Evolutionary Mismatch Ruining Your Health | Eric Edmeades on Metabolism, Sugar & Rewilding Yourself

Our instincts are a complete mismatch with our environment, and the only real solution to that is a massive increase in consciousness and self-awareness. We are dealing with more anxiety and depression, psychoactive drug treatment, addiction, and even suicide than has ever existed in history. The better we made things, the more we're suffering. That's what happened to us. We did it ourselves. We live in literal boxes. We go from one box and go into the moving box to get to the next box, and we block the sunlight out, and we mess with our entire systems by doing this.

Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker, and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies, and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier, and longer. On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset, and performance. And share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast.

My guest today is Eric Ermidis, internationally acclaimed health and wellness expert, founder of the transformative WildFit program and author of Post-Diabetic: The WildFit Way and The Evolution Gap. Eric is one of the rare voices in health optimization who blends evolutionary biology, behavioral science, anthropology, and real-world transformation architecture into one unified approach. For more than a decade, he has spent extensive time living with and studying the Hadza people of East Africa, one of the last true hunter-gatherer tribes on Earth. His deep relationship with the Hadza even earned him honorary tribal membership, offering unparalleled insight into ancestral health, human behavior, food psychology, and the roots of longevity. Eric is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded and operated companies in 6 countries, spoken on stages in over 60 nations, and shared platforms with luminaries like Sir Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, John Gray, and President Bill Clinton. His flagship WildFit program, rooted in behavioral change rather than willpower, has become Mindvalley's highest-rated health program, transforming tens of thousands of lives and helping people permanently shift their relationship with food. Recognized as one of the top 25 most influential leaders in personal growth, Eric was awarded a Canadian Senate Medal for his contributions to improving global health and quality of life. With a combination of scientific rigor, ancestral wisdom, and cinematic storytelling, Eric empowers people to rewild their biology, reclaim their healthspan, and create lives of freedom, vitality, and purpose.

Please enjoy.

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Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, Eric. I'm so excited to have you with us today.

Me too. I'm looking forward to this.

So Eric, you've spent over a decade, and I'd love to start here with the East African Hadza. And I don't know if I'm even pronouncing it correctly. One of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on earth. Could you share what a moment was with them that fundamentally rewired your understanding of what humans need to thrive and survive?

There's so many, but maybe the most profound for me was in 2020, I took a small group of friends with me. I took Paul Saladino of The Carnivore Code and Jeffrey Pearlman and Anthony Gostine from Perfect Keto. Like it was quite an interesting group and we went out on a hunt and at some point we kind of, they'd killed some lunch and they told us to stay here and wait. And then the Bushmen kept hunting and we'd already been out for a long time and one thing led to another and I ended up going out like into the bush just to go and relieve myself. And one of the Bushmen ran by with chief and I thought he called to me to follow him. So I started following him and like after an hour of running, I realized like, you know, he ran by going, which is like, means tourist, right? It's like he's calling me. Okay. And, and, and so I run after him and after like an hour of hard running, I realized like I don't have a guide with me. You know, like they're all back at the, you know, my friends are all there. My poor, my poor now wife, girlfriend at the time, I, I said the fateful Hollywood line to her as I walked off to go and pee in the river. I said, I'll be right back. I wasn't—

so they're like, where are you? You've been eaten by a crocodile.

It was bad. And there came this point though, where I really had a bizarre spiritual experience. I'd been running. We'd already been running a lot that day. And now I'd done another hour at full speed with these guys, you know, hunting. And I was in pain and I was worn out and I was thirsty. And then I had this out-of-body experience where I actually felt like I levitated out of myself and I could see me like a drone view running through the bush with them. And all of a sudden I saw something that I had observed before, but perhaps not appreciated. And that was they were having the time of their life. They were having a blast. I was dying and they were having a blast. And I'm not talking physical fitness here. I mean that I realized in that moment that their neurotransmitters, their emotions evolved for exactly that situation. So every single thing that they do from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, every single thing that they do to get pleasure, to get dopamine or serotonin or oxytocin, every single thing that they do is functional because they evolved those emotional responses to that environment. And now we live in a world where we have those same neurotransmitters, we have the same basic emotional psychological makeup, but we live so far removed from that environment that we consistently and constantly do things to get pleasure that are destructive. And that was like, I'd known it before, but now I knew it.

Wow. And I'd love to unpack that for a minute because I love all things brain. And as we know, we're in a dopamine pandemic in terms of getting it from artificial sources. And not able to focus and concentrate, not even able to build relationships anymore, have a conversation. I mean, it's, it's pretty sad. So their system evolved such that just being out running, being kind of as a pack, as a group together, brought them so much joy that, and their physiology, I guess they're also trained and, and used to this too, that they were just having so much fun. They were in their element.

Let me explain it a little bit differently. So we have the same basic genetic code that they have. There are some modifications here and there. My skin's a little lighter than theirs, you know, but generally speaking, we have the same neurotransmitters. We have the same emotional chemicals. We have the same nutritional needs and so on. Now, when a Hadzabe person wakes up in the morning and they feel like the stirrings of hunger and the need to move and what have you, everything they do from that point that will reward them is functional. So, you know, if it's a hunter, they're going to get up and get their bow and get their arrows and get pumped up with energy. Good for them. Good. And then they're going to start running out of camp. And the, the minute they spot any kind of spore tracks, they're gonna get a dopamine release. Oh, look, we found something. And then they're gonna start tracking it. And the closer they get to it, the more feel-good chemicals they're getting and the more excitement they're creating and the more, the more enjoyment they're having. Just like a teenager playing a video game, only this is not a video game. Then they see, they see the prey and they get another boost. Then they pull the arrow back and if they hit the mark, they get another boost. Then they eat super functional food and they get another boost. The entire series of rewards were functional. Every single thing they did to get dopamine rewarded them for doing something good for their survival or their procreation. And that was that. Now you take, you and I wake up in the morning and the first thing that many people think about these days is, I wonder how my phone is doing. I should check on that. And we go to the phone. Why? Because it's a source of dopamine. And the next thing you know, we're checking messages and checking scrolling and what have you, or Or we get up and go and have a coffee. Look, I, if you wanna have a coffee, have a coffee, but don't lie to yourself that it's like good for you. It's giving you some feel-good chemicals, some internally and some that you're, you know, ingesting. Or somebody goes and has some breakfast cereal and their body goes, oh my gosh, incredible calorie payoff. Yeah, but your body doesn't realize they're disastrous calories still giving you the dopamine.

Our reward systems evolved for the natural environment and the unnatural environment is now abusing that reward system for profit and for And I guess the good news to this is that you can rewire the neural pathways to find joy in meditating first, to find joy in the first hour and a half of waking, not to be on your phone. Would you agree?

