Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2622: Why Biohacking Sucks for Longevity

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Why Biohacking Sucks for Longevity Defining Biohacking. (0:59) The Top 3 Categories that Biohackers Like to Focus On. (4:41) #1 - Wearable devices. (5:30) #2 - Nootropics. (13:32) #3 – NAD. (17:23) What to do instead: Eat only whole foods. (19:27) Get good sleep. (26:39) Walk daily. (33:08) Lift weights. (39:04) Find a way to serve, give or teach. (43:43) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special MAPS Longevity Launch: ** Code 50LONG for $50 off, now $97 (regularly $147). Bonuses: Forum access for a year ($97), Post-Launch Kickoff Zoom call ($97). Expires on 6/22 (30-day money-back guarantee). ** Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code to receive 20% off your first order. ** June Special: Shredded Summer Bundle or Bikini Bundle 50% off! ** Code JUNE50 at checkout ** Calorie labels on menus don't change eating habits, study shows Loneliness has same risk as smoking for heart disease Mind Pump # 2497: The Amazing & Weird Side Effects of Creatine Mind Pump # 2437: What Happens to Your Body When You Quit Ultra-Processed Foods for 30 Days Mind Pump # 2402: The 5 Reasons Why Walking is King for Fat Loss (Burn More Fat than Running & How to Do it Correctly) Walking 8,000 steps just 1-2 days a week linked to significant health benefits Study Shows That Just One Training Session a Week Can Prevent Loss of Muscle Mass and Strength Mind Pump # 2612: How One Man Lost Over 300 Pounds Without Any Cardio Are religious people happier, healthier? | Pew Research Center Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Paul Chek (@paul.chek) Instagram Ben Greenfield (@bengreenfieldfitness) Instagram Jamie Selzler (@jselzler) Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks) Instagram  

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And if you go through our link, you'll get a massive 20% off. Go to Vioriclothing.com forward slash mind pump. Here comes the show. Biohacking, it's still around and it sucks. We're gonna talk about why it sucks for longevity What actually contributes to real longevity? Sounds so spicy. It's good triggered some people right now. I did I did so let's define biohacking first This is like a big space in in the health space and I you know, we first started the podcast

Biohacking started to become a thing. It was getting a lot of momentum. It was, and it's pretty huge now. You have a lot of people that are, if you type in biohackers, they'll pop up and who these people, some of them are good friends of ours. But biohacking essentially is a practice of using science, technology, lifestyle interventions to optimize physical, mental performance, health, and longevity. The problem that I have with biohacking is it focuses a lot on minor contributors or technology or the latest supplement or whatever, and they miss the forest for the trees.

You see biohacking podcasts and social media posts, they focus so much on these small things that I think they add a lot to confusion. And honestly if you did none of these things that they advocate for and just focused on the things that we know that the data shows has a big impact, you would have the best longevity. So it's just one of those topics I like to just dismiss. I remember the first time when we went down to visit Paul Cech and he was kind of talking about a lot of these new technologies.

I think we were even talking about HRV for a minute and he was just always referring back to like the most basic principles of learning your heart rate and learning how to control your sleep and eating habits and all these things would make such a bigger impact. And everything, it was always like a lot of information, but condense it down to what the biggest blocks are that matter.

Didn't he have a, I know I'm going to screw this up. The four doctors. Yeah, the four doctors. Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Well, didn't he have a, I know I'm gonna screw this up. The four doctors. Yeah, the four doctors, Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Sleep, Dr. Pain. Dr. Sain, and Diet, I think it was. Yeah, maybe look that up, Doug. I know, and I think it's such a great way, I wasn't even thinking of him to bring him up right now.

What came to mind when you said the biohackers that are in our friends is our buddy Ben Greenfield, who I actually think, when I think of the biohacking community, he seems to be the guy who does a pretty good job of actually checking the big rocks, or doing the big rocks too, in my opinion. Oh yeah. Like I think I have, and that's why I have so much

respect for him, I know he gets a lot of heat and stuff like that, and a lot of people think he's weird, different, whatever, I love Ben. And I think that a lot of the things that I have a problem with the biohacking community he addresses. And what that is, is he's not out there doing all these weird biohacking things and then also not doing the big rocks. Right? So like, I feel like he's really checked the box with the big rocks that make a difference in longevity, which I think they're the points you're going to make. And then he's also doing these other things.

So like to me, he's one of my favorite people to watch, experiment with these things. Then you meet other people that are in the community, they're so into the nerdy new science stuff, and they're trying all this stuff, and injecting all this shit, and shining lights in weird places. And then they have poor relationships, and they have a terrible inconsistent diet.

And it's just like, you know, you, if you just improved one of those things by 10%, you would get a hundred percent return versus trying this weird thing that may or may not give you a 5% return. You know what I'm saying? Yep. A hundred percent. And so what we did is we listed the top three categories, I would say, that biohackers like to focus on.

