Glucose Revolution Founder: Glucose Goddess – Balanced Eating, Motherhood, Mental Resilience, & Fuelling Your Ambition

21:15The Gstaad Guy:EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit ebglis.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Very cool. Well, I know that now you package all this information in a very fun and easy to digest way. But I know that initially your driver to get into this world actually came from an unfortunate circumstance.

21:52The Gstaad Guy:You had a back injury when you were 19 years old. Can you tell us more about how that got you started? Yeah, jump started. How this jump started you? Well, so I broke my back jumping off a waterfall. Bad idea. Don't jump off a waterfall. I didn't even touch, you know, hit any rocks or anything. It was just the water on my tailbone. One of my vertebrae went poof into 13 pieces. So I had to have intense surgery. I was pretty young, so physically I healed quite fast. But then I started developing a lot of mental health issues. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, depersonalization, which is an awful feeling of when you look in the mirror, you don't recognize yourself.

22:32It's really scary. And so out of this very dark phase came a clear message, which was that I needed to fix myself and my brain. That became my number one priority. And over the years, you know, I studied biochemistry to try to understand the body. I worked in genetics to try to understand genetics. And then I came across glucose sort of randomly by putting on a glucose monitor in a pilot study that was happening at the company I was at. And I didn't think anything would come of it, but it changed my life because I saw that the days where I had big glucose spikes, I had more panic attacks, more depersonalization.

23:09And the days where my glucose levels were steady, I felt better. so that was the the beginning that was the first clue and I developed a deep passion for the subject first to heal myself and I never thought that I would create an Instagram account I never thought I would write books I never thought this would be my job it random it happened sort of randomly despite me I started putting this information on Instagram and I I was just obsessed with the topic I thought it was so interesting and so cool. And that obsession really drove me. And I kept getting feedback that it was helping other people and that it was interesting.

23:44And I found this passion for explaining complex science. And I just kept pulling that thread and I wanted to do more and more about it. And I had the opportunity to write a book, etc. So now it's my full-time job. But it happened. I never planned it.

24:02The Gstaad Guy:Amazing. and that was a seven-year journey yes pretty much 2019 broke my back 20 no sorry 2011 broke my back 2019 started in my instagram account so i would say you know almost a decade before i started yeah it was a long time a lot of a lot of suffering it was very very dark but today i'm so grateful that i came out of it people often say like oh aren't you grateful that you broke your back and you went to that because now you're here i'm like no actually i would have preferred to not go through that yeah i prefer but that hadn't happened but it's it's really nice to have been able to transform that into something that's useful for people yeah that's very cool yeah thank you and would you say that today you're social media first yes because that's where the community started um that's i think that's the hardest medium it's it's easy to write a book in the sense it's easier to write a book because you have more pages making a single post that people are going to download or you know understand in one or two seconds that actually delivers a message i think that's the hardest the constraint of the format i think is also what made me a very good science translator do you think you're a social media first yeah absolutely yeah like through and through would you ever write a book is it something you're interested in yeah i'd like to i'd like to write a fun book i think people read less and less generally so i wouldn't necessarily place a bet on the category yeah probably bet against it if i could um but i think like a fun coffee table book where you could jump to any page when you have a friend over and have a laugh i think there's still a market for that nice of course there's still a market for normal books but i don't think there's a market for normal books written by the stad guy i think there's a market for funny books written by this slide.

25:53The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, yeah. So that's... It's a great exercise. It's really amazing. And for somebody, you know, I think, I mean, I wouldn't want to speak for you, but I think you're somebody like me who loves the visual aspect of things and you're obsessed with like how things look and the design, etc. It's really incredible to write something and then to see those words come alive in a book format. It's incredible. It's really, really cool. So as well as being a scientist, researcher, author, and social media personality, you're also a founder. Yeah. of the anti-spike formula? Well, I'm the founder of Glucose Goddess, and one of our products is anti-spike, but we have lots of other stuff going on.

26:30The Gstaad Guy:Can you tell us more about the other stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, anti-spike is my flagship product, but we also sell the Recipe Club, which is an amazing, amazing community of people who get my recipes every month. So that's been going on for almost three years, and it's all digital, and it's really wonderful. That was our first product, actually. Anti-Spike is the second big one. And Protein Prodigy, which is my third product, has just come out also. So it's a protein powder for people who want to put protein in their coffee and for it to not be disgusting. So it took me two years to find the right powder.

27:07And I'm obsessed with the products. I'm not trying to make a ton. I'm not trying to, like, have dozens of products. I'm trying to make very excellent single things that solve a particular use case. And I love this aspect of my job as well. It's really, really interesting.

27:21The Gstaad Guy:it's very cool so how do you balance the whole thing being a mother as well and a wife um i think i'm blessed with a brain that can multitask and that remembers a lot of stuff so i'm able to have lots of threads open in my brain at all times and it kind of works uh how do i balance it i don't know i just i just kind of do it i guess and i have an amazing team and i think that's the biggest that's been one of the biggest levers of the success of what we're trying to do is working with other people who are obsessed, who understand the mission, who are super, super good at what they do. And that's been able to really increase the productivity and increase the output significantly.

28:05So for example, I have somebody on my team now, Elisa, who does a lot of scientific research that I used to do. So we work really closely together on that. And for every part of my business and of what I'm doing, whether it's books or it's my YouTube show or it's a new product or it's a new science newsletter, I now have specialists inside the team that I work with on these topics. And at the beginning, it was just me. And so now having the opportunity to grow and have more people join. And it's all bootstrapped, right? I never raised any money. It was all bootstrapped from the beginning based on the income from the books.

28:41I feel super grateful for that. It's really, really nice.

28:45The Gstaad Guy:What I love about what you do on social media, particularly with the research, is that thing we spoke about briefly of making it more digestible. I think knowledge and the process of learning something used to be very intimidating, like especially growing up. When I think of learning something new, you'd imagine a classroom or you'd imagine scary looking books. Or going to the library. Going to the library, speaking to an angry teacher who didn't want to speak to you. This is always a horribly intimidating process. And then YouTube came in and slightly... Changed the game. Changed the game slowly.

