Sugar Cravings, Meat, and Your Health | JJ Virgin

We're going to talk about kids in a little bit. 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, 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 car 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 process.

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, 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, 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 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 think 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.

Yeah, you put no gluten on the.

You can put it on a potato, no gluten. Remember when they did that with cholesterol? They'd have a potato with no cholesterol. 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. 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. But let's pretend. For. Let's pretend. Let's suspend disbelief here in TV land and 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. Right now we've got 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 is 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 sign 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 that, 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. So 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 stuffed Oreos, which in reality, the low fat Oreos are worse than the regular Oreos because when you take fat, 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 because I just. Mike said, okay, I'm watching. 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 because I feel sick. Score. Score one for the home team. 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 kid 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 the dopamine, serotonin centers of a rat with drugs, the rat will push the pellets and, and keep hitting it to get the high over sleep, over food, over sex, over everything. And a rat doesn't have the ability to make a moral judgment. I mean, 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 really beat themselves up or other people that beat up addicts, it hijacks the brain. 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 think, oh, this one's lower. This one, no it's 31 grams of sugar.

31 grams. 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 and 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.

What about insure active? That's 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.

Magnify that.

But if you look at it, 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.

But you've been sure as 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.

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.

Because when you talk about grams, like 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 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? 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 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 myself, all right, if someone. This is, like, new to them. They 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, it is addictive.

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

Yeah. 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 at McDonald's.

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 give flavor.

Yeah.

Usually we've got a sugar, salt, fat combo that, like, if you look at a lot of 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.

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

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 it's, 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 gonna 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 skin 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 and 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, then we gotta 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 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, 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 and he has 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 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 and 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 just, 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. 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 the sea of cheesecakes, and I have no cravings, no desire. No, not. I mean, this is a sugar addict.

Right?

Right. And that just shows you that you can get there. And 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.

So since Whole Foods is all about food, I gotta ask you some food questions. So what's your philosophy on food and. Or healthy eating? Where do people go wrong when it comes to diet? And what is the Whole Foods diet? And then anything you'd like to add about what your favorite foods are and why?

Well, I feel like I'm in a bulletproof diet conference, so I'm a little bit. Gotta be.

No, you can slam Dave if you want, if you don't like his coffee.

No, it was very strategic because I sat next to Dave at lunch, and he's such a wonderful man, such a really nice person. I can't possibly slam this guy. I've been spending all this time talking about love. I can't go, you know, trash Dave Asprey here.

That was literally my attempt of having you for me just because we're good friends.

He's a great guy. Yeah. I've got a book that tomorrow is being sent to the publisher and should be out in April called the Whole Foods Diet. The philosophy is pretty simple. You should be eating do not eat hyper processed foods, the kind of junk that Americans eat. It's Going to kill you, it's going to cause cancer and heart attacks and obesity. Don't eat it, stop eating that stuff. And then so you eat real foods. Eat real foods. Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds and a little bit of animal foods. And I think if you look at the longest lived peoples in the world, the Blue Zones people, none of them were vegans, except for a small subset of Seventh Day Adventists. But they were all whole foods eaters and mostly plants. About 90% of their calories came from plant foods. 10% come from animal foods. Human beings basically evolved as plant eating omnivores. That's our digestive system, that's our teeth structure, that's the foods that we really flourish on. So maybe a little bit of wild caught fish, a whole lot of fruits and vegetables. And I would also say that it's so trendy now because of people's terror of gluten and the grain brain. And people are trying to avoid all or Paleo. They're trying to avoid beans, they're trying to avoid whole grains. Those foods correlate extremely well with longevity. Whole grains and beans are like those healthy starches are foods that we need. And if you cut those out of your diet and substitute animal foods for it, I think you're making a terrible long term mistake for your health. You might lose a little bit of weight on it initially, but if you eat a whole foods diet, you're going to be thin. I weigh the same as I weighed when I was 18 years old, about 140, 45 pounds. My cholesterol is 135. My blood pressure is 105 over 70. I mean this type of diet really does work. You really flourish with it, but that's all. I'll do my preaching on diet today, but my book will be out in April so I hope you'll take a look at it.

I had another food question for you, but I can leave that out.

I like food questions. I am a grocer after all.

I'm going to ask anyway. Yeah. What's the most interesting insight or truth you've discovered about one, food and two health that people might not know, but we would be surprised or shocked if they knew it?

