The Rich Roll Podcast - Natasha Kufa On The 10% Rule: Small Changes, Big Results

Episode Date: March 17, 2013

After a respite were back in the pod saddle with the stunning & knowledgeable Natasha Kufa. In addition to raising 4 kids, Natasha is an internationally renown nutritionist, certified raw food specialist, chef & food delivery proprietor and über-fit trainer, whose clients include A-list Hollywood celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey, Josh Duhamel & his wife Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas, and more. If that's not enough, Natasha is also the author of The 10% Rule: Small Changes, Big Results and is the owner and founder of Evolution Body — a raw food delivery enterprise servicing the Los Angeles vicinity. Topics covered? Colonics obsession, the joys & challenges of raising an autistic child & the impact of diet on spectrum behavior, the benefits of juicing, becoming a raw food chef, Natasha's fitness & diet perpective, the importance of maintaining a healthy gut microbial ecology, the 10% Rule — Natasha's primer for tackling & ultimately overcoming barriers to healthy eating habits & fitness practices — and of course the question everyone wants to know: what it's like to train a big celebrity? TECHNICAL NOTE: As you will no doubt notice, there are some odd clicking sounds with Natasha's microphone. Despite running some audio EQ, it nonetheless subsists. Apologies in advance and as I keep saying (did I say I'm apologizing?), I'll do better next time. Or maybe it's time to get a real producer involved – which by the way, is in the works… Enjoy the podcast and want to support the show? Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and leave a comment on the iTunes page for the show. Thanks for listening and enjoy the program! Rich

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, Episode 22 with Natasha Kufa and Julie Byatt. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. My name is Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Rich Roll Podcast. My name is Rich Roll. If you are new to the show or new to me, I am an ultra endurance triathlete. I am a bestselling author of the book, Finding Ultra. I'm a plant-based nutrition advocate, a public speaker, a holistic lifestyle entrepreneur,

a recovering attorney, and a family guy and father of four kids. My goal with the show is to share with you conversations with some of the most inspiring and interesting minds in health, in fitness, and in wellness. So what does that mean? That means I have guests on that range from world-class athletes to doctors, trainers, nutritionists, entrepreneurs, and a whole plethora of forward thinkers and paradigm-busting personalities, all of which are here to talk to me in an effort to help empower you to achieve maximum health and fitness and an optimal balance of mind, body, and spirit. Why? So you can unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. That's my goal.

So please, if you're enjoying the show, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe on iTunes and throw a comment up. We've been getting a lot of great comments lately. I really appreciate the people who have taken a minute to share a thought or two on iTunes. It helps us out a lot. Also wanted to apologize, apologize for taking an extended break from the podcast. We hit a good stride there for a while. We were doing about two episodes a week, and I think one or two weeks in there, we did three episodes in a week. And then suddenly, bam, I think two weeks has gone by without an episode. But hey, life intervenes. You got to make a living.

I was traveling, lots of other stuff going on in my life. And for one reason or another, it just kept getting pushed. So thanks for hanging in there and thank you for being patient uh and thank you for all the messages and tweets etc uh nudging me and saying hey where's my fix i need my fix of the podcast where did you go i hope you didn't uh abandon it no i certainly did not abandon it uh i love doing this, and I'd love nothing more than to find a way to turn it into more of a professional vocation. If I could do so, I would do this like five days a week. Believe me, I'd love it.

But it's not exactly paying the bills right now. So, you know, you've got to do other things. But I'm happy to be back with you. And on that note, actually, in addition to thanking you for leaving the kind comments on iTunes and on my blog, we put up a donate button on my website last week. You can find it on the blog page or on the podcast page. I think I just threw like one tweet out and said, hey, we have this donate button up if you're feeling charitable or want to support the show, check it out. And we immediately got a whole ton of donations. I was

stunned and amazed. So I appreciate the support. So if you would like to support the show, if you feel like you've gotten something out of the programming, if you've learned a little bit, if it's broadened your horizons, and I think we've got something like 45 hours of podcast content up already, hey, you can throw us a few bucks. You can donate whatever you like as a one-time donation. Or you can do a monthly subscription where for a preset amount,

your credit card will get charged or PayPal account will get charged. A little bit of money each month. You don't have to think about it anymore. The idea is that we would like to keep this going and make it regular, make it professional, continue to provide great content and keep it free. It will always be free.

So, you know, the donation is at your behest. And of course we'd love it. Uh, if you're feeling charitable, but don't worry, the show will always be free on iTunes and we appreciate the support.

So thanks a lot. Today's guest is Natasha Kufa. Natasha is quite an amazing woman, very inspiring. She is a fitness trainer. She's sort of a trainer to the stars. She's trained people like Matthew McConaughey and Josh Duhamel and his wife Fergie and lots of cool people like that, but also normal people here in town. She's trained people like Matthew McConaughey and Josh Duhamel and his wife Fergie and lots of cool people like that, but also normal people here in town. She's an incredibly fit woman from Germany, full of all sorts of great knowledge. And she is also a mother of four kids, which is astounding. I mean, the woman is ripped and ready to go.

There are few people on the earth that look as fit as she does. And she's also a raw food chef, a certified raw food specialist, as a matter of fact. She's a founder of a company called Evolution Body, and she has a raw food delivery service, which is pretty neat in addition to the fitness training that she does with her clients. And she's also an author. She wrote a book called The 10% Rule, Small Changes, Big Results. So she's going to tell us what the 10% rule is and what that's all about. So really happy to have her on the show to share her wisdom with all of you. So, I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, send us a comment and let us know. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long

time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Thank you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So without further ado, Natasha. Should it matter? Should it matter? Should it matter whether we're broadcasting or not?

We're just going to sit down and have a nice conversation. That is the value right there. Other people want to listen and that's okay. I'm glad that we had this opportunity to have this intimate meeting, the three of us. I know. Never, ever would have. Intimate meeting in the woods. Hey, I know. Which we never ever would have. In the woods. Exactly. Intimate meeting in the woods.

Hey, Natasha. Hi, Rich. Thanks for coming by the podcast, The Garage. Thank you for having me. The Garage is amazing. I'm sad nobody can see the view. Well, it's quite messy, but the clutter sort of gives one the impression that there might be some creative endeavors

happening in here. Something is happening. Yeah. It might be massively disorganized and i don't know if it's anything good but in my view i see some bike wheels and a racing bike and then some tambourines and uh keyboard and a pa because i like to bring the tambourine with me when i go ride you know you know when i go down to venice you don't even know how mean ritual is on a tambourine with me when I go ride. You know. When I go down to Venice. You don't even know how mean Rich Roll is on a tambourine. Yeah, that's right. It's crazy good.

But anyway, it's been a little while since we've had a podcast episode. It has. What's wrong with you, Rich Roll? I know. I've been slacking. I've been getting a lot of tweets lately like, what's wrong with you? People get demanding. They get demanding with their free content.

But life intervenes. We got busy. And we hit a good stride there for a while. We were doing two a week minimum. I think there was one week where I did three in a week. And it almost buried me because it's a lot of work. It was it, man. You broke the balance.

You went over that optimum balance. I know. And, Natasha, you were nice enough to allow us to reschedule a couple times. Yeah, I first thought you don't like me. No. Just too many things happening and, you know,

I want to have, when we do the podcast, I don't want to be distracted with other stuff that's on my mind. That makes sense. You know. So, I was talking,

actually, I was on a run, on a trail run with my friend, Usher Gunsberg. Usher Gunsberg, who we just on a run, on a trail run with my friend Osher Gunsberg. Osher Gunsberg, who we just had lunch with, by the way. Nice. He met us down in Venice. We were just at Cafe Gratitude.

At Cafe Gratitude. I usually see him sometimes when I run there because I was there this morning. The friendliest man on earth. The friendliest man on earth. Hi, Andrew. I know. He's a font of positive energy. But anyway, we were running and he's like, he's like, I'm loving the podcast, mate. You got to have Natasha on. He told me all about you.

And she's amazing. She's incredible. You got to have her on. She'd be a great guest. So, here we are. Well, thank you, Asher. Yeah. I'm going to have Asher on the show, maybe. Next, absolutely. So, you know, he gave me high praise because he's a television host by profession. He was host of Australia's version of American Idol. And then he did a show here, one of those dance shows, like Like You Can Dance or something like that. It was Paul Abdul.

With Paul Abdul, yeah, yeah. And he's a host. He's like a Ryan Seacrest kind of guy. Better. Way better. Yeah, yeah, way better, of course. Smarter and taller. And of course, vegan plant-based too.

So extra bonus points for him. Absolutely. And he's running the LA Marathon tomorrow. So it's Saturday afternoon right now. So we're sending him good vibes. Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, so I, I, I guess as the story goes, when he got that gig with that dance show with Paula Abdul, CBS said, you need to get in better shape or you need to get whipped into shape and you need to, you need to get down with Natasha. So what happened there? Tell me about that a little bit.

I've known Andrew when he lived in Australia. And then he would once in a while contact me when he was visiting here. And I got to work with him on and off. And then at some point he contacted me and said, I'm moving. Are you ready for me? You need to get me in great shape. So then he came, and I started making his meals. I cooked for him, and I also trained him.

