Dhru Purohit Show - The Top Do's and Don'ts of Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss and Longevity with Thomas DeLauer

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers Sleep Breakthrough, WHOOP, BON CHARGE, and InsideTracker. This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with health and fitness educator Thomas DeLauer to discuss the myths, nuances, and benefits of intermittent fasting for metabolic health. Thomas DeLauer is an expert in diet, nutrition, and all things intermittent fasting. Thomas is best known for breaking down complex and nuanced health topics into simpler terms for his audience and for his open mindset toward challenging his own beliefs in the field of diet and nutrition.  In this episode, Dhru and Thomas dive into: -What makes intermittent fasting underrated (2:12) -Real-life examples of metabolic flexibility (5:22) -Where Thomas’s beliefs about intermittent fasting have evolved (7:25) -The standard American approach to fasting (17:47) -How Thomas discovered fasting (26:36) -Tips and tricks to make fasting sustainable (30:05) -16:8 fasting (37:18) -Why tracking calories might be beneficial in the short term (41:11) -Do’s and don’ts of fasting for weight loss (49:02) -Fasting for longevity (55:36) -Common fasting mistakes (58:25) -Debunking fasting myths (1:15:11) -Stress as an overlooked area of health (1:22:47) -How our environment impacts our behaviors (1:38:30) Also mentioned in this episode: -@meowmeix Instagram account -5 Ways to Measure Fasting Effectiveness -Why Dr. Peter Attia Changed His Mind on Fasting For more on Thomas DeLauer, follow him on Instagram @thomasdelauer, YouTube @ThomasDeLauerOfficial, and through his website, thomasdelauer.com. Right now, you can get 10% off Sleep Breakthrough. And if you buy two or more you’ll get a free bottle of Magnesium Breakthrough. This is a limited-time offer! So just go to sleepbreakthrough.com/dhru and use code dhru10. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides personalized recommendations based on what your body needs. Head on over to join.whoop.com/dhru to get your first month free on WHOOP. BON CHARGE is a holistic wellness brand with a HUGE range of evidence-based products to optimize your life. Right now, my community can go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lot of the benefit we get from fasting from a longevity perspective anyway is from a mitochondrial angle. We benefit our mitochondria. We improve mitochondrial biogenesis. We create more mitochondria. We create our mitochondria to be stronger and more efficient. So they're better at creating energy with less stress and less exhaust, less reactive oxygen species, less oxidative stress, less inflammation. If you're curious about the power of intermittent fasting as a tool in your transformational journey, today's conversation.

is absolutely for you. Welcome to the Drew Prod podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Thomas DeLauer. Thomas is an expert in diet, nutrition, mindset, and all things intermittent fasting, which is what we're going to be talking about today.

Thomas's platform reaches more than 15 million viewers monthly, on average, through his YouTube channel, where he translates his experiences and learnings from his own health transformation into actionable steps for his dedicated community of 2.9 million subscribers. Thomas has built upon his experience as a young successful athlete and later a successful businessman that had himself tipping the scales at close to 300 pounds. It was through his 100 plus pounds weight loss journey and transformation that he was able to

tap into how he could truly not only help himself but help others as well. These experiences allowed him to develop the belief that we all possess the ability to tap into the best versions of ourselves by optimizing our understanding and application of fitness, nutrition, fasting, and especially mindset. Now on to a fantastic and nuanced interview on all things fasting with Thomas DeLauer. Thomas, welcome to the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. I'm excited to start off on all things intermittent fasting. I feel like you are the go-to guy, especially on YouTube that helps people break it down, understand where it can be a huge part of their transformation. It was for yours. You lost 110 pounds and intermittent fasting was one of the key

things. One, we'll get to some of the other ones. But you're also really good at helping people understand where it may be overrated in some certain aspects. So I'd love to start there. Give us a sense of in your experience now, what has been a decade of intermittent fasting almost. Where do you see intermittent fasting as being overrated in people's journey, but more importantly, underrated that could be a powerful tool to help people transform their bodies and their lives. Yeah, I'll start with the underrated piece. I think that it's vastly, vastly underrated the fact that intermittent fasting gives people an element of mastery with the control in their diet. And I think that we live in a world where we don't have a lot of control. We might feel like

We have a lot of control over what we eat, but let's be really real here. We have tons of hyper-palatable foods that are lighting our brains up like Christmas trees all the time. That's not control. Like the food controls us. And we may not want to admit it. It may sound kind of weird and almost woo-woo witch doctory to say that. But it kind of does.

You know, we have not even trying to sound crazy conspiracy here, but we've got food marketers that know what they're doing. Food tastes dang good. It lights our brains up and it makes us want more. With fasting, the underrated component of it is just that simple element of mastery and being able to abstain. Like abstinence from food is a powerful thing. Like we're exposed to food all the time. The ability to be able to just say no and have complete control is freaking powerful.

It's all heck. And that is the piece that is underrated because everyone wants to focus on these overrated nuanced pieces that are still important. But, you know, we talk about things like autophagy, which is great. Fasting absolutely induces autophagogy. but exercise also induces autophagy. Fasting is a means of activating a lot of different cellular processes that would ordinarily be activated through other processes like exercise or caloric restriction. It just works better for some people because their minds work that way. For example, I could have easily just restricted calories when I lost 110 pounds. No denying that that

could have worked. But did it mentally work for me? No, it didn't. I tried and I felt like a slave to food. I felt like a slave to the scale. I felt like a slave to tracking. It ruined my life. It was terrible. Whereas fasting gave me peace and gave me like a lot of flexibility. And it was still putting me in that same box. Was I accomplishing the same things that I would have accomplished with caloric restriction?

Yeah. But arguably faster. Arguably in a more defined way. Arguably in a way that jived with my personality better. And so it's not to say that things like intermittent fasting don't induce these amazing things like autophagy. But what I'm trying to say is that to say that fasting is the only way that does that is also factually incorrect. It's just one of many ways to get there. That's just one that I talk about a lot because I'm guilty of talking about autophagy and sort of embellishing how cool it is

because it's to drive home a point of how cool this cellular process is. But a lot of people that try intermittent fasting are also people that are very overweight or metabolically dysfunctional and don't have the ability to really exercise with any intensity just yet. You know, you mentioned a key word there, which was flexibility. And I've heard you say in previous interviews that the level of flexibility that you feel because you have intermittent fasting as a tool in your toolbox, like that's the number one benefit to you. What's an example of that flexibility that shows upon a daily or weekly basis that allows for more freedom

in your life. Maybe I want to have a chicken nugget with my kids, you know, not from, you know, McDonald's or anything, but maybe like, you know, gluten-free chicken nugget or something, right? Like maybe I want to be able to have some flexibility. Maybe I want to go have some ice cream with my kids now and then let them be kids and not have dad be a robot, right? Maybe I want them to experience food in a way where they can establish control and establish their own boundaries. And if I am constantly having my guard up and not touching these foods, I'm risking giving my kids, eating disorders, right? So I need to make sure that they can experience foods themselves and see dad experience these foods, but also see dad put up the guardrails and he needs to put up the guard

rails and get his life on track. But also being able to just enjoy food. I'm a foodie. Like I am. I always have been. I mean, hence I was 300 pounds before. I clearly like food. There's no denying that. So being able to enjoy food, but being able to have a strong understanding of when it's time to stop, but have a very clear black and white picture of, okay, I'm eating now. I'm not eating now. And when I first went through my weight loss journey, like the first couple of months when I lost, I lost like 50 pounds in the first three and a half months or so, that was all being very flexible. That was just with intermittent fasting, still eating the foods that I liked, but just putting them into a compressed eating window. So yeah, I was probably restricting calories,

but dude, I was still able to eat pizza. I was still able to eat burgers. I was still able to eat the foods that I wanted to. I just was eating a significantly less amount of them. I'd love to pivot to overrated, but also based off of your life experiences, after having done intermittent fasting and it being a part of your life now, and we'll talk about how you go about it now compared to previously, what have you found that you modified it or maybe you changed your mind or your recommendations on your YouTube page? A lot of people watch your videos that like your thinking evolved over a period of time based on some of the more overrated factors of intermittent fasting. Yeah, I mean, for one, just diving more into research too and seeing more and more and more

and understanding the nuance. But what really started to get me to say, okay, I need to take a look at this is how things started to change after I lost weight. Because intermittent fasting works super, super, super well when you were at a metabolic disadvantage, when you are metabolically unhealthy, when you have mitochondrial dysfunction, when your energy systems aren't working well, when you're overweight, when you have metabolic syndrome, syndrome X. Like there's no denying that.

the research is very clear. But once I got to a point where, okay, well, now I'm maintaining weight. Things are different. If I fast too much, it's actually not good for me. I'm trying to just maintain now. I don't have any more to really lose. I'm trying to just stay lean. So I need to pivot my way of thinking while also making sure that when I'm talking to my audience, I'm understanding that I have, you know, a split demographic of people that are already lean and people that are just coming to my channel that are like, man, I'm looking for help. So I have to make sure that I navigate that very, very carefully to not discourage people. And a perfect example is I used to fast every day. You know, I used to fast every day because I thought that that was the way to do it because it just

made sense. I was skipping breakfast. It would, it worked. It got the weight off of me. But if I did that now at my current body weight, I think that it would probably be problematic. So like I've adjusted my fasting to be more three days a week per se and maybe increase the length of my fast so it's more of a you know a shock also just seeing as intermittent fasting grew in popularity again over the last you know like i don't know five six years ago when it really started the hockey stick up again of course you've got social media so you've got influencers to hop on the bandwagon and they start talking about it but there may be embellishing things that maybe shouldn't be embellished and it was starting to give the intermittent fasting crowd a bad name. And that was frustrating for me because

