Transcript
Claudia von Boeselager [00:00:00]:
Welcome to another episode of the Longevity and lifestyle podcast. I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, here to empower you to live at your best and reach your highest potential. Thank you so much for tuning in, and please make sure to subscribe to the podcast. You're welcome to leave a review as well, which allows me to bring you even more free content with great speakers. So I'm so excited to have you both on today. So, you know, welcome to the Longevity and lifestyle podcast. And for my audience, I'd love if you both could share a little bit about your background and journey to getting to where we are today before we dig in.

Matt Gallant [00:00:33]:
Yeah, we're both from a small city called Moncton, New Brunswick, in eastern Canada. We were both passionate about bodybuilding. We were both trainers. Wade and I met in the gym. His mom was working out, and he came to visit, and we struck up a friendship. Then fast forward a little bit. We decided to start a business together. 2004, we launched some natural bodybuilding products, which were very successful.

Matt Gallant [00:01:00]:
We launched mass times, which is still our second best selling product. It's the best protein digesting enzyme blend out there. And then in 2014, we rebranded to bio optimizers. And along that journey, we argued a lot about food and nutrition. I was a ketogenic guy starting from the age of 15. It worked well for me. I thought it was the answer for everyone. So I got all my clients on it.

Matt Gallant [00:01:24]:
However, some clients didn't get good results. I had one guy that skin turned gray. He lost a bunch of muscle mass. Had another client that lost a bunch of muscle mass. Some people had digestive issues, and those were probably the first clues, which I kind of ignored. And then Wade, of course, a big proponent of the plant based lifestyle, which I'll pass it on to him to share his journey.

Wade Lightheart [00:01:46]:
Yeah. So I decided that I would be a bodybuilding champion on a plant based diet and challenge a lot of the dogma around, protein requirements, athletic performance, muscle building, fat loss, and the cosmetic side, which bodybuilding is a cosmetic sport, essentially different other ones, and was, had a, had a lot of success in those areas and blew up a lot of the ideas and in our discussions, what we recognized is with our different diet styles, we were able to be successful. But where the magic came was extracting elements that we were missing in one diet with adjustments in the other. I'll give you an example. So, on a plant based diet, it's really hard to get essential fatty acids that you need to the levels that you went for, optimal hormone function brain, cellular development, stuff like that. And there's a lot of experts that will condemn a plant based diet because. Because of, say, those reasons, insufficient amino acids or not enough essential fatty acids, et cetera. Well, I was resistant to that argument as a vegetarian person, but Matt's arguments around the importance of all these different types of fats, well, I had to concede that point.

Wade Lightheart [00:03:04]:
So then I went out and started searching for the plant based sources of fats that would support total health and offset some of the liabilities, say, in a vegetarian diet that, that rather than people would try to accommodate for, they would just attack and throw under the bus, which is really common for people to gain status and credibility about any diet, is they do it not by the merits of the diet, but by attacking other diets, as opposed to looking for universal diet principles, which is what the book is all about.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:03:41]:
I love that universal principles. And I think that's a really important point, because as you were saying as well, Matt, like, I had a ketogenic diet phase, and at the beginning it was great, and then I started falling off a cliff. I was exhausted, etcetera, and I was like, hang on, this isn't actually working for me. And I think it's nutrition is the medicine. We feed our body every day. So it's really understanding it. And I love the way that you start the book with an argument that you're having. So how did it go from the arguments to creating this masterpiece? And I think for people who are able to watch this, this stunning book that's not only beautiful, but literally, I think it's probably the most comprehensive book on planet earth on nutrition.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:04:19]:
So highly recommend it and the nutrition Bible. But tell us a little bit about the journey of putting it together in the book. And why did you choose the different components of the book? You could share that with us, and we'll take a few deep dives into it to make it so comprehensive and understandable for people.

Matt Gallant [00:04:36]:
Yeah. As Wade mentioned, there was a lot of debate, but the more we debated, the more common ground we found. Starting with digestion, we both realized that enzymes, probiotics, hydrochloric acid, and just overall gut health is an important factor in every diet. So no matter which diet you're on, if you use some of those tools, you're going to get better results. Then we learned about fats. I learned about fiber. There was just this long journey where we started letting the dogma go and focusing on the things that could work for everyone and then rewind a few years ago, we just realized that there was so much confusion. There is so much confusion around nutrition.

Matt Gallant [00:05:20]:
And as Wade mentioned, a lot of people, a lot of diet gurus or want to be diet gurus will attack not just other people, but certain foods. You know, this week, Kale's the enemy, and then it's oats, and then it's no lectins, you know, a new enemy every week, seed oils. And we wanted to just try to demystify nutrition, and it took 500 plus pages to do so because there is that much confusion. But, you know, we really wanted to try to be the most comprehensive, unbiased book on nutrition ever. And just to kind of give people the overall structure of the book. First, we start off kind of breaking down the main issues, right? Why every diet works for a while, why weight loss is such a struggle. Only 3% of people succeed long term. Then we shift over to kind of the goals, you know, and we break it down to five goals.

Matt Gallant [00:06:12]:
First goals, weight loss. There's essentially a 200 page weight loss book. Within the book, there is a muscle building section. There's athletic performance, cognitive performance, and then health, lifespan, which is currently our main focus.

Wade Lightheart [00:06:27]:
Right.

