on paper we're supposed to be more evolved and intelligent than we've ever been and people were like well we're we're living longer though no no we're the first generation in recorded human history that is not going to outlive the generation before us it is now reversed by treating symptoms we can keep people alive and what's happening is we're not
really living longer we're dying longer we're extending the [Music] suffering hey everyone welcome back to on purpose I am so excited to share today's episode with you this is a guest that I've been messaging connecting with for a while we're finally here so it's always a great feeling when you're finally sitting in the studio with someone that you've wanted to talk to
interview gain their insights for for a long time and he's a real expert he's a true deep expert and you know how much I love mining the mind and the energy of someone who's so deeply rooted in the work they do and today's guest is none other than Sean Stevenson the author of the USA Today National bestseller eat smarter and the international
bestselling book sleep smarter he's also the creator of the model Health show featured as the number one Health podcast in the US with millions of listeners downloads each year a graduate of the University of Missouri St Louis shwan studied business biology and nutritional science and became the co-founder of advanced Integrative Health Alliance Sean has been featured
in Forbes Fast Company the New York Times muscle and fitness ABC News ESPN and many other major media Outlets today I'm excited to speak to him about his book eat smarter and his journey you can order the book as we're speaking if you're someone who's been focusing on your diet to improve it for your body your mind your relationships your brain
then this is the episode for you Sean welcome to on purpose thank you for being here and thank you for writing this book it's such an honor to be here you make everything sound so much better as well well you you had to live it so you know it's it's been amazing but I I mean it we've been messaging we've been wanting to get together we're we're finally here and I was just saying to
you Offline that my physical health Journey has been very interesting because I almost ignored it for a long time because I was so focused on the mind and the soul and the heart and my wife was my educator and my coach when it came to my physical health and so whenever I'm sitting with someone who deeply understands food and nutrition
I'm very fascinated in open book because I know there's something I can improve about my health uh whether it's through my gut or my brain but I want to start with a bit about you and you know when you were younger you were diagnosed and I I won't give it away you can share about it but you were diagnosed and told that there might not be a way of fixing or solving something
now I can't imagine what that feels like hearing that when you're younger and I'm guessing at that time you didn't have the skills you have today so can you take us back to that moment and just explain to us what you went through and how that sparked your journey yeah absolutely yeah so we're a product of our environment but we're also creators
of our environment once we become aware of it and so I was just replicating what I was seeing around me which was a lot of dysfunction which was a lot of ill health and I kind of was like the one in my family that had the potential to make it and what it was was in the environment that I was in in the inner city and being in in poverty which even say that kind of with the parenthesis
here in the United States poverty is very different you still probably have a TV a car you know when much of the world is living on a couple dollars a day but you know we were struggling to get by in this environment all I saw was the opportunity for me to you know go to college which I never met anybody that went to college let alone graduated
except my teachers was through Athletics and so I did really well in school but I just saw Sports was going to be my way to get a scholarship and when I was 15 years old I ran a 4540 which is like NFL combine caliber you know and I was doing really great in track as well but fate had other plans for me it was actually at track practice when I had the the
first glimpse of what was to come and so I was doing a 200 meter time trial which 200 m is half the track and the time trial is just me and my coach and I took off and I was coming around the curve of the track into the straightaway and my hip broke and I didn't realize it at the time because I just kind of came up limping I thought maybe I pulled a
muscle I'd never really been injured before but it took a couple of days and I went and got a scan done because I just couldn't turn my legs over I went to see a PT and a physician and they put the scan up the X-ray and it's just my iliac crest bone was just floating off in space like oh that's the problem right there and what I went through was
something called standard of care all right standard of care which is not really looking at what is the cause of this thing but let's treat these symptoms right so I got some inid some non-steroidal anti-inflammatories I got some crutches which was cool I got to get out of class early and take the school elevator but nobody stopped to ask how did a kid break his hip from
running and fast forward I experienced almost a dozen more injuries the next two years I just couldn't stay on the football field or on the track and my body was just breaking down and so my vision of playing at the next level was just vanquished fortunately academically I got a bunch of scholarships I got to go to the school that I wanted to go to
I was going to walk on in red shirt and football but this is where I get that diagnosis so I was 20 years old and I was diagnosed with something called degenerative dis disease and degenerative bone disease so basically AR an advanced arthritic condition of my spine and this is usually reserved for people who are much older and so I was
19 20 years old the reason that I went into the doctor was that I just couldn't I couldn't extend my leg I was always in a lot of pain and whenever I would stand up I would get this like Thor lightning bolt shooting down my leg and it was just miserable and if you can imagine this when you're in pain when you stand up how about you just don't stand up
right so I was doing everything I could to avoid standing up and so I sat a lot I was constantly laying down or playing video games I was in college still and it just got progressively worse because your body really works on this use it or lose it basis so Not only was my spine deteriorating the rest of me was atrophying as well and so to really put
the icing on the cake of the story when I went in to see my physician and he gave me this diagnosis he looked me right in my eyes and he told me that this situation was incurable right because for me being athlete I was just like all right what do we do to fix this and he put his hand on my shoulder he's like I'm sorry son this is something that just happen and I'm sorry it
happened to you and that today I realize that goes against basic laws of physics like there's nothing that just happens you know there's a cause and effect and I didn't it didn't register to me when he first said it it just didn't it didn't make sense so I rejected it and I asked him this specific question Jay and I have no grounds for asking him this
question but I asked him does this have anything to do with what I'm eating should I change the way that I'm exercising and he looked at me like I was from another planet he was like this has nothing to do with what you're eating this is something that just happens and a little sidebar and I didn't talk about this for many years but you know my physician he was over he
was obese and he was clearly struggling with his own health not to say that he wasn't qualified to give me advice but he was clearly struggling himself and but I took his advice because he was the expert and him saying that this was my lot in life what he invoked was something called a nobo effect which we can come back and talk about in a moment but the
bottom line was he said that this has nothing to do with what I'm eating but he wrote me a prescription to eat some pills right this has nothing to do with what you're putting in your mouth go ahead and put these in your mouth right and so that was the level of thinking that I was dealing with fast forward the story after leaving there I went from a
nuisance of a pain to Chronic debilitating pain right because now I know that I have this thing this is my identity I'm this sick person I'm going to be in pain for the rest of my life he told me that and so for the next two years I did as little as I possibly could and he told me he gave me permission that's the big thing people don't realize if you if you've been
struggling your whole life and somebody gives you permission to stop struggling just nobody's going to blame you you got this bad thing that happened just take this free pass this Hall Pass and just ride it out it took 2 years which you know some people never get it and some people get it a little bit faster but it took me two years and over
these two years eating what I call the tough diet typical University food I was continuing the same behaviors and I'd gained a bunch of weight now because not Not only was I eating the same things but now I'm inactive and so I became much fluffier I'll lovingly say version of myself and I didn't recognize a person I saw in the mirror and that was
one of those breaking moments for me it's just like I didn't even recognize who I was and after those two years it's usually an event or or or a person or something that becomes a catalyst for that change and for me it was my grandmother you know and she was always checking on me those two years and if you're a young kid you're like I'm fine Grandma you know but I wasn't fine and
she knew it she was the one who really advocated for me she's the one who believed in me more than anybody that I was going to do something great and here I was living in Ferguson Missouri in this one-bedroom apartment sleeping on the mattress on the floor overweight in chronic pain can't sleep at night and my life didn't match up to my blueprint of
what success was going to look like and so it was in that moment that I decided to get well and most people don't really get that Jay it's just like it sounds so simple right but the reality is often times we don't decide it's more like we'll see what happens it's like wishful thinking it's like you know I I wish you know this would happen but when you
decide something you really cut away the possibility of that of anything else but that thing and even the word if you break it down day meaning from and kaider which means to cut right so you cut away the possibility of anything else but that thing and I decided to get well and so the last little part and we could talk about how I did this but um
it was from 6 weeks from that moment of decision and I had lost about 18 lbs which is not typical but I was always kind of the skinny kid in my family so my fat jeans definitely kicked on but you know the weight just came off of me once I started to implore a few really foundational principles you know with my nutrition with movement and the pain I've been experiencing that had me
