Gutsy Chick Podcast

The Surprising Neuroscience Behind Sugar Addiction

• Amanda Smith • Episode 76

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In this episode of the Gutsy Chick podcast, I’m joined by the brillant Leslie Chen for a real talk on food, freedom, and the stories we carry about our bodies. We’re unpacking the deep connection between how we’re raised, what we believe about health, and how that shapes our choices around food—especially sugar, weight, and what it really means to feel nourished. 

If you’ve ever felt trapped in guilt, shame, or confusion about what’s “right” to eat, this episode is your permission slip to unlearn the noise and tune back into what actually works for you. 


Here’s how to connect with Leslie Chen: 

Lean Instinct Formula page: www.riselean.com/weight-loss-coach 
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/leslielchen 


Other links mentioned: 

The Secrets of Body Whispering Private Podcast: https://bodywhisperhealing.com/private-podcast 

Watch Gutsy Chick Podcast on YouTube!

Check out more from Amanda:
Website: Body Whisper Healing
Instagram: @Amanda.G.Smith
Facebook: Body Whisper Healing
Pinterest: AmandaGSmithBWH
LinkedIn: Amanda (Ritchie) Smith

Take the Gutsy Chick Quiz to find out how your type A, high achieving mindset might be holding you back from healing your chronic health issue: https://gutsychickquiz.com





Leslie Chen, welcome back to the Gutsy Chick podcast. I am so excited to have you back. Our first episode, episode 60, was the neuroscience of belief. And I absolutely loved how that episode played out. And we said at the very end of that episode, we got to do this again. And we're going to do it around perception versus reality and manifestation. And as we were just doing our warmup for this episode, we realized, we have to talk about sugar and perception versus reality and some of the science that's coming out around diabetes. the new Alzheimer's is diabetes and how that can reform how we're thinking about food and how we're thinking about existing. So thank you for coming back. You're very welcome and it has been such a pleasure in the first 45 minutes of the conversation. We're having a party and we're going to continue the party and we're going to talk about the core issues, right? Sugar, what are the perception about it? What are some things that's the perception, part of the perception that is not even relevant to our daily health because there's so much to decompress about this such a huge topic and undoubtedly people have been developing a lot of limiting beliefs around it ah given by different sources. I'm looking forward to diving in with you. Yay! Alright, so first question. Is there such a thing as good sugar versus bad sugar? So Amanda, probably already know what my answer is gonna be like, but okay, for the audience, here's me out. In my household, there are two types of sugar, cane sugar, white sugar, and brown sugar. And we build our lifestyle naturally in a way that we don't need any more types of sugar. mean, if you're talking about fruits, then that's a different story. I'm talking about sugar in the traditional sense. Now, but here's the thing. Yesterday I had three Ferrero's. Okay, just a few days ago I had a boba tea with 15 % of sugar. They let you customize it. So the message here is that the three Ferrero's or whatever they put in a boba tea. In the long run, it's not going to affect my weight. It's not going to affect my hormonal balance, my insulin level, my grating level. For the long run, it has no impact. I've been at this weight of 123 pounds for 20 years, except for the time when I was pregnant. So we've been having sugar. We've been having sugar we put in to sometimes this small amount in our stir fry. We've also been having fruits and also different snacks. As long as you're in control, none of these are a problem. So you don't need to worry about it. And I don't sponsor the idea or school of thinking of categorizing every single type of sugar and give them a label. Okay, if you can stay in control, we're gonna talk about what staying in control means later, but if you can stay in control, you're gonna be walking through the chaotic world, but still healthy and strong and steady. Mm-hmm. I love it when people are like, okay, I've got to have, and I've done this, I'm guilty of this. I've got to have the low glycemic sugars because my body doesn't handle the other kind of sugars well. And for me, the trigger. And you know, we just had Easter yesterday and the sweets come out during these holidays, of course. And we have cake and the cake has this cream cheese frosting that was to die for. Yeah. but I can have just a little bit of it and if I go beyond that little bit, all of a sudden my stomach hurts. Is that natural? Is that normal? Is that how it's supposed to be? okay. So if the food is making you uncomfortable, you don't need to chew it. That's that's number one. The other thing is that discomfort when it comes to I can't speak about that cake because I haven't tasted myself pretty sure it's delicious. I wish I did. But