Physical and Mental Fitness with Jorge Cruise

DR. MIKE MORENO: All right, guys, well, welcome to another interesting episode. I’ve got to tell you, I’m so excited because one of my heroes is who we’re going to talk to you today. You know, we tried to just get through this entire multi-trillion dollar industry of wellness. There are so much stuff out there. We don’t know what’s good, bad, indifferent and the idea is really to kind of separate fact from fiction and, you know, lotions and potions and what really works and what doesn’t, at least in our opinion.

I got to say I’m really honored because I’ve been following this guy for a long, long time. I feel like we’re brothers from another because we have such similarities in a lot of things. We are fortunate to have Jorge Cruz today. And let me tell you, Jorge is a celebrity fitness trainer, a diet expert and a New York Times bestselling author. He’s worked with everybody: Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, Tony Robbins and President Clinton, just to name a few. We don’t have a ton of time. He’s built his career around banishing belly fat and he says, your waistline is your lifeline, so please welcome Jorge Cruz. Jorge, how are you today?

JORGE CRUISE: I’m doing great, hey, thank you so much. It’s an honor to be on the show and I’m a huge fan of your work as well, and I know we’ve crossed paths, I’m sure, and all these many years I’ve been doing it. God, I can’t believe it since I was on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1998 and then I had a book come out in 2021. So, it’s been over 20 years, but a huge fan of your work and your show, so thank you for having me on the show.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Well, thank you so much. Like I said, it’s amazing because so I know you’re from Mexico City, is that correct?

JORGE CRUISE: Well, I was born in Mexico City. My dad’s American and my mother is Latina. She was a Colombian gal, but her business, she was an actress dancer. She did television. So, she was kind of famous in Mexico City, in the 1940s and 50s. She passed ten years ago, but so when my dad was overseas, they were living in Santa Monica. My mom flew to Mexico to see her mom and kind of be with her people. [SPEAKING SPANISH] So, yes, I was born in Mexico City and my sister, I have a wonderful sister, a little younger than me she was born in California, but yeah, no, I grew up speaking both languages. For me, you know, like most Latinos, food was love and so I was a chubby little kid and an emotional eater.

I had a kind of a crazy childhood with my grandmother my mom’s mom, living with us from Colombia, and she was a hard lady to deal with, but she loved me in her own way, and it led me to overeat, I think. So, I wouldn’t be doing this without, as they say, as Oprah says, life happens for us, not to us, right?

DR. MIKE MORENO: Well, well said. So, you know, let’s get into this and you mention emotional eating, gosh, we can spend hours on that alone. It’s so much that goes with that, but let’s talk about the current times and unfortunately, these current times are amongst us in the presence of a pandemic. So, you know, we’re all stuck at home and everybody’s got their new terms for gaining all this weight, the Covid 19 and this and that. So, you know, what do we do? Where do we start with this? Let’s just break it down a bit.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah, you know, I have a really simple philosophy. You know, I always tell people that I work with, whether it’s a celebrity or whether it’s someone from one of my books or websites, that the thing I learned that got me to kind of change my direction is that by the time I was 19/20, I was 40, some pounds overweight. I was like 220 pounds, and I have pictures of my fat self on my website and they’re out there if you Google Jorge Cruz.

What got me to change, though, was pain. Now I had to connect it to something that was pretty deep in me. My dad at the time was diagnosed with prostate cancer. So that scared us, and it scared me even more when they said, “hey, you know, it could run in the family and you could have cancer as well.” So, for me, it really was pain, and you know, the person that wrote the introduction to my first book in 2001 was one of my clients and dearest friends, Anthony Robbins.

He got me to realize how important we can use pain to motivate us. So, I would say for anyone listening at home, if they are gaining 15/20 pounds, you know, this can be a good thing. You know, you can get to that point, but if you’re settled and you’re like, oh, whatever, then you may not be in that place. But there’s always a way to kind of stir the pot and we can talk about that because I have people that come to me and they know better. They know they want maybe it’s intermittent fasting they want to do because I’m a big advocate of that, or they want to do interval training. They’ve seen the results on the Revenge Body Show with the Kardashians, or they saw my work with the New York Housewives, Dorinda or Sonya or Brooke Burke in Malibu, and they’ve seen all the results. They’ve seen people lose two or three pounds of belly fat a week and they want it, but they’re like, oh, I don’t know if I can do this. I only have, you know, so many hours to eat, what is this 16 hours of fasting? Or I have to do interval training? Or that sounds scary. I can’t go to the gym, so they have a lot of concerns.

So, I often take them through a process to kind of jolt them a little bit to really realize if you want this, there’s a way to do it. We can talk about that because we can share that with people, I think it really gives people what I would call like an emotional edge. I think a lot of people lose that, you know, and it’s not our fault. It really is. I mean, you sit home, and you eat what most Americans do, a lot of carbs and a lot of sugar, and you gain this weight, you end up feeling depressed, you start feeling overwhelmed and the weight piles on, you know.

Right now, with COVID, I mean, there aren’t any gyms open, you know? I have certain clients that have used this to get in the best shape of their life, then like you said, there are some people that have gotten into bad shape back into you. They’ve gained 20 or 30 pounds and most of my clients over 50, you know, 50-, 60- and 70-year-olds and. It’s totally doable. I mean, you just have to make a decision. I call it thinking fit and we can get into it if you’d like.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, and I cannot agree with you more, and I tell people, you know, I’ve been working with patients now for 25 years and I tell people, Listen, tell me what you can do, not what you can’t and tell me what you’ve done, not what you failed to do.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I think it’s important because everybody’s different. We all have different needs. Socioeconomic situations. Culture is a huge thing. You know, my family’s from Mexico City so, you know, we grew up with the tortillas and the rice and the beans and all these things.

