The School of Greatness
How To HEAL Your Gut Microbiome for Better Mood, Weight Loss & Disease Prevention
Fri, 25 Apr 2025
Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Your gut microbiome shapes every aspect of your health from mental clarity to disease prevention. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz reveals how the diversity of plants in your diet forms the foundation of gut health, recommending a goal of 30 different plants weekly to optimize your microbiome. Shawn Stevenson explores the powerful connection between family meals and health outcomes, showing how eating together just three times weekly dramatically reduces chronic disease risk. Dr. William Li explains how ultra-processed foods send "hooligans" into your gut's symphony, while whole foods begin healing your system within 24 hours. These experts demonstrate that transforming your health doesn't require extreme measures—just small, consistent choices that work with your body's innate healing capacity.Dr. Will’s book Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, andOptimizing Your MicrobiomeDr. Will’s cookbook The Fiber Fueled Cookbook: Inspiring Plant-Based Recipes to Turbocharge Your HealthShawn’s book Eat Smarter Family Cookbook: 100 Delicious Recipes to Transform Your Health, Happiness, and ConnectionShawn’s book Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success: A Longevity BookShawn’s book Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your LifeDr. Li’s book Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal ItselfDr. Li’s book Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live LongerIn this episode you will learn:Why the diversity of plants in your diet is the #1 factor in gut microbiome health (aim for 30 different plants weekly)How your microbiome directly influences your mood, cravings, and mental health through the gut-brain connectionThe shocking research showing families who eat together just three times weekly dramatically reduce disease riskWhy ultra-processed foods now make up 70% of the average child's diet and how this damages gut bacteriaHow exercise shapes your microbiome differently depending on the type of activity you chooseThe transformative power of olive oil and other healthy fats on brain inflammation and blood-brain barrier healthWhy your taste buds can completely change in just four weeks when you consistently choose healthier foodsHow polyphenol-rich whole foods begin creating positive changes in your gut microbiome within 24 hoursFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1763For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Will Bulsiewicz – greatness.lnk.to/1621SCShawn Stevenson – greatness.lnk.to/1484SCDr. William Li – greatness.lnk.to/1743SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: What is the importance of plant diversity for gut health?
Well, I'll give you three things and they all connect back to the microbiome. I would start with food. The food is our most powerful lever that we can pull in terms of shaping and changing the microbiome. And there are simple choices that anyone can make. And this doesn't have to fall under a dietary pattern or a label. It's just changing the way you eat.
What would be, for that first one, what would be the top five foods that everyone should eat daily to optimize their gut microbiome?
Okay, I can give you a top five, but can I start with this essential rule? Yes. Which is diversity of plants. All right, so eating as much variety of different plants in our diet. We have to be intentional about this if this is what we want. Because the problem is the food system is not going to do that for us.
You go into the supermarket, they've distilled it down to 75% of the calories in our supermarket is three foods. What are those three foods? Wheat, corn, and soy. Wow. Yes. That is 75% of the calories in the supermarket. Now, granted, most of those are ultra-processed. I'm here to advocate for real food. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes, that's at least five.
We could add mushrooms. Those are broad categories. We can get more specific if we want to, but to me, it's about getting that variety. This is not just an idea or a concept. This is actually scientifically proven. In a study called the American Gut Project, which, by the way, was international, but it was run out of UC San Diego, what they found is that
At the end of the day, when they did their analysis, above everything else, there was this one rule. The diversity of plants in your diet was the number one factor in predicting who had the healthiest gut. And the number is 30. 30 per week. 30 different plants per week. Now, all fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. Include those 30. They count. Okay. All of them, right?
So, you want to have 30 different... Ingredients every week of plants. At least. Wow. At least. But you know what? I don't even know if I've tried 30 different plants in my life. Lewis, you and I need to spend more time together. Exactly, right? It's like 30. Wow, that's incredible.
You start to take a smoothie. It could be Monday morning. Take a smoothie, bananas, blueberries. Greens of your choice, whatever ones you like. Chia seeds, hemp seeds. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds. We're already up to six. Okay. Right? You want to add in some raspberries or some other kinds of berries. We could easily get this up to 10. Gotcha. Gotcha. You're making pasta sauce. Oh.
Why would you just do pasta sauce? Why not throw some plants in there? Oh, there you go. Right? Onions, garlic, basil, oregano. Those count too.
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Chapter 2: How does fiber and GLP-1 hormone influence satiety and weight loss?
So, the data are clear. That when we consume an ultra-processed diet, which in the United States today, 60% of calories are ultra-processed foods. So more than half. These are foods, by the way, that did not exist 100 years ago. Crazy. Right? So what we're describing was not possible for our great-grandparents.
