4 Mind-Training Hacks to Achieve Any Goal EP 1458

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You create a stress on the body. Maybe a little bit of damage, right? The body heals the damage, and then what it does is it tries to adapt so that the same insult no longer creates damage. So the question is, what does it.

Take to get my body to adapt? Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. This podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances, right? Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.

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So the muscle building process is an adaptation process. So to use another example, it would be like, Okay, so like going out in the sun and then your skin darkening to adapt to the UV rays. So it's very similar to what's happening when your body builds muscle. You go to the gym, you create a stress on the body, maybe a little bit of damage, right? The body heals the damage and then what it does is it tries to adapt so that the same insult no longer creates damage. So this is how you get stronger incrementally over time. This is why you can work out harder. over time because your body slowly adapts. So the question is, what does it take to get my body to adapt? A little more than you're doing now. That's it. So if you're doing nothing right now, literally 10 body weight squats, five pushups, and maybe a couple band rows is enough to get the body to start the adaptation process. And again, you want to do the right dose, meaning doing more than is appropriate will only get your body to prioritize healing over adaptation. Your body can't adapt because it's only trying to heal this damage that you cause. So the appropriate amount is literally a little more than you're doing now. So for the average person watching this with strength training, if they did 30 minutes of strength training once a week, they would get strength gains. And then when that felt easy, they could do an hour of strength training once a week. And then when that got easy, they could do a little harder. Right. They could add a little more load and then eventually it could add an extra day. And there's a lot you could do with two days a week with strength training. There's a lot, there's a lot of room to go when it comes to load, exercises, intensity. There's so much room to go with two days a week that the average person, I can get them to what they want realistically, which is two days a week. Now more than that, then we're talking about, well, I want my biceps to bulge or I want, you know, my glutes to sit real high or I want more definition in my delts to really pop out. Now we're looking at more days a week. But two to three days a week, you can get really, really far. I mean, the old time strength athletes in the 1930s and 40s, they worked out full body three days a week. And those guys, people like Steve Reeves, they had phenomenal physiques, just working out three days a week. So you can go real far and you don't want to look at the extreme fitness fanatics as, well, that's what I need to do. That's not what you need to do.

That's not what you need to do. Strength training is the core, is the.

Key, is what it sounds like.

It is. That'll burn body fat if you're doing strength training of legs and chest.

You don't have to do abs all day long. No, you know, that's a good question, right? You're kind of alluding to maybe spot reduction, right? So, I want to burn body fat from an area, so I'll train that area. It doesn't work that way, but what you do do is you develop and sculpt and strengthen the muscles underneath. It's important to train the whole body. the best exercises to choose. First off, you want to choose the ones with most bang for your buck, right? So if I'm only going to spend 45 minutes exercising, I want to do the exercises that have the most carryover and have the biggest impact. Essentially, you want to do compound lifts or big gross motor movements. So rather than doing like a curl, which is a very simple, you know, single joint exercise, I would do a row, which also involves the biceps, but now I'm working the back and the whole upper body. Yeah, pull up, right? Oh, yeah. dips and squats and deadlifts. Those exercises do the work of like five exercises combined. So you want to do those big gross motor movements because they give you the most bang for your buck. And for the average person, and I talk about this in my book, go to the gym and pick, you know, three or four gross motor movements and just practice them. So today I'm going to go squat, press and row. I'll do three sets of each. I'll rest for a minute and a half in between and then I'll leave.

That's it. That's it.

Three sets of each, what, 80%? Yeah, you want to train again more than you're used to, not beyond that. You want to feel good at the end of your workout. It's okay to feel a little sore the day after, but if you're sore.

To the touch or you're sore for.

Two days, you went too hard. Really? So you shouldn't feel too sore. No, soreness is a terrible indicator of... You push too hard. It's actually a good indicator that you did too much. It's not an indicator of, wow, I had a great workout. Really?

Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, high level, you know, strength athletes, they rarely get sore. They'll get sore. Maybe if they change something up, but they really get sore. You want a little bit of soreness is okay. So, you know, when I first became a trainer, I would ask my clients, how'd you feel, you know, after your workout? Oh, I was so sore and I'd be so proud. Yeah, I got a real sore later when I really figured this out. I'd say, how did you feel after your workout? Oh, I got so sore. I said, okay, we went. too hard. Let's scale it back. Really?

Yeah.

And what you'll get through is, and trust me, try this out. When you approach it this way, you're going to see more consistent results. Otherwise, what ends up happening is you end up getting stuck on this hamster wheel of breakdown and recovery. So I hammer my body, break it down, my body heals. Oh, I'm back to my workout, break it down, my body heal, and you just end up in the same place all the time. Breakdown, recovery, breakdown, recovery. what you want is a little breakdown, recovery, adaptation. Breakdown, little bit of recovery, adaptation. So you want to end up better than you were before. And you will see consistent strength gains and consistent progress, especially within the first year or two of exercise, if you approach it this way. After a couple years of exercise, it gets a little more challenging. But those first couple years, you should see some pretty consistent gains.

