How To Live Longer (The TOP FOODS You Should Not Eat) EP 1389

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It's and in a world where more and more and more and more of us are becoming insulin resistant, that's a very important thing to be paying attention to. Anything that's going to skyrocket blood glucose where you're not coming back down the way that you should is a recipe for disaster.

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My main goal this conversation is to give people tools to help them optimize their health, their well nutrition and overall their life. And I think a lot of it starts with understanding which foods to eat and which foods to never eat. You lost over 100 pounds, you've got under, you know, I think it's 8% body fat now. You've had the worst of foods, you've had the best of foods. What should we never eat if we want to stay healthy and really extend our lives and living longer?

Well, sure. And with this we can almost divide it into two categories. Right. There's the evidence based category where we have research from the last few decades. The problem that I sometimes have with evidence based is, although it's the best and sort of concrete, is it moves at a little bit of a slower pace than everything else. Right. Like when you start looking at, okay, well, what are we seeing in newer research that might not be evidence based or might or might not be epidemiological data yet or, or it's just observational data. But it's one of those things where we can still look at basic things and start to get ideas. So the other category is of course more, I don't know, anecdotal or what we see in observational stuff or rodent models. But I'll start with like the number one, I think that almost everyone agrees on and that's trans fats. Okay. Trans fats never eat trans fats. Yeah. With trans fats there is so much data demonstrating that trans fats are related to visceral fat, trans fats are related to endothelial stress, like all these different aspects that are just inflammatory for the human body. And trans fats you're going to find in most of the regular peanut butters. Right. Anything if you look at a label and it says, oh man, but I love peanut butter, well, it's not over. Right. You just have to look at the label.

Just don't. With the added trans fat, don't have those.

Yeah. If it says partially hydrogenated anything. Right. And what that means is they've basically taken a fat that would normally be a liquid at room temperature and, and they add a component to it. They basically add additional hydrogens to it to turn it into a saturated fat so that it's shelf stable. So at first Glance, it's like, okay, this is great. It's allowing things to be shelf stable for a longer period of time until you realize that you've completely like artificially manipulated a fat to be something else that the body quite candidly doesn't know how to deal with properly. And that's the one thing is like across the board, whether you're a low carb advocate, whether you're a calories in, calories out person, whether you're an intermittent, it doesn't matter what category you're in. You can be vegan, it doesn't matter. Trans fats, I haven't seen any way around it where you could position those as good. Okay. And when you start looking at what that does as far as an inflammatory response within the body, like, that's probably the biggest piece we need to be paying attention to. What can we do to eliminate these kinds of things? And that kind of just umbrellas into a category of anything that's high hyper processed, hyper palatable. Right.

Usually has trans fats in it.

Yes.

So what are the main categories? You know, because you could have peanut butter and not have trans fat, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, and usually that's going to be the peanut butter that has the little layer of oil and you have to take the extra 30 seconds to stir it. Which, you know, the worst part about that is it ends up on your shirt. You know, you're trying to stir it.

Over your hands and everything.

Yeah, it's a mess. It's a disaster. You know, so like things like I usually opt for maybe like a macadamia nut butter or something like that. It's like a thinner consistency, it's expensive, but you know, almond butters.

Sure.

I just think that they're overdone. There's a lot of almond butters out there. You know, coconut butter, like coconut mana, like just awesome. Like. Right. So just trying to like sub these things out, you know, I don't want to pick on peanut butter per se. Like anything that's got a high amount of these hydrogenated oils in it has clearly been like adulterated to become something that's. I don't want to say it's not safe for human consumption, but it's not healthy. It's pretty close.

It's not healthy. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay, so what are some other foods, Trans fats? Is there anything else you would add in the we should never have category to live longer?

I mean, never have. It's a pretty.

I mean, what about maybe like very limited Amounts if you want to extend the quality of your life.

Well, I saw the American College of Cardiology, like just within the last like two days. I've seen that they are now finally listing refined grains as something that is not exactly the best for cardiovascular disease. Right. And I say not exactly the best, sort of with air quotes because I'm careful how I word that. But anything when you start getting in this hyper palatable refined process, that's going to take the cake. Like we can get nuance y with all kinds of things. I could talk about sugar, I could talk about various lectins or whatever. We can get nuance y and we can certainly pick apart little things there. But the ones that we know are the things that are affecting the brain differently. Right?

Cognitive nutrition.

Yeah, cognitive nutrition, but also just the signals that it's sending to the brain. Right. Like Huberman talks about this kind of stuff all the time. We need to be looking at the bigger picture here. Like if something is hyper palatable and what it's doing to dopamine in the brain, what it's doing to the signals and ultimately triggering us to a eat more. But baby, be like false signaling to the body overall and messing with these feedback loops. So like a refined starch, like if you were to eat. I'm not a big proponent of grains to begin with, personally. Like, people can attack me for that all day long, but personally I don't feel amazing when I eat grains. That's just how I am.

Your body doesn't process.

There's something there. Like I get foggy. I can't put my finger on exactly what's going on. Again, I could pull research from both sides of the equation and we could poke holes in it and have a nuanced argument for six hours of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But one thing is for certain is when you look at the data between like a whole grain, which again is still a grain, and refined grains, what's.

The difference between very, very different?

Well, I mean, a whole grain is going to be in its like whole husk form. You know, think brown rice with the husk on it. Right. Think about the layers of digestion that have to occur. Think about how slow and how long it takes to digest that. Right. Then you look at something that's refined, something that has been turned into a flourish, bleached, treated with deodorants and all kinds of things to like basically make it devoid of nutrients other than just a vesicle for whatever other garbage you're putting on it. Right. That's when it's refined, and that's when it is a problem because it really doesn't have much nutrients other than just being a rather empty carbohydrate that they then have to fortify with everything else to ultimately put things back in that they took out when they bleached it and did whatever. Right. So when you actually unpack what it is, it doesn't even sound like it's something you should be eating. Right. And that's where, again, you can get in these discussions and arguments with people. But when you really explain like, okay, maybe we should just be living as close to the earth as possible. And that's a pretty balanced, honest thing to say. So these refined starches.

Yeah.

You start noticing. Okay, yeah, there's potentially more risk for inflammation. There's potentially more risk for obviously higher blood glucose and things like that. And in a world where more and more and more and more of us are becoming insulin resistant, that's a very important thing to be paying attention to. Anything that's going to skyrocket blood glucose, where you're not coming back down the way that you should, is a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.

Yeah. Because what happens when the body is in that high spike of glucose blood sugar, frequently throughout the day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, what is that doing to the body, to the nervous system, to the brain, to the gut and the whole system together?

Yeah. You know, I like to. High glucose is problem. One problem, but the secondary problem is the one that really becomes sort of the issue, and that's the hyperinsulinemia. That's the insulin levels being very, very high in tandem with that.

What do you call that?

Hyperinsulinemia. So it's where insulin levels are really high. So glucose being high is one thing, but insulin also being chronically high is another situation.

Like consistently not dropping down.

Right. Yes, exactly. So that's where I'm very careful with this. Like, having a spike in glucose is not inherently bad. That's what the body's. If you eat something with carbohydrates or even eat fruit, you're going to spike. Okay. But if you don't come back down, that's when you have a problem. Or if you have insulin that's constantly high because everything's out of whack. Pancreas isn't knowing what to do, and beta cells aren't producing insulin at the right rate, and they produce more because they're not sure what's going on. So as long as insulin brings that glucose back down. Because let's say you eat a bagel. You eat a bagel and your glucose spikes high. Well, the next thing that's going to happen is the liver is going to detect that that glucose is in the bloodstream and it's going to send a signal to the pancreas. And the pancreas is going to secrete insulin. And it's this beautiful harmony of producing insulin that allows the cell doorway to open and the glucose comes down and everything's copacetic, right? Everything's all good. But in someone that is insulin resistant, that cell doorway doesn't open. Right? So the glucose went high and the first signal was working. Okay, let's produce more insulin. But the problem is, is that now the cell is non responsive to insulin. So you're just producing more and more and more insulin to try to solve this blood glucose problem. So then you have two issues. You have hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia. And that's when you really start to have these problems, right?

