The Deal Dash Webinar: Reclaim Your Vitality

Hello and welcome to the third edition of the 2024 SS&C Intralinks Deal Dash webinar series presented in partnership with the All Day Running Company. The For those of you joining us for the first time, the Dealdash is a multi part Wellness series consisting of webinars, newsletters, some in person meetups and even a fun walk walk runner Jog Across America competition. To date, we've had over 300 customers and employees join the challenge from all over the world. If you want to join, you can simply search for interlinks all day running Co on the Strava app or you can post a question here and we can get you connected straight away.

At the end of today's webinar, we're going to have a raffle and we'll draw 3 attendees names to win some All Day Running Company swag. So remember, you have to be online at the end of the webinar for the drawing in order to win. So please stay with us. In our first webinar in this series, we spoke with New York Times best selling author and and co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, Jesse Itzler and he talked to us about his top rules to live by in webinar #2. We were fortunate enough to have Ken Rideout join us who's the president of Camrock Advisors who really took us through his methods of of practicing perseverance.

Today I'm joined by renowned celebrity nutritionist and and global Wellness speaker, Mona Sharma. Mona has provided guidance to prominent individuals such as Julianna Hough and had recurring appearances on television shows such as The Doctors and the Today Show. She's also the founder of Jicama, a groundbreaking line of functional foods and beverages. We asked Mona to talk with us and and share some of her strategies on how to reclaim your vitality, boost energy and regulate stress during the webinar. Please feel free to enter any questions into the Q&A window and we'll try and answer as many as we can in the available time.

So with that, welcome Mona, and the virtual stage is yours. Good morning. Thank you, Todd. Thank you for that introduction and good morning everyone else. I guess good afternoon for some of you. I'm on the the West Coast. All right, I'm about to pour my heart out into you and give you as much as I can in this time. I'm excited to see your questions after and you know, let's just dive in. You know, I want you all to think about how you woke up this morning.

How did you feel when you woke up this morning? Were you energized, excited? Did you feel stressed, anxiety? Did you hit the snooze button a few times? What I want you to consider is really what would it feel like? Start to imagine waking up tomorrow feeling completely at peace, feeling energized, feeling focused and really ready to take on the day without stress, without anxiety, and for some of you, maybe even without dread. Life can feel especially overwhelming these days, and just imagine if you could position the way that your body is going to enter in your life, your world with vitality and imagine that that's not just a rare experience, it's actually your new way of being.

You can unlearn a way of being. For me, my blueprint growing up was anxiety, and I brought that into adulthood and it really wasn't serving me at all. And maybe for some of you, that might feel unrealistic because in our modern world, you know, you're committed to hustle culture. We are addicted to achieving goals, to doing more. We're accustomed to the rush, the deadlines, the deals, the meetings, the emails flooding in at all hours of the day. Many of you might even thrive in high stakes environments. And I'm curious, have you ever asked yourself at what cost?

This is an important question because why are we pushing our bodies to the limits to achieve success only to realize that our health has paid the price? We live in a society where we reward doing more, we reward achieving more, we almost reward reward pushing more and even burnout. And this is fueling our imbalances and our health, despite our efforts to push more to get somewhere faster. And we have to deal with those imbalances over time because eventually they lead to burnout. You guys ever experienced burnout? Do you feel like you've been putting off burnout for a while now?

It's something that's kind of inherent when we are in that corporate space. Or maybe you are somebody who like me at one point in my life, you are a high functioning burnout expert. You push through everything that you have to do just as I did until I got to the end of my my rope. I've been there, but after 2 heart surgeries, two heart surgeries that were triggered by the exact same drive for success, I had to ask myself what was the point of pushing and achieving everything when I couldn't enjoy a healthy, vibrant body?

I promise you, nothing matters if you do not have your health. Nothing. So in my previous life, about 14 years ago, I come from the corporate world and on paper it sounded like the glamorous job. I was able to travel the world and be part of an incredible industry, but at the end of the day, it was a sales job. I had to do more, prove myself and got to a point where I just I had anxiety, I had stress every single day. And so I went into hardcore.

I started working out hardcore. I started eating hardcore. My girlfriend at that time, she called my apartment the House of free, fat free, sugar free, fun free, this free carb free, like I was doing all the things and yet I still started to get these heart palpitations. The heart palpitations because at that time I wasn't interested in getting to the root cause of my health. I just wanted the quick fix. So when I went to the doctor and they prescribed a beta blocker medication, I was like perfect, sign me up, let's go on this. So I continue to go about being hardcore without having to worry about these palpitations that were debilitating.

I went on that beta blocker medication and I ended up gaining 45 lbs. That 45 lbs in combination with medication caused me to become completely lethargic and it was really changing my spirit, my energy, and how I showed up for people around me. I wasn't having any fun whatsoever and still excited and looking forward to a quick fix. Fast solution. I said yes to having a heart surgery. So Can you imagine being awake during a heart surgery where they go through your neck and your groin? With these cameras you can see your heart on a massive screen.

They're injecting me with adrenaline and uppers and caffeine to induce these palpitations that I knew would only happen if I was out moving my body. And so they went forward with an ablation only for me to wake up the 2nd morning in the hospital with the palpitations again. The first surgery didn't work. The second surgery went a little bit differently. It took a little bit longer. They said, Mona, we finally found where we can do this extra ablation for you. But there might be a chance that you have to wear a pacemaker for the rest of your life and call that one of those moments where like your life flashes through your eyes and it's like, what the hell.