Matt Gallant [00:06:27]:
Then we talk about universal nutritional optimizers, which are all these things like gut health and other factors that everyone can use. And then we also talk about all the popular diets, and we go over the pros and cons, from plant based to raw food to paleo to ketogenic, if it fits your macros, and that's it. I mean, of course, there's a lot of chapters within all of these sections, but we tried to organize it in a way where people can kind of just jump in and pick what's the most interesting or relevant to them today. It's not a book you need to read cover to cover. Of course, if you're a nutritional nerd like we are, please do so. But I think it's a book. You can just look at the table of content, jump to that chapter, read it, apply it, and get some benefits.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:07:19]:
Yeah, and I love that as well. I think that's really important because it's so comprehensive that there's something for everybody in there. But then for people looking for specific things, they can just jump right back in. But just to take a step back, for people listening, what is your view on the diet industry today, and what is the biggest challenges? Because I was literally just in Austin at the weekend, and, you know, people are like, I only eat meat, and everyone should just only eat meat the whole time. And I'm doing really well, so you should do this too. And I'm sitting there smiling. I'm like, you know, I've been to other, I've had Harvard professors on stage, like, I fast and I only have one meal a day. Everyone in the audience should do this as well.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:08:00]:
And obviously, women are not men and et cetera, et cetera. So what are some things that people should be aware of that's going on in the diet industry so that they can better, better judge themselves what suits them or not?

Matt Gallant [00:08:12]:
Go ahead. Wait.

Wade Lightheart [00:08:14]:
Well, I think this is one of the great opportunities that you have when you're a little bit older. Like I'm in my fifties now, and I can almost predict what the next recycled diet strategy trend is going to be. You know, like we go through raw food, then we go to plant based, then we go to Paleo, then we go to keto. And if you look, historically, most of these are recycled ideas with some new twist or some new element. And of course, it comes with the super supplement that never before has been offered to really bolster the results. And a charismatic figure who looks the part can sell the story and now creates a new dietary cult following and then manipulation that happens in social media. So for, we started in the very start of this is how this mechanism works. And if you're a marketer, if you've been in the industry, you can understand this, but the average person doesn't understand this.

Wade Lightheart [00:09:14]:
I remember when Matt was explaining marketing me when we first started, I thought, what are you crazy? And he was seeing all these things that I didn't see. And now that I've been 20 years on the other side of that equation, it's like, oh, now I get it. And there's a bell curve of distribution. Everybody knows this, that does any scientific evaluations, and basically you have a large bulk of the people in the middle, and then you get a couple of stigmas out and like 30 sigmas out and you're down to 2% of the population. The 2% of the population that a diet works for are going to be all of the remarkable testimonials between for that diet that. So when that person comes on stage, the doctor, the athlete, the famous person, I actually believe what they're saying, that at that time in their space, based on everything they've done at that problem, this diet that they embarked on, identified or fixed some of the deficiencies they had in the past and may have been perfectly right for their metabolism, their genetics, et cetera, and their chosen lifestyle. But guess what? The guy at the back of the room that's fuming, yelling at them? Or is the person that's condemning them saying that I did that diet, that that expert said that so and so, doctor so and so, or, you know, famous person did. I gained all this weight.

Wade Lightheart [00:10:38]:
I got sick. I had metabolics. You know, like, they're the opposite sex spectrum. They got the 2% on the bad side. So the question, the thing is, is the average person doesn't have the ability to test that or see that. They just get. They're struggling. They want something to work.

Wade Lightheart [00:10:54]:
They've. You know, the story. I tried everything, but then I went to this, right? I'm so excited for my wedding. Oh, my God, this is it. And you load up, and it works for two of your friends that, you know, you get in a group for, and for you, it's an absolute disaster. And then somehow you think, I'm a loser, I'm a failure. There's something wrong with this. And the resentment builds up, and then you join the hater aid parade.

Wade Lightheart [00:11:22]:
Well, the good news is you can eliminate a lot of. Couple of chapters. At the very back, we talk about genetics and nutrigenomics, and that is targeted nutrition based on your genetics, both the advantages and disadvantages. So Matt and I, we had all these arguments, but when testing has changed everything, now you don't have to guess. You don't have to figure out what a market is. You can do tests under the guidance of a naturopathic doctor. We recommend somewhere between five at a minimum, and seven or eight on the top end. You can figure out everything and select the diet that's right for you, and you can get the specific supplements that your diet will never account to, because maybe you don't absorb that product right.

Wade Lightheart [00:12:05]:
Maybe you need a special form of that element. This is what the breakaway people are doing right now in the health and longevity. So while the general masses are going down the drain, as far as health, longevity, obesity rates, depression, and all that stuff, because they're caught in the mainstream marketing that's flushing their lives down the toilet.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:12:26]:
Yeah.

Wade Lightheart [00:12:27]:
There's a breakaway group in this percentile that are using the things that we outline in the book to get totally specific to what's right for that person. They're living longer. They're living at a higher vitality. They're enjoying their lives. And we believe that they're going to live a lot longer than their predecessors, because they've addressed the things that are going to take them out. That's what this book's about. You don't have to be a scientist, you don't have to be a doctor, you don't have to be a dietary expert, or you definitely don't want to be a zealot. You can figure out exactly what's right for you, make the selection that suits your lifestyle.

Wade Lightheart [00:13:00]:
And maybe, Matt, would you want to talk about the hierarchy of nutritional needs? Because nobody talks about how a diet is going to work for you, not just on a nutrition level, but on a social and psychological level.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:13:13]:
Matt, I'd love alluded to answer that, but if I may just ask a question for people who might not be familiar with what is neutrogenomics?

