Living With A Navy Seal, Running 100 Miles, Only Eating Fruit Until Noon & More With Jesse Itzler.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Physically, you know, we go in and out of shape all the time, all of us. We're in peak shape, then we slip, then we try to get back. We get better, we get worse. But the mental part of it was really the part that had the best and most lasting benefit. So for 10 days, I only ate fruit. And then on day 11, I had, you know, a bagel or toast or cereal or whatever, and I just felt disgusting. I felt so lethargic and bloated and just slow. I felt so much better. The other. So here I am, 26 years later, and I've only eaten fruit until noon.

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.

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Hey, folks, my guest on today's show only eats fruit until noon. He runs, I believe, hundreds of miles at a time and lives a completely. And I'm taking this straight out of his bio, an out of the box life. His name is Jesse Itzler. He co founded Marquee Jet, which is the world's largest prepaid private jet company. In 2001, he sold that to Berkshire Hathaway. And then he partnered with Zico Coconut Water and sold that to Coca Cola. He's a former rapper on. He produced and sang the NBA's Emmy Award winning I Love this Game music campaign and the New York Knicks anthem, Go New York, Go. He's the author of a book that I think you might find quite entertaining that we're going to talk a little bit about today called Living With a Seal. And he is also the owner of the NBA's Atlantic Hawks team. So when he's not out training for 100 mile run or taking care of his four kids, you're probably going to see him at a basketball game. And he's married to Spanx Clothing founder Sarah Blakely. So Jesse's kind of a slacker, but I decided to get him on the show anyways. Jesse, welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, man.

Thanks for having me, Ben. Let's do it.

Yeah, let's jump right in, man. You hosted a Navy SEAL to crash in your living room for 31 days. Which I know is kind of like the, the story behind this book, Living with a seal. So why did you do that? And I'm sure that this will rabbit hole a little bit, but I' curious to hear what happened.

Sure. Well, like a lot of things in my life, this wasn't planned. I was at a relay race, a 24 hour running event in San Diego. Running, running this thing with four friends. And the way the race was set up is whatever team ran the Most miles in 24 hours won the race. And there was a guy at the starting line who didn't have anyone to relay with. He was his own team and, and I noticed him because he was about, he was huge. He was about 280 pounds, you know, big guy, African American. And the race was self supported. So it means that you have to bring all your own supplies. They provide nothing for 24 hours. And we had a tent, we had food, bananas, the whole works. And this guy had three items. He had a fold up chair, a bottle of water and one box of crackers, which was crazy. And a mile 70 he had, because of his weight, he had literally crushed all the small bones in both of his feet. He just ran him to till he crushed him. And because he only had crackers and water, he had kidney failure. So he was literally. Yeah, he was, he was, he was literally peeing blood in his fold up chair. And I watched this guy basically duct tape his feet get out of this chair and continue to run another 30 miles to get to 100 miles, which was his goal. And I was so freaked out by just this guy's drive and warrior mentality and will that I googled him to see like who the hell is this guy? And I learned that he was a Navy SEAL with an absolutely amazing backstory. And I wanted to meet him. So I cold called him, I flew out to see him and a couple of minutes into our dinner meeting, I said, you know, if whatever got whatever this guy is inside, this guy that makes him tick, that got him out of the chair to make him continue to run through kidney failure and broken bones. If any of that, A little bit of that drive rubbed off on me that all the different buckets in my life, work, family, my training, everything would be so much better. And I just asked him if he would be willing to move in with me and my family. And you know, like a week later.

He was at my house, you were at dinner with him and he just said, will you move in with Me.

And my family pretty much. I was like, you know, would you ever consider living with me for a month? And he was like, he took about a two minute break, stared me up and down and said, if you're crazy enough to ask me to live with you, I'm crazy enough to do it.

That is crazy. So at that point, how long ago was this?

This was in like 2010. It was a while ago.

Okay, gotcha. But at that point, like you were, you were pretty successful. Like, like you were a guy Navy SEAL might actually want to come live with. You weren't some creep off the street.

