Optimizing Daily Habits: Snacking, Movement, Light Exposure, and More Wellness Hacks LIFE Network: RAW Podcast #3

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, welcome to a special raw episode. What does raw mean? Well, within the Life Network at joinlifennetwork.com, I pop on every once in a while and just release solo-sode conversations with me, myself, and I. Today is one of those raw episodes. We've handpicked episode 3 from the Life Network in which I talk about snacking habits, EMF and light exposure mitigation, non-exercise activity-based thermogenesis, lower back pain tips, and plenty more. So, this is going to be at joinlifennetwork.com if you want to check it out. Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Welcome to the— let's start that over.

We're here to talk about awkward, edgy, raw, controversial content.

Nothing is off limits, and you're gonna learn a lot.

Welcome to the Raw Podcast.

Hey, what's up? Welcome to Raw episode number 3, and boy, do I have a doozy for you today. Hopefully not too of a, I suppose, judgmental doozy, but let me lay the background for today's Raw episode for you. You know, this is a chance for me to talk about stuff that I sometimes don't have a chance to voice or need to voice sometimes a little bit more gently or without as much controversy on the main Ben Greenfield Life feed. But what I want to talk with you about today is based upon the fact that I just had around 20 guys staying at my house for the past 4 days as part of a health and business mastermind. Meaning these gentlemen flew in from all over the world. And I've done this at my home in Spokane, Washington, probably, oh, 7 times now. Bringing a bunch of folks together. They have mealtime Q&As with me, morning workouts. They use all of the biohacks on the property. We have afternoon roundtable masterminds to field questions. And, a mastermind would typically be like one person gets 1 to 2 minutes to share a problem they're having or an issue that they're experiencing in business and health and relationships, et cetera. And then the rest of the group is given anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to kind of popcorn style share their own perspective and responses on that. And often it's recorded for the benefits of the people involved. And a lot of times people are taking notes profusely throughout. And then, you know, we have evening campfire sessions and games. We bring in a chef. We kind of really make it a cool weekend, you know, not partying and drugs and alcohol and, you know, and the like. But instead just a really beneficial weekend, almost like a sleepover, in this case for adult entrepreneurial men who want to ferment in each other's wisdom and make each other better people. And so I'm kind of like the ring pack leader for that, or the ringleader for that, and lead everybody on these adventures and chats and masterminds and workouts, et cetera. And so by the nature of hanging out with a whole bunch of people at my home, for 4 days, I get a chance to watch people, to observe them in an environment that goes beyond just the way that you might see people at work or, you know, at a conference or in a setting where you don't see them as intimately involved in everything from brushing their teeth and, you know, doing their morning routines to the way that they eat meals to the way they live their day to the way that they operate after a workout or after a meal or before a meal, to what they eat. So, I have a chance to kind of observe, observe human biology in action on a very intimate level for several days. And, I noticed some things and had some takeaways that I wanted to share with you that will hopefully make your life better, your health better. And, there are things to think about that I think are patterns that I saw that you may want to, well, not to get negative, but avoid. And things that I realized a lot of people, both men and women, are doing that they shouldn't be doing. They want to optimize their health. So I'm going to share with you, I probably have about 10 different takeaways that I got from watching this group, interacting with them, answering their questions, and seeing how people Even people who think they're being healthy live and eat and move. So, I'm just gonna go through this list with you for today's Raw episode of some things that I noticed during this event at my house in no particular order of importance. So, number 1, snacking and drinking calories mindlessly. So, you're no doubt familiar with the benefits of intermittent fasting, giving the gut a break, the cellular cleanup and cellular autophagy. That takes place when, you know, in most men you fast for about 12 to 16 hours a day. Most premenopausal women, to make sure the hormones don't take too much of a hit, fast for about 10 to 12 hours a day. And then, postmenopausal women are kind of similar to men, 12 to 16 hours a day. But, there's another form of what you might call fasting that occurs in between mealtimes. Meaning, if you're