Jonathan: So this is a big question that came in here, which I really appreciate like. I’m going to summarize it because it’s quite long. It’s a good one and this individual says, ‘I know we focused on progress not perfection but they find that they want to kick it up a notch and they want to get really super Sane with their eating and I love to hear that and they say that they feel better when they eat clean and that’s their goal.’ And sometimes when they see a meal plan or a recipe that has even a little bit of say like crackers in it as a seasoning, they just shut down the whole because they get frustrating. They’re wondering if there was a scale where they could just find super SANE things and know that everything in the recipe is super SANE. There are a bunch of other really good suggestions and questions. I just want this to be easy. And then thanks Jonathan! You guys are great! So thank you! I appreciate that!

I think the core question here is I know that we’re about progress rather than perfection but if I do want to go super SANE which is a term that I’ve used before, how can I do that? And I think this individual might feel that some aspects of the Ignite program are tailored for people who are not yet super SANE and you’re right. It’s not tailored for advanced. It’s tailored to scale a way up and the reason for that is that if you want to go super SANE, in my personal experience, is that it’s much easier to make things SANEr.If you, for example, see a recipe and it calls for a little bit of cheddar cheese, you know that cheddar cheese is not super SANE so you just don’t put it in the recipe. Similarly, if you see a recipe and it’s calling for chicken, you say to yourself, hey chicken is definitely not the most optimal of a nutrient as protein source. It’s not bad for me but it’s just not optimal. Instead, you cooked the recipe but you just used maybe clams, which now you sound like that’s crazy. But if you just like clams from a taste perspective, chicken kind of taste like nothing. Clam’s kind of takes like nothing. They take on the flavor of what you put them in so my recommendation is, first of all, awesome. Optimal SANity is fantastic and in fact, let me actually share this link. There’s the breakdown early here in the program. Here, let me post this. That breaks down the food groups, the SANE food groups. Reina, that’s a lot of clams. I like that. It breaks the food groups down into normal SANity and optimal SANity. So my recommendation will just be if you see a recipe, it’s like progress versus perfection in the other end. So just because the recipe isn’t perfect, like maybe it has some things in it that aren’t perfectly SANE but not let’s not let that stop us from progressing towards optimal super SANity.

If you, for example, see a recipe and it calls for a little bit of cheddar cheese, you know that cheddar cheese is not super SANE so you just don’t put it in the recipe. Similarly, if you see a recipe and it’s calling for chicken, you say to yourself, hey chicken is definitely not the most optimal of a nutrient as protein source. It’s not bad for me but it’s just not optimal. Instead, you cooked the recipe but you just used maybe clams, which now you sound like that’s crazy. But if you just like clams from a taste perspective, chicken kind of taste like nothing. Clam’s kind of takes like nothing. They take on the flavor of what you put them in so my recommendation is, first of all, awesome. Optimal SANity is fantastic and in fact, let me actually share this link. There’s the breakdown early here in the program. Here, let me post this. That breaks down the food groups, the SANE food groups. Reina, that’s a lot of clams. I like that. It breaks the food groups down into normal SANity and optimal SANity. So my recommendation will just be if you see a recipe, it’s like progress versus perfection in the other end. So just because the recipe isn’t perfect, like maybe it has some things in it that aren’t perfectly SANE but not let’s not let that stop us from progressing towards optimal super SANity.

If the recipe calls for olive oil, actually, this is a great example. There have been some great discussions in the SANE coaching and support group for people are like why do all these recipes call for melted coconut oil. It’s a pain to melt coconut oil. Can’t I just use olive oil? It’s a great question. Olive oil is easier to cook with because it’s already liquid. Coconut oil is a SANEr oil so with some recipes, we are trying to make them as SANE as possible. So, it might be a hustle to melt coconut oil but it makes it SANEr. If you want to go super SANE, I’d say the number thing to do is just to print out the pages from that food’s list and anytime you see something that isn’t optimally SANE, just exclude it from the recipe, easy breezy, or swap something else then. I don’t think we have any recipes, which are like use 12 cups of flour. If we did, which we don’t, you can just to say swap in coconut flour, which is the optimal source of flour. Almond flour is sometimes easier to bake with but it’s not optimal Sanity. So, just swap in optimal sources and exclude things that aren’t perfectly Sane. If you do that, you’re going to have optimal Sanity.

