In this episode, Dr. Eric Osansky sits down with health and lifestyle coach, podcast host, and author Jenn Trepeck to discuss her new book, Uncomplicating Wellness. Jenn shares her personal journey through years of dieting, weight struggles, and frustration before discovering that lasting health comes from understanding human biology instead of following restrictive wellness rules.
During the conversation, Jenn explains why so many people feel confused by today’s wellness industry and how modern health culture often skips over the foundations that truly move the needle. They discuss topics like listening to your body, misleading food marketing, protein versus fiber, BMI misconceptions, muscle and metabolism, willpower, stress, sleep, and the difference between biohacking and what Jenn calls “biostacking.” Jenn also shares practical strategies for reducing stress, rebuilding trust with your body, and simplifying wellness in a sustainable way.
If you want a clearer, more balanced understanding of wellness and how to build a strong foundation for better health, you’ll get a lot out of this episode.
Click Here [1] to listen to it on the Save My Thyroid podcast
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with Jenn Trepeck, as we are going to talk about her book Uncomplicating Wellness. Let’s dive into Jenn’s bio here.
Jenn Trepeck is a health and lifestyle coach. She is the host of the award-winning podcast Salad with a Side of Fries and a sought-after speaker. After kicking her food issues, Jenn set out on a mission to pay it forward and change the state of healthcare by empowering each of us to take ownership of our well-being.
In her new book Uncomplicating Wellness, Jenn brings her signature mix of real talk, science, and humor that makes you feel seen instead of judged. It’s wellness without the weirdness. As she says, “You can have your health and eat the fries, too.” Welcome, Jenn.
JennTrepeck:
Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Dr. Eric:
Excited to have this conversation. Let’s dive into your background. What prompted you to write this book?
Jenn:
I grew up a dancer. I had my own saga with weight management mostly. It didn’t come into play until between high school and college. Growing up a dancer, I was very aware of my body and where my body was in space. And somebody in my house was always on a diet. Every fad diet there was in the ‘80s and ‘90s was in my house.
When I started to gain weight, I thought I knew what to do. I lived on that rollercoaster, gaining and losing, over and over. I remember at times feeling like I could breathe and gain weight. This does not make any sense. I was always fighting with my body trying to figure this out. It was never doing what I wanted it to do.
Ultimately, everything changed when I started to listen to people who were talking about what’s fundamentally human, biology, rather than diet culture. It changed everything. It completely changed my life. It allowed me to say I kicked my food issues.
From there, I really was like, why isn’t this what we learn? Everyone deserved this. To me, it felt like the nutrition education we’re all supposed to know, andnobody ever taught us. Then I asked questions of how things came to be that we did learn. Where did that stuff come from?
On the side of my full-time job, back in 2007, I became a health and lifestyle coach. Over 20 years later, the book came not just from my podcast, Salad with a Side of Fries, but because I saw this shift that was so dramatic in the questions that people were asking. 20 years ago, the questions were, “What am I supposed to eat?” At the time, it was Atkins. Now, it’s keto. Is it Atkins? Mediterranean? What’s the diet I’m supposed to follow? Now, in the last few years, the questions have become, “Red light therapy or cold plunge? Creatine or NAD+?”
We have gotten so in the weeds that we have lost the foundation. What’s the phrase, the trees through the forest? We have lost this piece of building a foundation on which we can then add some of these extra tools and see the difference.
Over and over, when people are coming to me in my practice, they are doing all of these things. They are spending a fortune. They are running themselves down trying to do all of the things, yet there are a few pieces that aren’t happening. It’s those few pieces that are the ones that actually move the needle.
It’s really about helping address that confusion and the simplification. One of the things that I also see happening is when we are doing all of the things we think we’re supposed to do, and it’s not “working,” we think we’re the problem. We internalize that. We feel like we’re broken rather than recognizing that the tools are broken.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. I can’t agree with you more about the foundations. If you are not incorporating the foundations. We had this conversation a little bit, and this is in your book, about supplements. Creatine monohydrate? NAD+? Whatever supplements? Not to say they can’t be beneficial at times. We both like supplements. If you are skipping the foundations, you won’t get optimal results just by taking supplements. We are on the same page.
The title, Uncomplicating Wellness. What is your definition of wellness?
Jenn:
I love this question. For everybody listening, I am going to share this with the caveat that my definition of wellness may have nothing to do with yours. Fundamentally, it’s all about all of us deciding what wellness is for ourselves and using that as the benchmark that we can use to evaluate all of the information coming at us.
