Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Transforming Your Health into a Competitive Advantage in Business | Ted Ryce

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyStop paying $500/month for 8 different marketing tools. Try GoHighLevel's all-in-one platform free for 14 days → https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelJoin our community of fearless leaders in search of unreasonable outcomes...Want to become a FEARLESS entrepreneur and leader? Go here: https://www.findingpeak.comWatch on YouTube: https://link.ryanhanley.com/youtubeTed RyceWebsite: https://www.legendarylifepodcast.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ted_ryce/Try ZipRecruiter for FREE at: https://ziprecruiter.com/workRyan Hanley sits down with health and fitness expert Ted Ryce to explore the critical transition from your 30s to 40s and how to maintain peak physical and mental performance during the most demanding years of your career.Ted shares his deeply personal story of how health and fitness literally saved his life after a devastating family tragedy, and how he's now dedicated his career to helping high-achieving professionals who find themselves successful but exhausted, looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back.This episode dives deep into the science behind sustainable weight loss, debunks common myths about metabolism and nutrition, and provides actionable strategies for busy professionals who want to optimize their health without sacrificing their career ambitions.Key Topics Covered:Why health is your ultimate competitive advantage in businessThe real science behind weight loss and metabolismDebunking the sugar vs. fat debate with actual researchHow to navigate health challenges during your peak earning yearsThe truth about popular diets (keto, carnivore, low-carb)Practical strategies for the 35-50 demographicThe role of stress, sleep, and recovery in performanceModern health interventions: GLP-1 agonists, TRT, and peptidesWhether you're a driven entrepreneur, executive, or ambitious professional feeling the physical toll of success, this episode provides the roadmap to reclaim your health and energy without compromising your goals.P.S. If you’re frustrated with your personal growth, if you know you’re capable of more but unsure how to unlock the best version of yourself, fill out this form: https://go.findingpeak.com/widget/form/tEeVsIdIkU1FyjxsL5No--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubric Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes. So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubric.com.

That's rubr-b-r-k.com. Testosterone is a symptom of the problem. Clomid, by the way, what it does is it stops this process called aromatization. What is aromatization? It's when testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Guess where that happens in your fat cells. In fact, women need that because, and women who compete in like bodybuilding and natural bodybuilding without drugs, when they get super lean, their estrogen levels drop. The number one thing that's causing issues with testosterone is excess body fat, especially visceral body fat. Guys are so quick to go out and take TRT. If you want to do things the right way, you've got to fix the root cause.

You have to lose the excess body fat. All right, Ted, dude, so excited to have you on the show. These are some of my favorite shows because I would consider myself like a fitness hobbyist. You know, I would never, ever present myself as I know what. what I'm talking about, but I loved to try all kinds of different exercises, routines, I got a cold plunge, I got a sauna, I got, you know, I love, and you know, what's fun is I like the testing part because you find out what works and what doesn't, but I technically don't know anything. So I love when I get people like yourself on here

that I can just pepper what questions and I know the audience loves it too. So thank you so much for your time, my friend. Yeah, happy to be here and I appreciate how you're starting out because I deal with a lot of people who they believe they know a lot. And in many cases, they do. But the way I define how good you are at health and fitness is the real world results. Just like you would say to someone who's giving business advice, like, oh, here's what you need to do with your business. You got to do this. You got to run these ads.

It's like, okay, man, you must have a killer business. Ah, actually, we're struggling. It's like, okay. I don't think I'm going to listen to you then, right? And so I think that's really important. And there are people who, and we can talk about this too, there's a lot of people who get results, but don't even know how they're getting them, like low-carb diet people or carnivore diet people. They're like, oh, carnivore diet changed my life.

It's like, no, you finally got into a calorie deficit. You lost the weight. Your inflammation came down because visceral fat secretes inflammatory chemical. makes you feel horrible, increases, you know, oxidation and stress in your body and all these things. And you lost that visceral fat. And now you're feeling better. But you could have used, you could have even done a vegan diet. Right.

So we can get into all that. You know, you just let me know where you want to start. Yeah. So I'm going to use this as like a personal fitness consulting hour that I get. So I'm just going to pepper. Now, yes. No. Go for it. No, I know the audience loves this particular topic. So our audience and it's a tremendous group. It tends to be men and women who driven ambitious, if you listen to all the crazy

shit on the show and the people I bring on, right, and you stick around, then this is kind of where your head is at. And, you know, I know fitness is a big part for a lot of people. And there's, and I did a poll about six months ago and got a, got some like feedback on the audience. And a lot of our listeners tend to be in like that 35 to 50 range. We do tend to skew more towards men, but we have a lot of females as well. And, you know, people are kind of across the spectrum in their health journey. Like, I didn't get detailed in the question. It was more like, where are you in, where would you classify yourself in your health journey right now? And I'd say it's a very broad spectrum. So, you know, don't feel like you're being too simple or too complex. There's people across the board

that have interest in these topics. So I really want to focus. on the transition in health from 30s to 40s and using that as the construct. One, that's kind of what I just went through. I'm 44 years old. To a lot of the people that I interact with, peers, even some of the founders and stuff that I coach, they're either coming up to that transition, right, which tends to be a moment, or they're kind of, they've made the transition into their 40s and now they're going, hey, I would like to be fit as long as I can.

into this second half of my life. So I'd like to use that as our construct as we talk through this. Because I know your recommendations or ideas for a 22-year-old would be different for a 50-year-old. So we'll kind of use that as our construct as we talk through these things. So first and foremost, you have this quote that I think is fantastic and kind of sets the table for our conversation today, which is success means nothing if you're exhausted, right? I love this because it's right to the point. If you're waking up every day and you feel like crap or you don't have energy or you're just not excited about who you see in the mirror, that sets the tone for the rest of your day.

So one, I'd like maybe you to talk a little bit, just kind of give us some context around your own health journey and where you've come from and kind of where you're, why you've made this your career. And then I want to get into some very specific things and start talking through some things. Yeah, sure. So health and fitness saved my life. Everyone thinks when they meet me, oh, you must have played sports in high school. It must have been a jock, but I wasn't. I was a weed smoking, skateboarding, rock t-shirt wearing kind of guy, right? And when I turned 19, I kind of screwed around in high school, didn't do well. got into college, started really getting into physiology,

and I wanted to study neuroscience. I was in particular, I was super fascinated by it. And then I don't know how deep you want to get into this, but my nine-year-old brother was kidnapped and murdered. And it's like big news, big story in Miami. Anyone who was living in Miami during that time knows my brother's name, Jimmy Rice. Don't look up this story. It's really bad.

but it was a very high profile case. They ended up catching the guy who did it. But when it comes to my story and how that plays into why I chose health and fitness to dedicate my life to, is because during that time, I was like, okay, my life is over, right? I didn't have my parents, like, my parents were very focused on, they got laws passed and they did all this great stuff for missing children in the United States. met with two presidents, et cetera, but I was just falling apart, mentally, emotionally, including physically. And I dropped out of school, didn't know what to do with my life. And I ended up finding

my way into the gym again, because although I was like the skateboarding kind of party guy, I had lifted weights too, and I did martial arts. So I wasn't completely just, you know, I was a skinny, very active kid. I just happened to party and that was kind of my thing. And I found my way back into the gym and that was my path to healing. That was my path to getting back to a place where like, oh, there is a light at the end of the tunnel after this terrible, tragic, horrible story, right? That really devastated my family. and put me in a dark place that took years to come out of. And again, health and fitness was the thing.

And I want to make it relevant to everyone listening because that's a really hard story. Like hopefully nothing like that will even remotely similar to that will ever happen to, I hope. But we all go through hard things, right? Your parent, best case scenario, you have the best childhood in the world, you're going to watch your parents get old and die.

