The Psychology of Eating and How Food Affects our Self Image

 

We live in a society that pressures us so much about our food choices that we find ourselves stressing over our diets and our health. Instead of becoming healthy, we fall deep into this unhealthy state, where we constantly feel guilty about what we eat and beat ourselves up in fear of gaining weight. If you are in this dilemma, then you’ll be glad of the National Holiday Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen are talking about in this episode about The Psychology of Eating and How Food Affects Our Self Image: National Eat What You Want Day. Giving yourself a breather away from keeping what you eat in check, this National Holiday is an opportunity for you to have the freedom to choose what you want to eat without feeling in the wrong. While this seems like a great thing for many, it also helps to be critical about what it says about our society, especially if we have to designate a holiday for our food choices. Jason and Whitney give their two cents about the subject, shedding light on both sides of the coin—from the holiday’s positive reception to its negative implications, particularly from the point of view of vegans. Tune into this very interesting conversation that takes a deep dive into the psychology of eating and how we associate our value and worth to what we eat.

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The Psychology of Eating and How Food Affects our Self Image

Jason, I know by now that you’re not the biggest fan of national holidays.

No, because I think we’ve done probably five with this kind of theme and maybe we’re jumping the shark on this theme a little bit like Arthur Fonzarelli. I am being honest. Let’s be honest with each other.

First of all, I have to say that when I listened back to the Adoptive Shelter Pet Day and we started off talking about National Shrimp Scampi Day, I was quite amused by that. I thought it was fun.

I begrudgingly said yes to that, especially when I saw it on our list of topics that we keep in Google Docs. To reiterate like, “Is she serious? What the hell is going on?” We parlayed it into a wonderful deep discussion about the ethics of animal adoption and the health benefits of companion animals. I still do cringe a little bit whenever you’re like, “It’s another national holiday.” I was looking at Instagram as we do and it was National Naked Gardening Day. We’re making shit up at this point. We’re pulling shit out of our ass and being like, “Let’s celebrate National Snort and Ground Cardamom Day.” Why would anyone snort cardamom? It’s delicious but please don’t snort it.

The reason that I often do this is so that we always have something interesting to talk about most times we should say we’re making things up. We don’t plan that much with the show. That’s not because we’re lazy, it’s simply because we like to make things authentic and organic on the show. We always have something to talk about. It just takes a little while. I use that as a spark in the conversation and many times we’ve had a day that has turned into some great topics. This episode is included with that because I wouldn’t have thought to dive deeper into the subject matter were it not for this national day. Because you can read the words, but then when you go, when you look it up, there’s a lot of interesting information about it.

Maybe not a National Shrimp Scampi Day. Aside from that being an inside joke between us, which if you haven’t read the episode yet for the audience, we encourage you. It’s a few episodes back and you can learn a little bit about an inside joke Jason I had. The origins and then how that somehow turned into a different conversation about plant-based seafood. I will go and research some of these days and some of them have interesting histories and some of them have fascinating discussions. Now, it is National Eat What You Want Day. Before I dive into it, Jason, how would you define that without knowing much about this random national holiday? What do you think that means?

If you could see my brow, it’s furrowed. Why? Is this because we have such a strange culture around making people feel guilty around their food choices? We’ve shamed and guilted people into eating a specific way for so long that we’re going to make a day where you can eat whatever you want. You are now liberated from the shackles of dietary preferences and strict eating guidelines and eat what you want. We needed to make a day out of that. To me, my first thought goes toward the unhealthy psychology behind eating in our culture. If we need to designate a day to give you permission to eat whatever you want, to me that lends itself to we have toxic psychology around eating if we have to designate a holiday to give you permission to eat what you want. That’s why my brow is furrowed. Are you serious?

I am serious. I pulled up a few different articles, some that take this quite literally, seriously, and are exploring the day. As I was researching that, I saw a number of articles on legitimate recognizable websites that people are getting fired up about this. I thought it was an interesting subject to talk about. Food is such a huge part of our wellbeing. It’s a big part of our lives. Jason and I each have a career heavily based on food. It’s interesting because we don’t talk about food necessarily as a rule. People assume that our show is about veganism because Jason and I both work in the vegan world, but a lot of our episodes barely even talk about food.

I thought it’d be fun to do a whole episode dedicated to food, but also some of the psychology of it, how the cultural shame can be. I found an article. This one is from DaysOfTheYear.com, which is a nice in-depth website and here is a little definition or explanation about what this day is. “Many people spend time stressing over their diet and what they should or shouldn’t eat. Mainly because nowadays the world is filled with magazine cover sporting perfectly toned, perfectly tanned models that constantly make us feel inadequate. The various health food fads that seem to come and go every few weeks don’t help either. As it turns out, a gluten-free diet is not particularly good for anyone who isn’t allergic to gluten.”

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Jason and I would beg to differ with that, “Juice cleanses deprive us of the protein and fat. Our bodies need to function properly.” That’s another thing that Jason and I could debate. This paragraph here has given me a lot to speak on. “If you, like many people these days are beginning to feel disillusioned with all of these things, you will be glad to hear about Eat What You Want Day.” Here’s the history. “It was created by Thomas and Ruth Roy to help people break away from the frustrating health and diet trends of the year, if only for one day, and let go and enjoy life a little. Most nutritionists seem to agree that giving yourself a break every now and then could be good for us and that forcing ourselves to eat only low calorie, tasteless foods for prolonged periods of time is likely to cause us to gorge everything in sight when our determination is off suddenly.”

“Why should you celebrate Eat What You Want Day? This website is our big advocates of the holiday, a lot of people had a structured way of consuming food. They have to be careful about what they eat, otherwise, they’ll put on weight and their health will suffer. Not everyone is blessed with a naturally fast metabolism. However, Eat What You Want Day gives you the perfect opportunity to have the freedom to choose what you want without feeling guilty about it. It’s also perfect if there is something that you’ve wanted to try for a while, but you’ve been holding out because you don’t want to cheat on your diet. There’s a huge section about how to celebrate and some of the highlights from that are eating whatever you want. If it’s not obvious enough, stop counting calories.”

“You might want to indulge or splurge financially to go to a nicer restaurant, spend a little bit more money on food. You could recreate a favorite childhood meal at your home. Have some comfort food, or maybe if you’re a strict vegetarian who can’t help but miss steak or shrimp every now and then, maybe you should treat yourself to something you wouldn’t usually eat to reward your body for the tasty things it has to go without in a daily basis.” I’m getting triggered by this. I have to say there’s a number of points in this website article that I strongly disagree with or find not accurate at least from my perspective. We can start by diving into some of that. Number one is this point about gluten-free not being particularly good if you’re not allergic to gluten.

