Ep. 156 – Lynne Bowman – Brownies for Breakfast

How conscious are you about what you eat? Your health is indeed your wealth; staying healthy is one of the best financial strategies you can have.

Eating for health and wealth means eliminating sugar and bad ingredients from your diet and choosing to eat whole plant-based foods.  

In this episode of the Secure Your Retirement podcast, we have Lynne Bowman, author of the Brownies for Breakfast book. Listen in to learn the benefits of eating in windows and sleeping to give your body time to clean and heal itself.

In this episode, find out:

●     Why staying healthy is one of the best financial strategies you can have.

●     How to be conscious about the food you eat to keep your finances and live a longer life.

●     The influence of a community on the way you eat and how healthy you live.

●     How to radically improve your health by eating in windows and sleeping to give your body time to clean itself.

●     The importance of eating whole foods, plant-based foods, and well-sourced meat for better health.

●     Why eliminating sugar and bad ingredients in your diet can reduce food addictions.

●     How to substitute a good diet with moving your body with less strenuous exercises.

Tweetable Quotes:

●     “Staying healthy is one of the best preventive financial strategies you can have.”– Lynne Bowman

●     “The first thing you might consider doing to radically change your health is to stop eating all the time.”– Lynne Bowman

Get in Touch with Lynne:

●     Website: https://lynnebowman.com/

●     Book: Brownies for Breakfast by Lynne Bowman

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

Here’s the Full Transcript:

