In this episode Brett Interviews Nutrition expert Sean Croxton.

Sean answers in great detail the following questions:

• 
  
• Is whole wheat worse than a candy bar?
  
• What are the biggest misconceptions in the Health & Fitness Industry?
  
• Does counting calories work?
  
• Is soy good or bad for you?
  
• How can you fix your broken digestion system? (causing you to stop losing body fat)
  
• What are the key hormones we need to control for optimum fat loss?
  

and loads more…

This episode is definitely a must listen for the person who is on a fat loss journey or just wants to know the TRUTH “finally”!

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Brett: Hello and welcome to another Fiitchick Podcast. I am your host Brett Campbell and today I have a very special guest with me. This special guest’s name is Sean Croxton. He is the founder of Underground Wellness. And this particular gentleman I have got on the line today, it’s about 4pm his time right now and it’s going into 8am my time so we are on different time zones. So, very excited to be able to have some of Sean’s time today to really answer some of these misconceptions or questions, I guess you could say, in the nutritional and fitness industry.

Just to give you a little bit of a background on Sean. Sean has a Bachelor of Kinesiology where he graduated from San Diego University in 2001. Sean’s also a Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist and Certified Metabolic Typing Advisor and so basically what that means is that he is a bit of kick-ass, he definitely knows what he is talking about. But what I will do is I’m going to handover to Sean, he can give us a little bit more about his background and then we are going to ahead with some really good questions.

“So Sean, over to you buddy.”

Sean: “Am good. How are you doing?”

Brett: “Yeah, really well mate. Thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions here that we have for you. That you don’t know that we’re going to ask.”

Sean: “Yeah, it’s all about stumping Sean today. I really appreciate you having me here.”

But my background just real quick. There’s really just one, not so much based on failure sometimes I call it failure but I probably should call it temporary deceit. I went to a California State University. I studied Fitness, Nutrition and Health. I got a Degree in it, did really well in my classes and I thought that I knew everything there was to know about fat loss and nutrition and diet and just getting people healthier. And I wanted to become a… I became a certified personal trainer right after college and I found that the information that I learned in school just simply didn’t work.

It didn’t work with my clients. It didn’t really work so well with myself. My clients kept getting fatter, I kept getting more depressed and tired and having digestion problems on and on. And just came to figure like hey after a while I just kind of came to this point where I kind of said, “Hey, maybe there’s something wrong with this quote on quote ‘scientifically proven program’ that they taught me in school. I mean I can’t blame this on my clients all the time.” And so I just started reading books and watching DVDs that were put together by people who were getting real results with real people.

Started to apply that to myself. Started to apply it with my clients and started to get the results that we were looking for. And I took that information and put it up on YouTube, I started making YouTube videos back in 2006; 2007 when YouTube was very; fairly new back then and people liked it. And it kind of spiralled into a podcast and to the blog and now to the Dark Side of Fat Loss and some of the other really cool things that we have going on.

Brett: “Excellent. So you did stuff back in the pre-historic days of YouTube so you would have got a really good kick start there.” So, I guess something that stood out to me this time when you said you were taught this quote on quote ‘scientific information’ I guess on how to achieve fat loss etc. “What were some of the biggest misconceptions that you got from there and where did that lead to?”

Sean: “That calories in, we used to say, that fat loss is really a matter of calories in; calories out.” To cut all the fat out of your diet because fat has nine calories per gram and carbohydrates and protein have four. So you should just focus on those. I learned that the way to lose weight is to cut off the fat and eat more whole grains which I know to be completely false. And as we all know whole grains have a gluten issue going on which a lot of people out there are dealing with right now and don’t know that they have.

Doing tons of cardio, that was the exercise component of my education is to do tons of cardio, be on that treadmill for an hour, make sure you really get that calorie burned up that way you can burn as many calories and since there’s 3500 calories in a pound of fat, if you burn 500 calories extra everyday then you are going to lose a pound of fat and it looks good on paper. It looked really cool when I was showing my new clients how it works like on a piece of paper and they were like, “Oh my God! I can totally do this.” But when it came down to those Friday weigh-ins slash body fat sessions we found that it really didn’t work so well.

