Dhru Purohit Show - The Top 5 Superfoods That Can Level Up Your Health with Mary Shenouda

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Birch Living. While the term “superfood” carries a certain hype, some foods do earn that status. Food is medicine, and some foods are more powerful medicines than others! Food is the most powerful tool we have to create optimal health. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Mary Shenouda to talk about the top five superfoods that can level up your health. Mary Shenouda is a highly sought-after performance chef and specialist. Her clients include both professional athletes and Hollywood entertainers. Mary is also the creator and founder of Phat Fudge, a high-performance food line of her own formulation.    In this episode, we dive into:  -The anti-inflammatory benefits of black cumin seed oil, where to find it, and why it’s Mary’s favorite ingredient (1:56) -How Mary approaches supplement protocols for her clients and herself (13:16) -Mary’s gut-reset protocol (18:23) -Mary’s background and how she got into this work (27:15) -Why liver is nature’s most potent superfood, Mary’s favorite recipe, and where to source it (37:28)  -The superfood qualities of tahini (44:52) -The power of medicinal mushrooms (51:00) -Mary’s autoimmune condition and what can contribute to flare-ups (57:24) -Autoimmune conditions and the importance of sleep (1:05:01)  -Why saffron is a superfood (1:17:27) Also mentioned in this episode: -Zatik Black Seed Oil    -Phat Fudge -Gut Reset Program -Host Defense MycoShield Spray -Mary Shenouda on The Genius Life Podcast  For more on Mary Shenouda, follow her on Instagram @paleochef and @phatfudge, Facebook @thepaleochef, Twitter @paleochef, YouTube @marythepaleochef, and through her website, paleochef.com. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Birch Living. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. To get $200 off your Birch Living mattress plus 2 free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's touted as able to cure everything but death, which seems very dramatic, but it does have so many wide varying benefits. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Mary Shenuda. Mary is a highly sought-after performance chef who specializes in getting people of all walks of life excited about the power of food to truly. help them thrive. Her clients include professional athletes and Hollywood entertainers. Most notably, Mary was working with some of the members of the Golden State Warriors who won the NBA championship. On today's episode, Mary walks us through the top five superfoods that she's put together, her top five list that can help anyone level up their health. Now, a little bit more about Mary, after almost two decades of suffering from a debilitating mystery illness that doctors

seemed unable to explain, and that prescription drugs failed to solve, Mary took matters into her own hands, devoting years of energy and personal research into foods that she was putting into her body. And Mary decided to change the way she ate fundamentally, and she was able to reverse her condition within months. With this new lease on life, it led her to abandon her career in tech and start a performance-focused private chef in consulting practice. In addition to her one-on-one work with peak performers,

Mary's also the creator and founder of FabFudge, a high-performance food line of her own formulation. Stay tuned for a fascinating conversation on Mary's top five superfoods that can help anyone, including you, level up your health. Mary, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you here. I want to jump right in to the conversation. and today we're talking about a few top superfoods that you've identified that can radically help people

up level their health if they work for them, but a lot of these work for a lot of people. We're going to get to that in a second. And I want to jump right in by talking about the first one because it's something that you're very excited about. Yes. And that's black cumin seed. Why is that one of your first and number one superfoods on this list that I have right here in front of me? So it's a really, really powerful anti-inflammatory. But before that, it's something that has been part of my rotation since I was a child.

It's very prevalent in Egypt. It's sourced from Egypt. And so we've always had it in oil form or seed form from a culinary perspective, but also sort of helps you not get sick, which was the simplest way my parents would describe it. And so you just listen to your parents. And then fast forward to what it is I do now, I started to research it more to understand it to incorporate it with my parents. my clients. And I found that it has really powerful antiviral, anti-bacterial properties and is really, really great for performance when it comes to athletes, which is what I do specifically. So it's something that I always used and it seems to reduce inflammation at rapid pace for my athletes

post-play. And I wanted to understand more research that might be out there on it because it's starting to become more popular. And so I started to find research around people replacing their arthritis medication with it, for example, or it helping with candida overgrowth. And it's touted as able to cure everything but death, which seems very dramatic, but it does have so many wide varying benefits. And then taking it one step further, we had, you know, something happened over the class course of the few years here. And I was noticing that very few of my clients and athletes were getting sick and then looking into more research and finding its ability to reduce viral loads. And so all of that put together made me make it like a most valuable player ingredient.

And so my clients will take a tablespoon of the oil a day or we'll still use it from a C perspective. But there's a particular compound in there, which I'm going to butcher called Thaquinone, and that's the active compound that seems to have so many incredible benefits. And there's a lot of research that exists on it, but there's now more focus. So I'm excited to see additional research. And when I say studies on it, it's also double plan studies, which is like, yes. So it's something that I just used because my parents told me to.

And then doing what I do professionally now, being like, okay, this is really interesting. there's more to this than just like mom said. I got a couple questions about how your parents used it. But first, my science writer and my team, her name is Taylor, nutritionist and science writer, she was the first person that really sort of highlighted to me, you know, during the pandemic and everything, when people were having a hard time getting back their smell. Right. That there was a protocol with black cumincy that a lot of people were using to address sort

of the inflammation. It seemed that people were losing their smell long term because the inflammation could not break that cycle. and was affecting certain cells that control everything would smell. And shout out again to Taylor because she gave that sort of protocol to a few people and said, try it. And it worked for a bunch of people. Yeah.

I had a client's friend who came in and had not had his sense of smell for a year. And he's someone that's somewhat skeptical around nutrition. And I was like, just try this for three weeks. Let me know what happens. I did a tablespoon three times a day for him. a black seed oil and then two tablespoons of asheraganda a day. And within 10 days, I was in the other room and he was eating. And he goes, holy shit. He's like, I can taste the cinnamon. And he's like, okay, Mary, I think you're on to something. And I'm like, you think I'm on to. It's my first day.

You think I'm onto something. So it was really cool to see that. And there's, yeah, there's definitely something to block human seed that's really fascinating. So much. so that I'm formulating a supplement with some of the scientists that work with Thorne to put together a compound where the star ingredient is black human seed. So when you give it to the athletes that you work with today, and we'll talk a little bit more about that and how you work with them, let's say if it's for maintenance and just helping them stay in a good place with their immune system, et cetera, all the benefits that you mentioned, how much are you giving to them and what sort of form and are you sourcing it from anything

in particular that our community could benefit from until your supplement arrives one day in the future. Sure. This episode is brought to you by Inside Tracker. You know, in my opinion, I think technology can be a critical part in the solution to helping us figure out what foods are best suited for our own unique genetic makeup. That's why I was super excited when I heard about Inside Tracker. Inside Tracker helps take the guesswork out of living optimally and creates a nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle plan that's personalized. for you based on your blood work, DNA, and personal preferences. InsideTracker's cutting edge technology gives you the science-backed recommendations for positive changes to your daily habits.

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Check out the Birch mattress today by Helix. A tablespoon a day for maintenance. Post game, we'll do a couple of days of two tablespoons a day. And then if they are sick with something, the protocol shifts, and that is client-dependent. throw out anything around that. And it's an oil. I use Zatik. They source from a single farm in Egypt. Incredible founders of that company that's actually who I'll be sourcing from for my supplement as well. What was the name of the company? Zatik. Zatik. Yes, Zatik, T-I-K, pardon me. And I will, from a culinary

perspective, use seeds when I'm fermenting foods, which it adds flavor. It's very peppery. I will say if you try the oil, it's the worst thing you'll ever taste in your life. Yeah, I've tasted it before. It's intense. I tell everyone this is the worst thing you'll ever have. I've become accustomed to it. They have capsules if you don't want to take down the oil. There's also some benefits shown with mixing it with honey. So it's not just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Actually, there is a chemical response that they've been showed specific to COVID, actually, with the honey and the black seed oil. but that will make it easier to take down. Yeah. And even if you're not dealing with right now, it could be something that people can incorporate into their routine, just like a maintenance thing. The number of athletes that come across and retired athletes

who they're definitely put off by the taste for sure in the beginning, but they stick with it. And within a few days, they'll say, like, I've had some of the greatest of all time be like, I need more of this black sale because I feel incredible, the pain in my joints. And these are athletes who are on some next level of wear and tear on their body, and they notice the effects of, I feel so much better on this.

