Burn Belly Fat FAST With This 3 Step Strategy - with Ben Greenfield

This is one of the best ways I've found to get fat off the body quickly. I actually call this in the book the strike, stroll, shiver strategies. When you are consuming added sugar on a regular basis, you're seeing blood glucose spikes throughout the day. High glycemic variability can induce gradual long-term insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can impair the body's ability to mobilize fatty acids from fat tissue.

Ben Greenfield is a global leader in health, fitness, and human performance whose mission is to help others become boundless. Ben is a New York Times bestselling author, and his work reaches millions of people every month through a powerful combination of podcasting, writing, speaking, and coaching.

What I am about to discuss I described to you that I will give to like a Hollywood actor getting ready for a movie role who needs to cut up to, you know, an executive who comes to me who, who's got 30 pounds to lose doesn't have like long-term human clinical peer-reviewed research behind it, but this is one of the best ways I've found to get fat off the body quickly. And the way it works is, and I actually call this in the book the strike Stroll-Shiver strategy, Streck-Stroll-Shiver. You wake up in the morning preferably in overnight fasted state. Now, overnight fasted state is going to be a little bit different between men and women. Women, premenopausal women specifically, from a hormonal standpoint and a fertility standpoint, whether or not they want to have babies for fertility is something that's correlated with generally good health. Do better on slightly shorter fasts, like 10 to 12 hours of fasting versus on a regular basis, like a daily basis, versus men who seem to respond better to about a 12 to 16-hour intermittent fast. So the idea is that you finish dinner and you're just not stuffing your face with extra calories, not an extra handful of dark chocolate almonds from Trader Joe's, not an extra, you know, bite of ice cream, not finishing your, your kid's plate later on when it's still on the counter at 9 PM. Just basically having that time of night when you actually stop eating and you're not going to eat again until that period of time has passed and arrived in the morning. For some people, that means you're done eating at 8:30 PM. That's me. I have a family. We love our big glorious family dinners. They're super fun, but I know that how late we eat as a family is not ideal for circadian biology, meaning that if you can finish eating 3 hours before bedtime or more, it's a little bit better for sleep. I'm also not like a, you know, I don't think you got to go the Bryan Johnson route and have your last meal at 11:00 AM or whatever. But either way, you finish eating, you go into that fasted period, you wake up having not eaten, and then the strike part means that you put something into your body that's going to shift it into a higher state of fatty acid oxidation. The two perfect examples of that would be like EGCG from green tea or caffeine from a cup of coffee. Not an orange mocha Frappuccino, but, or even like a lot of cream or coconut cream or whatever in your coffee, just like a black cup of coffee, regular cup of green tea, just to spark a little bit of extra metabolism. Um, so you're shifting the body into, into a higher state of fatty acid oxidation doing that. And then the stroll part indicates that you're going for about 20 to 40 minutes at a low intensity, what we might call a zone 2 easy aerobic conversational pace, after you've had your cup of coffee. This could be taking the dog for a walk. It could be going for an easy swim in your pool. It could be a yoga class. It could be, you know, riding a bike, um, just anything super easy. The magic is not necessarily that when you're working out at an easier pace you're burning a higher percentage of fat, which is true, you are burning a higher percentage of fat. What people leave out is you're actually burning a lower number of calories. So overall, you know, if you're working out harder, lifting weights, doing high-intensity interval training, you are going to burn more calories, and overall you're going to burn more fat. But the reason that the low-intensity morning exercise works is you're going to do it. Like, there's not a lot of people who are not just going to like take the dog for a walk after a cup of coffee in the morning 365 days a year, versus if I say I go to the gym and you got to do a, you know, like some kind of a HIIT session till there's smoke coming out your ears, and then you got to lift weights and, you know, do burpees. People are going to do that maybe 3 days of the week, 4 days of the week, you know, stop for a week, come back, you know, keep falling off the bandwagon. So the stroll part comes second, and then the last part is basically the part where you are inducing insulin sensitivity, lowering blood glucose, and helping to convert metabolically inactive white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat. And that would be the cold piece. This could be literally coming back from your walk, walking into the shower. And if you got to ease yourself into it by starting with hot water and then gradually going to cold water, that's one option. Or if you just want that instant wake-me-up and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet, you just start with full cold. It could be if you have one of the newer fancy cold plunges or ice baths, jumping into something like that. It could be, you know, jump into a lake or river or an ocean. I mean, around here in California, this could even be literally just like walking to the ocean if you're near it, jumping in and walking back home, and that counts as the cold component. So what you're doing, if you step back and look at this big picture is you're starting off by shifting the body into fat oxidation with caffeine or green tea. Then you're moving at an aerobic pace that helps to mobilize fat when you don't have extra calories on board to burn before your body turns to its own fat tissue. And then you're doing cold— is kind of like the, you know, pun intended, icing on the cake— to just basically shift yourself into a little bit more fat burning. Now, That's something that if you do it consistently, and I use this with just about every client I have whose number one goal is fat loss, it moves the dial pretty considerably. And there's some other things. That's Mango Chili Element, by the way. Kind of tastes like Gatorade with hot sauce in it. It's a new flavor for me. A little spice flavor. Um, there's, there's, there's other things that are important, but that would be like how you kind of consider the start of your day. Um, the other things to bear in mind, uh, for fat loss, one would be empty calories. Uh, I think alcohol is a perfect example. I am not opposed to alcohol. I think you actually make a case for the longevity-enhancing benefits of alcohol, meaning when you drink small amounts in moderation, you can actually spark a little bit of what's called an endogenous antioxidant response. Your body starts to churn out things like glutathione and superoxide dismutase and some of these things that are probably factors in the, the, the equation of many of these Blue Zones or longevity hotspots having some element of like a bitter alcohol or red wine, you know, as like a nightly habit. At the same time, alcohol at 7 calories per gram is not very nutrient-dense. You're not getting, you know, a lot of protein or satiating fat from it. You're getting some carbohydrates. And, uh, in many people, it can also be a little bit of an appetite stimulant. So I encourage people whose number one goal is fat loss, you know, they're not interested in, you know, the longevity benefits of alcohol, which are minimal but there, to just cut alcohol. And of course, we now— we have so many alcohol alternatives. You know, there's— I was at dinner last night and there must have been like 14 different mocktails on the menu. Seems trendy now to, to be able to, to to get access pretty easily to alcohol-free beverages. Second would be added sugar. You know, that one's kind of a no-brainer just because of the fact that when you are consuming added sugar on a regular basis, you're seeing blood glucose spikes throughout the day, which is basically what's called glycemic variability, high glycemic variability. High glycemic variability can induce gradual long-term insulin resistance insulin resistance can impair the body's ability to mobilize fatty acids from fat tissue. So it's true that sugars do have the ability to increase triglycerides, serve as an energy source that your body might turn to instead of its own fat tissue, but I think the biggest problem with the added sugars is the long-term impact on insulin resistance, which is going to have that mild suppression of fat oxidation. So no alcohol, no sugars. Um, and when you put all this together, you basically got a morning habit, you are watching the calories that you eat, you're moving actively as much as possible, watching alcohol, watching sugar. Um, and you know, when, when you look at all the different fat loss peptides and supplements and metabolic boosters, yeah, there's other things out there, but those would be like the baseline things that just about anybody could do. Um, GLPs kind of are something that always come up though now when, when, you know, you're having the fat loss discussion. Uh, I don't know if you've talked about those on the show before.

