>> dr. mark has spent his life exploring andliving his passion; health, wellness and performance. a three-sport scholar athlete in high school,mark attended harvard university where he continued his pursuit of academics and athletics.after receiving his undergraduate degree in psychology from harvard, mark went on to studyat the university of north carolina, greensboro where he graduated with a masters sciencedegree in exercise and sports science. dr. mark then attended naturopathic medical schoolat bastyr university. his experiences sharpened his insight into health and wellness bothin theory and in practice. dr. mark began to question the factors that most influencehow people live often in a misguided manner
in which people try to improve their health.he came to two significant conclusions; too much of what we are told changes too oftenand our scope of health must be magnified. in 2004 dr. mark founded onvo, a health andwellness company offering program solutions, personalized coaching and consulting services.as a personal client i'm very excited to welcome dr. mark adams to google.>> adams: great. thank you very much. thank you. and at least from the west coast timethanks for joining me on your lunch hour. and hi to everybody. you're over my right-handshoulder so if i look at you that's where i'm looking. i thought we start by going aroundthe room and sharing what everybody had for lunch. no. james, you said everybody willbe scared about that, right? i want to thank
you for having me out here today. and i'vereally been looking forward to it. i think google does an outstanding job of supportingyour health and wellbeing and not a lot of companies do that, so i think that a lot ofaccolades go to google. now before i start anybody here and there not like food? youguys tell me if they raise their hand. anybody not like food? okay. i just want to checkbecause i don't--i don't want--i might have to ask you to leave the room if that was thecase because i love food, i love to talk about food and when you think about it, we're goingto get in to this a little bit just kind of scroll on through some pictures here. whenwe talk about food, a lot of things come to mind but i always like to think about foodthat really just elicits kind of a yum response.
here, we like those don't we? and those, whatcomes from those, right? right? how about that? you think we can eat that today fordesert? guess what that is? it's strawberry shortcake. it's almost strawberry season that'swhy i put it in there. but anyway what--as i said, i like to talk about food three basicmain reasons: number one, no matter who you are, where you live, who you voted for, whatyour job responsibility is food matters to every single person in this world, in fact,it's one of the greatest common universal denominators we all have, okay? number two,it's a huge y in the road or really a fork in the road to play on word that really cantake you one direction or another, okay? in the positive way you go this way it can beone of your greatest sources of health, joy
and nourishment in your life. you go the otherway, go down the other path sometimes with good intention or sometimes just out of ignoranceor just you don't care, you go down the other path, well, food can become one of your greatestsources of disease, dysfunction, dissatisfaction, really, your life. so it really matters quitea bit. and i love wanting and having people experience food in much more the joyful, positiveway where you get what we all kind of want anyway but we sometimes don't know how toget there. and then lastly, which is i think is really kind of interesting, okay, is thatfood is the mirror of us and we're mirror of our food. now what does that mean? yes,we build our bodies out of food but i find over the last several years working with folksfrom all across different walks of life that
how we deal with food is a mirror image, infact, if we deal with food in a very positive way, a very calm way, a very joyful way thatreally translate and has parallels to the rest of your life, but if we have a bad relationshipwith food, a negative relationship with food, with a rigid relationship with food or we'rescared of food, we feel guilty, well guess what, that shows up in other aspects of yourlife. so before we get going, i always like to think about not making any assumptionsand say, "hey, is there a problem?" okay. and if there is a problem, what is the problemand then how do we go about solving it? well, i'm a big fan that you can always judge whatyou're doing, no matter how good it sounds, how smart it seems, what effective, what resultare you getting? that, at the end of the day,
is the bottom line singular measure that wewant to know, "am i getting what i want?" okay. and if we look at this, if you thinkabout what we look, what we want versus what we got, how many of you want to look better,you want to feel better, you want to perform better, anybody? all right, just one, two,three? okay. good a few more people, right? well is that where we're at? now i'm assumingyou're today because either you're just--you're--you like to soak up knowledge and informationand you're a sponge and/or some combination that maybe you're not 100% satisfied witheverything you are personally doing or think you're doing in your life right now. we havewhat i call this heaviness epidemic in our country, now both literally and figuratively.well, literally, right? okay. two-thirds of
americans are overweight, okay, and that numberis growing. that little map right there, you don't need to really know much about it exceptthe darker and the more red it gets and the orange gets, the more the obesity and overweightis just growing. and these maps are i think if i'm mistaken--not mistaken are only abouta 25-year gap, okay? no surprise. we know this. but, really, when you look around here,most folks here at google don't deal with that. but also we translate it to how youfeel [indistinct]. you think about your chronic health, your chronic illness. seven out often americans die from a chronic illness. two out of three healthcare dollars get spenton chronic illness, okay? but here's what the--we translate to a little bit, i thinkmore personal and really more about who we
