Shawn Stevenson | Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism | Wellness Force

One of the other things that happens when folks simply the act of eating together with your children. This was just four meals a week, and it could have been any meals. And they did this on low income families. All right. Just this act of eating meals together four times a week, any meal, it could be dramatically protected the kids against obesity, so their rates of obesity plummeted. And also disordered eating plummeted. These are protective measures that were stimulated and created simply by eating together as a family. And these are the things that are not talked about in the conversation of food and calorie management and trying to be healthy. These are the things that really make it all special.

And this is Josh Trent, finally back on Facebook. You recognize this man? On my right or my left, this is the one and only Sean Stanley Stevenson. Sean, welcome to Wellness Force, man. Welcome to Facebook Live.

This is such a pleasure. This is a pleasure. It's been, I think five years.

It's been a minute.

It's crazy. So much has changed.

So much has changed. And we're going to talk about the one and only Eat Smarter today. I got my hardcover copy. We're going to be giving away copies, but before we dig in, Sean, I wrote a bio for you. And it just touches my heart the work you're doing in the world. This is one of the most inspirational human beings. If you haven't met Sean Stevenson yet, the number one rated iTunes podcast, the Model Health show, he's been inspiring millions of people since 2013. Right? 2013 is when you started the show.

That's when this show started. Yep. I had a little previous thing, but yeah, please continue. This is good.

So you have this powerful and authentic presence, but this is what I get from you, and this is what all of us are going to feel today. You have the science and you have the spirituality in the story. So you kind of meet in the middle.

Right.

Whether you're spiritual or scientific, Sean, you know how to talk to people. And you're the author of Sleep the 21 Essential Strategies to sleep, your way to a better body, better health, better success. But this book, eat Smarter, that we're going to talk about reverting the metabolism, upgrading the brain and transforming your life. Sean, your work is a testament to the astonishing power of the human spirit. What you've been through all the obstacles both in the past and maybe in the past couple years. You really remind us how to choose love and to choose to be of service. Such an honor to have you on the show today. You know, you talk about stacking the Odds in our favor. And this book is a huge stack of positive odds. But let's talk a little bit about what even got you to write this book. And also your story. You talk on your show, you call it the superhero origin story, right? That's what you say. I love that. And I know you're a big fan of, like, the Marvel Comics and Silver Surfer, things like that, but what even made you. What even made you ignite the spark in your brain to write this book? Was it something that your audience was asking for? Were you feeling in your heart like, yo, this is what the world needs right now? What. What was it? Was it a combo of both?

Yeah, that's. That's such a great question. And, you know, and I'm. I'm going to be 1000. I'm going to talk about things I haven't talked about, because we talked about this before the show. When Sleep Smarter came out, I wrote that book. It was really. I hadn't. I didn't know what was going to happen with it. I just felt like it was a big gap missing in the conversation about health and wellness. You know, there's a thousand different diets and diet books and programs and, you know, fitness instructors, personal trainers and gyms and yoga studios. All of these wonderful things are now sprouting up. But this was a conversation that wasn't being had at the time. And so being somebody who's been a research scientist, a clinician, and just being in this space for 19 years, I just dug into the data, and I was. Because I was having patients coming in, you know, client working as a nutritionist coming in every day. And we. We were seeing such great results by getting people's nutrition really dialed in and their fitness program. But it took me about five years in clinical practice before I started asking people about their sleep. And when they started to tell me, I could not believe what people were saying to me. And so this was finding that gap that ironically, sometimes would kind of keep me up at night, just like, why is this person not able to normalize their blood sugar when these other 80% of people were? And finally, once we got their sleep normalized, the blood sugar normalized, the weight came off, their blood pressure normalized. If they were on the Centipril or statins, everything got better. But here's the big key. I know that people want change, but they don't want to change that much. And so that's why I dug into the data to find what are some clinically proven things that are simple for people to do that, they can get the results and not have to turn their entire world upside down. So Sleep Smarter came out and it just went crazy. I had no idea that that would happen. I just wanted a piece, something to give that could go on without me being there. Because I know that people on one, on one context, even if they listen to show, it's still a minutiae compared to the virility of a book. And so that really put me in a different stratosphere as far as, you know, the folks that are working as nutritionists. You know, then, you know, I was on Dr. Oz. I was on all of these. Major network television, national radio, become the number one health podcast. All of these things happened. But I'm not. I wasn't trying to be a sleep expert. I was just sharing the data. I. This book was the book that I always wanted to write, you know, because food was my. There's many paths to the goal. There's many bridges that can get you into the domain of real health. And for me, that bridge was food. Food isn't just food, it's information. And it really started to change me from the inside out. It changed me. One of the side effects was I started to think differently when I started to put different foods into my body. And that was the bridge for me. But here's the part that I don't usually talk about. When Sleep Smarter took off and it became an international bestseller. And by the way, agents, publishers, they were trying to talk me out of it. They were like, you should just do a book on this. You know, Keto's starting to get high.

Why were they trying to talk me out of it?

Because a niche book on this topic, it was not seen before to have success ever. Sleep Smarter became the most successful sleep wellness book. And I know, like the top sleep doctors in the country who've written books, you know, they might say, you know, sell a few thousand copies, maybe 10, 20,000. We sold hundreds of thousands of copies. And part of it is the data, because I'm a very evidence based, like, logical person, but also making it fun and making it enjoyable to learn about a topic that's so weird. Like, what is sleep? It's super weird, you know, but making it fun and approachable. But so they were, you know, even back then, were trying to talk me out of it. But once the success happened, then everybody's like, when's the next book coming, Sean? What you got next? What do you got? Literally before a year was even over, and I'm just like, whoa, like this book hasn't run its course and did the things it needs to do. And this was back, I think this was 2014, maybe somewhere around then. And just now, just two years ago, I started writing Eat Smarter, but it was years. Again, people ask how long it took. It really did take me decades to write this book because it's my life experience. But also, you know, there's over 500 peer reviewed studies and just going through all this data and I knew something. Last piece I'm going to share here and why I wrote this book and to tell you heart to heart why I wrote this book. What's sandwiched into it. Number one, we have to give people what they want. So I'm providing the very best data to date on how food controls our metabolism. But in a way that's never been done before. I'm taking people behind the scenes and teaching them how their metabolism actually works. What are the hormones involved, where does fat actually go, how does the process work and demystifying it, you know, taking the complexity out of it. That again, the publishers, they'll say without saying agents that people aren't smart enough to know these things. This is why there's so many cookie cutter diets and why there's so many like eat this, not that, telling people what to do. And I really, again, I had to fight. I had to fight for what everybody's receiving right now and let them know. It's not that it's too complex for people, we're smart as hell. It's just that you guys like to make it overly complex. The people where you get the data from. And so I took that part out of it. What are the specific foods and nutrients that control fat loss related hormones and satiety hormones. And so that's the first part of the book, giving people what they want. But what we really need and what is in section two of the book really in the heart of the book is how food controls our ability to connect with other people. How food controls our ability to have empathy and patience and a perspective take and even our proclivity towards aggression and violence. I didn't know this would happen right now, but I kind of did because I grew up around it. I saw in my environment there's something not right here, there's something not really matching up in our communication.

