The School of Greatness - 55 How to Eat and Live Healthy (Plus Myths on Red Meat, Paleo, and the Health Food Industry) with Liz Wolfe

Episode Date: March 6, 2014

Liz Wolfe is an expert on what it means to eat the best food for one's health. As entrepreneurs and athletes, we need to maximize our diets to get more energy and health to perform at the highest levels. In this episode Liz dispels so many of the rumors that the government and health food industries spread. It's all about eating simple food from quality sources and there is so much that can be learned. Make sure to listen to the end of the episode to learn even more about how to achieve a high performance diet.

This is episode number 55 with Liz Wolfe. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, greats? Thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm very excited about this episode,

as I am with every episode, because I get the opportunity to bring you an awesome guest that inspires me. And sometimes I actually just talk on my own without a guest, but today I'm bringing in a cool guest, a friend that I used to go to high school with, believe it or not. And that was a long time ago, about 15 years ago, when I probably first met Liz. And we reconnected a few years back at the CrossFit Games, and she was telling me what she was up to. And lo and behold, she's got this awesome new book out that I was actually cracking up when I started reading it because of how funny of a writer she is. And it gave me hope

to think that we had the same English teacher, and maybe I have the same, you know, humorous writing skills as Liz has, but her new book is called Eat the Yolks and it's discovering paleo, fight food lies and reclaim your health. And you guys know here at the School of Greatness, it's all about striving to achieve greatness in every area and domain of your life. And the body and what we put in the body is so essential to creating the extraordinary results and leaving the huge mark on the world and having an impact and living our dreams. It's so important. And this book, I firmly believe, adds so much value to understanding why and what and how and all the questions about putting foods into your body. And she covers a lot of the myths that are out there with paleo and with other diets and things like that. And I live in Los Angeles.

There's lots of vegan eaters, vegetarians out here, and she covers the myths of meat being bad or not bad. And she talks about cholesterol. She talks about sugar. She talks about dairy. I'm really curious to learn about all these different things because of how they affect my body. So we have a great conversation conversation and I'm very excited for you guys to check out and discover what Liz shares in her new book. She's a wise woman. She's got a, she lives on a farm. She's trying to become fully sustainable with chickens and cows and pigs and everything

and planting all her own crops. So she really practices what she preaches in this book as well. And I think you're really going to enjoy it. So go ahead and take out your pen and paper and let's let the class begin. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. I'm super excited about today's guest. It's a blast from the past, from literally about 15 years ago. It's my good friend, Liz Wolfe, who I went to high school with. How's it going, Liz? Don't say it was 15 years ago. Please don't say that.

That's probably when we first met. It was 15 years ago. What did you say? I would say that with deep just incredulity. I cannot believe it's been that long. 15 years. Well, that would be, maybe it was 16, because you were a freshman when I was a junior, I think, right?

I think so, yeah. And were you the same age, grade as Lauren, or no? Oh, yes. Okay, so you're a year behind me, because she was a junior when I was a senior. So Liz Wolf, so you guys don't know, is an author of a new book called Eat the Yolks, Discover Paleo, Fight Food Lies, and Reclaim Your Health. And we went to high school together in probably one of the smallest high schools in the country in St. Louis, Missouri. And I dated one of her good friends

back in high school. And she dated one of my friends actually back in the day too. We actually reconnected three years ago at the CrossFit Games. I don't know if we haven't seen each other or talked to each other probably since I graduated or soon after I graduated until then. It's probably been 10 years since we saw each other. Then we randomly ran into each other at the Crossfit games isn't that right completely randomly i mean walking down the same street at the end of the car it was crazy you i think you recognize me or did i recognize you i honestly i feel like we were kind of approaching each other and both of us are doing

like the the side thing like Yeah, it was really crazy. I had gotten into CrossFit a few years ago because one of my college football teammates, Graham Holmberg, had just won this thing called the CrossFit Games back in 2010. And he was training me at the time when I was doing kind of professional football stuff.

And so he was like, yeah, I just won this thing. It's called the CrossFit Games. And I was like, what is this? You know, it wasn't that big yet. And so I was like, yeah, I just won this thing. It's called the CrossFit Games. And I was like, what is this? You know, it wasn't that big yet. And so I decided to check him out the next year at the CrossFit Games and support him. And that's when I ran into you.

So it's such a cool experience. And you were telling me about this book. You said, you know, I'm doing a lot of this paleo stuff and it's blowing up right now. I work with, you were telling me a couple of people that you worked with.

And I was like, this is awesome. Let me know when the book comes out. And now three years later, she's writing the book that she finally wanted to write. And it's coming out. It's out this week. And I actually, a lot of people that listen to this podcast, I interview a lot of authors. And I skim the books. I'm pretty good at skimming.

