Taking Ownership of Your Health with Ella Davar

Ella javar is a longevity dietitian. She is the founder of the gut brain method. She’s a speaker, advisor and author. Welcome to the show, Ella.

Ella Davar 0:12
Thank you so much for having me.

george grombacher 0:14
Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do?

Ella Davar 0:20
Oh, wow, what a great question. It was a long story. I didn’t come to this career because I knew this was for me. It was a long journey and health struggle. So I came to this country around 20 years ago, and as a young immigrant in New York City, where do you go to make a living? So I ended up on Wall Street, just because it’s a very straight forward thought, like, that’s where all the money is. That’s where I gotta be so and after going through a bachelor’s degree in finance and an internship and then landing in career at United Bank of Switzerland, the investment and Wealth Management Department, I find myself the sickest and the furthest away from my true self. I was competing with man. I was, you know, one of those high achieving leading a high demand lifestyle. The deadlines was killing me. And I was young, you know, I thought I could handle it, but slowly but surely, you know, this whole wellness trend took off around 15 years ago, and I found myself leading up all the things that I could be doing to make myself feel better. I had horrible skin, weight gain, the stress was through the roof, and yoga saved my life. I started doing yoga. I became vegan, Ayurvedic. I tried every diet, and then eventually decided to make a career out of it, so I became a yoga instructor and then a health coach, and then I eventually decided to change my entire career and got a medical degree in clinical nutrition. And since then, it’s been focusing on prevention, on nutrition education, lifestyle education, and that’s how I became a longevity dietitian, not

george grombacher 2:04
necessarily a straight path, but one that certainly makes sense.

Ella Davar 2:08
Thank you.

george grombacher 2:09
Alright, so where did you grow up?

Ella Davar 2:14
I grew up in Russia. Grew up in Russia, okay, small town in Russia where my parents and my grandparents had a summer house where where they would grow their own food. So I grew up or eating what I called better than organic produce, you know, homegrown. And it wasn’t because it was part of the I don’t know longevity lifestyle is always, you know, as the Blue Zones. People now that are researching people that live long. They call them the peasants diet. You know, you just eat the simplest things that you can grow your own, with your own hands, right? Or make on your own. So, yeah, for me, eating healthy and eating off of the land that you’re born, and it’s just like one of the things that I was, you know, I grew up with.

george grombacher 3:01
So that’s certainly a wonderful background and way to grow up and experience that kind of living. And then you come to the United States, you go to Wall Street, and essentially the opposite in a lot of ways, probably from the way you grew up.

Ella Davar 3:16
You know, I’ve come full circle. That’s the story that I had to tell. I don’t know if you’ve read the Alchemist by Paulo coelia. You know that shepherd that lived in the church, and he decided he just gonna go out there and find the treasure and all the adventures, and you know where he ended up? A lot of people learn a lot of like, different lessons from this book. And I always remind people to remember how the book actually ended. He came back to the same church where he started to find the treasure that’s been the whole time. So growing up in, you know, the in the small town it, I saw it firsthand how hard it is to live this organic lifestyle, to grow your own produce, to take care of the animals the whole year, and then animals had to get slaughtered for the female to have food throughout the winter, you know, I saw all of that, and I saw how hard it is. And I remember as a young teenager in the 90s, I was like, You guys are all losers. You know, you buy this stuff, right? You don’t have to work all day to make this happen. So as soon as I turned 18 years old, I was out. I left small town in Russia, and I landed in New York City, and I was like, This is life. Like people are so important, so big. You know, for 20 years old girl, this was like, I want to be part of this big world, and I want to live a big life. And you know what happened one day, it was raining and it was New York City was way before Uber existed. It must have, must have been like 13 years ago. It was raining, so I had to call for UA for taxi, and one of those town cars came, and there’s a guy sitting of Indian origin, and he was wearing this. What do you call that? Those hats that they wear, like the big white ones, starts with the teeth. You. Know what I mean. And so he started talking to me, like, Can I look at your hand? So he started reading off of my palm. And nobody said to me, he’s like, you’re gonna end up on a land like on the farm close to the Earth on the farm. At night, I almost started crying. I was like, I can’t believe he’s saying that to me. I made it, and this guy’s telling me exactly so I remembered, I was so upset. I was like, There’s no way, no stop it right there. And now fast forward, it’s my dream to have a farm. Obviously, I would need someone to help me with that, because you can’t manage everything. You can’t be an educator, a mother and a farmer. It’s just, it’s a lot of work, but I do want to have that, and, yeah, I see a lot of value in that. Now,

george grombacher 5:46
yeah, life is a long journey home in a lot of ways, that is an awesome story, alright, so you you find success in a career that then makes your body and your spirit not not well, maybe even sick. And you start learning about wellness and yoga and veganism and different modes of eating. And then you go and get this, this degree as a dietitian, and start studying it to help others and certainly yourself. And when when, when I look around, I see everybody being so unhealthy. I see we’re at the top of almost every category, from being financially unwell to being, you know, physically unwell and mentally unwell. What’s, what’s the culprit? Ella,

