Transcript
Zack Arnold: I’m here today with podcast sensation Monica Daniel and NAB show reel sensation Sian Fever. I’m very very excited about the show today because both Monica and Sian have pretty much been on this crazy fitness imposed journey with me since day one. They’ve seen the many iterations of the different things that we’ve done with the program-they’ve been in challenge groups, they’ve been in Facebook groups, so they really are kind of you know beta members. Like I think Monica’s literally beta member, like two, and Sian, you’re probably like beta member I don’t know 10 or 15. So you guys have been have been around for a while and have gotten to know both of you very well, and I’m so excited to have you on board all the all the stuff that I’ve been doing so far and getting all the support? So thank you so much for being on the show today.
Monica Daniel: Thank you so much for having us, Zack. So the
Zack Arnold: Reason that this the idea for this show came up today is because sometime I don’t remember exactly when, but it was sometime in I think December, and you guys might remember more specifically within the period of about four days, with no connection between the two of you whatsoever, Monica contacted me, and then Sian contacted me, both saying, “I am going cold turkey on sugar. I am cutting all the sugar out of my life, and I want to see what happens. And all three of us are absolute sugar junkies. And for those that might be new to the podcast, you’re thinking a fitness podcast run by a guy that’s a sugar junkie. Yes, I am an absolute sugar junkie, and that’s part of the reason that I started this journey. Is I just realized that this was a problem that I had to fix. So I just want to talk today about your experiences. First of all, with where you started, as like how how your world actually was so centered on sugar, and I know that you know Monica, you’ve posted pictures of you know cookies and donuts and cakes in the office, and this is this is a really big problem in our industry. And I don’t want there to be policies where there’s no donuts allowed, no sugar allowed, no cookies allowed in like post production facilities. This is not about removing things; it’s about giving people the education and the option to find better choices, once they have the knowledge and understand the how sugar can actually be your kryptonite, like it is to me. So let’s just go. We’ll start with Monica, then we’ll jump into to Sian. Monica, just kind of give the audience a background of your relationship with sugar. So let’s start from there.
Monica Daniel: Well, I’ll start off with I love cookies. I love baking them. I love eating them right after they come out of the oven, and I have recently, actually. And you know, I’m the person who will eat the frosting off of the cake and leave like the pastry part and just eat the frosting. I just I love sugar. I’m not a big cereal person, but it’s just like the frosting, the cookies, and it’s funny because I don’t go into like a lot of times at work they’ll bring in like really fancy pastries, and I just want the cat in Starburst. And so, but my big thing is cookies, and I just I love sugar. I love I’ve always had a sweet tooth, and I I still do, still very strongly do have a sweet tooth. I have to say, I indulged myself over the Christmas break without feeling guilty about it. But yeah, I just like I’m the worst with it. It’s so bad, so that now I have the PAs in the office when they see me going near the sweet stuff. I’m like, stop me, and they’re like, okay, we will. And they will if they just see me walking by the pastries, even if I’m not looking at them, they’ll actually like yell at me from across the room. Don’t do it. I’m like, okay, okay, okay, I won’t. So it’s kind of funny.
Zack Arnold: All right, let’s move on to you now, Sian, and let’s talk a little bit about your relationship with sugar, because I know that you and I have had several email conversations back and forth, and even a couple of podcast conversations about this. So let’s let’s talk about where you started,
Sian Fever: I have just the worst relationship with sugar. I would look at a packet of Maryland cookies. I’m assuming you guys have Maryland cookies, right? You must do. And I would look at a packet of those and be like, “Yeah, that’s a that’s a pretty okay dinner, and right. And I would eat chocolate bars, and I would eat chocolate and big dang cookies until I felt sick, and then I would wait until I didn’t feel sick anymore, and then I would keep eating the cookies and the chocolate, and I could just go round that cycle like a few times, like in the evening,
Monica Daniel: I’ve done that multiple times too,
Sian Fever: Actually. And it was just, it was just always around. It was always a substitute for for dinner or when I’d get home from school. Like there’d just be a whole cupboard full of cookies, and I certainly didn’t realize just what I was doing to myself or the effect that it was having, and I would-I realized about a year and a half ago I was working in a trailer house, and I love-I mean, I love movies and I love trailers and I love cutting them. And I would have like a chocolate bar after my lunch, and in the afternoon I would feel like. Nothing in the world would make me happy. I had been loving what I was cutting in the morning, and I’d be still in the same project. But like 20 minutes after this chocolate bar, I would just be really demotivated, really depressed. And it took me a while to pick up on that. But the you know daily chocolate bars, daily biscuits. If there was cake for someone’s birthday, like I’d be going back for seconds, or I’d be the first in the line, everything and anything. And if it was there, I’d know it was there. If there was anything in the office or at home, like I’d be like a hawk, and I’d be all over it. So that’s kind of where I started.
Zack Arnold: Yes, and I can say that both of those stories sound very familiar. Like when you laughed and said, “Oh well, you know, sometimes I’ll just have these cookies for dinner. I’ve had entire boxes of fruity pebbles for dinner, and it wasn’t 20 years ago. Like it’s within the span of the last year, two, three years where it’s like, “Yeah, sure, I don’t feel like making anything. I’m just gonna have a box of fruity pebbles, and you just kind of. It’s funny because you said, “Well, I would eat them and until it made me sick. And I’m always thinking to myself, like, you know, I’m a scientist, and I’m going to eat this box of fruity pebbles, and it’s going to make me sick, and that’s going to teach me that I’m not going to like it anymore. It’s almost like the the clockwork orange theory, right? And then the next day, nope, I still want to have another box of fruity pebbles. So you know it just doesn’t work. As soon as you’re not sick anymore, you just want more. We’ll we’ll go into that a little bit later in the show, just kind of talking about why that’s actually happening. And I’m I’m not going to dig too deep into the science because I’m not a nutritionist, I’m not a certified dietitian, but I am definitely a food science geek and a nutrition geek. So I I know a little bit more than the average bear, and we’ll we’ll kind of go into some of the basics. But first, what I’d like to do is talk about how you guys decided I’m just going to go cold turkey because I’d actually asked both of you. You know, was there a program? Was there a system? You’re just like, nope. I’m just cutting it out of my life. So let’s go ahead. We’ll we’ll start with we’ll go back to you, Monica.
