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Speaker 1: Hi everybody, Iím back with my good friend Yuri today and we got some fun
stuff to talk about. Hi, Yuri, how are you? Yuri: Iím doing well. How are you?
Speaker 1: Very well, I want to introduce you real quick to our tribe here, for people
who donít know him because Yuri Elkaim is a registered holistic nutritionist, certified
kinesiologist and a high performance health coach of the highest order. He was a professional
soccer player and street conditioned and nutrition guy up in Toronto for seven seasons. He has
been around. If anyone knows how rigorous this stuff is, how challenging it is to be
a professional athlete in this world, you would basically already be giving this guy
props because it is a lot of work. Itís a lot of work becoming a professional athlete
and he did it for a very long time. Now itís about 13 years, he has empowered over 86,000
people with his no nonsense holistic approach to greater health.
Iíve checked out his stuff; it is amazing. Weíll talk about it in a little bit. He basically
Ö he got sick. He had an auto immune condition himself and he recovered from it and it became
his mission at that point to basically to get these clear cut health strategies and
provide that clarity and peace of mind because this world is still filled with junk information
and stuff thatís just kind of flash-in-the-pan, and Yuri youíve been working at this stuff
for a long time, trying to educate people and help them understand what health really
is. What I really like about your story is, a, you had the athletic background.
You had the jock thing and then you fell from heaven and hit the ground pretty hard with
your disease, so youíve seen it from the abundance vitalistic model all the way down
to the sick model and you picked yourself up and found some sense in between. I would
love to get a little bit of history on that, just because itís so human. You know what
I mean? You are a real dude. Yuri: Yeah, I try to be a real dude. I tell
my clients, my followers, that Iím now one step ahead. I have learned a couple of more
things, and Iíd rather them know more than me because I know what that kind of knowledge
can do for your life. My goal is to just really empower people with awesome information and
strategies to live that. As you mentioned, most of my life was geared towards playing
soccer. From the age of two, I think that was when I started playing. Obviously I have
pictures and memories, and up to until 24 that whole time of my life was just soccer.
It was like single minded focus on playing soccer.
I was always very interested in being active. I was fit but I wasnít healthy and I didnít
realize that until I was about 25. My first introduction really to fitness outside of
playing soccer was when I was 15. I broke my leg playing soccer. In the recovery process
I was introduced to weight training and strength training and that led me down a path of falling
in love with just training and how the body works, and it led me to pursue studies in
kinesiology, which I did for four years at the University of Toronto, but even through
those studies, I was just blown away. I love how the body operates for me.
From a physical perspective, exercise and physiology all that kind of stuff really fascinates
me and being able to combine that with what I did as a pro athlete and understanding how
all that stuff works together was really cool, but as I said, I was fit but I wasnít healthy.
I was training several times a week and some cases twice a day, and I was just running
myself into the ground without even knowing it and I was always tired.
One of my big things my best friends would notice because I would fall asleep in class.
I would come home from school. I would just lay in my bed and pass out for two hours.
I would sleep probably 10-14 hours a day between sleeping at night and my naps and Iím thinking
thatís a lot of time. Thatís like half my life.
Sleep is important but it is not that important. Iíd rather be awake and doing stuff, so having
this constant lethargy and fatigue and just feeling blah all the time really started to
impress upon me in my early 20s, and I had no idea why any of that stuff was happening.
Only when I went back to school, after I finished my soccer, I came back to school, studied
holistic nutrition, and within the first two days I had this huge aha! moment about why
I was suffering health-wise like terrible eczema, bad asthma, energy, autoimmune disorder.
All of it was the same thing. It was just symptoms of what was happening internally
due to my diet, which was heavily based around bread, cereals, pastas, cheese, milk for most
of my life. The funny thing is that I remember in university
learning from sports nutrition professors, who are dietitians, telling me that as an
athlete you should be eating lots of pasta, lots of bread, lots of those kind of carbs
to fuel your performance. Having done that and seeing that it does not work necessarily,
it was really eye opening to see an alternative way of health and obviously eating properly,
and the way I see it now is that we are all athletes, whether you are stay at home mom,
you are working nine to five in front of a computer and go to the gym a couple times
of the week or you are natural athlete, we all share the same body.
