Author And Thought Leader Rachel Brown Reveals How To Heal Yourself Through A Plant-Based Diet (#224)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.

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Rachel Brown earned her plant-based nutrition certification and food and sustainability certification from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell. After being diagnosed with high cholesterol in her late twenties, she discovered The China Study and started exploring the science of nutrition. After she ate WFPBNO for just 17, days. Her cholesterol dropped 50 points. That was the beginning of her family's journey from the Standard American Diet to a Whole Food Plant Based No Oil Lifestyle.

A licensed practitioner of massage and they pain neutralization technique. Rachel is also a certified yoga and Pilates instructor and a spiritual director.

She completed the 12-day McDougall program and has led corporate mindfulness seminars. She received her BA in Geography from the University of Washington and has been an adjunct professor in nutrition and wellness.

Rachel belongs to the University of Washington Alumni Association, the T Colin Campbell Center For Nutrition Studies Whole Communities Program, and Eat For Earth as well as Plant Strong and McDougal communities, Rachel is happily married with two grown children. She lives in California where she can usually be found trail running, rock climbing, cycling, and bike packing with her husband.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast. And you know what we're gonna really lean heavily on that saying for today's episode, we have a terrific guest that your health is your wealth.

After all, what good is all those zeros in the bank account or your business success? If you can't enjoy it or if you don't have the energy or the focus and for today's guest, we're gonna do a deep dive on another saying, you are what you eat. What do you think? Is there something to that? Is that a bunch of, you know what?

What we're gonna find out today because we have an author, a thought leader, and someone who has just an incredible story. Hang onto your hats. Here we go. We're gonna go down. A terrific ride for today's episode, Rachel. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And you know, Rachel, there's always a story behind the story.

What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:47] Rachael Brown: Thanks so much for having me, Jeffrey. Really it started with my dad has had high cholesterol as long as I can remember, and he was always on statins and he would have these odd side effects of losing his taste and you'd have to take some other medication. And so when I was in my early twenties, I was told I should go on cholesterol medication as well.

And I really didn't want to go down that road so I was told at the time to cut out some dairy and eggs and exercise more, and I did all those things and slowly my cholesterol would creep back up. And then when I was in my mid to late thirties, my five year old nephew was diagnosed with cancer. And his mom was in nursing school at the time, and they had a small hobby farm.

They grew all their own meat. She taught me how to pull mozzarella cheese. They had a big garden as well, but she had a professor at nursing school who asked her if she'd looked at the role of diet and nutrition in cancer. And she started reading books and saying, oh my gosh, you should read these. And they changed their diet overnight.

And so the first book she told me about was the China study by Dr. T Collin Campbell. And I read that and initially, Jeffrey, I was angry, really angry that this information wasn't out there, that I hadn't heard this before, that no doctor had ever told me about this. And after that it, I mean it made so, much sense.

I wanted to make sure, tested on ourselves to see if it really worked. We gave it 10 days. We got a blood draw. My family of four. I had two kids at the time, small kids, six and eight. And we ate whole food, plant-based, no oil for 10 days. I actually couldn't get back in for my second blood draw until day 17.

And when I went in to see my doctor, he said, what did you do? And keep doing it, whatever it is, because your cholesterol dropped 50 points. And I couldn't do that with medication that was almost 13 years ago. And for us, that was a yay moment. But also, oh shoot, now we have to do this. How are we gonna do this? You know, for the last 12 years we have eaten this way. But at the time there wasn't a lot out there. There was the China study, a few research books, and then a few cookbooks, but not a lot in between. I wrote the book that I wish I would've had 12 years ago. Enough information as to why this makes sense for everybody and the planet.

And then a quick how-to guide so, that people can give it a go for themselves.

[00:06:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Terrific. And I love the title of your book for For Fork's Sake: A Quick Guide to Healing Yourself and the planet through a plant-based and great play on words. Rachel, why don't we, pun intended, take a lay of the land, and really for the listener out there, it'd be terrific with your background and your insights, your wisdom.

To share what's really going on with the food and why it's so challenging today if we follow the SAD diet. mean, What an acronym, the Standard American Diet. mean The irony in that, uh, and which, we'll, you'll talk about momentarily what's going on because I'm sure there's listeners saying, listen, I see my doctor, I'm following the government standards of what to be eating.

Life should be great, but as you and I both know, it isn't so what's really going on behind the scenes?

[00:06:56] Rachael Brown: There is a whole lot I would say, and that's a big rabbit hole with government subsidies and all of that, that we could spend days going down. But yes, SAD is a perfect acronym. I mean, Standard American Diet really is sad. People are dying of heart disease, of cancer, they have inflammatory diseases.