I'm someone that like I literally owe my life to intermittent fasting. I don't know if I would be here today if it wasn't for it because I was so unhealthy. So that was frustrating to me to see like, guys, I know you're excited about intermittent fasting, but you got to check yourself a little bit with some of the claims you're making because it's those claims that are triggering so many people to come and attack intermittent fasting that have really big audiences. And now you're going to completely squelch the benefits of it because people are going to listen to the people that are squelching intermittent fasting versus the people that are really getting benefit from it. So I'm like, you know what? I need to be the guy that actually splits the lane here. I need to be

the guy that helps people understand that, yes, you know what, it's okay to get on your high horse about fasting. It's okay, but you got to be real. You know, we can't just say it's magic all the time even though it feels like it is. It felt like magic to me and I'm guilty of probably shouting from the rooftops like it was magic because dude I mean this was the only thing that worked for me so I mean I get that but it was so it was at that point where I'm like I need to start putting some some bumpers up on how I talk about it you know you made a really great video recently talking about how do you know if fasting is working like what should you be what should you be measuring what should you be looking at and for the person that's listening today where they have

a significant amount of weight that they want to make a shift on they want to improve their body composition, right? Because you talked about the different camps. For simplicity purposes, let's say that's one camp. And then we'll get to the other camp, which is people who already have some sense of being lean and, you know, they may not want to lose muscle mass and other areas. We'll talk about them in a second. So for the person who has a significant amount of weight that they want to shift, they want to improve their body composition, what are some of the things they should be looking at, maybe taking inspiration from that video that you made, to know if intermittent fasting is actually working for them and they're making progress. Yeah. I mean, the obvious one is, you know,

people first are going to think about their weight, right? Is weight working? Is weight dropping? Is things like that? Yeah. And that's a very valid thing to look at, of course. But there's a lot of components there. You know, just because someone's losing weight doesn't mean you're a, losing the right kind of weight. You know, so for one, it also doesn't mean that you're healthy. You know, it could just mean that you're losing muscle mass and you're not losing fat, right? So I try to look at a lot of things. So looking at, you know, even your fasting glucose is a tremendous way to just understand is this working? Because there are lots of bodies of research that still put people in a stage of caloric restriction where their glucose is still really cattywampus,

still out of whack. So if you're trying to say, hey, I'm just trying to get my metabolic health in check, is fasting working for me, I mean, being able to draw a line in the sand of where your, you know, blood glucose is when you start fasting versus where it is now in terms of the long haul, not on the daily. You know, is your HBA1C improving? Are you noticing? improvements in your just metabolic biomarkers. If you have the ability to go get a dexas scan, I mean, being able to look at your visceral fat, that's a big, big piece of intermittent fasting is the reduction in visceral fat, which I think all camp's going to agree, that is one of the most dangerous things that we could have is high levels of visceral fat, as far as inflammation's

concerned, as far as a number of different factors, fatty liver, sort of a proxy for fatty liver. So with that, it's like, okay, if you have the ability to get a dexas scan and you can see, hey, my visceral fat is actually shrinking. That is a great barometer for how well fasting is working. Also, in the moment, being able to test your ketones, I mean, are you actually getting the metabolic benefit that you want during a fast? So you can get pretty granular with that. But I think also looking at C-reactive protein, like looking at your inflammatory markers, arguably losing weight in general, caloric restriction, you're going to see an improvement in those kind of biomarkers, your IL-6. Your C-reactive protein is the main one that, like, if you went to your doctor and said, I want to

test for inflammation, they'd test your CRP and it's a pretty simple panel. It's not like anything crazy that you'd have to pay a ton of money for. That's a very important number to look at because if your CRP is improving, that's indicative of, you know, lowering inflammation regardless of weight loss. So even if your weight was the same, but your CRP is improving, that's tremendous. And that is a very early sign that your body is moving in the right direction. Also, your heart rate variability. If anyone wears a whoop or an aura or even the Apple Watch can do it now, and FitBick and look at that now. So it's pretty easy and mainstream.

Looking at your heart rate variability, that tells you sort of if you're fasting too much, right? So if you start finding that like I'm fasting a lot, I feel good, but your HRV is going down, indicating your recovery's going down. Well, that's a good time to note that, hey, maybe I should stop fasting for a little bit and kind of check myself a little bit so that that HRV comes back up. Because you don't want to put the cart before the horse fast for all these metabolic benefits while in the meantime driving yourself into the ground. What I loved about that video is that, you know, you've kind of contrasted that, you know,

there's a lot of different ways to fast. And the type of fast that we want to avoid is kind of like the standard American way of fasting, right? And it's from what I understand what you meant by that is this idea that people are going to fast, but when they're going to eat again, they're going to eat a diet that's constantly throwing their blood sugar on a roller coaster. They're fasting insulin is high and they're eating still a lot of processed foods. Now, some people have still gotten benefits from incorporating fasting, especially if it maybe helped them, as you mentioned, reduce calories.

But in general, tell us why that standard American approach of fasting, where you don't eat, and maybe you don't eat a lot, so you're sort of putting on this extreme pressure on your body. And then when you do eat, you're eating all sorts of junk again. Tell us why that's not ideal. Yeah, I'll put it into sort of a maybe a visual metaphor a little bit. Let's say, let's say you were in a really, really loud room and that loud room was your standard American diet.

It was just loud and noisy and like just base booming all the time. You couldn't hear each other talk. You couldn't hear yourself think. And then you go and you fast. Then you go into this like eerily quiet room where suddenly, you know, you could hear a mouse piss and a cotton ball. It's just like super quiet, right? And then you all of a sudden say, okay, I'm going to jump back into this room of the standard

American diet noise. how loud would that noise seem? How disruptive would that seem, right? Now I want you to think, on the contrary, you step out of that loud room, go into the quiet room, and then you step into the one room and there's just a gentle trickle of a brook and a waterfall and it's just kind of nice. And then you step into another room and maybe there's a little bit more noise. Then you step into another room and then it's a little louder. A much more peaceful experience, a much easier on the ears. It's much easier on the brain. It's much easier on your psyche. It's going to be less stressful. it's a simple analogy for how it is with fasting. It's like you're abstaining from food.

Your body is resetting. Your body is getting to a stage where it's, for all intents and purpose, it's more sensitive. It's potentially cleaner. Everything's operating a little bit better, right? And then all of a sudden, you're just going to throw the Pop-Tarts back in the mix. You may as well be just jumping into that, you know, Dolby surround super loud room. It's going to be a shock to your body and it's going to be highly inflammatory. And the nuance here, of course, anytime you eat anything, there's a level of inflammatory response. Like, make no mistake. Like if I ate a salad right now, there's going to be some inflammation.

It's just a normal thing. So don't get the wrong idea that like, oh, I'm going to have inflammation when I eat and it's bad. But arguably, the worst the food is, the higher the abundance of the food, especially in a short bout, the higher the inflammatory response is going to be. And you sort of counteract all these benefits you've been trying to get from fasting in the first place. So although it worked well for me in terms of flexibility, eating burgers and pizza and stuff like that for the first few months, I quickly learned that although I was losing weight, I felt like total dog crap. It did not feel good. When you would go back to eating those same sort of processed foods that you were having before. Yeah. So it's, you know, you're defeating the entire purpose, really. You know, you're taking all this work, putting all this work into being able to reset your body and kind of have a clean start only to reintroduce things that you're only going to be more sensitive to in the first place.

It's that whole white noise analogy. You know, it's like you turn the fan on. You can hear the noise. You turn it off. You know, it's quiet. And then you can, you know, it's like you get accustomed to it. So when you're constantly eating these processed foods all the time, that just seems like the normal thing. But once you pull that away for a while and then introduce it again, it's all more intense.

What did you notice when you got started? Was your body naturally sort of shifting and wanting to incorporate more whole? foods along with your fasting routine, like was it a gradual and natural process? Or did you feel like you had to sort of fight and battle this world of addiction that's kind of constantly around us that wants to get us, you know, sucked into these hyper-padable foods? Like, was this a conscious choice that you made? Or did you gradually find that your body started craving different things once you start fasting? It's a good question. And it's the latter. It's, uh, the junk food actually just didn't feel good anymore. It's like after the weight started coming off, I think my body was starting to be a

little bit more fine-tuned and it's realizing like this was just happening out of habit. It wasn't feeling good. So naturally, I actually wanted more whole foods. And once I started implementing the whole foods and everything felt, you know, so much better. So it's definitely, uh, when I was just restricting calories before I really tried intermittent fasting, it was much more difficult for me to eat healthy foods because I was constantly faced with them. You know, I was constantly having to make decisions. I was constantly having to prefrontal cortex my way through things, right? So it's like if I was eating five meals per day, that was five different opportunities in the course of a day that I would have to use my willpower. Whereas with fasting, it was like two opportunities, two chances

to F up, right? So it just really made a big difference just by sheer statistical, like looks at it. Like if you give me five opportunities to screw up, I'm going to have a much higher likelihood of screwing up. If you give me two opportunities to screw up, I probably won't screw up. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting, and I feel like you do this well with your videos. This is something that I feel that the traditional world of energy balance, and for those that are listening, it's like the traditional world of it's all about calories in and it's all about calories out. Not else matters, and it's just about energy balance, and that's how we're going to keep people healthy and keep weight off. And of course, there are some truths to that. We'll chat about

that in a second. But that world, when they look at fasting, I feel like one of the biggest things they miss is that component that processed food, especially ultra processed food, is so hyper palatable that if you're trying to just restrict calories in itself, it's actually like it's like hijacked your brain and you feel like you have zero control. And that's probably what you're referring to when you felt like nothing was working when you were following the traditional advice. Is that right? Yeah, totally, man. And I talk about this to this day and it kind of frustrates me because I absolutely understand thermodynamics. You know, I'm not an idiot.

I couldn't look at that. I understand the math. I understand the physics of it. Like I understand that energy balance is such an important piece. But I also feel like there's this big piece that's missing. Like clearly telling people to eat less and move more is not working. Like clearly because obesity is only increasing. And that message has only gotten louder.

louder and louder. And for some reason, that crowd wants to make it sound like it's the fasting groups and the low carb groups that are ruining everything because we're the ones confusing people. I don't think that's the case. I think that just it's a problem with all of us. It's not just the low carb or the fasting community like making crazy claims that are causing people to not have success. It's also the evidence-based community that's causing the problems too. Because if you just tell someone to move more and eat less and listen to their body, like, I'm sorry, but we don't have control anymore. Like, we can't just listen to our bodies, especially when you have someone in the fitness industry telling you that, someone in the fitness industry that has a lifetime of coping

mechanisms to make sure that they live their life a certain way and look a certain way, whether that means that they have to log everything and track everything down to the T to become obsessive to look a certain way. It's easy coming out of the mouth of those people. But when you've been overweight before and you've seen other people's struggle, it kind of pisses you off because you're like, no, I've tried that. And I'm not saying that reducing calories doesn't work, but I'm saying that if I simply just try to track everything, I am going to be at the mercy of every delicious thing that's on the grocery store shelf and I'm not going to win. Because not everyone has the willpower that every person in the fitness industry does. You know, those people are outliers and they should be talking to

other outliers. Does that make sense? It totally makes sense. Yeah. When you decided that you were going to try fasting on and that it was going to be a potential solution for you to help significantly reduce your weight, I think at that time you had become 110 pounds overweight about. And a little bit of your story, which I found really fascinating is that you were a skinny kid in high school, right? And then you decided later in high school, if I got correct, you wanted to bulk up. So you got into fitness and you started eating more. Your mom was really into like running and you wanted to be like your mom and you have a

close relationship. So you started getting very active. And along with that activity, your caloric intake went up to match the level of fuel that you needed to support that level of activity. And then life happening, stress factors, other stuff. I want to talk about stress because you talk so much about stress being the biggest factor that kind of shifted things in your journey. And now all of a sudden, your consumption is really high and your activity level is changing and you have all this stress and now you're gaining weight. Is that an accurate understanding of the story? That's perfect. Yep. So then at a certain point in time, you are now carrying all this excess weight and you're feeling like, okay, I need to give something a shot. So how did intermittent fasting even first make it onto

your radar as a possible solution to incorporate? Yeah. I mean, the industry that I was in, I was in sort of like biomedical, biotech sales, really. So I worked with a lot of physicians. We had a lot of medical advisors in the company that I was with. And I was pretty good friends with them anyway, just because we were, you know, associates and work. And they knew me when I was overweight. And they never really pushed any agenda on me. I mean, occasionally a comment would be made that like it was kind of ironic that, you know, the world that we were in and I was here I was overweight. But ultimately, when I finally did decide that it was time to lose weight, there were a couple of different instances where a couple of the docs that I knew were just kind of casual about,

