Hacking Gratitude: Spartan World Championship Exclusive

Hello, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. Hey. I have a pretty special series, a doozy full series of interviews for you coming up today and on a whole bunch of other days this week. I'm churning out the podcast this week because I just got back from Lake Tahoe, where I got a chance to hang out with some of the world's top athletes and biohackers and inventors and physicians and more down at the Spartan World Championships. Even if you're not an obstacle course racer, you're gonna dig today's show. You can access the Show Notes, where I have a special video for you over@Ben GR greenfieldfitness.com Sparta 17 yes, as in Sparta 17, like the movie 300 where they all talk with Scottish accents even though they're supposedly from Greece. Anyways, though, we digress. So in that video that I posted for you@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sparta 17, I actually have a fascinating discussion. This is at the top of the page that you see there about legal ways to dope your blood, legal ways to get nitric oxide up like Viagra for your whole body without actually taking the little blue pill, how to max your ATP and what are called your erythrocyte levels using some pretty fringe formulas that are out there. So when you visit that page over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sparta17, you're going to want to watch my interview there at the top of the page of this guy named Craig Dinkle. Craig, you may have heard on previous podcast episodes, he's like a total whiz when it comes to formulating very potent and unique supplements. I got a bunch of discount codes for you over there, too, on some of the stuff that Craig and I talk about. So that is what is bringing you today's show, that video and those supplements, which I consider to be not only some of the best supplements for altitude, but some of the best supplements for sex and for nitric oxide and for recovery from jet lag and for enhanced blood flow and for just about any situation where you want more blood. So check it out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sparta17 all right, let's move forward, shall we?

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield, and this is a bit out of the ordinary, but I happen to be sitting here with my trusty podcast sidekick, Brock Jason Skywalker Armstrong. Brock, how you doing?

I'm doing well. Hello. Hello, everyone.

And you could get sick of that lulling Canadian accent over the next few days.

Pshaw.

Pshaw. Because Brock and myself, to a certain extent, but. But Brock, to a much greater extent, we are going to be bringing you some amazing interviews over the next several days because we are at Spartan World Championships. Spartan World Championship. So here's what to expect. First, if you're not an obstacle course junkie or an athlete, don't worry. We are right now here surrounded by some of the top fitness, health, biohacking, nutrition, and even personal productivity and lifestyle minds on the face of the planet, who Spartan CEO Joe Decenta has flown in to be here, here. And Brock and I have decided to get the microphone in front of them and take a deep dive with them into their top secrets that we can deliver to you. And we're also, of course, since we are surrounded by some of the fittest people on the face of the planet here, we're going to be interviewing some of the most hardcore men and women that exist when it comes to their insider training tactics, their nutrition secrets, their recovery hacks, and a whole lot more. So basically, you are going to be getting lots of podcasts over the next few days. Don't worry if you don't have time to listen to them. You can save them. And I believe there's even a handy save function in Apple Podcasts.

You don't even save them.

Most podcasting apps save them for later. The next time you're bored on a drive or you have a few extra gym sessions or you're out on a long hike. You can basically listen in to a lot of these extra episodes we're gonna be pushing out over the next few days.

You can bathe in them even.

You can bathe in them. Literally like a float tank or Epsom salts.

Yes.

So we are, in addition to a bunch of podcasts, you're going to get right here on the podcast feed doing a bunch of short video and audio interviews over on the Facebook page. And if you don't know the Facebook page URL, it is Brock. Take it away. Facebook.com bgfitness so go to facebook.com BG Fitness if you want extra photos, amazing, entertaining and educational content for you in addition to what we're giving you right here on the podcast.

I'd call it edutainment.

Edutainment. Did you make that up?

No.

Okay, now we may not have our usual show notes. I'm going to warn you.

Yeah. Because I'm illiterate.

