 James Swanick here with Kristina Cole, how you doing? Hey, I'm doing good. It's a beautiful day in Boise. It's awesome. All right, Boise. It's a beautiful morning here in Brisbane, Australia. Nice to talk to you from across the globe. I know it. I've heard so many things about you, and I know you probably have heard about me, but it's great to finally meet you like this. Wonderful to meet you as well. First impressions count for everything, and I have been very strategically four minutes late just to see how you react. Not just, I'm just joking. All me, I'm four minutes late. Very sorry about that. We're talking about weight loss, energy, sleep, clarity, focus, feeling terrific, and you're an expert at all of those things. Well, I'd like to think that I am. I mean, I'm certainly not the smartest person out there, but I'm certainly doing my part to bring hope and healing to people across the globe. And we know we have a saying in Code Red and you ain't sleeping, you ain't losing. And so sleep is the number one rule when it comes to weight loss and just overall good health. So this is a match made, Christy Code Red and Swanwick, a match made in heaven. Oh, I love that. And Christy, you're the author of the Code Red Revolution and you're a speaker, and you were a pretty impressive boxer, as I understand it. Tell us about that. Well, thank you. You know, I grew up poor in the mountains of Northern Idaho on a big ranch. I have two sisters. My dad was a police officer and our local minister. So we lived life kind of in a fish bowl, but we had no money in a very small town. And so when I was growing up and I wanted to go to college and I left home, there was just no help. So I was purting myself through nursing school and I was waiting tables. And one day I took a boxing class and I was kind of boxing. You know, I didn't know anything about boxing. Well, a real boxing coach walked by the window and was watching me. And he said, you know what, how long you've been boxing? I said 44 minutes. He said, wow, you have a propensity to be a good boxer. You have a natural knack. Well, I said, you know, whatever, Powell. And he goes, you don't want to fight? I said, I've never been in a fight. I don't even care about fighting. He said, but you can earn money. Now, for a girl who's living hand to mouth, who is barely making ends meet, putting myself through school, I mean, that was music to my ears. So I started fighting as a professional boxer at 154 pounds all over the world, just to pay for my dinner. And I started making, you know, I was just, I didn't even know that boxing was going to be a huge thing for me. I just was trying to literally pay for my dinner. So I started making 500 bucks a fight and then it just exploded. I became one of the top three most dangerous females on the planet. And so over the course of eight years, I had 15 pro fights, two world titles, five knockouts, many broken noses, many stitches, many broken relationships, but it was good for me. So boxing was, yeah, it's a tough way to make a living, but it also got me to where I am today. Yeah, wonderful. And your nose looks wonderful, by the way, even if it's been broken a few times. It's been surgically straightened and put back on my face. Great job, surgeons. Wonderful, you look fantastic. Nice fit in the healthy and the energetic. We're talking to Christy Code Red-Nickel here today and Christy's actually created a nutrition program that allows people to lose 10% of their body weight per month without shakes, without diet pills, without diet foods. And it says, or you say, without exercise as well, which we're gonna get into in a second, but if you're just watching us now on Facebook or YouTube, hi Connie, watching on YouTube, post a question here for Christy. Christy would love to answer it. Anything weight loss related, anything energy related, anything sleep related, we're gonna be talking about on today's show. Christy is gonna be sharing her insights into how to easily lose weight and get healthy with three simple things, eating real food, drinking lots of water and sleep. But I noticed there's no exercise in there, which is fascinating. And we're gonna talk about that in a second. So just ask your questions. Connie says, where do I start? Question mark. Connie says, has said previously that she is carrying a few extra pounds. Where does, let's just say that we're dealing with a similar demographic, a woman maybe in her 30s or 40s, let's just say someone who's 20 pounds overweight. I'm not talking about Connie in particular. I'm just talking about a woman in general, maybe 30s, 40s, 50s carrying 20 pounds extra. What's the way that you coach people into losing those 20 pounds and feeling amazing? The best thing that Connie or anybody listening can do is to join our 10 pound takedown challenge. That's the greatest way to step them, dip your toe into the lifestyle. We ease you into the lifestyle so it's not so overwhelming. But if you don't wanna join the challenge, you don't wanna read my book and you're like, Christy, what can I do right now to start feeling better tomorrow morning? And that is Connie or anybody. You gotta start drinking your water. I've got a half a gallon jug here and you've gotta start drinking. You gotta get yourself up to a gallon of water a day. That's the number one best thing you can do right now to start feeling better as early as tomorrow morning. The second thing you do is you can turn your phone off, you can wear your swanis and you can get in bed at a decent time. Yep, I have six pair. I mean, I have them all over both of my houses, upstairs, downstairs, everywhere and you've got to get some sleep. You ain't sleeping, you ain't losing. So just doing those two things are gonna greatly increase your health and help with your weight loss. Connie's actually got a follow-up question and hi Bianca who's just joined us as well. Connie says, I used to be an athlete and it's difficult to not eat as much as I used to. I drink a lot and try to get sleep. So she does drink a lot of water and she does try to get sleep. But she's finding it difficult to not eat as much as she used to. Any thoughts there? Yeah, you know what, Connie, I'm an athlete as well and the way the Code Red Lifestyle got started is because I became a fat athlete. My husband calls it a fat lead and I hope that doesn't offend anybody listening but I'll just call myself, I was fat but I was also the fittest that I've ever been. And so the fact that I used to be an athlete, you know what that tells me? That tells me that that's just not your life anymore. A lot of people were like, I was division one athlete in college. Well, that was 30 years ago, you know? And for a lot of people, that doesn't matter. You might get back in a shape but the bottom line is you said, I try to get some sleep. That try word is red flags. You can't try, Connie. You've got to get in bed early. You got to say, hey, this family gets in bed on time, get the kids bathed, get kitchen cleaned up, close down the kitchen and get to bed early. You absolutely can but you've got to prioritize your help. So yes, you can stop with try, start doing it. Yeah, there's, for