Ready To Try a Personalized SANE Plan to Lower Your Setpoint Weight and Become Naturally Thin?

Jonathan:  There is absolutely no causal research that shows that you have to eat breakfast.

Yes, there are observations, because if you go to the national weight loss registry, you will see that there is a correlation between people who say that they eat breakfast also tend to have greater success maintaining weight loss. That does not mean eating breakfast causes weight loss. Obviously, when it gets sunny outside more people wear sunglasses. Certainly, that does not tell any of us that if we put sunglasses on we will make the sunshine. The core thing is to find something that is in line with the SANE food quality principles that works for you and to have that success. Because I promise you that to the extent that you depend on white-knuckle willpower, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of willpower that you have to use long-term and your likelihood of long-term nutritional serenity, happiness, and success.

Here is what I can tell you with 100 percent certainty, if you eat your SANE servings goal of non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole foods fats, low fructose fruits, at a rate that makes you feel great and feel energized and that you can do consistently for the rest of your life, doing that is radically more important than whether or not one of those meals happen in breakfast. Does that make sense? I really want to focus on those core principles rather than like, oh my gosh, I didn’t do this breakfast rule right. What we know for sure in the scientific literature has to do with what you are eating. When you are eating it is absolutely going to be a function of what works for you and works in your life, it’s definitely going to vary by person. Hopefully, that’s helpful and great question for sure.

Next question here, “How does alcohol, wine or wine spirits fit into the program?” Alcohol, in general, is not a SANE source of calories, and again the rule of thumb that can make it really easy is, does it have a lot of protein in it, does it have a lot of fiber in it. The answer is no so, therefore, is not a SANE source of calories. Does is it have a lot of nutrients in it? No. Therefore it’s not a SANE of calories. Does that mean you can never drink alcohol? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. What we can do is we can say alcohol as a whole if you look at the SANE spectrum one way to think about it is we have foods that we want to intentionally eat more of, non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, whole-food fats, low fructose fruits, in that order.

Then we have foods which are not something we need to go out of our way to eat more of but if we happen to eat them zero or 1 or 2 servings per day that’s fine. These are things like legumes, other dairy products, some other fruits. Again, one serving per day not a huge a deal but it’s not something that we are going to go out of our way to eat. So sort of like a green light, yellow light and then red light. And the red light, of course, are things like processed fats, starches and sweets which we should try to be so full of those other foods that we are just not tempted to eat those.

Alcohol it has to be categorized on the more orange-ish red end of the spectrum. Now, what we can do is we can make the SANEst choices for spirits that we can. And the best rule of thumb is wine is going to be much better than beer. Beer is one of the worst choices, of beer malt liquor if you are really wanting to see results that are going to make it really, really hard. Beer and multi liquors are essentially starchy carbs plus alcohol that has been shown to specifically add visceral fat or belly fat. Like beer belly is not a myth. There is a reason for that and that visceral, that abdominal adiposity.

If you want to drink alcohol, your purest SANEst choice will be clear liquor. So clear liquor and then next would be wine, and what you definitely don’t want to drink at all is multi-liquor or any sort of sugary mix drink. And that’s just because of the bunch of sugar, taking a Pepsi, and then adding alcohol to it is even worse than just drinking a Pepsi. Or coke, because you can add Rum to coke. I don’t know if people make rum and Pepsi. It’s certainly not something I’m familiar with. But again it doesn’t mean you can never drink alcohol, it doesn’t mean you are failing if you are drinking alcohol at all. We need to get those thoughts out of our mind. We need to give ourselves permission to make this gradual transition into SANity. The answer isn’t I’m giving up all alcohol. You don’t need to start drinking alcohol if you don’t already, but the answer would be how could I increase the SANity of the alcohol beverages that I’m drinking and hopefully, the guidelines I just provided will be helpful in doing that.

Questions around pumpkin seeds, almonds, dried chickpeas; these are great questions around SANE convenience foods. This is a question I’m actually going to defer to the Ignite Program and to your support group if you don’t mind simply because we have got some amazing resources in terms of ready to eat SANE snacks. Check that out in your step by step program for sure, eating away from home, talk about that in the support group. That’s a great question and it’s universal. So you got some great resources that will help you there for sure.

Dried fruits, please don’t eat dried fruits. Dried fruits are extremely inSANE. Generally speaking, the fruit is offered dried is already the higher sugar so they are not low fructose fruits, they are actually higher fructose fruits and then when you dehydrate them and you take the water out, you can eat way more of them than you would normally ever eat. So you are essentially eating candy that has some vitamins and minerals but that sugar is still going to wreak havoc on your metabolism. Please really be careful about that.