Ella Davar 6:37
it’s a mindset. You know, a lot of people live their whole life. They don’t see themselves being in control or in charge of what happens to them, right? So when I work with people, and I work I have experience working with people different background, like when I was studying to become a clinical dietitian, I worked on a research project. We worked in the low income communities in the Bronx and in the Harlem, and I have experience talking to them and really addressing their problems, right? People who live in the food deserts like it’s it’s cost a lot of money and energy to actually go find a healthy produce, but then fast food chain is on every corner. It’s so much easier to eat junk than putting all this money, energy and time into cooking healthy foods. And when I graduated from NYU, I worked on longevity clinics with the wealthiest population group and the most intelligent people in Manhattan. And you’ll be surprised, they all want to drink Coca Cola and they just want to eat hamburgers and all those people, you think, right? These are educated, and those people are struggling. People have the same issues, same problems and older problems, comes down to too much stress and not enough time. And you would imagine like they all have different problems they’re dealing with, and different resources to solve those problems. And so when we don’t, and it’s really comes down to a perception of stress and perception of what it is that we have the time for and what it is that we don’t have the time for, right? So I started asking people questions like, so why? What’s your why? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you do what you do? Right? And people always say like, I need to get you know, I need to get successful. I need to get like, for my children, I need to get ahead in life, for whatever reason, for myself, for my parents, or for my children. So when you find their their why, and very often people who are older, they don’t do it for themselves, but they will do it for their children. So I always ask them, Do you want to be there for your grandkids or for your grandchildren? And another Mindset, which I think now we’re changing in the industry, it comes down to when people don’t feel that that what they do on a daily basis has the effect on how they feel, right? Very often, people, ah, my mother had that. That’s why I’m so sick. Oh, my father, you know, struggled with that. That’s why, like, I’m pretty supposed to that, and you feel powerless, right? You’re almost like, it’s people get older, people get sick, right? And that’s the mindset, and a lot of people live it, and they almost like and they eat their whole life the same foods, like, oh, I eat this since I was a teenager, and that’s fine. And all this is all a mindset, and this is all of what do you call it? Like an education? How do you what do you know about this? And my job is to really educate people and to empower that to see like everything you do really has the effect on how you feel tomorrow. And I ask people to do an experiment. If you don’t believe me, believe yourself. Your body takes seven days at least, ideally 14 to 21 days as an experiment, right? Just as an experiment, see if you can eat more vegetables, add one vegetable that you haven’t had before. Every day, try new things, right? And treat it as an experiment, like it’s gonna like it’s gonna be over in a few days, and then you can do whatever you used to do, right? Or try exercising. Try doing different things, try exercising, try going for an extra walk. Find yourself a workout body. Or try. Try to go to sleep early and stop and prioritizing all these easy habits that we all can do, if only we prioritize it, and really tricking your mind into believing that this is temporary. I’m just going to do this for 14 days and see what happens. And guess what happens? You might turn into a version of yourself that you didn’t know existed, a version of yourself that’s full of energy, full of zest for life. Suddenly you want things out of life. Suddenly you have all these desires that drive you so you’re no longer getting by and like, just like, oh, another day, and I’m just struggling here. But suddenly you have a vision for yourself where you want to go, and that gives you energy and all these healthy habits. Guess what? They add up. They 100%

george grombacher 10:43
do this is all music to my ears. And you know, it strikes me that you’re certainly somebody who is not afraid to make a make a decision, and then to receive new information, and then to make another decision, like moving to out of the village to New York, and then moving out of finance into a more healthy environment. And so you’re making these changes, whereas for many people, we struggle to make these changes, because it’s just we’re following predictable patterns and habits. We’re doing the same things we’ve always done, and to disrupt that would be uncomfortable, and so I’m assuming I’ll ask a question here in a second. But is it also a function that if I start doing this, it’s going to be so much extra work, and that’s why I’m trying to trick my brain by saying I’m just doing this for a little while. Yeah. So is that it? Is that a part of it that I don’t want to lock myself into something that’s going to be really hard for the rest of my life? Eating healthy is a is a burden, versus eating cheeseburgers is easy.

