The Nutrition Hack That Changes EVERYTHING (Better Sleep, More Energy & Fewer Cravings) with Sarah Wragge

I just started to listen and look at behaviors and what was working. Everybody was snacking and people were snacking on carbs. And the more carbs you have, the more carbs you want. And it's this roller coaster that you put your body on and you will always be a slave to your hunger if your blood sugar is not balanced.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the earn your happy podcast.

If you are anything like me, you.

Are working really hard to stick to your New Year's goals right now. And I'm sure some have fallen off. Many of mine have kind of fallen off, come back on. But you guys, it is a practice. And one of those things is to take my supplements, take my glossy every single day. And the really cool thing about glossy is that you can truly replace some of your supplements. So, so we are at the daily value and we are also at the effective dose for four or more ingredients in there. If you just take one stick, let alone if you are on two a day, you can actually go check out the panel and realize that you can throw out a lot of your supplements or obviously just stop using them or stop ordering them so that you can save all of that money. And that really was the goal with Gloce, was to get a stick that really had most of what you wanted to take for the day. So you guys go to getglosi.com and check it out. Use code happy for 25% off. And we have a new lower price on glossy, you guys, you can now save $20 on your monthly subscription from what the normal low subscription price was. So you guys go and check that out. We were able to pass on that savings to you now that we've been around for almost a year. Super exciting because of you were able to get those prices down. And today on the podcast, you guys, I have Sarah Raggy. She is a certified holistic health coach, she's a wellness entrepreneur, and she is the founder of Sarah Raggy Wellness sww. And after struggling for years with arthritis and digestive issues, she discovered how to heal through the power of nutrition, which is everything. I know there are a lot of people like me that grew up hearing family members say, you have bad genetics. And when in reality, my family just didn' the habits of moving their bodies and fueling themselves in the way that we are meant to. Sarah's a wealth of knowledge on how to balance your blood sugar, stabilize your energy levels, curb cravings, and support a healthy metabolism. And basically, it's one powerful way to promote overall wellness with what she's Talking about on here, she also shares how to structure your meals and workouts for maximum fat burning and the role your social circle plays in your health. It's mind blowing. Plus, Sarah shares her personal tips for enjoying the occasional cocktail or indulgence without due derailing your progress. You guys know that I loved this because I cannot just cut things out of my life that I love. And I love a cocktail with my husband and my girlfriends, which is exactly how, you know, I operate. And I've built habits into my life that take care of my health, and I enjoy my little indulgences. I'm such a believer that your environment has a profound impact on your choices that make up who you are. And Sarah and I share our biggest tips to create sustainable habits to live your most vibrant life and feel great without the all or nothing approach. And we all know that this is such an important foundation of our businesses, of this entrepreneurship journey. You guys, it is vital for us to be taking care of our health. And ladies, it is huge when you start to get your blood sugar dialed in because so much of our brain is controlled by our thoughts of, what am I going to eat next? I'm hungry. Why don't I. Why am I always hungry? Why am I always craving these bad foods? Like, there is so much that goes on in our head where we drain energy from our business because we're so consumed with not knowing what to do with our food and our health. So tune in. I think this is going to give you a lot of freedom. And let's get started.

Sarah, welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I have all the questions for you. I am a health and wellness junkie, but did not start that way. I am from, you know, a family who. I'm from upper Michigan, really small town. We bonded over all of the food and just thought that we were. Our genetics were bad. That's what I was told my whole life. I literally had my aunt sitting around a table. There were five of us, and she.

They were.

There were five of the sisters, and they were sitting there and. And I remember them saying to me at like, 10 years old, well, just wait, you're gonna be fat like us. I. I literally, you know, it's such a mental programming that I think that so many of us struggle with, of, this is who I am. This is how it is. I'll never break this cycle. And, you know, you actually feel out of control in your body, and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you today, because I know that you do so much with your SWW method around blood sugar balance and kind of breaking through all of those thoughts that we might have about ourselves. So will you kind of start and just share, you know, your own journey where this started?

Yes. So similar to, to you. I was one of five kids growing up in Washington D.C. and living on the standard American diet. It was honey bunches of oats with skim milk for breakfast. It was a ham sandwich on Martin's potato roll for lunch, a granola bar on the way to field hockey practice. Before I was raggy, I was actually Siciliano. So we love to Sunday gravy, spaghetti and meatballs. Eggplant parmesan was a big one. And this was just how I ate. And the truth is I never felt well. And I struggled my whole life with a lot of symptoms. Acid reflux, chronic constipation. By the time I was 18, I was actually diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Oh my God.