And it was a great adventure. So you could take responsibility for him being fabulously handsome. A little bit, maybe. Yeah. So I'll do a little introductory segment after this to explain to everybody who you are so we don't have to go through all of that now. But I'm interested in your background and your story and how you came to be a trainer and to have the sort of fitness and nutrition perspective that you have. I'm from Germany, so that's where I started. I used to run track in school,

and unfortunately the sports program in our schools or in Germany, they're not like in the U.S. There's no scouts, and you can't really develop that grade. But I was really, really into it. But I knew I'm not going to be a professional runner, and I'm not going to do that for a living, even though I enjoyed it so much. Then I decided that I am going to be a physical therapist. I did that, and I worked for the soccer team, the local, the national soccer

team in Hamburg. And from there, I pretty much did some of the training, some of the recovery, some of the rehabilitation. But off-season, they tend to gain weight when um the training wasn't eight hours six hours a day and um all the beer too much beer yeah and sausages and stuff they weren't they weren't vegan no no not at all i don't i don't think anybody on the team was vegan but i don't think anybody in germany is vegan there's a few i think i know a few people. But I started, you know, during sessions talking to them about nutrients and food and, you know, fueling right and fueling right the entire year. And it's very easy to burn that much when you are working out that many hours. But most of us don't work out six hours and have all day exercise routines. So for most of them, it was really difficult to,

so it's one thing to know what to eat and then another thing to buy it and make it. And it becomes time consuming or it's a new thing and you kind of have to get used to it. And I think that was basically one of the things for um andrew it it wasn't so much that he didn't know it's one you have some knowledge and then you need to learn the portions and what to make what goes together and things like that so i started making the food and then i wasn't a chef at that time so and i basically was like okay when i'm if i'm doing this i should maybe become a chef so i went to chef school i was really um uh conventional you know gourmet chef restaurant kind of type of thing right um which you i guess politically this is the way to go

but after i was done i basically put my touch into it so it's not realistic for the person who lives at home and wants to eat healthy to have cream-based meals and you know very Spending hours creating sauces. Exactly. So I advertise a lot, even for the non-vegan clients, that it'd be more beneficial for them to eat clean five days a week, do what they want on the weekends. And if they have to eat animal products, to eat it once a day, not three times sometimes. A lot of people have eggs and bacon and things like that for breakfast, and then chicken for salad and stuff like that for lunch,

and then another meat product or animal product for dinner. So a lot of people liked it and had or experienced a good change in their body, in their well-being, in a lot of ways. And so I kept that. I started basically doing that for a lot of people and had a lot of private clients and would just do that regularly. And then I moved here. Yeah, so this was in hamburg though right and

so from coming right out of the gate were you a vegan or plant-based or so what was your nutrition perspective at that time um i um personally never cared so much for meat or it wasn't for me. A meal wasn't, it has to be vegetables and potatoes and meat. I just, I just needed to get some fuel. Like I didn't care so much about how it looked. It wasn't so important to me. So I was not a huge meat eater or I wouldn't have eggs all the time for breakfast. And it changed after my twins were born, pretty much. That's when, like about eight years ago. And that was that when you were still

in Germany or that was after you moved here? I moved here. So when you're working with these athletes in Hamburg, you're trying to give them healthy meals and options, but you're sort of veering away from the traditional meat and potatoes and all of that and dairy and stuff because um most of the time it's um easier for people to keep the structure during the week when they're busy and then on the weekend it's less structure and then they can go to the things that they like to do right sometimes it would be so radical to do a complete change. Right, to just adjust slowly over time. Yeah.

And what kind of results were you seeing with the people you were working with? Definitely better muscle quality. What do you mean by muscle quality? I, myself, even made the experience by eating too much animal products, you kind of look spongy. And if you are eating very plant-based, and I have to say, I'm not a big fan of tofu at all. I rather eat the soybean than the tofu. We can get into that. We'll get into that. So the less processed the better right and um so uh the the the look and the shape of the muscle to me seem to be

less spongy or the fat under the skin which you you know create when you have a lot of animal products right so that's i mean that's very different that seems very different to sort of the standard you know awareness of a lot of people that they say you should eat have to say Mike Tyson. Right. And there's a lot of athletes. Carl Lewis, there's a lot of athletes that are vegan or vegetarian and have maybe not over a long period of time, but they started doing it and they say they are different. Their health and their just overall well-being,

they feel better, they have more energy. Because fact is, eating too much meat just makes you tired. You produce so much tryptophan and you just get tired. Your body works so hard to digest it. Right. I mean, there's a lot that comes along for the ride when you eat the meat. In addition to the protein source, you have the saturated fat, you have all these other things going on. And the result generally is inflammatory. Yeah. It also creates an environment that's more rife for getting sick or run down or feeling tired and definitely that sort of post-meal lethargy because it requires so much energy to digest. So the net overall gain is diminished somewhat because you have to exert so much energy to reap the benefits of what that food product avails itself to you. Correct.

And also, I had worked with clients that would do a colonic almost monthly due to that. Monthly? Monthly. Like, literally doing that. And how do you feel about that? It's crazy. And I think if you have to do it once a year, it should be plenty. Yeah, people get addicted to colonics. And I can't even tell you why.

Well, you can't. If you're cleaning yourself out too much, then you're getting rid of all that microbial activity in your gut that you need to be healthy and digest your food. Yeah, absolutely. So that particular person had issues going regularly to the bathroom because it was damaged so much that unless she would do colonics, she wouldn't be clean.

So you do the colonics, and then you eat maybe healthy for a few days, and then you go back to the whole salad and meat and salad or vegetable and some sort of chicken or meat or anything like that and you do it so much and then you have the urge to do another colonic and it's just like this cycle and she was doing it for years so there is always this thing about doing cleanses and i think they're great but once you start doing cleanses um whether it's a juice cleanse or some kind of liquid cleanse and colonics, it creates such a disbalance that your body is not even able to do the things that it needs to do on its own anymore. So you have to constantly help with stuff.

Right. Even if they are herbs, it doesn't make it better just because it's some kind of herb that you're taking to clean out. doesn't make it better just because it's a some kind of herb that you're taking to clean out because if you are eating regularly very clean food and i say 85 then you shouldn't be needing it exactly yeah i mean my whole journey started with a juice cleanse and you know but since then i think i've only done one other one yeah i mean it for for us, it's more about the lifestyle. It's about actually living the lifestyle and eating that way on a consistent basis. And, you know, of course, we're not, you know, we're human. And, you know, occasionally something slips in that, you know, is not the highest quality.

But overall, it's not because we're living that way on a daily basis. There's not really the need to be doing the cleanse. And I think that the club, the obsession on the cleanse. And I mean, I talk to people every day who are trying to lose weight or get themselves balanced. And the cleanse is only, it's just one part of the yo-yo of the, you know, the seesaw, right? So it goes up and down. Exactly. It's one part on that cycle. So people eat like crap. They get disgusted with themselves. Then they do a cleanse. They feel great. They start off on a sort of a new path for a little bit and then it devolves into old habits and then they're back on the cleanse again. And it should be a palate cleanser or a tabla rasa or wiping the slate clean to start fresh and then adopt a lifestyle that you can sustain and maintain over time. Absolutely.

I experience that all the time for New Year's, for a project. It always is the starting over on doing things. Eating clean, going back to old habits, doing a cleanse, starting over, and then it goes back again to the same thing and because we're human it's not like a judgment you know it's like we're human beings we have cravings we we crave foods that aren't good for us you know i mean it's a natural tendency yeah and and um that's why i think it'd be important if you do five days to stick to five days and you don't go it's either this way or that way if i don't do all the time uh seven days a week then it you know then it doesn't work anyway so i might as

well just eat whatever i want you do five days you stick to a routine and it could be as boring as every time this every breakfast is the same because at the end of the day we're fueling with food you know and if you driving a ferrari you're not going to put very cheap gasoline into it because it's going to ruin the engine so you're putting very good fuel into your car so it runs better so it should be the same thing with your body. And then on the weekends, you can have your cravings and be a little bit looser. But the exercise and the diet during the week is like brushing your teeth and taking a shower, literally. The problem that I have, and it's just my own personal problem, is that I'm an addict. I'm a recovering alcoholic.

And so I can be incredibly obsessive about whatever, you know, like I could be planning for that weekend binge. I mean, yeah, see, the thing is like, I can't do that. Like, I know that the sort of cheat day thing or the, you know, do whatever you want one or two days a week is very popular and it works a lot for, it works really well for a lot of people. Like Tim Ferriss has a slow carb dietb diet. And one day a week, you eat whatever you want. You go to In-N-Out Burger or you go to Taco Bell and have 50 tacos. And you go to Cheesecake Factory. And it doesn't matter because you're eating so much that day, your body can't even take it in anyway.

And you'll pass it through. The problem with that for me, and again, this is just me, is I'll just obsess all week about that day. And I won't be able to be present in whatever I'm doing because I'll just be sitting there thinking about, three more days I can go to In-N-Out Burger. And so I had to completely let go of the idea of doing a cheat day. And that meant a period of time that was very difficult to kind of weather the cravings that come with that.

But ultimately, once you break that craving cycle, then you're free. You're no longer a prisoner of those cravings. And if you can break that cycle, then you can go on a new path and not sit around going in two more days, I can go to In-N-Out Burger. And that's amazing. That's... But I had to, I mean, I didn't have a choice. Like, listen, if I could eat whatever I wanted to, you know, two days a week, I would do that. But that wouldn't work because two days would become three and then three days would become four. And then I'd be doing a cleanse and a colonic every month.

You know, and that's a good example, actually. Because, and that calls, I think, addictive personality. Yeah. Which is good because then you're addicted to a lot of really good things that you can do um which some of us can and i have read a little bit about you and i think it's mind-blowing what you have done and um that's something if i guess if you didn't have that kind of personality you're not able to do right and that's my opinion but um for and i guess if you have that kind of um uh weakness that if you do that one or two

cheat days and it becomes three it becomes four and that's totally possible i remember an interview with uh francisca fernandes she's. She was a German swimmer from East Germany. And she would never skip. She won the Olympics. She was amazing. Very young girl. And she was in an interview. And then she was asked, why are you not ever skipping a workout?

Because that was her thing. She would never skip a workout. Never, ever, ever. Not even off-season. She said, because I'm a lazy person. If I skip a workout, it's going to be, oh, this feels really good. Maybe tomorrow I can skip another workout. It just gets like that.

Yeah, and hey, nothing bad happened when I skipped this workout. I relate to that completely. That's my kind of mindset. Yeah, so definitely it's something that you cannot generalize um and it works for some people it doesn't work for uh for um some but i think for the general population it's better than going eating all kinds of things of course yeah absolutely and you know people every day say you know i'm interested in this plant-based diet thing like how can i get started do i have to do it like you because i had to go whole hog right out of the gate and i say no you know start small

start with you know a couple things focus on the new things that you can eat don't obsess about the things you're suddenly not eating and you know your time with it, and your body will adapt and change. You'll see how you like it. You'll be more interested the better you feel. And that is what works for most people. So, of course. My version of that would be if we did what Natasha was suggesting and you ate five days really well,

then in my experience, it would start to shift your microbial environment and you would stop craving those things that you need to eat on the weekend. So I had a friend over who is really struggling with weight, and she said, what should I do? And my intuition was just to tell her to get a couple Vitamix, you know, with a lot of plants in her body and just start there and just please focus on that because I really feel that when your body starts getting what it needs,

it starts to drop those habits. So you don't have to drop the habits. Correct. The habits drop you. Correct. That's why I'm a big fan of the 10 rule yeah and i want to talk about that so this is the title well before we get into the book i just want to say one more thing yeah that is the first thing that i always say to anybody i

go if you can change one thing or just do one thing if you had a green smoothie in the morning every day and that's the only thing that you change about your diet, that is a huge step. And I think that that's a great first step. And that will start to create a shift in people because there is absolutely nothing in the world that will make you feel immediately better than having like a kale and spinach, like Vitamix or juice in the morning. You can feel, you can actually feel your body coming alive when you do it. And you go, wow, that's amazing. I should maybe do more of this. And that will take that person on a journey.

