The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Feel Like Your Best Self & Identify What Makes You Thrive Ft. Autumn Smith, Founder & CEO of Paleovalley

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

#646: Today we're joined by Autumn Smith, Founder & CEO of Paleovalley. After years of debilitating digestive issues and crippling anxiety for most of her life with multiple specialists telling her nothing could be done, Autumn decided to harness the power of whole foods. She cleaned up her diet and in just 30 days, her health issues were cured. Today we're sitting down for a raw conversation about nutrition and how to heal your body. We dive into the different health fads & what to look out for when taking advice from a nutrition expert. Autumn also gives us tips & tricks on how to grocery shop, all things animal protein & how you can improve your mental health via nutrition.   To connect with Paleovalley click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley Visit paleovalley.com/skinny for 20% off your first purchase. Produced by Dear Media  

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by Paleo Valley. Head over to paleovalley.com slash skinny for 20% off your first order. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.

Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Collagen is amazing. So it is the most abundant protein in our body, 25 to 35%. And we lose collagen, 8% of our collagen every decade after the age of 20. And so we have to kind of replace it. And when we don't, we start to get wrinkles and age spots and we just get kind of sagging skin. And the thing is, our ancestors ate collagen all the time because they were eating animals nose to tail. And our culture has largely lost touch with that. And so we're only consuming the muscle meats

and we're kind of just tossing aside the collagen. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Him and Her Show. Today, we're sitting down with Autumn Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Paleo Valley. After years of debilitating digestive issues and crippling anxiety for most of her life with multiple specialists telling her nothing could be done, Autumn decided to harness the power of whole foods. We dive into her story and all things health and wellness. We talk about struggles with substances and eating disorders, how she learned to value nutrition and how you can too, symptoms of poor nutrition, why it's important to care about how you feel versus how you look, what is somatic therapy and how to respond to stress. We also discuss how to get

adequate protein and what vitamins can help with skin density, knowing about how to take care of yourself, knowing what to look for, knowing how to feel, all of the things. This is a very health and wellness focused episode. If you want to feel better for the new year, this one's for you. With that, Autumn Smith, welcome to the Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Talk to us about when you started experiencing these debilitating digestive issues. It sounds like you had a lot of anxiety and a lot of issues. Yeah, I definitely did. They started around the age of 10. But before that, I kind of got swept into the ballet world as a youngster. And as you might imagine, got some rather questionable

dietary advice that I think kind of set the foundation. But my digestive issues were, I had looked like I was pregnant by the time, like nighttime. And there was like, just, I felt like I had a ball, just so much pain intermittently, unpredictably. One time I remember asking my mom to take me to the emergency room and they told me when I got there, you have gas pains. And I was like, wow, how can that be all that's happening? And they gave me the irritable bowel syndrome diagnosis, which IBS, a lot of people think is a BS diagnosis because they just simply rule out more serious pathology and then kind of give you this wastebasket that doesn't really tell you what's going on. So we did take the gas pills like they told me to do when I was very young and nothing really changed. And I didn't know it then, but the gut and the brain are intricately connected. And so

as I got into my teens and life got stressful, I started to manifest in like depression and anxiety and eating disorder. I kind of just really went off the rails. My parents were so loving and kind that they spared no expense. We did the antidepressants. We did the tuck therapy. We did everything they knew they could do. And it actually didn't help much, made me feel a little bit worse. And so someone who was just uncomfortable in my body in every way, physically, emotionally, I didn't know when my stomach was going to hurt. My skin started breaking out. I just went to substances. So I thought, anyway, I can kind of check out, numb out, just stop experiencing what I was living through. Drugs, alcohol,

lots of smoking. And I kind of continued on that path until some of my friends got in a lot of trouble in high school and ended up going to jail. And I realized, wow, okay, that was a wake-up call for me that I needed to kind of clean up my act. And I did. And I was able to go to college. I still had that passion for dance. I studied dance psychology in college, eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue dance and met Tracy Anderson and worked for her for a while. And it was then when I met my husband. That's kind of when my story really starts to change. I want to go back to your childhood. When do you remember even the idea of an eating disorder entering your head? Did it have

to do with doing ballet? I always am so curious because people will say, oh, I have an eating disorder, but where do you remember it coming from? Is there something your mom said at the dinner table that you can remember? I'm interested now as a mother with the daughter where it even was like an iota in your head. It was a very vivid memory and it wasn't my mom. My mom, such a beautiful mom, but it was at a costume designer. I was getting fitted for my ballet costume and the costume designer said, I hope you know that the Bolshoi, the principles of the Bolshoi are coming this Christmas and you need to lose a little weight. I was probably 11. Oh, wow. I was very young. And of course I was, you know, I wasn't developed at 11, but I was starting to.

And a lot of the girls I was doing ballet with were much younger. And so my body was different. But yeah, she made it very clear that you need to lose 5 to 10 pounds quickly. So when you hear that as an 11-year-old, I always wonder this. How do you even know how to lose weight at 11 years old? It's so funny. I started asking my mom questions. I started asking people like, okay, what do I have to do? And my ballet teacher, lovely, he would say, eat lettuce, take ginseng. And of course, the dancers, I worked with a lot of Russians, they were smoking. And so

in the studio, even while we were practicing. So I was like, okay, lettuce, smoking, you know, just taking ginseng. So increasing energy, eating as little as possible. At 11? Yeah, I was very young. And then I got into, you know, this kind of progressed. I was at that studio for a long time, reading calorie books. They told me calories, just a calorie. So all you have to do is count them and then you're not going to gain too much weight. And so that was kind of, it just turned kind of snowballed like, oh, wow, I can control this. And that, that feels kind of good. And when the Bolshoi principles came, they really liked me. They invited me to go to Russia and study. And I didn't. Yeah. That's kind of where the stage was set. Looking back, the IBS, what you said, something interesting. You said they just

gave you a diagnosis because it's almost like they want to put you in the box to be like, okay, this is IBS so they can give you an answer. Do you think the IBS had to do with the eating disorder or do you think the eating disorder had to do with the IBS or do you think that there was something happening within your system that was causing the IBS? Well, I think the IBS preceded the eating disorder. So the eating disorder was several years later. And so it was definitely something that I was consuming, but probably also stress related, right? I think I have always been very perfectionistic, very hard on myself. I think that's a stressful way to be. I also, as I got a little bit older,

our town, have you ever seen Dazed and Confused? Yeah, sure. So that was the reality in my small Montana town. Like when you were a seventh and eighth grader, the people in high school, because there was one high school, the girls in particular were kind of laying for you. They made lists about who they wanted to initiate and they would come pick you up after school and kind of take you and make you do these terrible things. So I was at the top of everyone's list. So you grew up quick out there. Grew up quick. And it wasn't unusual for girls.

