Cyclic Ketosis, "Thinkitating", Bad-Ass Meditation, Morning Routines & More With Quest Nutrition...

Hey, what's up you guys? It's Ben Greenfield. The podcast episode you're about to listen to is with this dude named Tom Bilyo. Complete badass, this guy. He's created like a, I believe almost a billion dollar value added company. And I'll tell you more about his bio when I interview him. But super duper interesting dude. I always like to interview these guys who have amazing morning routines. And you know, this guy thinkitates, he meditates. You'll get a lot out of today's show. Speaking of getting a lot out of stuff, you should check out the sponsor for today's show. Gainswave. Gainswave. I went to their clinic in Miami, Florida and I got this stuff called high frequency acoustic sound wave therapy, which opens up old blood vessels and stimulates the formation of new blood vessels in your nether regions. Guys and girls can use this. And you walk out of there feeling as though, guys, you're like a 15 year old. And ladies, I'm not a lady. I don't have one of those things down there that ladies have that I have to be careful not to mention in this podcast episode. So it doesn't get mentioned as explicit. But basically, ladies, you'll feel awesome too. So they do these things called P shots for men, which is literally platelet rich plasma injections if you want to inject. You can also do their painless high frequency acoustic sound wave therapy. They do O shots for women. All these fringe treatments to basically turn you more or less into a sex God. So you get 150 bucks off of any treatment from them. And to do that, you text the word greenfield to 3131. 31. Text the word greenfield to 3131 and you can jump in on one of these gains wave procedures at any of their 60 participating clinics nationwide. If you want to go to their Miami clinic, you'll get a big discount down there. You also would get treated by Dr. Richard Gaines. Yes, that's his name, Dr. Dick Gaines. But it works, right? So check him out. Text the word greenfield to 3131 31. This podcast is also brought to you by Four Sigmatic Foods. Now speaking of sexual enhancement, they have this blend called a Viking blend. A Viking blend. They also have blends for women as well, but this Viking blend, by the way, their blend for women is called the beauty blend. The Viking blend is this potent mix of arctic herbs and mushrooms, wild harvested greens, berries, mushrooms, tree barks and roots all in one blend. And it has a whole bunch of ingredients in it that help with libido and sexual performance and metabolism and protein synthesis. And as they describe it on their website, which I'll give to you in a second, primal passion for physical and mental performance, baby. So you can check these folks out@foursigmatic.com GREENFIELD that's f o u r sigmatic.com GREENFIELD and when you go there, use coupon code bengreenfield@foursigmatic.com greenfield and when you use coupon code bengreenfield over there, you will get 15% off. Now, before we jump into today's show, one last thing. I have all sorts of talks that I'm giving over the next few months that are completely open to you.

Everywhere from Finland to Iceland to Bulgaria. I've also got a whole bunch of races, spartan races that I'm going to be at. And I'll be there doing things like signings, helping out with clinics, having little Ben Greenfield fitness meetups. You can check out all of the places that I'm going to be, all of the cool conferences that you can attend that I'm speaking at if you just go to. Oh, and there are discount codes on all these conferences, too, by the way, my weekly roundup. Every week I put out a roundup of all the places I'm going to be at and all the latest news. And all you need to do is subscribe to the newsletter. And you can do that if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, click Subscribe and you're in like flint, baby. So check that out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com, sign up for the newsletter and check out all the places where we can hang out together, have a good time, talk more about shock and our nether regions and drinking mushrooms and herbs and supporting primal passion. All right, let's jump into today's show with the great Tom Bilyo in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Wellness is so important and getting the body right is so critical to living an optimized life and just enjoying your life, but that it doesn't stop at the body and it really does continue on to the mind. What's going to move me towards my goals and then creating systems and habit loops around that. So I'm very much a product of routines. What happens when we not building from a deficit back to middle of the road, but rather building from middle of the road to extraordinary? And that's where it gets really exciting.

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

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

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and my guest today is definitely not an underachiever. His name is Tom Bilyo and if you've ever munched on a Quest nutrition bar, probably nibbled on a little bit of Tom's genius because he's actually the co founder of that company, a startup that's now valued at, I believe, over a billion dollars. And he's also the co founder and the host of a new company called Impact Theory. And Tom's goal is to basically get people out of what he calls, I believe, the matrix and to enable people to actually accomplish a lot more and kind of defy this pandemic of physical and mental malnourishment that so many people are kind of stuck in. And he's an incredibly well spoken and entertaining guy, as you're about to find out. He speaks all over the world and inspires everybody from entrepreneurs to change makers to thought leaders. He's spoken at conferences like abundance 360, the freedom fast Lane. He's been a guest on the Tony Robbins podcast, My Friend Lewis Howes, the School of Greatness podcast. He's been featured in Forbes Success Magazine, the Huffington Post. He's on the innovation board of the Xprize Foundation. The dude is all over the place. And he also has made some pretty tasty energy bars in the process. So, Tom, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you, man. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah. And you know, I was looking over some of your stuff and I noted that you have a pretty, pretty elaborate and unique morning routine. That's one thing that I've talked about before on the show is morning routines and habits and how important they are. But I think maybe a good way for people to get to know you a little bit is for you to elaborate a little bit on how you set your day up, because I think it's pretty interesting and you unique and worth talking about. So would you be game to dive into your morning habits?

Yeah, most definitely.

Sweet.

So for me, the morning routine really starts the night before and I think that we live in a Society. And ironically, even I'm sort of getting a reputation for this that celebrates not sleeping. And I actually am 180 degrees in the opposite direction. I think people should prioritize sleep. I don't use an alarm, so I've become a little bit notorious for waking up really, really early. But what people miss is that I go to bed really, really early. So I'm in.

What would early be?

9:00Pm?

9:00Pm okay, so you're even worse than my wife and I because we consider ourselves now to be old fuddy duddies. We're usually like 9, 45, 10, or if it's a really exciting party night, 10:30.

Man, you guys are living dangerous by my standards. So, yeah, I try to get to bed really, really early. And the reason I do that is.

I want to get as much time in the morning to myself as I can. So go to bed super early. I wake up. Usually I'm up by 4:30. Sometimes I'm up as early as 2. But even if I get up at 2, which I do without an alarm, so I never, not never, but almost never wake up to an alarm.

So if I wake up at 2, I just woke up for whatever reason. And I have a rule. If you get five hours sleep and I wake up, then I have 10 minutes to get out of bed. If I've had less than five hours sleep, then I will try to fall back asleep, even if it takes me hours, because I find that at less than five hours sleep, I'm just suboptimal performance. And so I'd rather lose a bit of time to try to get more sleep to really be ready for the day. But I usually sleep between five and six hours. I get up immediately, hit the gym.

Even five to six hours, though. I mean, like, a lot of folks will say that's not enough, right? Like, you see that whole idea that like seven to nine hours is the sweet spot for sleep. And like, if you sleep less than seven or more than nine, you might have increased risk of mortality.

Do you find that five still gives you enough? I guess, like health and recovery?

