The Jack Dorsey Podcast: Advanced Stress Mitigation Tactics, Extreme Time-Saving Workouts, DIY Cold Tubs, Hormesis, One-Meal-A-Day & More.

When I paired that with, like, you know, doing some writing or some reading over the weekend, I just found that I got so much more done during those fasting periods because I was so focused. It just felt like I had much more time to really think and to work in that moment. It was a psychological response, but it was felt enough that, like, I want to pull the thread on that a little bit more and see what's there.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Searched the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn. Deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Hey folks, my guest on today's show is somebody that you're probably familiar with. He dropped out of college sometime back to start the company, Twitter. And he is now a well recognized billionaire businessman. He's the CEO of Twitter, he's the CEO and the chairman of Square. He's the co founder of both. But what most people don't know about this fella is that he also has a keen interest in all things fitness, nutrition and health related. And in today's episode, we are going to dive into his daily routine, his diet, his stress management strategies, workout and fitness habits, and what he does to keep his body and brain successful. So my guest, if you didn't guess already, is Mr. Jack Dorsey. Jack, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks, Ben. Really excited to talk with you.

Yeah, I actually had, I had no clue that you were interested in or really focused on health or fitness or nutrition. And so I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about what your habits are and how you keep yourself put together are running in many directions as you do. And of course I know that. Not that I want to focus on this. It seems from what I can tell, there's all sorts of controversy around you and your company right now. And I'm curious, when you get thrown a lot of stress, do you have specific stress mitigation strategies that you use? I mean, from supplements to breathwork to yoga to a routine or anything like that.

I mean, I have a bunch I've learned. I mean, I've learned a lot from your podcast and others that are similar, but I guess I start with. I've always. It took me some time to realize this, but I learn best through, like, experimentation and I want to experience something and I give myself a week or a month, depending on the practice, to really figure out if it's has some, you know, transformational capability for what I'm currently going through and then organize my life more around that. And I. I'll say that, you know, my, my routine today is completely different than my routine three years ago, but I. I feel like I have a lot of it dialed in based on. On what I'm currently experiencing in terms of stress and, and just what I have to do every day. And you know, three years ago is when I, when I went back to Twitter and took on another job in addition to running Square. Running. Running Twitter as well. And also, you know, we, at that time we were taking Square public and Twitter was going through a lot of turnover and also in need of a massive turnaround across multiple dimensions. So a lot of my routine today is all due to what felt like just had to be done in order to not just survive, but to make sure that I continue to be performant and I continue to be clear. And there's been some practices that have been really impactful, some that I don't know if they're impactful just yet, but, yeah, happy to get in all of them.

Yeah, go ahead. I think it'd be fun to geek out on some of the stuff that you do. I would imagine that you, like a lot of people, don't really adopt a lot of stuff, stress mitigation tactics, until things bite you in the ass and you realize that you actually have to begin to control some amount of cortisol and do things like sleep optimization and stress strategies. So just fill me in. We can take as deep a dive as you want. What kind of things do you do?

Well, I guess I'd rank them by impact. One is around just mental health, and the biggest impact there has been meditation. Number two has been around physical health, and the biggest impact there has been more exercise and sleep. And three has been around diet. And so I. So just to go through all three, I've been meditating for about 20 years. I originally just started playing around with it because I heard it from someone, I read some things and it wasn't a practice. It was more, you know, I would take five minutes, I would take 10 minutes, try to figure out what to do. And then as years went on, I found various practices and you know, kind of led me to more disciplined ways of doing meditation. And I played with apps and you know, I found some teachers. But it wasn't really until I found Vipassana two years ago that I went really deep in it. Really?

You mean Vinpasa? Like, like the full 10 day getaway?

Yeah, I did, I did my first 10 day meditation last year and just outside of Dallas, Texas. And I did it, I wanted to do it during a time that was more down than my normal day. So I did it in between 21 December and the first of the new year. So I was actually coming out of silence on the day of the new year, which was, which was amazing and symbolic to me. But it also allowed me to, you know, during that time things just go a little bit slower at work. And it enabled me to be confident in number one. Like one of the asses. You're silent and that means you're giving up all reading material. You can't read, you can't write, you can't have a device, you can't talk with anyone, you can't even look anyone in the eye. Any form of communication, including holding the door for someone would be against the discipline and against the practice. And the whole push behind all this is to make it feel like you're on a retreat by yourself, that you're the only person, even though you're there with a hundred other people doing the same thing. The idea is that it feels like you're there by yourself. So you're, you can't, you know, the most exercise you can do is actually just walk around the courtyard. And all this is just pushing all the focus to your mind. You do two meals a day. You wake up at 4:30 in the morning, or sorry, 4 in the morning. You start meditating at 4:30. You don't stop meditating until 9 at night. Geez. And it's, it was intense and, and I, I love, in my experiments, I love going to the extreme and then kind of walking bad back a bit just to find the balance for me. But that was my first time and I, you know, day two was extremely challenging. Day six was probably my hardest. I, you know, I was, I was at the middle of the day, I was like, I looked around at one point and everyone else looked like they were enlightened and there were all these Buddhas and they were getting something I just was not able to understand and able to get or to feel. And then that night, there was a discourse that kind of describes a theory behind the practice. You watch a video and he said something that just resonated with me and my practice right after that felt amazing. I felt the clarity, I felt the focus. I felt, I felt what I was intending to get out of the course in the first place. And then when I woke up, I cried. I was so happy. I was full of joy and peace. But then I went to sleep. I slept very, very soundly. But I woke up on the seventh day and it was just back to not understanding what I was doing and feeling lost. But all of that is this training of like, you can't grab on to the highs and you can't grab on to the lows. It's all about, you know, detaching yourself and not. And being more in control of the reaction.