My definition of wellness is the capacity to show up every day, to be the person that I want to be in this world and do the things I want to do every single day. I am physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually well enough to do all of those things and not have to make sacrifices because I am not fully capable in any one of those areas.
Dr. Eric:
I like that definition. That’s good. Some people just say, “feeling good.” It’s important to feel good, but it goes beyond that.
Jenn:
What’s your definition of feeling good? it could very well be different from mine.
I’m sure you see this in your practice. People say, “I didn’t know it was possible to wake up and feel like this.” Yeah! What were you thinking of when you said, “feeling good?” We put these words to it.
The other thing I think happens is we assume that other people are after the same thing we are, especially with social media, with headlines, and all this stuff coming at us. The Olympics are happening. We hear about all this stuff the Olympians are doing. I love watching the Olympics. I have zero desire to compete in any Olympics. While their training is incredible, it has nothing to do with what I need to do for me. We can hear it and be persuaded to think that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Dr. Eric:
True. I have no desire either to compete in the Olympics or run a marathon.
Jenn:
Exactly. Not a runner.
Dr. Eric:
There is a lot of conflicting information out there. You need a lot of protein. Minimize protein. These days, it seems like most are on the side of eating more protein, but some will say 1g per pound of body weight. Others will say that’s too much.
There is also intermittent fasting. Some people say 16-8 or 18-6. Others say that’s too narrow of an eating window. In my opinion, 18-6 is too extreme for most people every day. But everybody is different.
Why is there so much information that is conflicting and as a result confusing to people?
Jenn:
I was just reading a statistic that the global wellness industry is projected to be $9.8 trillion by 2029. That’s not so far away. That is a massively large number. When we are confused, we keep buying. We keep consuming. We keep searching. I don’t mean this to sound maybe as malicious or sinister as it does. It’s just that we have to recognize that it is an industry.
Going back to what you were saying when introducing me, it is up to each of us to take that ownership and autonomy and take the lead in creating health and wellness as we define it for ourselves. If we leave it to everything around us, of course they will have a different answer every day. That’s what benefits them.
I call it experimenting and playing to figure out what really works for you. Then it’s putting the blinders on. Keeping going, doing the things over and over that you know work for you. Once in a while, we might hear something, and then we can evaluate it based on what we know works for us.
For example, this is not real, so nobody go do this. There is maybe a headline tomorrow that tells us that broccoli is the greatest plant that ever was, and it is the cure for every symptom, illness, or disease. If you feel gross when you eat broccoli, don’t eat it. It doesn’t matter that it might cure all these things. For you, it will make you feel gross.
We always want to come back to what we know to be true for ourselves instead of having some of this shiny object syndrome and recognize that shiny object syndrome is what everything around us is designed to do.The fact that that happens, congratulations, you’re human. And the next step is ours.
Dr. Eric:
That makes sense. Isay that, too. Listen to your body. If I or someone else is giving recommendations, everybody is different. Getting back to the broccoli example, some people will love and feel good about broccoli. Other people might get bloating with broccoli. Maybe it’s not the broccoli. Maybe they have something else going on to address, and then they can tolerate the broccoli. But you don’t want to force yourself to eat the broccoli.
Another example is bone broth, which can be great for gut healing. But you don’t have to drink bone broth to heal the gut.
Jenn:
It’s an option. It’s not the only option.
Dr. Eric:
Also, with your book, you were going over how just because it’s labeled wellness doesn’t mean it’s healthful or natural. You gave an example of vegan chicken nuggets with 50 ingredients. When I was in chiropractic school 30 years ago, I was eating those Morningstar vegan chicken nuggets, thinking they were vegan, so they were healthy, not realizing it had GMO soy and all these other ingredients in there. You live and learn. That was before knowing everything I know now. You look at the box, and of course, the box will promote it as being healthful.
Same thing with gluten-free. Just because something is gluten-free doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Just because something is organic doesn’t mean it’s healthy. It might be healthier than a non-organic option. If you eat a sugary cereal that is organic, it’s still not healthy for you. It’s better than eating Frosted Flakes or Froot Loops. I’m glad you brought that up.
Jenn:
Froot Loops did a thing where they removed the food dyes.
Dr. Eric:
Did they?
