Why you should listen –
Natalie Jill is the author of 7 Day Jump Start – Unprocess Your Diet, and helps people across the globe reach their health, fitness, and business goals. Natalie leveraged the power of the Internet and created a globally recognized brand with over two million social media followers, leading to an online business that has generated over 7-figures in revenue! Many see Natalie Jill as a fitness and nutrition expert, but she is increasingly garnering attention for her ability to help others create, define, and monetize their brand in the online space. On today’s episode of Bulletproof Radio, Dave and Natalie talk about breakfast, social media, unprocessed foods, gluten-free definitions, willpower and getting into the fat-burning mode. Enjoy the show!
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Speaker 1: Bulletproof Radio. A state of high performance.
Dave: Hey. It’s Dave Asprey with Bulletproof Radio. Today’s Cool Fact of the Day is that non-food things like shampoo, cream, sunscreen, lipstick, toothpaste, medications, and vitamins sometimes use gluten for processing. Just because it’s not being used as a food, it doesn’t have to be declared on a label. So, if you’re like crazy gluten-sensitive, I’d check with you’re manufacturers. If it’s lipstick … Actually you probably don’t want to put gluten on your lips everyday because you eat a lot of lipstick. I read some studies somewhere that women eat like 80 pounds of lipstick a year. I’m just kidding. It was nowhere near that much, but it was enough to pay attention to.
I would say you probably don’t have to worry about it depending on the level of sensitivity you have. If you don’t know your level of sensitivity, try going without gluten, strictly going without gluten for a month, and see what happens to your brain. See what happens to the rest of you. Quite often it can take 6 months for all the effects of gluten to leave your immune system. It’s kind of crazy all the different systems that can be tied to it and we aren’t very good as humans at identifying long-term results of short-term actions. So, you ate the pizza and you’re still kind of stiff a month later, you’re not going to draw that correlation unless you’re a crazy event correlation machine like me.
Now, before we get into today’s episode which promises to be really cool, there’s something you should know about. If you’re watching on the YouTube channel – Bulletproofexec.com/YouTube will take you straight there – you’d see what I’m holding up. I’m holding up this amazing case of Bulletproof Bars. These are made with brain Octane oil. They’re also made with 12 grams of pure collagen from grass-fed cows. This is protein and fat. It’s the most fat you’ll find in just about any bar I know of. It tastes like a vanilla cookie with 2 grams of sugar and that only comes from the nuts. There’s cashews in here. That’s the only tree nut, which is one of the least reactive tree nuts for people who have autoimmune conditions. What this is is dessert. It’s so good and when you eat it, you just don’t care about food for a long time. If you eat 2 of them on an airplane, you’re done. You simply don’t want lunch. This is actually really fuel for your body. It has changed my business travel forever and I love them.
The newest hack of the day, of the month, of the year, that also ties into business travel, Bulletproof Insta-Mix. If you haven’t heard about this stuff yet, that’s because it just came out. It’s a game changer. It is a box with 14 packets, individual single-serving packets, of grass-fed butter and brain Octane in a powdered form. We’ve been working for 3 years on the science to get this so it tastes right and it doesn’t have crap in it. It’s pretty easy to mix butter and some kind of random cheap coconut oil with some kind of crappy thing and put it out there and it doesn’t work because coconut oil doesn’t do the same thing as brain Octane oil and it doesn’t taste good. Frankly, it’s not Bulletproof. This is the answer for business travel. I’ve wanted this for so long. It’s finally here. You dump in your fresh brewed Bulletproof coffee, shake it up in your Bulletproof coffee mug, you’re good to go. Wow! It’s already changed the way I travel. I’m so stoked on this stuff. No liquid. No spilling. No TSA complexity.
So, that’s the cool stuff that’s going on over in Bulletproof Land. Now we leave Bulletproof Land and we’re now in Bulletproof Radio Land. Wait, Radio Land is another TV show or another radio show. I actually like Radio Land. Sorry guys. I didn’t mean to step on your trademarks and all that stuff. Today’s guest is someone who actually was 50 pounds overweight with severe depression, and that let to her getting divorced and broke. That’s just the back story and she’s none of those things now, that I’m aware of, except once you’re divorced, you’re divorced. Just like me. Hey, nothing wrong with a little practice before you make it perfect. I’m talking to a Master Sports Nutritionist, it’s the fitness trainer who’s won millions of followers on Facebook and other social media things like that. None other than Natalie Jill, author of the new book “The 7-Day Jump Start.” Natalie, welcome to Bulletproof Radio.
Natalie: I am so stoked to be here. Seriously, my life feels complete that I get to be on Bulletproof Radio today.
Dave: Aww. Thanks.
Natalie: I’m stoked!
Dave: Hey, Brock we got to send her a lot more products.
Natalie: Well, I just heard what you were pumping about the Bulletproof Insta-Mix, and I’m all about that now because exactly what you said with the cheap butter and the coconut oil. That’s what I literally just said last week. So, I’m stoked.
Dave: Yeah. It feels different when you get the real stuff because brain Octane raises ketones and coconut oil has a lower effect on ketones than just eating nothing. This is totally not what they tell you in Paleo circles, but the science is the science. Coconut oil’s good for you, it’s just not going to put you in ketosis.
So, I’m happy we finally get a chance to chat on-the-air. We’ve talked before. You’re coming out with your new work and you’ve really actually done a lot of hacking on yourself because I tend to listen more to someone who’s dealt with … You’re really open about it. The fact that yes you had 50 extra pounds. I had 100 extra pounds and I dealt with the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome and social anxiety. As a kid, I used to have OCD, and ODD, and all sorts of weird stuff, but just to be able to be open and vulnerable about that, that’s one thing I respect about you. You’re like, “Yes. I had to lose 50 pounds. I had to turn my brain back on from when I was depressed.” You’re open about it and you share really authentically. How did that lead to you writing the “7-Day Jump Start Plan?” How did you get here with millions of people listening to your every words and looking at your every action? Give me your story.
Natalie: You know, it’s so funny because it’s hard to believe myself. I spent most of my being what I call a “fake person.” Up until my late 30s, I was the person that had this image to hold up. I thought, “I have to have this certain job. I have to live in this type of neighborhood. I have to drive this kind of car. I have to be married with the 2 dogs and the picket fence and the baby.” I just had this image of what was supposed to be and I feel like I spent my whole life in this fake world of putting on an act of who I thought I was supposed to be. If that makes sense …
Dave: It makes a lot of sense. I’m sure half of the people listening are like, “Oh, yeah.”
Natalie: Yeah. It’s happening. I feel like it was such a big lesson for me because what happened was just when I looked like I had everything so put together to everybody else in the world, my life was falling apart inside. I was pregnant and I was happy about that, but I was also pregnant at a time when the housing market had crashed, when the stock market had crashed, where I was getting a divorce. My husband and I at the time decided our marriage was not going to work for a lot of reasons. I had gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant and not because of hormones and just because I was pregnant, but because I was frankly eating everything. I mean french fries, ice cream, everything to comfort myself because I was feeling down.
