A Day In The Life Of Ben Greenfield: Ben's Exact Morning, Afternoon & Evening Routines.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, their life skill, their experiential skill is just through the roof. Like you could drop my kids in the wilderness and they're gonna come out alive. They'll figure out their way around an iPhone later on. The number one thing you're gonna experience is what I described earlier. A feeling as though you've just meditated for an hour because your sympathetic nervous system is far less driven than it would normally be when you're breathing through your mouth and furthermore or vegetable oils. Just because I know I'm gonna have to stare at my omega 3 omega 6 fatty acid index two months from now. And I want it health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, howdy, howdy ho. As I'm proud to say, this is an interview that took place between myself and Will Ahmed of whoop. Former podcast guest. Been on the show a few times. We recorded in the windy, icy tundra out at Spartan World Championships and the dude grilled me about my morning, afternoon and evening routines. We took a deep dive, a fun deep dive, and all the show notes for everything that we talk about as I get put in the hot seat for about an hour you can find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com DayintheLife all right, we are live.

From Spartan Media Fest, presented by ATP and I'm here with Ben Greenfield. Ben, how we doing?

It's windy and cold. Actually, I just hiked up the creek bed back behind my condo back here and opted to not take a shower in the, in the chlorine infused water of my lodge and to instead go out in nature and do a little cold soak. And now I'm questioning my sanity because sitting out here in the in the wind that our listeners no doubt can hear.

Yeah.

And Chilli Squaw Valley.

We're here in Lake Tahoe. It's unbelievable event. Spartan World Championships. The obstacle course looks pretty epic. What does a cold soak mean for Ben Greenfield?

A cold soak for me does not mean I'm going to like strip down to my skivvies and stand next to an ice bath doing Wim hof breathing for five minutes and then soak for 20. It means I'm going to go find a cool waterfall or a cool creek, take off my shoes, jump in, activate that mammalian dive reflex by dunking my head a few times. I'm usually in there two to five minutes, right? And then I get out and go along my merry way. And that's about all this, this, this super duper low body fat body can handle, unfortunately.

So I've been a fan of yours for a while and you've built an amazing following around health and fitness and nutrition. I think you inspire a lot of people. Let's start with what, what got you where you are today? Like, did you always know that you wanted to be someone who has really focused their life around performance and optimization?

No, but I always knew I wanted to teach well, ever since I was a little boy and I was home schooled. But I was very self driven. I was an independent learner. And I would spend hours at the library, you know, Grimm's Fairy Tales or Tolkien or CS Lewis or any of these other, you know, grand books of fiction, you know, Arthur Conan Doyle. I would just eat it all up. And I would also eat up any book that my parents got for me. But what I love to do even more was turn around and write about those things. Like, I would write for like children's magazines and I would teach things I was learning to the neighborhood kids. I was one of the favorite babysitters of the community because I love to just like teach children and sit around and read books to them. And nothing was really that focused on nutrition and fitness and health, even though I grew up kind of in the sticks, you know, out in Idaho. So I love the outdoors, right? I love to explore and go find rattlesnakes and throw rocks at cows and you know, find new, new caves to explore. And I grew up with that love for, I guess what you might call nature immersion and movement. I've always been a mover and recently I even had my ayurvedic typing done. This so called constitutional assessment that a lot of Ayurvedic physicians will do where they monitor your pulse and they look at your birth date and your birthplace and your birth time, and it's a form of ayurvedic typing. And they of course type me as someone who needs to constantly be moving. And I said, yes, that defines me to the core. And when I was 14 years old, I really started to play a lot of tennis. And even though up until that point, you know, I dinked around in baseball and basketball and, you know, my parents had me in soccer every year. I wasn't that passionate about that stuff in terms of like, like hacking it, you know, hacking the fitness and the nutrition of it. I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, but tennis, like, for tennis, I was like, okay, how can I increase shoulder power? How you Know what? What physiologically length of a hill repeat should I do to optimize my tennis game? What. What kind of move should I do? You know? And so that's what got me interested. And then from there, you know, all the reading and the research and the teaching started to get hyper focused on exercise physiology and nutrition.

So you fell in love with the research more than you fell in love with tennis, it sounds like.

I actually kind of fell in love with my tennis instructor. She was pretty hot. But no, I fell in love with both. Both the science and the application.

Yeah.

Which is what I still love to do. I mean, we're sitting here at Spartan World Championships. Like, I love Spartan World Championships, but I want to. I went on a walk with the dude yesterday, and he's picking my brain for, like a half hour. Like, okay, what's my electrolyte load need to be? How many calories per hour? Fluid intake, you know, pacing, all that stuff. And while I love to be out there on the race course, I also dig just chatting with cats about that thing, right? Like, how do you actually unpack the science behind what's going on in this race? Which is why, I think, for the most part, endurance sports wound up drawing me in a little bit more than some of, like, the power sports. I was doing, like, tennis and water polo, and I primarily play tennis, water polo, and volleyball at Idaho. And it seems like endurance sports are a harder nut to crack when it comes to the physiology and the nutrition, because they're sports of attrition, really.

And so important too, right? Like, you can have a freak basketball player who's just really good at shooting, right?

You can sit in a baseball dugout, eat Doritos, right? And maybe be kind of dehydrated and still get out there and hit a home run.

If you don't have the physiology dialed for endurance, you're your host.

We just offended a bunch of incredible Hulks who are playing football and basketball.

No, I mean, I think. Look, I think those guys are amazing too. I'm just saying it's. It's more important if your sport is purely endurance.

