Well with Arielle Lorre - 7: JUSTIN JANOSKA - Flexible Dieting, Body Image and Discovering our Truth

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

In this episode Arielle has a thought-provoking conversation with clinician and founder of The Autoimmune Revolution, Justin Janoska, about topics ranging from body image and it's effect on all areas of our lives; flexible dieting (including counting macros) and it's ramifications; influencers' and social media's role in many people's body dissatisfaction and conversely, what is really at the root of the widespread narcissism on the internet. Justin is truly a trailblazer in his field and his passion and knowledge will have you hooked. More about Justin Justin Janoska is a clinician and the founder of The Autoimmune Revolution - an emerging company that guides women in their healing journey to reverse their autoimmune disease and reproductive disorder naturally with specific attention on Hashimoto’s, Lupus, PCOS and Endometriosis. He holds a Master’s degree in Human Nutrition from The University of Bridgeport, but has a very different and unique approach that emphasizes mind-body medicine, including childhood trauma, and early adult stress. Through his work with clients, he helps them acquire a deeper understanding of they got here, supports them to be with their pain and embrace their truth. Justin and his team are committed to revolutionizing how we address and heal autoimmune disease in women. Discover more about The Autoimmune Revolution here: http://theautoimmunerevolution.com/ And follow Justin on Instagram here! Arielle's cookbook:https://theblondefiles.com/the-blonde-files-cookbook/ Follow Arielle here on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ariellelorre/ And catch up with Arielle here on YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm your host, Ariel Lori. I'll be talking to movers and shakers in the world of wellness and beyond, and people who have had their own interesting journey, whether it be physical, mental, spiritual, or professional. Thanks for joining. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Or welcome to the podcast. I feel like that's my intro every week, so I need to get some new material here. But for now, let's just go with it. So I am really excited about today's episode. I have Justin Janoska, who I found through Brianna DiOrio, who is a rock star, as you know, if you listen to her podcast,

which was a few weeks back. So Justin is a clinician and the founder of the autoimmune revolution, which is an emerging company that guides women in their healing journey. to reverse their autoimmune disease and reproductive disorder naturally with specific attention on Hashimoto's lupus, PCOS, and endometriosis. He holds a master's in human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport, but he has a very different and unique approach that emphasizes mind-body medicine, which includes childhood trauma, early adult stress. You'll hear us talking about some inner child work, and he just has a totally different approach than most practitioners that I've seen. Through his work with his clients, he helps them acquire a deeper understanding

of how they got here. He supports them to be with their pain and embrace their truth, and he and his team are committed to revolutionizing how we address and heal autoimmune disease in women. And he's really doing amazing work. We had such a good conversation. We actually focused more on flexible dieting. He has a book coming out called The Flexible Diet Disaster. And this is something that was important to me because if you've been following me for a long time on social media, you'll know that I had my own experience with flexible dieting. And at the time I thought I thought I was doing the right thing.

And in hindsight, I see it very differently. And I see how it really negatively impacted me at the time and then followed me for a while after. And it's so prevalent nowadays. I did a poll on Instagram and asked people how many of them felt like they were afraid of food. And I think it was like 85% said they were. and for me that food fear kind of came out of my flexible dieting. So it's different for everybody. This isn't necessarily to deter anybody from doing any of this.

We're not saying it's inherently bad. It's different for everybody. So my goal with this podcast is to inform and inspire other people, you guys, the listeners, to learn and want to explore what works best. for you. And that's going to be probably different from what works best for me and the next person. And it's really about exploration. So without further ado, Justin Janoska. Okay, welcome Justin. Hey, nice to be here. How are you? Thank you so much for coming on. I'm so excited to talk to you. I feel like I'm a Brianna DiOrio fan girl. And then I found you,

her and you guys kind of have similar styles and you're always putting out like research and science and facts and you're passionate about it. So now I'm kind of you're a fan girl too. Yeah, she's great and also on a whole new level too with that. So yeah, absolutely. So why don't you just give everyone a brief background about you? Yeah, of course. So I work with women who have reproductive disorders and autoimmune disease. That is literally the crux of what I focus on with my clients.