Yeah, say do you- Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, Dr. Movement, and Dr. Happiness. I just think this goes so well with this conversation. Yeah, it does. Like, you thinking about those things right there, and is there an area in happiness, movement, being quiet and silent, right, and diet that I can improve by a percent or two,

and the return on that is far greater than the greatest biohacking stuff that you guys are all seeing right now. 100%. So like I said, I listed a few things, a few categories in the biohacking space that are popular, and we'll kind of go over them and talk about maybe why they stick around, or why they were around in the biohacking space that are popular. And we'll kind of go over them and talk about maybe, you know, why they stick around or why they're around

in the first place, the pros and the cons. And so I'll start with wearable devices. Now, wearable devices, these are trackers, right? They've been around now for a little while. I remember when the Body Bug first came out, which was, I don't know, it's gotta be at least 15 years now that that's been out. This is one of the first ones that actually measured,

you know, they would say metabolic rate or calorie burn, would measure steps, and it was one of the first kind of wearable devices. Now we have so many, right? We have like the Aura Ring, we have things that can measure. Fitbit. Fitbit was huge for a minute there. That was probably the first one that really kind things that can measure. Fitbit. Fitbit was huge for a minute there. It was probably the first one that really kind of

opened up a lot of popularity. Yeah, movement and sleeping patterns and heart rate variability and all that stuff. And I remember years ago, I don't know if you guys remember this, we had a whole discussion on what their value was and I had really made a strong point at that time. This was a long time, at least eight years ago, where I said, you know, the

people that are really going to use them are the fitness fanatics. I don't see them making an impact on the average person. I don't see the average person putting on an aura ring and then it's significantly improving their health. I could see like, you know, one of us using it or somebody who's really into it. But I don't think data or data points is the missing link. And also there's another side to it. A wearable device can then start to become your master,

and I've seen this as well. I've seen this with tracking. I've seen this with calorie tracking, which by the way, tracking your calories and macros will do more for you than any other wearable device or tracking device would do. But even that, I see so often becomes tyrannical because then you're so afraid to go off of your diet

and everything has to fit within my macro type of deal. With these wearable devices, that's also the other side of it is where, I remember when Doug said this with the Aura Ring, he actually had worse sleep because he was so focused on improving his score. You get competitive about things you probably shouldn't

be that competitive with. That's right, that's right. It's kind of similar to the science community in the fitness world too, is that I don't think we lack any more science. I think the reason why, as a whole, right, speaking about our society, why we are so overweight and not in shape is not because we need more science. We need more information. We have more than enough. What we lack is self-control, self-discipline,

consistency, sacrifice. I mean, there's so many things that if we just, which by the way, these are like, I mean, go back to biblical times and stoicism, I mean, of these practices, if we can learn just to apply those to today, everybody would be healthy and fit, right? If we didn't overindulge, we didn't bend, we didn't abuse, we didn't, you know, we weren't late, like we didn't do all those things, take out all the great science that we have today and you would be incredibly healthy and fit. So it's similar to that, right? I remember as an early trainer thinking

that if everybody were more educated on nutrition and stuff like that, like that if we just had more information available, that that would solve the problem. And then I read a study, I brought this up on past episodes, I haven't brought this up in a long time, one of my favorite,

this was a study that totally shifted my paradigm. There was a small town somewhere that passed a law that said that all restaurants had to display the calories next to the meals that they were offering. And the thought was, well, if people saw how high of a calorie count the particular meal had. They'd make better decisions, obviously. They would make better choices.

And so what they did, and I love that they did this, because it's illuminating, and what they did, they studied it, and they said, okay, what are people choosing? Are they making different choices now? What are the purchasing habits now that we're listing these? So all these restaurants, everyone in this town was obligated, had to have it up there. So this is 500 calories or 600 calories, whatever. Here's what they found at the end of the period was that

people actually ate worse. Yeah, they justified the bump. Oh, that's only 100 more calories for the double bacon cheeseburger. That's right. I was going to eat a salad, but now... Instead of somebody going, oh, I'm going gonna go with the lower calorie option, like, well that one's only 300 more calories, and that's tastier, I'm just gonna go with that. It's what they theorize, but it clearly, not only did it not help, it actually went in the opposite direction.

So it's not an information problem. I don't think wearable devices will solve it. I think it's in how you communicate the information, and it's how you're coached through the information, it's what a good trainer and coach does, But wearable devices, I don't at all think that these are going to cause any benefit. I think it'll be great for the fitness fanatic who you give them more things that they can track and they're just happy as hell because they love to track every little thing. But even then, like I said, I don't think

But even then, like I said, I don't think somebody who's fanatical and obsessed is healthy as well. And you brought up having relationships. There was that one study, I think it was Stanford that published that having poor relationships was as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. So it's like, okay, you're this, we know a lot of people like this in our space,

who are so fanatical about looking ripped and, or even people are just fanatical about health that they don't have good relationships because they don't go out and do the things and meet with people because it's not perfect or whatever, or they skip things because they got to do my workout. They end up having poor relationships. They end up trading one thing for another and they end up turning fitness from a healthy thing into an unhealthy thing. I believe that wearable devices, when you place too much value on them like a lot of biohackers or I should say the data points, they place so much value in data points, I

don't think it's helping. I think it's overrated. Yeah, I think it's tools at the end of the day. I think it definitely could be overemphasized with its value. I think initially too, and this is where I also think coaches that utilize these probably has the most value. So they can interpret a lot of the data. They can guide and direct based off of some of the data that shows glaring differences

that they can make micro adjustments. A lot of times people can't really see through a lot of that to really navigate. So I think if there was a little more of the coaching element involved with that, but even then like there has to be a plan to, to then you know, evolve past that so we don't need these devices. It's good to point out things with the same time. We don't want to be stuck there. I definitely think that from the coaching perspective is extremely valuable. Because then it's how you coach it.

