Ben Greenfield: The #1 Biohack Is Free (And It's Not Diet or Exercise)

Today I'm sitting down with someone who has been at the forefront of health, performance, and what is possible for the human body for well over a decade. Ben Greenfield is a world-renowned biohacker, bestselling author, former elite endurance athlete, and one of the most sought-after experts in optimizing energy, longevity, and overall well-being. But beyond all the credentials, what I appreciate most about Ben is that he's not just about pushing limits. He's about living well and living aligned, especially as a husband and father. And that is where we start the podcast today. In this conversation, we're going about the surface and below the surface. We're talking about what matters most to him right now, how his views on exercise have evolved from high-intensity training to a more sustainable approach that the rest of us can implement in our life, and what he believes is the optimal human diet in which biohacks actually move the needle versus ones that just sound cool. We'll also get into something that affects all of us, how to think about testing your body from blood work to hormones in a practical and cost-effective way. Effective way and even touch on cancer prevention and what we should all be paying more attention to. If you care about your health, your energy, your longevity, and showing up at your best for the people that you love, this is a conversation that you're going to want to pay close attention to. It is my great pleasure to welcome my friend, Mr. Ben Greenfield. Ben, good to see you again, brother.

Good to see you too, dude. It's always fun to come to Austin.

Yours in a couple of months.

I know.

Actually, we never had dinner together and then now we're having dinner twice.

Yeah.

In like a month or two. Yeah.

It's good that I'm not strict carnivore and you're not strict vegan, so somehow we can match up.

We always find something works. Yeah.

Or you can have the broccoli and I'll have the steak and yeah, call it even.

No. So I'm excited for this conversation. It's interesting. I've known you for, we've known each other for like probably a decade or something. Just going to events and such. Never really gotten, this is the longest conversation we will ever had, which is cool.

Possibly awkward.

We'll see. Awkward. It'll be, it wasn't, well, the prep was awkward.

Yeah.

So before we hit record, forced conversation with Hal and Ben for an hour.

We'll see how this goes.

Poor audience, man.

Yeah.

No, but well, in prepping for today, I was— I watched multiple interviews of yours and I was like, oh, Ben's even more brilliant than like his reputation.

Yeah. I thought you were going to say you like cured your insomnia.

No, no, dude. You're like, your expertise runs really, really deep and that's why.

Yeah.

So I'm excited about that. Here's where I want to start. Just what matters most to you right now in your life? Like, what are you focused on right now? What do you— what comes to mind when I ask you that question?

Oh, Um, you're an author, so you'll appreciate this. Um, I've been working, and when I say I, I've really been doing nothing except smiling at the camera. Um, but, um, my— so the CEO of my company, of this company is called Life Enterprises, and Life Enterprises like owns my coaching and consulting arm and BenGreenfieldLife.com. It's the parent company and Life Market, which is like Amazon for health products, and Life Network, which is kind of like an in-your-pocket app for podcasts, health content, biohacking, etc. And, um, the CEO happens to be my best friend who lives 20 minutes from my house. His background is the film industry, and, um, he basically just like came to work for me as a fun project 3 years ago, and then last year started having a team follow me around with a video camera. And I didn't really know what he was up to behind the scenes, but he made a documentary Wow. And without you even knowing he was making a documentary, I knew he was like making like some kind of like, I thought maybe like some series of short cinematic YouTube Shorts. And eventually, like 4 months before it came out, I realized that it was a, a bigger project. And then he screened it for me on my birthday in December. So like, uh, 4 months ago. And long story short is we had like a big Hollywood guy come on as executive producer. And then WME found out about it. And so they're working on selling it now. And it's basically based around this concept of a little bit of an antithesis to like, not that I want to like throw people under the bus and this is not intentional, but like a, like the Bryan Johnson-esque don't die, you know, um, pursuit of immortality where you're just, you know, spending 5 hours a day in your hyperbaric chamber and cold and hungry and libidoless, you know, hunched over with your, you know, IV and your red light beds. Yeah.

And promoting that you are going to live to 185 because that gets, you know, clicks and such.

Right. And, um, living fully is what I'm more excited about, right? Family, relationships, danger, adventure, um, and, and basically spending more time focusing on getting the most out of the years that we have rather than grasping at the straws of immortality.

Yeah.

Um, and, and also, like, I'm a Christian, so for me, um, immortality is something that will happen in the afterlife anyways, based on my religious beliefs.

Sure.

And I would rather focus more on building relationships and family and legacy. And so I thought, well, gosh, with this documentary, like, um, back to the author thing, it would be cool to do a book that kind of rides on the back end of that.

Nice.

Now we live in an era in which AI can churn out books, uh, unfortunately. Yeah, way better than you and I could probably write when prompted. Right way.

Sure.

Way faster. I think fact fact-based books are a thing of the past, right? Like, I have these like 600, 700-page biohacking tomes.

Yeah.

And there's, there's a lot of like story and in-the-trenches knowledge in those, but I think writing a fact-based book is kind of a thing of the past. Yeah, right, right, exactly. So I like the idea of more of an immersive journalistic approach, right? And so my idea, back to what I'm excited about, is I want to take my sons on a series of adventures over the next 2 years. So we're kicking things off with, uh, bow hunting, spearfishing trip in Florida this June. We're going to do everything from like open mic comedy night together to restoring a used car to writing a children's book, um, to doing a service project in the local community. We've chosen about 10 different adventures, and I want to write it as a way for fathers and sons to have like this guidebook to bond through life. And Sahil Bloom wrote in his book The Five Types of Wealth that like 90% of the time, the quality time that you're going to have with your kids is kind of like over with. Yeah, when they're 18 years old. Yeah, they're 18. Well, they're 18. Um, oh, thanks for the reminder. Tomorrow. Thank you for the reminder. Uh, they're not here in Austin with me, so I'll call you. Um, but, uh, I want to defy that status quo. It's like, why couldn't you kind of craft your life such that you and your children are going on adventures every year? Wow. For the rest of your lives. And this book is designed to generate some ideas but also tell stories of what kind of teamwork and challenges and learnings and growth occurs along the way. So I'm in early stages, but that's, that's what I'm premise kind of in my downtime in the back of the Uber and stuff like that. That's what I'm kind of fleshing out.

Now, when you were— I know you're on the Front Row Dads podcast recently. Was this idea already brewing? Were you able to talk about that?

I'm on the Front Row Dads podcast tomorrow morning. Oh, you are? Yeah.

Oh, I don't know why I thought you—

okay, tomorrow. I think right here in the same recording studio.

Okay, that's great.

Yeah. Um, so no, this idea has been brewing for about 3 weeks.

Oh, wow.

So yeah, yeah. Based on a few discussions I've had banging my head against the wall with what kind of book I want to write, and this got me excited. Of course, I got my sons excited and I think it'd just be like if nothing comes of it, right? And I sell 24 copies, you know, to my mom and, you know, a few neighbors. It'd just be a fun project.

Yeah. But the process of— I mean, what, you know, it's actually a metaphor for life, right?

Yeah.

That it's like it's not about the outcome or the end result. It's about the journey. Right, with the journey of you having tin adventures with your sons, even if the book sucks, right?

Nobody buys it. Like, exactly. We'll have a video crew follow us, pull some cinematic shorts out of it.

Yeah, yeah. So the, the documentary— so these are separate, right? This is separate projects.

They're separate.

The documentary is about Living Fully.

Yeah, separate, comma, related. Yeah, because the book would be more about living fully, but in the niche of like the parenting, family, and even more nichey father-son space.

So there's 3 topics that, you know, I was prepping for today, and it's, it's health, it's fitness. Those are the 2 that you're known for. And interestingly enough, the 3rd was parenting. And, and that we just kind of started.

We're done with that. Good. Yeah.

Well, no, actually, let's just go. I was going to start with the health and fitness, but let's go. Let's actually, since we're already talking about parenting, um, you, you're an extraordinary father. And, uh, and I, I only know that, again, I don't— you and I don't talk dad stuff. I know that from just hearing about what you've done with your kids, for your kids. And then actually, John Vroman, who you're having the podcast with for Front Row Dads tomorrow, um, he had mentioned that he went and did this, uh, you know, the adventure with Tim and his crew.

Um, the father-son wilderness adventure.

I was supposed to be there. I was sick. It was such a bummer, man. I was so sick I couldn't go.

Oh, shout out to Twin Eagles Wilderness School. They put those on every year, and we did 2, and then my sons go to that wilderness school, or went to that wilderness school since they were 6 every year.

Since they were 6?

Yeah. So then they became mentors after learning, you know, the fire building and shelter making and whatever, bird language, animal tracking, all the stuff that you do in that camp. And so I think John met them at the camp that they were, they were mentors.

