Pursuit of Wellness - Heal Your Gut w/ Shawn Stevenson: The Nutrition Guide You Need

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Ep. #66 Unlock the secrets of nutrition and wellness as we discuss the profound impact our food choices have on health, sharing personal stories along the way. Our episode features Shawn Stevenson, author of the 'Eat Smarter Family Cookbook’. Learn how ultra-processed foods are rewriting our genetic blueprint, and savor the rich discussion about the misinformation regarding the calorie. We stress the importance of family time, shared meals, and the psychological nourishment they provide. We share practical tips for creating a thriving diet that's as enjoyable as it is beneficial, advocating for a minimum of three shared family meals a week to strengthen those precious bonds. Whether you're a seasoned health enthusiast or just starting your wellness journey, this episode will empower you to take control of your narrative and savor the path to healthy living. If you want to leave us a message for next time, click here! Leave Me a Message - click here! For Mari’s Instagram click here! For Pursuit of Wellness Podcast’s Instagram click here! For Shawn Stevenson’s Instagram click here! For Shawn Stevenson’s latest book click here! Show Links: Eat Smarter Family Cookbook: 100 Delicious Recipes to Transform Your Health, Happiness, and Connection Sponsored By: 15% off your first purchase at kosterina.com with code POW For a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to Wildgrain.com/POW to start your subscription. Vivobarefoot are offering 100-day trial on their footwear. You can purchase yours today with an exclusive 15% discount for our listeners with code POW at vivobarefoot.com Topics Discussed: 00:00:56 - Intro to Shawn Stevenson, positivity, sharing info in a digestible way, helping make healthiness achievable, family, mental health 00:03:05 Shawn Stevenson’s personal story and introduction into health 00:05:42 - Ultra Processed Foods 00:07:42 - Epigenemonics  00:10:17 - Degenerative Disk Disease 00:11:38 - Questioning health in relation to disease 00:13:04 - Dysfunction and self-sacrifice among health care professionals 00:15:10 - Taking accountability for your health 00:17:00 - Instinctive Elaboration 00:18:30 - Shawn deciding to go into health as a career  00:23:04 - Mari’s journey with Borderline Personality Disorder 00:25:20 - Poor diet is the number one risk to human health globally 00:27:33 - Obesogens - obesity causing agents 00:27:51 - Epicaloric Controllers 00:30:59 - How does weight loss work? 00:34:20 - Lack of diversity is the number one thing to lead to poor metabolic health 00:40:58 - Eating the foods your ancestors ate and personalized nutrition 00:43:30 - Top 3 tips for getting started on your health journey 00:45:00 - Tip 1: Striving to have diversity in your diet 00:46:31 - Tip 2: Upgrade your favorite foods and give yourself permission to enjoy food 01:01:16 - Tip 3: Make it an absolute mandate to eat with friends or family 3 times a week 01:06:41 - The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook 01:07:15 - What does wellness mean to you?

Six out of 10 American adults have at least one chronic disease now. We are the most chronically diseased society in the history of humanity. This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast, and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn. Hi, guys. Welcome back to the show. You are in store for an amazing episode with Sean Stevenson. He's an incredible leader in the health and fitness space, a nutrition expert. So I'm so excited to dive in. Before we get into it, I want to let you guys know that we have

restocked strawberry kiwi greens and the orange passion fruit greens. These are our top selling flavors at the moment. They are so freaking good. So I'm so excited they're restocked. Everyone's obsessed and they keep selling out. They are back. You can get them on Amazon, on the Bloom website. I believe they'll be in Target at some point. So keep your eyes out. Without further ado, today we're talking to Sean Stevenson, author of the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. What I love about Sean is his story and how he discovered the importance of nutrition. You'll hear more about it. But basically, he had degenerative disc disease and he was told that he would never heal and never be healthy and basically never be

able to walk. And he talks about how he healed his way out of this disease and also out of obesity. I really find his perspective very interesting because he says he grew up in a food desert. He basically only had access to fast food growing up and I think that's a really interesting and relatable perspective because not all of us grow up around super healthy environments. He's also all about enjoying food, making it fun and also bonding over food with our family and friends. So today we're going to talk about weight loss, why food diversity is so important, metabolic health, how to eat healthy with our families at home, avoiding disease and so much more. I already know you guys are going to love this episode. He has such a great way of making nutrition and health so approachable and fun and easy. So without further ado, let's talk to Sean. Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.

I was just telling you what I love about your content is that in the nutrition space right now, there's so many absolutes, there's so much disagreement. And I feel like you come in with such positivity and you share information in a really digestible way that people can interpret and make work for them. And even just listening to you over the past couple of days, I feel like it feels like you could take it on yourself and it's something you could make work for your lifestyle. And I feel like the goal for all health professionals should be to help people get their foot in the door. And I feel like you do just that.

So I applaud you for everything you do. And I love the fact that you bring it back to family and mental health. So we'll definitely talk about that today. I really want to talk about your personal story to start. For anyone who doesn't know, how did you get interested in health in the beginning? Awesome. All right. So I'll take a brief jump. And thank you for that, by the way. I'll take a brief jump back to the beginning. First of all, I was a baby. First I was a baby.

Chapter one. But, you know, I just grew up playing sports in my neighborhood you know I grew up in the inner city and um you know as a community where there's a lot of you know drug activity gang violence uh all that kind of stuff but also what people don't understand if they're not from that environment is there's a lot of beauty as well there's a lot of creativity you know the crate up on the the phone pole in the alley, like that we really did play basketball on that. And, you know, just finding a way to make something out of nothing, finding a way to manifest beauty when it doesn't seem apparent. And the crazy thing is like, my culture has become the popular culture, you know, it's kind of this hip hop culture.

And being in that environment, number one, this was a glorified food desert. All right. So now it has a term, which I don't like that term because it still has like this little hint of exotic nature to it, like a desert, you know, but no, this is like a very kind of depleted situation when it comes to access to food, healthy food. And so, you know, a regular thing for me in my neighborhood, we go to the corner store and they had something called penny candy. And so it was like all these different containers and literally each one costs a penny. So you come in with a dollar, you get a hundred pieces of candy. And I also think back to the patience of the store worker to go like a kid, like, let me get five of these,

let me get seven of those, you know? But we were just like hopped up on candy every day. You're going to see pretty much every kid in the neighborhood with a little brown bag of candy. And of course the chips and the soda and, you know and most of my diet was, now we have this term also ultra processed food. And just to make that distinction, humans have been processing food forever. Cooking a food is processing a food. Taking olives and pressing the oil out or coconuts, pressing the oil out, you know, sauteing spinach, processing and drying spices. These are all processes, but those are minimally processed. Those still have a high degree of connection to where they come from. You can pretty easily discern with a jar

of pasta sauce that it came from tomatoes and spices. Now contrast that with ultra processed foods is where you start off with maybe a field of corn and somehow, some way that field of corn becomes a bowl of Lucky Charms or that field of corn somehow, some way becomes a bag of Funyuns, right? So these are like cornmeal onion potato chips, but they're not potatoes, they're cornmeal. But it's gone through so many different processes, you can no longer discern where it comes from. And there's so many additives, so many preservatives, so many different synthetic newly invented chemicals, that this is no longer truly a human food. This is a food like product. And that is the majority of our diet here in the United

States. And this is according to the BMJ. This is one of our top tier peer review journals. And they discern that, and this was about two years ago, the average American adult's diet is right around 60% ultra processed, fake or food-like product food. That's insane. Now what's even crazier, and my latest book is the first major book to share this new study. This was published in JAMA. This is the Journal of the American Medical Association. And they looked at US children's ultra processed food consumption and they tracked it for 20 years, which is a huge data set. And they found that in 2018, this number had grown dramatically by that time.

