Greetings, superfriends, and welcome to this week’s show!

Our guest today is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author behind Crazy Sexy Diet and Crazy Sexy Kitchen. You also may know her from the documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer, which documents her battle with cancer, and ability to thrive despite it.

In total, she’s authored four books, inspired hundreds of thousands with her blog, and been on just about every TV show you can imagine. She’s even garnered attention from such greats as Oprah Winfrey – amazing!

You guys, this episode is flat out AWESOME… I went into it expecting to talk a bit about nutrition, and to be honest, I was completely blind sighted by how much wisdom, kindness, and inspiration she had to share. At some point, you’ll hear that I was just about at the outer limits of my interview skills, just struggling to juggle all of the incredible life lessons that Kris was sharing… It was seriously THAT good.

In the episode, we talk about health and nutrition and juicing and fighting cancer… but we also talk about self esteem, self love, self talk, meditation, daily habits, and even entrepreneurship. As I said, Kris is such an incredible fountain of inspiration… I know this episode is going to blow you guys away.

So without any further adieu, let me introduce you to Ms. Kris Carr.

In this episode with Kris Carr, we discuss:

• Kris Carr's journey to where she is today
• How Kris has learned to live with a rare and incurable form of cancer for 13 years
• The origins of Kris' incredibly successful brand
• Kris Carr' struggles and misconceptions about nutrition, and how she confronted them
• Kris' guidance on diet: low fat, high fat, vegan, or paleo?
• Meditation, attitude, and outlook as one of the most powerful healers, emotionally and physically
• What causes people to lose their confidence and self esteem, and how can they bounce back?
• Moving away from big cities, and why it can be so beneficial
• Important daily habits and practices Kris lives by every day
• Some awesome ways you can hack motivation and give yourself a burst of energy
• What is Kris not good at?
• Thoughts on body shaming and how to help people (and ourselves) turn our health around
• Kris' tips for making it easy and convenient to eat healthy
• A great green juice recipe that you can try today
• The differences between “juicing” vs. smoothies
• What books has Kris most recommended?
• What's the most impactful $100 Kris has spent recently?
• A special homework assignment from Kris that you can do this week

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Kris Carr's many successful books:
  • Crazy Sexy Juice (Coming out today!)
  • Crazy Sexy Diet
  • Crazy Sexy Kitchen
  • Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips
  • Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor
• Gerson Therapy (a controversial cancer treatment)
• Our previous episode with Erwan Le Corre
• Our previous episode with Abel James
• Our previous episode with Chris Bailey
• The idea of Pomodoro Time
• Our article on “Dear Fat People”
• Rhonda Rousey's new book, My Fight, Your Fight
• Our previous episode with Adi Rotem
• Kris' Website, KrisCarr.com

Favorite Quotes from Kris Carr:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host. Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by Paribus. A new app that lets you save money. Whenever stores drop the price after you. To check it out and get a special deal on the service visit jle.vi/save.

Greeting, Superfriends, and welcome to this week's show. Our guest today is the number-one New York Times Bestselling author behind Crazy Sexy Diet and Crazy Sexy Kitchen.

You also may know her from the documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer, which documents her battle with cancer, and ability to thrive despite it. In total, she’s authored four books, inspired hundreds of thousands with her blog, and been on just about every TV show you can imagine. She’s even garnered attention from such greats as Oprah Winfrey – amazing!

You guys, this episode is flat-out awesome. I went into it expecting to talk a bit about nutrition and to be honest, I was completely blind sighted by how much wisdom, kindness, and inspiration she had to share. At some point, you’ll hear that I was just about at the outer limits of my interview skills, just struggling to juggle all of the incredible life lessons that Kris was sharing. It was seriously that good.

In the episode, we talk about health and nutrition and juicing, and fighting cancer but we also talk about self-esteem, self-love, self-talk, meditation, daily habits, and even entrepreneurship. As I said, Kris is such an incredible fountain of inspiration. I know this episode is going to blow you guys away.

So without any further adieu, let me introduce you to Ms. Kris Carr.

Kris, welcome to the show. We are super excited to have you today, and I really appreciate you making time. I know you're very, very busy with a book launch. So, thank you so much.

Kris Carr: Jonathan. I'm so psyched to be here. Yeah, 

Jonathan Levi: Kris, first and foremost, I have to ask, walk us through your journey and how it brought you to where you are today, because I know you had a past life and doing all kinds of cool and interesting stuff before that.

And then all of a sudden there was kind of a bump in the road, and I'm really interested in those bumps in the road. 

Kris Carr: Oh, yeah, me too, actually, because they can become these great opportunities for growth. So back in 2003, I was living in New York city and I was an actress and a dancer and a photographer.

And I moved there when I was a teenager and I was on a whole other trajectory. And then I got diagnosed with a very rare and incurable advanced cancer that affects a very small portion of the population. So there's not a lot of information about it and there's no treatment for it. And so that was my defining moment.

That's when everything changed and I had to make some decisions for my life and with the disease that I have, which is a sarcoma, it can be aggressive, but it can also be slow moving. And so basically the only thing that we've done or, I mean, I say we, me and my medical team have done for the last almost 13 years now is just watching and it continues to be stable and I continue to feel well.