hey, like we've had good success with some of our patients that have been, you know, doing this intermittent fasting thing. And, you know, it might work really well for you. So it was really just like a casual, like, hey, you should try this from some people that I trusted. And really, I never looked back. So it wasn't like I was scouring the internet looking for the right kind of thing. It was more so like I knew what I needed to do as far as eating less, but it was just very difficult for me in the environment that I was in. High stress commission only work where I was just like if I didn't perform, I didn't get paid. That was just difficult for me to also try to keep track of how much I was eating, try to like exercise more, try to do all these different things. I just didn't have the

time. I didn't have the resources. Like if I took more time to track my food or took more time to exercise, that would mean that I was lacking in the financial department. Right. So it was really, really difficult for me. Now, in retrospect, knowing what I know now, I think I could have always made the time, right? Like maybe I just wasn't in the headspace, right? And everyone can make the time. If it's a priority to you, you make the time. But it was also a priority of mine to put food on the table for my wife and I. So fasting was like, dude, this is great. I actually like save time. Like I'm actually not eating. I'm not worrying about eating. So I didn't really have to exercise a whole lot in the first like month or so. And then I started kind of running again and, you know, doing other

things. But yeah, I mean, that's how it ended up on my radar. And when you first decided to take it on, and I think a lot of people are in this position, was there enough clarity at the time where you were like, okay, here's how I'm going to approach intermittent fasting? Like, how did you decide which version of fasting to take on? And what did you start off with? And is that the version that you kept up in the process of, you know, body composition change? Yeah. Actually, the funny thing is, I did like one simple fast where I like didn't eat breakfast and I was like this is easy. And then like three days later I just decided to not eat for two days. And I was just like, I'm just going to do a two day fast. And I don't remember how much I waited I lost, but it was

super successful and I felt great. And I was like, oh, cool, this is awesome. But it was also hard. So I was like, I'm not going to do that again. But anyway, I just jumped right in. That's kind of my mentality and my personality. Anyway, I was just like, ah, screw it. If this works, if it works for 16 hours, it's going to work better with 48. And it did. But it's not something that I would say I'm going to do like two 48 hour fasts a week or something. So then I jumped into the conventional 16-8. And I did that for like a good six months or so before I really started kind of lengthening my fasts and playing around with different things. So just for people who are falling along, that means you're not eating for 16 hours. And then you have an eight-hour eating window.

Correct. And in that eight-hour eating window, what were you finding, again, it changed over a period of time. You started off with this sort of standard American fasting where you were still going back and eating some of the processed foods that were there. But once you got into a good routine, what were the tips and tricks that you found to make that sustainable for you? Specifically during the time that you were eating so that the time that you weren't eating was a lot easier tend up. So one of them was obviously shifting towards whole foods.

Was there anything else? Would you have your bigger meal in the morning or in the evening? Like, what were you doing that you found was helpful for you? I didn't start manipulating timing a whole lot until I was a couple of years in, until I really kind of started understanding things more. One of the things that, you know, as some people like it, some people don't, but, you know, six, seven months in after I was kind of starting to implement whole foods is when I added keto into the mix too.

And that was a huge game changer for me because especially at the time, you know, 11 years ago or so, there weren't super delicious keto treats everywhere. So for me, I was doing keto before the keto wave came along. And that just by default meant that I was eating pretty wholesome foods. Like keto at that point, I was basically eating meat, cheese, coconut oil, and avocados. You know, it was like it was pretty hard to go off the rails with that. And once I did that, it was like, I'm never turning back. I was like, this is the way I want to live for the rest of my life.

You know, obviously things have changed now now that I'm, you know, at my set weight and I don't necessarily feel like I need to do keto all the time. I feel like I can dance around with different things. But the point is, is like, I felt so dang amazing that there was like no cravings whatsoever. It was really, really crazy. But by and large, the ways that I controlled my eating period, I would typically break my fast with something really light. And I didn't always do that. But I realized that I was always getting bloated whenever I would break my fast and eat something big.

I used to kind of like break my fast. And I used to either like have like a chick filet or, you know, something, right? Like it was like I was still eating crap when I was first starting. And that was a terrible disaster. And then a few months in, you know, then I would just sort of like make my own food. Maybe I would make, you know, pasta or whatever. I just didn't really know what I was doing. And then as time went on and I started adding the whole foods in, I was realizing, well, wait a minute.

If I have like a salad right when I break my fast, I feel kind of bloated. And then I was realizing like, okay, if I have fiber right when I break my fast, I feel bloated. Maybe I need to kind of figure out the system here. So I started figuring out that if I just had a little bit of lean protein, I would control my cravings. I would feel satiated right when I broke my fast. And it would give me this massive element of control over the rest of my eating period. Whereas if I had something high in starch and high in carbohydrates right when I broke my fast, I would feel like I would have to be battling these blood sugar roller coasters the rest of the eating period.

And it was like a struggle. And I was actually looking forward to the next day of fasting because I didn't have to deal with the struggle anymore. Because it was actually like it was turmoil. It was like eight hours of hell trying to like combat these cravings. Then I realized, oh, if I just have like a six or seven ounce chicken breast or even a protein shake right when I break my fast, I'm not craving crazy amounts of things. So then I can have a lot more control. So the influence of sort of blood sugar and your knowledge around that played a huge role in how you

actually felt and your ability to be compliant with fasting. Yes. And I had a knowledge of blood sugar stuff because when I was overweight, I became clinically diabetic in a short period of time. So, you know, I had sort of the standard operating procedure sort of thing that they would give you and you get diagnosed with technically the diabetes. I was 144 milligram decedaliter. So I was definitely in the diabetic range.

And I made myself that pretty quick. So, you know, I got the handbook, right? Like the little pamphlet the doctors give you when they say you're diabetic, you know, not needing insulin yet, but needing to like kind of eat the special diet that they said, which was total baloney, by the way. It was just like... What were they telling you to eat? Brown rice instead of white rice.

You know, it's just like, which I don't have a problem with brown rice. But if you're diabetic, like, you shouldn't be like saying add copious amounts of carbohydrate. It just doesn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense to me at the time either. So I did learn the ropes. and I did have to kind of learn some of the research behind that. And I knew how to read a paper.

Just given the work that I was in, I knew how to read a research paper, even though that wasn't where my educational background was in. I just had to learn. So the point is, is that, you know, understanding the blood sugar piece made a big difference. I understood that, like, if I would spike and crash and all this, that I would probably get hungry.

So now after, you know, now three point something million on YouTube and people following you and practicing, what have you seen over the year? of, again, for people who have excess weight, and then we'll get to the next category in group, do you recommend that the 16-8 is the best way for them to get introduced into intermittent fasting if they want to use it as a tool?

I think for getting started, it's the easiest, lowest barrier to entry for people to get familiar with it and become comfortable with it. So I do think that if someone is like fresh off the street, never fasted before, never gone more than 10 or 12 hours without eating, they feel like their face is going to fall off.

If they fast longer than 12 hours, then yes, I think starting with 16 hours is a great place to start because arguably the benefits don't really start kicking in until 15, 16 hours anyway. But at least if they get to 16 hours, they prove to themselves that they can get to that point. And it doesn't take long before people do that and say, oh, I can go longer, should I go longer? So although I don't think that we should be doing 16-8 every day for extended periods of time and I can explain why, I do think that it's a great entry point for people.

Yeah, could you explain why? Yeah. You know, at the risk of, you know, you end up putting yourself in the same category as basic caloric restriction. Not saying that intermittent fasting is not caloric restriction because it most likely is for most people. But even in a lot of studies where things are matched for calories between caloric restriction and intermittent fasting, a lot of times we end up seeing the intermittent fasting group

eating the same amount of calories as caloric restriction group, that's maybe eating three square meals a day, you know, 8 a.m. 2 p.m. 8 p.m. or something. And magically, quote unquote, the intermittent fasting group will have the same amount of weight loss, but have better biomarkers. They'll have better glucose, better HPA1C, better inflammatory markers. Like, how do you explain that other than the fact that maybe there is some extra benefit to abstaining from food for extended periods of time? Not denying the fact that caloric restriction was still at play, it's just how are you going about that caloric restriction? Intermitt caloric restriction throughout the day by having multiple meals or caloric restriction in a big, nice bolus of not eating

for 16 hours. Maybe that's activating more of the processes, right? The point is, is that if you just do that every single day, eventually your body gets accustomed to that and it becomes the norm. And then it's not really different anymore. Then it's fasting does need to be looked at with the lens of it being a hormetic stressor, which means that fasting probably works so well because it is such a shock to the system. It is so different. And it's so different from what most people do for the entirety of their lives that they get a lot of benefits, especially in the beginning. But you find that people that do 16-8 every single day for years, they feel great, they love it, but maybe their weight loss plateaus. So if it works for a lifestyle and you just enjoy how you feel but you're not trying to do

anything else, then by all means, don't change it. But if you've reached this plateau, which most people do, it's probably because your basal metabolic rate has adjusted just because it does. Your metabolism is going to adjust the amount of calories that you take in. And if you are doing 16-8 every day and just eating the same amount of calories roughly, but the only difference is you're skipping breakfast, your body's going to adjust to that. And the benefits of fasting start to kind of diminish. So I typically recommend, like especially once you've been doing it for a while, shift it up to slightly longer fasts a little less frequently. You know, try doing an 18 or 20 hour fast three days per week.

That's more like what I do these days. That way it remains a shock to my system. That way it remains the quote unquote stressor that I want it to be where it doesn't become just the norm. Going back to people plateauing is also one of the things that you were hinting at, especially in this world where even wellness products have become, you know, hyper palatable. and there's all these like great treats and keto treats and other things that are out there

is that if somebody is plateauing one reason could be that as you mentioned you know they need a different stress around their body but also that people are really bad in general about tracking how many calories or understanding how many calories they're eating so that if somebody says kind of like you were saying hey I've tried everything and intermittent fasting is the only thing that worked for me there's also stories that I hear about hey I've been doing intermittent fasting and it worked great in the beginning and that kind of stopped working. Could one of the things that people have to look at be, hey, are you just still over consuming on calories even though you're practicing intermittent fasting? Yes, a million percent. And that ends up being a lot of the issue. You know, it's, I usually say that's

the first thing that people should look at. I mean, before, before trying to adjust anything else or play with fasting length and things like that, just take a minute and take a few days in log and just see. I mean, you don't have to do it for the rest of your life. I know it's unrealistic to track for lot of people, but you know, you can use an app for a little bit and just see where you are. And you might find that, well, shoot, I'm eating more with intermittent fasting than I am with, you know, regular caloric restriction, especially when people start combining keto with fasting because as much as I love keto, we've got to remember that fats are very calorically dense. And it's very easy to overeat on keto.

