April: Hello everybody. It’s April Perry, Alia Perry, and Jonathan Bailor back with another episode of the SANE show. And we’re so excited to get to podcast with Alia and really being able to dive into the physchology of what happens when a child goes SANE. I have a lot of parents sending emails and letting me know that their children are struggling with their weight. That’s a very emotional email and I understand the pain that’s coming from these children and their parents because we lived through that so I can completely relate.

I want children and parents to feel hope and excitement that when you make the investment of time and energy to be able to go SANE that the results are phenomenal and amazing so I finally decided to interview Alia, who has been SANE for how long now?

Alia: About a year and a half.

April: Okay, about a year and a half and she’s 16 years old. This is a big deal for her. So we just identified six things that have made life really great since going SANE.

Alia: Six things that SANE has made amazing.

April: So, what’s number one? Ready?

Alia: Shopping for clothes is fun again. I absolutely hated shopping for clothes for about five years while I was struggling with my weight. I dreaded going to the store and seeing all of the mirrors. I hated being there. I never wanted to buy any clothes, I just hated how everything looked. So now that I’ve gone SANE, I don’t dread that anymore and I look forward to finding clothes that will just fit.

April: And you’re not afraid of mirrors?

Alia: Nope, not afraid of the mirrors anymore.

Jonathan: I think this is such an important topic April and Alia and one of the things I think we do not focus enough on as a society, because we hear, we pick up any source of news, once a week we’re going to hear something about the childhood obesity epidemic and how they expected heart attacks and cost and we’ve got children having heart attacks in their teens and this is just great. Let’s be very clear. Type 2 Diabetes used to be called the adult onset of Diabetes. Then we changed the name because we’re like oops…you don’t have to be an adult to get it when you’re surrounded with insanity, but what we don’t hear about is the heartbreaking, emotional consequences of struggling with overweight. We know smoking is bad for us, so we would want to protect our children from secondhand smoke all day because we know it does permanent physiological damage, but you’re not going to struggle to get a date to prom because you smoke, and you’re not going to get harassed in the hallway and not be able to buy a dress that you love because you smoke, so obesity is going to give you all of the negative health consequences of something like smoking is going to do, plus it’s got all of these psychological ramifications.

April: Exactly and as a girl that’s really, really hard. And as a mother, right of a daughter, that was really hard. I would take all of my children out on shopping trips and go try and these at the store, but the main thing I want to emphasize today is that SANE has made it so possible for her to transform her life and transform her body.

I’m constantly amazed at how I’ll go to a store with Alia, we go around the store, we’re picking out clothes and now the problem is we usually can’t find something small enough for you and she’s finding different clothes and then as she’s trying things on and she’s coming out and showing me these different outfits, I’m just seeing how happy she is and how excited she is to try on clothes again. I didn’t really realize that was missing from her life before. We’re not big shoppers to begin with. We hardly ever go shopping, but on the few times that we do, it’s just been really happy. It’s really fun. I wanted to emphasize that’s a fun point, something you can look forward to if you’re not looking forward to it right now.

Jonathan: It’s really important to make those point, April and Alia, because I think so often on the surface, when we think about doing things like going SANE, it’s immediately, we’re focusing on what we’re not going to do anymore. Oh, I can’t bake anymore, which actually isn’t true, but oh, I’m not going to bring joy to my children anymore by giving them snickers bars when they come home from school. Maybe not, but Alia, if you had to trade eating a snickers bar for how you feel when you go shopping for clothes that you love, which would you pick now that you’ve been on both sides?

Alia: Definitely not with the snickers bar.

April: That’s absolutely. So I think that’s something that’s really exciting for us and we want to make sure we’re sharing that. You want to go for Number Two?

Alia: Yes.  Two is more confidence with your friends and social life in general. I always had confidence and I wasn’t ever self-conscious about who I was as a person, I just didn’t like how I felt and how I looked. So I just know that I never have to worry about how I look or how I’m feeling—I’m never feeling bad about myself in social situations.