Prescription for methotrexate. And I grew up in D.C. so I, I was having these appointments at Georgetown Hospital. I was going to really, really like very well known places with great doctors and healthcare, but always just being written a script for something, whether it was another antacid methotrexate. Because my joints were so swollen that they, it was hard to bend my hands. I actually went in and had a colonoscopy to try to figure out if there was something going on. It said I looked great. I had upper endoscopies, two upper endoscopies also saying, you look wonderful. And not one doctor practitioner ever asked me about my diet. Nobody said, you know, Sarah, what are you consuming? Nutrition was never, ever a factor. And it wasn't until I met a holistic nutritionist and started working with her that I finally understood food is medicine. And that kind of catapulted everything for me. The power of nutrition created a complete and utter atom bomb transformation for me like nobody's business. And so, you know, once I started eating differently and I started understanding the power of vegetables and greens and foods that alkalize and I started to understand food combining a little bit. And I started to understand dairy and gluten and sugar and what those do to the body. And they create inflammation, they create bloating and swelling. And so I just, I really became super fascinated and actually kind of obsessed with anything related to nutrition and food. One of my first books I ever read was called the Body Ecology Diet and that blew my mind. I felt like the book was written for me. And then I started doing acupuncture. I started making green juice. I was like, importing raw coconut from, like, Thailand at one point on to make my own coconut and spinach smoothies. I was getting colonics before they were sort of hot. I was doing lymphatic drainage and infrared saunas way before anyone talked about them. And so during this time, I was really getting into my health journey. But I was an advertising executive, so I was traveling all over the world. I was in different time zones, living in a plane, eating plain food and feeling absolutely terrible. And so as I was getting deeper in my health journey, my steak and martini dinners were no longer lining up with what I was doing in my personal life or on the weekends. And so I decided I have to make myself happy now, right? I have to lean into what feels good for me in order to connect with clients and bring in sales. And that was my job. I was just to bring in, bring in business. And so instead of connecting with my clients over steak and martini dinners, I started taking them to SoulCycle classes.

Oh, genius.

Uh huh. And I was like, well, I have a corporate card. So instead of going to, you know, STK tonight, let's go to the Friday Stacy Griffith SoulCycle class.

Okay. How many people were happy and how many were disappointed?

So, I mean, actually like 5 turned into 10 turned into 15 to like a complete role reversal, Lori, where clients, people that I could never get a hold of, were calling me for a bike.

Wow.

And I was like, huh, this is really fun. I'm killing two birds with one stone. Because I was going to probably go to the class anyways.

Yeah, totally.

Now I'm bringing on all my advertising peeps and we're starting to create a deeper connection. We're starting to feel good about results. And people were losing weight. And so I started to go back to school. I went to Integrative Institute for Nutrition. And. And so people were feeling good. I was writing plants, I was sending juice cleanses because those were really hot in 2012, not so much now, but I was writing juice cleanses or sending juice cleanses to my clients as thank you gifts for giving me some of their business. And I have flipped the script on how do you network with people. And in 2012, the New York Times got wind of this because SoulCycle was really starting to make its name at this time. And they called me the sweat worker, not the networker. So it's great. That was my, you know, my My foray into all of this was just switching how I connected with people, writing plans, and then eventually ended up leaving advertising to start Saragu Wellness.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

There's so much for me to jump off of there, but I think the main one for me, because I know this had to change so much in my world in order to, you know, become the person that. Become that healthy person. And it was who I was around and what their habits and what their priorities were. So can you tell me a little bit? You know, obviously you were networking with these people. So many things were changing in their lives, in your life. Tell me a little bit about if somebody is really struggling, what are some things that they need to look at in their network and who they hang around?

I think your body tells you a lot. And I think if you're around someone and you feel like a little.

Hmm.

Like I'm a little guarded or I'm a little uncomfortable or I'm a little suspect or I feel like I'm being interrogated or this person makes me feel like myself. I feel like I met them, you know, I've known them for 20 years. They make me feel good about myself. I feel good when I'm with them. I think that there's so much pressure in our society to indulge in substances like get your drink on. Oh, come on, have another drink. Come on, let's just do one. Oh, you're not, not drinking, are you? Like, you know, or I'm going out, like for a cigarette grab, you know, come at. Come and join me. I quit smoking.

What?

Like, you know, it's so prevalent in our society and I feel grateful that we're kind of making a turn, that wellness is actually really cool now and that people are sober, curious, and that people are doing mocktails and that people are valuing one less drink so they can get up and work out. I think that's finally a conversation that's going on and I think it started happening around Covid and it's very necessary for this moment, but I think that's it. Lori is just like, how do you feel around that person? And as you, if you choose to go the route of healthier, sometimes it's a little bit boring.

Yeah, at first it really can, but you don't know how to replace that joy yet. You're like, right.

It's really hard. Like, so I think it's important to connect with people that are like minded. And maybe it's, you know, when my husband and I met, he's a News anchor. And so he, his clock goes off at 1:45 to 1:50 in the morning.

Oh my God.

And so there was no drinks and late night dinners. It was runs on the west side highway. It was SoulCycle classes. It was hot yoga. It was, you know, whatever it was, we. We were always moving together. And that was such an awesome way to build our relationship. Instead of getting a buzz at a restaurant, we were, you know, jogging and having conversations. It was a very, very different start of a relationship for me.

