The Liz Moody Podcast - How To Hack Your Blood Sugar For Energy, Weight Loss, Hormone Balance, Glowing Skin & More with the Glucose Goddess

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

My guest today is the lovely Jessie Inchauspe, founder of @glucosegoddess and the author of the upcoming Glucose Revolution. On this episode, she shares: how managing glucose can impact things like PCOS, fertility, aging, energy, gut health, and more why blood sugar impacts your weight as much if not MORE than calories the one food you can eat before any meal to mitigate glucose spikes (no matter what you’re eating!) how the order you eat food impacts your blood sugar curve why you actually SHOULDN’T eat fruit alone how blending, cooking, and juicing food impacts how it affects your glucose the simple hack that makes pasta, rice, and other carbs WAY better for your glucose—and your gut how zero calorie sweeteners like monk fruit, stevia, and erythritol impact glucose 4 genius hacks for dealing with sugar cravings an exact action plan for eating sugar-filled dessert in a way that’s better for your body the impact of cinnamon, sauna, meditation, and more on your blood sugar the best time to workout to manage blood sugar spikes and so much more! Tag @lizmoody and @glucosegoddess with any thoughts, feelings, or reactions as you’re listening, and show us any hacks you’re trying! I would also SO appreciate if you shared this episode or any favorite episodes with someone you love in your life! PS: My very first product is live!!! Go to htdeck.com to snag your Healthier Together Deck, which has 150 conversation starters in 6 categories! Find out more at htdeck.com—this is a self-funded limited run and these will sell out!! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. This episode is sponsored by Seed. You can get 15% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01™ Daily Synbiotic by going to https://seed.com/daily-synbiotic and using the code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley. Head over to paleovalley.com and use the code LIZM for 15% off. This episode is sponsored by GoMacro. You can get a whopping 30% off your order of $50 or more PLUS free shipping by going to gomacro.com and using the code healthiertogether. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthyer Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your health-est, happiest life, whether that's through mindset shifts or hormone health hacks or outfits to make you feel stunning or sex or money tips. We cover it all. If you're new here, hello, hi, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. Make sure that you hit the follow button on whatever platform that you're listening on so you do not miss out. on any future episodes. Next week's is an Ask the Doctor all about easy ways to identify and beat burnout, which you do not want to miss. I have such a fun episode today. It is all about hacking your blood sugar to transform your overall health. While many of us think of blood sugar as only important for diabetics, it actually impacts so many of your bodily functions.

I personally first started taking blood sugar seriously because stable blood sugar is a key element of managing anxiety as we talk about in the Ask the Doctor Anxiety Edition episode of the podcast. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Glucose levels can also impact things like weight, fertility, energy levels, brain health, skin health, hormone health, and more. The good news is getting your glucose levels in check can be easy and, dare I say, fun. My guest today is the amazing Jesse Inchaospe. Jesse is a biochemist and the founder of the amazing at glucose goddess Instagram account, where she uses a continuous glucose monitor to see the effects of different hacks on her glucose levels.

She's actually not diabetic herself either, but she's used balancing her glucose as a way to feel better in her body, which we talk about way more in the episode. We also talk about why blood sugar impacts your weight as much, if not more than calories, the one food that you can eat before any meal to mitigate glucose spikes, how the order that you eat food impacts your blood sugar curve, while you actually shouldn't eat fruit alone, the simple hack that makes pasta, rice, and other carbs way better for your glucose and gut. How zero-calorie sweeteners like mung fruit, Stevie, and erythritol impact glucose. Four genius hacks for dealing with sugar cravings and an exact action plan to eat sugar in a more glucose-friendly way.

The best time to work out to manage blood sugar spikes and so much more. You can pre-order Jesse's new book, Glucose Revolution, at Glucose-revolution. And Jesse and I would both love to hear from you. So tag at Liz Moody and at Glucose Goddess on Instagram, any reactions that you have as you're listening or when you try any of the hacks. We would both love to cheer you on. All right. Let's get into all of the blood sugar hacks with Jesse the glucose goddess. Jesse, I am so excited for this podcast.

I know that my audience is to I talk all the time about blood sugar. I feel like I've been thinking, but I wrote about it in my cookbook when I was kind of, thinking about what my dessert philosophy was when I was writing my cookbook. I was like, oh, sweet spike your blood sugar. And if we can mitigate that, maybe we can mitigate some of the negative impacts of dessert. But I've never talked about it in a real way. So I am so excited to have you on. Thank you, Liz. I'm so happy to be here. It's so lovely to meet you and to be on here and to talk all things, blood sugar. I'm ready. I'm so ready. Amazing. And as a bonus, we get to listen to your really beautiful accent. So thank you for having such a melodic way of speaking. I'm sure we all

appreciate that as well. Such a nice compliment. Thank you, Liz. Nobody's ever said that in the introduction of the podcast. So I'll take it. Can you start us off by just telling me a little bit about who you are and your background and like why and how do you know so much about glucose? Yes, completely, completely. So I'm French, grew up in France. I studied mathematics as an undergrad. And then when I was 19, something happened in my life that like propulsed me very, very quickly at a very young age into the world of caring for my health and the health of others. What happened was I had an accident and I broke my back. So one of my vertebraes exploded. It was really painful, awful. I had a very intense surgery. And then I started developing after the accident

and the surgery, very intense mental health problems. So, you know, depression, anxiety, dissociation, like a lot of scary stuff. And so at that young, fresh, ripe age of 19, I had a very profound realization that health is the most important thing. Like, if we don't have our physical and mental health, we have nothing. That's really the foundation of a happy and fulfilled life. So I started a journey to understand. how to reconnect with my body, how it worked. I really wanted to figure out how to solve my issues,

you know, how to solve my anxiety, my brain fog, my feeling of disconnection with my biology, and my feeling of misunderstanding too. I was like, I don't feel good and I don't know why and I want to understand. So I, in order to do that, I had a plan. So I went to grad school and I studied biochemistry to understand, you know, the inner workings of ourselves. And then I went and worked in the field of genetics for five years because back then genetics was really what we thought of as the forefront of health. And so I went to do that in San Francisco in Silicon Valley. And while I was there trying to answer kind of unsuccessfully all of my questions around how do I feel good, how do I speak with my body? I had the opportunity to try on a glucose monitor for the first time.

And so we were doing this pilot program at work and they were testing out these different technologies. And so one day they asked us, who wants to try a glucose monitor? And I immediately raised my hand. I was like, me, me, me, me, me, please me. And this is another moment that really changed everything from me. As soon as I applied the glucose monitor and started to be able to see literally the inside of my body on my phone, a light bulb went off above my head. So as you know, a glucose monitor measures every few minutes your blood sugar or your glucose levels in your bloodstream and sends the data to your iPhone or to your phone. So you can actually see in real time what's happening underneath your skin.