Okay. Yes and no. And what I mean is, is that you can certainly rewire, uh, your pathways in terms of, like we know, for example, muscle memory isn't a thing. You don't really have muscle memory. You have, you have trained neurology that means the muscles move the right way. We know through neuroplasticity that we can change our habits and we can change that stuff. That's true. You know, yes, that's great. But what I don't think we can necessarily change is certain instinctual reactions. And so our, our, we, we can't change, for example, that if I eat a bowl of Froot Loops in the morning, my body is going to reward me with dopamine for, for this incredible calorie payoff because our ancestors didn't have bad calorie payoff. They only had calorie payoff and all calorie payoff was good. So they stumbled upon a beehive and they ate all that honey and they, it was good and they got dopamine. But now what we can't change is that there are going to be destructive things that feel good. We can't change that. So then what we have to do is look at behavioral psychology and consciousness, and then we can apply those principles to changing our behavior and overriding it. If we try to pretend that, like, I think it was Freud said something like, it is amazing the degree to which Civilization, the development of civilization required the renunciation of instinct. We are living in a time when our instincts are a complete mismatch with our environment. And the only real solution to that is a slight bit of willpower here and there, but that's not a long-term solution and a massive increase in consciousness and self-awareness.

Is this something that you also noticed from the Hasidah that they're very in tuned to their own intuition? Hunting your senses and you know that there's danger also lurking. You know, the Maasai, they can walk through and a lion will pass and ignore them because they smell differently. I assume the same with the Hadza.

Not entirely true. If a lion sees a Hadza, or sorry, if a lion sees a Maasai, if the Maasai is in red, the lions will run. They are terrified of the Maasai.

Interesting. So not even just they'll ignore them, they'll actually run away.

No, they'll run from them. If you have a Maasai warrior in your Jeep and you drive past the lions, the lions don't like it.

So it's the word has spread.

Yeah. And yeah, I would argue that, I mean, this is totally out there theoretical, but I would argue that the lions likely have some instinctual response to mass. Well, first of all, we know that they have instinctual response to bipedal hunters, but I believe that they have an instinctual response to the color red because the Maasai are dressed in red robes and so on.

It was interesting when I was in safari in Tanzania once. Our guide was explaining that sometimes if tourists get out of the Jeep, if a lioness would kill a tourist, they have to actually kill the whole pride, which I thought was quite traumatic. But they said because the word spreads, oh, you can actually eat human. Have you heard something like this?

Yeah, apparently predators and lions are less inclined this way, but some predators, once they've kind of gotten a taste of human meat and it's been accepted as food, it can be food. Or if they're hungry enough, I mean, right now today, one of the largest causes of death apparently in the Kruger National Park is death by animal, but it's never tourists. The tradition has been that it's refugees refugees trying to get into South Africa from Mozambique and the, the crocodiles and the, and, and the lions and stuff take them. But they know the difference between a struggling impoverished refugee walking across the Kruger National Park and a well-dressed, clean-smelling tourist. They don't go anywhere near them. It's not simply that they'll just suddenly hunt all human beings. I'll also say that when your guide said that to you, what your guide didn't really understand, and, and you know, this, this happens. The guiding training in Tanzania is very different than it is in South Africa. What I can tell you is if you're, say, in the Ngorongoro Crater, or if you're in, you know, Manyara as an example, you're in there and you see a pride of lions and you get out of the car, 99 times out of 100, the lions are gone. They are terrified of humans. They, we've been hunting them. We've been killing them for a long time. So unless they're like, say injured or they have, if they, if they have babies with them, they'll defend themselves. Don't get me wrong. But generally speaking, you get outta the car and the lion's gone.

Okay. So some interesting facts about animals in Africa for, for content. Yeah.

I'm not suggesting that anyone test this theory, but it, but I've done it. And generally speaking, and it's the same, like if you're driving through a game reserve, you will see lions. If you're walking through a game reserve, you'll almost never see them because they hear you, they see you, they don't wanna be anywhere near you. Smell you. Yeah.

Yeah. Much, much far in advance. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you definitely feel out of your natural habitat. You feel like you're the weakling in the, in the equation as well. So yeah, it's amazing experience. So Eric, you often talk about the evolution gap, the chasm between our ancient biology and our modern environments. If you had to choose one modern habit that is aging us the fastest, what would it be? And what did the Hasda teach you about the antidote?

I would have to say, I mean, the list of these is so unbelievably long, but I would say the one that's causing the greatest devastation at the moment is the consistent consumption of poor quality sugar. It's the thing that's causing the vast majority of disease exacerbation, strain on the medical system, personal suffering, and the whole deal. I mean, we don't get enough sunlight. We're not sleeping properly. The, the, the screens are killing us. I mean, it is not just one thing, but I think if we look at the planet on the whole, say where some of the modern problems haven't arrived in every country, I would say that the Regular consistent consumption, particularly of refined sugar, but of poor quality carbohydrates is the biggest devastation that we're dealing with.

And as we know, one stat that shocks people is that more than 74% of adults today die from lifestyle-driven disease. And so when you look at that through the evolutionary lens, what jumps out to you as the most urgent misalignment? So we talked about the sugar, but what are some other points that you think people are missing?

I wanna back up for a minute and I just wanna just point one thing out about the term lifestyle disease. The term lifestyle disease is a deeply manipulative industry industry speak term that is designed to shift the blame from disastrous products onto the consumer. So the reason I mentioned that is that Ireland was the first country in the world to ban smoking as a country. The tobacco companies before the banning came along, that started in Ireland and then Vancouver was one of the first cities to follow and so on. Before that happened, there was a bunch of lawsuits making their way through the system. So like in the early, in the '80s, this started happening. The tobacco industry caught on really quickly that that they, they were going to eventually lose these suits, but they needed to try to figure out how to win them. And basically jury tampering is the best way to win. And while we know that there were examples of outright jury tampering, the most significant jury tampering they did was in mass hypnosis of the population. They started calling lung cancer a lifestyle disease. And so by calling it a lifestyle disease, it meant that if you were, you know, in New York and you were called to the jury, when you arrived there, you had been pre-hypnotized with the idea that lung cancer is a lifestyle disease. Therefore, if it's a lifestyle disease, it's the fault of your which is the fault of your choices, which of course completely, you know, skips the fact that tobacco industries manipulated people into smoking, lied to them about the danger of it and so on. So that, that's the first thing I wanna say is that I'm not a big fan of the term lifestyle disease because, and by the way, when the tobacco company did start losing those suits after a while, what did they do? Well, they invested in food and so they basically took over the major food companies. And so the same disastrous marketing ideas and lobbying principles went over to food. So when we call these things lifestyle diseases, what we're basically saying is it's the fault of the individual person and not the disastrous and manipulative impact of the food and tobacco industries. Yeah. Now that said, once you're aware of it all, important point, Derek.

So thank you for making it.

Yeah. And then the trouble is, is that once you're aware of it all, you might, you know, one of our slogans in WildFit is that if you're say type 2 diabetic or you're dealing with an autoimmune condition or a lifestyle disease, or you're dealing with obesity. What we would say to you is it's not your fault. It isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility now to do something about it. And that, that comes to your question, like, what do we do? And again, my question here is going to be related to the answer I gave you about sugar. I think that what we are really dealing with among all the problems we're having, I mean, we've got insecticides in everything. There's plastic everywhere. There, there's, I mean, there's a million problems, but I think one of the fastest things to fix that can really significantly have an impact on individual quality of life and the public healthcare care and the public health sector is metabolic flexibility. Like what most people do is they get stuck in a particular metabolic mode and they're stuck in that mode because they eat carbs on a regular basis. And so as a result of that, they either accumulate extra weight, which is the most common version, or, and/or they develop a type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, or what have you, and/or they develop type 3 diabetes, which is why, you know, you and I are likely to make it to 75 years old, but one of us is gonna be de— demented. Literally 50% of people that make it to 75 are facing dementia. And we know now that it's often referred to as type 3 diabetes. All of these things are at the very minimum, if not caused by, are massively amplified and exaggerated by the disastrous metabolic health of the planet. And so I think that is the lever that we right now, right now we could make the biggest move on that particular lever. I believe.

I think that And that's the beauty of it too. So it's not just the doom and gloom, like, yes, we know that's such a disaster, but there's so much you can do proactively. So I've had some leading neuroscientists, Dr. Del Bredesen, who you'll know as well. He says Alzheimer's is 20 years in the making. It starts in your 40s. It appears in your 60s, right? The symptoms. Dr. David Perlmutter as well has been on. And so it's really empowering people to understand there's so much you can do even if you have a genetic predisposition. Like I have a single copy of the APOE4 gene. My mother sadly passed from dementia, but her causes were separate. She didn't have a copy. My father's 87. Little bit of memory loss, but in general he's doing pretty well, 487 as well. And it should empower people to know that you can be so proactive as well. So for people listening, Eric, like what is the path? What, where should they start? And maybe you can share a little bit about your WildFit program as well.

I believe that it is fair at this point to suggest that with the acceptance that there is some suffering on earth and there always will be, and that there are still people living in poverty and that there's still slavery in parts of the planet, with the acceptance that those things exist. On the average, we are living in the very best times to have ever been alive. We're living with greater safety, greater personal certainty, greater food security. We, we, it is literally very simply the best time, the peak human experience. And that said, we are dealing with more anxiety and depression, psychoactive drug treatment, addiction, and even suicide than has ever existed in history. So it's like the better we made things, the more we're suffering.. And the best comparison of this is a very interesting thought experiment. An elephant living in the Kruger National Park, it has to deal with poachers and lions, hyenas, competing elephants, brushfires, drought, and the elements. So we take it out of that environment and we put it in a really nice zoo where it has predictable food. It has dental and medical. It has no hyenas, no, no lions. It has no poachers, no brushfires. Where will it live longer? Well, clearly it'll live longer in the— no, it'll live a third as long in the zoo than it will in its natural environment with all its natural dangers. And we are now living in the zoo. That's what happened to us. We did it ourselves. We built the zoo ourselves, but we're living in the zoo. We are fed by the zookeepers. Our laws are created by the zookeepers. We live in literal boxes. We, we, we go from one box and go into the moving box to get to the next box, and we block the sunlight out. We mess with our entire systems by doing this. What I really focus on in all of my work and my writing and the evolution gap is something called evolutionary mismatch theory. And evolutionary mismatch theory basically says this: genetic mutation takes an unbelievably long time, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of years to really make substantive differences. Our species is, say, 300,000 years old, and we haven't really changed a great deal in that time. There's some subtle, small surface changes like skin color. In the meantime, we have developed the ability to innovate and change our environment so rapidly that there's no chance that genetics could ever keep up with it. And all of our pain and suffering is in, is in that gap in, in that space. A good example using skin color, as I mentioned before, is, I mean, while I could sort of roughly predict where you come from based on your accent and then get it wrong cuz you're really from New York, but what I could be safe about is you are from Northern Europe. We're not gonna debate about that. I don't need to run a DNA test. You've done one, you know this is true, but I didn't need a DNA test to do that because I can look at you and I can see it.. And then you can look at me and go, oh, he's probably from, you know, mid to southern Europe, generally speaking, although actually born in South Africa. Now the reason you can tell that about each other is that I can look at your skin color, eye color, hair color, and I can tell where your genetics spent most of their time evolving relative to the sun. So you evolved the right skin color for living on an island that has no sun.

My father's German, but my mother is from the Scandinavian Irish, uh, people. So yeah, I look more like my mother, but people think I'm German.

Arguably both fairly northern Europe. Europe compared to say Ethiopia, right?

Correct.

And so, so you, you had to do that because if you had Ethiopian level skin living in those places, you would've developed severe vitamin D deficiency and your children would've developed rickets if you didn't and you wouldn't have made it. And those genes wouldn't have been selected for. And so the lighter your skin, this didn't just work going north of the equator, it worked going south of the equator. The Hottentots and the Khoisan Bushmen were just about as pale as me. That's evolution. And that's because it takes so long to move around the planet at that time. I mean, people think about like, you know, how did people get to say Scandinavia? How did your ancestors get there? They didn't put backpacks on and walk there. The population slowly grew there. It took thousands of generations to get there. It wasn't a journey. It was an expansion. So it took thousands of generations. And in that time, the people with the lighter skin tended to fare better and they bred people with lighter skin. Now you can get on a plane and travel thousands of generations of distance in 8 hours. That's called the gap. That's where the gap is. And the gap says that if you're gonna spend a lot of time in equatorial Africa, you'd better be careful of the sun. And equally, if, if, you know, my friend from Ethiopia is gonna spend a whole lot of time in Bergen in Norway, then he's gonna have to take precautions. He's probably gonna need red light therapy and vitamin D supplementation.. And this is one of thousands of examples where the gap is causing us, you know, everything from mild discomfort to existential worry.

And it's interesting because my happy place essentially is like Florida. I love the sun. I love the blue skies. I love being outside as well. And obviously Northern Europe, especially in wintertime, is colder, grayer, darker. And I definitely feel like I'm more primed to be more equatorial than Northern European, but that's the beauty of nowadays that we can travel a little bit easier.

And, but it also means that when when you go to Florida, you need to be a little careful, you know? And I wanna say this, the sun, like Claudia, the sun did not get dangerous in 1962 all of a sudden. Yeah, of course. Like that, you know, that's the big deal, right? Oh my God, the sun, the ozone, and the sun became dangerous. And that's why— listen, if that's what happened, then you know who else would be getting cancer? Elephants and hippos and rhinos. And for that matter, every plant that lives under the same sun. Would be devastated by this newly dangerous sun. But weirdly, this newly dangerous sun only really got dangerous for sapiens. And that's because I think of two things. One, we started moving to different parts of the planet where the sun did become more dangerous. Take a bunch of Europeans and put them in Australia where not only is the sun hotter, but it's 9 months. Of course, that's going to have a negative impact, you know, or potentially you're going to have a negative impact. And then, and then on top of that, you add the disastrous chemicals and and seed oils and, and just, you know, terrible metabolism and you, you've created a recipe for disease and disaster.

