He Started Tracking Biomarkers at 12 Years Old - Justin Roethlingshoefer

I had to be impressive. If I wasn't impressive, I would be nothing. And if I was nothing, my soul would die. And God said to me, he goes, Justin, if you can be nothing, I can make it something, and that will be— And that's my goal every day is I want to be nothing. I want to surrender everything to him. I want to submit to him. Being submitted is being so submitted to God's will that you hear him and then obsessively take action.

Alright. You know a podcast is going to be good when I'm interviewing the author of a book that I selected to fit the criteria, which is always heavily vetted of our father-son book club. And, the name of the book that my sons and I are going through this month is called Holy Health. It's written by Justin Rothlingshoffer. That's a mouthful. He's the guest on today's show. This is not just another Bible-based health book. You know how some of them are just like, oh, eat honey and drink milk and do the stuff they say in Leviticus. I mean, Justin's a biohacker. He works with pro athletes from all over the world. The dude is on the cutting edge of performance and at the same time weaves some deep spiritual health and spiritual science aspects into this book. So, I met Justin when I spoke along with my wife at one of the events that he does for couples called Couples Collective. His company is called Own It Coaching. As you'll hear in the podcast, he's a very good coach and he's very good at motivating and saying things in such a way that make you want to get off your butt and change your life, which hopefully you want to do after hearing today's show. All the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/HolyHealth, the name of Justin's book. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/HolyHealth.

Yeah.

A little bit about Justin. He's a former health and performance expert in the NCAA and the NHL. I met him through, again, the event that I did with him, but also geeking out over his love for biometric data, real-time analytics, self-quantification, and a lot of the same stuff that I do. He's now a sought-after speaker. He's a consultant. He's a USA Today bestselling author, and he's podcast host of a show called the Own It Show. So again, shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/HolyHealth. Enjoy my chat with Justin. Justin, dude, I have a question that I'm super curious to hear your response to because it seems like it's a little bit of the thrust of your book, but there's this whole modern trend of extreme wellness optimization and looks-maxing and taking things to the next level when it comes to control over how we look, feel, and perform. I would love to hear your perspective on that, dude.

Yeah, Ben, it's so good to be here. And I mean, I just love spending time with you, bro. And I think when we look at this, we've been able to see this happen in society very, very quickly, this looksmaxing thing, or even everybody's obviously familiar with the Bryan Johnson saga and everything has kind of gone on there from being obsessive about this. And I always want to come back to scripture because at the end of the day, you and me both, we go way back in being data guys. Like data for us, I think, at the time in which we were exploring it and trying to figure it out really became this new way to understand our body better. It was this exploratory factor. It was like, let's learn something new. So, if we understand how this functions, we can steward it in a better way. We can make a better decision.

Right. And, by the way, to interrupt really quick, that's not a new trendy thing for you or me admittedly. You've been on the HRV bandwagon since before it was cool, right?

Oh, yeah. I was on the HRV bandwagon since 2006, bro.

It's like— Yeah, before anybody even knew what it was.

Yeah. I still remember I was at Miami of Ohio with their hockey program at the time. And, there was this product out of Germany called Check My Level. And, it was basically you had to put on this finger or this apparatus on your ring finger on your left hand and you had then a strip that would go right across the forearm and it would plug into that little metric box here and it would send these little electrical impulses that would make your finger kind of just twitch a little bit. And, after about 60 to 90 seconds, it would spit you out an HRV number. And, everyone thought I was wild and crazy for doing this on all of our athletes. What we started to do is we started to increase, decrease intensities of the day based upon HRV numbers. We looked at long-term trends and were we moving positively or negatively? And we became the least injured team in the league and the least sick team in the league. It happened in every level in which we went. And now, obviously, HRV is the biggest thing. But going back to that statement is I just wanted to understand the body at a deeper level. This thing is so complex, but yet God made it so simple. When we come back to that component, There was somewhere along the way that this physical thing, this biohacking, life-maxing, looks-maxing space took over and we stopped using our bodies as something to be made into the image of God with. And, it became this back-and-forth kind of teeter-totter of idolizing your body and obsessing about everything or completely ignoring it because it became so overwhelming and so Distracting that we never actually saw ourselves in this place. And I call that the devil cycle in Holy Health. In that book, I talk about like the devil cycle where it's like, hey, I'm gonna obsess about this body that I live in. I'm gonna try to look the best. I'm gonna try to hit all my numbers perfectly. I'm gonna count all my macros to the, like, with every single scale. And it is gonna become this prison that I live in unbeknownst to me today, but will ultimately be flowing into that tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

Yeah.

When we idolize something, it ultimately imprisons us in some way. On the other hand, we ignore it to being like, ah, you know what? These symptoms don't mean anything. Oh, you know what? I'm just going to keep pushing because I want my will and my way. And both steal our health long-term until we go into the capital I, which is the middle of the triangle, and we see our body as the image of God, something to be made further into the image of God, something to steward in a way so it gives us capacity to love more, to serve more, and to do more of what He called us to do, it's only at that point that we actually start to truly feel abundance in life, which is what we were promised to begin with.

Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. And, that kind of all-or-nothing approach is something that I think is a corner some people get painted into. It's like, well, if I can't do the 5-hour elaborate morning routine I'm seeing on Instagram, then it's not worth even trying, bro. What's the world coming to?

Exactly.

And, I would never want to preach a message on this podcast of like, well, don't move more and eat less because that's self-idolatry. That's not what we're saying.

Not at all.

But, like you mentioned, there's this balance in the middle that needs to be attained. I think you mentioned in the book you kind of got into this whole world when you were 12.