Is that a big struggle for people? Like, maybe when they start working with you, are they like, oh my God. I get around my group of friends and their habits are just like, yes. It's so hard because it pulls me down. What do you say around that? Especially, especially family for me, I swear, I've been, yeah, I'm. I've been healthy for so long and I can go back home for a.

Week and I'm like, who am I?

Like, what is happening right now?

Totally. Yeah. It's so true. I think especially what's. What's interesting is my empty nester clients that now really have, they're kind of almost like in retirement mode or back to where they felt before kids. That's the worst age category because now you can kind of go out and do whatever you want. And I think when you're in, like, I'm in the throes of building my business. I'm in my early 40s, I have two young kids. I still have a monitor where I'm watching my daughter at night. Like I'm in the thick of it. So going out on a Wednesday and having a couple glass of wine, to me just like, doesn't sound any, like any fun because I need to wake up and, and do what I need to do. But I think when you are like enrolled in a group of people where alcohol is the thing, it's really hard when you're like, I'm trying to be healthier.

Yeah.

What I see happening more and more is when we have clients that feel successful, they start to bring their friends into the mix. So we were in Chicago last week for a retreat that one of our clients hosted for 40 of her friends. And we cooked. We had, you know, we had the place that we hosted it, cook all of our recipes. We did a couple of lectures, we had a Q and A, we did consultations. We did a workout class. And what was so cool about it is that now every one of those women in the room were all kind of speaking the same language.

Yes.

And I think that's what it's about is like, okay, let's go out to dinner. And, you know, this. Is this a real drinking night or are we gonna maybe can we fake drink tonight with like a little bitters and club soda kind of thing? I. So I think it's. I think it's hard. And then you go to different parts of the world. Like, you go back home and it's not like Los Angeles and New York.

No.

That plane ride is sobering also. Right. You're like, what are people eating on the plane?

Yes. Oh, my gosh. I'm originally from the Midwest and we were spending. We had bought a lake house and spent the last like three summers for a few months in Wisconsin. When I go back there, I'm like, oh, oh, my God. You just forget you do. And you realize how important it is to surround yourself with people who are like minded, at least the majority. And I know that this is. This was one of the harder conversations, like, for people, especially from the Midwest. I remember when I moved and I had started training different people.

They were like, but people don't get it.

They don't get how much your environment impacts you. And I think that that's the beginning is that hardest part of trying to fill your world with more people who are healthy than are not. And it's just like, you can do it. It will happen. You have to kind of work equally as hard on that as you do on changing your food and your lifestyle.

Absolutely. Yeah. I could not agree more. You surround yourself with people that fill up your cup, that are like minded. And by the way, if you do start to go down a health path, those relationships are probably going to change.

Yep.

And I also think there's, you know, nothing wrong with that.

Totally.

You know, I know that you had David from the Kabbalah center on your podcast. So he was my teacher. So I did co op for a couple of years. I got really into it. And he was my teacher in the basement of, like, a church in Tribeca. I mean, face to face, one of the most profound and amazing humans I've ever met. And he said something that, like, I think about all the time. If you are in a dark room and it's full of clutter or full of garbage, and there's a little door, and the door opens and light comes in, all of a sudden you're like, whoa, there's a lot of garbage in here. Or like, whoa, there's way more trash than I thought there was. All of a sudden you get A different perspective of like. And I'm not, I'm not saying people are trash. I'm saying you become aware of the toxicity in your life. It's not working. And now that it's visible, you become less tolerant of it.

Totally. Oh, my God, that's such a good analogy. Because all the time, oh, my God. Especially with. With people, I'm like, wow, you know, in the past, like five years, I feel like, you know, how maybe in the past people might have snuck in and you're like, oh, how did this kind of like, in a crazy narcissist or whatever get into my life? And now, now you're like, oh, no. I can spot it from so far away that it never happens anymore because you just. Your awareness is so much better. And it's the same thing with your health, your wellness. Like, you just get so tuned in like that it's really exciting. So if people are in the beginning of their health journey, I promise you, this gets way more exciting. It actually gets fun. There's like a million questions I want to ask you because I know you really dive into a lot of different stuff, but let's first start talking about how you got so into and obsessed with just blood sugar, sugar balance and how that plays into everything.

