Jonathan: What are we going to do today? We have some great specific questions. I also have some new stuff I’d love to share. I love the real-time questions. Let’s just do it up, shall we?

The other thing, I’ve got some great feedback here. I want to share it with you here now. Obviously, the Ignite Program has a lot in it. For example, we’ve got the Step-by-Step Program. We’ve got the Concierge, and within there for questions and issues that almost everybody has. Like cravings or eating on the go. Things like that, these big topics.

We’ve done everything we can to make sure there’s a huge amount of resources available in the Step-by-Step Program for those things. We’re helping your entire family to go SANE, that kind of stuff. Big and macro topics are covered in detail in the Step-by-Step Program.

Then there are some questions for example, like in the Support Group in which the SANE Coaches and other Family members are doing such a great job providing guidance on. What I’d love to be able to do on these Calls is make it like: ‘The stuff we’re going to do on these calls can only happen on these Calls.’

If I refer, ‘Please check out the Support Group’ or ‘Please check out the Step-by-Step Program,’ it’s not because I don’t want to help at all. In fact, I want to help so much that we’ve got resources in place to give the most help with those topics and I want to cover new cutting-edge stuff that we can’t cover anywhere else in these Calls.

So if that’s okay. I hope I don’t offend anybody by not getting to certain things. I want to maximize what we do on these Calls. I want to have the Ignite Program and the Step-by-Step Program and all the other programs in your Support Group. I want to do those of best service to you as well. Hopefully, that makes sense and helps. So let’s rock and roll.

Let me give you a specific example, something that we need to cover in these Calls together. This is a really important point. I’ve never actually talked about this before so you’ve probably never heard of this before and it’s extremely important. I noticed that somebody in the Support Group – I think; it’s been kind of crazy and that’s why I haven’t cut or shaved my hair. It’s been a really busy time. I think there was a comment in the Support Group, I was reading it on my phone.

It was something along the lines of, ‘I use coconut oil and MCT oil (which is an abbreviation for Medium Chain Triglyceride) because I think it burns fat.’ or something along those lines. There was a lot of information on the internet in general, rather misinformation on the internet that talks about either a short chain fat, coconut oil or MCT oil causing you to burn fat.

Now, this is a great example, and with all this stuff, even with calorie counting. It’s like – Yeah, that’s kind of true but it’s not the whole story. And because it’s not the whole story if you take it literally or you take it the wrong way it can be really damaging. So let me just give you a concrete example. Coconut oil helps you burn fat or MCT oil is a concentrated form of a specific type of fat that is found within coconut oil, helps you to burn fat.

That could be interpreted as follows: If I take my existing SANE Diet and I just of MCT oil or I just eat 2 tablespoons of coconut oil per day, that will help me burn fat. That’s a totally reasonable interpretation of someone communicating to you, ‘Hey, coconut oil and MCT oil helps you burn fat.’

Here’s the full truth, which is really important; the actual science which is like a game of telephone. Some of these things are based in science but they go through fifteen media outlets, and five internet chat rooms and it gets watered down. What’s actually been shown in studies is what the researchers will do is they will take a 200 calorie diet that has a certain composition of protein carbohydrate and fat. Then they will do an isocaloric swap because they will take, say 400 calories of some other form of fat. They will replace that with either coconut oil or MCT oil or these medium chain triglycerides, these fat-burning fats.

Now, the scientific fact is that when you do that, when you do a calorie for calorie swap – if you took 300 calories of long chain and you swap them out and swap an equal number of medium chain fats in – you would burn fat. Because those medium chain fats would process differently than long chain fats to use SANE terminology, you could think of them as being less efficient. If you do an isocaloric means you take about 300 hundred calories of sugar and you replaced them with 300 calories of protein, you would burn more body fat. Because protein is less efficient at being stored as fat than sugar is. Well, medium chain fats are less efficient at being stored as body fat than long chained fats.

But it’s not true to say that if you just eat more of medium chained fats, for example say someone’s eating a really unhealthy McDonalds based diet what they’ll do is that they’ll just read this on the internet and say, ‘I’m just going to eat 4 tablespoons of coconut oil in addition to the low-quality diet. Why am I not losing fat?’ That’s why. You can see how that’s kind of a half-truth.

We talked about protein being efficient, but we always talk about eating more vegetables, proteins, and fats instead of or in place of starches and sweets. And that’s very different. For example, if you took a 3000 calorie diet and just started drinking protein shakes, that’s not going to do what we want it to do. You want to take the SANEr foods or in this case, the less efficient fats and you swap them in place of the inSANE foods. Hopefully, that helps because oil, in general, is the important thing to talk about.

