Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 218 - Siim Land

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Siim Land is a best-selling author of the book Keto Bodybuilding which is available on Amazon.com. He’s also a public speaker, high performance coach, content creator, and a professional biohacker. The overall term he likes to use is Body Mind Empowerment which refers to physical as well as mental development. He creates content about optimizing health, performance, longevity, and wellbeing with different biohacking techniques. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

All right, Encima, so where's your tardy slip? Tardy slip? What are you talking about, man? Gotta do burpees, bro. Yeah, you gotta run sprints after the show. Eleven burpees. Wait, why? I don't know. Well, you know why, sir.

No, I don't. You want me to be... Okay. So we have a 9 a.m. start time. Yeah, I was here at 8.50. He was in the posing room. Yeah, I mean, I was here at 8.50. He was in a posing room. Yeah, that makes sense. I was here. I was waiting for you guys. Mark was here at like 9.10. Checking out his double bicep pose.

Okay, no, I'm lying. I was here at 9.20. Who do we got on today, Mark? We got Simland on today. Oh, hey, that sounds like he might be here. That was quick. Yeah.

Ching-chong. He came flying right in. Sliding in. There he is. Hey. Hey, there we go. This technology thing is pretty amazing. Yeah, it's the speed of lightning. That's right. Yeah.

I saw, um, you know, a few, uh, a few of your YouTube videos and, um, I saw a lot of the stuff you've been talking about with fasting and, uh, my cohost over here, uh, and SEMA has been messing around with some fasting as well. Quite often doing 18 to 20 hour fast every day. I've messed around with a lot of different versions of intermittent fasting. Fasted recently for 72 hours and played around with some stuff. Unfortunately, one of the videos I was watching of yours, I was like in the middle of my fast realizing how I messed it up a bunch of different times by like drinking too much coffee and some of those different things. But really excited to have you on the show here because there's a lot of confusion about fasting, which doesn't seem like it's even possible because you just don't eat food.

But people have a lot of questions and are trying to figure out the best way to hack their fasting. So let's just kind of start out with how did you get into this topic in the first place of fasting? Yeah, well, I kind of first found about it first in the high school. And at that time, I was like lifting, starting to like get into weightlifting. And I think I saw like the first videos about it were from Hodge twins, which are also like really, they're pretty big, like bodybuilders and have a bunch of muscle. So if they were saying that they're doing some form of intermittent fasting and they're not losing muscle and they're actually being able to lean down very easily, then I was like, okay, I'm going to try it myself. And the first kind of method that I stumbled upon was the lean gains

method, which is like just fasting for 16 hours and eating your food within eight eight hours and i kind of stuck with that for the following several weeks several years and during that time like i didn't lose strength and i was still able to like progress even as like a novice lifter at that time and now i've been doing it for up to like seven to eight years quite consistently and tried out different methods, the extended fasts, doing like the warrior diets

and doing one meal a day and different types of fasting. So yeah, so far it's, I've kind of realized that it's very like a powerful strategy for both your health as well as like even just the kind of relationship with food because a lot of people fear that it's going to mess up their like uh

their eating habits and they actually develop some sort of disorders but in my in my in my opinion in my own example i can say that it's actually like the opposite everything has kind of gotten better i find the warrior diet to be really fascinating and that guy was talking about uh fasting and eating once a day um probably what 20 years ago yeah like i think he wrote the book in like the early 2000 uh 2000 something like that and yeah he's he's been doing like the author of the word at Ory Hofmeckler. He's been doing it for like several decades. And he was like the OG in my opinion, who really brought it into like mainstream nutrition advice.

Is that how you eat? You eat about like once a day type of deal? Yeah. Like I think I would categorize myself as doing some form of the warrior diet. And I do eat like once a day, but I kind of break my fast a bit sooner, sooner than uh i do eat like once a day but i kind of break my fast a bit sooner sooner than just you know once a day i may have on some days i may have like some bone broth uh on some days i may have like a protein shake during the workout or something like that just to kind of support the physical activity so to say like it's very still like very you know

difficult to reach you know the top end performance-end performance with resistance training if you're fasting all the time. So I kind of implement these different strategies, such as having some bone broth or some other calories in myself. But most of the time, I'm still kind of confining the time window that I consume my calories. If someone's doing like a two-day fast or three-day fast, should they work out at all? Depends on, yeah, like what's their goal and what are their, like, I don't think it's like mandatory to be working out during these longer fasts because you're already burning a bunch of body fat and you don't need to put like additional stress on yourself but what i find is that sometimes it's good to have like some

easy or very easy you know some still you want to still move around you don't want to like lay on the couch all the time and maybe doing some form of yoga or some like resistance band workouts something easy to kind of stimulate the muscle. I find that's actually helps to get through the fast because you'll be like getting yourself some like a good pump and you also get like some additional energy boost. So I would say that although it's not necessary to be working out on these longer fasts,

it sometimes can be useful and kind of get away or like go through the fast easier you know other than the long-term benefits or the the benefits of being in a caloric deficit for a long time with these longer-term fasts i know that you go into a lot of like deeper ideas in terms of fasting in terms of autophagy and etc what are some other real good benefits of long-term fast that people may want to think of and how often do you think people can be doing these longer term three to seven day fasts per year? Yeah. You mentioned like a few things such as like caloric restriction and autophagy and those things. And like most of the health benefits of fasting are actually tied to the process of autophagy. So autophagy is the clearance of these old and dysfunctional cell organelles and mitochondria

and all this waste material that inevitably accumulates into yourself. And aging itself is accompanied by the accumulation of that waste material. And with autophagy you can keep yourself in check and consistently eliminate them. And even like one of the few known ways of promoting longevity and increasing lifespan in other species is caloric restriction is one of the few known ways of doing it.

And actually autophagy is the kind of central component to that effect. Like for instance, in some studies, when mice are genetically modified in a way that they don't get autophagy, they don't activate autophagy, even when they are starving, then those mice, they don't live longer despite eating fewer calories. And those mice that are like normal, they get autophagy when they are starving, then those mice will live longer because of autophagy. And it's been replicated in yeast and other life forms as well. So the goal, in my opinion, with intermittent fasting is to optimize the process of autophagy and activate it.

It's true that there is some basal autophagy happening almost all the time throughout the 24-hour period, especially during sleep and during exercise even. And whenever you're not eating in between meals, you're probably dipping in and out of it a little bit. But yeah, the goal should be somewhat to kind of find this optimal dose, what kind of suits your requirements. You know, I would imagine that for healthy people

who are exercising all the time and eating a clean diet, then for them, they will naturally need less autophagy because they're healthier already. And at the same time, they will be able to go into autophagy much more efficiently and faster as well because they don't have a bunch of this junk and they don't have a wrecked up metabolism that would you know slow down the process of going into autophagy but to answer your question like how often should you fast that's yeah depends again on the goals and uh what what the person can do in terms of their like how often do they train and what's their intensities do they need to be eating frequently

because of you know maybe some professional um physique goals or such but at the same time i think me personally i think the golden rule would be to have a few a few of these like longer than 24 hour fasts a few times a year and like one of the kind of implications with that is that although you may you may be having like a really long fast like a 10-day fast once a year, if you're eating like garbage the rest of the year, then you're not really doing much benefit to yourself. So I think that more consistent, shorter fasts,

even like 24 hours up to 48 hours, those would be much better than going for like really long fasts and then not fasting at all the rest of the time because you'll be like tapping into the autophagy zone and the therapeutic zone much more frequently have you ever added up the hours that you fast like um because something that you pointed out in one of your videos which i thought was really interesting you talked about um basically kind of what you just said right there where somebody might fast for 48 hours or 24 hours and that that's great. And it has a lot of, it's very productive. But if you just fast 14 hours every day or 16 or 18 hours every day, and you do that for a few

weeks, that'll be way more fasting than doing a 72 hour fast. Can you kind of elaborate on that? And what's the advantage of that? Yeah. Like I said, I think shorter, but more frequent fasts are better because you will be staying in the fastest state for longer and ultimately you're going to end up with uh longer like higher amounts of hours throughout the year for instance if you're just having a seven day fast maybe once a year then you're going to end up with seven days of fasting for the entire year. On someone else who's doing more fasting, maybe they have a three-day fast every quarter of the year. They're going to get like 12 to 15 hours of days of fasting.