I felt like I had the weight of the world on me because financially I was struggling. I knew I was going to lose my house. I knew I was having a new baby. I was going to be divorced. I was really scared because the only stable thing I had in my life was my job and I was traveling full-time with it. I knew that had to change. how was I going to be a single mom and raise a daughter and go through a divorce and travel? I remember feeling so overwhelmed. I felt so phony because I had this life that I looked like I was living and I didn’t know how to tell people I was struggling. I was embarrassed, which is so funny to me now because I share everything now. I don’t care. I just put it all out there, but at the time it was like, “I have to be tough. I can’t let people see this side.” I was really a fake person. It’s like a different chapter of my life.
Dave: There’s a line from an Alice in Chains song that I used to really like and it’s a lot like, “They never knew who I thought I was supposed to be,” is a line from it. You’re reminding me … I remember when I told my boss way back when I got divorced, it was way more than 10 years ago, I walked in and I’m like, “Look. I need to take a few days off.” He goes, “With no notice? Like what the hell. Where to start?” I’m like, “Things are moving. I’m getting divorced.” He just stopped and he goes, “Are you kidding me? Why didn’t you say something? I had no idea anything was going on.” All my friends said they’d had no idea. This just came out of the blue. I’m like, “Well, you’re not supposed to talk about that stuff.” It turns out you are supposed to talk about it, I just didn’t know. So, you were in the same boat I was in, right?
Natalie: Yeah. I was too proud for therapy at the time. All the things that I would be supportive of now, I was too proud. Like, “Oh. I don’t a therapist … ”
Dave: Therapy is for weak people. Don’t you know that?
Natalie: “I don’t need antidepressants.” Everything was just like, “I don’t need that. I don’t need to talk to someone and tell them my problems.” I knew something was wrong. I knew I was really depressed. I knew I didn’t want to get up in the day. I was tired. Literally I felt like the only thing that was keeping me going was that I was going to be a mom. I remember wishing that I had a remote control with a fast-forward. I’m like, “I just need to fast-forward this whole time of my life. I don’t know where it’s going, but I need to fast-forward.” My line in the sand was after I had my daughter, and things were definitely out of control, but I remember walking and catching a glimpse of myself in a window, like where you see the mirror reflection, and I just didn’t recognize who I had become. I had the bags under my eyes. I was overweight. My daughter was now a few months old. Things were hanging on me. I just didn’t recognize who I’d become and I felt so alone. I thought, “I don’t want to be this person anymore.”
I tell everybody now, the very first step in changing your life, whether it’s weight loss or your career or relationship, is you have to make a decision. You have to decide. You have to decide it’s possible. I always hear people say, “Oh. I tried this,” or “I don’t know,” or “I might,” but they haven’t decided. When I decided I’d had enough, that’s when everything started to change. I went home and I just said, “Okay. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this, but I’m getting out of it. I’m deciding.” I made a vision board. That was the very first thing I did. I did that because I wanted to be able to look at images of possibility. I thought, “If I could just look at happy couples, or look at fit people, or look at money,” or just things that I thought would make me happy at the time, maybe I could start acting towards those feelings. That was literally my first step. I didn’t have this grand plan to be in fitness or nutrition or inspire others. I just was trying to save myself and I new I had to decide and create a vision. That was literally the first step.
Dave: That’s a pretty powerful story. You learn a lot from a process like that versus like, “Oh. I decided I was going to start a health marketing and I’ll market the American food pyramid.” You get a different level of authenticity. I think that’s why you have so many followers on social too because you’re really open. I respect that about you.
Natalie: I never had the idea of starting a fitness business, but what happened was I needed accountability somehow and I couldn’t tell my friends, and I didn’t want to tell my family. I didn’t know who to talk to about what was going on, so I … This is when I had no followers on Facebook, I had my high school friends. When Facebook was first …
Dave: Both of them …
Natalie: Yeah. I remember the first thing I started doing was I was going to pay attention to what I was eating and I had started researching online about food and nutrition. I already knew some stuff about being gluten-free, but I didn’t understand really that whole unprocessed food and what I needed to balance things out. I thought, “I’m just going to start preparing meals based on what I’m learning and I’m going to take a picture of them and share them because I want other people to see what I’m doing.” It was really my own accountability that if I tell people I’m going to post my meals everyday, I have to do it. I can’t reach for the chips or the junk because I’m going to post my meal. I started sharing and what was really amazing was that was the first experience in my life of being truly authentic, of telling what I’m doing without an agenda. I had so much support. It was amazing. People were like, “This is so wild. You’re sharing your meals.” I had no agenda.
Dave: You’re telling me you didn’t photo-sculpt your guacamole into a perfect dome via Photoshop or media?
Natalie: No. So funny because I think of my cookbook now which is like food stylists and everything. Remember Blackberries? This was my Blackberry phone. Things looked like puke quite frankly. It was like, “What is this?” I didn’t know about that. I was doing it for my own accountability and it was very real.
Dave: People are mean on social. You’re like, “Okay. Here’s a picture of what I actually eat,” and they’re like, “It doesn’t look pretty.” I’m like, “Here’s the deal, most of us don’t eat food-sculpted food every meal.” It’s just a thought, but yeah …
Natalie: Now we do with Instagram and Pinterest. At the time my accountability on Facebook, no I just put it out there as my Blackberry photos. It was really amazing to me that I was just sharing and people were interested. They were like, “What is this? What are you putting in here?” I just was talking to people. That was it. There was no grand business plan. I was just talking to them.
Dave: How did that lead to the “7-Day Jump Start?”
Natalie: This is actually really funny. People liked my meals and they started asking, “Hey. This is really creative. Can you put together a recipe book for us?” I thought, “A recipe book? I don’t know the first thing about that.” Somebody told me to make an e-book. I remember Googling “What is an e-book,” because I didn’t know what that meant. An e-book is an electronic book. Then, because I’m a fast-acting … Like that ADD personality, I just do things. I don’t really research enough once I decide. I didn’t look up how to professionally do an e-book. I just did one myself on a word document with my Blackberry pictures being inserted. So, I took one weekend and I put all my Blackberry pictures in and I wrote a little description. It was this complete ghetto-style … It was not even a PDF, like a word document. I decided I was going to charge $10 for and I put it out on Facebook and I’m like, “Okay you guys I put my recipes together. Here they are. $10 if you PayPal. Here, I’ll e-mail it to you.” That’s how it started.
Dave: Nice e-commerce platform there.
Natalie: Yeah. I didn’t know about internet marketing or sales pages or any of this stuff. I just knew people are asking for recipes. While they were liking my recipes and I was doing this, my body was changing because I was really getting excited, I was connecting with people, I was working out more, I was starting to become the person I wanted to be and I was sharing that. I was saying, “I went to the gym. I did this workout,” and people started to see my body change, so they said, “Hey. How do you put this together in a meal plan?” So, I took another weekend and I wrote what’s now, it was a very different version at the time, but my original “7-Day Jump Start.” I wrote it in a weekend. I didn’t proofread it. It’s embarrassing now, but it worked. It was like I put together what I explained to you, my goals, how to do a vision board, how I put a meal together and how to use recipes in a little cookbook. I decided to sell that for $35 and people loved it.
It was I’m being real and I’m connecting, I’m not marketing, I was being real connecting with people. They loved it. They would send me in a message and say, “Oh my gosh. This Jump Start was awesome. I lost 5 pounds. I’m feeling great. Thank you for creating this.” I would ask them if I could screenshot that and share it and they’d say yes and I would say, “Oh my gosh. Look at Dave. He just sent me this. It made my day.” I made it about him because it was about him. He lost weight doing this. This is amazing. I always said, “Who is next?”