There's no way they could have ate the diet that we currently eat because these foods did not exist. And our kids, 70% of calories in our kids come from ultra-processed foods. Wow. And there's no doubt that they cause a shift in the microbiome. It's a shift towards what we call dysbiosis. So it's the opposite of what we see when we eat a diverse diet.
Diverse diet leads to a diverse microbiome, and that is a healthy microbiome. When we shift towards ultra-processed foods, we're actually contracting the microbiome. We're empowering the ones that love sugar. We're empowering the ones that create inflammation.
And they're signaling the direction they want to go in. They want you to go in. Hey, you want more of this sugary drink. You want more candy. You want more chips.
They're telling your brain you need this. There are interesting studies to suggest that our taste buds and our cravings are driven Biomicrobial. Wow.
It's almost like we don't have control sometimes. Or maybe it's felt in the past like, I want this so bad. Yes, I can stop myself, but my desires and cravings are just like, I'm going to go to the store and buy candy right now. And is that the microbiome kind of signaling and constantly telling us, get this, go buy this, you need this?
I think that they play a role in that whole, yes, I think that they play a role in that whole impulse. And yes, that certainly exists. But also the beautiful and exciting thing is our taste buds can change, right? Those impulses can change and you can get yourself to a place where what you crave is actually something that's good for your body and nourishes your body.
How long would you say it takes to change your taste buds from not craving sugar and processed foods into craving a diverse plant-based healthy options?
I think it really, you really start to see the benefits of four weeks. Four weeks. Yeah. Of doing it consistently. Of doing it consistently. Yeah. But by the way, don't, I don't recommend that people try to flip a switch. Now there are some people that works for, but like to me, we want what, what I want is sustainable, right? Something that you can actually stick with. Not extremes. Not extreme.
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Chapter 3: What are the effects of ultra-processed foods on the gut microbiome and brain?
And it was as effective as medication for the treatment of major depression.
Really? Yeah. Just putting them on that nutritional food plan. Yes. For some reason, I don't like the word diet because I feel like it's a restriction. Yeah. As opposed to an addition of healthy things. Which is what we're talking about, right? It's not about like... eating less and starving yourself. And I think that's what people associate the word diet to.
It's like starvation, cutting out all foods that I enjoy and being miserable. That's what people think when they think of diet. And so I'd like to try, I try to keep correcting myself to being like, what's the healthy food plan? What's the nutritional abundance plan that we're going to step into?
Abundance is the right word for what we're talking about here. 30 different plants or more. I'm asking you to add more variety, not take away, not restrict. Yeah. So it's the opposite of what we've been told by traditional fad diets. Yes. So, all right. Number two. Yes. So we want to improve our mood. Okay. Exercise.
So exercise clearly improves our mood, can be used as something to help in the treatment of major depression. And the question is, how is it doing that? And one of the answers to that question is actually through the way that exercise shapes our microbiome. How do they shape our microbiome? It depends on what exercise you're doing. So what kind of exercise do you like? I'm curious.
I like to lift really heavy. Me too. And I like to run about two to three mile. I ran four miles last night, but I usually run two and a half to three at about a seven mile hour pace. Cool. So not too intense, not like too slow, but kind of like a steady pace.
Yeah. Do you switch up your exercise every once in a while to see if you can get better gains?
I daily do different sets and different kind of like body parts I guess but I'm constantly following a program to either intensify or add reps or add weights. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm getting more gains. In fact, I just put up 220. I haven't done 225 in years but I started like six months ago, maybe four months ago being like, how many can I do and I had three. Yeah.
It's like, okay, let me see what I could do over the next few months and a couple weeks ago, I did... 11 and a half reps at 225. So, I feel like I'm back at almost college when I did 15 when I was training football. And I feel like I can do more than that now that I have more wisdom and knowledge and nutritional and training and recovery information.
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Chapter 4: How quickly can taste buds and cravings change with diet?
Well, it's interesting because you think about all the great athletes, for example, in the NFL. And you see these guys do, like Adrian Peterson comes to mind. where some of the recoveries that he had during his career were crazy. And they defy the rules of recovery. And it makes you wonder if there's something- Is that genetics? Is that microbiome? Is that, yeah.
Are there other factors in play here? But what's interesting is because you have this shift in the microbiome towards these anti-inflammatory molecules. Okay, well, I just mentioned that depression has an inflammatory component to it, right? So here we are and we discover that exercise is actually good for helping our mood.
And what I'm saying is what's happening under the hood, if you lift up the hood and take a look, is there's this shift in the microbiome. And now you don't even have to change your diet. I mean, I do want you to eat more plants. Right, right. Right? But exercise alone helps you improve your anxiety or stress or depression. Yes.
