Jessie Inchauspé: The #1 Diet Change That Will Transform Your Energy & Health | Health and Wellness | E401

23:13Hala Taha:Yeah, yeah. Like it's like if you don't have sweets for a while then like you just don't want them and then suddenly you bring it back and every day you're like, I want a sweet, I want a sweet. Absolutely. How do we stop that cycle? So the key is not to try to use your real power. That's not going to work. I think there's two things you can do. So first thing is when you want something sweet, try to have some whole fruit and then wait 20 minutes. And if you still want the ice cream, then have the ice cream. But the best first thing, the first sort of gate to try is whole fruit because whole fruit is sweet, but also contains fiber and water.

23:47So it doesn't create a glucose spike. And then if you really want to have the ice cream, which by the way, I totally relate to, use the bucose hacks so that it doesn't create an extra craving cycle. So as I mentioned, never an empty stomach. You can have some vinegar before you have the sugar. So one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water like this. Like apple cider vinegar or like? Apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar. You just want to avoid the sort of very syrupy balsamic vinegar. But this can reduce the glucose spike of that sugar by up to 30 % because it slows down the breakdown of sugar in your stomach.

24:26So you're still having the enjoyment from the sugar with less of an impact on your glucose levels. So with less of a creation of that cycle. And another thing that's very powerful that you can do is that after you eat sugar, use your muscles. So if you're in front of the TV, pick up a water bottle and do some bicep curls. do some calf raises like at the couch, you know, clean your apartment, do some laundry. Activating your muscles after you eat sugar is so powerful because they want glucose for energy as they contract. And the first place they look is in your bloodstream. They look for glucose you just ate.

25:01So for example, if I ate the same chocolate cake on two different days, but one day after that chocolate cake, I went for a 10 minute walk, it would create a much smaller spike than if I just sat down after eating it. So if you use all these little combos, over time, the spikes come down. So you're not creating that biological crash. And probably you're not going to keep eating as much sugar as you did in New York, right? Maybe you were eating sugar like every few hours, and now you're doing it in the evening for ice cream. And so over time, this is going to attenuate and you're not going to feel that craving anymore.

25:35Hala Taha:Yeah. So you were just kind of explaining how fruit compared to ice cream is like a better kind of glucose or easier to manage. yeah help us understand like i know i asked you this question right off the bat but like like i don't i feel like i don't quite understand still like what is a good like what is a good sugar versus a bad sugar and like for you for example like how often are you eating fruit like how often are you are you like trying to stay away from fruit or are you no i don't i don't try to stay away from fruit so fruit and a chocolate bar they actually contain the same sugar molecules It's the same thing for your body.

26:14But there's one massive difference, which is that in the fruit, there's fiber and there's water. So even though there is some sugar in there, it comes in this very healthy package that is going to break down slowly, that is going to arrive into your bloodstream slowly. And also, there's much less sugar in an apple than in a chocolate bar, right? So you have less sugar and a better envelope, a better matrix. And so I have whole fruit every single day. honestly, whole fruit is still there for enjoyment, for pleasure. Like we don't need to eat fruit. There's nothing in fruit that we can't find in vegetables, for example.

26:52But fruit is so lovely to eat and it's delicious, it's sweet, it's enjoyable. So I still see fruit as dessert, right? I'm doing it because I want to, because I like it. But it's a totally fine and healthy thing to eat. However, there's something really fascinating to know about is that the fruits that we have today in supermarkets, has been modified and bred by humans over centuries to be even more sweet and juicy as the way nature intended. So if you look at what a banana looked like, you know, thousands and thousands of years ago, it was full of seeds, not very sweet and quite hard to eat. And today a banana is like super easy to peel and it's very sweet.

27:36So humans have designed modern fruit to be higher in sugar. Yet, the same things will hold. Because of the fiber and the water, they're still fine for your health and you do ghost devils. The problem comes if we denature whole fruit. So if we make an apple juice or an orange juice, what are we doing? We are stripping away the fiber and throwing it in the bin. And we're just keeping the sugar in the water. And in that case, that becomes something that is really not very good for you. because we're concentrating the sugar of like five oranges in one glass and we're removing the fiber. So that protective healthy matrix I told you about, it's gone.

28:18It's vanished. And you're just left with the same sugar molecules as in a can of Coca-Cola in the same amounts. And so sure, there's a bit of vitamins in there, but like not enough to outweigh the huge amount of sugar that is in that juice. So it's not so much about like, is there a good sugar or a bad sugar? It's more there's good envelopes and bad envelopes for sure. And the only thing that is very sweet and that you can eat unlimited is whole fruit. The rest should always be seen as dessert and something you do for your enjoyment and pleasure and something you build glucose hacks around.

28:53Hala Taha:I feel like that's a really good reframe, like understanding that whole fruits are good because of the envelope that you were talking about. Yes. And then also like that you treat it like a dessert, like you know you don't have to eat it. but if you're going to have something sweet, you're going to opt for fruit. So I think like reframing and like make sure you're not denaturing it like you mentioned. So I think those are great. And so when you were mentioning you have fruit, you said fruit and granola and yogurt for breakfast or your first meal of the day, right? Okay, so in that meal, the fruit and the granola tend to be sweet, but because you have the yogurt, you also reduce the glucose spike.

