The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Eric Edmeades: The Power of Eating Sugar-Free to Reverse Lifestyle Diseases Including Diabetes
Have you ever considered that your sweet tooth might be an ancient survival mechanism playing tricks on you? Join us as Eric Edmeades, an expert in nutrition and lifestyle change, shares his transformative journey to a sugar-free life, and offers insights that could lead you to your own health revolution.
Through a captivating discussion, Eric reveals the evolutionary roots of our sugar cravings and how the modern food industry has hijacked these primal urges to our detriment. You'll be equipped with science-backed strategies to conquer those sugar cravings that our ancestors could never resist. We also tackle the often-overlooked role of fasting in recovery, the success stories emerging from Eric's WildFit program, and how these insights are revolutionizing the way we think about food addictions and eating disorders. And as we wrap up, we'll face the harsh truths about lifestyle diseases and the food industry's role in public health—leaving you with a renewed sense of responsibility and empowerment to take control of your health journey.
Join us for a deep and impactful exploration of what it means to eat, heal, and live well in today's world.
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Hello and welcome everybody to an interview today with Eric Edmeats, and it is with great enthusiasm that I introduce you to him tonight as a guest on our summit. He is considered to be groundbreaking in the world of lots and lots of different areas. Actually, he's a serial entrepreneurial, but in our context today he's done groundbreaking work in the areas of health, nutrition and behavioral change and he has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. He's renowned for his transformational, well-fit program where he walks you through a 90-day process of unhooking from junk food, getting onto whole foods and really creating massive transformation in body and mind. He is on a mission to improve the lives of individuals. Health is one aspect of it and he knows personally and professionally the power of going sugar-free and how detrimental can be when we're consuming it, especially in excess. Let's see what else to add about him. He's got a couple of books coming out. One of them is about it's called the evolutionary no, it's not called the evolutionary gap. What's it called again?
Speaker 2:The evolution gap.
Speaker 1:Oh, shoot the evolution gap. And he's got another one called Post Diabetic, which is going to come out in the spring, and his first book is going to come out in October. So welcome, eric.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So let's start with your story with sugar. I recall a little bit from your history that back when you were a teenager you were in the deep end with it and it was not going well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I wouldn't back then have said it had anything to do with sugar. I was like everybody else around me. Sure, we drank Coke sometimes and we ate ice cream, and we were normal. None of us were what you would consider, even back then, to have been overweight or anything. It was just maybe a few of us here or there, but it wasn't like I wasn't deeply concerned about food. And then I went to a business seminar and one of the things that came up there was about putting the right stuff in to get the good output out. And so I took my first ever this is back in 1991, I took my first ever vacation from sugar and some other things. But over the next 30 days I lost 35 pounds, I cleared up the chronic and cystic acne that I'd been living with and all my digestive problems went away and what have you. And that really got me thinking a lot about food and about sugar and the food industry generally.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Have you been basically a sugar-free man since then?
Speaker 2:No, and I have to say I mean that English, I mean I think many languages do this, but we take a word and then we put a lot of stuff in that one word, like the word love. You can love your pet and you can love your wife, but I suggest that you love your pet and your wife differently. The word love is this all-encompassing thing, and I think that we have to recognize something like that along the lines of sugar as well, that there are sugars that we have a long-standing and evolved relationship with and there are sugars that are newly introduced to us and forms of processing sugar that are newly introduced to us which are even more detrimental. So what I would say is that I have a conscious relationship with the best kinds of sugars and a recognition of what our evolutionary relationship with sugar was supposed to be like, that I do what I can to adhere to.
Speaker 1:Got it Very good point. When I say sugar, you're right. There's sugar in all plant foods, all of them, but I'm always referring to the refined processed carbohydrates.
Speaker 2:So in that case, yeah, I'm more or less, I'm not going to say it, I'm not going to say like I was at my girlfriend's ex-husband's wedding, which is super fun in Estonia, and I didn't have the wedding cake because it was a cheesecake and it just, but they had these little mini cake things that didn't have the cheese in them and of course they had sugar in them.
Speaker 2:But I'm at the wedding and I make an exception to that. But I also recognize that I'm not living with health debt and this is a very important distinction that you see, when I was living with health debt, that is to say, carrying extra weight and dealing with lots of symptomology, then that's a bit like spending money frivolously when you're in financial debt. So I'm at a place now where, when I do something like that, it doesn't have this, you know, this massive immediate impact, and I don't find myself waking up in a casino in Las Vegas with a tiger in my room because I ate one piece of sugar. And I think that you know, but I recognize that for in my life that if I allow something like that to go on two or three days in a row, I might I may well wake up in that hotel room.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, totally, totally. Why does this topic interest you and why are you passionate about it? Like you've got so many interests, this one persists for you. Why is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it persists because the change from unhealthy to healthy was so profound for me that I like we're talking about a quality of life upgrade that I have to look at my life today and wonder if I would even consider my life to be still worth living if I was living the way I was back then. Just to put it in perspective I had chronic sinus infections that meant that I had not breathed from my own sinus patches in years. I had chronic throat infections that meant that my tonsils were frequently flowing with blood and pus like this was regular. I had digestive problems that were so debilitating that when the cramps came in, I've look, I've witnessed partners of mine with menstrual, with menstruation cramps, and I can tell you I'm in the league, I get it. I'm of the worst of them. I could literally end up doubled over, unable to walk.