Yeah, because let's be honest, the average person is unbelievably unaware of their activity level and what they're doing. So when I started making my clients wear tools like Fitbit, it was not for me to really educate them. It was making for me to really educate them. It was to make them aware. You know, it was more like, you know, I'm reading the data and going like, oh wow, you know, she's reporting to me that she's so active and she does all this stuff.

And it's like, when I look at the thing, it's like. Yeah, you're. But you used one data point mostly, didn't you? The steps. Yep, just movement. That's all I really needed to know. I didn't really care about the, you know,

the HRV stuff that they have on there and the heart rate and comparing what exercise modality burn more calories. That stuff to me was insignificant. Really it was, what I knew was, going back to Paul Cech and his four doctors, Dr. Movement is one of the doctors, right? And so I cared about movement and activity. I know how much that promotes overall health and longevity is just being active and moving.

And a lot of people think because they're busy, think they're active. And so because that, it would give me that insight to then be able to coach them and say, Hey, you know, we're, I know you were busy yesterday, but you really didn't move much and we want to be moving this much because it's good for us. Right. So to me, like that's where those things are better suited. Using it as a biohacking tool to me is insignificant in comparison to the coaching aspect.

Next are these categories of supplements that'll be put in the category of nootropics. So these are things that are advertised to improve cognitive function and performance. You have a classic one would be caffeine, everybody knows what that does. Then you have the racetems category of drugs that are supposedly will help with mental performance. Lots of stimulants and other things in these categories.

Lots of these are huge supplement market now for nootropics. And the reason why I think these are oversold is because if you want to improve your mental performance, there's a few things that'll make a massive difference, but one of them makes the biggest difference. Yeah. Good sleep. Like that's, yeah, that's really it.

And so I think, well, I know what happens with nootropics and with people who use them is that they, this becomes a way to band-aid over their poor sleep. And they also, what's funny about them is what seems to be perceived as better cognitive performance when they do studies on this stuff actually is the perception, sometimes perceive,

people perceive themselves to be performing better when in reality they're not. Why is that? Well, there's a famous studies on methamphetamines, like Adderall. Yeah, Adderall is a big one. And people are like, oh my God, when I do take Adderall, I'm like way more, like I learn better.

They're like, no, you actually just like what you're doing. Like no matter what you're doing, you like it more. So it gives you a perception. You're not smart, you're not more productive, but you think you are. Yeah, yeah. Oh great. It's kind of like people who like smoke weed, and they're like, I'm way more. So it gives you a perception. You're not smart, you're not more productive, but you think you are. Yeah, yeah. Oh, great. It's kind of like people who like smoke weed

and they're like, I'm way more, I can smoke weed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They listen to your ideas the next day. Yeah, yeah. Rob, I swear they were creative. Yeah, so you know, nootropics again, I mean, being healthy is the ultimate nootropic. And supplements that promise to help with that.

By the way, the one, even the best ones like caffeine, which do, uh, have a positive effect on performance, especially when you're tired, your brain and your body adapt to them so rapidly. You, you, you, receptors start to down regulate and start to produce less of whatever, uh, catecholamine you're producing more because of the nootropic water to the point where like everybody knows this. So I'll give you the example. start to produce less of whatever catecholamine you're producing more because of the newtropic water, to the point where, like everybody knows this, I'll give you the example, I like to use caffeine.

You have caffeine every day, at this point, if you've had it every day, it's just to feel normal. Go off for a week, try it again. Now it's like a miracle drug, right? Because your body adapted to it, not really giving you any benefits anymore. Now you're chained to something, like you wake up, I know a lot of people wake up

in the morning, they don't have their caffeine, they're screwed, because now it's become a dependency. Yeah, again, I mean, there's ways to, even the best studied, nootropics that are out there, pales in comparison to improving your sleep by 10%, by, and even your diet. Of course. Moving over to a lower carbohydrate

to where the brains firing and utilizing ketones more often will make a difference cognitively so if you're looking for those benefits there are natural ways that just I mean they're not even in the same universe some of these things that we tout it's so amazing and we sell. Again, our space, like we get so excited about new science and new stuff and a lot of this stuff is attached to sellable products. And so we overhype the science, we overhype the biohacking capabilities of it

when it's like, well, you do know that there's some things within the diet and sleep and movement and stuff that you can tweak just a little bit and you're going to get 4X the return in comparison to this newest, latest cool drug that someone introduced to you. By the way, longevity for me, when I talk about longevity, for us, it's really health span is what I think about. Not just how long you're alive, but rather how long you're healthy and independent and functional. One supplement that is really popular in that space,

and there's data to support it, is NAD. NAD for mitochondrial health. Now, I know what the data says, but the data points to certain metrics and not necessarily overall outcomes. In other words, I may take a supplement that shows an increase in fat oxidation. They can measure fat oxidation. So we can say, oh my god, you're burning more body fat. But if at the end of the study, I lose more, no additional body fat than everyone else, who cares? Like it doesn't matter, right? You can see this for muscle

growth as well. This increases this particular marker of muscle growth by 50%. So people are like, oh, let's take that supplement. But at the end of the study, I'm not any stronger and didn't build any additional muscle because the human body is incredibly complex. NAD has some stuff to support it in some of these markers but whenever somebody talks about a supplement for mitochondrial health, I look at them and I go, have you heard of kratene? Have you heard of kratene? Kratene has end result benefits. Also for a nootropic.

