ATHE_Transcript_Ep 531_Jenn Edden
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert here. I put the Power of Health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So if you wanna get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry-go-round, I’ll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast.
So today I am gonna be digging into how to control your sugar cravings. Actually, it’s really more than that. So, you know, that was the initial title. Of course, you know, I get in with my guest and we go all over the place and really, I’d say the biggest thing [00:01:00] in this interview that’s gonna be super interesting is like, what is a root cause of sugar cravings?
How do they come about? Because once you know that, then you can go, what do I need to do to fix this? And I’ll tell you something. Hint, hint. It’s not one. It’s not one thing. And once you know this information, I don’t really know someone who doesn’t have one of these things going on. And if it’s not sugar addiction, it might be gluten or dairy addiction or something else.
So hugely useful information in this. I’ve. I kind of unpacked how I literally don’t have a sweet tooth, but I’m the salt crunch person, so I have to be very careful. Never, ever come to visit with a bag of popcorn. Please don’t do that to me. . That would be my downfall. And everybody’s got some right? But we are gonna go digging into all of this.
What you can do. If, if you have a sugar addiction, since it’s not like you can stop eating, it’s all around us. As I, as I [00:02:00] showed in the book, sugar Impact Diet. And the thing I know for sure about sugar is that number one, just like Mark Hyman says, number one, recreational drug of choice. It’s everywhere.
However it is, it is when you understand where your cravings are coming. You can actually break free from this and it can not be holding into this like sugar prison. So feel good about that. That can make a big, big difference. And interesting, even though I don’t have a genetic sweet tooth. I was literally raised, my nickname growing up was Poppy.
I was hooked on pop-Tarts. I don’t know if you as an adult have had a Pop-tart. I remember I thought, you know, I should try one of those again and see how they are. Cause I used to love those Frosted Pop Tarts, you know, they’re really not very good is what I would tell you . But that and captain Crunch and Cocoa Puffs, holy smokes.
Those were, those were definitely my things growing up. And then all of a sudden I just was like, I don’t want to eat sweet anymore. Happened at about age 12 and I just, [00:03:00] So you can shift yourself off of these things. There’s some definite tricks that you can do. I’m gonna give you a couple things that I love, and number one is to eat protein first.
It’s the most satiating I find. Quite often people are just needing protein and they’re eating around it by eating all these carbs. And number two, lemon juice can lower your blood sugar response to a meal, and the sour can take your sweet tooth away. So we have a lot more coming. I just wanted to zip that out there.
But let me tell you about my guest, my new pal, Jenn Edden. She’s a certified holistic health coach. She’s been doing this for 20 years and it came out of her home own personal story, which you’re gonna hear about. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna share it. You’ll listen to it. She is an sugar addiction expert.
She created something called the Sugar Freedom Method. And has a whole team now working people through this, basically freeing people from the trap of sugar addiction. She was a regular contributing health expert on Channel 12 News Long Island, and when she was in New York, Brooklyn, but she [00:04:00] left and went to Flagstaff, Arizona.
She really works the most with 40 to six year old women who are in the throes of sugar cravings and sugar addiction, and that is her sweet. So to speak, and really how to work with them to get that inflammation down so that they can quickly start to feel better and shed stubborn weight. So I’m gonna be right back with Jenn.
Stay with me.
Jenn Edden welcome to the. Thanks jj. Excited to be here. Well, this is a topic everyone always wants to talk about, so like how could I say no? When I saw that we were gonna be talking about sugar cravings, holy smokes. And we are gonna dig deep into this. How come you have just been like doubled down on sugar cravings for the last 20 years?
Why? Why’d you do this time when you ? [00:05:00]
Jenn Edden: Yeah, and I’m not a fan of labels and listen, I call it when I see it, and so when you can’t, oh, you’re from New York, , Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. You know, I call myself a recovering sugar addict. Yeah. For about two decades now. And when you’re a kid, it’s kind of normalized.
Have some cookies. Yeah. Come home and have some ice cream. But when you start hitting, you know, high school and then you’re in college and you’ve got, you know, buckets of Pillsbury frosting in your freezer.
JJ Virgin: Oh, you were one of the frosting. I actually had a client who I was like, what do you mean you get in bed with a can of frosting?
like, so here’s, here’s what’s funny, Jenn. I actually don’t have a sweet tooth and there was a time when I was doing the freaky eater shows I was using this genetic test and it would ta cuz we had people that would come on, they could only eat like maple syrup or something like that. And, , you know, you could go through their genetics and find out their sweet tooth, sweet taste, or all that.
I got none of that. I was raised, my adopted moms got a [00:06:00] total sweet tooth. I was raised on Pop-Tarts. My nickname was Poppy. I loved Captain Crunch without the crunch berries, but left my own devices. I’m going for salty and meaty. Not sweet. So I always hear this like when I wrote the Virgin Diet, the biggest question people asked about was sugar.
And I’m like, well just put the cookie down, like what is hard here? . So tell me what’s hard. Cause I was literally like, what is hard? Just don’t eat it. Don’t bring the enemy into the house. Stop it.