And these things we now know are caused by what we put in our bodies. So, genetics are responsible for some. Of what goes on in our body, but really they think now 10% is genetics up to 90% is lifestyle choices, including what we eat. And it really is tea calling Campbell's book. That China study was fascinating to me because he talked about his research and this is way back 1950s that they knew and they were working on.

Protein, animal protein turning on or off cancer cells. They did these experiments on rats and the amount of protein you fed a rat who had a tumor, they could watch it rise or fall. The tumor growth would rise or fall when they turned up the protein or turned it down. And then they did the same thing with plant protein did the same thing.

No growth. They raised it above 20%. No growth at all. So, our body is literally work with plant products and animal products vary differently. Basically, there's no downside to eating plants and for the most part, people get tripped up in all the information out there and feel overwhelmed in how much do I need to eat.

Do I need to count micros and macros? And it's just one more thing on people's busy plates to keep track of, and it doesn't need to be that way. We don't count any calories. We don't count micros, macros, we simplify it into, we call it happy because whole food, plant-based, no oil doesn't really roll off the time.

Happy from going from sad to happy. Happy standing for a healthy and plant powered yay really just remembering if you don't eat anything with a mother or a face. Everything out there is fair game. I'll see you wanna steer away from processed packaged foods and oils, but really that leaves a lot of food.

A lot of people go what can you even eat? But, fruits, vegetables, legumes all the whole grains, nuts, and seeds. People have been surviving on this for many, many years, and really well, the Blue Zones are proof of that.

[00:09:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: And what's interesting in your book, and again, for listeners, we'll have the link to the book and the show notes. I really encourage you to go out there, take it out and read it, see for yourself what's going on. Rachel, you go from day zero from 10 years to 10 days, and each chapter, the 10 chapters, walk us through day by day by day what's going on.

For someone who's listening and saying, you know what, I kind of forgot what it feels like to wake up and not be in pain. I have all these medications I'm just feeling off. I don't even remember the last time of what it was like to be pain-free and just be able to move and enjoy. Can you give us a brief overview of starting day one, what we can expect all the way through to day 10?

[00:09:48] Rachael Brown: Sure. Yeah. And that's the thing so Many big changes can occur in just 10 days. I really just help people put the actions in place so that you can do this as simply and easily as possible. So, you do have to know yourself. Some people are very black and white and it's easy for them to say, okay, that's it.

I'm not eating these offending foods. And they get rid of 'em, clean out their cupboards, and their fridge and they're good to go. Other people might need to add in something every day or say, okay, you know, I'm gonna add greens to every lunch and dinner this week, or I'm gonna add a piece of fruit before each meal.

Both of those are okay, but I would say yes on that day one, getting a blood draw to see where you are when you're starting out. And then each day putting into actions, into steps things that will help you by day 10, get that blood, drawback and see what's really going on in your body.

Simple things I mean, really it can be starting your day with a glass of warm water is one thing, right? Just getting some actions in place. Healthy breakfasts eating like a king at breakfast. Eating really as much as you can really. And as like prince at lunch and a pauper dinner if possible. But really you don't have to make it difficult.

It's really simple when you get rid of offending foods and you're left with some whole grains, pasta. If you love pasta, you can have pasta, you can have bowls of it every day. It's just what you put on top of it, right? Making up big batches of soups or rice, or baking a bunch of potatoes. Again, keeping it simple, but giving yourself these things that you can come back to.

Three times plus a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then within three days, I will tell you, you will start to notice different things. You might be sleeping better, your digestion might be feeling better already in just three days. I had to put a notice in the beginning of the book because if you're on blood pressure medication or take insulin, you might need to reduce your medications even in the first two days.

When you give your body what it actually needs to run on, you'll be astounded at how quickly it can start to repair. Like you mentioned, inflammation is a huge one. Many people with arthritis or other inflammatory issues that's one of the first things they notice in the first week that they don't have the inflammatory pain that they have lived with for many, many, many years.

It really is incredible what your body can do.

[00:12:04] Jeffrey Feldberg: And speaking of that, and Rachel, you said something interesting that for our listeners, it was really subtle and easy to miss. But Rachel, you're really spot on when you said, despite what we are destined to from a genetic side of things, it's our lifestyle choices, or what some people call epigenetics. It's what we choose to do, the actions we take, what we eat as an example, that's really the predictor of our future health.

And some listeners may be surprised to say, well, what do you mean? I've had in my family, there's been heart disease and my parents, you know, have suffered from that. My aunts, my uncles. That's probably the fate that's gonna be waiting for me down the road. Why would that be not the case? When we can make the right, kind of, in this case, lifestyle choices of what we're eating or what we're not eating.

[00:12:49] Rachael Brown: Yeah, that was part of my discovery because like I said, my father had high cholesterol. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and passed away from pancreatic cancer. My uncle also passed away from pancreatic cancer. When I was reading and learning about high cholesterol being connected to dementia and Alzheimer's.