And I have a company called the autoimmune revolution. And it encompasses those two areas. So PCOS and demetriosis, that sort of stuff. However, based around this discussion that we're going to have today, I started

to weave in eating disorders, disorder eating, anxiety past traumas. you know, that sort of thing as well because it kept showing up a lot that would coexist with our clients with autoimmune disease, right? And I couldn't ignore it. So that I realized was being tied into a lot of what's going on in the fitness space with flexible dieting and macros. And so now it's not a big thing I focus on, but it's something that is really, really important, I think, because not a lot of people have shed a lot of flight on the

cons and downsides of flexible dieting macros. Not to say that it's not useful and not helpful. It absolutely is. It's got a lot of utility, but, you know, there are pitfalls with it. And I think the consequences and the potential health ramifications are much more severe and untouched. And, you know, that's a big problem, I think, because it's great. breeding, honestly, it's feeding into chronic disease and autoimmune disease because I can see that,

you know, so it becomes one vicious cycle. So I kind of try to cover a lot of areas, I think, with what I do, but it all kind of makes sense in my mind. But traditionally speaking, I got my master's degree in nutrition, which focused it on, you know, functional medicine at the University of Bridgeport. And so that was my first entry point into the autoimmune space. my mom was Hashimoto's. It's pretty much why I do this in the first place. However, like I said before, I kept seeing a lot of these other issues show up with Hashimoto's and lupus and MS and stuff like that. And you know, you got to treat, well, you got to address everything I think to the ability that I can. And so that's pretty much how I got here. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting

because I think you have a really holistic viewpoint of health, obviously, and when we get into it, you know, I think kind of what's at the core of counting macros, it's really issues about, like, self-worth and how we feel about ourselves and how we view ourselves, right? And you can't be healthy, and especially if you're struggling with something like autoimmune disease, right, if you're struggling with those issues as well. Yeah, absolutely. because, you know, it's not as straightforward as this, but a lot of women, usually in the young 20s who do competitions and dieting, you know, they're really putting their body through the ringer. And so it's not uncommon to see, I actually see this more often than autoimmune disease, but PCOS, you know, they have the right genetic susceptibility to have that condition.

But, you know, for some people, it's like one major stressful event, whether it's dieting or competitions or. over exercise or something like that or an emotional stress that really tips them over the edge and overfills their bucket and then they have full-blown you know health problems so that can look like a lot of different ways but you know i think uh dieting can in a long term we're talking about not like three months of this but you know years and years of dieting and never giving yourself a break is just you know it has a twofold effect um one on your physical body and the emotional well-being as well and you know, it's speeds right into it. Right. You mentioned competition. I have a lot of women that follow me who have done or do competitions, and I seem to get a lot of questions around that

and around like, is it ever okay to put your body through that even just once and fully recover? Yeah. And so it's, it's a, there's a multifactorial answer to that because, yeah, you can get away with it because I see it all the time, right? People still can do that. But again, if you have certain weaknesses or shortcomings in your health already, you know, your immune system is really compromised. You have, you know, genetics, neps, whatever related to autoimmune disease or PCOS and you're just very sensitive to stress. Like, you're not going to do well and your body is going to respond and, you know, show you its wrath. And we can choose at that moment to either surrender and move on or just keep ignoring our intuition and doing it anyway, which we mostly do.

It's just rejected. Yeah. I never did a competition or anything like that, but I have my own experience with flexible dieting and counting macros. And I kind of thought that it was the answer. And, you know, I got my macros calculated for me by a stranger that I found on the internet. and this isn't to put that person down or anything. But, you know, they got my height and my weight and what I considered to be my activity level and then they calculated it, you know, so it was based on math.

They didn't take into consideration any of my, you know, other factors like the fact that I have PCOS and my stress load and all of that. So initially I felt good because I think the way that I did it, I was eating a lot more frequently throughout the day. So maybe my blood sugar was a little more stable. But also I was losing weight because I was eating far too few calories. And that in and of itself, I think, was really exhilarating, right? I mean, what woman doesn't want to lose weight?