Matt Gallant [00:13:21]:
I think just to really make it concrete, we can share a couple of examples. When you do these neutrogenomic tests, you're going to get a report that tells you where you have mutations. Now, mutations, of course, if you've watched a lot of movies, sounds like a really bad thing. Everyone has mutations, and some mutations are actually really good. You know, most people that you could say have extraordinary athletic genes, you know, a lot of those or most of those are because of positive mutations. Now there's bad mutations, and when you get those insights, you can start making adjustments, and I'll share a couple of personal ones. So, one is, I don't do well with saturated fats, which was a mind blower, because I've been a huge proponent of saturated fats for decades, literally, you know, and my fat, my profile, my lipid profile was never great. Now I've adjusted my fat intake.

Matt Gallant [00:14:21]:
I take a lot more olive oil. It's a great monosource of monosaturated fats. And there's a lot of other benefits, the polyphenols, et cetera. And I've reduced my saturated fat intake, so I'm eating leaner cuts, I'm eating more seafood, I'm eating more plants. Another example is I don't metabolize zinc. Well, I don't metabolize selenium. Well. And Wade, maybe share a couple of yours, because, you know, the power of doing these tests is you can start making adjustments today that could pay off dividends in decades to come.

Wade Lightheart [00:14:53]:
Yeah. So, for example, I don't metabolize fats very well, and I have a low satiety response. In other words, my tendency to overeat is much higher than other people because there's no off switch when I start eating. And if anybody's ever watched me on a spike day, they would. They would observe that, which is one of the strategies we talk about how to have your cake and eat it, too, by strategic eating high calories. And then the other thing is with the fats, you know, I need it. Every time I tried a ketogenic diet, I would get fat in my stools. And, you know, which was counter to say, Matt's suggestion when he was like, hey, you know, keto really works, and the high fat fats you'd really benefit from.

Wade Lightheart [00:15:33]:
And then. So when Matt got into investigating with our research team about, well, how do you actually break down fats in the gut? Turns out there's all these different lipases. In fact, he identified four different lipases, created a product called Capex that was so. He wanted to win the argument, obviously, and was motivated. And so he said, here, try this product. I didn't even know what it is. And he says, and up your fats. Well, guess what? I didn't have fats in the stool.

Wade Lightheart [00:16:00]:
And I started to feel some of the benefits that he was talking about by a higher fat diet. And I was like, oh, wow. Now, that didn't mean that I went to a ketogenic diet, but every time that I eat more fats, I make sure I have my capex so that I don't have a problem digesting and metabolizing those.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:16:20]:
Fabulous.

Matt Gallant [00:16:22]:
Go ahead. One thing I wanted to cover is what we call the biological optimization process, which, if you really want to build the perfect diet for you, this is the general process. There's a lot of details that we can skip over, but you want to assess, test, and optimize. So you're creating a feedback loop. You start by doing blood work and nutrigenomic tests and maybe some allergy tests, you know, gut biome tests. You get the results, you create a game plan, you implement it, and then you test again. And I think the greatest example of that right now, the guy who's pushed it to a new dimension is Brian Johnson. You know, if you're not familiar with them, he's, you know, the most, the fastest growing guy in the health space.

Matt Gallant [00:17:12]:
By longshot, of course. He's got hundreds of millions of dollars to do so, which most people don't have. So he's got a team of 30 doctors, but he is using that exact process, right? He's using all kinds of testing technologies. They come up with a game plan, and they just keep retesting and optimizing. So no matter what your budget is, everybody can implement that process. And it gets rid of the dogma and the opinions and the theories, because if you try something and your blood work gets worse, it's not a good diet for you. It's pretty simple. Yeah, it was back to what Wade was talking about.

Matt Gallant [00:17:51]:
We really wanted to create a framework. So this book is really a book filled with first principles, strategies, and frameworks. We really wanted to give people tools that they can use. Instead of saying, here's the ultimate diet, we could have done that, hey, eat a lower calorie, high protein, super high nutrient rich diet. Give people all the specific foods, which the book is loaded with those. But we really wanted to give people all the tools on learning how to fish and how to build a perfect diet for them. So we created the hierarchy of nutritional decisions pyramid. And it starts off with spiritual and cultural considerations, which don't apply to most people.

Matt Gallant [00:18:35]:
But of course, you know, if you're muslim and you're doing Ramadan, that's what you want to do, right? So we're not here to judge people and tell them, don't do things that are not aligned with your spiritual beliefs. We're here to help these people. It's the same thing for people that want to be vegan because they believe it's bad spiritually. Like, no matter what people's beliefs are, we're here to support them. The second layer, which I think is highly underrated, is really the emotional and psychological needs. And, you know, the most basic question to ask is, can I sustain this diet, whatever it is, for the rest of my life? And I think if most people ask themselves that question when they start to die, the answer is no. You know, I know that Wade can keep doing what he's doing for the rest of his life. I know I can keep doing what I'm doing for the rest of my life because it works for us, not just physically, but psychologically.

Matt Gallant [00:19:29]:
And yeah, sometimes people evolve and your taste change or your needs change, your goals change, which we'll get into next. But in general, you should be able to follow and sustain whatever it is you're going to choose to do. Of course, there's a whole chapter on the psychological side, which is critical. But then the third layer, which is the most important part in a lot of ways, is the goals. And we talked about the five goals. And just to give an example, if your goal is to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit. If your goal is to build muscle mass, you need to be in a calorie surplus. So right there, you can see that your calories and maybe your macronutrients will change the same thing with athletes.

Matt Gallant [00:20:10]:
I used to train pro athletes. Their goal is typically not to gain weight. They want to maintain weight, but they want to eat as much food as they need to maintain peak performance during workouts, during practice, and during games. A lot of these guys will train three, 4 hours a day. So you really need to optimize your diet for that. Now, our goal is longevity, health span, lifespan. So we're tweaking our diets to accommodate that. From there, you get calories and macros, and of course, a lot of people in the nutritional space, I would say it's another trap.