What kind of things do you eat when you're on one of those retreats for that two meals a day protocol?

It's all vegetarian. So you have, you have breakfast and you have lunch and you're not allowed to eat. Afternoon, you have, you have tea at 5pm Newer students can also have like a small bit of fruit, but your meal is really a vegetarian meal at the start of the day. So breakfast and lunch. And, you know, every day I would wake up and I would look forward to two things. Hot oatmeal and then Honey Nut Cheerios. And there was one day, I remember, I think it was actually day seven when the, the oatmeal was cold. And I'm like, oh, man, this is my one thing. This is the one thing I look forward to every single day.

Wait, are you saying you were looking forward to Honey Nut Cheerios after the retreat or. They had Honey Nut Cheerios during the Vipassana.

They, they had, they had Honey Nut Cheerios during the Vipassana. So this is a very, very Western.

I was gonna say. I didn't know that was an ancestral healing food.

Completely different. Completely different from when I did my, my, my second meditation, which was the end of last year in Myanmar. So the food varies upon the surrounding locale. I was in the middle of Texas, so one day we had vegetarian chili for lunch. And that was an amazing day. So it's a vegetarian meal. It's pretty light. And you're encouraged to, to go towards healthier options. But, you know, at least in Texas, they had Honey Nut Cheerios too.

Yeah. So when you finish up one of those, do you actually carry those meditation skills into life or do you just switch to using whatever calmer headspace or Transcendental meditation or some other form of meditation.

Well, one of the practice, what the practice asks you to commit to is number one, doing one of these 10 day retreats every year and then number two, every day, practice for two hours. So you split it between morning and evening.

Geez, I thought transcendental meditation was a lot because that's 2 by 20 minutes that you agree to during TM. I have no clue.

I practiced that for about a year as well, but then I found Vinpassana. So you wake up, ideally as soon as you wake up, you meditate for an hour and then before bed you meditate for an hour. That's probably the hardest one for me. I have to get really strict around when I'm going to bed and shutting down all the devices and whatnot. But I've more or less kept up the practice of two hours a day. I miss it when I travel. But the point is, anytime you have to practice, so you know, if you can dedicate the two hours, it's amazing and you carry with you some of what you experienced during the 10 days. But if you can just get 10 minutes and sometimes that's all I can find, that's what I do. And I try to go as deep as I can in terms of, you know, what I, you know, building that single point of focus and building that clarity that I experience directly during the 10 days both, both of my years.

So if you're meditating an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, are you still squeezing in other workout routines? Because you mentioned exercise in addition to meditation, but that sounds like a chunk of time.

Yeah, this is one I've been experimenting with a lot. So for two years I would wake up and I would meditate and then I would walk into work. And my, my office is five miles away. So through a combination of like changing what I wore and specifically my shoes, that allowed me and also my route that allowed me to get that down to an hour and 15 minutes. So every day I was walking into work and rain or shine, I would start it. You know, I'd wake up at around 6:15, I would meditate for an hour, I would get ready, I'd be out the door at 7:30 and then I'd be in the office by 9:00am and during that walk I would listen to podcasts like yours, or I would listen to audiobooks or I would just think. And an hour and 15 minutes over five miles, it's a pretty brisk pace. So it's moving quite fast and I might look a little bit more like I'm jogging than I'm walking. So I'm moving really fast. I'm getting everything going. I'm in the sun. I'm directly walking into the sun. The way that my walk is organized. So I go directly into the rising sun and I try to get as much sunlight as possible. And then I begin the day at 9. Over the past six months, I decided that I needed a little bit more space to think and I decided to work from home on Tuesday and Thursdays. Today is one of my work from home days. So coming at you from my living room and I've spent the whole day here, I had a few folks over from the office to talk about some of our strategies going forward, just longer term strategies and been writing a lot. I read during this time as well. But since I didn't do the walk, instead I do high intensity interval training. So I do the seven minute workout. I usually do one to three iterations of that. Or I get on the Tabata bike.

And that's the actual name of the bike. A Tabata bike. Or you get on a bike and do a tab of the set.

I get on a, I get on a air like a fan bike.

Okay.

I think it's called, I think it's called the extreme.

Okay.

I just bought it off Amazon.

You might have the same one as me. Does it have a little button that takes you immediately into the 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy 4 minute tabata.

Set that exactly what I do. It has a big green button, it has a big red button. It has a bunch of other buttons that go into the set. So I do, you know I do. I love the Tabata. I love, I love the like the segment workout just because of the flow of the exercises, resting some body parts and engaging others. And then the thing I love about submit workout is I never have an excuse. I don't have a personal trainer. I don't go to a gym. I travel a lot. And all I need in order to do a workout every single day is a chair and a wall and my body weight.

Now for the seven minute workout. Are you talking about the actual the New York Times 7 Minute Workout that was made popular a couple years ago?

Yeah. And the best app I found for it is an app called seven and it also allows you to work in some other variations of the seven workout. So they'll do, you know, you can add burpees or you can add more stretches or more core oh really? They have one which is the full body and then I also do a lot of the core exercises which is again just seven minutes. They have a stretch workout as well. It's very clean, it's very simple and it's always with me.