Has anything evolved or changed for you in the last four years, you know, as you continue to get older, you have kids, you have family, all these different things, you're running a business, you know, all this stuff. Or do you keep the lifestyle, the diet, or the nutrition and the training pretty much the same from four years ago?

No, it has to change. It has to. The key with exercise and nutrition is understanding that it's this very powerful, valuable tool. It's mostly multifaceted. that can improve the quality of your life regardless of the context of your life in that moment. So my workouts and my nutrition look different when I'm not getting good sleep because I have an infant at home or when something stressful is happening in my business or I have lots of energy and I feel great and I'm getting good sleep. Now it changes. Or hey, I'm gonna come beyond Lewis Howes' show. I want my mental acuity to be really good. I want to be sharp. My diet will change and my workouts will change around that as well. Or I'm going on vacation or... So I mold it and change it all the time. And really the idea is can I improve the quality of my life right now? And so that's what I ask myself when I go work out. How do I feel right now? What's gonna make me feel better? You know, what's going on in my life? What's gonna improve that? I can't... If I apply the same intensity, same training all the time as my life changes, that means I'm either gonna underdo it or overdo it, hurt myself or not get anything out of my workouts. It's like I'm never, it's gonna be very hard to do the right amount. So you have to change it and mold it as things change in your life. So sometimes that means you're going after it and you're having these great intense workouts and you're seeing these new gains in strength or whatever. And sometimes that means I'm gonna just relieve some stress right now.

Sure.

And I'm gonna feel better.

Yeah.

I think it was about 10 years ago and I remember hearing the stat that A third of Americans were obese. I think it was 10 years ago. And now I just heard recently, I think it's either 40% or 50% in that range of Americans are obese. I'm not sure if that's what you've heard or.

We're almost there. We're almost half.

Almost at 50%, right? What do you see happening over the next five to 10 years in kind of our society, in our world, to look out for in terms of the health, nutrition, and fitness space? and how can we start shifting the obesity epidemic? We.

Need to change the conversation. This has been my motivation since starting my podcast and my channel. The motivation has been to shift the direction, the conversation, the fitness space so that it becomes truly effective. We need to move from the mechanistic aspects of diet and exercise. Now those are important to understand so I want to be clear. It's good to know proteins, fats and carbs. It's good to know calories. It's good to know workouts and how they affect my body and what works for me. But that's not the main conversation. The main conversation is how can I develop a relationship with exercise and nutrition that lasts forever? What are the behaviors that lead to success within that. How can I move through the four stages of learning so I can make this an unconscious action to where it becomes like breathing, which it can be. I know people sometimes balk at that and think, oh, that's not. That's not possible. Yes, it is. It's totally possible. You just have to move from where a lot of people are right now, which is unconscious incompetence, to becoming consciously incompetent, to becoming consciously competent. which is, okay, I gotta pay attention to eventually becoming unconsciously competent, where now this is kind of what I do. And it's a process. And the health and fitness space is doing the world a disservice if it doesn't communicate to people in this way. If we keep staying on this whole, it's carbs, it's fats, it's sugars, it's this diet food, it's this superfood, this is the new workout, this is the new fad. If we keep doing that, we're gonna end up worse and worse and worse. We're not going to solve anything. If we talk to people and say, Hey, here's the deal. Let's understand the true value of food so that we can start to develop a relationship with food where you enjoy eating in a way where you're taking care of yourself. All right, what does that look like? Well, most people understand food value from a very narrow perspective. What is going to give me the most hedonistic value? What tastes the best? You go out to eat lunch with your friends. Hey, what do you guys want to have for lunch? Oh, Chinese or Mexican or let's get Italian or whatever. The value that we've placed on food is around that. We don't understand all the other values. So you've got to start with let's start to pay attention to all the values of food. How does this food affect me emotionally? How does it affect my digestion? My skin, how does this affect my hair? When do I crave certain foods? Is it when I'm stressed? Is it when I'm anxious? Do I eat differently when I'm in a restaurant versus when I'm with friends versus when I'm on my own? You have to kind of bring awareness first. Then start to point out the positives and the negatives. Hey, that thing that I like eating so much because it tastes so good, that's the thing that keeps giving me heartburn. pay attention to that. Or you know that one dish that I don't like the taste so much. My God, when I eat that though, I feel so good. My digestion is really good. Pay attention to that. And here's what happens. Over time, you start to develop a relationship with food where the value of food now is much more complete. Then what happens is you actually start to crave or want foods that actually benefit you in the truest sense. You start to develop balance. Right? So, hey, my digestion's off. I know, you know what? I want these particular foods because they make me feel really good. Or, my energy's low. I know these foods are gonna make me feel real good. Or, hey, I'm going out with my friends. We're gonna have a good time and drink some beers. Let me get that food that has that hedonistic value so we can all connect, have some fun and have some laughs. Because that's a value too, right? Yes. But you have to have this, by the way, the food industry knows this. So this is not, I'm not like, you know, discovering anything here. I'm just communicating what they've known for a long time. this is how they sell their products. They sell you food with excitement and beer commercials and they show you the girls on the beach and eat this, look, we crave popcorn when we go to the movies. They've already created that association. We probably already have foods that we have emotional connections to because of maybe something in childhood or because it reminds us of somebody that, you know. So you can do this with yourself, you just have to become aware around it. you also have to interrupt impulsive behaviors around food to bring that awareness. So a good example would be, for me, there's definitely certain foods that I can become very impulsive around. So like potato chips for me is the worst. Yeah, I know. Okay. That and pizza. Oh, pizza's another one, right? So what I'll do is I won't have potato chips in my house. Right. But I don't say I can't have them. If I want them, I'll drive a mile to the grocery store and I'll get them. Right, but it's more resistance to get there. I have a barrier. The barrier is getting my shoes on, getting in the car, driving the grocery store. And you know it usually I'm like, eh, I don't really want it that much. So you can do that with yourself and create those barriers and create that awareness and then identify what is making me feel the way that I feel when I crave these particular foods. And this is again, this is a bit of a process, but once you identify these types of things, you stop using food as a drug. And you start again, you start valuing food for its total value. Because when you talk to people, I love talking to people who've done this for decades, people in their 70s, who really, they just live a good healthy lifestyle. Ask them, do you enjoy eating healthy? Oh, I love it. Like, do you really love it or do you just do it because you like the results? No, no, I enjoy eating healthy. what they've done is they've built that relation. So it's totally possible you just have to. Yeah. And this is what the industry needs to start to communicate. We need to start to talk to people in this way versus the cut your carbs out or only eat these foods or eat this specific diet. This is gonna solve it for you. Not gonna work because you're not solving the root issue.

