EP. 147 — Jessie Inchauspe (Glucose Goddess)

Jameela:  Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I hope you’re well and I hope that today’s episode is something that you can find helpful and interesting and entertaining and not in any way harmful. But we do talk about sugar and glucose and how, if not regulated for some people, it can negatively impact their long-term health as regards inflammation or insulin resistance or diabetes or PCOS or cognitive function, and hormonal balance. And these are important things to discuss and I think a valid conversation once rising on the Internet.

But I also know that for some people, god knows I used to be like this it’s still really hard to hear anything about food or nutrition or to even have to think about it at all. Like it’s been so hard to break away from constantly thinking about it that you can easily be triggered back down a slippery slope of any kind of disordered eating or restriction orthorexia that is not what I want for you. It’s not what I’m trying to achieve with this episode. And so if you think you might be vulnerable right now, turn off this episode and I will see you next week. But for everyone else, I want you to know that we have gone out of our way to make sure that this episode is not just devoid of fatphobia, but it’s anti-fat phobia, anti-diet culture, anti-restriction anti- the lie that thinness equals health and fatness equals being unhealthy. And it is against following any eating pattern as if it’s gospel. It’s against the fear-mongering of health.

There are some things that we discuss that are you know important to discuss for our safety, but generally, it’s a very chill and reassuring approach to making sure that we are eating enough of the right foods in the best way for our long-term health, energy, and happiness. And that’s all I give a shit about. The reason I came across my guest today is because my health took a massive turn last year and I got really sick. And part of that was down to my lifestyle, including my nutrition. And so I didn’t know really where to turn because it’s so hard to find nutritionists who aren’t fatphobic and who don’t say things like “guilty pleasure” and “good foods” and “bad foods” and “healthy” and “unhealthy”. And I find that shit really unhelpful for my brain. But a lot of friends recommended me the work of Jesse Inchauspe, who is my guest today. And these are friends who work in the anti-diet culture space, who are very sensitive to fatphobic rhetoric. I have friends who are in bigger bodies who enjoy her work and find her to be really helpful and untriggering. And my own endocrinologist said that her work is on the kind of cutting edge of where science is now kind of moving. 

She is a biochemist, she’s not a nutritionist. I just want to be very clear about that. And her kind of specialist subject is now glucose and how it impacts our body in good ways and in also ways that need to be just kept an eye on. And I’m really lucky that I’ve got access to doctors and endocrinologists, especially people who don’t always make me feel like shit about what I’m eating and who don’t shame me. Very few people have access to doctors at all. Never mind doctors who don’t medically gaslight them or try and treat the symptom rather than cause and just give them a skinny weight loss pen rather than actually investigating what’s really going on with their fucking hormones and what’s really happening in their health and really investigating their lifestyle. It’s really fucking frustrating and it makes me feel angry and sick. And when people don’t have access to that safe information from medical professionals they go online. And online is a minefield of misinformation and things that tell you to give up entire food groups for long periods of time that can really be detrimental to your long term health. So I’ve been trying to find someone for ages just for me to talk to and that’s when I came across Jessie Inchauspe’s work and I tried personally following some of her simple tips and tricks and hacks and I’ve noticed a big change in my health. I haven’t lost weight. I’ve been eating more since trying what she suggested and those changes that she has suggested have positively impacted my health. 

Now, my health is not going to be the same as your health. We are different people. What works for me isn’t going to necessarily work for everyone else. It’s important that we all remember we are individuals and no […]advice should ever be treated as a kind of blanket for all people. We are all completely unique and so I always want you to run everything past actual health care professionals and people who know your body specifically and I hope those people are not into fatphobia and shaming you. I hope they make you feel safe when you talk to them. But don’t ever take any medical advice from a celebrity including – if not especially – me, because I don’t know fuck all about shit all.  Because I have buried my head in the sand, especially around this subject. I know nothing about this subject because for such a long time all I knew was starvation or binging or starvation or binging and I knew a couple of like incredibly dangerous diet tricks and that’s what I thought nutritional information was. So because of that, I stayed away from all nutritional information and I now have no idea how nutrition impacts my body. 

And that’s fucking sad because I’m in my mid thirty and this shit is important. 

We had Aubrey Gordon on this episode a multitude of times. And almost every time we talk about all the shit that’s in our food and how we aren’t told about all the hormones and the sugars and the salts and I don’t know, the chemicals that have unpronounceable names and how that stuff is more likely to be in cheaper food. So it disproportionately affects people with less money and to buy the food that is more nutritionally dense and less messed with chemicals and hormones. It’s much more expensive. It’s kind of fucking inaffordable, especially now in this current climate. So it is a valid conversation. It’s just so hard to have, and I’m nervous to have it. I want you to tell me if I got anything wrong in this episode and I want you to tell me how you feel and if you find it interesting or helpful. And I want you to be open with me because this is new.  This is new for me and it’s new for us to just not be in a situation where diet culture has fucked us over so badly that we’re now terrified of talking about food at all. And then we miss out on important information that can improve not our weight, but the quality of our lives. The quality of my life is better, for now understanding certain things about my nutrition. And as I said, no weight loss, no restriction, no bad vibes. I’ve been eating more and I’ve been feeling full and I just feel like I actually know and consider what’s going on in my body and that helps me make actually intuitive decisions.

So I’m very open about my health in this episode and what I’ve been going through in the last couple of months. Maybe you will resonate, maybe you won’t. But I talk about how this stuff has taught me and impacted me personally. As I said, I’m different to you and maybe it’s something that you’ll find speaks to you. And then you can read the book yourself and you can check on her resources yourself. She has them all on her website. She is someone I ran past a lot of experts before I brought her on this podcast and I really like her. I think that she advocates for a calm, safe, approachable approach to food. She’s very relatable in the way she puts information out and she’s very reassuring about the fact that it’s never too late to have the information and use that to steer your own health journey as much as you can with things like your lifestyle or your nutrition. 

She’s a very cool lady and I hope that you love her. I know a lot of you already follow her and a lot of you have been telling me about her in DMs. I really enjoyed this chat. I’ve really enjoyed her work on Instagram and in her book. And I hope that we have more voices like hers advocating against restriction when it comes to the way that we eat. In this episode, we talk about what glucose is and how it affects the body. We talk about what causes glucose spikes and the long-term effect of a lot of spikes and how to avoid them. 

We discuss how glucose can affect things from mood to diabetes to PCOS. We talk about the different ways that people can also be empowered to understand and care for their own bodies through food and understanding how their body interacts with glucose. And I come from a culture of South Asian culture that loves food, like we look at food as like medicine, and that’s how I want to look at food again, that got taken from me by the diet industry. I want to look at food as something that I enjoy, not something that I use as punishment or to deny myself from. Food is a way in which I can love my body. And I feel like I’m finally getting back to that place, thanks to my excellent healthcare professionals and thanks in part to this woman’s work. She’s very sweet. I hope you like her. This is the excellent Jesse Inchauspe, author of Glucose Revolution.

Jameela [00:01:18] Jessie Inchauspe welcome to I Weigh. How are you? 

Jessie [00:01:22] I’m good. I’m so happy to be here with you. 

Jameela [00:01:24] I’m so happy you’re here. Jesse, I’m going to start straight out the gate by saying that I think you might have changed my life. So I’m really happy that you’re here. And it’s so nice to probably meet you finally, after following you on Instagram for the last couple of months, it’s been a dramatic time in my life in which I’ve gone from not having any idea about the kind of work that you do to needing you more than ever. So, 

Jessie [00:01:51] Thank you. 

Jameela [00:01:51] Thank heavens, you’ve arrived. So I want to talk to you about your incredible work. You you go under the name of Glucose Goddess online and it’s unbelievable how fast your work is spreading. You talk about insulin spikes, glucose. The impact of glucose on our body is also on our mental health, all of which I want to get into. But so many of my friends, whenever I’ve tried to recommend you to them already following you and and they have found your work so helpful, so healing and completely lacking in shame. And I think that’s why I feel like you are the first person who works even near this arena that I have had on this podcast, because it is so hard to find someone who can talk about diet, who can talk about insulin and glucose without spreading misinformation and without spreading shame and toxicity. And so I’d love to talk to you about how you have come to want to talk about insulin and glucose in this specific way and and why? 

Jessie [00:02:58] Well, it was kind of a long journey, but four years ago when I started discovering the science of glucose really from my own personal, you know, healing. 