Matt Gallant [00:20:46]:
It's all they focus on. And then there's another group that wants you to believe in magic. So if you look at, wait, maybe just talk about bodybuilders and how they're the most successful people on the planet, planet when it comes to really manipulating.

Wade Lightheart [00:21:00]:
Yeah. So the number one thing that if you look, most people are looking to a diet in today's world is they're looking to lose weight, lose body fat, actually. And most people don't even make the designation between body fat and muscle. Like, one of the big things with, you know, products like Ozempic is if you don't address the muscle mass loss, you're setting yourself up. It's kind of like a deal with the devil. But if you're using something like that and you're taking into account maintaining lean body mass, and you have the guidance of a trainer and an athlete and the right nutrition program, well, then it might be a much more positive outcome over the long term. So, bodybuilders and fitness competitors, if you go to a local contest anywhere, the worst bodybuilder or fitness competitor in that show looks better than most people on the best day of their life. If most people look like that person, they would be ecstatic when they looked in the mirror.

Wade Lightheart [00:22:00]:
They feel their best, they look their best, they'd have that confidence and, and they'd be the healthiest they would be. And that's a great value to have on its own. But so the science about that is figured out, and most bodybuilders follow, if it fits your macros type philosophy, how much protein, how much carbohydrates, how much fats, and there's a few different camps of how they manipulate it. But guess what? Even people at a local show get in great shape. So that system is, in my opinion, the most successful, universal, applicable diet strategy for everyone. And it's probably the easiest to follow. Now, from a longevity standpoint, bodybuilders and fitness competitors do not live longer than other people as a general group because they assume their aesthetic success translates in longevity. And nothing could be further from the truth, because many of the restrictions that are allowing to get into that shape actually have detrimental effects, long term and disease prevention.

Wade Lightheart [00:23:09]:
Or sometimes they'll use chemical agents, like anabolic agents, or, you know, metabolic agents, in order to speed up metabolism, etcetera, that will skew the short term results and have long term consequences. And so we try to identify and present those to people so that they're, you know, if you're not in that industry, you don't know this, but you can extract the gold and throw away the things that don't apply and then move through the different stages of life. So that's what we do in the, the book. And it's, it's really revealing for a lot of people. And it's like, here's what's going to happen when you read this book. You're going to go, oh, that's what I was missing. Oh, that's what they meant. Oh, I didn't know that.

Wade Lightheart [00:23:56]:
And if you can have three or four of those o's in your life, your success is going to transform radically over the long term about what you choose to do for your life. And we're not here to proselytize or tell anybody they have to do anything, but we're here to help reveal the things that people don't know so that they don't get tripped up by them before it's too late. And we've been tripped up on like, I had a whole digestive meltdown after the Mister universe contest. I thought I had it figured out, went from Mister Universe to Mister Marshmill, and that led to digestive health understanding. And so we want people to avoid those things. Who has the time to put yourself in a dietary trap?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:41]:
And I think you do it so beautifully in such a neutral way as well in the book. But Matt, go ahead, what did you want to say?

Matt Gallant [00:24:46]:
No, I just want to wrap up the pyramid really quick. So the fifth thing is neutrogenomics, which we've covered. The 6th layer is gut biome, which again, we just touched on that briefly. But Bob Optimizer, which Wade and I are the co founders of, we believe we have the most powerful line of gut health products, from protein digestion to ketogenic digestion, to bio healthy biofilm builders, like our microbiome breakthrough, to p three om, which is another incredible protein digesting probiotic. And we've done thousands of experiments in our lab the last few years, and these products outperform every probiotic weve tested, every enzyme weve tested, and every hydrochloric acid product weve tested. Weve just released new, stronger versions of those products. And of course, claudias got a code you guys can use to save a little bit of money. The 7th layer, which Wade touched upon earlier, is supplements.

Matt Gallant [00:25:43]:
And I think theres a huge mistake that a lot of people are making, which is I can get all the nutrients I need from food and back to, I would say the biggest problem with if it fits your macros or the biggest problem that bodybuilders make is they only look at calories and macros. And as Wade said, thatll get you in shape or thatll help you build muscle. But if you start running into micronutrient deficiencies over time, that will compromise your health. Right. We know, I mean, to use an extreme example, there's people that have died from diure using diuretics, and they had a heart attack because they had no electrolytes to make their heart work. Now, that's a hardcore extreme example, but I think the same is true for all these other key minerals like magnesium and zinc and selenium, et cetera, et cetera. You need to make sure that your body has enough. And going from the minimal dose to the optimal dose makes a massive difference.

Matt Gallant [00:26:47]:
Like when Wade and I were burnt out and we started taking more magnesium, we started combining magnesiums. That was the turning point for us in terms of fixing our burnout and feeling calmer than we probably did in years, which led us to build magnesium breakthrough, which has been our best selling product. Now we're working on a new electrolyte line, which is going to be released very soon. We're creating hyper optimized formulas to make sure that people are getting all the nutrients that they need. Then, if you want to get more sophisticated, and by the way, when you buy the ultimate nutrition system, we have a 200 plus page supplement book that you get for free. So we can talk about that at the end. And after that, it's food sensitivities and allergies. And this is one of the things that a lot of the gurus out there, the people on social media are using to grab attention again.

Matt Gallant [00:27:42]:
They're attacking lectins and phytic acid and whatever the enemy is. And these things can be problematic for a small percentage of the people if they over consume. I mean, if, yeah, people are consuming ten pounds of kale a day for years, maybe they'll have oxalate problems if they don't have the right genes to process it. But these are small, small groups. And if you look, read that chapter, you know, it's probably the most comprehensive chapter on all the different type of food, sensitivities and allergies that people can have. And the last piece of the pyramid, which is critical for long term success, is lifestyle. Again, can you follow this? Can you live a great life? Can you go on vacation to Europe, enjoy great food, come back, not come back 20 pounds heavier, but still go out and enjoy great food? I'm a foodie. I just came back from Europe.