29:18The Gstaad Guy:things like Khan Academy Khan Academy I was going to say Khan Academy changed my algebra trajectory I know you're a mathematician actually so that's a nice I studied math I didn't but I used Khan Academy just to get by and I said recently I was on a panel at the Business of Fashion something that I had discussed with the CEO of Business of Fashion Imran and it's people are getting smarter and products are getting dumber. Yes. And the people are getting smarter part is really a note on consumers, just becoming more knowledgeable about what they're consuming. And I think for the first time in history, people are actually accidentally becoming more knowledgeable because back in the day you had to make a decision to go to a library, pick up a certain book and read a certain book.

30:14The Gstaad Guy:But now you can be on your toilet and scrolling. I think about that a lot, actually. That's where people read my content. No, they're just on the toilet scrolling. And the algorithm feeds them a glucose goddess post, which they would have otherwise had to very intentionally go to a library and learn something. And now, or maybe not even. I think it wasn't even published at the time. And now it goes to them and they learn more. They become more discerned. And consumers have those desires. I think where the lag is, is something you touched on briefly of the authority and the establishments actually haven't kept up with the consumer knowledge and demands, which actually leads to what I was saying about dumb products.

31:01I think the businesses haven't actually realized just how knowledgeable their consumers are getting. And they still try to say, oh, you know, we'll let us slide.

31:14The Gstaad Guy:And let's cut some corners here and there. And I think this is across every industry. So for the audience listening today that are founders or restaurants, owners, chefs, Yes. Anything consumer-facing where the knowledge of their consumers will impact their business, if not today, but tomorrow. What do you think they can be doing better as the people who have some degree of authority and they're actually competing in a race against those who are acquiring more and more knowledge thanks to people like you? Well, something that comes to mind as you talk about this is that, yes, you acquire more and more knowledge on the Internet these days, but there's also a lot of noise.

31:59And there's a lot of people screaming at you from your Instagram app saying nonsense. That's true. So it's not as if you open Instagram and everything there is peer-reviewed, super solid, backed science. Like, actually, you're getting a fire hose of random data and random opinions. So, yes, consumers are becoming more knowledgeable, but I think also more overwhelmed. And I'm not sure the education that you find on the internet is always good. In fact, I know for a fact it's not. So I think consumers, I mean, there's more information online. So people, and people trust what they see on the internet.

32:36So we do also have an issue here where people are being influenced, potentially towards the wrong pieces of knowledge. So for example, in my field, right, in health, you have a lot of people who are just trying to do clicks on their Instagram Reel. So who are fear-mongering, talking about you should never eat this, you can never do this, you're going to die if you do this, all this kind of stuff to get clicks. And it actually works and people watch that. And so then people believe the wrong stuff. So I don't have a solution to this issue. I would just say like public service announcement. If somebody on the internet is telling you something about your health and is making you feel scared, they're not doing it out of the kindness of their heart to make you feel better.

33:17They're probably doing it for clicks. So the fear-mongering stuff, we need to cut through it. Then for people who are on the forefront, as you mentioned, directly connected to consumers and trying to educate and teach, I would say just do more. I think there's a sense of, oh, Instagram is already saturated. I'm never going to find a place. I'm never going to be able to do anything. It's not going to have an impact. People have always felt that way. Like when I started my Instagram, there was already people talking about glucose on Instagram. So I thought, I'm never going to have a voice. never gonna find my place well it's not true you can there's always space and today as you know meta always talks about this too people are just consuming very few people are creating do you have a big you have like a you have a niche of creators and then you have just people looking at the reels and sharing the reels so if you have even the smallest inclination that you want to communicate something go for it i know it's hard and it's terrifying but we need more people making more content how did you start like did you ever feel like you wouldn't have a voice do you ever feel like it was going to be hard to actually make a name for yourself like what was that process

34:27The Gstaad Guy:i had that fear in the podcasting world to be honest on the social media i didn't feel like there was anything close to start when i started to be honest so i always felt like okay there's a big niche here because also i was video first yeah and i was instagram only and at the time no one was video first what year was this this was 2019 yeah instagram didn't even have reels or a good feature for in feed video it was something called igtv which was like competing with youtube yeah so these wide format 60 second plus movies and i uh i just felt like i was in a unique place so i was fine on instagram you were like i'm gonna do great i'm gonna do great on the podcast world I was like oh there's so many people with podcasts why should I start my own podcast so why did you a friend of mine who's also my agent her name is Shelby she said it's just a medium yeah it's not a product yeah and because it's just a medium there can never be too many by definition it's just a way of expression so but that's shifted because podcasts used to be more like products and now it's just another it's another channel 100 % yeah It's like saying, oh, I shouldn't start an Instagram account because there's too many Instagram accounts already.

35:42It doesn't matter. Yeah.

35:43The Gstaad Guy:Exactly. Just go for it. It's just a vertical now. It's just a content. Exactly. It's a way to share a message. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. I want to go back to that authority.

36:24The Gstaad Guy:What do you think people who serve food versus the people who are ordering food can do better for their customers? Are you talking about restaurants or industrials? Both. Both. I think restaurants have less of an issue because when you go to a restaurant, you're not getting a marketing message with each of the dishes that are served. You get a menu, right? But you don't get like somebody trying to emotionally hook you. When it comes to food in supermarkets, every packaging is competing for your attention. You're almost in like an Instagram landscape of just food. And so every package is trying to be an Instagram post, scaring you, exciting you, cholesterol free, gluten free, good for your heart, vegan, made with real fruit, low calorie.