Jameela [00:03:09] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:03:10] I then realized that people needed to know about it. People needed to know that most of us have glucose spikes every day, even if we’re not diabetic, and that these glucose spikes create things from like sugar addiction to cravings to acne to polycystic ovarian syndrome, to type two diabetes, etc.. So I was faced with the following situation. All this science had been discovered, all these papers had been published, but nobody around me or really nobody that I knew of, knew of this information. So I wanted to bring it to people. And I knew that the nutrition world and everything that touches on food and health was peppered with this, this underlying message of like, you know, if you’re not healthy and feeling amazing, if you don’t have the perfect body, like it’s kind of your fault, like figure it out. And so I was really upset at this stage because. It’s just not helpful, you know? And I wanted to bring this information to people in a way that was really easy for them to grasp and understand and incorporate into their lives. So I worked Jameela for the past four years on Instagram. I have read all the DMS, all the comments. I have updated my messaging. I have learned which words to use, how to not sugar certain groups of people, how to be as inclusive as possible. And the work that you see today is really the the crystallization of just listening to what people wanted. And that’s why we’re here today. And I sure do glucose science in a very friendly way that doesn’t bring any shame, that doesn’t bring any guilt. And that’s why it works and that’s why it’s healing people. So it’s really been the joint efforts between me and then just the people telling me what they wanted. 

Jameela [00:04:57] Oh, same. I mean, everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from the I Weigh community. 

Jessie [00:05:02] Yeah. 

Jameela [00:05:02] I would say. And so I think that’s why our work is quite aligned. And I’m annoyed, actually, that it took us so long to find each other. I think having been anorexic for so much of my life, you know, for 20 years I have been so afraid to go near the subject, not just publicly, but also even privately. I haven’t wanted to look into it because I’m so afraid of restrictive eating of any kind, because it’s such a slippery slope for me and it’s a slippery slope for so many people. And, you know, as I said earlier, when you watch the YouTube videos, when you watch the Instagrams about any subject like this, when you’re trying to investigate how you can just improve your physical health with food, because, you know, I come from you know, I’m Asian and we believe that food is incredibly healing. It’s a big part of our culture, but it’s just so dangerous. And what you have done is you have found a way for people to understand glucose. You’ve taken it from academia, you’ve made it much more, you know, for the people like me who left school at 16, who doesn’t understand shit about these like these medical journals that have extremely small writings with numbers and letters that don’t make any sense to me. You have made it so easily digestible with these excellent, really helpful graphics. And most importantly, you do not advocate for any kind of restrictive eating. You are not trying to put anyone on a diet. You are trying to create a new outlook in its totality on how we look at food, our timings of food, the order in which we eat food in order to get the best possible outcome for our inside. And you’re not focusing on the outside. 

Jessie [00:06:33] Yes. 

Jameela [00:06:33] And before I get into that, I would just love to talk about this revolutionary thing you did in that when your book was first published, Glucose Revolution, you were encouraged to put ‘lose weight’ on the cover, and it’s been a fight. 

Jessie [00:06:46] Oh yeah. So when I was writing my first book, you know, I had I would say, quote unquote, only like 20,000 followers. I was kind of still a nobody. My publishers had no idea whether this book was going to be a hit or not. And so at the beginning, I wanted to call it Glucose Revolution or How to Reconnect with Our Body. And I got pushback from the marketing teams of the publishing houses. And, you know, it’s fair, like they want to sell books and they were like, Hey, listen, we should put lose weight on the cover. Even though inside the book I don’t talk about weight loss as an objective ever. And I was kind of, you know, forced into it. I didn’t have much say. And so it was a bit saddening to me. And today when I see the first editions that still say lose weight on the cover, I kind of cringe. I’m like, Oh, but anyway, after the success of the book, I was able to take it off. I was like, Hey guys, listen, it’s been big enough now I want to remove lose weight from there. It’s not about weight loss. And so I was able to win that fight, but I was confronted with the fact that anything that says lose weight sells because that’s still an objective that a lot of people think is super important to their lives, you know, their mind controlled into thinking, if I lose weight, that will be success. So I’m happy I was able to free myself and my work from that. But, you know, it was it was tough to get there. 

Jameela [00:08:00] I think it’s amazing. And I wish more people had your ethics. But there’s a lot of money to be made in the weight loss industry, and it would have been very easy for you to go and try and take on and corner that market, especially as a slim, beautiful woman yourself. And I’m incredibly grateful to you and friends of mine at all sizes who are struggling with all kinds of different health ailments, which they’ve now realized a lot of are linked so much more heavily than I could ever have imagined to glucose follow your work and… and find used to be a safe space. I mean I so I’ll briefly get into this. I don’t love talking about my health publicly, but I think it is relevant. So in about September, I got incredibly sick and like my whole body just crashed and I had my blood taken by an endocrinologist who told me that everything was out of sync. My hormones, my my glucose levels, my cortisol levels, My, my insulin was on the cusp of pre-diabetes, like I was a fucking mess. And when she asked me to detail my diet to her, her visible horror as to my diet made me realize that perhaps there are things about my lifestyle that I am. I’m getting wrong and it’s not how much I’m eating, it’s just what I’m eating, and when. I have, I think because I had starved myself for so long, when I came out of that, I just came into a sort of like, Fuck it bucket diet of just like, I’m never going to restrict anything. I’m going to eat everything I want. I’m going to eat cake for breakfast and then I’m going to eat more cake at 11 a.m.. And then at 12 we’re going to have some pizza from last night. And then so I’ve just been like sort of not in a sort of binge-ing way, just in a sort of completely absolving myself of the prison of calories and carbs. And. And nutritional fucking information. And what I did is because I didn’t know anything about balancing balancing out carbs with proteins or fats or any of this stuff because we’re not educated. And also, I think it’s valid to bring up the fact that I was raised with no money. You know, I came up in a in a family that had no money. And so the foods that were affordable to us are just frozen carbohydrates and sugars and things that give you quick energy. We are not educated about food. Even if we were, we can’t afford the kind of foods that keep us feeling level. And so what this sugar habit of mine was doing was creating acne, which is fine, but also a sign that my gut or something is a working something. 

Jessie [00:10:40] Little message from the inside of your body, perhaps. Yeah.

Jameela [00:10:42] Yeah. Eczema and psoriasis and all of these different things, none of which anyone had ever told me were linked to glucose. And because I was slim, I just didn’t presume that I had any health issues going on. 

Jessie [00:10:54] You didn’t presume you could ever get pre-diabetes or anything related to that kind of stuff? 

Jameela [00:10:58] Yeah, because this is the this is the messaging. And I mean, I have been saying for years I’m unhealthier than most of my fat friends, but I could never have understood quite the depth as to which I was poisoning myself. And it’s not about just giving up all sugar forever. And that’s what I want to get into with you today. But I just felt like it was necessary for me to talk about this because as a former anorexic and as someone who’s now crashed their system with diet like this is technically my fault. Everything that’s happened, it’s my doing. Anyway. I now feel like there is hope as to how I’m going to go forward in an educated way about glucose. And that’s what I want to share with everyone today via your work. Sorry, that was very long winded. 

Jessie [00:11:42] No, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing. And it’s a beautiful place you’re in, you know, learning and discovering all this stuff and. That’s really where I want to educate people because. You might have heard in the past that like, oh, sugar is bad sugar, you should just cut of all the carbs all the sugars and stuff. My philosophy is, okay, listen, sugar. It’s just not good for the body. Okay. But sugar gives us pleasure. And I fucking love sugar. And I’m going to keep eating sugar for the rest of my life. And sugar is all around us. It’s a part of social events at my birthday and on chocolate cake. Like sometimes on a Sunday morning. I want ice cream for breakfast. 

Jameela [00:12:16] Yeah I’m in America where you have to buy sugar free bread. 

Jessie [00:12:20] Yeah. 

Jameela [00:12:20] Because they pump the sugar in food that you don’t even know it’s in. 

Jessie [00:12:23] Yes, that’s wild. So sugar is always going to be a part of our lives. And I want people to know these really simple tips and tools that will allow them to still have all the pleasure, but with fewer of the consequences on their physical and mental health. It’s really an empowering thing I’m trying to do. I’m trying to teach people about how glucose and other molecules interact with the inside of your body, what happens inside of your body when you eat different foods. And then I’m teaching people, you know, science based, very simple hacks like brush your teeth, drink water. You know, that’s the level I feel like we’re operating at. These hacks that hopefully will follow people for life, that will allow them to reduce all the symptoms they might be feeling, but still eat everything they want. And that’s why it’s so powerful, because it’s not restrictive. You don’t have to cut out anything. 

