato paste, marinara, sweet potatoes, all sorts of places. And it's not to say these are bad, but they add up, right? So all of that stuff starts to add up and you have to know how much of that you can have, and that's based on your own body's chemistry. And then which of those things you really should lose because they're just terrible for you, like skim milk.

Okay, well, explain why is sugar bad? I mean, what is it doing to the body? It's, Is it a poison or is it just something at a certain level? I mean, like, how bad is sugar?

Yeah, so it's really about what type of sugar. So what I'm going to do is blow up the old model first. And I love Dr. Lustig calls it a toxin. I think that's a great, great framework for it. Right now we're using a system called the glycemic index. And it's really created the major problems that we have because the glycemic index looks at a 50 gram dose of a 40, usually a carbohydrate based food, and says, okay, how does our blood sugar respond to this? That makes total sense with a potato. It doesn't work at all with carrots because no one's going to sit down and eat 50 grams of carrots. They'll have carrot juice. So what we looked at was what could make this make more sense. Glycemic load makes more sense because that takes serving size into account. But the challenge with that is that the glycemic index doesn't look, it makes one, one type of sugar look really good. So we have carbohydrates, we have sugars they all have two fates and two fates only. They're either going to go to glucose or they're going to go to fructose. And then they go in very different directions. So glucose raises blood sugar, raises insulin, raises cortisol, and that creates problems in excess. A little bit of steady supply of glucose keeps a steady supply of energy and focus to your brain. Insulin can come back down. But chronically, doing it, like having a snack every two to three hours, keeps blood sugar, will come up, trigger insulin. Insulin stays high. But the bigger challenge is fructose, which goes straight to the liver. It doesn't raise blood sugar, which is why it looks great in the glycemic index. And we thought it was so good. Why agave got this hall pass, right? But the challenge is when you don't raise blood sugar, you don't trigger insulin, you don't trigger leptin, you don't trigger ghrelin. All these things. When you trigger these, you tell your body you've eaten and it goes, oh, okay, I don't need to eat right now. It goes straight to the liver. And when it gets to the liver, most of it, if not all of it, turns into fat. Raises triglycerides, turns into fat. Now, along the way, it's super sweet, which is why we started using it. When you eat more sweet, you crave more sweet. It's super aging. It glycates, which means that it takes enzymes and proteins and lets them come together without needing enzymes, which is like wrinkling and brown spots. Very aging, it can lead to fatty liver. We have fatty liver in kids. This used to be something that we had with alcoholics. Now we have a new term, nash, for non alcoholic fatty liver. I mean, this is crazy. Shouldn't happen. Big, big issue with some cancers. So fructose is a whole lot worse, but yet the glycemic index makes it look like it's great. So what I did was I blew that whole thing up. I put together glycemic load and fructose grams and, and I contrasted them with fiber and nutrient density, which are good. And I created sugar impact scales. And then I rated foods I went through and I put them all together with all of those different things and I rated them either low sugar impact, kind of a go food, medium sugar impact. And how much you eat of those, again, really depends on your biochemistry. And then high sugar impact or no foods. And those are things that you really need to keep out of your diet because of what they do with insulin and cortisol. And thyroid. So again, it's not looking at sugar exactly, it's looking at the impact of those sugars. And that changes everything.

Okay, so there are seven groups of sugar.

Go through this because I had to go through. I like sevens, right? So we have to do the sevens again. It works so well. So again, what I did was I took each of these groups and I went, all right, high, medium and low in each of these groups. And one of the things that I did in the virgin diet that I feel works so well, because if you pull foods out and you tell people, okay, no more of that. What I've discovered over the years is people can put way worse things in their place. So what I like to do is give swaps. So if I'm going to pull a food out, I'm going to say, okay, don't, you know, you're going to pull out the pasta and put in quinoa pasta or spaghetti squash. You know, you pull out the white rice, you put in the wild rice, you just pull out the potato, put in the pumpkin. We just go back and forth. So we have roots, fruits, grains, no fat, and low fat diet foods and dairy products, dressings, drinks and sweeteners.

You at least know your stuff. I mean, you can tell I have little cue cards over here, but you kind of. It's pretty good.

You're afraid I wouldn't remember all this?

No, I know you know your stuff. Okay, so you talk about sugar intolerance. How does someone know if they're sugar intolerance?

So sugar intolerance really is about gauging your sugar impact. And it's all those symptoms that I already mentioned. And again, I like things that are really self serving. You know, what you measure you can improve. And so it really is kind of biohacking for beginners here is that you're gonna look at all of these symptoms and go, are these things I'm struggling with. And I rate them from 1 to 5. And then we go through the program and you rate it again as you test back foods so that you can really connect the dots. But it is the gas and bloating, energy, mood and focus and cravings and appetite and gas and bloating. I said that. Waste. So if you're having trouble losing fat off to your waist or it just keeps increasing or inability to lose weight.

So I think we should talk about gas and bloating for the remainder of the show.