Right. And I think a lot of the appeal was I had sold a few businesses at this point in my life. I had done some long distance runs and completed some whacked out races. And so he knew that, I guess we were wired. I don't want to say the same, but we both had experienced pain through races and we both. And I guess the credentials of having this business background, maybe, whatever, whatever clicked in his head, it was unbelievable. And then, you know, I learned so many life lessons that I was able to apply to my everyday, you know, existence.

Yeah. So he just. He shows up at your house, Is that what happened?

He shows up. I gave him, as he would say, I gave him the coordinates and he showed up.

Okay, so he shows up. And did you have like a, like a special bedroom set out for him? Was it, was he in your living room on your couch or. Where's this guy stand?

So I lived in New York City at the time. I split my time between New York and Atlanta and I lived in an apartment, so he had a room. But the first thing he did was remove all the furniture and blow up an inflatable tent that he slept in.

Well, you mean, was it like an altitude training tent or just like a tent? Yeah, it was like an altitude training tent.

Yes. And it was loud.

I actually, I own one of those and my wife won't even let me put it up because she refuses to sleep in bed with me if I've got an altitude training tent over the bed. But this guy travels with an altitude training tent and shows up at your house and pitches it in your living room.

Correct. My wife wasn't too keen as well.

Oh my gosh. Okay, so first of all, what's this guy's name?

His name is David Goggins.

Okay. And I know who you're talking about because I remember the first time I did Ironman Hawaii down in, down in Kona. I was treading water, getting Ready to race. And they dropped these guys out of a helicopter to also do Ironman triathlon. They jumped out of their helicopter in full gear, right into the water and proceeded to do the swim. And David Goggins was one of those guys. I remember seeing him, like, he looks like he should be playing basketball in the NBA. This huge like African American power lifter riding his bike down the, down the Hawaii highway. That's.

He's an amazing, an amazing guy. You know, he's an American hero. I have so much respect for all, all of our servicemen, but his backstory is uniquely particular because, you know, he, he grew up, he had super low self esteem. He grew up as one of only a handful of African American families in Indiana were in the town that he lived in, not far from where the Klan was based, originated, or headquartered. So he had a really tough childhood, low self esteem. So he gained all this weight and he weighed about 300 pounds. And he decided he was going to join the military. And because he had prior military experience, he only had when he went to the recruiting office to become a seal. He only had two months before he was going to time out, age out of when he could go because he had passed military. So Anyway, he lost 100 pounds in, in 60 days and taught himself how to swim by basically breaking into a local Y and, and just like, you know, completely transformed his body and ultimately became probably the best endurance athlete on the planet. He set the Guinness Book of World Records for most pull ups. He did 4030 pull ups in 17 hours.

Oh my gosh.

So he's broken all these records. So yes, he's, you know, he's an amazing Navy seal, but he also has this asterisk, his name, because he is this incredible, incredibly driven endurance athlete. And at this time in my life, Ben, like, I was like so many guys and women I was on, I had a great life, but I was in a routine. I was kind of on cruise, cruise control. Get up, go to work, you know, work out, go to work, come home, dinner with my family and repeat. And it was great and it was working for me, but I wasn't getting better because I was so in my routine. I was so comfortable that I really wasn't pushing my boundaries or anything. So he came in and really his task was just to shake it all up.

Okay, so what was the first thing he did besides pitching a tent? You're living.

The first thing he did was to get a sense of where I was at physically. So he had an idea of what he was Working with. And he asked me to do. We went down to the gym. He said, I want to see how many pull ups you can do. So I did about, I mean, I'm not strong at all. I did maybe eight. He said, all right, wait 30 seconds and do it again. So I did and I got maybe like five or six. He said, all right, wait 30 seconds and try it again. And I barely got like two or three. And I was just. My arm, I was done. And he said, okay, we are not leaving here until you do 100 more. And I said to him, that's great. Maybe in like Navy SEAL land, but in my apartment, like that's physically, it's impossible.

Right?

And he went on to just kind of explain to me that, you know, it's not. And you know, he already kind of identified my problem, that I was putting all these self imposed limitations around what I could do. And one by one, I eked out a hundred. And I said to myself, and if I'm under indexing by that, by a hundred pull ups, what other areas of my life am I under indexing in? You know, like, where else could I be? Do I have that much room for improvement? That much improvement? So I really did some self like reflecting and just started to say like, you know, I thought I was operating at a pretty high level, but really like, what the hell am I made of, you know, so, so at this.