So anyway, the book, The 10% Rule. So tell me about the book. What is the book about? I started this book. I didn't even want to, really, because I was asked so many times, do a video, do this, do that. Why don't you write a book? Why don't you come up with this?

And I think everything has been already out there. I don't really think any DVD, fitness DVD or anything like that or any new hype, anything. I don't think there's anything new. It's all been said. Yeah, and I didn't want to do anything that it was already been has been already out there and it's just you know repackaging it basically i was like i don't want to do that so um i had talked to a lot of different people

and um it was the experience with my clients their their journey, what they have been through, and how someone who was 400 pounds had lost so much weight and did a race, and people who have never been runners before did a marathon, and the mom that would never believe that she could do certain things and is now so fit back to work, and does things that she would never think she would have done. So I thought a lot of times i would do interviews and you know i was asked like what is that one thing you like what is this person's secret who what do you do to get these legs what do you do to get these apps i can't really i can't really answer that because um somebody has great

genetics and has great abs and then the other person has great legs or great calves. Rich has great calves. Yeah, but that's because of my mom. It's not because he's Ultraman. No, I can't. Actually, the more I train, the smaller

they get. When I'm not training, they get all big and beefy. You know what's hilarious was Sly Stallone met Rich once and just followed him all around asking him about his calf workout. smaller they get when i'm not trying to get all big and beefy it was hilarious was uh sliced alone met rich once and just followed him all around asking him about his calf workout i was wearing yeah i was wearing shorts that day how, you don't have to, um, shift your entire life. You either do a hundred percent or you're nothing. So either I change everything or I don't, there's not none, none of that. So, um, a lot of times I would start with clients that would, they would come to me. I want to change my diet. I want to do this. I

want to do that. I would work with, um, clients had have an eating disorder that that would come to me, I want to change my diet. I want to do this. I want to do that. I would work with clients that have an eating disorder that they would come right out of rehab to me. And I'm also a dietician. So for me to help them to get back on track, most of them always want everything at the same time, workout, training, diet plan, cleaning out everything and starting over again, it doesn't work. It'll be a short-term goal. And then long-term, it'll be exhausting. It would be like a marathon. You don't run a marathon within two, three weeks.

You have to properly train for it. And so I started saying, like you said, with with the juice you just change one thing you know and if it's the workout you start doing the workouts you start showing up and as that go we start working on the diet if you're going to work on everything at the same time it's going to become so overwhelming it's like the planning and it's and buying food as family. We have kids. We have to manage everything. And it doesn't work for most of them.

And then they just don't show up anymore. They just stop. It becomes too overwhelming and they give up. Yeah. And so I put some of my knowledge and some of the experience I had with my clients. And nothing in the book is really um it's no secret in there there's no secret to losing weight or no secret uh oh come on there's no magic pill no no I think the only the only thing that I always advertise for people is when when they come to me drink apple cider vinegar very good for you oh I love apple cider vinegar oh how do you know that like

what does it do like is, is it something new? It's like, no, my grandmother did it. Her grandmother did it. Absolutely. Everybody used to do it one day, and now nobody does it anymore. I talk about that in my book, too, and I get tweets all the time. I'm having apple cider vinegar. I never heard of such a thing.

Almost all of our salad dressings in our book use apple cider vinegar. That's great. Right? Yeah. And I think it's something that has no side effects, and you can always take it. It will never do something bad to you. But besides the apple cider vinegar,

I start talking about how to slowly adjust your diet, how to bump up your workouts or change your lifestyle. And the 10% rule applies to everyone. It applies to the person who has never moved anything has never exercised or as it applies to the person who has always been exercising and just wants to change a little bit or become better so um it's a tool not a secret it's a tool for people like motivation uh that they can you know they read and if there's any um interesting thing that they can pick up and use in their lifestyle that's great right so the 10 refers to changing 10 of what you do right 10 of the time i like that yeah that's good nothing

big nothing too crazy but then when you make that 10 shift at this point then over a long time it makes an incremental shift because um even rich could do 10 change well everybody can everybody life is a journey of growth and improvement right you're either moving you're either growing or you're regressing so there's no end point to that there's no destination no you know unless somebody becomes fully actualized and enlightened and just you know transcends the mortal coils which that's julie's plan you know you every i don't care who you are you you have you know most people you know everybody can be always improving there's always an extra 10 percent michael jordan or you know it's a really great kobe bryan or whoever you know whoever it is yeah just it's

it applies to everyone and it could be you know 10 percent in diet 10 percent in just you know how do you do things and exercise it just put like all like day-to-day stuff so that's what the book is about. Right, it's great. It's interesting what you said about being reluctant to write a book at first and having this pressure to kind of come up with something new and revolutionary

when it seems that it's all been said because so much of it is just elementary. And it's not that people don't, they kind of know what they need to do. They just want a really tight instructional manual and then they want to be inspired, you know, and that comes in many forms. And that's why there's a million of these, you know, books come out every year with this diet and that diet and this new exercise routine. And some of them, you know, capture the fascination of the public and some don't but it is weird because it's almost like snake oil because there's so many of these

books and right now i'm in a similar position like you know i'm starting to think about a next book and it's like well what are you going to say and i'm facing the same thing i'm like well i could write a book about plant-based nutrition but there's already a whole bunch of those out there. I'm not going to say anything that isn't in those books or, you know, are you going to try to reinvent the wheel or what is it that you, you know, have that's personal to you, that's unique to you, that's authentic to you that you can share. And it sounds like you've found that. I mean, it's sort of the stories of the people that you've helped and what's unique in your approach to delivering this information and this message that isn't anything brand new i read a lot about art here but about the new way to shred or five-minute app.

Yeah, exactly. Things like that. And I always wonder, it's packaged so, I guess, nicely that people really believe it. And then they think if they do 200 app crunches that they're going to have a six-pack. And it's like the information behind it is there's no such thing. There is no easy way of doing anything, not just exercise. Nothing is easy. I mean, if you want to be an engineer, you have to go to school,

you have to study, and it goes on and on and on and on. It's not easy. It's not like you can go and just learn it from the person who is an engineer. There's always a process to things. And that's the way it is with either reinventing yourself or changing your lifestyle or anything you do. It's climbing from the bottom and getting to the top at some point. Yeah, it's hard work no matter what. You've got to want it.

It's not for people that need it. It's for people that want it yeah and you know you can't if you're trying to find a shortcut or a way to short circuit something you know that's sort of like borrowed time and borrowed energy and that's why you see all this yo-yoing and the ups and downs and and uh you know in turn as opposed to true lifestyle change where all these things that you're kind of seeking as a destination become a byproduct of just changing your life. But that's a harder message to sell in a book, right?

Yeah, nobody wants to hear that. It's always, I get so many phone calls from different magazines, especially at the beginning of the year. So what's new? The 10 tips, the five things. What's of the year. So what's the, what's the 10 tips, the five things. Yeah. What's new? Nothing. Right. Nothing. I know there's nothing, there's really nothing. There's nothing to it.

It's true. Um, and yet at the same time, you know, don't be disillusioned because change is possible. It's, it's within all of us. We all have the power to change at any given moment. You don't have to have the earth fall on top of you. It doesn't have to be New Year's Day. You know, at any given moment, you can make that decision and set into motion a course of action that will change your life completely. And, you know, the 10% rule or whatever it is that inspires you, you know, that information is available to you. I mean, everybody needs the inspiration and they need the roadmap. It's just, there's not going to be, you know, the roadmap doesn't have to change every year and it shouldn't and it doesn't. Yeah. I don't know. I think the power comes in from people just sharing authentically from a very personal perspective. And I think for all of us, we think, maybe we feel in the beginning like,

well, that's just me personally. But it's from that point that you can share something that's very powerful and authentic. So I think what you guys are speaking about is just really writing about something that's really true to your heart or true to your path and not coming up with a gimmick or something, but just really, really speaking the truth.

And sometimes that's scary and it makes you vulnerable and you have to say things that, you know, maybe aren't, you know, all glossed over. But in the end, the impact is, you know, great. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to both of your next books. Yeah. I'd like to get a project with very overweight people. Really?

Yeah. Let's talk about that. There's no shortage of those people. I know. Exactly. I know, but when we were speaking of inspiration, a lot of times I really get inspired by my clients. And I started working with a guy. I'm still

working with him. His journey is not over yet. Amazing just experience so far. And he started, I think he's 41 or 42. He started off with almost 400 pounds. And his doctor was saying don't run don't know this know that lie down yeah lie down and take some pills yeah take it easy and I when I started working with him it was quite a challenge because weighing that much for so many years has obviously damaged some cartilage and joints and things like that. And so we had to take it very easy. Also on his heart, he ran his first race two weeks ago. Wow. He has lost 45 pounds so far.

Wow. And it's a slow process, 45 pounds. It's not like the biggest loser type of 45 pounds. So this is a lasting 45. Yes. He hasn't gained any weight. He's losing. Sometimes it's a little bit slower than others,

and then we bump things up a little bit. He has, for his standards, changed so much and feels so much better. And he's so motivated. And he'll be running a half marathon in April. And it's just so, I'm so thrilled to just see that and see that kind of change. And about two years ago, I worked with a family. It was like a volunteer work. It was mom and dad and two kids, and dad was so overweight,

he couldn't even be weighed. He weighed that much at the doctor's. And I couldn't really just work with him alone i start going into their house once a week and then see him individually twice and then i would teach mom how to cook what to use like i said what is it that you guys usually eat show me and then you swap things out before you make too big of a change. So you start swapping things out, use this instead of that. And so it was a process over six months. He had lost a lot of weight, and they continued to still learn.

What would be some of the examples that you would swap out? Lard. Lard. And exchange it with what? With, like, coconut oil or olive oil, and just not to, you know know fry your vegetables with lard and um uh they have never had brussels sprouts before so you know introduce new things um and then i usually would look at brussels oil that they're not good they're gross and they're bitter so then you show them how to cook them, stir-fry them with onions and with garlic.

Apple cider vinegar. Yeah, well, apple cider vinegar. That might be a little too radical for an early. It was. I remember his look. He just looked and was like, are you serious? Yeah. But it was how to prepare, let's say the meat um it would be like really a lot of

fat on it and then um which kind of meat to buy that it hasn't has not that much fat on it and how to cut it off and then how to prepare meals that are not deep fried like that was one of the problems everything is like in so much oil and is this like a cultural thing or are you? I think so. It's a cultural thing. But problem is, and this family was Hispanic. Problem is that Hispanics or Mexicans, they have great genes in their legs. They have all great legs.