Jenn:
Temporarily. They removed the food dyes. It changed the color of the Froot Loops. What happened? People stopped buying them. They went back to the food dyes. “What’s wrong with them? They’re not bright.” As humans, we’re cute. We want things, but we don’t recognize what comes with that.
It reminded me of how you weretelling people to listen to their bodies. When people come to me, a lot of times, they have no idea what their bodies are telling them. Part of the subtitle of the book is “Ditch the rules.” When we have outsourced all of the thinking to the diets, rules, and plans, and we have spent so long ignoring everything our body is telling us because we are trying to be perfect on whatever the instructions were, it takes time for us to figure out the language of the body again and what it’s actually telling us. Learning to pay attention to some of that is a process.
For anybody listening who’s going, “Sure,” rolling your eyes, “I don’t know what that means,” I get it, I’ve been there, and it’s possible.
Dr. Eric:
You also mentioned certain red flags that people can spot before spending money, trusting someone. Can you talk about some of the red flags?
Jenn:
It’s different if we’re talking about a headline or food product. One thing is just ignore everything on the front of a package. As you were just saying with the vegan chicken nuggets, ignore everything on the front of the package, and flip it over.
When it comes to headlines, some of the red flags for me are thinking about who benefits from me believing that this is true? What might their bias be?
Who are the people who were studied in this? Even if this kind of makes sense to us, okay, were the people in the study like me? FYI, a lot of the studies, at least the ones I have seen on intermittent fasting, longitudinally, don’t include women, or many women. Looking into some of those details.
By that token, what are our own biases? What do we want to be true? We love the study that is going to tell us to drink red wine and eat cheese with our friends. I’ve seen those headlines recently. They’re fun. And we also know that depending on where we are, what we’re focusing on, especially on detoxification pathways, red wine is probably not our best choice in those moments. Dairy may not be our best choice in those moments. Thinking through our own biases, what we want to be true, and when that applies to us. Taking a little bit of a critical eye.
My favorite tip for digesting all of this nutrition news and identifying some of these red flags is going back to what we said before of you know your body best. Channel your inner superhero. I love the image of the Wonder Woman bangles. You put those on, and you deflect the information, the headlines, the stories, the supplements, all the things that you know are not a fit for you. You have permission to ignore everything that you know doesn’t work for you.
Dr. Eric:
The biases, that’s true. We all have our individual biases, so we might convince ourselves to get a specific product just because we want to believe in it and not doing enough research. That’s great.
Going through your book, you don’t have a willpower problem; you have a willpower misunderstanding. You spoke about emptying someone’s willpower cup. Could you expand on this?
Jenn:
This question actually came up in my membership, Happy Healthy Hub. When do you know if it’s your hormones, your metabolism, or your lack of willpower that is causing the weight gain and inability to lose the weight? My answer was it is never willpower.
Your listeners are incredibly disciplined people. What ultimately happens is that we think willpower is what we need. When something doesn’t happen, a lack of willpower becomes this moral failure. Something’s wrong with us. We misunderstand what willpower is.
Willpower is this finite resource that is used any time we make a decision, any time we delay gratification, frankly, any time we’re thinking from the prefrontal cortex, the front of the brain. It’s not that you don’t have willpower; it’s you’re using it in a lot of other areas. Then we expect to have some left for that food choice or that workout when we haven’t done anything throughout the day to replenish that resource we’re using up. Things that drink from our willpower cup if you will. Any time we make decisions.
Think about how many decisions you make over the course of a day, from what you’re wearing that day to what order you will do things from your to-do list to what’s happening at work. Maybe you have some really big decisions to make. Maybe it’s a whole lot of little ones. They all drink from that willpower cup.
You’re reading a menu. Do you know how many decisions happen when you’re reading a menu? Our decisions aren’t just about the things that we say yes to, but it’s about the things that run across our mind that we say no to. They’re subconscious decisions.
If you’re driving somewhere, and there is a billboard for a Dunkin Donuts, and you notice it but don’t get the Dunkin Donuts or don’t stop at the 7-11, those are all decisions that are drinking from our willpower cup, even if we don’t realize that it was a decision.
One of the key things is to plan things in our day that replenish that willpower, so we have some when we need it. Things that replenish that willpower, interestingly, eating. Low blood sugar drinks a lot from that willpower cup. In all irony, if we eat something, we will have more willpower not to eat the things we don’t want to eat, if that’s where you’re at.