Brock is illiterate. And dyslexic. And Canadian. And Canadian. And frankly, we're going to be so busy interviewing people. We're probably not going to have a lot of time to sit down and make for you show notes, but we will make for you plenty of extremely helpful content and we promise mad value if you just listen in the next few days. Again, we're not going to bore you with the ho hum. I eat Red Bull and Snickers before the race and my top recovery tactic is compression socks.

Nor are we going to bore you with a longer intro than we've already done.

No.

This is getting a little bit long in the tooth. So I will be racing and I will be not only racing, but likely out there leading other racers through the course after I've done the race myself. So you're going to need to get used to Brock's Canadian voice and his beautiful shaven ballerina legs.

You betcha.

Which you actually can't see on an audio podcast, but I can vouch that.

They are quite beautiful. He'll be the voice you're listening to and seeing if you're on Facebook all weekend as we make you a part of what is widely considered to be the super bowl of obstacle course racing and is the crown race to discover who the fittest person on the face of the planet actually is. Spartan World Championship.

Unless you're a CrossFitter, in which case.

It would be the CrossFit Games. So get ready of plenty of action. Get ready for plenty of action over the next few days. And if you want to have the most fun with this, stay tuned to all the live content and the conversations over at facebook.com bgfitness and keep a notepad or your own friggin noggin.

Make your own show notes, guys.

That's right.

Come on, we've been holding your hand for too long. Now it's your turn.

Take notes on everything that we bring your way. We promise we're going to make this a lot of fun for you. So that being said, listen in because here we go.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there.

When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey everybody. Brock here for Ben Greenfield Fitness and throwing a bit of a curveball already this morning here at the Lake Tahoe Spartan Up Pod Fest. Supposed to be interviewing somebody else, but she didn't show up. So it's fellow. Jean and I were standing around having a lovely conversation about a really cool app, a really cool idea, his. His whole background, and we just thought, well, we should throw a microphone on this. This is a. This is a great conversation. So we're recording live here in Lake Tahoe at The Spartan Up Podfest, which is part of the 2017 Spartan Race World Championship. And Ben is still sleeping. That's why you're hearing my voice, because he's actually got. He's racing tomorrow and we thought it was smart of him to. To get his rest. So you're stuck with me, but you're also here with Gene, so.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Yeah, this has turned out really fortuitous. So I'm going to let you tell the people all the stuff that you were just telling me a few minutes ago about your background and how you ended up here.

Great. Hi, everybody. My name is Gene Gerkhoff and I'm the founder of Charity Miles. And Charity Miles is an app that allows you to earn money for charity whenever you walk, run, bike, Spartan, skip, hop, dance, jump, however you want to move through your day. Walk your dog. It's an app that you can use anytime.

Prancer Size, could you.

You can Prancercise. Actually, the woman from Prancer Size did reach out to us at one point. I think she has used the app.

Seriously?

I think she has.

I just totally.

Yeah, she has. She reached out to us at one point. We've been around for five years. We've won every award that you can win, from the Webby for the best health and fitness app to the south by Southwest People's Choice Award. Cool. And we've earned over two and a half million dollars for charity, which I'm really proud of.

Okay. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves, though. We need to know what.

What does the app do?

Let's go further back, even.

Okay.

To your history. So what you were doing when you. When you started to have this idea.

Ah, got it. So I used to be a finance lawyer on Wall street doing the Lord's work.

And.

When I was in law school, a long time ago, actually in 2002, I started to run marathons to raise money for Parkinson's research in honor of my grandfather who has Parkinson's. And actually, the last time I was in Lake Tahoe was in 2004. When I was really getting into marathons, I ran a race here called the Lake Tahoe Triple, which is a triple marathon that goes around the entire lake.

Wow.

And if anybody wants to do a cool race, that is a really cool 26. It's 72 miles. Oh, yeah. I don't know how kilometers work.

Silly Canadian.

Yeah. And I always wanted to get companies to sponsor me so I could raise more money for Parkinson's, but I'm not a celebrity. Well, now that I'm on this podcast, I guess I'm a celebrity.

