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Anita Chaperon
Podcast topics:
02:11 – Not an overnight thing
05:23 – How to gamify things
07:06 – It can actually be great
08:31 – The learning experience
10:59 – Stuff you don’t need
13:26 – Just experiment
14:33 – Eliminating the four baddies
20:29 – Know your genetics
25:13 – This one takeaway will work wonders
27:35 – In summary
Structure a life and business you love with help from James
Transcription:
James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 675, which is part of The Bio Upgrade Method Series I’m doing with Anita Chaperon. Hello, Anita.
Anita: Hi, James. It’s nice to be back. I can’t wait to get started on this topic.
James: Yeah, well, we’re working our way through them. In the first episode, 674, we talked about how it’s time to become the CEO of the business of you. And we set up the series nicely with a little discussion and some personal injections of experience. And we’re basically of the understanding that if we can optimize ourselves, then of course, our business will benefit from that. That’s why we have this on a generally business topic show.
But these days, I’m becoming more of a student of the whole of life, as I’m going through different stages in my life and business. But I can tell you, having just finished our financial year, I’m doing fine with the business health, which seems to correlate quite nicely to my personal health. And you’ve been a big part of that journey, which is why I’ve invited you back to share more stuff. And today, we’re going to be talking about eat well, and how to eat healthy for life with minimal discomfort. And I’m sure this is going to be a really great topic. So let’s have a chat about that.
Anita: So in the last episode, if listeners haven’t listened to it yet, I would advise that you do because it sets a few kind of global refrains of how you think about your health. So have a listen to that, I’d love to hear what your most valuable takeaways were from that. For me, the thing, or kind of the main concept I wanted to get across is to think of your body as a system within the ecosystem of your environment, meaning that anything that happens in your body will have a knock-on effect on everything else in your body. So you need to consider these things when you start to create your own health.
Not an overnight thing
And we also mentioned that, you know, in terms of the system of you, it’s divided into five main subsystems. And today, we’re going to, as you said, James, we’re going to touch on to the first subsystem, which is your nutrition, basically, how to eat well. And my whole philosophy and what I try to teach my clients to do with the Bio Upgrade Method, is to get them to first understand that they don’t have to wait for their entire schedule to be clean before they can start implementing healthy changes. But also, to understand that the ownership is with them. And this is what we mean by, you know, being the CEO of the business of you. And same goes with your nutrition. You don’t have to start eating well overnight. You can start eating well bit by bit. You can start it tomorrow and it can fit into your lifestyle. You don’t really have to go through this massive discomfort.
So I’m not going to fill your head with the basics and the standards about nutrition. You know, there’s enough information out there about this. And by now, I think everyone understands the importance of good eating habits on an intellectual level. The thing I wanted to kind of bring up to front today was more about the fact that emotionally we still feel like the rug is being pulled from under us when we think of making healthy changes to our diet.
James: And why is that?
“This is more you being scared of change, rather than you being afraid of healthy food.”
Anita: Well, majority of it relates back to our limbic brain, because we tend to get this feeling of doom and gloom, of restriction and deprivation, right? And because change is so hard on human nature anyway, we’re wired to resist change, I want to invite you to consider that this feeling of, you know, healthy food and healthy way of eating is boring and tasteless, and all that, I want to invite you to think that this is more you being scared of change, rather than you being afraid of healthy food. So if you reframe it that way, then you can very easily gamify this thing and understand that breaking through the membrane of change is going to take a bit of effort.
James: So it’s kind of like a fun thing to try.
Anita: Yeah. So yeah, make it a challenge, make it a series of hypotheses that you need to split test, just like you would do in your business. So instead of saying, oh, healthy food is tasteless, you know, there’s plenty of people that eat very healthily and they’re very happy with their meals. And in a blind test, if a healthy food is cooked well, it will definitely be tastier than another food. I can guarantee you that. So just try and you know, think of it, okay, what are the small incremental steps where I can make change? Don’t think of it as a permanent change as well, because I think that tends to be very scary for people, you know, when you tell them, oh, cut out sugar, and then that’s it now. For the rest of your life, you’re not going to touch another piece of sugar, which is not the case. We’re talking again about the 80/20 rule, Pareto’s principle.
