How to get UNSTUCK and Achieve the body you really WANT!

Very cool. Well, okay, so what does it require mentally and physically to perform at that level? Because I think it's a combination of both.

Yes. I mean, but the thing is that Ellen Maroulis is probably the poster woman for dedication. I mean, she went 18 months without having desserts. She didn't have Christmas dinner. You know, and we have a saying in sport with this third place tastes like cake.

Right.

So the thing is that she was very, very committed. But she, for example, learned Japanese so she could understand what the coach was telling her on the mat to her opponent so she could figure out the next move. Wow. So, you know, Helen, of all the athletes I've coached in my life, is probably the most detail orientated athlete that did every single thing. She watched YouTube videos of her fighting. She could understand her moves, you know, and now what we see is that now everybody's copying Ellen, so they're trying to see what you're going to do next. And we have a plan for Tokyo for that.

Okay, awesome, awesome. So for people that are here in the room, which are like a bunch of driven, successful entrepreneurs, male and female, I want to talk about some different advice and recommendations for people here to get in as optimal condition as they can on all levels and things that anything you want to talk about to improve not only their physical bodies, but their sleep or anything that you think is important. I first met. Okay if I tell the story how we met? Yeah. So we both have a friend named Janet Atwood who actually invited both of us. Unbeknownst to both of us, we had heard about each other because I had been Bill Phillips marketing consultant since 1996, and Charles was writing for Muscle Media magazine. He's written for pretty much everyone. And basically I'd heard of him and he had a big reputation in the world of fitness and bodybuilding and powerlifting and you name it. But I never met him in person. And so we go to Fairfield, Iowa, and we both go through meditation training for TM training. And that's how we met. And so we spent four days together with like five other people who were all my friends going through meditation training. And it was kind of funny because we were in a hotel where there was like nothing to eat except a bunch of carbs. Right. And you were like ready to kill somebody while going through meditation training.

Yes.

And we shot some funny ass videos at the grocery store and stuff. So that's where me and Charles met. So you've explored a lot of different areas of the mind and the life. So what are some Just fundamentals that people need to do in order to get in great shape.

One of the biggest myths is that it takes a lot of work to get a good physique. And I mean, Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the four Hour Body. But I think that four hours a week is plenty. Even my top level athletes, as far as strength training is concerned, it's about four hours a week. But there's no messing around when I train. And I think what people should realize, the room is full of entrepreneurs. But the difference between you and Olympic gold medalist is not that big because you're very driven. But the problem is that the way I explain to people is that you're like an oil lamp and the flame is the Yang energy. So the bigger you can burn the flame, it's great. So people spend a lot of their energy, but the problem is they don't take care of the oil. That's why we call the yen reserve. So executives should be really focused on building the highest possible yen reserve to be as Yang as they want to be. Because how many of you work 16 hour days? It's quite common, right? And then you cut back a lot of things. And I think that the modern trend is to say you have things like the one thing or Tim's philosophies, but you should try to shorten your workday and take care more of your yen reserve. And sleep is the eliminating factor. 72.8% Americans complain of sleep disorders. Wow. 72%. Okay. So where do we have most accidents in the US Is when we put the clocks forward and we lose an hour of sleep. So they put more cops on the road because there's going to be more accidents. So just one hour of sleep makes a huge difference in accident statistics. So I think that we have to take care of our sleep patterns. And there's also what I like to say to people is that the two biggest stressors or mouth, in other words, it's the things we say, it's what we put in our bodies. And the thing that happens is that you never had somebody say, oh man, I was so stressed last night, all I could eat was Brussels sprouts.

Right?

So people will say, okay, I was so stressed last night I went through three boxes of Pringles, you know, two kilos of chocolate chip cookies, blah blah, blah, blah. So we tend to self medicate with carbohydrates. Why? Because we found out a long time ago that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, is lowered by insulin. Right. But the problem with Insulin, it's your friend sometimes, but for most of us, it's the enemy because insulin is the hormone of aging. So the more insulin you make, the faster you age. And controlling the fat loss process is managing insulin. The more you can control your insulin, the better you will do. Great.

So when we were outside at lunch, I was doing a Facebook live video, and you talked. I said, what's the best piece of health advice you could give to people? That would be a total game changer. And you said, if grains were eliminated from the planet. But the caveat being that half the world's population survives because of grains and people. If there weren't grains, people would die. If you have the availability of food, like most people in this room, how would you eat?

Okay. I've worked a lot with the hockey players, football players, and I got to make it very simple for them. So I say, ask them a question. I said, ask yourself that the food you're going to put in your mouth was accessible to cavemen. And I run a test. So I go, like steak? Oh, yes, A caveman could have that. And then donuts. And they go, ooh, is there a donut tree? No. Pop. Is there a pop river. So if a caveman had access to food, he can eat it. So that's a very simple rule to simplify our eating habits.

Did cavemen have.

What about grains?

They did have access to some grains.

Very little.

Yeah.

Grains are more linked. Grains start to get popularized in ancient Egypt. And then what we saw, though, if you look at skeletal remains, is that that's when we start to have degenerative diseases. We used to be much taller, much more muscular when we were living more off a paleolithic diet. Yeah.

So when you travel, as most people here, they travel a lot. How do you eat when you're on the road?

Well, the thing that you have to realize is that I actually do a lot of my teaching schedule based on the countries where I could find the proper food. That's why I don't go to England. Right, right. It's like a third world country when you look at food.

And all those of you in England on Facebook Live. Hi there. How you doing?

In all seriousness, to be productive, you have to eat properly. But one of the things, for example, with jet lag, I just did a post today in some of my pages, is that the food you eat when you land in the country will make a big difference. Your brain's going to behave. So, for example, as the land is, we're now going to prepare for landing, well, you should drink about 1.5 liter of water. Why? Because have you ever noticed it's really hard to fall asleep if you got to pee? Right. So basically when you drink a lot, you activate the kidney meridian, which is the energy meridian. So you drink a lot of water. Then this thing you should pull out of your briefcase or your purse is caviar. Caviar is probably one of the best brain building foods. And you have to reset your neurotransmitters. And the Yang neurotransmitters are dopamine and that's still choline. So you could have caviar or you could have, if you don't like fish, you could have roast beef. But there has to be a meat or a fish that contains a lot of tyrosine because to make dopamine you need tyrosine. So that would be a thing. And the second thing I would eat is macadamia nuts. Because macadamia nuts contain a lot of levels of choline. And choline will fire up your brain. And you know, and also when you look at. Sometimes I teach, I land, let's say in Estonia at seven in the morning and nine o' clock I'm teaching and people go like, when did you get in? Last week? No. And they say, come. I have so much energy teaching. Well, a lot of it with jet lag is actually your mindset. If you keep saying, for me it's three in the morning in Boston, hey, fuck, shut up. Like you're in Estonia. You're in Estonia. Live like an Estonian, shut the fuck up. So you know, that's my philosophy.

It's beautiful. It's very, very sweet. So what is your fitness routine? How do you exercise? How do you work out when you're at home and when you're on the road?

Basically, I wake up early, I do meditation first thing. Then I take my book and I write what I want to be most proud of before I go to bed. That sets up my mind and I write what I'm grateful for. But it's not repetitive. He talked yesterday about lowering the bar. So sometimes I say, hey, it's a really great bed at this hotel, or whatever. So I simplify it and then I say, what am I going to do then write this down. This is the most important sentence of this interview. The first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it, it's food. Okay? So the first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it's food, will dictate the neurotransmitter. Cascade for the whole day. So that's why I'm a big advocate of the meats and breakfast, because it provides you with the raw material to make the proper neurotransmitters for the whole day. And there's lots of research from Even the early 50s on the content of your protein and the ratio between proteins and fats, and the quality of the protein you ingest in the morning dictates the energy even in the later afternoon. So with children, what they found at Harvard is that if they eat, let's say oatmeal or even worse, microwavable oatmeal.

Yeah. Or cereal or something.

Yeah. What they find is that when you give them lunch and they have to self select the food they will eat, they make worse choices if they had a carb only breakfast. Also, for example, if you give kids pancakes with that fake syrup, French canes, we call that telephone pole syrup because telephone poles don't have SAP. So if you have, let's say, telephone pole syrup and then pancakes, kids score 20% less on IQ tests because temporarily their brain's in a fog. So it's very important to set up your day with the right food. Then typically, an hour after I've eaten breakfast, I train and shower up, take a post workout shake and go to work. Whether I'm at home or I'm on the road teaching, that routine doesn't change. And I think it's really important to have very steady habits in your life. And then this way you never have an excuse for missing out in the gym. You don't miss your dentist appointment or you don't miss your appointment with your tax lawyer. Well, you shouldn't miss your appointments with your fitness because you got to take care of your body.

So as you age, out of all the different things, say, because I do a lot of yoga and I lift weights, which is why I'm bigger than you. But basically. So strength training, stretching, cardio, good, bad, how to go about doing it.

