ARI

So now my guest is Yuri Elkaim, who is the author of the all-day energy diet and also the creator of a greens powder that I really enjoyed so Yuri, thank you for finding time talk to me.

YURI

Great to be here, thank you Ari for having me.

ARI

Yeah so I’m really say talking because a number of things. First of all, how did you get to the all-day energy diet, what led you to this path?

YURI

I think with Lake with a lot of people in the health space especially, I really did it for myself first and foremost, I think a lot of people the health space get into it because of how to run health issues at some point of their lives, so for me I was your growing up, my goal was to play pro soccer and that was my sole focus for almost 20 years of my life. So I was I had this kind of his catch 22 as I was fit and active but that was, like a mask because I wasn’t really healthy and that didn’t really clue into that, until a lot of things kind of went sour for me, so I grew up with a lot of digestive issues I had really bad asthma growing up I like I had like the Darth Vader mask you to put on really bad really bad eczema low-energy light to the point where sleeping almost 12 hours a night’s feeling groggy in morning falling asleep at school really like spent half my life or more sleeping which was not some very good thing.

So I didn’t really clue into any of that because I was pretty young, when I was 17 though I started to lose my hair and that was a bit of a shock, because I had a long brown hair my dad rock in so naturally I had of a little more hair than what you might see now, so I didn’t know what was going on and within the space of about one month I lost all of my hair’s`, eyebrows and eyelashes everything and my doctor said I had an autoimmune condition called alopecia unfortunately they had no solutions, so they said we can inject cortisone into your head and all those kind of stuffs and I said no, thank you.

So it took me about eight years to figure out that all of those issues digestive eczema and asthma low-energy and then the other immune disorder were pretty much all part of personal the same thing it was really kind of what was happening inside my body as results of the foods that I was or wasn’t eating growing up, so I had been brought up on a lot of my quick dinners process foods very few vegetables and fruit, lots of grains passes and cereals because as an athlete that’s what I thought I was supposed to eat for carbohydrates and energy and they really all backfired, so that led me down the path of pursuing studies in a holistic nutrition, I actually had a degree in kinesiology health sciences before that but I really didn’t, I wasn’t very impressed with the nutrition that I was getting from the traditional academic route in one of the top 20 universities in

the world and so I went back to school the study holistic nutrition and I was blown away by what I was learning and I figured out, and I was like wow; if I didn’t know any of these stuff, there must be tens of millions of people who don’t either, so by trying to apply the principles I was learning, I radically transform my health and about two months, my hair started to regrow, I felt a little bit about congestion that and my kids were back in school, so I wasn’t kind of sick now.

ARI

The same thing.

YURI

It’s crazy, you know; I’m on very really sick, but seems like when my kids to get back to school to have a bit of the congestion thing going on, and soon as the is specifies principles for research to regrow my hair but all this other stuff you know when away all the all the health issues went away, but most notably from me was most amazing was the amount of energy that I had and I am talking to you like almost overnight, it wasn’t like I wait six months to feel better it was almost within you know within two day’s span and I was feeling oh my God! all I have never felt like this in my life, though I am a very kind of go type of person I want to achieve a lot and accomplish a lot and energy is really important test to make that happen so I was able to be with that energy as more mentally clear and more productive because I was able to focus and get stuff done, I wasn’t sleeping nearly as much and I was feeling more rested and those were really tremendous transformation.

So over the 14 years that followed I kind of concreted variations of the all-day energy diet in terms of the digital e-books started to put out a lot of information and then I realize, am like what I’m really well-known for is energy nutrition is really getting people energized and I believe that energy as the foundation for health because as I didn’t realize as at the time, but as I now realize that if you’ve low-energy if you are exhausted that is a warning sign that something inside of you is not working as it should and I think a great example of this is if you’re ever sick and you are kind of bedridden you’ll feel very energized and that’s because your body is requiring that energy to go inside and heal, so if people are walking around with low-energy day in day out maybe it’s not to the degree of kind of a healing from infection but there is something inside that is rotting their energy that is having to kind of do other things other than you put that energy towards like locomotion like movement or whatever so yes that’s kind of like what got me into this whole path of energy, it is really the impetus for why I wrote the book because a lot of books weight loss hormones and metabolism, but the way I see this is like, if you eat in a way that I describe in the book everything else improves as a byproduct and I’ve noticed this with hundreds of thousands of clients over the past decade and a half and as well I can see how you hear anything is often how you feel everything, the principles in this book applied to preventing disease to losing weights, to feeling younger and looking younger as well as having a lot of energy so that’s quick rundown of it all.