April: And this has been huge because being 16 years old now, and in our family you need to be 16 before you can go on a date and Alia actually has her first date tomorrow night. A group is going out together. We’re really excited about it and I feel Eric is not excited about it. Oh, oh, sorry. We have to clarify. Her date with someone else outside of the family is tomorrow night.

Alia: Mom…

April: Your first date is when?

Alia: Tonight.

April: With who?

Alia: My dad. I’m so sorry dad.

April: I keep calling it the first date.

Alia: Yeah, she calls it the first date and I think it’s the second date.

April: I’m so sorry. Second date is tomorrow night, first date is tonight for sure, sorry. I’m going to get in trouble for that later. What’s been fun though for me for her is to be able to see her just feeling confident and happy and having such a great group of friends and being able to have this confidence and joy and being with other people. She’s not self-conscious, she’s not hiding in the corner, she’s not refraining from going to social activities, and so just for me as a mother, watching what’s happening with her, super exciting.

Jonathan: I’m going to sound like a broken record during this episode, but I think it’s important and I think it bears repeating, which is, I love that we’re celebrating this because again, I don’t know of any inSANE food that tastes as good as the emotions that you are describing right now. So, let’s that’s great and also let me just make an observation that the second day after you turn 16, you were like, as soon as I turn 16, boom, we’re going to make this happen. I think that’s awesome. What is Number Three?

April: It’s so fun.

Alia: Number Three is easier to move. So, I always felt so weighed down, literally, just because I had all of this extra weight on me and it was hurting my feet and my knees and it wasn’t fun to move around or even to just exercise. I’ve been taught that you need to move to get healthy, but it just hurt to move and I didn’t want to do that to begin with.

Jonathan: It’s a really important distinction because so often we’re told again, inactivity is the cause of obesity when we actually have that completely backwards, right? When movement is hard and painful, we stop doing it. It’s just general human nature. What also happens is when we’re struggling with our weight, not only is it hard and painful, but what happens when you experience something that’s hard and painful over and over and over again and you don’t see results which you won’t if you’re not modifying your lifestyle. You will be in pain and then you will have proven to yourself essentially that movement is bad, so then you get into this self-defeating cycle and to have that experience when you’re a child, if the ease of movement is an issue when you are 15, can you imagine what it’s going to be like when you’re 65 or 75? It’s just so important to make those changes early so I applaud you for doing that.

April: My things is that I also find, is that a lot of the activities that teenagers are doing are involving movement, whether it’s playing “Just Dance” using the Wii or it’s going bowling or it’s going out—

Alia: Going to a dance.

April: Going to a dance. She was at a New Year’s Eve dance and I was watching her out with her friends, just dancing, having fun and I just thought, this could have been such a different scene, right?

Alia: I wouldn’t have been there.

April: You wouldn’t have even been there. I’ll just share one quick experience. So I was there as a chaperone at the dance and I was walking around and there was a slow song that came on. I thought, I wonder where Alia is. I was looking for her and so I’m checking on the dancefloor and I’m checking against the wall.

Alia: No other parents are there. It’s all the teenagers and a couple of chaperones. And no one else’s parents are out looking for them.

April: I know, but I was just looking, but then I kind of saw her and she was in the middle of the dance floor dancing with a really nice young man and just smiling and talking and having this wonderful experience. I just remember feeling so excited for her that she was just out there having fun with friends and not standing against the wall or not like I had been over at the—when I was a young girl, I would sit over at the chip table right and eat Doritos or something during those dances. She wasn’t doing that. She was out with her friends, confident, having a great time and that’s a pretty amazing feeling.

Jonathan: And that’s a really highlights the—I’ve talked about Stephen Cubby is famous for saying that nothing tastes as good as he said, thin feels. SANE feels. I think that’s really important of what we’re talking about here is, there is a set of experiences we can kind of choose between. We have the choice to say, you can choose in a free country to eat inSANEly and you will have a set of experiences. Your experience at the dance will be that you can eat a bunch of inSANE food on the chip table and that will probably bring you some joy in the moment, or you could have the experience of eating SANE food, and being out on the dance floor and that’s probably going to bring you some joy too.