In fact, a lot of the people in the demographic that you mentioned, that's who I work with, my clients, and we can talk about this because people love to talk about, like, oh, my metabolism is slow. It's like, no, you are a caretaker for your dad who has cancer for the second time and your mom who has signs of Alzheimer's. And, you know, it's like these things that happen in our social life that really, you take a toll on our time, on our stress levels. And so a lot of people in their 40s end up having kids that require a lot of money, attention, and then have parents that require a lot of attention

and sometimes money too. And that's what a lot of people's experience in the 40s are. So what I do is, again, health and fitness help me pull out of that bad place. And I help people, people who found themselves in a place where like, man, in a way, it's my best time of my life. I'm in my 40s. I'm more successful than ever more confident in who I am. And I look in the mirror and I don't recognize the person looking back. And it's like, will I ever be able to get that back? And a lot of people don't believe they can.

But I'm here to tell you that it's possible and it's easier than you think. So I appreciate you sharing that story with us. And while, you know, I'm assuming most people can't relate to the depth and public nature of the tragedy, I appreciate that you shared it to give us some context on, you know, you're, you know, we all have things, right? We all have things. And, you know, one of the things, guys, that I would, I would caution you on this is don't compare your thing to someone else's thing. your thing doesn't need to be as perceptually as big or disastrous for it to have a similar impact

on you, your body, your mental, your depression, right? So it's not like, you know, for you, it could be getting fired from a job, or it could be a girlfriend or your wife leaves you, or you're just having problems or, you know, a business partner does something, you know, there's plenty of things that can put us down this spiral and don't feel like your thing isn't as important or whatever. Like, we all have things and we have to pull ourselves out. And that's what we were to talk about today is how do we optimize our physical health? Because I've been saying for a long time on the show, your health is a competitive advantage. Right? When you're thinking about competitive advantages in business, your health is a competitive advantage. And I mean this

sincerely, you know, I, and I, you know, my kind of story with health is I had college athlete, athlete in high school, always just saw myself as this athletic guy. But then into my late 20s, early 30s, I had kids. I was married. working a lot, all the things you just said, right? In 2017, I am hosting a conference and am seeing it. And the final session of a two-day conference was I was doing a fireside chat with our last speaker to close out the day.

And I'm standing behind the curtain and we're like two or three minutes from going on and I collapse, pass out. My physical health, my drinking too much, much, not sleeping, eating crap, you know, just all the things. I had just, I paid zero attention to any of them, you know, because I was so focused on work. And the speaker had to go out on his own and essentially, I walked out, sat in the chair, you know, after pulling myself back together and basically said, hey, I think, you know, his name was Michael. Michael wants to get after it,

Michael, dude, we're here to see you anyways, go to your thing. And I sat in the chair and literally, was worried about passing out again while he went and did it, thank God. And no one even knew in the conference it was fine, but I realized I had hit this low. Like if I can't, at 36 years old or whatever I was, not being able to make it through a two-day conference, you know, without passing out is bad. And that's when I started my journey. And what I found at that time was, and when I started to lose weight, is all of a sudden I could create more.

I could be better for my team members. I could give more attention to my kids at night because I wasn't exhausted by the day. Like all these amazing things started happening. So someone comes to you, right? And they're in the situation that I'm in. They want to get better, right? So you're not convincing them they need to get better.

They've come to you and said, hey, I'm in this place. I'm 20 pounds, 25, whatever it is, 40 pounds overweight from where I would like to be. I don't have energy. How do you start digging in with them? Like I know a lot of people get stuck on where to start because it feels like such a big thing. Do I start running? Do I start lifting?

Do I take testosterone? You know, like what do I, where do I get started with this journey and turning my health around so I can make it a competitive advantage for me in business? Yeah. And the real answer is hire an expert like me. And they'll be able to guide you through the process in a way that doesn't lead to losing the weight, gaining a back. or overdoing it.

But I know that's going to come across self-serving, but that is the truth, right? If you want the fastest path to regaining your health and getting into shape where you can be at the best shape of your life in your 40s, 50s, even 60s, provided you weren't like an elite athlete in your 20s, of course, right? So, but let's get into the steps like separate from that. But I just want to drop that because how do you grow your business the fastest if you're not

already like just a business wizard? Well, you hire someone to help you, right? You hire a mentor. You want to get good at golf. You hire someone to help you. I want to get good at tennis. Hire someone to help you. I got my black belt a lot faster.

I told you earlier. I got my black belt in jiu-jitsu a lot faster than. I had planned on, I was planning on spending a year in Brazil to make it happen. I thought it would happen in like nine months, some eight or nine months. I got in less than six months because I hired someone. I hired it the best person I could to train with. That's, and help me level up. And I was already good, right?

But, and I think that's another thing. A lot of people are like, oh, but I know what I'm doing. It's like, eh. And here's coming into the part where, you know, if you're not, sold on working with someone yet, totally cool. But here's what I want you to focus on then. You think you're knowledgeable about health, fitness, diet, and you probably are in a trivia sense, like if you go to a party and you can talk about the ergo-theonine and Shataki and king oyster mushrooms and the sulfuricane and broccoli sprouts, fantastic.

What results can you get for yourself in health and fitness? fitness. What are your numbers, in fact? So that's what I start off clients with. Go get a Dexas scan to see your body fat percentage and also your muscle mass. And you're specifically your visceral fat. Not all Dexas scans do them. So you have to make sure you go to one that will test how much visceral fat you have. Because if you have that, you're not, you're not that healthy. Because I'll come back to the data in a second. But a bit. big mistake people make is tell them stories, they tell stories about what they're doing instead of about the results. It's kind of like someone in business saying, hey, we're running ads. I just

hired a rock star. Man, our business is crushing it. We're closing deals. How much money are you making this year compared to last year, right? If that was the goal, let's say. And if it's not different, then you're just talk, it's just talk, right? And so there's people, I remember a very obese guy telling me, hey, listen, I drink green juice and I'm eating the assaye and I'm doing this. I'm going, I'm doing cardio, I'm lifting weight. It's like you're out of shape. I don't need anything else. Yeah. What you're saying is completely irrelevant. And so, um, today's episode of Finding Peak is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Hiring's not hard because there aren't enough people. It's hard because you're drowning in resumes and starving for candidates who can actually

do the job. But not with ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash work. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash work. The second year job goes live, ZipRecruiter's matching tech goes to work, locking on to the right people fast and putting qualified candidates in front of you before your competition even wakes up. See someone you like?

Don't wait. Fire off ZipRecruiter's pre-written, invite to apply, and get top candidates leaning in before anyone else has a shot. Ditch the other hiring sites and let ZipRecruiter find what you're looking for, the needle in the haystack. Four to five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate within their first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address, ZipRecruiter.com slash work.

That's ZipRecruiter.com slash W-O-R-K. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash work. ZipRecruiter, the smartest. way to hire. And I went through this journey too where I had, I had the same thing. I had a story about. I was also got out of shape in my mid-30s and changed things around after that. But start with data. Go get your blood work. I work with so many high performers. They haven't been to the doctor and gotten blood work in a while. This is, if you're in your 40s, you don't have time to mess around. I had one client.

He went and got a CT, not a CT scan, a calcium score. And it was elevated. Calcium score is how much hard plaque is in your arteries. It should be zero at his age, but it was quite high, right? And so get the data, get a Dexas scan. If you have heart disease risks in your family, get a calcium score. I had a CTN gerogram. I don't even have heart disease in my family.

Luckily, it came out fine. Go get your colonoscopy because people are getting colon cancer earlier than before. Ed, can I ask you one question? Sure, go forth. So I have one of those, the company, the brand that I use is Whittings, but it's a true, Texas scan scale. How accurate, like, I know it's probably all relative, like you want to see the numbers in general heading in the right direction, but like how accurate are those types of scales,

like at home scales? Yeah, they're typically not, right? You want to go to an in-body at the very least, which is bio-electrical impedance. And a dexas scan is best. Now, a dexas scan does come with a little bit of radiation, but it's very, very low, right? So do dental x-rays and so does flying in an airplane. and, you know. A little bit of radiation never hurt anybody, you know what I mean?

