The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Have you been questioning how to live your dreams and enjoy greater happiness, health, and wellbeing? I'm James Granstrom, male model turned international speaker and wellbeing teacher. Join me every other week for new lessons, tips, and conversations on personal growth, health, healing and spirituality with my inspiring guests or straight talk from myself. I'm here to guide you to become your best self and enrich your life, so you can tune and tap into your own natural state of wellbeing.
The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Eric Edmeades Explains the WildFit Way: How to Heal Naturally & Close the Evolution Gap
When Eric Edmeades discovered that changing his diet could eliminate chronic infections, clear his skin, and help him lose 35 pounds in just 30 days, it sparked a lifelong mission: to understand how food and evolution shape human health.
In this episode, Eric reveals the evolution gap—the mismatch between our ancient biology and modern lifestyles. Despite living in the most comfortable era in history, we face epidemics of disease, depression, and disconnection. Why? Because we’re living out of sync with our natural design.
Through decades of research—including time with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania—Eric created WildFit, a revolutionary approach that has transformed over 150,000 lives. Instead of another restrictive diet, WildFit restores our natural rhythms of eating and living.
We dive into:
- The three natural metabolic states—and why most people are stuck in just one
- The hidden power of seasonal eating and extended fasting
- Why some foods give us freedom while others keep us trapped in cravings
- How reconnecting with nature can help us reclaim vitality and joy
✨ Ready to uncover your own evolutionary mismatches? Take the free assessment at gapfinder.com
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📖 And stay tuned—Eric’s brand-new book, The WildFit Way, is coming soon.
The more we've removed ourselves from our natural habitats, the more we're actually suffering, existentially suffering on an individual basis. Wildfit is the exploration of that gap, what I call the evolution gap, the gap between our evolved bodies and our present realities, and WildFit seeks to close that gap from a nutrition perspective. So you can look at almost any area of suffering on earth and you'll see this gap. Wildfit addresses that gap as it relates to food and health.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Super Soul Model series. Today I've got a very special guest on the show, an old friend, eric Edmonds. And Eric is a serial entrepreneur, an author, an award-winning speaker and founder of the WildFit program, a revolutionary health program that's transforming the way we think about food habits and human potential. Eric's lived quite a remarkable life and we're going to go through it in this episode and he's survived hardship, from being homeless when he was a teen to building businesses in tech. Hollywood special effects and wellness are also part of his resume. He's logged over 10,000 hours as a professional speaker on those global stages and has shared platforms with people such as Tony Robbins and Richard Branson. He's even lived the hunter-gatherer life with tribes in Africa. So, without further ado, I would like to welcome this week's guest, my old friend, eric Edmeades.
Speaker 1:Hey, so glad to be here, so good to see you.
Speaker 2:Excellent, eric. We met probably about 20 years ago in London and we were on the personal development scene and, yeah, a lot's happened and you've done a lot since that time. So it's been great to watch you from afar. But let's go back to the origin of your story. I know the origin of your story when we met, but you know, a lot changed, a lot of shaped wild fit has emerged and been birthed and now has blossomed as well as well. So just tell us a bit about the Eric story so we can then go on to what you've been doing in all these different areas of health, wellness, tech speaking.
Speaker 1:You know, if we pick it up, around the time that we met, which is, as you say, about 20 years ago, I had started a company in the UK and we were selling wireless networking systems, logistics management, barcode scanning, rfid tagging tech stuff. And I sold that business while living in the UK and around about that time I had started experimenting with doing some speaking and I already had a deep fascination with nutritional anthropology and food and stuff. So most of my initial talks back at that stage were, you know, were about food and food psychology let's call it the pre-WildFit talks. And I don't know if you knew Daniel Priestley in the UK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did know Daniel Priestley, but just before he started doing what he's doing now, I think this was the you know the genesis of what he's doing.
Speaker 1:We both, in a sense, kind of started at the same time. I remember when he landed in the UK and he started his, his initial business there and that led to Key Person of Influence as well. Well, one day I got a call from him asking if I would come and speak. And I wasn't really a speaker at that stage, but you know I was. I was starting to, I'd been to Toastmasters and I'd done some courses and and I see he said, would you come and speak? And I was like, yeah, I'm down for it. And I got there and and he said so you know, can you give me some idea of what you're going to cover so I can give you a good introduction? And I'm like, yeah, we're going to talk about food and health. And and he's like what? And he goes no, no, this is an entrepreneur network Like these are business owners. They're here to talk about business. You sold your company. You're here to talk about that.
Speaker 1:I had no idea Because I was only speaking at little clubs and stuff about health. I assumed that's why I was invited. So suddenly, with about 15 minutes notice, I have to prepare a 90-minute presentation on business and entrepreneurship and frankly, in my opinion. I had sold my company so I didn't have to talk about it anymore. So I was like, what is this all about? But I did that talk and it was life-changing for me. I enjoyed it so much and I saw some things. And the one thing in particular I saw was that, as these young, hungry entrepreneurs and when I say young I don't mean in age, I mean in that as these young, you know, hungry entrepreneurs, and when I say young I don't mean in age, I mean in their entrepreneurial journey, because they were of all ages. As they asked me questions and I was able to answer those questions through the lens of my experience, I watched their stress dissolve, like they had a. I was giving them a roadmap, I was giving, and I love that feeling.