It just started to grow. It started to grow and what was amazing, it wasn’t so much the money because, yeah money started to come in, but what was amazing to me is that my rock bottom place that I didn’t understand why it was happening to me was now changing the lives of other people and getting them encouraged and motivated and I felt like I had a purpose now. It’s like, “Wow! I have a purpose and I’m helping these people.” It was amazing to me. I wasn’t setting out to be a social media expert or a fitness guru or any of that. It just happened from me being really real and sharing and listening.
Dave: It’s amazing. You just went and you did it. When I started out, I spent 5 years writing a book, “The Better Baby Book.” I wrote the book before I talked to publishers. I had no idea what I was doing, but it’s an important book. I wrote it actually based on my own program for my own family to not have kids with autism because it kind of runs in my family. I kind of had Asperger’s. I say kind of because I wasn’t formally diagnosed with it, but it runs in my family and I had all the symptoms of it but by the time I was diagnosed with stuff, I’d already changed my biology so dramatically that I’m neurologically different. We’ll put it that way.
I did all of that work. That’s 5 years where I probably could’ve been sharing knowledge and information and just talking about it, and you just like went for it. I brought the book out and because I hadn’t done the things that you’ve done, it only sold like 5,000 copies. It’s actually got way more science in it than “The Bulletproof Diet,” which sold hundreds of thousands of copies because I learned how to do it right. Along the way, as the traffic started to grow for Bulletproof … I did come out with an e-book briefly, but it was once of those things where I spent a long time on it and I’m like, “It’s just not good enough.” I set the bar so high that I made it more work than it needed to be, and here you are and you’re like, “I’m just going to go for it.” So, kudos for doing that because I didn’t do that and you’re making me wonder why.
The very first e-commerce ever on the internet, you totally reminded me of it, was a t-shirt that said, “Caffeine, my drug of choice,” out of my dorm room. I posted these little forums called “News Groups,” on something called, “Usenet.” This was before the browser existed. It was like, “If you want one of these t-shirts, you can just send a check to my dorm room and I’ll send you a t-shirt.” It was so ghetto, but we didn’t have anything better at the time. It was actually, it turns out, cutting-edge. That quick start ability to just go out there and say, “I don’t really know, but I’ll figure out how I’m going to do it,” that’s a real asset. You’re making wonder why I didn’t do more of that in Bulletproof.
Natalie: I’ll tell you where it came from because that wasn’t the old me. The old me in corporate America before I went through all this was into perfection. Everything had to be perfect. This was … I didn’t care anymore. I was so down on my luck and feeling so bad that I had nothing to lose. I thought, “I’m putting myself out there and I’m just being real,” and what I was learning was the more real I was, the more I was connecting with people. It’s funny to me because I have so many people, especially in fitness and nutrition now, they come to me and they say, “Oh my gosh. You’re this big social media … ” or “You’ve been successful,” whatever, “Here I have this business plan.” I’m thinking, “You’re missing the whole thing. That’s not what I did at all.” I built a following really just talking to people and being real. That’s where I got my product ideas. It was completely the other way around.
Dave: The authenticity and connecting thing … I started writing with … I already had a job. I was a VP at a big company. I didn’t expect to build a business out of it like that. I wanted people to read the information, but I’m like, “I already have a paycheck. I’m OK. I’m not wealthy, but I’m certainly comfortable. It’s all good.” That level of startup, same thing, people coming all, “I have this big idea and I’m going to exploit the market.” I’m like, “Actually no one’s going to listen to you because you … ”
Natalie: Where’s your platform?
Dave: Yeah. Well even if you build a platform, it’s like to build an authentic platform of people who care, you have to care and you have to really bring it everyday. People have BS detectors that are really strong and if you set that off because you’re not authentic, it doesn’t matter if you meant to be authentic, either you are or you aren’t. I don’t know how to teach that, but you certainly put that in early because you put all of yourself into your business. You’ve also evolved your thinking. So, you started out with this, I’m just going to call it a ghetto e-book, and now you’ve got like a “real book.” How did you change how you lay it out?
Natalie: My ghetto e-book evolved as my business grew and I have 19 e-books now which is funny. Every single e-book, every single DVD I had made, every single thing I’ve done is because my audience asked for it. I never just had the idea. It was like they are saying, “We want workouts,” or “We want this,” and I created it based on what they were asking me for. Once I was actually making money and I was able to start an actual business and my following was growing, it was time to make that “7-Day Jump Start” better. Then I really did invest in getting help and making it more meatier, more information, some newer recipes. So, the e-book was doing great and I didn’t tweak it much after that because my gosh, we had helped tens of thousands of people transform and it was working it was amazing.
What happened was I wanted to get out to more of the masses. I feel like my message and what I went through was strong and I watched all of these diets come and go that I was not believing and not following, there was definitely a handful that I did, but there’s a lot that I think is just garbage out there. I thought, “I just want to get my simple message out there,” and I knew there was only so much I can do myself on social media and through my website. I just thought, “I have to get this in a hard copy book and I have to get it in bookstores because 1) I’m going to reach more people, and 2) It validates it more,” because you and me might think information’s great in an e-book, but there are people that want a hard copy, they want to know it’s a published book, and I get it.
So, to me, that was sort of the next step. I don’t need to prove that this works, I just want to get it out to more people. That’s when I did talk with several publishers and ended up working with one on turning this into an actual book, and what I wanted to do with that was make it different and better than the e-book. I felt that I wanted this to be a Part 2 to people that have already done my e-book, but also something that the masses would really enjoy. Things like putting 84 brand new recipes in it, so it could be a recipe book, adding workouts to it. Just making it a lot more meaty.
Dave: So, how did you lay it out? It’s laid out pretty cleanly. What does the 7-Day Jump Start Plan look like?
Natalie: The beginning of it is first, literally … It gets more into my story and sharing some other peoples stories and also talking about that first step because I think it’s so important, about becoming your authentic self, creating a vision, and writing out goals. I don’t care what the diet is, if you don’t have that dialed in, you can’t stick to it. It’s so important. You got to get your mind right. So, I really dive deep into that where I think a lot of diet, or nutrition books, out there, they like tap on that but they don’t really dive into that. I actually have things you have to do, like little workshops that you have to fill out just to get in that right mindset. Then I explain. I don’t love just giving a plan without explaining why things are happening, and I didn’t want to explain it too science-techy because there’s people like you that can do that amazing, that’s not my strength.
Dave: It’s also boring if you do it too much. I had to take it out of “The Bulletproof Diet.” I’m a geek, right, but most people are like, “Tell me what to eat already. For God’s sake, shut up.” You might have fueled the people better.
Natalie: No. I just didn’t want to put anything in my book that was not backed by research. So, everything is backed by research. I wanted to get to the point, and I wanted to remember who I was talking to. I’m talking to the person who was where I was, the person that is 30 – 50 pounds overweight, who’s eating processed food. They don’t understand this really amazing nutrition, they’re just learning to un-process their diet. I wanted to talk to them, so I explained things. I explained what happens when you eat artificial sweeteners, what happens to your body when you eat too many starchy carbs, what happens to your body when you don’t eat enough fat. I just explain it so they understand and that helps them understand why they’re doing things before they’re following a meal plan.
