Episode 3 | Silicon Valley Diet Secrets

‍[Host] Justin Guilder [00:00:01] Hi and welcome to the Lumina Legacy Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Guilder. On this podcast, we'll explore how to achieve and plan for a long, healthy life, as well as how to prepare for the inevitable and unforeseen. Through estate planning, insurance, and end-of-life decisions. We'll talk candidly with experts who advise high and ultra-high-net-worth clients so you can learn how to apply their strategies and tactics to your own longevity and legacy planning. So tell me what it means to have good nutrition.

Jae Berman [00:00:38] The first tenet of good nutrition is whole real foods. So making sure that you are everything that you're putting in your body, you know, 100% if not close to 100%, you know where it came from. At Stanford, we used to say, if it has a mother or it came from the earth, you know, it's whole and real. So I think part of good nutrition is just acknowledging that the majority of the food you're eating is whole and real. You're not getting into all the processed stuff or additives or, you know, potentially toxins. The second part of good nutrition is avoiding restriction. So, so much of what's going on in nutrition can often be eliminating something. And there may be some merit to the elimination. But what tends to happen is things get kind of things snowball. And then all of a sudden people are following an extreme, more restrictive diet and cutting out things that they probably need. So I often use the word balanced plate when I tell people how to eat, right? Because there's a carb, a protein, and a fat present on their plate. Right? Because the body needs all of those macronutrients regularly to make sure that, they're getting everything they need to metabolize and function properly, as well as to let the body know that it's safe, right, that it's not being put into a stress response. But often people start pulling too many things out. Things get restrictive, the body feels stressed, and then they've kind of lost the point of, fueling themselves.

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:02:12] So there's a lot of conversation around differing diets that create stress, right? What do you think about those? And maybe could you describe what some of those are?

Jae Berman [00:02:24] Yeah. So, at a really simple level, and it doesn't really need to be much more complicated than this in my opinion, is that, if the body thinks it's safe, it will work in your favor. It will burn fat. It will think clearly. It will understand its hunger cues. It will All the millions of reactions that are going on in the system on a second-to-second basis will be happening in a solid or in an appropriate way because the body thinks it's safe. If the body thinks it's in trouble, everything will shut off, right? Your hunger cues will shut off because if you're starving in the desert, the last thing you want to think about is how hungry you are. You won't burn fat because that's going to keep you warm on a cold winter's night. It's really hard to multitask and think about multiple things or function too clearly because all your body's thinking about is how to get out of that stressful situation. So many people are living in that stressed state because they're pulling things out of their diet. So on the flip side, if you nourish yourself and are taking care of yourself properly and you add a stressor to the mix, it's a nice challenge for the body. So, for example, this could happen with intermittent fasting. This could happen with a cold plunge. This could happen, which I mean like an ultra-exercise effort. Right? If your body if you're nourishing your body and taking care of your body, and then you put your body in that stressful state, the body's like, oh, this is fine. Like, that's a cool challenge. I'm going to adapt and become even more resilient because I have that challenge in my system. If your body is fried and sinks, it's in trouble. And then you put that stressor in your system. The body's like, what the hell are you doing? Like, I'm already in trouble and now you're adding more trouble. So what I often ask people is, is it working? You know, like if you are doing intermittent fasting, are you achieving the results you want to achieve? Are you losing weight? Is your energy better? Are you building muscle? Are you feeling all the sensations that you want to feel from that fasting diet? Or if you're using a cold plunge? Are you noticing that your body's adapting in a better way? Is your sleep improving? Is your just overall anxiety cooling because some people start using cold plunger sauna or hit workouts, or fasting or you name it? And when you ask them, how are you doing? You're like, I don't feel well. Like I'm not losing weight. My sleep's impaired. Kind of in a bad mood all the time, but I feel like I have to do this so it can be as simple as just asking yourself, like, okay, how are you feeling? And are you receiving the results of whatever you were trying to see receive the results of?

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:05:31] Yeah, I had that experience just yesterday. I, I'm not a personal, proponent for myself of too much fasting because my body tends to need a lot of fuel and rise early to work out. And yesterday was a long cardio day. I was up at five. I had rowed for an hour, and then I had to go do a tour of a prospective school for one of my children, I hadn't eaten, and at the end of the tour, I was worried I was gonna pass out, and they couldn't have gotten the orange juice right here. And soon enough.

Jae Berman [00:06:11] Right. And, you know, we forget that just like being online and, like, fully showing up as a human in this intense, crazy world is effortful. Like going, on a tour of a school where you have to ask questions to make sure that you're doing the right thing for your kid. You've got to make sure that you're presenting yourself well because there's the whole stressful moment maybe of like, am I going to get accepted and on the circuit stuff? There might be just emotions around, oh my gosh, my kids going to school. I mean, there's there's a lot to it. And to fully show up, you need to let your body know that it's safe, because if you don't, you're just not at your best in those moments. And then that ripples, you know, you're hard on yourself for not being good in that meeting. Then you don't feel well, then, you know, and the whole thing can kind of for bladder control.

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:07:04] That makes much sense. So why don't we rewind for a second and tell us a little bit about how you, German, know so much about nutrition and, and what have you been doing to get yourself to this place? Professionally, in education as well as career.

Jae Berman [00:07:24] Yep. so I was not supposed to go into this field. My dad had a master plan for me to be an accountant or to take over his M&A firm. Was not at all in the picture. and what happened was I studied abroad, in my junior year in Israel, and I traveled there to 10 to 15 countries that year. And, what I noticed was just how beautiful food was abroad. This was 98, 99. The majority of my friends were following the Atkins diet, which was super popular. So everyone was just starving themselves. And not even bread and bread is like your favorite food. So that felt strange. And you know, in college, many people had disordered eating or eating disorders and everyone was trying to get skinny. And then I went abroad and, boy, it was pleasant. You know, gorgeous food, beautiful dinners, all sorts of people serving us food was this ritual. And I just got interested in, like, how food could be this really pleasant and, like, exciting thing. And I then learned, I didn't even realize, you know, that there was this whole field of nutrition that you could go to school in nutrition, and that was even a thing. And so, after college, I switched gears and went to graduate school at Columbia for nutrition and physiology. So I always felt like nutrition and exercise go hand in hand and people tend to separate them. I had, in my early 20s, become a yoga instructor and applied instructor. And again, everyone was so focused on the exercise that no one was talking about food, or people were talking about food and they weren't talking about exercise. So my grad program put all the pieces together of how nutrition and exercise work together, as well as how important they both are. The other gift I received at Columbia that I had no idea was going to happen. was a major analysis of Columbia in nutrition, ecology, and sustainable agriculture. So I learned a huge amount about where food comes from, how food and soil are treated politically, and the importance of whole races. So that kind of became, a deep driver for me coming out of school in a way that I thought it was just going to be about, you know, macros and calories and biochemistry. But it turned out to be, also about, how food is grown and how to take care of that in the full cycle. in combination with the land. and then I, you know, was in private practice pretty much my whole career. And, one thing led to another. And then in 2016, I was fortunate enough to work with Christopher Gardner at Stanford on the diet fit study. And the diet should be studied compared to low-carb and low-fat diets. And the reason I fell into that study was because the paleo diet was really popular, and all my clients were again cutting out, you know, all these foods that in grad school I had learned were good for you. So I was just so confused, and I kind of kept interviewing people to understand more of what was going on with, kind of new nutrition science. And that led me to Christopher and Stanford. And so that was a wonderful study. The largest single-site weight loss study to be done. People were randomized into two groups. One group was on a low carb, one group was on a low fat. There was no, strict calorie level or protein level. And what came of it was, that both groups lost weight. Right. The tagline for the study was one diet does not sit. All right. And that's true, right? Like some people lost weight on low carb, some people lost weight on low fat. It had to do with, deeper motivation are you willing to create a change in your diet, or do you not? And the people who were willing and open to creating a change created change. And then, that led me into kind of this whole world of personalized nutrition with health tech. So, working in startups or in personalized nutrition and personalized, assessment tools and, how to communicate the message around nutrition, exercise, sleep, clinical testing, and using technology to support how to do that in a scalable way, adds a whole other layer of complexity to it.

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:12:02] Yes. anything personalized is hard to scale.

Jae Berman [00:12:05] Yeah.

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:12:06] But tell us a little bit about then how do you understand from an assessment perspective, what personalization you need to do if you're looking at your diet, your nutrition, and your sleep? It's like those are the three pillars we'll assume for a moment and walk us through that process of assessing where somebody's individual needs vary. How do you know that?

Jae Berman [00:12:34] Right. I think the first step to understanding kind of what you need and where to go is a level of humility which not everyone wants, to hear. But, being humble about the fact that they might not know exactly what's right for you. Right. If you come in like, I do this form of exercise and I eat this way and I know it's perfect. It's going to be hard for you to be humble about the fact that there are other ways out there. you also have to be humble about the fact that your data might not be great like you might be killing it in area one and area two, but you need some major help in these other areas. Owning that and realizing that your routine, your schedule, and your lifestyle habits might need to change is a major part of just going into the level of personalization. And the reason that's important is because while the data is so helpful and so cool and it's only getting better, it can be harmful to people, right? First of all, if you don't show, say you're good at, you know, you're an endurance athlete. And so you've got really strong aerobic health and, your blood is like, optimal, right? There are no major blood issues and no major health issues. Right? You're like, I'm good. You know, I can run ten miles on a Saturday. but if you're not aware of these other categories in your life that, aren't going well, you tend to get obsessed with the data, right? And you're like, my H.R. Is poor when I sleep and my, you know, right hip is not as strong as it should be. And, my body fat percentage is 1.5% higher than it should be. If you can't pause and say, okay, even though my blood is healthy, thank goodness. I'm a great endurance athlete, those are the areas I need to work on, and I might need to adjust a lot of these different components of my schedule. The data only becomes overwhelming and becomes almost a detriment. So if you're going to open the pearly gates, personalization, right? You have to be willing to move things around, which may seem obvious, but many people don't want to do that. Right. Or they think they can just add on more. Right? Like, I've already got this full schedule and already got this full work life and busy, busy, busy. But I want to be even better. I'll add at least 15 more things to my routine and then it doesn't work. Or you just stress your system out. So it does take a pause and like am I willing to do that? And then once you get into it, asking yourself or working with someone to say what's going well, you know, like, can I? Can I do a certain level of aerobic work without becoming winded? You know, can I lift heavy things in all the different parts of my body? Right. can I, um. Is my weight at an appropriate level? Um. Is my blood normal? Are my sleep stats like HIV and resting heart rate and, just my overall quality quantity of sleep, you know, am I getting over seven hours a night? when I wake up in the morning, do I feel rested? You know, am I eating foods that afterward I feel energized, not exhausted? You know, are there times in my day when I feel beat? is there a joint in my system that feels just terrible? You know, like, I just have chronic pain in one part of my body all the time. Or. I know I'm very stiff and a part of my body. So you can either work with someone to get testing, or you could just ask yourself. Am I doing okay in all these different components of my physical health?

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:16:39] So to be tactical, you have to couple that, qualitative assessment look personal qualitative assessment with an attitude of humbleness. What are some of the tests that you do like? For instance, you mentioned HIV. You don't know what HIV means right?

Jae Berman [00:16:58] So HIV means heart rate variability. And it's a very cool and complicated, you know, statistical and math formula. But when it looks at it your parasympathetic, which is the best part of your nervous system, turns on when you sleep. So if you are sleeping, deeply. And when I say deeply, I don't mean deep sleep. I just mean if your body's truly resting and recovering when you sleep, your air will be high. If you don't sleep, restfully. Your air will drop down. So that's a great marker to look at. If, you're quality of sleep, if your body is truly, you know, resting. However, the sleep data also shows that just asking yourself in the morning do you feel rested is sometimes as powerful as the quantitative data. So again, people can get so stressed out by the data coming in from sleep that they, they, you know, I can't tell you the number of points or like, I wake up and I feel pretty good, but, my data told me that I didn't get any sleep last night, so I'm feeling hard on myself. This just happened this week, you know? So I think reminding yourself that the data is helpful, but also checking in with yourself to see how you feel is extremely powerful to eh, using them both in conjunction to make sure that you're understanding everything so you can look at all these different components of your health, and weight. So there's your weight and your body composition. Right? That's a major player in, the longevity and the house band gain. Right. Weight is a major player involved in so many components of health. As we all know, body composition is another major part of that. And what I mean by body composition is that versus muscle, as well as what's called your visceral fat, which is that fat around your organs. That can cause quite a bit of, risk in and harm metabolically because it's the fat that's closest to your organs. So, and, you know, you want your liver and your pancreas and your, your guts, all, all of the organs that live in your core, those being surrounded by fat is not ideal, right? Because fat can lead to, harmful things. so.

[Host] Justin Guilder [00:19:34] Question how do you like how do you get body composition testing?

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