James: I think when I had a previous guest on the similar topic, and he was saying that anytime you would use the words, cut, or never, for example, that starts to really make the barrier big. Like, for example, if you had, and I hope you don’t, but if you had seven or eight teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, and you were able to reduce that to five or four, on a gradual basis, like one a day over a week, you would still start down that path of improvement, even though, you know, you’re still not at a level that might be awesome, you’re still at a less worse awesome level. You know, like it’s not quite as bad.
How to gamify things
Anita: I mean, I hate to use an old cliche, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Apparently, the Stonehenge wasn’t built in a day either, for those of you who have visited the UK. So it’s kind of a refrain which leads me very nicely into a reframe – I wanted to invite people to adopt this, instead of thinking of cutting things and eliminating things and reducing the amount of fun foods, etc., think of adding varieties of foods. Because your gut bacteria needs to be fed a variety of foods, and the richer your gut bacteria, the healthier you are. That’s been proven in many scientific studies now. So add foods that reduce inflammation; add foods that increase tastefulness; add foods that give you variety and don’t make you bored of what you’re eating.
And when you think from an abundance mindset, it kind of overshadows. I mean, it doesn’t completely eliminate, let’s be honest about this, right? It doesn’t completely eliminate the feeling of deprivation, especially in the beginning of the state of making those changes. But it gives you that gamification, it gives you that brightness of oh, let me see if I’m gonna like, you know, cabbage when it’s cooked in a nice way as opposed to just boiled.
James: You know, it can be interesting. When I went on that gluten journey with you, we cut it out for 14 days to see what happens if I reintroduce it. And when I reintroduced it, it was quite impactful, to say the least. The first sort of reaction I had was, wow, a lot of the foods that I eat actually have gluten. And especially, I like pastas and pastries and those sort of things, and beer. All of them have gluten. And then I remember seeing a comedian, Arj Barker, who had a whole routine on gluten. And he had, basically, the punch line was that he had figured out that gluten is essentially the protein responsible for happiness. And, you know, it was quite funny.
It can actually be great
But then when I was on my travels, I went to this restaurant in Paris, called No Gluten. And the whole restaurant is no gluten, and the food was amazing. And then when I went on the Maldives mastermind, which I do each year, I asked the chef if he can cook without gluten, and he said, not an issue, because he doesn’t eat sugar. So he’s already on a specific diet. And the whole week, he cooked me meals. And every time everyone else had a meal, they were eating no gluten as well. And they didn’t even realize there was virtually no gluten. Even the toast that he made had no gluten, and he was using tapioca flour, and obviously rice flour and corn flour and coconut flour, every other flour other than wheat, by the look of it. And that was my real education into how great the food can be. If you feel like you have to go without something, it can actually be still very pleasurable. And I’ve managed now for about three years without too much of an issue.
Anita: You raise a very good point over here, and this is an exercise that I do with pretty much everyone that comes to work with me, is the elimination challenge. Most important part is, obviously, we eliminate the most commonly-known offensive food groups. And then by reintroducing them, we notice if you’ve got a specific reaction. Because if you’ve been eating, you know, something like gluten for a very long time consistently, your body’s alarm clock tends to get blunt. The alarm that it’s on, it usually tends to get blunted. So by eliminating it and then reintroducing it in a kind of like in an overdose way, you’re allowing your body to give you that clear signal.
The learning experience
But even if you don’t get the clear signal as clear as you got it, for example, the most common feedback that people come to me with from this exercise is the learning experience. Like, because they had to gamify for themselves for those 14 days, they had to go and discover what other foods can they pull in. Because we all get stuck in a routine. So we eat the same stuff over and over again. And with this exercise, it’s like, okay, well, I discovered now that I absolutely love chia pudding, for example, for breakfast. When before, they wouldn’t have considered even using coconut milk, for example.