You can be really—which do you want? Again, it’s always healthy is bad and scary and it’s going to take all of these things away from me, but anyone who has been on the other side? It’s not as if healthy people walked around in a constant state of depression from all of the things that are missing out on. It’s the opposite is true.

April: And what’s also interesting is that most of the other people at the dance are at the chip table and then they’re also dancing. Not everybody is struggling with their weight, especially when they’re young, but what I think is interesting to know is that if you are struggling, if you’re not getting the results that you want, you just need to know what’s causing it because I didn’t know what was causing it. when we talk about nothing tastes as good as thin feels, yeah, but what happens, is you have to make sure you’re not using that as an excuse to not just eat because that was my problem. I would not just eat. I thought I could either enjoy food or be hungry and that was the only choice and that’s not true.

Jonathan: That’s not true at all. In fact, I would argue that individuals who are going SANE, let’s be very clear. If you go to the objectively, finest restaurants in the world, the finest restaurants in the world serve SANE food. They don’t serve snickers bar, they don’t serve soda, they don’t serve big macs and they don’t serve French fries or pizza. That’s not high quality delicious. The most delicious food in the world is SANE food. We just need to make it accessible to more people.

April: Love that. All right, should we move on to the next one?

Alia: Yes. The next one is, it’s easier to be a leader and this goes along with having more confidence. I wouldn’t want to be in front of people, putting myself out there because I just didn’t like how I looked and I think people would just think, oh, what is she going to be able to teach us, and I know you have some examples about this.

April: Yeah, just as far as you go?

Alia: For you.

April: Yeah, for me, I was in seventh or eighth grade. And that’s when I was really struggling with my weight and I didn’t want to run for Student Council. I didn’t want to ever do anything that would put me out there. I just felt really embarrassed about myself and now once I lost weight through not eating, I was slender, so then I did have more confidence, where I started running for student council and I was very involved because I felt good about my outside appearance, but it came at a cost and the cost was that I had to count what I was eating, count all of my calories, and I had to be hungry a lot. And basically starve myself. And so looking back on that, I’m thinking, well, I got to be involved in a lot of leadership opportunities that helped me get into college, right and all of these things that were wonderful about those experiences, but the cost was really hard for me and I ended up paying for it much later as those bad habits continued and I thought I always had to starve myself.

Now, I contrast that with Alia, who is eating SANEly, who is naturally slender, who is healthy, and she’s very open to leadership opportunities and putting herself out there and I wish I could go back and do what she’s doing now.

Jonathan: And I think it gives a lot of hope and inspiration for parents to hear these stories because while my wife and I haven’t been blessed with the opportunity to be parents yet, I know it’s not easy to do what we’re talking about. I think all of us can acknowledge that we live in an inSANE society so this isn’t easy, but the reward is so huge. What you’re talking about right now, think of the butterfly effect of maybe the young man or young woman that gives you a second look in the hallway because you’re carrying yourself with more confidence that you end up going out and doing it. Maybe that completely changes the trajectory of your life. Maybe taking that student council position helps you to meet someone who then gives you internship and then your whole trajectory of your life is changed. It’s like yes, this is not as easy as just putting a toaster pastry in the toaster oven and it’s not just as easy as going through the McDonald’s drive-thru, but it is so worth it, it seems.

April: Yes. Absolutely. All right, Number Five, ready?

Alia: Yeah. You never need to go hungry or feel guilty about not being hungry, this was a huge life changer for me just because we were both calorie counting apps a lot and we were thinking, you have to be hungry if you want to lose weight. It’s just the way it goes, but after going SANE, you know that’s not what you have to do anymore.

April: I think this is just a gift that you get to give your children and I feel like this is one of the biggest gifts that I can give my children, is that instead of encouraging them not to eat and instead of saying, Alia, I think you should take a smaller lunch or now dinner is over, don’t run back in the kitchen.

Alia: Don’t have dessert.