I mean, I've got you here, so we're going to talk about some more.

Okay, so here's my take on, on GLP-1s. Um, you know, your body will make glucagon-like peptide in response to a meal to produce a little bit of a satiating effect. It'll produce more of it if you eat slowly, if you eat mindfully, and if you chew your food 25 to 40 times. Like, there are ways to increase your body's own satiety, um, but some people just have raging appetites, or some people have developed hormonal imbalances with hormones like leptin, for example, or insulin would be another example, that impair their ability to be able to respond to hunger cues adequately. Um, The idea behind a GLP agonist, a peptide, is that you are injecting something that is going to increase those GLP levels for days. If I eat a meal or even if I take one of these supposed herbs that increases GLP, there are probiotics like Akkermansia that can do it. They're very bitter compounds. Amosarate is an example of one that you'll find in some ingredients these days. Those will do it for a few hours. So we're talking about the big guns, the actual injectable peptides doing it for days versus some of the natural lifestyle habits doing it for hours. And when you're suppressing appetite for days, um, it can be a lot easier to address the don't eat as many calories component of fat loss. The unfortunate side effect of going to a doctor and getting a prescription for a GLP agonist, you know, Ozempic, uh, Wegovy, tirzepatide, retatrutide, and any of these, uh, peptides, is that they— when they, when they do the prescription, it comes in a standard dose. And the standard dose is high enough to have a lot of different side effects, um, nausea, uh, gastrointestinal disturbances, constipation, because one of the things that it does is it slows peristalsis, right? So you're just moving stuff through the digestive tract And then, people would be like, "Oh, let's take more psyllium husk and triphala and all these different herbal compounds." And, that can cause even further gastric distress as you're trying to just push stuff through. And, the other problem is that the amount of nausea and the amount of complete distaste for just about any food can be almost debilitating emotionally and physically. You do see reports of depression and even suicidal tendencies in people who are on these standard dosages of GLP agonists. And I think one reason for that is that we as human beings have a dopaminergic response to food. Food is something we can gather around with people and, you know, and, and enjoy, you know, in, in moderation. And when you just cut that off, I think there is a little, little part of what means to be human missing. Like, we live on this planet with like hundreds and thousands of different flavors and varieties and colors and fruits and vegetables and animals we can eat, if that's your thing. And when you just remove all of that, I think it does have an impact, um, psychologically. And then the other thing is physically, when you don't want to eat, it's one thing to hear someone say, oh, if you're going to take a weight loss peptide, you got to remember to eat your protein, bro, so you don't lose muscle, and you got to hit the gym so you don't lose muscle, which makes sense. That's good advice. The problem is when you sit down to like your whey protein shake or your ribeye steak or whatever it is that you're consuming to get more protein, and you literally want to throw up when it's sitting there in front of you. Like, you could tell me to eat protein until you're blue in the face, but I'm just like, I'm not gonna do it. And then let's say I go to the gym because I heard I was supposed to lift weights if I'm on one of these fat loss, you know, GLP agonists. Well, you feel totally flat in the gym because you're not eating enough calories. So you're trying to lift weights and you're trying to exercise and trying to do what your doctor told you to do, but you feel like crap at the gym. I mean, I don't know if you've ever like tried to exercise really hard when you've been really cutting calories, like maybe during a fast, you know, going and trying to hit the weights hard and do enough to maintain muscle or build muscle. It's hard. Like, you could, you know, if you're a real gym rat with a big history of exercise, like you, you kind of know how to push through. But the average person has a really hard time lifting weights in a manner that builds muscle while at the same time extremely calorically deprived. So that's where I think working with a doctor who has access to a compounding pharmacy who can get you a dose of a GLP agonist that's much, much smaller is a good alternative. Meaning, a standard dose of one of the new sexier agonists that triggers 3 different satiety-inducing mechanisms, ghrelin, GIP, and GLP-1, is called retatrutide. It's a triple agonist, so it's targeting even more than GLP. Very powerful. Standard dose is 2.5 milligrams. You can take like 1/10 of that. You can take like 250 micrograms of that, has mild appetite suppression effects. You You still can eat, but it's more like you walk past a slice of cheesecake, you're like, "Yeah, I can leave it. I'm fine." But you don't sit down to, let's say, meat and potatoes with your family at night and just not want to eat anything at all. The other interesting thing is peptides like that now are in research showing an effect on fighting neural inflammation, improving insulin sensitivity, lowering lipids or at least balancing lipids. So, they seem to have these so-called pleiotropic or system-wide effects that can be kind of beneficial. So when it comes to using something like a GLP peptide for fat loss, um, I think it fits into the equation if you've got access to a doctor who's willing to prescribe you a dose via a compounding pharmacist that's much less than what a standard dose would be. And I think if you can do that, that's actually one of the most effective, kind of more advanced options for fat loss that are out there now.

That's phenomenal. Thank you for sharing. That's one of the most balanced perspectives about this that I've heard. And you know what's so interesting is this happens so fast. It happens so fast. Yeah.

In 2019, I was like, whoa.