I think I just said it because we now live in this low carb mentality. People are concerned about managing their insulin levels and eating low on the glycemic index. So as a result, in my opinion they're eating way too much fat. They're not eating the healthy starches, the Okinawans which were the one of the longest lived peoples in the world. When the elders of okinawa were eating 70% of their calories from 60% from just sweet potatoes alone, and about 80% from starch foods, including beans and rice and sweet potatoes and then vegetables. And that's a diet. A little bit. They eat 4% of their calories from animal foods. A little bit of pork, a little bit of fish, a little bit of eggs, and they flourished. I think that's a so healthy starch foods. That's my word for you today. Those are the foods that humanity has evolved on. We do very well on whole starch foods. I'm not talking about sugar, I'm not talking about white bread, I'm not talking about croissants, bagels, junk, that kind of junk. I'm talking about whole grain type things like steel cut oats, sweet potatoes, things like that.

Gotcha.

Okay, so I gotta ask you, since you know a little bit about. We've talked about my addiction project. And addiction comes in many forms. You know, drugs, alcohol, processed addictions, behavior, and food. And I think so much of the obesity, so much of the health problems are because of addiction and what that leads to in terms of, you know, behavior. So you said. I think food addiction is much greater than we realize. We take smoking as an addiction seriously. We see alcoholism, and we tend to think of food as more innocent. And yet you don't really understand your food addictions until you try and change the way you eat. And then the food addictions begin to assert themselves. And so what is your perspective on not only food addictions, but addiction in general?

Well, on addiction in general, I think human beings are very easily addicted. I think we're all addicts in some way or another. We're addicted to something or another. And I would say that you should strive to get rid of the unhealthy addictions and replace them with healthy addictions, such as good exercise and meditation and things that enhance our life force rather than drain it. So we know the unhealthy addictions. Smoking, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, things like that. Those are clearly not going to be good addictions to have. But food addictions are. People are not. They're much more in denial about that. I say the culture. We have mass cultural denial about food addictions. And yet you don't know you have food addictions until you try to change the way you eat. Try to change it. You'll find it's not very easy to do. You'll find 95%, 96% of diets fail within the first year because people just revert to their old eating patterns. In America, we're very much addicted to junk food. We're addicted to fast food, we're addicted to sugar, we're addicted to, you know, here's the key. We're addicted to calorie dense foods. That's how we evolved where calorie dense foods were very rare in evolution, you were foraging for fruits and vegetables and tubers. Occasionally you could bring down an animal, but it was very lean meat that you were eating. So whenever we could get something that had a lot of fat in it, or something that had a lot of protein in it, or just something that had a lot of calories in it, we like, tastes good, yum, yum, yum. And we now can, we can indulge ourselves every single meal. We can eat calorie dense foods every single meal. And the price of that is addiction, obesity, heart attacks and cancer. So we have to struggle with our own food addictions. But the good news is that you can get over it if you focus on it. And again, I have a book coming out that will tell you how to do that.

So 12 steps are incredibly beneficial from community, but they don't address food, they don't address the body and breathing and exercise. So to give yourself the highest possibilities, you want to do a combination of things and you have to be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. I love that.

And you know the body one, and I know there's so many different systems of the body, but you mentioned neurotransmitter chemicals. There's a great book, the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Ross. Have you ever read them?

Not only have I read them, but I actually met Julia Ross over a decade ago and she actually took me through a supplement regimen specifically for addiction because she's one of the top neuronutrient therapists in the world.

This guy is a connector. He knows everybody. So that's not very surprising. But her work is so powerful and a few lessons I pulled away from it is. I mean, that's where I learned of neurotransmitters and you know, some of the things, I guess to set the stage. Our neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain are what make us feel comfortable inside of us. They're literally mood shaping chemicals inside of us. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gamma aminobutyric acid. I probably didn't pronounce that right and I probably don't even care. So when we're eating sugar, alcohol, processed foods, flours, those actually displace our neurotransmitter chemicals. And those food substances can sit in the parts of the brain that should house the neurotransmitter chemicals. And because there's crappy things in there, it tells the brain, stop making neurotransmitters. Because our neurotransmitters receptor sites are full, but they're not full of neurotransmitters, they're full of crap. So we can get into this place where being inside of ourself feels like we're laying on a bed of broken glass. So now we start perpetuating potentially addictive patterns because we're trying to get away from ourself. So we might self medicate with more sugar because we feel like crap because we're eating sugar, Right? Because I just want to escape this sensation right now of feeling like I'm laying on a bed of broken glass. But then when you cut out a lot of the crap and start eating real food, like all of our neurotransmitter chemicals are made from proteins. We need like real food, not the crappy food to help balance that out so we can have the biochemical potential to feel good inside of us.