JORGE CRUISE: And food is love. So, it was a big deal, if you if you don’t eat it, you insult the family,

DR. MIKE MORENO: Exactly.

JORGE CRUISE: You know?

DR. MIKE MORENO: We don’t want to insult anybody.

JORGE CRUISE: No. Oh my gosh. You have a war and it’s like a telenovela soap opera and then you might as well just eat to keep everyone happy and so one way or another you’re eating. I’m not saying eating is bad, but we’ve made food… There’s a funny quote I heard not that long ago was this whole idea that food is the most overused form of, and mainly sugar, the most overused form of drug out there and the most underutilized form of drug is exercise, you know, because people give up, but again, it’s not our fault, in my opinion, really, people always do the best they can. I’ve been through divorce, two divorces. I’ve been through my mom and dad passing. My dad just passed last year doing Christmas Eve, so I’ve been through a lot of heavy stuff. I’ve had books to really good where no one on the New York Times and I’ve had books bomb, you know. I’ve written over 30, so it happens.

Life happens. If you let one bad thing happen, one divorce, one death, one bad book strike you down, you could be stuck there. I’ve worked with people that had have lost loved ones because of suicide, and so it can get really crazy. So, the emotional this thinking fit is really powerful. It really can shift people’s ability to believe in themselves. You know, I think that’s what it’s really about.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So I know your big acronym guy because of OMAD so I created an acronym, call you TME, which is, Think Move Eat?

JORGE CRUISE: Oh.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So let’s just talk a little bit about: Think fit. Move fit. Eat fit.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah, that’s perfect.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Like a rundown.

JORGE CRUISE: That’s kind of the triad of health that I’ve developed and you know, for me, if I’m working with someone like Steve Harvey, for example, or Brooke Burke in Malibu or Dorinda Medley in New York or whoever I’m working with, the first thing I try to get them to realize is that upon rising, the very first thing you think about the very first thing you focus in on, whatever it is, you take the mask off, hopefully you’re sleeping good and the first thing that enters your mind should not be the news. It should be really what you want. So, I tell people really that if you want that success to think fit, you need an affirmation.

I usually have a client; any client will write in their own words on some sort of poster board the words “I am capable” and it’s such a simple affirmation. I am capable, right? It’s super simple, but I was the kind of Latin boy. I was a mama’s boy, and I was the kind of Latin boy where my mother did everything and my grandmother did everything for me and as the man of the house was, my dad was always traveling or working, I wasn’t allowed to touch a thing.

So not that I wouldn’t have, but just I wasn’t allowed to, so they cooked. They did everything, and then I wasn’t physical because I was overweight. So, for me, I started to believe I wasn’t that capable of doing anything. I almost became codependent on my mother and my grandmother, where I felt like, Oh God, can you help me? Oh, I need to move this. Can you help me? Can you do everything? I relied on everyone and I lost that. I never had that edge. I think Tony Robbins, when I worked with him, we both helped each other. He got me to realize how powerful making a decision could be. So, I tell people upon rising say something to yourself like I am capable and my podcast show, I really dedicate an affirmation every single day. We do it Monday through Friday, and I record it here in California, but I’ve done it in New York and wherever I do it, it’s a topic usually, whether it’s nutrition or exercise that is about reaffirming our ability to really look outward to get that internal drive. It’s just as simple as doing an affirmation.

Then step two really is just being grateful for like a minute or two. I think everyone’s talked about that Oprah 20 years ago. Once I know I’m capable, I’m like, Yes, I can get out of bed. Yes, I can do an eight-minute interval training. Yes, I can do intermittent fasting, and eat at three o’clock and do a coffee with butter. Or yes, I can figure this out and I can get my life together. Then you need to kind of reinforce it slightly.

What I tend to do is just focus in on three things I’m grateful for. I’ve got teenage sons. Both of them are teenagers. One’s 16, one’s 13 one’s driving as much as I don’t see them as much as they’re doing their own thing, I’m grateful for my family and grateful for my past. I’m grateful for my career, you know, so I get into that place of gratitude and then, you know, really? Then from then, then I just I kind of then force myself quickly. I’ll go to the bathroom while I’m kind of doing this think fit exercise in my head. Then I learned this twenty-five years ago as well from a lot of different psychologists that I worked with originally.

This whole idea that exercise and movement and your physiology determines how good you feel. So, what I try to do upon rising, so literally say the affirmation get gratitude in my head. Once you’re in that grateful state of mind and you know you’re capable, I tell people move and I have a live stream. I do every morning with a group of incredible people from all over the country in the world, and it’s live. We started it during COVID. I was doing it more recorded before, but they all wanted to go live, and you know, everyone’s exercising now on Zoom.

So that’s what we’ve done for the last six months. I have this incredible group of people that we go live at 7am PT every day. We do an eight-minute interval training workout and what movement does, especially interval training. It helps you not just burn belly fat because science has shown that tone the body, sure, but it helps bolster serotonin and dopamine. So, you get that mindset and it kind of checks it off when you do it first thing in the morning.

DR. MIKE MORENO: And it doesn’t take long. I think a lot of people, you know, so I’m a swimmer myself. I’ve been swimming all my life. I used to run, I used to jog and, you know, then the back and the knees got in the way and you know, I’ve struggled with my weight at times as well. But I found my kind of my sort of like place and, you know, life still happens, and things go bad. I mean, you know, I’m listening to everything you’re saying. I swear we’re brothers in another life.

JORGE CRUISE: I love that.

DR. MIKE MORENO: You know, three years ago, in a span of 18 months, I went through a divorce. My mother and sister died all in 18 months, and it was just like.

