9 Fast Facts For Forever Fat Loss

Jonathan: Hey, what’s up, everyone?  Jonathan Bailor and April Perry and we are back here with another SANE show.  April looks like Santa Claus because she’s got the big mail bag draped over her back.  We’re going to do some awesome mail bag questions today.

April: I’m glad that’s why I look like Santa Claus.  I was wondering where you were going with that.  Yes, mail bag here.  Super excited because we have an amazing group in our SANE Families’ program and we asked them, “Okay, April and Jonathan are recording.  What are the questions that we should ask?”  I love the questions that I received.

Plus, I received several questions through email so we’re going to try to go through these as kind of rapid fire as we can because there’s kind of a lot but I’m excited because these are the kinds of questions that help us take our SANEity to the next level.  So if you’re brand new to SANE, you may want to go explore Jonathan’s website and find out more about SANE Solution first and then come back here and we’ll talk about these questions that you may also have.

Question number one is talking about daily protein.  When we go SANE, we need to be eating protein at least three times a day or shooting for thirty grams.  There’s a challenge with ounces versus grams because sometimes people are having a hard time tracking grams because all of our packaging says ounces.  So sometimes we’re trying to figure out how to do that.  Do you have any suggestions to help us?

Jonathan: For sure.  The one thing that needs to be very clear is, I think you mentioned something at the very beginning where you said our goal is thirty grams.  I wanted to just clarify that it’s twenty to thirty grams per meal or serving; not thirty grams total for the day — just to be clear.

April: Okay.

Jonathan: I would strongly recommend please don’t track in ounces because if you track in ounces, it’s going to throw everything off because an ounce is a measure of volume.  For example, an ounce of protein powder is not comparable to an ounce of salmon because an ounce of salmon is going to be seventy percent water whereas an ounce of protein powder has no water in it so it’s pure protein.

April: Got it.

Jonathan: We have to track in terms of grams.  Nothing I ever say has anything to do with ounces of protein consumed because it varies by the source.  It’s always by gram.  I would recommend that, if it seems confusing, stop thinking about that and just say, “A serving of nutrient-dense protein is going to be about the size of the palm of your hand.”  So if it’s a piece of meat or piece of fish or something along those lines, if you’re eating a portion that’s about the size of your hand, you will, if it really is a concentrated source of protein — not beans, not nuts — those are not concentrated sources of protein — you will get the proper number of grams if it’s about the size of the palm of your hand.

April: Okay, awesome.  Next question — soluble corn fiber and quinoa.  “Tried a protein bar that’s been recommended.  I noticed it had soluble corn fiber as an ingredient.  Sounded suspicious as anything made of corn, I wouldn’t think, would belong in the same diet.  Is soluble corn fiber okay?  Yes/no?  Is quinoa a grain or a protein?”

Jonathan: The only bar I now recommend — and it’s because it’s the only one that actually is good — is the bars that we sell called your SANE Meal Bars.  The reason for that is the bars I used to recommend have completely changed their formulation.  They now have artificial sweeteners in it.  They can trigger addictive eating behaviors.  It’s not a good idea.  So if you listen to things I recorded two years ago — the recommendation I made no longer holds because the product has changed.  We produce our own protein bars now that don’t have any artificial sweeteners in them and, interestingly enough, they do have soluble fiber in them.  So just because something is from corn doesn’t necessarily — fiber is good for you so just because it’s from corn, there’s sort of nothing inherent in corn that would make the fiber you extract from it damaging to you.

April: Okay.

Jonathan: Ethanol is created from corn.  That doesn’t mean it’s not a good fuel source for automobiles, for example.

April: Okay, so it’s extracted?

Jonathan: Yes, yes.  So the only protein bars I recommend are the protein bars that are SANE, which we create.  All the other ones have artificial sweeteners and a bunch of toxic additive nonsense to it.  Soluble corn fiber is SANE because it’s just pure fiber that is derived from corn.

April: All right.  Then the quinoa question people are always asking — Is quinoa a grain/a protein?  What is it?

Jonathan: It is one hundred percent a grain.  Something is a concentrated source of protein if it contains more calories coming from protein than it has calories coming from fat or carbohydrate.  Quinoa has more protein than other grains but it’s still getting vastly more of its calories from starch and from sugar than it is from protein.  Again, it’s SANEr than rice but it’s not SANE.