That’s certainly been a big debate and I choose to eat mostly gluten-free myself because it makes me feel a lot better and it’s reduced inflammation in my body. It’s helped me heal my gut in a lot of ways. I felt drastically different when I switched over to being mostly gluten-free. Jason has a similar story. Each of us has done juice cleanses or various detox programs. I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily depriving you of the things that you need to function properly. In fact, some of them give your body a break so that it can function more optimally. It depends a lot on which one you’re doing. I think that’s a big misnomer there. Certainly, this idea that you have to count calories all the time or that once a year you’re going to spend money on and splurge in a nice restaurant.

I suppose that all depends on your financial situation and your perspective on that. Certainly, the part that triggers me, and it sounds like Jason a lot is this part that if you’re a strict vegetarian, maybe you should treat yourself one day a year and eat something non-vegetarian. If you can do whatever you want, this is the big perspective that I have and I’m curious about what you have to say about this, Jason. I don’t want to make any judgments, first of all. I also want to say Jason and I are not medical professionals. We’re not doctors. We’re not nutritionists. We’re not dieticians. We don’t have those certifications. We don’t claim to. We speak about our personal experience and our professional experiences too.

We both worked in the food industry for a long time. We heavily researched things. We know a lot of doctors, read their books, and take their programs. It’s because we don’t have those certifications doesn’t mean that we’re not knowledgeable. I also think it’s important, ourselves included, not to make a lot of these assumptions. Who knows who this article is going to influence? You’re putting it into people’s minds that juice cleanses are bad for your body or that you shouldn’t bother eating gluten-free if you’re not allergic to it. If you’re a vegetarian, it’s okay to cheat and all of that.

It’s okay to do anything you want as long as it doesn’t cause significant harm to somebody. On that point, part of the reason that people go vegetarian is to cause less harm in the world. It depends on your motives. I think it’s interesting some of the phrases that this author chooses to use. This idea that we as human beings shouldn’t ever deprive ourselves. Maybe it’s saying that we should deprive ourselves 364 days of the year and only have one day where we go berserk. It’s almost like that movie, The Purge. Did you ever see that, Jason?

This is the nutritional version of The Purge 100%. On this day you can do whatever the hell you want. It is that, and it’s funny that you make that correlation. For me, the biggest red flag in this article is the assertion that if you subscribe to a “healthier dietary lifestyle,” be that vegetarianism. We could even substitute anything for that, Paleo, keto, primal, vegan, whatever the version of that the audience may or may not subscribe to. The assertion of this article that is most concerning to me is it’s inherently proporting that if you eat healthily, you’re depriving yourself and it’s going to be boring to the point that you will need a day to be bad and have a cheat day and lash out. Knowing many people, not just our circle of vegans, vegetarians, doctors, health professionals and nutritionists, we have some phenomenal, wise, knowledgeable people in our circle of friends and colleagues.

We also know Paleo and Keto people. I know people on the Carnivore Diet. My point is that the people that I know who are doing this in a way that is conscientious, balanced, and well-researched, whatever their lifestyle and dietary preference, there’s no sense of deprivation. When I talked to our friends or colleagues regardless of their specific preference, we never have conversations about like, “I wish I could eat two bags worth of fried fish sticks and tartar sauce covered in salted caramel, dunked in a milkshake. In fact, let’s do a fish stick tartar sauce, caramel milkshake.” We don’t have those conversations. The most dangerous concerning assertion I’ll reiterate is that they’re assuming in this article that because you eat healthily, therefore you will feel psychologically deprived. I think flat out, that’s BS.

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Another article I pulled up from Inc.com said, “A cheat day implies that every other meal is one that you don’t want to eat. A cheat day implies you’re almost forcing yourself to eat other foods. If those aren’t the foods that you want, then you don’t want to eat this particular diet that you’re on.” We can get deep on this. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. We’re still in the stay-at-home order, also known as, quarantine in Los Angeles. It’s been a big topic of discussion about the quarantine diet. I think about that almost every day. Part of that is because I have had disordered eating and that’s, in my opinion, a big psychological condition where you can become obsessed with your food and count your calories.

I can’t even tell you off the top of my head, although it would be interesting to try to journal it out, how many different variations of diets I’ve tried including on the vegan diet. I went vegetarian in May 2003 and vegan later on that year. I’ve done a lot of variations of the plant-based diet as well, but before that certainly did a number of them too. There’s part of me that’s fascinated with it. I like to experiment a lot. Jason and I both like to tweak our health regiments in a lot of different ways, see how we feel, and see how we look and on and on. I’ve written a whole book about the vegan keto diet. That’s a diet that’s worked well for me.

My point here is it’s easy to become obsessed with food and I’ve noticed a lot during quarantine how I’ve had moments where I’m like, “Screw it. I’m going to eat whatever I want. I’m in quarantine.” I’m already stressed, I feel anxious. I’m definitely eating for my emotions at certain times. Sometimes I’m eating out of boredom, which is also an emotion. Other times I feel a little unhappy with my food decisions. That’s something I like to reflect on a lot too is what exactly is this guilt, unhappiness, or shame, those types of emotions. Why is it that we feel them around our food? That’s something I want to discuss, Jason. The same thing is true with being vegan or even vegetarian.

There’s so much judgment about what you should and shouldn’t eat even when you think that you’re eating a fully plant-based diet, people can pick on you for eating a certain type of sugar because there was bone char in it or eating palm oil because palm oil might’ve come from a place that was orangutans were affected. You could get to an extreme point of veganism, not to mention all of the different diets within veganism like the high carb, 80/10/10, raw food diets, the no oil, salt or sugar diets, the entire whole foods diet. All these different versions of veganism as well. It’s easy to fall into or get into the gray area of orthorexia and become obsessed with every single ingredient, how much you’re having of it, where the sourcing came from. You get to this point where food becomes incredibly stressful.

Culturally, whether you’re vegan or not, this is a huge part of our society, at least in America and other similar countries out there. We get to this point where we’re eating a certain way because other people have told us that’s the way we should eat. The media has told us that if we want to look a certain way, we need to eat these foods. It’s become incredibly frustrating and stressful. No wonder there’s a national holiday for something like this. It seems crazy to me that it’s like one day a year. That certainly can’t be the case. I think people think that they’re “cheating” on their diets often. There are YOLO meals. Remember those, Jason? That was a big trend a few years ago.

It was YOLO everything. That was probably 2016 at the peak.