are. it's beyond the heaviest in our waistline,but it's really the heaviness in our life. i love to watch people. okay. it doesn't takemuch to entertain me. i could be in an airport, i could be on a park bench and you just lookat people, maybe you'll look at people walking around the hallways here. people walk aroundlike with a sense of heaviness, right? they don't feel great. they have maybe lower energy,they're getting tired, they're crashing craving all day or we're, you know, we're just gettingolder and that's just what we're supposed to expect, okay. that, to me, this heavinessin our life and how we feel to me is the biggest problem not just the waistline, okay, andespecially in a hard working environment where you're going, going, going and you're highperforming. you may be at your desk all day,
you're trying to get a lot of things doneon a deadline, okay? now, why do we have--so there is a problem, okay? what is the problem,okay? but then it's--we don't have it because there's a lack of information. in fact, we'rekind of in this land of a lost what i call noise and confusion, okay? problem numberone; everybody seems to be saying something different, right? you probably had folks uphere talking to you through this series, telling you a lot of different things. doctors willtell you one thing, your trainer, the fda, your dietician, nutritionist, right? yourfriend, the person next door to you, your mom, okay, oprah, you know, tell these thingsthis year, next year, you know, something is different from everybody. so we're not--there'sno surge of solutions, no surge of ideas,
okay? and here's the one thing that bothersme. what we're told changes way too much, okay? now, i know from a technology standpointthere's always upgrades, there's always advancements and, like, what's the next best thing. but,you know, here's the fundamental truth about our bodies, our big--our bodies are designedto function a certain way and that's not changing, okay. so why does it make sense that everythingwe're told often changes? so, for example, i have a--i have a little egg here, you cansee that, okay. and say this is--i don't think it is because i just grabbed it quickly atthe store this morning, but say this is an organic three-range, catre egg, no hormones,you know, none of that stuff. so we take out all those variables. if we look at the egg,is the egg good or bad? it's good, right?
right? everybody's confident with that rightnow. we don't have to go back too far in our recent history to say there's been judgmentthat said, "hey, no wait. the egg is bad" or "avoid the egg" or "only eat the egg whites,don't eat the yolk." in fact, if you look over the last 25 to 30 years or so we've probablyflip-flopped back and forth about two or three times on the egg. so i want to ask you, hasthe egg changed? what has changed? our understanding of it, right? i mean, to me it--maybe youhave kids or a pet and you're like, "okay. no, you're good. you're bad" and the egg islike "am i good? am i bad? i don't know. make up your mind." it's having an identity crisis,right? well, if the problem is what we know, our understanding or what i like to say ourcurrent knowledge which is our current state
of knowing changes. so what we're told todayabout the egg is different than what we're told in the past. and it's not just the egg.so, you can imagine from a nutrition standpoint specifically what you're told from, how youeat, what to eat, imagine that it might be different tomorrow than what you're told today.so we've got a couple options, right? do we wait around until we know it all--i wouldsuggest not doing that because we're never going to know it all, okay--or are we goingto come up with a way to think about things, a framework to give us lasting guidance to[indistinct] and where we can harness the natural power of life toward health. that'swhat i focus on and that's what i like to do because here's the bottom line, your bodynaturally tends toward health if given the
chance. you think about that. tends towardhealth if given a chance. so you cut yourself, what happens to that cut? you don't do anything,what happens to that cut? it heals, right? you might just wash it and forget about itand never really think much--think twice, okay? so some mechanism in your body is pushingyou toward health. your basic job, your basic responsibility is kind of push that alongor help to build along that way and you really remove the obstacles, okay? so the idea withthese--all these noise, all these confusion--i always like to tell people, it's almost likeyour computer. sometimes we need to hit the reset button. sometimes we need to see--towipe the slate clean, reset yourself and we're--and i'm in the notion that, you know, i'll getto him a second here that food is one of the
greatest starting points that you can startwith. okay. now, before i go further, i'd like--i'll just like to just take a minuteand tell you my story a little bit. and really, my lessons' not to tell you really about myselfbut really--because they will help you understand the approach that i take in really how i triedto help people day in and day out because i think there's some interesting lessons.anna here gave you a little bit of background i grew up in the midwest, a big family, sportsand fitness, went out to harvard, i was able to play football and studied there. i didn'treally know what i was going to be but i've always been interested about health and lifeand performance, at that point more about athletic performance. decided to go down tonorth carolina to get my master's degree in
exercise and sports science and i was goingto focus on [indistinct] performance. so i went down with the best programs in the country,worked with a lot of faculty members who dealt with--working with the olympic athletes, workedwith a lot of the teams and that's where i wanted to go. but while i was there, my personalinterest just kind of started shifting more to wellness, my own health--by the way, atthe same time, my father at the age of 57 had almost a--a fatal heart attack just whatseem like at that time, out of blue. and i'm like, "how could that happen?" you know. nothing--therewas really no warning signs that i thought but looking back, i obviously knew that. somy interest just kind of like, boom, wellness, my own health, nutrition, going from athleticperformance to life performance because no
