On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Jessie Inchauspé: 3 Simple Hacks to Improve Your Glucose Levels by 75% & 3 Ways You’ve Been Lied To About Sugar

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

What happens in our body when we eat sugar? How does a glucose spike affect our health? Jay welcomes Jessie Inchauspé (Otherwise known as Glucose Goddess.) Jessie is a French biochemist and New York Times bestselling author. Jessie is on a mission to translate cutting-edge science into easy tips to help people improve their physical and mental health through studies of glucose. In her books Glucose Revolution and The Glucose Goddess Method, which sold over 1 million copies worldwide in 40 languages, she shares her startling discovery about the essential role of blood sugar in every aspect of our lives, and the surprising hacks to optimize it. Jessie doesn't hold back as she unpacks the world of nutrition and wellness, and the intricate relationship between glucose, sugar consumption, and overall health. Jessie discusses the fundamentals of glucose and its vital role in fueling our bodies, the detrimental effects of excessive sugar consumption, and the three glucose spikes that can wreak havoc on our well-being. The hidden sources of high sugar content in everyday foods will surprise you therefore learning the practical strategies to train your body to burn fat for fuel is essential as well as uncovering the tips for eliminating post-meal cravings and the benefits of adopting a zero-sugar lifestyle.  In this interview, you will learn: The role of glucose in the body The foods that help lower blog sugar The hacks to control blood sugar spike The best practices to optimize your sugar intake Tune in to this eye-opening conversation with Jay and Jessie as they talk about practical tips, expert advice, and invaluable wisdom to help you make informed choices and prioritize your health and well-being. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:36 What is Glucose and How Is It Used by Our Body? 08:15 We Don’t Need to Eat Sugar 10:30 The Three Glucose Spikes That Damage Our Body 15:32 Foods with Hidden High Sugar Content 17:20 The Crash After the Glucose Spike 20:25 How to Train Your Body to Burn Fat for Fuel 24:35 How to Eliminate Post Meal Cravings 30:08 Why It’s Better to Have Zero Sugar Intake Daily 34:55 Sleep and Glucose Go Hand in Hand 37:12 How Blood Sugar Levels Affect Mental Health 43:18 Ideal Foods to Take Before Workout  46:57 The Benefits of Taking Vinegar Before Meals 49:56 Put “Clothing” on Your Carbs 53:33 Fruits Are Healthy Until It Gets Processed 57:26 Stop Counting Your Calories 01:03:53 The Anti-Spike Formula  01:05:50 The Disheartening Truth About Taking Ozempic to Lose Weight 01:08:58 Jessie on Final Five  Episode Resources: Jessie Inchauspé | Instagram Jessie Inchauspé | Twitter Jessie Inchauspé | TikTok Glucose Revolution Glucose Goddess  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to The Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. Hey, I'm Wilmer Maldorama, executive producer of the new podcast, Date My Abuelita First.

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Hey guys, it's Jay Shetty here, and I couldn't be more excited to share this exciting news. You asked, we delivered. Juni Sparkling Tea with Adaptogens made by my wife and I are now available in all Sprout locations across the country. Juni is the perfect midday pick me up. With only one third of the caffeine found in brewed green tea, it provides a gentle energy boost without the crash. It only has 5 calories and 0 grams of sugar, making it

the perfect drink. Plus it's made with a delicious blend of adaptogens and nootropics that may help boost your metabolism, combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants and stimulate brain function. Head over to your local Sprouts or visit Sprouts.com to find the closest location near you. The more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. Wow! And this shows on your skin and your organs slowly age. Today, 3 out of 5 people are going to die of an inflammation-based disease. If you want a healthy body, a healthy mind,

you need to make sure you're not on a glucose rollercoaster. Your body doesn't care whether sugar came from an orange juice or whether sugar came from a beetroot and is now in a can of Coca-Cola. Those sugar molecules will both lead to a glucose spike. Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier and more healed.

All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. The number one health and wellness podcast.

Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place that you choose to become happier, healthier and more healed. Thank you so much for coming back every week. I know some of you are coming back every day,

multiple times per day. Now you have 500 episodes in the bank from five years of podcasting. Make sure you go back and learn about all our incredible guests. Now today's guest is someone that I've wanted to sit down with for a long, long time. I was on tour, I was traveling,

we couldn't make it happen, but we happened to be in the same city and I had to take this opportunity. I know that this episode is going to be super powerful for you because if 2024 is a year you want to get healthier. It's a year that you want to feel better. It's a year that you want more focus, more productivity and to feel lighter and work on your health. This is the episode for you. Today's guest is Jesse Inchospe, a French biochemist and New York Times bestselling author. Jessi is on a mission to translate cutting-edge science into easy tips to help

people improve their physical and mental health. In her books, Glucose Revolution and The Glucose Goddess Method, which sold over one million copies worldwide in 40 languages. Jeshee shares her starting discovery about the essential role of blood sugar in every aspect of our lives and the surprising hacks to optimize it. Now, before we get going, I want you to realize this. In her international bestsellers, Glucose Revolution, which I have right here, and the Glucose Goddess Method, which have surpassed so many copies sold she actually did a research study across 2,700 participants and I want to share with you some of the key results that are going to blow your mind. Listen to this 89% of people following her method

have reduced their cravings 80% of participants are less hungry 76% of people following her method have reduced their cravings. 80% of participants are less hungry. 76% of people have more energy. 58% of people who wanted to sleep better are sleeping better. 47% of people who had skin issues have seen improvements in their skin. And 41% of people who wanted to improve their diabetes Reported it improved. Please welcome to the show Jesse. Thank you Jay for the beautiful intro It's all true and it's so inspiring for me to see how you've taken this subject matter Popularized it made it interesting made it fascinating made it practical

it, made it interesting, made it fascinating, made it practical. Every doctor I speak to tells me to read your book. And I have to say, I already know she is. She's amazing. But I love the fact that the medical community is supporting your work, is telling people to read your book. I love the fact that all of your work online, if you don't follow Jessie already on Instagram at Glucose Goddess, go and follow her because everything's so practical. It's so habit oriented. It's You've just done such a brilliant job at making glucose sexy and practical

And so anyway very excited to have you here. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I'm a scientist and I'm not a doctor I'm not a dietitian. I'm just a scientist Fascinated by how do we make science accessible, useful, practical so that everybody can benefit from the cutting edge science out there. So that's really my passion. And I'm so glad to hear that so many doctors are using my work with their patients. That's the point. We need to work together to improve everybody's health.

Yeah, it's incredible. Well, let's dive straight into it, because when I was talking about you coming on the show and everyone's very excited, I also found that a lot of people feel very uneducated in this area. And even myself, I've been on an education journey over the last maybe 12 to 24 months about my own glucose levels. But let's start with what is glucose and why is it important to understand it? I love this question. So glucose is also called blood sugar, right?

And glucose is your body's favorite source of energy. So make a fist right now with your hand. Okay, so as you're doing this, the muscles in your hand are burning glucose to contract. And for everybody listening to us right now, the cells in your brain are currently burning glucose to understand what we're saying, right? Every single part of your body is burning glucose

every nanosecond to keep you alive. And as human beings, the main way that we provide this very important glucose to our body is by eating foods. Specifically by eating two categories of foods. Starches, so that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, and sugars. Anything that tastes sweet from an apple to my favorite triple layer chocolate cake, okay? So we eat starches and sugars and we give glucose to our body. So you might think, okay, I want lots of energy. Who doesn't want energy? So if glucose is my body's energy, I should give my body as much glucose as possible.

I should eat as many starches and sugars as possible. Well, that's actually not the case. I love to take the image of a plant. Do you have any plants at home? Many. Okay. So you know that in order to keep a plant alive, you need to give the plant some water. But what happens if you give the plant too much water? It dies. Exactly. And the human body is similar. Some glucose, everything's going great,

too much glucose and problems start happening. Most of us are giving our bodies too much glucose. And this leads to a whole bunch of symptoms, cravings for sweet foods, chronic fatigue, brain fog, inflammation, faster aging, hormonal issues, and then long term, the development of type two diabetes. So my whole purpose is to teach people how to eat the foods that they love, the starches and the sugars in a way that's not going to cause problems. So how do you keep eating the spaghetti

and the cookies and the bread in a way that is not going to damage your health? That's the whole thing. And that's what I really appreciate about your work and why I'm excited about this conversation because I think a lot of us think, oh no, I have to cut things out completely or oh no, I'm going to have to completely shift everything. And actually you're saying there's maybe that is the case.