He was mentor? Yeah, they were mentors there, and he was just so impressed with them. Thing. So that, that really brought that to the forefront, uh, for me. Um, talk about some of the rites of passage. And I know that the Twin Eagles Wilderness School— I know they're the, the leader, Tim— what's his last name?

Tim Corcoran.

Tim Corcoran. Uh, you've told me he's an extraordinary man and you've learned a ton from him, and that's helped you be even a better dad and having the kids in the wilderness school. What are some of the rites of passage that you've done for your sons throughout the years?

Yeah, because they're pretty extreme, uh, relatively. Yeah, I met Tim because we, we moved to Spokane, Washington, and and the first property that I bought was this 10-acre plot in the forest. And I'm walking around the forest, our home had just been built, and I'm like, gosh, I don't know much about these plants, like the local flora and fauna, like what can you eat, what's the history of certain bushes and flowers, and what can you dig up, and what can you carve into medicine or brew or ferment. And so, I posted on Facebook, I'm like, who's the local botanist, foraging expert is what I was looking for. And somebody recommended Tim. He came over to the house, we recorded a podcast. He was just kind of getting Twin Eagles off the ground. Oh wow. And he walked me and my sons and my wife all over the land and we learned a ton. And that's, that's how I met him. Yeah, that's 12, that's how it started years ago because they were 6, right? Yeah. And it turns out that a lot of his training is in kind of the Native American lineage. Um, and a big part of that included studying being rites of passage into adolescence, rites of passage into adulthood, and even rites of passage for older adults who just never did that and want to find their way in life or challenge themselves with something that's different than, I don't know, flying to Peru to do ayahuasca or whatever, almost climbing Mount Everest instead of getting dropped by a helicopter on top of Everest.

Yeah, rather than take the plant medicine shortcut, it's actually doing the work.

Right, right. Exactly. And, I do think that in scenarios, plant medicines could play a role in a rite of passage, but would be very few and far between. Not like your weekend visit with the shaman, but something that you spend months and months or even years preparing for and highly respect. And I think they've kind of gotten a little bit diluted in that sense as far as the modern infatuation with ayahuasca and psilocybin and ibogaine and all the things.

Yeah, your podcast on that, by the way, my buddy Tom I'm blanking on his last name. He's a friend of mine, Tom Patterson. He's the founder of Tommy John Underwear. You know? Yeah. Oh yeah. You guys have been texting. That's right. Yeah.

I mean, I'm having dinner with him this week. Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Small world. But anyway, he said, yeah, have you listened to this episode of Ben Greenfield? And so this is wild. So I listened to your episode. I was really moved by it. And I've been very much off plant medicine for the most part for years. I did a lot of it when I did my cancer journey. Cannabis got me through pain and got me to sleep, and then psilocybin helped me on the other side of it.

Yeah. So, psilocybin for like end-of-life therapy, if it progresses that far. Totally. Another tool.

Yeah. And so, but what's wild is I was listening to it and I sent it to my buddy. I don't want to say his name. He'll be at dinner tonight. Okay. So, you know who it is now. But, but I sent it to him and he— we were coming here to do a podcast and he listened to it on the way here and then we talked about it and he was like, I'm not doing it anymore. Like, so you're— that episode, man, I don't know how— I'm sure many, many people though, it was a paradigm shift. Um, yeah, he's like, I'm not doing plant medicine anymore.

Yeah. And third, 30-second summary, I'm sure we can dig it up and link to it, is that we're talking about compounds that traditionally have been used for things like divination with the gods, relegated to the priesthood, um, even used, if you believe this, as a portal to communicate with a spirit world. Um, not just the mine, but, but angels, demons, spirits, entities. And that by opening that portal and venturing across it, um, and pretending that you, as let's say like a young human being doing a heroic dose of psilocybin in your college dorm room or whatever, can, can figure out how to navigate these spirits that have been, you know, effing with humans for thousands of years, is a dangerous road to go down. Yeah. And I'm not 100% against plant medicines in any situation whatsoever, but the recreational use, particularly high-dose recreational use, I think for every— let's be generous and say like for every 9 people that they help, there's like 1 person that winds up with schizophrenia or bipolar. And I've seen people doing like horrific self-mutilation. And I realize this is, this is controversial, but I would not be surprised if some of that is related to interaction with entities when in that space and that there's, there's a much, much deeper spiritual component that isn't respected as much as it should be.

Yeah.

So it makes sense playing with fire.

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It'll pop up.

Yeah.

So, the rite of passage thing, basically what my sons did was the first step was rite of passage into adolescence. So, this would generally be for them as a young man when they're 12 years old approaching that threshold to 13, something that that celebrates the end of childhood. And as a part of that, not only did we do like a ceremonial recognition, a big party with Grandma and Grandpa and all the family members, you know, a big like fire ceremony, and then at that point they were given more responsibilities in the household, um, more chores, um, more— we started calling them men, not boys. And, and so it, it's a little bit different than just, hey, I'm a I'm a teenager now and instead I've entered into this new era of responsibility. Their rite of passage was 3 days in the wilderness. And so, this was overseen— This was at 12?

This was at 12, yeah.

Okay. Just before they turned 13. And this is not like, "Hey kids, put on a backpack and go hike with the bears and see if you come out alive." It's more like the TV show Alone where they are in a specific location. People know where they are. Yeah. And they are by themselves facing their fears. Um, they've got like a backpack and a wool blanket and a knife. Um, they have a certain amount of water allotment, and then there is some fasting that's involved too. And it's a chance to face your fears, to be with yourself, to understand what that feels like to be cut off from technology and all the distractions of social media and your friends. And it was— they did it together for them? No. No, no, no. So by yourself? Yeah, which for twins is different, you know, just because they've been with each other. Yeah, since birth. Um, and then so we, we have 3 distinct rites of passage built into what we call the Greenfield Family Constitution, which is kind of like the handbook that we use to run our family. Okay. Um, the first is that rite of passage into adolescence. The second is when they turn 16, they had to leave the house for 3 months with no money from mom and dad and go on an adventure with the only rule being that they could they couldn't come home for 3 months. And initially they thought they'd go do like an international trip, and once they started to look at like the cost of plane flights, like, they're like, man, we're gonna burn through our whole budget just like getting to point A. Yeah. And back to point B. Yeah. So they got a used car and they bought, uh, like a pop-up tent that goes on the top of the car, like a roof tent.

Yeah.

And they drove all the national parks from Idaho down to Arizona and back up over the course of 3 months, just like, you know, figuring out how to stretch a dollar and, you know, how to make campfire oatmeal and how long you can stretch a, you know, a chicken from Walmart. And basically came back, um, with a great deal of independence and a little bit more knowledge about just like the way that the world works and what it's like to not be yoked to mom and dad.

Yeah.

Or on, on, I guess, you know, mom and dad's teat for, for several months. And so that was at 16. And then at 17, uh, and this we— what we have in our constitution is at some point between 17 and 18 Then they do a 10-day rite of passage, which is similar to that one that they did between 12 and 13 years old. That one was also overseen by Twin Eagles Wilderness School, but that's like the rite of passage into adulthood where after that they're given even more responsibility. They're expected to help pitch in with even more at the house.

This is at 18?

Yep. Contribute to the family income.

How long are they in the wilderness?

10 days, you said? That was 10 days. Yep.

Yep. And with what are they— what supplies do they have? Yeah.

So what they— the way they structure at Twin Eagles is they have a 3-day buildup of training, of workshops, of talks with Tim and the staff, then 4 days of no food. They brought in a certain number of gallons of water. Okay. Backpack, blanket, wool knife, and yeah, I mean, like, they came back and told stories. Like, one of them was like, yeah, I just like made a fishing pole and, you know, fished for imaginary fish over the edge of a cliff for like 3 hours. And another one was convinced he was being stalked by a mountain lion, so he built this whole shelter like with the base of a tree at it and like sleep with the— his neck against the base of the tree because he didn't want to get, uh, paralyzed by the jaws of a mountain lion. And, um, then they have 3 days of integration afterwards, talking, journaling, processing. And that was something that they finished like 5 months ago.

So I've never met your boys. I'm so— I want to meet your—

like Yeah, I got to bring him down here sometime.

Yeah, if you can even give me like the 1, 2, 3, like the rite of passage at 12, at 16, at 18, what do you feel like— even if I were to ask them, I'm curious, like how did they grow? What did they— how did they benefit from each of those?

I think for the 12 to 13-year-old, it was getting the opportunity to be proud of what they just achieved. Getting the sense that they were suddenly in a situation which they had more responsibility as young men when they came back.

Yep. Okay.

Yep. Um, I would say responsibility and maturity was the first one. The second one was a little bit more independent, right? Just like being on your own for 3 months at 16 years old.

Yeah. Having to figure out how to, right, just live. Yeah. It's almost being not homeless, but it's almost like that type of— it's like, yeah, you Hey, go figure it out and we'll see you in 3 months.

