Transcript: #113 How to Kick Your Sugar Craving with Kevin Geary

Listen

Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE

Transcript

• 03:47 About Kevin Geary
• 08:25 Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings
• 10:02 Myths in Overcoming Sugar Cravings
• 11:36 Stress as a Trigger for Craving Sugar
• 13:06 Mental Triggers for Craving Sugar
• 16:19 Carbohydrates
• 20:40 Misconceptions About Sugar
• 25:02 Overcoming Addiction
• 27:06 Psychological Aspect of Shutting Down Your Sugar Cravings
• 30:14 Committing to Real Food
• 34:45 High Glycemic Foods
• 38:00 Problems with Fruit
• 39:40 Importance of Eating Protein
• 41:15 More About Kevin’s Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings Program
• 43:03 Importance of Reducing Sugar Intake
• 45:30 About Kevin’s Rebooted Body Program
• 48:08 Importance of Sleep
• 51:56 Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
• 55:44 Where to Find Kevin Geary

Wendy Myers: Hello. Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. My name is Wendy Myers, and you can find me at myersdetox.com. You can find this video podcast on the YouTube channel at WendyLiveto110 and on the corresponding blog post.

Today, we have Kevin Geary on the podcast. He’s going to be talking about something a lot of you guys want to know, how do you shut down sugar cravings. This is a challenge for so many people, including myself, and this can be an exasperating constant daily battle because we are always surrounded by sugar everywhere you go. Everywhere you look, there’s sugar everywhere. And so many people are addicted.

So I thought that it’s very important to have Kevin on the show today. He has an amazing program called Shut down Your Sugar Cravings that you can check out. It’s a very inexpensive one-month program that he’s going to talk about today on the program.

Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest today on the show.

I’m so thrilled that I finally launched my Body Bio Rehab Program. This is an online, one-month program that I wanted to create to teach you about the basics of health. You can learn more about it at BodyBioRehab.com.

So many people send me e-mails every single day asking, “What kind of diet should I eat?” “What kind of supplement should I take?” “How do I sleep better?” “What’s the best way to detox?” et cetera.

So I wanted to create a program that was foundational, that taught the basics about the Five Pillars of Health. What type of diet you should eat? What kind of exercise you should do and how much? What kinds of stress reduction steps are key? People need a lot of stress reduction tools in their tool kit because it’s the number one killer.

People need to know how to sleep better. There’s so many simple tips that you can do to get a better night sleep. So I teach you that and the supplements to take to improve your sleep if, for whatever reason, you cannot sleep.

And I teach you all about detoxification, and how — especially in the coming years and decades — detoxification is going to play a primary role in preventing disease. There are hundreds of chemicals in our bodies on average. There are 80,000 chemicals in our environment and dozens of heavy metals. And they are not producing health. They are synergistically destroying your health.

Unless you add this to your health regime, you cannot hope to live a long, disease-free life. It’s just not possible in today’s day and age. We are going to talk about that in the program as well. Go and learn more at BodyBioRehab.com.

Our guest today, Kevin Geary, is a friend of mine. He’s been on the podcast before. He’s such a great guest. He is a holistic health coach. He uses a unique blend of ancestral science and modern psychology to help men and women reprogram their body and mind for sustainable fat loss, vibrant health and peak performance.

At one point, Kevin was 60 lbs. heavier than he is today — how hard to believe — but what he learned in his struggle to lose weight and keep it off has been incorporated into his Rebooted Body program.

Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Kevin Geary: Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be back.

Wendy Myers: Well, why don’t we just start out by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and why you became a health coach?

Kevin Geary: Sure. So back in 2009, I was over 220 lbs. I had high blood pressure. I was a borderline diabetic. And I wasn’t really happy with the way things were going. And I went to my doctor. My wife had urged me to go and basically get a check-up. She was like, “You haven’t had a physical in a long time since I’ve met you. Why don’t you go get yourself checked out? Make sure everything is healthy.”

We were planning on having kids, so she wants to make sure everything was in order with that. So I was like, “Okay. I definitely will.” I went and that’s when they told me, “Hey, you have high blood pressure and you’re borderline diabetic. You might want to take care of some of these things.”

So, I went home and — the other frustrating thing was I had been trying to lose weight. I had been doing the traditional approach, counting calories and going to the gym a lot, and doing a lot of exercise. I was trying to do running. And the only thing that was happening was I was getting tired all of the time. I was completely out of energy, and my weight would fluctuate. I would make some progress, but then I would relapse and I would binge. And so, what happened was, I would lose 5 or 10 lbs., and then I would gain 15 back. And just through that process over and over again, I worked my way up to 220.

So, I felt leaving the doctor’s office hopeless because I didn’t really have a plan of action. I knew that if I went back and just try to do the dieting thing that I was doing, that it was going to end in the same result. So, I went online and I was, “Okay. I’m going to look for people who are saying something completely different from what I have heard in the past and what I have tried in the past.”

And I came across the Real Food Movement and started to implement a lot of the principles there, and saw a really great initial progress. I think I got down to 175, 180 or something like that. And then, I started getting hit with some of these psychological triggers. I felt like I have made good progress, so I started rewarding myself for doing that. Sugar cravings that I had previously had come roaring back. I started binging again. And in the back of my mind, I was telling myself also, “You can go ahead and do these things because you have the answer now. You can get back on track whenever you want.” And of course, that’s a lie.

So, through this process, I eventually decided, “Well, okay, I obviously don’t have the mental part of this down. I got the physical facts in order, but my mind set is still out of control. It’s still manipulating my behavior.” So that’s when I really started to dive into the psychology side of things. And through the work that I did there, I was able to beat a lot of these triggers. You can get down to my current weight, which is about 165, and I maintained that for years.