Speaker 1:And funny thing happened is that a guy walked up to me and he goes Eric, that talk was fantastic and I mean I was, so I barely remembered the thing, it was just all adrenaline. And he goes could you do that same talk, like next week in Singapore? And I'm like I don't even remember what talk I gave, like I really like. But of course I go sure, and I zoom off to Singapore and I do that talk and then a guy comes up to me, a guy named Kevin comes up to me at that talk and he goes Eric, that talk was amazing, could you do that same talk in Australia? And so a week later I'm in Australia, new, zealand, and then Vegas and LA the week after that and I became an international speaker by accident, and that, that, that kind of couple of weeks, led to, in a sense, everything I'm doing today.
Speaker 2:Okay, Isn't that amazing how life can guide you on a journey that you didn't even think that you were going to be a part of. Yeah, no kidding. And had you ever wanted to do speaking when we were sitting around the mastermind table? That was never something I heard from Eric's mouth. It was never something you'd mentioned. You were interested in, obviously, companies, but you'd never really gone about the speaking business.
Speaker 1:No, I was terrified of speaking. I was properly public speaking phobic. But there did come a point when I had recognized some things about health and food and weight loss and diabetes reversal and that kind of stuff through my research that I started feeling compelled to share those things and so the sense of responsibility to share those things started to outweigh my fear. That's the same point.
Speaker 2:you just mentioned that because it sort of ties in perhaps the audience don't know is your initial journey with food, because that saved you, didn't it? Yeah, and that also gives you more like leverage to say I want to share this because it's been important.
Speaker 1:If you've been in pain and taken yourself out of pain, then when you see other people in that same pain at least for me it activates that in me and makes me want to change it. And that's really what happened. In fact, my wife invented a word for this. You know, she, she invented a word, she, we were talking about something one day. And she says she goes well, I have scariosity about that. And I said what do you? What do you mean? Scariosity? And? And?
Speaker 1:Because she's Estonian and she speaks Russian and she speaks some Finnish and she's multilingual, sometimes she just like uses the logic of a language to make a word, but this is not a word. And I said to her Kirstie, as far as I can tell, that's not an actual word. I mean, I can't pretend to know all the English words, but if that was a word, I feel like I would know it. And she goes well, what do you think it means? And I said well, scariosity is probably like the juxtaposition between your fear and apprehension about something and your curiosity about doing it. She goes see, it's a perfectly good word, but the funny thing is it actually is a really good word. And what the truth is is that I did have curiosity about public speaking. That is to say that I had a lot of fear and apprehension, but I also had this curiosity and when my curiosity got stronger than my fear, I started. I started saying yes to opportunities and that was a big moment for me.
Speaker 2:That's quite similar with me in the podcast. You know, initially I was like so reluctant. I was like I'm not going to share my story, I'm not going to share this. You know why me? Why does the world need another podcast person? Why does the world need another executive coach to help lead us? I was like, well, why not? You have something to say that should be said and it would be better that you say it than die by not saying it. And I remember hearing so many things about people who've gone to the edge and going I wish I'd, I wish I'd and I thought I'm not going to be one of those persons. I'm going to go for it. And it sounds exactly like that scary, scary-osity. Yeah, it is exactly that. It's like I'm going to do it anyway because my curiosity is stronger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So could you just back a little bit, just briefly, and tell that story to the audience, about what happened to you when you were a kid and the food was so powerful for you, because then that turns into your mission then, when you've healed from, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that was really big.
Speaker 1:I, I, um, uh. I had a normal relationship with food, you know, I I didn't have what we would consider to be, say, an eating disorder or something like that. I was mildly overweight and but I was suffering with, you know, I had terrible cystic acne. I had chronic throat infections, so terrible that my tonsils were constantly bleeding. I couldn't breathe through my own sinuses, and this was just my life. And I came from a medical family, so you know my grandfather and some of my uncles, and so of course there was no end of opinions about what to do. And of course my parents sent me to go see doctors and they prescribed pills and inhalants and injections and even surgery that I luckily avoided and nothing helped, like nothing was helping.
Speaker 1:And I then a buddy of mine talked me into going to a Tony Robbins seminar this is 1991. And I went there because I was there to learn how to make more money. I mean, I was 21. That was my focus in life at the time. And I went to this program and I mean, you know Tony's magical, he does all kinds of incredible stuff and I learned fabulous things and things that have impacted my life beyond the health piece. But on the last day of the program he started talking about food and health and it really made me think. I started thinking about some of the things he shared. And I went home and I started doing some reading and I decided to do an experiment. And so for 30 days I just cleaned things up a bit, I cut out some reading, and and I I decided to do an experiment, and and and so for 30 days I I just cleaned things up a bit, I cut out some stuff and I added some stuff, and 30 days later I had lost 35 pounds.
Speaker 2:Wow that is what's that in kilograms?
Speaker 1:It's, it's, it's it's two stone, it's, it's, it's a serious yeah 14 kilograms or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a serious. Yeah, what is it? 14 kilograms or something yeah, and I also.
Speaker 1:My sinuses opened up for the first time in years, my acne went away, my throat infections, my digestive problems ended, like I became an entirely different human being. In fact, I went to the doctor's office because I was still scheduled to have this surgery. They were going to take my tonsils out, this throat surgery, and I got there and I kind of expected them to notice, you know, like I'd lost 35 pounds. I looked distinctly different. My mother, my mother, didn't recognize me when I met her at the airport, like she, she, she literally didn't see me. My face had changed so much in the process. So I kind of expected that when I went into the doctor's office they would see this, they would notice that my numbers had changed so much in the process. So I kind of expected that when I went into the doctor's office they would see this, they would notice that my numbers had changed, my weight had changed, my composition had changed. They didn't say a thing. All they did was try to confirm the surgery. And when I told them I didn't want the surgery anymore, they're like oh, but the pain will be back. Like you know, it's like it was. It was really.