It's across the board the best supplement for mitochondrial health. It takes off the load of your mitochondria from producing ATP because it supplies it so readily. Now, we even have studies that show it to be, they're going to start using it intervention for people with Alzheimer's and dementia. But creatine is cheap. It doesn't sound exotic.

NAD does. You have NAD drips now, people get IVs of them and all that stuff. And so that's another one I'm like, I mean, go for it if you're doing everything else. By the way, even creatine doesn't get pales in comparison to exercise, diet, and sleep. Exactly.

Yeah. Obviously exercise is a big part of that mitochondrial health. Yes. So you've sold me on the idea that biohacking is overrated or a waste of my time, but I do want to have a longer health span. I want to live a healthier, longer life. What does that look like then? Yeah, well number one is to avoid heavily processed foods or eat only whole foods. Whole foods are foods with one ingredient. So fruits, you know, vegetables, meats, you know, minimally processed grains like rice, tubers like potatoes.

When you look at the studies on just how the brain, now we're going to get into this, but I just found these studies. I'm going to be doing a talk pretty soon in a few days in Las Vegas and this is going to be one of the topics. They have brain imaging on people who consume a diet that's predominantly made of heavily processed foods, which is the average American, so 70%, 80% of the calories come from heavily processed foods, and they show how the brain has now adapted to these hyperpalatable foods, and it is drug-like effects. You see adaptations in the brain because these foods have been engineered to light everything

up. They're irresistible precisely because scientists have engineered them to be so. The brain actually adapts and they find that it takes 30 days, I believe, for the brain to go back to normal. You got to go off everything 30 days, then the brain resets. It's almost like going off a drug and how you have to reset things. So it changes dopamine, it changes the reward centers in the brain. They cause you to overeat because they're engineered to, they've been scientifically

engineered to make you overeat. They're so, what's called palatable, which is very complex. People think palatable is just taste. There's so many things that go into that. That avoiding those foods, number one, you eat less naturally because you're full faster. Number two, you don't have these drug-like adaptations of the brain, which when you get your brain to adapt,

when you get your reward centers to adapt to heavily processed foods, it's like it's adapting to other drugs, meaning other ways of experiencing reward also get hampered. So the brain actually becomes hampered and hamstrung from constantly eating these foods. So that's number one. If you just avoid heavily processed foods, stick to whole foods, you'll get a radical impact on your longevity. I've never had a client who has stuck to a 30 day whole food diet.

Right. And that's normally what I try and challenge or ask family or friends that I know that have never done something like this. I have never had a single person who has stuck to that for 30 days and not felt and seen a significant impact on all aspects. Significant. Significant. Significant. Hair, skin, mood, sleep, digestion, energy, like across the board.

And I want to be clear that, you know, this conversation that we're having obviously around biohacking and longevity in this point you're making is not to demonize processed foods or even to act like we don't have processed foods in our diet. But when you become aware of how good you feel from eating only whole foods and by doing something like that, it makes the ability to not or to pass on these foods way easier. And that's one of the biggest challenges when you're helping a client through this process is that pull that they have to these highly processed foods. And then that's why they love glomming onto the content that talks about, oh, this idea

of demonizing, you know, processed foods. We all eat processed foods and everything's processed and try and convince people that justify those behaviors. And it's like, listen, I'm not going to tell you to never, I'll never tell a client that and I don't eat that way, but I do know how good I feel when I eat nothing but whole foods. And so when I have those moments where I have this pool to go eat something that's processed and not good for me, it is much easier for me to go, you know what?

I don't really want that because I know how good I feel when I don't and when I make whole food choices, you know what? I'll pass. And then there's times when I'm at a birthday and then there's a cake in front of me and there's like something that's processed. It's like, okay, I'm gonna enjoy, I'm at a ball game and I'm gonna eat something. So what? I'm very aware of, but becoming aware of that to me is such an important exercise for somebody who wants to pursue living a healthy long life is do that if you've never done that. It starts as a practice, right?

It's something that you have to implement. You have to be aware of it first, awareness. Now you have to bring it in. You have to practice it. And I think a lot of these that we're talking about, really the goal here is we're trying to implement these types of practices that promote better behaviors that actually prevent disease, that actually promote, you know, preventative matters against like the environmental stresses and the things out there that actually will kind of start to slowly deteriorate your

cells in your lifespan. Yeah, 100%. So just to keep hammering this with processed food. So this is the true history. When the tobacco industry started feeling the pain of the regulations that the government was finally putting on them. The tobacco companies, very smart businesses, hedged their bets and went and bought at the time, this is late 70s, early to mid 80s, these were the largest corporate purchases

and mergers in history at the time. They went and bought food companies. They bought General Mills and Pacific Hawaiian, like these huge food companies. And what they did is these tobacco scientists that understood addictive qualities. This is what they did with cigarettes. They learned how to make their cigarettes more desirable than other cigarettes.