29:26And you don't need that fruit in the morning or at your first meal of the day, but it's enjoyable. And we should also think about things we do for enjoyment. life is not all about just reducing sugar and being sad like we need to eat sweet stuff because

29:40Hala Taha:it's tasty now let me ask you a question about that breakfast would it make more sense if i was like let me just have this greek yogurt plain and maybe or like the granola that i have actually doesn't have any sweet in it it's like mostly nuts and stuff like that so like let's say i have the granola like the nutty granola and the greek yogurt and then i have the fruit after is that better or like that doesn't matter like to have that level of like granularity of how you eat? So in order to answer that question, we got to talk about the order in which we eat our food. Yeah. And there is a fascinating study that came out that has been since replicated many times that shows that during a meal, the order in which you eat the food matters in terms of the glucose spike that the meal creates.

30:25And the scientists found that the quote, ideal order for your glucose levels is the following. Vegetables first, then proteins and fats, and then starches and sugars. Why? Because vegetables contain fiber. And as I mentioned, fiber is our friend. Fiber will create this sort of mesh and slow down how quickly glucose arrives into our bloodstream. And why do we want to eat the carbs and sugars last? Because same concept, when there's food already in our belly, when we eat carbs, they arrive more slowly into our blood. So technically, if you want it to be like, super, super, super highly optimized, yes, eating the berries after you had the yoga and the nuts would be better than mixing them.

31:11But honestly, girl, like, the difference is gonna be pretty small, because that meal is not very high in glucose anyway. And I don't think you need to do that, like unless you really want to, but eating stuff mix is totally fine. You have a lot of protein in there, healthy fats, a little bit of whole fruit. It's fine. If you told me my meal, my breakfast is five cookies and a yogurt, I'd be like, okay, yeah, definitely don't have the cookies first, like have the yogurt first and then the cookies. It's always relative. But in your case, I don't think you have to worry about it.

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33:01Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, in business, communication is part of the client experience. Think about it. when you need to buy something or book a service urgently and the first business doesn't answer, do you sit around and wait? Of course not. You call the next business on your list. And that's exactly what your potential clients and customers are doing when you miss their calls. And by the way, your voicemail is not a sales strategy. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business communication system built so you can never miss a call. With Quo, your team can manage calls and texts from one shared business number so every customer conversation lives in one place.

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34:09Hala Taha:That's Q-U-O dot com slash profiting. Quo dot com slash profiting. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Can you talk to us about what a glucose roller coaster is? A glucose roller coaster is experiencing glucose spikes and crashes, spikes and crashes the whole day.

34:57So you have a sweet breakfast, you spike, then naturally your body's going to bring down your glucose levels. And then if you have a big spike, you're going to have a big crash. And that's the first section of the roller coaster, the first wave of the roller coaster. And then when you crash, this actually activates a part of your brain that tells you to look for more sugar. And so you're going to reach for super sweet granola bar. And then you're going to spike again. So the roller coaster is going back up. And then over the next two hours, your body's going to bring down that spike by storing away glucose into your cells.

35:31But a big spike means more cravings and more activation. And so if all day you do spike, crash, spike, crash cycle, you're stuck in this fatigue, exhaustion, sugar addiction. The cool thing is every morning at breakfast, you have the opportunity every single day to reset that glucose roller coaster. Your breakfast is extremely important as to whether you're going to be on a glucose roller coaster that day or not. So if you suspect that you might be on one because you crave sugar throughout the day and you feel super tired, tomorrow morning have a savory breakfast built around protein, nothing sweet except some whole fruit if you want, and see how different you feel.

36:16Odds are you will be spending your very first day not on a glucose roller coaster. And I can tell you that feels amazing and you get your life and your time and your brain back. If your audience cares about brain health, performance, energy, this also matters a lot. So being on a glucose roller coaster affects your brain. It affects your mood. It can affect how you behave with those around you. You can be more agitated, more easily irritated. It can increase brain fog. Of course, it can increase chronic fatigue for the reasons I just mentioned. So if your only focus is you want a bit more performance and a bit more even keel, then learning how to manage your glucose levels is fundamental.

37:02And in my book, glucose revolution, I have many more hacks and more science. And it's honestly a really, really good place to start.

37:09Hala Taha:All right. So let's transition into talking about your business. So one of the most fascinating things I found about you is that you've got a big following, right? We're talking about 6 million followers just on Instagram. We're on all these other platforms. And your main thing that you talked about for a long time was glucose. And in my marketing brain, that's really niche. You're not just talking about health or women's health. You're talking about glucose. Now, everybody needs to worry about what they eat and everybody needs to eat. So I guess it is broad, but it is still really niche. So talk to us about how you landed on that.

37:47Hala Taha:And if like you like how you were like, OK, I'm going to stick with glucose and be the glucose goddess. OK, so first of all, glucose is niche, but it's actually a very simple window through which to view nutrition as a whole. So it sounds super niche, but it's your glucose levels are a representation of how much fat you're eating, how much protein you're eating, of your exercise levels, of how much sugar you're eating, how many carbs you're eating. So they reflect an entire diet. So that's why it's cool and it's helpful. It's a niche molecule, but it actually represents a lot about somebody's lifestyle.

38:22So how did I get into this? How did I decide to do this? Personal journey, mental health issues, wasn't sure how to do better. I was working at 23andMe in Silicon Valley for five years as a product manager, super fascinated by that whole journey. Yeah. and I had the opportunity to put on a glucose monitor. Somebody in the company sent an email being like, hey, we have this glucose monitors. Does anybody want to try? And I just raised my hand out of curiosity and it changed my life because I saw that the days where I had bigger glucose spikes, my mental health was worse. And I was struggling with depersonalization, depression, anxiety since I was 19 after breaking my back and having an intense surgery.