I'm gonna break this down just a little bit cuz I'm curious. What would be your recommendation around sun? Right? So we know it's super important to have exposure. We don't wanna be putting on the toxic sun creams. There are obviously non-toxic ones nowadays as well. What do you recommend for people in terms of sun exposure?

Get as much as you can and don't burn.

Okay. Nice and simple.

I like it. Yeah. I mean, get as much as you can without burning, you know, it, it's, it's, I don't have full statistics on this in this moment as I'm talking to you, but my guess is just from some of the reading I've done that the absence of sun is more likely to cause cancer in somebody than the excess of it. And there's only, there's one practical reason, and that is that if you have an absence of sun, it is a condition that you are living with every single day. Whereas if you went out and got sunburnt one day, you likely then avoided the sun for a while. So, you know, you're not likely to subject yourself to the same, to the same level of damaged so consistently. Now, I know there are some people out there double tanning themselves, and I don't think that's a good idea either. One of the reasons that the sun is a little bit more difficult for us is because we wear clothes and we're indoors all the time. So then when we finally do go out into the sun, our skin isn't as ready for it as it would be. So the more regular exposure— look, I'm not suggesting we do the Dave Asprey and suntan our taint, but if you want to do that, you can. But I think that being naked in the sun on a regular basis is unbelievably good for us. And so we should be doing that far more.

And just don't burn. I think it's obviously keeping out of the sun at the most intense time, right? So between like, you know, 11 and 3, depends where you are, how intense it is, et cetera. Sure. Like going out in the morning, doing exercise.

And you know who else does that? The Hadza people. I mean, they, they, they evolved for that sun. And guess what? Unless we're on a particularly intensive hunt close to the game, we'll usually take a bit of a rest around noon. We'll usually find a nice big tree and have a sleep under the tree when the sun is at its hottest.

Even they do that. That. And for hunting, obviously, that's, that's the prime time because that's when the animals are active, morning and evening as well, right? So yeah, so they're kind of following that pattern of ancestral as well. I want to have a look at exercise, Eric, and your thoughts on this. So one study on hunter-gatherer physiology found that 5 to 10x higher daily movement, yet no structured exercise. What does that reveal about how we should think about fitness in the modern world?

What would you like people to know? Such a beautiful example of the evolution gap. So the Hadza people, they move way more than we do and they do no exercise, as you've just said in more scientific terms, right? So let's take a look at why they do that, but also when they don't, they are lazy. They wanna rest and do nothing as much as they can, but because they don't have Uber Eats, they have to do some stuff, right? But they rest whenever possible. You know, they, so, so they have an instinct to conserve energy. And we have the same instinct, but the trouble is, is that we've created a world where we can conserve energy and still not starve to death. They live in a world where they can only conserve energy up until they gotta get food and they need nutrition, or they gotta get water and they have to move. So they have a balance of a craving to go and get food and a requirement to do work to get it, and an incredible desire to be lazy. We've eliminated the desire for food. What I mean is, is that we've satisfied the desire for food without effort. But we still have a desire to be lazy. And so that's where we have a tremendous mismatch. And here's another part of the mismatch that I'm not sure you will have bumped into before because I don't hear it spoken about very often, but you have a heart and you have a diaphragm and those are pumps and they, they are there because pumping air in and out and pumping oxygen and blood around you is not only important, but it's urgent. It's urgent on a minute-by-minute basis. So your body's like, well, we're not gonna take a chance on this. We're gonna evolve pumps. We're gonna have to evolve pumps that just take care of this. But in the meantime, you have another bodily function, which is cleansing, you know, done by the lymphatic system. And the lymphatic system is not urgent. It's only important. It's important, but not urgent. So no need for a pump because in a normal human lifestyle, your need for water and food would require a degree of movement from you. And so the body basically utilized the existing muscular contraction and relaxation and compression to pump the lymph around. So the Hadzabe people are cleansing every single day. They're out there moving lymph all the time. We are watching Netflix. So quite aside from, hey, maybe one of the best anti-aging measures, longevity measures we could take, one of the best things we could do to prevent Alzheimer's is move, move, move your body. One of the best things you can do for is have good muscle and bone density. All those, we know all those things, but on a much more sort of dramatic basis, if you are not contracting and expanding and using your muscles, like, for a significant portion of the day, you're not moving lymph around. You're allowing toxicity to build up in your system, and that's gonna turn into inflammation, autoimmune disease, cancer, God knows what.

So two questions. One is, Eric, what does your exercise routine look like? And then for, let's say, a more average person who maybe has an office job, what would you recommend for them as an ideal weekly protocol for movement and exercise? I should say daily, But you know what I mean by weekly?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna go not only daily, but I'm gonna go more rapid, more, more often than that. I, I don't even care if you have an exercise routine. What I care is you have a movement plan that you construct your life around movement. So what does that mean? It means you will hardly ever catch me on an escalator. When I, I fly a lot and I, I did a talk in Lithuania this weekend and then I had to immediately catch an overnight talk flight and go from the airport to do a talk here in Dubai. I didn't even get to go to the hotel. I mean, like Like I'm on planes a lot and I, you will never catch me on the escalator. I shouldn't say never, cuz sometimes you don't have a choice. Like there are no stairs, but if there's an option, I'm never on the moving sidewalk. I'm never in the escalator. I'm not in the elevator. And that's just generally the way I live. If I'm staying in a hotel and I'm anything, you know, less than about 5 floors, I tend to use the stairs when you get above that. Now there's a time issue and, and so I'll do the stairs a couple times during my stay, but not every time. So finding the opportunity to move constantly. Also when you're sitting, like for example, you and I are sitting at the moment. I actually often— are you standing? Good job. I was gonna say very often when I met, when I was at my home studio, I had my home studio set up that I did all my interviews and teaching and stuff standing. And, and, you know, so I'm always wanting to, to do that. I'm also always looking for ways to actively lift things. My wife caught onto this and said, hey, I have something for you to lift. And I'm like, great, what is it? She goes, it's the garbage. Take it outside. But the funny thing is, by turning it into lifting, I'm more motivated to do it because I know I have to look for that. That. Yeah. And so I think that if we do that on like a regular and daily basis, that's the, that's one of the biggest exercise upgrades we could ever create. Now, what we should build upon that we talk about a lot in WildFit is that we, we look at exercises being broken into 4 categories. There's the cleansing category that we just talked about, and then there's the, the, the sort of 3 fitness categories, and that is flexibility mobility, cardiovascular training, and, and muscle density and bone, bone and muscle density training, lifting. And I believe everybody should be doing all of those things.

For the mobility piece, the stretching, the movement, what would you recommend? Is it just doing yoga? Is it after exercise, pre-exercise?

What do, what do you recommend? Yoga is, say, the most common solution to this. And I, and I would say that yoga has become such a big word that I wouldn't wanna just say, go do yoga because frankly there's some pretty destructive yoga out there. As in my, in my observation. So if you're going to a yoga class where you're finding yourself compelled to try to stretch and compete with the other people in the class, then you're in the wrong yoga class. Yoga is a self-sport and it has nothing to do with the other people that are in the class. You should be stretching to your maximum stretch and then coming off that a little bit and then staying there long enough to get the stretch into your system. And you know, I, I, I made the mistake of going to a yoga class and I'm, I, I, I did lots of martial arts when I was young. I have certain types of flexibility. They're incredible. I can sit on the ground. I'm 55. I can sit on the ground, put my feet together and put my knees on the floor.

Most people can't do that. Do you have a natural flexibility? I was a gymnast as well, but my hips would never allow it. I could do the forward and backward splits, but the side splits, I was struggling.

But not the side. I could never do the forward and backward. But what would happen for me is I would go into the class and see what they were doing. And I would try to stretch. I would benchmark it based on the other people. And the instructor supported that. If you go to a yoga class, you should have an instructor that reminds you that this is your class and the other people are just accidentally here.

Here.

But I do think that yoga, generally speaking, a good yoga practice— Peggy Cappy is the person I would like unreservedly refer everybody to go and see. She's the one who brought yoga to PBS with her program Yoga for the Rest of Us and introduced yoga to millions of people. And she's just a total inspiration. And I like the way she does that. I also have to say I'm not a big fan of Bikram, you know, Bikram Choudhury as a human being, but I love his yoga. I can't, I can't, I actually quite like it. That, for me, it's one of those things I only need to do about 3 sessions once a quarter and I'm solid. I, it, doing Bikram yoga completely changed my flexibility. But outside of that, there's another area that I think people should really be looking in, and that is fascia work. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I was really surprised to find this out. A, a friend of mine, uh, Michael Gebbie, he was an Olympic, uh, windsurfer and he, uh, and a medalist. And, uh, then he moved to the Dominican Republic where, where we became friends and our kids became friends and so on. And I learned more about his work. And that was the first time I really started to pay attention to fascia. And they do this exercise of resistant stretching. So, you know, let's say, you know, they're pulling on your arm, they're pulling out on it while you're resisting against them. Yeah. Right. And it, it gets the fascia to kind of separate off and holy, suddenly your muscles pop bigger, you have more flexibility, you feel taller. Mm-hmm. And so I think that's a big part of, of that because in our life, we just, you watch people, they just get smaller and smaller. Smaller because the fascia is tightening all the time. And if you— in nature, every now and again, you would have to climb and lift up high, or you'd have to, you'd have to throw something, and you'd constantly be pulling the fascia away. But now it just keeps getting tighter and tighter and tighter, and that, that is a big problem with mobility.

Jumping in quickly, it's Claudia von Boeselager. I absolutely love bringing you these conversations for free each week, and I can do that thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. These are brands I've personally vetted and believe in, and I think you'll love them Supporting them means you're also supporting the show and your own longevity journey. Thanks for supporting them. Now here's today's sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Juvent. If you or someone you love has been struggling with chronic pain, arthritis, poor bone health, neuropathy, circulation issues, or even something as frustrating as constipation, this could be a real game changer. The Juvent Micro Impact platform breakthrough technology trusted by leading doctors and supported by over $45 million in research. Stand on the vibrational plate for 20 minutes and its gentle micro impacts work at the cellular level to stimulate circulation, strengthen your bones, and ease pain naturally and effectively. And because I want you to experience this for yourself, Juvent is offering you $300 off Just head to juvent.com/claudia. That's juvent.com/claudia. And use the code Claudia to claim your discount today. This episode is brought to you by Kineon. When it comes to longevity, it's not just about living longer. It's about staying active, strong, and pain-free as you age. And that's exactly what the Kineon Move+ Pro helps do. It's a wearable red light and laser therapy device that works at the cellular level to reduce inflammation, ease pain, and speed up recovery naturally. I love that it helps support your body's own repair process, not just mask symptoms. It's portable, easy to use at home, and trusted by athletes, biohackers, and health enthusiasts who want to keep moving and performing at their best. If you're ready to move from pain to possible, head over to kineon.io/claudia. That's kineon.io/claudia to get 10% off your Move+ Pro. This episode is brought to you by Calocurb. For those of us who struggle with food cravings, Calocurb is a natural, science-backed way to support appetite control and reduce cravings without relying on synthetic appetite suppressants. Its key ingredient, amaracate, works with your body's natural GLP-1 response to help regulate hunger signals and promote a feeling of fullness. Clinically evaluated and made from botanical ingredients, Kalocurb encourages mindful eating and healthier portion control. Personally, I take it before going out for a meal or whenever I feel cravings creeping in. If you want to experience it for yourself, visit kalocurb.com/longevityandlifestyle. As well and use code Claudia10 at checkout.

Wow. I love that idea too. I mean, I have a monkey bar, as you can imagine. We've got a bunch of different things going on here. So just that hanging or attempting to do pull-ups now that I've repaired my shoulder a little bit as well, I'll be back doing that. So I think, yeah, it's that opposite movement of just opening up more often. And I love that analogy with the fascia as well. I think that that's such a critical point. Let's talk about food freedom and seasonal eating. You said that it's not about what we eat, but about about why we eat. What are the psychological drivers behind cravings that most people and most experts completely misunderstand?

