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August 1, 2022 92 mins

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.

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Jay Shetty sits down with Shawn Stevenson to talk about the amount of control we have over our body. Studies have shown that our thoughts are powerful enough to motivate us to move, to thrive, and to succeed. The same goes for our determination to improve ourselves. If we use the strength of our mind to push ourselves and our body to exceed what society deems as our limits, we can achieve far greater things. 

Shawn Stevenson is the author of the USA Today National bestseller Eat Smarter and the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter. He’s also creator of The Model Health Show, featured as the number #1 health podcast in the U.S. with millions of listener downloads each year. A graduate of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Shawn studied business, biology, and nutritional science and became the cofounder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Shawn has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, Muscle & Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, and many other major media outlets.

Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/

What We Discuss:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 03:15 Diagnosed with a degenerative disease
  • 12:31 Body movement is the primary driver of healing
  • 21:36 The power of food to reboot our metabolism
  • 32:23 How brain inflammation affects our body
  • 41:13 The human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe
  • 47:36 Your overall stress load as a human being
  • 59:13 Placebo clinical trial on prison inmates
  • 01:06:20 Our mood improves when we’re healthier
  • 01:10:33 If you allow a person to speak
  • 01:16:59 We’re living in a sick society
  • 01:26:25 Abundance in people resources is a gift

Episode Resources

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On paper, we're supposed to be more evolved and intelligent
than we've ever been. And people were like, well, we're
living longer though. No, No, we're the first generation in
recorded human history that is not going to outlive the
generation before us. It is now reversed. By treating symptoms,
we can keep people alive. And what's happening is we're
not really living longer, We're dying longer. We're extending the suffering.

(00:28):
Hey everyone, welcome back to on Purpose. I am so
excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it.
My new book Eight Rules of Love is out and
I cannot wait to share it with you. I am
so so excited for you to read this book, for
you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook.
If you haven't got it already, make sure you go

(00:50):
to eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to
anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love.
So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up,
or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.
And I'd love to invite you to come and see
me for my global tour Love Rules. Go to Ja
Shettytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences,

(01:14):
and more. I can't wait to see you this year.
I am so excited to share today's episode with you.
This is a guest that I've been messaging, connecting with
for a while. We're finally here. So it's always a
great feeling when you're finally sitting in the studio with
someone that you've wanted to talk to, interview, gained their
insights for a long time. And he's a real expert.

(01:37):
He's a true deep expert. And you know how much
I love mining the mind and the energy of someone
who's so deeply rooted in the work they do. And
today's guest is none other than Sean Stevenson, the author
of the USA Today national bestseller Eat Smarter and the
international best selling book Sleep Smarter. He's also the creation

(02:00):
of The Model Health Show, featured as the number one
health podcast in the US with millions of listeners downloads
each year. A graduate of the University of Missouri Saint Louis,
Sean studied business biology and nutritional science and became the
co founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Sean has been

(02:21):
featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, Muscle
and Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, and many other major media outlets. Today,
I'm excited to speak to him and buy his book,
Eat Smarter and His Journey. You can order the book
as we're speaking. If you're someone who's been focusing on
your diet to improve it for your body, your mind,

(02:42):
your relationships, your brain, then this is the episode for you. Sean.
Welcome to On Purpose. Thank you for being here, and
thank you for writing this book. It's such an honor
to be here. You make everything sound so much better
as well, you had to live it, so you know
it's been amazing. But I mean, we've been messaging, we've
been wanting to get together where we're finally here, and

(03:05):
I was just saying to you offline that my physical
health journey has been very interesting because I almost ignored
it for a long time because I was so focused
on the mind and the soul and the heart. And
my wife was my educator and my coach when it
came to my physical health. And so whenever I'm sitting
with someone who deeply understands food and nutrition, I'm very

(03:28):
fascinated and open book because I know there's something I
can improve about my health, whether it's through my gut
or my brain. But I want to start with a
bit about you. And you know, when you were younger,
you were diagnosed and I won't give it away, you
can share about it, but you were diagnosed and told
that there might not be a way of fixing or

(03:51):
solving something. Now, I can't imagine what that feels like
hearing that when you're younger, and I'm guessing at that
time you didn't have the skills you have today. So
can you take us back to that moment and just
explain to us what you went through and how that
sparked your journey. Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah. So we were a
product of our environment, but we're also creators of our

(04:12):
environment once we become aware of it. And so I
was just replicating what I was seeing around me, which
was a lot of dysfunction, which was a lot of
ill health, and I kind of was like the one
in my family that had the potential to make it.
And what it was was in the environment that I
was in, in the inner city and being in poverty,
which Evan say that kind of with the parentheses. Here

(04:34):
in the United States, poverty is very different. You still
probably have a TV A card, you know, when much
of the world is living on a couple dollars a day.
But you know, we were struggling to get by in
this environment. All I saw was the opportunity for me
to go to college, which I never met anybody that
went to college, let alone graduated except my teachers. Was
through athletics, and so I did really well in school,

(04:57):
but I just saw sports was going to be my
way to get a scholarship. And when I was fifteen
years old, I ran a four to five forty, which
is like NFL combine caliber, you know, and I was
doing really great in track as well, but fate had
other plans for me. It was actually at track practice
when I had the first glimpse of what was to come.

(05:18):
And so I was doing a two hundred meter time trial,
which two hundred meters is half the track, and the
time trials just me and my coach, and I took
off and I was coming around the curve of the
track into the straight away and my hip broke and
I didn't realize it at the time because I just
kind of came up limping. I thought maybe I pulled
a muscle. I'd never really been injured before. But it

(05:38):
took a couple of days and when I got a
scan down because I just couldn't turn my legs over.
I went to see a pt and a physician and
they put the scan up, the X ray and it's
just my iliat crest bone was just floating off in space.
It's like, oh, that's the problem right there. And what
I went through was something called standard of care. All right,
standard of care, which is not really looking at what

(05:59):
is the cause of this thing, but let's treat these symptoms, right.
So I got some insid some nonsteroidal into inflammatories. I
got some crutches, which was cool. I got to get
out of class early and take the school elevator. But
nobody stopped to ask, how did the kid break his
hip from running? And fast forward. I experienced almost a
dozen more injuries the next two years. I just couldn't

(06:21):
stay on the football field or on the track, and
my body was just breaking down, and so my vision
of playing at the next level was just vanquished. Fortunately, academically,
I got a bunch of scholarships. I got to go
to school that I went to go to. I was
gonna walk on and red shirt in football. But this
is where I get that diagnosis. So I was twenty
years old and I was diagnosed with something called degenerative

(06:43):
disc disease and degenerative bone disease, so basically an advanced
arthritic condition of my spine, and this is usually reserved
for people who are much older. And so I was
nineteen twenty years old. The reason that I went into
the doctor was I just couldn't. I couldn't extend my leg.
I was always in a lot of pain, and whenever
I was stand up, I would get this like four

(07:03):
lightning bolt shooting down my leg and it was just miserable.
And if you can imagine this when you're in pain
when you stand up, how about you just don't stand
up right? So I was doing everything I could to
avoid standing up, and so I sat a lot. I
was constantly laying down or playing video games. I was
in college still, and it just got progressively worse because

(07:24):
your body really works on this use it or lose
it basis. So not only was my spine deteriorating, the
rest of me was atrophing as well. And so, to
really put the icing on the cake of the story,
when I went in and see my physician and he
gave me this diagnosis. He looked me right in my
eyes and he told me that this situation was incurable.
Right because for me being an athlete, I was just like,

(07:46):
all right, what do we do to fix this? And
he put his hand on my shoulders like I'm sorry, son,
this is something that just happens, and I'm sorry it
happened to you, and that on my shoulders like I'm sorry, son,
this is something that just happens, and I'm sorry it
happened to you. And that today I realized that goes
against basic laws of physics, like there's nothing that just happens.

(08:06):
You know, there's a cause and effect. And I didn't.
It didn't register to me when he first said it.
It didn't. It didn't make sense. So I rejected it,
and I asked him this specific question. Jay and I
have no grounds for asking him this question, but I
asked him, does this have anything to do with what
I'm eating? Should I change the way that I'm exercising?
And he looked at me like I was from another planet.

(08:28):
He was like, this has nothing to do with what
you're eating. This is something that just happens, and a
little sidebar, and I didn't talk about this for many years.
But you know, my physician, he was he was obese,
and he was clearly struggling with his own health. Not
to say that he wasn't qualified to give me advice,
but he was clearly struggling himself. But I took his

(08:50):
advice because he was the expert in him saying that
this was my lot in life. What he invoked with
something called a no Cbo effect, which we can come
back and talk about in a moment, but the bottom
line was he said that this has nothing to do
with what I'm eating. But he wrote me a prescription
to eat some pills. Right, This has nothing to do
with what you're putting in your mouth. Go ahead and

(09:10):
put these in your mouth. Right. And so that was
the level of thinking that I was dealing with. Fast
forward the story. After leaving there, I went from a
nuisance of a pain to chronic, debilitating pain. Right, because
now I know that I have this thing, this is
my identity. I'm this sick person. I'm going to be
in pain for the rest of my life. He told
me that. And so for the next two years, I

(09:30):
did as little as I possibly could, and he told me,
he gave me permission. That's the big thing. People don't realize.
If if you've been struggling your whole life and somebody
gives you permission to stop struggling, nobody's gonna blame you.
You got this bad thing that happened, just take this
free pass, this hall pass, and just ride it out.
It took two years, which you know, some people never

(09:53):
get it, and some people get it a little bit faster.
But it took me two years. And over these two years,
eating what I called the tough diet, a typical universe
the food, I was continuing the same behaviors, and I
gained a bunch of weight now because not only was
I eating the same things, but now I'm inactive, and
so I became much fluffier, i'd lovingly say, version of myself.