Yeah, it's just like, here, it's out here heavy. But in 2019, I wrote Eat Smarter, and I went into all these different hunger, satiety hormones, just like really detailing them and how they're activated certain foods that tend to activate them a little bit more, lifestyle practices. So I talked about GLP-1 2019. I talked about adiponectin. I talked about obviously ghrelin, leptin, the more popular ones. But I knew that it wasn't just going to be GLP-1. I knew that as soon as I saw this wave happen, I was like, oh, they're going to target these other things too. Yeah. And sure enough, and they're not done yet.

And also apparently there's like a quintuple agonist.

Food manufacturers that are taking a hit because people aren't buying their shit as often. Yeah, they're working behind the scenes with their scientists to try to find workarounds for these different, uh, hyper, hyper palatability, right? Exactly.

Just trying to achieve that.

It's just chemistry, you know? And so it's more important than ever to be mindful of the— and, and we say this all the time, but the lifestyle practices around any of these implements because you started off the episode sharing it's still a matter of looking at the amount that we're taking in and the amount that we're expending. It's such a big part of this, of our life overall. And so one of the things you talked about, I got to ask you more about this because I'll share with everybody why specifically, but you mentioned glycemic variability, right? And you talked about, you know, obviously we are kind of inundated with sugar and kind of higher, higher glycemic foods in our society. Yeah. With that said, there are also healthy foods, what we'd be considered to be healthy foods, that can cause some drastic changes in our own glycemic variability that might be perfect for somebody else. Yeah. And one of the things that I saw you have on, you have on a CGM from Levels. Shout out to Levels.

That's a Dexcom G7.

And I'm curious, what can people gain from this? What are some of the insights? And why is it so important, so important for us to be mindful again in this metabolic health body fat equation, to be mindful of this glycemic variability?

Yeah, well, first of all, just to get this out there, I've been, I've been wearing the Dexcom for 4 weeks, and before that I was using a different one called, called a Libre, a Freestyle Libre. The only thing I've found about the Dexcom, and I would be curious maybe in the comments section of your, of your show or whatever, how many other people are experiencing this, is if I do, and I love to do this, like a really hot sauna session, it throws off my readings for like 2 days. And a couple of times the sensor has failed. So business idea for somebody, like get some kind of like insulatory patch over this thing for, for those of us who like to hit the sauna hard. Um, but the, uh, You know, the interesting thing is that you're right, and this is probably almost 10 years ago, the study that I believe was done in Israel that showed that based on the balance of the gut bacteria, there are differing responses to carbohydrates in people. And some people will have a blood glucose response to— in this case, in that study, I think they use bananas and cookies, uh, and some people will not really have that high of what's called a postprandial, post-feeding glucose response to those foods. And other people will. Um, and it can be very individualized. Um, now when you look at a lot of other foods, probably some of those you might have been alluding to, like let's say sweet potatoes and yams and berries, right? A lot of people don't know this, but yeah, they have rice, um, you know, quinoa, amaranth, millet, sourdough bread, and even some proteins, right? Like, um, proteins can be a little bit what, what are called gluconeogenic foods, meaning that the proteins can actually cause a blood glucose increase as they're converted into glucose. Uh, this would be like steak, ice cream, you know, whey protein smoothie, whatever. Um, there's a lot of variation from person to person in terms of how they respond to those foods that might not be a Coca-Cola as far as like, you know, just pure added sugar or high fructose corn syrup, but that still have potential for causing these blood glucose spikes. It's not as though those foods, because they're healthy foods that cause blood glucose spikes, are not potentially going to cause some of the same issues with insulin insensitivity or, uh, raging appetite as you get the hypoglycemia, the drop in blood glucose following the rise in blood glucose. That's where I think the idea of a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, comes in really handy, because you can start to know the foods that for you actually cause that and the lifestyle factors that cause it. Um, you know, like, I, I, anything in the bean legume category, which are supposed to be slow carbs, those spike my blood glucose. Those are just not great foods for me. Interestingly, I mean, not, not to rabbit hole too much, in many cases it's not the carbs in foods like that that are causing the direct blood glucose response. It can be an autoimmune reaction to those foods, a white blood cell response to those foods that then causes a cortisol response that results in your liver dumping a bunch, bunch of stress-related glucose into the bloodstream. And this actually is interesting because I've done some of the more gold standard food allergy tests, namely one called a Zoomer and called a Cyrex, C-Y-R-E-X. Several different beans and legumes flag high for me specifically is having a white blood cell reaction, like an autoimmune reaction to those foods. So now it makes sense, like it's not the slow carbs and the foods that are spiking the blood glucose, it's the fact that me genetically, I don't do— like my body thinks it's fighting when I have those foods. So that's another important component. And you don't have to go off and do all these fancy immune tests and food allergy tests. You can just wear a blood glucose monitor and know, okay, well, I don't know if it's autoimmune, I don't know if it's, it's the type of carbs in this food, I don't know if it's my microbiome. All I know is this food is a blood sugar spiker for me and it's one to avoid. And then similarly, you can get a lot of good data about what kind of things that you do from a lifestyle standpoint will control blood glucose. A lot of things people know about or, um, have been proven in literature for, for quite a while, like a pre-meal walk and/or a post-meal walk. You know, it's undeniable that that's fantastic at controlling blood sugar. I will, I will purposefully park farther away from the restaurant, like a few blocks away from the restaurant, so I have to force myself to walk to the restaurant. And then after I finish the meal, you know, I got to walk 4 to 6 blocks back to the car to get that postprandial movement in. Um, another example would be lifting weights. And lifting weights doesn't have to be like an acute event that you do right before whatever, you know, take your wife on a date night, you know, you're going to punish half the bread bowl at the steakhouse or whatever. Lifting weights can be something that helps to control blood glucose no matter what time of day that you do it. Doesn't be right before you go eat a meal because muscle serves as basically like a metabolic sink. Like, your muscles need to be full of glucose. So the way this works is that your muscles will absorb glucose to be able to fill themselves with the storage form of glucose glycogen. Your liver will also absorb glucose to store glycogen in your liver. Depending on the size of the person, you know, you might get a couple of thousand calories of storage carbohydrate in your muscles, um, anywhere between like 300 and 500 calories in the liver. And once all those are full, that's when the extra glucose starts to spill over into triglycerides and get converted into fat. Um, if you have a decent amount of muscle because you're lifting weights, then you've just got a bigger metabolic sink to be able to soak up the glucose. So lifting weights is cool because you not only get that chronic long-term ability to be able to, to sponge up glucose more, but then you do get the short-term effects of— yes, if you, if you do lift weights like an hour or two before a meal, you are going to be more insulin sensitive to that meal. So lifting weights, even more than aerobic exercise, just because you burn more glucose and get rid of more glucose and create space for more, is, is pretty high up there. Cold, I already mentioned, is something that can help to control blood glucose. I personally, wearing the CGM, have found nothing to be more powerful, um, also more uncomfortable than, than doing something cold, especially timing that. Before I know I'm going to go to a party or a great restaurant where they have my favorite carrot cake on the menu or just a multi-course fancy meal out with my wife, I will purposely go and do a 2- to 3-minute cold plunge and then go get dressed and get in the car and still be goosebumping a little bit just because I know that there's a pretty significant bulletproofing effect, at least for me, in terms of lowering the blood glucose response to the meal for really long time afterwards. Quick aside because I've been hearing this more and more these days, women are under the impression that cold is bad for females. Have you heard this? This is like the latest thing. It's like women shouldn't do cold baths. The theory is that that estrogen and progesterone in response to cold can cause more vasoconstriction. And when estrogen and progesterone are elevated, you also can see a higher cortisol response to the cold. All of that is, is actually true. Um, if you actually look at studies in women versus men and cold exposure, for example, there's one study around 60 men and 60 women where they did cold exposure and And yes, the women had a different response to the cold than men. They had a different adiponectin response, they had a different insulin response, different blood glucose response, different leptin response, and all of those responses were actually more favorable than what the men had. So from a metabolic standpoint, women actually responded more favorably to the cold. Women also showed in a different study a higher cortisol response, you know, just like a lot of the doctors and the experts are saying or telling women not to, not to get cold. Higher cortisol response than men for the first 4 weeks. But then when you follow it over time, from the 4 to 12 week mark in that study, cortisol stabilized and began to decrease long-term once they were done with the cold plunge. So there's almost like this stress resilience-producing effect from long-term cold adaptations in women. Um, it is true that if a woman is in the luteal phase of her cycle, where you increase in estrogen and progesterone, that there will be more vasoconstriction and more cortisol in response to getting cold. But there's zero evidence that that actually causes what a lot of women are being warned against. You're going to gain fat, your body's going to go into like famine and starvation mode, you're going to downregulate fertility, your body's going to freak out, you're going to be all sympathetically stimulated. That's not actually true. My wife cold plunges, I cold plunge. You could certainly overdo it. A lot of people do. Well, I shouldn't say a lot of people do. There are a lot of studies showing that if you do a 10 to 20-minute cold plunge, there's a pretty significant sympathetic nervous system response. As a matter of fact, there is such a profound response to long sits in a cold plunge which by the way, not many people are— there's not a lot of people that are going to sit in a cold plunge for like 10 to 20 minutes. Most people are like, 1, 2, 3 minutes and I'm done. There's evidence that that can suppress the response to exercise and inhibit your ability to build muscle or new mitochondria. There's evidence that it can cause long-term hypercortisolemia, more of a sympathetic nervous system response. But again, the, the devil's in the details. We're talking about long cold sits 10 to 20 minutes. And so, yeah, exactly.