I'll link to that one in the show notes for people. Show notes. By the way, for those of you listening in for anything Jack and I talk about are going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Jack, there's a couple bodyweight workout apps I have on my phone. That the Aptiv one. I know that's one popular app, but I have a really cheap app that's very simple. It sounds kind of similar to yours. I'll find the name of it and link to it in the show notes. But basically you're doing that seven minute routine every day or just on certain days of the week?

Every day, Every day. I need to do at least that because I never have an excuse even if it's raining outside or you know, I couldn't make to the gym or my trainer is sick or whatnot, which, which I don't have. I never have an excuse not to, not to work out. So if I'm in a hotel in the middle of Japan, I can still do it and I can still feel like I at least exercise my body in a, in a way that I found to keep me fit. It doesn't build muscle but it does keep me fit, does keep me alert and gives me a jolts of energy. I have been playing a lot more with just building more, more mass for that I've been using medicine ball and kettlebells playing a little bit with just a very simple home gym just to do more weight resistance. But I think I'm gonna need a little bit more instruction, instruction on that. So it's not as much, it's not as rigorous as all my other practices right now, but I just playing around with it to understand what it is and how it might help in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, a couple of things. By the way, that app that I use is called the VT body weight app. I just checked on my phone, it just has probably about 20 different body weight workouts in it kind of similar to that seven minute routine. But the weighted vest can work really well because I do that seven minute workout sometimes and I have a vest, it's a hyperware, it's like a really tight fitting weighted vest and you can get it in just like £20 and a lot of times £20 is enough to just jack your heart rate up for that seven minute workout. And then the other thing that I do with a lot of my clients will do this too. I'll have them do a short workout like that short, explosive body weight workout. And then for the resistance training. Have you ever heard of the book Body by Science by Doug McGuff?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's like super slow training. It's just one single set to failure. It takes 15 to 18 minutes for the workout, but it's one single set to failure for chest press. Some kind of pulling motion, like a pull up or a pull down shoulder press row, and then some kind of a leg press or a squat. But you just do one set, you know, time under tension for like two to three minutes for each set to absolute failure. And that works really well because the one, the one thing I noticed about that body weight workout, like the New York Times or any of the rest, just from a pure strength or bone density standpoint, sometimes you got to load the muscle. So if you do one of those twice a week and then you do like the body weight workout three times a week, and then you're walking a lot, you've got a lot of bases covered, and you're doing the Tabata set on the bike. So you're kind of hitting all the different parameters.

Yeah. And even with a seven minute workout, you know that there's, you know, you, you do squats, for instance, and a step up on a chair. And with that I'll mix in like the medicine ball or, or the, the kettlebells, just add a little bit more resistance and weight to it. So just experimenting a bunch, but where I want to get to eventually is more building strength. And that I think is the next iteration for me. The other thing on physical health that has had probably the largest impact just in terms of how I feel, but also mental clarity is sauna and cold. So about three years ago, I got, I invested in a barrel sauna and an ice bath that has a built in chiller. And the chiller gets it down to about 37 degrees. And I would rotate. I would do this every day as well. Usually in the evening I would have the sauna temperature at around 220 degrees. I would stay in there for 15 minutes, rotate into the cold for three minutes and then back into the sauna. Start, start with the cold for about three minutes, go into the sauna and do three rounds of that, ending in the cold for about a minute. And I could, I could wrap that whole thing up in about an hour. Yeah. So I love that for the, for the feeling. I recently discovered near infrared, so I recently purchased a sauna space, which is a little company out of Columbia, Missouri. Yeah, that hand makes near infrared saunas. It's a, it's a light array of four. Four incandescent bulbs. And it's the, the cool thing about it is it's actually in this little tent, so it's really portable. I put it in my garage next to where I do my workouts and whatnot. And the, the tent itself is also EMF shielded. So if I were to bring my phone in there, for instance, there's no signal whatsoever. So there's no radiation EMF from power, from WI fi, from cellular. So even if I were to go in there and meditate and not turn the lights on, it just feels, it feels a little bit, feels a little bit different because you're not getting hit by all the EMF energy.

Yeah, sauna space is one. They're one of the few saunas that actually does low EMF near infrared. I mean, I use the clearlight. That's a mix of a bunch of different infrared specific spectrums. So it's a little different. But the, the sauna space is more like a tent that you get inside, like a large tent that you get inside versus like a, like a wooden unit like the clearlight. But the, the saunaspace, they also sell their bulbs. Like you can just buy their near infrared bulbs and outfit anything. Like you could even. You could hang a couple of their, their. The bulbs come in like, almost like a chandelier that holds four near infrared bulbs. And you could even put those in your office. And you'll flip them on and stand in between them while you're working on your computer, for example.

Exactly. I have one of the separate solo bulbs right at my standing desk at home. So when I do work, I just flip that on and I'm still getting the benefit of the near infrared. But yeah, it's this little tent and there's a stool, freestanding stool in the middle of it. And on the far wall of it is an array of four lights. And you flip them on and you sit in one position facing forward, for instance, facing the lights for five minutes. And they rotate every five minutes four times. And they recommend at least 20 minutes. I usually, when I do it, I usually go in for 30 minutes to an hour. And that even, even more so than the, you know, the traditional dry sauna, which I invested in three years ago. It feels, I just, I feel A lot more energized. I feel a lot cleaner and I'm not getting the same like temperature because the Temperature is around 125 externally, but it raises my core temperature very, very quickly. So you sweat much faster than I would in the, in the typical dry sauna.