We actually got an APOE genetic test done, which everybody has one of six APOE genes. And we found out we carry one of the four alleles so, that's not the most predetermined to get Alzheimer's. There's one, if you had four four, you would, those are people who get Alzheimer's in their thirties.

But we are three four I found out I carried that gene. My father carries that gene. My son has that gene we know our bodies first of all over produce cholesterol and then break down cholesterol different than, five other types of bodies. But knowing that we can work within that and knowing what raises cholesterol, we can cut out excess dietary cholesterol, which is saturated fat animal products, and give our bodies everything they need to do what they need to do.

My cholesterol dropped 50 points. I don't have to worry about that. Plaque buildup. We did carotid artery tests to check this and over 10 years we watched our veins literally erode plaque we watched, disease reversal happen and for us, in less than 10 years both my son's and i's carotid arteries were clear and I now have veins that are like 10 years younger than my age rather than 10 years older when I started out.

And back to your first question. The SAD diet. When I did my first carotid artery test, they said well, you have a C plus for a US test. And I said, what does that even mean? They said compared to the world, you know, C plus is okay for an American. And I was like, I don't want an American, but our veins are so clogged.

That we have a different standing than the rest of the world. Yeah.

[00:14:41] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's crazy. And you know, for our listeners, when you visit your doctor or you follow the guidelines, what you have to keep in mind when they say, oh, you're right in the guidelines, you're normal. Oftentimes those guidelines are the bare minimum to keep alive, not to be vibrant, not to be healthy, or anything else like that. So, you don't wanna be quote-unquote normal because you know, Rachel, if we're honest about it. Unfortunately, sadly, most people, particularly in the US we're not the healthiest. We are lagging behind in that one area. Now, I wanted to ask you something. In your book, you talk about W F P B N O, Whole Foods, Plant-Based No Oil and so for our listeners who are listening into that, they're saying, okay, whole Foods. Yeah, I get that. And Rachel, you and I will talk about that plant-based. Okay, understood that No oil. Why no oil? What's going on with that? So, what would you say to our listeners saying, why is there no oil in this approach?

[00:15:37] Rachael Brown: This can be a tricky one, and my mom will still argue with me over this because she loves her olive oil and says, oh, but the Mediterranean diet, which, yes, the Mediterranean diet has wonderful things, but it's in spite of the oil and fish, not because of so, probably the things that I see that are most easy to think about is, for the same reason we don't pour oil down our drains, right?

We don't do that because it clogs our drains. The same thing happens in our bodies essentially is what's going on. And also oil is a hundred percent fat. So, most of us aren't looking to add a hundred percent fat to our diet. If you love olives, then have olives. Those olives have everything and total olive has fiber, a whole bunch of nutrients in it that your body breaks down and uses really efficiently.

But when you take those olives and press just the fat out of them, your body doesn't use it in the same way. To put it in perspective Christopher Carnrick, a chef he used to teach in Spain and taught in olive groves and all that. He said that a tablespoon of olive oil is 50 olives, you think about sitting down to eat some olives, I would say sit down and eat olive olives. You want, you probably won't get to 50, maybe. But you're gonna have everything your body needs to break that down. That's just fine. That's what I mean by whole foods. Same with avocado. Avocado is high in fat.

Eat the whole avocado. You can have it on food. That's just fine. Don't use avocado oil. So, you want to make sure you're having the entire plant rather than something that's been processed or modified in some way.

[00:17:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: And that is a perfect segue for one of the questions that I have because you're saying Whole Foods, and on the surface, it makes a lot of sense. But I'm sure for our listeners when they're in the supermarket or they're just browsing for food, they will see packaging and it's processed food. And you did reference this earlier, and it can be completely plant-based and it has all this fancy wording, perhaps organic and healthy for you, and zero sugar.

And this goes on and on. So, Rachel, what's going on with processed foods, even though they may be plant-based, why is that a no-fly zone for you with your approach?

[00:17:44] Rachael Brown: Yeah. It can get so confusing these days and in some ways, it's never been a better time to try and eat this way, but also it's never been a more confusing time because you're right, industry is now jumping on the bandwagon because there's a lot of money to be made. A lot of people are trying to eat whole foods.

I would say yes. First of all, never pay attention to the front of any label. Those they can save whatever they want. Classically you could pick up a can of no-fat pinto beans or refried beans. And on the back when you read the label, it's beans and oil. They use some tricky to make this possible.

But yeah, I would advise always looking at the actual ingredients. Not all packaged foods are bad. If you go into the frozen section, you can pick. Flash frozen greens and berries and all kinds of fruits and vegetables that don't have anything added to them. Those are just fine.

Canned as well. You wanna watch out that they don't have anything else added into them. But yes, I would steer clear of, especially snack foods can be very offending just with all the other ingredients that are in it. I suggest being able to read each ingredient, pronounce it, and at the very least know what it is.