Eric, what would you say? So, okay, it's, it's not that it's not— I would, I would rephrase that a little bit. It's, it is about what we eat. It's also about why we eat. And most crucially, it's about when we eat. And, and what I mean by that is that these days, you know, there's tons of good information out there about what you should eat. There's obviously a lot of confusion, that I think generally speaking, we're all aware at this point that human beings have been seasonal and opportunistic hunter-gatherer omnivores. We, we, we kind of know that. So we know that, you know, eating a life of seasonally available meats, fishes, eggs, and fruits, nuts, and seeds and vegetables, you know, we kind of know that, right? So I know that a lot of people know it, but don't do it, but we know that. But the thing that most people don't really understand is that we have 3 very distinct energy modes. We have 3 very distinct fuel sources, and those fuel sources evolved in response to Mother Nature. So a Nile crocodile, for example, has a very interesting metabolism. Nothing like ours. A Nile crocodile can take out a buffalo and eat that buffalo and then not eat for another year. They don't, they just, their metabolism is very, very different than ours. They can eat once. It's one of the reasons, like if I have I have had the experience of walking along in, in the bush and seeing lions, and I know whether or not to be afraid of them cuz you can see if they've eaten recently and what have you. If they've eaten really recently, that's not to say they're not dangerous, they're just less likely to be. Whereas a crocodile, I have no idea when that bugger ate last. Like, I don't trust them at all. So yeah, we on the other hand evolved this different metabolism because one big difference is they don't regulate their temperature. We regulate our temperatures, which means we burn a lot of energy doing that., right? So we developed the ability to burn sugar and to burn fat and to burn protein. And we burnt them based on what we were eating. It's not like we, oh, I'll switch, you know, no, you ate something and then your body decided what season you were in. And so, you know, in, in a season where there were not readily available carbohydrates, you know, say in the spring when there's no fruits and no root vegetables, really all there is is, you know, meat and maybe some greens and that kind of stuff, then, then, you know, You would naturally go into ketosis. You would naturally go into what we call WildFit Spring. And during that time, your body would be doing phenomenal cleansing. It's a great time for, for building muscle mass, for bone density health, for it's, it's just a great season for those. It's a great season for mental clarity. And, and, and so on. But then the summer would roll around and, you know, some summer berries would show up and then you'd eat a few of those berries and your body would start immediately prioritizing sugar. Like instantly, there's no effort to switch to that. Once your body is burning sugar, it wants to burn sugar and it starts craving sugar and you start looking around and you become become less focused and more like scattered about where can I find bright colored things that I can eat? Like, you know, and the carb craving, you become a carnivore, right? And you become a carnivore and now your cravings go up and the desire to overeat becomes stronger. The person who eats the bread is also the person that orders dessert, right? That's, you know, carbs leads to more carbs. And that was really important because the next season was winter. And so if we did not fatten up, if we didn't eat enough of the berries, if we didn't eat every bit of the honey, if we didn't eat all the root vegetables, we we could find, then that might have made the difference as to whether or not we made it through winter. So we developed an insatiable appetite and a desire to overeat and stomachs that could extend. We even developed stomachs that could expand to the point of pain. But luckily, we developed endorphins that we produce when we find a lot of food so that we don't feel the pain while we're eating. We only feel it after because we needed— yeah, we needed to be able to overeat. But then winter came along and all food sources were reduced. And we're not talking about talking about, you know, winter in Nova Scotia or Minnesota or, or, or Norway. We're talking about Sub-Saharan African winter and drought and, and now there's not much food. And, and so our bodies at that point initially probably go to some of the fat stores, but then even then they're like, holy crap, we're not eating anything. We're starving. Maybe we shouldn't even burn our fat. And our bodies switch over and start burning protein and we, we start triggering autophagy. And so many people get worried about that, especially some of the gym trainers that just don't understand. They're like, you don't wanna burn your protein. You gotta get back in the gym. Okay, look, hold on a second. Now the body is so smart about this. And my, my favorite silly metaphor is that let's say, you know, you and I and our families got trapped in an old cabin in Norway and a blizzard blew in and we, we ran outta heating fuel and we needed to make a fire. Well, we'd have to start burning furniture. I mean, what else could we do? Right? But we wouldn't burn the good furniture first. We would burn the broken stuff. There's a broken picnic table. We're gonna burn that. There's that painting that everybody hates. We're gonna burn that. And our body does the same thing. It's like, it's looking around for broken amino chains and broken proteins and burning them out. And this is a super important part of the cleansing process that almost nobody does. And so that shift in metabolic health, the when to eat piece is, it's one of the reasons that we've been so successful with WildFit because when you get that piece right, it's amazing what kind of health conditions clear up.

Just to ask also, from my understanding, is it better to be burning energy in terms of ketosis? So from body fat versus from protein sources? Cause I, I know if you do prolonged fasts, right, you normally kick into ketosis, but I guess at some point also then you, your muscles are, are being used, right?

The protein.

I have an, one is better than the other.

I have an opinion about this and my opinion is informed by, let's say, you know, human history and then my own sort of observational patterns, like what I've seen having had a few hundred thousand people go through our programs. I will say that, you know, if you have a chat with, you know, Gary Brecker or Dave Asprey, they'll tell you, but what the mitochondria does at 4:30 on Tuesday, if you, you know, I'm not gonna go into that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just, let's just, you know, one principle that I rely on fairly heavily is that any science or research or fad or marketing that you ever see about exercise or food that violates what we know about evolutionary biology and human history must be considered suspect.

It doesn't mean it's wrong, but you should take it with a grain of salt.

Suspicious. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so we, you know, with that thought process, I feel like this issue of metabolism and which is the best mode to be if we look at Sub-Saharan Africa where our metabolism evolved, winter was, you know, it could be anywhere from several months to even years in a really serious drought, but typically it would be a few months long. Then after winter, the rainy season would come and then you'd enter into spring and that would last for, you know, 6 weeks to 2 or 3 months, something like that. And then summer would begin and maybe there'd be some carbohydrate availability in summer, and then that would move into fall, which would be another couple of months and there'd be some carbs around. And so that's the pattern. What that would say to me is that roughly speaking, winter is probably is probably the shortest period of time that we want to be in, but we do need to be in it. It is important in my opinion to fast and to do that cleansing. And since most of us are not gonna wanna live through a proper calorie deficit winter, the, the hack for that is doing at least 3-day fasts on some kind of regular basis. That's, that's my version of it. And you know, because all the real magic kicks in after the 48th hour, right? You know, that's, that's when the real magic starts happening in terms of the next 2, you know, that, and that's the protein burning when it comes to the, the, the fat versus sugar, let's say my opinion is that the home state should be ketosis. The home state should be, you know, in fat burning mode rather than occasional sugar burning mode. And if you're in health distress, that is to say you're dealing with some lifestyle condition or you're carrying extra weight, then that ratio should even be more harsh. If somebody wants to lose weight, eating carbs is just antithetical to the entire process. It's, it's it's, it's not gonna be helpful. Having extra weight on your body is the financial equivalent of having debt. And then eating carbs while you have debt is like spending on your credit cards. If you're basically fundamentally healthy and you wanna go charge something on your credit card, you go right ahead because you're gonna pay it off that month. You're fine. But if your body is still paying off the debt that it's got and you go spend on the credit card, you're just gonna start accumulating more weight.

It's not such a good idea. It's a great analogy. And just around the fasting. Obviously some people are like, oh my goodness, 3-day fast, how is that possible? For those who've never done it, it is easier than you think. But what is some tips or advice you would give to help somebody flip into ketosis? So going back to metabolic flexibility, flip into ketosis faster. And then what would you recommend for women who are still cycling? When is the right time to be looking at doing 3-day fasts?

All right. Such interesting stuff here. So first you said flip. I like that because the way we, the metaphor that we use in WildFit is that you've got this metabolic switch. And if you're really healthy, that switch can go flip-flop, flip-flop. It can change based on your eating. Now, the one way that it will always flip easily is if you eat sugar. So if you eat any carbs and you're in keto, basically immediately, because blood sugar getting too high will kill you, so your body basically acts like it's toxic and says, holy shit, and boom, foomp, you become a sugar burner. But getting it to move back to protein burning or fat burning, that's hard harder. And so for many people that have been living in the standard American diet or the standard Western diet or standard developed diet, they have spent most of their lives eating carbs just about every day. So they've been telling their body, hey, you know, winter's coming. I know it's been coming forever, but it's really coming. And they eat carbs every day. Then that switch gets stuck. It gets stuck. And then when they try to one day go on a keto diet, they're like, yeah, and it just won't go. And that's why many years ago, I remember reading Tim Ferriss saying, I think it was in the 4-Hour in your body that about 10% of the people that attempt a good ketogenic diet actually manage to get there, like, properly. And the reason is, is that if you— if that— if that lever is stuck, then there's a bunch of difficulty on the way. It's going to take time. You're going to have low energy. You're going to get keto rashes. Your, your bathroom experience is going to be weird. Your sleep's going to be funny because your, your body— because you're eating in a way that your body is not running to. But the good news is, is that once you've got that flipped and then you come back and then you do it again and you come back. That switch becomes really quick. So for me, I can go into carb season and then I come out, like about 4 weeks ago, I realized I had been doing carbs for too long. Like we moved out of our house in the Dominican Republic in June and we're basically living in vacation mode, you know? And, and I suddenly was like, you know what? I feel like those pants are a little tighter than I'd like them to be. Let's do something about that. But I switched, I was back in keto that day. Like I could feel it that day. Whereas for some people it could take a week or two to get there. The good news is once you've done it a few times, that switch becomes really flexible. And that's also true of fasting. Fasting for 3 days sounds insurmountable and impossible to many people. And the first time it can be hellish and awful. And then the second time it's like, that wasn't so bad. And by the third time, like, I like this. And you know, that's because they've become more metabolically flexible.

