Jonathan: All right. Kathy asks: I have the whey and cocoa powder and other items that are not necessarily clean, is it okay to use those until I get products in the SANE store? Yes, Kathy. So, that’s a great question. So, I will—just for what it’s worth, just to give you a little bit of context. There is quite a few people that are not actually able to make some of the live calls. So, because of that however I want to make sure these are super valuable for them. So, that’s why sometimes we have to give—I want to make sure I get to some of the questions that were written in because for folks that can’t make the calls they can still write in their questions and then see the session recording afterwards.

However, I love the interaction. So, I’m going to balance that, but Kathy, you asked the—yes, so, if you have things like whey and cocoa powder and other items that aren’t necessarily clean is it okay to use those or do you need to—are they going to destroy your efforts? So, this is a very great, specific question with an awesome specific answer and then also general learnings we can take away from it. So, the short answer is unless it’s just complete garbage, which I don’t think it is, like if it was Nestle Quick for example, which isn’t really cocoa powder. So, it’s probably something maybe like a Hershey’s cocoa powder that you might have, you know if it was Nestle, Nestle Quick I’d say throw that away because that’s not even cocoa powder that’s just sugar. But if it’s just general store bought stuff which is going to be reasonable SANE, hey, that’s not going to just completely ruin your efforts. And I want to make a quick general point here which is I would really encourage everybody, and this is really, really important. To think of your metabolic system a little bit like your immune system. Now, what do I mean by that? So, the way your immune system works is not that—so, your immune system is resilient, right. Like if you get a cold or if you get exposed to a virus or bacteria your immune system, if your immune system itself is healthy will bring your back. Right. That’s the job of your immune system and that’s why diseases such as HIV or AIDS are so terrifying because they attack your immune system itself.

So, why am I saying this? Well, also, for example if we were to say, “Hey is it okay to ever have any viruses or any bacteria enter your immune system?” Well, absolutely. I mean, that’s what you immune system is for. Life, we can never be perfect, we can never completely avoid sort of any of those disease causing agents, but we have to make sure we have a strong immune system, so that if we do exposed to something which is less than ideal we can come back from it. That’s the same thing, that’s the same mindset we want to have when it comes to our metabolism. So, your metabolism—we talk about the set point. We talk about it’s an established system and we talk about how when your set point is elevated or when your sink is clogged your body’s essentially fighting to keep you heavy. So, you can think of having a compromised metabolism like having a compromised immune system. So, when someone’s immune system’s compromised even like the slightest little thing can cause life threatening problems. But, when you have a strong immune system if you get a little bit of virus or bacteria, hey, you know you’ll bounce back in a week, you’ll bounce back in two weeks. You want to make sure you don’t intentionally expose yourself. Like you don’t want to have anyone coughing in your face, but you’re not worried if just a little bit gets in there. The same thing applies to your metabolism. Once we heal it from the inside, once we make sure you have a safe and strong metabolism a little bit of exposure to things that aren’t perfect for a lack of better terms, is really just going to be like water off a duck’s back.

And a good example of this is actually children. So, sometimes we think, unfortunately, and our society tells us—hey, you know, kids, if you look at a children’s menu, it’s so sad and it’s heartbreaking because it’s essentially a litany of inSANity. In some ways the definition of children’s food is that which is packed with processed nonsense fats and sugar and salt. I mean, of children’s menu or children’s cereal, if you think about it, those are the least SANE items in the world and we’re told by big food that that’s okay. I mean, they’re kids. Their bodies can handle it. And that’s really—that’s not at all true. I mean, it does the same level of damage if not more damage to children than it does to adults, but one of the reasons we don’t see it doing as much damage as immediately to children is a child’s metabolism is fresh. It hasn’t gone through cycles of yo-yo dieting, it hasn’t been exposed to a toxic food environments for 40, 50, 60 years. So, if a child gets exposed to consistent low doses of inSANE foods it’s going to have potentially less of a visible or immediate impact on them than it would an adult, not because it’s any less bad for them, but just because you know, their immune system, their metabolic immune system hasn’t been, let’s say you know, beaten down as long. Now, unfortunately that’s of course, we’re seeing nowadays that that’s not necessarily true in the sense that even though a child’s metabolism is fresh, you know it’s fresh the toxics stuff that’s being put into their bodies by schools and by food manufacturers is overwhelming them.