We were in a program together. Yeah, Wim Hof, you, me, I think it was Jarek Robbins. We all had a program. Yeah, together back in the day.

Yeah, yeah, I remember that. That's good memory. Um, so, so what I'm getting at is that cold plunging in moderation is fine for both men and women. And then back to the fat loss blood glucose thing, it is one of the best things that you can do for blood glucose. So I cold plunge like 2 or 3 times a day. Um, I got cold plunge just scattered all over the property just because I love hopping in that thing instead of having a cup of coffee. My wife's in there for 2 or 3 minutes, she does around 35 degrees Fahrenheit and gets out and feels great.

Amazing, amazing. And a, a very accessible, simple way to track your body's response is through a CGM, continuous glucose monitor. Yeah. And again, The, my favorite is, you know, working with Levels because of the tracking. I think that they're the best. The app is awesome. The team is amazing. The people behind it. And if people want to get their hands on this data, access to CGMs, go to levels.link/model. That's L-E-V-E-L-S.link/model.. And also, we were talking before the show, they're now upleveling things where you're going to get a free— included with your membership, number one, you're going to get 2 free months with the annual membership, but you're getting now included 20 biometrics tracked that you can go and get an annual blood draw. It's going to be included with your Levels membership. And they have this really advanced AI to be able to tell you to kind of get a beat on your biological age and all this stuff. In particular with their expanded panel. Their expanded panel, which is a kind of upgrade that you could pay for, there's over 100 biometrics and it's put all in there. And so when I got it done, tracked everything from testosterone levels to thyroid function, nutrient levels, variations with cholesterol, not just as standard, you know, LDL, HDL. But the truth is, and I want to ask you about this because you know better than most, our blood work tells a story. It tells a story. It's kind of— it has— it's lacking context a lot of times when somebody gets their blood work back from a conventional, traditionally trained physician. Unfortunately, it's very superficial. You know, this is what's going on with your, you know, your cholesterol panel. And now we have so many more innovations and understanding. Like, there are people that can have, you know, high LDL and never have any cardiac issues at all. As a matter of fact, be, you know, abundantly healthy because—

or have a pristine lipid panel, and then if they actually go in and get like a CT angiography, show blockage, yeah, plaque accumulation, they've got epicardial fat.

They are, you know, maybe again they have a cardiac event and they look healthy based on a superficial view of things. And so our blood work tells a story, and getting information like this, it needs context. So are those numbers, you know, is that a threat for me personally based on all this other stuff? What does my triglycerides look like? What do these other hormones look like?

We're talking about Levels. This is kind of cool. Um, if, if you look at a company like that, um, I think Whoop is another example. Like, they've got a bunch of people wearing these things, so they're able to aggregate big data over time. And I'm assuming this is probably one of the reasons that Levels wants to do this, is now Levels can go from, well, here's like, you know, 8,000 people for when whatever broccoli spiked their blood sugar. We never would have expected that, but that's the data that we have now, to, oh, look at this, low vitamin D, or, um, you know, low free testosterone but not low total testosterone, or high CRP. All of these correlate to blood glucose imbalances. So now I'm, I'm, you know, and I don't know this for sure, but I'm, I'm assuming that they will be able to do this as they, as they pull in more and more of this data. They can then correlate biomarkers to risk for blood sugar imbalances, showing things that we just never would have known for.