Monica Daniel: My husband actually kind of acted as a catalyst for it because when I was working on Minority Report, it was pretty like we talked. It was crazy hours. It was really stressful, and I would do really gross things like just to try to get through the day. I think one weekend I had like four Pop-Tarts in one day, which is really gross when you think about it. And it’s just like pure sugar, but it’s I was doing things like that to get through the day. I was like putting on weight. I was just feeling sluggish and not feeling good. Couldn’t fit in my clothes, and I was like, oh my god, I don’t know what to do. And then my husband surprised me with something called because I’m I’m just like I feel like an idiot when it comes to like food and eating the right foods because I always seem to make wrong choices or choices that I think are good choices, but I actually aren’t. And so my husband signed me up for. He found a Groupon for something called personal trainer food, where it’s basically it’s like the meal prep program where they pre-cook stuff and then they like freeze it and you put it in your freezer and then you just warm it up, and it’s like really healthy food. It’s mostly like vegetables and like meats and like eggs for breakfast. And so it’s this whole program. And the whole point is, it’s um the point of they want to put you in ketosis to help you lose weight, just so you kind of have a better understanding of like how to eat. So the way I took it is, I was like, well, now I have to do it because you just spent all this money, and it’s like a month worth of food, and I would feel like such a jerk. And this is what I’ve been wanting to do anyway, and so it was like a good kick in the butt. And I felt I would feel guilty if I didn’t stick to it because I know that’s the big problem people have is like trying to stick to. This is kind of like was an extreme thing for me to do to just like go on this like health food kick of these prepared meals because I hate cooking and it’s all food that I could cook myself but I hate cooking I just hate it so it’s it’s all stuff I would it’s like just a bunch of steamed vegetables and like chicken and just various things and so what that did is it was pretty strict, but I kind of picked and choose some of the advice the program gave me. So what I liked about that program was it was food I would eat, so like plain steamed vegetables didn’t have any extra sauces, and they gave you like this like garlic butter sauce that you could put on for more flavoring, or you could season it if you want, and then just like I just I like eating chicken, so just simple things like that. So I’m like, okay, this is food I would eat. It tastes good to me, but other parts of the program were like, hey, if you’re feeling cravings, go ahead and have a diet soda to help curve those cravings. I was like, nope, not gonna do
Zack Arnold: It. Yeah, they just lost my endorsement?
Monica Daniel: Nope. Yeah, I mean, I and I’ve actually a couple people wanted to start on the program because they’ve seen me bring it to work, and I I give them that caveat. I’m like, look, I don’t I don’t like follow it to the letter as far as diet cola is bad, so I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to do is drink some water, or actually, what I do for. Afternoon snacks help curb. Is I’ll have Shakeology with water as my afternoon snack. You know, I’ll eat almonds. So it’s like I kind of pick and choose. Like I don’t think it’s like the 100% best program, but it was it works for me because it has enough of what I need. And then the things that I know I don’t want to do as far as what they’re recommending, I don’t do, and I’ve actually it was really beneficial. But it was pretty much cold turkey, no more eating sugars, and that first week was rough. It was really rough and hard, and because there was like food everywhere, you know, they bring donuts every week, they order pizza, and you know, I was I started it right when I was new at my current job, so it was like you know that whole. And we talked about this before, like the food bonding eating culture of the offices. Like I’m experiencing that now, but I just I just held firm, and I was like, no, guys, you know, I got to do this. I need to eat healthier, and and they you know they would ask every day, but they they understood eventually, and they they knew to stop asking me if I wanted donuts or pizza. So it was it was rough, and still I actually lost 10 pounds in that first month, just like eating healthy. But as far as like continuing with how extreme that was, I’m looking at is this is training me how to select the right foods and how to like make that conscious choice. No, don’t eat that candy. No, don’t eat that. Don’t reach for almonds because almonds are kind of my replacement for candy now. You know, I don’t overdo it, but you know because they’re little bite-sized pieces, it just kind of satisfies that little like mental craving of me wanting to eat something small and bite size and have them in my hand and pop them in my mouth. So that’s what I use the almonds for. So it kind of helps just kind of change my mental outlook on how I’m eating. Not to say I would continue as extreme as that was to me. It’s kind of like a a little bit of a mini boot camp to get me in the right foot throughout the holidays, it was really hard to try to eat as healthy as I could. You know, I had a pastry here and there. You know, I enjoyed my mashed potatoes or whatnot, and so I’m just kind of using it to train me to make better choices. So it’s taking what I want out of that program, and it’s just helpful for me because I could just pop the bags out of the freezer into my lunch bag and run to work because my other big weakness is I just hate cooking. This last week I was really bad just because I was like you know I’m gonna enjoy it and not feel guilty and then I’m actually starting another like extreme month where I’m like really sticking to the no sugar again because it I don’t want to do the thing where it’s like oh I give up I know it’s gonna be a process for me to just get past my mental craving for sugar, and so it’s like okay, now I’m going extreme again to try to get me to do it, and then afterwards I’ll I’ll probably go lax, and it’s probably something I would do like the extreme low no sugar for every couple months possibly, but I’m not going to like kick myself for eating a pizza when I’m not in that mode.
Zack Arnold: Since you’ve kind of brought this, been talking about kind of your your experience of going through the process of not eating it. One thing that I did real quick, just as a sidebar, is I brought up the actual ingredients and pop tarts because you said that you were kind of sustaining yourself. And I’m just going to read them really really quickly because the one of the things I want to make sure I differentiate by the end of this show for people that just nobody at this point thinks sugar is good for them. Like you don’t need to sit here and prove the point. Sugar is good for you. No, they’re wrong. It’s not bad. Like those days are over. However, what people don’t understand is how pervasive sugar is in everything, and it’s not just looking for sugar. So I’m just I’m going to read through some of the first ingredients in a pop tart, enriched flour, which is basically code for the sugar.
Zack Arnold: It’s code for sugar, but it’s it’s basically flour that has been stripped of any and all nutrients. So it’s just chemically created white flour that really is metabolized very very similarly to table sugar. Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, soybean and palm oil, sugar, cracker meal, and it just goes on and on and on from there, including things like red 40, yellow six. I can’t imagine there being something that has a lot more stuff in it that your body just does not want than a pop tart. And I’ll tell you, I used to have pop tarts for breakfast every single day. So I am no saint. I love brown sugar, cinnamon, pop tarts. Literally, they are just like heroin to me. Like my my little eyes will turn into cartoon character pinwheels when I eat them. But there’s a reason for that, and one thing that I wanted to touch on and go back to is you had mentioned my mental craving to sugar, and people need to understand that it’s not a mental craving to sugar. It’s a physical craving to sugar-it’s a neurological process that’s happening, where they’ve actually proven now that the dopamine receptors and the craving receptors in your brain are activated eight times more by sugar than they are by cocaine or heroin. So when somebody says, “Oh yeah, you know, I’m a you know a sugarholic, they kind of throw it away. Like it’s a joke, it’s not, and the food companies know this. So I’m not going to go too deep down the rabbit hole, but I wanted to kind of throw that in there and maybe go back later. But now I want to go over to you, Sian. I kind of go through the similar process, except with you, you had no program, and Monica’s yours really wasn’t specifically here’s a sugar detox program. You just decided you were going to incorporate that to get the most out of what you’re doing and get your money’s worth. But Sian, you just were like, enough is enough. So let’s talk a little bit about your process, and I want to understand how it felt going through it, and just kind of what the journey was.
