How to Change Your Environment to Make Healthy Choices Easier, Combat Stress, & Feel Your Very Best

29:34We're on our phones, we're staring at screens and we're not really being seen. Right. And so we can superficially look for that in likes and things like that. And, you know, and people become obsessed with doing that stuff, but this is all that's new. What we need, what our genes expect and need from us is to feel seen and valued in the real world. Right. And so giving this blessing and benefit to your children, especially today, where they don't feel seen more than ever, to sit there without your devices and to eat a meal together, it's just stacking conditions because you got to eat anyways.

30:13But it's that psychological human need of feeling like I matter. Like somebody sees me, I'm here. I'm here and my voice matters. And so, you know, just that's a little bit more practical than some of the invisible stuff. We need that. We all need that. You know, we need that for ourselves as well. And what I feel like one of the benefits that's happened with me, with my kids, when I brought my son, my youngest son, Brayden is here, is it's humanized me more, you know, because what tends to happen, and you probably had this with your father as well, it's like, it's kind of like Superman, you know, like nothing phases him, he's doing his dad's working, you know, and to humanize me.

30:53And he has so much more empathy for me. And he's like looking out for me and making sure that I'm good. I'm taking care of myself and these kinds of things, you know? And it's beautiful. It's because of these touch points and sitting around together before we eat. Nine times out of 10, we go around, we do like a gratitude practice, right? So we'll go around and share, you know, three things that we're grateful for from that day. Or, you know, a while back we did like, what's something you failed at today? And we go around and talk about these things. And me talking about failing, me talking about failing Superman here, you know, it's just, again, it really helps to create more rapport and connection with our family members.

31:34And, you know, I just want to share this because Father's Day just passed. And I like to control my schedule, as my family knows. I don't like this sporadic unless I choose it kind of thing. So they're like, okay, we're going to do this stuff, you know, Sunday. I'm like, okay, I guess. Yes. And so they took me to this really dope brunch and it was awesome. And so we all get, we had that thing of us sitting together. We're not on our devices and we're hanging out, we're chopping it up, we're eating good food. And we've had this tradition. And I actually want to share a couple of tips if I can. Please do.

32:09Yeah. So how to be, because this also leads into part of that question. How do we do this today when we're more fractured than we've ever been? Yeah. Kids are exposed to so much through their screens. Exactly. Exactly. And it, it is like, it's so addictive. It's so savory. It's like, it's just so much, it's infinite. Right. And so we've got to first understand that we are addicted, right? That's kind of the first step is understand that we have a problem. Yeah. And more often than I've had the opportunity to talk to so many different addiction specialists over the years and doing this work. And one of the most practical things is to, if we were wanting to change a habit is to replace it with something of equal or greater value, right?

32:53Because just going, quote, cold turkey is very difficult. It's hard. Right? So you got to replace like what's in your hand with something else, right? And so we had to anchor in, in the society today. And I just ran into at one of his basketball tournaments, a mother and her family sharing how this book has impacted her, the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook and changing the dynamics of how our family is eating together. And so what do we do? What we have done for whatever reason, and every family is going to be different, is kind of like having something to look forward to in that meal, right? So food is awesome, but you got to be careful about rewarding with food.

33:34For sure. So, but after dinner, you know, back in St. Louis, before we moved to LA, we had this phenomenon where we end up having a dance competition or dancing together or it evolved into like having rap battles. All right. And so once we got to LA, my son has a iPad and like somebody would like make a beat and we go around the table and freestyle. And it got to a point where we actually bought a microphone. And so we passed the microphone around. But when we haven't done that in probably a year, we haven't done that practice. Like our family structure changed. Like my oldest son moved out for a bit.

34:10They moved back. And driving back from the brunch, we're freestyling in the car. Amazing. You know what I mean? And it's just like this thing that adds, unconsciously, like, I have something to look forward to. It's creativity. You know, it's challenge. It's fun. It's funny. It's, you know, empowering. You know, it's like, it has all these ingredients that you look forward to that family meal. This could be a game that you guys play. I've just talked to a family. They play a board game while they have dinner, which I never thought about, you know, which seemed kind of obvious. This could be, you know, you guys doing some kind of, you know, maybe your family sings together, like playing instruments.

34:53Maybe it's just like telling funny stories or - Choosing a playlist. Each person gets to choose a playlist. If you're not, you know, sets the tone for what's happening. Endless possibilities. Endless possibilities. Yeah, those are amazing tips. Yeah. I think the no screen thing that you mentioned, Jay smiling in at us, you know, as we're talking about him. um i think what's really cool is first acknowledging that maybe screens are like the new mcdonald's you know when we were growing up it's like we normalized eating at mcdonald's now we know like the the horror that that that played um screens are the new mcdonald's and you know if we own in on what's going to happen in the future because it's being so normalized um you talk a little bit about this in your book also but like the impact on children and the trajectory of the future.

35:37I want to point out, like, this was a conscious decision for you and Anne. You set the environment in your house for doing this with your kids because you're imprinting on them so that they carry that on out into the world, right? Do you share with them, like, the stats? Do you share with them the dark side of what you know around all of this? My son is right there. And this is a part of it. He's around, like, even right now. And when we were leaving the house, my wife was like, it's take your kid to school. I mean, it's take your kid to work day. But this isn't really like work for him or for me.

