Ee 004 Now For The Meat

EE 004: Now For The Meat Of The EXECUpreneur’s EDGE – Hold The Potatoes!

A cloudy mind and out of shape body prevent you from being able to get past the hurdles that are in your way. And the life of an EXECUpreneur is riddled with hurdles.  This is why it is vital for you to properly nourish your body and your mind, and work at keeping them healthy. You need to take daily measures to ensure that both your body and mind are in a healthy state so that you can persevere in the most challenging of times.

Problem is, most people I know are running on empty.  Living from caffeine hit to sugar rush.  

My 12 Step Strategy tackles the physical along with the mental AND emotional parts of the energy crisis that plagues most every modern human, let alone the hard-working EXECUpreneur.  THIS aspect is missing from so many programs…people are afraid to “go there.”  I am not.  I dive in head first!!  Because if you don’t approach this topic holistically, lasting change is a pipedream.  

Your ability to succeed as an EXECUpreneur and forge your own path rests squarely on the shoulders of your ability to generate the energy your brain and body need.  Not only to just make it through the day like so many who just scrape by…but your body and brain have to function at peak levels all day, every day.  

You can have the best strategy, the best education, the most advanced equipment, the latest technology, decades of experience, and the deepest pockets.  But when paired with a brain and body that are not firing on all cylinders, you’re functioning at a deficit from the get go.  

You cannot counteract a deficient brain and body for very long. You can’t mask it, you can’t cover for it, you can’t find any other asset that can make up for that deficiency. There are only so many ways that you can cover for lack of brain power, and lack of energy to make it through the day. And only so long you can justify having to do so.  

If you’re running 90 to nothing, exhausting yourself every day, getting by with hits of caffeine and popping candy for the sugar rush, you are eventually going to hit the wall and that wall may be adrenal fatigue.  

That wall may become some sort of dementia. I don’t know about you, but this is the thing that scares me most.  And combatting it is my primary driver for the health of myself, my family and my business. 

What would your business look like if you had the beginning phase of dementia? What about when it advances?  How about when it’s full blown?  What does your business look like then? 

What happens to your legacy when you start to decline mentally?  

You’ll start by avoiding certain situations, then you’ll decline invites to social events, then you’ll start to withdraw altogether.  People begin to avoid social events because they can’t remember names of people they most definitely should remember, or they can’t follow a rapidly moving conversation like they used to.  

Can your business survive this?  Not many can.  

What about the even more likely scenario of winding up with Diabetes Type 2 (DM2)?  How about Metabolic Syndrome?  Metabolic Syndrome is the initial phase of DM2.  

It does not need to go down this way.  You have 100% control over this occurring in the vast majority of cases, and with real food!  You don’t need any proprietary pills, potions, nor powders to do it!  

In this part of the EXECUpreneur’s EDGE you are going to learn how to attain boundless energy without the crash, nor the fallout that has so many reaching for the pill bottle.  

The better you understand how this process works, the better you can do the things to help your body and mind perform at their best.  Let’s start with…

A Ridiculous Scenario…

If you learned you had a spot on your lung and it is most likely a tumor, would you quit smoking…or just cut back?  You’d quit of course. 

Now, what if your doc told you she believed you could “manage the size of the tumor” with drugs…what would you do then?  Would you continue to smoke and bet your life on these drugs?

Let’s apply this to the metabolism, more specifically the energy spectrum.  Bear with me.  I’ll bring this full circle in just a moment.  For now, just read and learn.  

The blood sugar spectrum runs from normal to full-blown Diabetes Type 2 with a wide range of grey in between.  (Side note:  this used to be known as adult-onset diabetes, but now there are so many kids afflicted, it can no longer be called adult-onset.  Rather frightening isn’t it?)  