We donít obviously have the same body, but we all have the same anatomy, physiology,
and the way I see it is like you can do things to improve that or you can do things to take
away from that and I see performance and health as the same thing now. If you are a high performance
athlete you have to be healthy. There is no getting away from doing things with your diet
and nutrition or lifestyle that youíre going to make up for by exercise. Itís just not
going to happen. Speaker 1: It is funny. I see this a lot in
the medical setting is you have your regular patients then you have your athletes, right?
The athletes get this kind of super medicine. They get this other class. Itís almost like
there is a VIP line for the athletes, right? Then the regular people come in and then they
are given they Lipitor and their Lunesta and their things and itís like ëall right, get
out of here. You are not going to do anything.í There is some sort of pre-supposition that
athletes are motivated enough and care enough about their health because theyíre like thorough
breed horses in a way. Someoneís betting on them and so their health is monetized in
some way, and so because they care the doctors are really on it and are taking care of them
in that way, and I think that if your average person looked at health care the same way
an athlete did, it would change the way medicine is rendered all around, and thatís why it
really resonates with the way you are doing your stuff is because we should all act as
if we are athletes. We should all want to scramble up the rock wall or run up the pyramids
and enjoy life to its fullest and why do we do we believe we canít.
Yuri: Yeah, I completely agree. I think now that I donít play soccer at that level anymore
itís been an interesting disassociation from how I used to lived my days to how I live
my days now, and itís very easy to get caught up in the sit behind a desk and do work mentality,
but then stepping away from and being like, ìhold on, do I Ö like how much time have
I actually spent sitting down today?î It is pretty ridiculous.
Why donít I do something that is going to challenge my body or maybe take a block of
time that forces you to be more productive behind the computer so you donít have to
spend as much time behind it so that you can go out? Yesterday I spent two hours kayaking
on the lake, which for me it was awesome because it is so hot here right now and thatís just
way more productive than sitting on the couch and trying to think about stuff for my business.
I get much better clarity and activity while Iím on the water for two hours. Yeah, I definitely
agree. If we thought of ourselves more as performance machines or somewhat of an athlete,
we would definitely making better choices because how we identify ourselves really dictates
the decisions we make. Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question. You
have the luxury of being able to say ëlook Iím going to think about this on the lake,í
which is really amazing and awesome and really an enviable position for a lot of people who
maybe say listening to this in their nine to five, where their bosses walking back there
saying, ìHey, what are you doingî and what have you.
How can someone who does have a nine to five and heís locked in, what kind of ritual do
you recommend for people who can go either before work or after work or get up and stretch,
how do you avoid collapsing, right? How do you avoid not being able to let this desk
positioning get the best of you? Yuri: The first thing is it needs to be prioritized,
right? We schedule meetings and things in our calendars, but we tend to think about
our workout as something that weíll get to if we have the time after work. After work
Ö I have worked with a lot clients obviously who have come to gym for instance and Iíve
trained with them after work, but I think we only have certain amount of energy and
willpower throughout the day and that gets beaten down over the course of the day through
thought processes, different demands, stress. At the end of the day sometimes itís a nice
release to get active but the level of motivation you need at the end of the day is that much
higher, even if you eat well than it is at the beginning of the day.
I really recommend and encourage people first of all to do something first thing in the
morning when your level of motivation is highest to eat well and to get active. Whether it
is just taking your dogs for a walk or going to the gym or whatever it is, do something
to get your body moving first thing because what that does it creates momentum that will
propel you throughout the rest of the day. If you start your day waking up late, grabbing
some crappy breakfast, youíve thrown in the towel. We have this psychological bias that
just says ëyou know what? I might as well just throw in the towel. Itís no big deal.
I had a crappy breakfast. Whatís the point? Iíll just let the day slide and I will start
again tomorrow.í But every day one day turns into two, turns
into a week, turns into a month, turns into your life, so you need to take a stand and
say ëstarting tomorrow I going to schedule this stuff into my calendar, and say Iím
going wake up at 7:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. or whatever time it is.í If you have kids get
up before the kids, even if itís half an hour to do some stretching. Do some walking.