all of you, return of the Jedi staff, Star Wars Empire Strikes Back fans out there. There's a scene in the movie Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker is on the planet with Yoda and Yoda's like, you know, you pull the spaceship out of the swamp using your mind and Luke Skywalker says, all right, I'll give it a try. And Yoda says, no, do or do not. There is no try. Exactly. Yeah, there is no try. You know, you'd have to make up your mind. It's all up in here. I can give you the easy tools but you've got to say in your mind, I'm sick of being fat, I'm sick of being sick, I'm sick of my medications, I'm sick of my CPAP, I'm sick of asking for the seat belt extender, I'm tired, I'm done. Being fat's got to hurt bad enough for you to make a change and for it to stick. And I know Bianca, I think you said is your program for women only, no, it's for anybody eating real food, is the proper human diet is for everybody. Real food, water and sleep is for everybody. So I drink a lot of water throughout the day. I have glass mason jars strategically placed all around my home. I have one in my office, I've got one on the kitchen table, one on the dining room table, I've got one in the bathroom and then I just have an overflow of them all over the place. So whenever I see the glass mason jar, I think about the water and I pour in some filtered water and I drink from it or I just leave them strategically around the place where they're always like half full and I just drink. Do you have any tips for visual cues or visual stimuli to kind of like trigger thinking about drinking water? That's a great one. I've actually never heard of that before, James. That's pretty cool. What we tell, we talk about this in our 10 pound takedown, sleep is number one, to losing weight and good health, water drinking is number two. So we talk about, we spend a whole day, a whole, I think it's day number three on talking about the water. First of all, you got to get a jug that you like. Now you guys notice I wear red lipstick all the time. I love makeup, I love lipstick. I'm not gonna drink out of something where I have to put my lips over and then it smears everywhere. So we tell people, get a water jug that you like. It's a little bit big, but this is 64 ounces and I like it. It's got a spout, it's got a straw. Also, if you don't like, if you have sensitive teeth, drink it at room temperature. If you like ice cold water, fill it up, leave it in the fridge the night before. You've got to drink your water. So whatever tricks and tips we, you can put flavoring. We have a certain flavoring like Ultima. You can put some grape, you can put some squeeze some oranges, sweet lemons in there. You can infuse your water with some good stuff, not Kool-Aid, not Kool-Aid, but we want you to drink that water. So we have a lot of tips and tricks that we talk about our 10 pound takedown to get that water in. But come on, surely Kool-Aid and Powerade and Gatorade, they're great to drink, aren't they, from Fat Lost Christy? Oh, hey, yeah, except for the loads of sugar, absolutely, you know, Weed Code Red Rebels are recovering sugar addicts. I'm a recovering sugar addict and you want to get that sugar rooted from your life, get it out of your house, get it out of your kid's life, get it out of your car, get it out of your office desk. And yeah, a lot of those Kool-Aid, Powerade, a lot of those things are just Gatorade, loaded with sugar and you've got to get you off of it because sugar is powerfully addictive. Chris DeMille on Facebook says, great tip. Thank you very much. We've got Amanda Lampkin who says, loving the glasses. Oh, thank you. There we go. Let me just see the view here. Oh, that's pretty special. Look at that. We've got Amanda says, you've been amazing since lockdown. I started in September and now lockdown has helped with my mentality towards drinking. I'm not sure who she's, she might be speaking to me there, so I'll take it, but if she's talking to you, Christy, Christy, you'll take it as well. We've got Rod Villarje. Water is great, but what do you think about energy drinks like Gatorade? Are we just actually talked about that, but you can answer that again. Hey, Rod, absolutely not. I get people off of all those bull crap drinks and anything that is a bull crap, fake chemical crap is what it is. I get people off of that and then you've got to ask yourself, why are you needing an energy drink? Why you're not getting enough sleep at night? People say, I just need to take a nap. That's the, you don't, we're not humans, we're not made to take naps. So why are you getting an energy drink? You don't need it if you're giving yourself the proper human diet and you're drinking water and you're sleeping. You're not going to need any of that. So absolutely not. I get all my rebels off of that. So just one more thing on the water and then we'll move on to nutrition. Tom Brady, who is the famous former New York, sorry, what did I say? Patriots, New England Patriots. I've got New York fans or probably all Patriots fans are probably like turning in their grave right now if I called him a New Yorker, but New England Patriots quarterback. Former New England Patriots quarterback. Tom Brady, as famously said before that, he recommends drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water per day. So half of your body weight in ounces per day. Does that seem about right to you? Kristy, did you get more or less? Yeah, that's a good starting point is what we say. That's a good starting point. But I believe in a bit more than that. That's going to help you go potty. That's going to help your tear ducts. That's going to help your sweat glands. It's just not quite enough. Across the board, I have gone on national television and said a gallon a day for the average person is a safe point. And what is that a gallon of water a day doing to us other than sending us to the bathroom probably more than what we're used to? We only go to the bathroom in the beginning a lot. People are like, I'm going pee all the time every 30 minutes, every 20 minutes, but your kidneys get used to it and they concentrate and your body will get used to the water. And so it's going to help keep the hunger away. It's going to help with digestion. It's going to help flush toxins. It's going to help your sweat glands. It helps keep the hunger away. There's so many great benefits to and positive correlations between water consumption and being fully hydrated. Plus, if you're even 1% dehydrated, that can be a 10% drop in energy. So a lot of afternoon fog, cities have shown can be cured by just a glass of water. So don't underestimate. And you know, Rod, you said something about you wanting flavoring in your water. I totally get that. We do allow Ultima in our water and we do allow lemon limes. We allow just a few kind of flavoring. I'm with you, buddy. I need the flavoring in my water. So you're going to notice I'll put some a little bit of like code red approved flavoring in there. Yeah, great. One of the things that I coach my clients on who are quitting drinking, I wrote this book, The 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge. And