Remember that it was a YOLO meal or YOLO day. It was like, “You only live once, so you might as well eat everything.” I feel like it’s interesting. I’ve seen people like Tim Ferriss approach this from a seemingly balanced perspective. We’ve talked about Tim Ferriss in other episodes. For the most part, I agree with a lot of the things he says. I think he’s well-researched, knowledgeable and he’s got great perspectives on things. I’m not even 100% sure but from my recollection, he subscribes to this cheat day mentality. From my understanding, he’s eating a regimented diet throughout the week.

Once a week, he allows himself to indulge in whatever he wants. That to me seems more balanced. He said in one of our episodes where he talks about how he wasn’t reading any new books in 2020. In that article, he was saying how he’s a bit of an all-or-nothing person. That’s something I can relate to. He does better on a strict diet because if he’s too lenient with himself, then he will overindulge. I experienced that a lot. This is part of the reason I was very drawn to the keto diet. I felt good on the vegan keto, which is a low-carb, high-fat diet. It felt great for my body, but also it felt structured.

I felt like I was able to follow the rules a little bit even though I don’t like the word rules when it comes to eating. It helped me stay in line. I will say, I often wonder about myself what’s real. Is it me feeling like I’m balanced? Are the rules another example of how I’ve struggled with an eating disorder? For me, limiting my food and restricting myself, am I only doing that because there’s part of me that still has that eating disorder? It’s tricky when you talk about any of these things. What is real balance when it comes to food? How strict should we be? If you’re only cheating once a year, that seems darn strict.

 

There’s so much that comes up around all this to unpack the psychology of eating. The first thing that I want to touch on is the difference between the ethical considerations that one might make around their food choices, regarding how it’s sourced, how it’s grown. Is it organic? Is it genetically modified? Has it come from a factory farm or operation? Does it come from a local farm? Is it vegan? Is it humanely raised? There are a lot of deep ethical considerations, but I think the point that we’re getting into, Whitney, is the difference. To me, it’s a massive difference between ethical consideration of what type of food industries do we want to support versus personal virtue. I think that for a lot of people, myself included, I remember when I was doing fully raw and high raw for a good four years. When I graduated from culinary school, there was this idea for me.

The analogy I like to say is there was some illusionary gold medal of eating that I was trying to get. I’m going to be the strictest raw foodist. I’m not going to eat anything that’s cooked over 118 degrees. I’m going to buy only organic. I’m only going to buy from the local farmer’s market. I was strict about that. I arrived at a point where I felt psychologically and physically imbalanced around all that because I wasn’t listening to my body anymore. I was coming at it from a structured, virtuous perspective. If I make these specific food choices and I support only these industries, companies and this type of food, then that somehow reflects the depth and breadth of my personal virtue. People will look at me and go like, “He’s such an inspiration. Look how regimented he is. Look how pure he is.”

To me, I had to separate this notion that I was doing things to try and create an image for myself that other people would aspire to or other people would be like, “Look at his work ethic. Look at his eating ethic. Look how much time he spends in the kitchen to make all these dehydrated crackers and all these superfoods.” I realized that I was doing it to try and attain some personal purity or personal virtue. In some degree, I was on the orthorexic spectrum of not honoring what my body needed, but coming at it from such a mental construct of purity and virtue. To me, I had to realize that there’s no gold medal for being the best vegan. There’s no gold medal for being the best raw foodist, Paleo person, keto person, or carnivore. No one’s handing out medals at the grocery store. It’s not happening. I think there’s still this deeply flawed association that a lot of people have where they associate their value, worth, and virtue with how they eat, and the degree of extremity to which they eat within that diet. I’ve certainly been there.

Social media certainly can aggravate this, so can forums and videos. Ultimately, we’re all searching for what we think will make us safe. It comes down to survival. Food is a huge part of our lives because we need it to be alive. We have this concern about staying healthy because we want to survive as long as possible. That’s one of the most primal things, if not the most primal things about us as human beings. It’s easy for us to become triggered and have this desire to live the right way so that it can lead to us living as long as possible. Jason, you of all people, you’ve studied longevity a lot. You’ve put together a lot of great tips on longevity.

One thing I love about your perspective and your method, your way of sharing this information is balanced and fun. I’m biased now because we’ve known each other for so long. If I look back on what I thought of you before I got to know you are that exact feeling of that you were this happy guy who had a wealth of knowledge. I remember feeling a little intimidated by you because you were so knowledgeable. In fact, when you and I met, you were doing a food demo. It was for Ultimate Superfoods. That was at Natural Products Expo and you’ve done a lot of those different things. I was trying to think if it was Sunwarrior, but no. You have done demos for Sunwarrior though.

Yes, the two biggest companies that I have been most involved with in the early days, probably from 2010 to about 2013, I was doing the live food demos at the Natural Products Expo West and East for Ultimate Superfoods. Once I started to dig in and use Sunwarrior products, I was doing live food demos for them. The idea there was for anyone who’s never been to the Natural Products Expo or if you have been and you’re a consistent annual goer like Whitney and I, you know that it’s extremely hard to find fresh-made food there.

A lot of the samples are dried and packaged. We would get a lot of traffic at the booths when I would be there doing a fresh kale salad with a strawberry vinaigrette, walnut tacos, fresh smoothies with Sunwarrior, or something like that. Part of the draw of doing these food demos was to give people a pit stop of, “Come get recharged, come get refreshed, eat freshly made food from a chef so you can go on with your day and feel recharged and energized.” We had great success. We still do, whenever I show up and do a food demo, there’s always a good crowd.

It’s because you do this with much enthusiasm. The was part of my point is that you are good about taking your knowledge and making it approachable. I think that’s one of the reasons that people are drawn to you. They don’t feel like you’re going to intimidate or shame them. You’re mainly like, “These are all the health benefits of things.” I think about you doing these food demos and you stand there with much confidence. You make jokes, you make people laugh and then you make great food. That’s the ultimate combination. I feel bad for any of the audience who haven’t had a chance to witness how you are in person.

I hope that once the world heals a bit and we move into a place where we can interact with each other in large groups again, hopefully it’s not a permanent change, but in our lifetimes, I suppose. I hope that there are festivals, conventions and things because you do such a great job sharing all of that. I think about these brands like Sunwarrior. They also have that same mentality. You and I have both worked for them and now they’re a sponsor of this show, which is cool. We use their products regularly. What I like about them is that they have great taste and they have great ingredients that make you feel good. When I think about Sunwarrior, I think about how to use their Lean Meal Protein Powder to make coffee smoothies. Coffee is one of those topics that people get fired up about.

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It is a contentious topic.

I feel like I’ve been in many different versions of veganism. Going vegan in itself, at least back when I did it in 2003. I felt alone until I started to meet other vegans, but it took me years to meet other vegans. When I went gluten-free, I was nervous about talking about it. I started eating gluten-free in 2010 and I remember writing blog posts about it and feeling nervous that people were going to judge me about it. I think that’s why articles like we mentioned, I feel sensitive to that subject of people saying like, “You shouldn’t even bother eating gluten-free unless you’re allergic to it.”