Point, I mean, I know a lot of these guys, these, these seals, like they'll get up at 4am or you know, have, have monster workouts done before the rest of the world is even out of bed. I mean, were you already like getting up early and running and stuff or did he take you to a, to an entirely different level of discomfort in your morning?

Yeah, I mean, I'm not a super early riser at this point in my life. I had one child. So I was getting up, but inconsistently, but not. He got me up really early, got me up at all, all times. When one day we ran something, we coined the four. 4:48. We would run four miles every four hours for 48 hours. So if we started at midnight, let's just say. And we ran four miles, let's just say it took 40 minutes. I'm making it up. Yeah, exact. Then four hours from then we would go and run. No, I'm sorry. Four hours on. So we would have three hours and 20 minutes of rest and then we would do it again. Right, we would do it again. And we did that for 48 hours.

Instead of Every minute on the minute. It's basically every four miles on the.

Four hours on the four hours for 48 hours. So that really interrupts your sleep because you get no rhythm. You're completely out of whack. And by the time you changed and it was the middle of the winter, so by the time you got warm, changed, it was dark, got into bed for 40 minutes, it was time to, like, gear up and go again. So, you know, I was all out of whack.

Okay, so basically at this point, was he training for something or were you training for something? Or was he just there living with you, beating you up?

Right. So he was. He's constantly training for races, staying fit. I mean, his routine would. For an average human, it would be like his regular day would be like you were training for an ultra marathon. He was just. He would go so hard for me. I was just trying to. I was just in a rut, man. I was just like. I was just in this really weird place of comfort. So I wasn't training for anything in particular other than I wanted to get out of this space.

Right, right. Okay, so he's got you doing 100 pull ups, which it sounds like you hadn't done before. What. What else did he have you doing from a training standpoint that changed your life?

Well, we ran a lot. I mean, we ran twice a day. We did a ton of pull ups. I start push ups. I started out, I could do maybe like 22 real American military push ups, not like, you know, perfect form. And by the time he was leaving, by the time he left, I was doing a thousand a day. So I made these.

A thousand.

A thousand a day?

A thousand push ups a day? Like broken up in. Into sets or you guys just like dropping every few hours?

Yeah, I broke them up into sets. But no matter how you. No matter how you slice it, a thousand is a lot in a day.

Yeah.

And I knocked a minute off of my running pace per mile, which is like. I mean, I'm a runner, not a fast runner, but I've been running forever and, you know, all of a sudden I was running six miles, six minutes faster. That, you know, that's significant.

Yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah.

So. So what about. What about from a dietary standpoint? What was he doing in terms of diet compared to what you were doing? Like, were you following any kind of special diet? And, and did you, did you. Because I noticed in your bio, like, you talk about how you only. I think you said you only eat fruit until it's noontime. Is that correct?

I do. So.

So actually before I hear about. Yeah, tell me, tell me about this fruit thing before I hear how David's nutrition changed you.

Yeah, well, I read this book called Fit for Life before I ran my first marathon in 91 and I really in the book it challenged the readers. It was written by a guy named Harvey diamond who is incredible. It challenged the readers to try one of his main principles, which is to only eat fruit until noon. I'll tell you why in a minute and see how you feel for 10 days. And then after 10 days go back and have your regular breakfast. So I tried it. So for 10 days I only ate fruit. And then on day 11 I had a bagel or toast or cereal or whatever and I just felt disgusting. I felt so lethargic and bloated and just slow. I felt so much better the other way. So here I am 27 years later, basically 26 years later, and I've only eaten fruit until noon. Now the premise of it is that we use in a very quick non scientific answer, we use a tremendous amount of energy for digestion. You have a big meal and you get tired when we want to have the most efficient digestion we can. So we have, so our energy is freed up to either fight disease or get through the day or whatever. And fruit digests super quickly, digests in like 20 minutes as opposed to, you know, three or four hours for most other stuff.

Right.

And it's, it's low obviously it's mostly water. It's loaded in nutrients and minerals and etc. And it's really the perfect food. Without getting into the science of it to eat, if you eat it on an empty stomach, it sounds, it sounds.

