Summary: 

In a conversation between Megan Lyons and Dr. Jade Teta, they discuss the importance of mindset and identity in achieving wellness. Dr. Teta emphasizes the need to transform one’s identity to become their best selves in all areas of life. He suggests that habits and behaviors flow out of our identity, not the other way around. They also discuss the importance of weight training for self-esteem and overall health. Dr. Teta argues that balancing the metabolism should come before eating less and losing weight, contrary to popular belief. He also offers free resources for learning more about metabolism on his website.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much Dr. Jade Teda for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am thrilled to have you here.

Dr. Jade Teta:

I’m so excited. Megan, thank you for being so generous for having me. And yeah, looking forward to the conversation,

Megan Lyons:

As am I. Well, I’ve read your formal bio to the audience, but please just in your words, tell us a little bit about you.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah, well I’m probably what you might call a health and fitness hybrid professional. And by hybrid, I mean if you take a personal trainer, throw that in a blender with a functional medicine doctor, throw that in a blender with a psychology and philosophy geek, you kind of understand who I am. And so I like to say I do mindset, muscle, and metabolism. I started doing personal training actually at the age of 15 years old. So a lot of people raise their eyebrows at that, but I say that the first time I got paid for a job was through personal training. So I’m like, okay, so that’s basically when I started. Then I went to a little known a profession called naturopathic medicine when I was getting ready, coming out of my biochem degree in undergrad. You may laugh at this, Megan, because being in the health and fitness space, I had no idea when I was going to medical school, I just figured I was on my way to East Carolina Medical School and I just figured at the time, this would’ve been back in 98, 97, 98, and I just figured that I was going to get more training in fitness, more training in nutrition and more training in psychology.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And I realized there was none of that. So it was kind of like this early midlife crisis moment where I was like, what am I going to do now? And I found a little known university at time called Basier University that trained primary care physicians in lifestyle medicine. And at that time that was considered woo woo witchcraft, crazy stuff. Everyone told me not to do it. Who would’ve fast forward to now? And it’s like all the rage. Functional medicine is mainstream. I never saw that coming and now currently working on my PhD in transpersonal psychology and yeah, I just love that. So it’s that mix of health and fitness mindset and then functional medicine, and you have an idea of what I do. My work happens in the gym with people with programs. It happens across the desk as a clinician and it happens in the mindset world. And mainly I do teaching now. So I teach and educate other professionals and educate the lay public.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. Well, we’re kindred spirits in going that functional, holistic, naturopathic, whatever you want to say. Early, I got a master’s in holistic nutrition maybe now seven years ago. And even then holistic was super weird, but I didn’t have the foresight. You did. I studied economics in college. So interesting. I made a major pivot later on. I’m very impressed that you had that foresight. And I’m also very impressed. I am chuckling at myself because the first thing when Jade popped on, I noticed a stack of books back there. That’s what allure me. You are someone who is a lifelong learner. I have two masters and I’ll finish a doctorate in a couple of months. And you have two doctorate level now. I mean, when are we going to stop? I don’t know. It’s a problem, but a good

Dr. Jade Teta:

Problem. Yeah, we are Kendra spirits for sure. And I think, I don’t know what you think about this, Megan, or what you listeners think about this, but from my perspective, when I think about why we’re on the planet, I go, I think we’re here for three reasons only. I think it’s learn, teach, and love. So when I just go, we’re here to learn, teach and love. And so for me it’s like learn to grow, teach to enrich others and sort of love and create to evolve the world. And so that’s what I love to do. And so I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. We were talking just before we popped on and I was like, I just love to teach. So it’s like getting on and teaching and I love to learn and that’s why I love conversations like this. You and I were both talking about the idea of being able to have differing opinions and go, oh, interesting how Megan looks at that.

Dr. Jade Teta:

That adds something to me. And you always just get something. So I’m always just loving to learn and wanting to be better, which is an interesting thing actually because I do think most humans, when we think about what causes us humans to change and transform, whether it’s in health and fitness or wealth or personal relationships or personal development, I think one of the things that we humans do or miss is we miss this idea of wanting to learn and get better and grow. We basically think it’s habits and behaviors or we think it’s willpower and motivation, but to me it’s identity. And what we do is we defend our old identity oftentimes rather than working to dismantle our old identity. And so that to me is what my lifelong goal has been been about. Let me become the new jade, be authentic not to a past jade or current jade, but be authentic to next level human jade or the better jade.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And I do think it’s interesting. I do think most humans, unfortunately, we as humans, we all do this by the way, no judgment. I do it too. But we do tend to defend our old identities in health and fitness, our old identities in the way we manage finances, our old identities and personal relationships. And that’s why we find ourselves in these repeated patterns, stuck emotions and recurrent obstacles all the time. So part of what I am passionate about for myself and passionate about teaching other people is how to transform their identity, how to become their best selves in all these areas that you and I teach in.