For me, I was wondering what happened. I was like, in this fast life, I'm successful, I'm doing well. From the outside, everything looks amazing and I'm suffering. I'm on heart condition. I knew in that moment, I had to make changes. And the irony of all this, everyone is that I knew that there was a better way. I knew how to heal my body. I knew I could be eating healthier. I knew that I could be moving differently. I knew that I had to mitigate my stress, my anxiety, my worry and my tension.

And growing up my dad's Indian, my mom is Danish. My mom, I've only ever known to have debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Her hands, her feet are completely deformed. They would take us to live at an ashram every single summer. And I don't ashram, if you don't know what that is, it's a spiritual place where you live outside in nature. You're doing yoga every day and breath work. You're eating these high vibrational foods that come from the earth. You are sitting in stillness.

You're dealing with your thoughts. It's like shutting down all of the tabs that were open and running in my brain so that I could finally listen to the symptoms within my body. And that's exactly what I did. After that surgery went back to my roots. I became a yoga teacher, a meditation teacher and nutritionist. Not even for my my profession, but just for my own personal healing. I share this with you not because I expect you guys to go away to an ashram. You don't have to do that. But we can all carry through the pillars, the foundations of health and well-being into our modern day world.

And that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. Because like I said, again, nothing matters until your health is gone. So you understand now like I really get this high stress environment, the high reward world that we live in of IP OS and mergers and acquisitions and boardrooms and especially closing deals. And I, I get it because I worked with some of the most successful people in the industry. And a lot of these people have normalized their level of stress because they had to. It's almost like the company cultures normalize this because they call it high performing or high achieving.

And look, there's nothing wrong with that if you live in a regulated body. But for most of my clients, their entire nervous system was almost in the state of fight or flight all the time on the inside, causing further imbalances. And I promise you, you know, success is one thing, but if your body is inflamed, there's a buzzword on the Internet now called inflammation. If you're experiencing chronic inflammation, that chronic stress can't last. We know that some stress is good for us, but chronic stress overtime, continuously actually is the instigation of disease. And for me, I certainly know looking back, I was living in hyper vigilance.

It felt really good to be there. And that might be familiar to some of you where your body is constantly in that fight or flight mode. You might think it's your competitive edge, but that means that your cortisol, your stress hormone, is continually elevated. This could be disrupting your sleep. This could be causing you to retain a lot of fat or water retention in your body, but it's certainly reversible. Your body is actually designed to heal in every moment of every day. In fact, your body right now, right now, in the second, is working its butt off to heal for you.

But the difference is, is it doing that? And are you still feeling depleted and stressed, or is it doing that and you feel like you're thriving with energy and balance and resilience? Stress is on the rise today, and the numbers are pretty staggering. And here's the thing, we can now measure someone's biological age against their chronological age. So I've worked with people who are in their 30s and even in their 40s, but their biological age when we, when we test this is actually in their 50s, meaning that their internal clock, their biology is aging faster than their chronology.

But you can reverse this. I want to just be really clear on that. You can actually age backwards with simple changes to your diet, your mindfulness practices and of course your exercise. So just like get a clear picture of this and maybe especially if it does apply to you, what's the alternative to a high functional stress life? It means that you're living successfully in a healed, regulated body that is thriving. You can thrive on intermittent stress instead of deteriorating from the chronic, chronic stress that we have today. And this is the difference between these two words that I really want to land with you today, Longevity versus health span.

OK? So what is the point in working so hard in today's world if we're not reaping the rewards of our efforts? The number one goal that we should all have, no matter what healthy practices you're pursuing is to add quality years to our life and by making every single day count. And I'm sure if I asked all of you right now, how do you want to feel when you're 100? Have you ever thought about that when you are 100 years old? Do you want to be in a nursing home?

Chances no. Do you want to be hiking with your grandkids and have your mobility and your posture and your strength free of medication? Because that's the possibility. However, what we noticed now is that the opposite is happening. The majority of aging adults today aren't aging well because we are not living well longer. So forget about the word longevity. I want you to now focus on health span and what are you doing to fuel your health span in the future?

Every decision that you make today accounts for your mind and your body of the future. So in this first part, I really want to connect you with something that's a little bit different. And trust me, I will get to some some other tips. The first question that people want to know when they book an initial consultation with me is OK, Mona, just tell me what to eat. What's the perfect diet? How do I exercise? And let's just go from there. And that's fine, I can totally give you that.

But chances are you've had or tried a couple of diets at this point in your lifetime only to fall off the wagon and to come back on looking for something new like me. Maybe you're looking for that perfect red pill. I think that red pill right now is called Ozempic, right? Or you're looking for the next guru to follow or fitness coach or whatever it is. But I want to really reverse this and bring back the control into your body. Stop looking for solutions that are external to you and giving so much control to social media, maybe even to your doctor or to the the fads and the trends that we're seeing happening.

When I went to the ashram, like I said, I was forced to deal with everything within me, my aches, my pains, my feelings, all of that stress that I was like stuffing into my body like, no, no, no, I'm going to deal with you later. I've got priorities here. I got to make some more money. I got to meet some more people. I got to get to the top of my my job really, really fast. I'm going to deal with my health later. I had to deal with all that stuff and I put myself into the environment to do that.