They understood how to create things that were addicting. They moved over to food. And what they did is they looked at food and they said, okay, let's break this down scientifically and let's find out what makes something enjoyable and let's hack into it and engineer and create foods that do that. And that's what they did.

So if you look at obesity in America in particular, if you put a chart of heavily processed food consumption up against the chart of obesity, they match up pretty nicely. And you can see the more of them we eat, the more obese that we get. But because they make you overeat, but what's really crazy, and I'm going to go back to this, the reward centers of the

brain, because you're getting hammered with this hyper palatability and these experiences that you would never get in nature. You would never find a Dorito in nature. You would never find a Dorito in nature. You would never get a Pop-Tart in nature. It just wouldn't, it just would never happen. No Dorito trees. When you consume these foods, over time, in a very

short period of time, the reward centers of the brain adapt, which means that they become less rewarding. You know what else becomes less rewarding? Everything. It actually affects all of your behaviors. So for overall longevity, simply, we're not even telling you macros, calories, proteins, carbs, fat, we're not even going to talk about that. Just eat whole foods. That one step right there will have a massive, massive impact on your longevity.

Next up is sleep. Sleep is a huge one. Now, poor sleep is really a modern, a relatively new modern problem, and it started with the invention or the application of electricity in people's homes. You know, before that, like, it got dark. Candlelight and fire. And then you went to bed. Yep, activities are done.

And in winter, people slept more than people did in the summer, and this is just what you did. And sleep is so important, I've made this point before, sleep is so important that we still do it even after thousands of years of evolution. Every animal does it. And let me tell you, evolution would have figured out a way,

if that's the case, would have figured out a way to get rid of it. When you're asleep, you are useless. You're not building, you're not hunting, you're vulnerable, yet we still have to sleep. So it's super, super, super important. You can't get rid of it, you can't change it. And with the invention of electricity, people get less sleep, electric lights will stay up longer. Now we have endless streams of entertainment. Now you're seeing sleep patterns in kids are terrible because of their electronic devices.

This has profoundly negative impacts on health. All you gotta do is look at the studies on people who work swing shifts and you look at their rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, even if they're not overweight, even if they exercise, it's higher. It's a terrible contributor to poor exercise, it's higher. It's a terrible contributor to poor longevity is poor sleep.

So sleep needs to be, and here's where I'm getting at, it's not going to happen naturally. If you live in a modern society, you can't just expect to get good quality sleep because everything is designed to keep you awake. So you have to structure it. This is the time I go to bed, I go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time every day, and I'm gonna get my brain ready for sleep

an hour before or two hours before. That's how you get a good sleep. Otherwise it doesn't happen. I think the hardest part about sleep is that I think most people don't even realize that they're getting poor sleep. And then that just shows you how resilient we are as humans. You've just figured it, you've just adapted to it.

This is how I always feel, or you're blunting the signal with caffeine and all these things. And so you just assume that this is what you're supposed to feel like, and you have never put... This is again, same type of an exercise right like I suggest to go eat whole foods for 30 days you know prioritize sleep for two weeks you know like and what I mean by that is like put a routine together where you're like you say hey for 14 days I'm not going to let myself stay up later than 9 p.m. I'm going to be in my bed all the lights will be off and I'm going to lay there and I'm going to go to bed and then I'm gonna be in my bed, all the lights will be off and I'm gonna lay there and I'm gonna go to bed and then I'm gonna get a full night's rest and then get up and like, do that for 14 days

and notice if you notice, see if you notice. You'll notice a difference in two days. Yeah. Close the sun down and sun up as possible. Yeah. Hit those rhythms and it's, I mean, it's built in our wiring and the further away we get from that, like we feel the effects of it.

It's tough cause it's built in our wiring yet our culture has shifted so far away from it. Totally. I mean, I'll never forget the first time we talked about this when it really dawned on me. And I don't remember. I know that Sal's repeated it multiple times. I can't remember who the first person who said it to us

or on our podcast or where we saw it. But talked about Mondays, the jet lag of Mondays. Like how, why, like that's crazy that it's a cultural thing that we all joke about the Mondays. We shift our circadian rhythm every weekend. Everybody knows that the Mondays are a thing. It's a joke, everyone's said it forever, there's memes about it, it's like it's in every sitcom,

funny thing, like Monday. And it's like, yeah, where does this come from? And it's like, oh, it's because on the weekends, we all stay up super late, drink, or do our thing, or like that. Try and sleep in. Yeah, yeah, and then sleep, like we totally throw off our circadian rhythm and then expect on Monday

it's supposed to just reset and go back to normal. You're jet lagged every week. It's like oh my God and that makes so much sense why Mondays suck so much. It's like it has little to nothing to do with the shitty job you show up to. It's because how you feel showing up to the shitty job. His brain isn't fully fine.