James: I went on a massive education curve. Like, I was reading ingredients in the supermarket and Googling just about everything before I eat it. And after a while, I got a way better understanding of what’s actually in the food that we eat. And some of those labels can be a little bit daunting. I’ve put things back down and thought, I’m not eating that even if it doesn’t have gluten, because all the crap that’s in there, I’m not touching it. And it led me to eat more fresh food. And also, I cook a lot more. So I’m sure these things will come up. But I basically went from zero to semi-educated about what’s going into my body. And it’s like putting, you know, high octane fuel in a Formula 1 racing car, versus trying to run it on kerosene. You know, like, when you get the right fuel in there, your life becomes completely different.
“Changing into healthy eating is more of an emotional issue.”
Anita: Yeah, this is exactly what I’m trying to relay to people. And you have that natural instinct, which is why I jumped at the opportunity of working with you. You know, you go and you discover and you gamified for yourself. Like you said, you make it your business to go and find out what goes in your body. And this is not the biggest shift, and going back to the whole changing into healthy eating is more of an emotional issue. It’s more about you know, you needing to identify with the fact that it’s you that is responsible for doing good by your body. You know, you need to put quality fuel in if you want to enjoy your life. I mean, it’s not rocket science. It’s, like, the most basic thing in terms of thinking. But if you gamify it and even just resolve to read the labels on the packaging, and if it’s got more than five ingredients, put it down and find a substitute.
We’ve got such an abundance of variety of foods at the moment. Perfect example was with simple Doritos right? Well-known brand. If you pick up any other flavored Doritos than the lightly salted ones, they’ve got, I kid you not, in excess of 12 ingredients in there. Why? Most of them are unknown to humankind, you know. There are three ingredients to make up a cheese flavor.
Stuff you don’t need
James: That’s what I noticed with sauces. Sauce is a great place where people hide flour.
Anita: And sugar.
James: And I just often think, why? And when you talk to the chef, often they can make you a gluten-free version. I’m thinking, why wouldn’t they just make that for everyone? Like a pepper sauce, for example. It’s not that hard to make it gluten-free. And so, you know, sometimes I think people are just adding stuff for the sake of adding it, or maybe spacing out the food or maybe it’s a cheaper ingredient.
Anita: Yeah. And it’s the status quo. It’s like, Andre cooks really, really well. And he cooks a lot of the dishes at home. And I always say to him, he makes the meanest tomato-based sauces. And if you taste his sauce, I can guarantee you’re going to say, oh wow, incredible. He does not touch flour or sugar. And yet his sauces are never not sweet, you know in terms of tomatoes. So some of the ingredients are there for a reason, yes, but a lot of the times you can cut them out and you will never know the difference. In fact, you might even discover something that’s a lot tastier than the norm.
James: There’s also the subtle differences between the actual foods when you break it down, too. Like for example, I’ve discovered that I can eat oats. And if I get the non-contaminated wheat-free oats, which they’re not allowed to label gluten-free in Australia, but they do in the United States, I get no reaction whatsoever to those uncontaminated, organic, prepared in a separate factory oats. But if I were to have the regular oats you buy off the cereal shelf that are made in cross-contaminated, wheat-infested, cereal-manufacturing plants, I will get a reaction. So it’s a matter of then selection of the source.
Anita: Yeah. it’s these nuances that you really need to, and I always say, you need to get selfish enough to protect your body, you know, to just be so defensive about it that every time somebody tries to intrude on that cleanliness, you’ve got a knee-jerk reaction. You go like, no. I’m not going to stand for this.
James: It’s like when you were trying to tell me I had to have this particular pastry at this place. And you said, it’s so good it’s worth the gluten attack. And I said, No, no, I’m not doing it.
Anita: How do you know I’m not just testing you?
James: I don’t know if it passed but it wasn’t even like, at the time, my reaction was quite severe and it wasn’t worth it. You basically make a decision. And also, later on, I discovered you can even buy enzymes, for example, that cancel out some of the bad effects that you have. But they’re really just, you know, very short-term masking agents. They’re not something that you would rely upon or use on a regular basis.