Kind of similar to the concept of a lot of people doing like you know, bulletproof coffee for example, you know, quick, simple, easy to digest. And it, it's, it's not a huge calorie load for your body, you know, in depending on how much butter you put in it, I guess or a huge digestive strain for your body to just be able to, to burn through liquids and fats basically in the morning.

Right. And it's not processed. So pro. Anything processed is just is, adds extra level of energy right towards digestion. So in any event, listen, I'm not a nutritionist or a scientist.

No, it's interesting. I mean is it like, like I like, I personally, I do plants until then like everything's just like smoothies, plants, blended stuff and there's a little bit of like coconut milk and Stuff like that in there, but.

Right.

Yeah, it's that, that idea behind intermittent fasting. Right. They say that, that one of the reasons that it decreases the rate at which your telomeres shorten and helps you to live longer is it simply your body not having the digestive or the cellular strain from having to process food stuff to, you know, make ATP or store it away. So that's interesting. Diddid David get on the fruit kick too? Or were you already doing that when he was living with you or what happened there?

You know, his, his meals were like a weird thing in our relationship because I didn't really see him eat a lot. He ate a lot of like, he would eat like nuts and some protein, some shakes that he made, some, some cockamamie shakes. But I, he didn't really like. He wasn't a big eater. He was.

That surprises me if it's big a dude.

I know he was at least at this, during this part of his, of our time together, you know, he didn't really eat that much. He definitely didn't eat refined sugars and junk stuff. I mean, he was a no dessert guy. He didn't want to take in empty calories, but. Yeah, but his, his diet had no impact on mine. I've been unwavering in this approach for the last, you know, like I said, two plus decades.

Yeah.

And for me, I'm a trial and error guy. You know, this works for me. I don't know if it'll work for other people, but it was, it's completely changed my life. Like, the energy level is. I don't even know what it's like when my friends tell me they're tired or they don't want to do this. I mean, like, I can't sit still.

Yeah.

And knock on wood, you know, I haven't really been getting. I don't get sick often. And so anyway, so this has been this fit for life thing has been a great blessing for me. And it's a real, it's a real. Now it's, it's lifestyle habit, but it's a real principle in my life.

Yeah. So what about your wife and your kids? Like, what happened in terms of David being in your living room and your relationship with your family or what they thought or how he interacted with them?

Well, for my son, who was like two at the time, he thought he had a live Power Ranger living with him, so he was real. All of a sudden, an action hero shows up in your living room. And for my wife, you know, she's an entrepreneur. She's lived her life kind of taking risks and living outside of, you know, her comfort zone and trying different things. So this wasn't really that weird to her. And she really. Her and David, between her and David, there was a tremendous amount of drive in our house, and they got along great. So it was a pretty cool dynamic.

Wow. So. So did they actually train with David as well, or was that just you that was doing the training?

Yeah, just me. It's a white. Yeah.

So in addition to this, this pull up test, what were some other things that he had you do that took you outside your comfort zone?

Well, it wasn't all physical. A lot of it was mental, and a lot of it was about building up my mental toughness muscle, which I think we all have this element of mental toughness, and I think it's a really important indicator of future success. And I think you can exercise it. And he would do that. So one day we would go out again. It was the middle of the winter, and we went for a 10 mile run in a, literally a blizzard. But he would. When we got home, he walked down to the lake that we were at at this time, and it was frozen. Kids were playing hockey on it. And he took a boulder and cracked a hole in the lake and made us both jump into the frozen lake. Now, first of all, I remember clearly my mother telling me not to play near frozen ice. This freaked me out as a kid. And this guy now has me swimming in it. But what he was doing was, I didn't realize it at the time. He was making me do things every day that made me super uncomfortable. And he was creating a pattern and an environment in my head that said, okay, no matter how tough things get, I'm not going to quit. And which is really, to me, kind of the definition of mental toughness. And by doing this consistently every day for 30 days, it really worked. It took my, like, maybe I was a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 on the mental toughness meter. Kind of maybe reset my set point a little bit. And so it took me through a series of these kind of exercises. On top of the physical challenges, do.