And it's more, it's more of a deep sweat. Like the, the, the photons actually penetrate a lot more deeply into tissue which is why it's, you know, it's popular for, you know, if you have high heavy metals or, you know, you're returning from travel or you've eaten a lot of crappy food. That's where those things come in incredibly handy.

Yeah, it feels, it feels more restorative whereas the, the dry sauna, the traditional, you know, finish sauna feels a lot more relaxing.

Yeah.

And now I use the finish sauna more for like weekends when I just want to like really relax and, and then go in the ice hub and it just like you going out of that cycle after it's finished, you just feel like an entirely new person. It's amazing. Whereas the sauna space feels more like daily restorative kind of clarifying and cleansing.

Yeah.

So today my routine is a little bit different in that I wake up a little bit earlier, I do my meditation, I do my seven minute workout and then I go into the sauna, the sauna space for about 20, 30 minutes before I do, before I do my walk. On my Tuesdays and Thursdays, I think I heard this from your podcast, but doing, you know, focusing more on the strength building exercises between the hours of 4pm to 7pm have a greater efficiency. So I've been moving some of my, some of my workouts to, to that timeframe, but they're, they're no more than, you know, 20, 30 minutes at a time. They're not, they're not, you know, really going all out. But I've yeah, been experimenting with moving to that time frame and seeing, seeing what effect that has.

It's kind of hard in my opinion because, you know, for, for me I'm, I'm wired up to eat the frog. Like I want to get up and just get that hard thing that kind of sucks over in the morning, which is usually like the high intensity weight training workout or the interval training workout. But yeah, I mean if you wait until the afternoon or the evening, your body temperature has peaked, your testosterone peaks, your post workout protein synthesis, your grip strength, all these things happen that make that a more conducive time to do a hard workout. And then it works well for me. And we can talk about your diet momentarily. But I save most of my carbohydrates for dinner just because a lot of times I'm out. It's a little bit more of a meal that widely fluctuates, especially when I'm traveling. And so youyou finish that workout and you're in an insulin sensitive state for a few hours. So you can go and you know, maybe you're going out to sushi or you're going to a steakhouse where you might have some of the, some of the bread or whatever. But it can be a, it can be a good way to mitigate a lot of the carbohydrate intake that might take place later on in the evening. So nine times out of 10, I do the same thing. I save it for the evening, unless it's just a super busy day where I know I'll have so much cognitive fatigue by 4 or 5pm I just need to do the hard thing early.

Exactly. And that's exactly what I found it like in the morning. I know like it. I know that like if I do it in the morning, it's done. And I feel like I have a win for the day. But I'm not as focused as I might be in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I'm a lot more focused, but it's all burdened by what happened in the, in the day earlier. And it might be in a lot of like mental stress or, or whatnot. And that kind of takes away and adds some excuse as to why not to go as hard. But I do feel more focused in the afternoon. But it, but it leaves more room for not doing it than I like.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like it's just a little bit harder to get it started. I find an extra cup of coffee or chomping out a piece of nicotine gum. Usually gets my ass out in the garage to do it. But I typically use some sort of chemical to get out there and do the hard thing in the afternoon and evening after a stressful day. By the way, you mentioned the chiller system that you use. I interviewed Rick Rubin last year and he has a pretty complex and very cool, pun intended, chiller system down his place in Kauai and in Malibu. And I'm curious, did you do something similar where you've just essentially got a tub, almost like a, you know, like an animal feeder tub, like one of those large oval tubs filled with water and then you attach your chiller system to that?

Yeah, that is exactly What I have, I, you know, I have, it's, it's not a, it's not a steel tub, it's a cedar tub. But to turn it into a, into a hot tub, but it does take some time to do that. So I have it. When I was doing it every day, like I would do it in the morning and it would start chilling at like 4, 4 in the morning to get down to about 37 degrees. It's also really cold here in San Francisco in the morning, so it doesn't need much help. But usually when I would get in it would be about 37 degrees max 42. Yeah. But yeah, the chiller's like, you know, far away from it so you don't hear it and it just does its thing.

Yeah, a lot of people who are on a budget, they'll get the chest freezers and do the same thing. And then I think it was Luke's story in LA and I actually published his cold pool setup as well. I'll link to that in the show Notes for Folks. But he uses instead of chlorine just a little bit of food grade hydrogen peroxide in the water every now and again. Each time that he bathes, he gets out puts a little bit of food grade hydrogen peroxide in there. And apparently that does a pretty good job keeping it clean without the use of chlorine. If you don't have something like an ozonator, which also helps it to stay clean without the use of chemicals.

Yeah, I mean, nothing has given me more mental confidence than being able to go straight from room temperature into the cold. I mean, just, just making that switch, especially like in the morning, you know, going into a nice cold tub from, you know, from just being warm and bad is. It just unlocks this thing in my mind and like, you know, I just, I feel like, you know, if I can, if I can will myself to do that thing that seems so small, I can, but hurts so much. I can do nearly anything, man.

Anything that tones the vagus nerve will do that. You know, that activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And there's nothing like cold and especially cold with your face under to do that. If you can train yourself not to take that like the mammalian dive reflex when you come up and just stay absolutely stone faced breathing through your nose, that's a good sign you're able to, to control a lot of external stress.

Exactly. And it took me, it took me some time to get there. But now like all my showers are cold showers. Like I just do not do, I don't do hot anymore. Like even, you know, washing off. Like I try to do entirely cold. And it's, it just feels, it's. For me, it's been better than caffeine in terms of like waking me up and focusing me. And it's also like something I have to overcome every single day. Like, do I really have to do this? Yes, I'm gonna do it.

Yep, exactly. And I mean, there's so many side benefits. You get a nitric oxide release and a lot of people will go cold, hot, cold, hot, which I actually like. One of my guests, Ray Cronice, actually uses that as kind of a fat loss tactic for a lot of his clients is they'll do a five minute shower morning and evening with 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot. Basically like a hot cold call contrast shower. That's pretty useful for recovery as well if you don't have like a sauna chiller setup. But either way you're doing the right thing with the cold. Do you do any kind of supplementation for stress like adaptogenic herbs or cortisol control supplements or anything along those lines?

Nope, none at all. The only supplements I take are a daily multivitamin and vitamin C. A lot of vitamin C. I just, I haven't, I don't know why, I just haven't found the discipline yet to be on something consistently. I like, I do the athletic greens every now and then, but if it's not part of my core, core diet, I haven't found myself really sticking with it with the exception of multivitamin. But I do want to explore more of that. Like that's, you know, goes into the, into the third aspect around, around diet. That's where I do, I do want to experiment a little bit more and, and play with. But right now I've just been trying to get the core, the core diet to fit my lifestyle and benefit me and in ways that I can feel.

Yeah, so you have, you have a little bit more of like a, more like a Tibetan monk approach. Those guys do a lot of deep meditation and production of theta brainwaves, etcetera, Et cetera, but they don't use any exogenous supplements. They make their own medicine, so to speak. My take on it is that I think anybody using whatever Chinese adaptogenic herbs or phosphatidylserine or any of these supplements that seem to do a good job controlling stress have no business doing so until they have learned how to make their own medicine by doing things like meditation, breath work, yoga, good sleep cycles, etc.

Yeah, I mean, the, Your, Your podcast on, you know, more the supplemental versus ancestral wisdom that you did not too long ago, I think was just so on point and resonated with me so much. I just. This, this concept of we're born with what we need and, you know, figuring out how to unlock it naturally. Right.

And then, and then the. The biohacks are the icing on the cake. The near infrared sauna is the icing on the cake to your walk where you're getting outside in the sunshine or using something like Binaural Beats or some meditation app is the icing on the cake for doing something like free meditation with just your own body?

Yeah. Or maybe better thought as mirrors or just kind of reflection of what is possible. I think a lot of technology, just my understanding of technology is a lot of it is a crutch. And a crutch isn't a bad thing. It helps us get from one point to another. But I think in realizing the effectiveness of it and the tool, what it's really doing is ideally showing us what we're already capable of and how we might unpick the pieces and unpick the puzzle to unlock it ourselves. That's my approach with supplements and technologies and even simple technologies like the infrared sauna. What am I missing in my life that makes this something that's valuable right now? And is it pointing to something that I could be changing in my lifestyle? And the walk itself, I learned from listening to some podcasts and reading from Ray. He, you know, I think he does a. A walk of at least 30 minutes every single day. And he does that. Ray Kronise Cronice, he does it in the cold. And like, when I'm doing my walk, I, you know, I wear jeans, I wear my running sandals, and I wear a T shirt. And it's, you know, it's 47 degrees out and the sun feels amazing, but, like, it's. It's cold and I'm moving fast, and it's just an amazing, amazing feeling. It's. It's uncomfortable at times, but it feels amazing when the day does warm up or when I do get to the office. And I can feel the effects on my energy, and I can also feel the effects on my sleep.

Yeah, I look like a total wanker up here when I'm going on my winter walks because I've got my son's big Harry Potter Gryffindor hat on and then my giant camouflage gloves and my boots, and then I'm wearing shorts and so I've, I've found a relatively isolated farm road back behind my house where I don't need to freak too many people out. But yeah, once you get used to it, it's actually very refreshing. And admittedly I'll often jump in my hot tub afterwards for dessert. But it's, it's, it's a cool way to walk.

Yeah, it's, it is. That is a word. It's refreshing. I mean it just, it feels like the crisp air in the morning is just. Yeah, it's an amazing feeling. It makes you, it's just this one of those take back moments where you're like, wow, I'm alive.

Yeah.

And it's exclamation point, you know.

Plus, when you consider that walking increases your brain derived neurotrophic factor and so does cold, you're stacking two things that allow you to think better and kind of, kind of access that whole sage advice to either walk on it or sleep on it to solve problems. And that's what I'll do in many cases is just leave all the technology at home and go for a walk. And often come back with the answer. And a lot of times if you're walking in the cold, I find you're even more sharp when you return.

Yeah. And without putting a lot of like aggressive stress on my body where like a lot of people have asked me, why don't you just run to work? And I just, I, I don't feel like one. I wouldn't have this, I want to have the same sense of joy because it would feel more as if I'm trying to get to point B as quickly as possible rather than like enjoying the walk, enjoying what I'm listening to, like thinking deeply, which I get another walk. But, but also it, if like in, in my runs it just feels like it's putting so much stress on various parts of my body and walking is a lot more predictable and lower stress and I think I get more of the benefits because my body has to deal with less and the stress.

Yeah, yeah. Now, now to your diet. What's that look like right now?