ARI

Yeah! I may think of that and where did the green powder fit into the whole story.

YURI

The green powder came about because a couple years ago because I talk a lot about the importance of getting more greens into your body, it’s really the foundation of your health and you know I’m not a huge fan of using energy for making smoothies need lots of salads and stuff but also realize when I travel or if I’m not at home or if I just want something a little more quick on the go, it’s nice to have something to turn to, so I had a lot of people asking me that, like you know, what greens powder do you reckon, we turn to, you’ll talk about alkalinity greens and it was a tough question to answer because they may be in Australia or the UK or in the State or living and never try it on, said really know what is accessible to those people and the other thing is that, I experiments and am trying to use a lot of greens powders in my life and all of them is like grass, it’s like they all taste like freshly cut lawn.

ARI

And they all have like 147 ingredients in them too.

YURI

Yeah! Exactly. And very few of them are whole food-based, so it’s like, there is a lot of things to look out for, you know personally I don’t mind the taste of fresh cut lawn but I prefer if it didn’t taste like that, so about a year and a half ago we decided like you know what, why don’t we formulate our own and so instead of only labeling some other product, I went right to the source we partnered with an amazing super food company, one of the top of the world and I said give me the raw ingredients and I am going to figure the stuff out of my own, I might play with this in my kitchen to find out the exact formulation that I think it’s amazing and then am going to give it to my kids and see what they think and if they like it, then that’s a good thing, and then I am going to give it to other people, you know friends and family to see what they think and you know I think we have come up with what I think is the best tasting greens powder on the market, I mean it’s, I think it’s incredible, it’s in grades, it’s a higher-quality premium grass juice powder a lot of grass green powders out there use grass powder not the juice powder which essentially means is like if they just cut the grass than really grounded down to a pulp, that’s what a lot of grass for green powders use and the problem with that is that the molecular weights is not small enough which means that it doesn’t blend in water very easily so if you let it sit in water at actually kind of rise the top.

With a green or grass juice powder which is what we have in our blend you have a much higher quality process that goes into creating this is all raw not of it is heat processed like that and it is in smaller molecular weights to the actual ingredients which allows it’s to blend in water very quickly and very easily and it doesn’t separate and give you that kind of sludge on top and so that’s what we did all that and you know every time we can’t even keep it in stock, I mean we have to literally kind of batch order it because in our inventory never last every time you bring it out it sells in like two days.

ARI

That because your picture is on it.

YURI

That too, that probably helps.

ARI

Well okay so, and again, I love it so actually I think it taste great and I do really appreciate that it’s only with like 10 or 12 ingredients or so or not even.

YURI

It is eight ingredients.

ARI

Eight okay, so they all energize, you are not a chef right; so do you plan out this things, what taste good and what makes it feel good right, it’s a pretty simple formula.

YURI

Yeah, I am by inch a little bit lazy, I am lazy and I am a foodie, so I kind of am very adamant about my health and energy, so how do I combine all these into one and some like everything I have done over the past couple of years has been geared towards kind of helping myself, of which I know as a byproduct kind of help wipe a lot of people because I think a lot of people don’t enjoy to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, just like I don’t get into a really good tasting food, so might my parameters are like the food has to be based on fresh ingredients that take less than 15 minutes to make and most fresh take less about eight and they have to taste amazing it can just be like as quick to make and you know I am just going to shuffle it down, but it has to taste absolutely amazing, again I use my kids as my acid test, so if I can pass stuff over my kids then I think it’ll do pretty well in the marketplace and third, it has to be based on, I mean it has to really energize you because if you have sure you can make a pasta in about 10 minutes, but in

my experience I don’t really feel very energized after having pasta, I always feel like falling asleep, I actually, I have a theory that that’s why the Mediterranean cultures have to have a siesta it’s because of the heavy lunch that they have that is very often based on their kind of food, but you know so that’s the whole purpose.

ARI

So let’s talk about the book now for a second, so the book is coming out on 23 September which is my birthday.

YURI

That’s exactly why we timed it for that day.