Yes. Yeah. So I, you know, when I started this, Lori, my job was a total side hustle for my advertising career. And I truly built my business, working really hard for one client after another. And my sole mission was just, okay, like, come in, help this person do whatever it takes. What do they need? Do they need a pantry? Clean out? Do they need a trainer? Do they need. Do we need to look at an in body scan? And what I started to see as I was watching people make progress was that I was starting to talk about blood sugar. And it got me really excited when I started to talk about it. And it also was the one thing that I was nerding out on at like 10 or 11 o' clock at night and listening to podcasts on that seem to make so much sense. How I thought differently about blood sugar was that blood sugar balance means, you know, essentially watching when you're having carbohydrates, because those are the things that spike. And I think that so many people are very restrictive. Like, you're never doing this again. You're never doing this. Like, why don't your blood sugar don't have your carbs? And. And I had myself worked with a couple of practitioners that put me on, like, pretty restrictive diets and being very fortunate to Have a lot of clients in the beginning and sort of look at behaviors. Restrictions don't work. No. People do not want a box. They do not want to count. They do not want to look at numbers. Sure, maybe for a couple weeks, but then it goes away. And what I found in working with people and looking at what specifically they needed, this was the one common thread that made sense for everybody. And then I started to play with it. I was like, okay, we're not getting rid of carbs. Carbs are good, Especially athletes, which a lot of our clients are. Need carbs. So when do you have them? And then I started to really look at behaviorally. When is the time of the day that we want to, like, go for it?

Totally.

Right. Like, it's dinner. Yeah, it's dinner. And after dinner. Yep, breakfast is whatever. Like, breakfast is my favorite meal of. Of. Of ever on vacation. Right. Like, because I can enjoy it. But breakfast in the morning on a Monday is not such a fun, exciting moment for me. Right. But, like, dinner time is when we connect with our family. You might want to have a couple cocktails. You go out and celebrate something. You join somebody or people love around food as a ritual, and it's also your reward system. I worked hard all day. Now it's time to enjoy myself, whether it's a bowl of pasta or a glass of wine or like, a bowl of ice cream, after dinner with my kids. And so I just started to really play with, okay, how do we balance blood sugar throughout the day? How do we optimize the amount of time that your body burns fat? And we do that by keeping your blood sugar stable. And so the formula I came up with was to minimize your carbs throughout the day and save them for the nighttime.

Hmm. I like this plan.

Opposite of what most people tell you. Totally eat your carbs before four. Well, what about the behavior part? Like, what about who you are as a person? Forget the blood sugar and the science and the body. So. So that's what, like, I got fascinated by. And I went into this with no business plan, no game plan. I just started to listen and look at behaviors and what was working and what was it. And then, especially during COVID Wow. Like, everybody was snacking, and people were snacking on carbs. And the more carbs you have the marker, more carbs you want, the more more you're spiking your blood sugar, the more it's dropping down, and it's this roller coaster that you put your body on, and you will always be a slave to your Hunger if you're blood sugar is not balanced.

Oh my God. That would have literally changed my life like 15 years ago. Well 50 long time ago.

In the only college for sure.

I wish I knew I could eat.

Papa John's at 2am now. I'm just kidding.

Well, yeah, seriously, mine was pizza shuttle.

That's amazing.

Yes. But like looking at lifestyle because I remember, you know, I've done everything, tried everything and it was like, it was always that like more restriction at the end of the day where that is where you want to be social. And I did have times in my life where I felt like a total hermit. And you really question like do I want to be healthy or do I want to, you know, have friends? Seriously, I have, I've felt that way before.

Like. Right. And all you are taking a step further or. And do I want to feel good in my, in my clothes?

Exactly.

Where I sit on my couch and eat broccoli.

I know it's, it's like it can be actually quite lonely and depressing. So I love that you factor in the lifestyle portion. Okay, so what does that start to look? Well, first I want to say what or ask what does blood sugar play a role in? Because I know when I was not eating well I also thought I was very like, I was like I feel like I have all this anxiety.

Yeah.

Depressed. So let's talk a little bit about mood.

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Yeah. Oh, yes. So, absolutely. When your blood sugar is constantly elevated, your body shuts down fat burning. So that's plain and simply the science. You eat something that spikes your blood sugar. Insulin's released. Insulin's a fat storage hormone. It says, hey, body, I gotta get this sugar outta here. I'm gonna shut down my ability to burn fat. I'm shutting it down. So that happens anywhere between, you know, one to four hours after you're consuming food, depending on what you're consuming, the severity of the spike, your metabolism, your age. Did you work out all these factors and what happens when you have a glucose surge? You feel tired, you feel brain fog, you are ready to go to sleep. Sleep. It's that post Thanksgiving feeling of, oh, like, I'm just. Now I'm just gonna take a nap at my desk. And I personally think there's no worse feeling in the world than that. Like, I hate that feeling of being tired after I eat. And it puts you into an anxious state. You know, it puts you into, I think, a state of distress and you don't feel good. Plain, plainly and simply, you don't feel good when your blood sugar is super high. You actually feel pretty good when you're in a fasted state or your body's coasting on protein, fat and fiber, which is that trifecta that you need to get you to that next meal. So if you don't spike your blood sugar in the morning, you send yourself on this nice little fun train ride. If you spike it with a bagel or have a bunch of fruit in a smoothie, or you start off with a Clif bar or something like that, you spike super high and then you drop down. And a lot of times we put our clients on continuous glucose monitors, and what we find is once you spike in the morning, it's very hard to rebound throughout the day. Oh, so you're almost setting yourself up for failure the rest of the day. If you have Something super carby in the morning.