But, uh, part of that came from deciding to change my lifestyle because in truth, I wasn't living a very healthy. Lifestyle and, you know, I was in my early thirties. And so I figured I had a lot more time to figure shit out, you know, like what you should be eating and drinking and thinking for optimal health.

It just wasn't on my plan, my life plan at the time. But then when, you know, something like as big as cancer and certainly an incurable cancer, which you can't get rid of happens, it became the most important thing to learn how to take care of. This great body that I have, but also how to take care of my mind.

Jonathan Levi: Ooh, that's the turning point. That's awesome. And I think in the process of that, I just figured out why our books have been so successful because I've seen your bio pick your profile photo. And I would have assumed that you were in middle school in 2013. I'm sorry, 2003. No, I just turned 44. My goodness. So there is something to this helpful living thing. 

Kris Carr: I think that, yeah, so far so good. 

Jonathan Levi: So tell us about how that journey progressed, what you discovered. I know you described yourself as a cancer. Thriver is first time I've ever heard that term. So what does that mean? 

Kris Carr: Well, I used to call myself a cancer survivor.

And certainly that was a part of the title of my second book that I wrote. And I realized it was very confusing for people and certainly survivors can connect to it because many people living with cancer were surviving. Just like everybody else. We're paying taxes, just like everybody else. We're dealing with politics and bullshit, just like everybody else, you know?

So why am I not a survivor? You know what I mean? Especially because I. You know, currently don't have the option of not being a patient. So, but I realized as my reach got bigger and people got confused, everybody assumed that that meant that I was cured. And I think it's important to understand that there are people out there who are thriving, but they may not have perfect health.

And it's easy for us to become saddled with all of these preconceived notions and saddled with a diagnosis. And the truth is, is that. When I started calling myself a cancer thriver, and other people realized that that was a term that they could use. I think it just started to feel a lot better. And that's what I call myself.

And for me, It's about going the journey and going the distance with a chronic disease. And if something changes in the future, good or bad, it's about how I handle it. So all of the stuff that I do on a daily basis to take care of myself and especially my mental wellbeing really sets me up for success with either direction.

Jonathan Levi: You know what I'm saying? And I have to compliment you because your brand has had so much success. I mean, you have a crazy, sexy juice and the crazy sexy diet and the crazy sexy cancer. Where did the term crazy sexy come from? By the way? 

Kris Carr: Yeah, that's a good question. Sometimes they go, what are you thinking?

Especially my credit cards has crazy sexy wellness and people are like, wait, are you like a healthy porn director? Like, what are you? But it started when I was newly diagnosed and my family and friends were so freaked out. And so I created these mass emails that I would send them called crazy sexy cancer updates.

And I sent them out in fun and funny ways. And also I use humor a lot to deal with many different things, especially my bane and. It let them know that I still had my sense of humor. I was still the girl that they knew and loved. I was just going through something challenging, but I hadn't lost who I was and I wasn't going to let cancer define me.

And so as the time went on, I started to give it a deeper meaning. So crazy for me is that out of the box thinking, and I think that you can very much relate to this Jonathan. It's the kind of thinking when somebody says, Oh, you'll never be able to do that. That's crazy. And we say, Oh, really watch us. And sexy is just empowering and cancer for me has been a teacher.

I love that. That's how it started. And after a while, and certainly after I was on Oprah. I got a lot of emails from people who didn't have cancer, but wanting to feel better and liked my approach to living. And that's when I started to expand and write for a larger audience. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that I'm avoiding the temptation because I'm in the process of launching a second podcast, which interviews folks like you and I.

About how do we turn our journeys, my journey towards combating add and combating difficulty in academia and becoming this accelerated learning expert, your journey of combating cancer. So it's basically a journey of how people become authors publishing. Uh, Entities online entities. So I'm avoiding trying to ask all those questions about your business and what we can possibly do another podcast about that.

But I guess that was a nice segue into my next question, which is sedate. You're working predominantly in the areas of diet and nutrition. And I understand that a lot of your message, like so many messages is around a heavier emphasis on fruits and vegetables and less processed garbage. Tell me about that a little bit.

Kris Carr: Yeah for me, I didn't have any background in nutrition and I certainly didn't grow up understanding what was healthy food for me and my previous career put a lot of emphasis on how you look and certainly being very thin. And so I spent a lot of time dieting as a young person and. Most of the dieting that I did, we were talking like eighties, nineties.

So it was all about that free processed, fake food. Yeah. That's made in a laboratory and takes a fricking laboratory to digest. And I just thought that that was healthy because, Hey, they wouldn't sell it to us. If it wasn't, I didn't really give a crap. I didn't want to take the time to figure this stuff out.

It was just like, Put the fast food and the fake food on the table. And let me get on with my life. I've got bigger things to do. Thank you very much. But then when I realized that my body was struggling so much, I had to take a deep look within and say, let's be truthful here. There are a lot of other systems that aren't working like your digestion.

I mean, I had such a bad and poor digestive system since I was a kid been on antibiotics a lot. I was sick a lot and I just struggled. And I think your digestion is your heart of your immune system. So. I started to look at all of the things that weren't working. Why did I have such bad eczema? Why couldn't I go to the bathroom?