37:11And you're like, what's going on? So I'm not sure that the people making the foods are going to be able to change the game very drastically because they need to sell their products, right? They have shareholders to answer to, so it's a bit complicated. I think we need consumers to be slightly more educated that when you have a health halo or something screaming a marketing message at you on a packaging, it's probably because it's trying to hide something. But listen, if I had a magic wand and I could get the entire food industry to do something, I would cut by 50 % all the sugars in various categories.

37:47For example, in breakfast cereal, in dairy. The issue we have is that even if one brand wants to do better and reduce the amount of sugar, consumers will just then jump to the other brand that still has more sugar. Because people like sugary foods. So we have a bit of a push and pull here. But if I had a magic wand, I would just say across the entire supermarket, everybody has to cut sugar by 50%. That would change everything. And then in terms of how they market the food, I would love for us to have approved marketing messages and then some that we're not allowed to put on a packaging because they're deeply trying to mislead people.

38:25So, for example, if you have, I don't know, like a fruit smoothie and it says cholesterol-free on the package, if you're like me and you understand food and molecules, you would say obviously it's cholesterol-free because cholesterol is only in animal foods. But to a consumer that is simply trying to buy something healthy for her kids and, you know, is just genuinely concerned about her kids' health, if she sees cholesterol-free on the packaging, She might think, oh, I guess that means it's good, right? There's just so much manipulation going on on these packaging. I mean, listen, if I had another magic wand, I would remove all these health halos that you have on packaging.

39:05You would not be able to say any of these things. And then it would put a bit more pressure on the consumer to understand what foods they want to buy and understand how molecules work. But you can't, you know, it's not just like a, it's not a single, everything has to work together. People need to have better information about food. That starts in schools. That starts with doctors having leaflets in their offices that educate people about what's protein, what's fat, what's fiber, what's glucose, et cetera. And then with the industrial food complex to also just blanket, be able to reduce the amount of unhealthy stuff they put in their products.

39:44and then I also think we need better public health campaigns we need to make prevention more sexy so in France we had this thing which was five fruit and veg per day that was like the the guideline and it was trying to make people healthier the problem is then food manufacturers making for example fruit smoothies said hey this is three of your five a day so again you have a mom who's just trying to make sure her eight-year-old kid is healthy buying this thinking oh the government said you know five fruit and veg per day this is three a day perfect what she doesn't know is that there's as much sugar in there as in a can of coke so we need better public health initiatives that cannot be abused and that are a bit more sexy because i think prevention has a big marketing issue it's not sexy so people don't want to do it if i tell you dude just like you know eat better exercise more it's going to be really good for your future health it goes through one ear not the other you're like okay yeah sure jesse whatever haha if i tell you at your next meal, have your veggies before the rest of your food.

40:45You'll remember that. You'll want to do it and you'll actually be able to sustain it.

40:49The Gstaad Guy:Specific. It's specific. It's easy and it sounds fun and it sounds doable. A very generic, even the five fruit and veg per day comes from a good intention but it's still a bit overwhelming. I'm like, well, if I eat zero, I have to go to five. Like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that. So, so many things to do. So many things to do. And a lot of people are doing great work and we need more of that. And I have limitless energy and passion to try to make a change on many levels of this humongous issue. Are there any countries or governments that you've seen do a good job in this category? There have been a lot of interesting initiatives.

41:26For example, in Mexico, they now put warning labels on sugary beverages, almost the same ones as you see on a packet of cigarettes. and what's been going on is that yeah so in a can of coke you see like very high in sugar and it's this black and white thing and it looks super scary and what's been interesting about this initiative is that it hasn't actually stopped adults from buying the products but now children who see their parents drinking or eating that are like dad mom don't eat that it's bad for you so everybody's trying different things um you know in the u.s we had all the move more movement but that was also hiding the fact that movement does not erase a poor diet.

42:07It's complicated. I don't think a single country is doing great. I think everybody is trying in different ways and I think we have to learn from each other and just keep going and keep advancing.

42:17The Gstaad Guy:Speaking of Coca-Cola, I see people ordering more regular Cokes than Diet and Zeros recently because they try to say, actually, it's healthier because the chemicals in the Zero are terrible for you. Yeah. They're not good for you, but they're less bad for you than 30 grams of sugar in the real Coke. It's, you know, a spartame is not good for you. A diet Coke is not good for you. But it's less bad. That's the problem. That's the problem. And people want to say, well, sugar is natural. It's not true, you know, like, listen, tobacco is natural. It doesn't mean it's good for you. So it's complicated.

42:59The best thing to do, no Coke, no Diet Coke, water. But that's less fun.

43:05The Gstaad Guy:I love water. Yeah, me too. But if you're used to drinking that food and that sweet drink, it's difficult to get rid of it. This podcast is brought to you by Pubelle by The Stade Guy, bringing you charms hand-painted with enamel on 925 sterling silver, allowing you to express all the things you love and all the things you might question. from reaver bateaux to baggammon boards and caviar tins to paddle rackets, there is a poubelle charm or completed set for everyone in The Know. Thank you so much for watching and enjoy the podcast. Speaking of quick hacks, my dear friend Constantine, who's off camera today, but very close by, loves leftover rice more than fresh rice.

43:55The Gstaad Guy:even the fresh rice tastes better. He tells me leftover rice is healthier. He is correct. He is correct. Yeah, so when you cook rice and then you put it in the fridge to cool down, some of the starch in the rice does this crazy thing. It basically turns into fiber. Wow. And then when you eat the rice, that's been cool, and then you can reheat it however you like. You therefore have a smaller glucose spike for the same exact rice. And you don't feel the difference. It tastes the same, but it is better for you. Okay. Now, you don't have to do this every time. Like, you can eat rice without cooling it down first.

44:35It's not a big deal. There's other ways you can reduce a spike of rice. For example, by having it with protein or veggies first. But this is a very, very cool feature of starch. It also works with potatoes, with pasta, with all starches. With bread.