Probably not a whole lot of us. Oh, yeah. And then it became like, well, if I can be achieving this aesthetic goal, eating this many calories, I can just bring. them down 100 or 200 and I started doing the math on myself and it got to the point where like you're saying I was rejecting all of my body's cues and I I mean by the end of it I couldn't even work out I had so many issues my body was under so much stress my hormones were completely out of whack I also had really bad gut issues at that time which were probably I'm sure there was a

correlation and and I could not function and that's where it's led me. So that doesn't happen to everybody, but, you know, what you were saying about rejecting those cues really resonates with me. Well, you brought up a point real quick that I meant to mention about the whole, you know, kind of coach issue and the context of the diet itself because dieting is one thing, but like how you go about it is another. And a lot of the typical stereotypical scenarios that we see is the young.

woman who hire somebody off Instagram and she gets a, you know, 1100, maybe a thousand calorie or lower diet. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it's the truth, right? And they have low carbs and, you know, we have food discrimination, you know, good food list, bad food list. We count macros. We do meal prep. We do fast at cardio. We do, we spend hours and hours per day revolving around food and diet and exercise. And, you know, we literally are just so consumed by that. And that is just going to dismantle our health mentally and physically over the long term. And so, like, there is a safer and easier way that doesn't cause so much restriction to get the same result. And, you know, probably putting that competition aside a little bit because towards the end of, like, Piqui, you have to do things differently.

It's one exception. But outside of that, for the average fitness fiend, you see what happens. And that's kind of what my point here is, especially with the book that I'm releasing this month about how this is really causing a problem. because it caused you to be obsessive macros because of what your coach has done to you. And that reinforces or causes physical and emotional stress that can then push you into emotional eating and compensatory behaviors. And that leads to body image satisfaction. And because you're probably just going to regain the weight back when you compensate and binge. And then you're back on a dieting thing.

And it comes one big cycle. And I see that. Yeah. And are we ever really satisfied? If we get to our goal, is it ever enough? You know, I would argue not. So when does it end? Yeah.

And the reason why it's not is because of two other reasons that I believe is because of our own unmet needs and feelings of inadequacy and unfulfillment and unworthiness from our childhood and trauma and stuff potentially. And also because social media influencers do that by just putting out their content. and we are automatically gravitating towards that and, you know, having this inner dialogue of, my God, I'm self-fat. Look at her. She's amazing.

And didn't self-reparas and stuff. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Guilty is charged, too. I mean, I was one of those influencers a couple years ago. I hope I'm not anymore. But, yeah, I mean, it's kind of getting shoved down our throats everywhere we look, right?

This impossible aesthetic. So why don't we back up a little and just, in layman's terms, kind of explain what we mean by counting macros and, I guess, flexible dieting. Sure. So we have what's known as rigid dieting, which would be honestly what a lot of people have done in the past. And that includes just basically exactly what it sounds like, having a good food list, bad food list, right? And it's very restrictive. You have to fall asleep tea. the calories and the macros have to be exactly whatever they're, you know, assigned to be. Macros and flexible dieting was kind of like a reprieve from that.

And over the past, you know, she's, I don't even know, seven, eight, nine years. And so like that's been really helpful for a lot of people because it allows that freedom in the sense that, well, as long as I have, as long as I am hitting my numbers, my 142 grams or my 35 grams of fat per day, whatever, I can eat whatever I want within those, as long as it hits those numbers, I can eat whatever I want. Because at the time we were thinking, and I think some people still have this belief that, you know, a calorie is not a, you know, basically like the fact that calories are created equal and they're not, you know.

Right. And so that's a huge misbelief. Like five calories or 500 calories of, you know, kale is the same as 500 calories. Right. Right. The biochemical effects are obviously vastly different for each thing. So that kind of got us into the, okay, we'll eat Pop-Tarts. Literally, that's what people were doing.

And this was maybe like five, six years ago. And I remember it on Twitter, but, you know, we'll see Pop-Tarts and we'll still lose weight. And yeah, that might be achievable, actually. But are you still healthy? Probably not. And that's, you know, the thing is that we have to think of. bad our own health, you know, not just weight loss. And so, you know, the thing I talk about is that flexible dieting is a double-edged sword. It's great in a lot of ways, right, because it offers

that reprie from rigid dieting, but it's also a disaster and causes a lot of issues because, you know, even still, and I'll tell you an example in a client I've had recently with an eating disorder and anorexia. She told me that we basically determined that she would never eat a quote unquote chief food, right? That, and some people honestly don't eat those. They don't eat donuts or ice cream or anything like that. It's quote unquote bad, even though they have the ability to, right? They just, they prefer to eat healthy foods.

