EFR 415: Eat Smarter - Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your Life with Shawn Stevenson

With the myriad of challenges we’ve all faced this year due to COVID-19, there’s a greater need than ever before to return to the basics of health and wellness, particularly regarding what we eat on a day-to-day basis. Guest Shawn Stevenson and I discuss how food affects so many different areas of our lives. Beyond metabolism, food affects our relationships, our ability to communicate, how we perform in our professional environments, and other facets of life that we normally don’t even connect to food. In short, we have a conversation on the most fundamental must-knows that we can use to truly take our health back.

Listen in as Shawn shares how eating the right foods can totally transform your body and mind, why he considers sleep as the most important factor to one’s health (even above nutrition and exercise), common nutrition myths, why you need to pay more attention to your gut health if you want to burn more body fat, why it’s time to cease the “war on fat”, and what most people fail to see when it comes to maximizing your health and wellness amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Follow Shawn on Instagram @shawnmodel

Follow Chase on Instagram @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• [08:28] Why Shawn decided to write Eat Smarter

• [17:25] What it means to be “smart” about eating

• [26:25] Dispelling calorie-related myths and overlooked essential aspects in nutrition

• [46:57] The importance of microbiome diversity to fat loss

• [52:20] Best food sources of prebiotics for greater gut health

• [1:01:52] Food sources to fill in the other elements of a healthy gut

• [1:13:16] Why we shouldn’t be afraid of eating fat

• [1:23:50] The extent of the health crisis in today’s world

• [1:30:31] What the focus should really be on if we want to talk about

  prevention

• [1:38:55] How Shawn’s challenging background inspired him to write his new book

• [1:46:40] How Shawn lives a life

  ever forward

Powerful Quotes by Shawn

• I think food is going to be the primary inroads for a lot of people because it’s so multifaceted. It really does work on you and changes you inside-out. Food isn’t just food—it’s information.

• There is no perfect diet for one person. Our personal metabolism is like a fingerprint. Everybody’s different, so a diet that might be incredible for one person can totally fuck somebody else up.

• People want change, but they don’t want to change that much.

• The biggest mistake in our culture today is that we have linked up, psychologically, diet to weight loss.

• The greater microbiome diversity you have, the higher your metabolism and, by extension, fat burning capability.

• The best metric to measure your health is how you feel.

• We have to stop thinking of our food in terms of numbers.

• Today, we have a healthcare system that is not based on health. We are the sickest society in human history, by far.

• We are one species, and we could be helping each other so much if everybody didn’t think that they were so right.

• If you take very smart people and you teach them the wrong thing, they become world-class at doing the wrong thing. It’s just that simple.

• Every day, I have to grow. I have to get better.

More about Shawn:

Shawn Stevenson is the creator and host of The Model Health Show, which was featured as the number one health podcast in the United States with millions of listener downloads each year. He is a graduate of the The University of Missouri–St. Louis and studied business, biology, nutritional science. He then went on to found the Advanced Integrated Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide.

The Model Health Show explores all things health and fitness with new episodes released on a weekly basis featuring a wide variety of guests. More than nutrition and exercise, The Model Health Show covers topics that make up our wellness as a whole, including relationships, financial health, and mental and emotional fitness.

Shawn is also the author of the bestselling book Sleep Smarter (2016).

Ever Forward Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic

Maybe it’s not the kind of magic you typically think of when you hear “magic mushroom,” but we’d contend the magic inside these mushrooms is even better, because it’s the kind of magic that helps you ...

• Power through a busy day with steady energy ...

• Keep your brain sharp so you can think fast, and think clearly ...

• Fuel productivity and creativity ...

• And even support immune functions

Plus, Lion’s Mane provides steady, sustained, natural energy, so you get all the “perk” of coffee without the crash or the jitters!

• Get your brain going with Lion's Mane

• Support immune functions with Chaga

• Keep the caffeine under control

• Scientifically proven and 3rd party lab-tested

Save up to 39% and get FREE US shipping - CLICK HERE!

Interview transcript:

Shawn Stevenson

On this episode of Ever Forward Radio, we're going to be talking about how food affects so many different areas of your life that you've probably never heard of before, how it affects your relationships, how it affects your ability to communicate, how it affects your metabolism in dynamic and interesting ways. And I think you're going to walk away with a lot of empowerment. So definitely check it out. Enjoy I look is the daily grind keeping you down 2020 has not been easy on any of us. And here we are trying to just finish strong, right? We are wrapping up the year. As this episode is going live. You got emails to answer calls, to make projects piling up things, wrapping up at the end of the year, the more there is to do the harder it is. It seems to keep up and all that stress can leave you with a bad case of brain fatigue.

Chase Chewning

Well, I don't know about you, but no matter how bad the going gets, I I'm going to keep going. And that means sometimes reaching for a little help. And that means reaching for something that I can trust that is healthy. That is organic, something that is going to fuel my mind and my body. So if you're like me and you think your brain could use a refresh, there is absolutely nothing like lion's mane, mushroom, ground coffee. These aren't just any other mushroom that you may have heard of. That's been a very trendy thing in the wellness world this year. I think lion's mane is a actual, is a lesser known super food variety that helps support mental alertness, clarity and concentration that coupled with chaga, the one of the most immune boosting powerful supplements, I have found ever something that doesn't keep my body safe.

My health system, just running at its peak performance. A true homeostasis coupled with an incredible organic cup of coffee. Well, of course I'm talking about Four Sigmatic. You can get yours by heading to foursigmatic.com/everford   that's www.foursigmatic.com/everforward. And look as an exclusive offer here only for you, the ever Ford radio listener, you can get up to 39% off plus free shipping in the U S all you have to do is head to this exclusive link. You're not going to get this deal anywhere else. You can click it down in the show notes, head to foursigmatic.com/everforward to get your mushroom ground coffee with lion's mane, to help your day to help your mind to help you think just to be well from the ground up foursigmatic.com/everforward to save up to 39% off of their ground coffee.

SHOW INTRO

Welcome back everyone. This is your number one source for inspiring content from people who are putting a purpose to their passion and truly living a life ever forward conversations and messages that will take your fitness and nutrition and mindset to the next level. I am your host Chase Chewning. This. Is Ever Forward Radio.

Chase (03:05):

My friends. Hey, what is going on? Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Chase Chewning; Army veteran, Certified Health Coach, and health, wellness, & fitness professional. I'm just a human being that really truly honestly has become fascinated, utterly fascinated with the potential we have as humans. The potential we have over the dominion of our bodies and our minds, how we can think, how we can feel, how we can perform, how we can look our strength, our mental fortitude. So many things go into us, what it means to be alive and to thrive. And now more than ever, I personally feel like that is being challenged. We are being shunned away from, from guidance, from help, from even protocols, from the support that we should be getting. I think from our community leaders, our country's leaders, and I not to get on a political soapbox here, but just the way 2020 has been going for me personally, my viewpoint beyond all of the healthcare concerns of COVID-19 social distancing, masks - here's absolutely a time and a place for that. Absolutely. 

But there has been a huge shadow, I feel, placed over the vital importance of just what it means and what it takes. And there's like the simplest ways to just fortify your, your life, your health, your wellness, your immune system. And so much of that comes down to well. At the end of the day, it's our responsibility of what we're doing, what we're not doing, what we're eating and what we're not eating. And today I could not be more honored, more proud, more ecstatic, really to have this man sit down next to me on my couch and just pour his heart and his soul out for you. None other than my personal mentor, my friend, my podcast, homie, Sean Stevenson. You may recognize him from the world-renowned podcast, the top-ranked and with millions and millions of downloads, The Model Health Show. We are here to talk about his latest gift to all of us.

This labor of love. His book, Eat Smarter: Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain and transform your life. He is the bestselling author of Sleep Smarter, one of the most profound books I have read use personally, and use clinically even, you know, advised and pulled resources out and given to two patients of mine and my former health coaching practice clinic just, I will link all of his work down below in the show notes, Eat Smarter, Sleep Smarter, someone that just gets it from the human experience level, the anecdotal experience, but also just someone that has done so much of the hard lifting for us in terms of the most recent clinically backed studied information of what it means to truly, truly take our health back. We have so much power do not give your power away. Your power lies within you every single day to choose to sleep well, move well, eat well.

Chase (06:26):

And that is exactly what Shawn and I are here to do for you today. You all do not want to miss this book. It is coming out. You can order pre-order now as this has gone live, but it will be coming out in late December, 2020 for you to get you do not want to miss this. He is the author of sleep smarter, like I said, and creator of the Model Health Show featured as the number one health podcast in the United States with millions of listener downloads each year, he is a graduate of the university of Missouri, St. Louis. He studied business biology and nutritional science, and then went on to found the Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide. Look, if you've been listening to the show for any length of period, you know how much this man has, has done for us in the health and the wellness world, but, but certainly how, how I appreciate him as a human being as a podcast or, and, you know, like I said, as a mentor, and now as a friend, Shawn, this was my pleasure, my honor. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for this latest gift to all of us. Here is Shawn Stevenson and talking about how we can all eat smarter, using the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain, and truly, truly transform your life. Welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

Chase (07:48):

Shawn welcome, man!

Shawn 

Thank you for having me!

Chase

It’s a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. And I'm so stoked. I mean, cause this is something beyond everything else I know we're going to talk about, but this new project eat smarter. The follow-up, if you will, to Sleep Smarter. No doubt has been like a labor of love, but also from like someone who consumes the content, it's just, when's the next piece coming out. What's coming out, dude. So grateful to have this finally. So grateful. Tell us about it. Why, why Eat Smarter? We went from Sleep Smarter to, to whatever you wanted really, but why Eat Smarter?

Shawn (08:23):

Well, Sleep Smarter really came out of a necessity. I'm a nutritionist. That's what I've been studying. That's what I've been in this space, you know, 19 years now. And so food was my, that was my inroads. For many people, there are many different paths to the goal and for me it was food. And I think food is going to be the primary inroads for a lot of people because it's so multifaceted. It really does work on you and change from the inside out. And I'm a big believer in this analogy, that food isn't just food it's information. So when I was trying to change my health and to get my own body and wellness together, the right foods, once I started putting this stuff in my body, it started to not just change my physical appearance, but also my mind in the way that I thought they made it easier to think that the way that I wanted to.

And so now we have data to affirm that. And that's, what's in the book too, you know, but why this book, this, this was, this was the book that I wanted to write in the first place really, but sleep smarter was a necessity. And what's so crazy. And folks listen to, this are probably well at adept at this point with some of the basics about sleep wellness. Sure. But it, when, when Sleep Smarter came out, it created a movement because there were books on sleep wellness that came prior. And I actually know the guys who wrote it like Dr. Michael Breus, and when, yeah, but that was later, that was later. But he was like, America's sleep doctor. There's never been a sleep wellness book. That's like skyrocketed before and changed culture. And part of the reason that I did it, you know, so I was working in my clinical practice, seeing clients coming in every day.