(10:14):
And I didn't recognize a person I saw in the mirror.
And that was one of those breaking moments for me.
It's just like I didn't even recognize who I was.
And after those two years, it's usually an event or
a person or something that becomes a catalyst for that change,
and for me, it was my grandmother, you know, and
she was always checking on me those two years. And

(10:36):
if you're a young kid, just like I'm fine, Grandma,
you know, but I wasn't fine, and she knew it.
She was the one who really advocated for me. She's
the one who believed in me more than anybody, that
I was going to do something great. And here I
was living in Ferguson, Missouri, in his one bedroom apartment,
sleeping on the mattress on the floor, overweight in chronic pain,
can't sleep at night, and my life didn't match up

(10:57):
to my blueprint of what success was to look like.
And so it was in that moment that I decided
to get well. And most people don't really get that, Jay,
It's just like it sounds so simple, right, But the
reality is oftentimes we don't decide. It's more like we'll
see what happens. It's like wishful thinking. It's like, you know,
I wish you know this would happen. But when you

(11:20):
decide something, you really cut away the possibility that of
anything else but that thing. And even the word if
you break it down, day meaning from and kaider, which
means to cut right. So you cut away the possibility
of anything else but that thing. And I decided to
get well. And so the last little part we could
talk about how I did this, but it was from
six weeks from that moment of decision, and I had

(11:41):
lost about eighteen pounds, which is not typical. But I
was always kind of the skinny kid in my family,
so my fat gene is definitely kicked on. But you know,
the weight just came off of me once I started
to implore a few really foundational principles, you know, with
my nutrition, with movement, and the pain I've been experiencing
that had me in terror for two years was gone.

(12:01):
And it was about nine months later when I got
a scan done and I completely reversed the degeneration. My
two herniated disc had retracted on their own. My bone
density was normal, and it was as if the thing
had never happened. So and by that experience happening to
me and seeing the stories of people coming up to
me at my university asking me to help them because

(12:22):
they saw the change. You know, I didn't look like
a guy who lost wait. I looked like somebody who's
really healthy. And to hear their stories, like people saying
telling them, you're going to live with this disease forever
diabetes or heart disease, you're you're gonna be on the
stat and whatever the case might be. And I had
this experience where I was told this negative thing was

(12:43):
going to be your story and to no longer have
that as my story. I had this level of authority
that I couldn't really put a finger on, and people
were attracted to that. So my life just went from
being very self centered in my pain to being other
centered and being of service. And I found every way
that I could to help others, and it landed me
here with you. That's a beautiful man. Thank you for

(13:05):
I know how hard it is to synthesize a life's
work in a few minutes. And of course I'm hoping
that everyone who's listening and watching is going to get
better acquainted with you if they're not already listeners. But
I'm intrigued by when you made that decision? What was

(13:26):
the first thing you did? Because I often find that,
first of all, it's hard to make the decision. When
you've made the decision, then the first thing you do
has such a big impact on momentum and acceleration. What
was the first thing you did that's so powerful? Jay
because the decision is instantaneous, but what takes long is

(13:49):
getting ourselves to the place where we make the decision right.
And so the first decision that I made, which I
didn't realize this consciously two years later, is I changed
the habitual question that I was asking. And today I
know that there's this really phenomenal process of the brain
evokes called instinctual elaboration. The human brain is always trying

(14:10):
to answer questions that we pose. It it's just automatic.
Our mutual friend Jim Quick, We've talked about this many times.
And the question that I was asking, was unconscious all
the time, was why me? Why is this happening to me?
Why won't somebody help me? And so my brain is
constantly scanning my internal and external environment to affirm why me,
Why I'm unhelpable, why I'm not deserving of being healthy? Right,

(14:35):
So I'm just getting all this data in as to
why my life sucks because I'm looking for it. And
so in that moment of decision, and again I wasn't aware,
I wasn't consciously aware of this, but I just asked
this question, very simple ask. Instead of asking why, I
asked what can I do to feel better because I
just saw a series of other doctors, which I highly

(14:55):
encourage people to if you get a bad bill of
goods like that, get a second third opinion before taking
any drastic action. Because I was just talking with Tony
Robbins about this recently. But there was a big meta
analysis done by the Mayo Clinic and they found that
when you get that initial diagnosis, it's only the same.
Less than twenty percent of the time is the second

(15:18):
diagnosis the same as the first diagnosis, And often it's
radically different, all right, So it's somewhere in the ballpark
of like eighteen percent of the time it's the same.
So that being said, you also want to seek counsel
from somebody who's not in the same line of thinking
as well. You know, somebody all ideally who has the
same goal as you, Like, if you're diagnosed with this
thing and you don't want to have this thing, maybe

(15:39):
that's the person you need to go and talk to.
But I was seeking counsel from the same type of thinker.
I asked this question, what is it that I can
do to feel better? What is it that I can do?
And this was kind of an audacious thing to be
healthier than I've ever been. That night was the first
night that I slept through the night without medication in
those two years. I just felt this peace, you know,

(16:01):
when I woke up, and this is the thing too,
It's not like again, like a unicorn came out and
like the clouds parted and you know, it's happily. Ever after,
I put a plan together, and that plan unentailed three
specific things. The first thing was changing my nutrition. I
knew just on a very rudimentary level that I needed
to quote lose weight, right because I was just like, logically,

(16:24):
if I'm having this pressure on my disk, let me
take some of this pressure off by losing some of
this mass. And I'm carrying. But I'll be honest with you,
j the first thing that I did was slim fast, right,
So because of marketing, like I saw the TV, that's
what I was acclimated to. So it's like a shake
for breakfast, a shake for lunch, a sensible dinner, right.
And it was disgusting, all right, it was terrible. It

(16:45):
only worked for a couple of days that I did it.
But by me asking the questions, the right people, the
right situations, the right books start to show up and
oftentimes those things have been there the whole time, but
I just wasn't a tune to them. And I had
a friend of mine that I had known her for years,
and she was in chiropractic college and we just like
kicked it, you know. But and I just thought she

(17:06):
was weird, you know, with her and her friends, you know.
And she took me to wild oats, right, which has
since been brought up by Whole Foods. And so now
I'm in this environment where I'm seeing all these different
supplements and foods and there's like grass inside. I'm like,
why is there grass inside? You know, a sweet grass.
But there was a book there, a nutrition prescription, and

(17:26):
it had all these peer of viewed And I was
in college, so I'm versed in research, especially doing what
I was doing in college. And there was peer of
viewed data on regenerating her nations and degenerative disc disease.
And there are all these nutrients that I had never
even heard of. Like all I knew about for bone density,
for example, was calcium. Because of marketing. There was like

(17:50):
a mega threes sulfur bearing, amino acid, silica, all these
other things that I wasn't getting anywhere in my drive
through diet, and so I started to again. I went
from slim fast to being a natural pill popper. Right,
So it's just like I need these nutrients. Let me
just take these supplements again missing the market's taking steps
towards it, and ultimately, of course that's very expensive. But

(18:11):
I finally realize, like, what if humans been doing the longest.
We're getting these nutrients through food, not synthetic, isolated versions
of those things. So I started to seek out all
the foods that had these nutrients and just begin to
like flood my system with these foods. So that was
number one. I changed what I was eating and literally
and there's a I've got to share this now, but
we'll probably circle back to this as one of the

(18:32):
most important tenants. Every single cell in our body is
made from the food that we eat, every cell, and
so we have the ability to make our bodies out
of really low quality materials or out of the best
stuff possible, you know. And so I was making my
tissues out of absolute garbage. I'm not exaggerating the slightest.
I fast food every day every day because again I

(18:54):
lived in Ferguson Missouri. I was surrounded by low quality
food and processed food and liquor stores, and that's all
I knew, right, And it was cheap. Again, being on
a college budget, that's what I could afford, which we
got to talk about that the economy is a scale too.
So anyway, so I'm flooding my tissues with really high
quality stuff now. And the body is so intelligent once
you give it the right materials, it knows what to do.

(19:17):
It's often just us getting out of the way. And
so that was one number two. The low hanging fruit
for me that I had some education on was movement
and exercise and being in pain. The worst thing to
do is to do nothing. There is a time when
you know you have a state of inflammation, like if
I have these two hernated disks, I'm not going to
go in deadlift, you know, three fifteen. That's not a

(19:38):
good idea. But after a couple of days and I'm functional,
I need to do something because the body movement is
one of the primary drivers of healing, of assimilation of nutrients,
of elimination of metabolic waste products. All these different things
require movement, right, Life is movement, and so I just
went to the gym at the university gym. Just did

(19:59):
what I can, which was I started off on a
stationary bike. A week later, I started doing a little
bit walking on the treadmill. A week later I picked
up a couple of weights, and all of that was
driving the good nutrition I was bringing in deeper into
my cells. Right. And the third thing was my biggest
struggle that two years was sleeping at night. And I
was just like, I gotta find a way to get

(20:21):
some rest because I was chronically tired, and I didn't
have to try to do that. One A principle from
my first book, Sleep Morner, is that a great night
of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. Right.
So all these good things I was doing, exercising, changing
my nutrition and getting access to sunlight, all these really
simple things led to me sleeping better in the evening.