Why did I always have a stomach that was on fire? Why was I on the purple pill, man? They put me on the purple pill when I was in my twenties. The acid reflux pill. Oh, wow. So I had all of these things going on as a young person, but like many people you think, well, that's what happens when you get older, but it's not what happens.

And it's certainly not what happens in your twenties. So. I literally left the oncologist office and I went to whole foods after my diagnosis. I didn't know where else to go, but something inside me said, you need to start it at the supermarket. And I have all these funny stories about literally pushing the shopping cart and bawling my face off because I had never seen kale before.

And I did not understand. I thought that weed was going to kill me a lot faster than cancer. Wow. So I had to relearn. Um, well, I'm not relearn how to learn for the first time. So I started to study and do my own research and the more I studied in certain programs that I took in, the more, I just became a student of health and wellbeing and not just nutrition.

And I started to connect the dots about what most of, I thought the smartest people were saying. And regardless of the specific modality or the specific philosophy, be it veganism or paleo, or, you know, all of the different. Wonderful ways to eat in this world. What everybody could agree on was we need to eat more vegetables.

So a big part of my core belief and philosophy, and what I teach people is how to actually prepare them and how to eat them and how to eat them three, four times a day, every single day. And as soon as I started to do that and got rid of all the junk food and started to juice my vegetables and make sure I made healthy smoothies and learn how to steam and saute and make great salad dressing so that I actually liked this stuff slowly, but surely like many people.

So many of the problems that were plaguing me started to fade away.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I love that. And also it comes back to the portion of plate. It's like, you have to replace that stuff and you have to replace it with calories. What's your take? I don't want to get into the whole paleo vegan debate of course, but what's your take on grains?

Was that part of the problem you were having with digestion and other acid reflux issues? 

Kris Carr: Yeah, well, I was also eating a ton of processed sugar. Uh, I was a sugar junkie for quite some time. So stripping that out helped tremendously. And even though I do practice a vegan diet, I'm not a fan of a heavy grain based diet.

If anything, I really try to. Really just focus on the gluten free grains as much as possible and not the gluten free processed crap. That's stuff's is sick. You know what I mean? So like, we're just talking about pretty much keenwah Milla and Brown rice, but I actually do better when I'm eating more fat and more protein, even though they're being in options and more fat and more protein and just a lot more vegetables.

Jonathan Levi: I was going to say it's probably a lot of vegetable fats. 

Kris Carr: Yeah, exactly. It's all the good stuff. It's the medicine, the seeds and the healthy oils and avocados and stuff like that.

Jonathan Levi: You know, Kris, I realized that we were talking about juicing and I was thinking about this doctor and now his daughter, who's now been relegated to Canada and Mexico because they can't practice the techniques.

I totally forget the name. I think it was Ferber and they're using juicing and huge doses of vitamins and minerals and juicing and all that stuff to actually cure or suppress cancer. I realized. I forgot to ask the most basic question, which is. Is your cancer in remission or what does it mean to thrive with it in remission?

Kris Carr: I have a stable disease, so it's just kind of hanging out and I get scanned and go through a series of tests every two years, just to see where it is. And so it's dormant basically, but I have, gosh, I don't even know how many tumors I have in my liver and both of my lungs, but dozens. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Okay. Yeah. I'm glad I remembered to ask that I kind of glazed over it before 

Kris Carr: I forget too.

Jonathan Levi: I think that's probably a good thing. I think that's probably part of your upbeat demeanor. 

Kris Carr: Uh, it's been 13 years, you know, and I've been working through this stuff. I had to work through a lot of fear and a lot of what-ifs, because it's kind of hard not to be able to go in remission. And in the early days, it was just the fact that I had to think about cancer all the time.

And I have a lot of compassion for cancer patients who actually go into remission and then have this terrible fear that it's going to come back for me. I've never had that experience. So. I've been able to work through the, just the very basic reality that it's here and it may always be here and I can go ahead and create a life and have dreams and goals and aspirations. Anyway. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. In fact, it sounds to me it's less like, anyway, it's more because of that and that it's really given you this optimistic and thankful outlook. 

Kris Carr: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right about that. But just to drill into this further, you can't have an optimistic and positive outlook. If you are just slapping affirmations on your life.

I think it's really important to teach people how to feel their feelings and to experience whatever heartache or anger or rage that they have because of a specific situation so that you can actually work through it. And then. I think that the positive feelings are very anchored in reality. Wow. 

Jonathan Levi: Okay. That's big. I have to process that for a little bit. Is this also part of your big outspoken advocate of meditation and things like that? Tell me a little bit about kind of, I guess, to be completely honest, I thought so much about the health aspect and the physical health aspect. And I don't think I was prepared for all the emotional health wisdom that you have to share.

So tell me a little bit about your philosophy on that kind of from the ground up. 

Kris Carr: Yeah, sure. Well, you know, changing your diet is pretty simple. Once we get through all the basics and we realize, yes, we should eat more vegetables and yes, we should get rid of all the processed shit. That's easy. What's hard is changing your mind.

And I think that once you change your mind, you change your reality. You change the world really. And. I was introduced to meditation the summer that I was diagnosed, I went to stay at a Zen monastery in New Mexico, because I was so raw with fear and panic. And I went out there and just stumbled into this place.