But someone who is doing, for instance, maybe like a 48-hour fast every other week or even like once a week, then they're going to get like up to 30 to 60 days of fasting. a week, then they're going to get up to 30 to 60 days of fasting. So if you compare those days of fasting, then of course I would say the longer fast may be more effective in terms of going into very deep ketosis and activating a lot of esophageal, but at the same time, it's not that frequent and consistency is probably more important for that. And at the same time, there will be a point of diminishing returns you experience with the health benefits of autophagy. After a while, you kind of max out even on those longer fasts and it will be better to

kind of break the fast, refeed properly, give yourself the proper nourishment and then have like another one down the road. So you're kind of having it more consistently. Yeah. Basically, if you even fast just 12 hours for two days, that's 24 hours of fasting, right? So mathematically, you can end up with a nice amount of fasting. However, some of the health benefits that you're talking about in terms of autophagy and things like that, those things don't really tend to kick in until you get into more like an 18 hour plus fast. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is true that, you know, you don't start to fast immediately after you stop eating. Like it's going to take at least a few hours before your body burns through

those calories and then it's going to shift into like the fastest state so even if people are you know like fasting for 16 hours then metabolically on the physiological level they may be fasting only for like 14 or 12 hours because they have to like first digest it the foods uh with which with which they like started to fast. So yeah, I would say that, you know, the idea of how fast you get into autophagy, that depends a lot on what kind of a diet you follow and how metabolically flexible you are. So someone who is able to go into ketosis faster, someone who doesn't consume excess amounts of calories, then for them, it's going to take much less time to get into like the healthier zone of autophagy. Do you do anything in particular going into a

fast? Like let's just say you had a couple of days where maybe you didn't, you know, eat what you eat, what you normally eat. Do you go into a very low carb diet, keto style diet, and then go into a very low-carb diet, keto-style diet, and then go into a fast? With the low-carb keto diet, then the idea that you're restricting your carbs, that can help you to get into the therapeutic zone of autophagy faster because one of the things that regulates autophagy are things like insulin and your liver glycogen as well. So in theory, you could accelerate the process by eating keto a few days before that. Because that's going to essentially enable you to get into ketosis faster when you start to fast, as well as go into autophagy. go into autophagy. So what I recommend people to do is that even just because of the fact that ketosis helps you to fast more easily, then I recommend people to have maybe one to two days

before starting any longer fast to eat a very low carb keto diet just so their body could get used to burning fat and that they wouldn't get like the withdrawal symptoms of stopping eating carbs. You know, I'm curious because you mentioned therapeutic zone in terms of autophagy. I know you made a whole book called Metabolic Autophagy. I haven't read it yet, but I'm pretty sure it goes into a lot of these details. Now, what exactly do you mean by the therapeutic zone of autophagy? exactly do you mean by the therapeutic zone of autophagy? And also along with that, I feel like when we hear about all the benefits of autophagy, right, we might try and go down that rabbit hole a little bit too deep. Are there any negatives trying to chase this, like trying to chase more

autophagy? Yeah, well, first of all, yeah, like I would say when you first people hear about autophagy then they think it's like the best thing ever and they want to activate it to the max for the rest of their life but the truth is that I have actually made several videos about it as well where I talk about that there are many negative side effects to autophagy such as like maybe the easiest one is

that you may potentially just lose some muscle mass which in turn can accelerate aging and has a negative effect on longevity. But there are actually a lot of studies showing that the process of autophagy can actually strengthen some cancer cells and tumor cells as well. Just because not that autophagy itself is like trying to give you cancer or something. It's just that the process of autophagy itself, it won't tell the difference objectively between what's bad and good. It's just the process of cellular turnover

during which you're like recycling some cellular material and debris. And just because of that, some cancer cells are really sneaky and they will just steal that some of the energy that you're creating during autophagy. And, i wouldn't say that autophagy is the best thing for actually treating certain cancers and tumors it will be much much more of looked at something as a disease preventative thing that you kind of keep yourself healthy consistently and making sure that your cells are being recycled properly.

But it's not like the best thing for like actually treating cancers. With the therapeutic zone of autophagy, there are, you know, many, many aspects of disease that you can kind of predict in your, let's say, blood results or like what kind of energy is burning through your bloodstream at that particular moment. And we already, you know, you probably also heard that the ketogenic diet has many therapeutic benefits, especially for epilepsy and actually using it for treating cancer and such. So one of the cancer researchers, Thomas Seyfried, has created this measurement to look at the person's metabolic health during a

fast or during a ketogenic diet. And it's called the glucose-ketone index. And it basically shows the relationship between your blood ketones and blood glucose. So if your blood ketones are very high and your blood glucose is very low, then that's an indication of a very high level of ketosis. And that can be indirectly used to look at how much autophagy are you getting as well. There are no real, in real time, measurement tools you can use to measure autophagy, but it can be indirectly looked at by using the glucose ketone index. And usually, for instance, if I'm fasting for about three days, then my ketones tend to be somewhere around three to four millimoles. And my blood sugar is very low,

around 50 to 60 milligrams per deciliter. And if you can do the calculations, the glucose ketone index formulas, you divide the amount of ketones you have with your glucose, and that's going to essentially give you the score. And the lower your glucose ketone index, the higher zone of ketosis are you at.

And that can also show you that there's more autophagy happening. Do you test your own blood often? I don't do it that frequently. I may use it sometimes if I'm doing some sort of an experimentation, but I don't see much reasons for doing it every day or something. Maybe once a week would be okay, but I tend to do it maybe once a month or something. to simply manage their weight, like, you know, nevermind kind of the autophagy and some of the other great benefits that it has. What are some recommendations that you would give somebody who just wants to be leaner or just wants to drop 10, 20 pounds? Well, like you said in the beginning, it's sounds very simple and you just stop eating. But in turn, that's that can be like an easy way to burn some more body fat. And I think calories still matter

and you can't eat unlimited amount of calories even if you're fasting. So the goal is to restrict your calories. But with some form of fasting, you can find it easier to stick to a lower calorie diet and kind of confine yourself in a certain timeframe where you have like less time to mess things up and you get more satiation from eating fewer foods. So for instance, yeah, there are different ways of going about it. Like, like the extended fasts, like three day fast or two day fasts, those are pretty good for dropping a lot of body fat really fast. But at the same time fasts or two-day fasts, those are pretty good for dropping a lot of body fat really fast. But at the same time, even just like one meal a day, like there are many people online who are doing the one meal a day for fat loss and they're kind of seeing

great results from it. So there are many ways of going about it. But yeah, the starting point would be to see what can I stick to consistently and how little food am I able to eat while still being able to work out and stick to it consistently. um, you know, just from even just, just even minor amounts of fasting, because from a lot of the people I've worked with, they seem to just have trouble with control. Like that's the main problem. And like you said, you said it perfectly. They have less time to mess things up. And I think that that can really be effective for somebody. So maybe somebody who's listening to this, it's like, maybe just, I don't know if you're not used to it and you really like to eat, you know, maybe try a 12 hour fast or 14 hour fast, ease your way into it and see if there's something that you can build up with some form of consistency. The odd thing that I find, and let me know if you've found this to be true with people that you've helped. Do you find it easier for people to simply not eat? Because that's what I've helped. Do you find it easier for people to simply not eat? Because that's what I've found. Yeah, I think there is some truth to that, that once you get used to fasting and