Yeah, it's that accumulation of data with a lot of different people, and you start to see the patterns.

Yeah. And then they can sell that to pharmaceutical companies.

But still—

I'm joking.

But still, you can be an outlier, you know. You might see all these great averages and know, like, this is going to be a tendency for this food, this lifestyle, uh, activity to be great for me. But the n of 1 is so important today. I've leaned into that so much, you know. I've been one of the guys really impressing upon the health culture, like, we've got this data going through these studies, and that's valuable. But it's also valuable to know the end of one, which is the experimentation that you do for yourself because you're unique.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, something else unique about this conversation, you know, we talked about the potential of, quote, getting rid of belly fat. Yeah. But we didn't talk about what it is and what makes it different. All right, there's some unique things about belly fat that I want to ask you about. So what is belly fat?

Hopefully I know the answer. You might know better than me. Um, white adipose tissue particularly is, is what most the belly fat is comprised of, and that's going to be a little bit less metabolically active. If, if you look at a different type of fat, which I mentioned earlier, that you make more of in response to the cold, brown fat, it's actually metabolically active. It engages in something called mitochondrial uncoupling, which means that when you consume calories, brown fat can use those calories to produce heat, which kind of makes sense because you do a lot of cold, your body's like, oh, okay, so I need, I need to take calories and produce heat rather than producing ATP. And when you're producing less ATP, it's a signal to the body to bump up the metabolic rate. Because you basically need to create more energy. So it's almost got this metabolic-increasing, heat-producing effect, whereas white adipose tissue is more of a storage depot, right? And you can mobilize fats from white adipose tissue in addition to converting it into brown fat. But the issue with white adipose tissue is if it is in excess, it starts to do things like churn out inflammatory cytokines, creating almost like this vicious cycle of more insulin insensitivity. If you were to do one of these newer scans like a DEXA, for example, you can look at visceral fat accumulation, which is basically a lot of this tissue that's around organs, which is correlated with, you know, basically increased mortality from just about every chronic disease out there. So, um, I would classify it as a less metabolically active storage depot than some of the other places in which we can we can keep energy-producing compounds like, say, muscle or brown fat, for example. Mm.

A little bit more sensitive to stress potentially. Yeah. And less sensitive to mobilization and activity and getting rid of it.

Right, right. Exactly. Which makes sense because you would want in a time of actual stress not email stress in an era of hyperpalatable foods that you're beck and call all the time, but like actual stress. Like it's the dead of winter and the deer that we killed in the fall are all gone and it's like the 1800s or whatever. So your body all of a sudden has to downregulate metabolic rate and shut down some thyroid activity and begin to create these storage depots that are going to serve you for however long a period of time is going to be until you get access to food again. That makes sense. It's all— it's a little bit of like a hibernatory scenario. But in our day and age, it's pretty few and far between unless you're like a self-inflicted like hyperfasted monk or something like that, that you're actually going to be in a scenario where you really truly have to sock away fat because, I mean, maybe you're on the TV show Alone or something like that and you're getting ready to go into an intense survival scenario. But for the most part, like, we don't really need to rely on survival storage mechanisms as much. Yeah, and, and it backfires too, because if you are just filling those stores up over and over again, which is so easy to do these days, we rarely in our day and age have a built-in mechanism to where you're going to be getting rid of that because winter's coming and, you know, you're going to be trekking across the plain with a musket over your back looking for a, you know, looking for an animal to kill. It's like, no, like in the winter you go out to TGIFridays. So, it's almost like this blessing and curse of living in a modern era in which we have a little bit of an evolutionary mismatch between what our bodies grew to be capable of doing and what they don't need to do anymore. So, it just requires more self-control. Same reason we had to fabricate boxes and rooms that we could go and pick up heavy stuff with because we don't do that for work anymore.

Yeah, it's signaling. Yeah, you know, it's just these environmental signals, these inputs, and our bodies are going to be a representation of the signals that we're giving it. Yeah, right. And so if we want to change our body and change certain things about our bodies, we have to give these particular signals. Yeah. And it really comes down— I mean, it's pretty simple, but nobody said it was easy.

Yeah, I mean, it's like from the moment you're born, you're basically fighting entropy, right? You're fighting your body's desire to go into this chaotic state. And yeah, early on in life, you're building bone density and muscle mass almost without even thinking about it, just based on the, on the hormonal surges and the growth of a young mammal. But you get to a point where, yeah, if you don't load a bone, it will become less dense. And if you don't load a muscle, it will atrophy. And if you don't load the heart, then its stroke volume will decrease. So we basically have to purposefully wake up in the morning and ask ourselves, okay, so what uncomfortable things can I do today to fight entropy. And again, like, back to our modern era, it's a little bit more difficult to engage in uncomfortable activities like thermal stress, like, you know, the cold that we were talking about, or, you know, the heat, you know, such as the sauna that destroys the continuous glucose monitors. Um, these are things that we kind of need to hunt down nowadays because we aren't, like, out in the dead of winter hunting, and we aren't out in the middle of the summer, you know, with jeans and a long shirt on building a You know, same thing with lack of access to food, same thing with lifting heavy objects. So there's so many forms of discomfort that we almost have to intentionally seek out now. Yeah, in order to— in order to get healthspan or lifespan.

Yeah, yeah. Our lives are more and more comfy and cozy and convenience. Yeah, wait, comfy, cozy, convenience, triple C versus the triple S you started off with.