But, the macro point here, Kathy, to answer you question, is if you think about for example, maybe some whey and some cocoa powder that you got from your grocery store from G&C or something like that as being you know, not completely toxic, but something that’s suboptimally SANE, if you’re working to heal your metabolism you know, that’s just going to be like just a little bit of like a cold bug and getting into your immune system and as long as we heal the system itself it’s going to roll right off. So, is it great? No. Is it going to really help you? No. Is going to completely derail your efforts? No. And please, another good thing to keep in mind is there is really nothing you can do in one day—and man, this is a really important point actually, there is nothing you can do in one day that is going to completely derail your efforts. And I think that’s actually really important. Maybe even write that down like even on your worst day or our most inSANE day nothing you did that day ruins everything. Your health doesn’t work that way. So, by way of analogy, it’s really easy to lose all of your money in one day, right. If you look at the financial meltdown that happened a little while a lot of people lost all of their investment, or all of their 401-K, all of their retirement in one day.

Now, when it comes to our fat metabolism system, when it comes to neurological inflammation, when it comes to our hormones and our gut there is nothing that we can do in one day that just completely destroys that. That’s not how that biological system works. It’s not either/or. So, we’ve got to always remember to be kind to ourselves. Right. Like if something happens, you go to a party, you go a little inSANE. Look, it happened, you learn from it, you’re going to do your best to not let it happen again. But, the worst thing is not actually being inSANE in that moment. The worst thing would be to let that isolated event contaminate your lower case SANity. Like, it happened. Like, if you’re an athlete, you had a bad game, it’s cool. You know what? You know what the most important thing is that we learn from it and that we move on. So, whether it’s store bought whey, store bought cocoa powder, whether it’s a meal out with friends or whether it’s really anything in life in general I would urge you to give yourself permission to learn from that event, to make a commitment that it will never happen again or you will do everything in your power not to let it happen again, but to never let shame or guilt contaminate you. Because that’s hey, more than anything you’re going to find in processed foods, more than anything you’re going to find in that whey or that cocoa powder you bought from the store, Kathy, and every other member of the SANE family that’s on this session or watching it, none of that will derail your SANity even to close to as much as shame or guilt or feeling any of those sort of sensations towards yourself will.

Okay. Like please, don’t do that. All right. I mean, you’re here. Kathy, the fact that you even had that thought is a huge win. It’s a huge, huge win. Okay. So, lots of stuff there. Hopefully that was helpful. Let’s see what else we’ve got here. Yes. Salad in a jar. All right. Rebecca, I know we’ve got some great questions about how to get veggies in on the go. For sure we got some questions actually written in on that one, so we’ll cover that. Okay. Cool. Beans, all right. So, I’m going to jump in some of the questions that were written in here. So, the first question we’ve got here is how do you set goals to shift from inSANE to SANE? Add one vegetable per day, cut inSANE foods one per week? What do I change first? How fast do I go?

Hey, that’s an awesome question. So, thank you very much, that’s great. The general question here is how do I work my way into this? How do I set SANE goals? Well, let me first answer that by saying what I really don’t want you to do. And this is after years and years of experience in working with thousands and thousands and thousands of people and reading a lot of research. So, two things. First is do not set a goal, and I know that this is going to sound strange, but I’ll explain why, I want you to if at all possible, to give yourself permission to set what’s called process goals rather than results goals. Let me explain that. With process goal your goal is exactly what is illustrated in this excellent question here. Like, “I am going to eat one more serving of vegetables this week than it did last week.” And the reason that’s an awesome goal is because you can control it. As much as you can control anything in life. Right. You can control whether or not you eat one more vegetable. You cannot control, no matter how much calorie counters want to make you think otherwise—right. Oh, eat seven less calories per day and you’ll lose exactly this much weight in this much time. Which all of us have tried. It’s never worked because that’s not how your body works.

