Hacks To Reach Your FITNESS GOAL & Train Your Mind to ACHIEVE ANYTHING | Lewis Howes

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. Yes. So the question is, what does it take to get my body to adapt.

A little more than you're doing now? How do we build like this, I don't know, furnace burning machine inside of us? Is that a consistent weight training and nutrition practice? Is it weight training five days a week? Is it, you know, it's not doing to fatigue or failure, it's more like 70% weight training. What is that machine look like?

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. 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. They could add a little more load and then eventually they 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, I mean, you can get really, really far. I mean, the old time strength athletes, you know, in the 1930s and 40s, they worked out full body three days a week. and those guys, you know, people like Steve Reeves, they had phenomenal physiques, you know, just working out through. 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.

Right.

That's not what you need to do. Strength training is the core. It's the key. It's 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 carry over 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. That's great. One 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. In fact, high level 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'd say, okay, we went too hard. Let's scale it back. Really?

Yeah.

And what you'll get through, and trust me, try this out. When you approach it this way, you're gonna 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 wanna 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 of years of exercise, it gets a little more challenging. But those first couple of 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 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 going to come be on 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. 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 and 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 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 got to 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 gonna 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 could 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 gonna give me the most hedonistic value? What tastes the best? You go out to eat lunch with your friends. Hey, what do you guys wanna have for lunch? oh, I'm 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 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 and the beach and you know, 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 like for me, there's definitely certain foods that I can become very impulsive around. So like potato chips for me is the worst.

That and pizza.

That pizza is another one, right? So what I'll do is I won't have potato chips in my house. 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. 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 It's 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 relationship. So it's totally possible, you just have to... 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 going to solve it for you. Not going to 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 they're all in the, you know, because we're all in this together. What are we gonna tell this person? Here's what I'm gonna tell them. I'm gonna 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 going to say, well, the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to 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 want to do that. I'm gonna say, you know what? That's fine. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna focus on metabolic correction. So I'm 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.

Interesting.

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.

So what should you 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 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 or how much you weigh.

No matter how big or, that's right.

40-50 grams.

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

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

Yes.

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

Right.

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 it ends up being about a one-to-one ratio of, you know.

If you're going to say more or less.

It would be less, right? Because anything really above the 50 grams of carbohydrates creates a more robust insulin response. 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. You know, skeletal muscle is fascinating, in case you were wondering, but I really thought about it. It's actually a nutrient sensor.

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It senses our nutrients. And it senses leucine. And that leucine, which is that branched chain 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 discreet meals is incredibly valuable. Because if you don't, you won't stimulate your tissue.

Sure.

And as you age, that tissue becomes more marbled with fat. You know, 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 heavier, mechanical tension. Exactly. Metabolic stress, ribosomal biogenesis, protein in 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- Yes, 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 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, what were the things that I saw that were kind of.

Striking to me that 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. 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.

If you go to your garden at the end of August and pick a cherry tomato that's ripened in the hot sun, 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, you know, the more flavorful the food is, the better it is. So it's wild. 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. 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 Vander Wall 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 my 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. 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, that's reducing climate change, producing more nutrient dense food that enrich in phytochemicals and good fats and more antioxidants and more minerals and just pretty much everything. So that was a sort of a, I think a key part of their longevity was they lived on this stuff. You know, they basically were shepherds and goats and sheep were their livelihood.

What was about their relationships?

Yeah.

How did that play in? Did they have certain types of relationships with family members? Did they have intimate relationships? Were they married for long periods of time? Did they have Yeah, 10 wives. What was the whole process?

One couple I saw had a collective age of 210. That's crazy. So I don't know. I think 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 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 living life. They weren't striving or trying to get anywhere. They were just being. Interesting. And so their culture was all about the power of these incredible moments where you share with people you love and care about and celebrate life and enjoy life and talk. We were driving out of this one town in Sardinia, and 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, the wave is over, he wanted to talk. You saw us in the car behind. He's like, he just wanted to talk. So we sat in the stone wall for an hour or so, and chit-chatted about life and about his life. Carmen, he was 85 years old and super vibrant fit guy. And he started telling us about his life and how 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. 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 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 met William and Julia. who was 103 months. You know, like, oh my. Like, you say, I'm 5 and 3/4. 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 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. It was really amazing to see this culture where people were not ostracized or excluded, but they were included in life.