Yeah. So, if you come back to it, I was a fat kid. I was a fat kid growing up, teased, made fun of all the time. And, I still remember I came off the ice one day and I'd come, gosh, for so long, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 years and had just dealt with it, had just kind of taken it, been the brunt of jokes and to the point of tears of a kid. And I still remember I came off the ice, I was in the corner of a room and the teasing continued to keep coming on. And I heard this voice. And today, knowing that it's a voice of Satan, the voice of the devil, and I talk about it in the 7 Ds, but it was like, hey, man, I can make all this go away. I can make all this go away. And I was like, yes, anything. And at that point, like anything, a good thing, when it becomes the ultimate thing, is the replacement of the purpose of your life, and it becomes the obsession. And so for me, at 12 years old, I suddenly had a growth spurt. I started to train a little bit more. I remember coming back in the fall of that year and everyone taking second and third glances at me like, oh my gosh, is this even the same kid? One father even goes, oh my gosh, Justin, I didn't recognize you. And getting now complimented for how I looked and complimented for the work I had put in. Ben, for the first time, I actually felt what fear felt like because I did not want to go back to the way things were. And so for the first time, I was like, you know what? I can control this. And so, at 12, 13 years old, I was tracking— I bought brainwave sensors for my head. I had a heart rate monitor. I had a pulse oximeter. I had a pedometer. I was tracking every metric possible. I knew the glycemic index inside and out. I would measure my food out and it became this obsessive nature.

Little junior high biohacker.

Seriously. And, I would run around my class. Ben, when I talk about this got wild, I'd have to do 10 squats in my locker every time I opened it up. Every time I go through a door, I'd have to do 5 pull-ups on the door hinge. I couldn't sit in a class for more than 30 minutes without getting up, walking outside. I'd make the excuse to go to the bathroom. I'd do 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, and walk back in. I couldn't walk between classes. I made myself run. And so all of these things, and I mean, even going home and sleeping, Took my room from the top room of the house, putting myself in the basement because it was a cold room and I didn't allow my parents to turn the heat on in the winter. So that, I mean, growing up in Northwest Canada, like -40-degree nights, it's down at 63, 62 in the basement. And, I didn't allow myself to sleep with any covers because that's how you burnt more calories. I only allowed myself cold showers. And, we're talking about—

So, this wasn't temperature optimization for deep sleep. This was like stay Stay hella cold while you're sleeping to burn more calories.

Yes. This became— and this is what we're talking about here, listeners, is this point where it becomes about, oh, how can I understand my health better? To this point of obsession because it's rooted in a fear of what not doing it ultimately would cause.

You say in the book, that's a devil's cycle, all or nothing, idolizing or ignoring, keeping you constantly distracted so you'll naturally become divided And disintegrated. Psychology calls this dichotomous thinking. Systems biology calls it a loss of adaptive capacity. Scripture calls it living without wisdom, obedience, and discernment. All-or-nothing thinking is what happens when the brain loses flexibility. There is no middle ground, no margin, no grace. You are either in control or out of control, winning or failing, disciplined or lazy, healthy or broken. Sound familiar? This pattern feels like commitment, but it's actually fear dressed up as certainty. It's rigidity, and rigidity always precedes breakdown.

Yeah.

And, that's what I want to talk to you about is the breakdown part, Justin. And, by the way, that's such a great couple of paragraphs in your book. What is that link between this control that you talked about and from this quote that I just read from your book and the actual collapse of the nervous system? What's actually going on there? Because you'd think that the more control, the better the nervous system becomes, but what you present seems a little paradoxical.

I love the paragraph you chose or the couple paragraphs because as I was writing that, obviously, I dove deep into the content. There's 5 or 6 different concepts all built into that one. You've got neuroplasticity, you've got nervous system regulation, you've got Just sheer scripture of obedience and what it is that God's calling us to do. And oftentimes when we start to try to control things, we control what we eat, we control how we sleep, we control the data in which we're looking at. Suddenly we put ourselves in the seat of God because we become God ourselves that, hey, I can determine what I'm going to do and I can create change in my body. But no, man, God created us to be able to be the greatest adaptable species on this planet. There's a reason why he said on the 7th day when he looked at man, he goes, you are very good. The sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the seas, those are good. You are very good. Beautifully, wonderfully, fearfully made. Knit together in your mother's womb, and I was like, "My goodness!" Like the specialty of that. And when I was doing that, that same time back in February, there was, and you've probably seen it, Ben. But there was this amazing viewpoint, the most detailed view of the cell that we've ever seen come out of.

Oh yeah, I saw that. That was nuts. Coming out of Stanford University. I forget what kind of camera they used for it. Yeah, you might know.

Came out of Stanford University, and you looked at this cell. And when I looked at this photo, Ben, it. It brought tears to my eyes the same way that my experience during my doctoral program in Louisville brought me to tears when I walked into Body's World and I saw the nervous system splayed out with the brain, the spinal cord, and all the nerves for the first time. I was like, man, this is what God was talking about. This is fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together, very good, made in perfect order.

Yeah.

His image. Like, my gosh, like just a reverence for this thing we live in, the complexity of this cell. And there's 30 trillion of them in our body synergistically working together, and 500 million of them become brand new every 84 days. That means every 5 to 7 years, you, me, and everybody listening becomes a brand new cellular human being. But whether the environment that the brand new cells are going into is one that's toxic, oxygen depleted, and nutrient depleted, determines whether it's an environment that the new cells can thrive in or it's an environment that the new cells just immediately start to decay in. And so, when we think about this and we go back to your question about control and nervous system regulation, we were never called to control everything. We were called to steward and obey. And oftentimes what happens is we take this path from being able to say, hey, I'm interested of health, I go from interest to invested to now idolization. So you go from this interested point to, oh, now I'm going to invest more in it. And then investment becomes this idolatry. And anytime— and this is for anyone to say, like, how do I know if I'm in a space of idolatry over my health and how I'm operating and how I'm doing things? Is anytime that rest feels like a sin. Whatever has taken its place has become an idol.

Yeah, which is why the Sabbath day of rest that is part of this whole cycle of rest, recovery, feast, famine, and the kind of built-in adaptive cycles is something that often gets thrown out the window for a lot of hard-charging high achievers. I mean, the religiosity of it aside, just the idea of having a full luxurious day off drives a lot of people crazy. Like, when I first started to observe the Sabbath much more intensively and dare I say obediently as pertains to scripture, it was a little hard to get up and not work and have an easy day and not do all these things that include control. But, this idea of adaptability, we were talking about HRV, the sympathetic and parasympathetic balance of the nervous system, the ability of the vagus nerve to kind of act on the pacemaker of the cells of the heart to kind of turn up or turn down the heart rate when— and correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it is what you're saying is this propensity to control almost puts you into a state of continuous fight and flight sympathetic nervous system response that thus reduces adaptability. And, from a nervous system standpoint, from a pure metric standpoint, You would tend to see a drop in HRV and readiness based on a desire to control.