The problem with cardio is most people do long slow distance, right? But if you look at research, the athletes, Olympic athletes who've done the most long slow distance cardio have the most brain damage in later age. So a lot of cardiovascular training is actually brain damaging and you can find it up in the research. So I prefer that people do interval type of training. But the most important thing is that you show up. Okay? So if your thing is yoga, or if it's tai chi, or if it's taekwondo or you want to play hockey, four Days a week, that's great. But you got to be active, you got to sweat, right? For busy executives, I've got certain types of workouts which I call German body comp training that people can do a lot of work. Basically, it's a fat loss through weight training. And strongman training is very good. CrossFit, if it's done in a proper box, is very good. Some people need external sources of motivation. They need to be in front of a group. And you gotta be. Here's a very simple rule about exercise. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. So if you don't enjoy it and you're just doing it because you, you need the discipline. That's bullshit, okay? And I don't believe in discipline. That's a myth. I wrote an article, the most popular and most plagiarized article I've ever written. It's called the Myth of Discipline. And the basic message of this article is that you make the choice and you gotta decide what you love more. You love your brain more than doughnuts. Then you'll exercise. Okay? Do you like, you enjoy healthy joints more than Kwasa and Nutella, right? So I don't know anybody that's ever been mugged by a dozen donuts. It doesn't happen, okay? I mean, have you ever eaten anything by accident? No, it doesn't happen. So this is the type of conversation you need to have with yourself. And then when I tell people, just make a conscious choice. Is this the best thing for me now? But don't tell me you don't have discipline. What you're telling me is you love donuts more than having a great physique or a healthy physique. Does that make sense?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So when people body fat and stuff. Some things I've worked because I've been through several of your workshops, like multi day trainings and stuff. Is people's ability to. Because so many people, it's a vanity thing. They just want to lose weight, they want to look good. And it's almost like secondary or circulatory system or how your heart's going to be or how your brain's going to function. I mean, it's like we live in a culture that is so much about how they look. And what I've learned so much from you is hormone levels. And so that people can really have maybe good workout rituals and stuff, but their hormones are all jacked up. So if people are really putting forth a lot of effort and they still feel lethargic, or they cannot lose weight, or they don't feel strong, or they're mentally foggy, what should they do to discover how to fix it and what is causing that? I mean, other than obvious things like the environment. If you're working your ass off and you're giving your no time to reduce, rejuvenate. I think what you've talked about a lot is stress. Human stress can cause so much of. So what should someone do if they're either in a state of like, I want to work out. This sounds good, I've always wanted to, but I can't stick with it. I can't stop carb cravings, I can't stop sugar, or I'm like tired. I have no motivation. I mean, just being in a place where they're stuck. How do you get unstuck?

Okay, the first thing is I always tell people to do this. The best day to change a habit in North America is Saturday. So you don't have to rush to go to work. So you say, okay, I'm going to commit. But I think people over commit. So I say just go to the gym, 10 minutes. Okay. So it's better to undersell, right? And then after that they could work it out. But the thing where people should, where they would have the most impact is actually sleep. Do you really need to send that extra email? Do you really need to watch the news? Do you really need to watch that TV show? Okay, you could tape it. You could buy a Netflix subscription. There's a lot of research out of Germany that shows that the earlier you can go to bed actually the better it's going to be for your hormones. One of the problems we have with our lifestyle is actually lights. So the more we can offset lights. And there's a lot of technology out there for controlling the effect of light on your brain, but also gradually diminishing the amount of lighting in your house as you prepare to go to bed makes a huge difference. There's stuff you could put on your computer screen so that there's less stress stress on the brain and your eyes. So managing the electronics in your life will do a lot for your sleep and simple things like don't watch CNN before you go to bed. I mean, have you ever seen great news on CNN? It's usually 99% strategy. And the thing that the.

Yeah, TVs in bedrooms I think are incredibly unproductive sort of devices, especially for entrepreneurs. You know, if you have nothing going on in Your life and TVs your biggest highlight, then maybe. But you know.

Yes. And then, you know, simple reading and book reading and journaling will do a lot for your sleep. Because one of the things with sleep is that people can't shut off their brain. One of the most common disorders I see in executives is the inability to shut off the brain. So journaling is one of the best ways to get out of your system. And I like people to journal before they go to bed. But having a grateful log, in my opinion is probably the biggest step for sound sleep. And you have to have what we call a sleep routine. So you have to have a countdown of what you're going to do and the activities you choose before going to bed. And if you go to my website, strengthsassa.com, i've got lots of sleep strategies. But for example, botanical called reishi mushroom and one of the names in Chinese means the mushroom for the professor lived too much inside his head. So reishi mushroom is actually an anxiety lower, it's an anti exiolytic. And then if you consume reishi mushroom extract before you go to bed, you actually have better sleep. There's a lot of different amino acids that can make a huge difference on the quality of your sleep. Like theanine that comes originally from green tea. How much magnesium you take before going to bed makes a difference. A lot of people have inflammation because of stress. So for example, taking a probiotic with glutamine an hour before they go to bed lowers inflammation and they sleep better. I mean, the amount of sleep strategies that are possible for anybody are limitless.

I remember you. I'm trying to think who you actually were talking to about it. You said that you think one of the most crucial things of keeping your mind sharp was just having a lot of different interests in a lot of different areas.

I think that's true because now I admire people who are single purpose. A brain surgeon who is really good and devotes all his attention to that, that's commendable. But that makes him more vulnerable. If you've got a lot of interest. And I've seen people in my business, television who when they were forcibly retired or elected, they got bored and they didn't know what to do with themselves. I can't imagine being bored. There was a 40 hour a day, you know, I was, and I had nothing else to do but sit and think or read. I can't imagine being bored. So it's important, I think, to, to keep active mentally. And the brain is like a muscle. That's a cliche observation, but if you don't use it, it's going to kind of atrophy.

Well, you've, you've done a tremendous amount of work with just helping people. Older people, however you, you define it, live better lives, understand their purpose. I mean, what would be some of your tips and recommendations as people get older to keep themselves totally mentally sharp? I mean, here you are, 87 years old. I live here in Arizona. So when I went to pick you up today, you know, I was getting there a little early, called and your wife said, well, he'll be back here at 9:30. You have appointments this afternoon. I mean, you stay very active and I mean you're clearly very active, very sharp individual and you're physically, you know, in fantastic shape. I mean, at least it, it appears that way to me. I mean, what are some tips and recommendations that you would have that would be significant life changes?

Well, a realization that you can mitigate hazards. You can, you can influence your longevity and your comfort and everything by habits that you clean up. When I was 25 years old, I thought it was a normal adult human condition to feel bad. I really did. I remembered when I was 15, I felt good all the time. If somebody had said when I was 25 and didn't feel good, when you're 45 and 65 and 75 and even 85, you will feel about like you did when you were 15, I would not have believed them. But I was too dumb to realize why I felt bad. At 25, I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I had a diet that would not have been good for a hog, really. And I wasn't getting enough sleep and I drank too much and I got that all cleaned up in short order through the help of my wife and with a decent regimen. I realized you can influence very heavily how your well being is, how you feel, how long you're going to make it. So I would advise that let nobody adopt the idea that they're going to die young because an ancestor died young. That's not necessarily true. You can do things to make things better and if people realize that, they start doing them.

You said a really important thing, which is you adopted a regimen that just turned it all around.

I mean.

What was the happiest time of your life or your career?

Oh, well, probably at points in 2020 because that was, that was not just because it was the last, but it was because it was where I belonged really. I'd done. I once said to somebody, a newspaper interviewer said, I said, I've done everything there is to do in my end of my business except play by play sports. And then I realized as soon as I said it that wasn't true because in 1939 I broadcast a boxing match on Radio Globe. I mercifully no recording of that still exists because it was pretty awful, I imagine. But I've done even play by play sports. So I was, I imagine that being a generalist, I belonged on 2020 and I felt that was where I felt most comfortable because it was news, but it wasn't headline news and little snatches that you had to go on from one to another. You could get in depth in a thing and do a news feature and I loved doing that. Some high points there that.

I mean, all the time that you spent doing news reporting, do you think it's gotten better, worse, or is it just kind of the same?

Well, some of, some of it's pretty good, but I think in some ways it has, it has slipped because of the competition as I mentioned, you know, the competition got a little fiercer than it ought to be. And then you ask yourself how, how will we mitigate that if. Do you want the government really running that?

Right?

No, free enterprise is still the best one way, but a proper regulation of free enterprise, and I would like to see the, the FCC a little less supinely weak than they've been on some points, but I think a proper, a proper supervision of what's going on and then allow, allow the free enterprise aspects to flourish because that's what, that's what keeps capitalism alive for people in terms.

Of keeping themselves fit, not just getting in shape, losing weight, but just as a lifestyle.