It doesn't sound like they're hustling for something. They're working hard to maintain their life, 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 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 creating inflammatory thoughts are creating inflammation in your body, literally. Isn't that crazy? And you have receptors on your immune cells, for example, for neurotransmitters. So if you're stressed, your immune system is eavesdropping on your thoughts. 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 needed. 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 in 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 and 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 in 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. 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. And is that because their meaning has lost or just when 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 and then feeling the heart, 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.

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And we were able to get him better, but it was through energy healing, which sounds kind of wacky and weird, but it was really through his own, you know, getting back in his body, being touched, being held, being energetically reset.

Wow.

He was able to reverse the heart failure.

It wasn't by taking some fancy drug or getting a heart transplant.

So he didn't pass away from that.

No, he didn't. But some people do. We fixed it, yeah. But some people do.

They might isolate themselves even more and.

Then their body just starts to shut down.

Loneliness is the biggest killer. Really? Loneliness seems to be a bigger risk factor than smoking or bad food or almost anything else.

What happens when we're lonely?

Again, it's a stress. We're social creatures, Louis. We all are meant to belong. We have a longing to belong. And if you look at it from an evolutionary point of view, you stick.

A human out in the desert or.

A forest by himself. They're not going to last long. Forget it. And so this is not true just of humans, but it's all of creation. And E.O. Wilson, who was a Harvard professor, wrote many, many books. He just died, but he was a very, very thoughtful guy. And he wrote a book called the Social Conquest of the Earth. And it's about how from ants to humans, we all work together. Like ants. Ant colonies, right? They're all working together. And so we have to work together to survive. And that's why altruism is actually a medicine. Altruism and serving and helping others actually activates healing mechanisms in our body. It activates dopamine in the same way.

That cocaine or heroin does. Altruism and serving. Giving. Why is breathing so important in our, not in, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs here, but in our existence, yes, in our lives?

I mean, you know, and I've been fortunate to be exposed to a couple different forms of breathing, and of course, you know, when you're in the ocean or in the water, breath is an ever important thing because your, you know, your relationship with drowning, but, , you know, lately I've been kind of studying under this guy Wim Hof, who does all this, breath training. But the, the thing that you realize is that, that your spirit or your soul is connected to your breath. And that when, that when you, you know, like when a baby takes its first breath is when it, the spirit comes into the body, just like when the breath stops. so does the spirit leave. So if you really want to get into like a kind of a little bit, you know, deeper conversation, it's a connection to your.

Soul or your spirit.

It's you have a... and then it's, you know, obviously mandatory for life. I mean, breath is the way we get oxygen. Oxygen is essential for living. So it's all about breathing at the end and then we know through cardiovascular activities and any kind of exertion, it's all about breathing. I mean, breathing is your fuel. That's your energy, that's your power when you're not eating food and digesting and drinking water. But oxygen is the thing that ultimately fires every cell in your body. So that's your, you know.

So have you been practicing breathing strategies or techniques or working on your breath since you've been surfing and swimming the ocean for your whole life? Have you been doing that or is it more in the last year you said you started started to dive in and really practicing now.

Well, it's been the last year or last year or so that I've really focused on isolation of the breath. I've been exposed to some yoga breathing and some types of yoga breathing over the years, but I haven't been so disciplined and consistent with it like I have been the last year and a half or two. And so, you know, But I indirectly have been doing it anyway.

Sure.

Because first of all, when you swim.

You have to when you're swimming.

Swimming is a breathing rhythm. Being in the water, you always have to hold your breath. So you have a relationship with your breath if you do any kind of diving or free diving. I mean, you already have established a deeper relationship than normal people.

Yeah, yeah.

Because normally people aren't. They don't even think about breathing. They're not even, you know, they're not even conscious.

If you want to become a better swimmer or better in the water, whatever sport you're doing, you have to master your breath at some level.

Absolutely.

You're getting better just by practicing it.

Yeah, it's a byproduct of you doing it without even being conscious of it. And then, you know, and then when you do some heavy, you know, circuits.

Or.

Other types of, you know, intense training, you know, what the breath is all about. I mean, usually the breath is what dictates the failure. At a certain point when you're out of breath and you're behind, you look at any endurance athlete or any fighter, as soon as they start mouth breathing and everybody will say, oh, they're finished. Yeah, their body can't. They're done.