Movement, exercise replenishes that cup. Accountability. That could be a buddy, a coach, a physician, any kind of accountability. It could be a tracker where you are going for a streak. Gamification is another way to increase willpower.
One of my favorites though is generosity. The way this works is that when willpower is low, our human need, our instinct is to protect ourselves, to protect the status quo, to go back to what is comfortable, to avoid any discomfort. When we have partaken in acts of generosity, it is a signal to our nervous system that we are safe, that everything is fine. If we have the capacity to think about someone else, we must be okay.
Hierarchy of needs. If we are not safe, nothing else matters. It’s almost the subliminal signal to our system that we’re okay. Maybe that means holding the door for the person behind you, not rushing past someone who is moving a little slower, buying the coffee for the person behind you. Small acts of generosity can actually increase our willpower.
Dr. Eric:
A lot of things we can do to replenish our willpower cups.
Jenn:
Exactly. A trick is to build some of those into the day. Not every day will be all the same ones. Not all of them take as much time as others. To have them all throughout the day, so we’re using and replenishing that willpower over and over and over throughout the day.
Dr. Eric:
BMI is BS. Let’s go with that one next.
Jenn:
BMI is potentially the worst metric for health. BMI is a calculation based on height and weight. Height and weight tell us about the gravitational pull on our body. News flash: there are zero diseases based on the gravitational pull of your body. There are zero diseases that exist only in bigger bodies. If we are going to look at health, there is more to the story than our height and weight.
When I did this as a podcast episode, I started digging into where this came from. How did we come up with this? Why did this startto be used as a metric? First of all, I can’t remember the guy’s name who invented it, but it was never designed for individual evaluation. It was designed to look at populations over time. All of the people in North America over this decade, compared to all the people in South America over the same decade. It was not about understanding an individual’s outcomes.
It was adopted by our medical system to make it easier for health professionals to have conversations with their patients about weight. Well, maybe we can just put that on the list of things that drive me a little crazy about our medical system. To me, wouldn’t we all be served by helping our physicians have uncomfortable conversations? Maybe they’d be less uncomfortable if we started to have these conversations.
The other piece to all of this is to say if we are not going to measure by BMI, what are we going to measure by? Body composition is a great one. What percentage of that body is muscle? What percentage of that body is fat? Where on that body is that fat?
There is more conversation about physicians using other metrics, but some of those other metrics, like waist circumference, using calipers, there is room for error in those that the simplified height and weight have less human error differentiation. There are pros and cons to every metric.
I really hope people understand and start to recognize that BMI is not telling us anything about our health. What’s really determining our health is what those pounds are made of. Are they muscle? Are they fat? Your organs, your bones are in that number, too.
Dr. Eric:
With that, let’s go into muscle is the new metabolism.
Jenn:
Muscle dictates metabolism. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. Muscle burns fuel. The more fuel we want to burn, the more muscle we need to have. It’s interesting because for a long time, I grew up in the ‘80s, ‘90s diet culture, the aerobics, the cardio queen things. Get on an elliptical. My body didn’t start to change until I added that resistance training, until I started to build muscle. More and more, as we look at the longevity research, muscle is our longevity. Muscle is our health span, our lifespan, our independence later in life.
By the way, if you want to be able to live by yourself later in life, what that requires is the ability to get up off the toilet by yourself. You know what it takes to do that? The ability to do a squat. Let’s do some squats. Let’s build some muscle. Let’s have more of that metabolically active tissue.
Dr. Eric:
I’m glad I’ve been doing more squats and deadlifts lately. With muscle, you need protein. Briefly, we chatted about protein. I brought up how there is so much conflicting information about how much protein. I’m sure you believe protein is important, but you mentioned how you want to start with fiber over protein.
Jenn:
I’m okay whether you start with protein or fiber in a meal in terms of sequencing, if you are sequencing.
Dr. Eric:
You were saying a lot of people overlook fiber. They are just thinking about protein, not thinking enough about fiber.
Jenn:
Exactly. I had a new client intake yesterday. Bless her. “I’m doing this for protein.” We went through her day. Basically, the only source of fiber was a couple apples, maybe one vegetable in her day.
A lot of times, especially in our modern lives and western world, we conflate carbohydrates with grains and starches, and fiber with grains and starches. “I’m supposed to minimize carbs,” whatever rule or diet you’re following. What ends up happening is we are misunderstanding, and we are losing out on fundamental food groups.
