I want to help people reconnect the dots, the symptoms, with how you need to live your life to make the symptoms go away. Symptoms are messages from your body. Your body is screaming at you. Your body is trying so hard to communicate, but we just don't know how to listen.

Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, everyone, to the school of greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Jesse incospe in the house, the glucose goddess. Good to see you.

Hi, Lewis. Thank you for having me.

So excited that you are here. We just spent, I don't know, the last 45 minutes talking about everything that I wish we were talking about on here. We're going to repeat ourselves and get into this. And there's something that I've been fascinated about with your work and your message around, something that's related to me, which is sugar. I've never been drunk. I've never been high. I never tried mushrooms. I've never done any type of psychedelic. It's just been something I've never done. I've tried sips of alcohol, but I've never been drunk.

Why?

A number of reasons. That is probably for a whole other episode. But my brother went to prison when I was eight for selling drugs to an undercover cop. That was the first thing that I was like, oh, just trying something. Where could it lead to? What could this lead to? I'm sure it's harmless if you just do a little bit here and there, but I just don't want to end up here. When you go visit a visiting room of a prison every weekend for four and a half years, it's heartbreaking, it's sad. So that was an early impression that was like, okay, I don't want to get into that type of trouble. And also, in sports, a lot of my teammates were drinking all the time we're doing drugs, marijuana. And I saw that it made them slow minded, and it gave me an advantage on the athletic field. So I was just like, oh, this is hurting them. The next day, when they drink, they're not as fast, they're not as sharp. They show up sloppy, they're not on time. Therefore, the coach is not going to put them in the game. How can I have the edge or the advantage?

And it just stuck with me. I was like, why start in my sports was done when there was so much benefit to not ingesting those things that are poisonous in your body.

It's very evolved of you.

I don't know. But the thing that has not evolved of me is all the sugar that I have consumed most of my life.

I feel the same. I don't drink alcohol. And people, when they say, why don't you drink? I'm like, I have another poison I prefer. That's chocolate ice cream.

I know, right? I could eat a gallon of ice cream. Same gallon.

When I'm here in LA, I order the Van Lewins chocolate fudge brownie.

So good.

And I eat it by myself on my couch at 11:00 p.m. I'm like, what am I doing?

I know, right?

Good.

It's so good. And that is the. I think one of the greatest addictions is sugar right now. And it is linked to so many different mental health challenges, diseases, weight gain, all these things that cause harm on our bodies, our relationships, and our lives.

Totally. And the solution, ideally, we would stop eating sugar altogether, but to me, that is impossible and quite painful. I don't want Brussels sprouts for my birthday. I want a triple fudge shock. So my work has been about, how do you help people eat the sugar that they love in a way that is less damaging to their health? So you get the dopamine, you get the pleasure molecule in your brain, but you don't get. We'll talk about it. But the glucose spike, the addiction roller coaster, the inflammation, et cetera. And I think that's why this work has resonated so much with people. Nothing is off limits. You can still eat the carbs and the sugar, but in a specific way. So that you also help your health at the same time?

Yes, because I think when I think about, I'm a very disciplined human being with everything else, and to think about cutting out sugar completely, even though I know that it has some damaging effects on me, just makes me feel like, what's the point of life if I'm going to cut everything out? It's like I want to enjoy something.

What's your favorite? Sugar. So, before we started rolling, you opened my book to the salted chocolate nut brittle recipe.

Amazing. It's probably like cake and ice cream and brownies.

Are you into chocolate?

Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, I could eat every type of ice cream, sugar, cookies, candies, all the processed sugar you can think of. I enjoy it, which is not a good thing, because when I eat non processed sugar, and I kind of stop eating the candy bar, processed, I guess, essence of sugar. And I have more dark chocolate with some honey or something, or some sea salt. I enjoy that, too. So it's learning how to enjoy it differently.

Yes.

But what I've heard you talk about is the thing that is cool about your method, because I was kind of worried as I started researching about you originally. Number one is because there are so many different methods, strategies, diets, hacks in the food, nutrition, health and wellness space that I think cause a lot more harm than they do helping people because it is so restrictive. But one of the first pages of your book talks about, this is not a restrictive diet.

First of all, this is not a diet. Right. These are basic common sense strategies that probably your grandparents already had implemented into their lives, but now backed up by this modern science that allows us to see why they're so powerful. And to me, the hacks that I share, they're not on the same level as, like, the paleo diet, the keto diet. For me, they're on the same level as drink water, brush your teeth, wear sunscreen.

We're talking about get 8 hours of sleep.

Yeah, exactly. We're talking about just basic physiology, basic health stuff that should be taught in schools. It's not a diet, it's not a fad. It's just how your body functions, and it's understanding physiologically how and when to eat your carbs with less impact on.

Your health, but it's not restricting you from eating anything.

You can eat whatever you want. Let me give you an example.

Now, you probably don't want to over consume on sugar all day long, of course.

So, of course, sugar is not good for us, right? Sugar causes glucose spikes that leads to inflammation, aging, insulin release. But the solution to this crazy food landscape that we live in, food environment, is not to cut out stuff. I don't believe in that. I think you try that for a week, or you're like, this year, I'm never going to eat sugar at all. That doesn't work. It never does. So what I recommend people try is try some of these techniques. For example, if you really want to eat some sugar, let's say a cookie, a donut, or whatever, the best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure, and less impact on your body is going to be after a meal as dessert, you want to always avoid eating sugar on an empty stomach and always avoid eating sugar in the morning. Okay?

Really?

Yes. So breakfast should be savory, okay. In the morning, nothing sweet.

Really?

Yeah.

Man, those pastries, though, with the chocolate inside and just, oh, man, the donut.

In the morning, keep them for dessert after lunch. Because if you have them in the morning, then what's happening in your body as you digest that sugar and those carbs, they turn into glucose molecules, and these arrive into your bloodstream really quickly and cause what's called a glucose spike. So a blood sugar spike. And then about 90 minutes later, Lewis, your glucose levels are going to drop, you're going to feel a crash. And now it's 10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. And all of a sudden, you feel more cravings for sweet foods. You're like, I need a cookie, I need some chocolate, I need a snack.

I need that spike again.

And then you spike again. And then all day you're on a roller coaster where you feel addicted to sugar because your brain, when you're experiencing a glucose crash after a spike, the cravings center in your brain actually activates and says, lewis, find a cookie. Find a cookie. And you want to avoid that, because then you cannot fight against the craving center in your brain so hard. Yeah, that center is very powerful, and it's linked to evolutionary responses that we have to low blood sugar. So you want to avoid that from happening. The way you do it is have sugar after a meal, as dessert, never on an empty stomach, never as a snack. Never for breakfast.

Wow. My gosh. Never as a snack. If you can you eat something first before you have the sugar.

Exactly. Or if you really need the snack, the sugar snack, what you do is another hack that I call put clothing on your carbs. So what does that mean? So, first of all, carbs. Carbs are two types of foods. Starches. So that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats or sugars. Anything that tastes sweet, from a banana to chocolate cake. Those are carbs. Okay? When you eat them on their own, for example, a slice of cake on its own or a bowl of pasta on its own, well, carbs break down to glucose molecules. So those naked carbs, very quickly, they end up as lots of glucose in your bloodstream, therefore a glucose spike. What you want to do instead is put some clothing on your carbs. And the clothing are proteins, fats or fiber before or with them. You can have them before or with them. So, for example, you could have a.

Bite of cake, but then have something else.

Yes.

Fat within that.

Yeah. You could have, like, some greek yogurt with the chocolate cake or with the bowl of pasta. Add some chicken or some cheese or some spinach. Right. Put clothing on your carbs.

Don't eat it naked.

Exactly. Never eat your carbs naked so that they don't cause as big of a glucose spike. Because when you put clothing on those carbs, digestion happens more slowly. So you're still eating the carb that you love with less impact on your glucose levels. And this is just one of many different hacks that I have that help us eat the stuff we love with fewer consequences on our physical and mental health.