this is this is this is here's the key here. Okay. Your body is trained to receive and process and experience certain food in very different ways. I give you an example. When I first came to the States back in 2005, second day in school, I had the first bite of American ice cream. Now don't get me wrong, in China we had a plant of ice cream. Okay, cakes, bread, whatever you have, we have there. First bite of ice cream, I could not swallow it. I literally could not swallow it because it was so sweet and I had this physical aversion. So I turned to my roommate. We just met the day before. I asked her, Anna, is this normal ice cream? And she turned her face around and look at me as if this is the strangest question ever. And she told me, yeah, of course it's a normal ice cream. Okay. I wanted to be a part of the conversation and just blending. I basically I shut up. And in order to blend in, the next 30 days, I had an ice cream every day when we were in a cafeteria. Just to be same with everybody else, right? 30 days later, I could not taste the difference. And I remember having to talk to myself that it's actually perfectly normal. It's normal. So I don't know what I was talking about 30 days ago. I no wonder my roommate gave me that look. Guess what? Your taste buds. being one of the many examples, okay, in terms of how you receive food and process food, it's trainable, it's highly adaptable. The problem is that when you have trained your body to receive food in a way that is so detached, I so desensitized to the toxic properties, you're gonna be bound to overeat the wrong thing. Also, there's also a psychological piece in it, right? So you're to crave it more. And that's when you have to be uh working hard on scrutinizing everything. This is good sugar. What type of sugar is that? Right. But if you're just like me nowadays, because I train myself back, okay, if you're just like me nowadays, it's the ice cream. I'm it's enough. or just like you, eating a nut cake, just a tiny bit of it and feeling like, okay, I can't have more because my stomach is now feeling stressed out. With that kind of physical sensation, you're not gonna overeat it. You're not gonna have more than you should. So that whole discussion of what is the composition, the chemical or whatever nutritious composition of the food, unless you have some like chronic diseases that require you to be high. hyper aware of these kinds of things. It's irrelevant. And that takes away a lot of burden on the brain level because think about how much you guys are consumed energetically by this kind of calculation and scrutiny in your mind. That causes a lot of shame and regret later. Yes, which programs an interesting game, an interesting loop that we end up having to play. Yeah. A lot of us want to blame food for weight gain or for our unhealthy lifestyle. Yeah. Do you think that it's food that's the true problem or is there something else? American food has this reason to be blamed I'm not gonna lie on that especially as somebody coming from somebody coming from China yeah oh I gained 50 pounds in my first year the first 30 pounds was gained in the first three months but here is the here is the distinction between the first 30 pounds and the latter 20 pounds here first 30 pounds was gained completely because of lack of knowledge. So when I ate that burger I didn't know that burger was like 900 or 1000 calories because we did not we were not brought up to even think in terms of calories we think it's we thought in terms of the sense of satiety and the wholeness of the food okay I had no idea about the numbers and what that burger meant but what usually failed my stomach could be something like 300 400 500 calories But in the United States, yeah, it can be doubled or even tripled easily, depending on what kind of sauce you put in it or dressing you put in it, right? So the first 30 pounds was gained through ignorance. through ice cream. Well, not knowing the ice cream, yeah, sure, yes. mean, that's retraining my body sensory patterns about food was also a big part of that. But again, it's because I didn't know better at the beginning. I didn't trust myself when I asked my roommate, I trusted them instead of myself, right? So if I would not eat an American food at the beginning, I was probably not gonna have this 30 pounds of weight gain. But here's the thing. The second part of the journey, which is the 20 pounds of actual weight, have very limited to do with food then. It was because when I first gained this first 30 pounds, I started panicking and tried every diet possible to try to lose the weight. So the aftermath of that was I was in constant self deprivation mode. I started building and developing the daily binge eating disorder. I had it daily on daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. Okay. So that pattern amplified every single possible negative effect that food had on me. I did AdKings and I regained the pounds, three rounds of AdKings. Initially lost 20 pounds and again, all of the bad plus 10 extra. And then a round of like 10 day complete fasting only water. Regained everything. I'm really determined. Okay. There is right. And then another round of Atkins because it was the only thing I didn't have to start myself through. And then we can never that's how I regained the weight plus 20 extra. So that part was psychological and coupled with a pretty deranged. inner sensory patterns with food because I no longer sense food in that way and plus the psychological drive everything just exploded. So is the food the only thing to blame? I don't think it is. I'm still standing by my original statement here Amanda is that when your body your sensory and another element of psychological programming is wired in a way that makes you want to eat the right amount of the right thing at the right time without any lingering overthought over thinking about food or negative fear, negative emotions about it, which chains you into the sun, some kind of downward spiral, right? The food is actually pretty much irrelevant because you can go to a safe way. You don't have the urge or impulsivity or even interest in shopping in the wrong aisles. Okay. Mm hmm. The wrong aisles being the ones with the candy. uh Well, I mean, another thing is that when I eat candy nowadays, I gotta eat good candies. Because it's a psychological... Okay. So it's like a matchmaking process, you know? I'm good, I'm healthy, I'm genuine, I really love myself, so what makes me want to throw garbage in my body if I'm to have something like the candies? And I told you I have candies all the time. Not like... binge eating them, but you know, this little pressure here, maybe one morning, the other afternoon, but you're going to have this unconsciously conscious process, okay, of wanting to put something that measures up with you. And the &Ms, they're just not in my life for a reason. And you don't even have to do the food science behind it. You don't have to go well that red red number five or whatever it is That's going to poison me, right? It's just simply that's I just I don't resonate with that. That's not a thing that I need And also it doesn't resonate with your body. Remember what I said wrong things because it happens to my clients all the time that they go to the program a few weeks later, they go to let's say the church event or some other places like a big gathering or party and they're exposed to some like old food that they thought they really liked and they come back to me saying that what's wrong with me. They're actually in sort of panic saying that, my my stomach was stressed. I don't feel comfortable. I'm feeling like nauseating. Like, yeah, because these are garbage. Your body is supposed to feel this aversion against garbage. Think about it, if your body feels good and normal when eating junk food all the time, what does it say about it? What does it say about that body and you? Right? So when your body have this internal compacts working for you, you don't need to worry about a micromanager on the numbers. It's irrelevant. Your body just naturally gravitates toward what it needs. That's interesting to even speak out loud in the United States because we inundated with crap. And it feels like what we have to do is decipher. This isn't for me, this is for me, but then it becomes this avoidance pattern. Yes, now avoidance thing is another thing. I wanna talk about it. So, Amanda, I eventually lost those 50 pounds in a year. I'm mentioning it, it is because it's so relevant here. The reason why I lost, the way I lost my 50 pounds was it was due to summer vacation, summer break in China. I gained those 50 pounds and I was so terrified because my mom was going to criticize me. In my head I was already picturing she picking me up in the airport and seeing my body and dropping very heavy questions and stuff because she has been always very strict with me. Then what happened was I was in the airport. She did not recognize me at the beginning when I approached her because physical change was that big. And then I called her and she looked at me for the, I'm telling you. Anna's part and for the entire month in China she did not say a word about my weight. She did not say that you have to avoid eating. She did not say you have to avoid sugar, avoid calories, avoid that, that, that. She did not say anything about it. I was naturally in my usual like the kind of life and the setting I've been in the first 20 years of my life, 19 years of my life. Okay. And I just felt normal. Has she mentioned you have to avoid this or that? I would be in the status mentality and experience the downward spiral every day. I will be overthinking everything. But I didn't feel a thing as if it was as if my like newly gained weight never existed. So it was the same home food, which was then later I learned it was very healing and nourishing and it satisfied me to the right level even though was not counting calories. I could not count because there's no calorie numbers on the labels. You can't even do the math. I could not go to the gym four hours per day, which I constantly did back in the States, two hours in the morning, swimming two hours in the afternoon, running