JORGE CRUISE: And we’ve had the same kind of impact, yeah and boy, you can you can definitely go into a downward spiral.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Totally.

JORGE CRUISE: Drink and do too much medical marijuana. I mean, I have clients that do this and then there’s some people that really harm themselves. So, believe me, you know, drinking and medical marijuana are the least of the issues, but there are people that just won’t even touch that, but they’ll eat bags of Doritos. If you do that consistently, you’re going to get diabetes, you’re going to gain the weight. There’s so much stuff in there that causes inflammation from the corn oil to the corn itself, it goes on and on. So, when I tell people move for eight minutes I was really grateful that in 2005, O magazine, Oprah Magazine featured this workout. This “8 Minutes in the Morning” was the book, and the book is available on Amazon everywhere you go.

Eight minutes in the morning was the very first book I wrote and was about this, and then I did four more books over the next five years. This is 2001, two, three, four and five, and we did this whole series and there are millions of books sold under this “8 Minutes in the Morning” title, but it just shows that you can really change your life in eight minutes. If you do it in the morning, you get an after burn effect. If you do it as an interval, which is new I never taught intervals. 20 years ago was just strength training, dumbbells and all that. Now we go, we start slow, it’s like a warmup phase. We take it up for 40 seconds and we drop it down for 40. So, it’s low, high, low. It’s high intensity interval training. People are dripping sweat.

If you go to my Instagram you’ll see me every day with my shirt off just dripping sweat and my clients are dripping sweat, and we have the best time because we’re done in eight minutes. We chat for like 20 more and then basically what people do then afterwards is they are set. They’re kind of primed for a really good day. Then the hard part begins. Then you’ve got to have some discipline with your nutrition, your diet, your work. You’ve got to learn how to maximize energy. Do you do too much coffee? Do you drink orange juice? Do you do fasting? Do you eat three meals, two meals? I do one meal a day. So, there’s so many, many questions, but you need that edge because exercise, especially for eight minutes, is easy compared to figuring out what to eat and also controlling yourself. Because that’s where, like we said, emotional eating can kick in, but now you’re primed.

So, the odds are the negative emotions are at bay and you have positive energy. You know, the serotonin. It’s well, you know, this is a doctor, it’s better than Prozac sometimes.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Wish we could buy it in a jar over the counter, it would be lovely. There are so many things that we can do. You know, one of the things I use a tool that I use with my patients, I call it the M&M rule.

JORGE CRUISE: I love M&Ms. I try not to have them.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Not those M&Ms.

JORGE CRUISE: Oh ok.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Basically saying mindfulness and motivation. It takes about eight seconds to ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why do I want to feel well? Why do I want to make a good choice about my diet and nutrition and hydration habits? What is my motivation and being aware living in the moment? And I think we live such a fast-paced life?

If you can stop for eight to ten seconds and say, why do I want to make the right decision about what I’m about to do? And is this the right decision? It’s about winning more of those battles than you lose. You’re not going to win every single one, but it’s about winning more than you lose and if you just live in the moment for just a few seconds and ask yourself those questions, we all know right from wrong, and I think eventually you’re going to start running downhill, which is, you know what we all want to do.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah, no, I agree, I feel like the hardest thing is getting the motivation, and I feel like that’s why for me, I’m addicted to podcasts. I’ve been following your show now and I follow by like 20 other shows. I love feeding my mind positive energy. Thank goodness that we’ve got this opportunity now in 2020 and during COVID, and it’s free for the most part. Podcasts can be very nutritious for the mind. You know, it’s like food for thought. That’s why I think listening to positive things daily and throughout the day can make it. When I work out by myself before I work with my clients, I’ll put on something really great, whether it’s an audible book or whether it’s a podcast or, you know, I always have some music going on too, but that’s my time in the morning. Then, you know, by 7:30, I’m done with everything and then I’m ready to have a rock star kind of day.

Even then, you know, you really have that momentum that gives you that edge and then nutrition and diet come along and that becomes something easier now where you have more self-control. The emotional eating is kind of put at bay because you feel good and when you feel good, sometimes you don’t. Food doesn’t have that drop because I know for me as a little kid growing up in a Latin family and being a gay man, I wasn’t able to know that at the time. For me, it was a big deal when I was told by my grandmother not to be a certain way, couldn’t look at my sister’s dolls, couldn’t do this. I had no idea.

So, for me, I just felt like food, food, food, food. I only realized all this 10 years ago, and that’s when I went through my first divorce with my wife and all that and I have these great kids from that life, but it was a big deal, you know, and there are parts of us that may be hidden. So, I would say anyone listening out there, whether you can’t seem to nail why you eat emotionally, for me, it was unhappiness, I think, and not that I didn’t fix that years ago through exercise, but it became even easier once I was more authentic and grateful for who I was and woke up to it, you know, and that was just 10 years ago that I woke up to this whole new life of being who I was and not in denial. It was crazy.

DR. MIKE MORENO: All right, so let’s switch gears,

JORGE CRUISE: Sure.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I’m really curious to hear, let’s just first talk about just a quick definition. How would you describe fasting to people? Because I’ve been doing fasting, believe it or not…

JORGE CRUISE: Intermittent fasting or?

DR. MIKE MORENO: For about 20 years. No, no intermittent fasting.

JORGE CRUISE: Ok.

DR. MIKE MORENO: For about 20 years, before it was a thing, and I was doing it because it’s just how my body was. It’s how it works. So, let’s talk a little bit what’s fasting?