There you go.

I've made it.

You're done. You can retire now.

So I figured if I could get enough people together, then collectively we'd have the clout of a celebrity and companies might want to sponsor us. And fast forward a number of years and the iPhone comes out. And I saw how much companies wanted to connect with us through our phones, and they were, you know, apps were a big thing. And I was thinking, man, if I could get all the people like me on one side of the phone, then companies will want to be on the other side of the phone and then we can all be sponsored for charity.

Yeah.

And that was the idea for charity, Miles. We started it five years ago, 2000, summer 2012. And, you know, in the first, you know, few weeks, it was like 30 people using the app. And now we've grown. We've got hundreds of thousands of members and we've earned over two and a half million dollars for charity. And we have great charity partners from the Michael J. Fox foundation, aspca, Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, Multiple National, Multiple Sclerosis Society, ALS Association. We've over 40 world class charities in the app. So if there's a cause that you care about, we've got one that is likely, you know, on the cutting edge of that issue and doing great work. And we are sponsored by great companies who are repurposing advertising money, media dollars that they would otherwise spend on banner ads in your phone to, you know, have a better advertising product in charity.

Miles.

Reach the types of people that they want to reach and have their money do good for the world.

So it sounds like there's several ways you can get involved. You can either be a charity that gets itself placed onto the app. You can be an individual, obviously, that goes around and uses the app and raises the money by walking, walking, dancing, skipping, doing all that stuff, or you can be a company that wants to buy some advertising space.

Yeah. If you want to reach active, healthy people, we've got a really good Way to do it.

Cool.

So everybody out there, you know, first, would love for you to download the app, would love for you to join our movement and walk with purpose. However you walk through your day, I like that.

Walk with purpose. And as we were just talking about before we rolled the tape, there's a lot of. I mean, this isn't just raising money for charity. This is actually something that can benefit people. Do you use this as part of your training when you're doing your marathons?

Is this.

Yeah, I do. So obviously I, you know, use it when I run. And I started this as a runner, and I kind of came to this with a runner's mindset, and the more I got into it, the more. And the more I started learning about these charities, and I would use it to walk to work for different charities. I just realized that it's really about how do you walk through life. It's not like raising money for charity is really nice, and that's certainly what we do, and that's what, you know, I want to do. But we can. If we change the way that we walk through this world, we can have such a bigger impact. You know, when you start, when you walk, you know, a mile to work for Feeding America, you become so much more appreciative of the fact that you have food.

Yeah.

And you become more conscious about the food that you eat. And, you know, maybe instead of getting, you know, the unhealthy lunch, you're more likely to get a salad and be appreciative of the fact that you have the opportunity to eat this healthy food when maybe someone else doesn't.

Yeah. We talk a lot on the podcast about gratitude and how. How healthful it is to express gratitude and to feel that feeling of gratitude that releases the. The oxytocin and all of those hormones and stuff. Like, in fact, Ben actually released a gratitude journal not that long ago that you can. You can purchase on. On Kickstarter. It's. I mean, there are a lot of gratitude journals out there, but. But Ben took it in a really specific direction, particular to him. But what I'm getting at is like, you're. You're absolutely right. If you're doing something that is instilling that feeling of gratitude or that feeling of giving or anything, it can.

It.

Not only are you getting the steps in, but you're also getting that. That great feeling. So it's a very healthful thing to do on a spiritual level and a biological level, physiological level, I suppose, for sure.

Totally. It makes a huge difference you become so much more appreciative of your health when you're walking for Parkinson's research and you, you know that 20 mile run that you have to do for your training, you get to do for your, you know. Yeah, I get to do this. 21. I get to do this.

That's a nice way to look at.

It and totally reframes the way you might approach an obstacle or a challenge or the things that are, you know, in your mind.

It sort of turns down the volume on the crappy stuff in life, isn't it? When you've got something that you're feeling so passionate and so warm inside about when the boss comes into the office and says something derogatory to you, it's kind of like, eh, instead of taking it right to heart and feeling terrible about it. Yeah.