ARI

Yeah! Thank you, very good PR planning, there are some recipes that I’ve heard of, if you can talk about that, one of them is the handball, so I will love you to talk about that? Let’s talk about that for a second, what’s a handball?

YURI

Handball is really cool, it’s a combination it’s like a healthy sweet treat, one of the whole ideas with the energy to hold premise energy is reducing the sugar coming inter-body, because you know blood sugar can wreak havoc on the energy and stuffs, but you know every now and then, it’s going to have a treat that if you can have a little bit of the sweets that is actually good for you, you aren’t going to feel very guilty about it, so you know a lot of times after dinner people want something with a little bit of sweet, what they want is a little treat throughout the day, so the hampers are really nice combination of healthy fats fiber a little bit of sweetness from honey pronominally, so were using things like you can actually do a couple different combinations of these depending on the ingredients you have, so for instance you can use like walnuts as the base and then am seeds and then you can throw in some honey to bring it altogether, you can do all of the cool things with this, I mean with that kind of base of the hamper and you kind of just put it into a food processor roll it up into little balls or in Canada temperance, we call this like ''Tibbett’s'' but this are rightly versions of them, so you get in like great sources omit of omega-3 fatty acids from the walnuts and hemp seeds, we are also getting a good source of protein because hempseed are actually one of the best forces of protein in the plant kingdom and you don’t need that many to get about 15 g of protein the 3 tablespoons we both 3 g proteins, that you had again two of this hampers, which be like really less afternoon, kind of a trip, if you need a pick me up instead of a muffin or cookie or something, you will actually be getting a good amount of protein along with fiber from the hemp seeds and the walnuts and that has also got a delay the impact of any of the this, the minimal amounts of sugar that might arise from the honey

and hemp ball is like a really great treats you know something you can have throughout the day after dinner and really good for people who worked out because you know after your work out, you are kind of like go between the gym at home, it’s a really nice quick thing to get into your body because the key with kind of a post work out nutrition is getting in simple sugars as quickly as possible after the workout to refill your muscles and if you get some protein in there as well, that’s a great thing too.

So hand balls are awesome, and they taste actually delicious too.

ARI

And so you mentioned honey a couple of times, is honey your preferred sweetener?

YURI

It depends like am not a huge fan of sweet things in general, just terms of the health consequences, but if you are to use sweeteners like in this recipe you would not be able to get away with using Stevia because the honey is required to kind of bind everything together so it depends on the nature of the recipe but if you’re doing things like when we need some really awesome muffins yesterday that were based on like using zucchini and almond flour and we used one kind of one ripe banana to sweeten things, so we used no sweetener other than one ripe banana in that recipe, those other recipes, we might use a bit of Stevia just as a little bit of kind of bring a little sweetness out and in those cases were not using things like honey or maple syrup so honey maple syrup are my two kind of go to traditional sweeteners if you want to think of them like that, I’m other than that, you should look at the alternative sweeteners that are actually somewhat good for you like aspartame maybe Stevia or xylitol are probably the two that are really good.

ARI

Yeah and I personally I like xylitol but you mentioned zucchini for muffins, a lot of people I guess don’t realize that unless you try it and when you make baked goods with zucchini leftovers or even carrots, but zucchini particularly, there are so moist.

YURI

Oh my God!

ARI

It is like the most amazing thing.

YURI

You actually, it is really because you can’t do it it’s other people when they’re baking they do the toothpick test or the fork test, where you put the fork in a muffin of the cake and it comes out nothing on it, you know it’s done, it doesn’t really work the same as zucchini, because you could burn the crap out of those muffins and there will still be moist inside so it’s such an unfair advantage if you really like moist baked goods, which they I think they’ll should be good as they would be, its actually good for you as well using zucchini or even at the pulp of like carrots as you mention, beats those are really sneaky ways to get some good veggies and that also bring some delicious kind of moisture to your muffins or cakes and stuff like that.

ARI

Yeah honestly, I have to hope on that for a second, it is the most amazing thing, because I make these spinach banana muffins for my kids that they are obsessed with and they have a lot of times, I put zucchini in them also and it’s a shocking like you almost think like it’s fake because they just look like some kind of preservative in here that is making it so properly moist so and of course as a byproduct, you know you can juice cucumbers and all other juices, depends on the one you are using to produce the sort of that you can just through in with the muffins.