matter who you are, where you at, you areperforming day in and day out. so i decided to come out here to bastyr, the naturopathicmedical school. maybe you're quite familiar with it. wonderful school. got my md degreeand went through the training and--anyway, the last part of the training at school, wehave a clinic that's in seattle. and it's a teaching clinic and we'd have people comingin from colds and flus, all the way up to aids, cancers, you name it, everything inbetween. and people would either would be coming to seek either alternative care orcomplimentary care with what they're doing. and what would happen, we'd have a supervisingdoctor, we'd have a primary doctor which is a student clinician, and a secondary doctorwhich is a student clinician. the person would
come in. so, you say you came in to the officeand say, "hey, what's wrong with you?" we'd ask what was wrong. we can go through a casehistory, we may do some physical exam; then we'd all go out of the room and we put ourheads together and say, "well, what should we do?" we've typed up a treatment plan andmaybe we had 10 things on this list. we go back in the room and we're going to presentit to you and hear how it--how the pattern repeat itself a little bit. number one, eatbetter. number two--a simple plan a little bit--two, you know, sleep more. three, needto exercise and be more active. number four, reduce some stress in our life, will you?what we can do? but then there's almost this like--but i know you're not really going totake the time and effort to do that. so number
five, what can i give you? and that happened[indistinct] time--times and i'm like, "well, how is that different than anything else?how am i going to try to fix you?" right? and i understand--i'm not--please understandi'm not dismissing, it's a teaching clinic, i know why but for me personal--personally,kind of, where i am and where i wanted to and my interest, i'm like, that just kindof bug me. i'm like, "well, wait a second, what if we just don't give up on the top ofthe list because if we're saying these things have the most impact, why can't we tell people--why--whycan't we go up to the top of the list, help people do those things more--not perfectlybut better and then maybe you don't need five, six, and seven." because it's--it's a painin the rear end, right? to get sick, to deal
with disease, illness, we talked about--wesaw the stats there a little bit while ago. so it's obviously much better--harder butmuch better to take care of your self, okay? so i came out there with not only seen thisprocess happen over and over but also two from just--again, i was not--i was not amusedof the idea that, well, what about this diet? what about that diet? what about this fator what about this or even what we learned in school and in textbook sometimes changeand i basely decide, i needed to start from scratch. here i complete 11 years of school,three different degrees and i'm like, i just need to start from scratch because you knowwhat? i'm frustrated and i'm confused so i understand when people come to me and they'relike, "i don't know what to do." so i just
start from scratch and i ask myself, two basicquestions. okay. how's a human being designed to live? and how you get the most impact?those are my focusing questions from the very beginning because i learned very quickly thatit's so important to have a framework that you understand, that you believe in personallythat will help you guide decisions otherwise, you're going to be all over the place, okay.so now, developing kind of approach that we work with people over the last seven yearsand--and as i said, these are people like you, they want to feel better, they just--theydon't want to be okay, they want to be better. some people have serious health conditionbut they really--they just really want to perform better day in and day out. so ourbasic philosophy is very simple, nourishment
gives us life, movement expresses life andrelationships are the meaning of life. everything in my world and how i work with people inthe framework can kind of fit in that. guess what, we start with nourishment. that's whywe're here today, right? but why? is it just because that's what i like? no, remember.this is how a by--how is a by designed--how's a human being designed to function to live.how do we get the most impact. you get that most impact with nourishment and specificallynutrition. why is this the case? as a human being, we have zero capacity to create energy,zero. think about that, okay. don't go into a lunch coma on me. we have zero capacity.what we do have the capacity to do is receive, transform and redirect. so we are--we arewholly and entirely dependent on external
sources of nourishment including food butnot just limited to food to give us life. so i would say, a little bell should go off--ourhead will say, ding, ding, ding. those things should be pretty important, okay? and in fact,they are. not just in theory but in practice, okay? so our principle of the nutrition thatwe develop and the word written in the framework that i teach is number one, eat real food.that sounded like really interesting, doesn't it? okay. number two, honor your hunger andnumber three, find your rhythm. all three are essential. the biggest mistake i findmost people make is that they think; number one, it's just about food. and if i figureout the food, everything else will come. it will help quite a bit. they will only getyou so far. the hunger and the rhythm [indistinct]
will tie things in where all these thingswere to go. now, i'm going to try to squeeze in, you know the time we have left--reallywhat takes me--i--what i teach in a 28 day program, i'm going to try to squeeze it ina, you know, in the next 20 to 25 minutes or so and give you a little bit of taste andoverview about how we want to approach this because this seem brave, this seem interestingbut they're like, "okay, what does that mean?" but there's a lot of things behind it. so,let's break them down just a little bit and we'll focus on real food a little bit morethan the others. real food, anybody have a good definition of real food?>> [indistinct] >> adams: yeah.>> it provides nourishment.