It's hard for me to stay in attention for an entire book just because I'm such a slow reader. And Liz's book, I was like, let me check this out. Let me see if it's any good, being a little skeptical. And then I actually started reading it and was doing my skimming process. And then I just started busting out laughing a few different times because it was actually hilarious. And then I just started busting out laughing a few different times. Because it was actually hilarious.

And then I thought to myself, I'm so grateful this is funny. Because we both had the same English teacher. So if I can write as well as Liz, then I'll be extremely happy about that. So it's one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Or skimmed, I should say. But I started reading more. And I was thoroughly surprised at how funny it was.

Every single page has some type of humor, it seems like. And I'm learning something at the same time. So yeah, on that rant, I'm super grateful that you're on, Liz, and I'm glad you wrote this book. Oh, I'm just so excited to get to talk to you again and especially to talk about the book. It's just everything worked out just so well. I can't, the serendipity of seeing you at the CrossFit Games is just amazing. It's nuts. It's nuts. So let's talk about this because, you know, paleo is something that I've been doing, I guess,

for three years now, but kind of doing, you'd say I'm probably paleo-friendly or paleo-lite or whatever. Can you tell me what is paleo, first off? I can tell you my take on paleo. Real honestly, I look at this as kind of paleo with a lowercase p, not paleo with a capital P, because in the last, oh gosh, I've been doing this paleo nutrition thing, which actually I was introduced to through CrossFit. I've been doing it for a good five or more years now. And as you live something and as you continue to learn, you kind of discover what's super important and what the points are that people just get hung up on for no good reason. and what the points are that people just get hung up on for no good reason. So the way I look at paleo and really bringing yourself to full health, it's about getting rid of the junk that has been marketed to us as health food over the last 60 years, which is a huge part

of what my book is devoted to. It's devoted to just smashing all of this hype and propaganda that has been literally shoved down our throats for, you know, a couple of decades, honestly, since maybe our grandparents were coming of age. And, you know, I know when we talk about paleo, we think about cavemen and way back in time. And that's a great framework to think about, all right, what was food always? What has always been food? And that comes down to properly raised meats veggies fruits natural whole real food it's just real food so that's the way i look at it i don't like to get too bogged down in the rules because i think that takes all the fun out of eating and living this

way and that's what the book is about yeah i think a lot of people who are so hung up on diets and like yes weighing their foods and figuring out what's perfect in amount of portions and things like that. Sometimes for me, it can seem overwhelming. And I just had a recent friend on his name is Mark fit who eats seven meals a day. He's like a super ripped fit guy, you know, huge following people love him and an amazing heart, amazing guy. But he, you know, he meets seven meals a day. He weighs everything. It's all calculated. But he said he loves that process of it. It's fun for him.

And that's great. Yeah. If that's good for him, cool. Yeah. So I'm not saying that's bad or wrong or anything or not the right thing to do. Whatever is giving you joy when you eat, I think, is what is the most important thing. Because at the end of the day, if you're stressing about something, that stress is causing your body harm. It doesn't matter what you put in your body. If you're stressing, the stress is actually more harmful than the food, in my opinion itself.

I could not agree more with that. Really, I mean, the more we stress, and that's another thing I've learned over the last five, six years of helping people get healthier. If they are stressed about implementing a change in diet or lifestyle, that will completely undo everything that they're trying to do with food half of the time. So great point. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of super happy, fulfilled, healthy heart individuals who eat junk food all the time, but they're probably not focused on like, oh, this is so bad for me, or I can't believe i'm doing this to my body and not saying that's the right thing to do but you know it's not harming them i think

it's the people that are like eating and eating and then they're they're binge eating because they feel bad that they're eating horrible foods that's when it starts to cause harm and obviously you want to make sure you're putting healthy good real foods in your body i believe to be living an optimal life, but it's not the end of the world. If you, you know, if you,

so quote unquote cheat every now and then or something. Now, what you cover in the book is a lot of myths and throughout each chapter, you've got, you know, myth, this and that myth, this and that.

And I had another guest on the podcast. His name is rich roll and he's a, a plant, a vegan guy. a vegan guy and used to be 50 pounds overweight was uh you know started having heart palpitations because he was eating all these meats and junk food and everything and realized that he just had to go cold turkey and go plant-based uh foods and he's been doing that for a long time. Now he runs ultra marathons and is a mutant looking shape, like so ripped and shredded and has muscle tone. And one of your myths says we can get all proteins we need from plants. And you say that's a myth, isn't that right?