And Rebooted Body was born out of that journey. A couple of friends who saw me do that process started asking me for more details. They were overweight as well, and wanted to get healthier. So, I started giving them tips and such on the side and guidance, and they saw great results.

I was working at the martial arts studio at that time, so I was teaching a lot of kids, and their parents would watch classes. Their parents saw my transformation, and some of them would start asking me about what I did, and I started helping them.

And that’s really when I decided that I wanted to do this in a more professional sense, especially because the job that I had at the martial arts studio — I was a co-owner — my partner was not a good person, and I was frankly tired of — not just him, but the whole paradigm of what martial arts has become. It’s just very reward-driven and empty and shallow. And when you’re teaching kids, they try to make it all about the games. There’s not really any serious training. And I have done that for 15 years. And I was so done with it.

And I saw this helping-people-get-a-body-and-life-they-love-thing as that thing I could jump to. And that’s when I started Rebooted Body. We did a pilot program for a group course. We got 16 people into that group course, live in Atlanta. We saw really great results. And that actually became the blueprint for my Total Body Reboot Program, which is our flagship course at Rebooted Body. So that’s the timeline there, the cliff notes.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. It looks like such an amazing program, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that. But you started a sugar cravings course as well, right?

Kevin Geary: Yes. Yes. Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings was released last year. And we released that really because — it is a stepping stone to Total Body Reboot. I mean, a lot of people want to do Total Body Reboot, but today they want something shorter to do first, something faster, something to get quicker results up front.

So that’s why we started Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings. Of Course, if people don’t want to do Total Body Reboot — it’s a really great program just for addressing that side of things. I mean, somebody could be in my shoes, where I knew about the commitment to real food, I knew about functional movement and all that, but I was still dealing with all the psychological aspects of these sugar cravings.

Now, one of the main issues that I see with people is, even they know what to do, the way their behavior is manipulated by these triggers and sugar, and processed food, and specifically — they just can’t consistently stay on course. That’s why I created Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings, to help people overcome that challenge, because I saw it was so big.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s why I wanted to have you come to the podcast and talk about how to stop your sugar cravings because it’s so challenging. I have a lot of clients — including myself, honestly — that do everything right, that have a very healthy lifestyle, but still really struggle with sugar. I struggle with sugar every single day. And, so I think you really give a lot of really great tips on this course about how to kick your craving’s butt.

Kevin Geary: Absolutely.

Wendy Myers: So why don’t we talk a little bit about sugar cravings?

Kevin Geary: Sure.

Wendy Myers: What are some of the biggest myths with overcoming sugar cravings?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, I would say the biggest myth that I see people fall into — it’s a huge trap — is thinking that if you beat the dependency, you beat the cravings. And, just in case people don’t have the clarification on this, the dependency is that short term physiological dependence.

When you’re working on that, you are getting the withdrawal symptoms — the headaches, the low energy levels, the flu like symptoms. This dependency is the two to three week period at the very beginning. And people are like, “If I could just learn to get through that, or somebody can get me through that, then I’d be good. I won’t have any more cravings whatsoever.”

And that’s absolutely not the case. So we’re going to talk about, I’m sure, about the psychology side of things. But until the mindset stuff is dealt with and the triggers are healed, the dependency is number one. It’s the easiest part to overcome.

If you just buckle down, and anybody can really use willpower for 21 days to get through that section. And that’s what really people do. But you’ll see — I was just online the other day, and somebody was recruiting their friends to do the sugar detox thing. But the problem was, they were like, “This is going to be my sixth time. It’s an awesome course. Come do it with me.” I’m like, “Your sixth time?” If this is your sixth time, it’s not working. And it’s not working, because I know how these courses work. They help you get through the dependency, and then you’re on your own. And the triggers are still there and they come back, and they derail you.

Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about some of those triggers. I know that driving by your favorite restaurants or maybe going to that gas station in the morning where they got the candy aisle. Let’s talk about some of those things that will trigger your brain to make you reach for that sugar.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So the first thing I mean is there’s a concept called Symbolic Substitution. This is probably the biggest thing that people have to get hold of and realize what’s going on in their life. But symbolic substitution is using sugar or processed foods to cover up unmet needs in their life, or to cope with unmet needs. And the stress is — we can use the term stress, in general — so if you have work stress, if you have relationship stress, if you have family stress, if you have scheduling stress — all of those things become triggers, and sugar is a very nice drug to cope with those things.

You have needs, like the need for a room in your schedule, the need for time by yourself, the need for an intimate relationship. Maybe those things aren’t being met, so you turn to sugar. That’s probably the biggest trigger, and the cause of smaller triggers that people may identify. That’s the one, I think, people need to deal with the most.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Just having a full life, people — I think, there are a lot of areas in people’s lives, like, they are not happy with their work or their relationship. And you have to fill those voids somehow. Absolutely.

Kevin Geary: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: Can we talk about some of the mental triggers that people have? I’ve read about this in David Kessler’s The End of Our Eating, and it was really profound for me. Where when you drive by certain restaurants or you’re hanging out with certain people, certain things can trigger you to reach for sugar, that forbidden food.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So I call this Trigger Pattern Paralysis, because you are paralyzed by these patterns that you’ve experienced. These patterns can come about in childhood, they can about later life — it doesn’t really matter where they come from, it’s just recognizing the patterns.

So yeah, some people are perfectly fine with kicking sugar cravings at home, but when they go out to a social event, suddenly, it’s out of control, or, like you said, they drive by a place and it calls to them. These are patterns that people are stuck in, and identifying these patterns is very important, because the patterns are very powerful. That is what your brain is comfortable with. It wants to get back to that pattern. It doesn’t want to break out of the mold.