you're actually in the fasted state, then it is somewhat easier to continue fasting because you already kind of overcame the initial hurdles and your body has become more in tuned and more adaptable to the fasting. So for instance, I myself would much rather continue fasting for maybe like an additional 24 hours rather than consume some unhealthy food at the airport or something or have like a very small meal that wouldn't satiate me that much. And instead would give me like additional cravings or something. So yeah, in some situations, I think it's easier to carry on with the fast, especially if you're,

you've already fasted for like a significant amount. But at other times, some people, you know, for them, if they do even just some form of like a partial fasting, or they do something like the fasting mimicking diet, that helps them to keep on fasting for longer by, you know, having a small meal, then I think that would be still much more beneficial and much more, you know, optimal than not fasting at all. or, you know, optimal than not fasting at all. How long have you found that? Because I mean, you've been doing fasting for years now. So obviously you've dealt with a lot of people that are picking up fasting and you've seen a lot of struggles. So I feel a lot of people

when they start doing intermittent fasting, they are trying to find a light at the end of the tunnel to understand how long it's going to take them to get used to this, to get used to the feeling of hunger, to get used to the, like just get used to the habit of not eating. And a lot of them quit a little bit too early because they're like, ah, this is too hard. I want to eat and I want to eat often. How long have you found on average that it takes someone to get used to fasting for prolonged periods of time? When I say prolonged, I mean, you know, 16 to 20 hours, not multiple day fast. Is there like, is there a time that people can look for?

I think it depends on where the person is coming from and how healthy they are. So for instance, someone who is used to eating like six meals a day and they're eating like the standard American diet, then of course that's going to take much more longer for their body to get used to it, just because they probably haven't tapped into ketosis in a long time, and their body is very metabolically inflexible. But for someone who is doing maybe a paleo diet, they're not completely keto, but they're still having some carbs, they're not overdoing the calories, then for them, it's going to take a much shorter time to get used to it. In my own example, when I first started in high school, then I was doing some form of a modified form of a paleo. I was still eating carbs, I was still eating starches, but I was primarily whole foods

based and higher in protein already. So that for me was somewhat easier to transition into the 16 and eight type of fasting. But even though at that point, it was harder for me to fast for like 20 hours or 24 hours on that type of a template on a, like a moderate carb diet. But after going keto, then I, I noticed on keto, it's easier to fast because you're already very used to using fat as a primary fuel source. And when you're not eating, you're skipping meals and you're fasting, then you're literally going to tap into deeper ketosis. eating, you're skipping meals and you're fasting, then you're literally going to tap into deeper ketosis. And that's like, you know, literally pouring gasoline on a fire and you're starting to really use your own body fat for fuel. So there's not going to be much difference

between eating keto and staying in a fast state. So there's definitely like different degrees of how fast you will be able to get used to the fasting. But in general, the kind of healthier you are, the more exercise you do and the, you know, the, the, the more controlled amount of carbs you eat, then the easier it's going to be. Yeah. You, you know, what's really crazy. You mentioned that you started fasting in high school. And when I was in high school, like that would have been not, I was the opposite. I was like, I want to get big. I'm gonna eat all the time. Right. So for you, I'm wondering, because a lot of people, especially like younger guys, uh, when they hear about fasting, they think about, you know, muscle breakdown. They, they think that they can't get big. I've seen some of your pictures. You're, you're pretty

damn jacked. So my question to you is how were you able to, or what did you structure your fast like so that you could still gain muscle over time? Because I can assume that you were, you were trying to gain muscle and you were also fasting. How'd you structure it? Right. Um, well over this, over this time period, I've gained maybe like 10 to 15 pounds of like lean muscle. I haven't tried to deliberately bulk and it's been primarily, I would say it's primarily the result of like progressive overload and, uh, sticking progressive overload and sticking consistently to a resistant training routine.

So the main driver of muscle growth, in my opinion, is just the stimulus, the physical stimulus. And that can be done by just focusing on getting stronger and even adding some hypertrophy work into the mix. So that's been always my kind of focus. I've never tried to go on these crazy bulks or dirty bulks especially because I think they're not going to be worth it.

You're going to have to just cut down. So I've always kind of proposed the kind of lean bulking approach. But with that being said, I would say that it's also a matter of timing your meals properly with the training. And with the 16 and 8 method, I was always training in a low carb state. And I was in a post-workout scenario. I would really try to stimulate the growth pathways that promote muscle growth.

And one of the most important ones for that is the mammalian target of rapamycin, which is short for mTOR. And mTOR is the kind of opposite of autophagy. So autophagy is the catabolic breakdown pathway, but mTOR is the anabolic growth pathway. So after coming from a fast, then I don't want to stay in the autophagy zone. I want to actually stimulate the mTOR. And the way I do that is primarily consuming more protein, specifically protein that has leucine because leucine is the main amino acid that drives protein synthesis. So I would always eat a bunch of eggs, some meat. And if I were to be eating carbs, then I would also combine the carbs with the protein because carbs plus protein is going to result in a higher anabolic response and it's going to

drive protein synthesis higher. Nowadays, when I'm doing some form of a one meal a day type of diet, then I still want to minimize the amount of muscle breakdown that occurs during the fasting period. It is true that you will be slightly on the catabolic side when you're fasting, but whether or not it's going to result in muscle loss, that depends on the balance between muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown over the course of the 24-hour period. So although I'm fasting, the small amount of muscle catabolism that occurs during that time, it's made up for by the amount of muscle protein synthesis that I experienced during my eating window. So that's why you shouldn't think of fasting or you shouldn't think of breaking the fast as something that should carry on with the fast. You want to actually really make yourself really anabolic

by consuming more protein and carbs sometimes and making sure that you train with enough intensity at the gym as well. I was just going to ask him because you said something that it's almost like a unicorn in some circles. You said a lean bulk. When you're doing something like that, what is the amount of calories that you're taking in? I would say that it's always somewhat around maintenance, but on the days that I actually work out, then on those days I would increase my calories, maybe 300 to 500 calories. And on maybe like rest days, I would drop those calories a little bit just to balance itself out. So you

don't need like a bunch of extra calories to achieve like a positive nitrogen balance and to build muscle you just want like you just want a little bit of extra calories just to support the growth and you then let your body do the rest so i i haven't you know because the after a certain point of extra calories then you're only gonna start promoting fat gain instead of promoting muscle growth. So yeah, like even just 300 to 500 calories, I think is the most you can do. Do you achieve some of this through just like a post-workout shake or something like that? Yeah, you could take like some form of a protein shake after workout. But what I found is actually, in my own experience, I've seen more results from taking a protein shake

either before the workout or during the workout. So like I said, you are being somewhat catabolic during the fasting period. And it is true that fasted training will cause more muscle breakdown if you're training hard. So to minimize that, I will take one scoop of protein powder and either drink it immediately before working out or during the workout. So that would give me some additional amino acids that my body would use to alleviate the muscle breakdown. So I've seen that that's been like a pretty big game changer for someone who is trying to build muscle on like a one meal a day diet or a warrior diet.

So if you're always training in a fasted state, then that's probably going to end up with additional muscle loss. But if you take like that protein shake during the workout, then you're kind of sidestepping that that completely and you're getting the sufficient protein and amino acids even during the workout. Have you ever played around with amino acids like essential amino acids or branch chain? intra-workout shake or something, but they wouldn't be very useful during the actual fast because they may interfere with some of the autophagy benefits because the amino acids will raise mTOR a little bit and that's going to interfere with autophagy. So the only time you would maybe want to take those BCAAs or amino acids would be during a workout when you're already like breaking down your muscle. And at that point, it doesn't really matter whether or not you stop autophagy or not.