If you're gonna put it in your mouth.

[00:18:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: Some good advice. If you're looking at that label and you can't pronounce it or there's all these terms there, it's probably a good warning sign, hey, stay away. Go to something else. So, let me ask you this, because in day three, and you talk about this in the book, easy replacements, I suspect you've already talked about some of that.

Hey, instead of having olive oil, have olive those, or instead of avocado oil, have the whole avocado. What would be some other easy replacements? I'm sure people are saying, wow, this is a big change that you're asking me to do, and I like such and such, but there's an alternative to that so, what would be perhaps maybe the top 2, 3, 5 foods that have easy replacements.

[00:19:28] Rachael Brown: Sure. Well, I suggest people sit down and just make a list of their favorite foods. What do you like to eat now? When we did that, it was lasagna. We had small kids. It was burgers and pizza. We made a list of our favorite foods and especially now, it's really not hard If you just Google whole food, no oil pizza recipe, you'll have thousands at your disposal, so, we just found replacements. We started making recipes that were the types of food that we loved but with no animal products in them. I have a recipe in the book for our favorite mac and cheese bake. You can add vegetables and put breadcrumbs on top, and it's amazing. Adults and children alike love it. On my website, I have a link for our favorite lasagna, which if people don't know there's not meat in it, they often can't tell. It's terrific. Yeah, I would suggest going through figuring out what your favorite meals are and then finding replacements that you can make. Also, on my website, I have a free downloadable principle guide that is replacement for How do you cook without oil?

How do you bake without oil? And those are really actually simple. It sounds crazy in the beginning, but you can saute just using broth or water or wine or teriyaki sauce. You can use any liquid that doesn't have oil in it, and it'll act very similarly. In baking, the simplest swap is just using apple sauce instead of one-to-one.

Whatever amount of oil that was gonna go in your cookies or bread, you can just use apple sauce and it will still be moist. It will still be tasty, you won't miss it, and your kitchen will be so much easier to clean.

[00:20:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: And we're jumping around here a little bit from the book, but I'm sure the questions are coming up. Okay. You know what, Rachel, I'm gonna give this a try. I'll give it 10 days like you're saying, and I know day number nine in the book, you say, what do I tell other people what to respond when people ask why you're doing this?

Because I, you know what? Social pressure and we want to fit in. I think it's just wired into us. You know, Back in the day when we didn't have the conveniences and survival wasn't a guarantee, being part of the tribe was important, and if you were an outcast back in those days, that would mean you're probably done.

That's it. And so getting other people's approval and listening to what other people are saying, it's hard for us oftentimes not to do that. I'm sure friends and family, they'll look at this and they'll say, what have you lost it? Why are you doing this? Why aren't you eating like everyone else is eating? What's gone so, wrong with you? How do you deal with that kind of social pressure? What would be some strategies?

[00:21:51] Rachael Brown: Well, you know,

In the beginning, we were so excited. We were feeling so, good, better than we remembered feeling, you know, in college that we were preaching from the mountaintops. Anybody that would listen to us, we were telling about this and then we realized we still wanna have some friends, people are walking away.

Yes, we shifted tactics and just decided, let's just do this for ourselves. If people are interested, then we have all our facts to share with them. But yeah, it depends on your personality. Again, some people really feel compelled to let everybody know what they're doing and why.

And I would argue there's a place for that. You know, If you have friends and family who are on medications who are not feeling well, sure it's important to share it but also to not expect that everybody is ready to make a change. Often they'll watch you and see, oh wow, you've lost any extra weight or off any medications.

You're doing these amazing things in your life now. What's the change? What's going on? And then you have a segue there to be able to explain what you're doing and why. I also think just sharing amazing food with people, a lot of people haven't tried whole food, plant-based food, or they have some idea of what vegan food would be, and if they come over for dinner and they have an amazing lasagna, you know, and at the end, you say well, yeah, that was you know, plant-based or you have a recipe to give them, then that can be a great tactic as well. But yes, you're right. The number one reason that people give up this way of eating is a lack of support feeling in it alone. It is important to find your tribe. And one of the upsides of Covid is there are all kinds of online groups now that you can join if you don't have a group in your area.

But yeah, even grabbing the book and one or two friends and reading it and deciding you know, hey, let's share some meals back and forth. Can be a fun way to give it a go. But yes, you do wanna find some support network.

[00:23:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: And speaking of support network, when you're with friends or other like-minded people, even your family, very easy to do but what do you do when you're invited out and it's a social occasion and maybe you're gonna be a guest at someone's house for dinner, or you're asked to go to a restaurant with a friend and they're on the opposite end in terms of what they're eating.