(20:43):
And once I started sleeping, I got better so fast.
Because it is the most anabolic stage that a human
being can be in outside of meditation. Everything else is
really catabolic. If you're up and active, you're catabolic. And
so this is where your body's producing all these regenerative
hormones and HGH and reparative enzymes, you know, once my

(21:03):
sleep improved, and my movement practice. But of course the
biggest thing was my mind, you know, my change and
perception of all these things. But that's really what the
first domino was, was changing the question and the right
stuff that was already there. I can now see. I
love how you've simplified it into the diet and nutrition,
the sleep, and then of course the movement aspect, which

(21:28):
you know, the three key tenants and then grouped by
the mindset and the approach. I want to dive into
some of those amazing insights that you share in this book,
because I think, as you rightly said, our understanding of food, nutrients, vitamins,

(21:50):
supplements has been so rudimentary for so long, and even today,
I think, as you rightly said, there's so much being
marketed at us that you kind of follow the latest
trend or the latest diet or the latest fad, only
to find that it's not sustainable or that it doesn't
really cure how you're feeling. And I think we've started

(22:13):
to realize that food can change how you feel. And
I don't think we thought about it. We thought food
is energy and you just keep putting it and I
love the idea of how we're building ourselves through bad
materials or good materials. Why is it important, as you
talk about in the book, to use power of food
to reboot your metabolism? What are the benefits of rebooting

(22:37):
your metabolism? And what are methods through diet and nutrition
that boost our metabolism? For everyone listening, it should always
be what is the thing? Right, So when we hear
these terms like metabolism, we often have a certain association
with it, that's my point. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, So it's
usually going to be tied to weight loss, and it's
a huge mistake because metabolism is really every thing. There's

(23:01):
a whole field of immunometabolism. You know, your immune system
has its own metabolism, where it's building new immune cells,
where it's functioning at a certain level, where there's cellular
waste products, and the list goes on and on. All
these things are metabolism. So life itself is driven by metabolism.
But this is a huge mistake, even in the weight

(23:21):
loss domain, when we're just thinking about food and nutrition
and diet in terms of changing our metabolism. And this
is why with the book, I gave people what they want,
which again that's the on ramp, right, But food controls
so much more than just our metabolism. It also controls
our cognitive function. Our emotional intelligence is highly influenced by

(23:42):
our nutrition. That's one of the main things I wanted
to talk with you about as well. And also it
affects our relationships and how we relate to other people.
The list goes on and on. Food isn't just food,
it's information, you know. And so as far as the
metabolism side is concerned, what I wanted to do was
break down how the process of metabolism actually works. How

(24:02):
does weight loss work right? How does fat loss work?
Where does fat go? Like when I quote lose weight,
where the hell's the weight go? You know what I mean?
So I'm taking people through that process and I use
analogies to make it make sense. Because one of the
things I learned from Tony was one of the fastest
ways of learning, which I was doing this but I

(24:22):
didn't realize it. It takes something that you don't know
and connected to something that you do know, right, And
so I use this analogy of going to the movies
and using it as a cellular movie theater and how
the process of fat loss actually works. And so we've
got these key ushers that are making things happen. You know,
you come into the movie theater and you've got these

(24:44):
specific enzymes. So we've got hormone sensitive light paise for example,
and hormone sensitive light paise is the enzyme required to
actually open up your cell so that it releases stored energy.
You know, try to list arise stored fat to be
used for fuel. Nothing's happening without this usher, all right,
So that's required. Then we've got another usher who's putting
fat in the seats right, lightboprotein lightpase right, and so

(25:08):
but then we've got the managers of the ushers, which
are insulin and glucagon. Which there's so much more, but
I'm just giving a little snapshot. This is great. I
love this analogy. It's a brilliant analogy. So it's making
it makes sense to me. So that's a good thing.
I'm the dummy in the room, is Yeah. So insulin
and glucagon they're actually brothers, right, So they're both from

(25:29):
their loving mother, miss Pancreas. All right, So insulin is
really about management and always looking for the worst possible scenario, right,
So they're all about saving up for a rainy day,
gets storing as much as possible so we're all safe
and we're all good. Glucagon is more of a free thinker,
more of a you know, go with the flow type

(25:52):
of vibe, and it's cool with letting go of some
of this store and energy, and so glucagon to make
a summation of the So insulin is the biggest hormonal
driver of us storing fat in our cells or storing
energy in our cells. When people hear the word insulin,
we often think about diabetes, right because a lack type

(26:13):
one diabetes is a lack of producing insulin. The mother
pancrea is the beta cells are not producing insulin, which
is absolutely horrendous. This means your cells can't get energy
and you'll literally just wither away. It's a terrible way
to die. Type two diabetes, which is most prevalent here
the United States. Right now in the United States, about

(26:33):
one hundred and thirty million citizens here in the US
have type two diabetes or pre diabetes. It's insane. But
this is not a condition where you're no longer producing insulin.
This is a condition where your insulin sensitivity, the ability
of that cell to get the signal has been tampered down,
right because insulin has been so abundant, because the blood
sugar has been so abundant, right, And so it's but

(26:56):
here's the thing, and it's a really beautiful thing that
even a condition like that, it's the body adapting to
keep you alive. So type two diabetes and we get
this label that you have this chronic disease and you're
no good or you know, you're tainted or you're broken,
it's actually this really intelligent adaptation by the human body

(27:17):
because it's adapting the way that your metabolism works under
unideal circumstances. Right. So it's beautiful, it's amazing. The problem, however,
is that we've been led to believe that that is
the end story, that your body is stupid and it
can't shift and create another expression. And so now it's
common knowledge back in the day. I've been in this

(27:37):
field almost twenty years. I'm about to hit my twenty
year anniversary, and we couldn't publicly say even another friend
Mark Hyman, like, you've got to be very careful saying
cure diabetes. Right today, it's common knowledge that you can
reverse this condition. So we've got insulin driving people into
the seats, right, keeping the theater full, and we got

(27:59):
gluca open up the doors to allow people to go
out and kick it at an afterparty. Right. So these
are two big hormonal drivers of metabolism. We've got some
enzymatic ones I hit a little bit, but then we've
got the internal cashier as well, which is your liver
in many ways, so people don't think about these things,

(28:20):
and this beautiful dance has taken place, like we just
want to get that fat off, right, and oftentimes we
associate that with like really working hard, right, restricting, cutting
things away. You can't have deprivation, right, all those things.
Those terms don't feel good, right, It's very against human nature.
And on the other side, you have to abuse yourself.

(28:42):
You have to exercise your face off, you've got to
just you know this tenant that I was taught in
my universe. I paid for this education Jay at a
private at a private university. The first day of school
in this big auditorium nutritional science class, the teacher told
us that if you want to manage your metabolism, if
you want to manage your body weight, just manage your calories.

(29:03):
That's all you have to do is control the calories. Right,
he was overweighted as well, by the way, all right,
and now again it's not that he's trying to be
in a fais. This is what he learned. And at
the time, we were in the food pyramid, all right.
So this is when I went to school back in
this was ninety seven. It's changed a little bit, like
we went from like the food pyramid to my plate,
but still really the same principles. But to say that

(29:25):
calories control everything about you or your metabolism or your
ability to lose weight is very myopic. It's tunnel vision
and people don't really realize. And that's what I spent
the nice segment of the book really diving into the
beautiful history behind calories and like, how is that a
thing that people plant this flag? And I know this.
I was one of them, right, being a nutritional scientist

(29:46):
and also somebody who's working as a strength and conditioning
coach at the university. I was just replicating and regurgitating
what I was taught, and it worked for some people
not for others. And so what I did was I
brought to bear this new term. It's called epichloric right. So,
and this was a pivot from my friend Bruce Lipton,
doctor Bruce Lipton. I don't know if you've talked to

(30:07):
him before, the biology of belief, right, So epigenetics, right,
So this is he's the person more than anybody's pushing
into popular culture. That means above genetic control, right, but
epichloric control, it's above caloric control. There are certain principles
that control your what your body does with the calories
you consume. And this would be so logical if we

(30:29):
think about it. And so just a couple of those.
One of those is the quality of food itself. All right,
So we hear this that not all calories are created equal,
but we have really sound science on this. Now I
share one of the studies in the book, and again
this was a peer reviewed study, And what they did
was they took test subjects and they wanted to see
what would happen with their metabolism when they eat a

(30:51):
meal of processed foods versus a meal of whole foods. Right,
and so the process food they're both sandwiches, by the way,
all right, So it's not like superglorified process versus. But
the whole food sandwich was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese.
The processed food sandwich was white bread and cheese product.
And cheese product is what most people are eating. That's
like craft. They can't legally call it cheese. It's called

(31:14):
Kraft singles. There's not enough cheese and the cheese, you know,
which is really messed up. Wow. Yeah. And so they
consume each of these sandwiches and they track their caloric expenditure. Right. So,
and this is something to get to just the end
part of like where does the weight go? We breathe.
Most of the weight that we lose out, we expel
it through our lungs. Our lungs are on also excretion

(31:37):
organ as well. We don't really think about that, but
they are. And so anyways, so they're tracking the outgo
of energy after eating these two sandwiches. And what they
found was that people eating when they eat the processed
food sandwich, there's a fifty percent reduction in their body's
expenditure of calories. Something happened by eating that food that
made their body hold onto more of the energy they

(31:57):
just consumed. And what it really was a hormonal clog.
To put it in a simple term, it changed the
hormonal cascade, neurotransmitter cascade organ function in a way that
made the body more stingy and holding onto this very
abnormal energy that was coming in. And so again, fifty
percent reduction is massive. And how often are people trying

(32:18):
to lose weight counting calories but eating processed foods, counting
the point system and all these things which can be wonderful,
but we have to address the food quality. So this
was publishing food and nutrition research. By the way, if yeah,
that's fascinating, I'm so glad you shared that with me,
because yeah, it's easy to be like this is healthy food,
this is unhealthy food. But it's even deeper than that.

(32:38):
And I think the gold standard, which I think you set,
which I really identify with, is I just know I
want to be healthier. Like what I've been saying is
I want to be healthier. I want to be more
informed because if something happens to me, I don't want
it to be something that I can and will continue
to want it to because I want to be as

(33:00):
healthy as I can continue to do my service in
the world. Likes that's where my past, my intention goes.
I know, one of the things that people are struggling
with a lot right now is inflammation. Right, And you
talk about the microbiome in the book as well in
the Connection, But walk me through where inflammation is created
from and how it connects to the microbiome in the book. Yeah,

(33:24):
the term again, what is it? Yeah, inflammation? The term
itself is derived from the word essentially meaning to set
on fire. Right, So there's this fire taking place in
the human body. And just to lean and connect inflammation
to metabolism, let's do that. One of the studies that
I referred to as well was looking at and this
was published in the Annals of the New York Academy

(33:46):
of Sciences, and they were looking at what was happening
with inflammation in the brain leading to accelerated weight gain.
Right now, this is another thing when people are trying
to lose weight, nobody's telling them, we need to deal
with the inflammation in your brain. And so what the
researchers uncovered was that essentially inflammation in the brain was

(34:06):
leading to more belly fhat accumulation and more disruption to
their metabolism. But the key was more belly fat accumulation
and obesity. Once people were venturing into obesity, it was
leading to more brain inflammation. So this becomes this vicious circle, right,
and again we're not looking at we need to address
the inflammation in your brain. Why is this happening when

(34:27):
your brain is controlling your body far more than anything else,
and there's an internal thermostat that's even controlling your metabolic rate,
which is based in your hypothalamus, which kind of considered
the master gland of the body. And the hypothalamus not
only is kind of like a thermostat for your metabolism,
but also it's a thermostat for your body temperature, for

(34:47):
your sleep cycles, and the list goes on. It's like
a circadian controller, right, Circadian medicine is popping right out too,
and so paying attention and so specifically the researchers were
denoting hypothalamic inflammation leading to all these problems. So what's
causing that brain inflammation. Obesity in and of itself is
increasing the rate of inflammation. So right now in the

(35:08):
United States, we're knocking on the door of two hundred
and fifty million of our citizens being overweight or obese. Right,
it's beyond epidemic. It's it's insane, rest assured. If we're
venturing into obesity, your brain is suffering because of it.
And I also noted in another study where we're seeing
this correlation. I talked to Daniel Aman who wrote that,
you know, keep it on the podcast twice. Yeah, I

(35:28):
love him so much, but he's accumulated so much data.
But there's also some period studies as well, looking at
once our waist size is increasing is correlated with a
decrease in our brain size. So as our wat circumference
goes up, our brain size goes down the volume of
our brain, which is not good at all. And so
there's this huge connection with these two. But also what's

(35:51):
driving this inflammation is the foods that we're eating obviously
as well an obesity self. Just to give a little snapshot, like,
how's that work? How's obesity creating more information? Our fat
cells are pretty they're pretty damn amazing. If without our
fat cells being as intelligent as they are, we wouldn't
have made it as humanity. It enabled us to go

(36:12):
through times of famine and still survive. But here's the thing.
We live in a very different time now where more
people are dying from excess than from deprivation, right, and
so during this time of excess, our fat cells can
actually grow. When thousand times their size rights it gets crazy.
They're like, Wow, I don't want to disrespect them by

(36:33):
calling little trash cans, but they're kind of like these
internal trash cans that can keep collecting. Yeah, it's like
these halfty, halfty cent sacks, like really good trash bags
that are filling up. And as that happens, it's sending
out a distress signal because the fat cells were never
made to contain that much stored energy, and so it's
sending out a kind of a false distress signal to

(36:54):
your immune system thinking that you're infected. You know, your
fat cells are chronically infected. This is why we see
epidemic levels of inflammation measured by things like C reactive
protein and folks as we venture into obesity. So the
fat cells themselves are a big contributor to inflammation. But
to lean into food a little bit one of the
biggest culprits as being highlighted today. And there's with any

(37:16):
of the stuff I talk about, Jay, there's always conflicting
it from that and the average person doesn't though, you know,
it's just like this is the end all be all.
What I do is, I'm a research scientist. Primarily, I'll
go and proactively look for things that rebuke what I believe,
that prove what I'm saying other otherwise or other than.

(37:40):
And you have it takes a lot of courage to
go and look for things to prove you wrong. But
what I'll do is I'll look at the variety of
information and what is the majority of data that we
have say that's a better place for us to stand
on and educate from right. But one of the biggest culprits,
and this is what the majority of data says is
these highly refined mind oxidized seed oils that have become

(38:03):
so prevalent in our food system. And again, I get
to work with the best people in the world in
these subjects, like doctor Kate Shanahan. It's really a pioneering
voice in this field. And she's you know, she worked
with the Lakers and help with Kobe Bryant, got him
all these protocols, extending his career, all these great things,
and so she has that fame and credibility there. But
she's also a brilliant scientist and somebody who's very versed

(38:25):
in metabolism. But one of the things that she shared
with me was that this particular study, which was crazy,
they looked at the biopsies, right, so you can actually
go and look inside of what a fat cell contains
back in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds and
saw what is the makeup of the average person's fat cell.
And about two percent of our fat cells back then

(38:47):
were made of these polyunsaturated fatty acids or poofaus. Right today,
the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids that make up the
average person's fat cell is up to twenty five or
even thirty percent. Went from two percent to twenty so
literally the ingredients that make us as a species has
changed dramatically. And what is it about these particular facts,

(39:09):
Like how is so much of it making up the
ingredients that make us up? And it's because they're in everything.
They're very cheap, they're rancid oxidized oil, they have no
choice but to be those things like getting the oil
from corn, Like there's so little and if people saw
the process, which I highly encourage people to do, there's
lots of videos you could see the processing of canola
oil or quote vegetable oil. I remember when my mom

(39:32):
started using vegetable oil trying to get healthy because my family, again,
I was the skinny kid in the family. Everybody pretty
much everybody else in my family at least about eighty
percent of folks world beats, and so she started using
vegetable oil. Sounds healthy, but it's not asparagus oil or
broccoli oil. These are highly refined seed oils, corn oil,
soy oil, canola oil. And to extract those oils there,

(39:57):
it kind of looks like just mud. It just looks disgusting.
It looks like this um like kind of like almost
like gasoline type vibe to it. And it has to
use bleaching agents and deodorizers. And I cited a study
in my book, and this was publishing the journal Inhalation Toxicology,
and they found that just smelling those oils while cooking

(40:19):
can damage your DNA. Crazy stuff smell, just inhaling the
fumes from it let alone actually pretty head. Yes, yes,
so it's crazy. It's so crazy. And so for me,
it's just looking like this specific component your body has
to go into this kind of pro inflammatory state to

(40:40):
try to manage any insult. Inflammation is one of the
most important things for our survival. It's kind of been
given a bad name right now because we're dealing with
chronic inflammation, but we need inflammation in order to to
just heal for stuff you don't even know what's going on.
There are cells right now in your body that are

(41:00):
dying off and recycling. There's always an inflammatory component catabolic component,
and that's okay. But once we venture into chronic inflamation,
where these things are getting out of hand, that's where
we start to see all manner of things go wrong. Wow,
I mean you know what I've I find it so
useful to be having this conversation with you because, and

(41:20):
I hope everyone who's listening and watching, I'm trying to
ask the questions that I think we skip. What does
this actually mean? How does it actually affect us? Because
right now we hear all these buzzwords and we look
for the quick fix, or I have go inflammation, or
I do this to you know, alcoholize it, I've got this,
do this, it's like, and we're always looking at that

(41:41):
quick fix, that quick when the quick solve, and actually,
when I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm going, wow,
there is just of course, naturally there's so much more
to it, but we have to be so much more
alert and vigilant, which is where we struggle because it's
almost like there is no veniance now because there's all

(42:02):
this information. Like you said, there's conflicting information. So if
I'm listening to this show right now and I want
to create more energy in my life, I want to
create more vibrancy in how I feel. What are some
of the things that were likely missing or that we're
likely struggling with in our diet or nutritionally that we

(42:25):
could add to help start that process of at least
feeling a bit more positive, like we have a bit
more control. We could stay right in the same lane
and just swap out the oils that we're using with
some intention. Researchers at Auburn found that olive oil OIO
canthal rich extra virgin olive oil is one of the

(42:47):
few things that's been found to be highly effective at
reducing information of the brain right and also being able
to help to heal the blood brain barrier. So what
does this mean? The blood brain barrier is kind of
like Matiokaku's kind of like a modern day Einstein, right.
He was like, the human brain is the most complicated

(43:08):
object in the known universe. That's big for him to
say something like that. That's really remarkable. The human brain
is the most complicated object in the known universe, right,
And the cool thing is we all have one. We're
never very good at using it, but we all have
this really miraculous organ and your body is very protective

(43:31):
of it because again, it's controlling everything about She's controlling
your metabolism. For example. It's the only major organ is
fully encased in hard in hard bone, right, So it's
we've got this built in helmet to try to protect it.
We've got the blood brain barrier, because everything that we eat.
The last place to actually allow nutrient sane, it's going

(43:51):
to be your brain, right, because it has a blood
brain Barrier's kind of like an internal security system, or
I like to think about it like a toll boot. Right,
So certain certain nutrients get express pass. Right, if anybody
ever has lived where they have tolls, and you get
an express pass that can go right into the brain.