Then I actually lay out a 7-day meal plan and it’s optional. I say, “You can read the rest of this and do it yourself,” or some people want the black and white tell me what to do, or “You could follow this.” I really break meals down just very simple: fats, carbs, and protein. Teaching what that is and everything is based on a food that once grew. So it’s real natural foods. I don’t put any rules about time of day. I know some people want to do Bulletproof in the morning and not eat food until a lot later, and that’s fine. I get that people want to eat their meals every few hours versus spreading them out. I explain why I don’t do the every few hours, but I let people choose because it’s beginner steps first. Let me teach you how to un-process your diet, let me show you how great you’re going to feel doing that, and then we can get into the more advanced stuff.
Then I have 77 recipes to show people that un-processed food can taste amazing, you don’t need ho-hos or Twinkies. You can have real food that tastes amazing, that’s good for you. 7 guilt-free desserts. Then I have 7 body weight workouts that are 7 minutes each because I also wanted to show people that you don’t have to go to the gym and beat yourself up for hours.
Dave: Are you like a Black Jack player?
Natalie: No, I’m not. I’m Roulette, I put everything on –
Dave: You’re like, “3 times 7 is 21.” I’m like, “Where did the 7s come from?” There’s got to be an angle here.
Natalie: Well 7’s always been my favorite number, I don’t know why, but because I called it “7-Day Jump Start,” I just liked the whole sticking with 7.
Dave: You just tripled down on the 7s. I like it. It’s got the … It’s fascinating.
Natalie: I didn’t want to call it like, “666.” I got to stay positive.
Dave: I’m telling you, if you went with the evil diet, you’d probably have a really big brand. I’m just saying.
Natalie: I honestly wanted to call it just, “Un-Process Your Diet.” That was the name I wanted because that’s really what it is, un-process your diet. We went with “7-Day Jump Start,” because that’s the book I initially did that had so much success, so everyone felt it best to keep it branded with that.
Dave: Let’s talk about what un-processing really is because cooking is kind of a process.
Natalie: Yes. Totally. So, you’d probably not agree 100% with my definition –
Dave: We don’t have to agree. I just want to talk.
Natalie: Again, I’m talking to the masses. So, yes, technically un-processed is raw, natural, you’re picking it off the tree and you’re eating it. That could be –
Dave: You have to be naked in the sunshine and get your vitamin D. It’s totally proven, there’s 3 studies. You could go extreme.
Natalie: No fake light at night unless you have your blue light glasses on either. Basically anything that once grew or you could pronounce is what I start with. So, if it once grew, that is a good choice, and if it’s coming from a package, which is not my choice, but if it is, what is in it? Do you know what those ingredients are? Can you define them? Are they real? This is probably a funny example, but I’m going to say ice cream. If you’re going to eat ice cream, I want you eating the real thing with 3 ingredients, not the fat-free, sugar-free, fake yogurt because we can’t define what’s in that. So, I want real ingredients that once grew and you can define and then we can advance from there. I think, and I’m guilty of it too, I get so caught up in this amazing nutrition and all the new research and what’s out there, but then what that does is that alienates people that are just starting because it’s overwhelming for them.
So, when I say “un-process,” I’m just unraveling. I’m getting you away from the Doritos. Let’s stop that. Let’s start eating more natural again.
Dave: That is an amazing first step, and there’s all sorts of reasons you might not want to eat potatoes. You can talk about carbohydrates, you can talk about other reasons. There’s a book called “The Potato Hack,” that actually talks about only eating potatoes. There’s arguments on both sides, but here’s the thing, eating a potato chip that came from a factory fried in crap versus baking a potato or making your own potato chip in the oven or even frying it yourself in good oil, there’s just a difference. I’m not even sure we can quantify what the difference is, but you’ll feel better if you make it yourself.
Natalie: It’s baby steps. It’s just like … I eat organic. I’m a huge fan of organic eating. Would I tell somebody … If the choice was to eat organic fruits and vegetables or not eat vegetables at all because their only choice happens to be not organic, I’m going to tell them to make … It’s baby steps. That’s what I talk about. So, if you’re eating candy and junk, the next best step is what? Then the next best step is what? You can really get picky and you can move down the line and have this perfect diet later, but you got to start somewhere. To me, people giving up diet soda and starting to read ingredients and understand what things are that they’re putting in their body, that’s a huge, huge first step. I want to show people that it’s possible because I think that some of the diets out there, they really overwhelm people. It’s too hard to start because it’s like, “This is extreme.”
Dave: It’s totally true. There’s a lot that happens when you go to just a normal person’s house … I used to do this with clients and even just with friends, and you take 2 large black trash bags, you walk into the kitchen, and you open the cabinets and you’re like, “This is going to the food bank because most of it isn’t food.” I have questions about this and people will think I’m nuts. If you go to someone’s house and this isn’t food and you take the food out, I don’t want to compost it, this is also going to piss people off, if you make compost out of processed food, you know what you get? You get crappy soil and it doesn’t grow good food –
Natalie: I agree
Dave: Industrial composting things, just because it looks like dirt, doesn’t mean it’s useful dirt. Sorry. You put antibiotic tainted crap in the soil, the soil won’t have healthy bacteria. This is how it is. You put glyphosate in there, it’s ruined. Do I really want to give bags of corn chips and seriously fake foods to people who are less fortunate? I actually would rather give them wholesome food and grass-fed butter –
Natalie: I’m like you
Dave: If someone’s really hungry, it’s probably better that they eat something rather than nothing. So, I’d bring it to the food bank. When you go in and you empty that … That is traumatic. You just gave away $500 worth of staple foods, even though I would call them staple “foods” with fake quotes around the foods because you shouldn’t be eating them. Your book helps people see, “All right. I’m going to have to make some changes there,” and that change alone is big, much less “You should have nothing but fats in the morning and try intermittent Bulletproof style.” That’s a pretty advanced technique.
Natalie: I think they’re great. It’s great advanced technique, but I like to baby step first. Only because they can’t get there yet.
Dave: Yeah. Baby step is actually really big step. That’s the point. A lot of people, they’ll never try all the advanced stuff, but just making the changes you were talking about, eating real food that’s not processed or better yet, processing it yourself in this thing called a stove. That’s actually a revolutionary act when you do it. Buying fresh stuff from the person who grew it instead of from China, it’s also revolutionary. I think you’ve helped a lot of people with your 19 e-books already just make that change.
Natalie: Thank you. I was so adamant about using the word ‘un-process’ because that’s really how I feel things need to go. Things have gotten out of control with the fat-free, and the sugar-free, then the “everything’s killing us,” then we got to juice clean. It’s like there’s so much out there and every place has a point and I get it but we’ve really gotten away from some major things that people need to change like artificial sweeteners. Why are people following these crazy diets and still drinking diet soda? I don’t get it. So, I needed to explain what’s happening with artificial sweeteners.
Dave: My favorite thing is the new trend in food which is food-free. They’re like, “It’s a low-calorie snack.” You’re like, “You know what that means. That means there’s less food in there.” It might processed, it might not be processed, but if it’s low-calorie it means that you’re paying more money to get less food and that’s stupid.
Natalie: I cringe at fat-free, sugar-free because I’m like, “What the heck is in there then? What are they putting in there?”