eating in between mealtimes, your goal is body composition, fat loss, metabolic efficiency, et cetera, then you're kind of suppressing that with snacking. And something that I noticed over and over again was we had, you know, we did have snacks around, like there were beef jerky sticks and plantain chips and, you know, healthy pork rinds from Epic Foods and coconut water and all manner of different snacks that were technically available. I don't personally snack in between meals, but yet the nature of bringing a bunch of people together, they kind of expect for there to be things available. Now, this is the equivalent of having like, you know, the the bowl of almonds that might be in your office, or, you know, the snack bar station, or, you know, the healthy drink station. Now, I was shocked at the amount of snacking that occurred between meals in guys who were sharing that one of their primary goals was to lose this extra bit of fat around their waistline. And yet, it was pretty rare for me to walk past someone and not see them with a bag of plantain chips in their hand or sipping that 80 to 100 calorie coconut water or just having a handful of macadamia nuts. You know, all healthy snacks. We're not talking about like Cheetos and Doritos and, you know, beer. But I would estimate that just about every person there was probably consuming somewhere between 300 and 600 extra calories from liquid calories or so-called healthy food in between each meal. The reason I'm telling you that is this. I think that people, especially when optimizing body composition, don't either look at labels or think enough about calories consumed in between meals, which can add up to over 1,000 total calories throughout the day of excess calories. Do I personally, quote, snack, unquote, in between meals? Yes. My snacks are gum, sparkling water with stevia in it, sometimes Zevia, which is zero-calorie stevia-flavored sparkling water, sometimes these energy drinks that are called Update energy drinks that are also zero-calorie, and ketones, which technically have calories in them but really don't cause any type of glucose spike and don't cause the same issue as eating actual calories or drinking actual calories. So the first thing I noted was people who have access to healthy snacks eat them a lot. It's the so-called Trader Joe's phenomenon, right? I shop at Trader Joe's, I got a pantry full of healthy snack foods, and I'm just hitting those over and over again throughout the day. Bad move if your goal is body composition. I would say the only person who might get away with that would be like a professional athlete who's training multiple times per day, you know, recreational triathlete who's training throughout the day. Or like a rapidly growing, say, adolescent boy or girl who's, you know, have— has multiple practices during the day, a rampant metabolism, fast-growing body. Like, I don't tell my own 16-year-old sons not to snack mindlessly. Of course, the snacks that we have around are very healthy, you know, Primal Beef Sticks and healthy bars and relatively low sugar, no added vegetable oil foods, non-sugary drinks. But the idea here is Most adults need to be snacking far less, especially adults who have healthy snacks around the house and justify to themselves that it's okay to snack because they're healthy snacks. So that's the first thing I noticed is just kind of snacking because stuff's healthy and it's around when the meals are providing adequate calories and it improves metabolic efficiency to not snack between meals. Next thing I noticed was there were a lot of drinks that we had around the house. We had everything from ketone alcohol alternatives called Keto Halls made by KetoneAid, which are great because we weren't drinking any beer or wine or mixed drinks or anything. We had coconut waters, but then we also had energetic compounds, right? Like energy compounds such as Update energy drink, which is great, coffees, mushroom teas with caffeine in them. A lot of people, a lot of people were complaining about their sleep scores. They're like, "Oh, man, I only got 6 hours last night. I was up late. I had difficulty sleeping. I woke up at 2:00," et cetera, et cetera. And yet, in the evenings and even in the later afternoons, I would see people just grabbing an extra cup of coffee, throwing back a couple of energy drinks because they were around, not looking at the label to see what kind of stimulant something had in it. And, I realized, gosh, A large portion of the population relies upon stimulants and sometimes says, "Well, I'm not gonna have a cup of coffee after dinner," but they're doing a lot of things that contain energetic stimulants in them after 4 PM. My own cutoff, unless I plan to be out late, is limiting stimulants after 4 PM and being aware of things that actually have stimulants in them. So, that's number 2 is Be careful with stimulants after 4:00 PM. I notice a lot of guys having stimulants after 4:00 PM. Alright, the next one we're going to move on to, technology.