in Terror for two years was gone and um it was about nine months later when I got a scan done and I completely reversed the the degeneration my two herniated disc had retracted on their own my bone density was normal and it was as if the thing had never happened so and by that experience happening to me and seeing the stories of people coming up to me in my University asking
me to help them because they saw the change you know I didn't look like a guy who lost weight I looked like somebody who's really healthy and to hear their stories like people saying telling them you're going to live with this disease forever diabetes or you know heart disease you you're going to be on the stat and whatever the case might be and
I had this experience where I was told this negative thing was going to be your story and to no longer have that as my story I had this level of authority that I couldn't really put a finger on and people were attracted to that so my life just went from being very self-centered in my pain to being other centered and being of service and I found every way
that I could to help others and it landed me here with you that's beautiful man thank you for I know how hard it is to synthesize a life's work in a few minutes and of course I'm hoping that everyone who's listening and watching is going to get better acquainted with you if they're not already listeners but I'm intrigued by when you made that
decision what was the first thing you did because I often find that first of all it's hard to make the decision when you've made the decision then the first thing you do has such a big impact on momentum and acceleration what was the first thing you did that's so powerful Jay because the the decision is instantaneous but what takes long is
getting ourselves to the place where we make the decision right and so the first decision that I made which I didn't realize this consciously till years later is I changed the habitual question that I was asking and today I know that there's this really phenomenal process that the brain evokes called instinctual elaboration the human brain is always
trying to answer questions that we pose it it's just automatic our mutual friend Jim quick we've talked about this many times and the question that I was asking was unconscious all the time was why me why is it is happening to me why won't somebody help me and so my brain is constantly scanning my internal and external environment to affirm why me
why I'm unhelpable why I'm not deserving of being healthy right so I'm just getting all this data in as to why my life sucks because I'm looking for it and so in that moment of decision and again I wasn't aware I wasn't consciously aware of this but I just asked this question very simple I ask instead of asking why me I ask what can I do to feel better because I just saw a
series of other doctors which I highly encourage people to if you get a bad bill of goods like that get a second third opinion before taking any drastic action because I was just talking with Tony Robbins about this recently but there was a big a meta analysis done by the Mayo Clinic and they found that when you get that initial diagnosis it's only
the same less than less than 20% of the time is the second diagnosis the same as the first diagnosis and often it's radically different all right so it's somewhere in the ballpark of like 18% of the time it's the same so that being said you also want to seek counsel from somebody who's not in the same line of thinking as well you know somebody all ideally who has the same goal as you
like if you're diagnosed with this thing and you don't want to have this thing maybe that's the person you need to go and talk to but I was seeking counsel from the same type of thinker I asked this question what is it that I can do to feel better what is it that I can do and this was kind of an audacious thing to be healthier than I've ever been that
night was the first night that I slept through the night without medication and those two years I just felt this peace you know and I woke up and the this is the thing too it's not like again like a unicorn came out and like the clouds parted and you know it's happily ever after I put a plan together and that plan entailed three specific things the
first thing was changing my nutrition I knew just on a very rudimentary level that I needed to quote lose weight right because I was just like logically if I'm having this pressure on my disc let me take some of this pressure off by losing some of this mass that I'm carrying but I'll be honest with you Jay the first thing that I did was Slim Fast right so
because of marketing like I saw the TV that's what I was acclimated to so it's like a shake for breakfast a shake for lunch a sensible dinner right and it was disgusting all right it was it was terrible it only worked for a couple of days that I did it but by me asking the questions the right people people the right situations the right books start
to show up and often times those things have been there the whole time but I just wasn't attuned to them and I had a friend of mine that I had known her for years and she was in Chiropractic College and we just like kicked it you know but and I just thought she was weird you know with her and her friends you know and she took me to Wild Oats right which has since been bought up by
Whole Foods and so now I'm in this environment where I'm seeing all these different supplements and foods and there's like grass inside I'm like why is there grass inside you know it's wheat grass but there was a book there uh nutrition prescription and it had all these peer-reviewed and I was in college so I'm I'm versed in research especially
doing what I was doing in college and there was peer viiew data on regenerating herniations and degenerative disc disease and there are all these nutrients that I had never even heard of like all I knew about for bone density for example was calcium because of marketing there was like Omega-3 fre sulfur bearing amino acids silica all these other things that I
wasn't getting anywhere in my drive-through diet and so I started to the again I went from Slim Fast to being a natural Pill Popper right so it's just like I need these nutrients let me just take these supplements again missing the mark but taking steps towards it and ultimately of course that's very expensive but I finally realized like what if humans been doing the longest
we're getting these nutrients through food not synthetic isolated versions of those things so I started to seek out all the foods that had these nut nutrients and just begin to like flood my system with these Foods so that was number one I changed what I was eating and literally and there's a I've got to share this now but we'll probably Circle
back to this it's one of the most important tenants every single cell in our body is made from the food that we eat every cell and so we have the ability to make our bodies out of really low quality materials or out of the best stuff possible you know and so I was making my tissues out of absolute garbage I'm not exaggerating the slightest hate fast food every day every
day because again I lived in Ferguson Missouri I was surrounded by lowquality food and processed food and liquor stores and that's all I knew right and it was cheap again being on a college budget that's what I could afford which we got to talk about that the econom is a scale too so anyway so I'm flooding my tissues with really high quality stuff
now and the body is so intelligent once you give it the right materials it knows what to do it's often just us getting out of the way and so that was one number two the lwh hanging fruit for me that I had some education on was movement and exercise and being in pain the worst thing to do is to do nothing there is a time when you know you have a
state of inflammation like if I have these two Hern discs I'm not going to go and deadlift you know 315 that's not a good idea but after a couple of days and I'm functional I need to do something because the body movement is one of the primary drivers of of healing of assimilation of nutrients of elimination of metabolic waste products all these
different things require movement right life is movement and so I just went to the gym at the University gym just did what I can which was I started off on a stationary bike a week later I started doing a little bit walking on the treadmill week later I picked up a couple of weights and all of that was driving the good nutrition I was bringing in deeper into my cells right
and the third thing was my biggest struggle that two years was sleeping at night and I was just like I gotta find a way to get some rest cuz I was chronically tired and I didn't have to try to do that one a principle from my first book sleep smarter is that a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning right so all
these good things I was doing exercising changing my nutrition and getting access to sunlight all these really simple things led to me sleeping better in the evening and once I started sleeping I got better so fast because it is the most anabolic stage that a human being can be in outside of meditation everything else is really catabolic if you're up and active you're you're
catabolic and so this is where your body's producing all these regenerative hormones and HGH and reparative enzymes you know once I my my sleep improved and my movement practice but of course the biggest thing was my mind you know my change and perception of all these things but that's really what the first Domino was was changing the question and
the right stuff that was already there I can now see I love how you simplified it into the diet and nutrition the sleep and then of course the movement aspect which you know the three key tenants and then grouped by the mindset and the approach I want to dive into some of those amazing insights that you share in this book because I think as you rightly
said our understanding of food nutrients vitamins supplements has been so rudimentary for so long and even today I think as you rightly said there's so much being marketed at us that you kind of follow the latest Trend or the latest diet or the latest fad only to find that it's not sustainable or that it doesn't really cure how you're feeling and I think we've started
to realize that food can change how you feel and I don't think we thought about that we thought food is energy and you just keep putting it in I love the idea of how we're building ourselves through bad materials or good materials why is it important as you talk about in the book to use power of food to reboot your metabolism what are
the benefits of rebooting your metabolism and what are methods through diet and nutrition that boost our metabolism for everyone listening it should always be what is the thing right so when we hear these terms like metabolism we often have a certain association with it that's my point yeah exactly and so it's usually going to be tied to weight loss and it's a huge
mistake because metabolism is really everything there's a whole field of immunometabolism you know your immune system has its own metabolism where it's building new immune cells where it's functioning at a certain level where there's cellular waste products and the list goes on and on all these things are metabolism so life itself is driven by