(44:12):
Most other things they're going to meet the toll booth
and they're not going to be able to get through
because the guard there's like you know, Dwayne the Rock Johnson,
it's like clones of him and Vin Diesel or whatever.
So it's just like highly unlikely that you can get
into the brain. It's very it's like an exclusive club.
It's very exclusive. And so to make it into the brain,
only specific things are able to do that. One of

(44:34):
the big issues today leading to more information is the degradation.
We're breaking down our own blood brain barrier, this internal
security system by eating all these abnormal foods. The blood
brain barrier, a big aspect of its regulation is through
the fast that we consume, right and so again eating
these really low quality oils and making ourselves out of
these things, we're degrading how our body functions. And so

(44:57):
what the researchers found again was that extra virgin oleocanthal
rich olive oil is one of those foods that's really
healing and anti inflammatory and also can help to heal
the blood brain barrier. That's crazy because for me, again,
like I don't have a dog in the fight. I
don't care if olive oil is cool or not. I
it's I don't care. It's so miraculous. But then you

(45:21):
just look at what if humans been doing the longest,
and how do you make olive oil? You crush olives.
That's it. It's not like the process that these other oils,
these seed oils have to go through again with the
deodor risers and the bleaching agents and the high heat.
As a matter of fact, extra virgin olive oil that
means that it's not heat processed all right, So it's

(45:42):
even paying attention to the very volatile nature of those
fats and it's stored in dark glass bottles because it's
even photosensitive. It's light sensitive, can break down and degrade
those oils, right. So and humans, we have documentation for
thousands of years have been consuming olive oil, right, And
so that's one of the great principles to lean back into,

(46:03):
which is like, what if human's been doing the longest,
let's do that, you know what got us here, because
what we're doing now is not working. Right, So that's
one of the great foods that can help to reduce inflammation.
So swapping out those oils being intentional about it, the
best way to consume these oils is going to be
through like finishing dishes, like adding some olive oil on

(46:24):
top or using it to make solids. Cooking with it,
you can moderate heat is okay, But for cooking we
need things that have more saturation, that are more stable
so they're not giving off all of these these kind
of pro inflammatory oxidative compounds. Right, So that would be
like coconut oil or gee or grass fed butter Avocado

(46:47):
oil is also rising in popularity now as well. But
just to throw a couple more for reducing information, the
cruciferous family of vegetables have been found to reduce information
specifically in the brain. Broccoli. You know again, I put
peer of viewed data to show that this food that's
just like super common can help to reduce brain information. Right,
So yeah, I can go on and on, but those

(47:08):
are things. No, No, this is fantastic. And I want
everyone who's listening and watching to know that all these reviews,
the research is in the book Eat Smarter, which is
what Sean's referencing. If you are listening and you don't
see me holding the cover and holding the book, you
can order it right now. And I deeply recommend that
because the level of detail of insight that Sean has

(47:31):
is so powerful it should not be underestimated. This isn't
a new diet book or a fad book on like,
you know, here's what you need to do, three things
you need to do tomorrow. It's not like that. There
is like deep research, reflection, introspection that Sean's done and
study he's done, and so you know, I'm going in

(47:52):
and allowing him to share depth on certain parts. But
the book is full of these insights. Shan. I want
to talk a bit about stress and the brain and
then diet because you also talk about the impact of
food on the brain. Brain on food, but also our
emotional states. We all know what emotional eating is. We've

(48:16):
all picked up a tub of ice cream or picked
up sugars when we're lowing energy or you know, we've
been there. We may even get drawn in that direction
still today. One thing I find intriguing that I'd love
to learn from you is how much is stress in
the brain causing some of these challenges within the body,

(48:41):
And can food be used to work backwards almost or
distress need to be dealt with in different ways. Yeah,
that's such a great question. Again, what is stress? We
have to look at that, and we tend to put
stress in this one box. Cognitively, most times people associated
with like life, stress work, stress work is stressing me out,

(49:02):
our relationship is stressing me out. But those are just
a couple of factors that go into your overall stress
load as a human being. So all of these inputs
are stressors. And for example, exercise is a stressor, and
it's known as a hermitic stressor, which that means that
if you're able to recover from said exercise, you get benefit,
right kind of like what doesn't kill me makes me

(49:23):
stronger principle. Right. But if you put on intense exercise
on top of relationship stress, work, stress, spiritual stress, right,
feeling not on purpose or cut adrift or disconnected, you
add that onto diet stress, the stress coming from the
abnormal food you may be consuming. The environmental stress right

(49:48):
right now, this is dope, Like we can record, We
got all this technology, but all of these energies are
just running in and out of ourselves at paces and
degrees that we just don't it then yet, right, So
we're all intermingling with these energies that we've never been
exposed to again as humans. So the environment itself is
going to be adding an additional stress. Gravity. Gravity's trying

(50:11):
to kill you, like you literally is trying to weigh
us down, you know in a sense if you want
to look at it like that. But we are resilient.
We've adapted to it, you know. But the John Carter,
I don't know if you know about that. That that book,
and that's that movie Disney. It didn't do very well,
but I think it's on Disney plus John Carter. So
this guy teleports accidentally, like from Civil War Vibes to

(50:33):
being on Mars. And on Mars, he's like superhuman because
gravity is different, so he's like jumping around, you know,
like it's it's really cool to think about. Gravity has
conditioned us in a certain way, and we were resilient
against it. So environmental stress goes on there, and I
can go on and on. All of these stress inputs
create your overall stress load as a human being. Now,

(50:56):
the issue is that, man, I've had to coortunity to
work with so many people in a one on one context,
but you know, groups and the books and all the stuff.
But the most overlooked thing that I've seen when people
are wanting to, you know, get off of their blood
press pressure medication that the centepreals or the statins or
you know, metform it for diabetes or their antidepressants, whatever

(51:17):
it might be. The nutrition and the exercise can only
go so far. The number one thing that I've seen
that people overlook is the impact of stress. Because you
can over eat your way into disease, you can undermove
your way into disease. You can undersleep your way into
these disease. You can also overstress your way into disease.
The problem is that stress is invisible, you know, in

(51:40):
a sense, like exercise, we know what that is, like,
it's physical, we're interacting with it. Food is like you're
putting stuff in like it's it's it's visceral, it's something
you could touch. Because stress doesn't have that aspect, we
negate it. But truly, and just to kind of loop
back to the story with that physician and then bolt wow.

(52:01):
So everybody's heard at this point of the placebo effect,
you know, to some degree, I was going to come
back to this. I'm glad you've gone and this it's amazing, right,
it's amazing. So just on average, if we look at
the breadth of pre viewed data that we have on average,
placebos are about thirty percent effective in clinical trials. So

(52:22):
fake drugs, sham surgeries, fake treatments are about thirty percent
effective on average. Studies much higher, like eighty percent effective
in some studies on antidepressants. People are not actually getting
something that has a real treatment. They just believe that
they're taking the drug. Now, this is very important. It

(52:46):
has to becoming No, it doesn't. He doesn't have to.
But in these trials are coming from an authority figure. Right.
And so one of the things that I talk about
in the book is the impact that your thoughts have
on your body's metabolism. Right. So this was done by
doctor Alia Crumb and her team at Stanford at the time,
and it was the Milkshake Study. And so they blended
up these milkshakes and they labeled them different different amounts

(53:09):
of calories even though they were all the same. So
some of them were the indulgent milkshakes they labeled like
seven hundred calories, some were you the smart shakes, where
they labeled they like two hundred calories, but all of
them were really like four hundred and fifty calories or
something like that. And so what they found was that
people who believed they were having the indulgent milkshake, they

(53:32):
had a much greater secretion or suppression of grillan, the
hunger hormone. Right, so they're more satiated because they believe
they're consuming something it has a lot more caloric energy.
And on the other side, the people who thought they
were eating the sense of Shake, the sensible milkshake, their
grillan levels didn't budge at all, which means they're going

(53:53):
to be hungry again very soon after having that milkshake. Right.
So that's the power of the mind to literally manipulate
your metabolit just in that one snapshot. And I've got
so much more data, right, so your thoughts determine what's
happening with your metabolism. So going back to the placebo effect,
so placebo's being again, we've got data. A great book

(54:14):
is Mind over Medicine doctor Lissa Rankin. So many studies
in there, but we've got data on placebo's being effective
and cancer treatments in surgeries for knees like MCL repair
like we've got there's there's so many crazy studies where
you know they'll because now you could even watch your
surgery where there's somebody will be watching their own surgery,

(54:34):
but what they're doing is they're playing a different video, right,
So they'll cut the person's knee open and just seal
it back up without doing any actual you know, a
therapeutic change, and their knee problem will heal right, oftentimes
better than the people who had the actual surgery, you know,
the surgical change and intervention. So I know this sounds crazy,
and these are things for me. I'm a very analytical,

(54:56):
logical person, so I wouldn't believe it unless I saw
the data myself. So that's the power of the human mind,
just a snapshot. Now here's the other thing. I don't
want to call them evil, but there's a there's an
evil twin to the placebo effect. It's called a no
cebo effect. This is when you get a negative injunction
that something bad is going to happen. So Placebo is
saying you're gonna get this therapeutic benefit. You're gonna take this,

(55:19):
and your blood pressure is going to normalize, your depression
is going to go away, your cancer is going to dissolve.
A no Cbo effect is saying this is incurable. You
have six weeks to live. You'll never walk again, right,
So these injunctions from an authority figure. And there's another
study I excited from Alia CROM's team. They did a

(55:42):
skin prick test where they used a histamine, you know,
a histamine stimulator to create a rash on people's skin,
and then they had an inert cream and they told
the test subjects either this cream is going to make
your rash worse or this cream is going to make
your rash better. It's different, people told different things. Now,
what happened was and this was true for like ninety

(56:05):
percent of the test subjects when they received that inert
cream that had no therapeutic benefit and they told their
rash would get worse. Within ten minutes, the rash got
worse and spread. For other people within ten minutes, the
rash got better and nearly went away from most people
just within ten minutes of them getting this cream that
does nothing. The biggest part of this was the benefit

(56:25):
depended directly with how the person believed in the competence
of the physician. Their rapport and belief in the person
telling them about the thing impacted their physical response the most.
So again, who are you listening to? You know? And
so for me, I had that nicebo effect injunction, Like

(56:49):
he told me this was incurable. I'll be in paying
the rest of my life, you know, I'll never walk
normally again, all these things, and I believed him. But
thankfully again, just like sometimes going through these things and
hitting rock bottom is a good place to stand up from,
you know, and being able to access this is why

(57:12):
people are such a gift, you know, Like my grandmother
was like a guiding light, like a north star for me.
I didn't realize it at the time. I just thought
she was being annoying. But just knowing that there's somebody
who believes in me, man, it just made the process
so much easier. But the thing is, you don't need
anybody else to believe in You can believe in yourself,
you know. But it does take it does take some revelation.