And she told me that she would only eat those bad foods as long as she were counting macros because she knew that if she ate it, it wouldn't cause any detriment. Whereas if she did it off macro counting, she wouldn't, she wouldn't, she wouldn't do it because that she would fear that she would gain weight like she doesn't trust her intuition and that's a problem is making that transition after that's a dieting if we're trying to be intuitive eater which we all should do which we should do in general yeah i can absolutely relate to your client i mean that's exactly how i felt a couple years ago um i was so even posted on instagram today like right before our podcast i went out and i got this like oatmeal seed nut

date bar. I don't even know what. You know, it's not unhealthy by any means. And I slathered it in almond butter and it was made fresh, you know, next door to my apartment. There were no macros or anything. And like, I was reflecting back on a couple years ago and that would have like terrified me. I never would have eaten that ever. Or I would have tried to like input the recipe and figured out how I could fit it in. And, and yeah, I mean, it's. there's so much food fear, even when you are doing something like flexible dieting. I'm curious, though.

Couldn't somebody argue that flexible dieting is more sustainable and therefore a better option than rigid dieting? Oh, absolutely. That was kind of what I was alluding to, I think. Now, it is very helpful and it gets people out of that sort of structured way of eating. And that's great. But, you know, my whole thing is, and I see this more, and I see this more so over the years, that it just becomes an obsession where we can't stop it.

And I call, and there's something that I talk about a lot, which is the cognitive eating, excuse me, cognitive eating roadblock. So no matter how much food freedom you have, you still have the inability to detach from county macros. it's still in your head. It's like this becomes a habitual practice that we use like an indelible mental mark and you can't erase it. And know that because I've been there myself when I did macro counting.

And so to me, that's a problem. If you're trying to disassociate from macros and flexible dieting and you're out eating with friends at a restaurant, but yet in your head you're like looking at the plate, okay, that's probably like 31 grams of carbs. That one's probably like 15 grams of fat, you know? and you're basically, you've downloaded my fitness palat in your head, maybe it's deleted off your phone, but it's still in your head. And you're just calculating, and that's still disorder eating, right?

And I don't really care whether it's a classical, you know, diagnosis of an eating disorder or not. It's still a problem. That disorder eating can, you know, turn into a full-blown eating disorder, I think. Right. And, I mean, it's not classified as a full-blown eating disorder, but it's also fairly new, right? Yep, exactly.

You talk about the, a huge problem is in how we get to flexible dieting to begin with, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, why we diet in the first place is a question we need to ask ourselves, why are you dieting, right? And a lot of us, we think we know, but we don't. And at the root of it all, I believe that a lot of people have just, have this feeling of body image dissatisfaction. Even the research shows this, right? So people who have body image dissatisfaction, you know,

move into flexible dieting or rigid dieting. And then that's where that whole cascade of disorder eating habits and eating disorders kind of come out. But I think people have body image dissatisfaction because of just their childhood. and or social media. It's really one of those two, and I've seen them both. Right?

So social media influences like I talked about before can create this belief that you're not good enough because she's a lot better than I am and I need to lose weight. Right. We want to feel like we're a part of a tribe, right? We want to feel like we're, we belong somewhere. And if their tribe looks a lot better than ours, well, that's what we need to do in order to get that, right? To be a part of that. And yet ironically, the influences out there have their own insecurities and past traumas and issues that they haven't worked through themselves. And they're also trying to fit in somewhere else.

So it's one big, what I call it, influencer hypocrisy paradox, right? Yeah, I was going to say, like, when you're, like, posting half-naked ass shot photos on the internet, like, there's probably, probably something going on inside. Well, yeah. I mean, that narcissism has to stem from somewhere. You know, if that's, I'm not saying you do one photo and you're just automatically like narcissistic. No, but like you do it all the time.

And there's a lot of people that do this and I've seen it. Like just very little value in their captions. It's like just kind of basically doing it for themselves instead of for their audience. And so, you know, even though they look great, they still have their own body image satisfaction. And that's just like a distorted view of life, right? And where does that come from? Probably their childhood and, you know, their adverse experiences they went through,

whether being, whether, whether being physical neglect, emotional neglect or physical or emotional abuse, right? So, yeah, and this is, this is definitely in the research as well, but I've seen this in compliance. And so that body satisfaction is, and healing that is, exactly what needs to be looked at, not the diet, not the fact that we need to, you know, die better or in the right way, but we need to see why we're dieting the first place and then

heal the wounds that are deep within us that we've ignored for so long. Yeah. I was reading your website and there was this sentence. You said, if you're dieting, tracking macros and in an endless pursuit for a dream that does not complement your other pillars in life, but instead disintegrates your social, spiritual, and personal health, and you need to have an honest reevaluation of your priorities and how much your body image plays a role in the quality of your life. Yeah. And that was like, I mean, hit me like a ton of bricks.