Is that when you get obese or what happens then?

I mean, it can certainly play a role with that. I think the biggest piece is the inflammation piece, right? Like inflammation can lead to insulin resistance and insulin resistance feeds inflammation, right? So you have, and I like to think of that as like a static. Okay, Think of like radio static. Let's say you and I are talking on a two way radio and we're a mile apart and if there's no static and no frequency interruption, I can talk to you, you can hear me just fine, okay? But now all of a sudden something has created a bunch of static and I'm trying to talk to you and you're not getting my message or you know, cell phones, bad signal, right? The more inflammation you start getting, it's almost, that's the simplest, most colloquial way of putting it, pretty static, disrupting this signal, right? And this signal is going to be disrupted from the hypothalamic pituitary axis all the way down to, you know, pancreatic level and lots of different levels in the body. It doesn't just have to do with insulin dynamics. So once this happens, it gets harder and harder and harder to send a signal. And then you're just, then everything gets out of whack. And then, you know, you're in states for chronic disease and all this when inflammation levels are high. So I mean, I usually tell people, Mike, if you're really concerned about this, I mean, go get a breakdown of your inflammatory panels. Look at your C reactive Protein levels. Look at various, what are called interleukins, and that really tells you a lot. But without an expert opinion on, like interpreting that data, it can just be paralyzing.

Sure, sure.

But back to sort of the refined starches and refined carbs. That's something that doesn't have. The fiber's not in place to slow down digestion. Okay. You're lacking the minerals, you're lacking a lot of the other components that would normally slow down the digestion. So it can be spiking at a controllable level and you're left with this out of control spike that has nothing to slow it down.

So what's the leading cause of insulin resistance then?

That's a very difficult question to answer. And the two sides that are kind of opposing right now, you know, one side says it's saturated fat intake, which is interesting.

Not trans fat. Saturated fat.

Well, trans fats play a role with that too. Saturated fat in general right now. Do I subscribe to that notion? Not 100%. I think in different departments, yes. The other side says, okay, it's just flat out not eating too much sugar and having sugar. I think there's caveats with both of that. Consuming too much sugar is certainly a problem if you're not using it. And I think that we just get back to real simple basics here that people on the Internet sometimes like to forget because it's so easy to just get tunnel vision and talk about one thing. Sugar is the problem. Sugar is the problem. Sugar sucks. Like, I don't think sugar is something we should all be eating a bunch of, but can you be granted more amnesty with your sugar consumption if you're actually moving your dang body? Absolutely. And that's the problem that we face. So the sugar question. Yes, eating sugar is definitely a problem. When it comes down to insulin resistance, comma, if you are not active, does that serve as a license to say you can eat as much sugar as you want if you're active? Absolutely not. But the caveat there is again, once again, people eat a lot of sugar and then they sit down, they don't move it. And the biggest driver that we're seeing right now for insulin sensitivity, the opposite of insulin resistance, is skeletal muscle mass and moving the body with said skeletal muscle mass.

So when you have that, that helps you move the insulin down, or what is that?

It's called a glucose sink. So if you think, like, if you look at my bicep and you think of it as good looking bicep, it's nice Bicep, but it's like. So think of it as a glucose sink, where this is almost a repository for glucose that I consume. I can consume glucose, and if I move my body, there's something called glucose independent or insulin independent glucose uptake. So what that means is independent of insulin, I can suck glucose right into my muscles. The bigger the muscles that I have, the more glucose I can suck up. It acts like a sink and it.

Won'T impact you as negatively.

As negatively. Correct. Because I have much more potential to store it as glycogen and much more potential to just incinerate it, process it.

And get it out.

Precisely, yeah.

So if you don't have the muscle, I guess, is it the quality of muscle, is it the muscle mass, is it the density? Or if you don't, what is it?

I think that remains to be seen. I think that's where we're seeing more research. I don't think muscle fiber type matters. I don't. Well, I could be wrong. At least we don't see that right now. Right. I haven't seen any, even in vitro research that suggests that. But it's very interesting. And people don't need to be bodybuilders. Like, we're not talking ridiculous amounts. We're talking like, muscle is the biggest suction of glucose. So I mean, it would be a very simple explanation to say, like, if I had someone that was 110 pounds sitting next to me with very little muscle and we ate the same size piece of cake, that person's glucose would probably spike higher than mine. Right. And even if we took similar weights but just looked at lean body mass, like, let's say I'm 180 pounds, someone sitting here is 180 pounds. I have 140 pounds of muscle. They have. That's not going to be accurate. I have 140 pounds of muscle. They have 80 pounds of muscle or something, their response to that piece of chocolate cake is going to be totally different to my response to that chocolate cake. And even though we weigh the same.

Right.

So that is such a big piece. And then I usually say, even moving your body, like flexing your bicep or doing some squats, sucks glucose into that muscle super fast. Without lifting weights, without lifting weights, just moving the body. And so when you say, like, what is the biggest cause of insulin resistance? It's the consumption of these hyper palatable processed carbohydrates and high amounts of carbohydrates in conjunction with not moving the body. That's why, I mean, you see athletes that can consume 500 grams of carbs. And that's maybe like, that's the bone I have to pick with a lot of like the CrossFit community is they have like the high level CrossFit athletes that are like 500 grams of carbs. 500 grams of carbs talking to the entry level CrossFit athlete that does 40 minutes of CrossFit workout, then sits on their butt the rest of the day in their office. Right.

They're not constantly moving and flexing and being mobile and stretching and all that stuff. Yeah.

And I guess, I mean, to do a service to the other part of this discussion, the saturated fat piece is interesting because the saturated fat piece basically implies that, okay, when you consume high amounts of saturated fat, it does affect beta cells and their production of insulin. Now when you look at this, the carnivore community or super low carb community eats high amounts of saturated fat and they don't usually develop insulin resistance. So what we start looking at is, okay, well, it must be this middle ground. Saturated fat becomes a problem when it's in tandem with overconsumption of everything else. So above a certain point, overfeeding in general just becomes a problem. Above a certain point, you could probably overeat blackberries. Right. Above a certain point, you could probably overeat coconut oil. Saturated fat. But there's this line of like, when is it too much? And that's vague, but it's important to.

Mention it probably depends on each person's body type and things like that. I'm curious, have you ever done the glucose monitor?

All the time. I usually wear one. I'm not right now because I was just on vacation.

Have you ever tested to say, you know what, I'm going to try the worst foods, like the things with the most sugar, the different combinations of fats and sugars, and seeing which one spikes the most in your body all the time.

Yeah. Really?

Yeah.

And it's usually surprising, right? It usually has to do with, it's.

Like a piece of bread or something or bagel.

Yeah. It's crazy. Like, I mean, for example, like rice spikes me through the roof, but if I eat a piece of pizza, it doesn't spike. Now there's obvious reason to that.

That gives me hope for pizza consumption.

There's fat in the pizza that's slowing down carbohydrate. There's some protein in the pizzas. Yeah. So it's all about, okay, this combination of things, which again gets very kind of granular, but usually singular. Unopposed carbohydrate consumption will spike you very high.

Bread versus bread, cheese and meat.