They have all great legs and where they gain weight is usually in the midsection. If they would live in Mexico back before all the bad foods came. Right, all the processed foods. And things that they're not used to. Everything they would eat would be just corn and beans and things like that. Like very natural foods. And now it's soda in a baby bottle kind of thing. So it starts at a very, very young age.

And their bodies, they're not made for this. So it's a huge shocker. So when they gain weight, it just goes where it's really dangerous, in the midsection, and it stays there. And some of them develop this apron, which is, you know, when the stomach is so big that it just goes on your legs. And it's very difficult to get rid of that. And it's, I mean, even to this day, even here in America,

they use lard to cook, beans everything everything with it and um i understand like it's the you know it's when you cook with bacon a lot of people say well you can't mimic the smell and it's let's say you go to a restaurant you have bacon smell whatever wrapped steak but that's something you eat in a restaurant, not constantly at your home. So it's like chocolate would be a treat. So it has to be treated that way. If your diet is based just on those kind of things and you cook daily meals with it, it'll start showing and you start feeding your kids with that and they're gonna have the same issue as they grow up so it is a cultural thing but i do think that um just people that

live here even in europe it has been fast food has become so accessible and it's so cheap and easy, and everybody does it. But I don't think people are that well-educated about it, especially when you really think about, let's say, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, even more. In Germany, meat would be Sundays. Sundays, people would have meat. So not as a daily part of the diet?

No. Really? Is that true? That's really, I'm surprised by that. I would not have expected that. Like second, after the Second World War, it was, it's expensive. It's very expensive to buy meat.

And it should be expensive if you think about it. But now, raising animals has become so cheap and they it's such a mass production that when you when you are able to buy a burger for 99 cents you need to think about it what why can i buy it for 99 cents why it's like why is it so cheap well the amazing thing is that i think somebody did a study recently i talk about this all the time but um i think one there was one or two fast food restaurants where some of the entrees are actually cheaper now than they were like 20 years ago and uh and it's already so unbelievably cheap so it becomes a socio-economic issue you know so if

you're dealing with an underprivileged family that is having health problems and people are overweight and you're coming in and you're saying, well, you know, you can't go to Taco Bell anymore where you can get 200 tacos for $10. You got to go to Whole Foods and buy kale. It's like, it's not going to work. You know? I mean, it's, it's, it's really, you know, when, when, when McDonald's is the most affordable food option, we have a big problem that is difficult to tackle because the dollars. The dollars don't add up to eat healthy. And so how do you deal with that with somebody who's dealing with a budget? Well, that family that I worked with, they had that problem.

They were dealing, it was a money issue um but there is but you can buy a you can buy a 50 pound bag of beans at the exactly mexican market for like a couple bucks i mean it's you know it's it is possible but i also think again it's the educational part of it um to or to just show this is possible if you buy this and this and this in bulk even smart and final there's people that there's places that you can buy vegetable cheap it might not be organic and it might not be from the farmer's market and local but it is better than eating fast food and if like we said if kale becomes more expensive than a burger that's the issue that's a huge issue and it is when you go to whole foods kale costs like something and the burger is $2.99 yeah so it's it's that's it's weird um and i think if you think about it

or for people to think about it it starts making sense but you know you know, I think when I moved here, literally every corner you drive, there's a fast food place. Yeah. Everywhere. They're back to back, back to back, back. And especially in certain areas where people don't have that much money. They're everywhere. Right.

And so what do Germans think of Americans when they look at the way the Americans eat? What would they say if there were no Americans around here? as well because um fast food there like when i before i moved 10 years ago when you would drive in the street where i lived it was in like i have no clue on how many miles distant there was like one burger king and maybe half an hour drive the other direction was one kentucky fried chicken and everyone all over hamburg would have to drive so far to get to that place now it's getting like here right they opening up everywhere and so it's same thing in asia yeah so they're getting there there's a lot more um overweight people now right right um and i think it's interesting to look at, you know, European culture as a whole, and you see people eating a lot of sort of fatty foods and calorie

dense foods. And yet, you know, at least before the proliferation of fast food restaurants in Europe, you don't see obese people. Like even in Germany, which would be considered a heavy meat eating culture people look relatively fit when compared to americans i don't i think here people don't move as much um in germany a lot of people still walk everywhere there's a public yeah public transportation there's not that much driving right um everybody who wants to go into the city like um what we call here downtown at our downtown is not like downtown here but it's you know there's shopping and um you know clothes and all kinds of boutiques are that a lot of people go there for shopping and um nobody drives there because it's a pain to park now everybody takes the bus you walk all over the place you walk walk everywhere everybody walks to school my mom still walks my

children to school here right and it's just interesting and ironic because you know we're so fitness obsessed and it's just all about fitness and weight loss constantly 24 hours a day here and yet that doesn't match up with the way most people live their lives here in America. So, you know, it's just bizarre. I mean, the weight loss industry is so gigantic, and it's all about, you know, the abs and this and that, five-minute abs, like you said. And, you know, we're all fat. The other issue is the drive drive-thrus and not only

for food uh it's starbucks it's um the bank has a drive-thru yeah yeah yeah so you don't know i saw a pharmacy the other day they have a drive-thru so you don't have to get out the car at all to get drugs the other day osher said that he used to have the window diet. I go, what's that? And he's like, if I could roll down my window and they would hand it to me, I would eat it. And I go, I'm stealing that line. I'm taking that.

But you know, this is actually kind of surprising. I mean, surprising for me to hear. And again, because I'm so aware of Germany's connection to real health and like all of the natural medicine. And one of my dearest friends is an osteopath and she's doing incredible work with children there, all this cranial sacral, you know, energy work. And so there is a big, there's a very large part of Germany that, you know, has that natural healing awareness, like from the black forest.

And so they're not just sitting around eating sausages all day. No. And I, and I find too that, you know, I have, I have had the pleasure of having a lot of close German friends and I've been to the country,

you know, a few times, but it seems like those moms were already, already using natural remedies right off the bat before they were calling the doctor before they were going to the drug. And so, and they have a very strong constitution and awareness and competence about that. But I'd say that's still like that.

I think the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is way ahead of Europe, even. Not just Germany. And you say ahead, what do you mean by that? A head, oh, well, not in a good way. Not like they are doing better things. But I think medication is great. I think it's good that it's available, but it should be available for things that are not life-threatening. For example, I had a conversation once with a professor about my kids,

and it was about the vaccine chickenpox. And I said, I'm not going to do that. And then he said, well, I was first a doctor, and then the doctor said, why not? And I said, because in my going to do that. And then he said, well, I was first a doctor. And then the doctor said, why not? And I said, because in my country it's not even allowed. We have the chickenpox and we have to just suck it up and just get sick and then have to recover from it. So for some reason, I think she thought that I'm from some different country. so she brought in the professor to educate me a little bit and that was very funny and so he started like um asking me what is it a religious um thing that why I don't want to vaccine the kids and I said no it actually has

nothing to do with religion when I I grew up, I had everything. I had to get sick with everything. And so I had to go through that. And here, with everything you guys have a vaccine for, and nobody even knows in a few years from now what these vaccines are going to do. So, and vaccines are, it's, you know, it's okay if people want to do it, but it's also okay if people don't want to do it. So I said to him, explain to me, if you give me one reason, one good reason why I should do chickenpox vaccine for the kids, I might consider.

I might consider. So his reason was, or the only thing he could come up with, is we live in America, and mom and dad have to work. If the child is sick, then somebody has to stay home. It becomes an economical issue. And I just looked at him. I was like, what? I was like, that's what parents have to do. That's when you decide to have children.

Somebody has to stay home and take care of them. That's how parents have to do. That's when you decide to have children. Somebody has to stay home and take care of them. That's how it is. Unless, I mean, if you don't want to do that, then you don't have any kids. But I can't, there's not a shot for everything. And when you have kids, you take it in, it's a given. They're going to be sick. They're going to have everything, and you cannot.

They're going to go through their normal… Well, I think that nobody would sort of discount the importance of certain vaccines and eradicating polio and all of that. So nobody is making the statement that there's something patently wrong with vaccines as a whole. And we had a little chat about vaccines on the podcast, podcast a couple, I don't know, a couple months ago or whatever. And it created quite the, quite the stir, you know, it's a very, it's an extremely controversial subject and people have very, very strong feelings about it. And, you know, vaccines play, play a very important role in sort of controlling and preventing and eradicating,

you know, some death, you know, deathly diseases. But I also think that there is room for rationality and a discussion about just how many vaccines, you know, are we going to get? And for things like chickenpox, I mean, I had chickenpox when I was a kid. I mean, you know, I understand that it can be severe if you get chickenpox later in life. But, you know, when I was a kid, every kid got chickenpox. And that's different from smallpox and that's different from polio and all of that. there probably isn't enough debate or discussion about the number of vaccines that a baby is expected to have all in a very short period of time when they're, when they're newborns, you know, and I think that there's room to discuss spacing those out or is every single one of those vaccines absolutely critical to, you know, that person's life and society as a whole.

I totally agree. I did vaccine one of my kids with the baby. All three of them, the other three, the older three, they have never had vaccines. The baby got very sick, and she was about six weeks old. And she had very high fever. Having other small children in the house exposed her to getting everything they bring home from their friends. So the baby got really sick, and I had to go with her to the hospital.

And her risk of meningitis was really high. So I decided I had a very great conversation with this Indian doctor who was there. She was head of pediatrician, the head of pediatrics. And she would come in and we would have 45-minute discussions. It was a lot of fun to talk to her. She had so much knowledge, but she was also really open to listen to my concerns and print out lists of vaccines and what kind of preservatives they would use, which ones have preservatives and which ones don't.

And all the questions that I had, she did answer. And I did space them out. I went only with the ones that were highly crucial for her. And it is a very personal decision to make. And I think most of us never go blindly into making decisions for our kids, especially, but I would never be ignorant when there is an issue that would maybe cause any of the kids have major health problems, then you have to make the decision that's right at the time.