36:11This is, it's our passion. It's what we do. And him being a part of these conversations and listening in on stuff has been obviously very powerful. He's been to tons of my speaking events and just involving him. I interviewed him on my show a couple years ago when he was a tiny little guy, you know, and just involving my family. My oldest son is a really incredible strength conditioning coach, personal trainer. I never told him to do that stuff. He just decided that that's what he wants to do. And it's because he's around it, you know? And so the power of modeling is incredible. The power of creating an environment.

36:47As I said earlier, culture is the shared values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people pass on from one generation to the next. The problem today with so many, like we might want to change our habits and we had to deal with this stuff. Maybe there's certain things we want to stop doing, stop eating. It's so hard to get somebody to change their habits. That's hurting them when they're in a culture that is feeding them those habits constantly. You can't escape it. It's, it takes so much more turbulence to try to change that. Well, what if you create a culture where it's just automatic.

37:24It's just what you do. And so, you know, for my kids, just being around it, obviously, but also yes, having the conversations, talking about the things, but most importantly, asking questions and letting them share, like share their voice, share their perspective and not making them wrong because we, we can easily, and I went through a phase of like, you can't eat this, you can't do that. You know, be the kid at the birthday party. Like, you know, you don't need that whatever and i just like step back and i just let these things happen because we have a healthy base yeah and also he knows how he feels if he has that that chitty i'm gonna edit chitty cake and he knows how he feels like he doesn't feel his best and they don't want to like you know what and he'll tell me like dad we should really eat a good dinner tonight you know what i mean and so again it's just stacking conditions and understanding that you know our families our children, our relationships, our significant others.

38:24We need a lot less berating and we need more inclusion. We need more patience and we need more. And this is another tip. We know our family better than anybody. We know what motivates our husband or our wife or our kids more than anybody, but because we're stressed out, we don't want to do it. Got it. Right. And we also know what demotivates them. And so what we tend to do as a reaction unconsciously is do the thing that demotivates them. Yeah. Right. And so we have to take care of ourselves. So we have that space to have that patience in those moments. Right. Because I know what motivates my son.

39:03I know what motivates my wife. And my wife is like, I said, she is crushing it right now. And this thing is going in our house even this morning. And my son told her, and she told me that he said it yesterday. He told her like, the secret to your happiness is just listen to your husband. Because she did what I said yesterday. And she was like, so happy. Like she was tired. Like we did a really tough strength training workout in the morning. And then we went for a pretty long walk later in the day. And it was super hot as well. And so, you know, I went back to work and then I saw her like an hour later.

39:39She's just in a chair, feet are kicked up. but she's just like half asleep. And I'm just like, baby, just take a nap. If you're tired, it's okay. Because she said, I'm so tired. I'm like, just take a nap. It's okay. And she picked up her phone because what happens a lot of times when we're tired, we'll just start scrolling. Exactly. Let's start resting. Right? Instead of you're distracting yourself and not getting restored. And so she did it. She went, took a nap. Then she took a shower. And she was like so pumped. She was like, I feel so good. She got dressed up. I mean, refreshed. She went to the grocery store.

40:12She planned for the week. She made dinner. And then she was still bouncing around all happy. And these are things I might have told her before, but in a different way. Like, you know, it's just like creating that space and that encouragement. And also you can recruit your people that you make into this as well. And so my youngest son and both of my sons, they're so affirmative and supportive of their mom, you know, and just letting her know when she looks beautiful, letting her know when, you know, she does something, you know, does something that, you know, a quote, good job. Just everything is just affirmative and loving.

40:49And let me be clear, we do get on each other's nerves. Of course. We talk a lot of shit, but we love on each other so much. And even in the shit talking, it's imbued with love and compassion. Well, the boys do that because that's modeled from you. Let's just call it as it is. So that's incredible. And I love that you're sharing stories because I think a lot of people, when they get to that point of frustration where they want to give up, right? Oh, it's too hard. I can't make them do what I want to do or vice versa. You're not giving every person in the house an opportunity. right and um uh i love that you hovered on that because i've worked with so many people where if they're not one person's into health and wellness the other partner isn't one of the partners is still buying the cheetos and the cereals and stuff like that um the communication to kids if you say don't eat this it's bad for you versus eat this this is way better for you it's going to get lost all their friends are eating the the junk food it tastes way better to them because it's hyper feel.

41:49My son looks at his bowel movements and he knows when he's eating the shitty food. Like he just knows instantly. Oh, okay. That was it. What did I eat today? But having open conversations about that, because it's not just about what's healthy and what's not, it's about how it makes you feel. And when you feel better, you make better choices. When you feel better as a family, God, life just gets better. That part. You know, really quickly with that, working as a nutritionist for so many years, I also worked as a strength and conditioning coach at the university that my wife and I went to. But working with people, that was the number one reason that people gave for why they can't get the results that they were wanting to get.

42:27Again, whether it was losing weight, whether it was getting their blood sugar in check, hypertension, whatever they were dealing with, they blamed their family. It's the number one thing. My kids, it's my kids. Like they, you know, I want to do this, but my kids, right? I'm not going to make two different meals. Like my kids, they only eat pigs in a blanket. or whatever, you know, mac and cheese or whatever. Or it's my significant other, you know, it's my wife, it's my husband. Like they just make it so much more difficult. And what really changed the game for me with helping individuals was helping families.