Speaker 1:I found it really odd and, at one point, odd. And at one point I asked my doctor, um, yeah, how long he had been to medical school? And he told me it was like six years. And and I said, and in that six years, how much that time did you spend studying medicine? Or studying studying food? And I was absolutely shocked to hear him say none, yeah, like none and for.
Speaker 1:For, for a moment I thought maybe this is the one doctor who, you know, managed to ski, you know skate his way through medical school and avoid all the nutrition classes. And no, I now know that this is absolutely consistent the doctors, the only doctors, that study food as part of their medical training, are the doctors who choose those courses as an elective, which is like to me suggesting that there are pilots out there that could learn to become a pilot. But you know, landing is an elective. You don't have to study that part. I was blown away by that and that, right there, that couple of weeks, changed the course of my life forever, because at that point I realized if they're not going to study this, I'm going to study it. And so that's what started my initial dive into nutrition, which led to nutritional anthropology, evolutionary biology, and then, of course, food psychology, and all of that, of course, led to WildFit.
Speaker 2:Okay, so thank you for sharing. By the way, has the doctors changed anything about that food? Learning about food these days, like you know what, 30 odd years later? No, no.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, some have don't get me wrong. I mean, if you follow me on Twitter or X, I have a thing called Doctors. I Trust it's a list that you can go to and there's some doctors there and there's no question, there are some doctors who have, you know, recognized that preventative medicine is the answer Dr Mark Hyman, for example. You know in functional medicine.
Speaker 1:He wrote the forward for our book post-diabetic, and so there's no question, there are doctors that are that are that are becoming proactive about that. But at a medical school level, I I mean, I think it's unconscionable that you could get through medical school without studying nutrition. That's insane. I understand that Kennedy is looking at, or that Trump and Kennedy are, for you know I'm not making a political statement about whatever I'm just saying. My understanding is that they are looking at changing that in the American medical education system that doctors will have to study nutrition. Now that's a good step, but the problem is that even nutritional education in America has been hijacked by the food industry, which is, you know where you get the upside down food pyramid and the old four food groups and that kind of stuff. So step one is they're going to start teaching doctors nutrition. They're going to teach them terrible nutrition. Step two will probably take another five or six or 10 years before they actually start teaching them really truly solid nutrition, but at least we're on the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, optimism is what we require here. You know, this has definitely been part of my journey and before we go into understanding what WildFit really is because that's really basically your you know your baby on being able to show people how to create that healthy nutrition relationship you know in my own experience, like I started meditating and then was guided to the right food, I thought that was a really unusual way. I never heard it and never discovered it. I didn't even know what meditation was. But when I was guided, this is the right food for me, James, these are the types of ingredients you need. You need this amount of water every day. I was absolutely fascinated that somehow the biology and my intuition, my instinct, was guiding me to foods, and I've been blessed to be well for such a long time and I put it down to being in tune. So let's go into understanding what WildFit is, because I think it's something very similar at the basics of who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think before that I would say this that WildFit is a chapter in a larger conversation, and what I mean by that is that the larger conversation starts with a really interesting question, and that question is we are currently living in what have to be, from an individual human experience, the single best times ever to have been alive. We live with the greatest level of personal certainty that has ever existed. We live with the greatest level of food, food security that has ever happened. We live with shelter. We, we, we, we are living in the very best times to be alive.
Speaker 1:I don't care what cnn, fox or sky news says, we are living in the very best times to be alive. I'm not saying there aren't some problems there are still many more problems to fix but there's less poverty today than there's ever been. There's less violence against children. Less people die in natural disasters now than ever before. There's more parity between men and women in education than ever before.
Speaker 1:We are living in the very best times to ever have been alive, but there's a really stark contrast, and that is that we've never been less healthy. We've never been less happy. We have more depression, more anxiety, more suicide, more heart disease, more cancer, more diabetes than ever in history. So it's like, as technology and civilization has developed to make things easier and better for us, we are wilting under the ease of our current existences, and that's something that I think a lot about, and it falls in a category of something called evolutionary mismatch or you might say, nature deprivation syndrome. The more we've removed ourselves from our natural habitats, the more we're actually suffering, existentially suffering on an individual basis. Wildfit is the exploration of that gap, what I call the evolution gap, the gap between our evolved bodies and our present realities, and WildFit seeks to close that gap from a nutrition perspective. So you can look at almost any area of suffering on earth and you'll see this gap. Wildfit addresses that gap as it relates to food and health.
Speaker 2:And so you've created the program how old is WildFit now?
Speaker 1:I think. Officially, I guess it's about 11 or 12 years old. I started research back in the early 90s. I started doing my first talks on human diet and ancestral living in the mid-90s, but as an actual brand, as a company, as a formulated program, it's about 11 years old now.
Speaker 2:And how many people have you helped through this program?
Speaker 1:You know, I think about 150,000 people have gone through the core program. Is this the one on Mindvalley? It's on Mindvalley, it's also at getwildfitcom. You know people do it through both platforms. And then we've had several million people go through masterclasses and and free workshops and all that kind of stuff, and so you know it. It's been, I James.