So when you're training and you're fasted or you actually have your protein shake, a lot of people are concerned because you hear that if you have even protein feedings throughout the day, muscle protein synthesis is much higher than if you have like one or two protein feedings which you typically do when you're fasted is that not much of a concern because of all the other benefits that come along with fasting in terms of like the increase of growth hormone and all that other stuff or is that still something you're thinking about um i would you know the the idea that you need to have like very small frequent meals of protein throughout the entire day. That comes from the idea that you need only like 30 grams of protein to maximize protein synthesis in one sitting. So it doesn't really tell you like how much protein you end up absorbing from one meal.

you end up absorbing from one meal. So it is true that if you want to maximize your muscle growth to the fullest, then having more frequent consumptions of protein will end up in more frequent spikes in muscle protein synthesis, and that may lead to more muscle growth. But even if you spike your muscle protein synthesis once a day or twice a day, then your, you know, your muscle growth rate would be maybe a little bit slower, but the end result, you know, after several years, there's not going to be much difference from that because you're still, you will be still able to absorb a lot of the protein. Even if you do it like, like within a small timeframe, your body will just slow down the,

the absorption rate of that protein. And you may even have a more sustainable release of those amino acids into your bloodstream throughout the entire several hours after eating. So I think there's not going to be much difference. But for optimal results, you would maybe need, you know, yeah, you could, you could take like six meals a day, but for most people, there's not going to be that much difference between like two meals or six meals. The idea is that with one meal a day, you would probably not be able to like, you know, see significant muscle growth unless you're using some form of like a protein shake,

or unless you're having like an additional meal before, before that. What are some things that people should be concerned about while fasting? I know for myself, you know, adding some salt to some water and some things like that have helped. What are some things that people should really be keeping their eye on if they're going to do 24, 48 hour, 72 hour fast? Yeah, like the salts and electrolytes are really critical because you know sometimes people feel lethargic and tired not because of their fasting but because of their like electrolyte deficiencies

and imbalances so those things can be actually made worse with things like drinking too much coffee drinking too much water those things they may simply make the person excrete their electrolytes. And yeah, adding just a little bit of salt into the water can avoid that. Some additional things would be to just be mindful of how adapted you are to the fasting, so to say. So there isn't going to be any trophies for people who fast the longest or people who skip the most meals. You just have to look at how well is your body able to handle it.

And if you start to feel lethargic and you feel like passing out or something, then yeah, it would be easier to break the fast and try again the next time instead of grinding your face through and actually maybe damaging your health in the process. So yeah, I think with fasting, there tends to be this all-in approach for most people.

Either people don't fast at all, or if they do fast, they fast too much too often and they start to see some negative side effects. And maybe additional negative side effects would be that they start to either lose a bit too much muscle or they just maybe start to show symptoms of fatigue all the time, symptoms of low thyroid, etc. So that's usually caused by just staying in a fasted state for too long, too frequently. And the way you can deal with that would be to make sure that you actually nourish yourself every once in a while. Just, you know, the cycles of feasting and famine, those would be something that are more preferential for everyone's health.

Have you messed yourself up with fasting before? Well, I think there have probably been some. I haven't had any serious negative health side effects or anything like that. But I would say maybe sometimes if I were to go on a longer fast after not prepared myself with keto before, then I would notice like, okay, I actually feel lightheaded sometimes,

etc. But if I make sure that my electrolytes on point, I make sure that I'm not drinking coffee all the time, then everything should be just fine. Do you fast every day? Not all the time. I may have a few days.

I try to have maybe one day of the week where I'm not doing some form of fasting. I break my fast. I'll maybe have two meals one day of the week. And at other times, I'm just kind of used to it. And I use it almost like a productivity hack as well to kind of keep myself mentally clear in the morning parts. And I'll start having some calories only in the later part of the day. What would you suggest for individuals that are kind of concerned with the slowing down of their metabolism over time? Because I mean, yeah,

if you have a slower metabolism, it just means you're more efficient with the food you're eating. But if you're fasting every single day for a prolonged period of time, it can slow down. So what are some strategies that individuals can do so that they can make sure that it doesn't slow down too much? I think most of the reason or the biggest reason why metabolic adaptation occurs is because of the overall amount of calories a person eats. For instance, you can have a super fast metabolism and get away with eating a lot of food if you consume, actually, if you're able to metabolize that many calories. So the biggest problem is that metabolic adaptation occurs with fasting has to do with people dropping their calories too much, too fast as well. So they either like don't get that hungry or they deliberately try to stick to like very low calorie foods. Like they eat, you know, kale and broccoli only. And that's naturally going to reduce their total calories for the day.

And that's one of the reasons they get the slow metabolism eventually. So the way you avoid that is to actually, like I said earlier, when you break the fast, you don't want to think about carrying on with the fast. You want to think about how do I actually nourish my body and give myself the nutrients that support anabolism and support muscle growth. And for that, protein, carbs, some fish, eggs, those things are like the most nutrient dense and most nourishing foods. Because if you think about it in a way that if you're fasting and your total amount of the meal frequency is somewhat lower,

then the nutrient density and the caloric density of those meals also has to be somewhat higher because you have less time and you have less meals to get all of your nutrients. So you don't have time to eat kale. You have time to focus more on the nutrient-dense foods like meats and tubers and berries and fruit. I like what you said there. A lot of people, you know, we found this to be true with this podcast. You know, when we hear people, you know, trying to diet and they didn't succeed,

whether it be intermittent fasting or ketogenic diet, or if it fits your macros, any diet, I think people are, they're automatically thinking, I need to dive right into this and I'm going to start on Monday and I'm going to do cardio for an hour and I'm going to lift for an hour and I'm going to, I'm going to kind of like rock the world and I'm not going to eat carbs for a month. You know, they, they get so excited, which is great that the enthusiasm is there. But, uh, you know, I just like to reiterate and say that time, time and time again is like, get used to the food first. Get used to some good nutrition and good health practices in your life. Get used to what it would feel like to sleep for eight hours. Get used to what it feels like to go outside for a 10-minute walk.

Get used to some good healthy fruits and vegetables and foods that just agree with you, that you enjoy, that don't come out of a box. And start there. It's a great place to start. And then you can dive into listening to this particular podcast about fasting and keto and those other things. But you got to start out with the foods first. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so true. It's going to be much easier to transition into these fasting and keto, etc. But at the same time, you will also have better health outcomes. So there's actually some reasons to believe that if you're fasting from a very unhealthy diet with a lot of junk, then you may potentially get more of the detox symptoms as well, such as feeling nausea, getting some diarrhea or some gut problems. Those may be avoided much better if you actually clear out your diet first and get healthier before you try to do these things. It makes a lot of sense. Keto flu and these different things, I think people originally thought it's just from having really high ketones, makes a lot of sense that a keto flu and these different things, I think people originally thought it's just from having like a really high ketones, but a lot of times

it's just the absence of carbohydrates when you're not used to it, uh, that oftentimes makes people feel bad. So I just always think that's important to, uh, to reiterate, you know, and, and for me, um, the fasting has helped me a lot because I'm a former fat kid. I love food. And so just to like, just to free myself of not thinking about food anymore has, has helped a ton. I don't fast every day. I mix it in here and there. Um, you know, I'll do 18 hours and 20 hours and I've messed with a 48 and a 72 more recently, but, uh, freeing myself of not having to worry about those foods has helped a lot.

Have you helped, have you found it's helped you, uh, be more productive with work and working out and things like that when you're just not so attached to like, when am I going to eat? Where am I going to eat? And carrying around Tupperware and things like that? Yeah, of course. Those are actually one of my favorite benefits of fasting, you know, aside from autophagy, I, I, I see that, uh, in my own example, I feel very more productive in a faster state. Uh, part of the reason may have to do with like slightly higher levels of cortisol and higher levels of adrenaline that you experienced during a faster state, but also the pure fact that you don't have to think about your meals and you don't have to think about eating at that moment

that that itself kind of frees up your mind and I do most of my writing I do most of my creative work and all the things I do related to my work in a faster state in the morning right after waking up so I really enjoy that and the kind of the mere fact of just kind of freeing yourself from the obligation or the responsibility of having to eat, that just opens up many new doors in being able to think and being able to process things cognitively. But at the same time, I also think that if you're actually fasting and you get hungry, then that itself has a cognitive boost. Fasting will increase BDNF, which helps with memory and helps with learning, but it also makes you more sharp.