The road to diabetes usually starts with crummy energy…maybe a little muffin top then works its way into elevated blood pressure, some high LDL (you know, the BAD guy…now if you’ve read my blog you know that is a lie…).  Pepper in some high triglycerides, with a low protective HDL and you’ve got yourself a first-class ticket on the Diabetes Express…all tracks lead to diabetes (type 2 & 3, now type 3’s a whole other book in the making).  

Whether you are exhausted or not at this point…is totally irrelevant.  Your body is in crisis.  

Most EXECUpreneurs I have worked with tried to thwart their body’s cries for metabolic help with stimulants of some type…morning vat of coffee, mainlining sugar in the form of juices and sweet pastries, the midday Snickers bar and washing it down with a big ol’ Mountain Dew.  Then an afternoon Frappuccino with something like 19,000 grams of carbs.  (May be a wee exaggeration, but not by much!) 

When all that stops working, the busy EXECUpreneur heads to the doctor.  There is too much at stake and too much to do to be tired all the darn time!  

It is here that they are indoctrinated into the “here try this” way of thinking.  It isn’t far off from what they were already doing, but now they’re cooking with gas instead of rubbing two sticks together hoping that final exhale erupts into a blaze of glory (and energy)!  

Conventional Wisdom attempts to manage these problems with drugs, and more drugs.  In our tumor scenario, your doc pulls out the prescription pad… but also highly recommends, demands even, you STOP SMOKING altogether for that was the cause of the problem.  

No doc in their right mind is going to say, “Meh, go ahead and keep smoking.  Just smoke the ORGANIC, non-GMO variety and take three of these, six times a day”.  

In the case of the EXECUpreneur who’s staring down the barrel of pending business doom, they think it is just about doing more to stimulate the energy.  Something to force the body to do more.  The mind to think more.  

This just isn’t the way it works.  At the helm of this energy crisis is your metabolism.  More specifically it is based in your blood sugar spectrum.  Now your initial issues don’t seem to be related to your blood sugar levels, but they most definitely are.  I call it BS for short… appropriate initials.

Moving forward…

The symptoms of a pending energy crisis show up as the things I mentioned before…starts as crummy energy, an expanding waistline, high LDL, high triglycerides (TG), High Blood Pressure (HBP), and low protective “cholesterol” (HDL).  When a few of these issues are present in a person, they are diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome.  

“Metabolic”.  Here’s the first clue it is a problem caused by food…AND, the medical community even named it!  

Despite the name, you come out of the doc’s office, scripts in hand…a statin for the cholesterol, an Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitor for the High Blood Pressure, maybe a pill that obliterates your appetite so you “don’t eat so much”, and so on.  

Boom…nice little drug cocktail for you.  

Hundred$, if not thousand$ a month for Big Pharma.  

In our tumor scenario, the doc immediately recommends smoking cessation…yet in our obesity/blood sugar spectrum gone awry, your doc flies right past the “what’s causing the problem” stop on our tour, and lands smack dab in the pharmacy.  Not one mention of stopping the offending activity.  

What is the offending activity?  

The energy crisis of the body and brain comes about from eating more carbohydrates than the body can put to good use.  That’s really the crux of the matter.  

Since carbs provide no structural support for any cells whatsoever, their only purpose in the body is for use as fuel.  When they can’t be used as immediate fuel, for reasons we’ll get to in a few minutes, the body has to do something with them.  So it stores them for later.  

One way it does this is by shoving these carbs (broken down into individual sugar molecules) into the liver, muscle and fat cells.  

In many cases, since “later” never comes…the fat cell becomes long-term storage.  Just how long depends on the individual’s biochemistry.  

Spoiler alert…you could pretty well classify lackluster energy as blood sugar wonkiness (official term in my book) which stems from an inability to use carbs efficiently for fuel.  In other words a “carbohydrate intolerance.”    

Across the board, eating carbs is touted as essential to a “balanced” diet and a necessity for all humans.  To the carb-intolerant, carbs are their nemesis. 