And the counterpoint would be, yes, it's a very personal decision, but it's also a social decision for everybody else. Because if you're not going to get this vaccine for this life-threatening illness, then you're putting everyone else at risk. Exactly. I agree. So anyway, but I think getting back to the original question, which was about pharmaceutical companies as a whole and kind of how we've become a very drug-addled society in a lot of ways, certainly, you know, many pharmaceuticals are incredibly important in

treating disease. And, you know, I'm, you know, I'm the last person to say that, that I'm not going to say, oh, big pharma is absolutely 100% evil, but I think that we have lost sight of preventive, preventative medicine completely. And when somebody goes to the doctor and says, you know, whether it's anything from, you know, my knee hurts to, you know, I can't get an erection or I'm feeling depressed, the first thing that happens is drugs are prescribed. And many of those drugs are very effective at treating that condition, but they're not treating the condition, they're treating the symptom. Nothing is getting at the underlying cause of what is making that person depressed or why that person's knee, you know, continues to hurt or, you know, whatever the case may be.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it's just, you know, exercising your own personal will and judgment and your awareness of your children. And this is, I... But it's hard. You go to the doctor, the doctor's the expert. He's telling you, this is what you need to do, you know? So for people you know they they feel they don't feel empowered to challenge their doctor right and there's an opportunity to make a shift in that awareness and understand that you do have uh you know your own will and your own choice and your own responsibility and that's why i advocate and really stand by parents mothers knowing their kids and knowing in the moment what's best

so that it's just not the idea that the doctor is somehow above you. So you use everything available to you and make the best decision that you can at the time. And I also have to say it's something that you learn by experience, and sometimes people don't. And I had to go through so many different stages with the kids so now i don't freak out as soon as something is i ask the questions i constantly ask the questions so much until i get the right answer that it's comfortable for me to make

whichever decision i have to make at that time but um i would definitely say i, if it's your first child or your fifth, always ask questions. At the end of the day, it's just more enlightening for you to, or more comfortable for you to make whatever decision you have to make. Yeah, absolutely. So getting back to, we were talking about, she was talking about that you would like to do some project with really overweight clients. So what would be your dream project? What are you envisioning?

My dream project would be maybe three or four families that I would go visit. And over a course of a year, see where they are. I love this kind of challenge. I was one of the schools of my kids. That was before my daughter had all of her services in place, one of the twins. Just for the listeners, so you're a mother of four children, actually. So tell us a little bit about your kids, their ages.

My oldest one is 15, and I have eight-year-old twins, boy and a girl, and a three-month-old baby. Wow, three-month-old. I can't believe you have a three-month-old. She's amazingly fit. I know, super hot. She went out. Incredibly fit woman. Thank you. You were already training three days after the birth? Three days after I took her with me.

Right. She came training with me. I cared for her. I couldn't do that. Wrapped her around myself. That's great. And my eight-year-old is autistic. So before we had everything figured out for her,

I basically took, let's say, about six or seven months off work i completely like i really did super early clients and i would go to school and be her aid i was there she had a really tough time and i'd be there and i started observing the school lunches and i thought I'm going to pull my hair out. And this was, I used to live in Bel Air, and this was a very good school and a very good neighborhood, and it was unbelievable what they would eat. So I started talking to them. I'm like, why can't we do do something different and i wrote letters to the school district and um then i was told that uh well we offer vegetables and fruit and we don't only offer

chocolate milk we also offer regular milk but the problem is um there was there was vegetables there was um like a container um individual containers with with broccoli or some kind of vegetables. Every time different, there was a container with a bunch of fresh apples or banana or orange. Maybe, occasionally, out of all these kids, one took an apple. Who's going to choose that when you can get french fries every day? I mean, the school lunch situation is just an absolute embarrassment and disaster. apple. Who's going to choose that when you can get French fries every day? I mean, the school lunch situation is just an absolute embarrassment and disaster. Totally.

And unfortunately, I wasn't really able to get anywhere. This would be another project I would like to do. I was asked two years ago, I think it was Jamie Oliver when he did something with the school lunches. It's a good idea. I like the idea. But in East LA, nobody has money to pay five bucks or more for a lunch. They get

free lunches from the school. They don't have to pay, actually. And the school lunches at this time, I think they run between $1 or $1.25 for lunch you can get a Big Mac for that yeah

but it's Jamie Oliver or his plan great in private school parents pay for it in the more um low-income family areas not it's a no-go because they either on food stamps or they have free lunches in school and sometimes the kids

even stay um until five or so and they get another meal and And sometimes they even have breakfast there. But I'm not so sure how to do this. Like how to... It's a huge juggernaut of a problem. And I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I seem to remember that when Jamie Oliver, you know, he did that Food Revolution show where he took on a school, I think it was in Pennsylvania or something like that, right? And they had the TV show and he was able to kind of revamp their school lunch program. And he had all this great success. He came up against all these obstacles and they were over able to overcome a lot of them. And it was considered a success. And he came to LA and his whole thing was he wanted to look at the LA school district school lunch program and, you know, do the same thing there and make it you know another season

of this television show and he ran up against so much politics that it just became untenable it wasn't going to happen there was no way and there's too many vested interests involved too many people with their hands in the cookie jar and he just i think he abandoned even trying right it just wasn't because it wasn't going to work. Yeah, and it's not just the financial part. It's true. The school district, it's very tough to get any kind of change without, I don't even know what you have to do to kind of get closer towards that. Well, the entire system has to be overhauled.

It's not just school lunches. It's all the bureaucrats who are trying to keep their jobs and all the big companies that are supplying these foods and the rates that they get. And there's too many people involved that have an interest in keeping it the way that it is. Anyway, but I wanted to get back a little bit into, I want to talk about your kids, but I also wanted to finish kind of telling your story.

I mean, we kind of left it off with, you're working with athletes in Hamburg and then you decided to come to the United States. So how long ago was that? About 10 years ago. 10 years ago. And why did you decide to move? the United States. So how long ago was that? About 10 years ago. 10 years ago. And why did you decide to move? I needed a personal change,

and I got kind of a job offer to work with a high-profile client, and I just went for it. And I thought I had it all planned out. By high profile, like big celebrity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is what I'm fascinated. You probably can't talk about this. Some of them I can. you can't speak out of school, you know, it's like trade

secrets, but like, I'm fascinated by how this whole like celebrity trainer thing works. Like, I'm like, where's, what is this network of people? I mean, how do you like get into this world and like, what is it going on here? It's very, um, boring. Really? boring really yeah see it sounds so glamorous it's not it's not my world to be honest i love the experience and i go and i enjoy it and i walk out i go home and i'm a gypsy right so it's it's um uh i really much never had an agent to, you know, get me any jobs. I was just very lucky to just put it that way. I met the right person at the right time, I guess, or I was at the right place, or however.

So there's this, like, underground railroad of phone calls going on, like, hey, you know, she did great things for me, you should use her. It was even less eventful than that. My first celebrity client was Brian McKnight, he's an R&B singer. And I started working with him, I cooked for him. start working with him. I cooked for him. And then I met an assistant of someone when I was pregnant

with my twins. And I'd be huge. I mean, literally, I was huge. Not everywhere, just my tummy was hanging down. It was so big. And I was told by the doctor, so while you're not going to make it all the way to 40 weeks, it's going to come at seven months or eight months. And I made it full term.

Just with the twins? All the way, yeah. Yeah. And I would go to the gym at the end pretty much and sit on a spin bike and just do my own thing have like headphones and i would you know try to get some kind of movement and before i have to deliver and there was this woman or girl that um i guess was really fascinated by me and then i didn't ever see her again after birth and um through someone else at the gym, she got my phone number. And then she ended up being a personal assistant to Josh Duhamel.

Oh, okay. And that's how I got into rope, really. So it was sort of like you were just being… The twins did it for you. Yeah, I guess so. The twins, yeah. It was the light. That's what made you stand out.

You were the only trainer that was carrying twins. Well, it was supposed to happen. She made the right call. She saw what she needed to see. And then she contacted me. She trained with me, the assistant, first. And then she told me her boss wants to meet me. So I didn't even know who he was.

Right. And to be honest, I don't really care who they are. I show up and do the same thing I do with everybody. Same thing. Same way rude to them. Well, it's got to be. It's probably refreshing for them, too, because most of those kinds of people are surrounded by yes people

that agree with them all day long. And you come in and say no. No, I don't. A lot of times I tell them not to talk so much BS. Because there's a lot of BS sometimes. But it always works. And I had a lot of great experience with so many people and I've been so lucky that everybody that I worked with so far

has been so incredibly nice to me and it has been always a great experience and I can't ever say that anybody has misbehaved or wasn't nice. Right, so you're not going to write a tell-all book about it. No, no. I can't. Nobody has done anything to me. Nobody's done anything.

And if they had, you wouldn't say anyway. No, I mean, I have learned through, you know, just working with so many different people all my life to adapt to whatever, you know, you're an hour with them, so you should be able to kind of you know make it work right and it usually works do you get are some of your your gigs through studios contacting you say we have this person and we want them on the show but you're gonna have to you know do a biggest loser on them and they're gonna have to lose you know 20 pounds in an incredibly short

period of time or anything that kind of puts you in a situation that could be somewhat ethically compromising in terms of what's responsible to that person's health yeah i have had one and it wasn't through a studio it was through that person and she's a high profile actress and she was pregnant with her third child but after having a few miscarriages and she couldn't really expose that she was pregnant for that because she had already signed a contract and um she was trying not to gain weight and um she was planning or wanted me to put on a very low calorie diet and cook for her and um i couldn't do it like i just it was right especially given the circumstances of the previous miscarriages

right interesting so let's get into a little bit about how your nutrition philosophy has evolved you know coming from germany and and you, studying what you studied there and, and going to chef school and all of that. And, you know, to this point now where you have this evolution body company and the foods that you prepare for clients and all of that, like, talk a little bit about how that came about and, you know, and, you know, beyond sort of the 10% rule, what your sort of take is in terms of raw foods and and eating plant-based and all of that because that's you know a lot of people that listen to this podcast they're they're not necessarily all vegans and i've had people on on the show with all different kinds of diets like it's not just you know hey if you're not vegan you can it's you know we're open to talking about

all of it but i am you know there are a lot of people that are interested in in eating you know if not a 100 plant plant-based diet, they're like, I call them plant curious. How can I be eating more plants, or how do I do this, or why should I do this? Other people are telling me this is unhealthy, or you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So after I moved here, I went also to raw chef school and became a raw food chef. Why did you decide to do that?

I was really interested i i was fascinated to say the least by raw food and i mean was there somebody that you knew that ate that way that made you think this is something interesting i went to a restaurant which one um giuliano giuliano yeah yeah i went to for the for the the people listening, Giuliano is this crazy awesome guy who started this raw food restaurant in Santa Monica. It's been a couple different names or whatever. But now I think it's called Giuliano Raw. Now he has a cookbook.