44:48The Gstaad Guy:Leftover. Cool it down. Cool down, yeah. Make it cold and then bring it back up to hot before you eat it. That's very cool. Yeah. I'll try that. Another thing that makes me feel really good is actually if I skip breakfast and lunch, I feel hungry, and I'll have this acidic breath, most likely. I've had a coffee with it as well, so it's not ideal, but my energy is through the roof. I am a man. You are a man. I've heard that men have a different biological response to fasting than women do. Yes. Truth? Truth. And a lot of the studies that had been done on intermittent fasting or on windows during which you eat throughout the day have been done on men and have shown a lot of interesting benefits.

45:41In women, so a lot of women have taken on the trend of, for example, skipping breakfast or just eating in smaller windows throughout the day. The data is not nearly as good and it turns out it can actually stress your body a little bit, especially for women who are pre-menopause. So women of childbearing age who still have their periods, intermittent fasting can be a stressor on your system. After the menopause, it seems to be different. You can actually fast with less stress on your body. And so there's a classic case of a 35-year-old female who does intermittent fasting, who does Barry's Bootcamp five times a week, who does sauna, cold plunge.

46:21She drinks coffee. She has a stressful job she doesn't sleep as much as you she would like to sleep etc that creates a huge amount of stress on the female system and you might see things like the period disappears or you know pcos or problems with the hormonal balance so as females we have to understand that our body is not as good as handling this kind of stress as a male body it's just biology we need more food more often. It's just the case. So if intermittent fasting works for you, that's fine. If you are having symptoms or you feel like your body is a bit out of balance and you recognize yourself in that little bouquet of stressors that I just said, maybe taking away one of them could help.

47:05And also it's important to remember, you don't need to intermittent fast to be healthy. You don't. In the studies that I've done on animals, they find that fasting is most beneficial when you restrict the number of calories in an animal who had an unhealthy diet. which makes sense, right? If you eat in an unhealthy way, eating less often the unhealthy food is going to be beneficial. If you have a healthy diet, the fasting doesn't do much to, for example, lifespan. So it's not necessary. It was an amazing trend. And there are things we did learn from it, which is that you don't need to eat six times a day.

47:35Three meals is perfect, but going from three meals to one is just not necessary. So do what fits you in your life, but don't take it as a must-have for a healthy body and brain. If it works for you, perfect.

47:47The Gstaad Guy:What are some nice-to-haves for men and some nice-to-haves for women? A lot of the glucose hacks, I mean, I would say most of the glucose hacks work for everybody. All the glucose hacks work for everybody because males and females have glucose levels and spikes in both males and females' bodies lead to consequences. So if I was to run through the hacks, the most important ones, savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. So go for the omelets and the proteins. eating sugar at the end of your meal so your mom was correct if you're going to have the oreos have them after a full meal not on an empty stomach shout out to your mom again um and then veggies first is wonderful uh doing a meal that's going to be a larger meal like for example at dinner having a big plate of veggies at the beginning of a meal is super good moving after eating very easy you don't have to go to the gym you can walk around the block you can clean your apartment You can dance to a few songs.

48:43Move after eating to help your body soak up some of the glucose from that meal. Vinegar is a good hack if you ever want to use it. And then when it comes to, you know, females specifically, there's one thing that's helped me a lot. And actually men can benefit from it too. It's supplementing with omega-3s. So today we have an out-of-balance omega index in our bodies. Omega-3s come from fish. Omega-6s come from processed foods, processed oils. and that balance actually dictates the amount of inflammation in your body and so today we're all very inflamed because we have more omega-6s than omega-3s so supplementing with omega-3s DHA specifically is super helpful especially for women who want to have a baby because during pregnancy again that's another hack in my book nine months that count forever you transfer a lot of omega-3s to your child and if you don't have enough you're not going to be able to transfer as much as you would like to.

49:35So I take a gram and a half of omega-3s every single day as a supplement. It's made a big difference in my gut, my inflammation, my skin, my nails, my hair. It's great.

49:46The Gstaad Guy:That's beautiful. I know that you're doing a lot of things for work and you're also a very cool mom. Thanks. I'd love to know more about that balance. I know you're very grateful for it, which you shared. But I'd love to know what that's like to make a decision like that to become a mom while you also are a mom of the glucose goddess empire. I never thought I would want kids. I had this idea when I was younger, oh I'm going to get married and have kids one day. But then in my 20s I didn't feel the drive at all. And up until three years ago I didn't really feel the drive and then I just sat down for a second I said, okay, fast forward to when I'm 60 or 70.

50:35Do I think having a family would be important to me if I think about my future self? And the answer was 100 % yes. And so that's when I made the decision to try to have a baby. It was a complicated journey. I had a miscarriage at three months the first time, a silent miscarriage. So I didn't know anything had gone wrong. I found out at the ultrasound it was super traumatic. and I don't know I just never really felt like having a child was going to slow me down I didn't have that belief ingrained in me I knew it was going to be a lot of work and it's been more work than I ever thought it would be but I didn't have that fear I knew that if I prioritize things I would be able to continue working I didn't know to what extent it would make me more productive which it has but it never felt like such a compromise i would say i felt like maybe i had already compromised so much to build my company and to build what i'm doing that it didn't feel like it was going to be a big extra sacrifice you know the obsession of of building glucose goddess over the past um seven years now i haven't had a day off in seven years and specifically when i when i go on vacation usually something really intense happens that i have to manage.

51:52So I was already in a state of such deep focus, such obsession, such all-encompassing work that I just knew I was going to find a way to keep it up. I also have a super supportive Mr. Glucose, who takes care of our baby glucose a lot. And I... I love these nicknames.

52:15The Gstaad Guy:They're too good. I haven't said anybody's names. So it's Mr. Glucose and Baby Glucose. or glucose junior glucose junior yeah so I'm not alone and my mom is present you know I have the great chance to be able to afford a nanny so I've been able to set my life up but it's hard it's hard but it feels good it feels great it feels it feels super hard but incredibly satisfying to be doing everything yeah when you're on those vacations and you have to put a fire out Yeah. Do you like the process of putting fires out? Yes. I think now I feel really good about the fires. I think for the first few years, I remember my first negative comment.