And that shift that's happening in the microbiome is actually helping you to get more from your fiber. Right. So you don't change your diet. You eat the same fiber. Now you get more from it. But what if you also changed your diet at the same time that you were implementing this exercise? If you did one and two, food and exercise. This is why they synergize so well.
So would you say your gut microbiome influenced your mood more than anything else?
I think that the answer is yes. And the reason why I say that is they have these bizarre studies that they've done where they take people and they inject into them something called lipopolysaccharide. What is that? All right. Lipopolysaccharide is produced by bacteria that live inside of us, like E. coli. So we've all heard of E. coli, okay? So this is like- They inject a disease inside of us.
So they're injecting this thing that you find in E. coli into a person's bloodstream. Wow. Okay. And then they track them over the next couple of hours. We're talking about humans. We're not talking about mice right now. And they see what happens. And here's what they find. Number one, because this bacteria has entered into the bloodstream, they get increased levels of inflammation in the body.
Number two, their mood and their motivation to work dips. Wow. All right. Number three, they socially withdraw. All right. So what's going on here? Basically, what I've just told you is that when they inject this E. coli type stuff, which I, by the way, want to unpack that in a quick moment.
When they inject this E. coli based stuff called lipopolysaccharide, it basically activates inflammation and which affects their mood, and it also makes them socially withdrawn. And they think that what's happening is that the body is starting to shut down to preserve energy because it needs to fight the infection. So that's number one.
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Chapter 5: How does exercise shape the gut microbiome and improve mood?
Interesting.
That comes from a damaged gut.
How do we get to the place where we start to choose healthy when we have the option? As opposed to, man, this is convenient. This Starbucks, I'm just going to get all the sugary drinks. I'm going to get the cookies. When you have the money to buy healthy food, but you still choose the convenience, the high sugar, the high calorie foods that have a lack of nutrition,
Why does that take place? Your culture has already inundated you with the deliciousness, the perceived deliciousness of all these ultra-processed foods. In the United States, the average American adult is, according to the BMJ, it's one of the most prestigious medical journals, British Medical Journal, 60% of the average American's diet is ultra-processed foods. All right.
Now, the revelation that I'm bringing forth in this new project, the E-Smarter Family Cookbook, is that A new study that was published in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, found that almost 70% of the average child's diet is ultra processed foods. All right. So you're inundated as a child here in the United States.
If you're average, if you're the average child, you're inundated with ultra processed foods that is engineered by brilliant food scientists to taste a certain way that has this excitatory thing. that influences what's happening with your dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, adrenaline, all these different hormones that make you feel exhilarated, that make you feel pleasure, right?
And so it's not just a taste thing. It's a addiction thing that is taking place with our children, all right? And so you're inundated with this. Why would you even consider it? eating, quote, healthy. It just doesn't even sound right. Right. Especially I'm tasty and you're young and so you've got all these metabolic benefits on your side, right?
And so this is- You're going to have the candy, the ice cream, the processed food, the packaged food all day long. Absolutely. The fast foods, all that stuff.
If you're a free reign child in America, like we got free reign chicken out here. If you're a free reign child in America- You're going to go for ultra processed foods. And let's make a distinction to people who are curious. What is ultra processed foods? So processing of foods has been done by humans for thousands upon thousands of years. All right. And it's just taking a food and processing.
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Chapter 6: Can the gut microbiome influence mood and mental health?
had dramatically lower intake of ultra-processed foods, higher intake of vital nutrients, at least five servings of fruits and vegetables at each day, most days of the week. And the list goes on and on, all these different benefits they were seeing. But this is the most important part about this study.
And by the way, they found that when the TV was rarely or never on for these families, they had an even further drop in their consumption of ultra-processed foods, the kids specifically, right? Because of that marketing, that advertisement. Now, the most important part about the study is that this was looking at minority children who would generally be in the context of low income conditions.
Families like mine. We didn't know that eating together could help to protect our health in some strange way. But... Had we known, even if we were eating processed foods, just the behavior of eating together, it starts to create this protection. I'm going to share with you why. This leads to the next study. This was a collaboration of studies.
This was actually published in Pediatrics and the Journal of the American Medical Association. And I'm going to get all these resources and link them up for you guys too. Yeah, and they're all in the book detailed as well in the family cookbook. And so what these researchers uncovered was that, and this is the most important takeaway from today, this is the one, do this one thing.
They found that families who eat together, any meal, three times a week, okay? So parents eating together with their children or a parent eating together with their children, just three times a week, dramatically decreased overweight and obesity in the children and decreased eating disorders And just overall decreasing the risk of the onset of early mortality and chronic diseases.