Yeah, outside my realm of expertise. And I'm very, I'll tell you when I know, so like radiation dosages, it's not something I read a lot about. But, but anyway, it's not going to, you know, having a Dexas scan is going to help you a lot. So one of those scales would be good in general for trends. If you're, if you're in the process seeing, you know, obviously weight, but seeing like, you know, a fat percentage come down, visceral fat percentage

coming out, like muscle, muscle mass going up as a percentage of body, like seeing the trends, it might help. But ultimately, if you want to know where you're at, you need to go to a facility and get like a Dexa scan and get an Emboddy scan so that you have like real accurate numbers. Yeah, Dexas scan is going to be best. And because the whitting scale, it's, you know, I've seen it trend similarly with with dexas scans or or embodied or bi electrical impedance but man it's just it's kind of like a better guess instead of even the dexas scan has a margin of error but it's quite low so yeah there there's always a margin error but but definitely the dexas scan is like the gold standard when it comes to that so I have a

whoop. I'm not wearing it right now because I go through cycles with it because I don't love having it on my wrist, but I love the data. And this scale. So guys, so you know what I'm talking about when I say a whithing scale. And there's other brands. This is just one brand. But like, it's the scales that you step on and you pull the like little bar up and you hold it and it sends electricity through your body and figures out, you know, these different things. And I found it good for trends, but I've always kind of been like, because right now it says my body fat is like this morning it was like 7.7% that's not accurate and I'm like I'm like I'm like look I I can see that right now yeah it's like I brought my body fat percentage down like but to think that

I'm like 8% body fat is crazy like that's just not this is not the truth you would have veins and here's how you know how lean you are it's not what the muscle striations and that type of thing it's the veins the vascularity if you have veins popping you would have veins popping out on your chest and your abs at that level of body fat. I would see veins on your neck right now. Which I, which I, just listening to the audio,

I don't have that. That's, that's not. And that's also not my goal, right? It's just, that was kind of like when I saw that, you know,

as I've worked through this, um, whatever, you know, I've been kind of on a mission the last like three or four months to kind of get myself back to where I wanted to be. I let myself not go, but whatever.

It doesn't matter. And, you know, I was always kind of been like, this feels like good for what direction you're trending, not not like you couldn't quote 8% body fat. Like that would be insane. Like, you know what I mean? Another thing about that and low body fat, some guys feel like, I think this is a misconception

that a lot of people have like the bodybuilders or let's say the men's health cover models when they diet down, their sex drive is low. Their energy is low. Yeah, they might be seven percent. body fat, but they're feeling horrible. They look amazing for sure, but a lot of guys that can't maintain super low body fat because of the hunger that happens, the lethargy, the low libido. You want to drop your testosterone levels into the double digits. If you're, you know, if you're measuring nanograms per deciliter, which is what you, what the metric that we use in

United States, it's like low is 300 or 280, depending on the lab. I've seen bodybuilders with double digits when they get contest. Now it comes back, right? And these are natural bodybuilders, because if they're taking testosterone, their testosterone will stay at the level that they're injecting, right? But yeah, for natural, if you're natural, not taking TRT, which I'm not a fan of, by the way. it's it's going to tank so just keep that in mind what you think might be your ideal based on especially now with social media and with all the steroid use and um you know the women with the bBLs and getting liposuction and people get guys get liposuction on their abs too like drake i don't have anything against people doing any of this stuff like for example drake's a

you know, a rap slash musician, rap rapper slash musician. But you could see going back, if you look at his photo, if he had this crease in his abdominal area and his arms, you couldn't see any veins, right? If he were that lean, you would be able to see vascularity on his, you'd see bicep and forearm veins just popping. But he didn't have that. So a lot of, and people use software as well.

Yeah. So it's just crazy times we're living in. And I love that you brought that up because I think this is, this is what happens to a lot of people, right? So, you know, I, my fight is against Dadbod, right? I don't want to be Dad Bob. Not even so much because I care about the look or what I mean, I don't, I don't like the look.

I don't like the way I feel when I put on weight. But like, but at the same, it's more, it's more the discipline of it, right? to me, when we start putting on the keg belly and we start accepting, you know, our back pain and our knee pain. And it's like, to me, that feels more like giving up. Like you've just kind of acquiesced to life. And, you know, my, you know, I say, you know, I refuse to go quietly into the night. I'm going to fight this thing kicking and screaming as much as I can in terms of taking care,

being diligent, you know, focusing on fitness, focusing on what I eat, focusing on mental health. all the different things like, right, I'm not just going to, you know, ride out what the universe decides to throw me from a mental and physical health perspective. I'm going to fight it, right? That's kind of my goal. And really where that came from was not this January,

we just went past, but the January before, right? So I live in upstate New York, used to 66 days a sun, right? So in January and February, you're basically drinking vitamin D and doing everything you possibly can to not get, like the winter blues. But I'm used to it. No matter what you do,

you have this dip in energy, just you don't see the sun, all the stuff. Okay, very used to that. So not this last January, but the January before, so that would be January of 2024. It's like I ran into a brick wall, dude. Couldn't get out of bed, no energy,

brain fog, no libido, just the whole thing. And I knew something was different. And I don't have a great GP. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this show, but she's kind of not awesome. I don't trust her. She constantly wants to put me on drugs. What drugs?

So I traditionally had very high cholesterol. Right, right. Traditionally, so since I was a kid, I've had a cholesterol over 200. I've always been over 200. And in the last 10 years, I've seen it go from 200 up to the last time. I just got my blood work yesterday, but before that, I was at like 275. And it was over indexed on the LDL. So I went, so I go to my GP and, you know, I find, I get this number 275 or whatever was.

That 273, something like that. It doesn't matter. She goes, oh, your cholesterol is high. I'll just write you a prescription for Lipitor. And I was like, I don't want to go on Lipitor. I'm just like, I don't want, one, I just don't like taking things that I feel are unnecessary. And two, I know there are side effects to Lipitor. And I'm just like, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to just go. I don't want to just like go on Lipitor. So I had done enough research, cholesterol being an issue for me as long as it has been, to know that that amount of cholesterol, if my plaque is zero, is essentially not an issue, or at least not enough of an issue to go on Lipitor. So I come back to her and I go, well, can you write me a ticket to go get a plaque and a plaque scan? Because, you know, if my calcium is zero and my plaque, if my plaque is zero, then I really don't need to go on Lipitor and she agreed and I went and it was zero.

So, you know, that was clear. You got a CT angiogram? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or is it in the, so you got injected with contrast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I got the whole thing and, and, you know, came back zero, which is great. Awesome. Okay.

So where I'm going with this is I'm, I ended up getting, it was one of the services that Huberman talks about for men's hormonal testing. I just got an at-home blood test, right? So it comes in the mail, you take the blood, you mail it out, and they send you your results. And I did that twice because the first time I did it, it was 77 for all testosterone, not just free. And the second time, it was 84. So I'm like, I'm like in the sixth or seventh percentile of men for testosterone according to the stats, right? So that's not free testosterone, guys.

That's all testosterone in my body, which is not good. My free testosterone was like five. So I ended up getting a prescription for n. Lomadine, M-C-L-E-N-C-L-O-N-K-K-O. It's a natural, it's a steroid that naturally activates your body's, like, testosterone production ability. And it's, you know, so it's not TRT or whatever. You take it's a sublingual. And after about three months, that had an amazing effect, right? My testosterone came back up. And but then I started, this is what sent me down the journey that we're on, that we're talking about today. was because I was like, my God, like, I've been relatively healthy since 2017, you know, varying degrees, but for the most part, on the healthier side for men my age. And this, my testosterone just dropped off the map for two months. And, and that's what kind of put me down this path of I'm not, I'm going to fight this thing.