And from an evolutionary perspective, that makes a lot of sense because hunters, whenever they started to get hungry, whenever they were fasting, then those moments were the most important moments where they had to get something to eat because otherwise they would either starve or really start to fast for longer periods of time. So yeah, fasting should sharpen your cognition and it should motivate you to become more efficient

at catching game or trying to find better food sources. cognition and it should like motivate you to become more efficient at you know catching catching hot game or trying to find better food sources you know with us talking about fasting so much i know that there are some parents out there that are like i'm gonna start fasting i'm gonna get my kids to do it too right um i'd be scared if i had a kid, I'd be scared to have them like, you know, use intermittent fasting in any way. Would you see that there like is any benefit in having children fast? Like, obviously if they're overweight, maybe it's a good idea to get them in that type of habit. But, uh, would there be any benefit to doing that? Um, I think that children definitely don't need to fast at least that long and that frequently.

So there is still some benefit to time-restricted eating, which is like a type of intermittent fasting. It's more like a daily schedule. And I would say that at least not teaching your children to snack, that's like one of the bad things. You want to kind of teach them to follow their own hunger and teach them more intuitive eating so that they wouldn't develop some eating disorder or they wouldn't become obese. So, you know, parents, they don't need to deliberately force their child to fast but i think that they should definitely condition them to not snack and to actually like sit down to eat something and to teach them how do you follow intuitive eating patterns you know the snacking thing when

you you mentioned that that's one of the biggest things that fasting has helped me with i think i've been doing it almost two years now and before before that, I was in really good shape, but I snacked a lot. Like I'd always have like food at like at arm's length. And I don't snack anymore now. And it's that like it's the habit of fasting that's helped a lot with that. So that's huge. That's actually huge. Just have like a granola bar in your back pocket. Seriously.

24 hours a day. You got a banana with you and like everything, you know, you always I'm the the same way. I was like that forever. And I, I'm still guilty of it. But even though I fast, a lot of times I'm still like, well, in case I get super hungry, I'm going to, I'm going to bring this with me. So it's, it's not an easy thing to break. Is there anything that we can utilize to kind of like hack the system into, I guess, lying to our body that is eating. Like something the body maybe wouldn't even recognize as food, but is still food. Like could you eat like a hard-boiled egg or something like that and still be quote-unquote fasting? Well, you know, technically anything that has calories will break a fast, but whether or not it's going to either kick you out of ketosis or interfere with autophagy, that depends on what's the food like and how your body's going to respond.

So there are a lot of these calorie restriction numetics that mimic the physiology of fasting a little bit by either lowering your insulin, lowering your blood sugar, and promoting ketosis. So things like even like black coffee, green tea, then there's things like berberine, turmeric, ginger, black pepper, cayenne pepper. Those things are these foods that stimulate the topology a little bit and promote ketosis as well. But for actual foods that you can chew, then for that there are some such as

cruciferous vegetables. Those will be things that promote autophagy a little bit and they won't inherently, to a certain extent, if you eat 100 calories of broccoli, then that's probably not going to interfere with the fast that much. It may interfere with autophagy a little bit, but you would probably go back into it much faster than if you were to eat an actual meal. Is there any problems with not getting your caloric, your calorie needs? If you only eat once a day, it might be tough for someone to, I guess, gulp down 3,000 calories or 2,800 calories or whatever their demand might be.

going to be like any negative side effects you're just going to burn more body fat and you're going to lose some weight but in the long term if you're doing it consistently like for several days and several weeks then like like we talked about earlier you're going to experience the metabolic adaptation and your body will just get used to eating fewer calories so if you're if you're trying to lose some body fat then like eating once a day for you're eating only 1,000 calories for one day, then that's not going to have any significant... It's not going to slow down your metabolism that much if you make sure you consume more calories the following day. So yeah, in the short term, there's not going to be any negative side effects

if you restrict your calories a lot. But if your goal is to consistently be able to stick to that kind of a schedule then you would want to make sure that you pay attention to your caloric intake so you're big on biohacking um what other i mean obviously you utilize fasting but what else do you do because i have seen on your youtube channel you like to go on like sauna then immediately dump into a cold ice bath and back into a sauna. What have you found? Like what are three to five different hacking methods? Have you found that have helped you be more productive? Well, I think that, yeah, the sauna and cold exposure, those things, I would categorize them

into the same group because I like to always do them together. And some of the benefits of them are increased if you combine them together. So I usually stay in the sauna for 20 minutes and then I'll do some form of a cold plunge, either in an ice bath, in a lake, or just taking a cold shower. So the benefits of that are it also activates the heat shock proteins as well as the cold shock proteins, both of which can also promote autophagy, but at the same time, they're really connected with improved cardiovascular health, reduced inflammation, and reduced mortality from all causes as well. So I think that it's another one of those almost ancient practices

that we can learn from traditional societies. And I do them quite frequently. I maybe do two to four times a week. I'll go to a sauna and do some cold plunge as well. But other things, I like to use the red light therapy device as well. So I've seen that it definitely improves skin health. It helps with lowering inflammation and as well as like just feeling more energized during the day. So I sometimes use it in the morning to kind of kickstart my

mitochondria to start producing energy. But I've used it even in the evening where it helps me to kind of ease or kind of relax and become more parasympathetic for the upcoming night. But I think one of the most important, let's say biohacks or things people should focus on is their general sleep optimization and making sure that their sleep quality is in point because like's so many negative side effects to sleep deprivation and even just suboptimal sleep can predispose you to diabetes and weight gain and Alzheimer's down the road. So definitely sleep is like a miracle cure that not only improves your focus, improves your productivity, but makes you healthier and helps you to stay leaner.

productivity, but makes you healthier and helps you to stay leaner. And even like the processes of autophagy or the benefits of autophagy, most of them take place during deep sleep. And yeah, so even if you are fasting, but your sleep quality sucks, then you may potentially not get that much autophagy compared to the amount of effort you're putting in. And fasting is going to be horrendous too too if you don't get enough sleep. Like every night that I don't get enough sleep, right? The next day I'm fasting, I feel like crap, you know? And you're like, why am I so hungry? Exactly. You get more sleep, fasting is so much easier. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's some research showing that people who sleep like six hours or less, they're prone to eat like 300 to 500 calories more than those who get like more sleep. So yeah, this definitely promotes like

overeating as well as like insulin, mild insulin resistance. Do you stop eating a certain time before bed to help you get more sleep or do you find you can eat right before bed and not have any trouble? Yeah, I generally do try to have at least like three three hours before going to bed to stop eating and i would say that on some instances for instance if i were to work out on that day and i didn't eat or i didn't stop eating three hours before bed, then my sleep quality will have like a small dip just because, you know, I would be interfering with recovery and such. But on some days, if I'm not eating that much food, like the volume of food is small, then on those days, I may, you know, even eat within like two hours before bed and it's not going to interfere me at all.

So it depends on what I'm eating and what kind of foods I'm eating and in what amounts. So generally, things that are harder to digest, things that take longer to digest as well, like maybe a bunch of vegetables, a bunch of meat, those are the things that are going to take a longer time to digest. a bunch of meat those are the things they're going to take a longer time to digest and they may interfere with sleep quality more versus something that is very easy to digest like some carbs or some fruit and those they don't seem to have like that big of an effect either have you always stuck to like uh and are you still continuing to stick to a higher fat diet or do you ever mess with um much higher carbs and moderate fat uh i don't i don't stick to like a keto diet all the time i do it more like a cyclical approach

or like a targeted approach so i do incorporate carb refeeds quite frequently and i i stick to like some of our low carb keto template keto template maybe 60% of the time, and 40% of the time I'm doing some carbs. The only caveat is that I never want to combine carbs and keto together because that's like a recipe for insulin resistance and all the other metabolic diseases that are actually so predominant in society. It's not that carbs are bad. It's not that fat is bad. It's just that the combination and putting them together makes them both bad.