Similar. Yep. Homeless without the dreadlocks and the weed, and at least I don't think that was involved. And then 18, I would say, or 17 to 18-ish, a little bit more growth similar to the, to the 12 to 13. And a lot of people might be thinking like, why the heck, dude?

Um, I mean, I think it's amazing. I'm actually, I'm like, I'm wanting, I'm going, man, I wish I would have done this with my kids. And what can I still do?

I wish I'd have done it myself.

Oh yeah.

Right. Because I think we have this kind of epidemic in a lot of Western cultures who no longer do rites of passage, whether that's a young man going off on their first hunt or like, you know, the movie Spartan, you know, going and facing the wolves and, you know, coming back as, as the young king or whatever. We have an epidemic of basically boys who shave, right? Like men who grew up never really being told when they crossed the threshold into manhood. Yeah. And so for many men, including myself, that involves going on a series of our own conquests and adventures to try to prove to the world that we are men, whether it be body infatuation, building muscle, getting a certain number of women, you know, achieving a certain body count, you know, homes, cars, businesses, whatever. And I think that a sense of acceptance that you actually are recognized as a contributory member of society in a ceremonial way, yeah, that involves some kind of a threshold that you cross in order to be given that position, is something that would help a lot of guys out. Yeah, you know, as far as just confidence and not feeling like you need to prove to the world that you're somebody through a lot of the other ways that guys are doing it now.

Well, I— so yeah, for me, like, I've never— I almost have never thought of myself as a man. I'm 46 years old, right? But I never had to write it.

Nobody ever told you, right?

Right. It was like, I'm still a boy, I'm a teenager, that my body's getting older.

But like, yeah, and it's— and it's different. This is controversial. Especially in a, in a post-feminist era. But women do have a, a specific biological moment at which they become a woman, right? Their, their first period. Hey, you, you can now, um, bring human souls into the world, which is a, a pretty significantly epic moment. Sure. And man, like, you don't wake up as a man one day and just like, hey, your balls have dropped and your voice is like Some stuff happens over a gradual period of time. Yeah, but men don't really have that distinct biological moment, which is probably why rites of passage for males have been a little bit more formalized in the past than those for females. We don't have daughters. My sons, it will be their responsibility to write into the future Greenfield family constitution what kind of rites of passage a young woman goes through, because there probably are are certain things that you'd want to think about, like, um, you know, do you, do you celebrate, like, onset of menstruation? Like, is there a party? Is there a coming-of-age ceremony? Like, these are things that, that will be their responsibility.

You haven't had to think about them. Yeah. Um, give me a summary of the Ben Greenfield Family Constitution. What, what is this document?

Oh, it's like, it's the playbook for the family.

So values.

Yeah. So in the same way that you'd brand a business You can brand a family. I learned a lot about this from, um, two guys primarily. A guy who used to be my financial advisor named Garrett Gunderson. He still does work, uh, in this area, like helping families with their family constitution. Okay. And then another guy named Rich Christiansen. Oh, okay.

Legado.

Yeah. And Legado, um, they helped us a lot. We actually went down to a cabin with Rich in Utah for like two days and learned a lot of this.

Yeah.

But basically we have our family values, which feed into and kind of craft the foundation of the family mission statement. And then that's graphically represented in the family logo, which are like, you know, family logos on our pepper grinder and our pickleball paddles and our throw pillows, the flags that, you know, hang outside the front door. And most importantly, in a crest that's like proudly displayed, like a really nice big like metalworked crest.

Wow.

And the home study.

And then family pride, bonding, identity.

Exactly, exactly. My sons can be proud of their last name and know what the family stands for, like what our values are and the impact that we want to make on the world, which is all woven into the mission statement.

And then what's the mission statement, by the way?

Oh, it's long. It's like 3 paragraphs.

It's not, it's not a sentence.

Yeah, but it's like, you know, we're content no matter our circumstances, and we're, we're here to help, love, and serve people and connect people more deeply to their Creator. And just Everything that we really want to focus on in terms of world impact as a family is in there. And this is also important because of the way that it feeds into financial legacy and generational wealth, which I'll get to in a moment. But then traditions are in there. So like Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, like what do we do? You know, when do we, you know, when we paint puff t-shirts and watch an old Christmas movie and what mom makes for the Christmas Eve brunch or dinner and it's all in there, and it provides like almost this sense of solidarity for the family, like, oh, this is just like us, this is what we do. And it gets super detailed. I mean, like every family member's like spirit animal and Hex logo or Hex color and, and font and end-of-life memorial wishes, is everything that you can imagine. And we build on it every year. We typically revisit it every year and add things that we've been saving up to add. You kind of like can get the family together in a sort of retreat type of situation and build on it, which will be fun as they have kids. Um, it is in Dropbox. It's printed. There's a house version, and now it's also a website, so you can update it via a website. Um, the, the, the thing is that if you look at passing on or building generational wealth, you can also use this as a tool for that because If you form a, like, a living trust, let's say, like a, like an irrevocable dynasty trust for the family that spells out, um, not only, you know, who manages the family wealth, uh, but what decisions or, or what money can and cannot be used for. A lot of that is advised by the family values and the family mission statement. And then if you, if you really want to get into the details of generational wealth, basically Every time a family member dies, um, if you have a whole life insurance policy on them— I'm not an insurance salesman, so yeah, no need to get— no, no need for the goosebumps to, to, to come up about me. I'm about to sell you. Yes, wholelifeinsurancewithben.com. Um, basically you can start an insurance policy on a kid when they're like 30 days old, and then with paid-up additions to that policy, you can create a sort of family bank which you can borrow against while the money— Anderson 101 right here— to grow. Yeah, exactly. And then, um, every time, let's say, $20 or $30 or $40 million or whatever the policy is pays out, that goes into the trust. You can basically build a family bank and build family wealth over multiple generations by tying insurance policies to the trust. And then that kind of like comes full circle and ties into the family constitution.

So intentional parenting, man, that's like— this is so— it's so— two things come up. One is how intentional you are, but also that you didn't reinvent the wheel, right? You got Garrett Gunderson to teach you the Whole Life stuff to create the wealth, right? You got Tim Cochran to teach you the rites of passage, right? And then who's the third? There's a third you mentioned, uh, Rich Christiansen. Rich Christiansen. Yeah.

All of these things, like, these aren't my ideas. Yeah. All you do as a family is step back and say, well, what are our values? Because that's going to be different for every family, you know. What's the impact that you want to make on the world? Um, what is it that your family holds dear and stands for? Um, you know, what kind of businesses are you in? What kind of businesses, you know, do you frown upon or encourage the kids to operate? Um, and so yeah, if your family's into just like gambling and trips to Vegas and, uh, you know, and, and all forms of hedonism, write that into the family values and missions. Choose your own adventure.

I love this, man. No, it's— I mean, you've got really got me thinking about being intentional. And I think that, uh, often my first thought, maybe people listening, right, you learn something and then you go, oh man, I wish I would have done that when my kids were 6. You know, my daughter's 16, my son's 13, but it's like, no, I'm going to go back and I'm going to do the best I can with what— right.

You know, where we're at. Best time to plant a tree, Chinese proverb. Right. Yeah. But if you look at it from a legacy standpoint, let's say you start when your children are 16 or 17 or 18, you're basically training them on what it's going to look like to get this structure in place when their kids are born, whatever, 5 or 7 or 10. 10 years down the road. So I, I mean, I even think like a grandparent who's listening could teach this to their children who have children to do it with their children. Yeah. So I don't really think there's like a bad time to start. Yeah. If, if you're thinking generationally and yeah, you know, you don't think that, you know, AI is just going to blow up the world and we're not even all going to be here in 20 years.

So that's our next, our next, our next podcast episode. Um, so let's go back to your blowing up the world. Yeah. You know, AI just, yeah, you know, being humanity's downfall. Okay.

I thought Podcast on explosives. Yeah, weaponry.

No, so talk about your background and we don't spend a lot of time on this, but for people that don't know you, like endurance athlete, worked with Reebok, you know, hardcore. And then, and then that's going to—

I want—

that'll lead into your— how your views on exercise have shifted. That's where I'm going, right? Which was— you were hardcore athlete, now you like walking.

Yeah, from, from masochism to walking. Yeah. Yeah, I— well, I was homeschooled K through 12. I wasn't that interested interested in human science.

You seem like a homeschooled kid.