Jameela [00:13:11] So first of all, let’s break down glucose. How would you explain glucose to people? 

Jessie [00:13:15] Ooh, okay. So glucose is your body’s favorite source of energy. So every single cell in your body uses glucose for energy. So right now, you know, my mouth cells are using glucose to talk to you, and my hand cells are using glucose to hold this pen. My heart cells are using glucose to pump blood like we need a lot of glucose. And the first place that we get glucose and the easiest way we get it to our body is by eating foods, specifically by eating starchy foods like bread, pasta, rice, etc. and sweet foods. So anything that tastes sweet from, you know, a chocolate ice cream to a strawberry. 

Jameela [00:13:53] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:13:54] And so since we need glucose for energy, you might think if I want a lot of energy, I should just eat a lot of starchy and sweet foods. And that’s going to give my body the most energy. 

Jameela [00:14:05] Yup, that’s me. 

Jessie [00:14:05] And that’s kind of where that’s. Yeah. And that’s kind of where the logic breaks down. It’s a bit like if I were to give you one of my plants, Jameela, because I was going on vacation, I was like, Please take care of this plant. You would know to give the plant a little bit of water every day, right? 

Jameela [00:14:19] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:14:19] To keep it alive. But if you start giving that plant too much water, even though the plant does need water, too much water is going to drown it. And I’m going to come back from vacation. My plant will be dead and I’ll be really upset at you. But the body is the same. Some glucose is very important, but too much and problems start happening. And the problems range from, you know, as I mentioned, in symptoms of inflammation to maybe mental health disturbances to your body on the inside, just having a harder time making energy and just functioning and then you might get some chronic diseases. So that’s kind of the basics of glucose. 

Jameela [00:14:54] Okay. And talk to me about what Glycation is. 

Jessie [00:14:57] Okay. So all the glucose that’s arriving into your system, it rushes to your cells and it rushes to these little things called your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cell. And the mitochondria are responsible for turning the glucose into energy. That’s their job. The problem is when too much glucose arrives towards them during a glucose spike, the mitochondria are like, girl, I cannot deal too much glucose. I need to, I just need to take a break timeout. And so you mitochondria essentially shut down from the stress of too much glucose coming too quickly their way and as they shut down one they increase inflammation in your body and two, they decrease your body’s ability to make energy. So you get tired, you get chronic fatigue. Even though you’re eating all this glucose on the inside, the system breaks down and so you feel crappy. And with every glucose spike. There’s a really cool mechanism that your body has to try to reduce this glucose spike. It sends out insulin from your pancreas. Insulin’s job is to take the extra glucose and store it away in different compartments in your body, in your fat cells, in your liver cells, and in your muscle cells. And so insulin is great because it reduces these spikes. But over time, when there’s too much insulin in your body, it can’t do its job properly anymore. And that’s called insulin resistance. And another name for that is type two diabetes. 

Jameela [00:16:23] And insulin resistance. We are hearing more and more is a big cause of why some people struggle to stop gaining weight or they struggle to lose weight. And it’s heavily linked to PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which causes a whole host of other health issues. But something that you and I were talking about over the phone, something that really frustrates me is that for years, maybe even decades now, we have known that insulin resistance is not caused by excess fat. And this is a. 

Jessie [00:16:54] Yeah. 

Jameela [00:16:55] Huge level of misinformation that keeps gets. I mean, I’ve seen articles published in the last month that still say that. And I mean, even if you type in insulin resistance, it comes up immediately that, you know, losing weight will help with insulin resistance. And so it’s so important that we understand the actual mechanism of this and how and why that is misinformation, because inherently in that is shaming and it’s also medical gaslighting almost, right? Because you’re telling someone lose weight and you’ll get rid of your insulin resistance, you’re insulin resistance is the thing that stopping you from losing weight if that’s something that you want to do. 

Jessie [00:17:28] And also saying just lose weight is a very easy thing to hide behind when you’re a big food company and you’re making, you know, crappy food that makes people sick, you’re just like, just eat less and exercise more. Just lose weight. It’s your fault you have this condition. And they completely failed to mention that actually what’s inside the food. So all this glucose, all this sugar that’s triggering the insulin might actually be the cause of the problem, not how much you’re eating or how much fat you have. What’s interesting is that you can be very slim and have very little body fat and still have insulin resistance. So it’s not a it’s not like insulin resistance is caused by being too fat. Actually putting on fat is your body’s way of protecting you against too much glucose. So people who are genetically unable to put on a lot of fat to grow the number and the size of their fat cells, develop type two diabetes faster because they don’t have that protection mechanism. So telling somebody just lose weight to fix the issue is completely misguided. What we should really be telling people as, Hey, you have insulin resistance, which means you have too much insulin in your body. Hey, guess what? To help this, to reverse this, let’s teach you how to reduce the amount of insulin in your body by using the glucose hacks that I share, for example. Then if you lose body fat or if you don’t is completely irrelevant. It’s like it’s not even in the same. Like it’s it’s just shocking to me. And yes, of course, it’s very frustrating to see this. But I’m also really hopeful that people are starting to understand and things are starting to change. You know, it takes a long time for new information to make it across the medical community. Doctors don’t have time to stay up to date on the latest science, like they have super busy, full time jobs. Slowly, guidelines change, but it takes a long time. So we need to be fighting the fight and teaching people. It’s not about the weight. It’s not your fault. There’s no guilt, there’s no shaming here. We’re just going to teach you how to eat so you can solve this yourself, but you don’t have to starve yourself or exercise. That’s probably not going to help. 

Jameela [00:19:48] And now we have people, you know, famous people and huge companies pushing diabetes medication, medication to help people with diabetes, rather, on to other people in order to help them lose weight at any cost, regardless of the horrific side effects, none of which are necessarily the cure to what it is that you are suffering with all the ailments that you are suffering with. I mean, I can’t believe the things that glucose, I guess. A lack of glucose management is the way that I would put it. I can’t believe the host of things that they’ve caused to my body, like my inflammation issues. And I would love for you considering this as a mental health podcast to explain the impact that glucose can have on your mental health. 

Jessie [00:20:34] Yeah, so in your brain there are many cells called neurons, and these neurons also use glucose for energy. And actually your brain uses a lot of energy, it needs a lot of glucose. But every single cell in your brain also have these tiny little mitochondria. And these mitochondria also become overwhelmed when there’s a glucose spike and when there’s a problem in your brain, you know, your brain doesn’t have sensory nerves, so your brain can’t alert you with pain. But what happens is you start developing these disturbances, whether it’s brain fog, because the information between your neurons cannot go as quickly as before because of potentially this inflammation caused by glucose spike, whether it’s, you know, increasing symptoms of depression or anxiety, whether it’s contributing to the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, like your brain really feels these spikes like every other cell in your body. And for me, Jameela, the reason I got into this in the first place is because my mental health was just in the toilet. And I discovered on myself, I was like, Oh my God, when I’m having these glucose spikes, my mental health is so much worse. I had a lot of issues with dissociation, like feeling like I’m leaving my body and shit like like that. 

Jameela [00:21:43] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:21:45] I was able to pinpoint that my glucose spikes were triggering these events like glucose spikes from eating food in an unbalanced, unfriendly glucose way was creating these episodes that I had been suffering for for like a decade. And that I was clueless about where they came from. So for me, mental health is the reason I got into this. And I think for a lot of people just feeling better, feeling happier, have steadier mood, decreasing symptoms they may be feeling is a very good reason to learn about glucose doesn’t have to be necessarily about physical health, or it can be completely to help your brain, and it really helps tremendously. And one last thing I will say that is fascinating is that scientists have discovered that there’s a place in your brain that is in charge of cravings, is literally a craving center in your brain. And when you’re eating in a way that creates a glucose rollercoaster. So spike drops, spike drops spike drop that activates the craving center in your brain and tells you, Oh my God, I need to eat more sweet stuff. 

Jameela [00:22:44] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:22:45] And so a lot of people come to me, and they’re like, Oh, I have these cravings. I don’t have enough willpower. Like, I’m so bad for giving in to these cravings, and I just want to tell them, No, these cravings are not your fault. They’re just your body’s reaction to this glucose rollercoaster you’re on. It’s not about trying to use all your willpower to, you know, suppress them. It’s not about that. If you look at the underlying issue and you reduce your glucose spikes, your cravings will naturally dissipate. And that’s such an empowering place to be because you can go from feeling addicted to sugar controlled by sugar, to a place where you decide when you eat sugar and when you do eat it, it’s for pleasure. It’s not because you’re feeling controlled by these urges. 