Speaker 2:I was living like that, but what was crazy about it all is that I didn't regard myself as sick. It was just what I'd gotten used to. It's just what I got used to. I asked the question now, at 53 years old if I'd been living that way for the last 40 years, would I still want to live? I doubt it very much. It was unbelievably painful and difficult. So what happened in my case is that my quality of life didn't just double. It's like it's, it's, it's. There's not even a mathematical scale for it. The one is suffering and the other one is unbelievable amounts of content and joy, and to make that transition was so unbelievable for me that I just have a compulsion to share that experience with other people.
Speaker 1:And was it linear for you, like, was there? Like, okay, so you go to this event, someone starts to raise your awareness about the power of nutrition and, you know, setting your life up for this, this contentment, this joy, the success that you're experiencing, and did you just kind of like, get it. The light bulb goes on and you start making changes. There was a lot of sort of back and forth, black, sliding.
Speaker 2:No well, okay, in my case there wasn't a great deal of backsliding, and I do want to talk about backsliding and what triggers that and so on. It wasn't so much backsliding, it was that. It's that I was unsatisfied with the level of information that was available to consumers about food at that stage. I mean, if you think about this, this is 1991. There was no paleo diet, there was no. The Atkins hadn't happened yet, so none of that stuff was out there. There was no answer to turn to. And so what happened in my case was I had this incredible health turnaround, but the truth is it was inspired by Tony Robbins. It was a business seminar by Tony Robbins and it was a very surface conversation about food, although very impactfully delivered. But then, you know, a couple of things happened Like. One thing that happened I recognized was that like, for example, back then, tony Robbins was practicing veganism and that I support people's decision to want to go in that direction. And I might question some, you know, I might question some of the steps you need to take to get there. But as I dug into that and I explored that, I decided I was not prepared to turn my life experience and health over to anybody else. It was going to be up to me to learn this stuff.
Speaker 2:I asked one of my doctors, after I didn't have to have surgery, and I said to my doctor listen, hey, listen, how long did you go to medical school? And he said six years. And I said and like roughly how many semesters, how much time did you spend studying nutrition, food, that kind of stuff? None, literally none. And I, that, to me, was one of the most shocking things in my life. And what's interesting is even I asked my uncle the same question. My uncle was a very well-renowned orthopedic surgeon, so he did more like 12 years in medical school and still did not study food. And when I asked him the same question, he cocked his head to one side, like a dog does when it's confused, like none. But in that moment he realized what a good question it was, and we had the most fascinating conversation about how it's even possible to get through medical school without understanding food. Can you imagine taking your car to a mechanic who doesn't understand oil, gas, automatic transmission, fluid, antifreeze the very things that the car needs to operate? And so for me, it wasn't so much a question of like willpower versus backsliding.
Speaker 2:For me it was an intellectual process of investigation, so I started reading everything that I could read. I tracked down this one article by S Boyd Eaton that he wrote in 1985 and it popped up on the internet in about 1995. And that was the first day that I wrote about food. I wrote this article called the Human Diet and I was basically putting forward a theory. It was really his theory more than mine, but it was that every species on earth has an evolved dietary relationship with food and if the closer you are to that relationship, the healthier you're going to be. Then, I mean, I continued the research and then I started visiting hunter-gatherer tribes in East Africa to go deeper into the whole exploration and each time I learned more, I became more adherent to the principles.
Speaker 2:But also and this is where we do talk about the backsliding issue I found something out fascinating and that is that I am all about freedom. I am all about I'm very about personal freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of movement and freedom of choice, which is tough because if you exercise modern day food freedom then you're gonna eat sugar all the time because you have a genetic proclivity. We have an attraction and a genetic life saving once, life saving craving for sugar, and it used to be controlled for a seasonally, so it never went out of line. But now, if you practice freedom, you just follow. I'm gonna listen to my body. People tell me I'm like don't listen to your body. Your body's like five million years old. Its information is like outdated. And that's where I started getting into the behavioral change side of it, so that we could give people genuine food freedom, that is, the ability to eat without regret and to not eat without feeling like they're missing out.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, incredible Right that whole intuitive eating. Yeah, left to my own intuition, I can tell you right now, eric, I would eat Black Forest cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Speaker 2:I saw Kit Kat cereal breakfast the other day. I mean Kit Kat cereal breakfast If I were listening to my body like the six year old. I wanna try that.