This was in the study. But in the beginning of the study in 1999, kids were already eating 61% ultra processed food. And by 2018, that number was almost 68%, almost 70% of our kids diet. And so I'm saying all that to say that anybody who knows science is going to know that that's the average. They're going to be kids at the lower end of that spectrum and higher end. I was at the higher end. So looking back at my diet, I was eating about 90% ultra processed

foods every day. And so now here's why all this matters and really kind of transitioning into how I got into this field of health, every single bite of food that we eat alters our genetic expression, right? So this is epigenomics, right? So we've got epigenetics, we've got nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics, looking at nutrition and how different food impacts our gene expression. And we know that every bite of food that we eat can alter the expression of several thousand of our genes. So somewhere around 8,000 of our genes are getting altered from every bite of food that we eat. It is phenomenal. It's crazy, beautiful, but also can be scary. And so with that being said, number one, these foods are changing our gene expression. And also every single food that we eat is determining the makeup of our cells. And so fast forward this story.

When I get to college, I take my nutritional science class. And this is big auditorium class. And we're taught some of the basics, you know, basic energy metabolism, this calorie dogma as well. And we don't relate this, however, to human health, which is strange. And I'll tie that together because in my biology class, we're studying the cell. And so you've got this incredible cell. You've got the mitochondria. You've got these different organelles.

You've got the nucleus. You've got, you know, the cell membrane. And we're not taught that, that mitochondria that we're studying, that's the quote energy power plant of ourselves, that mitochondria is made from our meals. It doesn't just happen. There's this unsaid belief in medicine today and in science that things just happen. That cell just come, it manifests just there. We're studying a cell. That cell is literally made from food. We're looking at food. And so the nucleus is made from the nutrients we eat. The cell membrane is made from our menu. You know, it's just like that light bulb had not

been turned on for myself and it definitely wasn't on for my professors. And so I'm making my tissues every day out of fake food. And because of that, myself, my little brother, my brother was hospitalized with asthma every couple of months. I had chronic asthma as well, a bunch of inhalers. My sister had the worst eczema you can imagine So, oh, so sorry for her This little girl, you know, just, oh, so bad

And, you know, eventually I was diagnosed Because I started having chronic pain With something called degenerative disc disease Where my spine, my introvertible disc were deteriorating. And I got this diagnosis when I was 20 years old. All right. So, and a couple of years earlier at track practice, I had actually broken my hip just from running out. I didn't fall. There was no trauma. My bones were so brittle. You know, my bone density was so low. So I had these degenerative conditions where my body was basically falling apart. It was, it was deteriorating as if I was much, much older. And as a matter of fact,

the physician I went to see at the age of 20 told me that I had the spine of an 80 year old when I asked him, okay, so how do we fix this? You know, what do I need to do to get well? And so to tie all this together. And when I was a kid, starting off with athletics and playing all the sports and, you know, playing in the neighborhood and really getting competitive at a high level. Once I got to high school, my body started to break down. I just couldn't stay healthy. Something was always happening to me. And getting that diagnosis was kind of like, oh, like it was kind of refreshing.

And it felt good to know that I had this thing that was wrong with oh, like it was kind of refreshing and it felt good to know that I had this thing that was wrong with me, but it was also incredibly disempowering because the physician told me there was nothing I can do about it. Didn't bring up food, lifestyle. This is the craziest part. And for a long time, I didn't know why I asked him this question, but when he told me the diagnosis and I'm just like, okay, so what do we need to do to fix this? He was like, I'm sorry, son, this is incurable. Um, this is something that just happens. He said the just happened thing. All right. And my brain didn't really register that the first time when he said, I was like, okay, so does this have

anything to do with what I'm eating? Should I change the way I'm exercising? I didn't think I had any grounds to say that. I thought it was like a moment of some kind of intuition or something. But I had nutritional science class two years prior because I knew that food had something to do with my health, but it wasn't clarified. It was, if anything, it was more confusing. Yeah. And so I asked him this question. And when I asked him, does this have anything to do

with what I'm eating? He literally did this. He like, he like cocked his head and like, he basically looked at me like, you idiot. This has nothing to do with what you're eating. I've had that look so many times, acne, mental health. It's always the same. And it's so sad because, and I also didn't share this part of the story for a long time. He was over 300 pounds as well, my physician at the time. And so, you know, I'm not saying that as a character flaw. I'm saying that as a, he was clearly, literally, you can see that he was not well. And he was probably doing what he felt was necessary for him to see his patients to thrive in his practice. He's

probably constantly consuming all these different things just on the go and, you know, justifying it because in medicine, we're also taught to basically run ourselves into the ground as, I mean, it was like self-sacrifice in order to help people. And we see some of the highest levels of dysfunction. People have no idea about this. Some of the, especially in the nursing field, which I worked at the university that I graduated from for many years and I worked with a lot of nurses. Oh my gosh, just some of the highest rates

of breast cancer of any demographic, of any population, highest rate of obesity of any profession, like in the top three, diabetes, the list goes on and on. And with physicians, some of the top three diabetes, the list goes on and on. And with physicians, some of the highest rates of substance abuse of, you know, cardiac issues, the list goes on and on. And it's like one of these tenants of, you know, healer, heal thyself, healer, heal thyself.

And so to, to wrap the story up, um, after getting that diagnosis and leaving there with my head down that I can't do anything about this. And I was put on a bunch of different medication. And the next two years was a lot of pain, a lot of pain and suffering. At this point, I'm living in Ferguson, Missouri, and another really glorified food desert. And my situation went from terrible to what's worse than terrible, terrible times a thousand. And at this point I had gained a lot of weight as well. I'd always been the skinny kid in my family, but now, you know, we've identified some certain genes that are correlated with obesity, right? The FTO gene,

for example. And so, you know, some things can be dormant, right? It doesn't have to express, but definitely something changed. And now I'm fitting in with the rest of my family. We're all overweight or obese. And all of that, fortunately, I mean, I'm sitting here with you today, but it all changed. And I heard you talking about this as well, when I was tuning in and listening to you, that for quite some time, and I love that you brought this up, you know, we're even told this, you know, in marketing, in the health domain, tell people it's not their fault. It's not your fault. You know, it's these people out here, it's this, it's this program,

they're out to get you. You can say that, but that's going to put you in a place of disempowerment. You're not going to have the power to change if it's not on you. And so, yes, my physician gave me a very strong nocebo effect, which we could circle back and talk about that. Yes, nobody educated me about nutrition and movement and all these different things that my genes expect from me. But at the end of the day, yes, I grew up in the most traumatic environment. There's gunshots, my window on a regular basis. You know, there's violence in my home, all of these different things. But nothing is going to change until I changed. And I had to take 100% responsibility for my health and stop blaming everybody.