Jenn Edden: And so how I teach it is it’s literally a light switch. You become somebody else because the most brilliant.
It’s not about smart, it’s not about motivation, it’s not about willpower. It’s actually something internal that goes on both emotional and physiological. Mm-hmm. , and it’s a light switch and it goes off, and I say the addict starts to talk. Mm. Okay. The issue I have is, Sugar for me, the way I teach it, it’s a socially acceptable legalized drug.
JJ Virgin: Yeah, it’s totally drug. I love, like Dr. Mark Hyman says, it’s the number one recreational drug of choice. And you know, if you’re an alcoholic, hey, don’t go [00:07:00] to the bar, man. Don’t, don’t have alcohol in the house, but you can’t stop eating. and it’s in everything. And it’s in everything. I was blown away when I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet cause I was like, you know, I don’t really eat any sugar cause I don’t really care about it.
I’d rather have, you know, a steak. But all of a sudden you go, oh, the balsamic vinegarette. Oh, the like, and you look at all these places. Oh, why are they putting sugar in that? It is really crazy stuff. So thank you. So tell me, so you’re gonna walk me through this cuz again, this was one, when I wrote the book, I had to kind of try to put myself into the place of someone who lit up with sugar, but I really.
Like if it’s sweet, I’m like, Ugh, too sweet . So that, but don’t hate on me
Jenn Edden: for that. Okay. Don’t
JJ Virgin: bow down. You’re like, my husband just, I got other issues. So that’s just not my, that’s not my issues. It’s like I got 99 problems, but sugar ain’t one. Yeah, I’ll take it. Okay. I’ll
Jenn Edden: take it. I’ll take it. But you know what?
We change it [00:08:00] one day at a time. I always say it’s a journey. It ain’t a sprint,
JJ Virgin: it’s a journey. So this all started for you because you were, were the gal that was buying the frosting and not frosting anything with it? Oh, no spoon.
Jenn Edden: Wow. Vanilla
JJ Virgin: frosting. I’d eat crunchy, I’d eat crunchy, salted nut butter with a spoon, but I wouldn’t eat frosting.
Jenn Edden: Amazing. Okay. Yeah. So the great news is I don’t crave it anymore. I see it and I don’t want it. And that’s why I, over two decades founded, I, it’s a sugar freedom method, registered, trademarked. I got some more work to do on it, but it,
JJ Virgin: we always have work to do on, on business and on ourselves. Like it’s
I love that. Right. It never, like, it never ends. So, but you got into this initially. So, yeah, you got into this initially because,
Jenn Edden: Saved my life. I had a near ulcer. I had crazy [00:09:00] anxiety. I had sweating stuff as a kid, not knowing that’s my body detoxing from something that my body does not like. Oof. And so that was pretty exciting.
I come from a family of addiction, so we teach that uhhuh, you’re predisposed if you’ve got some sort of addiction in your family. And so women. We don’t know these things, right? Something happens forties to sixties and women always say, I used to be able to put the the wine down cuz wine turns to sugar.
I used to be able to have a cookie. Why? At night after dinner, Jenn, I run a successful business, Jenn, I know better. Jenn, I go to the gym, you know, and so I hear all these things and I say, well, let’s talk about inflammation. Let’s talk about what goes on in the body as we age.
JJ Virgin: So, okay, so let’s, let’s like, start from the beginning.
So, cuz I’d love to just start with you, your story here of you and your like, I’m still, I’m just going to keep bringing up the frosting, the [00:10:00] frosting. Oh gosh. So there you are eating frosting. You recognize you came from a family of addicts. I thought it was very interesting when I lived in Palm Springs, I was working with people after they got out of Betty Ford and a couple times people would relapse and go back in Betty Ford and Betty Ford would take, you know, obviously you didn’t have any alcohol or drugs in there, but they’d candy everywhere.
and I was like, well that’s really ridiculous. You just replaced one thing for another. Come on. You know, , stop it. So, so what was the first thing, like what showed you that you needed to do something and what, like what steps did you walk through?
Jenn Edden: after college. Mm-hmm. , and I was very sick working at a nonprofit in New York City, and I would get these horrible stomach aches where I would literally need, and I’ve helped run the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
I was the second to. The president who ran the whole company.
JJ Virgin: Wow. So that’s what you were doing. You were running the Juvenile Diabetes Association? I
Jenn Edden: [00:11:00] was the manager, . And by the way, just so we
JJ Virgin: know, you can’t make this up. You cannot make this up. And
Jenn Edden: we could talk about the gas explosion next. That woke me up and God said, could you do this work for a living and cut out?
Wow. Half, you know, what in your life. But I say it because that’s type one, by the way, so Right. Just a differential, but still
JJ Virgin: diabetes. But still, you shouldn’t be living on sugar. No one should be living on sugar. So serving diet
Jenn Edden: soda, serving diet and other stuff. And I was like, mm, so anyway I was very sick, wasn’t feeling great, and my colleagues would still leave me my favorite black and white cookies.