I do believe that it's a myth. Now, I think that there are many, many ways to be healthy. And if something is working for someone, there's absolutely no way I'm going to confront that person and say, hey, what you're doing isn't right. Because if it's working, I cannot argue with that, period. But my practice in this book is built around my experience working with people who needed to get healthy. And some of those had been trying a plant-based diet and it wasn't working for them. So if somebody comes to me and they say, I feel terrible, I thought I was eating healthy, but I don't feel good, then we need to make a change. So truly this book is not about converting someone who already feels like they're healthy doing what

they're doing. Like we were saying, there are a ton of ways to be healthy, whether we're talking a plant-based diet on which somebody is doing great or somebody who's eating crap and just not stressing about it. So if you're healthy, I have no qualms about that. But what I talk about in the book is the importance of complete proteins, not just from an amino acid standpoint, because we know that proteins are composed of amino acids and different amino acids have different functions in the body. And I do talk about that, but I also talk about how animal foods, and I'll qualify this by saying, it's really important to me that we eat properly raised animal foods that are produced in a sustainable ethical manner. That's really something that I don't compromise on much. And we can get into

that later if you want to get into that. But part of what I love so much about animal foods and about engaging in this kind of natural process of raising food sustainably and animals living on pasture and fertilizing that pasture on which we can later grow plants, that type of thing, is because animal foods themselves are really dense in other nutrients. Fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, or I'm sorry, A, D, and K, and zinc, iron, lots of other good stuff, B12, things like that. So that's part of the reason I do think prioritizing quality animal products is so important because

we can get so much from them alone. Mm-hmm. No, I live in Los Angeles right now, And it's like the vegan capital of the world, it seems like, because every other street corner is vegan food, vegetarian food. And I love vegan food. I'll go to a vegan restaurant and it tastes amazing to me. But I have a lot of friends who are vegan and have been vegan for years. And they are so healthy and they look young. And they look young and they look younger than me, some of them who are 10 years older than me. And I'm just like, man, you guys are

like superheroes or something. And I'll tell you what, I love meat. I just had a big thing of bacon this morning. I love meat. Why? Is it better though to be vegan when some people are like, you know what, it's cruel to eat animals and look at how I have all this energy. Meat clogs your intestines or boggles you down. And when you take in the energy from a dead animal, you're taking that into your body. So what do you – kind of talk about this. Just kind of overcome some of these myths. So what do you, you know, kind of talk about this, just kind of overcome some of these myths. Yeah.

One of the, one of the books that I used in researching my own book was by Richard, oh gosh, Richard Nelson, I believe. And the book is called Heart and Blood Living with Deer in America. And what was so inspiring to me about this book was the way he framed our practice of eating animals, which is a, which is an ancient practice. Ancient cultures for thousands of years have valued animal food as an incredibly nourishing source of sustenance that they would be incredibly lucky to have. So for cultures who were resource bound and didn't have the supermarket and farmer's markets and all kinds of vegetable

calories available to them 100% of the time, animal products were incredibly precious. And it mattered how they caught them, how they slaughtered them. Because let's be real, and I make no bones about this in my book, it is something we should think about. When we are eating the flesh of another creature that matters. And the way that creature lived, the way it was slaughtered, and the way it was regarded during its life and taken care of is incredibly important. So I really get into that in the book. I talk about how we can engage in this natural cycle

of life and death on this planet. It's a very real thing. And rather than kind of taking ourselves out of that equation, really seeing how we can engage and drive the agenda of sustainability forward. Like I said, I don't advocate factory farming. Not at all. I'm from Kansas, so I know a factory farm. I mean, that is the type of meat I was raised on. I don't care to touch it now. This is part of the reason we have now a farm where we're working to raise animals and plants in a synergistic manner. And you really learn when you're raising your own food how critical both animals and plants are to a balanced ecosystem and a balanced diet. Now, where is this farm at? Well, it's outside of Kansas City. Yeah. And we have 15 acres.

We've got goats, pigs, chickens, guinea fowl, and quite a few plants. We're just now starting our garden. We're using a lot of heritage seeds. We're starting our garden for this year, and we're doing some canning and preserving and stuff like that, just working to be responsible for our own food supply. Wow. So do you pretty much eat everything that you raise? Well, we're working towards that. We've been here for about a year, and that's certainly the goal, but man, it is not easy. I am so grateful for the local farmers and the local growers who take their stuff to the farm market so I can eat because really, I mean, calories, food, it's precious. It's just we're so spoiled by the supermarket culture that we can just go get whatever we want whenever we want. It's just not how nature works. Yeah. So what's your goal with this farm to be fully like sustained sustainable yeah fully

sustainable now we don't have goals to take our products to the farm market because that's man that would involve producing a lot more than we probably are capable of doing right away but we want to feed ourselves ourselves right so let me get this straight then. You find it no harm in eating meat? I think something has to die for our dinner when we eat meat. I think that that is part of the natural cycle of life and death on this planet. I do believe that humans are meant to be omnivores. I make no recommendations in my book about how much meat a person needs to eat. I do believe that humans are meant to be omnivores. I make no recommendations in my book about how much meat a person needs to eat. I think I say one person's weekly steak or one person's steak could be another person's weekly oyster stew. But I do think, yeah, that creature

protein is really important. And as hard as it is, I think it's important to buy into that and live within that system. Not saying it's important to buy into that and live within that system. Not saying it's going to feel good necessarily, but that's the way it is. Right. Okay. So what type of meats are the best meats for us to consume? Grass-fed ruminant meats. What's ruminant mean?

Ruminant means any animal that has grazed on grass. So bison, those who hunt for deer, that type of thing, wonderful. So grass-fed, wild-caught, or ruminant meats. Those that are sustainably farmed. So right now we've got two goats, and we'll be bringing in two heritage breed cows here in the next probably six months. So here's what's interesting about the sustainability idea. When we came out here, we had 15 acres and we had no cows. We had no animals yet. And what you learn is that you can either produce your own food through machines and a lot of really unsustainable type methods. Like, you know, you buy a tractor, you have to use gas

to run that tractor, that type of thing. Or you can get animals to do the work for you and basically eat your grass, eat your weeds. Our goats eat all of our weeds. They eat our back pasture. The cows will come in and eat all of the growth from our back pasture as well. And that will keep them really well nourished for most of their lives. And they'll recycle nutrients back into the ground. So that's kind of how we're doing it. We're trying to do things in a synergistic way, kind of working with nature. And then we've got some grass fed cows across the street and a local farmer that raises them on grass. And that's what these animals are meant to eat. They're meant to eat grass. Animals are not meant to eat corn or soy meal in a factory farm. That's just the fact of the matter. So I think that probably answers your question. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And most cows are

eating corn, right? Oh, yes. Most of the meat that we see in supermarkets, unless it's labeled grass-fed, most of them are from factory farms eating all manner of crap. I hope I can say crap on your podcast. Of course. You never know. You can say manure instead. I can say manure?

Okay. Poop. Manure. I talk about in the book something really interesting interesting that margarine industry, as it started getting bigger and more important, as we started to believe that butter causes heart disease, which as I talked about in the book, that was a total mistake of science. And now we see more with the evidence that's available in the literature that we were a little bit mistaken about saturated fat and cholesterol. It's available in the literature that we were a little bit mistaken about saturated fat and cholesterol.

But as the margarine industry grew into one of the first global industries, we started to see the byproducts of margarine production getting sold as animal feed. And that provided the framework for the factory farming industry. So basically, we had these byproducts that folks realized they could feed to animals, corn and soy. And that's what goes on in the factory farm and the feedlots. And really, those animals are supposed to be eating grass. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

So tell me about butter then. Is butter bad? No. Butter from, again, it's that caveat, butter from appropriately raised animals. We are what our animals eat, after all. I say that in the book. But butter from a cow that's been grazing on pasture is really nutrient dense. The whole reason margarine was invented in the first place is because around, I believe, France, there was a butter shortage. And this was a huge problem because the ruling elite knew that the working class needed the calories and the nutrition from butter.

So in that shortage, they basically commissioned a replacement that was based on beef fat and skim milk. They were hoping to approximate the nutrient value of butter. So good butter is dense in vitamin A and conjugated linoleic acid and stable fats and it tastes really really freaking good no butter is amazing but what about what about what about people that uh you know are dairy free or that are like you know can't consume dairy or butter or cheese or any of these things milk um because they have celiacs they have something else a weak immune system where it causes some type of uh flare up in their body if they've got a dairy allergy or something. And yeah, gluten intolerance for folks with celiac disease,

a lot of times that intolerance also occurs with dairy intolerance, so you've got some cross-reactivity there. Now, a lot of people are actually just reacting to the milk protein, which we know butter does contain some milk proteins. So a lot of folks that can't tolerate those dairy proteins can tolerate ghee, G-H-E-E, which is a traditional Indian food. It's basically milk fat or it's butter fat with all of the milk proteins removed. So this is like my nutritional therapy practitioner hat that I'm putting on right now.

But you can also get those same nutrients from egg yolks. You can get a lot of vitamin A from egg yolks and healthy, stable fats and healthy, stable, naturally occurring cholesterol. Again, you're looking for free range chickens. So you can get those nutrients elsewhere. If you can't tolerate dairy, totally good to go. That's why I called the book Eat the Yolks. Yeah. Yeah. So dairy, so you love dairy. I do love dairy. Okay. It's not a paleo staple, no. Sure.

But I, again, paleo with a little p. I tackle that in the book. Dairy has a huge, long-running history in the human diet, and it's actually a pretty smart development in human history because think about it. Like we were talking about before, without supermarkets, our food is not guaranteed. So picture a nomad or a nomadic hunter-gatherer type who realized that, gosh, I can domesticate this animal. Goats were really probably the first animals that were used for dairy. I can take this animal with me everywhere I go. It can eat grass and different things that grow that I cannot digest.

And it can turn that into nutrient-dense milk. So it's actually pretty smart. And I have no problem with it. If folks can tolerate dairy, I truly don't think it's worth nickel and diming people for their dairy if they tolerate it well. So dairy is, but if you're going by the standards of paleo, then that's not including dairy. Is that correct? I think that's changing, quite honestly, which is really cool.