So the best tip I have is you gotta discover what it is you like. Is it yoga, is it lifting, is it martial arts? Like see what vibes with you where you're like, oh, that was fun. Because again, if you haven't been doing something, it's hard sometimes to get that start. So if you're doing something you love, then it's a lot easier to stay accountable, keep it in your routine. So activity, you just gotta move. People just need to move. Even if it's something as simple as going out For a walk, fresh air, put some good music on. People go to the gym, they may not work out hard, but they're moving and the mood changes. And then, you know, they go to the gym. Oh, I just. I don't have energy to do anything. They put a good playlist on, they get motivated by others around them, and then all of a sudden, they're there for an hour working out. So work on your environment. Do something that you love, where it excites you. It's something you look forward to, Grab friends. So that, again, makes it more fun. Those are simple things that I would say that you need to do. But you gotta be moving at least five times a week. Fifteen minutes, even if it's minimum. We were talking at the Genus seg. So Scott just had a brand new baby, and he's like, I'm getting no sleep and my business just went public. Like, he's got all these things. I'm like, just do 15 minutes. You know, you got 15 minutes, even if it's at your house doing burpees, whatever. And he's like, you're right. I can't make excuses. So make sure you're just moving. 15 minutes is better than nothing. And get those endorphins flowing. That's gonna help you be more creative, gonna help you be happier. It helps. Stress relief. So whatever it is, even if it's short term, there's always some way to get active anytime you want.

In terms of, like, people that have no energy, mentally, physically. I know. I keep. Because we're in the middle of a pandemic. You've had Covid twice. I imagine that had to wipe you out for a period of time. What did you learn from it? And how do you regroup yourself when you're literally depleted?

Well, so again, it kind of goes back to the same philosophy I have when I have injury. Everything's temporary, right?

Yep.

You do have to take the time to heal. So when I had Covid, it was important that I rested, tried to knock it out and not push it, and not try to go on runs or get exercise in. It's like, let your body chill. But then you need to be able to flip the mindset to go, okay, I've had my time, and now I need to be grateful that I am feeling better and utilize that again, making sure that we are not wasting days, not wasting time, not wasting what we are lucky enough and fortunate enough to have. So I remember the first time I got Covid, it was great weather outside, and I was just down for about six days hard, like out on the couch. But then I wanted to get out and go. So I'm like, I'm gonna get on my bike and go and got about two miles in and I'm like, wow, I am exhausted. And normally I can just go for a while. But it was like, okay, well I did it. Now pull back so I don't have some setback and have it like last 10, 12 days longer than it should. But I was still able to do something. Why? Because I was now able to get off the couch. So you've got to be able. It's self motivation. People look for motivation elsewhere all the time and that is okay. But you can't always be looking for others for motivation. You've got gotta figure out what it is that makes you tick. So whether it's maybe a challenge. There was one point in my life someone said, oh, you will never do well in this sport. And I was like, oh yeah, watch me. You know, and that drove me for a while. So what is it? You know, maybe it's that you have a vacation coming up and you want to get in shape. Well, that's not gonna happen if you don't actually work towards getting in shape. So if you set a goal again, maybe it's a little competition you have with a friend so that you guys can hold each other accountable. Tap into the resources that you have to help you. If you're struggling with that, talk to people. Ask, you know, even Google. How do you get motivated to work out? There's, there's information out there and it just takes one bit of information that actually impacts you, where you're like, oh, okay, I can do that. Remember what the twice says? You said take what? Take what works for you. You know, it's the same philosophy. It's different for everybody, but you've got to take the time to actually truly think about it. And people just want the answer. The answer is different for me, for you, for everyone that's in this gym. But you have to figure it out for yourself. And you've got to take the time to think about it. Jot it down again. What is it that makes you happy? Memes make me happy. Okay, well if I'm find some exercise memes, whatever it is, if that's going to get me out of my off the camera couch and outside, great. But there's something that helps us tick. Yeah, everyone has it. You got to tap into that and then work with people who can help you utilize what it is. That's within you to achieve those goals.

Okay, so all this crazy about, like, hacking and different things, from infrared saunas to cold plunges to, you know, I mean, do you do any of that stuff?

Yes, I do. So we actually. I haven't shown you. We have an ice bath back here. And as much as I hate it because I hate being cold, I'm Arizona weather. Arizona winters kill me. So I am. I'm not strong. Biting. I'm a wuss. Let's be honest. We call it what it is.

I was gonna say that, but I was like, how do I say this to you?

Right? It's the truth. But, you know, people talk about cryo and ice baths again. What works for me. I've done cryo. I had a company say, oh, you know, we just want to sponsor you, and free cryo. I tried it three times. I've tried it. Different facilities. Does nothing for me. That's me. I have clients swear by it. Ice bath works for me. So I think, again, it goes back.

To, what does it do? What's the ice bath do for you?

When you.

So after I do routine practice, I may be in there doing skills and routine for four hours. My body is beat, and it feels like I got hit by a truck and run over and run over, But I get an ice bath six, seven minutes, and I get out and I'm like, wow, all right, I can do this again. It refreshes me like no other. Takes inflammation down with all the different injuries. It's so important for me to have that rehab. So that works. I do tons of body work. I have mobilities training that I do before I ever work out, before I do my routine practice lift. So I have a whole regimen that I have to do to make sure I can stay healthy. Body feels good. You know, the biohacking stuff, that's still fairly new. Totally intriguing. I'm in the mindset of try it. And if it works again, some of it could be placebo, but if it forces you to have an action that's more positive, who cares? You know, there's fads out there all the time.

There's a ton of shit that is placed placebo that works. And if it.

Yeah, if it works, it works. And clients will say, I tried this. If it worked for them, I am never gonna tell them no. If it held them accountable to their goals, to their program, if it makes them happy, game on. Yeah, I'm all for it. But yeah, it's. It's. Try these things. Why not? You're Never gonna know if you don't try. I tried cryo. It was a huge thing. Everyone was talking about it.

Yeah.

I do ice baths, and to me, that helps me.

So.

Great. You know I'm sticking with that, right?

I love it.

Okay, this is Joe Polish, the tall one in this video. And I've got the very awesome Dr. Mark Hyman and JJ Virgin. And we're working out here together.

And Mark feels great.

Yes, he does. Look at that. Let's do it.

So he probably won't be able to lift his arms up later.

Well, here's.

Here's the thing.

Both of you are, like, sugar experts, so which one of you smarter? I love sugar.

You do love sugar.

I love sugar. All right, but you both have written books about why sugar is toxic and poisonous.

Now, I guess this is all about blood sugar balance.

Right? And what you.

Which is everything.

I'm just fed up. I'm fed up.

Yeah. Fed up with sugar. Fed up with the food industry.

Fed up with all the. We're eating all the it shows, telling us all the stuff that's food. I mean, I actually met with a woman who's head of the ADA American Diabetic association this week, who has diabetes, was following the freaking guidelines, was on four medications, shots and all kinds of crap, and wasn't getting better. She went on my program and boom, off the medications. Diabetes better. And she's like, wait a minute. The ADA is wrong.

If you follow that diet, you will become diabetes.

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so when you say programs. So you both have programs. What do people do? People watching this, what do they do to get an optimal physical shape? Get diseases by her, mostly by my book, and do them both, and they.

Get a double whammy, everybody.

That.

How do people get both of you in their house, like, to just have a sleepover if they wanted a sleepover. You don't want an eat over. Not a sleepover. Well, that too.

A workout.

A workout.

That would be actually kind of cool. What if there was a prize where you could hang out with Mark and jj, get back massages, the whole work, you know?

I'm good. Me, I'm good.

Yeah.

That's how I got into medicine. Just massage people.

Like, oh, it feels good.

I'm like, oh, I like, yeah, maybe do some medicine here.

Well, he's going into houses and cooking.

That's true. Okay, so I'm. I'm going to plug some stuff here because I have done amazing interviews with both of them, which you can find@gieniusnetwork.com Ilove marketing.com We've put them all kinds. And I love joe.com and yeah, and I love Joe. And that's really this because this video, I really wanted to leave back the me, but okay.

So.

Out of all of the things that you guys have learned, what would you consider are the essential elements in taking people that are at a stuck point? They're not exercising, they're not eating right, they feel hopeless, they have consumed boss so many books, they feel lost. What do you do? My view, and I think JJ is probably similar, is people into a reset, like a reboot. When your computer's on the fritz and it's going round and round and it doesn't work, you've got to do a reset. So that's why I wrote the 10 day detox. People can do anything for 10 days. And in 10 days, if you change your food into a few simple lifestyle practices, you literally can change your physiology, retake your brain chemistry back, retake your hormones, retake your taste buds, and in 10 days, you can go from feeling like crap to feeling great. And the weight loss is just a side effect.

It's automatic, like I said. And here's the coolest part, because people talk about losing weight and they're white, knuckling and struggling. But when you reset your taste buds and you get rid of your sweet tooth, which you can do in seven to 14 days, we've seen it. All of a sudden you've got the control back over sugar. And even though, like Mark says, I love sugar, it's like it's not an issue because you don't crave it anymore, right? And then everything changes.