I mean, of course, girls use words and that hurts. But girls in this Montana town would say, hey, I'll meet you in the ring after school. And that was like a threat. Like, I'm going to punch you or hurt you. They made me like push pennies and then they would kick you so you could get like I mean it was brutal they had just like this is just the culture in this particular what town is this this was called Glendive it's called Glendive it's a very small town and it was the culture until a few years after two boys made the national news for kind of

hazing and doing this they went a little too. And then I think it's been cleaned up since then. But yeah, so that stress and then also just thinking, oh, a calorie is a calorie. So I'll just eat junk. And that's what I did. I developed this like real addiction to sugar and processed foods because I thought it was just energy. It didn't matter what I was eating as long as I didn't eat too much. It's interesting because ballet has so much to do with women and women comparing themselves. And then you go to this high school and it sounds like that was the theme too was women. And both of them kind of, and I'm being a little stereotypical here, but have this parallel of like mean girls or girls that are competing against each other? Because in ballet,

it's like, I mean, I did ballet, nothing like you, but like I remember there's an undertone of like competitiveness. Did you see the parallels? Looking back, do you see the parallels? Yeah, absolutely. I did. I felt like everyone was in competition with me. Of course, you know, the Bolshoi is coming. I have to be the best. I have to be the thinnest. And then, yeah, not feeling totally accepted. And my perception was maybe different than reality. I had girls that loved me and supported me in my class. Absolutely. But it was kind of the older girls that were really laying for me and kind of, I think, damaged my perception of, you know, female relationships for a long, long time. I've had to kind of work through that. And I was always someone who just thought they preferred men and

just kind of was a tomboy. But I think underneath all of that was this competitiveness and this lack of camaraderie and support that at least I perceived when I went to high school. You mentioned that a lot of your friends got into trouble. And was this, were you like doing drugs with them or alcohol? What, what were you addicted? What was that like? Yeah. You know what? Um, I just tried everything and it's kind of tied to that feeling of, I wasn't safe in high school. Right. And so I knew that I was someone they were out to get, at least that was my perception. And so I kind of was attracted to the rougher kids,

like the kids who could protect me and would meet someone else in the ring and maybe stand behind me and say, you know what, I'm going to stand up for this girl. And so that those people did drugs. And I did, too. And we went to a concert one time one night and this kid ended up stealing something from one of the people I was with and they ended up harassing him and some of them went to jail by the end of it and it was drug related because of this experience do you feel like you swung the other way with health because then then you're like with Tracy Anderson and you're like I mean you're you went like so health conscious well a I think the only thing I do in moderation is moderation. That is me.

I'm just that personality. I wish that had been enough to take me to the place I am now at that time. But it wasn't. I just cut out the drugs. I was like, the drugs need to stop. But I did go to L.A. I was still drinking heavily in L.A. and doing all the things. I just wasn't using the drugs that I thought were really the problem at that point. So at what point do you start to take your health seriously? What

does that look like? That looks like my husband. When we moved in together, because I always put on a happy face, right? Still very driven, still going to get stuff done. And when he moved in with me, he was like, you are suffering. Woman, you're working as a celebrity fitness trainer. You look fit, but you're not well. You are crying at night. Your skin's breaking out. You look pregnant by the end of the day. And so he said, I need to help you with this.

We're going to, this is the beginning of our lives together. We deserve better. And so he got on Google because the doctors in LA that we saw didn't really have much to offer me either. And he said, let's try diet. I think Rob Wolf and Mark Sisson, they're saying people with digestive issues can change their diet and see results. And I thought that was crazy, but I did it anyway because I loved him. And in 30 days, all of the digestive symptoms were gone. That was crazy. You know, what's so interesting to me is there is and this is probably like I want to say like 15, maybe 10 years ago, there is a lot of people that are look so healthy from from the outside.

But they're they're having these issues that you just said they're crying at night. They're having digestive issues. What do you what do you think that is? I think it is just, I don't know, I got the message early that I don't have control over this anyway. It's kind of like a, it was for me at least, a hopelessness. Like, I'm just going to make the best of what I have because there's something inherently wrong with me and nobody can fix it. So why would I sit and worry about it a lot? I'm just going to pretend that I'm okay and carry on. I think too, it's some people in the health community,

they put such an emphasis on the way that you look instead of the relationship with yourself. There is a degree to, I mean, I think that that's like a big thing. I think that there's so much emphasis on the outside that there isn't enough emphasis on the self. But I feel like we also all probably grew up in a generation and maybe this is not as common. I mean, maybe it's still out there a little bit, but maybe I think channels like podcasts and social media and these have also opened up a pathway

for people to maybe be a little more vulnerable where I feel like when we were growing up, people didn't show their vulnerabilities and you were almost shamed if you did so. A lot of this stuff and conversations around some of our biggest vulnerabilities or insecurities is newer public conversation. And I think people really identify with it it but I don't remember a lot of when I was growing up of people like sharing their insecurities or vulnerabilities it was so like I think a lot of it has to do with like holding it inside and then that coming out in toxic ways absolutely yeah I didn't feel like I could share I didn't feel like anybody would care

and I definitely felt the pressure to just look the part right right? As a dancer. I think that's all what it, that's what it's about. And so having that like, oh my gosh, I actually feel well. I'm not just fit, but I feel good. And I like, I love my life. I have this sunny disposition. That was a completely different experience for me. It's not like Waylon Jennings talking about keeping up with the Joneses. You know what I mean?