And we, I mean, I had the food dialed in, you know, like one of the biggest revelations that hopefully people are getting today. And it definitely with the advent of eat smarter is that there is no perfect diet for one person that's going to be perfect for everybody. You know? So we are incredibly unique. Our metabolisms are like a very unique fingerprint. It's a metabolic fingerprint, everybody's different. And so a diet that might be just incredible for one person can totally somebody else, you know? And so, but then we get into this crazy thing in our mind where we start battling ourselves and thinking it's us, we're the problem. It's where the diet is great, but we're the problem. We just need to paleo harder or vegan harder. This worked for Joe. This worked for Susan. Why not me? And, and to see that play out, it creates vicious circles of poor self relation, you know, and, and that's one of the big problems underlying a lot of things too, because not only is this a, like world-class big idea book on nutrition, but it's also very important in layering self-development because really all of our choices really boiled down to how we see the world and see ourselves truly, you know, so I integrate that into the book and I think people are just going to have so many aha moments and, and, and smiles and a couple of laughs and just seeing how we talk to ourselves, you know, because there are, we do kind of fall into certain camps and the way that we see the world and I go through that.

But just the last thing to put the cherry on top of the WHY when Sleep Smarter came out, even though I was seeing success with the patients I was working with, we had like an 80% reversal rate for type two diabetes folks coming in on Metformin and even on insulin, , it was like, it was so we got it. It's just easy. It was easy. But the way that it happened was we were educating them on how their body actually worked doing. The one thing that you would think would be the first thing, you know? So I take them and I walk them through the process, like, okay, so here's what happens with your beta cells and your pancreas. Here's what happens with this, this particular hormone and to see their eyes light up. It's just like such a great feeling and a joy.

Chase

Let me introduce you to Mr. Glucagon.

Speaker (12:30):

Yes. So I take people through, in, in Eat Smarter, you know, I give it these wonderful analogies and just make it so people understand how their body works and it's, it just creates this empowerment. But there was always that other 20% would haunt me. You know, it's just like, what is the problem? And once I started asking people about their sleep and seeing the connection with sleep and, and body fat and all the different research involved in that, I couldn't believe nobody was talking about it because it was very like cookie cutter stuff. You know, you need to get eight hours of sleep. Nah, that's not it. You need to sleep better. And so,

Chase (13:03):

You know, quality you're saying over quantity. Absolutely.

Shawn (13:06):

Well, no quantity matters with calories, which we can talk about. Of course, you're going to talk about today, but you know, it's the, the quality aspect was definitely overlooked. So taking people through and helping them understand what is sleep, how do we know it's quality sleep and also very practical. Here's the big secret in why it was so successful. I know that people want change, but they don't want to change that much. You feel me? So that's like the bitter pill, probably someone just like felt that. Yeah. It's so just knowing that little bit of data, I would take people and give them these clinically proven strategies that they don't have to turn their entire lives upside down. I mean, it's, they get the results. So, and that just made the book incredibly successful. And it took me as a nutritionist and put me in a different stratosphere. So now when I talk about food, a lot of people are listening to it and this conversation needs to be had.

Chase (14:00):

Yeah. You became the guy, which is a whole other concept of, I'm almost even curious, like, do you regret it in some ways, because then you become like the pigeonholed sleep guy, but you're like, no, wait, I know a lot of other things too. There's a lot more going on to health and wellness and performance than just sleep. But I won't, I won't go there, but the book was monumental, Sleep Smarter. And honestly, it's a big reason why now for me, the last, I'll say probably two or three years sleep for me is King. It's paramount. My kind of personal hierarchy wellness has gone through a lot of rotations, but for sure now it's sleep. It's nutrition, hydration, physical activity. And then exercise really is like almost the last thing.

Shawn (14:45):

Yeah. This gets into the conversation of what I was taught in a traditional university. Right. You know, my very first day in my college nutrition class is like auditorium class. The teacher walks in silver way.

Chase (15:02):

Oh no!

Shawn

Pet peeve, but I didn't think in it, and it's looking back at it. I didn't believe that he could tell me what I needed to know, but it's because I thought that this nutrition class I was taking had to do with fitness, right. I thought that this would make me more fit. I don't understand there's a difference, a subtle but important difference between fitness and health. And we were also taught the very first day calories. We talked about calories,

Chase (15:30):

The magic C-word and all the curriculum, calories

Shawn (15:32):

Are King. There's some dirty C words and calorie is one of them, you know? And so we really dove in talking about calories, but in a very conventional cookie cutter way. And the goal, very simple. If you want it to lose weight, you have to expend more calories than you take in. So basically exercise more and eat less. He let us do more.

Chase (15:51):

Same thing I was fed for years

Speaker (15:54):

In this, the whole industry is built on that premise and the craziest thing and what people don't want to acknowledge, you know, quote health experts is that hundreds of millions of people have done that exact thing. And now we know, and I've got the data in each smarter that the number one is like teetering around number, number one and two way that you can foresee somebody is going to gain weight within the next two years is if they go on a calorie restricted diet, really, if they go on a calorie restricted diet, it is the best marker. We have a future weight gain OSHA. Okay. And the question is what's going on behind the scenes. And so we get into that and the analogy really. So if you want, we can talk a little bit about the history of the,

Chase (16:43):

I would. Yeah. I would love to yeah, let's go there. Kind of like in the back of my head question from the first was, I mean, I think we've already been talking about it a little bit is eating better, eating smarter. Yeah. And I was kind of curious, like, what was your mentality going into calling it, eat smarter instead of diets smarter, get rid of that D word entirely, man. [inaudible] Yeah. Which kind of feeds into like the background, the real meaning of calories. It's more than deficit and surplus. It's survival. It's livelihood as longevity is telomeres. I mean, it's all of the things that did that kind of play a role into eats, monitor over diets, modern the influence of the word calorie.

Shawn (17:25):

This is so important, man. This, what you just said is like, it's, it's, it's profound because it's really getting to the essence of why I did what I did in this book. It's because it's not about diet and food in and of itself in the process of eating. The biggest mistake in our culture today is that we have linked up psychologically diet to weight loss. Those two things are really synonymous when people think about dieting and nutrition is largely connected to weight. Whereas now, and I layered this so deeply into the book over and over again in every aspect, food and eating controls, every single area of our lives, everyone. And so we've got the latest data, which again, this is, there's been a lot of this. There's been access to it for many years, but nobody's ever put it together on how food affects your ability to connect with other human beings, how food literally affects your proclivity towards violence, how food affects your ability to have compassion and patience, how food affects your ability to just retain your memories.

For example, like of this conversation, you know, all of these things. So in the first section of the book, we focus on the metabolic side of mood, but finally, I'm taking people through and showing them exactly how their metabolism works. How does food control your metabolism? It's not this little cookie cutter, just get in a calorie deficit. You know, like what the, how does it work? Where does Pat go when you lose it? Where does it go? We take people through and show them the entire process, but in a way that makes sense. Have you ever shared that by the way, with people

Chase (19:16):

And process of fat losing fat losing weight, we breathe it out. Yeah. It's all, it all comes out like particles CO2.Like think about it. Like, yo, those few donuts last night! You’ve been breathing them out. Like that's where it goes.

Shawn (19:32):

So I've, I've been talking about this for a while and I'll include it here and there. But to put it into a book, a book, a book has a virility to it, you know, because nine out of 10 people don't know that. And we think that for us psychologically again, we think that we're losing fat when we're sweating… That’s a big, you know?! Kind of a psychological link-up that feeds into it.

Chase (19:54):

You were saying earlier, I got to do more. If I want to, if I want to burn more loose weight, I gotta do more burn more. Yeah.

Shawn (19:59):

Right. So exercise, that's the, that's the fat cells crying. It's having a good breakup cry. But in reality, you only are losing when you're actually losing fat or losing weight. That's only about somewhere around 10 to 15% is going to be from fluids. You know, and this includes urine. This includes sweat. The vast majority of it is going to be excluded from your body via your lungs. And about a third of that happens while you're sleeping. You know? So I mean, yeah, it's all connected. It's all connected, man. You know, so it's just the, the, the real underlying premise and why it's such a profound book and like the places it's going to be like, this is going to be in stores across the country that you would expect, you know, target stores and things like that to have a books book like that in those kinds of places, it speaks to the connectivity.

But also we're expanding the conversation because I'm taking you through and showing you, so you, now you have more legs under your belief of why food matters. It's not just because I'm trying to get fit because I've been trying this . It hasn't worked now. I know, Oh, this is affecting my relationship with my children. This is affecting my ability to have focused and predict productivity. And my ability to make income. This is affecting, you know, fill in the blank. Like we're really tying it together. So you see how much food matters. And the beautiful part is that certain foods push these, I call them metabolic switches, that help to make all that stuff work better.

Chase

Really? You know, what do you mean by that? Let's go deeper on the metabolic switch there for me.

FOUR SIGMATIC AD BREAK (21:35):

Yeah, Shawn is this guy the real deal or whatnot only does he have the experience, the professionalism, the credentials, but he has the passion. I don't know if you can hear it in his voice, but him and I, both, we are just honestly, a little fed up. And we're, we're very adamant now more than ever of how important it is to take your health back to trust, but verify to, to live a very well life, but a safe life, but also to stop living out of fear. Maybe if that's you, if you're, if you're fearful of the world around you, your external environment, your home environment. Well, here I am to tell you that you can stop you. You can become empowered in the more empowered. I believe we become the less fearful we are of what's out there of what is in our food is what is in our nutrition, our environment.

Because look, if we become educated through listening to shows like this to people like Shawn Stevenson and just implementing things in our own unique way and paying attention to what our body is telling us in response to that. Well, we're here for the long haul. We are adding value and quality to our life. And Shawn and I both know what it means to reach for a little help sometimes to just make a smarter decision and something, maybe we're already using like a great cup of coffee, right? So him and I both use and proudly work with this company, Four Sigmatic. They have been around for years now. They have been trendsetters. I thoroughly believe, I personally believe and just infusing these things. We're naturally doing. We're already doing in our day, like the smoothies and coffees and elixirs and, you know, nighttime hot cocoa is, but just making them better.

First of all, everything is 100% USDA certified organic. And when it comes to starting your day off on the right foot, starting your day off with just the, the energy, the mental clarity that, that boost that you feel after just a couple sips we'll of course, I'm talking about their ground coffee and fused with lion's mane, and they're actually hooking it up. You can get up to 39% off plus free us shipping by heading to the link that I have down in the show notes, just simply head to foursigmatic.com/everforward. And you are not going to be disappointed whether you're brewing this in a regular drip coffee machine, your French press, this stuff is going to power you through a busy day with steady energy. It is going to keep your brain sharp. So you can think fast and think clearly it helps immensely me personally. And I know it will you to, to fuel your productivity and creativity, and it is going to support your immune function. It is going to support a healthy brain. Thanks to chaga. Thanks to lion's mane. It is going to provide steady, sustained natural energy to get you all the perk. That's a coffee plan and the perk of coffee without the crash or the jitters low acidity.

So maybe if coffee kind of bothers your stomach you can be mindful of that, but it only has about 40 to 50 milligrams of caffeine, but you're not going to notice. All right, because your brain is going to be so dialed in, thanks to the lion's mane and your immune system is going to be so, so fortified. Thanks to the chaga. Plus, you're getting a cup of real organic coffee in there as well.

So look, if, if what Shawn is telling you, what I am telling you here today is striking a chord and you're ready to start making some better decisions and swapping out to have healthier habits and to eat smarter. So head to foursigmatic.com/everforward to save up to 39% and even include free shipping. This is an exclusive offer only available to you here on the podcast through this link. So if you can't get to it now, tap the link in the show notes and come back to us later, you're going to get the mushroom coffee.

This Four Sigmatic mushroom ground coffee with lion's mane to get your brain going, support your immune function. Keep that caffeine under controls and no crash, no jitters. And you can rest easy knowing it is safe. It is pure, and it is doing good for us all over the world. It is organic fair trade lab tested and even vegan. And look, if you don't like it, for whatever reason, you can get a 100% money back guarantee. All right. So how do you get this? How do you feel your body feel your mind fortify that immune system now more than ever had to www.foursigmatic.com/everforward  to save up to 39% off plus free shipping in the U S all right. Now, without further ado, let's jump back into, finish this powerful episode with the one and only Shawn Stevenson.

Shawn (26:22):

So the preface to that conversation piece and talking about Metis metabolic switches, we can't even talk about that until we first talk about the calorie paradigm. Okay. Because again, this is the misnomer and it's not that, first of all, it's not the calories don't matter. All right. There, there are a unit of measurement. So it's a unit to measure energy, just like a meter is a unit to measure distance. Right? Right. Yeah. Now the issue is it's very different from measuring distance because that's like in the kind of physical exterior or tangible experience. Yeah. Calories burning in your body, the common format that we have, which we'll talk about just a moment. It totally negates the very complexity of human digestion and energy unit utilization. It's multifaceted. And so I'll take you through, so number one, when the calorie was discovered, well, first, if you think about all the, like, we look at the ancient Greeks and you know, the ancient Romans and, you know, the ancient Egyptians, you don't see thick people pyramids, you know, but they weren't counting calories.

It wasn't a thing. This was invented in 18 hundreds and the funniest part. And I think, you know, a lot of people should know this. It wasn't when people, when the calorie was invented, it wasn't for nutrition. They weren't thinking about it in terms of food and nutrition. It was immediate application physics and engineering. Interesting. Okay. But then it parlayed itself into food. Thanks to Wilbur Atwater, which that water system is a way of counting calories today, which we could circle back to. But it was a couple of physicians, you know, goes back and forth. And I take people through the history in the book, but here's where it made the leap into food and nutrition. Wilbur Atwater started to use calories as a measurement for food. And the way that it's done well, it used to be done was through a bomb calorimeter or bomb calorimeter.

Okay. All right. So bomb calorimeter can measure the caloric energy and food. And what it does is you taking, you're taking the food, you put into a container. So which go into a furnace thing, right? Well, they actually exploded it. So you take the food, you put into a container, and then that goes into another container that's filled with water. And so then from there, they use electrical energy to incinerate the food and see how much they can warm the water. And that tells you how many calories were needed to warm the water. Right. So that gives you the calorie amount. The problem with that right off the bat is that your body doesn't digest everything that's in that food. So that is already, that creates a schism in the format. There's indigestible products, especially if you're eating real food. Right. So, okay. Now here's where it made the jump into common calorie. Lexi lexicon was in the early 19 hundreds as a physician named Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters. And she wrote a massive bestseller, 2 million copies… well, in a way in the early 1900’s not everybody got it!

And she basically, this began the indoctrination of our culture of starting to view food in terms of numbers. And so she, and she had, I gotta preface by saying this, she had constant battles with her own weight, and she essentially said that any woman could eat whatever she wanted, as long as if she was her height, as long as she maintain a strict diet of 1200 calories a day. Okay. And so she said that now we'll look at food in terms of, of numbers instead of food. So she said from the here, from here forward, we're now I'm going to say, instead of saying a slice of bread, you're going to say a hundred calories of bread. Okay. Instead of saying a slice of pie, you're going to say 350 calories of pie. And now this little, it seems like a subtle thing, but now food, isn't food and multi dimensional and dynamic anymore it's numbers.

And we're not looking at the impact it has on you body is that it's a variable in the life formula. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's so much bigger than just numbers. Now, she also, within these pages and I went in a read this old fangled writings, and it's just, it's such an adventure. Cause I couldn't, I couldn't believe some of the you would say she, this was when she began to usher into popular culture, connecting food with morality and really affirming that any kind of struggles with weight had more to do with character defect because it's all just comes down to numbers. Words, punishment are starting to be used. And the word sin is starting to be used. Oh, well this was also around the time of World War One. So the food was really hot and popping. And with that rationing, she was leveraging that she was putting her elbow into it and saying, Hey, when you feel those hunger pangs, because you're going to be hungry, you should have a double joy knowing that you were saving a child from having hunger pains or you're helping a soldier to eat.

You know, so now, and, and you know that you were having the hunger pangs of losing a pound. So it's also linking up that weight loss involves you being hungry. Oh, right. So all of these things are becoming a part of our culture and we were born into it. So we don't even realize it. So that's, that was really the advent of calories making the leap into nutrition. And it's just gotten worse from there. And by the way, the Atwater system is they don't use a, the bomb calorimeter to measure that that's a lot that takes a lot of time energy. These uses the Atwater system, which is like stuff. Again, we learned in school protein, four grams of calories, carbohydrates, four grams of calories table. No, I mean, what one gram of protein is four calories. One gram of carbohydrates is four calories. One gram of fat is nine calories. And one gram of alcohol, just throw that in there. We might talk about that is seven calories as well. And so basically you just do some math. You know, if you, if you got 25 grams of protein in here, you just do some math multiplied times bar, you know? And so again, that's what people are seeing on the calorie label there that they're obsessed with. Yeah. And not understanding that the real change in how calories impact our bodies. And this is the acronym that is in the book, but I actually put this in the book. This is what it goes down in the DM right down in the DM. So the first word, the, you know, so it's T H E D M all right.

Chase

The DM, I love your analogy!

Shawn

First aspect of how calories don't fit into this conventional model that has so many people suffering is the T is for the type of food. The type of food itself has a massive impact on whether or not your body is storing, absorbing, or even utilizing those calories in the first place.

Chase (33:17):

Exactly do you mean by type?

Shawn (33:19):

So there's a wonderful study and this was published in a food and nutrition research. All right, great. This is a really fascinating study. They wanted to find out if there was a difference in the rate of calorie burn for a meal of whole foods versus a meal of processed foods, they took study participants and they gave some of the folks what they deemed to be whole foods, which was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. All right. So this was the whole food camp and they gave the other group white process, bread and cheese product. Okay. Which is craft by the way, craft can legally say it's cheese!

Chase (33:55):

Come on?! All right.

Shawn (33:57):

And so they gave them these meals and then they measured their rate of energy expenditure, which is fascinating that there they're actually just seeing what happens in their body when they have these foods, after they compiled all the data, the folks who were eating the processed food sandwich had a 50% reduction in calorie burn after eating half, half. Just by the nature of the food, the type of food that they were eating half I wasn't expecting to have prevented their body from burning as many calories from their food that they just ate. Okay, please get this. This is some powerful . Right. And like we say this like, Oh, the quality matters. No, I got that data now. So now you're going to understand, everybody's gonna understand, everybody's gonna know this study. Right. So the type of food matters. So that's number one. So that's the, the T and the DM goes down in the DM. The H is if we're looking at, so the type, so first of all, we got type of food. And with the H this one is, it's a little bit complicated, but it's incredibly simple…

Chase

This feels like it’s got a story behind this relay this.

Shawn (35:10):

Yeah. There's like two stories. I'm just trying to pick which one, so how the food is prepared. Okay. This matters. Okay. So I'll just make this super short. I also discuss how the cooking of food, how the advent of fire really helped humans to evolve the very complex. We have the most complex brain on, on the planet. And then in the, you know, the known universe from, from what we know and a big part of that, this massive increase in the, in the sheer volume in capacity of the brain was tied directly to the ability to cook our foods. We were able to extract more nutrition from the food suddenly. And some folks might be like, what about raw foods? Raw foods is the truth. I'm not saying it's not, but we know this is just based on real data. Sure. This was a massively important thing.

Now, here's why this matters in the context of how calories affect us is that the bioavailability of those calories is going to be influenced by the, by how the food is prepared. So I'll just give you an example. Everybody is probably made spinach before sautéed spinach, right. Where I was going. I know that might go to example of spinach and heat. So you got spinach and the older, the spinach leaves, the more sturdy the cell wall. And plus, you've got some plans over that. One looks like a big finished leaf right there. I wish I could take the green thumb credit that's on my wife. Then maybe get a spinach plant. So you take that. And if you understand that the older, the more mature than plant the sturdy of the cell wall. So if you just eat that spinach leaf, it's difficult to extract any nutrients or R or calories from it is literally more fortified at the cellular level.

Chase (36:49):

So it's more, it it's locked away, higher maturity, right?

Shawn

Yeah. It's locked away in his cell. That's why baby spinach in the same volume, you can get more because of the cell wall isn't as sturdy. Or if you cook that spinach, suddenly the calories become more accessible to your digestion, right? If that makes sense. So, and when you cook it, the, the, the ability to chew it and digest, it becomes easier as well, which we'll come back to in a minute. But the sheer volume of spinach, if you take, you get this massive, like Sam's jumbo box of spinach and you cook it and it's just huge box. And then all of a sudden, it's like a teeny little baby, you know, when you cook it, let it go. And it's all that, all that caloric density is now, you know, so the sheer volume you can eat is more so it makes it easier.

But bottom line is when you cook your food, how has how the food is prepared, it's going to influence how many calories you get from it. Right? So with that said, I don't want to take that down too many different lanes, but you want to have a diversity of how are you foods are prepared. It doesn't mean to just don't cook your food or to just eat only raw food, because you won't get as many calories from it. You want to be in just aware that this matters, understanding this processes behind that can influence your decision making process for the foods that you eat, because these are the things that are not accounted for on nutrition labels. Yes. We're going to, I'm telling you, man, Eat Smarter is really ushering in a transformation of how we see food. So that's the T H the E is your efficiency of your digestion process.

Okay. Okay. I'm going to flip this a little bit. I'm going to, I haven't talked about this yet.

Chase

All right!