Which.

We don't necessarily get. If someone's going to a 12 step meeting, great. Giving you community. But the donuts you're eating, the coffee you're drinking, too much of that can actually be making the body component worse while you're making the community component better.

Exactly. Sugar is really the gateway drug. Sugar is the biggest culprit to the stepping stone for, for addictive behavior. And we are feeding so much shit to ourselves and to people and to children. And they're setting the stage for these individuals to really be more susceptible to becoming addicts. Like for instance, earlier I was saying there's a Dr. David Arneson, I never say his name right. Theriversource.org I believe is his website in Phoenix. And I went and met with him with my friend Paul Mittman, who is the president of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. And then Tom Faris, who is the Arizona Corporation Commissioner because we're working on doing some stuff in Arizona to find a treatment system that we can have people, instead of them going to jail or prison, we can have them go through this and prison that has efficacy to try to help people that have not committed a violent crime first offense, that instead of throwing them in jail or prison, we get Them treatment. And so one of the things we're working on is finding the best way that we can actually do this and then see if we can. I'm working with politicians, although my world is not that. I want to just be the catalyst and let the people that know how to make these things happen with laws take it from, from there, you know, hand over the baton. But I want to see if we can get something tested here in Arizona and then if it works, if we can take it from state to state to state.

And we.

So when we met with him, he said he's been treating people for 16 years with IV treatments. He's very familiar with Julia Ross's work. He's an expert in neuronutrients and using amino acid therapies and IVs to treat addicts. And he said to me, and I'm not going to say it exactly because he, he's really brilliant at the way he explained it. He said that when you see like an addict on the street that's homeless or missing teeth, he said in a lot of cases what you're seeing is modern day scurvy. And they're just not even getting good vitamin C. And a lot of these addicts are eating donuts, they're drinking sodas, they're eating candy bars, they're eating fast food, they're getting very terrible nutrition and they have a ton of gut problems. And, and he said, he talked about serotonin is produced in the gut, dopamine is produced in the brain, and if you basically do not fix the gut, then they're always going to be in a craving state. And he said something that was fascinating to me. He said if you do not repair the gut and get them producing happy chemicals, what happens is if you send them to jail or prison or you send them to rehab and they can sit down with the best talk therapist, the cravings are still going to be there and they're still going to be an addict. And I said, if that's actually true, millions of people are being thrown in jail and going into treatment without having their body producing. And they can be sitting down with even smart people that are trying to guide and direct them. But the cravings never go away. And what happens, these people then have to get drugs in prison. So we have just as bad of a drug problem and drug addiction happening and people doing drugs in prison and we're trying to lock these people up and keep them away from it. I mean, if you can get drugs in prison, drugs are everywhere. And see here's the challenge. The challenge aren't even the drugs. The drugs are just a symptom of a far deeper problem. The addiction is a, is a symptom of a deeper problem, which is disconnection, which is biochemical, which is all of these things. Because if you have biochemistry, the body isn't connected. So I don't say connection, just in terms of community connection. I mean you got to make shit work wiring in your body. And so what he does is he has a lot of success with IV treatments. And I said, well, can you treat these addicts orally? He goes, well, if their gut is so damaged, no, you actually have to bypass. But with IVs and we're talking a few hundred dollars of doing IV treatments where over a period of a few weeks and he can really fix a lot of the gut issues with people and then getting them eating foods that are not damaging to them. And I said, if this is actually true, this would literally save millions of lives if we could figure out how to do that and then make it available. So one of the many things were working on is trying to bring these brilliant people and seeing how do we scale that. And so what I'm trying to do is just be the curator and share this information with people and I'm going to interview these people, we're going to videotape them, we're going to put documentaries out and we're going to really find, you know, does this really, you know, work with numerous people? So one of the things that we're working on is seeing how do we set it up and take literally the worst addicts, you know, street addicts, people that are homeless, and see if we can actually, you know, help them get out of that craving state. But that's just one of many things. But you know, it's, it's fascinating because if you look at what they feed prisoners, if you look at what most addicts eat, I mean their diets are so unhealthy and so therefore, you know, their body is not going to creating the things it needs to cope.

Yeah, I would dare say that the foods a lot of them are eating, a lot of the average non addicts are eating as well, are foods that might make the belly full, but they're foods that actually take more nutrition from the body than what the foods deliver. And that is absolutely a recipe for it's literal self destruction.