39:03So I personally got fascinated by it. I read all the studies, I changed the way I was eating. And I was like, this is super freaking cool. And then because I think I'm just wired this way, I wanted to extend this to those around me. And so I thought, if I just print out these scientific studies and give them to my mom and my friends, nobody's going to care. I need to find a visual way to explain why it's so important to manage our glucose levels, regardless of our medical situation. And I thought about making these graphs. So I literally coded on my computer this little digitizer that took screenshots of the glucose monitor, turned it into this pretty graph that I made, I designed everything.

39:42And these graphs, when I showed my friends and my colleagues, man, they got it. And these graphs were simply showing the glucose spike of, for example, an orange versus an orange juice. And you can see in just a second, oh, the orange juice is a bigger spike, so that's worse. And then I decided to put a little bit on Instagram just because I wanted to help people, you know. And I thought, I'm going to give myself six months and try to make the best post I possibly can. And because I had a product manager mindset, I saw these graphs as a feature that I was continuously testing every single day.

40:16So I had a ton of iterations of these graphs and I was seeing what was catching on or not. And after six months, I had like a thousand followers. I thought, this is it, girl. I got to go. And so I quit turning to me and I decided to do the glucose thing full time. But I had no business plan. I had no, I had no idea what I was doing. And because I was in Silicon Valley, everybody said, Jesse, make a deck and go raise a million dollars. And I was like, I don't want to build an app. Like I want to make content and educate. And so I was about to stop doing this six months later because I had no more savings when I had the opportunity to write a book.

40:54So my book agent saw my work, reached out and said, I think you should write a book. And I had never thought about writing a book, but I did. And that's when things started to sort of snowball after that book came out. I got, you know, media and press and people were sharing more and more of the glucose graphs on Instagram. And then years later, I decided to build a business out of it, to have a recipe club, to have a formulation of a supplement I developed, to do more books, to do more products. But it all came very organically. I never raised any money. It was all bootstrap. It was all, you know, one foot after the other.

41:29So I love that. There was no deck. There were no Slick and Valley investors. I did take meetings and I was like, this is not for me.

41:36Hala Taha:So yeah. I love that you bootstrapped. Does that answer your question? It totally does. And I always talk, I love creator. You know, I'm a creator entrepreneur. Creator entrepreneurship is awesome. I believe that is the future. I believe that is the way that you can really build big businesses now without taking funding because your personal brand is your audience. Now, one of the things that like really like, you know, is eye opening for me is that you started with these graphs, like a lot of people like start with their face. You started with these graphs that you perfected that people really loved and people kind of got trained on.

42:10Hala Taha:Did you have any like insecurities about going on camera or like how was it for you to actually because now you're on camera all the time? How was it for you to get in front of the camera? No, I have never been insecure in front of a camera. And I credit my mother for taking so many photos of my sister and I when we were growing up. As soon as the camera comes out, I'm like, yes, hi. That was a big advantage. And so I was posting the graphs, but I was also posting selfies. I was trying different things. And I very quickly started making also some videos to complement the graphs. So I didn't have that hurdle of feeling like, oh, I feel uncomfortable, bulk, you know, taking photos and videos.

42:48I think that really helped because I know this can, this can be a real barrier to many people because it is weird to put yourself out there. But I just did not care. I was like, I'm going to use my face to talk about glucose and to help people. One thing I didn't do though, is I never shared my personal life, where I lived, who my friends were, what I was doing. I was not going to be an influencer. I was going to be a science teacher on the internet. And that's all I talk about. It's just the narrow science thing. There's nothing else.

43:18Hala Taha:So till this day, you don't incorporate personal... Oh, that's really interesting because a lot of people say you have to incorporate your personal life. Why do you think that works for you? Why other people kind of say you've got to be personal so people really connect with you? Why does that work for me? Because my whole purpose, my whole brand is educating about science. I'm a science teacher. And that has always been the case. And so I think the people who follow me, that's what they follow me for. And if I started posting about, you know, maybe some people would be a bit curious, but I don't think it would work on my platform if I started posting about my vacations.

43:54I think people would be like, who cares? Give us some studies.

43:57Hala Taha:Yeah. Yeah. That's a brand that you've created. Yeah. You're an educator. Totally. I'm an educator. Yeah. I'm not a... In my books, I get pretty personal. I talk a lot about my personal life and stories because I think it adds a lot to what I'm trying to communicate. But it was also a choice to protect myself, to be honest. And today, considering the amount of articles and media stuff that are written about me, thank God people don't know who my husband is or where I live because it would be a nightmare. So I'm very happy with that decision. Very, very happy with it. But I think it forces... Well, I feel like you do tell your story.

44:32Hala Taha:To your point, your books and like your long form podcasts, Like you do tell your story, but it's just not like your core on social media, the things that go viral. I share the things that are relevant to the message I'm trying to give and to the service I'm trying to provide. But I don't think it's relevant for me to talk about, you know, I don't know what people talk about on the Internet. Yeah, their food. Yeah, exactly. I do post my food, though. But to me, it's very clear in my head, like what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And it's always been a decision. Well, that's super, super fascinating.

45:08Hala Taha:So let's talk about how you make money as a creator. You mentioned some of the ways that you make money as a creator. What is like your biggest revenue generators? Do you actually make money from your book? Or is it more of like the speaking off your book? And how do you make money right now as a creator? I've been very lucky that my books have done very well. So my books have sold 3 million copies in 42 languages. So that's been a big, big, real business for me. Amazing. Yeah, thank you. And I think it's because, you know, I pour a huge amount of work into the books. Like the books are not something I do on the side.