What's your experience, Rachel? What kind of sage advice can you give us of how do we handle that? We don't wanna be hermits on the one hand saying no to everything. We still have to have a social life. How do we handle ourselves in that situation? What's going on with that?

[00:24:06] Rachael Brown: Yeah. Again, we've run the gamut with that. You know, In the beginning, we decided at the very beginning, we would always eat. If we went to somebody else's house, we would eat whatever they prepared for us. We weren't going to snub our noses and say, oh, we can't eat that. We decided at home we would eat this way.

But when we went out, we could eat whatever anybody presented, but we have really kind friends and they knew we were doing this for medical reasons and they would often ask can we make something? Could we try a new recipe? Or we would bring something that we could eat and now, you know, I would offer, you should make double what you think you'll need.

Because often if we go to a meal together, potluck kinda thing, our food is gone before we can even get to it because people wanna try it and it's delicious. Another tactic, you know, If you're going out to a restaurant, you can call ahead and ask what they have. Nowadays, it's not that odd to have a request for some kind of other food, and a lot more normal than it was, 12 or 13 years ago.

But you can also if you're going to a holiday party and you know there's not gonna be anything there that you can eat and you're not bringing anything, you can also just eat at home before you go and grab a beverage or whatever. Make it more about the social event, about connecting with people than about eating food.

[00:25:14] Jeffrey Feldberg: And I really like how you're open-minded if you're going to someone's house and if they don't know what you're doing or they chose not to have a dish for you, it sounds like it's not what you would normally eat, but you'll make the exception just to be polite out of respect. But to me, what the takeaway is your mindset.

You're not punishing yourself over this, hey, maybe I'm having a non-plant base. Maybe it's a fish or some kind of animal protein or something else. Won't normally do this, but I'll make the exception today. It's okay. I'll live through it. I'll wake up tomorrow morning. The sun's still gonna rise. All is good.

Am I on base with that?

[00:25:48] Rachael Brown: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I tell the story in the book about my son when we first said, okay, we're going this way. We know it's the best thing to do, and we are very black and white. He went to a birthday party and I can't remember if it, he had, Six hot dogs and 12 cookies, or 12 hot dogs and six cookies, we quickly realized, okay, that's not gonna work. We need to loosen up a little bit. It's not that you know, you wanna splurge on something because you miss it so much. A key point in this is really deciding it's not gonna be a diet because diets are something we give up at some point, right?

You deprive yourself and then you go back to what you really want. This is really a way of changing your lifestyle. The trick with that 10 days, our taste buds change about every two weeks. So If you give yourself two weeks, about 10 days, and try this, you'll notice like my son did, we were having pitas about nine days in and just playing pitas with hummus and a bunch of veggies in them, and he looked at me and said, oh my gosh.

Why are these good? Where did you get these red peppers? And I was racking my brain like they're the same red peppers I always buy, and then it dawned on me for him, his taste buds had literally changed. The red peppers tasted really sweet because they are really sweet when you're not having brownies or cookies or other things that are artificially sweetened. So, If you give yourself a little bit of time, you'll be amazed at how good this tastes and you won't be feeling like you're missing out.

[00:27:08] Jeffrey Feldberg: Rachel, you're absolutely right. And for our listeners who have done something like this, you'll know when you stop all those sugary snacks and the fruit dose and the glucose and everything else that goes along with that, the really, the natural foods, the whole foods when you've taken all that other stuff out, your diet, you've given, as you're saying a couple of weeks before your taste bud to change.

 Wow, who knew that a vegetable or a fruit could taste so good? Taste so, wholesome and so sweet and of itself. Whereas before it was rather bland or didn't taste so, good at all. And Rachel, let me ask you this because I know there's some people who are listening who are saying, okay, you know what?

I hear what Rachel saying and plant-based. Okay, but you know what? I'm not really a plant-based person. I'm another kind of diet. We can talk paleo diet, we can talk carnivore died, all those other kinds of things. But I think what everyone would agree on regardless of protein, no protein, animal protein, plant-based protein, that when it comes to certain kinds of animal protein, particularly when you have these industrial factory farms, and I know you talk about that in the book, people aren't realizing if they're really big on having animal protein. And they're eating the protein from these farms, these big industrial farms. And you know, I'm gonna kind of stop the narrative there because you go into it in the book and you can share with our listeners. Why is that not the thing to do? What's going on with that? I mean, after all, if a person chooses to have animal protein, isn't all animal protein the same? Or what's going on with these industrial farms that it, it's such a negative thing to do or something that you don't want to be doing?

[00:28:39] Rachael Brown: Right. You know, often people will say, but I eat grass-fed beef, and I will say, wow, that you're in the top 0.001% then because there is not a lot of grassed beef out there. These huge industrial complexes here in California will drive by them down I five and you can smell them for miles before you get there.