I disagree with that based on my personal experiences. It does depend on your motivation. Certainly, when I tried the keto diet in 2018 and then released a book about it in 2020, I still feel uncomfortable talking about keto. Then I started seeing brands like Sunwarrior confidently marketing themselves as keto-friendly. I started to feel a little less alone. They’re one of those brands that have been encouraging people to eat healthier on that. I want to take back that word, healthy, because what does that word even mean?

It’s probably one of the most subjective words because one man’s poison is another one’s panacea. This couldn’t be truer in terms of the genetic variance and minute as they are in our DNA sequence. As long as I have been vegan, eating plant-based and continue to be a proponent as you are, Whitney, of the myriad benefits of eating plant-based. The great products we love to use and always promoting those as we do Sunwarrior as an example. I think deeming something healthy or unhealthy is a dangerous sweeping generalization that people get into.

Going back to our point of the spectrum of all of these dietary lifestyle choices and the psychology behind it. One of the reasons that I was hardcore when I was a raw foodist was this idea that I had found the panacea. This is the ultimate way for humans to eat. All humans should eat this way. Here’s why, but the more I dug into the research and the more I personally learned about the idea of epigenetics. How food and lifestyle influence our gene expression and that those minute variations in our genetic DNA code combined with this idea of perhaps ancestral diets and eating closer to how our ancestors eat. There are many different versions of this. My point is I am not the person who’s going to say one type of eating or lifestyle choice is appropriate for nearly eight billion humans on the planet.

I am not the person who goes out there and I have never said all humans should be vegan, a raw foodist, or a whole food plant-based. I don’t believe that. I believe that my choices are my choices. They’re in alignment with my life, my physiology, my mind, and my sense of ethics, but I don’t expect or promote that every single person should eat, live or consume in a particular way. I do think though that the more people research and the more that they align with their sense of personal ethics and what feels good to them and what perhaps can lessen our deleterious impact on the Earth, those are good choices, whatever that means to the individual.

I think if you can look at different definitions or even synonyms for the word healthy or healthiest and all of that is a lot of times that means whole foods. That means unprocessed, nourishing foods, and some people throw around the term like clean eating. You can’t blame people because a lot of times we pick up words based on what other people are saying. It’s similar to clean eating is generally associated with unprocessed foods. Meaning you are eating foods that are benefiting your body more than they are harming it. We eat junk food.

The reason that it’s called junk food, in my opinion, is that it’s something that tastes good but isn’t nourishing us. It’s something that’s probably stripped of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and all of those things. It’s heavily processed and the benefits aren’t there. It might taste good. The part of this idea of cheat days is like, “I want to eat food that tastes good versus people that have this misconception that food that’s good for you isn’t going to taste good.” That has frustrated me for so long and there’s still this idea of, “I’m surprised that tastes good. Vegan cheese, I enjoy this.”

It’s about what we’re exposed to. It’s funny whenever I do these food demos or I go on tour and do my food and standup comedy thing. It happens a lot where people like, “I didn’t know that you could make brie out of cashews.” I also love it though. I make fun because I love people and I also think it’s magical to witness in real-time people’s conceptions meltdown. I didn’t know whatever it could, could be this good. I think that one of the brilliant things about the products that we recommend because Whitney and I try a lot of products every year.

 

We probably try hundreds of new products between the trade shows, the longevity conferences, the speaking appearances we do, and getting sent product samples. We have the beautiful blessing to sample, try, and experiment with our bodies a lot of different foods, beverages, supplements and superfoods. I want to make a point about supplements. I know that we’ve touched on this in a previous episode. I believe that episode is when we were talking about organic farming. I want to reiterate this point about over the years I’ve talked to a lot of people who are like, “You don’t need supplements. Supplements are bullshit. You piss most of the vitamins out and you don’t get the benefits.”

It’s a massive misnomer because to reiterate a point in a previous episode through monocropping, monoculture, GMOs and stripping our soil of the nutrients. The nutrients in our soil, unless you’re getting it from a farmer that you know how they’re taking care of their soil or perhaps on the highest level, you’re growing your own food. Because of the topsoil erosion and the remediation of the soil, we’re not getting the kind of nutrients in our crops as we did in our parents’ generation, certainly our great grandparents’ generation. For me, since we’re not getting as nutrient-dense of a diet as we did in previous generations, I am a big fan of supplements. I’m also a big fan of supplementation because it’s an easy way, especially if you’re getting high-quality supplements to get a lot of your daily nutrition. Your vitamin D, vitamin A, B complex, E, copper, zinc, manganese and your magnesium.

We go back to Sunwarrior, which is something I’ve been using for a decade and you almost as long, Whitney. I use it because it’s an easy thing for me to take their Lean Meal, or one of my newest favorites is their Beauty Greens and their collagen. You and I have both been enjoying that. You put a scoop of either one of those in your morning smoothie, your oatmeal, your chia pudding or even your pancakes. I’ve made pancakes with the Lean Meal and it’s just an easy way to get that additional supplementation and it’s a no brainer.

It also makes it taste even better. Going back to that coffee smoothie I mentioned, I did a YouTube video using this. It was a coffee smoothie with coffee-flavored boba.

You’re sending me videos teasing me. You’re like, “I wish you were here.” I’m like, “I can’t because we’re social distancing.”

However, I told you that if you came by during the time where you were willing to have coffee whatever your cutoff point is for me, my coffee cutoff points usually around 4:00 based on my schedule. I am addicted to making that coffee smoothie because the Sunwarrior protein has salted caramel flavor in it. Because you’re adding in that protein with all of the other amazing benefits of it for your gut. Can you read off the top of that sheet or the packaging where they share all the benefits? Because if you look at some of these products, it’s unbelievable what you’re getting. My point is that it adds an amazing flavor but in addition to that, you get all of these health benefits.

To me, it’s like looking at its full spectrum nutrition. We talk about NFP, which is our fancy way in the food industry and nutritional industry of saying Nutritional Fact Panel. For all of you who are avid label readers, when you flip it over and look at the nutrition facts and the ingredient label that’s called the NFP, Nutritional Fact Panel. The thing that I always look for, for me, I’m not vegan, keto by any stretch. Although I have been turned on to so much knowledge by Whitney and her amazing book. I do find that eating a higher protein, more nutrient-dense diet feels better for my body. If I look at something like the lean meal that we both have been enjoying in Sunwarrior, it’s 15 grams of protein for two scoops and it’s only 140 calories. Three grams of fat, 0 grams of sugar, which is amazing. You look at the NFP and I’m more interested personally in the micronutrients. The macros are cool, proteins, fats, carbs. I’m always interested in looking at the magnesium, the vitamin B, the riboflavin, the manganese and you look at how balanced it is here.