I know it sounds a little strange but your pancreas does not care if the glucose in your bloodstream came from natural or unnatural sources. Your pancreas has no knowledge of the source of sugar in your bloodstream. All it knows is that hey there is a bunch of sugar in my bloodstream and if I don’t release a bunch of the hormone insulin to take this out of the bloodstream the individual will die. That’s why diabetics have to take insulin shots, right? Because their blood sugar gets too high and if it gets too high, they will die. So your pancreas isn’t like oh this sugar came from honey, it is okay. It’s like, sugar I have to get this out of the bloodstream so I’m going to release a bunch of insulin. What’s better to eat? Strawberry starburst or dehydrated strawberry, certainly a dehydrated strawberry. But eating a fresh strawberry would be even better. So hopefully that’s helpful. Dried fruits though as a snack is totally inSANE. So please stay away from that as much as possible.

Next question here is, how much cocoa powder is harmful to the bowel? I am not aware of cocoa powder being harmful to the bowel. Cocoa powder is one of the SANEst, healthiest most antioxidant-rich awesome substances on the planet. I personally have been known to eat a half cup or more of raw cocoa per day just because it puts these other superfoods to shame in terms of antioxidant and therapeutic properties. It’s also a vessel dilator so it helps with blood flow. It is therapeutic; it can help boost your mood. There is a reason that we have SANE mood-boosting cocoa powder. This is a therapeutic food.

Certainly, if you double your intake and it causes gastrointestinal distress if anything causes gastrula intestinal distress just scale it back. And we talk about this with vegetables as well. It’s often not the total quantity that can cause digestive problems. It’s the rate that you consume it. For example, when it comes to vegetables if you were to eat 12 serving of vegetables in 5 minutes, you are going to have crazy digestive problems. But if you were to eat 3 servings of vegetables spaced out every three hours, digestive problems are going to be little if any. Because is much different intake. Same with cocoa powder I would space it out if you are having any problems with it because it is extremely good for you.

Looks like there is a question in here from Vicky, sorry I have seen a couple of things here. It says, what’s the best way to start eccentric exercise when out of shape? How often and how intense? Vicky, the number one thing I would recommend is if you have not already, please check it out, I think its step by step course 201. The one reason I say this is because eccentric exercise is a big topic and I want to make sure that we do 100 percent justice for you. In that, I believe it’s a SANE step by step 201 course. We have got some amazing demonstrations videos and eBooks that are going to teach you those foundational fundamental elements of eccentric exercise. And then if you have refinements that we can help you with we would love to do that for you in the support group and here if that makes sense. But I want to make sure that you are equipped for success and those aspects of the program are something that we definitely cover in detail. I do hope that that’s really helpful for you. It is not please do let me know and I will provide some follow up here.

Since we are talking about eccentric exercise, there was a question written in that I do want to tackle specifically here because it’s not covered in the program as stated. There have been some great questions. And this relates to your question for sure. Which is can I do more eccentric exercise and will that yield more benefit? What you will see in the step by step program is the recommendation of one intense eccentric routine per week and then one complimentary smarter interval training exercise for every workout, there you go, whatever` you want to call it.

If I ever want to get faster results can I just do more of that? we can talk a lot about this for sure, however, I think the easiest way you understand why the answer is no you will not get better results if you just do more of it is to think of this form of exercise as extremely powerful. Eccentric exercise, smarter interval training is one of the most potent — is almost like medicinal exercise. It’s so powerful in your body. And more isn’t better when you are dealing with really powerful things.

I said it’s therapeutic; it’s almost medicinal exercise so let’s talk about medicinal. Talk about medicine. If you are sick and your doctor prescribes very powerful penicillin. Your doctor will never say, hey take all of this penicillin on day one to get the fastest results. We might be laughing or smiling because you are like no that’s crazy. Even if you have a headache it’s not like, I have a headache if two help my headaches go away, 4 will help it to go away twice as fast and 10 will help it to go away five times faster. And actually, this whole bottle will make it go away instantly. So I’m just going to take all there is.

The way we have to think about exercise is super similar to that. Because what the right form of exercise does is it triggers what’s called hormonal cascade in our bodies. And what that hormonal cascade does is it then sort of tells our body to mobilize other hormones to release stored energy from fat cells and the magic is that once you trigger that you then just need to let your body do its thing. The benefits of eccentric exercise, the smarter interval training — this is going to sound a little bit silly but stick with me. You don’t get them while you are doing the exercise; you get them afterward when your body responds to that stimulus. That’s really where the benefit comes into play. So at the risk of mixing metaphors just think about — trying to not mix too many metaphors. I like metaphors but I don’t want to have six metaphors going on simultaneously.