It’s the same thing with making a new habit. When you try to make a new habit, your brain wants to return to that habit you’ve been doing for a long time because that doesn’t require any mental capacity. And the brain is always trying to be efficient.

Doing new things, building new habits is inefficient. So, you really have to understand the process of what’s going on. Why is your brain trying to fall back in these old patterns? What specifically are the patterns, and then, how can I break them?

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I mean, for me, I try to have alternate things to do. Like, when I have a sugar craving, I’ll drink a big glass of water to try to get rid of the sugar craving, or I’ll go for a walk, or I’ll try to do anything to distract me from wanting that sugar. I guess it’s so powerful.

But I also found in the past, when I had adrenal fatigue, that come about two or three PM, when you’re having a dip in energy, that’s when a lot of people also want to reach for sugar. So you have some healthy foods that will give them — some healthy carbs, I think — that will give them some energy boost rather than the sugar. Because when you are biologically low on energy, your body wants that quick energy.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. Absolutely. You have to be prepared for these circumstances. The worst thing is to not be prepared, to not have real whole foods available to you. Because when you’re in a time like that, where you are triggered and looking for sugar, if you don’t have the alternative at hand, then you’re going to reach for that sugar, like it’s just a given. You’re not going to be able to make that better decision in that time frame.

So, having stuff on hand where you realize, “Okay, my energy levels are crashing right now. Let me just open the fridge and boom, I have a plethora of real whole foods here available to me — healthy fats, healthy carbs, I can have something here that makes the world a difference.”

People really get into trouble. I always make it the first step for people to reboot their environment. That’s what I say, that they need to do as the very first thing. Because if you’re environment is not set up for your success, you will fail. That’s a given.

Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about carbs. I think it’s very important to have healthy carbs on hand.

Kevin Geary: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: Because I know, for me, genetically, I can’t do low carb. And when I try to go really low carb, I have really voracious sugar cravings, because I have the FUT2 gene, which means that my 23andMe test — I can’t do low carb.

So can we talk a little bit about carbs? Are carbs evil? What are your thoughts on that?

Kevin Geary: So, yeah, carbs really need to be put in context. I actually don’t even like the use of the word carbs because not all carbohydrates are equal. I mean, eating a pizza is not the same as eating a potato.

So, when we first talk about carbs, it’s important for people to take this first step of committing to real food. Because once you’ve done the commitment to real food, carbs become far less of a problem. If you’re eating a lot of processed carbohydrates, then we have huge problems.

I mean, those throw off your satiety signals. They really spike insulin levels. They do a lot of things that are destructive. And when we step outside of that space, we get to real food carbohydrates, they don’t do those things. They actually nourish your body and can set you up for success. So, I would say, that’s the important context to understand.

A lot of the talks about carbohydrates — as far as like hunter gatherers diets go — is misguided. There’s a lot of people online saying, “Hunter-gatherers were very high fat. Modern protein, very low carbohydrates.” And yeah, there were some hunter-gatherer tribe that lived liked that, but there were hunter-gatherer tribes that did not live like that. They were very high carb, and potentially even low fat.

So, we can’t try to put these concepts into these little black and white boxes. When we lose the context of the discussion, that’s when the real problem start to happen. And unfortunately, that’s what happens a lot online, that’s what happens a lot on the Paleo movement.

When I go to Paleo message boards and things like that, there’s a heavy demonization of carbohydrates a lot of times. There’s a misguided story about how hunter-gatherers live. There’s only one hunter gatherer tribe that ever existed and they all ate the same way. A lot of dogmas floating around on that, so I would say, do not be afraid of carbohydrates as long as you’ve committed to real food.

And then, a second thing there would be — you have to have the movement levels to support your carbohydrate intake. There’s this concept of evolutionary mismatch, where we, as early humans, were drawn to these high glycemic foods. These are high reward foods.

The problem is, now we live in abundance of these stuff. We really didn’t have an abundance of these back then. We can have sugar anytime of the day. In fact, people are trying to give us sugar at all times of the day.

And then you mix that with our very, very low output, our very low use of our bodies. We’re just sitting around all the time. We’re exercising, but exercise is not movement. Like going to the gym for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, that doesn’t make up for sitting on your butt for eight hours a day at the computer. You have to integrate low level movement throughout your day in order to support this carbohydrate intake.

If you’re just sitting at the computer all day, eating a bunch of carbohydrates, it’s probably not the best strategy.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I agree with you that there are a lot of dogmas in the Paleo sphere, that’s why I developed the Modern Paleo diet where people have to find the diet that works for them. That can take a lot of [inaudible 19:56] and testing, if it’s sensitivity testing, genetic testing et cetera.

Like, I found that I can’t really eat a high fat diet. I should probably be eating 20 to 30 percent fat. And this 70 percent fat — I don’t think that works for a tremendous amount of people, maybe some young males and some very fast metabolizer females and whatnot, but I don’t see that working for a lot of people.

Kevin Geary: Yeah, it’s very genetic dependent. It just seems some people do very well on that and some people don’t. And I mean, that makes sense because there’s a lot of history of people on high fat diets and there’s a lot of history on people on higher carb diets. It just depends on what line did you come from. That’s probably what your body is more drawn to.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s why I always encourage people, play around with things, maybe get a CTMA certified typing metabolic adviser to help you out with that. I’m hoping to become one soon, but it’s not available online right now. Well, let’s talk about sugar.

Kevin Geary: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: There’s a lot of misconceptions about sugar — what sugar’s healthy, what sugar should you avoid, et cetera.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, in terms of the health of sugar — let’s look at processed sugar for example here, because this is what people are always worried about. People are worried that by doing a sugar cravings program, that we’re going to somehow take away their happiness.