Yeah, so I'll take as much sleep as my body will give me. So every now and then randomly, I'll sleep nine hours and be like, okay, well that was weird. So I am making no effort to get less sleep. I just wake up when I wake up. So rather than spending too much time tossing and turning in bed, I do get up. So that, yeah, that's the only thing. So sleep as much as I can and then I Immediately go to the gym and hit that. And I think there's a huge connection between the body and the mind. So for me, the gym, even though I don't enjoy it, I am not a of fan. Fan of the gym. I think that the results you get from it are so important that I try never to miss it. So Monday through Friday anyway, so.

So if you, if you wake up. Sorry to keep interrupting you, but I obviously, I don't mind taking a deep dive into some of this stuff when, when you wake up at like 2am you actually do get up or do you. Do you fall back asleep at like a 2am?

If I went to bed at 9. So at 2, I've had five hours, then I have 10 minutes to get out of bed.

So you'll go to the gym at 2:00am?

Yeah.

Wow.

I have a gym in my house, so that makes that maybe a little less weird.

Yeah.

So yeah, roll out of bed and hit the gym no matter what time it is.

Just, just straight downstairs or straight into your. Into your home gym?

Yep.

Okay, cool. So you don't, you don't take a break for like, like coffee, anything to eat, stop by the bathroom, you just like jump straight into pumping iron?

Yeah, I'd probably pee if I've just woken up. But beyond that it's straight into the gym. So get up and hit it. And part of that is just, that's my morning routine and how I get the day started. And the part of it is if I give myself too much time to think about it, I will come up with a very compelling reason not to work out. So I do that right away.

Now, were you always somebody who would operate like that? Like just basically get up out of bed early, go to bed early, or was this a habit that you had to develop to get to the point where you are as far as the amount of success you've achieved?

No, I very much had to force myself to create routines and habits that would be beneficial. There was one period in my life when I was unemployed and I let my natural sleep cycle kick in and I had to set an alarm to make a 10pm movie. And at that point I thought, okay, this is just weird. And you start to feel super bizarre when you don't see daylight. And also like, you really begin to notice how many people are on just the normal schedule of daylight hours. And so you really start to feel isolated. Or at least I did and found it very disconcerting. So I started forcing my sleep cycle into something a little more normal. But that and I used to spend hours in bed, hours just laying there because I didn't want to get out of bed. And, you know, if I found myself, you know, when I was, say, in my early 20s, if I had woken up at 2 in the morning, like, forget it. No matter how much sleep I had, I would have stayed in bed. So, you know, for me, it really is about saying what's going to move me towards my goals and then creating systems and habit loops around that. So I'm very much a product of routines.

Yeah, yeah. Did you have to do things to actually get yourself into that sleep cycle? Did you use. One thing you see a lot now in the biohacking circles are sunrise alarm clocks, or the use of blue light blockers at night to let yourself get to sleep at a certain time, or the use of even sleep supplements to put yourself to sleep at a certain time. And then wakefulness compounds in the wee hours of the morning when you wake up.

And I know some people are even doing things like Modafinil and Adderall to get them through a morning after they've woken up super duper early. Do you use anything like that? Or you pretty much just lights out at 9:30 or 9, and then you just wake up when you wake up?

Yeah, so I don't use any other than caffeine, which I don't drink that much of. That's sort of the only thing that I use from that perspective other than fatigue. I think fatigue is my greatest ally when it comes to falling asleep. So I fall asleep very fast. But between the gym and then working, I mean, my typical workday is north of probably 13, 14 hours. So by the time I stop to go to bed, I am exhausted. And so, yeah, I. My wife makes fun of me because, you know, I fall asleep in, like, literally less than 30 seconds.

Wow. Do you. Do you use, like a Fitbit or anything like that to track what they call sleep latency? Like how long it takes you to fall asleep? Like, have you actually looked at that? Or you just know your lights out within 30 seconds?

Oh, I know, because my poor wife is not lights out in 30 seconds. So she reports when I start twitching so that she is my human Fitbit.

Oh, it's funny, we're the complete opposite, Tom. I'm one of those guys who puts on the sleep mask, the headphones, the binaural beats, the lavender oil on my upper lip. And then for me, it's 10, 15 minutes and I can already feel my wife's legs twitching and hear her breathing change as I'm over there doing all my biohacks to fall asleep.

Yeah, that's interesting, man. And that's cool that you found all that stuff. That helps because I know a lot of people struggle with falling asleep, and I did when I was a kid. So, like in high school, it would take me like an hour and a half to fall asleep. It was crazy. But now, not the case.

Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so you've got this five hour sleep cycle to bed early, up super early. When you wake up, no alarm, you get up, you go down, and you go straight into the gym.

Yep, hit the gym. And then after that I go immediately into meditating. And I meditate. I find the most comfortable thing that I can sit in and meditate, usually about 20 minutes, which is somewhat hemmed in by when the position stops being comfortable. So if my legs start falling asleep or just being generally uncomfortable, then I switch and I go from meditating, which puts me in a nice creative, calm state, alpha wave state and do what I call thinkitating. So I found a big frustration. Yeah, so I found a big frustration in meditating was that I'm sitting here trying not to think about anything, to refocus myself on my breath, but in getting in an alpha wave state and being in that calm, creative place that the ideas that I were trying to shut down were actually really good ideas. And so I would find myself breaking my meditation to take notes because I didn't want to forget. And then I thought, you know what? This would probably be better if I just knew going into it that when I'm done meditating, I will have this time where I leverage the buzz of this creative vibe to think of whatever my biggest problem is in business, to take notes, to know that it's okay at that point, that I'm not going to try to stop my mind from wandering. And as I just started thinking about why it was so effective, then gave it a name so I could explain to people. And that's been really powerful for me to know that I have that time so I'm not worried about.

Really quieting my mind. And that then when I'm in the thinkitating part where I still maintain some breath control, but it's a lot less focused than when I'm meditating. But I stay in that state sometimes up to like a half an hour, and let's say 70% of the time I'll have some decent ideas and pretty good. And then 30% of the time it's a total bust. And I'm a little bummed out that for whatever reason, my mind just, it wasn't clicking. But that's become the source of some of my biggest. It's not always a breakthrough, but just like clarity about what we should be doing with the business and how we should be pushing it forward and what we need to do and focus on. It's been very, very helpful.

So when you're meditating, before you start this thinkitating thing, are you in a specific spot? Are you one of those guys that goes to the same place every single time you meditate or in the same position? Because you said you'll meditate and just focus on your breath until your legs fall asleep. So you just cross legged or what exactly do you do? What's your setup for meditation?

So mine is like overly basic. I find the most comfortable seat that I can. So 90% of the time I'm in this one specific chair that I just happen to find obscenely comfortable. My wife hates because it is ugly, but man, is it comfortable. And I sit in that chair cross legged because it feels good and purely like. This was not me trying to follow anyone's prescription. It was literally like, what makes me feel like I can take a deep breath and what feels really comfy when I sit down and just found sitting cross legged with my back slightly arched. Which most people will tell you is just death from a meditation standpoint, but for me, it allows me to take really deep diaphragm breaths. And so in meditating, I'm going purely for what lowers what I call my background radiation. So anxiety, stress, all of that. So people could tell me all day that I'm doing it wrong, but I get the result that I want, which is feel really calm and at ease.