Deeming something healthy or unhealthy is a dangerous sweeping generalization that people get into. Share on X

Also, probiotics. Doesn’t it say on one of the sides that it has that little diagram where it’s like, “This is good for your gut?”

The one thing that I’m always looking forward to and to make a sweeping generalization about health, I know we said one version of healthy is not appropriate for every person. I do think that all people can benefit from adding more probiotics to their diet. We can make a sweeping generalization that if you have a healthy balance of beneficial flora in your gut, it is going to influence your mental health. We know that 80% to 85% of the serotonin, which is the feel-good neurotransmitter, is manufactured in your gut. It’s not in the brain. One of the big things I love with Sunwarrior is many of their products have probiotics in there. This particular one, the Lean Meal, has soil-based probiotics. It’s two billion CFUs per serving, which I love that.

When you look at their collagen, their Beauty Greens, which I love because I’m trying to look young in my 40s. They have a full spectrum probiotics in here. They’ve got a blend of acidophilus, plantarum, casei, rhamnosus, lactose, salivarius and bifidum. Those are some heavy hitters. To me, it’s not about getting one particular strain of probiotics and the gut health I’ve researched, but making sure you get multiple strains. Some people are like, “I’m going to take lactobacillus, I’m just going to take bifidum.” Those are great. To me, it’s about getting a variety of probiotics in your gut. Much like eating the rainbow diet. I’m a big fan in general of eating as many colors as you can. Greens, reds, blues, purples, because then you’re getting full-spectrum nutrition that way.

I will say that when I eat a diet that is rich in probiotics, whether the probiotics are coming from my food but in most cases, I would say I get my probiotics from something like the Sunwarrior powders or they have probiotic capsules you can take either way. However, I’m getting them in. It’s like putting some armor on my stomach for the times that I do indulge more and because I am sensitive to gluten and I feel like it affects my health in a lot of ways. If I’m going to indulge in gluten, what I’ll usually do is load up on enzyme. I’m taking Sunwarrior enzymes. I will take some gut health thing. I have this interesting one that I’m experimenting with and I forget exactly what it is.

It’s a low FODMAP supplement and it can help with bloating, constipation, some of the unpleasant gut irritability that I tend to have. I was taking some sprouted green powder. Sprouted food can help too. We can talk about that as well for the gut. It makes a big difference. When I’m given the option, I’ll usually get something that’s sprouted. I like to buy sprouted organic tofu instead of plain organic tofu because I feel like it’s easier to digest. What happens is when you are consuming these enzymes, these probiotics and these sprouted foods, these foods that are supporting your digestion. When you do indulge and whenever you decide to “cheat” if you want to call it that, your body is in a better state to receive it. I’ve found that I’ll have less upset stomachs when indulging those foods if I spend the rest of my time eating all of those other great nutrients. It’s like giving me the best of both worlds.

Also, in terms of my weight, which has fluctuated a lot throughout my life and something that I try not to be too preoccupied by. It is something that I still think about a lot. I’ve noticed that my weight doesn’t go to these extreme lengths when I spend the majority of my diet eating as many whole foods that are rich in all of these nutrients or taking some of these supplements as Jason mentioned. That’s part of the reason that I like to sneak in foods.

I was mentioning that Lean Meal, the salted caramel flavor. That makes my coffee taste even better. It turns it into almost like a Frappuccino because I’m blending it with ice and it becomes this wonderful food. I’m getting the coffee that I want, but I’m adding some extra nutrients into it to enhance the flavor and give me even more health benefits. That’s part of my point is going back to what we were saying about healthy food or unprocessed food not tasting good. We have all these associations. If it’s good for us and it’s going to taste horrible. I completely disagree. Jason, don’t you have the Snickerdoodle Lean Meal? Have you tried it yet?

Yes. It’s incredible. It tastes like a Snickerdoodle cookie.

What does it taste like? Is it like cinnamon? What are the flavors of Snickerdoodle?

It’s like malty cinnamon. It gives the smoothie a malty cinnamon flavor. It’s like a malted milkshake. I remember growing up in Detroit, going with my grandmother Rose, who is my original culinary inspiration along with my mom, Susan. We would go to an ice cream parlor in Detroit called Sanders and they had the old school, 1950s linoleum countertop that we would just roll up and sit on the red bar stool. I would get malted milkshakes. That’s like, “This person has been around. He used to go to the ice cream shop and get malted milkshakes.” I have such sweet memories of that and the flavor of this has a reminiscence of that childhood memory.

I will make you that salted caramel coffee smoothie and for the audience, if you’re feeling jealous, it’s a YouTube video. You can watch how to make it yourself. Jason, I think you should do some video content about how to make a malted milkshake with that Snickerdoodle. You have to make it for me because I want it, now you’re talking about it like, “Malted Milkshake.”

We’re going to do a shelter at home shake exchange. We’re getting creative.

I can live vicariously through your words. What would you even put in a malted milkshake? If you were told you had to make it, what would go in it?

To me, having a dense, fatty nondairy milk is essential. I would choose probably for flavor and density, a coconut or oat milk.

Probably oat because the coconut might make it too coconutty.

You want to make sure it’s fatty milk. It’s got to be dense. It can’t be thin milk. I find that something like almond milk is typically too thin. We talk about this in previous episodes about how certain milk is good for barista work and frothing because they’re fattier.

What about macadamia milk like Milkadamia? That could be good.

It could be the boss. You want to make sure you’re doing higher fat milk when you’re doing a malt because you want that density in that mouthfeel. You want it a little bit heavier.

You would have to be careful because I was going to suggest Ripple Pea Protein, which is my all-around favorite milk. Sometimes the pea protein flavor, I would say they’ve done a good job with theirs. I might be used to it by now. I remember when I first tried it, I wasn’t that into it. That’s another benefit of Sunwarrior. They use pea protein, but you can’t taste the pea protein because they are so good at balancing the other flavors in it, especially the salted caramel flavor. Jason, I get excited about plant-based milk. If you want to make it fatty but not have too much of a flavor, which pea protein or coconut milk would lead to and oatmeal because it’s high in carbs. As great as it is, I think that would be nice. If you wanted to go low carb like me, the macadamia nut milk would probably be your best bet all around.

I’m down with that. I would definitely take that and I would blend it with some of this amazing Snickerdoodle flavor Sunwarrior Lean Meal. I would also add a little bit of vanilla extract, and to funk it up, I might add a tiny pinch of cardamom to make it different, but it’s simple. You want to make sure you add ice cubes as well.