Go for a workout, whatever you are going to enjoy. Because I donít like telling people
you have to go to the gym because I canít stand going to the gym myself, especially
in the summer. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing the most
is what you are going to stick to, and you want schedule that in when your level of motivation
is highest, ideally first thing in the morning. Then once you have that itís funny because
we think about, yeah, I go to the gym one hour per day, seven days a week; letís just
assume that we do that. Most people donít. I donít really recommend it anyway but letís
just say that was the case. That would be seven hours of activities a week.
Letís compare that to how much sitting we do. I think the average is about six or seven
hours of sitting a day. Itís pretty ridiculous, right? Letís move away from the mentality
of thinking, ìOkay I got to go to the gym for half an hour or for an hour,î to say,
ìWhat are the things I can do throughout the day just to get active, just move around.î
Get active in the morning. Take some time at lunch or take a break throughout the day
or just go out for a walk, run some stairs or walk some stairs, do some light stretching,
and think about your day as this continual, unfolding of activity where you insert your
work into that day obviously, right? You will find youíre much more productive, more focused,
more energetic as opposed to just sitting down from 9 to 12 and then from 1 till 5 and
just try to hammer it out. Starting a new a schedule, it needs to be planned and doing
stuff that you enjoy is whatís most important. Speaker 1: I think thatís really astute because
I got a calendar and Iíve got a bunch of events on it; itís like this is on my calendar
right here. You and I are talk is right now on my calendar, but Iíll actually do this
when a patient will come in and they will be like ëwell, I never have time to work
out.í I say let me see your phone. Iíll look at their calendar and be like, ìWell
why you donít have it in here?î If itís important to you, it should be on your calendar
because if it is not on your calendar it is not going to happen, right?
I think that is really an astute point that people out there could listen in on. The other
thing that I was thinking about when you were saying that was, man, if you are not doing
what Yuri is talking about and you are sitting just trying to prop yourself up and get through
your day, what is the number one go-to for people in our society right now to make it
through the day, just get through that energy gap is reaching for a cup of Jo, right? We
have this epidemic of people that are just drinking coffee, taking stimulants to get
through their day because whatís happening is we are getting more stagnant from not moving
around that the body systems start to slow down, so what happens? We get fatter. We put
on the weight. Our brains starts to slow down. We need the stimulants to wake up and for
a guy who had autoimmune burn out issues think about what kind of energy goes into draining
the adrenals in such a capacity. Either you could do it by running around for a year,
seven seasons of soccer, right? Arguably a lot more than that just running and running
until you finally crash, or you do it by drinking enough coffee and sitting around and not exercising
until your adrenals go either way, but it is not sustainable model guys, right?
I think that your unique history illustrates that and so one of the things Iíve always
wanted to do is set up some sort of move away from coffee initiative, which maybe you can
help me with here. I know that you do a lot of coaching. You
have this whole academy. Itís something that I was really impressed with because a lot
of people would do flash-in-the-pan stuff and be like oh yeah well I have this product
that does this. I looked at your academy your school with all the stuff that youíre teaching
people and it is pretty thorough, and I was very impressed because this is the stuff that
no one learns in school and they need to. Tell me a little bit about what inspired you
to do that? Yuri: The big inspiration really comes from
what I mentioned earlier when I went back to school and studied holistic nutrition.
I had the biggest ëahaí moments of my life from a health perspective. I was an athlete.
I went to school and studied at one of the top 20 universities in the world in kinesiology
and health sciences, and I was still clueless about nutrition, and Iím thinking if I didnít
know this stuff thereís got to be billions of people who donít either. When I went through
holistic nutrition that was a very, very important part of my life and I started to think about
over the next couple of years if I didnít know this a lot of people donít either.
Is there a way that I can share this type of empowerment with more people, and it really
didnít materialize until like two and half years ago when I started getting the same
questions over and over again. Itís ëYuri, fat is bad. How much protein do I need? If
Iím working out what should I have for a work out?í It was continually. I could copy
and paste the same question a thousand times, so I asked myself well from again a flash-in-the-pan
perspective I can come up with a little gimmick to say here do this, but I much rather teach
people how to fish and I understand that by doing so I donít necessarily appeal to masses
because not everyone wants to learn. I said you know what? Screw it. I want to
really work with people and empower people who want to know this stuff, and so we developed
Super Nutrition Academy to become like the everyday persons nutrition school so that
the everyday person, not necessarily the health professional who wants to get on going credits
for nutrition and stuff, but for the everyday individual who wants to know how the body
works, the basics and the fundamentals of how their body operates.