I think it's called Planet Raw. Yeah, it's called Planet Raw now. And he has a cookbook called Giuliano's Raw Cookbook or something like something like that he is for all purposes the founding father of raw he really is i mean he's he's he's a fascinating guy he's got super long blonde hair and he kind of wears a midriff shirt and he prances about and you know yeah he's the bomb though and he's yeah he's cool like he i think one time we went i saw him and he was like wearing pigtails of course he's cool. I think one time I saw him and he was like wearing pigtails. Of course. He's very, you know, kind of merged in both genders.

Yeah, he is. He's sort of half female, half male. Juliana, you're crazy, but we love you. No, we do love you. He's a beautiful man. And if he wanted to be a woman, he'd be a beautiful woman. I mean, it was his restaurant. If he wanted to be a woman, he'd be a beautiful woman.

Yeah, I mean, it was his restaurant. I had no clue anything about raw food or even like the restaurants. It was very new to me here. So I went to his restaurant, and literally it was food orgasm. It was so good. It was so delicious, and the desserts were delicious. I'm like, I want to do this. I want to be able to do this. And it's not really that you have to go to chef school to learn.

It's really simple, right? Yeah, it's very simple. You just have to know the technique. Yeah, and so I did, and it was a great experience. And then I became a member of the Raw Vegan Network and would get a lot of clients through them. What is the Raw Vegan Network? I don't even know what that is.

It's a website. It's this lady, her name is Vicky. She's doing these. She just has people all over the nation contacting her. Like a resource? Yeah. Do you know anybody who can prepare me raw vegan or vegan food? So it was a very great experience.

And I always combine that somehow. I don't make it like in the restaurant, like Giuliana makes it, but I think a lot or the majority of your food should be raw and less especially vegetables shouldn't be cooked um i mean as much as you can broccoli is a broom broccoli is the internal room if you eat it raw that's right it'll scrape you won't need to do a colonic. It's its own colonic. Yeah. So, and I try to incorporate that into my meals and for my clients. Sometimes I don't even tell them because I experience, especially with the high-profile clients, if I say, tomorrow you're going to be getting a kale pineapple smoothie with E3 and this and that. And then I go like, ew.

Right. And I just do it and I send it. Just give it to them. Drink this. Yeah, I just say, drink it. And then they do. And I haven't had so many people drink kale juice ever. Right.

Yeah, and I think when you remove the, it goes back to another thing we talk about all the time, which is labels. And if you're putting a label on it, this is this, this is raw food. You know, then somebody has their association in their mind with what that means. And they've already decided that they don't like it before they eat it, as opposed to just, hey, here's your lunch. It's a salad. Right, exactly. Yeah.

yeah and so um and so now you have uh so now you have this company actually that you prepare these foods and you do like deliver is it how does it work like you sign up for like weekly meal delivery service or something like that it's very um it's a personal chef service i would say um but a lot more affordable than most of the delivery services. It's not more expensive. And you get your meals delivered every day to your door in a cooler bag, and they're labeled, portioned in different containers, and then you just put the bag outside, and then you get the next day the same thing. Right, that's cool.

So how does it... What's your network? Like how far, what is your... How far do you deliver? How far can you deliver? I deliver to Whittier. Oh, you do? Yeah.

Wow, so where's the kitchen or the facility where you... That's where I live. Uh-huh. Yeah. So do you do it all out of your house or you do... Wow. Yeah, I have a huge kitchen. Small living room, huge kitchen.

That's great. Very cool. And how long have you been doing that? Here in the U.S. for about nine years. Shortly after I moved. Interesting. You fascinate me because I was listening to you talk about your family who uses lard to fry.

And so you're so allowing of sort of their process. You know what I mean? Like you're not saying, no, I'm raw and I'm not doing that. You're really sort of walking through their transition with them. Usually when I go or when I went to this house, I opened all the cabinets and looked through things and I didn't say anything and then didn't start throwing things away.

And I start preparing a shopping list. And then I would say, buy this and this and this. And when she bought this and this and this, I would say, okay, this you can swap in exchange to that. You don't need this anymore. Yeah. It's going to be tasting as good if you do it that way. Right.

Right. And so talking about allowing, what? My wife's pointing at me. What am I doing? It's okay. It's not live radio. What am I doing? She's laughing at me me do i have a booger or something just come back oh just so i'm making like no when you're speaking you can be up here but when she's speaking come back all right thanks for the pointer we don't have a

producer here today i know all right well you know i want to get a little bit more concrete, if it's possible, for people listening out there who are interested in making some food changes or interested in kind of taking their exercise or fitness game to the next level. So what are some – I feel like the magazine editor who's now telling you what's new, what can you tell people. But I do always like to give people some takeaways. Like if they're, you know, when you, with all these personalities that you meet and all the people that you're interacting with, whether they're celebrities or normal people or what have you, I mean, there must be consistent themes that you come across and things that people struggle with, or, you know, if you had to just sort of remove one or two things from somebody's kitchen or gave them, you know, a couple simple pieces of advice about exercise or, you know, taking their fitness to the next level? I mean, what would be some things that we could share? In terms of exercise, huge advocate of outside.

I don't like the gym. I would say quit your gym membership. I hate the gym. Yeah. Yeah, we love that one. Yeah. So I don't exercise inside. Really rarely we do some things inside. But any movement, anything, even like climbing in the bushes and things like that. What about the gut? I mean, it's a beautiful day here.

We're in Los Angeles and a bunch of angry people in Chicago right now saying, yeah, fine for you, but we have two feet of snow on the ground. It's raining out or whatever. I'm from Hamburg, way up north, where it snows a lot. And I'm sure people who live in the snow are used to the snow, so they don't stay the entire winter inside. Besides, you burn a lot more when you go outside in the snow and you know your body is constantly warming up so it's a good benefit um and um you know if you really have to go inside for your workouts during the winter seasons

then so be it that's okay but we um have spring and summer and fall. There's a lot of weeks in fall that's possible, even if you live in those areas where... Right, find something you enjoy doing and take it outside. Yeah, I mean, running for me, I hear so much, it's not good for you, it's not good for your joints, you get injured. I really don't think there is bad joints.

I think there is bad joints i think there is um just a weak muscle and um i think if you do it the right way and do some kind of cross training and mix it with running and that's how you um bump up slowly your mileage um you'll be able to run i've experienced it with so many people and i. And I think it's the most natural way of doing exercise. This is what you do when you're a baby and the first thing you can do is running. And I can't really say it's a bad thing. And I always, even if you have to go up that big mountain,

that's going to raise your heart rate. It's to me, you know, the green from the leaves, you know, it's something that you can experience indoors. And running outdoors and not on the treadmill, you have so many, it trains the balance. You know, you have to work with the weather, you know. It's always different it's never the same even if you run the same route um it's uphill it's downhill different

uh surfaces you run on and it's a completely different experience and i have never met anybody who can run uh 12 miles on the treadmill right i've done it but it's not the most fun shoot me yeah no i mean when you're out on a trail and you have all the lateral movement and the up and down and the turns and all of that, you know you're working all different parts of your ankle, the supporting tissues around your hips and your knees and your ankles. And I think that, listen, running injuries are real. I think something like 80% of the people that run get injured. But a lot of that, I think, stems from poor running form. And I think it's from imbalances where certain muscles are underdeveloped, some of the supporting muscles.

And people start running too much too soon. Too much too soon. They start running every day. And even when I'm training super hard, it's rare that I'll run two days in a row. I'll do something else on that day in between. I got injured really badly myself running. And I have a very good friend who is head of orthopedics at Cedars-Sinai. And he always says, don't run, don't run.

And I got injured at the LR Marathon running it three years ago, two years ago. Was that the one when it rained really? I ran that one actually. That was the one before. That one was something else. Yeah, it was a nightmare. But I haven't run a marathon on my own

for a really long time. I usually run it with someone, with a client. And that one, the rain one, my client, what a trooper. You got through it. Oh, man. We both had hypothermia. We were like completely, it wasn't fun. But it was great.

Are you running tomorrow? No. No, I'm not running tomorrow. I didn't have really enough time to prep for it. Yeah. Well, that brings up another important thing that I wanted to talk about. I mean, you're incredibly fit for somebody who is a mother of four. And obviously, it's your profession to work with clients.

So it's kind of your job to be exercising. I assume you do some of it alongside with them, but still to be able to be, you know, so fit after having four kids and balancing, you know, everything that you have to balance with taking care of the kids and priorities and all that kind of stuff. I mean, how do you sort of arrange your day so that you're a present mom and the kids needs are met and yet you're still attending to yourself. Because I think a lot of people say, well, they fall off the bandwagon when they start having kids and then they feel like they're being selfish or indulgent if they're taking time to exercise

when they could be spending time with their kids. Yeah. So basically with me, and I'm going to also answer the question that you just asked with people feeling guilty if they take time away from their kids or spending time with their kids. For me, I start my days really early, 4 o'clock in the morning, and I'm already out of the house like 3.15,

and I start really, really early with my clients. And I have a few evening clients that I work with and usually it's after bedtime from the twins. But I try to manage it somehow that I'm always home when they come out of school and I usually am unless there's something else going on. The time that I do spend with them is just their time. There's nothing else around it.

And we really hands on parents and do everything with them. And I told, I don't know if I told you that my son just did a 5k. No, you didn't say no. He's a 15 5K. No, you didn't say. No, wow. A 15-year-old. No, no, no, the 7-year-old. Oh, my goodness.

Almost 8. Wow. Yeah. I've never pushed the kids to do any kind of sports or say you need to. I expect them to do some kind of exercise, especially the 15-year-old. But my son, Christopher, he is a running genius animal something like that he just doesn't want to ever stop and he's um um he has to be grounded like you have to stop you have to calm down you have to take it easy um but he finished a 5k two weeks ago and was the fastest in his age wow yeah so um but we we are really active and

we're a lot outdoors and um so weekends are usually dedicated always to family and i work saturdays um very early just two clients and then I'm home by the time that I'm up and going. But when you work with clients, are you driving all the way across town to go visit them personally? Yeah. I run with every single person

so that's how I get my exercise in. I don't usually stand beside them and say, okay, now you go over there, come back in half an hour and then I'll see you. I do run with them and I do all the stand beside them and say, okay, now you go over there, come back in half an hour, and then I'll see you. But I do run with them and I do all the exercises with them. As far as other parents or mothers

and spending quality time with their family or with their kids and also doing something for themselves, I can really, really encourage every mother to, it's one hour out of your day, really, or even half an hour out of your day. It, I don't want to say it makes you a better parent, but it calms you, it settles you. It's a good experience to have, to be a little bit on your own. really if you can't um be on your own or um have nobody to watch the kids it's something that you can't do with the kids you know um i had a lot of times the clients bring their kids to workouts just because they didn't have anybody watch them

and it's fine it works you know we go to the track because they can run around the track themselves and um there's um it doesn't i know it's a it's a very easy mom thing to feel guilty if you take time if you do something for yourself but it helps your relationship with the kids and it's it's a setting um uh you know uh how do you say that um it's you know teaching them that you know you take do you say that? It's, you know, teaching them that, you know, you take care of yourself, you be healthy, you're exercising, and it's just, you know. It's like a great example.

