The mindbodygreen Podcast

As founder and CEO of 22 Days Nutrition and author of the New York Times best-selling book The 22-Day Revolution, Marco Borges is one of the most sought-after experts in the field of plant-based nutrition and functional foods. Growing up in Miami in the late '70s—and attending public school during the heyday of cocaine in the city—he credits his strong sense of self and determined personality for his lack of interest in drugs and alcohol. He originally wanted to be a doctor, but the more he learned about health care, the more he realized that it's a much too reactive system.Eventually, Borges became interested in fitness and cycling and learned what to eat, what not to eat, and how foods made him feel. He says he owes his success to being eternally curious about everything and refusing to compromise. In this episode we discuss starting his own business and why it's not really work when you're doing something you love. He talks about creating 22 Days Nutrition abd how one Instagram post by Beyoncé caused everyone to go crazy overnight about the 22-Day Challenge.Borges has dedicated his life to teaching people how to transform their lives through movement and nutrition—including people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé. His incredible energy and wisdom make him one of my favorite people in the world, so don't miss this one!To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six years ago, Ella Mills was so ill that she could barely get out of bed. She spent hours watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians and browsing her friends' Facebook feeds, growing increasingly depressed. Doctors had diagnosed her with postural tachychardia syndrome, a rare disease, and pumped her full of medicine, but she knew there had to be a better way. Eventually, while browsing the internet, she read about the power of diet and lifestyle to heal and began experimenting with a plant-based diet. She was able to come off her medication after two years, and now, after healing her gut from rounds of antibiotics, she's feeling vibrant and healthy again. In this podcast, she chats about her healing journey and how she went from being sick in bed to the mega-successful blogger behind Deliciously Ella—and now, a businesswoman with four cookbooks (including the No. 1 best-selling debut cookbook ever in the United Kingdom), three delis, and three product ranges in over 5,500 stores.She also opens up about her relationship with her husband, Matt, whom she married only 13 months after they met. She shares how they navigate being business partners and life partners and how he experienced his own health crisis, which prompted them to finally prioritize work/life balance. Whether you're a wellness business owner, someone looking to take control of your own health, or simply a fan of Ella, this is an episode you won't want to miss.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark's Daily Apple and Primal Kitchen (the mega-popular brand of salad dressing, energy bar, protein powder and more), the author of the brand-new The Keto Reset Diet: Reboot Your Metabolism In 21 Days to Burn Fat Forever, and the man responsible for empowering millions of people to take back control of their health. While he's now renowned as the founder of the modern-day paleo or primal diets, he wasn't always this way. Once an Ironman athlete and competitive runner, Mark used to eat a primarily carbohydrate-rich diet to fuel his athletic endurance. Seventeen years ago, he gave up grains, and it was then that pieces of the puzzle finally began to shift into place and the diseases that had been weighing him down—from IBS to chronic upper respiratory tract infections—began to clear up. He started Mark's Daily Apple, the mega-popular wellness blog, and now—nine books, hundreds of talks, and a product line later—well, the rest is history. In today's episode, Mark shares how his rigid diet has evolved over time (you'll want to tune in just to hear his take on legumes and lectins), how he optimizes his mitochondria, his thoughts on Bulletproof coffee, and much, much more. He also shares how long you have to do keto for it to have a lasting effect (it's not as long you'd think!) and why he thinks "virtually every disease of civilization can be mitigated by lifestyle choices." Tune in to find out exactly how.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Byron Katie is a wellness icon. Unlike a lot of popular theories today, her system of self-inquiry, known as "The Work," helps people to separate their beliefs from what is true. In other words, she cuts through the bullsh*t pretty quickly. "The Work is not meant to support you to feel good. There’s no feel good in it. It’s about waking up to the reality," Katie said in our interview. That's the good stuff. She wasn't always the super-successful author, teacher, and beacon of light she has become. When I sat down with Katie, she shared intimate details about her awakening and what life was like beforehand. It wasn't easy. As a mother of three, she—understandably and relatably—was always worried about money, quite depressed, and stuck in a cycle of compulsive eating and smoking until one day in 1986 when everything changed. She started to see the world through different eyes and recalled with great detail exactly what that was like. That's how "The Work" was born. In this episode, Katie shares several examples that illustrate "The Work," dives into the six essential questions to ask yourself as a starting point, and helps us see ourselves as entirely separate from our belief systems. In her words, "suffering is the flip side of our true nature," and "The Work" is one way to guide yourself in the right direction.