And there's these misnobers out there that like because you're doing keto, you're granted all this amnesty from calories. That is not the truth. like it still matters and fats store very easily as fat common kind of misconception is that fat burns fat that's put out there as sort of a like a colloquialism like eat fat to burn fat and i understand where that's coming from i've even said it myself but that's not literal truth like fat doesn't burn fat fat stores as fat quite easily because it doesn't have to go through different enzymatic processes to store as adipose tissue so when you take someone that's doing

like a higher fat diet along with intermittent fasting and they've got a compressed eating window, like there's a good chance they're just adding in way too many calories, particularly as fat during that period of time. And next thing you know, they're like, oh, shoot, I'm eating 3,500 calories. Yeah, no wonder you're gaining weight. So we do need to kind of check ourselves with that. You know, there's good apps like as much as, you know, Lane Norton is kind of an opponent of fasting in many ways. Like he's also created, you know, he's got his like carbon app, which I think is great. It's not a plug for it. It's just, it kind of algorithmically adjusts based on like your body weight and stuff that's kind of cool so there's

tools out there for people to just be like hey I don't need to track my food forever but I can do it for a week and kind of get a glimpse of where I'm at and literally I mean there's people listening today that have never done that before right so is the basics they need number one it's probably going to be helpful to get some sort of app right you mentioned this app by this gentleman that that's one example or you could use like my fitness pal would that be in the same category yeah my diary is another good one. Yeah. So there's different apps that are out there. So you're going to use that. You probably need some sort of food scale. Is that going to be helpful? Yeah, because that's another thing is like one of the most disappointing things that's ever happened in my life is measuring

what a level tablespoon of peanut butter actually looks like. And so yeah, like, you know, understanding. And I think like occasionally doing that, I've talked about this in my videos before, is that occasionally sounds like I punish myself, but occasionally I will stop. and I will go back to weighing my food and measuring my food for a week or two as maintenance for myself. Because next thing you know, like that two level tablespoons of peanut butter over time, the law of attrition sort of becomes three, becomes four, becomes five, but you still think it's two tablespoons. Then you go back and you're like, oh, shoot. And you actually track, you're like, crap, I've been eating five tablespoons of peanut butter, not two tablespoons.

So I do it just as regular maintenance for myself because you get comfortable. Like, okay, I'm going to have a half a cup of brown rice or I'm going to have a half a cup of sweet potatoes. Well, I mean, not that I arguably, I think you could probably eat a lot of sweet potatoes and get away with it. Not saying you need to like be meticulous about sweet potatoes, but it's just an example.

But you know, you eyeball it. You're like, I know what a half a cup is now. And then that half a cup just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, because visually it's so looks so similar. I mean, there's some great Instagram accounts that are out there. I think there's this woman named Meow Mix, Amanda. Have you ever seen her stuff? I haven't.

She does a really great job of having two, meals right next to each other that she sort of weighed out. We'll link to her her social media and the show notes. And visually, you look at them and you can see like one is slightly bigger, but then the calories on the one that are slightly bigger is like 30% more calories. And that's the difference between, you know, maintenance and gain maybe for somebody who's just eyeballing it and looking at that. And again, calories is not everything, but as you've mentioned, it's going to be part of the equation. So I think doing it at least once, it's not something that I did until last year. And it wasn't for weight loss purposes. In fact, a lot of my life I've probably been,

you know, I grew up vegetarian. I wasn't eating enough protein inside of my diet. Why it was helpful for me, though, to track my calories is that I was over eating a lot on fat. And so I would not find myself hungry for things like protein. And especially because turning 40 last year and adding lean muscle mass was one of my main goals that I wanted to incorporate into my life because I was under-muscled, I would find that the more fat that I would eat, that would sort of crowd out my calories and my hunger for things like protein. So I would see that, oh my gosh, I thought I was putting in like two tablespoons of olive oil in my dressing for my salad, but actually it was like four tablespoons. And when I cut that back and got my protein up,

I started to see my body start to shift in the way that I wanted for my particular goals that were there. So I think it's something that's just good for people to do at least for a short period of time just to get a sense of where things at and is that meal match up with what your goals have. And then generally if you're sticking to a Whole Foods diet, you're going to be in a good position in place. But the tricky part is in particular wellness foods, quote unquote, wellness foods, you go down to Airwine, you go to Whole Foods. you go to Whole Foods, they're so good, the latest snack foods and things. It's just so easy to overeat on that and bump your calories up, even if they're coming from better quality ingredients. Yeah, man, it happens so quick.

Oh, I'm going to let myself have a little handful of chickpeas snacks or something. And you just don't, you know, next thing, it's two handfuls. And it's nuts. Like it just adds up so quick. And you don't need to become orthorexic or obsessive. It's just like keeping a little checks and balances of it. And one of the things that I've learned to do is once you understand that eyeballing aspect a little bit is don't be obsessive over what you eat every day.

You've probably heard me talk about this, but I try to look at my calories more so over the course of like a week. Because with fasting, I don't necessarily try to squeeze in, you know, my maintenance calories with how active I am. Like I usually eat about 3,000 calories a day probably somewhere in there. And it's like on a fasting day, I don't try to squeeze that in. but I might end up getting 1,500 or 2,000 if I'm fasting for 24 hours. I'm not going to try to cram 3,000 calories into a four-hour reading window.

It can happen and it has happened and it does happen, but it's not my norm. But that means the next day I might eat 3,500. You know, if I, so it's some days I'm going to have a little less, some days I'm going to have a little more. So I kind of like look at my diet as like these microscopic sort of cuts and bulks. You know, it's like, okay, well, today my calories are a little higher. Tomorrow they're a little less. What do I net out at at the end of the week? Yeah, no, that's a great approach.

Are there any other, before we go to the person who sort of feels like they're at a good weight, you know, they feel like they're, they want to maintain and they want to think about fasting as more of a longevity aspect. I'd love to get your take on that. Is there any other more dues and don'ts for the person that's trying to use fasting to lose weight and improve body composition? Anything that we didn't get a chance to mention? Yeah, I mean, I would say more on the dues side, I would say, you know, as much as you can kind of add in like the mono-unsaturated fats, the olive oil. all the avocados, things like that. There's some pretty cool new compelling research looking at like a Mediterranean diet combined with fasting.

They're calling it like a Spanish Mediterranean, which is a little more higher protein Mediterranean, which is pretty cool. So a higher protein Mediterranean diet combined with fasting seems to be a very good recipe for insulin resistance for potentially diabetes. So really cool stuff there. So what does that look like? That's going to be a little bit more in the way of like lean chicken, maybe some fish, lean poultry in general.

shellfish, stuff like that, as far as the proteins are concerned. I would say red meat maybe a few times per week. I don't have a problem with red meat. The hard part with red meat is just the fat content. So it's like with Mediterranean, I try to get less fat from saturated fat and more fat from mono-unsaturated, occasional polyunsaturated from the right sources. So I try not to, I shouldn't say I limit my saturated fat, but I try not to add more of it, if that makes sense.

And then as far as like the vegetables are concerned, it's like just go to town. on vegetables. I know some people disagree with that. I know there's all kinds of different walks of life on social media. That's totally cool. Do what works for you. I come from the school of thought that we get a lot of polyphenols and a lot of really awesome things from deep leafy greens. I think the biggest thing is that we need to pay attention to is we should be cooking them. I don't know if having them raw is the best thing. When you look at the phytic acid, when you look at the oxalids, all these lectins and conversations that people have about that are valid conversations, but a lot of them go out the window when these things are cooked.

that's the bottom line. So it's like we break down those. So it's kind of a moot point. So cook your vegetables, eat a lot of them. And then, you know, nuts and seeds. I try to limit my nut intake with the exception of like macadamia nuts. I do have a lot of macadamia nuts, have an occasional almonds, Brazil nuts. I don't mind seeds. I like good seeds like, you know, straight up pumpkin seeds are delicious and good sources zinc and fiber. So that's kind of what a Mediterranean looks like and really adding those fats in from the mono unsaturated sources. So lots of olive oil. Olive oil's got so many tremendous benefits when it comes down to insulin sensitivity and whatnot. So is it going to help you burn fat more?

Possibly because, you know, you're able to, one of the things like, just like you mentioned with that Instagram account, it's like if you take a look at two rib eye steaks and they're the exact same equal weight, well, one ribby steak might have 200 more calories than the other ribby steak just simply by the marbling of fat that's different between the two. And that's what kind of sketches me out. It's not that I don't love a delicious ribai. Like, I love a good delicious ribai. But it's really hard for me to ascertain the calorie count with it.

So if I'm really trying to control things a little bit more, it makes more sense to have leaner meats. So I know I went off in a tangent there, but that's like how I would say I'd like to eat with intermittent fasting. You know, sweet potatoes as my carb sources, a lot of the time, occasional brown rice. I'm not a big grain guy. Lots of fruit, you know, mainly berries, things like that. So those are the kind of foods you should be adding into your intermittent fasting lifestyle. The things that I think you should avoid, I don't think you should ever break a fast with high amounts of carbohydrates. I don't think you should ever break a fast with high amounts of saturated fat.

I think those are pretty hard on the gut. You might want to reconsider that. You know, opt just for the protein and then kind of go from there. I also think as far as, like, you know, a don't, like just try to keep track of, you know, cutting off the food a little bit before bed, maybe a couple hours before bed. If you're skipping breakfast, it's easy to stack your calories really close to dinner, which can tremendously impact your sleep. So I would recommend frontloading your calories towards the early part of your eating window and then sort of trickling off as the rest of the day goes on. Have you noticed any differences when it comes to genders and fasting? That's a big topic on YouTube.

And I've even had people come on my channel talking about their take on sort of how women need to fast different. What is your thoughts on that subject? Yeah. I think men probably don't need to adjust. a lot because the hormones are fairly static women. Yeah, I don't know, I don't think they need to adjust, but I think they might find that, you know, if they are more so in the more estrogen dominant phase of their cycle, then they can usually get away with fasting and feel more comfortable like it's a little easier to fast. That being said, when they're in the more progesterone

dominant phase of their cycle towards their actual period and their menstrual cycle, it's recommended that they don't fast as much then. However, it's recommended they don't fast because it can be more difficult. I don't always think that that's the answer. I don't think that fasting when it's easy is always the best time to be fasting. Sometimes fasting when it's difficult is when you get the best result. I'm not talking from fat loss. I'm talking from metabolic health. Remember that when you are in your progesterone phase, when you're in your, having your period, you end up having a lot more insulin resistance that naturally happens, higher levels of glucose, as a preservation system to keep glucose high because you are losing blood. So you have a level of insulin resistance that

occurs to keep blood glucose higher because some women lose a fair bit of blood. Some lose more than others, but either way, you're losing glucose. And the body's job is to really, the liver's job, is to really regulate that glucose a lot. So as a result, certain levels of insulin resistance happen. if you fast during that time, you can kind of help combat some of that a little bit, but you also can help combat some of the cravings that happened during that phase. Because during those progesterone phases, that's when the chocolate cravings come in. That's when all the junk food cravings come in. And fasting might actually help you get through that a little bit easier.