If someone is above 60 or 70 right now, and they're listening to this and they've been, maybe they haven't been well with their diet or they're working out at all. They're just kind of like living and little obese and have some minor health challenges. What can they be doing right now if they're over 60 to try to live a better, healthier, longer life?

Well, let's pretend they're not over 60, but we'll go there. Let's pretend they're 35 or 40 and they are slightly or obese and have a couple number of health problems and you know, they're all in the, you know, because we're all in this together. What are we going to tell this person? Here's what I'm going to tell them. I'm going to say, okay, the first thing that we need to focus on is metabolic correction. And we're going to do that by optimizing your protein. So you are a, you know, what are they? They're probably not eating a ton and, or maybe they're eating a lot of carbohydrates. I'm gonna say, well, the first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna say we are going to ideally, and again, they might not do this, one gram per pound ideal body weight, which if this person is 150 pounds, it would be 150 grams of protein, that is high, right? That is on the higher end. So this guy might be like, I don't wanna do that. I'm gonna say, you know what, that's fine. Here's what we're gonna do. We are gonna focus on metabolic correction. So I am gonna start you at three meals a day. I don't care when your first meal is, but that first meal after you are coming out of a fast is the most important. And you are gonna optimize that for dietary protein. And the reason it's the most important is because they are catabolic, they are fasting. At that moment, if we get that threshold, that nutrition, that protein threshold right, you will stimulate their muscle.

Mmm.

So what should be eating the first meal of the day?

So that could be, I would want them to hit 40 to 50 grams of protein.

Really?

And that could be a whey protein shake, which you could probably get a little bit less. It could be a beef patty. It could be chicken and eggs. It could be chicken and eggs. It could be whatever.

Okay, 40-50 grams of protein your first meal.

Just get that right. Just if any of the, if the listener would do that for me.

No matter how big your, no matter.

How big Or that's right.

40 to 50 grams. If you're 150 pounds or 250 pounds, just try to get in that range.

Yeah, I mean, listen, could it be between 30 and 50? Yes.

Okay, gotcha.

Between 30 and 50 would be great. If you are older, if you are that 60 plus, the muscle goes through a normal physiological change called anabolic resistance. You want to push their protein a little bit higher.

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If you are younger like you, you could probably get away with 30 to 40 grams of protein.

Okay. Does it matter if you work out first in the morning or fast for five hours in the morning? Doesn't matter. Just your first meal when you eat after you wake up, whether it's right away or 10 hours later, that first.

Meal should be optimized for protein. And I would argue that if that meal is not around training, our target carbohydrate load, and if they're not training, would be 40 grams or less, that first meal. So you keep the carbohydrates lower that first meal. The reason is, is it ends up being about a one-to-one ratio of, you know, if they want- Carbohydrates would be more or less.

Or you want less.

It would be less, right? Because anything really above the 50 grams of carbohydrates creates a more robust insulin response.

Yeah.

And you don't want that for your first meal. You want that first meal to be very smooth and stable. And not only that, and Heather Leidy, who I had mentioned earlier, has done some very interesting FMRI research that, you know, one of the things that protein does is it's very satiating. And I always tell patients not to worry about their strengths, but to plan for their weaknesses. And when you augment willpower by leveraging dietary protein, you plan for it. You're much less likely to overeat.