>> adams: it provides nourishment but--buta twinkie provides nourishment. >> not necessarily.>> adams: yeah, it does. all--not positive nourishment but negative nourishment but itprovides nourishment. if you are going to be on a deserted island and there's a box--acrate of twinkies floated up on the beach, would you not eat them?>> i would not. >> adams: you would not eat them? good. okay.but--you should belong to our club--that's good. now--but the idea--the nourishment couldbe positive or negative but yeah. okay. any [indistinct]--any other definitions?>> natural not processed. >>adams: natural not processed, that's good.what does that mean? so natural but not processed
for those who can't hear--yes?>> no plastic wrappers. >> adams: no plastic wrap, okay.>> stuff that grows. >> adams: stuff that grows. yeah, good. okay.you guys are coming on the right path. so what we would like to say--when i say eatreal food, no one said--didn't say diet food. no one said--didn't say health food, okay.real food, we have some basic kind of definitions that we talk about then we try to teach, okay.can i hunt it? can i pick it? can i fish it? can i harvest it? right? all these old worldfood categories; did this food exist before 1900? i don't break food down into piecesand parts. so when i work with folks, i don't talk a lot about protein, i don't talk a lotabout fat or carbohydrates, okay. so let's
take an example, okay, a water bottle. a littlesupport here, okay. i'm going to test you, okay. so we have a water bottle that has anutritional label, okay. for those of you who aren't here, we've all seen this so letme ask you something, how many calories on water--in water?>> zero. >> adams: okay. because we're looking at thenutrition label, right? so she said zero. how many--you need your glasses--how many--howmany--how many--how much protein? >> zero.>> adams: zero protein. how much fat? >> zero.>> adams: zero fat. carbs, how many carbs? >> zero.>> adams: zero. okay. can you do the math
for me? what does that add up to?>> zero. >> adams: zero. okay. so here we go, we'veidentified--you know, we collect we have said, these--we have a nutrition label, calories,fat, protein, carbs and maybe a few other things. we've collectively identified theseto be the most important attributes to decide what we put in our body, right? fair enough?right? we all know like how many--how many calories that have our--we're looking at labels,how many protein grams, right? i think we even have some labeling around here like that.so here's the thing though, we will be dead sooner without water than food by a long shotnot even close. we could go weeks without food if we had to as long as we had water.we could only go days without water. we're
seeing that in different parts of the country--differentparts of the world right now that there's shortage of water. so here's the thing, alittle bell should go off in your head and say, "well, ding, ding, ding. maybe thosenumbers don't tell me everything i need to know." and they don't. i'm not saying they'renot interesting or amusing or useful from time to time but i actually believe--and we'veseen that breaking food and dissect it into pieces and parts, calories, fat, protein,carbs. i believe it's been one of the worst mistakes we've made in our culture when itcomes to nutrition education trying to get healthy because we dissect and disconnectfrom the food. dissect the food down and we get disconnect--we don't know what food isanymore. some of you are a little bit ahead
of the game but we--this is where we get intodiet food and health food, okay? but hopefully, we go down and we look at the ingredientsand we say, "what's in there?" hopefully, it just would say water, right? so the idea--thisis where it becomes problematic if we take this next step forward. now that we've identifiedthose numbers but look sexy on the label, we start manufacturing food to meet thosenumbers and that's where you get into a lot of diet food and health food. so, obviouslywe have to focus on the positive but if we think about real food, the negative is thatwe want to avoid food that's been processed. there's only three fundamental ways food getsprocessed by addition, subtraction and modification. we either add something to it. we pull somethingaway or now in this day and age, this whole
genetic modification which to me is a veryscary thing because we are--we are fundamentally changing the dna, the genetic sequence offood that does not happen in the natural world, right? there are going to be consequences.but this does make sense, there's only--we have real food. can i hunt it, pick it, fishit, harvest it? what are these food categories real quickly? fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts,seeds, beans, legumes, rice, dairy, eggs, meat, fish, seafood, that type of thing, theseare real foods. so either we change that by adding some things, pulling away or modifying,okay. okay, case in point, a couple examples, okay. in this day and age, there's quite afew corn, soy, wheat and rice by-products, okay. this is where we teach people to lookat the ingredients. i personally don't care
what the top of a nutrition labels says. infact, i tell people, "if you can, not to look at it because it's going just throw you up."the front of the label--number one, food without labels is better than food with labels, right?but the front of something--the packaging, whatever it says doesn't always tell us much,the back, the top of the nutrition label, i don't really care. what i want to know,is it real food, is it not? i want you to look at the ingredients. so when we look atfood, you'd be surprise. go home to your pantry, go to the grocery store, go to health foodstores. you will feel--you will see things that are basic corn, soy, wheat by-products--riceby-products everywhere. so by definition, these foods have been changed by addition,subtraction, modification, okay. and here's
something i'll remind you of the end but youneed to do the hard work to figure this out and believe it yourself. but when we--foodthat's been changed, bad things happen, okay? remember we said nourishment gives us life,okay. so when we eat food that's been changed, bad things are going to happen yet to ourwaistline but it'll happen to our life. that's what the degrees of disease dysfunction, dissatisfactioni talk about. so it's not just no big deal, it's mostly healthy, it's--i'm not even [indistinct]calories, i'm eating enough protein. it's really more about the food itself, okay. enrichedor fortified foods, okay. this is a red flag, if something says it's enriched or fortified;survey your mind kind of all those foods--what they might be. i go, "well, what happenedto that food that it needs to be enriched