Sian Fever: Yeah, I think Zack, you had introduced me to the concept that sugar. There was more to met the eye with sugar that it wasn’t just a bad thing, you know. It wasn’t just ah, like fat or a bit too much butter or whatever. But there was this other dimension to it that meant that the behavior around it for some people resembled addiction, and that’s not to say that it is an addiction. It’s not, you know, when we say like sugar addiction, it’s it’s a popular term that we, you know, people have have coined, and the jury is certainly out on whether it is addictive or not. I don’t think the medical community has sort of settled on that yet, and there’s lots of research that’s out there that’s sort of being done, I think, but there’s nothing kind of concrete aside from a couple of studies that I think you’re probably very aware of, but back in August, I was on a job. I was on a music job, and it was multicam, and we had a very quick turnover. And I love music multicam jobs. I love them. And we were on site. I forget which festival it was, but we had been on site for two days, and then we had got a cab, I think, back to London through the night, and then we were we were due to start the next day. I had two festivals really close to each other, so I might be just like mulching the two stories together. But we had a really really quick turnaround, and there was when we got back into London, there was four editors in one very small meeting room, and we were really packed into this room and in the middle of summer with like a wheeled-in aircon unit and our chairs bumping against each other, and I got really stressed. I was really feeling the pressure of how much work we had to get done, how many tracks we had to edit a day, how many bands we had to get through, and there was so much programming. I mean, the schedule was was a lot, and the team was amazing, but I was really feeling the pressure. And there was a Tesco, a supermarket, kind of on the way in. And I think I’d done a couple of days, and I just woke up that morning in August, just feeling like I needed to lean on something. And my very my typical response in an edit or when I’m feeling stressed or upset is I’m suddenly eating chocolate, and there’s no decision process. There’s no hmm, what shall I do about this stress? I think I’ll go to the shop, and I think I’ll buy a thing, and then I’ll consume it. I feel stress, and without really consciously making the decision, I’m reaching for that food that will make me feel better, which is chocolate or biscuits. And I went to the supermarket and I bought like five or six chocolate bars. I mean, just in case I was going to run out. You know, like let’s just buy more than I thought I could reasonably consume across the course of the day. And I bought a few different ones and I carried them under. That was all that was in the the carrier bag that I had. And I got into the office about 930 and I got in a bit before everyone, and people were having breakfast in the kitchen, and it’s a really cool open office, and it feels like a startup company, and everyone’s getting in and making their coffees and cooking their breakfast. And before I knew it, before the other editors had shown up, I had eaten everything in the bag, and just beside me was this plastic bag of shame with empty chocolate bars, and it wasn’t the physical feeling of being sick. I was looking at it, feeling disgusted, and this was not an uncommon behavior at all. This was routine, and I I think it was the fact that it was like five or six chocolate bars within the space of half an hour. It was I ate them all in the space of half an hour, and I just that was the destroyer that broke the camel’s back, and I’d had this sense of amnesia.
Sian Fever: Every time you eat chocolate and you feel bad, you sort of forget because the strength of your want and your desire for that thing is stronger than your memory of how bad it made you feel. And so, from that point on, I just I realized that I was probably one of these people who couldn’t say no. I couldn’t just have one, and that would have to cut out entirely. So from that moment on, I didn’t. I just decided that I couldn’t. It was very bad for me, and I needed to stop it. And that first week, we were still in this edit suite. We still got this aircon little aircon unit, and I’m. I haven’t really told anyone I’m doing this. I’ve just kind of decided, and I feel all those feelings of shame and disgust, and like I’m trying to concentrate on my work, but it’s like there’s a siren going off in my head, kind of blowing like chocolate. You want chocolate? You want chocolate? You want chocolate? You want chocolate? Because now I’m now I’m not having it. Of course, it’s the only thing that I can possibly think about. And one of the other editors, they had bought this massive bar of chocolate because this is what editors do when they get stressed: they borrow it by a massive. If like box or bar of chocolate, and they put it on the aircon unit, and then the whole room smelt of chocolate, and so I was just trying to get through that first week of not having anything, and it was it was one. I think it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Honestly, I would sustain or like resist the cravings by leaning into them. I I could taste and I could feel those types of foods in my mouth so clearly. I didn’t need to eat them, and that was how I kind of got through my first week. And occasionally, I’d go into the kitchen and sniff the jars of Nutella and then put them down and run away again. And I eventually I got through the first month, and I was really, really, really proud of myself for getting through the first month, and I thought, okay, maybe maybe I’ve broken the back of this. Maybe I am home free. Maybe I could start to reintroduce some things. Maybe I could just have one biscuit. Maybe I could have just one slice of cake. And so I started very slowly testing those boundaries. And there was a birthday cake in the office, and I I tried tasting like the tiniest, tiniest morsel of of icing, and it didn’t taste how it did anymore. Like it had before, it tasted like this weird sugar mousse thing. I was like, oh, I don’t like that. Okay, that’s fine. I don’t like that. Weird, but don’t like that. And then I tried a biscuit, and I thought, I like that biscuit, and I don’t feel like I need another one. But the next day I had three, and the next day I had seven, and the next day was a Saturday, and I bought myself a chocolate cake and just sat and ate the whole thing. So, my story is, I think, is quite extreme, and I think it needs a bit of like an extreme treatment, as it were. And I don’t think this is going to be the case for most people who are deciding to get rid of sugar, but I had a really, I had a really, really hard time, and I didn’t have any sugar replacements. I didn’t have any sweeteners and any honey or agar nectar or anything like that because I didn’t want to keep the craving alive. I just really needed that, really needed that gone. And about four months in, which I think was around the time I emailed you, Zack, I finally didn’t feel plagued by anymore. It wasn’t an everyday struggle anymore, and it was only a struggle when I was in like Marks and Spencers, and you’re queuing up for the till, and they’ve got chocolate like either side, and this like weaving gauntlet of sugar either side of you, and you’re like, I just, I just really need to get out of here.
Sian Fever: And Christmas, Christmas was really hard, and all the kind of the cravings that I’ve been dealing with every day came came back because it was just in my face all the time, and I’m a very outside out of mind person. So if it’s not in the house, it’s not around me. I don’t. It doesn’t bother me too much. But at Christmas time, of course, everyone’s offering you things and sharing things and and that kind of thing. So that’s that’s me and my relationship with sugar. Really, it’s shameful. Like I’m embarrassed talking to you about it.