So what advice do we get when we seek help?  “Here, take this.”  And “this” is some prescribed pill that throws you into the never ending medical merry-go-round of pill pushing and procedures.  And the kicker piece of advice most people get from the Conventional Wisdom crowd?  “Eat higher-quality carbs.”  

You may be asking why they recommend drugs for a food problem…

THAT is the question of all questions.  You’re not going to like the answer.  The long and the short of it is…ignorance and “this is how we’ve always done it” -itis, and there’s lots and lots of money in managing symptoms.  

Oh, and not to mention, they think you’re too lazy to actually do anything about your problem.  (Their thoughts, not mine.)  

The “Cliff Notes” Version of Metabolism

Thank goodness we don’t have to understand the intricacies of electrical engineering to flip on a switch and have light.  Likewise, you don’t have to understand the inner workings of human metabolism to flip on the switch for boundless energy.  

I’m going to compress a ton of biochemistry into this section of the book…I’ll get right to the heart of the matter.  Buckle up my friend!  

Your body’s metabolism does not exist solely to regulate your weight.  In fact your metabolism exists to generate energy for your body.  Period.  

Many problems can arise as a result of a wonky system.  For instance, Metabolic Syndrome & Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 are two such problems on the rise resulting from the wonky systems run amuck.  These fully preventable diseases get their start from us eating in a way that is not congruent with the design.  

The design to which I refer is the blueprint to fueling our body and brain to harness the most energy from the least amount of fuel.  And to do so with the least amount of negative fallout.  

Here’s the tricky part.  We’ve been led to believe that what our body and brain need to function at their best is actually bad for us.  

“Say what?”  I’ll say it again…

We’ve been sold a bill of goods by those who have profit agendas that far outweigh their conscience, if they even have one.  

We’ve been told to get an exorbitant amount of our energy needs met through eating carbohydrates.  A whopping 65% of that need in fact.  This is like burning coal instead of jet fuel when it comes to the body.  Coal billows all sorts of junk into the system, for it to then have to focus on de-junking (think detoxification).  Whereas jet fuel burns clean and has little if no negative junk to make the body clean up in its wake.  

All in all, what we’ve been told to eat (and not eat) has led to an energy crisis in which Peter has robbed Paul for too long.  When this happens, the body signals the pancreas to increase insulin because we ate more carbs than our body could handle…and we do this consistently… pretty much all day long.  We were following the advice of the self-proclaimed “experts.”  I did too…until I dove deeper into the research.  Boy was I ever in for a shock!!  

Bottom-line, all carbs become glucose and fructose…and a few other -oses.  Simple, complex…doesn’t matter.  We’ll address glucose here…fructose is a whole different beast worthy of its own lesson.  (Another time.)

Eating excess carbs eventually leads to more and more insulin (hyperinsulinemia) which in turn continues to signal the body to store more energy for a rainy day.  Insulin drives energy usage by pushing excess energy into fat storage…that’s its job.  The more insulin present, the stronger the signal.  

When insulin is high, you are storing unusable energy as fat…not burning it, not even one fatty acid.  After a while, may take years, the body becomes insulin resistant because it has been marinating in insulin.  The more technical term is “hyperinsulinemic”, just as it becomes resistant to any strong, prolonged signal …the body has to dampen the signal so it can protect itself from damage.  

Think of it as a firewall for the human cell.  It is a survival mechanism.  “She’s trying to kill me with the carbage, shut the system down girls!!”…every cell is stuffed to the hilt.  

The body is merely trying to survive to fight another day in the life of an EXECUpreneur.

It’s estimated that over 60 million Americans are full-blown insulin resistant (right now) with many others well on their way.  Some kids are practically born insulin resistant because their mothers were so hyperinsulinemic.  

I have no clue how many of them are the high-achieving exec or entrepreneur but I’d venture to guess a whole mass of them!  

How Did We Get Into This Mess?  

One word, greed.  

When you create a crisis, and you develop a “treatment”, you can make bank.  