Speaker 1:The funny thing is, I mean, the reason I didn't get involved in this earlier, despite my passion, was I just didn't see a business model. You know I'm at heart a business guy and I've been involved in a lot of interesting businesses and industries, but I just didn't see this as being a business model. And when I started it I started it very much as a hobby and the word of mouth just magnified it. And the next thing, you know it's like we had maybe 100 clients a year through my little hobby, coaching practice. Mostly I had other business interests and I was teaching business and that kind of stuff, but without any marketing. I didn't even have a website. Suddenly we went from 100 clients a year to 5,000 clients a year like that. And you know we now have clients in over 100 countries around the world. We have 500 coaches. The Canadian government summoned me to Ottawa to give me a medal in the Senate, like you know, for my hobby yeah.
Speaker 2:I love it. I mean that's properly being in tune with yourself and your mission. Yeah, very much. I love the way that your mission seemed to have happened by accident. Do you think that that would be exactly the same for everybody else?
Speaker 1:I think you know, I think a lot about like, say, stages of life. You know, as a young man in your 20s, it's really all about. You know sex and money. You know you're trying to figure out how to get both right, you know. But then there comes a point where deeper things start to matter more. If you're maturing obviously some people don't they stay trapped in that model.
Speaker 1:I was quite fortunate in the sense that I started my first business when I was 27 or so, and I did well enough that I was able to sell it and, and so by the time I turned my attention to my hobby, I didn't need to make money, and that's not a place that a lot of people will ever arrive at. And I'm very grateful that I arrived at that place, because what it meant was that I was in a position to devote a lot of time to this thing without needing to worry about making money on it, and I was able to look at the business model without worrying about the profitability of it, and that freedom allowed it to grow into what it needed to grow into, which, in an ironic twist, ended up becoming very profitable. So you know, no, I don't think it's a natural thing that that happened. I think I was very lucky. I think I the combination of doing the you know, of having the right level of passion and putting in the right work and also some fortune, some being lucky.
Speaker 2:Were you surrounded with people that could help you.
Speaker 1:Yes and no, I've never been.
Speaker 1:You know, the asking for help thing is something that I've really only recently become more comfortable with.
Speaker 1:You know, what I was very lucky with is, about 15 years ago I was invited to join a private mastermind, and it was a mastermind that was created by jack canfield, you know of chicken soup for the soul and success principles and so on and um, and it's a it's a members only, invite only mastermind, so you can't like buy in you, you, you, you know someone's going to invite a member has to accommodate you, yeah, and and so I got nominated and I joined and immediately I found myself amongst, you know, some of the ogs of the entire personal development industry stewart emery, who was the ceo of s training that, of course, became landmark, and and, um, uh, you know, uh, john gray, who wrote the the mars venus books, and, of course, jack and marianne williamson, and just some phenomenal people.
Speaker 1:And so as I started building, I, even when I wasn't asking directly for help, I was through osmosis around people that had created phenomenal influence and had launched incredible programs and books and so on. So that really, I think that was an incredible stroke of luck that I was invited into that family and they're still family for me. I've been a member now for something like 15 years. We just came from our last meeting with them in in in, in near Montreal, and and I, I, uh, I'm really grateful for that. So, yeah, definitely I had that. That. That was a big advantage to me.
Speaker 2:So I always believe that if you've got the right mission, you've got the right passion, I think all of those things will come together. I'm thinking of the people like listening to your story, to think, you know, if you have got the passion, I think sometimes you know, life will put you in the right position, around the right people. It sure seems like that's exactly what happened to you.
Speaker 1:I heard something really cute the other day and it was like if you look around, you'll see a bunch of people that have guardian angels, but most of their guardian angels are, like, unemployed. And this is the idea is that your guardian angels only really jump in and help you if you're doing something extraordinary, if you're taking risks. And if you're not taking risks, then your guardian angels are just sitting around watchingflix with you and and they don't need to step up. So you're not even really aware. And this is a silly metaphor, but I'm reminded.
Speaker 1:You know, I I spent a lot of time around alcoholics anonymous, because I had relatives in the program and such, and they have an expression in a that god seems to look after dogs, children and alcoholics, and and and I realize it's because god well you know children, dogs and alcoholics take risks all the time, so somebody's got to be looking out for them, yeah, and so I think there is something in this that if you want the universe to have your back, you have to be doing something interesting enough for the universe to need to have your back yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, gabriel bernstein wrote that book, but at the same time, mark dooley, who I've been a big fan of for like 20 odd years, you know, he's like saying you know, you've got to just walk, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving and be messy in your movement and then something will come along if you have the passion, and I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:I accidentally discovered podcasting and speaking to amazing people around the world who are doing incredible things, just as a result of thinking I've got something to say, I've got a story to share. And when you try and understand that you've got a story to share, that also there are other people who've got amazing stories to share. That's when the magic happens. So it's really all about collaboration in one way or another. It's like how can we help each other? And I believe the universe always comes from the stance of a win-win, and I feel like the wild fit program and all the other things that you've been doing have been a way to create win-wins of health and vitality that can spin off and create those wonderful ripples. If we go back to the wild fit, you talked about that evolution gap and you spent a lot of time, uh, with a tribe in africa.