43:02Because as you know, you know, there's these sentiments, which I don't necessarily like saying anymore, but like, you can't be a prophet in your own land. Right. To where, you know, if I'm trying to, you know, want to help my mom, for example, it's just like, my mom's not really listening to me because she's like, boy, I changed her diapers. Like, what are you talking about? You know? Um, but when it comes from an external voice is very, very helpful. This is why the show and this shows like this are so powerful because you get to share from another perspective. Right. And, um, so being able to incorporate and bring in, like, we'll just say that I'm working with a woman, you know, she's, she's a lawyer, her husband, you know, maybe he's an engineer, whatever the case might be.

43:48And they've got two kids and she's just like, they're the, they're the problem. Right. And they're pointing the finger outward. And I come in, instead of just meeting with the, with the, the wife that I'm working with, the woman that I'm working with, I come hang out with their whole family and just, you know, introduce myself, hang out, you know, talk to them a bit. And that person personifies me or personalizes me. And this just happened at his tournament when the family came over to me, but in particular, it was the mom. And she was just like, I've been listening for 10 years. And the husband and son were there.

44:21And to actually see me, because what the sentiment, as they said, was in the house, like Sean said, that might get on their nerves. And so being able to actually talk with people and to create a cohesive thing. And what I would do is find out what motivates each person. Very practical. Like, so I might find that the son is a soccer player. And I talk about how their nutrition and their sleep habits can radically improve their performance and put them in a different league than everybody else. Right. I find that leverage point for each family member. And it's just like, it creates this lasting impact to where literally I get messages to this day of people I work with 10, 15 years ago, like Sean, ever since that day, or ever since that time that I worked with you, man, you changed the trajectory of my family.

45:08And so if we can find leverage points now for people listening, they might not know a Sean or a Mona directly, but what are those things that you can do to where it's coming from someone else's voice or perspective? This could be as simple as like, and I'm going to, since we're here, I'm going to be real. It tends to be guys were more hardheaded. Yeah, I agree. And she's looking over. And so, but also we tend to be more skeptical too. And so I found a great strategy to be like, this guy said something about like, if you eat this food, like it helps improve your sleep quality. Like, what do you think about this?

45:47And like, maybe give him the paper or the study or send him the post and just see what you think about that. And then he might be like, you know what? Like, yeah, what a lot of guys would be like, I knew that already or whatever, you know, or, you know, I don't know about that, but it can spark a conversation versus you coming in and telling him what to do, which we tend to rebel, you know, and it depends. It's not a man, woman, female, male thing. It depends on our personality, character. It depends on our character, but also what I've seen in working with a lot of people is that guys tend to be a little bit more hardheaded.

46:23And so, yeah, just being able to be like, you know, a little bit more of like, I'm the student here. Just like, what do you think, big daddy? You know, and so like, that could be a strategy. Yeah, I love that. the other part to that though is if there's something around health that you're interested in if you start searching on your phone you are part of this algorithm right i know there's like a love and hate you've got to be careful of the algorithm that you're part of however if you're talking about these conversations if you gently send those recipes or articles or inspiration to the other people change the algorithm at least it gets the the dialogue shifted right so own it on that.

47:01Change the algorithm. And I want to point out too, that people might not know in your cookbook, you have recipes from your family. And what I love about that in our house, what we do is like one person will choose the food for the night. I want Indian tonight. I want, we're big on taco Tuesdays and, or it's pasta, but people will have a say in what's being given. And I'm calling that out because I think that for a really long time now, women tend to be seen as the ones who kind are the drivers of wellness in the house. But I think the paradigm is shifting. I really think men want to be part of that and want to be inclusive.

47:35And so having a man like you, who's a leader and a model for that is a really big deal. Yes. I 1 ,000 % agree. I 1 ,000 % agree. And coming in that with intention. And so for example, inviting my kids in on what are we making, you know, for dinner this week. Right. And that's another buy-in for the family dinners, right. Something to look forward to. So we're doing the planning, you know, what, what, what kind of dessert do you guys want, you know, after dinner. Right. So it might be the, uh, cherry yogurt pops that are on the cover of the book, or it might be, you know, um, the, uh, superfood bark that we make as well.

48:15So it could be like a buy-in on what we're actually preparing. this is another great thing. Again, you know your family better than anybody, what motivates them. And so then being a part of deciding what we're going to eat together. And, you know, my wife tends to do that quite a bit of like inviting me in on the conversation. She knows how I am too. You know what I mean? Like I want to, I want to be, you know, a part of it, but I've loosened up on that a lot because we've intermingled so much. So we're just like, babe, you know, just like, just pick something. It's fine. You know? And so yesterday, funny enough, and my son had this for dinner.

48:51Um, one of the recipes in the book, it's this, it's a Greek bowl, um, with these incredible meatballs and just all these different flavors and flavor sensations. I think a big part of why this book is successful too, is that we're big foodies. Yeah. We love food. And we've accumulated these recipes over the years. And like you just mentioned, like there's a hot chocolate recipe that I make my son all the time or that my oldest son randomly at our previous house, he just randomly made these cookies from like four ingredients. Amazing. And it's just like, okay, that's going in the book, right? And also my wife and I perfecting some really delicious meals.