After every board meeting, they knew the stress and as a gift. Mm-hmm. , they’d be like, there’s Jenns black and whites, all the frappuccino from Starbucks. On the corner of Wall Street and I was like, this is a problem. I don’t feel well, but I can’t stop. And doctors were gonna put me on meds, Jenn wow. And then the doctor said, and I, true story, don’t worry, Jenn, he took it out of his coat and he said, I’m on it too.
And it was like [00:12:00] light
JJ Virgin: bulb what? Like, so some kind of a like metformin or
Jenn Edden: Yeah. Some sort of reduction. And I went light bulb. We’ve just normalized find New Doctor . We, we just normalized this and I started to really take a look
JJ Virgin: at what I was doin’ with my life. So what did you do? ? Like, you like kind of, so should we go there?
Jenn Edden: I mean, I love, I love to go there. JJ doesn’t know this, so we’ll tell you. Okay. So coupled with that, and I was like, Hmm. I had just newly gotten married. I met my husband through a friend. Mm-hmm. at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. . Four months into being married, I survived a near death guest explosion with my husband.
I got 35 stitches. You might be able to see them. I can’t see it.
JJ Virgin: No. We lost
Jenn Edden: everything we owned. Wow. Everything. Just see ya. But one cat, the Jeep and our wedding album, and God and I had a little convo called, I’m listening now. I wake up . Mm-hmm. , because I’m stubborn. [00:13:00] And I was like, right, what do you want me to do?
Because when you don’t own anything and you face a, like, you go quiet. And so I said, all right, let’s go. And I looked around the country at 10 holistic health places, schools that I could go to. Mm-hmm. And nothing really rang true for me. No. You have to know I was a biochemist from Stony Brook University.
Nice. And I went to medical school and did not enjoy. But biochemistry
JJ Virgin: is so when like nutritional biochemistry is everything. It’s the best, like
Jenn Edden: you knows, gonna be a doctor. Oh, that’s so great. So, but it’s gonna be a doctor biochemist. Mm-hmm work at this nonprofit because I don’t know what I wanna do with my life cuz I love medical school and I’m 22.
Got it. I meet my husband at 25. I’m now very. House blows up and I go, God, what do you want me to do? and God’s like, because I believe in that. I do. And so I ended up enrolling at the [00:14:00] Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It just resonated.
JJ Virgin: Was it also It was nearby, right? Because they were still doing stuff in person.
Oh, I was the
Jenn Edden: last to go to India and study there with Joshua. Cool. Beautiful. So it complimented. I already had, right. This foundation work of biochemistry. Right. Biochemistry. That’s good. And a year of school? About a year of medical school. Okay. And that was it. Like true story. Now I run a company fast forward I was saying before we got on 19 years, I have five women that work for me.
I’ve trademarked this method, and people say, well, how’d you come up with it? I’m like, well, it’s saved my life step by step by step. And I’m like, I probably should write this down. ? Mm-hmm. . And I got tired of teaching it individually,
JJ Virgin: and so I decided, yes, that’s one of the biggest, the biggest things that made me start to create all this was I was like, I’m repeating myself.
Maybe I should just write it down. , I could just write it down. That’d be easier because they forgot anyway when I, after they leave. All right, [00:15:00] so we are gonna walk through this process, but what I’d love to do too is like, let’s talk just about about cravings and you. Sugar craving SP like happy to. Is this, is it always an addiction thing?
Are there other reasons at play, like what’s going on there? A hundred
Jenn Edden: percent. First of all, I call it an imbalance cuz we always like, we think of all these other things. It’s not bad or good, it’s an imbalance. And it could be in one area or many areas of your life. So we teach well, how about we help you figure out for you what area is it?
Okay, so is it your gut health and your floor is out of whack? And this is five. We’ll talk about the five things I had come up with, but it’s why I wanted to talk about these, right? Are you dehydrated? Are you exhausted? Is it adrenal fatigue? Right? And so you’re craving artificial stuff. [00:16:00] Do you not have enough joy in your life?
So you’re craving this hit right, that we get from sugar. So cravings aren’t a one-stop shop. Like, oh, and I do not knock any one diet. I believe everything one thing can work for someone. Right? But it’s not just, you know what,
JJ Virgin: here’s the thing though. Oh yeah. Like, like I, because I remember I was leading a panel, I forget where, like Pennsylvania and these, you know how they have those big women’s events and I was out leading panels at these women’s events and at one of them they had a, like someone who was always on the news and like, Big, supposed like diet expert.
And I had to guide them through their final parting words and she goes, everything in moderation. I’m like, no, no, no. . So thank you for that. I, I’m, Right. It’s a big, fat, lie. Don’t believe everything. Moderation. Tell
Jenn Edden: someone who has a, a struggle with drugs. Just take a hit today. Someone with alcohol, just one drink, [00:17:00] someone with sugar.
Just eat a cookie if they don’t know how to control
JJ Virgin: it, right? They had, there’s, I used to have this thing that I just applied to everyone called the three bite Rule and I go, listen, three bite rule. You know, you just, just have, it’s your, cuz they go, because, you know, you start to pull people off things and they’re always like, well, what about my birthday?