Mechanics or physiology or the type of things that you really wouldn't expect the average homeschooled kid to be interested in, right? So president of the chess club, played violin, super into fantasy fiction, like stereotypical homeschooler. And, um, I got into sports in high school. Um, sports pulled me into wanting to study exercise physiology, biomechanics. I was even interested in medicine, sports medicine, and orthopedics. No, you're homeschooled, K through 12. Yeah. Oh, but in Idaho you can play sports at the high school level even if you're homeschooled. Okay. So then I went to college and studied exercise physiology and biomechanics and got a master's degree in that. Passed up going to medical school even though I did all the pre-meds and thought seriously about going to a few that I was accepted to. I kind of got disillusioned with, with medicine. Yeah, basically. And that was because I worked a short gig for about 9 months in hip and knee surgical sales, didn't like that. Um, felt just like more and more as though medicine wasn't calling to me, but I loved fitness and nutrition and exercise. Um, and I guess what you might even call like preventive holistic medicine. Okay. And so I started up a string of personal training studios and gyms in Idaho and Washington, and I was kind of like a nerd when it came to all of the cool technologies that you could use to enhance the body or quantify the body. So we had everything from, you know, my gym's indirect calorimetry equipment to measure things like VO2 max and calorie burn. We had like early stage like platelet-rich plasma injection machines to pull blood out and concentrate replacements and re-inject into joints. This would have been when I was 21 until I was about 27. Okay. And, um, we had high-speed video cameras and I was doing a lot in the endurance sports world. So we had a real strong following in like the local triathlon, marathoner, swimmer cycling community. And I worked a lot with local physicians, um, meaning a lot of my clients were patients who they referred out because I made a good name for myself as somebody who understood medical language, um, and could work well with doctors, but then also on the sports performance side of things could do a good job. Um, because basically I'm a certified strength conditioning coach and spent a lot of time, um, in the, in the athletic enhancement world. And so, in 2008, I was nominated by a group of physicians and voted as America's top personal trainer by the National Strength Conditioning Association, which was a huge honor. And, that also got me a lot more publicity just speaking, traveling to conferences, teaching people how to profit from operating brick-and-mortar personal training studios and gyms. And at the same time, my sons were born, my twin sons were born. And I'm like, like typical day for me, I'm racing Ironman all over the world, I'm running 2 gyms, I'm speaking, I'm, I've started a website, I started a podcast in 2008. And that was early online coaching. Yeah, super early. There was maybe like 100 podcasts max when I started a podcast. Most people didn't know what a podcast It was totally— you had to like code your own RSS feed and submit it to Apple and wait 2 weeks, and it was just like the Wild West. I mean, even, even, I mean, freaking like Joe Rogan wasn't even podcasting back then. I mean, there were very, very few people doing it, but I like the idea of like sitting in front of a microphone and just releasing— I did interviews and like strength conditioning research and, you know, exercise, geeky exercise knowledge, stuff like that. Anyways, when my sons were born, I was like, gosh, I'm like getting up at 4 AM, riding my bike 12 miles to the gym, training clients all day, working on online clients during lunchtime, you know, going for a swim, finishing up the day, lifting weights, or throwing in a run, going back home, you know, getting home at like 9 PM, having a little bit of dinner with my wife, going back into my studio, you know, doing more online programming, working on, you know, the newsletter, the PPC campaigns, the affiliate campaigns, these online information products, all this other stuff that I was building. And there was no way I was going to be like a present, you know, father. Yeah.

And I was working—

I wasn't a present husband at that point. I was a workaholic. Yeah. Um, but no way was I going to be a present father. So I basically reinvented, um, sold all of my studios, all of my equipment, got rid of all my clients, moved into, uh, the little side room in our rancher home down by the Spokane River, and, um, started doing mostly just online online coaching, um, speaking, and information products, you know, just basically like, uh, training programs for marathon, for triathlon, for swimming, for lifting, for injuries. Yep, yep. So I can be home. And honestly, like, that was just kind of like a slow rolling snowball to what I do now. Like, I've got the podcast, I do a lot of online content. I've kind of shifted to doing a lot more like advising and investing for companies in the health and fitness and longevity space. Uh, still speak, um, all over the world. And, um, typical day for me though, like, when I'm not traveling, like, I'm just like with the family. We have our morning huddles and we're hanging out. My sons and I are in the gym in the morning, and I'm seeing them all day long. And we're, you know, they're working on a business at home, so we're all on our, you know, computers at lunch, but all kind of like together, you know, working on our companies. And, you know, we have these wonderful, glorious family dinners and family hangout times in the evening, and, you know, pre-dinner pickleball. And so Um, yes, it's great. Uh, living the dream, what I do now. I love it.

Yeah, yeah. When I asked what matters most, I think that that's a full circle.

You just really said—

yeah, right— the fact that you get to wake up every day, uh, work with your sons, work out with your sons, spend time with your wife.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, I think that we are entering a potential era in which that might be easier for a lot of people to do. If you look at— yeah, the ability to be able to, uh, take a lot of the stuff that might be simple data entry work or, you know, being hunched over a computer and free up time. Yeah. To actually be with family more.

I'm curious, uh, you're a smart guy, um, and I was joking that the AI conversation was for another episode, but since you just mentioned it, um, what does that look like though, uh, if, you know, between, like, how are people supporting themselves if those jobs go away, right? Like, if you're, if you've got generational wealth. Yeah, it's a different— you're like, oh yeah, we just— I've got investments, I've got real estate bringing it in, like whatever that looks like, where you're like, I get to just relax at home because AI is nothing. But if you're someone that your income went away or goes away, like, I don't give a good— I don't know if anybody has a good answer, right?

I don't think anybody knows the answer. There will be a definite wealth disparity. I think there'll be a bigger wealth gap. The people who use AI effectively to not replace themselves and put themselves out of a job, but to build more, um, to create more programs and more, you know, software-esque products as a service, um, to be able to program more apps and more helpful apps. Um, and I think the people who are doing that and making useful content and useful apps and useful websites using GPT will just be able to do more. And people who are a little bit more reticent to use AI, a little bit afraid of its potential, um, I think they could potentially, um, uh, I, I think getting, getting, um, like lost in the shuffle is probably not the right term, but I think they might get left behind. Like, if you're not willing to step back and say, okay, how is GPT going to replace my job in some way, or how is AI going to replace my job in some way? Yeah. And how can I adapt, um, and pivot? Uh, and, and I think one way to think about it is that Um, there will be really, really high-ticket items that humans value because they're created by humans in certain sectors that are a little more untouchable when it comes to AI. I, uh, I'll give you one example. Um, my son's business is a card and board game business, right? They can use AI for, for marketing, for PPC, for socials, for videos, um, and graphic design, But if you like go to their Instagram page, they are specifically intentionally putting up videos showing that they're hand illustrating the cards, they're using drawing pads themselves. Like everything is hand designed, right? Like it's handcrafted, human-created content. And even if it wasn't, their final product requires humans interacting with one another in order to play the product. Yeah, this is something that brings humans together. Yeah. So I think that's an example like tabletop gaming, board game, card game industry, you can could make better games faster. But at the end of the day, you're— you're— I don't think there's a lot of people who are going to like—

it's not going to be pay money to watch robots.

Yeah, exactly. Even though people apparently do that now for chess. And oh my God, I think, uh, Elon's new fighting robots might actually be something people pay to watch. But when it comes to just like playing cards with the family or playing a good board game, um, laughing around the dinner table or laughing at game night, I think that's an example of a sector that, you know, if you do the right thing, you could use AI to profit more in. Yeah. Um, if you look at my realm, fitness programming, nutrition programming. GPT can already read labs, produce fitness programs, produce customized tailored diets way better than I can. So what can I provide? I can provide live experiences, right? I can provide communities where people can get together and work out together. I can provide the accountability piece. Yeah, the opportunity to talk to a real coach on the phone. And, um, and, and those are higher touch, higher end services, right? So like the— let's say you would have formerly visited a website that was charging you like $500 a month to have a personal trainer who was like a real human being writing out your workouts.

Yeah.

And maybe communicating with you a little bit on a messaging app like Trainerize or TrainingPeaks or whatever. Like now you'll probably pay like $5 a month for that because AI is going to be doing it all. And then you'll have the premium product, which is the real coach, the real human providing you the experiences, the accountability, the interaction with a human being that you crave. And that introduces a little bit more fun into the process.

So everything's going to change. No. Yeah, it's great. It brings up— I'm going to add to that. So I was talking to somebody the day that runs a $60 million company and coaching is their primary product. And we were just— we were talking through his business model and really neat guy, Matt Boggs. And I asked him, I said, hey, I'm going to— it was like the last 5 minutes of— we had an hour together just getting to know each other. And I said, I'm going to ask you the hard question before we wrap up. I said, I'm sure you're aware you run a coaching business that ChatGPT now is a 24/7 available coach and the coaching industry is doomed, is off, you know, it's the doomsday rhetoric. What are your thoughts? And he talked about Jeff Bezos, you know, owner of Amazon, that Jeff says when he was asked in an interview once, like, what, how do you, you know, all the, all these changing things in the marketplace, how do you deal with that? And Jeff said, I ask myself, what will never change? I don't worry about the things that are going to change. I say, what will never change. And so applied to the coaching business, um, it was people will always want to— they will want transformation. In order to get transformation, they will need accountability. ChatGPT is not going to make sure you do your push-ups, right? It's the human being that you know you're talking to on Thursday or you're meeting at the gym Friday morning, right?

