Episode 106 | Nov 14, 2024

Why The Recipe For Healthy Eating Requires Relationships, With Shawn Stevenson

Which matters more for your health: the food on your plate or the people around your table? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi and special guest Shawn Stevenson dive into the surprising science behind how social connections during meals can impact your well-being even more than your diet. With a gripping story of overcoming a seemingly hopeless health diagnosis, Shawn—author of Eat Smarter and host of The Model Health Show—reveals why relationships may be the ultimate health hack.

“The most influential factor on what we eat is our environment, is our peer group. The most influential factor on our exercise habits, our sleep habits, our success in life, is dependent on our relationships.”

Shawn Stevenson

Shawn’s personal journey is nothing short of transformative. At just 20 years old, he was told he had degenerative disc disease and the spine of an 80-year-old, with no chance of recovery. Refusing to accept this prognosis, he used nutrition, movement, and sleep to heal his body against all odds. Influenced by his grandmother’s love and his own determination, Shawn pivoted his life to study nutrition science and now inspires millions to embrace holistic health. His work, featured in major outlets like Forbes and The New York Times, continues to challenge conventional ideas about wellness.

Throughout this enlightening episode, Dr. Sandi and Shawn explore how family meals and a sense of community can powerfully shape our health outcomes. Shawn shares research demonstrating that strong social bonds can decrease disease risk and even extend life expectancy, outshining dietary micromanagement. He argues for a flexible, common-sense approach to eating that evolves with our needs and cultural influences. This conversation will make you rethink health as more than just food and exercise—it’s about nurturing relationships, too.

For health coaches, Shawn’s insights are a game-changer. His approach reminds coaches that true wellness is holistic, encompassing not just nutrition but also the emotional nourishment we get from meaningful connections. With practical strategies for helping clients create more joyful and fulfilling mealtime experiences, this episode will empower you to support sustainable lifestyle changes. Ready to explore the real secret to health and happiness? Listen below!

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Dr. Sandi: What do you think would be more important, managing the foods that you’re eating or celebrating a meal surrounded by people that you really care about, family, friends? It turns out the research shows that how we eat and who we eat with makes a much bigger difference than exactly what we’re eating. So, if you’re eating alone and you’re feeling lonely and you’re isolated, what you eat is not going to create good health for you compared to if you’re eating with a group of people that you are enjoying their company and you are then creating better health all around, better physical health, better mental health.

We get into this topic with my very special guest today. He is an expert in this area. He has a story to tell that is so inspirational. It will move you. It will leave you in tears how he overcame adversity to be one of the leading experts in nutrition today. I’m talking about the one and only Shawn Stevenson. Let me tell you a little bit about Shawn. He is the author of the USA Today National Bestsellers “Eat Smarter” and the “Eat Smarter Family Cookbook,” as well as the international bestselling book “Sleep Smarter.” He’s also the creator of the “Model Health Show,” featured as the number one health podcast in the United States with millions of listener downloads every month. He’s a graduate of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. He studied business, biology, and nutritional science and became the co-founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Shawn has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, Muscle & Fitness, Good Morning America, ESPN, and many other major media outlets. We’re just so excited to have you with us, Shawn. Can you just start out by telling us how did you get into this field? What inspired you to be a nutritionist and to write these wonderful books?

Shawn: Thank you. Yes. I’ve always been into fitness and athletics. And I remember just running around my neighborhood playing a lot of sports. And a friend of mine who lived down the street, once he moved to a “nice neighborhood,” a friend of mine had a gym like a weight set, an old rickety bench press, and some weight plates and things like that that he was giving. He gave to me for, I don’t know, $10 or something. There’s a bunch of stuff because his mom got him some new stuff. And so that sparked my love of lifting weights.