Just experiment
Anita: Yeah, absolutely. And everyone listening at the moment, they can just dissect the things that we’re discussing. And these are small tactics that, you know, they’re priceless. And just do one thing at a time. And this is part of the whole three-step process that I wanted to share with people as you know, just literally pick the one thing from all the conversations or from each of the conversations that resonates the most emotionally for you, and you go, you know, almost like you feel like oh, I want to try this, I just want to experiment with this. And then run an experiment like you do with your business, schedule it in your schedule. So you make sure that you show up for it, and then just do it, do it for 30 days, see how you feel, see what you learn from it. And then only keep the stuff that works. Just literally like, if you’re running an ad campaign for your business, you wouldn’t keep the entire campaign, whether it’s, you know, performing at two percent conversion rate, or 10 percent conversion rate. You dissect it and you only keep the components that work for you, for your business. And just the same with these experiments.
James: So what are the main categories that you would start with? I know you had me do gluten, and you had me do dairy. And I don’t think I drank enough alcohol for it to be a valid test. So I know a few of them off the top.
Eliminating the four baddies
Anita: Yeah, so okay, so three tiny little actions I wanted to share with the listeners today, one of which is what you’ve led down the line at the moment. And that’s, in my opinion, that’s the most important one, is to eliminate the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I call them. When I say eliminate, I mean, eliminate initially for 14 days. And I mean, like, read every label and be really vigilant about it, and then reintroduce each of the four one at a time and see what your reaction is, because then it’s the only time you’re going to have a true test of whether you’re really reacting to these groups or not.
James: Is this just one at a time?
Anita: So when you’re eliminating them for the 14 days, eliminate all of them altogether.
James: Wow. Is there anything left you can actually eat?
Anita: No, it’s just fresh fruit and fresh food and, yeah.
James: Like, for example, if you had sugar, does fruit count as sugar? Because I know if you eat the fruit whole, it comes with the fiber that it needs to absorb the sugar, versus if you tip a teaspoon of sugar into something. So there is a difference in the way you consume it. But would that still count for you?
Anita: So yes, I’m talking about added sugar.
James: So refined sugar or additional sugar.
Anita: Anything that’s hidden in sauces or stock cubes or stuff like that. And then so the Four Horsemen, just to kind of specify them, is added sugar, gluten and dairy (and I mean cow dairy, mostly because that’s typically the most problematic), and then alcohol. The sugar, you can substitute with either stevia or xylitol. Stevia tends to taste different for different people, so if you don’t like the taste of stevia, xylitol is a good substitute. It’s typically one-for-one substitute for sugar in terms of taste and sweetness. And it’s naturally or self-regulating, because if you have more than a tablespoon at a time, you’ll probably poop yourself, so be careful.
James: And stevia is more like two to one, isn’t it? Stevia, it’s much sweeter than sugar?
Anita: Yes, it’s multiple times sweeter. So you need to be careful with it. But that’s generally specified on the packet. I won’t overdose on either one.
James: Yep. I got some for my son, and he was like, whoa, hang on. This is like, supercharged.
Anita: Yeah, and most people don’t like the taste of stevia, me including. But you know, it’s all subjective.
The gluten part is very obvious. Basically, anything with gluten. Read the label, don’t assume anything.
James: That’s like, wheat, soy, barley.
Anita: Yes, and I’m not going to spend time on this because people can Google it. And I would say, do your due diligence, if you’re going to, you know.
James: Basically any food you can think of, if you Google, does it contain gluten, it’ll tell you. And most of the major manufacturers will let you know as well, whether it’s ice cream, through to chips, or whatever. And I’m sure you’re not eating either of those things. But you know, if you are eating out, if you have to go to a restaurant or somewhere, you can definitely ask the server or the chef, they’ll always help you make a modification.
Anita: Yeah. And if you need to pretend that you’re gluten-intolerant, do that. It doesn’t matter, no one is going to know.
James: Yeah, that’s actually an interesting one. Often they’ll ask if you’re celiac. And in some places, I went to a place near Buckingham Palace, it was a noodle-type restaurant. And in their company policies, they have to have a senior manager come and sit with you and go through the menu before they’ll let you order a meal if you suggest you have gluten intolerance, because they take it so seriously, and they don’t want any ramifications from a reaction. So there’s different levels of care. And then of course, when you’re traveling to some cultures, it’s extremely hard to have that conversation. I found that Asia, for example, it’s not really a thing yet, in some places.