metabolism but this is a huge mistake even in the weight loss domain when we're just thinking about food and nutrition and diet in terms of changing our metabolism and this is why with the book I gave people what they want which again that's the on-ramp right but food controls so much more than just our metabolism it also controls our cognitive function our emotional
intelligence is highly influenced by our nutrition that's one of the main things I wanted to talk with you about as well and also it affects our relationships and how we relate to other people the list goes on and on food isn't just food it's information you know and so as far as the metabolism side is concerned what I wanted to do was break down how the
process of metabolism actually works how does weight loss work right how does fat loss work where does fat go like when I quote lose weight where the hell's the weight go you know what I mean so I'm taking people through that process and I use analogies to make it make sense because one of the things I learned from Tony was one of the fastest ways of
learning which I I was doing this but I didn't realize it is take something that you don't know and connect it to something that you do know right and so I use this analogy of going to the movies and using it as this cellular movie theater and how the process of fat loss actually works and so we've got these key ushers that are making things
happen you know you come into the movie theater and you've got these specific enzymes so we've got hormone sensitive lipase for example and hormone sensitive lipase is the enzyme required to actually open up your cells so that it releases stored energy you know triglycerides stored fat to be used for fuel nothing's happening without this
Usher all right so that's required then we've got another Usher who's putting fat in the seeds right lipoprotein lipase right and so but then we've got the managers of the ushers which are insulin and glucagon which there's so much more but I'm just giving a little snapshot no this is great I love this analogy it's a brilliant analogy so it's making sense to me so that's a good
thing I'm the dummy in the room so this is great yeah so insulin and glucagon they're actually brothers right so they're both from their loving mother Miss pancreas all right so insulin is really about management and always looking for the worst possible scenario right so they're all about saving up for a rainy day get storing as much as possible so we're all safe and we're all
good glucagon is more of a free thinker more of a you know go with the flow type of vibe and is cool with letting go of some of this stor energy and so glucagon to make a summation of these so insulin is the biggest hormonal driver of us storing fat in our cells or storing energy in ourselves when people hear the word insulin we often think about
diabetes right because it's a lack type 1 diabetes is a lack of producing insulin the mother pancreas the beta cells are not producing insulin which is absolutely horrendous this means your cells can't get energy and you'll literally just wither away it's a terrible way to die type 2 diabetes which is the most prevalent here in the United States right now in the United
States about 130 million citizens here in the US have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes it's insane but this is not a condition where you're no longer producing insulin this is a condition where your insulin sensitivity the ability of that cell to get the signal has been tampered down right because insulin has been so abundant because the
blood sugar has been so abundant right and so it's a but here's the thing and it's a really beautiful thing that even a condition like that it's the body adapting to keep you alive so type two diabetes and we get this label that you have this chronic disease and you're no good or you know you're you're tainted or you're broken it's actually this really intelligent
adaptation by the human body because it's adapting the way that your metabolism Works under unideal circumstances right so it's beautiful it's amazing the problem however is that we've been led to believe that that is the end story that your body is stupid and it can't shift and create another expression and so now it's common knowledge back in the in the day I've
been in this field almost 20 years I'm about to hit my 20- year anniversary and we couldn't publicly say even another friend Markman like you got to be very careful cure diabetes right today it's common knowledge that you can reverse this condition so we got in insulin driving people into the seats right keeping the theater full and we got
glucagon open up the doors to allow people to go out and kick it at an Afterparty right so these are two big hormonal drivers of metabolism we've got some enzymatic ones I hit a little bit but then we've got the internal cashier as well which is your liver in many ways so people don't think about these things and this beautiful dance that's taking
place like we just want to get that fat off right and often times we associate that with like really working hard right restricting cutting things away uh you can't have deprivation right all those things those terms don't feel good right it's very against human nature and on the other side you have to abuse yourself you have to exercise your face
off you've got to just you know this tenant that I was taught in my univer I paid for this education Jay at private at a private university the first day of school in this big Auditorium nutritional science class the teacher told us that if you want to manage your metabolism if you want to manage your body weight just manage your calories that's all you have to do is control the
calories right he was overweight as well by the way all right and now again it's not that he was trying to be nefarious this is what he learned and at the time we we were in the food pyramid all right so this is when I went to school back in this was '97 it's changed a little bit like we went from like the the food pyramid to my plate but still really the same
principles but to say that calories control everything about you or your metabolism or your ability to lose weight is very myopic it's tunnel vision and people don't really realize and that's what I spent the nice segment of the book really diving into the beautiful history behind calories and like how is that a thing that people plant this flag and I I no this I was
one of them right being a nutritional scientist and also somebody who's working as a strength and conditioning coach at the University these I was just replicating and regurgitating what I was taught and it worked for some people not for others and so what I did was I brought to bear this new term and it's called epic caloric right so and this was a pivot
from my friend Bruce Lipton Dr Bruce Lipton I don't know if you've talked to him before I haven't I know who he is but I haven't spoken to him ah the biology of belief right so epigenetics yes right so this is he's the person more than anybody who pushed it into popular culture that means above genetic control right but epic caloric control
it's above caloric control there are certain principles that control what your what your body does with the calories you consume and this would be so logical if we think about it and so just a couple of those one of those is the quality of food itself all right so we hear this that not all calories are created equal but we have really sound
science on this now I Shar one of the studies in the book and again this was a peer-reviewed study and what they did was they took test subjects and they wanted to see what would happen with their metabolism when they eat a meal of processed foods versus a meal of Whole Foods right and so the processed food they're both sandwiches by the way all
right so it's not like super glorified process versus whole but the whole food sandwich was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese the processed food sandwich was white bread and cheese product and cheese product is what most people are eating that's like craft it's they can't legally call it cheese it's called craft singles there's not enough
cheese in the cheese you know which is really messed up wow yeah and so they consume each of these sandwiches and they track their caloric expenditure right so and this is something so to get to just the end part of like where does the weight go we breathe most of the weight that we lose out we expel it through our lungs our lungs are and also uh excretion organ as well we don't
really think about that but they are and so anyways so they're tracking the outgo of energy after eating these two sandwiches and what they found was that people eating when they ate the processed food sandwich there was a 50% reduction in their body's expenditure of calories something happened by eating that food that made their body hold on
to more of the energy they just consumed and what it really was was a hormonal clog to put it in a simple term it changed the hormonal Cascade neurotransmitter Cascade organ function in a way that made the body more stingy at holding on to this very abnormal energy that was coming in and so again 50% reduction is massive and how often are people trying to lose weight
counting calories but eating processed foods counting the point system and all these things which can be wonderful but we have to address the food quality so this was published in food and nutrition research by the way if anybody want check yeah that's fascinating I'm so glad you shared that with me because yeah it's easy to be like this is
healthy food this is unhealthy food but it's even deeper than that and I think the gold standard which I think you set which I really identify with is I just know I want to be healthier like what I've been saying is I want to be healthier I want want to be more informed because if something happens to me I don't want it to be something that I can and will continue to monitor
because I want to be as healthy so I can continue to do my service in the world like that's that's where my personal intention goes I know one of the things that people are struggling with a lot right now is inflammation right and you talk about the microbiome in the in the book as well in the connection but walk me through where inflammation is created
from and how it connects to the microbiome in the butat yeah the term again what is it what inflammation the term itself is derived from the word essentially meaning set on fire right so there's this fire taking place in the human body and just to lean and connect inflammation to metabolism we let's do that one of the studies that I referred
to as well was looking at and this was published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences they were looking at what was happening with inflammation in the brain leading to accelerated weight gain all right now this is another thing when people are trying to lose weight nobody's telling them we need to deal with the inflammation in your brain and
so what the researchers uncovered was that essentially inflammation in the brain was leading to more belly fat accumulation and more disruption to their metabolism but the key was more belly fat accumulation and obesity once people were venturing into obesity it was leading to more brain inflammation so so this becomes this Vicious Circle right and again we're not looking at we