I think you've said this before. You've said ever since you were kind of like small. I know, I felt this. There's just this like background tension in society and a lot of that has to do with the food that we eat, which is why your book is so pivotal. But what's fascinating about this core section is, like, when we eat food, it makes us feel things, right? It makes us have different emotional reactions, whether good or bad, if you want to label those. The one thing that I love most in your book. You talk about your grandma a lot in your book, and on page 242, you talk about being home for dinner. Food love, love languages. Let's go right to that, actually, because it dovetails with your story about your injuries and what happened to you when you were a kid that taught you kind of, like, the pitfalls about food. One of the coolest things you said, you said we might be under delusion that we're making choices about what we eat on our own free will, but if you research, it clearly shows and indicates that what you eat is heavily influenced by how you eat and more interesting with whom you're eating. That right there, the food love languages, like, we all know about our, like, love language types, right? For me, it's like words of affirmation and personal touch. I had never thought about food in that realm from that kind of lens. Can you talk about that? And then also what it was like for you as a kid, you know, with your grandma and your family, and just cross those for us, please.

Yeah. Thank you so much. That's my grandma's picture back here on the shelf. Like I mentioned, you know, I grew up around very kind of volatile environment, but these were so many good people as well. It's just the conditions that we're in is just so much oppression that you feel. You know, like, I grew up, I was on food. We were on food stamps, wic, getting food from food pantries, you know, like charities and things like that.

I remember the Velveeta log, right? We used to get government cheese as.

Well on that block. That government cheese, you know, it was different, but it was tasty, you know. But here's the thing. Coming from that environment, it was very different for me because I was also in a completely different environment. Like, almost the opposite. For a time, from the age of about. From kindergarten to second grade, I lived with my grandmother in a nice suburban neighborhood. I walked one block to the school, I played outside, and I didn't have to worry about anything happening to me. And we had a routine. I had woke up to certainty. We had routines for in the evening, in the morning. There's so much structure. There was a lot of magic as well. Like seeing my grandmother and grandmother My grandmother and grandfather every day. And not that I'm sure that they had disagreements, of course, they're people, but it was so much love and admiration. They were an entity. Like, it came together in one sentence. Meemaw and Pop. It just came together. And they loved each other so much, it was really remarkable. She literally could not live without him. And shortly after he passed away, you know, she. She. She left here. And having that experience, I was also exposed to the value of education. You know, she would sit with me and spark these things in me that just wanted me. It created a love of learning, which I think is one of the most valuable things to cultivate. Not necessarily learning what to learn, but. But creating an adventurous spirit or a passion for learning. It's like. But everybody. Every human has it. Every human has it. It's just for different things and finding a way to activate it. So, you know, she was definitely a big. She's throughout the book, many different aspects of my relationship with her. But on this part, with the food, love languages, you know, food fits so deeply into that framework. You know, if anybody's read the book from Dr. Gary Chapman, you know, like you said, we all communicate love in different ways, and we receive love in different ways, and we often, unfortunately, try to communicate our love to other people in the way that we like love to be communicated to us. And so one time, you know, my wife and I were together for maybe a year or two, and I remember I took this big white board out and I. And I painted. I used a little paintbrush and painted. Use different colors, you know, I think it was like my daughter's paint kit or something. And I painted her this poem on this big whiteboard, and. And it was so hard. It was so hard to do. But I just felt this desire to express this love in a different way. Like, I'm not just gonna, you know, take you out somewhere or whatever it is. I'm gonna show you how much I love you. And I gave it to her. And of course, she was like, this is awesome. But it wasn't the response that I was looking for, because that's not her love language, you know, she doesn't understand from her. From her perspective what all went into that and what I was trying to express.

Pretty anticlimactic.

Yeah. And the poem was pretty dope, you know? Cause I, you know, I know how to do the wordsmithing thing. But what really matters to her is quality time. Just being with her, that is the most important thing. Whereas I'm pretty good being by myself, you know, like, I enjoy time by myself, to learn to grow, to find out how to become better. And so you know what the greatest gift, and I didn't know this until later because I didn't understand the difference in the love language. So with food fitting into these boxes, so words of affirmation when somebody's cooking you a meal. My mother in law, one of her big ways she communicates love is through food. She lives for it. She literally lives to make food for other people. It is. She puts so much into it, like literally like met. She's meditating. She puts on meditation music while she's cooking. She puts so much love and life into that food.

She takes it seriously. That's amazing. She listens to meditation music while she cooks.

Yeah.

So it's like heart to hand to dish for real.

And she's been doing this for decades, you know. And so like she's communicating that through food, which again, that's a gift, Right. Gift giving is one love language. But in return, those words of affirmation for how good the food is, man, that really gives her life. That really makes her feel significant. Right. So giving gifts in the form of food, you know, maybe one of the greatest gifts that she gave was when my wife, when she had our son, our youngest son, Braden, and my mother in law brought over food, like food for like several days to take that off of our plate. It was such a wonderful gift to give and to speak in this love language that really mattered. Physical touch, right? Physical touch is another love language. And how we communicate and receive love, nothing fits more into that category than food does. Food is something we take from the external world and put it inside of our bodies.

Yes.

Like, it's so intimate and it be literally becomes a part of us. It touches us like nothing else can. It is so remarkable because we're. Your body is. It's a miracle really, taking this food stuff and turning it into you stuff, you know, it's such a powerful process.

I love this because I think about the way that like we take in water. Our body's like 90% water or something like that. The food and the water that we take, it actually imprints our cells. That's the part that trips me out. And you talk about the science of that in the book too. When we're absorbe, absorbing food and water, it is literally like zeros and ones, you know, like superposition on the quantum computers. That's what's happening on a very molecular level. When we take in this food and it's so easy to forget this. The quality versus the quantity. You talk about starving for macronutrients and micronutrients. Somebody could be getting 4,000 calories a day and they're still hungry. And how does that relate to the way that we force our family members to eat? And the food love language is like, well, unless you clean your plate, you don't love me. And meanwhile, what's on the plate? A bunch of calories that don't have any nutrient value.

Yeah. This is so powerful, man. And there's, again, because of the nature of this conversation, there's other different dynamics to get into. And of course, I go through each of the love languages. But I gotta touch on what you just brought back up for my spirit right now and what I really was on a mission to provide in this book is that it's not just the food itself, it's also who you're eating with, as you alluded to earlier.

Yes.

And how you're eating when you're eating all of these things. These little dynamics can literally change the entire outcome of our health. We're talking about these epigenetic controllers. And so research. And by the way, it's. Our minds are really run on questions. And so I was asking different questions, and a lot of people are asking about food. And the funny thing is, the data exists, but a lot of people don't hear about these things. So researchers at Harvard, which is again, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, really, I've heard of them. Researchers at Harvard. Right, right. So these researchers discovered that families who consistently eat dinner together. Families who consistently eat dinner together had a far higher intake of the most essential nutrients for human health and also protection against diseases. And they also had a far greater consumption of processed food and soda. Just a simple act they identified after factoring in so many different things. Age, gender, socioeconomic status. The act of eating together made families healthier. And I can, again, from my experience, when I live with my grandmother, we ate together. We ate together at least one meal a day. Living with my mother and my stepfather, I can count on my hands, besides a holiday, how many times we ate together. I'm not kidding. In the, whatever, 10 years or whatever it might be that I lived in the house 11 years, 12 years, I can count on my hands. We would often eat at the same time, but it's more like a free for all. You know, me and my brother and sister grab some food, we go sit somewhere. A lot of times in front of the tv, playing a video game. Just on the go. We didn't have that structure which entails a little bit more conscientious procedure in creating the meals. This doesn't mean that you can't order out or have takeout or whatever, eat together. But there's also something interesting that happens with humans. We're the only creatures that like get together, sit around and it's like, quote, breaking bread. We actually do this whole thing. But why do we do it? What it does, it actually helps to activate our parasympathetic nervous system and decrease that fight or flight, sympathetic dominance. Right. It improves digestion, but also by its very nature of the intentionality that goes behind creating food or preparing food for your family, it improves our outcomes of the foods that we're actually eating. And so I shared not just the study from Harvard, but also about three other studies that reiterate this in different forms in the book. And one of the other things that happens when folks simply the act of eating together with your children. This was just four meals a week, and it could have been any meals. And they did this on low income families. All right? Just this act of eating meals together four times a week, any meal could be dramatically protected the kids against obesity. So their rates of obesity plummeted. And also disordered eating plummeted. These are protective measures that were stimulated and created simply by eating together as a family. And these are the things that are not talked about in the conversation of food and calorie management and trying to be healthy. These are the things that really make it all special.

I just gotta pump the brakes right there because this is so big, like for everyone watching and listening, it's not just about what's on your plate. It's literally whether you call it epigenetically or, you know, Dr. Zach Bush calls it like the redox system, where we're microbiomes talking to each other within six feet. There's a lot of things that our eyes can't see that are actually going on. One of those is love. And that's something that's like peppered across all your content. Everything you do, whether it's a study about mask wearing and digging into the research to educate people about the dangers of mask wearing and maybe the appropriate time to wear a mask. But what's really pivotal, and I want everybody to really feel this, is like when you sit down with people that you love and, and you're creating that connection where there's food that's an act of service, it's an act of love. There's so much more going on than digestion, protein, carbs and fat. I mean, it's like a big deal. And thank you for mentioning that because so many people look to you for science. But I think I've always looked to you when I look back at your work and really diving in in 2016 is when I found you 2015. You always have this way of explaining things where it's like from the heart, but it's also trustworthy science. How do you navigate that? Because a lot of people, they get stuck in like the intellect, intellectualization of food. It's like all macros, all carbs, all protein. And then some people are super woo woo. Like they're just like, it doesn't matter what you eat, it just matters how you feel. It's like, well, there's a middle, right? How do you walk that middle, man? How do you. In all your research, I mean, you probably went through 6ft of paperwork to build this book. So how do you maintain that middle and not get pulled in either direction?

Thank you. And really, this is, man, this is such a great question. I have to say there's this battle always over nature versus nurture. I definitely see myself as somebody who's more logical, rational reasoning type person, you know, very analytical and questioning a lot of things, you know. But I went through, we have to go through seasons, we have to go through phases to develop these muscles and these capacities. So yeah, my mother in law that I mentioned when I was 25 years old, she, she's been teaching meditation now for about 40 years. And she taught me meditation. It was a class. And I was very like, what is this? You know? Okay. But my wife really sold me on it. She's been meditating since she was 2 and. But she had kind of just stopped. But her mom like developed these new meditations and so I went and I proceeded. But she spoke to my analytical mind. Like, she went and like talked about the, how these chakras were in alignment with certain glands.

That's right.

I was like, okay, yeah, I know about the thyroid, right? I'm just like the Vishudi. Okay, I get it. The anahata. Right? You got the heart. And so then, then so I suspended my disbelief because it really kind of. And this is what I picked up from her. She is one of my greatest. She's like my Yoda. All right. She's my much cuter Yoda. Well, no disrespect to baby Yoda. Groku. No, he has a name. So people just be like, it's Not Baby Yoda. So she's. That for me because she did the thing that I now do for many people. She spoke to the part of me that got me to open up. And once that happened, I suspended my disbelief and I engaged in the meditation and it changed everything. Like I. This was. I closed my eyes and I woke up. This was the first time that I realized that I had never had a conscious thought in my life. I was thinking and I was. You know, I did well in school. I did well in all these different things, but I didn't. I wasn't aware that. I was aware. I wasn't aware that there was this process happening. And I could see it now. All of a sudden, there was this separation that took place and I could see. But the sep. It was always there and it's always united. But I could see that I could choose my thoughts, I could choose my feelings. I'm not a victim, you know. And so I really. I woke up and it took a number of years of reintegrating myself into society again.

What year was this?

Because I was.

Where were you in life at this point?

I was in college still. I was 20. Yeah, I was 25 years old, so. And by the way, if you're wondering why I was 25 in college, I graduated. I think I was 26 or 25, maybe I graduated shortly after. But even in college, I never met anybody. I didn't know anybody personally who graduated from college. You know, outside of my teachers, nobody in my environment, nobody in my family ever graduated. College just wasn't a thing. Like, we didn't. I didn't know what that looked like.

Yeah.

And so when I did this thing, you know, I. When I was in high school, I was a scholar athlete, student advisory. I was the first year this program came into existence where you could take university course, Saint Louis University. While I was in high school, I was one of the first students to be able to. That was accepted into the program. Yada, yada, yada. Right. But I also got kicked out of school my entire junior year for fighting for the entire year. I graduated in three years of high school. And it was a miracle because of my environment, the way that I'm raised, my perception we solve our problems through aggression, through violence, even if I don't want to. I didn't want to fight. I tried to avoid it, but in my mind, it's just like it's going to come to this, you know. And so all the things I had to kind of overcome psychologically and just being able to manage myself. The same thing happened in college. I got kicked out of college for fighting. Who does that? Like, it doesn't even make sense. And I'm. I don't want to hurt anybody.