Jameela [00:23:23] Yeah, And I mean, I ended up on a sort of hell loop for years now where when I do feel like my mental health takes a bit of a plummet, when I do feel sort of brain fog and down and a lack of energy which I can now link back to glucose and I’ll explain that in a minute. I would then do what a lot of people do, which is go for a comfort food. And my comfort food has always been carbs and sugar because it’s not just sugar. When I would think of glucose, often we think of sugar. This can also be like any carbohydrate that isn’t broken down. And so I’m a big, you know, pizza girl. And so my first thought, my thumbs almost like automatically start searching Ubereats the second I start to feel down 

Jessie [00:24:05] Me too. 

Jameela [00:24:05] to fill myself with something that’s like instant gratification. And again, you found a way that I could still do that if I want. 

Jessie [00:24:12] Yes. 

Jameela [00:24:12] But it’s but I’ve been in this like, feedback loop, but then I’ve just been making it worse, making it worse, eating more sugar to cheer myself up, making it worse, making it worse. And until my sort of blood really crashed, you know, until my systems all crashed, I had no idea. And so because I would start the morning with, like chocolate or biscuits or cake with coffee with oat milk in it, and no water beforehand, no protein whatsoever. Within maybe 6 hours of me starting my sort of sugar and carbohydrate onslaught, I was just up and down, up and down. My mood was up and down. I was really grumpy by about 4 p.m. and sleeping really badly. And I say this in the kind of past tense because just in the last month I’ve been using your hacks to still be able to enjoy my Christmas period with lots of delicious Christmas foods, but without sending myself into a glucose spin. And it has changed my entire life like it has changed my sleep. My my skin has cleared up in a way that, like I say, I you know, I’m I have no problem with the way that my skin looks. But I do think that it is a big it’s a big indicator sometimes of your internal health. And so that’s a way that I can immediately see it. My eczema is better, my mood is more stable. I wake up in the morning and I don’t really need a coffee. I still have a coffee because it’s yummy. I have swapped to motherfucking unsweetened almond milk for a while. For now I’m and. And rather than me to say what I’ve used of yours, I would love for you to break down some of the hacks that you have for all of us. All of which I have adopted religiously. But I just want everyone to know that in the last month my body shape hasn’t changed. But my brain and my stability and the swelling on my ankles, which is a huge problem I have, has has gone away. And so so talk people through what they can do in order to be able to literally have their cake and eat it, too. 

Jessie [00:26:19] First of all, congrats. I’m so happy for you. And it’s such an honor to be able to help you in this small way that I have. Anyway, so guys, listen up. I’m going to teach you these hacks that are going to allow you to bring back balance in your body have fewer cravings so that when you do want the comfort food, for me, the comfort food is like spaghetti with a shit ton and parmesan on top. And then, like anything chocolate, you’ll be able to eat all the comfort food you want without, and Jameela you just said, throwing your body into spin where it becomes this like uncontrollable rollercoaster. So first things first breakfast. If your breakfast creates a glucose spike, you are going to start a glucose rollercoaster for the rest of the day. You’re going to have cravings every couple of hours. You’re going to be hungry every couple of hours and your energy is going to be up and down and up and down all day. So the first thing you want to do is make sure you’re having a savory breakfast. Savory as opposed to sweet breakfast. So breakfast is really the only time where I really urge you to not have any sugar. It’s the only time I will put 

Jameela [00:27:20] So hard. 

Jessie [00:27:20] any little box, any little restriction, because it changes truly your entire day. So the savory breakfast is built around protein. It doesn’t have to be like raw eggs. You know, you can have like leftover whatever, tofu, chicken, some salmon, a piece of cheese, some nut butter, of course, some eggs and a big egg girl. And then you want to have a little bit of fat and fiber in there, and you just want to eat mostly protein for breakfast. And if you want for taste, you can add some carbs, like some bread or stuff like that or some whole fruit. If you do this and I have a bunch of recipes in my book, you will set your glucose up for the entire day. And I also want to dispel the myth, because a lot of us think and I’ve been told actually, that in order to have energy for the whole day, you need to eat sugar in the morning. It’s really not true. Sugar gives you pleasure, so it gives you dopamine in your brain. And so you kind of feel for a second like you’re waking up and you’re perked up. You’re like, oh, I’m ready to take on the day. But actually, that’s not energy. That’s dopamine. On the inside, sugar for breakfast is harming your body’s ability to make energy as I explain with the mitochondria thing. So that’s an important one. Savory breakfast. And if you’re used to eating, for example, cake for breakfast, and it’s really hard for you to stop doing that, what you can do is have like a breakfast dessert. So just start with some protein first and then have the sweet thing you’re used to having. And just by doing that, you’re already going to help make a very big difference in how your day is going to go. So that’s, I would say, the hardest hack, but it’s also important so. 

Jameela [00:28:48] Iit was really hard for the first week I was cursing your fucking name out in my house, for the first week I was pissed because I ingredients I cannot stand savory in the morning. And so, you know, plain Greek yogurt is how I started. Like, sort of like a bit of strawberries or like a fibrous berry dipped in the plain and I was like, This could be strawberries and cream. This could be just imagine strawberries and cream. But I kind of had to slowly work my way out. But what was amazing is and I’ve always been told this would happen and I always thought it was fucking bullshit is that once you stop eating sugar in an unregulated way and you start to kind of balance out your glucose levels, you stop with the cravings. Because I’ve my whole life, never, ever for 36 years been able to eat a savory food without finishing it with something sweet. 

Jessie [00:29:40] Wow. 

Jameela [00:29:41] And even when I had anorexia, I would choose to not eat any savory foods or vegetables. I would instead just live on like a packet of Haribo or something, you know, just so I had constant little spikes of sugar. And so I’ve never been off that wheel. And and it is it is possible after like a week or two to kind of get past that initial like almost addiction. 

Jessie [00:30:05] Yeah, absolutely. And once people go to the savory breakfast, they rarely go back because you just realize how much better you feel for the rest of the day. And so another hack is if you’re going to eat sugar, which is fine, I eat sugar. I dessert all the time. I love sugar. The best time to eat the sugar is as dessert after lunch or after dinner. So if it’s hard for you to, you know, no longer have the sweet thing you’re having in the morning, just save it for dessert after your lunch or after your dinner. Because when you have sugar, after a meal, there’s already all this stuff in digestive system. And so it kind of slows down how quickly the glucose from that sweet thing is going to make it into your bloodstream. And that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to slow down how quickly glucose is arriving in your system so that you don’t create a glucose spike. That’s really the core thing we’re trying to do here. 

Jameela [00:30:53] Because the spike causes the insulin rise and then if the insulin rise 

Jessie [00:30:56] Exactly. 

Jameela [00:30:56] keeps happening too often, then it starts to kind of flatline. 

Jessie [00:30:59] Exactly. And that’s how insulin resistance is created. So there’s other things that come into play as well, like if you eat like very unhealthy fats from fast food and things like that, it can also contribute. But the core of the issue here is the glucose spikes creating the insulin release and then just having too much insulin in your body that [inaudible] resistance. It’s a bit like when you first start drinking coffee, you can have just one cup of coffee and you’re like really fucking awake. And then after years of drinking coffee, maybe you need two cups to have the same effect. You’re becoming slowly resistant to caffeine, and your body in the same way becomes slowly resistant to insulin because there’s been so much pumping out and that’s insulin resistance. 

Jameela [00:31:40] And stress can also have an impact on your incident output, right? So these things also kind of come into contact. 

Jessie [00:31:47] Absolutely. There’s there’s lots of stuff that has an impact on your glucose. I mean, like stress, time of the month, menstruation, genetics, gut microbiome. But the hacks really will take you 80% of the way there and they work for everybody. So then if you want to kind of optimize the last 20%, that’s fine. But food is really the biggest contributor to this. 

Jameela [00:32:07] 100%. One of your other hacks is to drink, I mean, I use apple cider vinegar, but it can be any kind of vinegar. I put it in water with lemon now first thing in the morning, 20 minutes before I even have my coffee. And now if I’m going to have any kind of high carbohydrate meal, I make sure 20 minutes, half an hour beforehand. I have all the men in my house now from because they’ve all watched my energy and my mood go up and I just feel so much better and I’m much more outgoing. It’s almost like I can see the color and everything again. So they’ve now religiously we’re all sitting there like just going through fucking liters of apple cider vinegar. I would recommend drinking it with a straw because it can fuck up your teeth. But talk to me about how that works and why it works. 