So this is, this is where I've, I've also experimented a ton. Like I, both in terms of what I eat and when I eat. So I was, I was vegan for two years and I, you know, I, when I get into something, I just go hard into it. I, I went cold turkey into veganism. I didn't really understand anything about the diet. I thought I would have to supplement like crazy, which I Did. And I would having all these, all these vitamins to make up for what, what I thought I was, what I thought I was missing. And at one point, midway through, I went back to my, to my parents for Thanksgiving and my mom up in the door and she said, jack, you're orange. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, you're orange. Like your skin is orange. Your, the, you know, the, your, your eyes are orange. So your, your hair is orange. You're orange. And I'm like, I, I didn't even notice the progression. My friends noticed progression, but I was just having way too much beta carotene and I was just like completely over overdoing supplements and vitamins to make sure.

Keratinemia, there's a name for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it took my mom to, to really push me back. And then she also said like, I don't know what to cook for you. You're not making it easy for me. So I, you know, I come from St. Louis, Missouri and midway through I moved back to St. Louis and during the, at the time it was really hard to be a vegan in St. Louis, Missouri. And I, at least the way that I approached it and I ended that and then went to more of a paleo diet and you know, did the, did the butter coffee in the morning and stuck with a very strict paleo diet and experiment with, with that for a year. And then I, I listened to a bunch of Wim HOF podcasts and he's someone that I've, I've learned a lot from. A lot of what he says resonates and a lot of what, you know, when I, when I did meditation and Vipassana, a lot of what Whim has stated I found similar to the practices that we're trying to, and that we're trying to be encouraged within Vipassana. The breathing techniques, the colds, a lot of what he's focusing through. These forces, whether it be breath or through the cold, end up having similar results as what you're trying to get out of Vivasana and just straight meditation. So I was listening to one of his podcasts and he said, I only eat one meal a day. And I'm like, wow, that's, that's extreme that, but also like really simple. He didn't really explain it. I couldn't find anything else on it at the time. This was about two years ago. And I just decided, okay, I'm going all in on this. So for the past two years, I've only had, I only have dinner. So I usually eat around 6:30 and I eat until about 8:30 or, or 9 at the latest. And that's when I can also drink, drink wine, like red wine usually. But I wake up, I have about 28 ounces of water to you know, 14 ounce Mason jars basically. And then I have water all day long. I don't have any. I, my, my vitamin is usually with dinner, my, any, any other like vitamins I would have like, or at dinner I don't have anything until around 6:30. And then I usually eat a really big meal and I have a, I have a protein, whether it be fish, chicken or some steak. And I try to have a lot of greens in terms of salad, a big arugula salad, spinach. And then I, you know, sometimes have like a asparagus or brussels sprout or some, some other like green, green vegetable. And then I have mixed berries as a dessert, maybe some, some dark chocolate. So usually I can find that everywhere I go. I try to eat at home as much as I can. Every now and then I'm out on dinners with other friends or colleagues. But I can usually find anything on the menu that would resonate with what I want to do. And.

Yeah, I've spoken to a surprising number of executives and busy people who do very well on the one meal a day routine. I feel like I could pull off that routine if I wasn't still competing professionally in things like obstacle course racing and as a fitness guy trying to maintain a certain amount of muscle and trying out new workouts all the time during the day. But just from a pure time standpoint, not having to stop to take a meal and then all the benefits that you get from what's typically a 16 to 20 hour intermittent fast every single day. So you have that press pulse cycling of cellular autophagy and then your MTOR activation. And, and like you mentioned, and we were talking about, if you throw in your hard workout before that big meal, you get a lot of that, you know, that carbohydrate just shoved in the liver and shoved into muscle. And that's a, it's a pretty good scenario. I can't do it. I simply can't with my schedule. But I'm intrigued by it. I would imagine as I eventually shift into perhaps a slightly less masochistic extreme exercise lifestyle, I'll try to pull it off. But do you find that after that one meal a day you're just stuffed to the game gills or is it pretty reasonable?

Well, I think the two things I noticed right away, like the first two weeks were really hard, but the two impacts I would point to is after I got over those first two weeks during the day I feel so much more focused and I think it's just this very ancestral looking for where the food is. You have this very focused point of mind in terms of this drive. And I certainly the time back from breakfast and lunch allowed me to focus more on what my day is. But the biggest effect has actually been on my sleep. So I eat at 6:30 and every meal I have and the food just tastes amazing. It really has increased my appreciation for food and taste because I'm deprived of it for, for so long during the day and then suddenly it's just, you know, a flavor burst and, and then I do, I, I do eat until I feel like, you know, I, I, I'm full. And then what it that the effect of it has. And like when I was eating lunch, I would, you know, I'd eat lunch and then I'd get tired after, after eating that lunch and, and my meetings would, would drag on. And in this particular case I eat and I inherently feel a little bit sleepy and I, I feel more relaxed and I feel like ready for bed. Like I feel I can, I can go to bed and like actually, you know, knock out in you know, 10 minutes, if not, if not sooner than that. So it really changed how quickly I fell to sleep and more so how deep I felt I was sleeping in terms of like I was waking up feeling refreshed and feeling like I actually, actually slept.

And do you, do you track any of that by the way? Do you self quantify? Like, do you wear like a ring or wristband or anything like that?

Recently I got an aura ring and I've been, I've been tracking it for the past four months and yeah, I can, I can get a lot more predictive around like if I, if I drink too much wine, I know my art. My, my REM sleep is going to go down. I know my readiness score is going to go down. If I keep to a consistent schedule of sleep I get, I get higher scores on REM and I get much deeper sleep as well. So that's been a new dynamic. It's just to check how I'm doing. The other thing I've been playing with recently is not just a single day, but like doing weekends. So I'll go from Friday till Sunday and I, I won't have dinner on Friday, I won't have dinner or any meal on Saturday. And the first time I'll eat will be Sunday evening. And I've done that three, three times now. Where I do extended fast, where I'm just drinking water, I don't put anything in the water. It's just water. No food until Sunday dinner when I try to ease back into it slowly, starting with bone broth and then building up a little bit as time goes on, but also as the days go on.

Yeah, it's very interesting. Like a lot of your protocol is based around this idea of hormesis, which we know induces cellular program cell death and cell cleanup and longevity benefits down regulates a lot of anabolic pathways and upregulates a lot of catabolic pathways. But a lot of the things you're doing would kill you if you did them in large amounts, right? Like heat, cold, high intensity exercise for short periods of time. Fasting, even like plant intake is actually, you know, it's technically a hormetic stress. I just recorded a podcast about this on the Carnivore diet that'll probably be out by the time this podcast gets released. But it's interesting how a lot of your protocol is kind of self equipping you to do things like handle stress or enhance longevity. But it's very simple. It's just all, all autophagy based.

Exactly, exactly. And, and you know, the, the fasting has been a new dimension. I've been doing the one meal a day for, you know, for two years. But the, the more prolonged fasting has been something I'm experimenting recently and I just. The first time I did it like day three, I was just, I felt like I was hallucinating. It was just a, it was a weird state to be in. But as I, as I did it the next two times, it just became so apparent to me how how much of our days are centered around meals and how the experience I had was when I was fasting for much longer, how time really slowed down. Like the feeling of time slowed to a crawl where the day just went on and on and on and on. And I think it was because, like, there was no like, meal to like, really, really separate the, the thirds of it. And when I, when I paired that with like, you know, doing some writing or some reading over the weekend, I just found that I got so much more done during those fasting periods because I was so focused and just felt like the, I had much more time to really think and to work in that moment. So there's a psychological response, but it was felt enough that I want to Pull the thread on that a little bit more and see what's there.

Well, do you have a family?

So I'm single, but I have a lot of. What I, What I do to make up for that is try to have dinners with like, my. My best friends as much as possible and, you know, try to enjoy each other's company over. Over. Over wine and. Yeah, a good meal.

So, yeah, I was going to say that. The reason I ask is for. For me as a family man, it's like meals are almost like the gathering time. You know, breakfast in the morning, and I don't really eat breakfast till midday because I do an intermittent fast. But I stand there with the kids and chat with them about the day and usually give them a little lecture out of some book I'm using to help build their character while they're having breakfast. And then lunch is right now solo. Although we're starting the kids basically into kind of like a homeschooling, unschooling scenario. Next year they're dropping out of sixth grade, so we'll begin to have lunches together and then we have a big family dinner together at the end of the day. So for me, you know, the family is the reason to break up the day with meals. But when I'm traveling and I'm solo, I can be hyper productive because either don't eat or eating is kind of like an afterthought.

Yeah, exactly. And I do want a family at some point. So, like, I feel like right now I'm just taking advantage of the fact that, like, I do, you know, I do have a lot of time that I can. I can dictate to practices like this that don't impact someone else and, and how they're living. And. And I want to experiment as much as I can to figure out what is most impactful and what I can. What I can lock in. And then, you know, as. As, you know, that progresses. Like, how to. How to introduce that into more of a. More of a family life as well.

Yeah, I seem to recall that I saw you and correct me if I'm wrong, it was a few years ago. I briefly met you with Joe decenna. I think it was you at a. At a Spartan race. Am I remembering correctly?

No, that wasn't me. I haven't done. I haven't done Spartan race yet.

It was somebody else from Twitter.

I haven't gotten there yet.

Okay. Yeah. Do you have your eyeball on anything like that?

I would, I would like to. I'd love to understand, like, what's a good. What's a good start? But I haven't, I haven't gotten into a lot of the challenges like that just yet. But I would like to, I'd like to start because I do appreciate, like, how that immediate sense of New York competition emboldens and focuses. And I think that's what's lacking in my singular practice right now. Like, a lot of what I do, I do completely alone and in solitude. And it's really, you know, it's all. It only benefits if I can raise the bar on myself versus someone else raising the bar on me. So it's something I recognize as a gap, but I haven't found the right way to get into it just yet.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's a gap for me. Whenever I work out with people, if I drop into a CrossFit box or I have a buddy over for workout or occasionally people come up here to record a podcast and we go out to the garage and exercise. I just always push so much harder when I'm with people. I feel like I would get injured if I frequently worked out with people. I mean, 95% of the time I work out by myself and then I use, you know, showing up to a spartan race or a triathlon or whatnot as kind of like the group fitness scenario. But, you know, there, there are other ways to, to scratch the social itch. The big thing for me too is whenever, when you work out with people, you got to meet them, places, you got to do drive, you got to wait 5, 10 minutes for everybody to show up. You socialize for 10 minutes afterwards, and your 7 minute workout turns into like an hour long foray.

Yeah. Which, you know, I mean, there's trade offs, but like, you know, the benefit of doing it with other people is that push. But also like, I think you have higher fidelity of learning in terms of what other people are doing or what tweaks they're making to a workout that has been more, you know, regimented or traditional for you. So, like, I think the, you know, the, the gap in my current practice is that I don't have that balance where someone as an observer can observe what I'm doing and say, hey, you do this a little bit differently and you get a little bit more efficient or a little bit more productive or, you know, have a gain in this way. So that I realized, like, as a self observer, I can only take it so far and it's lacking some perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there anything else you're doing in your routine that you think would be interesting for folks, anything that you've discovered and found to be incredibly helpful. Like, I'd never heard, for example, that seven minute app. I'll be downloading that. And I think it's a good tip for people that, that chiller system set up that you have. But anything else that you've discovered that you think people would benefit from, I.