So I don't think there's a right and a wrong time to fast. I just think it's like, you know, choose what works best for you. Throughout that estrogen phase, it's going to be easier to fast. But throughout the progesterone phase, you might get more actual. benefit. That's great. Thank you for that breakdown. I want to pivot over from that one category, which we've been putting a lot of attention on, which is also part of your story, people who have extra weight that they want to lose, they want to improve their body composition. And they also want to improve their metabolic numbers as well, too, which you talked about that. And we'll link

to your great video that you did. Now, I want to go to this category of individuals who are from a weight standpoint. They're at a place of maintenance. And they're starting to hear a lot of the really great conversations about the importance of muscle mass as we get older and how muscle is the organ of longevity. And they want to incorporate fasting from longevity purpose and a weight, maybe maintenance purpose, but they don't want to sacrifice all these gains that they had to struggle to make, especially I see this a lot in the category of women that are older that might be at a good weight or at maybe even slightly under underweight. What is your approach and recommendations for people that find themselves in that category if they still want to get the benefits of fasting and how they

should and shouldn't incorporate into their schedule? Yeah. I mean, as far as muscle is concerned, the number one priority is going to be making sure that you're still resistance training, whether you're fasting or not. You know, it's, I think it was Don Lehman, who's just one, really the godfather of protein research, like way back when, like he really knows his stuff. he had made a comment that was very interesting. He still believes that like 75% or so of maintaining and building muscle comes from the stimulus, not just the protein. So it's 75% roughly we could say that's the battle.

So that's the importance is keeping the tension on the muscle working out. So a lot of people when they intermittent fast, they say, well, I'm fasting so I don't want to work out because I'm going to break down muscle. That's kind of old school notions. Like when we work out, we're not quote unquote breaking down muscle. quite literally like that. There's muscle protein breakdown, but it's quickly recouped

through muscle protein synthesis. What does end up happening is it serves as a reminder to the body that that muscle is important for survival. So if you've gone 16, 17 hours without food, your body is going to say, like whatever's happening at that point in time is very critical for survival.

Like if you're moving your muscles, your body's going to say, oh, shoot, clearly this is important. So these muscles are deemed relevant for survival. The body's not going to break down something that it sees as very relevant, right? So it's very important, like even during your fast, it doesn't have to be a brutal workout, but work out. Keep resistance going. Keep stimulation on the muscle so your body doesn't break it down. And then, of course, the other side of this is making sure you get adequate amounts

of protein during your eating period. That's a very important thing, prioritizing it. Like, if that means that you have to 86 the avocado, or that means you got to get rid of the carbohydrates in this particular meal to accommodate the protein, then so be it. That's the responsibility you take on because if you want to maintain that muscle, you've got to get the protein in. It's that simple. Anything that you see that throws, like, do you see in that category again, of people who are sort of maintaining weight or, you know, they don't want to, like, lose weight. That's not a primary goal of theirs.

Are there besides, like, just over fasting, do you see any other mistakes that they're making when it comes to intermittent fasting? Just as far as, like, for maintenance in general? Yeah, maintenance in general, where they're doing it primarily for longevity purposes, they might read this headline or see this person talking about it or going back to your earlier conversation, they have seen some of these sensational claims that are out there by people that they look up to in the health industry. So they think naturally like a lot of things, hey, this is good. Well, more is better. You know, let me incorporate more of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

I just had Peter Atia in my studio last week and we were talking about this where like some of the mistakes that people make is just that more is better. So they start doing a lot of prolonged fasting, which I think prolonged fasting has benefits for like telomeres and for, you know, NAD and a number of different things as far as longevity is concerned. But sometimes we forget to look at the big picture. Sometimes we like we get so granular with like these cellular processes that we look at how important, forget how important muscle mass is. So if you're doing extremely long fasts all the time, like Peter mentioned he was doing like

a three or four day fast once a month. That's a lot. And he realized, wait a minute. I'm actually losing muscle. And whatever cellular benefit that I might be getting from a mitochondrial standpoint is that being overridden by the fact that I'm losing so much muscle. Because a lot of the benefit we get from fasting from a longevity perspective anyway is from a mitochondrial angle.

We benefit our mitochondria. We improve mitochondrial biogenesis. We create more mitochondria. We create our mitochondria to be stronger and more efficient. So they're better at creating energy with less stress and less exhaust. less reactive oxygen species, less oxidative stress, less inflammation. Okay, so that's all very, very important. And that's the whole reason we try to for a longevity perspective, from a longevity perspective.

But we have to remember that the muscle is the biggest house of mitochondria. Like the more muscle mass you have, the more mitochondria you have. So in an effort to improve our mitochondria, if we're sacrificing the house in the first place, It's like saying like I have a, right now I have a 50 bedroom house that's stacked full of mitochondria. But I'm going to reduce that down to a 10 bedroom house that can only hold so much mitochondria. However, that mitochondria is going to be 10% better. It's still better to have a 50 bedroom house with a ton of mitochondria that are operating at 90% capacity than a 10 bedroom house with 100% capacity. So we have to find that balance.

How much do we fast before we start losing muscle? And that's like that sweet spot seems to be for me like 24-hour fasts occasionally. You know, 24-hour fast every couple weeks or something like that in addition to what I'm already doing. You know, do the occasional longer fast because they have their benefit, but not at the mercy of my muscle. Yeah. And it goes back to that idea that you were sharing previously, which is that you're also not going to get the best results if you're not incorporating some aspect of strength training on a regular basis. What is your recommendation when it comes to telling your audience about exercise and then also strength training as a component?

What is the minimum viable dose that people should be incorporating? Yeah, it's an absolute bare minimum is two days a week. Two days? That's like two days a week, a full body resistance training is like bare minimum. I think three is gold standard. I think when you get into four, you're starting to get into like, you know, recreational territory where you're like more like, okay, I'm trying to get more body composition benefit and things like that. Three is like the gold standard for health, like being three full body workouts where you're hitting

you know, two to three sets per body part each time you go into the gym. You know, I'm going to go and I'm going to do two or three sets of squats. Then I'm going to do two or three sets of deadlifts. Then I'm going to go do two or three sets of bench press. Like just touching every body part three times per week, not so much to the point where you're crippling yourself, but enough to where you're stimulating. You've been working out since you were in high school. For a lot of people, they're just getting that sort of message now and they might find themselves in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. What is the best place for people to get started if they're thinking about like, okay, I'm hearing all this great information about strength training, just like I got convinced about fasting being a really

powerful tool. Is there a way that you found for your subscribers of people that are following you, that are looking to get started? Have you found better ways? Because it's tough for people who haven't done it before and it's intimidating for a lot of them and they're looking for how do I you know what are some of the beginning first steps that I could be taking yeah I think the biggest step that people can make is I mean if you just focus on compound movements it takes a lot of the just confusion out of everything what I mean by that is big multi joint movements you know squats simple deadlifts shoulder press bench press things where you're moving at more than one articulation you know you're not just moving sitting there doing bicep curls which granted that's better

than not doing them at all. But I think that people that are just getting started, just being able to move the full body as much as possible, it gets you the most bang for the buck. And it's the lowest barrier to entry and it's the least equipment barrier. You know, I think that my world would have been totally different if I had like a home gym when I was maybe overweight before. Because once I became overweight, it was a huge hurdle for me to go to a gym. Like I was pretty embarrassed, right especially being someone that worked out in high school and then took some time off going back to the gym like it sucked like i didn't like it i felt like people were looking at me it just kind of sucks i know a lot of people feel that way and that's a really important thing but the other side of that

equation is that if people have a home gym we know what that looks like a lot of times it ends up you know that stationary bike becomes a coat hanger or a place to hang your clothes and so that becomes a problem too so you really have to analyze like what motivates you and what deep motivates you? Are you motivated by going to a gym or is that an encumbrance to your day? Because I'll tell you, you can get by with a set of adjustable dumbbells just fine. You can do goblet squats where you hold a dumbbell up at your chest, you know, and just squat up and down. Resistance training doesn't need to be a bodybuilding routine. It's putting tension on the muscles and you can do that with a couple of dumbbells. You don't need to have anything crazy. And then once you feel like you've got a base and you're

like getting some enjoyment out of it, you know, then start, then join the gym. But But the gym culture sucks, man. Like, I, as I've gotten older, like, I've realized that, like, I don't like the gym culture. Like, I don't like the, I like working out at home where I can be experimental and try things that I would otherwise feel awkward at the gym doing. I feel comfortable if I screw up. I feel comfortable not going heavy because I know what I'm doing for my body. Whereas, especially with men, that becomes a very big problem because we all have egos and we all want to start lifting more and we get competitive. Even if we're not trying to be bodybuilders, it's just that that ego takes over.

And then women feel threatened in gyms because like it's a meat market a lot of the time. Like it sucks. Like my wife doesn't like to go to him. She doesn't like to go without me. So it's like that she hates it. She's like, oh, we'll only go with me. So and I know I can empathize. Like that sucks.

So I think that's such a bummer that that exists. And then classes are intimidating. Like I still to this day don't like going to classes because I'm such like a results oriented person that I like get depressed if I don't win. And I know that sounds bad and kind of funny, but it's also real. like then it's like, then it's like, I'd rather just not do it. So I'm a huge advocate for just having some equipment at home and just getting it done in 20, 30 minutes and just getting on with your day. Yeah, and especially if you're new to it, you know, finding maybe some sort of virtual coach or something that could work with you.

I found that that was very helpful for me. Like, I didn't even know where to begin in the process. And I started with at that time, I'm doing working with a different group now. But I started with this, you know, on, you know, no formal relationship with them or anything. But I just did these TB12 workouts. Tom Brady's, you know, band resistant workouts and they had these virtual coaches. And that was really helpful because I was like, okay, should I do this? Should I do this?

Should I do that? Should I look up a YouTube workout and do it that way? And I didn't grow up. You know, I played sports, soccer, tennis, things like that. But I wasn't going to the gym on a regular basis. So even some pointers took a lot of the pressure off of like, okay, I don't know what to do here. And that was helpful enough for me to get started on my journey. Totally, man.

Yeah, it works well. I mean, just having the accountability too. When I first reached out to you, and I'd have been following your work for some time, And I said, you know, I'd love to have you on the podcast. One of the things that I linked to that I wanted to talk about was, you know, the headlines when it comes to fasting can swing from one extreme to another. And there was a study that I sent you that came out recently. This is a few months ago now since I, you know, first reached out. But it was talking about how I don't remember exactly, but it was like fasting, there was no benefit for fasting.

We were chatting about it earlier. Do you remember which one it was? Yeah, it's a can't remember where it was. was published, but yeah, it was basically saying that intermittent fasting has no additional benefit, you know, over caloric restriction or something like that. It was something like, basically there's no, but the way that they, do you to pause or not? No, no, you can do. But the, yeah, the premise of the study was fairly even keeled. It was how it was sensationalized and the multiple media outlets that took it over that sensationalized the headlines to literally

say things like intermittent fasting has no benefit. Yeah, and they were saying, just to make it clear. They were saying for the group that did intermittent fasting versus the group that just did calorie restriction, the headlines were intermittent fasting does not make a difference when it comes to weight loss. And I sent it to you because I even think I saw a video that you had made at that time period. This would be a great thing to discuss. So talk about that, but also talk about the larger sort of ecosystem around the research and the headlines around fasting because people are trying to figure out they finally get excited to maybe try something, but then they see something that discourages them away from it, right?