Jessie [00:32:49] Absolutely. It’s interesting because apple cider vinegar and just vinegar in general, you know, it’s been used for centuries in lots of different contexts and cultures, and now we’re just understanding why it’s been used as this health thing for so long. So apple cider vinegar has a molecule in it called acetic acid. Acetic acid is fabulous. We love her. She does some pretty cool stuff. So if you have a tablespoon of vinegar, as you said, like 20 minutes before a meal, specifically before a meal that’s high in glucose, the acetic acid in the vinegar is going to reduce the glucose spike by up to 30%. And this is how it works. Acetic acid does two things. Number one, it slows down in your stomach how quickly starches and sugars get broken down into glucose. So it’s slowing down how quickly glucose can arrive into your system. And then second acetic acid goes into your muscles and it tells your muscles to soak up extra glucose like more glucose then they usually would and these two things together, reduce the glucose spike of your meal. So you can still eat the exact same thing that you’re used to eating, but if you do this before the meal, you’re going to reduce the spikes. So you’re going to reduce the addiction cycle, you’re going to reduce cravings, you’re going to reduce insulin release, you’re going to reduce inflammation. Like all this stuff that aging that I mentioned, that’s another super simple hack. 

Jameela [00:34:12] Yeah, I, I think when it comes to aging, I’m, I’m never worried about the outside but I’m definitely starting to now that I’m learning more about this stuff, really think about my brain like how my brain is aging. Like I’m all I’m I’m all into the skin wrinkles like I’m into, I’m into the folds in the creases because I think they make it look like you’ve lived. But I’m not I’m not okay with not doing my best to elongate my brain capacity as much as possible. 

Jessie [00:34:43] And, you know, actually, Alzheimer’s has been called type three diabetes because actually. 

Jameela [00:34:48] What? 

Jessie [00:34:48] Yeah. Girl. So scientists are discovering that what happens in your brain when you have Alzheimer’s is actually insulin resistance of the brain. And so it’s becoming there’s more and more evidence that’s showing that actually your health in terms of glucose and insulin is a really good predictor of whether you’re going to get Alzheimer’s in the future. So that’s a pretty cool, interesting thing to note. Just saying, if you want to keep your brain healthy, the hacks are going to help you. It’s very important. They’re going to put all the chances on your side to keep your brain as young and healthy as possible for as long as possible. 

Jameela [00:35:23] And talk to me about the link to brain fog, as we call it. We’ve given it this really like, cute colloquial name that makes it sound not at all scary, whereas brain fog means something. Actually a little bit worrying is happening in your head. Correct? 

Jessie [00:35:39] So we’re starting to discover more and more about this. What scientists believe now is that brain fog is actually your neurons not being able to communicate very efficiently any more because in your brain, all the information goes through these electrical impulses between your neurons. Right. And your brain lights up when you’re having a thought and when you’re doing anything. And so the speed at which the signals go between your cells is very important to the health of your brain, to how well you’re able to think and be creative. And so brain fog seems to be that communication slowing down between your neurons. And that’s what makes us feel like I can’t really think I can’t really remember anything, you know ugh. And also, it’s very linked to inflammation. So inflammation in the brain is thought to cause brain fog. All of these things have this underlying, you know, cause of glucose spikes and insulin happening. So, I mean, there’s a lot of other stuff. You know, glucose is just a part of what’s important for your brain health, but it’s becoming more and more clear that it has a huge impact. 

Jameela [00:36:40] And this is one of the things I’m the most fascinated by. I mean, my my boyfriend and my roommates, like, have all commented in the last few years, especially during the pandemic, where I feel like I just went like I started a sort of pizza tour at the beginning of the pandemic where I wanted to try all of the best pizzas, 

Jessie [00:36:57] Was the world? 

Jameela [00:36:57] the best that I could access. I’m not going to give them free advertising. No, I’m joking. No, I’m a sour I’m a sour dough girl, you know? And so that’s my favorite thing. And because I’m gluten free, I’m slightly more hindered than other people. But anyway, my point being is that I went on a kind of a really joyous and fun carb fest like over the whole of the last few years, especially during lockdown as when it started, and everyone’s noticed that my memory has declined really fast and all of the people who live with me have always known me as someone who has a particularly sharp and good memory. And it has been in a swift decline in the last like five or six years. And I was like, What was happening? Cause I’m only in my thirties like this. This shouldn’t be this bad. Like I’m not I don’t have baby brain, you know, like I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but it kind of felt similar to that. And in the last month, again, I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to evangelize too much, but it has been so noticeable with work. I’m more organized, I’m more on it, I feel sharper. My memory is coming back and I can I can I’m not feeling this kind of like heavy, fuzzy feeling that almost feels like it’s impacting my eyesight. It’s so strong sometimes, you know what I mean? 

Jessie [00:38:14] Yeah totally. 

Jameela [00:38:15] And I think that’s what brain fog feels like for me. Just this, like, weighty, unclear feeling. We feel like you’re it feels like your body isn’t your own. 

Jessie [00:38:24] [inaudible] it’s all like dirtying your brain, it’s all like uuuh what’s going on. 

Jameela [00:38:24] Yeah. And sometimes the only thing I think is kind of like I almost was doing, like, because I didn’t drink, but I would do sugar hair of the dog. Where if I woke up with brain fog, I would the following morning have a coffee full of sugar and then a cake. And then for about 2 hours I would feel like the brain fog was gone. Dopamine boom. I was straight back in. And dopamine is a really interesting one because I didn’t know the damage I was doing to dopamine. Can we talk about that? 

Jessie [00:38:51] Well, what do you mean by the damage you were doing to dopamine? 

Jameela [00:38:53] So what I mean is that my my dopamine receptors, right there is a link to us using sugar to feel better. And the impact that then has on our dopamine was first of all, what is dopamine? 

Jessie [00:39:05] Okay, so dopamine is a neurotransmitter. So it’s a little thing in your brain. It’s a chemical in your brain that makes you feel pleasure. So it’s the same thing that gets released when you have sex, when you gamble, when you do like drugs, it’s all the same stuff. And sugar releases dopamine in your brain. And that’s why sugar makes us feel good. That’s why when you eat something sweet you’re like, Oh, that’s your mouse. And I feel like oh marshmallowy and I’m excited and I feel awake. That’s dopamine. That’s not energy. A lot of people confuse that for energy. So that’s a really key thing. Well, listen, dopamine is addictive. Like when they do studies and they put mice in a situation where they can activate their dopamine receptors over and over and over and over again. The mice forget to sleep and eat and they just do this until, you know, basically they die and have to stop the experiments often because the mice would just die and keep activating the dopamine receptors. So it’s very addictive. So over time, we become addicted to this food, bringing us pleasure. And I think it plays all sorts of stuff on our mental health, on our psychology and like, you know, I’m not a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that would have a damaging effect not only on the addiction, but also you become a bit numb to it after a while. 

Jameela [00:40:13] Well, a lot of my friends have had their medications changed for mental health. And I will get a an actual psychiatrist on to talk about this another time. But. There have been increasing studies that show that there isn’t necessarily a link between serotonin deficit and depression. And a lot of my friends have been moved over onto drugs that that actually impact their dopamine receptors rather than serotonin. And I’ve seen tremendous results in some of my friends. Obviously, it’s a case by case basis. Never listen to a celebrity about drugs ever, including me. But it is a fascinating new it just feels like the information is updating so fast, so few people have access to it because there’s so much money to be made from not telling us anything and making us take injections or drink fucking drinks or shit our pants in the name of a multi multibillion dollar weight loss industry. And weight loss is the least relevant part of any of this. And I can say that, like I said, as a slim person whose body is breaking down, like breaking apart, my doctor was properly like, You have to get your shit together now because apparently this window of, you know, because I’m in my thirties now and so I was like, shit is it too late? Have I just burned myself out too much? No, apparently these sorts of like I have like a vital 15 years ahead of me in which I can turn all of this shit around to be a really healthy hopefully I get to be an old lady. 

Jessie [00:41:36] And even if you’re 60, you know, you can really turn this shit around. A lot of the symptoms of glucose spikes and do the situation that glucose spikes happen in your body if you use the hacks and we should go into a few more. But if you use the hacks, you can literally in a couple of hours change the biochemistry of your body and change what’s going on. So even if you feel like, Oh, I’m too old to change, no, no, no, the hacks can help you in a matter of days, really transform some things. If you have had, you know, type two diabetes for 30 years, probably your pancreas has some cells that are never going to come back. But, you know, other than that, you can probably reverse a lot of stuff that’s going on. Studies even show that people who have dementia are able to reverse some of their symptoms and go back to work when they change their diet. So there’s a lot of hope. And actually two days ago I was at the doctor’s office and on the wall it said, you know, like information about different conditions and type two diabetes, there is no cure, but we can manage it with medication. I was like, no, fuck no. Like, you can do stuff about it. And people need to learn that by changing some small things about how they eat, they can truly make a very big difference in their health. Of course, medication is really helpful. If you’re on medication, talk to your doctor about doing the hacks, etc.. But. We need to give power back to people like it upset me so much to see these things. 

Jameela [00:42:53] Yeah. 

Jessie [00:42:53] It’s not it’s not drug or nothing. It’s like, No, there’s so much stuff you can do, but we have to teach you these things. But there’s no money to be made off of glucose hacks. 

Jameela [00:43:02] Yeah, we may be need to do them in tandem. I think no one’s saying come off your medication. We’re just saying that, like, do all of the things. Okay, So like, let’s get back to the hacks for a second. I also do want to add before we go into them that one of the other fascinating things I learned about glucose in my body anyway, is that I you know, I, I don’t eat a lot of dangerous fatty foods because I have really high cholesterol and heart issues in my family. And so I’ve always been very conscious of that. I’ve even tried going completely plant based for a while to try and get it down. I have never managed to get my cholesterol down from like rock and roll like it is at rock and roll is off the fucking top. And to a point where. Doctors have been trying to get me on statins for years and I’ve always been like, No, I’m going to fucking crack this. I had no idea that motherfucking sugar doesn’t have to be fatty sugar. Just glucose can impact my cholesterol levels, which impacts my heart. 

Jessie [00:43:54] Oh yeah, no we’ve come a long way. 20 years ago we thought if you want to get your cholesterol back into a healthy range, stop eating eggs. Now realize it’s not the fault of fucking eggs. In sugar swings, things that are sweets, glucose comes hand-in-hand with another molecule called fructose. Okay, so they’re like buddies and in a sweet food. Glucose and fructose are together. Fructose is a very specific beast. So fructose, when you have too much of it. 

Jameela [00:44:22] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:44:23] It turns into bad cholesterol in your body. And it also can create fatty liver disease. 

Jameela [00:44:29] Mm hmm. 

Jessie [00:44:30] That is very not well known. And we need to tell more people about it. Sugar is the cause or can be one of the causes of, you know, heart disease and problems like that. So when you reduce your glucose spikes, what’s cool is that you also naturally are going to reduce how much fructose you’re eating because again, fructose only exists hand-in-hand with glucose in sweet foods. And so that’s why so many people reach out to me. They’re like, Hey, did the hacks cause, you know, I wanted to get my period back. And now I realize my cholesterol is in the healthy range again and I have good cholesterol in the good range and bad cholesterol is down. And my doctor’s like, What did you do? And they’re like food and doctors and not [inaudible]. Well some are, but a lot are not yet. So we have to tell people, you’re [inaudible]. Sugar is a very important thing to learn, to manage, to improve your heart health, to improve your cholesterol numbers. 

Jameela [00:45:21] So is that glucose spikes, that leads to the high cholesterol or is it just glucose in and of itself? 

Jessie [00:45:26] So it’s fructose. So glucose in and of itself is not going to lead to that bad cholesterol. It’s fructose, but fructose only exists in glucose containing foods that are sweet. So it’s one of the it’s one of the kind of the side effects of reducing the glucose spikes, is that it also reduces the fructose 

Jameela [00:45:43] Great. 

Jessie [00:45:43] in your body and in your in your diet. 

Jameela [00:45:45] Really, really fascinating. Yeah, it’s it’s been it’s been absolutely shocking to me. One other thing that’s changed and I will I swear I’m going to shut up about myself in a minute. But again, it’s just important for people to have a testimonial. Is that my the other reason I’ve gone to the doctor is that my periods were coming like every two weeks and I didn’t understand why. And I thought am I going into like really early menopause, like what the fuck is going on? And I had crazy PMS this year, which I’ve never ever had. I was always very smug about the fact that like my PMS most of my life anyway was really not that big a deal and suddenly my breasts were really hurting, really, really tender and I was swollen and I would get terrible water retention, really bad depression to the point where I would have to lock myself away in a room for like three days. Otherwise, you know, I was worried I might stab someone I live with. So it was really for their safety rather than my well-being. And I just became this like completely different person. Recently, and even that has fucking gone away. 

Jessie [00:46:47] Yeah. 

Jameela [00:46:47] Since I’ve changed since I’ve changed the, the glucose regulation. I have no PMS again. 

Jessie [00:46:54] Oh yeah. 

Jameela [00:46:55] And that is fucking fascinating to me. 

Jessie [00:46:58] There’s a huge link between glucose spikes and female hormones. Massive. So whether it’s PMS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, fibroids, difficult menopause like these all are linked to your hormonal system, and your hormonal system cannot function properly if your glucose is all over the place. It’s like it needs that. It needs glucose to be balanced in order to function properly. Not only that, but when there’s a lot of insulin in your body, which can happen when you have a lot of glucose spikes over time. A lot of insulin in the body tells your ovaries to make more testosterone. And so testosterone is the male hormone. And when there’s too much testosterone in a female body, then you start developing, you know, typically male traits. So hair on your chin, you can start balding, you can get a lot of acne, your period can stop. All these things are extremely linked to your glucose and insulin levels. So if you have any of these hormonal issues that we just talked about, the first place to look is your glucose and to balance that. Oh, and I forgot to mention one key very important point I should have said this is at the beginning, but the vast majority of the population has these glucose spikes. It’s not just like 10% of us. It’s most of us, most of us who do not have diabetes still have these spikes. So it’s very relevant for all of us to learn these things, no matter what condition or symptom you’re suffering from, there’s a very high chance that it’s going to get better once you get your glucose spikes under control. 

Jameela [00:48:52] Okay, so let’s get back to the hack. So we’ve discussed a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. 

Jessie [00:48:57] We discussed breakfast. 

Jameela [00:48:59] Yeah. It doesn’t have to be apple cider vinegar, but I think I choose a 

Jessie [00:49:02] Any vinegar. 

Jameela [00:49:02] Yeah, I choose yeah. Vinegar. And before you eat a lot of carbs, but generally just vinegar, is we’re finding is a good thing and it’s good for you gut and everything.  

Jessie [00:49:11] Yeah. We talked about having sugar as dessert, not on an empty stomach. 

Jameela [00:49:14] Sugar as dessert. 

Jessie [00:49:15] And now we should talk about veggies fisrt. 

Jameela [00:49:17] Oh, you love veggies first. You are obsessed with veggies first. 

Jessie [00:49:21] I should make a little hat, veggies first. 

Jameela [00:49:23] Yeah. 

Jessie [00:49:24] Okay, so veggies first. This is another hack. So before your meals at the beginning of your meals have a starter that is veggie based. Okay, Try to make it make up like about 30% of your meal. Kind of. That’s ballpark. And this will significantly reduce the glucose spike of the meal you’re having after 

Jameela [00:49:43] Cos of fiber. 

Jessie [00:49:43] Yeah, girl. So in veggies there’s fiber. Again, another superwoman. We love fiber. When a fiber arrives in your stomach, then in your upper intestine before anything else, it does this really crazy cool thing. It deploys itself onto the walls of your intestine superwoman style, and it creates this mesh, this protective viscous mesh that is super good for you and super healthy. This viscous mesh is then going to reduce how quickly any glucose coming down through the rest of the meal is going to make it into your bloodstream. So reduce the glucose spike very, very, very powerful. Very, very, very important. And the veggies can be raw, cooked, they can be leftover from three days ago in your fridge, like they can be a side salad. You can order, I don’t know, some side green beans at the restaurant and have that before the rest of your meal. You can make whatever kind of veggie you want. This will have a massive impact on your glucose levels and it’s one of my favorite hacks. 

Jameela [00:50:39] And what’s hilarious. 

Jessie [00:50:41] Cos you have to add food. 