Hey there, this is Joe Polish, the tall one in this video.

And I've got the very awesome Dr.

Mark Hyman and JJ Virgin and we're working out here together.

And Mark feels great.

Yes, he does.

Look at that.

Let's do it. Chris said he probably won't be able.

To lift his arms up later.

Well, here's the thing. Both of you are like sugar experts.

So which one of you smarter? I love sugar. You do love sugar. I love sugar. All right, but you both have written.

Books about why sugar is toxic and poisonous. Now, I guess.

What is this all about?

Blending sugar balance. Right.

And what.

Is everything?

I'm just fed up.

I'm fed up.

Yeah. Fed up with sugar.

Fed up with the food industry.

Fed up with all the bullshit we're.

Eating, all the.

Lies the government's telling us, all the stuff that's food. I mean, I. I actually met with a woman who's head of the ADA American Diabetic association this week who has diabetes, was following their freaking guidelines, was on four medications, shots and all kinds of crap and wasn't getting better. She went on my program and boom, awesome medications. Diabetes, better. And she's like, wait a minute. The ADA is wrong.

If you follow that diet, you will become diabetes.

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so when you say programs, so you both have programs.

What do people do?

People watching this, what do they do to get an optimal physical shape? Get diseases? They buy her book. They buy my book.

They do them both.

How do people get both of you.

In their house, like, to just have a sleepover if they wanted a sleepover. How do you want an eat here you go on an eat over. Not a secret.

Well, that. That too.

I mean, workout.

A workout.

That would be actually kind of cool.

What if there was a prize where you could hang out with Mark and jj, get back massage of the whole work, you know, I'm good. Me, I'm good. Yeah. That's how I got into medicine. Massage people, they're like, oh, it feels good.

I'm like, I like. Yeah, maybe do some medicine.

Well, he's going into houses and cooking.

That's true.

Okay, so I'm.

I'm going to plug some stuff here because I have done amazing interviews with both of them, which you can find@gieniusnetwork.com I love marketing.com.

We put them all kinds of.

And I love joe.com and.

Yeah, and I love Joe. And that's really.

This.

Because this video I really wanted to lead back to me, but. Okay, so out of the.

Out of all of the things that you guys have learned, what would you consider are the essential elements in taking people that are at a stuck point? They're not exercising, they're not eating right, they feel hopeless, they have consumed, bought so many books, they feel lost. What do you do? My view, and I think JJ is probably similar, is people need to do a reset, like a reboot. When your computer's on the fritz and it's going round and round and it doesn't work, you've got to do a reset. So that's why I wrote the 10 day detox. People can do anything for 10 days. And in 10 days, if you change your food and do a few simple lifestyle practices, you literally can change your physiology, retake your brain chemistry back, retake your hormones, retake your taste buds, and in 10 days you can go from feeling like crap to feeling great. And the weight loss is just a side effect.

Yes, it's automatic, like I said. And here's the coolest part about that, because people talk about losing weight and they're white, knuckling and struggling. But when you reset your taste buds and you get rid of your sweet tooth, which you can do in seven to 14 days, we've seen it, all of a sudden you've got the control back over sugar. And even though, like Mark says, I love sugar, it's like it's not an issue because you don't crave it anymore, right? And then everything changes.

It's really true. I think, I think most people don't get that it's not their fault. Like people, they blame themselves. I met a woman the other day who was told by a food expert and nutritionist that she there was no such thing as food addiction, that it was her fault that she didn't willpower and that she couldn't control herself. So she, so she read my book, which talks about the power of these foods, like sugar to hijack your brain, literally to be biologically addictive. She says, I'm going to try it. And she literally got her body back, lost 30 pounds and was able to reset her brain and realized that it wasn't her fault that she was fat, it wasn't her fault she was craving, it wasn't that she didn't have willpower. And our whole government policy and the food industry is all about blaming the fat person. Eat less, exercise more moderation, all things. There's no moderation of bad stuff. Like if you actually are eating trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, you can't moderate that. You've just got to cut it out. And if you do that, you'll reset and then you can enjoy all sorts of foods, but you're not going to become a victim of your brain chemistry that's been hijacked by the food industry.

Yeah.

If you assume that these are all drugs, which they are. And sugar is the number one drug of choice, is taking down everyone everywhere. Kids are not smoking and drinking at age 5. They're having juice and cooking. If you knew that, you wouldn't have a little bit. That would be ridiculous.