But at the time, I was disenchanted like a lot of people where I was thinking fitness and health were the same thing. I was very physically fit, but little did I know I was significantly unhealthy. As a matter of fact, when I was at track practice, when I was 15 years old, I was doing a time trial. I was the fastest kid in my school. In my grade, let me be clear, there was an upperclassman who was faster than me, but I was doing a 200-meter time trial, which the Olympics just passed. That’s half the track. And as I was coming off the curve of the track into the straightaway, my hip broke. I broke my hip from running, which is incredibly abnormal. It’s so unusual for a child to break their hip from running. But I went through what’s called standard of care. I went to see a physician. He gave me some NSAIDs. He gave me some crutches. Stay off the leg. I got to use the school elevator and get out of class early, so I thought it was great. But nobody stopped to ask how did a child break their hip from running.

And it wasn’t until a string of other injuries… I had about half a dozen other injuries, and it wasn’t until I was 20 when I finally got diagnosed with something called degenerative disc disease. And so I had an advanced arthritic condition of my spine, all right? So, my bone density obviously was incredibly low, and my spine was beginning to atrophy. Not beginning, we’re at a stage where it was significant progression because my physician at the time, he put the MRI up and he told me that I had the spine of an 80-year-old man, all right? I was 20. I was a kid. And to get a diagnosis like that obviously can be earth-shattering. But also I didn’t have any perspective on what that meant as well.

Now, here’s where it gets a little bit interesting and where we are today. For some reason, I asked him, and maybe this, kind of, ties to my upbringing in fitness and the fact that I went to school… When I went to college initially, I went for a pre-med program at this private university, and I did that because I thought it was something that I should do because I grew up in an inner city. I didn’t know anybody who had graduated from college except my teachers. And so I saw on television this happy family like on “The Cosby Show,” he’s a doctor. She’s a lawyer. They look healthy, so I’ll go to medical school. But I hated science at the time, which is crazy because I’m obsessed now. But I had a nutritional science class that was optional on that track. So, maybe that’s what sparked this question. Maybe it was my upbringing in fitness, but I asked him after he gave me that diagnosis, “Does this have anything to do with what I’m eating? Should I change the way that I’m exercising?” And he looked at me like I had two heads. He looked at me like I had no idea what I was talking about, and he said these exact words. He said, “This has nothing to do with what you’re eating. This is something that just happens. And I’m sorry that it happened to you. We’re going to get you a prescription for some pain meds, help you to manage this. Maybe get you fitted for a back brace. We can look at surgery as a potential, but you’re still young.” But he said, “I’m sorry, son. There’s nothing you can do about this.”

Now, just to give you a slice of the irony here. Again, I have university courses. I’ve taken physics. This abandons basic laws of physics in our model of the universe, which is there’s something called causality. Nothing just happens. He told me that this just happens. But what it really was was he didn’t know why it happened. He didn’t take the time to investigate why it happened. And he told me that this has nothing to do with what I’m eating, but he wrote me a prescription to eat some drugs. So many red flags are coming off, but unfortunately, because of the environment that I grew up in… And at the time, I was living in Ferguson, Missouri at this time, and this is one of the most glorified food deserts in the United States. And it was very difficult growing up in this environment. And also just I grew up in East St. Louis and just a lot of violence, a lot of drug use, a lot of alcoholism in my environment, and just poor health. And so all the fighting and struggling that I had to do, even to get into college, being the first person in my family to go to college, let alone graduate, when he gave me that permission slip to stop fighting, I took it. It was unconscious. And he said, “There’s nothing you could do.” It was like, oh, okay, there’s nothing I could do. I could stop fighting now because I’ve been fighting my whole life. And I went from… What brought me in was a nuisance of a pain. My gait was a little bit stuck. I couldn’t extend my leg properly, but it was more like a little nuisance of a pain. But within two weeks, I was experiencing chronic debilitating pain, and I was on a slew of medications. I was struggling to get up. Every time I would stand up, I’d get this terrible electric shock sciatic pain down my leg. And because I was so afraid to stand up, I didn’t want to experience that pain, I spent as much time as I could laying down and sitting down. And at this point now, everything in my body was beginning to atrophy because I just wasn’t using my body. I accept to play video games. I was still in college and so we played video games, watched TV, whatever.

