Shawn Stevenson: Upgrade Your Mind and Body

01/26/21

DATE: JANUARY 26, 2021

PROGRAM: ALWAYS EVOLVING

SHOW#: CM1059

GUEST: SHAWN STEVENSON

HOST: MIKE BAYER

 

(START OF PODCAST)

COACH MIKE BAYER: All right, guys, welcome back to "Always Evolving". I have a guest, Shawn Stevenson.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: How's it going?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Good. Thanks for joining me.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's my pleasure.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: You know we, we have a mutual friend, ah who- her name is Cynthia Garcia.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's right, yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And I reached out to Cynthia and I said, I want to bring Shawn on "Always Evolving" because I think he's going to provide some wisdom. But tell me about you. Like if you were going to kind of give me your story.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Hmm, wow, that's, ah, we already talked a little bit-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: We did.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, my background is very weird. You know, I grew up a good portion of my childhood living with my grandmother. Uh, I'm biracial.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And was that different growing- You grew up in Missouri, was it?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, in Missouri and so this was in the, in the early 80s, you know, living with my grandmother, um from kindergarten to second grade. Most memorable, really deep time of my life. You know, when you kind of come online, there's this like, infant amnesia, you know, you don't really remember, but, you know, from that point on kindergarten when I- and I actually came to live with her because of some of the circumstances living with my mother and my stepfather, ah shortly before that.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Why did you live with grandma?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So shortly before that, I was- you know, my mom- it's a tough environment. You know was a very, very tough environment that she lived in. And she wanted me to be a strong guy, you know, strong kid and very much one of the mothers of like, you know, you better not come here crying. You know, you get out there and fight.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Oh wow.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But um, this one particular instance, I kept getting to scuffle with this kid next door, Alfonzo. I'll never forget, um I was four years old, Alfonzo was maybe six. And our parents, my parent, my mother, and it was two adults with him, I don't remember if it's his mother or, um but they made us fight each other. You know, it's kind of like-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Really?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: They were sitting on the stoop- yeah, and they watched us and they made us fight. And I remember before it all happened, I was just like, really- I felt so wrong, just like why, I don't want to do this. 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Did you even know how to fight?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I mean, just because of my, my stepfather, you know, like kind of punching and throwing hands, that kind of thing. But immediately I was, you know I was a baby really man. Four years old. And he pushed me into a corner of a brick wall. And I still have this big scar on the back of my head today. Just busted my head wide open. So I'm wheeled into- the story gets better by the way- I didn't know I was going to talk about this, but I just remember, like, the lights going over me as I'm rolled into the hospital and but, you know, all the while, like, I'm just I felt so upset that I lost and I was telling my mom, I'll get him, I'll get him. And a couple of days later, after, you know, getting out of hospital, the stitches, he was outside in the back. And, you know, this big metal Tonka trucks were the thing and, you know, I retaliated and that just kind of set in place this continuous instance of me solving problems with violence because that's what I was taught to do. But my grandmother, shortly thereafter, I went to live with her. And I really I wish she was still here to ask her the details, but I know she was like, you know this- you can't allow my, my, my, my grandson to get hurt like this, you know? And so-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Why do you think your mom did that?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: She wanted me to- That's the thing is, it's like, it's not that she didn't love me. She wanted me to be tough. She wanted me to be able to handle myself in the environment we were in, you know, so but living with my grandmother's very, man it was so beautiful, man. It was just, there was so much certainty. We had routines. The school was just a block away. It's very safe neighborhood.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Did you miss your mom and dad?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: No

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: You didn't?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Not real. I mean, just going back over there for the weekends was always

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Why do you think they gave up- I mean your mom and dad would have had to allow your grandma-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what, I, I got to say that I did miss my mother. I would have this recurring dream, and I'm not this- I'm not a guy that talks about dreams and all that, but I would, I would have this dream that I kept trying to get to her. And every time I get close, she'd go through another door, you know, and I always just kind of felt like I wanted to be with her, you know.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mmh.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, but consciously, I would prefer not to be over there, because when I go to their house, I'm sleeping on the floor. You know, there's rats and roaches and all that kind of stuff. So, um, but in this environment, with my grandmother, this really gave me an exposure that so many other people where I'm from don't get, which is, you know, this feeling of safety. There was no, like, impending doom, like when I walk out my door and also safety within the construct of my home as well. My grandmother and grandfather, I'm sure, they were married, so I'm sure they had disagreements, but I never- there was so much love, like there were an entity, you know.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: What was your dad like, through all this?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I never met him. Never met my dad.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Wow. Never in your life.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, so my birth certificates blank.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Is he still alive?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I have no idea. 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Wow.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So I have that kind of story, you know. Like my mother was a teenager when she had me and, you know, so but I got that exposure of a man and a woman in a relationship and a construct and love, seeing my grandmother and my grandfather. And it's an imprint, you know. Even if life strays away. It's still there and going and being in that environment one of the things that really, even while I'm sitting with you today [00:05:00] and I really want to provide this for everyone else, it's not about learning stuff, like you can try to learn how to be this or that. It's having a love of learning and she sparked that. There's this nature versus nurture...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, yeah,

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Conversation, but I remember being with her and having this little Garfield writing book and just having this thing come online of like, wow, I can create anything I want. I can create ideas and words. And I just fell in love with learning, you know.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so, but my grandmother, you know, she listened to Dolly Parton and the Judds- mama, he's crazy. Um, Reba McEntire, Randy Travis, all that stuff. So we had that. Then I go with my mother, we've got, you know, Michael Jackson. We've got New Edition.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So everything was good. 

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So I had this dichotomy.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Everything was like nurturing. You felt good, you're with grandma.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Then my grandfather started having, uh really bad issues, you know, he had a heart attack and had to have open chest surgery and again, I wish I would have known what I know today, but they wanted to move back to- he's a country boy, you know...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: To the Piedmont, Missouri, which is like straight up, you know, what we call the woods.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know. And it was a choice that, again, I wish I could ask my grandmother about because I'm sure she wanted to take me with her, but I would have been, like, literally sticking out like a sore thumb.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I was already- I was in a 99 percent white school, you know, and so I kind of already had some of that tension and just being, you know, the environment, telling me that I'm different.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And, but I went to live back with my mother and, you know, my, my little brother and sister come along at that time. So I'm going from a 99 percent white school to a 99 percent black school.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Wow.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And that dichotomy, I mean, that like it was such a culture shock for both ends of it. And in this environment, you know, now we're, I'm dealing with, you know, drugs and gangs and, you know, the violence that I'm seeing now more consistently, you know. Then my household, my stepfather, my mother and-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Why do you think people are violent?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's not that we necessarily- of course, like oftentimes you feel this regret when you hurt somebody you care about, it's just an inability to manage one's psychological and emotional output. As a matter of fact, this is a big reason why I wrote "Eat Smarter".

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It wasn't- I mean, of course, we provide the best material on metabolism, but it's specifically how food and nutrition affects how we relate to other people.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And one of the studies that I highlighted, and this was conducted by researchers at Oxford, they wanted to find out what would happen with prison inmates if you improve their nutrition. And so they took a group of prison inmates and they gave them increased nutrition through, you know, vitamins, minerals-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Omega-3 supplements. And then they had another group who they gave a placebo. 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This was a multi-month study. And then they compiled all the data at the end of it and they found that the folks who received increased nutrition had a 40 percent reduction in behavioral offenses. But what was most alarming for me was they had a 37 percent reduction in violent offenses and the results were so shocking. Another set of researchers-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: But what, what type of nutrition was it? Like what was the difference?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, so this is just from supplements.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: It went from being spam to a vitamin being added?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: No, no, right, right, there's still-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Because I've worked in some of those places, I'm like, the food is so bad.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's crazy.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: I don't- like the foods so bad, I remember I had a job. I worked at a place that was a transition for uh a halfway house 18- 17 years ago. And um, the food in this place was crazy what they actually are fed. So, I mean, to that point, if you think about it, what people are currently getting in prison based on what...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: This found, is actually not helping people reduce their anger, their issues, because they can't emotionally regulate themselves if they're out of balance.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And so, if anything, it's it's this belief like, oh, well, we're not going to help people because they offended or they were violent. But the reality is you could be causing even more harm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, encouraging the problem.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, like instead of creating more balance.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, but also that similar food is what's in our food system with our children as well. Very similar and often times they're coming from the same places, actually. And so, what, the question is how. And so another group of researchers, the numbers were so startling. Thirty seven percent reduction in violence. They repeated the, the experiment with another set of prison inmates at another jail and got almost the exact same results. This was published in "Aggressive Behavior", which there's journals for everything, by the way. And for me, it's just like how what what's going on? How did this happen? And this gets into very simple neurobiological stuff. Like your brain is made from food. And, for example, the omega-3 supplements that they added in.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is one of the few-there's only a couple of dozen nutrients that get express pass pathway to the brain.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It has it's own diet. We call it, neuro nutrition because of the blood brain barrier. Omega-3s are so essential that because [00:10:00] they create cellular stability for the neurons and also allow for something called-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So you're saying that, that one mineral that people should always have in their diet or life is omega-3?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So omega-3s, that's a different category.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And why they got to sound so crazy, these like- they're always like B954- and I'm like I feel like it's like it gets- for a guy like me, right? I'm always- and I had I had JJ Virgin on the podcast and then I told her afterwards- you know who JJ is?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And I said to JJ during it- I was eating corn nuts and I didn't know that they were bad for me. She's like, yeah, they're fried. And I'm a corn nuts are fried? I literally thought I was having like a really good, uh...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Nice, healthy treat.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah. Nice, healthy treat. But then I talked to her afterwards. I was like, yeah, JJ you can make me the person that- you can do my nutrition and stuff. And then I got to have a phone call with her because-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's so much.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: I just need a simple, like what to add, and it's confusing-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Like, so-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Ah, you just said it. This is the exact thing and why I wrote this book is that- let me give you an example. When we get, like the gold standard of clinical trials is like a randomized controlled trial. And we'll just, that's conducted and we find out that we'll say omega-3s, since we're talking about omega-3s, that they're beneficial for reducing your risk of Alzheimer's, like clinically proven.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: It is.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It takes on average for the study to be completed and proven-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: To be used in clinical practice about 17 years. All right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's unbelievable. And people should be able to access the data immediately, like we know that this thing can be helpful and save lives potentially. But the issue is the complexity. And it's because of the world of academia. And even, you know, in the last year, I've read over a thousand studies. I'm a research scientist is what I do. But you have to be able to understand that language and my publisher and all that, really all the publishers that I've talked to, work with agents.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: They will say without saying it that people are stupid and just tell them what to do. Eat this. Not that. But how has that served us? It has not worked thus far.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We are the sickest nation in history, self-inflicted. We have over 200 million Americans who are overweight or obese. Right now we're almost at 50 percent clinically obese just within the next couple of years here. Something is wrong and a big part of it is the complexity. And what I've really strived to do is to remove the complexity so people can just understand how their body works, but in a way that makes sense. That's fun. And there's a statement and it's a tribute to Einstein. But, you know, you know, I don't know Einstein, but he said that if you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough. And so even as I'm researching, I'm thinking, how can I teach this? How can I make this? How can I make the process of metabolism like a movie theater, like going to the movies.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so I did that and I mapped out-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And is that what you kind of do? The book before was about sleep. And so did you dig yourself into research everything around sleep with the previous book? And do you find yourself going through phases of passion, like where you're like this next part of my life, this is about the eat smarter.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, I think that there's many- And you know this as well, there's many paths to the goal...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And there's also many bridges or connective tissue for, for people to become interested in health. For me it was food. You know, food really helped to change me and save, save my life, really. And so I'm a nutritionist. That's what I do. The sleep phenomenon for me was just-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: In West Hollywood, we call it a "nutritia".

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Nutritia (LAUGHING).

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Is nutritia coming around to help us out with our nutritia this week? I'm just messing.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It sounds like something my auntie would say. Get some of that good nutritia.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, yeah, bring nutritia around here and get us sorted.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So because the diet, food nutrition industry, multibillion dollar industry, super confusing, so many ads, I find, and people on this podcast have heard me talk about so much before, I, I kind of like URC when I see a lot of- and I'm newer in this public coaching space where it's like these people that are like, I'm going to make you a lot of money and pay me this much money. And it can dominate ads and there's a lot of ad money put behind it. And I have to imagine the same applies to food, nutrition, all of that. Like if I'm a big company that does not actually make nutritious, healthy food, but I'm killing it. I'm just going to come out with my thing, the gluten free version, and this version, this version...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And that's where it becomes confusing because as a consumer and as someone who's not, you know, doing all the research, like, how does- so if someone picks up "Eat Smarter", it gives them a simple roadmap to how to start [00:15:00] to eat smarter in their life?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, but here's the biggest key, so it's a unifier because I know all the guys that have the diet frameworks. I know the keto guy, the carnivore guy, the Mediterranean guy, the the vegan guy. These are all my friends and colleagues. And they get results for their patients. But there's a big percentage of people who don't get results.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: They're not talked about, they're not highlighted. And what it really is and what's lacking is people being able to understand what they need-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right, authentically.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That might not fit in the construct of a diet frame.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So how do I figure out what I need? Like use me as a, yeah-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, so first to go back to, you know, "Sleep Smarter", and that's a good bridge into, into this question, I saw that there was a gap, right? You know, the patients that I was working with in my clinical practice-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And what degrees did you get? Like how did you...?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I'm a nutritionist. You know I just studied nutritional science, biology, kinesiology, all that stuff.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Got it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But it wasn't like I wasn't passionate about it in the beginning. I actually went to school- I went to a private university in Missouri, really expensive because they had a great premed program because I was going to be a doctor because of what I saw on television. I never met anybody who even went to college, let alone graduate from college.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Oh, really?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Just like-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: It just sounded like it was the right thing to do?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It was because of the Cosby show.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Really?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, you know, he seemed like he was happy. You know, he's a doctor, they had a happy family. That's the influence that I had, you know, but I knew because of my grandmother, like I knew I wanted to do something great.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But I didn't know what or how to get there. And so, but because of- and I just think sometimes life presents you things because I- if I would have just gone that track, I wouldn't be here today. I would have been another clog in the system because I got to see really early on- which it was an elective for me to take my first nutritional science class. And my teacher was obese. And he's teaching me about- because I thought nutrition had to do with fitness.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And the thing was, he was a really smart individual. But if you take a really smart person and you teach them the wrong thing, they become great at doing the wrong thing.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like world class.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: That's right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And it's not that he was like secretly huffing down Pepsi's and, you know, honey buns. We were taught the food pyramid...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: In the very beginning. Right. The bottom of the pyramid. Get your 7-Eleven brown's in...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Whole grain, brown, everything. He was doing the thing, but it wasn't working. But because of this state of, like, learned helplessness of like, this isn't working, but I must be doing it wrong.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you just keep- let me, let me whole grain harder. Right? Instead of understanding. Wait a minute. This isn't working for me.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So you take that piece and then also you see the focus on pharmacology, on disease basically, the treatment of symptoms.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And there's nothing, there was no class about health, like what actually creates a healthy, robust human being.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's no class on how do you actually create an optimal healthy, functional immune system. It's Just all focused on problems.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so fortunately, because of another movie, just to be real, I changed my course of study to marketing because the movie "Boomerang" with Eddie Murphy. Shout out to that movie classic. But, um and then I just went on about my business for a couple of years, and then I lost my own health because of the way that I'd been eating since I was a child. My grandmother, even though she loved me so much, she, she was just one of those people. She just wanted me to be happy.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: What was the big change you made in your diet?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The big change that I made when I got healthier?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Phew, man.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: What was the big pivot?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Even this, like just for everybody. It's, it's going to come in phases, you know, but at the age of 20, I was diagnosed with this so-called incurable spinal condition, ah degenerative disc disease, which usually happens when folks are a little bit older and also, you know, definitely, you know, in their elderly years. But I was just a kid. And even earlier in high school and when I was 15, I broke my hip at track practice just from running. You know, I had all of these degenerative conditions, but none of my physicians ever stopped to ask, like, how is this happening to this child? And it wasn't until I was 20 to got that diagnosis. But I was also told by my physician that, you know, it's incurable. There's nothing you can do about it.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And, you know, about the nocebo effect...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, as your giving this negative injunction. And a lot of people don't realize that placebos in trials, we have to account for the placebo for somebody believing that it's a real treatment pill, pain reliever, whatever the case is. On average, placebos at thirty three percent effective in clinical trials. So people's blood sugar normalizing, you know, cancer tumors getting broken down. The list goes on an on-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Because they believe it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because of- the brain is the most powerful pharmacy. We have all the things to do, the action, even we take a drug. It's still your body interacting with the drug to do the thing. You know, even our immune system, when we're talking about fighting off a sickness and infection, for example, the inflammation is our immune system, creating the inflammation, you know...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Trying to solve the issue. [00:20:00] So having this experience, you know, I went through a really, really tough time and just my body breaking down. I really felt isolated and alone in my identity as an athlete, all this stuff. And eventually when I finally made this switch in my mind, like realizing I've been outsourcing my health to people who they meant well, but again, they were not trained in what actually creates health. And I finally asked, what can I do to get better? Like, because, you know, like our questions kind of dominate our thinking. And within a matter of weeks, I start to see things that were there the whole time that I just wasn't attuned to because I was chronically asking-. 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Like what?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Why me? Why, why'd this happened to me? Like, for example, a friend of mine who, she was a chiropractor and I'd known her for years.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But now once I ask, how can I get better, she invited me to go to a "Wild Oats" with her, you know, which was there (STAMMER) before "Whole Foods" scooped them up.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I didn't know this existed. I was living in Ferguson, Missouri at the time, so I didn't know what a health food store was. I didn't know any of this stuff. And so but now- I being that, you know, still in college, I have this eye for analytical data. I'm a very logical person. I see myself as. And so there's books there and it's just like, oh, there's a study that found that this nutrient increase, bone density, I thought calcium was what did that.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I'm taking all of this calcium and drinking milk, but my bones still keep breaking down. And it- there was like 20 other things that I didn't know about and I wasn't getting through my drive thru window diet that- I mean, I mean, I ate fast food every day.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Not, not a day, unless I was flat broke. Then I eat some ramen noodles, but this is just in my environment.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Ferguson. When I stepped foot out my door within a mile and a half radius, a liquor store, Popeye's Chicken, Lee's Chicken, Domino's, Papa John's Chinese food, but not like the nice Chinese restaurants, like bulletproof glass-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Chinese food, you know, [INAUDIBLE] Chicken, McDonald's, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Wendy's, ah Krispy Kremes. And that's just within a mile and a half radius.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like, I never- I didn't know what health would look like.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And the environment itself is oppressive and just encouraging us to continue to be sick. So the thing that I did first that really turned for me, the first thing I try to do is Slim Fast, because I was like, I should try to lose weight because of marketing. Like you said, marketers mess everything up. Right? Shake for breakfast, shake for lunch, a sensible dinner. You got this-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right,

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's all your vitamins-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And minerals. Doesn't work for most people.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah,

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But quickly thereafter, because of the environmental influences, I had her, who I had known all this time, health food stores, books existed, research existed. I just wasn't attuned to it.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so I first became a natural pill popper, to be one hundred, you know, which is just like, OK, I need chromium, I need omega-3s, I need silica. But that shit was expensive. So then within about another week I'd really looked at, OK, which foods have all these things? And I just started to just, just flood my cells in all of these things I was deficient in. And the, the bow on this story, on the, on the, on the gift was everything about- including my spine, you know, my disc, they're made of food. And if you don't give your body the raw materials that it needs to build the tissues, it cannot do its job. It's a very simple principle. Our heart is made from food. Your brain, the neurons, the dendrites, the gray matter, all the white matter. It's made from food.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's what allows us to have thoughts and feelings. It's all made from food. And so knowing that and providing my body the things that can actually do cool stuff, it changed everything for me.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So it was, it was getting into the research and looking it up and getting really curious and passionate. So what, what is a like- and I know that everyone's different, but if there was like a vitamin that people, that they're currently lacking nutrition and blank because of the way culture is, is there anything that you found is like usually a pretty good where there's not going to be negative consequences?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Vitamin?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's a great question. And it's, it's messed up that you're asking me this because it goes against everything that I'm teaching to give a specific. I want people to be able to know for themselves and to test because everybody has a unique metabolism.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You might be deficient in something someone else isn't.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But I can give you what the data shows. The biggest problem. Let me give you those-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Those Two-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, it's not for- necessary for everyone, but the biggest problem and then here's the solution.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The two are. The number one mineral deficiency in the United States is magnesium.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? And this is why this matters. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 biochemical processes in the body. So what that means is, there's over 650 things your body can't do if you're deficient in it or-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Or can't do properly. All right. And it's the number one mineral deficiency, about 60 percent of us are chronically deficient.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: What is, what has a lot of magnesium, in general, food wise?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I'll get- I'll do that last [00:25:00] because I want to share what it does. All right. So magnesium, having all these roles, a lot of them have to do with stress management, activation of your parasympathetic and deactivation of your fight or flight nervous system. But also this is incredibly important for your cognitive performance. And one of the studies that I share, because it's a, it's also an electrolyte. And if you listen to the word electro light, so this is how the brain, the electrical energy, the brain, your brain cells being able to talk.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Interesting.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And when you're deficient in this. And so one of the studies I shared was they took individuals who already had existing cognitive decline.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Between the age of 50 and 70, got them on a magnesium regiment. And just after a couple of months when they retested them, they were now functioning as if their brains were nine years younger.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Wow.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Just within a matter of weeks. All right. A couple of months. So that's how powerful it is. All right. And I can go on and on with the benefits. Now, what are the sources? This is the thing about food as well. It gives us indications of what what it has.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Based on the way it looks. The way that it kind of functions in nature. So anything green is going to be a great source of magnesium. It's going to be very dense and magnesium. So green, leafy vegetables, you know, broccoli, nuts and seeds are a great source of magnesium, but also chocolate, funny enough-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: How do you know if you're low in magnesium?

 

You can get anything tested, but you don't have to spend- Chances are you probably are...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because it's- it's such a buffer for stress. And I don't know anybody today that's not stressed out.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I mean? So.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And so, is- and then doing a vitamin, is there that big of a difference between- in studies, between doing a vitamin versus the broccoli?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's a great question. So in my nutritional science class, I was taught, you know, just make sure you get all your essential minerals, right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Take a multivitamin. The thing that wasn't taught, again is that there are so many different types.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mmmh.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There are so many different types of magnesium. There's different types of vitamin C.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: I know, trust me, I've just showed up at the vitamin store and I don't think the person behind the counter is going to really be able to advise me. To be honest. I don't think- I think, you know they're not- sometimes maybe someone's really passionate about it, but I don't know.. and your right, like, if I was going to go to the store and go, OK, I need magnesium, then what you're looking at-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: What type do you need?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah. And then it's like, OK, well, what brand is trustworthy, right? And then what marketing- because you don't know. And...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: You're just like and I guess- you can't go wrong with magnesium? You can't like...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Well, here, let me give an example. If you have too much- we'll just say magnesium citrate, which is one version-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: OK.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: If you, and maybe you need twice as much as you're able to take, because maybe take half of the dose that you need and that type of heat in the magnesium pulls water to your bowels. So it will cause a side effect of disaster pant's or diarrhea.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: OK.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. It can cause you to flush your system out. And thus you also end up losing magnesium, too. All right. So you can't effectively get your magnesium levels up with that alone, again, so but this is what's different with food is that it has a variety of different types that we're still discovering of magnesium. Of silica. Of vitamin C and also cofactors like these. They're called bio potentiator that make your body absorb it better. And it just makes sense because we evolved eating food. We didn't evolve taking Centrum.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, I mean, that's some new shit to-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: To our genes. And your body's trying to figure out, especially if it's a synthetic version of it versus a whole food form. Right. So, yeah. So those are some sources of magnesium. But also, you know, that's just one.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: I'm going to have a magnesium party. I'm going to get a spread out in front of me. I mean, we've been having a, I've been doing jujitsu um regularly for the past 90 days. And what I love about jujitsu is it's a lifestyle. And it, when it's a lifestyle, because of the environment you enter into so. My instructors name's Cobrina and he was ah, world champ, you know incredible guy, but what's amazing about it, is he started to advise me on what to eat and how to eat it, to kind of train like how they train. And since I've made those tweaks, it's really improved. And one of those things we started drinking was ginger and turmeric, as like a hot tea.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And ah,-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And so now we have a ginger and ah turmeric party, you know what I mean. Like I have to eventize things so that I've like, like if I make it a magnesium party, I'm like, ooh, the magnesium is coming out this week, you know? And then I'll get into it, because otherwise I feel like it's like- I had to make it fun...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Or a lifestyle. And I think that's that's why everyone's just so different, but that's helpful to know because it, it makes sense. Like we all go through like this brain fog at times. Like, where we're like, I slept eight hours. I thought I ate well [00:30:00]. I'm not that stressed, let's say, like, why am I not connecting the dots? OK, I meditated. But for me and and look, I'm a relative, I work out. I eat fairly healthy. Like healthy in terms of like I don't eat fast food. I don't have- for me, I don't eat bread or like and I, I'm a big guy. I'm two hundred and seventy five pounds, but like I'm um, I feel pretty good, like, I like how I look, you know like I don't look in the mirror and be like who's that dude. Like I'm a- like if anything I have the opposite of body dysmorphia. Like even when I was a lot heavier I looked in the mirror and I was like, ah I'm thick.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: With two "c's".

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: With two "c's", exactly. So it's- but that's really helpful to know because I never realized- that makes it simple that a potential solution for brain fog or just feeling like the thoughts aren't connecting...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Would be magnesium.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is perfect, man. Thank you for saying that, because so often, this is why I wrote "Sleep Smarter" is because we could be doing all this stuff right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But a simple- this one thing could be causing all of this problem and for so many folks is a simple nutrient deficiency, is what- even with our sleep, magnesium has a role in our sleep quality as well and I shared a study in the book on that. And I called him like this category of good sleep nutrients so you can have the perfect mattress, you can have the posturepedic, orthopaedic.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Massages your buns, all of it. The perfect pillow, blackout curtains and still not feel recovered if you're deficient in the nutrients that actually build the hormones that enable you to sleep.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That enable you to go through your sleep cycles.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So one is magnesium and what was the other? You said there's two...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, the other big one, man, it's such a big, big issue is omega-3 fatty acids. It is a massive- but the reason now, let me, let me be clear. So...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And why the hell does it got- 

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Well, listen to this.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: What don't they call it like, chowder or like- and I find in this- and I'm newly introduced into like the coaching world with like nutrition and stuff, some of this stuff, I'm like, what are you all talking about? Like, people are like, don't eat hummus, don't eat kale, don't do that. And I'm like, like you just start to get really confused when you're not in it. Like, if you're in it, you're probably like, you know it. But on the outside you're like the hell, like...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We're going to make it even more simple though.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yes, but Omega-3 fatty acid-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Even with magnesium, I'm steering us away from getting into complications about supplements...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And just like eat some green stuff...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Eat some chocolate.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yes, we love magnesium. We live for magnesium.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So with- when you think about these names in these categories, these are nerds. So it's like, why is this the Omega?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. What's the alpha? You know, and so we're just, we were gonna...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Why is it not, why isn't it gender neutral? (LAUGHING) Just kidding.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: (LAUGHING) We're gonna... 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Start getting with the times. Anyways, keep going.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So we're going to we're going to just keep this overarching name, we're going to keep it there, and then we're going to get into how do we do it? So the reason that I'm saying- so number one, this is a big, big nutrient deficiency because of the way we eat today.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: What we did, we were able to look at biopsies from folks in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds. Like so, like seeing what's in their fat tissue.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Dead people.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: No, no, not- I'm talking about back in the day-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Ok, back in the day they were like-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The data with living. Not old cadavers, no.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Got it. OK.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So like doing a biopsy and seeing what the body fat content is of a person in the early part of the nineteen hundreds. What they discover was that their body fat content itself was about just two percent PUFAS. All right. And this is easy to remember PUFA.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: uh huh.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So polyunsaturated fatty acids. Today when we biopsy, the majority of folks on average have about 30 percent. Their fat is made of 30 percent polyunsaturated fatty acids. These PUFAS...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Even the name PUFA, sounds like it's puffy, but this is from these highly processed seed oils that we thought were healthy, that my grandfather, when his doctor was trying to help prevent him to have a heart attack, have told him, eat this shit...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Which is, quote, vegetable oil. Which is not-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's not broccoli oil. It's not made from kale. These are highly refined seed oils. And one of the studies that I cite in the book, ah from a journal, inhalation and toxicity that really focuses on that found that just smelling, just inhaling these highly refined seed oils like vegetable oil, canola oil can damage your fucking DNA.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Just smelling it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Now, let alone us eating this stuff. Again, every meal it's in most processed foods. It's using these oils. Corn oil. The list goes on and also-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So canola oil comes from what?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's a, it's a rape seed. I mean, even the name sounds bad, but anyways, like so canola oil, it's- most of it is genetically modified and then it has to go through such a process of, of, of heating and deodorizing. And they have to add all these chemicals to make it palatable because it would taste and smell terrible. Right, so it's all of these chemical tricks to make it- it's [00:35:00] just, but it's very cheap.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And marketers use that shit. Let's call it vegetable oil. And let's say that this is the best oil. And they did that shit.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Whereas we didn't we literally did not evolve.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right and all the sudden it's just everywhere.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's changed our body fat content. Now we're not even the same ingredients of a human that we were 100 years ago. All right. But with the omega-3. So we need omega-3s because what we've seen is our ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s- omega-3s are like anti-inflammatory. Right. Their, pro cognitive performance.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Ok.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Their pro kind of metabolic health.

 

Yeah.

 

Omega-6s are also important. We need them, but they're more- I'm sorry, omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. Omega-6s are pro inflammatory.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Ok.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But we need them to like, help our cells repair. Ah, for our immune responses. It's, it's still important, but our ratio should be about three to one omega-6 to omega-3. Three to one.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Ok.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The average person today, twenty to one. Thirty to one. So now we have such a pro inflammatory content of these kind of structural fats and in our bodies. And it's creating big problems with our metabolism and also our cognitive function as well. So the reason I'm saying that Omega-3s are so important is we have to fix this ratio. We have to fix the ingredients that we're made out of. The Omega-3s, have an express pathway of getting it to the brain because they, they create our ourselves actual structure. They're called structural fats. So they're not storage fats. They're not brown fat that can burn fat. They're structural fats. And Omega-3s enable, similar to magnesium is something called transduction. So your brain cells can talk to each other. Which is kind of important.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: When you talked earlier about why do people hurt people? Why do people engage in violence? The brain is not working. It's not talking to each other and communicating to understand, like your executive function or your brain. If I do this action, this is going to be the result, right? It's, it's not that is impossible when you're not well, it's just harder.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: OK.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so it's one of the biggest deficiencies if we just look at the ratio of what is in our diet now.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So I really implore people to get there. But it's not just any omega-3s. Again, there's multiple types. There's DHA, EPA, ALA. What you need is DHA specifically and EPA. And I'm just going to tell you where to get it. The journal Neurology found that folks who eat one seafood meal per week do, in fact perform significantly better on cognitive skills test than people who have less than one a week. Right. Fatty fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines. But also the most dense source really is fish eggs. All right. So caviar, salmon, roe. Um, but again, you don't have to have- if caviar isn't your thing, you don't have to have it, but I just want you to know the data. Most of the studies on omega-3s is done on fish oil. We know it's very, very effective. But if what if you're vegan or vegetarian, then we've got krill oil and we also have algae oil. Regardless of which one you get, you need to get yourself a dense source of DHA.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, I remember, I remember I went with um, Jennifer Lopez to Ryan Seacrest's birthday party as her like date, like friend in Napa, and I remember there was so much caviar, but I, I just couldn't get into it. And everyone just kept raving about the caviar and how amazing the caviar was.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I think a good percentage of them were lying.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Really?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. You know, to fit in.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Like I-

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is delicious.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, like I just, I was like, oh. I'm not that exquisite 'cause I'm not getting into it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: It,

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Exquisite.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Everyone was. I'm sure it was very expensive. It was like his 40th birthday party, right?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh it is. It's very expensive.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: It is. Especially that level. It was probably the most expensive caviar.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: But I guess it's an acquired taste.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, I mean, some people absolutely love it and a lot of folks don't enjoy it, but the part of the reason it's so expensive is it's very nutritious and it's actually tied to things like, you know, libido. It's tied to improved cognitive health, all that stuff so.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, so so basically seafood once a week, but then, you know, what's interesting is I found, like, I know some people who were told, like eat fish and then they got mercury poisoning and like, too much tuna, I guess. So there's, like certain fish that are not the healthiest to eat. Right?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's a lot of nuance with with many of these things, but it really comes back to us humans fucking things up and messing up the environment, right? Because in a natural human setting, like my wife is from Kenya, and then there's there's different tribes and there's like a tribe who, like they, they a big part of their diet is predominantly seafood.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Uh huh.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And they've just developed a genetic connection.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Got it. Yeah, yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I mean?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: To be able metabolize, to utilize. Just be robust and healthy.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right, because you're saying mercury comes from what's going on in the world than the Earth, and that wouldn't be a natural uh, consequence of eating [INAUDIBLE]

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Things are beginning to bioaccumulate-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Into, you know, animals, and we're [00:40:00] an animal that eats other animals, you know, often, and so they bioaccumulate in us. And even if you're not eating animals and you're eating, you know, plants-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That are sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides. These things bioaccumulate in our tissues and they can create a lot of damage. Um, one of the biggest issues and this is what I talk about in "Eat Smarter" is this term- it's a complicated term, but is epic caloric control. And this just means above caloric control because in school I was taught you can manage a body weight if you manage calories, right? Calories in, calories out. But today we know there's seven clinically proven things that control what calories do in your body. Regardless of your calorie deficit, somebody can be on the exact same diet as you, they're the same height and same weight, same exercise, same everything, but you can end up burning a hundred thousand calories more per year than them because of the factors that control calories do on our bodies. One of those is your brain itself. Your brain is like the internal thermostat, right? Your hypothalamus specifically. And hypothalamic inflammation is one of the biggest- a couple hundred million people in America have this issue, but they don't know it because your brain does have pain receptors. It can't tell you that it's hurting.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: You know, you're just making me think of something, um as you're talking and because you didn't go the route of becoming a doctor and you know, a licensed professional, right? Which I didn't either. So I was a counselor. And then I decided I didn't want to go to school to become a licensed therapist. And I own a treatment center for the past 15 years. And, but everyone I've hired from academia has fucking failed so bad working for us. Like they don't have the street. They don't have the practical sense of what's going on around the world. They're just looking at, you know, they're not in the trenches, so to speak, right? It's more of a teacher academic approach. And I think that's why there's been such a high interest in demand for your book and for, for what you're talking about and why it's growing so much is because we don't really get to learn the stuff in school.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Especially not in this way.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: No.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, like um, so with that, with the brain, your brain can literally tell your gut, it's connected, it's the vagus nerve. It can tell your gut- just say you eat a meal, it can tell your gut to increase the absorption of calories or reduce the absorption of calories from that, from that food.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Mm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like that. And one of the biggest dis-regulators of that absorption process is inflammation. In your gut and or in your brain. And so, one of the things that can heal this issue that a lot- you know, these- some diets accidently do this and make their metabolism work better, but I'm being very specific. One of the things found, and this was from researchers at Auburn University, found that extra virgin olive oil, oleocanthal rich, antioxidant rich, extra virgin olive oil has been found to directly reduce brain inflammation and help with metabolism and also was found to repair the blood brain barrier. So that protective mechanism that keeps the wrong shit out of your brain, that causes inflammation. This isn't even a avocation for you should have olive oil. It's just the data exists.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you should know, you know. So what the researchers found was two to three tablespoons a day was found to have this protective and healing effect on reducing inflammation in the brain. So, then there's nuance with that. You don't want olive oil with having something just great for your brain along with something that hurts your brain like pesticides. So you want to make sure it's a higher quality. You notice when you go to buy olive oil, 90 percent of it's bottled in dark glass bottles.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because it's photosensitive. And (STAMMER) we.ve Known this for centuries. When you put it in plastic, when you put it in clear bottles, it's already oxidizing and becoming rancid.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. And also, when you cook it, now you can cook with it, you know, medium heat, whatever, but you're going to denature and lose a lot of the benefits. And so a lot of folks who include olive oil in their diet, historically, they use it for salads. They use it as a finisher. So your dish is plated, then you drizzle some, put it- they put it on some, you know, some sour dough, bread, whatever. Um, you can cook with it. And that's OK. But ideally, you want to get it in, in a way that it's not denatured.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: (STAMMER) And you may or may not answer this if I ask you this, but I'm just curious, your opinion. Is- so there's like, you know in mental health, for example, that I work in, primarily, there's um, huge body positivity that, that, you know, people talk about and does- do you believe that- and then there's like cover of Cosmo, they'll put like, you know, this is the new beauty and what have you. My question is, does [00:45:00] that aesthetic actually mean healthy? And that, like what, I know it's defined for each individual, but, and I know culture has made healthy seem like you're ripped.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: But at what point is your definition that something is healthy or not healthy. In just a pure medical, nutritional...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, that's such a great question. Such a great question. The answer is, it's obvious, you know, no two people should be built the same or that they can't be built the same. We're all very different. And there's an optimal of what that looks like. You know, through our evolution, we would have, you know, a certain density of muscle tissue, but also certain density of fat, depending on what time of year it is. It wasn't something that was so culturally supposed to be this way, or supposed to be that way. These are all really newer things in human evolution.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And to really answer that question, you know, you mentioned earlier, even seeing yourself like I'm thick, you know, it's good.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That really, these things really boil down to it doesn't matter what your weight is, your body composition is. Just are you healthy? That's the most important thing. I don't give a shit. I don't care if you're, you know-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: 50 pounds overweight. Who said that? That's overweight anyways, because we're using these metric- When I say there's 200 million Americans who are overweight or obese, when I'm saying that, I'm saying that in my mind as well, that like, that's still with the caveat, however, the majority being clinically obese, that measurement, you know, with BMI...

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's still like, because me growing up in the environment that I'm from, you know, somebody being a running back. Right. They might be 5'10 and 220 pounds.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But then they'd be considered overweight if we are using-

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Right, a certain measure. So it's really, it's really whatever uh mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally works for each person and not telling other people that being obese is healthy and also not telling people that having a six pack is healthy. It's figuring out for yourself what is healthy.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's right, that's right. And many of these things are side effects, you know, like a six pack is a side effect of certain things. And it doesn't necessarily mean I've done, you know, just over the years all the experimentation. I've been in this field for almost 20 years. And so there was a time I was 4.6 percent body fat. I might walk around like nine percent just doing what I normally do, but just the different stuff I was- I'd never felt worse, you know.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like my, my sleep was shitty. I um, my, my energy was lower. Like it just wasn't healthy.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. But I've just like trying to get to that place so I could say that I did the thing.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: And that's- to that point, and I'm glad it doesn't show up on my Instagram feed that much, but I must of been liking fitness stuff before. So I just kept seeing, like, all my search. And when I opened up Instagram, I would show all these people that were so ripped. And, you know, if you think about it, you're like, OK, well, and I get it. It's discipline and I'm going to be ripped. But then you really look at it in your like, for what really? If you're being honest, like, is it somehow a belief that you will be happier? Because clearly, if you're restricting yourself that much- (STAMMER) like people I know have done bodybuilding...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: The day of the show. They're miserable.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: 

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Fighters who cut weight. They're miserable for a few days before.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: No wonder they want to fight.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: Yeah, no wonder they want to fight, right?

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: So, well listen. We're all out of time, but I appreciate you coming on. You've also agreed to do our empowerment group, which I'm excited for. Which anyone who wants to join the empowerment group just go to CoachMikeBayer.com. You enter your email. We send you an email each week. We're going to be blessed to have Shawn Stevenson joining us. Also, his new book, "Eat Smarter", which it was such a hit that it sold out. Very hard to get. I mean, this is- none of you probably play "Magic The Gathering", but there's a card called the Black Lotus. It's now worth like three thousand dollars. Essentially, this book is like the Black Lotus, so you need to get it while you can and order it. You can get at Target too. Target has a few more of those books. Where my book, "One Decision" is also, you know, we're kind of- our books are brothers on that shelf. They're hanging out together and um, doing the dance. One will get your mind right. The other gets your food and, and mindset right. So I appreciate you coming on, Shawn.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: All right, brother. So make sure you click to subscribe and I'll talk to you guys very soon. Keep it magical.

 

COACH MIKE BAYER: The "Always Evolving With Coach Mike Bayer" podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as a replacement or a substitution for any professional, medical, financial, legal or [00:50:00] other advice, diagnosis or treatment. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine or any other professional service. The use of any information provided during this podcast is at the listeners own risk. For medical or other advice appropriate to your specific situation, please consult a physician or other trained professionals.

 

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