So that's why I think you would either eat a low-carb diet or a high-carb diet, but make sure that you don't combine them together. So on your higher-carb day, are you just cutting back on fat a little bit? them together. So on your higher carb day, are you just cutting back on fat a little bit? Yeah. Like if I'm having a carb refeed, then I'm not having any additional fats. It's usually just like tubers, fruit, something of that starch with some lean protein, like a chicken breast or white fish or something. So yeah. And mixing a bodybuilding diet and a keto diet back and forth as per your book right yeah i would say that's that's a pretty good way of going about it what about any cardiovascular training

you mentioned some strength training earlier do any you do any form of cardio any sort of hit or anything like that uh i would say that my main for me form of cardio is some hit or Tabata just because of the time efficiency. But I don't do it that frequently. I do it maybe, maybe like twice a week, I do a hit session. And I may have like an actual steady state cardio for like 45 minutes, maybe like once a week or once every other week. So I'm getting most of my cardio from HIIT, but sometimes like if I'm not feeling like doing some really intense exercise or if I see that my sleep hasn't been that good, then I'll just do like very low intensity cardio,

something. Do you, you know, you mentioned some strength training earlier. You mentioned progressive overload. Do you power lift? I don't specifically do power lifting. I actually focus more primarily on calisthenics and gymnastics exercises. So that's my main focus of trying to progress in the different movement patterns like hands and push-ups, muscle-ups, front levers, planches, those sort of things.

But I do go to the gym and I lift weights like once a week or something. And that will be the time where I do the compound lifts like bench, squat, overhead press, and the deadlift and so on. Go ahead. squat overhead breasts and the deadlift and so on you know go ahead do you know another rabbit hole other than the autophagies uh a lot of people talk about and you mentioned it a little bit the growth hormone increase when it comes to fasting how substantial really is that uh for like muscle gain or muscle retention yeah like the growth hormone human hormone, isn't actually like an anabolic hormone. That's like a misconception that it doesn't, it doesn't make you grow more muscles. It's more like an anti-catabolic hormone that just protects against the muscle catabolism and muscle loss.

So the reason why you experience higher levels of growth hormone in a fasted state is that your body just wants to preserve more muscle and protect it so uh yeah in in in an indirect way uh the increased level of growth hormone you experience in a faster state that can help you to uh end up with more muscle mass just because you experience like a less muscle breakdown during the 24-hour period but it's not like directly going to make you build muscle. You just, you, you wouldn't build muscle even if you, you know, regardless of how much growth hormone you experience in a fast state, you're not going to still build muscle if you're not sleeping properly or you're not getting enough protein and you're not getting

enough calories or you're not training, training hard enough. Yeah. enough. The sleep aspect of it, though, is so huge because I still find that I still get a lot of comments from people or messages from individuals saying, hey, I can't get enough sleep, but I'm doing all of this. I think Stan Efferding had a quote about it, or he mentioned, like, it's what? Stepping over pennies? What is it?

Yeah, yeah. Stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, yeah. Stepping over dollars to pick up pennies yeah so you go dollars to pick up pennies that's like the biggest thing yeah it's huge yeah any tips on how to sleep better sorry any tips on how to sleep better yeah uh well i think uh one of the biggest reasons people have poor sleep is that they're looking at their smartphones or they're exposed to like blue light right before going to bed and in the evening. So blue light coming from your laptop or your smartphone screens, that's going to interfere with the release of melatonin, which is the sleep hormone. And if your melatonin is suppressed then it's gonna be much more difficult for your body

to go into deep sleep and experience even the health benefits related to sleep so yeah that's why i think wearing you know some form of like a blue blocking glasses or even like installing these different filters blue light filters onto your screen that's like a huge game changer like i use the aura ring to measure my sleep quality as well and i saw that after starting to use like the blue light glasses blue light blocking glasses then i saw like a 15 to 20 increase in my deep sleep just because of that so yeah i think that's one of the biggest kind of unknown reasons why people experience insomnia or they don't get like enough deep sleep because it doesn't matter how long you sleep what matters is the quality of the sleep and how much deep and REM sleep specifically you're getting and you said

there's a blue light plugin so it's something you can like download and it'll like block it's even just on your phone period yeah on the iphone yeah like there's It's even just on your phone, period. Yeah, just on the iPhone. Yeah, like there's some like factory installments on your smartphone that have the blue light filter, but I like to use on Android, it's called Twilight and on PC or Mac, it's called Flux. So it's going to start to naturally or automatically

follow the circadian rhythm as well. So it's going to automatically downgrade the amount of wavelengths you're getting from a screen and it's going to turn into like red and orange. Yeah, my phone, everyone, when they look at it later

on in the day, like, why is your phone yellow? I'm like, it's because of the setting. But i'll show you it's a setting on there get you sleeping like a baby buddy oh yeah no that's that's huge i didn't know that that because i've heard a lot of the blue light stuff i've never knew it made that much of a difference well for me and at least it has and uh i think it's it's also like important to get like the blue light in the earlier parts of the day. In the morning, you want the opposite. You want to actually have the blue light,

preferably from natural sunlight like the sunrise, but even using the blue light, some emitting devices, like either your smartphone or some other things, that can also help you to offset a proper circadian rhythm. And in turn, that can facilitate a better night offset a proper circadian rhythm and in turn facilitate a better night's sleep. How about supplements? Do you take any at all?

I do. I think creatine is pretty damn awesome and effective. I also take some digestive enzymes every once in a while. I take some autophagic boosting compounds like milk, thistle, turmeric, ginger, those are the things.

And I also take some whey protein if I'm using some protein shakes during my workouts. But most of my focus is still on high uh, high quality, nutrient dense foods and getting them from there. So it looks like, uh, you know, you've learned a lot of these, uh, techniques. You learned a lot about fasting and a lot about ketosis and you've written books about it. And, um, you have a website as well. And, um, what's kind of the goal, like what you're trying to do? I know you do speaking engagements as well. You're trying to, um, kind of the goal like what you're trying to do i know you do speaking engagements as well trying to um kind of monetize some of these situations and uh uh you know kind of be uh an entrepreneur with uh the information that you have uh yeah well i think my goal with uh the content that i produce is to just share a lot of the things that I have learned as well as give people some advice and teach them how

to do these sorts of things related to biohacking specifically, like either optimizing the nutrition, optimizing fasting, optimizing sleep, et cetera. And so far I've been focusing a lot on writing books and creating videos and podcasts but i also have a few video courses which i'm planning on doing more consistently as well i'm planning on doing like a more a bigger platform where people just can learn to optimize their health and use these kind of you know biohacks that's as good as the word it is to uh live a better and healthier life you know did your because you went to school and you got a degree in anthropology did that help out what you're doing right now or is what you're doing right now

contrast with what you got your degree in uh yeah i did uh learn like cultural cultural anthropology in college which which isn't directly connected with the human physiology and biology, but it still taught me a lot about especially how to think better, how to have critical thinking and also notice some aspects of human psychology in different cultures and different societies.

So I think it was definitely well worth it, but I'm not using it actively as a means of earning my living. But I would say it was a good period in my life where I learned more about myself and more about the human being or the human physiology in total. or the human physiology in total. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned the cultural aspect of it because, you know, my Nigerian background over there and even with a lot of the ones over here, they do a lot of fasting as it is because of like the religious beliefs.

So they'll fast multiple times per week, not for dietary benefits, but just because like we just, you know, you just don't eat for a period of time when you're deep in prayer. And a lot of other cultures do this, but it's like American society, if you fast, it's kind of weird for you not to eat. Is it there like where you're from in Estonia?