Your body right now is talking to you. There are symptoms and signals that it sends you in every second of every day through fatigue, through digestion issues, maybe through aches and pains as we get older. And the problem is that we've been taught to really push through discomfort, push through it, work harder, forget about the pain, use your mindset, push through it and to ignore the signals from our body and to normalize symptoms like bloating or stress or fatigue. And today I want you to start to to listen to the red flags. Symptoms like bloating, like brain fog, like joint pain are actually not.

They're not normal. OK, we might call them normal, but just because they are common does not mean that they are normal. The analogy for this is that you have this car, and through those symptoms, you're driving through life with a red engine light flashing, and you're choosing to ignore it. It's like, oh, yeah, I've had bloating forever. I've had headaches since I was a little kid. Right. And I hope that, you know, if these symptoms are landing with you, I want to just start to be mindful of it. Maybe you've got a pen and paper nearby.

Because if we were all sitting in a room together, I would do this one exercise. How many people here suffer from bloating? I wish I could see all your hands from bloating, from gas, from heartburn, from indigestion, from anxiety, from worry, from Constipation, from irregular bowel movements, from insomnia, food addictions. Maybe you have a low sex drive. Maybe you have brain fog or issues finding your words sometimes. Maybe it's restlessness or somebody who constantly has to be moving, joint pain that I keep going back to PMS, irritability, or simply feeling like crap. Despite your best efforts, chances are all hands would be up by now, right?

It's sad, it's funny, but it's true, right? We are suffering in our modern world and there are long term impacts to these. So if you answered yes to any of those, write down your symptoms because that's your red engine light asking you to tune in. And I say this because heart attacks don't happen. They don't start because of the choices in our 50s. They, they happen because of the choices that we made in our 20s and 30s and 40s. Alzheimer's at 70 starts with the habits that we created in our 40s. Cancer, autoimmune disease like my mom had, doesn't, doesn't just happen in the years of that we suffer.

It doesn't just show up overnight. It's the result of accumulation over the years within our bodies. It's ignoring that red engine light. And sadly, a lot of us have been touched by a lot of these diseases. They're actually on the rise despite living in this era, this world of hyper Wellness, right? For me as a nutritionist, all the Wellness tips out there, it's like it's confusing. What are we on to today? Are we fasting for one day or three days? What's the best thing?

Are we doing this pill, that pill? Are we going keto? What are we doing? And the point is we have to now turn down the noise because the system is broken, right? The system is broken. And they're foundational pillars that you can really put to place. And the first part has to be remembering that you are your own healer. So if you pulled out that pen and paper, now is a good opportunity for you to ask this one question that you should be asking yourself every day.

This is a question I ask my clients all the time. On a scale of one to 10, what is the level of stress that you are feeling? 10 being the highest one being I'm on a beach, I'm cool. OK, if that number is over 5, a lot of you or for a lot of my clients, they will answer it as five. But if I were to step into their body, it would probably feel like like 10. We need to minimize that number. How many of you are having consistent bowel movement today?

So a healthy digestive tract means having one to two easy bowel movements a day. How many of you are waking up feeling rested to take on the day? And what about your digestion? Do you, do you digest your food easily or do you suffer from bloating or or heartburn? Again, another light flashing and I wanted to ask, how do you want to feel in your body? Are your choices even aligned with how you want to feel? Or are you putting it off till Monday or the new year?

Right. We all want to start something in the new year or in a new month. We're putting it off until the future. And I'm curious, if you had me as your nutritionist going through your fridge, going through your cupboards, what would you be hiding? Don't let Mona see this. Put that all the way to the back. Don't let her see this. Those are the foods that are chances are causing you, you know, a little bit of harm. And I'm asking you to just, like, take this global look at your habits because you probably know of at least one habit as really impacting your health.

OK, So what is that one habit? Write it down. What's the one habit that you know isn't serving your health? Is it too much processed food, too much alcohol, eating out too much for me sometimes too much caffeine? That's for sure. And you simply have to be mindful. This word mindfulness also is growing. We think that to be mindful means going to the ashram. It means sitting and meditating for 20 or 30 minutes a day.

But you can be mindful within one minute. You just have to check in with your body. With my clients, I guide them to doing this before your eyes even open in the morning. Before your eyes open. TuneIn, how does your heart feel? How is your digestion? Do you wake up with aches and pains? Do a scan of your body so that you can self correct that day? A lot of us, the first thing that we do is we give our power away. No, we're going to shut down the wisdom of our body.

We're going to go directly to our phones. I'm going to check my e-mail. That blue light's going to go to my brain. It's going to stimulate me and get me wired. I'm going to go to get my caffeine first thing. And just right off the bat, we're setting our our day up in that fight or fight flight stress response. When you live in fight or flight for long periods of time, your body cannot function at its best. The standard analogy back in the day, fight or flight, was when we were running from a lion or a wild animal. When we were running from that wild animal, you would have never thought to have a cup of coffee, throw an apple in your mouth.

I'm hungry right now, I'm going to eat. And yet here we are in our modern day world, living with fight or flight every single day, shutting food down the Hatch, expecting our bodies to just deal with it. No, the stage isn't set for you to even digest your food, so it's no wonder that you're experiencing certain symptoms. I'd like you all to consider the question of health span. So there's one question that I've asked my clients over the past 10 years, and there's only been one person who could answer yes.