They are just really horrid. But so much is going on with these animals. First of all, they're pumped full of antibiotics because they get so, sick. They're not designed to live in these places. You drive by, there's not a blade of grass anywhere. It's just dirt. They're being fed unnatural foods, sometimes ground up fish.

I mean, these are animals that usually would eat grass. Then they're waste products. There's massive amounts of waste products that leach into the water that we have whole dead zones in the ocean because of this stuff that's leeching down rivers and streams killing everything in its path.

Because of everything that's coming from these animal farms, not only that, the farm workers that are working in butchering operations I, it's just this really deplorable situation for the animals and the people. But this is all just that people can have meat. People don't wanna give up their meat. Yeah, there are so many reasons, and I think if the general public had a better understanding of where their meat came from and what it. That most people wouldn't be eating meat, but most people don't wanna take a look at that. I would urge people to just google livestock operations, but chicken farming looks like chickens are bred so in such a way that they can't stand up often because their breasts are so large. You know, I mean, there's just really deplorable practices that are where we get our food and we don't give it a second thought.

[00:30:14] Jeffrey Feldberg: And it's really a negative picture and we don't wanna bring the listener down, although you need to hear this. And I wanted to circle back to something that you said, and it goes back to the no oils. And in particular, I wanna focus on seed oils specifically. Canola Oil, as an example, Soy bean oil, because the science is now starting to come out and I believe years from now, we're gonna look back at these times right now where, I mean, you can't step into a restaurant where it's not some kind of canola oil that the canola oil and all these seed based oils.

That is like the cigarette smoking of an earlier era gone by of how harmful it is. So, for the listeners who maybe don't understand this well, you know, I see these advertisements and I see these oils look great, and hey, it comes from a plant and it's so, healthy for me. You know, why wouldn't I wanna be taking that? What's going on specifically with the plant-based, seed-based oils of why those are toxic, and why we shouldn't be having that?

 What's your take on that Rachel?

[00:31:08] Rachael Brown: Yeah I would say body wise they're very highly oxidizing in our body. So, oxidation, we know leads to inflammation. That's just again, we're pouring something we don't need into our bodies, which our body is having an inflammatory response because it can't deal with this. It's not really good for it.

It's trying to get rid of the effects of it. Yes. I just learned two weeks ago at a TCO Campbell conference that canola oil was initially used on machinery to keep it from gunking up. So, you think about we're cooking and eating an oil product that was designed to and initially use to keep metal from rubbing on itself.

So, I mean, yeah, I think you're right. I think that we will look back at this time and shake our heads so what we are allowing ourselves to eat. I spoke with a woman not long ago and her grandmother lived to be 106 or 108 and this woman had been plant-based for 30 years, but she was talking with her grandmother and said, How were oils when you were growing up, what oils did you cook with?

And her grandmother paused for a minute and said there were no oils in the grocery stores when I was growing up. It wasn't until rather recently, and so, you think about on a human scale it's been a very short period of time that we've been dosing our food in oil. Certainly, people had large from animals that they grew, you know if they had a family cow that they were, you know, butchered every year, there was that, but not this abundance of highly inflammatory food that they were adding to all their meals.

[00:32:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: And this could be a whole other episode in and of itself, Rachel, for the listeners. It's important to understand, look who's behind these oils. It's big business. And even to your point, Rachel, the restaurants that we go out to, even some of the best restaurants in the world, oftentimes despite what the menu price may be, as high as it may be, it's all about profits and how can I find the least expensive ingredients just to make that profit, to get that out there?

And unfortunately, at this point in time, the least expensive ingredients aren't always best for our health. Thoughts about that?

[00:33:08] Rachael Brown: Yeah, it's so true. I was talking with a professional chef and asking him why he thought so many foods had added oil because added oil makes things go rancid faster. It doesn't really seem to make sense for a manufacturing process to me, like why would you add an ingredient you don't need? But this summer we were in Colorado and met the owners of this it's called Bar You Eat.

They're like granola bars and they have no added oil. And we said to them, thank you so much. It's hard to find like a cliff bar kind of thing that doesn't have oil. And they said, yes, we know why that is now. We said why? They said in the manufacturing process everything gets gunked up without having that added oil.

Well, It's much harder to clean all the equipment afterwards without the oil. Then when I learned about the canola oil cleaning machine, I was like, oh, this is really making sense. It's not about our health at all. It's about the manufacturing process. Yes, you're right. I think if in general, we stop to pause and go, why am I being sold this?

Is this really good for me? Or who is this good for? It would influence what we are deciding to spend our money on.

[00:34:08] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so we've painted a bit of a negative picture, but it is what it is, hey, we didn't make it up. We're just passing along the message. Let's circle back to how we started the conversation, Rachel. You have 10 days, which is really what you're asking people to do. Give this system 10 days, give this way of life.