You cannot control how quickly your metabolism heals. You can control how much you stack the deck in the favor of your metabolism healing, but actually how long it takes your metabolism to heal is unfortunately not up to us. Right. If it was totally up to us I can imagine hey, you know, you get the flu going, back to that immune system analogy, [inaudible 00:21:24], “I want to be better tomorrow.” But, unfortunately I can’t do that, but what I can do is of course, get some rest. I can drink some tea, I can make sure that I’m taking some vitamin C. I can do all the process steps so that I facilitate that result, but my goal is always on the process. And please, like that, if you didn’t do—if you got nothing else from this call or this session, that in it of itself, focusing on process goals rather than results goals is so important. I mean, that’s such ancient wisdom. That’s not my idea. That’s from long, long ago. Right. There is a famous quote, I’m paraphrasing this from the Buddha, who says, “As long as you’re facing in the right direction just keep walking and eventually you’ll get there.” Obviously I kind of screwed it up a little bit, but the point is that you know, just take another step, take another step, and take another step. Eventually you will get there. And so, process versus results goal super important, but what are those process goals? Look, let’s keep this really, really simple. Really, really simple. Because it can be simple. To focus—I mean, it’s—it can be simple. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy, but it can be simpler than it’s been made out to be. Vegetable process goal: track, whether it’s using the SANE app, whether it’s using the SANE paper tracker how many servings of vegetables you ate on average this week. Next week take it up by one or two. That’s an epic goal. Another epic process goal, if you’re not drinking SANE green smoothies, start, maybe not every day, but if last week you did zero maybe this week you do one. Next week you do two.

Write that down. You know, I went from one to two. I went from two to three. And that in it of itself is so encouraging because we’re here for the long-term. Right. If you’re on these calls that means you’re here SANE Ignite lifetime. Right. So, those small process steps make such a difference over time. And that’s what we want, right. We’ve all yo-yoed in the short-term. We want those long-term results. Nutrient dense protein. Same thing, just think of it in terms of servings. You know, maybe last week you did a great job of getting your nutrient dense proteins in at lunch and dinner, but you struggled with breakfast. So, maybe you say next week I’m going to make sure I get it in at breakfast. And just something simple. Right. Focus on the food groups. What can I do this week in terms of process for my vegetables? What can I do this week in terms of what one thing can I do this week in terms of process for my proteins? What one thing can I do in terms of my whole food fats? Now, what one thing can I do this week to maybe stand and move my body more? What one thing can I do this week to get more familiar with eccentric exercise? What one thing can I do this week to maybe get a little bit more sleep? What one thing can I do this week to drink a little bit more water? Or to swap more water and green tea instead of any sort of inSANE beverage?

But, that like, it’s hard to put into words how deeply empowering taking on the mindset of small process goals and having that success and sharing that success—like, even if it’s not perfect. Write that down in the SANE support group, in your journal, “This week I’m going to focus on this one process goal, this one process goal, this one process goal.” Three things most. And let us know how you did. Holy moly. Those gradual steps in the three main food groups, and then when it comes to movement I think that in it of itself is going to be hugely powerful. And then maybe in terms of recipes like this one, this week can you find one SANE recipe that you enjoy so much that you—it’s just something it’s a go to recipe. You say, “Oh, my gosh. One recipe in a week that’s nothing.” But, think about it. If you just keep that up at the end of the year, one year, right, we’re all going to be here for longer than a year, after one year you would have 52 recipes that you’ve mastered that you love, that maybe you know your family loves. Fifty-two. I mean, how many different recipes do we make over the course of a month today? Imagine if a year from now you had 52 perfectly SANE recipes that you and your family love. Does that sound crazy? Well, if you found one per week consistently you’ve got it, but that’s not what we’re told to do, right. We’re like I’ll do everything right now versus do this one thing consistently. Do that one process thing consistently and holy moly, like the Buddha said, and I butchered, that’s facing the right direction and if you just keep walking oh, my goodness. SANE, you will be super SANE. You’ll be super SANE.

All right. Let’s see. Here we go. Yay, the [inaudible 00:26:22]. I love this. All right. We got here, got some good chat coming in here. Thank you so much, Kate. And Rebecca, Kathy. Kate’s got some good questions. Epigenetics, yes, Kate, I have done some research on epigenetics. If you have a specific question, please feel free to type it there in the chat box. I’d be happy to help. Will changing my eating help me with Hashimoto’s? What’s up, Alison? And I love how you spell your name. That is a fantastic way to spell your name.