Megan Lyons:

I love that. And I think for a lot of people listening, they might think, well, I have no choice. My identity was given to me by who knows my parents society, something else. But I bet for you, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s taken continuous reflection on what do I want? What’s the next level to use your words, what do I want my next level to be without that conscious choice? Yeah, we’re going to stay stuck. We get to continuously reinvent, but it takes work, right?

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah, it does. And I’m interested in what you think about this and what your listeners think about this. To me, I think life is interesting. The way it works. It seems to always without a doubt be out to move us. So it’s almost like change and challenge are the constants in life. And from my perspective, that ultimately is what is happening. Life things happen in life first it whispers in your ear, then it taps you on the shoulder, and then if you don’t listen, it kind of punches you in the gut and knocks you off your feet. And I do think the way we respond to those things, our perceptions around our difficulties and our struggles and our trials and our tribulations and our traumas, for me, I’ve learned to change my perception around that move from more of this fixed mindset type of thing to more of a growth mindset where it’s like, yes, this is hard.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yes, this is difficult. Yes, this is painful, but I have got to, no matter how hard it is, find the opportunity in this. And the first time you do that in life, the more you live, the more you get these things. First time you have that happen, it’s really tough and it takes years and years. Next time it takes just a few years. Next time it takes a few months and you just start getting better depending on what it is. I went through that with health issues in my twenties. I went through that with a divorce and an affair in my late thirties. I went through that with business failings. And time and time again, life asks you to up level. And I do think that that really seems to be partly the secret, at least for me and the people that I work with, that if you can catch them in these places and help them understand that pain is a path to purpose, that their suffering can act as a source of meaning or their hurt can be a way to help.

Dr. Jade Teta:

All of a sudden it changes the way we begin to see the world. And we’ve all probably had this experience where something happened to us and we look back maybe five, 10 years later, and at the time we know we wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemies. It was so hard. But then we look back and just go, wow, I’m grateful for that experience. I wouldn’t possibly be the jade I am today without that. And I do think that is the right mindset as we grow and get more wise. And I think it matters a lot because the next thing is always coming.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely. The next thing is always coming. That’s true. And I want to highlight, you have these three main principles, mind muscle metabolism, which you talk a lot about. We’re deep into mind already, so let’s stay here for this person and we’ll get to muscle and metabolism before the end. But for this person who is in the hurt and they hear you and they say, okay, hurt can lead to health. Yes, I can buy that, but what do I do? What are some of your favorite actual routines or exercises or habits that someone in that low place might want to grasp onto?

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah, this to me is the most important question that everyone should be asking. And from my perspective, let me walk you through how I see this and then tell me what you think about this. And you can point out the weaknesses and everyone listening to this can kind of see what you think about this. But the way I see it is like this. Let’s take physical injury. So let’s imagine you and me, Megan, we’re in the kitchen, we’re cutting vegetables and your knife slips or my knife slips and we cut our finger. We know exactly how to deal with this physical pain, don’t we? Because we feel the slice going into our thumb. What are we going to do? No one’s going to keep cutting vegetables. We stop. We drop the knife, we go, oh, we squeeze the finger, right? That’s the first thing we do. So the first stage,

Megan Lyons:

I’m doing it right now,

Dr. Jade Teta:

Right? As soon as I say that, we all go, Ooh, I don’t like this visual, but we feel it. So we pay attention to it. So the first stage is feeling, and I’ll explain how I think we can do this with mental emotional suffering, but let’s just look at how we do it physically. So first we feel so we pay attention. Second we deal. And the way we deal is we begin to look at it, open it up, how deep is it? Am I going to need stitches? What do I need to do? We wash it, we try to clean it, we bandage it. This is the dealing phase, and then we heal from it. Now, healing is interesting because the heel phase is okay, yes, get the stitches out, but change the bandages, put the antibiotic ointment on it, all that kind of stuff.