But to make a long story short, to consolidate this because it does have a happy ending, but it was not happy at the time, I was in chronic pain. I couldn’t sleep at night, and I was on another medication to help me to sleep, which caused… One of the pain meds caused restless leg syndrome. And just like it was just this vicious cycle, one drug leading to the next drug, and I was trapped. My mental health was obviously suffering. I gained a bunch of weight over the course of these two years that went by.

And it wasn’t until thankfully… And you mentioned you having grandkids and just the importance of that family structure. My grandmother, through this process, she kept on calling me, pestering me, and she knew in her heart that something was not okay with her… And the other grandkids would say this. I wouldn’t be the one to say this, but her favorite, she knew there was something wrong. But I was just like, “Grandma, I’m fine. Just stop worrying about me.” But I was not fine. And I saw additional physicians to get a second opinion, which this is why I’m so excited to talk to you, because if anybody gets a bad diagnosis or a bad bill of goods, I highly encourage them to get a second or third opinion. But if you’re going to somebody who’s in the same frame of mind as that first physician, you’re probably going to get the same answer. And Einstein said… And this is again… It’s 2024 now and so we didn’t have this conversation with Einstein ourselves. The internet could twist quotes up, but this is one of his most famous quotes is that you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that caused the problem. If you’re seeking another physician for another opinion who’s thinking in the same way, you’re probably going to get the same diagnosis or something parallel to that. And everybody told me there was nothing I could do about this. They gave me another prescription and they gave me another kind of permissions that they literally signed off so I don’t have to work and just have more bed rest. And my grandmother, after seeing the fourth physician, she just came into my mind that, here she was, she did so much to put me in position to be successful, coming from the environment that I come from. She gave me so much love and so much affirmation. And here I was giving away my potential and literally giving it away to people telling me that I can’t get better, telling me there’s nothing I can do. And so I put my power into them. And in that moment, it was just like a moment happened, and that happens for a lot of us, I decided to take my power back. I decided to get well. But this wasn’t just just a whimsical thing. It came attached to some action and a different way of thinking.

And what happened was I incited something called instinctive elaboration. This is something our brains automatically do. And our brains are really going to be… There’s like a subconscious dominant question that we’re always asking ourselves. And so for me, for those two years was, why me? Why me? 24/7, this is the question going on in my head. For other people, it might be, how can I take care of my family? Or how can I get people to like me? Or how can I get out of pain? But for me, it was, why me? And so in that moment, when I decided to get well, I asked, what can I do to feel better? What can I do to get healthy? And I had never done that all those years of suffering. And so I got a great night’s sleep for the first time in a couple of years, and I woke up and I put a plan together. And that plan entailed three things. One of them was changing the way I was eating. And maybe we could talk a little bit about that today, which was very simple. I was coming from a very, kind of, primitive mindset on it of just “losing weight,” using some of the stuff I learned in school, which is not efficacious, which we could talk about again. The second thing was movement. Our bodies require movement in order to heal. And that’s something that was stripped away from me. That was my low-hanging fruit, because I’d always been somebody who was very active and an athlete. And the third thing was, if you’re not sleeping well, you’re not healing well. And so really working to improve my sleep quality. And once I did those three things, just literally it was not even two months went by and I had lost 18 pounds, which is not typical, by the way. I’d gained weight that shouldn’t have been on me. I began to be able to sleep through the night. The chronic pain I was in was completely gone. And nine months later, I got a scan of my spine done, and my two herniated discs had retracted and they were back into place. And I regenerated some of the tissue of my spine, my intervertebral disc. Now the MRI light can shine through them, whereas before they were black. And so this was something that wasn’t supposed to be possible, and that’s what really sparked this career that I chose and changing my coursework in college back to science and nutrition because I knew there were so many other people who were told that their condition was impossible. They couldn’t get better. And I wanted to help those people. And that’s what got me here with you today.