Dave: Soy beans …
Natalie: Yeah. What people don’t realize too is, what I feel like I really dialed in on in the book, I have a big thing about artificial sweeteners. Your body thinks it’s getting those calories too so of course you’re going to crave more and be bloated and want more. Aside from everything else it does wrong to your body, they’re wondering why they’re still so hungry when you eat real foods and that doesn’t happen.
Dave: You get this neurological craving that comes from Nutra-Sweet especially. That stuff is so bad. When I was trying to lose my 100 pounds, I was working out like 6 days a week, but I was drinking big diet sodas because I didn’t want the calories and I was really struggling. I thought I had it down and this one day, right before the afternoon classes, I went to the university soda machine, and I’m like, “I’m going to be really good today. I’m going to drink a diet soda instead of even putting a little bit of soda in there because I’m not going to eat sugar. I’m going to win.” I drank this, I don’t know, hundred thousand gallon … It was like a vat of diet soda.
I’m sitting in class and I started to like hallucinate. I kind of felt like my eyes were crossing and I was drooling on myself and the teacher was looking at me funny. I was like, “Wait a minute. That’s what the diet soda did to me.” I had overdosed on an empty stomach on diet soda, and that was the level of signal that it took me to go, “Maybe I should back off on that stuff. It’s messing me up.” For me it really watershed my on-the-scale weight.
It has an effect, but most people don’t know that it has an effect because they never hit that crazy dose on an empty stomach. It’s just bad news. When you do the science, like you’ve talked about in your book without necessarily all the deep references, but just saying, “Here’s what it does to you.” Cool, man. Everyone should know this. Everyone in the country, everyone on the planet should know if a company tries to sell you those artificial things, they’re not doing it for your best interest and if they tell you it’s in your own best interest, that’s actually evil. You can’t do that.
Natalie: Yeah. It’s not okay. I also don’t expect people to be perfect. What’s really nice about an un-processed food diet is when you are eating clean and natural foods, when you do have that junk food whatever, you might feel good for a moment, but what happens is you start to realize what it does to you and how you feel after. Your taste changes for it. It tastes different. When you get used to getting your sweets from fruit for instance, and then you go eat candy, it tastes funny to eat a piece of licorice. It just tastes different. It tastes fake. It takes you eating natural and clean to get that. I’m human. I tell everybody I should be sponsored by Reese’s Pieces because that’s the worst thing for you ever, but one time a month, I send my husband … I’m like, “I need them right now.” I might eat them and then I never feel good after and it reminds me why I don’t do it.
Dave: Which color do you eat first?
Natalie: I don’t know. All the bad ones. It’s not good for me, but it’s like my one … Whatever it is from being a kid or something, if I really am feeling I need something, I want that, and I never feel good after. You do it, and you’re like, “Why the heck did I do that?” I teach people that you move on. Everyone’s human. You do things. When you’re eating, it’s what you 99% of the time, and when you’re doing that, your body reacts quickly and you remember why you don’t want to do it again. At least for a month.
Dave: That reminder thing in “The Bulletproof Diet” book, I’m like “Try this for a couple weeks and then just have pizza and beer and wake up the next morning and tell me it didn’t work.” You’re going to feel like, “Ahh!” It just ruins you. That was always happening. Now you’ve noticed. You’re doing the same thing. You cut out the processed foods and you add something back in. I imagine that a lot of your followers, they might go out and have a little bit more than Reese’s Pieces, but now you’ve actually felt the difference. The big food industry would love to have you go out and try one thing at a time and you’ll never experience any difference. “Oh yeah, I cut out this one little thing.” Nah. You have to cut out the group of things that cause trouble and they’re almost all processed.
Natalie: This Halloween was funny because I hadn’t had like sugar, food coloring, candy junk in a long time, but my daughter … Trick-or-treating, whatever, and she had the stuff and she wanted to try stuff. I let my daughter do what she wants. I just educate her on what’s it’s doing and let her make her decisions. I grabbed some of it, it was like Laffy Taffy or something, and I was thinking, “Oh. This is going to be so good. I remember it as a kid,” and I bit it and it was gross to me because I’m not used to that artificial sweetness anymore. I really realized how far off we have gotten with our taste and what we … It’s just a mess. To me, fruit is completely sweet to me. If I’m going to have fruit, that’s all I need if I want sugar.
Dave: Yeah fruit has plenty of sugar in there. I remember I was in Peru and I went to Lima, that big city, millions of people. There was these like fruit vendor carts except they’re all selling Kit-Kats and Snickers. They literally stopped selling fruit because it was too much work to get in the city. Then you get on this little plane and you fly to Cusco, which is a small town, and they’re still selling fruit and you can see a difference in the population. Like, “Okay. Are you eating food or are you eating packaged crap?” You’re happier when you eat real foods.
Natalie: Totally.
Dave: You do something else too. You’re Celiac and you recommend that everyone, including non-Celiacs, be gluten-free when they’re going un-processed. Why do you recommend gluten-free for everyone?
Natalie: Okay. So, first of all, I don’t necessarily recommend gluten-free for everyone, but I recommend un-processed food for everyone. When you eat an un-processed food diet, you’re pretty much eating gluten-free anyway. I wanted to explain that because just going a gluten-free diet could mean a processed gluten-free diet, and there’s a lot of people that go on a gluten-free diet and gain weight and get sick and Type 2 diabetes goes up. That’s junk. It’s almost worst junk than the gluten-containing junk sometimes.
Dave: You can actually have only corn chips and coke and be gluten-free and vegan actually. Vegan gluten-free diet right there.
Natalie: There you go. Perfect. I kind of got away from using the word, “gluten-free,” because when I was diagnosed with Celiac, this was years ago, no one knew what gluten was. Now it’s like this trendy thing and everyone is gluten-free. “Oh. Gluten-free donuts. I’m fine. I’m eating gluten-free.” No. It’s not fine. I do think that if anyone has an autoimmune disease, gluten has to come out. It’s a must in my mind, but I would say when you eat a natural un-processed food, by my definition, the way I eat, there is no gluten in that. There’s no gluten in fruits, or vegetables, or meats, or nuts, or seeds, or oils, or in Bulletproof coffee. There’s no gluten in that.
Dave: Right. Exactly.
Natalie: So, it’s gluten-free. I recommend everyone eat an un-processed food diet.
Dave: I love that. It makes me crazy when I see these big gluten-free stickers. I do something kind of sarcastic. I’m working on re-releasing a bottle of water, and I absolutely put a gluten-free badge on it. It’s freaking hilarious. Dude, it’s water. It’s a humor item. Also, there’s a vegan thing on it.
Natalie: I’ll put that on all my headphone and all my DVDs. On my DVDs I’m going to write “gluten-free.”
Dave: It’s like my water is vegan and my … I don’t even care if it’s vegan or not. I don’t consider plant-based or animal-based to be a useful moniker because well, my favorite animal protein in spider venom and my favorite vegetable protein is sarin, the nerve gas. So, clearly plants and animals are all toxic and we can’t eat anything so we should just be done with it. Those badges are kind of funny. It doesn’t mean healthy. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s technically true. So, hey let’s use it, right?
Natalie: That’s funny. I got away from the word “gluten-free” because I, as a Celiac, was over it, and almost am embarrassed if I go to a restaurant now and I’m ordering what I think will be fine for me and I have to say, “Can you just confirm that’s it’s gluten-free?” I feel like I’m the annoying person. I don’t like that now. So, I’m getting away from it. I’m coining the name “un-processed.” I like it better.