Yeah, I mean, my kids are so active, I don't even have to tell them anything. You know, it's different when you become teenagers. It becomes a little bit more challenging. But what I told my daughter was when she started high school, I said, I don't care what you do. Anything that has something to do with movement, I want you to pick. So she did. She picked track.

And she is not a track star, but she goes to her practice. For me, it's just important that she does some kind of exercise. And it's something that she hopefully is going to continue as she gets older. But there's a lot of things we can do within the family, hikes. And you can definitely go with your kids to the track and just exercise there if you have no babysitter no i mean i definitely experienced that in my life as well it's uh i really need my yoga practice to show up the way that my kids deserve me to be and what happens is when you know we're really busy and rich can't miss training and And I think as women, most of the time we can find an extra way to give

or allow somebody else to get what they need. Or that one condition where you're starting to eat and some child just needs to eat so it goes to them and not to you. But I know that that's a balance that is vital to our family and actually we just experienced it this week because things got really busy and I started to go to the back of the priority and so we have to reset our schedule and I have to get to yoga, I have to be able to have that practice and even though I get up really early as well, I get up

most mornings between 4.30 and 5. But that's my meditation time and my time to just connect. But I really, really, really do well with a strong asana practice. It really makes a huge difference. I'd go on a killing rampage if I couldn't. The problem is now I need so many,

like you were talking about, like to be grounded, like I need to physically move my body in order to be grounded. But now because I've done so much crazy endurance stuff, like going out for an hour is like not enough. Now I need like many hours a day. So I've boxed myself into a corner with that, I guess.

But, you know. Yeah, I usually tell people anything is better than nothing. Yeah. You know, even if it's, there's a lot of times I hear, well, it's 20 minutes, it's not really worth it. It's totally worth it.

Oh, yeah. Anything is worth it. You know, any, just going along the block, it's worth it. It's moving versus not moving at all. I mean, don't you find, like, you know, I mean, I've been practicing yoga for maybe, you know, going on 20 years now, and the thing that always amazes me is even if I, you know,

if I don't practice and I just get in for a little bit, my body has the memory of that. Like, it's recorded in there. So I almost don't have and I just get in for a little bit, my body has the memory of that. Like it's recorded in there. So I almost don't have to go as deep. And it's really, I'm so grateful that I have that established. Yeah, definitely. And I worked with a client who didn't have kids before. And then she got pregnant with her first kid.

And then she was really worried about getting back into shape. That was like her main concern because she had never experienced a body changing like that before. It's freaky. Yeah, it's really freaky, especially the first time. Especially with twins. It must have been something. That was crazy.

But I think that was my mom's curse because I'm a twin. Oh, you are? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, that's amazing. But I think that was my mom's curse because I'm a twin. Oh, you are? Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, I have a brother. And she always said to me, you don't know what it means. You have never had twins. And then after the first one, after my first child, I was pregnant with twins.

And I thought, I knew I was pregnant with twins because I felt so sick. It was normal. It wasn't like, it was beyond anything I ever known. It was exponential. And I went to the doctor, three and a half months pregnant. And I said, I'm so sick. Like, I'm so sick all the time. And then she, I said, I think I have twins.

And then she listened for the heartbeat. And she goes like, nope, you have only one. It's only one heart. And I was like, all right, then I guess this time is weird. So then a little bit over four months pregnant, I had my first ultrasound, and the technician was like, oh, my God, you have twins. You knew it.

The mother's intuition. It was, I mean, I felt so horrible. I couldn't keep nothing inside of me. I have that experience. All my pregnancies, I have four days where I eat and the food tastes so good. And then after that, I can't even unload the dishwasher. It's horrible.

I mean, the baby's totally safe. There's no problem. And then I have super easy births. Yeah, my births were actually pretty, this with the three months old, it was just so amazing. It was like 30 seconds. No, it wasn't that quick, but it was kind of quick. And she was so easy.

I think with the twins, that was the worst that could ever happen. My son's head was just ginormous. Oh, my goodness. I can't imagine. It's just crazy. So how is the diet with you? In your household, are you 100% raw family? No.

Or how do you manage all that with your kids? Share with us. Basically, at home, everything is gluten-free. And I want to talk about that. I have something I want to talk to you about that too. So I started that. Not that we ate a lot of gluten, but I just started that because of my autistic daughter. And so share with us what's the background on that.

Oh, no, go ahead. Can I just preface this with an experience I had last weekend? You can. That will sort of set the stage for this. I was in, sorry to interrupt everybody. It's your show. Hey, it's my podcast. I'm going to do what I want.

You do. And we love that. I was in Toronto last weekend. Toronto. I wasn't in Toronto. I was in Tucson. Two weeks. No, I was in Tucson last weekend for a speaking engagement at this event.

And there were a couple other speakers there. And there was one guy who I'd never met before named Jeffrey Mason, who's like this 72-year-old guy who's written like 27 books, I think. And he was a fascinating guy. I got to spend a good amount of time with him and I actually flew back with him to Los Angeles on the same plane. So I chatted with him for quite some time. And he's a uh sort of a vegan act advocate activist he's written a lot about um animals he kind of comes from it from an ethical animal advocacy point of view but his perspective was really fascinating and he's incredible and intellectual who's had this like zealot like life where he's what he he uh got his phd in sanskrit from Harvard, and he was a professor of Sanskrit, I think, at University of Michigan.

And then he became an analyst, like a psychoanalyst, and became director of the Freud archives, and then started writing books about how he didn't like Freud. And then he got ostracized by the psychoanalyst community, something like that. Anyway, really, really fascinating guy who now lives in New Zealand with his wife, who's German. She's a German pediatric, what do you call that? Pediatric doctor. Pediatrician. Pediatrician, yeah. And they live on the beach in Auckland, New Zealand,

and she treats children on the autism spectrum and so I was asking him all these questions about that and and he was telling me about the amazing results that he that she has seen treating these kids with diet and the biggest thing this the thing that seems to have a very dramatic impact on their sort of disposition is removing gluten and dairy from their diet. So I just wanted to, as a starting point, to kind of, you know, in hearing that, I was like, wow, I've never heard that before. That's really interesting.

And now to hear your experience with that, I'd love to hear more about. It's gluten-free diet has become very big in the autism community. We have very... Our household around my daughter is very much sterile. We don't have so much stuff everywhere, so it's not so stimulating to her. And she is a lot outdoors, and she's really much into animals. So we kind of, everything is like, you know, so she feels at home extremely comfortable.

But what she had was her digestion. She had a really hard time going to the bathroom. She would just sit there and had a really hard time going to the bathroom. She would just sit there and had a hard time just going to the bathroom. And I just tried to, you know, things like crackers and cookies, or if we would make brownies, or just like other things that would have gluten, I completely cut them out. And then I thought she had a little, like her digestion got better,

and then we completely cut gluten completely out. And I had read about experiences with kids that would stop eating gluten. they would start like licking things off the floor and whatever had gluten they would be craving for it but when they would go cold turkey basically like you know like some kind of chemical reaction it does in the brain and they would need it um i never made that um experience with her just because she didn't eat gluten so much or we wouldn't have it at home all the time. But now completely cutting everything out, even if we would make cookies or brownies or anything that would be a treat,

even those are gluten-free. So with her, I really made the experience that she's a lot calmer. And she does have tantrums, like autistic kids do, but not as severe. And they don't last three hours. What do they think that the connection is between the gluten and the behavior um one of the connection is that um this chemical imbalance in the brain that it causes that's one of the things but most of them are not it's not a proven that it's helping with autism. But I haven't met a parent that has tried the gluten-free

and said it doesn't do nothing for us. Everybody that I know and has done it says that they do see a difference, especially in their digestion. Interesting. That's great. It's interesting. I mean, in digestion, but also in mood and behavior. I mean, you know, and then it makes you wonder, well, if it's sort of everything is…

What it would do for your mood. No, you want it free. Well, first of all, where do I fall on the spectrum? That's an interesting question. We'refree. Well, first of all, where do I fall on the spectrum? I think we all are a little bit autistic. We're a little bit, all of us. Well, no, I think if somebody who's autistic, everything is amplified, right? So removing the gluten, you can sort of see a result. But if it's having that kind of impact on these certain individuals,

what kind of impact does removing it have on the rest of us? And I know, personally, I feel a ton better when I'm eating gluten-free, but I'm not perfect at it. I end up craving and eating bread or whatever and things that I know I probably shouldn't. But the behavioral thing is fascinating. The behavioral thing, if it is true that gluten causes some chemical imbalance in the brain, and if that would prevent that chemical imbalance,

then it would make sense why the tantrums and the mood is not as bad. It would balance. Yeah. And what are the other things just as a mother, you know, with this child and your journey, you know, and also having three others so you have the full spectrum and you can really feel each of their personalities. But what are the other things that you've experienced in your life that have been helpful to her balance and harmony within the family?

One of the things, I mean, besides the diet, is really everybody in our family accepting or knowing that this is who she is and this is who she will be. And it's not something that you can go out and say, I want to fix it. You can fix it. can fix it this is what it is and this is who she is and she will be that and you can give her tools to um learn how to deal with things in the outside world better but she will always be autistic and she will always have

or be more withdrawn and i think the first, you have to be okay as a parent and not want her to have play dates and go to tea parties and think, why can't you have fun at Disneyland? Why is it not fun to you? It's fun to her, but it's fun to her maybe for two, three rides, and then she's done because it's a lot of noise, a lot of people. And there's nothing wrong with her

and my experience during this whole time, she was about two and a half when I thought something is off with her and people would be, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I have to say, I have an amazing relationship to her. I don't want to say deeper than with the others, but so different. She makes me cry.

It's so deep with like because if she loves she loves you so different and so much that you have never experienced but if she doesn't like you oh my gosh you're gonna know it yeah she doesn't like you and um and and she has been i have experience with her i mean sometimes we have people at the house that she doesn't know she's never met them before and she would have family members that she has never talked to or she doesn't just care like she just like looks down and she just doesn't respond to them at one time a friend bring another friend of his that i didn't know. And then my daughter, always walking barefoot everywhere, had hit her foot on a nail.