All people can benefit from adding more probiotics into their diet. Share on X

With the cardamom. No, take away from the malted flavor like a classic malt drink. I think the vanilla and the Snickerdoodle flavor would probably combine well.

That’s true. I always like to add a hint of something weird where people are like, “What’s that haunting weird thing?” I’m such a rebellious streak in me that I’m like, “Screw tradition. I’m making it my way.”

People love that about you. That makes you a culinary genius is that if you can sneak things in that people wouldn’t normally think about. You have to like cardamom, which I happen to love.

The other thing too, as an aside, people sleep on cinnamon. Cinnamon is one of the best blood sugar regulators in the world. Especially if you get high-quality cinnamon, it has an amazing effect on regulating your blood sugar. For anyone out there who wants to try and tame their blood sugar, cinnamon and Nopal cactus powder. It’s two of the absolute best blood sugar regulators out there.

We forgot about another key ingredient. I’m surprised you didn’t bring this up or maybe I missed you saying it. Jason, what about Maca? Maca is like the ultimate malt flavor.

In my cookbook, Eaternity, I have a Maca Malt Milkshake in there, and it’s boss. You’ve got to be careful because Maca does some things to you. Maca is an adaptogen, which means it has this inherent ability to balance your body’s hormones. I’ve snorted Maca at a party in 2009. There was David Bowie on the radio. It was getting a little rowdy. It was a previous life. I’m proud of it though. You’ve got to experiment. If you take a lot of it, it can ramp up your libido. It has the ability to be nature’s Viagra to a degree. If you start taking Maca, be forewarned, especially if you are quarantined at home without a partner or a lover, you might have to channel that energy somewhere.

One other superfood, Lucuma, does it have a little bit of a malted flavor too?

It does. It has almost a light caramelly undertone. It’s the number one flavor additive for ice creams and frozen desserts in Peru where it’s grown. In Peru, they have Lucuma in a whole bunch of different products down there.

I wanted to go on this tangent about a vegan malted milkshake because I’m dreaming of it. It is a great example of how you can indulge in foods with great health benefits. This is why Jason’s book, Eaternity, is full of things. I remember one of the criticisms that people gave was that the ingredients were too expensive or exotic or something. Is that right, Jason?

 

Yes, on the Amazon reviews. To anyone who’s left an Amazon review, thank you. It has 4.5 out of 5 stars. Some of the lower-starred reviews were like, “He’s using goji berries and he’s using cacao.” I’m like, “You can leave those ingredients out if you want or don’t make that recipe.” I’m not an apologetic culinary artist in the sense that I want to experiment, try new things and share those findings with people. If you want to make something simpler like Puerto Rican beans and rice, mac and cheese, or gluten-free pancakes, I’ve got those simple recipes. I do have some recipes that have more “exotic ingredients” like goji berries, Lucuma, Maca and superfoods because I do believe that adding superfood supplementally have phenomenal health benefits. Why? Because they’re often grown in pristine growing environments. They’re organic, they’re extremely nutrient-dense. Treat them as you would a vitamin. That’s how I look at it. The only complaints that I had were having too many “exotic ingredients” in the book.

People will complain about anything. From my book, the only negative review that I’ve read was someone saying, “It wasn’t keto enough.” In one recipe, the chef that I worked with, Nicole, she says right in the beginning of the recipe that she’s using cane sugar for bread or something because it was going to help it rise. I didn’t do any of these recipes, but it was the alchemy of the way that the sugar was working in the recipe. It’s like kombucha. People get scared when they find out that kombucha is made with all the sugar, but the sugar is feeding the bacteria that creates the kombucha. It’s not necessarily in it at the end and a lot of that sugar is eaten away.

I remember someone jumped to conclusions. That’s a big thing that happens. Going back to the big theme of this episode, which is how we can make many assumptions about foods without understanding how they affect our bodies. This is something that I wish I had known when I was younger and struggling with disordered eating. I did not understand food, and I think a lot of people don’t. Back then, I wanted to lose weight and I felt uncomfortable in my skin and desperate. I would take appetite suppression pills because I thought, “Maybe if I eat less food, I will lose weight,” because that’s what I would hear. Maybe if I exercise more and burn more calories, I will lose weight and sure those things can be true, but they didn’t get me the results that I wanted.

I would eat things like Weight Watchers’ frozen meals because I was marketed and told that if I eat these foods that are low in calories or whatever they are, then I will lose weight. Meanwhile, I’m ingesting tons of sodium and eating lots of processed foods, chemicals. Who knows what else? Not to mention microwaving my food in a plastic container and the health effects of that too. I was ignorant and going on what I would read the magazines, seeing television and get marketed to at the grocery store. I think a lot of people eat that way and don’t feel they went the way that they want. That can lead to extreme things like getting surgery to lose weight. People that stapled their stomachs or one of our friends took some pill or some extreme weight loss technique through a doctor so that he would want to eat less food.

He did lose weight from it but it’s not a permanent thing in many cases. Unless you get your stomach stapled or something. There are long-term health effects of that too. A lot of the reason that people restrict their eating is mainly out of vanity. It’s a superficial reason. I’m saying this because I did that myself, unless you’re on the other extreme where you’re eating for longevity, which is another percentage of the population. My guess is that most people when they’re trying to control the way that they eat, they’re doing that because of weight. Would you say so, Jason? I feel health is like the second reason.

There’s a layer deeper to all this and to go back to the psychology of eating, which I’m a huge fan of understanding and researching. I’ve thought about going and getting my Master’s in Psychology so that I can have a deeper certification. I haven’t said this to you, Whitney or anybody, but I’ve thought about it sometimes, so I can combine the two worlds of the nutrition and the food that I’ve been studying for so long and have a deeper understanding of psychology. If I may make a sweeping observation here, I think that we’ve made an association that if we attain a certain body type, shape, look or aesthetic, then that will increase our desirability and our sex appeal. Therefore, if we lose weight and therefore increase our desirability and sex appeal, that will make us more desirable to the opposite sex.

For me, if I can distill it down, whether or not for me as a man that’s having six-pack abs, big muscles and having this standard of masculinity. For a woman in American society, an hourglass figure with a big butt, toned legs, big boobs and toned arms. Whatever these minutiae of beauty standards we have as men and women, I think ultimately we want to be loved. Because if I attain this standard of beauty and desirability, that will make me more attract attractive to the opposite sex, then I can find a partner and I’ll be loved and desired. To me at the core of it, it’s a cry to be loved, wanted, and accepted. It’s not about the shape, it’s about what the shape means in terms of our lovability and desirability as people.