Let's talk about that. Because you send me fart jokes all the time.

I think they're fun.

Yeah. So I figure if you're sending me fart jokes that this is probably an issue for you. Right, right. That's how those things work.

That is really, how do I respond to that? I don't know. I can't remember the last time any flatulence occurred in my life.

I just, you know, haven't you seen that book? Everybody farts. So right there I'm going to call BS on you, Joe Polish.

Okay, well, so thank you.

But it will improve as you improve your microbiome with the sugar impact diet.

Well, here's the thing. I don't know what the exact number is, but, but I've heard who even said it, the famous philosopher that 90% of all disease starts in the gut. That's what I want to talk about. Digestion is a huge issue. I mean it's how your body manufactures things. And if you put crap into your system or your body is allergic or sensitive or intolerant or whatever, not only are you not getting very good nutrition, but you are having all kinds of other symptoms and that most people never want to talk about because it's embarrassing. Everything, just the way you hold well.

I mean really everything. Joint pain, headaches, skin problems, everything. The very first thing that you should do is change your diet, improve your diet. It's amazing how many things get fixed just with that. It makes me crazy when you go to a doctor and you've got joint pain and you're given an anti inflammatory. When I've seen joint pain change dramatically by cutting out what I will call the trifecta. The drug trifecta is cereal and milk. If you look at it, we need to talk about how sugar really is a drug. But sugar, dairy and gluten are the trifecta drug there because they have all. You've got glutamorphines, casomorphines and sugar is basically an opiate. And so they all light up your brain but they also create inflammatory cascade in your body.

And so as it relates to that, I mean we're going to talk about kids. You know, I'll come to kids because people may not realize how children are truly being poisoned with foods that are actually marketed as healthy and nutritious. And it's really screwed up because not only see children don't have the mental ability to really even determine long term consequences of what that's going to lead to later in life.

Well and they also generally don't have a car or a bank account. So someone's giving them this stuff, they're not going grocery shopping. They might get in the cart and then bug their mommy for the sugar coated cereals. But again, it's not the ones. You just point out really well that it's not the foods that we think are bad that are creating the problems. It's the foods we actually think are healthy. And one of the things that drives me insane is the fact that we can put no sugar added on a label. Now I'm going to show you one. I have three. You got processed things. But I just want to show you. So this says no sugar added on this label, okay? So if you look at the ingredients on this thing, it says no sugar added yet. It's. And this is called green machine, right? Boosted green machine. No sugar added yet. It's got apple juice and mango puree.

If you look at kiwi, pineapple, banana puree. And these are all the fruits and the sugars in the beginning. And then you get to spirulina, natural flavors. Alfalfa, broccoli, spinach, barley. But those are at such low levels.

So they did a little bit of green to give it color. So they could call it green machine. But in reality. And they put purees of fruit juice in there. So fruit juice concentrate, fruit juice purees. You can put these things in into products and say no sugar added. So those little dried fruit snacks that they do like, check this one out. I mean, does this not look it's organic, Made in nature. I'm not sure where else you'd make cranberries in a lab. Like, where would you make them? But they say no gluten and no nuts and no sugar added. No sugar added. Now, I'm not sure how you could have gluteny cranberries, but it's such a good marketing thing. Now we'll put no gluten.

I'm sure you put no gluten on the potato.

You can put it on a potato, no gluten. Remember when they did that with cholesterol? They'd have a potato with no cholesterol. I'm like, it doesn't have a liver. Never had one. But no sugar added. It's got apple juice concentrate. So let's talk about apple juice. Apple juice. I'm going to go on a total rant here because this is a kid's drug of choice. Kids drug of choice is this. And I'm going to talk Oreos in a minute because Oreos are crazy. But let's say this is a kid's drug of choice. This is worse than this. This is worse than this. You're going to say, why, jj? Why would that be?

Well, if people are listening to the audio version of this, there's a can of apple juice.

A can of apple juice. And there's a Coke. Now, how could a. Oh, that was a Diet Coke. Well, let's pretend. For. Let's pretend. Let's suspend disbelief here in TV land. Say that was a Coke. So an apple juice is worse than a Coke because it's higher in fructose. So again, you've got kids with fatty livers. We've got kids. Right now, the obesity rate in children, one in three kids, is either overweight or obese. Do you remember when we were growing up that it was like there was one fat kid in class and it was the weird. It was like the rarity. And they teased them and they weren't even obese, they were overweight. Now we've got one one in three being overweight or obese.

Oh, it's dramatic. I mean, the way it just.