So, you know, my journey through this has certainly evolved. And the people that I've met, my favorite thing about what we do is the people that I've met and the people who've become a part of our community. And that's, you know, what brought me out here is I met Joe a number of years ago through this and so stayed in touch with him. And when I saw that he was doing this, he invited me to come out. I mean, we have a podcast called the Extra Mile where I interview people at the intersection of health and purpose. Yeah, A lot of our members. And so he thought it would be cool for me to come out here and I get to meet you and like, the serendipity of when you walk through life with purpose and you become more open, you get to meet some amazing people.

It's true, isn't it? Like, you. Not necessarily just the situations you put yourself in, because people can come here and be completely closed off and not meet anyone. But, I mean, most of us haven't even been here for like 12 hours and we've already amazing people, made some good friends already.

Walking to the coffee shop this morning and talking to one person and you, you know, recognize. We recognized each other's names from the emails that we had sent back and forth, started talking and you just become more open to meeting people. And like, the people that you meet enrich your life in so many ways and you learn so much from them and their stories are inspiring. Like I was mentioning to you earlier, there's a young man who is one of our members and he, on January 1, was on the southeastern tip of Key west on the buoy. Today he is somewhere in the middle of Idaho. And the way that he got to there is that he marched. He didn't walk. He marched. And he's on his way to the northwest tip of Washington state, which he'll Blaine Washington, where he'll be there probably in the middle of November. So he will have marched across the country, but not just across, but diagonally across.

Wow.

And the. There's a couple of really interesting things about this young man. The first is that he has type 1 diabetes.

Yeah.

The second is that he's 11 years old.

What?

And he will be the Youngest person by 4 years to walk across the country. And he's doing the whole thing with charity mods.

He's actually the same.

He. He's doing with his father. They were not athletic before. They didn't do any hiking or running or walking before. But the kids saw a documentary about somebody who ran across Canada. Got Terry Fox.

Yeah.

He saw the Terry Fox documentary and he figured, I want to do that. I want to raise money for diabetes.

That's right. Even Terry Fox wasn't that young. Now, he was a teenager, but, yeah, 11.

He wanted to. So he was inspired by that and he convinced his dad to do it. His first, his dad was like, you're 11, you're not.

Who.

Actually he was in school when he started. He was 10, and you're not going across the country. But. And then he kept saying, so eventually the father's like, all right, if you train, we'll do it. Thinking like, what is he gonna do to train?

Yeah.

And so the kid, like, goes out to the beach in Florida where they live, and he's like, walking like 15 miles a day on the beach. 10, 15 miles a day. And they're like, okay, he's serious. So they, like, put their house on the market. The mom's driving, like a support jeep, and, like, get to meet people like that or another. One of our members is 41 years old. He's had Parkinson's since he was 27. And for the first seven or so years of his diagnosis of his. Of his Parkinson's, he really got out of shape, was overweight, depressed. He had kind of like a life changing moment where he fell down the stairs and decided to get fit. And he started running. He's run over 15 marathons. He's doing the Chicago marathon again this year. He's done countless half marathons. And his daughter, who's 12, I think she's 12, I might be wrong about that. But she's young, got into ninja training.

Oh, cool.

And so he started doing that with her and he got really good. And he was just on American Ninja Warrior.

Wow.

Guy with Parkinson's disease, competed on American Ninja Warrior. And so you get these amazing stories of these people. And what you realize is, like, everybody's walking through life with some kind of a struggle, whether you're walking through. With walking across the country or you're just walking through life. Like, everybody's got their obstacles and how do you. It's just interesting. And their stories are amazing. And when you walk through life with this purpose, it just opens your eyes to that, and you can learn so much from it.

