The SECRET To Burning BODY FAT Explained! | Shawn Stevenson & Lewis Howes

Shawn Stevenson 0:00 So it is that deep. This is how powerful food is. You know, it becomes everything about you. The things you see in the mirror, how you feel, it's all based on food.

Lewis Howes 0:10 I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness. Really? [laughs]

Speaker 0:13 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 0:13 Please welcome Lewis Howes. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I've got my dear friend Shawn Stevenson in the house. My man.

Shawn Stevenson 0:20 What's up, brother?

Lewis Howes 0:21 Good to see you, brother. Very excited about this. You've got a new book called Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your Life. And I wanna jump in and ask you a question about something I've been insecure about my entire life.

Shawn Stevenson 0:35 Mm.

Lewis Howes 0:36 Belly fat.

Shawn Stevenson 0:36 Mm.

Lewis Howes 0:37 Never had a six-pack, never. And no matter how hard I've trained as an athlete in the past, no matter how, no matter how hard I try to biohack, optimize sleep, which I did in your last book, to eating the right foods, to eating just chicken and broccoli all day, it seems like I've always got a little belly fat that I can never get rid of. I'm curious, is there a way you think I'll ever be able to burn belly fat for good through the things that I'm eating in a better way?

Shawn Stevenson 1:04 First of all, folks need to know that you are ridiculously masculine.

Lewis Howes 1:09 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:09 Do you know what I mean? Like, you've got a great frame.

Lewis Howes 1:11 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12 Uh, just an incredible athlete. You know, we've done a lot of stuff together, too.

Lewis Howes 1:15 We've worked out together in St. Louis.

Shawn Stevenson 1:16 Yeah, yeah. And, um, there is-

Lewis Howes 1:18 Played basketball together.

Shawn Stevenson 1:19 Right. Man, dude, [laughs] I've got a story about that-

Lewis Howes 1:22 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:22 ... I can tell everybody about afterwards driving home because we were just gonna shoot around a little bit, then we ended up playing three games.

Lewis Howes 1:29 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:30 And then lifting afterwards.

Lewis Howes 1:32 Yes.

Shawn Stevenson 1:32 And on the way home, I've never felt like that. I had to pull over and take a nap.

Lewis Howes 1:36 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 1:36 I've never felt like that before.

Lewis Howes 1:38 We played hard.

Shawn Stevenson 1:38 Because you and me were both like, "No, I'm not gonna let him win." [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:42 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:43 But yeah, there's a, there's a component, of course, with genetics. Now, with that said, we know that the leading science right now and what's really beginning to finally explode and become a popular part of the lexicon is epigenetics-

Lewis Howes 1:58 Yes

Shawn Stevenson 1:58 ... and things that are above genetic control. Now, with that said, I think the first thing is having a understanding and an association with what fat actually is, and most folks have no idea. Unfortunately, we... Like, we're at war with something we don't even understand. And so-

Lewis Howes 2:13 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 2:13 ... fat can be broken down into essentially five different categories at minimum, and a couple of these, folks might have heard before, but we're gonna go even deeper. So the first type is subcutaneous fat, and subcutaneous fat is a type of white adipose tissue. This is the fat that's just below your skin. And so if you're trying to... If you think about, like, fat on your arms or your thighs, your butt, you can also have some su- subcutaneous fat on your belly, but that's the stuff you can pinch. Now, the other-

Lewis Howes 2:43 I can pinch, I can pinch a lot right here. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 2:44 The other type of fat is visceral fat.

Lewis Howes 2:47 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 2:47 And that's also, it's also known as omentum fat, and omentum fat is the kinda deeper recesses-

Lewis Howes 2:53 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 2:53 ... of your abdominal cavity, right? So this is the fat that's really kind of around the organs, you know, kind of putting st- if you have a lot of visceral fat, putting stress on your pancreas and on your kidneys and just everything in your core.

Lewis Howes 3:07 This is the fat inside your s- your... Not on the outside of your muscles, but inside your body.

Shawn Stevenson 3:13 Yeah, so it's like your abdominal cavity.

Lewis Howes 3:15 Gotcha. Your visceral fat, and you want less of that.

Shawn Stevenson 3:17 Yeah, this is the most dangerous type of fat. This is the fat that's most correlated with heart disease, with-

Lewis Howes 3:22 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 3:22 ... Alzheimer's, with type 2 diabetes. You know, it's just putting stress on your core, all, everything, which there's so much around there. And this-

Lewis Howes 3:31 Digestive tract, your organs-

Shawn Stevenson 3:32 Yes

Lewis Howes 3:33 ... your liver-

Shawn Stevenson 3:33 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:33 ... your stomach, everything.

Shawn Stevenson 3:35 And this is the stuff, it's a little bit more firm to the touch. It's a little bit harder to get your hands around. And so these are both still two types of white adipose tissue. These are storage fats, okay? So your body's storing energy. And before I go on, let me preface by saying this. Our fat is actually amazing. It's one of the most important things that have made us the humans that we are today, is our ability to store energy and to go back and utilize that energy. Our fat is programmed to do what we've taught it to do.

Lewis Howes 4:06 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 4:06 It's just doing what it's programmed to do. It's very good at it, though, and it can be a little bit clingy.

Lewis Howes 4:11 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 4:11 You know? So you have to give the right messages, and that's part of the issue.

Lewis Howes 4:15 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 4:15 So I just wanna make that clear. And fat is also... It's not... We tend to think it's like scattered droplets of, of cells or unhappiness throughout our body, but it's really an organ itself. So it's a connec-

Lewis Howes 4:26 Fat is an organ

Shawn Stevenson 4:27 It's an organ.

Lewis Howes 4:27 Huh.

Shawn Stevenson 4:27 It's an organ that has this interconnected communication. And being that it's an organ, it produces its own hormones, all right? So it's like making, producing more hormones that encourage more fat storage if it gets out of hand. All right, so I wanted to preface by saying that.

Lewis Howes 4:44 Wait, is it an organ, or is it like an organ?

Shawn Stevenson 4:46 It's an organ.

Lewis Howes 4:48 Fat is an organ.

Shawn Stevenson 4:49 Yes.

Lewis Howes 4:49 In the, in the-

Shawn Stevenson 4:50 Yeah. Just like, for example-

Lewis Howes 4:52 One... So fat in our body is one organ, and it's all connected from the brain of my-

Shawn Stevenson 4:55 It's all connected, yeah

Lewis Howes 4:56 ... from the fat in my brain to my belly to my toe.

Shawn Stevenson 4:59 Now, there's different types of fat communities.

Lewis Howes 5:01 [laughs] Okay.

Shawn Stevenson 5:02 All right? So this is another conversation. This, I go through all of these. I literally call it the fat communities in Eat Smarter-

Lewis Howes 5:08 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 5:08 ... and break this stuff down. So there's another type of fat in the white adipose tissue camp that a lot of people don't know about. It's called intramuscular fat, all right? Intramuscular fat.

Lewis Howes 5:17 Is this the third type of fat?

Shawn Stevenson 5:18 Yeah. And so this type of fat really works on-site to provide energy to your muscles. Now, when I went to school, my conventional education, I really was indoctrinated with an idea that fat and muscle are kind of, they have this dichotomy like they're two different things, they're separate, but they actually work together. And intramuscular fat really provides... And, uh, just to think about what it looks like, if you think about the marbling of a steak-

Lewis Howes 5:45 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 5:45 ... all right?

Lewis Howes 5:46 Beautiful. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 5:47 [laughs] That's, that's, that's your intramuscular fat. Now, that can get out of hand, too, and you can get what we refer to as chubby muscles-

Lewis Howes 5:54 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 5:54 ... all right, with the i- intramuscular fat. So that's too much white adipose tissue storage on that particular fat community, all right? So these three are white adipose tissue. These are storage fats. Now, here's what's really amazing, and a lot of folks might know about this next one- We also have body fat that burns fat. So they're not storage fats. These are fats that contribute to the burning of energy. The first one that's becoming a lot more recognizable is brown adipose

Shawn Stevenson 6:24 tissue, all right? Or BAT, brown adipose tissue, or brown fat. Now, brown fat, the reason that it's brown is that it's so dense in mitochondria, all right? Mitochondria-

Lewis Howes 6:35 Which is mitochondria are good, right?

Shawn Stevenson 6:36 Yeah. Mitochondria are really the energy power plants of our cells.

Lewis Howes 6:39 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 6:39 Really producing the energy. When we talk about having energy, th- these are the power plants creating that energy, and mitochondria is where your fat actually gets burned. All right? So folks don't... We're, we're taught these, like, diet p- paradigms. Like, where the... How does it work? Where does the fat go? How does it get burned? Your mitochondria actually are the place where the triglycerides get shipped to, to actually burn them and use them as fat. So brown adipose tissue is brown because it's so dense in mitochondria.

Lewis Howes 7:09 Side note, how do, how do I go to bed weighing a certain amount, and then I wake up and I lose two pounds? Where does that go?

Shawn Stevenson 7:16 I don't know.

Lewis Howes 7:16 Is that just burned through sweat?

Shawn Stevenson 7:17 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 7:18 Is that just-

Shawn Stevenson 7:19 Yeah

Lewis Howes 7:19 ... mitochondria burning it, it's disintegrating into the air? What is happening?

Shawn Stevenson 7:22 This is such a great question. So in Eat Smart, this is the first time in book form we're like, we're walking people through how the process of fat loss actually happens.

Lewis Howes 7:29 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 7:30 And it's just, the, the question should be like, "Where the hell does fat go?"

Lewis Howes 7:34 Where'd it go?

Shawn Stevenson 7:34 Does it go to pooping?

Lewis Howes 7:35 Do you just poop it out? Do you sweat it out?

Shawn Stevenson 7:37 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 7:37 Does it-

Shawn Stevenson 7:37 You got that, uh-

Lewis Howes 7:38 Do I breathe it in? [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 7:39 You got that Thanos keychain.

Lewis Howes 7:40 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 7:41 Does it go to another dimension? You know what I mean?

Lewis Howes 7:43 [laughs] Right.

Shawn Stevenson 7:43 But what they did when... This was so fascinating. They actually tracked the path of fat getting burned throughout the body, and tracked how it actually is eliminated. And so what they discovered was that about 84% of the fat... Because, okay, we have to preface by saying this. For us psychologically, in our culture, we tend to think of burning fat, if there's a visual of it, it's sweating.

Lewis Howes 8:05 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 8:06 Like, we're out there, we're at the gym, we're sweating it out. That's like, that's your fat cells crying.

Lewis Howes 8:10 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 8:10 Having a good breakup cry, you know? That's how we, that's what we think.

Lewis Howes 8:14 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 8:14 But in actuality, about 84% of the fat that you lose or that you expel from your body is through breathing.

Lewis Howes 8:23 What?

Shawn Stevenson 8:23 Yeah, it's eliminated via your lungs. Yeah, it's carbon dioxide.

Lewis Howes 8:26 So it-

Shawn Stevenson 8:27 Yeah

Lewis Howes 8:27 ... no way.

Shawn Stevenson 8:28 Yeah, about 84%.

Lewis Howes 8:29 So fat burns in the body, and then it goes, what? Into your lungs? It's like transporting through the lung cavity, and then you breathe it out?

Shawn Stevenson 8:36 It's, it's an eliminatory organ, you know? We don't think about that.

Lewis Howes 8:39 What?

Shawn Stevenson 8:39 We tend to think about, like, our gastrointestinal tract, our bladder as eliminatory organs. Your lungs. And so you breathe about 84% of the fat that you lose, comes out via your bre- your breath.

Lewis Howes 8:49 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 8:49 And about a third of that happens while you're, while you're sleeping at night.

Lewis Howes 8:52 Sleep. So b- you breathe fat out.

Shawn Stevenson 8:55 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:55 That's how you burn it.

Shawn Stevenson 8:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:56 80... How much-

Shawn Stevenson 8:57 Cesar Millan is the dog whisperer.

Lewis Howes 8:59 Yes. You're just-

Shawn Stevenson 8:59 I'm the fat whisperer

Lewis Howes 9:00 ... whispering. [laughs] Exactly.

Shawn Stevenson 9:01 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 9:01 I burn it in my sleep.

Shawn Stevenson 9:03 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 9:03 Um, so wait a minute. How much fat do we burn through our, our lungs?

Shawn Stevenson 9:08 About 84% of it. So-

Lewis Howes 9:09 Of all the fat. So if I'm 100 pounds-

Shawn Stevenson 9:11 But this is not the, just [exhales rapidly] your breathing. It's all the metabolic processes that take place to create the metabolic, kinda offshoot, so your metabolic waste.

Lewis Howes 9:19 It just comes through the mouth.

Shawn Stevenson 9:20 Right, through the breathing. You also do s- eliminate some of body fat through fluids, so about, you know, somewhere around the ballpark of about 15%, 16 to 14% sweat-

Lewis Howes 9:30 And bathroom

Shawn Stevenson 9:30 ... urine.

Lewis Howes 9:31 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 9:31 Yeah. Tears. [laughs] Can be. All of these things are, are e- eliminating, uh-

Lewis Howes 9:37 Fat products

Shawn Stevenson 9:38 ... products.

Lewis Howes 9:38 Fat cells.

Shawn Stevenson 9:38 You know? Yeah.

Lewis Howes 9:39 Is, is the fat, it looks coagulated when you look at it in like a, in your body, right? So how does it break down-

Shawn Stevenson 9:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 9:48 ... and then turn into just nothing that you can see?

Shawn Stevenson 9:51 Yeah, it's, it's-

Lewis Howes 9:51 It looks like, you know

Shawn Stevenson 9:52 ... it's a very complex and beautiful process.

Lewis Howes 9:55 The body is fascinating, what it can do.

Shawn Stevenson 9:56 Yeah. It, it is. It is. And we go through e- we... And it can be so overwhelming, but what I did was I made it an analogy in the book of a theater, making your body like a cellular movie theater. And there are particular ushers who are there to put fat into the seats.

Lewis Howes 10:13 Hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 10:13 So we tend to think that fat cells, we're trying to quote, kill fat or burn fat. But that's not really how it works, actually. Your fat cells are storage containers, and what they're getting filled with, the fat cells, basically when you're, when you're born, you have a certain allotment of fat cells. All right? You can't just indiscriminately kill them. They get filled with more and more energy. It makes the fat cell expand.

Lewis Howes 10:36 Hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 10:36 So what we're trying to do is to get the fat cell to let go of its contents-

Lewis Howes 10:40 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 10:40 ... so it can be used as fuel.

Lewis Howes 10:41 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 10:42 All right? And so there are two enzymes that are really the head ushers that push fats, the, the fat contents or triglycerides into the fat cell, or they usher them out when it's time to leave. So one of this hormone sensitive lipase is the one that comes and gets folks out of the theater. All right? Lipoprotein lipase takes the triglycerides and ushers them into the theater. All right? And then there's organs that kinda dominate and regulate what those enzymes are doing. You know, namely your, your, your pancreas is like the mother of two brothers who have two different roles. One of them is insulin.

Lewis Howes 11:16 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 11:16 And the other one, its brother, is glucagon. All right? Insulin is so, man. S- when you think of insulin, what do you think of, though?

Lewis Howes 11:24 Eating sugar.

Shawn Stevenson 11:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:26 That's what I think of.

Shawn Stevenson 11:26 Right? Right.

Lewis Howes 11:26 'Cause insulin spikes in the body when you eat sugar, right?

Shawn Stevenson 11:29 Yeah. And most folks think of diabetes, too. It's like tied into that lexicon.

Lewis Howes 11:32 Right, of course.

Shawn Stevenson 11:33 Insulin is so important for our survival. It's just, it's a super amazing-

Lewis Howes 11:37 We need it.

Shawn Stevenson 11:38 Yes. You absolutely have to have insulin, and if you're born, you know, in a condition where you have type 1 diabetes and the beta cells in your pancreas aren't even making insulin, like, you can die. Your cells won't get energy. So now here's the thing. Insulin's job is to store energy.

Lewis Howes 11:56 Got it.

Shawn Stevenson 11:56 Right? Yeah, and to encourage all those enzymes and to do their work as well. So when it's out of hand, when insulin is too active, it can be a problem.

Lewis Howes 12:05 It's storing too much fat.

Shawn Stevenson 12:06 Yeah. And it can get to a point where there's so much activity with insulin, it's getting overrun and, and stressed out that it stops doing its job properly. That's where you get insulin resistance All right?

Lewis Howes 12:17 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 12:18 And then you have something called, um, uh, this kind of instant cell, fat cell creation that can take place with the liver. It'll just start making its own fat as well. So but we'll circle back to that a little bit later.

Lewis Howes 12:29 Yes.

Shawn Stevenson 12:29 But here's the thing. So you got insulin doing its job of fat storage or energy storage. Glucagon does the opposite. It encourages your cells to let go of their contents to be used as energy. But glucagon cannot do its job when, unless his brother sits his ass down somewhere and stops-

Lewis Howes 12:46 Insulin

Shawn Stevenson 12:47 Yes.

Lewis Howes 12:47 So how do you get insulin to stop doing its job?

Shawn Stevenson 12:50 That's what it's all about, man. That's what it's all about.

Lewis Howes 12:52 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 12:53 But we don't want it to stop, we just want it to be efficient.

Lewis Howes 12:55 Efficient

Shawn Stevenson 12:56 And it's... Now, here's another thing. We do know that, as you mentioned, sugar is a big driver of insulin.

Lewis Howes 13:02 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 13:03 Carbohydrates in general.

Lewis Howes 13:04 Yep

Shawn Stevenson 13:04 Breads-

Lewis Howes 13:05 Pastas, right?

Shawn Stevenson 13:06 Yeah. Protein, but protein does as well. It incites-

Lewis Howes 13:08 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 13:08 ... the activity of, of insulin, at a lesser degree for sure.

Lewis Howes 13:11 Oh.

Shawn Stevenson 13:11 And even fat, in a kind of backdoor way, does drive insulin function too, or even contributes to potentially insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance. So it's not just this one thing, but we do know that in our culture, you know, on average, folks are eating, like, 150 pounds of sugar a year. You know? So that abnormal amount of exposure is chronically creating this over- overactivity of insulin to the, to the point that we have insulin resistance. Right?

Lewis Howes 13:41 'Cause 100 years ago we weren't eating as much sugar, I'm assuming.

Shawn Stevenson 13:44 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:44 And processed foods.