Shawn

So I'm going to flip it a little bit, but so next up is the E and the E is going to stand for energy exchange. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So energy exchange has to do with the process of taking calories from the food that you eat requires calories to process. All right. So making digestive juices your enzyme production in your mouth, that salivary amylase your, the chewing action, taking that, the swallowing, the churning of your stomach, secreting the bio, the nutrients moving throughout your gastrointestinal tract, getting pushed through your, your small intestine and the different vitamins and minerals and amino acids going different places, all that requires energy to happen. So this is not being accounted for either.

There's an energy exchange that takes place when you consume a food. Now, this, some, some of these pieces are a little bit better known, which protein, for example, requires more energy in that energy exchange to digest. So to digest your proteins right off the bat, you say you consume just to make the math easy, a hundred grams of protein. No, actually we'll say a hundred calories of protein. Okay. So a hundred calories of protein right off the bat about 20 to 30 of those calories are going to be used to digest it. So you're going to get a net gain of about 70 of those calories bodies commission, man, it's pretty steep. You got to think about this too, is because with proteins, it has to take the protein and unravel those, those bonds and just get those amino acids that the body is looking for.

So it can actually do something with them. So it's an energy exchange for carbohydrates, somewhere in the ballpark of five to 10% of the calories you consume are used to digest it. And for fats zero to 3%, somewhere in that ballpark, maybe upwards of five. So there's a big difference with protein and protein is the one is really left out of the conversation a lot now, and then all the debates about what's the most important which of course like we can get into a whole conversation on that. But bottom line is it costs calories to digest your calories. This is not accounted for in product, in product labels. I'm going to give everybody a good, like a really good example of some, a Tam tangible takeaway for today. There was a wonderful study that found that the study was basically saying the Atwater calorie system is flawed, or really.

And so what they did was have folks that eat some almonds, 170 calories of almonds, and they found that they actually only had a net reception or gain in their body of 129 of those calories. Interesting. Right? So your body is doing more energy and work to digest the KA the calories and get all these other potential benefits. You know, the vitamin E the phosphorus this there's calcium. They're always getting all these micronutrients that you need for other cool stuff. And it's far less calories that your body is absorbing than you think, versus if you're consuming a Twinkie, you know, or, you know, some ding-dongs, you can, a lot of those calories. Matter of fact, we strove from the processed food example, your body not only is going to consume those calories, but it's going to be much less likely to burn them off and let them go.

Chase

Interesting. All right.

Shawn

So that's T H E is where we're at energy exchange almost in the DMS baby, almost there. Now we're going to jump to the DM, which is the digestive process itself. Okay. Or digestive efficiency. So what this means is this really goes to everybody has this, this unique metabolic fingerprint. And so the way that you digest, if we both ate a hundred calories of almonds, your body's going to digest it differently than mine. And every other person of the billions of people on this planet. No two people are going to digest it the same.

Chase

Wow! You mean to tell me your body's different from my body, Shawn hahaha?!

Shawn

That’s what it is! A lot of cases be like Captain Obvious stuff. But, and even men and women, you know, men and women's bodies process just right off the bat, hormones are different calories different, but it's not the same body as you get through age, you know, your body changes zero to 12, 12 to 2030s. 40 is like, that's a whole other rabbit hole with hormones and everything. Just working against you. The commission gets deeper. Yeah. That's for sure as we age and what it really boils down to for folks to like, okay, so my audition is different. So your production of enzymes you, your enzymes are biochemical catalysts that basically enable your body to do everything that it does to turn that food stuff into youth stuff. So your, your expression or cascade of enzymes in that production, that's going to be an influence in that digestive efficiency, your stomach acid, which this is a huge, this is an epidemic today. Really with people actually being able to produce adequate digestive juices, to properly digest their food, to really break it down and to extract. So this is what I mean, like these so-called heartburn, right? This is man, it's an epidemic, man. Like so many people have no idea how bad this issue is. And I'm sure that feeds into another section of the book. We'll we can get there if we want, but the whole gut health microbiome, I mean, that's, that's the M.

Chase (43:50):

Oh . Let's just go, goes down to right here. So the microbiome,

Shawn (43:56):

Your microbiome is really, this is, this should be step one when we're talking about calories, because your gut bacteria viruses, fungi, you know there’s, there’s an incredible cascade of microbes that reside inside of our bodies that are determining what your body does. If anything, with the calories you eat, really, they decide burst. All right. And this is not part of the conversation. And so how does, how has this demonstrated, it’s a really cool study that this was published in a peer reviewed journal cell, very prestigious. What they recently found is that there are specific bacteria in mice that actually prevented their body from absorbing as many calories from their food. Interesting. Now you might be thinking, well, I’m not a mouse. Well, now we have human studies. And one of them is at the Y the Weizmann Institute. And they found that these, that there’s a certain prevalence of different types of bacteria that are more prevalent in folks who were obese. And when they took these, what they call these quote fat bacteria from obese test subjects and implanted them into mice who were lean, it caused these mice to become insulin resistant, gain weight, and body fat, versus when they took the bacteria from healthy human subjects and put it into the mice and they stayed lean, bruh.

Chase

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Shawn

So this bacteria talk, this is, this is real, and this is not being accounted for. And also the fact that we have massively disturbed and destroyed the human gut microbiome in the last few decades. Like, just, just to give you an example, like if you think about allergies, peanut allergies, for example, when I was a kid, there was no such thing. Now it’s like, you got to go through like a peanut metal detector. Like I know you got them nuts on you, you know, you can’t come in this school within a hundred foot radius, so you’re out!

And what it is, what, what the best data, we have shows that it’s because of the disruption to our microbiome. And it just causes this cascade of like immune immune responses, these hyper immune responses to our environment. Like we’re not supposed to be allergic to the world. You know what I mean? But yeah. You know, so, and I was one of them I had, man, I had absolutely terrible asthma and hay fever, dude. I can’t even, I can’t believe it was my life, but I had, like, I had a blue inhaler, a white pink inhaler… You know, like I had, it was my thing to get by and I haven’t had any of those. It’s so crazy to say this, but it’s been like 20 something, you know, about 20 years. Yeah. But it was just normal to me. I just thought that that was normal. Like I can’t breathe. I can’t, it’s just who I am. This is me.

But you know, once I, again, I didn’t know that I was fixing these underlying issues at the time by modulating eating real food. So one of the best studies that we, that I highlight in the book really points to the fact that the greater microbiome, microbiome, diversity, you have the much more likely or higher ratio of fat metabolism or fat burning, you have correlated well, like the bacteria, probiotic prebiotic, all those enzymes, all these things you’ve been talking about. That’s what you’re referring to. So specifically we’re talking about bacteria factors, a specific thing. Okay. And there’s certain bacteria like there’s these camps of like Firmicutes and bacterias, but in bifido bacteria, lactobacilli, excuse me. There’s so many different types of bacteria. 

But the greater, the diversity. And so one of the things I looked at was, okay, what’s happening in folks who have more of a kind of traditional like hunter-gatherer, gut microbiome. And it’s just like four times more diversity, 10 times more diversity than the Western gut that you’ll see in a, in a person who eats the Western diet and that lack of diversity. So basically what the summation is, as your diversity of gut bacteria goes down, your rate of weight gain, specifically fat gain goes up, they’re directly, directly connected. And as we can start to increase the diversity, the rate of body fat goes down. Amazing. So how do we do this? This is where, you know, I focused a lot of attention as well because there’s very practical, but we gotta make it fun. You gotta make it cool. And I wanted to just clear up so much of the confusion and all the infighting, like it’s the keto versus the vegan versus the, this is a unifier me versus you, us versus them. Yeah. We should not be doing that at all. I agree if anything, we should be us versus Ronald McDonald. You know what I mean? Hamburglar is getting everybody, you know, so…

We should unify for that, but you know, Ronald’s out here swimming in it. Like he didn’t give a about a pandemic and he’s welcomed open arms, kept making he’s an essential business for dinner. So, but what we do, what, what I’ve done here is like bringing together all the most poignant and, and really visceral points that are universal in every diet. So no matter what diet you subscribed to, we can make that framework work better. And most importantly, giving people permission to be flexible within that diet because the compounds of any diet, if you’re hurting yourself, because a lot of times, again, somebody might get great results, but then a year later it stops or the friend does that gets great results and they don’t. And so they blame themselves and they stop it. It all comes back.

But that should never, that should not be happening. I agree that that goes back to when your body, you, when you’re actually doing something abnormal and you’re setting your metabolism up to fail, they go back to that. You know, the, the focus on calories, you know, like when you stop existing on this credibly, low calorie diet, and you start eating again, you shouldn’t just balloon back up. You know, if you’re eating 500 more calories a day, it doesn’t work like that what’s happening is changes in your endocrine system. And the, the organs that are regulating the hormones related to fat loss. And I take people through that too. But with clearing up the, the miscommunication, everybody’s heard about probiotics at this point. Now the biggest problem with this, cause you could pop probiotics all day. You’re like, Oh, I just got to get that diversity.

That’s what people are here. Like I just got to increase my diversity of bacteria. And especially I have to see the data in the book. I’m just going to take probiotics or take some probiotic foods. No, get that boots. That’s not how it works. It does not work like that. How does it work? You, the only way that this diverse array of microbes is going to actually proliferate and stay and feel welcomed in your gut is if they have the food that they want to eat, there it is. Okay. It’s just like, anywhere you go, if you go to a party and you don’t have any other choice, you know, about like, I’m going to party, I know it’s going to eat there and they don’t got the you like, well, guess what? Del Taco’s open. Like they’re going to leave. You know what I mean?

So it has to have the appetizers and the food for the specific bacteria strains that you’re trying to proliferate in your gut. So some folks are doing elimination diets and removing complete categories that could launch it might help them feel better. Might help the here and the now. But yeah, that longterm, it’s doing a great disservice. Yes. So we have to be aware of these things and not put foods into these like evil categories. Like this is bad. This is not, especially when we’re talking about real whole foods that folks have been eating for thousands of years, the new process, food inventions. I’m not talking about that stuff. You know? So we have to keep that in mind, there might be a strain of gut bacteria that really thrives on a food that you’ve put on the no-no list. And once you add that food back in, but here’s the problem too.

We do have some data showing that, that you can, like, they’ll never come back while basically, you know, they, and it’s, that’s kind of scary, but for me, I’m always, I’m very optimistic. I’m just like, ah, we could stack conditions in our favor to make it, you know, so it’s not like that. So anyways, what are those foods? What are the appetizers that the probiotics went prebiotics, right? So prebiotics, most folks have heard of this, but now you’re really gonna understand why this matters. And it’s not as small as you think. So if we’re talking about prebiotics, a lot of those, so it might be like inulin, you know? So we might think about foods like garlic and onions and leeks and apples and pears. Asparagus is a great prebiotic source as well. But on top of that, there’s this growing understanding of this category of resistant starches and resistant starches.