Is fasting weird or is it just something that also people do somewhat? Yeah, you're totally right that the idea of fasting being either dangerous or crazy, it's not that fasting actually is crazy it's it's a matter of the cultural context in which it is you know practiced so in in these ancient cultures or these eastern cultures even fasting there is pretty normal and people don't frown upon it but But yeah, in the Western society of eating very frequently, just people having conditioned by mainstream nutrition advice and the years of eating all the time, that's just made people wary about fasting.

But in Estonia, I would say that most people aren't doing intermittent fasting that much, and they are still quite skeptical about it so but you know it's it's changing I feel and I see that you know these different ways of fasting it's a it's a they will become more popular within the next coming years and people whether or not it's gonna be you know whether or not people are gonna stick to it all the time. I don't think that all people will be eating OMAD one meal a day

and they're not going to be doing these longer fasts all the time. I think just their mindset about it will change a little bit and they'll see that, okay, it's not as bad or it's not as crazy as we once thought. Has America got their claws into you guys yet? Like are people starting to get fat where you guys live? Well, we do have like McDonald's and these burger joints, but I think the average Estonian isn't that overweight as the average American, luckily.

Because we still have like. We have more physical labor probably, and we have more time or more reasons to stay physically active throughout the day, like either commuting on foot or taking a bicycle or just spending time gardening or something else. What's your favorite food, regardless of diet? I think I would say maybe probably like some just eggs. I'm a huge fan of eggs, not because of the nutritional content, but also like because of the taste. So they taste good and they're really nutritious. Yeah, I eat eggs probably every day almost yeah

it's like these are so many different ways to eat them i've been eating them poached lately that's that's been really good but i usually do that like at a restaurant you know because i don't know how to poach them at home i can't figure it out uh what's uh what are some favorite things uh that you like to do you'd like uh You watch TV, movies, anything like that? I did watch John Wick 3 the other day, but I don't watch TV that often. So I may only watch a few of the more popular movies like The Avengers or something like that.

But most of the time, I get a lot lot of enjoyment from just, you know, reading books and spending time with family and working out and, you know, going to these different events where you meet like similar minded people. Do you feel like if you watch TV or like if you're doing something that's not kind of towards your goal, do you feel like you're wasting your time? Well, sometimes, yeah, definitely. It depends on whether or not you have something else to do. Like if you feel that you should be doing something else and you actually have something else to do, then you're probably just, you know, wasting time and procrastinating.

then you're probably just you know wasting time and procrastinating but if you don't have like a specific deadline or a goal or you didn't you know uh you know procrastinate during the day and you're then trying to relax then i then i don't really feel bad about it as long as i get my like daily to-do list done then i'm really you know i'm really uh into relaxing and just chilling i think it's actually very important to um take they take the time every day where you're you know taking the uh the foot off the pedal so to say and you're not in the hustle mode you know other than fasting and sleeping because we've talked about that you're like you've done a lot you've written a lot of books you're extremely productive in terms of the content you put on on youtube and i think a lot of individuals would be curious on like maybe three other habits outside of fasting and sleeping that allow you to be as productive as you currently are

uh three you said three or five if you if you have more okay um i think uh some form of uh meditation or some mindfulness practice will be pretty effective because meditation is like a meta skill. It improves everything else you're going to do just because of the fact that you'll be able to concentrate better. You'll have self-control and you start to observe your own behavior much better. to observe your own behavior much better. So meditation is one of the things that I've also been doing for up to like seven to six years, something like that.

And every time I notice that I don't meditate, then I notice that my kind of productivity tends to suffer a little bit or I just have like less clarity about what I need to do because meditation also helps you to clarify what are your goals

and what kind of activities you need to do because meditation also helps you to clarify what are your goals and what kind of activities you need to do to achieve those goals. Secondly, I would say some form of like a journaling practice would be really good. Just writing things down that helps you to, again, become more clear about the things you need to do as well as project your own ideas onto a piece of paper, that would be helpful for understanding yourself better. What I do is in the evenings, I tend to write out some of the things that I did good that day, where did I succeed? And some of the things that I did bad,

like where did I fail and where can I improve the next day? So it's not like it's not like judging myself it's just self-observation and self-criticism and I also write out what I need to do the next day like the three most important things that I'm going to do after waking up so it's always kind of set myself into motion and probably the last thing would be to... I would say that trying to practice some form of speaking or something like apocalyptic speaking,

it's a very common fear people have, but I've seen a huge improvement in personal development and just being able to overcome your own fears more frequently and kind of teaching yourself to face fears more often. I wish I had my shit together when I was that young. Me too.

How old are you? I'm 24. Damn. Yeah. Oh Jesus. I wish I had my shit together that much right now. Well, I think, I think I've just in hindsight I can say that one of the reasons I

have made maybe like some progress is that I've just made kind of this decision that I'm gonna learn from the mistakes of others instead of having to go through those mistakes myself so it's like accelerated learning I don't have to fail I just look at what other people fail at

and I'll just avoid the mistakes. That's actually a great, a lot of people are, a lot of people are focused on what other successful people are doing and you're doing something a little different by focusing in on, you know, not following down the same road

as a bunch of losers, basically. Right? People that aren't figuring out how to win. That's a great way of looking at it. Anything coming up? Any speaking engagements? Are you going to be in the States anytime soon? Or what you got going on coming up? Well, the next time we're going to be in the States is probably in like August or something. But speaking, there's going to be a few bigger speaking events that I'll go through this year. In September, it's the Health Optimization Summit in London with many of the leading experts and leading influencers in biohacking and health optimization. the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki,

which is also focused a lot on more the technology side as well as the cutting-edge biohacks. And this year's theme is specifically about the circadian rhythms and optimizing your 24-hour period. Yeah, they're about to have no food at those events. No, they're actually like... There's really amazing VIP dinners before that so people and all the speakers they come together the night before and they cook their own food with all these highest quality ingredients like a few years ago at the biohacker summit we had like reindeer bone broth

we had local fish and fire ants with chocolate and those sorts of things. So it's like really good quality nutrition and it's like keto, low-carb friendly, friendly, uh, vegan options, et cetera. So that's crazy. I picture everybody just like waiting for the first person to eat. And then everyone's like, ah, you fell for it. We were supposed to be fasting. Anyway, man, great having you on the show.

Appreciate your time. Uh, where can people find you? Yeah, well, on all the social media platforms, it's Seam Lunt. And,

uh, the book where we talked about is also metabolic autophagy, uh, on Amazon. And, uh, it's the author is Seam Lunt. There you go.

Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. All right. Thanks for having me. Have a great day. All right. Hell yeah. That was cool.

Yeah. That guy's awesome. He has a, his YouTube channel though. A lot of great information. Yeah. I want you to check that channel out. He has hundreds of videos up a lot of like,

and he goes deep on autophagy deep deep on all like a lot of different topics. They're pretty simple too. Yeah, they're short. They're simple. He gets to the point. He doesn't beat around the bush. I think, you know, there's probably a lot of people that listen to this and they're like, I don't really care about like longevity. You know, I don't really care about my cells and what's going on with all that.

It's good just to know some of that stuff. But in the end, I think most of us are just trying to get more jacked. But a lot of these principles can help you get more jacked. And if you're really worried about, you know, can fasting be like detrimental, just try it out for a while. Try, you know, try some of the smaller fasts and work your way into it. But I mean, if you're just to think about it from a logical standpoint, most of us who train like to eat. And so fasting can really make some sense because you get to have more food when it's time to eat, which can feel really good to you. So even if you, even if you're more of a, someone who likes bodybuilding style diets and stuff like that,

you can miss a meal or two and load up a little bit more on the, on the previous meal or on the meals later in the day or on the meal surrounding your workouts or something like that. And like a big thing is that I think the bigger thing is that it can help your food habits. Like I'm always still surprised about snacking thing is a big one. Yeah. I'm always so surprised about how, um, how my cravings changed. Like I never would have expected that I'd be craving the foods that I crave now. And like, I, I don't eat trash foods most of the time. I don't feel like I need to. So even if you are like super active, you're a power lifter, you're a bodybuilder, right? Um, at the end of the day, you still are looking to be along with

being jacked. You do want to be healthy and you do want to have healthy habits. And this can definitely trend you in that direction without you losing muscle, without you losing strength. It's not really a big loss there. I think we care enough about lifting to, I think everyone cares enough about their lifting to at least make sure that they're getting some of the requirements that they need. So yeah, like a lot of, a lot of lifters and even aesthetic athletes and stuff, they might want to finish the day off with a ice cream or something like that. But you're probably going to be less likely to do some of that. And also, if you do that, you'll cause less damage if you're doing some fasting.

And the food that you're going to want to start out with, though, is probably going to be a steak. You're probably going to want a steak, maybe a potato or something like that. And then if you had dessert, again, it will be less insulting to your metabolism because you didn't have as many calories throughout the entire day. Just a little bit of sugar, a little bit of carbohydrates,

maybe it won't kill you. But if you're eating all day and the ice cream goes towards a caloric surplus, well, now you might be kind of covering up some of those gains that you were hoping to get. I love how the use of the word less insulting to your diet like that. That makes you really think about that a little bit. Yeah, your metabolism's mad at you. Your body's like, what are you doing?

Yeah. Trying to screw me up. But yeah, fasting's been the same thing for me. It's made me hungrier for the stuff that I need. And there's just so many different ways of doing this. I know some people that will eat in the morning and they won't eat again for like six or seven hours. To me, that's still a form of fasting. It's still a way, it's still a way of doing it. Um, and he mentioned, he feels it's superior to be in a ketogenic state, kind of going into it.

But I don't think there's really a lot of evidence on that. He's just saying like from the autophagy standpoint that you could be more likely to produce more because of some of the results he saw with the glucose and ketones. Your glucose is lower the more ketones that you have. In talking to Dominic D'Agostino, who's somebody who actually is in a lab, like studying this stuff, he said it doesn't really matter too much, you know, and you're going to have different opinions from different people, but just do it your own way. Try it your own way. Don't try to like, don't make it any harder than it already is. It's already difficult. So, you know, I always just tell people, most people can do a 12-hour fast so easy.

And imagine if you did a 12-hour fast two days in a row, that's 24 hours of fasting. Not the same as going 24 hours without food. But if you do that six days a week, that's three days of fasting that you just did. And maybe it's something that you're normally not getting, and it's probably just a little extension of what you're already doing because you're probably sleeping for seven or eight hours. So it's just a matter of maybe not eating an hour or two before you go to bed and not eating a few hours once you start your day. Yeah. It's easy. Just build it up.

It's literally like that. I mean, you mentioned a lot of people when they get into these types of diets, they want to dive in. They want to start doing 24 hour fasts. Starting on Monday, bro. You'll see. You'll see me. You're going to see. I'm going to start on Monday, bro. You laugh now, but just wait. Oh no, you won't be laughing anymore. Not after you see what me and Andrew are about to do, bro. Yeah. By Tuesday, you won't even recognize me. Yeah. Monday. Start on Monday. Monday. Going to crush it. I have this bad habit of like like kind of believing you guys when you guys start going on these

tangents. And I almost, I almost thought, thought you guys are doing something there, but all right, let's, let's back off. I'm too damn gullible. He's like, what am I going to start? What? What's going on guys? Can I be involved? No no two jacks yeah what do you got coming up buddy it's getting to be uh

showtime here right yeah worlds worlds comes up on thursday oh yeah the matches that the time for the matches are up i'm going to be competing at 1 30 i think's uh my first match so everything's there it's thursday thursday right on thursday and we're not supposed to talk about how you you found out a way to uh shoot fireballs at people yeah they're gonna see that on the first match okay they're gonna know yeah let's just keep that quiet but man i'm excited it's uh it's a big bracket 24 guys so there's two different brackets um yeah there's a little bit like lifting like we where like you're training and training and training and the training's intentionally like kicking your ass and you're

like, man, I don't know if I got much left. Like, it's just, you know how it is. Like a lot of times going into a power for me, like, man, like I'm really getting my ass kicked here. And then you have a little bit of, um, like not time off, but you relax a little bit going into the show type of deal. Um, I don't know if I relax, like, so with powerlifting, you know, before me, like a quote unquote D load. Is there anything like that? Um, I think I'm backing off of, uh, like, like intense lifting a little bit more this week.

Um, but my training is still, my training has been intense. You have to be fast, right? It's important that you're at your fastest. I would imagine that that's probably one of the most important things, right? You gotta be quick. That and the similarity to powerlifting is that I tune into my game more. So when I'm outside, I'm like a few months out from competition, I'm going to work on a lot of things that I don't usually do. A lot of things that are-

Drills and different holds. Different holds, different types of guards. Work on weaknesses. Exactly. That aren't in my game. guards that aren't in my game. And then probably like a month to two months out is when I'll just start doing my game on literally everybody going into what I typically do and not going outside of that box. Because when you compete, like I like to, someone mentioned this to me when I was rolling with them a few weeks ago. He was like, I hate rolling with you because you pull me into your

matrix. Like I can't end up in your matrix. And it's just because I go directly into the game. I want to play not into what my opponent wants to do. And when I'm getting ready for competition, that's what I do. And like when I'm sparring with people, I go directly to my game and I don't waste time doing anything else. So it's just like powerlifting. You start focusing on your big three. You take out your, you know, close grip bench press and overhead press and all this crap and focus on what you're going to compete on.

Same thing with this. So I've been really just focusing on my game this past month and just going straight to that because that's what I'm going to do when I compete. I'm excited for you, man. I'm going to watch it, and if anybody messes with you too much, I'll probably run in there and hit them with a chair or something. Just run in. Pro wrestling style.

You're going to be yelling at the ref. I'm like like what are you blind yeah just making a big old scene that was easily a three-pointer yeah let's bring the slingshot hammer you know just hold it on the side just like this and just be waiting i don't think anybody would be scared of me at this thing i i got a feeling i got a feeling like everyone's like oh my god i could tie that guy up in two seconds and uh if i can't then he would be tired in 10 seconds you know yeah the big guys they want to pick on us man yeah it's not fair you i think you'll enjoy watching a lot of the uh a lot of the matches because you'll be seeing all the i have not seen a lot of jiu-jitsu yeah you

will you will on thursday i haven't seen a lot i haven't seen a lot of like high level competitive jiu-jitsu like that so i'm yeah i'm excited about any weird rules I should be aware of? Anything weird that happens during the matches or is it pretty straightforward? You mean for like me? Yeah, just period. Weird rules. Like people that are attending like they can't walk over a certain line or something.

Don't touch people like you usually do. I'll just say that. Just keep your hands to yourself because I know how handsy you can be so just keep your hands to yourself yeah somebody put me right in the arm right yeah you're like you don't tap somebody on the shoulder and they'll you know yeah put me right on the ground choke me out but the atmosphere man when i went to worlds last year that atmosphere is insane you got people from a bunch of different countries the stadiums filled up like it's crazy. Is it pretty tense?

It's tense. It gets loud too. Because when, when the matches are going, everyone has their coaches there. They have their teams there. Everyone's screaming. Like it's crazy.

It's, it's, it's high energy. That's cool. I'm excited. How about like filming or anything like that? Cause I know they have their, they have people,

they have their, their guys that film, but they have never, like I filmed my world's lost last year they didn't have my problem a problem with my girlfriend having a camera so like

you can you can bring that stuff in although I think I think I had to like sneak my camera in or the lady was like just put it in your backpack so we don't see it

right and then I then I was able to take it in so you just got to keep your stuff cool strength is never a weakness weakness is never strength catch you guys later