You were just doing what you learned. I mean, this is generational behavior. Generational, really. Trauma and violence that's passed on. And God bless all parents, right? It's like they do the best they can, but they give you these gifts and then you become either aware or not. So it's like, I love you, but I don't want that behavior. So I'm going to do this work to have a new being come through me, or I'm going to live it out the other way. There was something unique about you that made you choose your own path. Because most people, if they came from an environment that wasn't loving, that was violent, that maybe the food wasn't there, like, was scarce. I mean, you've been through, man. Like, people know you. I've listened to your show and we have a lot of links in the show, notes for this podcast. Like, you were not given this, like, gift of linear path where you were supported and loved and cherished. Like, you've been through it. So I'm curious, like, what is it about your soul? It's kind of a deep question. I promise we're going to get back to the food. But there's something about your soul, like your unique soul purpose, soul compass, whatever you want to call it, soul contract here on planet earth that made you choose to not be a victim. After all your injuries and the neighborhood you came from, what is that about your soul that allows you to give your gifts and choose that individual path of your soul instead of just repeating parents and grandparents.

Yeah, that's another great question. And you just said the word choose because I believe. And by the way, you know, that experience of, you know, getting kicked out of college, I was out for a couple of years, but I kept finding my way back. I kept finding my way back into this path because I just had this desire, like this deep seated thing all the way back from my grandmother that I was going to do something exceptional that my family had never seen before, that I was going to do something exceptional in this world and having that seed kind of planted, but going through all the processes necessary. You can't have a statement like that or belief like that without becoming the type of person that can actually handle and create that change. And so when you decide that you're going to do something outside of the bounds of what you've ever seen before outside of the bounds of your community, you are immediately evoking obstacles to be put in your way.

Yes.

All right. Because they're there to develop certain qualities and capacities and strengths and even latent abilities, latent talents that you don't even know you have. We often need. It's just like in the real world, you know, going to the gym, we need that stressor, we need that pressure to help us to develop strength and resolve and the ability to handle. And all of a sudden as you get stronger, that 10 pounds doesn't feel like anything anymore. And so as you grow as a person, those things that would normally take you down, maybe mess up your whole day, your whole week, maybe mess up your life, all of a sudden they don't even touch you. You don't even feel it because of the choice. And that's the word that you use. I chose it and I had many, many times and many of my friends and family who've end up literally dead or literally in jail right now. We had the same opportunity, same choices, but what was different? And I'm just, I'm gonna give you 1,000% from my perspective, this is what happened. I got to a place and this could be life serving this up to me or it's that soul call of like I need this to become me. I lost everything, you know, like the thing that I identified with. I was always a very capable. Even in the fighting, like I just felt like I could handle myself, I can handle anything. I felt much more like I could just whatever comes, I can handle it, you know, I got it. And suddenly that was stripped away my identity of being this like fit, athletic, capable person that was stripped away from me, my health, you know, my. The physician, when I was 20 years old, putting the MRI up, he told me I had the spine of an 80 year old man. This degenerative disc disease. Two herniated disc. And I was just in so much pain. I couldn't really move around. You know, my body was revolting against me. I lost my health and I was told it was incurable. There's nothing I can do about it. I lost truly any semblance of family that I had. You know, my grandmother, she's a trigger point. She was still there. Let me just be clear. It was her. After two years of suffering and asking habitually, which many of us do, asking why me? And I mentioned this earlier, there's this process the brain undertakes called instinctive elaboration. The human mind is really run on questions, questions I want people to walk away with this today. Questions are the answer. Questions are the answer. However, we have these subconscious questions we're always asking, whether we realize it or not. But I was asking every day of my life for those two years, why me? Why me? Why me? But. And also it's coming from a negative perspective too, because I might ask why me? Which I did later and I talked about in the book, and how we can turn these negative questions into positive. But why me Was I was. Your brain is a servo mechanism. So I'm scanning the environment to find and affirm things as to why no one will help me, why my life is terrible because I'm a terrible person, because I don't have any family or any advantages or any support. I just continue to see those things. Whereas as I evolved my awareness, now when I ask why me, it's because I am strong enough. I'm a different kind of strong.

Do you reflect back, Sean, and think about, wow, my brain wasn't being fed. And that definitely led to my struggle. Because your brain obviously wasn't being fed. Right. The human brain, as you talk about, needs smarter. The human brain is undernourished. I would say 95% of people have an undernourished brain. Right. Whether it's magnesium and we can talk about the fat and the proteins and all that, but you were coming from a place where you didn't know, that you didn't know is an ultimate blind spot. Yes.

Yeah. Those two things go hand in hand. As I mentioned, food isn't just food, it's information. As I got my body more nourished, my brain more nourished, it became easier to see the opportunities, it became easier to see the way out. But you know, to finish that question from earlier, it's just when I lost everything, when I perceived that I lost everything, you know, my health, my family structure, a sense of kind of purpose. I was going to school, but now I went from a 12 credit hours to 3. And I'm barely scraping by because I'm so embarrassed and I'm in so much pain and losing everything, you know, even my, my kids, you know, my two older kids. So I have three kids, my two older kids. You know, I was very young, you know, I was like college, high school, having my two, my first two kids, even them not being able to see me and to live with me, you know, because of the situation that I was in. You know, I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. It's one bedroom apartment, mattress on the floor. Whenever they come over I had a little air mattress that they would sleep on, but it had a hole in it. So they go to sleep like a foot above the ground. They wake up on the floor every day. Yes, but my kids and them seeing this process has been amazing, but so losing everything and people talk about this, but it is a real thing. When you hit rock bottom, seriously, when you feel like there's nothing else you can do, things can't get any worse. That's when sometimes you look up and you see your ability to stand up. And it took that, and it took a little bit of light in the form of my grandmother who called me, still checking in on me. And I use this word because she used to use this word pestering me. And I act like I was fine because he just like, what is this old lady gonna tell me? You know, how's she gonna help me? But I was not fine. And I realized that my blueprint for life was not matching up with my life conditions. And it was creating so much suffering. And so I had to change my life conditions or change my blueprint. And I decided to change both of them. And it started with when that happened. When I was at that rock bottom, I realized, no, I didn't realize this consciously yet, but I asked a different question. For the first time in two years, I asked, what can I do to feel better? It was the first time I ever asked that. After seeing all the physicians, all the drugs they gave me, all the prescriptions of bed rest, that's when everything changed. So, yeah, I mean, just to put a cherry on top of the question, that soul print or that transformation process really came from having being at that rock bottom and remembering. Remembering how capable and powerful we all are. And I want to instill that in the community members from where I'm from and from every other community in the world. That's what I'm really dedicated to.

Grandmother brings the medicine, doesn't she? Like the medicine of consciousness. There's something so powerful about that. Like really, let's be honest, ancient feminine wisdom. There's something very powerful about it. And actually my brother's here and he said, let that food be that medicine and that medicine be thy food. I know you've quoted this quite a bit, and the medicine of your grandma was like spiritual, emotional. The medicine that you were feeding yourself was food to heal yourself. Right? You had an 80 year old spine, you couldn't sprint around the track. You were dealing with having an air mattress that leaked and kids that come over. You're probably feeling a Lot of things about, like, not being able to provide. And so a lot of attacks on your psyche. There was something that pulled you forward, and it's. Here's the result. Here's the result of you being pulled forward.