It's true. This isn't the direction I thought we were going to go. I was going to hammer you on how you can use it for your training and stuff like that. And we can still talk about that. But this is, I think the. The whole spiritual side of this or the whole, like, emotional side of this is so. It's more than what it appears like. Raising money for charity is something that a lot of us do. I got into marathoning through the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.

One of our partners.

Okay. Yeah. The team in training, I coached for them for years afterwards because I really enjoyed the. Well, and again, actually, it was the people. Like, I really loved the idea that I was raising money for leukemia lymphoma research and stuff, but there's a bit of a no jerks allowed kind of sign that gets held, like, posted on the door when you're doing something like that. When you're doing something that really is giving and really from the heart, you don't get a lot of a holes showing up. And so you don't necessarily. They're not all walking across the country when they're 11 years old. But everybody, like you said, has their story. They have their struggle, and. And when they're good people at heart, it's a lot easier to get that story and get that information and get inspired by them, too.

Yeah. And so much of, you know, so much about, you know, Ben, and I think your podcast is about, like, the how and like the biohacking and like the techniques that you might use to be keto or.

Yeah.

You know, supercharge your training in this way or how do you train in that way? And certainly that's, like, all really important, but I think that the why is also really important.

Absolutely.

And I did a podcast with Jillian Michaels.

The Jillian Michaels.

The Jillian Michaels. And she said, if you. I can't. I'm going to paraphrase the quote, because I'm not going to get It. Right. But if you have a strong why, then you can figure out the how. And I think that that's really important.

I have a feeling Julian wasn't the first one to say that. No.

In fact, she said that she was quoting it from Viktor Frankl. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, which is like a classic book, which I recommend to anybody. So she was paraphrasing it or quoting it from him.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be a jerk about that.

No, not at all. But that's, I think, really important. If you have a strong why, you can figure out the how and the hows. And, like, learning different things are always fun, too. But the why I always find to be the important. And it gets you through that moment when you might not know how.

Yeah. And I mean, right there, that's a biohack. That's like. It doesn't have to be a crazy machine that you hook up to your brain or some kind of supplement or something. Like, the best biohacks are the ones that you can actually do in the moment, like a breathing exercise or a gratitude practice, or what you're saying, just taking that moment to remember, why am I doing this? Why is this important to me? And then. Yeah, then you find that how or. Or you don't. The other side of that is if you can't find your why, maybe you need to try something else. Maybe you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing in this life. And that's something. I think a lot of us make that mistake because we think we should. Like those shoulds. I have a friend, Dr. Alessandra Wall, who says don't should all over yourself. And she's absolutely right. We have so many people that are telling us you should see this movie or you should get eight hours sleep or you should be doing this. Like. Well, why. Wait, like, let's. Let's dissect this before we say you should be doing this. I could be doing this. But if you have that connection to your why, then you definitely know that you should probably be doing this because you have a strong why. But if you don't, well, maybe that should. Was misguided.

Yep.

Yeah, that's great. Don't should all over yourself.

Yeah, I want to get T shirts that say that I have to put her name on it. Absolutely. Her quote.

And the other thing about it also is that, I mean, as with anything, like Beatles said, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. And actually I think it's even more like, the more you give, the more you get. It's not just about giving money to charity or anything like that, but the more you put out there, the banker, you get back. I think you get more back than you give through all this. When you're with team, you probably got more from being a coach for team and training than you were giving. Oh, yeah, you did.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it was beyond getting like a free trip to Disney World, like, which I did get. It was amazing. It was really fun. But the lifelong friends that I made and the mindset that I developed during that time and I think a lot of the positivity in my life because I had just come out of an illness, I had some heart problems. And one of the reasons, like, a lot of people. And like the people you were talking about, too, coming out of a health problem, often the first thing you think, like the guy who got Parkinson's, like, I got to get healthy.

Right.

I'm going to do 15 marathons.

Right.

It's kind of what I did is like, when the cardiologist told me I was okay, he actually suggested that I needed to do a marathon or. Or something in quotations.