Ketones seem like they're the latest craze. I've been into them for a decade, just the idea of ketosis mitigating carb intake and now using what used to be unaffordable and inaccessible, you can now buy at places like Sprouts and that is ketones, liquid ketones. Ketone IQ is an interesting one. In a double-blind placebo-controlled study on trained athletes, Ketone IQ delivered a 19% increase, more than a 19% increase in average power during sprints, 13% peak power versus a placebo, 10% less fatigue, and a 5x increase in blood ketones within 20 minutes. So, they tested it and it does increase your ketones. They've shown it gives you a natural EPO boost. That's the same illegal performance-enhancing drug that Tour de France cyclists inject themselves with while laying down on the back of a bus. Ketones help jumpstart your body's own production of that. More red blood cells obviously means better oxygen delivery and higher output. A bunch of elite athletes are using this stuff like Jon Jones, Des Linden, Boston Marathon winner, Mitchell Hooper, the World's Strongest Man, you name it, Sam Laidlow, Ironman champion, bunch of Tour de France cyclists. No sugar, no artificial ingredients, just pure ketones in a convenient bottle. Visit ketone.com/BenG for 30% off your subscription. Order plus receive a free gift with your second shipment or find Ketone IQ at Target stores nationwide and get your first shot free.

Even though my whole home is hardwired with metal-shielded Cat7 Ethernet cable, it's a very low EMF environment. I've had building biologists come through and test the home. When there are 20 cell phones inside the house, there's still a large amount of radio frequencies bouncing around. Now, when guys had their phones on the tables, when we would have conversations and they'd take out their phones to take notes, I did little sideways glances and I'd check. Not only was I shocked at the number of people who did not have their phone in airplane mode, even though they weren't surfing the internet or talking on their phone or doing anything that required a connection, but also the number of times both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were activated. Folks, because you have a phone does not mean that it needs to be on. I'm recording this for you right now with my phone in airplane mode. My phone is in airplane mode about 80% of the day. Okay, about 80% of the day my phone is in airplane mode because why would it not be if I'm not using it to engage with content or be on the phone or do research or check social media or anything else, right? Or download a podcast or an audiobook, right? I have YouTube Premium and I use CastBox to listen to podcasts. I download everything. I don't stream anything on the phone. YouTube Premium, I get a video, I download it, I engage with it in offline mode, right? But this is another thing to think about, right? These are all the little things that take you from good to great. The phone is in airplane mode if you are not using it to access the internet or the online world or make a phone call. And furthermore, when it is out of airplane mode, unless absolutely necessary for connection to a device or some other reason, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are disabled. Okay, so that's the third thing to think about. And I'll review all these at the end of this Raw episode, by the way, for your, uh, for your convenience. The next is a lot of guys have laptops, right? And laptops obviously also produce radio frequencies. You know, my own laptop always has Wi-Fi disabled and Bluetooth disabled, but a laptop will produce a lot more EMF than a phone, even if those are disabled and it's not connected to the internet. When we're sitting around, you know, talking, doing masterminds, etc., again, shocking the number of guys who had their laptop placed on their thighs or in their lap without anything underneath it. This is easy to fix. There are companies like DefenderShield or Harapad, H-A-R-A-pad, who sell pads that go underneath the laptop to block EMF frequencies from doing things like causing muscular inflammation, inhibiting recovery in the legs post-workout, causing a decrease in sperm count, causing a decrease in both men and women in the function of the gonads. But it's— I think it's because they're called laptops that people put them in their laps and assume they're safe. And I don't think anybody there, despite the, the easy affordability and accessibility to laptop pads, had their laptop on a pad when it was in their lap. I have laptop pads spread all over the house. My sons both have laptop pads. We don't Like, for us, it's like totally, again, second nature to even think about a laptop being in contact with the surface of the body unless there's a pad underneath it to block the radiation. And I realize a lot of this stuff, again, might sound judgy, nitpicky, etc., but I'm trying to help you guys go from good to great. And this is another thing I thought, gosh, if there's this many guys and nobody's using a laptop pad, then I'll bet I've got some listeners, other people listening in, who may not realize that they should be doing this, right? So, kind of similar to having the phone in airplane mode, laptops always have a pad in them and they don't touch the body. Okay, next, evening light exposure. There are apps like One Tap Zap. There is the Shortcuts function that you can download to your phone if you have an iPhone that allows you to switch it into red light mode, switch location services off, which by the way, if your phone is in airplane mode, but the location services are still on, it's producing more EMF than if location services are on. And finally, these apps will decrease the amount of blue light produced by the phone far better than the native iOS mode will. But again, when I'm talking to guys glancing at their phones or taking stuff out, showing photos, I think maybe 5% of the guys had any dimming function whatsoever, and barely any of them had at night red light mode on, AirPlay mode on, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off, and location services off. I use— and you can Google this— the iPhone red light trick to suck all the blue light out of my phone as soon as the sun sets in whatever area of the world I happen to be in. It's 3 clicks on the side button on the phone, whatever that one's called, and automatically the phone goes to red light mode. It's a very simple color filter setting. In the show notes for this raw podcast, I'll include 1-Tap Zap, the red light disable location services, put it in airplane mode, turn off Wi-Fi, turn off Bluetooth, sleep function for the iOS shortcut, and also the red light iPhone trick. But basically, it— again, it's something you have to think about if you want to optimize sleep. Don't complain about sleep architecture, about not being able to get to sleep at night, about waking frequently, about feeling drained in the morning if you're not controlling evening light exposure, including from your device. And it's very simple to hack your device to do this. You just have to do it. And just like brushing your teeth, remember to do it or schedule for it to be done on a regular basis. So, evening light exposure is another one. And again, even at night, I would flip on our red incandescent bulbs take off the LED, turn off the overhead fluorescent lighting, and a lot of guys would be like, "Why is it so dark in here? Why does it seem like red light? Why is it like a campfire?" And for a lot of people, it was a total pattern interrupt. Why isn't the house lit up at night? Why isn't the world lit up at night? Because we're supposed to be preparing our circadian rhythms for sleep, and light suppresses melatonin and decreases sleep drive. So don't just go through your phone, go through your monitors, go through your house, decrease light. For many of you, I'm preaching to the choir, you've heard this before, but there's a difference between knowing it and doing it. So be strict with it. It'll have a huge impact on sleep. Okay, the next thing is when you're having masterminds, meals, etc., there is an option to sit. And us humans, whether we are waiting for an airplane, or a bus or an Uber, whether we're waiting at the doctor's office, whether we're in a meeting, whether we're in a mastermind, we sit because there's chairs and we're expected to socially and it's weird not to. I started standing during masterminds, stretching, sitting on the floor, foam rolling, using a little ball in the hips, standing, doing toe raises. And by the time the week was over, About half of the guys were doing that because they realized, "Oh, hey, just because we're in a circle talking or just because we're in a meeting or just because we're waiting for something to happen, we can be engaged in so-called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, burning more calories by doing something other than sitting." So, if there's an option not to sit, don't sit. And I was surprised at the number of guys from that— was a pattern interrupt. Oh wait, you're right. I'm in a meeting, but there's no rule that you have to sit in a meeting. And when you stand and start moving, a whole bunch of other people start standing and moving and you still get the same amount of work done. You know, while I'm recording this for you, I'm walking. I might take 4,000 steps while I'm just walking and talking to you. And that's a perfect example. Okay. So, the time to sit would be when you're eating. You want to engage the parasympathetic nervous system. You want to rest and digest. You don't need to stand and stretch when you're eating, but unless you're eating or you're really tied down, like on an airplane at a window seat and you just can't get up, try to move a lot more than you might currently be moving and defy these societal expectations to sit just because there's chairs. And you walk into the doctor's office, like when I walk into a doctor's office and they say, have a seat. I say, I'm good, thanks. When I walk into the doctor's actual room and they say, "Have a seat." Unless they're taking my blood pressure, I say, "I'm good," and I stand and stretch while I'm waiting for the doctor, right? So, again, you don't even have to sit if a secretary tells you to sit. Just realize that. Alright, next up, after meals, after meals, postprandial activity is clutch to regulate your body composition, regulate your metabolic rate, and regulate your blood glucose. There were many meals where we were scheduled to go into a mastermind, go into a meeting, go sit and meet. And I would say, "Hey guys, let's all go outside and go for a quick walk." When we'd finish dinner, I'd say, "Hey, we're going to take the 15-minute walk back to the parking lot that's 2 minutes away to lower our blood sugar after this meal and increase our metabolic rate." If you program into your life after every meal the idea that you're going to move, I mean, even after dinner, when I go like turn on the alarm in the garage, I do 50 jumping jacks and then I go up and down the stairs and I get stuff done. I do a little bit of cleaning. I don't go straight from mealtime into bedroom or mealtime into reading or mealtime into sitting and playing the guitar. Right? So you should have a rule in your life again as a Life Network member, somebody who really values their health, who's on this transformational journey. You have a rule after every meal, no matter what, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you figure out how to move. It's a walk. It's walking back to the car, the restaurant, from the restaurant, but taking the long way. It's getting up from breakfast and before you go down to the office, you know, if you have to sit in the office, that's fine, but do some movement first, even if that means cutting breakfast short or cutting lunch short so you actually can engage in movement. Doesn't have to be long. Research has shown as little as 5 minutes can do the trick. And sometimes if I don't have the area or space to go for a walk, I'll just do some toe touches, some stretches, some jumping jacks, a few little movements, some mobility exercises, and then get back to work. But it needs to be in your vernacular that after every meal you move. These are all the little things that stand up or that add up, right? Not sitting for long periods of time and choosing not to sit even though there's chairs there. Having a rule that you move after meals. Engaging in some of the other things I'm about to tell you. Okay. I got 2 more for you. The next is that a surprisingly high amount of the guys there had back pain, particularly low back pain. Now, if you have shortened hip flexors and weak glutes, back pain almost becomes inevitable. And I've got great articles at BenGreenfieldLife.com about different ways to biohack low back pain, but I can tell you probably the top 2 things I do to cut straight to you know, if you wanna call it Occam's Razor, the 80/20 or whatever. A, I follow that rule about not sitting unless I absolutely have to, and that's huge. And number 2, I do Stu McGill's Big 3 for the low back every day, which is the bird dog exercise, the curl-up exercise, and the side plank. And it doesn't take me long. I actually take a quick siesta after lunch, and when I get up from that siesta, I spend 5 to 10 minutes waking my body back up, activating my glutes, and lengthening my hip flexors using Stu McGill's Big 3 exercises, which you can Google and which are totally free to find just about anywhere. But, when I look at posture and I look at guys who are complaining about low back pain and I see the amount of sitting, there's a direct correlation. And again, simply not sitting and doing Stu McGill's Big 3, that's like low-hanging fruit for back pain. And, would I teach mobility to this group? And, you know, I observed the number of people sitting. I was just shocked at the amount of low back pain and how much that correlates to sitting a lot and not doing specific mobility exercises. And this really leads to the last piece, which is mobility, right? Mobility, what's it mean? Well, think of it, mobility equals movement ability, right? I like to think of it that way. It's not flexibility. It's not being a stretchy yoga person. It's literally ability to move. Now, here's how I optimize mobility and my body feels like it's 16 years old. I have very little aches and pains. Every morning, I make sure that I get