But I do eat sugar, but, like, it's a recreational drug. Like, I like tequila, but I don't, like, drink it all day long. Like, people have sugar for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Well, they start with cereal, milk, juice and a banana or a muffin latte.

That's right. And people don't realize that Breakfast cereal is 75% sugar. It shouldn't be called breakfast, it should be called dessert.

Right.

And it's like, so we need to just reset and understand how to find.

Where everything is sneaking in so that we don't turn our salad into a.

Sunday and our love that salad into a Sunday.

Right.

All right, so, jj, exercise. How frequently must you do it? Kind of, sort of. What are your thoughts on this?

You must.

She told me 15 minutes twice a week. I'm good with that.

So, yeah, for weight training, resistance. Look at this. Look at this specimen.

This is like 50 minutes once a year. Look at this.

Well, this was the start today. Whole new mark, right?

Yes.

Today is the last day of the.

Way mark used to be. I know, right?

You got to move more. Everyone should be moving at least 60 minutes a day. But if you're not getting hot, sweaty, and it hurts a bit, it doesn't count as exercise. But we are supposed to move.

That's why you were hurting me this morning.

That's why. Because I wanted to count as exercise.

I was hurting.

Trust me, I liked it a little bit. And then high intensity interval training, or cardio burst training three times a week to accumulate four total minutes of all out bursting. So if you're on the bike, what's bursting?

Where you go as fast as you.

Go as hard as you can for.

30 to 60 seconds. And you don't want to pace yourself, you want to burn yourself out.

Yeah.

It'll be the longest 30 to 60 seconds of your life. And then you recover and you do it again. Four to eight total minutes, three days a week. And then resistance training, hitting, pushing, pulling, pulling, pulling.

Nobody told me about pulling.

I was always push that one.

Hips and thighs and core. You do that at least twice a week. So for you, we'll start there and that's the big thing is how do you fit fitness in? And then.

You'Ve been whining here all day.

And then flexibility work, but really like yoga flexibility work because you want to lower your stress hormones. And so that's.

That.

That is huge.

So there you go.

I mean, that's a simple four, four formula that I think Brianna used. Just we're missing a little piece, but we're fixing that. And that helps you with your sugar cravings.

Yes, it does.

It helps.

It just helps you with your life. And so if you do not take time out for this now, you will take time out for it later with very poor health and disease and probably misery and suffering. And so if you're a parent, this is also something that children will watch how you live. They will watch you become a model. And so you want to be a model not only for yourself, but for everyone around you. And that's how everyone around you gets better. And there are a lot of forces that are literally always directing you in wrong. Because I've always loved the line that the most expensive information in the world is bad information. There's a tremendous amount of bad information that can kill you. So both of these individuals have written amazing books that have led literally collectively millions of people to better health. So what is the best book for people to start with with you and then with you? I think it's a 10 day detox diet. 10 days. People can do anything, reset. Then they own their body and then they realize how close they are to health and happiness.

There's just a few days.

And if it doesn't work for you, great. But if it does, you literally get your life back.

It will work if they work it.

It's true.

It's true.

You don't have to believe me. You just have to do it.

Yes. And the Sugar Impact Diet. And what the Sugar Impact Diet helps you do is identify where all the sugars are sneaking into your diet. And to understand that it's not about no sugar, but that all sugar is not created equal, you need to know which to choose and which to lose, which, I mean, simple to do.

There you go. And if you watch this on YouTube or wherever else, I'm going to put the links of their interviews and stuff.

Related to both of them in the, in the little area.

So just do it. And it's fun hanging out. You could pay like $5,000 to come see us or you could buy the book for 10 bucks on Amazon and like change your life.

That's true.

That's it.

And they make good presents.

Famous last words.

I think the most significant thing you can do to change your health, to change. Change the health of your kids, your grandkids, to change the economy, is to lower your sugar impact.

Absolutely. I would say remember that sugar is a recreational drug and use it like that. Don't think of it as breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's a drug and enjoy it, but not in a way that you would enjoy, like tequila all day long.

So much emphasis. There's so many documentaries out about food and about the, you know, farming industry and about the treatment of animals and about, you know, pesticides and GMOs and organic. And what's the difference between an organic, you know, chicken versus a non? I mean, how much does that play into your eating and your selection of food?