Think the biggest thing for me is just like, what, what's the new thing I can experiment with? Like, I listen to your, your podcasting on Freediving recently and I, you know, I'm, I can swim, but I'm not a great swimmer. And I think I've realized I do have some significant fear of, of the ocean and just like going deep into it. And what's interesting to me about what was described on Freediving is like, it's this perfect balance of, of breathing discipline, really stretching your mental capability in terms of, like, what you think is possible. And then, you know, parallel with, you know, a physical practice to train yourself to, to be able to stay under longer and longer with something that is, is quite scary, which is, you know, the depths of the sea. So that's. I. Since your podcast, I've just been doing a bunch of reading and looking at apps and apnea, you know, training and whatnot. And that, that to me feels like something I want to explore and one to like, experiment with in terms of like, really deepening a breathing practice, but also like, to get over, you know, some fears of, of the sea and, and water and, and, and whatnot and really put myself out there. So I think from a general standpoint, it's like finding something that I would make me uncomfortable and like, going headlong into it and like, finding as much research and conversations I can find to like, give me more confidence or practices that I can do on my own to get me there. And I think this is, this has really been my life. Like when I was a, when I was a kid, when I was, you know, 4 to about 7 years old, I had a speech impediment and it made me super shy and super introverted to the point where I wasn't even talking with my parents or my brothers or my classmates. And it was just very hard for me to get the courage and the confidence to, to get up and speak or even have a conversation with one person that I'm, you know, really familiar with. So at one point I realized that and I just, you know, fifth or sixth grade, I just decided, you know, what I'm, I'm, I can't live this way. Like this is, this is holding me back. And it helped with my writing, but it hurt with, you know, just my, my, my everyday talking with folks and I can't just hide behind writing all the time. So I signed up for the speech class and we did. You know, in speech class they do this improv thing where they give you a topic and you get five minutes to write a speech on the topic and then you have to get up in front of everyone and, and make a speech and, you know, articulate your speech on it. And that was a like, combination of the scariest things I could imagine at that point. Like one, they would give me a topic I know nothing about. So I have to make all this stuff up for five minutes and speak about it for five minutes and do it in front of people that might know something about the topic that I knew nothing about. So it really pushed me into a lot of uncomfort. And that led me to learning more about speaking and, and, and kind of quelling some of the fears that I would have about, you know, pronouncing my words or articulating things, which was, which, which was my impediment. And it's still to, to this day, you know, I. There's a, there's a, some portion of my mind saying that you're about to like, you know, mispronounce this word or stutter a bit or whatnot. So I've managed by putting myself out there to get over most of it, but it was required for a lot of the work I do. So it all comes back to this concept of learning through experimentation and like really making myself the, the experiment and, and if I can do it also publicly and share like what I'm experimenting with and like what I'm learning from it, then maybe some other people benefit from it as well. So recently I've been sharing a lot more of like some of my practices where whereas in the past I would not like, I shared what I experienced on my last meditation retreat, I been sharing some of the practices around infrared and sauna and cold and just what I'm learning and it's going to resonate with some people, some people won't. So anything I find, I want to share it as broadly as I can. And that's something I've been doing, you know, over the past six months. It's just trying to find a venue to make sure that I share it and like, also open to learning from the conversation that ensues around it.

Is that a blog or just from Twitter?

It's mainly through Twitter right now. Okay. I do. Since I was 14, I have, like, journaled, so I do keep a personal journal. I try to do that every single day, usually when I'm wrapping up the day. And I need very simple things for me to continue them every day. So I just use the notes app on the iPhone and, you know, it's searchable, it's accessible all the time. It's in the cloud, so I can get to it even if I don't have my phone. So it's secure. So I try to make sure that, like, for whatever practice I'm doing, I look at all the excuses I might have and I. I figure out how to do it to minimize those excuses. And that's hence, you know, the segment workout app. Like, I always have my phone, I always have a chair, I always have my body weight, and I always have a wall. There's no excuse. I can do it every single day.

Yeah, yeah. Assuming you're somewhere where there's a chair and a wall.

Well, exactly. You're.

You're basically a human guinea pig. For the good of humankind. I like it. And I'll link. I would imagine most people can probably find you on Twitter. It's not that difficult. It's ack. But I will link to everything that Jack and I talked about. Some of those workout apps, some of the sauna and cold pool setups, a few different podcasts I've done on some of this stuff, like that ancestral wisdom versus modern science, one he mentioned, and my interview with Ray Kronice. And I should introduce you to my boy, Ted Hardy down in of Front, Florida for free diving. Jack, if you ever decide to go that route, let me know. And I can.

I would love that. I would love that. I need to get over some fears, but I'm gonna do it.

Yeah, just text me later. He's a good guy for that. And anyways, I'll link to all this stuff. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com jack that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Jack. Jack. In the meantime, dude, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.

Thank you so much and thank you for your work. I appreciate you and all the effort you put out to share what you're experimenting with and also to just amplify a bunch of the stuff that you're finding that would take me hours and months and years to access in the form of listening to you. In the sauna.

Yeah, well, like I say, I put coffee up my ass first to let everybody else know what it feels like. That's. That's my gig. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Jack Dorsey signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. 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 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 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.