need to address the inflammation in your brain why is this happening well your brain is controlling your body far more than anything else and there's an internal thermostat that's even controlling your metabolic rate which is based in your hypothalamus which is kind of consider the master gland of the body and the hypothalamus not only is it's kind of like a thermostat for your
metabolism but also it's a thermostat for your body temperature for your sleep cycles and the list goes on it's like a circadian controller right circadian medicine is popping right now too and so paying attention and so specifically the researchers were denoting hypothalamic inflammation leading to all these problems so what's causing that brain
inflammation obesity in and of itself is increasing the rate of inflammation so right now in the United States we're knocking on the door of 250 million of our citizens being overweight or obese right it's beyond epidemic it's it's insane rest assured if we're venturing into obesity your brain is suffering because of it and I also noted another
study where we're seeing this correlation I talked to Daniel aan who wrote the yeah I love Daniel he's been on the podcast twice yeah yeah I love him so much yeah he's awesome but he's accumulated so much data and but there's also some peerreview studies as well looking at once our waist size is increasing is correlated with the decrease in our brain size so as our
waist circumference goes up our brain size goes down the volume of our brain which is not good at all and so there's this huge connection with these too but also what's driving this inflammation is the foods that we're eating obviously as well and obesity itself but just to give a little snapshot like how's that work how's obesity creating more inflammation
our fat cells are pretty they're pretty damn amazing if without our fat cells being as intelligent as they are we wouldn't have made it as Humanity it enabled us to go through times of famine and still survive but here's the thing we live in a very different time now where more people are dying from excess than from deprivation M right and so
during this time of excess our fat cells can actually grow 1,000 times their size right it's it it's crazy they're like wow I don't want to disrespect them by calling them little trash cans but they're kind of like these internal trash cans that can they keep collecting yeah it's like these Hefty Hefty Cent sacks like really good trash bags that
are filling up and as that happens it's sending out a distress signal because the fat cells were never made to contain that much stored energy and so it's sending out a kind of a false distress signal to your immune system thinking that you're infected you know your fat cells are chronically infected this is why we see epidemic levels of inflammation measured by things like C
reactive protein and folks as we venture into obesity so the fat cells themselves are big contributor to inflammation but to lean into food a little bit one of the biggest culprits as being highlighted today and there's with any of the stuff I talk about Jay there's always conflicting information of course of course yeah I get that and and the
average person doesn't though you know it's just like this is the end all be all what I do is I'm a research scientist primarily I'll I'll go and proactively look for things that rebuke what I believe that prove what I'm saying other otherwise or other than and you have it takes a lot of courage to go and look for things to prove you wrong yeah but what I'll do is I'll look at
the variety of information and what does the majority of data that we have say that's a better place for us to stand on and educate from right but one of the biggest culprits and this is what the majority of data says is these highly refined oxidized seed oils that have become so prevalent in our food system and again I get to work with the best
people in the world on these subjects like Dr Kate Shanahan is really a pioneering voice in this field and she's you know she worked with the Lakers and helped with Kobe Bryant got him all these protocols extending his career all these great things and so she has that that Fame and credibility there but she's also a brilliant scientist and
somebody who's very versed in metabolism but one of things that she shared with me was that this particular study which was crazy they looked at the biopsies right so you can actually go and look inside of what a fat cell contains back in the earlier part of the 1900s and saw what is the makeup of the average person's fat cell and about 2% of our
fat cells back then were made of these polyunsaturated fatty acids or tfas right today the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids that make up the average person's fat cell is up to 25 or even 30% so it's went from 2% to 25% so literally the ingredients that make us as a species has changed dramatically and what is it about these particular fats like how how is so much
of it making up the ingredients that make us up and it's because they're in everything they're very cheap they're rancid oxidized old they have no choice but to be those things like getting the oil from corn like there's so little and if people saw the process which I highly encourage people to do there's lots of videos you could see the processing of
canola oil or quote vegetable oil I remember when my mom started using vegetable oil trying to get healthy because my family again I was the skinny kid in the family everybody pretty much everybody else in my family at least about 80% of folks were obese and so she started using vegetable oil it sounds healthy but it's not asparagus oil or broccoli oil these are highly refined
seed oils corn oil soy oil canola oil and to extract those oils there it kind of looks like just mud it just looks disgusting it looks like this um like kind of like almost like gasoline type vibe to it and they has to use bleaching agents and deodorizers and I cited a study in my book and this was published in the journal inhalation toxicology and
they found that just smelling those oils while cooking can damage your DNA right crazy stuff right just smelling just inhaling the fumes from it let alone actually putting it in your body yes yes so it's crazy it's it's so crazy and so for me it's just looking like this specific component your body has to go into this kind of pro-inflammatory state
to try to manage any insult inflammation is one of the most important things for our survival it's kind of been given a bad name right now because we're dealing with chronic inflammation but we need inflammation in order to to just heal for stuff you don't even know is going on there are cells right now in your body that are dying off and recycling
there's always an inflammatory component catabolic component and that's okay but once we venture into chronic inflammation where these things are getting out of hand that's where we start to see all manner of things go wrong wow I mean you know what I I find it so useful to be having this conversation with you because and I hope everyone who's listening and watching
I'm trying to ask the questions that I think we skip what does this actually mean how does it actually affect us because right now we hear all these buzzword and we look for the quick fix all right I've got inflammation or I do this to to you know alkalize it I've got this do this like and we're always looking at that quick fix that quick win the quick solve and actually when I'm
sitting here listening to you I'm going wow there is just of course natur there's so much more to it but we have to be so much more alert and Vigilant which is where we struggle because it's almost like there is no convenience now because there's all this information like you said there's conflicting information so if I'm listening to this show right now and
I want to create more energy in my life I want to create more vibrancy in How I Feel what are some of the things that we're likely missing or that we're likely struggling with in our diet or nutritionally that we could add to help start that process of at least feeling a bit more positive like we have a bit more control we could stay right in the
same Lane and just swap out the oils that we're using with some intention uh researchers at Auburn found that olive oil ooc canthal Rich extra virgin olive oil is one of the few things that's been found found to be highly effective at reducing inflammation of the brain right and also being able to help to heal the bloodb brain barrier so what does this mean the
bloodb brain barrier is kind of like mukaku is kind of like a modern day Einstein right he was like the human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe that's big for him to say something like that that's really remarkable repeat that for us the human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe right and the cool
thing is we all have one we're not very good at using it you know but we all have this really miraculous organ and your body is very protective of it because again it's controlling everything about you it's controlling your metabolism for example it's the only major organ is fully encased in hard in in hard bone right so it's we've got this built-in helmet to try to
protect it we've got the blood brain barrier because everything that we eat the last place to actually allow nutrients in is going to be your brain all right because it has a blood brain barrier it's kind of like an internal security system or I like to think about it like a toll booth right so certain nutrients I like these analogies I like them certain nutrients
get Express Pass right if anybody ever has lived where they have tolls and you get an express pass that can go right into the brain most other things they're going to meet the toll booth and they're not going to be able to get through because the guard there is like you know know Dwayne The Rock Johnson it's like clones of him and Vin Diesel or whatever
so it's just like highly unlikely that you can get into the brain it's very it's like an exclusive Club it's very exclusive and so to make it into the brain only specific things are able to do that one of the big issues today leading to more inflammation is the degradation we're breaking down our own bloodb brain barrier this internal security system by eating all these
abnormal Foods the bloodb brain barrier a big aspect of its regulation is through the fats that we consume right and so again eating these really low quality oils and making our cells out of these things we're degrading how our body functions and so what the researchers found again was that extra virgin ooc canthal Rich olive oil is one
of those Foods that's really healing and anti-inflammatory and also can help to heal the bloodb brain barrier that's crazy because for me again like I I don't have a dog in the fight I don't care if olive oil is cool or not if it's good I don't care you don't you don't own olive oil it's so miraculous but then you just look at what if humans
been doing the longest and how do you make olive oil you crush olives that's it it's not like the process that these other oils these seed oils have to go through again with the deodorizers and the bleaching agents and the high heat as a matter of fact extra virgin olive oil that means that it's not heat processed wow all right so it's even paying attention to the very volatile