I always say protein and fiber at every meal makes your moving fat no big deal. Or protein and fiber at every meal creates health. It is fundamentally what we need. Protein is clean, lean protein. Fiber is vegetables and sometimes fruit. A meal is really any time we eat. The only difference between a meal or a snack is how much we have at a time; therefore, how long until we need to fuel again.
Within that, eat what you like. Don’t eat what you don’t like. Over the course of the day, for perspective, we recommend getting 8-12 servings of vegetables. A serving is like a handful. If it’s leafy greens, a serving is two handfuls. I talk in handfuls because, I don’t know about you, but I’m not living my life carrying measuring cups with you everywhere I go.
Dr. Eric:
I must admit, I’m a little bit anal when I make my smoothie. I do have my measuring cups for that. If I’m having some broccoli as a side, I can’t say I break out the measuring cups.
Jenn:
There is also a difference between getting that fiber from whole fruits and vegetables that we’re chewing versus the breads, pasta, baked goods, those grain sources of fiber. Certainly those grain sources of protein. A lot of them are less efficient than the animal sources. You have to do what works for you and your body and your system and your beliefs. Recognize that we might have different requirements based on other choices we’re making. We might have to have a greater commitment to paying attention to some of those things if we are choosing to focus on some other pieces.
Dr. Eric:
With 8-12 handfuls of vegetables per day, are you recommending diversity? 8-12 different ones? Most people won’t have eight of the same, but they might have three of the same, multiple servings of a few vegetables they like. Is that okay? Do you really encourage someone to try to have more diversity when it comes to fruits and vegetables?
Jenn:
Both. I live in the real world. I get it. We only have so many vegetables in our refrigerator. For some people, I end up working with a lot of people who eat only four things, or they’re very picky about vegetables. We start from wherever we are.
And I think you’re spot on. I talk about nutrient diversity as one of the most overlooked tools for health. Our body responds so well to variety, both day to day, meal to meal, and even within a meal. We might be dealing with certain things where at times, we’re saying, “I need to keep this. Less variety at a time, so I can start to figure out what’s triggering certain symptoms orwhere I’m at.” Our objective over time is to live in the land of variety.
Think back. The human body is still very caveman biology. We just live in this modern world. If we think about our caveman biology, different colors indicate different nutrients. The more variety on a plate, the more colors on a plate, the more nutrition we were getting. That is still the case. We just want to make sure that those colors actually come from the food rather than some sort of gas or dye.
We can be really served with variety. I notice this for myself, and I have had clients, where they will do food sensitivity testing. If you tend to eat the same things all the time, it can show up as a sensitivity even if it’s not really, but because we are eating the same thing all the time, on the spectrum of reactions, our body can respond to that. Certainly variety, and we pick our battles.
Dr. Eric:
There’s so much more information in the book, so we can’t cover everything. A couple more things before we wrap it up. One is biohacking versus biostacking.
Jenn:
This is a little bit of what we talked about before. We are all looking for that magic simple thing that is the only thing we have to do. A lot of times, we’re turning to that instead of the foundations, the fundamentals.
When I started digging into all of this, and I learned that by definition, a biohack is a marginal improvement. A biohack is something that creates a 10% improvement. If we’re operating at 90% health, that 10% improvement is astronomical. We’re going from 90% to 99%. Wow.
Statistically, 88% of the United States is not metabolically well. If the vast majority of us are not operating at 90% health, maybe we’re operating at 40% health. Going from 40% to 44% is not moving the needle. It’s why we feel frustrated and we feel like we’re broken when we do the thing that everybody on the internet is telling us to do, and we’re not noticing a difference.
The biostack is the foundation that we must put in place. Then we can add the biohack and notice that improvement and get the maximum benefit from that extra effort. You’re never going to supplement your way out of not sleeping. You’re never going to cold plunge your way out of not eating proper fuel. The biostack is our fuel, our hydration, our movement, sleep, stress, and community and connection. There is a piece of mindset in there, too.
Dr. Eric:
Awesome. Stress and sleep, that’s what I wanted to finish up on. That is part of biostacking. The title of the chapter is “Stress is a Killer.”
Jenn:
Not to be dramatic.
Dr. Eric:
I often talk about the impact of stress and how it was a contributing factor in my Graves’ condition. A lot of people I speak with, stress seems to be a big factor. Obviously, you feel the same, or else you wouldn’t have dedicated a chapter to stress.