I think it’s tough because we’re working against in a lot of ways a lot of cultural pressure and misconceptions. A part of the reason that we’re both driven to do our work is that for me, looking back on the struggles that I had growing up with food, struggling with disordered eating and the extremes at which I was willing to go to try to lose weight and then becoming older. Eating a plant-based diet helps with a lot of the emotional side of it because I felt like I did have some restrictions if you want to call them that, but I had new reasons for those choices. Choosing to eat plants versus animal products became much more about my body shape and the way it looked.

It became about my health and longevity. It became about the planet. It became about animals. I was able to move through a lot of the more superficial reasons that I was eating. I started to feel more empowered and positive about food. Also when I first went vegan, I was eating any vegan food that I wanted. I was eating a lot of vegan junk food. I was eating vegan cheeses, pizzas, packaged foods and microwaveable food. As long as it was vegan, I was eating it and that was leading me not to feel my best. Eventually, the weight started to come back on. I had lost some weight at the beginning.

Cinnamon is one of the best blood sugar regulators in the world. Share on X

Over the years, it started to come on because I was eating a lot of that processed food. The next phase for me was learning more about how to eat more unprocessed foods. Around the time that Jason and I started to get to know each other well, I was coming out of eating the 80/10/10 diet. I experimented with that for a few months. While that diet wasn’t something that I wanted to do long-term, it didn’t feel sustainable for me and my lifestyle, my food preferences. What I did learn from that way of eating was how great I felt on simple foods and how your palate changes. Earlier in this episode, I mentioned how this idea that juice cleanses are depriving, restricting, and hurting your body. How I disagree because juice cleanses, detoxes and any time that I’ve taken a break from eating a lot of foods, it has helped me appreciate simpler foods.

The one big benefit of 80/10/10 for me is I was eating a lot of mono meals. I would sit down and eat watermelon and that would be a whole meal for me. Also, mango or any of these foods that suddenly tasted vibrant, rich, and exciting. A lot of the times we’re not able to fully appreciate the foods like that because we’ve been eating so much processed foods or our taste buds change, our gut changes and we become addicted to foods. To me, the simpler I eat, the often the better that I feel. I tend to like the way my body looks a lot more and it has all these positive ripple effects. It’s a big journey and when we’re all learning something about ourselves. Ultimately, we have to experiment for ourselves, be open, and try not to be too concerned with what the rest of people are doing around us. We get fearful of what other people think. What’s the best way to do it? What’s the right way to do it? What does society say? What does the book, the media and all of this pressure say? We have to do our best to step away from that and tune into what feels good for us and experiment, be willing to go to some extremes. Because sometimes when you go to those extremes, you learn a lot about what you want and what you don’t want.

Going back to awareness, which is a massive topic of this show, is developing, growing and expanding our awareness. To me, when I started to realize that I had a sugar addiction a few years ago, it was creating an association through awareness that when I would start to feel stressed, anxious, lonely, emotionally-despondent, or depressed. We’ve talked at length about my journey with clinical depression in the past years on the show, I realized that for me there was a sense of trying to substitute the emotional comfort I wanted, the connection I wanted. The level of crying in someone’s arms, expressing my truth and being witnessed in that way with my depression and my anxiety that I was using sugary foods as a substitute for those emotions and connections that I desperately wanted.

It was because I had created this association psychologically that if I ask to be witnessed in my depression, anxiety, asked to be held, or if I were to be vulnerable enough to show people what was going on, I’d be perceived as weak. Rather than risking being vulnerable and perceived as weak, I would shove ice cream, chocolate, and cookies down in my face. I kept doing this until I realized that if I asked myself the question, what is it that I need? It wasn’t six cookies. It wasn’t a pint of ice cream. It wasn’t an entire chocolate bar in one sitting. It was that I did need to cry or call up a friend and say, “I’m depressed and scared. Can you hold space for me? Can we have a conversation?”

Those are the things I needed on an emotional level, but it wasn’t until I aligned with that level of awareness that I could stop eating so much damn sugar in one sitting and start to give myself emotionally and psychologically what I needed. That took a lot of time for me to create that association between my sugar bingeing and the fact that I was depriving myself emotionally of what I needed. I think for a lot of people out there, whatever your struggle is, if you have a struggle, keeping a food journal of the emotions you’re feeling when you’re eating is a good way to start to make those connections for yourself.

Keeping a food journal in your kitchen, maybe in a drawer, and every time you eat a meal. “How did I feel before I started eating? How did I feel after?” I think a lot of times, we’ll find that when we reach for that “comfort food,” that we feel appeased for a while. We feel like maybe the sugar hits our brain and we feel comforted. We feel a little bit better. For me, my experience, more often than not 1 hour or 2 hours later, I’m back to feeling depressed. I’m back to feeling anxious. It doesn’t work in the long run. Keeping a food journal helps to grow that awareness of the emotional and psychological associations that you feel before and after a meal.

I also feel there’s nothing wrong with finding happiness from food. One of the articles about the subject matter, one of the authors was saying, “It’s helpful to see a cheat meal as a reward, as a way to add variety to your diet occasionally. It’s your version of indulgence.” Another article said, “Ultimately, we’re all responsible for our own happiness. If a little extra sauce and vegan cheese are what your happiness depends on at the moment, then so be it.” To Jason’s point, I think ultimately our happiness is not dependent on foods. Our happiness is generally something else.

If at that moment you want to take a little shortcut, if you want to take the path of least resistance and indulge in something because that feels like it’s going to make you happy, then there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. I think looking at food as right and wrong in general is a bit odd. Food is about survival. We can use that for happiness and we can use that for longevity and increase how we feel and to shape how we look. We all have our different reasons for eating what we’re eating at that moment. It’s important not to judge ourselves and other people because we don’t know exactly what they’re going through.

If you judge someone for eating too strictly, you don’t know if they’re struggling with an eating disorder. If you criticize and judge them, it can trigger them in a negative way because there are many emotions tied into that. The opposite could be true too. We judge people for their body shapes, we see overweight people eating and we think if only they would stop eating that food, maybe they would lose weight. First of all, that might not even be true. We make many judgments based on what somebody looks and how they eat. Food does play a big role in how we look, but it’s not always super simple. We don’t know how hard somebody’s trying and we don’t know what if they’re having their cheat meal? What if the rest of their meals are completely different, but you happen to see them eating a certain way in one moment? We can’t make any assumption about that because we don’t know somebody’s history.