Shawn Stevenson 13:45 Oh my, it's not even close. It's not even close.

Lewis Howes 13:47 But it's, but what it's worth, the, the life expectancy increases every year it seems like. And we're eating more and more bad things, but we're able to live longer, whereas before we weren't.

Shawn Stevenson 13:57 That's the, that's the misnomer, though. We're not necessarily living longer, we're dying longer.

Lewis Howes 14:02 We're getting sick-

Shawn Stevenson 14:03 Sicker

Lewis Howes 14:03 ... and being able to stay alive

Shawn Stevenson 14:04 And being able to just... Yes.

Lewis Howes 14:06 It's a-

Shawn Stevenson 14:06 Very different

Lewis Howes 14:07 ... I was just, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 14:07 And this is the first generation, we, we are the first generation right now that is going to not outlive our generations before us. Right? This is the first time we're seeing this downtick.

Lewis Howes 14:18 What do you mean?

Shawn Stevenson 14:18 When we're supposed to be seeing folks... Well, basically the life expectancy has gone down for the first time-

Lewis Howes 14:23 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 14:23 ... in, like, recent history. Yeah, yeah. And-

Lewis Howes 14:25 So we're saying we're not supposed to outlive our parents? Or what do you mean?

Shawn Stevenson 14:30 So we'll just say the life expectancy of the past generation was 80 years old.

Lewis Howes 14:36 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 14:36 Now it's 79.

Lewis Howes 14:38 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 14:38 You know, so it's just going, the life expectancy-

Lewis Howes 14:40 Interesting

Shawn Stevenson 14:40 ... is going down for the first time-

Lewis Howes 14:41 From the previous generation

Shawn Stevenson 14:42 ... in recent, recent history

Lewis Howes 14:43 Gotcha.

Shawn Stevenson 14:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 14:43 It's interesting, I was asking, uh, Dr. David Sinclair about this.

Shawn Stevenson 14:47 Yeah, I love him.

Lewis Howes 14:48 He was like, "The goal is not to live as long as you can and be sick and miserable." He's like, "I've seen that in too many people. The goal is to live as long as you can healthy, flexible-"

Shawn Stevenson 14:57 Yeah

Lewis Howes 14:58 ... abundant, you know, not with chronic pain, and then die quickly."

Shawn Stevenson 15:03 Right. It's a-

Lewis Howes 15:03 To, to get sick and then die within a week.

Shawn Stevenson 15:06 That's, that's not what we want.

Lewis Howes 15:06 Not get sick and die within 20 years of misery. He's like, "That's not a great life."

Shawn Stevenson 15:10 Yeah. We don't want to just want lifespan, we want healthspan. And it all really boils down, and this is the most beautiful part about this, and what I'm really hoping to impress upon culture, because when we tend to think of food, we tend to think of it in relationship, in our culture, we think of diet in relationship to weight. It's just, like, what's connected. When in reality, food is one of the greatest, if not the greatest determinant of what every single cell and organ system in your body is doing at all times. And this is what I really wanna get across is, of course I'm gonna give you the best information possible on the metabolism connection with food, but also how does food affect your cognitive performance? And it's shocking when you find this data out, how deeply food impacts your levels of empathy and your ability to connect with other people.

Lewis Howes 15:53 What are the-

Shawn Stevenson 15:53 We'll break that down as well

Lewis Howes 15:54 ... what are the foods that cultivate more empathy and compassion, and what are the foods-

Shawn Stevenson 15:58 Well, before, before we get to that-

Lewis Howes 16:00 Yes, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 16:00 ... the f- the fat storage, we, there was one more.

Lewis Howes 16:03 Were you talking about brown fat?

Shawn Stevenson 16:04 Yeah, brown fat.

Lewis Howes 16:05 And there was another fat.

Shawn Stevenson 16:06 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 16:06 Some type of fat.

Shawn Stevenson 16:06 So there's one other fat.

Lewis Howes 16:07 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 16:07 And so brown adipose tissue is very dense in mitochondria, right? So these energy power plants. That's why it's brown.

Lewis Howes 16:14 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 16:14 Babies have a lot of brown fat, and it's kind of a evolutionary-

Lewis Howes 16:17 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 16:17 ... adaptation advantage to prevent, uh, hypothermia, you know?

Lewis Howes 16:21 Mm, to keep them warm

Shawn Stevenson 16:21 Just to basically keep thermogenesis going.

Lewis Howes 16:24 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 16:24 As you become an adult, you have a lot less brown adipose tissue. It's mostly located, like, around your collarbones, um, your, your shoulder blades, down your spine. And brown adipose tissue is remarkable in that it's really correlated if you have enough brown a- adipose tissue, which you can create more, and the mo- mobilization, the activity of it, is correlated with having a better body composition. So this type of fat is burning fat for you, if you know what you're doing.

Lewis Howes 16:52 Brown fat.

Shawn Stevenson 16:52 Yeah. All right, so that's a, we got three storage fats, and then we've got two other types of fat.

Lewis Howes 16:58 And that's body fat that burns fat.

Shawn Stevenson 17:00 Yes.

Lewis Howes 17:00 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 17:00 And so this other one, and this is one a lot of folks might know, m- might not know a lot about yet, is beige fat. Right?

Lewis Howes 17:07 This is the fifth type of fat?

Shawn Stevenson 17:08 Yeah. So this is beige fat.

Lewis Howes 17:09 Beige fat.

Shawn Stevenson 17:10 And so beige fat is really, really remarkable in that it can actually become brown fat or white fat. All right? Based on your lifestyle inputs and your nutrition can determine whether it's gonna be coming, turning into a fat-storing type of fat or a fat-burning type of fat. And the browning of this fat, one of the things, and I'll just throw this out there for folks since you asked about a specific, uh, food, when we go through so many different, but I'm, I'm gonna throw one out that might sound a little bit crazy, a little controversial, is coffee. Coffee's been found to encourage your beige fat cells to become brown fat cells. And in fact, one of the studies that I cited in Eat Smarter found, they actually used, uh-

Lewis Howes 17:56 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 17:56 ... fMRI, and they looked at what was happening in the body when somebody drank coffee, and they saw the brown fat areas of the body actually light up-

Lewis Howes 18:03 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 18:03 ... signaling increased thermogenesis. And one of the studies found that there's about a 3 to 11% increase in metabolic rate from having caffeine. Now, there's a U-shaped curve of benefits, right?

Lewis Howes 18:15 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 18:16 Some is good. Once we get to a certain place, we can mess ourselves up.

Lewis Howes 18:18 Then it's bad. Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 18:19 And also we get in the conversation of what is that coffee coming along with? Right? Is it just, is it coffee? Are you consuming coffee with-

Lewis Howes 18:26 Donuts and [laughs] crap.

Shawn Stevenson 18:28 [laughs] And like, you know, these car- coffee creamers with all these-

Lewis Howes 18:32 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 18:32 ... synthetic chemicals.

Lewis Howes 18:33 That is, that is not good

Shawn Stevenson 18:33 And even the coffee itself, are you getting a piping hot cup of coffee with pesticides and herbicides and rodenticides, and these toxicants that damage these hormones related to fat loss and fat storage, and create kind of dysbiosis in the gut?

Lewis Howes 18:48 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 18:48 So there's a big conversation there, and we dive into all these pieces to see, like, there's so many wonderful things that we have access to, but in our culture we've been a little bit led astray.

Lewis Howes 18:58 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 18:59 And it's not that coffee's inherently good or bad, it's been utilized for, by humans for centuries, but it's the quality and how you're going about it that can make all the difference in the world.

Lewis Howes 19:08 And the quantity probably, and yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 19:10 Yeah. And so just going back to your original question, when we're targeting that, you know, the belly fat specifically, and this is something that is not talked about enough, it's really about encouraging and optimizing the hormones related to fat storage and fat burning, right? And this gets into the conversation of calories, because we tend to be very calorie focused a- as far as with trying to lose weight or we're trying to lose belly fat. And it's not that calories don't matter, I wanna make that clear, I wanna preface b- with this. But when I was in my nutritional science class in college, the ver- like, the king, the monarch, the warden of-

Lewis Howes 19:50 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 19:50 ... diet is calories.

Lewis Howes 19:52 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 19:52 And I say warden intentionally because it's the little, it gets into this kind of prison mentality.

Lewis Howes 19:57 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 19:57 And diets are really revolving around this.

Lewis Howes 20:00 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 20:00 And I, I'm always asking this question, and I'm so grateful that I've kind of hardwired myself to do this: Where did it come from? Where the hell did this idea start? And so I went back and examined the entire history of calories, and it w- actually, [laughs] for me it's just like when we find, like, Egyptian pyramids, like, they didn't have any [censored] about calories.

Lewis Howes 20:21 [laughs] Right, right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 20:21 You know? It's, nobody was even thinking about it or looking for it, even when it was discovered. And it wasn't discovered and used for nutrition. It was discovered and utilized initially in physics and engineering. And it made-

Lewis Howes 20:34 Calorie

Shawn Stevenson 20:34 ... yeah. And this was in 1800s. And then it made its transition into nutrition thanks to a guy named Wilbur Atwater. But he's just kind of a little side note as well. And I basically, I go back and t- talk about all the people involved, but this is what changed America, this is what changed the world, really, was a physician. She's a pioneer for sure. Her name was Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, and she's the one who popularized the term calorie. And she sold, and this is back in the early 1900s, uh, she created a nutrition book, a diet book, and it sold two million copies back then, which is basically everybody and their mother-

Lewis Howes 21:08 Right, right, right

Shawn Stevenson 21:09 ... had this book. All right? Now-

Lewis Howes 21:09 What was it called?

Shawn Stevenson 21:11 This was Diet and Health and the, the Key to Calories. Something like that.

Lewis Howes 21:15 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 21:15 The Key to Calories. But I went back and read these old fangled writings, there's, like, a lot of pieces of it online, and this began the indoctrination of our culture in starting to look at food in terms of numbers. It's no longer this dynamic, multifaceted entity that affects all of our hormones and neurotransmitters and organ systems, now it's numbers. And she specifically said, "We will no longer call a slice of bread a slice of bread." You won't say a s- one slice of bread, you'll say 100 calories of bread. You'll no longer say a slice of pie, you say 350 calories of pie. And so-

Lewis Howes 21:50 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 21:50 ... we stopped looking at food as food. We started this evolution and started looking at it as numbers. And she asserted that a woman of her height could eat whatever she wanted as long as she maintained 1,200 calorie intake. And now let me also make this clear, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters battled with her weight for her lifetime. All right? And it's that term of, like, teach what you wanna learn kinda thing. Now, this is also crucial, and some people, this might tug at their heartstrings a little bit. This was also the beginning of this indoctrination associating food with character, associating food with morality.

Lewis Howes 22:25 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 22:25 And so she basically asserted that it's a character defect if you're not able to manage your weight, there's something wrong with you, and started to use terms like sin and punishment in relationship to food.

Lewis Howes 22:37 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 22:38 And this was also during the time of, like, World War I, so food rationing was a big thing happening.

Lewis Howes 22:43 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 22:43 And she said, one of her quotes I put in the book, and I'm paraphrasing that, "For every pang of hunger you feel, you should have a double joy knowing that you're saving the hunger pangs in a starving child," or-

Lewis Howes 22:55 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 22:55 ... you know, with soldiers and what- So she's basically saying this was also a massive change in our perception that hunger is related to weight loss. If you're hungry, you're doing it right. And this started to really change the psychology of dieting, right? And so calories began to become the king-

Lewis Howes 23:13 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 23:13 ... and the big focus. Now, I wanna say this, calories matter for sure. It's a m- it's a measurement of energy in food, just like a meter is a measure of energy in distance.

Lewis Howes 23:24 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 23:25 But that meter is consistent. If we measured this room consistently, it's gonna be the same meters.

Lewis Howes 23:29 It's the same distance

Shawn Stevenson 23:30 However, calories-

Lewis Howes 23:31 Are different

Shawn Stevenson 23:32 ... completely ignore, when you're talking about a measurement of energy, it ignores the complexity of human digestion-

Lewis Howes 23:38 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 23:38 ... and human hormones and neurotransmitters and cellular function. It's going to be different every day, the calories that you consume and what effects it has on your body.

Lewis Howes 23:47 'Cause our hormones are changing-

Shawn Stevenson 23:49 Yes

Lewis Howes 23:49 ... our bodies are changing, our timelines are changing. What we used to eat when we were 12-

Shawn Stevenson 23:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 23:54 ... may not affect us now when we're 40 or 50.

Shawn Stevenson 23:57 Exactly. Let alone you versus another person.

Lewis Howes 24:00 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 24:00 And this is where we get in these situations where a diet works for one person but it doesn't work for someone else, and it's, I'm sick of it, man.

Lewis Howes 24:06 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 24:06 Because people keep thinking there's something wrong with them, and they're not getting these very fundamental principles. And so, so folks can start to free themselves of this caloric prison, I can share, there's five really powerful metrics-

Lewis Howes 24:20 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 24:21 ... that are not examined. There's really five major things that control what calories do in your body. All right?

Lewis Howes 24:27 What's, what are those?

Shawn Stevenson 24:30 If we think about, I keep mentioning hormones, but just to give a good-

Lewis Howes 24:33 Yes

Shawn Stevenson 24:33 ... analogy of what hormones are. Hormones are really biochemical messengers that help your cells, the cellular community that you have, this amazing cellular community, to communicate with each other. It's like metabolic DMs, right? It's like text messages, emails.

Lewis Howes 24:46 How many hormones do we have?

Shawn Stevenson 24:48 There's about 50.

Lewis Howes 24:49 50 different hormones?

Shawn Stevenson 24:50 Yeah, about 50.

Lewis Howes 24:51 Are hormones... What is a hormone? Is it a, a, a cell? Is it an organ? Is it a connecting point?

Shawn Stevenson 24:58 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:59 What is it?

Shawn Stevenson 24:59 So horm- the, the building, the most important fundamental building blo- block of our hormones are proteins. All right? So the, I wanna f- I wanna really reiterate this, how important protein is, because it's needed to build your freaking hormones, all right?

Lewis Howes 25:14 Where are hormones stored?

Shawn Stevenson 25:16 All throughout your body. You know?

Lewis Howes 25:17 So there's-

Shawn Stevenson 25:18 Even like that fat organ that we talked about is making its own hormones.

Lewis Howes 25:21 Huh.

Shawn Stevenson 25:22 But there are hormones that are being produced and secreted by your pituitary gland. Your hypothalamus is like a master regulator of your hormonal system, your endocrine system. It's in your brain. And so one of the things we talk about in the book is this growing epidemic of neuroinflammation that is messing up people's hypothalamic function, that's screwing up what's happening downstream. Like, your thyroid is on that HPA axis.

Lewis Howes 25:47 Is the thyroid in here or something? Is that what-

Shawn Stevenson 25:49 In your throat

Lewis Howes 25:49 ... in your throat.

Shawn Stevenson 25:49 In your throat. And so that's largely considered, like, the metabolic regulator, like, your master gland associated with fat loss or fat storage, and it definitely plays a role. So these are all pieces in this, in this web. Now, what's actually determining what these calories are doing, and, and so I mentioned, I gave a little preface of what our hormones are. So when we're talking about calories, these five things, and I, I'll give an analogy. I'll give, like, an acronym, the DM, all right? We're gonna use that as our letters.

Lewis Howes 26:19 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 26:19 So it goes down in the DM. You know what I'm talking about, Lewis.

Lewis Howes 26:22 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 26:23 [laughs] So the first thing that's controlling what calories are doing, the, the T stands for the type of food itself determines what the calories are doing in your body, and this is highlighted in this crazy study. And this was published in Food and Nutrition Research. Listen to this. This is, this is freaking crazy. They went to find out what would happen with a meal of the same calories that's either a meal of whole foods or processed food. Same amount of calories.

Lewis Howes 26:49 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 26:49 Same-

Lewis Howes 26:49 So a, a bowl of cereal and some fruits and vegetables.

Shawn Stevenson 26:53 So what they did was they had sandwiches, and so one set of folks got the sandwich that was considered whole food sandwich, which was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. The other folks received the processed food sandwich, which was white bread-

Lewis Howes 27:06 American

Shawn Stevenson 27:06 ... and a cheese product, right?

Lewis Howes 27:08 [laughs] Oh, no.

Shawn Stevenson 27:08 And that's ch- that's Kraft.

Lewis Howes 27:10 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 27:10 Kraft slices.

Lewis Howes 27:10 That American cheese tastes so good, but it's-

Shawn Stevenson 27:12 It's not legally, they can't call it cheese. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 27:13 Ugh. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 27:15 And so here's what happened after, and I love this study because they tracked the pathway of calorie burn, their metabolic rate, and what happened when they ate these two respective sandwiches. After they compiled the data, the folks, even though the calories were the same, the folks who consumed the processed food sandwich had a 50% reduction in calorie burn after eating that damn sandwich.

Lewis Howes 27:36 What?

Shawn Stevenson 27:37 50% reduction.

Lewis Howes 27:38 Why is that?

Shawn Stevenson 27:39 Because the body, it... So this gets into some of the other things we'll talk about, but that, the processed nature of those foods created some metabolic dysfunction and some confusion for your endocrine system-

Lewis Howes 27:51 Oh, man

Shawn Stevenson 27:52 ... and your nervous system, and all these, the, the cellular community, that, that communication. So now the body is less apt to let go of that energy. It's confused. It's trying to hang onto it.

Lewis Howes 28:01 Ugh.

Shawn Stevenson 28:01 All right? Now, what are most folks eating?

Lewis Howes 28:04 Processed foods.

Shawn Stevenson 28:04 Processed foods. All right? So it's literally changing their way, the, changing the way their body even associates with calories, and they're trying to count these damn points, and not understanding that the very nature of how their body's operating is skewed. So that's just the T. That's the type of food, all right? So the H is how the food is prepared. Has a massive impact on what the calories do in your body. So-

Lewis Howes 28:27 You mean whether it's cooked, whether it's raw, whether it's s- stir-fried. I don't know, like-

Shawn Stevenson 28:32 Yeah, all of that.

Lewis Howes 28:32 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 28:33 Ex- exactly, yes. So to give a good example, if you think about spinach, right? Uh, spinach, a lot of folks, of course, consider it's a healthy food. Popeye was, like, knocking it down in the can. I don't know if a... Have you ever had spinach out of a can?

Lewis Howes 28:46 No, man. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 28:47 Oh, [laughs] it must have been tough times.