Correct. And I don't. And. But we also have to be careful not to rely on blood sugar as the only problem, because if we look at that as the only barometer for our health, then that would be saying, it's okay. It's totally fine if. As long as I have that sourdough bread with a bunch of butter on it all the time. Right. That's not good. It's just like, it sends the wrong message. But I think that one thing that we should all be aware of is sort of our insulin dynamics and our blood glucose levels. Like, I think it tells us a lot as a general barometer for how are we using the fuel in our body. And that's like this fundamental thing that we've forgotten.

I still haven't done it yet. I've had many of the different companies that have the glucose monitor and the tracking and all that stuff reach out to me. And I think they're all really, really powerful, what they're doing, giving you the data. I don't know, maybe I'm just like a baby. I don't want to have it on there for like a week or whatever, but I feel like it will give me so much more information about everything you eat. Because it tells you all the information right after you eat it, right?

Yeah, it's like pretty much real time.

So part of me feels like I got to start doing that to really dial in, you know, the next decade of my life to make sure that I'm doing everything I can without obsessing too much. You know, it's. It's kind of having a balance of being able to consume some things, but also make sure I'm really healthy. So. Yeah. You recommend it though, right?

Oh, yeah, for sure. My wife was so opposed to it because she, like, she thought that it was going to be having to stick this massive needle in her arm or something like that. No, no, you just don't even feel it. And for my wife, it taught her so much about when her cycle was coming and things like that. Like, crazy stuff that we don't think about in the mainstream. Like, okay, well, what happens the week before her period? Like, oh, why am I insulin resistant right now? I haven't even been eating bad, and this peach is spiking me like crazy. It teaches you that hormones change things, sleep changes things. And I think that's what a glucose monitor really taught me was how I could eat, because I'm kind of robotic with what I eat most of the time and how I eat on Monday, fully rested reacts in my body entirely different than eating the same thing on Tuesday after a crappy night of sleep. Eating literally the same thing with I could pretty much say literally the same workout too, and I've tested that side by side. It's crazy. Or what stress does. Like walking through the airport. Like just the stress of going through the airport. TSA everything. Like you don't realize it because you're busy and you're focused, but like your heart rate's usually skyrocketing. Like if you look wear any kind of wearable, you notice that, but what you don't realize is what's happening to your glucose and.

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It's just, it gives you a perspective of, wow, people that are stressed out all the time, no wonder they have chronically high glucose. It's not just their diet, it's also their lifestyle. And it gives you. Again, it's just another data point, you know, and it's just like all the data points we can get to help us navigate our life.

So what I'm hearing you say is stress is a massive factor and the ability to manage stressful situations and stay peaceful under stress is a massive factor in staying healthier versus getting sick or having more inflammation in your life.

Is that I'm here, that I can say undoubtedly. So.

It almost sounds like you could eat the perfect foods, you could get seven, eight hours of sleep. But if you don't know how to manage your emotions and you allow your environment to stress you out, your relationships to stress you out, your bank account to overwhelm you, then it could affect you and you could be extremely unhealthy in the body as well. If you don't manage stress. Is that what I'm hearing, dude?

100%.

Even if you do all the right.

Things, you know, tracking your foods, your macros, your.

That can stress you out more, your.

Fasting, your whatever it is. But if you don't understand how to connect the mind and the heart and create peace and heal the different things that are causing you to be triggered, then you're going to be overwhelmed and your body's going to be sick, Correct?

Yeah, I mean it's. And you can see that when you are looking at any wearable, right? So like I wear an aura, I wear a whoop. And then a lot of times I'm wearing like people like, why do, why do you wear both and why do you also wear cgm?

Why?

Because I cross reference data. Because I don't want to be dependent on one piece. I want to look and where are my common denominators And I can tell you like upon multiple different people that I've talked to, professional athletes, military, special operations, you know, NFL, NHL, whatever. Like when they're wearing multiple wearables and we're looking at their continuous glucose, it's, you see like under stress, it's very similar patterns. You know, it's poor response to glucose, poor response to, you know, more stress, it becomes a catalyst to like any little bit of stress. Sleep deprived plus stress, you're like a ticking time bomb, right? And they usually go hand in hand because you don't sleep when you're stressed out or you get stressed out, you're.

Eating snacks at night or whatever it might be.

Right.

So okay, let me get this, this is interesting. In your life, what are the main causes of stress for you? And also what are the main causes of stress for people? Is it relationships, is it family, is it career, money? Like what are the things that stress people out and then what stresses you out?

That's a good question. I think people that I talk to at various high levels, again, professional athletes, military. Military kind of works in like with special operations groups that I work with, their family dynamics are exceptionally stressed because that's on little six months or just you know, special operations, they might deploy last minute, whatever. Right. So it's, that's almost an anomaly. So their situations are heavily stressed, relationship based, you know, relationship wise. But with the bulk of people that I talk to. Yeah, a lot of their stress does come from relationships and does come from their family really. And it's, it's wild because I've had to position myself in a different way. Like relationship. Like I've been with my wife since high school, right. So I have, that has the ability to weigh on me heavily. I have two small kids. That is stressful. But how you perceive that stress is everything, Right. Remember Angela Duckworth's work? I'm sure you're familiar with that. It's like how you perceive stress is really how it impacts you like eustress and distress and all that.

It's your interpretation of the events, not the event itself precisely causes stress. It's how you perceive and interpret it.

Yeah.

Like a four year old that's excited to go to Disneyland tomorrow. Their physiological response in their body is very similar to mine around tax time, really. But think about it, right? They're excited to go to Disneyland, their adrenaline's high. Yeah. Everything, all these, the cortisol, adrenaline, everything. Same as me at tax time. Right. So it's, and it's again a simple way to put it, but it's the interpretation, like I don't, I can't possibly get excited about paying taxes. Like no matter how I turn it, that's not happening. But I can if I really, really try, like find positive spins on it that might lessen the load. And my point in saying that is that with people that are stressed about their relationships or I say family because relationships can be a little bit tougher. Like when someone just meets someone and there's relationship stress because you're trying to align core values.

But once you're in a relationship and.

You have a partnership and core values are aligned and things like that. How you perceive that stress should be different. I encourage people, especially with pro athletes that are traveling all the time, be like, look it. Look at your relationships and your friends, family as a positive. Like, that is stress. Just like working out the stress you are experiencing with your family, although it's tough, it's working towards making a better relationship. Okay, Compare that to, like, the stress, like financial stress and some things that are somewhat out of your control. Not to say that families aren't in, you know, out of that are totally in your control. But I look at my family as, like, I'm not going to let this be a stressor that's going to turn and burn. I'm going to let it be a stressor as, like, I need to be intimate with my wife because it's important to our marriage. Even if I don't want to be, I don't see that as, like, a bad thing. Like, right? Or I need to spend this time with my son, even though I'm tired and exhausted. Like, I'm like, oh, damn, kid. No, it's like, okay, hey, like, I'm tired, but it's just like going to the gym. I know this is doing me something good, even if I'm not in the mood. So that's a different category. And then, like, what stresses me out personally similar to you? Like, we're visible all the time, and people forget that. Being visible comes with a lot of different negative attributes. Like, sure, it has its perks, sure it's great in a lot of ways, but anyone that's ever been in the limelight at all and under scrutiny all the time, that's a constant stressor. And no matter how you spin it, that stuff's going to weigh on you. So how do I. How I deal with that is simply being aware of it, you know, and recognizing it and understanding that it's okay to feel the way that I feel. And I think that anyone can feel that way throughout different stressors. If you just acknowledge it and you understand that it's okay. Like, this is a temporary thing. Whatever you can go down a million rabbit holes with.