So it is something where if you can tolerate it and you're not one of the very, very few people who can't handle it, a non-negotiable when it comes to my clients. So we have a whole list here that we're going to get to in a second. And then we're going to do a little background to you so our audience understands where you're coming from and your experience and what you're up to these days. Before we get into that, there is a sense is that, you know, everything we're going to be talking about today, like, it's going to make people excited. And then even separate from this, you do a lot of of ingredients spotlights on Instagram. I talk about a lot of stuff. You and I both personally come across

a lot of things that just seems exciting. How do you, on a most simplistic level, when people ask, when you're thinking about putting together what you take, what you take a break from, how you incorporate into your schedule, you can't do everything. Right. So how do you approach that? Approach specifically when I'm telling a client or like the audience. Both with a client or for yourself. So I always start with actual tests. So you do blood testing, gut testing. If you're an athlete, we'll do sweat and spit analysis. Because I do want to know what is actually happening to your body.

I do say, you know, superfood for one person could be kryptonite for another person. So always understanding what's going on under the hood. And these are tests that are covered by insurance. So it's not necessarily like something that you have to shell out of money for. and from there we can get an idea of things we want to focus on. If someone doesn't want to start with that, it's, I tell people if you're approaching this for the first time, look up an ingredient, look up the benefits of an ingredient from a culinary perspective.

Now take it one step further and look up what's a minimal effective dose required for you to see a difference in your body? And what's the minimal effective prescription of cadence you should be taking it and try that for a period of time? And I do that with caffeine a lot. You know, caffeine has pros and cons, and I really like to lean on the minimal effective dose to see how that's going to help me perform. So there's different ways to approach it, whether you want to do it through actual blood testing and seeing what you need or just getting a basic understanding. And this information is available on the Internet and through different studies that you can easily access.

I do distill them in the highlights I do on my Instagram, but I always say I want you. guys to dive deeper because if, for example, you're on a medication and turmeric might interact with that. That's something that is so individual that you do need to take it a step further. So it's always a jumping off point. Now, for my clients, we get very detailed. I start with a gut reset, which is a fasting mimicking protocol and an elimination diet and then start to introduce things and we're documenting every day.

And I feel like that sounds intense to your average person, but to your average person, I really feel like you should treat your body like you are an athlete. Performance nutrition is for everyone. Everyone's performing on some level in their day-to-day lives. So I don't know how to get people excited about spending more time doing this. Maybe you have figured out the way to get them excited. But it's not always going to be super simple when you want to get the most out of specific ingredients.

There's a difference between eating healthy or healthier than you were before and then really utilizing the specific benefits of specific ingredients. Which, of course, that already is a huge step for most of the world's population, eating healthier than you were before. So anybody who's overwhelmed, like take it step by step. And again, pick and choose what you decide to move forward with. It's like anything in life. Something gets you excited.

You resonate with something. There's probably some sort of vibrational frequency or something going on where it's like, huh, that's interesting. Let me look into it. You mentioned something earlier that I think we should tease it out a little bit. You said somebody's superfood could be somebody else's, I don't know if you use the word poison, but Cryptonite. Cryptonite.

Superheroes that out a little bit. And what are some common examples of things that are out there in the sphere of the world that even for some of the top athletes that you work with or yourself as an example, maybe it is beneficial for somebody else. But it's not as beneficial for somebody else. Like what's an example of that? Don't yell. Everyone.

Coffee is a perfect example. example of that. Coffee for some people is incredible. Coffee for some people creates an autoimmune response on anxiety and more aggressive behavior and inflammation. And it could be the dose someone's taking or it could be coffee in general. Like I'm very sensitive to coffee. I can handle other types of caffeine, but coffee I can't. And I didn't need a test to tell me that. But later on, I found out that I have a gene mutation where coffee is terrible for me. Tumoric and higher doses is terrible for me. And again, that's through testing.

There's a lot of, you know, ingredients or a lot of sports foods and drinks right now that have beets in it. But beets could be a high inflammatory food for some people, so I'll utilize turnips for those athletes. It could really be almost any ingredient that everything you eat has a pro or a con. there's no benign food. So it's very much of sort of drilling down and listening to your body, which again can be overwhelming and it takes time to identify those.

Yeah. It takes time. And I think a lot of functional doctors would say that just because something doesn't work for you right now may not be a sign that that thing is bad. Like in general, you might need to do something like a gut reset or get to the root of it, patch things up, deal with the leaky gut or whatever's going on, and then all of a sudden something starts to work again. So things take time, but like outline the gut reset. And is that something that our audience can do? Can they follow along? So sort of piggyback in what you said. I always say

what works for me may not work for you. What works today may not work in six months. So I love that. And I really feel for functional medicine doctors because a lot of people go to any doctor looking for an answer right away. And when it comes to gut health and wellness, it takes time to figure out what works, and then it takes an understanding that's going to shift over time. So I feel for them because sometimes they're like, but you sad, but you sad. And it's like it takes time. You have to be patient with it. And I, again, really feel for them because it can be frustrating for both ends, but it can also

be really fun. I mean, my idea of fun is different than other people's fun, discovery period. So my gut reset, the reason why I do that with clients on the front end is before I run any labs, I want to know what their baseline is like. without all the normal inflammatory foods that they have been eating. So I released an online version of it, I think, when a year and a half ago. And it was the first time I ever released anything that I've done with my clients in that format. So the beginning of it is three days of a very specific bone broth.

It's one of my recipes incorporates a lot of different ingredients I grew up with that has different benefits. And you're just having that bone broth for the first three days and some olive oil. So that's the fasting mimicking portion of it, broth fasting. And then the next four days after you've done those first three days are the same nutrient dense foods that repeat themselves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it's still a calorie restriction. So it's a week that I recommend that people take it easy. I do have one athlete.

She is a goat. She decided she was going to go full on boxing during it. I don't recommend it, but she's in a league of her own. And it definitely helped her in those ways. but it is something that I want people to take it easy with. And through that whole week, I'm having my clients document everything they're experiencing because it's information. There's going to be some things that make you feel great about the reset, and there's

going to be some things you don't feel good about. And it's all information. So if you get a particular rash on a part of your body, that's information. If you have a headache on the first day versus a headache on the fourth day, that's information. If you don't respond well to the fiber on the Chitaki mushrooms, that's information. So from that week, we then go to a functional medicine doctor because I work with a team of people who are much smarter than me. And we go, this is what they experienced during this gut reset. Let's run these labs.

And what are the best guesses we can make with their diet moving forward until we get those results back? And it's really cool some of the feedback I've gotten from readers who have done it, as well as some doctor's office are replacing more popular resets right now with the. this protocol. And I think they really love it because it focuses on Whole Foods. And so the way I launched it, for my clients, we make modifications and we revisit it a couple times of a year. But for the general population, I give a format that allows them to document all of those things themselves and then take it to a functional medicine doctor who most of them are like, I know exactly what the goal of this was. And this is amazing information for us to then to proceed. Yeah, as somebody who's a partner in a medical clinic, the other thing that I love about

this is that often when you go to a functional medicine doctor and the context that you shared earlier is so helpful is like they're trying their best. I'm sure there's just like in any practice or any sort of profession. There's always good ones and there's ones that are not that great. So you got to ask around really sort of do your homework. But additionally, the one thing that I hear constantly and many of them have been on this podcast is that the population set is just way sicker than before. Like people are coming. in with so many more things going on than ever before. So the more that you can do a little bit of work on your end and doing something like this gut reset is putting in that work, you're coming

in and what you would have paid for in your first appointment for them to just tell you to go do this thing. You're already having done it. And sure, maybe you didn't have any labs done up into this time, but you're coming in with feedback and information to them that's going to help them narrow in. And no doctor would know that on your first appointment without that information. that's being shared there. So it's a great way to, if you are one of the few that can afford, you know, working with a practitioner, this is a good approach to help you sort of get the best bang out of your buck. And it is removing any of that frivolous noise in your body. So if somebody comes to me day one and they're like, okay, I want to run labs, but they had chips and some fast food

the day before, your labs are going to definitely be skewed towards the inflammation that you're experiencing from the diet you've had for the first few days. But if you're, and this is my perspective, I'm not saying it's the right perspective. It's been effective in the last 10 years of what I've been doing. But it could still be anecdotal. But if you run through the reset first and then we run the labs, I have an idea of what your true inflammation is independent of what you ate the last few days. And that's the information I'm looking for. I don't want, I don't know if it's the right to call it a dirty lab, but I don't want a dirty lab. I want a lab that had that ahead of us running that because it'll just help me.

figure out what program I want to put together for my clients because it's not just supplements, it's ingredients, it's meal timing, it's the macros, all of it. And all of that helps me determine that. And for people that won't be working with a doctor or maybe don't have access to somebody who's like a functional medicine, naturopathic doctor, integrative, they can still get benefit from this. And are there any guides to, you know, there's a lot of self-lab testing companies or like, you know, should they try to convince their current doctor, try to work within the insurance system. I'm sure you get this question all the time. What do you say? What do you suggest? If you're not going to see or can't see a doctor, this is still a great jumping off

point to then approach a paleo diet or a whole 30. It's a prep before you jump into a program that's going to change your diet altogether because it'll allow you to very clearly, almost very clearly, see how you respond to the foods you're reintroducing. So if someone does the reset and they're like, I feel really good. What do I do next? There's a there's a, there's a, there's a, model meal program at the end of it that I included as a bonus. But it's like, okay, now go into just eating healthier proteins, vegetables, but introduce them in groupings so you can really see how you're responding to the food. And that could be enough to really change your life. And you may not even need to worry about any persistent symptoms because they may go away.