one of the ways that I help people, weed themselves off alcohol is to drink lots and lots of water. And my favorite drink I always say is water, ice and a piece of lime. And I don't just mean like cutting off a little triangle of lime and sticking it over the glass. I mean, squeezing the lime in and stirring it around and having that nice little fresh lime flavor with some ice. Do the same with lemon. Just squeeze it in. It gives it a nice little flavor. Let's talk nutrition, Christy. What is the nutritional experience that you suggest? Because there's lots of ways to eat out there. At the moment, I'm hearing things about the caveman diet which is only meat. We've got vegetarian, we've got vegan, we've got the keto diet. There's intermittent fasting where you don't eat in a 16 hour window but you do eat an eight hour window. There's lots of quote unquote diets out there. What do you recommend when it comes to food and nutrition? I feel so sorry for the average consumer because they are bombarded. It is a huge industry, it's one of the biggest industries on the planet. So there is everything and lots of different things will work for different people. We believe in the proper human diet. That's real food. So on Code Red, we do remove certain foods out of your diet in order to help you lose weight. So we believe in meat, vegetables, nuts, eggs, seeds, seafood and fat. So I take you off all grains, take you off of course all sugar, all fruit except for berries, lentils and legumes. I take you off of that because anything that's gonna stall your weight loss like cheese, I'm gonna take you off of that as well. Dairy, you gotta be really careful with dairy. Only 50% of all the population can even metabolize dairy. So I do remove a few things from a person's diet that could hinder or stall your weight loss because nobody wants to be losing weight forever. And then we reintroduce just a couple of different foods strategically to find out what's gonna work for you. But it is the proper human diet. So we don't believe in chemically processed crap. As you were saying that it sounded like something resembling the paleo lifestyle of eating. Is that correct? Is that what you were describing there? A little bit, but paleo, they allow potatoes and we don't allow potatoes, yam, sweet potatoes because that's those high starch foods are gonna slow down your weight loss. So if the concept is the same as far as eating real food, but there are just some things that, you know, paleo, they allow the fruits and anything grown, anything from the earth, we don't call them bad. That's what you gotta remember. Nothing is bad. You don't wanna say good food, bad food. You just wanna say this food is gonna get me closer to this goal or this food is gonna get me the closer to that goal. Whatever your goal is, you wanna eat according to your goal. Does the goal change then? Does the nutritional plan change once someone has lost the weight and now they're wanting to go into, I'm not sure, let's call it maintenance style or wanting to live for longevity or they're what, like how does the nutritional plan change somewhat? It doesn't change too much because we believe in the proper human diet, which is real whole food, the way nature delivered it to us. We don't do a whole lot different in maintenance. We wanna, there are certain foods that you wanna reintroduce if you want an apple or you want an orange or if you want a pizza from Domino's. Just understand what that's gonna do to your body and we wanna do that strategically. We wanna do it very rarely. We wanna be really careful. Like for example, I cannot metabolize legumes or lentils. I mean, I just have a stomach ache this horrible. So I never eat them. I do just fine with apples. I do just fine with a few tortilla chips. There are certain things that I can eat in maintenance and not gain weight. So we really wanna work with our rebels to find out what's gonna work for them and we wanna add one thing at a time so we know how our body reacts to it. Yeah, Connie is asking here on YouTube. So paleo, question mark minus potatoes two, I think question mark. Paleo remember is anything that's grown and so they include a lot of like melons and different things that we don't believe in. We wanna stay away from any kind of the high fructose. Remember your liver can only metabolize a small amount of fructose at a time and we have genetically modified fruits that are bigger, brighter and sweeter than in the garden of Eden. And so we've got a great, we've got an apple the size of a baby's head. We've got four servings of an apple and one Costco size apple. So you really wanna be careful when you're, I just, my clients lose weight better than people on paleo. But again, we're moving in the right direction even with paleo. You wanna get away from the standard American diet and move into a more whole foods diet like paleo, but not really. No, I got it. Do you believe that there is, I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory, but do you suspect or, yeah, do you suspect that a lot of the food guidelines that are presented to us from American health or from organizations or from certain groups about the standard three meals a day, eating a good balance of grains and breads and dairy and things like that. I mean, are you of the opinion that these organizations are corrupt? Is that too much? Are they deliberately forcing these kind of guidelines on us in order to drive sales of their products? Do you think that they really do have our best interests at heart, but they're just ill-informed? But what's your view on that? I absolutely think the food pyramid and the standard American diet is driven by industry. We produce enough wheat on this planet for 10 billion people. We have what, 7.7 billion people. We subsidize the sugar industry. We subsidize, Americans, we, our government subsidizes the wheat industry, subsidize the corn industry, subsidizes the sugar industry. So we, a lobbyist, very powerful lobbyists are not going to let us come against. I mean, at least they're gonna fight us pretty hard if we try to come against what is so powerful right now. So that's why it has to be a grassroots movement. That's why, you know, you try to speak out against the grain industry or the sugar industry, because the WHO, the World Health Organization, did at one point say, we need to really limit our sugar consumption. And holy cow, Katie bar the door. I mean, lobbyists came out, industry came out in full force. So they're very powerful. And our standard American diet is driven by industry. I don't think they have the health of our, they don't have our health as not the best interest. It's money driven for sure. Yeah, yeah, if you watch any documentary on corn and the corn industry in the US, it's frightening. How, A, how bad it is for most people and B, how America as a country as a whole pushes corn on us. And, you know, high fructose corn syrup is in so many of our condiments and so many of our meals these days, aren't they? From like ketchup to mayonnaise to, you know, sugary drinks, like it's actually frightening how much corn is in our diet. 88% of all of our items in the grocery store have sugar or some form of high fructose corn syrup. It's absolutely terrible for you. Our liver does not know what to do with it. We wonder why our fatty liver disease is through the roof because we're eating foods our body doesn't recognize. Yeah. If you have a question for Christy, go ahead and post it now. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're watching on Facebook, if you've got a question about fat loss or weight loss or driving or energy about sleep, go ahead and post your question now and we will get that answered. Let's, Connie says scary and soybean. Any thoughts on soybean? Yeah, same kind of, we're in the kind of the same boat. We're just overproducing these products and we're putting them in makeup. We're putting them in shampoo. I mean, they're used as a filler. They're used in everything. And now our bodies are creating antibodies to it. We're actually creating, we're going against it because we're just bombarded by it. So we have to take our health back and our way of doing it is rebels is we take ourselves off of those items. We lose the weight, we heal our body. And then if you wanna reintroduce a clean source later on, you can. Seltzer water. Can I go ahead and answer that, James? Yeah, go ahead. What's your thoughts on seltzer water? You know, I've been in this industry over 25 years. I've had over 60,000 people come through my 10 pound takedown, thousands of people come through my challenges. And what is going on that I've seen working with tens of thousands of people is if you get people an inch, they take a mile. So is seltzer water bad? Of course not. But what I see people do is I say, okay, you can have seltzer water. Or they say, if I can have seltzer water, I can have soda. Well, if I can have soda, I can have a tonic. Well, I can have a gin tonic. Well, then I can have a bottle of wine because that's got water. Oh, my Lord. So I just say, no, seltzer water, nothing carbonated. We take you back down to the baseline. We get you cleansed of everything. We get your weight off. Of course, seltzer water is not bad, but I want you to just drink in good old fashioned pure water because we find that it triggers people to want bubbly beverages and it seems to just get out of control. We've got Aya Atina Batugas who says, so we need to avoid soft drinks too. Yes, absolutely. You've got to get Code Red Rebels. We get off all the soft drinks. They're pretty nasty. And we talk about that on our 10 pound takedown. Mel says, I was just wondering if what we eat sometimes affects migraines. I'm having a difficult time getting enough sleep because every time I wake in the wee hours of the morning, there's this usual pain at the back of my head. I'm unable to sleep again. There are times I'm so scared to sleep knowing that if I wake up, the pain will be there. That is absolutely debilitating. We've had plenty of people and people on my podcast that have talked about this. Most migraines I've seen in my career do come from your food. You need to get off all that crap. You need to get on the proper human diet, eliminate anything with the chemicals. You've got to do an elimination. You've got to get off that stuff and see if you're migraine. I would bet my next paycheck that your migraines are going to clear up, 99% of the time. It could be some underlining issue that we don't know about, but once you've treated with nutrition first and water and sleep, I think you're going to find that they come under control, maybe almost eliminated. I mean, I've got a lady, I think 38 years, she had debilitating migraines and a year on Code Red and she hasn't had migraine the whole time. Yeah, amazing. Christy, what are your thoughts on coffee? Coffee's good. What we do allow coffee on Code Red, I love coffee. We do allow two cups a day because that's roughly 350 milligrams of caffeine. We don't want to go over that because we just noticed that it cuts into our water drinking and the things that people put in coffee cannot be good. Sometimes it's not good. It just loaded down with sugar and chemicals and crap like that. But coffee has catecholamines. Coffee can help mobilize free fatty acid. So it is good for us in about the amount of about 350 milligrams a day. A friend of mine, Max Lugerveer, wrote a book called Genius Foods and he was saying that most people in America or the world for that matter, when they wake up in the morning, they're drinking coffee within the first 10 or 15 minutes and he suggested waiting about half an hour, the reason being that our cortisol levels are quite high in the first 30 minutes after we wake up. And if we then drink coffee, it raises our cortisol levels even further. Are you of that belief also? Absolutely and your insulin is 60% higher in the morning. So you want to be really careful what you consume because you're very, very sensitive to it. Absolutely wait at least a half hour. You going to get up? You want to walk to the bathroom? You want to go potty, strip down naked, weigh yourself and then immediately start getting that water down the hatch and then wait as long as you can before that first cup of coffee. Absolutely 100%. Is 30 minutes an okay period of time? Would you suggest longer? Yeah, 30 minutes is probably good. I think that's good. 30 minutes an hour would be even better. But yeah, I think that that would be just fine. And how do you take your coffee? Is it black? Do you put, I'm guessing that you're not putting dairy milk in your coffee, but how do you make your coffee? We allow Code Red Rebels to have a heavy cream in our coffee, heavy cream or whipping cream. I really would love all of us to move away from dairy as much as possible, but I'm not going to ask anybody to do anything I don't do. And so I put roughly a tablespoon in my coffee and that goes a long way for me. So I limit my dairy to two tablespoons in the morning and that's it. But it's heavy cream and a little bit of raw organic non-GMO stevia. Got it. When you say heavy cream, what's the brand or like is it out of a tin or a jar? Or like just explain that a little more please. Because I get my, I drink heavy cream every day. I get it from a local dairy farmer here in Boise. And so I think if you consume a lot of one product, you want to find a good clean source. So not only am I supporting the local farmers, but I'm getting a good clean source that I know it doesn't have any of the chemicals in it. So I get it from a local farmer. Almond milk, what are your thoughts on almond milk in coffee or just as a drink in general? Almond milk, perfectly fine. Any of the nut milks, any of the cashew milk, flax milk, make sure you get it unsweetened. I absolutely think you should move in a direction of getting away from dairy as much as possible. You'll find that flax milk has the most consistency that that is the closest to cow's milk if you are looking for that. Yeah, good alternatives. I was on a lengthy drive yesterday. I was driving for a couple of hours and I got hungry about the halfway point and pulled into a gas station kind of complex where they've got lots of fast food options there. And the options were KFC Burger King. It's actually