Yeah, so. It's funny too because if you took up to the shitty job. And you probably, yeah, so. It's funny too because if you took, let me ask you guys, what do you think would happen if you took a group of, you took 10 people, you know, here in Silicon Valley, you put them in a cabin with no electricity, do you think they would all sleep more? Yeah. Absolutely.

Because you're like, well I got nothing else to do. You get bored and it's dark. Let's go to bed. Forget about it. But you can, like for example, if I, I'll tell you, like you're like, well I got nothing else to do. You get bored and it's dark. Let's go to bed. Forget about it. But you can, like for example, if I, I'll tell you, like the opposite is, if I'm driving in the car with my kids and it's too late for them to take a nap,

every parent knows this, right? Your kid takes, like sleeps in the car, too close to bedtime, it's gonna screw up bedtime, right? So you're like trying to keep them awake. It's like a funny thing parents do. You open the windows, you know what, this is my last ditch effort, you know what I'll do? If I give them something to watch on my phone,

they won't go to sleep. Oh God, no. It'll keep, even though I see them nodding off, I give it to them, they'll stay awake. This is what we're doing to ourselves by being on electronics so close to bed. It's like, you're stimulated, you're not gonna go to sleep and it's gonna screw.

And the reason why that's not the most effective way to do that is because it overstimulates. That's how powerful it is. Oh yeah. It's like you go from, oh just trying to keep them awake to now giving them that, and then they become overstimulated. That's how powerful. Then you pull it when they scream.

That's how powerful those tools. No, it's wild. I mean, I feel like a lot of these things that what I love about we're going over for the longevity thing is like if you just put some small goals and practices in for just a short period of time of like, okay, I'm just going to be really consistent in this. I don't need to sell you on it. You'll see. You'll feel the difference in your days,

your energy, your attitude, your mood, your workouts. Everything will be improved. And then if you really care about longevity and that's your goal then this is the way you approach it is like here's these big rocks and there's room for improvement on all of them all the time focus on that and watch the return. Yeah and you know just a little preface here everything we're saying requires a little bit of structure and thought because modern societies are not designed for longevity. Okay, so that's why you got to kind of like, okay I have

to avoid eating processed foods, okay I need to have a structured way of sleeping or going to bed because if you live according to... It's a bit counter-cultural. If you just live in modern society, longevity is the last thing you're gonna get. The odds are you'll be sick chronically at some point in your life. So next up is to walk daily. A lot, walk daily a lot. Daily activity is profoundly healthy,

but here's where we're at, okay? We're not, this isn't about you becoming an athlete. I didn't say run, I'm not saying join a race, become an athlete, I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying walk daily because here's what we're at. We're not at a point where I'm telling you to improve your performance to improve your longevity. We're at a point where we're at an activity deficiency. We're at such an activity deficiency that just walking 8,000 steps a day has profound health benefits. It's literally like you have a nutrient deficiency.

Like I'm not eating enough vitamin D, my body's breaking down. Take vitamin D, I feel great. Vitamin D's not magic, but going from deficient to sufficient produces miraculous results. Not moving, like most people, the average person that works a desk job, which is most people now, probably takes closer to four or 5,000 steps a day.

Double that, watch what happens to your vitality and your health. And that right there, just daily activity, again, it's very strongly connected. It's one of those things you could do that has a huge impact on overall life. I wish we had the data to compare this to like just say 50 years ago.

How many steps people took? Yeah, it'd be interesting just to see. I mean, we all have, I'm sure, a speculation on what that is, but it'd be really neat to see what a profound difference it is. And what I think I'm most interested in or why this conversation or this point is most interesting to me to talk about is because very quickly we are moving in the wrong direction. Oh yeah. Like, I mean, and this is being honest about even my own behaviors.

Like I went from a guy who didn't know what DoorDash was and Instacart to going through COVID, being introduced to it and using it as a necessity to, oh my God, now it's like the only way that I get groceries and the only way that I get takeout food and I don't ever go and do this, which those were all steps. Like going to the grocery store and walking around for 45 minutes to an hour, at least once a week, was activity that has been eliminated.

So where did I get it? Am I now getting it somewhere I have to make, now I have to go actively go out and go get it. And so we are, as technology continues to evolve, we continue to cut all this stuff out. And I think it's a problem already. I think it's getting worse faster. So in the 1960s, the average American walked 15,000 steps a day. Today, how do they know that? Yeah, it was average based on what people did during their day. I did read that before. So they're estimating that people how often they

walked, how many people own cars. I mean you've heard me talk about that so I've said this or I knew I knew about today I knew today was under 4,000 so they have it at 4,000 I know that that I've read other places between 3,400 and 3,800 steps so that's pretty accurate because we have we have data for that right we're tracking people's stuff but I mean if that if that is true that's pretty accurate because we have data for that, right? We're tracking people's stuff. But I mean, if that is true, that's four times a quarter in less than a generation. Here's your best data that I can think off the top of my head for something like this. If you look at the longevity, the health span of people who live in cities where driving is inconvenient versus people who live in areas where you need to drive to get everywhere,

you see a pretty stark contrast in health. Now I personally know this for family. I have family members that moved to San Francisco and because San Francisco, it's like having a car, it's dumb, like driving and then finding a parking space. Parking is a nightmare. And finding a parking space while you have your apartment could cost you 400 bucks a month.