Dr. Sandi: What an inspirational story. And the fact that you were able to take charge of your health and you knew intuitively the way forward, that your story becomes this redemptive story, this narrative that can inspire others. And we often find that people choose to become health coaches, nutritionists, functional medicine doctors, because they have had some type of condition themselves where conventional treatment was not the answer. It was demoralizing. And they’re told, “No answer. You’ll always be this way.” And they didn’t accept that. It was that aha moment that can be absolutely life-changing. And what a powerful story to inspire others. We often hear today, there’s so many influencers around on social media and they fall into these rigid camps. You have to be carnivore or vegan, or you can never eat anything but organic foods. And chickens will kill you and kale will kill you. And there’s always… And I’m old enough that I’ve seen all of the trends come and go, fat-free and macrobiotic, all of them. And then you have a turnaround and someone will say, “No, that’s disproven. Do this, not that.” And what I’ve always so admired about your work is that you take this common sense approach, and you’ve dialed down to what is so important, which has to do with, and I’ve done courses in psychology of eating, it’s really the why we eat what we eat and who we surround ourselves with. And can we have joy around sharing meals and food as celebration? And when we divorce ourselves from that…and you’ve probably seen that as well, when you become a health nut, when you are following nutritionism, as opposed to just enjoying celebrating food. And I wonder if you can comment on that. And I know you talk a lot about it and certainly on your hit podcast, “Model Health Show.”

Shawn: Yes, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s the interesting thing about the time that we’re living in. On one hand, everybody has the ability to share their voice. On the other hand, everybody has the ability to share their voice, which is this really interesting paradigm where we have so many different perspectives, and humans we naturally find ourselves drawn to certain camps. We have this, kind of, tribal evolution, and now even though many of us do not have this physically, which is part of the issue, we find these tribes online. And, also, again, people are looking for solutions. There’s a lot of suffering. And if there’s a certain diet framework, whether it’s a practitioner who’s developed something and they’ve helped a lot of people with it or somebody’s used it themselves and they’re spreading the gospel of that framework because they got better, that’s a wonderful thing. But, also, they have to understand that this is something that might have been successful for you right now. And as you just mentioned, being in this long enough, you see this kind of evolution take place where certain things that might work for you now don’t work for you later, and we have to give ourselves permission to adapt. And throughout our evolution, this is really where I think our greatest gift is going to be working with people and being of service. Everything changed throughout the weeks, throughout the seasons. We’re not eating the same types of foods. And once we imprison ourselves with the diet framework, we could be missing out on things that can give us great joy and great health, or we could be implementing things that might be hurting us because a diet framework says to do it. It’s just silly. It’s so silly. The very best diet is what works for you right now and it’s likely to change.

Dr. Sandi: That is so right.

Shawn: And so even prior to getting connected to amazing people like you and the folks that you’re educating… So, I’m in my 21st year in working in health and fitness, 21 years, but years ago, when I really… It clicked after putting people… If I was into a certain diet framework, that’s what I would have them do. So, if it’s raw food, guess what you’re going to do. If it’s paleo, guess what you’re going to do. If it’s vegan… And that was not serving to people. But here’s the thing. There was a certain percentage of people every framework that would be incredibly successful. And sometimes I talk to these folks now, like 12, 15 years later, and they’re like, “Shawn, you changed my life. You have no idea. And I’m still,” I quote, “stuck to such and such. And now, da, da, da, da.” You know, like they’ve got these great results. But there are many people who did not get those results. And what we tend to do, unfortunately, is blame the person. You’re just not doing it correctly. You need to do this, tweak that. When I really hit my stride, and we had about almost 80% success rate, and people coming in that had abnormal blood sugar. So, they’re on metformin. Some of them are taking insulin already, but they’re in this state where they have insulin resistance. We had almost 80% success rate in helping people to normalize their blood sugar without medication. And when I hit that stride, it was because I started paying attention to the person. I started really taking in what they need right now. I started asking questions about their heritage, their ancestors. Where does their grandmother come from? What did your grandma use to make, your great-grandmother? And some people are from Greece. Some people are from Kenya. Some people were from Korea. And just let me find these things in their culture that their DNA probably has some resonance with.