Matt Gallant [00:28:37]:
I was there for two weeks. You know, I didn't gain any weight. Why? Because there's a lot of tactics that we cover in the book. There's a whole chapter on this on, you know, how you can go on vacations, how you can have a great holiday. You know, Wade goes back to see his parents every year and enjoys his mom bread. So there's a lot of tactics and strategies you can use to minimize the damage and enjoy life, you know, because at the end of the day, you know, being super healthy, but being super restrictive is tough. And Wade's done that. Maybe Wade can touch on that.

Matt Gallant [00:29:08]:
Man, I don't know anybody who's done a more restrictive diet for eleven months straight than Wade did back in the day.

Wade Lightheart [00:29:16]:
Well, I know one person, it's Miss Olympia, Natalia Coelho, who never breaks her diet.

Matt Gallant [00:29:23]:
They're talking about the world's best, with.

Wade Lightheart [00:29:26]:
The world's best, one of the world best fitness and physique competitors in the world. So that's what it takes to be number one on the planet. I kind of lost my spot there about restriction and eating. To give an. Matt, for example, psychologically needs. He needs a little dietary treat every week or so, and that allows him to feel satiated and not too restricted. I'm the opposite. I have to be hyper rigid because, again, and maybe it has to do with that genetics.

Wade Lightheart [00:30:02]:
As soon as I trip the trigger onto that forbidden food, quote unquote, I just want more of it. And, you know, it's a train wreck of chips and cake or whatever, you know, like, I just can't stop that. So I do better on, hey, you know what? I'm going to restrict myself for an extended period of time, get to the goal that I wanted, whether that's dieting for, you know, months and months and months, whether it's, you know, getting ready for a marathon or doing something like, you know, really ridiculous. That's really hard to do. I like those things. I like those restrictions. And if I don't have those restrictions in my life, I get lazy. I just don't follow stuff.

Wade Lightheart [00:30:44]:
I go off my diet too much. It doesn't work for me. So that's part of understanding your own psychology. And I don't think any diet book that I've read addresses those unique aspects that make you you and help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. And I think a lot of it is there's a lot of shame and guilt associated with food. And concordantly, there's a lot of joy in love with the social aspects. And those dynamics, I think really disrupt people from embracing who they are. Being able to navigate the social considerations because food has so much connotations around food, family and events and, you know, public out thing or relationships, love all those things and those extreme emotions that drive us in all of the subconscious, you know, inner self talk that happens when we lay it out in the book and you see it, it's like, oh, okay, that's okay.

Wade Lightheart [00:31:49]:
It's okay to be me. It's okay if I'm a diet restrictive type person, I can hang out with other diet restrictive persons and we can go to the diet restriction party and condemn everybody else that's not on that and feel good about, about ourselves. Or I could be a little bit more flexible. And you know what? I've set myself up that I'm not kissing off all my family members because I'm standing there with a holier than thou attitude when they hit the desserts. And maybe I can have a bite or two or share in a piece because I've got the right strategy. So if you don't understand those aspects of yourself or how to interact, you're going to fail on your diet. Matt and I have coached thousands of people collectively together on diets from every condition you can imagine. And we've identified the reasons people fail, why they fail, and it's not your fault.

Wade Lightheart [00:32:44]:
You just don't have enough information or the right information. And I've never seen a diet book address those issues. And I think it's really important to do so if you want to live long and live strong.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:32:53]:
Can you expand on that a bit for people listening and watching? Because I think many people hear, oh, not another diet. Or like, you know, because it's. I almost feel like this isn't a diet book. It talks about everything and it's, you know, you pick what works for you. But why do so many people fail? So that they can understand what's happening are they're setting themselves up to fail. But maybe you can expand a bit on those strategies so that they can have that aha moment and be like, okay, it's not just me. I'm not just the only failure. You said you've coached many, many people through this.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:33:24]:
So what are some of the trends that you see why people are not successful?

Matt Gallant [00:33:27]:
I'll jump in on this. And just to build off of what Wade was talking about. So we have, again, a psychological chapter, which we kind of broke up into two key sections. And the first one is, you need to get emotionally healthy. I was business partners with Dawson church for a few years. He's one of the most renowned, well respected authorities on EFT emotional freedom techniques, also known as tapping. He's done hundreds of research papers, including with weight loss. And both Witt and I have spent weeks of our lives with electrodes processing all kinds of resentments and fears and negative emotions.

Matt Gallant [00:34:07]:
And what happens when you're on the other side of that is you just. You're not going to be using food anymore to basically do a drug like response. I mean, if you look at food, if you look at a high sugar, high fat meal and its impact on the brain, it lights up the same brain centers as heroin does. Carbohydrates will increase serotonin, super hyper palatable food will increase dopamine. So you can use food as a drug. And a lot of people, and I know a lot of people personally, friends, including clients, that for them, food is an issue. And it's a very big struggle. And until they really clean house emotionally, it's going to be difficult for them to overcome that challenge.

Matt Gallant [00:34:55]:
And, of course, we talk about all the tools people can use, whether it's eft, eliminating traumas, neurofeedback, etcetera. And then to go back to what Wade was talking about, you know, the other major psychological keys to thy own self be true. And we talk about discipline styles. You know, what's your discipline style? So some people are dietary cyborgs. You know, Natalia, that Wade was mentioning, she has that, which is a very small group of people, but, you know, most of the people that are like that are going to be incredibly successful. Wade falls into the second category, which is obsessed with the purpose. You know, Wade, for a long time, I thought Wade was a dietary cyborg, until he stopped competing and he went back to normal. But for decades, he was operating like a cyborg.

Matt Gallant [00:35:47]:
You know, he was hyper focused, hyper disciplined because he had a purpose. You know, his purpose was to become a national natural bodybuilding champion and go to the blister universe, which he did. The third group is nurture. So there's groups of people that need to be around other people, right? They need to be in a group. They need to do this with friends for them. They really need to be fed emotionally. And if they don't have that, then they're going to struggle. So for those people, being parts of groups or having a coach can really help.

Matt Gallant [00:36:19]:
And then the last one is necessity. And of course, way tonight would always get clients that either got divorced or they got a health crisis, and now they need to change. They have no more options. So knowing that is helpful, Wade touched on, are you a moderator or an abstainer? So I'm a moderator. Like, if we're going out to a meal, my, my ultimate scenario is we try all the desserts and I just get one bite each. Like, I'm good. I just want to try a lot of things and I can go back to normal after that. And Wade's an abstainer.

Matt Gallant [00:36:54]:
Like, what works for him is getting hyper locked in for x amount of weeks or months. Then how do you comply with expectations? You know, are you an upholder, are you a questioner, an obliger? Or you're a rebel? Wade's a rebel. I'm a questioner. I need to understand, like, all the science, all the mechanisms, why it works, etcetera. Then we talk about just kind of, what neurotransmitter type are you? Dopamine driven, acetylcholine driven, and of course, we talk about strategies for emotional eaters. And then what kind of food do you like? I mean, that's probably one of the simplest questions. Like, if you love plants and you love salads, then you should probably eat more of that. If you're a meat lover, ketogenic diets will probably work well for you.

Matt Gallant [00:37:38]:
So these are just some of the psychological questions that we cover. And again, the more you ask yourself these questions, and if you read that chapter and you can identify, you're going to go to a new level of self awareness. Like, I'm so bullish on personality tests, not because any particular one is perfect, but almost with every single personality test I've done, I gain a new insight on myself that I didn't have before, which helps me be more successful.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:08]:
I love that. And I think, I mean, the same with the personality test. And I like the way that it's done in the book. It makes you realize you're not alone. And that the penny drops like, oh, that's why I struggled with this, or that's why, okay, I need to adjust and it's okay. And actually, people can have success by, you know, cycling or whatever works for them in the best manner as well. Or complete avoidant, as you were doing. Wade.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:31]:
I want to touch on gut health as a fundamental part, because many, many of us, and I previously had major gut health issues. And there's no point almost diving into things if your gut health is destroyed, be it from too much antibiotics or just neglect or all the processed food and things that people have been ingesting. So what are important aspects of assessing gut health, and where would you point people to, to get started, started on looking at that, to really understand, do they have enough good bacteria? Right? How are they digesting food? Might they have leaky gut, etcetera? What is that process that you encourage people to walk through?

Wade Lightheart [00:39:13]:
I'm going to jump in and talk about the fundamental assumption that almost every nutritionist or nutrition books makes, and that is, if I put food in my body, it's automatically converted into energy building blocks. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's literally hundreds of processes that happen in order for you to convert what you put in your mouth into, you know, things that fuel your body. But we've broken it down into five stages just for references, and then we'll identify where things go wrong. And here's the caveat. Like, I wouldn't have known. Like, I went to the Mister Universe contest and didn't know this. And then I gained 42 pounds of fat and water because I destroyed my gut health.

Wade Lightheart [00:40:00]:
This is in 2003, which led us to find a doctor who brought us to this attention. We were talking about enzymes and hydrochloric acid and probiotics and leaky gut, and, you know, chemicals produced from bad bacteria 20 years ago. Nobody was talking about this then. And so when we learned this, it transformed everything in our mind. So basically, you taste, touch, and feel the food. There's a salivary response. That's the sensory component of food, which is a big aspect of food. You masticate the food, the food then goes down the esophagus into the stomach.

Wade Lightheart [00:40:35]:
Now, a lot of people think there's this bowl of hydrochloric acid sitting there ready to do food. No. The first 30 to 60 minutes, the food stays in what's called the upper cardiac portion of the stomach, and the enzymes present in the food are supposed to start breaking that food down. Hydrochloric acid comes in, starts changing the ph of that food. And it also disinfects from bacteria, viruses, parasites, bugs that you might eat in the food, whatever happens to be on that food. And as that converts, then your body releases what's called bicarbonate buffers, which is a fancy name for minerals like calcium and magnesium to neutralize the highly acidic stomach. And then it goes into the intestinal tract. And this is where the gut flora is, or the microbiome, if you hear those terms.

Wade Lightheart [00:41:27]:
10% of those bacteria good, 10% are bad, 80% are opportunists, and most people have a dysbiosis there. And then finally, the last place is the elimination process that you know how well you go to the bathroom, which is part of peristaltic contraction, which moves the food, but that can be disrupted by physiological components and it can be used, disrupted by the use of drugs. First off, we're the only species on the planet that doesn't eat an enzyme rich diet. Enzymes are in charge of over 25,000 different processes. Everything from thinking to blinking requires an enzyme. They're catalysts. They accelerate the processes of the body. So a bear that eats blueberries and salmon eat it in a raw state where it gets the enzymes.