Anita: But in those cases, you know, take those extra enzymes. And again, you can google what enzyme can help you.
James: And you can take your own soy sauce, gluten-free soy sauce, and little hacks like that will get you around.
Anita: But for the elimination challenge, you know, make sure you plan it for when you’re going to be at home and not too busy. Because then, you know, you don’t have the extra discomfort of having to create hacks.
For dairy, all I’m talking about at the moment, and I know I’m probably going to get some pushback from purists, but I’m talking about cow dairy because that tends to be the most reactive. So swap it out for goat’s cheese, and Manchego is quite good, typically. And then if you can do without the cheese, then do without the cheese, it’s even better. They do quite good, non-stinky goat yogurts now, as well which I actually prefer to cow yogurt.
James: There’s coconut, coconut yogurt.
Anita: Coconut yogurt, just be careful with the sugar because they tend to load that with extra sugars, not just the coconut.
James: And there’s also like, your almond milks, macadamia milk. They can have the unsweetened versions.
Anita: Yes. So those are, you know, good substitutes, and now they make them so well that there’s very seldom you find one that doesn’t mix well in coffee or tea. So there’s no reason for you not to go that one, you know that extra little bit. And then minimize or eliminate alcohol. Now, you know, I’m not of the camp of, do not drink alcohol. If you don’t want to drink, don’t drink, but if you drink, drink very moderately. I drink myself, and I know purists don’t approve of it. And that’s fine. But again, you know, for me, and for everything that I try to teach other people is that, you know, you’ve got to enjoy your life, you can’t eliminate stuff. So I eat very, very, very clean, and my one vice is alcohol. And it’s not even, you know, like, I have one drink and that’s it.
James: And there’s different levels of alcohol, that have an effect on your body. For example, you would have to think a shot of vodka might be less harsh on your body than a cheap red wine.
Anita: Or a beer. Beer, especially for me and you.
James: Or a beer. Well, definitely in my case. You know, I’ve become a lover of cider. If I’m out and about, I might do that. But I don’t mind just a nip of vodka or something with a dash of lime and soda, because there’s not much sugar in that. And there’s virtually nothing weird about it.
Anita: And even like, with gin and tonic, a very, very quick hack is, well, make sure you have a tonic that doesn’t have artificial sweeteners, and that’s not loaded with sugar. But also, you could always mix half tonic, half soda water. It actually makes it a lot more refreshing, and then you’re saving half of the sugar calories, not all sugar, for example.
James: So sugar would have to be the hidden bomb. When you go out for a big night drinking, there’s an awful lot of sugar in those alcohols.
Anita: Especially cocktails, yeah. I don’t touch cocktails but that’s a different story altogether.
Know your genetics
And again, I’m going to move because I’m conscious of time. So I’m going to move on to the next kind of tiny little action that’s going to get you massive wins in terms of your nutrition. If you do your 23andMe, which is your genetic testing, it will be really good to run it past and do a Google search. And maybe James, we can include this in the show notes for people.
James: Yeah, anything you say will be fully transcribed.
Anita: Good. So Rhonda Patrick has a genetics report. If you search for Rhonda Patrick’s genetic report, there’s only one link that will come up. And for a small donation, I think it goes between $5 and $15, you can run your 23andMe raw data file through that. And what comes out is a very concise, but extensive at the same time, report on the major snips or major genetic mutations, mutations that might be of matter to you in your life. And the nice thing with her report is that she doesn’t fill your head with stuff that you can’t do anything about. She just gives you a report. And she gives you recommendations or implications of those genetic mutations. So she only gives you those recommendations on the things that you can do something about.