It's not even a diet. It's a way of life. Give it 10 days to see the results that you're gonna get. And you touched upon it briefly, but for the listeners, maybe you can go into a little bit more detail of how you began to feel the difference that it's making. Not just for you, but for your family and what listeners can expect when they can pick up the book.

Do this 10 days, carry it on beyond the 10 days, make it a way of life. What's in store for them.

[00:34:47] Rachael Brown: Oh man so many good things lie ahead. I, yeah, like I said, initially you'll probably notice digestion changing. Many people don't have migraines or headaches. If that's something they've struggled with. Your skin will clear up. Any excess weight will fade away. Even though you might be eating by volume, way more food than you have ever eaten the calorie density, which I talk about in the book makes it feel like you're eating so much.

And you are, but you're eating a lot of nutrients which your body is using to repair and really reverse disease in your body. As soon as 10 days your cholesterol might have dropped, your blood sugar might have regulated, your blood pressure has might become back to where it needs to be.

You will notice that you have much more energy. People will comment, wow, what are you doing? You look different. It's really been astounding and these results come in a very short period of time. That's why I want everybody to give it 10 days. And then at the end of those 10 days, you can reevaluate, see how you're feeling and do you wanna give it another 15 days and see how it goes.

In short chunks of time just to see how you're feeling. But many people who I work with will come and say, I'm not gonna do this forever, but I would like to lose some weight. Or I would like my blood pressure to go down. But then 30 days in, they like, I feel better than I ever have.

I've dropped the 20 pounds that I was carrying. Why would I go back? And all the arguments that people give, while it'll be too expensive or it's too hard, they realize those things really aren't true. You're gonna be saving money on the food that you buy. And it's going to be easier than you ever thought, easier than what you're doing now your life will take a different shape for the better.

[00:36:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Rachel in the news lately, there's been more and more talk about sleep, or in this case, lack of sleep, and the studies and the science and everything else is showing how sleep really has been underrated in terms of how important it is for our overall health. And I'm just wondering, have may, and maybe it's only data point of one for yourself, but maybe you've seen it in your practice with other people that you're speaking to, some of your clients, your family.

How does sleep play into this when you're going on this plant-based diet and you're now removing a lot those other kinds of not so great foods, what do you find with your sleep? What's going on with that?

[00:36:59] Rachael Brown: Yeah, your body really just starts to regulate itself and you start giving your body what it needs. You may also find, I'm not against caffeine. I love my morning coffee. I don't add cream or anything. I add plant-based milk to it. But looking at what you're eating, you might look more carefully and go, oh, I don't eat coffee in the afternoon.

That's gonna disrupt my sleep habits. Or maybe you cut out alcohol for time period that also can disrupt sleep habits. But as you're feeling better from what you're eating, it just starts to morph into other areas of your life. And yes, sleep is one of those. Coming up with some healthy sleep habits, allowing yourself the time you need to rest and repair your sleep will be deeper and better sleep.

It'll feel that way because your body really is doing a lot of work and your body needs that rest to do work. And you're right, many of us are sleep deprived. Think we can survive on five hours of sleep. But yes, research is showing that yeah, that's not optimal. And yeah, we should be doing things differently.

So, putting screens away in the evening having a kind of wind down routine, keeping a cool room that's dark all these things will help facilitate that. But just by changing what you're eating, you will notice benefits in your sleep.

[00:38:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: Rachel, I would imagine, and you can tell me if I'm on base with this because with your approach, you're taking out really those processed foods and foods that the body needs to digest for a very long time. I would imagine that with your approach, having the body digest the foods becomes a whole lot easier. So your digestion is on track. Time for bed, you're not digesting. Now the body can really catch up on that sleep, do whatever repair and maintenance that it needs. A food-based approach of different kinds of foods, like what we're talking about today, can also aid in sleep. Would I be on base with that?

[00:38:42] Rachael Brown: Yeah, definitely. And we know that actually even if you eat the same food in the morning and eat that same food at night, your body uses that food differently. By eating loading up in the earlier part of the day, your body's gonna burn those calories actually differently than it would at the end of the day.

So, yes there is growing science, I'm showing how our body use food to rest and repair and all of that. But yeah, giving your body the space and time it needs to do all that definitely is helpful.

[00:39:11] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Rachel, before we start wrapping up the episode, I wanted to ask you for our listeners out there, any topics that we haven't covered, any questions that I should have asked that I didn't ask? Anything that you'd like to share with our listeners of what they should know about the 10 days and this whole approach to eating?

[00:39:27] Rachael Brown: Yeah, I would say, you know, a lot of people come to me and say I'd like to do this, but I don't know that if this is gonna be okay for my child, or my aging parent. And I would say that yes, everybody who eats this way will get everything they need. There's very little you need to supplement.