and fortified?" because i'll tell you what,real food naturally comes enriched and fortified. so, something has been processed and changedthat they need to do that. and typically, enriched and fortified foods are enrichedand fortified with either--like synthetic chemicals or materials, or not the sourcesof those actual foods. so, for example, i would say it's kind of like when we processfood, it's like--it's like humpty dumpty kind of falling down and we're going to take mr.potato head parts and try to put him back together. it just isn't going to work. okay.we're going create some problems. low-fat foods; i took this picture i think it wasdown in portland, i believe walking by--i love ice cream just so you know. i alwayslike--let's put that out there because people
think, "you don't have fun with food." i love--iwant to live in a world that--like maybe ice cream. okay. so--you know, i always look atsigns like this but this is for a yogurt stand, okay. i like ice cream better than yogurt,just personally but you go through it, it says, "real, yes, healthy, none fat." low-fatfoods are processed foods. foods that naturally have fat in them, we remove the fat, you fundamentallychange the nutritional make up of that food and how your body--and how it's designed foryour body to deal with it, break it down and nourish you; major cause of crash and craving.and folks i work with, i don't let them eat low-fat foods so i highly suggest they don'teat--at that--low-fat foods, okay. here's the interesting thing, when you eat low-fatfoods, you'll have--probably have a higher
chance of being fat. okay. i know that's abig statement but we talk about why that's the case. and so, i always tell people, "youhave permission just to--like never have low-fat foods again, okay." and who likes those anyway?genetically modified foods, we talked about that. sweeteners, additives, chemicals, flavorenhancers, this is just kind of a broad generic category, lots of chemicals in our food, okay.i use msg as an example, okay. now, we all know--no, who eats msg in here? nobody goesout and says, "can i have some msg, right?" just a little history of it; introduced in1947, is an excitotoxin. so you can just kind of get all these crazy things going on withyour body if you have too much of it. we all know not to have that, right? restaurant say,"no msg," foods say, "no msg." that's not
the problem, right? so, you think your avoidingmsg but if you look at your ingredients--and we have--we--basically, we have a test andthat says if you have a 10-year old who can recognize the ingredients from start to finish,it's probably real food, okay. so, you see these categories of food. well, msg is--ifyou see any of these categories in the ingredient list, msg is always in there. okay. some ofus are like, "does a 10-year old know what those are?" "i don't know." there's a lotof health food and diet foods that have those ingredients, okay. now, also too, you think--you'reavoiding msg so these foods often have it. i'm not going to go through that list butwe don't--we try to stay away from things that might have maltodextrin in it for exampleas one big category. natural flavoring; do
you ever get something that says natural flavoring?what is that? if it's natural flavoring, why don't they just say it? it's a very vagueterm so this is where the truth in labeling comes out. well, it doesn't automaticallymean it's bad but it can be because there's no defining definition what is. so, usuallyi get kind of cautious where i'm not going to always avoid it but if see--if i see naturalflavors, i'm like--man, that's not something i want to have all the time or as a staple.okay. so we talk food. eat real food, this is the foundation, this is the cornerstonebecause it all--once you eat--once you have an understanding of what real food is in aframework, it becomes very easy. one of our goals--anybody golfing here? okay. are--oryou watch golf? i mean, you see they get up
to the hole and they're getting ready to puttand the golfer's kind of looking around and looking at all the angles right--to get thebest angle and the best shot. well, when i work with people, i have people do that fora little while but long term, you don't want to have to do that for the rest of your life,right? you want to be able to have a framework in your mind that you can filter all the onslaughtof information coming at you. things that you see that you could say via the triads;real food, not real food, real food, not real food, boom, boom, boom, where you don't knowhow to expand the mental energy. so we teach people a framework to really think about thisand really this to be broad, lasting and very specific definitions. that's the startingpoint, and it's just a staring point. but
once you got that, you can check the box becausethat will never change the rest of your life. and it's the only way that you can have achance to do number two, "honor your hunger." and most people think about hunger in thiscountry, and i think in a negative way. we have commercials on tv, "take this pill."take this herb." "suppress your appetite." here's the funny thing though. hunger is notbad, even though we have an avoid this behavior like avoid getting hungry. hunger is not bad.in fact, it's normal. it's part of a normal, daily physiological function. you breathein, you breathe out. you should eat and you should get hungry everyday. okay. when we'renot eating real food or we're taught to eat a big breakfast, eat before you workout, eatafter workout, eat every two or three hours,
where we're always eating, we're not goingto get hungry. most people, because they do not eat real food, number one up there, youwill crash and crave, up and down. blood sugar levels go up and down especially [indistinct]being in a work environment where you can go, go, go, and you're like, "what happened?i need something. i must go out and get something." now google does a great job of providing somereally good things, but there's also some things around it that are going to contributemore to our crash and craving, right? so here's the thing. that is not hunger. it's crashand craving. i'm not just counting it because it's actually real physiological distress.it's not a lack of willpower. but we're not eating this foundation of real food most ofthe time; we're going to be like this all
time and then we're going to have to medicate,we're going to have to reach something to medicate, to stabilize. and like i would [indistinct]my right arm right now to have some food; that type of mentality. and in the long run,that's going to get closer, you just--day by day closer than disease, dysfunction, dissatisfactionthat we all talk about. so what we find when we--people eat a [indistinct]--when we--eatingin the context of real food, okay, not diet food, not health food, you get more stable,more steady, more consistent energy. and over the--or course of time, if you don't eat,you gradually get more hungry. we don't die, right? we don't just fall off a cliff. whereashow many of you think, "okay, i better eat now or i better eat before i come--" i knowit's lunch time so it's a little bit different.