Because as you mentioned, we donít learn this stuff in school. We go through biology.
We go through chemistry. We go through physics. If weíre lucky in university we have a course
on anatomy or physiology, but Iíd say for 95% of the population they have no idea how
their digestive system works, for instance. These are important things to know and because
when you understand how your body operates and you understand how food impacts how that
and how they work together it really empowers you to make better decisions. The thing with
nutrition is that itís a very, very complicated universe. We know a lot about nutrition but
one thing I realized is the more that Iíve learned the more I realize I donít know a
lot about it. I tend to know a lot about nutrition and itës
just one of those things that weíre going see unfold and unfold down the road. Weíre
going to maybe look back on today and say ëwow, we were we actually doing that kind
of stuff and eating those kinds of thingsí because weíre starting to learn about the
intricacies of individualized medicine or individualized nutritional protocols, which
are if you and I both have the same diet weíll respond very differently to it. Itís very
tough to say eat this food all the time no matter what because weíre all individual.
We respond differently to things. With the academy what weíve done is compile
48 of the most important kind of topics within nutrition and health. Weíve divided them
into 12 modules so each module has four lessons and each module specifically get around kind
of overriding theme. Module one is all about carbohydrates and managing nutrition, module
two is about protein, module three fat and so on.
Then we get into the inner workings of the body. We talk with digestive health, immune
system stuff, endocrine functions, adrenal health thyroids, all that stuff. Then we started
moving it to mastery, where we talk about fasting, longevity, super foods, super nutrients
and we really give people again with one lesson a week, so itís one hour a week of learning.
Weíre giving them a level of nutrition mastery that is really almost impossible to acquire
otherwise. Because the only other options are to continue searching the web and continue
hitting your head against the wall with frustration because this person says this and the next
person says something completely different and theyíre both backed by science.
With the academy Iíve taken my 13 plus years of experience and I spent an additional 1,000
hours doing the scientific research to actually, if weíre going say something it needs to
be validated by not one scientific study but by a majority of them, so what people are
learning through the lessons is stuff that is not only pragmatic but itís also very
validated and objective through science. Again thereís nothing like. The only option
would be to go back to school and study nutrition, which will cost thousands of dollars and hundreds
of hours of your time, which is not feasible for the everyday person, so, yeah.
Speaker 1: Not everyone needs it, right? You donít need a nutrition degree to want to
get healthy. I actually see a lot of people getting into the health and wellness space
just because their obvious personal path to health and all that. A lot of people who say
leave their corporate jobs because they decide they want to be a yoga teacher, and then they
tried that for a couple of years and realized that thereís really itís hard to do and
all that, so they end up taking their yoga knowledge back to their kind of corporate
world and bringing their new wisdom with them. Thatís what really what this is about you
guys. If youíre in a career that you enjoy but youíre just not healthy you donít need
to go become a nutritionist to circumvent all that stuff. You just got to know the basics.
You got to know how to eat, you got to know how to shop, you got to know the basics about
food, and youíre right. Thereís lots of a things. My ancestors grew up eating very
different things than say a German personís ancestors. Thereíre reasons why my body will
react to certain things just because of history alone, the types of food and inputs alone,
and so this kind of one size fits all mentality on nutrition is really archaic. I think itís
important that youíre illustrating that and teaching that to people.
Yuri: This is something weíre looking to blow up big time, like get this stuff into
the school system and this is something that Iím going to push for the rest of my life
because I spent a lot of time developing it, and the curriculum is incredible. The content
is when people go through the lessons theyíre blown away by how thorough it is but not thorough
in the sense like you need a PhD to understand it, thorough in a sense that okay well if
you go to all these websites online itís skimming the surface, superficial answers.
We go deep. We go into the fundamentals to give people an understanding. We use a lot
of visuals, diagrams, pictures to give a very clear understanding of whatís happening internally
because it is a very complicated and confusing subject, nutrition in general. I believe we
still need to understand how it works. Itís very, very important.
Speaker 1: Your average person living a full time life wife, kids whatever saying okay
this sounds pretty cool. How long would it take them to go through the curriculum and
know what they need to know on average? Yuri: We have two options. What we initially
did was one of our goals was to reduce the amount of information coming at people because
weíre all overwhelmed with too much information. Initially what we did is we said okay when
you come to the academy youíre going to have access to one module per month.