In fact, the only thing you need to supplement, if you go whole food, plant-based, no oil is vitamin b12. And That is actually found in the dirt. And we used to get that when we grew all our own foods and ate foods that we grew ourselves and we had a less clean environment. We don't eat dirt anymore.

I wouldn't advise that, but we get that from eating animals who actually eat plants that are in dirt that's the only supplement we need to take. You don't need any other supplements. As long as you're getting some sunshine every day for the vitamin D. But there's nothing else your body needs.

You'll be giving a growing body or an aging body or a middle aged body. Everything it needs to be, its optimal self by eating whole foods. And yeah. You will notice children thrive on this way of eating. Now they probably need some more higher fat foods. They're growing and that's good for them, but they can be just fine on a plant-based diet.

Yeah. Easier than I think it's just, it is for everybody and it's easier than you think is mainly what I want people to know.

[00:40:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: Awesome. Terrific insights and much appreciated. And again, for listeners in the show notes, we're gonna have links where you can come to Rachel's website and pick up a book and the resources. And I know Rachel, you mentioned earlier, the website has all kinds of recipes and information to help someone along in their journey. Rachel, it's time now for our thought experiment and I know offline you shared you had a chance to listen to a few episodes. So, you've done your homework, you're prepared and we'll look forward to that. For the benefit of our listeners, here's the thought experiment. Think of the movie Back to the Future, and in the movie, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you back to any point in time. So Rachel is now tomorrow morning you look outside your window and not only is the DeLorean car there, but the door is open and it's waiting for you to hop on in so you can jump to any points in your life, in your time. Rachel, maybe it's you as a young child or a teenager, whatever the point in time would be.

Rachel, what are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons or wisdom or, hey Rachel, do this but don't do that. What would that sound like?

[00:41:37] Rachael Brown: Yeah. You know, I'd be excited because I love those movies but if the DeLorean was outside my door. Yeah, mainly I wrote this book for myself 12 years ago. This is the book I wish I would've had so but if I could, I would go back in utero and have my parents, and I wish that every person could have this information and make decisions accordingly.

If I could, I would just make this widely known that it's easier than you think. It's less expensive than you think. You're only going to help yourself. And it truly is Wealth in every sense of the word because it gives you everything you need to do what you need. I would say do some research and really that's the first chapter of the book.

But I wish I had that chapter and I wish I could share that chapter with the whole world.

[00:42:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Some terrific advice and you know, you bring up a great point for those listeners that are saying, well, sounds good, but food is expensive and I don't know if I can do this. The question for the listeners, and to your point Rachel, hey, not being healthy, having to not be in the business or not having that performance, or being all these medications or having forbid hospitalized, what does that cost?

That would be, you know, a rounding era. The cost of the food relative to not being healthy. So, you're right on point of doing whatever we can to be healthy and even if it costs a little bit more than it would otherwise. Big picture-wise, we're actually saving money, saving our health, and living a more enjoyable life. So couldn't agree more, and thank you for that sage advice.

[00:42:56] Rachael Brown: Yeah, definitely. I have people who've written in that they're off $400 a month medications from doing this. And you're right, you're either gonna pay for it now or later in, you don't want to retire and have open heart surgery and followed by another surgery and a stent put in.

That's just no way to live either. You have power over that, and I would say exercise that power and in the meantime feel great doing it and save money doing it.

[00:43:19] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely, and for our listeners, we'll put all this in the show notes. Rachel, for someone who wants to reach out to you or get in touch with you, where's the best place online that they can do this?

[00:43:29] Rachael Brown: Yeah, my website is www.forforkssakebook.com and you can order the book there, get tips and recipes. You can also order the book anywhere you order books, amazon, Barnes and Noble. There's an audible version. I also do consulting for people who are starting out. They read the book and they go I need a little help, or I need a little support, or I'm stuck in this area.

You can sign up for consulting on my website as well. And I am on Instagram forforksakebook, as well as Facebook is for forks sake book too.

[00:43:57] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, again for listeners, we'll have all that there. And Rachel on the consulting point for our listeners, you know what, you take your taxes to your accountant or hopefully you take your taxes to your accountant when it comes to your health. You know, why not get the benefit of someone like Rachel who's done this day in day out all the time?

Can save some speed bumps along the way. Answer those questions, give you some peace of mind. To me, it's a no-brainer. It's a win-win. And again, we'll have those links. You can reach out to Rachel and get in touch with her. Well, Rachel, it's official. This is a wrap, and we wanna thank you so much for spending part of your day with us here on the Deep Wealth Podcast.

And as always, please continue to stay healthy and safe.

[00:44:35] Rachael Brown: Thank you so much, Jeffrey. This is a real pleasure.

[00:44:37] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:44:40] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:44:50] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:44:55] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:45:02] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:45:17] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:45:39] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:45:50] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:46:03] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:46:21] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:46:48] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:47:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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