Right.

As well as sleep smarter. So that result was, like you said, changing. That's the key word, like changing the blueprint. So a lot of people are here with us and Liliana and Cicely and Lori and different people are here and they're like, giving you so much love. Thank you, Sean. Yes. And on top of that, probably so many people watching this or listening are going through their own reassociation of what a blueprint actually is. Like, how do they change their life? How do they begin this journey? You know, in your, in your book, you talk about, like, the food and the psychology. So we've explored your story, man. And I got chills a couple times because I was. I was literally picturing a one bedroom apartment, but with like a leaking air mattress and kids coming in. Like, that's hard. That's really hard. And changing your food habits and changing the way that you emotionally relate to food can be hard. I used to be 280 pounds, so I understand this journey. For people that are at that beginning point as they dig in to eat smarter, what does that beginning process look like of, like, first of all, what is the blueprint? And then how do they change the one they have that's not working?

Yeah, it's so good. So good. And by the way, I do not recommend the one bedroom teenage, teenage parent sleeping on the floor. I don't, I don't recommend it. I'm glad that I went through it because it develops certain qualities.

Yeah.

But, you know, all of these things are just opportunities for us at the end of the day. And so a big way to. The most important way to see this and to change our blueprint. Where does our blueprint come from? You know, it's coming from our thoughts and our perceptions. The greatest driver of the human psyche is to stay congruent with the ideas that we carry about ourselves. Everything we do in the world is actions associated with who we believe ourselves to be. And it's very different, difficult to get in there and to change the beliefs and to change the thoughts when the hardware itself is faulty. All right. It's very difficult. And so getting in there and we're talking about changing blueprint, changing our brain to change our life, our lives. And so what does that look like? Well, you mentioned this a little bit earlier. The human body is predominantly water, but truly your brain is about 80% water. And if we're looking at the most water dominant organs in the body, it's right next to the lungs as far as the most water dominant organ in the body. And one of the studies that I shared in each mortar, the researchers found that just a 2% drop in your baseline hydration rate is enough to cause mental dysfunction and fatigue. So loss of your reduction in your reaction time, reduced ability to be able to manage yourself in spatial like spatial awareness, the ability to do mental math and grammar. Basically we get dumber as we get dehydrated. And everybody today, so many people are looking for like what is the nootropic to take what is the this and that. Water is the number one thing. And so. But it comes with another important facet. By the way, when I was dealing with all of this, I'm not kidding, maybe I drink a glass of water but I was just vicariously getting. And by the way my disc that were essentially dehydrated and being flattened, they're non. It's a non vascular. You know, it's like a process of remote osmosis. Like your disc. Even as everybody. If you wake up in the morning and you're five foot ten by the end of the day, you can be five foot nine and three, four or even five foot nine and a half. Because of that compression, gravity and those disc losing hydration. Your body has a priority to hydrate your brain and your blood first. All right. The spine and bones are like the last place to get it. So you have to really super hydrate yourself to get back to the baseline you need to be. And so with this water conversation, this water piece number one, it's incredibly healing and important for the brain. But it's not just the water itself. It's the thing that water comes along with in nature that we've evolved with. It has to have minerals, electrolytes.

Yes.

And listen to the word electro light, electro. Your brain is literally running and communicating. It's this electrical currency. It cannot even do that without electrolytes. And so we go in and look at the data on this and how powerful sodium is for hydrating and improving cognitive performance. And that's a whole. There's a lot of nuance there. We're just going to cover some. Just touch on these things.

Can I ask real quick, people don't know this. The sodium potassium pump, just like in nature, there's high, low pressure. That's huge of what you're talking about. If there's no sodium. The pump can't pump.

Listen this. And I think that a big part of it is the issue with lexicon, because sodium is a little bit of a bad word, okay? Because like high sodium is associated with high blood pressure. And we, we associate sodium and salt and they're two different things. Salt, we got, you know, sodium chloride. It is, it's, it's high in, it's. For many of us, it's our highest source of sodium intake. But the salt we're exposed to is this heavily refined, like denatured, just crap, you know, Whereas, you know, again, our ancestors, these were things we look for as we evolved. We got to set up our communities around where we got water access, you know, access to food. But also salt was very important. Salary, you know, like the name, salaries derived, you know, salt is derived from that because they were paying, they were paying people in salt, you know, so valuable. So. But one of the other ones, I just got to throw this in here, especially with cognitive performance and being able to change your thoughts, change your mind, improve your ability to think. Magnesium is so critical. And one of the really cool studies that I shared, again, this is a peer reviewed study in one of the most prestigious journals focused on neuroscience. They took folks who were between 50, 70 years old who already have confirmed cognitive decline by increasing their intake of magnesium and then re scanning their brains, rescanning and re evaluating them in cognitive skills tests. These folks by simply improving their ratio of magnesium in their bodies, had brains that were nine years younger that performed as if their brains were nine years younger just by improving their magnesium levels. This is not a joke. It's not just magnesium is good for your muscles. Magnesium is responsible for 650 biochemical processes in the body. What that means is that 650 things your body cannot do or can't do efficiently if it's deficient. And it's the number one mineral deficiency. The data, the, the best data that we have, which shared in Eat Smarter, is that 56% of Americans are deficient in magnesium, chronically deficient in magnesium. But truly I believe the number is much higher because it has so much to do with modulating stress. So there's a couple of things I got to share. One more, one more.

Yeah, we had a question specifically about dosage too. So I know you're not giving medical advice, but maybe you could let Liliana, Melissa or people know, like what do you recomm. Recommend a certain amount of magnesium? Does it depend on body weight?

Like this is a great, really Great question. And this is what's different about Eat Smarter than other nutrition and diet books with the different guidelines. Every single person has a unique metabolic fingerprint. And there's no two people that are alike. And there's so much cookie cutter data. Even the RDA recommended daily allowances for different things. They're often just bare minimums for you to not become deficient and develop a disease. All right? They're not even about what's optimal or what you need versus somebody else. Because based on your diet, based on your stress, based on your environment, all these different things, you need different things than other people. Based on your, your microbiome, based on your, what's happening with your brain, your levels of inflammation and your hypothalamus, all these different things.

So it depends what I'm right.