And not bad, just was bleeding a little bit. And she's such a tough kid. She's such a boy. I mean, she's not a boy, but she's so hardcore. She doesn't feel pain or she doesn't care or she doesn't make a fuss over it. So she comes to this guy, puts her foot on his chair, and says, I need a Band-Aid. And she has this very raspy kind of like Tony Braxton kind of voice.

And she has an amazing voice. And she goes, I need a Band-Aid. And he looks at me, and I go like, what? She shocks me sometimes. She has never met this guy before she doesn't even know who he is she doesn't even know his name and all of a sudden she started talking to him about kung fu panda and you just wonder why why is she doing that and that's like some certain people give her i don't know it makes her so comfortable to talk to them well it's it's their energy, right? Yeah, I guess. She connects with them in that way. Yeah.

And then you were telling me she's an amazing filmmaker. She is an amazing artist in every way. She makes books. She draws them, and she illustrates them, and she writes the stories. And she gets fixated with one thing. and she gets fixated with one thing. So when she does one thing that is like she really got into the series of the Wimpy Kid books, so she's drawing them. She makes new stories. And then she is amazing in drawing, and her memory is just insane.

And she makes movies. She has so many cameras, and she was her wish list just insane. And she makes movies. She has so many cameras, and she was on her wish list for Christmas. So she doesn't care about toys, dolls, things, none. So she was on her wish list with a water camera, a camera that she can take underwater. Underwater. So she can make movies in water or under the shower

or stuff like that. and then she sets up like different cameras everywhere and then the ipad and then she has she posts things on youtube and um she has viewers oh cool and um she it's that like that's her project every day she has to make certain amount of movies and review video games and put them on YouTube and talk about them. That's great. And when you see her in a video, you go like, that's that kid? What? She can speak?

So she did one thing where she has these Apple headphones in there and it's all dark in the room. And then she goes to the microphone like this and then she goes my name is tatiana like she goes it's it's bizarre stuff that she like you crack up but then you want to talk to her and she goes like this and she looks at her yeah she won't she won't respond it's interesting that focus and you know it sounds like as a parent you know a big part of it is just sort of you know sort of cultivating that you know, it sounds like as a parent, you know, a big part of it is just sort of, you know, sort of cultivating that, you know, those channels where they do have that focus and supporting that. I mean, you know, she's making YouTube videos. It's not like she's not focused. She can't execute on site.

Oh, she can do that for eight hours. Like, if you say, hey, Tatiana, I'm going to shop, because sometimes I make her go with me, like, her alone so she can rely to get out, getting out and doing certain things. And I tell her because she sometimes makes videos with vegetables. And then she gets the vegetables and she draws faces on them. And she wants me to get a program for her that makes the vegetables, like the mouth top. Oh, the mouth, yeah.

Sounds awesome. So I said, well, you can come with me and you can pick your vegetables so you can make a video because because they rot at some point, and they get all shriveled, so she can't use them anymore. Then she comes with me, and then, but she's just, you know, she's so different in certain ways, and then in other ways, she's such a kid,

but she's so mature, and she, when she says, I need to get home. I need to do these. I need to do videos. I need to do all my reviews. It's so important. And when you ask her, what do you want to be? I want to be a famous movie maker.

She always says that. But my mom always says, you have to put her in some program. But the thing is, she won't. She doesn't want to go in a program. No, she wants to do her own thing. She knows what she wants to do. And if you tell her, it is great how you do it, but this would be the proper steps to take.

She was like, nope, not doing it that way. It is not right. Right. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. What kind of things could you say to you know other parents out there that might be struggling with an autistic kid or might not have the community or or kind of the knowledge base that you have or are looking for some help or are there some resources where people could go or yeah there is a lot of resources um i mean nowadays thank goodness um i don't i forgot this the name of this lady um well you can email me i'll put it in the show links no it was way i don't want to put her can i put her youtube oh yeah can i link to her because she sees like how many people come on people. Watch her videos. Give her mad views.

Yeah, so she loves that. And there was this movie made. What was her name? It was an HBO movie. It was a real story. Temple Grandin? Yes. Yeah.

I showed it to my oldest daughter when it came out. Because my oldest daughter would sometimes get so frustrated with Tatiana and wouldn't understand why she is the way she is and why she's driving her so crazy. And I said, I want you to watch something. And I actually was looking for Rain Man. I couldn't find it. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, that's good enough.

I didn't even know what it was. It really, really, I mean, I cried watching that movie. And I got to meet her at the Golden Globes. She's an amazing lady. And at that time, back then, there was no resources. And today, it's so open. It's so much there. Definitely read.

And the internet is a great resource. You know, look things up. There's so many different places you can even contact. Autism Speaks. There's so many different autism network groups, you know, social skill groups for parents, even support groups for parents. And just know that your child is incredibly, incredibly amazing, and they all have a very great gift,

something that they're really, really good at. One of my clients sent me something on Facebook on this guy that flew over New York, and then he landed and drew New York out of his memory. Right. I think I heard about that, too. It was crazy, and that's a gift that I don't have. It's amazing when you think certain tweaks in your brain and that it's possible for a human to do that.

It's just extraordinary. What else are we not tapping into? That's right. And I think the big awareness for all of us is to realize that everybody has something to offer and to share with us. And I was a speaker at this conference I was telling you about called Shift Us,

and there was like 20 educators and parents of full spectrum kids. They call them diagnosed autistic because who even knows what that means. But the main beautiful sort of message of the whole weekend was that there is nothing wrong with any of these individuals. They're just wired differently. And so if we shift our perspective and just start to embrace them as already whole now,

not like I wish you could sit longer or talk to people when they come in or whatever the social behavior is that's comfortable to us, then there is a whole world of discovery waiting there. And it's really our gift because I can see the love in your... I mean, you wouldn't trade her for anything in the world.

No, no way. I mean, literally in eight years, she has given me so much. And if she was any different, I don't know if I would be the way, like I had to learn a lot during this eight years and experience things with her and figure things out. And I don't know if I would be speaking the way I am, and I don't even know if I would be the same way or having the same perspective about things if it wasn't for her.

So she's definitely teaching me a lot. She's been your transformational agent. Yeah. Good. Well, I think that's a beautiful place to end it. So nice to have you thank you and experience this time

thank you and we hope to meet all your children oh for sure and we're in the hood so we gotta get together yeah we will have a play date

feel good anything else you want to talk about you know there's so much I know you can come back we'll come back come back alright know there's so much i know well you can come back come back all right so thank you so much the beautiful and fabulous natasha kufa you say you say kufa kufa kufa right but i'm i got married and i have a new name oh you do what's your new name it's's Fett. It's almost the same, yeah. Kufa Fett. Kufa Fett. Cool.

So the book is The 10% Rule, Small Changes, Big Results. I like the subtitle. So check it out. You can get it on Amazon, right? Yeah, on Amazon, my website as well. Okay. What is your website? It's natashakufa.com.

K-U-F-A. Yeah. That's right. Or you can go to, you can click on the Amazon banner on richroll.com and then buy the book. That way she wins, we win, and you win. Or whatever else you're going to buy on Amazon. You know how to do it, people. Also, we put up last week a little donate function for the podcast.

So if you have been inspired or you feel like just contributing so that we can keep this thing going, feel free to throw a few nickels at us. And if you don't want to, that's cool too. The show is free and will always be free, right? That's right. So you don't have to do anything you don't want. We'll keep coming at you, right? Somehow, some like natasha on the show um it was a pleasure having you thanks

for coming it was great thank you and also where else can we find you we can find you on twitter at natasha kufa right yeah twitter facebook i have a like it page i have uh i have people writing me all the time about all kinds of things and I get usually to them. Sometimes it takes a few weeks. Right. And if you're in LA, are you taking on clients now or are you full? I do. I always do. I work

with my husband like you guys do. What's your husband's name? Sebastian. He's German as well and he trains. He does a lot of the running, he does boxing, and he was a Muay Thai and kickboxing champion. He's a man's man. Yeah, he's man's man. And so yeah, we train together. Sometimes we train both of us with clients, sometimes individually.

So they always get some funny thing. He has an extreme German accent. Yeah, I'm scared of him already. But if somebody wanted to reach out to you and kind of learn more about your training and what you offer, they just go to your website? Is that the best place? Yeah, to my website,

and then you can contact me. All right, good. Beautiful. Hopefully you get some emails, we're gonna we're gonna put the link up to to the youtube channel oh yeah she'll be like thrilled all right awesome cool thanks for thanks again for coming thank you um again uh you want to check out what Julie and I are doing, you can follow Julie on Twitter at, is it Srimati or Jai Seed? No, it's Jai Seed. It's Jai Seed. Jai Seed on Twitter.

I can't keep track. J-A-I-S-E-E-D on Twitter. You're Srimati on Instagram. Yeah, Instagram is Srimati. Okay. That's right. I'm simple. It's just, I'm Rich Roll.

He's Rich Roll. Wherever you go. That's right. And you can find out a little bit more about what we're doing at JaiLifestyle.com. We've got my Jai Repair Athletic Recovery Supplement. We have B12. We've got the cookbook. We've got the meditation program.

And we're going to be coming out with some new products soon. I think we're going to just do a pure tri-blend plant-based protein product that we're working on right now that will have a much better, more affordable price point for people out there who want to check out the Jai Repair, but it's just a little bit too expensive. But the protein's a great blend. It is.

Yeah. Yeah. Pea, sprouted brown rice, and hemp. There's nothing wrong with that. You don't need anything else besides that. It's awesome. And also we're working on a vitamin D supplement as well, which is cool.

And Julie? It's like the sun in a bottle. If somebody wanted to listen to your music, where should they go? The sun in a bottle. Sunny D. There you go. Sun in a bottle.

They should go to srimatimusic.com. S-R-I-M-A-T-I musici music.com we got my debut album mother of mine there and soon um i'm going to have a new release of my second record called beloved cool and i'm going to be in worcester mass for the veg fest there in i think the second weekend in april and then i'm going to be in ottawa Canada for Plant Powered Ottawa. If you want to find out more about that, if you're in the area or around Toronto or Ottawa, check out plantpoweredottawa.com. And, of course, I can't remember the dates right now.

That's all right. I'll put them in the show notes. In some month. No, April. It's in April. All right. We're done. All right.

Let's get out of here. All right. thanks for listening everybody peace peace plants bye Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you