Speaker 1:No, I bloody doubt it, that would have been my breakfast of choice.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, Right, and I think that there's a very important speaking of the evolution gap and this is also in the post-diabetic book. Consider that, listen, for the vast majority of human history and by that I mean 99.999% of it our cravings and our metabolism and our neurotransmitters, our bodies evolve to live in nature and largely sub-Saharan Africa. So let's talk about sugar availability in sub-Saharan Africa. Good luck, it's not. It's not available. Where are you gonna find it? It's very rarely seasonally available. When does it happen? It happens when berries ripen on the tree. How long are they ripe for before somebody else picks them or another bird gets them, or whatever the case might be. You have days to get at them and then another berry ripens for a few days, but all of that happens in the autumn season, preparing for winter. Then what else might happen? You might, in the autumn season, and maybe to a some degree in the late summer, you'll find root vegetables. While not outright sweet, they're clearly carbohydrate and say sugar-based, right. And then you might stumble upon honey from time to time.
Speaker 2:But African bees because they grew up with humans, right? The North American bees are dumbasses. They put their hives outside where you can see them. They make them. African bees hide their hives so well because humans have been hunting for honey for all these years. So if you wanna find a beehive in Africa, you're looking for a little wax chimney about this big in the forest and that's where the beehive is inside there. So our ancestors didn't have like. They couldn't just go to the store and dial up Amazon and get honey delivered. They had to find it, which meant that honey was a rare and important resource. So we evolved powerful cravings and instincts to go get it.
Speaker 2:Because you see, let's imagine that you and I live out there in the wilderness and I have a powerful craving for sugar, but you don't. Well, you're way better off right? No, you're not, because what it means is that when the fruits are ripening, I'm gonna go eat my face off. When I find a beehive, I'm gonna stuff my face. You're gonna be like I'm not really interested. But here's the kicker, because I'm eating all those carbs. In that time of year I am gaining a tiny bit of weight. Maybe it's two or three pounds. But that weight is a combination of stored energy and water and that is gonna mean that when the winter comes which there is drought, it's long dry season when the winter comes, I'm gonna make it and sadly you're not, because you didn't eat enough sugar. Now the problem is, we take that craving and we bring it into modern society, where the food industries have figured out how to create garbage sugar, which still triggers all the same instincts for us and scattered everywhere. As you can see, I'm a little passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I love it. Eric, you're so wonderful. So people are naughty. They're like yep, that's my experience. I crave it, I wanna binge it, I'm obsessed about it, I can't get enough of it, I'm hooked. How do we unhook ourselves and just seasonally eat the whole food versions of it? But all this other garbage sugar? How do we unhook from that?
Speaker 2:Okay, in order to fix a problem, you have to understand the problem, and if you think the problem is that we like sugar and that we eat too much of it, then you go. Well, then just stop it. And well, the average person will go on two diets a year for their entire adult life and they will stay on each of those diets for an average. This is according to a large study I can't remember it was many thousands of people but the average person stays on those diets for six days. So what that means is the average person is on a diet for 12 days of the year, but they think of themselves as being on a diet for most of the year because they sit and struggle with willpower on a regular basis. You brought donuts to the office. I really shouldn't like. I really shouldn't is a message to your coworkers to convince you to do it. They think they're doing you a favor, right? So we understand that willpower isn't going to be the way to do it, not for most people. So now let's understand the actual problem.
Speaker 2:The actual problem is that sugar was once life saving. Literally, like literally, it was life saving. If you didn't eat enough carbohydrate foods in the autumn, you wouldn't make it through the winter. That's just the truth of it. So once you recognize that, you realize that's where the craving comes from. But then you realize another powerful truth about sugar that I'm sure you've seen all through your summit. Many people have talked about it. Sugar stimulates appetite, so sugar makes you hungry. This is why food manufacturers put sugar in things where it has no business being, because it'll make you eat more. The more you eat, the more you buy. The more you buy, the more profit they make. So sugar is the ultimate thing. But now let's take a look at recognizing how that even works.
Speaker 2:You and I are walking along 10,000 years ago in the African savanna and we stumble upon a fruit tree, and the fruits, by the way, are about the size of, say, a large grape or a small plum, and they're about an 80% pit and just a layer of flesh around the outside. Like all, wild fruits are Wild fruits don't have that much flesh. They have just enough to bribe you to move the seed somewhere. That's all they're doing Is they're just trying to say, look, I'll be tasty as long as you put me over there, away from the parent plant. So we grab some of these and we eat them and after a while we're gonna feel like our bellies are full, because normally your belly is only about the size of your fist. When it's not full of food, it contracts to the size of your fist, which means a snack can fill it right up. So let's imagine that you and I are walking along and this time I'm the one who says oh, my stomach's full, I'm done.
Speaker 2:But you have a different genetic marker than me. Let's say, your genetic marker is that as you eat this sugar, your insulin level spikes up to manage that, and then it breaks the sugar down so quickly that you're left with a surplus of insulin which generates a sugar craving. So you're on this roller coaster. I'm eating some and now I think I'm done. My stomach's full, but I have low blood sugar. I have too much insulin, so now I need to eat more.
Speaker 2:So what do we do? We walk about 10 feet away from the bush and then you turn to me and go you wanna go get some more. Well, how many of us have done that? How many of us have done that at a party? How many of us have done that at a party? I'm gonna have one little thing. You wanna get some more? I'm gonna have one. You wanna get some more? That is an old, life-saving, evolutionary throwback.
Speaker 2:The problem is is that now it's around us all the time and, worse than that, it's snuck into many of our foods. So our food cravings, our sugar cravings, are being triggered by the food industry to get us to buy more. So once we understand that, once we understand the mechanism, here's the next part that's more fascinating, and this is exactly what I think your summit is really about, and that is this when you don't eat sugar, you don't crave sugar. That is one of the toughest things for people to recognize, because most people have never not eaten it. Like they've never. They think they've not eaten it, except that they were eating pasta, which is also a form of sugar, and then they think they were not eating it because they bought the sugar-free version of it. Well, no, no, it's buried everywhere. So most people have never taken a proper break from it. So they don't know that once your metabolism has understood that the sugar season is over, it stops generating the cravings.
Speaker 2:Plus, on top of that, you have a candida die-off like, because your gut bacteria communicates with your neurology.
Speaker 2:And if you have a lot of sugar bacteria, then it's sending this message up to the brain go and get more sugar, we want my.
Speaker 2:It's like I call it, the digestive democracy. It's like the house of digestive Congress, and when you're eating a lot of sugar, you elect more sugar favorable Congress people in your belly. When you stop eating sugar, you have a gut bacteria die-off, you kill off your candida, and so your metabolism switches gears and your gut bacteria stops asking for sugar and after only sometimes as quick as two to three days, the cravings gone. And so when you realize that, then what it means is that people can quite literally in a week, change the relationship with sugar on a permanent basis. That doesn't mean they'll never eat it again, but it's knowing the mechanism of freedom In our world. The way it used to be is that sugar became available and it was your responsibility to go and eat as much of as you could, but then mother nature would take it away. Now mother nature doesn't take it away, so we need to use consciousness and willpower for a short window of time to gain our freedom back for the next season.
Speaker 1:Incredible, incredible. And one of the other pieces that happens it's fall. We're binge eating fruit, we're fattening up a little bit, we're putting some water and extra calories stored on our body and then, at a certain point as well, is that it actually sets in a form of insulin resistance which affects the mitochondria, and then we get sluggish. We don't actually want to move. We're literally at the mitochondria level inspired to not burn calories. Thank you very much. Conserve those, go for it, Hibernate, what do you call it?
Speaker 2:Hibernate.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, well, or for humans. We get tired, we get lethargic. All we want to do is eat. I'm like that's not because you're a sloth or a glutton, it's literally evolutionary. You know, now we've got survival. It is a form of hibernation.
Speaker 2:When we think of hibernation, we think of bears who go sleep off the winter. Right yeah, but think about what happens to the bear. The bear is eating berries and fat like crazy all through fall. It's fattening up, it's slowing its metabolism down so that it can burn the lowest amount of energy possible during the season of the greatest energy shortage. So we do the exact same thing. We just don't sleep right, we still hibernate. The more sugar you eat, you slow your metabolism down, you become slothful, you become tired and you conserve energy. It's a form of hibernation. You're slowing your metabolism down so that you don't burn your energy off too quickly, because who knows how long this winter is gonna last.
Speaker 1:Or this drought or, yes, this famine, right, right, amazing. Dr Hyman in his book the Blood Sugar Solution says you know, if you have a health condition of any kind any kind if you need to lose weight, you have a health condition of any kind. You got no business putting carbohydrate like even some whole carbohydrates, but any refined carbohydrates in your body until you've sorted that out. Then you can figure out what role it does or doesn't play. Do you wanna comment on that? Or what's been your experience with wild fit, and is that advice that you give you know?
Speaker 2:generally speaking, I think that when somebody is ill or injured right Ill or injured in any way then what we wanna do is make sure that we're only putting in what the body needs during that time and not putting anything in that's gonna stress the body during that time. So sugar in all its various forms, even the good ones, is somewhat stressful. The reason that we right like because we burn sugar, fat and protein all as fuel sources. We're able to burn all three of those fuel sources. But look at the order in which we burn them. We always burn sugar first, always Like if you eat sugar, you'll stop burning fat and you'll burn that sugar first. Why? Because it's toxic. It's your body. In a sense, it's like an immune response. It's like we gotta get that out. We gotta get that out now. If your blood sugar goes too high, you die, like literally, like, not figuratively Like. If your blood sugar goes too high, you can die. So your body is immediately trying to regulate that down and burn it. So if you're sick or if you're injured and you're eating sugar, you're actually stressing your body during that time. I don't think that that's ideal at all. In fact, I would suggest for, in many cases recovery from surgery, injury, disease one of the very best things you can do is fast as long as you're nourished. If you're well nourished. If you're not well nourished, do not take that advice. But if you're well nourished, then fast, because your body has where the average person carries. What is it? Two or 3,000 calories of blood sugar, but we carry 200,000 calories of body fat. So if you think about that, how many days does that represent that you can survive without eating? So if you're healing from something, sometimes going into a fast where your body is burning its own internal energy and not expending a bunch of energy trying to process food and sugar and stuff, then yeah, I would go with that, and I say that as an exceptionally fast healer.
Speaker 2:Like I had to have all of my wisdom teeth taken out and the dentist said I'm not taking them all out, you can have two out and then the next two and I go I don't think you've seen my speaking schedule, man. I can't take two full weeks of surgery. You're gonna have to take them all out. Now this is in California, so I had to sign a legal disclaimer, right? So the lawyers are out there protecting everybody. So I signed the legal disclaimer.
Speaker 2:I go in for the surgery and then he tells me you're gonna need to take a couple of days off. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. I'm running a movie studio at that point. I don't have time to take a couple of days off. I go for the surgery, I stick the cotton in and I go and I work that afternoon, I go to the and I'm at work the whole next day and I basically was fine. I was totally fine, but what I had been doing I had been largely fasting for the days leading up to the surgery and then fully fasting for the days following the surgery.
Speaker 2:One week later I went into the surgery for the post-op and removing of the sutures and stuff and the doctor goes when were you here? And I said a week ago. You said I had to come in in a week. And he goes no, no, no, but I'm looking in your mouth, you're a bit late for your post-op. I go what do you mean? He goes you're about three weeks late or two weeks late. You were here three weeks ago and I said why don't you look at the chart and he goes. And he looks at the chart and he goes. You were here last week and I go, yeah, and he goes, this has to be a mistake. And I said why is it a mistake? And he goes because I've done thousands of these and I have never seen anybody heal that much in a week. Like you are three weeks healed and, interestingly enough, that's for a huge conversation about medicine and food and what have you. And then he said I'm going to start recommending that protocol to people before they come for surgery.
Speaker 1:I would like. Yes, I unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with.
Speaker 1:Mark, yeah, yeah, I unfortunately had the different experience, but I had a ruptured appendix. Actually awful, didn't know what it was Really young, fairly healthy, ate, well Like. It was kind of like what could this be, what could this be? They figured it out emergency surgery. I immediately started fasting and I fasted for four days after. Truthfully, I wasn't hungry, Eric, it wasn't like a whole, it wasn't a hardship. I mean, there was little thoughts of food, but they kept bringing trays of food by and I was like, oh, thank you, no, I'm good. And yeah, boom turned around really quickly, great, like almost not even a scar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had that you know the one thing with appendix that you have to be a little bit careful of, and so I also. How old were you when that happened? Ooh, 40s, see, very rare. It happens when people are young, and I'm doing some research about this and I'm just gonna say it out loud, knowing it's a theory and not a fact, but it's very uncommon for people to have appendicitis like in their later years. It usually happens when you're young, and one of the reasons for that is that what utility the appendix does seem to have in its role, presumably in our immune system, is that it's mostly active when you're younger and then, as you get older, it shrivels up, and shrivels up, and shrivels up, and so by the time you get into your late, you know, into your 40s it's about the size of a raisin. So therefore it's no longer all that dangerous to you. And so you know for me.
Speaker 2:I was in Africa, I was visiting the Hadzabe people. I'd been there for a week already and I came out and had some gut pains and they were reminiscent of the cramps I had as a child and I wondered if maybe something. We even had milk in it, because I'm particularly sensitive to milk, and I was like, and then a friend of mine said you know, listen, you gotta go get an MRI. And I'm like we're in the middle of nowhere, where do you find an MRI? We can get back, we can deal with it when we get home. No, no, no, no, no. Luckily I had Vincent Padre, who's a gut doctor specialist, and another friend of mine, ash, and he was there and he's a surgeon, and they both came over and did the appendicitis test on me and said no, no, no, no, you're in danger, like you're in danger. And one of them said Eric, what business do you have walking around talking to people cracking jokes when your appendix is right, the pain you must be in? At the moment I'm like, yeah, but I can't. I got a life to live here. So, no kidding, we found an MRI machine in some field hospital. The waiting room was outdoors and we found an MRI and we went and, yeah, my appendix had ruptured.
Speaker 2:But here was the crazy bit, and maybe this is similar for you my appendix was the size of a 26 year olds. Mine was large too. It was healthy, and the surgeon he actually watched him take it out. I was awake for the surgery and I asked him to take the curtain away so I could watch the whole thing. I watched the incision and he took it out and he goes. He goes holy crap. And I go what? And he goes your appendix, it should be this big. And it's this big. And he attributed that, anecdotally of course, to the fact that I've paid such attention to my health since I was 20. So, in a weird ironic twist, being extremely healthy almost killed me.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. Yeah, mine was not a raisin, I know, because they showed the scan of it and they're like it's quite large, it's quite big. So I remember them saying that. I just assumed that was normal.
Speaker 2:But then one thing to know with appendicitis just in case anybody has this situation is, while the advice for fasting is a very, very good idea, the one thing that's very important to know is that any time that somebody makes an incision in your abdomen, your entire abdomen turns off.
Speaker 2:It basically turns off and that's to protect you in case of a puncture, in case you were injured by an animal or a spear or something, and so soon after the surgery, you need to give it a little bit of food to jumpstart it, to get it going again. So if you fast for too long after appendicitis, this can be quite dangerous. So in my case, I was out in the middle of Africa, I did the surgery and then, if you can imagine, the morning I had the surgery woke up at six or seven the next morning, got in a jeep and went back out into the bush just having had the surgery. But when I got out there I ate very small amounts of the things they gave us there, like little, very small pieces of meat. Just because they asked the surgeon, it said you got to kickstart your digestion.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting, I didn't, but I wasn't hungry, so I'm hoping that I just followed the body on that one.
Speaker 2:Well, you seem to be doing fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I think so, although I slowed down, mind the tapos and I would say I thought that was just you know, as they move on in age. So let's talk a little bit about your well-fit program. So you move people through the transformation of unhooking from processed foods getting onto whole foods and the behavioral change. Do you find there are sometimes people in there that have a bonafide sugar addiction, and how do you work with that If they're just struggling even though they know? I know what you're saying, eric. If I could get off it I'll stop craving it, but I just can't seem to get there.
Speaker 2:You know, addiction is a funny word and it's an overused word. What I mean is that addiction, basically, is being used to describe anything habitual. So let's talk about the difference, say, for example, between, say, heroin or caffeine addiction and nicotine addiction. Heroin and caffeine when you stop having, they produce powerful withdrawal symptoms. When people stop having nicotine, nothing happens. I would argue that it's not addictive in the same way that heroin is. But we do know that sugar sugar mirrors some of those physically addictive things, like when you quit sugar there can be physical manifestations of it. That said, I started WildFit with a very clear statement and that was that we were not here to deal with addiction and we were not here to deal with eating disorders. It wasn't what we were here to do, and the only reason I made that statement was that one of my team had worked in the diet industry previously and she said well, when you start this program, you're gonna have people coming to you with food addiction and with food disorder, eating disorders and stuff. And I go no, we're not. We're not marketing for that. We're here to help entrepreneurs improve their relationship with food so they'll have more energy and so they can enjoy their retirement. That's it like we're not.
Speaker 2:But then what started happening was it was so effective that people kept telling their friends. Like we didn't have a website. You couldn't. The only way you could buy it is if you happen to be at one of my business freedom programs, that's it. If you were at my entrepreneur program, you would find out about WildFit. That was it. But then people kept telling their friends and then their friends started writing to our help desk and saying how do I, what do I do with this? And as the word spread, like that, and it was truly like that, like for the first two years we did nothing in the way of marketing and we just kept growing until one day we went from a hundred clients a year with just a little coaching business to like three and a half thousand clients in a year, like jump, just like that. And it was just like everybody telling their friends.
Speaker 2:And so, as that happened, now people with sugar addictions and eating disorders started coming to us and but we didn't know. We didn't know because at that stage we didn't know to like we, you know, our questionnaires weren't as comprehensive as they are now and so on. So we just didn't know. But also we found out from people afterward that they didn't disclose their eating disorders because they thought we'd exclude them from the program. So they would sneak in with anorexia, bulimia and various forms of food addiction and we wouldn't know. And repeatedly and regularly they would write to us afterward and go I'm not anorexic anymore, I don't purge anymore, I'm no longer bulimic and the addiction I thought was an addiction is gone. So now we started digging into that, considering we're making no concerted effort on it, we're not giving coaching on it, we're not giving therapy on it, we're not even talking about it. Why is it working? And something we found out about this which is really really important, and that is both in terms of addiction and in terms of psychological issues like eating disorders, malnutrition and overstimulation amplify the difficulty.
Speaker 2:So let's first talk about addiction. And somebody has an addiction, not even sugar. Let's say they have an addiction to coffee. Say they have a caffeine addiction. If they quit coffee then they will probably get headaches, they might get the shakes and they could even in some cases get withdrawal symptoms like the flu and vomiting and stuff if they've been drinking it a lot. Now what's fascinating with our clients was is that at some point during the program. They would say take a break from coffee and have either no headache at all or only one of those headaches are go. I think I have a headache like that, like the withdrawal symptoms were gone, and so that got me digging into some research and figuring out what might be going on there and what I've deduced from that and the theory I have about that is that the more malnourished you are, the greater withdrawal symptoms your body kicks into. So if you're very well hydrated and very well nourished, then the withdrawal symptoms are not so severe.
Speaker 2:Now let's go over to the eating disorders. If somebody is, say, anorexia or anorexic, or say bulimic or both, which is unfortunately common, then they are by nature malnourished. They are by nature starving to death. Right, they are starving, and that's a scary thing. And then on top of that, they're also commonly by nature overstimulated, because what they do is they eat. Their starving body goes, eat something, and then they binge, knowing they're going to purge it out anyway. So eat what you want. And so what do they eat? Krispy Kreme, or they, you know, they eat a bunch of sugar, but they don't purge quickly enough that the sugar doesn't slam their system, so they end up with this sugar hit and no nutrition. So they're overstimulated and they're malnourished.
Speaker 2:Now, what's fascinating about that is that if you take somebody who's overstimulated and malnourished, well, let's look at another group of people that are like that, methamphetamine addicts. They're overstimulated and malnourished and all they crave is the fastest calories they can get, which is sugar and grease. That's all. If you methamphetamine addicts, all they want to do is eat deep fried shit and sugar, that's it. Well, the same thing is now happening to these people that say, have an eating disorder is they're malnourished and overstimulated. Their body is going into emergency mode and it's saying get the fastest calories you can, which is guess what? Deep fried garbage and sugar. And so the cycle perpetuates. Oddly, if you take that person and you hydrate the hell out of them and you increase their intake of good stuff without even asking, they're going to stop the other stuff. Don't keep eating that, go for it, but just eat this first. What happens is, as their nutrition and hydration comes up, their cravings for the other stuff goes down and it becomes manageable.
Speaker 1:Incredible, incredible. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about your book that's coming out in April. It's called Post Diabetic. Why did you write this book and why did why the term post diabetic?
Speaker 2:So I wrote the book. I think there are three interlacing reasons. The first one was is that, again, in the same way that we didn't create a wild fit to deal with food addiction and that kind of stuff, we created it to just improve people's relationship with food. We also didn't create it to reverse diabetes. Only we kept doing it like clients kept writing to us and kept writing to us and kept writing to us and saying, look, you know, there's, I'm not diabetic anymore, or I was diabetic, now I'm pre diabetic. And they kept saying this to us all the time.
Speaker 2:And, funny enough, I mentioned to you in pre show I was having this conversation with Mark Hyman. In fact, let me read this to you. This is directly out of the forward that he wrote for the book. This is from the forward he says recently Eric interviewed me for his wild fit members and after the interview we discussed cause cases of reversal of type 2 diabetes. Eric pointed out that patients who normalize their blood sugar and stop all medications are still referred to as pre diabetic. Instead, he suggested we should refer to them as post diabetic. It was a light bulb moment. Now we go on in that book and he talks about this in the forward that he wrote that we in our book are suggesting that type 2 diabetes should be classified as a repetitive stress injury rather than a disease. It's a repetitive stress disorder. It's the body doing what it's supposed to be doing based on what you're doing to it. It's not a disease, it's not attacking you, it's the. It's like spraining your ankle If you keep walking like that, you're going to sprain your ankle. If you keep eating like that, you're going to sprain your, your, your, your pancreas or your fat cells or your insulin resistance capacity.
Speaker 2:And then what tied it all together was I got a phone call and the phone call was from Ruben Ruiz MD. Ruben is a an amazing guy. He's my co author on the book and he, he was, he was. He is running three medical clinics in Southern California, largely service servicing the underprivileged in the Latino community, and he was 40 pounds overweight and on 10 prescription medications hypertensive and type 2 diabetic. And so one day he's driving to the clinic like and, by the way, many doctors are in that condition, which itself I mean, if your doctors in that condition get enough, get another doctor. I'm sorry, you know, sorry, but but he was in that condition and he stopped off at Starbucks to get himself a big coffee so that he could stay awake on the drive to his clinic. Only, despite the coffee, he fell asleep and he was in a wreck. Luckily nobody was too badly hurt. A couple days later two days later I think he's in a rental car because you know, his cars Not in good shape and he stops off at the same Starbucks and he buys another coffee and he drifts off asleep again into the H oV lane and is in another accident. Luckily, again, nobody seriously hurt.
Speaker 2:But that night he found himself having a crisis of conscience. He was like how am I a doctor? I have no business being a doctor and I'm a hypocrite, I can't. You know, he'll die still. And he was really like angry and he went on to the Internet and he started googling around for stuff. I don't know what he was searching for, but weirdly he ended up in one of my master classes. And so he then did our 90 day wildfit journey, which is like, say, 50% food, nutrition, education and 50% behavioral change processes. And at the end of that 90 days he had lost 40 pounds and he was off all 10 of his medications. He was no longer hypertensive and no longer type two diabetic. He called me and said Eric, we have to get this message out to the world. Can we co write a book together? That's. That's the moment that the book became a thing.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's such an amazing story. Yes, and I remember my very first experience of someone reversing diabetes was 21 years ago. I'd gone into a 12 step program for food addiction recovery and this guy, eric, had come in. He was obese, depressed, miserable he was. He had like this dark storm clown around his head. You could just tell that he didn't really want to be there.
Speaker 1:He shuffled into the meeting late and six months later, just shy of that, he was at the front of the room saying I, you know, I'm a whole food man. I have three meals, no snacks, whole foods only. I've broken up a sugar. I was on 11 medications I'm on one today 10 of them have been eliminated of lost 75 pounds. He was absolutely massively transformed and he said but here's the kicker. I've been diabetic since my 30s. I'm, you know, he's in his 60s. I was told I would never get off insulin and he said I'm no longer diabetic to this day.
Speaker 1:And I remember thinking what. And I showed the guy this time I'm like I don't reverse diabetes. And he's, and this guy, ron, looks at me and he goes all the time. All the time you get people off processed junk foods, you get them on three meals and no snacks. Whole foods, you know. Get them there and miracles happen with your health. And I remember thinking but this is true, why is this not on the cover of the New York Times, like, is this not just the most incredible thing? And I kept talking about it with people and people are like okay, florence, yeah, that's super exciting. Not, but it really is.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately it's not very exciting, because not only is it not profitable but it's anti profitable and and you know that that's a real difficulty and I know that sounds a little conspiracy theorist and you know, maybe I should go put on my little tinfoil hat. But here is the difficulty. Consider why it is that somebody who is pre diabetic doesn't think it's very serious. Because they don't. They don't know their doctor. The doctor goes oh, you're pre diabetic. What does that mean? You should probably try to eat better, and you know. But if it gets really bad, we've got these pills and then you can keep eating the way you want and then you can take these pills or these injections. But imagine if you went into the doctor's office and the doctor said you're pre cancer. You would take that seriously. Right, you would take it seriously in the case of diabetes. I, okay now. Do you know the? Do you know the tale of the two bandings? Do you know? Do you know who?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I do. I know one of the bandings, the guy who wrote the book in the early 1900s.
Speaker 2:That's right now. He was morbidly obese, yes, and, and his doctor recommended to him to take a break from all carbohydrates for a while to reverse his obesity. And he did that. And then he wrote a book about that which might have been the first ever Atkins diet, in a sense right, like you know. And he and he was so committed to the cause that he set it up that either people got the book for free or all the royalties went back into. Like he, it was a very Not for profit. He wanted the message out to the world.
Speaker 2:Now here's the crazy thing. So first, that banding basically created a preventative measures and measure to prevent diabetes and arguably to reverse it. Right now he dies and lived a lot longer than he would have because he was morbidly obese, but he dies. And then I don't know if it was maybe about 20 years later, another banding was born there. So they're related. They don't know each other Because they missed, but they're related.
Speaker 2:And the second banding is in Canada and he kind of rose to fame because he was the guy who discovered exogenous insulin and he figured out exogenous insulin initially from dog they figured out how to get insulin from a dog pancreas and then they figured out other ways to synthesize it, but, as I understand the story, he got the original patent on insulin and he sold it to the University of Toronto for $1, because he believed that people had the inherent right to have insulin if they needed it, because back then there was really only type one diabetes and like if you don't have it you're going to die. He did that and therefore diabetes basically should have been free for anybody who needed it. Somewhere between that sale for a dollar and today, it's become a multi hundred billion dollar industry and that benefits by giving advice like well you know, if you're feeling a little tired, you should just have a Mars ball.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. Wow, yeah, how it got into the hands of pharmaceuticals to go and Profit, yes, and to confuse the public about what is the best diet for diabetes, because they had a very strong hand and discouraging us away from the real solution. Eric, we're almost out of time. Is there any final words you'd like to share today? I know you and I could talk all day on this. Is there any? Final words you'd like to share today. Yeah, like if sugar, sugar addiction recovery any of those.
Speaker 2:There's something super important and I really want to say this. If anyone listening if you right now you're hearing my voice and you're dealing with, say, a little extra weight or a lot, or say type two diabetes, or say a number of different autoimmune diseases, inflammation, that kind of stuff, if you're dealing with anything that they refer to as a lifestyle disease, I want you to really listen to me and I want you to hear something very important. It is not your fault and the reason they call it a lifestyle disease is to blame you, and that's something that tobacco industry figured out long time ago, because when they realized they were causing lung cancer and people, they didn't want to lose the lawsuit, so they started seeding the idea in the population that lung cancer was a lifestyle disease. Therefore, well, it's not our fault, and they now own most of the food industry, by the way. So the idea that you have a lifestyle disease is wrong. You don't have a lifestyle disease. You have a disastrous food industry. Ridiculous food regulation. Disease is what you've got a bad food education disease. It's not a lifestyle disease.
Speaker 2:Now, yes, you improve it by improving your lifestyle. There's no question about that. So I really want to be clear that it's not your fault if you're a little overweight or you're a lot overweight or you're type 2 diabetic or you have any of these lifestyle conditions. It's absolutely not your fault. They say to you, if you moved a little more and ate a little less, it wouldn't be this way. That's a lie. They say that if you just restricted your calories for a little while everything that's a lie. It's not your fault, but what it is is your responsibility to turn around, and the only way you're going to do that is not by going on a diet. It's by literally changing your relationship with food, and I hope I hope that you find a way to do that, and if I can ever support you in doing that, I'm always here, and coming to summits like this is an excellent step in your journey to reimagine your relationship with food.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your time and wisdom today, eric, much appreciated Cheers.