Please, it’s a two-step process. One, give yourself permission to say, ‘hey, if this recipe isn’t perfect, that’s all right.’ I’m not going to let it hold me back from my pursuit of SANE perfection. Then you’re going to pull out that link that I just sent you and you’re going to say, ‘all right, this ingredient isn’t optimally SANE, I’m just not going to include it.’ Just the same mindset of let’s say you don’t like olives. Olives are wonderfully SANE. They are optimal fat source, great source of amino and saturated fats. But say there’s a recipe and it calls for olives, you probably just wouldn’t put olives in the recipe, same kind of thing here, optimal SANity. You’ve got your list of SANE foods. You’ve got your list of optimal SANE foods. If it’s a SANE food, swap it in optimal version. If it’s not quite SANE, don’t put it in. Bam! You have just made the entire SANE recipe library optimally SANE and you’re really going to see some great results when you do that.

And from a vegetable perspective, it’s the same kind of thing; green leafy vegetables, more exotic vegetables, things like arugula, and Swiss chard that aren’t super common but they’re on that guide right there. Please let me know if you have follow-up questions about that. Just like we talked about making SANE substitutions to make recipes that are totally SANER, we can take Sane recipes and use optimal SANE foods to make them optimally SANE. Hopefully, that is helpful.

Penny… Cool, yes. Thanks for the info on keto SANE. Even my functional doctor also eats this way, absolutely! And Penny, let’s keep in mind that there are therapeutic benefits like I think ketogenic diets have been used to help with certain temporary treatments of schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s and things like that. So we always have to take it on a case-by-case basis. What is the goal of being in ketosis? That would be a great conversation to have with your functional doctor. It’s not a questioning of whether or not ketosis is valid, but it’s like why am I in ketosis, and how long should I be in ketosis, and what is the point in being in ketosis.

Because sometimes, human beings, we have a tendency sometimes to focus on the means rather than the end. What I mean by that is, and we talked about this a little bit in the master class, often times people will say you know I want to be in low carb or I want to eat organic or any of these labels and in the 1990s and ‘80s was low fat. I want to eat low fat. Nowadays, a lot of it is I want to eat organic or you know grass fed. And it’s not that any of those things are bad and actually, there’s a question about that. If you think about it just a little bit differently and this is kind of an advanced SANE mental technique, they all meant to get us some place. We’re not eating ketogenic just to eat ketogenically. We’re eating ketogenically so that blank like so that what. We’re not just eating grass-fed meat because it’s fun. We’re eating grass-fed meat because of what and that because of what is really important because it’s different for different people.

Some people if they’re ketogenic because they have seizures and they’re trying to minimize having seizures and when they have seizures they fall down the stairs and become seriously injured, then absolutely. It’s much more important not to have a seizure and not to fall down the stairs than it is to eat 14 servings of vegetables versus eight. So that’s the key thing is to have those conversations about why am I doing this, what is the end goal. Because the end goal like the end goal is not to be paleo. The end goal is not to be low carb. The end goal is not actually even to be SANE. The end goal is to be happy and healthy and to reverse whatever is causing us pain and that’s the judge. That’s the barometer and if being ketogenic gets you there, then keep doing it. I just think that’s really important because we can sometimes get hang up on am I adhering to this set of rules rather than am I letting results be my guide because at the end of the day that’s really what it’s all about.

If tomorrow you found out that eating Cheetos, Dingdongs and Ho Hos and drinking Pepsi made your lipids healthier and major A1C level is fantastic, it made you feel great then it’s healthy for you. No human being is that way. But the goal is not to adhere arbitrarily to a set of rules but to focus on the outcome. I think, often times, we get that in other areas of life. If we’re planning a family vacation, it’s not about like we’re doing that because we want to have fun. We want to bring the family together and I think maybe family is a great example because I think we’ve all had instances where this thing, this tool, that we’re using to try to bring about a certain state. Maybe this is going to date me, but when I was growing up, we were like my family board games. And there were some board games that we just didn’t like. And if the goal is to play a board game, that’s very different than a goal to have fun as a family. But if our mind is like, no look it’s game night, we are going to play a game. If that’s making everyone miserable and sad, then is the goal to play game or is the goal to make everyone happy. If the goal is to make everyone happy and this game is making everyone sad, then maybe we need to play a different game!