"but i better eat now or before i go to thismeeting, because i'm not sure if i can make it to the next 30 minutes or an hour withoutfood." right? why? again, it's the way we're taught, the way we're conditioned, but alsothe context of real food, okay. how many of you are getting a little tired right now?you just had lunch. either i'm boring you or number two, here, you're sitting here justeating food and food is--and eating food is a highly energetic process where when youeat food, you're going to digestive--rest and digest mode, we're all saying like, "i'mgetting sleepy. i wish i could lay down." when is the worst time to have a meeting?right after lunch so the people--when you get done with this, i feel sorry for the nextfolks, right? you're going to be like, "uh."
and it--you might be fine normally. but again,if it energize with the many process, that's crashing and craving. what happens when weallow people to get hungry is you're really--when you're hungry, you're kind of in a high-performancemode. so, i work with a trainer one time who told their client, "show up hungry." becausehunger is hot mode. [indistinct] think about that. so what happens when you eat food andget bugged down, the last thing you want to do is really perform, okay. but when you'rehungry in the context of real food, not crashing and craving, you still have plenty of energy.i'm hungry right now but notice i'm not like, "oh, i need to sit down because i'm just goingto about to collapse. i'm energetic, i'm alert, i'm engaged." and that's possible. so whatwe try to do with people is, again, teach
them this process of real food hunger so numberthree, you can personally find your rhythm, okay? what does that mean? rhythm is kindof a strange word but it's appealing in some ways; but it means types of food. some ofyou we know would do better with more meat, less meat, more grains, less grains, moredairy, less dairy. you all need to eat vegetables because grandma was right about that. so there'sthe types of foods, okay? anybody a vegetarian in here? okay, we got quite a number. anybodylove meat? okay. what if we cross, you say, we're going to make you do that and you dothe other. you wouldn't like that very well, would you? everybody has a personal rhythmthat they do best with; so the types of food, the timing of food. some people do reallywell, in fact, do much better not having breakfast
in the morning. and i know we are told, "eatbreakfast. it's the most important meal of your day." but for some people, that's theworst thing they should do because it's going to upset their rhythm the rest of the dayand they do that day after day and they're going to be just out of source. for a lotof people, i think dinner is the most important meal of the day the way we have our cultureand society set up. and so, the idea, find your rhythm is the types, the timing, thefrequency, is a--your individual blue print or finger print that makes sense for you.that's why sometimes all these diets, all these fads, there's elements of truth thatsounds interesting. they appeal to a small segment of population but maybe not to youor maybe partially to you. so, what you need
to do is have a framework. again, i alwaysgo back to the importance of having a framework that you believe in and understand that willhelp you filter and guide your decisions in what we--what we try to do is, with this three-prongedor three-principle approach, where all three are important, is to give you a frameworkthat will never change for the rest of your life. real food will never change no matterwhat. no matter how smart we get, okay? on your hunger, find your rhythm. those threethings, this is the lasting framework that will never change, that applies to every singleperson in here because you're going to--you understand what your rhythm is, you startto experiment about what food you do better with in timing, you are going to experiencethat uniquely just for you. let's have a cool
thing. and you could--you can just stop playingthe game of like, "okay, what right are we on? what's next?" okay? so, we start withfood. as i said, we start with what you eat because we believe it does change everything.not just your waistline about how you feel, "what are my favorite clothes?" i'll readthis to you. i know you can all read but let's pretend that this is story hour. "when i wasyoung and free, my imagination had no limits, and i dreamed of changing the world. as igrew older and wiser, i discovered the world would not change, so i shorten my sights somewhatand decided to change only my country. but, it seemed immovable. as i grew into my twilightyears, in one last desperate attempt, i settled in changing only my family, those closestto me, but alas, they would have none of it.