called Hungry Jacks in Australia, Burger King. But it was KFC Burger King. I don't think there was a McDonald's at this particular place. They had a Red Rooster, which is an Australian company here, which is kind of a rival to KFC. They had Subway and then they had a meat pie store, which the name of which escapes me. Oh, and they had a Chinese takeaway place as well. What I ended up going for, because I was hungry, I was so hungry I wanted to eat, what I ended up going for was a six inch sandwich from Subway. And as I was eating it, I was like, this is pretty damn good. But I suspected that the bread was still probably gonna be causing me some issues, but in that type of scenario, Christy, if you had to eat, what of those scenarios would you eat? You've got KFC, you've got Burger King, you've got a Chinese takeaway, you've got a meat pie store and you've got Subway, which of those would you go for? I would go for the Subway and I would have turned that sandwich into a salad. I would have gotten extra chicken on it, lots of lettuce. I would have piled in the Helping's avocado, a little bit of bacon in there, a little bit of olives, and made it a nice high fat, high protein salad. I would have skipped the bread completely. That's where you're gonna get that insulin spike and what is insulin? The fat producing hormone, the fat storage hormones. You wanna kick that bread off any chance you get. And also because I ate the bread and then I hopped in the car and drove another hour, so I'm not moving, right? My body's not breaking down or digesting properly that six inch sandwich that I just had, right? Yeah, you just stored that right as fat. That's not a good thing. I'm not gonna shame you or anything, James, but definitely, guys, skip the bread anytime. Skip the, you know, my dad had a heart attack about six months ago and while he was in the hospital, the next morning they brought him in a burger and fries. People think the burger is the one that you wanna, that you wanted the meat patty, is the one you wanna avoid that for a heart attack patient. No, the bread and the fries, he should have kicked them off the plate and just ate the patty, the lettuce, the pickles, the tomatoes. So we've gotta start thinking getting off the crap carbs. You know what's funny is that I knew this and I know this and I've known it for a decade and still, even though, you know, still I was tired in the moment, I was driving, I saw all the options and something in my brain is like, eat, but just doing a salad with the meat is not enough. I want the bread and I know it's not great for me and I know I'm gonna get in the car, I'm gonna drive off. And I like to think of myself as very health conscious. You know, I feel like I have the body nature intended me to have, I exercise five or six times a week, I drink lots of water, I don't drink alcohol and I smoke cigarettes, I eat crap food very rarely. And even then, despite knowing that and having a podcast and interviewing the world's experts, I still chose to have the bread at a six inch subway sandwich. So what is it, do you think it's going on in the human mind that even though we know what we should do and what we should not do, we still end up doing those very things? Yeah, people say, when you know better, you do better. I don't agree with that. I think a lot of people know better and they just choose to not do better. First of all, you wanna be careful of fact that you're tired and you're bored. When you're tired, your body sends signals that you're hungry and it craves sugar and it craves carbs because that's the quickest form of energy. We're talking about from here down, your body views that bread. Quick glycemic spike, it's gonna give you that. Hi, you're looking for, I mean, I know when I travel to Europe, if I have a croissant, if I have a bagel or any kind of a bread product, I mean, I can't stop thinking about bread. It sends you into a cycle of craving more. So that is not you just being crazy or not having any willpower. That is the pull of the carbs and the sugar, which again, the carbs turn into sugar from once they pass your neck. And so a lot of times when we're tired or we're bored, we're gonna crave sugar or things that turn into sugar in order to wake us up and keep us going. I mean, look, Dr. Hyman said it best. He said, when I was a resident and I was working these night shifts, I didn't crave kale salad, I crave donuts. That is just our ancestors, our genetic way to just keep us alive and keep us going. Yeah. We've got a few more questions that are coming through here, but before we do, let's just turn our attention temporarily to sleep. How do you ensure that you get a terrific night's sleep, Christy? I have a very, very strict sleep schedule. I am militant, absolutely militant about my sleep. I start my sleep routine early. I have very good bedroom boundaries. I have a very good sleep routine. I start early, two hours before my bedtime, I put my swannies on and I make sure that I'm starting that for sure. And everybody, yep, everybody. And then if I notice I'm gonna be on the computer during the day, I have my day wear swannies on. And that helps reduce the eye strain. It helps to not block the melatonin production, all the things that we know about. And so I start that two hours before my bedtime. And then as I get about an hour before I go to bed, remember, I get up at five in the morning, so I'm in bed by eight and asleep by 8.30 or nine. Like, I mean, I'm very, very militant. So then I start to dim the lights in my house. Lights come down. Everything gets calm. Noise goes off. I make my way upstairs. I take a hot bath, take my makeup off. Everything's dim. It's starting to get very cool in my bedroom, guys. You gotta sleep between 64 and 66 degrees Fahrenheit. You gotta have a cool, dark room. I have a weighted blanket that's already on my bed. No kids, no pets in my bed. So I make sure that devices go off, that I am calm, that I'm reading, that I'm calming my mind, that I'm taking time to really calm myself down. Sometimes if it's been a hectic day, I have some CBD oil that I put under my tongue and it helps me to relax a little bit, but I only take that if I need to. What time of night are you putting on a pair of Swanwy's glasses? And you've been a big supporter of the technology and the glasses and the eyewear that we've had now for a couple of years. So why are you such a proponent of blue light blocking glasses in general? Well, the Swanwy brand, and I'm not just saying this, I've always been this way, is absolutely hands down my, there's no better quality. I learned that from Alex Sharfin a while back and that's why I wanted to get involved with Swanwy because I knew this company was absolutely premium. I knew that everything you guys touched was gonna be pure gold. And so I started early, but I noticed with myself that it changed my life. It changed my sleep. It changed, I mean, I used to have to take a sleeping pill. I don't have to take that anymore. If I just put my Swanwy's on early enough, then it really helps to reduce the blue light, reduces my eye strain. It relaxes me. It just brings me to that state of sleep so much better. So I tried it on myself first and that's why we do, we sell so many Swanwy's every month is because I am always talking about it, always showing I keep them, I have a travel pair, I keep a two pair down here, a two pair and two pair at my other house, two pair upstairs. I mean, I'm never without my Swanwy's because they have changed my life. Thank you so much, Christy. We so appreciate your support with that. There are people who are watching this who despite all of the best advice about turning off electronics are still gonna crawl into bed and watch Netflix on their phone or scroll through Twitter or whatever they do on their phone. So if someone is going to do that, even despite us saying don't do that, you shouldn't do that, it's not good for your sleep to do that. Even though people are gonna ignore us and still do that, how would you suggest they do do that in order to ensure that they're protecting their sleep as much as possible? We talk about this all the time on Code Red. We don't expect people to turn off their devices. We just know they're gonna be on their phones. We know they're gonna be on their iPads. We know they're gonna watch a Planet Discovery Planet on National Geographic before bed. We know that they're gonna watch your favorite show. So what we really, we do absolutely, everybody has got to get their pair of Swanwy's on two hours before bed. You cannot scroll. And a couple of times I've forgotten mine. I mean, I cannot fall asleep if I'm on my device. And so hands down without a doubt, you've got to block that blue light. And they've got to make their sleep environment good. They can't expect to have kids, kicking them in the rib cage and dogs barking in the blinds up. And why can't I sleep? Because you're not doing, you've got dirty laundry on your bed. So to give yourself the best possible night sleep, you've got to clean up that room. You've got to cool it down. We've got to get lavender. People just want to go right for Ambien. But there's so many more things you can do to actually induce sleep and protect your bedroom boundaries. Even when I travel, James, I travel all the time. And I still have my whole team knows I'm going to be in bed by eight and I'm going to be back up at five the next morning. So don't bother me. Everybody be quiet. Earplugs, eye masks, everything. We all, you've got to protect your sleep. They say, shorten your sleep, shorten your life. So this is a non-negotiable. Let's answer a few questions here that have come in on Facebook and YouTube. And then I want to ask you about your daily routine, Christie. But Susan, your Patrick here is asking, what are your thoughts about intermittent fasting? You know, on Code Red, we don't we don't say the word fasting because we are trying to get people out of the drive-through and into the kitchen. And fasting scares a living crap out of people, even though you fast when you sleep. So we on Code Red, we don't eat after 6.30 p.m. That is a rule we don't eat with. We just don't that we just noticed that late night eating late night eating is just not good for you. So no eating past 6.30. So you're fasting naturally. And but we just don't say that word. And there are people on the internet, like Thomas DeLauer who are Dr. Berg. There are lots of people who are experts in intermittent fasting. So I kind of tend to stay away from that subject because it just scares my rubbles and it makes them think that they can't, they're just scared of it. But we have an eating window, we have a not eating window, just naturally as humans. You can join Christie's 10 pound take out challenge to lose your first, next or last 10 pounds. No pills, no powders, no shakes, no exercise required. And the challenge starts June 1st, which is in about a week from now. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about that before we answer a few more questions, Christie? Yeah, this is a 30 day challenge, a 10 pound take down. You can lose at least 10 pounds in 30 days by just following basic rules. So if you register for $47, you're gonna get a tracking sheet, you're gonna track your water, your weight and your sleep each day. You're going to, and I want you to write that down on the tracking sheet. I don't want you to keep it on your phone. I want you to take a pen and write it down. It's already a tracking sheet. You just write it in the box and you're gonna eat off the foods list and avoid the food on the other side. And so it's a very simple food list and you're gonna follow very simple rules. You're gonna be entered into a community private group where I'm gonna come live to every single morning for 30 days and teach you something new. And it's a great way to dip your toe into the lifestyle. You're gonna receive an incentive gift, just my way of saying thank you. You can win over $2,000 of prizes and of course our average weight loss for the month is 12.2 pounds. And so you can lose at least 10 pounds and it's a really great way to get started and heal your body. I love that, wonderful. And we've got a link down in the comments there where you can enroll in Christie's program. We've got a question here that says how many apples a day are apples good for your diet? Well, apples aren't, we don't allow apples on Code Red when you're in weight loss mode. So we stay away from apples, but later on when you reach maintenance, you can reintroduce them back in if you want. Another question here, I just did a two week cleanse and detox. Now I'm approaching my eating to my circadian rhythm, thoughts? I don't know anything about you Facebook user and I don't know what kind of what you're talking about. I don't really believe in detox. The body knows how to detox itself provided there are no toxins coming in. We got people that are doing some bullcrap cleanse shake and then they're drinking beer at night. What kind of bullcrap is that? So if you go through some shake cleanse which I don't believe in and then what do you do? Well, you just gain your weight but I got lost seven pounds in one week. But then what do you do when you gotta go back to real life? So I don't believe any of that stuff. The body knows how to cleanse itself. The body knows how to detox. If you give it sunlight, you give it water, you give yourself sleep, your body can heal itself. But you gotta get off the sugar, you have to get off the chemical process crap, no caramel macchiatoes and cake pops, no lean cuisines, none of that bullcrap taco bell. You gotta eat real food, drink water and sleep and you will heal your body. I haven't drunk alcohol now in 10 and a half years and I have a program that helps people. We've helped about 20,000 people now quit drinking for at least 30 days via my 30 day no alcohol challenge and a couple of other programs that we have. What are your thoughts on alcohol? How much is too much? How much is okay? What kind of drinks, if you are gonna drink, should they just get off alcohol altogether? Like what are your thoughts around that? Yeah, I personally don't drink at all. I come from alcoholic grandparents and there's alcoholism that runs through my family and my sister's an alcoholic and I just don't, I just