Totally. Because if you come back to it, right, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stress, body does not know the difference between. So, Ben, you could go for a run. Ben, you could go lift something heavy. Ben, you could be in a fight with your spouse. Ben, you could be worried about the school your kids are going to go to. Ben, you could be building your new home and trying to figure out the new purpose in your life. You could be having all of these things go on around you and your body would not know the difference between these. And thus, as you're continuing to try and control, it's not you consciously going, man, I'm stressed. It's your nervous system going, man, Ben is not safe. Ben is not in a place in which I can back off and recover. Ben is not in a place where I can go into this parasympathetic state and relax and rejuvenate and restore, but rather I have to stay sympathetic because he's got all this stuff going on. He's trying to control. And thus I have to keep him on alert, and thus I have to continue to keep myself in overdrive because at some point a saber-toothed tiger is going to come out and I have to make sure that Ben can protect himself. And so this constant state of control keeps us in a heightened nervous system state or a state of alertness that even when we're sleeping subconsciously runs behind the scenes that doesn't allow us to truly repair and restore and recover long term. Which is why when we look at all the data, if you fall— and again, we've got this data over the course of the last probably 50 years— is if you look at somebody's age bracket and if they're above the 50th percentile of their heart rate variability norms for that age bracket, they're 84% less likely to get any chronic illness in their lifetime. Why is that? Why is that the outcome? Because if your HRV is above that 50th percentile for your age bracket, that means that your nervous system flexibility is much higher, showing that your body is flexing and fluidly moving through stress, repair, stress, repair, sympathetic, parasympathetic. And there's a beautiful balance. There's a rhythm. I shouldn't even say balance. I hate that word. There's a beautiful rhythm that is in play based around how we were designed. And, the best definition I've ever come up with heart rate variability is heart rate variability is your body's language that's communicating how well it's adapting to stress based upon your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms.

Yeah, great definition. I think some people would go the direction of, well, so you're saying the answer is just relax more, bro, release control, whatever. But, I think the issue is deeper and you get into that in the book. The issue is where your actual identity lies. This, I think, was one of the most powerful parts of your book, Justin, was how where your identity lies fits into the equation of how much you're trying to control and how to shift where your identity lies. So, get into that for me.

So, what I said in the book is your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms you operate on on a daily basis is your identity made visible. So what you decide and what you choose and the actions you take every day tell you who you are. You might say, I'm a loving husband and a present father and a servant leader, but you're anxious all the time. You're frustrated all the time. You raise your voice all the time. You hit the snooze button every single morning. You don't— you're 40 pounds overweight. You don't hydrate properly. You eat whatever's convenient. You don't go to bed and wake up at a consistent time. You Don't plan ahead. You don't have a Sabbath day. You don't do any of these things. So suddenly, the reason that there's a confidence issue in how you operate in is because the definition for confidence is creating undeniable evidence that you are who God says you are, but every decision you make is in contradiction with who you say you are. So how do you expect confidence to actually happen? And when people go, hey, well, how do I solve that? How do I come back to something more meaningful that I'm able to now identify who I say I am? Versus who God says I am. This is, again, this comes back to it, Ben, is so many people have taken on the identity of who the world told themselves they had to be before they even knew who God told them that they were. And what happens is we end up in this imprisonment. There's 5 types of hearts that I see in high-capacity people, people who are on the front lines. And these 5 hearts are this: it's the performance heart. It's that what you do validates who you are. Thus, you have to sign up for the hardest races. You have to constantly strive. You have to do things from a place of winning, accomplishing, creating, and building. And so, that takes precedence over everything.

Those of you watching the video, I'm raising my hand right now.

Yeah, yeah.

I definitely err towards that heart.

Me too. Exactly. It's a performance heart. Then, there's the pleaser heart. This is the pleaser heart where if I look after everybody else, if everybody else is okay, if I'm the yes man or the yes woman to anybody around me, that if everyone else is good, then I will at some point also be good. But, the pleaser heart depletes themselves. Then, there's the protector heart. And, the protector heart's like, hey, I've tried to release control in the past and it's hurt me. Thus, I've got bruising and I've got wounds that I haven't been willing to go and deal with. So, I'm going to go and try to control everything. But, The control is disguised as care. And so I continue to stay in this protector heart. Then there's the perfecter heart. And the perfecter heart is kind of what we touched on earlier, is that if everything has to be perfect, I have to do it at the perfect time, at the perfect place, have the perfect metrics. If my sleep score is down, I'm going to have a bad day. Thus, I'm not even going to work out. If I can't get an hour workout in, I'm not going to do the 20 minutes. If I can't get A 2-mile run in, I might as well not even do a 1-mile run. Like, it's the perfecter that leaves you in this place where you're actually never making progress because your pursuit for perfection halts the progress that could actually long-term take you further than perfection ever could. And then lastly is the pessimistic heart. This is the person who's tried. They've tried over and over and over again, but when they say try, there was never actually a level of commitment, buy-in, and submission. To what you were actually called to. There was never a level of obedience. Because there was never a level of obedience, it was always based on your strength, and thus you always fell flat at some point. And so, the pessimist says, hey, it will work for everybody else except for me. God is good to everyone except to me. And you always see the glass half full and you always— or you always see the glass half empty and you always see the negative things. that could actually come from something. And so, until we heal the heart, and there's a certain order to this, and when we talk about order mattering is the world will tell you what habits and behaviors you have to do. You have to cold plunge, you have to sauna, you have to intermittent fast, you have to do zone 2, you have to do zone 5, you have to get in the hyperbaric, you have to go and only eat organic single food ingredients, you have to go to bed at a consistent time, wake at a consistent time. They'll tell you what you have to do and you go, And, I'm not saying that these things are bad, but what I am saying is that everybody all of a sudden goes, oh, I got to go start grabbing all of these. And, grabbing at all of these may not actually be the season for you to actually go and start grabbing at them because you've done what the world has said. So, when you go and you attain the body or the physical habits that the world says, it thus starts to cloud your mind and go, man, I'm not consistent enough. Man, Ben's so much further ahead of me. Why am I not far enough along? Right. And then, I'll throw in there real quick.