It breaks my heart. In the last couple decades, yeah, that whole evolution thing has gotten way worse than anyone ever would have projected that evolution picture. But we've got this quadrupling now in teens. Like obesity is now quadrupling over the last. From 30 years ago to now, obesity has quadrupled in teens, doubled in kids. This should not be happening. The fact that we've had to change the name of adult onset diabetes to type 2 diabetes because children are getting. It should be signed enough. But what we're doing is when you look at exposure equals preference, we are creating drug addicts with our kids and realize that if you are an overweight or an obese child, the chance you'll be an overweight or obese adult is 70%. Now, a lot of that is okay. Exposure equals preference. And realize the again, the kids aren't getting in their car and driving to the store. So how are the Oreos getting in the house? Right. I mean, we don't have the stuff in the house. I will tell you a funny story. I get these Oreos because. And I'm going to tell you the drug story about the Oreo in a minute. But I get these Oreos and I bring them to my studio house because we're going to tape this whole kitchen makeover where we throw the bad stuff out and we bring the good stuff in. So I get the low fat Oreos and I get the double stuff Oreos. And which in reality, the low fat Oreos are worse than the regular Oreos. Because when you take fat out, you bring more sugar in. I mean, that is one of the biggest problems that's happened over the last 20 years is that we decided that fat was the villain because of Ancel Keys, who really took down our health nationwide. We pulled the fat out, we put sugar in its place because high fructose corn syrup is so cheap and devastated the health of the nation. So I have these Oreo cookies And Bryce, my 17 year old, comes into this studio house. He's like, wow. Like he has walked into, you know, heaven. He's like, what is all this stuff? Because there's sodas and cupcakes and all just trash. He's like, thinks mommy has finally, like, lost her mind. That's funny. And he's like, can I have some of those? I go, they're props, Bryce. They're props. You know, he goes, please. Pretty please, Pretty please. He wants these Oreos. Like, he's going straight to the Oreos. Apparently this is the number one cookie Oreos. Amazing. With this thing inside that. Who even knows what this white stuff is? Anyway, he eats two of these Oreos. Cause I just love cocaine. I'm going to watch. I'm going to watch what happens here. Eats two of them. And I'm looking over him, he says, I can't eat anymore. He goes, I feel sick. Score. Score one for the home team. So. So they did this study of rats at Connecticut College. And what they found in the study, they compared morphine to Oreos. And what they found was that morphine and Oreos both have the same effect on the brain. They both light up the reward center of the brain. They trigger endorphins and dopamine and serotonin. But given the choice between the morphine and the Oreos, the rats chose the Oreos.

Interesting. That is interesting.

Frightening. I mean, just scary stuff. So, I mean, think about that when you're giving your kids apple juice and Oreos.

Yeah. You know, I was actually talking to someone earlier today about addiction and about drugs because, you know, as I've talked about publicly, I was a really bad drug addict. When I was 18 years old, I would free base cocaine and I literally would wake up to get high and I would get high to go to bed. I mean, I literally was just. That was my coping mechanism. I wanted to get rid of the pain, the anxiety, the stuff I was experiencing, the boredom. I just chose a really bad way of doing it. And we were having this conversation, it was with a dentist. And it was funny because I said, well, you know, they found out in the 50s that if they hit, hit the dopamine, serotonin centers of a rat with drugs, the rat will push the pellets and keep hitting it to get the high over sleep, over food, over sex, over everything. A rat doesn't have the ability to make a moral judgment. They don't sit and think, well, what I'm doing is right or wrong. They just want that hit. And so what's going on in the brain is biochemical. And so people that are really beat themselves up or other people that beat up addicts, it hijacks the brain and food hijacks the brain.

It hijacks the brain and then they sneak it in everywhere. So you don't even realize you're doing it. You think, I'm having that green drink, I'm doing a great thing. I'm having, oh, I'm supposed to start today with this skim milk and cereal. And so you don't realize. So your brain, you're addicted to this. Now you have to eat every two to three hours because you've got the brain issues put together with your biochemistry. Because now your blood sugar is going up, your insulin's up, your insulin's high. You can't access stored fat for fuel, so your blood sugar crashes, you have to eat again. And all of a sudden, you can't even use stored fat for fuel. You're a sugar burner and you're addicted to the sugar. And your biochemistry is starting to shift. You're becoming insulin resistant. Right now in the United states, we have 86 million people who are insulin resistant, pre diabetic. 86 million, 29 million people are diabetic. And of those 29 million people, 8 million don't even know they are. And a sweet drink, if you drink one or two sweet drinks a day. So that could be that green drink. That could be this. That could be this vitamin water that you're having for focus that has 31 grams of sugar.

So let's talk about this.

I mean, I think, oh, this one's lower. This one. No, it's 31 grams of sugar.

So vitamin water, it's called vitamin water. That sounds very healthy. Is that healthy?

It's vitamin water. Focus, by the way, this is for focus because actually. And it's naturally sweetened. It's naturally sweetened. I just want people to understand how duped we are by marketing. I mean, shame on them for doing this. And this is why I'm taking this on. I'm in need. A lot of Help. Because as you can imagine, I'm taking on all of these companies with all this marketing that are taking our health down. And I mean, we have an economic crisis. Our economic crisis is because of these things. This is what's happening. It drives me crazy. Because if you drink one of these every day, you are going to increase your risk of diabetes by 25%.

Interesting.

And you thought by drinking this or that green drink that you were doing a good thing for yourself. It makes it even worse.