Like, I'm going to make, you know, within reason, I'm not going to fly to some shady country and get injected with some experimental chemical. But, you know, with as much as I can, you know, as reason, you know, as reason, as reasonable as I can be, I'm going to do the things necessary to create healthy longevity in my life. And that's kind of how we got to, you know, wanting to talk to professionals like yourself who know so much about this stuff. Because you really have to do, if you're not working with an expert, this is the last thing I'm going to say. And I know I'm talking a long time. I apologize. No, no, no. Okay. To your point about working with an expert, if I, if I wasn't

like a research OCD psychopath, right, which is what makes me good at certain aspects of my job, But if I wasn't so willing to invest hours and hours into reading and listening to all these different people and comparing notes and trying to figure out what could work for me and then going out and finding the professionals that could help, right? I have no idea and I'm probably still sitting here with super low testosterone feeling like shit just thinking this is what my life is. So going back to your point of working with an expert, I know guys that when, you know, someone like Ted comes on a show and it's what he do. and you hear that, you're like, oh, that's because, no, what Ted said was, call me. He said, find somebody that you can work with who can be your guide because I'm telling you, unless you are a complete psychopath, this is very hard to do yourself.

And it will take much longer and you will make a lot of mistakes. So I just wanted to double into that point that I found a local hormone optimization specialist who I work with here in my local area. And she has completely changed. You've finally broken loose from work. three friends, one tea time, and then the text. Honey, there's water in the basement. Not exactly how you pictured your Saturday.

That's when you call us, Cincinnati Insurance. We always answer the call because real protection means showing up, even when things are in the rough. Cincinnati Insurance, let us make your bad day better. Find an agent at cINFIN.com. Game for me, but it wasn't... until I found her. I was doing all kinds of different things until I found her.

So I just wanted to kind of push into, I do think it's very important that if this is important to you, that you find somebody like yourself to work with. Yeah, definitely. And just a, so you're taking Clomid. Is that correct? Because you said Clomidine? I can tell you exactly what it is.

But I'll talk in the Clomifene, right? Yeah, and Clomifine. Yep. Yeah. that. Yes, what that does is it stops. Again, I'm not an expert in this area, but what it does is it stops. So here's what happens, right? Because we can talk about testosterone because testosterone is a downstream effect. And so what I mean by that is you might say, man, my problem, I don't have any money. I don't have any money. That is my problem. It's like, no, no, no, no. Do you have a job? Is your business?

Like, that's a symptom of your problem. So testosterone is a symptom of the problem. Clomid, by the way, what it does, to my recollection, right, is it stops this process called aromatization. What is aromatization? It's when testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Guess where that happens. in your fat cells. In fact, women need that because, you know, women who compete in like bodybuilding, in natural bodybuilding without drugs, they're, when they get super lean, their estrogen levels drop, right? So the number one thing that's causing issues with testosterone, according to the best literature that we have is excess body fat,

especially visceral body fat, right? And so guys are so quick to go out and take TRT or some other type of medication. And look, you know what? Everyone, I've put things in my body, MDMA, you want alcohol. Alcohol is one of the worst things you can do. But I'm not judging. But if you want to do things the right way, you've got to fix the root cause. And the root cause is this. It's like you have to lose the excess body fat. And another thing about that is we know that there's what's called a personal fat threshold. For example, Chinese people get diabetes at a lower BMI, right? So at a lower weight, BMI is just a measurement of your height and your weight. They get higher rates of obesity

at a lower BMI than Americans do. Well, why is that? Well, some people have a genetic predisposition to having diabetes or insulin resistance at lower levels of body fat. Just like I was, I had a CT angiogram too. My calcium score of zero. I had what's called zero stenosis in my arteries. So there's no signs of any type of issues with my heart, with my arteries. I'm 48 years old. But I had a pre-cancerous polyp removed from my clob.

colon back in 2021. And I have to get colonoscopies, um, I'm, you know, quite frequently, right. So why? Because I had a genetic predisposition to it. So, so you can't compare yourself to people. And that's why going back to the second thing I said, first was, you know, hire, hire an expert to help you. But the second was get the data, right? You don't want to tell yourself a story about how you're doing. Go get a dexas scan. Go get your blood work, right? Go get a VO2 max because that's a VO2 max test is something that measures cardio respiratory fitness. In other words, how fit you are cardiovascularly because a lot of people aren't very fit cardiovascularly, especially if you're fat, right, if you've got excess body fat,

if you've got a big belly, you may be going out and pushing yourself and it feels like you're pushing yourself, but the issue is you're already out of shape. Your body is under stress already. Right? You have what's called oxidation is higher, right? Oxidative stress is higher. If you're, if you're too overweight, you're going to have some sleep apnea so your sleep isn't going to be good. You're going to already and you're going to already have issues. And as we get older, to your point earlier, we age is not just a number, okay? It's It's a good thing to say that, and you should say that, if you're currently saying that. But the reality is this, even if you're, like, doing everything perfect, let's take, this person doesn't exist, but let's just imagine there's a lean, fit person.

They've been fit their whole life. They're like Olympic level of, Olympic level, cyclists, VO2 Max, right? And they just, they've been doing the same thing. They've never changed. The only thing that's changed is their age. Their VO2 max is going to come down. We're super focused on building muscle and strength, which is the foundation, in my opinion. But VO2 max is something where you can get your strength.

You can be strong and have muscle in your 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s, not a problem. But your VOTOMX is like, it's kind of like you have an opportunity. The younger you are, the more you can invest in it to build it up. and then the less the decline, right? And every year that goes by, you're missing out on that if you're not doing dedicated cardiovascular training. And our levels of what's called low grade chronic inflammation go up. Scientists are call it inflamaging, right?

And so these levels of inflammation go up, even if you're doing everything right. And if you're not doing everything right, which is like not. 99.9% of us, right? Unless you live, unless you're part of the Shemani tribe in Bolivia, living off the land, right, hunting your food, which none of us listening to this are, you're not as healthy as you think. Modern life is just, you know, it just, it is what it is. That's why we have to work so hard to stay healthy as we're really working against, you know, the amazing and fun life that we've created, but it's a bit far away from, let's say,

what our biology is designed for. Yeah. Okay. So good news with the enchlamophane. I used it for about a year. And then my doctor and I cycled off of it once we felt we had everything stabilized. So it was more of like get yourself.

fixed and then all the things that you said. So it's funny. She said, basically what she said to me was, in order to get you back to operational speed, we're going to use this tool, right, for a period of time. And then in the meantime, what I need you to do is get your ship together. Because I, yeah, in the end of 2023, I was selling a company. There was a lot of stress. I was exiting. You know, there's all this stuff going on. So like 2023, I kind of, I'd put on about 10 or 15 pounds from where I like to be, which is pretty much where I am today. And so some of that and, you know, just all the things, right? You, you, you, I'm just as susceptible as anybody else to the, oh, I'll just have one drink tonight because I earned it, you know, because I worked so hard today. And, you know, that kind of

shit, like, adds up. And, um, I have a bunch of questions on some individual things that I'm to see for the end, uh, and kind of like, maybe we'll do like a rapid fire section. But there's two, there's two additional topics that I want to touch on that I know a lot of people are thinking about, hearing about, and let's start with the big one, and that's GLP-1s, right? And as I share with you in the pre-show, and, you know, I don't know that I've ever shared this on the show, but, you know, I'm obviously, you know, it is what it is. I take a tricepetide, Monjorno, which is a, what is the second generation, GLP1. I take a micro dose of that. So I take one point something milliliters or milligrams or whatever the metric is.

And take it once a week. And so I'll give you what I have seen as the result, right? Sure. The reason that I wanted to take it. And I did months and months of research on this, right? So one, it wasn't about fat loss. I was already on that journey and kind of knew how to do it. It wasn't, you know, the things that I was the most interested in were, one, reducing food noise.

right so one of the things that I found is with the micro dose all my food noise is gone still still like to eat protein i still hit my calorie numbers it's not like i'm just not hungry but i don't think about food all day you know what i mean i don't get i don't get cravings i'm not craving i'm just like oh i'm hungry i'm going to go eat eggs or i'm going to go you know do whatever uh inflammation which also comes with reduction of fat fat but there's some anti inflammation and then the other one was I wanted to completely cut sugar for the most part, any processed sugar outside of like fruits or whatever out of my diet. And what I've found is, again, with the micro dose,

I have zero desire for sugar, right? So my, you know, my mom, and part of that was my mom went pre-diabetic about six months ago. So there's a little bit of nervousness in me that that might be, there might be hereditary to that or, you know, whatever. and I was like, I'm not a big sugar guy to begin with, whatever. So I have really enjoyed it. I've had no stomach issues.