How many people do you have on your health care team? Who's your care team? You ever thought about that? Who's taking care of you? If you're a parent, you're certainly taking care of other people. If you are a manager, you're taking care of your team. But who's taking care of you? Our doctors don't oftenly often take care of us. They will help us get rid of a symptom in the same way that my doctor wrote a prescription medication for medication that I thought that I needed at the time.

But he didn't ask me about my stress. He didn't ask me about the quality of my digestion, if I was digesting my food properly, my metabolic function, or any of those questions. He wasn't part of my care team. So who's part of your care team and how often are you checking in with them? For some people, this could be their massage therapist. For some people, could be a Doctor Who's actively participating with you in your health span strategy. It could be even somebody that you're speaking to every single week could be a nutritionist. I suggest the number one kind of take away from this not working with me, but working through me today is to find a Doctor Who is your partner in healing and somebody who's going to run a full panel of all of your blood labs.

So checking on every single system within your body from head to toe and not just looking to see that you're in a specific range, but making sure that you're in the optimal ranges of healing and thriving and otherwise helping you self correct in that moment. If you don't have a doctor or if your doctor is that you're young, yeah, you're fit. It's just stress, that's normal. Bloating. Oh, that's normal. Joint pain? Yeah, you're in your 40s, that's normal. Again, these symptoms are not.

Just because they're common does not mean that they are normal. So maybe it's time for you to go to, you know, if you go to an Institute of functional Medicine, ifm.org, you can find a doctor in your area. There's a difference between a functional medicine practitioner who's been trained in nutrition and looking at biomarkers and understanding even your bowel movements versus a traditional Western doctor. All right, I get my my clients to do their labs two to four times a year, 4 times. Obviously, we're dealing with high inflammatory markers. If I see that your internal state is under stress, we got to get to work.

And it's not about finding a supplement program and buying 20 supplements that you see that are trending on, on social media. You don't even know that your body's digesting those. I want you to remember that your perfect diet, your perfect healthcare plan should be as unique as your thumbprint. Your diet should not be the same as mine. Your history, your stress, your genetics are very different. So why should we be focusing on the same foods to get around this until maybe you do these labs is I want to start to consider how did your ancestors eat? So I've got one side that's meat and potatoes.

I've got another side that's strictly vegetarian. And when I follow more of an Indian style diet, my body comes back into into balance. My digestion is optimized. I don't have to worry about if I'm getting 100 grams of protein a day because instead I'm focused on feeling good. Notice how you feel through the healthy practices that you have. All right, so with that said, let's dive into some nutrition for optimal energy. All right? Your food is your fuel.

It's the gas, the incredible gas that you're going to put into whatever car you, you, you love. It powers everything that you do from your performance to your recovery, your cognition, and the way that you age. Again, remember that biological age versus chronological age, the food that you eat can reverse or slow down how your body is aging internally. And yet many of us continue to fuel with shitty gas, right? You get the analogy. And look, I said this yesterday when we were prepping for this call. I know you guys know what to eat.

If I were to put two plates of food in front of you, you know which plate is the healthy food. You know which plate Mona would probably say, oh, don't go there, right? But what I'm more interested in is why aren't you choosing the healthier option for yourself? Why don't you think that you should be in the number one priority position of the things that you need to take care of and fuel your body with vitality and energy and happiness and instead veer towards habits that are robbing you because they're robbing you, right When my health was at its worst, I, I said I was on that House of free diet.

I was eating a shit load of protein. There was no sugar, there was no carbs. But with my high cortisol levels, my body was panicking. There was no carbs, no brain fuel to help me function. I was having brain fog every single day. And with high levels of cortisol, despite restrictive dieting and hardcore, I was still gaining weight. Has that ever happened to you guys? Question the things that you're following and whether they're actually working. Again, too much processed food, too much alcohol, too much caffeine.

We know that they really don't benefit our body. One of the biggest things that might apply to you guys is how often are you eating out? Eating out, sadly, is one of the most detrimental things that we can do to our health. A lot of it have to we have to do it professionally, right? A lot of us have to engage with with our clients when we're eating out. But the problem is, is that these restaurants cook with inflammatory oils. So we started using things like canola oil, which is if you look at how canola oil is made, it's disgusting, by the way, but it's cheap oil that makes things taste good.

Or we cooked with refined vegetable oils, highly inflammatory to our cardiovascular system. Or they're cooking with seed oils when we now know when they cook these seed oils at really high temperatures in restaurants or use them for frying, they are inflammatory to our cellular wall causing damage and even metabolic dysfunction. So you know, really looking at where inflammatory oils are coming in. If you see canola oil, cotton seed oil, safflower oils, soybean oil, vegetable oils on any products that you have at home, even those are the first things that I want you to go and remove. They're they're inflaming your gut and they're inflaming your brain.

We have something called a gut brain access that it's a nerve endings actually more neurons that we have in our gut microbiome than we do in our brain. We think it's our brain that's calling the shot, but it's actually a gut. So if your gut is inflamed, if you're fueling it with inflammatory foods, it's sending inflammation to the brain, which is why a lot of my clients, when I simply take them off these seed oils and vegetable oils, they notice a difference within the first five to seven days. Their digestion even improves, Their energy goes up, their joint pain goes down. Even that little bloating that they have tends to to dissipate.