I mean, you never think about how your body image plays a role in the quality of your life and how far its tentacles reach, right? Like personal, spiritual, social, it really does affect. like you said, disintegrate. Such a powerful way to put it. So you talk about self-love being the antidote to all of this. But if somebody finds themselves here, how can they reevaluate and how can they try to make changes?

If they find themselves where? I understand. If they find themselves at a point where their social, spiritual, personal health is affected by, their body image and the role that is playing in the quality of their life. If somebody's like counting macros and they're listening to this and they realize like, shit, this might not be serving me. Well, you know, like I kind of mentioned it, but like you have to step back a bit, right?

And the posing question I raised to a lot of people is, it's where my clients rather is, we'll ask yourself, how do I come to be this way, right? how to come to be this way? Like, what is my story? Right? Why do you think, why do I think I end up here? I ended up here having this illness, having this disease, having this disordiating habit, having, you know, these challenges and emotions that I experience every day. And the thing is we're just like, it's subconscious stuff so we don't really access it unless we try to.

And that comes back to really mindfulness meditation doing all those sort of things that we all know about, but we don't do it. right it's a very simple concept but it's very hard to implement and so it's it's really it's a narrative medicine and this is like kind of what I really focus on with my clients is my body medicine and really seeing how they got here because without awareness we can't do anything and honestly sometimes the awareness alone is is the ability to detach and escape right from these self-defeating behaviors, right? But that's also part of what dieting is. I think it's part of the, you know, category of self-defeating self-sabotage behaviors in a way. You know we're thinking that it's doing your favor, right? Because it also fits in with with binging, you eat in food and drugs and

opioids and alcohol and whatever, right? These are all automatic patterns that we have developed. as a result of the stories and beliefs that we've had about our life that are stemming from these buried, unreconciled, unprocessed emotions. And it just so happens that dieting happens to be one of those behaviors, right? Yeah. So what would you say is, I mean, how do you go about breaking the cycle? Yeah, I wish that was a simple answer. I mean, there are a lot of things that, a lot of tools and techniques that we use, but

But the simple, the quick answer to that is really trying to learn how to sit down and be still for a moment. And, you know, practice meditation so you can cultivate awareness, right? That's where, that's really how you get better at it because I know because I've been there myself. But when you can do that, then you can start to piece together your history and see about, you know, so one of the things I talk about a lot is the, biography biology timeline and that's something where you just kind of think about well at what age did I have this event major event going on in my life thinking about the major stories and traumatic experiences whatever that you know that you that you have because you remember it you know that went on what ate how old were you then and then when did this sort of behavior when are the

eating issues show up when did the binging show when did the you know the purging show up when did the you know crazy two hours of gym sessions show up, right? And then what were the emotions that you think were circulating in your head at that time? Right. So that's literally the first thing we have to do because I can't tell you what to do. And that's, in fact, no one really can. No one can really tell you how to break the cycle. But you, what we're doing here is guiding people or I am trying to say to people,

I want to guide you to open up and listen inside and support you, view with her pain and embrace your truth. Right. Right. So seeing your truth and seeing with, seeing it with new eyes, right? It's not what's happening to us. It's how we relate to what's happening to us. Nothing changes in your life except for how you look at it. So we're really trying to bring them home and to their true and authentic self. And oftentimes, just that awareness alone is what allows them to break free from it. But even that is still kind of simplistic. You need to do other things sometimes depending on the context. But I mean, that's for the, for the listener, that's the simplest and most, you know,

practical thing that you can do now is try to piece this out and see like what happened, you know, because all of this happened for a reason. It didn't just happen because it felt like it, you know. What kind of meditation do you do? So I, you know, I do a couple of different ones, not just the basic focus on your breath type. stuff but loving kindness meditation is a favor to mind i like to use a lot i do guide imagery with my clients and be in a child work we do um yeah those are the big ones i would say we do um there are a lot of different styles within that but it's it's i think having uh

sort of practice where you have an inner advisor or somebody that you look up to as a hero your grandmother you know, a fictional character, whoever, you know, I think of honestly like, you know, like grandmother Willow in the Pocahontas, right, that tree that talks to her. Like, I think of that, you know, like I think having something like that in your meditation is really powerful, especially when you're trying to heal your wounds because imagine you had some, you have somebody in front of you, a little girl who just got slung by a bee or something. And you do nothing about it, right? And she just learns that that's just pain.