nature of those fats and it's stored in dark glass bottles because it's even photosensitive it's light sensitive can uh break down and degrade those oils right so in humans we've had we have documentation for thousands of years have been consuming olive oil right and so that's one of the great principles to lean back into which is like what have
humans been doing the longest let's do that you know what got us here because what we're doing now is not working yeah right so that's one of the the great foods that can help to reduce inflammation so swapping out those oils being intentional about it the best way to consume these oils is going to be through like finishing dishes like
adding some olive oil on top or using it to make salads cooking with it you can moderate heat is okay but for cooking we need things that have more saturation that are more stable so they're not giving off all of these these these um kind of pro-inflammatory oxidative compounds right so that would be like coconut oil or ghee or grass-fed butter avocado oil is also rising in
popularity now as well but just to throw a couple more for reducing inflammation the cruciferous family of vegetables have been found to reduce inflammation specifically in the brain broccoli you know again I put peer peer viiew data to show that this food that's just like super common can help to reduce brain inflammation right so yeah I can go on
and on but those are just a couple of things no no this is fantastic and I want everyone who's listening and watching to know that all these reviews the researchers in the book eat smarter which is what Sean's referencing if you are listening and you don't see me holding the cover and holding the book you can order it right now and I I deeply recommend that because the level
of detail of insight that Sean has is so powerful it should not be underestimated this isn't a new diet book or a fad book on like you know here's what you need to do three things you need to do tomorrow it's not like that there is like deep research reflection introspection that that Sean's done in study done and so you know I'm I'm going in and allowing
him to share depth on certain parts but but the book is is full of these insights Sean I want to talk a bit about stress and the brain and then diet because you also talk about the impact of food on the brain brain on food but also our emotional states we all know what emotional eating is we've all picked up a tub of ice cream or or picked up sugars when we're low in
energy or you know we've been there we may even get drawn in that direction still today one thing I find intriguing that I'd love to learn from you is how much is stress in the brain causing some of these challenges within the body and can food be used to work backwards almost or does stress need to be dealt with in different ways yeah
that's such a great question again what is stress we have to look at that and we tend to put stress in this one box cognitively most times people Associated it with like life stress like work stress you know work is stressing me out my relationship is stressing me out but those are just a couple of factors that go into your overall stress load as a
human being so all of these inputs are stressors and for example exercise is a stressor and it's known as a hormetic stressor which that means that if you're able to recover from set exercise you get benefit right kind of like what doesn't kill me makes me stronger principle right but if you put on intense exercise on top of relationship stress work stress spiritual stress
right feeling not on purpose or cut a drift or disconnected you add that on to diet stress the stress coming from the abnormal foods you may be consuming the environmental stress right right now this is dope like we can record we got all this technology but all of these energies are just running in and out of ourselves at paces and degrees that we
just don't understand yet right so we're all intermingling with these energies that we've never been exposed to again as humans so the environment itself is going to be adding an additional stress gravity gravity is trying to kill you like you literally is trying to weigh us down you know in a sense if you want to look at it like that but we are
resilient we we've adapted to it you know but the John Carter I don't know if you know about that uh that that book and that's that movie The Disney it didn't do very well but uh I think it's on Disney Plus what's he called John Carter no so this guy teleports uh accidentally like from Civil War Vibes to being on Mars and on Mars he's like
superhuman because gravity is different so he's like jumping around you know like it's it's really cool to think about gravity has conditioned us in a certain way and we we're resilient against it so environmental stress goes on there and I can go on and on all of these stress inputs create your overall stress load as a human being now the issue is that man I've had the
opportunity to work with so many people in a one-on-one context but you know groups and the books and all the stuff but the most overlooked thing that I've seen when people are wanting to you know get off of their blood PR pressure medication the cils or the statins or you know metform for diabetes or the anti-depressants whatever it might be the nutrition and the exercise can only
go so far the number one thing that I've seen that people Overlook is the impact of stress because you can overeat your way into disease you can under moove your way into disease you can under sleep your way into disease you can also over stress your way into disease the problem is that stress is invisible you know in a sense like exercise we know
what that is like it's physical we're interacting with it food is like you're putting stuff in like it's it's it's visceral something you could touch because stress doesn't have that aspect we we negate it but truly and just to kind of loop back to the story with that physician and no the nobo effect wow so everybody's heard at this point of the placeo effect you know to
some degree I was going to come back to this I'm glad you gone there yeah and and this it's amazing right it's amazing so just on average if we look at the the breadth of peer viiew data that we have on average placebos are about 30% effective in clinical trials so fake drugs sham surgeries fake treatments are about 30% effective on average some
studies much higher like 80% effective in some studies on anti-depressants people are not actually getting something that has a a real treatment they just believe that they're taking the drug now this is very important it has to be coming no it doesn't it doesn't have to but in these trials they coming from an authority figure right and so one of the things that I talk
about in the book is the impact that your thoughts have on your body's metabolism right and so this was done by Dr Alia Crum and her team at Stanford at the time and it was the milkshake study and so they Blended up these milkshakes and they labeled them different different amounts of calories even though they were all the same so some of
them were the indulgent milkshakes with they they labeled like 700 calories some were you know the um uh smart shakes where they labeled it like 200 calories but all of them were really like 450 calories or something like that and so what they found was that people who believe they were having the indulgent milkshake they had a much greater secretion or suppression of gin
the hunger hormone wow right so they're more satiated because they believe they're consuming something that has a lot more caloric energy and on the other side the people who thought they were eating the the s a shake the sensible milkshake their gillin levels didn't budge at all which means they're going to be hungry again very soon after
having that milkshake right so that's the power of the mind to literally manipulate your metabolism just in that one snapshot and I've got so much more data on that right so your thoughts determine what's happening with your metabolism so going back to the placebo effect so placebos being again we've got data a great book is Mind Over Medicine Dr Alyssa Rank and so many studies in
there but we've got data on placebos being effective in cancer treatments in surgeries for kns like MCL repair like we've got there's there's so many crazy studies where you know they'll because now you can even watch your surgery where there somebody be watching their own surgery but what they're doing is they're playing a different video right
so they'll cut the person's knee open and just seal it back up without doing any actual you know a therapeutic change and their their knee problem will heal right often times better than than the people who had the actual surgery you know the surgical change and intervention so I know this sounds crazy and these are things for me I'm a very analytical logical person so I wouldn't
believe it unless I saw the data myself so that's the power of the human mind just a snapshot now here's the other thing I don't want to call them evil but there's a e there's a evil twin to the placebo effect it's called the nobo effect this is when you get a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen so Placebo is saying you're
going to get this therapeutic benefit you're going to take this and your blood pressure is going to normalize your depression is going to go away your cancer is going to dissolve no SEO fact is saying this is incurable you have six weeks to live You'll Never Walk again right so these injunctions from an authority figure and there's another study I cited
from aliia crom's team they did a skin prick test where they used a histamine you know a histamine stimulator to create a rash on people's skin and then they had an inert cream and they told the test subjects either this cream is going to make your rash worse or this cream is going to make your rash better different people were told different
things now what happened was and this was true for like 90% of the test subjects when they received that inert cream that had no therapeutic benefit and they told their rash would get worse within 10 minutes the rash got worse and spread for other people within 10 minutes the rash got better and nearly went away for most people just within 10 minutes of them getting this cream that
does nothing the biggest part of this was the benefit depended directly with how the person believed in the competence of the physician their Rapport and belief in the person telling them about the thing impacted their physical response wow the most so again who are you listening to yeah you know and so for me I I had that nibo effect injunction like
he told me this was incurable I'll be in pain the rest of my life you know I'll never walk normally again all these things and uh I believed him but thankfully again just like sometimes going through these things and hitting rock bottom is a good place to stand up from you know and being able to access this is why people are such a gift you know like my grandmother was
like a Guiding Light like a North star for me I didn't realize it at the time I just thought she was being annoying but just knowing that there's somebody who believes in me man it just made the process so much easier but the the thing is you don't need anybody else to believe in you you can believe in yourself you know but it does take it