Ella Davar 11:53
So it’s a great question. You said it’s going to be really hard. Everything is hard living a life that you hate is hard living like getting by and doing the job that you don’t care about is hard sitting up every penny not not living your dreams is hard, you know, or feeling like crap every day is hard, right? So you know, they say like you choose your heart and very often in life, life is going to like you. You just, you know, called out all these events in my life, how I moved, how I changed careers, and I’m like, you know, then I changed the cities. I moved from New York to Miami. And sometimes when people used to describe like, You’re so brave, you’re so courageous, and I’ll be like, Who me like, I was just like, I just move out of fear. You know, life makes me do these things. When people tell me, Oh, you moved to America. That must have been hard. I was like, I had no choice. There’s nowhere to go back, you know. So, so that’s how, like, the life would make you do things. And very often, when people get into the wellness thing. They get sick, they get diagnosis. That’s when that serves as a wake up call, and suddenly they’re like, I’ll do whatever to be alive tomorrow, right? So, so it’s either life is gonna make you do the hard things, or you eventually, when you mature, you step into your potential, and you say, I could do hard things, you know, and you choose your heart right? Like you said, exercising and cooking healthy is hard, for sure, but having a diabetes and having all these diagnosis and feeling like crap is also hard. So yes, it’s true, most people come into this healthy lifestyle when something really bad happens, and they decide to make, you know, different decision. But nowadays we see more and more, and it’s becoming, you know, a trend in bigger cities that younger population group is all over it. That’s how they start. They see that as a as a new, you know, lifestyle. That’s how they want to live.

george grombacher 14:01
It all makes sense. Why you were asking people about their why earlier. So just changing the way I eat for the sake of change the way I eat is probably not going to be a sustainable solution, but exactly, really getting clear on what’s important to me, and then aligning my habits and and what I do to that that’s probably going to make it stickier when, when you’re looking around, and what are is it all of it? Is it? Is it the way that we act? Is it the food that we eat? Is it all killing us, or something’s killing us faster?

Ella Davar 14:35
Well, there’s nine different factors that play into longevity, and who is just one of them eating the most nutritious foods that are right off of the land, minimally processed, what they call the whole foods. Is when you see, what you see is what you get. You know, when you look at a sausage, you really don’t know what’s inside. Someone made it, and you only can imagine or read the ingredient. Let’s see, like, what’s that? Or you can have a steak, and it’s literally like it’s a it’s meat, it meats, right? That there’s nothing else in there. Or fish, a piece of fish, right? So what you see is exactly what you get in those are the whole foods. And when you see carrots and peas, and that’s what you’re eating instead of eating some, I don’t know, something out of a plastic container or a can that you really have no idea what went in there. So that’s the foundation, eating the simplest and falling in love with the simplest thing. It might be hard, you know, because some people, like I would, I worked with so many people that would tell me, like, I hate cauliflower, I hate brocco. There’s no way. And those are the people that their taste Bucha are oversaturated with other flavors, like a lot of salt a lot of sugar, and when they detox for a little bit, they like for 14 days they don’t drink sugar sweetened beverages. Suddenly, they’re like, wait a second, it’s not that bad. I tried it. I gave it a try to taste all. I’ve heard all these stories, you know, because your taste bud really adjust, and if they’re over saturated with strong flavors, like processed foods. Of course, plain foods taste like cardboard, you know, so, but when you change, you will be surprised. So yeah, food is one of them. The second thing that’s killing us is the lifestyle, the sedentary lifestyle, right? So everything is, you know, either driving or sitting to get through the day, so very, very important that we are moving throughout the day. We’re either walking or exercising and not sitting for eight hours straight. So exercise is essential part of like our bodies were meant for movement, not for sitting. Um, then also stress. Stress is the and the perception of stress, as I mentioned, is what’s killing us and leading to chronic inflammation. So this mindfulness techniques that are becoming more and more popular, my favorite is breath work and meditation. When you really, I call it a date with your soul. When you take the, I don’t know, five or 10 minutes out of your day, you just like, sit with yourself and sit with your mind. And very often, you’ll start hearing all this wisdom and all these voices, which is your soul, and all the wisdom that all the advice that you’re seeking, it’s all in your heart. So stress, and then finding a way to manage stress, whatever it is for you listening to your favorite song might be it. You know, sometimes that’s enough, but stress and the perception of stress really see what gives you anxiety and what stresses you out, right, and how you can improve that for yourself, for your own sake, um, stress as number three other things are relationship with our loved ones, and how we treat ourselves and how we treat others is very important, how we feel within our family, and finding this building this meaningful relationship, whether in community, contributing to the world, and feeling what’s called the icky guy that’s part of the Blue Zones when they Call it, when you wake up every day and you know why your why, and where you’re going and how you’re contributing. And there is this reason to be alive, right? Having that is important part of the mindset. Um, what else is there? The stress community, living, being part of the larger group? Belonging right, whether it’s spiritual or religious or, I don’t know, any community that it’s really huge. Like I said, the reason to be part of something and sleep is a major one, is as much as we want to take, you know, out of take the life out of our body and give us everything that we can achieve. It’s just as important to give our bodies rest and to recharge its batteries. Just how you know you want your iPhone to work all day, you need to put it down on the charger for a while. Same thing with our bodies, it’s called restorative or rejuvenative sleep, of like being able to just recover throughout the night, that’s important. And a lot of especially young people, are just like, underestimating the value of good sleep and how much it can give you throughout day, right? And the more you take care of your sleep habits, the better you feel the less junk food you eat. So there’s this kind and you can even lose weight. You know, people lose weight by just lowering the cortisol, lowering the stress, and sleeping better naturally, because their body is getting out of the fight or flight mode. So these are just part of the healthy lifestyle that I mentioned, and there’s so many, but mastering these basics is going to get you a lot more results than anything like advanced supplementation or little things