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've seen more men with mustaches growing in lately, you can thank Justin Coghlan ("JC"), one of the founding members of The Movember Foundation. With 20 participating countries, more than 5 million individual participants, and $850 million raised to date, Movember has become the world's largest men's health movement. Like most brilliant ideas, it started at a bar and was kind of an accident. After having a drink together almost 15 years ago, Travis Garone and Luke Slattery decided to revive the mustache as a style statement. Then a funny thing happened: People started asking them why. Once they realized they'd stumbled upon conversation-starting gold, they decided to leverage it for a good cause. JC and Garone's brother Adam joined the following year to increase momentum. "There's a women's hospital, a children's hospital, but there's no men's hospital. What are men doing for their health?" said JC. In addition to raising funds for prostate and testicular cancer, Movember is shining a light on men's mental health. Seventy percent of suicides are middle-aged men, and JC says it's because they're not talking to one another about life's ups and downs—at least not the same way women do. Movember aims to save lives by starting the conversation. In this episode, JC reveals how Movember went viral, shares moving personal stories of Movember's impact, and deconstructs how the brand has evolved.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jimmy Chin is an adventurer, artist, and filmmaker whose awe-inspiring photos have graced the pages of National Geographic and Outside magazine, not to mention the feeds of his 1.7 million Instagram followers. He's directed and starred in Meru, a moving documentary following his attempt to conquer the most daunting mountains in the world, and has been named one of the most influential climbers in the world.Considering his career in the clouds, you'd never guess Jimmy grew up in the cornfields of Minnesota, where he dreamed of one day moving to the mountains he'd seen on family vacations. In the early stages of his career, he lived out of his car and chased the peaks and climbers that inspired him. It wasn't until one of his mentors passed him a camera on an expedition that he realized he had a knack for photography and framing.Over the decades to come, his camera earned a place in his pack as he took risks to get to the top, with a few stumbles along the way. A class-4 avalanche sent him 2,000 feet down a mountain at 80 mph and showed him the veil between life and death. Extreme weather events forced him to power through days of climbing on a third of an energy bar. All of these experiences helped him hone his definition of risk—something he credits as the foundation of any meaningful experience. In this episode, Jimmy opens up about it all and delivers one of our favorite definitions of wellness to date along the way.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tara Stiles is the co-founder of Strala Yoga and author of six books, including the new Guiding Strala: The Yoga Training Manual to Ignite Freedom, Get Connected, and Build Radiant Health and Happiness. She's also a new mom and a resident of DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York's latest booming wellness mecca. Tara started her yoga journey in the woods of the Midwest where she grew up. Tara remembers spending hours practicing meditation (although she had no idea that was what she was doing at the time). She moved out to New York to become a dancer, which transitioned to modeling and eventually yoga—and at the time, yoga wasn't nearly as popular as it is today. When she was just starting to dip her toes in the yoga world, Tara found herself at a retreat upstate where she met her now-husband, Michael Taylor. Her first impression of Mike was a good one (he was the only other person on the retreat who brought chocolate), and on their first date, he charmed her further by bringing his own sandwich, eating it on the floor of her studio apartment, and showing off his handstand skills. The two eventually got married, co-founded Strala together, and now have a beautiful 8-month-old daughter together, Daisy. Despite the ease of Tara's life now, it hasn't always been like this. In this episode, Tara opened up about her what her experience with Strala Yoga has really been like over the years and the unique challenges that come with going into business with your spouse (at one point, she and Mike almost got divorced), and how being sexually assaulted led to a severe eating disorder. You'll also learn about the parts of motherhood Tara didn't see coming and what she thinks the future of wellness looks like.