Lewis Howes 28:49 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 28:50 But so spinach is a good, this is a good one because these green leafy vegetables, there's nutrition that's locked in the s- inside the cell wall.

Lewis Howes 28:58 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 28:58 And you have to basically crack open the cell wall to extract the calories and some of the nutrients. And as the, as the spinach gets older, that's why we have there's baby spinach.

Lewis Howes 29:07 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 29:08 And as the spinach gets more mature, the cell walls become harder to break into, all right? So just right off the bat, baby spinach versus the same quantity of mature spinach, you're gonna get more calories out of the baby spinach.

Lewis Howes 29:20 Is that better for you, or...?

Shawn Stevenson 29:22 It, this is not about better or worse right now.

Lewis Howes 29:24 Okay.

Shawn Stevenson 29:24 This is just, like, understanding there's some other stuff happening.

Lewis Howes 29:26 Interesting. Okay.

Shawn Stevenson 29:27 Now, but here's another thing. Cooking the spinach, too, breaks down the cell wall. So regardless if it's a baby spinach, cooked spinach, I mean a mature spinach

Lewis Howes 29:36 Mature

Shawn Stevenson 29:36 ... and when this happens, it also, the density of the spinach. Like, you've seen it. You can-

Lewis Howes 29:41 Shrinks. The whole bag goes like [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 29:43 Comes this little teeny baby teaspoon-

Lewis Howes 29:45 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 29:45 ... right? And so this is one of the things, and I really start the book talking about this, that most experts will agree that it was our ability to cook that really created, like, a quantum leap in the evolution of the human brain because we're now able to extract more nutrients and, and calories from our food, even though this, this term wasn't invented yet.

Lewis Howes 30:07 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 30:08 Not to say that it's good or bad, or that raw food isn't good. It's just understanding when you, how the food is prepared changes what calories do in your body.

Lewis Howes 30:16 Interesting. So if you're cooking spinach, it has less calories in it.

Shawn Stevenson 30:19 If you're cooking spinach, calories become more available.

Lewis Howes 30:23 So what does that mean?

Shawn Stevenson 30:23 All right?

Lewis Howes 30:24 When you consume it-

Shawn Stevenson 30:25 [laughs] Yeah, you can-

Lewis Howes 30:26 ... your body's consuming more calories?

Shawn Stevenson 30:27 Yeah, it's, it's able to extract more of the calories when it's cooked.

Lewis Howes 30:30 So if it's raw- It's got less calories

Shawn Stevenson 30:33 A-

Lewis Howes 30:33 A little bit less

Shawn Stevenson 30:34 ... a less that you can extract from it in general.

Lewis Howes 30:37 So, so this-

Shawn Stevenson 30:37 These are, these are just minutia

Lewis Howes 30:38 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 30:39 These are small things, but they matter. So this gets into the conversation of what food is. And so when, even when we talk about calories, the way that this was initially kind of brought to the forefront, they used something called a bomb calorimeter, all right? A bomb calorimeter. And what they do is they took the food, and they put it into a box, and they put that box into another box that's filled with water, and then they would burn the food with electrical energy to find out all of the available calories that were in this food that was used to heat the water up.

Lewis Howes 31:10 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 31:11 And so once they did this, they was like, "Okay, there's 200 calories in this particular food product." The problem is you might, you might be the bomb, Lewis, but you're not a bomb calorimeter, all right?

Lewis Howes 31:24 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 31:24 Your body is very different. There are indigestible components of that food, for example, whereas the bomb calorimeter is, is basically saying all the calories that are here when you don't absorb all the calories in the food that you eat.

Lewis Howes 31:37 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 31:37 Okay? So this creates this schism.

Lewis Howes 31:39 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 31:40 All right? So those indigestible components could be m- they're gonna be more in raw spinach. This ... You're not gonna digest as much.

Lewis Howes 31:49 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 31:49 I hope that makes sense.

Lewis Howes 31:50 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 31:50 So you're not gonna as digest as much, and you're not gonna pull as many calories in. However, there's bioavailable micronutrients that you're gonna get. It's not that raw spinach versus cooked spinach is good or bad, it's just there's different ways that it impacts your body.

Lewis Howes 32:03 Sure, sure.

Shawn Stevenson 32:03 All right? So that's how the food is prepared.

Lewis Howes 32:05 Yep.

Shawn Stevenson 32:05 So it's-

Lewis Howes 32:06 Types of food, how it's prepared

Shawn Stevenson 32:07 ... right. So the DM, it goes down in the DM. All right? The next one is the E, and the E stands for energy exchange. Now, this one here, this is something folks might have learned about a little bit in school. I know I did in my university class. However, I don't think we really get this. It costs energy, it costs calories to digest calories. Your body uses calories-

Lewis Howes 32:33 Calories

Shawn Stevenson 32:34 ... to digest calories.

Lewis Howes 32:34 To burn or digest the calories

Shawn Stevenson 32:36 ... to produce the, the-

Lewis Howes 32:39 To chew

Shawn Stevenson 32:40 ... the saliva, to, to chew-

Lewis Howes 32:42 To-

Shawn Stevenson 32:42 ... to swallow

Lewis Howes 32:42 ... through the intestinal wall-

Shawn Stevenson 32:44 Yeah

Lewis Howes 32:44 ... like everything, right?

Shawn Stevenson 32:45 To churn the stuff

Lewis Howes 32:46 ... it's a process of

Shawn Stevenson 32:46 ... to produce stomach acid, to move it, to take the food from your gastrointestinal tract through your, uh, small intestine and move it through, uh, into your bloodstream and move those cells, those, those nutrients to your, to your brain, to your eyeballs, to your toes.

Lewis Howes 32:59 How much does... How much do we burn from one meal? From eating, chewing, to eliminating, how long does that take typically? Is that a 12 or 24-hour window-

Shawn Stevenson 33:10 It depends, man

Lewis Howes 33:10 ... from one meal?

Shawn Stevenson 33:11 That's, that's such a very diverse-

Lewis Howes 33:13 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 33:13 ... question because it depends on the type of food. It depends on... Matter of fact, we'll get to that in a moment.

Lewis Howes 33:17 Okay, okay.

Shawn Stevenson 33:17 We'll get to that. [laughs] So-

Lewis Howes 33:19 Energy exchange

Shawn Stevenson 33:20 ... yeah, energy exchange. Now, this energy exchange, how m- how many calories or how much the caloric expense is in digesting food depends on the type of food, too. The macronutrients-

Lewis Howes 33:29 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 33:29 ... specifically is what people know about, but it's a little bit more diverse.

Lewis Howes 33:32 If it's processed food, it's gonna be harder to digest. It's gonna be more work or less work?

Shawn Stevenson 33:38 It depends on the type of food.

Lewis Howes 33:39 Got it.

Shawn Stevenson 33:40 But let's... We'll stick with the overarching because we could do the whole show just on that one topic.

Lewis Howes 33:45 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 33:45 But just on the macronutrient side-

Lewis Howes 33:47 Okay

Shawn Stevenson 33:48 ... proteins are well noted to be more calorically expensive to digest. It costs you about 20 to 30% of the protein that you eat is the calories in there are used to digest the protein.

Lewis Howes 34:01 Ooh.

Shawn Stevenson 34:01 So we'll just say if you consume 100 grams of protein, 20 to 30... I'm sorry, 100 calories of protein, 20 to 30 calories are used to digest that protein.

Lewis Howes 34:10 Wow. That's pretty good.

Shawn Stevenson 34:11 Right? So you get a net profit of calories of 70, all right? So-

Lewis Howes 34:16 So you can have more calories, and realize it's gonna be less, that you're actually-

Shawn Stevenson 34:21 Yeah

Lewis Howes 34:21 ... wasting

Shawn Stevenson 34:21 ... with protein

Lewis Howes 34:22 ... interesting

Shawn Stevenson 34:22 ... with protein.

Lewis Howes 34:22 Okay.

Shawn Stevenson 34:22 With carbohydrates, it's gonna cost you, it's about 10 to 15%-

Lewis Howes 34:26 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 34:26 ... of that energy that you take in, caloric energy, is used to digest it. For fats, it's about zero to somewhere b- in the ballpark of about 5% to digest it.

Lewis Howes 34:34 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 34:34 All right?

Lewis Howes 34:34 So more protein equals more burning-

Shawn Stevenson 34:37 It's thermic

Lewis Howes 34:38 ... of calories

Shawn Stevenson 34:38 ... it's called the thermic effect of food.

Lewis Howes 34:40 Huh.

Shawn Stevenson 34:40 All right? And protein is largely kept out of the conversation today. It's people are battling about carbs and fats.

Lewis Howes 34:46 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 34:47 These are the big diet frameworks, and protein is like Rodney Dangerfield. It's like, you know, "I get no respect."

Lewis Howes 34:52 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 34:53 You know what I mean? It's just like... So it was so fascinating because I think, too, in our culture, we believe that most Americans are just eating a ton of protein-

Lewis Howes 35:00 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 35:00 ... when the data actually shows something very different. There are populations that are eating, um, a, a, a very high amount of protein, but the quality of their protein, too, is a problem. And then there, but there's a large portion of our society that's not eating enough protein, and they don't, not even near what they need to be.

Lewis Howes 35:17 What are they just eating? The sugar and carbs?

Shawn Stevenson 35:19 Yeah, because we've-

Lewis Howes 35:20 Interesting

Shawn Stevenson 35:20 ... replaced so many things in food with more, with more sugar, you know? So the thermic effect of food, this is not taken into consideration.

Lewis Howes 35:29 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 35:29 This does not show up on your product label. And just to give people a, a food tip here, um, one of them is almonds. Almonds is a really great example, and there was actually a study that was done, and it was looking at basically it's ca- saying there's a discrepancy in the Atwater system of caloric. So what you see on the back of a product label-

Lewis Howes 35:48 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 35:49 ... pe- companies are not using a bomb calorimeter anymore to measure calories in their food. They're just doing some math.

Lewis Howes 35:54 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 35:54 All right? They're just like, "Okay, there's four, um, four calories per gram of protein," right? And they're just doing some math, all right? So that's the Atwater system. But what they found was that even though it might be 170 calories of almonds you're consuming, that's on the product label, in actuality you only get a net caloric intake of 129 of those calories. All right?

Lewis Howes 36:18 Say that one more time. On the label-

Shawn Stevenson 36:20 170 calories you're consuming-

Lewis Howes 36:21 On, o-

Shawn Stevenson 36:22 ... of almonds-

Lewis Howes 36:23 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 36:23 ... you're only netting, you're actually only getting 129.

Lewis Howes 36:26 'Cause you're burning-

Shawn Stevenson 36:27 Yeah

Lewis Howes 36:27 ... the other-

Shawn Stevenson 36:27 There's energy being used. There's a thermic effect-

Lewis Howes 36:29 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 36:29 ... of food, right? So almonds are a great-

Lewis Howes 36:32 Now, is that true for everyone? Is that based on your hormones and your metabolic rate?

Shawn Stevenson 36:36 That gets to the next one. All right? So-

Lewis Howes 36:38 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 36:38 ... the THE, so it's going down in the DM. All right?

Lewis Howes 36:42 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 36:42 The DM. So the D is digestive efficiency. All right? Digestive efficiency. And this- ... l- leans i- i- into the conversation of your unique metabolic fingerprint. All right? Every single human being is incredibly unique in what their metabolism and their digestion is doing. There's never been a digestion like you before in human history-

Lewis Howes 37:04 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 37:04 ... there will never be after, and you are not even the same today as you'll be tomorrow.

Lewis Howes 37:09 Exactly.

Shawn Stevenson 37:09 It is always fluid-

Lewis Howes 37:11 God, it's crazy

Shawn Stevenson 37:11 ... and changing. And the problem is we think that we're ... We put ourselves in this box. Even the, a diet. A diet might work for us for a year, and then all of a sudden we're doing the same things and it stops working, and we blame us. It's like, "No, I just need to paleo harder. I need to keto harder. I need to-

Lewis Howes 37:26 Right

Shawn Stevenson 37:26 ... vegan harder." The-

Lewis Howes 37:27 Count calories more.

Shawn Stevenson 37:28 Yeah. And these are great frameworks, but we don't want to-

Lewis Howes 37:32 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 37:32 ... we don't want them to imprison us because we change. Our bodies are continuously changing and evolving. Not to say that any of those aren't wonderful, and Eat Smart is really a unifier-

Lewis Howes 37:42 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 37:42 ... of what- whatever diet framework you want to, to go with, I support that. But there are principles that apply for success in all of them. So digestive efficiency means your ability to produce, uh, stomach acid is one factor of that. Uh, your, your enzyme production, like folks that produce lactase, the enzyme that can break down lactose, right? Milk sugar.

Lewis Howes 38:05 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 38:06 About 75% of the population don't produce adequate amounts, if any, of lactase enzyme. So they're not digesting-

Lewis Howes 38:12 To break it down. Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 38:13 ... right. And so they're not extracting as many calories from it. Not that this is a good thing, though, because [laughs] your bacteria in your body are gonna go crazy if you're not digesting it properly, thus, you know, the running off to the bathroom, you know?

Lewis Howes 38:27 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 38:27 Because you don't know if you have to fart or whatever.

Lewis Howes 38:29 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 38:29 You know what I mean? And you're not fun to be around if you're lactose intolerant. Like, you have a, you know, extreme case of that and you're, like, downing some, you know, some, some milk. You're on the gallon day diet.

Lewis Howes 38:39 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 38:39 Right? So these are all factors that influence your digestive efficiency. And also for you, for example, your gastrointestinal tract is probably longer than the average person, right?

Lewis Howes 38:50 'Cause I'm bigger and taller.

Shawn Stevenson 38:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:52 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 38:52 And there's more time-

Lewis Howes 38:53 Gosh

Shawn Stevenson 38:54 ... for it to kinda stay in your body. That, that superhighway is just longer because it has to try to fuel this bigger vessel.

Lewis Howes 39:00 How long is our intestinal tract?

Shawn Stevenson 39:03 It depends on the person.

Lewis Howes 39:05 How long is, do you think-

Shawn Stevenson 39:06 Several feet

Lewis Howes 39:06 ... several feet?

Shawn Stevenson 39:07 I'll just put it like that. Yeah. It's, it depends on the person.

Lewis Howes 39:10 That's so weird.

Shawn Stevenson 39:10 And it's, but it's also, we tend to think it's very uniform. We think these things are uniform across the board, right? Like, this 5'2" girl is supposed to [laughs] be doing the same protocol as a 6'4" Lewis Howes, right?

Lewis Howes 39:25 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 39:25 You should drink the same amount of water, eight glasses of eight ounces a day.

Lewis Howes 39:29 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 39:29 No. We have s- Everything is unique. We gotta get back to these principles. So digestive efficiency, that's the E.

Lewis Howes 39:37 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 39:37 The D-

Lewis Howes 39:38 The D

Shawn Stevenson 39:38 ... goes down in the DM. So I'm sorry.

Lewis Howes 39:40 That's the D.

Shawn Stevenson 39:40 Yeah, that's the D.

Lewis Howes 39:41 The M. The M.

Shawn Stevenson 39:41 That's the D. The M, all right, goes down to the DMs. This one right here, oh, this is really-

Lewis Howes 39:49 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 39:49 This one, man, this is like the final frontier when we're talking about nutrition and health and where we're at with science right now, and the M is your microbiome makeup. The makeup of your microbiome has a massive impact on your body's association with calories. This is part of the lexicon now. I know just about everybody listening has probably heard of the microbiome, right? This incredible ecology, this, this dynamic, uh, plethora of microbes that inhabit our bodies, that are in and on our bodies. Even right now, dude, you got, like, 400 trillion viruses.

Lewis Howes 40:26 Yeah, I know.

Shawn Stevenson 40:26 The virus is on people's mind.

Lewis Howes 40:28 Bugs.

Shawn Stevenson 40:28 Right.

Lewis Howes 40:29 All in the body.

Shawn Stevenson 40:29 All over.

Lewis Howes 40:30 Isn't that crazy?

Shawn Stevenson 40:31 400 trillion, and many of them are opportunistic, right? Th- but that means that when you're compromised, they can take control. But the thing is, while th- they around, they all play a role. It's not good or bad. It's about us being in a good state of health because viruses have actually helped us to evolve as humans.

Lewis Howes 40:47 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 40:48 As a matter of fact, when the human genome was decoded, they found that humans, the human gene itself is 8% virus.

Lewis Howes 40:55 Right. It's like alien, right? It's like a-

Shawn Stevenson 40:58 Dude, it's, it's crazy.

Lewis Howes 41:00 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 41:00 It's crazy, and we're at war with these things. We're at war with microbes. We wanna kill viruses. We wanna kill bacteria. Not to say that novel things or, uh, things that the body doesn't have an innate immunity towards, we, we shouldn't be careful about. But we also have an adaptive immune system that this is how we got here, and what the greatest science that we have right now shows that our immune sy- system itself was started by viruses that were defending itself against other viruses.

Lewis Howes 41:30 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 41:30 And that's how we became the kinda dynamic, adaptive immune system that we have today. And so this is the B cells, T cells, you know, these interferons, natural killer cells, all these things. So but going back to the microbiome and the association with calories, this, this, this is gonna freak you out.

Lewis Howes 41:45 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 41:45 Listen to this. So to start with, they, this was published in the journal Cell. They found that there's specific bacteria in mice that actually block their intestines from absorbing as many calories. All right? So the bacteria in their gut blocked the absorption of calories. Now, some folks are like, "Well, we're not mice." I get that. Now we have human studies, and now we know that folks that start to lean into being overweight and obese, there's a very distinct shift in the microbiome cascade, where we can literally just look at somebody's microbiome cascade, not even know what they look like, what their body composition is, and know that they're overweight based on their bacteria.

Lewis Howes 42:26 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 42:27 All right? And so what they did was they took these human, quote, "fat bacteria" and implanted them into lean mice. And what happened was the mice who were in, uh, who had the fat bacteria put into their bodies began to gain weight, they became insulin resistant, and be- and gained body fat-

Lewis Howes 42:46 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 42:46 ... rapidly, versus taking human samples from healthy test subject, lean test subjects, and putting them into mice, and they begin, they, they stayed lean. All right? Well, I'm getting excited

Lewis Howes 42:59 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 42:59 This is the one. This is, this, this study right here is the freakiest one to me. They took identical twins, all right? They took-

Lewis Howes 43:07 Humans?