If you're grabbing at that stuff that the world says that you need to be healthy with the motivation that the world has, right? And this comes full circle to the identity piece. I think that's where a lot of the issues lie. It's like the motivation that the world would present to you is the reason to do a lot of these things is because that's where your worth lies. That's how you're going to be judged. That's the person you're going to portray on social media, that your worth as a human being is dependent upon your fitness, your jaw, Veins in your abs, whatever. Whereas, if your identity is rooted in something that goes beyond that, that's greater than that, that's more eternal than that, then all of a sudden, those things, all those things you listed that you and I both do, and then you guys, Justin and I, we would probably fit into the category of biohackers. We do the hyperbaric and we do the PEMF and we do the red light and yada, yada, yada, but our identity is not rooted in what those make us. So, when it comes to that identity shift, Justin, I mean, you mentioned there's a particular order in which you proceed with the changing of the heart, but walk me through that a little bit in terms of just how do people go from, yeah, this is who I need to be for the world to respect me, to I'm comfortable with being this other person and have it not be just like, oh, I'm just giving up and I'm getting whatever, fat and lazy because this doesn't matter if who I am to the world doesn't matter.

And again, something I want to call out there because I think sometimes people see that and this is why this message is even so important to the church because the reason that I drifted from my faith for probably 15 years between the ages of 15 and 30 years old was because I never looked in the church and saw somebody who is physically fit, somebody who is mentally sharp, Somebody who is strong mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Our bodies are something that carry our brains to church.

Exactly. And, oh, this body is just temporary and this body is just going to come and it's just a meat suit that's going to be here and it's going to dissolve. And my soul is eternally protected because I love Jesus and I know him. And I was like, man, God came in a body as Jesus. He walked out of a tomb in a body and he's going to come again in a body. Your body matters. Hey, God had said our bodies were the— and making a a human was the only thing he called very good. He actually intentionally took time to build us in such a unique way that why don't we have the same intention in how we live? So I'm not asking people to do less. In fact, what I'm actually asking them to do is be more intentional with how we live based on how we were created, so you can have a greater capacity to do everything that you were called to do. Like, I think you should work out. I think you should be strong. I think you should eat well. I think you should hydrate well. I think you should honor your sleep cycles and your circadian rhythm and your sleep patterns. I think you should give yourself a Sabbath day, and I think you should give yourself rhythms throughout the day of breathwork and meditation to downregulate, to honor the nervous system that governs the entire body and how you function. I think you should do those, and scripture would agree with me. However, it's the heart posture behind how you do them. Is it that's where your worth comes from, or is it this how I worship the Lord? Is this how I worship and give God the honor for everything that I get to do? And thus I use the energy, thus I use the mental clarity, thus I use the focus to carry out the calling that he's blessed on my life so I can do more for him and the kingdom. And coming back to that order, when you all of a sudden have these habits and behaviors that now you idolize, and these are the things, that's when it starts clouding your mind, as I mentioned, because you can't figure it out. You can't get your rhythm and you're like, man, why doesn't this work? And then they start to create these anxieties. It starts to create these, this overwhelm, these depressions, and the things that ultimately imprison the heart, the 5 hearts I talked about, that thus disconnects you spiritually from who created you in the first place. But when you flip it on its head and now all of a sudden you focus on, hey, I'm going to focus on connecting with God first. I'm going to connect on focusing with who he says I am, not who the world tells me I have to be. And, when I go back to who I am, I know that I'm a catalyst for change. I know that I'm a manmaker. I know that I'm a rising tide. I know that I'm called to keep tips of the spear sharp. When I know who I am in his eyes, who he's created me to be, that frees me of my performance heart, that frees me of my pleaser heart, that frees me of my pessimist heart. It frees me of that and thus renews my mind to have patience, to have kindness, to have joy, to have love. to be able to see this through. And only then do I get to hear him so clearly and be obedient to what I'm called to do. A perfect example of this in the habits and behaviors is in the past, Ben, the belief set that I had was if I wasn't impressive, then I would be nothing. And if I was nothing, my soul would die. That was my belief set. That was my through line. Wow.

Yeah.