JORGE CRUISE: Sure. So, I wrote a book three years ago called Cruise Control Diet and it talks about intermittent fasting, which basically, if you break it down the way I taught it in the book three years ago, it’s a 16-hour window where you are in that 16 hours, you’re hopefully sleeping seven to eight hours and then for four or five hours in the morning, you kind of skip eating carbs and proteins. Those are usually the macronutrients that break a fast and cause insulin to go up, healthy fats don’t do that. They don’t have that effect, and it’s been researched.

So, I usually tell my clients, if you’re doing a 16-8, so 16 hours of not eating and eight hours of eating, then most of my clients will eat a traditional meal as early as the 11 or 12. I know when I was working with Steve Harvey, he would be up at 3 in the morning and would eat something at 5am, but his window ended a lot earlier. So, it’s an eight-hour eating window and that’s typically done for weight loss and all that. Now what I’ve done since that book came out three years ago, and I’m working on a new project for next year that is, it’s more of an exercise plan, but there’ll be a nutritional component that talks about doing one meal a day. As you said, that acronym OMAD, one meal a day, and that’s a hashtag. You can find it on social OMAD. That’s a little different. Now, what does that do and what kind of fasting is that? Because that’s more extreme. You’re eating maybe one to two hours a day and fasting for 20 some hours, twenty to twenty-three hours, and a lot of big-name people, both celebrities and people like the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey does this. A lot of really high level, intelligent people do this, and it’s not for weight loss because none of them have weight to lose and they don’t disappear and die. They do it because it causes autophagy in your body. Autophagy is a process of housekeeping.

Really simply done if you can go 16 but verge closer to 20 plus hours and it gets better when you’re past 20. So, I do twenty to twenty-three hours and I eat every day around 3pm PT. I just know my schedule and I do it for about an hour and then I’m done. I eat well. I really feast. It’s intermittent feasting. That’s another way to look at it because I eat well, get all my macros.

I start with healthy proteins, healthy fats, carbs, get all that in there. The way you do it, it’s simple, you get this incredible longevity effect. You get this disease prevention effect that’s been talked about. Ironically, a lot of people think this is kind of fringe and weird, like this is a new thing, but as history has shown this is something that’s been done for millennia and a lot of religions talk about it. If you think of Ancient Man, one of my mentors is Mark Sisson, who created a whole series of books and has this company called Primal Kitchen, and they sell my favorite cooking oil, avocado oil, salad dressings, all this stuff, he’s been like you intermittent fasting for 20 years. He’s 67 years young and he has an incredible physique. If you see my interview with him on my show, I got him to show his abs off. He’s, you know 67 years young and has the body of a twenty-six-year-old, six pack. He looks amazing. He has energy, vitality. He just had a grandkid. I mean, he’s in phenomenal shape. He’s stopped aging because he’s been doing this for two decades where he does one to two meals. He does both, one or two, and does a minimum of 16 hours.

So, what it does is it gives you this advantage. Now the biggest question probably people are having is like, oh my God, I’m going to be hungry.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right. Yeah, how do you do this?

JORGE CRUISE: Well You can cheat it. That’s the great thing.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Love the word cheat. Let’s get to that.

JORGE CRUISE: Well, cheating the fast or understanding how your body works really, it’s just a bio hack. A lot of people talk about this. A lot of authors like Dave Asprey written about this. I wrote about it in my book, and it’s basically understanding that certain macronutrients in certain foods as well won’t cause insulin to rise and if you don’t cause insulin to go up. One of my dearest friends who wrote the introduction to this book, I had Brooke Burke, but I also had Dr. Jason Fung from Toronto write the intro to the book, not the forward, but the intro and really talks about this. He’s written the number one bestselling books on fasting. If you go to Amazon, Jason Fung, FUNG, he’s an incredible doctor in Toronto, in Canada, and basically has given the science out there that a lot of us are using. This idea that you could have like a cup of coffee, which won’t break your fast because there’s no there’s no macros in that really. There’s no carbs, fats or proteins, but if you add butter, one to two tablespoons or you could do coconut oil if you’re more plant based, whatever kind of healthy fat you want, not vegetable fats, but healthy fats and we can talk about the oxidation that causes inflammation in the body from using canola oil and these seed oils, but I’m very conscious of healthy fats. Could even be beef tallow. I know a lot of people don’t like that, but I cook with it. Whether it’s butter from animals or coconut oil or MCT oil, you can put that in your coffee or tea or even just hot water. Use a little frothier you can get on Amazon for a few bucks, and you make this creamy, delicious morning beverage and can add a little bit of monk fruit. I love monk fruit. It’s a natural plant-based sweetener.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I love monk fruit.

JORGE CRUISE: It doesn’t raise insulin, and then you literally are good for two to three hours and get that energy. It’s great, but I’ll tell you the thing that’s even more incredible. Turning off hunger is just hydration with a little bit of…

DR. MIKE MORENO: There you go, thank God. I was dying, I was dying to say that word.

JORGE CRUISE: I add pink salt like a Himalayan sea salt that’s rich in magnesium, potassium, just a pinch of it into the water because it’s been shown to help you super hydrate. I do that actually before I have coffee, and then that gives me this crazy energy to do my workout. I usually don’t even have a coffee until after the workout. I use it more, not for energy, but for hunger control. So that’s kind of my morning with celebrities, with clients, with people. I work online. After that workout, we start to not just hydrate and continue to hydrate throughout the day, but then they’ll use these bio hacks like coffee with butter or I have certain clients will do egg yolk scrambles. That works really well because that’s all-high fat, no protein, no fats when you take the white out. I have people do chia seed puddings that work sometimes. That just fills you up and it passes through you. Doesn’t break the fast.