So did you make this up yourself or did you actually go through some form of a transcendental meditation course or some kind of other form of formal meditation instruction?

Well, I guess very mildly formal meditation instruction from a guy named Mark Devine, who's a former Navy SEAL who was.

Oh yeah, I know Mark.

So amazing dude. And he was the one that really got me over the hump of meditation is not for me. I don't know about this.

Well, it's hard to resist meditating when a badass Navy SEAL tells you to do it and says it changed his life. All of a sudden it puts that whole skinny yogi pushing a giant shopping cart full of kale through whole foods, who's a meditator in a whole different light. When you see the Navy SEAL who can kill you with his little finger meditating.

Yes, I totally agree. So based on his box breathing method, and I've modified it to what feels right to me, but that's it. He is my only yogi thus far.

Yeah. I actually use Mark's box breathing technique for walks now. So for me, in many cases it's moving meditation that I do in the mornings. And I'll go for a half hour walk out on these farm roads, back up behind my house and simply do box breathing through my nose the whole time. Right. So four count in, four count hold, four count out. Four count hold. And now that I've kind of taught myself how to do that while walking, I find myself doing walking meditation just about everywhere. Like when I'm walking through an airport or a mall or through downtown, my body reverts to meditating and box breathing as I walk. It's like this natural mechanism it falls into. But it, but it originated with Mark Divine teaching me how to do box breathing before. Well, in this case I went down and did his kokoro, which is like, kind of like the, the hell week for civilians that he puts on down there in San Diego. But the box breathing is, it's a very powerful technique and it works well even for moving.

Yeah, that's. I don't do walking meditation, but that actually is a pretty good use time.

Yeah. If you already know how to box breathe, it's worth trying anyways though. We rabbit holed a little bit. But you were talking about how you'll move from this meditation into thinkitating. And are you saying that what you do is you stay in that meditation position and then just start to solve problems that are in your business or your personal life while still in that same chair?

I actually break the position, but usually stay in the same chair. So it happens to be a recliner. So normally I recline it back, I straighten my legs, I start breathing just through my nose, which normally I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, but maintain a nice rhythmic breath. And then I just let my mind wander on whatever problem I'm facing in the business at the time and.

And that's it. Instead of trying to corral my mind and I don't force it to stay on that problem, I just, I let it go. Let it go where it's going to go. And being in a creative state like that, a lot of times you'll get some pretty interesting ideas.

Now I noticed in one of the articles that you wrote speaking of Mark Devine, you said that you think meditation is critical to becoming a badass. What do you mean by that?

I think if you're going to optimize cognitively, which is step one, if you want to be a badass, meditation is just critical. And I think so many people, I've heard it likened to defragging your hard drive. And for me, I think of it as background radiation. If you're not lowering your stress, your anxiety, you just never get to that calm, creative state where you're going to be able to have intellectual breakthroughs or even just have a better baseline in your everyday life. So I think that that's just really, really important all around.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So. So you meditate and then you, you thinkitate, and this is all after you've worked out. And then what, what comes after that? Like, are you one of those guys who does like a, like a, a cold shower or anything like that, or some kind of elaborate smoothie before you start into your official work day?

No, not at all. So I immediately. I used to read first, and then I would go into my list of most important things, but I've actually switched that now and I go to my list of most important things and I get that all moving. Usually spend. Try to spend a couple of hours on that, and then if I still have time before employees show up, then I'll do some reading. And that's really where I get the bulk of my reading done as well, is in the morning. So on a day where, like today I was up at 4am so on a day where, you know, my day starts at 4, my first employee shows up at 10, I've got, you know, six full hours to really take care of all that morning routine stuff, make sure that I've moved all the critical stuff forward. Because for me, like, the reason that I try to do that even before the first employee shows up is only execution matters. And so if you're not actively doing things, if you're not moving the ball forward.

Man, that's just. It's a super dangerous game. And I think people lose years of their life to like essentially just. I'll just put it off till tomorrow. Just till tomorrow. Till tomorrow. And they never make those big or even small changes that accumulate over time. They just never do it.

It's kind of interesting because I've talked to a lot of people who, who are seemingly hyper productive, and I even get people asking me personally about this, you know, like, like how I. How I write a blog post every day or, you know, do all the podcasts or whatever. And it seems like a prevailing theme is a lot of people are like super duper. A lot of like the successful productive people are super duper, almost like selfish with their mornings or wake up very early to be able to do some of the things that you've just talked about, right? Like a whole bunch of me time, prep time, body time, mind time. And then in your case, it sounds like some education time before the actual day to day rigmarole starts. So by the time all that begins to take place, you've already really put a lot of money in the bank when it comes to yourself and your own kind of, kind of personal development. And I found that for me that's a game changer when I can begin the day. And for me, I guard my morning pretty selfishly so that my day doesn't begin until about 9:30 or 10am and all the way leading up to that point, that's all it is. It is basically education, reading, meditation, gym, the workout, the walk. Things along those lines that might seem like they're all just a waste of time, but that allow the rest of the day to be just hyper productive.

Man, I am totally with you. And taking care of that stuff first I think is just so important. And that's also why I make sure that I go through that list of most important things before anything can interrupt me. And there are some super distressing studies that have come out about how often we all get interrupted in an average workday. It's nuts, every 11 minutes or something. So, you know, getting deep work done to me is that's how you get ahead. Like if you're not able to go deep for a sustained period of time, it's just, it's crazy. And it's crazy what you can get done if you're able to go deep and sustain it, you know, say for even like 45 minutes an hour just makes a huge difference.

Yeah, yeah. Now just backpedaling a little bit. Are you, when you're in the gym, when you're doing your morning workout, do you have like a specific routine that you follow? Have you found something that works really well for you with your busy lifestyle? Staying what, what I'm assuming is relatively fit? I've seen a couple pictures of you. Seems like you're, you're, you're pretty lean and mean, dude.

Yeah. So right now I'm doing a push, pull, leg split. So on day one, I do everything that's push. On day two I do everything that's pull. And then day three I do legs and Then abs, and then rinse and repeat. And I work out five days a week and I typically take the weekends off just for.

Honestly, it isn't even about resting my body. It is purely about sanity because I don't enjoy working out. So. Yeah, and that's it.

So push, pull. So you're going to do pushing exercises with the legs on one day and then pull exercises with the legs the next day or both push and pull on the same day.

For legs, it's push and pull on the same day. So I work quads, hamstring and calf on one day altogether.

Right. And then when do you do upper body?

That's what I split push, pull. So I would do on my push day, I'm going to do chest exercises, shoulders, tries, and then on pull day I'm going to do back, bicep, forearm, and then legs. I do all three major muscle groups at once.