out of bed early enough to allow the time for 15 minutes of mobility every day, right? So, I'm getting about 75 to up to 90 sometimes minutes of mobility. Every single week. This is not like a warm-up for a workout. That's part of my workout routine, not a cool-down. It's literally starting off every single day with what I call the momentum of mobility. And that can include leg swings, stretches, you know, Stu McGill's Big 3, foam rolling, hip work, you name it. But again, when I was with these guys, we were talking about morning routines and many of them would be like hot tub, cold plunge. Hot tub cold plunge, staying in the sauna. When I started to do my own mobility routine, guys like, "What are you doing? Are you gonna work out?" I'm like, "No, this is just how I wake up, how I wake up the body, how I engage in active mobility." And I got a great juicy share for you. If you want to see, I would say, the two best examples of the type of mobility exercises that you could or should be doing every morning, Check out Ben Patrick and his ATG for Life, tiny little book you can get on Amazon dirt cheap. It's got a ton of fantastic yet little-known mobility exercises in there, specifically many that lengthen the hip flexors and strengthen the glutes. And then the other guy to check out is Elastiboy, a great handle, Elastiboy on Instagram. He's got these little mobility snacks that he demonstrates and they're fantastic. They're little mobility exercises. But if you want to wrap your head around the type of exercises I'm doing every morning, check out the ATG for Life by Ben Patrick or the Elastiboy Instagram channel and you really understand this idea of movement ability, what it actually looks like and how to do it. Okay. So, That's 15 minutes every morning. Do it. It'll change your life. So let's review. We've got snacking and drinking calories mindlessly in between meals, even if they're healthy snacks. Just cut it. No need to do it. Next, stimulants late in the day after 4:00 PM. Inspect labels. Know what you're consuming. If you're having sleep issues, cut those out. Number 3, phone is in airplane mode with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location services disabled. And if you do need to have it on, at least Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and preferably even location services are disabled unless you're using them. Next, if you gotta have your laptop in your lap, get an anti-radiation pad from DefenderShield or Hara Pad or even Amazon. If you look up Amazon anti-radiation laptop pads, they have them. Next, program your phone to reduce evening light exposure wherever the show notes are for this raw podcast. I'll include the One Tap Zap, the iPhone red light trick, and the Shortcuts function for putting your phone to sleep. Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off, red light on, location services off, airplane mode on. One click of a button right when you go to bed. Easy phone shortcut. I know some of those exist for Android as well. I'm just saying the iPhone ones because that's the iOS that I use, the operating system I use. Next, uh, if there's any option other than sitting Don't choose the sitting option. Okay? Simple concept. Sometimes people look at you weird because you're the one person standing as you're waiting for the airplane to leave while everybody sits and eats their burritos, but you want to be the pattern interrupt if you want to be that person who defies the risk for chronic disease that we see in westernized societies. Next, every meal, move. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes max. Move after every meal. Non-negotiable. Doesn't matter. Figure out a way to do it, even if it means decreasing your meal time. Next, try doing Stu McGill's Big 3 every day while sitting less. Lengthening the hip flexors, strengthening the glutes, and you will not be one of those all too common people who fall into the category of low back pain. And then finally, try to program 15 minutes of morning mobility in and check out programs like Ben Patrick's Knees Over Toes. And, uh, and the Elastiboy on Instagram to see examples of what I mean. So I don't know how many that was, 9 or 10, I lost track, but that's what I learned by living with 20 people who are trying to be healthy but still making common mistakes that healthy people make. And I hope this really helps open your eyes as to changes you can make that are low-hanging fruit but that are going to change your life, change your sleep, change your health, and change mobility. So, I hope that was helpful for you. Thank you for listening to Raw episode number 3. I'll have juicy show notes for you, check them out. Until next time, thank you so much for being a valued Life Network member.

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