What I'm doing in the book is continuously giving you these pieces so that you feel truly like, oh, this is something that I probably need to add in for myself. And so in the domain of magnesium, I could tell you this. Number one and most importantly, we just want to increase your intake of magnesium rich foods because your body has. Our genes expect us to eat magnesium rich foods. And it has an intelligence to be able to garner and to use magnesium efficiently and to not overdose. But let me be clear, this is what's most important with this conversation. When I was in my nutritional science class, I was taught you're supposed to have these essential vitamins and minerals and take a multivitamin to get it. There are so many different types of magnesium. There's so many different types of vitamin C. There's so many different types of omega 3s. There's so many different types of even B12, like B12 is supposed to be a B12 vitamin. There's four. The list goes on and on. Food has all of them. When you're taking a synthetic supplement, is that the kind you really need to do the things you want? So, food first. Where are we going to get it? Anything green is going to be a good. We talk about this as well, that, you know, nature is giving us some indication of nutrient content based on color, based on the way it, it performs in nature, some of the things that it does and even the flavors, the way that we evolved. If we were talking about just natural human evolution, how we're connected to the planet, which we really are, we developed this thing, it's called post ingestive feedback. All right? And so we talk about the science of flavor and what would happen. We'll just say, you know, 500 years ago, your ancestors are, you know, hunting, foraging, and they're going out and they come across some berries, maybe some wild goji berries, but maybe it's called something else at the time, whatever, and they eat them. And then what happens is when you have that and that flavor association, your body starts taking notes on what it got from that food. Right? Oh, I got some copper, I got some selenium, I got some amino acids, I got a little bit of these kind of sesquiterpean oils. I've got all these different things. And now I've created this association between this food and these nutrients. And so when I become deficient, I will have a craving, I'll have a desire to go and eat those foods. The issue today is that food manufacturers have really muddied up the water of that communication. And so then of course we talk about the associated hunger and metabolism effects. But here's the thing, anything green is a great source of magnesium. Chocolate is actually a great source. Ironically, chocolate is a great source of magnesium as well.

One of my favorites, just a square of dark chocolate. It's so good.

There you go, there you go.

It's the best.

And we want to get, you know, of course, higher quality stuff. Nuts and seeds are going to be great sources of magnesium. You know, there's tons of different lists in the book, but food first, then we can look at supplements. This is something in my clinical practice I would have quite a bit of people to supplement with magnesium. And since then, you know, we've had many much more improved products. I like things that are still earth grown nutrients and not like some synthetic chemical, whatever isolated thing, but like what is. Maybe there's a magnesium supplement that's derived from like really, really concentrated sources of salt and they, you know, isolate that magnesium, for example.

I'm a huge fan of the element stuff. I don't know if you and Rob have talked about that. Do you have brands that you go by? Do you even, do you recommend brands? First of all, do you get in trouble if you recommend brands? Like, do you even do that?

I do, I do from time to time. You know, especially if I'm using it on a daily basis. I have tried it, but I haven't talked with Rob yet and I don't use it consistently. You know, I've been, I tend to like experiment with just a couple of things at a time, you know, to see what it does. And so, so number one, food first supplements. And then also there's topical magnesiums as well. And the Great thing about it is that there's a little bit of an intelligence of the body to absorb essentially what it can use. So magnesium sulfate, right? That's Epsom salt, right? But then there's like these wonderful magnesium sprays and things like that. But again, you want to make sure that they're not coming along with potentially dangerous, you know, chemicals. We don't want that. We just want something that's, you know, very, you know, from quote, earth grown nutrients and earth grown sources.

It's very clear. Food first. And we're doing like a scratch of. A scratch of the tip of the iceberg for Eat Smarter, go to Eat Smarter book right now. There's a 30 day program that's involved in this too. And also, Sean, we're going to give away three copies, man. We love you. We love your book. So you guys watching and listening right now? Please just leave us a review on itunes. Like an honest review. If you like it, cool. If you don't tell us how we can get better, tell us what you thought of Sean. Go and get one of three copies and we'll actually announce it on the 31st of January this month. Sean, you are such a wealth of knowledge, man. I already knew this. Like you, the way you can go deep on one topic without any notes, just from your memory, it's a testament to all the work that you've done. It's really like the embodiment that we talk about on the show. So many people are like, searching for the next podcast, the next book, the next thing. They're like stuck in that gathering phase where they're just trying to get all the information and then they're trying to embody it so they can, like, let go of the weight, which is actually something I learned from you five years ago. We don't need to lose the weight. We know where it is, right? You taught this in podcasts like five, six years ago. We know where the weight is. We don't have to lose it. It's there. It's about letting it go. So to fortify this. And my question for you is like the emotional component of Eat Smarter, the psychological, the brain nutrients. We talked about magnesium. Is there anything from a micro or a macro perspective that can give us higher emotional intelligence, right? Our ability to have emotional resilience and the capacity to listen and not get triggered. Like, talk about that a little bit, man.

Such a great question. So. And by the way, I love that, you know, our tendency when we lose something, right, we lose weight, Our tendency is to try to find what we lost, you know, where, you know, and so we want to, like you said, let it go. But even to get to that place where you can have that insight and that different perspective, it really is kind of garnered by what we're putting into our bodies. So what can we do as far as nutrition to improve our. Our emotional intelligence and our ability to relate to other people? I want to share two things. So, number one, researchers at the Ohio State University, they wanted to find out what would happen with married couples when they have abnormal blood sugar and their ability to communicate with each other and to solve their relationship conflicts. And so they had them wear continuous glucose monitors. And this was a while ago. This is before. It's like every. People are just doing it just for. Just for chits and giggles, right? So they had these folks to wear them, and they can actually monitor what's happening with their blood sugar in real time. And so what they discovered was that. And by the way, in our culture right now, we have a hundred, and here in America, we have 135 million Americans have type 2 diabetes or pre diabetes right now. And the number. It's just sky continues to grow. So we're talking about abnormal blood sugar. This is habitual. This is an absolute epidemic. It is a major problem. Super easy to have abnormal blood sugar and eat a common meal. Like, I grew up eating almost every meal for my entire life up until I had this, you know, transfer transformation in thinking. Something that makes you go, you know, sugar spike and then you go hypoglycemic, right? Blood sugar spike and crash and that associated crash. Your body takes blood sugar management very, very seriously. Like, this is a threat because your blood sugar needs to be stable so that you can keep your eyes out for threats. Because, again, we think we're fancy. We could get a drive, a Tesla. We could wear nice clothes. We are still. We have very primal programming. And so the blood sugar has to be stable for you to analyze and to like to analyze threats in case you need to fight or flee. And plus, your blood sugar needs to be on point for you to fight or flee. All right? So to get your blood sugar back up, your body can do it, and it will instantly do it. The way that it goes about doing it, though, is by secreting these catecholamines, right? So stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, to get it back to its baseline. The side effect, however, is that they can make us very irritable and even aggressive. And so what they discovered in the study, after compiling the Data. When folks were experiencing abnormal blood sugar, they were far more likely to have greater aggression towards their partner. They're far less likely to be able to have patience and a prospective take. And they also found that they were far less likely to resolve their relationship conflicts just based on their blood sugar. All right, so when we're talking about being able to have empathy and to have patience and understanding the ramifications, what's happening in our environment around us, most folks are habitually experiencing abnormal blood sugar and it's just creating. They don't even realize this term that we use in science called, you know, it's called hangry. But we take this very seriously. It's a real thing. And so coming out and thinking that we're in control of our thoughts, feelings and emotions. These issues we're talking about, this was with people who are in married relationships who probably love each other and wanting. And by the way, I don't usually share this often, but part of what they did in monitoring how they felt about their partner, they were using like one of those like voodoo dolls where you stick a pin. Like how many pins do you stick for your, you know, for your mate this evening? You know, which is really messed up. It's really messed up. But so that's part one is making sure that we are eating in a way that we can keep our blood sugar stable. And for most folks, by the way, it's going to be unique to us. We get into that. But for most folks, it's just going to be eating real food, you know, just avoiding some of the crazy, whatever, I mean, just the stuff that I, that we grew up eating. So that's one side. But let me give something very specific here and something helping to modulate and regulate our blood sugar, but also making us more emotional and more emotionally intelligent and more stable and patient. And this is omega 3 fatty acids. All right. The data on this is absolutely insane. It's crazy. I talk about this pretty much in every chapter of the book because it just keeps showing up on the metabolism side, the cognitive side, the sleep wellness side. And the reason that this, it's so remarkable is that it's one of the few nutrients that very clearly makes your brain work better. And so what the researchers discovered. So I'll share two quick studies. One, we'll just talk about cognitive performance. So this is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by simply increasing folks consumption. And this isn't just omega 3s, it's DHA and EPA. Okay, not just not ala, not the plant Version, which I'll give some advice for folks that aren't eating animal products.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, we have.