Like there's even our parents' generation. I think they had it even worse. Like you did, like when I speak to my, or when I spoke to my grandparents, like nobody showed weakness or like, it was like a no, no. There's such conversation though, around the way you look versus the way you feel.

I think that that needs to be talked about. So, I mean, so many times we see like a celebrity that looks so good and then, you know, they end up in psychiatric care. There's not enough conversation around the way that you feel inside in the relationship with the self. A hundred percent.

So when you started pairing those together, how did your life transform? Oh, in every way, right? I was no longer managing. I just like would get through the day before. And then all of a sudden I had, you know, a different, entirely different lens to experience the world. I felt inspired, creative, energized. I wasn't creating chaos in my relationships. I think my biological instability, like my blood sugar swings were very dictating my moods and I felt bad. And so I'd kind of create these stories and yeah, relationship disarray and just arguments. And so it looked like, wow, I have peace for the first time. And then what do I do with that? Like, who can I help with that? What kind of life do I create with that? And my husband

actually was very intentional, sat me down and said, what are we going to do now? Like now that you feel well, like what's the next step? What are you passionate about? Where are we going? I think that when people who are used to chaos experience peace, it's uncomfortable because they're not used to it and their nervous system isn't used to it. And I think that when you're so used to chaos and you're so used to running on fumes and you're so used to being addicted to the stress and then all of a sudden you do have a peaceful sense in your body. It's really uncomfortable because you're not used to it.

So my first question for you is why were you creating chaos in relationships? You know, I think I probably have had like cognitive distortions that I was, you know, either born with or developed, just taking everything personally, making assumptions. If you read the book Four Agreements, I was doing the opposite of all of that. And so there's that. So if somebody would give you an anecdote on something, you would think that it was a personal attack on you? Oh, of course. And I would make assumptions about what they mean and all the story and their reasons for wanting to attack me. And so I had a lot of that. And then I also had that

distrust. I'd been cheated on a lot. I had girls who were really, really mean to me. And so I had a lot of that. And then I also had that distrust. I'd been cheated on a lot. I had girls who were really, really mean to me. And so I just had this big wall. And so anytime someone got really close or was, you know, like my husband is just genuinely peaceful and calm and wanting the best for people. It was just like, what is this? This can't be real. So I'm going to sabotage it or create some sort of chaos. So a lot of different reasons that I've done therapy since I was a very young girl. And I can see them now. But at the time, it was just my lens. When you're going through all this, what are you consuming and doing?

So if someone's listening and say they're putting their body through this really high cortisol workout and they're like eating junk, I would love to know how you transitioned from what you were eating and doing fitness wise to sort of like the other side of peacefulness. Yeah. So basically I was just counting calories. I was eating all of these terrible food bars that were really high in carbohydrates. And then I was, you know, drinking a lot of caffeine for my system. I still don't do it to this day because it is so impactful for me. No caffeine whatsoever. I don't. You know, I'll use it like if there's something I need to get ready for or, you know, very

strategically, you know, not first thing in the morning. There's things I do around it to kind of enhance or allow my body to do it. But so a lot of that, a lot of drinking and then just a lot of candy, literally a lot of candy. So just empty calories and empty nutrients, empty calories, empty nutrients, and then just a lot of, you know, bread. Bread was kind of my thing. Gluten is a thing for me. So I have to avoid it now. But bread, anything processed. What about your workouts? My workouts at that time, which point they've definitely had. I would love to know just your journey of working out and how it's evolved.

Yeah. So basically as a dancer, obviously I was working out all the time. And then if I, you know, I'd running, I'm a, I'm a big runner. And so I did that for most of my adult life or young adult life. And then when I got to Tracy Anderson, Tracy Anderson's amazing, but I was working out six hours a day when I was her trainer, because you do every workout with every client. Six hours a day? It depends on the amount of clients you have. But yeah, sometimes I would have six sessions or three sessions. They were, back when I worked there, about two hours each. So an hour cardio, an hour muscular structure. And so that was that point. And so that was obviously probably contributing to me feeling terrible at night. But now, so now that I've transitioned and all we did was cut out processed foods, right? We cut out processed foods. We started focusing on really high quality animal products and green, leafy greens, fermented foods. And so that's the diet that I use now. And my workouts right now, they're super chill. They're a lot of yoga. I taught yoga and yoga was also very transformative for me. And I do, I kind of sync them with my cycle. So they're more intense in the first half. I really lean

on cardio in the first half of my cycle. And then in the latter half, I do a lot of yoga. I do Tracy Anderson still because I really am a fan of her method. But it's like there's rhythm, right? It's before it was kind of just like, I'm going to do this really hard workout no matter what's happening in my life. And now it's kind of like, well, what's happening in my life? Let's like kind of cater my workout to that. It sounds like you were just like running on fumes all the time. Oh, yeah. I just probably suffered from a lot of insecurities that were just fueling this just kind of like almost like paranoia and just like panic around the way I was looking and nervous system and how a lot of things that we're doing, whether it's a high cortisol workout or overworking out in your case, six hours a day or what we're eating or even like what we're doing

if we're causing chaos in our relationships, all these things are like taxing to the nervous system and it ends up being really problematic over time because it's like Chinese torture. And you know what I just started doing like probably six months that have maybe been one of the most transformative things I've ever done is somatic therapy. What's that? Have you tried somatic therapy? Oh, I don't even know if we've ever talked about it on the show. Oh, you guys need to. And I've got to tell us all about it. Somatic therapy is soma, body. It's therapy of the body. So I had been to talk therapy for years and years and years. But this is, we come and add it through, okay,

what is your nervous system telling me right now? Like, so she'll kind of analyze, okay, your posture. And then we learn tools to regulate. So if you're kind of in a hyper aroused state, right, you're anxious and, and how do you bring your body back down? How do you even, which was the most impactful part for me, how do you recognize that you're there? Because I think I was kind of living in this disassociated state for a really long part of my life. So how do you recognize what state you're in and then how do you regulate it? And I was really inspired to do it because I'm a mom, right? And I was like, I want to be a cycle breaker and I want my son to know, okay, you're up here. Here's how you come down. And it's really simple I want to be a cycle breaker. And I want my son to know, okay, you're up here.