I’m like, it’s one day. It’s one day a year, like, and it’s not for like nine months. We’ll wor let, let’s focus here now. But it was always, what about my birthday? And you can have three bites, man. But then I realized someone who’s really got this issue, three bites, ain’t gonna work. It might work later, but it takes some time.
And there’s, for me, I cannot have three bites of salted, buttery popcorn. . See, I would nose down it, like if I went to the movie theater interesting. And there was a bucket, an unlimited bucket of movie popcorn, and I got the unlimited bucket I would be up in, I wouldn’t see any movie. I would be sitting by the popcorn stand eating the unlimited bucket of popcorn.
So, you know, I think it’s really important for people to know, yes, a [00:18:00] trigger. And hopefully, and I do believe, you know, from my own work with Sugar Impact Diet, that you can heal so much of this. So it’s not an issue anymore. But in the interim, don’t be mean to yourself, right? Like, amen.
Jenn Edden: So I am the person who’s at the other end of what you wrote.
100%. I can have something. I had one Reese’s Peanut butter cup. I literally don’t think I had one in 10 years. Kids were having one. I’m like, and I believe in, well, for children, that’s a whole other thing. But I have three kids, nine, 12, and 14. And so it is very important that I model what I call like a normalcy.
Yeah. And so, and not the normalcy of what’s going out there in the public schools. We will not knock that.
JJ Virgin: Oh my goodness. You can knock that. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Well, Brooklyn, where you came from is where it’s really going completely off the rails. But anything works better in Arizona right now, you know?
Jenn Edden: Taki are the new thing. Takis. Taki. It’s like a glorified Dorito on crack and everybody loves them. And we’re from New York and my kids go, what is [00:19:00] that? And they tried one and kids are reading two bags
JJ Virgin: by 9:00 AM Oh, is this like when we had like this Lunchables when my kids were in school and I’m like, yeah, my kids get
Jenn Edden: made fun of for those two.
Cause they didn’t know what
JJ Virgin: they were. . Yeah. I’m like, but you know, the interesting things with kids is. First of all, exposure equals preference. So expose them to broccoli enough times they’ll like it. Don’t expose them to fruit loops cuz they’ll like it, you know? But my kids had never tasted cereal and then they went to Grammy’s house and they were like, mom, honey nut cheerio.
I’m like, uhoh. But, you know. Yeah, they, but I always thought, I’m like, eat the good stuff first and we’ll go out if you want a a, you know, Coldstone Creamery, we’ll go get when we’re, it’s like not gonna happen. Nothing. You’ll be a weirdo, you know. Oh, they’ll do the kid binges. Yeah, they go like we, I had a girlfriend growing up, Evelyn Blier.
Evelyn Blier. Her mom would send her to school with half a cookie. Like literally she’d get her little lunchbox and her, her mom was always watching Evelyn’s weight. [00:20:00] Evelyn was fine. She didn’t have any issues. Right. But poor Evelyn got sent with one half of a cookie. She had come to my. And lose her mind over all the stuff there.
Right? Because like, you know, she was given half a cookie, half a cookie.
So we started off, I like everything, you know, there is no one diet, which I totally. That like, it’s so obvious that that is the truth. People
Jenn Edden: don’t know though. They think,
JJ Virgin: Yeah, they failed. No, they don’t. You didn’t fail . So, so is it that as women age and mm-hmm. , you know, I mean there are all the jokes for wine about wine for a reason.
You know, it’s like, you know, if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t out there as a meme, you know, it’s a meme for a reason. So is it that they are. trashing their gut microbiome. Is it that they’re stressed to the max and not getting enough sleep? You know, is it that [00:21:00] right? I mean, you look at all
Jenn Edden: that you found. Yes.
You, your voice at
JJ Virgin: 50. Yes. It’s, it’s a combination. Well, fifty’s a whole different thing. Once you’re 50, everything’s fantastic and you flipped your switch back and you don’t have to deal with it, wait till you wait. It’s the best. But right up till then everything is like hell on wheels. So, so when you look at all the different things that can cause cravings, Yes, it’s generally not just one of those issues in there.
And then, you know, the other one in there is like, besides the gut health thing was so clear and dehydration. I just did this crazy interview with Dr. Richard Johnson, who I’m obsessed with, and he like, I like, he thinks I’m such a dork. I’m like, I’m a fan girl on you again. And I had to tell my husband, I’m like, I’m kind of obsessed with this, you know, professor from Colorado.
I’m sorry honey. And then great. You know, the whole stress adrenal issue obviously, and you know, the mood issue, but then the genetic issue. Yes. Which you’ve gotta take into account. and you can work with. Yes. Right. And can
Jenn Edden: we just add in the rush, rush, rush, rush, [00:22:00] rush, rushing. Well that’s the,
JJ Virgin: that would be stop eating meals.
Adrenal, you know, the adrenal. And then, and then, yes. And then what I’ve really noticed is women, and this is my like real focus now, is like, would you just eat protein? Like start with protein, eat your protein. And you know, they tend to like pick at carbs all day long. I’ll just have this skinny latte and the biscotti.