Let me wrap up one exercise metaphor and then I will move on to the next one. The first exercise metaphor is a smarter exercise is not more is better. Just like medication, is not more is better. It’s about finding the optimum dose that will trigger the body’s natural healing responses and then to let the body do its thing. Its right dose, optimal dose plus time for your body to react to that equal success. More is not better. More is not better; in fact, more can actually make you sick and worse like it would in the medicine case.

Speaking of more is not better it’s worse, let’s do another analogy here and that will be part of what happens when you train eccentrically or do smarter interval training is you break down your body in a positive way. One thing that’s amazing about our body is that it responds to the right kind of stress by becoming stronger. If you ram your car up against a wall and it gets all crinkled up, your car won’t heal itself and it certainly won’t become stronger as a result of getting broken down. But what your muscles, for example, will do is when they get broken down in a safe way if you give them the proper nutrition and rest, not only will they heal themselves but they will heal back stronger. And that’s amazing, and that’s the core to healing, that’s the core to our help here. Which is yes we have damaged metabolisms but with proper time, factor number one and proper nutrition our body can not only heal itself but it can actually become super better or even better than it was prior to the damage in the fast place.

By way of the analogy when you cause that damage — I’m scared to use this analogy because the damage that you cause when you exercise smarter is good. And the example I’m going to use is bad damage. So please take this the way I mean it rather than the way it might sound. Imagine you got a cut on your hand, that’s damage to tissue and when you do eccentric exercise that damage to tissue as well but if it’s healthy damage, its damage to your muscle tissue that’s desirable. Getting a cut on your hand is damage to tissue but it’s not desirable. But what happens after damage to tissue happens? Your body puts a scab in place. I know this is a little bit gross sounding but imagine if you said, I’m going to pick that scab off. That’s certainly not helping your body to heal. The stimulus has already happened. The stimulus was the tissue got damaged now the body just needs to heal and any interference with that healing is counterproductive.

In some ways think about it kind of when you train eccentrically you in a positive way damage your muscle tissue and to do anything to it before it’s healed is counterproductive. That’s another reason why we want the appropriate dose and time is the critical factor. Time is such a critical factor and we will certainly talk about that as we go on. But more is actually worse in the case of exercise. Hopefully, that’s globally helpful and Vicky hopefully that gives you some context on what you will see in the program as well.

Alright, rock and roll. Let’s go on to the next question here. I’m getting some notices here on my end. Debra wrote in with a great question. I find it difficult to eat all the food I need to meet my daily SANE goal, any suggestions? I do use Garden In My Glass smoothies in the morning. How does not meeting the daily goals prevent me from lowering my set point weight? Fabulous question Debra. If I knew what your goals were that would be certainly helpful. There are baseline levels you don’t want to fall below but there is a balance here, we know what’s essential and we got to customize it beyond that.

Let me describe that one better. I know for example and I can tell you the research shows that you definitely want to maximize your results to be in those double-digit servings of vegetables. And if it’s not visible to do that via rash vegetables or frozen vegetables that you find at your local grocery store, that’s why we created many of our SANE superfood powders. The reason I say that a double-digit serving is essential is in order for your body to heal itself which is why we are here we need a therapeutic dose of nutrition and there is a no more concentrated source of nutrition than non-starchy vegetables. We literally need to flood yourself with that nutrition in a lot of ways getting to 9 at a very minimum level of vegetables I would say is essential to reaching your goals.

But if you get to nine or you get to 10 and you are like no mass, and then remember anything that’s going to make you feel uncomfortable or anything that’s going to touch your willpower that’s counterproductive. Maybe you say, alright hey I’m good with 9 now and maybe that changes in the future. But it’s another helpful technique to remember that this is going to change and evolve as you make progress. As you make progress with your eccentric training. You are going to need to use more resistance because you are going to get stronger. and similarly and I think most people get that, if you are training for any kind of you are doing your multiplication tables eventually you will do your multiplication tables in grade school and then those become easy and doing the same thing won’t better at math you have to move on to something more advanced. Same thing applies to exercise. If you can do 10 pounds today and 10 pounds tomorrow on the third time you work-out you probably want to do more than 10 pounds if you want to keep making progress.

We are going to have that baseline level of vegetables and don’t feel bad if it’s not 16 because maybe that’s something that you are going to work your way up to. The other things that are essential is at least three servings of those 30 grams. Depending on your body size, serving size information is covered in detail in the step by step program. It’s going to be between 20 and 30 grams depending on your body size but at least three servings of nutrient-dense protein to trigger that muscle protein synthesis. Again I would say that’s essential and that’s required because we do want to provide protein, amino acids are essential. That’s why we say essential amino acids. They are essential for your long-term health and well-being. I know the metrics and the goals its shoot for 6 that’s also in a world where like if you were eating no inSANE foods at all you definitely are going to need to be eating more SANE foods or else you will be hungry.