And my clients not only didn’t feel well in terms of their mood and digestion and their sleep and things of that sort but they just weren’t losing the weight the way they wanted. And one thing that I always say when I do interviews is like if I have a new client and I will say her name is Mrs. Nelson.I can say, “Hey Mrs. Nelson, what do you want me to help you with?” She could say, “Hey, I want you to help me lose 30 pounds.” And I say, “Ok Mrs. Nelson, I can help you lose 30 pounds but let me ask you a few questions. How is your digestion?”

Mrs. Nelson: “Ooh, I don’t go to the bathroom very often. I skip days and when I go it’s usually weird looking.”

Sean: “How is your mood?”

Mrs. Nelson: “Ooh, I’m depressed. I’ve got anxiety, stuff going on. I’m on this and that medication.”

Sean: “How’s your libido?”

Mrs. Nelson: “Ooh, I have no sex drive at all. It’s causing some real friction in my relationship on and on.”

Sean: “How well do you sleep?”

Mrs. Nelson: “Ooh, I wake up several times a night. I have to get up and do something to kind of calm down before so I can go back to bed again.” And I say, “Hey Mrs. Nelson, I can help you lose 30 pounds but are you still going to be happy being 30 pounds lighter but you still can’t sleep, but still have poor digestion, but you still have no libido, but you still have mood issues?” And of course the answer is ‘No’ and so the premise of the Dark Side of Fat Lossis first of all conventional dogma does not work when it comes to fat loss. But second of all is that you don’t lose fat to get healthy.

We have it backwards. We have to get healthy to lose fat and that’s the key that fat is a symptom of some type of underlying imbalance in the systems of your body and that’s exactly what the book walks you through from beginning to end.

Brett: “Yeah, well I guess I could probably ask you about a thousand questions just out of that and you got off to a really good point there at the start.” And this is something that we really try to recommend to all our ladies in our private forums and so forth is that the whole dogma and stigma around calories. So can we talk about that a little bit more in regards to ‘why?’ Obviously we have got your stumped on calories but if you can go into a little bit more on, “What are your thoughts around calories and what do you recommend the general public do in that regard?”

Sean: “What I recommend is that the public eat real food. We call it ‘jerfing’ J.E.R.F – Just Eat Real Food, and we can talk about that a little bit later.” But in terms of calories we have to consider how are the calories affecting the physiology of your body. 100 calories of sugar like those 100 calorie packs of those different treats that they have these days affects your body in a completely different way than a 100 grams of fat for example from coconut oil, perfectly healthy saturated fat in coconut oil. But we have to talk more about saturated fat in a minute because I know some people are like, “Saturated fat? That will give you heart disease.” But that’s complete fallacy right there.

But anyway, sugar and these processed foods and even these wheat products, these whole grain products; those calories are causing our blood sugars to get out of whack. When your blood sugar gets out of whack basically causing spikes in your blood sugar. When your blood sugar spikes, high blood sugar is toxic to your body. This is why diabetics have sky high blood sugar and they need to have stuff amputated or they go blind because all that sugar literally fries your capillaries in your cells and you end up losing parts eventually and things don’t work very well. So your body has to make something called insulin in order to bring those blood sugar levels down.

Well after a while after energizing your cells with sugar and insulin over and over again, you cells could become resistant to insulin. So basically what happens is your blood sugar is staying high all day, your insulin levels are staying high all day because your body can no longer do the job that it used to be able to do. And when insulin levels are high, you are in fat storing mode. It is almost physiologically impossible for you to burn fat when insulin levels are high.

And this is why a low carb diet works so well for a lot of people. Now I am no advocate for a low carb diet or any particular diet specifically. I think everybody’s needs are based on who they are as an individual but this is one of the reasons because it’s able to control somebody’s blood sugar, control their insulin, make them more insulin sensitive so they can get back into fat burning mode. 100calories of fat doesn’t do that. Fat really doesn’t have any influence on your blood sugar or your insulin levels.