Remember, oil is not SANE. That doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy, but it’s not SANE because oil is not a whole food fat. It’s the fat from a whole food extracted out so it’s refined concentrated fat, doesn’t mean we should never use oil. But I think this individual was led to believe that they should use coconut oil liberally because it burns fat.

Now we know coconut oil does not in itself burn. In order for coconut oil to burn fat, in order for anything to burn fat you would actually have to use up more calories being processed by the body than those put into the body. Those foods exist. That’s what most non-starchy vegetables are basically pure fiber and protein.

So to actually metabolize and digest celery – which is what we call a negative calorie food – to actually take celery from being celery to being something your body can do something with, from breaking it down to water to breaking it down to the teeny tiny bit of sugar that’s in it, breaking down the protein elements, breaking down the fiber element and eventually excreting the fiber out of the body. That costs your body more energy than celery provides.

There are these certain negative calorie foods. Oil is not one of those. It’s not even close to one of those. Oil is not the devil that you go like, ‘Right after Jonathan finishes this Call, and I’m going to throw away all my oil.’

Let me be very clear about this because this can be a big difference maker for you. Oil is not SANE, there’s no fiber in it. None, zero protein and there is no water. So there are three things, the key components that are the common denominators across the tidy aggression, nutrition, and efficiency. None of them are in oil. So that’s why oil is in other fats in the SANE spectrum.

The only reason to use oil is because you have to and I would encourage you to explore ways where you don’t have to use it at all, or you can use it a lot less of it. Buy a lot of eggs, because eggs are super SANE.

My mother – I’ve seen her cook, and I love her, she’s a fantastic cook – just scoops oil and puts it in the pan. Way more oil than could ever be needed to prevent the thing from sticking to the pan. You can go, ‘I’ve got a big old tub of coconut oil,’ because coconut oil is a great oil to cook with. It has a high smoke point. It doesn’t get all mingled and turns into trans-fat. Not like poly-unsaturated fats would if you cooked with them but just a teeny tiny bit will coat the bottom of the pan and cause things not to stick and that’s great because since it’s not SANE you don’t want to go out of your way to eat more of it.

Other things like salmon, salmon is super SANE and pan-seared salmon is delicious. But we’ve been programmed to put oil in the pan. Put olive oil in the pan, that’s the best option. If you don’t have the best option put coconut oil in the pan. We have to put oil in the pan.

There are cooking techniques such as brazing and boiling or broiling that can be great ways to still have a delicious flavor and delicious taste. When you’re cooking that piece of salmon just lay down a thin layer of water in the bottom of the pan and that will prevent it from sticking and it will add wonderful of moisture to the fish and I just think it’s really important. The indiscriminate use of oil does not increase your SANity at all. It’s not SANE.

Anyone who tells you that these fats will burn fat is only telling you a half-truth. What the research has actually shown is that only when they are swapped, only when you take more efficiently processed fats by your body and you swap in these less efficient fats – which are good for you – only then do they contribute to fat loss. If this doesn’t make sense, please post a question as a question in the chat box.

That’s a big, big, big, important distinction to make. Hopefully, that’s a great example of the kind of stuff that I want to cover in these Calls because it requires a lot of nuancing and a lot of caveating. Hopefully, that is helpful here.

Please keep in mind that another way to think about oils is that whole food fats are very important. When anyone talks about healthy oils we have to think of in terms of oil is refined fat. Why am I making this point?

What is sugar? Most sugar comes from whole foods. Sugar cane or sugar beets are two of the primary sources. To be frank, if you were to sit around and chew on sugar cane you’d be fine because you’d never consume a ton of sugar for it to be an issue.

But when we take sugar cane and we extract out concentrated sugar, it’s really easy to overdo it. It’s really easy to overdo it with extracted out concentrated fat. Again, it doesn’t mean olive oil is bad for you.

It doesn’t mean coconut oil is bad for you. But it does mean if you’re thinking if the words ‘olives’ and ‘coconut’ are in your brain. Just stop there. Eat more olives. Eat more coconut. Eat more of the whole food. Rather than just taking all the fiber, all the protein, all the water out and then

Same thing with juicing versus blending; I love blending so much, blending is taking a whole food and essentially just pre-chewing it for you. All the fiber is there, all the nutrient is there. All the SANity is there. Whereas – funny story here we can only ever do these on these Calls and I don’t share anywhere else.

You may remember there was a television show a while back. It was the Bethany Franklin Show or something like that. I was scheduled to be on that show and I was going to debate the guy, I think his name was Joe the Juicer. He produced a movie called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead He’s Australian, I believe, juicing is his thing. I was so excited. The whole point of the debate was ‘Is going on a juice-only diet healthy?’ It wasn’t even going to be a debate. It was going to be without much of love and sensitivity. All you do is drink juice.