We want to give them love, too.

It's inclusive. It's inclusive for all. All walks of nutrition.

Yes.

And so what they found was simply by. So first of all, they have a baseline performance in their memory by increasing their intake of DHA and EPA within a matter of days, dramatically improved their memory. So we can talk about declarative memory, explicit memory, the list goes on and on. On paper, they got smarter by improving the intake of this one nutrient. That's good. Here's the other side. And this relates to our inability to manage our emotions. Oh, this was really messed up. This is crazy. So these researchers, they mapped this out and they were using MRIs to actually look at the brain itself, and they found that the folks who had the lowest intake of DHA and EPA had the highest rate of brain shrinkage. Accelerated brain shrinkage. The baseline was 1.2 teaspoons a day. Anything lower than that accelerated brain shrinkage. When we're talking about managing our emotions and we're talking about the executive part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, and we're talking about the amygdala, which is much more emotional and much more concerned about survival of self than putting yourself in someone else's shoes, all of these parts of the brain literally start to lose life. And this is something that's not talked about. That literally, if you're deficient in this nutrient, your brain is going to shrink. Another thing that's associated with brain shrinkage is as our weight goes up, our brains get bigger. As our body fat, as our body mass index goes up, our brains get smaller. And this is Dr. Daniel Amen. Really good friend. And actually his, his quote is on, on the book, but he does SPECT imaging. So he actually looks at the brain and he sees this stuff. It's not just hearsay. It's not, oh, I think you have a chemical imbalance. We're going to look at the brain and actually see what's going on and not guess, right. So in the intake. And by the way, the. This isn't like shrinkage that just because it's cold outside, like you get into the cold plunge, you get a little shrinkage.

This is like long term, we've all been there.

This is like long term, Mess up your life, mess up your brain, mess up your ability to have emotional intelligence and to regulate yourself and your decisions when you're deficient in these things. And last I got to Share this really, really quickly, please. This hits the forefront in a study that was done on prison inmates. And we haven't, we have a visual of what that looks like, right? Aggressive, you know, rule breaking, all these different things we might think about. It's unfortunate the situation from the perspective of science. It's a great place for a study because it's a ward study where you can track everything that's happening in real time. And so what they did was they gave a certain group of prison inmates improved nutrition in the forms of vitamins, mineral and omega 3 supplements. All right? And these are going to be inherently, these are going to be from whole food sources. Okay. And then they gave another group of inmates placebos. Four month study, compiled all the data and their results. The inmates who were receiving improved nutrition in the forms of vitamins, minerals, omega 3 supplements had a 40% reduction in behavioral offenses and they had a 37% reduction in violent offenses simply by improving their nutrition. And specifically, the thing that really stood out to me because it's going to be coming from a whole food source versus this synthetic whatever is the Omega 3 supplements. All right. It literally makes you better able to self manage because in that situation, your prefrontal cortex that has social control, that is able to distinguish between if I take this action, this is going to happen. I don't want that to happen. Let me change my approach or my action. Right? Let me make another decision. That part of the brain, when your brain is malnourished, it can't do its job effectively. Not to say it's impossible, it's just a whole lot harder.

Wow, man. The seeds you have planted in our mental garden, I just, I hope and trust they're going to grow with everybody because I think about the EPA and the DHA and like you got to pay attention to the source, by the way. So if you're eating fish that are fed soy, you probably don't want that epa, dha. So there's some great sources out there. You go into that deeper in the book, but the one piece about this, that's huge. And I'm not necessarily a religious man or a biblical man, but I believe it's in the Bible. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. So the flesh was weak because the brain couldn't do what the spirit was asking the body to do. There's this interrelationship between mind, body, spirit. It's not just a cool wellness phrase, right? It's real. So how do you approach that in conversations with clients and by the way, do you even work with anybody individually anymore? Do you have groups programs? Like, how do people get involved with you? I know there's the 30 day process. You can go to eatsmarterbook.com, but how do you cross this chasm? How do you connect the mind, body, spirit for people that you even work with if you do, or in your group programs or in your work?

That's a great question. And thank you for the directive with the book as well, and folks that are listening live. This is crazy, what I'm about to say, you know, again, coming from where I come from. But when Eat Smarter came out, it became the number one new release in America of all books, which is crazy. And the books actually sold out on the biggest book retailer on Amazon. So right now you can't get it at Amazon, but you can still get it. It's restocked. Barnes and noble.com, target.com also target bookstores. The bookstores have them. You know, even if you go to Amazon Bookstore, somebody just sent a picture.

And go to Sean's Instagram because sometimes he'll roll up in a Target and like, sign a few copies. So go to his Instagram and see if you're in his neighborhood. I know you're in L. A. Anyways. Please, please. Yeah.

So cool. So cool. But all of this is just to say that I didn't expect it. No. But to experience it, it's just been so unexplainable. Unexplainable, you know, because I really felt that this was needed right now at this time. So many. The book was supposed to come out, like, almost a year ago, actually, but things kept happening to move it back to this point when we really. At the turn of the year and to see the response and people. It was on the top 10 list with Barack Obama, Matthew McConaughey. What this is. I'm not this. I'm not that, like, this isn't about celebrity or politics. This is about health. It's about love and connection and education. And people are showing that this is important. So those are the places you can find the book. And of course, esmarterbook.com we got a free video course that I put together, too. But so thank you so much for that directive. Yes. And really being able to kind of tap into the question was about our soul. Soul blueprint.