So this is why there are a lot of people out there on Ketogenic diets, on these high fat diets where everybody else thinks they are going to die because they are consuming that diet however they are perfectly health, lean, spry, energetic people because the fuel that they are taking in by way of more fats and more proteins and less carbohydrates is able to create a physiology within the body that is conducive to fat loss as well as conducive to health.

Now one thing we need to realise when it comes to those calories in; calories out thing is this; if you take in less calories then your body kind of loses its motivation to burn calories. So if you put less in your body feels ‘well hey there’s lesscoming in’ your body is an amazing compensator. So let’s say, “Hey less is coming in though let’s slow down this person’s metabolism. There must be a famine coming.” So we need to realise that we are just cave men and cave women with IPhones and Mac books and stuff like that.

Our physiology is pretty much the same so when you take in less calories you are innate wisdom of your body, the survival machine that it is; is saying ‘less calories must be a famine around the corner. I need to slow down this individual’s metabolism, if not then when that famine comes this person is going to die because the metabolism is too high. They are going to burn through their fat stores way too fast.’

Now, one other thing that we’ve completely miss and Gary Taubes made this point in his book Good Calories, Bad Caloriesthat we’ve forgotten the concept of working up an appetite. So if you are out doing a whole bunch yard work and what-not and shovelling and putting stuff in wheelbarrows and you go inside, the first thing you want to do is eat because you have worked up an appetite. You do the same thing when you go to the gym and run on that treadmill and lift weights.

I’m not saying anything is wrong with running on the treadmill, lifting weights and doing physical activity. But what I am saying is that typically we you go home from your work out what do you want to do? You want to eat more food, right? And so we are taking in less calories and slowing down metabolism while at the same time increasing your appetite. And I always say this, “If you consider cave man and cave woman and you consider a time of famine when less calories are coming in, right? What kind of cave man and cave woman would go for a jog during those times?” None. It would make no sense, right?

So that’s exactly what we do with our calories in; calories out model for Fat Loss and Health. We are starving cave people going for a jog. It literally makes no sense and this is exactly why it doesn’t work.

Brett: “Excellent stuff.” And what I would highly recommend you do if you are listening to this now is press rewind and hear that whole segment again there that Sean just, he dropped a whole lot of truth bombs on us there and I guarantee you’ll get some really good things out of that. “So just to elaborate on a couple of those and Sean I know you are talking about hormones and so forth and that’s probably one of my favourite parts of your book Dark Side of Fat Lossin regards to insulin and so forth is there anything else you can tell us about, I guess, how our hormones determine whether we are fat or not and what are some key tips that people can do around there?”

Sean: Well of course the key step as I mentioned earlier is to eat real food and to control your blood sugar by what you eat as well as how you move. And so you can fight insulin resistance by way of being active by going for a jog or doing some interval training, weight training as well. Those activities all make you more insulin sensitive which is great for fat burning as well as for health. When you blood sugar get out of whack and your insulin gets of whack, you also have another hormone called leptin that gets out of whack as well.

And what leptin is, what a lot of people don’t realise is that your fat stores are actually an organ. They actually produce hormones and one of those hormones is called leptin. And so your fat stores are communicating by way of leptin with your brain. With the hypothalamus in your brain so your brain is kind of monitoring saying ‘Ok, there are sufficient fat stores going on with Brett. Brett’s leptin is talking to me saying there is sufficient stores so we can keep his metabolism humming along and everything is great and his appetite at bay and everything is cool – right.’

Now if Brett’s fat stores grow too large then what happens is the leptin coming out of your fat cells again talk to your brain. Your brain says ‘Oh, Brett’s got too many fat stores right now. What we need to do is reduce his appetite and also increase his metabolism so that we can take off some of this fat.’ When Brett’s leptin is too low it is going to increase your appetite. So the body is always looking for this perfect spade of fat just to make sure that you can survive the upcoming famine that really never comes.

But what happens is when your insulin and your blood sugar are out of whack because you’re eating these processed foods that are usually like marketed to be health foods to help you lose weight and makes no sense,is you get something called leptin resistance and this is where the brain can no longer get the signal from the fat cells. So you could be overweight with tons of fat cells and tons of leptin signals going to the brain saying ‘Hey brain, there is too much fat here. Increase the metabolism and reduce this person’s appetite so we can lose some of this,’ but the brain just doesn’t hear it.