And so every room I went into, I had to be impressive. I had to tell people what I was doing. I had to tell people what I was up to. I couldn't just go run 100 miles. I had to go run 100 miles on my own around a track in 24 hours or less. And that was the story I would tell. And so I say that because it wasn't until that I went through this slow framework and got still, was able to listen, was able to be obedient and gain wisdom, that as I was sitting in the sauna, the Lord redeemed that belief set, that story that I said that ultimately caused this identity that was locked in the performer and the pleaser. And suddenly when I heard this, it changed everything. And again, I'm going to say what my original identity was. It was I had to be impressive. If I wasn't impressive, I would be nothing. And if I was nothing, my soul would die. And God said to me, he goes, Justin, if you can be nothing, I can make it something, and that will be impressive. And so it's literally written right above my office. It's on my wall. It says, be nothing. And that's my goal every day is I want to be nothing. I want to surrender everything to him. I want to submit to him so that I can hear and be obsessively obedient. Because Ben, there's a difference, and I hope all the men are listening to this right now because Ben, you and I, we're strong. We're physically strong men. We're able to do hard things. We love to train. We love to work out. But I want you to hear this coming from both of us is there's a difference. Between being submitted and being submissive. Submissive is what Adam was in the Garden of Eden as he watched Eve take a bite of the apple. He did nothing. He watched submissively and just allowed it to happen and then blamed everybody for the outcome. That might sound familiar in some people's worlds right now. Being submitted is being so submitted to God's will that you hear him and then obsessively take action. And so I wake up every single morning going, Lord, tell me what you want today. I want your will, not mine. And thus, give me everything that you need to carry out the calling of my life, but do not give me any more than my character can handle. In the same time, develop my character to handle everything you have for me. And that is my prayer every single morning. And thus I wake up, I go outside, I get fresh light. I sit down. I get into the word. I get into scripture. I go and get my workout in. I come home. I'm able to be with my family. I'm able to be present. I'm able to be focused. And now I'm doing stuff like this all day long, energetically and focused and mentally clear. I've got boundaries set in my day of when I'm just alone with my spouse, when I'm just alone with my thoughts, when I'm just alone with the Lord, when I'm now pouring out and doing deep work and I'm focused on business. There's set boundaries out of the disciplines they shape. shape the man or they shape the person, not disciplines being the goal and the outcome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, I'm glad you got into a little bit of that rhythm of listening to God because I think some people might make pretty good sense of the idea of, okay, so it's not who does the world expect me to be and my identity should not be wrapped up in, for example, how I look, feel, and perform, but should instead be wrapped up in making the most impact that I can with the purpose that God has given me for my life and maximally equipping my body, brain, and spirit to do so. That connection, I think, is something a lot of people can wrap their head around. But then, I think where people stumble even after making that connection is, all right, so if I'm going to equip myself to be like protector, provider, even slip into some of these hearts that you mentioned because I'm trying to make maximum impact for God, you can still take that too far. You could be like, okay, I'm making myself hard to kill so I could take care of my family and fulfill God's impact for my life. So, I've got 2 hours in the gym today and I need to really be there to whatever it might be, share the gospel, love my neighbor, go out and fulfill God's purpose for my life, so I need 90 minutes in the hyperbaric today. We could go on and on. The balance of how much is too much is, I think, tied directly to the listening. You need to actually have the time carved out to develop the wisdom and discernment from hearing God's voice. And, I know this from previous chats that we've had back when we did an event together. I remember at dinnertime, discussion that I had, you were sitting to my left and describing to me your morning prayer habits. You just kind of alluded to that a little bit, but I would love to hear a little bit more about what the strategy is for you or what the process is for you of listening to God in the morning. When does that occur for you and what does your morning time with God actually look like so that you can build that wisdom and discernment?

Yeah. So, before I go into the specifics, I want to touch on something that you said because it's really critical for people and where they're going is, again, high-performing— bless you— high-performing people. Bless you. High-performing people, what often happens is they're willing to sacrifice their own health on the altar of success or the altar of kingdom work. At the end of the day, we have to come back to this, that God invites us into partnership with him. And so he's given us a body to carry out the calling that he's placed on us. He could go and do whatever he wanted at any point of time. This is why we actually have no control over anything. And the moment we realize that, it immediately drops our— drops our anxiousness. It drops our anxiety. It drops our overwhelm. It drops our stress and allows us just to be. That is what a submitted person looks like. Not a submissive, a submitted. And I'm going to give this exact scripture because I want to walk through this. And as I do this, this is ultimately what helped me get to the place in which I'm at that ultimately restores cellular health. And we can talk about the 3 things that cells need. And when we know what the cells need, we thus can reverse engineer how we live every day to be able to now honor God in the way in which we're created. But when we think about this, it's Romans 12:1-2, and it says, therefore, in view of God's mercy, brothers and sisters, use your body As a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the patterns of the world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This way you will be able to test and approve his good and perfect will. Now, when we go back to it, I want to break it down for people because it's so freaking cool. Therefore, in view of God's mercy, in view of his mercy, knowing that we are sinners, knowing that we are going to do things wrong, knowing that we live in a world that is full of toxins, that has crappy food, that We are called to, or we are tempted to do the things that are more convenient and lazy in view of his mercy, because of his mercy on us. Use your bodies as a living sacrifice. In Hebrew, the word bodies actually just refers to life. So in other words, use your life as a living sacrifice. And living is key because when Paul was preaching to the Roman people, all sacrifices at that time were dead. And so, a lot of us still to this day see, oh, use your body as a living sacrifice. We're killing ourselves in the pursuit of our mission. We're killing ourselves in pursuit of our calling. We're killing ourselves in pursuit of giving to our family, giving to the businesses we've built. But, what it actually says is it says later in Ecclesiastes that obedience is even greater than sacrifice. So, Be a living sacrifice, thus fully alive in the focus, the energy, the way you show up. Be that so radical, so uncommon that people look at you, Ben, people look at me, people look at those listening and go, I don't know what Ben's up to. I don't know what Justin's up to. I don't know what this other person's up to, but I want what they have because they're living in a way that right now isn't really available to me. There's an energy, a focus, a mental clarity, an attraction that I just can't get away from. So use your bodies, use your life as a living sacrifice, because that is holy and pleasing to God. That is your true and proper worship. Yes, he loves it when we get in the Bible and we go to church, but being obedient to what he's called you to, that is what's different. Do not conform to the patterns of the world. The patterns are just habits, behavior, and life rhythms that we've chosen that the world tells us is normal. But no, no, no, no, don't conform to those. Do not conform to the patterns of the world. The Instagram is going to shout at you. The crowd is going to shout at you. The TikTok is going to shout at you. The influencer is going to shout at you. But no, we are going to do something different. We are not conformed to the patterns of the world. Thus, we are going to transform by the renewing of our mind. And when again, you go back to mind, mind is actually another word they used for heart. So when you renew your mind, you transform your heart, you free it, you free yourself from the identity of who you thought you were. to actually who God's called you to. And only once you transform are you able to test and approve God's will for you. You can say, hey, is this somewhere I should be? Because the gift of transformation is thus now discernment. Discernment does not come before transformation, which is why Paul even said, why do I do things that I hate? Why do I know what I want to do, but I still don't do them? Anybody, does that sound familiar? It's like, man, I know I need to go to bed at this time, but the game is on, man. The emails need to go out, man. I want to stay up and continue to do something else. It's like, why do I do the things I hate? Because we haven't yet transformed. You haven't yet fully submitted, surrendered to the obedience of what God's asking you so you can step into what is good, new, and perfect for you in his will. And so in doing that, As I was able to transform my heart and I was able to fully submit and surrender, God used me. What I've done every single morning for the last 8 years is I wake up and I come right outside and I flip the red light on. I flip the red light on because it's usually around 5:45, 6:00 a.m., and I get into my word. It's literally this Bible right here, open right next to me. I get into my word and I'm not all about Getting through the Bible in a year. I'm going to choose a chapter, sometimes even just a verse, and sometimes I might be on that verse or that couple verses or even a chapter for like 2 or 3 months. I've been in Romans for the last 4 months because there's just fresh revelation coming to me. It's like, oh my gosh, this is what Paul was talking about. Oh my gosh, this is how it applies to my life. Oh my gosh, you know what? I just had a scenario in my life yesterday that that's what God's trying to speak to me. And so, I sit in it and I listen. And, I think that's where a lot of us sometimes have an issue with scriptures. We get in and we're like, okay, cool, I read it, but we actually aren't able to apply it. And, until we are unable to apply it, we haven't gained understanding. And, understanding to knowledge is the gap of wisdom.