(57:32):
It does take a lot of work to be able
to do that. But anyways, but just to put the
icing on the cake with this, with stress and the
impact that it can have on our bodies and our relationships.
The reason that I don't talk about this off the jay,
but the reason I wrote this book was to address
how food is affecting how we communicate with each other

(57:53):
because you probably have noticed we're living at a very
divisive time right now. You know, there's so much divisiveness,
there's so much agitation, there's so much in fighting, when
on paper, we should be more connected than ever, Like
we all have the same access to the same data.
Why is there so much arguing about it? Right? And
also people are becoming so polarized, like they're going and

(58:14):
planting their flag at one end of the other end.
But truth truthfully, most people are here in the middle,
but they're listening to people at these outer ends. But
what's not being talked about is the fact that, for example,
there was a study done at the Ohio State University
and it was looking at couples, you know, like I
love my wife, she's my best friend, and but we also,

(58:36):
you know what I'm saying, we have you know. And
the thing is like we know our stuff now because
we often attribute it to the person. But what they
did was they use glucose monitors to see what happens
when the person in the relationship when they have abnormal
blood sugar, how they respond to their partner, yes, all right,

(58:57):
And so what they found was when people have when
their blood sugar was abnormal, you know, when they experienced
a blood sugar crash for example, which is normal because
again we're going hypoglycemic and then crashing because the way
we eat today, the test subjects became much more aggressive
towards their partner. Keyword aggressive. Right, And here's the biggest thing,
because for me, it's just like okay, that's a quality.

(59:18):
But what's the end result. End result is they were
far less likely to resolve their relationship conflicts. So that's
the outcome because your blood sugar's messed up. Now, we
think about this with kids, like you know they're hyper
or whatever, they're cranky. You're just a big adult baby,
you know, you get the same hard wiring. And so
when we tend to be in conflict is when we
when our biological needs are off, you know, when we're tired,

(59:41):
when we're hungry. These things we attribute to kids acting
up like that, but we do that to each other, right,
And so that was just one little glimpse into it,
like this is somebody that you love. And so with
the just a little sidebar in the study, they use
like these dolls and poking pins in the doll. How
if you are a madic or partner you are. So

(01:00:02):
it's just kind of creepy like some people. So, but
now here's how we branched this out globally. Researchers at
Oxford University. They wanted to see what would happen by
improving the nutrition of prison inmates. Right, so we have
a certain psychological view of people who are in these conditions. Yeah, right,

(01:00:24):
But for me, I have an experience with this because
of the environment that I come from. You know, many
of my friends and family end up in that situation.
I could have been in that situation. And so what
they did was and this is a randomized, placebo controlled trial,
gold standard. This isn't just guessing. This isn't like the
oh this thing, gold standard of clinical trial. They took

(01:00:46):
a group of these prison inmates and they improved their
nutrition just through getting in from Omega three fatti ascid supplements,
which we've got to talk about that by the way,
and then just increasing their amount of vitamins and minerals
that they're consuming, right, so very rudimentary stuff. And then
they have the cebo group who gets nothing. It's a
four and a half month study and after compiling all
the data, the test subjects. The prison inmates who received

(01:01:08):
the improved nutrition had a thirty five percent drop in
behavioral offenses versus the PACEBO group, and most notably, a
thirty seven percent drop overall in violent offenses. Their proclivity
towards hurting another person dropped by thirty seven percent by
increasing their nutrition. What was in that nutrition, dude, basic vitamins, minerals,

(01:01:33):
multi vitamin type stuff, omega threes, but the megathrees are critical.
That's why I want to specifically talk about this. But
that sounds so crazy because the very best programs in
prison for rehabilitation come nowhere near those types of results.
So some other researchers saw it and they were just like,
that's impossible, and they replicated the study and almost got
the exact same numbers. This was published in the journal

(01:01:54):
Aggressive Behavior. There's so many journals that cover these things,
and the data is available by getting people healthier, by
giving them the basic The question should be how just
your cells, your brain cells specifically, being able to talk
to each other, you require key nutrients, and so one
of those nutrients is omega three, fatty acids DHA and

(01:02:15):
EPA specifically. The cool thing is that blood brain barrier.
They got to express pass so they're able to cross
the blood brain barrier because it's one of those essentials
for the brain. Now, this is so crazy, but without
these specific omega three's, your brain cells can't really efficiently
talk to each other. It's something called they enable something

(01:02:36):
called signal transduction, so your cells being able to talk.
And also they're part of all of your cell membrains,
so just the cell being sustainable itself. If you're deficient
in these things, again, your body will try to do
what it has to do, but it just degrades the
way that your body works so much. And so a
study this was published in the journal Neurology, one of

(01:02:57):
the top journals looking at the brain, and they found
that test subjects who consume less than two grams of
omega threees per day had the highest rate of brain shrinkage. Yeah,
and where are we getting omega threes from naturally? If
we're even getting this. Yeah, this is so important because
for years I made this mistake, all right, working in

(01:03:19):
a clinical practice, seeing people every day and wanted to
invoke more plants into people's diets. I would tell people,
make sure you getting your cheese seeds, and you know
your flax seeds. You got flax seeds or flax seed
oil in a refrigerated section because it's volatile. But I
was missing the mark because that's a LA. It's a
different form of omega threees. It's the plant version, and

(01:03:42):
it's not what your brain uses, all right, So your
brain uses epa and dha. These are only found in
animal foods. And we do have an option for people
doing a vegan protocol, which is algae oil. All right,
So we'll come back to that in just a second.
But this is very important because your body can the
plant omega three ala and converted into dha and epa,

(01:04:05):
but you're gonna lose at least seventy five percent the
conversion process, all right, So this is going to depend
on your microbiome, your other metabolic factors, on who's efficient
in converting this. So to say, for somebody that is
doing a vegan or vegetarian protocol to just have chia
seeds are cool, it's not. It's not cool. Literally, we're
talking about your brain shrinking. This is not a joke.

(01:04:26):
You need to make sure you're getting these dha and
epa the whole food versions or sources that we've evolved
having is going to be coming from fatty fish. Again,
humans have been eating these foods for thousands of years.
I don't want to get into religiosity about our nutrition
and it creates all this divisiveness. I just want to
talk about principles, right, and so fatty fish, grass fed beef, eggs.

(01:04:50):
And then we've got as far as what most of
the peer view studies are done on, it's done on
fish oil, right, and it's just it is what it
is now with I said, I believe that there are
some other means for this. One of them, depending on
where your ethics lie, could be krill oil. All right.
So krill oil is one of the richest sources of astaxanthin,

(01:05:12):
which is protective of those Omega three's, which is huge
and of itself. But this is a microscopic keyword, microscopic shrimp.
All right, you're probably just even like if you lick
the air, you're going to be killing more sentient beings
than you know what I mean, this microscopic shrimp. But
it's a concentrated form of omega three's dha and epa.
If that's where you sit, then we have algae oil,

(01:05:34):
which is a plant source. The caveat here is that
we don't have much period viewed data on its efficacy.
We know the DHA and EPA is there, so I
don't want everybody to wait. If you're doing a vegan protocol,
please get yourself an algae oil today, Like today, get
a specific so algae oil is going to be encapsulated,

(01:05:55):
so which again I would love people to do food first,
but in this situation, it's essential. It is absolutely essential.
So we can still do our chia and our flax
and our hemp seeds. Those are those are great for
other things, but please don't mistake the fact that we
need a mega threes for cognitive function. And again in
this clinical trial they're using fish oil, So this is

(01:06:16):
not a joke. Being able to reduce your proclivity towards violence,
to improve your ability to perspective, take, and to be
able to have more compassion and patience. We know this
when we're when we're nutrient deprived, when we're even just hungry,
we tend to be more irritable and less patient towards
people we love, let alone people we don't know. So

(01:06:36):
the biggest issue I believe Jay. And this isn't because
I'm a nutritionist, Like I really examine this, Like I
sat with this for a while. I was like, is
this because my life has just been revolved around health?
Like truly, I feel that the biggest underlying issue for
our epidemic levels of divisiveness and very illogical behavior and
the ability to see another human being and to want

(01:07:01):
to do them harm, it's because we are unhealthy, you know.
And the data indicates this, but my real my life
indicates this, you know. Like I grew up in an
environment man Like it was just it's an environment. It's
so volatile. There's so much violence, you know, outside my
door and in my own household. And to see how

(01:07:26):
I've changed because I was a reflection of that environment.
Something I didn't tell you about when I went to
that private university. I got kicked out of that university
for fighting. I got kicked out of high school for
my entire junior year for fighting. And I I was
in student advisory. I was teenage Health Consultant, which was

(01:07:46):
this little health program. I was in in Roads, which
I was able to take college credit. You know. It
was the first year that it was popping off with
Saint Louis University. I was a scholar, athlete, I was
all these things. It didn't matter, you know. I got
in this situation where I felt threatened, and I resorted
to that behavior, you know. And every day in the morning,

(01:08:08):
you know, going in getting the cereal and getting the
you know, the pasteurized orange juice. I'm eating pizza pretty
much every day of lunch with the oppressor with cheese,
you know, and just like I'm making my body out
of this really low quality material, right. And so the
crazy thing was, once I got physically healthier, I started
to see people differently, and I started to have so

(01:08:30):
much more patience because I was replicating those behaviors. Like,
you know, my daughter is my oldest I have three kids,
and my mother, like she would say something once and
then five seconds later, she's pissed off. Right, she doesn't
want to repeat herself. She's just ready on fire, to
be mad, to be irritated, to be aggressive towards you,

(01:08:52):
and to have such a lack of patience. And so
I was being that with my daughter. You know what,
for me, I wanted her to be. Of course, most
people want their children to be better than them, and
so when she was in kindergarten, I was getting her
like second and third grade work and we would sit
around a table and all this stuff and just imagine
like the lack of patience that I had. And she

(01:09:12):
graduated with honors all that stuff, but you know, just
what she had to deal with. And I'm even then
of still it wasn't like bad, but still just like
the level of patience that I have now from like
my youngest son is ten, it's night and day. It
is night and day because I'm physically healthier, and it's
not a struggle. It's not a reach for me. Now

(01:09:34):
here's the rub. It's not that we can't express compassion
or the perspective take or to express patience when we're unhealthy.
It's just harder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think
we've all experienced that, right, Like I think we all
know that that when you're hungry, you react differently to everything.