Shawn Stevenson 43:07 Humans, yeah. They took identical twins and they looked at their microbiome cascade, and they found that the... And again, these are identical twins. Same caloric intake, all right? The, the twin who had a higher ratio of bacteria associated with obesity gained more weight, had a tendency towards gaining more weight and body fat, even though they're eating the same diet and they're identical freaking people. They're identical twins.

Lewis Howes 43:34 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 43:35 The calories became such a lower tier thing. They're eating the same amount, yet one's gaining fat and one isn't. So this conversation is so much bigger than just managing calories and telling-

Lewis Howes 43:46 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 43:46 ... your patients that they need to be in a caloric deficit. We're way past that right now. These things matter, they absolutely matter, but there's so much more to the picture, and so many people are suffering because they keep doing calorie restricting and t- trying all these different diets and not understanding we need to get your microbiome healthy.

Lewis Howes 44:03 How do we get the microbiome healthy?

Shawn Stevenson 44:04 Ah.

Lewis Howes 44:05 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 44:07 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 44:08 So that's the solution.

Shawn Stevenson 44:09 Yeah. This is-

Lewis Howes 44:10 Focus on the microbiome, not the calorie deficit.

Shawn Stevenson 44:12 Yeah. This is a big part of the book, too. You know, we focus on these things.

Lewis Howes 44:15 Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 44:16 Uh, we can get into that. So one of the, the, the most important things that the research is showing is that one of the most remarkable things in association with fat loss and weight loss is associated with having a higher diversity of, of microbes in your gut, specifically bacteria. The higher the diversity-

Lewis Howes 44:35 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 44:35 ... the lower your body weight and body fat percentage, the correlation. The problem is, here in the Western world, our diversity of our microbes is just... Like, we've got a lot of endangered species and a lot of things are extinct versus folks who are in more of a kind of an indigenous culture.

Lewis Howes 44:54 The plethora of fruits and vegetables-

Shawn Stevenson 44:57 Yeah

Lewis Howes 44:57 ... and uniqueness, right?

Shawn Stevenson 44:58 Yeah. It f- up- somewhere around four times as many different microbes, right? So take yours, multiply it times four, the different, um, the different species of microbes.

Lewis Howes 45:10 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 45:10 All right? So in the Western world, our s- our diversity is going down, and this is also associated with the, some of the problems we're seeing that we don't... We think it's just associated to... It's, it's, people are, they don't have willpower, end of story.

Lewis Howes 45:23 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 45:23 But here in the United States, and I want people to really get this, we have an epidemic, and nobody's talking about this and nobody's talking about this right now and associating it to the problems we're seeing. We have an epidemic of obesity.

Lewis Howes 45:36 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 45:37 Over 200 million people here in this country right now are overweight or obese, all right? These numbers-

Lewis Howes 45:42 What's the definition of obesity?

Shawn Stevenson 45:44 Obesity-

Lewis Howes 45:46 How much-

Shawn Stevenson 45:46 This is-

Lewis Howes 45:47 ... body fat or percentage?

Shawn Stevenson 45:47 You know, unfortunately this is tied to some questionable metrics with like, with BMI.

Lewis Howes 45:52 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 45:53 You know?

Lewis Howes 45:53 Body mass index.

Shawn Stevenson 45:53 Because somebody can be, like, have a lot of muscle on their frame, but we're not talking about that.

Lewis Howes 45:58 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 45:58 All right? We're talking about we know what's happening here in the United States.

Lewis Howes 46:01 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 46:02 And a recent study came out, this meta-analysis, uh, determined that about only 12% of United States citizens are metabolically healthy, all right? So we got over 200 million people who are overweight or obese. We got-

Lewis Howes 46:13 How much body fat is overweight on a person? Or how much body fat percentage would that be? Is this like-

Shawn Stevenson 46:18 It, it depends

Lewis Howes 46:19 ... 20%, 30%? For, what's the-

Shawn Stevenson 46:22 Yeah. I mean, even these numbers, man, can be a little bit-

Lewis Howes 46:25 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 46:25 ... mm. You know, for, just for example, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're healthier because your body fat percentage is low.

Lewis Howes 46:33 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 46:33 Like, I had a 4%, 4.6% body fat at one point. I was not healthy.

Lewis Howes 46:37 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 46:37 All right? But just in general, you know, guys can be somewhere in the ballpark of 12%, 15%. Um, and that's still... But then it's just like the, the vanity aspect.

Lewis Howes 46:47 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 46:47 Like, "I can't see my, I can't see my lines."

Lewis Howes 46:49 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Shawn Stevenson 46:50 You know? Like, I can't-

Lewis Howes 46:50 'Cause I'm, right now I'm like 16%.

Shawn Stevenson 46:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 46:52 And I just checked it last week.

Shawn Stevenson 46:53 But you're a healthy guy.

Lewis Howes 46:54 Healthy.

Shawn Stevenson 46:54 Like, this is what I'm saying, like, when I say that it depends on you-

Lewis Howes 46:58 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 46:58 ... these numbers, we have a big problem with these numbers.

Lewis Howes 47:01 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 47:01 But I'm using the numbers as a leverage as far as with statistics-

Lewis Howes 47:04 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 47:04 ... to try to, like, get our eyes open.

Lewis Howes 47:06 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 47:06 But there's so much variance within that because again, like, some people would sell their... Like, they w- s- name their firstborn child Rumpelstiltskin, like, to have your body.

Lewis Howes 47:16 Right. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 47:17 You know what I mean?

Lewis Howes 47:17 Right, right. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 47:18 So yeah, we gotta keep this stuff in context.

Lewis Howes 47:20 Sure, sure, sure.

Shawn Stevenson 47:21 Now-

Lewis Howes 47:21 Okay

Shawn Stevenson 47:21 ... 200 million people in the United States-

Lewis Howes 47:24 Are obese

Shawn Stevenson 47:25 ... obese or overweight.

Lewis Howes 47:26 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 47:27 On top of that, over 130 million people in the United States have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

Lewis Howes 47:33 130?

Shawn Stevenson 47:34 Yes.

Lewis Howes 47:35 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 47:36 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:36 That's crazy.

Shawn Stevenson 47:37 It is crazy. It's crazy. So diabetes or prediabetes, and on top of that, about 60% of the United States population has some degree of heart disease right now.

Lewis Howes 47:49 What's, what does heart disease consist of? What are the types of heart disease-

Shawn Stevenson 47:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 47:54 ... in that category?

Shawn Stevenson 47:55 So this is a, such a diverse topic too-

Lewis Howes 47:58 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 47:58 ... because even our definition of these things-

Lewis Howes 48:01 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 48:01 ... is a little skewed. You know, hard- hardening of the arteries, for example.

Lewis Howes 48:04 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 48:04 Like, how does all this stuff work? But I wanna point back to a really important point, 'cause I, I just... I don't want this to go left unsaid.

Lewis Howes 48:13 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 48:13 Some of my best friends are, like, the top cardiovascular surgeon in the world, or the top-

Lewis Howes 48:20 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 48:20 ... gastroenterologist, uh, in the, in the United States. All right? These are my friends, colleagues, and they will tell you. So top gastroenterologist, just talked with him recently. He was in school for, like, what, 15 years. 15 years. And he shared with me, he got... And he, he specializes in the treatment of, of systems associated with digesting your food. The systems-

Lewis Howes 48:49 That's all he does

Shawn Stevenson 48:50 ... and organs. But guess how much education he got on food?

Lewis Howes 48:55 One month?

Shawn Stevenson 48:55 Two weeks.

Lewis Howes 48:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 48:58 Like you, even a month-

Lewis Howes 48:59 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 48:59 ... versus 15 years of education, learning about food for two weeks You treat organs that deal with food

Lewis Howes 49:06 Right

Shawn Stevenson 49:07 We have a big problem. So in the cardiovascular domain, same thing. Elective, right? And your heart is made of the food that you eat.

Lewis Howes 49:15 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 49:16 Your arteries are made of the food that you eat. Your blood is made of the food that you eat. How do we not have a education on these things? You know? Like, our attention is so ... The system itself, these are incredibly smart people. These are some of the best and brightest, but if you take a really smart person and you miseducate them or you teach them the wrong thing, they become world-class at doing the wrong thing

Lewis Howes 49:39 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 49:39 And we're t- keep trying to treat symptoms

Lewis Howes 49:41 Right

Shawn Stevenson 49:41 We're treating the symptoms of not knowing how food creates all these things. So it is that deep. This is how powerful food is. You know? It becomes everything about you. The things you see in the mirror, how you feel, it's all based on food

Lewis Howes 49:55 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 49:56 You know? It's so powerful. So, um-

Lewis Howes 49:58 What, what is- We're talking about how to, uh, optimize the microbiome

Shawn Stevenson 50:02 Yeah

Lewis Howes 50:03 And I'm hearing you say it's the diversity of the whole foods that we should be eating, and in America specifically, we have very limited diversity-

Shawn Stevenson 50:11 Yeah

Lewis Howes 50:11 ... of these whole foods, these vegetables, these fruits, these-

Shawn Stevenson 50:14 Yeah

Lewis Howes 50:15 ... uh, healthy fats and meats and nuts, I'm assuming. Is that what it is?

Shawn Stevenson 50:19 Yes

Lewis Howes 50:19 It's having a diversity, and the more diverse we can have, the better our microbiome makeup will become

Shawn Stevenson 50:26 Yeah. And in the book, I cite a brand-new study that found that increasing your diversity in your fruits and vegetables inherently increases the diversity of your microbes

Lewis Howes 50:35 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 50:36 So this is a very simple thing we can do. Even if we're eating healthy, we tend to get caught in our little, like, food meal prep gone awry. You know what I mean? Like, chicken, rice-

Lewis Howes 50:44 Yeah, same thing every day

Shawn Stevenson 50:45 ... broccoli. Chicken, rice, broccoli-

Lewis Howes 50:46 Yeah, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 50:46 ... you know? But I'm eating healthier compared to the ... But what are you doing for your microbes?

Lewis Howes 50:50 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 50:50 They need a diversity. And really the heart of the matter is I've been talking about probiotics for 15 years

Lewis Howes 50:58 Taking probiotics?

Shawn Stevenson 50:59 Yeah. Not taking, but just the, the science of probiotics. And of course, that's one input, but you could take all the probiotics you want. They're not going to colonize if they don't have the food that they want.

Lewis Howes 51:09 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 51:09 It's kinda like going to a party and you're hungry, and they don't have snacks that you want. You're gonna have to leave there soon, hit Del Taco. [laughs] You know, whatever

Lewis Howes 51:16 You're talking about life, heavy. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 51:16 You know? [laughs] You-

Lewis Howes 51:18 I've been to Taco Bell probably 10 years. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 51:21 Dude, I would get the 10 pack. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 51:22 Oh, man. [laughs] Back in St. Louis-

Shawn Stevenson 51:25 Yes

Lewis Howes 51:26 ... getting, uh, Taco Bell.

Shawn Stevenson 51:27 We've come a long way

Lewis Howes 51:28 Steak and Shake. Oh, man

Shawn Stevenson 51:30 That's if you wanna get fancy-

Lewis Howes 51:31 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 51:31 ... you know? So here's the thing-

Lewis Howes 51:34 Oh, man

Shawn Stevenson 51:34 ... and it's, it's so wonderful because, you know, when we get into these principles and how all of this stuff kinda fits together, um, this is a simple input, is increasing the diversity of the fruits and vegetables helps to give, helps to create the preferred food choice or the prebiotics. So there's probiotics, prebiotics. Prebiotics are the food that the microbes want in order for them to stick around. So we're losing all of these species because they don't have their preferred food in our system anymore

Lewis Howes 52:07 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 52:07 All right? And then we have postbiotics. We have pre, pro, and post.

Lewis Howes 52:11 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 52:12 [laughs] The postbiotics are basically the, the vitamins, minerals, SCFA is these short-chain fatty acids, all the nutrients your bacteria create in you for you

Lewis Howes 52:21 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 52:22 It's a symbiotic relationship, and that's really the front line right now. It's the, you know, the, like I said, the, the final frontier that we're studying

Lewis Howes 52:31 Let me ask you a hypothetical question. Obviously, this would never happen, but I've asked this to different n- nutritionists and doctors and scientists who've come on. Hypothetically, you're only able to eat five foods for the rest of your life.

Shawn Stevenson 52:46 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 52:47 Just say hypothetical.

Shawn Stevenson 52:48 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 52:49 You're on an island. There's only five food groups there-

Shawn Stevenson 52:52 Yeah

Lewis Howes 52:52 ... or you're only able to choose five every day for the rest of your life. If you had to choose, what would those five foods be to try to optimize your hormones, your mitochondria, your microbiome-

Shawn Stevenson 53:03 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:03 ... you know, everything to optimize? Obviously, it'd be very limited, but if you could only choose five-

Shawn Stevenson 53:08 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:08 ... and you get to choose five vitamins and supplements if you wanted to

Shawn Stevenson 53:12 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:12 So five foods, five vitamins. Obviously, this is a hypothetical-

Shawn Stevenson 53:14 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:15 ... but what would you say?

Shawn Stevenson 53:16 Lewis, I don't know if anybody's ever done this on your show before, but I'm gonna have to plead the fifth.

Lewis Howes 53:20 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 53:20 Like, I can't answer that question. [laughs] It goes against everything, you know? And there are ... You know, that, even that, if I had to choose, like, my five favorite or whatever, you know, I could do that, but it's, it's really getting away from the, the, the urgency of us increasing-

Lewis Howes 53:38 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 53:38 ... our diversity of food. It's a, it's an urgent situation right now

Lewis Howes 53:41 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 53:42 And on top of that, I, I gotta share this too, we go to the grocery store, it looks like there's all this different stuff to choose from, but the majority of foods that the average American eats are from the same 12 foods, just packaged up differently. Like, most of those, like, wheat, corn, soy, you know, sugar. Oranges made the top of the list, too. Largely orange juice-

Lewis Howes 54:02 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 54:02 ... you know, but we're just eating the same stuff packaged up differently-

Lewis Howes 54:05 Over and over in different ways

Shawn Stevenson 54:06 ... wondering why our gastrointestinal tract and our microbiome, so many species are becoming extinct. We're eating the same stuff. So yeah

Lewis Howes 54:14 It's becoming extinct because we're not eating more diversity?

Shawn Stevenson 54:18 Yes. Diversity, that's the-

Lewis Howes 54:19 So why grow it, why plant it, why, you know, develop it if we're not eating it, essentially, right?

Shawn Stevenson 54:23 It, it's the way that this ... This gets into the most important part of the book for me, which is the systems behind why we're eating the way that we're eating, and how do we fix those systems. You know? Our government's ... Unfortunately, a lot of our food policies are controlled by lobbyists who-

Lewis Howes 54:40 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 54:40 ... you know, work for these major food companies. And our government, and I shared one of the studies in the book, which is, this should be really eye-opening for folks, provide government subsidies for processed food creation. You know, like, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. And there was a ... And the thing is is, like, okay, does that actually correlate with worse health? And there was actually a study done looking at the people who consume the highest amount of these government-subsidized foods had about a 40% greater incidence of being obese. So there's a direct- ... link between what's being provided to our citizens.

Lewis Howes 55:15 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 55:15 And it started off with good intentions-

Lewis Howes 55:16 Right

Shawn Stevenson 55:16 ... providing government subsidies to farmers, but now it's these big agricultural businesses-

Lewis Howes 55:21 Ugh

Shawn Stevenson 55:21 ... that are growing the same genetically altered food crops that become the very basis of the human diet.

Lewis Howes 55:27 The foundation of our food, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 55:28 And the fruits and vegetables aren't getting anything. And so this also leads to the reason it's so damn cheap for us to go to Taco Bell and get a whole damn taco-

Lewis Howes 55:38 For $0.99

Shawn Stevenson 55:38 ... like it's so... Right. Not just one, but you get two for $0.99.

Lewis Howes 55:42 I know. It's crazy, man.

Shawn Stevenson 55:43 Right? Two for 99 cent tacos, and a avocado costs four bucks-

Lewis Howes 55:47 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 55:47 ... or $3, and it falls off a damn tree.

Lewis Howes 55:49 [laughs] Right.

Shawn Stevenson 55:50 Right? How, how is that possible?

Lewis Howes 55:52 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 55:53 And it gets into how the money is managed, and where money is being funneled, and it's being funneled into the processed food system.

Lewis Howes 55:59 So what would, would you say on a, on a weekly basis are the types of foods you're eating in your house?

Shawn Stevenson 56:04 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 56:05 What do you eat, then? What's the diversity of foods? If you're not eating five, if you're eating 50, what are those foods-

Shawn Stevenson 56:09 Yeah

Lewis Howes 56:09 ... those main foods for you?

Shawn Stevenson 56:11 Okay. So key word here, diversity.

Lewis Howes 56:13 Okay.

Shawn Stevenson 56:14 Diversity. And I hesitant to say, because I don't want people to base on what I'm doing-

Lewis Howes 56:22 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 56:22 ... because they need to do what's best for them. And what we do is we go through all of the, the stuff that has some clinical efficacy, like actual peer-reviewed evidence to support how this food is effective in blank thing.

Lewis Howes 56:35 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 56:35 So whether it's helping the diversity of your gut, whether it's helping to-

Lewis Howes 56:38 Mental performance

Shawn Stevenson 56:39 ... yeah, that and also, since we're on the subject of metabolism still, I'll give you one of my favorite food groups and what I do on a regular basis. And this is highlighted in a incredible peer-reviewed study. They found that the consumption of green, leafy vegetables... Everybody hears it, "Eat your veggies. Eat your veggies." Why? Now we know why. So what they found was that the consumption of non-starchy, green, leafy vegetables led to a direct increase in the production of our body's major satiety hormones, like GLP-1, leptin, right?

Lewis Howes 57:12 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 57:12 So the things that control our satiety because that's one of the issues with any diet framework, is you need to, you need to make sure that you're avoiding the thing... Like, I call these, these kind of three amigos of body fat growth, and one of them is hunger-

Lewis Howes 57:27 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 57:27 ... and managing your hunger hormones-

Lewis Howes 57:28 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 57:28 ... and neurotransmitters related to that. That's one of the things, so green, leafy vegetables. And another study found that-

Lewis Howes 57:34 To help with your metabolism.

Shawn Stevenson 57:35 Yeah. So they found that for every serving of vegetables that you have in a day correlated with a one-third reduction in waist circumference.