You can see what happens after you eat. if you don't eat after you work out, after you're stressed. And I was seeing all of a sudden this sort of language of my body on my phone's screen. And for me, Liz, this was the first time that I felt finally reconnected to my biology, to my body. And this was really the beginning of my fascination for the topic. Interesting. Would you say that via your journey of learning about glucose and managing those blood sugar spikes, you've been able to make a mental health transformation, or do you still have bad mental health days?

What's your relationship with that now? So my relationship to mental health really changed after wearing the glucose monitor. I really was able to solve and understand many, many of the triggers of my anxiety and my brain fog. And what was really interesting is that they mostly all related to glucose levels. So I'm going to sort of walk you through, you know, what happened after I first put on the glucose monitor and all the stuff that I discovered. So at first, Liz, it was kind of confusing. I'm not sure if you've worn a glucose monitor, have you? I haven't. I have a whole anxiety story around overchecking blood sugar, so I haven't personally done it. Okay. I understand. So at first, it can be very, very confusing. I was seeing

all these spikes and these dips, and I was like, what is happening? I really wanted to understand, you know, the underlying mechanisms that were doing all this stuff in a good scientific fashion. So I started diving really deeply into all the science. I started doing. reading all the papers about glucose levels and how actually, you know, we've recently found out that it's not just something that diabetics should care about. In fact, 90% of us have glucose spikes every day as non-diabetics. And these spikes lead to lots of different things and, you know, fatigue, cravings, inflammation, et cetera, but also they can trigger mental health things. And so for me, I started discovering that very often, if I felt anxious, if I felt a bit,

out of balance mentally, it's because my glucose levels had been spiking on a roller coaster, and that was creating stress in my body and in my brain. So I'm in a much, much, much, much better place now mentally than I was after my accident. And the glucose monitor helped me reconnect with my body in a really deep way and help me start the healing process. But of course, you know, therapy has been incredibly helpful, just understanding how to process stress and how to not keep it in my body, but kind of shake to release it and a lot of journaling, a lot of other stuff. I mean, it's an ongoing journey, but I feel super happy about where I am now. I would love for you to explain like in a sentence or two, like you're talking to a five-year-old,

what is glucose? Glucose is your body's energy. It's like the fuel in your car. So that means we need it. We don't want to cut all glucose out completely to manage these glucose spikes. Glucose in our body is good, but spikes are bad. Is that a simplified way of saying it? It is.

And actually, it's a really good question. Because contrary to a car, in order to get our fuel, we actually don't necessarily need to get it from the outside. So what I mean is that glucose is, you know, primordial to our survival. But even though eating it is actually the most common and easiest way to get it, it's not the only way. Even if you don't eat sugars or starches, your body will make glucose from within from fats and protein. So you don't actually need to eat it. You just need to eat enough, and then your body will make glucose from within if you don't eat it. Although one of the things that I really like about your work is you're not asking people to cut huge amounts of things out of their diets.

You're mostly your work seems to be about adding things in and reorganizing timing, and I really like that. So we'll get into that in a second. But first, I want to talk about a few more of the things that those glucose spikes are linked to. You've mentioned brain fog and sort of the mental health issues. I know you talk about hormones and PCOS a lot. Can you talk about that for a second? Yes, absolutely. So there are very few things that glucose spikes don't influence and don't make worse. But in the world of hormones, this has been a very important topic in my Instagram community. So at its core, what a glucose spike does that affects hormones is that it triggers insulin.

So every time there's a spike, your body releases insulin to take the glucose and put it away to essentially, you know, make you come back down after the spike. And when there's a lot of spikes, you start reducing a lot of insulin. And the issue is when your body has a lot of insulin in it, something fundamental happens that leads to hormonal imbalance. And what happens is that the excess of insulin prevents your body from transforming the male sex hormones into female sex hormones. So as a result, you end up with a total overgrowth of male.

sex hormones of testosterone and not enough female hormones. And this then leads to the umbrella of PCOS symptoms. So you have missed periods, acne, hair growth, et cetera, infertility. And fundamentally they're all due to this excess testosterone, which is also due to the excess insulin, which is due to excess glucose spikes. So a very efficient way of combating these symptoms is to reduce the glucose spikes so that you stop the chain of effect. I think that's so fascinating, and it's such a powerful tool for managing hormones that we don't talk about regularly enough. Yeah, I agree.

No, it's really incredible, and I receive a lot of messages from women who have had missed periods for years, sometimes decades, who have been unable to conceive. And by understanding the glucose levels and, you know, reducing those spikes, they've been able to regain proper hormonal function and they have their periods again and a couple I've had babies and I'm like oh my god it's so cool I mean yeah it's really really awesome so you have a lot of power glucose goddess babies right I should send them like little um we should make little baby clothes and little onesies I'm a glucose goddess yes so good that would be so cute so cute and so I really want to make it clear that when you're diagnosed something like PCOS you have power like there is power

in your plate. And it's really remarkable to see all the women who've been able to apply the hacks I share and incorporate them into their lives and change the game for them. Another category that I think glucose spikes are really interesting for is how they combat the notion that calories are the only thing that matters for weight loss, which is something that I get asked literally every single day on my Instagram. Like, why aren't you talking more about calories? Calories, calories, calories. And I tend to focus in my recipes far more on blood sugar. than I focus on calories. And I'm going to send them to this podcast now.

So can you help me explain why glucose spikes matter for weight loss? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, let's be clear. If you eat 10,000 calories a day and you keep your glucose really steady, you're still going to gain weight, right? Like, calories matter in some macro sense. However, you know, we know that if you completely ignore calories and you just eat in a way that keeps your glucose levels,

steady, you're able to naturally reduce cravings, reduce hunger, and actually lose weight because you're just less hungry and your body's able to burn fat more. So if you focus on just calories, it can be really, really difficult to lose weight because you're not really getting at the root cause of deregulated hunger or cravings that are keeping you completely tied. So glucose spikes to me, reducing those is the number one thing to do if you're trying to lose weight. And in fact, what's really interesting is that even in the people who apply the hacks that I share in an effort to reduce glucose spikes for another for other reasons for example let's say for fertility they end up losing weight as an unintended consequence because by reducing glucose spikes they're reducing

insulin levels to their body is in fat burning mode more but really essentially they are reducing their hunger and their cravings so it doesn't even feel like they're on a diet or anything it's just this very effortless journey of getting your glucose in check, eating better, feeling awesome, and naturally losing weight. It's pretty amazing. Wasn't there a study? I totally could be remembering this wrong, but wasn't there a study too where the only, like they ate the same amount of calories, but the only thing they changed was the order of their food or something that managed their glucose spikes? Yes, absolutely. So there are a ton of studies like these that show that if you give two groups, the exact same number of calories, but one keeps their glucose level steady and

the other doesn't, the group that keeps their glucose level steady actually loses more weight than the other group, even though they're eating the exact same number of calories. That's so interesting. Yeah. Yes, it's so interesting. So even if you keep calories equal, right, you're able to lose more weight when you're on a diet that studies your glucose levels. And that really, you know, completely exposed our previous understanding that all that matters

are calories. Amazing. All right. We've got the sound bite that I'm going to send you to from now on. Please check out this podcast episode. Awesome. Like I mentioned before, one of the things that I really like about your philosophy is you're not asking people to cut and limit for you. It's really about adding things.