Here's what I love about the paleo community is that it's a body of information that continues to grow. Of course, there's that trail back 10, 15 years to when the original Paleo, capital P, Diet, capital D book was published. And that was kind of the original no dairy, no potatoes, no rice, et cetera. No legumes. No legumes. No legumes. Those are the rules. But now we've got people like Rob Wolf, Chris Kresser, Mark Sisson, who are taking that template of ancestral food and just consistently adding to this body of information we have

about how humans digest food, how they use it, and how different cultures use food for thousands of years in good health. So it's just that constant conversation about what food is appropriate, what works for you, and what doesn't. Yeah, because I think somewhere, I think Mark Sisson talks about how he has like a little bit of cheese or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's okay or whatever. But traditional paleo diet is no cheese, right? Yes.

If you go back and you buy the paleo diet book from 10, 15 years ago, that's what you'll read. That's the rules, right. So, I mean, you know, my friend Rich Roll, I said, you know, I feel like it's going to be a real challenge for me to try to go vegan. But I was like, I'm open to experiment on all these things just to see how my body feels. And he was like, you know what, I'd really recommend just cutting out dairy because of all the inflammation it causes in your body and how it slows you down from the principles of dairy, I guess. And again, I'm coming from an ignorant place of just trying to test and try different things. And I believe everyone's body is different, but does dairy have inflammatory, I guess, aspects to it? I think conventional dairy certainly is problematic for almost everyone. And again, I keep saying to folks, I wish that I can consolidate my

entire approach into a soundbite, but I can't, which is why I had to write a 200, 300 page book. You need my take on things, read this 300 page book. But I do think an important distinction that we should make is the difference between like an intervention diet and a sustainable lifelong approach to eating. So, you know, this fat, sick and nearly dead, I think is a, is available on Netflix. Great movie. Sorry. Movie. Yeah. Well, see,, this fat, sick and nearly dead, I think is a, is available on Netflix. Great movies. Sorry. Movie. Yeah. Well, see, I get them, I get them confused, but I think it's a cookbook now, but it's a great example of someone who was really sick on conventional modern food and they changed how they were eating to something based around whole foods.

Now we see some of the same types of incredible profound health transformations in the paleo community. I read about them every day, but you also see these, you know, in other communities, vegan, vegetarian, where people common thread, they cut up junk. So, and that will always make you feel so, so much better. And that's kind of where I'm coming from is like, let's just cut out the junk and then tweak from there. And when it comes to dairy, most of us have been eating processed garbage dairy for like 30 years of our lives. And it's gross. I'm going to tell you a story that you'll be able to relate to.

Back in middle school, when I was in the boys dorm, I know you were in the girls dorm. Oh, yes. Mr. Harlow, my house pop in the boys dorm, the middle school, I told him that I drink a lot of milk. And so he got me this five gallon milk dispenser that I got to put in my room and all the other guys in the boys dorm came into my room to get milk at night. And I would go through this thing literally probably once every three days, five gallons of milk and just be drinking it constantly. And I remember always having like a stuffy nose and like be coughing a lot. I didn't know why. And it's because, well, first off that milk, like,

you know, middle school, like cafeteria milk at schools is probably the worst milk in the world. But so you're saying that as long as where we're getting our dairy from and our meats from is from a healthy place, then it's okay to eat in moderation, basically. I think so. But we keep going back to this. Some people don't tolerate milk, even the great stuff, just like some people can't eat strawberries. It doesn't mean milk is an inherently evil food.

It means probably number one, Lewis, we don't need to be drinking five gallons of it a week. I think there's a huge argument for variety in the way that we eat, of course. But also, I'm telling you, who wants to drink the milk of a sick, sad, mistreated cow? I certainly don't. I don't want to eat the meat of a sick, sad, mistreated cow. And I also don't want to eat vegetables that have been doused in pesticides or GMO foods, that type of thing. And that's just me.

But again, let's cut out the crap and focus on food quality, whatever that food is, which is, I think one of the really great strengths of the way the vegan diet is presented in mainstream culture. I mean, of course there are vegans that eat processed vegan food, just like there are other people that eat processed quote unquote health food. But the idea of eating whole, nourishing, nutrient-dense foods and being aware of where your food comes from is just, that's the foundation. Yeah. And in a vegan diet, a lot of it is based off gluten and soy. Isn't that correct?

Well, yeah. Some people do it that way. But I think there are plenty of vegans who would tell you that's not the way to do it because that's still processed food. Right. Now, let's talk about gluten for a minute. Okay. I'm looking at the page 165 where you're talking about gluten-free has become a buzzword. And I did an experiment. I like to do a lot of experiments. I wouldn't say

I'm as much of an experimenter as Bulletproof Coffee Guy or Tim Ferriss, but I do my own little experiments. And I went off gluten for, I've gone off sugar for two months and I lost 28 pounds in the first 28 days with just no sugar. And it was unbelievable what sugar did to my body. But gluten, I got off another time for two weeks, no gluten for two weeks. And I remember going to a nice little restaurant here in Los Angeles after my two-week experiment and I felt great. And I got this huge bowl of shrimp pasta that was at this Italian restaurant. It was unbelievable. And after the dinner, my two friends, my buddies I was with were driving.