49:30We used to teach classes of food preparation as well. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, for years we did that. And it got bonkers. Trying to feed a lot of people in one class, if it's like 30, 40 people, it's a lot of work. The overall nutrition in our food has taken a nosedive in recent decades. In fact, an analysis published by scientists at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery. 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients from the 1950s to 1999. According to that research, everything from vitamin A to calcium to iron and more has significantly declined. Again, if it's not in the soil, it's not in the food.

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52:19Now back to the show. Again, just inviting people in on the process. For sure. Another part of that is inviting your kids in on the process of preparing the food. Yes. This is another big part of this mission because right now somewhere around 30 plus percent of young people don't know how to prepare a single meal. We're talking like college age kids like so like under, you know, 25 and under and adolescent. So we'll just say 18 to 25 year olds don't even know how to make one meal for themselves. All right. It is a it's becoming on the endangered species list. Oh, I believe that. And so what happens, and I share the data on this, is that when they don't know how to prepare food for themselves, they automatically eat more ultra processed foods.

53:03And family meals are also on the endangered speech list. Only about 30 % of American families eat together on a regular basis, right? This used to be the majority. Now it's just extreme minority. And so please invite your kids in, make some recipes together. give them this vital skill to be able to take care of themselves because this world like it is just going to be tantalizing them with like all these convenient easy things but this can be easy too just being able to whip up a couple of things for yourself with real foods can be absolutely life sustaining truly make a recipe book as a family right i could be doing anything right now I would travel, pack up my family, travel the world, go to every village and find like the, the sage wise older man or woman and like find all the recipes.

53:52Let's document them before we lose it all. And like trade it all in for these genetically modified food, fast food, everything, fast food nation. You should do that. Right. I feel it out every time with guests. I'm like, okay, you should do that. Okay. It's affirming. And I will to close that topic on men. Cause we do have a lot of male listeners. When my husband, he was inspired on a trip that we had to Morocco. he bought a tagine pot and then just starts making these big tagine pot meals that was like a love language for me it was like one of the most amazing kind of sexy things for a man to do so tip for the men out there um now that we've drifted from that a little bit let's go back to you know how we eat and who we eat with being important but also the science around how it drives our cravings and also our metabolism when you speak to metabolism we think about the impact our physiology, maybe we take it back to the mitochondria.

54:41So when we think about our bodies actually utilizing the food as information, what is the impact? Like how could it, how could it shift our metabolism? How could it shift our food cravings? Yeah. This, this is multi-layered. At its core, as soon as you're around other people, in particular people that you have a relationship with that you love and that you care about and they care about you, our biology changes dramatically. So as I mentioned, this is an epigenetic influence. And so one of the things that also, there's over 250 studies that are embedded into the content of the book itself. But I talked about some data affirming how we're at this place now where when I was in college, what I was taught was that genes control your destiny, you know?

55:28And if you have a genetic predisposition for a particular disease and you have this, they started looking for all these genes that cause disease. And that was the thing. Like genes are the reason, like this is the price. Yeah. Your lifestyle kind of matters, whatever, but it was all really, all the chips went on the deck of genes control your health. Today, we know this and we're so far from that, that upwards of 99 % of disease manifestations, unless you're born with a true genetic defect, unless you're born with a true genetic defect, most of us get here with pretty healthy genes and we don't have genes.

56:06And one of my mentors, and I've had multiple conversations with him about this, is cell biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, and him being really the pioneering voice in epigenetics. He told me, Sean, we don't have genes for disease. And I was just like, whoa, that doesn't feel, that's ruffling my feathers. He's like, no, no, no. We don't have genes that code for disease. Disease genes can manifest or present certain symptoms, right? And so a good example of this might be type 2 diabetes, which is obviously of epidemic proportions today, where we have around half of the U.S. population diabetic or pre-diabetic, and somewhere around, you know, 30 to 40%.

56:57And this is a, quote, adult onset diabetes, right? So you're not born with this, but something happens. Something happens along the way. And what happens is, for example, we'll just say that one of your primary causative agents is epigenetic influence is ultra processed foods, right? Extreme amounts of sugar and carbohydrates that your genes never interacted with for thousands and thousands of years prior, and now you're getting exposed to, and now our body is responding and making an adaptation to that exposure to keep you alive. It's changing the way that it operates to help you to survive. But then we blame the stupid disease, like body, why are you doing this thing?

57:38When we were exposed to something that was making us to adapt to this condition. And then of course, what do we do? Instead of removing the cause, we start to treat the symptom. You got it. get into this vicious circle. And so, and then we blame, oh, you've got diabetes in your family, you know? And yes, that absolutely plays a part, but it is a tiny, tiny part, you know, the vast majority of, and what he shared with me was that, you know, we've got the Human Genome Project. We were expecting to have all these genes and come to find out like there's certain varieties of corn that have way more genes than humans do.

58:15But what we have is incredible diversity in how genes can be expressed. One gene can have thousands of different potential expressions. And that's what he shared with me based on epigenetic inputs. So your environment, your diet. But every time I talk about these things as well, and this is exclusive stuff right here. Every time I talk about those things, which I was studying nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics, but he'd be like, Sean, no, no, no, no, no, no. The mind first. The number one influence over your gene expression is your mind. And it's just like, oh, it's so hard for me to really accept that.