45:39It's most of the grueling work I do every year is research for books. So the books I've done well. I do a little bit of speaking in conferences, but honestly, not more than two or three per year because that's not my core business. And then I build products for my community. So I only sell online. I have a recipe club, which is a subscription that people can subscribe to. And I send them glucose friendly recipes every month. I have a supplement I formulated a couple years ago with the best molecules on the market to reduce glucose spikes with natural ingredients if you want to. So that's been a very, very loved product.

46:14And I'm launching actually a couple more things this year, which I'm very excited about. But when I make a product, it's really because I want to solve a problem and I'm frustrated with the fact that it doesn't exist. I don't have ambitions to have a hundred SKU business or to make more supplements just to make supplements. It's more because I see a problem and I'm trying to fix it. So the problem that I'm going to fix soon is the fact that I want to have protein every morning, but very often I only have time to have coffee. Yet it's impossible to find a protein powder that's actually delicious to put into your coffee.

46:52They're all full of flavorings and textures and all that crap. So I decided to create my own that actually reached the brief of ultra pure, ultra good for you. No additives, nothing weird. So that's launching in a couple of weeks. It's called Protein Prodigy.

47:06Hala Taha:I love that. I will definitely be a customer. I love putting like vitamins and stuff in my coffee. You froth it in your coffee and it tastes like you added just like a splash of milk. But you added 20 grams of fucking protein, which is as much as in three eggs in your morning coffee. Wow. So this is the kind of stuff I love. Oh, I will definitely be a customer of that. I love that. You just said that like you like to solve problems that you see like this is this is something that I wish that existed. Are you actually also listening to your audience in terms of like what they want from you? Yeah, all the time.

47:40100%. So how do we do that? Well, I have a dedicated team member who reads all the DMs every single day that we receive. So that's like thousands of DMs per day and tells me what's going on. She reads comments. We get emails from our community all the time. I meet people in the street. They tell me things. I do a lot of Q &As on Instagram. I see a lot of questions. So I'm very connected to what people need what people want. I can't solve everything. But when I see a problem that I find exciting, then I'll go after it. So the morning protein thing was a big recurring theme. Yes, I know I should have a savory breakfast, but I don't have time to cook.

48:21I just grab my coffee and I go to work. And for years I was like, how do I? I've got to put two in two to figure it out. So that's how we do it. Yeah, yeah.

48:29Hala Taha:I love that. And your latest book is about pregnancy. And when I was first like thinking about what do I want to talk about with Jesse on this interview? I was thinking, okay, no one's going to care about pregnancy with my audience. But then when I was actually looking into your stuff, it was just so interesting. And I do feel like a lot of my listeners are thinking about having kids, already had some kids, or probably want kids in the future. So I just think it's great information. One of the most powerful things that I heard you say is you've debunked this myth of a bun in the oven. Everybody always says, oh, and I'm having a baby.

49:04Hala Taha:I got a bun in the oven. But you say that's totally the wrong way to think about it. So why do we have to think about it differently? Because women are not ovens. So we're not this passive vessel of heat and oxygen just waiting for a baby to grow. The science is actually pretty clear. So the moment you have sex and make a baby, yes, your baby's DNA is set and is never going to change. But actually, what you do during these nine months of pregnancy, how you eat, your lifestyle, your environment, it's co-creating your baby's epigenetics so you're not just an oven you're like an active participant in your baby's creation so all this came about just because i was pregnant last year and i had my little boy and as that was going on i just dug into the research because i'm a biochemist and that's what i do and i discovered such incredibly fascinating pieces of information that are very different to the bun in the oven myth that I had to, I just had to deep dive and write a whole book about it, about how to eat during pregnancy to set up your baby's health for life.

50:07Hala Taha:Yeah. And when you say epigenetics, just because this is not like a medical audience, right? What does that mean? So epigenetics are kind of like these tiny little light switches that sit on your DNA. So for example, you and I have the same gene or genes for diabetes, for example, but maybe on my DNA, there's these little switches that have that gene more activated. And on your DNA, your little switches have that gene a bit more silenced. And so DNA is not the whole story. Identical twins have the same DNA, but if they have a different epigenetic makeup, their health is going to be different. So we used to think that it was all about DNA.

50:45Now we know that like our environment or nutrition actively calibrates what's really going on in our body and our health. And so when I say epigenetics, it's just that. It's this programming of the switches on your baby's DNA. And these happen during pregnancy. And one of the factors is what you eat. So depending on what you eat, these little switches will program your baby's DNA differently. So there's a lot of stuff going on. You're not just this passive oven.

51:10Hala Taha:So help us understand, like, tell us about like the difference in the output of your baby. Let's go business terms. Output of your baby for nine months if you are eating eggs and, you know, tell us what somebody, what good looks like in terms of what you should eat in your pregnancy versus somebody who follows the advice of like nature will handle it. Just eat whatever you want, eat for two and everything will be fine. Well, so one thing to know is that even if you don't follow any of these recommendations, your baby will probably be fine. Like that is one of the beautiful things about humans is that we're very resilient.

51:44But let me take a very simple example, sugar. So when you're pregnant, your baby doesn't actually need you to eat sugar, right? Yet we have these cravings for like ice cream and chocolate, etc. So many moms end up eating way more sugar when they're pregnant than when they're not pregnant. The thing is, we know from this incredible study from the UK that looked at people who were in the wombs of their mothers between 1940 and 1953, and who were in the womb of mothers just before and just after. And the reason this is key is because from 1904 to 1953 in the UK, there was a rationing because of the war.

