The Gut Brain Connection with Jaime Filer [Ep. 62]

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This is the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury, and this is episode 62. The gut brain connection with Jamie filer. I loved this conversation with Jamie. This was right at my alley. She is a personal trainer and works with women to achieve long lasting results. I think primarily because she doesn't just start and stop with the gym part. She is well-versed on these kinds of topics that are so important to the overall health of women, especially. And what we discuss today is that gut brain connection. She provides several tips on how we can support that neurotransmitter production in the gut, and just generally support the second brain. That is our gut. It's far more important than you might think. So listen in and choose at least one thing to implement this week.

Lisa: 0:54

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. I'm so excited to have Jamie Filer here on the podcast today. She is a personal trainer and actually all kinds of stuff. I'm going to let her introduce herself first, before I make assumptions about what her title is. So take it away, Jamie, tell us who you are, what you do, how you came to this work, and we'd love to hear all that first.

Jaime: 1:41

Sure. I mean, I guess personal trainer would probably be the first, descriptor that I would use for myself, because as we were discussing offline, it's really one of the only careers I've ever known. It's the only one I've wanted to know. And, and again, as I said to you before, it was, it's more of a calling. So how I came. To be a personal trainer is I just I fell in love with the gym. I fell in love with feeling strong and empowered and I didn't understand why if I found something that made me feel this good, why everyone else wasn't doing that. Right. Uh, you know, if you discover a fantastic movie or a great restaurant or like, I don't know a really soft comforter. You're going to tell people, you know about it, right? So that's how I felt about the gym. So it just so happens that there's actually a career where you can go around spreading the gospel of fitness and it's called being a personal trainer, but I'm 36 years old. I live in Florida with my wife, Katie. I moved from Toronto, Canada to Hollywood, Florida, and then we crossed coasts and we now live in St. Petersburg.

Lisa: 2:44

Okay. I'm not super familiar with Florida, but it all sounds nice to me. So

Jaime: 2:49

It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous here.

Lisa: 2:52

great. Okay. Well, Jamie contacted me because one of the things she loves to talk about is the gut brain connection. Which I find so fascinating, we often hear the gut called the second brain, which we're going to discuss and part of the reason for that is because so much of your serotonin and other neurotransmitters are actually made in the gut, which is why gut health is so very, very important. So let's start there. why is the gut called? The second brain

Jaime: 3:27

Ah, so really interesting. One of, you know, I don't want to start spewing facts. I'd love to come at it more from the psychology, but the reason that it's called the second brain is because the body as a whole, there are twice as many fibers that go from the body to the brain as there are that go from the brain to the body. Literally everything you do with your body, from the things you put in it, to the way you move it, to how you treat it, gets sent to the brain. Right. So your gut has nerve endings and it has signaling, uh, chemicals that tell the brain, you know, we like what Jamie's putting in here. We don't like what Jamie's putting in here. And it essentially tells the brain how to perform as a result of what it is. It's your. ingesting. And again, we're talking pills. We're talking, we could be talking drugs. We're talking food. Obviously that's the big one. Um, but your stomach lining is just so susceptible to picking up everything and then telling the brain how it feels about what's inside.

Lisa: 4:35

Great. And go ahead with more psychology or science on that. I know you were like, I don't want to get too technical, but like, let's do

Jaime: 4:42

let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's funny because there's an entirely new, I guess you could call it a discipline called nutritional psychology. And it's essentially what we're talking about. It's when I have, right, we all know when I have sugar, when I give my children sugar, what is it maybe 30 minutes to two hours later, they're on the floor, they're napping. Or they're what, whiny, maybe complaining, they don't feel as good, their stomach hurts. But like, look at all of those different descriptors. We've got a little bit of psychology in there, right? They crash, they don't, they don't feel good in here. But also we've got the physiology, right? Their belly aches. As adults, we don't come out of that patterning. We will still eat things that make us... fall asleep within 10 minutes. Not a great sign. We should eat foods that give us energy rather than drain it. We eat foods that we know bloat us, right? Even my wife should probably not have ice cream. And yet we just, we can't stay away, but that's, it's what we do because.

Lisa: 5:45

I find that so often people are like, Oh, but I just like, how do you not, how do you not eat ice cream? I'm like, you notice that it bloats you and then you decide that's no good. Why do we

Jaime: 5:55

Yeah, right. But again, it's, it's, of course it bloats you and we don't like that feeling and we don't like how it looks and we don't, some of us may not like what it does to the scale the next day, but imagine what's happening in your brain when you eat a food that's doing that to your body.