58:52But then as I dove deeper and deeper into the data over the years, every thought we think has correlating chemistry that's instantaneously produced. And so if we're having thoughts of anxiety or something that's pissing us off or something that we just feel joyful about, we feel that feeling because there's a change in our chemistry. With that said, and to put a bow on this and to tie it all back together, when we're around people that we care about, there's a deep, deep change that happens with our biochemistry. This is unconscious, just our thoughts of, even if we're pissed off at them for whatever reason, if we know that we love this person or our family members, our chemistry changes and it elicits more of what we would refer to as like anti-aging, you know, expressions of certain things.

59:40And so what we are doing when we stack conditions in our favor with our environment, with our family members and understanding that we need this for healthy genetic expression. We need each other more than ever. We know the ramifications with social isolation, it's deadly. And we know that being with people that we care about having healthy social bonds is the number one, from the longest running study on humans, number one determinant of how long you're going to live is your relationships. And it's because it's impacting you at the level of your genes. And so I hope that that answered the question.

1:00:19It does answer the question completely. And I love that you took it there. I'm doing my master's in quantum healing and Dr. Lipton's one of the professors in that. And I have to say, looking back, do you not believe after your diagnosis, if you didn't believe that you could heal? Done. If I believe that I was going to have a heart condition for the rest of my life, prescription after prescription, I want to throw that back at the audience because so often we witness people in our family, in our circle, getting sick. We believe that it could be part of us. And this is what gets me with longevity right now.

1:00:48We talk about longevity in our circle as well. So much of it is fear-based, like the fear of getting older, the fear of getting sick. And it's like, well, are you taking the supplements and the vitamins and working out because it makes you feel good and you're happy? Or is it driven by fear? And the fear is the emotion of what's in your body. We have to switch our perspective and change our lens. So I think belief is something that's so huge. And going back to something that you said earlier with heart math, just thinking about someone that you love changes your physiology. I took those old school epigenetics tests, you know, within school, nutrition school and stuff like that too.

1:01:21And there's a completely different lens in how we understand epigenetics today. Do you recommend that people do their epigenetic testing? That's such a good question. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I just did what, again, at this current time, appears to be the most advanced panel on, you know, it's like 110 different biomarkers. And in addition to that, you can get like CT scans and all this stuff to come up with your biological age. This is where we are. Again, I think there's, yes, we have these objective measurements, but some of that being a quote biological age is still subjective. Like there's nothing that's invented today that could tell you like how old you are biologically, but we can see some very close approximations.

1:02:12Right. And so I just did that. Cool. I am almost eight years younger biologically than I am chronologically, which is pretty dope according to this. And also I see this room for improvement. Like there's this one surprising nutrient deficiency that I had. I was just like, what? and by and this one was a controller of so many other things and so just being able to focus on that can make me even more basically slow my rate of aging let's not say reverse my age per se but slow my rage of age of uh my rate of aging dramatically and so i was actually one of the keynote speakers for one of these big you know biohacking events like the big one you know dave um but i was brought in to be like the grounded person you know what i mean just like listen i I know you guys want to take all this shit in another room and do all these treatments, but just go for a walk.

1:03:03Yeah. So I'm coming and I'm sharing the data on this and, you know, and so it's the approximation is so much closer, right? We overcomplicate things because of fear, right? And so I'm very big on practicality and doing that and getting that blood work done. I think it speaks to some people. Like my wife is very analytical with that when it comes to that stuff. self-quantification motivates her immensely. I don't want to do that. I want to pay more attention and advocate for people to pay attention to how you feel. Pay attention to how you look, how you feel, how you perform. Just see yourself, right?

1:03:43Pay attention. Like, am I doing something and then like, I'm hella puffy the next day? Like your body's telling you, you don't need a blood test. You don't need like this complicated thing to tell you. Like that thing didn't really jive with you, right? But we're so externally focused today. So many things are pulling our attention outside of our bodies. I know this intimately. We can have all the studies in the world. And by the way, you can go and look at my track record. I've got stuff from almost 20 years ago where I'm using peer-reviewed data to affirm a certain point, which has become popular today.

1:04:16I did that. I'm going to share this with you. I've been really talking about this before. I did that because when I started to like speak at these different events and I go like speak to the biology department at a university, and I've been in this field for like 23 years now, I felt inadequate because I didn't finish the pre-med track. I got out of there because I hated it. Life brought me back to studying health. And so, and I'm coming at this with a different perspective of overcoming a so-called incurable disease that the way that you're teaching is, it put me into that position, right? With the nocebo effect, right?

1:04:54This is incurable, what I have. And that made everything exponentially worse. And so I'm coming in to speak to this department. Maybe I think at the time I was like talking about telomeres and whatnot, which I know, you know, Elizabeth Blackburn and Alyssa Epple and like that whole thing. but you know I felt like I've got to come with the data just so they listen to me about practicality I did it with a purpose because I didn't have a lab coat on and I'm just you see me like I'm just a cool guy you know just you know I show up how I am authentically and so that's why I was using published data to affirm a point or something practical now it's like used in everything you You know, our friends and colleagues use this template.

1:05:37And many of these folks, and they've sat in my office or in my studio, and they share with me, like, I was listening to your show for years prior to what I'm doing, and I could see that template. And it's a great model because it provides some verification for you to tell a story and to empower people. But we're at a point now where these studies can mess people up. Yes. Because that study is not the end-all be-all. That study might say this thing that is completely wrong for you. And an end of one experiment is more than enough. Like you could be doing something that works remarkably for you that doesn't seem to work for anybody else that you know.