I’m like, don’t do. At 11, by the
Jenn Edden: way, because we’ve eaten too much at night that we’re not hungry. So we walk the dog, we start on our texting cause we have things we need to do, and then it’s like, oh, at 11. And I’m like, no, no. You just put a latte in you at 11 with skim milk. Yeah. And then they think skim milk.
And I go, okay, let’s have a
JJ Virgin: convo about skim milk. Yeah, skim milk. Oh, go. You go ahead. And I like, Go on a skim milk rant. Please go ahead. Skim milk. Yes. And how much
Jenn Edden: sugar lactose Yes. Is in skim milk. And that we’ve been brainwashed to think that skim milk is good for us. When, when I say organic heavy cream mouths dropped, like, like they think they’re gonna get fat.
Like, oh no, no. You’re gonna be your version of you, but this is [00:23:00] me. Three kids later. Yeah. We don’t compare. I’m almost 50. I am not obsessed with exercise. I’m not. I said, this is me uninflamed and I drink coconut milk from a can. Full fat avocado, one and a half a day. Now my saying is that, you know, but skim anything, you’re in trouble.
Yeah. And someone brainwashed to think that or. artificial sweeteners.
JJ Virgin: Oh, go on a rant about artificial sweeteners too. Would you
Jenn Edden: like your hips to keep expanding and your metabolism squished and they’ve. Right. They’ve, they’ve taken what biopsies and stuff and that stuff is lodged in our brains. Like it doesn’t know where to go.
But with all due respect, I love that we get to talk. We’ve been brainwashed. I, you know what was so interesting? I was a snackwell chick, so I know snack
JJ Virgin: wells in the eighties. Snack wells. Well, the funny part with snack walls is no one eats the recommended serving some snackwells anyway. Right. No, cause they’re, well, I was just listening to an interesting podcast that was talking about the real issue with [00:24:00] processed foods.
Now is the real issue with processed foods, the damaged seed oils, is it, you know, all of the high sugar impact carbs? Or is it, because there’s all the keto ones out now too, and is it just that they have such amazing mouthful feel, feel that they’re, they’re addictive. So even if they have no sugar, doesn’t matter.
It’s chemically you just are like, I want more of that. I need more of that. Ooh. And it just lit up your brain to go, you know, dopamine hit, dopamine, hit dopamine hit. So super interesting.
Jenn Edden: Truth, and I think that’s, and women have food sensitivities, so we also. Teach. Yeah. How to, when you have a food sensitivity, you’re gonna love that food.
Right? You know, when you say you love an Oreo do you broccoli, no, I eat broccoli. So when the word love, I say, well, we should probably figure out if there’s a. Food sensitivity there cuz then you won’t love it. It’ll just be something anyway you eat.
JJ Virgin: Right? And it’s, it’s basically, there’s two [00:25:00] sides to that with the food sensitivity thing.
There’s obviously the actual I G D response that’s gonna make you crave that food because of those little antibodies needing a home. And then there’s the other side of it of you’ve got the sugar. Gluten, queso, morphine, trifecta, and those things all have a drug-like effect on your brain. So you look at something like an Oreo where you’re getting that, or cereal and milk where you’re getting that and it’s like this perfect combo.
Not only do you have the food sensitivities like gluten already making your gut more permeable, fructose already making your gut more permeable. And then dairy, which when you look at food sensitivities like dairy is the biggest one. When I was looking at all those tests. But you also then have. , the opiate-like effect on the brain.
So it’s like this super duper, huge whammy. Such a hook. So let’s talk to like, thank you, you know, when you’re working through all of this. And you know, obviously a big reason we start to look at this is, [00:26:00] you know, I think, I think what I’ve seen with clients over the years is they, they, you know, kind of ate this way and didn’t really think much about it having their, you know, Greek yogurt with the fruit on the bottom and they had.
Bagel with the light cream cheese and the, the, the muffin, the healthy morning muffin and the skinny latte thinking everything is fine and then the weight starts to go up and their weight starts to go up about 40 and other. Before that, they were like, yeah, you know, not really looking at it. And since they aren’t looking at body composition scales, they’re not realizing that this shift’s been going on for a while where they were losing muscle, putting on fat.
That’s great, JJ. and then they try to just cut back on some of that stuff. Or maybe they just start to walk and it’s not working. So what’s going on there?
Jenn Edden: Take a deep breath cuz you just talked about like 90% of the population of women go, oh my God, jj she just described me. Cuz I, I hear that. More times than I care to talk about.
They always say, I don’t understand that. They blame [00:27:00] themselves and do some gym workout that puts more stress on them. And I always say, when your cortisol is high, when you’re all stressed out, ain’t nothing coming off your middle sister. Nothing. And a lot of women, about a lot, 90% of women come with some sort of gut health issue.
They bloat. They have not had healthy bowels in years. And now they’re just stopped up. So I say it didn’t just start at 42, you have belly fat and back fat. I said, this has been going on since you were a kid. And what happened was, I describe it simply as the body had enough and now it’s just gonna start storing fat.
And what we teach is when we bring inflammation down in the body. I can’t get over with Gayle at 63. I told her I couldn’t promise on all these meds. And I, I’m not sure. And she’s like, I’m just gonna follow you, Jenn. I’m coming. And Gayle, her endocrinologist, had left me a beautiful memo, a voice memo. She lost 50 pounds in 63 days.