That's powerful. So the more glucose spikes we have on a daily basis and the more we have over time, it causes us to live less.

Yeah.

It won't allow us to live longer, is what I mean here.

You say it causes us to age faster, really, through a process called glycation. Yeah.

What does glycation mean?

So glycation and glucose kind of sound like the same word. They're similar. Glucose glycation. And this is why, first of all, before we talk about glycation, I have to explain something to you. So, you know, when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to cooked to brown, what actually happened is that in the oven, it glycated. Glycation is the cooking process of the chicken. Now, did you know that as a human being, from the moment you're born, you slowly glycate? You slowly cook?

You start to cook.

Yes. Like a chicken in the oven. And then when you're fully cooked, you die. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true. And on the inside, you're actually browning. So if you look at the cartilage of a baby, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of somebody who's 100 years old, it's brown, it's been glycated. Glycation is cooking, and it's aging. Now, why am I telling you this? Because every time you have a glucose spike, it accelerates glycation. Glucose causes this, cooking causes this, glycation causes this aging. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. And this shows on your skin as wrinkles. Right. I'm actually 85 years old, but you can't tell I don't have glucose spikes. And it also ages your organs within. And that's just one of the few things that happen when you have too many glucose spikes over time.

Wow. How many glucose spikes is ideal to have on a daily basis? Like, what's the optimal amount of spikes that we should have?

As little as possible, I would say.

Besides not eating, I guess. How do you not have a glucose spike when you're eating foods?

You avoid eating too many carbs on their own, too many carbs for breakfast, too many processed foods. But I don't want people to become too obsessed with keeping their glucose levels perfectly steady because you can actually do that in some unhealthy ways. What I want people to think about is, do they have symptoms of glucose spikes? Do they feel cravings for sugar? Do they feel tired throughout the day? Do they ever experience brain fog, mental slowness? Do they not sleep very well? Do they have inflammation on their skin, like acne, psoriasis, eczema, et cetera? Those are all signs of glucose spikes. If you can never leave the house without a snack because you know you're going to be hungry every couple of hours, that's glucose spikes causing that. And so, as we implement these hacks, you can actually check in with yourself and see that these symptoms are improving. You don't have to wear a glucose monitor. You don't have to track your glucose levels to see the spikes or the no spikes. You will feel better, and pretty quickly, too, because your glucose levels respond in a matter of minutes to what you eat and what you do.

So I recommend people learn to check in with themselves and see how they feel.

What is the optimal amount of eating in a day to manage glucose in a good way?

Are you into intermittent fasting?

Yeah, kind of.

It's been very trendy recently. But you don't actually need to fast for many hours a day to have healthy glucose levels? No. It's more about what you eat. Right.

So you don't need to skip breakfast, you don't need to skip dinner?

No.

You don't need to have 500 calories a day? Restrict calories?

No.

Now, are you still going to look healthy and lose weight in this process, or are you going to gain weight if you're just eating whatever in the right order?

Well, so there's the order thing, but the hacks that I share, they allow you to stop focusing on the calories, stop focusing on the restriction, and just kind of understand what molecules are in your food. And then naturally, as you focus on these glucose hacks, a lot of other things fall into place because you're less hungry. You have fewer cravings for all the processed junk.

Your hormones are healthier.

Exactly. Your hunger hormones are more balanced instead of you feeling famished every 2 hours. So naturally, when you focus on the hacks, a lot of things fall into place, into your body, and then on the fasting topic. I just want to remind people that intermittent fasting is not necessary to have a healthy body. You don't need to fast in order to be healthy. It's much more important to eat well in a way that keeps your glucose level steady than to restrict your eating window. For example, especially for females, we have to remember that fasting is actually a stressor on the body. So if you already have a life where stressful job, kids to take care of, you don't sleep a lot, you drink coffee, you do intense cardio exercise, maybe you do cold showers, you add fasting on top of that. ThaT is a lot of stress for your body to handle. And that's why you see some women who are piling on all these things. Their hormones are breaking down, they feel exhausted all the time. Their body is just being like, no, that's too much stress. So I love fasting when I'm on vacation, for example, and it feels like an easy stress to add on.

But when I'm working and I'm doing lots of stuff, I prefer to have breakfast, to have a savory breakfast, as I explained, to keep my glucose level steady and to just eat three times a day. Yeah.

Something you mentioned here that I love is around freedom. And I think a lot of people don't feel free today with food, diets, restrictions, needing to biohack their life all the time. It feels like they always have to do something else or restrict something they love in order to be healthy, in order to optimize their life. And the more I'm hearing you speak about just understanding, it's almost like intuitive eating as opposed to restricting counting calories, fasting, all these other things that are trendy right now, because my fear is that a lot of women specifically, and now men more so with social media, feel like they need to look perfect all the time. They feel like they need to eat a certain way and be on the recent trends in order for their bodies to morph in a way that makes them feel like they're enough.

It's so tough.

So how do we apply these hacks without feeling like it's some new trend but more understanding? It's more intuitive for me to just live a holistic, healthy life.

Yeah. Well, first of all, if it's not calling you and don't do it right, it's totally fine, whatever works for you. But I found a lot of benefit from people switching from the fads and the restricting and the intense stuff and that relationship with your body that becomes a forceful relationship it's like you're battling with your body every day, right? You're, like, holding on really strongly and trying to prevent this hunger and these cravings and just trying to be really willpower. Yeah.

So hard to have willpower.

So hard. Forever so hard. And a lot of these fads, unfortunately, they're just not based on science. Right? They are marketing machines, and that's also being used by the food industry to sell you more processed foods, et cetera. So I think what people will find in my work is I'm a biochemist, and so I'm coming back to the principles of physiology. How does your body actually work, and how does food impact your hormones, your cells, your energy levels, your mitochondria? I'm not trying to push some crazy new extreme diet. I'm just showing you some simple stuff that actually has been used for centuries. It's not very groundbreaking when you think about it. Let me tell you and give you an example. So, the four hacks in my second book are savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. Vinegar before you eat, carbs, a vegetable starter. So starting your meals with veggies and moving after eating.

What's the science behind all those hacks?

Okay, so savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. First of all, that's been done since forever. Sweet breakfasts, that's an invention of the food industry, okay? We didn't used to have dessert for breakfast. It doesn't make any sense. We used to have meat and potatoes. So, savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. Because if you have a savory breakfast that's built around protein and not, let's say, orange juice and granola, which is pure glucose, then your glucose levels are going to stay nice and steady with the savory breakfast instead of having a big spike. And then that addiction roller coaster we talked about. So the spike and the cravings and the spike in the cravings and the spike in the cravings, you don't want to be on that roller coaster, because then that prevents you from living the day you want to live. It prevents you from being able to use your energy and your passion and your talents to express in the world. You are being controlled by that cravings roller coaster. If you start the day with a sweet breakfast. So that's the first one. Savory breakfast built around protein. Nothing sweet except whole fruit.

If you want something that tastes a little bit sweet.

But after you eat the protein.

Exactly. So, for example, this morning, I had some leftover salmon cakes. I had some green beans sounds good. Yeah, green beans and some rice and some parmesan cheese. And to me, treating my breakfast like I would any other meal has completely changed my life. And it almost feels like I often get people who tell me I was having a sweet breakfast my whole life, and now I'm having a savory breakfast, and it feels like I walked through a mirror, you know, in the movies, like the Alice in Wonderland, like walking through to this alternate universe, parallel universe. That's how it feels. Because all of a sudden you're in control, you're energized, you feel good. Anyway, interesting. So that's breakfast.

Yeah.

Okay. Second hack that I love talking about is vinegar. Now, everybody has vinegar in their kitchen.

But no one uses it, no one likes to taste it.

True. But it's an ingredient that's been around for centuries in our culture. And actually, in some countries, it's very well known that it's something that is good for you. It's healthy. Right. In Iran, for example, they have apple cider vinegar every day. It's a health drink. But only recently have we understood why it's good for us. So the reason vinegar is.

So what's the science behind it?

Vinegar contains a molecule called acetic acid. Okay. And acetic acid, what it does when you have it before a meal is that it slows down the breakdown of carbs into glucose molecules. So it acts on enzymes in your stomach, and it slows down how quickly the food you just ate is going to be turned into individual glucose molecules and then into your bloodstream. Okay, so the second hack is one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before a meal that contains carbs.

I've done this a bunch in the past. Not a bunch, but a handful of times. And I just feel like I have to close my nose while I'm drinking this tall glass of water because it just burns. It tastes bad. It smells bad. It's just like, man, this is not enjoyable. So how do you make it enjoyable with vinegar? Is there, like, unflavored vinegar or, like.

Lemon white wine vinegar? You can try making a dressing and putting it on your meal instead of drinking it. Interesting. And I know it's not great, and so I have some ideas about how you could use other things to have the same effect. But nonetheless, the scientific studies are there showing us it does have an impact. And it's very simple and it's cheap.

Yeah.

But if you don't like it, don't force yourself before every meal. No, I would say once a day before a meal that's high in carbs, right? That's it, yeah.

And when you track this with a glucose monitor or how you're tracking it, what do you see the spike doing instead?

You see 30% reduction in the glucose spike.

If you just have a tablespoon, tablespoon.

And a big glass of water diluted.

Before eating carbs, like, ten minutes before, doesn't matter.

Five to ten minutes.

Wow. 30% less of a spike.

Yeah. So you still eat the carbs you love with less impact on your glucose level.

Interesting.

Yeah. But if you hate this hack, it's fine. The other hacks are just as powerful. Right. So the savory breakfast one will transform your entire day, the experience of your whole life, essentially. And then the third hack is called the veggie starter hack. So that hack means having a plate of vegetables at the beginning of a meal. And you might think, okay, actually, this has been done for a long time. In France, we have this concept called criti, which is raw veggies at the beginning of a meal. In Italy, antipasti, all the roasted, nice vegetables. In the middle east, they eat herbs by the bunch at the beginning of a meal. You know, that salad with vinaigrette, it's quite a common way to start a meal, and now we understand why. It's because veggies contain an amazing substance called fiber. Fiber. She's amazing.

She's on fire.

She's amazing. And fiber, when you have fiber in vegetables at the beginning of a meal, the fiber has time to go and coat your upper intestine and to create a sort of protective shield, like a superhero deploying herself on the walls of your upper intestine.

Really?

Yeah. And it's this sort of gooey, viscous mesh that is improving your gut lining, and then any glucose coming down afterwards will not be able to get through to your bloodstream as quickly.

Wow.

So the veggie starter is an incredibly powerful hack, and you can even combine it to the vinegar hack by making a little vinegar dressing and putting it on your veggies.

What does that do? Does it decrease even more?

It decreases even more the glucose spike of the meal. Yeah. So you still have the pasta and whatever you like, but if you add this hack. Yeah. So you see what happens when you do these hacks is that you can still eat the carbs you love, but then you're creating less of a spike. Therefore, the carbs are, first of all, not having as big of a negative impact on your health. Less inflammation, less glycation less insulin release. And you're avoiding the creation of that cravings roller coaster, which is the main issue, because most of us, when we have something sweet, then 2 hours later, we want more sweets, and then it's 11:00 p.m. And you've eaten 56 cookies, right? Yeah. That's what we want to avoid. We want to have the stuff we love without creating this cycle of becoming a victim to more sugar cravings. The last hack I'll mention, and you'll love this one, it has to do with muscles. You got some good muscles now.

Yeah.

So you know how to use these?

I want them bigger, though.

You want bigger muscles?

Stronger.

Really?

Go.

Nice.

Not too big, but yeah, you want more.

You know why? It's for your glucose levels.

It is. It helps you process sugar better when you have more muscle.

Exactly. And the reason is. So glucose is your body's favorite source of energy. Every single cell in your body burns glucose for energy. So right now, your brain cells are burning glucose to understand what I'm saying. You're holding a pen. That means your hand cells are burning glucose to contract and hold that pen up. If you're listening to us, every single part of your body is currently burning glucose to perform its function. And your muscles, as I mentioned, also burn glucose to contract. Okay? And we can use this to our advantage. The fourth hack in my method is once a day, after one meal, use your muscles for ten minutes.

Move, walk, stretch, walk, jump.

Exactly. You can even ten minutes, clean your apartment, do the dishes, fold your laundry, go grocery shopping. If you're at work and you can't do any movement, you can do some calf raises underneath your desk for ten minutes. Lots of easy little ways to get that movement in so that your muscles will absorb some of the glucose from the meal.

What happens if it's 10:00 at night? Ben and Jerry's is calling my name. Yeah, baby freezer or whatever ice cream you like is calling my name. I'm just sitting there watching a movie, eating a whole thing of ice cream, and then I sit there and then I go to bed a couple hours later. What happens to the brain, body, gut if you do that by itself without applying these hacks?

Well, you're going to experience a very big glucose spike as you're watching the movie and eating the Ben and Jerry's. That's going to have impact on your brain. It's going to increase inflammation, it's going to mess up your sleep hormones. You're not going to sleep as well. Your sleep is not going to be as deep or as restful. You might even wake up the next day feeling hungover. You never get hungover because you don't drink, but sometimes you can feel hungover from sugar.

Wow.

If you've had it late at night, you're going to feel a bit groggy. You might feel like your hands have swollen a little bit during the night.

Your face swollen.

Exactly.

Interesting.

And then with that glucose spike, you're also increasing glycation, aging. You're also increasing insulin release, which over time builds up to a diagnosis of prediabetes, for example. And whatever sort of health background your body has, if you've ever experienced symptoms, from brain fog to psoriasis to fertility problems, that spike is going to make those worse. So let's say you're watching that movie, eating the Ben and Jerry's. You have a few options. You can have a handful of almonds as you're having the ice cream to put some clothing on the ice cream.

Interesting.

Yeah. You could do a vinegar drink. You could also grab a book or a bottle of water. And after you eat the ice cream, maybe do some bicep curls as you're watching the movie to help your muscles soak up some of that glucose. There's always solutions.

So if I've eaten the cake, the ice cream, the cookies, and I've forgotten to do all these things beforehand, but I can still do it afterwards a little bit?

Yes.

Even if the sugar is just in my gut already and just soaking down there, I can still have a couple of almonds or have vinegar and it'll still help.

The best thing to do afterwards is movement.

Move.

Yeah. So do them calf raises. You're sitting on the couch. Calf raises for ten minutes during the movie. That's going to help, actually. Okay. And you can do that up to 90 minutes after eating. The movement, the muscles.

Okay, cool. Do some push ups, whatever it might be.

Totally.

Okay. So these are the four hacks in this book. Do you have other hacks that you recommend as well?

Yes. So these are the four most powerful, important ones to start with. But in my first book, I have some other ones that are really lovely as well. So we talked about clothes on carbs. That's the one I really enjoy. And another one is about snacks. So when you want to snack, should we eat snacks? If you want. It's better not to. It's better to wait between your meals. But sometimes you're hungry, sometimes it's 04:00 p.m. And you're hungry. So what you're going to do, ideally you would have a savory snack. As I explained, not sweet, not sweet. Keep the sweets for dessert. Okay, sweet, equal dessert. Have some eggs, have a piece of toast with some avocado on it. Try to think savory always as much as you can. That's going to be incredibly helpful to keep your glucose levels nice and balanced. Because when you're hungry, when you want a snack, whenever you feel that hunger, that means your digestive system is quite empty. So if you feed it something sweet, the glucose is going to arrive really quickly into your bloodstream and create a big spike.

Or if you could have a snack, should you have vinegar right before?

If you want, if you can, you should use these hacks and compose with them as you wish. And then, you know what, if you can't do any of these hacks one day, it's totally fine. I don't want people to stress out. It's not like something super strict you have to do all the time. There are weeks where I don't do a single hack because of XYZ reason. You can't fall off the wagon. This is not a restricted of diet for me. These principles are things you keep with you for your whole life. Like for example, if one day you don't drink enough water, you're not going to go crazy about it and be like, oh my God, up. It's like, fine, just drink more water tomorrow. Or if one day you forget to brush your teeth, it doesn't matter. We're here for the long haul. We're here to build these habits into our lives and to be able to call upon them like little fairy godmothers whenever we want.

Yeah, that's cool. But the more consistent you can be with it, the better off you'll be.

Absolutely.

So is it possible then to eat more of the foods you love, to lose weight and to live longer?

Yeah, absolutely. And weight loss is an interesting topic, right? I think often when people see something that has to do with food, the first place they go is, oh, is this going to help me lose weight? And I've specifically never talked about weight loss because I think that if you angle something as this is a way to lose weight, then it becomes a diet, it becomes restrictive, it becomes a fad, it becomes something that you attach a lot of anxiety towards. To me, these hacks, as I mentioned, they're principles of how your physiology works. And when you avoid the spikes, a few things happen. Cravings reduce, hunger reduces and you burn more fat and so, as a result, about half of the people who do this naturally lose weight without trying to lose weight, and even by eating more than they usually would. So to me, weight loss is a consequence of your body coming into balance, getting in alignment. Exactly.

And I read in here you did a 2700 person experiment with this, and a lot of the people did lose weight, but they just felt happier as well.

Exactly.

I think that's the key. It's like, how can you be happy doing something that you can do for forever? And you said a lot of people are actually eating more than they were before, and some of them were able to lose weight by doing just the right things in the right order.

Absolutely.

And I think a lot of it, I mean, how much of stressing about what we eat, how we eat, how much we eat, causes us to be out of alignment with our health and our hormones?

I think a lot. Because when you overstress about food or anything else that causes cortisol, that causes stress in the body, that can have a negative impact.

Now, does cortisol also create a spike in glucose?

Yes, it can, absolutely. One of the biggest spikes I ever got was when I was giving one of my first big presentations and I was wearing a glucose monitor and it was in front of like 300 people. And I was so freaked out, I was shaking, but I did it. And then I looked at my glucose monitor and I saw one of the biggest glucose spikes I had ever seen.

Yeah, you weren't eating, though.

I wasn't eating.

Come on.

Yeah. And the reason is that. So back in the day, when we saw a lion or whatever, we had to run away from a predator or a danger. Our body would release all this glucose from our liver into our bloodstream to give energy to our muscles, to give immediate, quick glucose so that our muscles could contract and we could sprint. Now, in today's day and age, a lot of the stress we experience is actually not something we have to run away from, but rather something that is just a stressful social situation. But your body still releases this glucose to help you run away if you have to. And that's why you see this spike.

So it's like chronic anxiety will also cause glucose spikes as well.

I mean, I think, like, very acute events of stress will cause a spike. Right? Chronic anxiety, probably, maybe. I don't know. But we have to remember, food is still 90% of what causes glucose spikes or doesn't. But you will see, in very stressful social situations, sometimes you can get one of these spikes.

Wow. So how long were you wearing a monitor for when you were studying a lot of this for yourself?

Nonstop for two to three years.

Nonstop. I mean, you take it off for a couple of hours or you went.

Yeah, I got really into it. I was going through my own health journey and figuring out my mental health and how I was connected to food. And so, yeah, it was my absolute passion. And I did this nonstop for almost three years. And now, because I understood so many of the principles, I don't need to wear one anymore.

It's intuitive now.

Yeah. So I do it maybe twice a year, but I don't think people need to wear a glucose monitor to get the benefits. That's really key.

What was your life like before you got into these experiments for yourself?

There was such a big disconnection between my lifestyle and my everyday choices and my health. For many, many years, I had a lot of mental health problems, depersonalization, anxiety, and I just never connected those to what I was doing.

What did you connect those to?

I had no idea. I was like, oh, maybe it's because I had this accident when I was 19. I broke my back, and my brain has been broken ever since. And I thought I was just going to have to live with this my whole life.

What was the experience like? What did it feel like for you living like that?

Well, it's scary. I could never be alone. I felt really sad about the outlook of my life. I felt like, man, this is going to be tough. I felt like, this is going to be a tough life. I was like, it's going to be heavy.

Is it because you were just thinking and feeling, like, negative thoughts or you were just feeling insecure or you were feeling anxious? What was the feelings?

I was having actual episodes of this thing called depersonalization, which means, what is that? It's a situation in which all of a sudden you feel like you're not. Like your body is not yours. Like, I would look at my hands and be like, whose hands are these?

Really?

Yeah. And I feel a split between. I would call it splitting. That's the term I used, and it's quite common, actually. And it's a split. I felt like one part of my brain would split off from the rest and just kind of look at myself from above. When I looked in the mirror, I was terrified. I would have panic attacks. I'd be like, who is this person? No, it was terrible. Really? It's the worst thing ever.

Is this like split personalities?

No. Basically, it's a stress response. So when I was 19, I broke my back jumping off a waterfall. And then I had super intense surgery where I thought I was going to die. Like, it was terrible.

You have like, metal and plates in your back?

Loads, yeah, loads in my spine. And the stress from that event, I had never processed it. I didn't know how to process it. I was living in London. No doctor had ever told me, hi, like, hey, Jesse, you went through something really stressful. Let's shake it out. Let's help your body move the stress out of your cells. Nothing, right? So all this stress created this sort of PTSD like, symptom of depersonalization. But then it stayed with me because I had no idea how to fix it. I had no idea what was causing it. Why did I have an uphill Monday and then nothing for three weeks and then three this week? I had no clue. I was lost. I felt completely like the victim of these episodes. I could not stay in a hotel room by myself, for one. I was too stressed to be with myself. And existing had become the most scary thing ever. And I think it's because I thought I was going to die before that operation. That part of my brain just didn't process that we stayed alive, you know what I mean?

So you thought the operation, you weren't going to survive?

Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, because I was 19 and I had waited three weeks between the accident and the surgery, and they had told me what they were going to do.

What did they do?

Well, they opened you from the side. So I had this big scar on my waist. They take out the broken stuff, they close the side, they flip you over, they open from the back, they put a metal cage, they drill stuff into your spine, and blah, blah, blah. And I lost lots of blood. I mean, just like, I was so scared. I was so scared. And I thought to myself, if I wake up, this is going to be a miracle.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. But for these doctors, it was a routine operation, right. But I was like, hopefully I live. Yeah. And so I think that event, having been completely unprocessed, then led to this terrain of mental health problems. And the issue was I didn't understand how I could make sure these episodes didn't happen and I didn't understand what was triggering the episodes before. Eight years. They were eight years? Yeah. They would just happen randomly, once a.

Week, once a month, once depended. You look yourself in the mirror and what would you see?

I would not recognize myself.

Holy cow.

Yeah. It's a very strange experience and I think unless you've experienced it, it's very hard to relate. Yeah, but it affects that very core, deep part of yourself that is just telling you, I am Lewis. I am alive. That thing becomes broken, and so it precedes every other experience. You see what I mean? Like, the core of just being a human being in a body is broken. So it sucks.

Yeah. So what happened then? How did you learn to find this? How did you find the solution after 80 years of suffering?

Well, I had crazy experience. I wore a glucose monitor for the first time as part of a pilot study. And I saw one morning, as I was experiencing one of these depersonalization episodes, I saw on my glucose monitor that I was also experiencing a massive glucose spike from the breakfast I had just had, which was a sweet breakfast.

Interesting.

And in that moment, I was like, oh, my God, is there a connection between what I'm eating and my mental health?

Wow.

And I was like, what the heck? And that's when I became fascinated. I thought, wait a minute, maybe the spike. I think I had just eaten a donut for breakfast. Maybe that spike is causing something in my brain that is causing this symptom to come out again. And then I dove into the research and I found, wow, I'm not alone, actually. Even if you don't have diabetes, you can have these spikes and they can impact your neurons, brain fog, mental health, anxiety, your hormones, your energy, your mitochondria, your cravings. And I found these hacks in the scientific studies. I applied them to myself. And then I finally felt like I had a first tool to improve my mental health.

Wow.

And then I created this baseline of feeling safer in my body, feeling better. And then on top of that, I built EMDR therapy, emotional processing. It was not all fixed with the glucose hacks, but it gave me a foundation upon which I felt like I could build myself back.

Wow. Yeah. You still had to process and integrate the lessons you were learning from the traumas and the years of traumatic experiences you were continuing to have from this situation.

But I understood that the way you eat and the way you're living your life is so connected to your brain and how you feel.

How much of our food determines the way we think?

What do you mean by the way we think?

Like, can food that we eat cause us to have thoughts? Thoughts that are not our own, thoughts that are directed towards mental health and negative side effects of mental health?

Well, the way you eat can impact your neurons. It can create inflammation. It can slow down the speed of signals between neurons. It can impact your gut, which then, in turn, impacts a lot of different hormones. And molecules in your brain. So, yes, absolutely. The studies are fascinating, showing that if you put two groups of people who have mental health issues on different diets, one of ultraprocessed foods, for example, lots of carbs, lots of spikes, and another group on a whole foods diet without so much sugar, that group on the whole foods diet, their mental health improves. The processed food diet group, the mental health gets worse.

Wow.

So I don't know exactly about specific thoughts, but the chemicals in your brain are 100% impacted by what you're eating. So if you already have a terrain of poor mental health, you're going to be impacted by that stuff for sure. And that was my experience. And I never found a single study on depersonalization and food, but I found loads on anxiety, depression and food. So maybe in the future we'll have a depersonalization one. But I think now it makes so much sense. I'm like, well, of course, my food was an important thing to fix in order for my mental health to get better.

When did you start to feel like you were back in your own body and you were seeing yourself, recognizing yourself, accepting of yourself, and loving yourself again?

I think as I was writing my first book, it all kind of came together, because in order to write a book, you have to really process and integrate information. And as I was writing it, and in my first book, the introduction, I wrote my story of the accidents and everything. And that was a real, very emotional moment. I was like, wow, I'm actually writing this down. I'm processing, I'm putting it in this chapter and talking about the after. And I'm no longer the girl who broke her back because I was defining my life.

That was your identity.

Totally. Totally. Because I was still broken from it.

Oh, gosh. You hadn't healed emotionally from it.

No. And what's wild is I saw all these physios after my accident, and they were like, make sure you can walk, and blah, blah, blah. But not a single person addressed the emotional, spiritual trauma part of things. And I really hope that one day when people have a very intense, for example, spinal operation, that there's somebody who's in charge of saying, hey, your body went through some crazy stuff. Let's help you move some of that stress out. Let's have a little ceremony, let's shake to move and help your nervous system integrate. Let's do some tapping. We need more of that.

Absolutely.

We need so much more of that.

Yeah. I mean, the book, the body keeps a score, continues to just take off because it's about the traumas that your body has felt, if you just go on like it didn't happen, your body's going to remember and it's going to cause a disconnect.

You know that too, right?

100%. And I feel like when you start to process those things emotionally, through any type of therapeutic experience, it allows you to integrate lessons, reflection, and kind of speak it aloud. You writing it down was you acknowledging it, like, this did happen. Let me process and move through this and try to not eliminate it or disassociate, but integrate the lessons. And it was a part of me, but it doesn't define me. I think that's a beautiful thing.

Yeah, but some people go their whole lives not being able to process stuff. We don't have enough education on that in the world yet. And I think it's so powerful.

I'm curious about your thoughts. Maybe you haven't done any research on this yet, but I'm curious about your thoughts of being in the wrong intimate relationship or in a toxic relationship, and how it affects your glucose spikes and your health.

Oh, cool question. There's one study that comes to mind that kind of shows the reverse. So they did this incredible study in the US. They recruited, I think it was a hundred couples, married couples, okay. And they gave each person in the couple a voodoo doll representing their spouse.

Oh, my gosh.

And the researchers, bless them, they asked the participants to put a pin in the voodoo doll every time their spouse annoyed them. Come on, I'm serious. And then they also measured these people's glucose levels. What did they find? They found that the people who had the most irregular glucose levels, the more roller coaster. Well, they had put more pins in the voodoo doll representing their spouse, and now we can.

So they had anger and resentment towards their spouse more, and they had more glucose spikes. Holy cow.

So one of the hypotheses of the scientists was that glucose spikes impact this molecule in your brain called tyrosine, which is in charge of regulating your mood and keeping you calm and calm and cool. And when you have lots of glucose spikes, that thing does not do well, and it's not at its normal levels, and that can lead you to being more vindictive, more irritable. Yeah. So that's the only thing I know. But then, in terms of what happens if you're in a toxic relationship? Well, if you're in a situation where you don't feel well and you're trapped or you're in a very difficult situation, your nervous system is going to respond. Your nervous system is going to be in fight or flight. Cortisol levels are going to increase. You're going to be seeking out dopamine to counteract the very difficult emotions you're feeling. So as a result, I can totally imagine how that would lead somebody to eat lots of sugar, have more irregular glucose spikes, et cetera, for sure.

Wow, this is fascinating. And for that, you mentioned diabetes a little while ago. If someone's not going to use a glucose monitor, they're not going to monitor themselves. What would you say are the top three signs of understanding if your blood sugar is out of balance or unhealthy?

Well, first of all, your doctor should probably once a year test your fasting glucose levels. So that's a pretty standard test. And that will tell you, do you have prediabetes or diabetes? But once that happens, it's kind of like, well, okay, now you do something about it. But before that, I would say the most common symptoms are cravings for sweet foods. I mean, that is just such a sign, especially if you have them multiple times during the day. That means you're on the roller coaster. And then second one, which we haven't really touched on yet, has to do with energy levels. So let me explain to you something. Physiologically, you know how I explained that your body burns glucose for energy? Now, there's one little organelle that does this conversion of glucose into energy. It's your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cell, et cetera. Your mitochondria. Their job is to grab glucose molecules that you just ate and transform them into energy for your body to use. And your mitochondria are super happy when they receive a steady supply of glucose. They're like, steady, transform into energy steady. All good. Now, the problem is, if you give your mitochondria way too much glucose at once, a little bit like if you gave a plant at home way too much water at once, your mitochondria are going to stress out.

Wow.

They're going to sort of go on strike. They're going to go, too much information cannot handle. Like, I'm just going to go have a nap, and they're going to stop converting glucose into energy as effectively.

Wow.

You as a human feel this as chronic fatigue. Playing with your kids is exhausting. Waking up is exhausting. Going grocery shopping is exhausting. It's 03:00 p.m. You need five red bulls and two coffees to stay awake. And then at night, you can't fall asleep and you don't feel well.

Oh, man.

Right? So there's a problem in your energy capacity, in your body. Your mitochondria are damaged. With every glucose spike, you increase that damage to your mitochondria. And so chronic fatigue is a telltale sign that your glucose levels are out of work. So I would say cravings and chronic fatigue.

Oh, my gosh.

You're like, whoa, this is amazing.

There's something that you triggered in my mind to ask you about smoothies, juices, and coffee. Can we have them? Or do they cause too much of a glucose spike that cause more damage than, I guess, healthy benefits.

It's, first of all, you can have everything. I'm always going to tell you. If it's 02:00 p.m..

I like it. Don't restrict me. Come on.

I'm like, if it's 10:00 a.m. On a Sunday and I want chocolate ice cream, I'm going to have it. Okay. Yeah, eat it. 100%. Okay.

But what happens to our glucose levels when we have smoothies, juices or coffee?

Okay, so first of all, coffee. Fine. Just don't put any sugar in it.

No sugar?

Yeah. Or some. Well, then have the sugar.

But you have to have something else before.

Yeah, try to have. If you have sugar in your coffee, have it after breakfast instead of before breakfast.

Don't just drink coffee with sugar by itself.

Big glucose spike.

Big one.

Yeah.

What about coffee with like a milk or a creamer or something like that?

Fine. Oat milk is going to be the worst for your glucose levels. Oats milk is like making pasta juice.

Oh, man.

You cook some pasta, you put it in the blender with some water, you blend it until it's liquid. That's pasta milk face bike. When you make oat milk, it's the same.

What about oats by itself with a little bit of protein.

That's better. Yeah, that's good for breakfast. You can have that. Listen, if you love oat milk, have it. I'm just telling you the different stuff. So oat Milk, not my favorite favorites, would be like whole fat dairy or nut milks.

Almond milk.

Unsweetened.

Unsweetened almond milk. Little bit of that is fine. Little bit of stevia.

Yeah, why not?

Fine.

Okay, let's talk about fruit. You ready?

Yes.

Okay.

What's the worst fruit to have?

There's no such thing as worst fruit.

What causes the greatest spike?

Fruit juice.

Juices.

Okay. Yeah. Let me explain. So you know how humans bred gray wolves into lots of different breeds of dogs? Like chihuahuas? Chihuahuas is not a natural breed. Right. For thousands of years, we've been breeding different wolves and blah, blah, blah to make all these different breeds of dogs. Well, we haven't been doing that just with dogs. We've been doing that with plants and with fruits. All of the fruit you find today at the supermarket is not natural. Not a single one. Really. They are all. Yes, they are all the results of thousands of years of selective breeding to make fruit that are juicy, full of sweetness, not too much fiber, not too many seeds. Okay? All the fruit that we have today is a human invention. They're all human inventions. If you compare, let's say, today's banana to an ancestral banana, ancestral bananas are full of seeds. They're tiny, they're tart, and they're really hard to eat. So remember this, fruits are a human invention. Today's fruits are a human invention. Now, the thing is, if you want to eat something sweet, having a piece of fruit is still the best thing to do, because fruit contains fiber, and fiber, as I explained, helps to slow the glucose spike.

Which fruits have the best fiber? Because fruit juice, you're saying, has no fiber. Very little, yeah.

Listen, I don't want to call out specific fruits. I think have the fruit you like best. Okay, fine. If you want me to call out specific fruits, I will. Berries are the best. Probably the best option. Yeah. Tropical fruit, like mangoes, even apples these days are super sweet. I mean, have whole fruits. I don't want to demonize whole fruits, but what happens is that if you juice fruit, you're throwing away the fiber. That's the stuff that goes into the garbage bin. That is the fiber.

That's the good stuff for your gut and helps the spice to go down.

Yeah. And then if you make a fruit juice, it's just water and sugar.

Without the fiber.

Without the fiber.

So what if you had the fiber in some other food first and then you had orange juice?

Sure, if you want.

Is the spike going to be lesser?

Yeah. I mean, you can always be very ingenious about stuff, but I would recommend people see orange juice as dessert. If you want a juice, it's for pleasure, it's for dessert. It's not a good way to get your fruit in.

You're still not telling us don't have it. You're just saying it's not going to be the optimal way to do it.

I'm never going to tell you don't have something, but I'm going to say.

But that's a dessert.

Yeah. It's not a breakfast food. It's not a good breakfast. Way to start your breakfast.

If I wake up, first thing I do is have a little bit of water and then a tall glass of orange juice or a tall glass of apple juice. No bueno or whatever. Juice. What happens to that glucose spike? What happens to my body?

All of the sugar in the juice is going to arrive really quickly into your bloodstream, make a big, big spike. Inflammation, aging mitochondria, being tired, cravings roller coaster kicks off. Neurons get inflamed. Signal of neurons slows down hunger, hormones go haywire. You're creating a day for yourself that is going to be full of cravings and fatigue. Wow. Yeah.

So what is the first thing I should be eating in the morning to set me up for success that day? For my mental health. My hunger. Cravings, everything. My hormones.

A savory breakfast build around protein.

Eggs.

Eggs, some yogurt, some leftover fish from last night, tofu meat, a smoothie with protein powder, some nuts, something that, and I have loads of recipes in the book, but something that's built around protein. That way you're going to keep your glucose nice and steady because protein does not turn to glucose when you digest it.

So we talked about juice, but what about smoothie? You just mentioned smoothies. So smoothies would be a better solution?

Slightly better, yeah. For example, if you smoothie a banana, okay, you're not going to get rid of the fiber, but the blades of the blender are going to pulverize it. So it's going to become less effective and you're going to drink that banana smoothie so quickly versus eating the banana. So smoothies and juices are just less good if they're made of fruit. But if you have a smoothie in the morning with like, protein powder, some nuts, some milk, a little bit of fruit for taste, it's fine as long as you're balancing it and putting some clothing on those fruit protein in there.

Yeah. So if you have peanut butter in there, is that a good thing?

Because it's protein, it's going to be better for your glucose spike.

Yeah, it's a better thing.

Okay, you're trying to make me say things.

Well, I'm just trying to understand better.

Yeah.

For the women that I feel like struggle and the men that struggle with their body image, they're needing to look perfect, either needing to look super skinny in a certain way for women, or for men needing to look shredded and ripped or whatever. How can individuals with maybe an addictive personality or a personality that they just really haven't figured out how to accept where they're at with their body, or they just feel like they're bought into their friend group that's telling them do certain things. What can they really do to start to heal and integrate better around their lifestyle? The way they view themselves when they look in the mirror, how they look at their body and how they eat so it's not so toxic for themselves.

I'm not an expert in the psychology of things, but I can tell you a few things that I've observed and learned. I find that sometimes when my readers or my community members come to me and they're like, oh, Jesse, I really want to lose ten pounds. Like, if I lose ten pounds, I'm going to feel so much better. Actually, what they're saying is, I want to feel better in my body. It's not really about the number on the scale. It's about, do you feel good in your clothes? Do you feel happy when you wake up? Do you feel beautiful? Do you feel energized? Do you feel good about yourself? And often what might happen is that somebody will try the hacks and they might not lose weight, but on the inside, their biology is going to be working well again. And all of a sudden, they feel happy. The hormones in their brain are rebalanced. They have energy, their mitochondria work. They feel good about themselves, they sleep well, they have motivation to go and work out. And they realize, oh, it was not about the ten pounds. It was about feeling good and feeling healthy and feeling like myself and feeling empowered and feeling like I have agency and energy to go after my dreams.

So often when we're after a specific weight loss, it might actually hide another desire. Because sometimes you get the weight loss and you still feel sad.

It's not enough.

Yeah, it's not interesting. And listen, I think this is on the realm of psychology and therapy, et cetera. But I know for me, my relationship with my body completely changed. I grew up in France being bombarded with diet messages. Lose five pounds, of course, all over the know and body dysmorphia, and you're like, oh, my God, my thighs are so big. And it's like, thighs are not big. But we're bombarded with these messages, and it's a way to control women. It's so effective.

What is the difference between the messaging in the health and wellness world in France or in Europe versus in America that you see because you've grown up in both cultures, the messaging and the.

Marketing is quite similar. The same stuff is trying to be pushed. But in France, there's a bit more of a culture of eating. Like, we take an hour for lunch, we eat with our family. People cook every day. When you come back from work, you stop at the butcher as the cheesemonger at the produce guy, and you buy fresh food. Right? And then you cook at home, and you actually take time. And I think that's the main difference that I see. And so we're less victims to the big food industry because there's such a deeper culture of cooking and eating together. But listen, nobody is immune to this crazy marketing to diet culture. It is everywhere. Everywhere. French women are also obsessed with being thin. Yes, of course. And so that's one of the reasons I never talk about weight, because I think it's really deflecting the real objective here, which is to help people be healthy. You can be skinny and be really unhealthy on the inside. Right? And it's also just a way to control women. It is such a powerful controlling mechanism. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with how I looked, how much I weighed.

I would weigh myself every day, et cetera. And that prevented me from actually thinking about other stuff, like what I wanted to do, what were my passions, what did I want to learn? How I felt. So it's kind of a prison, and I'm trying to help women understand it's not about the weight. Like, diet, culture, diets losing five pounds before summer, that is toxic.

Right?

And the diet industry is making so much money off your back by making you believe that's going to make you happy and worthy. You see what I mean?

The hacks that you've been talking about researching, studying, and applying, like you mentioned, are a lot of things that have just been around for a long time, and it's bringing them back with new science and showing here how this supports the glucose spikes going down, helps you feel more healthy. All these different things, when people skip out on the healthier hacks and they go for a quick hack or a drug, something like ozempic, that's been kind of taken over, and they live by that versus kind of grounded principles on health and nutrition, what tends to happen even if they lose all the weight they wanted to lose, even if they look better in the mirror, what happens when drugs take over? Common sense.

Listen, I understand the food environment we live in is so confusing. So much of the food we eat is so bad for us, so toxic. We're all lost. So I understand why these drugs have taken over, because we are profoundly lost. And interestingly, in France, ozen pig is not a thing.

Really?

Nope.

Well, it's just cigarettes instead, right?

No, but people are like, what do you mean? It's drugs. So you're not hungry anymore. It's just like, why? Because I think in America, because there's so much more processed foods, all of our hunger hormones are deregulated. So we do feel hungry all the time, and we don't know how to eat better.

So there's no azempic or these drugs in France that you're aware it hasn't taken at all? It's not in the media?

It is in the media, but I don't know a single person in France who takes it.

Really?

Yeah.

So they're pushing it in marketing there, of course. Yeah, but people aren't buying.

No, they're like, what? Yeah. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. So what happens? Well, listen, first of all, I think it gives people a sense of control, and that can make you feel good. But the problem is with Ozempic, for example, now we're starting to see studies about what happens when you stop. And so with Ozempic, you lose a lot of weight, but you also lose a lot of muscle. And then when you stop taking ozempic, you're going to start eating like you normally would again. And then you gain all the weight back, but you just gain fat back. You don't gain the muscle back, so you end up in a worse situation. Right. And the way Ozempic and the other GLP one agonists work is that there's a hormone in your body called GLP one, and it's one of the hormones that tells you, Lewis, you've eaten enough. You know, when you have a big family dinner and your aunt is like, lewis, one more slice of pie, and you're like, aunt Mary, I really can't. I'm just like, you know, when your stomach is really full, one of the reasons you feel that way is because of GLP one.

An ozempic tricks your brain into thinking there is more GLP one than there actually is in your body. So your brain is like, oh, I feel super full.

And then.

Right, I cannot eat. Exactly. Forget to drink. Right. It's crazy. And this is not great because there are natural ways of increasing GLP one, but these drugs trick your body into thinking there's more than there actually is. So we don't know yet what all the after effects are going to be, but I think it says something really disheartening about the state of our dietary habits is that we're so lost about what to eat. And the food around us is so bad for us that we need a drug to help us not eat the food.

Oh, my gosh.

And for big food and big pharma, I mean, match made in heaven, right? It's making a lot of money to a lot of people.

Wow.

But whether or not you take one of these drugs, it's important to understand physiologically how your body works, because otherwise you're just going to be just as lost in six months when you stop.

Right. So what is it? Glp? Is that what you said?

Glp one.

Glp one. So what are the natural ways to, I guess, create more glp one without.

A drug eating fiber or. And this is one of the reasons I created antispike my new capsules, is that there are plants that help your microbiome produce more glp one naturally. So, for example, after six to twelve weeks of taking antispike, you see a natural increase of 15% in glp one. It is an actual increase. It is not tricking your brain into thinking there's more glp one, it's actually helping your body create more of this satiety hormone. And using a lot of my hacks is also going to naturally increase glp.

One vinegar, too, or. No?

I don't think so. I don't think so. No. It's more about specific nutrients that you eat. So protein and fiber and fats, et cetera. But it's just a normal hormone that you have on your body all the time. It's not this crazy new thing. It's just acting on something that's already there.

Yeah. So like we were saying before, vinegar is one of the best things you can do to have in water before a meal. That will help you decrease the spike of glucose of the meal no matter what you're eating.

Well, you have to be eating carbs, because if you're eating just broccoli, that's not going to help because broccoli doesn't really make a spike.

Got it. But if you're having sugar carbs, then it'll help you decrease when you have vinegar.

Exactly.

A lot of people don't want to drink vinegar every day, and they don't want to travel with a bottle of vinegar with them wherever they go. And so this is something you've been developing anti spike. So what is this? What are the ingredients that support you similar to what vinegar does, I guess.

Well, the reason I developed this product is because I was seeing pop up on the market a lot of these vinegar gummies. I won't name names. Interesting. A lot of companies have made vinegar gummies that taste good, that have lots of sugar in them, that are really bad for you, and that have no science supporting them. So my readers were like, hey, can I take a supplement instead of the vinegar?

Yes.

Can I take a vinegar capsule? Vinegar gummy. And I did a lot of research, and I realized there's a lot of stuff on the market which at worst actually contains sugar and makes a glucose spike, and at best doesn't have any scientific studies backing it and doesn't really do much. So I thought, for the people who want a pill when they can't do the hacks, okay, when they're traveling or whatever, they want a little extra help. Is there stuff that could actually function? So, after several years of digging into all the scientific research, I found these four very interesting plants. Now, these are plants that have been around since forever, okay? But recently, scientists across the world have found that they have an amazing impact on our glucose levels. And I put them all into antispike. So the plants are mulberry leaf, lemon extract, cinnamon, and antioxidants from green vegetables.

Wow.

So you take the capsule before eating, and it reduces the glucose spike of the meal by 40%.

40?

Yes.

Come on.

Yes. And it's not bogus. We have tons of clinical trials on this. It's amazing. And it's because antispike contains this molecule called DNJ. DNJ is awesome. And what she does is she lets 40% of the sugar from your meal pass through to your microbiome without being absorbed into your bloodstream. That means your bloodstream doesn't register it. There is less of a spike, so less impact on your health. And your microbiome is so happy to feed on these sugars, and it creates all sorts of positive hormones, including increasing glp one. So it's honesty. I know it sounds a little bit like a magic pill, and I don't want people to think, oh, I'm just going to do this and not do the hacks. It is an extra tool. Do the hacks. Do not replace all the hacks that are free and easy and food based with antispike. But if you want something to have in your purse for when it's a birthday party, you're traveling, you want a little bit of help, you're going to eat carbs, and you want less of a spike. This is 100% the best thing on the market. There's nothing like it.

It's incredibly powerful, 100% plant vegan, a lot of clinical studies on it, and it's the only thing I recommend today.

Antispike.

Antispike baby.

Where they get it at your website.

Yeah, antispike.com.

Excited. I can't wait to ask some and try it out. That'll help me with my sugar cravings, that's for sure. So it's kind of like a guide. It's like this usher, taking the sugar through your body without it going in the bloodstream, less of the sugar and just kind of peeing or pooping out.

Going to your microbiome and feeding your nice bugs, the good bacterias.

Does microbiome want bad carbs and sugar?

It wants the undigested carbs. It creates short chain fatty acids. Yeah, absolutely.

So it wants that in the gut. But challenge is when you have sugar without these other things, it goes in the bloodstream first.

Exactly.

Is that what happens? Which causes the spikes?

Exactly.

Which makes you gain weight, inflammation, age faster.

Age faster. Glycation, mitochondria damage. Yeah. Your face, you're like, oh, God.

What else do we need to know about this that we haven't covered yet? What are you worried about that's coming over the next couple of years with society, with wars, with pandemics, all these different things that have happened? What else do we need to speak about that hasn't been said?

Well, I work in a very narrow field, which is science of your body and of food. And I think in this space, the stuff I'm concerned about is kind of what I experience, which is more and more of a disconnection between symptoms you feel and finding the root cause. So more and more plastering of a medication over a symptom, instead of asking yourself, what is this symptom actually trying to tell me? Symptoms are actually messages coming from your body, right? The cravings, the brain fog, the acne, the infertility, diabetes. They are your body's way of speaking to you and saying, lewis, there's a problem here. Help us fix it. Your body is not asking for a drug to suppress the symptom.

Interesting.

It's asking for you to pay attention. So I'm concerned that we're going to keep going further and further down this path of treating a symptom completely disconnected from understanding what it's telling us about how we live. And we see this in all areas of health, right? Not just in glucose spike symptoms, but mental health symptoms, right? Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, all this stuff, all these autoimmune diseases popping up. I mean, it's everywhere. I want to help people reconnect the dots, the symptoms, with how you need to live your life, to make the symptoms go away. Symptoms are messages from your body. Your body is screaming at you, your body is trying so hard to communicate, but we just don't know how to listen. We don't have the language right? So if you're listening and watching today, and you have symptoms and you've had them for a long time, flip the script. Ask yourself, hey, maybe this is my body speaking to me or trying to speak to me. What if I listened and tried to fix the underlying issue instead of suppressing, medicating, feeling bad about it, not talking about it?

Yeah, I mean, I'm all for tracking data because I love to track the data and know what's underneath everything. But in the world of extreme biohacking cultures, what it seems like wearables, glucose monitors, heart rate monitors, blood drawing every month, whatever monitor you have, aura rings, sleeping and tracking everything, is that. Also, I think it's good to have the knowledge about your specific body and how your body works. But is that sustainable long term, to keep every biohacking thing possible to tracking data? Could it be more stress?

First of all, it costs money. Not everybody can afford these trackers. And the people who need this information the most are the people who cannot even afford my book. So to me it's like a moot point. It's like, sure, track it if it motivates you, if it's cool, if it helps you understand. But really, the public health crisis we face is not going to be solved by these trackers. It's going to be solved by giving people free information online, accessible, easy to digest, understandable. That doesn't even require high literacy rates to understand. That's what I'm passionate about. I don't care about the biohacking stuff. I'm like, if it makes you happy, if it helps you feel more connected, if it helps you motivate, go for it. Don't become already stressed out about it, but go for it. But I have friends, for example, they wear sleep trackers and they've told me that in the morning. It's almost like they don't know how they feel yet until they've looked at the sleep data.

Oh, you didn't sleep well? Oh man, now I'm tired.

And you know what this reminds me?

Interesting.

It reminds me of back in the day. Or it still happens, where women weigh themselves in the morning and depending on the number on the scale, they would then say, I'm going to have a good day or I'm going to have a bad day and feel bad about myself.

It would determine their attitude.

Absolutely. Because that stuff has such a big impact.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's great sides to it. I discovered all these things to a glucose monitor. So far from me to say glucose monitors are not useful. It changed my life profoundly. But now I understand that there's so much work to be done in just giving this information for free without an expensive device.

Yeah. And you show, like, okay, when you eat this specific meal, you show the science on the other pages that say, okay, when you eat this, when you have something before, here's what happens with the glucose spikes. So you're showing already what's going to happen to most people.

Exactly. Yeah. So as long as you see it visually on my data, I think it makes sense. And these hacks are based on scientific studies, on clinical trials. They're not just me testing stuff, winging it, making up. Yeah. I'm just using my data to illustrate the scientific studies.

I love the emotional support water bottle.

That'S in the vinegar week. That's one of the ways of having your vinegar hack.

Yeah.

And so in the method, in the glucose goddess method, I have had a great time just creating all these easy recipes and making it fun and easy to start with. It's a very colorful, joyful book, and I'm obsessed with design and copy.

Beautiful.

And how do you help people change their behavior as simply as possible? And as you see in the pages, for example, all the ingredients have a little photo of them.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It feels very friendly.

It's really beautiful. Yeah. It's always been hard for me to look at a lot of recipe books that just have the words. It's not inspiring, but when you see it visually, like this beautiful image and you see the images of the foods.

And you feel like it's easy, I'm obsessed with simplification and helping people.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Actually take the first step.

You've got great design.

Thank you.

Which I appreciate. I love great design.

It's like half cookbook, half a coffee table book.

Exactly. I'm so excited for you, Jesse. I'm so happy to hear that you've been transforming your own personal life and you've been healing from the reflection, from all the different therapies you've done, but also by taking back control of your life, by monitoring these things and by applying it. So I'm really glad that you've done the work because you've given so many people hope for their life, for their health, for their future in a world of diet, culture, or just confusion of what to do. So I really acknowledge you, Jesse, for being on this journey of being a servant of wisdom from bringing back the ancient things that our great great grandparents knew and applying it to a world of confusion and chaos and uncertainty. So I'm really inspired by everything you're building. The glucose goddess method, the four week guide to cutting cravings, getting your energy back, and feeling amazing. Make sure you guys grab a copy or two. Give one to a friend. Again, if you know someone in their life that's been struggling with nutrition or food or body image, like, give them this book, give them this gift, and send them this episode.

I think it'll really inspire people. I'm inspired. So I'm grateful for you. And check out antispike.com. If you don't like vinegar, like me, I'm a very picky eater. Check out antispike, something you can take before you eat foods, whether you're traveling or at home. If you don't want the vinegar to help decrease the spikes in glucose, which I think is really cool. All plantbased. Antispike.com. I can't wait till I can get my own stock. Where else can we send people to to support you and be of service to you? You've got a great social. I mean, your content of social media is amazing. It's always inspiring. But what else can we do?

I think the Instagram is, where is my hub? Where I talk about everything. So, glucosegoddess.com. And I think something really simple, too, is that I make lots of free content. And so if you have, for example, a parent that has diabetes, get onto my Instagram and send them some of the posts and the simple graphs. And that has a huge impact to helping them understand what's going on in their body. So use all of my content as much as you want. It's free. It's there to be shared. If you're a health practitioner, use it with your patients. Like, we're all on the same team. Let's help people understand their bodies better.

Yeah. It's beautiful. Okay, final two questions. This is one I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want because you've decreased your glucose spikes. So you're living way into the hundreds. But it's your last day. Your last day. You're fully brown on the inside. You're fully. I love it.

Glycated.

You're fully glycated. But you've lived an amazing life. You've accomplished every dream, experienced every experience, felt all the love you wanted to feel. You did it. It's a celebration, but it's the last day. And for whatever reason, in this hypothetical world, you have to take everything with you that you've created, this book, this interview, anything you've ever shared online, gone.

Okay.

From our world. And you get to leave behind only three things. Three lessons. I call it the three truths.

Okay.

What would those three truths be for you?

Symptoms are messages have a savory breakfast, actually, and focus on personal growth. Grow as much as you can. Take challenges as lessons. Find the teaching in every difficult thing that happens to you, and grow, grow, grow your soul, your spirit as much as you can.

Those are beautiful.

Thanks.

Symptoms are messages have savory breakfast and focus on personal growth. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Being fully in your power, finding what your specific, unique power passion is and inhabiting it as much as you can. Because that's what your soul is here to do. Your passion is what your soul wants you to go towards. And I think being able to live in that place as much as you can, whether you have a passion for drawing or horses or biochemistry, trying to live in that space, to me, is really great.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis House. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.