This is so important. The data is just remarkable when I’m looking at the impact of resistant starches. So resistance starches, it just basically is what it, when we think of starches, it’s like carbohydrates, right? These are like indigestible. These are resistant to digesting, right? And this feeds your, your bacteria. And again, I’m not saying this is not for everybody though, but for a lot of folks, I’d say even the majority of folks having some resistance starches in their diet is essential just because the, our genetics for most folks have had a nice a nice level of resistant starches in their diet. So what does that look like? Well, this is going to be foods that might be a little bit unexpected. Okay. I’ll give a common source of resistant starch. So, Oh, super common is green bananas, right? When bananas are green, they’re very high in starch, but as they get more and more yellow, they become, you know, that gets converted, starts to shift over and trans mutate. It’s more sugar, right? So green banana, like throwing the half of a green banana into a smoothie, for example, great source of resistant starch. Probably not, probably not gonna wanna eat that thing. We’re all busy, but it doesn’t taste happen to those nutrients that bioavailability more by just making it more accessible.

Chase

Yeah, exactly!

Shawn

It doesn’t, it’s not, and this is the thing it’s like, for me, I’m a big fan of enjoying the process of getting well. So if you don’t want to do that , don’t do it. There’s banana. There’s actually a green banana flour. You could throw some of that into, you know, I don’t know a recipe, you know, something you’re already doing, you know what I mean? So you could do like some keto brownies or something, throw some of that flour in there. But anyways, so this that’s one domain. And also as the, as it starts to get more yellow, there’s still that tip of the banana though, the devil’s anus and nasty part, you know what I mean? The part that we do not speak of, we flipped that off, but so that’s agreement as, but here’s another one and this is super fascinating. Is white rice. All right. Now this was tough.

So it was a no, no, right. Everybody’s saying white rice. No, no. When I went to college, they were like, if it’s, if it’s white, it’s not right. If it’s brown, you gotta be down. Right. Basically that was like the tenant, everything white is bad. Yeah. And so here’s the thing, when this, when this knowledge came, I was on a man, I was eating whole, whole wheat spaghetti. I was eating brown rice. I just went full tilt with it. And, but I still wondered I would go to a restaurant and I would see the, the owners of the Chinese food restaurant. And they’re like eating white rice and vegetables. And I’m like, what did they not get the memo? A lot of Asian foods, Italian foods you know, even for me last several years has been a lot of my wife’s Persian. So a lot, you know, basmati rice, a lot of things like that. Yeah.

Wait a minute. Like, y’all are healthy as hell. Like for the most part. Yeah. That’s the thing too. You guys are way healthier than us. Huh? So there’s a, there’s a, we have to acknowledge those moments. Like, wait a minute, something’s not adding up. And for me, I’m just like, okay, do they not get the memo? And I just went on about my business and now it is my business, you know? And and I was like, okay, what’s the connection here? And there’s a great like sub I’ve got these little like short story, like little sub bar, little fun fact sections in each smart as well. And it’s this one’s called rice rice baby. And this one is looking at this, this conflict between white rice and brown rice. And so it’s absolutely true that Brown rice has the fiber. It has the far more micronutrients.

Right? However, it also is where there are anti-nutrients and there are nutrients that are containing Brown rice that can actually block the absorption of some of the other nutrients you’re trying to take in. And what they found out our ancestors thousands of years ago is that there are gut irritants in that germ, in that brand that surround Brown rice. And when we’re talking about whole grain bread in one context, so what they would do with bread for example, is there was a commonality deferment the bread Oh, wow. Help to reduce those gut irritants. So ancestors knew what was up, man. Right? So by staying on the lane with the rice, by getting rid of that part, you, of course, it’s just like you’re taking, you’re getting rid of the, the fiber and the and the micronutrients. However, you’re not bringing in something of can blatantly hurt you right.

As well. And so some folks are listening to like brown rice is fine for me. Just stay with me, stay with me now. Here’s, what’s so fascinating. The white rice, when it’s cooked and then cooled all the way down and then reheated the resistant starch content of that white rice skyrockets is one of the best resistance starts sources is when white rice is cooled and then reheated.

Chase

All right. So I’ve never heard this before.

Shawn

Yeah. Your specific strains of bacteria absolutely love that are really found to be supportive of healthy metabolism, love resistant starches. So that’s just a little hack. Now you still have the full reign to choose. It doesn’t mean to go balls to the walls, eating white rice, and you can eat that. You can even have both, but with brown rice, I would highly encourage you to soak the rice or, and, or use a pressure cooker and, or even sprout the rice.This helps to reduce the potential gut irritants because some folks, they go for the Brown rice and just wonder why I’m bloated all the time. Why am I bloated? Like, I know this is better for me, but we don’t question it because we know we’re doing the healthy thing.

Chase

Right. I’m doing something that I’m supposed to be doing for me, but I still feel like… meh.

Shawn

So yeah, exactly, exactly. But also one of the most important things that I strive to do is just keep bringing people back to their very best metric. We’ve got all these cool self quantification tools that we have today, but the very best metric is how you feel. How do you feel? How do you look? How do you feel how you perform and to keep directing people back to that over and over again, because we’re, unfortunately, we’re so disconnected from that. We’re not in our bodies. 

Chase

We’re so externally focused, focused on the diet that I’m supposed to be doing. What’s cool. What’s trendy. What, you know, what is the guy? And the girl left and right. And me doing, we’re focusing on what we think we’re supposed to be doing, but missing out on the greatest teacher right here. And as coaches right here, it’s our mind, it’s our body. That biofeedback tool quality is literally just, I remember going back into my clinical health practice and I would tell so many people all the time I look this ditch, My Fitness Pal, let’s ditch the calorie counting. How the hell do you feel after this meal versus that? Yeah. And I mean, that taps into the whole other world of mental health that taps into just unveiling things that were preventing you, or keeping you from a certain modality, a certain mindset, a certain diet for sure.

Shawn

Yeah. And it’s stressed out enough. Yeah. And even in that vein too, on top of that, our external focus is also social media television, all the fear and problems going on in the world. And so we lose a connection with that internal guidance system, which we all have, you know, but there’s, we can end up with a lot of like static on the line and miss out on that valuable feedback that’s happening all the time. You immediately know how food feels in your body. You can just tune in, you know? And so, but that’s just one of this category of resistant starches. There’s, there’s many different choices that folks could, could look into. But that’s just one category of prebiotics that we covered. There’s, there’s many others as well, but I just want folks to start to be aware of that resistance starts. You’re going to hear a lot more of that, about that coming up in recent years.

I mean, sorry, in upcoming years, and with that said, so we got prebiotics and then also yes, absolutely. Probiotic foods are important. We, we do want to bring in friendly flora and I’ve got, I mean, again, I went in, okay, so we know this prebiotic probiotic, food boot, does it have any data related to fat loss? Oh, and you’re going to be, so you’re going to be so blown away. You’re going to be so surprised. But one of them that, no, I’m not even gonna get it to, okay. I never going to get into it because there’s going to be some surprises on the opposite side as well. It’s just like something that is the hottest thing on the streets. Doesn’t really have that much data. However, a lot of anecdotal data, which we can not negate that as well. Some folks add something in and it’s clearing up their skin.

They have more energy, whatever we can not negate that just because we haven’t ran clinical trials doesn’t mean that it’s not effective. I’m saying so what, but what I really got into was here’s the things we have, we know for sure that you probably aren’t getting information about, you know, so that’s it man. So prebiotics, probiotics, and then they’re going to actually make vitamins and minerals in you for you scaffolds, right? Short chain, fatty acids. This is one another thing you’re going to continue to hear so much more about, this has a direct correlation to gut inflammation, to your metabolism and fat loss or the ability of your gut bacteria to make these short chain fatty acids in you for you. So these are, so you got pre Biotics pro and post Biotics. So they’ll make these postbiotics for you, you know? And so “biotics” means life by the way.

Chase

So pro means for life? Probiotics sounds like it sounds like a win-win to me!

Shawn

So yeah, it’s a beautiful, beautiful day man. And then one of the other things that we do is focus on, okay, what are the foods that are clinically proven to help in this entire process of fat loss? So, because like I mentioned, we take people through, you know, all the different enzymes and hormones involved, like how this Oregon produces this hormone that does this thing that gets the fat out. Right. And a couple of the surprising things, man which I guess, you know, it’s not really that surprising, but the ratio of omega-3 to Omega six fatty acids is a huge, huge player in this equation because one of the most recent studies affirmed what we kind of already knew. So through our evolution in Dr. Cate Shanahan, Shanahan’s really good friends.

She’s amazing. Early 1900’s, when they did biopsies of human body fat, they, and this is great because you can actually take a sample of what is the fat made of. And it was founded about two to 4% of our body fat as humans was made up of these polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs right. . Right, right. Get that out of here, puffer. So that two to 4% and that’s okay. That’s from naturally, it’s not the polyunsaturated fats are bad. There are naturally occurring foods, specifically nuts and seeds right today when biopsy taking a biopsy from humans of today, the average Western person, their body fat content is now 15 to upwards of 30% polyunsaturated, fatty acids. The ingredients that make the human of today is different. All right. The very stuff that makes us up and what the hell happened and is this okay?

It’s not okay because the vast majority, probably 99% of the PUFers that we’re taking in are from these highly processed seed oils. And so when I’m talking about our canola oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil sunflower sunflower oil, and this quote, vegetable oil, greatest, greatest marketing trick in history because you got vegetable in the name, even though it’s not, it literally is not a single vegetable. And it comes from and flip the ball around people take a look. Yeah, man. And what’s so crazy is what’s required to make that oil to get that oil from that plant is insane. The, the bleaching that amount arising just to be fit for human consumption and to not be disgusted by it is unbelievable. And there’s actually a study that I cited in the book from one of the most prestigious journals on the subject, matter of inhalation and toxicology found that even smelling these oils, when you cook them can damage your f’in DNA! At that level...I just edited myself!

Chase

I caught that, hahaha!

Shawn

Maybe even smelling it while cooking, it can damage your DNA. Sure. Right. That doesn’t even make sense. Right. But it does. It kind of does. So what the data shows is that traditionally be a three to one ratio of omega threes. I’m sorry. Make a six to omega threes. Now it’s upwards of 50 to 1% average is somewhere around 17 to 22 to one, which is astronomically different from what we evolve having. And so what one of the coolest studies found was that as you start to shift that ratio back into, into balance, we have you know, closer to that three to one ratio, or even like 10 to one ratio, we see a direct impact on reduction of body fat reduction of weight, regardless of the caloric intake. So taking folks and having them on the same caloric diet, simply shifting that ratio of fatty acids folks lose more weight.