And then I decided to stay for the rest of the summer. And that was first time. Yeah, it was a big wild for me too, but that was the first time I was able to really realize that my thoughts aren't real. And my feelings aren't facts. And I was able to start to wrangle that monkey mind that can destroy a person.

It was destroying me cause I was just living in this idea of what if, what if, what if? And I thought, Jesus, what if I lived to 92 years old? And I spent every waking moment in the what if, what if, what if right. So meditation became a lot of ways, my medication in the early days. And it is still a big part of how I balance my physical wellbeing and my mental wellbeing, especially around my scans.

So when I go every two years, it kicks up a lot of stuff for me. And the meditation practice that I've created for myself really just keeps me calm. And keeps me centered and present because the truth is we can all future trip and we can all get stuck in our past. And guess what? We miss the most beautiful moment, which is the moment of now.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Well, I couldn't have said it better myself. Kris, what is your meditation practice? How much, how often tell us about that? 

Kris Carr: Very reasonable. Actually, I don't think we have to do crazy amounts of exercise or meditation or fasting or all of these really extreme things to have happy healthy lives. So for me, it's just 20 minutes a day. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. It's pretty simple. And which type of it, pasta dinner, or. 

Kris Carr: It's Chris Parson, a baby. It was just make most stuff up. Actually, it was more rooted in Zen, but I don't follow a specific tradition anymore. I just sit and breathe. And if I'm having a hard time focusing on the breath or focusing on releasing my thoughts, then I count.

So I count. From one to 10. And if the thought comes in, I just say thinking, you know, just to ground myself back in the reality of, Hey, I'm meditating right now, not figuring out my book launch, come on home thinking, and then I'll pick up on whatever number that I left off on.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. So, Kris, as I mentioned before, you're a major source of inspiration and confidence for women everywhere and not just cancer sufferers.

I'm not sure how to approach a question around that, but I do want to hear your thoughts, transitioning a little bit from tackling fear and anxiety, to going into the idea of self esteem or the status quo, both for women and for men, and what you think are some of the tools people are lacking or could potentially be lacking to have this healthy balance of self-esteem and confidence that you're so well known for.

Kris Carr: Hmm. Well, thank you for saying that. I. To realize I was so well known for that, but I think that over time in my journey, and certainly, as I've become more public with what I teach and what I believe, I think confidence is key. Confidence is key for all of us. Nobody wants to feel insecure. It's a very uncomfortable, unhappy place to be.

And what I think is like every big revolution starts from within and the self-esteem revolution is no different. I think what happens when we feel low and we feel like we're worthless is that we've truly forgotten who we are. We've forgotten that we matter. We forgotten that we're precious and we've ultimately forgotten that we're spiritual beings in a human experience.

Um, how do we remember that? Well, meditation helps a lot. Um, any form of contemplation for me, a big part of my spiritual practice is just walking in the woods, hiking, being out in nature, connecting to a much bigger source than myself. It's so easy to get stuck in our little everyday lives and our judgments and our criticisms about ourselves and others.

And then you look up and you see an Eagle pass above your head and you go, Whoa, there's such a bigger world out there. There's so much to look at and to take in and to feel so inspired about why am I getting stuck in this small thinking? Totally. Yeah. So when I forget. It's because I've allowed myself to fall out of balance.

You know, I've allowed myself to take on too much and maybe I've gotten too concerned about what other people think about me, or maybe somebody said something mean on Facebook. And I really let it penetrate my being. And I've just lost touch with who Kris truly is. And when that happens, I just go back to my practice.

Jonathan Levi: It's interesting. You mentioned about being out in nature. One of my goals every month is to spend 72 plus hours out in nature with sand between my toes or dirt in between my toes. And it, it does a world of good. I think it really well don't actually tell good.

Kris Carr: I mean, it's so healing. It's literally like just filling your body with energy.

Jonathan Levi: It's so genius. There is something about it. There really is something about just the calming effect. 

Kris Carr: Yeah. That's why I moved out of New York. I bought this little kind of broken down. We call it the farm because we have a barn and a little. Guest house. And we have 16 acres and we had to renovate it.

It was a piece of crap and we're still in the process, but it's out in the middle of nowhere. We're on a dead-end street and barely get any traffic or even see people. And it's such a magical healing place for me to spend the vast majority of my time writing and creating. And then when I go out in the world and do big events and stuff like that, I feel very charged.

And I didn't feel that way in New York, as much as I love the energy. When I got sick, I really realized that I had to be in the mountains. I needed mountain energy. I needed grounding nature. So. I relate. 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. You say that we've had so many guests who say the same thing. We had Erwin liquor who talked about, get out of the city.

If you can afford to Abel James who talked about living on this awesome ranch away from all the noise and hustle and bustle. And there does seem to be a correlation between highly creative people who are in the field of healing and getting out of these big overcrowded cities, wherever possible. 

Kris Carr: Yeah. And even if it's just that you can get out for a day or a weekend and you make it a regular pilgrimage that you stick to, like the wonderful stuff that you're talking about on a monthly basis. I think that that's enough for folks who can't afford to leave altogether jobs lives, et cetera. Just get out as much as you can.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, definitely. It's like do the best you can with what you have. That's it, man. All right, guys, let me just hit pause really quickly to let you all know about this episode's sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Paramis. You guys, part of being superhuman is always being on the ball and never getting a sword deal.