Yes, it will absolutely help you with Hashimoto’s. Anything that is going to increase the nutrient density of your diet and reduce the inflammation that you encourage is going to help with any malady. And we talked about this in the last session, but there is no medical condition—like so, if you think about disease, one way to think of disease is the body not being in its desired state. So, we have vitamins and minerals and proteins and fats that we call essential. Essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals are essential. If we don’t eat enough of them we get things like scurvy, rickets so on and so forth. If you don’t eat enough B vitamins your spinal column deteriorates. Not good. Why am I saying these things? Well, disease is caused by a breakdown of something in the body. Now, it only makes sense that if we give the body an abundance of that which it needs to thrive and to heal itself—because remember, the only way we ever heal is the body healing itself. That’s not like woo-woo mystical crystals. That’s science. That’s eastern medicine, western medicine, common sense. The only way disease ever goes away is if the body heals itself. Like that’s what putting a bone in a cast does. It allows the body to heal itself. The flu only goes away if the body heals itself by providing your body with the foods that give it the most of what it needs and in fact, an abundance of those things. You’re not eating less of everything, you’re eating more SANE things, so much so that you’re crowding out the inSANE things.

Any disease of the body will get better. It has to. We’re giving the body more of what it needs to heal itself and less of what causes it to breakdown in the first place. That’s going to help and that’s going to help globally and really, really powerfully. And that’s why this is so much different than just counting calories and eating less because eating less just gives you less of everything. You don’t need less of everything. You need more of good things. So much so that you’re too full for the inSANE nonsense. So, hopefully that’s really helpful.

Why is whole wheat bad for us? Great question. So, let’s keep in mind here that whenever we’re talking about food, food is a zero sum game. So, what I mean by that? It’s kind of an economic term. It’s when we eat one thing we’re not eating another thing. Which I know sounds a little bit stupid, but it’s actually important to think about. So, if we put a bunch of whole grains on our plate by definition we are not putting something else on our plate. So, it’s taking up space. Now, when it comes to is something good for us or is something healthier, is something SANE that’s really like—as you know, we have the spectrum. Right, we have the non-starchy vegetables on end of the spectrum, we have liquid sugar on the other end of the spectrum. Whenever we say is something good or bad for us what we’re really asking is like is this better than that or is this better than everything else I could be eating right now? So, for example is whole wheat bad for us relative to sugar? No, absolutely not. And in fact, the reason that have heard that whole grains are good for us is because they are better for us than refined grains. If you had to choose between eating Wonder Bread and eating bread that was made from Einkorn wheat which is, the Einkorn and amaranth wheat is the wheat that existed in Biblical times versus the dwarf mutant wheat that we have today which is the totally different species of wheat. It’s got like 42 chromosomes whereas the wheat of Biblical times was back in the teens, like I think it had 12 or 14 chromosome. Totally different—it’s a totally different plant. It’s literarily like apples and oranges. So, amaranth wheat compared to dwarf mutant wheat, totally different thing.

So, if we’re eating whole wheat, even dwarf wheat instead of eating sugar that’s a good choice, that’s better for us. Much like eating—smoking one pack of cigarettes per day is better for us than smoking two, but the key thing to keep in mind is just like smoking one pack of cigarettes per day versus smoking two doesn’t make smoking one pack of cigarettes just objectively good for us. Especially when we could be breathing in even cleaner air. So, let’s go back to the whole grains. What people, a lot of people use whole grains for is to fill themselves up. So, often what happens is whole grains are used to crowd out vegetables. So, they’re just like rolls or filler or rice. I mean, they’re usually just things to fill you up. Now, when it comes to filling ourselves up we now know, oh, my goodness, from a hormonal healing perspective and just from a satisfaction perspective and health and a fat loss perspective, whole food fats they are satisfying and they are so hormonally healthy for us. And they also don’t contain any sort of inflammatory substances. Like for example, there is like amylopectin A is a very addictive substance that’s found in whole wheat. Whole grains can cause gut permeability issues because they have a lot of various substances that can irritate gut bacteria. This is why you hear so much about celiac disease. This is why you hear so much about a gluten intolerance. There is just a lot of things in whole grains that are not nearly as beneficial for us as some of the other foods that we can be eating.

So, it’s not like, “Oh, my Gosh, the reason we have obesity epidemic is because people are eating whole grains.” No, no. I mean, that’s not the reason we have an obesity epidemic, but the reason whole grains are not considered SANE, in addition to being relatively low satiety and low in nutrition and aggression—the factors that contribute to SANity is just because man, I’d so much rather you’re eating your vegetables. And actually I had—I interviewed one of the, someone who used to be the head, she was the speaker, the public face for the like the national dietetic association or something, some big organization. And I just asked her, I asked her point blank, you know, “If you had—if a person was eating whole grains in place of vegetables would you recommend that?” And of course, not. Right. There is nothing that is unique about whole grains that we can’t get in greater abundance in vegetables and low sugar fruits as well was like without all the like gluten and other stuff. Like there is no amylopectin A or gluten in kale.