So I would love to start with adding vinegar. You're sort of famous for your vinegar trick. Can you speak to that a little bit? I think especially like apple cider vinegar in the wellness world, a lot of people are like, okay, is this a bullshit thing that? people just have written about, you know, it just, it has that air of bullshit to it. And I think you've shown that it's in fact not bullshit, although it's also not just apple cider vinegar. So that's interesting too. It's totally not bullshit. So there are like dozens and dozens and dozens of

studies that have studied vinegar like they would study a medication, like clinical trials of just adding apple cider vinegar into people's diets and watching what happens. And these studies have been done on type 1 diabetics, on type 2 diabetes. on pre-diabetics, on people without diabetes. And every single time what the researchers found was super fascinating is that by just adding one tablespoon of vinegar two to three times a day into your meals. So, you know, having them before your meals is the easiest thing to do. You just take a tablespoon of apples and vinegar in a tall glass of water and you drink it

before your meals. People lost more weight. Their health markers got better, like their hormones got back into balance. their diabetes slowly reversed. It's just kind of insane when you read these studies. You're like, oh my God, this thing is incredible. And there's even one study that was done in Brazil where the researchers like literally wrote in the article, they said, vinegar is as effective as these supposed fat burners

that the diet industry has made and salty people. Vinegar is that incredible. It's really, really, really cool. Can you speak to the mechanism of action? And I think people, I mean, don't get like too crazy science. Like make it in a way we can understand. But there is some really interesting science behind why it's actually helping. Yes.

So there's two main mechanisms. And the first one is that when you drink vinegar, vinegar goes into your muscles and tells your muscles to increase their uptake of glucose. It basically tells your muscles that they're hungrier than they think they are. And so your muscles start soaking up the glucose from your bloodstream and storing it as later energy into the. muscle. Second thing, vinegar goes into the mitochondria of your cells, so the place where energy is handled, and tells your mitochondria to burn more fat, literally tells your body to burn more fat.

And those are the two main mechanisms by which vinegar does. It's incredible stuff. And so then if you extrapolate this, you know, if you have a vinegar drink before a meal, let's say you're about to eat some pasta and you, before eating the pasta, I have a tall glass of water with vinegar in it. So a few things are going to happen. First of all, you're going to see on a glucose monitor that the spike that the pasta would have created is actually much, much smaller, you know, 30 to 35% smaller than if you hadn't had the vinegar. And that's because your muscles are soaking up the glucose as it arrives into your bloodstream from the pasta. Second, your mitochondria are going to be burning more fat. And third, because the glucose spike is going to be blunted,

you're actually going to feel so much better. You're not going to have the energy crash three hours after your meal. You're not going to feel like super hungry in the middle of the afternoon, wanting a cookie or something. So your mood is going to be more stable. Your hunger is going to be more stable. And just overall, you're going to be in a better disposition for the rest of the day. So it truly is magical. And it's really cheap. Like you can just buy a bottle of vinegar at the grocery store. It's insane. And again, you can use any vinegar, right? But apple cider just tends to taste the best. And so people go for that. Yeah, exactly. You can use any type. Don't use balsamic, though, because balsamic has added sugar in it, so it kind of defeats a little bit of the purpose. But for those who

don't like apple cider vinegar, you know, white wine vinegar seems to be quite popular. And also because it's an acquired taste. Like, I love it now. I love it. Yeah, it makes me feel so healthy. It's like my brain associates it with you're doing something good for your body. But, you know, as you're starting, you can start with like a teaspoon, even half a teaspoon in a tall glass of water. I will just grab a bottle of water and, like, put vinegar in it, you know, in the afternoon and kind of sip on it. So there's lots of different ways you can add it to your diet with scientifically proven

incredible effects. So do you do it every day before most meals, or do you kind of save it for the times you're eating pasta or you're eating a more glucose baking dessert? I probably do it more before eating pasta. For example, tonight I'm going to have a nice pasta dish. And so I know I have my vinegar in my kitchen. I'm like, oh, okay, after I record with Liz, I'm going to go have a little vinegar drink. So, no, usually before, you know, the starch or sugar-heavy meals, you can do it any time,

but it's before those meals that it's going to be most useful for your body. And can you overdo it? Like if you did theoretically do it before every meal, would that be bad? No, you can't overdo it. So there's just one, okay, two things here. There's one instance, this paper reported that this woman was drinking 25 tablespoons of vinegar a day for five years. And she had some big issues and she had to go to the hospital. So just don't do that.

25 tablespoons is too much. Then to, you know, listen to your body, kind of feel it out. Some people seem to have kind of a weird reaction to it and just really can't handle it. And that's fine. but for most of us, as long as it's diluted in water, I mean, it's totally safe to drink. You know, it's less acidic than lemon juice. It's less acidic than Coca-Cola. It's less acidic than the gastric juices in your stomach. So there's really no issue there at all. And just because I know my community is going to be like, wait, I want to get into the nittyest of nitty-gritty.