Dave: The definition of gluten-free is also subject to regulatory approval. This was maybe 10 years ago, I had my first chance, I finally got enough points … I used to commute from California to Cambridge, England, which is a horrible commute. I did it every month. I don’t remember how many hours of flying it is, but it was time zones and jet lag. I finally got my upgrade to Virgin Atlantic Upper class, you know the purple seats and chair with enough leg room, finally from Economy. I ordered the gluten-free meal, it comes out on these nice plates. They were like, “Oh. You’re gluten-free.” They bring me this roll and I turned the package over. The roll is made out of wheat starch. It has 60 mg of gluten in the gluten-free roll. It’s below the regulatory definition of gluten therefore it’s gluten-free. I’m like, “Stick a fork in my eye guys. Whatever. I’ll just eat the butter.” In fact, that was the trip where I came up with the name “Bulletproof.” A guy named Herb Kim was sitting next to me. We got to talking and he gave me the idea. It was kind of cool.
That definition of gluten-free, it doesn’t mean anything. You got to watch out, like what’s in there versus it’s free of this. If they’re telling you it’s free of something, they’re trying to distract you from knowing what’s actually in there, which is what’s most important.
Natalie: Okay. Here’s my other pet peeve about gluten-free. I hate when someone says, “I think I’m gluten-sensitive, or I’m Celiac, or I’m gluten-intolerant, so I am going to get a blood test. My doctor wants me to eat lots of gluten this week so it will show up in my blood test.” To me, I’m like, “Just take it out of your diet. If you feel better, you have your answer. So, you want to put more poison in you to see if you have a reaction to it? That’s ridiculous. Just like being sensitive to lactose, just take it out. We don’t need it in our diets.
Dave: Yeah. I did the same thing. I’m like, “Look. Some people have Celiac, but some other people have long-term, 20 year plus autoimmune reactions to it.” There’s no argument for including it in your diet except, “I’m lazy.” At this point there’s lots of other better sources of nutrition. So, if your starving and you can’t afford to not eat wheat, then eat wheat. It’s great. Starvation is really bad for you. Otherwise though, move away from it.
Natalie: Yeah. What’s the point? There’s no reason. If you have to have starches, I’d rather you have rice, potatoes … Add something without gluten anyway.
Dave: Exactly. It’s not an ideal food for humans, so when you un-process your diet and you’re doing the 7-day Jump Start Plan, all right, cool. You got people to try it, and maybe they only kind of did it. That’s cool.
I want to know more about your diet. People listening to Bulletproof Radio are always interested in the latest hacks for their diet and all that stuff. What about getting your body into fat-burning mode? What do you talk about in planning that?
Natalie: Oh my gosh. Okay. I could down so many roads on this, but this is how I talk to my people because I want it to be as simple as possible. First of all, you have to consume less than you’re burning off. That just is very basic elementary school information, but I think a lot of people miss the boat counting all these things and trying to measure all these exact portions and then they’re just not active at all. I tell people, “You want to eat healthy, but you got to move your body too. You’ve got to move because we’ve got to get our bodies moving instead of just sitting all day, which is horrible for us, and just eating. If we’re eating more than we’re burning off, we’re going to have a problem right there.”
I also talk about that you have to eat fat to get rid of fat. Just like I would tell you to drink water to not be bloated. If your body’s not getting it, it’s going hold on to things. I hate people that say, well I don’t hate anybody, but I hate the whole fat-free craze. I eat a lot of fat, a lot of it. The more fat I eat, guess what? The more fat I burn off. I’m not storing it when I’m eating it. I keep it very basic like that. I’m not a fan of eliminating food groups entirely –
Dave: Natalie …
Natalie: Yep?
Dave: It’s people like you who are increasing the price of butter. If you would just stop talking about this high-fat thing, I’d really appreciate it. Okay?
Natalie: It’s funny because you got me hooked on coffee with Ghee in it. That’s all you and I’ve been sharing that a lot on my Snapchats and social media. I get so many people like, “What are you … You’re putting Ghee? That causes heart disease.” I’m like, “No. It doesn’t. That’s such old information. No.” So, I feel like there’s just so much old misinformation out there now and we need to eat real foods, we need to eat fat, we need to eat protein, we need to eat carbs, and carbs are not Doritos. Carbs can be vegetables and protein. You have to eat foods for your body to operate that way, so it’s not storing fat, it’s burning it. That’s very basic, but that’s pretty much how I like to explain it.
Dave: Even if you’re not in ketosis, which is a big part of what I recommend going in and going out, you still have to eat enough fat to burn fat. If you’re only eating sugar, you’re body’s like, “I got to store this stuff as fat.” Certain kinds of fat like Brain Octane, specifically, it can be stored as fat in the body. Most fat can be stored as fat, it doesn’t mean it will be, but it can be. I’m a fan of including things in the coffee recipe. I’m like, “Okay. This gives you energy and it just won’t get there on your hips or on your belly or wherever you don’t want it to go.” That little hack for me has been a big one.
Natalie: My big thing for me that I like to say … I hate when someone says, “Oh. Do carrots make you fat?” Or “Does coconut oil make you fat?” Or “Will MCT oil make you fat?” What I say is, “Eating too much processed food and not moving your body is what makes you fat.” Inactivity. Those are the 2 things that make people obese. Now, we can get into intermittent fasting, or ketosis, there’s all kinds of things we could go down and discuss. The bottom line is even if they don’t do putting themselves into ketosis, if they do the basics, they’re not going to be obese. It’s very hard to be obese doing the natural way of way of eating, eating these foods.
Dave: That’s totally true. What do you have for breakfast?
Natalie: Well, before I met you, or after, because before I met you, I knew my plans. I have different things that I like to do. I have my staple of like 4 different breakfasts. One of my favorite things is I do a natural turkey sausage. It sounds … I know that’s processed, but it’s one that I know every ingredient in it. It’s a natural and I cook it with MCT oil a little bit, and then I do a big side of berries and fruit. I’m getting my fats, my protein in that. That’s one breakfast that I love to have. I love to do eggs and avocado and fruit. That’s another one that I’ve done.
Now, quite frankly, I’ve gotten addicted to your Bulletproof. I hope I’m not in trouble, but I’ve done it not quite the right way. In fact, you have fans that comment on mine and are like, “That’s not true Bulletproof.” I’m like, “Okay. I’m trying.” So, I use … This is my new favorite breakfast, and my entire team texts me in the morning and are like, “Are you making the coffee?” What I do is I take the Bulletproof coffee and I … I think I told you last time I talked to you, I had never had coffee in my life until like a month ago. I started listening to you and now everybody’s hooked on coffee here. So, I use –
Dave: We’ll send you some more.
Natalie: I use your coffee and I add it in the blender with the MCT oil, but I do –
Dave: Are you using Brain Octane or MCT?
Natalie: Your Brain Octane.
Dave: Okay. Brain Octane is like a subcategory of MCT. Cool.
Natalie: So, I’m using Brain Octane, sorry, specifically Brain Octane. I don’t use the 2 tablespoons. I use probably a teaspoon to a full tablespoon of that, then I add a tablespoon of Ghee, and then I do a full scoop of a natural chocolate whey protein, and then I add a special cacao I like. So, that’s my little concoction and I blend it up. That’s my addiction in the mornings right now.