So this gets beyond the calorie conversation. When you know these so-called weight loss experts, I was just like, what are you in a calorie deficit? You’re not in a calorie deficit staying at calorie deficit. That’s not the whole story and people are hurting because of it. You know? So it’s like we have to stop thinking about food in terms of numbers and also the quality and the ratios that our genes are expecting of us. You know? So what do we do with that with the mega threes? So most folks know fish is going to be probably the most common source fatty fish, the wild caught for sure. So now this is, this gets into why don’t people leave them there? What if I’m vegan? What if I’m vegetarian? What if I can’t even watch Aquaman, a sea horse like bothers me? You know, if you don’t dig fish, there are other options, you know, we take folks through, but please don’t be, don’t get the illusion that you can get the specific, but the data shows it’s DHA and EPA that you can get that from plants because it doesn’t work that way. You can, your body can convert it, but you lose about 90% of it in the conversion process of turning ALA into DHA and EPA, DHA and EPA are absolutely critical. The data that’s in the book on how it affects your cognitive performance will knock your socks off. Like you would not believe. Right?

Well, vision health, like I mean, so many things in anti-inflammatory markers, it’s unreal. That reminded me a lot of the stuff reading about that reminded me a lot of a lot of what max, Luke talks about which you guys have a lot of parallels in terms of really looking at kind of debunking a lot of things, but really just prefacing like, Hey, here’s food, here’s food, here’s a human body. Here’s what we know in terms of the science and the data. And here’s what we know in terms of the anecdotal, how I feel, how you feel, how you might feel, should feel I’m taking all of these things into the equation of life. And it’s not just here it is here. It’s here. All the things go down, one rabbit hole, learn, pull what you need, you know, paying your own corollaries kind of thing, but pay attention along the whole way.

Chase

Yeah, absolutely.

Shawn

So what can folks do with DHA EPA algae oils? So you do want to get these in, if you’re doing a vegan protocol, vegetarian protocol, if you’re doing a vegetarian protocol, including eggs, you can get, you know, the egg yolks will have a pretty rich source of DHA. For example, however, the best source is going to be, if you’re just trying to do food only is going to be fish. There’s going to be some in various different, you know, other types of meat as well in eggs, however, algaes. And this is another category of foods that have been used for thousands of years, but it can, it just depends on you. Like, does this make sense for me, if I’m going to eat like some, this great super green, we were looking at or we’re talking about getting in the chloral Ella world, spirulina, chlorella, AFA. But I, I add, I have all of these, but we dive into what’s the data actually show, not just thinking, you know, of course like spirulina is the highest protein food that we’ve ever discovered. The highest ratio of protein gram for gram, you know, it’s about 71% protein by weight, which is nuts by the way. But the thing is, it doesn’t weigh that much either.

So like given it’s like microscopic size, so you can, of course you can have that as a supplemental form of protein in your diet. However, because it doesn’t weigh very much. If you have the same amount of protein from your spirulina versus, you know, somebody who’s having a chicken breast, for example, you’re going to have to have technically the scientific term for the amount of spirulina you’re going to have to have is Butler. Right. You’re going to need a buttload Butler metric, but low, you know, so that’s what we’re talking like two cups and nobody’s going to do that. So don’t get it, don’t get it twisted, but also the quality of the proteins too. Right. You know, that’s something special about plant foods and spirulina. If we’re talking about that category, very digestible, you know, there’s like soft globular proteins. When we talk about something like hemp seeds, for example, very digestible, very similar to what’s found in egg whites. And I know I be talking about this for,  for a minute. Yeah. For 10 years. Yeah.

So that’s, that’s, that’s what we got on the food front, but we basically go through and, and knock out like, okay, so this food, this food, this food, and we actually, I put together, I hit the studio and put together a mini course of 10 of these specific foods that are clinically proven to have a massive impact on your fat loss related hormones. And I put that mini course together and we’re giving it away for free right now as a folks. Pre-order the book. So, and this isn’t one of those, like, here’s this PDF, like this is a real 10 video course. And it’s so beautiful. And just like so rich with information and fun. Like, I really feel that the process of learning this stuff should be enjoyable.

I mean, or else it’s not going to stick or people aren’t gonna want to come back to it. They’re going to have resentment. They’re going to have PTSD for all this stuff that they’re learning to try to make themselves better. You know, and that’s what we’re trying to cut off.

Chase

Couple of things, top of mind, can you sit with me for a little while longer?

Shawn

Of course!

Chase

Again, why I loved how you titled this book, what to eat instead of the diet, everyone needs the diet you should eat. You really kick things off with kind of describing, I won’t put words in your mouth, but like most of us are focused on fat loss and, or probably should be. And I’m not saying from, you know, like like that last five pounds or a hundred pounds, but just in general, I think it’s a fair statement.

A lot of us are focused on fat loss when it comes to our diet. And if we’re being honest, we probably could. But then you immediately went into not just making a statement and providing this information, but just breaking down what fat is. And I mean, for me, it was a great reminder and some new information in there. And it brought me back to years ago. We both actually had our own show. I found her through you Dr. Sylvia, Tara, The Secred Life of Fat. That book probably helped me the most. And I, I gave out copies to my patients at when I was a health coach. And I was like, this book blew my mind. So if you could highlight not only why at a high level is somewhat of a focus on fat loss for most people, a good thing. And then please like share with us why fat is not this big, scary monster that we all make it out to be most people.

Shawn

Yeah, man, it’s such a good question. And this is a big part of the issue. This is a big part of the reason we haven’t solved the problem is that there’s been this war on fat. Yeah. And not even understanding what it is. Fat is very good at what it does. It’s an organ. It’s an organ first. I mean, we could start there so fat. Isn’t just, we tend to think of it as just like… Yeah. I mean, we tend to think of it as like, there’s this, you, you got some fat tissue or fat cells. It’s an organ that is deeply interconnected. And it communicates and produces hormones, its own hormones and send signals throughout your entire body. Constantly feeding back information with your brain on the reserves that you have available. But here’s the thing, like I said, it’s very good at his job. If we didn’t have fat, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be here. We would have went extinct a long time ago. Yeah. It’s giving us, it’s given us this incredible evolutionary advantage to be able to store energy and use it for the things that we need to get done, to continue to consume energy and store energy. Now, the problem is that we don’t have a famine around here anymore. Not no we’ve got 24 seven access to basically any food you can see conceive of for most folks today, you know, with, you know, within some certain bounds and our genes are not wired up for this kind of exposure to food and your body fat is just use, it’s waiting.

It’s a job it’s waiting around for time when you’re not eating. So it can do its job. It’s a, it’s a container. It’s a storage place. Now when we’re targeting fat to try to get rid of it, when we have to number one, bring a level of great gratitude and respect because that body fat has been so helpful in us surviving, right honor, the fat respect, the founder of sensei fats.

Chase

And with that said, so here’s, what’s so interesting is that when we’re talking about fat loss, we also need to be more specific on what that means because there’s many different types of that as well. And that’s what you really highlight in this section.

Shawn

I really appreciated that, Oh man, it was, it was a pleasure. And it was an adventure, you know, like, and I was, these are the things I’ve been talking about for years now, I get to put into this form where so many people are going to be like, Oh my God, I had no idea.

So we can start with subcutaneous fat. So subcutaneous fat is a fat that’s basically just below your skin. And when folks are looking, talking about subcutaneous fat is the fat on your arms or your butt, your legs. You could have someone in your belly as well, but this is kind of stuff that you pinch. The other type of fat that we’re talking about around their midsection is visceral fat. And so your visceral fat is not the stuff that you can easily pinch. It tends to be more firm to the touch. This is known as more of like organ associated fat. It’s deep in the abdomen. And it tends to put a lot of pressure on your internal organs. So your pancreas is stressed or your liver is kind of like crowding and pushing stuff around. And like, you know, your kidneys, it’s just really creating a lot of pressure around your core.

And it’s very dangerous of all the different types of fat visceral fat is most associated with mortality, higher rates of mortality and basically death from everything. And you want more social distancing with, yeah. You want to increase the social [inaudible] of the visceral. Yes. And what’s so is that there are hormones that actually take visceral fat and can redistribute it to a subcutaneous fat. It can shift it around in your body and make it less dangerous. And we talk about that too, but here’s okay. So we’ve got subcutaneous fat, we’ve got visceral fat. So these are kind of our two targets, but we also have intramuscular fat. And so intramuscular fat. When I was in school, I was, I had this belief system because of the education that fat and muscle are dichotomous. Like there are two different things.

Like you have one or the other you’re gaining one or losing the other kind of thing. They’re actually very interconnected, especially intramuscular fat intramuscular fat is right there on site with the muscle to provide energy for your muscles to do the you need to do. So a lot of times when you’re like walking and whatever, you’re getting it’s from the intramuscular fat. If you want to know what it looks like. It’s, if you think about a marbling of a scale, like a ribeye or something. Yeah. So that’s very, but also that can get out of balance too. You can start to have these chubby muscles. If you have too much intramuscular fat, it could be dangerous. So those three categories are all lumped together under this umbrella of white adipose tissue. When we’re talking about losing fat, we’re talking about targeting white adipose tissue, all right, the storage fats.

On the other side, we also have fats that don’t store energy. They burn it. And this gets into the conversation of Brown adipose tissue, which a lot of people have heard of at this point now, but not in this context that we’ve dive into an eat smarter. So Brown adipose tissue, when we are babies, you know, with baby chase and there’s baby chase, you had a lot more Brown fat, you know, as far as the, the ratio on your body, because it basically it’s like this evolutionary advantage to help the baby to maintain its body temperature and prevent against the Bible. Yes, but as we get older, the Brown fat ratio goes down substantially. Most of us carry it around. Like our collarbones are upper shoulder blade area and our long our spine. And now here’s, what’s so cool. You can improve the production and activity of your brown adipose tissue through specific changes in your lifestyle.

Most notably folks know about the cold stuff, you know, exposing yourself to cold, but also there are things you could do with your diet that can increase and improve the function of your Brown adipose tissue. Now this is what’s really cool. Your brown adipose tissue. Again, this doesn’t store fat, it burns fat, right? It burns fat. And just to share this I’ll just, I just want to share it. I’ll share it, please, please. One of the most fascinating things that was found as far as nutrition is concerned to increase your, your body’s the, the activity of your Brown adipose tissue. So this, it just I’m hesitant because it comes with the whole story and I don’t want to make it a big thing. We can always leave them wanting more that’s for sure. One of the coolest studies found coffee consumption actually can improve your body’s ratio of brown adipose tissue.

Here’s how it, what the research has found. First of all, was that folks who are consuming coffee in the study, they could see that there was heightened activity. They could see the brown adipose tissue areas on the body start to light up demonstrating higher rates of thermogenesis. Now it comes in through a back door mechanism. Now it’s the other category of fat, which is beige fat. So you’ve got brown fat and you’ve got beige fat. So what they found was is that, and so beige fat is so unique. And this is so it’s just, I love is about the human body. So powerful, so amazing, but base fat cells can become either white fat or brown fat. It becomes what your body is using depending on what you know, how does it get there?