Is there an amount of time that's ideal before these meals to have it? And is there like a too long before that it won't matter or too short before that it won't matter? Oh, yeah, that's a really good question. So in the studies, they've, tested multiple timings, 20 minutes before, 10 minutes before, five minutes before, it worked. Listen, if you can only, for example, have some vinegar first thing in the morning and then not have it the rest of the day, it's still going to help. Ideally, if you want maximum effect, have this vinegar drink 10 minutes before eating before your meals. But it's a spectrum. You know, whatever you can do is going to be better than not doing it at all. All right. Got it. I highly

recommend it. I also love it with like a little bit of cinnamon. It makes it feel like a cozy, like apple cider drinks to me. Yes, yes. I actually made this post with like different ways of drinking vinegar if you don't like the taste. And they're kind of like mocktails with a vinegar in it. So some have cinnamon, some have other stuff. So check them out. They're really cute. I love that. Okay. Let's talk about the order that we eat food in because that hugely impacts your glucose curve. And I love the idea you talk about like a green, a green starter. right? Yeah, completely. So you know, you mentioned that my philosophy is not about removing stuff from the diet and it's really correct. I think it's really difficult. I personally had a lot of

trouble when I had to try to follow these, like I was vegan for a bit and I was keto for a bit when I was younger and it was always so freaking hard and it just didn't work for me. And so when I discovered this science around glucose and when I distilled these hacks from all the scientific evidence, it was really life-changing for me because these small hacks, like for example, example, eating your foods in the right order, allow you to eat whatever you love eating, and still study your glucose levels to help your body and help your health. So the food order thing is really, really cool. The studies show that if you take two meals, two exactly identical meals, okay, with the exact same foods in them. If you consume your foods in a specific order,

you will reduce the glucose spike by 40%. This specific order is. This specific order is, eat the vegetables first, then the proteins and the fat, and then the starches and the sugars. And so I've adapted this into multiple hacks for the community. The first one is obviously when you can, when it's not too complicated and you're sitting in front of a meal, try to have the veggies first, then the proteins and the fats and then the starches. If you're having like a curry where everything's mixed together, like don't stress it. but when it's easy, do that and it's going to help your glucose levels immensely.

The second thing you can do that kind of takes this hack and brings it one step further is to add to every single one of your meals. Add a green starter at the beginning. And so what I mean by a green starter is just a starter that is based around vegetables. So the vegetables don't have to be green, but it's just kind of like a shortcut way of saying it. So make, you know, your favorite little vegetable dish. for example, for me, I love either like a really fresh arugula salad or maybe some roasted cauliflower with some tahini sauce and maybe like a tomato salad with nice salt and pepper. And have that as a starter

before all of your meals. And the reason this is so important, you know, eating your vegetables first or adding vegetables to the beginning of your meal is because in vegetables, there's a lot of fiber. and fiber is like your best sidekick for steady glucose levels. Fiber, when it's eaten first, before everything else in the meal, it will go and coat the inside of your upper intestine. It creates this kind of like viscous mesh. And then everything you eat after the fiber will actually have its absorption reduced. So any starches you eat after the fiber will be absorbed at a lesser. extent by your body. So less of the glucose will go through into your bloodstream. So we do this. And then the

reason we also do the proteins and fats before the starches is kind of for the same idea. Proteins and fats slow down digestion. So that means that anything you eat after them will arrive in your intestine slower. So you're trying to reduce the speed and the velocity of glucose hitting your upper intestine and creating a spike. I don't want to spend too long on the notion. I think a lot of people like you should eat fruit alone and those types of things. And I think largely science has debunked it. But can you just speak to that briefly? The people who are like, wait, you're supposed to eat fruit first. So you digest it really fast. You don't want to slow down digestion. You want to speed in it. Yeah, completely. So I did a lot of research on this because that's the question I got asked a lot.

So I traced this whole notion of you should only eat fruits on an empty stomach back to the 18th century. It's actually a French doctor who came up with this. I like love the idea of doing like a medical history. project. That sounds so fun. Totally. Well, I just, you know, it's really important for me to understand, you know, where these things come from and really understand what the legit science and evidence is behind stuff before I discuss them. So this doctor said, if you eat fruit after everything else, they will send up vapors into your brain and rot in your stomach, causing a lot of issues. So this is where the concept of fruit rotting in the stomach comes from. It turns out, nothing can rotting

in the stomach. It's actually a very clean place. And it's actually the part of a digestive system that has the least amount of bacteria. So it's impossible for anything to rot in the stomach. And even if it were possible, which it is not, rotting takes way longer than just a few hours. Rotting takes days and weeks. So this whole notion is really incorrect. However, it's been also talked about in the context of Ayurveda, right? People in Ayurveda say you should only eat fruit and an empty stomach. So to that I say, listen, there's no scientific evidence. From a glucose perspective, it's better to eat fruit last so that the glucose and fructose in it don't go into your bloodstream as much. However, if personally, you know, you do not like eating fruit after a meal or you feel

kind of uneasy or you feel like it messes up your digestion one way or another, like don't do it, you know, listen to yourself, listen to your body. But for the vast majority of people, people, this causes causes no issues and it's actually better for our glucose levels. I love, like, reminding people that the science is the science and they're based on large-scale studies, but your individuality still matters and you should never be like, well, but the science says and completely ignore what's happening in your own body. Like, always be aware of what's happening in your own body. Completely. And also, you know, science evolves. Like, who's to say that in 20 years we're not going to discover that actually, yes, you know, fruit eaten last has an effect on this and

that? Like, we just don't know. So, so. So, So far, we cannot say this is a real scientifically backed thing, but your personal experience is very important as well. I think it's really, you know, it's really useful to say this. Okay, let's get really granular on our green starter. What if we're having a salad, but where the dressing has like a little bit of honey in it? Does it need to be completely sweetener-free to count as a green starter? Hmm, you're asking me the tough questions now this.

So it's a spectrum. it's better to have a nice salad with a little bit of honey in the dressing and maybe some vinegar as well and some nuts and some cheese in the salad than to not have the salad at all. But if you're drizzling like five tablespoons of honey onto your salad, you're probably going to counteract the positive effects of the actual fiber. So it's a spectrum. You know, it's best to not have any sweeteners in your green starter. But if it's something you tremendously enjoy and can't live without, like, I think it's also okay. It's not all or nothing. It's about finding the thing that works for you that optimizes your health as much as you can while still being enjoyable and fun.