Because yes, a bunch of bad shit happened to me. I was not in ideal circumstances, but I am proof positive, truly. Like a lot of people say, you know, if I can do it, you can do it. No, no, you don't understand. I'm from Ferguson, Missouri. I transformed my health and became one of the, well, you know, according to the people, you know, top health experts in the world coming from that place, you place. And I have three major bestselling books and the list goes on and on. All these things should not be possible. They shouldn't be possible. But coming from that environment, I'm telling you, I've seen the power of the human spirit

and the power of perspective, the power of environment. And all the solutions were there the whole time for me to, you know, heal my spine and my bones and, you know, to transform my body and my mind. They were all there, but I just wasn't attuned to them because I was tuned into the victim channel, you know, just like everything is so bad. And I had this constant question in my head, why me? And it was playing in the background 24 seven. Why me? Why me? And that's, it's a really interesting phenomenon in the brain.

It's called instinctive elaboration. We're always doing that. We all have a dominant question that we're asking ourselves and it's attuning our focus. And so to put the, to tie the bow on top super quick, I went from within about six weeks of really deciding to get well. And there's a little bit there that happened. But I decided to get well. I lost 18 pounds in about six weeks, which results not typical necessarily. I could sleep through the night for the first time in two years because I was in so much pain,

I couldn't even sleep. I was off the medications that I was on. And the pain that I've been in for those two years was gone in six weeks. And I got a scan done. It was nine months later. And my two herniated disc that were severely degenerated now had retracted into place. And the suppleness of my disc had grown substantially so much so that my, my spine looked at as that of someone in my age bracket, right? 80 year old person, now somebody who's like in their twenties and thirties, and that wasn't supposed to be possible. And because of that, and this was kind of one of those things where it's like, was it my choice? I did say yes to it, but I got into this field because somebody came up to me at my university and asked me for help.

They saw what happened with me. And actually my professors were coming up to me. Like people literally were stopping me. Like, what did you do? And my friend's little sister ended up coming to the college as well. Somebody from high school. And she asked me to help her. And so I was like, you know, I'll meet you at the gym on Saturday. She was like, how much should I pay you?

And time froze. I'm like, what? I was just going to meet you at the, you would pay me to help you get healthy? Something I would do anyways? And that was really the start of my career was focusing on how can I be of service. I think olive oil is one of the most ancestral healthy ingredients we could possibly use. I love to add it in its cold form on salads, meats, avocado, etc. And Costa costarina extra virgin olive oil is one of the best in my opinion it's an early harvest extra virgin olive oil from southern greece it's incredibly healthy and

delicious and once you try it you'll never go back i actually have been using costarina for years and years and years i worked with them when i lived in colorado which is so long ago i love the fact that they are so conscious with the ingredients they're putting in. So it's early harvest. Olives are taken off the tree early while they're still green before they ripen, which results in incredibly high polyphenols. Polyphenols are powerfully healthy antioxidants, which have been provided by hundreds of studies to be anti-inflammatory and reduce the risk of chronic disease, which is incredible. We love that. I also love the fact that the Costa Rina olive oil is in glass bottles. Many extra virgin olive

oils are in plastic and you should never, ever, ever buy extra virgin olive oil in plastic. It allows light, the enemy of good olive oil, and can leak microplastics into your oil as well. Costa Rina is so freaking delicious. It really adds depth of flavor to everything, veggies, meat, etc. I've had tons of my friends try it and they always say it's the best in our pantry. Plus the Mediterranean diet consistently ranks number one as best for overall health and extra virgin olive oil is a huge part of that diet. You guys can use code POW for 15% off your first purchase at costarina.com and they are also available nationwide at Whole Foods, Crate & Barrel and select Sprouts locations. So a little bit of a story time. Every single weekend my husband has what

he calls an alpha Saturday where his friend comes over and they weightlift and then they eat breakfast. And what I started doing was making my wild grain croissant or my sourdough every time they were working out. And they've now officially become obsessed and I am required to make my wild grain goodies every single weekend. And guys, I am truly obsessed with wild grain it is the first ever bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough fresh pasta and artisanal pastries every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less no thawing required and what i especially love about wild grain is all the ingredients are really clean like they have such minimal ingredients if you check the ingredient list it's like less than 10 things usually. And it's really, really pure stuff.

There's no crazy additives. My personal favorite is the croissant, but I also made the sourdough the other day and oh my gosh, with some ghee and honey on there. Amazing. Fee is obsessed with their cookies. I mean, next level. And the pasta is so good too. There's so many amazing options and it just makes breakfast or dinner like that much more fun. And you can now fully customize your wild grain box so you can get a combination of breads, pastas, and pastries. If you want a full box of bread or pasta or pastries, you can have it. Plus for a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box, plus free croissant in every box. When you go to wildgrain.com slash pow to start your subscription, you heard me, free croissant in every box.

And $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash pow. That's wildgrain.com slash pow, or you can use promo code POW at checkout. You know, by the way, the first, my answer was $7. For an hour session? Yes. I mean, that's a good deal. At the time, yeah. Your story is incredible, first of all, so inspiring.

And in a lot of ways, it reminds me of my own because I had not a physical diagnosis, but a mental diagnosis when I was in college of borderline personality disorder. And I was excessively drinking alcohol, eating highly processed foods, not taking care of my body. And I was put on a number of medications, which I think, you know, the psychiatrist I saw had the best intentions, but those medications made everything worse for me. And now I don't even meet the characteristics of BPD. Like I don't technically have the diagnosis anymore. And I always look back and wonder if I hadn't been eating that way or drinking that way, like, would I have been classified as someone with that diagnosis? It's so simple. Like you're sharing, if those ingredients are added into your biology,

what do you think is going to happen? Like, this is really basic stuff, but we have a paradigm that is obsessed with the treatment of symptoms and not looking at the person. What are the inputs that you're bringing in or what are the things that you're lacking that your genes expect you to have in order for healthy expression that your DNA requires for you to be quote normal. And even our society today, normal is not normal. The CDC just, as of this recording, this was a year ago, published their most recent data and they have established, and they put this in a cute little infographic that I guess makes it soften the blow or something. 60%. Six out of 10 American adults have at least one chronic disease now. 60% have at least one. 40% of our adult population have two or more chronic diseases. We are the most chronically diseased society in the history of humanity. And this is largely from lifestyle-induced choices. It's largely from our choices and our exposures. And I'm not just saying