(Or is it create the treatment then manufacture the crisis?  Hmmm… something to ponder.  Okay back to my original train of thought!)

Remember, there are an estimated 60 Million people who have metabolic issues caused primarily by an unbalanced energy utilization spectrum.  Keep that number top of mind.  

Now, let’s talk drug money…

When you create a health crisis, and you provide the “treatment” and on top of that you strongly influence the method for payment (insurance companies), you can pretty much write yourself a blank check.  One with lots of zeroes and multiple commas.  

Picture yachts, mansions and sports cars…not yours or mine, mind you.  These luxuries belong to the purveyors of pricey pills, potions and powders…and not to mention procedures.  There’s so much money in managing the disease and barely any in helping the body fix itself with real food.

For most people, they have plenty of insulin, which again is the metabolism’s main determinant of using food for immediate energy or storing it.  Since they have plenty and it’s doing its job, what’s the problem?  

It is like drinking water from a NYC fire hydrant. The signals and the carbs are coming in at such a rapid rate, the insulin cannot shove the glucose anywhere else, all the hiding places are taken.  So, it is left with no other choice but to spill it over into the bloodstream.  Whiz, bang, boom, they’re finally diagnosed with Diabetes and told to manage it with drugs.  

Now, all along the way one’s blood sugar registered at normal levels. But this problem had been building for years, decades even.

The above scenario is how it goes down… pretty much every time.  

I’ve heard this story time after time after time.  Small variations in the drug cocktail and yes, there’s usually a flippant “lose some weight” tossed in…but time after time, this is the scene.  

And it does NOT work.

Some of these drugs cause the pancreas to make even more insulin because the sugars are not “controlled.”  In so many instances, there is already plenty of insulin around, the cells are literally marinating in it, yet the body cannot use it.  This marinade occurs due to insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance comes about to dampen the signals from too much of something.  IT is a survival mechanism.  

The pancreas eventually burns out.  And NOW…it ISSS unable to produce adequate amounts of insulin.  

WHAT??  Wait a minute…this never had to happen!!

So How Do We Clean Up This (Orchestrated) Mess?  

How do we stop the war within and make peace with our body?  How do we tap into the boundless energy we need as an EXECUpreneur without abusing the body with caffeine and other stimulants packaged for the ultimate in convenience?

We Start With a Two-Fold Process.  

One part is to decrease the glucose coming in; the second is to burn up what’s already locked away in the body.  

Remember all that sugar (unused fuel) that was shoved into every nook and cranny for later use?  That stuff has to go!

Now is as good a time as any to mention this…much of that excess glucose that’s just sitting around gets turned into fat by the liver via a process called de novo lipogenesis (making new fat molecules).  It is an adaptation designed to wait out periods of famine which were common in our past and pretty much NEVER occur today.   It’s an amazing adaptation…your liver literally creates new fat molecules from excess glucose to store energy for future periods of famine.  Survival at its core!    

You’ve got all this excess sugar in the system and it’s damaging you, possibly undetected…it needs to go!  

It’s time to break up!!  It’s not you…it’s THEM!

At this point, you should be upset, angry in fact if you can relate to what I shared up to now.  

Bottom line, you’ve been misled.  We all were.  We’ve suffered collectively, and all the while, others have profited handsomely.  

Here’s another kicker, though I’m not trying to kick a sister while she’s down.  I am simply driving home a point.  

If you’d addressed the cause of the problem in the first place, you’d be in the clear, slim, with boundless energy AND off the Diabetes Spectrum by now.  

Just as in our smoking scenario…where we not only silence the symptoms, but we directly cut off the cause of the problem per Dr.’s orders.

You didn’t know how this all works.  I bet what I’ve shared thus far has never come across your path before.  

Well, maybe not since back in 10th grade biology when that boring teacher lulled you to sleep after lunch.  I had one of those, and I’m so happy he didn’t turn me off from biochemistry, this stuff is my jam!