I feel like I wake up with energy. I feel like I said, no food noise. The inflammation stuff has been great. And, you know, in general, it's been a very positive experience. But again, I'm taking like, I'm taking less than what is normally a microdose for most people if they're going to do it. So that's kind of where I'm at with these. but I, you know, obviously we started, we were talking on the, in the green room and you started giving me your response and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, like I want to get into it in the show.

So talk to us about DLP ones, you know, and you're not going to hurt my feeling. So, so, you know, share your honest opinions on how people should be thinking about these positive use cases, places need to be careful, et cetera. Yeah, and I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit more biased against using testosterone because guys are like, no, I couldn't, I couldn't lose the fat. And then I started taking T or T. It's like, no, you're eating too many calories. You think you know that you're training properly, but you're actually not, right? And then you take testosterone. You build muscle. Like, we've done studies where people, or one group goes into the gym, starts lifting weights. The other group sits on the couch and injects testosterone. I forget the levels that they use, right? Because that's, it's really not something I know. like the specific dosages. But anyway, the point is the people who sat on the couch and took testosterone gain muscle. The more muscle you have, the easier it is to lose fat, right?

Because your body mass goes up. By the way, what do you think is the number one thing that determines how many calories, or how many calories you burn per day? What's the number one thing do you think? Did you walk? How many steps? How much you weigh? A 300-pound person requires way more calories.

way more calories to maintain. You have to the inner, like, it's like people saying, hey, let's, let's forgive the debt of the college students. It's like, well, someone has to pay for that. You cannot build fat. You can't move to a desert island and, you know, be starving and eating bugs and climbing trees for coconuts and cracking them open and, you know, barely getting by and maintain a 300 pound body if you're like, you know, five, five, 9 or 511, right? It's not going to happen. You simply don't have the energy to do it. Now, this is, this might sound controversial, but it's not. There's a lot of what's called metabolic war data showing like this is this is like the case. So anyway, I know I kind of went off on a tangent,

but I wanted to just be clear about that before moving on to gLP ones where I work with clients who take gLP ones. I'm not as again. them and the reason is I think taking TRT because you you think I think it's just I think it's a total cop out unless you've been had a traumatic brain injury or you had a testicular injury and you actually need it think it's a total cop out and there's so many doctors who will prescribe it like come on in let's do some TRT when it comes to GLP1 here's here's what changes my mind about it. We know that to some extent, obesity is heritable. Really good person on this is Stefan Guine. He was on the Joe Rogan show. And he's written a book. I've had him on my show a bunch of

times. When I first had him on, he's a neurobiologist that studies obesity. I was like, what the hell does neuroscience have to do with obesity? But the biggest breakthroughs in obesity, including GLP-1s have come from neuroscience. In fact, what do GOP-1s do? All they do is the effect the reward part of your brain to quiet it down so that you're not like, oh, man, I'm feeling a little stress. Let me go get some M&Ms or whatever the case is. So we know that there's obesity,

and this is something I changed my mind on as I've matured and educated myself. It's like, okay, there's a reason that, that I work with clients who are extremely successful, Deca millionaires, and they're 260 pounds at 5 foot 11. And it's not because they're lazy or lack work ethic. Uh-uh. Right? And then I work with guys don't struggle as much.

And it's like, okay, something's going on here. And some people just have, this is all a brain. issue and some people um if if it helps here's here's my thoughts on it if do the right thing because you don't want it to be a cop out i've talked to people who wanted to work with me and they're like you know but i'm taking a gop1 it's like well 25% of what you lost is muscle because you aren't doing the right things you don't know how much protein you're eating you're not lifting weights i'm glad that you feel better and that's great but i'm i'm striving for excellent I help people who want to achieve excellence here.

Well, that's the OZempic face that people talk about, right? So when you do none of the work, right, when you continue to eat the same macro, macro percentages, right, which normally are over-indexed towards carbs instead of protein, and you're not lifting weights, et cetera, and you're just taking the gLP ones, that's when you get that kind of gray sunken face look that you've seen in a lot of celebrities. right? And, you know, this was one of the biggest things when I was doing my own research was, you know, I'm trying to get as close to my body weight, which is 195 pounds in protein. And if I can be within 70% of that, I'm happy, right?

I mean, some days, you know, you go a little bigger or whatever. But, you know, that has been a big part of not having any, I feel, any structural changes is all I really did was ramp up the protein and keep the carbs enough so I had energy. and that way you don't get that, that Ozempic face that people talk about. And if you Google Ozempic face, you'll see some pretty gnarly looking things. I've got to,

actually. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, you dig out, there's a ton of it. And what you see is like, your skin starts to turn a little gray because they're not eating enough protein.

They're not eating enough food in general. And they get this like skinny fat, sunken face look, right? Because they're not, all that's happening, they're not doing anything to improve their body structure. They're literally just, eating less calories because the g lp ones is telling their body you know is not giving them that

indication it's really wild so don't get ozambic face all right keep going sorry don't get it yeah and starting off with lower dosages i think you know i i've worked with several clients on glp1 agonis and um yeah one of them still struggles so it's not a it doesn't work the same for everyone and it's something that you have to commit to long term. In other words, the research shows that when people stop taking it, they gain the weight back. I don't know about micro doses and what we know about that, but the food noise comes back. And depending on who you are and how much food noise you have to deal with, right? Maybe it makes sense to take a microdose for a long time. Now, here's the thing. I've created like a framework.

I call it the metabolic reset sequence. There are ways that you can manage your hunger and cravings without that. You know, again, depending on who you are and how much you struggle, you still might have to. Yeah, I'm not against using GLP1 agonis. But again, in the context of doing the right things. Yes. And I'll say this too. If you're someone who's like, I'm never going to do the right thing, I'm going to drink alcohol.

I'm going to eat what I want. I'm not going to exercise. But yeah, give me a shot. Like I'll take a shot, though. It's like, okay, then do that. Right. It's better than losing your life to being overweight. But I agree with you.

And just so everyone knows, part of my protocol is, has been, you know, I have made necessary, physical activity and diet changes and structures and discipline to go along with it. It's not like, this wasn't just like, oh, I'm overweight and I want to lose weight. This was like, look, I'm trying to optimize myself. I know the places that I'm weak. I know the places that I need help with and the things that I want to keep out of my body,

right? Like I'm interested in your take on this if you feel differently. But to me, like sugar is the fucking devil, right? No, disagree. So hard. Hit me with that. Yeah, no, I'm into that. Look.

Yeah. So look, sugar, the devil, okay? I'll start by saying this. Sugar's found in fruit. It's not structurally. There's different types of sugar, right? Fruitose, sucrose, galactose, lactose. But it's not, so it's not really sugar, right?

And going back to this brain thing, right because nobody is overeating oranges there might be someone who's doing that but that's a different problem right um what we're really talking about the thing that hijacks people's brain if you look at like when you think about sugar tell me a food that you know like oh that's a high sugar food tell me what you think of uh i think of candies baked goods uh cupcakes treats ice cream um let's go with that yeah that kind of shit so candy for sure um Like jelly beans, that's like 100% sugar. Most people, though, if they're eating like ice cream or cookies,

crumble cookies or whatever, if you look at the fat content, the calories coming from fat are much higher. Or they're equal to sugar. So what it really is, and this is, look, and I want to say this too, I was low carb, like staunch low carb for 10 years until I got fat. my mid-30s and I was like, I'm doing everything right. Yeah. Why did this happen to me?