So that's like, like setting yourself up for failure means like you're, you're kind of messing up your appetite all day. Like you're going to be craving. Yeah.

Yes. Okay, you are messing up. You are, you are going to be hungrier if you start your day with a ton of carbs. Now let me caveat here, because people that are high intensity interval training, strength training, marathon runners, these people need a simple carbohydrate after that exertion.

Okay?

So you know that that's a different category. And this is why we have so many different programs. We do one on one customized programs and then we do our group coaching, but we really want to learn. Okay, Lori, like, what is the flow of your day from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep on Tuesday? You're going to Pilates, okay? You don't need a banana in your smoothie afterwards. Yeah, but if, I mean, you did a high intensity interval class, like an Orange Theory or Barry's Boot Boot Camp. Please replenish with blueberries or, or a piece of sprouted bread or bananas afterwards because those glycogen stores are, are low and we've gotta replace them.

Do you feel like, after, like, what is a, a good time frame for people to have to kind of learn how to eat and be guided through it where they couldn't later go on their own, where they don't feel like they're just on a freaking meal plan? Do you know what I'm saying?

Yes. Well, so our programs are three months long and by that time we kind of put you through a, like a metabolic boot camp in a, in like a gingerly way.

Yeah.

We want to help you retrain your metabolism to burn fat as your primary source of fuel instead of sugar. So this is a process called metabolic flexibility. And when you figure out metabolic flexibility and how to balance your blood sugar, everything that you want is on the other side of that weight loss. No more brain fog, no more anxiety, better sleep, better digestion, all the superficial things. You're leaner, you're more toned, your hair looks better. All the. Your blood sugar is the root of all evil. Unfortunately, sugar. Sugar is the root of all evil.

So sleep, Sleep is huge. So many people, I think, you know, whether it's staring at their phone or this, the screen, whatever. How much do you think that food has to play in to sleep?

I think it's like 80% of it.

Okay, tell me why.

I think there's a couple scenarios with regards to food that can throw your sleep off. First and foremost is not eating enough throughout the day so that you go to bed and you're hungry. And a lot of times your blood sugar will dip in the middle of the night and we'll see it on a glucose monitor of a client. They'll dip maybe below 70. And I'm like, what'd you have for dinner? And they're like, you know, grilled chicken and broccoli. Okay. That's where the carb comes in to help you stabilize that blood sugar throughout the evening. So number one is not eating enough throughout the day and you're kind of hungry. Number two is eating too much towards the end of the day because you haven't done your homework throughout the day. To prioritize meals, we have a, our ten step method. The fourth step is called Feast famine. So we're asking that when you eat, you really eat and when you're not, you don't eat. So feast, famine. Feast famine, repeat. If you are not eating enough or you eat too much at the end of the day and you go to bed on a full stomach, it will absolutely impair your repair mode, detox mode at nighttime. We've all been there where you have like too full of a stomach, you kind of sleep, I call it surface sleeping. And then you wake up with a food hangover. I don't think there's anything worse.

You know, when I, I competed in fitness for four years and I just remember it was the worst sleep of my life because, you know, they, they always kind of have you or my coaches kind of had me eating like these very protein and vegetable based meals at the end of the day and really trying to watch that sugar. And I just remember I'd wake up every single night like, well, I'm awake now. Like, because your body is like, not.

Because you didn't have cars.

No. Yes, totally.

Yeah.

So it just was like such disruptive sleep that when I started eating carbs I was like, well, look at that, right?

Actually, yeah, sweet potato and, and sleep yourself, you know, into oblivion. Like, it just.

No, you need carbs.

That's why I like that feeling at the end of the day of, yes, give me some rice with the salmon and the vegetables. And you feel so much better from it.

So much better. And then even if you're, you know, because if you're thinking about it, what happens is if, if you don't have those things in the evening and you're constantly restricting yourself and you feel that way and you're waking up it's like you're just going to end up like binging on carbs the next morning anyway because you're like, or in the middle of the night when you're awake because you can't sleep anymore. It's just a, it's a, it's a bad cycle to be in.

It's a bad cycle.

So I love that. Okay, so tell me about the ten step process that you guys put people through.