Do you have any hacks for getting into ketosis faster for someone new to this? And do you take any exogenous ketones?

As well? No, I don't. The main reason that I don't is that I know me and I know most people, and that is that if you start taking exogenous ketones, then you're going to be like, somebody offers you the tiramisu and you're like, well, I am trying to get into spring at the moment, but I've got the exogenous ketones. It's like taking lactaid so you can drink milk that your body doesn't want. Like, I'm not a big fan of that. That said, that said, I'm not against the idea if somebody's really diligently wanting to get there and get there more quickly. I think I think that there are, I, I think exogenous ketones are a possibility in that case to, to support the process moving more quickly. And it's something that I plan to experiment with now with our clients because we have about 10% of our clients when they go through the spring process, they suffer. And I'd like to see if I can end that suffering for them more quickly. And so I think exogenous ketones are probably a good idea there. But in the meantime, really the best thing is move your body. No excessive exercise, but move, like get out and hike and get a small sweat going. Drink a lot of water, keep your salts up and stick with it because once you cross into it, it's like arriving at the Holy Land.

It's just a different state of being. And that mental clarity is so beneficial as well. So yeah, it sounds painful, but I think the more you do it and reminds me, I haven't done a 3-day fast in a while, so I probably need to. How deep into ketosis do you get or would you recommend getting?

One of the things we do at WildFit is we will never ask you to count calories. We'll never ask you to weigh your food. We'll never ask you to measure any damn thing. In fact, we'll discourage you from even measuring weight. Like these modern measurements are largely destructive. I, you know, we need some of them here and there to check in and what have you. But I, I like, for example, using pee strips is ridiculous. I can make your, you know, if you want to go really deep into ketosis, just get dehydrated and then your pee strip will be dark green and you'll be super satisfied. But you know, no, my view is this. When you're ne— when you're trying to navigate the how deep into ketosis, what you're usually trying to do is nurse a sugar habit. What I mean is, is that you've heard the idea that, well, you can apparently eat up to 25 grams of sugar in the day and not break ketosis, so you can kind of measure how deep. When I go into spring, I don't eat carbs. And our ancestors, when they went into spring, they didn't eat carbs. There's no need for them. They didn't need to do that. Some people like to torture themselves and go, well, yeah, but I can have like one chocolate at the end of me, my meal, because it's under 25 grams. You can, you totally can. You're still gonna produce blood sugar issues. You're still gonna produce a bunch of insulin and you're gonna have cravings the next day. Whereas if you just went 3 days without that rubbish, the cravings would go.

Yeah, exactly. And then you have a choice as well. I wanna pick up on something you mentioned at the beginning about having a spiritual awakening when you were out running with has that, right? How much does spirituality play into the work you do now, your teachings, et cetera? And what are some things you would like people to know about that intuition, spirituality piece, irrespective of someone's religion, let's say?

It's kind of funny. I started my life as a speaker doing largely business speaking. So in those environments, you don't talk about meditation. You talk about visualization. You know, like you have to— Terminology is different. Yeah. You just gotta gently ease your way in there. Like you don't admit to wearing crystals and burning incense in your house and stuff like that. I've had a very, very long, I started meditating when I was 12 and I saw a version of meditating on a TV show on the Six Million Dollar Man when, when I was 12 and it just inspired me. And so whenever I was having to wait for a doctor's appointment or an airline or a boring teacher, I mean, you know, the only difference between that and daydreaming was that I'd learned to direct the thinking to some degree rather than just daydreaming. And that really has, that's really been a grounding energy in my life. The idea of spirituality is such a charged comment. You know, one observation I have is that if your, if your Instagram bio says I am spiritual, I would question that. You know, when it starts becoming an ego contest of who's the more spiritual person, then I'm like, I don't know, that, that seems to have lost its translation for me. So I don't, I don't want to speak to being, you know, particularly mystical or spiritual. I believe that our job job in this life is to enjoy it as much as we possibly can. That's our job. And if in that enjoyment we're motivated to create benefit for others, then that's wonderful. Then that makes it even better, I feel. And then if you have a spiritual calling and you have a sense of faith and trust in God or the universe, then I think that's wonderful too, because it gives you, it makes you feel a little less alone.

And I think I think that's kind of the best way I can put it. What's a question you wish more interviewers asked you but rarely do?

It depends really on what's going on in my life at any given point in time. Like, you know, I have my general interests around evolutionary mismatch and entrepreneurship and business. Yeah. But then I also, I'm really interested in, you know, in culture and I don't mean pop culture, but I mean, I'm really interested in things like freedom of speech and human rights and family court systems and stuff. And So while I'm often directed to speak about, say, nutritional anthropology or visiting the Hadza or behavioral psychology and those things that I've done a lot of work in, sometimes it is nice to do a veer-off conversation on, hey, what do you think about what's going on with freedom of speech in the world? And I think I would like more of those. I'll tell you, when I did Jordan Peterson's podcast, he caught me off guard. He did nothing anybody had ever done before. He basically did like a psych eval on me for 2 hours.

It was very interesting.

Interesting.

So what do you want people to know about freedom of speech and what's going on in the world at the moment?