that because it sounds good. This is based on the data. You know, another analysis, meta-analysis published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, this was in 2018. They looked at smoking. They looked at all these different things that we know are, quote, not good for us. They found that poor diet is the number one cause of our epidemics of chronic diseases. It's the number one cause. And to stress that out, this was one of the biggest analyses ever done. This was published in The Lancet. So this is, again, another top tier peer reviewed science journal. And they looked at over a hundred countries, the data from chronic diseases, deaths, and their food intake. And they determined, these researchers determined that poor diet is the number one risk to human

health globally. And they established that about 11 million humans die annually from poor diet. And a paradox has taken place where most people that are dying from poor diet are no longer dying by lack of food access. They're dying from the overconsumption of these food-like products. You know, here in LA actually, and again, a lot of folks don't realize this, but you know, of course we, we here's, if you're not here, you don't see it, but the homeless population and the homeless population here in L.A., rate of obesity is almost on par with the general population. I've noticed that. So we're right around 43% obesity in the United States, which that should just be shocking in and of itself. And the homeless population as of the last reporting was around 38%. And so again, even if we don't have access to money and resources, we can still be obese very

easily here in the United States because it's not just the food itself. It's not just the overconsumption of calories. Again, I paid good money for this education to essentially be miseducated around the science of the calorie. And of course, it is a unit of measure that we can use and it does add some value. But this is turning humanity, physics, biology, so many different aspects of science into like you are a machine, you're a calculator or you're gears and levers. And today, one of the cool things, but it's kind of messed up at the same time, is that we have this new category of newly invented synthetic chemicals that are getting this label of obesogens. So these are obesity causing agents. These alter your metabolism in a way that your body handles those calories differently.

And so in my earlier book, I established this new term that I've been working to push into popular culture called epichloric controller. So this is above caloric control. And I identified about 10 different science backed, I'm talking mountains of data, affirming how these different factors determine how your body interacts with the calories you consume. They're above that. And, you know, I shared some of those also in the new Eat Smarter Family Cookbook as well, because this education needs to get out there. Not to ignore that calories aren't a thing, but one of the things I did, I'm fascinated with why. I'm fascinated with the stories. My wife kind of makes fun of me a little bit. When, whenever I'm left to my own devices, I'm like watching some history documentary.

Like, I don't know. I just like that stuff. I want to know where stuff came from. Like, what's the story. And so I went back and analyze the story of the calorie. Yeah. Where did it come from? You know? And I put that into a massive like USA Today national bestselling book. I had a partnership with Target stores for a wellness campaign, all this stuff and got this message out there. Now more people are aware of it, but the calorie, it didn't even come from the field of nutrition. It started off in physics and it kind of made its transition thanks to Atwater, which we use the Atwater system on packaging. And a kind of made its transition thanks to Atwater, which we use the Atwater system on packaging. And a lot of people don't know this as well. When you read the

calories or the nutrition facts on these food labels, they're not actually running through taking that food and actually putting it in a bomb calorimeter and incinerating it and seeing how many calories are actually in this food. They're just doing math. That's all they're doing. They're just doing some math on some generally accepted things and slapping it on a label. So it's not 100% accurate all the time. It's not even close to 100%. It's not even close to 100%.

But then again, we just start to rely on these things. And even with the bomb calorimeter, what they would do is take the food and put it into this device. And there's like a water aspect to it as well. And they incinerate the food and see how much it can heat the water basically. And first of all, they're incinerating the food. Your body doesn't incinerate the food that you eat. There are certain factors that are not even digestible.

You're not pulling any calories from that. As a matter of fact, there are certain foods that you expend way more energy to digest that food than other foods. Your body is so complex and incredible to negate that is just stupid. It is just plumb dumb. Let's talk about this because I think a lot of people listening to this, I'm going to release this in January, are thinking about weight loss. Maybe they are headed on a fitness journey. I lost 90 pounds, but I wouldn't say I even fully know how weight loss works. Like how does fat dissolve? Where is it going? And then I also think a lot of people enter this space thinking that it's just calories in, calories out. Like I know when I entered the fitness space, it was 2017.

If it fits your macros was a huge phenomenon and people are eating Rice Krispie treats and whatever fit their numbers. But you're saying it's about the quality of the calorie too. Absolutely. So just to share a couple of these Epicolor controllers. Again, this is all backed by peer-reviewed data. One of these really interesting discoveries, just in the last couple of years, the microbiome is having a huge moment right now and for good reason.

So some researchers at the Wiseman Institute uncovered that your microbial makeup is literally one of the frontline determining factors of how and if you're absorbing calories from your food. And so what they did was, and this is just one of many studies, there's human studies and then there's animal studies as well. But what they did was they were taking human bacteria that they've established is more correlated with, I struggle to call them fat bacteria, but they're more correlated with obesity

and insulin resistance, diabetes, things like that. There's a certain bacteria cascade that's seen consistently. Now, the question is, is it the bacteria first or is the obesity first, right? So, but we know that this is definitely a huge thing. Now, what starts to shed some light on it is they take this human bacteria from a subject who is expressing insulin resistance and

obesity, having that kind of gut diversity, and they're implanting that into mice. And those mice that are otherwise lean and eating the same diet, they suddenly gain weight and become insulin resistant. Not any other changes, but the change to their microbes, right? And the same thing happens taking a mouse that is expressing this kind of microbial makeup towards obesity and implanting what they dubbed as, quote, lean bacteria from humans into these mice. And then they lose weight. Same diet. Everything is the same. Their mouse lifestyle is the same.

But changing their microbes changed their body composition. So what gives you an unhealthy obesogenic microbiome? This is a great question. Okay. So the vast majority of data is pointing to the number one hallmark. And I'm just going to give you, let's look at identical twins. All right. You can't get any more identical.

All right. It's literally identical twins. Same egg. All right. But some research, I'm from St. Louis. So, you know, we've got WashU there and SLU. And so some researchers there compiled the largest database of twins and looking at all these different factors. And what they determined is that there's, these are just two subcategories of microbes. There's so many, but bacterial deities or

infirmicutes, okay. Or bacterial roides, and firmicutes. And what they uncovered is that if one twin had a higher ratio of firmicutes, they had higher rates of insulin resistance and a higher propensity towards being overweight or obese compared to their sibling. Again, identical twins. Looking at their microbes, having a higher ratio of these, quote, fat bacteria,

in this case, firmicutes, was leading to a higher prevalence of obesity or obesity-like kind of biometrics. And so now with all that said, what do we know to be true and what can we do to change this? The number one thing, the vast majority of data is pointing to lack of diversity is the number one thing that will lead to poor metabolic health. All right. So higher rates of insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, you name it. And the question is, how do I improve my diversity? And what, what does that even mean?

