How To Make Weight Loss Empowering Instead of Depressing

April: Hi! This is April Perry and Jonathan Bailor back with another episode of the SANE Show. Jonathan, I have a lot of really good questions to ask you today. Are you ready to answer them?

Jonathan: I’m ready, only if they’re good questions though? They’re good questions?

April: They’re really good questions. Well, I feel really privileged actually to get to share these questions with you because they are sourced from people who trust us, who trust the Calorie Myth, trust the SANE Solution, they trust the podcast and they just had some clarifying questions. Or sometimes they just want to share a little bit of their heart with us. So I feel really privileged to get to be the mouthpiece, we talked about, to be able to ask these hard questions, because most of the questions that people are asking or emailing me about, they really don’t feel comfortable talking about them in public at all, or with friends. They get so many different answers out there that a lot of them are really confused, so I feel really privileged to get to talk about these.

So, first question – I’m just going to go ahead and read what the email said because I feel like it will kind of capture the essence of it. Here’s what it said: Hi April. I wonder if you can help me handle some of the stress that is going on in my head. Every time I look at a picture of myself, or see my reflection in the mirror, I feel fat. I say in my head over and over again that I am too big, that I am not attractive, and that I need to change. I just don’t know how. If I could become more toned, more slender, I know it would do wonders for my whole life. I’ve been trying to eat SANE for quite a while and I’m trying to do the eccentric exercises, but I think I need to do it better. I’m just not seeing results that I think I should be seeing. I’ve been listening to your podcast with Jonathan and I just want to feel hopeful that I can actually heal my body and my mind. I keep thinking I should count calories again and exercise two hours a day because I’m not doing SANE right. So, what is the roadmap I need to follow and can you spell it out in a way that feels doable? Thank you.

So, that’s kind of a lot of questions. It’s kind of a tall order and I think it’s kind of already been done, but I think what we want to hit on is there’s just someone struggling and needing more hope. So here you go Jonathan.

Jonathan: The good news April is this individual is not alone. In fact, it’s amazing that the language in this email you received, “What is a roadmap I can follow? Can you spell it out in a way that feels doable?” Because we actually developed, and recently a lot of people have really enjoyed it, a seminar that we provide. You can find out more about it at SANESeminar.com. We actually share during that seminar a patent-pending SANE results planner during that seminar. We help people to start developing an actual roadmap and they enter in nine different variables, like way beyond their current weight, their goal weight, digging into their family history. Then we look at what they’re going to be eating from a servings of vegetables, proteins, fats and insanity. Then we actually use this patent-pending algorithm to provide them with like here’s what you can expect in terms of results. That’s incredibly exciting.

The thing that’s been really interesting to watch with it though April is that from a marketing perspective it would be really easy for us to just fake that and say, “You’re going to reach all of your goals in three months, just like these infomercials you see on television.” You know, “Just try it a little bit and in three months you’re going to lose ninety pounds and it’s going to be miraculous.” If that was ever true – here’s the secret. If there was ever anything that made any person lose weight that fast, healthfully, and sustainably you would already know about it. And everyone would already know about it because it would be so wildly effective that it couldn’t possibly stay a secret.

April: Okay, so what I think I’m hearing you say is that this person is wanting results maybe faster than they’re coming. Let’s say somebody goes through this seminar. They go through and they discover that it’s going to take them more than a year to accomplish their goals, their weight goals, or their health and fitness goals. What if then there’s another program over here that promises it in thirty days? I think that’s an issue, but what you’re saying is it might just take longer but keep going?

Jonathan: Yes. Well there’s two components of it: One is that literally the conversation I was having with my team prior to this recording session was what we should do about some feedback we’re getting during the seminar. Because people are saying it says that I will reach my goal in five years and that’s just discouraging to me. But then what we found out when we follow up with these individuals, I’ll give you a concrete example without sharing any personal details. This individual weighs 240 pounds and in their SANE planner they said their goal weight was 120.

Now let’s take a couple steps back. The average weight of a female in the United States is 164 pounds. Now this woman was also 65 years old. Her height is irrelevant. The point is, is that her goal was to lose well over a hundred pounds, but even more important than that, if at her age and given her medical conditions she was at 120, she would literally be in the top .5%, in terms of physical fitness and well-being. So not that that’s—

April: It’s like wanting to be an Olympian.