And it’s the same kind of thing with food. It’s not like being ketogenic is not the end. It’s a means to the end and if it’s getting us to the end, rock and roll. Then if it’s not, then we need to reevaluate it and we need to always compare to that end rather than the means. Hopefully, that makes sense. It’s kind of esoteric but I hope it’s helpful.

The next question here that was written in has to do with what I just said and it has to do with what about grain-fed versus grass-fed beef and other meats. Probably, the common wisdom of what you’ve heard is what the science says. Absolutely, grain-fed beef is not fantastic and this is a great question to couch in the earlier question of optimally SANE versus SANEr. And we should be very clear that there’s a big difference here. So I want to be clear that it is okay to just want to be SANEr. The vast majority of people who are struggling with their weight and who are struggling with obesity and diabetes and metabolic syndrome, it’s not because they’re eating conventional beef versus grass-fed beef. At that point, we’re going from B to an A-plus. Whereas most of us, we’re not trying to go from a nine to a ten. We’re trying to go from a lower point to a higher point. So this is a great question to highlight that because it’s really easy to say. Look, I can’t get grass-fed beef. It’s four times more expensive than everything else or it’s not even available to me, I give up because I can’t be perfect. So let’s be very clear. There’s super SANity and then there’s SANity.

Now, what I can tell you about Sanity in terms of peer reviewed research is SANity is proven to help you avoid diabetes, obesity, hypertension, dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, yada-yada-yada. That’s why I’m all about getting us to Sane, getting us to non-starchy vegetables nutrient as to protein whole food fats. That is required to be the awesome vibrant version of yourself. Now, we think that if you’ve done that and you want to do more doing things like grass-fed beef or wild caught fish, should help. It seems pretty clear that it should help. Now, the question is how much should it help and is it helping enough to merit the cost. I don’t know. That’s up to you. You could see how you feel.

A lot of people, for example, if you had to choose between very lean grain-fed beef because the reason you want to do grass-fed beef is it’s leaner, it has a better nutrient profile, and so on and so forth. But the toxins, the hormones, and all that issues in grain-fed beef are found in the fat. So if you get very lean grain-fed beef, if it’s ground beef, then you squeeze the fat out with paper towel. Is the difference between that and grass-fed beef going to make a meaningful difference in your life and that’s the key point of something that we talked about in previous sessions, the meaningful difference. It could be healthier. But will it matter in the long term? That’s the question. Is it worth it to you?

So I think, all things considered, if you can easily get wild-caught salmon, personally, I get frozen salmon patties and canned salmon from Costco rather than their fresh salmon because the frozen and canned types, not only are they less expensive than the fresh but their wild caught. And I have access to both and when I’ve access to both, I am going to choose wild caught, especially if it’s more cost effective. If I’m going to eat beef, I would try to get grass fed but what I personally paid twice as much for it, I don’t think the cost benefit is there. And I don’t think there is any peer reviewed research that shows the cost benefit to be there. It’s not that it isn’t better. It’s called the ‘any benefit myth’ something can be good for us like, is Ferrari a better car than a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. Is it $300,000 better of a car? They both get you to point A to point B. So I think that’s the key. That’s just something we have to take on individually.

Yes, in an optimal world, not only we are doing grass-fed beef, but we’re doing grass-fed organ meats. I want to be super SANE. Muscle meats are nothing from a nutritional density perspective compared to organ meats. Conventional liver contrasted with grass-fed muscle meat, the conventional liver went hands-down in terms of nutrient density and metabolic healing. So that’s another thing to watch out for, just getting optimal sources of conventional SANity. That’s really important. I would take conventional kale personally over organic iceberg lettuce any day of the week. Organic is good for you. It is the optimal choice but what are essential for life are vitamins and minerals. We know if you don’t eat enough vitamins and minerals you die. That’s why they’re called essential.