So we've looked at, we've got several studies looking at people who are living a more, some of these words, again, I kind of say with hesitation, but natural human lifestyle that we evolved closer to. Something we evolved closer to doing, which is more akin to like a hunter-gatherer tribe. And they'll see four to 10 times more diversity in their gut microbes than the standard or average Westerner. All right. That's a lot. We're talking about on the magnitude, you know, thousands, you know, right now we each have several thousand different, you know, we've got bacteria, we've got viruses, we've got fungi, we've got archaea. There's all these different factors, we've got parasites, there's all these different microbes that make up our gut microbiome. And so how do we get to this place? Well, we know that one of those factors that has reduced our diversity, and I'm going to tell you this, many Americans today have a lot of endangered species in their microbiome are completely extinct.

Certain microbes that have been verified to be supportive of human health, just gone. We don't have them anymore. But other humans do that are living more of a natural lifestyle. And so our consumption of ultra-processed food has wiped out our gut microbes and been feeding what we refer to as more opportunistic. And I don't want to say bad. That's another big problem in our field. We got to stop with this good or bad stuff.

All right. Everything has its role. All right. So even what we might refer to as like a pathogenic or quote bad bacteria, even like E. coli, it plays a huge role in human health. When it's overpopulating or in the wrong places and all these other factors, then it can be incredibly dangerous. But we can't just look at this with this vanilla view, you know, just try to wipe everything out. That's how we got in this place in the first place. And so how do we improve this? Well, the most data is pointing to how do we increase the

diversity of our gut microbes is by increasing the diversity of inputs. All right. So increasing the diversity of foods that you're eating. And here's the one of the big takeaways from today. When you eat a food, you're not just eating that food, you're eating that food's microbiome. All right. So when you eat a blueberry, you're eating that blueberry's microbiome. When you eat an avocado, you're eating that avocado's microbiome. When you eat, fill in the blank, a pomegranate, you're eating that pomegranate's microbiome. You're taking in all this microbial data and also providing substrates or, you know, there's this growing category of prebiotics and it's limiting because really just about any food

is going to function as a prebiotic for something. All right. And so what we want to strive to do, a lot of folks, even when we, when we get healthy, we make the decision to improve our health. A lot of us tend to get into this, like, eating the same thing over and over again. I've been there. You know, chicken, rice, broccoli, chicken, rice, asparagus, or chicken, quinoa, asparagus, steak, you know, whatever. And we might mix it up a little bit, but we need to make it a mission or a mandate for ourselves this year to improve or increase the number of different foods that we're eating on a regular basis. Give your microbes these different inputs.

It's going to be one of the best things we can do to fortify our health. And also a lot of these different inputs are sort of working as immune system training. You know, I've got friends, even have one of my friends on Paul Saladino. I've known Paul for several years. And Paul's at the other end of this. When I met Paul, he was all just the meat and organs. Now he's fruit. Now he's fruit. All right. So again, honey, honey too. All right. He's even out here to fruit juice. I know he's really getting out there now, you know, but here's the thing. He still is a proponent of carnivore diet, but it's really a omnivorous diet. And I got him to admit that a

little bit, but it's highly carnivorous diet. And I respect that. I understand that. And I've also got friends who are like top tier experts in the vegan community as well. You know, one of my friends, Dr. Will Bolsiewicz is a award-winning gastroenterologist and he has a vegetarian approach for many years and it works for him. But he's also, both of them are saying every, every person is different. Yeah. So important. Right. And so that's the part, and these are the people that I gravitate towards. And also those who are willing to accept that they might have been wrong about some things

because we don't have it all figured out. And when you started this episode off and talking about like, I kind of have this inviting personality is because I messed up. I didn't have that for a while. And I've actually worked with real people in the real world. I was working as a nutritionist for over a decade. And I've actually worked with real people in the real world. I was working as a nutritionist for over a decade and I've been in this field for 21 years,

but working with people every day for 10 years. And in the beginning, if I was into something, that's what the patient was going to be into. If I'm into raw food, raw vegan diet, guess what? If I'm into paleo, guess what? If I'm into keto, whatever it is. And that is so unfortunate. But thankfully, I got to this place where I was being honest. There are a certain percentage of patients who were not getting the results other people were getting. Most people got great results just because we were pulling out a lot of ultra processed foods on accident. But I gave all the credit to this diet framework. And what I started to do and what I encouraged, because I know there's a lot of people who work in health as well that are probably

listening to this, is to pay attention to the person and ask them questions about them. You know, not just about their diet, but what are their stress levels like? What is their relationships like? You know, work life balance or whatever the case might be? How's their sleep? But most importantly, finding out if you can, as close as you can, what is their lineage? You know, like, do they have some Greek heritage? Maybe let's add in some things, some traditional things from their diet. Would their grandmother eat their great-grandmother? Or Sicily or Kenya or Japan, whatever it is. Let's look at what their ancestry was associating with because chances are their cells, their genes are going to interact with those foods a little bit better.

And so I started to truly make it personalized. That's the future of nutrition is personalized nutrition, but it's happening right now. One topic I don't think we talk enough about is foot health. I think we all wear these crazy cushiony shoes and think they're good for us, but actually they're not. And that's where Vivo Barefoot is on a mission to create regenerative footwear that brings you closer to nature and your natural potential. I'm also a huge fan of grounding, like getting our feet on the soil and in the sand. I think it's really beneficial for us. And after millions of years of evolution, your feet are perfect bits of kit. Humans have evolved to essentially walk, move, and run barefoot, but the modern shoe have impacted foot function

on contributing to a movement-focused health crisis in the process. That's why Vivo Barefoot Footwear is part of the solution to help enable you to fulfill your supernatural potential. Designed wide to provide natural stability, thin so you can feel more, and flexible to help you build up your natural strength from the ground up i personally love the motus strength shoe for women it's perfect if you lift weights in the gym you feel really grounded and stable while you're doing

your movements plus studies show that foot strength increases by 60 in a matter of months just by walking around in them vivo Vivo Barefoot are offering a 100-day trial on their footwear. You can purchase yours today with an exclusive 15% off discount for our listeners with code POW, P-O-W. I love that you mentioned that because I always find my diet, I thrive off of food that's so different to what my husband thrives off of. He's Italian, he loves, you know, olive oil, and he can eat different things to me. And I personally do really well with meat and root vegetables because I think that's what my ancestors were eating. So I love that you brought

that up. For someone listening who's at the beginning of their health journey, what are your top three tips for getting started? Oh, wow, this is tough. All right. Now, this can actually piggyback off of what I was sharing when I introed with Paul, is that, you know, there are, there's a paradigm that, you know, plants are trying to kill you. All right. And, you know, another one of my really good friends and mentors is Dr. Stephen Gundry. All right. And he's like the plant paradox guy. But if you don't actually listen to these people and study what they're saying, he isn't saying that this plant is just trying to kill you. And that's the end of the story. He's like, you need to prepare this differently. If you want to eat this, do this.