It's really true. I think, I think most people don't get that it's not their fault. Like people, they blame themselves. Other day, who was told by a food expert, a nutritionist, that she was no such thing as food addiction, that it was her fault that she didn't have willpower and that she couldn't control herself. So she. So she read my book, which talks about the power of these foods like sugar to hijack your brain, literally to be biologically addictive. She says, I'm going to try it. And she literally got her body back, lost 30 pounds and was able to reset her brain and realize that it wasn't her fault that she was fat. It wasn't her. Her fault she was craving, it wasn't that she didn't have willpower. And her whole government policy and the food industry is all about blaming the fat person. Eat less, exercise more Moderation, all things. There's no moderation of bad stuff. Like, if you actually are eating trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, you can't moderate that. You've just got to cut it out. And if you do that, you'll reset and then you can enjoy all sorts of foods. But you're not going to become a victim of your brain chemistry that's been hijacked by the food industry.

Yeah.

And it's.

You assume that these are all drugs, which they are. And sugar is the number one drug of choice. It's taking down everyone everywhere. Kids are not smoking and drinking at H5. They're having juice and cookies. If you knew that, you wouldn't have a little bit, that would be ridiculous.

But I do eat sugar. I do eat sugar, but, like, it's a recreational drug. Like, I like tequila, but I don't, like, drink it all day long. People have sugar for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Well, they start with cereal and milk, a banana or a muffin. Latte.

That's right. People don't realize that Breakfast cereal is 75% sugar. It shouldn't be called breakfast, called dessert.

Right.

It's like, so we need to just reset and understand how to and find.

Where everything is sneaking in so that we don't turn our salad into a.

Sunday and our love that salad into a Sunday.

Right.

All right, so, jj, exercise. How frequently do you. Must you do it? Kind of, sort of. What are your thoughts on this?

Must.

She told me 15 minutes twice a week. I'm good with that.

So, yeah, for weight training, resistance. Look at this. Look at the specimen.

This is like 15 minutes once a year. Look at this.

Well, this was the start today. Whole new mark, right?

Yes. Today is the last day of the way mark used to be. I know.

All right, you got to move more. Everyone should be moving at least 60 minutes a day. But if you're not getting hot, sweaty, and it hurts a bit, it doesn't count as exercise. But we are supposed to move.

That's why you were hurting me this morning.

That's why.

Because I wanted to count as exercise.

I was hurting.

And then high intensity interval training or cardio burst training three times a week to accumulate four total minutes of all out bursting. So if you're on the bike, what's.

The first thing where you go as fast as you can, as hard as.

You can for 30 to 60 seconds and you don't want to pace yourself, you want to burn yourself out?

Yeah.

It'll be the longest. 30 to 60 seconds of your life. And then you recover, recover and you do it again. Four to eight total minutes, three days a week. And then resistance training, hitting, pushing, pulling, pulling, pulling.

Nobody told me about pulling.

I was always that one. Hips and thighs and core. You do that at least twice a week. So for you, we'll start there. And that's the big thing is how do you fit fitness in?

And then.

Whining, you're all that. And then select flexibility work. But really like yoga, flexibility work because you want to lower your stress hormones. And so that's. That, that is huge. And that's why I don't like endurance training. So there you go. I mean, That's a simple Core 4 formula that I think we agree on. And you're just, we're missing a little piece, but we're fixing that. And that helps you with your sugar cravings?

Yes, it does. It helps. It just helps you with your life. And so if you do not take time out for this now, you will take time out for it later with very poor, poor health and disease and probably misery and suffering. And so if you're a parent, this is also something that children will watch. How you live, they will watch you become a model. And so you want to be a model not only for yourself, but for everyone around you. And that's how everyone around you gets better. And there are a lot of forces that are literally always directing you and wrong. Because I've always loved the line that the most expensive information in the world is bad information. There's a tremendous amount of bad information that can kill you. So both of these individuals have written amazing books that have led literally collectively millions of people to better health. So what is best book for people to start with with you and then with you? I think it's a 10 day detox diet. 10 days, people can do anything, reset, and then they own their body and then they realize how close they are to health and happiness.

There's just a few days.

And if it doesn't work for you, great. But if it does, you literally get your life.

It will work if they work it.

It's true, it's true. But you don't have to believe me, you just have to do it.

Yes. And the Sugar Impact diet and what the Sugar Impact Diet helps you do is identify where all the sugars are sneaking into your diet and to understand that it's not about no sugar, but that all sugar is not created equal. And you need to know which to choose and which to lose.

Which I've made it simple to do.

There you go. And if you watch this on YouTube or wherever else, I'm going to put the links of their interviews and stuff related to both of them in the, in the little area. So just do it. And it's fun hanging out. You could pay like $5,000 to come see us or you could buy the book for 10 bucks on Amazon and like change your life.

That's true.

That's it.

And they make good presents.

Famous last words.

I think the most significant thing you can do to change your health, to change the health of your kids, your grandkids, to change the economy is to lower your sugar impact.

Absolutely. I would say remember that sugar is a recreational drug and use it like that. Don't think of it as breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's a drug and enjoy it, but not in a way that you would enjoy like tequila all day long.

And you know, I. The body one. And I know there's so many different systems of the body, but you mentioned neurotransmitter chemicals. There's a great book, the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Robert.

Have you ever read them? Not only have I read them, but I actually met Julia Ross over a decade ago and she actually took me through a supplement regimen specifically for addiction because she's one of the top neuro nutrient therapists in the world.

This guy is a connector. He knows everybody, so that's not very surprising. But her work is so powerful and a few lessons I pulled away from it is. I mean that's where I learned of neurotransmitter. And you know, some of the things, I guess to set the stage. Our neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain are what make us feel comfortable inside of us. They're literally mood shaping chemicals inside of us. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gamma aminobutyric acid. Probably didn't pronounce that right and I probably don't even care. So when we're eating sugar, alcohol, processed foods, flours, those actually displace our neurotransmitter chemicals. And those food substances can sit in the parts of the brain that should house the neurotransmitter chemicals. And because there's crappy things in there, it tells the brain stop making neurotransmitters because our neurotransmitter receptor sites are full. But they're not full of neurotransmitters, they're full of crap. So we can get into this place where being inside of ourself feels like we're laying on a bed of broken glass. So now we start perpetuating potentially addictive patterns because we're trying to get away from ourself. So we might self medicate with more sugar because we feel like crap because we're eating sugar, because I just want to escape this sensation right now of feeling like I'm laying on a bed of broken glass. But then when you cut out a lot of the crap and start eating real food, like all of our neurotransmitter chemicals are made from proteins. We need like real food, not the crappy food to help balance that out so we can have the biochemical potential to feel good inside of us, which we don't necessarily get. You know, if someone's going to a 12 step meeting, great, giving you community. But the donuts you're eating, the coffee you're drinking, too much of, that can actually be making the body component worse while you're making the community component better.

Exactly. And sugar is really the gateway drug. Sugar is the biggest culprit to the stepping stone for addictive behavior. And we are feeding so much shit to ourselves and to people into children. And they're setting the stage for these individuals to really be more susceptible to becoming addicts. Like for instance, earlier I was saying, there's a Dr. David Arneson, I never say his name right. Theriversource.org I believe is his website in Phoenix. And I went and met with him with my friend Paul Mittman, who is the president of, of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. And then Tom Faris, who is the Arizona Corporation commissioner, because we're working on doing some stuff in Arizona to find a treatment system that we can have people, instead of them going to jail or prison, we can have them go through this and prove that it has efficacy to try to help people that have not committed a violent crime first offense, that instead of throwing them in jail or prison, we get them treatment. And so one of the things we're working on is finding the best way that we can actually do this and then see if we can. I'm working with politicians, although my world is not that. I want to just be the catalyst and let the people that know how to make these things happen with laws take it from there, you know, hand over the baton. But I want to see if we can get something tested here in Arizona and then if it works, if we can, can take it from state to state to state. So when we met with him, he said he's been treating people for 16 years with IV treatments. He's very familiar with Julia Ross's work. He's an expert in neuronutrients and using amino acid therapies and IVs to treat addicts. And he said to me, and I'm not going to say it exactly because he's really brilliant at the way he explained it. He said that when you see like an attic on the street that's homeless or missing teeth, he said in a lot of cases what you're seeing is modern day scurvy. And they're just not even getting good vitamin C. And a lot of these addicts are eating donuts, they're drinking sodas, they're eating candy bars, they're eating fast food, they're getting very terrible nutrition and they have a ton of gut problems. And he said and talked about serotonin is produced in the gut, dopamine is produced in the brain. And if you basically do not fix the gut, then they're always going to be in a craving state. And he said something that was fascinating. He said if you, you know, do not repair the gut and get them producing, you know, happy chemicals, what happens is if you send them to jail or prison or you send them to rehab and they can sit down with the best talk therapist, the cravings are still going to be there and they're still going to be an addict. And I said, if that's actually true, millions of people are being thrown in jail and going into treatment without having their body producing. And they can be sitting down with even smart people that are trying to guide and direct them, but the cravings never go away. And what happens, these people then have to get drugs in prison. So we have just as bad of a drug problem and drug addiction happening in prison, people doing drugs in prison. And we're trying to lock these people up and keep them away from it. I mean, if you can get drugs in prison, drugs are everywhere. And see, here's the challenge. The challenge aren't even the drugs. The drugs are just a symptom of a far deeper problem. The addiction is a symptom of a deeper problem, which is disconnection, which is biochemical, which is all of these things, because if you have biochemistry, the body isn't connected. So I don't say connection, just in terms of community connection. I mean, you got to make shit work wiring in your body. And so what he does is he has a lot of success with IV treatments. And I said, well, can you treat these addicts orally? He goes well, if their gut is so damaged, no, you actually have to bypass it, but with IVs and we're talking a few hundred dollars of doing IV treatments where over a period of, of a few weeks. And he can really fix a lot of the gut issues with people and then getting them eating foods that are not damaging to them. And I said, if this is actually true, this would literally save millions of lives if we could figure out how to do that and then make it available. So one of the many things we're working on is trying to bring these brilliant people and seeing how do we scale that. And so what I'm trying to do do is just be the curator and share this information with people and I'm going to interview these people, we're going to videotape them, we're going to put documentaries out and we're going to really find, you know, does this really, you know, work with numerous people. So one of the things that we're working on is seeing how do we set it up and take literally the worst addicts, you know, street addicts, people that are homeless, and see if we can actually, you know, help them get out of that craving state. But that's just one of many things. But you know, it's, it's fascinating because if you look at what they feed prisoners, if you look at what most addicts eat, I mean, their diets are so unhealthy for sure. And so therefore, you know, their body is not creating the things it needs to cope.