Right. Fear of public embarrassment or, um, being outcast from the community is something that's less threatening when it's a digital community, um, without the hierarchy of actual human beings. And that kind of like built-in primal fear of letting someone down is nowhere near as strong when it's a computer versus a human. Like, we'll let computers down all day long because at the end of the day, um, it's, you know, we don't care about them as much. No. And, you know, I'm sure there were— there's some people that would argue that, um, you would still have some sense of accountability. Like, even, even I will fall into that pattern where I get that dopaminergic reaction to checking boxes, even if the boxes that have been assigned to me are assigned from a digital presence. Like, you need to wake up, you need to do this. I've got to— sure, whatever's work— brush my teeth, drink my whatever liters of water per day. So I get that. Um, but then I think there are other things in the coaching community that people also crave. I would say another big one is connection and community. And that's where coaching is probably gonna have to reinvent itself to a certain extent. Some coaches already do live events, like people fly to their houses for masterminds, or they do clinics, or they do conferences. Or they just, like me, just show up places and speak. And in many cases, when I'm speaking at an event, I'm leading a morning workout, I'm hosting a dinnertime Q&A, I'm bringing people to a place like whatever Six Senses and doing a 6-day getaway. I see those becoming higher, like a premium offering from a coach. And I think that's another area that a lot of coaches will need to pivot into is how do we get these human beings together.

Together. Yeah, yeah. It's just reinvention. Yeah. Like you said, and it's happened with every technological advances. Human humanity's had to reinvent themselves. Yeah. Exercise. How is your, how is your take on exercise changed from being a hardcore endurance athlete doing tri— Right. I mean, the way you just described your, you know, it's like you're exercising, you're going home, you're exercising, you're working, you're exercising, you know? Yeah. Yeah. How has that changed?

I mean, you talk about the dopaminergic reaction to checking boxes. Many people do depending on how you're wired up, but this would particularly be the people who fall into the hard-charging, high-achieving entrepreneurial category, probably many of your listeners. We derive a great deal of pleasure from forward motion and often have addictive personalities that thrive on that. This is why you see many former addicts turning to something like Ironman triathlon or marathoning as kind of like a positive arguably healthier, questionably healthier solution compared to say drinking excessively or drugs. And so, I think that for me, a lot of that long endurance masochistic style, I mean, I logged over 7,000 miles of endurance racing. I did 13 Ironmans. I did Ironman World Championship 6 times. I raced for Reebok for 4 years in Spartan and optical course races. I did open water swim competition, I did adventure racing, and it was fun. I have nothing against someone like climbing their own personal Mount Everest. Yeah, but there's a fine line that exists, especially in endurance sports. But I think exercise in general, CrossFit, HIROX, DEKA FIT, anything that you traditionally think is like a fitness type of event that sucks people in and can become pretty addictive. Not only is it monetized and commercialized pretty well, like if you've ever been to an Ironman, you see all these people just like dehydrated and struggling across the finish line and fighting for those last few miles. And they're standing in line ready to write a, you know, I don't even know the price now, let's say like a $1,200 check to Ironman the next morning at breakfast to get into the next race. Yeah. And I think you can get sucked into this vicious cycle of beating your body down with too much of a focus on fitness, on endurance, because that's where you're going creating your pleasure. I think a more well-rounded life would involve some sports, you know, whatever, pickleball, tennis, golf, some walking, some art, some instrumentation, you know, music, local community meetup, some service. Like, it's hard to do a lot of those things, speaking from personal experience, when you're preparing for an Ironman. Like, every last free moment you're swimming or biking or running. Yeah, a lot of marathoners have experienced something similar with running, or cyclists with cycling. These are time-consuming sports. So is CrossFit, so is HIIT.

I'd say my audience is probably just how do they get themselves to move their body. Like, you know, it's like, so yeah, I don't know how many—

to a very small subset of population. But, but here's what you need to know. Here's what's important. If you look at actual data on exercise, you tend to see a law of diminishing returns, a law of diminishing returns when you exceed about 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or about 75 minutes of very vigorous high-intensity exercise per week. Oh, per week. And once you exceed that, that's where you start to see arterial stiffening, calcium deposition in the arteries. So basically like a heart that's more prone to atherosclerosis.

Oh wow, that's why you see like runners get harder to have heart attacks.

The cardiovascular data is the highest. Um, you could also make a pretty strong case for things like cortisol or stress hormone dysregulation, joint damage, etc. Um, you know, I experienced everything from, uh, thyroid deficits to testosterone depletion to a lot of things related to over-exercising, overtraining, under-recovering, somehow convincing myself that you had to reach a certain intensity and volume of exercise every single day to see results or to feel good about yourself. And that, that can be damaging over time. I think a more reasonable approach, if someone's sitting here and maybe they're not, you know, an Ironman addict and they— and like you said, they just want to get in shape.

Yeah.

Lifting weights full body 2 to 3 days a week. Yeah. Doing some kind of high intensity interval training session 1 to 2 times a week. This doesn't have to be every day.

What's a high interval?

Gimme any, that would be like for me, I do a, no, not for you, for a normal human. Well, the, well, the, the, the, this is for me now. I consider myself, you're more of a normal human. I would say the difference between me and a, a quote, normal human is I am, I'm so jaded from my days of competitive sports and fitness events that even though I'm no longer training with the same volume, I train at a higher intensity. Intensity. Like, people hear that I'm a lot more sane now, but then they still go train with me and I'll— yeah, my workouts are still relatively soul-crushing, but nowhere near— like, for me, they're nowhere near what they used to be. Yeah. So lifting weights a few times a week, 2 to 3 times.

You talked, by the way, about on the Mark Hyman podcast, super slow weightlifting.

Talk about that. So if you were going to choose a form of training that lends itself best to building strength and muscle with a low risk of injury. This is not going to turn you into an Olympic athlete. There's not a lot of power development involved with it, but super slow training. Um, I did it today. Um, I had meetings that started at 11 AM today. I hit the gym at 10, was in the shower by about 10:45. I had a super slow— I did one warm-up set on each exercise, and then I did one super slow set to failure, okay, of a few basic movements, chest press, pull down, leg press, row. You do machines, back extension, and shoulder press.

Okay.

The shoulder press was with dumbbells. The back extension was with an apparatus. The rest of them were with machines.

And how?

Because it's a lot easier to kind of move machines much more slowly.

Like, you'd also see about talking bench press really, really slow and you hit failure, you might be in trouble if you don't have a spotter.

Yeah, exactly. AI robot spotter, which will be a thing soon. So 10 to 30 seconds up, 10 to 30 seconds down. Single set to failure training. Not my idea, not my By science. Best book about this is a physician named Dr. Doug McGuff who wrote a book called Body by Science. That's where I discovered this. And your heart rate stays up, so there's a little bit of a cardiovascular training response as well. But what I like about it, and I use this a lot with people who I'm training who are just like executives who just wanna stay fit, they don't care about piling on slabs of muscle or being a pro football player. They just wanna hit the gym and be able to do it and stay happy and injury-free. So, it's super slow training, full body, 2 to 3 times a week. Typically, you can get it done in anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes. And, it's a pretty good workout. If you look at data on longevity, the type of muscle that's most associated with living a long time and high quality of life and low risk of injury is not the type of muscle that you build with super slow training. It is muscle that's kind kind of like small wiry powerlifter type of muscle, muscle that can produce high amounts of force in a short period of time. So, when you're doing super slow training, let's say you're doing 2 to 3 sessions a week, you would still want some point during the week where you're doing something more powerful and explosive. So, for me, that typically looks like a few bodyweight exercises. I have kettlebells. I'll throw some kettlebell swings in. I have an Aerodyne. I'll throw in some sprints on the Aerodyne. And then, I play pickleball. I I play tennis. I'll occasionally get out and play some other sports. I mean, I don't know if ping pong counts, but ping pong. But basically, in the same way that walking briskly seems to be more important to longevity than the number of steps that you take, which is interesting. That's why I love walking with my wife because she's a super fast walker. She takes a high step count. Nice. Moving your body or a lighter weight quickly is also something that you want to be aware of and do. Interesting. But that can literally be like stacking on 10 minutes calisthenics before or after your super slow training workout just where you're moving a little bit more quickly. High-intensity interval training, you asked me what that looks like. I do 21 minutes twice a week where I'm going 30 seconds hard, 2 minutes easy, or 10 seconds hard, 2 minutes easy.