53:04This was probably a few months into making my Instagram account. It destroyed me for three days.

53:10The Gstaad Guy:Do you remember the comment? No. Exactly. It was probably something like, you're stupid. I don't know. No, I don't remember the comment at all. But I remember it really flooring me for three days. And I was like, I was questioning everything because I'm a recovering people pleaser. So the negative comment really hurt me. And today you need to really go for it to hurt me because I've just seen so much. And the level keeps going up. So I feel like once I've, I mean, I'm sure you feel the same way, but once I've been able to manage a level 10 fire and I feel like, okay, I know how to do this kind of fire now.

53:48Then you have level 11 fire that comes your way. And now I enjoy it. I like the process. It's hard, but it feels like going to the gym. I'm like, okay, what's the difficulty we have to deal with today? What's coming my way? And again, because I've been able to create a really strong team around me, it gets easier. And now it gets more fun. But the beginning years was so tough because I was just this random girl talking about blood sugar on Instagram. And I felt kind of stupid doing it. You know, when you have five followers it's not the same as when you have five million people don't think the same thing of your work of course so when you have five followers and i'm like this is a strawberry and if you make it into a juice this is a spike i was like oh gosh you know maybe it's silly what i'm doing today doesn't feel silly today it feels like i'm doing great work and i get a lot of validation for it but the beginning years were the hardest and the dealing with the comment and just being alone i was alone for many years i was alone for four years i didn't have a team for four years it was just me on my Instagram account, making the little graphs on my computer, creating computer software to extract the data from my glucose monitor to make the thing.

54:52Today, it's easy to say, oh, wow, it's, you know, it's working so well. But the beginning was tough. And I made a pact with myself at the very beginning. I was still working in a company. I told myself every day for six months, I'm going to work on this project that really is lighting my soul up one hour per day for six months. And only at the end of the six months will I assess where I'm at. Because at the beginning, when you have 17 followers and you post something and it gets one like, I can tell you, you don't feel so good. You don't want to continue. So that pact was what allowed me to actually take off, I think.

55:29And at the end of the six months, I had, I don't know, 2 ,000 followers. And that already felt like enough.

55:33The Gstaad Guy:Did you have the fear of being cringe? Fear of being cringe? Yeah. Yeah. But I live with that. I don't know. It's okay. I can, you know, that fear has a, she has a space in my brain and I can hold her. It's okay. She doesn't control me. That's the question I get a lot from people who really want to get started online. And I guess about me, they're like, weren't you scared of being cringe? Like, yeah. But then you'll have five million followers and it won't be cringe anymore. That's the one. I've seen one of those random motivational Instagram things. It's like, you're cringe until you're inspirational.

56:09The Gstaad Guy:Mm-hmm. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was just going to say, putting yourself out there is hard. I think I credit my mom because she took a lot of photos of us growing up, so I was always in front of a camera. And so I don't feel scared about filming myself and posting a photo of myself. But if you've never done that before, it's a difficult exercise. And then you spend six months just being like, can I post this photo or not? You just have to go for it. Just go for it. How did you realize you were a people pleaser? Probably therapy. Therapy has been very helpful to me. I didn't even know I was that.

56:43I thought it was just part of being a human. You see what I mean? I didn't know it was possible to live without that. And through therapy, through undoing these beliefs, through understanding the patterns, how I grew up, and why that turned me into a people pleaser, I've been able to free that part of myself a little bit. And especially, I think, running this business and doing this message, you can't be a people pleaser. And you learn that very quickly. Like you can't please everybody. You have to make tough decisions. You have to fire people sometimes. You have to do hard stuff. And the people-pleasing aspect just has to disappear.

57:19Otherwise, you can't grow. And as my business has grown, I've had to also grow personally. Otherwise, I can't keep up. So it's been a mutual growth path. Were you a people-pleaser? No. No.

57:32The Gstaad Guy:I don't think I was ever a people-pleaser. But I think definitions and labels are really good for self-reflection. I think people hear people-pleaser and they're listening to this and they're like, oh, that's unfortunate. And they don't even realize that they're people-pleasers. So I'd like to briefly define what that meant to you. Yeah. To me, it meant that I felt better about myself if somebody told me that I was doing something good. so getting external validation like a comment that said i love this post that made me feel really good and that made me feel like i wanted to continue my instagram account getting a comment that said you're stupid that made me want to stop so placing a lot of value on external validation and on how people perceive you and on getting positive feedback from the world wanting to be liked absolutely absolutely wanting to be liked and just recently I think over the past few years now I quite like being disliked I'm like it's okay it's a flex it's cool I'm okay with it um but it takes time to undo these things it takes time and I don't think you can I don't think I could have gotten to where I am today if I had not been able to heal that part of myself and it's the child part you know it's the part that I grew up with my mom and my sister my dad my parents were divorced and so it was a female household and so the energy was kind of always that you know and people would come over we'd like host and be nice and my mother never got angry i never saw anger at home it was always just happy or sad never angry never frustrated never um trying to flex your agency or your power never so it was ingrained in me that those were the emotions i had access to the the politeness the niceness the fawning the sadness but i had to reclaim anger.

59:22And in order to start being a people pleaser, I had to reclaim my anger, my frustration, and my agency. It's all the shadow work. You know this concept of shadow work? So the concept is amazing. And so it says that when you're born, you're born as a human capable of experiencing all emotions, everything. And when you see a baby, it's true. They go through everything all the time in a very extreme manner. And then as you grow up, some of the emotions throughout how your parents raise you, what happens in school, you put them in a bag behind your back. You don't really access those anymore. They're not okay to access.