So I think one of the things that helps people, you know, you said, what do you do to not ever feel like you're on a diet plan again? Yeah, I think regimen and structure helps people feel a sense of freedom. Because whether we like to admit it or not, everybody loves a to do list. And like checking out box is really fun, very satisfying. Especially like our clientele, like very type A people. They're like done, done. And so what we've done is create a 10 step process that you go through from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep at night. And it starts with water. So it's very, these are very simple steps and it takes you through your day. So the first step is to wake up. We send you a little SWW water bottle when you start with us. And you put this by your bedside table and you have that entire bottle before you, your feet hit the floor. Sounds totally nuts, but I promise you, people start to like to really crave it totally. And then the next step is to alkalize your body. So this is helping get rid of acidity from the night before. Prime your body for digestion and alkalize. Get rid of that acidity before your next favorite step, which is to have coffee. We're not going to ask you to ever stop having coffee. I just want you to do alkalize, like a hot water with lemon, a fresh green juice, or we have a dehydrated greens powder called alkalize. You could have that right before you have your coffee. And it's like, okay, I made my bed, I drank my water, I drank my alkalis, now I'm having my fun coffee moment. And then the next step is to figure out what your fasting number is. So intermittent fasting people ask us all the time. Your fasting numbers should be varied. You should not do a 16 hour fast every single day. Not do an 18 hour fast every day. You should do 12, 14, 16, 12, maybe it's 13. And you will become intuitive with this and you'll go, okay, wow, this is a morning where I'm, it's 12 hours and I'm eating or you know, you might have been a little bit more indulgent the night before and you're like, ah, 16 is not that hard. And fasting is an awesome, awesome way to stabilize your blood sugar. It also allows you to tap into your fat stores for energy and use them. So a lot of the times why people gain weight on the outside, get fat on the outside is they're not using fat on the inside. And we have, our body's very efficient and it's very smart. And we have a lot of stores that are waiting to be used and burned up that we just don't tap into because we start our days with sugar.

Okay. And you also talk a lot about or I'd seen, seen you talking about, you know, if you're sore after a workout, if you're really bloated, this can also be a lot around you know what you're eating. Yeah, tell me about the sore after workouts. Like consistently sore is this, this is not normal.

So if you're consistently sore after workouts, it's a sign that you're probably over training. And this is a concept that I found very, very hard to grasp. We live in a culture that tells us no pain, no gain, you know, you must suffer to get a result. You must do this workout program seven days a week for two hours or you must, you know, buy your, buy the five pack and do a five, five days of a 45 minute boot camp class. And we think that that's going to yield great results. And so we have something called the ab workout strategy. And this teaches you to really dive in to those A workouts where your heart rate's above 140 beats per minute. Your hard charging, fast workouts, the interval sprints, the berries, the orange theory, A run and then your B workouts are those workouts that are 140 beats per minute and below. So this is what a lot of people are calling like more of a zone two workout and a workout's more of a VO2 max workout. And so what I argue is that with more B workouts, more yoga, Pilates, hiking, weighted vest walks, bar classes, more of those and less of the high intensity, you will actually lean out and lose weight because you have less of a cortisol response and stress response and your body taps into fat faster when you do those B type of workouts.

That was, I mean, like, let me just tell you the journey of learning that because I have been, you know, I was just like a hit workout girl years and years and years. And it was just a spiral of number one. It makes you way hungrier.

So.

Oh my God. Like a workout. Ravenous. Yeah, ravenous all the time. And then, so then you're trying not to. You're trying to like, ignore this very like instinctual part of you trying to keep you alive to go eat. And then you're doing more hit workouts because you just think that's the key because maybe it worked for you in the beginning and we just get stuck there.

Well, and it makes you feel high. It's in a. Isn't it? That dopamine hit is like, that's an addiction feeling of like feeling again.

You know, it's kind of crazy because if you go to Orange theory and analyze it, because I definitely was an orange Theory girl for a long time. Still. Still love it. But for on occasions, like the people there, I'm like, you're here five days a week and your body has never changed in two years.

Like, you work out harder than anyone I know.

Yeah. Well, it's because your body's stressed out. And I, you know, I used to be the person that if I went to bed at midnight, my alarm went off at 4:45 for a 5:30 class, I was up.

Right.

But now I will reset that alarm and sleep.

Yes, totally.

Because sleep has to be the priority. And sleep is also a learned behavior. So, you know, I have young kids and we do the same thing every single night. We do the bath, I'm teeing them up for. We're getting ready to go to sleep soon. Right? We're giving their body cues of. All right, we're gonna do the bath and we're gonna do a little song. We're gonna watch the Peppa Pig thing and then we're gonna bring you into the bed. And we're really no different. So after a day of, you know, you told me your podcast recording schedule, you are amped up at the end of the day, right? You've been in go mode, you're performing. And so you have to come up with a wind down ritual to tell your body it's okay to go to sleep and to rest deeply. That's where heart rate variability comes in. And we look at that relationship on your. On your aura or on a whoop band to see what's that relationship between your sympathetic, like what you and I are in right now and your parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest. So I love to think about our person holistically. Like, what is Lori doing What is her routine in the morning? What's your schedule at night? Where are the pitfalls? Is it sugar? Is it a glass of wine? Are you starving at lunch? And then we create a customized game plan to meet you where you are and get you closer to the goals. But I think, like, back to your original question. After three months, we've trained your metabolism. We understand what the flow of your day is, and it has become a lifestyle and something that you'll never shy away from because you feel good doing this, and it's not hard.

Okay, so I have a few questions left on here that I want to get to. So, drinking alcohol. Tell me about this. Now, I do have cocktails, so go be kind. I'm just saying.

Yeah, yeah.