And Paramis helps you do exactly that when you go out in the world and you purchase things from shops like Amazon, sometimes they drop the price and pelvis scans through your email, constantly checking. To see if those companies owe you money. I actually tried it out for the first time this week, and I saved $18 on a new microphone that you guys will hopefully hear soon in the podcast.

So I highly recommend you guys check it out and save some money yourself. You may be owed money right now as we speak. So you definitely want to take advantage of that to check it out and to get a special discount on the service it's free, but they do charge a small commission of the money they save you.

Visit J L e.vi/save, and you will get 5% off of their commission. So Kris, we've talked a lot about habits. It's on the show in the past with money safety, Gretchen Rubin. And you've also mentioned a couple of really good habits like meditation. Are there any other daily habits that are really important for you?

Kris Carr: So for me, I frame it more like a contemplative practice. So it may not be meditation every day, but it is some form of checking in. We could be journaling for 15, 20 minutes. It could be meditation. It could be walking in my woods, but it's connecting with myself before technology. So, and never, ever, ever wake up and check my phone or wake up and go to the email.

Or any social media, that's kind of like my big no-no rule. So go within before you go outside. 

Jonathan Levi: That's brilliant. I've got to adopt that one. It's just, it's so hard being on a different time zone from everyone else because you wake up and you're already 10 hours late answering everyone's email. 

Kris Carr: Yeah, no, I can totally get that. But what I realized is when I go outside of myself, first, I wake up. I know that I'm going to. Get to my to-do list at some point, hopefully that will be a reasonable list. Otherwise I'm setting myself up for failure. But when I check in with the outside world, I immediately go to that. You do list, which is Kris, you do this for me.

You do that for me. I need this by this time for me, as opposed to like, what does it do Kris need first? Um, definitely that's a big one. And then another big part of. I guess my habits are I write every day. So I try to schedule that first as much as possible. And I'll write for a three hour chunk. Oh, wow.

And that's kind of a non-negotiable time and obviously things come in and I bend the rules occasionally, but more often than not that three hour chunk is like, I don't know. That's my sacred time. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. And that's blog posts, new books. 

Kris Carr: Yeah. And it could also be something that I just want to explore creatively, but.

As a writer, it's a really important thing to actually write. And the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, the quicker you get at it. And so for me, it's just like, I know that I'm going to do anywhere between 15 to 20 hours of writing on interrupted writing a week. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Amazing. I wish I had that habit in that discipline writing for me is kind of a love, hate thing. I do it because I have to keep writing. I have to keep improving the books in the works in the courses, but for me, I love doing the podcast. It's my guilty pleasure.

Kris Carr: That's awesome. Well, I didn't say that. I loved it by the way.

Jonathan Levi: That's true. You didn't. 

Kris Carr: I just say that I do it.

Jonathan Levi: That's a fair point. Do you have any, uh, discipline hacks for our audience as to how you get yourself to do things that sometimes you need to do, but don't want to do. That's 

Kris Carr: really interesting. I don't know. I like to break rules all the time, so I'm always trying to break my own rules and kind of create my own.

Well, what if I did this instead? Would that count? So I'm very aware of my inner 18 year old. Who's trying to get shit by me. I am launching another book this fall, and I have a very big writing schedule and interview schedule and just big campaign schedule. So we're just moving into business for a little bit.

Yeah. And I started to get a little cranky about it. I started to say, I can't possibly, well, they do this. I don't know that I can get this done. I need to start backing out of things. Right. So I literally sat down and said, nobody else gave you this goal. Nobody else is putting other these expectations on you.

These are all your own internal expectations. So do you really want to do this? You need to buck up and get it done. Either complaint and, you know, take it down a notch or. Locking load. That's like a terrible thing to say, but it did turn me around around a little bit. And so oftentimes when I'm having a difficult period, I have these tough love conversations with myself.

And I don't want to say that there aren't times when I have to take it down a notch, because honestly, balance is very important, but there will be moments when you're trying to go for a bigger goal and balance. Isn't always. Possible. Although I do look for those moments throughout the day where I can let off steam and have like small vacations throughout the day, you know, it's like, can I go for a swim for 15 minutes?

You better believe it. And then I can get back to my work and then. A huge difference on my productivity and whatnot, but I don't have hacks, but I will say that I do have tough conversations with myself and to kind of realign my priorities. And sometimes after those tough conversations, I may back out of a bunch of things because in truth, my body doesn't feel happy and healthy doing it.

But usually those tough love conversations. They're the great equalizer for me. That's when I figure out what it is that I truly want and how I'm going to go about pursuing it. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's such a huge point. And yeah, we had a Kris Bailey on the show who really emphasized also this idea of self-talk. If you had an employee or a colleague who wasn't getting it done, you'd have a tough talk and rationalize and you can do that same thing with yourself.

Funny enough. The other thing we talked about on that episode was the idea of Pomodoro time and how you're more productive. If you take these little mini vacations in the middle of your workflow, every, I think it's, I mean, 90 minutes or something like that. 

Kris Carr: That's so cool. I didn't know it was called that, but I have definitely found that to be so effective.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Okay. Very cool. So we've now demonstrated you're an expert in nutrition and mindset and meditate. I'm totally impressed by you. Totally blown away. Okay. Well, thanks. 