Dave: You’ve definitely got all the real Bulletproof ingredients because you’ve got butter –
Natalie: But I didn’t do right ratios. I know that.
Dave: Yeah, but ratios vary by person. Some of the crazy, calorie-counting critics are like, “There’s 430 calories in Bulletproof coffee.” This is going to sound radical, but just check this out, a 90 pound woman will put less fat in her coffee than a 300 pound body builder. You know what? It’s the same thing when they put scoops of scrambled eggs on their plate, the body builder puts more calories on his plate and the lighter woman puts less calories on her plate because the amount of food you eat isn’t actually fixed. It’s a base of what’s your basal metabolic rate, how much do you move, and how big are you? I’m like, “Those matter. So, yes I’ll have 400 calories, but I’m like 200 pounds. If you have 400 calories, it might not be good.”
Natalie: It’s so good and then I put it in my Vitamix and I have to put it on super high speed because it makes it really frothy. I can’t do the raw … Did I hear you say you can put a raw egg in it? That’s not going to happen. I can’t do that.
Dave: Well, it gets slightly cooked when it’s in the hot coffee –
Natalie: Okay. You just put the whey …
Dave: It’s invisible when it’s in there. You would never know. It’s just a little bit frothier.
Natalie: Another thing … There’s lots of different ways I’ve done breakfast, but a lot of … One thing I do love … A big weakness to me was always granola, but I don’t want to eat granola. So, I get a very natural brand of it and I use … The serving size I think is 3/4 cups and I use 1/4 cup of it, but I trick it. I take 1/4 cup of granola and I take a bunch of walnuts chopped up and then I take a lot of strawberries and berries in there and then I take shredded coconut and cacao nips, then I add a little bit of coconut milk. That’s another breakfast I’ll do. It’s about taking the natural foods. I still get the crunch-factor or whatever, but I got to say, lately I’m pretty addicted to the coffee. That’s like my go-to everyday. It’s going to have to go in my next book because I love it, and it’s just my new favorite craving in the morning.
Dave: You can do like some of your granola stuff with the coffee –
Natalie: Well, I usually add strawberries, so I wasn’t completely honest. I have to have some berries too.
Dave: That totally works, right? So, you can build the coffee in. What kind of gives me indigestion is –
Natalie: It’s a new brand for you. You can call it “Build-A-Coffee,” and it’ll be for people like me that just don’t listen completely and just modify it. Build-A-Coffee.
Dave: You’re getting the important … You get the Brain Octane, you get the clean beans, so you don’t get the food craving later from the coffee crash. People put all sorts of weird stuff there. Someone put bacon in the other day. I’m like, “That’s not good.” I did … I’ve tried tallow –
Natalie: Have you put the cacao in there though? It’s really good like that.
Dave: We make a cacao powder. A lab-tested raw one and I’ll use that for mocha. In the Bulletproof coffee shop we do that. We add nibs to some things, and we use the collagen protein that’s heat stable which is another hack for it. It’s like that basic thing where you get the clean coffee, you get the Brain Octane, and a little bit of butter because it has stuff in it that’s really good for you.
Natalie: The Ghee is so good.
Dave: Butter of Ghee, yeah. Ghee is actually better than butter from a nutritional profile. From a frothy perspective, Ghee is not as frothy as butter which is why I recommend butter for most people. It’s pretty well-tolerated and it’s just like a slight flavor edge. You’re choosing the right thing –
Natalie: I’m going to go back to those Instagram comments and I’m going to say you approve because I have all kinds of Dave fans going, “That’s not the correct way to do this.”
Dave: Here’s the other thing that true Bulletproof fans will say about that, they’ll say, “Look. Whey protein isn’t very heat-stable, so if you’re going to go to the trouble buying a high-quality, low-temperature processed whey … ” I manufacture this crazy whey with extra colostrum and stuff. They whey doesn’t benefit from heavy blend because it breaks up the peptides, assuming you have actually have peptides in your whey, and it doesn’t set up to heat very well. So, what a true crazy Bulletproof person would do is they would blend the coffee and the oils first which allows the heat to drop in the coffee –
Natalie: That’s what I do. There you go.
Dave: You add the whey … I generally say don’t really put whey in coffee because of the heat thing, but if the coffee’s cooled a bit, you add the whey at the end and then pulse it a little bit to get the whey mixed in but not blend the crap out of the whey. That’s pretty darn Bulletproof. I could go for that.
Natalie: I’m Natalie Jill. I’m just un-processing. See, I’m un-processing. So, I’m not perfection. Look, I didn’t even do coffee before, so I’m coming a long way.
Dave: You have come so far and look at how amazing you look now that you’re on coffee. You look twice as good as last time we talked.
Natalie: I’m happy. Yeah, that’s right. I’m younger now. I dropped 10 years. It’s amazing.
Dave: Yeah, you’re IQ doubled. I get it.
Natalie: No. I love it. I definitely … I talk about it. It’s on my Snapchat. It’s on my Snapchat this morning. You have to check it out.
Dave: That’s so cool.
Natalie: I Snapchat all day. It shows my Bulletproof … What I’m doing there.
Dave: I have a question. I’m old, right?
Natalie: You’re younger than me I think –
Dave: So, if I’m on Snapchat, do I have to wear pants? I don’t have that down.
Natalie: Remember we were talking about being authentic, doing the whole authentic … What I love about Snapchat is it’s so real and fun. I show … I just have fun with it. It’s like I embarrass myself on there. I don’t even care. It’s fun because you think you’re just talking to your phone and you just forget that a lot of people are watching. It’s fun and I start every social media site with just having fun and it evolves. My social medias always grow pretty quick because I’m just real on them and Snapchat, to me, is like the most fun, real one and people are just interested in what I’m doing. Right before we were on here I Snapchatted that I was about to talk to you. I just share whatever’s going on. It’s like the least time-consuming. It’s just fun. Whatever you think you’re doing … Show your setup for stuff … People are interested. They want to know what’s really happening. They want to know if you ever have a Reese’s Pieces. They want to see it. They want to know the fun stuff.
Dave: I actually don’t have Reese’s Pieces. I don’t do any of that stuff.
Natalie: I’m just trying to project on you to make –
Dave: I do that like coconut agave, I forget their names, coconut ice cream sometimes. Agave has fructose in it, but I don’t eat any fructose usually, so like I don’t really … It doesn’t matter.
Natalie: They just like to see. My dog is famous on Snapchat and so is my husband. I make fun of everybody else. That’s what you do with it, just make fun of everybody else in your life.
Dave: All right. I got my Snapchat lesson.
Natalie: Awesome.
Dave: So, talk to me about willpower. You’ve dealt with depression, you’ve dealt with obesity, you’re clearly in a really happy space. What’s your take on willpower?
Natalie: So, I think you can’t do things on willpower alone. You have to have a bigger picture or a bigger “Why?” You need to know why you want to do things. Like, with you, you said you were dealing with Asperger’s and all these things going on and you knew that you didn’t want to feel that way. For me, I’m 44, and I’m a proud 44. I feel 20. I feel good. I am happy. I love when people say, “You look great for 44.” I like that I can play with my daughter at the park and not be sitting on the bench complaining about aches and pains. There’s 44 year olds that feel 90, and then there’s me that feels 20. That’s my “Why?” I want to be here for a long time, and I want to have my wits about me and be as healthy as I can.