What about higher starch vegetables like a sweet potato? Yeah, so those I would count as a starch. Those would not be a green starter in my book, just because the quantity of starch in them is so great compared to the fiber that really, you know, they counts just like rice or pasta in a way. So in the food order, you would put those last. So it's about the ratio within it. So is that way, I noticed that you put hummus on your green starters a lot. And I think of legumes being a little bit more high starch, high carb, but they also have that protein. So that makes them okay for green starters. Exactly. Yeah. And the starter that I like the most with hummus is actually either cucumber with hummus or carrots with hummus, like raw carrots

of raw cucumber. So altogether, they create a green starter that's pretty high in fiber and doesn't have that much starch. So yeah, I would say hummus is fine in that context. But sweet potatoes I would probably put towards the end. Well, and hummus, you're also adding like tahini and olive oil. You're adding things that are, I would assume, making it more glucose-friendly. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, beans and legumes in general have really high protein, really high fiber. So I really think they're a really nice green starter for anybody who loves them. Go for it. So when you're deciding the order, are you kind of deciding like the predominant macronutrients? Yes. Yes. For example, you know, fruit, right? Take, I don't know, a banana. It has fiber in it, but it also has a lot of

sugar. So I'm like, okay, well, the predominant macronutrient here is sugar, so it goes last. Similarly, like, if you take, I don't know, a tomato, a tomato has a bunch of fiber, it has a tiny bit of sugar in it, but the predominant macro is fiber. So it goes first. Okay, that makes sense. And then how much do we need? If we just like eat five leaves of spinach, does that count? Or is there like a tipping point? I think the best thing you should try to do is have as much of a green starter as the starchers you're going to have at the end of your meal. So try to do a one-to-one ratio between the green starter and any starches you'll have at the end. that's really the sweet spot where it blunts the glucose curve enough that you can enjoy the starches without a spike.

However, I would also say if you're running out of your house and you're going to like a restaurant or something and you only have a couple seconds to grab something to coat your intestine before you go out and eat, I don't know, a pizza, even like a heart of palm, a few bites of broccoli that you have leftover in your fridge, Like, anything is better than nothing. However, if you have the time to really plan and make the perfect glucose steady meal, then one-to-run ratio between wing starter and starches is what I do. I know. And maybe think so much about restaurants because they bring the bread basket and then you're eating the bread first.

And like, it would be so much better to eat a salad and then eat the bread after the salad. Totally. And, you know, okay, so I think maybe, I wonder where this bread thing comes from. But, you know, if I had a restaurant and I wanted people to eat as much as possible and order as much as possible and order dessert, for example, I would serve bread first. Yeah. Because it would create a big glucose spike. And then, you know, a couple hours after, well, you know, in France, we stay in the restaurant very long. But then inevitably, a bit later, you're going to have a really big craving when the spike from the bread comes back down and crashes.

And that's probably when you're going to order a dessert. So, you know, in the context of owning a restaurant, it might make sense. But they might not have been like located into the science, but also they might have noticed like, oh, people order more when we bring bread to the table. It's also, I mean, in restaurants, what they've studied, the lighting and how that impacts, how much you order, the order of things on the menu, the music they play. So why not the order they serve glucose rich foods and starch rich foods? Completely. And you know, these traditions, they just kind of show up for X and Y reason. And then they're part of our culture.

but what's quite encouraging is that there are many, many instances of cultures in which they actually start with the green starter at the beginning of the meal. So, you know, in France, we traditionally start with crete, which are raw vegetables. In Italy, they start with antipati, which is also a vegetable-based dish. You know, in the Middle East, they have these bunches of herbs that they eat by the bunch. So it's quite interesting for me to find out that all of this glucose science is really backed by a lot of traditions that are much older than the scientific papers that I discovered. For sure. I tend to be like, because I'm a very lazy cook, I tend to be kind of like a one big dish

person versus having multiple components. How important is it to have the fiber and the fat and the protein in that order like before a meal versus adding them to a more carb heavy meal like pasta? Like if I'm wilting greens into my pasta, is that still helping or not as much? completely helping it's a spectrum right so the worst thing you can do for your glucose level is have a meal that is just starches and sugars then a really good thing you can do is add fiber and protein and fat to that meal and mix them all together then if you really want to go like the extra mile and do the super super good glucose thing you would add maybe a green starter and have that first before you kind of starch combo but just the fact that you're adding wilted greens and I assume maybe

I don't know, other sources of protein and fat to your starches. That's already fantastic. You know, it's really, really good. It's helping your body. The combination of the macronutrients is reducing the spikes. So overall, your body will be happier. You'll be healthier. You'll reduce inflammation.

You'll reduce insulin release. So what you're doing is great. Liz. I approve. I approve. Okay, good. I'm glad that you're not invalidating every recipe I've ever put out. No.

That's good. That'd be really bad. If my entire food philosophy ended up being debunked this podcast, which I would still put it out because I want people to know, but it would be a moment where I'd have to really sit alone with myself and reflect for a while. Yes. And to anybody listening, we did not plan this. Liz did not call me up and say, listen, you can't debunk all my recipes. You've got to say they're good. Like, I'm speaking to the heart here. I never do that. I never do that to my poor community. I love them too much for that. Okay, let's talk about changing

the state of food. For instance, blending a smoothie or cooking a veggie. And then there's all Also, the notion of like resistant starch where if you cook and cool starches, it changes how they react with your body. Can you talk about how changing the state of a food impacts how it affects your glucose? Yes. So let's start with juice. So when you juice of fruit, you are removing all of the fiber. As I explained, the fiber is really important and protective in helping you not absorb as much

of the sugar coming through afterwards. So when you juice of fruits, you're really just eating, sorry, drinking just a big glass of sugar, which is equivalent to drinking a glass of soda. Now, people say, oh, well, you know, sugar from a fruit, sugar in a juice comes from a fruit, so it's better for you. But actually, you know, the sugar in a Coca-Cola, it actually comes from a plant too. It comes from usually beets or corn or cane. Like, it also has a plant source. So regardless of its source, it's really important to understand that sugar is sugar. It's always the same molecules. It's always going to create a glucose spike in your body, and it's going to harm your cells.

make you age faster and all this stuff. So juice from a fruit is really not great. Then if you juice a vegetable, you're actually fine because vegetables have very small amounts of sugar. So even though you're removing all the fiber, you're just basically drinking water with some vitamins in it. So it's not as concerning. So for people who love green juices, like salary juices and stuff, it's not an issue. You just want to avoid having too much fruit juice in anything that you drink. Then, so that's juicing. Should we talk about blending? Yes, please talk about, I'm a little nervous about this, although I know that you posted that there's like good smoothies and bad smoothies

and all the stuff you talked about adding into your smoothie was what I do and I encourage my audience to do with my smoothie recipes. But I start every single day with a green smoothie. It is my favorite thing that I do and I'm nervous about having it taken away from me. A ton of greens, so a ton of leafy greens. And then usually some type of fruit like frozen, strawberries, something like that. Sometimes there's frozen cauliflower.