Yeah, see, that's the whole thing. It's one thing to know, oh, I'm just drinking a milkshake or I'm drinking. But there's a lot of.

But what about Insure Active? That's the, the muscle health one.

So talk about that.

Okay, so I actually, and this is.

That was my question is what are these liquids?

Now here's what's so ridiculous. You can't even, even with my glasses on, I wouldn't be able to see this. So in order to. So I have this huge magnified. But if you look at it.

So guys, real quick, just for the camera.

Because you can't see this, but look at, here's this thing. It's 200 calories. 250 calories for this little bottle. And there are 22 grams of sugar in it. And the first ingredient's water, but the second ingredient is sugar. And then there's corn, which is basically corn maltodextrin, which is also sugar. Okay, so it's got sugar and sugar. And then it's got some soy protein just to lower your thyroid along with it. So we'll raise your insulin and lower your thyroid. Bam. Bam.

That is a muscle building liquid and that's muscle health.

How on earth can potentially just.

Goodness in a bottle, isn't it?

All this stuff, it just makes me. It makes me crazy. It just makes me crazy. No, no.

And it should. I mean, it's bullshit.

I mean, well, but here's the deal. I have so many this. I mean, we talk about sugar as a drug and people are like, I'm not eating that much sugar. I'm not eating that much sugar. We're not eating this anymore. I mean, our table sugar consumption thankfully has gone down, but we are getting 22 teaspoons of sugar in a day and kids are getting in 34 teaspoons a day.

Can you. Because when you talk about grams, like 20, 22 grams or 18 grams or 30 grams or whatever in a bottle, can you explain what that is? Like, I think in a soda Like a Coke or Pepsi. There's something like 11.

Is it 11 tablespoons? So 16 ounce soda has 44 grams, which is about 140 calories of sugar. I mean, just, it's a little heap of sugar. What I like to look at it how I did this for a great visual for people because I think no one's going to get up and have any. An ice cream cone for breakfast, I would hope. But if you got up and had your cereal with your skim milk, a glass of orange juice, maybe put some sliced bananas on that cereal because that's got good potassium. Right?

Right.

That's basically about four ice cream cones worth of sugar.

Four ice cream cones worth of sugar, bowl of cereal, skim milk, a banana, what else?

And some orange juice. The calcium fortified orange juice. Let's make it even better. Or let's say you, you were just going to go get a skinny latte and a muffin. A skinny latte and a muffin is three ice cream cones. Now that muffin in reality, if you wipe the frosting off a cupcake, take a look at it. What is it? It's a muffin. Right. So a muffin is just a cupcake without the frosting on it. But all of a sudden you called it a muffin. And what if it's a whole grain muffin and you just. Now you have a little halo. And I think that's where the biggest damage is coming from is all these things that are agave sweetened or there's no sweetener added. You know, a low fat little strawberry yogurt, 26 grams of sugar. That's nearly two ice cream cones worth of sugar. And again, these are things that we're doing to be healthy. That's why we've got this crisis. We've got a crisis of misinformation where we are being duped. It's creating this addictive cycle with all of us and then destroying our biochemistry along with it. So all of a sudden we're going, I cannot. Why am I pre diabetic? You know, I just had someone come to me and she was using a health shake every day. She can't figure out why she can't lose weight. I go, you know, it's probably just a couple simple tweaks. I usually just can catch a couple little things. And she every day had been given this shake that was supposed to help control blood sugar. It had 17 grams of fructose in it. This is where you get into trouble, right?

Totally, totally. So here's what I like to do just because I'm sitting there thinking to my. Myself, all right, if someone. This is like, new to them, they've never heard this before. And I know a lot of people that I interview, lots of health experts and stuff, they're familiar with it, but they may not have gone this deep with it or have heard this perspective as it relates to sugar. And some people are like, you're talking about stuff that I eat every day. I love the way this tastes. And I don't want to trade that for. Because the brain is still hooked.

And we don't like change either.

Oh, absolutely not. When you're addicted. And I think a ton of food stuff is addictive.

It's built to be addictive. That way we sell more of it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, look. You look at the McDonald's playgrounds. I mean, they don't just want the people hooked on the food. They want them hooked on the environment. They want them hooked on the Happy Meal, the toys.

Well, we put gluten on the French fries. Yeah, there's gluten on the French fries.

Yeah. And I think even, God, 20 years ago, the Chicken McNuggets, they were injected with six different sort of liquids, one including real high sodium to get.

