414: I Did Everything "Right" With My Diet and Still Hit A Wall

Jarrod 0:00

But you can't stop there, 'cause you can't live a life on just removed things from your diet. You have to now start adding what I call my fire extinguishers. So the foods that help to get rid of the inflammation. When I'm-- And with that, I'm talking about inflammation specifically. 'Cause we have so many foods that can add to it. Well, that's great. Remove those, then we add the fire extinguishers. But there's so much more to it than that. All the phytonutrients and the health benefits, things that we will actually touch on today.

Anita 1:33

if you haven't heard last week's episode, episode 413, go back and listen to that now. In that episode, we talk about five things that could be hindering your health that you're eating right now because you think they're healthy, And when Jarrod and I were discussing that episode, it made us think of another thing we wanted to talk to you about. Because we spent a lot of our lives well, when we were learning how to get healthy and really attempting to the best of our ability to do what we were told was healthy, We would focus a lot on what we were removing, And that is really a great place to start. So last week, we shared five things that you want to remove from your life, but you know, I feel like I kinda spent that time grading my life on a scorecard. So what I mean by that is Looking at things that I was getting out of my life, oh, well I don't eat any seed oils, check, and I don't eat any gluten. I have no dyes coming into my life, no white sugar. And then it's not just the no here, it's, okay, then I started adding some things I was doing. I'm eating organic, grass-fed, free-range, cage-free. Going back to the no, maybe I would say things like no nitrate-added meat, nothing highly processed. so I had this mental checklist going on of the things that I wasn't doing that I wanted to get out of my life, and then some things that I was doing already, like getting organic, getting grass-fed, which was better than not choosing those things, but still not the best for optimal health, which is why I ended up in a bad place health-wise. We hit 40, and I hit a wall with my health. If you haven't heard this story, you can come into our group Peak Performance Network at poweronplants.com/ppn, that stands for Peak Performance Network, and you can search when you're on the computer on that community site. At the very bottom, we've given you this invaluable tool. It is going to make your life so much better and help you and your family become healthy in so many ways because in the lower right-hand corner, you're going to find a magnifying glass that's a rose type color, and when you click on that, it is going to allow you to search every single one of these 400 plus podcast episodes and counting. It gives you a database that it searches every word we've ever said. So you can go in there and search where I've talked about I was struggling. You could look up struggling or cage-free, where I talk about how I ate cage-free, I ate organic Or if there's something specific you're looking for Like tofu. You wanna learn more about tofu, type in tofu. It will tell you not just the titles, but everywhere we have ever mentioned the word tofu, and you can click the one you're interested in and it will literally give you a play button that takes you to the exact place in that specific episode that says tofu. We put a lot of work into setting this up for you. I hope you understand what an incredible resource you have at your fingertips. this reason alone would be worth getting into PPN for you, because it is going to change your life. But not only that, when you get there, you're gonna meet our amazing community manager, Robin, who is an incredible resource and encourager. On top of that, all of our awesome members who are already there before you, who have great ideas, who are going to support you and lift you up And a lot of times you're the only person in your home who's trying to learn how to eat more whole plant foods

Jarrod 5:10

Sadly, yes. I mean, sometimes people have to walk this alone in the beginning in their family. Maybe they're a pioneer and they c- get other people interested because they see the results, they taste the food, and then they come alongside with you. But it can be a lonely walk in the very beginning, and that is why we created this resource, Peak Performance Network.

Anita 5:28

so you can search every single episode at poweronplants.com/ppn when you join us inside Peak Performance Network. Now, onto this scorecard. So you have this scorecard you're grading yourself on. Things like my family doesn't eat seed oils, no gluten, no dyes, no white sugar, no nitrite added meat, no skin on my chicken. All these things that we think, oh, it's so great we're not doing these things. but we wanna take this episode to focus on what now needs to come in its place, and this is a biblical principle. When something is removed from your life that's harmful, you wanna put something back in its place that is amazing for you, that you enjoy, and we show you all about how to do this inside Accelerator You can find out more At poweronplants.com/accelerator. The Accelerator Experience only opens a couple of times a year, so you want to get on the wait list to get notified and you can apply, because the spots can fill up quickly. We walk you inside Accelerator through our five-part framework that we've walked hundreds of clients through and gotten them results And that starts here. Every one of them started here. Right where you are. So you are in the perfect place. The next step is to get into Peak Performance Network and then to keep an eye out for Accelerator when it opens. So with this scorecard that we give ourself, we feel good about ourself. We feel like we're doing something great when we're not doing these other things. But the question that we wanna address here is what are we putting in the place of those things that were harmful for us? there's a process you have to go through to realize what actually is harmful because there are lies we have to undo. There are things we believe that were harmful that just aren't harmful and things that we thought are healthy that

Jarrod 7:15

aren't.

Anita 7:16

aren't. S- five of which we went through in the last episode.

Jarrod 7:18

mean, it's important to consider what are the things that are actively adding fuel to the fire, and you need to remove that. But you can't stop there, 'cause you can't live a life on just removed things from your diet. You have to now start adding what I call my fire extinguishers. So the foods that help to get rid of the inflammation. When I'm-- And with that, I'm talking about inflammation specifically. 'Cause we have so many foods that can add to it. Well, that's great. Remove those, then we add the fire extinguishers. But there's so much more to it than that. All the phytonutrients and the health benefits, things that we will actually touch on today.

Anita 7:53

Yes, and so it's not just about what you're removing from your life, which sounds a whole lot like deprivation or dieting. Don't you think that's what happens a lot of times when

Jarrod 8:01

Oh, absolutely

Anita 8:03

I lived with my mom for years, and I saw many people go through it. We have clients who've gone through it before. You get stuck in this cycle of this is the only way I know how to escape my health problems, dieting or restricting myself or feeling deprived in some way, because I can't have the things I really wanna eat, and I have to eat these things.

Jarrod 8:22

What do you enjoy eating? You can't eat that anymore. Instead, you gotta eat our packaged cardboard. Cardboard,

Anita 8:27

Isn't that awful? Our packaged cardboard, and that's really true. Or zero point cabbage soup for the rest of your life.

Jarrod 8:34

I'd take zero-point cabbage soup over cardboard.

Anita 8:36

would, too, 100 times over. But it has to taste just as good or better than your old favorites, or you're not gonna stick with it. That's the reality of the situation, and it has to be simple and quick to work with your busy schedule because you have places to go, people to see, and things to do. And so the question is, what do we now get into the place of those foods that were harming us? Well, first of all, of course you wanna get whole plant foods. It's fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes. This is the powerhouse of foods that not only are known to prevent inflammation and disease, but actually reverse these things that you've been told, "Oh, hey, you're gonna have that forever." Can I tell you how many diagnoses and symptoms I was told I would have forever that are gone? How many times that's happened for our clients with things like rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure,

Jarrod 9:26

high cholesterol- Irritable bowel, reflux, severe headaches

Anita 9:30

High cholesterol. Skin issues, joint pain, fibromyalgia

Jarrod 9:35

Asthma, acne

Anita 9:37

Chronic exhaustion and fatigue. You have to have energy and feel good to live your God-given purpose, and that only happens when you bring in and replace those things that were sabotaging your health. So first we have to recognize what those things are. We gave you five of those on the last episode, the things that need to go. There's so many more, but the thing is, if you just get stuck with what needs to come out, now you're left with an empty place, and you feel deprived, and you feel defeated, and you feel like, well, life's not even worth living at this point. I've

Jarrod 10:10

Or I can't do this, so I might as well just eat what I love because I know nothing else. So

Anita 10:15

well just eat what I love because I know nothing. So what do you put in its place? Whole plant foods. Well, how do you do that? You find out the way to make them taste good, be quick And that you love just as much or even better than your old favorites. But why are these whole plant foods so important? It is the phytonutrients that are in there. First of all, it's the things that aren't in there. You don't have the cholesterol in there. You don't have parasites in there. but what you do have is a lot of phytonutrients, and this is so amazing because we used to say there are about 40,000 nutrients that scientists have discovered in whole plant foods that they really don't know what they do yet, but I'm sure they're good for you. Oh, no, no, no. This is the reality of the situation. There are 100,000 total phytochemicals. These are plant chemicals. That's what phytochemical means. There are 100,000 of those that scientists have chemically identified. There are 4,000 compounds that have been characterized, meaning researchers know their chemical structure and where they're found in the plant, but they do not yet know how they affect health or affect the body. And then there are 150 compounds, that is the number of phytochemicals that scientists have actually studied in depth in any way. But there are over 1.2 million compounds in whole plant foods that they have discovered through new analysis techniques that remain entirely unknown as to their structure, function, or their purpose

Jarrod 11:44

That is definitely more than 40,000. But even 40,000 is a huge number. But this tells you that there's even more. We don't know what they do. Now, probably not all of them directly impact our bodies, but I'm sure a lot of them do. And I think they would be responsible for the anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic properties that we see in these foods.

Anita 12:09

So this info that we just shared with you came from Jeffrey Blumberg. He's a PhD, professor emeritus at Tufts Friedman School, and a former director of the Antioxidants Research Lab at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. All that to say, he studied these things in depth. His entire career was spent studying antioxidants, phytonutrients, supplements, different things like that. And he came to the conclusion that all these things are in whole plant foods, and he doesn't believe that these one-off nutrients are such a great idea, because many times we're getting too much, especially if you're taking ones that are like a multivitamin just to cover a lot of things. you might be getting too much of one thing and could actually cause damage. So we wanna be really careful with taking nutrient supplements, man-made ones. and especially when you don't even know if you have a problem with that thing. You're just trying to cover all your bases. you know what's the better way to get those phytonutrients?

Jarrod 13:06

And whole plant

Anita 13:07

plant foods.

Jarrod 13:08

Yes. And we think if a little g- is good, more must be better, and that's not always the case. Even with something like vitamins, because it's something that we need, we just assume, "Well, then I must need more of this if I'm feeling down or lacking energy." Well, that may not be the issue. A lack of vitamin C may not be what's causing your fatigue. Maybe you're not eating the right kind of foods. Maybe you're inflamed. Maybe there's another issue, so we, we need to be wiser about these things.

Anita 13:34

with that stuff. So we're eating more of these whole plant foods. Now we're getting 1.2 million plus things. We don't even know what all these do, these amazing foods God gave us to eat in His original design.

Jarrod 13:44

but you know who does know? Well, first, the Father knows, but then our body knows.

Anita 13:48

that's good, 'cause I was thi- expecting you to say God, and that just is such a good point. Our body knows. It knows how to take these things and use them that God has put in there. We don't have to have all the answers. We just need to get more of these foods into our life in a way we actually enjoy, that works with our schedule. Now,

Jarrod 14:04

I've studied a lot of these things, and I understand how some of the mechanisms work, but you don't have to understand the how or why they work. You just have to eat the foods that have them, and your body will do what God designed it to do, and it will heal. It will optimize your health. So from that 1.2 million, again, w- maybe we haven't characterized them. Maybe we don't know exactly what they do yet, but it doesn't mean that they're not active as long as we're faithful to get them into our lives

Anita 14:35

So what are some of the things we do know that are in whole plant foods? One thing, obviously we talk about it a lot, this is something that you can search inside PPN, fiber. Fiber matters more than you realize. It is actually the literal food your good gut bacteria eat. It is what they require to thrive, to live and thrive. When it's not there, they die off. They're not there And their job is crucial.

Jarrod 15:02

And with fiber, there's not just one type. You wanna get a wide variety of plants because they're different fibers and different compositions that help to feed a much wider variety of gut bacteria. Really, we, if healthy, should be colonized with about 5,000 different microorganisms, and you can sustain that by getting a wide variety. Now, what do these gut bacteria do? Well, they're actually friendly. They create things that we need, vitamin K, serotonin, dopamine, which are used as neurotransmitters in the brain. They help to fight off the pathogenic bacteria, so that way our immune system doesn't have to do that. They release compounds like butyrate, which is a short-chain fatty acid it suppresses inflammation. It does it in the gut, so that way you get rid of inflammation along the gut lining, but it gets absorbed into the bloodstream and helps to lower inflammation throughout the entire body, even our brain. But in our gut, if we suppress the inflammation, then we can maintain a healthy lining, which there is a one-cell-thick lining that covers the surface in our intestines that helps to block things from being absorbed inappropriately, meaning they have to be digested to small enough, building blocks to then be absorbed So on the flip side, when our gut's inflamed and that lining is damaged, the holes are bigger and much larger particles. Now, those particles may not be harmful in and of themselves, but they're much larger than what should be absorbed, and we can have an immune response, an allergic response to that. So it'd be kind of like if you were using a strainer to strain,

Anita 16:40

to strain proteins,

Jarrod 16:41

I don't know, we use it for beans, like when we're cleaning beans or rice or something. What if you had holes in that strainer and now your rice starts pouring through? Well, we can have that. Well, it's not good, but within our gut, when we have incompletely digested molecules that come through that are bigger than they should be, that can create an inflammatory response.

Anita 17:00

immune response. Your body says foreign invader.

Jarrod 17:02

immune response, yes. So sometimes when we have food allergies, that may be linked to this leaky gut that's allowing these larger particles to come through. They're not completely digested, and then our body says, "Wait a minute. We don't recognize you. You're not supposed to be here," and then it mounts an immune response to it.

Anita 17:21

a simple way to help prevent leaky gut is eating more fiber, and fiber is only found where? Whole plant foods. And then we have sulforaphane. Now, that is something found in cruciferous, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage. these turn on your body's own cleanup crew. and it only forms when you chop or chew a plant. So you want to eat more We know these are known cancer fighters.

Jarrod 17:47

They actually have multiple things that they do. They're known cancer fighters, but it's also known to kill the bacteria Helicobacter pylori, or we say H. pylori for short. Well, that is known to the cause of 75% of the ulcers that we have in our stomachs. Which can then lead to potentially stomach cancer, because once you have a breakdown of that protective lining in your stomach, the stomach wall is subjected to the high acid environment. You get damage that happens that can then cause cancers. So Helicobacter pylori has been shown in studies to be killed by sulforaphane. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing

Anita 18:29

So then you have phytonutrients like dietary nitrates. We've touched on this before. You know, sometimes they're made out to be the devil, but what we know is your body, when you're eating whole plant foods, converts it into nitric oxide, a gas that relaxes the muscle wall of your arteries so that you have wider vessels, now you have lower blood pressure, and you have a healthier body overall. So things that contain nitrates are foods like beets, arugula, and spinach. Getting more of those is super important for maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system and blood pressure. And then there's the compound beta-glucan. It's a soluble fiber. It turns into a gel in your gut, trapping bile acids and carries them out.

Jarrod 19:10

Now, why is that significant? Because bile acids are made from cholesterol. So any of the cholesterol that gets dumped into your digestive tract, some of it gets trapped, and then we eliminate it.

Anita 19:21

excrete it. And then if you eat berries, cherries, and red cabbage, you're getting anthocyanins, the pigments that make purple and red foods. I cannot tell you how important these colors are. If you're not eating purple and red veggies and fruits, get them now. These improve how the lining of your blood vessels work, including the small vessels that feed your brain. Then there are flavanols. You find those in cocoa, tea, apples, and grapes. These also target the lining of the blood vessels.

Jarrod 19:49

Cocoa's one of my favorite ways to get, get those. Yeah.

Anita 19:53

Nobody's gonna argue with chocolate, Jarrod. Nobody. Well, maybe, maybe there's one person out there. If you're the person that argues with chocolate, let us know.

Jarrod 20:01

Maybe there's one grumpy individual that doesn't wanna be happy.

Anita 20:05

Well, we might even give you a little bonus if you have it. I think that the joy... I'm pretty sure cocoa is the joy compound. It must have the joy compound

Jarrod 20:10

it. makes us happy.

Anita 20:12

me super happy. And then there are things like lutein and zeaxanthin. These two compounds are found in things like kale and spinach and collards. They physically deposit in the macula in the back of your eye. They filter blue light. They are in your eye doctor's macular degeneration formula for a reason, but guess what's better? If you get it fresh in whole plant foods. Then you have things like isoflavones These work to help fight breast cancer. You have curcumin, which is found in turmeric, which helps to fight inflammation. We could go on and on. Again, there's 1.2 plus million of these in our foods And when you eat a wide variety of whole plant foods, you will be well on your way to feeling your best so that you can fully live your God-given purpose, the one that God put you here to live. And you know what I love about you? That you value your health. We don't have to say, "Hey, you need to be healthy." You get that. You value your health. You're looking for the way to fix it. The way that you prevent disease and reverse the problems that you're already struggling with, is learn the way to get more whole plant foods. How do you do that? You find somebody who's already learned how to do that in the way that is actually enjoyable, that works with your busy schedule, that you're not gonna have to go through 200,000 recipes that disgust you and that you hate, and that can tell you how to make things without even needing a recipe, can show you food formulas, can show you what exact ingredients do you substitute for this ingredient that you like to use in your food now, and what brands do you like best, and where do you find those, and What do you make when you wanna go to somebody's house? And you don't wanna miss out on all the fun, or you wanna have somebody over to your house as a guest, and you want them to actually enjoy the food. These are all the types of things we show you how to do in the Accelerator Experience. It is where you lay this solid foundation of step one, two, three, four, five, boom, now I know what to do, and I'm off to the races, and I'm getting results. I actually feel better. I'm not just adding more years to my life, but i'm also adding more life to my years. You're already doing a lot. You're already accomplishing a lot for the kingdom, but we are about kingdom expansion to the maximum, And so we help you to fine-tune your health, to get you to the place where you are operating at maximum capacity, and you're feeling great, and you're able to help those people who are out there waiting for you to be able to show up and when that happens, imagine what's possible in the kingdom. Imagine what's possible

Jarrod 22:42

and you can make these changes in days, not decades.

Anita 22:46

Because we've gone the path before.

Jarrod 22:48

it, yes. And there was a period of time where we would find a little bit of information, make a change, get a slight result, but now with what we have, results happen so much faster. You can literally take our decades and turn it into your days

Anita 23:03

I want you to think back through this episode and think of one thing that you learned and start implementing it today because this is where everything starts to change for you. Don't get overwhelmed by a lot of new information. Just pick out the one thing that you wanna start doing today, and maybe you're thinking, "You know what, Anita? I just need some food that tastes incredible. If you could just make this really simple for me to get started. Where should I start?" Go to powerandplants.com/cookbook right now. That's powerandplants.com/cookbook. Get the bundle that has both cookbooks in it. It's going to change your life, and then get into Peak Performance Network at powerandplants.com/ppn, and as you're cooking through, you're going to learn so much in there. It's not gonna take a lot of time. You can peek in for a couple of minutes a day or a few times a week and start learning and implementing. You're not gonna believe how much faster you're feeling better. And then when you're ready and you have those things that you started and you're getting results and you say, "You know what? I need the steps to make this quick. I don't wanna have to figure this all out I need step one, two, three, four, five," Apply for Accelerator to see if you're a good fit at powerandplants.com/accelerator. We have loved spending time with you again today. As always, know that you're loved. We are praying for you, and we can't wait to see you soon