It’s like somebody calling you from their cell phone or somebody calling your cell phone – right, but your ringer is turned off. You don’t know they are calling. And so what happens is this person just continues to gain weight and their metabolism stays slow and at the same time this person is likely cut their calories in half so metabolism just gets slower and now we have a problem. Now the way that you deal with leptin resistance is pretty much the same way that you deal with insulin resistance which is to eat real food, to get all the processed carbohydrates out of your diet and to work out. Be active. Do all that kind of stuff.

Now there is a whole lot of other stuff in the book regarding insulin resistance, how stress can cause insulin resistance, the toxins in our environment, your personal care products and your household cleaning products and closets. Poor sleep, as a matter of fact this is a full chapter in the book. Just one night of sleep deprivation can make somebody that is insulin resistant as a diabetic for the next 48 hours. That’s just one night of sleep deprivation so although I am focusing right now on the food and exercise component, the book covers a lot of other things as well.

“Ooh, you know what. I want to mention one more thing. Give you one more example here.”

Brett: “Sure.”

Sean: “I could talk your ear off about this stuff all day.”

Brett: “Oh I love it.” [Overtalking 00:16:10] “I’m sure everyone else is loving it too.”

Sean: “So check this out.” So when I was a functional diagnostic nutritionist I used to run hormone panels like saliva panels on my clients. And I would be able to see their [cortisol] which is their stress hormone. Their DHEA which is the precursor to their sex hormones like testosterone and oestrogen and what-not. I would be able to see their melatonin and their progesterone and when I had a client who had been trying to lose weight for years and the weight just would not come off.

Whenever I run that persons’ hormones first and foremost I would see that their adrenals were depleted. So they would typically have like really low cortisol levels and low DHEA levels. Now think about this, if DHEA is the precursor to your testosterone and remember testosterone is what helps you build muscle and burn fat. If your DHEA is low, your testosterone is going to be low as well. So all these people who I’m working with who have been running on treadmills and reducing their calorie consumption they didn’t have enough of the hormone testosterone to help them build muscle and lose weight.

When that’s the case, what you want to do is look for the reasons why that is occurring. Why is your testosterone low in the first place? Why are your adrenal hormones out of balance as well? And when you find that and it could be either diet, it could be over exercise, it could be digestive problems, it could be a backed up liver, it could be so many other things but when you find that and you correct it and you change that person’s lifestyle and you get them to eat real food, the testosterone comes back and their ability to burn fat comes back but you have to do the work first. It’s not just calories in; calories out.

And one more thing, men who I worked with who couldn’t lose fat when I run their panels very often I saw sky high oestrogen levels. You’ve got sky high oestrogen levels guys, it is not solely a female hormone but it’s a primary female hormone. It’s what makes women store fat and what-not – right. And so, if you are a man and you have high oestrogen levels, you are not going to be able to lose fat the way that you want to. And no matter how much you diet and exercise it’s not going to help you. You have to find the root cause and I explain that stuff in the book.

Brett: “Excellent. Thanks for sharing that.” So I guess in regards to, “We keep talking about just eating real food and your concept of ‘jerfing’ so let’s go into that a little bit and explain the concept of jerfing and yeah, we’ll go from there man.”

Sean: “Alright.” Well maybe 2 or 3 years ago I’d become so disenchanted with the bloggers here. I mean it was just getting ridiculous like bloggers blogging about other bloggers because they disagreed with the way that they were recommending others to eat. And it was just getting stupid and I thought about; whenever I write a blog or I do anything I always think to myself, “Is my mom going to understand this?”

Because if my mom doesn’t get it then I probably shouldn’t be posting it because that’s the typical person who is out there looking for health information and somebody out there going on Google ‘how to eat’, ‘nutrition tips.’ And they do that and they come up with all these search results, one person says vegan, one person says Atkins, one person says Paleo, one person says something else and it’s pretty ridiculous – right.