So, I’ve got all these little tricks that will help you treat it, so you basically never feel hungry. So then imagine every week dropping two to three pounds. I’ve had people lose seven eight pounds in a week, just depending how much they have to lose. Their energy, their mood, their everything changes. You lose the belly fat, but more importantly, you feel incredibly feel younger, you feel more vital and if you keep doing it. How did you get started 20 years ago, you said? That’s incredible.

DR. MIKE MORENO: It sort of happened by accident because I’ve never been a breakfast person. It’s just never been my thing, you know, there are some people that open their eyes and they’re like, famished. I’m kind of one of these guys where I’m hungry or I shouldn’t say I’m hungry, but I begin to develop hunger four or five hours after I wake up. If I’m up at, say, six, it’s not till 11 that I even have a desire to eat. So, I kind of just had that whole routine. Now I’m a little different because I exercise at lunch. My day will start at six. I’ll go till 12.

JORGE CRUISE: You exercise when you can.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Exactly.

JORGE CRUISE: It’s better than not doing anything.

DR. MIKE MORENO: People will say, what’s the best exercise? I’m like, the one that you like and can do. Period.

JORGE CRUISE: Consistency.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Exactly. So I’ll swim at lunch. Then what I’ll do is a very small amount of, not a large quantity, but a small volume protein bar, maybe a half of a protein bar because when I swim, I swim for an hour very aggressively, about two miles. I have a trainer and it’s very intense and I found that if I don’t have at least a half of a bar, a little bit of a carb just to get me through, I struggle. Then my eating will typically take place, usually between two o’clock and seven or eight o’clock. That’s my window. And that’s it. But you know what? You bring up my biggest pet peeve, and I will tell you, it’s my contention that I think 90 percent of people walk around dehydrated every day.

JORGE CRUISE: Yes. Well, we’re not scared, but I know people don’t like to go to the bathroom and sometimes they’re just like bothered by it and they rather eat something but also I have clients that have drank water and they pee it right out and they still feel hungry. For me, it’s all about the minerals, and Springwater is really the best.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, I love the pink salt idea. That’s great.

JORGE CRUISE: A little bit of pink salt, that’s something I learned in Malibu from one of my dear friends Laird Hamilton, who’s one of the world’s famous pro surfers up there, he and his wife, Gabby Reece, great couple, great kids and one of the bio hacks that a lot of elite athletes like they use is electrolytes. It’s another way to say it, but rather than all the sugar that comes in from commercial electrolyte drinks.

DR. MIKE MORENO: That’s the problem, right?

JORGE CRUISE: You add just a pinch, you know? If I’m doing thirty-two ounces of water, I’ll do half a teaspoon. I use Real Salt, which is a great salt from Utah. It’s from these underground, like they go down six miles down underground in these mines and it’s ancient salt that you know. It’s clean of plastic and all that because most white salt unfortunately has been contaminated and it’s also bleached and all these things. So, you want the salts that have those colors in them, but they usually have a little iron, but they’ll have potassium and magnesium. That is what helps turn off hunger by hydrating you. So, I saw a lot of a lot of clients that 50 to 70 percent of the time when you think you’re hungry, you’re simply dehydrated.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, I tell people that all the time. You know, I used hydration in a glass of water for a lot of things. A lot of people who, you know, I work with a lot of smokers and have for a long time trying to get them to quit. I have all these little tools and all these things, but I tell them, you know, when you’re in your office, when you have that desire to go out and grab a cigarette and kind of decompress, try this. Take an eight-ounce glass of water and take a five-minute walk and think about what your goal is and then come down to your desk, but a lot of people are just thirsty. I mean, we don’t have a fuel gauge on our body. It would be nice if we did, right?

JORGE CRUISE: You know the iPhone and the Apple Watch always helps, but they haven’t done that yet.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, there’s going to be something that’s going to come out, but I think, you know, it’s critical people just don’t realize that dehydration makes you feel tired, makes you lose concentration, makes your ability to digest, metabolize, absorb. So many things revolve around water and a lot of people think, “well, I’m not thirsty.” and my answer is simply, do you put gas in your car when it runs out and or do you wait when you’re on the side of the road and you say, now I need gas.

JORGE CRUISE: That’s smart, yeah.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I love that you’re a big proponent of and there’s so much I love about your philosophies, but I love the hydration thing, and I will tell you my biggest thing is we need carbs, we need fats, we need proteins. We need the right ones. We need them at the right time of the day, and we need to make sure that we’re being aware of portion control. Those things are critical.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah. You know, understanding the macros and for me during COVID, I had kind of my mind blown. I had a conversation offline with Mark Sisson, really great guy, if anyone listening wants to Google him, he’s out there. He’s 67 now, and he told me about a book he endorsed the Carnivore Code. I was like, oh my God, you’re just eating meat. He said, Well, this guy, Paul Saladino, Dr. Saladino, he says he doesn’t like salads and he was joking because his last name Saladino (Italian), but he got me to write the foreword, and I said, Well, what’s the book about? Are you just eating meat now? He used to have a large amount of vegetables and carbs and all that and pastas. We would go to when I was living in Malibu and I would go out to lunch once a week at the Soho house out there. It’s really beautiful on the water and just eat whatever and have nice wines and all this stuff, usually Dry Farms, which are lower in sugar. He’s like, but all that’s changed. I said, really? What happened? Well, he got me to realize a little more of the science of ancestral health with eating meat. I was like, if you don’t eat carbs, you’re not going to poop, you’re not going to have your fiber. So, we got into this huge discussion. I said we got to do this as a podcast, so we did, and we video it. It’s on YouTube. Jorge Cruise and Mark Sisson or it’s on my Instagram or on my Jorge Cruise Show.