So when you run your report through her, you’ll be able to find out a really good baseline starting point for things like, what kind of carbohydrates you’re better suited to, genetically. What kind of fat – is it saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated. And then you’ll be able to find things like whether you do well with animal protein or plant-based protein, etc. Whether you have things like choline deficiency (choline tends to be mostly an animal-based protein), or things like whether you’re able to convert beta carotenoids to retinol, which is your vitamin A. Vitamin A or retinol is typically found in animal products, and the beta carotene is found in plant-based diet. So if you’re mostly vegetarian or vegan, and you have genetic mutations that don’t allow, or you’re not as efficient converting one to the other, you know, it’s good to know that so that you know, at least you need to take maybe a cod liver oil to supplement your vitamin A, which is very important for things like skin, connective tissue, collagen production, etc., your eyesight.
James: It might explain why some people are so strong for or against being vegan or meat eating, because they might have the type that can’t process one and does process the other in a good way.
Anita: Absolutely. And some of us feel, you know, if we pay attention enough, we feel instinctively that we do better with animal protein than plant protein, for example. But you have it there black and white. And again, it’s worth emphasizing, and I think we’ve said this a lot, you know, many times in our previous podcast on DNA, and the one with Jonny as well, you know, your genetics are not your destiny, but it is a good starting point. You know, if you’re completely, like, disillusioned about your diet, and maybe you’ve got multiple food sensitivities, it’s a good basic starting line from where you can now run experiments and get to know exactly how you react to things. And also, sometimes there might be hidden clues in those genetic mutations. Because, you know, for example, for me, I do happen to be one of those people that doesn’t convert beta carotene to retinol A properly.
James: And I don’t convert B12 or folinic acid properly. So I have to take the methylized version of that. And it’s like flipping a boost switch. You know, I went most of my life without being able to process that food properly, and then I take the supplement, it’s like an extra level. It’s amazing.
Anita: It’s one of the times when it’s really justified to take a supplement. And again, you know, thinking of your body as a system, once you think you’ve fixed or you’ve improved that feedback loop, it has a knock-on effect on everything else. So like your B12, James, that you mentioned, has a knock-on on how you clear neurotransmitters. So therefore you can be feeling less anxious throughout the day, you’re more able to focus, you’re not stressed out during the evening. If you’ve taken enough B12 during the day, for example, you sleep better, and so on.
There’s a lot of nuances and I don’t want to like, stress people by giving so many examples, so we’re just trying to capture, like, the biggest wins. Most people don’t even need to get down into the nitty gritty of this. Once they implement the bigger rocks, they have such a large gain from it that they don’t need to get into the minutia.
James: I want to back that up. For me, it was really the 80/20. Just a couple of key wins made all the difference – a few supplements, taking out an ingredient that was causing me a hassle. It just completely turned me into a different person.
Anita: Yeah, exactly. And if you’re feeling comfortable with that, I always encourage people I work with, I always say, Okay, if this is good enough for you, this is where you need to stay. Because otherwise, you might get obsessed about stuff, and then that’s a different type of disease. And unfortunately, I’ve been down that road. But for me, it’s there’s an added element of I love this stuff, I love learning about it. And I love finding out how things work. So I tend to go down rabbit holes.
This one takeaway will work wonders
But talking about the 80/20 rule, this is actually the last thing that I wanted to share with you, with the listeners, is: if you decide even, like, the only one thing if you take from this conversation is to just cook all of your meals fresh with a variety of food ingredients at home 80% of the time, then that will transform your life, you know, no end. And I mean, I know it sounds simple. Obviously, it’s not as simple as it sounds, but it’s just one rule. So now you don’t have to fill your head with a gazillion things, you can just start, okay, what are three to five meals that are for breakfast for lunch and for dinner? List them, and then decide, how am I going to cook them from scratch at home? And then prepare yourself and do them. And you’ll see that, even within two weeks, you will discover such a profound difference from what you used to feel before that you’ll probably never go back to the previous way. You’ll start implementing the things that you find that work and then you’ll fine-tune the ones that didn’t work quite well, from the start. So there was a third thing that I wanted to share with the listeners.