1:06:17And you're not going to honor that because of this study says that this isn't good for you. You know, we've got to take back our agency and to, yes, we can have, and I've shared a bunch of studies. We can have that data. but the most important data, more powerful than any of these studies, is the data that your body is presenting to you. Literally every single microsecond of your life, if you just take a moment and tune in. You got it. God, I love that. That literally word for word is the inspiration for this podcast. How do we merge that ancient belief system? I say with modern medicine, right?

1:06:53There's so many gifts to modern medicine. Having this information is really, really nice. but as much as we can talk about root cause healing any doctor who's getting that lab report and they're seeing an increase in liver enzymes or lipids that are elevated that doesn't give you root cause doesn't help you understand any differently you've got to go out and figure out how what the source is for you and how you can um you know switch tracks and for healing 99 of the people that i work with it starts with the supplements and the food plan and that because that's what they're conditioned to thinking.

1:07:24Then it turns into, oh, no, that doesn't feel good for my body. I want to do this instead, right? And to bring that back to everything that you've said, I think the foundation of what you're speaking to today, it comes down to an emotion that you, it's a state that you're setting within your body. And that state starts with community and with the state that you're putting your body in when you're with people that you love, when you're eating with other people instead of isolation. Absolutely. And one last point with this is that why are relationships so impactful? Yes, the leading researcher said it was stress, metabolizing stress, which is dope.

1:08:05Okay, got it. But one of the things that I feel, again, in one understanding of this is that, and this is going to be obvious once I say it, but we don't have published data on this. Your relationships impact what you eat more than anything else. Your relationships impact your sleep habits more than anyone else. Your relationships impact your exercise habits more than anything else. I said anyone else. But anything else. You know that your husband is going to impact your sleep. Your wife is going to, your kids are going to impact your sleep. More than anything else. So again, your relationships are the tip of the spear.

1:08:37It's that thing that, it's the umbrella under which everything else sits because it impacts everything so much. So what if you get the relationships right? So it automatically makes everything easier. Invest in that thing because it's gonna be influencing you, period. You can't get away from it. And there are like, of course, if you have enough will, you can be that person in your family that gets out and goes to the gym and gets the hell away from your family. Like, this is my whatever, You know, I'm dedicated to this thing. But what I found to be more beneficial is instead of dad going to this magical place called the gym and coming back like happier and, you know, sweaty or whatever, just like, where have you been?

1:09:16You know, it's more like, let me show them what I'm doing. Yeah. Let me do this in front of them. Let's train together. Yeah. And so I intentionally did that early on. And to this day, like my son is sitting in another room, he's 13 years old. he's, I don't have to tell him. He's just going to get out and train. He's going to shoot around. He's going to do some exercise. He's going to ask, like, what can I do? And like, even if we do game together, by the way, which I had a terrible gaming day yesterday. But after that, like we go outside and we play in the real world. You know, we went outside and played horse, you know, shot around.

1:09:54And we have this balance. And he invites that balance because of our culture that we've created. and so it helps to affirm and makes everything so much easier when you get the culture right and so I wanted to share that and also if I can close with some tips to go back with this family eating phenomenon today more than ever if I pull out my phone and you as well we've got all this stuff on our calendar that's scheduled isn't our family more important? our family is more important than any of that stuff but we usually don't put them on our schedule schedule it three meals per week is that minimum effective dose seen across multiple studies i just shared a couple schedule it make it sacred put it on your calendar and so this whatever that looks like for your family it doesn't have to be dinner by the way this could be brunch on sunday like we just did and then a couple of meals per week this could be coffee with friends right i'm taking talking outside of your family if you don't have kids if you don't friends count too yes all right?

1:10:57Shout out to friends. Shout out to Ross and all those guys, Rachel. But friends count too. And having that very powerful interaction. So this could be getting coffee with your friends, schedule it. This could be, you know, maybe you have family dinners Monday, Wednesday, then brunch on Sunday or family dinner Monday through Thursday. Then one of the things we haven't been eating together as frequently because basketball season, we've been watching a ton of basketball. Wow. And playing basketball and watching basketball while having dinner. And it's just been like, it's a season for that with us right now.

1:11:32But we have a deep anchor in us eating together and talking. And even outside of that, if we don't have that time of sitting down eating together, we have time of us seeing each other and talking. Like even a walk over here, five minute walk, just me and my son, you know? And so having those touch points. So Schedule it. Make it real. Schedule it. That's tip number two, because we talked earlier about having something of value attached to the meal, right? So find out what that thing is. Make it fun. Make it, it doesn't have to necessarily be like super fun, but like something rewarding, something connecting.

1:12:08It could be even a tough conversation. You know, it could be, apparently my mother-in-law used to ask my wife and her sister when they were little, like littles, like, you know, what's the meaning of life type questions and having philosophical conversation, right? So whatever that looks like for you. And as we've talked about multiple times, make it a phone-free zone. Absolutely. Yeah. Another study done on children, minority children, who are generally in the context of a low-income environment like I come from, I can literally count on my hands how many times I sat down and ate a meal with my parents.

1:12:48Okay. Outside of a holiday. It just didn't happen. It wasn't a part of my reality, but I know if my parents knew, they deeply knew that eating with their kids was going to protect them against illness, they would have done it. There weren't bad people. We just didn't know. And we're living in just chaos, essentially. We'd eat a lot at the same time, but we just grab and go, you know, get in front of the screen. I sat down to eat with my brother and sister quite a bit, but I couldn't wait to get back outside or go to the TV, play a video game, whatever the case might be. And so we know that our phones are, our devices are dividing us.

