024 – 3 Steps to a Sharper Mind with Karl Pilz of Nutrition to the Edge

Gift biz unwrapped episode 24 for five To six hours every

day, we are not being near as effective as we could

be. And so our business is suffering because of it.

Hi, this is John Lee,

Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,

and you're listening to the gift of biz unwrapped,

and now it's time to light it up.

Welcome to gift biz,

unwrapped your source for industry specific insights and advice to develop

and grow your business.

And now here's your host,

Sue Monheit Hi there and welcome to the gift biz unwrapped

podcast that you own a brick and mortar shop sell online,

or are just getting started.

You'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your

business. I am so pleased to have Carl Pils join us

today. Carl is a former member of the corporate world who

allowed work and business to take over his life so much

so that he ballooned to 224 pounds with absolutely no energy

left. He decided to dive into the nutrition world and committed

himself to learning the truth.

And I emphasize truth about how our body works after losing

53 pounds.

Carl now helps others take a similar journey.

He does this through his website,

nutrition to the edge.com

and the I'm too busy for nutrition podcast.

This is actually the second half of our interview with Carl

in the first part,

which is episode 23.

We talked about why sometimes we don't feel as good as

we could,

and exactly how nutrition plays a huge role.

We covered proteins low and high fiber carbs and what they

do to our body after we eat them,

I have to say it was a pretty enlightening episode.

And today we're going to talk about just what do we

do about this situation and how can we eat so that

we can gain the most energy and mental focus we can

to grow our businesses.

Welcome back to the show,

Carl. Hi,

Sue. Thanks so much for having me looking forward to It.

Is there anything you'd like to add to your intro before

we get started?

Yeah. You know,

just my background,

where I came from,

you know,

I was an engineer by traditional schooling.

I was an electrical engineer and got into technical sales and

just that corporate traveling that lifestyle where you're taking customers out

to dinner and out for drinks and trying to catch all

the meals on the road.

That was just,

you know,

it was fun at first,

but after a while,

you know,

I blew it up actually to 227 pounds and I'm a

five, eight foot guy and for a five,

eight guy,

227 is a hefty fella looking back.

It's really incredible how much I weighed and how badly my

health got out of control.

It's amazing when I just started looking at this and took

off down this road,

it's really incredible how your life changes and how big a

little changes make,

just when you started understanding how your body kind of as

a system works.

So we'll get into all that today.

In the last episode,

we left off with me,

challenging Carl,

about how do we change our eating habits and fit it

into something that we can maintain for a lifetime.

And that's where we're going to pick up.

I don't see anybody going through life without a bit of

cake on their birthday or low fiber carb foods from time

to time.

How do you manage that?

I mean,

how do you fit it into a lifestyle that you can

do over Time?

You know,

in my podcast,

every episode we talk about what I call the 80 20

rule of nutrition and the 80 20 rule applies to everything,

including how often you stick to a healthy eating plan.

I love cheesecake.

I love these ice cream sundaes with these brownies,

from this place down the street.

They're unbelievable.

And so my wife and I,

you know,

we have a day to a day and a half every

week, usually on Saturdays or whatnot that we eat,

whatever we want.

The important part is that the majority of time that you

eat, you're eating in a way that is going to help

you, but you can't deny yourself if anything,

have your cheat days and enjoy them,

really don't count calories on your cheat days.

Definitely the 80 20 rule,

I take a day to a day and a half and

just eat whatever I want.

Okay. I feel much better now.

Thank you.

No problem.

So these blood sugar spikes that was wait,

you know,

that shows why this is devastating for our weight,

but let's get back to energy and focus and productivity.

When insulin comes out and removes all the excess sugar and

doves it into ourselves,

the kicker for energy and focus levels is that insulin will

also take those amino acids with it.

Now let's shift back to protein real quick.

When protein is digested,

it gets broken down into amino acids and those amino acids,

a lot of them go up to our brain.

Well, our brain has something called the blood-brain barrier and that

is kind of like a fine mesh screen where the amino

acids get up to your brain,

but it takes a while for them to sink in.

It's like they're waiting in line to get into a club.

You know,

they sit there and have to wait their turn back to

carbs. If we have a blood sugar spike,

and then we have an insulin spike and insulin is removing

that extra sugar.

If there are amino acids sitting outside of our brain waiting

to get in,

then insulin will also grab those amino acids,

swipe them away from our brain and dump those into ourselves

as well.

Those amino acids will not get into our brain.

Those brain chemicals don't get formed because your brain does not

receive the raw materials.