george grombacher 19:54
earlier we talked or you talked about taking ownership and feeling like you’re in charge of. Of your health, and I imagine probably every aspect of life, or all the things that are controllable, when somebody does make the decision, I’m going to commit to leading a healthier lifestyle, and they get into it in a couple of weeks, is it possible to start feeling better immediately?

Ella Davar 20:17
Yes, yes, within the like four seven days is the minimum 14 to 21 days when you really start to feel the difference, whatever the symptoms, skin clears up, more energy, less fatigue, less brain fog, more clarity or weight loss, all those things you know they do because the food now is proven to affect mental well being and mental health. So there’s a nutritional psychiatry now that treats depression and anxiety with nutrition. So if you’re really focusing on eating color for vegetables every day, green leaf vegetables every day, that’s the hardest one. Not a lot of people love green leaf vegetables, but they’re essential. And then eating probiotics, rich foods like fermented foods, and then eating mega three, rich foods, which are anti inflammatory, Omega three, rich fish like salmon, sardines, mackerel, and then incorporating anti inflammatory spices and herbs like turmeric, ginger, thyme and oregano, and then hydration, like mastering these habits, incorporating, like falling in love, like I said in my TED Talk, with the foods that love you back. Those are that’s essential part of you know, like really finding a way how to incorporate those into the lifestyle. And once you found that, once it’s part of your lifestyle, it’s you’ll see it’s so much easier to keep that habit, because the results are just so obvious.

george grombacher 21:55
Fall in love with the food that loves you. I think that’s great. You can fall in love with everything that loves you back like exercise and sleep. If we could just do that. Ella, sometimes

Ella Davar 22:06
it’s tough love very especially with exercise. You can’t even imagine at the moment that this is good for you, because it’s so hard. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And then what’s what I love about exercise is that you do something that’s hard, and then you do it again, and for the third time, it’s like, that’s not hard anymore. I could do even more. Like, wow, that’s really what they call progress. I was like, I’m getting stronger. And that feeling is priceless. I

george grombacher 22:34
think that that’s the right term for it. I think that it is priceless. You do so many wonderful things. Start feeling better. You develop self confidence. You’re proving to yourself you could stick to something. You develop grittiness and all all the good things so and

Ella Davar 22:49
then you develop self confidence. As I said earlier, you realize you can do hard things. Suddenly you’re the most confident person in the room that’s able to take up on challenging things because you believe in yourself.

george grombacher 23:03
Yeah, I love it. Well, Ella, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Ella Davar 23:10
Well, you can check out my website, the gut brain method.com, I didn’t talk about gut health much today, but I specialize as a longevity dietitian. I specialize in gut health, because that’s a root cause of all the imbalances and conditions, health conditions that people deal with. You know, you are what you eat, and before it becomes who you are, it gets into your intestines, and that’s where all the root cause of inflammation, of imbalances start. So I test for gut gut health, and the method that I’ve developed, it’s called gut brain because of the gut brain connection, and also because I do combine science, nutrition science and longevity science with mindfulness techniques that I mentioned earlier to help my clients not just learn what they should be doing, but also embody it and embody it in the most natural way and lower their stress. So the gut brain method.com when you can learn more about my program, how to become client or how to become a gut health expert. So I now teach others how to do what I do, because of how essential this work is, I teach health coaches and nutritionist how to use help others to become to to heal the gut health and also Ella devar.com for those who are interested in learning more about what I do and my Instagram are the same. It’s gut brain method.com. And Ella DEVAR,

george grombacher 24:36
excellent. Well, if you judgements I did show Ellie, your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to the gut, brain method.com, and learn about everything that we’ve been talking about, and more specifically into how our guts have such a profound impact over all the other aspects of our health. And we don’t even read. It and go to Ella devar.com E, L, L, A, D, A, V, A, r.com, for more things, Ella, and then find her on Instagram as well. I’ll link all those in the notes of the show. Thanks again, Ella.

Ella Davar 25:11
Thank you, George, but until

george grombacher 25:14
next time, remember do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.