Yeah, they're done. They're gonna say they're done. So, what have you learned about yourself in the last two years after essentially 40 years of breathing strategies and mastering your breath now into actually diving into these new strategies? what's opened up for you, what's been available for your body, your mind, your relationships, your health, your businesses when mastering this new way of breathing?

I think it definitely brings a certain amount of control over your system that you didn't have. You have a sensitivity to-- you- have.

More control now in these last two years than you did for 40 prior years studying this?

For sure. Wow. For sure. Just because of the sequencing of breathing and the way the body reacts to it. And when you get into, it's like any form of training, when you put stress on the system, then the system adapts. That's how it works. I mean, evolution is because there's stress on a situation, so there's a there's an adaptation and then we evolve and, and, and, you know, so by, but when you start stressing the body through the breathing, then it adapts and becomes more efficient and you start to get control of you, you find that you can, you know, you can breathe yourself into real calmness. Yeah. You can find you can use the energy to bring your energy up and make you more, you know, more aggressive or more powerful. You can control your lactic acid, threshold. I mean, it seems somewhat boundless. Yeah, it's crazy. I'll just reiterate what happened for those.

That obviously weren't here. There's probably 10 of us outside. I walked in, you guys were already doing the breathing. And then we took us outside on your pool deck. We started breathing and within about 45 seconds, I thought it was gonna pass out. You're like, okay, you're gonna breathe in a certain way and I'll have you demonstrate this for a second. You're gonna breathe in a certain way and you don't want to hyperventilate but close to it. And I remember my whole body was like tingling. We're laying on our backs and my whole body was tingling. I was like, I might pass out if I push this. Because I was dizzy, I was lightheaded. I was like, it's early morning here. I'm like, where am I? Up in Malibu. And it was intense and we did it for, I was like, yeah, okay, maybe this is like a 10-15 minute thing, warm up for the real workout. We did an over an hour felt like a breathing. It was one of the most intense things I've ever done, one of the most intense workouts and I played, you know, high level sports in three different sports.

Absolutely.

It was insane.

But that's, I guess that's really the point. The point is, is that you can, you know, you can just be not moving and put the system through an intensity that is more intense than moving all the parts. And I think that's again part of the mastery of it, like when you know you know, because we, you know, we're so trained in to believe that, that working out is, is something that, you know, you bang iron and you run and you bang and you, and it's all this, this hammering, and then we have to feel sore and feel like someone punched you to feel like that was a good workout. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Me, too. You know, can you walk? I can't walk. I can't walk either. You know, like that. And that was, and, and we consider that that to good training, when you can go into a situation where you're almost sedentary, you're laying there, you know, and then maybe we make you do a couple push-ups and then you just go to a whole 'nother place. You know, it just, it kind of shines a light on really what is training and what is working out and what is being in shape and what is, you know, all of that that we, that we have, you know, we try to box up, we try to package and say, well this is it. And we have a pretty good mindset about what we think it is. And then all of a sudden something like that comes along and you're like, well actually we don't know what it is. But they really feed each other. Those systems are all, you know, they're all feeding each other. Your body doesn't really know the difference. If you can implement strict breathing, it doesn't know the difference between that and you running and forcing your body to breathe hard. At the end, your body's like, okay, well, I need oxygen for whatever reason it is, either because I don't have it or because I'm burning it off, but at the end, it needs it, it needs it, doesn't need to know why. And so then you have to get it. How do I get it? I got to do it through the breathing. And so you can, if you're disciplined, I mean, we learned, because we were doing these altitude mask trainings, so we have these special masks. Training masks. But they weren't not the restriction masks, but an actual mask that It simulates altitude. Sure. And you put these resistors on it, and it's a process that they developed for Russian fighter jet pilots. Before they had pressurized cabins, they'd send these guys up and they'd fly up to 15,000 feet, and all of a sudden they'd just burrow in and they're like, well, what's wrong? Well, they're not acclimated to the altitude. So how do we acclimate them? How do we acclimate thousands of them in a short period of time? And so they developed this mask system with these restrictors. and what you do is you wear an oximeter that tells you where your blood levels are. So, you can see where the blood level is and you're supposed to get your blood level down to like 70% oxygen and you stay there for three minutes and then you come back out. It takes three minutes to get there and you do that six times and then you do that once a day and then within a couple months.

You can build up to it and.

You reach 20,000 feet and you're like, no problem.

You're fine.