Speaker 1:I believe it's east africa but correct me if I'm africa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and they're called the hadza tribe. Tell me what you learned about them and how that relates and how you take that into your modern day life. You know you're a businessman. You know you've got businessman. You know you've got lots of programs. You've got your hands in a serial different entrepreneurial businesses. But how are you taking what you've learned from this really nomadic tribe and taking it?
Speaker 1:today. One of the one of the best ways to demonstrate that comes from, uh, an experience I had with them where I went to go visit them for the first time over 15 years ago and now you can kind of book a tour and go and see them. It's become a bit Disney-fied, but it was very different 15 years ago. And on one of my subsequent trips maybe the third trip my guide, he said why are you back here again? Like when scientists come, they come and they do their study and we never see them again. Like you keep coming back. Why do you do that? And I explained to him this idea of evolutionary mismatch. I explained to him this thing that I call the evolution gap and that is that our biology and our instincts evolve for that environment. And now we're out of that environment and I think there's things that we can learn. And he said well, like what specifically? And I said well, take a look at the way they eat. You know we eat in a very different way. We're suffering with a bunch of diseases. They're not, so maybe we could learn.
Speaker 1:Years later, years later, gasper, my guide, he starts telling me about this school that he's built, and I don't like this part of the story because the truth is, I didn't want to hear about the school that he built, because I've climbed Kilimanjaro seven times and every porter and every guide has a school or an orphanage or a library or something that they claim to be involved with, and they're just. You know, they're just trying to scam for tips and I'd rather just give them their tips. I don't need to play the game. And so he's like oh, you got to, I got this school. And I'm like I've already visited schools, I've literally built schools with my own hands in Tanzania Like I don't want him to tarnish our friendship with this. Manipulation is kind of how I'm feeling, right? Anyway, one day I'm looking at our travel itinerary in the country and I noticed there's a big gap between our departure and our arrival. And I know the drive time is not that long. And I go Gasper, what's going on here? And he goes oh, my Eric, you're right, that's quite a big gap. He goes, you know what? I know somewhere that we can stop for lunch, and I said where? And he goes my school. So I'm like oh, I see why he left the gap right. So I'm like fine, gasper, we're gonna go and see your. So we drive out and his school is on the foothills of Mount Meru and he's telling us the story. His grandfather left him this beautiful piece of land and he decided to build a school and he built it himself. Like he went and raised the money he took. We got there and I was blown away.
Speaker 1:Now I have visited government schools I've missed. I visited private schools. I visited local Masai schools and wherever I go, here's what I see Kids that don't look particularly healthy. They're grateful to have the opportunity in school, but many of them are being sent to the school because their parents can't afford to feed them. So they're being sent to the school because there's food there. Like it's a tough environment.
Speaker 1:But at Gaspar School the kids looked amazing. They looked healthy and active. There was none of that yellowness in the eyes, didn't have these little distended bell. They were healthy. And so I went to gasper and I go gasper, your kids look amazing. What's the why? And he goes. You don't remember and I'm like, what am I supposed to remember?
Speaker 1:And he goes the conversation we had by the fire, gasper.
Speaker 1:We've had many conversations by the fire over years.
Speaker 1:Which conversation he goes.
Speaker 1:And he starts telling me about the time when he asked me why I keep coming back and that I had told him that there are things we could learn from the hods of people, that if we were to apply those lessons to our modern life, we'd create modern, and he said so. When I heard you say that, I decided that at my school I would mimic as closely as possible their diet, because otherwise they're just eating cornmeal and wheat meal like every other school, which is why they don't look so good. So his kids get meat two or three days a week, they get vegetables, they get fruit. It changed everything. Now those kids are healthy and it will change the entire direction of their lives that they get to grow up like that. And my general message is this there are hundreds more examples like that where we are dealing with this mismatch, where we produce adrenaline for the wrong events. We are, our emotions are mismatched with our realities, and if we can learn to close those gaps with food and other things, we can improve our quality of life.
Speaker 2:So how many kids were at that school?
Speaker 1:About how many kids? About 100, I think, about a hundred or so. Wow, yeah, and we now, like we've we've been, we've been sponsoring, I think, 20 of them for the last, maybe close to maybe as much as 10 years, putting them through, you know. But yeah, it costs about 300. It costs about a dollar a day to educate, clothe and feed a child and, and so I think we sponsor about 20 of them there, for we have, for a number of years, I like your quote.
Speaker 2:You say something like food is your door to freedom. What do you mean by that? You know, because I like this.
Speaker 1:It's a dichotomy, and that is that food is either a doorway to freedom or it's a trap, and unfortunately, for most people in the developed world these days, it's a trap, and unfortunately, for most people in the developed world these days, it's a trap. There are foods that we eat that are empty of nutrition and full of addictive substances, stimulating substances and what have you, and that are basically designed to trigger appetite, and so there are certain foods that take your freedom away. If you eat this, you will be hungry. If you eat this, you will want more. Once you pop, you can't stop right. It's like by design, and so those foods are specifically designed to take your freedom away.
Speaker 1:But when you eat foods that are evolutionary matched you know that are part of our historical history you are eating foods that buy you freedom, and a really great example of this is the current GLP-1 or GLP-CRAZE this whole ozempic govi and what have you? Those miracle weight loss drugs, nevermind the side effects like blindness and stuff that they can create. Those miracle weight loss drugs are mimicking the natural freedom that certain foods create for you when you eat them. As an example, if you're not a vegetarian and you go out and you have a ribeye steak, you can only eat so much, because, as you eat it, your body produces GLP-1 peptides and tells you that you're satiated and now you're free. On the other hand, if you eat the garlic bread and the pasta, you definitely need to have the tiramisu for dessert, because those foods are activating your appetite, and so the point is, some foods are designed to rob you of freedom, and other foods can give it back to you.