But if you are at 3 and you are full and you are good, that’s okay because that’s the sort of essential baseline level and then for whole food fats this is the area that’s most flexible depending on how much fat you have to lose, depending on your protein sources, you might be getting sufficient fat from the protein sources. For example salmon is a fatty fish; it’s an optimal source of nutrient-dense protein. But if you eat a lot of salmon, that’s going to provide you with a lot of essential optimal fats. The area I would say if you are too full — and can we just say how awesome it is that we are here talking about fat loss and weight loss and the number one problem is I’m too full for all these food. How awesome and transformative of a mindset is that? There is an abundance of food, nutritional therapy and that’s why this works. Because if you are full there is no willpower involved. There is radically less willpower involved and the willpower that is involved for example I still crave sugar will diminish over time because as you retrain your taste buds that go away.

Whereas the willpower required to starve yourself just gets greater over time. It’s easy to starve yourself for one day, it’s harder on the second day, it’s harder on the third day, it’s harder on the fourth day and eventually, it’s impossible. Eating more but smarter retrains your taste buds, you are full and it makes it easier to avoid those inSANE substances. But point being if you are too full and you are eating pure SANity, whole food fats is the area that you can be most flexible with. I personally wouldn’t drop below one or two servings per day but don’t ever — nutrient dense protein, non-starchy vegetables are really key and essential. Some tangibility there with the whole food fats and low fructose fruits are totally non-essential. They do provide some great vitamins and minerals one way to think of low fructose fruits though are sweeter vegetables, they are vegetables with more sugar in them. They are tastier for a lot of people than vegetables but they are not uniquely nutritional when compared to vegetables. Let me know if that’s not helpful or if I was a little too wacky on that one.

Let me jump here to some questions that were sent in and actually let me give you a quick heads up here which has to do with long-term success. This is one of the more detailed topics that I wanted to make sure that we covered here today because I think a lot of us have a tendency and please jump in here if I’m missing the mark, is that we sometimes can be our own worst enemy. I know this applies to me at least. I don’t know if this applies to you but I will say things to myself in my mind that if another person said to me I will be like hey that’s not cool. And I’m not going to let that stand. But when I think about what I say to myself, like, men, if anyone else talked to me that way I wouldn’t let it stand.

Why I’m I bring this up? The reason I’m bringing this up is when it comes to our goals and it comes to our progress sometimes it can be really helpful to have some objective data. Not because I’m a huge geek and I love data but rather because it can give us a baseline. So let me explain a little bit more what I mean. I know a lot of us are like we’ve been taught for 40 years I want to lose 7 pounds in 7 days. I want to lose this weight in this time period. That’s what we have been told. And actually, that’s one of the crazy counterproductive things of the calorie counting model. is it reduces this to a mathematical equation which fails in every laboratory study that has ever looked at it and it has failed for all of us right where we are told specifically there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, therefore, cut 500 calories out of your diet and you are going to lose one pound per week. apparently forever because if calorie math worked that way then 500 fewer calories per day is 3500 calories per week which is a pound of weight loss per week. If you want to lose 12 pounds in 12 weeks that’s what you do. We try it, it doesn’t work that way and we blame ourselves.

That’s because the body does work that way and what should our expectations actually be? Not a lot of people know this but what is success objectively? If you look at the actual data, the actual studies, to reduce our body weight meaningfully let’s say a 10 percent reduction in body weight and to keep that off. To do that in 6 months to a year and to keep that off. First of all, let me just acknowledge that would make for a good reality television show. I’m kind of kidding but if someone weighs 190 pounds right now and their goal is to weigh 150 pounds, so we can talk separately about fat loss versus weight loss but let’s just simplify here.

Let me pick different numbers to make that number easier on myself. Let’s say is 200 pounds and their normal healthy body weight would be 150, if after a year they had lost 10 percent of their body weight and let’s say that’s from fat because we are not after burning muscle tissue, we are not after water weight loss here. So they go down to 180. The standard that I know a lot of us set for ourselves is — one I am not 150 pounds yet, I didn’t reach my goal weight, therefore, I am a failure. If any other human being said that to you say take a hike buddy. But we will say it to ourselves multiple times per day. And why do we say that? We say that because we see television shows and we see magazine ads that tell us that first of all you only lost 20 pounds and if you took this pill you could have done that in 21 days, what’s your problem.

But again please keep in mind that if it was possible to lose 20 pounds in 21 days by taking a pill and keeping it off I promise you everybody would be on that pill. So it doesn’t exist. There is no secret magic thing out there.