Is this jumping jacks or what is it?

This is AirDyne, elliptical, rowing machine. We were in Arizona yesterday, so I hit the pool for 20 minutes.

And, tell me again the interval How you do it?

So it depends. And, and if you really want to dig into the physiology of this, muscles, like I mentioned, you've got strength and you've got power. Those are the two kind of like skills, you know, the, the Avenger-like skills we want to focus on. So you have strength and power for muscle. And then for cardio, you have your VO2 max, you have your ability to be able to buffer lactic acid, you have your mitochondrial health, and you have your fat burning capacity. So in brief, what that means is that if you want a good VO2 max, once every 1 to 2 weeks you do longer intervals. So this would look like, and, and obviously now speaking of GPT, you could literally like replay this podcast and have GPT listen to it and like spit out a workout for you based on this. But you do a longer interval cardio workout. VO2 max responds well to something like a classic 4x4 protocol, 4 minutes at maximum sustained Sustainable pace, 4 minutes, pretty easy passive recovery, 4 times through.

Okay.

And you don't need to do this like multiple times a week. Literally research has shown that as little as once every 2 weeks you can maintain or build VO2 max with that approach. Okay. So that's one longer intervals. If you want to talk work to rest ratios, you do the math. It's a 1:1 work to rest ratio. Lactate threshold is your ability to be able to buffer lactic acid, the stuff that makes your muscles burn when you're exercising. This would be a classic Tabata set. Have you heard of it? No. Okay. So Tabata set, this is based on Japanese research, is a 4-minute set that consists of 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy, 8 times through. So if you think about it, that's a 2:1 work to rest ratio, but you're not letting the lactic acid get out of the muscles before you hit the next interval. It's nice cuz it's short. I mean, you could literally use this as like a warmup for one of your strength training workouts. Yeah. But that's lactic acid tolerance. So it's longer rest periods or, or longer work periods, shorter rest periods, but pretty, still pretty short and snappy. Okay. Mitochondria, that's the third one out of four. Mitochondria respond well to hitting it hard for 10 to 30 seconds and then luxuriously long rest periods. So this would be, for example, doing once a week mitochondrial training is, is something that responds pretty well to once a week protocol. 8 hard 30-second efforts with 2 minutes of easy recovery 3 between each. Okay. So you could do this again on Aerodyne, rowing machine, elliptical trainer, whatever.

And if someone doesn't have equipment and we're talking like you mentioned walking briskly, I'm just trying, I'm, I'm, so I want to give the simplest vibe, right? Like if so, okay, so for somebody walk, you mentioned walking briskly. Let's touch on that. So if somebody's like, I don't have an Aerodyne bike. Yeah. I, I haven't, I'm not even working out right now. Like I need to, I need to, I got the neighborhood, I need to move my body, got some Like, what's the cheapest, fastest, easiest way? And so, yeah, what's the optimal way to walk?

I like this. So walking, you head out on a walk and you walk as briskly as possible for 4 minutes, and then you slow down and you walk at an easy pace for 4 minutes, and you do that 4 times through. For the lactate tolerance, you do 20 to 30 jump jumping jacks, you recover for 10 seconds and you do that again and you do that 8 times through. Okay. For mitochondria, you go for a long walk that's not at a super fast pace, but every time you get to a telephone pole, for example, you shift into a jog or a little like mini sprint for, yep, about 10 to 30 seconds.

Okay.

And then another long walk in between each.

How many of those?

Anywhere from 6 to 8 for the, for the mitochondria. Central piece.

Yeah.

Then the last piece is your fat burning zone. I do this with a walking treadmill at my desk. Like, I do my Zooms, a lot of calls, like podcasts, podcast interviews on the treadmill. And this is just like aerobic zone 2 conversational pace, like training your body how to move for long periods of time, preferably— and this is tied to the nutritional piece— without a lot of glucose on board to burn. Which is why I like for people who are wanting to lose weight to kind of like do some fasting fat loss zone 2 type of cardio. Yeah. Some people will jump out and say, well, there's not a lot of really good research that shows that doing fasted zone 2 cardio is going to burn fat. And they're right. This is, this is anecdotal. This is with my clients. This is not long-term human clinical studies. Yeah. But waking up and doing, let's say, like a 30-minute walk without eating, or having a Saturday morning hike that you're going out for with just water without having had breakfast, and it's like an hour and a half to 2-hour long hike, it teaches your body how to tap into its own fat reserves. Yeah, as a fuel. If you, if you look at why this might work from a fat loss standpoint, you've probably heard of something like intermittent fasting. Sure. Now if you look at weight loss as relates to intermittent fasting, like let's say not eating for 12 hours a day, right? So between 9:00 PM and 9:00 AM you're not eating any food, which is actually hard for a lot of people to do once you start to add up like when you snack and when you eat breakfast. And how much creamery you put in your coffee, and stuff can sneak in. Yeah, the reason that it works is not because there's something magical about fasting or even working out fasted for fat loss. The reason that it works is because it gives you a shorter period of time to stuff calories into your gaping maw, right? Like, that's actually why intermittent fasting works. Yeah. Now, if you look at longevity and things that go beyond weight loss, there are some impressive elements of fasting that go beyond just calorie restriction to help you out in other areas of life like gut issues, longevity, you know, telomere length, cellular health, mitochondrial health, etc. But if we're just talking strictly about weight loss, most of the magic occurs by just limiting how many calories you're eating. And the practice of fasting makes it easier because you're giving yourself a shorter period of time during which you're allowed to eat. And so back to the fasted fat loss cardio cardio. Another reason that I think it works is when you're walking, it's harder to eat. And when you say wake up in the morning and have like a 30-minute walk that you go on, there's an extra 30 minutes that you're not eating. Or when you have like a weekend Saturday hike, that's, you know, it just makes it that much easier to have an intermittent fasting window.

Let me ask you, to keep the fat burning going, because I've always— I think I was, I was in my 20s, and I, I think it was the book Body for Life by Bill Phillips, which was the biggest book back then.

Classic.

Yeah. Um, and I think that was where I learned about— oh yeah, and it was a common sense. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm gonna exercise first thing in the morning with no food in my stomach so that there's nothing to burn except for the fat on my body. Yeah. So how long do you need to wait after you do the exercise before you start putting calories in to, for that fat burning to actually be effective? 30 minutes after or how long? Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody knows first of all. Yeah. 'Cause there's, 'cause there's actually no studies done on this. Interesting. But if you think about it, after you exercise, there is a growth hormone response that can actually allow you to burn more fat post-exercise, um, or theoretically would allow you to burn more fat post-exercise. So if you are trying to burn a bunch of fat and you don't care about lean muscle maintenance, you could wait 1 to 2 hours after an exercise session to eat. Okay. Um, I don't recommend that because I think it's stressful for the body. I think that people get super hungry and then they do what is called caloric hypercompensation, where they eat way more food. People do this with cold plunges too. Like, research has shown that when people do a cold plunge, the meal that they eat after the cold plunge, they tend to add like 200 to 300 extra calories, which if you're aware of that, you're less likely to do it because you're able to check yourself. Yeah, but it's a thing. Like, we, we like to reward ourselves sometimes with food after exercise.

So I did it, pat myself on the back.

Yeah, exactly. I think more of the trick is working out in the fasted state and then eating afterwards. I don't like for people to wait so long that they start to get stressed out, that they start to get hangry, etc. If you wore a continuous blood glucose monitor like this, if you started to see your levels dropping down into low levels like 70s, 70s, you know, high 60s, that's a pretty good sign that you're getting hypoglycemic to the extent where there's, there's more cons than pros. Um, when it comes to the, the idea of working out fasted in the morning, again, not a lot of good research that you're going to burn more fat besides the chance that— besides the fact that you're giving yourself a shorter window to eat. Um, but I like to do it because I have better workouts when I don't have a tummy full of food. Sure. I just, you know, you're just less likely to blow out your pants on the leg press, you know, fart in the gym. Like, there's all this stuff. It's just like logistically— and there are workarounds, you know, there's like pre-workouts that have calories but that are easier to digest. Yeah. Um, and so much of this is person-specific. Like, if you're my sons, uh, one's playing rugby right now, one's playing lacrosse, they're trying to put on muscle. Those guys eat for like 18 hours of the day. Like, they're waking up and like my son's in the peanut butter and the bread and then his pre-workout and then sometimes an intra-workout and then he finishes and making some big plate of scrambled eggs and having lunch 2 hours later. Yeah. You know, took 'em to Whole Foods yesterday on the way to the airport 'cause they were in Arizona with me, you know, and I, you know, was weighing their, their hot foods salad bar, their hot salad bar, Whole Foods, you know, little paper box. And you know, when I held it, I automatically, I'm like, this is gonna be a $50 salad. It's gonna be a $50 salad, put it on the scale. 'Cause they just pile it on. Yeah. And they eat meat, meat. And, and that's great if your goal is to, is muscle mass.