Okay, gotcha. So so basically it would be like day one, legs, push, pull. Day two, upper body, push. Day three, upper body pole.

Exactly.

Okay, gotcha. And then you work in the core on those upper body days.

I actually do core on legs.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. What about like, like cardio, like high intensity interval training, that type of thing? Do you work in any of that?

I only do cardio if I'm really trying to get lean for the most part because my diet is so strict, I don't really have to worry about that. But then if I'm trying to get shredded like for the summer going into that, I will start to do some cardio just to really take the leanness to another level. I can't get shredded without cardio.

Yeah. About how long are you in the gym each morning?

About an hour.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So.

As far as the education piece, kind of returning back to that, you know, you've got your gym, you've got your meditation, you got your thinkitation. You said you read after you've done this thinkitating.

Well, so I read now after my list of most important things. But so yeah, I'm a voracious reader. I read about 50 books a year.

50 books a year. Is that all like, like Kindle or paper or do you just use a variety of methods for reading almost exclusively audible?

So for me, I can assimilate auditory information way faster than if I actually have to move my eyes across the page. And it's. With the exception of one book a year, it is all nonfiction.

Wow. Amazing. So. And all. All via audiobook.

All via audiobook, yeah. Because I can Speed it up to 3x.

Interesting. See, that's. And I don't. I don't do the 3x. And the reason for that is I personally, I don't. I'd be curious to hear your take on this. Actually, Tom, I've found that when I listen to a podcast or an audiobook super duper fast, I almost, like, tend to lose the voice of the author or the narrator. Like. Like, it almost seems to shift to just pure information without their emotion or their inflection when I speed it up a lot. And maybe that's just me, I don't know. But did you have to progress from like, 1 speed up to 3 speed to actually get to that point? And do you find you lose, like, any of the meaning when you do that?

I definitely had to progress, and I do not feel that I'm losing anything. So there are some times where somebody, the narrator will speak if they have an accent. This is a perfect example. So if you have a British narrator, despite the fact that my wife is British, I find at 3x, I have a hard time understanding them. So I'll slow it down to 2.5. But it's pretty rare that I have to slow something down. And there are times where I am convinced that I bumped it back down to normal speed because I'm so used to listening to it now at high speeds. And I think anybody could do it. You just have to put in the time to. At first, 1.5 is a stretch, and then 2 is a stretch, and then 2.5 is a stretch. And then you get to the point where you keep forgetting that it's at 3x. And it's only when somebody gets into the car with me and it starts auto playing, and they're like, what the hell? These people sound like chipmunks. That I forget that it's sped up. It's like anything, man. Put somebody in the gym on day one and they're not going to be able to lift a lot of weight. But three years into it, it's like, you know, it's nothing.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm a voracious reader. I usually would go through about three to five books in a week. And for me, it's a mix of Kindle and then books in my office, books on my bedstand, books on the coffee table, and then audiobooks. But one thing that I found with audiobooks is I have yet to find a good mechanism to take notes. Right. With a Kindle, it's easy. You drag your finger and you highlight or with a book, you know, typically. And folks see this, like on my Snapchat channel, for example, I usually Snapchat books that I read take photos as I'm reading them, and, you know, you can see what I've circled and what I've underlined as I go. But with audiobooks, do you have. Do you have a mechanism that you use? And I'm totally asking this for my own pure, selfish purposes because I have difficulty still, like, highlighting or jotting out notes when I'm doing audio. Do you just remember things or do you have a way to keep track of notes when you're doing an audiobook?

Now, I found taking notes is really, really helpful. So one, the Audible app lets you turn things into clips so you could grab a section. Also lets you just straight bookmark, which is normally what I do because it's so fast. So I know bookmark that. And then when I go back to listen to it, rewind it 30 seconds and then let it play. And then.

Did you say that's the actual app for Audible that allows you to do this?

Correct.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Okay, this is good to know. I actually don't own that app. I haven't used it yet.

My own book is actually on Audible. I recorded about 18 hours of reading for it. But admittedly, I don't actually own the Audible app. I didn't realize it allows you to do that.

Oh, man, it's amazing. That app really changed my life. Like, it's just incredible. And then beyond that, I do notes through the voice recognition. So I click over into the notes app on an iPhone and just talk into my headphone microphone, and I find that it's very, very good. It's not perfect, but very, very good. And then that allows me to later go back and recapture a sentiment or memorize a quote or something if it's really powerful. So taking notes is. And I didn't. For years and years, I didn't take notes. And I did find that I could remember because I read a lot in themes, and I would remember the major themes and stuff, but I wouldn't remember what book it came from. Or there'd be that one quote. Oh, man, I wish I had written it down, but I don't remember exactly where it was at in the book. And so starting to take notes, one, just the act of note taking reinforces it already, so you're more likely to remember it. And then two, I can go back and scan my notes. And that's been tremendously helpful. Wow.

Cool.

Hey, what's up? Ben Greenfield here. I want to interrupt today's show to tell you three things. First of all, if you haven't yet been over to itunes to leave us a review, go to itunes, leave the show a review, because that is what does things like boost ratings and gives you good karma so that you don't die an early, horrible death and also so that you feel really good about yourself. So go to itunes, do a search for the Ben Greenfield show and leave a review, leave a rating, leave a comment, be constructive criticism. If you leave a one star, at least tell me why. And that way I can fix stuff, because that's the only way I know is if you tell me so. In the meantime, though, this podcast is brought to you by the best tasting green juice superfood powder on the face of the planet. Gently dried superfood powder so it hasn't been completely shocked. To hell with high heat pasteurization, which destroys the nutrients. Instead, it's been gently dried. It's gluten free, it's soy free, it's dairy free, it's vegan, it's USDA certified organic. It's got stuff like coconut and ashwagandha and turmeric and moringa, a whole host of superfoods in it. And there is no mess and no juicing and no blending and no shopping and no cleanup. You just pop this thing open and boom. You can add teaspoons and teaspoons to any recipe or any smoothie or any shake or any homemade ice cream or anything else you want. You can even dump it straight in your mouth and you get this stuff. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Organifi that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com O R G A N IFI check it out. It's really, really tasty powder made by my friend in San Diego, Drew Canole. Pretty cool cat. He comes up with some pretty good ideas. So check this stuff out. This podcast is also brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What does ZipRecruiter let you do? Lets you post your job to find qualified candidates. When you post your job, it automatically takes the job that you give to them and posts it to 200 plus job sites, including social media networks like Facebook and like Twitter, all with one click so that you can find candidates in any city or any industry around the nation. Unless you quickly screen them and rate them and hire them fast. Fortune 100 companies and a ton of small and medium sized businesses do it so you should do it. You know what that's called? That's called cool kids marketing. Right? The cool kids are doing it. So you should do it. And you can do it for free. How do you do that? You go to ZipRecruiter.com first. That's ZipRecruiter.com first. And when you go there, you get to try ZipRecruiter for absolutely free. Easy peasy. Check it out. And now back to today's show.