Lisa: 6:11

again then if, if it's like, okay, it's creating this negative impact, what signals are, is the brain getting that drive us to eat it again the next time?

Jaime: 6:21

Great question. You mentioned serotonin, right? Serotonin production. The reason we keep going after it is dopamine. The body has four essentially, we call them happy hormones, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin. Dopamine is the quick hit. Dopamine is the drug. Same thing when you get a a notification on your phone or someone pops up, you know, Lisa's been mentioned in a comment on Facebook. You're like, I'm so curious. A text message pops up. We have to answer it right away. Drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, food. That is why we keep going for the ice cream despite knowing how bad it makes us feel and the long term, short term ramifications of it. Because in the moment, it's our drugs. Our brain produces a quick hit of dopamine that says, all right, it's, it's fine. Just this time.

Lisa: 7:17

So, typically, I describe that to my clients as what's happening, like, when we're tasting it. That dopamine is coming primarily from the taste, the texture, like, what's going on like, in the mouth before it really hits the gut. Would you agree with that?

Jaime: 7:32

Oh my gosh. A hundred percent. It lights up the reward center of the brain, but also do you know how many different nutritional scientists. and nutritional psychologists have been put to work creating that mouthfeel, that texture, and that taste, right? There are probably as many scientists working for Coca Cola as there are at NASA. They're just figuring out what your brain and your mouth like to get you consuming more. so yeah, 100%. I agree with you A lot of people and a lot of money went into making ice cream tastes like that.

Lisa: 8:06

And the thing about dopamine is it's also not only is this the feel good, but it's also the, message, this will keep us alive. So like in hunter gatherer days, when we came upon a field of berries, they were very tasty. And our brain is like, Oh, we should eat as many of these as possible because this will keep us alive because we got so much dopamine from that. And the problem is now we've taken those berries. We've concentrated them down at a concentrated flower. And. We have a chocolate brownie Sunday, right? And so we get this concentrated hit of dopamine. Our brain is like, Oh, very essential for survival, right? Like it's so much more. I mean, I want to get dopamine from, um, a balanced dinner, right? I want to get dopamine from a salad and roasted potatoes and, you know, like food, right? And we do, we get some, our brain is like, yes, this is good food. We should eat this again, but it's that concentrated food that gives us so much more.

Jaime: 9:09

absolutely. We call it in the industry hyper palatable. Your palate really likes it, right? If we look at Lay's potato chips or Pringles compared to I A baked potato, obviously the Lay's and the Pringles are highly palatable. You and I could probably finish a bag of Lay's, but finishing an entire plate full of potatoes? No, because mother nature just didn't take palatability into account. I also want to say that it has evolved over the years. I mean, my mom looks at a lot of the foods or my grandmother even would have looked at a lot of the foods that we have now and she'd be, she'd say, I don't recognize this. Right. And that's two generations removed. So our caveman ancestors would probably, they would die out because they wouldn't touch the stuff that you can find, um, you know, in grocery stores these days.

Lisa: 10:03

Yeah. And unfortunately, I mean, that that's true. Like they wouldn't recognize it like visually as food and all of that, but our brains really haven't evolved enough to like make the distinction because we're still kind of working on that dopamine pathway.

Jaime: 10:20

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, Katie and I went to Costa Rica in March and we stayed at, uh, well, we ate empanadas that were made by a woman who grew everything herself. She's so isolated from the nearest group. Didn't taste like an empanada, Lisa, that I've ever had in my life. And then for dessert. I'm putting this in air quotes for people listening. She served us fruit and that fruit didn't taste like even the fruit that I would buy cut up at the grocery store.

Lisa: 10:52

Like, in an amazing way,

Jaime: 10:54

in an amazing way. I mean, I know I'm going to be careful to say that there, there were certain fruits where I was like, wow, this mango is incredible, but then I would have an orange and I said that tastes dull. That is not what my public's. Or my all the oranges taste like it is missing flavor.

Lisa: 11:11

Mm hmm.

Jaime: 11:12

So you're right. Like I think to an extent, even my brain is conditioned to expect highly sugar palatable, even, even when it comes to fruit.