Just alliteration. Strike, stroll, strike, stroll, shiver. Yeah, I mean, like, I was, I was in the gym this morning and, and, you know, people like, oh, you're the fitness guy, like, of course you were in the gym, it must be easy if you just wake up and go to the gym. No, like, it still is hard every single day to, you know, roll out of bed and put the shoes on and get ready and get dressed and go down there. And, you know, in the first few minutes really suck and it still kind of hurts as you're doing it and I'm not saying that your entire life needs to be masochistic, but there— like, if you're looking for health, there is a certain amount of discomfort that's necessary. And that's actually something that I think, like, in the biohacking industry, like, the idea that you can, like, hack the system and that there's shortcuts, that there's a little bit of that grit that's missing. Because there's a huge problem in my industry right now, and I would— I was even just speaking at, like, a nutrition supplement conference, kind of the same thing. It's like, yeah, pop a pill. And, you know, you want to, you want to gain mass, you take peptides and amino acids and collagen and whey protein. And you want to lose weight, you know, take, take these different, you know, thermal burning agents and appetite suppressing agents. And you want to increase bone density, you know, just mainline minerals and bone broth and eat your way out of it. But you get to a certain point where you do actually have to experience a little bit of discomfort. You got to be cold, you got to be hot, you got to be sweating, you got to be like under load in the gym, you got to be sucking wind every now again. Um, and I think like people are always looking for like the Fountain of Youth, you know, way to pop your pill, uh, and, and use that for life extension or health extension. And, you know, it kind of comes back to my mentality about at the end of the day when it comes to fat loss, just like stuff your face less and move more, you know. And a lot of people do need to hear that in an era where it's like, no, I'm supposed to have, you know, aspartame instead of sucralose and get rid of red food dye. No, you need to move more and eat less. Like, that's the number one number one thing you need to do. It's very similar when it comes to this idea of discomfort. It's like, yeah, you just— you can't pop a pill and pharmaceutical your way out of discomfort. Like, there's a certain amount of that that's necessary if you want to be a resilient, healthy human.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that, man. And it is— it's especially striking coming from you, you know, because you know about all this stuff and all the cool things that we have to, to biohack our bodies and our environment. But you just said it, grit. You know, there's a psychological component. Our genes expect us to have these stressors as well. It makes us better. It changes us in ways that are far more complex than we realize yet. And so, yes, we can find these workarounds, but at what cost? Yeah, right. When we're making things easier again, that's what got us into this in the first place. Yeah, right. And so it's just keeping it in context and doing our best to stay true to— again, you said it, like, we found ourselves with this, this biology here that's evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in this current form, and we were in a certain environment for most of that time until, you know, like, literally experiencing dietary stressors, right?

Like, there, there's a case to be made that moderate exposure to, like, gluten and lectins and plant defense molecules. And, you know, so they're called xenohormetic agents, right? Xeno-hormetic agents. These are elements of the plant kingdom that, if consumed in high amounts, could kill you, or from the plant standpoint, at least keep you from coming back and nuking that plant out of existence as a mammal. Um, and, you know, in high amounts, they can cause some gut distress, they can cause you to, you know, like, go poop out the seed of that plant elsewhere, whatever. But But in small amounts, they also induce cellular resilience. Back to the alcohol piece, right? You get an antioxidant response, you get a change in the microbiome based on the dietary diversity present in a lot of these compounds, and you develop an immune system that's more resilient. And when you say, "Yo, I'm going gluten-free, lectin-free, I mean no oxalates, no phytates, no cruciferous vegetables, nothing that's bitter. I'm going to do the 3 ribeyes a day type of protocol." Um, if you have severe autoimmune disease or like a really significant gut issue that needs healing, you might need to do that for a short period of time. But, you know, it's another kind of like myopic focus in the health industry, or at least the, the nutrition part of the health industry now, to just like cut out any food that has any element of any type of, of toxin or poisonous presence when If you look at— if we want to extend this to, let's say, other lifestyle activities, exercise is poison. I mean, your muscles look like World War II after exercise, torn up and you got a bunch of cortisol and lactate and they're damaged. Alcohol is toxic to your body. Sauna is depleting and you're losing electrolytes and your heart's under stress and you're hot and you're producing these heat shock proteins to keep your brain from dying. When you get in the cold, your body has to start shunting blood flow all over the place so that organs don't freeze, and so the toes and fingers don't fall off. Yet, you know, you don't see a lot of people saying, well, don't go to the gym, it's dangerous. But you see people saying, well, don't eat gluten, it's dangerous, or, you know, don't eat oxalates, they're dangerous. And yeah, they are in high amounts, just like if you spent, you know, 3 hours a day at the gym like a bodybuilder and, you know, died of cardiomegaly when you're 60 years old, you know, that, that type of gym activity can be damaging. But small to moderate amounts of a high amount of even slightly toxic and poisonous foods from huge elements of dietary diversity increases cellular resilience over time and increases the diversity of the microbiome in a way that helps with your brain and helps with your immune system. So, um, I think the discomfort piece even applies to food, with the only exception being like, I don't know a lot of people who just like complain that sourdough bread tastes really bad, so they're gonna avoid it because it's uncomfortable. But if you look at stuff like that, like from a gut standpoint, it can be slightly uncomfortable, like for your body to learn how to deal with all these different dietary components. But if you introduce them on a regular basis, interestingly, your microbiome changes in such a way that it becomes better able to handle a diverse array of foods. And the more myopic your diet becomes, the less able you are to handle a diverse array of foods. Hence the peanut allergy crisis, as parents were told for a long period of time that babies shouldn't have peanuts. And we saw a direct correlation between parents being taught to avoid peanuts at all costs and a rise in peanut allergies versus small doses of peanuts that a child is given to allow their immune system to be able to develop a proper response to peanuts. Um, I saw one study a few years ago that showed that people who had low amounts of gluten or gluten-free diet in early age were more sensitive to gluten at a later age, probably because the bacterial composition of their gut had not developed to the point where they could digest that specific protein as efficiently. So it's kind of like the, the more you cut out and the more simple your diet becomes, um, the less tough you get, basically, because it's just like less digestive discomfort.

Man. So again, this is a powerful point. If you don't have celiac, if you just found out about some of this information, which is— this is easy for any of us to do, especially today, social media, podcasts, and those type of things to get educated. We want to get better and we find out about gluten and potential issues. And maybe we find out we have a sensitivity, right? And so we exclude this thing and we go for years doing our best and we're asking the waiter and we're checking all the labels and we're, you know, all of that stuff. And then you find yourself in maybe, you know, um, an interrogation situation. All right, they're trying to get information out of you and you've been gluten-free for 10 years, and they're like, all right, you don't want to talk?

Get the gluten. All right, because they're not the Wonder Bread. Let's go.

They're gonna fuck you up with that gluten. All right, so it's in a way— and I love this— is kind of like being able to not necessarily microdose, but to have certain exposures and not to completely, uh, eliminate certain things just because of an aspirational idea, right? Yeah. And this is still— this is the most important takeaway from today— this is still unique to you and what that looks like.