Right, right. I'm curious about how you got into this space in the first place, because at one point you were about 280 pounds, completely overweight at the time. How did you get there? What were the emotional and psychological reasons, if you can look back, that caused you to get your body, your health and your life to be in that direction? What was the key that unlocked you to becoming in this field. And now losing all the weight and being less than 8% body fat and a chiseled Greek God on YouTube, all these things that have supported you in getting. You went from one extreme to the next in a sense, but you became very educated and informed. And how did this all come about?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, when I was at my heaviest, it came from. I was a skinny cross country runner in high school. Okay, I played, I played rugby, but I was a winger. So I was always kind of the light fast guy, super skinny, picked on for being skinny all the time. So for me it was like, I gotta get big, I gotta, I gotta put some muscle on, right? So, you know, like my senior year, high school, I started working out, put on some muscle and stuff like that. And then I decided like, you know, started going on bodybuilding forums like, I want to be a bodybuilder, I want to. And I put on some good mass. And then I realized like, okay, I need to, I need to like turn this into a bulk. Right? So it starts out with it basically like me becoming very, very overweight, started as a bulk that went out of control and turned into me just like completely losing hope and just continuing to eat like that until, you know, sitting down, being sedentary. I was working in a, at that time, a corporate healthcare job. I was an executive recruiter. So I went from bodybuilding style bulk to just, I don't give a crap. Like, I'm just gonna keep eating like this.

How many calories a day is this probably?

I mean, if I had to put my finger on it, I mean I was eating so much like Jack in the box tacos and like, I mean, it's just hard to like equate an exact amount of calories. I'd probably say 5 to 7,000. Yeah. Somewhere in there, you know. And the, I was a runner growing up, so I was always accustomed to being able to actually consume decent. And this happens to so many athletes, people that are high school athletes. And that was a perfect example of that. I went from being a runner that could afford to eat 5,000 calories a day because I was running all the time, to just life hitting me. All of a sudden I'm responsible for my own bills. I'm, you know, like, things were just different and all of a sudden I'm under a bunch of stress. I was like in a commission only job, I was like, you know, physician recruiting. So I was placing physicians in different positions at hospitals and long Term acute care. And it was very stressful because if I didn't perform, I didn't get paid. And with that came a bunch of stress. You know, I was up to like eight or nine monster drinks per day at one point. Like the fully leaded ones with the sugar. Oh my gosh. Like, unreal. Like, my health went from being pretty decent as a high school athlete to being officially diabetic. Like actually by numbers. Right. I reversed it pretty quick because, you know, I personally believe I wasn't that.

Long into it yet.

Yeah, exactly. But still, like the fact that I put myself there in a two year period, that's how bad my lifestyle was. Like, I went from decent, pinnacle of health, putting on some muscle, young, fresh kid, to like, I mean, I ruined myself. Like, I really ruined myself. And it was just a recipe of, you know, being sedentary, high stress, high, high, high sugar diet and just, I mean, fortunately, the one thing that was stable was my relationship. My wife had been with me since high school and she loved me one way or the other. But yeah, she knew you and she.

Were 160 pounds and then 280 pounds.

Wow.

Man, she's, you know, she's never wavered. She's always like, loves me the same. I've never felt like she treated me differently in any one category, which is probably one of the reasons why I possibly even felt enabled at that weight. I was like, whatever. I'm just letting my body go. My life's gonna.

She accepts you no matter what.

Yeah. And you know, deep down, I mean, I think about that now retroactively. Like, I think, okay, 11, 12 years ago, when I was like, I was like, I wonder if, like you, if, if she had have put more pressure on me. And this is not crapping on her. Right. This is like saying like, I wonder if, if she had like said, hey, like, you look disgusting or something. If that would have been a catalyst for me because I've always been to.

To get out of the relationship or to actually get into shape.

Get into shape. Yeah. It'd be like, hey, like, you're like, you got to do something.

Or she said it in a loving, compassionate way, like, hey, I love and accept you how you are, but I don't see this being good for you long term. I'm worried about your health.

Or she, she probably. And she probably did, actually. And I'm just one of those people that's just like, I was so laser focused and I was so focused on just making money at that time. Like, that was just you know, young kid, want to impress everybody, want to make money. And, like, I'm glad I got that all out of my system when I was really young. Like, I got, you know, just trying to chase coin and, like, let my health go to crap. I'm glad that I got through that when I was in my 20s, because I don't think that it would be the same situation if it happened to me now. I don't think I would have some metabolic resilience on my side like I did when I was younger.

100%. Interesting. So what is something about you that most people in your audience don't know about you?

I think people probably don't know much about how everything was built, how Thomas DeLauer came to be what he is. I'm not some guy that just quit the corporate world and spun up a YouTube channel. You know, I essentially been on my own since I was about 13 and a half years old. And, like, I homeschooled through high school because I was working full time to help support my mom and things like that. He's like, people don't realize that, you know, overnight success, 10 years in the making kind of thing. Like, I mean, for so many years, my wife and I, you know, working 16 hours just to make ends meet, and it's just like, eventually things started to click, but people don't realize what positions people to be. I don't want to even consider myself a top performer, per se, because maybe I'm too humble with that, but at the same time, like, what carves a person and why they go the direction that they go.

So what happened for you?

And it was just like, you know, you look at that kind of thing. Like, I had so many unique experiences. I mean, I. When I was 11 years old, I ran my first marathon, right? And it's like, one of the things.

I ran my first one last year at 30, 39. You were, like, extreme.

Yeah, my mom was. I've thought about this a lot, right? Like, I feel as an adult that perhaps I could not get the approval of my mother unless I was running, right? Because my mom was a runner, and I don't think that was her intent, of course. But as I've gotten older, I realized, like, what I crave, right? You look at, like, Tony Robbins has always talked about, like, who did you crave attention from? Right? And I craved this attention from. I craved attention from my dad, but at the same time, I craved the love and support from my mom. My mom was very like, you're either gonna run and do this with me or not gonna really hang out like it was. So as that kind of flash forwards into my adult life, it's interesting where it's like, if I have almost this need to perform in order to be loved, right? And that's getting very vulnerable and real with that situation. Something that has taken me, you know, a lot of meditation and a lot of processes to kind of come to. To understand, like, okay, well, that's okay. Like I have to perform, but I also feel like I have to stay in shape to be worthy of love. I have to be. And could I.

Is it something you feel now or something you felt then?

I think it's something I felt then and something that I definitely feel in a strange way now with having a big audience. Right. So in some ways being aware of it has helped that situation, but in other ways, having an audience has also magnified it. Right. But as long as you're aware of that situation, I think you can make it okay. You can make it good. Short of really having major experiences and really having semi traumatic events to shift the way you think, some of that subconscious behavior is just hard to change, hard to shift. But what most people do is they don't go through their life ever realizing that exists in the first place.

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Walk into a room and I understand that, okay, I am going to feel like these people are going to judge me if I am not a specimen, if I'm not perfect. But if I actually believe, that is a different story. Right? Right. So it makes it more fun, it gamifies it. So now for me, it's a challenge against my subconscious self in some ways where it's like, okay, I can change this or I recognize this and I Can derive it and I can use it as a. But will it ever be able to change? I'm sure it might take a catalyst. It might take something to sort of like shock me out of it.

But do you feel like you fully love and accept yourself where you're at, no matter what you do, or are you not there yet?

No, I'm not there. Really? Yeah, I'm not there. And it's. And it's. There's a lot of unpacking to do with like my childhood and things like that. And it's.

What do you think it would take for you to love and accept yourself?

That's a good question. I've thought about it a lot and I really don't know. And I think the uncanny thing is that I've been overweight and that didn't affect how I looked at myself, per se.

Really? Like your identity?