Right.

So you nail that 40 grams of protein first, maybe a little bit lower carbs and some fat, then that next meal is maybe four or five hours later, right? So you stimulate muscle. You now have robustly stimulated muscle. That next meal will be another, again, depending on what you need, I like to target around 30 grams at a minimum.

Protein.

Yeah.

Okay.

The data, you know, it's interesting. So a lot of the literature doesn't actually support much discussion on that lunch meal. It's really that first meal. And then, but again, if we're talking about maintaining healthy skeletal muscle, we're also talking about maintaining blood sugar, right? Compliance is really important. Protein, it's very hard to store protein as fat. There's a high thermic effect of food, meaning it takes more energy to utilize it. And part of the reason I believe is because it stimulates muscle. So it takes anywhere from 20% of the food that you eat to actually, it takes 20% of that energy. So if you're eating 100 calories of protein, there is some contribution to that.

Sure. Gotcha.

Then that last meal of the day, I would say I would make that more robust again. that 40 to 50 grams. And any listener could do this. The younger you are, muscle is typically healthier, you can get away with a little bit less. The older you are, the more protein you need at once to overcome anabolic resistance. Skeletal muscle is fascinating, in case you were wondering, what I really thought about it. It's actually a nutrient sensor. It senses our nutrients. And it senses leucine. And that leucine, which is that branch, which is that amino acid. And that's really how we need to think about protein, is we really need to understand that protein requirement as we age is really about a meal threshold. 24-hour protein is very important. Secondarily, having protein in discrete meals is incredibly valuable. because if you don't, you won't stimulate your tissue. And as you age, that tissue becomes more marbled with fat. It becomes more challenging. The other thing is resistance exercise is another way to stimulate tissue. And this is where you get with a great trainer. I know I typically recommend between three and four sessions of resistance exercise a week, but again, having someone evaluate you as it relates to training. And then another thing that's overlooked is mitochondria. And that's really the cardiovascular aspect. And the current recommendation is 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity now. And I think as, you know, again, we're very split. People are really into resistance training or they're really into cardio. But when we think about longevity, we must address both.

Is cardio, when I think of cardio, I think more about people trying to lose weight.

That's not a great strategy.

Is it helping you build muscle when you are just running and riding a bike?

I mean, not really. I mean, muscle to grow requires metabolic stress. Requires mechanical tension. Exactly. Metabolic stress, ribosomal biogenesis, protein and calories.

Then why do people focus so much on cardio? Is it for heart health? Is it for other, Yes.

I believe that number one, it's very easy to do. You don't have to have advanced knowledge of training protocols. And that's hard. That's hard for people. There is that barrier to entry. Cardiovascular, a lot of the literature, a lot of the data has always been done on cardio. Again, because it's easy, you first use rodent models, then you transition to humans. But cardiovascular activity is very valuable. as it relates to mitochondrial function, as it relates to energy, and there's a natural decline as we age. Again, aging doesn't get easier.

Sure.

But being able to be strong and capable and optimizing for dietary protein will be the ultimate in longevity.

Yeah.

And there's so much confusion about the narrative that my fear is, you know, when you address it in your later life, you're missing this huge opportunity midlife. Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, they don't develop later in life. They start in your 30s. When I was looking at that participant's brain, when I was looking, we'll just call her Sarah, when I was looking at Sarah's brain, it didn't start then. It started in her 30s.

From nutrition or from?

From excess, from being overweight. You know, had she built muscle, it would have been a metabolic buffer.

Right.

You know, when you look at diseases of aging, it's not the aging. These diseases like Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, these start in your 30s. Sarcopenia, which is the big one where, you know, sarcopenia is loss of muscle mass and function, you know, which is we see people get much smaller. That doesn't start then.

Right.

It starts much earlier. So if you eat the way that you did in your 20s, You have no chance of protecting your muscle. The changes will be subtle until one day they're not.

You just start shrinking and getting weaker.

You have increase in adipose tissue. You now fall into the general category of one of the millions that are overweight, have high blood sugar, insulin resistance, you name it. And it's something that happens over time. And if we continue the conversation that is very distracted about, well, we'll take this and we'll take this and we'll do that, as opposed to do the foundational things that we have direct control over, which is train hard, optimize and prioritize for a protein forward plan. You do those fundamental things, everything else is gravy.

That's it. So if you focus on protein and you train consistently, you should be able.

To protect your muscle.

And it sounds like eliminate a lot of the health problems or risks that.

Could come your way.

This is the ultimate in a muscle centric approach.

What was the things that you you saw when you went to these blue zones that they did that maybe you weren't even thinking they would do? Like, what were the surprising things they did? Or the unsurprising things?

Yeah, I mean, a few things I saw that were kind of striking to me.

It made sense, but one was that.