And I was so frustrated. And now I really, I get into arguments with the low-carb community all the time because of this. So sugar being the devil, if you have metabolic dysfunction, meaning if you're pre-diabetic or diabetic, the more sugar you have, the more is going to disrupt your blood sugar for sure. However, what even causes diabetes? What do you think? I don't know the answer. I know it has something to do with insulin resistance, our inability to create insulin.

Right. And what causes that is fat deposits in your pancreas, which your pancreas is what secretes insulin. So what this really is, like you cannot cure diabetes by going low carb. You cure diabetes by losing fat, right? Or they may not, I think the medical community uses remission or whatever. They don't say cure. can you cure diabetes? That's not, that's for, you know, someone, for a medical doctor to really explain the nuance there, but I'll tell you this. I've worked with diabetics and people with pre-diabetic

blood sugar levels. The way you drop it is by two ways. Number one, build more muscle because your muscles are a sink for glucose. You store carbohydrate in your muscles. It's called glycogen. for some people sugar is a performance enhancing food or drug or whatever you want to call it right for but if you're if you're like sitting around and jacking up your blood sugar levels because you're you know munching on um you know gummy gummy bears or whatever yeah okay it's probably probably probably gonna mess you up more if you you keep that up and you're not doing any type of exercise and in general uh you have high levels of body fat for sure, but it's kind of throwing, eating sugars like throwing gasoline on the fire. What's causing the fire? It is the fact that you have too much body fat and specifically fat in

your organs, the visceral fat. And again, when like one of the biggest thing that, one of the biggest issues is liver fat. People have non-alcoholic fatty liver. It's being diagnosed at higher and higher rates. These aren't people who are drinking a lot, right? So why? Why? that happening? Well, it's because fat deposits start to get into the liver, start causing it to start disrupting its function. So really the answer is not about going back to data, right? Because I eat sugar, right? Let's say, let's go beyond just using macronutrients or a type of macronutrient, right? Subtype of macronutrient, sugar, which is a carbohydrate. What is it? What is the, the root problem. If you can't, if you're, let's say, if you're not under 20% body fat, you've got

work to do. If you've got a belly, you've got work to do. If you don't lift weights at all, you've got work to do. And or if you have high hemoglobin A1C, which is a measure of elevated blood sugar over the course of several months, you've got work to do. If you have fasting insulin, fasting glucose high, C-peptide high, like the answer is not in the food to eat. You it's in it's in your blood work it's in your body fat percentage because we're going now look if that's a helpful heuristic for you to not eat sugar I'm not saying to you or to anyone listening no you you got to eat sugar that's not true it's definitely not helping you okay but I want to make sure that we're clear right on let's say you want to make sure that if your business is

having a problem you don't say well we need to hire more sales guys or you want to be sure like, well, is it because we don't have enough sales guys to handle the volume? Or is it, you know, or do the guys just need better training? You want to get the root cause, not symptoms. You want to get to the root cause. Yeah. And so look, sugars. And here's something else.

Saturated fat never gets talked about because saturated fat was demonized in the 80s unfairly. And now it shifted to sugar, right, which is now being demonized. unfairly and or carbohydrates generally and sugar specifically without the conversation with all the nuance because that that's really the issue here is nutrition is very nuanced for example there's studies showing like if you wanted to increase the liver fat and so one we know that saturated fat and having a higher percentage of calories coming from saturated fat increases liver fat faster than sugar does nobody talks about it why it's not popular to talk about comes from research research is boring you know scientists don't explain it well and i'm not saying saturated fat is bad either right because again it's

it's how much are you eating and who's eating it because if i eat saturated fat guess what i can see my abs i've got veins all my shoulder you know i'm lean it's not going to be a big deal versus someone who's of shape. Again, it's these things that people are missing. So especially if you'll see a lot of people in the keto and carnivore community, I have this one screenshot from someone. Now, we have studies proving this, but it's always fun to share the anecdotes. I take screenshots from these groups. There was a guy doing keto. He was in a carnivore group on Facebook. He was doing keto. Lost a bunch of like 40 pounds, I believe the weight was. switched to carnivore to get even leaner because that's got to be the answer. And he gained 20 pounds

back after doing it. And he was dumbfounded. Why? And people are, you know, doing mental gymnastics in those groups. It's completely insane what you read in there. But the answer is this. If you go from doing keto, which I don't like it, but at least you're getting veggies and doing other things and you're filling yourself up with more than just meat. What most carnivore people do, because they show it off in their pictures, their photos, right? There are social media photos. They're cooking ribeye and in butter and then eating bacon

and eating cheese burgers covered in cheese, you know, like I'm sorry, hamburgers covered in cheese. It's like, dude, if you overdo your calories, and especially if a lot of them, and it's easy to overdo your calories from fat. In fact, the biggest change in the American diet is more calories are coming from fat than before. Now in the form of vegetable oils usually because there's been an increase in, you know, junk food, basically, right? And so people are eating more food, eating more junk food, eating bigger size portions. But yeah, it's, It's a more nuanced conversation.

Ted, so do you have a few more minutes? I know we're over our time. Okay, so I want to hit you with like a little rapid fire section, maybe spend, you know, two, three minutes on each one of these. You know, because I think we could probably do entire episodes on each one of these things that I want to hit. And I'm going to jump around a little bit. So the first one I want to talk about is.

Can I say one more thing before we go on? Yeah, yeah. I know I said something controversial. So here, here's what I want you to do. If you're like, no, this guy's full of it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. There's an influencer on TikTok that says something different. And so here's what I want you to do.

You can either do a couple things, actually. There's something called, now I don't endorse these, but just as an experiment for a few days. There's something called a potato hack, where you eat nothing but potatoes. And potatoes, you know, people demonize carbs and say they make you fat. Potatoes actually score very high on, in satiety. In other words, it's hard to eat a lot of them unless they're doctored up or embellished

with cheese and sour cream, et cetera. So do the potato hack. Look at what it is, is basically eating potatoes, right, boiled potatoes. You will lose weight because you're not going to want to eat a bunch of potatoes, right? You just naturally start bringing your calories low and eating less. So do it for three days and you'll lose fat. If you want to test the sugar thing, do a juice cleanse. A juice, it's not really a cleanse. You're just losing body fat and you're drinking nothing but juice, which is sugar. And I don't love fruit juice generally, except for maybe pomegranate juice. Story for another time. But you will lose weight in three days of doing that. Now you'll gain it back as soon as you go back to your old diet, but you can prove to yourself that sugar does not

cause you to gain weight. It can cause you to lose it and improve your, if you did, you know, I wouldn't recommend going and have your blood. I'm here on the job site with Dale, who's a framing contractor. Hey, good morning. Dale traded up to Geico commercial auto insurance for all his business vehicles. We're here where he needs us most. Yep, they sure are. We make it easy for him to save on all his insurance needs, all in one place, with coverage

that fits his business and buy. I'm lying. Oh, I shouldn't have looked down. It's all right. We're so far up here. Look at me. Take a deep breath. Oh, I'm good.

So good. Get a commercial auto insurance quote today at Geico.com and see how much you could save. Get more with Geico. Done before and after, but you could do it. And you're, because of the low calories, you know, because on a juice cleanse, you're having something in the neighborhood of 1,000 or 1,200 calories per day in juice. It's really hard to drink that much juice. And you can see that.

Sorry. This is what I'm sure. I don't mean interrupt you. The reason that I've been struggling is my children convince me to get a kitten and the kitten won't leave me alone. I apologize. You want to home. The last like two minutes, he has been messing with me and I had to just get him out of

the screen. I apologize, Ted. Cats, cats, uh, listen to no one, right? They march to their own meat. I'm such a sucker to allow my children to talk me into getting this kitten and, you know, it's whatever. It's all good. I apologize.

Um, um, um, so anyway, you can try that experiment. And, and that's what I suggest that you do. try these experiments because to be honest, people don't have the knowledge or experience to really even know, like maybe I come across, hopefully I come across this knowledgeable and confident in what I do because I am, but you don't know me. So I might be just, you know, just another person. Test these things and you will see that you can improve metabolic health and lose weight doing things that you wouldn't think were even possible. Again, I don't. I don't. I don't. condone those as ways of living or, you know, but just as an experiment.