So, whole grains, it’s not like, “Oh, whole grains!” It’s just that whole grains do some damaging things to quite a few people. They can stimulate appetite, they could cause a lot of insulin to get released in your body which can contribute to pre-diabetes. They can make you hungrier rather than satisfying you, but most importantly, often they’re preventing you from eating SANEr foods. And I want you to eat so much of the good stuff that you’re just too full for things that are less SANE. So, hopefully that is helpful. All right. Let’s see here. Let me catch up on a little bit of the chat. All right. Good stuff. Oh, goodness, now there’s lots of chat. Julia and Fran and Allison. Julia, I haven’t seen you on chat before. Welcome. Julia is not being shy. I like that. All right. Let’s go. Tell me your problems are going to be sugar and gluten [inaudible 00:34:40] anything inSANE. Never felt so great. Oh, thank you so much, Fran. That’s good stuff. Fran. Fran is just dropping positivity in here, I love it. I love it.

Salt. Alison, do we need to limit salt because to me that’s what makes veggies taste good. Good news! Salt has been given a bad rep. So, here’s the situation with salt. The reason salt has been given—when you think salt you probably don’t think super healthy. I don’t know what you think, but you probably don’t think super healthy. The bottom line is that salt is definitely an issue when you’re eating inSANE foods. When you’re eating inSANE foods what you’ll find is that the amount of salt in processed food—right, salt is a preservative. So, when you take soy and corn and wheat and other processed mono crops and you strip out all the nutrients you got to make them taste like something because you know what? Soy by itself with everything stripped away just does not taste good, neither does wheat, neither does corn. You got to do something with it. What you can do with it to give it a really stable shelf life and to make it taste good for very little money? You pump it full of trans fats because trans fats stay shelved, stay stable. You pump it full of a huge amount of salt and you pump it full of sugar. Right. If you read—what’s the guy’s name? I forget his name. But, the title of the book is Fat, Sugar, and Salt. And talking about the three major weapons of the processed food industry. And of course, we all know that it’s not that like fat is bad, it’s the fat found in processed food is bad. Same thing with salt.

Salt when used like—when we would normally use it is not going to be bad. The way you would naturally and normally use salt, not bad, but when we put our trust and our health frankly and our lives in the hands of companies whose only interest—they’re not evil, right. They’re not evil, but Nestlé’s job, right, people who own stock in Nestle are not interested in the blood pressure or other people. They’re interested in making money. That’s their business. Right. That’s not evil, right. We all have jobs and we’re all able to use computers because businesses exist. So, there’s nothing wrong with business. It’s just that we have to understand that processed food manufacturers are not in the business of our health, they’re in the business of making food that costs them very little to sell, that they could charge a lot for and that tastes good. Adding a heck of a lot of salt, adding a heck of a lot of a sugar and adding a heck of a lot of unnatural fats causes that. And it kills us. So, just like everything else if you do it the way nature intended it, it’s all good. It’s all good. So, yes, if you are just sprinkling some sea salt or my favorite is pink Himalayan salt that has a wonderful flavor to it, it’s got some essential minerals in it, that’s a great way to help with the veggies. And as a general rule of thumb anything within reason, within reason that you can do to get yourself and your family to eat more vegetables, boom, it’s worth it.

So, bacon is not particularly SANE to just eat strips and strips of bacon, but to use bacon as a seasoning for vegetables do it, do it. Whatever you can do to get that nutrition into your body do it. Salt has been given an overly bad rep in general. Number one, number two, you will not overdo it with salt if you don’t consume inSANE processed food because you would never—just like for example, right, soda has 11-15 teaspoons of sugar in 12 ounces which is ridiculous. If you were going to make yourself a beverage, even if you were going to sweeten it you would never sit there for yourself or for someone you love and say, “I’m going to make my five year old the beverage here. Here, let me get some sugar. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” You would never do that, ever. But, food manufacturers will. So, as long as we stay away from the processed nonsense we’ll be all right in terms of that.