April: Don’t have dessert. Yeah, all of the things I used to say to her to try to be helpful, right? I was trying to help, now I get to make sure that all of my children know that you don’t ever have to intentionally starve yourself and the thing is, is I know there are so many parents out there who are setting their children up to work with personal trainers at the gym, who are putting their kids on calorie counting type diets, trying to help their children lose weight. I know this is happening because I’m hearing from these parents and [Inaudible 15:11] same thing, but I feel so excited and so empowered as a parent to make sure that my children know that they never have to be hungry.

Jonathan: It’s an incredibly important distinction to make April, because I think your experience as you mentioned is fairly universal in the modern day and age, which is why we’re here to try to reverse that and that is this idea that healthy equals hungry and those things have to go together and let me just be a little sciencey here first. I haven’t had too much science so far in this episode, so we’re going to do just a little bit of science. Can I do a little bit of science?

April: Absolutely.

Jonathan: Okay, so I’ll just do a little bit of science. We have enough time, so I’m going to do a little bit of science.

The reason that eating less of a standard American diet “works” is if you’re smoking two packs a day, it is better to smoke one pack a day because cigarettes are trajectory bad for you so if you smoke less of them, you will get lung cancer slower. Fact. Right? so if you’re eating like the average American and it’s even worse for children where about 60 percent of your calories are coming from processed nonsense and you go to a popular weight loss program, and they tell you to just take the 2,400 calories of processed nonsense that you’re eating and drop it down to 1,200, that’s like going from two packs a day to one pack a day.

The problem here is that we don’t have to smoke, we do have to eat. So you can’t just say, eat less. That’s like saying, don’t go from two packs a day smoking to one pack a day. It would just be like hey, could you breathe less? Could you just take half as many breaths throughout the day? That will solve the problem. No, no, no, maybe you could do it for a little bit, maybe you could slow down your breathing rate for a little bit, but not for the rest of your life, but somehow we think that is a logical way to handle our food. Just be hungry. Just hold your breath. Just hold your appetite, that doesn’t work. Yes, you will get short term results because you’ve reduced the amount of poison that’s going into your body, but it’s like low dose poison, it’s still not a desirable state. So the ability to say, let’s focus on more of what heals us, in place of that which harms us, rather than just saying, just get rid of everything. That’s so much more empowering and so much more effective.

April: Exactly and I wish I had known that back in elementary school because the first time I remember starving, not eating enough, was when I was nine, but I remember sitting in my third grade classroom, and fourth grade classroom and I remember feeling hungry and thinking, I’m just going to be hungry, I’m just going to be hungry—it’s sad that a nine year old child, instead of thinking about the assignments on the board or the worksheets I was doing or the play we were putting on for school, I was sitting there thinking about how hungry I am and how I’m trying so hard not to eat. I think that’s sad for any child.

It’s a gift for our children. Okay, ready for Number Six?

Alia: Yes. Life just feels happier in general. I can’t imagine where my life would be without the staying SANE because just the quality of my life is so different from what it used to be.

April: I just have to add a little bit here because I really see it from the outside. Alia has always been a happy girl. She’s always been very solid, she knows who she is. She is always cared about other people and we have a wonderful relationship her whole life. But what I’ve noticed is now that she’s SANE, there’s this extra little lift to her where when she finds something funny and she wants to share and her sense of humor has come out alot more. She’s really fun with her friends. She’s has this air of more confidence, and joy in general and I see that in her. I see how happy she is and she’s not hungry so she’s not sitting there starving herself because you’re not thriving and happy when you’re hungry. I just feel like just seeing how happy she is because she’s made this choice to eat a SANE diet, to really put this as a priority. It’s been a year and a half. Alia is solid. For her birthday breakfast this morning, we made her these coconut flour cookies that has Xylitol in them and they’re good, right?

Alia: [Inaudible 19:36] for breakfast.

April: [Inaudible 19:40] a whole lot of sugar. It’s really fun that we have new options and she sticks with it because it really makes her happy.