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barry Stuart Sternlicht is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, and chairman of Starwood Property Trust, the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the United States. He's the brains behind W Hotels, Bliss Spa, and environmental flagship brand 1 Hotels—oh, and he's also a billionaire. But he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, his mother a biology teacher (later turned stockbroker) born and raised in New York.When you ask Sternlicht how he got from a public school education to Harvard Business School, from arbitrage trading on Wall Street to building a $50 billion real estate empire, he immediately references his biggest influences: his father and Neil Bluhm (co-founder of JMB Realty). Sternlicht makes no bones about having learned from both their great successes and their abject failures. If you'd asked a 20-something Sternlicht what drove him to succeed, he'd have said, "I wanted to be rich enough to have a tennis court and a pool." But something deeper than that has driven him to the success he's found today. What he found in the hotel industry when he first started running his own company was a deeply ingrained pursuit of mediocrity, which spurred him on to create something better. "The pervasive culture of striving to be average was not for me." But when you learn a little bit about the mission-driven nature of his latest enterprise, the 1 Hotels brand, it becomes clear that, beyond just creating something he's proud of, Sternlicht has become motivated to invest in something bigger than himself—bigger than any of us—the planet. If you're not familiar with the wellness-oriented, sustainable hotel chain, this statement from Sternlicht on the 1 Hotels homepage sums it up beautifully: "I wanted to capture the beauty of nature in a hotel and in doing so, commit to safeguarding it as best I can, a responsibility that I believe we all share." In this episode of the mbg podcast, Sternlicht digs deep, sharing the lessons that made him who he is, how he worked his way from low man on the totem pole to monolithic mogul, and how he aims to protect and conserve our world to the best of his ability (and how we can help). If there's ever been a can't-miss episode, this is it.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Mark Hyman is a pioneer in the field of functional medicine and a nine-time New York Times best-selling author. He's an internationally recognized leader, speaker, and director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. We discussed his life and background in health—from working for a year in China to starting his yoga practice in 1979, when it was still a fringe activity. He also revealed the details of the two major health crises he's suffered in his life. The first occurred when he was living in Beijing, where he got mercury poisoning and developed a whole host of health issues from depression to muscle breakdown to chronic diarrhea. It was this struggle that propelled him into the field of functional medicine. Another occurred recently, and he'll share how he rebuilt his body's systems and health from the ground up using intravenous ozone—a very experimental and controversial therapy—IV infusions, and stem cells. Dr. Hyman and I will cover the debate over saturated fat—and why the AHA declared coconut oil unhealthy—and whether or not cholesterol has anything to do with heart disease. His book Eat Fat, Get Thin challenges the belief that we should be following a low-fat diet when the evidence is just not there. As a leading voice in wellness and functional medicine, Dr. Hyman is leading the charge for all of us to take back our health—one step at a time. As both a doctor and patient, he's experienced the powers of functional medicine and getting to the root cause of disease. You won't want to miss this one!To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kelly LeVeque is a certified holistic nutritionist, wellness expert, health coach, and author of the best-selling book Body Love, which has been taking the wellness community by storm. She serves as the guide for our new advanced functional nutrition program, where we'll teach you everything you need to know about functional food and the endless healing abilities of nutrition. "Live in balance, weigh what you want, and free yourself from food drama forever" is the mantra LeVeque lives by. She started her career in the medical industry, working with oncologists and cancer patients, and ended up in the world of holistic nutrition, working with celebrities like Jessica Alba. In this podcast, you'll learn why this background in science and medicine helps her understand nutrition and determine what's legitimate—and what's not. She'll spill on how to feed your cells with the fab four—protein, fat, fiber, and greens—and why a diet of steamed broccoli and chicken isn't going to help you live your best life. So many of us struggle with maintaining healthy lifestyle changes, and in this podcast LeVeque explains why most diets go wrong: They are too restrictive. Her best advice for anyone struggling with diet and sticking to healthy lifestyle changes? Focus on what you're adding to your life instead of how much you're depriving yourself: "If you understand blood sugar and if you're thinking about what you should put on your plate instead of all the things you shouldn't have, it gives you a little less anxiety about it." You'll leave this episode with a new understanding of the ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, the bulletproof diet, and what happens in the body when you eat sugar. In other words: the knowledge you need to navigate the wellness world and live your best life through food as medicine.To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast newsletter? Sign up here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices