Brian Johnson shares what happened to his body after eating one dessert meal during a 90-day travel experiment tracking his metrics. His resting heart rate jumped from 42 to 50, his HRV dropped 55%, and his glucose spiked. He argues one meal can shift your metabolic markers and shows how to recover from it.
Questions this episode answers
About 15 books in around 20 days.
Continuous glucose monitor (CGM), blood panel, DEXA scan, and VO2 max test.
From 42 to 50 bpm (an increase of almost 20%).
From 62 to 28 (reported as a drop over 60%).
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic one. As I've often joked, I've traveled more in the prior nine months than I had in the prior nine years. So after I got back from a recent top secret trip to Europe to work with some of the most elite athletes in the world, I was fired up to take a breath and catch up on some reading while the team continues to forge an antifragile business. So I read about 15 books in around 20 days. Happy face with an Exploding Head Emoji. Yes, that's like me. It was awesome. I binged on two separate domains. Mental Toughness and Peak Performance books and Nutrition, Energy and Longevity books. The Mental Toughness Peak Performance feast included Uncommon by Mark Devine Changing youg Story by Bill Beswicks, Pressure by Guy or Jordet, the Captain Class by Sam Walker We've got notes on all those already. The Pressure Principle by Dave Allred, the Failing Forward by John Maxwell, Belonging by Owen Eastwood and the Gouge by Admiral Bob Harward. Notes on those coming soon. Insert another head exploding emoji now. The Nutrition, Energy and Longevity Wisdom Feast included Change youe Diet, Change youe Mind by Georgia Ead, which is now my new all time favorite nutrition book by the way. Nutritional Psychiatry really powerful stuff. Forever Young by Gabrielle Lyon, Metabolical by Robert Lustig, Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter Stolen Focus by Johan Hari, Good Energy by Casey Means and Outlive by Peter Attia Notes on all those coming soon. Insert another exploding head emoji. Again, notes coming soon. Can't wait to share. But that's not quite the point of this. Pashuan this is as part of my 90 day sabbatical from travel, I decided to go next level in all things energy. I got a continuous glucose monitor. Let's go. A blood panel, a DEXA scan and a VO2 max test. And I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with a lot of variables as I set some very big goals to go next next next level with my energy as I do my best to help you do the same so we can make 2025 the greatest year of our lives. So as part of that experimentation last weekend I went out to dinner with the family and I deliberately ate stuff I wouldn't usually eat and I made sure I had a normal dessert to see what it did to my glucose and my HRV, etc. So check this out as I shared via Heroic Social we got a link to the post. My resting heart rate went up almost 20%, 42 to 50 from the night before and my HRV went down over 60% from 62 to 28 from the prior night from one meal. Now to be clear, that's crazy. My continuous glucose monitor data was even more crazy. I'll share more on that soon. Now, it's fascinating to see this data. It's exciting for me to see so I can continue to optimize personally. And it's heartbreaking to imagine how many people are unknowingly destroying their metabolic functioning and putting themselves at risk for chronic diseases. Now, we'll be talking about this a lot more in all the notes coming soon, but we've got to know that these little things matter. The chronic diseases that are currently plaguing our society don't show up all of a sudden. They show up on the other side of decades of of little meals like the one I had. And that's today's posho on. Let's make the connection between the choices we're making with each bite we take and our future well being and choose wisely today. P.S. the morning after I had that crazy normal meal, I might have hammered a sunrise workout to get all that extra glucose out of my body, followed by the sauna and a little cold plunge. PPS pro tip if you do happen to go off the rails a bit and eat a lot of excess refined carbs, a post meal workout is a great way to vacuum up that extra glucose circulating in your bloodstream.
