In this conversational segment, the primary speaker shares his personal biohacking journey, focusing on his extensive experimentation with the ketogenic diet and various fasting protocols. He describes how, after meticulous planning—supplementation, electrolyte balance, calorie adequacy—he initially experienced heightened awareness, stable energy, and reduced hunger during the first days to weeks of ketosis. However, after about three to four weeks, he noticed a decline in mood, motivation, and a sense of not feeling like himself, likening it to the "frog in a boiling pot" analogy. Reintroducing carbohydrates restored his baseline mood and motivation, leading him to adopt a strategic, non‑regular use of keto rather than a continuous diet. He then outlines his preferred fasting regimen: daily time‑restricted feeding (12 pm–6 pm), a weekly 24‑hour fast, and a quarterly 72‑hour fast, which he claims reboot the system and provide many of the benefits associated with ketosis. The segment ends with a brief interjection from Claudia von Boeselager.
Chapters
So I began experimenting on the biohacking side of things in my late 20s. And so that included supplementation, diet plans, sleep hacks, different technologies, and so on. And some of them didn't really work out for me nearly as well as I had hoped. So I'll give you an example of that. The ketogenic diet, that was one thing that I spent years trying to perfect. Countless hours researching and reading books and listening to podcasts and added all of the electrolytes and the magnesium and the sodium and the potassium. I changed the meal composition. I made sure I was getting adequate calories. I mean everything. But ultimately what I would find was that in the first few days, even the first couple of weeks of going into a ketogenic diet and into ketosis by extension, I felt great. By great, I meant just very aware and I didn't have the hunger pangs and my energy levels were relatively stable. But then fast forward maybe 3 weeks in, a month in, I didn't notice how much it had impacted my, in a sense, personality and my preferences and my, my levels, presumably because my, my, and my focus and everything was different and off. And I didn't feel like myself. I didn't feel as good. And it was like the frog in a boiling pot of water experiment, right? Where at first I didn't notice anything. And it was only when it got far enough and I looked back, I'm like, I'm not feeling like myself. And then I would add carbs back to my diet and I would feel like myself again, my motivation, my mood would be uplifted and so on. So that was one of those experiments that over the course of years it took me to really come to that realization. And now I use it strategically, that diet, not regularly. And instead, to your question of whether one of the hacks that I really like, it would be fasting. And so most of the benefits, in fact, more of the benefits that you would get from a ketogenic diet, you can get from extended fasting. And I do that quite regularly. So I do time-restricted feeding every day. I only eat between typically 12:00 PM to around 6:00 PM.
Okay.
Once a week I'll do a 24-hour fast. That's typically Thursday into Friday. So I might have my last bite at 6 or 7:00 PM and then have my first bite on Friday at 6 or 7:00 PM. And then I will try— I'm not as disciplined with this as I used to be. Life with a girlfriend changes things. But every quarter I try to do a 3-day, 72-hour extended fast, and that just really reboots the system and you just feel So much better after going through that. It's difficult to do at first, but you get used to it and it's worth it.
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