Speaker 2:There's a. I used to say this to my friends like years ago once you have an apple, you don't really need another one. One's enough, right? You don't crave another apple after you've had a really good, juicy, delicious, wholesome apple. And I was like, why is that I've?
Speaker 1:I've just pushed back a little yeah, push back a little and I'll say this that, um, uh, an apple which you know is a fine thing to eat, um, is is heavy in carbohydrates. And so what'll happen when you eat an apple is that you might not immediately want to eat one at that moment, because apples now are very big. Remember that apples used to be about that big so you would need to eat like six or seven or eight of them, but now they're quite big, so they do. They can fill a good chunk of your stomach. But as you eat that apple, your blood sugar begins to come up a little and your pancreas starts producing insulin. So to deal with the blood sugar. And then, once the blood sugar has been brought down, you're left with a little bit of an insulin surplus, which triggers a low blood sugar alarm, which makes you hungry. And so somebody who eats an apple will almost certainly want to eat something. Maybe it's not another apple, but they'll almost certainly feel snacky a little bit later. It will trigger this.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not because we're flawed. It's because apples are an autumn food. They are present before the winter comes, and so when you eat carbohydrates, your body is getting this message. Listen, you better top up winter's coming man, and so apples are designed to actually make you hungry. So, yes, you can eat one and you don't immediately feel, wow, I need another apple, but half an hour later it's quite possible your body goes what else is there? What else is there? Because in the fall season you're actually supposed to eat like that, you're supposed to fat, fatten up, whereas somebody who goes out and has, you know, an omelet or a steak or something super high protein like that, that is automatically satiating. And so what happens when they do that is that they produce glp1 internal peptides and they don't have any blood sugar and they literally are done that you couldn't make them eat again I really like this.
Speaker 2:I've got a question um if, question, if everything's seasonal but you live in the tropics, how about what happens then? Well, I don't live in the tropics, but you know I'm in a very hot country and they pretty much grow most things here. So you've lived in the Dominican Republic, you've been in the tropics, you've been in Turks andics, you've been in Turks and Caicos. That's a tropical area. What food would be right for the body then?
Speaker 1:So I want you to imagine that we take a bear from the Cascade Mountains who lives with normal seasonal changes right In the the fall the salmon are running and the berries are everywhere and it eats all those things and it fattens up and then it hibernates for the winter and then over the winter it burns all its fat stores as it's hibernating and then the spring comes along and it starts the cycle again. What should that bear do if we move that bear to the tropics?
Speaker 2:yeah, but the question is are you the?
Speaker 1:bear. You are, yeah, but the question is are you the bear? You are Okay, and that's my point. You are that bear. You are not where you live. You are where your genetic heritage comes from, and I don't mean your genetic heritage of the last 10,000 years. Look, you're Northern European. I don't need Sherlock Holmes to figure out that your most recent genetic contributions are Northern European. But 99% of your DNA evolved in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Speaker 1:Those are the seasons that your metabolism evolved for, and so it doesn't matter if you go, move to Yellowknife and you're dealing with Canadian winter or you move to the tropics. That is your environment. But your biology requires as closely as possible that you match the way you evolved. So if you live in the tropics and and there's like fruit is available year-round, great that's that. You know, fabulous. Except that's not good for you because it's not what you evolved for.
Speaker 1:You know, if we take that bear, and even if we don't move the bear to the tropics, but let's say somehow we take that bear and we trap it in the fall forest in the Cascade Mountains, then it's going to be stuck with fall foods and if it eats fall foods for like six years, it's going to get fat and it's going to develop like insulin sensitivity problem, maybe even diabetes, and nobody's ever given it seed oils or glyphosate. It's simply in the wrong season for too long. And so now, if we take that bear and we put it in a zoo, one of the things we have to learn to do is make sure that it has a seasonal rotation to its eating patterns. Well, we are now in the zoo. Your DNA largely evolved for the seasonal fluctuations of sub-Saharan Africa and then your relatives left there and you picked up some tiny little mutations, small things, your skin color changed and that kind of stuff, but ultimately you still have the same metabolism as somebody from from sub-Saharan Africa.
Speaker 2:Okay, so basically eating seasonal is the way forward, and organic.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, but not seasonal to where you're living seasonal to your DNA, basically let's just say this there are three metabolic modes fat burning, sugar burning and protein burning. And if you were living in a natural life, if you were living with the Hadzabe people, you would naturally go through all three of those metabolic states at various times in the year and at various times in a given week you might be in pure fat burning mode and stumble upon a beehive and you would suddenly become a sugar burner until you finished eating that honey and then you would resume your fat burning cycle. So you would have all three of these. Now the average person living in Marbella or New York is stuck in one season. They burn only carbs, and when they burn only carbs, they create a number of challenges, including marching themselves toward Alzheimer's disease, potentially creating insulin sensitivity problems, potentially putting on weight, developing diabetes and so on. These are not diseases in my mind. They're repetitive stress disorders. They are I'm, out of balance with what my body's really looking for.