have not ever, I've just stayed away from it naturally. I don't like it, I don't like the way it makes me feel. I don't allow my Code Red Rebels to drink at all while they're going through my program. We just find that people, they're weight loss stalls and it's triggers people. It triggers them to wanna eat the whole sleeve of Ritz Cracker. So we just say no. If somebody wants to reintroduce alcohol, we can reintroduce a very small amount like a gin or a vodka, a clear liquor mixed with something like a diet sprite that it doesn't have sugar in it. And then also if you wanna reintroduce wine we're not saying any of these things are bad. Remember we don't wanna say good food, bad food, good this, bad this. We don't wanna create a diet mentality. But four ounce, one, four ounce glass of wine per day for a woman and two for a man and nobody has just four ounces. So people just overdo it. So you gotta really be careful reintroducing those back into your life. And alcohol is something that all a society seems to encourage us to consume. Our marketing and culture. It's kind of like, it's okay to get to eat bread with a meal. I have to have the garlic bread. It's okay to eat pizza. It's all right to have all these kind of carb laden foods. Do you notice that as well? That like, it always seems like when I'm walking through a supermarket it's always, for me it feels like it's James versus the supermarket. It's like everything in the supermarket is like eat this crap food, drink this crap liquid. And then when I go out to restaurants for example I got the smiling assassin of the waiter and the waitress saying, can I get you started with some drinks? And so everyone's kind of like smiling saying have some alcohol, have some sugar, have some desserts, have some carb laden foods. Do you feel that as well? Like society's kind of, it's always you versus society or you versus culture? Yeah, the deck is definitely stacked against us in our society. I know that I was, when I was a waitress before I got into fighting and then turned it into what I am now. I mean, we were taught how to upsell and it's upsell, upsell, upsell. Get them to buy more, get them more. And it just feels like the world is against you but these marketing experts Nestle and Coca Cola and some of the biggest companies in the world they have the best marketing experts out there and they know how to get you. They know how to, they know the marketing but you know, when you feel really good by cleansing your body and not eating that crap I mean the pain, at some point you get sick of asking for the seat belt extender and you just say I am sick of being fat you gotta wanna be healthy and healed and be thin and a healthy weight more than you want that crap. And that's how this whole thing is that's how the diet industry is gonna crumble and fall is because the dollars are gonna speak you vote with your dollar and people are gonna end up just saying I've had it with this. I don't feel good when I have these the copious amounts of tortilla chips or that you know, the this and that and they're just gonna quit buying it and so the industry is gonna have to meet the demand of the voter, of the consumer. And so we're gonna just have to do this ourselves we're just gonna have to learn the hard way we are the sickest and the fattest we have ever been in a human history I mean we are 70% overweight in our country 44% obese I mean this is a pandemic if you wanna call anything a pandemic so it's already catching up to us and people are just gonna vote you vote with your dollar and people are just gonna quit buying it after a while when they realize how good they can feel this way. Jenny on Facebook asks is natural Sweden okay like monk fruit, stevia or rithritol? Hey Jenny great question on the Code Red Rebels we allow a raw organic non GMO stevia not the stevia in the packets. I'm talking about not the stevia with the fillers the raw organic non GMO stevia that you need a really really really tiny amount of or the Lakonto monk fruit monk fruit is an herb stevia is a plant and those are natural sweeteners and that's what we allow yes good question. Thank you Jenny Facebook user says is almond or oat milk in coffee okay we've kind of touched on that but maybe you can just talk to oat milk as well. I don't know a lot about oat milk I mean when it says oat I'm thinking it's made from oats and I don't want my rebels having anything made from oats cause that's gonna be I don't know what's in that so I don't have to look into the labels but yeah you always wanna make sure you got almond, cashew, flax milk those kind of milks you wanna just make sure they're unsweetened and yeah that's perfectly okay. Bianca says how about equal sweetener? No you wanna stay away from equal you just wanna have the stevia or the monk fruit. Facebook users ask can you do open face an open face sandwich I'm not quite sure what that means do you know Christy? Well I don't I'm assuming you have bread on the bottom and you just toss off that top bun certainly that's moving in a direction of better choices but I'd like to see you just not have any bread at all and just eat what I do is when I order a hamburger I go ahead and just order it kind of naked like we have naked hamburgers or naked tacos I just kick off the carb and just have the meat and the veggies. Someone's saying here I've done James's challenge many times awesome great job. Eating late meals is that good for diet people? Eating late meals probably not cause you're saying last meal by 6.30 I think you said is that right? Eating late is not good for anybody. Guys your liver detox is between 2 and 4 a.m. If you eat up until bedtime and then go to sleep your body does a whole bunch of stuff at night while you're sleeping you think you're just sleeping and your body is actually rejuvenating cleaning itself up but if you eat late it has to digest the food instead of cleaning his body up like that is not good. Digestion is very very difficult for the body it takes two thirds of your energy to digest food and it robs from other sources like your brain in order to digest food. So we don't wanna eat into the evening this is not good for sleeping conditions I know personally I don't eat after two o'clock I don't I just I can't sleep on a full stomach so it is not good we want those insulin levels to come down remain low throughout the night so that your body can do what it does at night and not have to digest all that crap food or any food. Kristi when do you exercise? How do you exercise? How much do you exercise? Well certainly exercise is not a way to address a weight problem there's absolutely impossible for you to out exercise a bad diet. There's no way I mean we got a lot of fat athletes I was a fat athlete I know this firsthand a lot of you athletes out there that have a weight problem you're like well I do crossfit six times a week well then why are you still overweight? If it worked you wouldn't be overweight so just understand that now I am an exercise physiologist and I've been a professional athlete and I'll always be an athlete I love exercise for the million other reasons I exercise first thing in the