And, you know, she makes up a story about it. A lot of us are wounded internally. And there's a wounded child in all of us and probably in our parents too, which is what, which is why we behave the way we do because of them. Right. And so one of the things that we can do is try to communicate with that wounded child and tell her that basically the younger version of yourself, the five-year-old version of you, right?

and say, you're going to be okay. And in the same sense that grandmother or the 95-year-old tree you're talking to is going to say those same sort of messages to you, right? Because we all know that. If we were to ask our grandmother, you know, how to help us, they're going to have all the right words to say, right? Yeah. And so that's in the same way we're trying to do that to our younger version of herself.

That's a very healing, very powerful and healing. sort of thing you can do. But it's, it's, it's very tricky and sensitive for people because it really gets to the heart of the wound and it's, it's not easy to do. But it's just something you get gently got to touch every now and then and then see what you can make of it. Yeah, I did some of that. You know, I'm very vocal about my sobriety and I did a lot of therapy, a lot of rehab when I finally got sober this time and I did inner child work and it's very powerful. Yeah. And then I, you know, I started doing, I dabbled in meditation and then a year ago I started doing TM and that was really huge for me. Something that it did other than teaching me how to like sit with my emotions and my past and my

present and all of that and be accepting. It definitely attuned me more to my body, and I felt like it kind of happened at the right time because it was after I stopped counting macros, and I was trying to figure out how to eat intuitively because so much of my eating was, all of my eating, was driven by emotions prior to that. Uh-huh. And, and yeah, I really became more adept at identifying, like, hunger cues and just trusting my body. And that's a thing too, right? So I fell into this trap, I think, that we can just be mindful eaters and practice that and, you know, do food journaling and let's do our five senses and stuff. And that's helpful, right? But it's still like a band-aid at the end of the day if you have not dealt the emotions that underlie that. You know? Yeah, they're going to keep coming up. Right. manifesting in different ways. So what would you say to people who are unhappy with their bodies and they want to change it?

I mean, in some circumstances, that's okay, right? How does one go about doing that in a healthy way? So the thing I say is, you know, die because you love yourself, not because you hate yourself. And only you will know the answer to that. So if you believe that you're going to diet and it's going to achieve some outcome and you get there and you're still unsatisfied, then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons. Right. And you're continuing to follow this. And it's one like perpetual pursuit.

But you have to be honest and have awareness of any sort of, you know, unprocessed emotions that might be the reason why it's why you're dieting. right because a diplan you know is or the right coach or whatever is not going to be the answer to this you know we should be okay with eventually where we are and accept our body for what it is we should accept it even if we are as healthy as can be mentally and spiritually right and we are 100 pounds overweight we should still be able to be okay with ourselves and accept ourselves right a lot of this i'm not going to go off on the tangent too much but a lot of people are in the fitness, self-development world, or like self-love this, self-love that.

And it's still almost like a lie because if you don't accept yourself for who you are, then it's almost like you're not really loving yourself. So that's, it's one of these things that you have to, you have to have both. So it begins with self-acceptance in my opinion. And when you do that, then self-love follows. But, you know, if we're just saying we need to love ourselves,

and that will be our answer to, you know, successful weight loss and not having any more emotional pain maybe tied to it, then see how far that gets you, you know. You got to look to see what else might be, you know, lingering in the background. And if you can authentically, truthfully say that I accept and love myself unconditionally, me, then I would say you permission. I'm not telling you what to do, but you have permission to diet, right? You can do that because nothing should change at the end of the day. You just do it because you love yourself and you want to do it, right?

That's why I think dieting for person, I'm sorry, competing for a personal pursuit is fine. If everything is solid in other areas of your life, but if it's like a done deal, if you don't get first place and you self-sabotage as a result, and you think all your work is hinging off your body, then you're dieting for the wrong reason. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah, totally. So radical acceptance. Yeah, right.

I love it. Okay, so let's get to a few questions. I had a lot of people ask this, actually. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting? Is that another unhealthy cycle that can be? lead to eating disorders? You know, I don't think so. I mean, I use it periodically with some of the clients that we have that have insulin

resistance and blood sugar issues and stuff like that. It's really therapeutic in that sort of way and also from an inflammatory standpoint as well. That's mostly why I use it, not so much for weight loss because the evidence that it is more superior than regular feeding every two or three hours is not. not there. So there's no added benefit. Honestly, I did it for four years and I loved it. I just felt really good. And not everybody can get and get away with that. If you're hybolycemic, it's not a good idea to do that. Yeah. I tried doing it briefly and it did not feel, it didn't feel right for me. I don't know because of my hormones. I know it's it can be tougher

for women, especially with hormone imbalances. I mean, would you tell, would you tell a client with PCOS to steer clear? No, I actually recommend it for PCOS a little bit. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because they're mostly insulin resistant, right? And so that will be something that we'll use. And again, it's not something that I push on anybody.

I'm like, hey, like, I think this will help you if you're willing to do it. Give it a shot. And let's see if we can push back meal one by an hour and see how you do. And then over time, you just keep pushing it back a little bit more and more and you get like, you know, whatever, a 16 hour. fasting window going and you know they start to be able to handle it but it's a short-term thing anyway like I don't expect them to do it forever and it wouldn't probably be realistic either so yeah it's just one of the things that we'll use but yeah especially with people like like that and maybe even you know diabetes a little bit that's when I think intermittent fasting

has the best utility interesting I need to get you back on to talk PCOS. That's a big one. Okay. Can you talk yourself into the food you eat making you sick? Oh, great question. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. And the reason why is, so, for example, I get questions all the time or really just statements saying that they ate this food and they think it's causing their constipation of of bloating, right? It's causing the skin reaction. And actually, this happened the other week with a client of mine. And I said, okay, what were the emotions around it? Were you having, you know, stress?

Are you anxious? Were you frustrated, whatever? Did you go into believing that it would cause problems? Because honestly, you manifest the outcome you anticipate. If you think that ex-food is going to cause this problem, yeah, you're going to make it happen. Right? And that's, it's, that's because our emotions can do that. And so that's a very possible reality that can happen.

So if you think of food, and that doesn't, it doesn't not absolutely negate the fact that the food itself can be, you know, a problem at a biological level or cellular level, right? It can absolutely still do that. And you can say, this food isn't going to bother me at all. I'm going to have, you know, perfect health, just like it was yesterday when I eat the food and still have problems. But if you're believing that it's going to be an issue, you're just basically compounding the problem or creating one that never would have happened anyway if you didn't think that way. Yeah, I can attest to that. I had, you know, I'm very, I talk about my gut issues a lot.

And last year I was like kind of on this gut healing journey and I was avoiding a lot of foods. And I, there are definitely certain things that when I eat them, I don't feel great. But like, I think it was a couple weeks ago. I was eating, I was devouring an almond butter. Like, I had two jars in like three days. And I was so good. And like I was having it on apples or whatever. I didn't notice anything. And then when I looked at the ingredients, it was like a raw almond butter. But it had a few ingredients in it that I've been avoiding for over a year. And I didn't notice. I mean, I didn't feel any different. And it was just, kind of interesting. I thought kind of like what you just said. I think the fear and the expectation and the anxiety around it maybe was at least lending itself to the reaction that I had

previously. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yep. Can counting macros or dieting cause fluid retention or weight gain? Well, that's more attributed to the food, you know, not the act of counting macros, right? Unless you... What about the stress around it? Your, you know, your BMR. Stress, yes, absolutely, right? So, like, that's, I think, honestly, that's what most people are dealing with,

because if you're really anxious to stress out through this daily life and, honestly, even the untouched stuff in your subconscious mind that could be yeah it could be there but you know really with moderns daily living and kind of how we're like oCD and type A and like overcommitted all the time yeah that's going to wreck havoc on your gut because we know that stress will over the long term it'll you know impair thyroid metabolism and functionality there it'll deal with it'll impair you know stomach acid production and even enzyme output and bile secretion, all these things that you need to have to assembly and digest food. So if you're not doing that, then that's how you can get bloating and constipation and all these other, you know,

GI issues, right? So that's why, that's honestly why a quick tip here. That's why you want to do some diaphragmatic breathing for like two or three minutes before you eat a meal if you're really stressed out because that's going to stimulate your vagus nerve and basically activate your interic nervous system, which is like its own entity in your gut. And that's going to allow for peristol system, the movement and contraction of your brain. bowels to have it move through and not cause this iBS stuff that you're maybe experiencing. How does one do diaphragmatic breathing? Well, it's just like you do in yoga or meditation, right?