April: All right.  Next question — green smoothies instead of water.  This person has been replacing water with green smoothies, I guess, and trying to do that more but is wondering if they can cause extra weight gain.

Jonathan: I would never recommend replacing water.  Green smoothies are a delicious way to eat vegetables but I would not say — my recommendation is never “reduce the amount of water you’re drinking.”  I think that you should drink a lot of water.  It is very good for you.  I think green smoothies — it totally depends on what you’re putting in them too.  I mean, you could absolutely gain weight if your green smoothie contains a bunch of ice cream in your green smoothie.  Just because it’s a green smoothie doesn’t necessarily make it good for you.

April: Okay.  As we talked about this before, we talked about, Can I have green smoothies in place of water?’  if it’s just spinach that you put in with the water — like spinach and water and some lemon — then you said spinach is mostly water anyway so that would be okay if you’re just having spinach in your water.

Jonathan: It’s always okay.  The question is — so the data I have is green smoothies instead of water cause weight gain?”  I would never say, “Stop drinking water; start drinking green smoothies.”

April: Okay, so think about what’s in it as well.

Jonathan: Yes.  But the statement —

April: Even if it’s just spinach, lemon, and water, you still would say, “Drink more water and have maybe a few green smoothies a day” or something like that?

Jonathan: Who knows?  So what’s going to happen is, after I answer this question, people are going to say, “So I need to drink a gallon of water and a gallon of green tea and green smoothies so I’m going to go to the bathroom all day.”

April: Clarify here.

Jonathan: Just give me a second and I will answer the question.  No interruptions.  When we make recommendations around fluid, there are certain fluids people say for example, like coffee doesn’t count towards your fluid intake because it contains caffeine and caffeine has diuretic effects.  So we do want to drink a lot of fluid and we want to drink fluid that doesn’t have a bunch of sugar in it and that doesn’t cause a bunch of diuretic implications.  Green smoothies are, by and large, water.  So, yes, you can generally –

If your goal is to drink a gallon of SANE fluids per day and you drink thirty-two ounces of green smoothies, you don’t need to think that you need to drink one gallon plus thirty-two ounces because then you’ll just urinate all day long.  The way this question was phrased threw me off a little bit because I don’t know what’s in the green smoothies and the question is phrased as, “If I drink green smoothies in place of water, could I gain weight?”  The answer is “absolutely yes because water doesn’t contain anything in it and green smoothies could contain anything in them, depending on how much you put in them.”

April: Okay.  Am I able to talk now without interrupting you?

Jonathan: Yes.

April: I do the same thing to Eric all the time.  He’s like, “I’m not done.”  Okay, that makes sense.  Thank you.  I like that one.  Okay, next question is — What’s the SANEst way to lose weight quicker?  Someone says it’s interesting learning about the low carb version of SANE.  Interesting.  Hoping this helps me move the weight off a bit quicker.  So what carbohydrates would you recommend cutting out?  I’m assuming fruits.  Does that also mean beans?  I’m also guessing peanuts.  All right, willing to exercise more as well.  Okay, what do you say about it?

Jonathan: The SANEst way to lose weight quicker is to eat like a fitness competitor.  So the way that fitness competitors eat is they take a serving of vegetables and a serving of protein and they eat that six times a day and that’s all they eat and they eat by themselves; they take that out with them when they go out to eat; they don’t make any exceptions.  This is the thing.  Losing weight really fast healthfully is simple but it’s not something that you will likely want to do because it just requires you eating the same stuff.  Like, eat salmon and broccoli at every single meal six times a day in portioned-out servings.

April: And no whole food fats in addition?

Jonathan: Well, salmon is a fatty fish.

April: Okay, okay.

Jonathan: So if you look at salmon, you’re going to get like thirty to forty percent of your calories from fat.  The way you would lose weight quicker is to just be extremely SANE.  You would eat non-starchy vegetables; you would eat the most nutrient-dense forms of protein; and then if needed — depends on how much fat you need to lose — you would add whole food fats as required.  But again, if you look at a fitness competitor, they do count calories and they are eating fewer calories just from really pure nutrient-dense sources to lose weight faster.  Again, I could tell you how to lose weight fast.  I can’t tell you how to lose weight fast and healthfully and be a mom and have a job and have variety at every single meal and do all these different things.

April: Okay.  No, I really appreciate you sharing that because I think that for some people who do need to lose weight relatively quickly — maybe they are trying to get pregnant — I actually had an email from someone who’s trying to be an organ donor for her spouse and she was feeling stressed because they told her she had to lose a lot of weight so they told her to basically starve herself and go to the gym every day.  I really appreciate you sharing that.

So next question — fitness video recommendations.  Rumor has it that you may put together an exercise video at some point.  First of all, is that true?  Are you thinking of doing that at some point?

Jonathan: I am thinking of doing that at some point.  It’s not going to be for a little bit but, yes, I am.

April: Okay, awesome.  Next question is — how sore should we be if we’ve been doing our eccentric exercises every week?  What if we’re just mildly sore a day after and that’s it?

Jonathan: If you’re mildly sore a day after, then I bet you’re not doing it at a gym, which is okay, and it’s very difficult, depending on how — so again, it’s hard to answer some of these questions because if you weigh 300 pounds and you’re doing body weight squats and your ideal body weight is 150 pounds, you could imagine that that’s very different than if your ideal body weight is 150 pounds and you weigh 160 pounds and you’re doing body weight squats.

In one scenario, you have 150 additional pounds you need to lift and in another scenario, you have 10.  So the fitter you are, the more likely it is that you’re going to need to go to a gym and you’re going to need to add a substantial amount of resistance if you want to feel sore.  But if you’re just getting started and your body provides enough resistance — so if you are doing eccentric exercises with a proper amount of resistance, you should be extremely sore for three to four days afterwards.

April: Okay, so it just means you need to add more weights to what you’re lowering if you’re not sore?

Jonathan: Correct.  And if you’re not familiar with strength training or if you’re just getting started with it, this is something you want to ease your way into because it’s just like anything else.  Eccentric training is something that takes a little bit of time.  You want to get used to it.  Just like if you wanted to run a marathon, you wouldn’t go outside and try to run twenty-six miles tomorrow.  You ease your way into it.  The same thing here.

April: Okay, now I have a question because I have a right wrist that is not as strong as my left wrist and my left knee is not as strong as my right knee.  So when I actually did eccentric weights this morning and as I was doing the leg press, my left leg can’t do what my right leg can do.  What would you recommend?

Jonathan: Muscular imbalance is quite common.  I too suffer from that.  I’ve blown out my right knee three times and I didn’t get the third surgery so I actually don’t have an ACL in my right leg.  In the second surgery, they took a hamstring ligament and grafted it to my knee and it tore so my right hamstring is way weaker than my left hamstring.  As a general rule of thumb, muscular imbalance isn’t good.  You don’t want to compound muscular imbalance.  If, for example, your one leg is weaker than the other, you kind of want to stop when the weaker leg is done.

April: So just don’t push my right leg to do twenty/thirty pounds more than my left leg, you’re saying?

Jonathan: Correct.  Otherwise, you will compound that muscular imbalance and then that’s going to — for example, because your legs connect to your back and then things will shift and other bad stuff will happen.

April: Okay, thank you.  All right, next one — another question on eccentric weights.  I know if I can do more than six reps, I need to go heavier but if I get to, say, four reps and I can’t do any more at that weight, is that just the end of the exercise or should I just drop the weights enough to finish the last two reps?

Jonathan: For weight training, the key metric you want to look at is what’s called time under tension.  So six reps is relatively arbitrary.  We say six ten-second reps because we kind of want about sixty seconds’ time under tension.  If you’re doing four twelve-second reps and that’s sixty — excuse me, that would be fifty-eight seconds of time under tension, then that would be okay.  But yes, what she’s actually describing is dropping the weight and doing two additional reps is what you call a drop set and that is an actual thing that happens during resistance training.

You want to completely fatigue your muscle so whatever helps you to fatigue your muscle most completely is what you should do.  If this case, you feel sore after doing those two additional reps while dropping the weight, you could do that.  You could also just drop the weight at the very beginning so that you could do six reps.

April: Okay.  I want to spend a day in the gym watching you and see what you’re doing because obviously we can’t answer every question over an audio or video broadcast that’s not in a gym but one more quick question — so when you’re talking about doing the six reps and that should be no break at all between each rep?  Like, you lower it and then you’re right back up right that second?

Jonathan: Correct.  There’s no pause in between repetitions at least as recommended.

April: All right, I’m getting better.  Okay, when nutritional goals are different for adults and children.  This is kind of an interesting question but she’s saying, “What foods are healthy that may be too efficient to be considered SANE?”  I don’t know if I quite understand the question.  I’ll just ask it and see what you think but she’s trying to evaluate different foods.  I have two kids, 18 months and 4 years, who are not big eaters.  They’ll eat some vegetables and whole food fats but they mostly like fruit and dry carbohydrates — and that’s the exact same with two of my kids; actually three of my kids.  They pretty much refuse to eat protein — that’s Spencer; he just says it makes him sick, doesn’t want any of it.  They don’t eat enough volume of healthy foods to have enough energy to keep growing so because they’re young and kind of concerned, what foods are still pretty healthy but maybe they’re too efficient to be considered SANE?

Jonathan: Actually, this person gets bonus points because they are actually using the term ‘efficient’ perfectly and it’s the first person I’ve heard really do that well.

April: Awesome.  Kudos.

Jonathan: So what this person means is, these individuals are eating food like dried fruits that are very efficiently metabolized by the body and therefore if you overconsume them, it’s very easy and efficient for them to be stored as body fat.  So that is the E in SANE.  Kudos to this person for nailing the usage of that term.  It’s absolutely true that, for example, not only with children but for, say, very elderly people who may have digestive problems, the idea of taking someone with significant digestive issues and feeding them very inefficient food, like very fiber — rich vegetables and protein — is the last thing that would happen because their digestive system simply can’t handle it.

We always have to look at things in terms of cost benefit.  If eating inefficient foods causes you to have severe digestive problems, you need to eat food and you need to eat calories in order to energize your body.  In this context, if the choice is between ‘your kids don’t have enough energy to grow and they’re eating efficient and sort of less SANE foods, then no, they definitely do need to eat the efficient, less SANE foods because, in that context, stunted growth is going to be worse than any alternatives.  I mean, it’s always about the SANEst we can do, given our limitations.  If, for example, I can’t eat — not me personally but let’s say, I’m a vegetarian and I don’t eat meat, we would say, what is the SANEst you can do within those limitations?  I think the same thing applies here.

April: Okay.  So we won’t go into all the lists of those foods that — doing the best you can.  Things like whole grains are better than not whole grains.

Jonathan: Exactly.  Things like tubers and starchy vegetables are going to be better than grains in general; so things like sweet potatoes and turnips and those types of things are going to be way better than grains in general.  So those are also great options.  Beans could be another good option.

April: Okay, awesome.  When someone is told they need to lose body fat for immediate medical reasons, how does one expedite that?  We kind of just talked about that — like a fitness trainer or a body builder.  The answer is to go SANEst so learning just how to fine-tune our diet and exercise for the medical need.  Is that same answer as before?

Jonathan: The good news is that, what you eat will determine the number of calories you consume.  So part of the problem — the reason we as a culture do over-consume calories is because we eat unsatisfying food.  If you eat unsatisfying food, you have to eat three to four thousand calories per day to feel satisfied.  If all you said is, “I’m going to eat green vegetables and tuna fish, hypothetically.

April: Okay.

Jonathan: If you said that’s all you’re going to eat, you would stop eating at about twelve to fourteen hundred calories per day and you would lose fat very, very quickly and that’s what fitness competitors do.  They essentially pick a lean but nutritious sort of protein and vegetables and that’s what they eat.

April: Okay, so can you just live on that?  If I just ate tuna and broccoli and that’s all I ate for every meal, could I just live on that?

Jonathan: For the rest of your life?  Probably not.  You might have some nutrient deficiencies probably; however, it is important to keep in mind — variety is good for you.  Variety is good for you.

April: I’m not saying I want to eat tuna and broccoli for every meal.

Jonathan: What I’m saying is the general template.  So there’s an extreme version of what I just said, which is pick one vegetable and one protein source.  There’s a more broader sense, which would be, “Pick a vegetable and a lean protein source and that’s what you’re eating but let’s keep in mind, just for what it’s worth, variety in terms of what we can find in our grocery store is new.  Humanity prior to grocery stores, which was the vast majority of human existence –

People who lived in, like, Northern Europe ate the same stuff all the time and people who lived in sub-Saharan Africa ate the same stuff all the time.  They didn’t have a lot of variety.  So as long as you are getting all that essential nutrition, which you would from nutritious protein and non-starchy vegetables, you could absolutely — variety is generally good but supermarket variety can’t possibly be required to stay alive because it didn’t exist until recently.

April: I love how you make that so simple.  I love it.  All right, next question — I received a really beautiful kind of heartbreaking email from one of our listeners who says, basically she is eating SANEly.  She’s eating the non-starchy vegetables, the nutrient-dense proteins, whole food fats.  Not just eating SANEr, but eating optimal and exercising — doing eccentric exercise — just joined a gym — really working at this; really committed.  She’s heard my story.  She relates a lot with me and she said, “I really want to know what’s going on because I’m not seeing results and it’s been three months.”  Is there something else going on?  I thought I just need to bring this up to you and find out what else could it be going on?

Jonathan: Oh, absolutely.  When you go through the SANE Master Class, for example, which you can do free of charge at SANESeminar.com, we go through like nine different factors and many of which have nothing to do with what you’re eating.  If you’re on SSRIs, certain forms of medication, they could totally stall your weight loss.  Insulin therapy could stall your weight loss.  Excessive stress can stall weight loss.  Yo-yo dieting chronically can install your weight loss.  Sleep deprivation can stall weight loss.  Many, many, many different things — totally separate from what you’re eating or how you’re exercising — can stall weight loss.

April: Okay.  So when people do come into SANE Seminar or when they come into your program and they’re actually participating in this, is that just where they go to get more health, more ideas?  What would she do?

Jonathan: That’s exactly right.  I mean, so there’s only so much that — if you wanted to become a doctor, it would be very difficult to do that by just reading blog posts on the Internet.

April: Right.

Jonathan: You would probably need some personalized attention and you would need sort of a comprehensive long term strategy that’s continuously monitored and continuously updated.  That’s what we provide at SANE Solution.  So you can become a sort of casual observer with free resources and things on the Internet but if you really want to dig into it and have a personalized program, then to do that for one, two, three, four years or for the rest of your life — that is exactly what we provide.

April: Okay, awesome.  All right.  Those are all the questions in the mail bag.  I think you did a fantastic job, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Boom.  You don’t look like Santa Claus anymore.  You’ve now got just this empty, deflated balloon hanging off your back.

April: I am ready to fill it up again this next month.  We’ll get together and do another one soon.

Jonathan: Beautiful.  Thank you, everyone, for the questions.  I really appreciate it.  I always try to do the best that I can with a little bit of limited information but the one sort of next action I would really recommend is, often times, you can actually judge the competency of someone by how definitive of an answer they give you based on limited information.  So for example, like if you ask a really qualified surgeon a really short question and they’re like, “You should absolutely do this.” that will never happen.  They’ll ask you like six other follow-up questions.  They’ll want to know more about the situation because they know all the different factors that are going in.

Just be very, very careful.  Health and wellbeing is very complicated and it’s very nuanced.  So if any blog post or article with no data about you or your individual circumstances is like, “Definitely this, definitely that, here’s my three-word answer”, just be a little cautious of that because that usually doesn’t work out.

April: Thank you so much, Jonathan.  I love that next action.  I think a stretch goal would be find out as much as you can about Jonathan.  Honestly.  I love saying I can’t tell you how much I have been able to revolutionize the way I think; the way I eat.  I love it that when I have a lot of stress going on or a lot of things in my life, I can stay healthy and strong.  SANE slowly changed my life.  Glad to be here with you.  Thanks for being here on the podcast.

Jonathan: April, real quick.  Just before you close, can I say one quick thing?

April: Yes, then you close.

Jonathan: Oh, then I’ll close.  Okay, cool.  So the other thing is — I know this can seem overwhelming.  Like, I even saw April while we were recording, when I was talking about like drop set, she’s like, “Oh, I want to watch you in a gym.”  Keep in mind and be compassionate with yourself.  You can get a Ph.D. in exercise physiology and still not know everything.

This is a huge amount of information that covers millions of research papers.  So it’s never going to be like, “I’ve got it figured out.”  I don’t have it figured out.  We’re always learning.  All we can do is get better over time and that’s what we’re doing here.  I appreciate you giving both me and April the opportunity to help you a little along that journey.  Remember to stay SANE.