Even though we're eating them,

they got hijacked,

they got hijacked.

And so here's how it works in real life.

We eat a steak.

That should be great.

That's a lot of protein and it's a lot of amino

acids should make us feel great a little bit later.

But with that steak,

we eat mashed potatoes in a Coke.

Now we're giving the protein,

we're getting the amino acids,

but we are also causing a blood sugar spike.

So those amino acids that are going to our brain hoping

to get in,

never get there and they get wasted.

And so that is why it's so hard for most people

to maintain their levels of energy and focus,

because this is what they're doing to themselves.

And really let's talk about a timeframe because I said earlier,

that what you eat affects how you feel 20 minutes,

half an hour down the road.

When you eat these quick digesting carbs,

they can get digested and spike your blood sugar.

In 20 minutes,

20 to 30 minutes is all it takes to get those

amino acids away from your brain.

Your brain needs a steady income supply of these amino acids

to keep your energy and focus levels at a high level.

If your brain is not receiving them for any reason,

then your levels of these brain chemicals starts to deteriorate and

it deteriorates longer and longer over time.

And so if you keep doing this to yourself,

you will be fighting worse and worse symptoms of fatigue and

brain fog and self-criticism and all this stuff.

Self-criticism and optimism.

That's all tied to serotonin.

If you're preventing these brain chemicals from being formed,

it's going to get worse and worse and worse because you're

not rebuilding it.

You're not rebuilding it,

but what's the good news.

Give us some good news here.

The good news is that since the turnaround time for this

whole process is so quick,

that means that if right now you go and construct a

meal that is constructed properly a half an hour later,

you'll start building more and more brain chemicals.

And then if you do it,

the next meal,

you'll build more brain chemicals.

And so you'll build your level of these brain chemicals back

up higher to where they're supposed to be.

You can start right now and start making yourself feel progressively

better and better and better.

And with one meal,

wherever you are right now,

you can double how good you feel in the next half

an hour without question.

And this is why Going back to your 80 20,

why the 20%,

if you want to go out and have something that doesn't

follow these guidelines,

isn't as detrimental because you've started rebuilding already.

And then there are a couple of meals where maybe you've

just leveled yourself off or pulled from the bucket a little

bit, but then you go back on and just keep building

back. Yup,

definitely. And here's the way it goes.

I said 80 20 rule.

And there are some days where midwife,

you know,

some weeks where we'll take a day and a half and

just do a lot of celebrating and really maybe we'll go

two days and eat whatever we want.

But here's what you'll start to notice.

When you start building your brain chemicals up,

you'll start noticing how good you feel and how much you're

able to get done.

Because now you don't need naps.

Now you're not foggy.

You feel so good about yourself and about what you're doing.

And the quality of the work that you're putting out is

so unbelievable.

Do it the right way for a certain period of time.

And you'll feel amazing.

Then you'll reward yourself and you'll go and eat a bunch

of cake.

And you'll notice that you don't feel as well.

It be terrible,

but you'll notice that you'll feel a little more sluggish.

You won't be on your absolute a game.

When you do this time.

After time,

you go through a period where you're eating well,

and then you cheat and you start to see how much

it takes for you to cheat,

to for it,

to have those symptoms come back and how bad you feel

afterwards. That's when you start saying,

you know,

it's not as worth it,

right? It's not worth what I'm giving up to get the

flavor in my mouth that I've been craving for a long

time. And so you'll still do it because it will never

look unattractive to you never.

I mean,

this stuff looks fantastic,

but what you'll learn is that you'll get to a point

where you can say,

yeah, I'd like to have it,

but I have a lot going on right now and I

can not afford to not be on my a game.

And you'll be okay with that decision because now you made

the decision actively,

right? So that's where you get to.

And when you get to that point,

now you have control of everything.

If you do some surveys of entrepreneurs,

if you ask them out of an eight hour Workday,

how many hours out of those eight hours,

can you put yourself in the zone in that insanely productive

place where we're getting a ton done?

And the quality of that work is unbelievable.

The number one response that you'll get is two to three

hours. The second place response will be one to two hours.

That is a big hole.

That means that for five to six hours every day,

we are not being near as effective as we could be.

And so our business is suffering because of it,

Right? I mean,

the way I look at that is people are still putting

in the time.

If they could be more productive with their Workday,

they may be able to cut the Workday a little shorter,

have produced just as much and have some more time for

themselves. And you know,

this is what I tried to find out for my customers.

What's important to you.

Is it getting more work done in a shorter amount of

time so that you can get out of there and spend

more time with your family?