Yeah. And I think what I love about that is, is exactly what you said, the experiment part, right? Like, my, I'd say my fitness journey being not an expert, you know, armchair, you know, just hacking my own body. It's just been experiments, right? Everything's been an experiment. Does does lifting weights or does boxing or does running or does, you know, what is, and then once you find the things that seem to work for you, what's the cadence, what's the rhythm, how often, right? Like I was seven days a week lifting weights for a while. I realized that was too much, right?

Then it was a lot of it, some of the stuff that I do too, just so everyone's clear. And listeners know this about me. Sometimes it's just mental health stuff, right? So it's not even like I'm going to the gym to lift weights because I'm trying to get jacked or think that's even the right thing to do. Your body needs a chance to respond. Your muscles need a chance to regrow and all that.

but it was more like mental. But I realized I wasn't at a certain point, at a certain number of months of that, right? I stopped feeling as good. I stopped getting gains. And I said, okay, I got to dial it back. And now like two heavy lifts, maybe three a week has become a good rhythm.

But it, and you've said this over and over in different ways. And I think it's just a core point here is we have to, one, we have to be intentional with this stuff, right? Two, there is absolute value. in data and knowledge. So your actual stats, as you've mentioned, working with someone who knows how to interpret those stats and apply them to you and what you're trying, your goals are, et cetera. And if you do that and think of these things as tests like the potato hack or a juice cleanse, whatever, right, all they're really doing is helping you get better in tuned, right?

If I'm taking what you said, they're all, these little tests help you get in tune with what works and what doesn't, which then allows you to eventually come up with the routine that puts you in the best place. I mean, that's what we're trying to get to. And I think thinking of these things as tests or experiments is absolutely the right way, guys. And too often, too often we just get caught up on like, like you said, I'm going to do CETO, right? And then it's, and Quito is hard as hell. And there's, you know, and it's very difficult, especially for the aid, this, this 35 to 50 range that we're talking about because you have kids, you have a spouse, and, you have a spouse, or a partner, your job is probably the most stressful it has ever been at that point, right?

Because you're either growing it, if you're an owner or a founder, or you're trying to raise up your career and advance to the next level. So you have all this reality, right, that isn't just, I'm going to wake up every day and spend every minute that I'm awake thinking about my physical and mental health, right? So it's about finding that cadence. And to that extent, you know, I wanted to hit you with three over the counter, now over the counter in most places, we'll call them chemical compounds and their impact on our body. And the first is nicotine, right? Tucker Carlson has Alps, Joe Rogan's putting in Zins. Talk to me a little bit about nicotine.

I just saw Dave Asprey was on a buddy of mine show, the Mick Unplug show, which I highly recommend everyone listen to if you're into business stuff. And he was talking about, you know, five milligrams a day of nicotine is great for mental health and, you know, fighting off dementia and all this shit. And like, like, where, one, is nicotine use positive at all? Because some people will tell you just in general, it's terrible, don't listen to anybody. Two, is there an amount or range that feels like it does have some positive benefits and, you know, kind of walk us through nicotine real quick? Oh, that's, that's a random one, but I'll tell you, I might smoke a cigar every once in a while, but I respond very poorly

to nicotine. We know that it's similar to caffeine. And that's, that's similar to caffeine. And that that it can, you know, enhance cognitive function, but it's more addictive. It can cause cardiovascular issues. Went into the best, the best thing that you can do to improve cognitive function is to get lean. Make sure your VO2 max is high. In other words, spend time doing cardio, things like Zone 2 and Hit training, and lose fat, sleep well. And caffeine is, is, is, a preferred. I wouldn't mess around with nicotine, especially if you have an addictive, a tendency towards addiction. Yeah, and I'll double into just personally. So I do, I use that, uh, Tucker Carlson's apps, Alp brand, mostly because they have a,

a three milligram that seems to work very well. I do one, maybe two a day. Um, I do have an addictive personality. And what I found is because of, I have pretty hardcore hyperactivity. And I found that one, it does help me focus a little. And when I first started using these, because of the focus enhancements, which were very positive for me, at a low dose, you know, if I kept dosing myself during the day, I felt awful in the evening, awful. So I have to be very careful, one, two, three milligram a day tops. If I go to a third or a fourth, I immediately, and, you know, if you're, if you're not hydrated enough, the cardiovascular stuff, you can start to feel some heart palpitations, license of heads. I would agree. This isn't my favorite thing.

I have found that a small dose has a positive effect, but if I, if I go past the small dose, I, I see rapid negative impact. So I would agree. Stay away from it, guys, if you can, if you do go way lower than like they're selling sixes, nines, oh my gosh. A 13 milligram pouch of Zinn, which I think Zinn is the only brand in the States right now that sells like anything over 10, that's going to put you on your ass. Like there is no reason to have that much nicotine in your body, in my opinion. Okay.

The next one I want to talk about is weed, right? New York State, it's legal now. It's legal a lot of places. It's become commonplace. If you drive down the road in most states that it's legalized, you're like driving by cars. You could smell it everywhere. You know, it has become very normalized in our life now. What should be thinking about with weed?

Is this, is it, is it, is there, are there any positives to it outside of the recreational kind of take you away from yourself? Or is this just pure recreation? And if you're going to use the substance, understand why you're using it. Don't try to convince yourself of anything else. you know, just understand there's negatives to it. Yeah, look, I, that was my drug of choice, right? And every once in a while I still might, might do it depending on the circumstances. But, but yeah, there's nothing healthy about weed, right? If you have cancer and if it helps

stimulate your appetite, in that situation, it's like, do what you need to do. But if you're trying to optimize health and your overall, you know, I don't want to say healthy because it's a rare thing in today's society, but let's say you're focused on health and you have no major chronic illnesses, it's not going to help you, right? It messes with your brain. Chemistry makes you more likely to have anxiety. Again, I think that the poison is in the dose. And certainly, aside from the cannabinoids that are in marijuana, combustion, breathing and smoke, or now we know, vapes like, vapes are in particular,

we're coming, we're starting to learn that's pretty bad for your lungs. And so inhaling smoke is not good for you. It doesn't matter where the smoke is from. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So, so I, um,

you know, I'd say in the second half of my adult life, uh, I've tried to replace when, when, in the, in the days when I'm running the excuse play of I need to land the ship. You know what I mean?

When I'm running that. excuse play for my own mental. You know, I've, I've transitioned a little away from alcohol and I don't drink as much, or substantially less. But what I found was, and I liked it for that reason, right, at first. But I found that continued use over time, even once or twice a week, I lost my snappiness. You know, I wasn't like, I've always prided myself on for better or for worse, I could index things in my brain fairly quickly. And I felt like it just throttled that ability. And I really didn't like it.

And I've substantially in the last six months or so kind of downshifted on that. Because again, if it doesn't have a positive impact and, you know, you're not just using it for recreation for recreational purposes, which is okay. You know, I mean, no judgment on anyone who decides to do that. But the idea that you can smoke or, you know, take, edibles every night before bed, you're just harming yourself. You know, there's no, that's not a, that's not a victimless crime, I guess, if your brain would be the victim in that standpoint. Yeah, we know it affects sleep architecture. I believe it suppresses REM sleep in particular,

if I remember correctly. It's not really that necessary to kind of, it's like, it's not good for you. Alcohol, too, not good for you, right? Past two drinks a week, we know that there's, risk start happening, right? No amount of alcohol is good for you. And listen, I drink. I'm not saying that with any sort of moral judgment. Just sort of like, just own your decisions. We all live and we die and we have to decide how, you know, what experiences we want along the way. And I think it's okay. I'm in Brazil right now. I drink wine here. I like kipidinas, which are sugar with fruit and just a liquor called koshasa shaking up like that's that's i don't like other types of drinks i like that one you know and so yeah i'll do it every once in a while but just i don't i just i don't make any

excuses about or try to try to what do you call it just a you phytmism yeah it's it's it's not good for me it can be fun and i think i think there is some benefit to that because i do believe that health goes beyond just the physical. It has to do with social, has to do with psychological. And some people would argue spiritual, right? So I think there can be an argument made for it. But again, if you're,

you don't want to justify chronic use with, like you shouldn't be doing anything every week, even drinking every week. If you're going through a period where you're going out and meeting with clients, okay, but you need to rein it in. You shouldn't be doing any of that every week. Yeah.