and now as i lay on my deathbed, i suddenlyrealized: if i had only changed myself first, then by example i might have better--mighthave changed my family. from their inspiration and encouragement i would have then been ableto better change my country, and who knows, i might have even change the world." lookwhere this written, on the tomb in westminster abbey 1100 a.d. i love this because this isjust as true today. here's my corny part of this, you guys all have gifts, you all havetalents, you all have abilities, and if you are not your better self, your best self,you are always going to feel dissatisfied falling short personally and also the peoplearound you, whether it's work family or relationship, they are going to self-support too, okay?now, here's what's happening. here's what
i know as we wrap up here and we'll stickaround for some questions for those who want to stay--stick around. when you eat food that'sbeen changed, bad things happen. and if you're sitting here today and you're not kind ofsure what to do, what's going on, i'm a big believer in this simple idea. you truly donot know what's wrong until you allow your body to do what's right. you know what's rightabout to every single one of you? your body naturally tends toward health if given a chance.no budget in the world is big enough, whether as an individual, as a family, as a corporation,if you don't give health a chance. and the only person, who can do that, is the personthat you look in the mirror every single day. we can't--we can have a lot of people supportus, we can have them support us at work but
we can't look to other people, we can't lookto agencies, experts, to do the work for us. so, let's tell people just what if, this wholeidea, your body tends toward health if given a chance. you need to give your health a chance.so, what if just for today, what if for a couple of days? we ask people to commit the28th day. but what if you give your body, what would it need, you take away what itdoesn't need and you just get a step back and you get the heck out of the way of yourself.think about that. just what if. very good things will happen, not just on your waistlinebut in your life. you'll be smarter, be more creative, you'll be more generous, you'llbe more giving. you'll be closer to the person that you know you want to be and you are becauseit all really back to food? not all of it
but a heck of a lot. and we get--we're fortunatewe get to see this everyday with folks where [indistinct]. and i tell you--and this iswhat i'll leave you with--i don't want you to trust me--okay?--because we're all thrown--weall get a lost of information. you need to be the judge. you need to decide for yourselfbecause you need to find what works best for you. so here is what i suggest. for a coupleof days, for a week or however long, reset yourself. just start from scratch, forgeteverything you know and start with food and see what happens. you'll get surprised. anyquestions? yes. >> [indistinct] tofu.>> tofu. oh, yes. >> is it a real food? and if not, [indistinct].>> adams: it's not real. okay. so usually
most tofu is processed soybean, also from...>> pardon? >> adams: oh, i'm sorry. i need to repeatthe question. so somebody asked about tofu and if it's a real food or a processed food.so tofu is typically [indistinct] soybeans--[indistinct] soybeans. eighty-five--eighty-five to 90%of soybeans are genetically modified. [indistinct] number one. and usually--and also tofu isprocessed in a way that's not--that the violets are addition, subtraction modification. soybeansitself are [indistinct] great. but if you're going to eat soy like the fermented soy sourceslike tempeh and miso, which is in the traditional japanese culture, they're also the sourcesof soybeans that made better. okay. lots of examples. okay, here's one. okay. i broughtmy last prop here. okay, bread. the bread
exists before 1900. yes. like, thank goodness.the bread and butter, yes. okay, good. but what type of bread? okay. well, here we havebread. we read--read the front of the label--right?--if you guys can see that: 100% stone ground wholewheat bread. is it real food? shall we eat it? you know, that's a trick question, don'tyou? well, here's the thing. we like bread, but if you're going to buy this, you're notbeing yourself. if you're going to buy this as a staple, you're really not doing yourselfany favor. i'll give you a quick little--we don't have enough time to begin to hear thewhys in this session. but here's a quick look [indistinct] go out to the world to judgeyour bread. it we will blindfold you and go into the grocery store or just line up allthis bread in front of you, we blindfold you
and we hand you the bread and you start tosqueeze it. remember that commercial "don't squeeze the charmin?" any of you guys rememberthat? okay, "don't squeeze the charmin toilet paper." if you can squeeze the charmin, youjust need to kind of put it back, okay? okay. but if you all [indistinct] i'll get [indistinct]you squeeze and squeeze and you squeeze bread as hard, you want to open your eyes and actuallylook at it and do the ingredients list test where you look at your ingredients. soft crustedbread, okay? grain is a big one. a grain can be very, very good or healthy for you, butit also can be very, very negative and not so healthy because it's not just the grainitself; it's how it's processed or changed. soft crusted bread usually made with commercialyeast, quick rice bread, okay? so it short
changes the process. it changes the glycemicindex probably by 100 and 125 points compared to what we call an old-world crusty bread,the kind of bread that you see at the market or that if you cut and you don't eat thatday they spoil. you look at your ingredients test, okay? this oil--this has about--thisbread has about six lines of ingredients from [indistinct] syrup; yeast, which we've saw.sometimes it contains msg. it has vegetable oil like canola oil and soy oil. those arevery not so good oils even though they're touted as [indistinct], they're very highly-processedoils, okay? there's a lot of things here that a 10-year-old can't recognize and pronouncelet alone--let alone me. and so we look at--we were just judging it here. we buy that, okay?now it doesn't mean you can't go out to, like,