So my family members got rid of their cars and there were like little shops that they just walked everywhere. Everywhere they went they walked. And everybody lost weight, everybody got healthier. And trust me, their diets did not change. It was just because they were moving on a regular basis. And so again, this is one of those things that your life

is not, it used to be, the reason why it was 15,000 steps before is because if you wanted to go to the store, you probably walked. Most houses had one car and it was with dad who was at his work and so I'm gonna go to the post office, I'm gonna go for a walk, I'm gonna go pick up the kids, I'm gonna go for a walk, let me walk to the school, let me walk to the grocery store.

And so people just moved. There's also another compounding effect to this, Sal, that we haven't pointed out too, that I think that we're overlooking, that is extremely important. And this seems to be top of mind for me right now. I've mentioned on the show that I have a pool now, and so I'm out of the pool all day in the sun.

Outside more. And it's like, it's dramatically different. Just a year ago, my life, of the amount of sunlight that you got, and like, I can feel the difference. And so, if you don't take a lot of steps, there's a very good chance that you're sitting in a building, sitting in a car, or sitting in your house all the time.

And so not only is the movement so important, but also just getting out. It's a compounding factor. Yes, getting out in the sunshine, and getting not only is the movement so important, but also just getting out- It's a compounding factor. Yes, getting out in the sunshine and getting out in the sun. And like that, the value of that and the importance of that, again, to our overall health and longevity is profound. And if you think that just in the 60s, we were doing four times the amount, we've reduced that dramatically, just making an effort to get outside and walk those 8,000 steps.

If you took three walks a day after breakfast, lunch, and dinner for about 10 minutes, it would make a huge dent. That's it. And also timing it, the reason why I'm saying this, timing it, this is the coaching side of me, right? If I tell someone to walk after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they'll actually walk more consistently than they would if I said to do 30 minutes. Yeah, it's called habit stacking. It's habit stacking, and if they miss one or two, they still got one or two in. It also has better effects on insulin sensitivity post eating, moving, improves insulin sensitivity more than if you did it at a separate time. So that's the strategy I tell people.

After breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just go for a walk for 10 minutes and you'll get pretty close. Break it up and it makes it much easier. You'll get pretty close to what we're talking about. Next up is lift weights. Lifting weights or strength training is extremely protective. And it doesn't take a lot for longevity.

Once a week. Once a week is what you'll see the data. The data, now we're not talking about being a bodybuilder or getting your max lift in or whatever, but once a week is more than enough to derive the longevity benefits of strength training. Strength training is unique to other forms of exercise because the adaptations that occur happen afterwards and stick around longer.

So you build strength once a week, you keep that strength. You don't need to do it every single day. Plus the calorie burn from strength training is not the benefit. The benefit is the strength gain. And it's also protective. If your day involves a lot of sitting, like most people have some strong muscle on your body, your insulin sensitivity is way better, even though you're not moving. Your mobility is way better, even though you're not moving.

Your hormones look way better. You have a metabolism that is more flexible because you have more calorie-burning muscle. And it only takes once a week to do that. At minimum, it's muscle preserving too. I have clients that have actually made tremendous gains because of the fact of overdoing it for the longest amount of time and really not emphasizing active recovery and allowing their body to really rebuild and move forward in terms of strength

and muscle building potential. Yeah, I think of all the points that we're gonna talk about, this one is the most misunderstood. I think there is this belief of how much you need to do to reap the benefits of health and longevity and overall strength. It's so crazy how little you need. It's crazy minimal. And again, to your point, we're not saying this is the best way to get your body

composition changed or be an athlete or be jacked and body like, no. But when I think about 90% of the clients that I train, this is what they all were wanting. And they were all happy. Yes, they were. They were. I can count on one hand how many people sat in front of me or just like Adam I want to get on stage or I want to be an athlete. It's like lean strong most my clients were

Middle-aged people that just wanted to be healthy and fit they weren't asking for anything crazy They didn't even want to be jacked or ripped. It was just like I just want to be healthy and fit I know I'm getting older. I know I'm out of shape. My doctor showed me my blood work I know that I got to fix all all stuff and it's like to do that it's one time a week or one exercise a day. Like however you want to break it up. You want to break it up in one movement over five, six days you could do it that way or you could do it one day or you do one day you do it and you will reap tremendous benefits. Yeah it's funny you talked about not losing muscle. We

have studies on that Justin. In two weeks. Yeah, it's funny, you talked about not losing muscle. We have studies on that, Justin. In two weeks. Yeah, one workout every two weeks will prevent the muscle loss that happens from aging. That's literally it. So in other words, once a week will progress you. Progresses you, that's the point. You'll get stronger and you'll build, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, once a week builds muscle. At minimum you preserve it, you can literally build if you repeat it. At least half of my clients that I was with for long term only did strength training once a week. That's all they did. And then they walked the other days and everybody was very satisfied with their health

and their fitness. And I really feel like if the general pop really understood this, and I hope that's what we're getting, what people are listening to, yeah, that's not a lot. That's not a lot to commit to. I could commit to that. And then hey, and then maybe you have periods of time

when you're in a rhythm and you're feeling good and you get an extra day or two in there and it's like, that shit compounds. And if you just make a commitment to yourself, I mean, I love the interview that we did with Jamie, right? Where he said like, oh, I just, you know, I've now identified as I'm the guy who works out four days a week.