It didn't affect my identity. Like, I was still a very driven person. So I know that what drives me is performance, whether it's going to be business or working out. So there's something about drive in general. So it doesn't necessarily have to do with my physical appearance or my physical body.

Results, though.

Results, yes. And being a results oriented person can be detrimental if that's all you're chasing. If everything is like a transactional feel. Right.

And is there a lot of stress and pressure that. Okay, I'm on, you know, 15 million views a month and almost 3 million subscribers and tons of social media followers and all these people so used to seeing me in a specific physical shape, a condition, you know, the six pack and the everything. And you're shirtless a lot. When you're teaching a lot of stuff, do you feel the weight and the pressure and the stress to always be this, you know, this look?

Yeah, absolutely. Really? Definitely feel that way.

Do you ever feel like you can just kind of relax?

Well, the funny thing is when I relax, usually my body composition gets better. It's kind of funny how that works. But yeah, definitely. I mean, it's. But at the same time, it's like I love what I do so much and while I have some youth on my side, like I feel great with it. I don't feel like I'm stepping in a direction where it's detrimental to my mental health. But with that, it's like when you look at. Yeah, you have algorithms that are constantly rewarding you for behavior that might not be good to your long term mental health. Right. And what I mean by that is like, yeah, it sucks when you look at the fact that a shirtless piece of content from me on Instagram dramatically outperforms one with me with a shirt on. Right. That is not exactly the Pavlovian response that I want to be having constantly in my life. So there's even questions of sometimes it's like, is this what I want? Is this my destiny? Is this what I want to keep doing? Do I want this transactional Pavlovian response that's not aligned with my moral compass? Right, Interesting.

Because how do you battle that?

I can battle it by utilizing different systems within social media. So, for example, YouTube is a chance for me to, like, I'm hardly ever shirtless in you on YouTube. Like, I like. YouTube is something where people respect me for my ability to articulate complex subject matter.

Your research.

And something that I could do if I was. Got hit by a bus and paralyzed from the waist down, right. Like, or from the neck down, like, I could still do that. And I still think people would respect me for my intellect. And it just goes to show in different worlds, like, how Instagram is such a different platform where that is much more visual. Right. So I try to kind of find that balance where I get a little bit of both, okay, like YouTube. It's an opportunity to flex my mental muscles, so to speak, and really articulate these things. So it's almost a systematic way of doing it. Now, that's very surface level, Right. I think what you're asking is, like, at a deeper level, like, how do I balance this stuff? And I mean, obviously through lots of meditation, through lots of, you know, external work and internal work, you know, it's about, okay, like, how do I, you know, interpret this in a different way? I mean, if it's going to be. I'm kind of thinking, I don't want to say this and have it go off, you know, but obviously psychedelics are a piece of that. Right? But I don't necessarily want to talk about that, you know, so just various ways through meditation, how do I achieve a different perspective? How do I understand this different piece? And also just, I mean, good old therapy, right? I think that people don't. They put this in a bucket where if you go to therapy or you talk about situations, you talk about your life, that it's a point of weakness, but I use it as an advantage. I mean, this is something like I'm. It's like a cheat code. Like, if you learn how you react to something and why you do certain things, it is a cheat code for how you can better help others. And people. People forget that. So the fact that I'm still on a journey of mastery, I will never master myself and I will never reach ultimate mastery. That is, I'm at peace with that because it gives me something again, being so driven, that makes it nice. It's like a constant journey that I can go on.

On a scale of 1 to 10, let's call this the self love and self peace scale. 10 being you fully love and accept yourself and you have a lot of peace internally. One being you hate yourself, you have no self love, and you're in constant stress. On average, where do you fall on the scale right now?

Six and a half.

Six and a half?

Yeah.

What does that feel like?

Say it feels like I'm confident in just about every decision that I'm making consciously, but I feel like there's a little bit of a misalignment of my little cognitive dissonance of my core values and what maybe I'm destined to do in my life.

What are you destined to do? What do you believe is being called to do?

You know, I feel like I'm scratching the surface of it right now. I do believe that I'm destined to help people, but I feel like I'm destined to help people in a much more direct way than the sort of indirect mass way that I do right now on YouTube. I feel like there's something bigger. I feel like there's a. Call it an existential crisis, if you will, in some ways, but I feel like there's more that I can give and more that I can do to help not just others, but myself indirectly by helping others. So I do wake up frequently thinking, like, am I living to my full potential? And as I've gotten older and I start to feel aches and pains more in my body, and I realized, like, okay, things hurt when I work out now, and things like, okay, what I used to sort of translate into how hard can I push physically? Now it's a lot more of, well, what more can I can I give? And what more can I do mentally and spiritually? And all this. Interesting, which is vague, but I just feel like there's more on the table. If, like, I feel like the plate is definitely not full, what would it look like? I think having kids has shaped that a little bit. It's helped me realize that. I think that there's a younger generation that needs a lot of help. I see the direction of ways that we're going, even with health, and I look at my kids and I get kind of nervous with that. And I'm like, okay, well, in order for me to feel fulfilled, I feel like I need to help this, like, my kids generation because I can't really feel confident in what I'm doing. Helping people my peers, my age, knowing that maybe this is neglecting this entire next generation. It's given me a different vantage point, like having kids, like having a level of empathy that I didn't have before. And is what I am doing, although seemingly altruistic, is it actually more selfish.

Than anything what your. Your business.

Your business is my being. Right? Yes, I know that's very deep, but it's. I look at this younger generation and I have a feeling of discontent. And I'm just kind of like, oh, man, they're getting the short end of the stick here with everything that's kind of gone on in society. Right. Like, everything, like, how do I help that? But I don't know how to help.

Well, teaching parents, really, on how to, like, to eat well, to live well, and so that they teach their kids would be one of them.

That's a very, very good point. And that's happening indirectly. Right?

Right.

And that's like you saying things like that. That's like, okay, there's a. There's a conscious feeling there that, okay, maybe there is something that's. And this is all. In trying to achieve a different level of greatness. Right. It's not because I'm picking apart what I'm doing and I'm not happy with where I am.

You're not fully fulfilled still.

There's more. There's gotta be more.

Yeah, well, six and a half is like a D. It's like a D plus, I guess.

You know what I mean?

It's like a D D or something.

And, you know, and there's. I mean, I guess you've probably asked this question with other people, but. But there's days where it's an eight, Right. There's even days where it's probably been a nine. And I think if I wanted to get analytical about it, I probably need to reverse engineer what makes those days feel that way. Right. Because when I am most at peace, when I am most happy, is when I'm out backpacking, when I'm just out in the woods or just with my family, but really just in nature. That's where I get that solitude. I'm such an introvert, which people would never think because on social media, but it's like I recharge when I have that solitude. So it's very interesting. If I start reverse engineering, okay, this is when I feel optimal. And the cool thing is, and this is motivational for, I guess everybody, is that regardless of whether I wake up as a 6 or wake up as a 10, the one thing that never really wavers for me anymore is the eating patterns. Right. I've stabilized that, and I think that that can be done with anybody. And I want to transition for just a second because I want to give motivation for people that feel that way. Because a lot of people, if they were to wake up feeling like a six, they would eat like a six.

Or maybe worse than a six.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And then that kind of just manifests where they go. Right. Then the next day they wake up like a five because they ate like a five. So I guess in a very simple way, eat like a 10. Always eat like a 10, you know, and you'll feel like a 10.