It is more important because if you don't eat right and you don't pace right, you're screwed. More so than. Than any other flavor of sport.

Let's walk through a day in your life, because I. I bet you have a lot of interesting things that you do over the course of the day. Walk me through. From the moment you wake up, what's the first thing you do do?

Well, it depends on whether I'm traveling or whether I'm at home.

Let's pretend you're at home.

But it, but, but really, whether I'm at home or I'm traveling, the same general practices persist throughout. So I take large elements of my home routine with me when I'm on the road, with the exception being that I have a lot of fancy things at my house that I can't use when I'm traveling. So, you know, whereas when I'm at home, when I'm sipping my morning cup of coffee, I might be using like a photo biomodulation red light panel. When I'm traveling, I'm sipping my cup of coffee at the hotel coffee table.

So you wake up and the first thing you do is drink coffee?

No, no, I wish, I wish I could wake up and roll over in a piping hot cup of coffee has materialized there. But I'm not that lucky. I wake up and the very first thing that I do is I open my gratitude journal and I read and inspire inspiring verse of scripture and I gratitude journal about one thing that I'm grateful for that day, one truth that really leapt out to me from what I read, and one person who I can pray for or help or serve that day.

Wow, that sounds nice.

If time permits, I will also read like I'm reading Ryan Holiday's Stillness is the Key right now.

Yeah, A lot of people have been talking about that book.

Yeah. Depending on when I wake up, because I don't wake to an alarm unless I have a flight to catch. If I have an extra 10 to 15 minutes to lay in bed and I'm looking ahead and knowing that I have that, that affluence of time. I will also read something devotional, something like, you know, this Ryan Holiday book that I'm going through, something from scripture, so I'll spend a little bit of extra time in bed. But that's, that's exactly how I start my day, whether I'm traveling or whether I'm on the road.

So gratitude, some reading. Okay. At that point, you're gonna get out.

Of bed probably then I get out of bed. And if I am at home, I mean, we could get into the weeds here, so we might as well. If I'm at home, I wander into the bathroom and I wash my face with a good, like, oil cleansing. I'm using the one from Ali Tura right now. Shout out to my friend Danny Nilo down there. And so I wash my face, just, you know, wash the oils and things off. And then I use Oil pulling oil, which is a blend of different essential oils that clean the bacteria of the mouth. This is another kind of ayurvedic practice. So.

And we'll include a lot of the stuff in the show notes, by the way.

Yeah, I put the oil pulling oil in into my mouth and a lot of people just use coconut oil. But there's a lot of good blends that you can buy on Amazon that also have things like peppermint and oregano and rosemary. A company called the Dirt makes a pretty good brand that I like. And so, so I'll oil pull swishing in my mouth as I go downstairs and begin to proceed about the other elements of my day. So I've got oil in my mouth. So if my wife's already up and she tries to say good morning, it's good morning to my kids. But usually I'm the first one up because when I'm up it's typically right around 6am and most of the rest of my family doesn't get up till around seven. So I go downstairs and while I'm oil pulling I begin to prepare some element of coffee. I'm a big fan of coffee versus green tea or matcha or anything else. And so I grind the coffee and usually I'll either be making a French press or we have a really nice coffee maker that gives a super smooth cup. It's called a Wilfa Precision. And I don't remember the actual, I don't remember how it's not a pour over but it kind of infuses the water at a very fast rate with hot water, like spraying it through the grinds, it gives a super smooth cup. So I'll either make that or French press. But as the water is heating for the French press or as that Wilf of precision maker is making the coffee or if I'm in my hotel room and I'm traveling and I just have, you know, hot water heating up or I, you know, I have coffee being prepared in another manner. I spend the first 15 minutes of my day basically taking care of my body. Meaning I take out foam rollers, lacrosse balls, I travel with small mobility tools. And my first 15 minutes are my self love time, my me time to basically take any nagging ache or pain, anything I want to foam roll, anything that feels like it needs stretching. And I just kind of combine breathing and stretching and typically that oils in my mouth for a good 15 minutes or so. So sometimes I'm starting my stretching before I've even spat that out. But as the coffee is getting ready. I'm just basically moving my body and preparing it for the day, day, rolling out, anything that needs rolling out. Focusing on deep nasal breathing. Just a lot of self love. And you know, I figure every week I'm getting a good 75 minutes of mobility work, you know, even in the absence of massage. Yeah, these little things add up. And so, so I get through all of that and then by then the coffee's ready. And so I'll take my coffee and delve into morning reading. So I will follow certain accounts on Twitter, I subscribe to certain research reviews and digests. A lot of times people are emailing me different things to read in terms of journals and research. So I always start off the day by learning versus reacting and responding and even creating. I don't do a lot of writing early in the morning. The reason for that honestly is it's just easy to sip a cup of coffee and read. And when I'm reading I want to start to get the wheels turning like what's come out today in nutrition and science and fitness and in exercise research. So typically It's a good 20 to 30 minutes that I'm just reading and drinking coffee and researching and avoiding push notifications, avoiding, you know, emails that I don't need to see. I have one important folder that's, that's where all the, you know, everything filters in that I know is important filters into that folder. So that's the only email folder that into to check in the morning. And I spent time drinking my coffee and going through all of that.

Now why coffee versus tea? I imagine you're someone who's done a lot of research on one versus the other.

Well a, I like coffee. I grew up on coffee. It's a comfort food for me. My father was a gourmet coffee roaster and I just, I understand coffee. I own a company that produces coffee. So I eat my own dog food.

Yeah.

And I find that green tea makes me just a little bit nauseous as does Matcha. I don't care for the tannic flavor of a black tea. And even though I do have a giant mason glass jar full of water, when I, when I spit out that oil at some point, you know, I spit out the oil, I swish out my mouth and even before I've had my coffee, I have a giant glass of water. And typically I put some hydrogen tablets in that hydrogen rich water has been shown to be very good anti inflammatory and have some other good benefits. So I drink this giant glass of hydrogen rich water but coffee is just for a multitude of reasons. And of course, we know that when taken post workout, it can amplify glycogen restoration. We know that it can increase free fatty acid utilization. If taken pre workout, it staves off diabetes and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and it initiates liver and gallbladder release of bile. Like, there's a lot of cool things that it does for you. And it does a really good job initiating a bowel movement, which is typically where I'm off to, right? Like after I've done my. My reading and my research, I. I go and have my bowel movement, you know, and that's, you know, usually a good 10 to 15 minutes of just, you know, the squatty potty and just completely, completely getting my. Myself in that state of bliss, emptiness, to where I don't feel as though I've got anything left in me. And then. And actually a couple of times a week, and this is because I genetically have a higher than normal risk for colon cancer, and I have had several family members come down with colon cancer. I actually do a coffee enema. So I've got coffee going up both sides and there's. There's nothing to make you feel as clean as a whistle. Like a. Wow, that's a real.

I mean, what made you start doing that?

Looking into it. I interviewed a few kind of big health influencers who have that as a regular practice, spoke with several people who just swear by it as just like a crucial part of their week to keep things moving and to stave off constipation. And there's a little bit of detoxification effect that occurs, you know, as you, as you release a lot of the, you know, the phase one and phase two liver conjugates out into the bile. It helps to move those along. So it's just, you know, I've had two colonoscopies. I'm cleaning as a whistle. And I think a big part of it is my regular coffee enema practice for the past three years.

You've done a phenomenal job romanticizing that, which I respect, honestly, if you have enough key terms.

It feels, it feels absolutely wonderful to be honest with you.

Okay, so you've done that now. Where are you in the day? What's up next?

Okay, so then I always eat anything yet, right? No, no, I always, every day, do a 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast. So the coffee's always black. I don't consume any supplements that have any calories in them like fish oil or anything like that. The oil that I'm pulling with, of course because it's full of the bacteria from my mouth, gets spat out into the garbage can. So after I've used the restroom, I'll typically do either a, a full on workout if my day and my upcoming schedule dictates that I'm not going to have much time, or I know I'm going to have a lot of decision making fatigue or cognitive fatigue at the end of the day that would leave me feeling a little bit too drained to do a hard workout. In that case, I will do typically a concurrent strength and endurance workout that involves the type of training that would prepare one for an obstacle course race like this. So a lot of running and air assault, bike and burpees and kind of like cardiovascular modes interspersed with sandbag carries and mace slams and pull ups and loaded push ups and basically a variety of functional moves combined with cardio. That's nine times out of 10 the type of workout that I'm doing. So it's high intensity, it's high intensity concurrent strength and endurance training.

Not a lot of break time, almost.

No break time, no. I squeeze a lot of volume into about 60 minutes of work time. And that would be again if the afternoon or evening is not going to permit me to do that. Because it's in the afternoon or evening when your grip strength peaks and your testosterone peaks, your post workout protein synthesis peaks, your body temperature peaks.

So it's better just to interrupt for saying that's why most athletes prefer working out in the afternoon, isn't it?

I think so, yeah.

I mean, just based on that natural.

Rhythm, let's face it, some of us are slow in the morning, it takes longer to warm up. But if I'm able to do, do that workout in the afternoon or evening instead based on my schedule, I do for the reasons I've just stated. And what I prefer to do is something similar to what I did this morning or what I'll do at home. A walk in the sunshine, an easy swim or some time in the sauna and you know, just something very parasympathetic based, something that still gets me moving, something that allows me to continue to breathe and clear my head for the day. But you know, if, if time does not permit for that and I anticipate that the day is going to go a different way. You know, typically what I'm doing is that relaxation that I normally do at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day. But either way I've got two movement sessions per day, right One hard one and one kind of easy parasympathetic.

Sauna, swim, walk, two types of activities, no matter what.

Two types of activities per day, no matter what. The first one's always fasted.

Got it. And what do you think right now is underrated in fitness? Just from like a, an athletic standpoint or a movement standpoint.

Minimal effective dose of training. We talked about this. You and I were on a panel up in Vancouver recently and this came up, you know, amongst kind of the biohacker community. And this idea of time under tension being the key versus sets and reps mean two to three minutes of time under tension for a muscle group is enough to initiate hypertrophy and muscle maintenance. So this concept of like super slow training, single set to failure, or this idea of high intensity interval training for 15 to 20 minutes versus an hour or two of steady state endurance training, it's just for people with increasingly busy lives, just an absolutely fabulous time hack. And I incorporate a lot of those concepts as well. Meaning that for example, if I were doing concurrent strength and endurance training, I might do one single super slow three minute chest press, you know, set to failure of some kind of a push up or a chest press or a dumbbell press or something like that. And then go on, do a set of high intensity cardio, right, like say a tabata set or two minutes as far as I can go like a 500 meter row, then come back and do one single set to failure for shoulder, one single set to failure for, for poles or pull downs, one single set for squats or deadlifts, et cetera. And I think that this idea of minimum effective dose is very useful. And there are of course technologies, you know, for, for me, you know, I'm often labeled as a biohacker and I, I do like some of the technologies that have been created to make this attainable for people. Like, you know that that Vasper machine that combines cold blood flow restriction training, a full body exercise machine, and 21 minutes of high intensity interval training that gives you strength and cardio in the equivalent of like a 3 hour workout and 20 minutes or the ARX fit machines, which are basically motorized driven machines that produce a massive eccentric load that completely exhaust you over that course of two to three minutes. And it's one set for each of those muscle groups. So you get what you get in a 60 minute strength training session in 15 to 20 minutes. So sometimes I think people might feel as though they need to needlessly spend too much time at the gym. That, that being said, There are some of us, probably a lot of people walking around here at this race, a lot of people in the fitness culture, a lot of people who might listen to our podcasts who like, the gym is their happy place, right? That's their place of meditation for me. Yeah, for me, I love to go to the gym and spend like an hour at the gym just, just doing stuff, right? Just, just moving stuff, listening to a good audiobook or podcast. I find for me it's just as simple, stabilizing, if not more than meditation. You know, I'm constantly focusing on body awareness and mindfulness while I'm at the gym. I'm breathing through my nose. I'm using my breath, my prana, to drive me through movements. I'm not watching tv, I'm not on my phone, I'm not chatting with people. I'm in this very deep, focused space. So, you know, I need to couch that idea of minimal effective dose of training with the idea that if, you know, if the gym is your happy place or that longer workout is your happy place, then don't feel guilty about that. Don't over train, but don't feel guilty about that.

Talk about your breath, work through your nose and the importance of breathing through your nose versus other areas.

Well, there's a few interesting areas to explore regarding this when you look at the animal kingdom. You know, the naked mole rat, the bowhead whale, many long lived species, they found to have a very high CO2 tolerance, meaning that they maintain high levels of CO2 and high levels of oxygen simultaneously. And based on something called the Bohr curve and exercise physiology, we know that when you have high levels of CO2, when you're not breathing off CO2 through something like hyperventilation, oxygen dissociates more readily into tissues such as muscle tissue and heart tissue. And so you're actually able to more readily oxygenate tissues when you have simultaneously elevated levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide. One of the best ways to do that is to breathe through your nose. Another very good way to do that is to focus on your exhale lasting slightly longer than your inhale. And there's a very good book about this called the Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McCown.

And to be clear, right, it's exclusively through your nose, right?

Ideally because the nose allows you to breathe out in that slow manner versus pursing your lips, which can be a little bit difficult to remember to do when you're exercising. And furthermore, when you breathe through your nose, you are humidifying the air, which allows for more oxygen dissociation in the lungs, in the alveolar space. In addition to that, you actually tend to breathe more diaphragmatically when you breathe through your nose. When you breathe through your chest, there are baroreceptors in your chest that can activate the endocrine system that can cause a higher release of cortisol. And so by breathing through your nose, you're actually keeping yourself in a slightly less sympathetically driven state while you're exercising.

Which is very important because your sympathetic system is what goes into overdrive when you're exercising. So if you can decrease that at this and still have the same output, you're making your body more efficient in a way.

Right. And for anyone who has not adjusted, let's say, do whatever strength training session that you would normally do, but either breathe through your nose the entire time or use a device like I recently discovered a device, it's a mouthpiece that pretty much makes it impossible to breathe through your mouth. You have to breathe through your Nose, called an Opti O2, I think is how it's spelled. Optio 2. And if you do this, if you try this, I guarantee you will come out of your strength training session or your time at the gym, or even your run. Right. They used to have the, the Spartan boys, right, the actual Spartan boys. Not, not the little ones running around orange T shirts here. But like thousands of years ago, the Spartan boys would actually put gravel or water in their mouths and be forced to run a rigorous trail while only breathing through their nose. And then they would need to spit out that gravel or that same volume of water at the end. Yeah, but if you have, if you, if you're listening and you haven't yet tried this, the number one thing you're going to experience is what I described earlier, a feeling as though you've just meditated for an hour. Because your sympathetic nervous system is far less driven than it would normally be when you're breathing through your mouth. And furthermore, you are more mindful of your entire body because your body is driven by your prama, your prana, your life force, your breath. And so by being constantly in tune with that during your entire workout, you really do feel as though you're in an elevated state when you finish.

Really fascinating. Okay, so let's go back. You've now finished some kind of an activity session. Could be high intensity workout, could be more, you know, something more parasympathetic. What are you doing now in your day?

So at that point, typically I'll go in, I'll visit With my family for a little while. You know, the boys typically are up by then making themselves breakfast, all chat about the day. Usually we have like a little family kind of team meeting. You know, what's going on today, what's the schedule looks like, you know, what, when's jiu jitsu? When soccer, when are we gonna have dinner? Just like, you know, just kind of getting on the same page with everybody.

How old are your kids?

They're 11 years old.

So homeschooled?

They're not homeschooled per se. They are unschooled, meaning that we do not use a curriculum. There is zero structure. They wake up in the morning and they do whatever they want to do. And you know, my job as a parent is to simply surround them with as many proactive activities and people and teachers and tutors and things that keep them from waking up and, you know, flipping on the TV and playing video games all day. And they stay very busy, you know, building tree forts and playing in the woods and shooting bow and arrow and meeting with their Spanish teacher and their jiu jitsu instructor. So they have a fantastic day. It's like a childhood dream.

And how, how do you know that they're developing at a rate that's better than say their 11 year old equivalents?

Standardized testing. They still need to take standardized testing. Yeah, the state of Washington requires them to take standardized testing in terms of they do well and in terms of practical hands on experience, I mean, they are amazing chefs. They have a cooking podcast, they run a business, they know woodworking skills, they know how to use a skill saw, they built a tree for it, they can hunt and kill and field dress an animal. Like in my opinion, all that is far more important than how do you match up on a standardized test. So their life skill, their experiential skill is just through the roof. Like you could drop my kids in the wilderness and they're going to come out alive. And I think that as a base foundation, that's important. They'll figure out their way around an iPhone later on.

So, okay, so family time. And at what point now are you eating?

I typically this, this is around 9, 30 or 10. So I, I have my entire team. So I own a supplements company, Kion, and then I also do a lot of consulting. I do a lot of coaching through Ben Greenfield Fitness. I record podcasts, I write. I spend typically about 10 hours each week just visiting with my private coaching clients or people who have hired me to review their blood, their biomarkers, etc. But my team knows that nothing gets scheduled before about 9:30 to 10. Right. So I have that morning available. And then typically starting at about 10 is when I'm like a horse with blinders. No push notifications, no emails, no text messages. It's just like four to five hours a day deep work till 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon. But it's at about 9:30 kind of while I'm visiting with my family, touring around the kitchen, I'm usually just making a smoothie, like just a, like a superfood smoothie.

Okay. And, and that four to five hours of work that could be anything from business related to research.

Yep. It, it's, it's whatever happens to be on the task for that for that day. But for me it is consults and phone calls with clients who have hired me to manage their health or their sleep or any other element of their performance. It is writing, meaning writing articles for BenGreenfieldFitness.com editing articles, working on articles from magazines or working on book chapters, or it is recording a podcast, either being interviewed or interviewing someone from my own show. So I'm a big believer in kind of Cal Newport's idea of doing work. And I spend those four to five hours just immersed in non reactive work. Right. Like the emails, those get saved for the afternoon or the early evening. The reactive. Hey Ben, can you shoot a quick, quick video for this or two minutes of this, three minutes of that. All that stuff gets saved for later on in the day because that's easy to do even when you're cognitive fatigue like you, you can respond and you can react, but my time is my time from about 9:30 or 10 up until about 1:30 or 2. Nothing distracts me. That's all deep work time.

And do you take any kinds of supplements or brain enhancement tools at this point?

So I have my cup of coffee in the morning and in many cases that will have like some four sigmatic mushroom extract in it, like some, some lion's mane or some chaga or something like that. Sometimes I'll take a nootropic like qualia mind or qualia focus typically to keep my appetite satiated. As I'm getting going through that morning of work, I am chewing gum. Sometimes it's nicotine gum, often with sparkling water or Zevia. And so yeah, usually there's some kind of stimulant kind of keeping me going during that time. In addition my, my office is just littered with all these pieces of biohacking equipment that I use while I'm working Out. So I'm standing on a grounding mat to reduce inflammation while I'm at work. I have, you know, light panels, these red light infrared panels that kind of shine light on me while I'm working. I have a walking treadmill, you know, a standing treadmill desk, a little balance board. I have a kettlebell. So I'm kind of constantly moving at the office. I mean, technically, even if I don't get a chance to work out during the day, I'm taking like 15,000 steps a day just talking to people and, you know, moving around and doing things in my office. And one thing I didn't mention, by the way, was, you know, when I. When I say I'm having a smoothie for breakfast, my smoothies are pretty damn extra extravagant like that. We're talking like bone broth, collagen, coconut milk, usually stevia, sea salts. And I blend it all up to, like an ice cream texture so I can eat it with a spoon, almost like in a side bowl. And then I'll top it with, like, spiraling and chlorella and cacao nibs and coconut flakes and all these, like, it's.

I bet your kitchen cabinet's pretty epic looking.

It is pretty epic. Just there's a lot of good stuff in there. And really, you know, most of. Most of everything else I eat, it's very. Almost like. I wouldn't describe it as paleo, but it's almost like a bastardized version of the carnivore diet. Right. Like, so I eat a lot of. A lot of organic wild meat. I hunt. So, you know, we have a freezer full of meat that I've hunted, and I also will order good organic meats. One of my favorite companies.

What do you hunt?

I hunt white tailed deer, elk, turkey, axis deer, pig.

And what do you. What do you kill with? Kind of a naive question.

A Hoyt. Oh, wow.

So you're not even using a gun. You're out there.

No, no, I. I like the challenge of. Of spot and stock with a bow.

Yeah, that seems amazing, actually. That. That's got to be fairly old school. And that's got to require a lot of technique, I would think.

Like, I practice every day. I practice shooting every day when I'm.

At home with a bow.

Yeah. And I travel with this little, like, handheld device. Allows me to kind of practice while I'm traveling without my bow.

If someone wanted to get into. Would you call it archery? Is that the right way to describe it? If someone wanted to get into archery, how would they Go about doing that.

My method was to visit my local bow shop and to visit with them, to get fit by them to have a bow built. Then I began to shoot in some archery competitions and also some hunting competitions called Train to Hunt. I went out hunting with some people who kind of mentored me and guided me through my first hunts. I subscribe to Peterson's Bow Hunting magazine. There's a few really good bow hunting podcasts out there, like my friend John Dudley's Knock on Archery is a good show. And so, you know, a little bit of magazine, a little bit of podcast, and then just immersing myself in the local hunting community.

That's amazing, man. That seems like such a pure passion is to be good at archery.

Yeah. And it allows you to put the meat in the freezer. And so, you know, I'm, I am, I eat like a nose to tail. So a lot of organ meats, liver, heart, kidney, a lot of good grass fed wild meat, like wild caught salmon and elk, bison, buffalo, etc. And then just lots of like small berries, tubers like sweet potato, pumpkin, yam, etc. Coffee in the morning, a little bit of wine in the evening, and a little bit of raw honey as another carbohydrate source. And so, you know, my diet is very, very simple aside from that very complex morning smoothie.

Okay, so after you've done all this work, it's late afternoon. Are you now going to do another type of activity? You mentioned you kind of like to do two things.

Yeah, I break and have lunch. Right. And lunch is typically something like I've just described, like a little sweet potato with some leftover steak from the night before. I'm a big customer of Wild Planet sardines. So I order all their herring and mackerel and sardines and anchovies, a lot of small cold water fish. So I get a lot of omega 3s. Lot of times I'll have those for lunch with a little bit of like, like a pumpkin mash or something like that, or a squash. And then I always take a nap for about 20 to 45 minutes. After lunch I go and it's a recovery nap. Like I have one of these things called a biomat that makes like a heat that, like an infrared heat. So I lay on that. I have some of these NormaTec boots that will use gradated compression to allow the legs to recover while napping.

Yeah. And typically put the Normatec on while you sleep.

Yeah, well, I'm on the biomats. I put the Normatec on, I lay on my back and then I have this thing called a new calm. It's a vagal nerve stimulator. So it just shoves you into parasympathetic mode very quickly and it has like a GABA cream that goes over your carotid artery on either side of your neck. And then you put these pads on and it kind of drives the GABA cream in, stimulates your vagus nerve. I put on a sleep mask and technically the new calm has like a 20 minute power nap function. And so most days all I have is around 20 minutes available. So I show the 20 minute power nap function, I'm good to go. But if, if I've got luxury of time a little more time that day, I'll like run the 20 minute power nap function twice or else I'll use. There's another really good app called Brain fm and I'll put on Brain FM for a while and just kind of fall asleep to that.

And are you actually setting this thing to 20 minutes or does your body just naturally work?

It automatically is on 20 minutes and it kind of like it's designed to simulate a full 90 minute sleep cycle, which is really cool. And they've done studies on the military with this thing and it's the real deal.

What's it called again?

It actually works the new Calm Nu Calm. And so it will bring you through a full 90 minute sleep cycle in 20 minutes. But because it brings you out of that sleep cycle at the end, it kind of like has these twinkly sounds like that kind of wake you up and pull you back into. I think it brings you from beta to alpha to theta and then kind of kind of back up. And I think that final twinkling at the end kind of is a little bit of a beta release. So it wakes you up and you don't feel groggy afterwards. So I wake up from that and then after that I've got like typically another couple hours of work like till around 5 or 5:30. That's.

And you won't have drunk more coffee at this point?

No, no, I don't do a lot of coffee afternoon sometimes if, if I'mif it's the afternoon, I'm still a little bit groggy. Like I'll have another piece of nicotine gum or talk about nicotine gum. It's just like a good little cognitive pick me up. And nicotine actually has some good benefits for the mitochondria as well. You might be familiar with vitamin B3 and some of these other forms of nicotinamide. It's kind of similar. Like you can actually assist a little bit with the health of the mitochondria and the electron transport chain.

And you do it in. It sounds like you do it infrequently enough where you don't feel a craving for it.

No, I mean it's, it's mildly addictive the same way that coffee is or same way that exercise is. But I'll typically do that. I've, you know, I've always got some kind of weird like adaptogenic herb blend or something somebody sent me. So sometimes the afternoon's my time to just experiment, try something, you know, try something that might happen to be sitting in my pantry at the time. But usually I'm a one cup of coffee kind of guy. Unless it's a very demanding. Like today at, you know, it's bartending world champs, you know, today I'll be go, oh go. I'll probably swing into Starbucks and like grab a cold brew or something. Later on today there'll be two cover. So anyways, I wake up from the nap, kind of pick myself up again, do a little stretching, like get my day going again. And I find that nap gives me almost two days because then I'm like super productive for two hours. Like all the emails, all the phone calls, all like the little fires that need to be put out, I'm doing that all the way up until about 5:30 or so. And then it's time to either A, do that hard workout on an ideal day or B, I've already done the hard workout because I know that day was going to be super stressful. I'm just like out for a walk or you know, an easy bit of time in the sauna. And then once that's done, once that workout is done, there is one final dip into the email inbox to make sure there's no additional fires to put out. And then from then on out, the entire evening is with the family. We have these amazing family dinners. We gather around, we cook dinner, we take out games like table topics or exploding kittens or unstable unicorns or chess or whatever else. And we have an amazing family dinner. Sometimes we have people over, we finish dinner. We will sometimes.

What time are you finishing dinner in the day?

Usually we Finnish dinner around 8, 8:30, sometimes a little bit later. And then we play music. Like we play piano or guitar and play the kids a song we read, we go through our gratitude journals for the day. It's just like, you know, sometimes, I mean Honestly, aside from that meet and greet in the morning, I'm not seeing my family that much the rest of the day. But I just like when the evening rolls around. That's just like the protect, that's just the way my day is structured. Right. That's the protected family time. You know, on the weekends, like a Saturday or Sunday, you know, we'll be off whatever, going to the museum or doing something fun together. But weekdays, like nobody sees me from like you know, 9:30 or 10 until that workout's done, like in the evening and I break and finally it's all coming together as a family for the rest of the evening. I'm pretty much inaccessible to anybody, including my family during that time.

And so now we're at the end of the day. What is your whole process for sleeping? What kind of tools do you use?

So I have installed in my bedroom, I've replaced all the bulbs, all the artificial LED flicker with red incandescent bulbs which are very close to like torch light or fire light. Right. So there's no blue light in the bedroom.

It looks like a strip club.

Looks like a strip club. My bedroom does, which is great because I mean like we're all adults here and actually red light does make people look better during sex too. Like it actually there's a reason they use it in strip club. So it does make sex better too. But you use red incandescent bulbs. When I'm to trying cooling around in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, whatever. At night I have like wraparound red glasses. I use a brand called Raw Optics. It blocks like the 400 to 480 nanometer wavelength of light which is the one that's most likely to suppress melatonin production while you sleep. I have a chili pad that I turn on that circulates 55 degree cold water under the bed while I'm asleep. To keep my core temperature down and assist with my deep sleep levels. I have an essential oil diffuser that diffuses like lavender essential oil and into the room. So I have like this nice relaxing scent while I'm asleep. And typically you know, the, the kids are in bed after I've played them guitar and we've read and stuff. Usually you know, they're asleep by around 9:30. So then it's, it's time for mom and I. So between about 9:30 and at the latest 10:30, you know, it's reading, it's sex, it's chatting with my wife. It's just, you know, very passive, non business based activities. And yeah, just, just Basically, you know, very, you know, the room is cool. The room is dark. There's blackout curtains. It's. It's only lit by red lights. There's no business, there's no TV in our bedroom. And that's just my time to kind of put it, put an end cap on the day with reading and romance.

And any supplements at this point. Do you do melatonin, Magnesium?

What I, what I use to assist with sleep is I typically. Even though kind of like that afternoon picking company, companies are always sending me whatever. Here's our new blend of kava, or try this new blend of valerian chamomile or whatever. Nine times out of 10, my go to is I take about 60 to 80 milligrams of CBD and I take a few capsules of this supplement called Sleep Remedy, which is made by my friend Dr. Kirk Parsley, who designed this supplement to help Navy SEALs get to sleep at night. And it's like a gamma amino butyric acid precursor. And I use that when I travel too. The only thing I add in when I travel is extra melatonin for the circadian rhythm cycles, you know, because when you cross over to different time zones, and I like this brand from Quicksilver, it's like a liposomal melatonin that just knocks you out. Like you put a few sprays of that under your tongue, gets absorbed super fast because it's this liposomal formulation. And so I'll add that in with the Sleep Remedy and the CBD when I travel.

How much like a B testing have you done on your own body around cbd? Because I know there's a lot of products out there.

Well, with sleep quantification, it definitely enhances deep sleep, but only in high doses and only in the absence of thc. THC seems to disrupt deep sleep cycles.

That's such a good point. Like, there's so many products that also have thc, so you have to figure out what's right.

Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing, of course, less I give people the impression that you gotta just like pop a bunch of pills to get to some sleep. Is the other thing I do a lot of, especially increasingly since I interviewed Dr. Andrew Weil on my show and we talked for a while about this. Is this 4, 7, 8 breathing? Like once your head hits the sack and the light is off, you start going into this breath work. It's four, count in, seven count, hold, eight count out. And my latency has considerably improved since adopting that breath cycle. I'll follow, you know, how you know you fall asleep but you don't remember falling asleep, like that type of thing. I'll start into that breath cycle and I'll just fall asleep and not remember when I fell asleep.

And do you wear a sleep mask?

I do. I use one called a mind fold. It's interesting because that particular sleep mask was first designed for people who were doing like psychedelic journeying, you know, like laying on their back and taking a mega dose of psilocybin or whatever. And one of the reasons for that is because it does such a darn good job blocking out all light. I used to recommend this silk wraparound sleep mask made by Sleep Number and then I found this mindful thing and it's like it's next level.

And you mentioned blocking out light. Do you do stuff with the blue light blocking glasses?

Well, I wear them like I mentioned at night. I wear, I wear the raw. Raw has a really good wraparound red pair that I wear at night. And then during the day if I've got a lot of screen time and monitor time. Or for example, again, when you and I were just up in Vancouver at that event, you know, I was on stage, there were bright lights. It was inside like the Vancouver Convention Center. So it's all LED fluorescents. We know those produce a flicker that's mildly damaging to the retina. We know that those during the day can disrupt sleep cycles. Even if it's not 5pm or if you're walking around at 2pm under bright LED LED, as you would find in a mall or in a grocery store at a convention center, that can disrupt sleep cycles later on. So when I'm traveling and I know I'm going to be in those kind of situations, you know, because I'm. When I'm at my house, my house is all natural incandescent lighting, large windows, etc. But what I do when I'm traveling and I know I'm just going to be exposed to a lot of this fluorescence and LED is I wear clear blue light blocking glasses. And that same company, Raw Optics, they make a, like a, like kind of a fashionable looking clear one. I don't know if you saw me wearing like those black thick frames like those. Those are the ones I wear during the day. And then I switched the red light ones at night.

I do the ones at night. I haven't gotten into the ones during the day, but I should check that out.

They help if you're an un. If you're in unnatural artificial light settings for a long time, like I've especially found them at conventions and conferences where a lot of times you're indoors on an expo floor the whole day.

Yeah, that helps.

They help so much with sleep later on that or a day where I'm doing a ton of writing and I'm just got a lot, I have a lot of monitor time.

One thing I love that you're describing, which I think people take for granted, is how all these things, even eight hours before you're even thinking about bed, affect your sleep. And it's a, it's a really important phenomenon that I don't feel like society's really grasped.

Sunlight exposure for the first few minutes of the day when you get up is important or at least simulating it. Right. So you know, if I'm in Seattle or Iceland or somewhere, I'm just not getting out of the sunlight. Fricking Vegas. Right. Where they make it impossible to get outdoors. I always travel with this pair of glasses that emits light similar to the greenish blue light wave spectrum that you would get exposed to by staring into sunlight in the morning. They are called re timer glasses because that's exactly what they're designed to do to re time your circadian rhythm. And I also travel with something called the human charger, which is in ear light therapy. So I blast my eyes and my ears with light if I cannot get out in the sun in the morning. Because that's when your circadian rhythm starts with that blast of sunlight in the morning. Yeah, it's important, as is red light at night. Right. That's why getting an infrared sauna at night or using those red photobiomodulation panels at night can be very effective for enhancing your sleep.

Now, we both share a passion for, for measuring a lot of stuff on our bodies. Talk about just why you think it's important to measure things like sleep and recovery and exercise and how you use that data in a positive way.

Well, it's two reasons. A, it allows you to make informed decisions. Like, you know, if I smoke weed before bed, I fall asleep, but my deep sleep cycles suck. But if I take some CBD oil, my deep sleep cycles are better. Right. I wouldn't know that really without a quantification device or I have a rule for myself that I take 15,000 steps a day and if I finish up dinner, like tonight, we're going to Plump Jack's restaurant for the VIP media dinner, etc. I guarantee if I look at my, at my phone and my step data and I'm sitting there at dinner and it says 14,000 steps. I'm going for a 10 minute walk before I go to bed, right? So, so, you know, it allows me to keep track of that stuff, but it's also highly motivating, right? Like I protect my sleep more now that I measure it. I protect my step count more now that I measure it. I protect my, my HRV more, right? Like, like how sympathetically driven I am now now that I measure it. And so I pay attention to, to a lot more. You know, it's same thing with blood biomarkers, saliva, anything you test it, it not only gives you a ton of insight, but it also, I think just as importantly, keeps you accountable. If I know that two months from now I'm gonna take a look at my omega 6, omega 3 fatty acid balance, I guarantee that I'm gonna be much more careful about my monounsaturated fat intake, prioritizing fish oil, prioritizing omega 3s, maybe not putting the spoonful into the can of almond butter quite as frequently, or mindlessly chomping away at pistachios or, or vegetable oils just because I know I'm gonna have to stare at my omega 3 omega 6 fatty acid index two months from now and I want it to look good.

Totally. Totally. What are some quick tests that you think everyone listening should do?

Aside from wearing a quantification metric that at least gives you sleep and hrv, which in my opinion are the two top metrics to track, you know, and I would say overall heart rate and overall step count, which would be pretty high up there too. As far as metrics that I think are important to track, I would say that a basic way to track blood glucose and inflammation, because glycemic variability and inflammation are the two best predictors of overall wellness, health and longevity. So for example, a quarterly test of all your inflammatory markers like crp, fibrinogen, homocysteine, et cetera, like a really good glance at what's going on from an inflammatory standpoint and then a regular measurement of blood glucose and what is considered to be a three month snapshot of blood glucose, your hemoglobin A1C. There are continuous blood glucose monitors you can wear such as the Dexcom. They make a very good device called the Dexcom G6. And you can actually, you can monitor blood glucose in real time. And I've done that. It's, it's incredibly insightful for overall health. Nothing exists right now comparably for inflammation, but I would say if there's two things you're going to track and you just myopically want to focus on the most important variables. It would be blood glucose and inflammation, both of which are affected most dramatically in my experience by your level of processed carbohydrate or what would be considered acellular carbohydrate intake, starches, processed sugars, et cetera and vegetable oils.

Got it. Now where can people find you?

BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I am putting the finishing touches on a massive new book that I'm incredibly excited about. So I'm going to name that too. It's called Boundless and that is@boundless book.com it's 608 pages. Just jam packed with this shit.

We'll definitely include that in the show. Notes. What's, what's a. Give me the quick plug on the book. What's going to be in the book.

It is a complete manual to mind, body and spirit optimization. It is everything I've been deep in the trenches for the past three years. Very advanced anti aging and longevity stuff. I cover everything from peptides, sarms and hormones to a lot of what the blue zones are doing and other longevity hotspots from around the world. A lot of minimal affected dose of exercise stuff. A ton of new biohacking tools and tips and technologies. A lot of stuff in there. There's two big chapters on just like sex and lovemaking and romance and relationships. My goal with that book was for anybody who has a body to be able to pick it up and have a complete blueprint to what makes them tick and how to optimize themselves, live a long time. And the subtitle of the book is upgrade your brain, optimize your body and defy aging. And that's what the book's about.

I love it, man. Well, this has been such a pleasure having you on. I think everyone should check out your book. You've got a ton of credibility in the space. You do the research. You do a lot of testing on your own body, which I think some people don't do. So I've got a lot of admiration for you. Thanks for coming on.

And you're going to do an enema now. I know. I can see it in your eyes. All right. Thanks Will.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I'VE ever recommended. Recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.