Zack Arnold: Well, I I want to stop you right there because I don’t want you to be embarrassed, and I know that you have like the plastic bag of shame. This should be a T-shirt. Like that’s amazing, but I don’t think you should feel ashamed. And I think when you say, “Well, you know, my case is really extreme, and I don’t think other people will go through this, the sad thing-not sad for you. The sad thing for society is your story is normal, and I know because I’ve read many, many other stories like this. So when you say that, oh, you know, I spent this time and you know was completely off of it, then I slowly introduce something into it, and then four days later I’m eating an entire chocolate cake. That’s not uncommon because you’re feeding the chemical addiction that your brain has to sugar, so it’s not just a matter of you don’t have a lot of willpower, or you’re a weak person, or you’re a shameful person. This is a chemical addiction that develops in the brain, and the brain desires that. It’s like when you were saying you could actually taste the chocolate, and it certainly didn’t help that they had the chocolate smell radiating throughout the room. That certainly doesn’t make it any easier, but that literally is that’s a neurological trigger. When you smell that chocolate, that is a trigger that goes off in your brain, and those dopamine receptors start saying, “I want it! I want it! I want it! That’s why you have companies like Cinnabon. I don’t know if you have those in in London, but there’s a company called Cinnabon in the U.S. and they are in malls, and they just make these really gooey, you know, just these cinnamon sweet buns that are literally just sugar bombs, and they’re delicious. They’re so freaking good, but they specifically don’t put the Cinnabon stores or the mrs. Field stores in the food court, and it’s not because of any kind of you know specific you know geographical reason or whatever they specifically say we want to be away from the other foods. So when you walk by our stores, the only thing that you smell is our cookies or our cinnamon buns because that is a neurological trigger that instigates the craving in your brain that says I must have this now. So you don’t walk into a mall thinking I really need a Cinnabon right now, but as soon as you smell it, that trigger goes off. Your neurology, your all your neurons go crazy, and those dopamine receptors are saying I must have, I must have, I must have. So I don’t want you to feel any sense of shame because you don’t have willpower or you made these decisions. That’s what I want people to start. Understanding and the information I want to get out there is that it isn’t you. The food companies actually understand all the science, and they are genetically engineering foods and scientifically engineering them to have the maximum amount of what they actually call the bliss factor, where you have a reaction where you just say, “Oh my God, this is so good. They do this with crunch. They do this with sweetness, where they will literally change the amounts of crunch or sweetness in a food by micro amounts until they scientifically get the most out of it, where they know that people are going to have the maximum amount of craving. I’ll actually put a link to an article that talks about this bliss factor and insiders in the food industry that are now starting to anonymously blow the whistle on the fact that this is how the food industry works. So I don’t want either of you to be thinking, “Oh my God! Well, I’m so ashamed because I just want to have the the cookies or the cake. Like this is way bigger than just people that are weak and don’t have willpower. This is a much much bigger issue. I want to get back to you, Monica. But one quick thing that I wanted to mention, based on what you had said, Sian, that I think is a really interesting thought process that a lot of people go through. Is you said, well, I didn’t, I wasn’t sweetening, you know, any of my foods with sweeteners or agave nectar or whatever it is.
Zack Arnold: And most people don’t realize that sugar isn’t just sugar. Sugar is so many different things, and they have now I don’t know the exact amount, but roughly 80% of the food supply, at least in this country, it’s probably a little bit less now in the the UK and in Europe because there are much stricter food standards over there than there are here. Nobody gives a crap what’s in our food in the US, but over 80% of our food supply has some form of sugar or sweetener in it. But most people will look and say, “Oh, well, there’s no sugar in here. It’s because it’s hidden under other things, and agave nectar is one of the biggest culprits. Or somebody will say, “Oh, well, I’m using agave nectar, so it’s healthy. It’s organic agave nectar. And agave nectar actually has a higher glycemic index than table sugar does. So that means that your insulin will actually spike more if you have agave nectar than if you have a spoonful of sugar, and the way that sugar works. Just to give a really, really quick primer, because I want to get back to your stories, and I don’t want to talk too much, but I at least want people to understand this: that when sugar comes into your body, if you have a high amount of sugar in your bloodstream, so if you have high blood sugar, then your pancreas secretes insulin, and it shuttles that extra blood sugar out of the bloodstream, so you can regulate your blood sugar. And what happens is that extra sugar becomes what are called triglycerides, which is a fancy word for fat. So if you’re eating fatty foods, thinking this is why I’m getting fat, it’s not. The reason that you’re gaining weight and accumulating fat on your body is sugar. It’s excess sugar in your bloodstream that’s transported and converted to triglycerides, which is fat. So I want to make sure that people understand that. But the reason that I really wanted to have the show is not so much to geek out on food science, and I certainly know I have the tendency to go down that rabbit hole. But I want to talk so much more about how it affects us as creative professionals. So I first want to go through what you two experienced because you you talked somewhat about how the withdrawal process was hard, but let’s actually specifically go into what withdrawal symptoms you had and the what are the positive things that you saw as far as creativity, focus, sustained energy that you started to experience once the sugar and the sweets were removed. So we’ll go to you, Monica, and then we’ll go to you, Sian.