morning at 5 a.m. I'm an early morning riser this morning I was up at 4.58 I was at the gym working out by 5.20 and I'm knocking it out first thing in the morning before anything I love being up early I love early morning workouts. Yeah I found that early morning workouts were great for me recently since I've moved back to Australia kind of like COVID-19 quarantine forced into that ordinarily I might be in the US but because I'm now in a different time zone in Australia my early mornings means I'm on phone calls or interviews like this to America so what has happened is that my workouts have been pushed later on in the day and what has often or not although not always happened is that sometimes I just skip a workout because life gets in the way I'm like oh now I don't feel like it so that's something that I get to work on and then I choose to work on which is getting even more self-disciplined I guess is the phrase I would use to get that workout happening first thing in the morning have you found a lot of your clients as well when they move from like an afternoon workout to a morning workout they're more regular with their workouts have you found people at this for whatever reason they can't do it in the morning have to do it in the afternoon we don't deal with exercise at all on Code Red that is we do have an exercise program that people can do but really we don't even talk about it on Code Red we just have thousands of people that are just trying to get out of the drive-thru and into the kitchen it's just not something that we deal with back when I was a trainer and I trained celebrities and that's all I did then I talked about that kind of stuff but on Code Red it's just not something that people need to worry too much about then I just don't ever deal with it for Code Red Rebels and what's the exercise routine that you do when you do it at 5.20 in the morning I lift weights and I do a bit of cardio it's pretty standard weightlifting I like CrossFit I like to do multi-joint movements compound movements get in, get out I like to do them quick I like to do them fast I like to do them heavy and I like to just get in and just make it count hit it hard for a half an hour hit it hard and then go home I don't spend too much time I also have a dog that I walk twice a day I get out all day long I'm out moving I don't sit for very much but I like to definitely hit the weights you got to keep that weight on I got to keep that muscle on especially as you get older Yeah, so it sounds like you're more of a high intensity kind of get in 30 minutes get out rather than a longer slower kind of building muscle or doing it slower over the course of an hour or so Yeah, I just had my body fat tested a couple of months ago when I was at a spa and I have 130 pounds of muscle on me so I'm carrying a ton of muscle for a girl especially I'm in the top 2% of all women in the United States and so I don't need to build anymore I certainly just need to keep my body fat down so get in, get out make it happen If you're hungry between 6 and 8 p.m. is there a snack or food do you recommend? So what we say Facebook user on Code Red is ain't nobody gonna die from skipping a meal if you are hungry between 6 and 8 p.m. then you need to go to bed and you just need to suck it up you're gonna be fine remember hunger equals younger everybody is... the magic happens in between meals Code Red Rebels believe in 2 meals a day not 3 meals and 2 snacks there's no snacking on Code Red it beats up your body and it triggers insulin and we don't want to do that more than what we have to so if you need a snack between 6 and 8 p.m. you need to go to bed the kitchen is closed stay out of the kitchen do not eat anything drink a glass of water if you have to Christy tell us about your couch to gym program I know a lot of people have been inactive at home since COVID-19 quarantine etc tell us a little bit about that the couch to the gym was designed exactly for that a lot of people are target niche they've never worked out or maybe it's been 20 years since you've worked out and so I created a program that's 12 weeks and I work out with you every single day and it takes you from absolute zero all the way to being ready to join anything and it's body weight only is done with no equipment in your living room or in your basement or wherever you want to be you don't need any kind of equipment or space or anything and you click the video and I go through the workout with you the first workout starts off I mean I kind of did it with my mom in mind because my mom is very inactive and doesn't do any exercise and so it's very safe it starts off with absolute zero and people just they go to a gym and they try to do things that they have no business doing they don't know what they're doing they get hurt, they do too much they go too hard well the couch to the gym I trust me more than I trust anybody else and so I guide people through and progressively each week gets harder and harder and harder by the time you get to week 12 you're busting your butt and then you can walk into orange steering or CrossFit or a gym or body pump with confidence knowing I have good balance I have good stamina I have good endurance I'm ready to go so it's getting people from zero all the way to whatever they want to do ready to go I love it, Christy, Nicole thank you so much for your time and expertise today is there one overarching final kind of like motivating speech you want to give to the user here who wants to do something about their way he wants to feel better, sleep better live better you know let me just leave you with this you need to remember that no matter how far gone you are there is hope the diet industry wants you to believe that you need this pill you need this powder you need this potion you don't you have everything you need all inside you already you've got to put safeguards in place you need to have a community that's going to come come around you and hold you accountable but you can absolutely do this you're not so far gone you're not like well I'm on loads of medication you should see the people that have come through my program that have saved their own lives with hundreds of pounds off you can absolutely do this you're not so far gone you've lost case so stop acting like oh I mean it feels like and I've been there before I know I've been overweight it feels like there's just that you're too far gone that you can't come back from this but you absolutely can you've got to clean out that cupboard you've got to put in some boundaries you can do this I can help you or you can do it on your own but you absolutely can do this and you must you must do this Christy Nicholl thank you so much for your time and expertise thank you so much for being a big supporter of these glasses we love you at Swan Week thank you so much and I think I speak for everyone watching you have a really infectious energy about you I love that thank you I love it I love what I do Christy Code Red Nicholl thank you so much for your time thank you for asking questions to Connie Bianca our Facebook user and all the other people who ask questions and we will catch you on the next one