Other things that could be sabotaging your health are you're not getting enough fiber. So you know, in these past few years we've really seen things like keto diet work, paleo style diet really working. All these diets can 100% work. Chances are until they don't. So when you're trying a new diet, I want you to go and check your blood, see how your body's reacting to see if it's for you or not. But this is when we can really come back to some again, foundational truths. So before I get to that, I just want to just go through, you know, some some key findings today.

We are now understanding the direct link between what we're eating and our energy, our stress, our anxiety, our out view on on life. And I'm sure you guys are seeing a lot of this in the media as well. But despite everything that we know, Americans today are getting sicker, fatter, unhealthier and unhappier than ever before in history. We are seeing an unprecedented level of chronic illness. 6 in 10 adults have a chronic disease, 6 in 10. Four in 10 from that number have two chronic diseases. That's insane. And why is obesity, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease by the way is now known as type 3 diabetes?

It's a metabolic condition. They used to be so rare, like our parents and grandparents especially. We didn't see the numbers that we did today, but they now become the norm and all roads lead back to stress, inflammation, and an ultra processed food revolution. Anxiety. For me, anxiety was out of control. These disorders are on the rise with depression as well. Depression is 50% more common actually with women than it is with men. They're all notable because they're all preventable. And I just want that to land with you today because some of you might have a genetic predisposition to some of these diseases.

But just because your DNA is a carrier does not mean that that is your destiny. You can turn off the genetic markers that 'cause you to get sick. Rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease runs in my family. But because of my efforts towards my health, I can reverse those numbers. And a lot of these conditions, again, are are relevant or you're able to see them in your labs long before they manifest into disease. So what are we going to do? You now know about the oils that I want you to take out of your diet.

You're going to be conscious about when you're eating out or where you're eating. And I should probably tell you there's an app called the Seed Oil Scout, looks like SOS seed Oil Scout. All you have to do is put in your zip code and it will help you find the restaurants in your area that doesn't use those inflammatory vegetables, vegetable and seed oils. All right, so there's just one helpful resource that I give my my clients, but I want you to just take this ownership into your own hands. What does that mean? I just want you to eat nutrient dense foods.

Nutrient dense foods reduce inflammation, they optimize your brain function, they reverse metabolic damage and stop going down the rabbit hole of these diet fat. Don't be fooled by packaging that you see in stores that are labeled keto friendly, gluten free, healthy, natural, right? Those are expensive labels that these big food brands are paying for on their packages. If you're buying more or eating more foods that come from a package, AKA dead food, there's no life force to it. It's sitting on packages, it's been transported thousands of miles and it has a shelf life likely of one or two years.

Those foods offer zero nutritional value for you. Protein powders. You remember when protein powders used to be a supplement? Now they're considered food. It's not food. It has a high source of protein, but it's dead food. What are the foods that we know we thrive from high vibrational, polyphenol rich, high fiber foods that come from the earth. What I'm talking about is organic fruits and vegetables. OK, a lot of us don't have time. I get it.

Gosh, I run a couple of businesses. I've got kids. I have a podcast. Finding the time to prepare food seems impossible sometimes. But look, we all have an hour or two on Sundays and in that hour or two on Sundays, my clients know that they're getting these foods that I'm talking about. They're pre cutting. You can even buy them pre cut, pre wash free everything and making sure that they are part of your meals. Making sure that you're the person at the office that has veggies stacked in glass containers to snack on throughout the day instead of going for a coffee and a doughnut or don't even say Starbucks frappuccinos with all those flavor lattes and chemical ingredients.

I don't want to hear it. All right, So be the person that inspires other people to hop on that wagon. So what are you doing? You heard about the trend of trying to have 30 different types of plant fibers a week. I said to you earlier that you can actually change the Physiology of your gut microbiome within a few days. Remember, my clients notice a difference just by changing their diet within three to four days. And so for you, if you start to include more fiber focused foods with all of those colors, think of eat the rainbow, right?

There's a reason behind that. Those Reds and purples and oranges and greens from nature are anti-inflammatory. They put out inflammation to the body. They're loaded with fiber that help you feel more full. And the different plant fibers actually fuel the gut microbiome. Another buzzworthy, another buzzworthy trend. Your gut microbiome is the dictator of everything when it comes to disease, metabolic health, your energy, your mood, your drive, everything. You don't have to go and buy an expensive probiotic. Half of them do not work, by the way. All you have to do is eat a variety and a diversity of plant focused foods.

OK, remember those two words, variety and diversity of plant focused foods. How do we do this when we go to the grocery store? I just want you to buy what's on sale that week. Yes, organic does matter, but to make sure that you're not a creature of habit, some of you are probably eating the same foods over and over every single week. When we order our groceries, we're getting the same foods every single week. By doing that, you're only taking a limited amount of spectrum of vitamins and nutrients and phytochemicals.

But when you have different things, so one week you're going to do cucumber, kale lettuce, romaine. The next week you're going to do zucchini and squash and tomatoes and mushrooms. That variety is going to fuel your gut microbiome. It's going to fuel your serotonin production, your feel good hormone. You're going to be fueling your immune system. 80% of your immune system resides in your gut by simply eating a variety and diversity of those polyphenol rich foods. So when they say eat the rainbow, that's what it really what really matters.