Monica Daniel: Well, first I want to say to Sian is I don’t think you should feel ashamed at all because I am a sugar addict, obviously, and the way I help fight my cravings is I have my sugar sponsors, which let the PAs at work, my husband, like I, I they make me accountable, so I have someone hold me accountable. So it’s just like, okay, no, I can do this. I’m not going to give in to that stupid craving. And so I actually have people help me get through that. And it’s like a constant thing. And we, I refuse to let them buy any like sweets or sugary stuff in the house because I know we will eat them quickly. So I don’t think you should feel ashamed at all? I I have sponsors as I call them that helps that helps me with my sugar issues. Thank you,
Sian Fever: And thank you for saying. I mean, I don’t. I had such a hard time with it, and whenever I’ve spoken to people, and I haven’t really spoken to many people about it at all. I think you know people on Facebook that are friends of me know that I have done this, but really getting into the bones of what my behaviors were like before. When I have talked to someone about that, there is this dawning look on their face when they realize, “Oh, this is serious, and I didn’t really take it serious before. And now I’ve heard just how bad it was for you and how much of a struggle it was for you. I can see that you need support, and I had said to to people like maybe just treat me like an alcoholic. Think of it in those terms. Like I really don’t want to be around it. I don’t want to be offered it. I don’t want it around me. And and if you think of it in those terms, then it becomes less of a kind of joke, which was the barrier that I had. Explaining this to to people, there have been a couple of instances where I can see that dawning look of realization on someone’s face, and I do feel this kind of deep sense of, oh, you get this now, and I can see from the look on your face, you you think it’s really bad, and I do think it’s really bad, and I’m kind of admitting to that sense of shame because I don’t want anyone who’s listening to this to feel like they’re alone in that feeling, and that if you are feeling that, as you said, it’s it’s not actually a shameful thing, but it’s sort of natural, I think, to feel maybe a bit embarrassed, and especially if you go on a podcast and talk about it to lots and lots of people. But you know, thank you so much encouragement and and your kind words. It’s really it’s really lovely. Go back to
Monica Daniel: Zack’s question. So the the sugar withdrawals. Oh God, I’m about to go through them again this week, and I know it’s gonna suck. So what the first couple days I think were the worst. It’s funny. It’s physical things happen. Like I had weird aches all over my body, and I was like, “What is happening? And I got these horrible headaches. And it’s it’s not like I was starving or anything, but I would be really hungry, and I was like, “But I just ate, and I know I’m full. But why am I feeling so hungry, and I was like, “Okay, maybe I’m thirsty. And one thing I noticed, like cutting the sugars out, I was also I also got really dehydrated because I was eating so much healthier, and my body was just trying to figure out how to process things differently. It was just kind of my body became a mess. Essentially, there was Advil involved because I just I had to get through the workday without like a terrible migraine, and it lasted I think maybe about four days. The second or third day was the worst of it, and so after getting through all in the way I I kind of got through it, I I had to take Advil. I just tried to you know drink as much water as I could get down, which wasn’t very much. That’s another issue I have. I just don’t drink enough water, nearly enough at all. And I just, you know, tried to stay focused on work and distract myself with. It’s like, well, I have all these things I have to do, so since I have to get these things done, I don’t have time to think about that. I really want that cookie that’s on the table over there that someone just brought in, and I would just also just remove myself with the room and try not to look at it at sweets at the time. But yeah, it was just like I felt physically ill, and the aches were. I knew the headaches were going to come because I’ve I’ve gotten headaches before when I did like the Beachbody three day cleanse. The second day is when it usually hits me, but the aches were a little more surprising. I’d had experienced them to that level, and it was just really strange. I found after I kind of went through those withdrawals, you know, I was I wasn’t you know I didn’t feel like snacking as much. You know, when you snack, it’s like you’re just kind of grabbing whatever is readily available within reach, so I didn’t feel like snacking as much on junk. Even you know I would want to snack even when I wasn’t hungry before, and now it’s like I, I didn’t want to snack as much because I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t need to eat, and I was I was more focused. I had more energy. Just things just felt clearer, and it’s funny. I did. It really hit me how much of an effect sugar had on me. So I did this during the holidays, which going to the extremes of completely cutting it out is really hard during the holidays.
Zack Arnold: More power to you for choosing that time of year. By the way,
Monica Daniel: Thank God, because guess what? During Thanksgiving, I did not gain any weight, unlike I’m sure everyone else, I had really healthy meals. I I allowed myself because just the program was super strict, so I I allowed myself a little bit of stuffing, like you know palm size serving of stuffing, a little bit of palm size serving of mashed potatoes. So that’s something that’s like okay, portion sizes. That’s that’s an important thing to to keep in mind, and afterwards, you know, everyone’s having pumpkin pie, and I love pumpkin pie, and I usually put more whipped cream topping on it than there is pie. I didn’t have the whipped cream, and I just kept giving my husband the puppy dog. So I was like, I’ve been so good. Can I just have one little bite of pumpkin pie? He was like, no. It’s like please, just one little bite. He gave me like a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of pumpkin pie. I immediately got this horrible headache and felt sick for a couple hours afterwards. I was like, “Well, that curbed any craving I had for desserts and pumpkin pie, and it was just like it. It was amazing to me. Like my body just could not process that, and it’s just like, why are you eating this crap? We don’t want this, and so it was just it was kind of strange and eye opening how much that one tiny piece of pumpkin pie, like it wasn’t even a spoonful, it was just a tiny piece, and it just made me so sick. So that that kind of helped me. To get through my cravings as well, it’s and it’s one of those things. It’s like I’ve I’ve been a little more sugar lately, where it’s like, oh, I’ll have one piece, and it’s like what Sian was saying. It’s like I’ll have one piece, and it’s funny. You have like a little bite, and you’re like, oh, I feels my head feels slightly weird, but it’s okay. And then the next day, you’re it’s like you’re building up your sugar tolerance again, and then that’s when you just go over the top. Eventually, by the end of the week, and so it’s it’s just so strange how like I could. It’s very obvious how sugar affects me, and how for so many years it’s like, why did I feel like crap for so long? Oh, because I eat sugar in everything, and I didn’t you know realize that was why. That was like a big reason why, but it’s one of those things. It’s like I still want my big ice cream cake for my birthday, but at the same time, I’m like, man, I really don’t want that ice cream cake for my birthday because I know it’s going to make me feel like crap. But it tastes so good.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and well, it’s interesting because pretty much all of the the symptoms that you talked about are very very similar to what happens if you go through alcohol or drug withdrawal, and they again have done studies where they have seen the mirrors, especially in mice and rats, but also in humans, where when you withdraw from cocaine, heroin, any type of opiate, or you withdraw from sugar, you almost can’t differentiate between the withdrawal symptoms, and it sounds like you certainly experience them as well. And the one thing I want to mention before we go to Sian’s experience is you would say you just felt so hungry. That’s because your blood sugar is plummeting, and you’re just craving and craving and craving that to to fix that. And once you get away from that and get through that initial period of three to four days, everything-at least as far as I’m concerned, if I’m going through my experience with sugar, which I won’t go into too deep, but that’s what happens to me. Like you had mentioned, the three day refresh. That to me is like my silver bullet. Whenever I feel like you know what, the sugar cravings are becoming a bit too much. I’m eating too much crap. I need to just hit the reset button. I need to restart the computer. Hit the reset button. The three day refresh is an amazing program, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. I actually did a full review of it, and I now use it like once every three months just to reset my system. And it’s I I’m not a big fan of a lot of Beachbody’s supplements and products, but this is one that just is they hit a home run. But I will find that food, like you said, food starts to taste completely different, and things like broccoli and cauliflower and kale and salmon and all these these things actually taste really good and flavorful. Whereas when I’m eating a lot of sugar and sweets, that stuff tastes like crap because your taste buds readjust. So there are there’s a whole gamut of things that happen to the human body when you’re withdrawing from sugar. So let’s now go to Sian’s side of it, and I’m assuming that these will be fairly similar. But I’d like to hear from your perspective as well.
Sian Fever: Yeah, that it. My kind of withdrawal, if you like, sounds very similar to Monica’s, with the added addition that my gums would really hurt for those first two, three days. It felt like someone had kicked a football into my face. Did you ever like get kicked in the face when you’re in the playground and that like pain that’s just very sustained in your the front of your mouth. It felt like this pressure, like someone was pressing on my mouth and in my jaw, and so that was always a very keen indicator to me that like you need some sugar, you need some chocolate. You you you’ve forgotten to have your chocolate bar today, and so the first few days the physical symptoms are very obvious: headaches, pain in my my gum, jaw, a sort of restlessness that I could never really put a finger on, and put my finger on. And I watched a documentary called That Sugar Film, which I recommend of anyone interested in this. And the person in it describes that process, like giving up smoking. They said it was they haven’t felt that way since they gave up smoking. That just kind of there’s a restlessness inside. It was inside me that I couldn’t quite define, like a kind of anxiety. And like Monica, I when I accidentally had something sugary, like I had some aloe vera juice, and and I was like, Jesus, that’s so sweet. And I hadn’t really, I had, I didn’t realize at all when I look, you know, on the nutritional information on the side, and it’s got a buttload of sugar in it. Okay, that’s something I won’t be drinking. And that that first three months was just full of instances like that, where I’d pick up a thing that I would have all the time, or I really enjoyed, um, or I’d be really crave like sweet and sour chicken, and then I’d realize, oh well, the clue is really in the name. Like, if I should have realized that that’s why I like it because it’s all syrupy and sweet and lovely. And so the first, you know, first months were just sort of crossing out and discovering and crossing out foods that I liked that I didn’t realize had loads of sugar in. And of course, this is on the run up to Christmas and Christmas presents, me and my boyfriend we make a proper Christmas cake, and it’s a very dense fruit cake. And one or two months before Christmas, and you put there’s a share in it, and then you put more share in it every week, and it just keeps going back and in back on the job, and it’s amazing. And we would. We made mint ones for for everybody, and made up little hampers, and we were going to make mince pies. And last year I made mince pies as present. Do you guys have mince pies in the U.S.
Zack Arnold: I’ve heard of them. I’ve had mince meat pies, but I’ve never had a mince pie. So I think it’s different in the US, or at least for me, than it is in the UK. Okay,
Sian Fever: It’s um, it’s like a small pastry cup, and inside it’s got what we would call mincemeat, but it’s it’s lots of dried fruit in kind of gloop, and they are delicious, Zack. They’re delicious. I will send you some. Well, if it has
Zack Arnold: Gloop, I’m sure that it is because I’m a big fan of gloop.
Sian Fever: They are delicious, but they’re they’re obviously incredibly sweet because it’s just sugar. Last year I bought some shop-bought mincemeat in a jar, made the pastry, bunged in, and ate them, and everything was lovely. And this year I did the same thing, and I took a bite out of it, and I nearly, I was nearly sick, and I had the exact same thing Monica was describing. I had something that I didn’t realize had that much sugar in it. Ate a small part of it, and I felt nauseated for about two or three hours afterwards. And we threw it all away and made mincemeat from scratch, and just didn’t. We put like a third of the sugar from the recipe in it, so they were really comparatively low in added sugar. And you could taste the fruit, and it was the first time I’d ever really tasted the dried fruit in it. And that brings me on to another sort of development that I didn’t see coming, which was I could separate finally the taste of sugar and the taste of chocolate. For example, the taste of sugar and the taste of fruit. I had never; they were just one and the same thing for me. And it turns out chocolate isn’t that much fun if it’s not mixed with sugar. It doesn’t taste that great. Like I tried cacao and I was like, it’s bitter and it’s not that much fun. And I also came to realize that I was using these sweet foods as a reward system-a reward if I was happy, a reward if I was sad, or you know, or other like a crutch if I was sad, or hey, I would just find I was just really trying to find reasons to have sweet things, and so there was a lot of mental games going on. And then my birthday happened, and everyone very sweetly wanted to give me cake and cupcakes and and sweet things. And every turn, it was I soaked my guns and you know, thanks everyone for the sweet food, and it was a really lovely thought, but that I couldn’t have it, and everyone was very understanding.
Zack Arnold: Well, I would say that you should be proud of being able to do that because that’s not an easy thing to do. So, rather than being ashamed or thinking that you shouldn’t have been eating those things, the fact that you could be given all those things and have them around you in a social setting where the the ritual is that you’re just expected to eat these things to have the willpower and the strength to say no thank you. That to me is something that should be applauded and celebrated rather than being ashamed of all of the other things. So I’m I think you should definitely focus on that because that that takes a tremendous amount of strength to do. That frankly I don’t even have the strength to do usually. So you should you should definitely be applauded for that. But one thing you’re welcome. One thing that you brought up, and I’m I’m glad that you brought this up because I was going to bring it up as well. Is you mentioned that sugar film, and this is a film that was done by an Australian documentarian named Damon. I think it’s Gamow or Gamo Gamow. I can’t I can’t remember how to pronounce his name, but it’s kind of like the super size me of sugar, and he decided that he was going to see what sugar really does to a person. But here’s the catch, and this is where it’s really interesting. He didn’t eat chocolate bars and ice cream and all these horrible foods. He said, “I’m going to eat quote unquote health foods that are laced with sugar. So these are things like low-fat yogurt, fruit juice, health bar, cereal-all these things that are marketed to us as health foods. And his health deteriorated just as rapidly as it did for Morgan Spurlock when he was in super-sized meat eating McDonald’s foods. And that’s the part that’s really terrifying to me: is realizing that it’s not just about oh, well, I don’t eat cookies all day long, but there’s sugar in pasta sauce. There’s sugar in loaves of bread. There’s sugar in over 80% of our food supply, and I really think it’s important for people to understand that those things are there. We don’t realize they’re there, but the reason, again, like I had mentioned earlier, that it’s so important that I wanted to bring this to this audience specifically, is not so much because this podcast is about here’s how to lose 20 pounds in 30 days, or here’s how to look good, you know, on the beach. It’s what does it take for us to be high performance machines in front of our workstations? Because if somebody is saying, I want you to make 1000s upon 1000s of creative decisions all day long, and I want you to do it for 12 to 16 hours a day, and I want you to do it for five or six days a week. And we’re never going to give you a break. One of the things that you’re doing as a creative professional that will severely limit your ability to perform at that level and be able to concentrate and focus without exhausting yourself is sugar. Sugar is my kryptonite. I know. That if I want to be creative for long periods of time, it’s not about oh well I don’t want to gain a pound or two or you know what goes in the lips goes on the hips. That’s not the way that I think. I think all right, it’s Monday at lunch and it’s somebody’s birthday party and they have red velvet cupcakes and if I have that red velvet cupcake for the next three days, my focus is gone. I’m not going to be able to edit. I’m not going to be able to cut scenes. I’m going to be all over the place, have lack of focus. Just go on Facebook and email and all these things that we use as distractions when we can’t focus. For me, that comes from sugar. It also comes from gluten. I have a sensitivity to gluten, which is a whole nother show and another rabbit hole that I won’t go into.
Zack Arnold: But sugar is my kryptonite for focus, which is why I wanted to bring it to this audience. So for both of you, we can go back to Monica first, and then we’ll go to you, Sian. But what did you notice specifically when you started to remove sugar and your ability to just work for longer stretches of time without feeling distracted? And you mentioned that you weren’t as hungry anymore, you weren’t snacking. But what did it actually do to your ability to be creative?
Monica Daniel: Well, I was able to focus more, which is is difficult to do because just assistant editing, I get interrupted all the time, like every 10 minutes. So it’s hard for me to get into a groove without someone coming in asking for something else. I have to be able to get focused really quickly and be able to switch gears really quickly, and it’s just not one of those things where I’ll get like four hours uninterrupted. It just doesn’t happen. If I get 20 minutes uninterrupted, I’m happy. So I was able to to focus better and just kind of get back to work quicker when I had to switch gears, sleep better. That’s another big thing that I noticed, especially this last week, because I was little. I went a little sugar happy. I blame the donut last Friday, but I’ve actually been having trouble sleeping. It’s just it’s they’re not good deep sleeps. I’m restless all the time, and I’ve just noticed it. The worse I get with sugar, the worse it gets, so when I when I cut sugar out, I sleep better, and as a result, I feel more rested throughout the day, and I’m able to focus better on top of just being able to focus in general because I’m not as tired, and I just I don’t know I just feel like I could think better.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that to me, that’s that’s the home run. That’s really what I’m trying to help people do: is think better and create better and make more decisions over a longer period of time without having mental fatigue. I know that I experience all those things hands down when I stay away from sugar. But did you experience some of the same things, Sian?
Sian Fever: I experienced two main things, and the first one was that I wasn’t experiencing the peaks and troughs of the sugar and the adrenaline and the insulin that kind of just bounce you through. My energy was has just really evened out. I am not try. I’m not wishing I could have a nap in the afternoon anymore. Like I’m fine. I’m I’m awake and it’s cool. I don’t think I have more energy, but I think I’m not riding an energy roller coaster anymore. It’s just very smooth across the day, and the second one is that my mood is far more consistent as well. Like I’m not suffering like a mood dip either. I feel my mood feels has has a stability now to it that it feels very reliable, and I think I still get distracted. Honestly, I could distract myself till the till the cows come home. But the energy and the mood, those really were such huge things for me, because I thought that was just how this is just how it happened. I thought you just everyone fell asleep, like or wanted to sleep in the afternoon after lunch, and and everyone just got going. Oh God, everything’s rubbish in the afternoon, and you know, and I’m not feeling sick, you know, after I’ve eaten because I haven’t just had, you know, chocolate or something like that. So my health feels feels way better. And and unrelated to post production, but an un but a surprising plus was I I pretty much stopped getting spots. Like my skin has not been the best, and then since I’ve given up sugar, like it’s looking pretty great. Don’t want to don’t want to brag, Zack, but it’s looking pretty great. When I um first gave up sugar, I bought like five books of kind of healthy sugar-free meals, and I as I was cracking them open, they were like, “You’re gonna glow! Like this glow. Every second word is glowing, which made me, you know, shut them and put them away again. Because if someone’s telling you stuff like that, I feel sold to. I feel patronized, and I haven’t actually touched them, but they weren’t entirely being untruthful.
Zack Arnold: No, there’s there’s a lot of science that backs that up. That when you start eliminating toxins like sugar and gluten and a lot of you know processed starches and all all the processed foods in our system, your skin completely changes because really your skin is known as the barometer for kind of your overall general health. So I can attest to all that, and I literally lived with the worst acne for God almost 20 years, and as soon as I changed my diet, my. And just transformed. I was like, “Oh my God, I look like a different person. So I’ve I’ve experienced that as well.
Sian Fever: No more foundation for me.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, me neither. I don’t I don’t have to put foundation on in the morning, which is so helpful. Oh my God, so much time.
Sian Fever: The time you save. Yes,
Zack Arnold: Exactly. Well, I don’t want to keep you guys too much longer because we’ve we’ve been on here for for quite a while, and I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface, and we could turn this into a 234-part, series. But a couple of areas or resources that I want to send people to, if they’re thinking, “Whoa, this is a little bit bigger than I thought. I just thought I had to, you know, be careful of chocolate bars and Coke. And it’s it’s a much, much bigger problem than that. So the the few places I would recommend you go: number one, check out that sugar film. Another one is there’s a documentary called Fed Up that talks a lot about the food science and the the food industry and politics behind sugar and how it’s in our food system. That’s another one to check out. There’s also a link to an article that was done by the New York Times that’s called “Is Sugar Toxic? And this is kind of one of the foundational articles that almost anybody will send you to, and say if you want to just get started and really understand the idea behind sugar being a toxic substance, if you think, oh, it’s just a bunch of BS, go ahead and read this first, and then go ahead and formulate an argument. But it’s a really, really good article, so I’m going to have a link to that as well for you. And then the next thing I would say is, if you’re thinking, well, you know, I don’t have any problem with sugar. Sugar is fine; it’s not affecting me. Then go ahead and just give yourself seven days, completely cut it out of your life. If you feel no different, then sugar is not a problem for you. But if after, if through those seven days you went through a lot of these withdrawal symptoms, you will start to see that sugar does have a much more profound effect on you, and then more importantly, start to introduce it back into your diet and see what the effect is. Because that’s what I’ll do with with a lot of people that say, “Oh, well, gluten’s a bunch of BS. It doesn’t affect me at all. I’ll say, “Maybe you’re right. Just go ahead and cut it completely out of your diet. See if you notice any change, and you might not. But then introduce it back in and see how you feel. And nine times out of 10, when you introduce it back, you say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I felt so crappy. It’s because you just become used to it. It’s kind of that analogy of the frog boiling in water, and I use this analogy for for sitting all day long, but it works really well for food as well. Or if you take a frog and you throw him in a pot of boiling water, he’s going to leap out. But if you put a frog in lukewarm water and you boil it, he won’t feel a thing until he’s cooked. And it’s kind of the same thing with sugar and gluten and all these other toxic substances. You’re getting low levels, so you don’t eat it and vomit or throw up like you just had a spoonful of Drano. But it’s something that does affect you on low levels and causes chronic health problems throughout your life, but if you just eradicate it completely and then reintroduce it, you get a much more acute response. Or maybe you don’t, but you’re going to know whether or not it’s something that affects you and affects your performance by just doing an elimination of just that one thing. So don’t change your whole diet. Don’t change your whole life. Just say I’m going to eat all the same things except I’m going to remove foods that have sugar or sweeteners just for seven to 10 days and see what happens, and then you can formulate more of an argument as to whether or not you think sugar is something that’s toxic to your own system. And it sounds like both of you have pretty much done that own self experiment and have realized very clearly that sugar is something that does affect you profoundly.