Or are you more interested in doubling and tripling your income?

You know,

you're always going to put in 60 hours,

but you want the income to grow steadily,

or is it that you want to build a more quality

business? Let's say you're running a team.

You have assistants that you're managing employees.

When your brain is functioning at a super level,

then your direction will be clearer.

Your thoughts will be clearer.

You will communicate your message to your employees a lot crisper.

And so you'll be building a much more solid business.

These are all things that I try to understand about my

customers because what's important to them is really important to which

direction I need to take them.

Right? But all of these things,

whatever is important to you when you get on your a

game and you do the things that will put you on

your, a game,

the results that you want,

you'll get them.

And it's not that hard.

I mean,

just taking what we talked about today.

If you remove those quick digesting carbs and switch all your

carbs to slow digesting carbs,

you can take that amount of time that you spend in

the zone from two to three hours,

easily up to six to seven hours easily.

Let's sum all this up.

Cause we've talked about a lot of different things here.

We've talked about raw materials and protein and quick digesting carbs

and, and slow digesting carbs.

And all of that.

If you were to sum it up into three things that

people could do when they left the podcast today,

that will help them feel better and be more productive.

What would they be?

One, two,

three. Number one is definitely switch your quick digesting carbs to

slow digesting carbs.

Now, how do you do that?

Considering we're very busy people.

If you're going to the grocery store and you're buying food

and you're buying food out of boxes,

you know,

you're buying some rice or some cereal or breads or whatever,

how do you find the slow digesting carbs?

It's actually very simple.

Look at the food label for anything that you're about to

buy on the food label.

There'll be a line item for the amount of carbohydrates in

grams per serving.

There will also be a line item for the amount of

fiber in grams per serving.

You want a lot of fiber per a certain amount of

carbohydrates. And the number that I tell people is you're looking

for three grams of fiber per 20 grams of carbohydrates.

If you have at least three grams of fiber per 20

grams of carbs,

you can classify that as a slow carb.

And that should not cause blood sugar spikes and it should

not cause weight gain and all these energy and focus problems.

Now, if you have less,

if there are 2.9

grams of fiber per 20 grams of carbs,

don't eat it.

Don't buy it.

That's a quick carb.

It'll lead to blood sugar spikes and zap your energy and

focus. So Three grams of fiber is the magic number to

20 grams of carbs.

Yep. That really seems to be the magic number,

the higher,

the better.

Right. Okay.

But that's how you look at bread or anything in a

box. And you can tell if it's going to be okay.

Okay. All right,

what else should they do?

What's the second thing.

Number Two is add protein to all your meals.

Every one of them,

there's all kinds of online calculators.

A lot of people say one half gram of protein per

pound of lean body mass.

So if you're a semi muscular person,

you're not really overweight and you weigh 150 pounds,

that means 75 grams of protein a day divided by three

that's, 25 grams of protein per meal.

I tend to go a little bit higher,

you know,

for, for guys,

probably you should be looking at 30 to 40 grams of

protein per meal.

If you're a smaller woman,

like a a hundred pound woman,

probably 25 per meal is a pretty good number.

That's about how much you should include at every meal per

meal that will give you enough of the amino acids to

build the right amount of brain chemicals.

And now you'll not be sabotaging them.

That leads us to the third thing.

And this is something that we haven't really talked about,

but it's a big deal.

Adding healthy fats to every meal.

And that's a whole other podcast on its own.

That's actually,

I did a whole podcast on appetite in episode three on

my show,

our appetite is completely regulated by fat.

And the reason that most people can't stick to a healthy

eating initiative is because we're all told to eat low fat

diets. So we're eating dry salads or we're eating steamed vegetables

with nothing on them or lean grilled chicken.

We're being told to cut the fat when fat is what

controls, the hormones that control our appetite and that hormone is

called leptin.

A lot of us have heard of it.

Leptin is caused to rise by eating fat,

plain and simple.

So if you want your appetite to be regulated,

then you need to add fat.

If your appetite is not regulated,

if your left hand is not raised appropriately,

that hormone leptin is so much stronger than anyone's willpower.

So if all you have to fight,

your hunger is willpower.

You will fail without question.

So you need to add healthy fats in order to regulate

that hormone.

So Give us some examples of healthy fats,

avocados, Nuts,

dairy. There's nothing wrong with dairy.

If your body can tolerate it.

And some people have dairy sensitivities,

but if you can tolerate dairy and dairy is perfectly fine.

And I'm talking about whole fat dairy,

all the saturated fats from animals,

the government regulations are changing because of the research that's been

coming out over the last 10 years that saturated fat and

cholesterol are not bad for our heart at all.