So let's just start by going through your day. All right, so some of you were up really, really early. The first thing that I want you to do is to start with hydration. Hydrate your body after a night of detoxification, living in today's modern world, having a body that has too much of A toxic load is the first thing that's impeding our performance and our recovery. So start with water, ideally spring water. Please no tap water. This is not good for us. Get a water filtration system if you can.

And the hack to this which you might have heard or tried is adding electrolytes. Don't go out and buy an expensive electrolyte powder. Half of them that tastes really sweet actually aren't that mineral dense. There's a brand of sea salt called Baja Gold Sea salt. Baja gold sea salt. It's incredibly high mineral, dense sea salt. I just put a sprinkle of that into my water. I start my day with that. This should be the thing that instigates your bowel movement first thing in the morning, not a coffee.

All right, let your body detoxify. After that, you can go into your exercise and things like that. But did you know that the one thing that can help your performance is, again, I mentioned not looking at your phone, but instead going outside first thing in the morning. For some of us, it's still, you know, pretty dark. Some of you might be sunny by going outside, getting grounded in the earth and looking up towards the sky or the sun. Those rays of light actually go through the optic nerve and communicate to the gut microbiome naturally boosting serotonin that feel good hormone, queuing the body to wake up better than coffee, giving you the energy that you need.

And that's actually the first step to sleep training. Do this first thing in the morning every single day. And I promise you, your circadian rhythm, when it is aligned with nature, will function more optimally. And then it's up to you. Some of you here are fasters. I would say that if you for a long time have not had an appetite in the morning, this to me is a sign of digestive dysfunction. When we wake up in the morning, we should be hungry. We eat to break our fast to give our bodies fuel for the day.

I know that fasting is a trend and it is highly beneficial, especially for putting our bodies into a toffagy and reversing disease and stuff like that. But I want you to consider try skipping dinner instead of breakfast. It might not be easy, but just give it a go. Skip dinner. You're going to skip. It won't. You're going to have a terrible social life. OK, but do it even one night a week. Skip dinner instead of breakfast.

You'll notice the quality of your sleep might increase. You're going to be resetting your digestive system because the the strength of your digestive system is everything. And after that, I want you to focus on a protein packed breakfast. Protein is very important to prevent sarcopenia, to age really well, to ensure that, you know, into our 40s as we lose muscle and bone density, we want to get into those 80s and 90s and hundreds and again, climbing with our, our, our grandkids. Protein is important, whether that's plant based protein through natural foods, none of those beyond burgers or fake meats, those are 100% inflammatory garbage for you.

Or using high quality animal protein or using that protein powder supplement is a great option. A lot of my clients will do a really big protein smoothie with a side of pasture raised eggs. Having that higher load of protein to start the day actually works as metabolic fuel for the body. It reduces cravings, it supports the gut microbiome, and it gives you sustainable energy throughout the day. Better than caffeine. I want you to consider no snacking if you're constantly snacking. Your body or digestive system is constantly working. If your digestive system is constantly working, digestion takes a tremendous amount of energy.

You're robbing yourself of energy. If I were to ask you all, can you all use a bit more energy? I know I certainly could. So avoid snacking, eat until you're comfortably full two or three times a day, depending on how many meals you feel good with, and then avoid snacking in between your meals, but making sure you have a ratio. OK, so we've now talked about that high polyphenol. Eat the rainbow diet. So focusing on fiber, high quality protein is the next one and then the last one is high quality fat. So good fats like avocado, nuts and seeds are really high quality.

Extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, hemp seeds, chia seeds, raw nuts and seeds. Not the ones that are sugary and have oil in them. Got to look at your labels. Look at the backs of the labels to make sure no oil, inflammatory oils are on them. Use that as your trifecta. OK? If you want to optimize your health today moving forward, at every single meal that you have high quality carbs that come from the earth, eat the rainbow. High quality protein that we mentioned and then a high quality fat.

That's the trifecta. No diets, just eat real food. I had a client who was addicted to having two to three venti coffees a day. There's 235 grams of coffee in a venti coffee. If caffeine is an addiction for you and you might not notice it because you're just a high performing caffeine addict. What he was doing over time is dehydrating his coat. He was suppressing his appetite meaning he wasn't taking in nutrient dense foods anymore. But he thought, oh, I don't have to eat. Amazing.

He was disrupting his adrenals, his natural cortisol production that led him to insulin resistance. So in his 30s, he became pre diabetic. This also disrupted his sleep, meaning he wasn't recovering faster. And his biological age, you guys was 64 years old. So we might think that these simple things that we're doing aren't sabotaging our health or maybe it's your one vice, but really own in on making better choices. All right, so as we wrap things up, let's just like bring everything into into perspective. For such a complicated world of health and Wellness and nutrition, sometimes it's frustrating not to know where to land or where to where to start.

And I promise you, the first thing that you have to address is listening to your body symptoms. Stop ignoring the symptoms and remember that you were the healer. The second one is optimize your rest, starting that sleep cycle first thing in the morning, getting out into the sun, making sure that you're getting quality, quality sleep. If you don't have something like an aura ring to help you understand the quality of your sleep, I really do suggest one of these. Not they have to wear it all the time, but this is what I use as a tool with my clients to understand their HRV, their heart rate variability.