Lewis Howes 57:45 What's that mean?

Shawn Stevenson 57:46 So every serving of vegetable led to about a third less fat being on your waist.

Lewis Howes 57:52 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 57:52 Yeah, yeah. Really fascinating. And then if we want to make the jump to the cognitive side-

Lewis Howes 57:57 What would be the top veggies, leafy gr- leafy greens?

Shawn Stevenson 58:00 There's so many. Diversity, man. Spinach, kale, bok choy.

Lewis Howes 58:04 All of it. Just get all of it.

Shawn Stevenson 58:05 All, all of it, diverse.

Lewis Howes 58:06 Now is it-

Shawn Stevenson 58:07 You know?

Lewis Howes 58:07 ... cooked, raw in a salad? What's-

Shawn Stevenson 58:09 Both.

Lewis Howes 58:10 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 58:10 Diverse.

Lewis Howes 58:11 Doesn't matter.

Shawn Stevenson 58:11 And, and it also keeps things fresh-

Lewis Howes 58:13 Interesting

Shawn Stevenson 58:13 ... and fun. And also, let me be clear about this, too, when I'm talking about green, leafy vegetables, you know this, man. Well, it might, you might not have f- you might, might not remember it. I didn't eat a salad until I was 25.

Lewis Howes 58:23 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 58:23 Because-

Lewis Howes 58:23 Took me till about 25, 30.

Shawn Stevenson 58:25 Right. We had this conversation. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 58:25 Maybe, maybe I was 30 when I got Sweetgreen. It was 30 in New York City.

Shawn Stevenson 58:28 Yeah, y- the Greatness Bowl.

Lewis Howes 58:30 Yeah, exactly.

Shawn Stevenson 58:30 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 58:31 Exactly. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 58:32 But I'm s- I think part of why I'm so good at this is that I was really, really messed up.

Lewis Howes 58:37 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 58:37 You know? And I just grew up in a culture where-

Lewis Howes 58:40 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 58:40 ... you know, this just wasn't a part of my reality. There's no way that I would eat a salad.

Lewis Howes 58:44 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 58:44 And so please understand, a big part of that is association and culture, environment, and we talk about in the book, that in the book. But also, if food tastes good, it makes it a whole lot easier.

Lewis Howes 58:56 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 58:57 What if we make those vegetables ta- taste phenomenal, right? And that's the thing that's missing oftentimes. And we also have this thing in our minds that if it tastes good, it's not healthy. There's, like, this little thing, like, "This can't be good for me." But it's actually, why do you think food tastes good? It's, tastes good for you to eat it.

Lewis Howes 59:14 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 59:14 It encourages... We're hardwired to ta- for to seek tasty things. But food manufacturers have leveraged that desire to eat tasty things to our detriment, you know? And so I talk about that food science and the science of flavor because even flavors in foods are indicators of nutritional content-

Lewis Howes 59:31 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 59:32 ... if we were living in a natural way, right? So they, we, we des- we, we develop these flavor preferences based on, we might be deficient in selenium and omega-3s, so we have these flavor associations. We know, like, "Okay, I need to go and eat blank food."

Lewis Howes 59:46 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 59:46 You know, "I need to go and catch some fish because my body is wanting this thing." Now we just go to 7-Eleven.

Lewis Howes 59:52 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 59:52 You know what I mean? Like, but we can take back control of these systems and recalibrate them. And I was gonna share earlier, one of the things that I wanted to do was stack conditions. So when I give you this food, it's not just one thing it's good for. There's another side with the cognitive function side, and this was conducted by researchers at Rush University in Chicago. And what they did was they looked at folks who were beginning, you know, into their senior years, and actually looked at their brains and looked at their diets. And they found that folks who ate two or more servings of green, leafy vegetables each day had brains that were about 11 years younger on average.

Lewis Howes 1:00:27 Shut up.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:28 Yes, yes.

Lewis Howes 1:00:28 This is why I was so stupid in school.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:30 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:00:30 I ate sugar all day. [laughs] I never ate any vegetables.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:00:35 Man.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:35 Me too. Me too, man. I would get that, uh, personal pizza.

Lewis Howes 1:00:39 Oh, man.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:40 And get the ch- get the pretzel with cheese.

Lewis Howes 1:00:42 Oh, that's amazing.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:43 And I dipped the, I dipped the pretzel into the cheese and then dipped the pizza into the cheese.

Lewis Howes 1:00:47 Oh, that sounds like my life.

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:49 Yeah. So I'm over there, game day, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:00:52 Eat the bowls of pasta

Shawn Stevenson 1:00:53 ... like the muscle to dinner. When my, when the offense is in, I'm doing my thing. When defense, I'm s- I'm yawning, I'm tired, like, you know.

Lewis Howes 1:01:00 I was so tired all the time.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:01 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:01 Working out, practice, always yawning.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:03 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:03 Never ate anything healthy.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:05 Did I think I told you this? When I went to Principia, it's a boarding school, [laughs] there was a milk dispenser in our dorm I was 13 years old. A five-gallon milk dispenser.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:16 What? A milk dispenser?

Lewis Howes 1:01:17 Milk dispenser. Not 2%. Whole milk.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:20 Yeah, whole milk. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:21 This is the cafeteria milk dispenser. You know what I'm talking about?

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:24 You like pour out-

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:25 Oh, yeah. For the cereal

Lewis Howes 1:01:25 ... you put the big bag in there, the big five gallon bag-

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:29 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:01:29 ... that you put in there. They cut it open, and then you open it up. I got them to move it into my room.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:34 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:01:35 And I swear to you-

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:36 No, Lewis

Lewis Howes 1:01:36 ... I swear to you-

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:37 No

Lewis Howes 1:01:37 ... I would go through five gallons every week.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:40 No, this is crazy.

Lewis Howes 1:01:41 Swear to you.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:42 Are you serious?

Lewis Howes 1:01:42 Drink it throughout the morning, drink it at night when I'm studying, drinking it all day. 'Cause this is how I was conditioned as a kid. My dad would give me a glass of milk every night. It was just like, "Drink more milk."

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:52 Yeah, milk does a body good.

Lewis Howes 1:01:53 Commercials.

Shawn Stevenson 1:01:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:54 All this stuff. I had a five-gallon dispenser for a year in my dorm, just drinking it all day. And I was like, "Man, why am I always tired?" I can only imagine the, the quality of athlete I could have been-

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:09 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:02:09 ... had I learned nutrition when I was a teenager.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:12 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:12 'Cause I didn't eat anything quality.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:14 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:15 Never.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:15 That's crazy. Man, like, that's literally blowing my mind.

Lewis Howes 1:02:18 Never.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:18 You got them to move it into your room?

Lewis Howes 1:02:19 My room.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:20 You're free.

Lewis Howes 1:02:20 Right next to my bed, just, glug, drinking it all day.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:23 Wow, dude. That's crazy. And like you said, what could have been?

Lewis Howes 1:02:27 What could have been?

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:28 You know? Same thing for me, you know? In ... I ran a 4.5 40 when I was 15.

Lewis Howes 1:02:33 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:33 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:02:34 Imagine eating healthy.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:35 Dude. But it was that same season-

Lewis Howes 1:02:37 You'd be six feet tall if you ate healthy

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:38 ... it, this, at, in the same season, in the same season, I was doing track practice, 200 meter time trial. And as I was coming off the curve into the straightaway, you know this story.

Lewis Howes 1:02:48 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:48 My hip broke.

Lewis Howes 1:02:49 Ooh.

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:50 And my bones were so brittle. I was ... Dude, I was 5'9" in eighth grade. Like, I was towering. [laughs] You know how you're in the back row?

Lewis Howes 1:02:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:02:57 And then everything just started to break down.

Lewis Howes 1:02:59 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 1:03:00 You know, my bones. And I, it wasn't until I was 20 when I got diagnosed with this degenerative bone disease, degenerative disc disease. So my spine was just deteriorating. And nobody stopped to ask, like, "How could this happen to a 20-year-old?"

Lewis Howes 1:03:12 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:03:13 Kid, or a 15-year-old kid, just breaking his hip at track practice. And from there, my, my dreams of, you know, college football, everything started to become vanquished. I've got game films where I break away, like 39 sweep. I'm gone. I'm f- five yards from the end zone. Nobody's behind me. And then I f- I start to fall, like breaking down.

Lewis Howes 1:03:32 No way.

Shawn Stevenson 1:03:32 Tearing, you know, tearing muscles. Yeah. Like, I've got it on game films. And I'm like limping into the end zone and falling down. It's, it was a nightmare, man. And I couldn't stay on the field anymore because my body was just breaking down. And what I was exposed to is what's called standard of care, which standard of care means they gave me some NSAIDs.

Lewis Howes 1:03:49 Uh-huh.

Shawn Stevenson 1:03:50 Gave me some crutches. Like, you'll heal up. I did. But I c- nobody asked, "How is his bones breaking from running?" And when this diagnosis happened, man, it was earth shattering.

Lewis Howes 1:04:01 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:01 Because I was always like this fit guy, like capable. And like now I can't even really walk right because of this pain in my s- from my spine that's going into my leg. And my physician at the time, um, he put the MRI up, and I was just like, "Okay," like, "how do we fix this?" You know, just working with the trainers. They're like, "Okay, what do we do to get back on the field?"

Lewis Howes 1:04:20 What do you have here?

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:20 You know? And he's just like, pump ... Basically like, "Pump your brakes. Like, slow down, son. This is, this is bad. You know, this is incurable." And he told me that I had this, I had the spine of an 80-year-old man.

Lewis Howes 1:04:32 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:33 When I was 20. And not a healthy 80-year-old [laughs] either, you know? Like, shout out to Mark Sisson, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:04:38 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:38 But, um ...

Lewis Howes 1:04:40 Is he 80? [laughs] He's like-

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:41 He's 70.

Lewis Howes 1:04:42 No, no.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:42 I think he's 70 or 72 now, maybe.

Lewis Howes 1:04:44 No, no, no, he's-

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:44 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:04:45 ... he's 70.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:45 He's gotta be. Like, no, no, I think he's in his 70s.

Lewis Howes 1:04:48 I think he's, I think he's late 50s, early 60s.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:48 But he doesn't look ... He d- and he's definitely not in his 60s.

Lewis Howes 1:04:51 You think he's 70?

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:51 He's definitely-

Lewis Howes 1:04:51 60

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:52 ... he's at least in his 60s. I think he's 70.

Lewis Howes 1:04:54 [laughs] I don't think he's 70. That's amazing if he looks that great at 70.

Shawn Stevenson 1:04:58 Yeah. But this is what's also possible. Even wherever he is-

Lewis Howes 1:05:01 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:01 ... it's still possible.

Lewis Howes 1:05:02 He's a freak. He's got a six pack at 60-something-

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:04 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:05:04 ... or seven, whatever it is. Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:05 Yeah. And but I was the opposite. I was what you would think about with a 80-year-old person breaking down and, you know, a lot of chronic pain. And, you know, he sent me on my way, and that was that. You know, he gave me some medication, told, prescribed bed rest. Now, I want to encourage anybody, if you've ever, if you ever get a diagnosis with something life altering like this, do your best to get a second and/or third opinion before taking any dramatic action. And I did. Unfortunately, it was the same thing. And it was until two ... And by the way, for the next two years, every doctor that I saw told me bed rest. So I just kept doing nothing.

Lewis Howes 1:05:42 Sleeping. Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:43 It ... Just sitting around playing video games.

Lewis Howes 1:05:45 Isn't that the worst thing you can do for yourself?

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:46 Not only-

Lewis Howes 1:05:47 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:48 [laughs] Not only was my spine beginning to atrophy in my hips and my bones, but now everything else is.

Lewis Howes 1:05:53 Muscles, everything.

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:54 Your body-

Lewis Howes 1:05:54 Your organs are not producing. They're not ... Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:56 Your body works on this use it or lose it basis.

Lewis Howes 1:05:58 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:05:58 So I'm literally just decaying. You know?

Lewis Howes 1:06:00 You're dying at 22.

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:02 I'm ... Yeah. Accelerating that process. And two years later, man, it was, it was a little over two years. It's t- it's tough to ... Man, it's tough to talk about. Incredibly, I, I was in fear. I, I got into a place where I was scared to stand up because the pain ... I would have to like walk very gingerly because I know like the sciatic nerve has to like hit, and then I could walk normally, like a normal gait. And so I just decided not to get up because I was scared to.

Lewis Howes 1:06:29 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:30 And being that I'm eating the food that I was eating at the time, what I call the tough diet, typical university food, I was made out of this [censored] .

Lewis Howes 1:06:38 Oh, man.

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:38 You know, my body was made out of this. And I'm not moving now, so I gained so much weight.

Lewis Howes 1:06:42 Pretzels and cheese dip.

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:06:43 You know?

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:43 Dude, I ate fast food every day. Every day. Not a day went by. Because it was cheap and tasty.

Lewis Howes 1:06:48 Tastes amazing.

Shawn Stevenson 1:06:49 Yeah. And so but everything changed, and it was ... I don't remember if it was that day or the day after, but I went to see the last physician, um, because I had hope. And I had this chronic question going on in my mind all the time: Why me? Why won't somebody help me? Just like ... But I didn't realize it. And our brains are really run on the questions that we ask. It's this, it's ca- it's an, it's a reflexive thing. It's called instinctive elaboration. Because our brains are like a servo mechanism. ... is even right now we're exposed to trillions, hundreds and hundreds of trillions of bits of data and information that our brain has to filter and only present to us consciously the thing that we hold most important, right? Because even now, like you be focused on your toes, you know, and probably you thought about your toes a little bit, you know, for people that are listening.

Lewis Howes 1:07:40 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:07:41 But were your toes not existing before? They're there, but the- it's not a top priority. And so that servomechanism is guided by the questions you ask. And so if I'm asking all the time, "Why me? Why'd this happen to me? Why won't anybody help me?" my brain is just looking for a reason to affirm why my life sucks. And after I got that last diagnosis, he again gave me a new prescription-

Lewis Howes 1:08:02 [gasps]

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:02 ... told me bed rest. Two years later-

Lewis Howes 1:08:05 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:05 ... and sent me on my way.

Lewis Howes 1:08:06 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:07 And he meant well, he meant well. But I realized, it was either that night or the next night, that I'm by myself. They're not thinking about me. Even though they mean well, they are not walking in my shoes and dealing with the suffering. And it was the first time-

Lewis Howes 1:08:22 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:22 ... that I asked a different question. I asked, "What can I do to feel better? What can I do to get healthy?" It's the first time I ever looked at, like, what can I actually do? Because I'd been like, "Why won't somebody else help me?" And it changed everything, man.

Lewis Howes 1:08:35 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:36 That was the first night I slept through the night in, like, two years-

Lewis Howes 1:08:38 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:38 ... without drugs. And, um, I woke up with an- just a renewed sense of purpose because I had already ... I went to school. I, I was in the auditory nutrition class.

Lewis Howes 1:08:49 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:50 But I got out of it because I, I hated it. I hated science, ironically, which [laughs] -

Lewis Howes 1:08:56 Now you're, now you love it

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:57 ... science is my boo now.

Lewis Howes 1:08:58 Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:08:59 You know what I mean? But it's the way that I was taught.

Lewis Howes 1:09:01 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:01 It didn't really have an association. It didn't have that connective tissue.

Lewis Howes 1:09:04 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:05 And, um, I began to dive back into my training because I always did good in school.

Lewis Howes 1:09:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:10 You know, I had, you know, straight As, but I would get into trouble.

Lewis Howes 1:09:13 Right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:13 You know, I would ... Um, I, I didn't enjoy the process of, like, learning science because it just, it didn't stick. And so asking a different question, I did the low-hanging fruit first, which was exercise. Like, I just went and started, like, going on a, um, a cycle. You know, just got on a, a-

Lewis Howes 1:09:32 Bike?

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:32 ... stationary bike-

Lewis Howes 1:09:33 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:33 ... at the gym. Just started pedaling. It was hard. The next week I started doing a little walking and just built up from there. The first thing I did [laughs] was I did SlimFast first.

Lewis Howes 1:09:42 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:43 Because that's the commercial.

Lewis Howes 1:09:44 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:45 Right? I'm like, I gotta lose weight. To a shake a, for, for breakfast, a shake for lunch, a sensible dinner.

Lewis Howes 1:09:50 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 1:09:51 But thank goodness I quickly transitioned out of that. And because of that question, somebody that I knew for two year- no, three years at that time, she was a, you know, somebody I'd, you know, kind of hung out with for a while.

Lewis Howes 1:10:05 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:05 You know, just hung out.

Lewis Howes 1:10:05 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:06 Anyway, she was a chiropractor.

Lewis Howes 1:10:07 Wow, that's nice.

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:07 You know, she was older. She was like, you know, 10 years older, and she took me to Wild Oats. I'd known her this whole time, we never went to Wild Oats.

Lewis Howes 1:10:15 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:15 Went to Wild Oats. I walk into this entirely different dimension. Like, I'm like, "Why is there grass sitting up there on the counter?"

Lewis Howes 1:10:22 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:22 You know, like-

Lewis Howes 1:10:23 People buy this and eat it [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:24 ... [laughs] and the, um, but there was this nutrition prescription book. It was this massive, like, nutritional Bible there, and I began to look at all this, like, peer-reviewed evidence on this nutrient working for this thing. And, and I was shocked that this stuff existed. I had no idea. And this goes to the conversation of exposure.

Lewis Howes 1:10:42 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:42 You know? So many people are ... We're born into these conditions. When I ん で す け ど growing up, man, you know, we were on WIC. We, you know, food, Food Stamp Christmas would come around-

Lewis Howes 1:10:53 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:54 ... you know, the first and 15th, and we even got food from, you know, shelters.

Lewis Howes 1:10:58 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:10:58 And, you know, those food pr- pantries. And, um, we didn't know that there was a difference with food, you know? It's just stuff that you eat, and I just want stuff that tastes good, and that was the end of the story. I didn't know that it mattered. I thought that if you wanna be healthy, you exercise.

Lewis Howes 1:11:11 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:11 Because I looked fit, you know? But it was, my body was made out of straight-

Lewis Howes 1:11:16 Crap.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:11:17 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:11:18 Sugar, crap, processed food.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:20 But going, going there, I started to ... This, then I went from SlimFast to becoming a natural pill popper. All right? Because now it's, like, all these isolated nutrients. But I quickly, thank goodness, again transitioned out of that because-

Lewis Howes 1:11:33 You mean supplements?