In Korea, which was one of the Greek blue zones, they eat so much wild food. So they had wild greens, summer greens, winter greens, they had wild mushrooms, they had wild sage tea. They had wild fish, they had so much wild food in their diet. And we know that wild foods are much more nutrient dense. Why? Because they're stressed. And stressed plants make more protective compounds. Those protective compounds are called phytochemicals. They give the color and the richness and the flavor. What people don't understand is the more flavorful a food is naturally, the more phytochemicals it has. Interesting. You know, if you go to your garden at the end of August and pick a cherry tomato that's ripe in the the hot sun that explodes in your mouth, like the most incredible flavor. But if you go to a store-bought tomato and you cut it, it's like cardboard tasteless. What's the difference? It's the phytochemicals. So flavor always follows the phytochemical richness of a food. So not the stuff you put on it, or sauces, or salt, or fat, or sugar to make it taste better, which food industry does, but just the natural flavor. So the more flavorful the food is, the better it is. So they eat a lot of wild food and it's so flavorful. The other thing that was interesting was that shepherds had this culture of going and knowing exactly which plants to feed their animals at which time of year to graze them. So we'd shepherd them, they'd eat all these wild plants, but they knew if this herb was coming in at this time of year, they'd go eat this herb. And if this plant was coming in this time of year, they'd go eat that thing. I'm like, why are you doing that? He says, We know because the meat and the milk tastes better when we... yeah. It kind of, you know, they were not doing it because it was better for them or because it was for longevity or because-- It tastes better. Right, the cheese, yeah, it tastes better. So it turns out that we know now that phytochemicals are not just in plants and phyto means plant. They're not just in plants, they're also in animals. So the work of Fred Provenza and Steven Banville from Duke have clearly shown that When animals are eating a wide array of wild plants or a wild array of, you know, planted grasses and flowers and different things, they will seek out medicine in the food. So they will literally go and eat major, like, you know, calorie crops, let's say, but then they'll go and sample from like 100 different plants to get their medicines. And so these wild animals, these wild plants are being eaten and the phytochemicals are accumulating in the meat and the milk of these animals. So studies have shown, for example, that you can have as high levels of the catechins in green tea in goat milk that's from goats eating certain wild plants. Really?

Yeah.

So it's mind-blowing and there may be ways that even these get transmuted. So eating where generally raised meat, I went to a restaurant here in LA last night called Matu where they have regeneratively raised meat.

Was it amazing?

It was amazing. Now it wasn't as fatty and kind of like marble-like corn-fed meat. but it was delicious and it was tasty and yummy and amazing.

What was this place called?

Matu, M-A-T-U. I'll have to check it out. Really good to Beverly Hills. And you'd love it. It's so good. And you can eat that and know you're eating from an animal that's been well taken care of, that's living out in its natural habitat, that's regenerating the environment, that's storing the ecosystems, increasing biodiversity, conserving water in the soils, reducing climate change, it's producing more nutrient dense food that enrich in phytochemicals and good fats and more antioxidants and more minerals and just pretty much everything. That's incredible. So that was a sort of a, I think a key part of their longevity was they lived on this stuff. They basically were shepherds and goats and.

Sheep were their livelihood. What was about their relationships? How did that play in? Did they have certain types of relationships with family members, do they have intimate relationships? Were they married for long periods of time? Do they have 10 wives? You know, what was the whole process?

One couple I saw had a collective age of 210.

It's crazy.

So I don't know. I think, you know, being married is definitely a key to longevity for men. For women, not always. Depends on if they're happy or not.

Oh, man.

So I think having a happy, healthy relationship is such a key part. of longevity. And they were very much in the realm of community. It wasn't just like this isolated relationship. They were embedded in a context of a community that was totally supportive, that celebrated together, that played together, that worked together, that harvested together, that shared sheep together, that made cheese together. They were just doing stuff together as part of the way of life. And they would just stop and talk and hang out and like chill and it was like nobody was like starting a company or you know, nobody was like you know getting ahead in social media for likes and followers. I mean they were just they were just living life. They weren't striving or trying to get anywhere. They were just being. -Interesting. -And so their culture was was all about the power of these incredible moments where you share with people you love and care about and celebrate life and and joy, life and talk. And we were driving out of this one town in Sardinia, because I had these two guys that were really great, and they were local Sardinians. And this car stops in front of us and blocks us. And this old guy gets out, he walks over to this stone wall, and he waves us to come over. And I'm like, what's going on here? And he just waved us over. He wanted to talk. You saw us in the car behind him. He's like, he just wanted to talk. So we sat in the stone wall for an hour. hour or so and chitchatted about life and about his life. He was Carmen, he was 85 years old and super vibrant fit guy. And he started telling us about his life and how, you know, there was a mudslide that destroyed the village he grew up in, which they moved the town a little bit higher on the mountain. But he still had his farm on that old area, his old family land. So he took us down, he had like six sheep and he had a pig and he had some chickens and he had orchards and he had a whole garden where he grew eggplants and peppers and tomatoes and zucchini and herbs and spices and it was amazing. He literally took care of this entire property by himself at 85 years old. I mean, I don't think I could do it. And then I'm chasing this guy up this hill after his sheep and I'm like, I can't keep up with this guy. He's 85 years old. And so he was super vibrant, mentally sharp, you know, he lived with his family and they just had this incredibly deep culture. There wasn't nursing homes. I meant, well, Julia, who was 103 months, you know, like, oh, my God. Like, you say, I'm 100 and I'm five and three quarters. She's like, I'm 103 months. And she was like, you know, didn't have kids and lived with her niece and nephew who loved her and took care of her. And she was still working. She was still working, making all this stuff for weddings, all the little tablecloths and doilies and embroidery stuff. I don't know how about how to do that, but she was making all this stuff, and she was so bright and still was walking around every day and taking her walks and hanging out with everybody and her friends and. It was really amazing to see this culture where, you know, people were not ostracized or excluded, but, you know, they were included in life.

And it doesn't sound like they're hustling for something. They're working hard to maintain their life, like their home, their farm, their land, whatever they have. Maybe they're a small business, but they're not hustling for something greater, is that right?

Yeah.

No.

Why can you live long and still hustle? Hustle or just want more, want to build something greater in your life.

I think you can. I think it's really about what happens on the inside because one of the biggest things that regulates your epigenome is your mind. So your biggest pharmacy in your body is between your ears. It's the most powerful pharmacy in the world. And you can activate it for good or bad. So when we are having thoughts that are, you know, Stressful thoughts when we're in toxic relationships, when we're worried or anxious, when we aren't in harmony with ourselves, it activates all these really nasty pathways that drive inflammation and harm your mitochondria. I mean, your microbiome is listening in on your thoughts. It's eavesdropping. So those bugs don't like it when you are not happy.

Really? Yeah. What is the process of that from an idea, a thought, into the mitochondria, how does that transfer into a healthy information, into a physical manifestation versus unhealthy information, data and a thought into physical unhealthy?

So, what's the biochemistry of it? Well, for example, if you're stressed, you're producing cortisol and adrenaline and all these other hormones and proteins that then will trigger a whole cascade of downstream effects that activate transcription factors that transcription factors that turn on genes that cause inflammation and all these other problems. So you're basically, you know, creating inflammatory thoughts are creating inflammation in your body, literally. Isn't that crazy? And you have receptors on your, like immune cells, for example, for neurotransmitters. So if you're stressed, your immune system is eavesdropping on your thoughts. Wow. That's why if you're stressed, you are more likely to have an infection or.

Get sick or have other bad health consequences. Why do you think it is that our body is built this way that a thought can either make us feel and physically transform into joy and health or feel sick and then become sick? Why do you think our body... Why.

From an evolutionary point of view, why.

Do you think that is?

Isn't that crazy?

It's a crazy thing. You think something, it's not actually, it's in your mind, right? Where it, you know, it's like, and then it transfers into your body.

Well, I think, I think, I don't know, Louis, but I think, you know, we have, have a built-in stress response system, which we need it. Like, if we're getting chased by a saber-toothed tiger, well, you know, we need to get on the move. Right. And we need to, like, Jack up our cortisol and pump our blood sugar up and get our blood pressure up and our heart rate up and flood our body with glucose and, you know, just all this stuff that needs to survive.

Yeah.

Make it's like, you know, the story, like how someone's, you know, sees her kid under a car and can lift up a car. Like, why can that happen, right? Because we have the system built in to deal with acute stress. That's a good thing. The problem is we have a society and a life that drives chronic, unmitigated, unrelenting stress. So unless you are very clear about how to discharge that stress, because we can't avoid it, right? But how do you discharge it? How do you not react? And how do you have a different perception of relationship to what's happening to you? It's all about perception, right? So I always say stress is the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body. So it could be a real threat to your body, like a tiger chasing you, or it could be an imagined threat to your ego, like you think your wife's cheating on you but she's not. And you get the same physiology. Or you can have the same input, let's say you're James Bond and I put a gun to your head versus Woody Allen, it's going to be a very different set of responses, right? Same input, very different response. That's the beauty of our minds, is we have the power over our thoughts. You remember Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning? He said, Between stimulus and response, there's a pause. And in that pause lies a choice. And in that choice lies our freedom. For those of you who don't know about Viktor Frankl, he was an Auschwitz, and he was a psychiatrist in Auschwitz, and he chose not to let even the most horrific thing that's almost ever happened to human beings affect his own well-being and happiness and inner life. -That just blows my mind, right? -Unbelievable. -So, when you think, oh, my life and this and that, we always have a choice, you know? And whether you have stuff or don't have stuff, it's all about our perception. So, mindset and your thoughts are a key part of longevity and health and having meaning and purpose. That was the other thing in these cultures. They had so much meaning and purpose. Carmine had such purpose. He had to go and take care of his sheep and he had to feed his family and he he wanted to support the other members of the community by giving them food and he fed his animals the extra. And so he had a meaningful life. And he also had a very active mind, was reading books and learning all the time. So, you know, that extends your life by up to seven years.

Wow.

Having meaning and purpose. Because you hear the story sometimes of like, you know, someone in their older years, their husband or their wife dies. And then within six months or a year later, they die.

Or a week later. Yeah, a week later, right?

You hear that story often.

All the time.

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And is that because their meaning has lost or just more they have a broken heart and they don't know how to- Both.

I mean, there actually is a phenomena of a broken heart. I had a patient with this once who had this incredible wife. They were deeply in love. They were married for decades and decades. She got breast cancer and died. And he was relatively healthy and all of a sudden he went into heart failure. Come on. Like boom. And it's in the medical literature. It's literally a broken heart and it causes actual clinical heart failure where your.

Heart muscle can't pump the blood around. Now, that's from, what is that from? Is that from thinking?

Yes.

And then feeling the heart You know, the pain in your heart?

Yeah, it's the physiological phenomena that happen when you have a stress response, the flood of all these stress molecules in your body that damages the heart.

Let's say that you were able to give a five-step process for someone who's 30 pounds of belly fat or around there, 20 to 30 pounds of belly fat. And they were like, you know what? for once in my life, I want to get like at least a flat stomach. Yeah, maybe it's not gonna be super defined and under 8% body fat, but 12% body fat, roughly 10% and I could get close.

Sure.

Everything we talked about from sleep to emotional stress to nutrition to, we haven't talked about calories in, calories out or lifting and things like that yet, but from everything we've talked about, if you had to give a five bullet point process of like this would be the foundational steps to get you started on losing that 30 pounds of belly fat.

What would you say?

Yeah, I'd say, and I've talked about this before, step one, very clear and defined breaks between meals. Whether you are snacking or not. What I mean by that is rather than grazing throughout the day and constantly keeping insulin levels high, I find it much, people have much more success by having very clear defined gaps. So I don't care if you're fasting or not, but eat breakfast and have a very clear and defined break until lunch. Have a very clear and defined break until dinner. Allow yourself the ability for insulin levels to come back down, glucagon levels to come up so that you're actually getting into a fat burning process between these meals. Every time you're consuming something, you're kind of stopping that process for a little bit.

Interesting.

Right?

Even if your calories are, you know, yes, that comes into equation, but you need to have these peaks and valleys a little bit.

Breaks between consumption.

Yes.

Now, can you consume water, teas, coffees, anything? For sure.

Anything zero calorie. I mean, it's real calorie. Yeah, it's, I think once you, and that's, people will naturally eat less doing that too. But I do think that we have to take little bits from the calories equation and little bits from carbinsulin model and meld them together instead of having these two camps that are largely opposed. and that's where I say, hey, this seems like an equal, delicate, thoughtful acknowledgement of both sides. You're probably going to eat less by having these clear defined meals, but you're also taking into account letting insulin levels come back down nice and low and you're not keeping them chronically elevated, which we know is not good either. So that's usually rule number one.

Okay, step one.

Step number two is very similar, but I say have a minimum 12-hour break between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the day. It's 12-hour fasting minimum.

And it's not really a fast, right?

Sleep and don't eat after eight. Exactly. I feel like there's a reason why you get your blood work done after a 12-hour fast. Things tend to come back down to homeostasis. Give yourself a chance to get back down to this balance. There's a multitude of different reasons why that's beneficial. Insulin levels getting lower, insulin sensitivity getting much better, so the food that you do eat with breakfast is to be much more able to be taken up and utilized, which leads into step three, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper, right? So you're kind of tapering as the day goes on. So larger meals in the morning, if you're not fasting, which we'll talk about here later, if you're not fasting, having a larger meal in the morning is generally going to be better. And if you look at the research, it's very, very clear that that people that have a larger breakfast end up eating smaller lunches and smaller dinners naturally.

Because they feel satiated, right?

And that doesn't mean that you go eat a box of Froot Loops or Cheerios for breakfast, right? And with that, I'll kind of dovetail into a slightly different piece that kind of coincides with that. Okay, there was a BMC Medical Genomics study that's probably one of my favorite studies that demonstrated that you can have higher fat content in the morning, because you end up starting the day with more insulin sensitive muscles and less insulin sensitive fat cells. What that means is you have less likelihood of storing fat as fat in the morning. And that way you start your day with higher fat, higher calorically dense meals. So maybe steak and eggs, something like that, without a bunch of hyperpalatable carbs, right? Something that's calorically dense. And then as the day goes on, taper calories. carbohydrates are lower calorie than fats, even though they do spike your glucose and spike your insulin. It's okay to have those at night if you're not overdoing it. So a lot of times what I will do is I will have a higher fat breakfast. I will have something like steak and eggs for breakfast or usually like steak and like ground beef. I'm a big fan of like that Joe's scramble kind of thing that you do, right? With like a little bit of goat cheese, a little bit of feta, maybe some like lox make it very Mediterranean and that that's pretty high fat, so it's calorically dense, right? It ends up being like 800 calories, right? Then as the day goes on, like a slightly smaller lunch, and if I am having carbohydrates, they're usually allocated to the evening time. That doesn't mean I'm having cakes and pies, it means maybe I'll have some lentils, maybe I'll have some, you know, something Mediterranean, right? Then, you know, that's gonna naturally be lower calorie because there's not as many fats in it. I'm largely Mediterranean, I'm mostly Italian, so it's like I look back at that and like my grandmother was always kind of saying like she always had these light dinners, little teeny dinners, right? It was just like, and you look at a lot of the Mediterranean cultures and with the exception of when they're having big feasts and stuff for special events, like a lot of times they are having really small dinners, right? And they're like shutting it down right after dinner. It's like maybe they'll have a little bit of coffee or whatever it is they're having and then, you know, go right to sleep.

Yeah.

Which, and then you go into step four is, you know, your diet should optimize your sleep, right? That's something that we kind of talked about in the beginning, but the best way that you can optimize your sleep without really digging super deep into what is stressing you out and causing this sort of internal battles that might be keeping you up. Cutting your food out a few hours before bed is usually very, very powerful for people. And that, again, it nicely coincides with everything I'm talking about. If you're having those 12-hour breaks between dinner and breakfast, well, then the earlier you eat your dinner and cut it down, shut it down, the earlier you can eat breakfast the next day, right? If you stop eating dinner at 6:00 p.m., you're done eating, then by 6:00 a.m. you're good to eat again. And chances are you're not going to roll out of bed at 5:59 and immediately go eat at 6:00. You're probably going to naturally end up fasting longer and you don't have to be a quote-unquote intermittent faster. You're naturally kind of, you know, getting into that category, right? Okay.

And number five.

And number five, and this is something that you pull the throttle on or hit the throttle on occasionally, right? you want to temporarily, like when it's time to really pull that lever, temporarily reduce fats and then bring them back up. So that's sort of my lever. If I'm following all four of these lifestyle principles and things are working but not working as fast as I want, what I will temporarily do is reduce fats out of the diet, even if I'm low carb. Okay, this sounds crazy, right? But then bring them back in once weight has started to come off. People forget that even if you're doing, and I'm largely a low-carb guy, so I catch heat for saying this sometimes, but fats are still calorically dense. So it's the easiest lever to pull from a food volume standpoint to dramatically reduce calories really quick and then be able to bring them back. Because what you don't want to do is you don't want to have just this point where you're chronically restricting calories forever and ever and ever. and then the moment that you do come back up, your body's like, oh.

Shoot, put the weight back on.

Yeah, that's not fun. I actually think, and there's recent research to back this up, that keeping calories moderately high and then having aggressive short-term drops, like reducing fats and bringing calories low for a couple of days and then back up, can actually be very, very effective, which is probably why fasting works so well for a lot of people that just do it at random.

Yeah.

Like they'll just be like, I'm eating Six days per week normal, and then I do a 24-hour fast once per week. It's great because you're never letting your body get accustomed to this decline in calories. You're just like status quo, status quo.

Whoa, what's going on? Then back up to normal.

Who do you recommend fasting for and who do you not recommend it for? I don't think there's many people that shouldn't do fasting to a certain degree, right? But there's a large degree of different kinds of fasting. There's 24-hour fasting, there's 16-hour fast. Exactly, and like a 16-hour fast, if you want to put the label on it, you can call yourself intermittent fasting, but there's a lot of people out there that are probably intermittent fasting that don't know they're intermittent fasting. So 16 hours is pretty, I think the benefits start at 16 hours. So someone doing a 16/8 fasting, that usually works, but the reason that that's working is for two simple reasons, caloric restriction and insulin being lower. Nothing magical is happening with a 16 hour fast, but when you start creeping over that 16 hour mark is when the benefits start. start to kick in. So I personally, I fast usually three days per week with a 20 or 21 hour fast. So I'm still eating two meals and I just do it three days per week. So it's kind of intermittent. I can't think of a lot of people that wouldn't have success doing that because almost everyone that even thinks they wouldn't be able to do it, they might get hungry the first couple of times and then after that it's a cakewalk. Now people that have serious hypoglycemia issues, they should probably be conscious of it. That being said, and full disclaimer, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a dietitian, but even people that are dealing with hypoglycemia, a lot of times getting their bodies adjusted to periods of time without food is actually a good thing because it teaches their body to be able to utilize alternative fuel sources so they're not reliant on this undulation in glucose. There are certain people that if you're very, very, very, very active, then yeah, it might not work for you. Someone that's working crazy manual labor construction. I'm sure there's different situations, clinical conditions that people shouldn't fast. And those, yeah, defer to your doctor. But as far as general people, I can't really think of anyone that wouldn't get some benefit out of it.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode. with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. Did you know that skin care can.

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