is a multitalented kind of plant powered superstar.

She is an author

She is a research fellow at King's College in London.

She's got the Gut Health Clinic.

You may have read her book, Love Your Gut.

She's got a new one

coming out as well called How to Eat More Plants.

And if anybody ever needed direction on anything,

this is the direction to take. This is so fantastic.

I'm so excited to have Dr. Megan Rossi here with us.

Thank you so very much for being here.

It's an absolute pleasure.

How are things going with you?

I know we have a mutual friend in Will Bulsciwitz

and when he just released The Fiber Fueled Cookbook,

it was a whirlwind of appearances

and instagram lives and just commitments to get this

book on store shelves and get that in front of people.

How are you dealing with this?

Because I'm sure your plate is ultra full right now.

Yeah, look, it's it's a lot but I love it.

You know, when you've got a message

that, you know, can improve people's lives in very real

and often surprising ways.

It just keeps spurring you on to do the TV and do

the lies and do the podcast because I know that

it has potential to help millions of people.

So it's that motivation that continues

to get me through with not that much sleep,

which by gut microbes aren't overly happy with

our gut microbes.

Be affected by sleep.

We always think about what it is that you're eating,

but sleep plays a role there, too, huh?

Absolutely.

So we know that, like humans, we've

got our own circadian rhythm.

So to our gut microbes.

So that's the sleep wake cycle.

And the studies have shown

that after just two days

of not getting enough sleep, so sleep deprivation

actually changes

your gut microbes despite being on on the same diet.

So that's actually something I focus on in the first book.

You got the four pillars of gut health.

So, yes, obviously diets are really important,

but so is you getting enough sleep?

So I've got a sleep questionnaire in the

in the first book, which helps you get an idea of your

sleep quality. And then I get

one of my researchers actually at King's College London

shared with me the sleep protocol

that she actually used in a clinical trial

that showed it significantly improved people's

sleep quality

and duration

compared to the other control groups

that just got told to sleep more.

So she let me put

that in the book to help people really,

you know, maximize their sleep and in turn improve

they health that way.

Then obviously there is the movement element.

We know that's equally important

as you sleep in terms of supporting that gut bacteria.

Community and really helping them thrive.

And then also this stress, that's the fourth pillar.

We know that

so many of us, myself included at times, can get stress.

And that strangulation up here leads to strangulation

of your gut and your gut.

Microbes don't want that either.

So, again, in love, you got I've got a stress questionnaire

where you can scale yourself as well as one of my colleagues,

Kimberly Wilson, who's a psychologist, actually shared

some of her favorite types of, you know, ten minute

strategies to help reduce stress and in calm down the got that.

So yeah, it's all about those four elements despite,

you know, people having a perfect gut boosting diet.

If you're not focusing on the other areas,

you just can't really get optimal gut health.

Oh, okay.

So I'm learning something new today. All right.

So I definitely could use some help with the sleep and stress.

That's interesting.

I'm going to I'm going to go I'm going to follow those tips.

I'm going to get me a good night's sleep.

What's not really expected to talk about that

at the top of the interview. But here we are.

Let's talk about nutrition, though, and focus on that.

That is the primary focus

of the exam room after all, the exam room is all about diet.

They love, they love, they love, they love to learn about

this stuff.

Now, in your book, How to Eat More Plants okay.

You encourage people to eat 30 or more plants

every single week.

You hear the number 30 initially.

That seems like an awful lot, but your message in the book is

you can get to 30 without much effort at all.

It really is much easier than what people think.

In fact, the

the menu plans in the book, whether it's the one for family

feasting or for busy people all of that

and contain over 70 plant points each and every week.

Now the important thing to highlight

it doesn't take extra time or extra cost.

You know I want to make sure that this is a really accessible

way to achieve maximum gut health.

It's things like you know at the grocery store instead of

just getting the pumpkin seeds,

get the three seed mix instead of

just getting the chickpeas, you get the three bean mix.

As long as it's

obviously not insult or vinegar, it's just in the water

and those sorts of things.

So just broccoli, get the stir fry mix.

So whenever you go to the store, think diversity.

Now this magic number 30 stemmed from a trial undertaken

in the US from you know it's amazing colleagues of mine

and they showed that yes, people who eat at least 30 different

types of plants a week have better gut health

than those who eat the same ten on repeat.

And I think if we think about

our own diet, often we do fall into habitual

buying the same foods, cooking the same meals

but the science is

really highlighting this element of diversity

is incredibly important because of the phytochemicals.

So we know that we all you know, need, you know, the key

micronutrients in our diets, about 20 plus of them.

But there is tens of thousands of these phytochemicals

which are within plants

and each different type

of plant provides different phytochemicals.

Now the thing about these phytochemicals

is that our bacteria absolutely love them.

And when we feed our body these phytochemicals,

the bacteria thrive the better at producing different vitamins,

regulating hormones, communicating with our brain,

impacting our blood sugar regulation.

All of those things that bacteria do are enhanced

when we feed them that diversity of those flashy chemicals

so that the science behind why we're trying to get at least 30.

And in the book I've come up with this plant point system

which stemmed from that that that trial showing that the 30

but then I've just added on

to my clinical experience in terms of giving different

and for example herbs and spices just get a quarter of a point

but if you eat you know an example

if you eat 20 strawberries you only get one point.

Whereas if you eat ten strawberries

and a banana and some quinoa you get three points

each different top you get a new point.

So you've kind of turned it into a game that sounds like fun.

Yeah.

Look, you know, the reason I did that is because,

you know, I've been a clinician for the past 15 years.

I know that we love counting things,

but what we see is counting things like calories just

doesn't achieve the long term results that people deserve.

So I've kind of turned it into a way

we can count plates instead,

and it's a really fun way, I think, to engage with that.

You know, thousands

different spent plant species out there that a lot of us

may have seen in the shops, but aren't that,

you know, comfortable with cooking, for example.

So, you know,

one of the sections in the book

is the meat, the legumes and then meats, the whole grains.

And what I've done is introduced eight really

incredibly healthy types of whole grains and legumes