Radon Stancil:	Welcome, everyone, to our Secure Your Retirement podcast. And today, we are bringing on a guest. You know that in our podcast, our goal is to talk about one of three things typically, is financial, legacy, and then lifestyle. Today, I will tell you, is a lifestyle podcast. And I say that because it’s about how to make sure that you have as healthy a lifestyle as possible. And we have a very special guest on. Her name is Lynne Bowman, all the way from California. So first of all, let me just say welcome to our podcast and thank you for coming on, Lynne.
Lynne Bowman:	Well, thank you so much for the invitation and excuse my hat. This is the Nevada Wolf Pack, University of Nevada, in case you didn’t recognize it. But I’m wearing it for my grandson today.
Radon Stancil:	Very good. Welcome. I’m very glad to have you on the show today. Murs and I, we love it whenever somebody comes on and shares things with us that can help us think about not only just the financial side, but also the health side. And I like what your little caption here is. It’s glam grandma who knows how to get you to eat your veggies. And when we were talking prior to starting this interview, you actually said a lot of people don’t understand the connection between health and wealth and how they’re connected. So can you kind of give us, first of all, maybe a little bit of background, what got you on this quest and then maybe what’s the mission of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish?
Lynne Bowman:	Okay, well, you’ve already kind of leaked it. The mission is to get you to eat your veggies. So let’s just put that right out in front. But I am a type 2 diabetic and have been since the eighties. And that started me on a quest to figure out how to stay on my feet and stay healthy. And I realized in the process of doing that, that a lot of the information that was put out about type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases was not, in my mind, accurate and not too helpful. So it’s been decades, obviously. I’m now 76, as I confessed to you earlier. But I’m happy about that. I love being 76. I survived and I plan to survive happily for as long as I can, maybe another 25 years or so. And I love the idea of bringing that kind of security to people if I possibly can.
	And I think a lot of people don’t understand this clear connection between your money and your health, that something like 85% of the bankruptcies in this country are because of ill health. And staying healthy is one of the best preventive financial strategies you can have as well as, come on, let’s just have more fun. Let’s be more active. Let’s enjoy every year of our life that we possibly can. And the best way to do that is to be healthy.
	And there are some very clear strategies now. A lot of research has come out in the last two years about exactly what it is that keeps you on your feet longer, better, stronger. And it isn’t always what people think. There’s a lot of kind of a jumble of misinformation, people selling supplements, and the healthcare industry saying one thing and the supplement industry saying another thing and the diet industry pushing stuff out all the time.
	So I’m here to talk about what I personally have been able to discern as the truth in all of that from the point of view of a grandma. That’s my sort of letter behind my name, is I’m a grandma. And so I have a very different point of view as a woman who has stood behind a sink for many years in my life, as well as I’ve had a career in communications and advertising. And so I’ve been an office monkey too, and I had three kids, single mom. So I think I have some street cred when it comes to what really works and what can you incorporate in your life that makes sense that’s going to make you feel better for a long time. So that’s what I’m about.
	And as you know, I have a book out on the subject recently, Brownies for Breakfast. And I titled it that way very consciously, because I think so many people associate healthy eating or a healthy lifestyle with deprivation. Like, “Oh, you mean I have to give up sweets and give up fun and give up eating what I want and give up eating when I want?” It’s always about something that they’re going to be denied. And we have this emotional, all of us, relationship with food and our bodies and we don’t want anybody telling us what, even a grandma, we don’t want anybody telling us what to do, what to eat, when to eat, how to eat.
	But guess what? If you want to be healthy and you want keep your money to do fun things with and not pay medical bills, you’re going to have to listen up about what to eat, when to eat, and how to move, because that’s the big one when it comes to keeping yourself healthy, for sure. Although, and you guys know this, community is huge in keeping you healthy and happy and alive longer. So it’s impossible to talk about food. Food isn’t just food. It’s about communion. It’s about sitting and eating with people. Who are you eating with? Are you eating alone? Are you eating out of a paper bag? Are you driving through for all your meals. All of that has a very big influence on how healthy you’re going to be and for how long.
Murs Tariq:	Yeah, Lynne, that is a very good overview there. Thanks for sharing that. How many grandkids do you have?
Lynne Bowman:	I have two.
Murs Tariq:	Congratulations.
Lynne Bowman:	So not a huge number, but they’re perfect, of course.
Murs Tariq:	Well, also, you’re [inaudible] about getting them to, or getting anyone to eat their veggies. I’ve got a two-year-old at home, almost two-year-old, and we’re working on that right now and trying to find little ways here and there to sneak it into what he thinks is a treat is actually just full of veggies.
Lynne Bowman:	I’m all about it. It’s all about smoothies, Murs.
Murs Tariq:	Yeah. It’s a lot of fun. But I mean, it makes sense, right? If you’re healthier, especially in your later years, you could be avoiding some major, major medical costs or maybe delaying the threat of long-term care and all these different things that are very, very expensive, especially where we live, in the U.S. So living a healthy lifestyle not only can save some money, but it can also provide some happiness in retirement as well and not be so bogged down. But how do we do that? And so that’s why I want to dive in.
	It seems like you’ve done a ton of research. And I think we all will Google here and there, hey, what’s the best diet to be doing right now and get caught up into whatever marketing works towards us. And we go pick that diet and run with it for a little bit. And so we want to hear about what you have found and think is one of the ways that works for you and maybe some people that you work with. But what would you say is the most surprising advice that you would give? Let’s keep all the listeners on the edge of their seats here and let’s get straight to the advice.