They wanted to go drive up Mulholland Boulevard, which is like at the top of this kind of mountain in between West Hollywood and the other side of the valley. So you can see kind of like the whole valley on top of this mountain. So we're driving up there, the other side of the valley. So you can see kind of like the whole valley on top of this mountain. So we're driving up there and I am literally feeling like I'm going to throw up and I'm sick. I'm so sick. I can't even open my eyes. And we get to the top. They're like, okay, let's go hang out up top here and look out this beautiful scenery at midnight. And I'm like, guys, I can't even get out of the car. So I put the seat back and I just fall asleep for the next half hour while they're up there.

I was so tired and just exhausted. And I think the experiment kind of like proved what gluten did to my body, at least being off of it for a while if I wasn't, I guess, used to it. But I think, you know, looking back on high school and college sports, when I would, we would have these big pasta dinners before games. And a lot of my games, I remember feeling exhausted and being like, why am I always yawning and exhausted? And I think it probably had a lot to do with the gluten intake. Now, I'm assuming you're going to say that a lot of people's bodies are different and some people can process gluten different than other bodies. And it all kind of depends on it,

I guess. But what does gluten do to our bodies? This is the interesting thing about gluten that kind of makes it stick out like a sore thumb as far as maybe potentially demonic foods. as far as maybe potentially demonic foods. By the way, a giant thing of pasta, that's a lot of refined flour in your body as well. So it might not just have been the gluten. It might have been a whole combination of things. But what we know about gluten is that it has the ability to act on a chemical in your gut called zonulin.

And what in your gut is if you kind of hold your hand out straight with your fingers out straight and touching each other and think of your gut as a bunch of fingers that basically reach out the cells of your gut, reach out and kind of pull nutrients in to your bloodstream. acts on zonulin is basically zonulin tells those tight spaces between the fingers and your gut to open up. And that basically means that foreign proteins that should not be in your body are able to get through. So that's what's kind of special in a really horrifying way about gluten. And I think that to go back to what you said about in high school and eating certain foods. And I remember being in high school and after I left the school that we both went to and went to a bigger school, I struggled with my skin. I always struggled with eczema all the way through college when I dabbled in veganism and vegetarianism. I still had these issues and I still felt really tired.

Now, that's me personally. But what I never thought about was that food was potentially causing these feelings. And I think with kids in high school and adolescent kids, we just kind of assume that they're going to have mood swings. They're going to be tired. Yeah, it's puberty. They have acne. But really, we never think about how food affects us and how it might be causing those things. So, I mean, it's crazy.

It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, does every kid supposed to get acne when they're 15 or whatever, you know, or is it the food that we're eating at the cafeterias that's causing it? I think it's five gallons of milk in your dorm room. Exactly. Now, so what's your definitive answer on gluten then? My definitive answer. Do you eat gluten? I do not eat gluten because generally gluten is what you find in processed foods. And I even think whole wheat bread and most of the things that are in boxes and bags and

packages with buzzwords like whole wheat and that type of thing splashed across the packaging. Generally, those are processed foods. If we look at the labels, you won't even be able to pronounce half of the ingredients. But gluten and say, and I'm sure there are places around LA that you could get some really awesome old school traditionally made sourdough bread that's made from an ancient sourdough culture, and those breads would contain gluten. Now, for people that have eliminated processed foods for long enough, your gut can heal. Those tight junctions can get tight again. Your gut can be ironclad, and you can probably tolerate a gluten exposure now and then, especially from

really good traditional foods. However, I just don't care for those foods anymore. I rely on properly raised meats, veggies, fruits, healthy fats, and I'm really happy with that. Right. Gotcha. And it's interesting. I've dated actually a couple individual ladies who had celiac disease. And it was interesting when they would eat gluten, you could definitely see it flare up all over their body, their skin. And when they were off of it and sugar and dairy and other things, they were very – it calmed down. So let's talk about sugar. Because, again, I cut off sugar for, this was back in, I think it was 2010. People started calling me Fluis for Fat Lewis.