They look at this like, “Oh, great. I can never enjoy sugar ever again. I can never have ice cream.” So, I always try to tell people, “When you’re talking about healthy eating and putting it in context, being a Nazi regarding sugar is not a healthy approach to sugar. That’s not healing your relationship with food.”
So I tell people all the time, I lead the Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings course online, I created it, yet about once a week, I go out with my family, especially in the summers, and we’ll have a night where we get ice cream after we eat dinner. And we’ll enjoy that ice cream out with the sun shining on our face, and we’re relaxed and we’re enjoying life. How is somebody who created Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings having ice cream?

Well, first of all, because I’ve done the work, I’ve healed the triggers. When I eat a bowl of ice cream, that doesn’t mean I eat six more bowls, and I don’t eat a bowl every day for the next seven days because of that. I didn’t fall off the wagon and get run over by it.

So, doing the work allows you to moderate. We always have this talk about moderation and is moderation even possible, or some people say moderation is the best strategy. Moderation is something that you can achieve. And I think that the goal is, when you change your relationship with food, you are able to enjoy even processed sugar from time to time.

And in the context of healthy lifestyle, people I think should be doing that, because abstaining from something like that forever, and all the time, and trying to be a hundred percent, that’s not healthy. And the stress that comes from that, probably, is far more damaging than just eating the bowl of ice cream that you want to have.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I agree with you. There are some people — there are some personality types that take things to an extreme. And they’re like, “I haven’t had sugar in two years and what not.”
But I think, for a lot of people, it’s about moderation. Once a week is fine. And I think that people can — some people that are addicted to sugar can go for a week and then have their little treat whenever that might be, and plan for that.

Kevin Geary: Right.

Wendy Myers: I think that’s a much better strategy, moderation is key.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. And even — I’ve seen time and time again through my program working with people that where before the program, they will do the willpower thing for six days. And on the seventh day — and a lot of programs advocate for this, they call it the cheat day. So you just — look, you use your willpower for six days, you do whatever you want on the seventh day. And I want to tear people away even from that strategy. I want it to be something that is very intuitive like, “Oh, I want a bowl of ice cream? Sure, let me have one. Because in the context of what I’ve done over the past month, it means nothing.”

So, I think getting people focused on willpower, willpower, willpower, cheat. Willpower, willpower, willpower cheat. That’s still a losing strategy. I want people to get away from willpower altogether. And that’s what comes from changing relationship with food and healing the triggers.

You don’t need willpower anymore. You have a different perspective on food. You have a different meaning for what food represents in your life. Therefore, it is powerless over you. And that’s where real freedom happens. When the food is powerless over you rather than consuming you at all times of the day, that’s when you know you’ve made it.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Especially, I see that issue with having sugar consume you and cravings consume you. Because when people are generally healthy, like many of my listeners –they’re not drinking, they’re not smoking, they’re very healthy individuals — and for a lot of people, sugar is the only drug left.

Kevin Geary: Yes.

Wendy Myers: You know what I’m saying? There are a lot of people that have certain genetics, they have addiction issues. And when they get rid of all the addictions, be it drugs or sex or whatever addiction people can have or fall prey to, sugar is the only thing left. Food is the only thing left. And that activates the dopamine receptors, that reward system in the brain. Can you talk a little bit about that, perhaps, overcoming that?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. There’s actually — you triggered in my mind — there’s this concept of Addiction Transfer that people have to worry about as well. And that’s what you said. If you — we see it time and time again, where somebody quits smoking and that causes or ramps up a sugar addiction or a food addiction, like you haven’t got rid of the addiction.

Addiction is like this underlying thing inside you. And the gambling, or the sex, or the shopping — that’s just how it’s choosing to manifest at that time. It’s not actually — there’s nothing about shopping that — it’s not a chemical that you’re injecting in your bloodstream like heroin or something. Why can’t some people go shopping and they just shop? And other people go shopping and it’s a full-blown nightmare. And their credit card draw maxed out, and their trunk is full of stuff that they don’t even want, and don’t even realize they bought.

Why does that happen? Why is it so different? Because this addiction is an underlying thing. That’s just how it is manifesting for that person. And that activity, like you said, is triggering that dopamine, where they might go do some other activity that doesn’t have that effect for them.

So getting into the bottom of — what is my body trying to tell me? Which is another important concept, because people think, “Okay, I understand. I have the addiction. Well, I just want to stomp on it. I just want to squash it. I just want to put it out. I want to make it go away.”

And you can’t do that. You just can’t run it over. You have to understand it. You have to figure out what is it trying to tell you. And then you have to address those things, and you have to heal those things. And that’s where the freedom comes from.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I really love how you go over a lot of the psychological aspect, I think that’s missing in so many other online health programs and sugar programs, et cetera. There’s not enough addressing the underlying psychological root causes of these issues.

Can you talk about how your program differs from some of the many programs out there? What are some of the problems with some of the other online programs?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, the way Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings works is the first two weeks, we focus on the dependency side of things, the easy side that I talked about. And we learned about the commitment to real food, and why that’s important, and what the real food is going to do for your body, and what processed foods do to your body when you’re consuming those.

And we provide the support, which is really critical. There’s a lot of programs out there — you get the program, you follow the curriculum and you implement it in your life to the best of your abilities, but you’re all alone, and just left to just do it. And it’s not really tailored to you, specifically. It’s a one-size-fits-all.

Whereas our program, the curriculum is a framework, and then we have coaches who are with you the entire time, you can reach out to them whenever you need help, if you have questions. And the coaches also get feedback from you. How are your responding to this, and what changes do we need to make based on, like your individual preferences or individual experiences, or individual issues that are coming up with you? So that coaches are there to mold this program to you. That’s really the biggest part of it.