Yeah, I would dare say that the foods a lot of them are eating, a lot of them average non addicts are eating as well, are foods that might make the belly full, but they're foods that actually take more nutrition from the body than what the foods deliver. And that is absolutely a recipe for, it's literal self destruction.

So like what Steve work here is focused on is flow and basically high performance staging. Right. So what does that even mean? So talk about people format. First thing you have to know is the old story of aging. Most of you definitely heard the parts of. It's what I like to call it, the longest slope route theory. The idea that all of our mental skills and all of our physical skills, nothing we can do this on this fashion. 1907, he was scared of turning 50. And so he said, you know, most people, once they turn 50, they are too fixed in their way. And I'm paraphrasing, don't even try psychotherapy with them. They're no longer educable. So the idea of elbow can't learn new tricks. All that happened over the 20th century is we proved Freud right by 1990s. By the 1990s, we had just figured out the biologists. And then a couple cracks started showing up in that thinking. And over the past 30 years, what we've learned is that all the skills we used to think decline over time. We now know they're using skills and they're stuff training them to hang on to them and even invest them far, far later in life than anybody thought possible. Two or three of the most important discoveries that you've learned about your own body and your ability to perform when doing this because you do some crazy shit in our country. Aspect flow and adult development runs out for reasons that we talk about later. He part on the other side of a flow state learning increases or seals increase more adaptive, more complex. He was the primary driver of adult development. I think that was overstating the case a little bit. But he spent most of his career working on adult development flows. I'm a lifelong skier and my plan for my later years was to ski as much as possible. And mountain skier, which means I like to take big, big risks. And I like really highly, really scary hard lines down. But I started to realize that this guy was a much more serious problem. I was like, there's no way, you know, in that community. So I called mom talk about this and I was like, you know, we were sorry about it. Otherwise you can find yourself locked out of this state. And that's the real issue. New theories that said, you know that I basically looked at body cognition, network neuroscience a couple other places and said not only can you teach old dogs and tricks, old dogs do better than younger dogs at learning certain it's stone that was worked in a lab theoretically was accurate. Anybody old 40 or 50 or 60 years. Rails and foxes and wall rides. It's incredibly acrobatic. It's very dangerous. I had a list of 20 tricks that would cover here. Safer. There was a reason why I wanted this ski problem speed skating where you're in contact with in a single direction. And. I think it took me five years. Athlete on parks New York who had gotten injured, had a family, walked away, came back when I came back and he made more progress in the civilization he's ever seen. And at that point we were like, okay, this is cool. Patterns are working. But we've done like the sexiest pilot study in the history of pilot studies. But that's all we got. So the following year we came back and this is the Video Joe was going to talk about between 17 older adults 49 is used the exact same protocol we were using 4 days on the mountain dump that we then stripped out gadgets for us because maybe not for everyone. We don't understand that but apparently not for everyone. And we turned into a training called xpinar that the whole goal of it. But mindset is. I think the second half of my life is my best years are ahead of me for a lot of neurological reasons. Seven and a half years and a half long ethic. So if we were to start with people for you start with mindset. You start by working your mindset. And when we strict up the export we just wanted to see if we can explode people's mindsets toward data. And maybe community worked beautifully. That it works. Your body your ability to perform like what. Flow states have triggers. You want more flow in your life. There are three conditions that lead to more flow. First thing to know flow is focused. Normally shows up on the present moment. We pay the most attention to the task. We have. Good emotionally. There's a sweet spot between anxiety. Too much stimulation and boredom. Not enough stimulation. It's known as the flow channel. Challenges. Really hard to figure it out. But we thought it was really upset. But this is the first time that we did in older adults. An older here means anybody over 30 actually any sort of reasons that we can get to. But once you sort of cross that threshold all your trauma stays with you. Brett we call it allostatic load. It's trauma. The impact of trauma over time on our physiology and our psychology known as allostatic load. Allostatic overload is one of the number one causes of burnout. But when we started to figure out the cause of allostatic load and especially when you're going after physical challenges Switchblood is no longer 4 to 5% of 1%. It's way shot down and you don't even notice it. A lot of it's subconscious. But there are subconscious brakes governors of performance that tend to be there. So the idea was we're going to start with motor patterns do 100% of the time perfect success. No fear build out in one micro motion at a time. Slowed them way, way, way down in how they normally want to progress even when everything was going wet. If you want any language. Then we'll take a break. We'll do lunch. Then we'll come back with Stephen a little bit later. One of the biggest obstacles as people age that get in their way of slow rot right obstacles is people do the wrong things, they reach for the wrong levers. So you want to compete performance agent in a sentence. Everything you need to know about peak performance agent. They want a rock to your opponent. You have to engage on a regular, regular basis in challenging social and creative activities that demand dynamic, deliberate play take place in novel outdoor environments. That's the biggest lever we have at our disposal of standing out. We want to engage in novel creative social activities. Novel, challenging, creative and social activities that demand dynamic, deliberate play and take place in novel outdoor environments. What about shaving your younger friends? Friends like Joel, when he goes. Challenging creative and social activities that demand dynamic, deliberate play take place in novel outdoor environments. We can define what those terms mean in a second and why they're important. He skis probably a few. This is a challenging social and creative activity. Dynamic swings of all five categories of functional fitness. So I said we have to train all our skills. What are those skills? Strength, stamina, agility, balance and flexibility. Those are the five skills we have to train. There are very precise numbers for this. The whole health organization. 300 minutes of moderate duping. This is for peak performance aging, not for healthy aging or against successful aging. Peak performance aging meaning 300 minutes of stamina training a week two, aerobic training a week two strength based week three, balance, flexibility and a gym. So if he's skiing, if he's coming to genius network, he's getting all the bunks at his own. I mean I went water skiing with him and the freaking guy is amazing. He's been. He started water skiing after. So there you go. So you know, we're about the same age. I think you're. Ago me with Henry Rollins for Black Flag when I was in my 20s when I took that picture. So you touched on some of these. If you took all of the things you know and gave someone one technique to immediately better their health, what would that one technique be? So for people perspective, start realize that my next 10,000 focus on social activities are really crucial. So like it is from a more romantic perspective, you could be morbidly obese and you're going to go farther by having regular social contact than by losing weight. Social contact is roughly Brian in terms of longevity and health. So social contract really, really matters. If you change your mindset. This is a weird one. The single greatest correlation, Which is odd and what they've done all these studies on cognitive reserve or preserving brain function. You lose your legs, you lose your ability to move around and talk to people. Basically stuff stimulates our brain so much that we fall into cliff without it. That's one of the reasons. But they think about other stuff. Yeah. How many of you knows my stress freaking guy every day this dude is like he's about to turn his Ben sit you since you are so. And he literally sits like this for 30 minutes every day in a sauna. And I'm in like he tried doing it for like three minutes and he's like what the hell and just sits. Which is awesome. What's a step by step method? A way to get more easily in the flow that everyone here can utilize going forward. And when we come back we'll do Q and A and stuff with everyone. So I don't know. There's no launch size fits all. There are 26 known flow triggers there stuff we all know risk is a flow trigger and that's just because social risk, intellectual risk, pattern recognition. So let me tell you why my backup plan was in. We take ideas together in a novel way. That's counterrecognition. It's fundamental survivals. We're close to our basic level and improve speed. We all know that little rhino plenary field. So creativity is a slow driven. So when I say challenging creative activities both of those are flow triggers. But there's a thing about park seeking. Why the park suggested to me is. I can grind across for whatever it is that I was going to do. That's data recognition for. So. As you're skiing or snowboarding down a mountain. By the way, I got hired a bunch of years ago. I can't talk about the program of the coach. But for the major college football program the idea was if you can get players in the flow before practice when injuries go down. And the answer is yes, that extraordinary. What did we do? Get off the football field, go run the trails and interpret the terrains. Hit a hill, go up an angle and come down with your body just like you were surfing or skid or whatever. You're just running the line. You can't run that far. It was roll and dunes are things you're going to be doing on the field through the forest. Novel outdoor environments and it worked. Tremendous amount of love during practice. A lot less injury on the field as well. So you not just skiing, snowboarding, that sort of thing that works here. But other thing I want to say one of the reasons novel outdoor environments are really crucial to this. So most of us work out. Most of us probably don't work out outside and really do work out outside. We're now seeking out not a lot of our environments to Hear what matters so much. One specific we said earlier there while they're not causing therapy of additives we talked a lot about it. All of them link back to explanation. When we are in nature most people know that 20 minutes of nature flushing stress hormones out of the system and will actually outperform mostly SSRIs from mild to moderate depression sort of cool down once you get to extreme depression. And there are reasons for this. For anybody who's curious, come see me offline and I'll tell you why it works. But one outdoor environments are calming us down novelty it's a slow trigger when we encounter novelty improves. But the big deal from your brain if you want to hang on to your mental function three things are important. One is nonprofit outdoor environments. Why you want to hang on to your hydrogen. You want neurogenesis, you want the birth of new neurons or you want new neural networks. Most of the neurogenesis they don't brain and clean. So from a hunter gather perspective right Remembering where you were when like emotionally charged I got attacked by a bear or there was bright fruit on this bird trait habits is really crucial to survival. So the brain is specifically designed to remember where you are when you have a potential to experiences that simple. And when we burn seven energy neurons every day they would capture their face and then die. That's what they're for. And so I would say peak performance is helping more than our biology works for us rather than against us. Peak performance agent used to be our biology work for us who have it against us when faced with the challenges and opportunities of aging. This is what I'm talking about when I say something like that. Novel outdoors environments use the brain the way the brain is designed to be used. And as a result we get to hang on to brain function of that.