No, there's so much coming out around alcohol right now. I'm like, please, do I want to block this, or do I want to send it to my husband?

I know, I know, I know. Yes. So listen, I think to say, like, you're not going to ever drink again is actually absurd. I think the way you can drink is better. So consolidate your drinking days.

Mm.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and pick your number. All right, I'm gonna have 2, 2, and 2. Or I'm gonna have 1, 1 and 1. Or I'm gonna have 1', 2 and 2. Thursday night's not a big deal. Friday night, I want to get. After. I'm gonna have three. Saturday night, I'm gonna have one. You know, I think you have to pick those sort of fun splurge events and enjoy them. And then it's also okay to go out and fake drink or, you know, order a bitters with club soda and muddled orange, because similar to the a B workout strategy, after I've done a lot of B workouts, boy, does that a workout feel good.

Yeah.

After I've done Sunday through Thursday of no drinking, boy, does that tequila feel really good on a Friday.

You know, that's actually, like, what my husband and I do every single year. We kind of, like, we'll do, like, New Year's, whatever. And every year for, like, the past three years, we've been like, hey, let's reassess our drinking. And, like, we pick the days.

We're.

We're typically like, Friday, Sunday, but sometimes Thursdays. But we do pick our number already. And there's something huge about going into that date night knowing that we both said, tonight's just one. You know what I mean?

I love that.

And then so then we're like, okay, what's the non elk? You Know, like, let's look at the non elk list after this first one. So it's just like the intentionality behind it. And also it helps that I have a partner who does it with me, but man, it is. It's literally changed my life because it's turned me from like a total. I used to be. I was pretty good during the week, but I was like a three cocktail girl on the weekend, which made me feel like. And so now I.

Days.

Yes. It's like, oh, my God, a little.

Bit on Tuesday after Saturday night.

Exactly. And so now I'm like, yeah, I really don't have more than one or two, except for, for, you know, those special occasions or whatever. But that has changed my life. And I don't think it would have ever changed if I wouldn't have started with that small step of like, just trying to stay in those parameters. Okay, how do we feel about protein? Protein at every meal. What kind of proteins do you think are best?

Protein's so hot right now.

So hot. It's the hottest thing right now. Having a moment.

It's so having a moment. So, of course, I think it's awesome.

You know, protein is awesome. T shirt.

Oh, hot right now. You know, 10 years ago, I was the yoga and quinoa girl.

Yeah.

And now I am like heavy weights and a steak girl.

Yeah, totally. Like, how did I get here?

Yeah. Like, how did that happen? Right. And I've gotten really into strength training and eating protein. Yeah. Because I. Back to that thing, Lori. I feel so good.

Totally.

I feel so good when I get a good lifting session and eat a burger. It gives me energy, it feeds my muscles. It, you know, celebrates the work I did in the gym. Like, I just can't say enough about how important it is for also making your body look good. And I think there's so many. We're just essentially, as we age, we're kind of waiting to wither. We lose muscle every decade. And so it is homework to put it on. And if you don't use it, you lose it. And so I think that the weight training and the protein goes hand in hand. So my recommendation is you choose your ideal body weight. Ideal. And then you. And then you multiply that by one. And so if you want to be £120, you need to eat 120 grams of protein. If you're £150 and you want to be £130, you need to eat 130 grams of protein. So you can pick your ideal. And then that Is really challenging to do. So my little protein tip is I make a smoothie every single morning with 45 grams of protein. And that way I'm a third of the way there. And if I eat a piece of salmon or a steak for dinner, I'm almost halfway there. Then I'll throw in something in the middle of the day for lunch. Hard boiled eggs or turkey or something like that. I also like amino acids. I think that adds its protein at no more calories. And also it doesn't make you feel full.

Ooh, tell me about your faves. I was actually looking for some.

So I like body health. I do the capsules though, because I don't love the way that that body health tastes. It's kind of sour. Okay, that's my top pick.

Okay. Body health.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

But it's hard. Protein is, it's essential. It's just, it's literally there's all these things on social nav, like, well, I gotta quit my job so I can eat.

So true. When I was competing, I was literally like just eating all of the time. I was like, eat out of you?

Right?

I was eating out of bags of like, bags of chicken. Like it was crazy. It was insane. I mean it worked. It truly it worked great. But it was, it was a full time job. There is so much about health and wellness that I feel like you can obsess over in. Looking back, I'm like, man, now that I now that I finally feel after years that I'm like dialed into what works for me. I just overthought everything. And the little things you think are going to affect you don't. And you know, just, it's, it's very, it's just all trial and error. But you know, if they program, they don't have to do all of the error. So that's great.

Everybody, yeah, everybody else did it.

Did it for them. Okay.

All the work.

Let's talk about. I just want to hit on you. Kind of touched on it. But how do we feel about juicing now?