You think you came out of it more healthy? More just like beat up and mentally tough or, you know, and then the reason I asked that is almost like playing devil's advocate. Like, you know, I've seen a lot of these Navy seals and they seem to just like over train, right? Train, train, train, until the body breaks and, you know, heal up and then do it again. Like, how did you feel after those 31 days?

Well, there's two aspects to it. So the physical aspect was I was in great shape, but I was definitely beaten up and I required a lot of rest time afterwards. The mental side of it is where I got the real benefit because here I am four or five years later and I still have, you know, I still hear him whispering in my ear. He's still my Obi Wan Kenobi. Two years ago I did a paddleboard, a stand up paddleboard race around Manhattan. And it was a 30 mile race. I'm not a good paddleboarder. It was incredibly challenging currents. It was so hard.

Yeah, 31 miles is a ways on a paddleboard.

Yeah. And I've done, I've rent, you know, I've done ultra races, 100 mile runs. This was really, really hard. And I just remember him saying to me, and in this particular race I had no, I had a supply boat with all my water, food, sunscreen, everything. And we got separated. So I had no water or food for three hours and it was like 100 degrees and I was in really bad shape. And I kept hearing his voice saying, you know, we had this saying, when you're done, you're really only 40% done. When your brain tells you you're done, you have that much, so much more in you. So I just kind of reiterating that and seeing his face. So the lasting impact physically, you know, we go in and out of shape all the time, all of us, we're in peak shape, then we slip, then we try to get back. We get better, we get worse. But the mental part of it was really the part that had the best and most lasting benefit.

Yeah, I like that when you're done, you're only 40% done. I actually just had two Navy Seals leave my house last night. They came up and did what's called a 20x. These are guys based out of a company called SEAL Fit down in California. And this was a Commander Mark Devine and another Navy SEAL named Lance cummings. And so 20 people showed up at my house and the idea is they just, they work them out for 12 hours. And it is interesting to see people's idea of what a hard workout actually is, change. You know, there's one point where we walk out the door and we tell them we're going to go for a walk. And one guy asks how long? And we said 19 miles. And you know, everybody's wearing their rucks. Just go walk 19 miles. And it's, you know, that's something that nobody would have done before. But it's crazy, you know, how much farther you can go when somebody who's done that as part of their job, in many cases every day tells you, hey, this is just normal.

Yeah, yeah, I love it, man. I wish I had the invite to that. Yeah, 21x.

Yeah, it's called, it's called a 20x. Then they also do one called a Kokoro, which is about 60 hours of that. It's just a beat down, right, like rucking and PT and you know, essentially doing like, like a little mini hell week or a mini hell day. So I completely get what you're saying when you talk about getting mentally stronger. I'm, I'm curious in terms of yourself, you know, obviously you had, you had David live with you. It changed your life physically and, and mentally. But as far as things that you've taken away since then that you now use in the trenches, you know, you're obviously, you know, you own the Hawks, you're jet setting, you're all over the place, you're running companies like, what is it that you've now implemented and kept in your life since he came and lived with you?

Well, for me, I really just try to, I try to live life for a living. I try to have as many experiences I can put on my life resume as possible.

So I don't, I mean like specifically, like did you go out and get an altitude 10 and start sleeping in that? Like, do you have like. Oh yeah, like your own little smoothies that you now travel with, like little things. I've stayed in your life since he stayed with you?

Good question. Well, I'm definitely, I'm super security conscious. You know, he was very aware he would come into our house and like, you know, like clear the house, quote, unquote. Clear the house in like 40 seconds he would like be in every room leaving door. So I'm very, I'm very aware of my surroundings now, more so than I was, but not really. I mean, I just got better in the areas of things that I was doing. So like, I'm just more consistent with, you know, he had, he did, he had this one shake that he had that he was buying that he added to this powder that he swore by. I don't even recall the name that I stayed on that for a while. I was drinking that when he was there in the morning as part of my, with my fruit smoothies.

But in terms of like, like how you guys finished up the, the period of time where he stayed at your house? Like, how did it end? He just pick up and leave one day. Do you say, hey, I've had enough, dude, I, I need some time off? Or how did that work exactly?

Yep, we had a 31 day kind of handshake. And at the end of 31 days, I woke up and there was a note that said, hey man, thanks. And that was it. I didn't see him for like two years.