You get the four lessons, one per week, and then and then youíre ready for module two
and so forth and so on. At that rate it will take you a year to go through the 12 modules,
and then we realized, and even for myself Iím the type of person who would rather consume
all the information at once or in a very short period of time and then start applying it.
What weíve done now is we give people the option where they can do the month by month
or they can have access to everything upfront and just go at it at whatever pace is suitable
for them. It really depends on the individual. I still
recommend either way that they really chunk it down and at least devote one hour every
couple of days or at least once a week to sitting down going over one lesson, and we
have little assignments and cool little homework things that are fun that they can do with
family that really ingrain the stuff that theyíre learning.
The stuff that theyíre learning is very practical. Itís stuff that they can take to the grocery
store and then apply it. They can if it better they can go the doctorís office and sit down
and talk about cholesterol, blood sugar, cancer. These are very, very important topics that
most people have no idea about, with respect for instance what to look for when youíre
doing a blood panel. What do the numbers mean, right? Being able to have a conversation with
your doctor in an intelligent fashion so that youíre not thrown on a medication that you
donít need necessarily so all these things to empower people but again one hour a week
at the very minimum, and if youíre crazy type A like I am you can do more than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah right everyone has got an hour a week, especially when it comes to ñ
Think about it this way you guys. How many hours a week do you spend eating, right, at
least two hours a day if youíre doing it right. Letís say an hour a day if youíre
stuffing meals and just running. You have several hundred hours of eating that youíre
stacking up every single month, and if youíre not doing it right youíre digging yourself
into the wrong direction. Itís critical to understand what to eat how
to eat and how to eat and have a better understanding what goes into your body because every single
day weíre doing this thing called eating. Itís kind of like driving without a map and
wondering if youíre getting somewhere, so itís nice to some course correction along
the way so you know you want to get to a certain destination you get there. In the minute or
so that we have left here anything else anything kind of pearls that you have, like a nutritional
pearl, that you can just drop on the audience and say look hereís one thing that you can
do right now that will change something meaningful in your life?
Yuri: Yeah, two things because you reminded me of something I wanted to mention, but first
the most important thing I think anyone can do is add more greens into their diet. If
you add a green juice, a green smoothie, green vegetables and salads, whatever, that is the
most important thing that will take your health to the next level. Thatís the number one
thing I recommend for anyone to do. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that the
reason we need to understand this stuff is that Iím training to become a recreational
pilot, and one of the things we have to do as a pilot is understand is a check list before
we actually are able to fly off. Every part of that check list needs to be checked. If
this doesnít work why is that important? If the mag needles donít respond properly
what does that mean? Because if you donít understand that and
for some reason you just say okay itís no big deal Iím just going to take off anyways
and then in the air your engine fails because you werenít aware that the mag needles or
the spark plugs to your engine for instance thatís a huge problem. I relate that back
to our health where if you donít understand whatís happening with your internal health
checklist then itís a disaster waiting to happen. If youíre eating something and youíre
not aware of what that food can do to you whether it be good or bad, itís only a matter
of time before that can become a very, very big problem.
I like to use these analogies from different areas of life and flying is just a super analogy
for been very methodical in the way that we think about things and looking a little bit
deeper inside to understand how we can better our health.
Speaker 1: I love it yeah and if you donít in flying you pay the ultimate price because
your plane goes down. In life we wash up on the beaches of broken medical system with
diabetes or heart disease or something because you didnít read your gauges, and now all
of a sudden youíre sick and someone is telling you canít go on your vacation or do what
you want to do in life because your body is quitting on you.
Yuri: The problem is that the flying is pretty much instance. The health stuff is several
decades in some cases down the road. Sometimes it would be nicer if you can get that squared
away, so weíre like oh my god! I got to do something about this. Thatís why awareness
is very important. Speaker 1: Iím going to share links so people
can check out your academy. Yuri, youíre a great guy. Iíd love to have you back.
Yuri: Absolutely. Speaker 1: Talk about more of this stuff,
I think youíre a breath of fresh air in the space. Itís a real pleasure.
Yuri: Thank you. Speaker 1: Cheers, weíll see next time.
Yuri: See you guys. Speaker 1: Thanks.