Dr. Jade Teta:

But more importantly, the heel phase is next time me and you go in the kitchen to cut vegetables together, we’re going to be aware and be thinking about, I cut my finger last time, so I’m going to be more careful. Or maybe we’ll even go out to YouTube and look at some cooking shows and videos and learn how to cut vegetables better. So we know instinctively, intuitively how to do this with physical pain. We have to feel, we have to deal, we have to heal. Now, here’s what we tend to do as humans with mental emotional. So now imagine the metaphorical psychological thumb. What we do is we cut our thumb or someone hurts us psychologically, and we go about this in one or more dysfunctional ways. And by the way, no judgment here. I do this too. But one way we do this is we run up to everyone else and stick our finger in their face and go, ow, ow, ow as if they’re supposed to grab it and feel it.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Or we sit there and stare at it and whimper and whine, right? Oh my God, I cut my thumb. Meanwhile, we’re bleeding all over the place. Or maybe we stick our thumb behind our back and act like nothing happened, right? We go, I don’t need this hand. I don’t even need disarm. I’ll just go around with one arm for the rest of my life. Or at its worst, we become the hurt person who hurts people. Now we go around cutting people. So we tend to blame, complain, whimper, whine, distract, deny or hurt. Now, by the way, none of this is meant to be judgmental. It’s just for all of us to look at ourselves because if we want to feel, deal and heal, we have got to do something different. So what do we do? What’s the equivalent of feeling in our body? Well, we have to go in.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Remember, the unconscious emotional body does not think in logic and linearity, it doesn’t think in language, it thinks in metaphor, thinks in feeling. So the way we can feel this is we can go in, let’s say, and find where we feel this and name what we’re feeling. I’m feeling sadness. Well, where is it? It’s from my heart. Solar plexus up to my throat and it feels like tar and it sticky and it causes me to feel like a choking sensation, and it feels like sandpaper sometimes and it feels like hot, viscous fluid other times, and it’s angry. And we give it this personality and we really try to understand it. More importantly, we ask ourselves, what is the thought and story associated with this feeling? Is it a story about safety and security or acceptance and belonging or freedom and autonomy? All these stories that we developed in childhood development, adolescent development.

Dr. Jade Teta:

So we explore it. This is the field phase. Now, the deal phase is what am I making this mean about my self-worth my safety, who I am as a person and the world at large? Am I making it mean that people are distrustful? Am I making it mean that I’m not worthy? And what is a better story to tell? What lesson can I learn? Where is it trying to get me to? And then the heal phase is what can I now do, create or teach out of this to other people? If you want a shortcut to healing or mental emotional pain, go out and try to find other people have suffered that same emotional pain and look to help them. From my perspective, the fastest path to let’s say purpose is the authentic telling of our story of struggle. So just like we have to feel, deal, and heal with a physical thumb injury, we have to feel, deal and heal with our emotional selves.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And I’ll give you three tools here just real quick to wrap this up that you can do. One is journaling. Now, research has shown very clearly that if we write out written exposure therapy, if anyone’s interested in going and look at the research on this has three parts. The journaling technique. The first part is to write about the emotion, not the A, b, C of what happened, the emotion, where is it in the body, what does it feel like? What’s its personality? All this metaphorical imagery about the emotion. Step two is what was the story that I told myself about the world or myself when this happened? And step three is writing as if we’re a director or producer in a movie and giving it plot and purpose. You know how every movie starts with this sort of hero’s journey difficulty and then there’s a turnaround and somehow they figure it out?

Dr. Jade Teta:

Well, we have to write our own story that way. And this has been shown to work for PTSD for trauma, for all kinds of trials, for struggles to help people figure this out. It’s a very simple tool. Another tool is meditation, not meditation, like mindfulness meditation that we think about, but visualization meditation, if anyone’s ever seen Happy Gilmore, going to your happy place and seeing yourself living a different life and actually feeling that in your body. These are two very powerful techniques. And the third technique is what I would call be it until you see it. It’s very different than fake it till you make it because fake it till you make it is when people are watching, you’re not doing not the thing. Or when people are watching, rather you’re doing the thing. But when they aren’t watching, you go right back to doing what you’re doing before, be it till you see it says whether they’re watching or not watching.

Dr. Jade Teta:

I am being this new person. And you go out in the world and you be the hero you teach. You listen for people who are struggling in the same way and you look to show up. And these three things among other tools, we could talk on this for hours, but these three tools to me are very simple tools that are evidence-based tools in the research that we can use to turn our mind and our pain around. And I know I’m rambling, but I’ll say one more thing here. The final thing I’ll say is we think, and this will maybe segue us into the other aspects of what we wanted to talk about, but we think that it’s habits and behaviors and motivation and willpower that make change. It’s really identity and beliefs. And so if we have these old stuck emotions and old belief systems around safety and security and worthiness and all of this kind of stuff, we think it doesn’t have anything to do with the way we eat or whether we’re motivated to exercise or how we manage our finances or our inside of personal relationships and romance.