That was it. Just hey man, thanks. And he was gone.

That was man. It was like we became really, you know, we did everything. He shadowed me everywhere. Every meeting, every meal, every workout. He lived with me everywhere. If I traveled for a meeting, he came. If I took a train ride, he came. Everything. And we got close. Or at least I thought he would.

Like go to work with you.

Everything. Everywhere I went.

What did your, your employees or your co workers think when you'd show up with a big old Navy seal? Like, because this guy's a, he's huge, Ben.

If I had 15 minutes in between meetings and calls, he'd make me see. He would say, we're going to see how many burpees you can do in.

No.

Yes, he would. I would walk into meetings drenched. He would come, he would come. I mean, it was the craziest thing. We would take a break. They'd be like, all right, we can take a break from a conference and say we have 10 minutes. You know, check your emails, we'll be back here in 15 minutes. And I would come back in a completely different T shirt, like still sweating.

Oh my gosh.

So he maximized the day. You know, exercise is cumulative. We're going to do as much as we do and check and see what we, where we're at at the end of the day.

Oh yeah, just imagine if everybody have a Navy SEAL standing behind them at their cubicle.

Yeah. So my, my employees thought I was insane, but they also loved it.

Wow, that's crazy. And then he was just gone. Does he know you actually wrote a book about this?

Of course. No, no, we're still in touch. When he left, we took, he just, you know, he went and he was still active in the military. In the book I refer to him as seal.

Uh huh.

Plus I wanted to, you know, I just, I didn't think it would be.

Oh, you couldn't release his name, right?

I didn't want to. I probably couldn't. He didn't want me to. And then. But now that he has been identified and it's out there and, and you know, people know he was with me. It's totally fine.

Wow. And he, and he's still in the Navy seals.

He is not active anymore.

Okay. So now he's not. Not active. You're able to say his name, right? Okay, gotcha. So that book is called Living with a seal. And for those of you listening, by the way, I'm taking notes and if you want to, if you want to see the shownotes for today's episode, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 100 mile man is in 100 mile man. Now as far as running 100 miles, are you still doing that though? Are you still doing ultramarathons?

I haven't done that distance in a while. I'm still doing ultra things. It's, you know, I'm 48. It's taken. It's taken. I've got a lot of miles on me. And so now I enjoy the paddle, paddle board stuff. I enjoy super intense stuff but not, not necessarily that much time on my feet.

So you're doing a lot more like high intensity interval training, paddling, less long distance running.

Yeah.

Interesting. Is that based off of a. Are you familiar with like Mark Sisson for example in his book Primal Endurance or this concept of like lifts lift low level physical activity during the day and like brief bouts of sprints here and there being the ultimate way to kind of like maintain fitness and longevity at the same time.

You know, roughly kind of familiar. But I'm like, I'm a trial and error guy. So I just. Yeah, almost 50 and I've run every day since I'm 20 basically. I've tried so many different things. I'm just kind of like based on my time management, what work. The stuff that works best for me now Ben is to mix running. You know, if I can get like something that's like kind of explosive, like a burpee that all body parts as mixed in with running, that's a good. So like a typical workout for me will be like run a quarter mile, do, do 20 burpees, run a quarter mile, do 19 quarter mile, 18 down to one. Sounds like a five mile run, 220 something burpees and it takes me about a little less than an hour. Perfect workout because I've gotten my run in, I've gotten kind of a full body thing. So if I can get design 20 of those and just whatever I feel like doing and keep it fun, that's a great day. And then get the long stuff in on the weekends.

Gotcha. So I have a question. For you, one more question about diet, and then I want to ask you about any little biohacks that you have in terms of jet lag hacks or health hacks or anything like that. But as far as diet goes, you eat fruit until noon or eat only fruit until noon. At that point, do you follow a special diet the rest of the way? Like special supplements that you take or, you know, the way that you'd break your fruit fast at lunch, things like that?