And then the second biggest part is when you get to weeks three and four. We’re done with the dependency side of things, and that’s when we really hit heavy on the triggers and the tools that are going to give you long term success.

So, my goal is that when people do Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings — it’s only a 28-day course. And obviously, we can’t take you from a sugar addict to completely healed in 28 days. Anybody that claims they can do that, probably, is lying to you.

So, we give you the tools, though. And we give you the things to work on and to think about during the 28 days. And then you can continue to do the work because you know exactly what needs to be done and what needs to be focused on, and what needs to be addressed.

The big part is that — where most programs just do the dependency, they just get you through the initial dependency period, and then it’s like, “Oh, you graduated. Oh, you’re successful. Don’t ever come back again unless you’re going to do the course again because I’ve got nothing else for you.”

Well, we say, “Look, first two weeks we get you through the dependency, and in the second two weeks, we’re going to hit really hard on all the of psychological aspects of this, so that you can be free forever.”

I want people to only have to do Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings once. That’s it. And if they want ongoing support after that, to continue doing the work that they saw needs to be done in that programs, then that’s fine. But we’re not going to play this game of you’re on your fifth or sixth round of Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings. That’s not how this works.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, I like how you try to get people focused on real food and in eating real food. In terms of transitioning to real food, what do you suggest to people who are very much caught in the standard American diet, the sad diet, and don’t feel that they’ll enjoy committing to eating real food.

Kevin Geary: Right. So, this was my biggest issue because, when I — my entire life, I was a standard American diet eater. I hated vegetables. I hated fruits. Everything I ate was processed. I remember, pretty much, twice a week I would order a pizza and eat the whole thing myself. I would stop at Chick-fil-A and get milkshakes three to four times a week.

It was just processed food, processed food, processed food. And when I try to eat fruits or vegetables, and people hear that I don’t like fruits, they’re like, “How is that even possible? That’s the natural sugar. That’s the good stuff.” I’m like, “No. I’m just used to hyper palatable foods that anything real tasted horrible to me.”

And I think that this is the biggest perspective shift that people need to make, is that your taste buds now– how they are programmed — is not how they will be for the rest of your life. So, one thing I found that was huge was when I committed to real food, and in the beginning it was a struggle. But I would say four, five, six months in — you know what happened? I started to really enjoy eating fruits and vegetables and then I started to seek them out.

And then, I realized that if I went back to processed foods at all, they were too powerful. The flavor, it seemed off, it seemed fake and it wasn’t as enjoyable. And I just want to talk about psychological perspective shifts. There are physiological perspective shifts that happened too. So, your taste buds are constantly turning over, and as you retrain them by removing the hyper palatable foods and reintroducing the real foods, they start to come down again.

You know they’re very — actually, I should say, goes the other way, because the hyper palatable foods, they have to turn off a little bit, because there’s too much there. And you need to get that sensitivity back.

That sensitivity comes back fairly quickly, so someone like me who wouldn’t touch vegetables or fruits, now consumes vegetables and fruits all of the time, seeks them out, enjoys consuming them. And that’s what I want people to see as possible. Because when I was back on that standard American diet, if somebody has told me, “You’re going to commit to real food, here’s what it looks like.” I would have been like, “There’s no way. I don’t like any of those things. There’s no way this is going to work.”
But realizing that, “Don’t worry, you’re taste buds are going to change and adapt and you’re actually going to enjoy this.” That is really eye opening, and I hope people believe me when I say that — it may sound far-fetched, but absolutely the truth.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I felt the same way. I always eat vegetables my whole life, but I lost my way in my teens and twenties where I ate a lot of food, because I could. And I just didn’t gain weight eating them, and I ate fast food all day long et cetera.

And it’s so true that you talk about your taste buds do — they do readjust, because when you eat, for instance, certain foods, processed foods and fast foods had so much MSG and glutamate in them. And those just make it taste so good. And now, when I took a bite of a food like that, it just tastes terrible to me. It just completely overpowers your mouth and your senses, because I’m so used to the subtle delicacies and the flavors and smells of fruits and vegetables.

And it’s so much more enjoyable that I just have no desire to go back to that way of eating. And I’ve never thought that I would be there. It’s just the small steps every single day that are so important. Maybe eating one more vegetable a day or just making those small changes. And over years, it leads to huge changes.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. Especially, it’s really important for people to understand this — this is true for vegetables, and I didn’t realize this up front because when my parents gave me vegetables, of course it was low fat. There wasn’t any butter on the vegetables, they’re wasn’t really anything there to really enhance the flavor and help make this dish taste better. When you can use healthy fats with your vegetables, it becomes much more palatable. Nobody, or a few people, like to just grab a vegetable and gnaw on it. I like to cook them and butter them, and that’s what’s really makes it great.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about high glycemic foods. What are some of the problems with high glycemic foods? Because most of the standard American diet is very high glycemic foods. How does that affect your sugar craving?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, in my experience, high glycemic foods are low satiety foods. They’re really going to drive hunger. They’re going to drive and make those cravings even worse. And it’s going to lead to people almost always over eating a lot, especially if there are processed foods in the mix.

Now, there’s also the theory of insulin driving weight gain and issues there. There’s a lot of controversy involved in that. I’m not going to really get into that because I don’t think it’s the most important side of this. I think the most important side of this is putting — just like we did with carbs — just putting high glycemic foods in general, in context. And saying, “Look, if you’re committing to real food and you’re not sedentary, you’re not going to run into a lot of issues.”

Now, if you do have cravings and you’re in this process of shutting down your sugar cravings. You know, the first two weeks you’ve shut down your sugar cravings, we are removing a lot of high glycemic foods because, like I said, they tend to be low satiety foods, so they tend to be foods that exacerbate those triggers.