Jonathan: And the thing that’s really important is so if her roadmap – like if today you said – I’ll say for myself: I want to be in the top 1% of swimmers, and right now I’m not even average, not even at average. It only makes sense that it’s going to take me many, many years to get to that point. Right? So what we need to do is two things. What we did, and we actually did this with that individual is we said right now you weigh 240. How different would your life be and how confident would you feel if you lost 20 pounds of fat and developed ten pounds of muscle? Can you just imagine how transformative that would be? Now the scale actually only moved ten pounds. But if you did that in a sustainable way, and then you could do it again. I mean you’re not going to keep building muscle obviously, but you said instead of my goal being the end point, the goal is make progress. Then take that progress and build off that progress. And take that progress and build off that progress. Just like you always say, for anything in terms of life and general efficacy. Your goal isn’t write my dissertation tonight. Right?

April: No, of course!

Jonathan: It’s to make that progress. So the roadmap is going to be – we’ll lay it out more for you at SANESeminar.com, but the key thing to keep in mind is that we are talking about healing a metabolic disease. And I don’t say disease to be like oh my God I’m terrified and scared. It’s just a fact. The American Medical Association now recognizes metabolic dysfunction, which is the technical term for what I call a hormonal clog, as a disease. Diabetes is a disease. Metabolic Syndrome is a disease.

If you have a disease it’s not going to go away in two weeks. But with constant persistent action, and self-love and patience over the course of months and even years, we can heal you and keep you healed for the rest of your life.

April: So I’m hearing that we need to be first of all realistic in what our goals are. And not just even realistic, but I mean kind of step back and recognize if our goals are just something that’s been inspired by the media, or if it’s something that’s really our goal. I think that that’s a key point, something that you’ve been helping me heal mentally for a long time. Because I kept thinking, well I’m supposed to be a size two. I’m supposed to weigh 125 pounds, because I saw someone once who weighed 125 pounds and I liked the way she looked. I mean random! Why do I care? That’s just ridiculous! But assessing your goal based on yeah, your health history, and what your life is like, and how old you are. I mean just kind of looking at reality a little bit more instead of just what’s my pie in the sky goal of how much I want to weigh.

I wish that there was a way we could help heal the whole world of this because my heart’s been hurting lately with some young girls that I know who are starving themselves and running five miles a day because they want to look a certain way. That’s hard for me to even face because I remember my days of doing things like, and I think when we can just step back and say you can trust the same process. Do it and keep doing it and keep doing it better. You know, optimal foods, really push yourself in your workouts, you can keep progressing. But then don’t think that you’re going to achieve something that’s not naturally right for your body. That’s helpful to me.

Jonathan: I think that’s incredibly helpful April, and we’ve said this in previous shows but I think it bears repeating again. I actually got some flack on the “internet” for saying this previously, so I’ll say it again to give some more fuel for people. Having abs is a skill. What I mean by that is if you want to be really, really, really good at basketball, like basketball is a skill. Or the piano. And you have to practice it constantly and you have to always stay on top of it. It’s like if you want, there are people who have visible abs, but they are not people who are – they haven’t achieved nutritional serenity. They’re constantly thinking about what they’re eating. They are counting their calories because they’re trying to maintain a level of body fat percentage that the body will not ever naturally be at that state. It’s a skill and they have to keep working at it and working at and working at it. So if that is a goal that someone has, I can show you how to do that. That’s not what we’re in the business and that’s not the mission that we’re on.

The mission we’re on is to say if right now you weigh 240 pounds, one I would urge you to throw your scale away because how you weigh is irrelevant. What I would recommend you do is you focus on process goals that have to work. Eating more of foods that have been enjoyed by humanity for thousands of years and that provide more of which is essential to life in healing, in place of foods that are addictive, and toxic, and proven to make people works. I mean, that’s like saying does not jumping in a pool help me to avoid getting wet? Yes! It has to work, but it might not work as fast as when people get on the Biggest Loser and go to a ranch and take a bunch of stimulants and dedicate their whole life to doing something, which actually ends up making them worse off and they gain more when they go off the show. So it’s a lot of psychological stuff.