So I noticed that on your podcast, and by the way, for those of you listening in, Tom does have a podcast. It's called Impact Theory. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tom what I'm going to do is I'll set up show notes where you guys can go and access any of the things that Tom and I talk about. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tom. So, Tom, on your podcast, you actually, if I'm not mistaken, do, like, little short snippets where you talk about what you've learned in each of these books. Is that correct?

So, yeah, I do book reviews. So.

Yes. Okay, cool, cool.

Now, what would be, right now, when we're recording this is 2017, what would be, in your recollection, one of the better books that you reviewed, or what you would say would be, like, your top book thus far this year, Disrupt.

Yout by Jay Samet. It is amazing. Amazing. That guy's mind is just absolutely incredible. Honestly, I don't want to get too crazy here, but he's like, in my mind, he is a national treasure. And I mean that literally. That is not hyperbolic. He just needs way more exposure. This guy has been insanely successful, and the way that he's able to look at problem solving in business is unparalleled. And it applies to any aspect of your life, no matter what you're trying. Just the way he breaks things down and helps you think, it's just incredible.

What's Jay's story? Where's he from?

He is an entrepreneur who's been both an entrepreneur and what's called an intrapreneur. So going into a big company but acting like an entrepreneur, they literally hire you to do this. So if they wanted somebody to like the music industry when it was dealing with Napster and trying to reinvent itself.

Emi, ami. I forget if it's emi. I think it's EMI hired him and said, basically, this is completely eroding our business model. How do we save ourselves from this? Universal did the same thing. He's been Sony. Sony was the other one. They bring him in and say, help us really disrupt ourselves and change the paradigm that we're operating under and have been operating under for God knows how long. And he goes in and does that and just really explains to people the way to think and how to seize disruptive moments in any marketplace to create opportunity. And we're about to live through one of the biggest disruptions ever with automation. And so the way that he's thinking about that and really trying to help people generate massive opportunity in this time of disruption is really special. And I've also just had a chance to get to know him as a human being. He's a great human. And so supporting what he's doing, even if you're just doing it purely selfishly, just to learn from him is worthwhile.

Okay, gotcha. I'm already bookmarking this on Amazon and I'll link to it for you guys in the show notes who are listening in. I may actually have to download the Audible app. Maybe I'll make this the first audiobook that I actually listen to disrupt you.

It's definitely read by him. Sounds like just like you did.

Oh, really? Okay, cool. Yeah, I love it when authors read their own books. I can't guarantee I'm going to do it on three times speed, Tom, but I'll check it out for sure. And this kind of relates, I guess a bit to what you're up to now, because I know that you founded Quest Nutrition and I actually would love to talk Nutrition here in a little bit and kind of like your take on bars and formulations and things along those lines, but you're really not. That's not your hardcore focus now, is that correct?

That's correct.

So what exactly are you creating now with this whole Impact Theory thing?

The easiest way to explain it, and this is admittedly the finger pointing at the moon and not the moon itself. But we're trying to build a studio bigger than Disney. So if you ask the question, what would Disney look like if it were founded today? We're trying to answer that question.

Gotcha. So you mean you're wanting to make cartoon style entertainment or movie style entertainment?

Movies, Yeah. I mean, how exactly we convey the story will be specific to the story. And the reason that I use Disney as an example isn't because of the animation. It's because Disney is the only studio really that's ever existed that had one overarching thing that it was trying to convey to the world. And so you can shorthand that to the magic of childhood, which is not the thing that's interesting to me, but it is so critical to what's called a total merchandising strategy to have ideology that the entire company revolves around. So if you ask yourself, what kind of movies does Sony make? No idea. It's all across the map. What kind of movie he does Paramount make? Same thing. Warner Brothers? Same thing. Like, they all just make whatever movie they think is going to be a hit. Disney said, there's one more thing. Not only do we want to make sure that it's going to be a hit, but it also needs to capture that magic of childhood and be family friendly. And there's this certain criteria that all of their properties fall under. And if I said to you, hey, this movie's coming out, it's a Disney movie, you already know something about it. And that's just really, really incredibly important to brand integrity. So that's the one thing. I'm literally looking at the entire narrative industry and am befuddled that nobody has copied that before. And so that'll be the big thing that separates us. That and a whole host of other things that I won't go down that rabbit hole in this interview, but is very compelling to me in terms of how we transmit ideology in an era where people don't believe in the mythology anymore. So I think that's incredibly important to doing what my real goal is, which is total body, wellness, mind and body. So the reason that I was so interested in Quest and the reason that I'm still just a huge believer in Quest and consider myself the chief evangelist for the company is that wellness is so important and getting the body right is so critical to living an optimized life and just enjoying your life. But that it doesn't stop at the body and it really does continue on to the mind. And originally I had planned to do all of that in Quest and Quest was going to be a mind and body company. But man, to get a brand to flex and change and be that broad, that it can handle both is just a challenge that clearly I am not prepared to undertake. And to drag my partners into that, which is obviously a high risk endeavor, also not necessarily fair for them if that's not the vision that they have. So just made more sense. We were building a studio inside of Quest, which is literally where the name Inside Quest came from. And instead of trying to get one brand to do double duty, I spun it off into a standalone company. And that's Impact Theory.

Gotcha. And I noticed that you Actually have a lot of interviews with quite a few folks you're doing like studio style interviews with. I know that you interviewed this guy that you were just talking about, the author of Disrupt yout, Jay. Is it Samet or Samit?

Samit.

Okay, gotcha. And you interviewed actually somebody I was with this weekend over at the Spartan Race, Amelia Boone. You've got Jamie Wheal on there, who, the author of Stealing Fire, who I recently had on my show as well. And so you're taking all these people into your studio and you're interviewing them in a way to spread this message of total body wellness.

That is, it's really getting to the mind, optimizing the mind. So some of them we talk about the body, some of them we don't like. With Amelia Boone, it was very much talking about a lot about that and mindset, but really the show is mindset focused. So total wellness.

I misspoke when I said total body wellness. To me, it's getting at the mind and the body both. And that show focuses almost exclusively on the mind. So it's really the whole kit and caboodle when you take quest in conjunction with impact theory.

Now when you say the mind, do you mean iq, working memory, executive function, or are you more talking about.

I guess, like, like emotions, you know, vibrations, frequencies, things along those lines. Like, like more of, I guess like the, the invisible, spiritual aspect.

For me, the biggest thing I'm interested, the frequency stuff makes me a little uncomfortable, but I'm, I'm interested in all of it. So I think you really have to understand mindset first and foremost. I think that's the foundation on which everything else rests. And that, you know, encompasses your perspective. And you know, Einstein said the most important decision any person has to make is whether you live in a hostile or friendly universe. I think it's just a choice like you choose to believe and so that's really, really important. But then also just anatomically understanding the mind, literally the brain, I think is critically, critically important. And so we've had a bunch of neuroscientists on the show, but at the end of the day, if I had to wrap everything up, it would be mindset.

Interesting. Yeah, I've, you know, I've had some, some similar, I guess, breakthroughs with, with the way that I do things with my company. Tom is, you know, I started off just basically, you know, wanting to help, you know, soccer moms look good in bikinis and help dudes get sick six pack abs and then realize that, that a big, big Part of optimizing your body went above and beyond that, right? Like, you need to fix your gut and you need to balance your hormones and optimize your sleep. And there's so much more that goes above and beyond, just like, like sinews and. And muscles. And then, you know, I realized too, that, you know, what a lot of companies, you know, like, you know, brain biohacking companies, you know, folks like, you know, bulletproof, and a lot of these people who help people gain better brains, they've actually tapped into something as well, right? You can't, like, separate the body from the brain. And you. You need to pay attention to neural function and the blood, brain barrier and neurotransmitters and all these things that a lot of times fitness junkies don't think about. And so there's the body and the brain. But for me, I think of it almost like in three ways, right? You've got the mind, brain, you got the body, and then you have the spirit, where you delve into things like relationships and love and gratitude. And again, all these things that many cases, people who have their bodies optimized or perhaps even their brains optimized, also don't think about. And so for me, you know, a big part of what I want to personally help the world achieve is like this total optimization of not just body, not just mind, not just spirit, but body, mind and spirit altogether. Now, I'm curious, do you focus much on the spiritual aspect? Do you focus on things like gratitude and love and emotions and relationships and. And things along those lines with what you're doing?

Yeah, definitely. We actually have a show called Relationship Theory, which is specifically about relationships, love, relationships. I think about, and talk somewhat on the show about gratitude.

I would say that that's maybe 30% to the 70% mindset, but I think that that's such a critical component to mindset that it's somewhat inevitable to get into it.

Yeah, yeah. Now, why does the idea of, like you said, the idea of frequencies makes you think you said it makes you nervous or kind of gives you pause when you hear about things like frequencies or vibrations or things along those lines. I'm curious why that is.

Because I.

Think that it, for me, feels like we're putting language around something prematurely before we necessarily really understand it. So there's clearly things that we don't understand.

But I find that when things get named too early, they can be misleading.

Yeah, Yeah. I guess the way that I think about it, and I actually have a book recommendation for you that you might like related to this, a few of them, is this idea that every cell vibrates at a certain frequency. It's why certain forms of music make you feel good versus making you feel bad. It's why.

For example.

When you're hanging out with someone who is just full of peace and love and joy and positive emotions, you can feel really positive. And then there's this idea of energy vampires who actually have a little bit more of negative frequencies, very fast beta brain waves or very low, what's called heart rate variability. And you can actually detect people, animals, et cetera, can detect brains, electrical fields, hearts, electrical fields. And so the frequency of one person or one animate object can actually change the emotions and the frequencies of another.

One really good book that kind of goes into this. I don't know if you've heard of it before. It's called the Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. I think is who wrote that. And then there's another really, really good one about how many of these emotions and frequencies can affect health. And there's a book called Healing and Recovery by a guy named Dr. David Hawkins where he goes into how you can use things like positive emotions and frequencies and things like that to actually induce healing of things like chronic diseases and illnesses. And for me.

I've really never been into a whole bunch of the. I guess what many folks would call the woo woo. Until I started to delve into some of these books and realized that there's actually almost like this link between quantum physics and vibrations and frequencies and people's health and people's emotions and people's like their mind, their body and their spirit. And so both those books, the Biology of the Belief and Healing and Recovery. Maybe I'll send over to you after we record. But they're actually really, really good books.

Nice, man. Thank you for the recommendations.

Yeah, yeah, no problem. Gotta. Gotta take at least a little bit of a dive into the woo on every show. So anyways, I wanna actually talk nutrition a little bit too because we have a lot of people listening in who are big into diets, nutrition. I know that with Quest, you were pretty involved with that. Tell me about how Quest came to be. What was the idea behind that? From a nutritional standpoint? Were you personally.

Looking for like a new diet or a new bar for yourself and created something in your kitchen or how did that actually come to be that company?

Well, so my partners and I were looking for something that we could really be passionate about and that we could just do from a value creation standpoint up until that point, our company that we were doing previously really was about being smart marketers and finding a product that filled a niche in the market. Not necessarily something that we really believed in and had deep passion for. And I grew up in a morbidly obese family. And full disclosure, we founded the company for three very different reasons. But for me having grown up in a morbidly obese family and understanding that the nature of the problem is everybody else's solution is to ask people to change their behavior. And so we wanted to create a solution that leveraged people's behavior. So, you know, most people eat for pleasure way more than they eat for sustenance. So we wanted to create products that they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them. And that was, you know, going back to this notion of me wanting to create wellness, body and mind. You know, it was looking at my family members who struggled profoundly with food and saying, I want to see them happy and how do we get them happy? And just understanding that optimizing the body is one of the most powerful ways to get to the mind. And starting with that notion of, okay, well, let's make something that they can crave and love and enjoy eating and replace something that is bad for them. So my sister is a perfect example. She used to just love M&MS. And wanted to give her something that she could enjoy just as much or at least almost as much. And that was good for her. And so that's why I was so excited about it. And then my partner Ron, who really is the nutritional genius, like this guy is just unbelievable.

And look, I understand how self serving, what I'm about to say is, but I really believe this, he is the Steve Jobs of nutrition. Like the guy's understanding of human metabolism, nutrition is just unbelievable.

What's his name? Ron?

Ron Pena? Yeah.

Is he like a physician or nutritionist or what's his story?

No, man, not at all. So he is an entrepreneur who is a devout mixed martial artist and got tired of being thrown around the ring by guys bigger than him. And so went starting when he was like 19 or something, just went on an all out quest to learn about adding muscle, to learn about health and longevity. It started this way and I don't know that he would say that that's still his primary focus, but it started for him as really a way to bulk up and be a more effective martial artist. And so started learning about adding muscle mass and what you have to do to your diet to do that and became very interested in the deep complexities of human metabolism and understanding food's impact on the body and, and things like arterial flexibility and just really, really going down that in a hardcore way. And it was, I mean, for sure, when I met him, I had started to figure out how to lose fat, but I didn't know how to put on muscle. I certainly didn't know how to put on muscle and stay lean. And so meeting him, and this was a decade before we founded Quest, just working with him to understand nutrition for myself and to change my own physique and. And he was very instrumental in me putting on mass and just really, really unbelievable. So anyway, by the time we decided that we're going to found Quest, he and his wife had been formulating these protein bars that they were just making because there were no protein bars in the market that any of us would eat. So my wife was making me protein bars and his wife was making him protein bars because it's such a convenient way to get the protein. And we could, by making them at home, we could get them without the sugar, but they still tasted great. And that was really the beginning. His wife, they just started to get really, really tasty. And so when we were looking for that next business, we thought, hey, this could be a good start. We always saw it as being a food company, not a protein bar company, but it would be a good opening. And so we brought some food scientists in to help us make it shelf stable. Entirely complicated process unto itself. Did that and then found a way to actually manufacture them. And that was the start.

Yeah, yeah. And you guys are obviously one of the, I believe, most popular protein bar companies out there now, if I'm not mistaken. Is that true you have like a. Like a $1 billion valuation or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, if you take it by sales, we're the dominant force for sure.

Yeah. Do you get any bounce back, by the way? Or maybe bounce back wouldn't be the right word. But any pushback from.

This growing movement that excess protein reduces longevity and that too much protein could trigger aging or cancer by activating. I'm not sure if you're familiar with mtor, which is.

This protein pathway in the body that's responsible for accelerated aging or accelerated inflammation. This idea, too much growth hormone, too much insulin, like growth factor or too much protein might potentially be an issue versus higher fat versus higher protein. Do you ever dive into any of these nutrition debates as somebody who's involved with a high protein type of company?

Well, one thing I will say, I never engage in the debates and food is like religion, people are just intense about that. So our thing as a company is to give people control, to let them decide what they want to do. So we're just trying to clean up the ingredients and we've made huge investments into ketogenics and I can tell you that for me personally, four days a week I'm high protein. Three days a week I'm ketogenic.

Oh really? You do a protein cycling type of approach in your own diet for sure now.

I went pure keto for nine months one time. It was the most glorious nine months of my life. I absolutely love being ketogenic. Love. The problem is I have a hard time maintaining muscle mass. So I found that by dipping in and out it was just way more effective. Now the reason for me that keto was so transformative is I have struggled with inflammation problem problems my entire life. For 15 years, years I had to ice my wrists every night because I just had so much pain. And it was, I just assumed like a forever thing. And I did keto like hardcore four to one keto as a part of a hopeful. I won't say that there's enough science to say that this is definitive, but there's some exciting research coming out that, that says maybe ketogenics has implications in terms of defeating cancer. So I thought, hey, what can it hurt? I'll do a yearly hardcore ketogenic cycle.

And if it doesn't have anti cancer properties, I'm no the worse off. And if.

I did my first cycle and hated it, hated it, but my inflammation was gone, why'd you hate it?

Just because you can't walk past an Italian restaurant without going nuts or was it just like too, too restrictive or.

I was a fool is the short answer. So we joked at Quest about making T shirts that said keto, you're doing it wrong. And I was very much doing it wrong. So that T shirt was very much made for me. And what I was doing, I was four to one, first of all. So for every combined gram of protein and carb, I was eating 4 grams of fat, which is just brutally difficult. Your meals are tiny and gross and so that wasn't fun. And then I wasn't supplementing so I wasn't getting some of the micronutrients I needed. So I had keto flu. Tremendous.

Minerals and things like that.

Exactly. So that was a misery. Now there's ways to supplement around that. But again, I was a fool and didn't know any of that and just went headlong into this as an intrepid self experimenter. So when I did the whole nine month cycle of pure keto, I had worked with people and figured that out and wasn't doing 4 to 1, I was doing 2 to 1 and supplementing where I needed. So once you're doing it right, keto's fantastic. But like I said, for me it was hard to maintain muscle mass, but the impact of my inflammation was just, it was unbelievable. It was like taking a drug. I was shocked at what a big impact it had.

There's some very, very compelling research behind mediation of inflammatory related cytokines in a ketogenic diet. I mean, it's enormously helpful for that. What you're alluding to though, is the fact that a lot of people do it wrong. They don't use electrolytes, they don't use minerals, they're very active people and they excessively restrict carbohydrates because of trickle down advice from like, you know, people who are following ketosis to manage medical conditions, you know, who are eating like 20 grams of carbs a day. But really, like, if, if somebody who's physically active or who's like, you know, training every day tries to do something like that, you just don't have enough freaking carbohydrates to, you know, to produce things like, you know, proteoglycans for your joints or enough glucose for like the, the, the mucosal lining of the gut. And so, yeah, I, I think that there's a lot of mistakes that can be made. But your approach now sounds interesting. So you're basically doing ketosis a few days a week and then doing high protein for more of like an anabolic day.

Exactly. So the days that I work out, I'm high protein and then it's like anything. The actual routine that I do is slightly different. And I actually do one high protein meal on Fridays and then I switch into ketogenic for the rest of the day. But I just round it to four and three. But yeah, that's really been great. It allows me to maintain that hard, full feeling in my muscles and yet manage my inflammation. It is a game changer. And it's one of those things that I thought I had this on lock. I thought I had everything figured out. And so it always makes me wonder how vast is the world of nutrition that I still don't understand? It is for sure bigger than the world that I do. And that's the thing that actually excites me about nutrition and human metabolism is we're really, at the very beginning, and to see where this goes and to see all the things we're going to learn. And hopefully the food industry will continue to keep pace with what's coming out and make better products. That was our mission when we started this was we're not trying to be the only food company. We want other people to rise up with us and, and be watching what's going on and really investing in research and seeing what's true. That's all we care about. We'll change on a dime if we see that there's something that's true. When we started, high fat wasn't on the radar. And then as we began to learn about ketogenics and the importance of fat, then we came out with the ketogenic line. So it's metabolic truth is truly what we seek.

Yeah, yeah, it's a very good point. And actually, you have a unique approach because in many cases, what you'll see, people who are trying to get adequate carbohydrates or not stay in, like a strict ketosis type of diet will do, is they'll eat carbs at the end of the day, do what's called cyclic ketosis, where you're in ketosis all day and then you eat a whole bunch of carbs at the very end of the day to replenish your stores. But that's actually what you've just described is, I think, an approach we haven't talked about on the show before, which is you basically have certain days of the week where you're in ketosis. And then rather than doing carb refeeds or higher carbohydrate days or evenings, you instead have certain days where you do high protein. And I'm sure it sounds to me like you're pretty nutritionally savvy, you know that some of that protein can get turned into carbohydrates. And so on those high protein days, you're still getting adequate glucose from the gluconeogenesis from the protein. So that's a cool approach. It'd probably work pretty well for people who are wanting to build muscle or go anabolic as well without excessive protein intake would be to have certain days of the week where you're in ketosis and then certain days of the week where you're not eating high carb, but you're instead eating high protein. It's kind of a unique approach. There must. There must be a name for it, I'm sure. Or we could make one up on the spot if we needed to. The the, the pro keto diet.

There you go. I like it.

Yeah. And that, that idea too, that you just talked about regarding the emerging science of like nutrition, I guess, individuality and the emerging science of nutrition. I don't know if you've read it. I'm going to get them on the podcast soon. But there's a really good nut book by Rob Wolfe where he talks about how some people's blood glucose will just skyrocket in response to a cookie or a banana, while other people will have just no blood sugar response at all. And it's a perfectly healthy food for them. And so people, based on their genetics and their levels of digestive enzyme production and amylase production and insulin sensitivity, will be able to handle really sugary foods or carbohydrates, while other people simply can't. And so it simply comes down to the fact that of course one diet isn't going to work for one person, even if it works for another person. But this idea that even blood sugar response to certain foods is going to differ from person to person is really intriguing and I think highlights the fact that everybody really should actually be doing some kind of blood glucose testing or DNA testing or blood testing to determine what diet is going to work best for them versus buying the, the latest diet trend book off the bookshelf.