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:34 Yeah. Because ... And not to say that supplements aren't helpful, especially the right ones. But it's still looking at food through this allopathic lens that I was taught in school.

Lewis Howes 1:11:44 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:44 Which is, like, a pill for this.

Lewis Howes 1:11:46 Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:46 You know, a pill for every ill.

Lewis Howes 1:11:48 Do you take supplements now?

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:49 N- definitely not as many.

Lewis Howes 1:11:51 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:11:51 And there's a reason why, too, that we talk about in Eat Smarter, which it went from about 7% of all liver damage to about 20% in recent years being associated with supplements.

Lewis Howes 1:12:01 Shut up.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:01 Overconsumption. Yeah. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:03 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:03 It's real. Because your liver has to handle-

Lewis Howes 1:12:06 The, the processing-

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:06 ... the processing for these isolated nutrients. Oftentimes, this is not a very regulated-

Lewis Howes 1:12:10 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:10 ... system either. Not to say supplements aren't good.

Lewis Howes 1:12:13 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:13 But we're taking, like ... Some people are taking 20, 30 different supplements a day.

Lewis Howes 1:12:17 So what happens when we take that many supplements a day consistently over time? It affects our liver?

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:21 So your liver is responsible for, number one, like, drug metabolism. We have over s- somewhere around 70% of the United States population is on prescription drugs. Your liver is handling that [censored] first and foremost.

Lewis Howes 1:12:31 Mm. Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:33 And also, your liver is responsible for food, you know, food metabolism, that interaction as well, which ... Man, your li- the name, liv-er. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:12:41 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:41 It's responsible for you being alive, like massively. We can't survive without your liver.

Lewis Howes 1:12:46 There's only one liver, right?

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:47 It's two kidneys.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:48 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:48 One liver.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:49 Yeah. You got two eyes.

Lewis Howes 1:12:50 You can-

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:50 Okay, there's some pirates out there-

Lewis Howes 1:12:51 You can have-

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:52 ... you know, but-

Lewis Howes 1:12:53 You can only, you can have one kidney and survive.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:55 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:55 But you can only, there's only one liver.

Shawn Stevenson 1:12:57 And even with your liver, like you can lose portion of your liver and grow, grow it back.

Lewis Howes 1:13:00 No way.

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13:01 That's pretty cool.

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:02 It's regenerative, magical, like seemingly magical.

Lewis Howes 1:13:05 How big is the liver?

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:06 It's pretty big. I mean, as far as, like, the internal organs. But here's the crazy thing, is that with it ... Again, I wanna reiterate, it's not that supplements are bad, especially the right s- food-based supplements s- especially, but synthetic, isolated- Synthetic chemicals

Lewis Howes 1:13:23 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:24 Right? So about 20% of hospitalizations from liver problems is associated with supplement consumption now.

Lewis Howes 1:13:31 No, come on.

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:32 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13:32 From supplements

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:33 There's a study, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:13:33 ... not, not, not pill, prescription pills, but actual over the counter supplements?

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13:38 20% of liver challenges in the hospitals are due to this?

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13:43 How do they know it's based on supplements and not-

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:45 They just do a intake and like look at what the person's consuming, you know? So again, n- this, these types of sc- sci- this type of science is still like very, there's nuance there.

Lewis Howes 1:13:54 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:54 But just for us people to, just for us to be aware that this exists-

Lewis Howes 1:13:57 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:13:58 ... that, hey, wait a minute, maybe I wanna pump the brakes a little bit on taking all these pills. So this was game changing for me, man. I asked the question, okay, so I've got degenerative disc disease. My spinal disc have degenerated. I have two herniated discs. It caused me-

Lewis Howes 1:14:11 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:11 ... all this pain. What are they made of? I asked this simple question.

Lewis Howes 1:14:15 What are my, my discs made of?

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:17 What are they made of? What is my spi- what are my bones made of? I'm, my, my, my bones are so, my bone density is so low, what are they made of? We think of calcium-

Lewis Howes 1:14:24 Calcium is what we think of

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:25 ... right? Because of the marketing, but there was like 20 other things that were s- as important, if not more important for the formation of bones and our bone density-

Lewis Howes 1:14:34 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:34 ... that I had no idea about. Magnesium, even omega-3s that we think about in, associating to like brain health, omega-3s are needed for bone formation as well. All right? So I wasn't getting any of that stuff in my diet, so I started taking pills first, but then I was like-

Lewis Howes 1:14:48 Supplements or...?

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:49 Supplements, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:14:50 Supplements, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:14:51 So I asked, what foods are these things found in? And then I understood the seemingly magical aspect of food, which there are all these other things that are there, too, these co-factors and bio-potentiators. And the game changing insight was that what have we been consuming the longest? This supplement is new. This drug is new. Humans, we have millions of years of evolution in relationship with eating foods that have supported our development. What do my n- what do my genes expect me to eat? Where is it expected to come from?

Lewis Howes 1:15:23 From a concentrated pill supplement or from food?

Shawn Stevenson 1:15:25 Or food, yeah. So I started to ma- make, my mandate then 20 years ago was food first, and that was a game changer. So once I did that, man, six weeks after that moment of decision and like revelation, the pain that I'd been experiencing every day that had me in fear standing up was gone.

Lewis Howes 1:15:45 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:15:46 And I was scared. I was even more scared then because I felt like I'm gonna do-

Lewis Howes 1:15:49 You're like, "What happened?" [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:15:49 ... something's gonna happen. So I'm like freaking out, but I'm also like-

Lewis Howes 1:15:52 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:15:52 ... let me just keep going with this. Let me keep going. And I was feeling so good. I had lost about 18 pounds at that point, which is not typical, but I was like the skinny kid in my family for a while. And now like it just, those, you know, fat, quote, fat genes, these epigenetic influences turned on, so the weight just came off of me. And the most wonderful part and why I'm sitting here today with my, with my man Lewis Howes, is my professors, students, you know, at the school, they started, they saw me, and it wasn't like I looked like somebody who just lost weight. It looked like somebody who was like really healthy-

Lewis Howes 1:16:25 Alive, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:16:25 ... and alive.

Lewis Howes 1:16:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:16:26 Because when I see my pictures of myself then, I look like freaking like Casper the Ghost.

Lewis Howes 1:16:31 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:16:31 Like I look like a shell of myself, like there's something missing. The light is not there. And so people started coming up to me, and the first person who like specifically asked me for help, she was somebody I went to high school with who went to c- uh, ended up going to the college I was at. And she saw this transformation and she was like, "Can you help me, you know, to do, to, to do what you did?" And I was like, "Absolutely." And so I was just like gonna like l- schedule a time to like meet up with her, and then she was like, "How much should I pay you?" And like time froze.

Lewis Howes 1:16:59 You're like, "Wait a minute." [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:00 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:17:01 "I can make money helping people live better?"

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:03 I had no idea it was a thing, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:17:04 Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:04 And I was like, "Um, $7?" [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:17:07 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:09 And that was the beginning, man. So then I went on to like certification for personal training, a strength and conditioning coach, then, you know, graduating, shifting all my coursework like to biology and all those things.

Lewis Howes 1:17:19 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:19 And then opening my clinical practice and working as a nutritionist for over a decade, man, and just seeing some amazing transformations. Um, you know, we specifically work with a lot of folks with chronic diseases, you know, diabetes, heart disease. People coming in, they got blood sugar is like 300, 400.

Lewis Howes 1:17:35 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:35 They're on metformin, sometimes insulin. Oftentimes, somewhere around 80% of the time, we're able to, uh, normalize their blood sugar without medication-

Lewis Howes 1:17:43 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:43 ... you know, working alongside with their physicians and, you know, just, but we did that by education because that's the thing that's n- that's not given to them.

Lewis Howes 1:17:51 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:17:51 You know? This, nobody's telling them why. It's just like, "Sugar's bad," okay. But I would reverse engineer it. I would like literally walk them through, "Here's how your body actually does this thing. Here's how diabetes is created."

Lewis Howes 1:18:03 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:03 "Here's how insulin resistance happen." And you could see the light come on in their eyes and-

Lewis Howes 1:18:08 It's proper education.

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:10 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:18:10 What's your thoughts then on fasting in general? Because, uh, I don't know if you've seen Dr. Jason Fung's work, uh, The Obesity Code, The Cancer Code, where he's talking about fasting a lot to reverse Type 2 diabetes in a lot of his patients as part of the process, a part of the treatment plan, I guess, is, is adding fasting into your life.

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:18:31 How does that apply to things, to the hormones when we fast-

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:35 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:18:35 ... whether it's a one-day fast, three-day fast?

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:18:37 How does it apply to our metabolism? Does it slow down our metabolism when we fast, again, whether it's intermittent-

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:18:43 ... or three days? What does that do to the body?

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:46 Oh, man, this is in, [laughs] this is, I could not not put this in there because the data exists.

Lewis Howes 1:18:51 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:52 And it's just, and I wanna make this clear, I also have a protocol for if you don't wanna fast and you just wanna have your three square meals a day.

Lewis Howes 1:18:59 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:18:59 You know, like, but for all of us, if we can put our nutrition even into a 12-hour window, in that 12 hours of, of fasting, of not eating, which is just, that even includes your sleep time.

Lewis Howes 1:19:09 12-hour window of not eating, eight-hour window of eating.

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:12 And just say you finish your last meal at 8:00.

Lewis Howes 1:19:14 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:15 And then you sleep. You get a good night's sleep. You wake up the next day. You have your first meal at 8:00 AM. Wow, let me tell you some of the things that can happen. Number one, we see a substantial increase in production of human growth hormone-

Lewis Howes 1:19:26 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:26 .. right, which is largely, it's considered the, quote, youth hormone, you know, s- associated with, you know, healthy body composition, but also like cognitive development and, and especially in recovery. You know, protection from illnesses and it, speed of recovery from injury and things like that goes, it just goes on and on and on. It's why kids have so much energy too. It's really tied to energy, right? HGH. But I know we talked about this before, I think of like Barry Bonds-

Lewis Howes 1:19:52 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:52 ... like, you know, Jason Giambi.

Lewis Howes 1:19:54 Yes.

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:54 You know? We've, being from St. Louis-

Lewis Howes 1:19:56 Mark-

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:56 Mark McGwire-

Lewis Howes 1:19:57 Exactly [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:57 ... Big Mac, they named a highway after him.

Lewis Howes 1:19:58 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:19:58 Highway 70. They took it back, though.

Lewis Howes 1:20:01 They took it back down?

Shawn Stevenson 1:20:02 Uh, yeah. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:20:03 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:20:04 But, um, yeah, so by having a little bit of fasting, that process, uh, is, is elicited and, you know, you produce more HGH. But also improvement in insulin sensitivity, like we see marked results with that too. And one of the studies that I put into the book was so shocking for me that I could not not talk about it. They had folks to consume essentially the same amount of calories, but once they partitioned it, all they did, they gave them this one restriction of like, "Okay, let's take this consumption of caloric, you know, availability that we're giving you and put it into this 12-hour window," and then they saw increased weight loss simply by having the same amount of calories but in this window instead. Same amount of calories. And they also saw increased production of satiety hormones or normalization-

Lewis Howes 1:20:48 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:20:48 ... of like leptin and ghrelin. Um, they saw biomarkers associated with longevity as well, so... And I can go on and on. Just by putting your nutrition into a window, and then there's so many different types of fasting too.

Lewis Howes 1:21:02 Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:03 You know, and I can't talk about anything with efficacy or ethically without me doing it.

Lewis Howes 1:21:09 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:09 So man, that's part of what happened to me too of going too far. I've tried all of them. Whatever diet framework you know, I've done it.

Lewis Howes 1:21:19 Raw food-

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:19 Whole-

Lewis Howes 1:21:20 Yeah, everything

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:20 ... vegan.

Lewis Howes 1:21:21 Keto.

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:21 But I'll do it for like a year, two years-

Lewis Howes 1:21:22 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:22 ... three years, you know? And that, that change in the, and I didn't know it at the time, of my microbiome in taking away certain foods that really my, for myself personally, were associated with good health.

Lewis Howes 1:21:35 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:35 By removing those prebiotics sources, like that can cause gut dysbiosis, and so I was dealing with that-

Lewis Howes 1:21:41 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:21:41 ... for a couple years. And like I started to become food, have these, all these food sensitivities that were rooted in this change in my microbiome. And so my, even my story of like what did I do to fix this? Because this is like one of the biggest things growing right now is dysbiosis of gut bacteria. And you might not have stomach problems or digestive problems, but it might show up with migraines. It might show up as issues with your thyroid. It might show up with arthritis.

Lewis Howes 1:22:06 Interesting.

Shawn Stevenson 1:22:07 This is important because even our methods of testing, look man, I'm just gonna say the thing nobody else is willing to say. [sighs]

Lewis Howes 1:22:14 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:22:15 Dude, like honestly man, we've gone through a lot of stuff today, but we don't know [censored] .

Lewis Howes 1:22:20 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:22:20 We don't know anything, man. Like even the top vi- virologists in the world knows less than a fraction of a percent about all the viruses there are-

Lewis Howes 1:22:28 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:22:28 ... and how they function.

Lewis Howes 1:22:29 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:22:30 We don't know anything, but we act like we do, you know? And it's, it gives us a sense of certainty. We do, we, we know so much more than we did, but, and that's the beautiful part too. Even our innovations in the last couple o' decades have been amazing, but what have we done as a result? Like we are not getting any healthier. You know, the data exists, and part of this problem is that on average, when we have a peer reviewed, even if it's a placebo controlled, double blind, like everything, gold standard of study, we get a result finding that, say, curcumin, active component in turmeric, has anti-angiogenesis properties, meaning it helps to cut off the blood supply to cancer cells-

Lewis Howes 1:23:09 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:09 ... and fat cells selectively. That's in, that's in-

Lewis Howes 1:23:12 Cur- curcumin?

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:12 Yeah. All right. Well, we'll circle back to that. But we find that it has, it's been proven, it takes on average from proof to being in clinical practice in medicine 17 years.

Lewis Howes 1:23:23 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:24 We don't got that kinda time, Lewis.

Lewis Howes 1:23:25 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:26 And that's part of the problem is that these studies are often designed and speaking to in this language of academia to sound smart to other people instead of like how can people take this information and use it in their lives? Because I don't wanna have to wait 17 years to find out that this thing can help me.

Lewis Howes 1:23:41 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:42 Right? So we don't know anything. The, that gatekeeper system and also the, the, the level of information getting to people is changing thanks to the work that you're doing, what I'm doing, taking this information and making it available to everybody.

Lewis Howes 1:23:55 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:23:55 But making it make sense because it doesn't have to be... Food is complex.

Lewis Howes 1:24:00 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:01 But it's also incredibly simple. You just put it in your mouth and chew.

Lewis Howes 1:24:04 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:05 Your body handles the fine print.

Lewis Howes 1:24:06 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:07 But it's very complex in that it affects so much, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:24:10 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:10 Like there's so many different factors, and that's one of the things I move towards in my clinical practice is that personalization, and also looking at where do people come from? Like what's their lineage? Maybe we can eat what your ancestors ate, you know, a little bit more like that, and I would find great effects with that too.

Lewis Howes 1:24:25 Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:35 You know, there's so many different things to consider, but the basics are often not addressed.

Lewis Howes 1:24:39 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:39 You know? Um, for most folks in our society, and again, we tend to like try to treat a symptom, but at the end of the day we have to cover the basics and make sure that we are getting the nutrition that our body needs right now, which can be different next week.

Lewis Howes 1:24:53 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:24:53 Um, one, let me give you an example here. Right now as we're recording this, we're at a, probably the most stressful time in human history. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:25:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:25:02 And the, the number one mineral that's really associated with the modulation of stress, like our body's stress systems, is magnesium. And prior to this experience we're having right now as a culture, 56% of the United States population was chronically deficient in magnesium.

Lewis Howes 1:25:19 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:25:20 And it's responsible over 350 biochemical processes in the body, so that means there's 350 things your body can't do or can't do-

Lewis Howes 1:25:28 Without magnesium, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:25:28 ... properly without it, you know? So that one, getting that one nutrient addressed can help to elicit the, the parasympathetic nervous system response, turn off that fight or flight, and start that healing to deal with stress because what I was gonna say is the nutrition side, stress It seems invisible, that's the thing. Like, you can't see stress, but it is very real and it can kill you

Lewis Howes 1:25:53 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:25:54 One of the most interesting reports, and this was in my first book, about over 90% of all physician visits today are for stress related illnesses.

Lewis Howes 1:26:04 What?

Shawn Stevenson 1:26:04 They have a stress component. Yeah. Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:26:07 I'm stressed, I'm anxious, I'm overwhelmed

Shawn Stevenson 1:26:09 Because what does, what does that mean? What is it doing? This related to your hormones, your neurotransmitters, the things that are determining what your liver's doing, what your heart's doing, what your body fat's doing. You could overeat your way fat. You can under-sleep your way fat. You can under-exercise your way fat, and you can over-stress your, yourself fat as well

Lewis Howes 1:26:28 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:26:29 And now most people have issues with all of these things because 150, 115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived. What are we doing? Again, we're looking for another drug to solve our problems right now, when we are, we are the sickest nation in the history of the world, self-inflicted. Let me be clear, self-inflicted

Lewis Howes 1:26:51 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:26:52 That's the root, and the system that all of this, that's governing all of this is sick in and of itself. And unfortunately, you know, again, we have a, a, a great medical system, especially for emergency care, but as far as the treatment of our biggest killers sucks

Lewis Howes 1:27:09 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:10 Everything continues to get worse. Heart disease, cancer-

Lewis Howes 1:27:13 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:13 ... diabetes, Alzheimer's, obesity. Nothing is getting solved because we continue to treat symptoms-

Lewis Howes 1:27:18 Not the root, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:19 ... with pharmacology and not addressing the issues that cause these things. How many people go in that have Alzheimer's and/or the, or even early onset, how many people go in and get counseling on sleep? Because now we know that sleep deprivation is correlated-

Lewis Howes 1:27:38 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:38 ... with Alzheimer's

Lewis Howes 1:27:39 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:41 And this is the stuff that's con- gonna continue. Even Alzheimer's also is, in many aspects, is being called type 3 diabetes. So the relationship with insulin in the brain.