So, when it says in the Bible to meditate on scripture, Do you mean you wake up and you put on the red light and you read, but then you're basically sitting in silence after you've read thinking about or dwelling upon what you've read?

All I say is, Lord, what do you want me to hear in this? And, it's amazing what happens, Ben. It's amazing what happens. And, sometimes I might not get anything for 2 or 3 minutes. Lord, what do you want me to hear on this? I might go back to the verse. Lord, what do you want me to hear on this? Oh, my gosh. He used the word always, and then I start thinking back to like my teachers going, "We very rarely ever in human capability should speak in absolutes, never and always." But God speaks in always and never all the time because He knows what's best. So in all things, in all things, pray with thanksgiving. Oh my gosh! So every time I pray. I should be giving thanks. Well, start praying every time with thanks, meaning no, not complaints, not, hey, get me out of this, but give thanks for what you're through and watch how everything starts to change. That was an epiphany I had just sitting there. I was like, oh my gosh.

And, not just change but also come full circle back to the biological impact and the science of gratitude, right?

Ben, this is literally what I was about to say because the day that I saw that, It was also the day that I was writing the chapter on gratitude, which is vitamin G, knowing that you cannot be both anxious and grateful at the same time. And so it's like, in all things, through prayer and petition, pray with thankfulness. It's like, oh my gosh, so you're telling me to be grateful every day? And thus your biology and your scripture align in what it is that we're trying to talk to. It's like, my goodness. Then when I do that, guess what happens? HRV increases because now controlled decreases mental and emotional capacity increases and you find more joy, more love, more patience, more kindness, the fruits of the Spirit that are evidence that you're walking in alignment with how you were created. And so, when we see science and scripture never meant to be separate, they always meant to be married together, that then continues to be the thing that propels my morning routine from then sitting in stillness to having water next to me, then getting up and going and getting my workout in. I'll do strength training or zone 2 or zone 5, and we can talk about how the oxygenation of the cells ultimately is what's required. So, there's a certain amount of time that I'm doing for each one because science tells us how much zone 2 and zone 5 we need to optimize VO2 max, and VO2 max is a measure of oxygen efficiency in the cells. And, if we know that the cells have a high oxygenation environment, then that decreases stress and raises HRV, and the cells have an environment which the new cells can thrive, and thus the only option is to see aging slow down. It's like, my gosh, the Lord thought about this far before we did.

That's actually one thing I like about the book is you do that about 30 times from hyperbaric oxygen to massage tools to ozone therapy to PEMF. You're like, here's what it does and here's where you see in the Bible exactly what's going on with that in terms of how we were, as you alluded to earlier, fearfully and wonderfully made.

It just, man, Writing this book, it just humbled me so much. It's like being a guy who's been in cadaver labs with human beings and cut open people and looked at them and seen all this stuff and done all the research and been in the studies and been in the literature and the educational work. You know it, but then when you see it from a scriptural lens, it's like, man, it makes me emotional because We were thought of so far, so long ago and so far beyond. Like, how could we ever worry about what was going on every day? Because if, if he looks after the sparrow, do you not think he's going to look after you? But what is standing in the way of your health? What is standing in the way of your weight loss? What is standing in the way of your autoimmune disorder? What is standing in the way of you getting to be the person that you're wanting to be and have the freedom which you're wanting to live in? is your willingness to be obedient to what He's called you to. Ben, I sweat hard every day. I do the hard things every day, but I do them now no longer from a space of fear of getting fat or a fear of not being well, but I do them from a space of worship being, this is what I get to do. What a freaking blessing this is that I get to operate this way.

Mine kind of fit into 2 categories. The category that you just described, And then I think that, and you get into some of this in the book, like attendance to relationships and community and neighborhood and families is also part of this. And now I would say a solid 50% of my workouts are like, this is getting me ready to go like hang out and play tennis with the boys on Tuesday night or do family pickleball. Or we just started getting ready for our September elk hunt, right? So now we're rucking And, for me, that preparation to just go do, pardon the expression, fun shit with other people is also a really, really great perspective on training.

100%. We're called to be in community. We are called to be with other people. I think, Ben, here's where it comes back. I'm going to read it exactly because I don't have the scripture memorized, but it's what starts Part 3 of the book. And, it's Deuteronomy 6:6-7. And it says, these commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit down at home and when you walk along the road, and thus they will not depart from them. And so the things that we do every single day, the habits, the behaviors, the life rhythms in which we're doing obediently, that gives us the vitality to go and do the family trips, to go and climb the mountains that we've always wanted, to go and see the depths of the earth and the wonders that are there. Those are things that we impress upon our children. You can look at the scientific data. 87% of kids that grow up with obese parents are obese. No, that's not a genetic disorder. That is because they live in the same environment and they mimic the habits, behaviors, and life rhythms of those obese parents. And so, that's why. And so, as we walk in this, there's a science but also a biblical truth that falls at the base of how do we live every single day so we can have life abundantly. And then, ultimately impress those on our children that thus sets the legacy for what we do long-term. So, you don't just get to see your children, but you get to see your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, and ultimately get to set a legacy that continues to exponentially grow. And, they see their bodies as these things to be stewarded, not these things to be mastered.

Your morning routine or that morning spiritual rhythm, you said begins with putting on the red light, reading the Bible, listening to God, and then you get up and go about your day. I'm assuming there's other rhythms during the day that help you to remain in that state of either constancy of prayer or connection to God or even your evening rhythm. So, what else do you do on an average day?