Which is not necessarily bad, but just at least a lot of people feeling confused about it. So do you want to chat about that study? Yeah. And then talk a little bit more about the larger context around, you know, the total body of research around intermittent fasting. Yeah. So that particular study, when you actually look at the data with it, what's funny is Alan Aragon was part of that study.

And Alan Aragon was on my channel. And when he came on my channel talking about that study, he was a lot of, he was actually thrilled to mention that, hey, like, I was kind of wrong. Intermittent fasting actually does work. And I'm like, whoa, wait, you're telling me that this study says it works? It's like, yeah, that was like the whole point. It was like, we were saying that it works just as well as caloric restriction. I'm like, that's so funny how it got twisted in the media to make it sound like intermittent fasting doesn't have benefit. And he's like, well, no, actually, we demonstrated that it actually does have benefit. And we found it to be about the same as caloric restriction. So it's a

glass half full versus glass half empty thing, right? Essentially, the study was actually kind of unbiased. The study itself wasn't too bad. There were some flaws for sure, like self-reported stuff, like where you're just expecting people to know how many calories they're eating and like that can always be a problem. There's a lot of reverse causation in it. I shouldn't say a lot. There were some forms of reverse causation that I could have pointed out like where they're

basically saying people, they had them fast for X amount of time, but you're not necessarily taking into account like their lifestyle beforehand. So you're only measuring markers based upon like the period of time in which they're fasting, which can be like very incorrect. Say, hey, we're going to take these people have them intermittent fast for three months, but you're not taking into account like their lifestyle before that and like then taking a snapshot of their biomarkers and saying that this. But what the main part of the study was like a big systematic review where they were just looking at multiple studies. And the problem, the biggest problem with that, is that they deemed intermittent fasting as 12 hours. And that was the biggest glaring problem

was they were trying to say like, oh, well, there's no benefit to intermittent fasting versus caloric restriction, which again, even if that was what the headline said, I'd be fine with that. Because, you know, then I think people can ascertain their own result there. They can say like, oh, cool, well, it's not better. It's not worse. I choose fasting. Then it's like even. It's like, hey, man, here's two options that are totally viable that work perfectly well. choose the one that's more alluring to you. Okay, I'll choose fasting because I like it. But instead, it gets twisted around, right? So, but, comma, what they said is that this is not, they said 12 hours is intermittent fasting. So they're like, looked at people that were eating 12 hour eating window,

12 hour fasting window. I'm like, that's not fasting. That's like normal life for a lot of people. Like a lot of people stop eating at seven and then don't eat again until seven. Like, that's not fasting. Fat we need, if we're going to address fasting and we're going to, actually break this down, we need to look at actual fasting. So what it appears is that studies were gathered to kind of compile a narrative that possibly wanted to be construed to level the playing field or it was just complete, just, I don't know, just being completely naive, right? So I don't think the study, I want to believe that the study didn't have any malintent. But where the malintent comes in is just the tribalism within the diet community.

release and social media and the media outlets because and I can't pick sides either because that same study was published out on Fox. It was published out on CNN. It was published out on CNBC. So it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on. They were all guilty of sensationalizing that title to make it sound like fasting doesn't work. And I think they saw that this gets a lot of clicks and that's the problem. And then social media, we just have tribalism. We just have diet camps where you have one side that hates fasting, one side that likes fasting. And instead of thoughtfully acknowledging that there's benefits to both things, they just attack each other.

So to get the click, they say, ha, these stupid crazy fasters, like, knew they were bogus. We knew they were all wrong. Let's get some clicks by creating content that surrounds this. And it's the most frustrating thing because the only people that lose are good people that are just trying to get started, you know, just trying to get healthy. What would you see, you know, what kind of study would you like to see done in the fasting space? to really sort of drive home a lot of the anecdotal experiences, your own experience, and all the mechanistic actions that you've seen in other studies.

Like, is there a type of study that you'd love to see done in the future? Yeah. I mean, in the ideal world, being able to like do a longer term metabolic ward study, but you can't do that. That's not humane. That's not ethical. You can't put humans in a metabolic ward for 10 years, you know. So that's what's really tough is you can only look at rodent model stuff for that.

So that's the ideal situation is to be able to like, yeah, let's match for calories. let's, you know, do that, but that's clearly not going to work. So, you know, the next best thing is I do think that we need to craft these studies a little bit better because systematic reviews are great and meta-analyses are great. But then you're at the mercy of all these different flaws within each of these studies. And then you're just, you're just compiling just a lot of data and you're, I don't know, you're just left with a mess. So I do think that if we were able to accurately match for calories, but accurately, like, adjust for BMI. So what I mean by that is a lot of these studies that look at fasting and look at

caloric restriction, they don't always adjust A for BMI, they don't adjust for lean body mass. They don't adjust for fat mass. So they look at weight loss. But we need to be looking at lean body mass, but we need to also be looking at inflammation. We need to also be looking at HPA1C. We need to be looking at glucose. And we need to be able to acknowledge changes in glucose and changes in HBA1C and inflammation as very important things. Right now, a lot of times they're sort of off to the side,

you know, and only people that know what they're looking at are going to find those in the studies. So it would be nice to also see like, okay, let's look at overweight people. Let's look at metabolically unhealthy people. Let's look at healthy people. Let's look at active people. And maybe we should be dividing these results into different cohorts because intermittent fasting is tremendously advantageous for people that are overweight and metabolically unhealthy. But maybe it's not as effective for people that are already lean. And if we had that nuance there, I think people would have a lot more respect for what's coming out with these papers. Be like, oh, well, you're not trying to group lean results into overweight results.

You know, you keep them separate, if that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Now, for the person who's listening today that is not the person that's going through all the papers like you and your team are, are there any guidance that you want to give them about some of the more sensational claims that are out there, fasting so that they could be a better student of sort of being, you know, having their skeptical hat on of understanding that middle ground, that middle ground that you try to highlight, which is like, hey, intermittent fasting can be a powerful tool in the toolbox. And it doesn't mean that it's this magic bullet for everything. So are there any sorts of claims that you've seen out there that you

want to highlight that, you know, you might want to get people to put their slightly more skeptical hat on and say, hey, until we have more evidence, you know, be wary of people saying that intermittent fasting can do X, Y, or Z. Yeah, I think anyone that says that fasting is magically going to make you live longer, I think you should be skeptical of that. I think that, like, indirectly, it might through caloric restriction, through lots of things, but that gets the, that's one that gets touted all the time. Like, okay, the other piece is you got to be careful with, well, okay, there is some evidence with fasting and cancer, but we also have to be really careful with how that content goes out there. And with that, I recommend turning to people that kind of know what they're talking

about, the Volta Longos, the people like that that really know that I wouldn't listen to an influencer ever when it comes to cancer talk unless they are credentialed in that field. I just think that cancer specifically, like, because there are cancers that grow and thrive glycolytically, but there's also cancers that thrive on lipids. So there's a lot of like, I know the keto community will be like, well, the answer to solving cancer is, uh, is cutting out carbs. That's not true because there are some, some fats that fuel cancers. And cancer is a very complex thing. So when you look at fasting and cancer, like, you just have to make sure the content you're looking at it is looking at both sides. So just be very wary there. It doesn't mean that you, uh, don't trust it, but just look at it with a lot

of scrutiny and ask questions. You know, the other piece is, like, when you're looking at this kind of content, like, don't be afraid to ask questions, you know, challenge and challenge in a respectful way. If people get defensive based upon your challenging, it's usually a sign that, you know, maybe they're not confident in what they're actually putting out there, which, you know, you got to be careful with. Also, like anyone that's talking about, it's tough because autophagy is important. But we have to also respect that, like I said, in the very beginning of this podcast,

it comes from different avenues too. So if people try to tell you that fasting is the only way to get autophagy and that's this magical thing, that's a flat out lie because it's happening all the time just at different degrees. Also, you know, with fasting, anyone that's kind of taking a, taking this stance that it's a secret, right? It's the best thing. Like those are the kind of words you always want to look out for. It's like, okay, secret or, you know, anything like that. Because it's not, that implies that they're starting to go down this rabbit hole of this is the only way.

And I think, you know, it's the claims have chilled out a lot. Like they haven't been as bad as they were. Like we used to see them all the time. Like literally like titles like the magic of fasting and things like that. So I think as long as you find content that has nuance and looks at both sides, it's going to be okay. But that being said, you do feel like it was, you know, I won't say magic, but it was like you also are trying to make sure that people understand like this was a crazy powerful tool. And I think that you've done a pretty good job at doing both.

Like, hey, be wary of this. But also, like, I don't want to have you be so wary that you don't understand that fasting can be a really powerful tool for you. Yeah, insanely powerful. And I think the operative word there is tool. Like, I think if you can understand that this is a tool that you apply and you can have multiple tools in your toolbox and that's totally okay. And we need to stop this way of thinking that you could only have one way of doing

things. And we also have to stop this way of like, being afraid of detail and multiple tools. It's, I did a video a while back that broke this down and was like, if I gave you a toolbox and it had a million tools in it or had 500 tools in it, you would be paralyzed because you wouldn't know what tool to use. But if I gave you a toolbox that had 500 tools and I said, here's a toolbox with 500 tools.

But these five tools are the ones that you should use the most. Then all these other tools will have ancillary purposes later on. and it's good to know them all. So it's like if I gave you a toolbox and you had a hammer, a saw, and a drill, sure, you could probably start to build a house. But when you start needing to do the electrical, you're going to need some wire strippers. You're going to need some wire. You're going to need some pliers. You're going to start needing these other little tools that actually build the entire house. So although the big fundamental things like caloric restriction and and understanding energy balance are probably the hammer, the nails, and the saw, and the drill.

You can't build the entire house without having the detail. So we have one side that tells us you need to not be posting so much detail because it's just confusing people. No, it's okay to have tools in your toolbox. You just need to know when you use those specific tools. Yeah, and just so people falling along, that's often the criticism again from more of the traditional camp, again, whether it be energy balance or maybe traditional fitness camp, that their critique of the wellness industry is that there are so many recommendations of things for people to do that, number one, it's hard for them to keep up and then they get confused. And I'm sure that some of that

is warranted based. There's a lot of people putting out content all different sides. But you're saying that we shouldn't throw the baby out with a bathwater, that these tools and the personalization around them, when you understand them, you can see which tools are, are good to take you to the next level, as long as you have the foundational ones that are present. Is that what I'm hearing? Absolutely, man. It's like we can't,

it's so easy to just want to preach what you know without understanding what makes someone else tick. Like, what makes me tick is detail. I need to know what is happening for me to have blind faith. Like, I can't just trust something without understanding how it works. Now, the sort of report. bottle that I get with that is, well, most people don't need to know that detail because that's problematic for them to have so much minutia and so much of that. Okay, that's coming from your

perspective because I've got 3.4 million subscribers that actually appreciate the detail and wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the detail. And it's growing at a pretty good rate. So I might be crazy, but I kind of think that some people are wired that way, that they like the detail. So when someone comes at that and says like, oh, well, you're giving too much detail. or like people just need to understand the basics, there are some people out there that just blindly want to listen to the big basics. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with that. But then there's people that question things. And then there's people that look deep and people that are free thinking a little bit that say, well, wait a minute, no, I don't want to just trust

that it's just calories. I love to think that there's something in that red dye number 40 that's probably not real good and I want to know why. And maybe I'll still eat it, but I still want to know why because that's fair to me and this is a free country last time I checked and I can know what's in my food. You know, you've known so much for your content around intermittent fasting, but I've seen you say on multiple interviews that, you know, the lack of fasting or somebody doing fasting or not doing fasting is one category, but that you often found even for your own story that stress and the presence of chronic stress in our lives is one of the biggest things that deter us out of weight when it comes to our body and body composition and generally make us

feel like crap, is that a fair assessment? Yes, yes. So I'd love to hear, give us your sort of state of the union on stress and why you think that the topic of stress often gets overlooked or is underrated in terms of people paying attention to its impact on them. Yeah, I think it's just been watered down. If we go back to, you know, you're 40, I'm 35, you know, so we're close enough in age. Like, if we think back to like when we were kids, stress was dad's stress from work.

