Ben Greenfield in the Hotseat

So anyone that follows you knows that you're not just focused on the body, right? You really care about the mind and the spirit as well. How did that develop out of, you know, being the guy that ran the gym and being this guy super focused on the body and maybe being focused on in this technical, intellectual way. But you've really, I mean, you're super known for biohacking in a much broader sense, as well as other components of mind optimization and spirit optimization. How did that come about?

It was two things. Number one, I realized during my Ironman triathlon career, this was about 2011 or so, and it really was my impetus to start on that book, Beyond Training, which redefined how you should actually train, taking all these elements or taking into account all these elements like nutrition and digestion and brain and hormones and all these things that a lot of, a lot of hard charging exercise enthusiasts failed to pay attention to. It was my own experience with the fact that I was like, I looked really good in spandex and I was really fast on a bike and running a marathon and swimming in my wetsuit, but I wasn't healthy. I started to dabble into this world of blood and biomarkers and self quantification. And part of that was because I was speaking at all these health and fitness conferences. So I'm constantly exposed to the most cutting edge tactics for quantifying the body or biohacking. The podcast does that too. I'm constantly approached by people who are like, hey, we have this piece of technology, we're planning on releasing it in like a year. We want to use you as like the guinea pig to test and trial this thing out. So I was really familiar with this concept of just beginning to like, test and see what's going on inside my body, not just outside. You know, I was having like, sleep issues and skin issues and like, my cortisol was really high. And I started to realize that there's a lot more to things than just the body. And a big, big part of this also came down to the fact that many of, like the focus issues and the distractibility issues and the sleep issues and the hormonal issues that I was experiencing were not just due to body dysfunction, but also due to a lot of the inflammation that can build up in neural tissue in the brain from improper training and from lack of sleep and from eating the wrong type of foods, right? Not, not doing the high protein, low carb bodybuilding diet or the high carb, low fat triathlon diet. But I began to realize that there are Other things that are important for neural health, like healthy fats, like avocados and olive oils and sardines and walnuts and these kind of things. And so I really started to geek out on healthy, holistic, ancestral nutrition. And my wife was a huge help in that because she was a rancher girl. She was already into making your own fermented sourdough bread and, you know, milking goats and raising chickens for eggs and doing all these things that we do now at our home in Spokane. But ultimately part of it, the mind part of it was really making that connection between not just a holistic approach to the body, but realizing that this skull that's sitting on top of the rest of our body is kind of like the master controller. And if this is falling apart, in many cases, it's because something's going wrong up here. Like, this is just kind of the canary in the coal mine for issues that are occurring in the control center. And so I realized that you have to do more than just take care of the body. You need to optimize the mind. And it's more than just like eating fat or getting enough sleep. You have to actually build new neurons and you have to learn new things and you have to engage in novelty and variety and challenge. And I started to realize that being a complete human, a big, big part of it is challenging your brain and caring for your brain and challenging your mind and optimizing things like focus and creativity. And so I really started to tap more into that side of things. And in addition to that, I kind of started down like the anti aging and longevity route, right? Because a large portion of the people I was working with, these are like 40 to 60 year old men and women who not just want to, like, these are like hard charging high achievers who want to live a limitless life, who want to go out and do triathlons and marathons and Spartan races and CrossFit wads, and they want to figure out how to do it and still live a long time. So I started to really get into like anti aging and longevity. What makes the body actually go for a long period of time? What's the secret to all these long living people? And sure, a big part of it really was a lot of the stuff that I already knew, right? Like you eat a lot of antioxidants from wild plants and you move and you lift and you sprint and, and you consume healthy fats and you get enough sleep and you get lots of sunshine and fresh air. But I also started to delve into this concept that family and love and relationships and the belief in some kind of a higher power or a spiritual aspect to life were really the defining characteristics of what made a human not only live a long time, but be happy doing it. And sure, I grew up as a Christian, well, familiar with spirituality, granted. I kind of like went off the deep end for many years in college and even after college, kind of like forsaking that whole idea and kind of scoffing. Humans are pretty powerful. We train our bodies, we train our brains. Screw the whole spiritual woo woo aspect of things. But I've realized that there's actually a lot to that. Everything from positive emotions to gratitude to love to relationships to family. It's been, well, you and I are talking right now. It's been about three years that I've really started to take a deep dive into everything from like prayer and meditation and yoga and gratitude journaling and a lot of the things that I would have kind of like laughed at and scoffed at as like whatever, the ironman triathlete riding my bike down the highway or the bodybuilder as things that are things that like old people do, or.

People who aren't cool do, or people who are kind of weird and edgy and like hippies living in the forest do. And I've realized that's the stuff that not only puts the icing on the cake, but it kind of is the cake, right? Like having a six pack abs or like increasing your iq, like that's the icing, right? The cake is the spirit, the cake is the soul. And so really like that's a big, big part of my goal now is I don't want to just help people have, you know, like what I started off doing was helping soccer moms look good in bikinis, right? Like that was what I was doing in college was just like personal training in a very, very traditional way, you know. And then I got into biohacking and optimizing cognitive performance and neurofeedback and all these things that can help to optimize the brain. And for me it started with sports performance. It kind of turned into, wow, this makes me like a more productive CEO. It makes me into a more productive author. It helps me to get rid of jet lag. But really, I mean the key to everything is strong spiritual health because I mean, all of that is for naught if your soul sucks, right? Like if your spirit isn't fostered or cared for, if your love and your relationships and your family quality are dwindling. And so really that's how that all kind of evolved was it started with a keen interest in health and the body. And then I realized you got to take care of the control center. And then I realized that really, it's the invisible that counts even more. And it's what science has shown us ultimately results in lasting happiness and longevity.