Well, first of all, all of our cancer patients, we work with a lot of cancer patients, we immediately do go organic because we can't be certain whether their cancer is being contributed from by factors in their diet, like pesticides or whatever. But again, I let people make their own decision on that. I have a natural tendency to go more towards natural whole foods. I want my clients to do that too. But you can't get everybody to do what you want them to do. So what I'm really a big proponent of is what I call better bad choices.

Right.

And so Eunice said, when I call, oh, my God, I remember you from all those years of better bad choices. Just small changes can yield huge results. Let me just show you one. A can of Coke has, let's say, 40 grams of sugar. Raise your hand if you know how many teaspoons of sugar. Exactly. That is lemon.

Right?

Okay, you write this down. Grams of sugar divided by four equals packets or teaspoons. So 40 divided by four means there's 10 packets of sugar in a can of Coke. If you drink two cans of Coke a day, you're drinking 20 packets of sugar. So I put 20 packets of sugar in here, and that's how much sugar is in two cans of Coke. Now, if this person just found a small, different beverage to drink over the course of time, this small change would yield huge results. Because if they just drank two cans of Coke a day, at the end of the week, they drank 140 packets of sugar, and that's how many oops, don't worry about it. We'll get it at the end. That's how many packets of sugar they're drinking every week just from two cans of Coke a day.

See?

And so the premise is not to get people to give up everything, it's to show them. Because once you show somebody the real truth, it's hard. Once you know it, it's hard to kind of go back there.

Yeah, Right. Okay, so let me ask you about the second thing that you're most known for, which is relapse prevention. So it's your psychology in that area. Why is that so important?

Because, as you all know, because it's the same, right? If you don't change the way you think, you cannot change what you do. And we're all aware of that. Right? Let me share with you some of the common little statements we all make to ourselves that sound productive and look at what I'm going to do. Raise your hand if you've ever said, I'm going to start my diet on Monday. Right. I would change that thought to be more accurate of what you're really going to do. Instead of saying, I'm going to start my diet on Monday. What I think you should really say is this. I'm going to see how fat I can get before Monday. Because the thought occurs to me, I have to stop eating bad by Monday, so I better eat as much food as I get my hands on by Monday. Right. Another one is I know what to do, I just don't do it. Right? That sounds right. Right. That's rooted in the pain pleasure principle of psychology 101, which we're all very familiar with here, Right. The idea is this. If you're saying I know what to do, I just don't do it, what you're really saying is this. Although I'm uncomfortable, the way I look and feel right now, what you're asking me to do is more uncomfortable because their association with changing their food has always been rooted in the negative. And that's what I change, is it shouldn't be negative, it should be a joy to make this change. And you should love your food.

So the way that I currently eat is more. Now I'm not super religious, hell bent on any particular method of eating. And I've interviewed people on every type of from raw foods to vegans to, I mean, you name it, to Paleo people to whatever. And my current diet is close to like a Paleo sort of diet with very healthy food in the sources of where they come from. And so what is gluten the devil? Is dairy the devil? I mean, like, how do you now certainly. And I don't eat processed foods. I mean, it's very rare that I will eat something out of A can or a bag, unless I'm stuck in the airport. And if I do, I'll probably get nuts or something like that. Right. And so how do you recommend people eat? And what are the things that you 100% know to be healthy? Or is that even too much of a stretch? I mean, because it seems like every day. I mean, look what happened to coconut. I mean, I remember going and seeing Tim Allen, the comedian. We had a backstage pass and he did this whole skit. He's like, kale, everyone's eating kale. He's like, when did kale get an effing publicist? But there's so many things about food. So what do you know are just, this is the way to eat or does it depend? I mean, how does one answer this? Because there's so many different opinions about this. And I've interviewed very smart people that.

Look very divergent ideas.

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

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

So there's really two questions that you had in there, and we'd like to tease those apart, one of which is, is this the devil? And the other one is, what's the solution?

Right.

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

Lots of sugar, but low fat.

Lots of sugar, but low fat.

Yeah.

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

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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

Everyone knows that you write about in your book, if you're not getting enough carbs, some people, they just can't sleep, right?

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

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

Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's very exciting. I like this description.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do I have the same looking nose, though?

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

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

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

Can diet help correct adrenal rhythm?

It can.

So what does that mean?

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

So when you say circadian, what does that mean?

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

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

Yup.

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

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

You mean like the Philip blue light box or things like that, or are you talking something else?

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

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

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

Okay, gotcha. So what is a question that I could or should have asked you, that.

I have not, could or should have asked or have not? I think the big thing is really just letting people know what is possible. And that transformation does happen. So short periods of time, and I've seen so many to where maybe it's been decades of frustration, and people really think that it's their genes working against them or that it's their lack of willpower. Like they've been taught. And they get into this cycle of greater emotional trauma and more turmoil. And the reality is that can change. You know, in the study, we had some people that actually lost six inches around their waist in the course of the 30 days. So it can happen in radical, powerful ways. And it's possible. There was a time in the past where we looked at people who were struggling with their health and we told them, hey, it's your diet. You're not trying hard enough. You've got to eat alkaline foods. Sugar's your culprit. You've got to be more active. That's why you're tired. So check it out. That was tuberculosis. That's exactly the advice we gave for tuberculosis in the 1840s, and in our area in the Southwest, there was no shortage of sanitariums. You'd go there and you were dying. They maybe called it a consumptive personality. We thought it was a personality disorder. And you were dying of what they called consumption. And you would go to something kind of like a modern fat farm. They would make you do physical work. They would be very stringent on your diet. And the degree to which you failed is the degree to which you. It was your fault for not trying it all hard enough. And we didn't know how wrong that was. And that's exactly what's going on now about all the very real struggles with weight. We're telling people that if it doesn't work, it's your fault. And here's our model. Here's the idea. Do your best. Make it. Make it work. And it's no different than it was for tuberculosis. We said the same stuff for leprosy and for smallpox, too. We said, this is your personality, this is your temperament. And you've got to overcome those things if you want to get better.

Let's talk about, aside from food, what other lifestyle things help enhance just overall health that are absolute must. What are just the things you really.

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

Oh, yeah, 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, 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 strength, 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 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, split 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. Now I know you've got some work to do before we do that.

You're so sweet to me. I really appreciate that. On 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. Let's. That's it. We just threw the gap.

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

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

Do you mind talking about how old you are?

I am 51.

Yeah. 51.

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

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

That.

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

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

Yeah. And I'm very excited to try that because if I could, maybe that'll become my new meditation. Maybe I can meditate in the float pod. You can think about that. It's a two for one. Exactly. I could take some vitamin C, lower my cortisol, then go in the float pod and meditate.

Exactly.

As Doug said earlier, people, many people spend their health creating their wealth, and then they have to spend their wealth trying, trying to regain their health. What if we just valued health number one. Hello, fellow Genius members. Genius network members. We're so excited to be part of your family. You heard. I'm Jennifer Carroll.

And I'm Jessica. And we are J and J. And we are going to talk to you guys today about how to live large and live long. So this is a room full of entrepreneurs. Now raise your hand if you live life, go big or go home kind of way. Yeah, I kind of thought it was about everyone. Well, that was my dad's life motto. Just like you, my dad was a rock star entrepreneur. He lived large. And actually, according to this poster right here, entrepreneurs are the new rock stars. Just like you, my dad valued success at a very young age. Travelers who loves to travel in this room. Yep, dad loved to travel. Just like you, my dad loved his sports. He ran marathons, he wake surfed, and he cherished all 18 summers with his family. Just like you, my dad was a thought leader who wanted to make a difference. Dad lived to give. And actually, for the past 20 years, we've been going down to Mexico, building homes for homeless families in Mexico. Just like you, my dad loved his life, and he loved his wife, his playmate. Entrepreneurs. You guys take care of everything. You take care of your business, you take. You take care of your staff, you take care of your family. But do you take that same care of your health? I ask you, do you value health as number one? Because you know what? My dad didn't. My dad lived large, but he never went to the doctor, as you see right here. He's a 6 3, 220 pound guy. He worked out every single day, but he bragged about not going to the doctor. And I do believe that if he did go to the doctor and if he actually got checked and if he was actually proactive about his health, he would be in this room right here and that he would actually be one of the 97% of men who survive prostate cancer if detected early. So, yes, I encourage you. And I know you guys live large, but live long. My dad made his first millions in his 20s, but he made his first widow in her 40s.

You're probably asking yourself, what on earth could this grieving widow and her darling daughter share with you today that could be worth $250,000? It's an excellent question, but I have a question back for you. Do you want to be unstoppable do you want to go on and make $250,000 again and again, living our live large, live long philosophies?

Yeah.