So if you've done a lot of. How many marathons have you done?

I've done 70 some races. I don't know what the breakdown is, but that's like 10Ks. Half marathons. Marathons. Iron.

What's your favorite distance?

I like Olympic distance triathlon. I feel like it's like, it's the distance for me. It sort of suits my. I'm a bit of a heavier guy. Like, you look at the longer course guys and they're a little bit smaller, a little bit leaner. I'm built like a hockey player, so going hard and fast for a shorter time is better for me. But where was I going with this? Yeah. So I basically did, like, started doing a whole bunch of marathons. And not only was that, like, not necessarily the greatest way to get healthy, but it. It changed my mindset and set me off in a whole different direction for. For my life. Like, I guess like yours did too, like leaving your law career and.

Yeah.

And going into something like this is. I'm. People don't do that very often completely uproot their life. I was working for the government. I was a web developer. You were a lawyer. And like, we gave up what most people would consider to be great career.

Right. And by the way, I don't recommend it.

You don't recommend giving up or becoming a financial lawyer.

No, I don't recommend just like quitting your job and.

No, no.

Doing what I, you know, that was maybe probably a little foolhardy on my part sometimes. Like, there's like a, almost like a fetishization of like, that I'm gonna like, quit everything.

And there is, it's a really, it's a culture thing right now that everybody's talking about, like, oh, yeah, quit your day job and for yourself and be an entrepreneur. And that's great for some people, but not everybody. Certainly not everybody.

There's like a lot of self awareness that I have gained since doing that where I'm very. I love what I do and I'm really glad that I took this path. But it's a hard, it's a hard road, as you know, and like, it's not for everybody. And I would. I don't recommend it to most people.

And.

I think that there's other ways to get that sense of purpose in your life without, like, quitting your day job.

Yeah. Well, I think that the idea that you have to quit your job to be happy means that you're putting way too much pressure on your job to be like, you need to refocus your priorities and make your life more meaningful.

Right.

If your job is sucking everything out of it. And certainly there are. Sorry, Kerry, that's our editor. Certainly there are crappy jobs out there that, that you probably should walk away from. I've had some of those in the past, too. But if you're putting so much pressure on your job to make you happy, well, you're probably. You need to find something like, like an app that tracks your steps so you can raise money for charity while you're walking to work and stuff too.

And it's like, that's actually one of the, I think the, the hidden benefits of charity miles that I did not anticipate. When I walk to work with it every day, it centers me.

Yeah.

It's not. And it's, it really is beyond any amount of money that's raising for charity. It's just like, it just centers me. It makes me, again, express that, feel that gratitude for the opportunities that I have in my life. It makes me aware of the, you know, the trash on the street makes me want to not, you know, use as much plastic.

Yeah.

When I, you know, it's impossible to avoid, but, like, you know, I don't need the plastic bag when I go.

To get drinking out of a throwaway cup right now in my car.

I try not to have as much of that, like, it's just, you know, you find these small ways to incorporate more this purpose into your life. When I'm with my son, I try to be a lot more present. I have a one year old son. Oh, well, just like, you know, try to like put your iPhone away and like be with your. Yeah, be with Max and you know, play with him in the swings and you just find these moments that you can just be much more grounded in and it just changes. It just changes the way that you see the world. And I think that when a lot of people are experiencing that is going to be so much more transformational than any amount of money that we raise for charity by far.

So when you're, when you're starting the app, let's say you're on your way to work or you're going out for your walk or whatever, do you have a practice? Like do you take a moment and do some breathing exercises or do you have any way to sort of focus yourself in on those feelings or does it just sort of happen automatically?

You know, that is a really good idea. I haven't done like a meditation.

I'm full of good ideas.

So I like to. In our company, I don't, I haven't ritualized this because. And maybe I should. But like, I like to think about what is my why today.

Yeah.