Yeah, it is. I mean, and that, that is the cool thing. So you don't want to walk out of, um, or let's say finish hearing this podcast and say, well, you Ben and Shawn said I could just eat whatever I want to eat and all of a sudden all these foods I've been avoiding for years because I heard they were unhealthy, I'm just going to fill up the grocery shopping cart. Back to what you were explaining about self-quantification, you can now test. I mean, you can actually find out if you really want to get precise and you can get a good food allergy panel that'll show you if you actually have an immune system response to a food. Or if it's just unhealthy for you because you've been given that impression by your neighbor or a book. And you can do the blood sugar and see what blood sugar responses are to certain foods. It's pretty rare, again, back, back to the whole like full-blown autoimmune disease component, that by doing a bunch of testing you're going to find out there are like 10 foods that you could eat. But you may actually identify a few that really truly are not up your alley. And I think there's a difference between that and just like avoiding, yeah, all the foods that you've read about in all the books at all costs. Because I mean, you and I know this, like in the nutrition industry, um, one of, one of the, um, one of like the secrets to writing a best-selling diet book is to create a villain, right? That is like the group or the food or the compound or the molecule that's just bad for all human beings in the entire universe. And then write the whole book, present the diet that eliminates all of this, maybe sell a supplement somewhere in there that helps you digest the thing. And you'll see that model. I'm not throwing anybody under the bus because there's just like, there's so many examples of this. There's probably like hundreds of different books that exist on the market right now that are written from this perspective. And I, I don't think there's, there's any type of, um, malicious intent behind writing a book like that. I truly think that many people write these books like they probably had a pretty bad reaction. They had patients who had a bad reaction to these foods. And I think that in many cases people can have a bad reaction to certain foods. But I don't think it's done a lot of people much of a service to learn that, oh, here's yet another food, yet another compound that I have to avoid. And you just get this laundry list where, you know, at the end of the day, you're like, you know, can of sardines and some sea salt, and that's like all you're allowed.

So, um, something—

so yeah, so I think that, that there's a little bit of a commercialization of myopic diets as well.

Yeah, and also even with the allergy test, we've got to keep it in context. Why is your body responding to that? And also, you know, for example, it might be you're hyper-responsive to ginger. Yeah. And I've seen this happen where somebody's having— it could be stimulating the immune system in a way that is supportive.

Yeah.

If in certain contexts, and later on, you know, uh, 6 months later, they're no longer responsive to ginger in a negative way, you know. So it's like you've got to take this stuff, keep it in context.

This is— I'm glad you brought that up because this, this is all like— I went on vacation to Italy and I ate all the gluten and gelato and pasta that I wanted and I felt fine. They must be doing something different to the European food supply than they are to the U.S. food supply because I have all that stuff at home and I feel horrible. And, yeah, maybe that's a little bit of the case like, you know, no whatever Roundup in Italy or something like that. But, I think a bigger part of it is you're just less stressed out when you're on vacation in Italy. And, anytime you're in a low-stress scenario, your body's just able to handle more dietary diversity as well. So I think part of it too, you know, back to what you were saying, is ask yourself, why are you having a deleterious reaction to that food? And maybe it goes beyond that food. Maybe it's, it's how you're handling your emails and your stress and your sleep and your relationships, you know. Because anybody knows, like, you know, like, if you're stressed out, like, the same meal that you would have done fine with while watching, you know, funny movie with your family or hanging out playing games around the dinner table apple can just like give you like some gas and bloating and digestive distress if you're, you know, eating it while you're, you know, driving, just holding the steering wheel with your knees, like driving to work, commuting, like eating out of the— with this— not that I endorse that, um, but yeah, just like the, the manner in which you eat, the mentality that you have, and this, the stress or unstressed scenario in which you eat can definitely affect that as well.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't want to let you go without asking you about this. Um, obviously— well, maybe not so obvious for those that don't know, but Boundless, you have an updated revised edition, the red one. This, first of all, this book in and of itself can get you fit with the sheer weight. You don't leave us—

I know, well, I did a book signing yesterday, so yeah, you got like 60 of them.

But you don't leave a stone unturned. Like, you talk about some of everything, and also it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book as well, and it's one of those books where honestly, man, you could just like like look at the table of contents, pick out a chapter, and just dive in. And you're going to learn stuff that you didn't know, period. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about, it was— I got reminded of it because earlier you said bone loading, muscles, right? So these stimulants, and also you mentioned bone density, and it got me thinking about the Wolverine chapter in the book. And this is one of those things that's— I don't want to say it's inevitable like Thanos or anything like that. See, it's a lot of superhero references going on, but many people experience things that set them back. Injuries, right? We get hurt, especially if you're doing stuff. I just saw a segment from Dr. Stu McGill, and he was basically like, who do you think gets back injuries more often? People who inactive and unfit or people who are fit and active? The answer was actually people who are fit and active have more issues because they're risking, they're pushing it. Sometimes they're pushing it too far. And so when these inevitable things happen, there are proven ways to get better faster. Your body knows what to do and it can. We have a capacity that is just dormant for so many of us. And you talk about how to successfully accelerate healing. And that's why it's called Wolverine, of course. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, it's also possible that the active and fit people are just more tuned into their bodies, so they're the people complaining about the back pain, whereas the, the unhealthy, unactive people are just like, they're just like, oh, this is how I'm supposed to feel. So it might be a little bit of that as well. I don't know, I haven't seen the, the research from Stu McGill. Um, but, um, I think there's kind of two different ways to look at recovery. One is just basic recovery, like I've finished a workout and I need to do something that allows for metabolic waste to get flushed out of my used cells. This would be hot-cold contrast like sauna cold plunge or hot-cold water. This would be, from a biohacking standpoint, those recovery boots you can wear that pump blood in and out of the legs. If you really want to get advanced, these can even be things like hyperbaric oxygen chamber, or, you know, any of these things that you see in a lot of, of biohacking or longevity facilities, things that allow the body to move stuff out of cells and heal a little bit more rapidly from that standpoint. Um, and in that same category would be the actual nutrients that help muscles to repair and recover. I think the primary ones to think about would be anything related to building blocks for muscle. So huge fan of collagen, Ben Greenfield, huge fan of essential amino acids, huge fan of protein, especially when consumed along with digestive enzymes, namely digestive enzymes with proteases that help to break down the protein more readily. Um, and, and one of the reasons that's important is a lot of active people are having their protein feeding within a couple hours after a workout. And after you've worked out, you do a little less good of a job producing digestive enzymes, right? So taking a digestive enzyme with whatever your post workout meal is can help with more of the amino acid bioavailability just because you're breaking down the protein more readily. So looking at your protein sources, looking at things like blood flow, oxygen, etc., you know, that, that chapter is pretty long, but I kind of detail some of the different hacks and some of the different nutrition principles for something like that. Um, and then the other piece in addition to the basic recovery piece is the injury piece. Which, which of course is, is a big issue for a lot of people. Um, when it comes to injuries, I think we could look at it from, again, like a technology standpoint and then also a nutrition/supplementation standpoint. So, um, if— let's, let's use an example. I don't know, throw, throw a joint at me or, or an injury that you've dealt with or something that you think is kind of common.