Like, that's just like, you know what I mean? Like, we see stress as like, that's what I remember. It's just like, okay. But I didn't really think about actual stress until I got older and realized like all the different aspects of stress and all the different confounders that come into play there. And it's kind of funny because how we perceive stress makes a big difference too. You're probably familiar with like Angela Duckworth. she she Harvard I can't remember she anyway like her big piece was our perception of stress right even tim ferris has talked about you stress versus distressed sort of in a colloquial fashion however

she talks about it more scientifically whereas like if you take a five-year-old kid that's excited to go to Disneyland tomorrow the stress response in his body physiologically is very similar to me being stressed out about having to file my TPS reports it's like the same stress response in the body but how it's perceived dictates whether that becomes a negative stress or a positive stress or a positive stress And once I understood that, I realized like, wow, like there's really toxic things in my life that are literally toxic. And then there's things that are stressors that are actually adding a benefit. Exercise is a stressor that's giving me a benefit.

But we also all have to understand the hormetic curve, the understanding that as something becomes more and more and more stressful, eventually there's a very sharp drop off where the benefit is no longer. If you go to the gym three days per week and you gently tax your body enough to develop an adaptation with progressive overload, you're going to get stronger, you're going to get better. But if you go to the gym six or seven days a week and you try to max deadlift every single day, you're going to destroy yourself and you're probably going to get sick. You're probably going to feel like crap.

You're never going to recover. That is a perfect indicator of that is too much stress. So adequate amounts of stress, the occasional cold plunge, the occasional sauna, the occasional workout, the occasional mental stress, that's fine. But when it starts becoming chronic, that is when it's unnatural and problematic. we face it but we don't listen to it because it's just we're all stressed so it's just norm like okay but we're all miserable so just because we're all stressed and just because we're all dealing with the same thing doesn't mean that it's okay and also meditation is not cool like people you know there's

only like us weirdos that are like you know into it right and you're again you're a woo-woo witch doctor fasting is magical kind of guy if you talk about meditation right so it's just we have to make it normal to make mindfulness practices. We have to make it more normal. And that's a long process. It stresses the biggest killer. We just don't realize it. Like it truly is cancer, disease, oxidative stress, DNA damage, like early death, like car accidents. Everything comes right back to stress, doesn't it? Like sometimes there's accidental death, but like you're stressed out, like divorce, all these things. Dude, it's the ultimate life. ruiner, but we're so focused on that peanut being bad that we forget about this big overarching

piece. When you were on your way to your heaviest weight at the time, what were some of the biggest aspects of chronic stress that were really making it even more complicated for you to feel healthy and look healthy? Yeah. I mean, for one, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. That was stressful for me. So it was like stress in the background.

But also, like, I was in a high stress, like very black tie environment in the healthcare world where like I felt like, you know, if I wasn't performing, I wasn't worthy, I felt like I constantly had to, well, I mean, I had to literally had to perform to make money. So it's like if a deal didn't close, then, you know, what are people going to think of me? You know, the stressors of being a young, young man and trying to like make money and be the best that I can be, live the American dream. Like that is stressful in and of itself, right? Then, factor in my entire upbringing, my childhood and how I was brought up to be like, I'm not worthy if I don't do these things. If I, if I'm not running, if I'm not achieving a certain level of success, if I'm not this, then I'm not a worthy person and I'm not, I don't get the love of my parents. That's the kind of trauma that other people face too, that they don't realize changes the lens in which they look at their stressors. Like what would normally be something that we strive for and try to achieve greatness with becomes a stressor where it should be something pleasurable and fun that we're working towards. But the lens in which we look at that based upon our

childhood traumas and our past changes everything. So it's like your perception of stress, my perception of stress could be entirely different. We might have stressors in different ways. But the bottom line is that they're still impacting our physiology in a really bad way. How did you become aware that there was these background stories that were shaping a lot of your perception. And you mentioned one of them, which is, if I don't do X, I'm not good enough and maybe I won't be loved. When did you first become aware of that? And how did you start to sort of unwinded and realize like, okay, that's not true. That's just a version of story that I've told myself based on my life experiences. Yeah. I mean, part of it came from just randomly starting meditating about 10 years ago.

I didn't really start meditating a lot until after I was well into my weight loss. journey. And a lot of it came to me with that. It came to like really being like, I had this like visualization practice that maybe it's right or wrong. I don't know. But I always still like, have you ever thought how weird it is, how just weird the past is that like when we think about it, our brain is just like memory in a computer. Like the past literally doesn't exist. It's literally what we have just the projection in our brain. And like it's sometimes I trip myself out when I think about that because I'm just like it literally doesn't exist. Like it's literally the past is what we interpret it, what is fragmented in our brain as an electrical signal

that is memory. It is so flipping weird and I could get lost in that forever. And when I kind of thought that and I realized that, I'm like, it doesn't even exist. All that matters right now. It's like Rafiki in the Lion King when he like hits Simba with a stick. And he's like, how, why did you do that? He goes, it doesn't matter. It's in the past. I don't know if you remember that line. And it's, I love that movie growing up. And that is such a powerful thing because it's like it doesn't. Like, it's just all that matters is what's right here, right now. So I started realizing that, well, the past doesn't matter and I can move forward. But then I had kids.

And then it all changed because then I realized that like in an effort to not generationally parent, not treat my children like I was treated growing up, I needed to reflect and I needed to understand. So thus began, you know, a long journey of therapy and understanding like what makes me tick. and it's been a lot of unpacking over the years to understand like, okay, my childhood wasn't normal. I'm not going to be a victim, but I'm going to understand that this is my operating system. And although I'm successful, I wouldn't consider myself the happiest person in the world. At this moment, you're saying? Oh, absolutely.

You know, it's like, and I talk with Lewis Howes about this. It's just like, you know, he does that thing like, what are you on a scale of one to ten with your level of self-love? And I was like a six. Yeah, I remember that. Yep. And, you know, he says that that's not uncommon, like with, you know, people that have a level of success or has he calls greatness. Because you're constantly striving for something. And it doesn't necessarily make you happy. But on the other side of the coin, it's like, if you don't overcome adversity, are you going to really have success?

But what is success? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to make money? What does define it, right? But I realize that, like, there was a lot of pain in my childhood and been a lonely life as a result of that. and I don't want my kids to have to go through that. Like I probably, despite all the healthy things that I do now on the outside, I hope that I didn't take a lot of years off my life with how stressed I was and how much I've spent in turmoil as a result of having a stressful childhood and how I look at the world in such a stressful way. I don't want my kids to do that.

I want my kids to live a long life where they're happy and I want them to do what makes them happy. And that's not to say that I don't love what I do. Like, I love what I do. I don't think there's another job I would rather have. But it's that constant need for more and more and more and success and, you know, just chasing, right? And that's just been programmed into you. So understanding that was very, very important for me to make sure that I don't generationally parent my kids.

So it's been a long, hard look at myself over the last like four or five years. In that process and taking that long, hard look, was there anything in? you know, if you don't feel comfortable talking about it, no worries. But was there anything that you had to forgive yourself for or like have some compassion towards yourself that in the past, you did the best that you knew how in that moment? Yeah, you know, I'd say I was pretty addicted to benzodiazepans to like Valium and to Xanax, you know, when I was especially overweight. And I held that really held myself to that like for a lot of my life.

Like, it was really difficult for me because I grew up thinking that, like, if you're addicted to something, you're a total piece of crap, you know, and I, but it was like, talk about anxiety. That was my way, that was a coping thing for me. Like, it was just like it started as like a normal prescription turned into exceeding my prescription and then finding other ways to get it from other people to like needing it to function. I was never like this junkie that was like, I mean, you don't usually find that with benzos. Like you don't find people that are like literally junkies for benzos, but they're just like becomes a normal part of life where it's just like, oh, shoot, I feel a little anxious, pop a milligram. Like it's just, you know, so it was like popping multiple

milligrams per day just to get through the work day. And I'm like, you know, but I beat myself up over that for so long to a point where I'm like realizing like nowadays, I look back at that and I did have to forgive myself. I'm like, you were a kid and like you were a kid. Like you were in your early 20s. Like cut yourself some slack. Like you didn't have like a normal upbringing. You were thrown into the world. But where I've always struggled is I don't want to feel like a victim to myself. So I don't want to be like, oh, well, you had a tough life. So it gives you a license to do that. You got to take full ownership. So there's this balance there of giving yourself forgiveness while also not being a victim because I feel like the victim mentality is a terrible mentality to have,

even if it's our yourself. Oh, my circumstances sucked. So it gives me a license to do this. Even subconsciously and retroactively, give me a license to do that. No, F that. You take ownership. That was a stupid move. Would I have done it today? No. Did I have circumstances that led me there and it was a coping mechanism? Yes. And I accept that. But I'm not going to play the game saying that like, oh, my life is hard. So I got addicted to trucks. It's going to be more so like that was the way my life went. I made a bad choice. I've learned from it. Move on. And that's where I stand today. So I do forgive myself. But I have a repeat pattern of not exactly being gentle with myself anyway. Even with how I look at that, right? I'm just, it's almost a checks and balances of punishment and, you know, and, uh, and due time,

right. So still to this day, like, I struggle with that. How do I mean, I probably need to be a little more gentle on myself and not, uh, I don't want to say punish, but not look at things, maybe quite so negatively as I do sometimes, you know, and, and just be a little more gentle on, hey, like life happens. It's okay. Like, you know, you just slipped up. You had chalmain. You can go, you know, get on with your life without fasting for 24 hours afterwards. which is because you ate a bad meal. I don't eat jamming, but it's just an example. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it goes back to this idea, like in all things, we're trying to find those nuances to see the truth in the situation that, hey, listen, this happened. I take ownership of it,

and I don't have to excessively beat myself up. And I think that resonates with a lot of people who are listening today because we all will fall off the wagon in some version of our life towards some goal, fitness goal. Maybe we're trying to start a business. Maybe we're trying to eat better. And it's the falling off is one thing, but it's people repeatedly beating themselves up and going back to these old stories that fulfill this idea of who they had of themselves in the past. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve love. I was never going to make it in the first place. I'm not deserving of a healthier body or a healthier lifestyle. And the more that we can get perspective, meditation was a big part of that for you, whatever that tool is for people.