To be on a sugar-only diet and all sorts of essential nutrients. But what is juice? Juice are whole foods with all the fiber removed. We want the whole food. If there is one food that everyone is agreeing with, or in, on, or through is that food in its natural whole state whenever possible is your best bet. Hopefully, that is helpful.

I do see that I got a question here Live from Anne. It’s the first live question and I want to give it preferential treatment. Anne asks, ‘When you eat 25 grams of cottage cheese with 25 grams proteins and 7 grams of fat in the count, so how much? ‘

Anne, I’m sorry I might be misunderstanding your question but I think it has to do with SANE scoring. You’re probably eating whole fat cottage cheese because if it was skimmed or low fat cottage cheese, I don’t think it would have 10 grams of fat in it.

But yes, if you eat for example like a fatty piece of meat generally speaking if the food is going to be giving you about 150 calories from fat, that would count as a serving of whole food fats. Now if the food only contains 10 grams of fat, that’s nine times ten is ninety calories from fat.

Depending on your body size, if you are very small or if your optimal body size is very small and petite, then a 100 calories worth of fat may count as a serving of whole food fat.

But if you are of an average size or if your body structure would be of an average size, if you are at your ideal body composition than it’s usually more like 140 calories. If you’re eating a lot of cottage cheese maybe you’d wound up eventually and count a serving of whole food fats in addition to protein for that. If you are ninety calories from fat, it would not need to count as a serving of whole food fat.

Alright, so some other good question here. There was a question from last week that we didn’t get to and we promised that I would bring them forward to the next Call and this one was, ‘my family and I will not give up spaghetti and [inaudible 23:50] from only black beans. The family loved it and I found pastas made of chickpeas, adzuki beans, and mung beans respectively. And sprouts which is another name for twitter joes or those types of places. I have been trying them out as well. No grains in the ingredients. All have 14 to 25 grams of protein and 9 to 13 grams of fibers per serving of 50 grams. Since this has brought some peace to my family, I was wondering how you feel about these bean pastas as a substitute for wheat pastas.’

Great question. First of all, I love the way that question is phrased. How do you feel about bean pastas as a substitute for wheat pastas? The reason I love the phrasing of the question is not like, ‘Are bean pasta’s good or bad?’ because that depends on our goals, that depends on what we’re eating them in place of. We have to be very strategic in how we think and how we talk. For example, saying, ‘Are bean pasta’s SANE or inSANE,’ is a very different question than ‘Our bean pasta as a substitute for wheat pasta is a good idea.’ totally different questions. I can tell you with 100 percent confidence. You’ll often hear me on these Calls give you answers which are like, ‘Well, maybe.’ this, that, and the other thing, because the question could go in many different directions.

Bean pasta’s without a doubt a SANEr, alternative in place of wheat pastas. In this specific case, if you’re looking at a 50-gram serving and 13 grams of that are coming from fiber and 25 grams are coming from protein.

Then let’s say in the 25-gram case, the thing you’re eating there is 50 percent protein. Even on the 9-gram end of the spectrum for fiber, 25 plus 9 that’s well over. It’s about 60 percent of the net weight that you’re eating is coming from fiber and protein. Since that’s a dry pasta, there’s not going to be any water in it. That’s why it’s sort of dry pasta. I would imagine the rest of it is going to be trace amounts of fats and the rest would be carbs. Remember carbs aren’t bad, we just want to get our carbs from the SANEst sources possible, non-starchy vegetables being the SANEst source possible.

I don’t have personal experience with bean pastas, if 60 percent of the calories are coming from protein and from fiber then the remaining calories are coming from carbs. Those carbs are coming from an extremely SANE source.

So again carbs are not the enemy at all. We just want to make sure that carbs are coming from the SANEst source possible. From sources that are as high in water, fiber, and protein as possible. Dry pasta doesn’t have any water at all. But even that said 60 percent of it is coming from pure SANE sources. Those are a great substitute.

It is also a great question because while beans are in the middle of the SANE spectrum they’re not like, ‘Go out of your way to eat 12 servings of beans per day.’ When you do score beans using the app or the website, the way the actual algorithm works, is that your SANE score does not go down for the first one or two servings of beans. They are just thought of as neutral. They do have some benefit, but if you eat too much of them they do have some cost whereas things like sugar and starch are actually going to drop your SANE score things like non-starchy vegetables really increase it.