There's definitely some mental catharsis in sitting around with your bros having a couple cocktails talking shit for a couple hours. There's... 100%. Right? So, no, I think that's phenomenal.

And, you know, I think... You want to get high? Join Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Yeah, that's what everybody says. That's what everybody says. It'll stimulate... I've been doing it for 20 years, man. It's just the amount of complexity

it's not as probably a drip uh like it's you know doing like the birdman suits or squirrel suits whatever they're called right it's not as crazy as that but it's super stimulating you never get to the top it's just spiraling levels of complexity and challenge for your brain and you make a lot of friends too there's a great social aspect because it calms guys down with their attitude because everybody gets her butt kicked in there, right? Yeah. Or, you know, got their butt kicked along the way. Some people are really good.

I train with this one guy, four-time world champion. You know, yeah, I don't think he gets his butt kicked very often. But yeah, but anyway, so doing, finding, I believe, too, just modern life is so easy. I know it's hard. It's stressful. It's weird. Like I'm going through, we're running ads right now and trying to, um, you know, figure out like what the right combination of ads to scale our business, you know,

and it's super frustrating. But on the other hand, it's life has never been easier. You're not suffering from like the Shemani tribe in Bolivia, for example, they're kind of untouched by processed food. They, you know, 70 years old and they have no, no cardiovascular disease, no plaque in their arteries at 70. Like they have unheard of cardiovascular health. But guess what? They're dying from infectious diseases. They get a, you know what I mean? Like, Like we're living such a good life. It gets a little boring. So we have, especially if we're high performers,

we come home after a hard day of work, solving problems and complex issues and being creative. And then you're home, you're like, man, I'm watching TV. And this series is boring. Let me have some popcorn and a little bit of wine or maybe a few caramels, you know. And we're kind of suffering from life being too good. Yeah, there's too much availability.

There's not enough challenge to get to the resources to make them scarce enough that we consider them. We just go to the store, buy another bag of whatever and pop it in our face. All right, I want to wrap up. I appreciate your time. This has been amazing. We've gone so many different directions and talked about so much stuff, and I really appreciate your opinion. The last thing that I just want to ask you and take, you know, we don't have to spend a lot of time here, but I mentioned that I used to wear whoop. I know there's aura rings.

I get a lot of questions from people. And again, not an expert. So this is why I have guys like you on because I want to know. Like, one, do you think wearing these devices adds real value? Like I love the stats as like a high performance kind of crazy person, but I don't always know like, like what I find is I go in cycles. I'll wear the whoop for like three months. I'll kind of figure out how to calibrate myself and what the impact is.

And guys, I can tell you point blank. Weed and alcohol absolutely impact your sleep. If you've ever worn a whoop or an or a ring, 100%. you can see the difference. Number one, number one thing that helps me sleep is sex before bed, like good sex before bed. So really interesting. You know, that's not, that's not, I'm not, I'm not throwing that line out there, ladies, just just letting you know, you know, what the results came back. For me too, like, or any type of like exercise or, you know, somewhat vigorous exercise depending on the mood. But my, my, my question is like,

if I'm starting a journey, right, so we've talked about this person, Is it worth investing in an aura ring or a whoop to help us stay on track, to have metrics to kind of watch trends, et cetera? Are these devices worth the investment? I know they're not terribly expensive, but it's a couple hundred bucks. And, you know, maybe there's a monthly fee or whatever to some of them, depending on what you get. Like, is it worth investing in these items to help us along? Like, is the juice worth the squeeze, I guess is what I'm asking.

So I'm wearing an aura ring right now. Okay. I got the gin four. for me it's worth it but here's the thing I don't pay attention to most of what ORA talks about the readiness score I throw that out right a lot of because what they do they try to gamify it to one make it more proprietary also

look people are super their attention sucks so they like get bored with the same stats so you can tell like over the I've been using an ORA ring since I think 20 2019 and you can tell like Orens is evolved. I'm like, man, just tell me what I want to know, like this other stuff. Some of it's interesting, but a lot of it doesn't replace solid testing, like what I talked about earlier. But what is solid about it is it can track your act. Just, I don't like the WOOP. Orring has studies comparing it to polysuminagraphy, which is the gold standard of

measuring sleep architecture or sleep quality. Woop doesn't, to my knowledge, maybe they've done something more recently but so or is the gold standard in that it's still not as good as going and getting a sleep study though if you need one but it can help you change your behavior like i i have fragmented sleep i wake up um you know so it helps me to dial in my bedtime so the things that matter are like what time are you going to bed because if you're going to bed at different times, even if you're sleeping in eight hours, you're going to feel the effects of that. The circadian disruption. Your sleep efficiency, how long, out of the time you're in bed, how long were you actually asleep, right? How long you were asleep? How much movement?

Like, as far as the different phases, because people are like writing articles about like, here's how to optimize your R.M sleep. There's even arguments about from sleep, from sleep, doctors who use polysomnia somnography about what phase starts when and how many phases. So I don't think aura is quite at the level. So you have to know what to pay attention to. Generally speaking, though, if you buy it and just kind of mess around because you're not quite at the point where you want to hire someone to help you, try it if it does get you. Because the thing is, people buy supplements and it motivates them, even though they don't know what their blood borrower.

is they just read something or someone on Instagram so they buy it and it kind of you know it's like this health a small win for their health and it gets the motive the big thing is does it help you behaviorally you know and if it does improve because you can quantify your steps or your sleep I'd say I'd say it's worth it you know yeah I'd say in general it's worth it but it's good to be intentional and know like some of the things like I don't I don't give a shit about your readiness score that doesn't like I've woke I've had some of my best workouts um with a bad sleep and in a bad readiness score right or if you had sex right before bed and your heart rate's elevated right and then you fall asleep or will say hey your heart rate was elevated last night but you

actually slept well it was not elevated because you know you're thinking about you know some of my clients, I have a client who's just being made CEO because there's this big issue with the CEO and his son and some craziness happening. And so like it's not because of mental stress. It's because you do a little bit of exercise before bed. So you have to, you have to have some knowledge if you really want to understand like what to pay attention to and whatnot. But if it generally, give it a try if you're struggling with your health and a little bit of quantified, and gamification can help, you know, get you more active, then go for it. Yeah.

Ted, I appreciate it, man. You, this has been phenomenal. I appreciate you taking, you know, following around, you know, kind of going all different directions. But this has really been a masterclass, man. I think we've given people, you know, some, some great things to dig into. If they want to go deeper into your world, right, get to know you better, follow your work and maybe even ultimately work with you, where's the best place for them to go?

Yeah, you can find my podcast on Apple or iTunes, wherever you listen to podcasts, Legendary Life, Ted Rice, my last name spelled R-Y-C-E. So watch out for that. But if you want to learn more about the metabolic reset sequence that I do, you can go watch a free masterclass that I've put together. It's about 30 minutes long. And you go to legendary lifepodcast.com slash free. Awesome. Guys, I'll have the links, too, so whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening, wherever you listen, just scroll down into the description or the show notes,

and I'll have links to all this stuff. Ted, I appreciate the hell out of you, man. I'd love to have you back some time because there's like, I got a million more questions that we didn't even get to. Let's do it. But love it, dude. This has been fantastic. I appreciate all the extra time.

I wish you nothing but the best. Thanks, Ryan. Really appreciate it. It was my pleasure. Happy holidays. Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow.

From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy holiday. If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.