This is what people have been doing for thousands of years. Do this. Don't just do that. Right? And number one is that diversity. And part of that is we're taking in these inputs. What we might dub as a plant poison over here in this camp, this could also be a hormetic stressor that is improving the health of your immune system, you know, your antioxidant system, your cognitive function by having that exposure to whatever it might be. Maybe it's these polyphenols, maybe it's, you know, these anthocyanins, maybe it's these triterpenes. There's all these different really, here's the thing. We only know maybe 5% of what there is to know about food. Maybe. Isn't that crazy? There's thousands

of things we don't know yet, but then we act like we know it all. And that is so silly, you know, instead of like acting, activating that spirit of curiosity, you know? And so number one is striving to have a diversity in your diet. All right. So lots of diversity and healthy inputs from real food. That's slash real food. All right. So real food diversity. That should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyways. And there's tons of amazing recipes in your new book. I mean, I can't wait to try a couple. The sweet potato pancakes? Yes. Oh, man. People are posting photos.

They're making the recipes and posting photos on Amazon. Oh, that's so cute. If you go to like, I don't know, whoever's got cooking shows and stuff like that and these cookbooks from these famous TV shows

and stuff like that, people aren't doing that. It's because they love you. They're connected with you. That's so cool. I think that it's largely, the book is going to operate in the way that the people want it to. I personally wanted the education to be the focal point because there's over 250 peer-reviewed studies embedded into the content. But people, when it boils down to it,

the people are using it like, this is just delicious food and I want to yell and scream about it because this is delicious. That's the other thing. Eating healthy can be fun and it can be good. I think that's a huge misconception that a lot of people have. So if you're listening and you're entering a fitness journey, eating healthy can be so fun. And it actually like really got me into cooking when I started playing around with my food. Now I thoroughly enjoy cooking. I do it every day. See, this is, this would be number two, you know, is, is just that, which is, um, give yourself permission to enjoy delicious food. Permission is a huge thing. We have all these psychological barriers. And again, I've been in this field for 21 years. I know all the people, you know, these are my friends and colleagues.

But some of these folks are in a camp of like, you know, eat to live, don't live to eat, right? If it tastes good, spit it out kind of thing. Like the food is fuel. And that I understand why they would say something like that because we've become this culture that is so hyper-focused on pleasure of the mouth. But the reality is, yes, we do have a lot of the joy button, the pleasure button getting pushed. But the reality is humans have been seeking out tasty things forever. Have you ever thought about why certain animals eat what they eat? You know, why does that goat go and eat that stuff? Or why does those sheep go and eat those things? Or why do, you know,

those birds eat that? We seek out things that are attractive to us, whatever, regardless of our species. But as humans, we've always been seeking out joy through food. That's what drives us to eat certain things. And so to deny that is to deny biology because we, as a fact, we have one of the most complex palates for flavor of any species. I struggle to say this as well

because we haven't actually like talked to a sheep or talked to, you know, a bat. Like, what do you think? But just being able to like analyze the structure of certain cells, you could see that we have a very diverse palette, ability to sense flavors. And a big part of that is also in synchronicity with our very sensitive sense of smell. All right. Now we don't understand or acknowledge how good of smellers we are, but our sense of smell is not like a hound dog or whatever. It's like more internally, like when we eat food,

we are able to sense certain things that interaction. And this is why, for example, if somebody has the sinus infection or cold or something like that, your food tastes weird is because of your sense of smell. It's not your sense of taste. Smell has so much to do with that.

And the last part is, which there's even sight, I can tie in all this stuff, but there was actually a Nobel Prize awarded for something called the sonic chip experiment. All right. And so what these researchers found is that the sound of food is a huge determinant in our pleasure of food as well. And so, by the way, it's called an egg Nobel Prize.

So it's like conducted by the Nobel Prize foundation or society or members. But it's more like things that make you laugh, but also make you think. And what this scientist found was that he basically, he needed to find a very uniform food, which he used Pringles because they're all like the same shape. There's no other chips that are just so consistent like that. And he put on headphones onto the study participants and amplified certain aspects of the sound. And he found that when they amplified parts of the crunch to a certain place, the test subjects suddenly felt like the food was like 10 to 15% fresher. It was more pleasurable to eat.

And most importantly, they felt like it tasted better. They felt like it tasted better because of a sound. That's funny because I feel like they always use those noises in the advertisements for food. Oh yeah, we love that. Yeah, exactly. But if you look at biology and you look at evolution, you look at just human psychology, if we would have came upon an apple a thousand years ago and we bite into that apple, there's a certain expectation. There's a crispness. If you've been into that apple that you came upon and it was mushy, it was soft.

It didn't have that crispness to it. Your brain would be like, oh, this might not be good. This might make us sick. Right. And so there'd be a natural aversion. And so food scientists have leveraged all of these aspects, the taste, the smell, the sound of these foods, and of course in the appearance as well. But we can use this to our own benefit because real food has all of those things and

so much more. But we've created a culture to where ultra-processed foods are normal, right? Eating that bowl of Lucky Charms is normal, right? You know, drinking Pepsi or whatever it is. Not to villainize these things. They exist, right? But we've gotten away from real food. And so I'm saying all this to say that. So number one would be real food slash diversity. Number two would be to lean into

deliciousness and upgrade your favorite foods, right? That's the number one thing that I did nutritionally that transformed my health and my body back in Ferguson. I was eating fast food, and I'm not exaggerating, every day. Every day, unless I didn't have like two dollars so did you completely stop eating the fast food and you switched to real food no one's ever asked me this before like how was there a cheat meal ever was it a full switch i completely stopped eating all fast food except chinese food which and i'm making this distinction because some people might hear this like, Chinese food isn't fast food. If you're from the hood,

if you're from where I'm from, it's different, all right? The Chinese food, like this is, there's bulletproof glass, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, crab ragoon, hot braised chicken, pork fried rice. Which I feel like you could create

healthy versions of at home. Yes, of course, of course. But these folks and what changed everything, because I was just in my head like, this is just the only thing that I'm eating still. There are, like MSG is a thing that is literally added as an ingredient into different foods, by the way. So I'm just like looking back, oh, now I know why I couldn't stop eating it. But also one day I was eating in one by the way. So I'm just like looking back, oh, now I know why I couldn't stop eating it. But also one day I was, I was eating in one of the restaurants, one of them that was a little bit nicer, didn't have the bulletproof glass. I was closer to the university I went to and I'd already, my health was transformed. I just actually trained some people and I was sitting

there and I was eating and I was looking at the store owner's wife and kid were like eating as well, like in a booth across from me. And they weren't eating what I was eating. You know, they didn't eat the hot braised chicken. You know, they were eating like steamed vegetables and white rice or whatever. And I'm just like, that's really interesting. They're not eating this shit that everybody else in here is eating. And so, but what I did do was instead of going to Burger King or McDonald's, I, now I was introduced to, there was one Whole Foods in all of St. Louis. And St. Louis is a big city, big major city.

And a friend of mine had taken me to Wild Oats, which has since been bought up by Whole Foods. That's really one of the catalysts for changing my health. And I'd known her for years, but this was part of that. Like I made the decision to get well. And now my friend, we just kick it, you know, like we kick it at her place, that kind of thing.