So one more, what is another recipe that people love?

YURII think one of the most amazing mind blowing recipes are the nori wraps because they’re so powerful, they are so simple and the nutrition they provide is off the charts, though a lot of people so here you don’t recommend bread and I don’t because I don’t think there is any health or redeeming qualities to bread at all other than the fact that we been so indoctrinated from birth to grow up on sandwiches and stuff like that, though nori wraps are something we make at home probably several times a week because how easy they are to make and the thing is when you make a sandwich the sandwich the bread for instance is a shuttle for crappy things to come into your body for the most part, am not saying this is the case, but if you make your sandwich, usually you are going to have like you know cold cuts and stuff like that but if you’re making nori wraps if you’re making a wrap, so nori is the sheet that is a sewer that is used for making sushi and it contains copious amounts of trace minerals that we never get in our diet which is really important for overall health.

So simply by eating nori, even if it is eating it by itself, it would be tremendous juice health benefits but because of the nature of health, you know how it is, it’s a sheet and you can put stuff in there roll it up and you can make your own sushi or your own wraps, so you putting things instead of you like peanut butter and jam which, what the taste are you getting there; or cold cuts and then cheese and stuff like that when putting in like sliced up avocado, sliced up mango, sprouts, cucumber, put in some sour, like sprouted lentils, it’s amazing and you can actually see, you can make, you can do all kinds of the cool things and you can make like vegan sushi if you wanted to this type of thing we can cut up, you can roll it up and cut up into little pieces of sushi

or you can make a little more of a substantial filling and just roll it up with the nori and some other wrap.

Now, if just the kind of a little tidbit, if you make a more substantial wrap, you can actually buy rice paper which is probably found in outing most health food stores and you just did in water for about a minute or two and use the rice paper as the base but put the nori on top of that and then roll everything up and keep it together that much more effectively, but it is so good, it’s and you can do all sorts of cool things with this, you can start playing around with different vegetables, you can make like all of things and put stuff in there really delicious it takes no time at all to make and it’s we have had a lot of people can of initial beta testers go through the book and across the board, like they’re blown away by the nori wraps, this one lady who is a mother of seven kids that one of her sons was addicted to hotdogs was actually starting to not want hotdogs anymore, instead he wanted to have nori wraps, so that was the big win, so they are awesome.

ARI

That is a big one and then, what’s your sort of feeling on fitness like how often do you work out, and you know also you’re a father of three also, how do you fit it in and how do you recommend people get the workout?

YURI

Yeah, I am really believe in terms of exercise, less is more clear and I realize this as a former pro soccer player and then, I worked as a strength and condition coach at the University for seven years and I was very adamant about getting into our coaching staff, the idea that guys we cannot crush these guys with two days sessions in blazing heat in the summertime, that’s a recipe for disaster and I saw this firsthand when I was playing pro soccer France and I was playing alongside some of the top players that are playing the champions league as well as the French national team and one of the things I quickly realize was that, it’s not what you do with your workouts, it’s what you do with your recovery, that is the most important thing and I didn’t know this at the time that I used to train twice a day in the week, you know I was ridiculous how much I used to train, but it was no wonder by the time was 24 my body was burned down and so now I probably workout, I would say maybe three, if I were to four times a week that’s really sad that would be a miracle, a lot of my workout are now in my backyard because I get out of the luxury gym I used to use, it’s not that I want to, so I guess I love being creative with my workouts and so I do a lot of cattle belt work, I love health sprints and actually, I have been recording this and am looking at a 50 pound weight fats that I have and the elevation training mask, I don’t think I will ever use that.

ARI

Yeah!

YURI

You know it mimics attitude and so it deprives oxygen coming into your body, so a couple days ago I was like am not going to the gym, because I have so much to do, so am going to go up and down stairs for 15 minutes with 50 pound weighted vest and the elevation training mask and there’s nothing closer to feeling like you are going to die than doing that and so it is getting, but we have been led to believe that if you are not working here for a long period of time very often, you are not doing anything and I think when you look at a lot of you where you work out nowadays especially the ones we of lately that infomercials were like intense workouts and 90 minutes seven days a week, you are going to crush your body and you are going to get great results sure, but you can’t do that consistently for the rest of your life and so I believe intensity is very important but it needs to be its yeaning yang, like you have to buffer that with adequate recovery and you cannot it’s if intensity and duration are inversely related if you’re working intensely, you cannot last that long, it’s like you can’t sprint for more than 10 or 12 seconds until your body slows down, and it’s the same thing with the way you exercise you have to have those recovery in off days, you allow your body to bounce back strong.