One thing I and you mentioned you know as you got you used to run in the beginning I have to bring this up and I didn't have it as a question. But what I found when we were talking when we went out to lunch in Tucson is that you were fan of Dr. John Sarno's work when it comes to physical pain. And I'm a huge believer. I think the vast majority of the way that pain is treated and diagnosed is wrong. And I lived in chronic pain for most my adult life which the way Sarno would describe what he called TMS. In the beginning he called it tension myositis syndrome. Then it became tension myonuro. Then the mind body syndrome. And you're an expert in this area and he said that the pain is caused by oxygen deprivation and brought on by repressed emotions, predominately anger and rage. And so Steve Ozanich, who wrote recent books on it, he sent you some of his books. Could you explain that from your standpoint about how much the mind and emotional states affect the physical body?

Well, to me, this is one of the great limitations of conventional medicine is that it is totally stuck in the biomedical model which sees only that which is physical as being real. And in that model, if you observe a change in a physical system, the cause has to be physical. The idea of non physical causation of physical events is not allowed. And for that reason, all of the whole realm of mind body medicine is viewed with great suspicion by conventional science and medicine. And that enormously limits their ability to manage these conditions. With back pain particularly, one of the most striking facts about it is that you can see, you can look at X rays and scans of people that look so horrible, you can't imagine that they are not crippled by pain and they have no symptoms whatever. On the other hand, you can look at scans and X rays of people that look completely normal and the people are disabled by pain. So there's a very low correlation between physical findings and subjective experience. And that's one of the things that Sarno is based on. So this is a major component of integrative medicine. I call it whole person medicine, where you don't exclude the mind. That's like, it's key. Let me tell you one story. A couple weeks ago, I was in Japan and I spent time in Okinawa, which is one of my favorite places when I was doing research for my book Healthy Aging. I made a number of trips there because Okinawa has had the highest concentration of centenarians in the world. And it's very interesting to look at their. What is it about that? It's awful hard to tease all those things apart. It's a tropical Pacific paradise with clean air and water. The Okinawan diet is one of the most interesting diets I've ever seen and enormous. Very different from mainland Japanese diet, but incredible variety of sea and land vegetables, unusual foods. Okinawans get great physical activity all the time, not by going to gyms and using exercise machines. They're calling in fish nets and carrying water and chopping wood and hoeing in the garden and stuff like that. But I think especially there is an enormous influence of the way that aging is, is thought of in that culture. The old people in Okinawa are honored. They're living treasures. They're made part of all community activities. One story I collected there, which I think is very telling, is that a common cause of sibling fighting in traditional Okinawan society is over who is going to get to take care of the aging parents. Very different from here. Anyway, I was in. There's a village in Okinawa called Ogimi, which is celebrated as the longevity village. I had been there a number of times, but I went back this time, and they paraded out a number of their old peep centenarians, which they do. And all of them were asked what was the secret of their longevity. And one of the things that they all said was, eat everything. Interesting. However, in the past couple of years, Okinawan longevity has plummeted, and now Hong Kong has surpassed them, which is hard for me to believe. And the fall in Okinawan longevity is entirely attributed to McDonald's. That there has been a sudden appearance of American fast food, and people go for it. So when these people say eat everything, I don't think they meant McDonald's. I think it was their traditional diet. But how dramatic to see this change in such a short time.

No doubt.

Wow, that's fascinating.

One woman who was 102, I think another secret that she had, which I've started to practice, she says, you want to move your fingers all the time. And she was always doing things like this. She said it's very good for the brain.

The adrenal reset diet. What does that even mean? What does adrenal mean?

What is that?

Because I don't think the average person understands that.

Yeah, our body has little glands that control whether we're burning or storing, quite simply. And a lot of our strategies to make us lose weight are strategies that make us more apt to store weight. So I talk about how you can go out from storing and towards burning. It's a big global catastrophe that we're facing.

Okay, so I've got a whole list of questions here that I'd like. I mean, we could talk for a week, but. So the rates of obesity are growing, like, dramatically. What are some of the latest projections of kind of. Of where we're at?

You know, it's pretty terrifying stuff. One stat that I read recently showed that in the next little over a decade, we're looking at 2/3, 67% of people on the globe being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. So globally, the numbers of deaths we're projecting. So go back to, like, 1800. All the wars all around the world since 1800. So World War I, World War II, you know, Vietnam, Korea, and Not just our wars, but all the others. So all those casualties together, we're talking about more than that in the coming decade from complications of obesity. And we're talking about roughly ten times the cost of all those wars since 1800.

Why?

That's it. So the old model is people are lazy and they eat too much. That's what we're being taught and told. And it's so disconnected from reality, you know, to see the rates go up stratospherically in the course of a decade. So one thing we see is that animals, so chimps, when their food is controlled, they're getting obese, even on controlled diets. So it's not behavior and lifestyle. There's a collective number of factors that push us into the storage state. And our body is getting geared up for famine. You know, we have these mechanisms that allowed us to survive famine in the past, and now a whole lot of things push those buttons. And we're storing all of our food as fat.

Yeah, and you get right into it immediately. In the beginning of your book where you talk about stress, you talk about toxins, you talk about all of these other factors that I never really quite considered had that much of an impact on people's weight. I have a friend, I won't name his name, where he. And I've known him for probably 15 years. And without changing his diet, when this guy would go through a breakup of a relationship or go through stressful situations, he would literally just gain weight. And whenever things would. And he's like kind of a roller coaster sort of lifestyle, you know, I mean, he would have lots of ups and downs and it was amazing. And I'm not talking just like 5 or 10 pounds. I mean, he would literally fluctuate 30, 40 pounds. And then things, you know, he would start meditating and he would like lose £20 and he would swear that he could not figure it out. But then he identified a few years ago that it was totally based on stress level. And so now one of his maintenance things is keeping himself not freaking, getting completely stressed out because if you're not sleeping, all these sort of things.

Way back when, stress meant danger and danger meant predators. And predators would go after us when they had fewer food options. So that meant food scarcity. So stress equals famine to our bodies. And famine means we prepare, we hold onto it. So his body was not under physical danger, but the mental emotional stress, which can be part of that for sure, that triggered the same thing that danger would. And his body went into a storage mode because of It.

And I'm not even sure where I first read this, but it's like people would make the analogy, well, we're so much safer, and we got all these luxuries that we never had before. The difference, though, is it's just nonstop, the interconnectivity. Whereas if you're chased by a lion hundreds of years ago, when you're done.

If you survive, you're bored for a while, you're safe.

Right, exactly. Whereas in modern society, if you have anxiety going on, it could just be constant from the moment you wake up to your inability to sleep and all these sort of things. So let me, without going too deep into that, how much do genes control our body weight? And what is a gene? I mean, I'm going to ask you some very basic sort of things because I want people to, you know, you hear about all these things, but, like, what does it actually mean?

You know.

You know, many who have struggled have been told that it's genetic, that their weight is genetic. Genes to our body are what a blueprint is to a building. So a gene is a set of instructions that tells us how we're going to grow. So you see a set of identical twins. They share the same genes. They've got the same eye color and a lot of the same health habits. They've been studied. So if twins are raised separately, their body weight has no relationship whatsoever. There's like no correlation. And they've shown that the difference in weight from one twin to another is predictable based upon the adrenal hormones. So the more one twin has adrenal hormone stress, the more that twin will gain weight. So we're often told that weight gain is genetic. And it is true that there is susceptibility among certain family members we see. But now we know it's not because of the genes. And the positive side of that is that means it's not inevitable that it can change and it can improve.

Okay, so if I see some, like, let's have. I have a lot of female friends, and some just don't eat very. And I know skinny fat. I mean, so there's some people that are not healthy, but they look good, and there's others that just exercise and work out and they still have trouble losing weight. And so the best of my layman's understanding is, oh, it's genetics. This person just has sort of this thing, and this person does not. To what degree are some people just born a certain way where they can eat whatever they want and they maintain a certain level of Thinness and other people do not. What is that all about?

Well, they're a vanishing species. Current stats tell us that you brought up skinny fat, which is a good concept. There are those to where their scale weight may be good, but they do not have enough muscle tissue. So they're okay weight, but just not lean enough, not enough lean mass. So if you take them out and you take out those who are overweight or obese, the remaining percent of the population is about 11%. So about 11% of the people right now have good body composition. So there's not many. And they are dwindling very rapidly.

Wow.

Okay, so now one of the things you talk about is how do you. Why do you argue that calories do not explain weight gain? Because there's been this for years. You know, calories in, calories out. Explain what is a calorie. And then how does that relate to weight gain or weight loss or whatever?

It makes me nuts. And that is one of the biggest public policy statements is that it's just eat this, not that, move more, change the calorie equation. So a calorie is a unit of fuel. So you've got a gallon of gas as a unit of fuel. So a calorie is how much metabolic energy food would release if you burned it in test tube. Now, they've argued at the level of public health that weight gain is from people consuming more calories. And then the solution based on that is eat fewer calories. And I think about that. Well, let's go like to football. So I'm not a big sports expert. I'll put that out there.

Same with you.

Okay, good. So I don't have to be embarrassed. So let's say that we're doing a post game analysis and the Cowboys just crushed it. They won the Super Bowl.

And.

And someone wants to know from the big commentator, well, why did the Cowboys win? Oh, here we go. The Cowboys won the game because they scored 30 more points than their opponents. Like, well, duh, you know, that's. So there's a description, but that's not an explanation. And that wouldn't be a strategy. You couldn't say, hey guys, next year let's score more points. We could win that way. So at best, that's all the calorie model is. It's just describing events.

It doesn't explain.

It doesn't explain it at all. And not only that, but it doesn't work.

So can you explain it?

Sure. It's the storage response. The body goes into a storage mode and you mentioned about the very real powerful mental, emotional stress, and that's big. But a lot of the other factors that are invisible do the same thing. So we could breathe in plastic residues and the same thing like your friend when he would go through a breakup or a crisis and how his health would change from that. The same stuff can happen to you from breathing in byproducts from plastic, the same things that would happen under a crisis. Or you can spend more time around electromagnetic fields. You know, we're carrying our devices all the time. That's just like the breakup and the crisis. Or we can have the fact that a third more people than ever before do shift work. You know, they're not sleeping at regular times. That's just like the stress, that's just like the crisis.

Did you say a third more actually do that.

Starting in 1980, it went up by about a third.

Really? In the US or is this worldwide?

Globally.

Wow.

The global economy. We're working on each other's schedules.

Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah.

Because I mean sleep. Well, let's talk about something like sleep. I mean, I'll throw that in here. I guess I can zig and zag.

Here a little bit.

But how much does sleep affect things?

That's a factor. And somewhere around 1980, 1990, things shifted that caused radical weight gain. And we've seen that sleep can be a stronger predictor of weight than diet or exercise can. So the old model of it being behavior, habit, calories, sleep, doesn't make sense on that. If you sleep more, you're actually burning fewer calories. But the data's strong that good, deep sleep rhythms are helpful and they help because they reset the adrenal response and move us out of that storage state.

Yep.

Okay, so, you know, one of the questions I have here is that experts say that weight gain is a result of poor habits. How does habits relate to this? Because I'm of the mindset that much of any sort of indulgence is addiction and the brain gets hijacked. And I know a lot about behavioral addictions, sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction. And when I say a lot, I mean I've done quite a few interviews with people on behavioral addictions versus chemical and drug addictions. And I used to be a drug addict. I won't go into my whole story here, but I've talked about that. When I was 18 years old, I used free based cocaine. I was a drug addict. And I'm a big admirer of 12 step groups and recovery and all that. That being said, there's a difference between habits and just flat out addiction habits. I think everyone has good habits, even if the consequences of their habits are very poor. If someone wakes up every day and eats an egg McMuffin and doesn't exercise and smokes a cigarette, they've developed really good habits of waking up and eating poorly and doing that. But that's used to shame people and guilt people. And what's your take on.

Well, yeah, it shames, it guilts, it raises the stress load, and it's not a rational solution. So habits imply willpower and they imply intent. They imply that we've got a choice to eat this or that or move or not move. There's some conscious intent behind that. This model, this idea totally breaks down when we look at the fact that infants and toddlers are getting obese and morbidly obese at unprecedented rates.

And you even talk about animals and animals.

So from 1990 to 2000, about 20,000 separate animals were tracked, representing dozens of different species and many different habitats. Every single animal tracked was found to have unprecedented weight gain over that time frame. Now, some people say, oh, well, people feed their pets too much. Well, okay, we'll dismiss that. And some could say, well, wild animals eat scraps from humans. We could dismiss that too. But many examples were animals on controlled diets. So their food was measured, their food was unchanged, their activity was monitored, their activity was controlled. Chimps, between that time frame, our second closest genetic relative, they gained roughly 30% body weight per decade, two decades back to back on controlled environments. So once you see that the whole idea about willpower, habit, indulgence, no, it just doesn't fit anymore.

Right.

So what is causing that?

There's a collective higher number of factors that push our bodies to the storage state and make us hold on to things. There's actually a clock. So this is crazy, but belly fat, the stuff around our organs, is very different than the subcutaneous fat below our skin. And every part of your body has a clock. There's rhythms, there's timing to it, like you're asleep versus awake. It's obviously very different. So you can pull out someone's belly fat and you can keep it alive in a dish, Provided you've got the right ingredients, it'll survive for a little while.

That's exciting.

And you can watch its clock. You can measure the activity of its biological rhythm. The more visceral fat someone's carrying, the greater degree that their clock is out of rhythm with their body. Central clock clock, which the adrenal glands control. So when this regulation is off, the body is storing and holding onto things. And it's not a matter of starving it, it's a matter of resetting it and recalibrating its timing.

Well, so since we live in such a culture and I have a friend, Dave Kekich, who's in a wheelchair, he's very involved in health and he's in incredible shape. He's in his 70s, and in spite of being paralyzed from the chest down, he works out, he eats very well. He's studied health and nutrition his whole life. And he's told me about when he would go and do talks. He would talk about the benefits for your circulatory system by doing cardio exercise and vitality, just things of how exercise and nutrition create longevity and allow you to feel better. He's like, and the audience would be interested. But then he would talk about how to tightened, saggy skin or anything related to vanity, they would light up. It's one of these things to where I've always, as a marketer know that sell people what they want, give them what they need, because people want to look better. And so guys, typically from just a physical standpoint, will say, I'm generalizing here. We'll gain weight around their bellies and they would have love handles. Whereas women would, you know, their butts or their thighs. And if they start exercising, their boobs disappear and their butts are the last thing to go. And guys like to say, what is going on in the physical? How does the body, when it comes to weight loss, respond to it that way? Like, for instance, why does a guy have like love handles? Why does some women have its thighs and butt? Because we could talk all day long about all these wonderful benefits, but it's like, if we can make my butt awesome or if we can make ripped abs, life would be perfect.

Right?

But I'd love to just get your explanation from understanding what does the body do, how does it process this and the different types of fats.