And this is when I started to study things like nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics and just looking at let’s do what’s best for you right now and adapt as we go along. I’m not going to put my thing onto you. And that’s when, again, everything changed. But a big part of that, which I did not understand at the time, and I’m so grateful because being somebody who’s so passionate about food, you know that we can make it the end all be all. Food is everything. And it is such a big part of this. But, and this is a big but, there’s something that controls all of this that is this, like, epi-controller, epigenetic or epi-caloric controller of what we’re eating and where we are today, which is the most obvious thing that it’s always been. And I’ll share with you guys. So, there was a massive meta-analysis done by some researchers at Brigham Young University. And this included data from hundreds of thousands of study participants, and they were looking at what is the factor that stands out the most for human longevity and disease prevention. And their data, shockingly to the scientists, found that people who had healthy social bonds had a 50% increase in longevity versus those who did not. They had a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality when they had healthy relationships. And also a friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Waldinger at Harvard, he’s the director of the longest-running longitudinal study on human longevity, on human health. Same thing, he’s skeptical like me. I come into things, I’m an optimistic, skeptical person. So, he didn’t even believe the data when he got the baton pass to him as a director. And he combed through the data, asked other institutions like Brigham Young, for example, who had their data. I need to make sure, because this does not make sense. Relationships are the number one factor in how long you’re going to live, the quality of your relationships. And absolutely, this is shown to be true again and again, regardless of the diet. Now, this is not saying a diet of Apple Jacks and Twinkies, all right? But regardless of what, if you’re looking at the Blue Zones, incredibly diverse foods.

And so with all that being said, this is really where the data has landed me and also finally being in touch experientially myself and really paying attention to the bigger picture and not being so consumed with food and saying, “What is controlling the food that we’re eating? The most influential factor on what we eat is our environment, is our peer group. The most influential factor on our exercise habits, our sleep habits, our success in life is dependent on our relationships. Again, it’s a kind of, epi-controller of these things. Now we could talk about the behind-the-scenes chemistry of being around people that we love. But just to drop a couple of quick studies really quickly, one that inspired me to write my latest book, the “Eat Smarter Family Cookbook,” was some researchers at Harvard. And I could not believe nobody was talking about this. They were compiling this data for years on family eating behavior. And I came upon it and I was just like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe that this exists.”

And to kick things off, they found that families who eat together on a regular basis have a dramatically higher intake of essential nutrients that prevent diseases in those family members.” Obviously omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals but in food form, so really bioavailable stuff, dramatically lower incidents of again all manner of chronic illnesses in people who eat together with their family on a consistent basis. But they also found consistently lower intake of ultra-processed foods, things like chips and soda, and some of these things we might put in a bad category like trans fats and things like that. And high glycemic foods. They tended to eat less of that stuff. For some reason, there’s something about it.