So I don't love juicing now. I love green juice. I think, you know, it's green juice is simple carbohydrates. So I having a green juice right before a workout, if I need a little something because it's something my body can really easily burn. I also just love once in a while I'll do like a day of veggies. And so I'll do green juices, green smoothies, salads, some cooked veggies. And it feels like A really good reset from all the protein that I usually consume to them. But I don't love juice cleanses because usually in those comes beet juice and carrot juice and pineapple and all that stuff spikes your blood sugar. So you're also. Nothing really satisfying is going to happen from that. You might lose a little bit of water weight, but then you stop juicing. You're going to be so hungry. Huh.

And then I feel like once you start, you know, because I've done some juice cleanses, I feel like once you start eating again, you also kind of just, just put on the water weight that your body naturally carries when you're having food.

Yeah.

Like, I'm like, well, that was painful for nothing. How do you feel about oura rings?

I love them. I love oura rings and I love whoop bands and we use them on our private lifestyle clients and we pull the, we pull data daily so I can look out what's your output, what's your recovery. And that allows me also to say that workout that you thought was really hard is not, you know, like, yeah, I'm like, so that you crushed your workout, but your strain was 2 and your heart rate was 140. I'm not quite sure that you did.

Oh my God. I wish when I had my gym that we had oura rings because I have so many.

I know, I agree.

I promise you you can go harder.

I promise.

Promise you you can. Okay, so tell me, you, you kind of chatted about how you personalize the program. Tell me a little bit more about what that looks like if somebody was coming in, learning about their lifestyle.

Sure. There's, there's a couple ways to work with us. So first and foremost is a one on one private lifestyle client. So it's a three month program and we, depending on what level you choose, we will either just handle straight nutrition and lifestyle or we can add on and add data. You can work with our team of doctors, we have a team of concierge services, including private chef services. Meal delivery will help with travel support when you go away. You know, it's really goes from super bare bones like just let's figure out a food plan to I'm traveling and on a plane three days a week and I don't know what to eat. We'll even work with your hotels to make sure that your meals are in line or that your smoothie, you know, your smoothie ingredients are there so they can make your shake after your workout.

Wow.

So that's the one on one and then that's how really SWW was born, was just these one on one programs. And as we've grown, I've created an online program called the SWW Method. And we do it every quarter. We're kicking off our first, our January one next, next week actually. And this is a group coaching program. Hundreds of women, sometimes a couple men join and from all over the place, and we come on, we teach you the ten steps, the method. We give you your own coach, you download an app, you put your food pictures in there. We're commenting real time. You know, Lori, of course you're starving two hours later because you didn't eat enough protein. Protein. Or you did a high intensity workout. Why was your breakfast eggs and not a little bit of fruit? So things like that, we give them real time feedback, we write them a customized food grid, a plan that looks exactly like what you would get in the lifestyle. You get two 45 minute calls and then a 50 minute call at the end to figure out how you can continue working with us if you wanted to.

So you really, I mean, you cover a lot and. Yeah, and I feel like after, you know, three months or whatever your typical program is too, I feel like you learn so much that you feel like you can kind of go sort of on your own after that, but then you can always reflect back on the program. So what's, what's coming up for you? What's exciting?

So what's exciting? So we are a month or so out from launching a new product.

Awesome.

So we have our two products, Alkalize and Restore, that you can use to bookend your day. So you wake up, you alkalize the body with greens. You finish your day with Restore, which is a mineral recovery drink. It has magnesium, potassium, sodium bicarbonate and L theanine. And L theanine is an amino acid that calms your nervous system and it sets you up for a very, very deep restful sleep. So you bookend your day with Alkalize and Restore. And then our product coming out is called Elevate and it is a coffee alkalizer cream. So it's a powder into go sachets and one of them is unflavored. So I figured out that there's really three types of coffee drinkers. There's the black coffee drinker, there's the half and half. I want a creamy coffee. And then there's the mocha frappuccino that wants something sweet and decadent. So we launched, we are launching a unflavored. It's an mct organic MCT based creamer with minerals in it. It's absolutely delicious. A little teeny bit of organic monk fruit and then we have a cacao version of that that's much sweeter. But all of them keep you in a fasted state. Alkalize the coffee, add in some minerals, the acidity of the coffee normally strips away and above all else, tastes really, really delicious. Even if you are stuck and you have a not so great cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, you can put this in to elevate your coffee.

Oh my gosh. Well, coffee drinkers are celebrating everywhere. Yeah, that's, that's me. I'm always like, I'm just, I'm not giving this up. So I'm so sorry.

Give up your coffee. Just make it better.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's not. Not going away. Well, I'm so grateful for you. Where can people go to get gallons?

So you can follow us on social at Sarah Raggy Wellness and you could also just go to our website, saragi.com.

You guys, I will link everything in the show notes. So if you love what you heard, just go check it out below. Definitely go follow Sarah. And she's got so much information, even just on her Instagram. If you love those short little, you know, learnings that you can grab and go. So you guys, I'm so grateful for you tuning in and until next time, earn your happy. Bye everyone.

Sam.