There's always some type of fat like an avocado. There's always some type of protein like hold hemp seeds or protein powder of some sort. Often there's spices and then water is with it. And sometimes like nuts and seeds are in it as well. That is a glucose goddess approved smoothie. You're good. And am I good to have, I'm jumping ahead of myself a little bit, but am I okay to have that like as my breakfast, even though you encourage savory breakfast, like one thing I was wondering,

reading your work is if I should be having my smoothie at lunchtime instead of breakfast and have a savory breakfast first. Listen, it's better to not eat any sugar for breakfast because the spike created in your body after breakfast really influences how you feel for the rest of the day. That being said, when I say savory breakfast, I'm really trying to teach people to not go for the very, very sweet stuff. so it's not go for the cereals and the pastries and the juice and the sweetened yogurts. You know, what you're having, I would actually consider it in the savory camp because it's not just a fruit smoothie.

So in my book, like this is okay. What you want to avoid is really just having a smoothie that is made entirely of fruit because when you blend a fruit, these are blades going really, really, really, really fast. And they pulverize the fiber particles. So the fiber is still technically there, but it's been pulverized. into bits that are so small that it can no longer have its protective effect in your body. So you want to avoid blending fruits because then they just turn into this sugar with like nothing, no parachute to hold them back and to prevent a spike. So in smoothies, the best thing you can do is exactly what you're doing, Liz, which is

greens, a source of fat, sorts of, source of protein, some fruit for taste if you want. I would add easily I have berries and like a third of a banana in my smoothies, but I also have a bunch of protein powder and avocado and nut butter and oils to curb the spike. Just as we said, there's a spectrum in terms of your meals and whether they're just pure starch or they're like this perfectly ordered meal. In smoothie, there's a big spectrum too. So the worst is just fruits, but then the best is really honestly what you're doing. Like I don't have anything to say to that.

I think it's an A plus glucose goddess smoothie. Am I not getting the benefits of the fiber then from it, though, because I'm pulverizing the fiber. Like the greens have so much good fiber for them in you. Am I not getting those benefits? You're not, unfortunately. But listen, because you have the fat and the protein in there, you're still slowing down digestion.

But yeah, if you want to get fiber, like the best thing is to eat whole vegetables. With the smoothie, you're not going to optimize for fiber. But hey, you're probably optimizing for like happiness. because it makes you happy to have this beautiful smoothie you create for yourself every morning. And I'm sure hearing what's inside, considering the amount of protein and fat and hasn't it and the small amount of fruits, I'm pretty certain that it keeps your glucose level steady. So you're probably optimizing also for hunger and mood for the rest of the day. So it sounds good to me.

And I'm getting the nutrients from the grains, even if I'm not getting the fiber direct. Exactly. Yes, correct. Correct. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about cooking food.

Does that change? It's glucose interaction with your body? Yes, a little bit. Absolutely. So, you know, when we cook foods, example, we take a raw carrot and you eat that, it'll make a very small spike. If you then cook it, if you boil it, it'll make a little bit of a bigger spike. If you then blend it, it'll be a bigger spike. And if you then juice it, it'll be an even bigger spike. So again, this is a spectrum. But when we cook foods, we increase the availability of the starches and sugars in that food. It's not a bad thing, right? Because it's easier for us to digest when a thing.

food is cooked. However, there's this really cool hack in cooking that when I discovered this, it changed my life. I mean, honestly, a lot of these hacks have changed my life, but this one is really cool. So what I discovered is this concept of resistant starch. So when you cook a starch, let's take like a sweet potato because we discussed them earlier. If you take a raw sweet potato and then you cook it, so in the oven or you board it or any form of cooking, And then you let it cool down. This can be either in your fridge, it can be just on your countertop, it can be in the freezer, whatever.

You let it cool completely. What's happening inside the potato is that some of the starch is turning into this thing called resistant starch. And resistant starch is just fiber. It's just a different word to say the same thing. It's turning into this protective fiber that then coats your intestine and reduces glucose specs. So you've essentially increased the fiber content of the sweet potato by cooking it and cooling it. And then when you eat it again, and you can reheat it, by the way, no problem. Reheating it does

not remove the resistant starch that was created. You're creating a smaller glucose spec in your body for the exact same potato. And it tastes the same. And it doesn't change anything to the enjoyment of your meal or anything. It's just improving the effect of the sweet potato on your body. And it's helping your health. So it's a very, very cool hack, especially because I love leftovers for best. Yeah, it's the best argument-creating leftovers that I've ever heard. Yeah, I love leftovers for breakfast. It's one of my favorite things. So, you know, leftovers put them overnight, have them for breakfast, and they'll create a smaller spike than the night before it, which is so cool. It's so cool. I have a few of these tests on my page. I think it was actually I would sue potato. It's very,

very cool. Science is amazing. I'm so glad now to have the glucose data from my glucose monies. to be able to explain this and illustrate this and help people visualize what all the scientific papers say. It's a blessing. It's really awesome. I do. I think that it's there's so much wonderful science out there. But first of all, finding somebody like yourself who can actually read a study. I think that people sometimes discount how difficult is to actually interpret studies. And you need quite a bit of training to do so. And then to make that accessible and easy for the rest of us to understand is so hard to find, honestly. Okay, what about the zero calorie? Like, I want to particularly focus on the natural sweeteners because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast have already aspirate, you know, if they have it, they probably know that it's not great for them. But stuff like stevia or monk fruit, that often gets a pass in the wellness world. And then I saw on your Instagram that smart sweets spiked your blood sugar a ton, which really surprised me. So can you speak to that?

Yeah, so the reason smart sweets spike my blood sugar is not because of the sweetener they use. It's actually because they used presoluble tapioca fiber as one of their ingredients, which is listed on the nutrition label as fiber, but actually is not fiber. It actually turns to glucose when digested. And I believe they've changed this since, but that was really why the spike was happening. But also, you know, they say on the packaging that there's, you know, carbs and their candy. It's not like supposed to be this completely flat glucose response. But in terms of the sweeteners, so stevia is a really good option.

Alulose is a new sweetener kid on the block who's very, very cool. And then monk fruits also are really good options. So yeah, is there anything in particular you wanted to ask? Or in terms of glucose levels, these are all great. They are all great. So I've heard stuff like sometimes your body reacts to artificial sweetners or things that taste sweet, even if they have zero calories, as if you're adding sugar to your body, that doesn't seem to be the case for these more plant-based natural alternative sweeteners?