But you realize that we can implement that same thing just by controlling your breathing and by restricting it. And you don't even need, you don't even need this thing, but it takes the discipline and it takes the time. Yeah, it took, you know, we had.

An hour of it.

It was like, yeah, yeah.

The interesting thing was I was doing it and I realized that I wasn't focused on anything else in my life. I wasn't, you know, it came up in a couple moments. I was like, oh, what about that thing that I was stressed about yesterday and about this relationship issue I have and about my business? But then it was like, you're going through so much in your body, you have to be in the moment present of your breath that you can't stress about something else, which was so fast. I was like, wow, I just did an hour of meditation, essentially.

Meditation, and it's actually, and that's the whole thing with, you know, when a lot of Wim Hof's training, the Iceman's training has to do with, and this is, you know, because I've been exposed to different forms of meditation, This is a mechanical meditation system where you can actually implement a process to meditate, not an ethereal process, not something where you have to kind of, you know, where you get to a swami and he tells you to go to this thing and, you know, and from my scientific practical mindset where I come from, it doesn't work. I just, I can't get there. It's like, and I, well, you know, transcendental and I'm on, okay, yeah, that's great. But when you tell me, breathe this many times, exhale, hold, you know, breathe again, exhale, hold, you're gonna see this mentality. You're gonna feel this athlete. Yeah. That's, I'm coming from, you know, I'm coming from math. I'm coming from practical, like, you know, this does that, that does this, you know, I need that. I can't be, it can't be too ethereal for me. Some people actually excel in the ethereal, but I don't. I'm not, that's not the way my mind works.

You need to be in your body more.

That's right. And this is a way that it's allowed me to do some meditation that first of all, I didn't know it was possible. And I'm like, wow, that's what they're talking about when the guy, you know, I probably experienced some things that it takes somebody, you know, 10 or 15 years or more to, to, from being taught by a guy in Tibet to even get near.

But you're getting into it in three to six months. That's right. And being in your body, not just being in your head.

No.

And, well, the presence, like you said.

All of a sudden you're in a spot where you aren't thinking about any, there's nothing else. You can't. You can't.

There's nothing.

It won't allow you.

Like, there were a couple moments, I think, when we were just relaxing, you.

Know, for like 10 seconds. I was like, you'll drift. for a second. We'll just bring it up.

And then you're like, okay, here's the breathing exercise. So if you can, let's maybe do like 15 to 20 seconds of what someone could practice at home in a safe environment. Because you were pushing us pretty hard.

Maybe you weren't, but for me as a newbie, I was like, oh, this is the real deal. Yeah, well, you need to go into it slowly. I mean, you know, you can go online and get a course from Wim. He has an incredible online program. You know, basically the foundation of it really has to do with a I call it a circle breath and I don't even, you know, I'm an amateur, but I know that I look at it as a circle breath in the sense of that the in and the out are similar. And then it's really, it's a rhythm and it's almost like hyperventilation, but not that because hyperventilation takes a lot of energy and you're short breathing.

So what does hyperventilation look like?

Hyperventilation is more like, like that where you start to where you'll get, you were not really getting, you're kind of, you can get a CO2 buildup which happens which make you, you know, I mean, you can pass out doing any kind of breathing, you know, or lack thereof. Yeah. But this breathing is more like.

Like.

If you think about pumping something up, like how you pump a raft up or how you, or you blow a balloon up, you know, you blow a balloon up like.

Right.

So in that kind of a rhythm and it really it's about oxygenation, right? It's about getting oxygen into the system in a very efficient way and full saturation. And then from there and you'll get, you know, you'll have all these, you know, sensations. Like you said, you feel your body tingle, you'll have weird things on your lips and ears.

I was getting lightheaded. I was, I thought I was gonna pass out.

But those are totally, those are totally Normal, normal things.

So what's the purpose of oxygen oxygenating your body? What's that purpose? What's that do for the body once it's complete?

Well, I mean ultimately it definitely will allow you to work harder, you know, so that if you implement like like for example, you can do you know when in WIM's program you do these push-ups and you do them just with normal breathing and then he has you sit there and then you oxygenate your system and you exhale and hold your breath and do push-ups, and you do more push-ups on an exhale breath hold than you did while you were breathing.

Breathing. Wait, so you could do more push-ups, completely letting go and then holding it, not taking a breath in and pushing, you can do more push-ups than if you were breathing.

Yes.

How is that even possible?

Doesn't your airways need the oxygen? They do, but the fact is that you've saturated your system with a volume of oxygen that you normally don't get when you just normal breathe and do an activity. And that's really what it's about, right? It's about you understanding that the oxygen that you store in your system is greater than the one you're getting. And to get more because also you have to remember it takes energy to breathe. Yeah. So when you add an activity with breathing, then now it takes energy just to do the breathing. And because our breathing isn't a very efficient, we're not absorbing enough when you compound that with the amount of energy it takes to do the activity.

Right.

So, yeah, the breathing energy, the energy it takes to do the activity, and then you're. And then you're. And then you're behind. And that's why you.

I mean, ultimately, the muscles don't fail because they're failing. They're just not getting the oxygen. I mean, we were like, those of.

Us who had shirts on, you know, we're.

Dripping in sweat, just breathing. Absolutely.

And it's not even that hot out right now. I know, I know, it's all, it's counterintuitive. You look at you're like, oh yeah, and again, you know, to have the discipline to be able to do it and implement an hour of breathing and realize that you're really getting an incredible workout, you know, it's, that's part of, that's part of the process. I think that's part of it, is to teach you that, that, and, and, you know, at a certain point, you know, You either have to be exposed to people that are doing it or you have to be at a maturity level to handle it because, you know, our normal mindset, you know, we just gotta grind away at stuff. And it's because that's actually an easier way to approach things. It's easier just to go, I'm gonna get on my bike and I'm gonna ride for, you know, two hours straight. Or I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna grab this weights and I'm just gonna bang this weights or I'm gonna sprint back and forth across this field.

It's another thing to go, okay, I'm.

Gonna go lay down.

It's more discipline to do what we did.

Exactly. Which is the irony of it, right? It almost takes more discipline to do nothing than it does to do something. But that's kind of the irony of.

The story, in a way. It's interesting because I was so grateful that you were facilitating it for us because it was my first time. I don't know if there were other.

Guys first time there. Yeah, a couple of the, a couple of the, I think they may have.

Done it once or something. Yeah, yeah. And it was interesting because I was just, I was like, you know, did we, you made it so comfortable for us, at least for me. You're like, you know, it's okay, you don't have to do the same pace as everyone else. If you need to breathe, Yeah. You can take a break.

For sure.

And I really appreciated how you were facilitating that. You know, you become like a master of teaching it through doing it yourself, it sounds like.

Well, but also that's an approach that I think that I've already always had. I think that that's a little bit how I work in my, and it's not something that people perceive of me because of what I do. They think they're gonna come and get hammered.

Yeah.

And that's not the way I approach things. Have you read Natural Born Heroes?

Not yet.

So Natural Born Heroes is a phenomenal book, but there's a big, you know, for me it was biblical because it was like the philosophies of some of the guys in the book, like the guys that are like fitness natural that were all about training in nature, but they were also all about no competition. They were against competition because they felt like that it really was a restriction of elevation of everybody's individual thing. And because of my kind of lack of, because of my approach to competition, that I always feel like, you know, that a lot of our evolution gets held back because we protect information, because it's really about, I'm going to try to beat you. So if I know something that I think I can beat you with, I won't tell you because then you'd have it too, and I wouldn't be able to beat you. But if my objective is to make you be as good as you can be, and I'm gonna try to be as good as I can be. I will be like, you can't believe this, try this. And so that's more how I approach things. And I think because of, especially like in big wave riding, when we've gone out and done the things we've done, that it has to do with the fact that we've done it with camaraderie. We've done it with community. And really the evolution of man, if you looked at why man survived was because of that, that that was the way we behaved. And it was only when we became so populated and so dense. Did we create competition was more out of entertainment? That really competition was designed for entertainment. That's why we have competition. And at the end, fighting and all these things that we have, they're not real fighting because real fighting doesn't last very long and it's very brutal. And it would be, it would never be, you wouldn't watch it on TV and it wouldn't be something that you wouldn't just do it unless you were planning on actually killing a person. And there's also this thing about that everybody being able to do it, like true arts, true fighting or true activities are meant that a child should be able to do it and an old person should be able to do it to make it something that really is for the species. So again, these are all kind of deep ingrained ways of approaching it, but that's how I always, I never approach it like, Hey, I'm gonna hammer you. Now if people come with the attitude like, Hey, I can do this, then I might subject them to something. But that will be only because that's what they're asking for. If somebody comes to me with in confidence like, Hey, I'm going to give myself to you. Take care of me. I'm always going to do that. Because I think that, I mean, it has to do with how I grew up and where we are in dealing with heavy situations. The situations are heavy enough. I don't need to, We don't need to do anything. I don't need to go and see how long you can hold your breath. Because what's that gonna do? That doesn't do anything. And the bottom line is that you can destroy anybody. I don't care who you are. I can stack more weights. I can make you hold your breath longer. I can, I mean, it's like the stretch is deeper, the breath holdings, everything can always be, you know, you can always create something that's undoable. It's more about creating something that's doable and how high, how far can we push that? How, you know, and again, individually push your barrier, you know, and it's interesting because it's, that's total Wim Hof philosophy. That's total, that's total, you know, natural born heroes philosophy. Like I see it and you start to see it, you know, and in a way that's tough mudders philosophy, that Spartan race philosophy. I mean, these are all about getting the collective through and, and ultimately that really is the most primal system because that's how we made it. Because without each other in our evolution, what match are we against, you know, all the things in the world? We're no match.

It's kind of like, yeah, it's kind of like nobody wins unless we all win, in totality.

Absolutely, that's right. Nobody survives unless we all survive. And so in a way, I mean, it doesn't mean I don't like healthy competition and the fun of, you know, a little paddleboard race or some boxing or something. And, you know, my competition concept really used to be more like, or should I say, is more related to like, okay, you know, you want to compete with me and you think you're courageous. Well, then we'll go to a big cliff and we'll just keep going up until one of us doesn't jump and whoever jumps higher is the winner. So I always thought that that was a real defined.

Through courage.

Courage.

Yeah.

Wow. For me, I go, that's, for me, I go, that's. I go, you want to really talk about, you know, you want true competition, we go, we have competition with courage. And that's, and I think that's part of the process that brought me to riding giant waves, that I thought, well, if I ride the biggest waves in the world and I ride bigger waves than anybody else has ever ridden, and most of the waves I ride, no.

One wants to ride.

That kind of puts me in a unique position. Yeah. That's your own. That puts me like, you know, and, I mean, it's the, I always love the term, the victory through attrition.

Through attrition. What's that? What do you mean?

The last guy standing. At the end, you don't even need.

To be any good.

If you're the last guy and everybody else is laid out, you know, in the 300, when there's only one guy standing, you're the winner.

It's interesting. And through that approach, you can give all your secrets away, you can give all the information away, it's still who's got the most courage. That's right. So you can just be as good as me technically.

That's right.

All the information you need, but are you willing to go above and beyond.

That's right. Me. That's right. And then it becomes a skill thing. So then you add skill to that too. So that as an added element of, because you know what? There's always some crazy guy that'll do anything stupid too. But then, will they survive? So then, which again, that's part of the thing. But again, it's part about the survival thing where like, yeah, the guy might be able to go higher, but if.

You go up to a cliff and.

Then the guy jumps higher than you and he dies, he doesn't win. Then you still are, You're still, you went higher. So again, it has to do with, it has to do with, you have to still have, you can't have the element of who's the craziest because there's, because you got a skill. You gotta have, there has to be, and you also have to have understanding. You have to have experience to know where the line is, where the, or your line is.

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 body fat. And they were like, you know what? For once in my life, I want to get like at least a flat stomach. 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 other things 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 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. Even if your calories are, yes, that comes into equation, but you need to have these peaks and valleys.

Breaks between consumption. Now, can you consume water, teas, coffees?

Anything zero calorie? 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 the carb-insulin 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 your chance self a chance to get back down to this balance. There's a multitude of different reasons why it's beneficial. Insulin levels getting lower, insulin sensitivity getting much better, so the food that you do eat with breakfast is going 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. 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, 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 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 is a BMC Medical Genomics study that's published 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, 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 steak and ground beef. I'm a big fan of 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'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 going to naturally be lower calorie because there's not as many fats in it.

Breafkast like a king, lunch like a prince dinner.

Like a popper. Like a popper, gotcha.

Yep.

So you just, and that's a, you know, just age old wisdom, right? It's like, that's small dinner. I remember my, you know, I'm largely like 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, these 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 go right to sleep. Which, and then you go into step four is your diet should optimize your sleep. That's something that we kind of talked about in the beginning, but the best way that you.