Lewis Howes 1:27:52 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:27:52 You have receptors in your brain, too, and your body's ability, because your brain runs largely on glucose, and it needs to be able to do that process right. But what happens when insulin resistance happens in your brain? Man, so how often are we getting this kind of education? We're not. We're not. But we can change it

Lewis Howes 1:28:11 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:11 That's the beautiful part about right now, is that so much is fluxed up.

Lewis Howes 1:28:16 Right. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:16 You know? So much is in flux, and it's so malleable now that it can be changed. It's getting shaken. Before, the systems were very sturdy-

Lewis Howes 1:28:24 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:24 ... and I'm just, like, out there promo- like, "Don't go to McDonald's."

Lewis Howes 1:28:27 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:28 "No." Like, I'm not gonna get very far doing that

Lewis Howes 1:28:31 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:31 But right now when things are so shaken up, I really, I'm so grateful to be alive right now. I really feel that Eat Smarter coming out right now is not an accident. And I even shared with you, like, we have a national campaign. We're gonna be at essentially every Target store in, in the United States

Lewis Howes 1:28:45 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:45 I used to work at Target

Lewis Howes 1:28:47 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:48 I was a floater. I'm out there pushing the carts. Now my book is gonna be in Target, and not just in the book section, special 2021 wellness initiative

Lewis Howes 1:28:56 [whistles] That's pretty sweet

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:57 I'm not playing, man

Lewis Howes 1:28:58 That's pretty sweet. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:28:59 Let's go, man. You know, we were born for this moment

Lewis Howes 1:29:02 That's pretty sweet

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:02 This is the time right now

Lewis Howes 1:29:03 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:03 All the stuff that we've done to prepare ourselves, this is the time to do it

Lewis Howes 1:29:08 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:08 And we really have to work to get our, our communities healthier. At the end of the day, that's our greatest defense. That's our greatest defense because unfortunately this isn't being talked about enough. A CDC report came out, which I've been talking about this stuff since April-

Lewis Howes 1:29:22 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:22 ... and, and also in March, looking at the numbers coming out of Italy and finding that about 88% of the folks who passed away with this virus had preexisting chronic diseases and comorbidities, uh, somewhere around two to three on average, comorbidities

Lewis Howes 1:29:37 What's that?

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:38 So these are additional causes of death

Lewis Howes 1:29:40 Additional causes of death

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:41 Right. And/or preexisting chronic diseases, right? So heart disease. The, the main three were heart disease, uh, diabetes, and obesity

Lewis Howes 1:29:49 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:49 And I was like, "Oh, we're, we're in trouble"

Lewis Howes 1:29:52 So they were a co-cause of death with COVID

Shawn Stevenson 1:29:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:29:54 They got COVID, but because they had these other elements, it's what also caused the death

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:01 So this, and I, what tends to happen right now is people get skewed-

Lewis Howes 1:30:05 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:05 ... because everything is so polarizing right now. So this is-

Lewis Howes 1:30:08 So I think I saw recently there was 250 death, 250,000 deaths in the USA related to COVID. Is that ...

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:14 So let's, let's be clear-

Lewis Howes 1:30:15 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:15 ... because we get so skewed on what this means. This does not mean that COVID-19 is not a factor, and some folks can lean so heavy into this just like, "Well, these people would've been alive," or, "N- these people died because they were going to die anyways because they had heart disease." Not saying that

Lewis Howes 1:30:33 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:33 Let's be clear. What I am saying, and what the data now shows even here in the United States, because when I saw the numbers, I was like, "We're in trouble here"

Lewis Howes 1:30:42 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:42 We're the sickest nation in history

Lewis Howes 1:30:43 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:30:44 And so the CDC report found that 94% of the folks who lost their lives ha- with this virus had an average of 2.6 preexisting chronic diseases. So would, had they ... This, only 6% of people-

Lewis Howes 1:31:00 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:01 ... didn't, didn't, quote, "have a health problem," which they might've been that

Lewis Howes 1:31:04 They might've had some health problem, but not-

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:06 Even that

Lewis Howes 1:31:06 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:07 Right? Because these are opportunistic viruses that I talked about earlier

Lewis Howes 1:31:10 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:10 You can be compromised being sleep deprived and being overstressed

Lewis Howes 1:31:14 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:15 But 94% of these folks, and nobody is scratching their head, and nobody is saying a thing on major media and our health leaders, like, we have to get our people healthier

Lewis Howes 1:31:25 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:25 We see the number one risk factor is being sick, having preexisting lifestyle related chronic diseases. And I'm not saying this because it sounds good. The Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most prestigious journals, 2018, published a report, massive meta-analysis. They concluded diet, poor diet is the number one cause of our cr- chronic diseases in America

Lewis Howes 1:31:44 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:45 Number one. It's right there

Lewis Howes 1:31:47 It's, it's the root that causes-

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:48 And we know this

Lewis Howes 1:31:48 ... so many things, obesity, heart, diabetes, all these other things

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:52 But we're not talking about that

Lewis Howes 1:31:53 Alzheimer's. Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:53 We're not talking about it

Lewis Howes 1:31:54 It's the root

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:55 We're talking about, let's get another drug-

Lewis Howes 1:31:58 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:31:58 ... to treat a symptom, when we really need to be talking about how do we get our citizens healthier

Lewis Howes 1:32:02 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:02 You know? And so- In truth, our chronic diseases loaded the gun and COVID pulled the trigger. You know, that's really a good way to look at it

Lewis Howes 1:32:11 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:11 It was setting us up for trouble and this isn't the last time. This isn't the last time

Lewis Howes 1:32:17 There's gonna be more

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:17 The, oh, yes, absolutely

Lewis Howes 1:32:20 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:20 This is just, especially if you look at the trend. We've got SARS, we've got MERS. All this stuff is just happening in the last couple of decades. People keep talking about the, the flu from back in-

Lewis Howes 1:32:30 19 whatever, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:32 ... you know, [laughs] 1918. But it's been pretty quiet. Now, all of a sudden, why?

Lewis Howes 1:32:38 Why's that?

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:39 We're, we are more susceptible than we've ever been before, and humans are tinkering with stuff that we've never tinkered with before

Lewis Howes 1:32:46 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:32:46 ... messing with our food system, all these genetically modified crops and, you know, we're of course, in the lab tinkering with viruses. And not really understanding like, we keep carrying this level of arrogance like we can outsmart a virus. What? Like, how's that working out for us?

Lewis Howes 1:33:03 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:33:04 Just look at the numbers. And we keep blaming, we keep blaming people and not the systems that are governing all this stuff. You know, there is absolutely a degree of personal responsibility, but I grew up in a situation I didn't know-

Lewis Howes 1:33:18 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:33:18 ... that there was a choice. I didn't know there was a difference, you know? And I wanna make sure we have access. That's one of the things that changed my life is just-

Lewis Howes 1:33:24 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:33:24 ... getting access, getting exposure, and we can provide that for everyone, truly.

Lewis Howes 1:33:29 Yeah. So many things that could go down there, but what I'm hearing you say is going back to the basics with nutrition. And if we could go back to the basics, if you give people one prescription today around types of foods and- or types of supplements they should be adding to give themself the best chance to have a strong immune system, burn the unnecessary fats they don't need, optimize their metabolism, what would you say we should be eating and taking in general? Obviously, each person's unique in different stages of life, but I'm hearing green, leafy-

Shawn Stevenson 1:34:07 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:34:07 ... leafy greens, a mixture of diversity. Is this a mixture of diversity of meats, fruits, nuts, oils as well?

Shawn Stevenson 1:34:16 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:34:16 Or is it more in the leafy green category?

Shawn Stevenson 1:34:19 So that's one facet for sure. Another thing, [laughs] it's so funny. I've been talking about this stuff for years, but now like we've got really cutting edge data on this stuff

Lewis Howes 1:34:30 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:34:31 Another major thing I want everybody to focus on from today forward is their omega-3 fatty acids. A lot of folks have heard of this. Now, we have a wonderful study that was just released and it's highlighted in Eat Smarter, where they're looking at the ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids in human tissue. The ratio as we evolve was about three to one omega-6 to omega-3s. And omega-6 are known to be the kinda more pro-inflammatory of the omega-3, I mean, of the omega family

Lewis Howes 1:35:00 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:35:00 Omega-3s are more of anti-inflammatory. But omega-6 are important. They're important for many processes in the body. But when that ratio gets skewed, we see increased inflammation, which inflammation is tied with every hormonal problem you can name, and I talk about that as well. And also inflammation in the brain

Lewis Howes 1:35:17 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:35:18 And so now, that ratio is 20 to one, 30 to one for some people, omega-6s to omega-3s. And what they found in this particular study was that as folks improve their omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is directly correlated with decreased body fat

Lewis Howes 1:35:34 Mm. Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:35:35 This is a major regulator of what your fat is doing, right? Your fat communicates with each other. The fats you consume, part of the problem is I know I was indoctrinated with the idea that eating fat makes you fat. You know, I, I thought we were past this, but we're not, 'cause it keeps coming up in-

Lewis Howes 1:35:51 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:35:51 ... the media every now and then. Like, "Saturated fat, saturated fat is gonna kill you." And I've got studies that show the opposite. Not to say, but th- they're not taking into account-

Lewis Howes 1:36:00 Type-

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:01 ... where does it come from

Lewis Howes 1:36:01 The types of fat. Yeah, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:02 Yes. Where-

Lewis Howes 1:36:03 The quality of the fat

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:03 The quality, yes. And so one thing you can do immediately is improve your omega-3 ratio. All right? So avoid consuming things that are, um, extremely high in these inflammatory omega-6s, which for most of us, we primarily get that through these highly processed seed oils, right? So corn oil, so-called vegetable oil-

Lewis Howes 1:36:30 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:30 ... which is not, it's not damn broccoli oil

Lewis Howes 1:36:33 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:33 Like, these are proc- these are highly processed seed oils. And dude, what happens, like canola oil. Canola, even at Whole Foods, if you go to a hot food bar if it was open, um, a lot of it's cooked in whole, in, uh, canola oil

Lewis Howes 1:36:44 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:44 Like, it's organic canola oil, healthy. No. Canola oil is a high... What it takes to make these oils, they s- they smell and taste disgusting. They would, but they have to be deodorized, highly processed, and refined

Lewis Howes 1:36:58 Mm. Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:36:59 And then can you, just even that in and of itself should tell you, because these oils are very delicate. They're very delicate. It makes them rancid and increases their, uh, the capacity of like, uh, oxidative stress-

Lewis Howes 1:37:13 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:14 ... for your body

Lewis Howes 1:37:15 What are the top oils we should be eating then? Olive oil is number one, right?

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:19 It's, I wouldn't say number one. Very important

Lewis Howes 1:37:20 It's an important one

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:21 Very important to eat

Lewis Howes 1:37:22 It's also a lot of calories, right?

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:23 Yeah, but, uh, there's some really cool studies that I put into the book showing this direct correlation with increased olive oil consumption and, and weight loss

Lewis Howes 1:37:32 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:32 So yeah, something special there

Lewis Howes 1:37:34 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:34 But here's the thing

Lewis Howes 1:37:35 'Cause the calories are

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:36 Olive oil is not highly processed

Lewis Howes 1:37:38 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:38 Right? It's often col- it can be cold pressed and is bottled in dark glass bottles-

Lewis Howes 1:37:46 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:46 ... because it's sensitive to light

Lewis Howes 1:37:47 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:48 So don't get your olive oil in clear plastic bottles

Lewis Howes 1:37:50 If you can see it, don't, don't buy it

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:52 Yeah. It's already, it's, it's denaturing

Lewis Howes 1:37:54 Extra virgin olive oil?

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:55 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:37:55 Is that better?

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:56 Extra virgin, organic-

Lewis Howes 1:37:57 Even better

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:57 ... or if you know the farm, then I would get like-

Lewis Howes 1:37:59 Okay

Shawn Stevenson 1:37:59 ... pesticide-free

Lewis Howes 1:38:00 So olive oil is good?

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:01 Yeah. But with omega-3s, the s- the number one source is through fish

Lewis Howes 1:38:06 Fish

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:06 Cold water fish. Now, some people listen like, "Well, I can't do that. I, I'm, uh, I'm..." I don't mess with the fish. And some people, you know, I've heard this so many times in my years of, of clinical work that, you know, they're vegetarian. I'm sorry, they say they're vegetarian, but I only eat fish

Lewis Howes 1:38:24 They're pescatarian

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:26 But they wouldn't, they wouldn't say, like, like, the term. It's more like, "I don't eat meat"

Lewis Howes 1:38:30 Right

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:30 "I don't eat meat" But I'm pretty sure-

Lewis Howes 1:38:32 Fish is meat [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:33 Yeah. It's just, just say, "I don't eat land meat"

Lewis Howes 1:38:35 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:36 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:38:36 Exactly

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:37 So but if you don't, if you don't eat fish or... That's okay. We have, there's other ways. However, this is the most dense source that humans have been eating the longest

Lewis Howes 1:38:46 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:46 If we're talking about real whole food sources, which we want food first. And so specifically I'm saying this because of the DHA and EPA. These are the omega-3s that are clinically proven to have all the benefits I've been talking about-

Lewis Howes 1:38:59 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:38:59 ... whether it's cognitive performance and/or it's stuff with the metabolism. There are omega-3s in plants, but they're in the form of ALA. All right? ALA is very different. Your body can convert some of the, your, your, uh, ALA into EPA and DHA, but you lose about 95% of it in the process, conversion process

Lewis Howes 1:39:16 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:17 So you gotta eat, like, clinically speaking, a buttload of chia seeds-

Lewis Howes 1:39:21 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:21 ... like, daily. Like, you gotta be shoveling it. Um-

Lewis Howes 1:39:24 Whereas wild-caught Alaskan salmon might-

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:28 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:39:28 ... be just, like, a higher source

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:29 Over the, over the top-

Lewis Howes 1:39:30 Mm

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:30 ... you know. Um, how, so again, but what do we do? Algae oil.

Lewis Howes 1:39:35 Algae

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:35 Look for a high quality algae oil

Lewis Howes 1:39:36 Algae oil?

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:37 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:39:37 It's good for you, huh?

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:38 Yeah. Inc- super high-

Lewis Howes 1:39:39 Cook it or you just drink the oil?

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:41 So al- algae oil will come in capsules

Lewis Howes 1:39:43 Okay. Okay

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:43 Very concentrated sources of, of, of algae. Or krill oil. So krill is like a microscopic shrimp, so maybe that on your eth- on your, uh, uh ethics, maybe that is, like, a, you know, more viable source

Lewis Howes 1:39:55 Substitutes, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:56 Super high in astaxanthin, which is correlated with longevity-

Lewis Howes 1:39:59 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:39:59 ... and reductions of heart disease and all this stuff. So that's really cool. Um, so krill oil or algae oil. Now, to be clear, 99.9 of the studies on the effectiveness of omega-3s, they're done on fish and fish oil, not these other things. The oil, the, the, the compounds are there, but we just don't know if they have the same effect

Lewis Howes 1:40:20 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:20 Okay? So just be aware of all that stuff. Green, leafy vegetables we covered. Omega-3s. One other thing I wanna make sure everybody walks away with today, because we talked a little bit a- about the macronutrients, but there's not just three. So in school, again, we're taught fats, proteins, carbohydrate. There's actually six. The other one's alcohol, is a macronutrient

Lewis Howes 1:40:41 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:42 And we talk about that, all the ins and outs of that as well, which, eh-

Lewis Howes 1:40:47 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:48 It's, we can't even get into that

Lewis Howes 1:40:49 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:49 But you gotta read it. The, the data is, is bananas

Lewis Howes 1:40:52 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:53 Not to say good or bad, but you need to know

Lewis Howes 1:40:55 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:56 Also, the sixth man coming off the bench-

Lewis Howes 1:40:59 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:40:59 ... for the macronutrients is fiber. But that fifth player that doesn't get a lot of attention is water

Lewis Howes 1:41:05 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:06 Water is probably the most profound of all these macronutrients

Lewis Howes 1:41:10 So here's a question. How much water a day should we be drinking?

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:14 All right

Lewis Howes 1:41:14 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:16 So this is, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you the answer

Lewis Howes 1:41:20 Okay

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:21 But ev- it doesn't matter if I tell you what to do unless you really have a connection why to do it

Lewis Howes 1:41:28 Uh-huh

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:28 Water, your body, your, everything about you is based on water

Lewis Howes 1:41:32 Water

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:32 We hear this stuff, you're mostly made of water. What the hell does that mean? In the, in the book I s- I cite a study that had folks who drink 17 ounces of water. And-

Lewis Howes 1:41:43 A day

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:43 ... just within a couple of... No, just within a couple of minutes

Lewis Howes 1:41:45 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:46 And, and what happened is something called water-induced thermogenesis. They ended up burning about 25 calories from drinking water

Lewis Howes 1:41:53 Now, is the quality of water mattered? Is the-

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:57 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:41:57 ... the temperature matter?

Shawn Stevenson 1:41:59 Not as much

Lewis Howes 1:41:59 Hot or cold?

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:00 Not as much

Lewis Howes 1:42:00 Okay

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:01 That's a personal preference. There are, like, the Ayurvedic principle-

Lewis Howes 1:42:04 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:04 ... like, I know about all this stuff, by the way

Lewis Howes 1:42:06 Like warm, like luke... Yeah, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:07 Okay, so here's the cool thing

Lewis Howes 1:42:08 So wait, they burned, say it again

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:09 They burned 25 calories from drinking water, Lewis

Lewis Howes 1:42:12 In-

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:12 One, just one little serving

Lewis Howes 1:42:13 ... 10, 15 minutes or something?

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:14 No, if you do that four, five times a day, you're burning, you know, 100, 200 calories-

Lewis Howes 1:42:19 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:19 ... just from drinking water

Lewis Howes 1:42:20 17 ounces of water

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:21 Se- that's what was used in this study

Lewis Howes 1:42:22 Uh-huh

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:23 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:42:23 So that's like a, a tall cup, right? Tall glass

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:26 But the question is why?

Lewis Howes 1:42:28 Why?

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:28 Why the hell, how can you burn calories like that? I thought you had to go exercise your face off, not just drink water. It's because water makes everything work better. Every single hormone we talked about is operating in a water medium

Lewis Howes 1:42:40 Hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:42:40 Your mitochondria is based on water. All your neurotransmitters are based on water, and it moves throughout your body in this water superhighway. And when you become deficient, which most people are, just habitually through the day all these systems start to basically, these wide superhighways start to become these, like, dark back alleys-

Lewis Howes 1:43:00 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:00 ... where, like, Batman's parents got killed. You know what I mean?