Dr. Jade Teta:

But it has everything to do with these things. And so one of the things that I would like to see in our industry is that we start paying attention to the fact that our childhood development, our adolescent development, our young adult development and all these stories and painful events and things that have happened to us in our lives, they determine the way we show up in these other areas we would like to change and habits and behaviors flow out of our identity, not the other way around. So if you want to change these things, identity matters most, which is why I think it’s pretty interesting why you and I started this conversation with the mindset piece. I do think it is the most critical piece if you want change your identity and that’s how you do it.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, I love what you said, and the layers of what you said work so well together with the feel, heal and then deal and the identity on top of it. If someone’s willing to feel that mental thumb or emotional thumb that’s been cut, okay, then they’re starting to process it, journaling it, but they’re going to get stuck in the middle if they don’t shift that identity. So if they’re someone who chronically feels victim, like the world has been hurting them, all of this kind of stuff, they’re not going to be able to get through the heel. And then the visualization through journaling, the dealing and teaching others, unless they can go back to that new identity that they’re creating for themselves. So I think everything that you said layers together so well.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah. And actually let me say something. This may be a little triggering for some people. I know it was for me a little bit when I first was working this out for myself, and it has to do with victim identity. So everyone just hear me out on this because it can at first seem triggering. Now here’s the thing. I think our culture has a dysfunctional relationship with the victim identity because here’s the thing, anyone is hurt as good humans. Not only do they deserve to be a victim, I actually think they have to be for a time, it is a requirement. In other words, the feel phase is the victim phase. We must take the time to feel. We must take the time to grieve. We must take the time to feel sorry for ourselves. We must take the time to be angry If someone hurt us, we have got to go through that victim feeling stage.

Dr. Jade Teta:

If we don’t, that’s a problem. However, we also cannot get stuck there. And if we get stuck there, that becomes a problem. So being a victim is necessary. However, anyone who gets stuck in victim, and we all have to be very careful. We can’t rush anyone. We do not know when it is time. Everyone must be on their own timeline. But at some point it does. And this is the triggering part. At some point it does become a choice. We have got to make the choice fault is irrelevant in this discussion. It’s basically you have got to take responsibility. So even if Megan and I are in the kitchen, if someone runs in and cuts Megan’s finger and then runs away, what is she going to do? Drop the knife and chased him around running after him. You did this, you did this to me, you did this to me.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Meanwhile, while she’s bleeding all over the place, this is part of what is so hard as humans. So for me and my friends and all of you, one of the things I know about you, Megan, and you know about me and we know about all your listeners, is that we all suffer. It is something that every human does. And so we each can go and be compassionate and allow people to be in their victim state. However, we all too must hold ourselves and others to the standard of your next level. Human self is the hero self. And at some point you have got to move away from the victim mindset into what we might call the victor mindset, right? The villain might be the hurt person hurting people. The victim is the hurt person who identifies with the hurt so much, they get stuck there. The victor or the hero is the one that goes, I’m going to be the hurt person who helps people and this is the way out.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, this is the way out. I love that. And I would also say this is the way to health. I don’t know if you have the same experience, but so many people come to me as clients and they say, oh, I want to lose 20 pounds or whatever. And we realize in talking, there’s so much of the mental stuff going on, but they’re like, no, no, I don’t want to work on that. Well, they have to be ready. I can’t make them be ready, so I’ll help them with their nutrition, whatever. But I know deep inside they won’t really heal until they can start uncovering and working on some of this mind stuff. So I think we present options to people for if and when they’re ready, and you do that so well on your website, but we know that all three of your pillars, the mind, muscle and metabolism, they’re so connected.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah, and I think you said that so well, thank you for that. It’s so well said. And I think that part of the issue here is that in the health and fitness industry as a whole, we don’t do a very good job of tying for people the direct connection between mindset and metabolism and weight loss. But one of the ways I like to do this is imagine a child who self sues. They’re scared. So what do they do? Or they’re having difficulty, they’ll rock themselves to sleep, they’ll throw temper tantrums, they’ll suck their thumb, they have very self-soothing type of stuff. They’ll seek for affection. Well, as we become adults, we actually don’t have those same behaviors anymore. Sucking of the thumb becomes late night cravings in the inability to stop eating or cravings for alcohol or sex and drugs. We have other ways that we self-soothe.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And so if you’re wondering, if you’re listening to this and you’re wondering, how do we make the connection into metabolism? Think about what happens is if you have these deep-seated mental emotional things, which by the way you do, I do, we all do. If you have them and you’re using self-soothing adult self-soothing mechanisms, what is happening is you can then begin to see those behaviors. So from my perspective, when it comes to overeating or sitting on the couch or binging and not moving, lack of motivation, I see those things as self-soothing behaviors, and I don’t judge them. And then I look around and go, the thing is not to berate yourself. It’s to realize that we all as humans have needs for safety and security, acceptance and belonging, freedom and autonomy. These things are core for us loneliness. And then we start to go, okay, let’s begin to look at these old stories.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Let’s begin to use these as stepping stones to be authentic to the person that we want to be. And let’s see these dysfunctional behaviors around health and fitness, around finance, around personal relationships as vase, us trying to get attention or be safe or be accepted, all of these kinds of things. And once we began to let that stuff go, we could step more fully into our power. And then some of the things that are exciting, things that people want to talk about in metabolism, like the different diets and the different stuff and the different behaviors and the different habits and all the information now that stuff can begin to permeate and make a difference. But one of the things that I would say as we begin this discussion about metabolism is I would say just like I am 1000% different mentally, emotionally from Megan, because we have different life experiences and all the different things, I also am physiologically different.