Bean pastas sound like they’ve even taken some of the sugar out, they’ve made beans and legumes even SANEr, which is totally possible if you look at things like vegetarians and vegans. Pea proteins or rice protein; you can take rice and you can extract the protein out and you can end up with – while regular rice is something like this is just a guestimation. The clean rice protein that is available in the SANE store has 60 plus protein. Pea is even higher. It’s got a concentrate that is 80 plus percent, whereas a pea in itself or a legume is going to be much lower. In a 30 percent range, I’m estimating.

It actually sounds that these bean pastas are almost like, this is regular beans over here and this is a pea protein powder, it almost sounds like these pastas are right in the middle. That’s pretty brilliant.

Whoever asked this question, thank you. Please let’s talk about this in the Support Group if we’re not already because those sound like they could be some awesome ways to increase our SANity. Sometimes when we talk about a bridge to getting SANEr, A SANEr option but it’s not quite SANE, this sounds like its actually SANE. No need to feel bad at all. Great question.

We’re going to keep this to 90 minutes or until I pass out. So there’s always that disclaimer. The next question here is, ‘I do not eat meat, tofu or dairy. After watching SANE videos I’ve started to include eggs, cheese, and seafood back into my meals. I have a good vegetable protein shakes. What is the best way to balance the requirements?’ again, very thankful for this question because if you eat seafood and eggs you’re good. If you don’t eat meat and are what’s called a ‘pescatarian’ which is you eat seafood and other animal products but you don’t eat meat you can not only be SANE but you can be optimally SANE. The optimal source of nutrient-dense protein is seafood if you’re willing to eat seafood or even eggs.

This is a good thing for us to cover in these Calls. We talked about ‘A calorie isn’t a calorie,’ and earlier we talked about ‘Fat isn’t fat.’ Omega-6 fats are different from the Omega-3 fats, which are totally different from Omega-9 fats which are different from saturated fats. Within saturated fats there are long chained saturated fats, medium chained saturated fats and short chained saturated fats. A calorie isn’t a calorie, a fat isn’t a fat, a protein isn’t a protein, and sugar isn’t sugar. There’s fructose. There’s galactose, there’s lactose. There’s maltose. There are all of ‘toses.’ I got mitoses.

Protein isn’t protein. Protein is evaluated in terms of what’s called biological value or BV. What that means is how much of the protein you ingest can your body actually use. That’s another reason why the things we read on the internet or on most websites do such a bad job for us in terms of what will have on our health. Because they have like things like peanuts are a good source of protein are, unfortunately.

If a food gets 70 percent of its calories from carbs or fats then it’s potentially a good source of carbs or fats not a source of protein. Let’s pick something like eggs, they are totally SANE. An egg gets about 64 percent of its calories from fat. It’s totally SANE, but if it gets 64 percent of its calorie from fat, it’s a whole food fat, not a nutrient dense protein. It gets more of its calorie from protein than it gets from, because if it gets more of its calories from fats then it’s a fat. If it gets more of its calories from carbs than anything else then it’s a carb. If it gets more of its calories from protein then it’s a protein.

Things like quinoa is a good source of protein that is actually saying is, ‘Relative to other grains, quinoa is higher in protein.’

The truth is quinoa has more protein in it than rice. That’s true. But now to say that quinoa is a good source of protein is false. The reason for that it’s going to provide 3 or 4 times more carbs than proteins. That in itself is not good for you even though it’s a good source of protein.

In addition to that, the protein that quinoa does provide has a low biological value, meaning that your body cannot make use of all of it, as you could imagine for a protein that comes from a plant. The reason your body needs protein is that it’s going to synthesize it into human tissue.

You could probably imagine intuitively that for example as I talk about spinach calorie for calorie is higher in protein than a fatty steak is. Now, of course, you’re never going to eat 600 calories of spinach. So there’s no way to get enough protein from spinach. The point is even if spinach does have a high percentage of protein, which it does relative to other vegetables, and even if quinoa does have more protein relative to other grains it’s still low on a biological scale and then in terms of availability it just cannot be synthesized by the body readily, whereas animal sources of protein or even some of the dairy is a source of animal protein, eggs, egg whites. These have an extremely high biological value. Specifically, egg whites are the standard. The biological scale is from zero to hundred and an egg white (or egg) is a complete standard.

Then there are things – that I don’t really know and this probably doesn’t make sense – like whey proteins that are above a hundred. This doesn’t really make sense, but I think when they developed the scale, whey protein wasn’t really a common thing. But when they measured it, it breaks the scale.

The point is if you’re eating seafood and you’re eating egg whites those are brilliant, delicious super nutrient-dense sources of protein. They have extremely high biological availability which means your body can make use of them and that’s extremely important.