And, you know, I'm 6'4", I'm tall, I can carry like my weight pretty fine. But I got up to 250, 250 pounds or 254 pounds or something like that. And I didn't even know I was getting big until people were like, my sister was calling me fluous. And because my gut, I started to notice it when my underwear was folding over in my gut. And I was like, okay, I was like, I cannot have this anymore. So I cut out sugar for two months and it was extremely challenging for me. I realized that I was addicted to it like a drug. And but within 28 days i lost 28 pounds i was down to whatever 220 something and i was like wow this is incredible

what sugar and i had so much energy i felt just energized throughout the entire day and i was drinking green juice i was drinking a green juice every single day. I just watched Fast, Sick, and Nearly Dead and started drinking one green juice a day. And it was incredible. Now, what does sugar do to our bodies? And is sugar good or sugar bad? Well, sugar, it depends on where you get it from. Now, if we're talking about sugar just as carbohydrates in general, you know, a sweet potato is dense in carbohydrates, but it's also dense in a ton of other nutrients that your body needs to process

sugar effectively. But if we're talking white sugar, refined flour, refined sugar, what that's doing, it's literally stealing nutrients from your body. Your body needs B vitamins. Your body needs magnesium to process sugar. And so you eat a sweet potato. It's got some B vitamins in there. It's got some minerals and you'll be able to process it effectively. But when you're just eating the garbage, it's stealing nutrition from your body. Not only that, but what you don't burn, you're going to store. You're probably also storing a lot of extra water because that's another facet of how our bodies process carbohydrate. It requires extra water. And beyond that, it can be really inflammatory. So it is no surprise to me

that Fluis needed a little bit of a sugar detox. That's pretty normal. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you can hang on to pounds of inflammation. When people go on, when they overhaul their diets from the processed junk that we've been sold as health food to something like based around whole real foods, they lose pounds of inflammation. It's remarkable. Yeah. What do you think about kind of these, what are they called? Colonics?

Colonics. What do you think about those? I think that's an LA thing, buddy. I don't know if I could speak to colonics. Yeah. I mean, I do know that there are some really effective holistic cancer treatments that make use of the enema, which is different from colonic irrigation. What's the difference?

I believe enemas are, oh gosh, we're talking, we're talking bowels now. I like it. Uh, right after lunch. Um, so colonics, I believe are colonic irrigation is a lot, we'll say deeper of a treatment, a little more extensive. Whereas enemas in particular coffee enemas, which I know are a big part of the, I believe, a Gerson therapy for holistic cancer treatment. They don't utilize as much of the colon. They don't go in as far. Yeah, it's a little bit different. But I got to say, I think that might be a LA thing.

Yeah, all my friends are talking about it. But I don't know if I could ever do it. I'm just curious. I think motility is really important with anything that you eat. You need to make sure you're pooping. Like let's just be, let's, I mean, even Oprah had a show about looking at her poop. So let's just talk about it. It's important because it's a huge part of your report card, what you're eating, your report card is how you feel going into the next meal. Do you feel like crud and you're hangry, which is hunger plus anger equals hangry. But it's also how you're going. And if you feel like you're not going, then something needs to be tweaked.

Sure. Now, how often should we be going? Well, there's kind of different reads on that. Some people feel that you should be going after every meal at least once a day is important. And if I could throw in a little plug for one of my favorite products, the Squatty Potty. The Squatty Potty. The Squatty Potty. I am not paid by them at all, but they basically are kind of a little stool that you can put in front of the toilet to bring your body into a more anatomically correct position for elimination. Okay.

So that's important too. Interesting. Interesting. So at least once a day, but if you're going after every meal, that's probably a good thing, right? The more. Well, it depends on, I love that we're having this conversation. Great to talk to you again after 15 years. Let's talk poop. It really depends on kind of the urgency. So some folks who are eating foods that they think are healthy, like whole wheat bread, for example, that they're actually intolerant to. For example, if they're gluten intolerant and they think, hey, I'm eating whole grains, that's supposed to be healthy. And they feel this sense of urgency immediately after eating a sandwich.

That's not good. However, if we look at, you know, for example, the animal kingdom, many animals, especially like for my dog, for example, he will immediately eat and he will immediately go to the bathroom after he eats. And that is a pretty normal cycle for him. And you can kind of see the difference between like, oh, God, I got to get this out of my body versus I've now put more in, so I'm going to let some stuff out. Right. Exactly. That's hilarious. It's important, Lewis. I'm telling you. I believe it. I believe it. I mean, I could say many things right now, but I'm going to hold off on that. I am sure that, man, you could tell probably some hilarious stories about me.

I could. I don't know what you remember about me, but I'm sure it's probably some hilarious moments. My mom kicked all of my old stuff out of their house the other day. She's like, get your stuff out. You haven't lived here in however many years, so get it out. And it was all my old pictures. No way. From high school.

Lewis. No way. Old basketball pictures. Lewis. No way. Oh, basketball pictures. You, Sam Gilman, Dave Retzlaff. No way. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. You'll have to send me some of those.

I will. Or email me some scanned ones or something. I will do that. That'll be hilarious. Yeah. Well, what is a, you know, I'm looking at, I've been skimming through this book while we've been talking, and there's so much that you cover about every vitamin. These names I don't even know of, but you cover everything. There's a thing about iron.