Yeah, I think that what I'd like everybody to remember is that freedom of speech and generally freedom is not something given to us by the government ever. The government never gives us those things. What happens is, is that a very strong and determined population fights with violence to secure those freedoms and then turns those freedoms over to a government. And then that government over the next few decades and generations generations does everything they can to erode those freedoms, you know, to create safety. And then the next generation has to fight for those freedoms again. And it is our job as citizens to resist that erosion of our freedoms at every stage of the process, because if we don't, we end up with totalitarianism. So I really, I believe that we should be doing that. I don't, I don't like what I see happening in the UK where people being arrested for sharing posts on Facebook. They may as well bring Stasi and just roll them out as far as I can tell. And I'm aware that my saying this might mean that one day I walk through immigration in the UK and I get I said this. And you know, the point in time where I'm not allowed to enter a country because I've said this about that country, probably I shouldn't visit that country anymore. I find it really difficult. I find that the censoring games that we saw the American federal government subject Twitter and Facebook and those guys to was unconscionable. The controlling of that type of speech is just absolutely wrong. I am a, let's say, freedom of speech absolutist. I believe that you should pretty much be allowed to say whatever you want want because I believe that there are consequences baked into society for doing the wrong thing. So for example, if you espouse a bunch of hate speech and incite violence, you have two major consequences. Inciting violence is against the law, so you might get criminally charged for doing that. And equally, being an objectionable and hateful person might cost you your job and it might cost you your friends. And so freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of speech without consequence. It means freedom to express yourself. And I hope you will, because freedom of speech means that people get to out themselves. It means that we get to know who they really are. When we start to try to control what they say or control what they, you know, we just, I, and by the way, for all the fighting that people want to do about freedom of speech and they want to picket because they feel like we should go and protest and all this kind of stuff. And hey, I support the right to do that. What I do want to suggest is that with some exceptions, like what Canada did to the Freedom Convoy and what Biden's administration did to the social media platforms and what's happened in the UK today, with With some exceptions like those, the largest erosion of freedom of speech is our own imposed upon ourselves. The fear to speak our minds, the fear of public speaking that we were taught in school, the, you know, women should be seen and not heard, children should be seen and not heard, use your indoor voice. The programming that we've received that have caused us to become unwilling to communicate is actually a bigger threat to freedom of speech than any current government in the, let's say, in the free world.

I agree. So what would you encourage people listening to do more of? Is it to seek public speaking opportunities, to share their opinions?

What would you encourage? I would say this, that I don't believe that there's a, I don't believe that there's a better amplifier of professional value in the world than communication and public speaking skills. I just don't think there is. And in fact, when you look at things like the gender pay gap and that's a very contentious it's just conversation and there are different things that, that contribute to that. But where there are tangible measured influences on gender pay gap, one of them is really fascinating. It has to do with, with disagreeability. And, and, you know, the fact is that women on the whole are slightly more agreeable than men. Not all of them. I've, I've met my fair share on both sides of the spectrum, but on the average, and, and, and therefore men are on the average slightly more disagreeable. But if you use that sort of clinical psychology speak about disagreeability and da da Well, you could put it another way. Men feel more free to communicate, and that means they're more likely to ask for the promotion or to suggest a new function, or they're more likely to do those things and only by a tiny margin. But that tiny margin makes a significant difference. My belief is that one of the greatest professional advancements anyone can do, I don't care if they're an orthopedic surgeon or a waiter or a lawyer or a politician, one of the greatest advancements anybody can create in their professional life is to become comfortable and confident confident with speaking in front of a camera, in front of an audience, and they should definitely do it. They should go to Speaker Nation. They should go to Toastmasters. They should go and learn to be comfortable saying what needs to be said.

I love that. I have so many more questions that we didn't get to, Eric, so maybe we'll do a round 2 at one point. So what I want to ask is, first of all, where can people find you, your work? Where can they follow you?

And we'll link everything in the show notes. Absolutely. Well, I'm on social platforms, most of them @ericedmeans. I'm probably most active on Instagram. I actually personally answer people there whenever I can. My website is ericedmeads.com. Outfit is at getwildfit.com. One of the things, actually, I have two gifts. Look at this. I have two. Amazing. One is that we created a very extensive evolutionary mismatch assessment, and it is a test that you go and do. You don't have to give us any blood or hair samples, but it's about as effective as that. And you answer 100 questions, 10 questions in 10 areas of life, and it will measure where evolutionary mismatch is causing you difficulty, pain, even and then it provides you a customized book on evolutionary mismatch for you, a customized report that guides you through what you can do to start closing the gap. And while we're in beta until the end of the year, that test is currently free, like totally free. And it's really, it's a customized report on how to make everything better. It really is effective.

And then you gotta check it out. Where can people, where can people find that?

Gapfinder.com. Gapfinder.com. Yeah. And then the other one, since we spoke about speaking, is that there, one of the reasons that people have a hard time communicating is that there are 8 influence paths. There are 8 different styles of getting your message out into the world. And one of them is typically natural to you or to me or to anybody. And where we often develop an apprehension or a lack of confidence is when we've tried to communicate in one of the wrong paths and it hasn't worked as effectively for us. So, you know, as an example, Oprah Winfrey, free. She's a natural celebrity and her path is to attract a lot of attention to herself and then divert that attention and create stars, making herself a superstar. Robert Kiyosaki, on the other hand, you know, Rich Dad Poor Dad, his path is much more around the leveraging of IP. Now that's not to say that Oprah doesn't do that. She has very good people doing that for her. But Kiyosaki thinks that way, which is why he started with games and, you know, Cashflow Quadrant and, and, and all that kind of stuff, leveraging his IP. More than his own stardom. And so if people wanna know what their path is, we launched the Impact Dynamics test, which again is currently in beta and it's currently free.

It's at impactdynamics.net. I need to write these down. Impact Dynamics.

And then the other one was Gapfinder?

gapfinder.com and impactdynamics.net.

Okay, perfect.

So we'll link them all in the show notes for everybody too. Sounds good. As we finish up today, Eric, do you have a parting thought or message or piece of advice or ask from my audience today?

You know, what I would say is think about what I said about living in the zoo. You know, we really are living in the zoo. We, we, we are all dealing with some degree of nature deprivation syndrome. Every one of us. Most of us are running low on B12. Most of us are running low on vitamin D. Most of us are running really high on cortisol and adrenaline and stress. And that's really bizarre when you think that we're living in the safest times in the history of ever, and yet we're more stressed than ever before, and that's because we are like those zoo animals. We are in a perfect environment that's a mismatch for our instincts, our, our nutrition, our, and what have you. And so my ask for you would be to work on rewilding yourself. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean selling all your stuff and moving into the woods unless you, unless you want to. But what it does mean is spending more time by the water, spending more time in the forest, spending more time moving your body, getting sun on your skin and in your eyes. It means eating foods that are as natural as possible. I can tell you right I'll tell you right now, the number of our clients that have gone through our WildFit programs and called us and written to us and told us, my depression is over. They didn't come for that. They came to lose weight or they came to have— no, they're talking the third most commonly reported benefit of going through our programs is increased sense of wellbeing, simply being happier. And so I would say that the more nature you can bring into your house and the more you that you can take out into nature, the happier and more fulfilled you're going to be.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Eric, for coming on. Thank you to your audience for tuning in today. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Love your work.

Love what you're doing as well, Eric.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much for having me. Hi everyone, it's Claudia von Boeselager again. Before you take off, would you like to get a short email from me to you several times a month with top tips, insights, and strategies to help optimize your life, health, and business? This could be interesting posts or articles I've read on life and longevity, optimization, cool biohacking or lifestyle products that I've discovered, and other fun things to help you be at your best. It's a very short piece of inspiration for you, so if you want to receive it, check it out by going to llinsider.com.

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