and weight. ah I could not do any diets that I did in the States. It's impossible. We have carbs in every meal. What was the end outcome was that By the end of my summer break, which is actually a bit more than a month in China, I lost 14 pounds. Just by switching back to normal. so back to your question, avoidance, especially when you're having sugar problems and sugar addiction, I've been there. Remember I told you I was daily binge eater and the majority of what I binge ate was sugar. so. This has been, there has been a lot of discussion in the field of psychiatry in the past 10 to 20 years. The strategy that we've been using, I say this is bad food, let me avoid it, let me cut it out completely out of my house, right? That's called avoidance strategy. And basically it has been proven to be inefficient and ineffective by plenty of studies. And this is the reason when you have the feeling of fear and anxiety or stress about something. Doesn't matter if it's a certain kind of food or event or some person, right? What your brain automatically wants to do is to avoid that thing, that person, that situation. Keep it safe, of course. When you avoid it by cutting it out completely, what you're actually doing is to act in line with that loop. So you're acting in line with what your brain's already supposed to be doing. And by doing that, you're reinforcing that loop. And you're reinforcing, not lessening, but reinforcing the emotion, the negative emotions that you've already had towards that food. Whether this is fear or anxiety, because fear or anxiety is a big part of the food addiction here. If you didn't put it on a pedestal, you wouldn't have been addicted to it, right? What actually works and what I do in the formula in terms of helping removing the sugar addiction is an exposure strategy. And what I mean by exposure strategy is to strategically help the person create life circumstances, which we can use our brain actually uses as hardcore data, fact-based evidences to create a sense of towards that thing. And when you're having creating, when you have created a level of comfort, you know what? Detachment comes from comfort. You're comfortable with that around that guy. You don't put it on a pedestal. You're not gonna keep thinking about it. Let the sort of the person own you. You're not gonna be obsessed. So this is the predicament a lot of people are facing. It's bad, I avoid it. Okay, you did two things. First of all, you label this bad, which is already. making the game a thousand times harder because now you're creating an enemy in your mind. And then you avoid it by avoiding it, your strength and the rain falls in a loop that you're trying to get out of it. So eventually you're pretty much present here. reinforcing the negative keeps you in the loop. The way to break it, which we talked about this in episode 60, was getting neutral. neutrality, the sense of neutrality matters and the sense of neutrality comes from two things. the first thing is your body has to be able to give you the sense of neutrality. If you wired your taste buds to really want that certain thing that is not good for you, that you're trying to get away from, you're not going to have a neutrality because it's biased. So there is a physical bias here, right? And then there's a psychological bias there. psychological bias can be formed with a bunch of beliefs. Now I talked about my experience in China, I think it's very just it carries a big distinction here is because see this is what I tell my clients all the time the difference between you and me is not biological, it's not physical, it's not really genetic because people have different forms of limited beliefs. it's not I'm genetically built to be in this way but if you look at America as a in the 1970s and 80s, right? You guys were pretty fit back then, okay? The real difference that creates the barrier for you and makes things a thousand times easier for me is that I grew up in a world in the environment where I saw in everyday life the data that I keep using the word data because there's a data feeds the brain that shapes our perception, okay? So I grew up in an environment where I saw in my everyday life the hard-based, hardcore evidence system data that being fit and healthy is the birthright. You don't have to work on it. Now, I was born in the country, I lived in a city where we had easily 10 million people. 10 million people. And the country has 1.4, not 1.6 yet, but 1.4 billion people at the time. Growing up, in my surrounding, I don't remember knowing or seeing any overweight person. I saw, I remember very clearly that after dinner, my entire family was in front of the TV and we're watching an interview featuring somebody who is overweight and she's probably 200 pounds, okay? And the doctor asking about what was causing that problem because it was so rare. And in our culture, we didn't have like gym, we didn't have this calorie-hunting, the whole system, whole school of thinking regarding macros then. counting the sugar all the time but we were having everything that you guys were forbidden to eat here for example the first shocking thing I heard when I first landed in States was that white rice is so bad for you because it makes you fat I remember saying to myself I had almost three times per day in the first 19 years and I've never had a problem with my weight okay and I went when I tried it was at King's and I was like okay limiting carbs really did make me you know slimmer but it didn't last but that's a different story. What I'm saying is that when you grew up in this surrounding, in this environment where your choose is just so different, you don't have the mental baggage or false limiting beliefs and perceptions that pull you back into the role mentality all the time. Whereas my students, my clients here, they grew up not just in the oh macro environment, but also the family environment is teaching them. I can't tell you how many times Khan tell me that I was put on Weight Watchers when I was 7, 8, 9, by my mother who struggled with weight for a time right now it's things come clear to you if it didn't work for your mother it won't work for you but they didn't know back then so their version of reality is that I will always have to struggle I will always have to do something work very hard to even deserve it whereas over there it's like it's your first right Yeah. part of my teaching is actually not about teaching people to lose weight or get rid of addiction because that's just, you you do the, take the right steps. You're going to get there. The hardest part, actually the not hardest part, would say the biggest milestone I I will consider real victory in my teaching is to actually to shift that person's belief and make that person understand. not on a visceral level but also on a spiritual and everyday kind of experience level that this is my birthright to be there. I don't have to struggle for it. Just because they're experienced, have backed that up. Yeah, I love, I love, love that mentality. It's interesting. I moved to Colorado to one of the healthiest States in the U S and I moved here because I wanted to continue to play outdoors and do all of the active things that I love to do. And I thought if I'm moving to the healthiest place that there would be less obesity, but it's still here and it's all around us all the time. So when it comes to perception, that's what we see. People have been talking about people who have the chronic weight problem. think a lot of those people have been, uh, shouldering way more, way much more blame than they deserve. Because coming from the brain science perspective, because like being examically trained in neuroscience, we actually see the differences in terms of how the brain actually functions. Right. And sometimes even on a structural level and how childhood upbringing can bring a huge impact on how the person is going to operate on what level the person is going to operate later in life throughout life. Okay, so it's not just about the reason why I'm saying that a lot of people are actually taking too much more blame than they actually deserve is because people look at them saying that this is a discipline issue. This is a willpower issue. You're just not good at learning or you're just not good at following rules. No, it's not about it. Right? So if you're somebody who have been brought up in life and you lacked the parents and the proper parenting that teaches you how to actually treat yourself properly, you're gonna have this torched vision and version of belief in terms of what it means by taking care of yourself. And some people will think that, I'm dieting. If I'm dieting, I'm taking good care of myself because I'm being responsible for myself without understanding that when you are dieting rigorously and through mostly, right, self deprivation, starving. you're actually harming your body more than you know. And that actually prevents you from getting back to health. But there's so much misinformation and also the wrong teachings at the early stage of life. Not to mention, we're talking about sensory patterns, whether your body is actually programmed in a way that receives and process and experience food that enables you to get fit and healthy. That's also another big missing piece. But if you don't have those, then it will be very hard. It's not, I tell my clients and my audience, willpower is irrelevant when the right programs are in place. That habit building is not about sticking with rules. No, especially in this area. mean, entrepreneurship probably. But in this areas, we're considering what we just talked about, health and fitness, it's actually a birthright, because we see that from billions of people around the world, right? It's actually a birthright. So when that being the overall message, think about it, it's actually not about will, however, at all. All you need to do is to enable yourself, the body, to be able to function at level on a sensory and chemical and a physical and metabolic. That is a big missing piece that people were not brought up learning about or they were actually deprived of it in early stage of life because of some kind of family