That's right. The connection between this mind, body, spirit. We hear about this in wellness. I think there's even software. It's called, like, mindbody.com but beyond just it being, as Michael Pollan calls it, like something where it's on a social media meme or it's looked upon as just like a lighthearted thing. There's so much truth in this equation of mind, body and spirit. So my question for you was, like, how do you actually approach this for people that are beginning the journey? And I don't know if you work with clients anymore individually. This concept of mind, body, spirit, it might be cool to intellectualize, but where does the heart meet the road? On it.

Yeah. And so with. I closed down my clinical practice a few years, a few years ago, which was tough. It was really tough. I mean, everything was very successful and I was having incredible experience, but I just really. And it was like, so. It was so hard. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done because there's also a sense of certainty in that as well, that I've been doing so long. But I knew that this was when I was writing Eat Smart. I mean, Sleep Smarter. This is when I was writing Sleep Smarter. I knew, like, I've got to go 120 into this and get this message out to the world. And so that's when I made that decision. So I don't work with patients and clients personally anymore. I do have various programs, different schools that I work with. And also I do guest lectures. Like, I just did a guest lecture for NYU Neuroscience department for their students. But, you know, there's different institutes and things like that for training. But outside of that, how do we do this and why? You know, this is the power, the virility that a book has, because you could take my entire life experience and encapsulate it, something that has taken me decades, and you can absorb that in days. That is one of the biggest things with tapping into that, because for you to be able to identify and to have, even as you're listening today and connecting with Josh and I, having this experience, if there's something that sticks out to you, it's because it's already there in you. It's not something that came from outside. It's just reminding you of who you are, how powerful you are, and the gifts and the insights and the capacities, your spirit, just like, ah, yep, yep. That's familiar. You know, that's familiar. So I would say, and I've got this firsthand experience. Oh, man. The people in my life now that I would see on the television, you know, that are my friends. Wow. I mean, I'm just kind of freaking out right now. So, like Michael Beckwith, I saw him in a documentary. I'm about to talk to him in about 30 minutes here. You know, I'm bringing that up to say immerse yourself in it. Get yourself around good people. Get yourself around what he calls the beloved community. And people that support you and support your greatness. This doesn't mean that they cater to you. Yeah. And they tell you everything's gonna be okay all the time. It's more so that they, they create a space for you to grow. They, they help to, to provide a little bit of, you know, a little bit of space and some fertilizer with some, with some insights and some advice. But people who also make you think differently, who challenge you and challenge your way of thinking, you know, get yourself around community. Good people. Make it a priority. That's part one. The other part of that is because it develops like a positive perimeter that supports your growth. But the other part of that, as, as you do that, as you grow yourself, you start to become a light and, and a source of inspiration for other people. And that's really what paying it forward means. That's, that's really. It becomes infectious. There's negativity isn't the only thing that's infectious. That's right. And disease, growth, health. We have solid data on this. We have solid data on this. That health is contagious. That a positive frame of mind and solution oriented thinking and success is contagious as well. And today more than ever, you're not relegated to only the powers that be. Get to know this stuff. You can click play, you could hang out with Josh, and you get tapped in to something that feeds your spirit. So make it a mandate to do that every day. No matter what, come what may, get a positive perimeter set up to simply remind you of your greatness.

Man. Just like we started the show, stacking the odds in your favor. So with this book, you're obviously stacking almost 400 pages of odds that are positive. The positive perimeter. I've waited six years to ask you this question. And with the grounds that we've covered with emotional intelligence and neurology and brain health and supplementation and the pitfalls that we scratch the surface with, with everything you've been through, men, your upbringing, the way that you serve now, the books that you've written, the. The way you will serve and probably another book that you'll write, I think you should write something called Be Smarter, which is a combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual. Just plant that seed in your garden. How do you, how does Sean Stevenson, define wellness. You know, we look at this axis of mental, emotional and spiritual. But what does that actually mean? You know, not from an intellectual level, but from your heart. Like, how do you see wellness? What is wellness to you?

The first thing that came up as soon as you asked that question is relationships. You know, we're a product of our environment. We really are. But what's exceptional about humans is that we're also creators of our environment. We can proactively create any environment we can imagine. It's just, it's incredible the things that we can do. But often we're using our power for little things. You know, we don't really understand how powerful we are. So ror, right? There's ROI return on relationship. I would not be here talking with you guys had I not invested in ror. And I'm saying that from perspective. I was by myself. I was alone in that one bedroom apartment. Like, I've never felt so alone. And part of that too is my. Just my, my natural tendency, or maybe there's that nature versus nurture thing, but, you know, just really feeling like I don't need anybody. I got this. You know, I even told you my kind of aggressive spirit and just feeling like, you know, whatever it is, I can handle it. Trying to save the world by yourself will kill you. All right? So I had to open myself up and kind of cure this lone wolf syndrome that I had and open myself up to working with and through other people, you know, so wellness is great relationships. It just makes it all easier. It makes. It makes being healthy so much easier. If you're hanging out with Josh and I and we're like, you know, we're hungry, we're probably not going to roll up at Wendy's, you know what I mean? It just makes it. It makes it more complicated to be unhealthy. But so that's number one and also wellness to me. So number one is relationships. But I think it's coupled right with. So I can't say one is more important than the other, but wellness is. It all starts from your perception of who you are. You know, I mentioned this. Everything about us, our thoughts. I could talk about the action, right? Wellness is being like eating healthy food. It starts with who you believe yourself to be. And here's the cool part. You get to choose who you are. You get to decide who you are and you get to write your story. No one else is writing it for you. Sometimes we act like I'm kind of co star or maybe, you know, you are the star of your story. And the sooner we can realize that, the sooner that we can realize that the pen is in our hands and we can write our own story and write who we want to be, the more gracefully we're going to find that place of overall wellness.

With a deep breath and my hands together, man. Thank you for the wisdom you've shared. What an incredible podcast we had. Like so many people. Eat Smarter Movement. Somebody tagged in the, in the comments. Eat Smarter Movement. Do you have a hashtag where people can actually follow you and engage with you about the book?

You know, you already know. And my wife, she handles us all.

We'll ask.

Yeah. So there. But there's a hashtag for esmarter that we, you know, we follow, we engage with. But if just follow me on Instagram. I'm at Sean Model and I'm doing a lot of cool stuff there. I was very resist. I'm one of those people. I'm just resisted. I wasn't going to do Instagram. Now it's clubhouse. You want to build a clubhouse. I'm just, you know, so. But now I'm on Instagram and having a lot of fun and sharing a lot of cool stuff.

Cool. Everything's in the show, notes eatsmarterbook.com Sean, thank you from my heart to yours and everybody with us, thank you for coming on the show and until we see each other again, maybe not on the Facebook Live. I'd love to have you back on the show to talk about relationships and the rorket. Until that time, Sean and I are both wishing everyone with us love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon.