4 Experts on How to Build Muscle | 1181 | Dave Asprey

I went through this period when I weighed 300 pounds when I was younger. So I said, I'm going to go on a low fat, low calorie diet. I'll work out an hour and a half a day, six days a week, half weights, half cardio, and I'm going to do it no matter what. And 18 months later, I was still the same weight. I was stronger, but I was still fat. Yeah. And it drove me nuts. Well, that cardio, 200 calories burnt on the treadmill. That 30 minutes, that cinnamon roll, that is 850 calories. They don't match. No. You can't pay for pizza on the treadmill. No. Comes down to nutrition. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey, and we're talking about nad, we're talking about mitochondrial function, all those things which help with muscle. But if you do those and you don't have muscle, what happens with aging patients?

Yeah, you know, this idea of skeletal muscle health has really been overlooked. And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak about skeletal muscle as again, the pinnacle of health and wellness and this organ of longevity. There's something very fascinating, and I just want to point this out to the people in the collective and your podcast listeners, is that we have been hyper focused on symptomology, meaning we've been hyper focused on end state of aging, whether that is Alzheimer's disease, or later stage cardiovascular disease, or even obesity, type 2 diabetes. These are diseases, in my opinion, and the evidence would support this of skeletal muscle first. So understanding and putting skeletal muscle into this framework of not just physical excellence, because by the way, I'm sure you guys saw, Dave is very ripped right now. Lean and ripped. But really skeletal muscle is this organ system. It is an endocrine organ system and it determines everything from glucose disposal, which are the carbohydrates that you eat, to its function as an endocrine organ through contracting skeletal muscle release of myokines. Now, your original question was, let's say you do NAD and you support mitochondria. That's all wonderful. And the reality is, as we age mitochondria, which a lot of mitochondria is found in skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle goes through physiological changes as we age, for example, like anabolic resistance. This idea that skeletal muscle is a nutrient sensing organ, which is fascinating. This idea that skeletal muscle senses the quality of the diet through the amino acids that are presented to it, and that efficiency of protein utilization declines as we age.

Here's a question. You say this happens as you age.

Potentially, yeah.

Oh, there you go. That was the little asterisk. It doesn't always happen as you age. It just happens if you don't do something about it. Because it's really important for listeners to get that vibe there. You can control this, but if you don't control it, it will happen.

I actually really appreciate that. In the literature, there's a large body of evidence related to aging skeletal muscle. This concept of sarcopenia, which is a decrease in muscle mass and function, and. And also a handful of causes related to what we would call the hallmarks of aging. You said something very smart. And it's this idea that these things don't have to happen. A large majority of the research that we look at from aging are healthy or sedentary adults.

Healthy my ass. Those are not healthy people.

There's exactly. So the framework that we are viewing these physiological changes in skeletal muscle, while we call them healthy older adults, the physical activity or the stimulation of skeletal muscle, they are a disease population. And this change, one of those changes with anabolic resistance, does it need to happen? Potentially it does not. So you're absolutely right. Potentially it does not. And again, can you overcome it? Can you change it?

Yes. You're. You're pointing out a major problem right now. It's that almost every test you can get done compares you to Muggles. And if you're a biohacker, you are not normal. You ideally are several standard deviations away from normal, which means you're abnormal in the best possible way. Like Superman's abnormal too. Right. And it's not a bad thing. So that means that any study you read on aging was. They looked at a whole bunch of sick people to see what they did. But those people are not like you. The statistics and those things are not like you. And the lab values they target are not like you. Like, at 40 years, as in my neuroscience company, every quantitative EEG done and brain aging actually goes along with muscle aging. But they compared them to a. A set of brains that were scanned in the 1970s from a bunch of Muggles. Like, these are people who are not healthy, who are smoking, were drinking. They didn't do any controls. Just a bunch of random people. Right. And there's nothing wrong with being a random person. It's just that that might not be what's for you. So I have a database of 1500 super brains of people who are into biohacking and brain training. And when you compare yourself to that, it's very different. Right now, you can't really say, well, how do I look like compared to super agers on these things in most studies. But you probably can with a measure of skeletal muscle mass, right?

Yeah.

How would you do it?

First of all, I've never heard the term super. Super agers. Is that your term?

I love that there is super centenarians which has been used. James Clement I think is the one who studied them the most who's been on the show. But super agers are just people who age really well. I just, I think I made that up, but I might have heard it somewhere else. I love that.

I've never heard it.

Okay. I think I might be. It might be an original accidental invention.

Well, I love it. Let's talk about, especially for the biohackers, this idea of optimal skeletal muscle. And before I provide you with any kind of answer, I want to tell you where the massive flaws in the way of thinking and looking at skeletal muscle are right now. We are very good at measuring fat mass and in fact that's what we've done. We've measured fat and bone. Dexa, which is considered the gold standard by the way. There are again large bodies of evidence. This is the shoulders that we stand upon. This idea that DEXA is going to tell us the amount of skeletal muscle and the optimal amount is flawed on a fundamental level. Are you ready?

I'm so happy you said this.

Okay, tell me why it doesn't actually measure skeletal muscle mass directly. DEXA that we have been using does not directly measure skeletal muscle mass, nor does it measure the quality of the tissue as an individual ages. Skeletal muscle becomes, if it is sedentary, there's this decrease in flux. It's like an over packed suitcase. Skeletal muscle that is not trained and leveraged with physical activity will become like a marbled steak. Yes, this one major cause of insulin resistance and the subsequent diseases that follow that. But skeletal muscle is not measured directly, routinely, nor in literature. The way in which it can be would be potentially MRI or ct. The majority of people do not have access to that and it is also not used in most research studies. So right now what we have is a extrapolation or an estimation of lean body mass, which is not the same as skeletal muscle mass and we are not directly measuring it. So actually, Dave, I have no idea what your optimal muscle mass should be.

This raises a couple questions. Okay. Number one, the founders of Pre Nouveau or the founder, the chief medical officer, which is an mri. Whole body mri, yes. Technology have been on the show. I did it at their first like beta location in Vancouver about five years ago and again last year in la. And that gave really good indication of these things, including things like liver fat, which isn't a muscle. But yeah, my number was, I think, under one and a half percent. It was a very, very low range, which is really important because if your liver is fatty, you probably have fatty muscle, and if your liver is not fatty, you probably don't have fatty muscle. I don't remember though in my score, a muscle quality score, even from those guys. So how would I get that?

Well, that's a great question. And again, these standards are not done yet. They don't exist. These are major gaps in where we are. One way in which you would see the quality of skeletal muscle is basically, I'm sure that there is a calculation where they would be able to look at intramuscular fat. Potentially there is, but not routinely done.

Okay. So I'm guessing that they could write the code for that. And I will actually ask Prenova about that because they, they rewrote all of the software using AI to stuff. So I, I don't think it would be a hard challenge. So let's ask them. Maybe you can advise them.

You know, and the other thing, with muscle, there is likely a genetic potential. And I think striving to reach whatever that individual potential is is important because skeletal muscle ultimately becomes your body armor. And do you have to spend four hours at the gym to get there? No. But again, thinking about there's a genetic propensity for an individual to put on skeletal muscle and providing yourself with strategies to be able to optimize that genetic potential, I think is absolutely critical.

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Yeah, I had a.

So what would you tell younger people to do about that?

So I, I have two thoughts on that. Number one, training younger is very advantageous and there's been a lot of information out there saying that when you are younger it's going to stunt growth. I have two very little children and that information is false. It doesn't stunt growth and it doesn't affect growth plates.

Even really heavy lifting.

It doesn't necessarily even have to be heavy. Heavy is all relative my understand.

I mean I looked at this a lot for my kids because they wanted to do the upgrade labs AI thing that flexes your bones And I thought.

That may be different bone flesh again. But again, you are talking about something that is utilizing AI as opposed to what is available for a non biohacking child.

Like a max weight deadlift for a six year old is probably not a good idea, but they should be doing strength work. But just max heavy strength work. I've told my kids, like wait, tier 18, you know, maybe 16. What do you think? I've seen 16 year olds on rowing teams actually stop rowing because of overtraining. But that may be volume of training, not because of actual strength.

Right. And I think that one could say probably a max deadlift at 6 or 16, maybe too young. But I think that based on the data and lifting and stimulating muscle, whether it's for muscle hypertrophy or strength, that there is no good clinical indication for individuals to not be training young.

Amen. Double down on that. One of my most recent proud father moments was when my teenage daughter spent some time with me and like watched me biohacking. We were traveling to a vision Lock counties conference in Europe and so I went to the gym with her and she's like, this is fun. And then she said, you know what, I can do this twice a week. Like it's only gonna take me 20 minutes. We have the stuff at home. And I'm like, yeah, but, but she made the own, her own decision to do it. It's fun and it's not like every morning, it's. And for a teenager who just wants to like feel good, not, you know, become a bodybuilder later in life, how much weight bearing exercise, how often is ideal?

So this is a great question because from your perspective, I think you've been able to kind of biohack the system. So I'm gonna give you information from traditional literature. Not using AI, not using any kind of stimulation. There is a very easy rule of thumb, individuals training three days a week. You could train three to five days a week. Again, there is a strength continuum so you don't have to necessarily load super heavy. And we've all heard this, the 8 to 12 repetitions. Again, could you do more than that? Absolutely. But I think starting three days a week is a perfect place to start. Unless you are Dave, unless you are using AI and working 10 sets, the other side to that. 10 sets per muscle group, the other side to that. That is a very generic recommendation, right?

This is a very generic, your fitness competitor level. Like I've seen your Instagram, you're like, look at my apple bottom and whatever the hell else you call it. But like, you are super fit, right? And, and you kind of, you're kind of a gym rat. And that's a compliment. Not a, you know, not a, an insult at all. But like, you, you love it, you want to do it. My kids are studying and like, they have stuff they want to do. Talk to me about minimum effective dose for teenagers, because they're more likely to do that. Three days a week is a lot to ask for a teenager who has.

A busy life potentially. Or are we training them to create physical discipline? So I will say there is that. There's the physical discipline aspect. The minimum effective dose could be some kind of high intensity interval training. Um, I'm curious to hear what kind of training you're doing. But for example, Martin Gabala created the one minute workout and he's up in Canada. And that is ma. I mean, that is full out, maximum effort. And that would just take a minute, a minute of total work and, and you would be toasted.

I would do that three times a week with kids. That's fine. What I'm doing now is pretty much a variety of the things in the strength chapter of Smarter, Not Harder. So I'll use blood flow restriction, which amplifies the results you get even if you use less weight. Electrical stimulation. Sometimes I'll use resistance bands instead of lifting weights. And I pretty much don't lift weights unless I'm at a hotel and you know, I'm like, oh, I guess I'll do some flies or whatever just because. And if I do that, I never spend more than about eight minutes doing that. And I just exhaust the muscles as fast as humanly possible. Because all the data that I've seen from doing the research on the book says the faster you exhaust and then the faster you recover equals more growth and less time. But if you exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, and then recover, your body doesn't adapt as quickly. So you don't see the same benefits. There may be some upper limit if you're a fitness competitor in a bodybuilder or something. But for me, like, I want to minimize the amount of time and energy that I put in to maintaining my. Right now I'm probably around 7 1/2% body fat.

I would guess that.

And I'm like, I have exceptionally dense bones and like, I'm, I'm in great shape. New York Times says I'm almost muscular, which is the vibe I want to live a long time. Like if I put on another, you know, whatever X number of inches, I'M actually gonna have a hard time fitting insurance. And I don't know that I'm likely to live longer if I had, you know, a much larger chest than I do now. Or am I? I don't know. You would know.

I. I have thoughts on this. The skeletal muscle as body armor. Let's say you were to get injured. Knock on wood. That never happens. Or you were to get sick. A individual, whether they are 40 or whether they are 20, will lose around 2 pounds of skeletal muscle in seven days. Probably closer to five days, depending on what they're eating.

Right.

Well, there is a grace period of about seven days with an increase in leucine content. So there is a grace period. But after seven days, that immobility is devastating for both strength and muscle mass. In an ideal world, that never happens. But the reality is, if in fact something were to happen, I would always like less, not more.

In the world where I mean more.

Muscle, not less muscle. Okay, More muscle rather than less.

Yeah.

There is no evidence to support that more muscle mass would be detrimental. I have not seen that. Now, we're not talking about bodybuilders using supraphysiological doses of any kind of hormone that's changing their muscular tissue. We're not talking about that.

We're talking about, yeah, there's a certain amount of load on the heart. If you're walking around with three times the normal amount of skeletal muscle mass, that's probably not good for you. And we see cardiac issues in those exceptionally large bodybuilders. But who knows? Maybe it is from all the roids. I'm doing my best also.

What you said, body mass. You know, body mass, you have to pump a lot of blood. So I do think that there is evidence to support a more muscular body rather than a less muscular body. In the idea of framing with prevention. The other thing that becomes really important is that we've seen this. We've seen that individuals who lose skeletal muscle have higher blood levels of glucose, have more insulin resistance, and oftentimes have elevated levels of triglycerides.

It. It makes so much sense because what is the muscle doing? It's actually using blood sugar. And if you don't have muscle and you have blood sugar, well, what's it gonna do exactly? And it's also gonna build up, which then you get advanced glycation end products, which is one of the major causes aging. And it's just a bad situation. But I. I have a little story about the value of muscle mass. About 25 years ago, my Father was in really good shape because he would, he'd been training in order to do like to walk the, the Rocky Mountain trail that goes from like Mexico to Canada. And he was really, really into these long distance solo backpacks. And he started getting pain in his stomach, like really, really bad pain. And went into the hospital and they said, we think it might be your appendix. And he goes, I don't have an appendix. What wrong? He just remembered it being taken out, but it wasn't. So it went gangrenous and exploded. And you know, as a doctor, that can be kind of fatal, right, when you start doing that. Well, because he was so muscular, he survived, but he lost 25 pounds of skeletal muscle during his recovery. If he hadn't had that muscle, he would have died. And he, he says that to this day. Um, so yeah, if you in a car accident, something bad happens. I don't know, government tells you you can't leave your house for three years, whatever. Having skeletal muscle mass might be good for you.

I would agree with you.

Think of your body like a high powered machine. Each part of it needs just the right amount of oil or tension in order to work the right way. Good blood flow is one of the most important things your human body needs. Without it, your organs get starved of the nutrients and oxygen they need to work. Well, good news. Calroy Health Sciences two supplements can help. Both are backed by really legit research. Arterosil HP protects the fragile inner lining of every blood vessel in your body. And and Vasconox HP provides nitric oxide support for up to 24 hours as measured by an open label published study. If you're ready to amp up your vascular game and keep your body Moving, go to calroy.comdave for a special deal. So guys, back when John was on this show, actually before you even on the show, you sent me one of the first 5x3 bars ever made. And this is something that you've become well known for. And this is the way you apply variable resistance. I even wrote about it in Smarter, Not Harder. It's just one of the several different ways that puts muscle on better than picking up rocks. And it, it, I think that the, it's probably a Facebook posting or something back then that I did it, it totally helped to blow up, but got a lot of attention on it and you could really feel and see the difference. And you just came out with a new digital version of the X3 bar, which is why I want to have you back on because this thing is really incredible. I'm all about the data. I don't care what some epidemiologist says or some super angry men's health, you know, exercise physiologist who's basically a troll. I don't care what they say. I really don't. All I care about is my data or your data. And your results are my results. So some clown can tell you that, you know, statins work and the only way to live longer is exercise. And there's a longevity guy out there, a doctor, trying to say these things right now. The reality is it's more complex, but show me the data. And the data is you. So with the X3 bar, I tried it for a few weeks before I promoted it. I was like, holy crap, this is different. And with the digital version, you have, you can show people they get stronger, faster, and you can show them exactly how much they did. So I'm. I'm a huge fan of this.

Well, I mean, you. You already have one, yet you're going to.

Yeah, I know the value of data for motivation, and I know the value of the X3 bar. So, like a digital X3 bar. Mm. It's so good.

So, yeah, like, variable resistance will make you absolutely stronger, so much faster. But. But the. The concept of progressive overload, I just. Most of the audience probably never heard that term. What it means is you need. I. I never liked the term before because when somebody would say, like, you know, what's your. What's your method of training? They're like progressive overload. So your method of getting stronger is getting stronger, because that's really what that means. It's like that. That kind of dumb. But the concept is, if you are getting stronger, you can progressively handle more resistance. So you can go up in repetitions, or you can do the same amount of repetitions, and each repetition is done slower. So more time under tension. That's progressive overload, or you're dealing with a higher level of resistance. So all three of those things, or a mix of any of those things, is greater force created. So you're progressing the overload. You only grow muscle from a protein synthesis standpoint when you best those numbers. So if you're not beating your previous, then you're not really doing anything.

Now.

This is just from a myofibro perspective, not a sarcoplasmic perspective. But for the people who want to be as strong as possible, you want to make sure you're breaking your record every time. So true.

Though, if I flew around the planet yesterday and I've got circadian Disruption, and I'm recovering from a cold and I go into lift. Do I really want to break my previous best on that day when my body isn't really ready to grow?

I would tell you, sleep today.

Let's do it.

Okay.

There you go. So that's part of what Upgrade Labs is doing. It's like, hey, let's get your data. And if you know your desire is to lift heavy, but your body is like, nuh, let's not do it. Let's put you in an advanced recovery protocol. Right? Yeah.

There are plenty of days where your body says no. You want to create that environment where you're besting your previous. So. So the original program was more like a standard kind of fitness program, but I'm doing something a little different now. Whereas we focus on strength, you basically just do one set per exercise per week, and, you know, you're fully recovered, going, going in because you had an entire week rest. And then in between, you just do volume work. And so, you know, my, my, my approach to this, and I haven't launched the program yet because the number of sets is like, bit different, you know, per body part, and the exercises are done a little differently because it's a little different focus. But ultimately what we want is just maximum blood flow. So, I mean, you can put your favorite Netflix show on and do sets of exercises.

Not.

This is critical, not to failure.

Okay.

You want to stop five reps short of failure. So you do your strength work. And you know what you can do? Let's say it's, you know, the black band, and you can do it 20 repetitions. Well, that's, you know, that's your, that's your strength work. But then when you switch gears to volume, which is what you do for the rest of the week, then it's just like, okay, I can do, let's say four or five sets or maybe 10 sets, and I'm just going to do 15 repetitions instead of 20 because you're just trying to compound the blood flow into the muscle over and over and over again. And that's where the size comes from.

So how many reps are you doing? Like the failure reps, did you say?

It takes 20 repetitions to just go to absolute complete fatigue.

Okay. And you do that how many times a week?

1.

So once a week you blow yourself out, basically. Right, okay. And then the rest of the time, you're. You're doing five reps short of blowing yourself out. You do that every day?

No, so I can do it. What I'm doing right now is six days a week. But I split the body three ways. So I do push upper body, pull upper body, and then legs. That's how I split it.

Got it. And this is an average of how many minutes per workout?

Oh, geez. I mean, the actual time under tension might be like six minutes per workout.

Six minutes. And the time, is there a rest between each set? Yeah.

Yeah.

So then what's the total time with resting and doing it?

Well, it depends. Like I tell people, do as much volume as you can do, it fits in your life.

People will say that what you're saying is too good to be true. Right? And I get this all the time, dude. I have a franchise with 27 locations and more signing up. And we have all this data and we're showing that it works, but it's not supposed to work, therefore it doesn't. And what you do, you know, they're saying, what do you mean? You're not, you know, blowing discs out with, you know, 16 plates on each side of something, therefore it doesn't work. And the reality is curiosity is okay and it's okay to be wrong. You know, I've shifted some of my nutritional strategies from what I did 10 plus years ago. I think I'm directionally accurate on it. And, you know, we all learn. And you may decide tomorrow that six reps instead of five away from failure works better. And then you'll just change and it won't mean you're a bad person, bottom line. And just this is just for people listening. John has real science and we're going to talk about stuff in the journal, strength and conditioning research and other things like that. But you see so much garbage out there, some of it funded by big Pharma and there's organized trolls for animal rights, terrorist groups trying to get you to be vegan. There's probably some like farmers group trying to get you to be carnivore. You know, that's, that's behind the scenes pulling puppets. I doubt it. But who knows? The bottom line is how do you know if something's trustworthy? Sometimes journals help. I think they do, but you gotta look at the people who are talking about it and the results they're getting with themselves in their communities. And I've, I've seen some pretty impressive results. You know, why it works and how it works. And frankly, you know, your biceps look like they're doing all right now.

Doing all right.