But how do people actually do that? I mean, I've had a lot of different nutritionists and health researchers and experts and weight loss and all these things, psychologists, therapists, talking about these things. But for so many people, it is extremely difficult to discipline their diet, to discipline their nutritional intake and be consistent of eating healthy good things that they know they're supposed to do consistently. I'm one of those people. I've never been drunk. I've never been high. I don't do drugs. I don't do psychedelics. Psychedelics. I don't do mushrooms, none of that stuff. But sugar is the thing that comes and goes in waves. Yeah. Some weeks and months, I'm extremely disciplined and minimal. And other times I'm just like, I feel great. So let me just, you know, it's not going to affect me, and then it affects me. And it's been hard. And I'm a very disciplined person, but it's still hard for me to be very disciplined on nutrition 100% of the time.

Yeah.

So how.

And I'm disciplined. You know, I'm striving for greatness and performance and results. So for people that don't have that type of discipline, how can they be consistent on the nutritional intake over a lifetime and make it their lifestyle and not just a diet?

Yeah. I mean, it's such a basic good question that people always want to bring it back to, like, tracking and things like that. And I think that that doesn't. That works. Tracking works. But you're talking about it at a deeper level.

Right.

Because I experience the same thing. I can have the most steadfast meditator monk that I'm talking to. And they will still battle with this. Right?

Really?

And it's something to the point where we have so much things, so many things that are just available at our fingertips that are just temptations not in alignment with how we've continued to evolve. As, you know, it's like we just. Technology and food production and the food industry is growing at an exponentially faster rate than how we are changing. Right. So we have these things that are available that just simply shouldn't. And outside of putting yourself in a locker and, like, away from these foods, total echo chamber. Like, you are fighting temptation all the time. And we have to recognize that there's only so much power in your prefrontal cortex. There's only so much willpower.

Yeah.

Like, it's a finite resource. So with that, you have to kind of change your way of thinking. And the way that, like, this occurred to me, like, three years ago or so, when I had. I had a really, really bad, like, sinus infection. And I've always had kind of recurring sinus infections ever since I was little, but I had one that was really bad, and I couldn't taste or smell for, like, two months, right? And that was something where I realized, like, why am I still craving these certain foods? I can't even taste them, right? And it was like this aha moment where I'm like, this. This is clearly a mental thing because something sweet hits your taste buds. It's not just the taste of it. It's what it's doing in the brain. So changing your relationship with food, changing your relationship with struggle has been a very big thing, Right? So for me, I always had this kinesthetic awareness thing with my workouts, right? With workouts, it was like, if I inflicted pain upon myself and it was positive pain for a workout, I could flip this kinesthetic switch that was like. I called it my pain switch. And I would flip that pain switch. And, you know, as an athlete, that's sometimes just what you do, and it happens inadvertently. Sometimes you visualize it, but visualization is huge. So for me, I'd visualize flipping the pain switch. The switch is off. I can now push it harder and push it past my normal aerobic capacity. Anaerobic, whatever. I realized, why can't I apply that same thing to nutrition without becoming robotic, but becoming very, very aware? And so I've changed my relationship with how food makes me feel. And that's taken a lot of work.

What do you say to yourself? What's the Conversation, the inner dialogue, the mental strategy you use to do that.

As simple as it sounds, whenever I would eat something for about two or three months, I would simply say like, food is fuel. Food is fuel. And that sounds very. Because you don't want to take the fun out of it. I still love food, right? So when you do that, but you have to train yourself to believe that. Like, okay, if I'm eating this sugar, that's okay, but remember it's fuel and I should use it, right? Or if I'm. And that's the thing here, if I.

Want to eat it, make sure I move my body. Go for a 10 minute walk, walk upstairs, move it a little bit, just get it out.

When you change the relationship with food, you're not abstaining, you're changing the reaction, right?

So like, and I should never have a bucket of ice cream and then just sit around.

It's just the thing, right? It's like if you're gonna do it, you didn't the morning, eat it for.

Breakfast, whatever, and then go move all day.

Exactly. It's so that relationship, I mean, it gets much bigger than that, right? But that relationship with food is everything. And so many of us have a distorted relationship with food. And for me, being. I've been on opposite ends of sort of the spectrum, right? Like when I was younger, I was practically, you know, as a runner, I was practically eating disorder category the other direction. Like, I have to be as light as possible. Oh, I don't want to eat that. I don't want to get fat. I don't want to. And then it kind of went the other way where it was almost like masochistic, where I'm just like, I don't care, I'm fat already. Let's just go all the way.

Okay?

Now it's kind of like find a little bit of that middle ground. But the pendulum probably swings much more towards how I was when I was younger. Gotta stay lean, gotta stay this. But I also have recognized that food, food is still reward. And we are constantly told that food shouldn't be treated as a reward. Don't reward your kids with food.

I call.

The reason is, is because food has always been a reward, Right? It's always been a reward for us.

You get the hunt and you get the food. Yeah. You go gather, you get some food.

It's simple, right? What you have to do is you just have to once again change the relationship with the feelings attached to food. Recognize that those feelings are there, but do something with them rather than Just let them. Let them be and consume you. If I am going to go and eat that ice cream, then I. I'm aware of what that's doing in my body, and I'm not going to let that turn me the other direction and get depressed and go eat more. I'm going to say, you know what? This is an opportunity. An opportunity to move more. An opportunity to move tomorrow. And that's not having this transactional relationship again. Because what you don't want to do is say, I'm going to eat some pie, and now I'm going to punish myself by going on the treadmill. That's the exact wrong thing to do, right? But you do say, okay, I'm going to eat this piece. Great. I've got full glycogen tanks. I'm gonna go work out. I'm gonna get the best workout of my life. I'm gonna have some fun with this, right? And I teach my kids the same thing. And having kids has really made this apparent because kids constantly, I want a snack. I want a snack. It's like they have five stomachs. I don't understand it. And like, how do you. If they're reaching for, like a Larabar or something that I would still consider healthy, but has a decent amount of sugar from dates and stuff, right? Like, they. Kids just crave these things. And how do I teach them that? You. Yeah, you can eat that, but we should really get out and move. And, you know, it's kind of like how I translate it to them is, hey, it's fun to feel good. It's fun to feel good, right? Like, you've got this energy from that bar. Doesn't that feel good? Like, let's get out and let's use that energy. Let's go have fun. And now it's to the point where my kids are like, can I have a lar bar? I want to go outside and play. I'm like, this is awesome. Like, that's cool. Without actually, like, molding them in any weird way, I've helped them light a spark to understand that when they eat this and at a young, subconscious level in their brain, it's probably forming something that's beyond what we even know in research where maybe they taste something sweet and now they naturally want to move versus saying like, oh, shame, guilt. I shouldn't have eaten this. It's terrible. No, we're going to go have fun. We're going to play. But I teach them that with not just sugar. I teach them that with fats, too. Because I think it's also fundamental to learn that all food is fuel, but be in touch with how it makes you feel. So how I retain that discipline is the exact same way. It's like, how do I feel? What do I feel after I eat this? Did I feel crappy? Okay, well, then that's probably a pretty good articulation of what that's doing in my body. And with that, it's really turned into this intuitive eating. And that's like, I guess. I mean, it's a great segue to talk about how fasting has worked. Right. Because fasting has allowed me to have more flexibility with my diet in the confines of still appropriate discipline because I can flip that switch on and off a lot easier. Fasting, not fasting. Fasting, not fasting.

And you're one of the. There's a few things I want to talk about here before I get into fasting. One is the mantra. It sounds like you had the mental switch. The mantra of food is fuel. So is that something you would think about right before you were making a decision of what to eat?

No. See something usually while eating it.

While eating it. So it wasn't helping you make a decision of like, okay, here's a candy bar. Am I going to decide this? Is. Is this going to help me and fuel me in a positive way or a negative?

Fuel that's too willpowery, that takes too much energy.

So you would still eat the candy bar if you needed or if you did While.

While, yes. And granted, this was happening three, three and a half years ago, so candy bars weren't really in the equation anymore. But that being said, an apple or whatever. Yeah. Or something like, because I would still crave fruit or, you know, whatever. But. Yes, exactly. It's like while I'm consuming it, it's like really trying to teach my body and understand, like, this visualization, you know, the power of visualization. Obviously, just yourself and the guests you've had on. It's like that visualization with eating something can be just as powerful.

So you would say this as you're having a bite of the apple or whatever it might be. You'd be having an internal conversation. Food is fuel. And then having a positive relationship with something that might be looked at as negative before. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Precisely. Yup.

And training your body to appreciate the food and to say, okay, I'm going to go act and move my body after I eat this, and it's going to help me. It's not going to hurt me. And I don't need to be shameful about eating this. Is that kind of the process? Because a lot of people that eat something and they feel good because it tastes good and then they feel shameful.

Yes.

And that doesn't help them because then they have more of that to have the good feeling and then feel shame again and the cycle continues.

Because what is happening here is much different than what's happening here.

Yeah.

And you know, in our world, like we get this instant gratification from food. Especially like the translation of. I see a direct correlation with my time scrolling social media and my addiction to my phone. Direct line item correlation to how much I crave snacking and things like that. It's the same firing, you know. Right. It's like that same dopamine itch that needs to be scratched. And just in the same way I get addicted to looking at my phone or checking my email, that usually correlates with how much my addiction to food is at that point in time. But like, you don't just say like, I am going to like, resist the urge to check my email. I'm going to resist the urge to check my email. Sometimes it takes like, what is the response? Like, a lot of times, you know, you'll check your email first thing in the morning, you'll get a negative email and it hits you. Then you're like, this is how I'm starting my day. Like, this is what I'm gonna do. Like, screw that. And that's your catalyst. But like with food, you eat a Snickers bar and it feels so good up here. You feel like you're doing the. Everything is telling you in that immediate moment that this was a good decision, Louis, like, you did the right thing.

Then your belly afterwards is like, oh, why is it digesting weird? And now I feel like, like lethargic. And yeah.

And you go out and you move and you try to do something with it and yeah, you're going to have some fuel, but you're going to be like, you know what? Crazy enough. That didn't feel as good as when I had that apple. And you start creating this internal like checks and balances, if you want to call it that.

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I want to ask you a question about belly fat because I feel like this is what is the stat now? 40% of Americans are obese. Is that the stat? Somewhere around, somewhere 45, something like that.

Pretty crazy.

It's probably what, like 3% of Americans have a six pack. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's probably very low and I don't think people should have the goal of actually trying to get a six pack. I don't know if that's the best route to take their lifestyle. I'm all about results and performance, but I really believe it should be about the process. The daily journey, making good decisions every day, having good habits and the results will take care of itself and you're just going to look better and feel better in general. If you get a six pack, great. And if it's just flat, that's great too. But 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 going to 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 talked about, if you had to give a five.

You know, 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. Right. Even if your calories are, you know. Yes, that comes into equation. But you need to have these peaks.

And valleys, a little breaks between consumption.

Yes.

Now can you consume water, teas, coffees, anything else?

For sure, anything. Anything. Zero calorie. I mean it's, 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 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 like 12 hour break between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the day.

12 hour fasting minimum.

And it's not really a fast. Right.

Like sleep and don't eat after 8.

Exactly. I feel like, you know, there's a reason why you get your blood work done after a 12 hour fast. Right. 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, you know, able to be taken up and utilize. 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 people that have a larger breakfast end up eating small, smaller lunches and smaller dinners naturally.

Because they feel satiated. Right.

And that doesn't mean that you go eat a box of Fruit 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 hyper palatable 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 going to naturally be lower calorie because there's not as many fats in it, right? So your day is just kind of going like this.

What's the breakfast? Like a king lunch? Like a prince dinner?

Like a popper.

Like a popper. Gotcha.

Yep. So you just. And that's, 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. And then when 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 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 6pm you're done eating, then by 6am 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. 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, right? So that's sort of my lever. Right. If I'm following all three, 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, it'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 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.

Exactly. And like a 16 hour fast, you know, 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. Right. 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 to kick in. So like I personally like, I fast usually three days per week with like a 20 or 21 hour fast. Like, so I'm still eating like 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, then after that it's a cakewalk. You know, it's not. 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. You know, there's certain people that, you know, if you're very, very, very, very active, then yeah, it might not work for you. Like 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, even if it's just mentally.

Yeah. And maybe there's an age range of like under 10. You're not, I don't know, or over 70 or something. You know, I don't know, but.

And it's a balance. You know, since we were talking about longevity in the beginning, like it's a balance. Right. Like what is is not often talked about, which is so important is the yin and the yang of fasting for longevity. While not taking it so far that you're jeopardizing muscle mass.

Mass.

Exactly.

And someone that is over 70, that's a very fine line because you're going to be at a higher rate of catabolism and muscle breakdown. If you start aggressively fasting over 70, where's your line of diminishing return where you're actually depleting muscle mass that's actually hugely beneficial for keeping you alive. And then also same with a younger person where it's like you're in this critical developmental stage where everything is firing at warp speed and you don't want to disrupt that. But again, like how many cultures have to go out and hunt for food and their kids don't get food until. So from a disclaimer standpoint, I don't think kids should fast, but who knows, right?

Sure, sure. What is your position on working out, burning quote unquote calories, I guess, and also just consuming less or the right kind of calories on losing weight and building muscle.

Yeah. Okay, so this is an interesting one because deficit in general is very vague. Right. So if you ask anyone in the nutrition community, they're mostly going to say, most of them are going to say, yeah, it's a caloric deficit that matters.

Right.

But there's two ways to go about a deficit. A nutritional deficit or an exercise induced deficit. Is one better than the other? From what I've looked at generally and what I've experienced, you're quote, unquote fluxing. And I'll explain this. Fluxing flux, it's called G flux at a higher capacity when you are inducing a deficit at an exercise level because you have more metabolic activity happening. So it's like if I was sitting on my couch just starving myself, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that that is good.

Right.

I think activity matters. There's a fine line of what's too much. But so there's something called G flux. And G flux is essentially where it takes energy to burn more calories. So if you eat 2000 calories and I eat 5000 calories and you expend 2000 calories and I expend 5000 calories, on paper it would look like we're both at net zero. Right? Okay, not the case. I have actually burned more calories because there is an energy demand associated with sort of the mobilization. I call it like a mobilization fee. Like you always have to pay a fee. If someone comes out to change a windshield or five windshields, you're going to pay more to have them change one windshield. Typically, because of that mobilization fee, I'm having to mobilize more metabolic activity. And that alone, the flux of that actually has an energy demand. And there's been plenty of research to back this up. So someone that's consuming 5000 and burning 5000 actually burns way more than someone that's eating 2000 and burning 2000 because of the energy flux.

And your body probably keeps burning after you burn more because you've had to spend more energy to burn those 5,000 totally. So your body just doesn't shut off, it just continues to Burn for probably.