Stress and sleep go together. If you’re stressed out all the time, that will affect sleep. If you’re sleep-deprived, that will compromise your adrenals. It’s a cycle.
What solutions are there for chronic stress in your opinion? There is only so much we can do for actual stressors.
Jenn:
Stress is one of those things where we can also get into that black and white, all or nothing thinking. We are never going to get rid of all the stress in this reality, so we end up going, “Whatever. I’ll deal with all the other things instead of stress.”
I’ve been there. I was working in hedge funds. I was building a health coaching practice on the side. I ended upin adrenal fatigue. I didn’t realize that’s what was going on. I have been there when you are dragging yourself out of bed. To your point, it’s time to sleep. It’s 11pm, and I’m up watching reruns of old TV shows until way too late because that’s when I’m wide awake.
When it comes to stress, one of the things that made the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it is understanding why. One thing I learned about stress is when we are in fight or flight, organ systems, bodily functions that are not tied to our survival of the next 20 minutes are essentially offline. What is that? Our immune system, our reproductive system, our metabolism, growing hairs and nails. Allof these things we start to notice, we’re getting sick all the time, our hair is falling out, we’re not sleeping well.
I remember working in hedge funds, someone who worked with us was having a really hard time conceiving. Her doctor recommended that she get a new job. Once I understood what was happening, then it helped me figure out how to prioritize the stress reduction things.
Similar to what we were talking about with willpower. I believe we have to build some of these stress reducing things into our everyday, so we are constantly chipping away at it.
The other thing about our caveman biology in this modern world is, you know those old success posters, where it had the iceberg and the water line? The part above the water line is what everybody sees, and the part below the water line is what it took to get to the success of what you are trying to do. I feel like the icebergis our stress, and the water line is our awareness of it. Over time, that water line just keeps raising. We think we’re not stressed, but our physiology is.
What are all of the things we can do to send safety signals, to send signals to turn on rest and digest all throughout the day? One of my favorite things for that, simple enough, is just breathing. When someone walks in a room, and you’re not expecting them, and you gasp, that breath is shallow and in the chest. Breathing deeper into the diaphragm, a longer exhale than inhale, our physiological signals to the body that the stressor has passed.
Think about it. In fight or flight, if we were running from the saber-toothed tiger, since that is always the example, we find somewhere to hide, we watch it pass. What then happens to our breathing? It slows down. Our exhale becomes longer than the inhale. We are less panting and more breathing deeper into the diaphragm.
If we can do that, a couple times, to send signals to our body for rest and digest that we are safe, that we are not being chased by the proverbial saber-toothed tiger that just looks like our phone buzzing now, we can start to send those signals and bring some of those other bodily systems and organs back online.
One of my favorite things is to add that breathing before a meal, before you eat something. People will call it habit stacking. I think of it as what better time to turn on rest and digest than before we eat something? Little things we can do.
Our movement, our exercise is a tremendous way to help the body burn through that stress response. One of my old Pilates teachers used to say, “The phrase ‘working out’ came through the idea that we were working stress out through the body.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it helps me think about it. It makes sense to me logically.
Maybe it’s putting on a song and having a dance break. By the way, that song is always the song you loved in high school or college. There is a thing called neuronostalgia, which is why we always identify with songs from that period of our lives. Write down a couple of those songs on a post-it, look at it, and start to do it. Turn everything off. Put the song on. Commit to doing your thing for a couple minutes.
Choose a handful of things. I’m a big fan of post-its. Write a handful of stress reduction things or things you enjoy doing that you feel you never have a chance to do. Put that post-it on your computer screen. Put a copy of the same list on a post-it in your coat pocket. As you’re going about your day, that post-it interrupts us. When we’re having that wildly stressful conversation, maybe it’s a Zoom, you look down and see that post-it, and you are reminded you can do one of those things as soon as this Zoom ends. They don’t have to take a ton of time.
The trick is you have to have a bunch of things on that post-it, so in the moment, you can just pick something. If there is only one thing there, and you don’t feel like doing that, or it will take more time than you have, it won’t happen.
And there is nothing harder than trying to think about that list of options when we are in the moment of the stressful situation.
Dr. Eric:
Some great information. Breathing before you eat, that’s a good idea. Do you do it with every meal?
Jenn:
No, I’m human. We all live our lives. We forget the things. The reminders are helpful. Even for the sleep. I have an alarm that goes off on my phone that says, “Stop what you’re doing, and get ready for bed.” We need the tools and reminders.
Even though we may not do it every time, the times we do it, it’s helpful. Like I said before, we don’t need perfection to be the enemy of progress. Something is worth it. A little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing.
Dr. Eric:
I like the post-it idea, too.
Jenn:
I am a big fan. I have one on my computer right here.
Dr. Eric:
Years ago, I used them. What I would do is write different things on the same post-it note, and it would get too crowded. The individual post-it notes are good.
This has been amazing. There is a lot more in the book, but we want people to read the book than talk for three hours. Really appreciate this conversation. Any last words before we wrap it up?
Jenn:
You’re not broken. We have been given a lot of broken tools. It is possible to be on the same team as your body. You don’t have to figure that out alone. Working with someone like Dr. Eric or me or someone who can help you relearn the language of the body, move forward, and make some progress is tremendously helpful. It’s what I did. It made all the difference and is why I do what I do. I promise you it’s possible. UncomplicatingWellness or Salad with a Side of Friesare great places to start.
Dr. Eric:
For the book, just go on Amazon?
Jenn:
All of your online retailers. You can request it in your store. Amazon, Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million, Walmart, Barnes & Noble. All the places.
Dr. Eric:
I assume they can also find you on social media?
Jenn:
My website is ASaladWithASideOfFries.com. On all social media, I am @JennTrepeck. Please send a message. I love hearing from you. It might take me a minute to respond, but please do send a message.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you so much, Jenn. Really enjoyed this conversation. It was an excellent book that I highly recommend. I learned a few things as well. Appreciate you being on the podcast.
Jenn:
Awesome, thank you. I appreciate you.
***
Dr. Eric:
That was a great conversation with Jenn.
Listen to your body. I say this all the time. She gave an example of how broccoli is healthy, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat it. If you don’t like it or if you eat it and get bloating and gas,you don’t need to eat it.
Same thing with bone broth. Bone broth can help support the gut. When I dealt with Graves’, I did not drink bone broth, not because I didn’t like it, but because I didn’t think about it. These days, you see bone broth everywhere, and it’s easy to get it. Back in 2008, there weren’t all the options there are today.
Froot Loops. I used to eat them for breakfast every single day growing up. Part of my nutritious breakfast. I brought it up because she mentioned how they removed the food dyes. Then people stopped buying them, and they added them back in. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had them.
The marketing of food. Talking about things that are common sense. Ignore everything on the front of the package, the claims. Actually read the ingredients. If something says “natural,” it doesn’t mean that it can’t have some artificial ingredients. It could have natural ingredients, too. You need to be careful. If you’re not in the habit of reading ingredients, definitely recommend doing so.
BMI is BS. She mentioned it’s the worst metric for health, as it’s based on height and weight. She recommends body composition. I can’t say I really have thought deeply about BMI. It’s not perfect. I do think body composition is fine. It’s what percentage of the body is muscle or fat. I don’t agree if BMI is completely bullshit, but it’s not a perfect marker.
Muscle is the new metabolism. We chatted about how muscle is metabolically active tissue. Reinforcing why it’s important to add resistance training and focus more on it than prioritizing aerobic exercise, as a lot of people still do. Probably not as much, but when going to the gym, a lot of people still have aerobic classes. I see a good amount of people on the treadmill and other aerobic equipment. I think it’s good to do some aerobic exercise but focus more on resistance training.
Fiber versus protein. Both are important. These days, there is a lot of focus on getting enough protein, but you don’t hear as much about getting sufficient fiber. She recommends protein and fiber at every meal. Get most of your fiber through vegetables and some fruit. Try to minimize, if not avoid, other sources, like breads and baked goods. Focusing on whole, healthy foods, mainly fruits and vegetables.
Biohacking versus biostacking. She mentioned how we are looking for the one magic simple thing instead of looking at fundamentals. A biohack creates a marginal improvement, like 10%. There is not a single biohack example for sleeping. The biostack is fuel, hydration, movement, sleep, stress, community, connection, and mindset. You want to incorporate foundations.
Some biohacking can be helpful. There is a time and place for it. It’s not a replacement for the fundamentals. That’s what she was conveying. I don’t think she is against biohacking, and I’m not either. If you try all these little biohacks and don’t incorporate the foundations, it will be difficult to heal.
I think that’s it. We talked about a lot of other things. Check out Jenn’s book. As usual, I hope you found this conversation to be valuable. I look forward to catching you in the next episode.