Yeah. So, I have 3 very distinct points in my day and I set this up Intentionally because again, I go back to scripture. Scripture sets our rhythm. So, we think our day starts when we first wake up and it ends when we go to bed. And oftentimes, we fall into bed exhausted. But in Genesis, this rhythm repeats 6 times and it says evening came, morning came, first day. And so, we actually think of our days backwards. So, evening is actually the start of my day. So, I have a very So, I have a very set time when my day begins or in a lot of us when it ends. So, at 6:00 p.m. at night, my computer goes away. And, as soon as my computer goes away, this is the start of next day. So, what do I need to do to start the next day? I go into the sauna for 20 minutes. I get a good sweat and I just listen and I just pray, Lord, what do you want me to know? What do you want me to experience? What do you want me to go through? I'll come out. I will do a 1-mile run. I will then hop in the shower or I will hop in the cold shower, cold plunge shower. So, I'll shower, cold plunge, and then shower.

Just so you're not getting your cold plunge funky.

Exactly, exactly. And then, I will walk inside and then I am present being family man for the rest of the night. And, it allows me to be solely focused on what's happening there. So, everything that happened in business, hey, we shut it down, we closed it by 6:00, I'm able to now go prepare myself, So that there is now a transition. That's the start of my day. My evening is sacred time because it's preparing me to go and pour out in the morning. Then when I wake up in the morning, again, a simple habit is scripture before technology. So I wake up, I get right into the word with the red light. I listen to what the Lord wants. Then I go get my workout in, get the rest of the day going. And then midday, right? It's not regimen. It's not like at 1:00 every day. That's, again, the idolization.

Yeah.

But it's somewhere between 11:00 and 2:00, 11:00 and 2:30, somewhere in the middle of the day. I will walk outside, walk out right outside my studio here. I will lay in the grass. I will look up at the sky, and I will go through about 3 to 4 minutes of breathwork. So the cyclic sigh, 2 breaths in through the nose, 1 breath out through the mouth, 20 rounds, do a breath hold, and just say, Lord, what do you want me to know? And there's some things in my day, like, dude, my days do not always go well. There's stuff that happens that I'm just like, man, that was a bad day. Join the club. That was a bad moment. Like, hey, you know what? That's a $200,000 mistake, or that's like whatever it might be. And it's like, man, that's a tough day. But at the end of the day, when I go lay out there, it's gratitude, it's gratefulness. What do you want me to know? What do you want me to learn? What do you want me to do next? And all of a sudden, man, I just like, how blessed am I that this is what I get to do every single day? How blessed am I that this is where I get to live? How blessed am I that this is the family I get to do life with? How blessed am I? And you look at everything and the way in which you structure your day. I have more than enough time to do everything that I could ever want. I have more than enough time to write a book every single year. I have more than enough time to work 8 to 10 hours a day if that's what's necessary. I have more than enough time to travel 100 days a year speaking. All those things are there. And when it says that a day in the kingdom is like 10,000 days, or if a day in the kingdom is like 1,000 days, God has a way to multiply time. And so many of us, the first thing we say is, I don't have it. Well, it's because your order is wrong and you're trying to fit everything in and trying to prioritize it based around the heart that's imprisoned. And your data will show you that when all of a sudden now, Ben, even on my worst day, I've got an HRV of 95, my VO2 max is still 67.

Wow.

I've still got the ability to go and do anything that anybody asks because I've got capacity to be able to go and do that so I can serve and love. It was never about the six-pack abs, the muscles, or winning the races and the trophies. It was always about how could I serve more, love more, and be around more so that 80 becomes the new 50 for me. And you know what? There's a cool— again, cool scripture when we're talking about Moses. It says Moses hiked to the top of the hill. Top of a mountain to hear from God. That's what it says. Hike to the top of the hill to hear from God. It says after he heard from God, he went and did his job and he died at 120, his eyes not dimmed and his body still strong. What we forget about this is that it says Moses hiked up a mountain at 120. And so a lot of us have a hard time walking up the stairs. And so I want to be fit, able, well, right down to the cellular level. So that I can ultimately be used right up until the day that I die. And if that's 80, 90, 70, 120, 190, it doesn't matter to me because I want his will, not mine. And every single day is just an act of worship so that ultimately these cells that are constantly renewing have the oxygen, have the ability to detoxify, and have the nutrients necessary to continue to do the regenerative and restorative nature that they've been created to operate within.

Yeah. And, the oxygen, the detoxification, the nutrients, you take a deep dive in the book. And, by the way, folks, just a reminder, it's going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/HolyHealth. That's where I'll link to Justin's book and some of the other stuff that he's up to. But, you mentioned something I don't want to leave people hanging on, Justin. We're going to go back to the science, back to the practical nitty-gritty stuff. You said you have this balance of zone 2 and zone 5. Based on science. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. So, per week, what I'm trying to hit and what I aim to hit is about 180 to 210 minutes a week of zone 2. So, staying in that 60 to 70% max heart rate. And, for me to make sure that I'm up to date and knowing what's happening, I'll do a VO2 max test every single month. About once a quarter, I'll do it on myself with the actual mask and machine. But then, the other months, I'm just doing a Cooper test, which is a 12-minute run. Get as much distance as you can over the course of 20 minutes and you put that number into a little equation and it spits you out an estimated max heart rate or estimated VO2 max.

And, by the way, I should mention for people who can't run, knees, hips, whatever, there are bicycle-based approximate equivalents for VO2 max. Even the Carrow bike, they have a built-in VO2 max calculator. So, So, there are ways to keep your finger on that pulse without running.