For me, meditation was a part of that, also reading the work of like Eckart Tolle and present moment awareness and just seeing like, wow, my thoughts are lying to me all the fucking time, right? And they're like popcorn, you know, just because you think a thought doesn't mean that that's you. And when I had those realizations, I started taking my thoughts less seriously and understanding that they could just pop up for all sorts of different reasons. So did I want to choose to believe this thought or not? It also sounds for you that also having kids and seeing that, hey, they're going to make mistakes all the time. How do I want to parent them? And I've seen a lot of people as they've become adults and had kids. I don't have kids yet, but I look forward to this experience, that they are reparenting themselves in that process.

Just the same way that they would want to show up as a parent for their, you know, daughter or their son. They're like, oh, wow, like this is how I talk to a kid about what's right and wrong. This is how I talk to a kid about messing up and doing. doing better. It's a gentle, firm, supportive voice and we learn how to start to talk to ourselves in that same way. It seems like that's been a little bit of a journey for you as well. Yeah, dude. It's massive ownership. And you know, the old saying is like if you, it basically your story will control you if you don't control your story, you know, and it's like you need to take ownership. Like I need to take ownership of all my screw ups, but that doesn't mean that I'm

beating myself up over it. It just means that like that is just that. That is just, that, is that and just because I view that a certain way today and it might deflect my thoughts and my mood a certain way doesn't mean that that's the way it's going to be forever. And I love that popcorn thing. I'm going to use that because it actually feels like I can relate with that where it's like a thought pops up and it's just popcorn. I used to always use the boat, you know, just a boat going down a river. There's a there's a thought. There's a thought. I like the popcorn because that's almost the way it is. It's just like, point, you know, you can be in a good conversation and then a thought comes in and it dictates the entire way that you feel the rest of the day,

simply because of that random thought. And then having understanding of like a little embryonic understanding of neurochemistry and biochemistry in general, understanding how the brain works just makes it all the more peaceful. Because I'm just like, this is just an electrical system that's sometimes, I don't want to say it's out of my control, but it's like sometimes you're going to have neurotransmissions and things that make you feel a certain way. And you realize like actually what's going on in the brain and like I can sit there and think about that in meditation. be like, oh, you know what, it's all good. Like that thought is just something transmitting down its little neural pathway

and doesn't define me as a person. So true. And I want to conclude on this last point. You know, you've talked in a lot of videos and content of yours, which is how much our environment and even the people who we've spent time with plays a role. And obviously, you were in a high stress environment when you were progressing towards your heaviest weight. and that meant certain food choices, that meant hanging out with certain types of people,

with certain types of behavior. We've talked in this podcast before about studies like the Framingham study that have shown that your best friend has more of an influence on your habits in life than even your wife and your kids and, you know, even your parents because we tend to want to match the behaviors of people that we feel like we look up to. What are some things that you would give it? as advice when people are starting to look at their environment and understanding that sometimes it's actually hard to make certain decisions because they are literally around people,

circumstances, and situations that just reinforce bad behavior. How do we begin to break out of that? Yeah. I mean, one of the first things that I had to do, like, I was always stuck in this box where I felt like I couldn't break out of it because I was fabric. this sense of guilt that my wife and my kids would have. This was even recent where if I took time for myself, then I was guilty. I was feeling guilty because I fabricated this box where if I am not home or I'm not spending this time with my wife and kids, then they're going to think

a certain way of me. And it made it so that I was creating a toxic environment for myself because I felt trapped. That's just a simple example in the recent past where I created my own box with that. that time invested in you is making people not love you as much? Yeah, or exactly, because there's a big difference between investing in yourself to, you know, quality over quantity, right? So it's like the dad guilt, the mom guilt. Like I know moms deal with this all the time. And I'll just put that in perspective here because I think it's really important,

especially, you know, I just know with my wife, how she feels that way. It's a little harder to describe as a dad. but moms will they give everything for their kids like and they're underappreciated with that because it's just what they do and it's just mom and then they never get a chance to put that oxygen mask on themselves and they end up creating their own toxic environment as a result of that because the only thing that they have is their kids so you've got these you know maniac five-year-olds like screaming at you that's the closest thing to you you are a product of your environment so you're like you start acting like a like reactive in nature because that's how a toddler is and you can't escape

that. No one understands the guilt that you feel when you want to do something for yourself. You know, you go and you say, okay, I'm going to go get a pedicure. I'm going to go get a manicure and do something to myself, but you feel terribly guilty because that's just like, oh, well, I'm, I'm abandoning my kids. It's a, that is a cycle. And I do think that that is a cycle that leads to divorce in a lot of cases because then it's like the mom just feels like she loses her identity, dad's working, and dad comes home, and then it's just like, and I could see this cycle happening, not that like our marriage was bad. I've been with my wife since high school. There's never anything though, but I can see things happening before they happen, which I think is a benefit

to meditation. Like I think that I can stop, pause for a second, reflect, see what's happening, see where something could be going. And I can see my wife getting stressed and I could see my getting stress and feeling that guilt. So some of the things, you know, that I do is I set boundaries and I take time for myself. And I, that doesn't mean that it's like I take, rather than taking five extra minutes to go do something for myself when I'm on my way home from work or something, I carve out time with the family where I'm like, no, I'm going to go on a trip this weekend and I'm going to do something. And like boundaries have been a very important thing. And I do the same thing for my wife. And I encourage her to do the same thing. Last year, I shipped her to Hawaii for five

days. She was stressed and I was just like, bada boom, here's a ticket. Where am I going? You're going to Hawaii by myself? Yes. You know, so it's like quintessential like, you know, put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Otherwise, you just, you don't, you're going to garner a lot more respect from other people and you're going to create a better environment because you also find in people that you surround yourself with the same things that you look for in yourself. So if you were in a room with 100 people, you would gravitate toward the people that are going to fill a void for you. And if your voids are just so vast because you feel empty inside, then that means that you're going to start selecting the wrong friends because you're going to select the friends to fill a void

that you really could fill yourself. But then you're picking up all their crappy habits and shit habits along with that. So if you take care of yourself, you only need to fill small gaps and it makes you more particular about who you choose as friends, which sounds big. bad, but it's actually very important. Being particular about your groups of friends is probably one of the most important social things that you can do as you get older because your time is limited.

And if the only contrast you have from your family is a shitty friend that makes shitty choices, then what you're bringing back to your family is a shitty person. It's easier said than done because you're going against all these years of psychological buildup where a lot of people feel like they're not deserving

and they don't deserve better people around them or they don't deserve time for themselves, but it is one of the most important undertakings that anybody could take on. Because if you can't make progress in that and prioritize yourself, as you said, put the oxygen mask on, then you start to look for and be susceptible to all these marketing claims that are out there where people are promising you that this thing is going to finally fix this void that you have. And there's obviously, we've talked about an entire interview about the benefits of fasting and different tools and eating health here. And those things work a lot better and we're much more likely to keep them up if we feel

good inside and we're nourishing ourselves from a level of purpose. And the beginning part of that purpose is just carving off enough time to see like what thoughts are ours and what thoughts are just old ideas from a coach, a teacher, maybe a parent who didn't know any better but parented us about. particular way and we have to kind of break through that a little bit. Otherwise, you know, we're constantly looking for that thing that will solve our issue and will constantly be in a deficit in our lives. Totally, man. And there's a season for everything too. That's something that I've come to peace with too. You know, like there are going to be times in my life when I can do

certain things and there's going to be times in my life that it's just not realistic. And I think like someone had mentioned it to me a couple years ago. I think I was as stressing about like I had young kids. I wasn't able to do as much of the stuff I wanted to do anymore. I had to make different sacrifices and that was hard. It's called being a dad. But there's also a season for everything. And sometimes people hold themselves to the same standards they had. Like, you know, my wife, she was a like a professional barrel racer and team pinner and like really big in the rodeo world in high school. But then as life goes on, like there's a ridiculous time commitment with that. and she's had to it's a difference between accepting and actually really living it for a while it was first

it was like a little bit of this like basic acceptance of like I'm never going to get to do that again like and it just would defeat her and it would feel like she lost her identity and then she kind of as she got older with it she just realized there's different seasons for things and that maybe she can do that again as she gets older the kids grow older in the meantime there's different attributes of her love of horses that she gets to enjoy now maybe she gets to connect with the in a different way with the kids and do different things and being able to extract different enjoyment out of things, not being bound to your identity the way it was X number of years ago. So I still look at that kind of stuff now. Sometimes I get disappointed about I can't run a marathon as fast as I did when I was in high school. And I defined myself by that because that was how I got mom's love.

It's okay. Like I have a whole different set of amazing things I get to do now. Now I can bench press 400 pounds. I couldn't do that then. Maybe I like be happy about that, right? It's just there's different. There's a season for things and be okay to change. You know, it's the ability to survive is not about resilience.

It's about the openness to change. I think Charles Darwin said something very similar to that. That's a great reminder. Thomas, this has been fantastic. Is there a place interview that you have done recently, something that you feel is a great next step for people that are watching today on YouTube or listening on audio? Some work that you put out there that is a nice next step after this conversation here,

if they want to follow along with your work. Yeah, I think actually I have a video releasing tomorrow at the time of filming today. That's what I did with Peter Atia, which is really great. And the video is specifically on five things that Peter Atia has changed his mind on in the last five years. Peter Atia is a very esteemed longevity expert and tremendous MD. And I think it's just a great discussion. And it's very pragmatic too. It's like, hey, here's some things that maybe aren't so correct anymore that we should look at differently.

I think it's just a great jumping off point for people that are interested in like the longevity world. Because that's specifically five things in the realm of longevity with that. Awesome. Well, we'll link to that below. And you do a really great job. I want to just acknowledge you for a second because, you know, at the intersection of being able to highlight the benefits of something, fasting is a big thing that you're known about. You've written a book on the topic as well and you've been making videos about it.

but then also help people understand where claims around it might be getting a little bit overblown and they might be missing the meat and potatoes of what really works with this idea. And then also within that, it's natural that being a public figure and putting yourself out there, people are going to have different opinions than you do. And I've seen you do really great at in both solo episodes as well as inviting people on who are critical of you to have an honest discussion about something and say, hey, okay, where did I maybe miss the ball about something or how do we have disagreements to something, but we can have a healthy disagreement around it and say, you know, I feel this way and you feel that way.

And the audience benefits from watching you guys. So I don't know too many people that have done that on a public platform like YouTube that have millions of followers. You see a lot more of people digging down into their trenches, their version and not really leaning into inviting feedback or not willing to have dialogue. And I don't know, you know, you know, everything about your background, but knowing a little bit about it, I got to feel that some of the unique life experiences you had, even if some of them were very tough, puts you in a place and position where you have a level of awareness that you can see things way more 360 than a lot of people. And so just want to acknowledge you as somebody who is in that silent majority of your fans

who probably never reached out or never left a comment on your YouTube page, but we're just watching you. I just got to say that I really appreciate that level of work. You know, you're often people acknowledge you for your level to break things down and explain complex ideas. But I'd say it goes even a step further that you have awareness of even how your ideas exist within the context of what everybody is talking about. And that is a huge feat. I just want to say thank you for your work that you do on that table. That means much more than you might think.

Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks again for coming on. Yeah, you bet.