So let me ask you about diet. That was another topic, and it's from your decades of research. What is the optimal diet for a human being to consume and why? And then the caveat to that is, does it differ based on the person? Now I know the objective, right? If you want to— but I guess also all of that, what's the optimal diet to eat? And let me— before you answer that, let me just share this. I went to Tony Robbins event in 19— no, 2000, I think year 2000, right? And he was preaching vegan, vegan veganism. And I liked the idea of, okay, you don't hurt animals and it's better for your body. Like, oh great, let's do it.

Yeah.

And so I went, I was vegan.

You're a giant like Tony Robbins, is probably easier to maintain muscle anyways. Like the Growth Hormone thing.

Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. But so I, but I was, I was vegan for many years and what got me to stop being vegan was I think a buddy sent me an article and it was basically about how the crucial nutrient vitamin B12. Yeah. Is virtually unavailable in a vegan diet. Yeah. And for me, I look to nature, call it God, call it what you want, as like, what makes sense? That what, what, what does nature tell me that we should do? And I went, if vitamin B12 isn't available in a vegan diet, that can't be the diet that God or planet Earth or whatever intended. And so then, you know, so now I, you know, I'm like kind of vegan by day, paleo by night, a little bit of both. But what are your thoughts on what's the optimal diet for a person?

Yeah, vitamin B12, comma, creatine, comma, taurine, comma, these are all essential amino acids. Common, certain amounts of vitamin D or forms of it, uh, common omega-3 fatty acids. Like, there's a lot that is more difficult to get from a plant-based diet. You know, back to the whole, like, idea of me being a Christian, and many, you know, creationist Christians will say, well, the Earth was created in such a way that humans could just eat plants. And that is true. A properly structured plant-based diet does give you just about everything that you need to survive and thrive. It involves a lot of work. You have to soak and sprout and ferment and unlock nutrients and food combine protein combined and grain and rice combined, but you can do it. Yeah. Most people do not have the energy or the time to do a vegan diet the right way or even a vegetarian diet the right way.

They're just buying processed, however, soy meat.

And I'll come around and say though, you, you can do it. Yeah. And then if you want to like be a serious bodybuilder, unless you're a complete anomaly or Ironman triathlete, or you want to do something that's physically, shall we say, like unnatural, you know, you want to turn yourself into a warrior, then it becomes even harder because you're putting higher demands for creatine for amino acids, for a lot of these vitamins on your body, and it's just easier and faster to eat a steak every now and again. Yeah. So back to the root of your question, the perfect human diet. Well, you know, like 20 years ago, you could make a pretty good case that if you wanted to take a chance based on all the epidemiological, you know, human study data available, that some semblance of a Mediterranean diet that is not like the Olive Garden unlimited breadsticks and seed oil drenched, you know, iceberg lettuce salad. Yeah, Mediterranean diet, but involves like high amount of omega-3 fatty acids and some pastured eggs and some fish. Exactly. Not a ton of red meat, but red meat every now and again. Some element of fasting, because religious fasting is a big part of a Mediterranean protocol. Polyphenols, antioxidants, even a little bit of red wine would fit into that protocol. Not a lot of sugars, a lot of recognizable foods, like a properly structured holistic Mediterranean diet, low in ultra-processed foods, would be the one most likely to allow people to have things like absence of cardiovascular disease, dementia, all-cause mortality, which is just the risk of dying from anything. Um, and I think if you just know nothing about your body, you could take a chance that that's a pretty good way to go. Maybe it's because of human origins in the Fertile Crescent. Maybe it's just because that diet is so widely varying in, again, like anti- antioxidants and polyphenols and omega-3 fatty acids. But now, that's why I said 20 years ago, we live in an era where it's not hard to get a genetic test, to get a urine test, to get a blood test, to get a, like, a stool test, to, um, to test your hormones, to test what supplements you're deficient in, to test what nutrients you're deficient in, and to step back with that data and actually customize your diet to you. I, uh, was at, um, Michaela Fuller's house yesterday, Jordan Peterson's daughter. She was born with severe predisposition to things like rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune disease, which is why she's become such a champion of the carnivore diet, because she was born ill-equipped to handle plant defense mechanisms. And that's just the case for some people. And some of that's genetic, some kind of— some of it can be lifestyle, some kind of— it can be like gut-induced stress, you know, high amounts of antibiotics as a baby, So there's a lot of things that determine what foods you are and are not equipped to eat. Other people, and a high number of people have like genetically high histamine sensitivities. The kombucha and sardines and anchovies and red wine and even like leftover food or fermented and smoked food that a lot of people do just fine with that are a lot of times part of a healthy diet give those people brain fog and bloating and gas and poor sleep and wide glucose fluctuations. So customization is the name of the game. And 10 years ago, what would have cost you like tens of thousands of dollars at Princeton Longevity Institute or whatever, you can get a lot of tests now in your home. Yeah. If you're really handy, you can upload most of those to a large language model and yeah, a pretty good, pretty good description. They're getting better of the way that you should eat based on those test results. And then you, and then you add in whatever, how much you exercise and what your goals are on top of that.

And yeah, and you can customize. That was actually my next question for you, which is testing. How important is it for people to get tested? What should they be testing for, you know, blood tests, hormone tests? And where do you recommend they go to get those?

Yeah, um, so it kind of depends on what you have access to.

Yeah, let me say, what's the most cost-effective way for people to do this?

Okay, there are, um, kind of like Mark Cuban has like a wholesale, uh, like pharmaceutical med website where you get a lot of generic medications. Those exist for a lot of the tests that your doctor might run. Uh, I think it was just a couple of days ago that Kennedy passed some kind of a law that requires transparency in insurers to be able to show what it is, or providers to show what it is that they're paying for and what insurer is paying for. So people become more and more aware of the actual cost of a prescription medication.

Wow.

Or the actual cost of a test. And there are wholesale testing websites where you can order a lot of tests to your own home. Now, I'm not a doctor, this isn't medical advice. Yeah. Um, there there are websites like Rupa and DirectLabs that literally have hundreds of tests, many of which you without a medical license can order to your house. There are stool tests to test your gut for things like parasites and yeast and fungus and bacterial imbalances, you know, or to your house. The Dutch test, which is a dried urine test for hormones, you can order that to your house, which is more like a movie for your hormones compared to blood, which is more like a photograph snapshot. Okay. There are saliva salivary genetic tests. Like, um, I mean, there are so many, uh, 3x4, um, 10x, um, uh, where should somebody start? Uh, SelfDecode. Uh, Rupa has one called 3x4 that's pretty good. It's a salivary test for genetics. Uh, your saliva. Your saliva.

Yeah. So I just did— actually, the timing of this question in terms of I just, you know, Function Health.

Mm-hmm. Familiar? Yeah. Function Health is another one.

So I just did Function Health and, and I'll just share for anybody. This is a great place to start. And I realized I'm like, I haven't done a blood test in a while and I'm a post-cancer patient. Like I need to be doing more often blood tests and it had been a while. So Function Health, you know, go online, pay for the test. Yeah. Go to Quest Labs, get 17 vials of blood, which is like, this is a lot of blood. Yeah. But, but here's what's cool is, and it goes back to the customizing of the diet. So I literally just got my preliminary results this morning. And you go and you click and it shows you, you know, where you're out of range. And when you click on it, it then gives you a detailed description of what this means. And it says, here are the foods you can eat to improve this marker. Here are the foods to avoid to improve this marker. Here are the supplements you can take to improve. Like, it was— so it was—

and it's interpretable for someone without a medical license. So, so you're talking about Function Health, um, Cyfox, um, gosh, there's so many of them now where you can order a blood test to your house And then the difference between that and a wholesaler is you're paying more for something like Function because you're paying for the brand, you're paying for the app, you're paying for the R&D put into the app, you're paying— and then sometimes their monetization model is based on recommending certain supplements to you that they make or that they have affiliate relationships with. As long as you know all that going in, a lot of times it is a smoother, more accessible experience for someone versus getting a hard-to-interpret PDF that you got to hire somebody to walk you through. If you're going through a wholesaler like DirectLabs or, or Rupa, for example. Yeah. Um, but either way, the— these, these companies like Function that do it for you, you know, um, and you just drive to a Quest or a LabCorp in most cases, those are good. Um, but back to your question about which tests, it would be a genetic test is like once in a lifetime unless you're one of those guys messing around like CRISPR gene editing. And, you know, for the most part, your genetics, your genetics.

Life.

They're not changing. So one of those, a really basic blood panel once a quarter is a great idea.

And that's like the function health, right?