James: Well, I’m sure if someone’s listening to this and they’re just hitting Start on their microwave dinner, then they could have incredible gains from this one. I cook every day now. I love having food at home and cooking, and the time to do it, of course, which is, that’s a business thing in a way, freeing up yourself enough to be able to cook. But I really enjoy the process of sourcing and cooking food and then eating it. It’s become a ritual. It’s actually way easier to cook, too, than I ever realized. I got started by having someone send around a box of fresh stuff each week and some menu cards, and I learned all the basics. And from that, then I was able to go freehand. But there’s masterclass videos online, there’s entire cookbooks for whatever type of way that you want to prepare food. There is, whether it’s gluten free, for example, there’s really good cookbooks for that. And it’s something, if you plan on eating for the rest of your life, it’s a really good place to put time and energy into.
Anita: Yeah. You should plan on eating.
James: I mean, when you put it in perspective, it’s something I do every single day. Like, I eat multiple times a day. It’s like, we know when it comes time to buying a mattress, you’re going to spend a third of your life on that thing – it’s okay to spend a little bit and get a nice mattress, right? Same with food, it has to be one of our biggest costs of living. And it’s the fuel for our body. And it optimizes the outcomes if you can get that right. So I’d have to think that most people listening to this are already of a reasonable level of education in terms of general knowledge, because we talked about this sort of stuff before on our podcast. But now we’re just taking the little refinements.
In summary
You’ve given three tiny little actions today, let’s recap them so that we can write this down and continue our journey, starting with the minimize or eliminate the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Anita: Which is sugar, gluten, cow dairy, and alcohol. And then find ways to substitute them or eliminate them altogether. Learn from the experience and keep only the stuff that works. And then keep refining from there.
Second one: know your genetic tendencies and use that as a starting point. And build on that, again, with micro experiments. So you can fine-tune and find a diet that suits you and helps you enjoy life as well. It’s not about restriction; it’s about adding stuff that you enjoy and makes you feel good.
And then decide to cook 80% of your meals at home from fresh, with variety of ingredients.
“Pick one thing, do it and see what happens; learn from it.”
But James, sorry, I didn’t want to brush over one thing that you keep bringing up with all the examples that you give from your story, from your experience. It’s not like you know, those boxes of fresh fruit came over to your door by chance, right? You engineered it that way. You took that action to see what happens, you know, I’m going to order these, I’m going to start this ordering system. Let’s see what happens. What can I learn from it? And this is the biggest takeaway from all of these series of podcasts that we talked about now is, just pick one thing, do it and see what happens; learn from it. And that’s all that matters. And then pick the next one, you don’t have to do everything all at once.
James: But certainly it took a lot of the effort out, because it was recurring and automatic. So it just, each week it turned up. And I’ve only just stopped it because I’m traveling for the rest of the year, more or less. And I’m now in a really strong position to manage it myself. I know what to look for, and it’s become a habit. And that was a big change. So yes, I had to make it fit into my routine in a way that was such low resistance it was easy to continue. And it was great. So yeah, thank you for that.
So Anita, this is great stuff. You’ve got a whole course on this – I recommend everyone go and get it. It’s at jamesschramko.com/anita. If you like this stuff, it’s there, it’s deeper, and it’s put together by Anita. And you’ve got a really strong flavor of what Anita is all about and how much passion she has for this topic. And, of course, an enormous amount of research. You’ve been researching this for many, many years that I’ve been speaking with you, Anita. And I was fortunate enough to go through that little pilot program, and it literally transformed the way that I think about food and diet and health.
And actually, I’m really excited for the next episode, because it’s one of my favorite things to do, ever. We’re going to be talking about sleep and rest. And I remember one quote you said to me once when I was telling you, I’m just feeling really tired and lethargic and just needed to have a little nap sometimes during the day. And you said, if you’ve got everything else right, you really shouldn’t need to do that. And that’s how we discovered that there was a deeper issue. So it’s a sweet topic for me. I’ve got some great stories to share with that one as well, and Anita, you’ve got a lot of research and knowledge on it. So, looking forward to that, will be Episode 676. But for now, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a comment. If you’ve got questions for Anita, leave a comment, we’d love to address them. And I want to just thank you so much for sharing it. Anita Chaperon, you’re a dead set legend.
Anita: Thanks, James. Yep, see you in the next episode.
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