Lisa: 11:22

Mm hmm. Yeah. So, um, when we are thinking about less in the mouth, when we're talking about that dopamine, but more in the gut, what can we do to say, I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse, but like increase the serotonin production down there, you know, because we want to have as much of that as we can. And I know a lot of that is produced there. Like what can we do to support That second brain that is the gut.

Jaime: 11:51

Yeah. So there, there are obviously a number of things we can do. Uh, I got top three. Number one, go for a walk after meals. You know, a lot of us tend to, feel sleepy after we eat. Sometimes it's based on the quantity, right? We eat too much, we get sleepy or we eat the wrong things, we get sleepy. But when you go out, even if it's for a 10 minute walk outside and you get that moving, insulin can pick up the glucose in a more efficient way. So the body uses those nutrients and the, the nutrients and the blood go about your entire body rather than just staying in the gut. If you were to go from sitting down for a meal to sitting down on the couch to watch Netflix. The other benefit that you'll get specifically regarding serotonin is the vitamin D, right? As soon as you go outside, if you've had lunch and then you go for a walk or breakfast and then go for a walk outside, again, you're getting that vitamin D and serotonin. The other thing is try to abide by the, I mean, most experts will say three ingredient. I allow a little bit more, we'll say five ingredient rule. Try to keep the foods in your house. containing five ingredients or less. Like there is no reason your peanut butter should have more than peanuts in it. Right? That's right. We say, and it's, it's funny, but that's so true. Like how did we bastardize peanut butter so badly? It is the butter that comes from peanuts. Period. Full stop. So take a look at the ingredients that you're eating and try to try to dumb them down. and then the other one is I call it a mood food journal. Keep a log of right by right by your desk or right by wherever it is. You eat your meals and log how you feel after certain meals. You know, breakfast was, uh, an egg sandwich from Dunkin Donuts or McDonald's. How'd you feel after? You were hungry again an hour later. Lunch was a Caesar salad from the cafeteria. the Caesar dressing didn't quite agree with your gut. Let's write that down, right? What happened to your digestion after Caesar dressing? And then evening, you did whatever. You got sleepy immediately after eating. Um, you're writing that down too. And now we can start to recognize patterns. I need breakfast that has fiber so I feel fuller longer. I need a dressing that's maybe based in an oil and vinegar rather than a cream. And then at dinner, I need to go for a walk immediately after I eat, or I'm going to pass out watching television.

Lisa: 14:26

Perfect. My listeners know I'm a huge fan of food journaling, and this is just like such a great way to add to it. my clients plan ahead what they're going to eat for the day, just like a quick, just exactly what you're describing, just a jot down of what they're eating. But I'm always like. Even if you're not doing that, or even if you miss planning for that day, or if you're just starting, food journaling is such valuable information. It is absolutely, hands down, the most important nutritional study you will ever read. It does not matter if you read... A hundred other studies about what's good for you or what these people eat or what that diet did for these people. You have to know what it does for you. You have to know what these foods do in your body. And just like your wife, if she wrote down every time I eat ice cream, I feel this way. She might be convinced ice cream, right. That's, I mean, honestly, that's really how I realized I was lactose intolerant is because I really started paying attention to and, and really journaling about, okay, when do I feel this nausea? Oh, it's the dairy. It's not the cereal. It's not when I had like milk and cookies. It's not that I ate too many cookies. Like I remember one time thinking, okay, I'm just going to have one cookie and see how I feel,

Jaime: 15:43

hmm.

Lisa: 15:44

but I always had a little cup of milk with it.

Jaime: 15:47

Ah.

Lisa: 15:48

And I'm like, Oh, it's not the cookie. It's the milk. And so, yeah, food journaling not only is going to tell you what foods agree with you, but then including that mood part is really like an extra

Jaime: 16:04

yeah, 100%. I mean, not just I know I keep coming back to the, uh, the lethargy, but I know some clients who immediately after sugar, it'll be like, I just shortened their fuse down to nothing. They now they're on edge. So they'll have sugar as part of their lunch to help get them through the rest of their business day. But anyone that comes near their office. Better come in with like a shield of armor because this, this client was on edge and that's what sugar did to them. so yeah, there are so many different moods you could be feeling after different foods. So I totally agree with, with what you do.

Lisa: 16:41

So a common, mood, if you will, is anxiety and stress. Right. It's, it's so common with, our age group. I, I mean, I'm 10 years older than you, but you know, late thirties, forties, fifties, and especially I talk a lot about this because it is the age group that I think listens is this perimenopause menopause time and reducing our stress is. One of the most critical things that we can do.