It was such a powerful conversation and that was maybe five months ago. Then I interviewed Paul Saladino, who’s the author of this book called The Carnivore Code. Then I’m going to interview this man, Dr. Sean Baker, who has a book called The Carnivore Diet, a little different, he’s fifty-three in phenomenal shape, and he’s got a different philosophy, slightly different. Then there are people like Dr. Gundry, I think, is that his name? The one who wrote the Plant Paradox?

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yes absolutely.

JORGE CRUISE: And he talks a different angle about how certain plants are toxic? So, then I really, as much as I’m doing intermittent fasting, I was like, Well, what do I eat during that window? Because I’m only eating in the small two-to-three-hour window, usually one hour. I want to make sure I’m eating the right foods and I want enough fiber and I want enough of the macros, the healthy fats I’m getting throughout the day because I use them to cheat with my coffee and everything. So, I want good protein and I want good carbs and so and I’m friends with a trainer who works with Beyonce, he and I have been good friends for many years, Marco Borges and Marco wrote, co-wrote with Beyonce and Jay-Z this really great book called The Greenprint, and they have this huge empire called the “22 Days Nutrition” company, which sells these proteins, pea proteins, vegetable-based proteins. I have friends on that side too. The hardcore vegans. I’ve never been on The Ellen Show, but I know people that work with Ellen, and she won’t have you on the show if you’re not a vegan. So, I’ve never been on her show because I’ve never been fully plant based. I just have always had a little bit of meat.

So, with regards to all that, it’s been interesting if we have time to talk about the actual macros because what I’m following now and I’m going to be 50 next year, I’m 49 right now and I feel during Covid, I got into the best shape of my life. Not just from the intermittent fasting and from the interval training, but from this slight shift in eating that Mark Sisson got me to realize and then talking to all these doctors, Dr. Saladino, now I’ve been talking with Dr. Baker and they all have books and they’re all very, like they’re real doctors. They don’t say that, and I’m not saying that that’s bad thing, but they really have studied the body and they do it for peak performance and they work with athletes and really high-level people.

So, it’s interesting because I know a lot of people say, oh my gosh, it’s destroying the planet. It’s bad for your body and you’re going to die of a heart attack. Then there’s some people that look at plants and they love the plants, or they avoid the plants. So, it’s tricky. I think you’ve got to do what feels right for you, and not everyone is ready for that kind of message. That’s even harder sometimes to say no to broccoli. You’re like, why can’t I eat broccoli or brussels sprouts? They’re toxic. Oh my gosh.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I have three really good buddies, so the four of us, we’ve known each other now almost 30 years, and we met when we were, you know, 22 years old, fresh med students and one’s from New York, once from Jersey and one’s from Pittsburgh and they’re all kind of situated now in Vegas, New York City and L.A. So one’s a plastic surgeon one’s an orthopedic surgeon, I do primary care, fitness and wellness, and then the other one is a radiologist. Well, two of the four of us are whole food plant based.

JORGE CRUISE: Aha!

DR. MIKE MORENO: So we get into it…

JORGE CRUISE: Whole food, plant based, and whole food means?

DR. MIKE MORENO: Meaning not potato chips, not cookies.

JORGE CRUISE: I gotcha, I gotcha. Like no processed food. Meaning that it’s plant based, what maybe 80 percent of your diet is that and then 20 percent?

DR. MIKE MORENO: It’s nearly everything

JORGE CRUISE: Oh.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So these guys you know, they don’t eat meat, they don’t eat chicken. They don’t eat fish. They’re their source of protein is going to be pea protein or soy protein.

JORGE CRUISE: Ok. That’s what Marco Borges does as a trainer. He has Jay-Z on this plan. Beyonce. I mean, there are a lot of high-level people that are following a plant-based life and, you know, up until COVID I was too.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I think it’s great if you can do it, I just can’t do it. I don’t know, maybe it’s my Mexican background, but I like my meat. I like my chicken in my life. So, we go back and forth, and we give each other a hard time all the time, but I think to your point, and I got to ask you this question, I’m dying to ask you this question. So, tell me about kale. I don’t want to bag on kale. Kale is not a brand, it’s just a general plant. I have a shirt that says Kale with a big red X on in because I’m not a fan of kale. I’ve tried it every which way. So, tell me about kale. Give me like a rundown. Let’s let our listeners hear your take on kale.

JORGE CRUISE: Well, you know, there’s always going to be positive stuff on kale. I mean, it’s very plant based and it’s green and has chlorophyll and has fiber, and I used to eat it all the time. I would have three or four times a week. I mean, Beyonce and Marco Borges, huge fans of it. One of my dearest friends is Dr. Andrew Weil, and he has a restaurant in San Diego. I’m sure you’ve been to is, True Foods. They have the best kale salad. I’m all kaled up and you know, it’s not that bad to make it taste good. You have to definitely put a lot of avocado oil on it and things like that, but I was intrigued because once I discovered what Kale does, and there’s a chart, it’s actually in Saladino’s book, in The Carnivore Code, but he gave me permission to put it on my Insta, and it’s called the spectrum of plant toxicity. I have it on my Instagram. If people go to @JorgeCruise and I can repost it later or send it to you, but basically imagine on the less toxic side and something that not too many doctors talk about, but he does, Dr. Paul Saladino talks about how non sweet fruits like avocados are really good. They’re less toxic, and squash is really good for you, and berries are really good for you. Then then the moderate are like carrots, sweet fruits, whether it’s an apple or something like that. Then you get into your more toxic.