1:13:27Our devices are divisive. And so even having the phone in eyesight, and I shared a study in the East Martyr Cookbook actually on this, pulls away, like literally strapping people up and monitoring their brain activity, it pulls away attention from the moment because your brain knows if it sees that phone, there's so many goodies in there. And so make it a phone-free zone because that study on these children found that when parents or caregivers ate with their kids four meals per week, didn't matter which meal, they ate five or more servings of fruits and vegetables five days a week and significantly less ultra processed foods, namely chips and soda.

1:14:08But what they noted in the study was this, if the TV was never a rarely on, there's something about having that thing in between everybody, plus the marketing to the children, children who watch, it was like, um, who every hour that a child is watching television led to a consumption of 127 more calories per day. And of course, it's from ultra processed foods and the marketing and those kinds of things. So with all that said, make it a phone-free zone, tech-free. Of course, put a playlist on, whatever the case might be. That's fine. Yeah, that's in the background. And make that a time to be present with each other.

1:14:47That time is for you and it's so healing for everybody. Is connection the missing ingredient to everyone's wellness plan? Absolutely. It's number one. Number one. Let's just reiterate that. So family meals linked to 35%, just three times a week, linked to 35%, lower risk of disordered eating, better school performance, lower obesity rates in kids. This is one of the studies that you pulled out. We have to really own this. And I think that we need to model it when we're out in the world and talk about it with our friends because it's the only way that we're going to see change because using a screen is just going to become more normalized moving forward.

1:15:25Right? So great tip. All right. I want to get some more things out of you as we wrap things up. The biggest one was on, where did we go here? So people who had, oh, the connection. You've written that connection is one of the most overlooked ingredients in your wellness plan. But talk to us, like, what are some of the trends that you're seeing out in the world in terms of food consumption for children that are really impacting their physical and their emotional development? Yes. So this goes back to that study we mentioned at the beginning from JAMA. So the average child in the United States right now, the 20-year study, is eating almost 70 % ultra-processed foods.

1:16:05That is absolutely atrocious and it's unacceptable. This doesn't make any sense at all. Except the fact that the culture that we have has normalized the consumption of these fake foods. All right? Now, the trend is that what I'm an advocate for is just don't go cold turkey. let's change the ratio. Even though this could be easily framed as like I'm making this as bad food or the villain, humans are awesome. Like we've created some really cool stuff that's tasty. We've got these brilliant food scientists who are doing all this incredible innovation to make foods taste a certain way. We can acknowledge what that is, appreciate it.

1:16:45Let's not villainize it and just have more of real stuff that we know, again, we've been eating for thousands of years and save some space for a little fun stuff, you know, quote, fun stuff for, which even as I say that, eating real food is fun as hell too. But just like, let's not villainize the Twinkie. And I'm saying that because I've thought a lot about this. Like I'll contemplate on Twinkie for like, just I'll go on a walk and think about it for an hour. It has value. It has its own value. You know, if this was an apocalypse situation, like that Twinkie can keep you going for a day. I just watched, we're going right now, since my son is 13, we're going through the archive of Denzel Washington movies.

1:17:24We just watched Book of Eli. Okay. And the movie starts off with him, spoiler alert, eating a cat. Right. All right. He eats a cat. And I'm just like, in that situation, like if he came across a Twinkie, I mean, that is literally like cause for celebration. Like for real, we're going to throw a party. We found a box of Twinkies. So that could be around for a hundred years because it never dies. Basically, It's like designed to be, you know, it's fake. It never had any life force to it. And, you know, but it can sustain you. It has its value. And I'm open to the possibility that all this ultra processed food we're consuming is mutating us in some beneficial way.

1:18:03Okay, maybe we're going to get excellent powers. I don't know. I'm just saying, I'm throwing it out there. We don't know. We'll do a follow up on that. Chances are it's really messing us up. Yeah. Extremely, extremely bad. But I'm open to that. And I'm saying, I'm setting it up like this to say, we don't want to villainize this thing because it tends to push people towards the things we tell them to stay away from. Let's focus on adding in, shifting the ratio. I'm a big advocate of 80-20, right? Eat 80 % real foods, make that the basis of your diet and save that 20 % for whatever you want to dibble and dabble in.

1:18:39So that's kind of just one of the big mindset shifts to take with that. A Twinkie could bring someone a lot of joy. and if it's the joy that's the rainfall in your body i totally get it but to your point it's like once you get to the the part of doing the healing where the foundation is solid i think our bodies are so resilient that we can handle it it's when it becomes in excess so what about the tips like the parents who are listening and we're like yeah but sean you know there's goldfish everywhere at my school cheerios are there every single morning there's coffee cake and you know the school's saying it's good for me.

1:19:12How do we make parents understand that it's really up to them to make the change? I get hate mail on goldfish crackers, by the way. I'm so anti-goldfish, but I get hate mail on it. But what are some tips for those people? First of all, the power is in your hands. So much of our culture has been outsourcing our kids, everything to other people. And we just need to be honest about that. Now, this doesn't mean we have to live on, off the grid and you know, homeschool our kids and all that stuff and more power to people who choose to do these things. But this doesn't have to be an either or situation.