There's a thing about all these different vitamins. Vitamin D, salt. Everything. everything so we're covering kind of like just the the broad aspect of everything you talk about you talk about fat you talk about cholesterol don't hate you say saturated science you talk about proteins everything that pretty much you need to know about nutrition and eating what is good for your body what's not good for your body liz covers covers in this book. So I really want you guys to make sure you check it out. You can go check out realfoodliz.com or eattheyolks.com. And you know, a lot of people, you're all over Facebook and Twitter and you're now on Instagram. You can check her out. It's, I guess, eattheyolks pretty much everywhere online, right?

Yeah, you can get to all my social media portals from eattheyolks.com or realfoodliz.com. And I don't say this lightly. I'm not, I'm not saying this because Liz is a friend of mine and that we went to school together, but this is a really informative and supporting and a helpful book. And again, it's extremely funny. Like I'm still skimming through right now and just your writing style is hilarious and it's refreshing. You know, I go through a lot of business books a lot, so it hilarious and it's refreshing you know i go through a lot of business books a lot so it's it's more drier and uh it's refreshing to really see how um

creative you are as a writer and how you're able to kind of match your wisdom with with nutrition and with foods and you're really practicing what you preach. You're like, you live on a farm. You eat the foods you raise. You plant everything. You do it all. And you were saying how before this interview that this is your lifestyle. This is what you do.

And it comes first. And promoting this book is something you want to do as well. But it's got to kind of be on the back burner while you're bringing in 20 pigs next week or something. Two pigs. Two pigs. Whatever. Two pigs, two cows, and chickens. On the cover of your website, it's a picture of you holding a chicken or a rooster or something. Yep.

That's my chicken. And you've got goats. You've got it all. So I highly encourage everyone to go check this out. And it's hilarious. It's like a comedy book, in my opinion. But I'm learning something as I go. And as someone that I feel like I understand my body as an athlete,

I'm very aware of what I put in my body and have tried and learned a lot of different things and experimented different things, this is an amazing resource that I am going to keep on my shelf and I usually give all my books away. So I'm very blessed that you wrote this book for everyone out there who can read it. And I highly encourage everyone to go check this out,

Eat the Yolks. You can find it anywhere on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and definitely go check out our site. Is there any final words that you'd have to say about foods and nutrition before we let you go? Just eat real food. Just eat real food. And I think there was a book.

You probably know the book. I don't know what it's called. I think it's called Real Food or something like that, actually, where there was like the principles of eating. And one of the principles was like when you're looking at a label, if it has more than five ingredients, don't eat it. And I don't know if you know what book that is, but, uh, I'm not sure, but look, we don't even need labels, right? There you go. An apple, a tomato, celery, grass-fed beef. We don't even need labels. So one ingredient, anything with a package, probably don't eat it. Right. I would say avoid the boxes, the bags and the packages if you can, and be patient with yourself. This is a lifelong thing. We have to eat every day of our entire lives. So be patient,

accumulate information and do what feels best for you. And, and one final thing while I'm thinking about it, you know, there's, there's some, there's a lot of busy entrepreneurs who listen to this interview who are traveling and at the airports a lot. What's one of kind of quick piece of advice to give to people who are constantly on the go? Well, there are a lot of delivery services if you need them. Pete's Paleo is a great one. I take paleo kits with me everywhere I go. Whole food, grass-fed jerky, that type of thing. But bottom line, anytime you are able to sit down and get a good breakfast, that's what's going to fuel you the whole day. So eggs, eat the yolks, some avocado, some sweet potato,

maybe a little pat of butter. Fuel yourself from the very beginning of the day, and you'll be good to go. Liz, I appreciate it. Final question for you. It's what I ask all my guests. It's what's your definition of greatness? Oh, loving appreciate it. Final question for you. It's what I ask all my guests. It's what's your definition of greatness? Loving your life. There you go.

Realfoodliz.com. Liz, it's a pleasure to connect from the past. And I hope to see you soon at the next CrossFit Games. Thanks, Lewis. there you have it guys i hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did you can check out all the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash five five for episode 55 lewishouse.com slash five five for episode 55. LewisHouse.com slash five five. And again, if you haven't checked out the book yet, go ahead and check out the book. There's the links to everything with Liz and her book

called Eat the Yolks. I highly recommend it. Even if you just want to laugh, it's extremely funny and hilarious. So go check that out. In the meantime, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to just be aware of what you're putting in your body and follow through with the principles in this book and what Liz talks about through this podcast. You guys know what time it is.

It's time to go out there and do something great. Our difficulty is that we are adding too much white flour and sugar and do not get enough of the foods that carry the minerals and vitamins. When the primitive people adopt the food of modern civilization, their teeth decay just as ours do. I've spent several years studying the primitive people in various parts of the world, and I've come as a missionary from them to the people of modern civilization. And I beg of you to learn of their accumulated wisdom. And if you do, you too can have strong, healthy bodies without so much disease as we suffer from these days. Like a bullet shot, find me in the night We'll paint the morning sky, be forever mine Make me come alive