And so I started thinking about Weston A. Price and Weston A. Price was a dentist slash nutritionist who actually travelled the globe in the 1930s and lived with, visited, studied the habits of indigenous populations who hadn’t been exposed to white sugar, white flour, pasteurized milk and table salt. They hadn’t been exposed to processed food and they were very healthy people. Completely healthy people who didn’t have dental problems, who didn’t have heart disease, who didn’t have cancer, who lived to old ages. Didn’t have mood disorders or anything like that. And he found that some of these people had high fat diets like the Inuit, the Eskimos or like the Masaai of Africa.

Some people like the Swiss had more carbohydrates in their diet and just a little bit of protein and fat. But the thing is; is that they all had different diets – right, but they were all equally healthy. None of them ate carbohydrates, no not carbohydrates, none of them counted calories I should have said but the common denominator amongst them all is that they just ate real food. They ate what was accessible to them and they didn’t argue about, “Hey, your diet is right and your diet is wrong,” they just ate food – right. And so am thinking, “Hey, a vegan diet may work for one person but it’s not going to work for somebody else.”

I have tried it myself, it doesn’t work for me. I’m a mess if I try a vegan diet. Now your average person out there, I used to do metabolic typing real quick and metabolic typing it would spit out this piece of paper and it said these foods are good for you and these good foods are bad for you. So if you were like a fast utilize you couldn’t eat broccoli, you couldn’t eat garlic and you really just mess with peoples’ minds because you are thinking, “Oh my God! I eat freaking pop tarts and orange juice for breakfast every day. I just want to eat better. That’s it, I just want to eat better.”

And so I said, “Hey, let’s get away from that. Let’s quit making this stuff so complicated and let’s just eat real food.” And the way that we are going to do that is use these sheets to find out what works right for you by tracking your body language and listening to what your body is telling you. If I go out for sushi; lots of carbohydrates, a little bit of protein not so much fat in that meal; am a sleep in an hour. If I make myself a steak with a little bit of vegetables on the side and a lot of butter on there, am good for like 5; 6 hours. Perfect – right. I know my body, I know that as soon as you put a meal in front of me I know exactly how it’s going to make me feel.

However, most people are going to the sandwich shop for lunch eating this super high processed food and wondering why they are half asleep an hour later at their desk because they don’t think about it. They don’t make the connection between here is what I eat and here is how I feel. Your body will tell you when you are doing it right and your body will tell you when you are doing it wrong – right. The problem is that when you are doing it right most people get freaked out because they think they are going to die of a freaking heart attack because they are eating more meat which is a whole other stuff.

But that’s how jerfing came about and so it’s just eat real food and it’s just real basic. It is meat, poultry, fish, it is fruits here and there, vegetables, it is gluten free grains if tolerable and I am kind of on the fence right now of whether or not I even want to say gluten free grains period. Some good unpasteurized raw milk. I am not a fan of the pasteurized type of milk. If you are going to have a milk make sure it is whole fat like, “God did not put fat in the milk to kill you. No, it doesn’t work that way.”

Having eggs if they are tolerable. I can’t eat eggs. I know that about myself, if I eat eggs I get all flemmy. That’s my body’s reaction to it. And good clean water and you are good to go. Although a little bit of nuts and seeds and some healthy fats and oils like olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil – it’s not so bad,butter, kalo, even lard. Those are real foods that have been eaten since darn near the beginning of time and people were healthy because of them and I can’t understand how in like the 1900s all of a sudden they started causing disease.

Like the food just made up its mind and said, “Hey you know what, today we are going to start causing disease,” even though people have been eating them for billions of years. It doesn’t make any sense, you know what am saying, when you really think about it. So that’s just eating real food and it’s sweeping the nation right now.

Brett: “Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more.”And all of our following is we always promote just eating clean healthy foods. Clean eating is obviously, you just need to look at it and go, “Well it actually doesn’t sound all that hard when you look at it from a perspective of what do I eat.” You have just outlined in detail exactly what someone could take right now. Create your own meal plans and be happy and healthy for the rest of your life. But the problem that we do have is like you said with this marketing companies and big shopping chains etc. promoting foods that are supposedly healthy but aren’t healthy.