Jonathan: And that’s such an important point to close on because everything and all of the excuses that we’re going to give ourselves, like it costs too much. Takes too much time. It’s too difficult. What do we spend our money on? We spend our money on things that we think are going to make us happy. What do we spend our time on? We spend on our time on things that we think are going to make us happy.

Now, let’s be very clear. For the first six weeks where you were going SANE, I bet you weren’t feeling the way you’re feeling right now. I can bet it was a little bit rocky and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I think this is so powerful for people to understand is it’s just like, you’ve been trying the alternative. You’ve been trying yo-yo dieting, you’ve been trying calorie counting and struggling with that for 40 years, if you’re an adult or ever since you can remember if you’re a child and that’s never going to get easier and it’s never going to make you feel happy and it’s still hard. So you can choose to spend your money and your time on things that are going to make you happy for a moment and then sad and lethargic long term or just give it 6 weeks, 12 weeks. You’re 18 months into now, but you’re good for the rest of your life. You’re happier for the rest of your life.

We go to college for four years to get a degree which may or may not be useful. If you spend six months doing this, it will change the rest of your life guaranteed. That’s a pretty good investment.

April: No, 100 percent. Anything you want to say on that?

Alia: Just get past the first couple of months and the first couple of months, I was frustrated because I didn’t see results right away. I definitely felt better. I just didn’t see the immediate results. But after sticking with it, I just saw the results and never went back.

April: And then five different pants size later, you were just shrinking out of your clothes. It was so amazing to watch. One of the things we just want to emphasize because we’re talking about child and what SANE looks like for a child, I think and correct me if I’m wrong, Jonathan, but it seems to have worked faster for children than for adults. Is that what you’ve noticed as well?

Jonathan: It will work faster for individuals who have not weight cycled. That’s also why it seems to work better for men. It’s not because men have an easier time losing weight. It’s because most men haven’t weight cycled a bunch in their life, so every time we yo-yo diet and this is why we’re so against calorie counting because it will fail long term and every time it fails you it’s harder to then fix your metabolism long term.

So a child who had never weight cycled or a male who has never weight cycled, or a female who has never weight cycled will see way faster results than someone who has yo-yo dieted a bunch.

April: I think that’s a valid point just to bring up because if viewers are watching, and listeners are listening, after you’re hearing, you’re thinking about this story or thinking about a child in your life, who is struggling with weight, giving it this effort and trying it out and seeing how quickly the results will come if this child hasn’t had yo-yo dieting, it’s pretty amazing to watch and I think it’s empowering to know, it’s not like you need to go on this diet for a year and a half to see any change. You’re going to change your diet, change your life permanently, at least go into it with the intent I’m going to do what will work for me forever. I have no doubt that Alia will be totally fine in college. No doubt. She knows what to eat, she knows how to prepare her foods, no worries. We’re going to make sure she has a kitchen or have access to the foods that she needs and she’ll be fine and that’s a pretty amazing feeling as a parent to know that once she leaves, she’s good. I don’t have to be concerned about her anymore.

Jonathan: And also one thing that’s really encouraging as we talk about results is that if you’re watching the video this will be especially helpful maybe.  So if you count calories, your results will be good at the start, and then they will get worse as time goes on. So if you cut your calories to 500 calories per day, you’re going to see the most weight loss in the first week, then you’re going to see less and less and less weight loss until you have no weight loss and until you gain it all back. With SANE, the opposite happens where it actually like there is a delay and then you get this sort of expedential growth or expediential progress because what’s happening is your body is healing in a foundational level and just like when you think about it, when you have a broken bone on your body, it’s not like the cast slowly comes off, it’s like no progress and then one day your arm is better. So it’s kind of the same thing with your metabolism. That’s why it’s second nature now because while eating less becomes harder over time and the results slow down over time, SANEity comes easier and you actually see more results the longer you do it.

April: Yep, we love it. So, we just hope that any children or parents who are looking at this and feel this hope and feel excited about what this can do for the children.

So, thank you so much everybody for being with us and remember to stay SANE.