(01:09:54):
And I think we've all experienced the irritability when you
feel like your body's like exhausted or you're going to
be more irritable, you're going to be more agitated. I
think we know that. Most people would say, yeah, I
know exactly, what that feels like. And this is where
I like the connection you're making and I agree with
you even more is I've spent so long with people

(01:10:15):
where they keep trying to solve the issue in their head.
They're wondering why their energy is not right, they're wondering
why they don't feel positive, they're wondering why they don't
feel clear, and so much of it is diet related.
Of course, there's meditation, and there's mindfulness and these beautiful practices.

(01:10:35):
But if you're doing all of those but you're not
solving your gut, you're making life harder, like you're working
harder without using all the resources. And that's why at
the beginning, when you said it's your diet, your sleep,
and your movement, and then you have your mindset and
your meditation and your mindful us, we've got to use
all fours. Like you can't just use one. Like you

(01:10:57):
can't just work out and say, oh, it doesn't matter
what I eat, And you can't just eat right and say,
oh it doesn't matter if I don't work out, and
you can't just sleep right. And you're right, it's not
about choosing either raw it's it's all of them. And
that's what you present in this book about the connection
between them. Yeah. Sure, you're such a wise, insightful twenty
years studied. I mean when you mentioned them, like, I

(01:11:19):
can tell it's it's phenomenal, and you can tell what
a passion you have for this. If someone's listening today
and you could simplify for them three things that they
should try and learn more about and three things they
should be very aware of that they may need to
put aside, what would you say for each of those?

(01:11:40):
For someone who's today going, wow, I need to read
this book, Eat Smart, So I'm going to order that,
But it's like, what are three things that I need
to add and think about and research and learn more about,
and what are three things that it maybe need to
avoid and set aside. You know, this is a tenant
throughout history. The number one thing for me is to

(01:12:00):
know thyself, you know, really do a self assessment because oftentimes,
you know, working as somebody who's I'm sitting across the
table from a person and they've got twelve medications that
they're on and they're wanting to make a change, and
I have to be there and to look them in
the eyes and say I got you, We're going to

(01:12:20):
figure this out, and actually know with every five of
my being that we're going to figure it out. To
be able to do that, I have to evoke within
that person and find what is a leverage point and
help them to get honest about what landed them in
this place that they're in to begin with. Right, So

(01:12:42):
what I would find is that and this is a
great secret for all the coaches out there, many people
already probably know this who are doing this type of work.
If you allow a person to speak, just ask them questions,
they will often tell you the cause and the cure
of what is ailing them they're being. They know it already,
it's already within their mental and you know, cellular records.

(01:13:07):
They know better than anybody, right, But you have to
give people space to be able to speak. And so
but oftentimes coaches, you know, we want to help people,
and so we just want to give them our thing, right,
but just actually be there, listen, be a space for
this person. It's probably nobody's ever really listened to them, Like,
just actually shut everything down to listen to them. Be

(01:13:28):
that person, and they'll tell you the cause in cure.
So know thyself is the tenant self assess, and there's
different personality types that we can put people in. But
we're infinite, you know, we really are. But there are
people who tend to be people start things and stop
things very quickly. You're right, they meet a little bit
of resistance in there. That's okay. Then there are people

(01:13:50):
who you know, swing for the fences. They go and
they do so much like they go, they get all
the things, they get all the equipment, They go so
hard and they on themselves into the ground, right. And
there are people who are just more balanced. Like there's
different personality types and so really honing in on what
your personality types is are And I talk about this

(01:14:12):
a little bit in the book as well, So know
thyself so you know what to shore up. And I
don't like to talk in terms of strength and strength
and weaknesses. You know, you have strengths and then you
often have things that are foreign to you, right, And
that's okay because like my strength is I know a
lot about the human body. I don't know about cars,

(01:14:32):
you know what I mean, Like I know Danna Kapatrick,
Like I feel disrespected even saying car around. You know
what I'm saying? And So it's just like being able
to understand, like that's not my domain of excellence, or
but I could learn I might, you know, because of
my experience come into the car game, and like I
can start seeing stuff other people aren't saying, you know, like,

(01:14:54):
but that's not for me. So I understand my strengths
and also where I don't have any credibility or experience, right.
Number one is just a principle to know yourself and
to know what things tend to hinder you. And I'll
just share one little quick one because I saw it
as a big consistent in my clinical practice. One of

(01:15:15):
the biggest things that hinders people in getting in the
progress that they want is blaming others. All right. I
was literally I was right there listening to them, and
I'm like, I can see after a while, I can
see it coming out here. It comes you know, if
my kids would just abid us, right, if my husband would,
just if my wife would, just if my mom would

(01:15:36):
just you know, like everybody else in their life is
making it harder. Right, So they have this story and
they're going to live and die by it, right, and
so but the thing is, it's just a story, and
it doesn't mean that it's not true. It doesn't mean
that you don't experience more, you know, conflict or curveballs
in your life because of your life experience. But listen,

(01:15:58):
like it's all about perspective, you know. I've been through
some crazy stuff in my life and to be here
where I am, like the number one thing besides that
moment of decision is taking responsibility for my life one
hundred percent responsibility. Again, this is one of those things
that you might you don't really do that, you know,

(01:16:19):
And so that's without any wiggle room. I had to
stop pointing the fingers. I had to stop blaming and
catch myself whenever I do it and understand even if
in a relationship conflict, it's not fifty fifty, it's one
hundred one hundred, because if there's a miscommunication taking place,
instead of me being like, why don't you understand this?
I can think about how am I communicating this? Because

(01:16:39):
there is a way to get through, right. But that's
me taking responsibility. But sometimes we don't feel like it,
you know. But also again, if you're physically unwell, it's harder, right,
So being able to help people with that piece of
like you've got to take responsibility here, stop blaming other people.
There as a way, right, and what we do is

(01:17:01):
and this is where I can answer more the question.
It starts stacking conditions in your favor to make it easier,
make it automatic. So the biggest issue today with people
being able to go from where they are with their health,
where we are severely sick society. I mentioned two hundred
fifty million Americans overweight or obese, one hundred and thirty
million Americans diabetic or pre diabetic. Sixty percent of Americans

(01:17:23):
have some degree of heart disease right now. One hundred
fifteen million Americans are regularly sleep deprived. Uppers of fifty
million Americans experience in autommunic condition. I can go on
and on and on. These are things that have never
happened before. But if skyrocketed, depression, all time high ADHD,
the list goes on and on, everything is worse. And
here we are again on paper, we're supposed to be

(01:17:45):
more evolved and intelligent than we've ever been. And people
were like, well, we're living longer though, No, No, we're
the first generation in recorded human history that is not
going to outlive the generation before us. It is now reversed,
which doesn't make sense. It should be continuing increase. But
we've hit a threshold, you know, our quality of life
is suffering because by treating symptoms, we can keep people alive.

(01:18:09):
And what's happening is we're not really living longer, we're
dying longer. We're extending the suffering, you know. So how
do we get into this state? And the solution here?
The number one thing is we live in a severely
sick culture and so we're automatically going to pick up
what's happening in our environment to be healthy. And a
severely sick society is very it's weird, you know. So

(01:18:32):
today you and your wife are weird as hell, Like
you guys are super weird, and shout out to everybody
else that's you're weird, you know, And that's okay. It's
abnormal because normal right now is being unwell. And so
a solution here is and this is my goal and
it's what I do. This is what I dedicate my
life to, is what gets me up in the morning,
is to help to make a shift to where health

(01:18:54):
is normalized, right to where it's easy to have access
to the things that healthy. Right now, we have ease
of access to things that make you sick, that degrade
your health, that degrade your mental health. These are all
close closely accessible, right, and so one of those things

(01:19:15):
you know, again, being from Ferguson, Missouri, I was surrounded
by fast food like absolutely, you name the place within
a mile radius, all of them are just some surrounded
by it. And the question is why is this so cheap? Right,
because that's why I bought it? Yeah, the accessibility, the price,

(01:19:37):
and the taste. Of course they got food scientists or
brilliant at making you addicted to the foods. But the
cost that the economies of scale here, and so how
is it that I can go to McDonald's and get
three cheeseburgers for the same amount that would cost me
to buy one avocado? This avocado falls off the tree,

(01:19:57):
like literally, this this cheese was are so cost intensive
to make it makes no sense, right, the bread and
the processing, the meat, the cheese, the condiments. Not to mention,
even if we use an avocado versus a happy meal,
there's even a toy the packaging, right, all of these
things are so pros intensive, right, the market, all of that,