a baseball stadium or a football field andeveryone saw you a hotdog that's in a white bun, no big deal, okay? but if you think you'rebuying that as a staple and doing something good for yourself, that's not the case, okay?so breads, granolas, rolled oats, granola bars that have rolled oats in them, instantoat meals, certain things, health food, diet food, they're very irritating on the gut;inflammatory. we're not getting the nutrition out of it. but grains by themselves are verypacked with nutrition but it's all how you handle them to access the grain. most grainsthat we have on our society with the cereals, breads, crackers and certain things and flour-basedare not prepped the right way to give us nourishment as you say. i'd love to give--i spent a wholesession on grains and berries. because it's
one--grains and berries i think are two ofthe most misguided and i call the two most violated forms of food we have. we mess themup quite a bit. >> [indistinct]>> adams: great, yes, good question craig, very good question.>> [indistinct] >> adams: yes. no good question. so the questionis, what--how do you consider basic cooking and food preparation? yes, that to me is notfundamentally changing a process, so i'm not saying go out here and all go eat raw or gojust go eat some raw meat and everything. so, our traditional--you exactly said it right,the traditional methods we have for preparing, storing, preserving food that have been aroundfor thousands of years, those are not fundamentally
processing the food. we can overcook foodthough, we can overheat food, and in fact, pasteurization oftentimes because it's highheat killed the bacteria, right but also has collateral damage in the negative ways. theyfundamentally change the nourishment of food. so that's a whole new topic too but you'reright. so, just the preparation, food prep methods, they can be--they can be prohibitivebut the one's that we--that you're taking about that have been around, those are--that'sthe way to go. that's what we've been doing for a long, long time. okay, thank you. anyother question, i know we're running short in time. yes. let's go back here, and we willcome back since you just... >> [indistinct]>> adams: yes, yes, good question, because
there's a lot of them out there. i like tokeep it simple. i have three fastening oils that i love to or kind of like go to. okay.i love butter, number one just real good butter for--i mean, i'm like--i'm like presidentof butter fan club. it--it's, you know, good source of butter. i'm not afraid of it whatsoever.if i'm going to cook--if i need no heat or low heat or maybe even modest heat, a greatof source of olive oil, i think is the way to go. now, if i'm going to cook over a highheat, meaning like stir frying and high prep, one of the very best and healthiest oils youcan possibly consume is organic, extra virgin, unrefined, got to be those things, coconutoil. okay. and coconut oil, if you grab it, you look at it, it's hard at room temperature,you pop it down. i make popcorn out of that,
i stir fry it, it's just kind of my go tooil, and i don't even like let's say coconut, but you can find oils that have more or lessof a coconut flavor. your canola oil, your sunflower, saffron, your vegetable oil, yoursoybean oil. okay, very highly processed. i call them supermarket oils. contribute alot of problems to our health condition. that's another idea too. i don't--like i said i don'tcook them, protein fast carbs, calories, i don't even cook some fiber, starch, saturated,monounsaturated fats, because it--we know the food categories, if you eat the real foods,those things could take care of themselves, are by actually does well with having certainlevels of--of various fats from monounsaturated to saturated fats. in fact, we need that forhealthy brain function sometimes. it's just--i--if
you'll find that--i don't pit food againsteach other because i don't want to pit the vegetarians against meat eaters in a fight,right? i--i don't pit food against each other because that's part of your rhythm. i'm moreconcerned not about the--the cross comparison, like the--what i call the vertical comparisonin the food pyramid that i use, that i want to know how changed the food is, because everyfood category could be changed. so, we take an apple, over guacamole. i--i have a clientwho brings over a bushel of apples every fall, and it--i mean sometimes it's picked veryday. that's what i call a zone 1 or a real food. but we can take that same apple, processthen refine it, add some high fructose corn syrup, some food coloring, put it in a jar,all soon that becomes a very highly processed
food, even though it's just apples. okay.every food category can fall along those levels of whether they're real or not real. that'sthe tricky part. okay. okay. anybody--anybody join us from afar have questions?>> can you repeat what the three oils you recommend are please?>> adams: yes. >> butter.>> adams: really good butter, number one, that's it--that's her yelling out there. oliveoil, in what comes to oils; spend your money on olive oil. you kind of get what you paidfor it. it makes a difference in not only the source of nutrition but also the tasteexperience. so, spend your money--sarah who's our food nutrition coach, she kind of recommendsbuying two levels of oil, a really more expensive
kind to save and use for special occasionsor certain dishes. and more of a mid-level oil that's still really healthy but also youcan use it more day-to-day. so, butter, coconut oil, olive oil and then coconut oil. the coconutoil, and this is how it needs to be, extra virgin, unrefined and organic coconut oil.those are the three biggest, there's a few others that are out there but those are thethree big ones that i think are the way to go. and they handle--and they handle our situations.okay? yes. >> have you used mustard oil to make [indistinct]?[indistinct]. >> adams: mustard oil, you know much aboutmustard oil, sarah? you know, i don't have a lot--much experience but i've--i'll look--i'lllook at that. okay? i would say if it's been
traditionally used, that's a good sign, ifit's been used for than 50 or 100 years. that's a good sign. okay? well, yeah.>> [indistinct] high heat cooking...? >> adams: high heat yes, high heat cookingthat's a tricky one. yes. >> salted or unsalted?>> adams: salted or unsalted? i personally like slightly salted butter. okay? big fanof sea salt or slightly salted butter bits, sometimes you either get unsalted butter andadd a little bit of sea salt. okay? it all depends on where you're putting it with becausesometimes if you're adding it to something that already has some salt content, or you'readding it as a recipe, you might not need it. [indistinct] i want to thank you for joiningus today. i know, it's not always the easiest
thing to come out in the middle of your daybut thank you and please listen up if you have any questions, we try to, you know, answerit the best we can. okay? thanks so much.