Kris Carr: Is there anything you're not good at? Oh yeah. I'm not good at sports. 

Jonathan Levi: Okay. Okay. Fair enough. All right. Okay. I was beginning to have suspicions that you're in fact superhuman.

Kris Carr: I'm terrible at math. And what else? 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Let me change gears a little bit, Kris and ask, as I mentioned before, you're really a source of inspiration. And as you mentioned with the idea of sexy and empowerment, on the one hand, he actually wrote a blog post about this earlier this week about this whole.

Body shaming thing that's coming up right now. And there's this viral video, which by the time our audience listens will be probably old news, but it was entitled dear fat people and was basically really kind of very nasty fat shaming and comedy at the expense of people who are overweight. And people really came down on this idea and I came out and said, look, the way the message was delivered is wrong, but.

The idea that advertisers want us on the one hand, they're advertising all these foods that are making us unhealthy and all these pills that are helping us cope with our diabetes and the idea that we should try and convince someone who's suffering. And who's having all these health complications. It's okay.

Love your body. Anyway, I think is just as dangerous. Maybe not just as dangerous, but it is also dangerous because it's depriving people. Of that basic right. Of self preservation and wanting to improve their life. So my question for you is how do we balance between we should all love ourselves and we should, whether or not we're obese, whether or not we're suffering from cardiovascular disease, we should love ourselves.

But at the same time, we should always want to improve ourselves to optimize our health. I was sure you'd have some thoughts on that. 

Kris Carr: So. Yeah, well, that's a big topic. I think everything stems from the loving yourself first, and it's very hard to make changes that lasts. If you don't believe you're worthy.

And when you don't believe you're worthy, you don't believe that your effort will have any effect. So starting from the place of building your self-esteem and building your sense of self worth and building that muscle and building that strength within, I think that's where we begin. And when we start to experience what it is like to.

As you said, love the skin you're in. You also realize that the skin you're in matters too. So I want to say around as long as possible, even though I have a chronic disease and originally I was given 10 years to live, I would love to live into my nineties. I think that's enough. I actually pretty good, but that's not going to happen.

If I don't take care of myself. Right. And not just because of cancer, because of all the other things that take place when we age. And certainly if we're not mindful of what we're eating, what we're drinking and what we're thinking. So we start from, uh, handling and caring for our minds. And then once we get a taste of that, I think it's imperative that we move to the physical body.

Yeah. It's not okay to not take care of ourselves. Exactly. Right. Yeah. But we don't want to start with, Hey asshole, you're not taking care of yourself. Right. 

Jonathan Levi: It's that fine line between shaming, because actually a lot of people responded to this video and said, you know, Thinking that you're going to guilt someone into making better decisions actually works the other way.

It causes people to guilt eat and it exacerbates the problem.

Kris Carr: I agree with you. It's also not kind.

Jonathan Levi: No, it's definitely not kind. And I think you, and I agree one point, which is well, many points, but what I said when I heard this whole love the skin you're in and love yourself and love your body, most specifically love your body.

I said, look, Anything that you love, whether it's a person or a friend or a pet or a romantic partner, you invest in that relationship and you invest in their wellbeing. So this idea of, Hey, I'm overweight. And I love myself anyway, that to me is superficial love. Real love is I love myself. And because of that, I want to get well.

I want to take care of myself. 

Kris Carr: I think you're onto something. I really like how you're articulating this. And I would say that you still have to have that first. Kind of bingo. You got first. Bingo. Thank you. You have to have that first bingo. Before we move on to the second one, which is, and because of this, I'm going to do my best to take care of myself and change some of the habits that I know are causing a great deal of suffering.

Like if I'm honest with myself, the habits that I have are not making energy deposits and self-esteem. Deposits. In fact, they're making deep withdrawals to my psyche and my overall sense of wellbeing. So I would like to change that and I believe that I matter. So I'm going to try. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. That's actually a really nice segue to get into.

You talked about changing the diet being easy, and you talked about an emphasis on juicing. And one of the things that I noticed, kind of one of the perils of having a memory skill that I teach is are I remember all the tiny little details. And you said you focus on. Teaching people how to best prepare and integrate the fruits and veggies into their lives.

Can you give us a couple of tips on that? 

Kris Carr: Yeah. So we're all very busy, right. And a lot of times folks say I don't have time to make healthier choices. And then I often think like, well, do you have time to feel like garbage? You know, probably. So we all have a certain amount of time, but we can use it wisely.

And so one of the things that I like to do is prep my stuff the night before. So I'm a big fan of. Making healthy green smoothies and healthy green juices. And if I'm pressed for time, if I'm leaving for an event or like this morning, having a podcast with you and knowing I wanted to get some of my own contemplative practice in before then I prep everything the night before and it was all ready to go.

And these different bags it's cut up. It's washed the recipe has been chosen and boom, we're ready to get it done. 

Jonathan Levi: That's awesome. Where are you getting your recipes from? 

Kris Carr: Oh, well, I make them love it. So yeah, I'm actually still working through this new book that I have coming out in October. So I've been choosing from that book a lot.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Tell us that one. I know, actually, it's coming out the same day as this podcast. 