Here's how you come down. And it's really simple. Just to give people a few things that I thought were crazy. It's just like looking around the room. Simply looking around the room is a signal to your nervous system that you're safe. Because you have that tunnel vision when you're in a stress state. And you can kind of open it up and reverse that. Interesting.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And even just like tapping, bilateral tapping. This, again, sends a signal of safety to your body. And then just rocking. My little guy and I, I just got a recliner in our room. I'm just rocking. Yeah, rocking. And if you can't be in a chair, just swaying. And I'll notice, yeah, if I'm ever in a situation where I'm feeling really anxious, just swaying. It's simple. That makes so much sense what you said about looking around, too, because this guy that does body work on me told me that it's really important to like look to the right for 30 seconds and look to the left.

Maybe that's kind of what you're saying. Like, is that in line? It is. And I've read this and I've seen videos about it that if you look and it's kind of a reset and that you'll yawn afterwards and it's kind of resetting, rebooting your nervous system. So yeah. And then there's vagal exercises that you can do. But yeah, I know I'm obsessed with the nervous system too. I think it's underrated and more important than, you know, it's as important as food, I think. So is this like an hour therapy session or you go for like 10 minutes

or do you get tools that you take home? What's this like if someone wants to book a Soma therapy session? Okay. It's awesome. It's an hour and you know, she would prefer to go longer, but like you thought, yeah, the therapist in the beginning, it was really confronting, really hard. And I was just like, okay, is this, and you talk so slow and wow. But you know, yeah, it's an hour long session. She's going to like, look at your posture. She's going to like look at your posture. She's going to talk about the situations in your life and how to use them. One really simple example for as a mom, if anyone's listening to this, my little guy, he doesn't love school and he'd come home and he'd be so upset. And we have this long ride home and it always really bummed

me out because I could tell that what I was doing was not easing his anxiety. And so what she taught me to do is just, oh, those feelings in the moment are really important. You just pull over and you get in the back seat with him. You just hold him and you cradle him and you talk to him and, you know, as calmly. And then you go home. I don't know. For me, it didn't even occur to me. Instead of just charging home in the car and saying,

just charging home and listening to him scream or wail or, know and it just felt i i don't know it just didn't feel good for me but that's just one simple shift that's a great tip how old is he he's eight and we do it now he has a bad day oh here comes mom and she you know he knows i'm gonna just pull over and we're just gonna hold each other and comforting ah yeah For me and for him. It's like, I get to like. Do kids take the bus anymore? Not my kid, but they do. Yeah. I mean, I was a bus guy, so there was nobody, there was nobody stopping and pulling over. It was like.

Zaza's dream is to take the bus. We talk about it every day. She wants to try the bus. Oh, I love that. I took the bus since like. You can take the bus with mom. I think I took the bus since like first grade. I always took the bus. Yeah.

Your parents just three and then i would hop on random you were being comforted by your dad in the back let's put it that way there was no pulling over i think no one was holding you in the back i think the bus driver like backhanded me he's like i want to do over i work with a lot of women a lot and i obviously do this show we speak to a lot of women. Sometimes when things come up around competition between women and these things that I guess, again, and maybe this sounds a bit sexist coming out of my mouth, me and my guy friends and guys,

a lot of men don't have these issues. I can't remember a single time in my life when men are comparing their bodies to each other. Unless it's like, hey, who's working out and you big building biceps or like, I feel like there's a lot of women that just like, they really get aggressive with other women, especially around competition. I wonder like for both of you,

like where do you think that comes from? Cause it's an, it's an issue that I think a lot of men just don't face and don't understand. We're competing. Right. I don't know. Maybe for male attention,

maybe for, I'm not sure if that's something that we just feel is cultural or what it is, but I don't know. I don't know exactly where it comes from. What do you think? It must be human nature. I think it's human nature. I just think it's an eight. There's one woman who's going to get the guy. I don't know. It must be ingrained. Again, and someone's going to pull a sound bite of this and it's going to make me sound bad. But I think, you know, I see... Well, now they are. I see a lot of this stuff, but like sometimes I see things online and a lot of women are just really, really hard on other women.

I think it's projection. I think it's something wrong that they don't like about themselves or their own life. And they're projecting it onto other women. So like an example of that would be a night nurse. I've seen this. Like if a woman has a night nurse online, like say an influencer or an everyday woman or a celebrity or anyone is showing their night nurse, which isn't rare because people will hide it all day long because they don't want to be chastised. I will see mothers who are tired, of course, from being up with their baby. Of course, it's tiring.

Get mad at the mother that has a night nurse. You're talking about yourself? No, I'm not talking about myself. I'm saying people have gotten mad at you. No, I guess what I'm saying is- I'm not talking about myself. I'm saying there's mothers that are maybe up all night with the baby and then they'll see someone online who has a night nurse and then they'll get angry at that woman. Does that make sense? I guess what I'm trying to get at is when I was growing up and

I would ever feel down or whatever, there was a lot of guys that would rally around and you feel like you have a support system with these guys. And it sounds like sometimes some of the experience that you've had and I know Lauren's had, it's like the opposite, right? you feel like you have a support system with these guys. And it sounds like sometimes some of the experience that you've had, and I know Lauren's had, it's like the opposite, right? It's like, you don't feel that support. And I just think it's an interesting dynamic that, you know, like guys can go out and there's no, there's no issues. You know, I think the best tip is to like go into any interaction with a lot of women with an abundant mindset. If you go in with a scarcity mindset and you're like, you're like, oh, you know, people are fighting, people are saying, like, I just think you go in with an abundant mindset. And if someone has a problem with that, like that's their own issue.

Because I remember like your story, I've known Lawrence since we were 12. And I remember a lot of the older girls doing very similar things that you're describing to you. They keyed my car, they rode on my car, They ripped my license plate off. It was, and my experience was my tires. I mean, I can, I can relate to, but I think a lot of women have experiences like that. I guess that's what I'm asking about is like, where did that come? I mean, who knows? Maybe it's a bad topic, but I'm just was wondering like where that comes from. Cause again, my experience is you get there and a lot of the older guys kind of like, yeah, you'll get like hazed a bit, but it's not malicious. It's like, you're kind of like getting indoctrinated into this brotherhood of like guys that are actually going

to support you. Or maybe you're playing a sport with them. It's not like nobody's keying cars. Why don't you go do a science experiment in a lab, Michael, and figure it out? Everyone would love to know. I just think it's an interesting dynamic because again, I see it a lot, especially in the business that I'm in where it's like, you know know and it's this space was created to kind of like support female voices and amplify that and collaborate but you know there's at times whenever there's been issues or whenever there's been pushback among this show or company it's always like angry women yeah that are attacking other women yeah I'm just gonna say it's just honest I think yeah I think humankind the way that we're wired, competition for male attention

or otherwise and projection too, because I do notice that a lot of the women who criticize me are talking about themselves. You know, I just, I have gotten that sense, even in the feedback and the comments in our ads. It's just like, oh, this seems, if you really look into it, maybe a little more relevant to you as well. So yeah. And you almost have to have empathy for it.

I do. I do. And it was like when it was my turn to be that senior i tried to make a freshman push a penny and i was like oh i couldn't no get up like i would never do that to you like i am the biggest supporter of women because of it so i mean there's a good outcome but yeah like our daughter just started school and she's young you know she's three and a half and i will come and i'll see her playing sometimes in the group and i'll always like if i see her maybe not playing with them i always tell tell her when we get home, like, hey, make sure you're including everybody and being friends and being nice to everybody.

Because I don't want like that. I don't care how she does in grades and school. I was terrible. But if I ever see her being a bully, that's gonna be a problem. That's something that's like, it's not gonna fly in the house. Yeah. We talk about that with my boy too. We talk about and also how to identify that in other people.

Do they light your candle or do they blow it out? And if they blow out your candle, yeah. I love that. Are you a mentor or are you a giver? I want to take this episode to talk about meat. So it sounds like you were not eating a lot of meat before your health transformation. And now you eat a lot of meat.

Can you talk to us about that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think if I could tell women one thing that would have the most positive impact and that was really simple, it's just get adequate protein. And I opt for 100 grams a day. So protein is they're the building blocks of our neurotransmitters of our physical body, of the signaling molecules. And so really, really important. We're always turning it over. And many women have this bias towards especially animal protein, or I did. I thought, oh, this isn't a good thing to do for the environment.

It's bad for my health. And so I didn't need it. But when I focus on high quality animal products, that was when I found that stability. Honestly, my blood sugar was finally stable. And it's just, it's very grounding. I don't know how else to describe it. And so animal products, and we can get into this when you raise them correctly. And even when you don't, they're better than a donut, right? They're just satiating. There's a protein leverage hypothesis. They're going to help turn your appetite down. They're going to help you lose weight and build better body composition. You're going to age more gracefully. The research is there. Most women are under eating it. They say to eat 46 and 56 grams respectively. Those are our dietary recommendations, but they're really based on

the minimum. And so when you look into trials of people losing weight or reducing fullness throughout the day, or even they have this, it has this thermogenic effect where you burn more calories or, you know, maintaining weight loss after you've lost weight. These are increasing sometimes up to two times what we're recommended to be consuming now. And so I do, I mean, I eat adequate animal products almost with every meal. My life is, yeah, like I said, one thing that forever transformed it. I have had a very similar experience that you had. I was eating a lot of carbs, a lot of fruit. I love fruit. I just was eating a lot of it and moved to Austin and completely changed the way I ate and literally was eating deer for breakfast the other day. Every single meal that I eat has meat in it now.

And I'm really picky about where I get my meat. And I totally get what you're saying when you say grounded. My weight has dropped. My body composition has dropped. I feel so much better. I feel more energy. I feel brighter. I feel more comfortable in my body.

I feel full. I don't eat as much carbs that I don't need to be eating or sugar. I don't drink as much. Like I can go on and on, but I will say like if it being vegan or vegetarian works for you, great. Do that. Go do that. But for me, I've noticed the same benefits that you've noticed. And I've also noticed, and I would, I feel like you're the perfect person to ask this to, is my skin has gotten tighter to my muscle and not just in my arms and my legs, in my face. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Have you been eating a lot of collagen? Because that's what I would definitely attribute it to. A lot of collagen. And also

vitamin A is really rich in animal products as well. And I'm sure that's in me, yeah. Yep, it is. And that's going to help too. But yeah, collagen is amazing. So it is the most abundant protein in our body, 25 to 35%. And we lose collagen, 8% of our collagen every decade after the age of 20. And so we have to kind of replace it. And when we don't, we start to get wrinkles and age spots. And we just get kind of sagging skin. And the thing is,

our ancestors ate collagen all the time because they were eating animals nose to tail. And our culture has largely lost touch with that. And so we're only consuming the muscle meats and we're kind of just tossing aside the collagen. Now, research has been really clear about this. When you add collagen in the mix, one trial in particular, 45 to 65 year old women consuming not even an enormous amount of collagen. I think it was something like five grams of collagen, but a 20% reduction in wrinkles. And you'll also see improved hydration. And it's working to stimulate your body's own production of collagen and helpful with elastin, right, which is another protein that you find in

your skin. And so it goes beyond skin, though. I mean, there's so many benefits of collagen, but yeah, simply adding collagen into your diet, the glycine too, there's a really special amino acid profile in collagen and glycine, proline, they all have kind of their secret sauce, but glycine has also been showed to help kind of prevent oxidative stress to the skin as well. So that's probably what you're experiencing is just hydration, more hydration and better turnover of collagen. And just, it's kind of like a fountain of youth, honestly. If you drink your bone broth, it's like taking your insides to the spa. And it's just not something that we do enough today. You mentioned Mark Sisson earlier. I was talking to him and he basically said if he could only do like one supplement, it's collagen because of all these reasons.

And I'm reading this book called The Wager, which I can't remember the author's name, but it's a really good book. And it's talking about scurvy. And when you get scurvy, it's like lack of vitamin C, which depletes your vitamin C. And then your whole body, your teeth fall out, your skin falls off your face, old wounds. So I just think, again, like I'm all for if somebody has an ethical reason to go for a plant-based diet. But I think to say that there's

no benefit to meat and collagen and some of these things is a little bit misinformed and not a lot of enough people talk about. I also, you know, it's interesting when she started eating meat, I think a lot of people that eat a ton of carbs, if you put say 50 grams of protein from an animal based product on that plate, and then the same amount of carbs you normally eat in a meal, but you eat the protein first, I guarantee you're not going to finish those carbs because you're going to be so satiated and you're going to feel full. And that is also helpful because you're not eating, again, all of these just empty nutrients. Well, yeah. And there's the protein leverage hypothesis. I think I skipped over it, but I really want to emphasize it because

it's this theory that essentially our body's looking for amino acids, right? And so if we're consuming carbohydrates and we're consuming fatty snacks, we're going to eat and eat and eat and eat until we've had that adequate amount of protein. Whereas if we just consume the protein, it kind of, it literally, it leads to the production of like glucagon, like peptide one and cholecystokinin

and these appetite regulating mechanisms. And then you just feel satiated. Yeah. You mentioned a hundred grams of protein. I would love for you to walk us through your day. Are you eating a beef stick? Are you doing bone broth? Tell us how you're getting those 100 grams of protein specifically in and I would love to know from morning to night. Awesome. So that depends on where I'm at in my cycle. I do a lot of intermittent fasting, but one of the most impactful things, a lot of women, 30 grams of protein first thing in the morning, whenever you do breakfast. So

I do 30 to 50 grams. How do you get that in? That's a lot. It is a lot. And then my, my snacks are like 10 to 20 grams. And so maybe my first meal, I do bone broth with pretty much every meal. So if you have a scoop of bone broth, you're going to have like 15 grams of protein right there. And a lot of times I'll do a shake too. So I'll have like raw egg yolks that are pastured that you trust the source. I put two or three in there. Then I might have a beef stick. Eggs are a big thing. What kind of beef stick? Oh, our Paleo Valley grass fed beef sticks. I love the beef sticks. We're going to talk about Paleo Valley and stuff, but I might need to get some of these beef sticks. Oh yeah. I will hook you up with some beef sticks. And even it's very European,

but like beef sticks in the morning, it's a thing. You can do it. Oh, I love a beef stick in the morning. Beef stick me in the morning. I give them to towns. I love a beef stick in the morning. I'm not talking about that.

I'll take your beef stick, but I do love to eat a beef stick. I had two before I started this podcast because I felt I needed a little bit of those. Yeah, a little. And they're like 10 grams of protein, right? Yeah. There's like six in one.

Now I've eaten as many. And this was when I didn't have other dietary options. I've had five. Hey, there's a meal. Have a little greens powder. But the record is 12. I have an influencer. He's eaten 12 in a row.

So yeah, beef six. Those are more often my snacks than my actual meals. I say like a palm size amount of animal products. You know, shrimp are very high protein if you're into shrimp and fish too. But yeah, this amount of beef, this amount of chicken and a ton of vegetables. I eat a ton of vegetables in addition. So that's what that looks like. But a lot of hiding egg yolks and steaks.

We eat a lot of steaks. So realistically though, for people that are listening and they're overwhelmed thinking a hundred grams, like if you could only have three meals in the day and you needed to get a hundred grams of protein, what would that look like? Cause I, to me, it doesn't sound like so much, but to some, it might sound like a ton. Absolutely. So that would look like four to six ounces of a high quality animal product, right? At each meal. And then what I do is I have, I add the bone broth into the meal too. So that's another 15 gram portion right there. So you're looking at 35 grams for each meal there.

And then you're left with, you know, 25. And then you have 25 grams left and you have snack like a hard boiled egg. You have some of our beef sticks. You have some turkey sticks. You know, you have almonds. They don't have as much protein. You have some shrimp. I love to keep those little trays of shrimp around my house. You have some tuna. You have a can of sardines. I mean, you

know. Sardines are so good for the skin. They're so good for the skin. So an egg is like what, six grams? Is that right? Yes, about six grams. Yeah. And so when I put two eggs, you know, into my smoothie, also a really high quality protein powder. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If you're really struggling to get all that meat in your body, yeah, get a high quality protein powder. The beef stick though is underrated. And here's why. The beef stick is something that you can carry in your purse.

As a mom, I love this. And I also love that I can give it to my kids. I'll chop it up for them. And this is so weird. I have two in my pocket. Randomly. I forgot I had two in my pocket. Randomly. I forgot I had these in my pocket.

I thought he was going to pull something outside of his pocket. But they're so easy to implement and the best part they don't need to be in the fridge.

No. You can just carry them like it's like a fruit snack but a beef stick. But you got to get a good source. You can't be this can't be any beef stick.

Let's clarify. Yeah. There's a beef stick. But you got to get a good source. You can't be, this can't be any beef stick. Let's clarify. Yeah. There's a lot of really dicey ingredients in most beef sticks, like BHA and BHT. And those are linked to potential carcinogens. So we have gluten, you know, problem. If you find it in the airport, it's probably not the right one, right? Yeah, exactly. Most of them aren't the right one.

And so you really want to start from a good, clean animal, grass-fed, grass-finished, regeneratively raised, if you possibly can. And then what we've done that's different is we ferment them. Talk to us about how you created your B-stick. Yeah. You know what? That came out of like when I was on tour with J-Lo and I had right before that, I had reclaimed my health and I was like on this high, like, yes, okay. So then we went on a seven month world tour. I was like, okay, sometimes we were in a different country every day. And it became really, really hard to maintain that diet. And had you started Paleo Valley at this point? No. No.

Okay. We got to get the story. And then my husband was going to meet me in France. And I said, oh, you've got to bring me some meat sticks because, you know, I'd realized protein was kind of one of the things I really, really needed. And so he brought some grass fed beef sticks over in a suitcase. They let him do this. But anyway, And it's still, these grass-fed beef sticks, they still gave me like digestive upset. And I thought, what in the world? And so once we got off tour,

I went and we decided we're going to make this realistic for people. We're going to make the healthy, nutrient-dense, clean choice also the easy one, something that everyone can take no matter what they're doing in their life. And so I called people. like what is the what are the ingredients that could potentially be bothering me and we came across something called encapsulated citric acid i don't know if you've talked about this but it's like it's the industry standard so it drops the ph but it's derived from a lot of times genetically modified corn citric acid and then coated in hydrogenated oil and there are these little beads that you just put into the product and it melts in. And so it drops the pH. And when the manufacturers were like, well, I don't want to do that. And

he's like, oh, it's industry standard. You just have to label it citric acid. No big deal. Like no one will know. And I was like, I don't care. Like that's probably in my hypothesis, that was probably one of the ingredients contributing to it. So I thought, no, no, no, we're going to do it something different, something very different. And what did our ancestors do? Like they fermented meat and it sounded weird, but a lot of other cultures do this. So I think I made 200 phone calls and we finally found a manufacturer saying, yeah, I'll ferment your sticks. You know, it's not very common because it takes about four times as long, but one guy was willing to do it. And so, and the cool part is that it has this different flavor, right? It's not like tough and chewy. It's actually, moist is the wrong word, but it has like a snap. It's like a hickory smoked

summer sausage that you get around Christmas time. It kind of has that flavor. And if it's fermented, is it better for the gut? Yeah, absolutely. We hear so many times, like I've never been able to eat beef sticks before, but I can eat these ones. And fermentation typically results in the production of probiotics. And in our first iteration, we definitely found probiotics in the sticks. We've since had to lower the water activity. And so I don't know that probiotics are still present, but it's definitely much more easily digested. Was J-Lo eating so much protein when you traveled with her? Love this question. J-Lo is a beast, eh? And I love her approach to food. Very different than

mine. But, you know, she, I remember this. She had, I think, chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese at one of her parties. That's her thing. It's just like, and she just, I think I learned it from her. I can't remember. Three bites. She has three bites of everything. Whatever she doesn't restrict, she just has what she wants. She just doesn't need a ton of it. And some people are able to do that moderation. It's not for me. Like I'm not as good at that, but for her. Yeah. What workouts were you guys doing together? Tracy Anderson. Every single time.

You know, every, you know, at the end of the tour. No, no. It was only her staff that we do yoga. But yeah, every time. I mean, Tracy Anderson sent me on that tour. And so JLo, we'd perform all the time and then she'd do a workout most days before that. Yeah. So I would love to know when you were creating the bone broth with Paleo Valley, what were some things that you noticed on the market that weren't good, like the citric acid? And what did you do differently? Yeah. It's funny because there weren't a lot of products when we started creating it. It's kind of just now really exploded. But our priorities are always the cleanest animals, no antibiotics, nor hormones at all, raised in a way that not only improves your health when

you eat it, but also the health of the ecosystem. And then most collagens actually drive from the hide or the hooves of the animal. That's so cool. Yeah. We do ours from the bones because historically that's what people were eating. Excuse me. That's not so cool. Well, I mean, I think it's kind of neutral. I think it's kind of like that is a source of collagen. But what's the better way to do it? Well, the way that I prefer is bones because bones are going to contain more than just collagen. They're going to contain minerals and they're also going to contain other healing compounds like gags, like things that support joint health, hyaluronic acid, things like that. So boiling the bones, we wanted to recreate that. So we have a bone broth protein

rather than just a collagen protein. And then also you have to really be mindful of the additives. There's just, who knows, natural flavors you'll see in tons of these bone broth protein powders. And you don't even know what's in there. Like they don't have to list what's in there. They can use processing agents that don't have to be identified and are only known to the person making the products. That's always dicey. And then also protein powders are notorious for having bpa and high levels of lead and mercury heavy metals it's just because of the way that they're created and sometimes the machinery and sometimes just anytime you concentrate something down it just like increases that and sometimes it's just you're not getting a really high quality source and so

also pesticides are you really really really want to have your collagen tested for pesticides, which is why we test for 75. Yeah. Yeah. You just want to make sure that some some third party testing is coming in because you don't want your collagen to turn into a source of toxins in your body. So your collagen has no pesticides. Yeah. We test for the presence of 75 different pesticides. And also it sounds like your bone broth has no natural flavoring, we test for the presence of 75 different pesticides. And also it sounds

like your bone broth has no natural flavoring, no natural flavoring. And it sounds like your beef sticks have no citric acid. So what I what I love so much about your company is that you are so passionate about what you have put in your own body because you've had your own digestive issues that to me, I think it establishes a really nice trust with the consumer because you aren't going to be eating anything that's all these hidden shit, pesticides, citric acid. It sounds like you really created this to fill a need for yourself first and then other people just kind of really identify with the mission. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And especially since I have a child now,

you better believe there's nothing I'm going to put in his body that I think could potentially hurt him. But I'm sure you guys have heard this highly sensitive person thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like 15% of the population is, I think that is like one of my gifts that has not always felt like a gift, but like, I just feel things in my body profoundly. And so, yeah, if I don't feel right with it, then yeah, we're not going to produce it and definitely take every step to make sure that it's as clean as possible. So when you think of a product, obviously you have a vast offering now, but when you think of developing something new, what does that process look like? Is it like, hey, you discover collagen, for example, and you say, hey, there's not the source that I would like or not the

product that I would like, or are you looking for specific categories to go into? Both. And usually what happens is I'm just so excited around the research around food as medicine. So I always find ingredients that I'm like, wow, we have to do that if it's not available. But almost always we can find a reason to make a different version. Collagen, for example, or beef. A lot of the beef in our country is actually imported grass-fed beef and it's not necessarily grass-finished, right? You can have grass-fed beef that is then grain-fed. And we wanted to create a supply here, like an incentivization for American farmers to do regenerative methods. So when we source, it's American farmers, right? And it's grass-fed and grass-finished, and it's using agroecological

principles that are restoring environmental health. So yeah, sometimes it's just saying, okay, these look like pretty good products, but we could make the sourcing better, more beneficial in some way, or it's creating an entirely new category. I think we were like the second organ complex on the market. You know, just Dr. Schmidt came before us. But yeah, it's both.