59:54For men, it's usually sadness. You're not, it's not okay to cry. You put it in your bag behind your back. And then as an adult, the fact that you have these emotions in that bag, which is called your shadow, actually harms you because it shows up as people pleasing. It shows up as uncontrolled anger. It shows up But anyway, and so one of the pieces of work of therapy, which I did, which is amazing, was to go and reclaim all that stuff in the shadow and to try to be more whole. And in the context of being online, creating content, being exposed to all these people, having a message, trying to change things, it's been very important to reclaim that shadow work.

1:00:32Because otherwise, I would feel more broken, I think, by the experience.

1:00:37The Gstaad Guy:That's cool. Yeah. and now you have what it takes personally to be able to manage these fires in a very different way than you did in your everyday days absolutely absolutely yeah five years ago i would never survive a day in my shoes today i think yeah no i i've worked on a few startups yeah as part of my my career and sometimes i work with people on them who have done the startup life before and sometimes the first time and it's two very different energies because people who haven't done it before all they can think about is when will this end of like when will the fire stop like when does it get smooth all of a sudden people have only worked in a corporate environment where there's that safety net or they've had the big corporate structure where like crazy things don't happen every few hours but people have been exposed to startup environments know that's just part of the game and another cheesy instagram motivational thing you love those though that's so good they're just too good sometimes you read them you're like it's so cheesy but it's so true it's so true and here's a good one it's it never gets sorry it never gets easier you just get stronger it never gets easier you just get used to it you just get stronger and it's so true about the the whole social media journey the whole being a founder in general the whole startup life and I guess life in general and what you're saying about being a mom.

1:02:05You stretch it. You find that you have more strength than you thought. But you have to have the tools to go through them. You have to have the tools. And I think therapy is huge for this. You have to have the tools to go through the fire. You know, that first comment that knocked me down. I talked to my therapist about it. Three days, I was back up. Today, I have dozens of negative comments a day. I don't even bat an eye to them. It's like, the thing hurts you. Can you get through it? can you process the emotion? Can you metabolize it so that it doesn't stay with you and keep you in a state of anger, basically, of sadness.

1:02:37It's going through them, I think. And that's been a great, great tool that I learned in therapy, how to move emotions through my body, through my psyche.

1:02:44The Gstaad Guy:I know that earlier in this conversation, you very humbly spoke about your career like it was somewhat consequential. Like this thing happened and now I'm glucose goddess. I just know out of experience it's not actually the simple consequential process because you basically have a reason to give up and turn around every single day. It's like shame is a reason. Fear is a reason. Failure is a reason. And you have to double down every single time. And you have to have something that's bigger than you to guide you towards that. For many, it's a problem they want to solve. For some, it's a life they want to lead.

1:03:22The Gstaad Guy:If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to know what made you double down over and over again and decide over and over again, no, actually, I know this is the worst day of my life, but I'm going to go for it. Two things. One is external and one is internal. The external one is once I understand the science, I knew that there were people in the world who desperately needed to have access to it. my archetype of the person I think about the most is the person who has type 2 diabetes who doesn't know that it's reversible who's going straight into a wall of amputation of blindness of being on medication for the rest of their lives who is trying to do something healthier who goes to the store who sees fruit smoothie no cholesterol and thinks this must be good for me and they don't know they're making themselves sicker that person I want to help I don't want these people to have to go through this ever.

1:04:16I want every single one of those people to know that type 2 diabetes is reversible, that you can do easy things to get back to health.

1:04:23The Gstaad Guy:Forgive my ignorance. Type 1 diabetes is genetic. Type 2 is dietary. Type 1 diabetes, you're basically quote unquote born with it. It's an autoimmune disease. So type 1, you can never cure it. Type 2 diabetes is lifestyle driven. So after decades of poor diet, et cetera, you will develop type 2 diabetes. Type 2 is the one that's reversible type one you have to live with and manage so far there's no cure type two you can reverse and these people i mean these people who read my books who message me every day they are the reasons i continue because there's noise on instagram there's people calling you stupid whatever there's people dying like we need to do something about this so i don't know why it just drives me fully and then there's a more spiritual also reason i feel like this idea for the for you know helping people understand health and science i feel like the idea picked me i feel like I don't have a choice.

1:05:13This idea has been floating around me for a very long time. When I was in middle school, now looking back, I'm like, whoa, I was a pancreas at a theater play we were doing in school. We were doing the human body. I was the pancreas, which is the organ that manages glucose. I know it sounds stupid, but I have all these little things in my life. This idea was floating around and it picked me and I said, yes. And I said, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to bring this idea into the world and I just made a pact with it and many times I wanted to quit many many times in fact the week where my agent my literary agent found me was the week I was coming home to Paris and I was telling my family I'm going to stop the glucose thing like I just it's just not working how can I ever make money from this it's not going to work bam that week I get basically signed with a book agent and over and over again every time I wanted to quit every time there was a fire that felt too big to recover from, something pulled me through.

1:06:09Whether it was a testimonial from a reader, somebody I met in the street, a taxi driver who in London runs randomly told me, he had no idea about my life. I was having a very difficult day. My first book had come out. I was honestly like, I wanted to quit everything. He looked at me in the little rear view mirror. He said, what you're doing is very important. You need to keep going. Like an angel. No idea why he said that. So the universe has been conspiring so that I keep going with this idea. And that's the best way I can explain it. It's an emotional drive to help people because I think type 2 diabetes should not exist.

1:06:45And today one billion people in the world have it. Huge public health issue. People suffering. Kids suffering. Parents dying too soon. People being on medication at the hospital for their whole lives. There's just so much to do, you know, and people need the information. And then a spiritual belief that I need to be doing this. So I'm going to get up and I'm going to keep doing it.

1:07:06The Gstaad Guy:And fight. Yeah. That's cool. When I'm doom scrolling, and partially because I'm a victim of doom scrolling like all of us, but partially also I'm just trying to learn what's going on out there. and I see some conversations about young women that are quite polar in view of like be that like boss who like just career and do your own thing and then there's another camp which is like quite maternal and be a mom and like not be the boss But very rarely do I see the storytelling of both together online. Well, let's be perfectly clear. I'm not a full-time mom. I have an amazing nanny who takes care of my little boy, you know, nine hours a day.

1:08:04I've had to hire somebody for him to have constant maternal care. I would love to be a full-time mom and I would love to be full-time doing this work. It's impossible. So I've had to make a compromise. I think the idea that you can do both is bullshit. You can't do both. I can't. I mean, a baby needs constant care, constant attention. And it's not in the few naps that he takes per day that I could run my business. So I've had to outsource, you know, and I've had to, I've had to, no, I've had the privilege to be able to do that. So you do make sacrifices. And maybe I'm going to look back and say, I wish I had spent more time with him and I wish I had worked less.

1:08:41I don't know.

1:08:42The Gstaad Guy:but do you think you would have been able to do what you're doing now as a mom earlier in your career where you wouldn't have been able to necessarily have the means to outsource and get a second set of hands to help you out impossible I'm very fortunate that my business is at a level today where I can afford care at home so people who say they actually want to wait until they're in a better financial position to have kids is very reasonable i don't have an answer honestly you know what motherhood has taught me to be humble i was like oh i've written books like i do all this stuff it's gonna be easy to be a mom i had all these grand beliefs i thought you know i thought pregnancy is gonna be so easy i'm gonna be a goddess i was throwing up all night for months i and anyway it's just super humbling So I don't think I can honestly give any advice to anybody.

1:09:39I can just talk about my own journey, which is that I feel very lucky today that I can afford to have a nanny to help. And in the beginning, it was very hard. Because the first three months, I didn't have a nanny, and it was just me and Mr. Glucose and David Glucose. And then when the nanny came, it was hard at the beginning. It's really hard to hand over your baby. But now I think I found a good balance. But there's compromises. You cannot do both full-time. that's a lie it's impossible so I'm doing my best to keep doing my mission and keep doing the stuff that's driving me intellectually and also to take care of my little boy which is amazing it's a lot of work it's a lot of work and of course as you said it's complicated as women you have all this messaging around you should be a mom you should do this, you should do that you can do both, you can't do both you should continue working, you should stop working you should do daycare, you should do blah it's just complicated people find their own way but I feel very very fortunate today that I can do this for sure and if I didn't have a nanny I would have to stop work completely

1:10:44The Gstaad Guy:you did something similar that I did career-wise of having a full-time corporate job yeah and then eventually you hedged for a second you did both six months six months and then you quit you did this full-time yeah so I was working six months at the company at the end of the six months I had $40 ,000 saved and I thought okay I can live on this for a year I'm going to try to do glucose thing full-time so I tried and at the beginning I was living in San Francisco so in SF back then anytime you have an idea it's raise a million dollars and build an app which is what I tried to do for the first few months and I was like wait a minute I don't want to do this I want to make content and after that first year was the that moment when I said I how can I live from this I had run out of money I was like okay I'm gonna shut down the glucose goddess Instagram I had maybe 10 ,000 followers.

1:11:31I was like, well, I had a good run, you know. And that's when I had the opportunity to sign with a book agent and she found me. So again, the universe was conspiring and helping. And so I kept going.

1:11:41The Gstaad Guy:For the listeners today who are at a desk job that they don't like and they have an idea that they do like, but they lack that confidence to quit their job and to go all out on that idea they have that's just been keeping them up at night? What advice do you have for them? The six-month deal worked pretty well for me. So work on it one hour a day for six months. Don't look at what happens every day. Don't look at what's going on every week. Don't be discouraged. Just make a pact with yourself. Put a calendar invite six months from now. that's when you assess whether you go for it or not. Between nine and six months, one hour a day, rain or shine, just do that and see where you are in six months.

1:12:33Because sometimes it feels so overwhelming that we just don't even start. And if you break it down into digestible chunks, like the glucose hacks, for example, then you can really get somewhere. And I understand completely the feeling that you don't want to quit your job with very little safety and certainty. I think that makes total sense. I did not quit my job. I waited until I had a little bit of traction where I felt like, okay, there's something here.

1:12:56The Gstaad Guy:I did two years of both at the same time. But I guess that's a privilege as well. If I was spending two hours a day commuting, for example, then you can't do that. But I was during COVID, so thankfully I gained two hours a day. Didn't have to get ready in the morning. Kind of, but not really at home. But you know this feeling where you just said that the idea that's keeping you up at night? I love this idea of like there's some things that light up your soul. And I really, truly believe that that's a direction that you cannot ignore. Like if it's lighting up your soul, that idea wants to be born.

1:13:35And after a little while, if you don't act on it, it's going to go to somebody else. That's Elizabeth Gilbert and her concept of big magic. Like ideas live independently of humans. They want to come through. And so the idea is going to circle around you for a little bit and give you the opportunity to try. And then if you don't do it, it's going to go to somebody else. That's why you see people who say, this person launched this thing I had that idea last year you're like yeah but you didn't do it so it went somewhere else it's a bit woo woo but I think it's I think it actually parallels a lot of experiences that you might have

1:14:03The Gstaad Guy:I mean every single restaurant in a major city you'll have four or five amazing ideas at the table very few people who actually have the patience and care to actually execute on any of those and that's okay and it's good that not everybody executes on this stuff it's okay I think the stat is like 10 % of people think of an idea. 10 % of those people take the first step towards that idea. 10 % of those people keep going. You know, it's like, it's tiny, tiny, but it's okay. Not everybody should be doing this or is caught up with. I mean, it's hard. For me, I actually, I don't know if I've spoken about this before.

1:14:38I don't think I have, but it wasn't actually an idea keeping me up at night.