So many more hours, 100%. And like Alan Argon had put it in an interesting way and he was like, yeah. If there's someone that is obviously being around professional athletes, you can almost feel an energy that they have that is different from someone that is like, let's say wasting away on a hospital bed. There's literally a different energy that is given off like we. And that sounds woo woo, witch doctory, but it's not. It's like they are fluxing at a different capacity. Like their caloric intake is high, their expenditure is high, everything is buzzing. Right. Compared to someone that is like withering away and dying, it's just a different energy and different demand. And that G flux is very real. But with that G flux you have to ask, is there so much burning, so much activity, so much oxidative stress, are they actually negatively impacting their lifespan because you're increasing this overall like burn hot, die young sort of thing? That remains to be seen. So I'd like to say I think it's a delicate balance of in between, I think periods of nutritional deficit and then periods of exercise deficit and kind of like balance it out. If you want to get really like granular about it, like try to, try to figure it out what works for you, do a schedule of it. Because I just try to follow it naturally. There's periods where I just don't have the energy to push it really, really hard in the gym. So I throttle my deficit nutritionally and then there's times where I feel like an animal and I can train really hard for like a month or two and then I'll eat more and I'll let my deficit deficit be driven by exercise. So I think there's a balance of doing a little bit of both. Exercise definitely drives metabolic changes like you know, exokines and all these different things that trigger changes in our genes that are tremendous for, tremendous for longevity.

Sure, sure.

I think there's a big, big discussion to be had there.

If someone's looking to build muscle, what do you think the key things that they should focus on should be?

I think stimulation number one. I think we've seen. I had Dr. Tommy Wood on my channel not that long ago and it's so interesting to talk to him about this. Because stimulation and stimulating the muscle is the most important thing above even calories for building muscle. There have been interesting research papers that I've seen that people in a caloric deficit, as long as protein needs are met and muscle stimulation is there, they build muscle Even if they're in a deficit. Right. So their overall weight loss might go down because they might lose fat. So thermodynamics are still applying here, but hypertrophy is happening somewhat independently of being in a caloric surplus or not. So all that has to do with is protein and stimulus. Protein and stimulus. So if you really wanted to simplify it, it is that, you know, and it's consistent stimulus, consistently putting tension on the muscle. Because it's as simple as. And again, with fasting, I say it's so important to be moving your muscles and moving your body while you're fasting.

Really?

Because it's demand. Like you're creating a demand. Like if you are not moving and you're in a caloric deficit, the body is going to deem the muscle that you have as metabolically irrelevant and not something that's important. If you are moving your body during a fast or a deficit, your body is going to say, okay, even though we don't have a lot of food on hand, clearly this dude is using this tissue, so save it, don't burn it. Right.

Burn the fat around it. Yes.

Not the muscle.

Because this is clearly evolutionarily, like, important or from a survival standpoint, on the contrary, if you are starving, you're fasting yourself and you're laying down, the body's going to say, well, this muscle is metabolically expensive. Why are we paying all this energy to keep that around, keep the fat, because that's going to be good for survival. So all these people say fasting is going to break down muscle and store fat. That's actually probably true if you don't move much, but if you move, it flips completely interesting. So for building muscle in a normal sense, for someone that's not fasting or anything like that, it's still protein and stimulus. Protein and stimulus.

And what would be the. What would the training or nutritional mistakes that you made earlier in your career, in your life that wish you would have known then that you know now?

That's a good question. What I would have changed, for one, is I definitely would have paid more attention to prioritizing protein. I went a very long time prioritizing carbohydrates because the muscle building magazines told me that carbohydrates are what build muscle. And I think I spent a lot of years driving myself into insulin resistance and ultimately even pre diabetes and eventually touching into diabetes doing that. And it set a bad framework for me. So I wish I had a prioritized protein. I think I would have Saved myself a lot of metabolic heartache, you know, other things I wish that. Well, I don't wish I did anything differently, but if I were to start today, I definitely would not have been doing six meals per day. Right. Like, the whole, you got to eat six meals per day because that's how you keep your metabolism going. Like that. That made me a slave to food. And the thing that I do regret about that is all the wasted time of my youth that I was carrying.

Around Tupperwares, meal prepping and backpacks and.

All the food, it just wasn't necessary. It just wasn't even necessary. I mean, you look at, like, Stan Efferding, who's a brick house, like, the guy is a monster, and he eats like two or three square meals per day. And even he is like a massive bodybuilder with a huge following that is just like, oh, like, I eat three square meals per day. I don't eat six meals. And it's just. Yeah, it's like all those wasted years of just, like, schlepping this food around, prepping, when I could have just had breakfast, lunch and dinner and just allocated protein accordingly.

Right. Good principle, man. You've got a lot of information on your YouTube channel, which is really inspiring. I want people to make sure they go, subscribe over there. Thomas DeLauer official over on YouTube. I think you're almost 3 million subscribers now, right?

That's like 3.3 now.

3.3. Yeah.

It's growing fast.

Update your bio. I know, 3.3, you know, 15, 20 million viewers a month. Make sure you guys check out his YouTube again. YouTube.com Thomas DeLauer official. You're also all over social media, TikTok, Instagram, things like that. How else can we be of service to you if we want to learn more about optimizing our health?

Yeah, I mean, I always tell people, people can be of service to me by voting with their dollars at the grocery store. Sounds kind of inadvertent and weird, but the thing is, the more that people buy the foods that are healthy, that's going to change industry and that's going to change media, and that's going to change everything. And that helps me because at the end of the day, I'm producing videos and getting views, and if people are getting interested in that, that helps me, but it also helps everyone. Like, if you're eating clear and you're thinking clearer, we're making better decisions as a society. Like, we're not making decisions with inflamed, foggy brains. Like it's like, why would you do that? Like, making a decision when you're sleep deprived, it just doesn't make sense. Right. So that's the best way that people can help me. I mean, I don't want you to just come to my channel and watch my videos because it helps me. I want you to make bigger decisions in your life because that will indirectly affect all of the people that are in this industry.

Yeah, it's beautiful, man. I want to acknowledge you before I ask the final two questions. I want to acknowledge you, Thomas, for the transformation you've had. You know, I think it's hard to go through the transformation that you had when you're conditioned to consume and eat and the things that you did and a lot of people do. So for you to be the guinea pig to transform and get to the place of health you're at now is really inspiring. I also want to acknowledge you for your realness of being a six and a half in the Self Love and Peace scale and knowing that there's still stuff for you to improve and work on and emotionally reflect on from your past that will support you and optimize your health even more and your relationship with yourself. So I acknowledge you for your. Your realness in this conversation. I appreciate your honesty. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three Truths Question. Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want, but eventually you got to call it quits. In this life, you accomplish everything you want to accomplish, but you got to take all of your content with you. Anything you ever say, create or put out in the world, audio, written, video, go somewhere else when you die. So no one has access to your information or your message, but you get to leave behind one final message with three lessons, three things you know to be true from everything you've experienced in your life. This is all we would have to remember you and your lessons by. What would be those three truths for you?

Number one is remember that this is what it feels like right now. And that is that. Because I tell myself that all the time. And it brings me back to life, right? If I'm in pain, if I'm sad, this is what it feels like right now. This isn't what it feels like five minutes from now. This isn't what it feels like ten minutes from now. This is right now. The next one's a little bit more cliche, but hug your family often. That's just what it does for you emotionally. What it does to your guilt. Your guilt goes away. It's not to mention oxytocin and all these other metabolic and different hormonal things that happen. Just hug your family and value them as much as you possibly can. Because it's one thing that I've learned even in my relatively short time here on Earth. I just feel better when I hug my kids and I feel better when I hug my wife and be okay with that. And then I think my message to men especially is it is more masculine to be okay with your emotions and is more masculine and it takes more confidence and more manhood to be okay with that than it does to masquerade it and to just put on the tough guy act. The true tough guy act is being able to be real with yourself and look in the mirror and recognize when you're sad, recognize when you're happy, recognize when you're screwing up and apply that to your life versus putting up a veil and calling it a day.

That's great man. Final question Thomas what's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is laying your head on the pillow every single night, feeling like in that day you have given it your all and you can rest your head on that pillow knowing that what you put out into the world is exactly what you would want to receive.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience. Make sure to subscribe to our Greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels. Apple I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue.

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