And that's like, yeah, that's like your, your lipid, your complete, your, your, your complete blood count, your comprehensive metabolic profile. A lot of time just looking at everything from vitamin D to thyroid. Yeah. Some of the hormones in the blood are there, but I'm still a bigger fan of, of urinary testing for hormones. But that's like a quarterly thing. Hormones, I like people to do that annually, right? And I think urinary is best. Yeah. Because again, it gives you a running snapshot of how your hormones are fluctuating over a 24-hour period and what they're getting broken down into. And then a gut test, that also would be like an annual thing unless you come back from some vacation in freaking, like, I don't know, Bali or India or Thailand or wherever and you got like, you know, you're painting the back of the toilet seat.

Yeah.

Like, like in that case you can get a gut test to see what's going on, what changed, what you need to fix. So we've got genetic, which is salivary. We've got hormones, which are urine. You have your blood panel quarterly. You have your gut panel annually. And then the other ones that I like are a good food allergy panel. And that's kind of like the DNA test. Some people would think it's once in a lifetime, but what that actually is, it's a food allergy and intolerance test. That would be— there's like a company called Infinite Allergy that makes a good one.. And it shows you what kind of things that you're producing an immune reaction to that you might not have a true allergy towards, but you have an intolerance to because you have a gut that needs to be healed up. And in many cases you can take a test and then you start to eat really healthy and 6 months later you take the same test and, you know, maybe the first test said that you were super sensitive to whey protein and all forms of dairy, whether it's goat or camel or water buffalo or cow or whatever. And, you know, every bean on the planet. And like beef, and then you take that test 6 months later and you've been eating a super clean diet and not doing a lot of like processed foods and a lot of inflammation, lower stress, better sleep. And what looked like lit up like a Christmas tree from the first test looks fine on the next test. So food allergy tests typically like an annual basis is good or kind of like the gut thing, like if symptoms arise. Yeah, those would be the, those would be the biggies besides just like your daily stuff, like your wearable, you know, you know, HRV, sleep, activity, stuff like that. But if you got those tests, you can then sit down with that data and say, okay, here's what I should eat, here's the supplements that would just make expensive pee for me, here's the ones that my body actually needs because it's deficient in. Um, and again, yeah, I mean, if you go to a wholesale lab testing website, get this stuff, get the results, which are usually in a PDF, feed them into GPT, like, you could bootstrap a lot of this.

Yeah. What, um, and that Function Health, which they're not a sponsor or anything, right, but they did a urine test and a blood test. And so, and then they— you get to do add-ons on the website, Right, which I ended up spending way more than I was planning because they're like, do you want the Grail pre-cancer screening?

I'm like, of course, that sounds like, you know, you want the hormone test?

I'm like, yeah, sure, you know. So I, uh, went from spending a few hundred dollars to a grand or whatever.

And then you've got like Next Health, Fountain Life, a lot of these companies popping up that do super comprehensive executive health screenings where they're doing pretty much everything I just described plus full body MRI and CT angiography and Dexascan. And usually, I mean, you're paying anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 annually to— for, for that level. But for the people who want to go to that level, I mean, there are companies that just kind of have the, the turnkey approach.

And they're, they're selling to the affluent. That's their, their client base.

They're selling to the affluent. It's stuff that you could kind of sort of figure out how to get à la carte. You'd be paying for some of it out of pocket, but a lot of these companies, you know, they're just keeping track of everything digitally. And there's some good executive health programs out there.

Last question, why is it important for someone to be testing? Like, you know, I hear, I'm like, oh, I, I, like, I think we're, by nature, we just, yeah, human nature is to do the minimum we have to do to get by.

Can I just intuit what's going on with my body?

Yeah, like, I'm all right, I'm not like that. Yeah, we wait until we're sick or we're in pain until we go get checked out. So why should somebody get online and go to Function Health or one of the wholesale sites and like, and go get a blood test, go get a hormone test.

Why is that important? Yeah, well, you just answered it. It's preventive medicine. Um, so, well, sometimes it's preventive and sometimes it is detective work when something has actually gone wrong. But by keeping tabs on your unique biomarkers, on your internal biology, you can make dietary adjustments, supplement adjustments, medication adjustments that help you to be a healthier you. Coming full circle, not so you can live 180 years, but so that you can be like throwing a football around with your grandkids and going on the hikes you want to go on, and, you know, not spend an hour on the toilet every morning and being able to like go out to eat and know what it is on the menu that you should order and what is gonna like keep you up till midnight with some kind of stomach issue or high blood sugar. So it's kind of like a quality of life thing. And yeah, you pay for it, you do, just like anything in life.

And where you pay on the back end when you're sick and you're in— right, exactly.

Yeah, it's a good point. You can pay on the back end, but it's just better living through science that enables you to be as impactful as possible and to get through a day more productively. Because I mean, you know this, you've been through a lot. Like when you have health it is a drain. It's a drain on everything you're trying to focus on, whether it's a book or an email or getting to work on time or anything else. So, um, yeah, it sounds silly, but just something as simple as self-quantification can make a huge dent in you knowing, you know, let's say you've been having your healthy, I don't know, like oatmeal and orange juice with a side of kale for breakfast for the past 10 years, and you test and it turns out that you have like an oxalate sensitivity and kale is bad news, and you you're like pre-diabetic and the oatmeal and the orange juice isn't doing a great job for you. And then you're sensitive to like lectins and gluten, so the oatmeal probably isn't the best bet anyways. And like scrambled eggs and avocado would be a great switch for you. Yeah. And, and you just know, and like something as simple as that can kind of like change your life. Yeah. Like take, take you from habit to precision.

And so I would say anybody listening, do it now. Like don't wait, right? Like go, that's a great place to start is go get test, get a blood test, check out your markers, get a hormone test. You know, and, and if you haven't done it a while, now is the best time. Yep. And, and I know as somebody who got cancer, it's like, oh, what? As soon as I got it, I was like, what are all the things that I put in my body that were not natural that may or may not have caused this? And it was— I took Adderall for like a decade so I could focus, right? And what I realized is that I was valuing productivity above my health. I was valuing money above my health. Like, like, right? Like, I need to make money, so I'm going to shorten my sleep because money's more important. I wanna be productive, so I'm gonna take Adderall cuz that's more important than my, you know, it was valuing all these other things that once you, as you know, once you lose your health, yeah, nothing else matters and you go, oh man, I should have put health first. Yeah.

And fast feast cycles like sprint recover cycles, you know, workout recovery cycles, back to the overtraining thing, are a reality. Like if I'm like writing a book and it gets time to actually produce the final manuscript, yeah, like I'm going to bed at 10 cuz that's when my family finally gets to bed. I gotta get up at 3:45 and I gotta short sleep for like 6 months. Yeah. And you can't be perfect if you want to produce and create, but these are like spurts that you go through. It's, it's kinda like back to the Ironman thing. It's like you don't have to race 3 Ironmans a year for 40 years. Like you could do like 1 or 2. Yeah. So, so yeah, I, you know, we're not anti-productivity, you know, all pro-health. There are times when you just gotta take one for the team, but that shouldn't be, that shouldn't be the majority of the time.

But it's the same thing with eating healthy. Like to me, I have no problem occasionally eating unhealthy. Healthy because I eat so— I like, yeah, you know, every, you know, I love, I like Back to the Body for Life book. It was like 6 days a week you eat healthy and then you have a cheat day and eat whatever the heck you want, right? Like, right, you know, that, that kind of way of living. Well, well, Ben, man, I, dude, I'll have you back on. Like, there's so much we could talk about.

We still talk about the bombs and the, you know, yeah, we gotta have dinner tonight. So is today cheat day?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Awesome, man. Um, all right, cool, man.

What do you want to leave people with, dude? If you leave people with one message about their health, about their family, either one or both of those.

Yeah, we throw out a lot. And I know that these type of podcasts, it can be almost like a little bit defeating. Like, gosh, where do you even start? It's Firehouse. I think like super underrated is walking, like so underrated. And we mentioned it briefly a few times, but I started to say this and I don't know if I finished it, but 8,000, 10,000 is a really good goal. A lot of people aren't getting that. Yeah. And it's not hard if you just reinvent your working environment, you know, get a treadmill desk, take calls outside. Even if you can't afford a treadmill desk, like you don't have to be on video all the time. You can have your phone in your pocket. You don't have to be, you know, on the Zoom video. It's like we live in an era where people expect you to be. Yeah, but you can literally announce, hey, you know, for the next hour we're all talking, I'm on a walk. You can either be looking at my face sitting in a chair or know that like I'm like, I'm paying attention, I'm here, but I'm walking. Like, I just use any excuse you can to move. Yeah. It's really good place to start.

Yeah, move your body every day. All right, brother, appreciate you, man. Keep doing the work you're doing, and most importantly, keep being the dad and the husband that you're being. That makes the biggest difference. Thanks. All right, appreciate you.