It's just like, if you just become the person who like, I never not try You never not brush your teeth You never not shower like just never not not work out one time like make that like a non-negotiable And it's not a crazy major commitment And if that's always a non-negotiable and then at other tarot periods of your time You have a little sprints where you get a couple more times a week and you're in really good discipline like wow then just Imagine what a profound difference that can make in your life over course of a year to you built such a solid foundation

And going into your later years To maintain it's it's literally like the majority of your year could be on that schedule of once a week You know intermittently we could introduce a little bit of stress and really a challenge in there, but the majority of your entire year, if you keep dialed in with this consistency, you're gonna have a great result. To put it differently, building muscle takes time.

Keeping it is really easy in comparison. Strength training's just wonderful in those ways. Lastly, you wanna find, and I made this general, but you really wanna find and prioritize a consistent quote unquote big picture practice. This typically looks like a spiritual practice, but this also includes charity, volunteer work, or in other words, community work, where you

look at things from a big picture and the data on this is remarkable. It's hard to find anything that has better outcomes than something like this. Like you look at the data on people that are part of a church, go regularly, right? So they're part of that community. The rates of everything bad is so much less than the average person and the rates of things like happiness, satisfaction are so much higher. And humans, we're just complex, okay? We're complex, we need big picture practices because life can be hard, we can make anything hard just by thinking about it in a particular way and this puts things in perspective and a big part of this is community.

This is a big part of it. And what's happened, especially in modern times, is we've, what we've done to food, we've done to personal connections. So we've taken food and turned it into engineered food and we've taken connections and turned it into engineered connections. So now I have a bunch of friends on social

media, but that's such a terrible replacement for real friends in person. And the data on this is, again, it's exceptionally clear. So loneliness now has become one of the number one risk factors for poor longevity. It's especially true for men. So I would have worded it different. I think I would have said like, find a way to serve, give, or teach.

There you go. And that's straight out of like Arthur Brooks's formula to happiness as we age, right? Serve, give, or teach. Find a way to do that and I think, because even if you struggle with the spiritual side or aspect of it like that, like I think you can get behind that, that like, hey, you know, find something I can serve, give,

or teach to others. And I think the rewards from that and happiness that will come from that, and how much that plays a role in your health span, I think is tremendous. And so, I agree. I think that you have to find one of those somehow, whether you go the direction you're talking on the spiritual side or you go the direction I'm saying. Prevents that spiral, you know, you're really giving back and enriching other people around you

and you're involved in other people, you're thinking outside of yourself. The vibrance of your social networks is directly related to the vibrance of your social networks is directly related to the vibrance of your health and your longevity. It's very important, but it's actually, you know, it's crazy.

It's actually not crazy. This is right along the lines of everything we're talking about. The default today is not that. It used to be the default. You used to have to be a part of communities and socialize and meet with people because that's what your day called for.

Today, a lot of people work from home or in an office and they don't, if they talk with anybody it's on social media or through text and it's having terrible effects on all of our health. You need this, you absolutely need this and because your life doesn't call it to happen naturally, you need to schedule it. You have to kind of seek it out,

which means it's uncomfortable. By the way, all this stuff can feel uncomfortable because it requires some structure and discipline. I know a lot of people, it's funny, people now make jokes. It's like when there's like these memes or these videos where friends will randomly show up to their house, they'll hide.

Like what are they doing here? They should've told me they were coming or whatever. That used to be society. People didn't like call you, hey can I come over? They just showed up, hey how are we doing? Now it's like oh my God, if someone shows up, like you know, I don't wanna be around anybody right now type of deal.

But the health effects, it's crazy. Speaking of Arthur Brooks, he was talking about great ways to spend money, which I think kind of illustrates this. And he said the worst way to spend money is to buy things. One of the best ways to spend money is to spend it on experiences with people that you love. And he says it's funny because we think of things as being permanent and as experiences being temporary, but the truth is, in terms of happiness, things provide temporary happiness,

whereas experiences provide permanent happiness. So this last part right here, and again, you can look at the data on people who attend, for example, the church data is the best, because that's the most, I think, the most consistent, is that people who attend regularly, who work with their church and their community, their health outcomes are remarkably good. And I'm gonna tell you this right now, oftentimes they're not fit and healthy either. So

this just goes to show you how powerful this effect is. They oftentimes aren't lean and fit and healthy and yet they have better health outcomes because of this big picture thinking. By the way, we've released a brand new maps program called Maps Longevity. It's different than any other maps program we've ever created. It comes with a 30-day kickstart where every single day you're doing something different and new. It's a three-month program. Of course it includes exercise and diet, but so much more. The focus is longevity. If you go to mapslongevity.com, the code 50LONG you'll get it for $50 off plus you'll get free access to our private forum and you'll get to attend our kickoff zoom call for free where we're gonna take you through the program. This expires on the 22nd so

again go to mapslongevity.com use the code 50LONG for the discount and the free stuff. Look if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPumpJustin, me at MindPumpDestephano, and Adam at MindPumpOut. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5 star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.