Right. Well, I never use the word diet. You know, this is just the way I eat. And, you know, people think that it might be extreme or different, but I think eating, you know, Twinkies and other stuff is extreme. So we both were at odds. No, I mean, I don't, I don't mix proteins and starches at a meal. So if I want to have a baked potato, I won't. I wouldn't have. I don't eat meat, but I wouldn't have a steak or something. You know, it's protein driven with it. I keep my. I try to keep my starches together and my proteins together. I don't really eat. I don't eat dairy. I don't eat fried food. So those are kind of my principles. And then, so what do I eat? So I'll fruit till noon and then I'll make myself my own veggie burger. I'll have a salad. There's plenty of stuff to eat. I just stay away from really refined processed stuff. Fried and dairy.

Yeah, yeah. Is that all part of that fit for life diet or that fit for life? Sorry, you don't like the word diet book?

Yeah, life. I mean, it is, it is. I mean, I'm a, you know, I just believe in common sense, you know, and I just don't feel like food was supposed to sit on a shelf or have the ability to sit on a shelf in a package for two years. Yeah, Like, I don't think that's the way God intended us to eat food.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So what about other. Other hacks that you use? I mean, obviously you're. You're doing a lot of things. You're running different companies, but you're staying healthy. You're staying fit in terms of other little things that you found to be really successful for you. Do you have any. You obviously don't sleep in an altitude tent in your living room, but do you have other little hacks that you use to keep your body healthy doing what you do?

I love cold therapy, so I love cold plunges. I like the cryo machines now. I try to get as much.

Did you still take the big boulder out to the icy lake?

Well, now I just fill up an ice bath and get in it. But I like what cold does. I used to take a ton of steams and saunas as well and just relax in there. But running is my meditation. And I just, you know, I try to allocate three hours a day for me so just to make sure that I can prioritize me on some level. And in those three hours I just do, you know, whatever I want to do. So that could be emails, it could be working out, it could be reading the paper, but that is that all.

Is that always at the same time of day or do you break those three hours up throughout the day?

Both I try to do once, but if I don't, I just, I'll break it up. So like I found that it was really hard to manage time and which is really all we really have. And I felt like I was time because all the emails I would, you know, we all get the demands for, hey, can you take a lunch meeting with this person? This guy wants to, can you get, spend 15 minutes? He wants to pick your brain. Hey, can you come to this? It was just like I was losing control of my time. So I just did a very simple pie chart. I said, all right, there's 24 hours in a day. I sleep seven of them, at least 17 hours. If I take three for myself, which I think is super important. And I don't think enough people really invest in their own being. So that leaves 14 hours left. And if I work a regular 40 hour week, you know, eight hours, I still have six hours with my family, whatever. Now of course you have commuting your food, you have this stuff. But there's so much time in a day if you met, if you don't dilly dally and you know, if you don't just sit around and like. So I try to, you know, stick to that formula as best I can. My pie chart deviates. If it's a busy week, work, work week, that eight hours a day might go to 10 and maybe my six hours of my family, whatever goes to four. But I always try to keep those three hours for me, which makes it better for my family and friends and coworkers and everything if I'm happy. And you know, I'm sure you're the same way, but like if you miss a day or you miss a workout, you know, you're like, you're cranky you're not necessarily as fun to be around, you know.

Yeah, for me, for me it's a 90 minute, 90 minutes in the morning. I gotta have me time. Like from the time I roll out of bed. I don't schedule anything. Like if, like I don't schedule 7:30am calls, for example, because I know, like, you know, for typically I'm out of bed, done with my, my gratitude journaling and, and everything else I'm doing at like, you know, let's, let's say 6:30, you know, it takes me a half hour to go to bed. That gives me one hour and I found that's not long enough. So I, I do, I use 90 minutes for my sauna. And like you, I do cold thermogenesis and I do a little bit of meditation and I do a little easy workout and you know, get, get a few things done, make myself a big green smoothie. But yeah, I protect that morning time. And I've found that that's just like a, like a life's requirement basically.

Right.

Yeah. I'm curious too. You own the Atlanta Hawks, and I've been reading a lot of articles recently about different basketball teams. For example, like the Golden State warriors doing brain zapping before their games where they're using some device called a halo to do like a magnetic, I think it's called transcranial TDCs to their brains to activate their frontal cortex or increased motivation before workouts, before games. Or there was another article on the CBS Sports website where they talk about how NBA players are hacking sleep by traveling with special vents to put over the filters, the air filters in hotel rooms, and traveling with their own little blackout curtains and sleep kits that mold to their body and stuff like that. As the owner of the Hawks, are you immersed? And as a guy who's obviously into health, are you immersed in helping players become healthy? Do you have opinions on these more advanced techniques people are using to stay healthy in professional sports?