And I like to try to draw from something, whether it's a story from our community or a photo that somebody shared from charity miles or something I read in the news or something like, what is my why today? And like that. I usually try to think about that when I'm walking to work and I think maybe I should do like a little bit of a breathing thing. That sounds like a good idea.

I always think of breathing just because that's a big thing for me. But having that moment where, like the way you were talking about when you're playing with your son, having that moment where you actually like, remind yourself what you're doing. Because I think it is easy to just. And I can see this happening with the app. It's easy for us to just fall into routine. Yep. Like, we are routine machines, like humans are terribly. We're so predisposed to finding the most efficient way to do everything. That routine becomes routine.

Right.

So finding those times to break that routine and remind yourself, like, no, there's a bigger purpose here. There's a. I, like you said, find your why. Like, what is my why for today? Or what is my why for this moment?

That's a really good idea because a lot of times, like, I'm just like, you know, when I'm starting it, when I'm walking to work, I'm, like, rushing out the door, you know, like, yeah, I'm a little bit late.

We all are. That's rushing everybody's day constantly.

I've got to get on a call for a meeting or something or, you know, because I'll start it and then I'll, like, usually, like, get on a call or not do a call while I walk to work or I listen to another podcast while I walk to work. I think maybe taking, like, a few seconds to, like, to do that will probably even ground me even more.

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if there's not to influence the app or something, but having that moment in the app when you push start or whatever, maybe it pops up and makes you fill in your why for the day or for the moment.

There's actually a really cool. It's not an app, but it's a program. And I can't remember the name of the company that makes it, but it's called Breathe, and it's meant to break our addiction to social media. So, you know, I definitely experienced this where, like, I feel addicted to email and Instagram and Facebook. Yeah, I don't anymore because I've constantly been trying to break it, consciously trying to break it. And, you know, all these apps, and I know this as an app developer now, we spend all day trying to addict you. Yeah, that is my job.

Absolutely.

And, you know, we're not a company. I'm not Facebook with, like, thousands of engineers who are really smart, who are doing it really well, but they're creating a habit loop. And we actually did a podcast with a guy named Nir Eyal who wrote a book called Hooked that breaks down the way that habits are formed. And I recommend anybody read that book if you want to. It's called Hooked. And they talk about the four stages of a habit loop and how the most powerful stage is the variable reward stage. So you get an itch, you perform an action, and then you get this variable reward, which creates this rush of dopamine. And that's what hooks you to these products. So, like, you're bored, which is your trigger. You open Facebook, which is your action. Then you get this variable reward of, like, all these photos and articles.

Yeah, immediately, Immediately. It doesn't have to be good or well thought out.

It's just that immediate variable reward is like creating that dopamine, which is like hooking you into this and addicting you to this product in the way that, like, cigarettes would addict you or gambling would addict you. It's like a slot machine.

Yeah.

You know, and so to break it, there's this program called Breathe that you kind of like attach to your Facebook. And then every time you open your Facebook, this thing opens up and it's like breathe for five seconds.

Nice.

And then it'll take you to your Facebook.

Yeah.

But it creates this, like, five second barrier between opening Facebook and that dopamine rush.

Yeah.

That helps you break that addiction and catch you out of that, like, habit. Yeah. Loop. Which.

And delaying the gratification even by 5 seconds is significant because most of the time I think that I saw a figure somewhere that most people only spend like 30 seconds or something at a time on Facebook because, like, we're waiting for a phone call or like we sat down at the bus stop or whatever and it's. Yeah, usually we don't sit down and do it for hours in generally it's like few seconds. So having five seconds that you're doing something right, like meaningful right before you get that and you still get your payoff. I guess you still get to see the. The cat photos, but it's. Yeah, I like that.

So that's a cool kind of hack too, like to break habits or to help form habits. And so I think that's a really good idea. Maybe incorporate that into charity models in some way to kind of get you centered into that moment. Yeah, it's a really good idea.

It's an extra biohack to layer on top of your biohack that's already there or to remind you that you're actually doing a biohack of some sor by even having the app running. That's.