Now, we can get into nitpicking because they have the ability to eat more often. These people are more astute, they have more access and all these things. After I found this study, I had to write this book. And this study was published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. And this was looking at minority children who generally come from the context of a low-income environment like me, like where I come from. And what they found was that when children eat with their parent or caregiver, four meals a week, it didn’t matter which meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, didn’t matter, four meals a week, these children had dramatically lower intake of ultra-processed foods, namely chips and soda, and higher intake of real whole foods, in particular fruits and vegetables they noted. They ate five servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week when they just had this culture of eating with their family and/or caregiver at least four meals a week. And the researchers noted in particular in this study, this was having these meals with the TV not on. There’s something about the television also because the television becomes another person in a way, another factor sitting at the table, right, telling a vision to us. And so it’s like being present. There’s something that unlocked a superpower here. And last study I’ll share it. And again, I could share a bunch more, but just one more in the vein for kids. And this was published in the Journal of Pediatrics. And the researchers… And this is for everybody, this is our homework. They found that the minimum effective dose for protecting children against chronic illnesses by the eating behavior with their family, they found that families who ate together three meals per week, the children had a dramatically lowered incidence of developing obesity and disordered eating, all right? So, again, something is three meals a week. It was the minimum effective dose to see a dramatic decrease in risk for our children. And again, we can unpack what’s going on behind the scenes, but this act of eating together, and we already covered having these healthy social bonds is incredibly protective for human health. And also, it’s the number one thing that’s governing what we’re choosing to eat in the first place.

Dr. Sandi: So powerful and so underappreciated. And there’s research with depression as well. And loneliness is an independent risk factor that’s bad or even worse than smoking. And I look back when raising my children, and one of the things I most regret is being so strict, being so adamant. Those are the fat-free days craze. And I remember being at a Thanksgiving dinner that my sister-in-law, my husband’s sister made. And I think I threw a fit because the stuffing was this glob of fat and, “Don’t eat that. This is awful.” Instead of what you’re describing, which is that sharing a meal, being thankful, and what stands out what they remember is how my rigidity about nutrition, in those days fat-free, really… We were vegans as well, which made it even worse. I think I brought one of these tofurkeys to the dinner.

Shawn: Oh, I’ve done that too. Tofurkey, this big ball of ultra-processed glob.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, yeah. And now, of course, everything that I thought was bad is now turned out to be good. The science changed. So, if I let them eat the stuffing, it would have been better for them and the real turkey. But be that as it may, it’s the importance of family meals. And for so many families, they can’t get together or it’s a conflict regarding the kids have eating issues or the parents. Can you comment on what are some strategies, some tips to make family meals more consistent, more rewarding for everybody at the table?

Shawn: Yes, and that’s the key. And first and foremost, we have to get to a place of honesty. We know ourselves and we know our children and our significant other, if we have a significant other, we know them better than anybody, especially our children. We know them better than anybody. But a lot of times we reject what is. We fight against what is. For folks that have different… They have multiple children… They probably see… Sometimes your kids can be very different in their personalities and they might come from the same environment, same people, they come from the same couple, but they could be dramatically different in their temperaments, in their motivations, in their demotivations. So, we have to take a moment and embrace the fact because that takes responsibility for us to acknowledge like we know our children. We might just want to fight against them because they’re not doing what we want them to do, but we know what motivates them. We know how to communicate with them to get them to do the things that are advantageous to them.

So, I just want to put that out there first and foremost, but that also requires… And a lot of times we don’t want to do that too because we’re tired. We got a lot of stuff going on, and we do so much for these kids. Sometimes we can be in this state of rebellion like, “I don’t care. I don’t want to fight them in these. So, here’s the nuggets and macaroni and cheese,” or whatever the case might be, just relenting, or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s the tofurkey and the raw food stuffing, and you’re just like, “You got to eat this. I’ve known this whatever.” There’s no communication and no empowerment for the person. And what I’ve seen a surefire way to get people to rebel when they have the opportunity is to not communicate with them and for them to feel empowered in the choices they’re making with their food. So, it requires some energy investment, it requires some time.

And of course, yeah, it can be easier if your kids are born into a culture that manifests health, they’re just born into it, but most of us are not, especially today. We’re just born into a bit of a mess. Not a bit, a lot of a mess. And so we’re trying to manage disfunction and fix the trauma versus… My youngest son versus my two older kids, they were born into a mess, right, because I was eating ultra-processed food. I was eating cereal for dinner. I was eating a family can of SpaghettiOs or fast food every day when my oldest kids were little. My youngest son, who just turned 13 last week, he was born into this. All he knows is health. And the thing is also the environment knows it on him. This kid is the biggest, fastest, strongest kid in his age group, but it’s not just that. These are things that I could acknowledge being somebody who works in health. He’s radiantly healthy but radiantly… He doesn’t have to talk. He’s just attractive to other people, and he’s a leader. He has all these qualities that I didn’t forcefully program into him. He just picked it up from being in the environment. I’m not saying my kid is perfect. I don’t like his sense of humor.