teaching or culture or maybe the macro culture as well. And that is the missing piece. So it is not really about not having the knowledge or not good at learning, not having the willpower. Interesting. When you look at the way that parents, and I'm gonna go to the parents because I am one, you are one. We're looking at this growth in dementia and Alzheimer's. And what the most recent, and I say most recent, like last 15 years, most recent study is showing us. is that this is actually diabetes type three, which immediately parents are going, okay, that's sugar. I've got to take away all the sugars from my child, which is almost impossible because kids are innately driven to carbs and they should be because that's how their body likes to function. And that's great for them in the morning, right? Our body is designed that way. How can we shape our current reality so that we're not freaking out about our kids eventually having diabetes type 3 slash Alzheimer's? Okay, so I'm gonna give you my perspective. I'm gonna give you someone else's perspective about this. The reason why wanna give his perspective is that he does have the authority level to speak on this issue because he's one of the world's top neurologists ah specialized in dementia and Alzheimer's. And my perspective as a parent and as somebody who has been helping people with the exact problem is that uh Focusing on the core Really, I mean we've been talking about it's actually a symbol in line with everything we've been talking about so far In my house in the backyard we have a small you know Little vegetable garden and we cook a majority of the food that we eat the reason why we do that I'm not good at gardening I'll share with you that everything I touch probably dying a few months But the reason why I do this is because I want to get my five-year-old daughter comfortable with the idea It's about, again, what kind of environment that you're gonna put her in, what kind of everyday activities and experiences she's gonna experience herself in the seas and witness is going to shape her belief. Well, derived from the conversation about China versus US just now, right? So I want her to have this appreciation of natural food, right, her food, and I also want her to feel normal and comfortable. Even like the sense of entitlement of being able to... take care of herself by cooking her own food and growing her own food. Because here's the thing, if you're eating well, if you're eating well, 80 % of the health problems that you're facing or fearing are gonna be gone. That's the core I was talking about. Okay, in terms of sugar, this is my daughter's experience. She's five and she goes to a transitional, we're in California, we have the transitional kindergarten set up in the public school. So they have School lunch daughter wants to have school lunch to be the same with everybody else so we learn But you know when you're looking at a school lunch menu you see chocolate milk on it, right? Here's the thing Right, here's the thing. I don't care what you have had in school Okay for breakfast and dinner you eat well And I don't make a fuss about what they had in school I don't make a fuss about every single candy that she made or she ate Except for one scenario when somebody gives her M I tell her this belongs to trash can. And you're not the trash can. I make it very clear to her. And a lot of parents, some of my friends, close friends who are also parents, question me about it saying that this might be traumatic. There is nothing traumatic about teaching a young lady herself with and what measures up for her. But that's the only exception I will make when calling out some kind of sugar. But if it's something that I... I can accept it, I don't make a fuss about it. Because when you are criticizing or overly nervous about it, you know what, this kind of tension gets passed on to your daughter without you realizing it, and then she is gonna make a big deal out of it. By making a big deal out of it, she's gonna make it a barrier in the future. Why? Okay, I'm gonna finish this then first, and then we're gonna talk about that part because, you know, everything branches now. Yes. but let me just make sure that we're staying focused on the core question here. So that's my idea. Focus on the core. Things cannot be go to wrong. And my daughter now, she comes back, she's like, mommy, I don't need the chocolate because I had the chocolate milk in school or I had something miss uh her teacher gave me and I'm good. So she actually developed this natural sense of detachment when you don't, right? Yep. why earlier when we talked about my mother using sugar in coffee, you asked me, that exposed, would I expose the daughter to it? I'm like, I don't, don't fuss about it. If she wants to it, she can't, but we're just going to teach her how to be, but giving comfort, we're curating, we're nurturing detachment. Okay. That's the same thing. Now my neurologist friend and colleague, okay. Last week I was in Seattle. We had a one-on-one meeting. for an hour and we've been talking about some of the latest ah finding and