I gotta ask you this though, and this is something that's kind of tortured me. We've all seen videos of Shaolin monks and they're doing one finger push downs and they're doing these incredible feats of strength.

Yeah.

And they're small. Why are they so strong when they don't have the bulk that you or I have?

There's three ways to make a muscle bigger and there's four ways to get stronger. So what they're focusing on is the way to get stronger that doesn't make you bigger, which is neurological. Getting more muscle to fire. Got it. At a faster rate. Most people, when they, when they contract a muscle, it's, you know, maybe low percentage, 30%, whatever of the actual mechanical tissue available is recruited. So like, like a gymnast, they're great at getting almost the entire muscle to fire in, in anything they're doing with intention. So, you know, not necessarily, not necessarily reflexive, but more, more is recruited in their reflexes also, which is why they have such incredible balance. So the Shaolin monks, they, they also very, very carefully restrict their eating. You never see obese Shallon monk, that's for sure. Very, very, very small amount of calories, very high level of potentiation. And the muscle that they are growing, they're not getting a blood flow effect. They're doing mostly what X3 does, which is muscle protein synthesis. So they're just building sort of like lean, powerful muscle as opposed to a larger muscle that's capable of longer sustained contractions. That's, you know, that's sort of more like a bodybuilder.

But they don't get the bulk. Part of what I do is I read your stuff and I look at modern things and I also look at old practices. And a lot of these guys are practicing something called nigong, which is sort of the redheaded stepchild of qigong. And they teach that there's ligaments and tendon strength, that there's muscle strength, and that there's something they call interstitial strength or wang. And I don't exactly know what that is, but maybe that's the neurological stuff you're talking about. It's some other factor that we don't look at in modern exercise science. But maybe what those Shaolin masters are doing is definitely tendon and muscle and bone just strengthening and neurological strengthening. So they, like you said, they, they fire everything so they don't need as much. That would be more like driving a lighter car. Right. How do I get that I want to be stronger than you with 50% of the muscle mass that you have.

I mean, then that, you know, it's like lifting incredibly slow does that. So like, like real slow contractions with the X3. So, you know, I'm moving like molasses, you know, like three seconds up, three seconds back kind of thing. You're recruiting more tissue. So like the, the analogy I like is when you draw a line on a piece of paper, if you do it fast and not a straight line, it's easy. If you do it slowly, your hand will ache. It's because all the stabilization firing is required to enable you to draw that line straight. So all kinds of reflexes are firing to keep that pencil in your fingers and drawing a straight line. And all kinds of feedback information is being used from, you know, your visual interpretation of what's happening on the page and the mechanical feedback, what's going on in your hand. So, you know, you draw a straight line really slow and you know, your hand just like, ah. Why is my hand ache from drawing a line? Well, much more muscular involvement.

Okay. So really, really slow movement. That's something in, in my last book, smarter, not harder. Like really, really slow. Especially eccentrics. Makes a difference when you're using the new X3 bar that you came out with with the, the digital measurement, do you. It must track the speed that you're lowering the bar.

Yeah.

And how do you, how, how's the feedback work on that to encourage people to do it slower or faster?

So it's sampling multiple times per second.

Okay.

And it's. So what you're competing with is the total force you create. If you're going, if you're doing like crappy, you know, fast repetitions like that, you know, or just pushing out, letting it, you know, like snap back on you sort of thing. The aggregate number is going to see that you're hanging back in the, in the easier part of the motion a lot. You spend a lot more time back there than you are in the loaded position. So then you're going to have a lower total force. Now, once you learn how to do it right and you go slow and controlled contractions, that number starts jumping up. So you always want to be beating that number. That's progressive overload. So by looking at that total number, and I mean, it's like precise, like, like when I do a chest press, the aggregate number of pounds that's collected is like 20,000. So it's. I can, like, if I'm at, you know, 19,900, I know I've got to do another maybe half a repetition to beat my previous best, but then that's a trigger for Growth. And when you have the data in front of you, you said it's so motivating. Most people, they may only have a few workouts in their life where they actually get stronger and they are able to realize it and perform a greater level of force and then trigger growth again. It might only be a handful of times because most people have no view of this. And repetition, counting is not it because, like, you can do, like I see people when they start training, you know, they might do 10 reps on a bench press with a certain amount of weight, and then two weeks later they're doing 12 reps, but they're doing them faster. So they're actually doing less work by doing the 12 reps than with the 10. So are they getting stronger? No, they're not. And with this, like, you absolutely know every time, and if you waited the proper amount of time and you had the proper amount of protein on your days that you were training, you will notice you'll beat your number almost every time. And that's, that's what happened to me over, over the course of 2023 in my 14 hours of exercise.

Oh, man, it's tough. 14 hours. It's like almost, almost two full work days. Let's talk about diet for a minute. You, you seem like you're kind of a carnivore ish sort of guy these days. Where, where are you on the spectrum of protein? Source of protein, type of fat, frequency of carbs?

It's funny, I was going to ask you the same question. So. So not everybody sees this, but Dave and I were just hanging out in. At a conference, and you shredded like, like you said, you're like 5% body fat.

It's, it's insane for, for being where I came from, like, just like the, the veins and stuff. Like, like, I don't know. It's on YouTube.

This video is not doing it any justice. You look, there you go.

It's weird.

You look like an anatomy chart.

Yeah, I'm not displeased, we'll put it that way. But yeah, I like to think biohacking works when you keep adjusting over time. So first, tell me what you're doing, because you look like a balloon animal.

Yeah, actually, I'm more interested in what you're doing because I think you, you, you're closer to the right answer. But, um, yeah, I mean, I'm getting one gram per pound of body weight in quality protein. So either meat or, you know, fermentation.

Meat or fermentation? What are you fermenting So I have.

A supplement called Fortagen. It's.

Okay, so basically amino acids. Okay, got it.

Yeah.

So. So you're doing either protein or amino acids that have an equivalent amount of protein. Okay. And the difference for listeners, if you eat a steak or a whole protein, about 30% of it, of the calories in it go into breaking it down. If you eat the amino acids that happen after it breaks down, they're fully absorbed and you need far fewer of them, you need less calories. But as long as you're getting the amino acids at the end of it, there's benefits. There's probably also some metabolic signaling in the gut from eating protein that's probably beneficial, but we don't know. Okay. Yes. What do you do for carbs?

You know, I try and stay like under 15 grams a day.

Wow. And, and that works over time for you? Okay.

I mean it does, but I'm, I'm gonna ask you the same question. What are you doing?

You're not gonna like my answer. It's funny. And then. But first I want to get yours.

Wait a.

Hold on.

I mean now I'm a scientist. If there's a better answer, somebody can tell me. Like putting, you know, cramming cauliflower in my ears is going to make me like bigger and stronger. You see me like doing this all the time.

I'll be a gravel tarian. If it works, I don't even care how it tastes like, I am willing to do anything. It's better if it's proven.

Great.

Even if it's not proven, I'll probably try it if it's not going to kill me and I'll prove it myself if I have to. Because the most interesting things aren't proven. They just work right now. So first you got to tell me fats, type of fat, amount of fat, where are you on that?

Most of the time I'm one meal a day. It's pretty much like, like a 2 1/2 pound rib eye is what I eat every day.

Nice. Grass fed or not?

I try to. If I'm on the road then you know, like if I have to go to a Texas roadhouse.

You lift every day? You're doing omad. You do cold therapy and stuff too? When I can, like regularly.

But you, you'll chambers or not, they don't do it for me. I like, I like a cold plunge.

Okay. Where's your cortisol?

Well, it depends.

It does change every day. Who would have thought, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it can go decently high.

It's not like blown out low.

No.

Okay. Awesome. What I found over time is when people go following some of my recommendations, right? You can always overdo something. I'm like, do it when your body needs it. I'm like, I'll do it every day. I found that for most guys, if they do omad the one meal a day, so they're doing relatively long intermittent fasting and they're doing keto without a break that they usually about six, eight weeks they start seeing cortisol levels go up and up, which feels good at first cuz cortisol and adrenaline are energy sources. But then you start waking up and you're like, God, I didn't sleep well. This happened when I did three months of of what we would now call Carnivore when I was stress testing the edges of the bulletproof recommendations. And so you're like, God, my sleep quality just went to hell and your sleep score's no good. And then you wake up without a kickstand and then your hair gets a little bit thin. These are all like high cortisol things. So that's one of the reasons my recommendations were maybe you should.