April: Okay, now I want to get more into just the question of weight. That’s another question down here, but I think this next question is kind of a quick one. I’m curious which SANE foods are easiest on the stomach. This is somebody who’s done a lot different research, college classes, Bachelor’s in health science. Loves SANE, is really excited about it, but notices she’s nursing a baby, SANE foods kind of upset her stomach sometimes. And I had the stomach flu a few weeks ago and I could not eat SANE foods when I had the stomach flu. I’m sitting here eating saltine crackers because I was so sick.

So all right, let’s just talk about it because for the most part I can east SANEly, it’s not a big deal. But, if you have a sensitive stomach, or you’re sick, or you’re nursing a baby I don’t know. So can we just talk about that for a second?

Jonathan: Absolutely, and in fact let’s be very clear, SANE is not a marketing term. It’s an acronym for the four factors that determine the quality of the calories: Satiety, Aggression, Nutrition and Efficiency. The fourth one, Efficiency, has a lot to do with the ease or the efficiency with which your body takes food and breaks it down through digestion and other mechanisms into usable energy. Foods that are inefficient, meaning it’s not easy for them to be used as energy or stored as energy are great when it comes to managing your health and weight loss because they heal your digestive system. They make your digestive system do the work that it’s designed to do. But, if you’re a newborn baby, or you’re an elderly person, or you have an upset stomach, eating a lot of fiber and protein is going to be the last thing you’ll want to do in that context because they are inefficient.

So it is absolutely the case that things like fiber and protein are radically harder to digest than sugar and starch in 99% of contexts that’s a good thing. But in 1% of contexts it’s not, and part of that 1% of context is for example like if you’re running a marathon. If you’re running a marathon and you need energy into your bloodstream very efficiently, that’s why you’re going to shoot glucose packets, because you want it right into your bloodstreams when you’re going SANE.

April: So, a quick question for you then, are there any SANE foods that are easy on your digestion? I mean I don’t know, what do you…?

Jonathan: Absolutely. There’s SANE foods that are easier on your digestion. So for example cooking vegetables are easier. Cooked vegetables are easier to digest than non-cooked vegetables. Generally speaking, fat is incredibly easy to digest. So if, for example, nuts have fiber in them, so if you were eating fattier cuts of SANE meat, or fattier fish, or whole eggs are going to provide you with abundant energy that’s incredibly easy to digest. So you’re going to go cook vegetables. If you need to go into legumes you can go into legumes if you want. Fruits are also very easy to digest.

April: Okay. All right. Ready for my last question?

Jonathan: I’m ready.

April: This one says I’ve heard you say in your podcasts that you didn’t lose weight for two to three months, but that your body changed. This is personally what happened to me. Did you ever end up losing weight on SANE? And she talks about her history and trying to eat healthily, avoid diabetes, and she said, “In the back of my head I think it makes sense that if you’re eating well perfectly you could, should, would lose weight, right? Just wondering.”

So I’m actually really excited to talk to you about this because for my first year or whatever of SANE, the first few months when I started working with me, weight didn’t change at all. But in photos I could just see it was totally different. Then I didn’t weigh myself for a long, long time. Like a really long time. And I had lost some weight, so I lost maybe like eight pounds or something like that, once I did weigh myself again. Then I started doing eccentric exercises really consistently. I joined a gym. I’ve been doing eccentric exercises. In the past eight months I have gained seven pounds and my body fat percentage has gone four percentage points. Is that weird? I’m like why am I gaining weight but my body’s losing fat. I’m like I don’t know. Jonathan, help me understand what’s going on.

Jonathan: April, you hit the nail on the head there. Honestly, when it comes to your aesthetic, like how you look, the only thing that matters is body fat percentage. I mean body fat percentage is the ratio of lean to non-lean tissue on your body. So you could weigh 130 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 30%, or you could weigh 130 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 15%. The visible difference there is all determined by the body fat percentage. The reason we can’t focus on – like we have to move away from weight is because – and here’s a quick to show how inSANE what we’ve been told about weight is, here are two things you can do today to lose weight. Are you ready? Stop drinking water completely. Drink no liquids. Never ever, ever, ever, ever do resistance training. I think anyone who’s listening to this show knows, everyone knows what are two things you should do to make yourself healthier? Drink more water and resistance train. Both of those things will make you weigh more. Right?