And I said, well, help me understand why are things like kale and brussels sprouts and lettuce and legumes and seeds and grains and these nightshades so mostly toxic, so harmful? And he’s like, Well, you can read the work of the Plant Paradox, which is out there because he does agree with some of that in there, but basically, he gave me this really basic, simple fourth grade explanation because I like simple. Oprah told me, Keep it simple and I was like, Oh my gosh, you can get into deep stuff or just let me understand this. He says, think about plants, since humans have been in existence, say, up to two million years, you know, prior to that, there weren’t a lot of predators of plants, I mean, there are certain animals that would do it, but what the plants had to develop, mainly for those predators, was defense mechanisms so they wouldn’t be eaten because a plant has those seeds in it and with those little seeds, they can grow and continue their species and all that.

So unlike animals that have claws or nails or can fight or can run or can hide, plants don’t do that. So basically, he said, think back, go back in time and think of these plants having to have defenses and these defenses were to push animals, creatures and then eventually humans to not want this.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right, so they don’t get eaten.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah, because their outcome is, they’re not here for us, the plants, just want to live. As we are their greatest advocates and you’ve got people like Beyonce and Jay-Z and Marco Borges, you know, doing documentaries, all this about plant power and how we love plants when we’re eating them, right? You know, it sounds nice, but they don’t want that plants. Not that they’re smart. They can’t be cognitive of this, obviously, but they’re designed to repel people and creatures to eating them. So, you think about this and was interesting because when he said that to me, it’s like I said all plants, he said, some have less. I said, Well, which ones? And you know, I’m a huge fan of fiber and all that. He’s like, we don’t have to worry about fiber, because if you eat more of a meat-based diet, you’re going to still go to the bathroom. There may be a twenty-four hour or forty-eight-hour issue, a little delay. You may feel a little backup and I’ve had people do it the other way that have gone meat to plant based and then they get backed up with fiber, so you get backed up with meat or fiber, but then it passes.

I’ve been pretty much, you know, if you look at my Instagram, you’ll see a lot of meat, you’ll see some squash, you’ll see sometimes I’ll do a sweet potato because that’s less toxic, but basically, it’s the seeds and the more the foods have seeds and what kale is, it’s obviously doesn’t have the seeds, but it’s in there with the lettuce family and all that and what they’ve shown in things like, brussels sprouts are in this grouping, that they’re highly oxidative and can cause certain issues in the body where you can have allergies to them. So, what’s interesting is I never thought of kale as being something I needed, but I always liked it because I wanted to live longer. I wanted it to have the antioxidants.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right. It seemed like the right thing to do.

JORGE CRUISE: I said, Well, what about the antioxidants? Now Dr. Saladino is a little more, shall I say, intense when it comes to eating not just meat. He’s really dedicated his life to helping people go into more of a meat-based diet, but he also encourages people to eat organ meat like heart, liver and collagen, which I’ve been doing for many years, but more collagen shakes. I wasn’t ahead of the curve like 20 years ago. I had certain clients doing boiling bone broth and boiling bones to get the broth and the marrow. The bone marrow is very nutritious, but a lot of people in today’s world now know about collagen, and they don’t know it’s bone broth sometimes, and it’s like a chocolate shake, so it tastes great. So certain foods like that are going to give you these nutrients that we need that we think we can only get from plants. So, for me I think of that and you know, again, I invite everyone to check out this Carnivore Code by Dr. Paul Saladino. It’s a great book.

Mark Sisson, my mentor, wrote the introduction to it, which shocked me because I was like, he’s the one that got me to always have a big salad, and he still has that, but now he’s following more the low, toxic stuff. So, for me, the things I love are, you know, I have a chart on my site that I’ve shared with people, at www.JorgeCruise.com, you know, I love avocados. I’ll usually eat one or two a day. I love squash, so I’ll have that every day almost. I love coconut oil. I’ll use that on occasion. Avocado oil, tubers, I do like carrots, things like that, but I’ve stopped doing a lot of Brussels sprouts. My kids and I, we had a recipe that I would make in Malibu and I’d share it with celebrities, and we do all these really roasted brussels sprouts and all this. I avoid that now. Is it bad? Is it not good for you? You know, some people can get away with eating it and they don’t have any issues. I noticed as I cut certain things out, in particular almonds, I see a lot of almond butter. I got a lot less breakouts because I always thought, how at 49 am I getting the zit on my head? You know.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right.

JORGE CRUISE: Like, this is not right. I’m not going through puberty. Why? And for me, I’d get a lot of skin issues with certain foods, but I always thought they were healthy, and I always blamed it on hormones. But I’ve noticed now that I’ve gone kind of free of a lot of these toxic things and seeds are part of that. And chia seeds are kind of an exception because the way I teach my clients to use them, they bloom and they don’t actually chew them, they let them pass through them. So, it’s more just the fiber and it passes through.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right.

JORGE CRUISE: But regardless, I feel like there are certain foods that we should be aware of. It’s a very it’s a deep topic. We could definitely talk more about it at another podcast. I could go on and on, and these guys are really great, you know, mentors to me, Dr. Saladino and Dr. Baker, they’re well, they’re here on the West Coast. I should say I don’t think they’re in California, but they’re in this area. More importantly, it’s definitely gaining momentum. It kind of lays on the on the backs of what Atkins did years ago in the 80s. A lot of my clients did Atkins and had great results, so it’s kind of a modified version of that. I know South Beach diet years ago too, remember that one?

DR. MIKE MORENO: Sure.

JORGE CRUISE: So there’s so many diets, it’s tricky. I think the best trick if you’re doing intermittent fasting and you’re working out and you’re eating in a time restricted window, whether it’s eight hours or two hours or one hour, whatever you’re eating in that window, you’ve got to eat things that hopefully you enjoy but also things that hopefully, like that you said that are whole, that aren’t processed. I think that’s step one. Then obviously a balance of the proteins that whether they come from animal sources or plant sources and then the fiber. It’s not necessarily a macro fiber, but vegetables can be helpful for certain things. I just enjoy them for variety.