My oldest son and I, we could laugh all the time. My youngest son, he’s just like, “Stuff isn’t funny,” all right? And he gets in his little pocket, so I love when I could make him laugh. And the thing is what he enjoys more funny enough, which I ignored, was he loves to make me laugh. And even when he does it, he sits there with a straight face, but he loves to make me laugh. He knows that he’s done something funny. I’m not trying to say my son is perfect, but being born into the environment, yes, we have certain advantages.

But my older two kids… In particular, my oldest son, he works in fitness. He’s a personal trainer here in California, and we’re from St. Louis by the way. When he was born, I was living in Ferguson, Missouri. He slept on an air mattress that had a hole in it, by the way. He’d go to sleep aired up. When we wake up, he’s on the ground. And he’s been with me through this whole process. And he’s had to tough his way through my different food paradigms as well, but he was able to, unfortunately, come to a place because I had to improve my parenting, and pay more attention, and educate, and find creative ways. And a big thing… This is like a superpower I’m going to share. One of the most remarkable ways to get your children to improve their behavior when it comes to health is not coming from us, coming from other voices.

Dr. Sandi: Yes, counseling.

Shawn: All right? This is a superpower I didn’t know that I had because I would take my kids to these events that I would be speaking at, right, and they’d see, okay, number one, they’re listening to me differently because they see all these people are listening to their dad. Because to them, I’m just their dad, but also the other speakers, right, and them getting these messages and just like, “Oh, wow.” So, I’ve seen many times where my kids will be like, “I want to do such and such. I want to try that food.” Using that, whether that is through taking our kids to different events, maybe it’s community stuff. Maybe it’s certain things at the school. Maybe it’s certain films, whatever the case, but we’ve got to be careful with all this stuff. We’re not trying to indoctrinate. And that’s what a lot of these films unfortunately are. But just being able to have other voices.

Oh, last thing, I want to throw this in here. Leaning into what they’re passionate about as well. So, if our kid is passionate about debate club, and if they can get some insight into a top debate person who they utilize whatever, they’re very big on their hydration and their fish oil, whatever the case might be, right, or their sleep or if they play basketball, being able to have those reference points like, “Oh, here’s Lebron James. Sleep is part of his training. And he’s eating this particular whatever 80% unprocessed, minimally processed food.” So, it’s being able to leverage their passions, the things that they’re interested in, that’s how it would come in, because I went from working with people to working with families. And that’s how it really impact kids.

And some of these kids… I’ve got stacks and stacks of letters from kids. And it’s like probably my favorite thing, outside of my family, is getting these letters from these kids. And my youngest son was telling me… It was this morning. I came and spoke at his school last year. And I gave the cookbook to the third through eighth grade who came to the event. And he was like, “Yeah, Dad,” he was like, “I was thinking about today how it was so weird.” He’s like, “I was in my science class. This kid came up to me and they just like, ‘I just made your dad’s honey sriracha salmon last night,” and…” She’s just like, “Dad, I cannot believe these kids were cooking.” And that just speaks to… It’s something really special to inspire our kids but also that takes for us to allow them some space to be there with us, to be in the kitchen with us, to be at the dinner table with us and have some patience and to ask questions.