Lynne Bowman:	Surprising advice. This is becoming less surprising. It’s out there and it’s supported. But if you haven’t heard the news, one of the most important things you may do for your health is to not eat so often. Americans, particularly, eat all day and all night. And the first thing you might consider doing to radically change your health rather quickly is to stop eating all the time, to eat in a shorter window of hours. And I highly recommend midday, during the day. Not too late, not when it’s dark. And right away, you’re going, “Yeah, well,” but people, in this country particularly, well, in Argentina and some other places, but everyone’s eating pizza at 11 o’clock at night in front of the TV. And that is the worst possible scenario as far as your body is concerned.
	Some of the really interesting, exciting, newer research is about a thing called autophagy, which is my new favorite word. I love saying it. Autophagy. And essentially, it means your body cells’ ability to cleanse themselves. And we didn’t used to consider that at all. And so it’s a picture that I want everyone to have of you’ve got to give your body time to do the processes that it knows how to do beautifully to clean itself. And the body wants to do that when you’re sleeping at night, late. And if you continue to shovel food in, it’s like continuing to drive on the highway when the crew is there and they’re trying to clean it up and the trucks and shovels and everything, and you’re still… You have to empty it. You have to leave it so that these cells can do this process of cleansing. And they are getting rid of dead bits and allowing your body to wash itself out.
	And without that it’s just like that closet you’ve got in your rubbish room. It just fills up with stuff. And that’s not a scenario for health. It’s just this refuse is piling up in your body just the way it would in your garage. So that may not be totally surprising to people, but it certainly was to me when I first really put my snoot in it and understood the science of it. And I hope that’s a picture that people can take away, that you need to let your body rest. And that the only time your body actually heals itself is when it’s in deep sleep. And you cannot sleep deeply if you have a full stomach. You need to leave a period of time from your last meal to when you go to sleep. And that’s going to let you sleep better, which is a complaint of a lot of us who are older than 45 or 50. Sleep can become an issue. And you can’t have great health without great sleep.
	And especially now, they’re making the connections between cognitive health and sleep. Very, very important. So understand that food plays a role in sleep. And all these bodily systems are connected. You can’t really separate out movement, exercise, or mood, or food. It’s all part of the same system. We give it different names, but it’s all just you. But the good news is you’re in charge. You can make a decision to change something that you’re doing and it will work. It can be very powerful. And you said, yes, I’ve done a lot of research and I’m my biggest guinea pig. I’m the only truly cooperative subject that I have to experiment on. Not that I haven’t tried with kids and husbands and things.
	But I’ve experimented with being a total vegan. And that was very, very interesting. I did that for six months and I got a great result in my hemoglobin A1C coming down and I felt great. It was all wonderful. But since then, I’ve moderated. And I now eat some fish, salmon particularly, and it’s all backed by science, but also delicious. It’s something I really love to eat and a very healthy thing, as far as I’m concerned, to eat. There’s a recipe or two in my book for that. But the thing that all the science supports is whole food, plant-based eating. And there’s really no disagreement about that among people who study food, nutrition, longevity.
Radon Stancil:	So I was going to ask you, because you said your book is about eating brownies for breakfast or whatever. What would you say the overwhelming premise because, I mean, we know people do things like calorie counting. They maybe do intermittent fasting. Maybe they decide they’re not going to eat carbohydrates or they’re going to eat low amounts of carbohydrates, like you’re saying. I’m assuming based on what you just said, you don’t eat red meat, you don’t eat pork, you stick with the other things. So what would you say the overwhelming premise then of your being in an experiment that says, “Hey, these are the components of what you could do and what you should avoid.”
Lynne Bowman:	So it’s whole food and plant-based. So most everything that you eat should be a plant food and as little processed as possible. So some people consider putting something in a blender processing it. To me, it’s like, well, if it’s spinach in the blender, it’s still spinach. It’s still whole food. It still was just a spinach leaf. And I haven’t done anything except chop it up. So more plants, whole food. And when it comes to meat, if you are going to eat meat, make sure it’s happy, grass-fed, college educated meat, not factory farm. It’s very important for your health because the dairy products and the meat products that come from factory farming are not something that is going to add to your good health. So if you want meat, make sure you’re sourcing it well, that you know what that critter ate, because that’s what you’re eating.
	So I’m not going to tell everyone to just drop meat now, but I am going to tell everyone, here’s my number one recommendation, is no sugar. If you take sugar out of your diet, that is going to eliminate so many things in bags, in boxes, you can’t even imagine, once you start really religiously reading the labels. And you’re doing this, Murs, because you have a child, two-year-old child. So you are becoming so much more conscious of it. Once you start really reading those labels, you’re going, “Oh my gosh, this has sugar in it? That has sugar in it? Everything has sugar in it?” Yes.
	And then the next bit there is, I hope you know by now that sugar is, in fact, addictive. It’s more addictive than heroin. There’s lots of science behind that. And so when people say, “Well, how about if I just kind of cut down on the sugar?” My response is, “Well, how about if you just cut down on the heroin? Will that work?” No, it doesn’t work. You need to get off of it because your body is responding to this substance that it is addicted to. And so give yourself two or three weeks and then kind of see how you feel and see how it’s going. I mean, really get off of it. Really go on a sugar diet.
	And my book, by the way, the Brownies for Breakfast idea is that you can make fabulous food with no sugar. You just don’t realize it. And there are all these great sweeteners out there now, which, of course, because I’m diabetic, I was on this maybe sooner than a lot of people were because I really needed, it was essential that I be more careful than other people. But it turns out that the same prescription that is super healthy for a diabetic or someone with heart disease, that’s the same prescription for everybody. We should all eat like a diabetic.