does take some Revelation it does take a lot of work to be able to do that but anyways but just to put the icing on the cake with this with stress and the impact that it can have on our on our bodies and our relationships the reason that I I don't talk about this often Jay but the reason I wrote this book was to address how food is affecting how we communicate
with each other because you probably have noticed we're living at a very divisive time right now you know there's so much divisiveness there's so much agitation there's so much infighting when on paper we should be more connected than ever like we all have the same access to the same data why is there so much arguing about it right and also people are becoming so polarized
like they're going and planting their flag at one end or the other end but truth truthfully most people are here in the middle but they're listening to people at these outer ends but what's not being talked about is the fact that for example there was a study done at the Ohio State University and it was looking at couples you know like I love my wife she's my best friend
and but we also you know what I'm saying we have stuff you know like every couple and the thing is like we know our stuff now because we often attribute it to the person but what they did was they Ed glucose monitors to see what happens when the person in the in the relationship when they have abnormal blood sugar how they respond to
their partner yes all right and so what they found was when people had when their blood sugar was abnormal you know when they experienced a blood sugar crash for example which is normal because again we're going hypoglycemic and then crashing because the way we eat today the test subjects became much more aggressive towards their partner key
word aggressive right and here's the biggest thing because for me it's just like okay that's it's a quality but what's the end result end result is they were far less likely to resolve their relationship conflicts so that's the outcome because your blood sugar is messed up now we think about this with kids like you know they're hyper whatever they're cranky you're just a
big adult baby you know you get the same hard wiring and so when we tend to be in conflict is when we when our biological needs are off you know when we're tired when we're hungry these things we attribute to kids acting up like that but we do that to each other yes yes yes yes and so that was just one little glimpse into it like this is somebody
that you love and so what they just a little sidebar in the study they use like these dolls and poking pins in the doll how how aggressive you are or mad at your partner you are so which is kind of creepy like some people put so but now here's here's how we Branch this out globally researchers at Oxford University they wanted to see what would
happen by improving the nutrition of prison inmates right so we have a certain psychological view of people who are in these conditions absolutely yeah right but for me I have an experience with this because of the environment that I come from you know many of my friends and family end up in that situation I could have been in that situation and so what they did was and
this is a randomized placebo control Trial Gold Standard this isn't just guessing this isn't like the this thing gold standard of clinical trial they took a group of these prison inmates and they improved their nutrition just through getting some omega-3 fatty acid supplements which we got to talk about that by the way and then uh just
increasing their amount of vitamins and minerals that they're consuming right so very rudimentary stuff and then they have the placebo group who gets nothing this is a 4 and a half month study and after compiling all the data the test subjects the prison inmates who received the improved nutrition had a 35% drop in behavioral offenses versus the bbo group
and most notably a 37% drop overall in violent offenses their proclivity towards hurting another person dropped by 37% by increasing their nutrition what was in that nutrition do you know basic vitamins minerals multivitamin type stuff Omega-3s but the Omega-3s are critical that's why I want to specifically talk about this but that sounds so crazy because the very best
programs in prison for rehabilitation come nowhere near those types of results wow some other researchers saw it and they were just like that's impossible and they replicated the study and almost got the exact same numbers this was published in the journal aggressive behavior there's so many journals that cover these things and the data is available by getting
people healthier by giving them the basic the question should be how just your your cells your brain cells specifically being able to talk to each other you you require key nutrients and so one of those nutrients is omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA specifically yeah I want to hear about this yeah the cool thing is that bloodb brain barrier
they got an Express Pass so they're able to cross the bloodb brain barrier because it's one of those Essentials for the brain now this is so crazy but without these specific Omega-3s your brain cells can't really efficiently talk to each other it's something called they enable something called signal transduction so your cells being able to
talk and also they're part of all of your cell membranes so just the cell being sustainable itself if you're deficient in these things again your body will try to do what it has to do but it just degrades the way that your body works so much and so a study this was published in the journal neurology one of the top journals looking at the brain and they found that test subjects
who consume less than two grams of Omega-3s per day had the highest rate of brain shrinkage yeah and and where are we getting Omega 3es from naturally if we're even getting those yeah this is so important because for years I made this mistake all right working in a clinical practice seeing people every day and wanted to invoke more plants into
people's diets I would tell people make sure you're getting your chia seeds and your you know your flax seeds you got flax seeds o flax seed oil and refrigerated section because it's volatile but it I was missing the mark because that's ala it's a different form of Omega-3s it's the plant version and it's not what your brain uses all right so your brain uses EPA and DHA these are
only found in animal foods and we do have an option for people doing a vegan protocol which is algae oil all right so we'll come back to that in just a second but this is very important because your body can take the plant omega-3 ala and convert it into DHA and EPA but you're going to lose at least 75% of the conversion process all right so this is
going to depend on your microbiome your other metabolic factors and who's efficient in converting this so to say for somebody that is doing a vegan or vegetarian protocol to just have chia seeds you're cool it's not it's not cool literally we're talking about your brain shrinking this is not a joke you need to make sure you're getting these D this
DHA and EPA the whole food versions of or sources that we've evolved having is going to be coming from fatty fish again humans have been eating these foods for thousands of years I don't want to get into religiosity about our nutrition creates all this divisiveness I just want to talk about principles right and so fatty fish uh grass-fed beef eggs and
then we've got um the as far as what most of the peer viiew studies are done on is done on fish oil right and it's just it is what it is now with that said I believe that there are some other means for this one of them depending on where your ethics lie could be krill oil all right so krill oil is one of the richest sources of aanin which is protective of those Omega-3s which is
huge and of itself but this is a microscopic OPC keyword microscopic shrimp all right you're probably just even like if you lick the air you're going to be killing more sentient beings than you know what I mean this microscopic shrimp but it's a concentrated form of omega-3's DHA and EPA if that's where you sit then we have algae oil which is a plant Source the
caveat here is that we don't have much peer reviewed data on its efficacy we know the DHA and EPA is there so I don't want everybody to wait if you're doing a a vegan protocol please get yourself an Al oil today like today get a specific what do you eat that with so algae oil is going to be cap encapsulated oh caps okay so which again I'm would love
people to do food first but in this situation it's essential it is absolutely essential so we can still do our Chia and our flax and our hemp seeds those are those are great for other things but please don't mistake the fact that we need Omega-3s for cognitive function and again in this clinical trial they're using fish oil so this is not a joke being able to reduce your
proclivity towards violence to improve your ability to perspective take and to be able to have more compassion and patience we know this when we're when we're nutrient deprived when we're even just hungry we tend to be more irritable and less patient towards people we love let alone people we don't know so the biggest issue I believe Jay and this
isn't because I'm a nutritionist like I really examined this like I sat with this for a while I was like is this because my life has just been revolved around Health like truly I feel that the biggest underlying issue for our epidemic levels of divisiveness and very illogical Behavior and the ability to see another human being and to want to
do them harm is because we are unhealthy you know and the data indicates this but my real my life indicates this you know like I grew up in an environment man like it was just is an environment is so volatile it's so much violence you know outside my door and in my own household and to see how I've changed because I was a reflection of that environment
something I didn't tell you about when I went to that private university I got kicked out of that University for fighting wow you I got kicked out of high school for my entire junior year for fighting wow and I was at I was in student advisory I was uh Teenage Health consultant which was this little health program I was in inroads which was uh I
was able to take college credit you know it was the first year that it was popping off with St Louis University I was a scholar athlete I I was all these things it didn't matter you know I got in this situation where I felt threatened and I resorted to that behavior you know and every day in the morning you know I'm going in I'm getting the cereal I'm getting the
you know the pasturized orange juice I'm eating pizza pretty much every day at lunch with a oppresso with cheese you know and just like I'm making my body out of this really low quality material right and so the crazy thing was once I got physically healthier I started to see people differently and I started to have so much more patience because I was
replicating those behaviors like you know my daughter is my oldest I have three kids and my mother like she would say something once and then 5 seconds later she's pissed off right she doesn't want to repeat herself she's just ready on fire to be mad to be irritated to be aggressive toward you and to have such a lack of patience and so I was being that with my daughter you