I personally eat a very high fat diet because all this

brain chemistry stuff,

it actually accelerates the more you beef,

your fat intake up,

and the more you drop your carbs.

But I went on a very high-fat diet of 70% of

my calories are from fat.

And I tracked my heart markers because I wanted to see

what it would do.

And the longer I stay on this type of diet,

the lower my LDL goes,

the higher,

my HDL comes up,

the lower my triglycerides come down.

I cut my triglycerides in over like 60% in the first

year. Wow.

And my testosterone came up because what a lot of people

don't know is that testosterone is built directly from cholesterol.

There is no other source.

And also vitamin D we all know how important vitamin D

is for us.

Vitamin D doesn't magically come from the sun.

What the sun does is cause a chemical reaction in our

skin that changes cholesterol into vitamin D.

So in order to get all of this important health stuff,

we must have cholesterol.

And so all this low cholesterol nonsense has been exactly that

nonsense. So there's no reason to fear saturated fats and cholesterol.

And when you start eating them,

then you'll see how good you feel as a result.

And your hunger will be very regulated when you get your

hunger completely under control.

It really makes a healthy eating initiative so much simpler because

that hormone leptin,

when it's out of control,

it can really make your life miserable,

but it doesn't have to.

And we all can experience that so quickly just to summarize,

I want to make sure that everyone has caught these three

actions that you feel we should take,

correct me.

I'm wrong here,

Carl. But the first one is make sure that you're switching

from quick to slow digesting carbs.

The second is to add protein to all of your meals.

And the third is it's okay to have fat.

It needs to be healthy fat,

but also add that to each and every meal mm And

healthy fat includes animal fats.

The unhealthy fats.

What I mean is trans fats.

So the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils,

the soybean oil,

the vegetable oils,

those are the fats that you wanna stay away from.

Those are the ones that cause heart issues because they're manufactured.

If you've ever squeezed the carrot,

you know,

that oil doesn't really come out.

And so they have to do things like add all kinds

of chemicals and do all kinds of stuff to create vegetable

oils. Those oils are not good for you,

and they should be stayed away from,

but the animal fats and dairy fats,

there's nothing wrong with that.

So gift biz listeners,

you've just heard Carl and how he describes all of these

things and how it affects our body.

If you're interested in hearing more,

I've been listening to his podcast quite a bit lately,

which is why I got him on the show.

There is so much more valuable information that you can hear

directly from Carl on his podcast.

And his show is I'm too busy for nutrition.

And I would encourage all of you to go over and

take a listen.

There's even more detail and more topics that he gets into

than he's had time to share with us today.

Your podcast is fabulous.

Carl, so kudos for putting it up and thank you because

we can all use this information.

Thank you very much,

Sue. I really appreciate that.

I've really enjoyed putting together the podcast.

It's been quite an experience.

I know that I feel the same way.

It sure is.

So we're going to roll over now into our reflection section.

What's one trait Carl,

that you have just naturally that you think has helped you

bring you to the point you're at now.

I really have learned to start to see failure as simply

a lesson being learned,

and that lesson will lead you to success.

That's a really big mind shift that I think anybody who

is an entrepreneur has to be able to have,

otherwise you'll get so down that you'll want to quit.

Yeah. You know,

I think this is a common theme from a lot of

people that I've talked with on the podcast,

because we have some idea that people who have been successful

just happened to just jump in and everything they touch turns

to gold.

And you never hear the behind the scenes things about all

of the struggles and where things did fail.

But the key is they didn't just stop.

They figured out a solution or they changed course or something

so that they could continue on towards their ultimate goal,

whatever that might be.

Absolutely. What tool do you use regularly to keep you productive

or to help create balance in your life besides nutrition?

Oh, I was going to say my blender.

You can,

you, can you do that too,

but you gotta give me another one,

my blender,

or tell me about your blender.

Okay. My blender,

I actually use one of those Nutribullets.

Those will pull Vera's anything into liquid.

Sometimes I'll put broccoli and spinach into my shake,

which you don't have to,

but it actually,

there's no flavor once you polarize it.

So well,

most of the time for breakfast,

I either do bacon and eggs or I'll put together a

five minute shake,

which if you go to my homepage,

you can get six spectrum smoothie,

recipes, that taste amazing.

They include everything that you need to really amp up your

energy and focus.

So my blender is one of them for the other.

I am actually a list person for all the apps that

I've tried out.