To me, there’s so much we can’t control … There’s so many things we can’t control, but why not control what we can? I can control what I put in my body. I can control how much I move it. So, I do it. I control that. To me, the willpower part isn’t as important because I know my bigger picture.
Dave: I feel like when you take the steps you’ve taken to control the things you can control in your environment, like what you put in your mouth, it does free up willpower for other things versus just being whip-sod around by what you ate in your last meal or what’s going on in the world around you. Building peace into your environment is not a bag thing because when you get a little bit of quiet time, maybe you perform better, maybe you have more willpower. It seems to make sense.
Natalie: I like people to know that everyone’s … Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has their days. Every month … There’s definite days where I feel down or … I mean it’s just human. You have days that are bad, but it’s about making good choices so you can get the majority of your life great. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to throw your back out or you’re never going to … Things happen in life, but you just make the best choices you can while you can.
Dave: Very, very well said. Well, Natalie, I’m really curious how you’re going to answer the final question of the interview.
Natalie: I’m scared.
Dave: I mean I don’t know if you … Hopefully you didn’t prepare ahead of time, because it’s more fun if you don’t. If someone came up to you tomorrow and said, “Natalie, based on everything you’ve learned in your life, I want your advice. I want to perform better on everything. What are the 3 most important things I need to know?”
Natalie: Oh my gosh. I love this question. Okay. God. I have like a hundred. The first thing, be accountable. It’s no one else’s fault. You got to drop the blame game. I’m so sick of people blaming everybody else for what’s wrong with them. That’s not going to help them. You got to drop it and just be accountable no matter what it is. Things might be tougher for you, they might be harder, you might have more uphills to climb. It doesn’t matter. You got to be accountable, you got to own it, and do it.
Dave: Do you know who created the blame game?
Natalie: No. Who?
Dave: I don’t know. Whoever it is, it’s their fault.
Natalie: Oh. I get it.
Dave: Sorry. I just had to blame someone. I was just being mad. Sorry.
Natalie: I hate the blame game. My slogan has always been, “Excuses or Solutions? You decide.” That’s another thing, we all have excuses. I could have a million excuses, but we could choose to tell everybody our excuses and have validation about them and that, again, changes nothing, or we could find solutions to things and everything changes. That’s the other thing I would say.
The third thing I’m going to say is … It sounds so basic, but it’s just move more. I used to get in trouble in school as a kid because I couldn’t sit still. I was just always moving and fidgety and I want to get up. I was labeled everything. I was ADD, ADHD, whatever. My daughter goes through the same thing right now with her teachers. Teachers will say, “She’s not paying attention,” and I want to say, “You’re just boring.” It’s not her, you’re just boring. People are supposed to move. I like that she moves around and wants to get up and doesn’t want to sit in one place.
Society tends to tell us that that’s not okay, that we’re supposed to be sitting in a cubicle all day or sitting behind a desk and supposed to be little robots and just work, work, work and go run on the treadmill for an hour. That’s not what our bodies are designed to do. It’s okay. I don’t care what you’re teacher of your boss told you. Move around because inactivity is close to being dead. Just move. I could go on about exercise programs and everything, but I’ll tell you right now, if we just got rid of our chairs and our cubicles and those desks, a lot of obesity problems would go away.
Dave: Totally true.
Natalie: A lot of health problems would go away. So, that’s my last thing.
Dave: Well, great answers, as I would’ve expected. Natalie, thank you for being on Bulletproof Radio. Will you tell listeners where they can find out more about your book, more about you? You have social stuff everywhere. Where should people go to connect with you?
Natalie: Okay. So, nataliejillfitness.com/book is where I want everyone to go initially because that’s where you’re going to find out where to get my book, which is available everywhere. That’s my website, nataliejillfitness.com. I’m on every social media site, NatalieJillFit, except for YouTube which is Natalie Jill Fitness, but other than that, NatalieJillFit. My books will be in bookstores everywhere as of May 3rd. It’s available at a pre-order now with lots of bonuses.
Dave: That’s Natalie –
Natalie: Jill
Dave: N-A-T-A-L-I-Ejill.com/book
Natalie: Nataliejillfitness.com
Dave: Oh. Sorry. Nataliejillfitness.com/book.
Natalie: Yes.
Dave: We’ll include that in the transcripts, so when this goes live on the Bulletproof website we’ll put a link so everyone can find it. No problem.
Natalie: Thank you. This is what looks like. Can you see? It’s a hard cover. This is the Galley, so it’s like the paper-back, but the actual book is a hard cover, all-color copy, recipes.
Dave: Is that you?
Natalie: That’s me with blonde-hair … Blonde-ish. Now my hair’s darker. It’s gotten darker.
Dave: Okay. That’s why you look so different. That is like a super model picture. That’s awesome.
Natalie: It is? I was told I look like J-Lo on this. I don’t know how I feel about that. This is me.
Dave: If people are telling you you look like J-Lo, I think that that’s okay.
Natalie: Okay. All right. Well, yeah. I don’t ever cut my hair short. It’s always long, but I’ve definitely gone blonde to dark many times.
Dave: If they said you looked like Donald Trump or someone –
Natalie: That’d be a problem …
Dave: That’s not a compliment. If you’re like J-Lo, I think you’re doing all right. I’m pretty sure.
Natalie: All right. That’s me.
Dave: I’m not that cool.
Natalie: I fought for this cover, Dave. I did.
Dave: Did you?
Natalie: I didn’t want like the standard standing in the kitchen all serious like every other cookbook and recipe book and nutrition book. I had to be different.
Dave: Well, cover design is a dark art, and I certainly haven’t mastered it at all, so I think you did well.
Natalie: Thank you.
Dave: Beautiful.
Natalie: Thank you.
Dave: Have an awesome day and thanks again for being on Bulletproof Radio.
Natalie: Thanks to you. Thanks.
Dave: If you enjoyed today’s show, do something good. Go onto iTunes and say, “Hey. I liked this,” or better yet, share this episode or share your favorite episode with someone you think would like it. Subscribe to it and head on over to Natalie Jill’s site and pick up a copy of her book if you’d like to learn more about un-processing your diet.
While you’re at it, there’s a few other things you could do. I mentioned at the beginning of the show a couple things you need to know about, and I’m going to mention them again, because, well, they both have me super excited. Bulletproof bars, collagen, Brain Octane, all the good stuff. Super portable. Super delicious. If you eat them with the chocolate bar, you’ll never want a Reese’s Pieces again. Natalie, I’m talking to you here. Insta-Mix, because sometimes you don’t have time to take butter and oil and pour it into your coffee. Because I live in Canada, I’m going to show you something here that just pisses me off. See this one, the customs people, yes I’m talking to you Canadian customs, you opened my precious Insta-Mix and you cut one open because you’re bastards and you put tape on it that says you inspected it. You know what? This is unnecessary harassment at the border for people who just want grass-fed butter and Brain Octane in their coffee. Got it? It is a white powder, but it’s not that kind of white powder. Have an awesome day. Even if you’re the guy that cut my Insta-Mix open. I forgive you.
Speaker 4: Get tons more original info to make it easier to kick more ass at life when you sign with the free newsletter at bulletproofexec.com and stay Bulletproof.