It’s not about the weight [00:28:00] is not about the weight for me. I don’t care about that number. I care about her body stopped hurting, right? And it started to release. And so we look at gut health as one of the first things. Most women, you may or may not agree, but have some version of leaky gut.
JJ Virgin: Well, that’s what the Virgin diet is.
So right now, I dunno if you know this book I wrote, I wrote this book, the Virgin Diet. So it’s been a while. It’s funny, you know, it means, it’s like, I don’t know how you don’t have leaky gut. If you are, you know, if you’re stressed, you have leaky gut. If you’re eating gluten, you have leaky gut. If you’re getting fructose in your diet outside of fruit, you have leaky gut.
So that’s pretty much if you’re taking any pain medications, you have leaky gut. I just saw someone just sent me. One I’m gonna do the podcast on. It was like, you know, I just, I take an Advil every day. Isn’t that okay? I’m like, no. . No. So not okay. Not okay. You know, and I’ll tell you something interesting, and it’s really where, you know, the Virgin Diet came from when I [00:29:00] was 17.
I tore my ACL. And I didn’t tear it all the way. I tore it partially. And so I kept going on it. And then at like 23, I literally walked out on a volleyball court, went to hit a, like, the ball went past me. I pivoted to look at where the ball went. Like I didn’t even, I never touched the ball. I literally walked out on the court, looked to see where the ball went, and that pivot, my knee blew out.
And I remember like my then husband, who was not, not a very like, Empathetic guy was like looking at me like, you didn’t hit the ball. Like, what? Nothing could have happened to you. He stayed and played the. that just tells you, and I hopped, hobbled off the, off the court and you know, but that started years of, you know, knee, five knee surgeries, et cetera.
And a doctor who told me, you can take as much admiral as you advil as you like. And I’m like, okay. You know, , right. So that’s what led to major. I mean, that’s, Hey, it’s [00:30:00] been great for my career. And probably help some other people. However. Wow. You know, you really trash your gut. So you know, when you really look at like gut health, unless you are very aware, you know, we start out with kids getting put on antibiotics, we hurt your gut, then you’re being fed a low fiber diet, then you’ve got all these damaged seed oils.
Then you like it just starting kids out on Cheerios. I know.
Jenn Edden: Which. Soy. It’s really hard to talk about, know soy. Forget. It’s hard to talk about smell. Well, I grew up on soy cuz my mother said I was violently throwing up. I, what I didn’t share is I was born with a cyst and so my mother, God bless her, didn’t know.
And for the first year of my life, I was on a continuous antibiotic for the first year of. and then they did surgery and then they put me on longer and my mom didn’t breastfeed cuz back then sh and I quote, it’s not healthy for your daughter, so put her on the Similac. I don’t knock it, I don’t judge it.
No, but like you, I [00:31:00] was pretty messed up for a very long time and that’s why my work interesting is what it is. Oh
JJ Virgin: yeah. I was, well that’s how you see most people I find that are really doing things and, and I’ve come to today, I’m just thinking about, and I said, you know, I think I’m gonna call myself a real world scientist.
What I saw when I was in grad and doctoral. It was very interesting cause I was paying my way through and I’m working at Gold’s Gym in Venice and I’m going to school. And I’m going to school. And what they’re teaching me in school and what I’m seeing people do at the gym are 180 degrees different. And I kept thinking, but the people in the gym.
Are getting these amazing results and I’m taking what you’re teaching me and I’m using it with clients and I’m not getting amazing results. So I’m going to go do what they they’re doing in the gym cuz it is working. And then I’m just gonna study like the pathways because that will explain to all cause you guys are just doing studies to back up what you think and it’s gotta work in the real world.
We’re not gonna get paid, you know, so there’s, you know, there’s [00:32:00] what you do in a lab and you’ve gotta be willing to look at what’s going on in the lab and going. , is this really the right, you know, is this translatable information? ? Yeah. I love, you know, You know what I find with most people who’ve really come, come up with something is generally it’s a problem that they needed to solve for themselves or a family member save my life.
That got them right, that got them involved, hundred percent. And then they then learned how to apply to others and to make it work, which is super cool. And then you can go around, like early on I was looking at all of the reasons that you would gain weight or just not be able to lose weight. And I actually went around the country teaching.
Course to doctors. It was called overcoming Weight Loss Resistance, and it was genetics and gut health and stress and sleep and insulin resistance and blood sugar and toxicity and sex hormones and thyroid, right? So I’m going through all this and I did not [00:33:00] know why. gut, gut issues made a difference. I just had a client sent to me.
It was Suzanne Summer’s stepdaughter. A doctor sent her cuz the doctor said she needed a cheerleader cause nothing that we were doing was working, working. And just, maybe you could just spur her on and have her do a little exercise too. And I’m like, I’m not really a cheerleader. Like I’m, I’m not your cheerleader right here,
Like, I’m just gonna, like, I’m much more direct, you know, I’m kind of tough love with rock, but I’m like, I’ll. I loved this girl so much. She’s amazing. She lost 40 pounds. She, every doctor, because her gut hurt, gave her probiotics and they were making her worse. And I’m like, why don’t we, why don’t we just pulse these foods out, take out the probiotics, and look and try to try to get rid of some of the, you know, like I thought the time, maybe it’s candida, right?