So, the last little thing I’ll throw in here, because we could just rattle off some tips. One of them would be knowing that our kids’ personalities, my youngest son, if he knows the plan, he’s all about it. He’ll do the plan before you even mention doing it. My oldest son, he’s whimsical. He’d rather do everything else and then the plan later. So, he’s the one who do last minute homework. My youngest son, I can’t stop him from getting to the homework before he gets in the door. So, knowing that, I’ve got to communicate with them differently to the best of my abilities. I could just tell my son on a random like, “Hey, actually, we’re just going to have dinner tonight together because we can’t do such a such.” He’s like, “Cool.” My youngest son, if I tell him and he’s got his day planned, “Actually, we’re going to have dinner…” He’s like, “Ugh,” he gets a little bit of resistance. And so I’m coming into that knowing, “Okay, hey, we’re going to switch to dinner tonight. Brayden, what do you want to have for dessert?” So, he gets to pick, be involved, right? And I know he’s like his mom. He likes the sweets. But even with that, we can do higher quality desserts and things like that. But just being present, knowing that we know our children, we know how to motivate them, we know how to demotivate them, and we can create suffering for ourselves if we just want to fight them. And ourselves as well, we create suffering because of fighting ourselves. We know us. Know thyself. And so those are a couple of tips embedded in there. And of course, there’s a bunch more that we can cover.

Dr. Sandi: Oh, this is fabulous. Such wisdom. And yes, it is communicating. It’s not one size fits all, knowing your kids, knowing yourself, and bringing joy to meal time and eating together, preparing food together, which you touched on. And I love what you said about sometimes somebody else can be the inspiration. And that can even be for your spouse or your partner too. My husband, I’ve constantly been nagging for years and years. And he was at an event that FMCA had sponsored and somebody was speaking. It was Dr. Tom O’Bryan. And he happened to mention blueberries good for your brain. Since that day, 10 years ago, every day he has this handful of blueberries. Oh, Dr. Tom said I need to have it. I didn’t say a word about it. I could have, and he would have said, “Oh, that’s just my wife nagging me again.” But it was somebody else. That was powerful. So, it works for our partners as well. Shawn, this has been absolutely fabulous. You have offered so much wisdom and it’s from the heart. Where can people find you?

Shawn: Awesome. Yes. So, where most people probably know me from would be my show. It’s called the “Model Health Show.” And I’m very proud to say we’re in our 11th year of the show. We’ve been the number one health podcast in the United States many times, other countries as well, which is crazy. Again, I started the show. I was living in Ferguson, Florissant, and… It blows my mind every day. And so people can find the show anywhere they listen to podcasts. And my home online is themodelhealthshow.com. So, we’ve got transcripts of every episode and videos and all that stuff. And of course, it’s on YouTube as well. And as I mentioned, my latest book is the “Eat Smarter Family Cookbook.” It’s a really beautiful book, and there’s over 250 peer-reviewed references in the book embedded in the content but also one of these sections uses superheroes to articulate everything. So, it’s just like a story of the Marvel Universe describing all this science. And so it’s really fun. Parents and kids alike enjoy reading and learning from it. I know we have a big emoji culture now. So, we even use emojis to articulate. I picked out a couple dozen of these really science-backed foods that just have so much research to affirm how good they are and for different things. And if one food is affirmed to support gut health and brain health and maybe metabolic health, you’ll see like a muscle emoji, a brain emoji and a gut emoji. And then you can find correlating recipes with all those things. Yeah, so you could find the “Eat Smarter Family Cookbook” anywhere that you get your books. And my other two books are “Eat Smarter” and “Sleep Smarter.” It was my first. It’s an international bestseller. It’s getting close to 30 different countries it’s published in and translated into. So, very special books and I’m very grateful. They’re just great resources to have.

Dr. Sandi: I love your book. Your cookbook is fabulous. I’ve made a lot of the recipes and it’s beautiful. It is so beautifully illustrated. The pictures are just gorgeous. And of course, I’m a big fan of your podcast as well. So, we will link to that in the show notes. I encourage everybody to tune in because it’s a wonderful show and still going strong. So, we are happy to support your mission. You have just changed the lives of so many people. So, thank you so much for being with us.

Shawn: Thank you. I appreciate it.