ARI

I just couldn’t agree more, so and of course and you know this, but I think that a diet that is very alkaline and rich in greens is very supportive of recovery so.

YURI

Huge, that’s one of the things that is not as well scientifically supported as I think it should be, but it anecdotally makes a huge success.

ARI

When I was training for Ironman, I was vegetarian and I noticed my recovery was just superfast, I mean like it was amazing and then as I included more animal proteins, it wasn’t that I didn’t feel good, it’s just that I noticed that I was not recovering as quickly so and I don’t know if it has to do with anything of that of the alkaline and diet may help counteract the effects of lactic acid but it’s is something interesting.

YURI

Yeah! I think there’s some in the one I talked in the books at the foundation of energy is really what’s happening in the blood and treating alkaline from food, you are essentially allowing your blood to be in a possible state and our bodies naturally alkaline but it’s the city by function, though when we exercise, we prismatic acid our body has the shuttle that out in some of our muscle fiber can actually use lactic acid to produce energy that’s why after an intense workout,

going for a late walk will do some kind of a recovery is a really good idea, because it helps to the shell some of that out, but if you’re producing acid from your workouts and you are eating an acidic diet, lots of grains, lots of animal products, your making things worse because now you are taxing your body's buffering systems and that’s only going to slow everything down, so if you can bring more alkalinity namely kind of through plants because of the minerals they gave you which are alkaline you allow your body to speed up the process. So just a quick example, calcium is one of the most important buffers, alkaline buffers in the body, so if your body is producing a lot of acid, it’s going to use calcium to buffer that acid, if you are not getting enough calcium from your diet, am not telling you to be drinking milk, because milk contains like calcium, but it can also contains more phosphorus which inhibits calcium absorption the first place, but one of the best source of calcium organic vegetables, so if you eat more greens, you are getting more calcium into your body and you are allowing that calcium to now assist in the buffering process of acid that you are producing during workouts, it only makes sense that you are hoping to recover plus plenty foods or anti-inflammatories they are going to help mitigate information that is caused by working out the first place, so it’s a win-win for sure.

ARI

So now the last question that I like to ask on this interview is, what are your top three personal tips for being more effective, and that can be from anything, and again I have to keep bringing up the you are a father of three, you have done all the stuffs of, what are your top three conditions for people to be more effective?

YURI

First one is to make sure that you are priority number one, you have to put yourself at the top of the total pot and as a parent, I realizes this even more because you know you’ve kids, you obviously have families, and they are our very important but if you are not taking care of ourselves, like we are not able to give more to them, so you have to make time for yourself having a morning routine that gives you your space for time to whatever might be whether it’s to reflect to Journal, to write to think having a time for you in the morning for me is huge, I haven’t been consistent with this but I will like to but I know that when I have that morning time for myself before the kids are up and it’s a huge difference for the rest my day, so the first thing.

The second thing is to only spend time doing what you’re great at doing and this is something that took me a long time to realize by the last couple years I have really moved away from like creating my own webpages and have stuff that there’s no way on earth I should be doing to only doing things I’m amazing at doing, which is essentially content creation, marketing and connecting with other people, like managing my team, little tasks stuff like that, I have no business doing and I don’t you want to know about it and that’s I think kind of creative type worried for anyone like you have had to focus on your unique abilities or core strengths.

And the third thing would really be, I mean obviously would be exercise and eating a clean diet because it’s eating crapping and you are not moving, you are going to be stagnant, I mean you are not going to be feeling good, you are not going to have a mental clarity and I can have the of the energy to get stuff done, so those are the three big words from me.

ARI

Those are awesome. So where is the best place for people to find out more we are going to put links to show more, find the book find you everything.

YURI

So they can find out about the book@alldayenergydiet.com Mill ward is really cool stuff for this initial biologically so if she has a check that out you can do so, you can visit my blog which is yurielkaim.com, and then am on Facebook as well so yeah1

ARI

Yuri, Thank you so much for your time, it was awesome and I can’t wait to try myself some ham balls.

YURI

Absolutely, thanks Ari.