Usually we've got a sugar salt, fat combo that, like, if you look at a lot of the sodas, it's sugar and salt, because then you want more and more and more. So there's reasoning behind all of this stuff, and it's so that you'll want more, more and more. But here's the thing, and I kind of get where you're going with this. And the deal is, it's simpler than people realize. What I wanted to do was make this. If it's not easy to do and if they're hard to find foods or it's expensive or it doesn't taste good, no one's going to do it. What I hear from people over and over again is they actually like the swaps better because it's really just trading habits. You're used to eating one thing, you're just going to shift it out for something else. In the first couple days, you might be going, all right, where's the. You know, I'm missing the skinny latte, but instead you're having either your bulletproof coffee shout out to Dave, Dave Asprey. We love Dave Asprey. So either you're having that and you will never miss that skinny latte again, or you're having some coconut milk in an espresso, it's not hard to do. It's just knowing which things to make the shifts from. But the bigger thing that I've heard is that within two weeks and really during. So I have people, I'll kind of back up. I have people first test just by doing that simple sugar impact quiz and doing what I call the sneaky Sugar inventory, where I go through the most common medium and high sugar impact foods. We talked about some of them pickle relish and balsamic vinegar, and these no sugar added jams. We go through all that just so you can get a feel for how much you're eating in a typical week. Because it's an eye opener, even for the most healthy eater. And if it is, what I tell people, similar to the virgin diet, is that's awesome, because if you were absolutely flawless and still feeling like crap, you know, then we got to go look for some real deep, deep lying health issues. If you see that these things have been sneaking in, how awesome is that? Because in two weeks you can be in a totally different place. Now, what I think makes this different from everything else is when I looked at these programs, I went, wow, they have you go cold turkey. That doesn't work with someone who's now trained their body to be a sugar burner, because the minute you pull these foods out, your energy is going to crash and that's going to send you searching for a cookie. So the first week I have, you just learn to live by the sugar impact plate, which means eat clean, lean protein and healthy fats and some low impact carbs to give a nice, steady, steady supply of energy to the brain. Do that, but taper from high sugar impact to medium sugar impact. You're not going to go low right away. You're just going to start creating that awareness. And then you take two weeks and you go low. And it is the most exciting thing because this is where you make this transition from being a sugar burner where you have to eat every two hours and your whole life is about food, to being able to go four to six hours. In fact, Jeff Moore told me that he said, jj, I don't even. I have to remind myself to eat. This was a food addict guy who dieted as a hobby for his whole life. I mean, he's probably lost a couple thousand pounds in his life. He needs to remind himself to eat again. But the bigger thing that happens during that time because we drop fructose down to almost zero, is you reclaim your sweet sensitivity. And at the end of that time period where we go back and, and we start to match you up and go, okay, let's try some higher sugar impact foods. They taste too sweet. You recognize how bad they make you feel, but they taste too sweet, you don't want them anymore. And it sounds incredible to say that. I'm sure if you're listening, you're like going, yeah, that sounds crazy. But again, I took these die hard sugar addicts. I didn't do this the easy way. When I tested it on 700 people, I basically went out and went, all right, if this is your problem, if you feel like you cannot quit sugar, it's taking you down. You're the one I want.

Yeah, well, see, that's one of the reasons why I really am happy that we're doing this interview, because I've referred a lot of people to your work, to your books. Jeff Moore. I introduced you to Jeff Moore. The cool thing about him is this is a guy that runs a multimillion dollar food company. I mean, he sells wild things, seafood. I mean, he sells seafood, he sells meat, grass fed, all kinds of stuff. And this is a guy who you would think has access to all kinds. I mean, he has all the food he could want, healthy or whatever. And he's lost at this point, and this is a few months ago, over 40 pounds.

But I think the funniest thing of all, and it shows what a problem this is, is here was Jeff, he said, I've got your book. I just don't know what will I eat. I go, what do you sell? You sell wild fish? So he sent me a picture and I talked about this actually in my public television show. This just shows how far you can go. He sends me this picture of this sea of cheesecakes. He is at this event and there is a sea of cheesecakes. Every flavor surfing. Oh my God. I mean, every flavor. They're beautiful with cookies in them, like just cheesecake. And I'm looking at this and he sent me this picture and I'm thinking, uh, oh, right, uh oh. Like this is gonna be, this is gonna be his takedown shot. And he sends me this. He goes, I don't feel anything. I'm sitting here in this sea of cheesecakes and I have no cravings, no desire, no not. I mean, this is a sugar addict. Right, right. And, and that just shows you that you can get there. And it, it just, it's like, just say, hey, I've got two weeks. I mean, what if in two weeks you could break that control? That sugar has had on you for your whole life. Because for all of us, I mean, if you look at it, I don't have a sweet tooth. But I was raised because some people genetically do. I was raised on pop tarts, Captain French, and Cocoa Puffs. And when I thought I was doing better, I switched to frozen yogurt and black licorice. I just kept shifting my vices, thinking I was doing better, until finally I went, this is not working. It hasn't fixed the problem because I'm still getting sugar. It just is in a different wrapper.

Can I mention something? This is bringing this up for me because you mentioned replacing habits. I'm really not a big fan of discipline. I think it's a guilt in a lot of ways. Obviously, it's a contextual thing. But if someone says, well, I got really bad habits. I just have a bad habit that I. I do this, I do that. And 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. I mean, 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. 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 Steven 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 of people 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's 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 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'm 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 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, 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 is 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 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 helps 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, for giving us hope, showing us what's possible. I think you get what you expect and that people start to give up because they've tried. And this is what drives me. They tried these green smoothie cleanses loaded or these crazy cleanses loaded with fruit.

I want to ask you about cleansing. We're going to Make a note of, we're going to talk about cleansing.

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 that 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 ahold 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. No, 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 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. He said to me, he goes, you know what's funny? He goes, you never see skinny people order diet sodas.

No.

He's like, you just don't. So diet sodas versus. I mean, talk about artificial sweeteners. Yeah.

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 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 thought, oh, well, 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 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 and is picking up juice and cutting cayenne pepper and lemon and all this stuff. 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.

Cleansing, 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. But 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, and 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, 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 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 of the juices are loaded with sugar. Like, look at that one that, you know, the maple juice and cayenne pepper. And there's a maple. It's either maple juice, maple, or syrup, or it's molasses. Either. 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 true. Trying to tell you stop it. Right.

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

Yeah.

Because there has been many times in my life, I mean, 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. I mean, we didn't have a lot of money, so 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 kind of a sadistic Little league coach that ruined my liking of sports. And so I was never around health habits. And 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. 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 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 saying, well, you know, that doesn't cause people to go out and do things. And he said, 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 that's conveyed on this video with Arianna? I said, 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 or 13 years old. And the other one was like 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 loved that because it's like, what sort of message are you conveying? And my father smoked. My father died of lung cancer. But I say he really died of addiction because he was addicted too. 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 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. And my son, this is a really funny one. My 17 year old, I had a friend said, oh, you should check his computer. I bet he's watching porn. 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 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 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's. It doesn't mean they can never have the other stuff, but they learned that you go out to eat. If you want to have a dessert there, you can have a 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 for my kids, this is just their normal. But I also am like, well, 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 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, and it's kind of cool.

The big thing with kids is you focus on activity and energy and fitness and doing fun stuff and 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've got. You weigh like 50 pounds less than me. You're my height. How does this work? I could knock you 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 my 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 sleeping. 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. 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 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 runs?

0 I did. I was a, 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. 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.

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

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

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

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

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. 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, yeah, it's like weight training for your brain. And then I know that I'm going to get better because now I finally have given in. You have pummeled me with this. And I'm 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. 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 Tru Rest. And so there's lots of ways that you can handle stress.

Yeah. And I'm very excited to try that because I've 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. So the point is, everyone that is watching you have rituals that you do, ways that you go about doing things, things that you put in your mouth. It starts one fork at a time, and you can shift things. And it's a lot harder to create momentum than maintain momentum, which is why I wanted to do this episode with JJ Virgin, do this interview. So get a copy of her book, Sugar Impact Diet. I'm going to ask you a couple more questions, then we'll go ahead and wrap. But I just want to remind people that the plan and path for how to do everything that JJ's talked about is clearly laid out. She's helped many. I mean, how many people have you impacted or reached? I mean, stuff you've done on Dr. Phil and just everything.

Yeah. So, I mean, just the Dr. Phil alone, it would be crazy how many people would write in. So it's millions of people. But I honestly believe that my mission is bigger now with sugar, especially as I started to see what a huge problem it is. And it's one that I want to take global, and it's one that it impacts all of us. And I realized as I did this and created a whole new way to look at it, that I was going to get some heat for it, especially because you start to look at. It's really the companies out there and the manufacturing practices. So it really is going to take an army of us creating awareness and then passing the message around. But that starts with doing it yourself.

No it does. And part of it is living. The message is really important. I mean, not all people do, but I think that absolutely is critical, and it helps.

And.

And also, marketing can be done in very ethical ways, and it can be done in very destructive ways. Marketing is just a tool. Just like water. You can kill yourself from drinking too much water, too. I look at the marketing message, and the story you tell is critical. I mean, you take cigarettes as an example. If a tobacco company came to me and offered me $100 million to help to help them design a marketing campaign, I would really want the 100 million, but I wouldn't take it because it's selling a product that kills people. And I honestly cannot understand how some people can rationalize and justify the fact that they are behind companies and products and services that enslave people, that kill people. And the food industry does some really destructive shit. And there's also a side of the food industry that does amazing stuff. So there's great people on both sides of it. And what I like about you is you name names. I mean, you're going to show us.

That's why I'm going to need help, because.

So how could people watch you? What's the best way? Because you don't just have books here. You have. I mean, even some of your stuff.

Let's talk about.

We'll come to your supplements, but I want to talk about the tribe that you've developed around this. I mean, how do people get engaged?

So what's been great is, of course, on Facebook. I've got a page on Facebook at JJ Virgin Fan Club, and then at Sugar Impact. D. One of the things that I made a commitment to is to just get as much information. I wanted to take out the objectives. If someone says, I can't afford the book, first of all, go check it out at the library. Or you can even just go to sugarimpactdiet.com and you can get free training videos, the Sugar Impact Quiz, the Sneaky Sugar Inventory. I made a commitment. I have a podcast now. We have ezines, tons of fresh, free information out there. So there is no excuse that you can't get started. I put as much information as possible. And the thing that I've been really excited about is that I've seen people get evangelical with the Virgin Diet, where it's not a matter of, oh, yeah, I'm doing Atkins or I'm doing the Zone. They're like calling their friends, going, you have to do this, right?

Sell it.

By the way, I actually Send books now to some of these people. They'll tell me, I've just turned on 12 friends. I'm like, give me your address here. I'm giving you books for your trunk. But that's what I love the most, is that they found how it worked for them. And that's how really you pass it on and you change the world. I believe that if we can take this message out there with sugar, if people knew better, they would do better. I think the whole problem we have is that we're duped by misinformation. And I want to believe with a lot of these food companies, they don't realize what they're doing. And as they realize, they'll make the changes. That's the Pollyanna in me. I'm going to believe that. I know it's not always the case, but I believe that with a lot of them is that. That they don't really realize that banana puree is problematic and hurting people. Or apple juice concentrate on their dried cranberries. Just stop it. So it's just get that message out. Share this message. And I think one of the easiest ways to be successful on the program, besides journaling, is to get a friend to come and do it with you and join a community of support. So that's the other side of it is don't go this alone. Get some friends around you to help you.

Well, and I'm going to. You'll hear me tout and promote JJ stuff. Because, for one, I'm not only a friend. I guess I would say I'm a client. Sort of like the Hair Club for Men commercial. I'm not only the president, I'm also a client. So I follow your advice. It works.

You eat my bars as you text me.

And when we do our Genius network group, we literally have your smoothies and all this stuff and talk about this. I mean, I mean, what makes this different than any other jug of potion?

Here was the challenge. The research shows that people who start the day, they incorporate a meal replacement shake, not an adult milkshake, but a meal replacement shake into their daily diet, lose more weight, and keep it off. I'm fascinated by what keeps people on a program, and it has to be something that they love, that they'll do every single day. A shake is a great one because most people get in trouble. They're having dessert for breakfast or they don't have time, right? So they're having a cupcake and a muffin or like a muffin and a latte. A cupcake And a soda or they're skipping. So a shake is a great replacement. But when you look at a lot of the shakes out there, like that one that had 17 grams of fructose, they either have artificial sweeteners, too much sugar. They're made with soy protein, they're made with whey protein, which raises insulin more than sugar does. Right. So. And I've got to make something different. So I made two different types of shape. They both have 1 gram of sugar in them. No artificial sweeteners. They taste great. And one is made from. And this is crazy, it tastes like a milkshake. But it's made from Swedish cow's defatted beef protein. Incredible. Like, incredible for someone who's working out because it's got collagen, it's anti aging, amazing stuff. And then I made one for vegans with a pea blend. So I've got everybody covered. Because I always say with all of my programs, doesn't matter if you're vegan or paleo or anywhere in between, you can follow this. Right? I get along with everybody. I love you all. But I wanted to make something that you could use every single day and not get in trouble. And boy, whey protein, walk away from the whey. And soy lowers thyroid function. So these things, if you're using them especially every day, you're going to create problems.

Yeah, yeah. And of course, even just hearing that, what you just said, some people are.

Like, what are you doing? What way? No way. No way. And then I made bars because I needed a bar.

And they got these little chia seeds in them. You get your chia. Yeah, Chia seeds, the same things that chia pets are made out of. That's what I hear all the time.

They are, but you didn't grow them. So this will not. You cannot plant this. And it will not turn.

I won't have like a little sheet.

No, I mean, don't do that, because I can just see, next time you'll have this little thing. Jj, virgin cheese. Jj, Virgin's Chia bar. So, so what you can do. I started making them because I could not find a bar out there that wasn't an adult candy bar. I mean, all these energy bars, like Snickers now has a high, high protein. I'm like, oh, my gosh, Snickers, you know, And I know some of these bars, like, you know that Detour bar, It literally tastes like a Snickers bar. You look at them and they've either got artificial sweeteners or soy or whey protein, you know, they've got all the crap. So I was like, all right, I've got to make something for myself. So I started making it, and then people were stealing my bars, so that's where the bars came from. And then I reformulated them a little bit based on some information you gave me, which we'll just leave that one alone.

I'm a pretty smart guy.

I don't know. I think you're fabulous. Now, you guys all wolfed them down, so.

No, they're really good.

Thank you.

What is something I should have asked you, but I didn't.

Well, I think you walked around this a bit, but I want to really drive it home. And that is, if you're listening, sitting on the fence, going, well, why should I believe you? I go, it's really about believing back in yourself again. So many of the things that we come to accept as normal or we think are just aging are really just your body trying to shout out to you that this isn't working. What you're doing isn't working, even if you think you're doing everything right. And the challenge is those symptoms that are symptoms now are the precursors to disease. And so you owe it to yourself. And if not for yourself, then do it for your family. Do this. It's just two weeks and you'll be in a totally different place. And then all of a sudden, you can go out and go after the things you didn't have the energy or focus to do before.