Lewis Howes 1:43:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:03 And so how do we fix this? Drink. Drink the water. But like you said, the type of water matters, and we go through all of that too. But just to give some simple principles, there was [laughs] one study, this was done from t- testing houses from Southern California all the way to New Jersey, and they found that tap water was con- contained dozens of pharmaceutical-

Lewis Howes 1:43:25 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:26 ... chemicals. All right? Metabolic waste from people taking chemotherapy medications-

Lewis Howes 1:43:31 Oh, no

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:31 ... antidepressants-

Lewis Howes 1:43:33 Oh

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:33 ... uh, lisinoprils, you know, stuff for heart disease. This was showing up in our water supply. It's just like, what the hell? Why? How is that possible? We're all, we're really, this Earth, we're in this Earth bubble, you know, and this stuff is getting recycled. You know, there is toilet to tap water. There's new projects that are taking, yeah, and, and taking [laughs] water from our, you know, from our bathrooms-

Lewis Howes 1:43:52 Oh, man

Shawn Stevenson 1:43:52 ... and putting it back through the faucet. But it's one of the things trying to solve our problem with water here on the planet. But oftentimes it's not due to that. It's just the hydrological cycle and stuff that we're as humans putting into the environment now that never existed before, and we don't have filtering processes that can get... And these are microscopic amounts, let me be clear, but they're there nonetheless. You know? So just understand if you don't get a water filter, you are the filter You become the filter

Lewis Howes 1:44:17 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:17 All right? So I highly recommend getting a water filter, but ideally this would be, uh, something like reverse osmosis, but that makes it like blank water

Lewis Howes 1:44:27 There's no vitamins and minerals in the water, right?

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:30 It's like-

Lewis Howes 1:44:30 It's dead water

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:31 ... exactly, dude.

Lewis Howes 1:44:33 You need like rich vitamins and minerals in our water, correct?

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:37 This goes back to nature.

Lewis Howes 1:44:38 Ha.

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:39 When I was in school, we were taught water's H2O.

Lewis Howes 1:44:42 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:42 But there is no H2O anywhere in nature by itself. There is no plain H2O anywhere in nature. It's called the universal solvent. Water's always combining with other things, and it's what gives water this character and structure is the minerals that's in that water.

Lewis Howes 1:44:57 So when you take all the minerals out-

Shawn Stevenson 1:44:58 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:44:58 ... what is that doing to our body when we're just drinking dead water?

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:03 So one of the things that I was like even battling with [laughs] the publisher on is like putting this full story of water and how our cells actually get hydrated. So I'll just put it, to put it simply, it affects the hydration levels of your cells and your extracellular fluid.

Lewis Howes 1:45:17 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:18 And it can cause some serious problems. But what if water has too many minerals, like ocean water?

Lewis Howes 1:45:23 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:23 It'll kill you, right?

Lewis Howes 1:45:24 Right, right, right.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:24 So it's just, it's a basic-

Lewis Howes 1:45:26 So where do you get-

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:27 ... if we go back

Lewis Howes 1:45:27 ... your water from?

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:28 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:45:29 I, I wanna drink your water. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:30 What we, what we evolved drinking, like in recent history-

Lewis Howes 1:45:33 Bottled water

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:34 ... no. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:45:35 Is what we've been drinking.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:36 Right. But I mean, like throughout the recent centuries, it's like people-

Lewis Howes 1:45:39 It's tap water

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:39 ... no, no. W- people go to where the springs are at in the well.

Lewis Howes 1:45:44 Not tap. I'm talking about recently.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:45 Oh, like super recent, yes.

Lewis Howes 1:45:46 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:47 But like-

Lewis Howes 1:45:48 We used to go to wells

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:48 ... we would, humans would-

Lewis Howes 1:45:50 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:50 ... set up shop and civilization where the water was at

Lewis Howes 1:45:52 And s- and dig a well-

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:53 Yeah, if, if they could

Lewis Howes 1:45:54 ... and go, yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:55 ... if they had the technology for that.

Lewis Howes 1:45:56 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:56 So that's what would determine what we're doing, right?

Lewis Howes 1:45:59 Right.

Shawn Stevenson 1:45:59 So that's ideal human water is spring water.

Lewis Howes 1:46:02 From the earth.

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:03 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:46:03 But now we're getting it from bottled sources, or bottling it and-

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:07 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:46:07 ... right?

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:08 But there are great, there are great sources that, you know, um, maybe bottle in glass. We get into the conversation about BPA and all that kind of stuff.

Lewis Howes 1:46:16 Where do you drink your water from?

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:19 You know, when you came to my house in St. Louis, we lived on a well. We had well water.

Lewis Howes 1:46:23 That's crazy.

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:24 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:46:24 That's exciting.

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:24 But when we moved here, very different.

Lewis Howes 1:46:26 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:26 So we get like, you know, spring water delivered-

Lewis Howes 1:46:29 Oh

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:29 ... bottled in glass.

Lewis Howes 1:46:30 Oh.

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:30 Um, you know, got like a water dispenser.

Lewis Howes 1:46:32 What's it called?

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:32 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:46:33 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:34 Gonna do that. I was about to. Mountain Valley, everybody knows about Mountain Valley now.

Lewis Howes 1:46:38 Mountain Valley.

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:38 But again, I've been on this for like 20 years. You know, waking up every day I'll drink about, um, 20 to 30 ounces of water to start the day.

Lewis Howes 1:46:46 How mu- so how much do we drink throughout the whole day?

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:49 To give people the simple barometer-

Lewis Howes 1:46:51 Yes

Shawn Stevenson 1:46:51 ... the number one marker for you to know how much water to drink is listening to your body. Unfortunately, we're, uh, largely disconnected from what our bodies are telling us, all right? So to give people a barometer as just a starting point, take the, take your weight and divide that number in half, and just say if you're-

Lewis Howes 1:47:15 Mm-hmm

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:15 ... 150 pounds, you divide it in half, that's 75. That's the number of ounces that I want you to drink as a baseline.

Lewis Howes 1:47:21 So half your weight.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:47:22 You know?

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:22 Now, once you get to 200 pounds and up, just 100 ounces-

Lewis Howes 1:47:25 100

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:25 ... that's solid, okay?

Lewis Howes 1:47:26 'Cause I'm 230 right now.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:47:27 So 100 ounces a day.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:28 Yeah, yeah. That would be the ideal challenge.

Lewis Howes 1:47:30 Two ounces. Is that a-

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:31 It's not that much. It's really not that much.

Lewis Howes 1:47:33 Is that a gallon? How much is in a gallon?

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:35 How much is in a gallon?

Lewis Howes 1:47:36 Is, is that 64 ounces?

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:37 See, you remember.

Lewis Howes 1:47:38 I don't know.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:38 Man, you were just telling me.

Lewis Howes 1:47:39 I'm, I'm trying to remember this stuff.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:40 Yeah. So it's-

Lewis Howes 1:47:41 Okay, so 100 ounces a day for me.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:47:44 Wow. That's a lot of water.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:45 And this is ... I know, but this is, if you're active-

Lewis Howes 1:47:49 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:49 ... you know what I'm saying? Like all this-

Lewis Howes 1:47:50 If you're running and working out, you need it

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:51 ... yeah. And it, so like even given that barometer, it's gonna depend on your lifestyle.

Lewis Howes 1:47:56 Yeah, of course.

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:56 So that's why I don't even like giving these numbers-

Lewis Howes 1:47:58 Right, right

Shawn Stevenson 1:47:58 ... because it's so-

Lewis Howes 1:47:59 It all depends

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:00 ... individual

Lewis Howes 1:48:00 ... it all depends. Okay, let me ask you a few things-

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:02 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:48:02 ... on better relationships. What are the foods we should be eating to have better moods and a higher chance of quality, intimate relationships?

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:12 Mm. This is the most, this is the most important part for me personally of this work because-

Lewis Howes 1:48:17 Because relationships are a big factor of stress for people, which causes a lot of bad habits and obesity and all these things.

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:48:24 It's the level of stress.

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:25 Yeah, absolutely.

Lewis Howes 1:48:25 So if we can have better relationships with everyone, our lives would be better.

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:31 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:48:31 So what are those foods that can support that?

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:33 And have you ever seen as many people fighting, like arguing and like s- there's, there's so much polarization-

Lewis Howes 1:48:39 Crazy man

Shawn Stevenson 1:48:39 ... and people being separate. It's, it's ... that's the major epidemic, because we can't solve our greatest problems with everybody fighting and nobody's willing to listen. And what the data shows clearly, and that I really brought forward for the first time in book form and just getting this out to everyday folks, is how much our food affects our ability to perspective take and have patience-

Lewis Howes 1:49:02 Mm, my gosh

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:02 ... and to have empathy. And this is highlighted, one of them is the, you know, a study, this was from the Ohio State University.

Lewis Howes 1:49:09 Yeah. The Ohio State.

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:10 And, and what they did was they had couples, uh, they just looked at their blood sugar, which largely what they found was that these blood sugar s- spikes and crashes, you know, we consider like hypoglycemia and your blood sugar going low, which is largely related to what you eat, when the, the study, I mean the, uh, study participants, these couples, when their blood sugar would go low, they found that they were more aggressive and irritable towards their partners, and less likely to perspective take and to resolve their conflicts because of their blood sugar being-

Lewis Howes 1:49:43 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:44 ... um, disturbed.

Lewis Howes 1:49:46 Too low.

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:46 So, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:49:47 So how do we ... do we want the blood sugar to be high or low?

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:49 Not high, just normal.

Lewis Howes 1:49:51 Medium level. [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:49:52 Normal. And the reason that it can go so low, and but here's the thing, when your blood sugar goes low, it will normalize, but it usually does that because it's like a survival response.

Lewis Howes 1:50:02 Mm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:50:02 It increases your production of stress hormones to get it back up. So cortisol, your body can literally, it's a process called gluconeogenesis, it can break your muscle tissue down and use it for fuel to get your blood sugar back up, right? There's so many different ways your body does to figure out the problem, but it makes you more irritable and aggressive. And so many times in relationships, people are not fighting the other person, they're fighting their biology. People are-

Lewis Howes 1:50:27 Yeah

Shawn Stevenson 1:50:27 ... people are not fighting a- a real actual issue. They're creating, we often create issues. How t- how many times do you get into it when you're tired? How many times do you get into it when you're actually just hungry, you're hangry? This term is used now, and it's cute, but it's real.

Lewis Howes 1:50:43 Real.

Shawn Stevenson 1:50:43 Like, we've got science on this. And how many times do you get into it when you're o- when you're just stressed out about stuff, right? And you get into an argument about, you know, some damn, like, I don't know, house shoes or something. Like, "Why'd you put my house shoes here?" You know?

Lewis Howes 1:50:58 Yes.

Shawn Stevenson 1:50:58 It's like some, the stupidest things.

Lewis Howes 1:50:59 It's the stupid stuff.

Shawn Stevenson 1:51:00 You know? And it's just because you're not showing up as your best self because our biological needs or our biological, uh, thermostats are off, right? So we have to address these things. So that's number one. One of the most shocking things, and this is more so than ever right now, we're seeing these, we're seeing violence displayed, right? Social unrest due to violent incidents. And there was ... This is kinda messed up, what I'm about to say.

Lewis Howes 1:51:32 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:51:33 Um, but it's a, it's a great community to study because it is a controlled environment, but they took prison inmates and they wanted to see how nutrition would affect their behavior.

Lewis Howes 1:51:45 Interesting.

Shawn Stevenson 1:51:46 And so this was Oxford University researchers. And because it's, it's a ward study, it's controlled environment, they wanted to see if they gave these inmates increased nutrition, so vitamins, minerals, omega-3 fatty acids-

Lewis Howes 1:51:58 Not the crap they're getting every day-

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:01 They didn't change their food

Lewis Howes 1:52:02 ... cafeteria.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:02 That's another study, where they changed their food, and the results were even bigger than what I'm about to share with you.

Lewis Howes 1:52:05 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:05 But I wanna give you the baseline study.

Lewis Howes 1:52:06 Sure.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:07 So they gave ... They had a control group who didn't get these additional nutrients, and they had the study group. After they compiled all the data, they found that the prisoners who were getting increased nutrition had a 30% reduction in overall behavioral offenses, and they had almost a 40% reduction in violent-

Lewis Howes 1:52:25 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:25 ... offenses.

Lewis Howes 1:52:27 Now, is that because they were just happier, they were getting good food? [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:30 No, this was n- this was not the food.

Lewis Howes 1:52:31 It's affecting the mood.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:32 They had a placebo group. They, everybody's taking pills.

Lewis Howes 1:52:34 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:34 They don't even know what they're taking.

Lewis Howes 1:52:36 It's just supplements.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:37 That's it.

Lewis Howes 1:52:38 Not food.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:38 That's why I wanted to share this study first.

Lewis Howes 1:52:39 Supplements only.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:40 Right. And just getting the increased nutrition.

Lewis Howes 1:52:42 And everyone's taking the same supplement-

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:44 Right

Lewis Howes 1:52:44 ... but one are told ... Wow, interesting.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:46 Yeah. 40%, almost a 40% reduction in violent offenses-

Lewis Howes 1:52:50 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:51 ... by improving the nutrition available in their body.

Lewis Howes 1:52:53 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:52:54 So food r- the nutritional value really affects our mood.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:57 Yeah. And-

Lewis Howes 1:52:57 And it can affect our relationships.

Shawn Stevenson 1:52:59 This study was so profound, another set of resource- searchers saw this, and they were just like, "This, this can't be possible. 40% reduction in violence? No way." So they repeated the study with another set of prisoners. And this was published in the journal Aggressive Behavior, which there's journals for everything.

Lewis Howes 1:53:14 [laughs]

Shawn Stevenson 1:53:15 Um, but they found almost the exact same thing happened.

Lewis Howes 1:53:18 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:53:18 We can increase our propensity towards violence by improving our nutrition.

Lewis Howes 1:53:22 Hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:53:22 And then so studies that were done actually implementing more whole foods saw even better results, because food-

Lewis Howes 1:53:28 Wow

Shawn Stevenson 1:53:28 ... does something else. It does something really special. So with that said, um, right now in communities that are in conflict, we're oftentimes ... Your likelihood, you ... Let's be clear. You can have empathy and compassion and patience for someone else when you're not well, it's just harder.

Lewis Howes 1:53:49 So much harder. And when you're stacking all the stresses, and sleep deprivation, and not working out, and you're lacking community, and you're doing all these things and stacking it, you're gonna explode-

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:00 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:54:01 ... at some point.

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:02 Yeah. It's just a matter of time. And just, just your ability to have patience.

Lewis Howes 1:54:07 Hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:07 You know, your ability to, um, see the other person's point of view, your ability to have compassion and understanding, it's harder to elicit those things, but it's not impossible. What we, what we're experiencing right now, because we know that we are the sickest nation in human history, self-inflicted, a nation of sick people are arguing against other sick people and wondering why nobody's listening. If we can get folks healthier, we can start to have healthier conversations.

Lewis Howes 1:54:34 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:35 It's not that it's impossible if you're not well, it's just harder.

Lewis Howes 1:54:38 Harder.

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:39 And I know some folks are listening, they think, you know, "I might not be that healthy, but I know that I, I'm compassionate and, and I have empathy." Absolutely. But please understand, it's not just about your perception of who you are. When you're not well, your biology starts to act very different.

Lewis Howes 1:54:56 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:54:57 And we start to see shifts in your brain activity.

Lewis Howes 1:54:59 Wow.

Shawn Stevenson 1:55:00 And your prefrontal cortex that's responsible for decision-making, and social control, and distinguishing between right and wrong starts to go cold. And your amygdala, you know, these more primitive parts of our brain start to take over.

Lewis Howes 1:55:11 Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson 1:55:11 And we're just not our best self. So this is my big mission-

Lewis Howes 1:55:15 [clears throat]

Shawn Stevenson 1:55:16 ... that, you know, I, I might not say that often, but this is im- imbued into the pages of the book, is let's get our citizens healthier.

Lewis Howes 1:55:23 Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson 1:55:24 Let's make this a mission, because just imagine what we can do once we start to feel better.

Lewis Howes 1:55:29 Absolutely, man.

Shawn Stevenson 1:55:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:55:31 Man, this is powerful. Make sure you guys get this book, Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your Life. This is gonna be extremely helpful for you guys. Definitely check it out. Some amazing research, lots of studies in here, and a 30-day smart plan of action at the end which you're gonna really wanna take on, which breaks down everything on what foods to eat, how much, when to eat. Uh, so if you need sau- sauces, dips, dressings, everything that is the best stuff for you, make sure you check this out. It'll be very powerful. Check out Shawn, uh, eatsmarterbook.com. Also, get Sleep Smarter while you're at it, because sleep is such important to our overall health and wellness. And when I started optimizing my sleep from your, uh, teachings, it really helped my overall wellbeing. So just getting quality sleep, and it's not just the amount of time, it's also the environment, everything. So get Sleep Smarter. Make sure to follow Shawn on The Model Health Show podcast, one of the top fitness nutrition podcasts in the country. Check him out on Instagram, Shawn Model, uh, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, which we're gonna get you up on YouTube more. I want you to get more videos out there.

Shawn Stevenson 1:56:45 For sure.

Lewis Howes 1:56:46 So man, this is powerful. Eat Smarter.

Shawn Stevenson 1:56:48 Thank you, man.

Lewis Howes 1:56:48 Thank you so much for being here, brother.

Shawn Stevenson 1:56:49 Hey.

Lewis Howes 1:56:49 Appreciate you, man.

Shawn Stevenson 1:56:50 My pleasure, man. Love you, bro.

Lewis Howes 1:56:51 Love you too, man. If you wanna learn about the key foods you need to eat to master your health, make sure to watch this video right here.

Shawn Stevenson 1:56:59 Are really important, and the food that you're gonna find micro ... Foods that you're gonna find them in are whole foods. You're gonna find them in plants, you're gonna find them in meats. Meats are a great source of micronutrients.

Lewis Howes 1:57:08 Really?

Shawn Stevenson 1:57:08 Organ meats are also a great source.

Lewis Howes 1:57:09 Organ meats.

Shawn Stevenson 1:57:10 Not a lot of people ... Yeah, organ meats