I love the marketing analogy. And so with an economic analogy, we could have a real estate investment, we could have stocks and bonds, we could have gold coins hidden in the backyard. So the body works that way too. And whenever we have adequate resources to survive, we want to put the surplus somewhere. And if times are secure, if we're stable and steady, we might buy a rental property, we might make a long term real estate investment. So that's muscle mass, that's for guys, the chest and the biceps for women, that's healthy, toned legs. Now on the other hand, if someone says, hey, your business might go under, you're going to lose your job next week, and you've got some cash, that's not time for the rental property. That's maybe cash under the mattress. That's like gold coins buried in the backyard. So that's like security. It's like quick access. It's liquid cash. So that's belly fat. That's stuff around the butt and the thighs and around the waist. That's the cash under the mattress.

So your body's just simply trying to.

Just trying to get by.

So take vanity out of the picture. The way your body's responding to stuff is it's simply trying to survive. So this is really a conversation about how to perform, how to thrive, not just survive and reset it. So when you say reset, it sounds like with all of the toxins and all of the weird things that are going on out there, how much of this can we truly control versus, if you could even explain that, I don't know, in percentages or whatever, how much of this is controllable versus how much of this is like we have to pick the right place to live. We have to be lucky we're not under electrical lines. We don't carry our computers and electronic devices. I mean, how would you respond to that?

Sort of.

Yeah. Short of living in the wilderness in a cave or something. Right. So the cool thing is that all these things affect a rhythm and they throw it off. But by and large, our bodies are gravitated towards thriving. You know, we're really meant to not stay in that mode for long. It's meant to be like you're talking about the tiger thing to where you survive and then you're back on track again. So we want to thrive. You know, we want to go back to homeostasis. And in terms of time frames, the measurable disruption of our bodies and the storage process, it can fix in a month or two. And when it's fixed, when it's back on track, it's easier to keep it there than it was to get it there, because it's really the natural state. So it's very recoverable in the short term.

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about athletes because everybody in this room is an athlete in a certain way, shape or form within their business. You're a superstar. You're a rock star. You're the guy or the gal that's doing it and doing it in an interesting way and getting it done. Okay, now I'm getting Calls from major sports teams, because that is the new advantage. You know everybody heard about Moneyball, right? Way back when where they were looking at different ways to increase productivity through their ball players. Now it's becoming sleep. The jets actually, believe it or not, hired sleep specialists to work with their team. There are actually a lot of areas. I'm only going to go over three different areas today where, where we see a change based on athletes and their sleep. No sleep equals no learning. It's actually sleep after an event, a lesson or a game is the most important sleep that an athlete can get. Here's why. Because remember REM sleep. It solidifies that neuroscience. It actually makes those neurons work together in order for you to remember and learn from your training session. The same will hold true and in every single one of your businesses. If you are having a training session, whether you're training people who are buying your products or you're training your staff, if they don't have a good night's rest afterwards, if you go way on into the night, till 11, 12, 1 o' clock in the morning, and they're not getting the sleep they need, they're not going to be able to make those memories, to learn from those mistakes, to be able to understand what the next thing is that they're supposed to do. It's pretty impressive. Solidifying knowledge requires both REM and deep sleep. It's not just about REM anymore, it's also about deep sleep. The first aspect which happens during deep sleep is basically a rehearsal. So during deep sleep, your mind is kind of going over what you've learned and stripping out some of the bad stuff. And then REM sleep is moving information from your short term to your long term. And that's where it gets really effective. And that's where you can then organize your information and recall it in a way, shape and form that can be advantageous to you. Slower reaction time, that's kind of obvious, right? If I'm tired, I don't really react as well. Pretty interesting. When you take a look at people who've done an all nighter, their reaction time triples. Not in a good way, in a bad way. And so one of the things we're seeing with a lot of athletes is that in fact the sleepier they are. So for example, if you're on a major league baseball team and you have, what is it, 162 games a year or something like that, these guys rather on the road constantly, how are they sleeping, where are they sleeping, how much sleep are they Getting another big factor when you're in a series. Right now we're in the middle of the World Series. So what's happening back to, back to back to back games? Well, if somebody is playing in an area that isn't in their time zone. Now you compile jet lag on top of lack of sleep. And now you're trying to tell these people that they've got to perform at the top of their level at the most important game of the season. How is that going to work out for them? It's probably not going to work out as well as they would have imagined. Low testosterone comes from lack of sleep. So what does that mean? Just one week after sleeping five hours, a man's testosterone level drops as if he's aged 11 years.

11 years.

So if I'm going to get five hours of sleep a night, I'm 46 years old, I'm going to have the level of Testosterone of a 57 year old. Nothing against 57 year olds in here, but I'd like my testosterone to stay at age 46 as long as I can keep it there. But testosterone has a massive factor when it comes to athletic performance, but it also has a very big factor in terms of aggression, in terms of connection, in terms of cognition. So when we're starting to think about where is our energy coming from? I know somebody was talking about energy before. Testosterone has a lot to do with it. Testosterone, by the way, is not just a male thing, it's also a female thing. Women have certain levels of testosterone as well. Believe it or not, estrogen is actually a bigger energy factor than testosterone. We can talk about that too. How does this affect performance in many, many different ways? Sleep deprivation and poor quality sleep affect muscle memory. It affects increase in metabolic process, actually causing an increase in energy expenditure. The amount of calories that you take in when you're sleep deprived. Actually you burn through them in certain ways faster. Why is that bad for an athlete? They run out of fuel in the middle of a game, in the middle of whatever, because they're sleep deprived. Their whole metabolic system isn't working. Well, that's for the elite athlete. Well, we have a marathoner in the room, but I know we may have some other people in here who are interested in. I know Robin was saying he wants to become a better athlete. There's a lot of people in here who are athletes who are interested in this type of thing, who are interested in elite sports. Now let's talk about people who aren't. Let's talk about the metabolic process and what occurs during sleep deprivation. It's pretty amazing. One of the things that happens is your cortisol level jacks up. That means your appetite increases, your metabolic process slows because it's trying to conserve the amount of resources that you have in your system. High appetite, low metabolism. Two other things happen that are very, very interesting. Your hormone levels change. Ghrelin, which is your go hormone that tells you to go eat, actually increases. Leptin, which is your satiety hormone, or the stop hormone hormone, decreases. So when you're sleep deprived, you have a high appetite, you have high hunger, which is. Those are two very different things. You have low satiety and you have low metabolism. It's a recipe for disaster. Food choice also changes, which is pretty amazing. People, when you're tired, what are the types of foods that you go for? Let's go. What are the types of food that you guys eat or gals eat?

Carbs.

Doritos.

Doritos. Carbs, sugar. What other stuff? I'm a lucky Charms guy. Cereal and milk is a big one for me when I'm really down. How about anybody else?

Ice cream.

Ice cream's a big one. And a late night snack. Ice cream too is another one. We can talk about that too. Here's what we know about those food choices. They're actually not neurochemically driven. When you eat high carbohydrate, high fat foods, it produces serotonin, which is the antithesis of cortisol. Remember, your cortisol levels are high when you're sleep deprived. Your brain doesn't like it. It wants to calm down. So it actually makes you crave high fat, high carbohydrate foods to lower that cortisol level so that you can actually get some rest. It's not your fault that you want to have ice cream and cereal and all those good things in the middle of the night. Your brain is telling you that you're so sleep deprived it's got to slow down. And that's how your brain does it. It craves those foods again. During REM sleep, the body reaches peak testosterone levels. Less REM equals less testosterone. REM sleep promotes protein synthesis, building muscle mass again for the athletes in the room. And sleep deprivation, low sleep quality and jet lag are some of the key factors to what happens to these people.

Great story.

A good friend of mine who's also a sleep specialist works with the Boston Bruins. Anybody in here a hockey fan? Ok, so we got some. Got a big hockey fan back there. So really interesting situation the night before. And this was in 2011, the night before game seven. I'm sorry, the day before game seven of the 2011 Stanley cup, he got a call from the head trainer at the Bruins. And what was happening was the day of the game, day seven, they had a schedule practice for 10:30. And what the sleep specialist said was, cancel the practice. He's like, are you kidding me? Cancel the practice? Like it's game seven of the Stanley Cup. Like, this is it. We've got to get there. And he's like, uh, that's actually because they were playing in, I think it was Vancouver. So it was really interesting. That would have been a perfect napping time. They cancelled the practice. They let all the players sleep. Guess what happened? They won. Was it due to the sleep specialist and that advice? I can't put my finger on that, but here's what I can tell you. The next year, the Vancouver Canucks hired a sleep specialist.

It might have had something to do.

With the fact that the city was burned down.

Well, I'm not saying that there weren't external factors in there, but using this as an example, one of the things we know, especially with, like, elite athletes, I've worked with some Olympians before, and here's what we know. We're Talking about a 30% difference in performance at the elite level. You know what a 30% performance difference is at that level? That's being on the podium or to get nowhere near the podium.

Okay.

I mean, when you talk, I mean, that is absolutely the difference between a gold and not showing up.

Okay?

So when we're talking about sleep, it has many massive, massive effects on athletic performance.

Okay?

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead.

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