I just mentioned Stu McGill and back injuries, low back injury. Yeah, so we'll say a low back. Okay. Um, yeah, herniation.

Yeah, so let's say you have a disc herniation. Um, one thing that is necessary is pain control. Um, I'm not a huge fan, just based on some of the gastric and liver issues it causes in people, of ibuprofen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory antioxidants. There are compounds like curcumin, another one called pro-resolving mediators, fish oil, any of these natural anti-inflammatories that can help from an inflammation standpoint. From a pain standpoint, if you look at anything that would be a tactile or a haptic cue, like, like a vibration, touch, or something that would be a photonic cue that warms the tissue. And this would primarily be anything from like the red light, infrared light world. Both of those can be really powerful. So throw my back, um, doing the disc herniation. I'm going to shift towards an anti-inflammatory diet. I'm going to include a lot of curcumin, omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil, maybe some of these fancier compounds like the resolving mediators, some of these things that will help to decrease inflammation naturally. Initially. And then I'm going to either get like a red light belt or a red light panel or get access to some kind of red light that I can get on there a couple of times a day for 15 to 20 minutes to start to increase blood flow and heat the area. Um, from a tactile sensation standpoint, there are belts now that will like massage. Hyperice, Therabody, they, they produce belts that almost— yeah, it's basically like wearing a massage tool that will vibrate, and it, it serves to both increase blood flow but also just that haptic sensation helps to override the nociceptor, the, the pain receptor sensation of pain. Um, electrical muscle stimulation would be another example of this. Like, if you wander into Walgreens on the back pain shelf, you'll see like a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator, a TENS. Unit that will stimulate nerves to override back pain. Those work pretty well. There are now units that will combine the option of using TENS and also using electrical muscle stimulation. So TENS stimulates the nerves and then EMS stimulates the muscles. So, uh, companies like MarkPro, for example, M-A-R-C-Pro, they have, they have a unit with little electrodes that you can attach that can either override the nerve or override the muscles. You kind of go back and forth. The nerves are useful if it's just like pain and you can't sleep. The muscles are useful if you want to start to retrain that area. And I would say one of the last things to think about, and this is just kind of like a cool— this is something I do pretty often with injuries, and it's kind of a cool trick to have up your sleeve— is if you put something on the injured area that's transdermally absorbed. An example of this would be, let's say, like a magnesium lotion or a magnesium oil or a CBD lotion or a CBD oil. Magnesium can kind of relax the muscles. The CBD can act as an anti-inflammatory. Arnica would be another example. Like, in a lot of CVS, Walgreens, you can get something called Traumel, T-R-A-U-M-E-L, and that's got things like arnica and these topical anti-inflammatories You put that on the muscle and you rub it in, but now you want to drive it more deeply into tissue. And I learned this, this trick from a physician who worked with Tour de France cyclists who just said, like, get back into the race, you know, the next day after having been injured the previous day. So then you want something that will drive the transdermal topical deeper into the tissue. That's where you can actually use something like red light or electrical muscle stimulation to drive it more deeply in. So you would, you'd put your topical on the tissue or on the low back then you put on a red light belt or a vibrating belt. I actually have a belt, it's, it's, uh, back in my hotel room here because I just travel with it everywhere just in case I hurt my back because you don't want to know how many times I've like mildly thrown out my back while traveling and just wished I had something like this. So I have a belt I got off Amazon in my backpack, or well, it's back in my hotel room now. It does massage, it does red light, and so I can put like a transdermal on there, wrap it around, just doing it all at the same time. And then the last step is if you're able to put something cold on, so you're able to turn up the stimulation a little bit higher and then finish with heat. If you do that like a couple times a day, that's, that's fast track to recovery. Last thing is I'd be remiss not to mention, you know, back to peptides. There are other peptides beyond GLP. There's two, these are actually called the Wolverine stack, one peptide called BPC-157, another one called TB-500. These are injectable peptides. That rapidly speed up muscle repair, tendon repair, ligament repair. Um, gotta be a little bit careful with peptides, where you, where you get them. Um, a lot of them are just like cheap contaminated Chinese imported peptides. Um, but if you can get like a good source of peptides and work with a doctor who's got access to like a compounding pharmacist, um, peptides can be really good for healing also.

Ben Greenfield, where can people pick up a copy of new revised edition of Boundless?

Wherever books are had, anywhere. Amazon, Barnes Noble, uh, boundlessbook.com, wherever.

Got it, got it. And also, where can people find you, connect, follow you, all that good stuff?

On the internet.

On the internet. We're in it, we're in it right now.

Uh, bengreenfieldlife.com.

Awesome, man. I love talking with you, man. I appreciate you so much for the work that you do. And how you do it. And, you know, we've actually, you know, ended up staying at the same place back in the day. We stayed at a house in Austin.

That's right.

You're about that life. You got there, you didn't get an Uber. You was like, you tweeted out to your community, who's got a bike? I'm about to bike all over the place.

You know, everywhere. I almost rode my bike here today, but it's a little far from Santa Monica. I was like, I don't want to get there all sweaty.

And, you know, well, thank you. I appreciate that, man. I appreciate that. But, you know, truly, man, it is an honor to know you. And thank you so much for coming to hang out with us. Thanks, man. Hey, if you like this video, make sure to check out this video right here. Tens of millions of people started running thinking it was the single best thing that they could do for themselves. Well, it's now been 50 years since the running boom, and not many people have lost weight engaging in a running program. It's a, it's a not a very good choice of weight loss strategies.