If their heart rate variability is before below 40 or 50, we got some work to do. We got to make sure that their bodies are getting into that deep state of recovery. And then we do that by using the foundation. So proper sleep, proper hydration that we mentioned, proper food, that we mentioned, proper exercise, and then managing your stress. I want you to remember the Pareto principle, OK? After today, after hearing this, there's no more pushing through, no more grinds, no more chronic cortisol overload. I want you to really TuneIn, and I want you to consider the Pareto principle. So it's not about perfection.

I'm certainly not perfect. Even as a nutritionist. The Pareto principle teaches us that 80% of our results comes from 20% of our efforts. This should apply to your work too. 80% of your results were 20% of your efforts. So from all of the tips that I've given you today, maybe you're choosing just one thing to start with and that one thing can have massive impacts on your biology. All right, just give it a few days. Something that we can do right now. Another tip, when we talked about movement, a lot of us are sitting in front of our desk all day.

We should all be moving every 45 minutes. If you have the option to turn your Zoom meetings in to 45 minutes instead of 60, buy little egg timer on Amazon and every 45 minutes I want you to move your bodies getting up. You might even have a walking desk. You might get outside, look up at the sky. By shifting your nervous system from fight or flight to rest and digest, you will be creating an internal stage for your body to heal and and function at its best. SO in closing, I want you all to just take a deep breath, side out your mouth.

By doing that alone, you're cueing your body and your brain to come in to rest and digest. I want you to do this throughout the day and in this moment. I want you to get really clear. How do you want to feel when you wake up tomorrow morning? How do you want your energy to feel your mood? How do you want to show up for others in the world? How do you want to age? What do you want to look like when you're 8090 or 100?

I see myself hiking a mountain with a grandkid on my back. And you know what? Now that I'm getting a little older, it's not the number on the scale. It's not the six pack. It's not, you know, doing the three back-to-back marathons. It's not fasting for 3 or 4 waters a day, three or sorry. It's not fasting for three to four days a week. It's about honoring my constitution, understanding that the best choices for my health are things that I can dictate. And I really hope that you start to turn down the noise from the external world to remember and recall that you control your destiny and you are your healer.

Thank you. Thank you, Mona. That was, that was, that was really phenomenal. I, I, I, I'm especially attuned, you know, personally myself to the, to, to what you talked about with the fitness age. I I discovered just this year the whole fitness age and chronological age and, and I found myself now that I can't run as fast as I used to, I get a big thrill out of looking like, oh look, I went down a year or things of that. Nature so. It's kind of fun that way.

Yeah. But again, we'll use them with our doctors like that should be a biomarker that our doctors are looking at, right, every single year. Good for you A. Couple of other questions and things that came out. One, one that I thought you know is certainly pertinent for myself. I, I, I know for many of my colleagues, I'm sure for some of the customers who are out there as well. It's, and it kind of centered around, you know, just our day-to-day jobs and you know, this could it could be anyone who's out there, but a demanding job where maybe you're traveling, you're on back-to-back calls all day.

You know, what are what are some tips or thoughts you might have on finding the the time to be able to prep or plan? Am I going to eat the right way? And what's my Wellness schedule going to be? How would you approach that for someone who's travelling or on the road or those kinds of things? Well, first, I, I always remind my clients like, gosh, even Will Smith, you know, like there's people who have achieved these insane levels of success from the external world. And the one common denominator, even Warren Buffett, he starts his day by prioritizing himself, by tuning into what really, really matters.

That might mean that you have to get up an extra 5 or 10 minutes. Really today my day is back-to-back on calls like this. And last night what I did is in a blender. This is what you can all do. So I talked about getting that 30 different types a week of plant fibers in a blender. Get a high quality blender. Pour in some coconut water. I want you to throw in some celery, some ginger, some mixed greens, a carrot, maybe some bell pepper, maybe a bit of a protein powder if you want to, maybe some turmeric.

You know, just throw everything into that blender, the coconut water makes it taste better and blend it out and in a massive Mason jar. All my Co workers will always see that on my desk and I'm drinking one of those a day. So when life does get busy and yes, I've got a coffee in front of me also, I know that I'm at least doing that one thing. Another option is to consider a food delivery program. This is something that my clients will do even if it's two or three meals a week to help them with those those lunchtime cravings. Protein smoothies at the office are another really big hit.

Make it normal to have a blender in the office. And Sundays again, Sundays the the key day. We all have an hour on Sunday where we can prep, prioritize food prep that. Makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. You, you've, we've done a great job sharing with us, you know, the different nutrients eat the rainbow and, and things of that nature. There's a question here about supplements as well. And and do you have any thoughts on on colostrum and whether that's good or bad for the gut? Oh my gosh, classroom's one of those things right now where it's like it's in the spotlight, right?

But if you look at the studies out there, one, I want to know where the classroom's coming from. A lot of us don't know how it's manufactured. Is it going through intense heat? Is the company that's selling it publishing the results? Most of them aren't. So before you give in to whether it's colostrum or any fad that's out there, you want to go with a company that has two things. One, longevity behind them, the studies to back it and the studies that actually are published to their consumers. And with my clients, again, don't just supplement for the sake of supplementing.