We don't go places, but now, you know, she took me to wild oats. And so now I'm kind of attuned to this and I see, Oh, I'm studying like, what is grass fed beef versus whatever McDonald's is serving me.

And I'm just like, there's a higher amount of like, even Omega-3s. And there's data on this that I could access, just go online. And so I started just getting higher quality versions. Instead of eating a McDonald's burger, I go to Whole Foods, get some grass-fed beef, like a sprouted bun or whatever.

And instead of, you know, oh my God, the fries were crazy. Everybody at this point, I think is seeing supersize me, but they just don't die. They don't go bad. That's not normal, right? You could find a fry in like a seat cushion five years later and it still looks the same. That's not normal. That's petrified food. I also feel like those foods are so palatable that it's addictive. It's almost like you can't stop. I haven't personally had, I think the only fast food I've had

in the past five years is Chick-fil-A. And I always do the grilled. I've never had Chick-fil-A. I see the lines out there. I know. But, you know, what I did was I'd get oven fries, like these organic oven fries, or just get some vegetables. So at the time, the only vegetable, I didn't eat a salad until I was

25. It was the first time I had a salad in my life, which is, I know it's crazy, but I would eat broccoli though, you know? So I was just like upgrading the inputs and I was starting to get in more diversity as well of these inputs. Little did I know, this was like 2002, you know? So this was a long time ago and the microbiome was definitely not like in vogue, right? So I didn't, but I was making these changes and I didn't realize it. But also what you just shared was

food scientists are brilliant. Like we've got the most brilliant engineers creating social media apps. And you know, these food scientists are at. Like we've got the most brilliant engineers creating social media apps. And, you know, these food scientists are at a whole different level. One of my friends, and shout out to Dr. Yvonne Burkhart. She is a board certified toxicologist

and she worked in the flavors and fragrance industry. Wow. She knows, like she knows where the bodies are buried. Like she saw the behind the scenes. Yes. Like what's really going down. Wow. She knows, like she knows where the bodies are buried. Like she saw the behind the scenes. Yes. Like what's really going down. Yes. So there's a device called a gas chromatograph

where we can now isolate flavors. All right. So you can take a cherry and isolate the chemistry that makes up that cherry flavor. And now you can take that cherry flavor and add it to whatever you want. You can add it to soda. You can add it to soda. You can add it to ice cream.

No cherries necessary anymore. And what it's done is it's really muddied up our metabolic waters and how our DNA, how our brains also are associating with certain foods. Because through our evolution, and I talk about this in the book as well, it's super important. There's something called post-ingestive feedback, right? Post-ingestive feedback. If we were to eat a real food,

we'll just use that apple, for example, that we talked about earlier. We eat that food. Our cells are literally taking notes on what nutrients came from that flavor, all right? So it could have been, right, some pectin, some vitamin C, you know, maybe some dead cherry. Maybe there's some anthocyanins. Maybe there's some melatonin. It's one of the densest sources of melatonin, if not the to develop a deficiency or start to go low on any of those things, we would develop a craving for that flavor and seek that out. But now we crave chips ahoy. Now we crave, you know, Pringles or whatever the case might be.

The fake version. Very, very different, right? And so the point number two is to upgrade your favorite foods. And so my family loves brunch. Like, you know, we've been big like breakfast for dinner family through the years as well. And so we love pancakes. And also when I was in Ferguson, like I'd go to McDonald's and get hotcakes and sausage. But what if we can use instead of a highly refined base, what if we use a incredibly nutrient dense and we've got prebiotic aspects to it. We've got anthocyanins in sweet potatoes that have been proven to directly impact the memory center of the human brain. Like I can go on and on. We're going to use that as the base and it's

delicious too. So we're using sweet potatoes as the base for these sweet potato protein pancakes. And there there's a higher ratio of protein as well. And they just taste good. They're good. It's still a pancake though. Don't get me wrong. We're still, it's still a pancake, but it's so nutrient rich. And with that, and also by the way, I'm very conscious of, we already talked about the spectrum of my colleagues' diet frameworks from carnivore to vegan. Everybody's invited to our table. Everybody. We can't leave anybody out. And we cannot vilify anybody for wanting to do something that feels good to them. And so we've got burgers for everybody, right? So we've got the quintessential grass fed beef burger, which is, it's amazing.

It's just amazing. And we got a salmon burger for, you know, folks who are just pescatarian. And I gotta be 100. The salmon burger is probably my favorite right now. But you can't just pick one because it's kind of like picking your kids. Yeah, I was going to ask your favorite recipe. The salmon burger is so fire. But we also have a veggie burger as well using real food because the impossible burger paradigm exists. It is the definition of an ultra-processed food. For that grass-fed beef burger. There's one ingredient

plus spices, of course, but there's, that's one thing, impossible burger, 40, 60, all these different things. Many of these synthetic ingredients. And again, not, I don't want to completely villainize it. I'm, I know that that's going to come off like that. If that is a 10% of your diet or every now and then that's fine. But I know that I did going to come off like that. If that is a 10% of your diet or every now and then, that's fine. But I know that I did when I was doing a vegan protocol. I got too far into the weeds with ultra processed vegan versions of things. Right? And today it's way different than when I did this in 2006 or whatever it was.

So I'm an OG with all of these things. And, but I lived, I did this in Missouri. All right. And to come out here, like when I come out here to speak or something, I'm just like, there's all these vegan restaurants. This is crazy. It was like, it was like magic. It was like a dreamland. I feel like my biggest takeaway is if you can make it at home with whole ingredients, that's always going to be the best choice. Like even when my husband and I want to have a cheat meal, maybe some pasta, if we make it at home, I feel like you can kind of get away with eating more of it

because it's real, you know? You just said one of the most remarkable things about all of this stuff, which is our beliefs about food, the state in which we eat, is in some ways more impactful on our bodies than the food itself. which is our beliefs about food, the state in which we eat, is in some ways more impactful on our bodies than the food itself. And the data is affirming this.

And I compiled all of this research, and it's all in the book as well, on eating behaviors and how eating together with friends and family impacts our health outcomes. And, you know, one of the studies was actually done with minority kids who would generally be in the context of a low income environment like I come from. And they found that when these kids were able to eat with their caregiver or, you know, caregivers four meals a week, breakfast, lunch, or dinner could have been any meal, four meals a week. The children ate four, I'm sorry, they ate five servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week.