They send mixed signals to your body. Somebody is trying to get rid of their sugar addiction, but they’re eating tons of fruits. It’s telling your body two different things. I’m trying to get rid of sugar addiction but I’m giving you lots of natural sugar. Even if somebody was four months, five months, six months down the line, fruit’s not a problem.

But in that first two to three weeks of trying to overcome the sugar cravings, then it may be a problem. I’ve had people, who were doing really, really great, eat an orange and then they’re like, “Wow. My sugar cravings just went haywire.” I’ve heard that so many times that we just decided, “Look, we will calm down on the high glycemic foods altogether, even if they’re real, in the very beginning. And then we’re going to have to introduce those later, but for right now, it doesn’t fit the strategy of overcoming these sugar cravings.”

So understanding the context of where the high glycemic foods fit in my life. Do they fit for me right now, or do I need to wait and have them fit in somewhere later down the line?

Wendy Myers: Yeah. It took me a long time to figure out why I’d have a bowl of cereal in the morning — frosted flakes or corn pops or whatever it was I was still eating in my twenties — and I’ll be hungry two hours later. And I found that because it’s a high glycemic index, and you have that crash and you want more carbs…

Kevin Geary: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: …more sugar. And I was, “Why am I hungry? I just ate two hours ago.” I think a lot of people find that as well when they eat smoothies in the morning, and they have a lot of sugar, lots of fruits, a whole banana and some dates, and other high sugar fruits. And then they’re hungry two hours later. And so I think it’s very important to talk about how fruits have so many carbohydrates. Some of the fruits are so high in sugar, and they’re not healthy for you.

Kevin Geary: Right.

Wendy Myers: Some of the really high sugar ones. Can you talk a little bit about the problems with fruit?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, I actually have people follow — I gave them just a little template when they come in — it’s not a rule, it’s just a suggestion — that they order their carbohydrate intake. So you prioritize veggies, and then the next thing would be berries, and then the last thing would be fruits. Because, especially when you tell people, “Okay, eat fruits and vegetables.” You know what they do? They go eat all fruits. And they leave out the vegetables.

Wendy Myers: Yeah.

Kevin Geary: So, I make sure they prioritize. Primarily vegetables, then you go to the berries, and then the last thing you would include is fruits. But we find all of the time, especially for breakfast, because the number one message that I get from people is, “I like my breakfast to be light.” “I don’t want to eat a lot of fat or a lot of protein in my breakfast. Therefore, I turn to fruits. Therefore, I turn to oatmeal and things like that.”

And then, like you said, we get that crash two hours later. They’re severely hungry, their cravings are going hay wire, they’re stuck at their desks, so they don’t have a lot of options. They’re not prepared. All of this is a recipe for disaster.

So, yes, making adjustments to when do I eat my carbohydrates in the day, that’s a really important factor. Especially, with the fact that you partition your carbohydrate intake toward the night time, a lot of times that can help improve your sleep. So, there’s a lot of ways we can make shifts in what people are doing throughout the day to really help them. But that’s a huge issue. Is eating sugar in the morning setting yourself up for failure for the rest of the day?

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Absolutely. I find the same thing when I experimented with my body, that if I have sugar or fruits in the morning, I just ended up eating sugar throughout the day. It just never seems to fail. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of eating a lot of protein? Not going crazy with it…

Kevin Geary: Right.

Wendy Myers:…eating 30 percent protein, but how can eating protein stop sugar cravings?

Kevin Geary: So, protein’s just a very high satiety. When you’re eating the protein, you’re going to — and this is why low carbohydrates diets tend to work pretty well for weight loss because you eat the protein and it sates you, and you’ve actually eaten less calories.

Whereas, if you are eating a bunch of carbohydrates, you would continue to eat them. I mean, they’re very low satiety foods, so that leads to overeating, like I said. So, when you bring protein into the mix, it’s just calming to the system, and it helps stabilize those blood sugar levels.

Once you get on the roller coaster, and that’s what happens when you’re eating that breakfast, you’re getting right into the roller coaster in the morning. That’s why it’s so hard to not snack and to not just go off the record with you sugar eating during the day, because once you’re on the roller coaster, it’s impossible to get off — it’s not impossible to get off, it’s really hard to get off.

So, having that protein especially in the morning to stabilize the blood sugar levels, make sure that you never get on the roller coaster in the first place. Everything is just nice and stable, and then you make it to lunch, you do the same thing, and then you make it to dinner, and you do the same thing. And everything is good.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I absolutely agree. Let’s talk a little bit more about your Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings Program. Is there anything more you want to tell people about it?

Kevin Geary: I would say that, number one, continue to think about a lot of the important things we’ve talked about such as the psychological side of things being really important, such as the fact that you’re not condemned to a life of being sugar free.

And the third thing would be that, if you are looking at real food as maybe, this could be a struggle to transition to, that we are going to help you make that transition. And then once you have made that transition, it is absolutely enjoyable and you will be absolutely glad that you did it. Because there’s nothing like experiencing — we can talk about it as much as we want to — but there’s nothing like experiencing truly being free from sugar cravings in an authentic long-term way.

I mean, there’s a lot of people out there who have been “off sugar” for 21 days, or 30 days or 60 days or 90 days. But because they didn’t deal with a lot of long term stuff, they eventually rebounded and went back. They still don’t know what it’s like to be completely free, to have a different relationship with food and a different relationship with sugar.

And be able to moderate, and be able to enjoy life again. That’s what these programs are about. It’s, “How about we do this so we can stop obsessing.” Because when you stop obsessing, and you stop being consumed by this issues, you can actually enjoy life. And you can go put your focus on other things that are far more important. I want people to experience that. That’s the biggest thing.