So for these plant-based ones, what's important is that they don't trigger insulin release. And as I mentioned, you know, insulin, too much insulin is one of the root causes of the hormonal issues and a lot of other problems as well in our body. So that's the good news. And then, of course, you know, sweeteners have their own set of effects, like they increase your desire to eat sweet stuff and maybe because you have a sweetener you think oh i can have this ice cream now because i you know i didn't have real sugar earlier they of course keep our dependence on sweet taste but i mean it's better to drink a diet soda than to drink a real you know can of soda i mean it's a spectrum guys like we know sweeteners have an effect on our body and a microbiome etc but like

real sugar is real not very good for us either we can't you know forget that we have to think about the alternative. In a vacuum, would I tell you add sweeteners to your diet if you don't already have them? No, of course not. But if you're telling me, I'm addicted to sugar, I can't get off it. Should I start using these natural sweeteners instead? I would say, yes, absolutely. Start using them, then decrease so that you slowly, you know, stop craving the sweet taste as much. It's all relative. There's all the spectrum. I think often we hear black and white things, like, oh, this is so bad, this is so bad, or this is so good, this is so good. It's like, well, you know, you have to think about the pros and the cons, the context, the alternative. It's really

important to bring some balance into this world of nutrition that's very black or white. So that's what I try to do. That's why all my answers are like, well, it depends. I totally agree. And I think it depends on your goals as well. Like, I think sometimes people come to me and they're like, oh, should I do? You know, people are taking this supplement and this supplement and this supplement? And I'm like, well, are you trying to help with your gut health, your anxiety or your hormones. Like everybody's goals are different and the way they should be approaching their health is different as such. I could not agree more completely, absolutely. You mentioned sugar cravings and I think sugar cravings are a big one that a lot of my community,

well, I'm not even going to couch it in that. I struggle with sugar cravings a lot and I know you have some fun hacks for dealing with sugar cravings. So can you please help me? Yeah, of course, Liz. And listen, I used to have so many cravings just for the little story. up when I was younger, I had for breakfast every morning a Nutella crepe, like a big crepe with a bunch of Nutella in it. And then by 11, I was like, I need a cookie. I'm so famished. So I know the experience of really being on that cravings roller coaster. So my cravings tips. So first of all, the first thing that I do when I have a craving is that I set a timer for 20 minutes because studies show that very often a craving is due to your glucose levels dropping after

a spike because you just ate something that created a spike. So I put a timer for 20 minutes because often what happens is that during those 20 minutes, my glucose levels have time to go back up and the craving dissipates. So that's step one. And just tell yourself, you know, listen, if I still want the thing after 20 minutes, I'm going to eat it. So it doesn't feel like, you know, you're preventing the eating thing. But it's a helpful way to understand. and where the craving is coming from. Then if you still want to eat the thing, so let's say, Liz, what's one of your go-to cravings foods?

Chocolate chip cookies. Okay. So if you really want to eat the chocolate chip cookies, there's a few things to do. Because I want you to be able to eat them and enjoy them. What I don't want for you is I don't want these cookies to create a cycle of cravings where three hours later you want more and you want more and you want more.

Okay? So the real solution here is finding a way for you to eat those. cookies without starting the roller coaster of glucose levels that's going to keep you on the cravings loop. So what I do is, I bake the cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies too, by the way. So I bake the cookies. As I'm baking the cookies, I have a tall glass of water or bottle of water with the vinegar inside, okay, to prepare your body. Then second is I'm going to preload or like before I have the cookies, I'm going to have something else. Like, for example, 10 almonds. So with the almonds, you're adding fiber to your body. So you're preparing your intestine to not absorb too much of the cookies.

And then finally, with the cookies, I will add something else, for example, a big glass of milk or some Greek yogurt or something kind of fatty to have with them again to slow down how quickly the glucose from the cookies is going to hit my body. And then after I eat the cookies, I'm going to use my muscles. So either clean up the kitchen because you made a mess or go for a walk. You know, if you have a dog, walk your dog, dance, do some pushups, watch a movie, and do a plank in front of the TV, fold the laundry that's been sitting on your floor for five weeks, anything that uses your muscles, because that's going to even more reduce the spike by allowing your muscles to take up the glucose for energy. So all in all, what has happened is that you've had your cookies, but the glucose spike they created in your body is much, much smaller.

So what does this mean? Less inflammation, less insulin release, which is really cool, slower aging, less likelihood of weight gain, and most importantly, I think if you know, you're somebody who suffers with cravings a lot, no creation of the cravings roller coaster. So you all of a sudden can kind of claim back, you know, your mood and your hunger hormones and they become more balanced. And so slowly, if you do this over time, you'll notice that the cravings might be. still be there, but you'll know how to manage them in a way that doesn't create more cravings later. And I'm all for eating cookies, you know, a couple times a month or whatever, how many times you want to eat cookies. We just want to make sure we're doing it in a way that doesn't

put us into a stage of complete dysregulation and lack of control, right? That's really what we want to help people avoid. Yeah, for sure. That's all super, super helpful. Are there any foods other than the vinegar, like not food groups like fibrous, vegetables or whatever? But, but individual foods that flatten the glucose curve. I know that people talk about cinnamon a lot. Is that true? Yeah, so cinnamon works only if you take it over a long period of time. So you have to take cinnamon for like five to six weeks daily for it to start having

an overall glucose lowering effect. But you can't just like, you can't just sprinkle cinnamon on your food and for it to flatten the glucose curve. It's like a, it's a level that has to build up slowly in your body. So it's not like vinegar. Because vinegar is one shot, you know, it works right away immediately, even just once. But it would be if you were concerned about flattening your glucose spikes overall, like I put cinnamon in my green smoothies often.

I love using it in curries. I love using it in like a bolognese sauce. I think it's just a great spice. That would be worth incorporating regularly. Completely. And you know, spices have a lot of other effects, positive effects on our body. So it's not always all about glucose. So yes, no downsides to cinnamon.

and if you can build up that level in your body over time, it's going to help reduce your overall glucose variability. So all good. And then you mentioned moving your body, moving your muscles after having the sugar. In general, do you think that working out after you've eaten is better? Or I know a lot of people in the health world think that fasted workouts are better. What's your take on that?

So my take on it is that exercise anytime is better than no exercise at all. However, in the studies, if you're looking at glucose, it's best if you can exercise after you eat. The studies also show that exercising before you eat helps reduce the glucose curve of the next meal. But if you have the choice and it's all the same to you, then after you eat is the most effective way to use your muscles to flatten the glucose curve.

And you can do any type of exercise. What I recommend to people is going for a 10-minute walk if they can. Or like, for example, you know, if you're in a building or something, going up and down a few flights of stairs a couple of times, anything you can do to activate those muscles so they start soaking up the glucose will be super, super beneficial. But again, you can do it any time, but after the meal is the most effective if you want optimum efficiency. Are there any other non-food related things that we should be adding in to positively impact our glucose spikes? I'm thinking like meditation or cold showers or taking time in a sauna.