1:19:50I am a firm believer that it's a both and world. And our responsibility, our blessing, our greatest gift is to be able to create that foundation and set the template for these kids. Right. And so do the things that we can. We know that at school, yeah, they're going to have, there's going to be candy. There's going to be this, there's going to be that, but what are you doing at home? Like let's really stack conditions, make sure we get all the good stuff we can when they're at home and find creative ways to do that. And also lean into innovation, right? And so goldfish crackers, there are quote, healthier iterations of these.

1:20:30Absolutely. Everything. Less of everything now. It is insane. Anything that you could think of, there's a healthier version of that thing now, because humans were like, yo, I really love pizza, but I know it totally messed me up. So they're creating these like healthier versions of anything that you could think of, right? Just yesterday, wait, on Father's Day, we got, this is a, this is a plug for our favorite YouTuber, Ryan Trahan, all right, that my son and I will watch his videos together, but he's got a company that he created, this young kid, he's like, I'm going to guess he's probably 25, but he created a candy company called Joyride.

1:21:08Oh yeah. And so it has no artificial colors, significantly less sugar, but kids really love it and they love him. And so he's wanting to make his candy the number one candy at Target. He's number two right now, but it's just like, even these kids that are getting some of these ideas and truths about nutrition, they're trying to find a way like, Hey, I'm a kid, I still like candy. You know, I want these sour strips and, you know, twists and things like that. But how can we do it a little bit better and not hurt ourselves so much? And also understand that's just candy. Like, let me eat real food as a primary thing in my diet.

1:21:44And it's okay to have some of this stuff. So be an advocate for better than, right? And you can be an advocate at your school, at your kid's school as well. You can be an influence. You could suggest things. You could talk about things. You can get other parents together, right? They have meetings for this kind of stuff, or you can put them together yourself and you can change. And I'm saying this from a place of experience. Some of my friends, Kelly Starrett, Dr. Kelly Starrett and his wife, Juliette Starrett, incredible coaches. They've got standing desks at their kids' school. Incredible. Really?

1:22:17They got standing desks put in. Wow. Yeah. And again, it's just because of who they are and the influence and having these conversations. things are changing right now and we could be a part of that change. Beautiful. Um, it's happening. I really do feel it's happening. Thank you for being here today. It's my pleasure. This is awesome. Last two rapid fire questions. If you could leave our listeners with one takeaway that you're most excited about for the future, what would it be? Getting people hanging out together. You know, um, AI is here. AI is listening right now. like the AI I don't know what they're what AI is thinking um but the thing is our lives is is AI is AI is is integrating itself more and more into our culture and more things that humans have been doing that AI is going to be doing and it's just it is what it is there's no stopping it even if I might want to what that's going to do is lead more time for us to do something and as if things are going now, that's going to mean more time for people to be in that meta universe online and jacked into the matrix, honestly.

1:23:26And I get conjured up ideas right now as I'm sitting here, my son is in the other room of that movie Ready Player One, right? Where people like are getting on virtual to experience life and experience whatever you can imagine, really. Anything. And that in of itself is very alluring. But what we know about humans is that, again, and we need each other. And so my proposition for everybody is to make it your mandate to be more human than you've ever been. All right, that stuff is awesome. My family and I, we went and did a virtual video game, plays, whatever, it was amazing, it was awesome. But we don't wanna live there because chances are, as things have been affirmed to us now, that is going to be a detriment to your health if that is the majority of what you're doing and where you live.

1:24:15get offline more, create, connect, um, be again, as human as possible, move your body, explore, have fun, see the things, you know, go outside of your environment as much as you can. And this is coming from somebody who didn't get on a plane until I was 25. It was the first time I got on a plane. And because I had no aspirations of leaving, you know, the St. Louis hood that I lived it, you know, but get outside of your environment, experience life. This is our chance to be more human, to create, to connect. We're going to need each other. I don't know how quickly this is going to happen, but it's going to come a time in the near future where we're up against some insurmountable odds from technology and us in some way.

1:25:00I'm not trying to conjure up a Terminator scenario, but we're going to need to band together. We should start that process now. love each other, respect each other, spend time together in the real world. So that encompasses a lot more than two things. I think so. You were such a model of that. Everything from your content to the guests that you have on to your cookbook, to you don't have eat smarter or sleep smarter, make sure you go and get that. And I couldn't agree more. It's connection, connection to yourself, to others, to your food, to your environment, to your loved ones. Thank you for modeling that today.

1:25:32Thank you so much. Of course, it's my honor. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this and definitely check out Rooted in Wellness with Mona Sharma if you enjoyed her interview style and the questions and just the vibe overall. She's a wonderful human being, great teacher as well. And of course, she's been a guest here on the Model Health Show. So check out that interview because I know that we talked about some things that she don't really talk about, even through her own media experiences. So it's incredible, incredibly insightful.

1:26:08She has an amazing story of recovery because she had heart surgeries and all kinds of stuff trying to figure out her own health. So again, I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Apply, apply, apply. This is a time more than any other to connect, to spend time, devoted, intentional time with the people that you care about, to make that an intention. If you don't have that right now, currently, to make it an intention to gather clarity and to move, take those steps in that direction, because we truly do need each other more than ever. We got some amazing masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon.

1:26:47So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. Thank you.