Wendy Myers: And let’s talk about how important it is to reduce, or even eliminate your sugar intake. What kind of diseases does constant sugar intake cause?

Kevin Geary: Well, first of all, I mean, obviously, it is a large driver of obesity and then there’s tons of diseases — heart disease, diabetes, everything that is associated with being overweight and eventually being obese. So, trying to avoid all of that is really important.

But again, it’s about context. If you are committed to real food, you shouldn’t be afraid. And if you are moving your body a lot, you shouldn’t be afraid. And if your stress levels are being kept low, you shouldn’t be afraid. And if you’re sleeping well, you shouldn’t be afraid. So putting all of these things — getting all of these things in order is the number one defense against all of these potential problems that are out there.

We do know this, that if you ignore all of those things, then you are at far greater risk of developing all of these diseases and conditions. If you commit to real food, and you put all of the other pillars that I just talked about into practice, you are likely not going to see all of those issues.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that when they have high cholesterol, it’s because they’re eating too much sugar and some grains, processed grains that drives up their cholesterol levels. It’s not saturated fats and red meat and things like that. I think that’s a really important point for people to know. I guess a lot of people don’t realize when they’re going to their physician, and diagnosed with high cholesterol, the doctor tells them to stop eating red meat and butter and …

Kevin Geary: Right. Right.

Wendy Myers: … and people ignoring that fact that it’s sugar and grains that are contributing to that issue. I just want to make that point. I think that’s important.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. Yeah. And really, it’s processed sugar. Nobody is going and getting these red cholesterol panels because they’re a fruit eater. They’re eating a lot of fruit. It’s all of the processed food that’s in their life that’s causing the problems.

And it is more than just the sugar. The sugar’s a big part of it. But that’s why I said, when you commit to real food, a lot of those problems instantly go away, because real food doesn’t have the issues, it doesn’t have the chemicals, it doesn’t have the hyper palatability, it doesn’t have a lot of the fake sugars. It’s just — it’s nasty. And when you switch to real food, good things happen to you.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your program, Rebooted Body. I really admire this program. I think it’s beautifully designed, and I think it’s a great long term program for people to embark on. Can you talk a little bit about this program and how you developed it?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. So, Total Body Reboot was the blueprint that I made when we did that first live group in Atlanta. It looked erratically different. Obviously, we’ve gone through many iterations now, we’re on version 3.0. We’re actually working on version 4.0. And the good thing about this is people are life time members when they join this, so whenever we do iterations on the program, they get access to those iterations as well.

What we do is we walk people through six different stages, and it’s designed to be based on my experience with working with people. Putting the right pieces in the right order so that people can get from point A to point B faster and with less stress and with less — just trouble in general, because I think a lot of people don’t realize that if you embark on this, try to do this on your own, there’s going to be a lot of setbacks along the way.

There’s going to be a lot of challenges along the way. There may be some challenges that you run into that you don’t have answers for. You may do what I did, where you make a lot of progress and you have a huge setback. What people don’t realize is that, when I have my setback, I had made a lot of great progress. And I had this setback dealing with all these psychological triggers, that was months, months and months and months of time to get back on track.

And if people don’t want to get through that, if they want a system that’s already laid out for them, that knows a lot of the challenges that they’re going to run into and exactly how to overcome those challenges, then that’s what Total Body Reboot is for. It puts everything in a nice line for people. They just go step by step, and then the support — just like I talked about with Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings — our coaches are right there with you the entire time you reach out whenever you need help.

And if you have challenges that are unique to you, we’re there to help you solve those as well. We also made Total Body Reboot like a framework and not a one-size-fits-all program, so that when you give us feedback and say, “Hey, this isn’t really working for me. What should I do instead?” Boom. We’re right there to help you do that, because we understand that every single person is different, and every single person has different needs. We’re very responsive inside that program to what people actually need.

Wendy Myers: And you wrote a book too. You wrote REM Rehab. Can you talk a little bit about that, and why you wrote that?

Kevin Geary: Yeah. REM Rehab is the book that I co-authored with Evan Brands from Not Just Paleo. And we decided to write the book — number one, it’s like a secondary thing that I give to people who do Total Body Reboot, so it’s actually included in the Total Body Reboot membership because in stage two, I want people to be able to reboot their sleep, because that’s just a huge aspect of being successful.

Sleep drives cravings. If you are doing your Shut Down your Cravings type program — it’s also available in that too, by the way — if your sleep is not dialed in, so two things happen. Number one, we have leptin, which is an appetite suppressant hormone. We have ghrelin, which is an appetite stimulant hormone.

There have been numerous research studies, where if you’re getting six hours or less sleep per night, you have basically 30 percent more ghrelin production. So, you’re going to be 30 percent hungrier. And then 20 percent is the leptin-like diminishing effect. We’re suppressing that leptin. So you’re not as able to feel full when you do eat.

So, this is a huge issue for people who are trying to overcome sugar cravings. I mean, we have people telling you all the time, “Kevin, I’m doing everything you’re telling me, but it’s not working. I don’t understand. My cravings aren’t going away.” And I’m going to go, “How’s your sleep?” “Well, I’m getting five to six hours a night. We got this thing at the company. I’m having to put in a lot of work.”

I’m like, “Boom. Right there. That is exactly why you’re still struggling. You don’t have your sleep dialed in. It’s nearly impossible to succeed if you don’t have your sleep dialed in.” And I haven’t added that to the program yet. So this opportunity to create this with Evan was a really good opportunity, not just to give people something to do if they know they have trouble with sleep, and they know how important sleep is, but to supplement my program as well.