Wade Lightheart [00:42:14]:
A horse or a cow eats grass, it gets the enzymes along with the nutrients. A tiger eats zebras, it gets the enzymes and probiotics from the zebra that it consumes. We cook, pasteurize and irradiate our food. Now, there's a lot of advantages to that from a health and storing component, but it destroys all the enzymes. So virtually everybody is eating an enzyme deficient diet. And there's a thing out there. If I take extra enzymes, is that going to screw up my enzyme production? No, it's going to allow you to make more metabolic enzymes, and you're not spending your energy just trying to digest your food. Second stage, as we get older, we stop producing enough hydrochloric acid.

Wade Lightheart [00:42:55]:
Hydrochloric acid is that key element to disinfect us from the invaders as well as change the ph. Now, a great enzyme formulation operates in a variety of ph ranges. A lousy enzyme formulation works in one small range of phs, and that's it. So those two elements need to work together. You need a full spectrum enzyme, and you need a very potent hydrochloric acid. Quick test. If you want to know if you have enough hydrochloric acid, take a quarter to a half teaspoon of baking soda, put it in 4oz of water, stir it up, drink it on an empty stomach. If you burp in five minutes, you have enough hydrochloric acid.

Wade Lightheart [00:43:36]:
If you don't, you don't, and could benefit from taking a hydrochloric tab like, you know, hcl breakthrough with your meals, or right after final and most important stage, after the food's gone through that mix. And hopefully you have enough minerals in your body that you're buffering that acid. And if you're not, make sure you get your minerals up, then you go into where the real action happens. We live in a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria cultures. The good ones are called probiotics, pro life. Well, here's what's really crazy. Like, we have a lab in Bosnia with microbiology experts, and they show that the different types of food, the minerals that you add, all of these elements, determine what these little critters provide for us. In other words, if we don't have bacteria in our stomach, good bacteria, we die, we starve.

Wade Lightheart [00:44:27]:
We can't get the things we want. We can't make the defense mechanisms, we can't make the antioxidants with all these things. And so we're not really feeding ourselves. We're feeding the bacteria that feed us. Now, conversely, over the last hundred years, we've been using a massive amount of antibiotics. They do not discriminate between good and bad. So virtually everybody that's listening to this has gone through a bacteria culture and have probably disrupted their bacteria. Then we've got an assortment of thousands and thousands of chemicals, things like glyphosates that are destroying bacteria.

Wade Lightheart [00:44:57]:
Right. Then we've got all these other elements, like forever chemicals and things like that that you're hearing in the news that are disrupting the function of the bacteria. So most people in the health industry understand this, and they're supplementing with really high quality probiotics with the right prebiotics, both within their diet or with the bacteria themselves, so that these cultures can grow and to provide all the things that we need because it's a big part of our immune system. So when you're looking at digestive health, a holistic strategy is, am I getting sufficient enzymes? Do I have sufficient hydrochloric acid? And do I have the right bacteria? Right. And most of the probiotics that youre going to buy at the supermarket are dead. Theyre not working, theyre not functional. And so a lot of people have tried probiotics and said, I didnt feel anything, or they try a cheap enzyme blend and said, well, it didnt do anything for me. Well, thats because someone grabbed and this is, this is my pet peeve of the supplement industry.

Wade Lightheart [00:46:03]:
Research papers will come out and say, hey, everybody has leaky gut, right? Harvard just came out with that, for example, which was condemned for 20 years, by the way. They said, no, that wasn't the case. Now that's the new trend. So a bunch of unscrupulous marketers take that idea, take some element that will help fix your leaky gut, which pretty much everybody has, but they'll sell a really poor supplement, white, labeled by some manufacturer, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, they don't care. They run a company, make a bunch of money, close that company down, move to the next one. We understood that 20 years ago and that's why we got into the supplementers. We're not going to do that. We're going to create a money back guarantee for everything else.

Wade Lightheart [00:46:48]:
We're going to use real science with the world's best experts in that area to develop formulas that work. So we have like microbiome breakthrough. You put that in your body, your leaky guts fixed. Why? Because it's proven, it's tested, it's science. And we back it up by that. Very few companies do that because it's, it's not cost effective to build a great company. It's not cost effective to build a great supplement. Most people would just rather, you know, market, you know, on trends as opposed to provide scientific based solutions.

Wade Lightheart [00:47:19]:
And so we're on that and the book illustrates that. But if you don't have your digestive health, get this, 100 million people in America on any given day suffers from digestive health. 12% of the emergency hospital visits are gastrointestinal related issues. Harvard Medical center says virtually everybody has leaky guts. And things like these forever chemicals or glyphosate are disrupting the health and vitality of so many people. And there are solutions, and we have those solutions for people and that's where we get so excited and motivated to share these with people because I just know there's millions of people of suffering that we can fix literally overnight just.

Matt Gallant [00:48:01]:
To share some mind blowing stats. Do you know doctor Gus Vickery by chance?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:48:06]:
Oh, I don't know.

Matt Gallant [00:48:07]:
Okay, anyways, so met him last year and I said, hey, you know, we have a product that's just incredible at building healthy biofilm. So he's tested it with over eleven patients now and he's got more patients coming and he's tracking their zonulin levels. And zonulin is considered the best measurement to see people have leaky gut with the zonulin dropped over 90 plus percent, which is incredible, using microbiome breakthroughs. So now he's putting anybody's got high zonulin. That's what he's using. And yes, whereas gut health, you know, it's pretty simple. I mean, Wade touched on it a little bit as far as the stats. But, you know, if you got flatulence, if you're, if you're burping a lot, if you feels like you've got bloating, if it feels like you got ball of cement in your gut, if your stools aren't good, you've got a digestive issue that can be optimized or fixed, or you got a problem.

Matt Gallant [00:49:04]:
Right?

Wade Lightheart [00:49:04]:
Acid reflux, heartburn, all of those.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:49:07]:
Yeah.