So let’s look at that because I know a lot of it stems from the whole grains, wheat, corn etc. So can you give us your overview on what your thoughts are on the grain, wheat, corn and cereals and that type of stuff there.

Sean: Well, I mean, grains to me really aren’t real food. You might be able to get away with some gluten free oats, you might be able to get away with some mellow even though it’s been shown to cause some issues with the thyroid, maybe some buckwheat but I am not really a big fan of grains period. One thing that I used to do with my clients when I was doing health coaching is that I would take all my clients off of grains, not even just gluten containing grains but just grains period for thirty days.

And 9.9 times out of 10, even though it was a little at first for that first week, 9.9 times out of 10 they felt so much better when they took out the grains. Grains, as a lot of people know these days, contain gluten which is just a protein within the grains that is very damaging to the gut lining and causes many problems not just in the gut but according to Dr. Thomas O’bryan who’s my man, he is a major gluten expert, I want to say 7 out of 8 people who have gluten sensitivity don’t have any digestive problems.

It can manifest itself on your skin so you could be having skin breakouts and you are putting all types of creams all over your body but it’s not really as cream deficiency as the fact that you’re eating toast every morning. Another place in your body that’s very susceptible to gluten sensitivity would be the brain. So how many people do you know that who have brain fog and depression and their memory starting to go and they kind of blame this whole memory thing on aging and they are like 30 something years old if it goes.

You should have a strong brain all the way to the day that you go, you what am saying, but these foods that we are consuming especially the grains; the gluten is not only causing inflammation and problems with their brain house but also it’s the fact that these whole wheat, heart healthy products that we are consuming are sky high on the glycaemic index. I posted a blog today, the title of it was: Is Whole Wheat worse than a Candy Bar? And it is. If you look at the glycaemic index and you compare a slice of whole wheat bread to a snickers bar, the whole wheat bread is actually worse for your blood sugar than your sneakers bar but most people wouldn’t think that.

So the blood sugar spike that’s caused by all of these again quote on quote ‘heart healthy grains’ are causing inflammation to the brain as well as to the rest of the body because of the fact that it causes this major spikes in sugar as well as insulin. And when you have sky high insulin like that there is something in your brain called Amyloid Plaque that needs to be cleared out. If it is not cleared out, it can lead to Alzheimer’s but one thing that keeps your brain from clearing out amyloid plaque is insulin resistance caused by excessive carbohydrates in the diet specifically wheat, gluten and all the processed crap out there.

Corn, I mean, most corn these days is genetically modified which is a huge problem especially all the processed stuff that you see out there. Most of these genetically modified which has its own problems that I won’t get into today, probably a topic for another show. But if you’re going to have some corn on the cob, I’m not mad at it. That’s no problem however if there’s corn syrup or corn something as an ingredient in the food that you are consuming, you may want to not consume it. I mean speaking of ingredients you don’t want to really eat foods that have ingredients in the first place. An apple is an apple, beef is beef and what-not.

“You mentioned soy, you mentioned… am sorry. You mentioned corn, you mentioned wheat. What was the other?”

Brett: “What does is other then soy? I think everyone would be interested in knowing your opinion on soy. What’s your opinion around that because it’s not one of those things to take?” So let’s drop truth bomb on that.

Sean: Soy is not really food. Soy has never, I don’t think, really been approved by the FDA as a real food product. Soy used to be used for making glues, I believe it was. It’s got many different problems, it is goitrogenic which means that it can cause problems with the thyroid. It’s loaded with trypsin inhibitors and trypsin is an enzyme that helps you to digest protein and so it inhibits that particular enzyme so you don’t digest protein very well when you consume lots of soy. It’s loaded with phytic acid which strongly binds onto the important minerals in the soy so just Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc, Copper, Iron on and on.

So even though you might see something that says soy is high in calcium or whatever, you are not really absorbing it because of the fact that it is high in these phytic acid. A lot of people believe that soy is also oestrogenic so it causes increases in oestrogen levels. So the guys out there who are dealing with man boobs, what we call them out here, and one of the reasons why is because we are consuming so many soy products.