know what for me I wanted her to be of course most people want their children to be better than them and so when she was in kindergarten I was getting her like second and third grade work and we would sit around the table and all this stuff and just imagine like the lack of patience that I had she and she you know graduated with honors all that stuff but
you know just what she had to deal with and I'm even then I'm still it wasn't like bad but still just like the level of patience that I have now from like my youngest son is 10 it's night and day it is night and day because I'm physically healthier and it's not a struggle it's not a reach for me now here's the the rub it's not that we can't express
Compassion or the perspective take or to express patience when we're unhealthy it's just harder yeah yeah yeah exactly and I think we've all experienced that right like I think we all know that that when you're hungry you react differently to everything and I think we've all experienced the irritability when you feel like your body's like exhausted or
malnutritioned you're going to be more irritable you're going to be more agitated I think we know that most people would say yeah I know exactly what that feels like and and this is why I like the connection you're making and I agree with you even more is I've spent so long with people where they keep trying to solve the issue in their head head they're wondering why their energy
is not right they're wondering why they don't feel positive they're wondering why they don't feel clear and so much of it is Diet related there's of course there's meditation and there's mindfulness and these beautiful practices but if you're doing all of those but you're not solving your gut you're making life harder like you're working harder without using all
the resources and that's why at the beginning when you said it's your diet your sleep and your movement and then you have your mindset and your meditation and your mindfulness we've got to use all four like you can't just use one like you can't just work out and say oh it doesn't matter what I eat and you can't just eat right and say oh it
doesn't matter if I don't work out and you can't just sleep right and right it's not about choosing either or it's it's all of them and that's what you present in this book about the connection between them yeah Sean you're such a wise insightful 20 years St studied I mean when you mentioned I'm like I can tell it's it's phenomenal and you can tell what a passion you have for
this if if someone's listening today and you could simplify for them three things that they should try and learn more about and three things they should be very aware of that they may need to put aside what would you say for each of those for someone who's today going wow I need to read this book eat Smart I'm going to order that but it's like what
are three things things that I need to add and think about and research and learn more about and what are three things that I maybe need to avoid and and set aside you know this is a tened throughout history the number one thing for me is to know thyself you know really do do a self assessment because often times you know working as somebody
who's I'm sitting across a table from a person and they've got 12 medications that they're on and they're wanting to make a change and and I have to be there and to look them in the eyes and say I got you we're going to figure this out and actually know with every fiber of my being that we're going to figure it out yeah to be able to do that I have to evoke within that person
and find what is a leverage point and help them to get honest about what landed them in this place that they're in to begin with right so what I would find is that and this is a great secret for all the coaches out there many people already probably know this who are doing this type of work if you allow a person to speak just ask them questions they will
often tell you the cause and the Cure of what is ailing them they're being they know it already it's already within their mental and you know cellular records They know better than anybody right but you have to give people space to be able to speak and so but often times coaches you know we want to help people so we just want to give them our
thing right but just actually be there listen be a space for this person because probably nobody's ever really listened to them like just actually shut everything down and listen to them be that person and they'll tell you the cause and cure so know thyself is the tenant self assess and there's different personality types that we can put people in but
we're we're infinite you know we really are but there are people who tend to be people who start things and stop things very quickly right they meet a little a little bit of resistance in there H that's okay then there are people who you know um swing for the fences they go and they do so much like they go they get all the things they get all the
equipment they go so hard and they run themselves into the ground right and there are people who are just more balanced like there's different personality types yeah and so really honing in on what your personality types is are and I I talked about this a little bit in the book as well so know thyself so you know what to shore up and I don't like to talk talk in terms of
strength and strength and weaknesses you know you have strengths and then you often have things that are foreign to you right and that's okay because like my strength is I know a lot about the human body I don't know about cars you know what I mean like I Know Dan catrick like I feel disrespected even saying car around her you know what I'm saying and
so it's just like being able to understand like that's not my domain of of Excellence or but I could learn I might you know because of my experience come into the car game and like I can start seeing stuff other people aren't seeing you know like but that's not for me so I understand my strengths and also where I don't have any credibility or experience right number one is just a
principle to know know yourself and to know what things tend to hinder you and I'll just share one little quick one because I saw it as a big consistent in my clinical practice one of the biggest things that hinders people and getting in the progress that they want is blaming others all right I I was liter I was right there listening to them and I'm
like I can see after a while I can see it coming out here it comes yeah you know if my kids would just a bitterness right if my husband would just if my wife would just if my mom would just you know like everybody else in their life is making it harder right so they have this story and they're going to live and die by it right and so but the thing is
is just a story and it doesn't mean that it's not true it doesn't mean that you don't experience more you know conflict or curveballs in your life because of your life experience but listen like it's all about perspective you know I've been through some crazy stuff in my life and to be here where I am like the the the number one thing besides that moment
of decision is taking responsibility from my life 100% responsibility again this is one of those things that you might you don't really do that you know and so that's without any wiggle room I had to stop pointing the fingers I had to stop blaming and catch myself whenever I do it and understand even in a relationship conflict it's not 50/50 it's 100 100
because if there's a miscommunication taking place instead of me being like why don't you understand this I can think about how am I communicating this because there is a way to get through right but that's me taking responsibility but sometimes we don't feel like it you know some but also again if you're physically unwell it's harder right so being able to um help
people with that piece of like you've got to take responsibility here stop blaming other people there is a way right and what we do is and this is where I can answer more the question is start stacking conditions in your favor to make it easier make it automatic so the biggest issue today with people being able to go from where they are with their health where we are
a severely sick Society I mentioned 250 million Americans overweight or obese 130 million Americans diabetic or pre-diabetic 60% of Americans have some degree of heart disease right now uh 115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived upwards of 50 million Americans are experienc an autoimmune uh condition I can go on and on and on these are
things that have never happened before but they've skyrocketed depression all-time high ADHD the list goes on and on everything is worse and here we are again on paper we're supposed to be more evolved and intelligent than we've ever been been and people were like well we're we're living longer though no no we're the first generation in recorded
human history that is not going to outlive the generation before us it is now reversed which doesn't make sense it should be continuing to increase but we've hit a threshold you know our quality of life is suffering because by treating symptoms we can keep people alive and what's happening is we're not really living longer we're dying longer
we're extending the suffering you know so how do we get into this State and the solution here the number one thing is we live in a severely sick culture and so we're automatically going to pick up what's happening in our environment to be healthy in a severely sick Society is VE is weird you know so Jay you and your wife are weird as hell like you guys are
super weird and shout out to everybody else that's that you're weird you know and that's okay it's abnormal because Normal right now is being unwell and so a solution here is and this is my goal this is what I do this is what I dedicate my life to this what gets me up in the morning is to help to make a shift to where health is normalized right to where it's easy to
have access to the things that make you healthy right now we have ease of access to things that make you sick that degrade your health that degrade your mental health these are all close closely accessible right and so one of those things you know again being from Ferguson Missouri I was surrounded by fast food like absolutely you name the place within a mile radius all of them
are just I'm surrounded by it and the question is why is this so cheap right because that's why I bought it yeah the accessibility the the price and the taste of course they got food scientists brilliant and making you addicted to the foods but the cost the econ the economies of scale here and so how is it that I can go to McDonald's and get
three cheeseburgers for the same amount that would cost me to buy one avocado yeah this avocado falls off the tree like literally this these cheeseburgers are so cost intensive to make it makes no sense right the bread and the processing the meat the cheese the condiments not to mention even if we use a avocado versus a Happy Meal there's even a toy
the packaging right all of these things are so C intensive right the market all of that there's we don't have like Beyonce doing a thing for you know avocados like if you could imagine that you know um but you know what I'm saying that's a really good point but here's the thing a really good point if you think about this like how is this possible and I answer this question