Actually, let's go there. Let's talk about that. Is there a need? What is it that needs to be fully cut out? Are there things that we need to definitely avoid in those two buckets that you just shaped for us? Well, we really don't need sugar. We don't need to eat sweet foods at all.

It's really just for pleasure. Your body doesn't need that amount of glucose, that amount of sugar. So when we eat sweet stuff, whether it's fruit or chocolate cake, we're doing it because it releases dopamine in our brain. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone. So sugars, we could do without. But listen, I want a chocolate cake for my birthday. I don't want to eat broccoli for my birthday, you know, and it's

all around us. Sugar is delicious. It brings us pleasure. So of course, if you could completely cut it out, it would be better for your health. But I don't think that's realistic for most people. I don't have that kind of willpower and I haven't seen, you must know people who have completely cut out sugar, but it's quite difficult. What about you? What's your sugar consumption like? So I'm an extremist, which means I either am eating no sugar.

So when I was a monk, I didn't eat sugar for three years. But then I can easily drop back into eating sugar every day because my mother raised me as someone who ate a chocolate bar, a chocolate biscuit, a chocolate yogurt, and a chocolate ice cream every day growing up. So you're my chocolate brother. Yes, when you mentioned that chocolate triple layer cake and you post, I'm like, that is my dream.

And I have had to, through my wife's coaching, through your work, had to develop a healthier relationship with sugar because I believe a few years ago, I was genuinely addicted to sugar. And I want to talk to you about that. And for me, it's taken a lot of retraining, a lot of steps in between where now I'm back being the extremist, where I'm not eating refined sugars at the moment. But at the same time, I would allow myself on my birthday

or an occasion to allow myself to enjoy and indulge. I've just I was wearing a glucose monitor for about three to six months like last year and I was shocked. I was absolutely surprised at the types of things that spiked my glucose levels. I would eat a non-sugar cereal as a test and that would take it to bad immediately, not even average.

It was bad immediately on the glucose levels. Yeah. Talk to us about glucose spikes and why are people measuring their glucose levels? What does that show us? And what are we trying to get our glucose to map at? So when we eat a meal or food that contains a lot of glucose. So, for example, a chocolate cake is a good option, a good example or a plate of pasta or anything else that starts your sweet. When we deliver that glucose very quickly to our body we experience what's called a glucose spike which means just a

rapid increase in how much glucose is in your body. And if you're wearing glucose monitor you will see this, it will look like this mountain that's just rising and rising and rising, and then it crashes. You don't need to wear a glucose monitor to understand the benefits of my work, by the way, but it's a cool visual tool. So what happens in your body when we spike? Why is it bad for us?

There are three main mechanisms that are going on on a physiological level that make these spikes damaging. The first one has to do with our mitochondria. The mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Most people remember that from biology class. So your mitochondria are these little factories inside your cells that are responsible for turning glucose molecules into energy. Okay?

They're incredibly important. The problem is when you give them a glucose spike, so when you deliver them a bunch of glucose molecules very quickly, they break down. They kind of go on strike. You know, it's like when you have so much to do on your to-do list that you're just like, I can't do anything, I have to go nap. That's the feeling they get. They're like overwhelmed by all these glucose molecules and they cannot do their job properly anymore. And so what happens, you feel this as fatigue. So you keep eating this sugar and these carbs, but you're exhausted.

You wake up in the morning, you're tired. Going to the grocery store is exhausting. Playing with your kids is draining. Your mitochondria are not functioning properly anymore. And that's why one of the main symptoms of having glucose spikes, which most of us have is this sense of chronic fatigue. Now, the second thing that happens in our body when we spike has to do with cooking.

So, you know, if you put something in the oven, like a chicken, and it goes from pink to brown, the chicken has cooked and the browning process is called glycation. The chicken has glycated. It has cooked and the browning process is called glycation. The chicken has glycated. It has cooked. Now, a human being, from the moment we're born, we're slowly cooking. We're slowly glycating.

I know it sounds weird, but it's true. For example, if you look at the cartilage of babies, it's white. But if you look at the cartilage of somebody who's 100 white. But if you look at the cartilage of somebody who's a hundred years old, the cartilage is brown. We glycate, we brown as we age. And so much so that glycation is actually pretty similar to aging. And then when we're fully glycated, when we're fully cooked, when we're fully aged, we die.

So glycation is a process that we can't stop. We can't stop aging. You know, there's billionaires trying to reverse aging, but so far they haven't been able to. But we can slow it down or speed it up. And glucose spikes have something to do with this. Glucose and glycation kind of sound like similar words. It's because it is the glucose that is doing the glycating. The aging. Yep. The aging. Yep.

The cooking. The cooking. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. Wow. And this shows on your skin. Wow. You get more wrinkles and your organs slowly age as well. So that's the second thing.

I had no idea. Yep. I did not know that. Yep. Wow. And the third thing that happens when we have a glucose spike. Well, all of these processes, so the mitochondria and the glycation, they also increase inflammation. And inflammation is just a nasty thing in the human body.

It causes lots and lots of issues. Today, three out of five people are going to die of an inflammation-based disease. So inflammation is not good. You want to bring that down. And the third thing that happens when we have a glucose spike is that your body knows that these spikes are not good for you. Your body, when it senses this big glucose spike, it calls your pancreas and it's like, hey, we need to get this glucose down. So your pancreas sends out a hormone called insulin, and insulin is amazing.

And she grabs all the excess glucose molecules and stashes them away into your liver, into your muscles and into your fat cells. And that's one of the ways that we gain fat on our body. But then too much insulin over time, that's the reason we get type 2 diabetes. So essentially you have mitochondria fatigue, glycation, inflammation, diabetes. And then a whole bunch of other symptoms you might feel depending on your personal health history like brain fog, like hormonal issues that could lead to infertility, et cetera, et cetera.

Basically what I'm saying, Jay, is that if you want a healthy body, a healthy mind, you need to make sure you're not on a glucose rollercoaster because otherwise it's going to be very difficult for your body to function and for you to feel your best if you're experiencing glucose spikes on a daily basis. What are some of the hidden places glucose is that we may not see or may not understand that we can't figure out on a day to day basis? Because I feel like when I went to that test of the no sugar cereal, in my head,

that didn't have glucose, only for me to understand it was the rice that it was made from that was having that impact on me. So are there any others that you know that are hidden? Actually, breakfast food is usually a top offender, right? So orange juice, fruit smoothies, breakfast cereal, even if they say no sugar or low in sugar, that doesn't mean they don't contain glucose.

It just means they don't contain any table sugar, but they could also contain sugar from fruit, which is quote unquote natural. So it doesn't have to be claimed as an added sugar in a package, right? Breakfast foods, huge, huge, huge offenders. And then kind of like funny things that you wouldn't expect, like eating a lot of grapes. Yeah. If you eat 50 grapes, that's actually a lot of sugar because the fruit that we eat today has been bred to be extremely high in sugar and concentrated in sugar.

But I think breakfast foods are one of the biggest ones. Oh, also dried fruit. People don't realize that it's not because something comes from fruit that it's good for you. Dried fruit or fruit smoothie or fruit juice can contain, you know, tens and tens of grams of sugar, even though it originally came from a fruit. But your body doesn't care whether sugar came from an orange juice and is now in an orange juice, or whether sugar came from a beetroot and is now in a can of Coca-Cola, right?

Those sugar molecules will both lead to a glucose spike. Yeah, and it's interesting because I think the way we've been trained to have a sweet breakfast, I've switched to savory breakfast last year and that's something you are a big, big, big proponent of. That's a big hack of mine, yes. Yeah, talk to us about that switch. Well, listen, the glucose spike that we experience after breakfast is going to control the rest of our day. So if you eat in the morning something that is pure glucose, like most of us do, right?

I grew up on orange juice and Nutella crepes, so I know. Sounds amazing. It was amazing, but then at 10.30, I was exhausted because I was crashing, my glucose levels were crashing, and I was super, super hungry. Because after a big spike, you experience a big crash crash and that crash activates the craving center in your brain and literally tells you, Jay, go find some chocolate, you know, and you cannot resist.

I know what that voice sounds like. You can't resist that urge. So your breakfast, if you're having a big glucose spike at breakfast, you're setting yourself up for a day of cravings, fatigue, inflammation, and you're going to feel quite awful. An important switch to make is to switch from a sweet breakfast to a savory breakfast built around protein, right? Whatever kind of protein you like. Maybe it's dairy, maybe it's tofu, maybe it's protein powder, maybe it's leftover fish from last night, maybe it's eggs, whatever kind of protein you want. That's going to keep your glucose

levels nice and steady. Add some healthy fats in there and you can have some starch like a slice of bread for taste, but importantly a savory breakfast contains nothing sweet, except if you want some for taste, some whole fruit, right? And you know all those sweet breakfast foods that you love, you don't have to say goodbye to them completely. The best time to have them is for dessert after lunch or after dinner, because if you eat something that contains a lot of glucose, something starchy or sweet after a meal, the glucose molecules are not going to arrive as quickly into your bloodstream

because there's already going to be food in your stomach. The worst time to eat starches and sugars is breakfast because your body is super empty. So anything you eat goes to your bloodstream in a second. But it's actually the meal of the day where most of us eat just starches and sugars. Think about the typical breakfast, orange juice,

oats with honey on them, breakfast cereal, fruit smoothies. Oatmeal with raisins. Exactly. And then you wonder why most of us feel so terrible throughout the day, why it's 4 PM and we're exhausted and we need coffee or Red Bull. We have cravings all throughout the day. And even at night, your breakfast controls how you feel for the whole day. And I think switching from a sweet breakfast to a savory breakfast is almost like, you know, in the movies, when they go through the mirror, it's a parallel universe. Yeah.

And you really feel so different. Absolutely. So, so, so different. All of a sudden you have steady energy. Your brain is clear. You feel good. You feel like yourself. You're not controlled.

You're not a victim to these cravings anymore. Yeah. I found though, that as someone who has had cravings for a long time or lived in that sweet cycle, there's been a lot of withdrawal symptoms. I think when people stop eating sugar, I've definitely experienced headaches. I think some people experience very low energy.

Someone was telling me earlier today that they feel nauseous or sick. Like there's a lot of different things that come with it. Talk to us about why it's so addictive. Yeah. Obviously beyond the fact that we love the taste of it. Why is it so addictive and how does it cause those symptoms? Yeah. I think what you're talking about is if somebody goes cold turkey and just

completely cuts things out and that's not actually something that I recommend. I think that again, like I don't have that kind of willpower and I want to help people improve their health without having to give up the sugar. So even if you delay the sugar from breakfast to after lunch as dessert, you're not going to get all those withdrawal symptoms. You're still going to be able to enjoy it and get the dopamine, but with less impact in your glucose levels. And listen, sugar is addictive, right? And that dopamine is very, very, very, very addictive. And as human beings, eating something sweet is a very easy way to get a hit. Now, what you're talking about can also be due to if somebody completely cuts out carbs,

so starches and sugars completely, let's say from today to tomorrow, you cut out all carbs, that can cause issues because if you've been eating carbs your whole life, your body expects these carbs every two to three to four hours and your body is actually just burning glucose for energy. So all of a sudden you cut off its supply of glucose and it becomes a little bit stressed out. Especially if your body's not used to also burning fat for fuel. In a healthy body, you can switch from burning glucose for energy to burning fat for energy easily. So either you eat glucose and your body gets energy that way or you're not eating and your body's burning fat.

In most of us, we're eating every two to three to four hours, some carbs. And so our body doesn't know how to burn fat for fuel anymore. It doesn't have that muscle. So the idea is to train it slowly to be able to do that. Not to just cut out completely the glucose, you know, cut the grass and under the foot too quickly. That's going to be difficult. Yeah and I think that's one of the

biggest challenges, right? Because when it comes to newest resolutions or when it comes to changing habits, we often think we have to go in or out. I hate that. And diets, you know, they don't work. They're super stressful. They're actually a pretty strong way to control women. Like I have been from the moment I was a teenager, the magazines are telling you lose five pounds in a day, lose your belly before summer. You're bombarded by these messages.

They make you feel inadequate if you're not on a diet. I mean, it's pretty messed up. The amount of fat on your body or how much you weigh is not a good representation of the internal health of your body. Right. And if you're just focusing on, I want to lose weight, I want to lose weight. There are very unhealthy ways to do that. That might actually make your health way worse. What I like to teach people is these simple hacks.

So savory breakfast is very important one. Eating sugar as dessert instead of on an empty stomach is another key one. And these hacks are going to help your body on the long term and create better health from within. And you might lose weight. For example, in my experiment about half the people lost some fat on their body without trying to, without counting calories, without cutting out foods, just because naturally that's where their body wanted

to be and it readjusted, right? But the objective is not weight loss. The objective is being craving free and not feeling victim to finding sugar three times a day, or not a victim to the pot of ice cream at the back of your freezer after dinner. Good energy. So you can actually live the life you want to

live and go after your dreams. You know, that's the point. And play with your kids and have time for yourself. And then improving any medical condition you might have. From mental health through infertility to diabetes. Weight loss consequence. It's not the whole point. It's not a diet, you know?

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives. Those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly, ourselves. We chat about things like what to do when a friendship ends, how to know when it's time

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Hola mi gente, this is Wommer Valderrama, executive producer of the new podcast, They My Abuelita First, part of iHeartRadio's My Cultura podcast network. Each week, host Vico Ortiz and Abuelita Liliana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics who are putting their trust in Abuelita to find them a date. Your job right now is to get on Abuelita's really good side. Our Abuelita definitely knows best. On Date My Abuelita First, three single contestants will vie for

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apps. Listen to Date My Aurelita first on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you lay awake scrolling at bedtime or wake in the middle of the night and struggle to fall back to sleep? Start sleeping better tonight. I'm Katherine Nikolai, and my podcast Nothing Much Happens Bedtime Stories to Help You Sleep has helped millions of people to get consistent, deep sleep. I tell family-friendly bedtime stories that train you to drift off and return to sleep

quickly, and I use a few sleep-inducing techniques along the way that have many users asleep within the first three minutes. I hear from listeners every day who have suffered for years with insomnia, anxiety at nighttime, and just plain old busy brain, who are now getting a full night's sleep every night. I call on my 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to create a soft landing place where you can feel safe and relaxed and get excellent sleep.

Listen to Nothing Much Happens, Bedtime Stories to Help You Sleep with Catherine Nicolai on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and it's a different shift in mindset really because you're saying that a lot of us addicted to weight loss,

weight gain, or something like that. And you're actually saying, well, let's make it about energy. Let's make it about focus. Let's make it about health. Health, yeah. Yeah, which is, which is, which we just haven't been trained to think that way. You know, we haven't even, I grew up always feeling like,

oh, if I didn't put on weight, then I must be healthy. And that's such a, I mean And that's such a rudimentary belief around what health and wellbeing is. Absolutely. And it's shifting. You know, now understanding that's not the way to go. We need to focus on health, not body size or body weight. Absolutely. What should someone eat at 3 p.m. when they're tired?

Because everyone has that post lunch you know slump they do they do but it actually can go away if you steady your glucose levels and if you no longer have these spikes you don't have to feel that post meal slump anymore because generally that slump comes from your glucose having spiked and now dropping because after every spike there's a drop and this drop can make you feel really really really tired. So if you feel those symptoms of the post-meal crash the best thing to do is to start with your breakfast. So have a savory breakfast. Then the second thing I would recommend is at lunchtime make sure that you start your meals with a specific type of ingredient

that is going to help balance your glucose levels. And before I tell you what that is, I want to tell you about this amazing research study, Jay. So, researchers looked at a meal and they found that if participants ate the elements of that meal in a specific order, they could reduce the glucose spike of the meal by up to 75%. Huge! That's huge. Without changing how much they're eating,

without changing what they're eating overall, just by changing the order. And when I was in school, I remember biology teachers telling us, oh, when you eat, it all becomes a big soup in your stomach. And so I was in school, I remember biology teachers telling us, oh, when you eat, it all becomes a big soup in your stomach. And so I thought, how is this possible? How can the order in which you eat the elements of meal have an impact?

So the research is fantastic. It turns out that when you start your meals with vegetables, the fiber in the veggies when you eat it first has time to coat your upper intestine and create a sort of protective mesh, okay, like a shield on the walls of your intestine. And that shield then slows down how quickly the rest of the meal is going to access your bloodstream. How quickly the molecules from the rest of the meal are going to make their way into your bloodstream. And so veggies first is this very important hack. Now the scientists...

I still would eat my veggies last. Really? Because you hated them? Yeah, because you eat all their carbs first and all the rest of it. You're like, oh yeah. And you know, actually, so when you go to restaurants, they often give you bread at the beginning of the meal. And actually it's pretty smart. So I think there's a whole conspiracy here. Because if you give people some bread at the beginning of your meal, so you're super hungry, you eat the bread. Bread is starch, it turns to glucose.

So very quickly you experience this glucose spike. And about 90 minutes later, you're crashing. And that's when the waiter comes over and is like, hi, anybody would like some dessert? And at that point, you're feeling this intense craving for sugar because of that glucose drop. So you're going to order dessert. Wow, that makes sense to me. I love bread at the start and dessert at the end.

But the best thing to do actually is to delay that bread and first have your veggies and then have your main dish and have the bread during the main dish or after the main dish. And that way you can still enjoy the bread, but the glucose molecules are going to be protected by that fiber mesh and not going to create that big of a spike. So you won't feel those cravings 90 minutes later. You won't feel the energy crash. So that's another super important hack.

And if you do nothing else, just at your next meal, eat what you would normally eat. Just add a plate of vegetables to the beginning of your meal. And it can be three baby carrots, it can be some beautiful roasted cauliflower with tahini or whatever, it can be some salad, it can be any sort of veggies you have in your fridge and tomatoes count as well. And you'll see how different you feel after the meal.

No crash, no cravings, and you know you're also helping your body become healthier from within. And interestingly, J, this hack actually has a lot of parallels in cultural habits. So, you know, I'm French and in France, we have this tradition of crudités at the beginning of a meal, which is raw veggies. In Italy, they have antipasti, which is generally vegetables at the beginning of the meal. In the Middle East, you usually start your meals

with herbs eaten by the bunch. So none of the stuff I'm talking about is that revolutionary. It's kind of common sense, but we've lost touch with these traditions and now we understand the science behind them, so I want us to bring them back. Yeah, that's spectacular.

There was a study you were about to quote and then I cut you off. Tell me. I don't know, you were about to say, and the study says, and then I said, I used to eat my vegetables last. I don't know what that was. I think I was just talking about the food order.

So 75%. And so ideally, from a scientific standpoint, you would always start your meals with the veggies, then the proteins and the fats, and then the carbs last, the starches and sugars last. Now, you know, that's a scientific theory, and if you want to decompose your meal and sugars last. Now, you know, that's a scientific theory and if you want to decompose your meal and do that specific order, you can.

But I think from this science, we can just extract the most important piece of information, which is veggies first and the carbs towards the end of the meal to reduce the spike. I think that's so practical. I think all of us can at least do that with whatever's on our plates. And if we can just make that shift today, we're going to start to see the benefit

and that will hopefully push us in that direction. Exactly. And then naturally you crave less sugar and you feel better. And it's these small tweaks and you don't have to cut out foods. We're not talking about restricting how much you're eating. I'm actually telling you to add food to your meal and that is going to improve your health. So veggies first.

That's another very key hack that I recommend people try out. How off is the recommended daily amount of grams of sugar on any given packages, right? So if you look at any processed food or any packaged food, it will say this is 30% of your daily amount. How wrong is the daily amount? Well, so the American Heart Association recommends no more than 25 grams of added sugar, I think for women and 50 grams for men,

something like that. But we don't need any of this sugar. We don't need to eat any sweet stuff at all. Your body does not need sugar to live. So that is an upper limit, if you to live. So that is an upper limit. If you will. Yeah, that's an upper limit. Yeah.

We're seeing as the basic requirement. It's like saying, uh, I don't know, three cigarettes are allowed a day. It's like, it doesn't mean you should smoke cigarettes. It means like that's a per limit after which real problems start happening, but it's better to have zero. But then what these recommendations don't take into account is when are you eating the sugar? Is it first thing in the morning? So you're increasing inflammation, brain fog, increasing risk of diabetes, hurting your mitochondria, having cravings, aging faster,

or is it after a lunch that had fiber at the beginning of a meal where the impact is going to be way less hardcore on your health? So if you just keep eating the same amount of sugar as you're eating, but you just change when you're eating it, that's the first step. you're already going to see a big impact on your health. And then second step could be reducing amounts. For sure. And naturally, because you're not creating that cycle of addiction, you're going to have fewer cravings for the sugar anyway.

There's this other really cool study I want to tell you about. So scientists put participants in an fMRI scanner, you know, those big doughnut scanners. Okay, so they were looking at their brain activity. And as the participants were in the scanner, there was a screen in front of their eyes and the screen showed images of food, chocolate cake, donuts, broccoli, burger, et cetera. And the scientists asked the participants to rate how much they wanted to eat that food from one to 10.

Okay, like one is like, I don't care. 10 is like, I wanna eat this right now. And the participants were hooked up to a machine that was measuring their glucose levels in real time. And this is what the scientists found. They found that when people's glucose levels in real time. And this is what the scientists found. They found that when people's glucose levels were steady, they were rating all the foods like five-ish. Burger, five-ish. Broccoli, five-ish. So, you know, no particular cravings. But then when the

participants glucose levels were dropping, two things happened. First thing, on the brain scan, the craving center was activating. And second thing, they started rating all of the sweet foods really highly. Okay? And that just goes to show that you cannot control these cravings. They come from a deep part of your brain that goes on to alert mode when your glucose levels are crashing. Because it is a dangerous thing for the body, right? Your body doesn't know that that crash came from a spike

because you just ate 15 donuts. Your body thinks it's low on energy. And so all this to say that as you study your glucose levels, this craving center will activate less and less. So naturally, you're not going to want to eat as much sugar and you're going to switch from a situation in which you were controlled by those cravings to a situation in which you'll eat the sugar you really like for pleasure, for enjoyment without feeling controlled.

So instead of feeling like, oh my God, I need to eat something sweet right now. Give me anything, any chocolate bar. It's more like, hmm, you know what, tomorrow, I want to go to my favorite bakery and get my favorite pastry. You know, from a sense of like agency and strength and boundaries versus being a victim to that sugar addiction.

Yeah, you can have that delayed gratification. Exactly, exactly. No, that's huge. I mean, two things that really helped me with this, and I noticed when I'm weaker, and this obviously happens with the amount of travel I do, and I totally noticed how that impacts my desire for more sugar.

And I found that one of the biggest commitments I had to make was eating my meals on time every day. And that started to reduce cravings. So when I was having breakfast at a certain time, lunch at a certain time, and dinner at a certain time, I found myself having less cravings and filling the gaps with less sugar. When I was missing breakfast, I was missing lunch,

and then I was trying to make up for it, then I would be willing to take anything, as you're saying. And the second thing I found was when I had poor sleep. So when I was sleeping badly, or I wasn't sleeping enough, I would wake up craving sugar to want to get me to the next meal. And then naturally I'm going to have all these things that aren't great for me

because I just haven't slept well. And I found that those two things had a massive impact. But how is what you're saying having an impact on the other way? So I'm saying how these lifestyle choices impact my glucose cravings, but how are our glucose levels impacting us? For example, sleep.

So sleep and glucose go hand in hand. And so what you're describing is if you wake up and you haven't slept well, you have more cravings. And you know what else happens, which is kind of unfortunate, is that when your body is tired, it cannot regulate your glucose levels as well. So anything you eat will create a bigger glucose spike.

So, for example, if you have that cake on a day when you're rested versus a day when you're super exhausted, the exhausted day, the cake will make a bigger spike. You're eating the same cake, but it's creating a bigger spike. Therefore, a bigger crash, therefore more cravings. And so when we're tired, we tend to crave more sweet foods and that makes a bigger spike and a bigger drop. And then in turn, being on a glucose rollercoaster also makes your sleep that night worse,

not as deep, not as restorative. So you start this vicious cycle. Okay, here's what to do to break the cycle. First of all, use the hacks when you wake up, right? So if you're tired, have a savory breakfast. Second thing to sort of reset your glucose balance is to exercise, even just five minutes. So next time you wake up and you're tired,

do five minutes of jumping jacks. Put on a YouTube video, five minutes, you know, exercise. Anything that's gonna get your muscles working is gonna help you manage your glucose levels better that day. And then help you manage your glucose levels better that day. And then as you study your glucose levels, you will notice you will sleep better.

And often people will tell me that they used to wake up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart, sweats, that can be because your glucose levels are crashing as you're sleeping. Wow. Yeah, and that's why in my study, so many people improve their sleep, not by taking sleeping pills, not by changing what's happening in their bedroom, just

by changing how they're eating. Everything is connected, Jay. You cannot just look at one thing in isolation. When you improve your glucose levels, so many systems in your body improve. It's remarkable. So you might be entering this because you want less inflammation or fewer cravings but then what happens is you realize oh my skin is better oh I sleep better oh my mood has improved you know all these amazing side effects it's really beautiful to watch. Yeah you mentioned mood there

what's the connection between blood sugar levels and mental health because I think again even though we are making those connections now, I think often we don't recognize how correlated our diet and our mental health is. That's the reason I got into this in the first place. So when I was a teenager, I had an accident. I broke my back jumping off a waterfall, had very intense surgery. I have lots of metal in my back now and physically I was fine because you recover fast when you're that young.

But then my mental health started going really down the drain. So anxiety, depression, depersonalization, I felt like my brain was completely broken. I didn't feel like myself anymore. And I went on a journey to try to understand how to get better. And that's what got me studying biochemistry. That's what got me into genetics. And then almost 10 years after my accident, 10 years of darkness, I finally had my first clue.

I was part of a pilot experiment and during it I could wear a glucose monitor. And I saw Jay that the days where my glucose levels were spiking and dropping a lot, my mental health was worse. And the days when my glucose levels were steady, my mental health was so much better. And this changed everything for me because I had been completely lost for the better part of a decade trying to understand what the heck I could do to improve my mental health.

And I was lost, let me tell you. And nobody said, oh, you should look at your lifestyle. But in that moment, I remember that day, I was feeling one of these episodes come on of depersonalization, which is this horrible mix of brain fog, feeling like a stranger in your own body. I mean, it's terrible. And I scan my glucose monitor and I see one of the biggest glucose spikes I had ever seen. And so I started putting two and two together.

I said, wait a minute, is it possible that this glucose spike is actually causing this episode? Anyway, so that opened the gates really wide for me. I was like, wow, this is fascinating. And I started doing all the research I could and I saw that I wasn't alone. That most people experience glucose spikes on a daily basis even if they don't have diabetes and that these spikes are correlated to all the things we spoke about and to mental health. So as I started managing my glucose levels, my mental health started improving. And so what's the connection? Well, the cells in your brain also use glucose for energy. And so you know those three things I talked about?

The mitochondrial damage, the glycation, the inflammation, the insulin. Your brain cells also feel these consequences of spikes. And we don't fully understand how the brain works, but we do understand that when these things happen in the brain, it's not good. We also know that glucose spikes impact tyrosine levels. And tyrosine is an important molecule that regulates our mood.

I want to tell you about another really fun study. Can I? Yeah, please. Fascinating. So bless these scientists. They're so amazing. Okay, so let me tell you what this study is. So scientists recruited 200 married couples.

They gave each person in the couple a voodoo doll representing their spouse. Wow. I know. They told the married people to please over the next six weeks, put a pin in the voodoo doll every time your spouse annoys you. And then at the end of the six weeks the scientists got all the voodoo dolls back with all the pins in them and they measured the participants glucose levels. They found that the people who had the most irregular glucose levels

had put the most pins in the voodoo doll representing their spouse. And that's where the tyrosine hypothesis started coming up. They saw that being on a glucose rollercoaster can impact how irritable you are, how you see those around you, how nice you are, how triggered you are by your spouse. So if you ever feel irritated, agitated, like, oh, so annoying this person, I hate them.

Well, maybe your glucose levels have something to do with it. So whether you're trying to improve irritability, hangerness, mental health, anxiety, depression, whatever, managing your glucose levels again is a key foundation in the house of your health. And for me, like it wasn't everything, right? After I managed my glucose levels, I had to go to therapy, do EMDR, do lots of other stuff. But it gave me a foundation that was so necessary as that first step. Yeah. Well, I think what you're laying up there for us, and that's definitely what I've discovered in my own journey of mental health

and wellbeing is just that you're just making it harder for yourself when you're not using everything at your disposal. And I was definitely someone who had used mindfulness and meditation in order to master the mind, but I didn't realize how hard that was when your body was slowing you down. And actually, if your body was with you, the kind of revelations and breakthroughs you could have

were limitless. But when your body wasn't with you, or for some people when their mind's not with their body, it slows you down and it makes everything so much harder. And I couldn't recommend that more to people. Like if you're someone who loves meditating and you love mindfulness, but you're not taking care of your body

and you're not looking at your glucose levels or your sleep, take a look at it. It's only going to make you a better meditator. And if you're the other way around where you're like, Jay, the physical stuff for me is easy, I feel really fit and healthy. It's really important to add the other side as well because you have no idea how good you can feel It's all connected and to give you another example. I've been Recently really into weightlifting so it feels really good My body feels strong and I've noticed also my mental resilience has improved as my physical resilience has improved

So I'm able to manage stress better, I feel stronger and that's because you train your nervous system. Your body and your brain are connected by your nervous system, right? And so when you improve your physical health, your nervous system improves and your mental health improves as well. It's all connected.

Absolutely. Is there a more ideal food before or after workouts? Oh, great question. So this actually brings me to another hack, which is the hack about movement. So as your muscles contract and as you exercise or even as you're just walking, your muscles are burning glucose for energy. And we can use this information to our advantage. So the hack I recommend is after eating one of your meals a day,

after one of your meals a day, use your muscles for 10 minutes. Go for a walk, play with your dog, tidy your apartment. I'm a very messy person, so I do that one a lot. To tidy your apartment, do some calf raises. If you're at your desk at work, why not go to the gym? You know, go weight lift, because as you do this, your muscles are going to be using some of the glucose from the meal you just ate. And if you're an athlete and you're doing some very intense exercise, your body is going to use up most of the glucose from

whatever you eat. So the more you exercise, the more you can eat glucose before or even after actually. And you're experienced much less of a spike. So if you want to eat a cookie or chocolate cake before or after workout is actually a pretty good time to do it. That way a lot of the glucose will go to your muscles instead of causing a spike. That's what I've been trying to do. So the reason I'm asking is for myself, one of the things I struggle with is usually I'll wake up, I'll meditate in the morning and then I'll drink a tea or something like that,

like a warm herbal tea, and then I'll go on a hike or I'll go and work out because I've never really found what to eat before my workout. That's great for me. And then when I come back, I'll eat breakfast, I'll have my savory breakfast and I feel good and everything feels fine. But I often wonder, could I be doing something better

before I go out on my hike? Which can be like, it'll be 30 minutes normal and then 30 minutes intense incline. If you do eat something before going, working out maybe a banana or something, do you feel like you're able to work out better? Do you feel like you have more energy, more explosivity? That's a great question.

I think I'd have to monitor that to give you an honest answer. And I would say that in the past, I've tested things like dates, That's a great question. I think I'd have to monitor that to give you an honest answer. And I would say that in the past, I've tested things like dates, but then I was worried that that was going to spike. That's very high in sugar, yeah. Exactly. So I had that recommendation from someone. I tested it out.

I was like, when I learned about everything to do glucose, I was like, wait a minute, that's probably not a good idea. How intense are you exercising? Are you just walking? No. So that's what I mean. It's probably 30 minutes easy and then 30 minutes of like explosive incline. But it's not high intensity in that it's not all fast. It's self-paced, but it is all uphill for 30 minutes. For example, if I don't eat before I work out, I don't perform as well.

Right. Because as you're eating something that contains glucose, that's going to feed your muscles very easily accessible energy. So you could do some tests. I don't think dates are necessary because they're very high in sugar, but you could even try something like, you know, a piece of sourdough bread, right with an avocado on it or a banana with some nut butter. You don't have to have something so sweet and concentrated as a date, but do some tests,

see what works for you. Now I know some options. Yeah, you could but do some tests, see what works for you. Now I know some options. Yeah, you could even do... I like the avocado and soda. You could do some almonds, you could do yogurt with some berries. Try some stuff out and see because you might find that you're actually walking faster. That would be good for me. Definitely sometimes I'm going up the hill going, why am I doing this today?

And I completely agree with you. And would you say it's the same for weight training? Before weight training? Is that the same type of food? Big time. Big time. Especially if you're doing something like weight training which is, you know, more explosive than walking or running. You have to really, your muscles need to be able to go,

Pachaa! You know? So yes, absolutely. So my nutritionist put me on to this a couple of years ago and I hated it but then when I saw you were like it was one of your big pillars. Oh I know what you're about to say. You know what I'm about to say.

Yeah. Vinegar. Yes. So I was drinking a cup of vinegar like the little whatever the shot of vinegar. Why a shot of vinegar before? Okay well first of all a shot is not good. You should always dilute it because if it's a shot, it's going to hurt your teeth. I was literally doing a shot.

So I'm going to change that. You're going to change that. And that's a lot easier to dilute. Yeah. Okay. So vinegar contains a wonderful molecule called acetic acid and acetic acid. When you have some before a meal is going to slow down how quickly food breaks down into glucose in your body.

So it's kind of like slowing down digestion. And this is really, really good. It makes you feel fuller for longer and the glucose molecules arrive more slowly into your blood and that's the whole point. So the hack is before a meal that's going to be high in carbs, have one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water. I was not doing that. Five to ten minutes. Yeah well I've no wonder you didn't like it. You guys are

shot like gosh and it can be any type of vinegar. Apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, cherry vinegar, whatever. You just want to avoid the very syrupy like balsamic glaze. That one's no bueno because that's full of sugar. This is an easy hack and again science has shown us that this ingredient that most of us have in our kitchen actually has a wonderful effect on our health. And it's been used for millennia. I mean, vinegar has been around forever. But now we understand the science behind it.

It's a great hack. And what you could... And before every meal or just lunch or is there a... Depends on how you feel. I recommend before the meal of your day that's highest in sugar or starch. Right? And one other thing you can do is, you know how I was explaining veggies first is so important.

You don't have to drink the vinegar. You can also make it into a dressing. I like the sound of that. And put it on your veggies. Okay, you're making it easy for me now. So you know the salad with some vinaigrette dressing? Wonderful way to start your meals. Wonderful.

You get the fiber from the veggies making that mesh and you get the vinegar slowing down, breakdown of food. And you're golden. Got it. Okay, now I can get back on it. Because I've been avoiding it. It was so hard.

I was like, I have to ask you about this today. I'm not surprised. I was doing a shot of vinegar and you were right about the teeth as well. I'm so sorry. That's terrible. That's kind of gross. Yeah, I don't blame you.

It was really hard to have and... Yeah, every time I'd have it, it would almost feel like it could start some reflux or it could have like, you know... That's not great. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, it's good. But as you can see, this is another really easy hack.

It's free. It doesn't ask you to add any... To remove anything, you're just adding stuff and helping your body at the same time. And then I like to see these hacks as sort of an on-ramp to a freeway. You know, you kind of get on them and then after a few days you feel so much better

and everything becomes easier in your life. My name's Laverne Cox. I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of the Laverne Cox Show. You may remember my award-winning first season. I've been pretty busy, but there's always time to talk to incredible guests about important things. People like me have been screaming for years,

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That's awful. And I should have seen it coming. Hmm. Yeah, no, that's great. What about for our snackers? Our snackers that are listening who are saying, Jesse, I love this advice. I can do that for my meals, but I'm a big snacker. And I turned towards, I mean, today, if you look at it,

whether it's a protein bar, but I guess protein bars is such a common go-to snack, but they have really high sugar. It depends on the bar. It really depends. So look at the ingredients always. And if you... So when you look at the ingredients list on the back of a product,

they are ordered by weight. So if the first ingredient says sugar, that means sugar is the most important ingredient in that product. And then they decrease, right, in weight. So if you see in the first five ingredients of anything, whether it's a protein bar or yogurt, if there's any type of sugar in the first five ingredients of anything, whether it's a protein bar or yogurt, if there's any type of sugar in the first five ingredients, then that product is dessert.

Okay. So if it says like... That's such a great tip. And it doesn't have to say just sugar. It can say something like date puree, honey, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate. In glucose revolution, I have the whole list, Honey, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate. In glucose revolution I have the whole list,

but manufacturers use lots of fancy words to not make it sound like just cane sugar. But actually it's just cane sugar. It's all the same molecules, right? So sometimes you could take it. Your body's not telling the difference as you said. No, no difference. So that's for the protein bars.

And then for the snackers, okay, I have a hack that's called putting clothing on your carbs. Anytime you eat carbs, so carbs being starches or sugars, make sure to never eat them naked. And by naked I mean on their own. So never snack on just a piece of bread or never snack on just a cookie. Always add some clothing which means protein, fat, or fiber, which means, for example, adding some avocado to the bread or some cheese,

which means, for example, adding five almonds to the cookie or Greek yogurt, right? So if you love snacking, remember this hack. Put clothing on your carbs, never eat your carbs naked, that way you'll have less of a glucose spike. Because the risk, Jay, is that our snacks kick off that cravings roller coaster. Because between meals, our stomach is empty.

So same concept as for breakfast. You don't want to eat too much sweet stuff, otherwise it's going to make a big spike. And you're not going to feel very good 90 minutes later. This is actually genius. Like, if you're listening to this right now, none of us have any excuses to shift this around. Genuinely, I'm listening to you just going,

thank you. Like, thank you so much, because I think it's so often when you're hearing about how to change your diet and your food, it just sounds so hard and so complex. And it feels like, God, where do I even start with this? And here we are just making really basic connections that we can all do very, very simply.

And it helps you with your energy, with your mood, with your skin, but also for serious health conditions, like type 2 diabetes, this is the way out, right? If you have type 2 diabetes, if one of your parents, grandparents has it, it can be quite challenging to know how to get out of it. And it can feel like either I have to go on this extreme diet and never eat carbs ever again or I'll do this medication. And what I want to offer with these hacks is an easy way to take back some control over

your glucose levels because type 2 diabetes is reversible. It is not a genetic hereditary disease that you can't do anything about. You can improve it. I see people put it into remission every single week using this work in concert with their doctor, of course. But this is the kind of stuff that can turn your health around. And instead of getting sicker as you age, your health can improve as you age.

And don't we all want that? That's the dream, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. In the book you talk about, there's some research that says that eating fruit first thing in the morning without any other foods is best for digestion. Would eating it as a singular food first thing in the morning impact blood sugar? What's your take on that? Well, you know this idea of, oh, if you eat fruit as dessert,

it's going to rot in your stomach or it's going to putrefy. That's kind of an urban myth that's been floating around. So if you look at the ideal food order from that science, you should eat the sugar last, right? And fruit is also in the sugar category. And so how do you reconcile both of those things? And people have asked me a lot about this concept of, oh, fruit for dessert is going to rot in your stomach.

Turns out there's no scientific evidence to support that. Nothing can rot in your stomach. Nothing can putrefy in your stomach. Sugar, sugar eats and lasts or fruit eats and lasts does not do that. Okay. Now, even though most of us think that a piece of fruit is supernatural, they're like, oh, a banana or a peach, like that's nature's bounty. Turns out, Jay, the fruit that we find today in supermarkets is actually not natural.

Humans are very good at breeding stuff. So humans have bred grey wolves into chihuahuas, right? And loads of other breeds of dogs. We've also bred our fruits and our plants to be very sweet and full of sugar. If you compare a banana from today to an ancestral banana, they look nothing alike. The ancestral banana is small, full of seeds, full of fiber, quite tart. Modern day banana is basically dessert. Same for apples.

Apples used to be small like cherries. Now they're this big, nice little plump package of water and sugar essentially. If you want to eat something sweet, a piece of whole fruit is still the best thing to eat because of that protective fiber. And I explained the fiber makes that mesh in your intestine. But then as soon as you denature a piece of fruit, whether you juice it, you take away the fiber, you blend it, you pulverize the fiber, then it becomes just one big glucose spike waiting to happen. And it's not because something comes from fruit that it's good for you. Yeah, that's a really good explanation. I appreciate that. I think there's always been people who've demonized fruit as well in that way,

but I think that explanation actually gets into the nuance and subtlety of how we're having our fruit and why. And I will never going to say don't eat fruit. It's totally fine to eat fruit. Seriously, it's much better to eat fruit than a cookie, right? For your glucose levels, for your body. It is still an unprocessed food, right? It's been bred and changed. But it's still unprocessed.

So of course have fruit. Just don't denature that fruit. Totally. Because then you're taking it even further and further away from the way nature intended us to consume it. Yeah, I actually remember when I first went to India with my mom and my mom was making me the same curries that she would make me in London, but now making them when we were living in India.

Just for a bit, we went visiting when I was younger. And it's so interesting because each vegetable was so flavorful, but so different. And I'm sure you feel this back home or when you're traveling, like, you can find these places in the world where you're eating real vegetables again, or real fruits, and they don't look as perfect. They all look imperfect.

They're kind of funky. Yeah, they've got personalities. And even the flavors are not consistent. So like, a zucchini's gonna taste different to another one, but it's still so flavorful, but in such a unique way. And I remember saying to my mom, like, what are you doing here? Like, what are you doing differently in India

that you're not doing back in London? It was just what was accessible. And I think that's in the States for sure, where I feel that even more than from London, where in London, I still felt certain vegetables and everything was still accessible. But here, right, I really feel like a lot of the vegetables and fruits that we're eating are super processed.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. It's really tough. One of your other hacks is stop counting calories. Yeah. I wanted to talk about that because I think that's what all of us do. And again, the recommended 2000 for women and 2500 for men seems to be like such a big figure

that we focus our whole diet plans on and lives on. I love this question. Do you know, Jay, how people used to measure the amount of calories in the food? I don't know. Okay. So if they wanted to measure the amount of calories in a donut, here's what they used to do.

They would put the donut in a little box and they would put this box in a bigger, like an aquarium, like a big basin of water. Okay. They put the donut box at the bottom of the aquarium and then they would light the donut inside the box on fire. The donut would burn. And then they would measure by how many degrees the water in the aquarium increased. Oh my gosh. So, and that would give you the number of calories in the donut.

The calories is just a measure of how much heat is given up when something is burned. So if you were to put an avocado in that box and burn it, it might increase the water temperature around it by the exact same number of degrees. Therefore, you would say this donut and this avocado have the same number of calories. Now, it seems pretty obvious that this is kind of a silly way

to measure food. It's almost like saying, oh, this book and this book have the same number of pages. Therefore, they're the same book. This is not the case. My book and your book might have the same number of pages, but they're not about the same topic. They're not from the same author. They don't give you the same information. Don't give you the same emotion. Right? And so if we just talk about foods based on how many calories they contain, we're missing what's actually key. What is in that food? What are the molecules in that food?

Is that food just glucose and they're going to create a big glucose spike? Or is that food just healthy fats and protein and going to keep your glucose levels steady? To give you another example, two people could be eating the exact same number of calories. Let's say two women are eating 2000 calories a day. One of them could be eating in a way that keeps her glucose levels steady, feel great energy,

functioning mitochondria, clear brain going after her dreams, girl boss, whatever. The other person could be eating 2000 calories in a way that's creating lots of glucose spikes, inflammation, inflammation, aging, type two diabetes, hormonal issues, brain fog, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How many calories you're eating does not tell you how healthy you are, does not predict your health at all. You need to learn about what you're eating. And in my book, I explain how to identify the

molecules in a food. And if you follow my hacks and you stop counting calories, naturally your health is going to improve. You might be eating the exact same number of calories as before, but your life will be completely different. Calories are not enough information. They're interesting to measure the quantity of a food, for example, one

donut versus two donuts, but they're not sufficient and it's really easy to hide behind calories when you're, for example, a food manufacturer and you're making processed foods and you say, there's only 50 calories in this little bag of sweets. Don't worry, it's not bad for you, it's just 50 calories. Yeah, but it's 50 calories of pure sugar is gonna make you feel horrible.

So calories are not enough. We need to evolve past this. I want to teach people what is in their food. I want to make every single one of my readers a food detective. I want them to have all the agency, the power, the information to make informed choices when they go to the supermarket. That's the goal, right? Giving people that freedom and that power.

That's what I care about. Yeah, that's such a brilliant mission. Thank you. That's such a brilliant mission because even everything you've said to us today, whether it's being able to know what to look at on the back of a pack, all the way to... Putting clothing on your car. I was just about to say that, like putting clothing on your car.

I love that it comes for you in your heart and mind from a place of giving people agency and giving people strength and rather than making us fearful, which I think a lot of diet plans do, a lot of food advice does, it makes us quite insecure and scared that we're doing the wrong thing. Whereas when I'm talking to you,

I feel a sense of like enthusiasm and confidence that I know what to do. And that's so fulfilling. It fills you with so much enthusiasm and energy to feel like, yes, I am in control of how I'm going to feel and what I'm going to eat. You are and the information is there. And I just want to apologize to all the people

who've been manipulated by food marketing, diet culture, that stuff can stop. If you get this information, this will stop. And the thing that breaks my heart the most, Jay, and I think this is what motivates me to do this work, is when I meet somebody who has a medical condition like type 2 diabetes, and everybody wants to make the right choices. Everybody wants to be healthier. But because of the manipulation and all the misleading information about food,

they're eating in a way that they think and they hope is good for them, but is actually making them sicker. And that's what I want to stop. I want to insert this information and this science in those situations and turn it all around for people. Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Jesse, we've talked about so many things today, but one thing I wanted to ask you about was the use of supplements. I take a lot of supplements every day. I've felt better because of them. It's had a big impact on my personal life. And I was always someone who was playing around. I think supplements are also things

that you have to test and experiment and see what works for you as a combination. What's your take on supplements? Well, I know supplements in the glucose space, right? And I can't comment on all the other stuff. I'm sure there's great things for other stuff you're trying to optimize. But when it comes to glucose, so people often ask me, instead of doing the vinegar hack, can I take a vinegar gummy?

When I can't have a veggie starter, can I take fiber pills? My dad has diabetes, doesn't want to change his diet. What can I give him? And I spent the last few years researching extensively this space and what are some cool molecules that could actually help your glucose levels. Unfortunately, what's on the market today at worst actually contains sugar and creates a glucose spike under the guise of going to help you with your glucose levels and that's just so annoying to me.

And there's some good stuff out there, but I've actually created something incredible that is the best thing on the market if you want to help your journey to study glucose with a supplement. Now, I'll explain what it is, but I don't want people to think this is a magic pill. You should do the food hacks first and foremost. That is going to have the biggest, most powerful impact on your health, but a supplement can also help. So I've identified four plants, Jay, that have existed forever, but that recent science has shown have an incredible impact on our glucose levels.

These are white mulberry leaf, lemon extract, cinnamon, and antioxidants from green vegetables. I've put them all together into a capsule. You take it before a meal, and it reduces the glucose spike of your meal by up to 40%. Wow. And this is more powerful than vinegar, which was up to 30%. I know. I got some in my bag for you. I'm serious. I've got some. So if you want extra help, this is the thing you need. It's called anti-spike formula. You can find it on my website, anti-spike.com. It not only has this immediate impact on the glucose spike of a meal, it also builds up

benefit over time. It reduces inflammation. It reduces your fasting glucose levels. It increases GLP-1, which is a hormone we've spoken a lot about recently in the media because of things like ozempic. GLP-1 is a really cool hormone that just makes you feel fuller. And Ozempic tricks your brain into thinking there's more GLP-1 in your body than there actually is. But with anti-spike, you're actually harnessing natural pathways to increase it for real. So this is my latest creation and I hope it's going to help a lot of people.

You know, when you're at 4 p.m. birthday party, when you're traveling, when you can't do the hacks, Auntie Spike will be there for you. But again, do the food hacks first. It's just an additional hack to help. Yeah, I want to try it for sure. I have one in my bag. Yeah, I love that. What is your take on Ozempic? I mean, based on what you just mentioned there, what's been your assessment of it?

I'm sure you've seen people who are on it. Yeah, listen, I think for a lot of people it's been kind of a godsend. They've really struggled their whole life with their weight and for some people that's their objective, right? So, whether you take it or you don't take it, it's not my place to judge. But what I've found, Jay, is that if you think about it, this craze has shown us that we live in a society in which our food system is so toxic that we need to take a pill to prevent us from eating the food around us.

Do you understand how sad that is? So I just feel a bit worried and a bit disheartened that we've gone to that place. And also when people lose weight on ozempic, they don't just lose fat, they also lose muscle mass. And so when you on the ozempic, they don't just lose fat, they also lose muscle mass. And so when you stop taking ozempic and if you gain weight back, you

often just gain fat back. And so overall you're in a worse place. So whether or not you take it, it's important to learn my hacks. So that way, when you stop it, you sustain it, right? But yeah, I mean, wow. Wow.

What can I say? Crazy world we live in. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, what can I say? Crazy world we live in. Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you touching on that cultural challenge that we have on a number of parts in our conversation. And I really think that that's at the heart of a lot of what you're saying is that everyone out there who's listening right now who feels like they don't like the way they eat,

they don't like what they eat, they judge their body, they look at the mirror first thing in the morning and criticize themselves. It all comes from programming and conditioning. It's not your fault. It's not your fault and you were set up to feel that way. Yes. And there's a lot of money being made off your back because you feel that way. Yeah. And so I think a lot of people, we beat ourselves up. We think, oh, what's wrong with me? Or there must be something really bad with me.

Or, oh my gosh, I'm not disciplined enough and I don't have good habits. No, it's not about discipline. It's not about laziness. Everything is temptation, choices. Toxic food around you that's cheap, misleading marketing messages, incorrect information. So we need to go back to teaching people

how their body actually functions, and the science and the physiology. And you know, Jay, I hope I will become completely irrelevant. I hope this information will be so common knowledge. People will be like, yep, wear sunscreen, drink water, brush your teeth, have a savory breakfast. Like I want my stuff to be at that level and I want to retire and disappear because everybody needs to know this. It should be taught in schools. It's a basic right to understand how your body functions and how to navigate this difficult food landscape that we live in. Absolutely.

And the courage that any of you have right now who are listening and even wanting to take one step towards that agency that Jesse's been talking about, that's a huge win. Because we're operating in a society where even taking that one step is often so difficult because of all the messages we're hearing around us. So anyone who's listening and about to take that first step, go and order a copy of Glucose Revolution right now, The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar,

and of course, check out anti-spike.com to figure out if you need to add that once you've done Jesse's hacks. And Jesse, we end every conversation with a final five, which is our fast five on the podcast. And I'm excited to see what you answer. So they have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. Got it.

So Jesse, here are your final five. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received when it comes to health? Symptoms are messages. I'm going to let you expand because I like that. Okay. If you feel symptoms from acne to psoriasis,

to infertility, to brain fog, these are not something to suppress. They are messages. They are your body trying to communicate with you, to tell you, hey, there's something wrong. I need your help. Don't suppress. Don't feel bad about the symptoms.

Flip the script. Talk to your body, be like, okay, why is there all this eczema on my arm? What's going on? That's inflammation, that's inside. Can I help you? You see what I mean? So symptoms are messages.

How do you think we often process symptoms instead of as messages? We think our body is fighting us. We're like, body, why are you against me? We don't understand. It's crying for help. It's not against your body just wants to keep you alive. Your body's not trying to be annoying.

I promise your body's trying to keep you alive. That's so good. That's so good. I love that. Your body is not trying to be annoying. No, it's so true. And your body is so much smarter than you. So much smarter than you. Listen to it. It's got stuff to be annoying. I love that. No, it's so true. And your body is so much smarter than you. So much smarter than you.

Listen to it. It's got stuff to teach you. That's such great insight. Next time you come, we're going to talk about that. Yay! I love that. That's really hit according to me. I think it's so interesting how we look at anything

inconvenient as there's something wrong and you're being annoying and I wish you would just be okay. Rather than, oh wait a minute, you're actually trying to share something. And I think a lot of people, at least I've heard, I don't have kids, but I've learned that a lot of people feel this with their children. Where your child's trying to communicate with you

and just doesn't know how. And it's almost like our bodies like that. Yeah, it's like a baby doesn't cry because it's trying to annoy you. A baby cries because it's going through something difficult and he wants your help. Yeah, I love that. That's such a beautiful answer.

All right, second question. What is the worst health advice you've ever heard or received? Have a fruit smoothie first thing in the morning. Yeah, I mean, anything that has to do with fruit juices, fruit smoothies as being a health food, anything, no. I'm just like, no. Yeah, don't do it.

Don't do it. Okay. Question number three, what's the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do before you go to bed? The first thing I do in the morning, I take my earplugs out and I drink water. So you do have water first in the morning. Yeah absolutely and then I try to turn my phone on a little bit later. I try to not turn it on in the first half an hour. Last thing I do at night before going to bed, I have this app in which I track my mental health. So I put a little, a scale of one to five,

how my mental health was today. And I write a couple of sentences about my day. Nice, what is the app code? It's called Dalyo. I have no affiliation whatsoever. It's awesome. D-A-Y-L-I-O. And I've been doing this for four years now.

And it makes a little dot for, I'll show you in a sec. It makes a little dot for every day. And so I have four years of dots of how my mental health was and all of those. And I see these patterns. I see that I've gotten happier over time, more fulfilled, have less episodes of difficult mental health issues. So it's really cool to look back. That's beautiful.

I love that. That's a great recommendation for everyone listening. Fourth question, what's something that you used to believe to be true about health, but now you've realized it's actually not true? That everybody should wear a glucose monitor. So when I first started in the space, because wearing the glucose monitor had changed my life, I was telling everybody to wear one.

And now I realized that you can get all the benefits by seeing what I've discovered in the science that I've found and sometimes overtracking yourself can lead to issues and stress. Yeah, I can relate to that. There was a point where I was measuring everything and it was useful and then it went too far and then I didn't want to measure anything

and then it's a really interesting balance because data can be so powerful and at the same time it can be so disempowering. Because sometimes you look at the data to decide how you feel about yourself. Yeah. It's like, you know, if you wake up and you're like, I don't know if I'm tired or not, look at my sleep data. Oh, I'm exhausted, clearly, because I didn't sleep well.

But you're actually not connected to how you feel. Yeah, yeah. And it takes you outside of your body. Exactly. It's what you were saying earlier. We need to actually get better at living in our bodies and listening within our bodies and the hearing and feeling what they're saying to us and how they're communicating rather than expecting

that even an external person or system is going to somehow predict how we feel. Amen. Yeah, that's a really, really powerful takeaway. I love that. or system is going to somehow predict how we feel. Amen. Yeah, that's a really, really powerful takeaway. I love that. Fifth and final question, which we ask to every guest who's ever been on the show.

If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? Okay, I'm going to restrict myself to the world of food, okay? Because there's lots of other laws that we could do that would be very important in the world. And it can be a real law, like, you know. Yeah. Ban all processed breakfast food.

I love that law. Because that would help kids, it would help parents, it would change people's mood, make them happier, more fulfilled. Yeah, I think that's a big one. That's huge. Or like the law could be treat breakfast like any other meal. Because if you ban something, then other stuff pops up. So it's more like treat breakfast as second lunch and eat lunch food at breakfast.

Yeah, that's great. I love that. Everyone, Jesse in Chopin. The book is called Glucose Revolution, the life-changing power of balancing your sugar. If you don't follow at Glucose goddess on Instagram, make sure you go do that right away, please grab a copy of this book. We went through the hacks, but we were just skimming the surface. There is amazing insight, amazing hacks, amazing steps and habit building processes inside the book that are going to be huge for you.

So I can't recommend this book enough. I would actually say that if there's one book you read in 2024, I want it to be this book. So please, please, please go pick this book up. I would actually say that if there's one book you read in 2024, I want it to be this book. So please, please, please go pick this book up. I think it will change your life. I don't think I've ever emphatically mentioned a book that way before on the show, but I mean it.

And I can't thank you enough, Jesse, for the work that you're doing in the world and how much it's impacted my personal life and how I feel and how I think it's gonna impact millions and billions worldwide. So thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. I'm very grateful to be here. Thank you. And I hope you come back soon.

With pleasure. If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Eamon on how to change your life by changing your brain. If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged. Regardless of the progress you've made in life,

I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The One You Feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple podcasts.

Oprah Magazine named this as one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better. It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations

with world renowned experts, and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II,

an opera singer who burned down a nunnery to kidnap her lover. And a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils. Have in common. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica Podcast. Check it out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.