Speaker 2:Okay, so in order to stay in balance, what is Eric's tips from WildFit?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know. Tip number one, of course, is eat nutritionally appropriate foods. Eat the foods that human beings have been eating since the beginning of time. There's no mystery about the human diet, as much as the food industry would like to confuse you, or what have you? There is no mystery about that. So step number one is good nutrition, and step number two is mimicking to some degree what we call ancestral food rhythms, that is to say, to recognize that there were times when mother nature came along and said no more carbs for you. They're gone. They're not in season, that's not an available situation, you can't have any, and so you might not have liked that, but you didn't have to use willpower to go on a diet. Mother nature just came along and took them away.
Speaker 2:I heard that the Hadza people sometimes have to fast because they don't have access to food and then once they. Is that the case?
Speaker 1:Well, think of the grammar you said. Sometimes they have to fast. That makes it sound like it's a decision that they're making. No, sometimes mother nature imposes fasting on them. Yeah, it's just it. Just you know, that's just that's. That's living in nature, when you don't have Uber eats and whole foods.
Speaker 2:But we don't have that problem. Yet Fasting is still healthy for the body.
Speaker 1:That's the difference. Is that because we evolved with mother nature controlling our dietary cycles like that, those are optimal conditions for us. But now we're living in captivity and we have steady food supply, so we're not running those cyclical routines anymore, we're not living with that balance anymore and we're suffering the consequences. So now what we have to do is bring our consciousness to that conversation and we have to say you know what, if I was living in nature, there would be food deprivation at times. And now I need to go into a fast.
Speaker 2:So how often do you fast, given the WildFit program, and if that's something that you advocate, and also how long for Okay and and also how long for All?
Speaker 1:right. So I, I'm not a big fan of the um, of the of, say, the traditional intermittent fasting or what they call mimicking fasting thing. I, I, I agree with some of the core principles. For example, a hunter, gatherer, starts the day without breakfast because, guess what, there's no food. They have to go get it. And they end the day without eating because, guess what, once the sun goes down, it's too dangerous to go looking for food. So in a sense, that intermittent fasting window mimics a, let's say, ancestral food rhythm. But when we're talking about proper fasting, the real magic happens after 48 hours. The real magic kicks in after 48 hours.
Speaker 1:In the first instance, mother Nature did not make food available. You weren't a successful hunter, you weren't a successful hunter, you weren't a successful gatherer and you didn't find any food that day. So you ran a calorie deficit At first. Your body goes okay, well, I'm going to have to get some energy from somewhere because I've got no sugar left and I've got no glycogen left. I've got. I'm going to have to burn some of my fat.
Speaker 1:But something happens around the 48th hour where the body goes. I don't want to burn all my fat. I don't know how long this is going to last and your body starts looking around for something else to burn and what it looks for is old, broken proteins and amino acids and collagen, and it looks for useless material and it burns that. This is called autophagy or protein autophagy. So your body is now burning broken, old proteins and cleansing them out of you, and that that's a super important. Like I, I would say that that type of fasting is maybe the most important anti-cancer protocol anybody could follow okay, so it's after 48 hours as well that that begins.
Speaker 2:Right, that's right. That's right. So one is so, it's three. One is not useful, okay. So day two you're just getting through it, burning the last bits of maybe even the fat or kicking into the fat, and then that last section there from day three onwards yeah, is this just a-? That's when the magic happens. That's when the magic happens, right? That's when it starts to kick into the Okay, interesting.
Speaker 1:And so you asked how often I've gone through different versions of this. Many, many years ago In fact, not long after you and I originally met I had gotten into fasting at that point and I did. I made all the traditional fasting mistakes. I went to fasting centers where they were ideological about the way they did fasting. For example, they're like well, give up all meat and eat only fruit before you go into the fast and then break the fast with fruit Absolutely incorrect, like just not correct at all. And, as an example, if you would like to have a major candida explosion in your body, break your fast with fruit. That would be really useful.
Speaker 1:But there were some things like that that I went through like five and seven day fasts and tried those different methods. What I've now been working on, and for many years at this point, is mimicking fasting in a way much more similar, to, say, the way natural fasting happened for hunter-gatherers, and so what I will typically do is three days, and by three days I mean that I break the fast at mid-morning on the fourth day so that I get that full 24 hour cycle of cleansing out. But sometimes I'll go into the fourth, fifth or even into the sixth day. But I recommend to our, we recommend to our clients that you really shouldn't do that fourth, fifth, sixth day unless you're supervised. You shouldn't be driving cars and operating heavy machinery and that kind of stuff when you're, when you're going that long my favorite cycle for this I haven't been doing't been.
Speaker 2:Is it just water that's happening in the fast?
Speaker 1:just water, yeah, yeah, water, and maybe some like very pure uh um, uh, like herbal tea, but no lemon juice and all that kind of stuff, like just water, you know. And and then, from a cycle perspective, about two years ago, I experimented with doing this once a month. So I was going in WildFit. We talk about seasons, and so we have spring, which is a, let's say, protein based season, a keto season, and then we've got winter, which is the fast, and then we have autumn, which is a carb season, and so what I was doing is running a model where I would do three weeks in in, uh, three weeks in spring, and then I would do two or three days in fall and then I would go into a three day fast and then begin again with spring.
Speaker 1:And I did that for about a year and it was life changing for me, there's no question about it. It's it's tough because you're talking about three days of fasting every single month and that's socially difficult. Everybody wants to meet around food and all that kind of stuff. But my body changed, my mind changed, my mental focus changed and so on, and so I've done a version of that now where, like last year, I probably did about eight months, like there were eight months that I did a fast like that, and the year before it was basically almost the full year. But now, as you and I are talking, I'm beginning to think.
Speaker 2:I haven't done one in about two months, so it's probably about time to do that again. So I'm thinking one that's about to kick in, you know? Uh, I've done a two week fast. I went to thailand to do it, but it was an absolute cleanser. Why, whilst I did lose weight, I noticed the amount of energy I had was phenomenal. The light behind my eyes was like I remember someone coming to me going your eyes are like headlights, so the cleansing that's happening from within is so powerful. Um, no question.
Speaker 1:And I have a question for James. You said that you're plant-based, so are you like plant-based or are you vegan?
Speaker 2:No plant-based, so I don't drink milk but I, I, I, I use, like oat milk and almond milk, Um, but I like the occasional bit of ice cream and I like the occasional bit of cheese on pizza. And what about meat?
Speaker 1:I don't eat meat. All right, we'll have that conversation maybe another week.
Speaker 2:This is something that I wanted to challenge you because I love what you're about. I love the WildFit way and the thing is, whilst everybody's different and I believe all of us are different because I used to eat meat I used to drink alcohol this wasn't something that I just said I'm going to stop. This was just something that happened naturally. We talked earlier about your mission found you. Naturally.
Speaker 2:This is exactly what happened to me and I'm not advocating anybody do what I do.
Speaker 2:It just happened that when I began to meditate, close and quiet my mind, my natural energy began to rise and when it did, I was guided to what was good for me. And I've been doing that for I don't know over two decades now, daily, and if it's still working for me and I look great and I feel great and I've got incredible energy and I can run up mountains very comfortably and run down them, I've got an insane amount of energy. Why is that? It's only because I'm listening to the instinctive voice that's coming from within that's guiding me and I believe deep down, that's what we're all trying to return to, and I think WildFit and what you're doing there is a beautiful way of being able to help people reset and come back to who they are because they've forgotten, and I think that you explain that beautifully, and you've got your new book coming out called the Wildfoot Way, so tell us a little bit about that, because that's coming out, actually, at the end of this month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's coming out quite shortly. I have all the links for that here, guys, so you want to be reading this. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1:It's funny. When I first created Wildfoot, I had a number of people pushing me to do books. You know, you should do a book, you should do a book, you should do a book. And I, I, just I. I was um really reluctant to do that. Because there are so many diet books, why add another diet book to the shelf? You know it doesn't I like it, you know because you did the pre-diabetic book.
Speaker 2:What was the other?
Speaker 1:yeah, and the book the evolution gap, yeah, but the the uh, um. But when I first created WildFit, I decided to do it multimedia because I wanted to be psychologically transformative, and I'm glad that we did that. And then my publisher came along and said they want a book about WildFit. And so the WildFit way isn't a diet book in the traditional sense at all. It is a book of principles. And so what it really does is it describes why WildFit is so effective. We have an 85 completion rate, and when people are pulled years after the program, they're still on track, and that's not consistent in the diet industry at all. And so the book really gives people organizing principles for taking command of their relationship with food. I'm I'm really excited about it, so I'm glad it's coming out shortly. Yeah, it's coming out where.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's coming out. Well, it's going to Kindle, I think, on the 30th of September and hardback on the 5th of October. So, guys, you've got to get this. Just one last tip for the audience. If there's something that Eric could say with your golden knowledge and the wisdom that you've accumulated, what would it be? To help people on their health journey. What one tip you give.
Speaker 1:I'll give a tip and a resource. When you take wild animals and put them in a zoo, their outcomes are almost always bad. They don't do well in zoos. Great white sharks can't last for more than about two weeks in an aquarium before they die. You know elephants live longer in forest slave conditions than they do in zoos, and elephants living in the Kruger National Park, where they're being hunted and poached and they're dealing with droughts and fires, they live longer there than they do in zoos.
Speaker 1:When we're in our natural environment, we are happier, we are healthier in every possible way, but we don't live in our natural environment anymore, and so one of the things that I would challenge people to do is to look at their lives and identify where they could bring more nature to their lives.
Speaker 1:You know there are some obvious examples, but like avoiding escalators and walk moving sidewalks, like when I go through the airports I almost never take those things. I want to get the steps in because in nature you had to. Equally, if you're living in a country like England where there's no sun, then you need to figure out a solution for that. It might be a travel agent, a convertible or a red light system in your house Like. The idea is to close those gaps, and the resource that I would offer for that is that at gapfindercom, we've created this evaluation. It's an evolutionary mismatch evaluation where you can go and assess your life against evolutionary principles and then it produces a comprehensive report and prescription for what you can do to close the gaps in your environment, in your health, in your relationships, in your family. It really it's super comprehensive and I think it gives people a really great roadmap to do exactly what you're asking.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, we'll make sure that that link is available so you guys can check out, because I think that's really important. I love the tip, eric, thank you so much. It's been insightful and very enjoyable speaking with you. Eric, thank you so much. Make sure you check out his new book, the Wild Fit Way, which is coming out really soon. This week's super soul model is Eric Edmeans, thank you, thanks so much for having me, thanks for tuning into the show and if you enjoyed it, please remember to follow, rate and share it with someone who'd love it too. Until the next time, wishing you green lights ahead.