So any measure which says – like the measure is telling us to do the opposite of what we know we need to do. So we have to throw it out the window and we have to either measure our waist circumference, or we have to just get skin calipers and measure our body fat percentage, or we can just judge by the way our clothes fit us. That’s the key right there.

April: I feel like I wouldn’t have even stood on the scale except you have to know how much you weight because you have to put it into the little machines before you can do – well I guess you could get calipers. I don’t have calipers. But I didn’t even want to weigh myself, because I don’t typically. But then I just thought, oh well that’s kind of weird. I gained weight, but I love it that we’re looking at waist circumference, we’re looking at body fat percentage.

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean the biggest thing though for me is it’s very hard to answer in some ways questions of like are you going to lose weight. Because I’m saying resistance train. I’m saying more food. So if you eat four pounds of food today, which you should, at the end of the day you will weigh more than when you woke up. But over time you will end up weighing less because if you’re overweight that means you have more fat on your body than you need and over time your body will burn that off. But in the short term, the weight is literally going to move you – focusing on your weight in the short term will make you weigh more long term.

April: Okay, I think that’s a great thing to focus on and I think it’s just also really helpful knowing that I don’t have a goal weight anymore. I think that’s what’s been different for me because it used to be a goal weight. I had to see a certain number on a scale. Now I’m more for am I eating the right quantities of certain vegetables, how’s the quality of my food, how much am I pushing myself in exercise. Like you told me a scale of one to ten I should be an eight. So I am working really hard to get to that, to hit it. So my numbers are changing more. I’ve actually upped the pounds but I’ve been lowering in the gym. But I think looking at those numbers have just been really helpful for me. I mean still my head goes back thinking Ah! Maybe I should weigh less or be a smaller size. I don’t know, but it’s finally getting to the point where I have to keep thinking back wait a second. So your voice is in my head a lot reminding me, April, you’re never hungry. You’re eating great foods. You’re taking great care of yourself. You don’t even really have to think about starving yourself ever again. You’re really happy and your life’s going great. So anything wrong with that Jonathan, or sound like I’m on the right track?

Jonathan: No, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, and that’s I think writing down that goal and I mean as a next action I would say there’s two things here: One is I’ve got to say, you have to stop weighing yourself. I don’t like to be dictatorial, but as a next action you cannot be SANE and weigh yourself simultaneously. Judging your progress through the scale is inSANE. It’s an inSANE activity.

April: Good!

Jonathan: You need to buy a measuring tape if you don’t have one. They’re 99 cents. And if you want to measure something you’re going to measure your waist circumference, you’re going to measure the number of vegetables you eat in a day, and you’re going to measure the number of servings of nutrient dense proteins you eat in a day. Those are the three things you’re going to measure.

April: Okay, I love it! Love that next action. Do we have a stretch goal with this one or do we just – well I do have a stretch goal. Get out of your head. I think that that’s probably the hardest thing. Get rid of everything you’ve been taught before this that does not make sense with what goes with a SANE lifestyle. Just get rid of it and stop going back to it. Because every single time you think count calories, run hard all day, never eat anything that I like ever again. As soon as you say that you’re going to feel crazy. So does that sound like a good stretch goal?

Jonathan: It sounds like a great stretch goal April. And if it sounds – like people are saying how can I do that? How can I give myself permission to let go of that with kindness and love? If it worked you wouldn’t be where you’re at right now.

April: Yeah.

Jonathan: Right? So doing the same thing you’ve done in the past and expecting a different result – not going to work out well. Not going to work out well. So we’re here to help you on a more SANE path and we hope it helps you.

April: I love it. All right. Well thank you so much, and please feel free to send in your questions. We really do like to be able to be helpful to you and I feel really grateful to have the chance to be able to hear what’s going on in your life and be able to help bring it to Jonathan, who I totally trust to give us the answers that helps us not have to be crazy anymore and be able to focus on really taking care of our health. So have a wonderful day and remember to stay SANE.