52:21And pregnant moms only had access to a certain amount of sugar. And that was the same for the rest of the population. Anyway, scientists, 60 years later, they look at these babies who were developing while moms had less access to sugar. And they saw that in these babies' entire lifetime, they all had a 15 % lower risk of having developed diabetes. The only difference was that their moms were eating about 40 grams of sugar versus the average before and after, which was 80 grams. So the amount of sugar you eat when you're pregnant seems to calibrate your baby's vulnerability to things like type 2 diabetes and obesity.

52:58And so why is that? First of all, we have to understand that when we're pregnant, our bloodstream and our baby's bloodstream is pretty much connected. Not technically connected and touching, but pretty much. There's no filter. So everything you eat goes into your blood and goes into your baby's blood. So if you eat a lot of sugar, your baby in your room is also going to be receiving a lot of sugar. And this has an impact on the formation of his organs. His body is going to be like, oh my God, there's a lot of sugar around. We're going to be born into a world with a lot of sugar. So this might increase his insulin.

53:32This might increase his fat mass even in the room. You're sending signals and this can calibrate future health. A more positive and exciting example might be choline, which is found in eggs, or omega-3s, which are found in fish. And today, the sad thing is that most moms are not meeting the general world recommendations of how much choline and omega-3s to eat during pregnancy. And we know from some clinical trials that, for example, if you eat a lot of omega-3s during pregnancy, a lot of eggs or a few supplements with them, scientists can measure a four-point increase in your baby's IQ years after birth.

54:10For the case of choline, scientists can measure faster reaction time in children who were developing in the wombs of mom that had more choline. So you can do these really positive things for your baby's brain development with simple advice. And so in my book, I recap the four pillars. The first one is to try to reduce how much added sugar you're eating. So try to use the WHO recommendation of 25 grams of sugar per day or less. Second, have a bunch of choline. So I was eating three or four eggs a day during pregnancy to give my baby enough. You can eat other foods too that contain choline. Omega-3s.

54:45Three servings of fatty fish per week, and your baby's getting all of the omega-3s that he needs. And then finally, protein. I know it's the buzz thing right now, but actually when you're pregnant, you need more protein. And if your baby is protein restricted, this can also create some vulnerabilities later in life. So not too much sugar, choline, protein, omega-3s. If you do those four things, which most pregnant moms today are not told about and therefore don't do, you're going to give your baby an upper hand in terms of his long-term health.

55:15Hala Taha:Protein is a really interesting one. People are really obsessed with protein. Nobody really talks about it in the context of pregnancy. But I heard some fascinating things from you in terms of like, if, you know, you don't have enough protein, your baby's actually born with like less capability to keep muscle later on, even as an adult. So talk to us about how, what you eat, how like, you know, the baby is expecting that the environment that they're being born into directly correlates with what the mother's eating. Yes. So this is based on studies that we have on animals. So we don't have a specific trial where we can take, you know, 5 ,000 pregnant moms give half of them enough protein and half of them very little protein and then measure the outcomes, right?

55:57That would be unethical. So we use a lot of studies from animals to see this. And in animal studies, when you restrict how much protein a mother has during gestation, it is always extremely clear the baby is born smaller with less muscle mass and the baby stays smaller also later in life. So to give you an example, back to this epigenetic thing. So scientists have found that in animals, when a baby is developing in the womb of a mom with very low protein intake, she has little epigenetic switches on his DNA that say, keep your muscle mass small. And the fascinating thing is that this epigenetic switch is not just happening during pregnancy.

56:37You can measure that when that baby grows up and is an adult. That setting stays with him for life. And if you think about it biologically, okay, imagine your baby's in your room and he can't see the outside world. He can't touch it. He can't hear. He can't see anything. He's relying on signals that you bring as the mother to sort of infer what world he's going to be born into. And so if you're giving him very little protein, he receives that signal and he thinks, or his body thinks, I'm going to be born into a world with low protein available. And so what's a very smart setting in that case the setting should be keep your muscles small.

57:17Don't try to build a lot of muscle mass. Priority your essential organs. Okay, because when protein is scarce, we don't want to have a bunch of muscle mass to deal with. Just focus on the brain and the heart and muscles stay small. And so these little settings can stay with somebody for life. Now, I don't know about you, but if I think about my friends, you know, I have two very close male friends and they kind of have the same gym routine. They eat the same. One is able to build muscle very easily and the other one is not, even though they kind of do the same thing. So I'm not saying that it's because necessarily one of them had a low protein diet during pregnancy, but this could be one of the factors.

57:53Hala Taha:It's so crazy to think about the fact that whatever you eat during pregnancy, your kid actually like forever is like predisposed to either diabetes or predisposed to not being able to put on muscle mass. So does this mean that we're just like doomed and we should all be like, mom, would you eat while I was pregnant? Give me the download so I know what's going to happen. No, because this is just one of many factors. But the reason I wrote this book is because I feel like it's a factor that's just not spoken about enough. But of course, for example, when my mom was pregnant with me, all she ate was sugar, pretty much.

58:25And so when I was 25 years old, I was on the cusp of free diabetes, even though I had a quite healthy French diet. And so looking back, now that I know what I know, I'm wondering, oh, maybe it has something to do with the diet I was exposed to in the womb. I had a vulnerability. This is all vulnerabilities that we're talking about. It's not a sentence. It's not because your mom ate a lot of sugar that you're for sure going to get diabetes. You can always, you know, change things in your life. You can always counteract this with lifestyle, but it's about vulnerabilities and resilience. And I think if we know this, why not use these nine months to try to give our baby the least possible amount of vulnerability to disease and the most resilience?