advancements in his research and in his hospital. also works as the head of neurology department in his very big and prominent hospital in Seattle. uh talking about dementia, sugar and Alzheimer's, right? It's naturally not just about sugar. Sugar is definitely one of the things in it, uh big things in it. But it's like, again, think that actually supports my point about going back to basics. The biggest problem people are experiencing nowadays is that they have been so used to eating out. And when you're eating out, you are going to be exposed to overloaded, like overdose of sugar, right? And also there is an extra amount of preservatives that you're going to be constantly facing. And they have, there have been studies showing the intrinsic linkage between preservatives and dementia slash Alzheimer's. And this is he told me, 45 % of Alzheimer's could have been avoided if preservatives is not in the picture. If the person is not constantly going to, you know, dine out. The other thing is that another big factor that's driving Alzheimer's is body weight. Very clear and significant link between obesity, and Alzheimer's. But here's the thing. It actually goes back to the same thing, which is that if you cultivate the mindset and the comfort I'm talking about and this routine of cooking your own food using the real authentic food majority of times, you're not going to have this weight problem. You're not going to be overly exposed to preservatives that creates, because both, both values and also the sugar, right? All of these will point you to the same issue, is Alzheimer's in this case, but I'm pretty sure other problems with chronic diseases. it's not, we see a lot of comorbidities in comorbidity, you know, among the different kind of symptoms measures here. ah Well, one of the most surprising point that he made during our conversation was that When it comes to Alzheimer's, people are like, okay, I'm seeing the risk factor with the food I've been eating there. I'm 50 years old now, I'm 60 years old today. And I'm gonna have to correct things now. ah But studies actually found that the development, initial development of the disease actually started in your 20s and 30s. In your 20s and 30s, basically it has already been framed. So if you have been doing this for the past 20 years or 30 years and all of sudden you're saying I'm going to correct it, it's probably not going to do too much to shift the course. So the reason why it's so relevant to parenting here is because we have to educate our next generation. It's not about us anymore. Yes, people, if you are in your 40s, 50s, you've been living in our wrong lifestyle for such a long time and you want to correct it, of course you should do it because it's not just Alzheimer's. Mm-hmm. ultimate life quality. But now I think we need to look and think about what we should teach our next generation. And for me personally, I'm really proud of the fact that even at the inception of Lean Instinct Formula, this is something that I stand by in the program, which is that you have to, we have to cook like majority 80 % and for people in the program, 80 % of food. And so many people have come to tell you, tell me that, but I don't wanna cook. I don't have time to cook. I'm so busy. I'm not a good cook. I'm not interested in that. And they refuse. They don't wanna join. And it cost me business, but I never bulged because I know clearly it's just a simple factor. If you cannot control what you eat, forget about transformation on any single level. So I just sustained it for the past decade. And now looking back, it is... One thing I would never give up for another 10, 20, 30 years if I'm still running the program now because it's just the right thing to do. So we have to shift our perception about parenting. What it means by cultivating the right habits in children because setting rules, you cannot eat this, that, that. I'm telling you now because I've seen it. It's going to backfire big time in the future. But how do you live actually influence a child? What kind of value do you want to implant in their mind at a young age? What do you want to expose them? Because you have to live it, you have to show it, right? For them to actually have the right perception that fosters funnels, health, vitality, longevity. self-love. That is the the key and demonstrating it from a parent perspective. Yeah, those those are big. I use one analogy among my students and make them understand it right away because a lot of people are, self-love is just checking the box, right? I have a list of rituals and I have to check it. It still takes a lot of, I still takes a lot of, you know, willpower. But hear me out. Like if you're a successful woman, you're single, you're looking, are you going to spend time? talking to any guy on the street. You're not. Because you have standards. You know your worth. So if you agree with that, what makes you go into the grocery store and pick up everything on the candy aisle without a second thought? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Self-care ultimately is rooted in self-worth. I have to know myself enough, appreciate myself enough in order to want to care for myself. So I'm gonna do that. So self-care is actually, uh it's not some regimen or like rituals you have to strive for. It's actually a natural byproduct of self-worth. Right? I am so worthy and I'm not going to let that M pollute me. It's just not in my league. Okay? It's irrelevant to me. Here, I'm bringing you back to the same thing that I talked about from the beginning. It's not about categorizing food. It's not about scrutinizing numbers. It's about going back to your core. If you can stick with the core, a lot of those things that consumes other people traps other people. are irrelevant to you. You're gonna automatically want the right amount of right food at right time because your body is now working up for you. You're gonna go to the grocery store and you're just gonna go into the right aisles and buy the right thing without even thinking about the wrong aisles and wrong things. Doesn't matter how much toxic properties they have, it's irrelevant. Why do you spend time learning about the toxic properties about something that is irrelevant? Yep. Yep. Oh, Leslie, it's always a pleasure to have you on here. We got it. We, and the way we ended the last one is going to be the same way we end this one. Cause I still want to talk about manifestation with you. Cause we didn't talk about that today. We talked about perception and reality and sugar. We're going to talk about my, uh, the lesson from the TEDx talk that I almost had. Yes. Yes. manifestation, ah Leslie, thank you so much. Where can people find you on the interwebs? my website, you're going to put it up on the, yeah. and finding you on LinkedIn. Those are the two that'll be in the show notes. You guys watch your LinkedIn. It's fabulous. Truly, truly the stories that you put in your LinkedIn are fabulous. I always get captivated and pulled in to reading your posts on LinkedIn and they're not short. Some are. It's not AI that I can promise you. Exactly. No, you can tell it's not AI. my gosh. You can tell, but the stories are so good and they bring us back to exactly what we talked about today, which is coming back to our core, coming back to center, coming back to how we are innately supposed to live and the things we're supposed to believe that we are healthy from the get go. And it's a birthright. You didn't. to create a new identity out of you. You just need to activate it. that's what we are constantly seeing in the United States is people trying to figure out, okay, what's the, what's the right diet for me? You'd went down the Adkins route, which is keto. I've gone, I've, I've gone through several versions of this myself. And you know, that's just part of the learning process of being human, but also it's what we experience here in the United States. Diet is the way you must count your calories. must know what macros are. You must understand food science. You must know the difference between a good sugar and a bad sugar. What? You know, I always say America is a, uh, it's a fat fish bowl. The fish in a bowl in the fish bowl, the aquarium, aquarium, how we put it, okay. The little thing, uh, they have a mirror, but they think what they see in the reflection is the entire world, but it's actually their own reflection. They, if you go outside of the world, that's a country and live there for a few months and see how people actually live. And you're going to find out that 99 % of what you worry about that. It's non-existent or untrue to begin with. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's why I love taking my daughter to other countries so that she can be exposed to the fact that the United States isn't the only way. Or we're not talking about politics in this conversation. not, not politics. No, no, but, the, way that we live, right? I live in suburbia. There's not necessarily suburbia in certain countries, right? So it's just the exposure of, of what we live in all the time and what she sees all the time versus what's in other countries. Taking her to Kenya is high on my list. That's a third world country where, know, there are, there are towns. Yeah. but for the most part that's wide open space and nothing like what we have here. So yes, I wholeheartedly agree about that. Yeah, awesome. Let's schedule another conversation and we can finally talk about manifestation and perception because that's actually an important part of weight loss. And there's a lot of misconception about it. There's a lot of misconception about it, I can tell you. my gosh. Yes. The, the whole law of attraction thing has gotten completely muddled. Unfortunately here in the United States. So yes, we're going there, Leslie, we are going to do this and it's going to air this year. Definitely, definitely in eight months. Right. It'll be a minute, but definitely this year. Leslie. Thank you again. You're very welcome. I had pleasure. I wanted to have wine almost, but yeah, I definitely had pleasure with you, Amanda, and we'll keep in touch. Yeah, see you.

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