And, you know,

I've tried out things with like Evernote and stuff like that,

and they work well,

but I'm a list person.

And so when I write things down and I slow my

thought down enough to write something down and make myself a

list of,

to do's,

that really is what anchors that in my mind and helps

me remember it better.

And it really helps me churn through my tasks a whole

lot better.

Do you do Your lists through simple pen and paper?

Yeah, it sounds cheesy,

but that really helps me out.

Have you read a book lately that you would recommend,

or you think our listeners would find value in?

Absolutely. And Napoleon hill outwitting,

the devil.

Oh, I love That book.

Talk a little bit about the backstory of that book.

It's fast.

Oh, it's fantastic.

And Napoleon hill wrote thinking grow rich back in the twenties

and it was hugely successful and that's a fantastic book on

its own.

But after he wrote that book,

you know,

after the crash of 29,

he went into despair.

And what this book is basically,

is him going into such deep despair.

And you know,

they're in the book they talk about,

is this real?

Or is it not?

But he goes through and interviews the devil to talk about

how the devil controls the vast majority of people out there.

And the devil talks about all these different ways of self

doubt and even food and all these different ways that the

devil controls 95,

98 or whatever is presented people.

The devil calls,

the people that are under his belt drifters.

And you know,

I'm not really what I consider a religious person,

but this book was so interesting because of the way he

elaborated on how people are controlled,

how the devil controls the minds of people.

And so it was very interesting.

The devil calls,

the people that he controls drifters when you get into the

habit of drifting,

as in not focusing your thoughts,

not being able to think on your own when you just

take what is told to you as given,

without questioning it,

that is what the devil calls drifting.

And he goes through this long elaborate interview with the devil.

It's so good.

It's so interesting.

And I believe also that this book wasn't published for years,

the family will allow it to be published until just recently,

hasn't it just come out within the last several years?

I think It was,

Right? What makes it so crazy that first off it,

you know,

hid for 70 years without being published,

but the stuff that he was talking about back in the

thirties, how applicable it is today,

it really is freaky.

It is.

It's very freaky.

I would recommend getting the audio book because the guy that

they got to do,

the voice of the devil is actually very good.

He is,

he, he totally is.

And you've just led me right into that because I have

teamed up with audible.

So gift biz listeners,

if you want to take advantage of the audio book,

just go to gift biz,

book.com and make a selection.

And you can get this audio book for free peril.

Our time is almost up here,

but I'm not letting you leave without giving you a virtual

gift. It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

This is your dream or goal of almost unreachable Heights that

you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside?

What is inside is a world that has flipped its view

of a healthy diet.

And therefore everyone is thinking incredibly clear.

Now what this translates into is that everybody is thinking more

rationally. Crime is down as a result.

Disease is low because we're all getting healthier.

And the world is full of people who have chosen to

be happy.

Everybody's looking for how to be happy.

And happiness is a choice that you make every day.

And when you're thinking,

clearly it is a lot easier to make that choice when

we're not filling our brains with a bunch of garbage that

is making it perform poorly.

It is a lot more difficult to make that happiness choice.

And so that's what I would like to see in that

box. And I helped 100,000

of them to get there.

There you go.

You've got a marker in the sand,

a hundred thousand,

got it.

And all of us can help you.

Carl, all of the listeners too,

can join in,

just share this information,

share Karl's contact information,

which we're going to talk about in a second here.

And let's all help him reach that hundred thousand.

Thank you very much.

So, and with that,

how can our listeners get in touch with you after this

show? Well,

if you are on a computer,

then my home on the internet is nutrition to the edge.com.

And if you're out and about,

if you're out for a jog or you're in your car,

then you can listen to my podcasts.

And that is the I'm too busy for nutrition podcasts.

Either one,

If biz listeners,

you also know you can jump over to our show notes

page, we'll have all the links and a lot of this

information in detail so that you can go back and review

everything that's been said on the podcast today.

So before you go,

though, Carl,

I have to congratulate you on your new baby boy,

Blake Blake is only six weeks old.

And as many of you would have no need to know

we do these interviews over Skype.

And I'm looking right now at Carl holding his little boy

Blake, because that's the picture that he has up on Skype.

And he's absolutely adorable.

Thank you so much.

He's so cute.

It's been so much fun.

And thank you so much for the valuable gift of sharing

all of this information about how our bodies work and how

we can perform better simply by eating the correct foods.

May your candle Carl always burn.

Thank you very much,

Sue. I had a great time being on here.

Thanks for inviting me.

Learn how to work smarter while developing and growing your business.

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If so,

we'd love to hear from you.

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