But just it'll help you become your own advocate in a lot of those ways. And so that seems to, again, the feedback I get from people is really impressive. I never tell, like, this is like the holy grail, but people are coming back with my Crohn's flare-up is gone. I've had persistent symptoms related to a traumatic brain injury, and that seems to dissipate. The bloat that I've always had is gone. The headaches are gone. My vision is clear.

And I know inflammation is this, like, word we use frivolously now. There's a comedian that made a whole stretch. on, did you see it? No. Where he was like, have you been taking turmeric? And he's like, turmeric? He's like, yeah, turmeric. He's like, the thing that I buy once to make a dish and it stains all of my

bots and fans, he's like, yeah. He's like, why would I take that? He goes, inflammation. He's like, what's that? He's like, you know, general inflammation. He's like, what's that? He's like, that's the new bad thing. He's like, I thought cholesterol is bad.

He's like, no, turns out that's good. Inflocation is the thing. So I love that. Welcome to nutrition. Yeah. Really cracks me up. But I think there's a root of this inflammatory response that's causing all of these other things that people are experiencing or if you have something like a traumatic brain injury, the response

to that. So I have a little highlight thing on my Instagram of people saying what they've experienced. So we run that play before we start working together if someone's going to make changes. But for my clients and myself, we'll revisit the gut reset, maybe not all seven days sometimes modified after long bouts of travel. if they fell off our programming related to what we're doing from a diet perspective, if they're feeling under the weather, we can run it for a couple of days or run through the whole seven again or maybe modify it or we'll do the dense foods all seven days. So there's different ways to make it work for you. I put it out and like this is the most general way to do it, but you can definitely make it your own.

The whole thing is paleo, like make it your own. Love it. So before we go into the next superfood, and we have four more that we're going to cover here, let's give a little bit of background context. So classic sort of question. Mary, what do you do? There's a lot of layers to it. Give the audience layers.

I am a performance chef and specialist. I came to become this performance chef and specialist known as paleo chef from being sick most of my life. It's a common story in our industry, not knowing what's wrong, being in the ewe. are at least once a month passing out in vomit from a migraine and doctors being that young, they assume you're on drugs. And they're like, what did you take? What did you take? And you're trying to explain to them that you just have this mystery illness.

No one can figure out. And it started in second grade for me. And by the time I hit fourth or fifth grade, I decided like, oh, this is just my normal. So I made peace with it and just lived in pain every single day and did my best to not let it affect my livelihood. So if I was at a birthday party with a headache coming on, I'd be like, no, I'm going to stay until the very last minute or playing sports. I had coaches that understood. I would have limited eyesight if I have a migraine that day, hives, and we would find ways for me to still play the sports I want to play around that.

And the hospital visits became more frequent as I got older. And there was when I was 23 or 24, the final hospital visit where I was just so frustrated with misdiagnosis. medications that didn't make any sense, nothing that was really helping, and me asking, you know, what is the root, what is causing the migraine and had sort of a meltdown in the hospital, ripping out the IV, marching out, like, I'm going to figure this out on my own. And it was surprising that it took that long because I'm very clearly, very assertive in other parts of my life, but was just relying on doctors to tell me what they thought was wrong versus doing that research. So stumbled upon a TED talk by Dr. Terry Walls. We all love Dr. Terry Walls on

minding your mitochondria. Remembering I did a whole report on the mitochondria in high school where my lab partner and I rewrote the words to a Beastie Boy song about ATP. Got a fight for your right to ATP and being like, oh, all of this sort of made sense and was leading up to it a technical paper I wrote in seventh grade about my idea of what autoimmune really means. And then sending out my own lab work. So all that research happening at the same time and assuming I'm going to be sensitive to gluten in some way. So I started to remove gluten right off the bat. Test came back that I actually have celiac disease. I was like, okay, this is more serious. I was stoked when I got that. I was like, amazing. I just stopped eating this and I feel better.

Like I didn't feel limited by, oh, what am I going to eat? Fruit, vegetables, proteins. I can still have scotch. Amazing. We're good. And so I, within a few months, Once of changing my diet, all those symptoms went away. And I was in corporate technology, and my colleagues were noticing, you know, you don't seem like you're in pain anymore. You're not sitting at your desk with sunglasses on. And I was always an overachiever because I'm actually high school dropout and I went into tech at a really young age.

So my peers are 10 and 15 years my senior. So I have to not just make quota, exceed quota, to make sure that there's no reason to be like let the young gun go. So them noticing, you know, you're not having to muster through the day anymore to prove something, like, you seem better. And I'm like, I am. It's the diet that I'm changing. And at the time, paleo is becoming a popular word. And so it was so much easier to say I'm following a paleo diet versus, oh, I'm avoiding gluten, kason, and soy.

And somebody asked me in that environment, oh, would you put together a plan like this for me? And I was like, I could. Like, will you cook for me? And I'm like, I don't cook for people. I manage multi-million dollar contracts. Like being just so full of myself. And he's like, you know, I'm willing to pay somebody this amount of money. And I was like, well, this is amazing.

I live in San Francisco. You can make good money and still be poor. Heck yeah. I'll do this as a side hustle. They'll pay for my designer dresses, all those things. And so that was my first client. My second client, which came about a couple weeks later, I was getting my wisdom teeth removed because they were coiled and impacted and all the stuff.

I had to get put under for it. And when I came to the surgeon was like, oh, I'm so excited that you're going to be my private chef. So under the influence, I've already subconsciously decided I'm a private chef and pitched myself as a private performance chef. So those are my first two clients and was trying to do both for a little period of time, just a few months. and my body was tired, breaking down very much like you can't do both. This is too much on you. So I had to choose one or the other. Had a serendipitous moment with a famous chef at the ferry building

and that interaction, which my friend had to point out to me because I was so in my head about what it is I wanted to do next. I quit the next day, corporate, and went all in on personal paleo chef.com. And then fast forward another month, Kamal Ravacant, a friend of mine, made a comment about why I don't have paleochef.com. And I'm like, oh, it's being taken. Somebody's using it. He's like, really?

You should check it right now. I'm like, I told you, dude, it's used. Someone's using it. He's like, let's just check. It was going to auction that day. Had he not said that, I wouldn't have been able to win paleochef.com at auction. So I'm running that play. By the way, Kamal's been on this podcast before.

Oh, amazing. Great guy. Amazing. I, And sort of just like following the signs and my friend Mark Grove says, you know, it sounds like you're responding to the call, although that's not what I'm aware that I'm doing. I'm just sort of going with what makes sense. I've been very much like uncertainty is the greatest opportunity in life.

And so that's sort of the call that I was following. And I was the only one that was doing what I was doing at the time. So when any athlete, any tech, tighten, any actor was Googling personal paleo chef, I was the only one showing up. So it was a combination of luck, timing, opportunity, but the reason why I'm still doing it 10 years later is follow through. So I got those clients early on because I was the only one doing it at the time, but I have the credibility I do because of how detail I am. And I'm still learning how to say this, but the talent that I possess to be able to still be doing that 10 years later. So that's how it started.

That's how I got these incredible athletes over the last decade. I've been able to work with some of the greatest athletes in the world. I get to say now, I have a championship under my belt. Go four years. I worked with a couple of players there. And I mean, just some of the most incredible humans in the world that buy into and trust me with their health in this way. Beautiful.

And in addition to the personal paleo work that you do with individual clients and athletes, you're also an entrepreneur. Let's just do a high level. We'll chat more about fat fudge and all the other stuff you're up to. But just explain a little bit about what led to the products that you created. It's stress testing it. So you see things that work really well with your clients and you're like, this is really interesting.

You share about it. And again, respond to the call, fat fudge is a great example of that. It's something I made for my clients because I don't love protein bars and I don't like goo packets and I needed something different for them. So I was making them fat fudge. I called it functional fudge at the time. And they're hitting PRs on the field, on the court. The musicians are like, wow, I had a great writing session today. And so I shared that recipe.