So, for me, I do a lot of squash in the summer. Watermelon, sometimes without the seeds, things like that. Then obviously the healthy fats. I’m always ingesting healthy fats, whether it’s avocado or I’ll make scrambled eggs. If I do an egg yolk scramble, which helps cheat the fast, I’ll make it in beef tallow and that was something new that I was introduced to that Epic makes. It’s commercial now everywhere, and it’s just animal fat, not dairy fat, but it comes from the beef meat and they have different variations of it, and it really makes food taste great. I feel like this is something that I’ve never written about yet, and it’s something I’m working on to kind of modify what I did a couple of years ago on intermittent fasting. It’s an interesting debate because diet, I think everyone, it’s like a religion.

It can be very emotional for people and as it should be because it changes how you feel, sometimes really fast. You know, at one point during COVID, I was drinking more than I should have, and I had gotten off of medical marijuana because I was doing natural. Then I was too lazy and sluggish in the mornings, too strong for me. Then I went back to wine and I was drinking Dry Farms, and which is a low sugar, low alcohol. They call it the no hangover wine. Dry Farms, really, really great wine, delicious stuff from Europe and you can get subscribed and all that. They ship it to you and all that, but I had to cut all that out because I don’t know if it was just me, just super sensitive and reminds me 20 years ago when I was overweight and fat, but I was really overeating every macronutrient. Now, you know, I’m more sensitive to what I eat because I don’t eat in a small window, but I notice like, I get such an edge once I dial into what my body wants and it’ll tell you, you know, I’ll get a zit and I’ll be like, OK, why did I do the almonds? You know, I shouldn’t have done that, and it’s a reminder. Some clients that can get away with it, and I feel like if your body is OK with it, that’s OK, but there are people, especially women that I’ve worked with that are in their fifties and sixties that may have thyroid issue and they cut out gluten, for example. It’s a huge transformation.

That’s where I think people can play with the actual macros. I can guide them down a path. I know you have a great diet plan too, and a lot of people do. I think that’s where you can play with it and you have to do something that hopefully makes you feel good, and you look good and works for you.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I could talk to you for hours. Listen it’s fantastic. I mean, we can spend hours on just a simple topic. You know, my main thing is and again, going to the acronyms, I love that you are a fan of this, but I use an acronym called LADS. It stands for what is the ideal diet and it’s got to be likeable, affordable, doable and sustainable.

JORGE CRUISE: Ooh, that is beautiful, well said.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I think if people can just adopt what works for them, we’re all different. Be aware of your body. Journaling. Journaling your food days are so critical.

JORGE CRUISE: Be mindful.

DR. MIKE MORENO: It just being aware we live in a fast paced world and we’re always running. I mean, I tell patients all the time, what did you have for breakfast three days ago? They’re like, I have no idea. So being aware of those things is critical.

JORGE CRUISE: I think that’s great.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Jorge, where can we find you? Because I know people are going to have a lot of questions. Tell us about social media, your podcast.

JORGE CRUISE: Yeah, if you google me, Jorge Cruise. Instagram, Facebook @JorgeCruise, and my website is www.JorgeCruise.com? I’ve got an eight-minute belly fat cure kind of program that we’re giving away for people. We’re now texting. I don’t know if you guys know the new thing, they say most people are doing that now. It’s a little more effective. I still do emails so you can always email me at [email protected] if you have a particular question.

If you’re interested in joining my workouts that I have in the morning, just go online. Google me, Jorge Cruise, you’ll see me. You’ll see this guy who’s Latino and he’s been out there with a lot of incredible people. I’ll tell you, it’s been my passion, and I feel really blessed that my whole career, like yours, has been dedicated to this kind of material because I feel like as much as you would think we would have solved all sorts of issues with health, certain things we can’t solve, but when it comes to exercise, nutrition and mental, I think happiness and how we do, it still seems to be a struggle. With COVID, gosh, right, people are feeling the stress of it, the isolation, the loneliness. I mean, I was in New York for quite some time, and I would have been normally in New York right now, but I’ve been here in California, in San Diego with my kids, and it’s all worked out and I feel like you can do a lot at home. Thank God for podcasts like yours. Thank you for having me on because I feel like sharing our message with people that want positive insight is so important. I hope to have you on my show. Let’s do something fun as well.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I can’t wait. Thank you so much Jorge. I can’t thank you enough.

JORGE CRUISE: My pleasure.

DR. MIKE MORENO: That was so much fun. That’s going to wrap it up for today, guys. Don’t forget, subscribe, download and listen to Wellness, Inc with me, Dr. Mike Moreno today. Thanks, guys. Have a great one.

The Wellness, Inc. with Dr. Mike Moreno podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as a replacement or substitution for any professional, medical, financial, legal, or other advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine or any other professional service. The use of any information provided during this podcast is at the listeners own risk for medical or other advice appropriate to your specific situation, please consult a physician or other trained professional. Thank you.

About This Episode:

On this episode of Wellness, Inc. Dr Mike Moreno interviews fitness guru to the stars and author of “The Cruise Control Diet” Jorge Cruise.

Jorge opens up about his own struggle with weight, his divorce, coming out after years of hiding, and how he deals with failure. Jorge shares his philosophy about how pain is a great motivator and how it can serve you.

Dr. Mike and Jorge Cruise share secrets about the best ways to stay in shape including the most effective biohacks, thinking fit, affirmations and gratitude, intermittent fasting, high intensity interval training, new cutting edge theories on weight loss, and so much more.

Connect with Jorge Cruise:

https://www.jorgecruiseshow.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jorgecruise/
https://twitter.com/jorgecruise
https://www.youtube.com/user/jorgecruise/