Jaime: 17:12

Mm hmm.

Lisa: 17:13

it seems like there's a lot we can do with nutrition. And with this, you know, gut brain thing. Do you see that, like, anxiety or stress recorded when you see these food journals of your clients?

Jaime: 17:25

gosh, of course, of course. And I think that it should be said that, uh, again, processed foods perpetuate the anxiety and the depression. Again, that sugar crash puts you in a mood whereby it feels like there's a gray cloud over your head. It's no different than depression, right? It literally feeds off it. So we definitely same, same as you, as soon as someone comes on board with us. I mean, of course we're going to give them the training program, the customized nutrition, this and that. But that's not our focus because the truth is Lisa, the majority of people know what to do. They know they should be moving and they know they should be eating clean, but we might be the first people that have ever told them the reason you're hanging onto fat around your belly is because you don't sleep enough.

Lisa: 18:13

Mm. Yeah.

Jaime: 18:14

So you mentioned, you know, stress mitigation and decreasing stress. Stress and sleep are the first things we focus on. Do you have a nighttime routine? How is your sleep hygiene? Right? As important as your dental hygiene, your sleep hygiene, and again, also without enough sleep, your defenses are down. Your immune system is weakened. Your, your mood is Again, hairpin trigger in terms of anxiety, in terms of yelling at other people, we'll call it aggression. So, what you eat, you know, if that keeps you up later, because you had ice cream before bed or cookies before bed, now we're pushing our sleep, now we're waking up at the same time, but not in a great mood, we did that because of food.

Lisa: 18:58

Yeah. I think, too, when you're talking about. This like mood reaction to some of our foods, some of that too is happening with the way I teach my clients, the model you're also getting some, some thoughts about what you ate, you're thinking, Oh, I shouldn't have eaten that. I know better. And that is compounding the effects. The actual food is having on you because you're also sort of beating yourself up, like, okay, we've overeaten. Let's not punch ourselves in the face. About it. Right. Let's, let's not add insult to injury by criticizing yourself and speaking to yourself in a way that is not going to cause improvement later. We, we always think like, Oh, well, if I just hate myself enough, I'll work harder in the gym or I'll eat better, but I promise like you cannot hate yourself. Then I've tried it. Believe me.

Jaime: 19:50

Yep. Yep.

Lisa: 19:52

But I think when you're saying like, watching what these foods do to you, I think also like. Watching your thoughts about that to like watch how your brain reacts when you're feeling crappy watch that you don't say, Well, here I go again. I'm never going to lose weight because then those thoughts are going to compound the

Jaime: 20:13

Absolutely. Absolutely. And to an extent, you will manifest more of them and more behavior, right? Cause as soon as we start thinking in terms of always and never, you don't even give yourself a chance. So I, I couldn't agree more and our, our nutrition. So we kind of have three pillars of our program. It's training, nutrition, and accountability. Our nutrition program is actually called the nutrition reset method. Almost specifically for that reason. So many of us were given these awful, destructive, hurtful ideas about food and body image from our mothers, from the media, from, you know, again, given our age supermodels. back in the day. we aim to reset all of that. We want to reset your relationship with the scale. We want to reset your relationship with counting calories. Cause of course a lot of people have, Oh my God, the last time I did that, I gave myself an eating disorder and we're like, It doesn't have to be like that. and of course resetting how you talk to yourself when you see yourself naked in the mirror. Right. so yeah, a hundred percent agreed.

Lisa: 21:20

Yeah. we talked a little bit as well about. Like not waiting till we're feeling really ready mentally to, I was telling Jamie when we got on, I was a little bit frazzled. I was like, I got to figure out how to get my daughter to school, like school just started. And now I don't have my older daughter. She graduated last year. So I'm like, Oh. Now I've got to drive this one. And I'm like, how am I going to fit my workout in? And I literally like came to this interview with wet hair. Like, so I'm feeling really frazzled. And I was saying, you know, we were talking about how women in, in our age range often are just feeling stressed, feeling so busy. And we think I'll wait until I get this part. Under control or I'll wait till, you know, the kids go back to school or the kids are older. I thought I was going to have more time when the kids got older. Like, no, then you just spend your entire weekend at water polo and volleyball tournaments. I guarantee

Jaime: 22:18

That's funny. Yes. Yes. Okay. I see where you're going with this. So I'll tell you my, my strategy. And the first thing I do is I ask my clients as, or I guess the prospects, cause my clients would never say this. No, I'm kidding. Um, I say, would you like the success that we have together to be long term? And they're like, yeah, of course. Like I'm hiring you because this is a sustainable process. I said, great. Do you believe that you'll never be busy for the rest of your life? And they laugh and they're like, of course not. Like I'm going to be busy again. And I said, okay, well then wouldn't it make more sense if we start? when you're busy so that you'll have the most support during this time. And then if you learn how to do it when you're busy, then when it gets quiet, oh my God, it'll be smooth sailing. You will be infinitely more successful. And then when it inevitably gets busy again, you will have the tools that you learned when we first started to navigate that turmoil. So why wouldn't we start, like it almost makes more sense to start when you're busy than when things get quiet again.

Lisa: 23:30

I had a male client actually that, started with me during tax season and he's an accountant and he's like, I am tired of gaining weight during tax season. basically he was like against my better judgment.

Jaime: 23:44

I'm starting now.

Lisa: 23:45

I mean, he didn't use those words, but it was kind of, I think how he felt like this seems ridiculous that I'm going to do this, but it was so great for him to be actually motivated by this highly busy time that he's like, I'm tired of using food to get through this time. And so it was really fun to work with him during that super busy time. Or when I've worked with clients, like through the holidays, I'm sure you've done that too. Like, you know, people think, well, I'll wait till after the holidays. I can't lose weight during, and I'm like, oh, but you can, you know, you can start working on VO two max. All that can be done during the

Jaime: 24:25

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you said. there are no precedents or rather there's only one precedent as soon as you navigate one holiday, you've navigated all of the birthdays anniversaries and vacations, you will ever take as soon as you've navigated. I don't know, God forbid, losing a parent, you've navigated all sad events. That you will ever have to navigate, right? As soon as you've moved a house, you've also transitioned to a different job. You've also, you know, had sent your kids off to college. There's only one precedent to be set, and then you have the tools in your toolbox for you to pull out next time that happens, because it will happen again.

Lisa: 25:10

I love that. I, I have so many changes coming up this fall and I'm like, yeah, and we've done this like,

Jaime: 25:17

you've already had them.

Lisa: 25:18

yeah. I've got, you know, a daughter going to college. I've got a son that's getting married. I've got two other nephews getting married, like all more travel this fall than I've ever done. And I'm just like, I'm here for it. So I love that idea that once you've done one, then you can just use that knowledge to do it again.

Jaime: 25:38

Yep. 100%.

Lisa: 25:40

Great. Is there anything else, Jamie, you want to, teach our audience before I let you go anything we didn't hit on that you are really passionate about?

Jaime: 25:49

Definitely. Yes. I would say that something that a lot of people miss is that fitness meets you where you're at. you don't meet fitness. You know, some people will resonate or will enjoy a Zumba class. And that's their pace. Some people, it's CrossFit. But I think everyone, at least when they get started, thinks that fitness is a 10, 000 foot mountain that they have to climb. And it's not. It's literally the step. Right in front of you and then taking 5, 000 more of them before the end of the day. That's all fitness is. It doesn't have to look like what I do or what Lisa does to keep herself fit. It's, it's what's going to keep you active. And I think again, similar to the mental health thing. That's the other thing that gets a lot of people in trouble. They think that fitness has to look like XYZ. But it doesn't. It looks like what's going to keep you happy and moving.

Lisa: 26:48

perfect. I love that. There's so many ways to be fit.

Jaime: 26:51

That's it.

Lisa: 26:53

Yeah. I'm always like, Oh, maybe I should add that fun piece of equipment to my gym because I work out in my gym and I'm always like, Oh, maybe I should do that. I wonder if I have space for that. Like, there's just so many fun tools that you can add and create variability. So yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for being here. I really appreciate it. Is there something you want to share as far as how people can get in touch with you or find you on the internet?

Jaime: 27:18

Absolutely. I actually have a free anti anxiety or anti gym anxiety e book. that we can put in the notes. But the best way to get in touch with me is actually through Instagram. You can find me at J a I M and then the numbers nine one. So@jaim91, I respond to all of my direct messages and I look forward to connecting with your audience.

Lisa: 27:40

Perfect. Thanks again.

Jaime: 27:41

My pleasure.

27:43

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