Okay, then imagine, if you will. You're not here at a genius network meeting. Sadly, you're on your deathbed, surrounded by your family and friends, your loved ones, and you're fighting for your last breath. And in that moment, I want to ask you, what would you do? How much would you pay for more time? How much would you pay for 250,000 more hours? That's 28 and a half more years. I know my Philip would have paid a lot more than $250,000. How much would you pay for more time? Time to scale up our businesses. Scale up your businesses. Time to keep living large as entrepreneurs. Time to watch your son live out his dream. Time to walk your daughter down the aisle. Time to grow old with the person that you love. Like you. My Phil thought he was unstoppable. By the age of 52, he was stopped by prostate cancer.

Steve and I in Forbes magazine. Bill Carroll is 25 years old, rich as cheesecake particle on our Marina. Dave and I in Flair magazine.

Wayne Gretzky is with us.

That's cool.

I know that footage is hard to watch. It's excruciating to remember. Now, you had a chance here today to meet my darling little mini me daughter, but I also want you to know that I actually gave birth to a human truck. Yes. And as my husband was holding the screaming newborn, I'm panting. I said, is it a boy? And he goes, it's a hockey player. And that's exactly what he became, a professional hockey player. Six' four, 220, missing teeth, power forward enforcer, professional hockey player. A couple months before Phil passed away, I went up to Canada to see Austin. And when I was up there, one of his practices, one of his coaches, Coach Jeff, comes up to me and he says to me, I'm sorry. I hear your husband is really sick. And Austin says, he's fighting for his life. Can I ask what he has? I said, prostate cancer. He looked at me like, I'm sorry. I thought everyone survived prostate cancer. I said, yeah, if you go to the doctor and you get checked early enough, you can be one of the 97% of men that survive this disease. But, yeah, my husband wasn't that guy. By the way, Coach Jeff, how old are you? 48. You get checked regularly, right? Oh, no, look at me. I'm in great shape. I'm on the ice with the guys every day. I Eat organic. I. I don't drink or smoke. And besides, I hate going to the doctor, and I don't need a doctor going there, if you know what I mean. Well, I watched this big, burly Canadian hawkpuss, and he just. He metamorphed into my Phil, standing there healthy, and I just lost it. I'm like, what? I just said, no, you go in and you get checked. If you don't do it for you, you do it for your wife and your kids. You do it so you can watch your son live out his dream, and you can walk your daughter down the aisle, and you can grow old as the person that you love. Because, you know, my Philip, he can't do that anymore because he's home and he's dying. No, you go in and you get checked, and you bend over and you.

Take it like a man.

He's like, whoa. I'm usually yelling at your kid on the ice like that. Fast forward a couple months. Phil's passed away of prostate cancer. We're back in Canada watching one of Austin's hockey games, and Coach Jeff comes up and gives us his condolences. But then he leans in and he kind of whispers, and he looks around. He says, jen, I went in and I got checked, bent over and took it like a man. And, you know, when the doctor was putting on his glove, I said, doc, I'm doing this for a woman, and it's not my wife. Like, a lot of information there.

How many of you guys have children? Raise your hand.

Whoa.

You guys would do anything for your kids, right? Hey, dad, will you teach me how to drive? Hey, mom, will you help me pick out my prom dress? Hey, dad, will you help me pick out my new cool shoes? Hey, dad, will you watch me as I play my first NHL hockey game? Hey, dad, will you walk me down the aisle when I get married? Just like you guys? My dad would have done anything for Austin and I, but he can't do any of those things anymore because he's not here.

When we hold our crystal ball and we ask that infamous question, what do you want? We see a man putting on a bow tie. He picks up the phone. He says, I read your book. We saw you speak, got checked, went to the doctor, found out I had cancer, got treated, and I'm a survivor. I'm about to walk my daughter down the aisle, and I had to reach out and say, thank you for making a difference. If I could give this book to one person, just one person, I would give it to my Phil. 12 years ago because I believe he'd be sitting here in this room as a genius network member if he knew the stories in this book.

Now, this message is not just for the women or for the men also. It's also for the women. And you know what? Right now it is breast cancer awareness month. So, yes, I want you to live large and make magical memories, but I also want you to live long and take care of those memories. Health number one for everyone in this room.

We're here today to share our stories in hopes of encouraging you to take action, to not only continue to live large as entrepreneurs, but to live long and value health number one and get checked.

And there's actually something you can do right now to add time to your life and your loved one's life. So I actually want you guys to take out your phones. Seriously, Seriously. I want you to do this. And in the past 10 minutes, you've been thinking about someone and it might have been yourself, which is totally okay. But I want you to send this message to that I love you. Live long, get checked, and bend over and take it like a man.

Okay?

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

Watch them.