There are some safe forms of soy for example there is a fermented soy products like Natto, Miso, Tempeh as well as Tamari sauce. The fermentation process actually gets rid of all the anti-nutrients that are in there, so that’s a good thing. So those are ok to consume but Soy Chips and Edamame and all of this stuff, that’s not really something that you should be consuming. And actually it’s hard to find any soy these days that’s not genetically modified. I want to say like 80 to 90 percent of it in my country in the United States is genetically modified and so that’s just a big enough reason to not consume it – period.

Brett: “Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more there.” So, I guess, let’s change tact a little bit here and have a little bit of fun with it. “If you were to be given power tomorrow and you were to change all the health laws or the way in which things are marketed etc. what would some of your policies you’d bring in around through in the whole health industry?”

Sean: “I would make the Just Eat Real Food pyramid. It would be awesome. It would be so cool.”

Brett: Laughs..

Sean: It would be like… there would be no grains on it. The base of the pyramid would be like grass fed beef and pastured pork, pastured poultry, good free range organic eggs; pastured eggs I should say. There would be water there because people don’t drink enough water. There would be bacon on there for sure. There would be like lots of good vegetables. There would be sweet potatoes, “Man!” There would be some little bit of nuts here and there.

And then at the top of the pyramid would be like your 20% foods. Like so every once in a while you just feel like getting buck wild and having some fun and just indulge in some chocolate cake, do it to keep your sanity, to have some fun and enjoy yourself. That would be the first thing. Number two I would make like Joel Salatin, “Do you know who Joel Salatin is?”

Brett: “No, I don’t. I think I am not aware of.

Sean: So Joel Salatin is like one of the head real food farmers in the States. He was featured in Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma book. He was also one of the lead farmers in the movie called Food, Inc. Joel Salatin is amazing and he is a true farmer and knows how to rebuild the soil. And I think Joel Salatin would be like the Head of like the USDA, like running our agricultural system because what we are doing by way of this conventional farming practises is destroying our soil.

And when you destroy the soil, you destroy the health of the people because that soil no longer has the nutrients that it needs to put into the food so people can eat it and be healthy. Our soils are depleted and it is reflected in the health of the people. And so he would be my guy, him and Alan Savory. Alan Savory is a guy who can take like desserts and actually make them fertile zones again. “I mean, that’s huge.” If your audience has a chance go to YouTube and just put in Alan Savory; A.L.A.N S.A.V.O.R.Y and watch his TedTalk and see what he is doing with some of these desertified lands.

Savory is using cattle and what-not in order to cause the servants of the land to aerate the land, to get water back into the soil and to create soil where people can actually grow food where they couldn’t grow it before. Like we have a serious problem, not just in my country but in the world right now because we are running out of land to grow food on. “That’s not good.” And so those would be some of the first things that I’d do with the food system.

I would also, here is the thing, like right now in the States we have this whole ObamaCare going on and people are whining, “Like I don’t really keep up with it,” and what-notbut people are like whining and complaining about how much money it’s going to cost and how we think it’s socialism and all this stuff and Health Care is expensive – right? But Health Care is expensive… “Like have you ever seen how much an X-ray costs? Have you ever seen how much an MRI costs? Or like a prosthetic limb?” Like I was watching like Bill Maher the other day and they are like this prosthetic limb costs like $350 to produce but they sell it for like $35,000 to the patient. “Like that’s crazy.”

So I would go in there to and fix this pricing system that they’ve got going on because these device selling and prescription drug companies, the margins that there are getting on the stuff that they are selling to the patients is stupid and now that money is being funnelled from publically paid for Health Insurance, Health Care. And it’s crazy. It’s making these companies super rich and we are missing the point on it. So that would be something that I would address as well. “It’s crazy!” 

Brett: “Excellent!” Well what we’ll do is we’ll send out a petition and get you into the Government and we’ll see what happens.”

Sean: “Oh man, you keeping it real. I would get assassinated. I’m just going to be honest with you.”