	So the book is, my brownie is made out of pumpkin and nut butter and monk fruit sweetener, and you can use egg substitute or regular eggs. Eggs, it turns out, if you’re truly vegan and you really want to be strictly vegan, you won’t eat eggs, but eggs are a super whole food. If you’re sourcing them well from a happy chicken whose name is known by a farmer who loves her, go ahead and eat eggs. They’re wonderful. But you can make a brownie. And I could tell you, I could show up at any church supper with my brownie and stack it on the table there and not tell people it was sugar-free. And there would be a number of people who would come up to me and go, “Oh, Ms. Bowman, your brownie is the best thing I’ve had in a long time. It’s gooey and delicious. I can’t believe how yummy is. It’s too rich maybe, but it’s really good.” It’s just knowing how to make food without crappy ingredients. Pretty simple.
Murs Tariq:	So let’s say we get the diet aspect of being healthy all figured out, which is a big part of it. I used to say when I was younger, I used to say I work out so hard so that I can eat whatever I want, which is really kind of a false statement. It worked because I was young and I had a strong metabolism at the time.
Lynne Bowman:	You were a guy.
Murs Tariq:	And a guy. And as you age, your metabolism starts to slow and you have to be very careful about what you eat, but still the formula does apply. Exercising does apply. But the diet is a huge part of staying healthy. But let’s say we get the food part figured out and remember, our-.
Lynne Bowman:	You feel good enough to exercise.
Murs Tariq:	Right. And so remember, our listeners are 55 to 75. You told us that you’re 76 yesterday. And so for someone of that age category, what would you say is the best exercises to complement a very nice diet?
Lynne Bowman:	Well, first of all, walk. Everybody should walk all the time, everywhere they can, as often as they can. Best exercise anyone can do at any age. We are meant to walk and run. And so do that. It doesn’t cost you anything. It can save you money and it makes you feel good. And then beyond that, what I do, and I highly recommend it because it’s social as well, which is a huge part of our health and mental health and physical health, as we get older, I work out three times a week with a group of gals roughly my age, some younger. We do TRX. We do Pilates. It’s a workout that would stack up with, it’s definitely a workout. But it’s also stretching, it’s core muscles and so on. So if that works for you, if you have a place that you can go and do that. It’s great for me because I see my friends three times a week and we laugh and make fun of each other and dish. And that is a huge part of health as well. It’s very hard to be super healthy and be completely alone.
	So I would recommend highly that you find a way. We have a walking group. I live in a very small country town, but we have a group of people who walk on the beach and walk on some of our trails and we communicate via email. And okay, we’re going to show up at this trail eight o’clock, show up at that trail eight o’clock, different days. That’s walking and hiking.
	Working out in a gym, I don’t know. That’s not my thing because I like it to be a very positive and supportive kind of situation. So it just depends on what the gym is. Dancing. Take Hawaiian dancing. Take any kind of a lesson that gets you out there with some music and some younger people maybe, and just move your buns. That’s basically all you need to do. Even if it’s just walking, walking down the street, walking a dog. A lot of my friends, of course, have critters that have to walk. So that gets them out and walking their fuzzy friends.
	But yeah, Murs. And I wanted to go back to your baby one more time, because I talk with families a lot about how to get kids to eat their veggies, which is a thing that I think you need to start really young. And with my kids, it was not that hard. It was kind of fun. They learned very young that they needed to shop with me, cook with me, they needed to clear the table. And a kid will eat what a kid grows or a kid cooks. So get your child starting in the dirt as soon as possible with some kind of a little, even if it’s something on a sink that’s herbs, parsley, something that’s growing. And get that kid up to the stove and stirring stuff and cooking stuff as soon as possible. Because then they’ll they’ll eat it, absolutely. It becomes a different thing when they’ve made it and they’ve participated.
	And my kids also, and if they were here, they would growl about it probably, but they always had to read the label on everything at our table. Nothing got by without having that label read aloud and dramatically at times. Because until you understand what is in processed food, it’s hard to be motivated to work a little harder to make something yourself. You have to quit just eating out of a bag. You cannot be healthy just eating stuff out of a to-go bag or a bag of Oreos or Doritos or any of those things. They are actually engineered to addict you.
	And I don’t know if you guys have talked about that before, what big food really is up to, but they’re not your friend. Those foods were not created to make you healthy. They were created so that you couldn’t stop eating them. They literally are engineered to make you unhealthy, when you think about it. And forgive me for being a bit of a scaremonger here, but I think it’s important to really get that message that when you’re eating out of that bag, you are eating someone else’s profits that are made on your ill health.
Radon Stancil:	Yeah. Well, it’s all very, I mean, when you talk about, it’s like, okay, well, that makes sense, that’s extremely interesting. Extremely kind of gets you to think and go that makes sense. So let me ask you this, Lynne. People listening, if they wanted to get your book and learn more about you, what’s the best way for them to go do that and get that information so they can continue to learn about what you’re teaching?
Lynne Bowman:	Thank you. And I hope you will. I love hearing from people, I love getting questions and inquiries. And my website is Lynnebowman.com, very simple. L-Y-N-N-E-B-O-W-M-A-N.com. There’s a form on the little thing, contact, that you can send me a message. And I try to respond to all my messages. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all that. And in some cases, my author name is Lynne Parmiter Bowman. P-A-R-M-I-T-E-R. So you can search that and find all my podcasts on Listen Notes and Spotify and those places. But just search my name. There are a couple of other Lynne Bowmans, but there are no other Lynne Parmiter Bowmans. And the website again is lynnebowman.com. And the new book is Brownies for Breakfast: A Cookbook for Diabetics and the People Who Love Them.
Radon Stancil:	Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Lynne. It’s been a pleasure having you on. I know what you’ve shared is going to be interesting for our listeners so thank you so much.
Lynne Bowman:	I hope so. Thank you.