It becomes what your body needs. However, the needs can get skewed. Your body can think because of processed food consumption, stress that it should produce more white adipose tissue. We need to save up for a rainy day and you just keep making more of it. And versus adding more to the Brown adipose tissue, basically, there are things you can do to basically make the base shells, get a tan. You can come up Brown, right? And so one of those ways is coffee was found to be able to do this, to, to promote the Browning of your base fat cells and base fat cells are they’re genetically distinct and different from Brown fat, by the way, they have their own precursors. So it’s pretty fascinating. However, there’s a U shaped curve of with coffee. I was a catcher. You can bring me because you know, America is like, some is good. More is better. Give me the whole like Folgers, you know, saying, I’ll start like mainlining, let me get it. You know, like 30 ounce of Trent, that’s a secret thing of Starbucks. You’ve got like the 16, they got the, like the big goal of a Big Gulp stimulus. I think it’s a thing. Starbucks is handing out anxiety.

So what’s so cool about the human body and nutritionist interaction. And but each of these things come with a certain level of intelligence. Humans have been utilizing coffee for so many centuries, but there’s a way to go about it. And if you’re getting your fresh cup of coffee along with a nice piping, hot serving of pesticides and herbicides and rodenticides and fungicides and all those things are, and I, I made sure to this, isn’t just talk anymore. I’ve got the data are all proven to suppress your metabolism, right? Because they’re either estrogenic or neurogenic. So they’re made, they’re designed to disrupt the reproductive cycle of pests, small organisms, or their neurological cycle. Think about why these things were made for, or what they were made for in the beginning. And they don’t want that. I don’t have that in my coffin there to kill stuff bigger than your gut microbiome, your gut bugs.

So they’re getting smashed. They’re getting demolished even a fighting chance and we’re not thinking about, okay, why is our diversity changing so much? It’s because we’re assuming this and enough is enough. Now we know why. Now we understand why. And this is another reason why getting this book into popular culture is such a big deal because now you’ve got the data on the things that we just logically. We can just take a step meta perspective and see like, okay, this stuff is designed to kill pests. I’m mostly made of micro microbes, much smaller. Right? You think there’s a problem? Yeah. We know there’s a problem. So again, we got with, with all of those different types of body fat in the support, it still really revolves around the hormones. Cause like I said, it’s an organ. So we want to improve the communication within the fat communities.

And there’s certain for certain foods to do that. And some of them are in that in the course as well, that free course that folks get. And by the way, if I didn’t say it, it’s eat smarter, book.com is where you can get it. The bonus course, it’ll all be in the video link shown us for sure. For everybody. Thanks for, thanks for sharing that out. Yeah. It’s, it’s important, man, because right now we’re at a very critical time in human history where we have seen, I mean truly if, if you’re willing to look at it, we’ve seen the ramifications of a healthcare system that is not based on health. We are the sickest society in human history by far, and I’m really, I’m going to confess to you. Absolutely. I’m going to continue every opportunity. I get to highlight these numbers because it takes a while for it to click.

But here in the United States, we have over 200 million people who are overweight or obese. So when I’m talking about the science behind this whole process, millions of people every year get onto conventional calorie, restricted diets and they fail. Not because they’re not smart or because they’re not trying hard. The system is flawed and it’s incredibly one-sided. And so over 200 million people are overweight or obese over 125 million people have type two diabetes or pre-diabetes here in the United States alone. It’s unbelievable. And the ratio of children, we, it used to be adult onset diabetes. We had to change it. We had to change it. My entire family. Yeah. We had to take that out now. It’s just type two-ten, you know? And so, you know, again, I grew up in these conditions, so I didn’t know that food mattered. It was just stuff. I just felt like, again, if I just exercise, I eat whatever I want.

I’m good. But it’s such a bigger story. And on top of that, about 115 million people in the United States are regularly sleep deprived, chronically sleep deprived. How does it affect your body composition? That’s that’s in there as well. How does it affect your ability to communicate with other people? How does it affect your ability to, to just think and focus and be productive? You know, all of these things are stacking conditions against us. And one other little piece here we’ve got over 70 or somewhere around 70% of the United States population is prescription medications right now. And it's not normal. It's not okay. And many of these things we're treating symptoms. We're a pharmaceutical based society, really, because that is the main go-to by very smart and, and, and, and loving human beings who get into the field of medicine to help people. And some of the medications are because of other medications.

Chase

Oh yeah. Like one band-aid on top of another causes, another problem…

Shawn

And we're just, yeah, we're just plugging holes instead of figuring out where the hell is this water coming in, and this is our time we can change it because our greatest susceptibility to the virus that's on everybody's lips, you know, hopefully it's not on your lips, but the virus that's top of mind for everybody is and I, I stared this data very early on, back in April, you know, we had data coming out of of Italy and the folks, you know, their, their minister of health. Who's kind of like, you know, their Fauci-type tad character. And I, when I was like reading transcripts, and when we're talking about researchers, like I've read over, over a thousand peer review journals just in the past 12 months, this is what I do know.

And it's not, this is not like seductive, you know, Dan Brown, you know, DaVinci Code reading. It's not like all joyful, but I find this joy in him. And so I'm able to like, just look to see the data and I could see you have to come into it expecting to be wrong as well. And it's a muscle you have to build up. Yeah. That's working against bias either way, which again, we all have them in the science and the, you know, the anecdotal and everything for me that definitely came across, always comes across in your stuff, which if you want the end result to be a happier, healthier life of longevity to stack the conditions in your favor and every way that you always talk about, we have to have that mentality. We at least have to learn how to create that or else we're always going to be dogmatic and stuff.

Chase

And we're always going to be the us versus them kind of thing.

Shawn

Yeah. And it’s totally an illusion this whole us versus them paradigm. We are one species and we could be helping each other so much if everybody didn't think that they were so right. You know, the reason I really feel, and just being open about this, that I have this level of expertise. So that I'm really good at this is that man. I'm just I'm so I love to learn. I just love I'm obsessed. I want to find the, the very nature of science is like making science obsolete again, you know? And like that is not happening right now. All of a sudden, everybody thinks he's got it. They've got to figure it out. The top virologists in the world knows less than half of a percent about all the viruses that there are and what they could do. They don't know , just like, come on. And this is beautiful, but they know something they know more than, than a more than me pharma, but we have to understand the magnitude of what we, what we don't know. And I marvel at that is so amazing. We will never know. We will never know all there is to know about nutrition. We know bits and pieces, and now we have some really, but it's just gets us back to fundamental things that our ancestors have known for that.

Coming out of Italy is showing that about 88% of the folks with COVID 19 on their death certificate had additional causes of death and, or pre-existing chronic diseases. This is not to say that COVID-19 was not the cause of death. This is to say that there is this vulnerability that's implicit in. Why, what I want people to really get is that this is for 88% of the folks. And when I saw the data, I started to ring the alarm. I'm like, we're in trouble. United States. We're the sickest nation in history. We're in trouble. And then sure enough and most when I put the data out there, 99% of people was like, ah, yes, this makes sense. But then there's a 1%. It's like, well, it's just COVID is just, it's just COVID. We have an underlying susceptibility. And recently the CDC just last month published.

The data that I had, I was talking about is coming back in April - 94% of the people who died, 94% of them had preexisting chronic diseases and or additional causes of death, main three. And this was published in JAMA, by the way, as well, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, we can fix this. We can, that's say underlying weakness is an underlying vulnerability in our culture. That's not normal. We've accepted as normal, not once. Have you seen any of these on TV or, you know, these public health officials talking about let's get our citizens healthier? Yeah. It's all about suddenly it's about prevention of exposure, right? They don't know about prevention at all. And now all of a sudden, Oh, we can prevent this thing. And it's such an arrogant thing. I'm probably sounding a little arrogant, cocky.

Chase

I'm with you, man. It's a soap box. I mean, I can tell you recently I put up a video kind of realizing some things in my social media that were like working against me. And every time it was a flag of like, are we allowed to be talking about this stuff? I would want to educate, to talk about wellness prevention, these preexisting conditions. Why is nothing being routed to that content? Why, when I put out something about that it is not - “Hey, here's a resource on lowering your cholesterol. Hey, here's a resource to a free diabetic clinic in your area.” But no, I'm just being bombarded with someone else's agenda on what they think is going on. And I mean, that's a whole other rabbit hole in and of itself, but I have to show on these last like six, seven months, man, in, in everything you've been putting out. And now I know like in the background we are fighting like this uphill battle that absolutely has to keep going on, but it's just like, look at, look at what we're facing.

Shawn

Yeah, this is, but this is the beautiful part of what keeps me excited and happy and joyful about it. Because of course I get in these moments even just a moment ago, like I kind of get a little because it's so it's right there for us to see that the attention is not being put on the thing that matters most in our underlying it's as if we can't fix it. That's how the system is operating. As if you've got diabetes, it's just the end of the story. And now we know that this is completely reversible for the vast majority of people not talking about type one diabetes, but there are people with type one diabetes who are freaking killing it as well. They're thriving, they're fit, they're healthy. They're living a full life. That's possible. But what examples do you have? And I when I grew up, I didn't have these examples.

So my body started to break down when I was 20 years old when I was 15, actually I broke my hip at track practice just from running because my bones were so brittle. I was made out of the . I was eating that I thought was normal Glassman. Yeah. I was Mr. Glass. Then I turned into Bruce Willis, you know, but here's the beautiful part is that when stuff is so unstable like this, and there's so much nonsense, we can actually see it and bring it to the surface and we can change it when the system, prior to all this happening is very sturdy, very strong. Now people are questioning things finally, you know? And so it's so funny that the things I've been talking about for again, about 20 years, they start integrating themselves into wellness, cultures, and incorporations and things like that. Now they reach out to me like, I'll say Nestle reached out like really, like they reached out to ask me to like, you know, work with their team and their employees and all that stuff. And for me, when I see them as like, we need you to help change our optic stuff.

We've been just basically weaving it into the culture, just bits by bits. And here's the most shocking piece that I want people to really know. I would say this, but now we actually have some data on how long it takes from a, a really well done peer reviewed randomized controlled trial, proving the efficacy of say this specific food and nutrient to be used in place. And we'll just say something that's even more effective than a pharmaceutical drug in its clinical trial, proven to be effective. It takes from that stop, that trial being done on average, about 17 years for to make it into clinical practice. We don't have that kind of time. You know what I mean? But the beautiful part is we also, right now we have this instant connection where you don't have to wait, but you need to be tapped into the right thing, you know?

And so that's what this is about. That's what you do. You know, that's what I'm about is I live in breezes and right now is a really important time for transformation because there's no way that when I was saying earlier about having this kind of, you know, our health experts right now, you know, the, the, the folks who are running the different task force is this level of arrogance that you can outsmart a virus that is way smarter than you obviously like that's the problem. The thing that we do know that we have some education on is human health in sovereignty, what does it take to create a healthy, sovereign human being? If we're not doing those things, we shouldn't be talking about that other. Or even if we're talking about the other, please talk about the stuff that we know is, come on, come on… You know, even the playing field a little bit. Yeah. So I'm very passionate about it, man. And I feel that, you know, I'm here for this moment. Like we get, we all get to choose our meanings, you know, and I, I choose to believe that I was born right now at this time in human history for this moment of change, because I know that our children and grandchildren and generations to come are going to be looking back at what do we do now? What do we do in this inception point of 2020? And this, this virus that took over our reality, did we decide to become a healthy, happy sovereign human species? Or did we ignore all of the signs in our faces and, and continue to buy into the medical paradigm that has continued to fail, to fail us every single year, everything gets worse and worse and worse, and I don't have to make it up anymore.

Heart disease continues to go up. Cancer continues to go up. Alzheimer's continues to go up. Obesity continues to go up every chronic disease. They haven't cured . And as a matter of fact, heart disease is the number one cause of death. Number two cause of death is cancer. Number three cause of death is iota Genesis. Most people have no idea about this and you can go look up the study on Johns Hopkins. The third leading cause of death is hydrogenesis ultra means. Physician Genesis means created like, just pause right there. Physician created our form auditing our medical model. Medical error is the third leading cause of death in our country every year. Not just one year, every year. And people do not understand this. And it's, again, this is not to say that these aren't good people, but if you take very smart people and you teach them the wrong thing, they become world-class at doing the wrong thing. It's just that simple. If the only tool you have is like, okay, they have high blood pressure prescribed, you know, lisinopril and a satin. If that's what you do, that's what you're going to do, but we're changing it. We're changing. There's a big shift happening with integrative medicine, functional medicine, big shift to, to nutrition and health it's happening in bits and pieces. But this is the inception point of a big change potentially, but we need everybody listening to be a part of it.

Chase

Shawn I've got like doggy ears moments from what I picked up from what to eat so far that dude, I mean, I could like hold you captive for like six more hours, but I want to ask one more question before we begin to wrap up. And I've heard in your story, what we've been talking about a little bit today and just what I know of your story to begin with. Hell it's even what you literally put in your introduction - Where you come from! Like the background of not having the immediate access to information and stuff like this really resonated with me a lot too, growing up a country boy in the mountains with my grandparents, you know, those of like a dichotomy because it was, I didn't have access and didn't really sound like you had a whole lot of access to a lot of these great resources and foods and stuff like that. So it was a little bit of no food deserts or whatever you want to call it. But then also like we had, we almost didn't really need it. I mean, I ate so much of the foods that my grandparents grew in our garden and I just ran and played and sunshine and light just lived. So it was like, it didn't have access, but I was good.

And then when we got plugged back into society, that’s when kind of like, Oh, like the world is our oyster kind of thing, all these other variables. And that's when process foods and too much information, all that. I've heard this in your story. Like I said, you literally launched the book with it. And you're talking about earlier, this books can be everywhere. It's going to be in target. Did your background of lack of access to this kind of information, play a role in your mission? It kind of sounds like now to get this out into those areas, because I know damn well it is going to be at  Amazon, it is going to be all the places that we can learn. All the people have access to that can learn, but the people that are going to target, you know, the lower socioeconomic or food deserts, like was it that important to you? And is that intentional?

Shawn

Yes. Yeah. This is why I did it. This is, I might not ever say this again on the show, but that was the underlying reason for writing this book. I felt a man, you know, and it's because of we, before we started recording, man, it was getting like the vibe was JJ is getting emotional because the kids, man, you know, like there's so many children who were, who were the victims of all of what's happening right now, you know, because, and they can't choose for themselves. I was born into the conditions. So I'm speaking from this from a very firsthand perspective, you know, growing up on welfare and having the government cheese and having, you know, the, the food stamp Christmas and then having nothing, you know, and being able to find a way to just eat. My mother sold her blood so many times just to get us food, you know?

And if we talk about, you know, why don't you just work harder and pull yourself up by your bootstraps? She did, she was working overnight at a convenience store and she ended up, somebody tried to Rob her and they stabbed her eight times. She almost died. You know, like these are the conditions that I grew up in. And so it's not just as cut and dry as just like work hard. It's going to be all right or just buy better food. We have to work as a society. And first just realize and put the spotlight on the fact that there are some massive like food inequalities, you know, because all the conditions that I saw, you know, when I was in college, all of these, you know, I referenced when I was in college. Yeah. I lived in Ferguson, Missouri, you know, which has become very popular now. But I experienced a lot of the same issues that you might think about. And in my neighborhood, hopefully, are you kidding me? Like, I didn't even know that existed. I didn't know. That was a thing. You know, like I walk out my door, liquor store, Chinese food, three pizza places, these chicken McDonald's steak and shake. If you want to get fancy steak and shake dairy queen and McDonald's Arby's, which I never eat!

So that's what I'm saying. But in my hood though, as kids, you know, they don't want you to win. What's going on Krispy Kremes, Burger King. I'm just walking through walk, just taking a walk mentally. I can see you got that mental map. Yeah. Then we've got Jack in the crack right there. We've got Wendy's across the street from that. This is what I see every day, every day, there wasn't a gym in like, no gym, no farmer’s market… None of this, this wasn't in my reality. I didn't know those things existed. The first time somebody took me to, it was a a friend of mine, you know, this, she was a woman know I was in college. I was probably like, maybe, you know, 19, 20, no, sorry. I was, I was 21. I was 21. And she took me to wild oats. She was a chiropractor. Right. Cause she went, took me to wild oats. And I'm just like, what wild, who, what is first of all, how the wild do you know what I mean? And they're in there like juicy, you know, this guy, grass growing. I'm like, why is that grass in the stores? You know? And, but I wind and I started to, there were these books in there, you know, the nutrition prescription books, you know, and just like looking at all these different nutrients that did these different things.

And at the time I was dealing with this essentially massive degenerative condition with my spine arthritis of the spine. I mean just pain. I couldn't even walk and just, it was terrible. And I started to see, okay, wow, this thing does, this, this thing does that. I thought my bones were degenerating because of calcium or whatever. Cause this is what I saw on TV. I found it, Oh, I make a threes are important with your bone formation. You know? So I start to see that these things existed. I got exposure. And then I, it changed everything.

Chase

No one told you what to do or told you what to read, what to believe. But just the access, the access is the gateway to all of us being able to, to figure our own shit out.

Shawn

Yeah. Yeah. And that internal guidance system that the static on the line started to dissolve. And because of that exposure, I ended up changing the world. And how often can that happen? You know, for so many little kids, little boys and girls that just need access, just some exposure, just get good things into their body and watch their, their intelligence and consciousness flower. You know, just imagine what we can do if we get people on real things, you know, like we're building rockets and on like, you know, gas station food, you know, just imagine what we could create. You know, we've got all of these crazy problems. There's, they can not be a problem without a solution. It's two sides of the same coin, but we can not continue to think in the same way that we're thinking to fix them. And really right now the greatest mission is to get our communities healthier. And I'm very passionate about looking out for those who no one else is looking out for.

Chase

I love it, man. Well, you've definitely been doing it. You are doing it. And come December 29th, man. Everybody's going to eat and smarter. Even, even for me, like going back to, I call it going back to basics. Not just not basic by any means my man, but just like going back to fundamental things that like was the origin of my, my access, my entryway, my gateway drug to health and wellness. It's just a reminder. I don't need to be taking this for granted. I shouldn't be taking this for granted. Here's why, here's what this does. Here's an optimization tool. Like it's crucial for learning

Shawn

Every BODY, man. I got to say this man. Yeah. And I, because for me, my, my passion would, I would want to know for myself personally is what can take me to the next level. Right. So that's, it's in there for everybody. Yeah. But to take that kind of data, but also to make it apply for the everyday person who is just at ground zero. Absolutely. That's, that's the beauty. That was the fun and the art of putting it all together to make it all make sense, which can't be easy. I mean, the stories to, to, to take all the things that, you know, and to put it at the level that it needs to be clearly understood reduce confusion, but just to have the science, the anecdotal the slide.

Chase

Yeah. It's I mean, clearly, like I said, at the beginning and it just translated so well, so congratulations. And I'm so glad we're able to kind of dive into some of these key concepts of a eat smarter using the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain. It transform your life. That's that's, that's the root of it. All right here. Yes, sir. Well Sean, like the final question I ask everybody, and I dunno, I haven't really actually fully kind of like shared all my background with you. We've connected a lot over the years and always grateful direct, indirect the passion, really the, honestly, sometimes even the fear, even at the beginning of the fear of what is my life going to look like if I don't take control of my eating habits, if I don't learn genetics, if I don't learn what maybe the future has, the whole concept came from a position where I watched my hero pass away, my father died from a terminal illness.

And it was just like, look at what's possible. You think somebody is taking care of their bodies and their minds, but just even at that moment, it's not up to you. And so he had these two words, his mantra that he just instilled in us growing up ever for whatever, for whatever, for, and he lived literally to his dying breath and it was just something that I grabbed hold of and not only helped me get through that loss, but now it's like my whole purpose for what I do. So what does that mean to you, man? How do you live a life Ever Forward?

Shawn

You know, that's, it's, it's, there's so much wisdom in that statement and I think you could phrase it of course, different ways, you know, just based on, you know, your exposure. So for me, my goal every day, and my wife would tell you this before, before I would, you know, since you're asking the question every day, I have to grow, have to get better in some, in some area of my life. If I don't, I am, that's my, that's my only connection point to feeling like worthless in like this disconnected from my purpose. You know what I mean? And it's such a strong, using very strong words because that's kinda how I feel I have to get better.

And so for me ever forward would be every day, just striving to get 1% better, just do a little bit more, find something else out, find something new, but married with that I think is just that, that, that character trait that I think so many of us can use right now, which is just being like a lifetime student and being curious and being open and just continuing to strive to learn, because that's what we're really here for. You know, it's just to grow into it, to become more of ourselves. So that's what I would say to that, man.

Chase

I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I always tell everybody there's never a right or wrong answer. And I appreciate you kind of sharing your interpretation. So Shawn, my dude, again, my pleasure, like my honor to have you on here on the show and I'm, so again, grateful and proud of your new work here. We're going to have everything down in like the video notes and show notes for you guys. Definitely wanna check it out. And also, Ever Forward Radio would not be a thing, I'm 99% sure, if it was not for the Model Health Show. And and it was just a testament of like do the thing that you want to do! Do the thing that's going to help serve you and the most amount of people at the same time. If not for you and if not for them, like the model that you can set for other people that are just waiting for you to do that thing.

Shawn

I appreciate you so much and that's powerful. Thank you. I receive that, man. So grateful.