Jameela [00:50:41] Yeah, exactly. And one of it’s one that’s just it is I’m eating now more than I was before, which is great. And like, you know, my say, like I feel very like satiated and stuff, it hasn’t been any kind of decline in what I’m eating, just a shift of the order. But what’s fascinating is that these are not new things. You are not reinventing the wheel here. Like we we look back through cuisine, especially like European cuisine, in which it was very normal. As you you know, you and I were talking about it on the phone. It was very normal to have a salad before your meal as the starter, very normal to have crudités all these different things you see in Greek food, Italian food, French. Yeah. And so you, you had vinegar on your salads that you would have before that meal. And and another one that I want to bring up is the fact that you talk about just doing even 10 minutes of light exercise like a stroll or doing laundry or dancing around your living room. Talk about the impact that because that, again, is something very normal that we used to say. I grew up with people being like, shall we take an after dinner stroll? And I always thought that was something more to do with, you know, pooing. You know, it would get the food down there. I mean, 

Jessie [00:51:54] I’m sure it helps too. 

Jameela [00:51:54] yeah, I think I thought it would like you know, it would motivate the peristalsis in your bowel to, like, move down, squeezed out. But I never understood. But it does turn out from from your research. 

Jessie [00:52:06] Yeah. And all these things, you know, we’ve been doing these for so long, but now we understand how they work. And now we have I’m able to visually show, you know, by showing you the glucose data from my body how they work. And I think that’s what’s so motivating to people because they’re like, Oh, I get it, I see it now, I’m going to do it. So the walking thing, your muscles need glucose for energy. Every time your muscles contract, they use glucose to do so. And so we can just use this to our advantage, this information. The hack is after your meals within like an hour and a half after the end of your meal. Just use your muscles for 10 minutes. It can be walking, it can be dancing, it can be doing the dishes. It can be, I don’t know, lifting your baby up and down. It can be walking your dog. It can be doing a ten minute whatever YouTube dance video you want. You can even go to the gym and like, lift weights if you want. Totally. Fine. This will significantly reduce the glucose spike of your meal without you needing to change what you’re eating in the meal. Again, you know, it’s not about don’t eat this, don’t eat that. Change everything about how you’re eating, it’s about adding these hacks like gentle giants in your life that help you feel better, helps your body heal and thrive with very little effort. 

Jameela [00:53:16] It also just, you know, it’s a time before we realized we could monetize people’s bodies and we could monetize people’s diets. And there was something intuitive about salad first, crudité first, there was something intuitive about the after dinner stroll. There was something intuitive about having balanced meals that weren’t fads like keto or, you know, binges of carbs and cheap meals and all these different fucking scary things like we could just eat like a nice you know, like meat and potatoes and vegetables, and then you would have your dessert at the end of the meal. You would never think when I was growing up of having dessert on its own. 

Jessie [00:53:52] Or for breakfast. 

Jameela [00:53:52] Well, that’s what I heard, you know. Yeah. And so we we used to live a much more authentic and intuitive. Well, we talk about intuitive eating now, and I feel like that’s what we always used to do before there was a market in fucking with people’s hormones and bodies and mental health and body image. 

Jessie [00:54:12] And then selling you a drug that keeps you able to eat the shitty food while suppressing the symptoms. You know, it’s kind of like a wonderful dance of making people feel bad about their bodies, giving them food that’s going to make them feel worse under the guise of this is going to be good for you and going to help you lose weight or whatever. And then once you’re sick, it’s like don’t worry. Just keep eating all the stuff you’re eating, keep doing the extreme diets you’re doing. But now take these drugs to, you know, suppress any symptoms and any messages your body’s trying to give you. Like to me, symptoms are our bodies going like, Hey, there’s something going on underneath, like I need to have glucose spikes and sos sos. But often when we have these symptoms, we suppress them, we feel bad about them, we feel guilty, we feel like we have to ignore them. And that’s just your body trying to communicate. And that’s something that’s so important to me. I really want people to change the narrative instead of feeling upset that their body is failing them or whatever. Be like, Hey, body, like you’re telling me all these things, I mean this, and then try to fix what’s going on underneath so that you can help me live and you can carry me around and they can go after my dreams. And that’s my goal. 

Jameela [00:55:15] Yeah, it’s been a huge, like, mature maturity curve for me in my life to stop looking at like eczema, psoriasis or acne as my body trying to embarrass me, which sounds ridiculous. You know, once I changed the way that I looked at my body and became kinder to my body and treated it like my best friend, I started to look at those things as just like gentle notifications because really like the heart attack I could have from the high cholesterol that I was developing is your body like failing you, a bit have acne or psoriasis or whatever weight fluctuation is a very gentle, comparatively gentle way of your body going like, Hey, something’s out of balance. You need to go get your blood checked, make sure that your. 

Jessie [00:56:03] Your body knows. 

Jameela [00:56:04] Yeah, because I don’t want my brain or my heart or my liver to suffer. I’d way rather have an external notification. And as soon as you start to look at it as a notification, that feeling when you wake up and I get cystic acne, that’s what I was developing. I used to have it when I was a young teenager as well. And so like you wake up and it’s like painful, like swollen cyst that you can’t get rid of on your face. Like the feeling isn’t anger now I’m like, Oh, okay. Good to know. Noted. 

Jessie [00:56:32] Yeah I will get on this. 

Jameela [00:56:33] Noticed straight away. Yeah. 

Jessie [00:56:35] And it’s a completely different life and world when you’re able to get to that point. And, you know, learning about glucose like that healed me and my relationship to my body and it became my friend instead of becoming instead of being this black box that I didn’t understand. And I really I really hope that to the science and to this information, you know, millions of people can get to that place because it’s such a such a nicer place to live from. When your body is actually your friend and a partner instead of something you just feel. 

Jameela [00:57:04] Yeah. Yeah. It’s the goal is to reprogram especially so many women. Although I know a lot of gay men, especially now linked to it and just everyone is starting to suffer with this. But to. To really not just say it, but to walk the walk of feeding your body, you know, giving your body deliberate additions to create really wonderful balance, nourishing nutrition rather than denying your body. I haven’t felt like I’m denying myself anything. And I have noticed a lessening in the cravings, which has led to a lessening in my desire sometimes for certain things. But they’re still there because I still love something delicious. You know, I’m a sociable person. This is how you I was in like I socialize in my house. But, like, you know, this is a it’s a bonding thing. And I enjoy the culture of food. You’ve just completely reframed it for me. And my periods are coming at a normal pace again, thank God, because again, that was sending me into a fucking sugar hell loop where because my periods were coming so often, I had so little energy because I was bleeding a lot. And so then I was like, Oh God, I I need some more cake. 

Jessie [00:58:15] Your hormones are probably just wreaking havoc making you feel totally out of work. 

Jameela [00:58:20] Yeah, everything. All over the place. And I know that I’m on a long road because I really, like, burned myself alive. And so it’ll probably be, you know, six months until I really start to see, like, everything level out in my blood test results. But it’s amazing to know that once those blood test results come in, there’s no part of me that’s like, finally I can get back to the old way. I’ll just be like, Great, I’m healthy now and I’ve probably staved off a lot of things. Like, you know, we there are lots of serious diseases that are massively impacted by inflammation, and inflammation is massively impacted by glucose spikes. 

Jessie [00:58:56] Inflammation is like the cause of three in five like deaths in the world. Inflammation based diseases, whether it’s, you know, cancer or heart disease or problems in your brain, like everything is driven by inflammation. And when you get it down, things really change radically and you can get it down quite quickly, which is great. 

Jameela [00:59:14] Yeah, Yeah. That’s what I mean is that like in spite of everything, while it’s not going to happen overnight, you will see changes faster than you can imagine. And the whole changes over time. 

Jessie [00:59:26] Mmhmm especially on mood and energy. Yeah. Yeah. It’s short term and long term. 

Jameela [00:59:29] Yeah. It was the biggest one was me realizing that I had more. I’ve just become like, I don’t want to exercise because, you know, I have a like a bad at it. I’ve had a bad attitude to exercise in the past up until the last maybe like year where I associated with weight loss. And so then I just shunned it. But even after I had like reestablish my relationship with exercise, I suddenly stopped wanting to do it when I needed to most, which is around September, October, or I didn’t want to go walking anymore. I didn’t want to go outside. I didn’t want to go see nature I just felt fucking grumpy and too tired to move and my ankles are too swollen for me to move. And I was just like, Fuck this. And so again, bringing my body to a standstill like that increased the fact that I couldn’t control my glucose because of the impact that exercise has on your glucose spikes. And so let’s revise the hacks again. And by the way, just for anyone who’s wondering on Jesse’s Instagram, she does these fantastic graphs that are kind of two graphs side by side of, you know, the difference in your glucose spike if you just have an ice cream or if you have an ice cream followed by a ten minute walk. And it’s amazing how cohesive that information is. It had such a big impact on me just to be like, Oh, that makes so much sense. Adding a salad to your meal, boom, half the glucose spike. So let’s just revise all of our hacks. 