I know that it's really, really tempting, but if your digestion isn't functioning at its best, all you're doing is you're throwing more stuff into the body. Like I said, when my health was at its worst, I was supplementing with all of these things every single day, but my body couldn't keep up. I was already shoving my stress, my emotions, the toxins, like the world, like everything was going into my body. So clean up first, reduce your toxin load, optimize your diet 1st, and then add in the supplements and let me see your blood labs. Let's see what you actually need to take. There's no sense in supplementing if your body doesn't need it.

Makes sense. Total. You know, as you and I have talked about in prep and it's people who are attending these series know we've got this kind of running competition that's tied in with this Wellness program. And so there's a couple of questions in here. I'll combine them, but the question is around your thoughts on saunas and cold plunges and what impact that has on the body. They are brilliant. So these are types of biohacking, but when it comes to something like sauna, guys, all of our ancestors knew about staying in heat, about sweating.

When we sweat, we detoxify. The problem is that we live in a very toxic world and a lot of us genetically. You can actually do a test that helps you understand whether your body is good at detoxing or whether you might have compromised detoxification symptoms. If your body's not detoxing properly, you're going to be one of those people that had your hand up at every single symptom. I'm one of those people. So an interesting challenge that you can try, if you have access to a sauna, go into a sauna every single day for 14 days straight, 14 days straight, just 20 minutes sitting in the sauna to just see how you feel after detoxing through a controlled.

Like that and yes, Sana will also help with your recovery. The more that we're eliminating toxins, the more that we're igniting our bodies. Mitochondria. Coal plunging does that. When we go into that deep cold water, our body goes into a state of stress and they're it's coming back into rest and digest. We're training our nervous system to come back in a peaceful state. So in the same way that you practice yoga on a yoga mat, coal plunging can actually have the same benefit.

We go into the water with freaking out and then we go into a calm state of being. We're training our nervous system how to function at its best through periods of stress. So #1 focus on detoxification #2 find the modalities that you love. Cold plunging isn't for everyone. Maybe it's walking, maybe it's journaling, maybe it's singing, maybe it's yoga, Tai chi Find the thing that you love to do that helps to balance your nervous system that. That that's great advice. All right, I'm going to get one more in here and then we can announce our our winners of the drawing as well.

So the last question here, which I you know, I think it's certainly one near and dear to my heart, is any recommendations on the right amount of sleep per night? You guys, it's moving from 8 to 10 hours, Can you believe it? Eight to 10 hours. We worked through an era where it was sleep when you're dead. Now that was the biggest mistake. So This is why it like another thing that we have to be mindful, don't trust all of the trends that happened out there.

OK, so when we are sleeping well, so again, using my aura ring, if I'm getting at least an hour and a half of deep sleep, an hour and a half of REM sleep, meaning my brain is detoxifying while I'm sleeping. And looking at that HRV number, heart rate variability, I can tell if my body is recovering from the efforts of my day, from the stresses of my life. If those numbers continue to go down, that's an SOS. You do something to put your body into a calm state, to heal, to recover, maybe to take a break from running for a day or two because you're not recovering.

Then you have to work with a practitioner to understand why. Why aren't you recovering? Going to bed at 9 O clock, you guys, if that's a possibility, that's the new thing. 10 O clock, that's a new thing to support your body because believe it or not, adults have to sleep train. We sleep train babies, but we have to sleep train as adults by being exposed to blue light throughout the day, our phones continuously, but also blue lights at night. I have a hard rule with my clients. No screens, no blue light going into their eyes at least one hour before bed.

You might hear that some people put red light bulbs into their houses. Other people will start to light candles when the sun goes down. I mentioned mimicking the circadian rhythm of nature. We should be done eating by the time it's dark outside. We should be winding down for bed with no food in our stomachs for at least two hours before we go to bed. By limiting the blue light exposure and our body's ability to have to work through digesting food at least two hours before bed, I promise you that HRV number will go up, your sleep will improve, you'll wake up feeling more rested, and your body will function at its best.

That's awesome. I, I, I can, I can definitely self attest to the, the, when I found the blue light setting on my phone so that it turns off blue light at a certain hour, you know, a couple hours before bed. I, I actually, I, I noticed that, you know, Mona, I, I really want to thank you for your time today. I think you've given us all an awful lot to think about. You've given me pause about heading out for my Dunkin' Donuts coffee this afternoon. It really has been tremendous having you on the.

So I'll announce quickly the three winners here. So number the first, first winner of the drawing is Brett Price from Blue Cross. Second winner is Michael Johnson from Cerberus, and the third is David Johnson from New Jersey Resources. So congratulations to the three of you. Someone from our account team will be reaching out to you and get the details about how to get you, get you the swag. And with that, again, heartfelt thanks to you, Mona. This has been really great. There's going to be you. You actually had a you were going to give us your website where people could access some of this information.

You got it. Yeah. You know what I love community. It's so important for us to stay connected and to use social media for the good. So find me on Instagram at I'm Mona Sharma. Send me a note if you have any questions or go to my website. So a lot of the foundations of health that we talked about today, I have a free program for you guys. It's called the 8 Roots of healing. Go to my website, sign up there.

You will have access to videos from me that walk you through a longer version of the content that we talked about today to give you the the foundations of healing moving forward so that you really optimize your your health span. Great. Thanks very much everybody. We look forward to seeing you next month on on the next edition of this. Have a great week. Thank you.