By eating together with your family three times a week. That's fascinating. All right. This is the major takeaway that I want people to take on. And make that a mandate, make it a mission to eat with your family, eat with friends three times a week, plan it, add it to your calendar. Because today we've got a lot of stuff going on.
And a lot of times if you don't put on your schedule, it's not real. Like literally plan it out. This could be whatever flavor it looks like for you. This could be, you know, family dinner on Wednesday and Thursday and then brunch on Sunday, right? Just whatever works for you, but...
There's something really special about this process, and we can unpack more of this why, but also the psychological aspect. And this was shown in data looking at adults and how eating together with their family dramatically decreased their stress levels. This was coming from... a population of workers from IBM.
And they found that as long as the workers were able to get home and have dinner with their family, it kept work morale high. But as soon as their work schedule and the demands start to dig into them spending time with their family and getting home in time for dinner, their work morale start to go down, their stress levels elevated. Now, why does this matter overall?
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Chapter 7: What is the impact of eating meals together on family health?
We may even have some benefits. Yeah. Let's stay right here with extra virgin olive oil. So one of the studies that I shared in the new book, in the East Mortar Family Cookbook, looks at olive oil and researchers at Auburn determining that olive oil can actually help to reduce inflammation in the brain and help to heal the blood-brain barrier. Incredibly good. Like that's astronomically powerful.
Like why is this oil, why does it have such a resonance with the human brain and nervous system? That's amazing. And this is more mono and saturated fatty acids, by the way. And also if it's treated right, it's going to be bottled in dark glass because it's sensitive to light and heat. And so, even using it, by the way, we want to make sure that we're not using it on too high of heat.
And also, traditionally, maybe finishing your dishes with it, right? So, your plates, your food, or using it for salad dresses, pour on some olive oil, right? Our mutual friend, Dr. Stephen Gundry, he's an olive oil fanatic. He's obsessed with olive oil. He's like, drink it every day. Look at his results.
My guy is, you know, he's in his senior years, big time, and he's just so on point, like his cognition, his health, his energy. Last time I talked to him, he was like on a ski trip somewhere. It's amazing to see.
He takes like a shot a day of olive oil, right?
Yeah. It's just like a crazy old man. Or he's like, oh no, he actually is looking at the data. And so that would be one in the healthy category. And another one is, Now this one, there's a little bit of, by the way, none of these are, 100% across the board for everybody. All right. We've got to keep that in mind. The future of nutrition and health is personalization.
For some people, olive oil is not your thing. You might have background genetics that don't metabolize this particular oil a certain way or small amounts or whatever the case might be. So you got to keep that in mind. So we've got nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics are going to be some of the leading fields of science. Looking at how
What you eat influences your genetic expression and also your set of genes, how it's catering towards certain things being better for you versus other things. Versus your friend, versus your wife, versus your brother. Everybody has our unique cascade of genes. And on top of that, microbial genes, all right?
So all the genes that make up your microbiome, all the bacteria that make up your microbiome, they have their own genes. If we go gene for gene in the human body, 99% of your genes are bacterial. It's the little critters, their genes. And so now where we're at today with science, we're looking at how our bacteria's genes are affecting our human gene expression, all right?
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Chapter 8: How often should families eat together to reduce disease risk?
But the biggest focus needs to be on the quality of that food that you're eating, that you're building your tissues out of real sustainable materials. And that things that your cells can recognize, that your cells, your genes have evolved having some exposure to this versus... Hot fries. Right.
Which is very different from the metabolic impact that that's going to have versus, and again, you could do things in a certain phase. Like you were guzzling Dr. Pepper like you're getting paid for it and you can get by. But at some point there's a cost with everything. Absolutely, man. There's a cost with everything in our universe. There's causality.
And so being able to be empowered and start to see through a different lens, like is this real food or not?
Based on what I'm hearing you talk about, it almost sounds like if we stop thinking about mental health, not stop thinking about it, but focus more on gut health, it sounds like it connects to the brain and the mind and it'll create more alignment in ease versus dis-ease.
More, it's a new frontier. It opens up the avenue for more solutions. And by the way, because the gut also connects to other parts of our body as well, you know, again, remember I told you, like I'm all about the common denominator. pull that bow back and send a single arrow through as many things, many problems as you can.
Imagine if we could actually tackle mental health, mental wellness, and physical wellness all at the same time. And, you know, gut bacteria clearly plays a role. It's not You know, it's not the only thing, but, you know, it is the undiscovered country.
Because there's a, who is the doctor? Dr. Emeryn Mayer, I think it is. I don't know if he's got a book called Gut-Brain Connection. I think somebody that's talking about these things as well. And it seems like a lot of the things that are stemming from the brain disease or challenges is in the gut.
Yeah.
And it's also linked to longevity, it sounds like, as well. Exactly.
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