And they ate significantly less ultra processed foods, chips and sodas. So the choices start to be different as well. But the data is affirming like, well, let me share one more study actually. This was published in Pediatrics looking at health outcomes for our kids. They found that three meals a week, if kids ate with their parents or caregiver three meals a week,

they had a dramatically reduced incidence of developing obesity and disordered eating. That is crazy. Wow. That's crazy. There's a protective aspect of this. The same holds true for parents as well. I share a story on parents and helping them to basically modulate metabolized stress better. And what it is, is that our chemistry

changes when we're around people that we care about. Oxytocin is getting produced at a higher level and oxytocin has been identified as something that can kind of counteract the impact of cortisol. And I know you talked about that with Dr. Mindy Peltz, my friend as well. And, you know, cortisol is getting blamed for a lot of things. Cortisol is not bad, but in the wrong context, right? If it's too high at certain points, if it's too low, if it doesn't have a certain healthy rhythm to it, yes, it can be a problem. But for much of society, they're in that kind of chronic low-grade fever, like it's running hot until a lot of people are crashing eventually. And so oxytocin has this really remarkable ability to kind of counteract or neutralize the activity of cortisol.

This is why just getting around people they care about tends to reset your nervous system. And there's a switch from your sympathetic fight or flight to parasympathetic rest and digest. And I think you mentioned only 30% of families are actually eating together nowadays because we're all running around in fight or flight, eating in the car, eating in front of our screen. It's such a different experience. Yeah, and that's number three for me

because it's not the food that we eat solely. Because, you know, eating the best time to eat something that we might deem to be a quote bad food, which I don't want to put the label on the food like that. But eating that food that is not the best for you would be when you are in high spirits and feeling good. Most of the time when we do stuff like that in our society is when we don't feel our best.

And there is this new term called stress eating that is a very real phenomenon. And we're managing mostly unconsciously, subconsciously our emotions through food. It's something we can control. It's something that brings a certain level of certainty. There are so many different psychological benefits or leverage points to using food. And we're not doing the real thing. Like our bodies are screaming at us for change,

for certain inputs. And so number three would be to make it a absolute mandate to eat with your friends and or family. Okay, friends count too. At least three times a week. That appears to be the minimum effective dose seen in the data to provide all these protective aspects to human health. And this goes beyond just the food that we're eating. Because, you know, again, if everybody's getting together and eating some, I don't know, Olive Garden or whatever it is, your health outcomes are going to be better. Plus just basic stuff. Like if you're engaged in conversation, leptin, adiponectin, there's all these different satiety hormones. They're going to get a chance to pop their heads up while you're engaged in something

versus mindlessly eating your food in front of a device. Not to say that you can't do that, but especially for kids today where there's this new phenomenon that folks are growing up in with social media and you cannot help but to activate a severe level of comparison and so we have a deep psychological human need to feel seen and you don't get that you all you're doing the seeing through that and looking for people to

acknowledge you but to actually see somebody in the real world and to see your child, to be present with them. It is like, it is putting so many things that are intangible and valuable and life affirming, life transforming into their bank account that is going to pay it forward for many years to come. And so, you know, that would be the third thing for me is to make it a mandate. Three meals per week is the minimum effective dose to plan. And if nobody else is scheduling it, you schedule it, whether it's with your family, some friends of yours, get together for brunch, get together for, you know, a cup of coffee, whatever it is, three times a week.

Like it is filling your cup, literally, when you do that. I love that. Three amazing tips. And I have to say, guys, what I love about this book is it's not just about the recipes and the food. We were talking before and I said, I love the charts you have that talk about the scary choice, the sufficient choice, and the smart choice, whether it's to do with cooking oils, beef, snacks. I love the fact that you meet people where they're at, but you're also giving tips that

are outside the food itself. Like you were talking about cookware and the chemicals in cookware. So it's really more about the environment in the kitchen itself and how to create a healthier environment. So I really appreciate that. I have to ask you the question we ask every single guest. What does wellness mean to you? Because I believe everyone's pursuit of wellness

looks different. It's everything. Wellness is everything. Every thought that you think, everything that you're exposed to. There's a statement we hear in our circle that you are what you eat, but it is so much more than that. True. If we even understood you are what you eat, we'd be at a whole different level because we literally are what we eat when i see you i've seen i'm looking at what you've eaten like a steak today but you know it's just it's such a miraculous process where our bodies can take that and to make human tissue right and or the lack thereof, right? So we're seeing everything about us comes from the earth. Everything is such a beautiful thing, but it's not just you are what you eat. You are what you think

you are to drink, obviously too, or maybe not so obviously we don't think about that. You are to think you are to breathe. You know, everything is wellness. Everything is wellness. And so wellness for me is the adventure of discovering what works for me right now, you know, and that is always evolving. And we can fight with that. And what I've seen over the years is sometimes when we find something that works for us, we turn it into a religion. We turn it into everything. And we miss out on the fact that you are a constantly changing, growing, evolving human being. And that thing that might have given you value at one time, we cannot attach our identity to that. And so being open to change, switching this switch in our mind to look for the adventure in it, right? Instead of resisting the change, knowing that, oh, this is, this is going to be something that is great for me now and being open to the next adventure. And so, yeah, so wellness for me, it's, it's everything, everything that we do, everything that we choose, and also being open to the adventure.

Amazing. And I feel like your story is the perfect example of that. Sean, where can people find you online? Where can they find the books? Give us all the deets. Awesome. So the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, I am so honored to say that it is a USA Today national bestseller. It's the number one new release cookbook in the United States when it came out. And I'm saying that it's crazy because I don't have a cooking show. You know, I don't have like all, I got into this field partially, even when I started my show over 10 years ago, what my first venture into public speaking was teaching food classes and just like these, they would turn into parties afterwards. You know, like it was so when people are eating good food that makes them feel good and it's delicious.

It's like it's electric. It just created such an incredible vibe in the rooms and just kept growing. They start off with three people. And I knew two of them were my clients. And I was but I was terrified. I was terrified. And, you know, this is again like 15, 18 years ago, but then it was five people, then 10, then 20, then we got to get rent out buildings. And, you know, so, you know, just,

I'm so honored by that. It's something special about it. It truly is. And my family is deeply integrated into the book itself because I think it's important to demonstrate, to show a model of what's possible. And, you know, our relationships are truly the biggest determinant on our health. And, you know, we share that data in the book as well, because it is a fact. The longest running longitudinal study on human health has affirmed that. And so you can pick it up anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that good stuff. And of course your local bookstores you can check and see if it's it's there as well and you can find me my probably where most people would connect with me and know me from is my show is called the model health show and I'm also grateful to say you know over the years has been the number one health podcast in the country many times and when I

started it I was living in Ferguson Florissant, which is not the hub of health in the United States, you know, in the heartland. And again, it's a demonstration of what's possible to have a voice that reverberated so powerfully across the world is so remarkable. And so you can find that wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I'm at Sean Model on Instagram. Fantastic. Thank you, Sean, so much. That was amazing. Thank you. It's my honor. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. To support this show,

please rate and review and share with your loved ones. If you want to be reminded of new episodes, click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast or video player. You can sign up for my newsletter to receive my favorites at marilowelland.com. It will be linked in the show notes. This is a Wellness Out Loud production produced by Drake Peterson, Fiona Attucks, and Kelly Kyle. This show is edited by Mike Fry and our video is recorded by Luis Vargas. You can also watch the full video of each episode on our YouTube channel at Mari Fitness.

Love you, Power Girls and Power Boys. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team.