Jessie [01:00:49] For sure. And I will just add one thing that’s important is that the graphs that I have on my Glucose Goddess account, they’re from my body and I use them to illustrate scientific papers that exist. Right. So I’ll find a scientific paper that shows this really cool new hack that scientists discovered. And then I use my own data to illustrate it, but I’m not like drawing conclusions from my own data being like, Oh, I found this thing. So now everybody should do it. It’s really just there for for teaching and for visualizing the science that exists. So 

Jameela [01:01:16] yeah 

Jessie [01:01:16] let’s recap. Yeah, you get that. So let’s recap the hacks. So number one, savory breakfast. It’s hard, but it’s worth it, I promise. Go easy. Go slow. But it’ll change your day completely. Your energy, your cravings, how you feel. It’s really, really cool. And then you’ll never go back. Secondly, I think we talked about when you do have sugar, have it as dessert after a meal instead of on an empty stomach, so you can still have all the pleasure of the delicious chocolaty thing I’m a chocolate addict but any, any delicious, sweet thing you want to eat with less of an impact on your body. Then we spoke about vinegar. So one tablespoon of vinegar diluted in water or as a little sauce on your veggies, maybe before a meal helps reduce the glucose spike. And then we talked about the veggie starter. So beginning of your meals, 30% of your meal should be a vegetable based starter. It can be just a simple side salad or it can be some, you know, really complicated, beautiful roasted cauliflower with tahini, like whatever you want. And then lastly, we have the walking after the meals or any other light exercise that you prefer. If you want to go ice skating, that’s totally fine too. 

Jameela [01:02:21] But wait. Okay, so going back to the veggies, sometimes people don’t have the money for a starter, don’t have the time for a starter, is it still valuable to have veggies with your main or should you try and quickly smuggle them in first on your plate? Like how much of a difference does it make to eat your veggies before the rest of your meal or with the rest of your meal? 

Jessie [01:02:43] It makes quite a difference. However, it’s way better to have veggies with the rest of your meal instead of no veggies at all. So it’s a spectrum, you know. 

Jameela [01:02:51] Why do they affect it so much? Why is there such a difference? 

Jessie [01:02:56] Because when the fiber gets put in place in your digestive system before anything else, when the mesh has time to actually deploy itself and then protect you for the rest of the meal, it’s really just about the timing. It’s like you’re preparing your body and then you’re eating the rest. However, if you eat your veggies with the rest of your meals, for example, if you have a mixed like, I don’t know, a pasta dish with some chicken and some broccoli in there, even if you eat it all together, that mesh will still will still be able to create itself. It just will be more powerful if you created before the rest of the meal. Does that make sense?

Jameela [01:03:26] How much? Yes. How much before the rest of the meal Is it ideal to eat? 

Jessie [01:03:30] You don’t have to wait at all. Actually. It’s quite remarkable. So I just have it all in a sequence. So I have the veggies and then the rest without even waiting. 

Jameela [01:03:39] Great. Okay. That’s really good to know. Really interesting, because I just like some people just I just don’t have time sometimes to do a three course meal. 

Jessie [01:03:46] For sure. And if you don’t have time, if you don’t have money, if you don’t want to do anything complicated, buy a little bag of baby carrots. You know, buy like some cherry tomatoes. You can have raw veggies. I think that’ll be like the cheapest, easiest, no cooking, no assembling option for sure. Yeah. 

Jameela [01:04:05] Okay. And knowing that it should be 30% real gives you an idea of roughly how much of those veggies to eat on a case by case basis. 

Jessie [01:04:12] If you can only eat two baby carrots and that’s not 30% of your meal, those baby carrots are still way better than having no baby carrots at all. So always remember that even if you’re doing something that feels really, really small, like even if you’re grabbing like one green bean from your friend’s plate and having one green bean before the rest of your meal as a veggie starter because you don’t want to order a whole starter, that’s better than having nothing at all. So you can do tiny, tiny things if you can’t do 10 minutes of walking. Just like lift your calves like ten times at your desk after your meal. There’s lots of small things that you can do. It doesn’t have to be extreme. Start small and you’ll start seeing the effects. And then it’ll be easier and easier. 

Jameela [01:04:50] And this is just this is just so much of a healthier and more sustainable way to live than with these quick fix fad diets, where they’re encouraging you to give up all carbohydrates and to put yourself in deprivation. I don’t think it’s very good for you to not have carbohydrates in your diet. I think your brain needs carbohydrates. I feel fairly confident of that scientifically. These things exist in balance for a reason. It’s just about actually understanding that balance. And I think we are deliberately tipped out of balance so that we stay in this constant loop of of feeling low energy, high energy, or, you know, our weight or our skin or this, that and the other just in these constant like dips and and high is like it’s a it is a conspiracy against us. I genuinely, I genuinely believe that because there’s just too much money being made, there’s too much of a wealth gap. Women are too targeted with this misinformation. I can’t believe this shit isn’t taught in schools. My life would have been when I look back like I felt almost depressed when just a few months of doing this was had changed my life so much. I was like, my whole fuckin childhood would have been different if I’d known these things. But this information is just a. That was the eighties. But they even now, this misinformation is still being circulated. It still hasn’t changed on fucking Google. The first thing you see when you google insulin resistance. So much misinformation, so much shame. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no there’s no valuable rhetoric there that’s actually like, you can do this and this can be changed. Today you’re looking at like a six month to one year to three year like struggle and you’re seeing celebrities working out at 5 a.m. every single day and just doing all this stressful punitive shit. And actually these things within like five days I think of doing this, I noticed a change. Like it’s instant gratification. It does take a long time to perfect, but it’s instant reward as to how happy you become. 

Jessie [01:06:51] And you know, this whole thing about education, like I always I’m always wondering, like, how best am I going to get this message out? And I keep going back to the fact that the best thing we can do is just one person by one person teaches information and teaches science. And hopefully fingers crossed one day, you know, I’ll have the opportunity to like work on an extra class that can be in schools for kids to learn about this or add a lesson in med school about the glucose hacks and glucose and stuff. But the problem is so massive. However, what I’m really excited about is the fact that when you as an individual or a person starts applying these hacks, you feel the difference instantly. And so you understand that your body’s doing better and you just keep going and they become your friends for life. And so I think that’s how we need to approach it person by person, you know, one person by one person healing, learning this stuff, and the next generation will know more of it because then they’ll have kids and teach their kids all this stuff. 

Jameela [01:07:44] However I can be helpful to you when it comes to creating syllabuses or getting the word out, I would love to be of service because as I said, like, I’m part of your cult now. Jessie. 

Jessie [01:07:59] Can I quote you on that one? 

Jameela [01:08:00] Yeah, I, I haven’t had this many seven hour sleeps in a row since I can remember. 

Jessie [01:08:09] Oh I’m so happy to hear that. 

Jameela [01:08:10] And I’m really, really grateful to you for your work. And I guess the last thing I have to ask you, given all this conversation about this, is what do you weigh? 

Jessie [01:08:21] Ooh I weigh my freedom. My mental health, my relationships, my growth, and my cat.  

Jameela [01:08:35] That’s fantastic. And you weigh changing well over a million people’s lives now. 

Jessie [01:08:44] Yeah. 

Jameela [01:08:45] It’s been such a soft approach. Such a soft, slow, kind approach that has taught so many of my friends to look at our bodies the way that I was hoping we all would as engines, that we are just fueling correctly. 

Jessie [01:09:00] And your friends too. 

Jameela [01:09:02] Yeah. It’s just really. It’s really just. It’s really just special. And and I know you have a second book that you’re working on so everyone should go out and read the first book, but then please come back and and teach me more. 

Jessie [01:09:16] I would be 100% honored and delighted. And for all the good things you’ve said about my work on today’s podcast, I also want to say I have learned so much from you, from your show, from your content, like you’ve opened my eyes so, so much. And so coming today here for me is like such a such a proud moment. So thank you. 

Jameela [01:09:38] Oh, thank you. Well, you know, what we’re just sharing is reciprocity. At large. You’ve been a dream. Come back a million times. And I really hope that this has been a healing episode for everyone who’s listened. I hope I’ve managed to not trigger anything or anyone. I hope you know that we are really coming at this in the place of like your mind, your longevity and your power. 

Jessie [01:10:03] I love it.