Dr. Jade Teta:

So I’m psychologically different. We are all of us, but we’re also physiologically different. We also are different in our personal preferences. Some people like beer and Brussels sprouts, other people like I have a sweet tooth and I grew up in an Italian family. And then we have our practical circumstances too. So I have a whole foods right next to me. Some people live in food deserts. And so when we start to look at this transition from mindset into metabolism, we have to go, well, we’re different psychologically. We’re different physiologically, we’re different in our preferences and we’re different in our practical circumstances. And now if you understand that, then you start going, okay, this is starting to make sense. If that’s true, then there is no way in my opinion, and I’m interested what you think, but in my opinion, I go, there’s no way that a one size fits all diet is going to work for every human on the planet.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Some people will thrive off fasting, some people off keto, some people off vegan and vegetarianism. And it’s because of we’re different psychologically, physiologically preferences, practical circumstances. And that is the first step here. So not only is it getting clear on your psychological history and beginning to integrate all those old things, but in the metabolism realm, it’s also integrating this idea that I am different. And not only do I need to pay attention to my psychological body and the emotions that I express, but I need to pay attention to my physiological body in the biofeedback, the hunger, and which foods keep me full and satisfied for a long period of time, and which foods keep my energy stable and predictable and which foods lead to me eating better and less foods later. And this is the discussion we have. So now you can see the thread here.

Dr. Jade Teta:

It’s like not only do I have to take care of my unique individual psychological aspects of me and integrate that stuff, but now I have to take into account the unique physiological aspects of me. And now all of a sudden I’m designing a life and mindset, muscle and metabolism that fits me uniquely so that Jade has his own unique approach. Megan has her own unique approach, and all of you listening have your own unique approach. And from my perspective, again, and I want to see what you think about this, Megan, but from my perspective, I think this is again where the health and fitness industry lets us down because what they wrongly make us believe in my opinion, is that everyone is supposed to be doing the latest craze and that you find a diet, you could read a book or watch a documentary or listen to a podcast or read a blog, and the secret’s going to be there for you. And I don’t think that’s true, and I’m wondering what you think if you agree, you disagree.

Megan Lyons:

Well, gosh, I wish it was true sometimes because my job would be so much easier if I could just sell a $5 meal plan for every single person and then that was it. And I feel almost like I’m letting people down when I’m talking to them for the first time and they’re like, so what’s the system? And I’m like, I don’t have a system. Our system is to go deep into you all of the things that you said. I don’t prescribe keto for every person or vegan for every person, just like you said, we get to listen to all those things and bring in biomarkers and labs and preferences and all of that and come up with a unique recipe for every person. And then that changes over time. That changes for me what I eat now versus what I ate 10 years ago, partly because of increased knowledge and different phases in life, whatever, but also because I just get to stay in tune with the signals that my body’s giving me and continuously readjust. So I totally agree with what you’re saying. And one piece in there that you mentioned was people just think, oh, I’ll eat less first. I saw this on your website that you said eat less, lose weight, and then have a balanced metabolism is what people expect, but it’s actually wrong. We want to balance the metabolism and then automatically eat less and then lose the weight. So can you tell us a little bit about this?