It's just breathing through your nose for like five, six seconds, right? And then exhaling slowly for about the same duration. Some might even do box breathing, which is like you're holding for, you know, you're holding it in the expansion, expanded position and also in the deflated position as And it's just, again, it's just calm you down and get into your parasympathetic mode. And, you know, when you can do that, honestly, the power is, it's so powerful. Like, it literally will make the positive changes you want to have, like, instantaneously. So just got to do it.

You know, that's it. Okay, I'm doing that my next meal. Yeah, yeah. I do boxed breathing before sleep sometimes. And it's like, I don't know, for me, it's more powerful than, like, any drug or supplement or anything. Oh, for sure. You never did competitions, did you?

No, I didn't because I didn't care for it. It wouldn't change anything for me. Getting a drug, it wouldn't change. But you did count macros. Yeah, I mean, I got to, like, you know, I was really interested to see how lean I could get in my life. And I did that, like, five years ago maybe. And it was cool, I did it.

I'm like, hey, bored, done. So, you know, just a challenge of yourself. That's really all I was for. But no, I didn't want to compete. Didn't care. And did you have, like, what you were talking about earlier? Did those numbers trail you when you stopped or no, because your motive was in the right place? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, so honestly, I struggle for, like, maybe five, six months after that, like, counting in my head. That's why it's called the cognitive meeting roadblock, because, We all do it. I know it. We just don't talk about it because I did that. And I still, yeah, I was kind of like, okay, I'm done dieting, but I'm going to still count anyway. But why?

Just to maintain. And it's not going to happen. You're not going to maintain a 4% body fat. So I was like, you know, being really stupid. And yeah, I was a little more relaxed with it in my eating, but I was still like kind of nervous. So I wasn't, I wasn't fully committed to detaching from it. And that didn't happen until I was like really certain that I need. to, you know, basically achieve something else and understand that.

My actions were having sort of negative effects on my family, my friends, and my social life and all of those things, you know, the wake-up call, basically. So how can people find you and how can people work with you? Sure. So the team that we have is the autoimmune revolution. dot com and that's what i've created and so like we have divided it up in the sense that there's because we focus primarily on pcOS and Hashimoto's um we have we have programs for them that are like nothing else and they work so well because it's different from what doctors do and all

those things so if you've had tried a lot of things and nothing has worked and then you should go check out those pages, see what we put out there and testimonials of women who have been through the program. Otherwise, outside of that, I work with, I do work with people who just have, you know, different issues outside of it. So that includes mold toxicity, Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus, psoriasis, crones, a inflammatory bowel disease mostly. And even eating disorders, I do still do those because we work through the stuff that we just talked about today. and yeah that's basically what I focus on but yeah the website the automobam revolution dot com Instagram for me is at Justin Janoska J-A-N-O-S-K-A and that's if you just want to

creep around and see all the content I put out related to the sort of information yeah there's so much good content there like you were talking about earlier there's a lot of value it's not just gym selfies. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so thank you so much. I think this is going to be really, really helpful. You know, I can't even tell you how many messages I get every day from people saying they're eating 500 calories and still not losing weight and wanting to know the right macro numbers, and it's really kind of disheartening sometimes. So I hope, you know, I hope the listeners can take something away from this and yeah thank you again oh no thank you it's been pleasure all right i hope you enjoyed that as much as i enjoyed it i feel like some of these conversations that i've been

having the last few weeks have really been paradigm shifting for me and they've kind of just opened my eyes and made me see things in a different light and it's expanding my understanding of some of these topics and wellness as a whole. And I hope it's doing the same for you. And I hope that you walk away from this feeling informed and empowered to make decisions based on what you're learning and based on what you're feeling and less so on maybe what you're seeing just in our society as a whole or on social media, all of that. So before I go off on a tangent, since I've already kept you guys for an hour, I'm going to leave it there and see you guys next week.