As I was browsing Snap stories instead of doing homework, I came across a Well + Good article on sugar-free desserts. I had just finished a month without sugar and just had to look into this article.
This article was an interview with Crosby Tailor, the creator of Crosby’s Cookies, his sugar-free healthful desserts. I saw these cookies and needed to get my hands on them. I went right to Crosby’s website and started exploring.
As I read about his journey and his recipes, I found his story and philosophy so interesting and wanted to know more about him and how he got started. I got in touch with Crosby and was able to set up a time to talk with him and learn all about his philosophy and journey. Here are some of the highlights.
Crosby’s Journey to Health
A little background on Crosby: he is a former college football player turned model turned health enthusiast. He has tried every diet out there in search of one that would make him feel like he was performing at his best.
He is now the creator of Crosby’s Cookies, whose motto is “Eat dessert, burn fat,” and runs his blog and Instagram (@Crosbytailor), Tailord Life. He created his line of guilt-free, healthy, and fat-burning cookies because he wants everyone to be able to enjoy dessert without sacrificing any of the flavor and pleasure.
Crosby’s diet is currently a high-fat and low-carb diet. He doesn’t eat sugar and focuses on getting lots of good fats like MCT oil (from Bulletproof), avocados, egg yolks, grass-fed butter, and meats. When you eat a healthy high-fat, low-carb, and low-to-moderate protein diet, your body enters ketosis. Ketosis is the state in which your body burns fat as its fuel instead of sugar.
After he graduated college and was no longer a college athlete, he had to modify his diet since he was used to practicing for several hours a day and eating as much and whatever he wanted.
To Crosby, food was just a form of fuel, and he did not care what he was eating. When his lifestyle changed, he had to develop a new diet and change his perspective on food.
First, he tried being vegan, but after a few weeks of feeling on top of the world, the lack of protein and certain fats started to take a toll on his body. His body was changing and he felt weak and tired. He began to not be able to book as many jobs and knew he needed to change his diet.
After being a vegan, he took a dramatic shift to a raw Paleo diet. This diet is an extreme one for sure, and it includes eating Paleo, but everything is raw—meat and all.
Crosby had so much energy on this diet and was feeling great until the raw meats began to give him stomach issues. He had to take a long and powerful dose of antibiotics that destroyed his gut and left him completely imbalanced.
Crosby then read The Body Ecology Diet book by Donna Gates and became fascinated by it and used her methods. He began to utilize it to help him get his body back in balance. Because he had to heal his gut and get back on track, he required a strict diet of no sugar (like a handful of blueberries every few days maximum) to kill the yeast from the antibiotics. He also had to take lots of healing foods and supplements like probiotics.
This was a long process, but in the end he learned what he needed to do to make his body feel its best. After he was healed, he continued to eat sugar-free, which is what sparked his dessert obsession.
The Desserts
All of his desserts are one-hundred percent sugar-free and full of great fats. What many people don’t know or believe is that fat is great for you. In fact, the more fat you eat the more fat you can burn. A person can turn himself into a fat-burning machine by restricting carbs and eating lots of healthy fats. This is a way to essentially train your body into burning fat for fuel.
Not only are his desserts full of fat and sugar-free, but he also loads them up with amazing ingredients that have numerous heath benefits, creating the ultimate guilt-free and delicious dessert.
#SpoonTip: Check out the food section on Crosby’s blog for some amazing recipes.
Common Problems With Clients
Although Crosby is not a doctor, he is very knowledgeable on health and fitness, so he does some health coaching on the side. Many people come to him in hopes of losing weight, healing their gut, or are looking to get stronger.
The first thing he usually brings up is how our gut health is responsible for so much in our bodies. Eighty percent of our serotonin is produced in our gut, which means your gut is responsible for a lot of our well-being and how we are feeling. Essentially, you can look great on the outside, but never feel that way on the inside if your gut is not functioning properly.
Another common problem he sees in his clients is hormonal imbalances. Between all the crazy diets out there and gut imbalances, your hormones can get out of whack and make it extremely hard for you to lose weight, feel like you have energy, or even function at your full potential.
We have been trained to think that fat is bad, and that if we eat it we will get fat. This is completely untrue. In fact, low-fat diets can lead to a decrease in production of estrogen, which is one of the main female reproductive hormones.
Fat is also responsible for helping build healthy cell walls, which allow you to metabolize insulin, thus keeping your blood sugar better regulated. Without proper blood sugar control, your body begins to store fat.
Fat plays an important role as one of the building blocks of our cell membranes, precursors to our hormonal system, and is an essential factor for the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins A,D,E, and K.
For these reasons, one of the first things Crosby recommends to his clients is for them to increase their fat intake. He recommends starting the day with a Bulletproof coffee and restricting carbs and adding a lot more fat to all meals.
After a few weeks of doing this, clients notice that they have so much more energy, their skin looks clearer, their brain is functioning better, and they are able to lose weight.
Tips For College Student
I asked Crosby what he would tell his college self to do if he knew all of this information back then. He said if he knew even some of this information his life would have been so much different, and recommended a few tips.
First, he really emphasized the importance of fat and how adding even one tablespoon of MCT oil a day can change your life dramatically. He emphasized that we should get educated on the benefits of fat and stop being scared or restricting fat intake.
As we increase fat, Crosby recommends decreasing the amount of carbs and sugar. Sugar is horrible for you, and everyone could benefit from cutting sugar out of their diet
The more sugar you eat, the more resistant you become to the body’s response to insulin, which means your body will pump out more insulin to bring your blood sugar back down. Eventually, you might be unable to burn all the sugar you eat, and your body will store it as fat.
Crosby said he sees a lot of people who wake up and eat a banana and oatmeal or a smoothie and think they are eating whole foods that are good for their bodies, and that by doing so they will become healthier. In reality, they are starting their day with a boatload of sugar that will be burned quickly and stored as fat.
#SpoonTip: Instead of having a smoothie with lots of fruit and sweetener, try adding some protein powder, coconut oil, and sticking to low-sugar fruits like berries and açaí.
As you do this, your body will get more used to using ketones (when the body burns fat for fuel), and you create a gateway into slowly releasing sugar from your diet. Then you will see how your body does not need to rely on sugar or carbs for energy.
Crosby is also very interested in Chinese medicine and all their excellent herbs. He recommended taking a look into all the different mushrooms, herbs, and supplements that are used in Chinese medicine.
Finally, we are all college students who are constantly stressed and cooped up in the library or the dorm room, so he recommends that we get outside and relax. A little fresh air and exercise can be a great way to de-stress and regroup.
For more information and resources make sure to take a look at Crosby’s blog and the Bulletproof website to get educated about all the amazing benefits of fat.