Brett: Laughs

Sean: “It would be

Brett: “… piece of chocolate bar.” So just a couple of things that popped up for me there and I know that this is one of the questions that we did have down here is, I noticed you mentioned bacon and every American and Canadian friend that I have they love bacon. So, talk to me about bacon and your thoughts on, “Is bacon a healthy food to have as part of your diet?”

Sean: “Absolutely.” Bacon is a perfectly healthy food that really got a bad rap for a long time along with its side kick eggs. If it is a good pastured, properly raised bacon, I’m all for it. Yes, I think that bacon might be something that you don’t want to have every daybecause it is a little bit high in the polyunsaturated fats. So that is something to keep in mind. However, it is very tasty and I would much rather somebody have bacon for breakfast than cereal – easy.

Brett: “Excellent. Couldn’t agree more.” So before we finish up this interview because I know I could talk all day and ask you questions and I definitely get your passion when you speaking about this. So it’s really something to be on here with you but I just want to finish off with just a couple of more questions.  And one being, “What advice would you give to someone out there who is listening to this going, “Oh jeez, right now am currently eating bread and wheat. And I’m not losing wait, I’m stuck on a plateau,” what would your first initial tips be for this person?”

Sean: “You said they are eating wheat or they are not?”

Brett: “They are. They are sitting there going, “Well I was brought up to believe bread was healthy.”

Sean: “Ok. I got you.” Alright, so I would say…

Brett: Just a quick example. Sorry. Just a quick example is as a child I was brought up to believe that white bread was healthy. So we had white bread sandwiches every day for school. And so I learnt about this.. How bad it actually is for you. So for the person who is in a similar boat.

Sean: “Okay, I got a quote and it was one of the things that we lead off the book with. It’s that Albert Einstein quote: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different results.” And so what you want to do is do something different and for this individual that something different is to get rid of the grains. Just let it go. Just do an experiment. I’m not saying get rid of them forever. Just do an experiment for 3 weeks, 21 days; no grains. Eat real food and see what happens in those 21 days. That’s it. Start with 14 days – right.

Just do that and just see if it works for you. Cut out like all the soda that you might be eating or drinking, the juice that you are drinking as well and just make those 2 small really tiny modifications and just see what happens with you. And I think that it will completely… You’ll lose weight, you’ll feel better and it will reinforce you to keep going and start to make more changes because I think one problem that people have is they change too much too fast. And when you do that, you end up finding yourself back in the same position.

So when you just do this little things very slowly and you see success after a couple of weeks, it kind of gets you fired up for that next thing that you are going to do.And so cut out the grains, cut out the soda, cut out the juice. Drink some water and go from there.

Brett: “Excellent advice. Thanks a lot there buddy.” So, look let’s just finish off with where can… and I will put these notes underneath this particular podcast so for anyone listening through iTunes you just head over to fiitchick.com.au so that is f.i.i.tchick.com.au, click on podcasts and you will see this episode show up there. “But for the person who doesn’t go and do that Sean where can people find out about you and more about what you are about.”

Sean:  You can go to my main website which is

undergroundwellness.com, jump on the email list. I send out the email every Tuesday and Friday. Tuesdays is when we do the radio shows so I’ll be doing that later on today and then Friday is when I send out my latest video. So Friday 9am Pacific Time is when I send that out. You can also follow me on Facebook; facebook.com/undergroundwellness. Those are my two main hubs.

Brett: “Excellent.” So is there any… “I will give you the last word there Sean.” So any last words of advice you would give our listeners.

Sean: “JERF! Just Eat Real Food. That’s it!”

Brett: “I love it. Alright brother thanks again for your time and we look forward to talking to you very soon as well and we will get this all over to you very shortly.”

Sean: “Thank you very much.”

Brett: “Alright Sean. Take care.”

Sean: “Hey thanks Brett. Man, I appreciate everything you’ve done man and just let me know if you need help on anything else.”

Brett: “Perfect. Will do.”

Sean: “Alright buddy. Have a good one.”

Brett: “Bye.”

Sean: “Bye.”

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