Monica Daniel: One thing I’ve noticed that I take as a win. So I travel to Northern California a lot. So I’m, you know, driving that stretch of the five, where all there are fast food places and gas stations, and you know, it’s like when I stop and I use, you know, and I’m still struggling with sweets now. But now when I like go into the little gas station stores trying to find a snack because I’m hungry. It’s like I look on the shelves. I was like, “There’s absolutely nothing I can eat here because it’s all like chips, Pringles, candies. Even the nuts are like mixed with candy and have all this like extra junk on them. So I’m like, “There is absolutely nothing I could eat here at all. Whereas before, I’d be like, “Ooh, I’m gonna take the hostess cupcake and get some Cheetos, and so I mean, even though I’m still struggling with it now, I have like no desire to pull anything off those shelves because I’m just like gross. I still have a long drive to go, and I don’t want to feel like crap on the drive. It’s just that that mental shift I feel like is like a small victory that I’m just like not immediately going. Ooh, yay skittles when you know I’m on those long road trips that I take like once or twice a month.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree. There’s nothing worse on a road trip than just filling up on all that stuff because I will just have the hardest time staying awake and focusing, and it’s it will make road trips miserable. So I I definitely can can understand all of that.
Sian Fever: I was going to say before we run away, there were two things that really helped me over the last kind of I think I know how many months now five five months or so, and the first one was concentrating on home cooking, and my recommendation to anyone who wants to do this is is get yourself a cookbook. Because so much of the sugar that you’re taking in is is through ready meals and through pasta sauces, like you were saying, and the act of cooking all your own food, you can see when the recipes like add a buttload of sugar, and you can make that decision whether you want it in there or not, whether you want to cook that thing or not, and then just being very conscious about what’s in your food just it helped me so much. And over the first couple of months, I think I was overeating, I didn’t see any weight loss, and then in the third month, I just I lost like seven pounds in three weeks, and I can only really accredit that to because I wasn’t eating my sugar hadn’t gone up and down; it was just not there. So I was eating kind of proper portion sizes of home cooked food, and the second one and was actually Monica brought up was to have someone in your corner, have someone who knows what you’re going through. My partner, he gave up sugar at the same time in support, like like completely off his own back. I’ve never asked him to do that, and to be have someone around you who is can see what you’re going through and can also like commiserate with like they’ve just brought in like the Friday chocolate bar box or whatever it is, but it was really was really really helped. My housemates were great too. They were they were wonderful. They um because they eat a lot. They eat a lot of chocolate. They we hide it in the cupboards. I just if I see it, I just pick it up and put it somewhere else. And yeah, cook, cook your own stuff, and have someone in your in your corner.
Zack Arnold: Those are great suggestions, and I love the idea of Monica having a sugar sponsor. There’s no question that I will be incorporating that idea into the programs that I’m creating. And the the other thing that I want to do, just I I want to give people kind of a a really simple place to start where they don’t feel overwhelmed. So I think I’m going to create a bonus document that goes with this episode. That’s just kind of like here. Here are the simple places to get started, and I think the two that you mentioned are really, really good ones. And I’ll throw in a few other helpful places with resources and some simple steps that people can follow. Because this is kind of one of those you just need to need to take a small baby step forwards, see a little bit of an immediate reaction, and then you want to go further down the rabbit hole, whereas if somebody says, “Well, just do all of this deprivation for 30 to 60 days and lose all this weight, most people don’t end up making that journey. But if people just look at it as a much shorter journey with much greater gains that happen almost immediately, that’s where the wins start to happen. So, I want to make sure that I can encourage people to to do that and go down that road because it will make a tremendous difference in the way you feel and the the moods you experience, your level of creativity, your level of focus, and these are all things that people want in our industry. So I’m going to do my best to provide tools that are going to help people do that. So on that note, I cannot thank the both of you enough for being willing to candidly share your stories and your addiction to to sugar and everything you’ve gone through, and never ever use the word shame again. Do not do it. I will not allow that to happen.
Sian Fever: We have this saying in my house: the shame bell. Did you watch the the Game of Thrones episode where Cersei walks down the stairs?
Zack Arnold: No, I’m not a not a Game of Thrones watcher because I don’t appreciate. I just don’t have HBO. We
Sian Fever: All watch it together, and and we tease each other when one of us is you know left the kitchen in a mess or whatever. You know you get a shame bell across the across the WhatsApp. Very cool. I feel this is all new.
Zack Arnold: All right. Well, Monica, Sian, thank you so much. I guarantee that you guys are going to be back again. I mean, Monica, I practically record with you every other week now, so I might as well just call you a co-host. But I definitely want to want to have you guys back as well, because I’m sure this will this will be a very very helpful show for a lot of people. I hope.
Monica Daniel: Well, my next step, because this whole thing is part of a larger process for me. Like, even though it’s, I’ve actually gotten a little bit of concern from people about like the this personal trainer food thing, but I’m actually the way I use it is not 100% the way they sell it. I’m using it to train myself to make better food choices because it’s it’s all real food, and I I’m sorry, Sian. I can’t I can’t learn to cook. I hate it. But what I do is I make hard-boiled eggs. That’s easy, and that’s my snack. Sometimes is I’ll just have a hard-boiled egg, but it’s part of my larger process. It’s like okay, I need to cut. I was eating better, but I was having a lot of sugar. Now that I’m cutting sugar out of what I eat, now it’s also now just trying to integrate the small kind of regular exercises, not like a rigorous training, but it’s something you talked about in like a couple. I think it was the Ben Greenfield podcast. It’s like those little things you could do throughout the day. So for me, this is just one aspect of a larger process, and the way I make it so it’s not so overwhelming to me is I’m usually just kind of focusing on one aspect at a time, and then I build on it is what I’m doing.
Zack Arnold: That’s the entire fitness and post philosophy right there. Is finding one tiny thing, hit that, and then build on it. It’s no different than editing. You just you find one edit to make, that edit works, and then you build off of that. And before you know it, you have a 90 minute film with 1000s. That it’s in it. Yeah, it’s the same process. So I’m I’m glad that you look at it the same way, and I’m very very glad that we were able to have this conversation today. So thank you both so much for being on the show. Oh,
Sian Fever: Thank you for having us, Zack. Thank you very much.