That's pretty sweet.

Yeah. We've got a whole new. Whole new layer of the app here now, and it's only. It's only 8am I know. Look at us go. I'm not even done my first cup of coffee yet.

Yeah. So I hope that, you know, folks out there, if you're. If you're listening to this and we'd love to have you join our community and share your stories with us. We'd love seeing people's photos.

Is this international? Could I use it in Canada?

Yeah, you can use it in Canada.

All right. I know we have a lot of listeners in the UK and Australia.

We've got tons of people in the UK and Australia and Canada, and we even had like four people in Iran use it and I'm not really sure how that happened, but we were in over, like, 100 and something countries for sure.

That's fantastic. Wow.

Mostly in the US but definitely international. And it's cool. Like, people share photos from all over the world and. Yeah, it's from. It's amazing. It's like, my favorite thing, and that's actually how I got addicted to social media was I was like, I just loved the photos that people were sharing of their charity miles from all over the world. Like, I just kept.

Like, somehow I think that's better than just scrolling mindlessly through photos of cats and lunches.

Well, those are fun, too. I got a cat. You take some funny pictures now. It's like, all baby pictures of my kid, Max.

Yeah. But I just have pictures of my bike.

Oh, yeah.

I don't have a cat or a kid, so it's all my bike.

Yeah, I went through that stage as well. Yeah. So we'd love for people out there to join us. I'm super appreciative of the opportunity to come on the podcast and share our story with you.

Yeah. Thanks to Alicia for not showing up for her interview.

Thank you, Alicia.

So I can get you on here.

Thank you, Alicia. So, yeah, check it out. It's charitymiles.org, you can just type in charity miles into your app store. Our podcast is the Extra Mile. You can search for charity miles in the podcast store. And check that out. We've got some really good episodes on there. And, you know, would love to have you guys all join. We can create, like, a Ben Greenfield team.

Oh, hey, that'd be cool.

In the app. And people can join that. And you guys can all see, like, the miles that you all do collectively.

And set up a little competition.

Yeah.

A little leaderboard. And, you know, if you experience. And also, I love the way hearing, like, how the app affects people. So if you share your stories with.

Us and, yeah, we could set up a whole different layer of how people are using it to hack their gratitude or hack their. Their oxytocin releases and stuff.

Like, take it to hack your oxytocin.

Yeah.

Actually, my colleague Lauren came up with this kind of slogan called hack the app, which she's encouraging because we're encouraging. You know, we say you can use the app to walk, run, or bike, but people do so much more with it. Like, they'll grocery shop, they'll walk their dog, they'll dance, they'll roller skate, they'll wind surf. They do all this stuff. So she calls that Hack the app. So hack the app.

Yeah. But being active is really the only criteria. Yeah.

You're just using anything.

That's fantastic.

Cool.

Well, thanks so much for coming here.

I really appreciate it.

This is really great. And thanks to you. And thanks to our host, Spartan Race Joe decenna, and of course, the Spartan Podcast itself for setting up this. I'm reading this verbatim and this sounds terrible. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna go off script and say thanks for setting up this weekend. It's been really fun so far, and it's barely even begun. And Ben will be racing in the 2017 Spartan Race World Championships tomorrow. So if you're hearing this podcast today, which is Friday, make sure you tune into Facebook Live because we're gonna.

What's going on live today? Are you gonna release this today?

I'm gonna release this right away, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, we're gonna do this so the world will hear this probably later on this afternoon.

I gotta see how you do that. I also would love to get some podcasting tips from you because our podcast is so new.

We'll. We'll do some. Do some techie nerd stuff in a bit, but yeah. So everybody stay tuned, get onto Facebook, Facebook.com fitness, and I'll be shooting some stuff, hopefully live, of Ben on the course. If not, then I'll get him when he's a pile of mush at the end of the course, and it'll be a fun time. So thanks again and thanks for listening, everybody.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sa. Sam.