Kris Carr: That's so cool. So it's her 20. I thank you for saying that it's called crazy sexy juice and has over a hundred simple recipes for. Making healthy Doose and smoothies and awesome nut milks. And it's a big thing that I love to help my audience with because I think that, you know, sometimes cooking can be complicated and I have a cookbook out that did very well, but sometimes it's very intimidating for people to get in the kitchen and they think like, Oh God, I got to get the right pots and pans.

And I really, really don't know the basics. And so. Do you think in blending is certainly if you're doing it in a healthy way and not eating a ton of sugar can be really easy for people. You don't have to learn a lot. You just learn a couple of tricks and you're good to go. And ultimately, I think we can all agree that we just, we really need to eat more vegetables.

So. Trying to make it easy for people and also make it delicious. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. And I love that your emphasis is actually on vegetables because a lot of people will put two bananas in a smoothie and be like, this is super healthy. Well, it's probably not because it's like a massive sugar load. 

Kris Carr: Yeah, I think it's really important to keep people balanced.

And we certainly have recipes that have more sugar than others, cause it's 102 recipes. So you need to be able to offer a lot of different options for people. But I teach folks how to basically take the sugar level down and, and to adjust recipes accordingly. And for the most part, a lot of my own recipes, um, on a daily basis and these included are pretty low in sugar.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. And probably you're adding a lot of good fats. Yeah. 

Kris Carr: That's good proteins. 

Jonathan Levi: So simple recipe. If you can, a sneak peek of the book that's coming out today. 

Kris Carr: Well, I think a basic green juice recipe that pretty much everybody can love and get behind is. Cucumber celery, any type of green that you have on hand, be it kale or romaine or shard one green Apple.

If you like little sweetness and some lemon, do you want to add ginger? That's awesome too, but that's my staple recipe. If you don't want to have the Apple, you can take it out. Just have the lemon to cut the green flavor down. I think cucumbers are so sweet and I can just drink straight cucumber juice so you can just adjust it based on what your own needs are and your own diet philosophy is.

Jonathan Levi: And that's a good one. That's awesome. I was going to ask actually, well, first I want to comment that. Yeah. When you do cut a lot of sugars and processed sweeteners out of your life, right? Things become so much more sweet and flavorful. That's interesting. Like a lemon can suddenly become very sweet and sour.

Kris Carr: Yeah, it's so true. It was a huge change for me when I moved over to a plant-based diet and away from all the sugar that I mentioned to you earlier. I literally had such an addiction to Ben and Jerry's, I make fun. I was like, I was having a threesome every night and Jerry that's awesome, but it was amazing how my palate completely shifted.

It took some time. But then like, as you said, the basic things were just incredible. 

Jonathan Levi: Totally. Let me ask. This is the difference between a juice and a smoothie. Just that the smoothie has the fat source added in there. Yeah. And the fiber. Oh, so explain to me a little bit what juicing is, as opposed to just throwing everything in a blender and making a smoothie.

Kris Carr: So do you think is when you basically put everything through the juicer and there are many different types of juicer, but the juicers basically remove the fiber so that you're just drinking a glass of juice. Like you would drink. This is not what I recommend, but a glass of orange juice is just juice.

It's not a smoothie. It's just the liquid. And obviously a smoothie. Is when you put everything in the blender and you still have the fiber. And I think fiber is incredibly important. Obviously we need it for many reasons. We need it to keep the trains moving. We need it to balance our blood sugar. And so I recommend a combination of the two or if you just want to have smoothies, that's totally cool too.

I think when you're drinking juice and people don't like the texture of smoothies. So even though it might be a delicious smoothie, they gag on the texture. So a green juice can be really effective. And for me, like when I started practicing, I was a raw foodist for quite some time. And when I was doing that, I was drinking a lot of green juice and I felt really, really good.

And I'm talking about very low sugar green juice, because you're getting up last, you nutrition pretty instantly. And you're taking very little digestive power to actually absorb it and assimilate it. And as somebody who is struggling with. Pretty much broken digestion. It was very helpful for me to get back into balance.

So I love it. It makes me feel great. I know a lot of people have seen some great benefit from it, but again, I don't come from a position of one is better than the other. I think whatever works for you. Let's just get you consuming more veggies.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. I think we should note and correct me if I'm wrong here, but vitamins are water-soluble.

Vitamins are water-soluble. So a lot of people tend to think, well, if you take out the fiber, you're losing a lot of the vitamins. When in fact a lot of those vitamins are coming out and that's one of the reasons say steaming vegetables is so much better than boiling them and then pouring out all that water.

Kris Carr: That's awesome. Yeah. You're smart. You're right. 

Jonathan Levi: Smart. Maybe read a lot. Definitely. 

Kris Carr: And absorb it. You're going to have to teach me your ways, man. 

Jonathan Levi: I'll do that. I'll tell you what, I'll send you a copy of my book. You send me a copy of yours. I would love that. That would be awesome on that note. What book have you recommended most besides your own?

Kris Carr: Oh, wow. I love reading like you, but I doubt that I absorb as much as you do. So you're going to help me change that right now. I'm devouring some novels and some memoirs. And I'm going to tell you about a book that has nothing to do with wellness, but everything to do with building confidence and being a badass.