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah, I love that. Yes, that’s exactly right. And people might go, so then the question goes, okay, so how do I balance my metabolism? How do I know? So most people think the metabolism is about calorie management and it is an energy management infrastructure in the body. However, it’s more than that. What I think it actually is is a stress responding, sensing and responding apparatus. And then because it senses stress and responds to stress, it has to manage the energy. So I think what the wrong thing is, is we don’t realize there’s one more level up that’s perhaps more important, the stress sensing mechanism of the metabolism. So once you understand that, you go, okay, so what does a balanced metabolism one that is adapting to stress rather than becoming degraded by stress, what does that feel like? It feels like the following. We have biofeedback in our body sensations that basically are associated with many different hormones and signaling molecules.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Hunger is one, energy is one, cravings is one, sleep is one, mood is one. Exercise, performance, exercise, recovery, libido, menses, erections, signs, symptoms like joint pain, headaches, all of these things are the metabolism speaking to you. So the metabolism doesn’t speak English or French or Spanish. It speaks metabolism. So we need to learn the language of metabolism, and this is the language, one silly little acronym I use to help people remember. This is S-H-M-E-C, sleep, hunger, mood, energy craving, shme, keep your shme in check. When your shme is in check, your metabolism is balanced. And if you can do that, then you will automatically almost always be more motivated to move and be less and more able to achieve a natural sustained calorie deficit, which is required. There’s two things for sustained weight loss in my mind, a calorie deficit and a sustained calorie deficit.

Dr. Jade Teta:

However, how do you get the sustained calorie deficit? Well, you balance hormones. You keep hunger energy and cravings in check. So either whether you want to say EC in check or heck in check, this is a catch all phrase for all these biofeedback sensations. Once you get heck, hunger, energy and cravings in check, now you have a couple other things. Now, heck is in check. Now the next thing that should be happening is you should be attaining and or maintaining optimal body composition that should be moving in the right direction. The third thing, which you alluded to Megan, is your blood labs and vitals also should be optimizing from my perspective, if those three things are true, heck is in check, you’re attaining and maintaining optimal body composition and your blood labs and vitals are moving in optimal directions, then what you are doing is the right plan for you regardless of what it looks like.

Dr. Jade Teta:

I don’t care if you’re eating cotton candy and Snickers bars, if gives you hunger’s energy and cravings in check optimal body comp and optimal blood labs, then that’s the right diet for you. Now, Megan and I would probably tell all of you that’s not going to work for hardly anyone on the planet, but if it did, then I would say good with it. I would be good with it too. The fact is it’s not probably going to work for anyone, but I’m making that statement just so everyone understands that it looks very different for everybody. And by the way, just to go back to mindset a little bit, there’s also an acronym you can remember for mindset. It’s called Afraid. The emotions of afraid stands for anger, frustration, resistance, anxiety, insecurity, and depression. So in your mindset world, if you’re stuck in the emotions of afraid, because remember, emotions are meant to be felt not lived, right?

Dr. Jade Teta:

So if you get stuck in one of those emotions, that’s an indication. You’ve got some of these old dysfunctional stories you need to work out in the same way that if hunger, energy and cravings and heck is out of check, you got some metabolism gunk to work out as well. And so it really is becoming self-aware and having someone actually educate people. And here’s how you read your emotional body through the emotions of afraid. Here’s how you read your metabolic body through the sensations of schmuck. This is how people need in my mind. Now, again, I could be wrong about this, and so we can see, but to me, I go, we need to give people simple ways to be able to check in with their body rather than having them outsource their knowledge of their own metabolism. The only real book that we should be studying in my mind is ourselves.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, I agree. I like to read a whole lot of books on nutrition, but when a new client comes to me, the first thing I’ll say is I have read those books on nutrition and I’ve never read the book in you, Sally or whatever. So we get to do that together. Now in terms of helping people feel their heck or their m and they’re afraid, I love acronyms too, so I’m going to remember all of these. Do you have principles that you, or practices, not principles that you take people through? Because I get a lot of people who are like, oh, I don’t know if I’m hungry. I don’t know if I have an energy slump. So is it as simple as writing it down? And also with that, can you talk about your metabolism school that you have available on your website, which we will link to?

Dr. Jade Teta:

Yeah. Yeah. So I love this. I love question because the fact of the matter is, it’s like anything, right? If you’ve never gone to France and spoke the French language, you are going to be so confused when you sit down to try to order something and everyone’s speaking to you in French. So the idea is first to learn the language of metabolism. So we just did that, and honestly, it’s kind of as simple as that. Now, the next idea is, okay, I get it, Jade, I’m not supposed to find a diet. I’m supposed to create a diet, but how do I do that? So the first step is keep heck in check. But the other thing is, yes, there is in my mind some basic the alphabets basic alphabet soup you need to understand. And by the way, when I say hunger, energy and cravings, it’s not that you shouldn’t be hungry, it’s that hunger should be under your control.

Dr. Jade Teta:

In fact, being hungry can be a good thing, but it shouldn’t cause you to binge. Having cravings should be a good thing, but it shouldn’t cause you to binge. So here’s how I would break this down. For people who are wondering about nutrition, you can pick any sort of system you want. And one of the systems I like is kind of the more ancestral sort of system. If you look at the way we humans evolved, and by the way, this is just one way to do this, but I’ll walk you through it. You can see how people live or if you want to come more recent, we can just think of the old European style of doing things, right? We tend to think eat less, exercise more, and that’s the Dieter model. Or we tend to think, eat more, exercise less. That’s the couch potato model.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Now, we tend to think these are the only two states that we can be in, but the fact of the matter is there’s the hunter gatherer state or the old European model, which is eat less, exercise less. Now, we’ll add one more component to that because it’s pretty much eat less, exercise less, move more, which is a distinction that people need to understand. So this is another one of those ABCs like, oh, I’ve never understood that. We need to think of movement, just walking from point A to point B as different than hoisting dumbbells around and doing sprints and all this kind of stuff. Hunter gatherers don’t do that stuff. They move all day and then they eat relatively sparsely because living off the land, you can’t get 2000 calories every single day. You don’t know when your next meal. So they move a lot.

Dr. Jade Teta:

They walk a lot and they eat very sparsely. And the way they eat is a diet that is calorie sparse, nutrient dense, tasty, but not too tasty. These are the components, calorie, sparse, nutrient dense, appetite suppressing, that’s another one. And tasty, but not too tasty. So what does that look like? That looks like a protein. Vegetables, low sugar, fruits, these things are tasty but not overly tasty. We’re not talking pizza and burgers and potato chips and things like that, but it’s a protein source. It’s lots of fruits and lots of vegetables. And from my perspective, that is the base. And by the way, the best studied nutrition program in the world is probably the Mediterranean diet, and it’s not perfect, but it does lean a little bit more towards this. It is not huge bowls of barbecue like we do in the United States, but it’s fish or it’s a little bit of chicken, or it’s a little bit of steak, or it’s a little bit of pork, or it’s a little bit of eggs, and then it’s vegetables and then a little bit of starch.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Not all starch, all fat and no protein in vegetables. So to me, just reverse that. Reverse the big bowl of pasta and the sandwich and turn the sandwich into a salad and turn the pasta into a soup. And I’ll give you an alliteration to make it soup. Simple soups, salads, scrambles, shakes, stir fries, skillet meals, right? Love it. These are all the things that are basically, and they’re all basically salads, right? Like a salad’s, a salad, a soup is just a wet salad. A scramble is just an egg salad. So they’re all basically salads. And this to me is the place to start. Now here’s the thing, and I’ll shut up here just a minute, Megan. Sorry, I’m just talking, talking, talking. I love it. But here’s the thing, right? So you go, okay, Jade, I get it. Soup, salad, scrambles, shakes, stir fries, smoothies, skillet, skillet meals, like, okay, I’ll stick with those.

Dr. Jade Teta:

How do I know if it’s working? Then you do that for a week and you go, did this keep my heck in check? Did I lose weight this week? And then quarterly, are my blood labs and vitals getting better? Am I feeling more vital? And then you go, oh, I’ll do more of that. Or you can do this. Let’s say all of us, we’ll all play a little game together. Let’s say Megan and I are going to cook you all breakfast, right? And on day one, we make you breakfast and we give you a bowl of oatmeal and some blueberries and that’s your breakfast and you get nothing else to eat for the rest of the day. How many of you are going to feel like that keeps you satisfied for most of the day versus let’s say I give you bacon and eggs. How many of you are going to feel like that keeps you satisfied for the rest of the day versus I don’t give you anything at all?

Dr. Jade Teta:

How many of you are going to be able to get to dinner or the next day and not binge? And so the other thing you can do is go, if I eat this particular meal, does it help me eat healthier, better, and less at the next meal? We all know what this is like, right? Think about the standard way we do this. Someone wakes up, they have a little cup of yogurt, then they go to lunch and they have a little teeny salad, then they come home and eat from six to 11 at night because they’re so starving because they didn’t feed themselves. And so these to me, are some of the rules. And the final thing I’ll say here is if you get confused, just think about the Bruce Lee quote, Bruce Lee, the actor philosopher martial arts. He has an interesting quote that was meant for martial arts, but I think it applies to health and fitness.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And it says, absorb what is useful, discard what is not add, what is uniquely your own. And so what you are essentially doing is you’re playing metabolic detective. You listen to Jade, you listen to Megan, you listen to stuff on social media and you go, oh, that’s interesting. Let me try that. I’m psychologically drawn to that, but you don’t stop. There you go. I like it psychologically. I’m interested in keto or fasting or carnivore or whatever it is. But what you have to ask is not whether you like it psychologically, but will your metabolism like it? Yes. Will it keep heck in check? Will it cause optimal body comp? Will it balance labs and vitals? And so from my perspective, yes, can do soup, salad, scrambled shakes, stir fries. You can use that if you want or you can just start with any program you feel drawn to. But then you have to know, does my metabolism like it or not?

Megan Lyons:

I love it so much, I’m going to take this episode and force, not really, I don’t force my clients to do anything but offer it to so many clients. I think you are speaking such gold here, and I am so excited for people to learn more about you. But before we wrap up, I just want you to give some kind of gem about your third pillar, which is muscle, anything you want, wherever you want to take it.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Well, the largest, we all talk about balancing hormones. Guess what? One of the largest endocrine organs, hormone organs in the body is it’s muscle. And so here’s the interesting thing. The more muscle you put on, the more you can be a weight. Training, for example, is the only exercise that you can do that takes excess calories and makes them into muscle rather than fat. And so to me, the muscle component, this idea of muscle centric medicine becomes a glucose sink, becomes a fat sink. What I mean by that is when people who overeat, if you’re doing lots of resistance training, you’ll actually be less likely to store fat from that. And I’ll just briefly say this and then we can wrap up. Here’s the thing that people think, right? They think I get on a treadmill and I run and I’ll burn 300 calories, and you will, and you’ll burn more calories if you run on a treadmill than you will weight training.

Dr. Jade Teta:

But if you begin to weight train, what will happen is you’ll burn some calories during the workout, then you’ll burn some more calories recovering from that workout, then you’ll burn some more calories the next day repairing from that workout. Then you’ll burn some more calories the following day, regenerating tissue and adapting for that workout. And so what ends up happening and then you have now more muscle. So then when you go out and move again, you burn more calories than you did the next time. And from my perspective, this is why we really should be shifting into weight training. I’m not saying this because I’m a weight training guy. In fact, I think that the most important people who should be weight training because of some of the things that happen are menopausal women actually, because they start losing bone density, they start losing muscle mass.

Dr. Jade Teta:

And if you see menopausal women who train with weights, they go through menopause so much more easily, they keep their body shape so much better. They are not seeing these decrements with osteoporosis, et cetera. So from my perspective, this is why. And the final reason is that guess what muscle and weight training does for us psychologically that has been shown that when you challenge your body this way through heavier and heavier weights, it makes you less afraid in life. It makes you more resilient emotionally as well. And there’s a really interesting study, actually, Megan, I don’t know if you know with Anorexics who they, because Anorexics, one of the things that happens with anorexic is they tend to revert back to anorexia. It’s hard to get them, but one of the things that happens is when they get them weight training, more of them are able to stop the starvation and their self-esteem goes up. And so there’s something about weight training. Cardio is really good for mood like boosting depression and stuff. But for self-esteem, weight training is the thing. So that’s my little pitch on why we should be doing more weight training.

Megan Lyons:

Those are some super compelling reasons. I think if anyone can listen to that and not want at least one of those benefits that you said, I don’t know what you’re doing, but something magic out there. So I hope everyone is motivated to do a little more strength training. Now, people I know will want to learn more about you. I want to include some of the resources from your website in the show notes. So I will do that. But if you would just tell people where they can learn more about you and any closing thoughts you have.

Dr. Jade Teta:

Thank you, Megan. You’re so sweet for having me. I really appreciate it. For those of you want more of me at Jade Teta on Instagram and all the social media profiles, so at Jade teta, my website, jade teta.com, next level human.com. And if you want some of the free resources like Metabolism School, you can go to drj.com/metabolism-course, so drj.com/metabolism-course. And I really appreciate you having me, and thank you everybody for listening.

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much.

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