1:14:44The Gstaad Guy:It was my future self. I would just dream for hours and hours in every classroom every night before I could sleep just thinking about future me I had no idea how I would get there but I just I knew future me I was like I I want to be this guy and I want to be his friend and I don't know how I'll get there but if life gives me a slither of opportunity on the way there like I'll hold on to it for dear life you know it was never like oh I have to chase this I think it was more like oh I have to chase this future version of me and once that guy is presented to me or whatever is presented to me then I'll run with that because that's what I can run with and have you quote unquote made it to where you wanted your future self to be no now I have a new guy I have a new future self this is very Matthew McConaughey have you seen that no um i think mcconaughey has a great i think it was an oscar speech where he said that he dreamt of his future self and once he became him he dreamt of his future self and basically like you never get there you just keep finding that new person but a really cool exercise that i really enjoy is actually thinking about my past self and thinking like what would he think of me oh yeah oh you know which is like i guess an exercise for gratitude but i've paused and like i look at old pictures and old videos constantine and i actually did this together last time when we were in paris we actually both started crying because we we looked at this old video uh of me getting my first uh my first raise at work and i was so insanely happy and it would seem so insignificant today and i was thinking that guy there would dream to be at breakfast with us.

1:16:37The Gstaad Guy:And it's such a really cool exercise because we're also so

1:16:44The Gstaad Guy:obsessed with motivation and growth. We sometimes forget about the process of reflection. Which is such a big motivator. Honestly, it's the most powerful motivator. I did something that I highly recommend other people do. I kept a diary. It was called the Glucose Diary. So the first day when I decided to try to turn this glucose passion into something, I wrote I don't know what day April 2019 and I wrote like I'm in this city and I just thought maybe I should build a glucose Instagram account kind of weird but like maybe I'll work and then every month I would just write a few sentences about what was going on so after a year and a half for example if I hit a rough patch I would go back to that diary and be like oh my god a year and a half ago I hadn't even done anything look where I am now so it's really difficult when you compare yourself to your future self because that future self keeps evolving but that past self becomes more and more proud of you as time goes on.

1:17:34So that's been a huge, huge help. And I still do it. It's incredible. And I compare like first diary entry to this one. And so when I feel like, oh, I have to deal with so much crap today. It's so difficult. I'm like, but this Jessie, six years ago, she was dreaming of being here today. So the difficulty I have today is actually such a privilege. It's a privilege to wake up and have a problem, quote unquote, I need to solve because I've helped so many people, because my message has gone so far, because X, Y, Z. So it reframes everything.

1:18:04The Gstaad Guy:I actually do something similar. I love that. I just don't do it on paper because I find writing intimidating. I actually find books intimidating. To write on them, to read them. I'm a digital guy. So I actually just send myself videos of myself. I make vlogs with one viewer. Oh, that's so good. And it's me. That's so good. I've been making them since I was 17. That's so good. Random vlog. Like, hey, vlog. I'm here now I think I did one the day I broke up with my first girlfriend when I was like 18, 19, whatever like just have all these random videos going through moments of transition it's so powerful it's really cool so cool so cool on this episode of the podcast we'll do something that we do on every episode of the podcast which is a brief game of à la poubelle versus fantastique can you please give us a couple of things that you would throw à la poubelle and wish to change about society and the world you find yourself in and a few things you would celebrate to be fantastique that you wish you could see more of okay, à la poubelle polarization in the health and wellness world people fight I'm vegan, I'm carnivore, I'm this, I'm that you suck, you suck we're all in it for the same thing we all know how to be healthier it's not that complicated vegetables, fresh food, less sugar movement let's all agree guys it's okay so a la poubelle everybody on their soapboxes fighting against each other when we should be working together um a la poubelle i'm sorry but it's gonna be nutella crepes for breakfast and nutella toast for breakfast for kids sugary food for kids tastes so good i know i know i know i know i know i know um a la poubelle um a la poubelle okay i'm gonna get so much hate for this oat milk a la poubelle oh i know it's hard facts today big oats gonna come after you know if glucose goddess disappears guys it was big oats who came straight to our house so oat milk a la poubelle um and then a la poubelle telling people that when they have a condition the only way out is lifelong medication a la poubelle that's bullshit we can solve things.

1:20:17It takes education and work, but I don't put it. And then Fantastique, I think therapy, Fantastique. Highly recommend. Fantastique, your vlog idea of creating videos and looking back so you see progress you've made or writing down things because people need encouragement. We all have a little thing lighting up our soul and we should all try to go after it as much as we can.

1:20:39The Gstaad Guy:Best encouragement is your past self. Exactly. So Fantastique, having a process in place that helps you do that. fantastic doing shadow work reclaiming emotions that you didn't have access to when you were younger fantastic all the researchers in the world doing incredible science advancing our understanding of the human body fantastic all the passionate doctors nurses healthcare professionals who do such thankless work who are there day in day out trying to help people be better and fantastic people in governments and people in positions of power who want to change stuff and fantastic to be able to to work with them every day yeah i love that thank you so much for sharing thank you and thank you for taking the time to be on this podcast it was my absolute pleasure thank you for the coffee and for the great talk of course can you uh give the audience a quick call to action i know you have a lot of cool things coming new product new book uh call to action glucose goddess instagram is where everything happens that's the that's the hub And so my new book, Nine Months That Count Forever, for anybody who wants to have kids one day, knows somebody who's going to have a kid, is pregnant, wants to get pregnant.

1:21:49It's a real game changer. Very excited about it. And for people who know they should be eating enough protein but don't have time to cook three times a day, Protein Prodigy, two scoops in your morning drink, froth it. Tastes like adding a splash of milk. And it boasts 20 grams of protein.

1:22:05The Gstaad Guy:20 grams? Yep. People should be having a gram per pound of body weight. Exactly. Best protein powder in the world, in my opinion, hands down. Comes from Ireland, grass-fed cows, family farms, processed without heat, without chemicals. It is the shit. It's incredible. Protein Prodigy. There you go. Protein Prodigy by Glucose Goddess. Exactly. Thank you so much, Blue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Stardegai podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

1:22:43The Gstaad Guy:And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. A la prochaine. And a big hug from the Start Guy.