Yes, all of the above. Anything that helps your body either relax or your nervous system really. relax so that your cortisol levels decrease because the more stress, the more glucose levels are deregidated. So any of those things, really, really helpful. Yes. Are there favorite ones among, like, are there ones that you've noticed with your own monitor are especially helpful? Honestly, going to bed early and sleeping. It's incredible. If you compare, let's say, you know, my regular morning cappuccino, depending how much I've slept night before, the impact on my glucose levels will be very different. If I'm poorly rested and I'm

tired and I have that same cappuccino, it will make twice as big of a spike as if I have an actor and rested. Yeah. And so there's a team of researchers in the UK out of King's College, London, that just came out with a really cool paper like two weeks ago showing exactly this. Yet another study showing that sleep deprivation has a really big impact on our glucose levels. Now, I know, you know, for a lot of people listening, you know, you have kids, you have obligations, you don't get enough sleep. So I would just say if that's your case, a little bit of exercise first thing in the morning, even five minutes of high intensity, like jumping jacks, whatever you can do, find a short YouTube video you like and do five minutes of exercise. This helps your body reset a little bit and handle glucose levels better. And then, again, as always, avoid having just sugar for breakfast because that's just going to be.

and deregulate your glucose levels even more, and it makes you even more tired throughout the day. All right. Amazing. What about coffee in the morning? Is that having, if we have it black, is that having any impact on our blood sugar? You know, that's a really interesting one because I think it seems to depend person to person. So some people, when they have a black coffee, it increases their stress levels and they get, you know, a bit anxious and jittery, and that can create a glucose spike. And other people, zero impact. So this seems to be very, very individual. And this is actually on my to-do list. I want to do a deep dive into coffee and its effects on glucose levels.

Isn't there a gene that impacts how you absorb caffeine? I haven't gotten genetically tested. I feel like we joke. Yeah. Do you think that has something to do with it? Probably. You know, definitely. So the caffeine metabolism gene is a real thing.

You know, I worked at 23 and me when I was working in California. So I'm very familiar with all this stuff. And it's really interesting. It just shows how quickly your body can dispose of. and get rid of the caffeine, break it down, and dispose of it. So if you have the slow metabolizer gene, caffeine stays in your body much longer. And I'm sure it has an impact on the spike it creates. I'm going to have to do a deep dive in.

I'll get back to you on that one. Can you leave us with one homework assignment that we can do if we just want to start impacting our glucose and really seeing results that will get us excited to move forward with this in our lives? Hmm. Yes. I'm actually going to say something that we haven't touched upon that I think is a really nice little hack. So next time that it's the middle of the day and you want to eat something sweet, maybe you see a really nice pastry at the coffee shop or you're like, oh, I want a Snickers bar. Set it aside and have it as dessert for your next meal instead of between your meals. And that way you can still enjoy it with a much smaller impact on your glucose levels. And then start following the hacks. Like start adding them, try them for a couple days, try them for three days. And you'll see the impact on your body and your mind are absolutely tremendous. And I hope they'll help you as much as they've helped me because it's really life-changing. Well, and just to put a little fine point on it,

the reason that getting that coffee shop pastry and putting it after is because all of that food order stuff that we talked about, right? So you'd be full of your veggies and your proteins and your fats and you would actually absorb less of the glucose from that coffee shop pastry. You got it. Yes, perfect. Amazing. Amazing. All right. Can you tell us where everybody can find you, see the graphs, find out more of your amazing work?

Yes. So honestly, you know, this whole journey from me started on Instagram and it's still where everything is. So my Instagram is glucose goddess, the glucose goddess, yes, glucose goddess. And then I just finished writing a book, actually. It's coming out on the 5th of April. and I'm super excited about it and you'll hear all about it on my Instagram. So if you're interested and you want to hear more about that, come and follow me. Welcome to the community.

And I've been lucky enough to sneak peek a little advanced copy of the book and it is phenomenal. You should just go and pre-order it right now. Also, pre-ordering is really, really helpful for authors. So it's a really wonderful way to support authors that you love. But this is one that you want on your list 100%. Oh, thank you, Liz. Yeah, the book is called Glucose Revolution. You can find it anywhere that books are sold.

Amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your amazing wisdom with us today, Jesse. Thank you for having me, Liz. It was so fun. Thank you for your very, very good questions. It was a pleasure. I hope you loved this episode with Jesse. Remember to tag us both in any hacks that you try.

I am at Liz Moody and she's at Glucose Goddess on Instagram. And one final quick thing before you go. I was talking to Zach the other day about how excited I was. about the podcast and how I really want to make this podcast huge. I love, love, love the community that we've built. And I am so grateful to the tens of thousands of you that choose to spend this time with me every week. But I'm just going to speak this into existence. I want this show to be like Tim Ferriss or Lewis Howes Big, where it gets literally millions of downloads every single week and I can get the absolute best guess for you. And we can do live events when it's safe and

just all the fun stuff. Honestly, it also bothers me just how many. many of these types of podcasts are hosted by men. Like the first two ones that came to my mind that were huge are hosted by men, which is just kind of annoying. Anyway, so I was brainstorming with Zach about how to make that happen. And he was like, well, did you ask your community? So I have two very specific requests for you. First, if you could write a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Yes, Spotify has reviews now too and you can totally do one on both platforms. I would so appreciate it. I have a goal of 2,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts, and we are so close. And if everyone listening literally wrote a super quick review right now, it literally takes 60 seconds. We would blow that number

out of the water. And second, if you could just share one link of an episode of the podcast that you think would resonate or the whole podcast if you can't think of a specific episode or don't want to take the time to with someone in your life that you think would love it. It would just make the biggest difference in the world. We have episodes on Fear of Flores. If you know anyone dealing with that, we have episodes on gut health, episodes on friendship. There's truly something for everyone. But again, like if you don't want to take the time to do that, I totally get that. You can just click the little share button and share the entire podcast and be like,

hey, I think you might like this podcast. Give it a listen. Give a little scroll to see if any episodes appeal to you. It would mean the world. And that's it. That is my whole request. I honestly debated even asking, but I also think that I can't sit here on a pod preaching about people going for what they want in life and not like go after the thing that I want more

than anything else in the world. I love my social media community and my books, but this podcast is where I put my heart and soul. I love it so much. And honestly, I think it's the thing that I'm best at. And I'm proudest of it because of that. So thank you for being here and for being part of this ride. And honestly, if you don't do any of that stuff, I love you wholeheartedly either way. And honestly, also, if you have any ideas for helping the pod reach new audience, I am all ears, DM me on Instagram or shoot me an email. I'm Liz at Liz Moody.

I would love to hear. All right, I love you guys so much, and I cannot wait to see you next week on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas. Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about.

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