That's a great call. So, actually, the bike version of that is what you would do is you would go for 6 minutes and pedal as fast as you can getting as high average watts number as possible. And then, you take your average watts instead of distance during the run and you put average watts into the equation that gives you your estimate of VO2 max. So, both are good. If you've got hip or knee issues or you just prefer to run, it's your choice. But, I do that every month. And then what it gives me is that my max heart rate. And so I'm able to now find my exact zone 2 in that 60 to 70% zoning. And I have 180 to 210 minutes every single week. Now, when people go, oh my gosh, Justin, that's like 3.5 hours a week. How are you doing that on top of your 4 to 5 days of weight training and then your 30 minutes here? Well, here's the cool thing that people don't know about zone 2. And here's where we come back to your prioritization. Is every single night what happens is I go for a family walk, and during that family walk, I throw a weight vest on and I'm walking in zone 2. There you go. So suddenly you've got literally 3.5 hours every week of zone 2 just doing our family walks. And now I've incorporated my family into this, and my wife now throws on a weighted vest and we get our zone 2s in together and we're doing this. And how incredible and amazing is it that now we just get to go and connect? And on that walk, you talk about connection. We do something called high-low buffalo. So I tell her my high of the day, my low of the day, and something that surprised me in the day. And we share each other.

Buffalo is like something weird that happened, right?

Yeah, something weird, something that surprised us. And so it's like I learned something new about my wife and we get to go and do this together and you're getting your zone 2 in. How awesome. Then there's also times throughout the day where there's usually one meeting a day that I will put very specifically on where I will be on a bike. on the other side of my office, and I will do a biking meeting. It's one that I usually don't— I'm not presenting on. It's one that I'm just maybe listening and taking in, but I'm getting maybe an extra 30 or 40 minutes of zone 2 throughout the week. And so that's how you build it into this rhythm and this framework that's sustainable and is leaving a legacy that actually matters. And then when you talk about your zone 5, your zone 5 is 30 minutes a week, Every single week. And that's your all-out zone, or pardon me, your all-out VO2 max work where I'll pair that at the very end of all of my workout days. So, if I'm lifting about 5 days a week, and so that means that at the end of every workout, I'm doing about 6 minutes of all-out intensity work. So, I'll go on the SkiErg and I'll do 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off by 10 sets. And I'll repeat that maybe the next day on the rower. I'll repeat the next one maybe on wall balls and burpees. Like, you can change it up however you want, but I'm ensuring I'm getting my zone 5 in and my zone 2, because my zone 2 creates an aerobic base, creating at the cellular level the cardiac efficiency adaptation, where zone 5 creates that zone 5 work, which is the cardiac output adaptation. And so now we suddenly start to think about science again because this fitness space has been so convoluted of what do you do? How do you do it? Increase your VO2 max, do this, do that. It's like, no, no, it's very simple. If I increase the efficiency of how my heart moves blood through the body and I improve the output of the amount of blood with every stroke of the heart, the only outcome based on how we were designed is that oxygen efficiency goes up.

Yeah.

Because blood is the only thing that carries oxygen. And thus, if VO2 max goes up, stress goes down, HRV goes up, and your cellular environment is built to heal. That's the beautiful way. And when you understand how the body was built, what physiology actually does, science and scripture lean together. And you go to 1 Corinthians, and what does Paul say again? Run in such a way So that you may get the prize. And that is how I run in such a way. I run so intentionally that thus the prize at the end of the day is life abundantly. The prize at the end of the day is to feel energetic and mentally clear.

Yeah. You heard it here first, folks. The Bible says don't jog. You have all these sections. I love towards the end of the book where you have connection to God's design just to give people a little flavor because you were talking about the weighted vest and walking. And, I'm literally walking as I'm saying this. In the Old Testament, burdens were often carried on shoulders as a sign of responsibility, Isaiah 9:6. Our bodies were designed for load-bearing and purposeful work. Walking while carrying was a normal part of life in biblical times, gathering water, collecting food, or bringing offerings. God made the body to move under tension and to grow through resistance. In James 1:2-4, we're reminded that perseverance through trials or load produces maturity and strength. This tool builds strength through burden and gets us into zone 2 without added joint load, just like faith strengthens under pressure. And, I love how you draw these corollaries in the book. The appendix is one of the best parts because you just rinse, wash, and repeat that with all these things that we do on a regular basis.

It's so funny because even building on what you just said, there's something called the Roman rule. And what the Roman rule said, and this goes back to even those people that would come at us and say, oh, you're asking us not to work hard, you're asking us not to do more. No, there's a Roman rule that says if a Roman soldier ever put his armor on you and made you carry it, you had to carry it for a mile. You had to. And what Jesus calls us to do is he actually calls us to carry it for 2 miles because the first mile you had to do it, the second mile you get to. And so, you think about this worship and this blessing and this offering. We were called and created to do things and work hard and to operate within this body that is like, it's so amazing. It's got such a great capacity. And, what a shame it would be if we were actually never able to see its true potential and be able to walk in full alignment with the abundance that we've been blessed with.

Well, folks, the book, It's called Holy Health. Like I mentioned in the introduction, this is actually the book that I'm going through right now with my sons for our father-son book club. I liked it so much. Very unique combination of scripture, the Bible, spiritual fitness, and also physical and mental fitness. And, not just surfacey stuff like whatever, like don't eat pork that isn't pastured. Justin goes deep into biohacks, vagus nerve stimulation and vibroacoustic therapy and how to filter your home and beyond. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/HolyHealth is where the shownotes will reside. Justin, dude, you're a man after my own heart. I wish we lived closer together because I feel like we would hang out more, but it's awesome to see you again, man.

So good to see you too, man. And, I'll have to make a trip out to your new place. And, I actually had a friend who was at your place and then came to mine. He goes, bro, I think your and Ben's homes are the only 2 in the world that look like this and can be experienced like this. And so, I've got to come up to yours, you got to get down here to Miami and see mine, and we got to spend some time together.

Yeah. Alright, bro. I should be in Miami this fall. I'll keep in touch with you. Folks, thanks so much for tuning in. And again, the book is Holy Health. Get it wherever books are found. Do you want free access to comprehensive shownotes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting-edge research, and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life, and a whole lot more, check out BenGreenfieldLife.com. It's all there, BenGreenfieldLife.com. See you over there. Most of you who listen don't subscribe, like, or rate this show. If you're one of those people who do, then huge thank you. But, here's why it's important to subscribe, like, and And/or rate this show. If you do that, that means we get more eyeballs, we get higher rankings, and the bigger the Ben Greenfield Life show gets, the bigger and better the guests get, and the better the content I'm able to deliver to you. So, hit subscribe, leave a ranking, leave a review if you got a little extra time. It means way more than you might think. Thank you so much.