Matt Gallant [00:49:07]:
So, you know, if you got any of these symptoms. And what happens a lot of times is people normalize that it's normal, you know, like, they just don't know that there's a better way or there's a different way of living. And the good news is, it's easily addressable. And we have, again, I think, the best suite of products to do that from mass times, HCL breakthrough P, three Om and microbiome breakthrough. Between, you know, those four products, we feel there's not a single digestive issue that we can't fix, which is so.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:49:38]:
Exciting, because I think it's only then people might be with digestive issues eating well, but being like, I'm not feeling any different, it's not making a difference, but it's what you guys were saying as well. You're not breaking it down, you're not being able to absorb actually all those nutrients. So by addressing that proactively and then having this beautiful diet that suits you, you will then have those beautiful upside of feeling better, having more energy, and absorbing all the nutrients that you need from the food as well. So, really, really exciting. Love what you guys are doing. I love that you go really full in on all the science, also on the products that you develop. And then I brought out this beautiful bible. Where can people find out more what you guys are up to? More about the science perhaps as well.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:50:21]:
Follow you on social media. Can you share from my audience?

Matt Gallant [00:50:24]:
Sure. But first, just where can people get the book? Plus an entire video course that we filmed in the Hollywood Hills last year. It's ultimate nutrition system.com claudia. You'll save 10% using Claudia, which I think it's ought to be automatically applied. You also get three cookbooks for free. You get a 200 page plus supplement book for free. You get an entire book that covers all 750 scientific references for free. You get the hardcover copy of the book and you get the 25 plus hour video course.

Matt Gallant [00:51:02]:
So again, incredible offer, incredible value, covered by 365 day money back guarantee. And yeah, you can check us out on bottomizers.com and use Claudia to save 10%. Strongly recommend you get the ultimate digestive stack which will give you again, massimes hydrochloric HCl breakthrough and P three Om. Try those three together, you can digest virtually anything and wait maybe just to close it out. Talk about our guarantee, which is the best in the business.

Wade Lightheart [00:51:31]:
Yeah, so our products are made by science. We believe in service, and we protect you with our 365 day money back guarantee. Basically, if you try any of our products and it doesn't blow you away with its effectiveness, we humbly request that you let us know and we give you all of your money back because we realize. I remember when I used to save all my money as a kid, you know, to buy, you know, four magazines on education and the supplement that I thought was going to make a difference in my bodybuilding career. So we respect the value of your dollar and we'd rather you redeploy that with someone else that could solve your problem. If we can't, we're very confident we can. We have an extremely robust customer service team, probably the best in the industry of the lowest refund rate of any company I've ever heard of. Plus, we have real people.

Wade Lightheart [00:52:27]:
It's not AI. You're not talking to machines. You're talking to real educated people that care, that solve the problems. And all of the questions are filtered through me that you might have and that they response using responses that I've crafted. So you're getting direct responses from the owners of the company through our team. You're getting people that care and you get a money back guarantee on everything that we sell. So there's no risk to you other than a little bit of time and an experiment. But here's the upside.

Wade Lightheart [00:52:55]:
The chances are your life is going to be better, you're going to feel better, and you're probably going to end up telling your friends about it, because there's nothing that beats feeling better in life. Feeling better is winning. Getting healthier is winning, right? And we've helped hundreds of thousands of people do this. And Matt and I started this company as personal trainers because we fell in love with seeing people transform where they were suffering, where they felt bad about themselves. They didn't look how they looked all of those things, the joy that we got when they beat those boogeymen that were taking their lives out. We said we got to continue that spirit through our entire company. And our whole company embraces those values. We tell the testimonials every week on our team meetings because it's what fuels us.

Wade Lightheart [00:53:45]:
The little old grandmother that couldn't go to the bathroom, and now she can. The person that was embarrassed to go to the social interference because they had flatulence, right? Someone who was taking medication for heartburn, they don't have to do it anymore. Someone that every time they went out to a social occasion, were in pain because they didn't have the enzymes to break down that particular food. Eliminating all those increases the quality of life and the quality that you can contribute as an individual to whatever your level is, because health is the determining factor. It's the amplifier for everything in life. And we want to amplify that message across the world. So, thanks for having us on the podcast. As you said, you got the links on there.

Wade Lightheart [00:54:26]:
Check us out, go through everything, ask us whatever questions, and help us solve your biggest problems. We're happy to do that.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:54:34]:
Thank you so much, both for coming on today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Highly recommend. Everyone check this out. Even if you are following one particular diet, they've covered literally everything in the book and then some to say for sure. Do you have any parting thoughts, final ask, recommendations, or message from my audience, Matt and Wade.

Matt Gallant [00:54:52]:
Well, thanks for having a podcast. I always think about the reverberations, the ripples that happen over time. You know, we're all trying to do our part to educate people. Well, hopefully they'll go and educate people, and hopefully they'll influence more people. If we fast forward a few decades from now, I have a vision where the world is living at a new level of health. Longevity is at a new level, quality of life's at a new level. But we got a lot of work to do because the majority of people are, you know, not on the same path that we are, but we're going to convert one person at a time. And podcasts like this is how it happens.

Wade Lightheart [00:55:30]:
Yeah, I think Matt said it all. So, just want to thank you for having us today. It makes a big difference in the world, and if one person gets something out of this, then it's a win.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:55:41]:
Beautiful. No, completely agree. And so everyone listening, share this knowledge, share this wisdom with those that you love. It's these little steps that add up to a lot. Everyone's contribution helps in this game, so. Yeah. Thank you all so much for coming on today. Such a pleasure to have you on.

Matt Gallant [00:55:57]:
Thank you.

Wade Lightheart [00:55:58]:
Thank you.