We also know that the body can deal with some level of toxins. That’s why we have an immune system. If we couldn’t deal with any level of toxins, we couldn’t breathe in our air. Our air is polluted like crazy and in fact, there’s really interesting phenomena. We’ve heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is called a post-traumatic growth, which is in fact, like we don’t want to avoid all forms of toxicity. The quickest way to screw up someone’s immune system is to have them never be exposed to viruses or bacteria, ever. It’s a whole like the ‘Boy and the Bubble’ story. If you were kept in a clean room your whole life and then you ever stepped out of that clean room, you’re done for. Because the way biology works, which is amazing, is biology says hey you’re harm, I get a little bit of harm, and it doesn’t mean we want harm but a little bit of harm can cause growth. So yes, grass fed is good. Wild caught is good. Organic is good. Whenever possible, we should make those choices.

We really shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t make those choices because one, it’s not clear if those choices will matter long term. We’re all going to die someday or something so there’s only so much you can do. There’s a question as to what is the right level of refinement for what we’re eating. At some level, we need our children to be exposed to viruses and bacteria. Otherwise, they don’t do well. That doesn’t mean we want to throw ourselves in a room full of people with chickenpox at all, especially not chickenpox. That’s no fun. But the point is again to really understand that our body is a brilliant dynamic organism that is capable of healing itself and that it is good too.

Whenever possible, grass fed or wild caught but please don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do that. They are the optimal choices but remember we’re not always about optimal. They’re available. We’re about what we can do sustainably and enjoyable for the long term.

Bernadette! I don’t think one ever asked the question before so I love it! Bernadette is piping up. I like it. When talking about functional and integrative doctors, what things to look for when choosing one. That’s a good question Bernadette and I’ve never actually been asked that question before. I’ve been asked a lot of questions. I’ve never been asked that one. Hopefully, I would spend a lot of time here in your SANE Ignite program, especially in understanding a lot of the science and the mental aspects and just have a conversation.

This might be the rule of thumb to use, just two of them. One is any health care professional who isn’t open to collaboration like there’s actually been studies done on this in terms of like doctor efficacy and surgeons. If you were, for example, be having a medical condition, you were talking to a medical professional and you said, ‘hey my mother-in-law is a doctor and she said X.’ And the other medical professional that you’re talking to is like, ‘Oh well, why don’t you just go talk to them instead. Ah!’ I would not work with that person. Think about it. What’s the mindset? The mindset needs to be, ‘hey Bernadette we need to do everything we can to help you.’ If you and I are talking, which is what we’re doing right now, my goal is not like for me to be right and for you to listen to me. It’s not about me, it’s about you and it’s about your success.

So if I was your functional medicine doctor and you came to me and you said, ‘hey Jonathan, it’s really interesting what you said about grass-fed beef, my mother-in-law is a doctor as well and she said this what do you think about that.’ I’ll be like, ‘Oh you know that’s great, no, maybe let’s get her on the phone and let’s collaborate, let’s figure this out.’ And if you say, ‘Oh, you know I want to get a second opinion on something.’ Hopefully, your functional doctor will say awesome like please go do that. Go get a second opinion because we need all the information we can get.

So the first thing I would say is their openness to collaboration and to divergent opinions. Because remember just like I said earlier, we are results and outcome focused. We’re not about being right. We’re about being healthy and about being happy. They should be open to collaboration. They should be open to differing opinions and that’s how science is done. That’s how science is done.

We have conflicting ideas and opinions, we test them, then we looked at the results, and then we refine. But when we don’t look at the results, we have what happened in America over the past 40 years. Fat is bad for you. Sugar is great. Just keeping eating this way and then the obesity and diabetes rates are doing this. And the medical institution up until about 10 years ago is just like we’re right, results are wrong.

Now, we have an obesity epidemic because we weren’t focused on results, we were focused on, ‘oh goodness, I said this publicly in a journal article so I can’t take it back now because that’ll make me look foolish.’ Look, if you’re an architect, you’re building a bridge and the bridge collapses, like the bridge collapsed. That’s all that matters. And our nutritional bridge collapsed. We need to rebuild it. We need to be open to collaborations. That’s a great question. Anytime you’re working with anyone in any field I think would be great. Are they open to collaboration?

The second thing is I think that things like supplements can be a red flag. Obviously, with the same lifestyle, we provide SANE super foods. They’re there and the make SANEity easier but we’re not like okay, ‘Hey to go SANE you need to spend 700 dollars on this super food and then you need to mega dose this and need to do these 15 other things.’ Not that it can’t work, there might be some instances in which that is necessary. But remember, these things are called supplements. If our supplement bill is higher than our grocery bill, there is no supplement in the world. On the record, there will never be a supplement in the world that will have as much positive impact on your life as a good night sleep, done, done!

There’s a third tip. I forgot. I don’t remember them. But focusing on that stuff like eating nutrient dense foods, moving your body safely, getting a good night sleep, minimizing stress, and staying hydrated, if you don’t get those things right, everything else is like I’ve used this analogy before and I’ll use it again. They’re a little bit like if you walk outside your house, you saw your neighbor and the car was burning. The car is immersed in a ball of flames. And your neighbor comes strolling out of their house and the windshield’s dirty. It’s got about smut on it from the smoke and they’re like cleaning their window off with some Windex while their car is burning. It’s just crazy. Like your car is on fire. Don’t worry about the smudge on the window. Yes, the smudge on the window is unfortunate. Yes, having a clean windshield is good but your cars on fire!

Our first steps are getting those nutrients, protein, whole food, fats, low-fructose fruits, and non-starchy veggies. Getting that quality sleep. Keeping those stress levels down. Building those loving relationships. Moving our bodies; a lot in a low impact way and a little in a high-intensity safe way with eccentric exercise. Getting that stuff right is so much more important than anything else.

So if anyone is like, “Well, you know I wouldn’t worry so much about your sleep instead take this pill” I would run the other direction and if peer-reviewed research supports. And the third thing I would say– I really appreciate you asking this question because it’s very rare that I’ve asked a question that I’ve never been asked before. So I’m sorry I’m kind of rambling with this one, but I think there’s some good stuff here.

The last question is– Oh, Bernadette I lost it. The focus, Oh, yes, the last one is a certainty. So this is a big one. This is a big one. Nutrition is incredibly complicated. Hormone balance is incredibly complicated. We are just starting to understand these fields.

So you’ll notice sometimes that what I say and what you see in the same program it’s flexible. It’s like do this and if it works keep doing it if it doesn’t then stop and do something else; because the more we learn about nutrition– Actual experts in nutrition, and hormones, and biology; the more they know the more they don’t know they know yet.

Right, and this is why we focus so much on whole foods because the more it’s more like eat more vitamin C, it’s like well if you just take more vitamin C pills that actually blocks the absorption of other vitamins. So it’s not about eating more vitamin C it’s about eating the right balance of vitamin C relative to everything else. And right so it’s not like vitamin C from an orange is literally treated differently. If you eat an orange and it has 30 milligrams of ascorbic acid in it, which is the technical name for vitamin C– and so if you take a person and feed them an orange with ascorbic acid– that has ascorbic acid in it naturally and then you take another person and just feed them 30 milligrams of a ascorbic acid, you will see independent of the sugar intake, like the actual receptors will behave differently in those contexts; because vitamin C in the context of an orange with fiber and all the other vitamins and minerals that’s totally different.

And we kind of know that. Right, like it’s– When you eat a food you’re eating millions of different things that go into your body, and they will react so differently based on your stress levels and everything else. So the third thing to look for in an integrated doctor is if they’re like, “This is true. This is false.”– and I’m certain– and you should definitely do this all the time; run the other direction because with most things in life the more a person actually knows the more they’ll be like, “Hey, try this, but keep in mind we don’t have all the information yet because– Yeah, so hopefully– It’s kind of like the teenager mindset where I could speak for myself at least, but I think we’ve all had this experience like when we’re younger we objectively know less than when we’re older but we think we know everything. Like “Yes, this is totally what I should do.” My 15-year old self knows everything, and my 15-year old self had way less knowledge than I do today. And the older I get I’m like, “Well, there’s another way to look at that.”