because I had to like I not only did I answer the question but I looked at what is the outcome so a Big Driver of this is government subsidies right so from the year year 1995 to 2010 alone the United States government doled out almost $200 million in government subsidies to Farmers who are growing these commodity crops that largely show
up through the drive-through window and in processed foods right so corn soy various forms of where sugar we can extract some sugar wheat of course is big and by the way like if you look at a grocery store most of the foods are made of those ingredients right some forms or versions of those things so what happened was by in giving this investment almost nothing went to the
farmers who are growing fruits fruits and vegetables now here's the bottom line I came across a study and I dug I had to find what is the outcome from this there's got to be somebody asking this question because I'm asking it and I found it in the Journal of the American Medical Association one of the most prestigious journals in the world and they looked at the consumption of
government subsidized food and the outcomes of Health in humans right so the people who are consuming the most government subsidized Foods had almost a 40% greater incidence of being obese they had a far higher uh waste circumference so belly fat and higher levels of blood sugar and also degradations to their their uh inflammation so measure they use C
reactive protein to measure they had high rates of inflammation right so all of these terrible things but key thing almost a 40% greater incidence of being obese by consuming the food that our government is literally paying for for to put into our society we're literally feeding the problem and it's not okay and when I say the government I mean us
because that money is coming from us but we don't understand our Authority we've outsourced it to other people who don't have our best interest at heart and so I'm in an environment where 60% greater incidents of my aunts you know the my family members black women 60% greater incidence of being obese than and a Caucasian woman that's the that's the
society that we're living in and it's the environment right it's not that any of us are just by Nature more likely to be unhealthy right and so we can help to stack conditions to unify each other you know unify our communities but we got to stand up for each other and not allow this Insanity to happen because what's happening when we're feeding this problem is the higher
rates of of mental issues of poverty it's driving more crime it's driving more divisiveness right it's not our fault I didn't want to be a a quote bad person I'm in an environment where it is a bigger risk for me to go outside and play than for another kid because I literally might die a bullet might hit me you know and that's again it's a it's
not like this is a daily thing but that stuff did happen you know and people don't understand that so you look at people and you're like just work harder my mother worked overnight at a convenience store just to again try to make me and she was stabbed eight times by somebody trying to rob the convenience store these are things people often again they don't they're
not subjected to and she my mother's a really tough human being like it's crazy you know if you hear some of these stories about my mom but when she she subdued the guy the police came right she's just man she's she's kind of a badass but when she she survived and subdued the oh yeah yeah yeah so when she got to the hospital and got the
stitches The Physician told her that if you weren't overweight you would have died your your body fat saved you what do you think she's going to do that cognitive Association my fat is my savior it's protecting me you think she's going to do anything to lose this weight she's she's going to be more acclimated to having more of it it's my protection it's my safety right she sold
her blood to put food on the table you know all these different things you know so but it's a Perpetual it's the environment it's the culture and there is a way to transition out of that but I'm I'm really the exception not the rule like it took so many minor miracles for this to happen but and I look back at my life it's just like is there
something remarkable about me like how did all of this happen and the the thing is we're all remarkable I just realized that I have some power I realize that I have I have the ability to decide to think what I want to think and to respond the way that I want to respond and to make choices in the world when I had just been Outsourcing all of my
choices to the environment around me and I have this story about like I can't I can't do it so you know to to drive that point home a big solution here is for us to create conditions and we can do that we can start with our own culture and our own household if people see my son for example my son Jordan 21 years old uh right now he just launched a new fitness program
yesterday and you know I never told him to work in this field but he's just in the environment right and so he's been personal training and serving I get messages from people who their kids have bought his program like in tears just like your son help my I I didn't sign up for that I had no idea but it's we created a culture of of Fitness of health of connection
intentionally and it doesn't matter where you start because my son Jordan was there with me in Ferguson sleeping on an air mattress he knows what it's like he was there with me through all of it and so he has that perspective no matter where you are right now no matter where your kids are at we can create conditions and nobody said it was going to be easy
though you know you're going to there's going to be resistance especially if you've been just on the iPad all the time or watching TV all the time but a solution is this is to add to a solution we need to fill that space with something of greater or equal value that's the trick that's it right so if you can find a way to supplant the need
to you know for them to watch another show with something that is you know involves movement you know maybe again like and you can recruit other people you probably got friends in your network you know like maybe there's a dance class or maybe there's you know fill in the blank you like the greatest gift that I have in my life today is the resources and the people that I have
right and I'm a I'm a self professed Lone Wolf for sure like I definitely had that Lone Wolf energy but now like every day in my meditation practice I have a little segment where I do a gratitude and I run through all the you know people I'm grateful for and it's just like it blows my mind often times I I I you know going to tears you know
thinking about it all the wonderful people but that even that happens by you becoming the type of person that can invite in that kind of energy right and so one of the big tricks that I've learned over the years too for people who are wanting you know who's blaming other people and wanting them to change is very difficult there's a statement
that you can't be a prophet in your own land you know invite in find other voices to do the thing so I just came back on Sunday from speaking at an event in Mexico every year it's it's called phenomenal life and it's Eric Thomas often considered like top motivational speaker in the world so it's him myself uh CJ this guy named Jamal who's just a brilliant guy as well so we do this
event I'm not just going to go to the event I'm going to bring my family so they can hear it from them rather than from me yeah right so that's one of the things I realized is just like if I have the opportunity let me get the kids in this place even with Fitness what tends to happen is if somebody's working on their Fitness they they leave their kids
they never really see them like mom goes to this mystical place called the gym and she comes back happier and sweaty like even that it's kind of freaky actually to think like where are you going mom um but anyways give your kids some of these inputs like let them see you work out invite them in do some stuff with them right as soon as my
oldest son was old enough to go to gold back in St Louis he was 12 years old and you know he let 12 year olds in he I brought brought him to the gym with me and now like this he's a beast like it's it's it's crazy you know it just yeah so start with your own household create a culture intentionally it doesn't have to be perfect it's just about progress you
know I know you ask for three things but there's so much that was beautiful man Sean you could drop the mic that was that was so beautiful on so many levels because what I really appreciated about you is you're able to put the emphasis on taking responsibility and designing your own destiny in and amongst all of the chaos all of the divisiveness all of the pain
and challenges that you've experienced personally that you see around you and you're saying well I've taken my own learning into my own hands and I think that's empowering I think it's encouraging and I think it's enlivening for everyone who's been listening and watching cuz we can hear your heart and I love today how you've connected the gut to the heart to the brain you know
to see that 360 degree approach to life through your truth is truly powerful to experience to just sit in the presence of that and that just like flies off of you like it just exudes from who you are your eyes your face your body your mind your whole entire presence like I I've just been feeling it uh so I want you to know that I see that
I feel that and I want everyone who's listening and watching if you haven't been able to see it because you're not in the room I'm sure you can hear it and I want everyone to go you know subscribe to Sean show grab the book eat smarter follow Sean on social media because he's talking about the gut but it's a way through to the heart and the Soul as well so Sean I want to
thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us as a guest on on purpose for putting your heart into this book and the work that you continue to do and I know this will be the first of many more conversations thank you Jay it's been an honor thank you man I received that thank you so much I want to make sure everyone who's been listening and
watching what I'd love for you to do is tag me and Sean to let us know what you learned what you took away there were so many phenomenal insights today on so many different levels right whether it's mental physical emotional spiritual family societal economical like we've really went everywhere and what we discovered ultimately as Sean said was we've got to
take charge we can't Outsource our happiness we can't Outsource our health got to take that Char just as he has just as he continues to try to do and serve and support us as well so I can't wait to see what you've learned I can't wait to see your feedback big thank you to Sean again and a big thank you to each and every one of you that investing
in your health and happiness as you listen to on purpose thanks everyone thank you Sean if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monk book.com check Below in the description to make sure you order today