There's nothing wrong with finding happiness from food. Share on X

I think it’s also equally important to be kind to yourself. If you want to indulge, if you want to see food as a reward, if you want to tie food to your happiness, it’s okay to do that. To Jason’s point, we also have to pay attention to how often we’re doing that. If we’re using food as a crutch, maybe we can shift things a little bit and find other sources of happiness, whether it’s laughter or taking a walk outside, spending time with friends, being with a companion animal. There are many other ways to feel happy and sometimes we eat food out of boredom. Maybe we are dehydrated and we need to drink a glass of water or maybe we need to distract ourselves.

I battled a lot with this during the stay-at-home order where I felt bored at times. It’s hard even to admit that because there’s so much judgment around feeling boredom. I’ll be honest, sometimes I feel bored. Sometimes I feel antsy. Sometimes staying at home, there’s only so much I want to do on my computer and I’m bored of being in front of my computer. Eating food sounds a lot more interesting than staring at my screen. There are many emotional reasons why we choose to eat. If we can remove that judgment and that fear around the long-term impacts. The truth is I’ve gone through a lot of periods of indulgence and generally indulging a lot over the course of a month or two has not made that big of an impact on my body.

My body is usually impacted when I eat a certain way for months at a time, if not a year. It creeps up a lot slower than we are led to believe. We have this fear that if we eat a donut, that we’re going to gain a pound from it immediately. That’s not true. That’s not how it works for most bodies. There’s a lot of advanced things that are happening in our body when we eat a donut from all the carbohydrates that are circling through our cells or our bloodstreams. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to ruin you because you have that one indulgence.

I’ve certainly learned during quarantine that I’ve weighed myself a number of times to see what’s happening as a way to track my body. I’ve been surprised that I’ve barely gained weight with all the indulgence that I’ve done. I will say that even if I’m not gaining weight, it has impacted things like my sleep, my mood, my energy, and my digestion. Those things I will notice a difference after sometimes one meal can throw me off a lot. That’s a long-winded answer to say that we have to keep ourselves balanced, whatever that means to us and whatever’s important to us.

I want to comment too, Whitney, on the proverbial donut versus our thoughts about eating the donut. There’s the actual consumption of the thing and then there’s the thoughts and associations that we have with eating the thing. In my book, Eaternity, there’s an interesting part and I believe the “Eat for Weight Loss” section. They did a study years ago with Japanese women where they looked at their psychological associations with food and the amount of cortisol, which is one of the primary stress hormones that our body releases when we are stressed, anxious, or in fight or flight. When we’re feeling guilt, stress, and anxiety or judging ourselves for our food choices, it’s possible that the cortisol levels can spike in our body. They notice that there was a corollary between consistently elevated levels of cortisol and retaining weight with these women.

The point I want to make here is to own your choices. If you’re going to have the glazed donut, the slice of chocolate cake, the salted caramel Frappuccino, have it and feel as good as you can about owning that choice. The agency you have was saying, “I’m doing this and I’m going to enjoy and indulge the hell out of this thing.” First of all, it’s going to be psychologically healthier for you. It’s going to be hormonally healthier for you because when you have the guilt, the stress, and the judgment, the cortisol goes up. With this research and other research that I’ve referenced in the book, there is an association between cortisol and weight gain. If you own the damn choice and enjoy the cake, the Frappuccino, the donut, the cookie, close your eyes, bask at the moment and appreciate on a sensual level the choice you’re making, that is much healthier physically and psychologically than guilting and shaming yourself after you’ve eaten it.

I am super curious about what the audience has to think about all of this and I sometimes wish that we were on stage or in a roundtable discussion where we could ask other people in the audience for their live feedback. What you can do is go to our website, Wellevatr.com, and there is a comment section so you can share your thoughts right there. You can also reach out to us on social media. We’re @Wellevatr on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok even, although we don’t post many videos, but maybe we will in the future. We love hearing from you privately or publicly. If you want to comment on a post, you want to comment on a story that ultimately goes into our direct message box on Instagram or Facebook, which is another place you can reach us.

You can also email us. We simply want to hear from you in whichever method is most comfortable and easy for you. Having you part of the conversation is meaningful. Speaking of which, you can get more involved with the show and our work by supporting us on Patreon. That is at Patreon.com/wellevatr. If you look up, This Might Get Uncomfortable, you will find our Patreon. For a little bit of financial support every month, you get to become part of our inner circle. You get little perks. You get to offer suggestions and upcoming episodes. Sometimes you get episodes before they’re released. We try to add a number of things in there and in exchange we use those funds to pay the bills.

We’ve got a number of finances involved and we’re also trying to expand into more equipment, investing in different things that can make this show better and reach more people. There’s a lot that we’d love to do and your financial support is helpful for us. Speaking of financial support, we want to give a big shout out and thank you to our amazing sponsors, Sunwarrior who we mentioned. You can learn more about them and get a discount on our website, Wellevatr.com. We talked about their amazing products. We talked about their Salted Caramel and Snickerdoodle Lean Meals. Jason talked about their Beauty Greens and Collagen Powders. They make a lot of amazing products, not to mention their Digestive Enzymes that I use, their Probiotics. They have so much. We adore them and we are grateful for their support!

 

On that note, I do want to give a small plug to the course that I did with Commune. If you dear readers are interested in learning more about my perspectives on the psychology of eating and how it affects our mood and brain chemistry. Good Mood Food is my ten-day course that I did with our dear friends at Commune. If you want to dig into more recipes and nutritional content, ways that you can optimize your mood, your brain health, and your emotional relationship to your food choices. We always love to empower you with as many resources beyond the show as possible.

If you are research junkies and life experimentalists like Whitney and me, you can join us on this journey of knowing thyself. We talk so much about self-awareness and conscientious experimentation. All of the books, courses, products, and supplements are designed and recommend it to you so you can continue on this journey of optimizing your wellbeing mentally, physically and psychologically. With that, we adore you. We appreciate your support and your subscribership. We will see you soon with another episode.

 

Important Links

*We use affiliate links in our show notes. This means we receive a small sales commission if you purchase an item based on our recommendation.

• Adopt a Shelter Pet Day: Raising Awareness About Adoption for the Well-Being of Animals – Previous episode
• Eaternity
• DaysOfTheYear.com
• Eat What You Want Day
• Why Every Day Should Be Eat What You Want Day – Inc.com article
• Shouldn’t Every Day Be Eat What You Want Day? – Bustle.com article
• Ultimate Superfoods
• Natural Products Expo
• Ripple Pea Protein
• Sunwarrior
• Sunwarrior Lean Meal
• The Vegan Ketogenic Diet Cookbook
• @Wellevatr – Instagram
• Twitter – Wellevatr
• Facebook – Wellevatr
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• TikTok – Wellevatr
• Patreon.com/wellevatr
• Good Mood Food online course
• Commune

 

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