Right. Well, first of all, I'm an owner. I have great partners and I'm not the sole owner, but we. A ton of time in our training staff. We just actually completely did a big switchover in our training staff in that department. And they invest a lot in exactly what you're saying. So we put in a cryo machine. For the first time ever in our training facility, we have a sleep doctor that is on staff to help, you know, to help the guys we bring in, you know, new foods. And I'm, I'm a big advocate of that. You know, post Game and pregame smoothies and post game. You know, it's very difficult when you play a game at say 8 o' clock at night. You're done at 10:30, you're on the road, you have to get on a plane. You've just burnt, you know, thousands of calories and now all of a sudden it's midnight and you play again tomorrow. You know, what are you going to put. You don't want to have a huge. It's very difficult. That's like a really hard lifestyle as an athlete. So, you know, we invest a lot in that area. And it's not, you know, traditionally, 10 years ago, I would assume in the league training was a lot different, right? Recovery was a lot different than it is now. There's just so many new advances. We test our athletes, our players, for everything from flexibility all the way to strength and conditioning, but across the board. So there's a lot. There's so much. The advances are so great and we've been able to do a very good job, I think, in reacting to the information that we get and giving our players, you know, and always learning, but the best, the best environment that they can have to succeed pregame and post game, recovery and get and preparation, right.

Do you get to spend a lot of time using a lot of that equipment? Like, do you go there and do cryotherapy at the Atlanta Hawks training facility or do you use a lot of those, whatever it is, their gym or any of their tools and techniques for yourself, for your recovery?

As much as I can. I mean, without question, it is an amazing perk. And also just be able to pick up the phone and ask a couple of questions like, hey guys, you know, man, my Achilles is hurting today and this is what I did yesterday. What would you recommend? Or, you know, that's been a great, great advantage, but I'll get in the cryo machine, man, and I'll get in the cold tub as much as I can.

Yeah, no, I feel like a million bucks again. That's my go to routine every morning, infrared sun straight into the cold pool. Now, you wrote this book, Living with a seal, and you're obviously busy with the Hawks and your other projects, but I'm curious if you have any new crazy adventures or experiments or books that you're working on after the, after the Navy SEAL book, right?

I do. So I decided just off the success of the book, to do a series of Living with Interesting People. So I had a chance to live with the Navy seal. I'm just trying to Sort out what the next journey will be. But I'm going to do a five books living until my wife says I can't have anyone else move in.

So have you actually had other people move in?

I'm working it out now. Yeah. Just thinking about, got a couple of ideas, I think.

Give us a teaser. What are you thinking about?

I mean, everything from a monk and not talking for a week to keeping it in line with this, the whole concept of fitness and so we'll see.

Interesting. Yeah, you sound like, you sound like my friend Joe decenna who will do things like, like have, you know, wrestlers come and live with his kids. I don't, I don't know if he did a monk. I know he does the only watch television and Mandarin Chinese trick as well. But you're familiar with Joe and his parenting and lifestyle techniques.

When my son was born, I called Joe and I said, I need a monk. I need someone to come train my kids the way you trained your kids.

That is funny. Have you done a spartan race?

I have. I mean, I follow. I know Joe for years. I love him. And I have not done a race yet, but really just had a scheduling and I just watched it on TV though. I mean, he's done such a good job.

Yeah, it's amazing. Well, if you're listening in and you want to check out this book and read more about Jesse's adventure living with David Goggins, I'll link to it over in the show notes along with a link to Jesse's website and this Fit for life book and some of the other things we talked about, these articles about what the NBA players are doing now. And you can get all that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 100Mileman that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 100-Mileman so Jesse, thanks for coming on the show and sharing this stuff with us, man. I think it's a fascinating story and it tempts me to find some badass to come and pitch a tent in my living room.

I appreciate it, Ben. Thanks for thinking of me.

Awesome. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Jesse Itzler signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

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

Sam.