59:07And the main problem, honestly, is that today, this stuff is not discussed, even though the OMS, the European Union, the US NIH, they all have these recommendations for choline, for omega-3s, for sugar, but they're just not communicated and not followed. So there's a real failure of communication here. That's all it is.

59:26Hala Taha:Now, I met a lady who was like a complete stranger who was just having like a random conversation with her. I forgot even who she was. It was somebody in like service or something. And she was talking to me about how she had kids and she thought I was a lot younger than I really am. And she's like, oh, and you when you I don't have kids yet, but she was like, when you're older and you start having kids, she's like, my kid gave me 40 pounds is what she told me. My kid gave me 40 pounds. And in my head, I was like, I think it's a choice whether or not you gain, you know, 40, 50 pounds in your pregnancy.

59:58Hala Taha:And I think there's a lot of misguidance in terms of like, eat whatever you want when you're pregnant. And a lot of people kind of, you know, it's hard to get pregnant, I'm sure. But I also think you have some control. And I think there's some misguidance around like how much you should or shouldn't eat. So what's your thoughts around that? I think it's a pretty complex subject. I agree with you in the sense that there's a lot of misguided advice like, oh, you're pregnant, you're going to be fat and get fat anyway. So eat as much as you want, or you need to eat for two, or people sort of encouraging you to eat a lot.

1:00:30the truth is you don't actually need to eat that much more when you're pregnant. And this comes as a bit of a shock. But if you look at the science, it's like 300 calories per day at the very end of pregnancy and way less before. But first of all, pregnancy can come with nausea, with food aversions, with cravings for sugar. Hormones go haywire. So it is hard to have the same diet as you used to. And then you throw in that big soup, like all the advice around you. And for some women, that ends up with, you know, gaining 40, 50 pounds. But you don't have to. You don't have to. So I think if you're able to sort of follow these principles and understand a little bit the science behind it all, it's easier to not put on a lot of excess weight.

1:01:14But for some women, that's just how their body works. They can eat super healthy, but just the hormones and the pregnancy itself just makes them gain a lot of weight. But I agree with you, there needs to be more education that you don't actually need to eat for two. You need to eat for like 1.2. So it's not that much more.

1:01:31Hala Taha:You weren't saying like take a certain vitamin, prenatal vitamins. I'm sure you think that's okay. But you were saying to actually like eat fish to get the MOE3. Like what are your thoughts around vitamins versus just eating the proper food? So it's actually pretty freaking hard to hit, you know, every single one of your goals every day, especially for omega-3s and choline and protein. So I actually was taking a prenatal, a pretty complete one, but with methylated forms of molecules, which is a better way to absorb them. I was also taking an omega-3 supplement in addition to eating fish. But food should always be there first.

1:02:12You know, supplements are an insurance policy. But you can't just take supplements and then just eat pizza and think you're going to give your baby everything he needs. That's not how it works. But I think as a complement, they're great. There's no reason to oppose them, you know. I think both can totally work. And in the book, I give some guidance around what to look for in the prenatals, what molecules you need in there, what form, et cetera, what quantities. Because there's so many prenatal supplements on the market, and many of them don't contain the most important stuff.

1:02:42Hala Taha:Something else I want to talk about is something that's often not discussed ever, which is miscarriages, right? Miscarriages are something that happen to a lot of people. often people don't even, you know, tell their closest friends that they've had a miscarriage. And I know that actually happened to you. So would you feel comfortable to tell us a story about your miscarriage and maybe what you've learned from that experience that you want to teach other people? 100%. I'm very happy to talk about it. Thank you for asking. Because when I went through it, I felt so alone and I felt like I had nobody around me who had stories to share.

1:03:18So I'm very happy to share, even if it can help one person feel less alone. So I got pregnant the first time and everything was fine. But at the three-month scan, so I've had scans before. We saw the heartbeat, everything was fine. At the three-month scan, the doctor told me, oh, the embryo has stopped developing. There's no more heartbeat. The pregnancy is over. But the crazy part is I did not have any symptoms. I hadn't bled. I hadn't had any cramps. Like I had zero symptoms. So this was something I learned as a shock at the doctor's office. And this is called a silent miscarriage, meaning the pregnancy stops, but your body doesn't expel the tissue.

1:04:00So I had to have a DNC and it was extremely traumatic. I felt so alone. I felt so depressed, so angry. I had to rewire my entire brain in terms of my expectations for the following year. I felt like it was just so unfair. Why is this happening to me? and the intensity of the emotion was not something I was expecting or prepared for. And I remember telling my husband that if emotions could kill, I feel like I would be dead. That is the level of emotional turmoil that I was experiencing. Yeah. And I learned, you know, I was thinking, oh, is this something I did? Is it because I did this? Is it that?

1:04:41And I learned that actually miscarriages are very common. One in five pregnancies today. and that it's usually not at all the mom's fault. It's just a chromosomal abnormality. But you asked me, what did I learn from this experience? I learned that it's something we need to talk about more because the people around me didn't really know how to hold that grief. It's not a grief that people are very comfortable around. And I think because of that taboo, it's just being perpetuated. But then when I started talking about it, I learned that my mom had had miscarriages. my stepmom, my grandmothers, my friends, but nobody had ever told me this before.

1:05:22And so I think the main problem is that we need to talk about it more so that we know it's common. And so we feel supported and not alone when it does happen. And a little word of encouragement after that miscarriage, I got pregnant again a few months afterwards. And then my baby boy was born and is perfectly healthy, but it was a real trial of the heart. Then go through pregnancy again with that level of anxiety because I was convinced I was going to miscarry again. But I didn't. And now I'll as well. But man, that was just hard freaking core. Wow.

1:05:58Hala Taha:Yeah. And I'm sure that made you want to research like, what can I do differently this time? Is that when you started thinking about this book and kind of researching for this book while you were actually pregnant again? So I started researching during the first pregnancy. And what I learned is that there wasn't really anything different that I could do because most miscarriages are not about something that you do or something you eat. They're really out of your control. It's like the egg or the sperm had a slight chromosomal abnormality. And so it stopped developing because it didn't have the right DNA.

1:06:31And this has nothing to do with what you do during a pregnancy. That's one of the cases where you actually often don't have an agency. This happens earlier on in the DNA process. when the egg is being formed, when the sperm is being formed. Yeah.

1:06:45Hala Taha:That makes a lot of sense. And I'm sure that takes a lot of weight off of people's shoulders, like especially women who are the ones that are pregnant. Like it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's like nature. But that could be insensitive to say to somebody who just had a miscarriage. So what should somebody say? This is a great question. And people were like, girl, it's just nature doing its thing. Don't worry, you'll get pregnant again. That's pretty much the worst thing you can say. And the thing I liked people to tell me was, I'm so sorry, this must be so incredibly hard. Can I do anything?

1:07:21Can I bring you food? Can I take you out for lunch? Do you want to go get a massage? Do you want to go for a walk? Just like how you would support somebody going through grief. You know, there's so many different shades of grief. So not trying to fix it, not trying to minimize it. Because even though the baby, you know, was not visible and the pregnancy was not yet visible, for me it was very real and so I was truly grieving something very real and so that's that's my advice just just treat it like you would treat normal grief and be there and don't

1:07:51Hala Taha:minimize it I love that so the pregnancy book did that feel like it was a disconnect from your glucose brand or like did you ever feel like that puts you in a box at all and like that you want to like grow out of that that glucose goddess and be more like general or how do you how do you think about that? I think my real talent is to make complicated science easy to understand. And I don't think it stops at Gruegros. Honestly, one of my biggest passions in life is mental health, because I went through so much of it myself. And I have this dream one day that I'm going to do a book about mental health and kind of find some, you know, science-backed hacks to help people.

1:08:31And this doesn't feel weird to me. It doesn't feel like a departure because in my core, what I love to do is explain science. And so it might be glucose, it might be skin health, it might be mental health, it might be heart health, it might be exercise, it can be anything. And you know, over the past two years, I've actually been doing content that's not just about glucose. So I'll do stuff on like fasting, or I'll do stuff on exercise performance. And I just love all of it. And my audience appreciates it too. And honestly, like I've talked about glucose so much, And there aren't that many new studies coming out to feed new content, enough new content.

1:09:09So I've had to branch out and I've loved doing it. And my audience also loves it. So it's good.

1:09:15Hala Taha:Yeah. And I feel like that's a normal trajectory of creator entrepreneurs, right? You start out with a niche. You get really popular for it. You're like the, you know, queen of glucose. You are the top thought leader of that. And now you have this captive audience that you can kind of continue to teach on things that are not just glucose. So I think that's awesome. And another thing is that, you know, the only reason I wrote this pregnancy book is because I was going through pregnancy. And so as I go through my life, new topics are going to interest me as I age and get wiser. And so I think, you know, my audience is going to go on that journey with me.

1:09:52So when I go through menopause, I'm sure I'm going to do a lot of menopause content. When my kid is five years old and only wants to eat pasta, I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that. And I'm going to talk about that. So it's also a journey. And I don't see this brand and this project as something that I'm going to exit in two years. Like for me, this is a lifelong marriage and opportunity and joy. So it's not going to stop anytime soon.

1:10:16Hala Taha:Okay. So for the wannabe entrepreneurs that are listening, that are working in a corporate job, like you said, you worked at 23andMe. I started Yap while I was working at Disney, right? What is your advice to them in terms of like, they've got something that they're passionate about that seems pretty random, right? But they want to start posting about it. What's your advice to them? Well, I did two things that helped me actually do it. So I'm going to share that. And if it resonates, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. First of all, I started a little diary. So every week or every month, I would write, you know, April 2019, I'm thinking about this glucose thing.

1:10:55Like, could this be an idea? You know, May 2019. Oh, I got a glucose monitor. This was happened. And to just write a little bit of a diary, just once a month, a few sentences, because I found that one of the hardest things for me at the beginning was that I felt so discouraged constantly. I was like, I only have a thousand followers. I only got 20 likes. Like I'm going nowhere. This is useless. But actually that's your brain playing tricks on you. And so I would go back to the diary from six months ago and realize, oh, six months ago, I didn't even have an Instagram account. Like realize how far you've come, girl.

1:11:27And that was very motivating to me. And then second thing, I made a contract with myself. I was at 23andMe, I said, I'm going to work on this glucose project for one hour a day for six months after work. That's my contract. And I will only assess the success or whether I want to continue or not at the end of these six months. Because every day during those six months, I had 100 reasons to stop doing the Vucos project. It doesn't make money. I have a full-time job. Where is it going? It's not a business, whatever. And that contract saved me because I just put my head down. One hour a day for six months, one hour a day for six months.

1:12:05And thank God I had that because at the end of the six months, I actually had something. And then I made the decision to go for it. So you have to hack yourself into not giving up every single day. And those are the two main hacks that saved me.

1:12:19Hala Taha:So good. That's such, such great advice. Last question on entrepreneurship. So 1 ,000 followers to now 6 million followers. You mentioned a big milestone. First milestone was the book. But like, help us understand, like, what were some of the big things, like big swings that you're like, oh my gosh, I have a million followers all of a sudden. And like, how did it really take off? What were some of the big things? So for the first two years, it was extremely slow, but I was posting every day. And I understood something key, that if I wanted to grow my Instagram account, the only way to get people to find my account and follow me was if their friends or their family members shared with them one piece of my content.

1:13:00Like this is how people consume content. You get memes and reels in your DMs from your friends and your mom and stuff. And that's how you follow new accounts. So I thought to myself, my KPI is, is this shareable? Is Nancy on the toilet peeing, looking at Instagram, going to see my graph and decide to share it with her friend? That's the only thing that matters. And so as I was thinking about these glucose graphs, these posts, that was my North Star. Is this shareable? Does somebody understand it in less than three seconds? And does it make them feel good, useful, smart to share that with their friends?

1:13:37And so I just optimized around that. And I stripped down all the complexities of the graph. There are almost no words on there. It's very simple, surprising tests of foods that people have heard about that bust common myths, you know, and that's how I grew. But it was a very, very long process, for sure. I was even reaching out at some point. I was like sending LinkedIn messages and DMs to everybody I knew who had more than 5 ,000 followers saying like, hey, can I test something? I'm like, do go monitor for you. and they were like, yeah, sure, test this. And so I did. And then I sent them the test and I was like, I hope you're going to share this in their stories with their followers.

1:14:15And sometimes it worked. It was just, it's grueling. But I knew that the North Star was shareability. And then the engine kind of built itself and then I kind of got it. And then once it becomes viral, people share it. Then the growth is something you don't even control anymore. At least that was my experience.

1:14:32Hala Taha:I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Of course. I'm not sure how often people actually ask you about that side of it. So I'm glad that you got to share it. Thank you. Cool. So I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? I'm going to have to answer about health because health is wealth, baby. Like there is, you can have all the money in the world. If you don't have your health, it's complicated. So how to make sure you have more profitability in your health?

1:15:04Start today. have a savory breakfast built around protein, no sugar in the morning. Thanks be later.

1:15:10Hala Taha:Very solid advice. And what is your secret to profiting in life? This can go beyond financial. Turning my phone off. Because I feel like to really enjoy my life, the more time I spend on my phone, on my computer and social media, even though it's my work, the less I feel like I enjoy my life. So it's kind of a double-edged sword. I try to turn off my phone as much as possible, at least on the weekends or on vacation. And that's when I really would feel happy. Like truly deep happiness to me really comes when I unplug. And it's kind of a boring answer, but it feels so true. And I feel it in my core, in my body.

1:15:47What about you? I'm curious.

1:15:48Hala Taha:My secret to problem? I would say relationships. Like just something that I forgot. I think I can't remember. I talked to so many people, so I can't remember who told me this, but they said like, if you had to choose how to spend your time and money, you should always invest in relationships. Like you'll never regret that you spent your time and money on your relationship. So like that's really to me like anytime I have to make any sort of decision, I'm like, does this optimize relationships or not? And if it doesn't, then yeah, then I go in the other direction. So, so important. Well, Jessie, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

1:16:23A good place is Instagram, Glucose Goddess. So my books that I recommend are Glucose Revolution to learn everything about glucose. and for pregnancy, it's called nine months to count forever. And if you're excited about the protein, which you should be, it's called Protein Prodigy and you can pre-order it now already.

1:16:41Hala Taha:Awesome. I can't wait to learn more about that. I'll stick all those links in the show notes. Jessie, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. All right, gang. I personally learned a lot from this conversation with Jessie. The biggest lesson for me is that what we eat is not just about calories or weight. It's about the signals we are sending to our bodies every single day. Jesse helped us understand how glucose can affect our bodies, even if we don't have diabetes. And what I love about Jesse's approach is that it's not about being perfect and cutting out everything you enjoy eating and every sweet.

1:17:14Hala Taha:It's about being more strategic, having these sweet foods after a meal instead of on an empty stomach, choosing whole fruits over fruit juices, building your first meal around protein, and when you can, moving your body after eating. One of the most practical takeaways was the savory breakfast. Jesse explained that your first meal of the day can either put you on the glucose roller coaster or help you get off of it. So if you're constantly hitting that afternoon wall, craving sugar or feeling foggy, your breakfast might be the first place to look. If this conversation resonated with you and you want to go deeper on the science of glucose and how to avoid glucose spikes, definitely check out Jesse's book, The Glucose Goddess Method.

1:17:54Hala Taha:and if you're pregnant or soon to be pregnant, she's got this book, Nine Months That Count Forever and it goes super deep on the science of pregnancy nutrition and how the choices we make during those nine months can shape lifelong health. If you're pregnant, I highly recommend you check out that book. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If this conversation helped you, share it with somebody who needs more energy or more focus or a simpler way to think about their health and make sure you follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or connect with me on LinkedIn by searching Hala Taha.

1:18:28Hala Taha:This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.

1:18:35Hala Taha:Hey, Yap fam. We're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting podcasts for eight years and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous. You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale. And we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers. And I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry.

1:19:15Hala Taha:So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from$500 ,000 to$10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes. And we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com slash apply and share your story.

1:19:50Hala Taha:Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast.

1:20:16you