And we have food scientists on our team. And many times it's my darling husband, Chaz. He's an idea man. We just work together. He seems like a fun time oh my goodness he's the best hey chas he's the best i know i wish he was here he can come on next time yes speaking of organ meats obviously a lot of people are now this has become mainstream people are talking about all the time yeah what would you push people towards and what

would you caution them against when it comes to these kind of products that's a good question because i think like everyone's hearing all this stuff and you know you caution them against when it comes to these kind of products? Ooh, that's a good question. I want to know that. Because I think everyone's hearing all this stuff and you have these, like one of our studios, the liver king was in there with a giant plate, slamming all this food. And not passing judgment on anybody, but I think this has become a hot topic and people are obviously interested in the subject. But I think just like anything else, you have to get the right source and have a little bit of information. A hundred percent. And I want to talk about something exciting. I just learned about that after it, remind me. So yeah, you want animals that are raised appropriately. You don't want

antibiotics. You don't want hormones. You don't want pesticides. And for us, it meant we want an American supply again, because a lot of them are coming from other countries. And I understand because historically they've had higher standards. But I think now a lot of American regenerative farmers are getting ahead of this trend and they're not using antibiotics or pesticides. Also, you want to freeze dry, right? You want to have it. The processing really, really matters too. And so you could damage the fragile proteins or other nutrients. And so having like a freeze dried and then you just don't want anything else in it. And people hear that like eating liver, it's a toxin because it's storing everything. The liver is not. It's processing things and it's letting go of that. But that doesn't mean that pesticides, antibiotics or hormones or when the animals are treated poorly that it couldn't somehow negatively impact the quality of that. The quality of the animal, the processing. And of course, you just don't want any extra additives in there. If we want to just get a quick organ in, what's the best organ to get in?

Are you talking about with capsules or just to eat? Both. Okay. So yeah, I love our grass-fed organ complex. If you're someone like me, it was when I got pregnant that I realized, wow, focusing on nutrient density is important. I was exhausted. And I read about this anti-fatigue factor in liver and my husband tried to hide it so many ways, right? He, you know, put the tripe, just like snuck it in some beef or, you know, soaked it in milk. What a good husband. Yeah. He, yeah. It, you know, it didn't work for me. You didn't sneak liver in anything of mine,

Michael. How do you know? How do you know? Maybe I did. So for me, capsules are the way to go. I love our organ complex. It's liver, heart, and kidney, and that's genius. But if you want to like kind of like the gateway organ is maybe like heart or tongue or chicken liver rather than beef liver. Beef liver is going to have a much more pungent taste. So soaking it in milk, tongue, heart, and chicken liver is a better way to go. I don't mind liver that much. I'd rather have the beef. Okay. Well, that's just me because it freaks me out.

Birds freak me out. Well, there's a lot of problems with the way that we raise most birds. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. If the audience were to start with one of your products, for me, I'm going to say the beef sticks or the bone broth because I think it's such a great way to get more protein. And like you said, I think that's genius. You're eating three eggs, have a cup of bone broth. You're eating three eggs, have a snack of a beef stick. What is the one product though, if you had to pick one for our

audience that you would recommend? Great question. I would say bone broth. And you know why? We didn't even touch, scratch the surface on the research around it but but glycine is an amino acid that most of us aren't consuming enough of there's research to suggest that the amount our body produces because it is conditionally essential right you don't you can make it but the amount our body produces is not tied to how much we actually need and so we make three grams a day we eat about three grams a day. We eat about three grams a day. And research suggests we probably need more like 15, maybe even up to 30 grams a day. Wow, I never heard that much.

And when we don't, yeah, this is a really cool 2009 paper written. And he took all of these things into consideration. And so we're kind of working with this glycine deficiency syndrome. And so glycine is important for collagen turnover, right? So when collagen turnover stops and you don't get at least that 12 grams you need a day,

that kind of backs out, right? You start to have the sagging skin and the wrinkles and all that. But also glycine is really important for glutathione, our master antioxidant production. And so that just helps us not age as quickly or age as gracefully. Also creatine for our muscle and our bones and bile salt so that we can digest everything. So if everyone is walking around with a glycine deficiency, I just think everyone could potentially benefit from that even more than just protein alone, like collagen protein special.

So drink the freaking bone broth all day long throughout the day. Drink it all day. I'm telling you. How many grams of glycine do you think in a serving of the bone broth? It's about a third of the amino acid portion.

If you get our unflavored version, 15 grams, you're going to have around five. Okay, that's a good, that's a healthy. that's a healthy. It's a healthy. I need the bone broth. You need the chocolate bone broth.

I'm telling you the chocolate bone broth is magical. My God, that sounds so good. I know. I just said Dr. Drew just came and he just got affiliated with our company and he is obsessed. Like I came on like when he did an interview and I was expecting to just like totally geek out. And he was just like, I can't even tell you how much your bone broth,

your chocolate bone broth has changed my life. I'm going to go order that chocolate bone broth and the unflavored. That is genius. I also sometimes put bone broth in my kids' cups and just give it to them. It's hot chocolate. My little guy asked for hot chocolate.

That's a great tip. And you mix it with, we go down, we have a dairy farm right near our house and we mix it with this raw dairy that we have. It's heaven. And he doesn't, I mean, it's as sweet, I think, as hot chocolate with way more benefits. I'm giving my kids hot chocolate bone broth. Can we do a giveaway of beef sticks and bone broth and chocolate bone broth? Yes, absolutely. Okay. All you guys have to do to win is to follow at Paleo Valley on Instagram and tell us your favorite takeaway. There were so many from this episode. I will be implementing more glycine into my diet, having more bone broth with every meal and eating my

beef sticks left and right. Michael, don't get excited. Where can everyone find you, the company, and pimp yourself out? Okay. PaleoValley.com and also Instagram, Facebook. We also have another company, Wild Pastures, and Wild Pastures Burger Company. If you're local to the Denver, Boulder area, I'd love to see you there too. I love what you're doing. I think it's so cool. And that hot chocolate for kids. My God, that's a good tip. It's my favorite. Thank you. Thank you guys for listening. This episode was brought to you by Paleo Valley. If you're interested in trying any Paleo Valley products, we have a special offer just for our listeners. Head over to paleovalley.com slash skinny for 20% off your first order. Paleovalley.com slash skinny for 20% off.