So we created REM Rehab and — like I said, it’s available in the program and even if you don’t want to do one of the programs, you can purchase it by itself, RemRehab.com. And we’ll show you how to completely reboot your sleep after we tell you about all of the crazy things that would happen to your body if you are getting poor sleep.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I think it’s a really important book because I have the same thing, if I have a client that’s not sleeping well, they’re not going to heal their body.

Kevin Geary: Right.

Wendy Myers: They’re not going to be able to reverse disease. They’re not going to be able to kick their sugar cravings or meet any of their health goals. We have to get them sleeping, it’s the number one priority.

Kevin Geary: Yeah. I use the analogy of the sun coming up. What has the most impact on the earth’s temperature on any given day? And it is whether the sun is up, or whether it’s down. Like, if it’s night, guess what? Temperatures are low. If it’s up, then temperatures are high. It has a massive impact. Sleep is the same way. Sleep has that massive of an impact on your health — on your cravings. So, if you are getting very poor sleep and you’re like, “Why isn’t my body warm?” Well, the sun’s not up, it’s night time. You have to get that thing in order. And once you do, you realize how almost instantly you feel better. I mean, if you have a lot of sleep deprivation, it’s going to take a few days, maybe even a few weeks.

But once you get your sleep in order and you’re committed to it, then you’re going to realize how powerful it is and how much you can turn around in a very, very short amount of time. Some people that I’ve talked to who were having trouble with sugar cravings, and we got their sleep in order, it’s like a light switch for a lot of people. Instantly they get relief.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I totally agree. I think it’s just the number one priority people need to have, and they need to discipline themselves to get better sleep, so important.

Kevin Geary: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?

Kevin Geary: It’s going to be the lack of movement. I mean, just thinking about going from the bed where we’re lying down, to the breakfast chair where we’re sitting in our table and eating, to our car, where we’re sitting down driving to work. And then going to work and sitting in our desks in the office and after hours and hours and hours, and going to lunch. And then at lunch, you’re sitting down, and you’re eating, and you’re talking to your co-workers. Then you go back and you sit more at your desk, then you go home and you sit on the couch, in front of the television and then you go to the gym a few times a week because you’re like, “That’s what I needed to do to live an active lifestyle.” And it’s like, “Dude, you’re not active. You’re not even close to being active.” I don’t care how many times you go to the gym, you’re not active.

Active is not doing all of that sitting that you’re doing, you have to be moving your body. Going to the gym, exercising, is not undoing that. And if you think it is, you’re fooling yourselves. So, finding different ways to be active and — one of the big thing now is the standing desks. Let me convert to a standing desk. And really — that’s better than sitting, I’ll give people that.

The problem is not with sitting, the problem is with not moving. So, if you’re standing still and not moving, it’s still a really, really big problem. So, the getting people to move their bodies, and even if it’s just like — I see a lot of people, which is cool, sitting on an ab ball to do their work. Because they happen to use their postural muscles and they’re rolling around a little bit when they’re not typing and they’re thinking or something, that’s movement.

One thing that I do now is I set a Pandora timer which is a 20 or 25 minute timer that just goes in cycles. So you set it, and 25 minutes it goes off, and you spent five minutes doing some stretches, doing some push-ups or some squats or whatever, taking a walk, coming back, you do more work. Timer’s off again, you do it again. It’s just a reminder to get up and move throughout the day.

I think if people got this movement, they committed to movement, not to committing to exercise, but committing to movement in general, they would see a ton of benefit, and they would see the reversal of a lot of the problems that they are dealing with.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. So do you have a treadmill desk?

Kevin Geary: I don’t. I don’t. I just force myself to constantly get up and take breaks and go move, but I can tell you that’s the biggest mistake I made in the first, I would say, eight months of running Rebooted Body because, like I said before, I was a martial arts instructor. So I was up on my feet moving all day long — kicking bags, punching bags, holding paddles for kids kicking, which means I was walking backwards and moving the paddles and walking forwards and moving the paddles — just constant movement all day long.

And when I quit that job and I transitioned to Rebooted Body, it went from moving all day long to not moving all day long. And I saw such a decline in my health in that first eight months. And it took me a lot of time to recover from that as well. It’s not easy. Once you fall into that, it’s not easy to crawl back out of.

But people got to see, they’ve got to realize they’ve been at desk so long now that they don’t realize the impact. Thankfully, I got to witness the transition, from moving a lot to not moving a lot in such a short amount of time that I knew exactly what was wrong and I was able to start to reverse that problem. A lot of people unfortunately haven’t caught on to that yet.

Wendy Myers: Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was so good. You’re always such a great guest which is why …

Kevin Geary: Thank you for having me.

Wendy Myers: …which is why I wanted you to come back on. Why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you and maybe a little bit more about you?

Kevin Geary: Sure. So everything is at RebootedBody.com. They can get our Facebook, they can get our Twitter, everything there if they want. Of course, the program’s there as well if they want to do those. We have over 125, 150 blog articles now. We have over a hundred podcast episodes. The Rebooted Body podcast is on iTunes and Stitcher Radio.

And just a shout-out to the Overcast app. It’s a new app that I download and that’s how I listen to podcast and it’s probably the best app that I’ve ever used. So if people want to get into the podcast listening, or they are already a podcast listener, but maybe they’re not happy with their current app, I would say the Overcast app. I think it’s free. It’s really good. It’s the best one I’ve used. So, that’s it RebootedBody.com.

Wendy Myers: Well Kevin, thank you so much.

Kevin Geary: Thank you.

Wendy Myers: And listeners who want to learn about me, go to myersdetox.com. You can learn about natural healing, how to heal your health conditions naturally, and detoxification, the Modern Paleo diet, all kinds of info about living a healthy lifestyle. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.