(01:20:18):
there's we don't have like Beyonce doing a thing for
you know, avocados, Like if you could imagine that, you know,
but you know what I'm saying, it's a really good point.
But here's the thing. If you think about this, like
how is this possible? And I answered this question because
I had to, Like, not only did I answer the question,
but I looked at what is the outcome? So a

(01:20:41):
big driver of this is government subsidies. Right, So from
the year nineteen ninety five to two ten alone, the
United States government doled out almost two hundred million dollars
in government subsidies to farmers who are growing these commodity
crops that largely show up through the draft, through window
and in process foods. Right, So corn, soy, various forms

(01:21:03):
of where sugar we can extract some sugar. Wheat of
course is big. And by the way, like if you
look at a grocery store, most of the foods are
made of those ingredients, right, some forms or versions of
those things. So what happened was by giving this investment,
almost nothing went to the pharmers who growing fruits and vegetables.
Now here's the bottom line. I came across the studying

(01:21:25):
and I dug I had to find what is the
outcome from this. There's got to be somebody asking this question,
because I'm asking it. And I found it in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most
prestigious journals in the world, and they looked at the
consumption of government subsidized food and the outcomes of health
and humans. Right, So, the people who are consuming the
most government subsidized foods had almost a forty percent greater

(01:21:49):
incidents of being obese. They had far higher waste circumference,
so belly fat, and higher levels of blood sugar, and
also depradations to their inflammation so measure they use see
reactive protein to measure they had higher rates of inflammation. Right,
So all of these terrible things, but key thing, almost

(01:22:11):
a forty percent greater incidents of being obese. By consuming
the food that our government is literally paying for to
put into our society, we're literally feeding the problem. And
it's not okay. And when I say the government, I
mean us because that money is coming from us, but
we don't understand our authority. We've outsourced it to other
people who don't have our best interests at heart. And

(01:22:32):
so I'm in an environment where sixty percent greater incidents
of my aunts, you know, my family members, Black women
sixty percent greater incidents of being obese than a Caucasian woman.
That's the society that we're living in, and it's the environment, right.
It's not that any of us are just by nature

(01:22:56):
more likely to be unhealthy. Right, And so we can
help the stack in aditions to unify each other, you know,
unify our communities. But we've got to stand up for
each other and not allow this insanity to happen. Because
what's happening when we're feeding this problem is the higher
rates of mental issues, of poverty. It's driving more crime,
it's driving more divisiveness. Right, It's not our fault. I

(01:23:20):
didn't want to be a quote bad person. I'm an
environment where it is a bigger risk for me to
go outside and play than for another kid because I
literally might die, a bullet might hit me, you know.
And that's again, it's it's not like this is a
daily thing, but that stuff did happen, you know, and
people don't understand that. So you look at people and
they're like, just work harder. My mother worked overnight at

(01:23:44):
a convenience store just to again, trying to make ends meet,
and she was stabbed eight times by somebody trying to
rob the convenience store. These are things people often again,
they don't they're not subjected to. And she, my mother's
a really tough human being. Like it's crazy, you know
if you hears some of these stories about my mom.
But when she she subdued the guy, the police came. Right,

(01:24:06):
she's just man, she's she's kind of a badass. But
when she survived and subdued that, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
So when she got to the hospital and got the stitches,
the physician told her that if you weren't overweight, you
would have died. Your your body fat saved you. What

(01:24:29):
do you think she's gonna do that cognitive association? My
fat is my savior, it's protecting me. You think she's
gonna do anything to lose his weight. She's she's going
to be more acclimated to having more of it. It's
my protection, it's my safety. Right, She sold her blood
to put food on the table. You know, all these
different things, you know. So, but it's a perpetual. It's

(01:24:51):
the environment, it's the culture, and there is a way
to transition out of that. But I'm I'm really the
exception and not the rule, Like it took so many
minor miracles for this to happen, But I look back
in my life, it's just like, is there something remarkable
about me? Like how did all of this happen? And

(01:25:11):
the thing is, we're all remarkable. I just realized that
I have some power. I realized that I have I
have the ability to decide, to think what I want
to think, and to respond the way that I want
to respond, and to make choices in the world when
I had just been outsourcing all of my choices to

(01:25:33):
the environment around me, and I had this story about
like I can't, I can't do it. So, you know,
to drive that point home, a big solution here is
for us to create conditions, and we can do that.
We can start with our own culture, in our own household.
If people see my son, for example, my son Jordan
twenty one years old right now, he just launched a

(01:25:53):
new fitness program yesterday, and you know, I never told
him to work in this field, but he's just in
the environment, right and so he's been personal training and serving.
I get messages from people who their kids have bought
his program, like in tears, just like your son helped myself.
I didn't sign up for that. I had no idea.

(01:26:13):
But we created a culture of fitness, of health, of
connection intentionally. And it doesn't matter where you start. Because
my son Jordan was there with me and Ferguson sleeping
on an air mattress. He knows what it's like. He
was there with me through all of it, and so

(01:26:34):
he has that perspective. No matter where you are right now,
where no matter where your kids are at, we can
create conditions. And nobody said it's gonna be easy, though
you know you're gonna there's gonna be resistance, especially if
you've been just on the iPad all the time or
watching TV all the time. But a solution is this
is to add to a solution. We need to fill
that space with something of greater or equal value. That's

(01:26:57):
the trick, right, So if you can find a way
to supplant the need to you know, for them to
watch another show with something that is you know, involves movement,
you know, maybe again like and you can recruit other people.
You probably got friends in your network, you know, like
maybe there's a dance class or maybe there's you know,
feeling the blank. You Like, the greatest gift that I

(01:27:18):
have in my life today is the resources and the
people that I have, right, And I'm I'm a self
professed lone wolf for sure. Like I definitely had that
lone wolf energy. But now like every day in my
meditation practice, I have a little segment where I do
with gratitude and I run through all the you know,

(01:27:39):
people I'm grateful for, and it's just like it blows
my mind. Oftentimes, I you know, I go into tears,
you know, thinking about it all the wonderful people. But
that even that happens by you becoming the type of
person that can invite in that kind of energy. Right.
And so one of the big tricks that I've learned

(01:27:59):
over the years too for people who are wanting you
know who's blaming other people and wanting them to change,
it's very difficult. There's a statement that you can't be
a prophet in your own land. Yeah, invite and find
other voices to do the thing. So I just came
back on Sunday from speaking at an event in Mexico.
Every year it's called Phenomenal Life, and it's Eric Thomas

(01:28:22):
often considered like top motivational speaker in the world. So
it's him, myself, CJ, this guy named Jamal who's just
a brilliant guy as well. So we do this event.
I'm not just gonna go to the event. I'm gonna
bring my family so they can hear it from them
rather than from me. Yeah. Right, So that's one of
the things I realized. It's just like, if I have

(01:28:43):
the opportunity, let me get the kids in this place.
Even with fitness, what tends to happen is if somebody's
working on their fitness, they leave their kids. They never
really see them. Like Mom goes to this mystical place
called the Gem and she comes back happier, sweaty like
even that it's kind of freaky, actually, the thing like
where are you going? Mom? But anyways, give your kids

(01:29:07):
some of these inputs, like let them see you work out,
invite them in, do some stuff with them. Right as
soon as my oldest son was old enough to go
to golds back in Saint Louis, he's twelve years old,
and you know, he let twelve year olds in. I
brought him to the gym with me and now like this,
he's a beast like it's crazy, you know, it's just yeah,
So start with your own household, creative culture intentionally. It

(01:29:31):
doesn't have to be perfect. It's just about progress, you know.
I know you ask for three things, but they're beautiful. Man.
Sure you could drop the mic. Was that was so
beautiful on so many levels because what I really appreciated
about you is you're able to put the emphasis on
taking responsibility. I'm designing your own destiny in and amongst

(01:29:56):
all of the chaos, all of the divisive, all of
the pain and challenges that you've experienced personally that you
see around you, and you're saying, well, I've taken my
own learning into my own hands. And I think that's empowering.
I think it's encouraging and I think it's enlivening for
everyone who's been listening and watching because we can hear

(01:30:17):
your heart and I love today how you've connected the
gut to the heart to the brain. You know, to
see that three sixty degree approach to life through your
truth is truly powerful to experience. To just sit in
the presence of that and that just like flies off

(01:30:38):
of you, like it just exudes from who you are,
your eyes, your face, your body, your mind, your whole
entire presence, like I've just been feeling it. So I
want you to know that I see that, I feel that,
and I want everyone who's listening and watching. If you
haven't been able to see it because you're not in
the room, I'm sure you can hear it. And I
want everyone to go, you know, subscribe to Sean Show,

(01:31:02):
grab the book, eats Smarter, follow Sean on social media
because he's talking about the guy, but it's a way
through to the heart and the soul as well. So Sean,
I want to thank you from the bottom of my
heart for joining us as a guest on our purpose,
for putting your heart into this book and the work
that you continue to do. And I know this would

(01:31:23):
be the first of many more conversations. Thank you, James
than I received that. Thank you so much. I want
to make sure everyone's been listening and watching. What I'd
love you to do is tag me and Sean to
let us know what you learned, what you took away.
There were so many phenomenal insights today on so many
different levels, right whether it's mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, family, societal, economical,

(01:31:50):
Like we've really went everywhere, and what we discovered, ultimately
Sean said was we've got to take charge. We can't outsourcepiness,
can't outsource our health. Got to take that charge, just
as he has, just as he continues to try to
do and serve and support us as well. So I
can't wait to see what you've learned. I can't wait
to see your feedback. Big thank you to Shan again,

(01:32:13):
and a big thank you to each and every one
of you that are investing in your health and happiness
as you listen to on purpose. Thanks everyone, Thank you
Shan
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Host

Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty

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