I think it's a great point, man. And I have for years now had a precision extra within reach and testing my glucose, testing my ketones. People just need to test. That's what I love about a ketogenic diet is it's not faith based. You don't have to take anyone's word for it. Test your level, see if you're producing ketones or not.

Yeah, yeah. I actually did a laboratory test with this guy named Dr. Jeff Voluck down at University of Connecticut. So he had one group of athletes follow for 12 freaking months a 90% plus fat based diet like strict ketosis. And I was in that group and he compared us, I think there were 12 of us with another group of athletes who follow just like a traditional endurance, endurance athlete diet, right? Like 50 to 60% carbohydrate and 20 to 30 protein. 20, 30 fat around there. And then he took us all in and tested us. Did a 3 hour treadmill run and a VO2 max test and muscle biopsies and fat biopsies to look at things like how much glycogen was stored in the muscles of the high fat ketosis people versus the low fat non ketosis people. And ultimately the findings of that study was called the Faster study. I'll link to it in the show notes for those who want to listen or check it out. It found that the high fat athletes not only performed just as well, but also literally rewrote the textbooks. Like what the prevailing science of exercise physiology says is the human body can burn at maximum 1.0 grams of fat per minute. And the high fat group who followed this high fat diet for a long time, or like way longer than the two or the four or the six weeks you see in most studies, we were burning on average about 1.7 grams of fat per minute. And so it completely rewrote the textbooks as far as like how much fat the human body can burn when it actually is given a chance to adapt to a high fat diet. But there was also some, some pretty significant issues with that for me. Like, like 12 months of ketosis, my testosterone dropped and my, my thyroid seemed to dysregulate a little bit. And there were some definite issues that reflected the fact that super active people may need to actually do some of those things you and I were just talking about, increase protein intake or have carbohydrate refeeds or things along those lines. But my own experience with ketosis was pretty interesting in terms of the fat burning adaptation that occurs in response to 12 strict months on it.

Yeah, My gut instinct is that cycling is just a big part of evolutionarily how we ended up here. I mean, barring like Inuits who would have had essentially access to only high fat meats for the most part, like everywhere else, you're going to be cycling through meat when you could get it. And sometimes that meat would have more or less fat, depending on the time of year. Plus you're going to be grazing on the things that you can gather. And so it's just the mix of things that you would get in an ancestral diet. It just seems like it would change too much for us to pick any one thing and just stick with it.

Even just as a way of admitting my ignorance, I just try to mix it up a bit.

Yeah. And even if you look at the Inuits, they're evading a lot of the deleterious hormonal bounce back from like really low carbohydrate or even slightly low protein. By eating a ton of the organ meats, you know, they're doing a lot of brain and liver, and I know they're eating like the thyroid glands and a lot of those things that you really, really do need to eat even more. So when you're restricting carbohydrates or restricting protein. So, yeah, it's really fascinating. I could probably talk with you for a very long time about this stuff, but I actually, I know we're getting a little long in the tooth on the show and your time is valuable, but I did want to ask you one other question. I guess more of like a broad question. I noted that you wrote actually in the bio that you sent over to me that you wanted to address the pandemic of physical and mental malnourishment. And I'm just curious, when you say a pandemic of physical and mental malnourishment, what do you mean by that?

Well, the physical, I think, is pretty easy for people to understand. You know, you look around, there's something like, Jesus, 30,000 new people are diagnosed with diabetes like every 30 seconds. It's ridiculous. Whatever, the actual status is crazy. And the, you know, the problem that people are suffering from physically is very visible. It manifests itself as obesity. It's, you know, amputations. It's all kinds of crazy stuff. So people get that.

But the one that like throws people because it's invisible is mental malnourishment. And right now in Australia, suicide is the leading cause of death among young men. It's number two in the U.S. it's crazy.

What'S happening from a mindset in terms of even things that you could liken to a disease with, with anxiety, depression, which come down to really manifesting neurologically. It's just not being addressed and it's still considered somewhat taboo, like to say that you have a mental illness. So that is from wanting to see the connection between the mind and the body brought out more to see people optimize not only their body, but their mind. That's really what I want to address and quest played into the body and really help people understand that or more importantly, to understand it to give them the tools they needed to combat it. And I'm talking like the general public because for somebody who can eat less and exercise more as a way to combat this stuff, it's great. But the general public, that just isn't the way, that it's just not a winning solution. And impact theory is meant to take that same approach with the mind rather than changing behavior to try and leverage it to help people have a mindset and just doing things like we talked about with the morning routine. Getting enough sleep, eating right, meditating, like doing things to help them address cognitive function, ideas of self esteem and like, how to build your self esteem in an anti fragile manner so that you're not as susceptible to things like feeling stupid or being inadequate, things that end up being so deleterious to people's sense of self and really just giving people the tools to deal with that kind of thing. And then if you really want to get crazy to what happens when we're not building from a deficit back to middle of the road, but rather building from middle of the road to extraordinary. And that's where it gets really exciting. And what does the world look like as people begin to really optimize cognitively and spiritually, as you were talking about really finding, you know, a life that they're excited about? Like what does that look like? And when people are able to not just dream big, but execute against that, what does the world begin to look like?

And you're basically going to take all that and Disney fy it.

Yeah. I mean, you're going to have to use Disney in the way that I mean it and not in making it childish or anything, but understand that there's that they're one of the most dominant content creators on the face of the planet that have ever existed because they've understood some fundamental things about human nature that other companies just have simply not acknowledged. And so leveraging that I have no interest in. I mean, I think some of the things that we do will be aimed at kids, but there are many things about Disney that just isn't what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help people empower themselves to think in a way that will let them acquire the skills that they need to execute against some of the biggest problems that we face as a society. I just accept that the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative. And we are meaning making machines. And we draw a lot of the inspiration and transmit a lot of the knowledge about how to live, how to think through stories. And I think we're living in a unique time now where you can have social content that runs along in parallel with the traditional narrative content to really give people the characters and the ideas that they need to understand their lives.

Yeah. Are you going to grow the actual Walt Disney mustache?

I have zero intention of doing that.

Okay. That was the million dollar. That's why I got you on the podcast, actually. This was all leading up to that question ask that very paved the way.

Time well spent.

Yeah. Well, what I'll do is for those of you who want to check out Tom's Impact Theory website where he actually has some really good interviews, I'LL link to that site along with some of the books that we talked about from.

Disrupt you to the Audible app to the Quest Nutrition website. Everything you want to check out from today's show, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tom to go. Read up more on Tom, stalk him, follow him, whatever you want to do. Leave comments or questions over in the show notes and I'll be sure to reply. And again, that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tom. Tom, I want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man and being so generous with your time.

Thanks for having me on, man. I had a great time.

Yeah, yeah, no problem. And for those of you listening in until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Tom Bilyeu signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

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