Yeah. So again, the book, Sugar Impact Diet, I would actually get all of JJ's books. And here's the thing, too, that I would really like to make a point of. This book would make a wonderful holiday gift. During the holidays, I get sent a lot of stuff. Now, I hope that's either people kissing up to me or they really genuine friendships. But I get sent really cool stuff. My team here at my company at Piranha Marketing and Genius Network, we get sent stuff, and a lot of it is candy and cookies.

Don't send him any candy or cookies. No.

And I tell people that too, but we still get it.

I get candy sent to me. I'm sure I want any more. My mother actually sent me See's candy one year when I owned a gym. And I go, why would you do this? She goes, well, the other people there want it. I gave it to the UPS guy, but, yeah, it's re gift it.

Yeah, re gift. But it's so funny. I almost one year, I wanted to register regift.com but someone had taken it already because I'm thinking I'd get sent so much stuff I could just re gift. But the thing is, send people a copy of your book.

Thank you. And they can do the cookbook. And then I put a conversion guide so you could use any of the recipes in Virgin diet will work for Sugar Impact Diet.

And real quickly, so you talk about these seven drop seven foods. What are the foods that have the most problem? Not saying that everyone has not just name them off real quick.

These are the foods I found most people reacted to. But the deal is you pull them out for three weeks and then you challenge back to see which work for you and which don't. Now, gluten and dairy. Gluten and dairy are the ones that are classic. Create classic problems. And then soy gluten. Gluten is a protein found in grains. Wheat's the biggie, you know, but some of the other grains as well. But the challenge is that it's used in a lot of things to stabilize and thicken. And because it's a drug, you know, it makes you addicted to foods. But gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, and then sugar and artificial sweeteners. And again, you pull them out for three weeks and you challenge back. I find a lot of people, if they eat a higher quality pastured egg, can eat it. But corn, corn is just sugar and most of it's genetically modified. Gluten and dairy are drugs. Soy lowers thyroid function. And peanuts are not a nut, they're a legume. Eat tree nuts. But I did do it so that you could convert it. I also, so it's easy to use the cookbook for the Sugar Impact Diet. But I also created a holiday guide to get go along with the Sugar Impact diet that you can get@sugarimpactdiet.com so you can have your holiday guide to go with it too. So how you can do low sugar impact during the holidays, and you know what, I'll tell you, and I've seen this with Virgin diet, and I saw it as we did Sugar impact diet with 700 people is I found that if you do not talk about this, you know, I like to bring the family in, but sometimes you have to do sort of, you don't want to create this whole hostile situation. So if you just start cooking this way and you don't say anything, the thing that we've heard in these families is people want to know why they're getting such great meals. Because it's not weird food. It's Normal stuff, you know, it's marinara. It's like great ala keca spaghetti squash with meatballs. It's not crazy stuff. It's raw cacao mousse with avocado. They all taste great. In fact, if you didn't tell them what was in there, they wouldn't know.

No, your food is awesome.

Thank you.

So here's the thing. I mean, going back to time and cost and price, what the hardest thing to get people to realize and understand is. You're going to pay for all this anyway. If you don't take time out for this now, for your health, you're going to take time out for it later. You're going to take time out with sickness, you're going to take time out with lack of productivity, being lethargic. Life is painful if you don't live this way. And you could feel infinitely better than you do now. If you're consuming a lot of the sugars and a lot of the crap.

Well. And even if you don't think you are, you probably are. If you already feel great, you can feel even better. And if you're struggling, sitting here. And again, this is the person I really want to reach. The person has given up. It's time to get your hope back and get into action.

So, so what are your websites?

So sugarimpactdiet.com is probably the best place. I have an overall jjvirgin.com too. And then in sugarimpactdiet.com we've just done some bang up training videos to walk you through the program. Again, I've done everything. So I want you to buy the book. Buy the book, Buy the book. But I also did everything for the person. I don't want them to say I couldn't get started because I couldn't buy the book. You know what? Watch the training videos. Get in action. You can do it right away. It's easy.

Awesome. So I want to encourage you to share this interview with anyone that you know in your life that would be well served to hear it. Go out and get a copy of J.J. s book, maybe get several copies and give them to people that you care about. I think it is an act of love. So spread the love, share it. And of course, please give me your comments and I'd love to hear the results. I do these things because. Because I get real joy out of knowing that anything that I did helps reduce suffering in someone's life. And this not only will make people better, but it will also reduce a lot of pain because there's people every day are misled, and they consume crap that they think is actually healthy, and they pay the price. This will save lives. It doesn't just make people feel better and look better. This actually will save lives. And we are in a downward spiral in a lot of ways, and we need to, you know, have people that will be willing to do something and take us out of that. So any famous last words?

Famous last words is get started. Awesome. It's easier than you thought. Now that you know better, it's time to do better.

Yes. Thank you, jj.

Thank you, hon.

Peace out.