So a lot of the books that I read in my work life have to do with spirituality or nutrition, but right now at night, I'm reading Ronda Rousey's memoir my fight, your fight. Oh yeah. So it's like 10 children by day, Ronda Rousey by night. 

Jonathan Levi: She's so intense video about her talking about, uh, essentially, you know, just because my body.

Hasn't been groomed or I, haven't kind of trained my body to do anything, but have children and look good. Doesn't mean that I'm any less of a woman and all this great stuff. 

Kris Carr: Yeah, no ntense. She's super intense. And her memoirs is just full of little nuggets of wisdom. Like I am never going to put somebody in an arm bar or dislocate their shoulder.

Like that is just not my plan this time around, but I have so much respect for people who basically overcome great odds to become great people. And I think she's got a lot to teach. Women and certainly female athletes. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that so much. We had a guest on the show who was actually my neighbor and she's a two-time world champion, a Thai kickboxer.

And also just like, I think we don't give athletes enough credit for being the kind of very motivational and actually spiritual people that they are. And, you know, just because they're not in academia, say they really have a lot of wisdom to share even people who are getting knocked upside the head every day.

Kris Carr: Yeah, exactly. It just takes an enormous amount of discipline and focus. And I think that we could all use probably a little more discipline and focus in our lives. And certainly, if we have goals to change our health goals, to change our happiness, and hopefully goals to help somebody else other than ourselves.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Let me ask another question of a similar nature. What do you believe is the most impactful hundred dollars someone can spend? Oh my goodness. Or what is the most impactful hundred dollars you've spent recently, which is an easier version of the same question. Okay. 

Kris Carr: But it's super specific, but I think you'll like this.

So I have a disabled dog who has Lou Gehrig's disease. And yeah, we have like two people in the family who are living with incurable diseases. And I actually found him on the side of this mountain that I hike on and he was a bag of bones. I actually thought it was a dead animal. He was so thin and emaciated and we brought him back to health.

And then a few months after. Uh, he was, you know, feeling better and certainly he was 50 pounds when we found him he's a hundred pound dog now. Wow. So by the way, I didn't feed him a vegan diet. So just to be clear on that, I went to the meat store every day with like a baseball hat on. Anyway, he has Lou Gehrig's disease.

And so he goes to hydrotherapy twice a week. And he's in a wheelchair, a little wheelie cart. He's awesome. And this hydrotherapy is basically extending his longevity and his life. He was given about six months to live in that was over a year ago. So I'd say his hundred dollar hydrotherapy session that happens today at 3:00 PM is probably the most impactful, a hundred dollars that I spend every week. 

Jonathan Levi: That is so cool. And I think it speaks so much to kind of your respect and admiration for life. Well, thank you. Wow. So, Kris, I know we're just about to run out of time. I wanted to ask you, we always like to give homework. I'm a little bit evil in that regard, and we like to give our audience.

Homework that they can do this week while they wait for next week's episode to come out. So that may be a blog post that may be a thought exercise that may be run to the store and pick up this totally awesome food product. What would the piece of homework that you would like to give a look like for this week?

Kris Carr: Wow. That's so good. Well, I could say, go ahead and try that green juice recipe that we talked about earlier. So anybody who resonates with that, go ahead and give that a try and I'll just do something really basic though, because I think when we are in a state of gratitude, more than we're in a state of anxiety or this isn't right.

The way I want it to go, our life improves. So if you can think back more, think over the week or think over the day or the night and just choose three wins, like three wins that you had. One of them could be, Hey, I made that green juice Kris talked about, or wow. I listened to Jonathan's podcast and it was really inspiring as it is.

Every week. That's one of my wins. I made the time to listen and check in with him. I made the time to have that green juice or, Oh, you know what? I tried that 20 minute meditation practice and it felt great. I made the time or it felt like crap, but I did it anyway. So. What are your three wins? And if you can think on them on a regular basis, I think you realize that your life is pretty awesome and that you're doing just fine.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That is awesome. That is a fantastic note to end on Kris. I've never said it on the show, but I always tell my friends that I have a new hero every week. Thanks I guess. And I've never felt that to be more true than this week. I'm totally blown away by you and all the wisdom you've had to share as I'm sure our audience is as well.

So if they want to check you out, see what you're up to learn about. Obviously the new book we'll link to in the show notes, but also read your blog, check out your videos, where do we send them? 

Kris Carr: Well, first and foremost, you're just such a kind smart person. And I want to thank you for having me on it's been awesome and you're a great interviewer.

So it's such a pleasure. So I just want to say that. Yes, it's true. And you can find me @kriscar.com, Kris with a K. kriscarr.com. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. And we will link it up and I know. Even though you spelled it out, most people will probably misspell it. So we will link it out @becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast.

And just to remind everyone, because you've been so humble and so kind today, today, you guys, if you're listening to this episode, the day it comes out today, Crazy sexy juice is out. Please check it out @becomingasuperhuman.com. We'll have a link to it, and we will give you that green juice recipe as well.

That Kris mentioned on the show, Kris, thank you so, so much has been such an honor. 

Kris Carr: Thank you. 

Jonathan Levi: All right. You take care.

All right. Superfriends. That's it. For this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guests posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email or email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the becoming superhuman podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.