Well, it was SIBO. But no one knew what SIBO was back then. It was just when all that info was coming out crazy. So, you know, sometimes I bring this up because sometimes [00:34:00] we, you know, we see it in real life and then we go, huh. Wow. When we do excess cardio, I remember early on I read a study that said women who maintain their weight by cardio, if they stop doing the cardio, they gain their weight back and no one knew why.
And I’m like, they lost their muscle that just burned up all their, you know. So, you know, sometimes we just have to. Have to just kind of see things in real life and to be able to go back, what would be the mechanism to make that thing happen? And then the studies catch up. But you gotta get the results right.
Jenn Edden: And woman, childhood matters too. We can go there just a little bit, but your childhood matters. What you saw growing up, if you’ve had a, any sort of trauma, I mean, we’ve all had our own versions, but abuse, abuse is something. It will normally pass on. I mean this, everyone comes through me before the method I, you need to come here and this is the last thing you’re doing because women come hopeless and you don’t get to come hopeless and then go, oh, that didn’t work too.
Right? Buck stops here. But the truth is trauma is just something to say. And [00:35:00] then, It’s deep. It runs deep. It’s, as you know, it’s in the nervous system. And that is beyond the work I do. But that is real. And we will store to protect. And then I’ll just, well,
JJ Virgin: you need to know about like so, so to, I’m heavily into Dr.
Joe Dispenza. Cause I believe that just like we take our muscles to the gym, we need to take our nervous system to the gym. So Absolutely. That’s how I do it. I, I have, Yes, had Dr. Amy Apiggian on the podcast multiple times, she is so good with everything around trauma and apparently, and I believe it’s probably higher, but they say, you know, with obese people it’s 50% of them have had some kind of sexual abuse.
Yes. Trauma. I bet it’s, I think that’s higher. I bet it’s higher. It’s higher. It just makes sense. 70% is tire and you kinda look at and go, well, who hasn’t had a traumatic. . So we all have to learn, like if you haven’t had one, it’s coming. Like last two years we had traumatic event. Mm-hmm. , like everyone’s had traumatic, like you, you don’t [00:36:00] get out without having a traumatic event.
You know? So you really have to be able to
Jenn Edden: trauma with bad gut health. Right. And, and depending on it’s, do you have habits? How many those do you have together? Did you grow up in a family where obesity is what you saw and Right. And so,
JJ Virgin: It’s just, well, and you had dessert after every single meal because that’s what you have dessert after every single meal.
That’s normal, and you have to.
Jenn Edden: It’s been normalized because you finish everything on your plate. Mm-hmm. everything. Yes. It’s been normalized. There’s some unwiring wiring. We’ve got a mindset woman that helps us. We’ve have, we have someone who does movement and we have one that does nutrition and so between the three with me, yeah.
You just get it. I’m very
JJ Virgin: grateful. This is wonderful. How quickly can you walk someone through your method and shift them? That is
Jenn Edden: amazing.
JJ Virgin: three months
Jenn Edden: or less with Gayle. It is amazing when you are very inflamed. Yeah.
JJ Virgin: Walk, walk us through Gayle, like take us through. I’d love to hear a [00:37:00] case study. Oh, I think that’s a great way.
Let’s, let’s walk through ga. So
Jenn Edden: Gayle, so we are not doctors and we always say check with your doctor if you’re on high blood pressure meds, antidepressants. Right? We know our place and. talk to your doctor. So that’s number one. And then number two, I was like, yeah, what are all these supplements you’re on?
Do you know why you’re on like 52 supplements? I don’t know Jenn. I said, well, well, let’s just go through them. Which ones did you put yourself on from the commercial on tv? And which ones did your doctor? Right. So we left the doctor stuff in and we just started taking her off. I don’t even know what they all were.
It was incredible to see ginseng this, this and that, this thing. And I was like, well, let’s just remove those the way you had. Let’s just take some stuff out with the probiotics and let’s see what the body does. I truly believe when we get out of the way, a body wants to heal, the body wants to heal, but we inhibit the healing.
So we started just taking out things that from my, you know, 19 years, 18 years of doing this, and right there she’s like, huh, I feel a [00:38:00] little different, a little less bloated. I’m like, well, that’s interesting. Great. She also wasn’t drinking water. You need to drink water to flush the toxins out of your
JJ Virgin: system.
Well, there’s even more. I just did a really cool podcast again with Richard Johnson where he talked about how dehydration, cause I knew dehydration raised stress hormones, but I didn’t know how it made you hold onto fat and it turns out. When animals hibernate their stored fat, you know, that’s how they liberate water through the burning of stored fat then causes water release, right?
So he says, but there’s a period before that if you’re dehydrated, your body actually goes through this process of fat storing. So, Actually when you’re dehydrated, if you’re, if you’re like over salting, it can compound it and you can store more fat, and I’m like, holy smokes. Okay, , that’s information amazing.
Yeah, I’d never heard that one before. I was like, wild. Well just keep that. Well, it’s some of the stuff that you’ve heard, like your mom told you her, her [00:39:00] mom told you, and. Huh. You know, like breakfast should be the biggest meal today. Why? You know? And it turns out it’s really cuz you need the protein at it.
Breakfast shouldn’t be the biggest pancake meal today. Right. But, so all these things, once you start to unpack the physiology, it’s actually. , there’s, it just makes sense. It actually makes sense scientifically too, which is super cool. Which is why some of these things keep going and going and going and other ones don’t cause they actually work.
Okay, so back over to Gayle. We love that. So,
Jenn Edden: so gluten and dairy, as you would imagine, right? Main sources of, well, you wouldn’t imagine, I’m gonna tell you main source of what this woman was eating. Craving, craving. What am I gonna do? and her gut health was absolutely off the charts, so we did, let’s do some leaky gut.
Let’s pull out all these extraneous supplements. I don’t know what they’re doing. We teach that. Right? If you’re not sure, and it’s not, again, something doctor prescribed, I don’t touch
JJ Virgin: that stuff. Well, quite often. I, I walked into a, a client’s house and she had all these supplements. I go, what are these?
She goes, it’s [00:40:00] everything that I saw in the Dr. Oz.
Jenn Edden: I’m talking about this is exactly, but
JJ Virgin: they dunno why they’re taking it. Get a foundational, like maybe start just with the multi. Love you. You know? Hello.
Jenn Edden: How about some vitamin C in the winter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agreed. And so what I found is just by doing that and getting out all the, should we say it, magnesium sterate fructose, like all this stuff in the supplements in itself.
So we removed that and then the, the leaky gut protocol. So that was great. We had the body doing something and then we stopped offending it every single day with breads and cheeses and all these things that we were addicted to. So we did that and then we needed to work on the emotional health and what’s going on in her family that’s causing spikes, large spikes of cortisol all day long from the arguing with God bless.
with the family. And so we talked about some relationship skill building [00:41:00] and it is amazing for her. I had never seen the body, I think of it this way, like it so much so please, if you’re listening to us, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you if your body doesn’t react that way. Gayle was extremely inflamed and this combination worked very right?
Very fast. Yeah, but I’ve seen it. .
JJ Virgin: Yeah. Hey, it doesn’t, it, it’s, you know, three months, six months, a year. It’s, it really doesn’t matter because it’s the long game and you’re, you’re just, you’re healing. So great job. You know, we’re all gonna heal at different rates. It’s that we are. Healing because we’re either improving or we’re not
So we want, there’s no staying the same. No staying the same here. Right. Well said. So we’ve gotta, and then to that shift that, and you know, I was just talking to someone yesterday who had all these big plans. I go, all right, you know, we’re just gonna start here with this one thing. Here. Like, you know, she was like gonna do these 12 things for her self-care and [00:42:00] just she was upset with herself.
I go, oh, stop it. I go, you know, I gave myself a year to incorporate a meditation into my life a year. That’s one year. . Thank you. That’s it. Took that long. Totally did. . Thank you. So,
Jenn Edden: but we say that if it’s not simple, fun and easy, I wanna make that, that is something we say about the sugar freedom method. If this feels like one more to do on your list, you’re not coming.
That’s literally when I get on calls. Does it feel lighter? It’s a trick question. So if you end up talking to me, it’s a trick question. Does it feel lighter talking to me and knowing you’re gonna have a team who has your back and you’re not guessing anymore, and to say, Hmm, yeah, you’re just in the wrong place.
It’s okay. Or you’re not ready. It should feel lighter. Oh, you’re not ready. Yes. Yeah. But it really needs to feel right. Simple, fun, and e I mean that, not that it’s always easy, but it needs to feel that way. It shouldn’t feel like you have to cut everything out and you need to weigh this and measure this, and 12 glasses of this easy, [00:43:00] and you are already busy.
So it needs to be part of your lifestyle, which is why it’s an anti-inflammation, anti addiction, lifestyle
JJ Virgin: change. So here’s what’s cool for everybody. Yes, you are gonna get a masterclass that you did that walks people through this process. I am going to put that at jjvirgin.com/SugarFreedom. So that’s what we will do.
That’ll make it super easy to grab. So you’ll get walk through the masterclass cause I’m sure you’re intrigued. Like, how did that happen? You’re gonna, you’re gonna learn the five steps so that you know what to do and if you want to go deeper, and again, jjvirgin.com/SugarFreedom, and I know we went all over the place and, you know, that’s great A, my a d, D at work, but B, it’s really fun to kind of just dive in and see where things go.
So I really appreciate you taking the time.
Jenn Edden: Absolutely. Thank
JJ Virgin: you.[00:44:00]
Hey, just a quick reminder too that I put her masterclass, that’s Jenn’s masterclass. Five steps in the Sugar Freedom Method, and you can get that at jjvirgin.com/SugarFreedom. Easy peasy. All right, if you’ve not yet subscribed to the show easy too, just go to subscribetojj.com and I will see you next time.
Bye.