That recipe went viral. And then people were taking pictures of that product and little baggies. Like, you've got to turn this into a product. So I took $600. and one on Periscope, RIP, and was like, okay, there's 50 orders available online and I don't know what I'm doing, but if you buy them, I will figure out how to make into a product. And it sold out in an hour. And it wasn't that it sold out in an hour that was interesting.

It was more so who bought it? I didn't realize it was following my work. And I was like, okay, don't fuck up now. These people are watching you. And so it just repeated that process. and all future products that come out underneath the fat fudge house, it has to do with products that have been stress tested with performance athletes. This is not me sending an idea into a lab or asking formulators to make me a recipe.

This is stuff that I've created on my own and have used with my athletes and my clients and being like, there's actually legs behind this and feeling so confident with putting it in the market because of that. Yeah, it tastes amazing. You brought a bunch over here. I've tried it for years. It's been in all the Arawans and stores and other stuff around here. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. My first, my first store. My first store. That's amazing. Yeah. And just so everybody's clear, we're talking about P-H-A-T, fat fudge. Yes.

And link in the show notes. We'll chat more about it in a second. Okay. We're going to pivot from your story and I'm sure we're going to come back to it in a second. We're going to go into the next superfood. You know, you mentioned Terry Walls. She's been on this podcast twice. Love Terry.

And something interesting for anybody that knows the Walls Protocol, which is something that she developed for people that primarily have autoimmune and she had MS, is that she was, she grew up vegetarian, and then as she started to understand that sometimes a diet that you think is going to be the best for you is not going to do the best for your health. And she had these autoimmune symptoms and progressive MS. And she created this version of like her version of like the paleo autoimmune diet and felt like people would get better, but they weren't getting fully better and she came on this podcast. She said there was two things she did and modified the diet that immediately started working for a lot more people. The first one was working their way

slowly up over a period of time, up to getting about eight to nine cups of vegetables a day. That was one. Number two, which is what we're going to talk about next, is inclusion of organ meats. So let's talk about why organ meats in particular liver is number two on your list of top superfoods. Goes back culturally. I've been eating liver since I was a child. It's one of my favorite foods.

How do they make it? Yeah, how do they make it? Well, that's where I got tripped up was none of my friends growing up in California liked liver. And I'm like, liver's amazing. What are you talking about? And then I went to a friend's house

for dinner. Her mom made liver. And it was liver and onions and it was gray and it was bland. And I'm like, okay, now I understand why you don't like liver. In Egypt, we make it with coriander and cumin and cinnamon and green peppers and jalapeno and it just full it's like feels so

warm when you eat it um and again just part of our diet since we're kids and lo and behold parents are right it is something that is super nutrient dense the i don't have all the recommended daily values memorized but it's in my ebook and i post about all the time they're like a thousand percent of all these different necessary um nutrients and when i incorporate it Now, there are some people who have too much iron and definitely should avoid liver, since this is not for those, because again, not everything is going to be great for everyone. But we did a project with Nike, the female running team. So these are women who are expending tons of calories.

Some of them are bought into vegetarian, vegan lifestyle. And even though they are performing well, they have so many health issues. One's losing their hair, that the one hasn't had their period in a period of time. the other one can't put on weight. And I don't like to throw everything at someone right away, particularly for females up. My first recommendation is usually, let's incorporate liver, either eating it or capsules. It was insane this project we did Nike within a few weeks. Period returns for one.

The other one is able to put on weight. The other one is like I'm experiencing like a warmth in my body. And then for her, after like 10 weeks, she was experiencing new growth. of hair, excuse me, energy depletion across all clients usually goes up. And so it's something that, again, is liver is so normal in other cultures and for whatever reason is not here. But it is another non-negotiable should your test not show that we should be avoiding organ meat. Now today, when you make it, what are some of your favorite recipes and are any of them available online?

Bang and liver. Bang and liver. Talk about it. What is it? How do you make it? It's the way I described. So it's exactly the way we make it in Egypt, the way I had it growing up. I have had it on pop-up menus for my collaborations with different chefs. And you're putting liver on a menu in L.A. And nobody returned it. And some people were skeptical and they loved it. I've maybe had one person in the last 10 years across not just clients or patrons of the pop-ups or even people who bought the e-book and did. it, one person is like, I just can't get past the texture. Everyone else is like, I can't believe I love liver.

Now, I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong at some point. Be like, I hate it, can't get past it. But I think most foods that you don't like has to do, this is where the culinary side comes in, has to do with the preparation that goes into it. Some people who don't love chewing on liver will make it the way that my recipe calls for and then blend it into a cream and, like, do paté with it, just full of so much flavor. I can say that that is, as somebody who grew up vegetarian and never really had liver, never had anything, then when I got into the world of functional medicine and connecting with all these great doctors and seeing that, okay, this diet that I thought worked really well for me anymore, doesn't feel like it's working well.

When I first had liver, it was in the form of a paté. And it was actually at a restaurant just right down the street from over here where we're at in Los Angeles. And it's called Farm Shop. They have a chicken liver moose on the menu. and it's a little bit of liver blended with some, like some fruits and other stuff. And it's this beautiful paté that you can add to like a cracker or just eat with veggie sticks. And that was like a great introduction because it made me more excited to actually try it out in other forms. Yeah.

If you had liver and onions first get, you'd be like hard pass. Yeah. I feel for all the kids who are scarred for life on the liver and onions. Yeah, I deal with that a lot. There's some sort of like really, visceral childhood response to it. So I'll hide it. I'll make tacos or something.

In the spectrum of organ meats as a whole, is there any particular reason that you particularly put the spotlight on the liver compared to some of the other organs that are there in organ meats? The spotlight was there in the beginning, truthfully, just because it's something that was incorporated in my culture. Yeah. And again, you find out, and when you do the research, it is something that is very nutrient-dense. I also think it's more palatable.

I grew up eating hearts and tripe and all of that. But those are harder to really get behind if you're not used to that texture. Even I'm like, I don't feel like eating hard today. It's a little too much work. Do you ever have to be an advocate for something like liver from people who are from your cultural background and have forgotten about it? Like anyone in your family that you said, guys, liver was a part of how we grew up. And I'm going to get you re-excited about it again. No, we're excited about it.

When I go home to Egypt, you know, you come over for one dinner, but your auntie is going to make food for a week for that one table because they want all your favorites. The thing of liver is huge because we all love it. Yeah, it's no one needs to get excited about liver in my culture. So a couple more clarifying questions for people because even a lot of people who are listening to this podcast maybe haven't dived into liver. So what form of liver are you using? And do you use any particular services to ensure, like, quality or you have like a butcher or something that you go to to get the best quality? I would recommend checking out your local farmer's market, getting to know your butcher that's there and understanding where it's coming from. Chicken liver, I lean towards because, again, it's the way I ate it growing up.

I think it's a little more palatable. The texture is a little better. You can go beef or chicken, whatever your preference is. beef is, I think, easier to mess up in the cooking process. So this is the culinary side. If you overcook it, it will become very tough and rubbery chicken liver. You can overcook a little bit. There's a margin for error there.

But yeah, the hitting up your local butcher is what or your farmer's market and find out the local farm that is servicing that area is usually what I recommend. And any capsule recommendations, companies you love? like? Paleo Valley, really like them. And then there's another one. Organ Complex, I think it's the Oregon Complex. Yeah, it's got a few other things in there that are really great for you. And then I there's, I can't remember the name now, but there's one out of New Zealand, I believe, that I really did like I was looking at, at other, some of the other countries have better regulations around their farming practices. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. All right.

Let's go into the next one and you actually also have a product that has a superfood ingredient that I just tried. It's fantastic. And that next one is tahini. So just explain to people what is tahini. A lot of people actually surprisingly don't know what it is. And why is it on your top five list? Tahini is ground sesame seeds.

It has a really beautiful nutty flavoring to it. It could almost be like peanut butter. Almost. I don't have peanut butter. I haven't had peanut butter in like 11 years. So to me it tastes like peanut butter because I don't remember what peanut butter tastes like. But tahini is everything in the Middle East. I don't know if it's everything in your culture too because you do have halveh, is what you guys call.

We call it halawa in mine. It's not everything, but it definitely, we have that Middle East influence in some of the ingredients, often in desserts. Yeah. But yeah, it's used a little bit sparingly in our Indian culture. So in the Middle East and Mediterranean culture, we use it for sweet and savory foods. So hummus has tahini in it. And our desserts have it. Our ice creams have it.

We'll make dressings with it, different dips with it. So it's just something, again, that's always been in the fridge. I consider it a staple. And then doing what I do now, I'm like, oh, this is actually a really great vehicle when it comes to nutrient density. The way it's absorbed in the system for intake is really interesting, too, has a really great profile of magnesium, potassium, potassium, manganese, a little bit of iron. And it was the fat fudge is inspired by halawa or halva, which is a dessert. And I was eating it one day and thinking about how, oh, the ingredients are so clean.

And then there's a different story of me doing some formulation for the Oracle sailing team and wasn't really happy with one of the final things I was trying to do for those athletes. And as I'm holding the halawa in my hand thinking, like, wait, if you modify these things, It can become a performance food separate from that because original cacao is the first one. The spice ingredient in there was a combination of spices I was using for a coffee that I had posted. And I jokingly called it unicorn fuel. Be careful what you say on the internet because they ran with it and it was voted like number two coffee hack of that particular year because the recipe went viral. So I had a canister of unicorn dust on my counter, which was the pre-measured stuff just to easily make the coffee.

that I was doing for my clients. And so when I was making the halawa for myself, it's very temperamental. And I missed the timing of it. So I knew it wasn't going to crystallize like a natural tahini or a natural halibah. And so I dumped in all those ingredients of the unicorn dust in there and ended up making this OG formula for fat fudge. And the other ingredients are like maca and turmeric. The original one had some cayenne in there. and the ability for those other things to get absorbed better in combination with the tahini made it really interesting and powerful. Like, for example, coffee is in original, the equivalent of one coffee bean per packet,

which is like 10 milligrams, not very much. Some of my friends are like, oh, my God, how much caffeine is in this? I feel so focused and like so much energy. And I'm like, interestingly enough, not very much. but the combination of that minimal effective dose with the maca, with the different elements of tahini has enabled you to be more focused. And so I really enjoy people who are skeptical and think it's just like a snack and they take it. And they're like, I'm noticing that I'm like locked in or I hit a PR on the field.

Like I had more energy to keep going. So Tahini. Tahini. So it's like a transportation vehicle. Yeah. Right? So it's like a great way. So separate from that is there.

Are there any other ways that you recommend that people incorporate tahini, like most common one that people use is probably like dressings? Is there other ways that you would incorporate into your recipes so people can get the benefits? I mean, yeah, from a culinary perspective, I'm making dressings with it, I'm making dips with it, I'm making some healthier desserts with it. Sometimes I'm just spooning it or eating it with some fruit, putting it into a smoothie. there's it's so versatile like it I don't know what the Middle East is without Tahini basically but I think being more focused on it like using it as a packet or like even making your own version of fat fudge like mixing it with some other things at home having it on its own and then becoming more aware of its effect on your body like I really want people to

be aware what's happening to their body when they're eating something like that especially if they're trying to discover the benefits of it I love Tahini as like like take a little bit of tahini. And we've had a lot of experts go on the podcast previously and talk about people having in their repertoire like a savory snack and not always sort of reaching for sweet. Just to have as another option for them, especially when it comes to like metabolic health and other things if they're trying to like, you know, balance out their blood sugar and improve their results.

So tahini is just one of those that you can quickly add in a bunch of little things like just even chopped vegetables, like a little bit of tahini. mix it all together, kind of make your own, I don't even know what that would be called, but like, it's a salad. Salad, yeah, but with tahini kind of the glue as holding it all together. I like that with tuna. I don't like mayo. I do not like mayo.

I don't understand it. Every time I try to like it, my stomach turns a little bit, which is strange because I'm okay with aoli, but like mayo from the jar. So growing up, again, instead of mayo, tahini is our tuna. So for me, tuna, tahini, a little lemon, a little cumin. And then I'll put it in like a red bell pepper. And specifically red because I like the combination of the flavor of the red bell pepper in contrast to the tahini. And the tuna is a snack of mine. I love it.

That's a recommendation for you right there. All right. Let's go to the next one. Mushrooms, specifically like the medicinal mushrooms. So what are those? And how do you incorporate them in what you have going on? There is a few of them. The ones that I use most commonly are cordyceps. I'll use Shataki from a culinary perspective. And Chaga, Turkey Tail, Rishi are the ones that I really like to use and I'll have different benefits. For Sigmaatic, Taro is a friend of mine, so he's introduced me to them a long time ago and got me incorporating them. I have a pituitary adenoma.

So I've been using them in higher dose combinations to help shrink that. And that's how I was introduced to them initially. And then before I introduced them to my client's repertoire, doing more research. Like cortisups, I love using for endurance and performance enhancing altitude prep, Rishi, which is in the Adapt Halva, Fat Fudge for regulating the nervous system, helping bring you down, Chaga for the immune system. Shataki, I love it just so. powerful for gut, healing. Do you have any favorites on your end? I feel like you're in the same boat

when it comes to functional mushrooms. Yeah, you know, mushrooms is one of those in the category. Love tarot, love what they're up to. I, for whatever reason, again, this is where everybody just pays attention to their own body. I don't feel a draw to them. That doesn't mean that I have a reaction to them, but I just don't feel a draw. The culinary mushrooms, you know, that are there, I like to cook with them and include them in, especially I get them from the farm. market here, good sources. Yeah, what are your favorite mushrooms? I love the, what are they called the trumpet mushroom?

It's like the really thick ones. Yeah. I like to kind of cut those up, like little pieces of, almost like little tiny pieces of steak in a way. Yeah. And I like to pan fry them. Yeah. And incorporate them with like a nice like omelet or something like that. Love chitaki mushrooms as well.

You can make chitaki like a steak too. Get the really big heads. Yeah. Score them as if you're scoring a steak. and lightly steer them with a little coconut aminos, but for longer than you think on a lower heat, and it becomes really beefy. And the umami flavor on that because of the coconut aminos is really nice.

I will do something similar with Lionsmane mushroom, which is this beautiful mushrooms, like this cream color and I guess it looks a little hairy, but I'll do that slow, like, saute with that too. Yeah. The thing that I do really, really love is that anytime I get a whiff, of like my tonsils are acting up or like my throat is starting to get a little inflamed. I am a huge fan of the My Community Spray by Paul Stammis.

No, I haven't heard of it. What's in it? It's got all the mushrooms. Everyone that you just mentioned over there, minus the culinary ones. And it's an incredible blend. And I just find it works really well with me. No financial ties or anything to the company. but that's kind of been one of my go-toes.

So you are drawn to it. That's like when I get, if I'm feeling like sick, I use it then. Yeah. It's not a thing that I use on a regular basis. I know there's fantastic products that are there and I love them all. Like they all taste amazing. Yeah. But yeah.

Yeah, I think before somebody goes down the path of all these ingredients, maybe not liver because it's not very costly. But some of these ingredients, like the functional mushrooms can be, you know, pricey for an average household. It's removing other inflammatory foods, doing the best you can with what you have first. So you can more easily notice if any of these other things are beneficial to you. Because sometimes people get really excited and like, okay, I'm going to buy everything they talked about. But like do it in stages. Like remove some other things first, get in a good place where you can actually be aware of how these things impact you in the same way that you're

very aware that that spray helps you when you're feeling a little under the weather. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. And the company's called host defense. Host defense. You've probably seen it around. And another note about that is that there is one of the world's top cancer researchers. And his name is Ralph Moss. He was previously at Sloan Kettering.

And through some controversies that he's talked about in this podcast previously, he was asked to leave because he was questioning the efficacy around a drug that was being overhyped and was also touting, because they asked him to look into what are some of the natural things that are out there that in addition can work with pharmaceutical interventions. And he came back with the whole list. He was hoping to debunk the whole situation. He came back with a whole list. And one of his items that he had on there was some of these medicinal mushrooms. And when my mom had got diagnosed with breast cancer, this was now almost like 12, 13 years ago, I reached out to him and I said, hey, you know, I'd love if you can do a little consult. He's kind of like the cancer. He's kind of

like the cancer CEO, he steps in and helps people like say, okay, you're going to need this type of doctor, you're going to work with this, get this test at this one place, and like all in the specialty of what that person's cancer is. And he brought in some evidence-based supplements and there was a few, again, I don't have the details in front of me of what he was referencing, what that evidence is, but I'll throw in the show notes. He brought a few medicinal mushrooms that had shown some benefits for the particular type of cancer that my mom had. Right, right, right. Turkey tell is one of my star ingredients for my pituitary adenoma. named him Herbert.

Herbert. Yeah. Nice. Hopefully you don't meet a real Herbert in real life. And it's interesting because it had been shrinking, which was really cool just doing my doctor and I have an agreement. He's like, I'm going to let you do what you do with food for a period of time. And if it shows that you are making progress with it, I will let you continue.

And if you don't or it starts to grow again, then we'll go a different route. And I love that I do have a primary care physician who knows that what he does and what I do can work together. Like he'll call me for consults with his other patients. But this is what I'm going to do from a medical standpoint. What do you recommend from a nutrition standpoint, which is really cool for just a regular primary care physician? But I've seen some progress with that. Let's go back to your story for a second. So you're mentioning when you were younger, you were throwing up, migraines, you know, fatigue that you were dealing with.

There's a whole host of symptoms. So now, obviously, this is your lifestyle, the way you eat, the superfoods you include, and then just the general makeup of your base diet. Do you ever have what maybe somebody would call flare-ups now? If you do, what are the circumstances that, you know, contribute to them? Or has largely, because you've so radically changed, like, you just don't deal with these symptoms. Yeah, I had to talk. And somebody in the audience said to me or asked, like, do you just basically,

feel good all the time now. And I took a deep breath and kneeled down. I was like, look, here's the thing. I manage multiple clients. I have two businesses. I do too much. And just because I eat well, it doesn't mean I feel good all the time. But there's no way that I could do everything that I'm doing right now. If I wasn't following the protocol, I'm following right now. Heaven forbid, I was still in the place I was before. I wouldn't be able to get as much done as I can. So I don't feel great all the time. We just had NBA playoffs. That's an insane schedule to follow.

I'm definitely exhausted. I'm incorporating every tool that I have. My red light therapy in the morning, my normatech, making sure I'm fueling properly to sort of stay away from some of the flare-ups you might have as a result of limited sleep, stress, just a crazy schedule. For me, if I get something that's cross-contaminated as a celiac, I will have a flare-up. I'm having a flare-up right now from some cross-contamination last week. So I have brain frog. I have a rash on my elbows. I have some inflammation in my face and my joints.

I can't get my aura ring off. And so I end up following closer to my gut reset to sort of calm everything down on that process, doing sauna, cold showers, things like that. So for me, flare-ups have to do when I'm doing too much. And I always get a little frustrated. like I wish I felt better so I could do more. I'm not the person that wants to do less. So learning how to be kind to myself, like take a time out as much as I can depending on the schedule. Because it's not like I can be like, sorry NBA.

I'm flare up. I got to go lay down. It's like, okay, I know that there's an end date when I can take some time for myself. And just following as good of a diet as I possibly can and knowing that this two shall pass. So I try not to get frustrated when I have a flare up. because this used to be my every single day. So when I have a flare-up now or a migraine now, I'm like, I can't believe that this was normal for me.

I'm appreciative of you opening up and sharing about this because I think a lot of people can relate to it, especially people who have, maybe they didn't have the exact condition or circumstances of symptoms you had, but people have gone through stuff. And then you change your lifestyle back to the way it was previously, or there's certain heavy stressors from work or the environment or people responding to sort of, the latest happenings in the news or whatever. Yeah. And things can come back. Yeah. And I think that a big piece, which you hit on, is that mindset piece of being kind and not leaning into wanting to beat yourself up.

When you do beat yourself up, what is the story that's circling in your head? You know, what's the story that you're telling yourself when you're trapped in that component? And again, all of us beat ourselves up. I'm just curious. What story do you tell yourself? Yeah. And I want to be really clear, too. You can be doing everything right in front of you and still be having a flare-up, and that could be a trauma response. There's a, I think a lot of people sort of push down any sort of experience they've had and be like, oh, it's in the past, or it wasn't that big of a deal. And even not acknowledging that you've been through something, your body's going to

hold on to that some way, and that could create a cascade effect of an autoimmune response. And maybe we'll change what autoimmune response means in the future. But there is an emotional component to it as well. you see a lot of autoimmune stuff with people who have PTSD. And as far as your question of beating myself up, I have to really think about that because I'm so solution forward. I mean, I do have depression. I do wake up most days, not automatically in the best mood and being like, oh, another day.

So I have to go through different habits and steps to feel better. and get back into what I think my true baseline underneath whatever is causing the depression is optimism and generosity and joy. Otherwise, how can I get there by following some steps? So when I beat myself up, I don't actually talk down to myself. I'm trying to think if there's any time that I did talk down to myself. I'm more so observe of like, okay, you're feeling this way. you have an understanding that it's not really your baseline. Things may feel very overwhelming. You may not want to deal with this.

And I just sort of, I cocoon would be the worst version of it is I won't leave my apartment for a few days. And the idea of going past my doorstep is very overwhelming. And I'm like, okay, I'm having a heightened response to something right now. And again, being very patient with myself practicing self-care. And self-care could sometimes be, for me, it's dairy-free, eating some ice cream. zoning out and watching a movie and just being very, very still. But I don't talk down to myself.

I really consider, I look at myself like the five-year-old version of myself. You're an observer. Yeah, I'm not going to be mean to a five-year-old type of thing. I think that probably took a lot of practice, or do you think that it was always that way, just because you went through so much? I think I've always been an observer from a young. young age, a very odd kid in the observations. Like I have memories that don't make sense as far as my mom goes, how do you even remember

that? You were maybe a year old, maybe even eight months because we didn't live in the apartment when you were older. So I think I've always had this observational element. I have definitely been through some very traumatic experiences. Definitely have lost a lot of people in my life. And I think when I wasn't aware of that, I would have like a hyper response like a blow up and I don't yell often but I'll like start yelling

about something or immediately need to leave a situation because I'm not aware what's going on. I'm having like just a response to what's happening exactly in the moment, a reaction. And I had to spend a lot of time learning how to, okay, this is the trigger that's happening inside of me. It's up to me if I want to display that trigger in a certain action or a certain thing I say and now observing it and being like, I may not always be in control of how I feel, but I am in control of what I do with that feeling. And that takes practice. And I'm 37 now, and I wouldn't say I've gotten really good at it until like 29, 30, 31. And I still, I mean, I've maybe had one moment like that that lasted a few minutes in the last year.

And even in the moment, I'm like, oh, but you're about to have an episode. And I thought, actually, I could, for me, I'm like rationalized. Like, I deserve to have that episode, but I lost a few minutes and I catch it right away. Are you, for your autoimmune condition, how crucial, just touching on it? Because there's a lot of people that, because of our past topics of covering autoimmune, because we've done it quite a bit with Terry, Dr. Rajdani, who's another great doctor down the street, we're getting an influx of people that are recently discovered that they have an autoimmune condition. What do you want to say about autoimmune and sleep, especially with how much stuff is on your plate?

Yeah. Sleep is so crucial. That's the first thing I try to tackle right after changing up the diets with my clients is everyone gets an aura ring. I actually have a coach's view where I get to hit refresh and see what my clients are doing, which is kind of creepy. Like if I introduce a new supplement and I want to see how they slept, I'll just hit refresh in the morning. I'm like, oh, they're up. Me, son of a text. They're like, no, no, no, we're good.

We're just at the club right now hanging out. Hey, I do ask them to take their ring off when they go out. I'm like, if you're going to party, I don't want to see what's happening. Just take the ring off. But sleep is so underrated. I notice for my autoimmune, if I get, my ideal is eight hours. If I get less than six, I will have a flare up. And it's not as intense as a cross-contamination flare-up,

but it's like white noise in my brain. or I'm very sensitive or very anxious. And something as simple as taking a 20-minute nap, trying to fit that in, will make a world of a difference if the schedule's insane. And I just know that I'm not going to get good sleep for the next week type of thing. So like sleep, I don't think we could ever talk enough about sleep. One of my other clients wrote a book on it.

I'm trying to remember the name of it. But like Ariana talks, Avington talks a lot about sleep. I think she was one of the first people that I recognized in that status, touting sleep in that world of like glorifying how busy we are, glorifying how little sleep we get. So she was one of the first people in that industry that was like, oh, I think we got it wrong. Well, I think what's beautiful now is that, especially with all these podcasts that are out there

and people like yourself going on them, there's now almost like a reverse glorification of like, hey, I sleep this much and I get this much done, which is a beautiful thing to hear. Right. Because it's so key. You know, my wife doesn't have an autoimmune or anything else like that. But when she doesn't get even one night of not getting the right amount of sleep, we're more likely to have friction during the day. You know, I'm not putting that on her. They could be both sides.

Right. They're going to be both sides. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me clarify. Just in case she listens to this episode. Love you, baby. Yeah, it's so key. It could literally be the sixth superfood on our list over here. I think that's before anything else, to be honest. I would move it up. Yeah, definitely.

Like, what do we need when we're sick? Sleep. What do we need when we're cranky? Sleep. It really will help create a clearer picture, too, what's going on if you adjust sleep. I'm sure you work with, before we get to our last superfood and some other topics we want to cover, I'm sure you work with a lot of clients of all different dietary approaches, right? Like you mentioned you had work with some athletes and did some work with Nike and those athletes were vegan or vegetarian. I'm asking primarily because, you know, that's the background that I came from. I don't eat that weight now.

When you're helping people in that world who have just chosen for their own reasons, could be cultural, could be animal stuff that's there, anything's that beyond the obvious of, you know, people talk about B12 and they talk about, you know, a couple supplements you might need. Anything for the people that are committed that this is what I'm doing right now for these specific reasons, what, how do you modify and sort of have them have some of the best of the world of paleo minus animal products, like reducing some of the grains, et cetera? Like, what have you seen have been best practices?

It's focusing on nutrient dense. foods and leafy greens. Everyone gets collard greens, mustard greens, charred, different spices. But if someone comes to me and they're like, I want to be vegan, I want to do this vegan, I tell them you need to work with someone else. I'm not going to be the solution for everyone. And I don't care to be the solution for everyone. If you're that dead set on it, now, if we run blood work and it says it's great for you, we can work around that. But generally my response to someone who is like, I eat vegetarian, I eat vegan. And it's not for religious purposes. I do put the religious requirements in a different class where we'll be more likely to work around that.

And again, keep in mind who I'm working with. I'm working with some of the elite performers across multiple industries. They usually want to feel their best to keep doing what they're doing. But if we run blood work and the blood work says you need something and it happens to only come from an animal, you're going to argue with blood work. I'm not imposing my belief system on you. I'm looking at what your body is telling us you need. And if you're a vegan and your body is saying we need to have these different foods in there and you just refuse to, I'm not the best person to help you. There is probably someone who knows exactly how to optimize a vegan diet. And that person should get your business. Not me. I'm not going to pretend like

I'm going to become the expert on vegan performance. You mentioned blood work. So, When you're looking at markers, just again, from your perspective, you're part of a team, right? You're part of a team and you're the first person to say, like, look, I'm not the medical doctor. I'm the person who's enhancing through food performance. And I work with medical doctors. Yeah, I think you're referring to someone as like the cancer CEO. Right. Like I think I'm in the performance CEO.

There you go. You know? You know? Like I have learned a lot through experience over the last 10 years. So I'm very good at getting very close to figure out what lever we need to pull. but it's all done with a team. We've got functional medicine doctors, primary care. We've got different specialists.

We've got sleep specialists. We've got PTs. Like it's a whole team that we're working together for that goal. But would you think you're going to ask me a question about markers? Yeah, yeah. Just some of the top markers that you're paying attention to that are there, like just from your perspective, your approach. General comprehensive, I want to know how's your pituitary functioning. I want to see what your nutrient levels are like.

There are some people who don't believe in the food sensitivity, the blood serum one. I find that in organizations like sports organizations are like, oh, that changes so frequently that we don't think the efficacy of it is very strong. And my pushback is always, you know, things do change in the body. So I want to see the food sensitivity because I want to give them the best possible environment to reduce inflammation in their body. And then after all the general labs, so glucose, all of those things, then it will drill down to things that are more specific depending on the client.

Do you ever run like an omega-quant and fatty acids and things like that? I do, and I don't know enough to speak on them. So you usually let the doctor tell me what, like, okay, this is what we're seeing. This is what I would like to see. This is how the conversation goes. doctor goes, this is what I'm seeing. This is what I'd like to see shift. Here's the nutrients or the organs or whatever is being affected. And then they don't know what to do after that because they don't usually know a lot about diet and nutrition. I go, cool, I'll then take that information,

start doing heavy research on mechanisms and pathways and, okay, what affects this. Now, what foods can affect this. Then come up with a list of things I think will work and what the doses go back to the doctor. We'll look at it together. Then I'll I'll go to like Dan Garner and Andy Galpin, their sports chemists and sports scientists. They'll go over the work that I did, present something new, or say it looks good, and then we'll come up with a plan. Like it is really a team of just everyone sort of specializing in their lane, but then also hopping into each other's lane.

So there's no egos about it. That's great, which is how things should be approached. And one day, I'm very bullish on technology. I've made a lot of investments in the space of. you know, technology being a part of this, ultimately what you've created, which is, again, for people that are at the top of the top, that is not going to be able to scale. You know, we're never going to have enough doctors. There's barely any functional medicine doctors when you look at the world of it. And then good ones on top of that. Good ones on top of that.

There's a lot of ones that are out there that, again, maybe well intention, maybe not well intention, but many are doing their best, but it's just, it's a systems thing, right? It's a system thing. So I can't wait for. more technological interventions that can help do the heavy lifting so that more this can scale to more people. I think there's more than one perspective too. Like, yes, the systems to be able to scale this for more people, but then also the other system that creates these problems in the first place are food sourcing, our accessibility and certain parts of the world and different parts of neighborhoods in America specifically. So it's like, yeah, it's great to have systems

that allow people to have access to the information that I give my clients in the process, but also how do we impact how we get our food? If you could wave a magic wand and there was just like one component of that that you could get a chance to address for... What a simplistic question? Let's do it. There's somebody listening here and they're working in something and they might have the ability to pull on that lever.

If there was one component that you could wave a magic wand on. It's so complicated. Like it's agriculture, the way we process food. It's super complicated. I think accessibility, right now it starts with accessibility, especially in the underserved communities where they don't even have access to whole foods on a regular basis. There's, I think it's misfit market and supermarkets spelled in an interesting way where they get access to those communities to like farmer market type fruits and vegetables. and education to back that up. Because if the consumer makes better choices and those who are providing the consumers

need to make changes, I know there's big efforts all the way up to the government level. Corey Booker is doing some workaround, changing all of that. I think it's a very courageous effort that will take a lot of time. But I don't know that I think there is one magic wand answer. I mean, are you sitting on an answer for us? Not that I was asking you for an answer for the whole thing, but if there was one thing that you could change, you thought from your perspective of the world that would have the biggest.

And I think you gave an answer. He said underserved communities that don't have access to both the combination of food. And you added in, I think, is an important missing piece that people leave out, is the education. Is the education combined with the food? And sometimes it's even just basic cooking classes. There's a project that was done at Cleveland Clinic for their Center for Functional Medicine where, you know, they were writing essentially, like, you know, giving out and working with a local

provider to have the food available to some of these underserved groups. But then there was a question of like, well, what do we turn this into? And this feels like a lot of work and how do we make this happen? So it has to be combined with some basic cooking classes, how to also make those localized for the flavors that those communities, depending on what part of the country you might be in, actually want to enjoy. You know, how crazy are we to think that our very, version of eating healthy should be imposed on that same population that might have a different sort of flavor profile in what they enjoy. So yeah, I think you answered it. Yeah, I think definitely more programs in schools too. I think if you empower kids in that way, agency over what they put

in their body and agency over like I can cook something, it cascades far beyond just nutrition and wellness, but the sense of pride and self-worth and self-confidence. That in sports, I think every kid should know how to cook and play sports. Let's touch on our last superfood that we tossed in right before this interview started. I forget it already. Saffron, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, what do you want to say about Saffron? I want you to share what you found first.

Well, yeah, I linked to this in a newsletter that I had written previously. And it's an article by the Atlantic that I came across a while ago. It's called The Spice That Hooked Medieval Nuns. And the subtitle is, Saffron has a little. been altering people's moods for hundreds of years. And basically the story goes into how Saffron was discovered by these nuns during medieval times in Europe who found out that Saffron had almost like an effect where they felt euphoric, a little high. And it would work so well that it became a regular part of this routine. And then the church got a little worried about this. And

at times was even considering like should this be banned should this not be allowed you can't you know I don't know if we want everybody to be feeling good all the time uh how can we shame them if they feel good all the time do you want to put your email out for anybody that has complaints we can direct it uh if you want to send me email but a complaint go ahead and I will let you know or recommend that you should see a therapist as to why you're so easily offended by other people at paleochef.com Yeah, so what do you want to add on top of that for saffron? So saffron I use for my athletes for mood boosting for sure, for altitude training for just blood oxygen levels. It also has some antiviral effects.

And it's really, really powerful. It is one of, if not the most expensive spice in the world, but it's also incredibly potent. So it just takes a pinch of those threads. And I like to let it seep in a tea or put it in like a cold press juice with turnip juice and celery juice and some coconut oil and let it turn. And that's part of like a daily supplement. But it has very it has very noticeable effects. Again, my clients, the athletes at least are on a very strict protocol all season. So they notice effects of things very easily.

And so one of my athletes is really good at noticing. when it's included and noticing when it's not included. Like say I forgot the saffron for a couple of days. He's like something was off with that tonic. Like I didn't feel like the normal boost. And I'm like, what the fucker do you notice that was missing? Mary, we lost yesterday.

I don't think you put your saffron in my green juice. I definitely got accused of or there was one game I couldn't make. And there was a game prior to that I couldn't make. And they had lost both games. And I got like four or five text messages from different people and the staff. Like, we put this on you. And I'm like, right, this is my fault. You have to come to the games.

So what you're saying is that if somebody is into sports betting, they should follow you on Instagram to find out when you're not showing up. Yeah. Although this is actually, I only took the word of the chef. We were at an away game. And when I were at way games, I have access to the hotel kitchen so I can do my thing for my athletes. I don't work with whole teams. I work with specific athletes on the teams. And I travel with all of our meals for the away games.

And so I was in the kitchen on an away game. And the chef there goes, fat fudge, I know fat fudge. So-and-so team uses this fat fudge. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, the whole team uses it. It was in our kitchen. And I'm like, are you sure it's this product? It's like, yeah, I go, this is my product.

He was like, that's really cool. You didn't know what they use it. I was like, no. Business me is stoked. Loyal to my soil me is like, I got to look up who is buying this and turn off their subscription for the rest of the season. I'm not trying to help these fools. I didn't do that.

P.S. just for the record. But I had this like, this is so cool. And I do believe in what I do so much that I do think he could help a whole team. You didn't do that, but you want everybody to know that you could do that. I could have. I was like, who's ordering this? Just so anybody tries to cross you and break your trust, they need to know what you're capable of.

I would never do anything like that, although it's very entertaining. to say out loud. I hope people have sense of humor. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. Our audience definitely has a sense of humor.

Talk about the product suite that you have that it's available for people. We've already mentioned fat fudge. That's the main seller, the best seller. Yeah, yeah. So we have three different versions. The cacao original has been there since the get. This last year I launched the PowerBerry, which is it's got beats, cortiseps, and then berry in there. It tastes more like.

strawberry. So if you're someone who doesn't like berry, I've been told people like I wasn't expecting to like it, but that's energy without caffeine. And then the Adopt Halva, which some people say it tastes like a fluffer nutter that that peanut butter marshmallow sandwich kids would have. Never had that before. I think it's an American thing. And this one has Rishi and Ashwaganda, so it's meant to like chill you out. I did some powders for a short period of time to test to market, some sleep tonics, which did well. So we're bringing that back and then keep your eyes peeled for the black seed oil supplement. And then almost anything you see me post for my athletes is coming down the pipeline. I mean, you know that I almost lost the business a couple

years ago from a manufacturing nightmare. Is there, can I just interrupt for a second? Yeah, of course. Just because like, you know, always thinking about audience value, what do you think translatable to the audience? Any person is going through a tough time. It doesn't have to be somebody who owns a business. Yeah. It doesn't have to be somebody who's in the health world specifically. But what were some of the key lessons and takeaways that you took away during that time that could be applicable to anybody that's going through a tough time, even if it's one or two?

Even if it's not your fault, there's a way to make it your responsibility. Hmm. You don't have to fix it right away. Be patient in that process. And this two shall pass. Yeah. The first one is really powerful. I've shared on the podcast before that one of my favorite quotes from this executive coach who was previously a venture capitalist, his name is Jerry Colonna. He asked this quote, I'm going to paraphrase here because I don't have it in front of me. He says, how have I been complicit in the things that I say I don't want in my life? So even if it's not your fault, how have you been complicit? How did you play a part in the story, in the development, even if that is, sometimes, we've all done this before, letting people treat us a particular way and maybe not speaking up early.

Okay, great. We just did the best that we could, but we participated in it because the law of responsibility says that if it's not your fault at all, at all whatsoever, and again, minus, you know, we're obviously having a carve out so everybody understands is always exceptions to the rule, you know, sexual violence, you know, other things. You know, that stuff exists in the world. There are crazy people. There are, you know, terrible people in the world.

But we're talking about the day-to-day that most people experience. If it's not in some way your fault, then it's very unlikely that you could do something to rectify it. But on the flip side, the law of responsibility says that if in some way this is my fault, that means I can at least do something to influence it, which is a reminder about the power that we have. We're supremely powerful. I don't, I think, I think what I do with food is just.

a tool and the bigger message is for people to understand how powerful they are when they can feel good. Most people don't know they can feel good. And I think this has to do with my keen sense of mortality because most of the people in my life I care about have passed away even at young ages is I want them to get the most out of life. Whatever that version for them looks like and it's hard to make decisions to get there if you don't feel good.

So one way to start feeling good is diet, nutrition, wellness. and then you start making decisions from that place. The number of readers who I think they're so brave, they're like, I changed the way I ate or incorporated this thing that you recommended and I wasn't in pain and I quit my job and I did this. And it's like, that's really powerful that you not being in pain allowed you to see there's a different path in my life that I want. Feeling good is the unlock to so many other aspects of our lives that we also want to change.

And on the flip side, just as you shared before, you can be doing everything right and life happens. And in those moments, it's when we have these mantras that remind us that this is just a moment in time. As you said, this two shall pass. Yeah. I think I learn a lot from sports. The greatest are motivated and fueled by failures. They don't get knocked down and be like, well, that's it. No, they're like, okay, I'm going to improve and get better. And I think any one of those moments where life happens, it's an opportunity for you to really show how powerful you are. Make meaning out of it.

I don't believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe you can make meaning out of it and write a story that's profoundly powerful and also inspiring, because I think we're all influencers. Day to day. Even something as simple as being the first to smile in an elevator, that could influence that person that you smiled at

to then pass that forward. Beautiful. I love it. Mary, where can the people follow you? And do you have like, you know, one thing that I see that my audience really loves is like you're talking about these ingredients spotlights and other stuff like the latest research, like new ingredients, new things. Is there, of course, social media will link to that paleo chef? Is there a newsletter or some version where people can get pushed to them or do they get notified some way when you have some new insight? God, God, I should create one. Come on now.

Just a synthesis. I'm the worst. Like I have a very large email list that I don't email. Because, you know, we can't leave it up to Instagram. They're always changing the algorithm. Yeah, that's why you proactively check your favorite feeds. We're here, yelling into the Avis. But I do, I mean, I do have a newsletter that I'll be paying more attention to now that the season's over.

And again, almost lost the business, decided to self-fund the debt that was created from a manufacturing oversight. And now that things are in such a great place again, being able to build out the systems that were beginning to get built out. at that time. So it's having a regular newsletter, building out my team, which I feel so honored and lucky and privileged to be able to support a team. Going on podcasts more frequently. Going on podcasts more frequently, not feeling silly about it. But paleochef.com is where you can sign up for this forthcoming regular newsletter. I do email you guys that just, you know, could be better, could be better at doing it more regularly. And then the Paleo Chef feed is where I post the spotlight and also what I'm doing with my athletes and what I'm up to both from an entrepreneur

standpoint and a chef standpoint and some mindset stuff and music. I post a lot of music. And then fat fudge, p-h-a-t-tfudge.com for the product. And the Instagram feed is fat fudge as well. Love it. TikTok. I'm giving you guys a to do list. My team is right behind me.

I'm giving you guys a to do list. No, they love this because they will send me messages like, great post on Instagram. You could turn that into a TikTok, you know. There you go. Are you on TikTok? I am, yep. Regular, like on it? Yeah, I post probably about once a day.

Just mostly clips from this podcast. Okay. It's amazing. I went from like zero to 20,000 in like just a few weeks. So you're recycling content from here? Are you doing like live, like talking to it? No, I take the best clips from the people that I have, the pleasure of interviewing like yourself.

I'll try to find something that gets people excited about wanting to listen to the interview. And it's been working amazingly. Yeah. A lot of people. have seen a lot of success with that, Bobby Brown. She crushes it on there. And she talks about how she's a different demographic than you would assume is on TikTok, but they're on there. And she does more with casual. She's like, I just go on there and talk and then we're selling on a product like Matt. And she's like, Mary, we're selling out like Matt. And I'm like,

okay, got it. Got it. Got it. All right. Well, we'll stay tuned. Who knows. I do have an account. It's Paleo Chef on there. Okay. Okay. Mary, it's been fantastic. It's been a pleasure. I've known you for years. And then finally you asked to come on the podcast, which is amazing. Is that how it works? Do you have to ask? You know, I like when people ask. I'm not going to presume that they're interested to come on if they don't regularly go on podcasts, but also it's because you put yourself out there. You want Max's podcast. That interview was fantastic. Anybody who wants more, you covered a few additional superfoods there. We'll link to that episode. So it was a pleasure to have you on the show in the new studio.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I, I mean, I asked, but also thank you for for accepting. My pleasure. Thanks again.