The Bossticks - Dr. Peter Attia Pt. 1 On Optimal Fitness Routines, Body Fat Management, Fasting, & How To Live Longer

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

#603: Peter Attia, MD, is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that appliesthe principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening theirlifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan. He is the host of TheDrive, one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health andmedicine. He is also the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Outlive: TheScience and Art of Longevity. Today Peter joins the show for part one of a two part episode. In part one we discuss optimal fitness routines, body fat management, fasting, and how to live longer.    To connect with Peter Attia click HERE To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by JSHealth JSHealth Vitamins is a science-focused vitamin and wellness brand that provides targeted formulas to help you meet your personal health goals. Go to jshealthvitamins.com/skinny and use code SKINNY for 20% your order or first subscription. This episode is brought to you by the Clean Simple Eats Clean Simple Eats protein powder is non-GMO, gluten-free, 3rd party tested, always grass-fed and made with zero artificial ingredients. You can get 20% off your first order by using code SKINNY at checkout at cleansimpleeats.com . This episode is brought to you by Dr. Dennis Gross If you want to take your beauty routines to the next level with immediate and long-term benefits, go to ddgskin.com/skinny for up to 25% off Lauryn's exclusive bundles and new lip products. This episode is brought to you by Westin Hotels At Westin hotels, there's amenities and offerings aimed to help you move well, eat well, and sleep well, so you can keep your well-being close, while away. Find wellness on your next stay at Westin. This episode is brought to you by Ibotta Ibotta gives you cash back on hundreds of grocery items from produce to personal care to pantry goods, so you can make sure you're beating inflation no matter what you're purchasing. Download the Ibotta app now & use code SKINNY to receive $5. This episode is brought to you by Vegamour With Vegamour, you're able to have visibly thicker, fuller, shinier, longer hair, all without the harsh ingredients. Vegamour's products are 100% cruelty free and not formulated with any harsh chemicals. Visit vegamour.com/skinny and use code SKINNY at checkout to get 20% off your first order. Produced by Dear Media.

The following podcast is a dear media production. This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. Okay, you talked, we listened. I am obsessed with going into DMs and learning what you guys like and don't like about all the products. And I am always a fan of adjusting. So introducing the new and improved shaving cream. Okay, so we launched a razor.

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She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. There are some people who don't enjoy exercise. I enjoy it. I feel so strongly that everybody exercise that I think we just have to find a way

to make sure it becomes natural. And sometimes for people who are not coming at it from a place of doing it, the goal is to do just enough to simultaneously accomplish the following. Make sure they don't get hurt and make sure they start to see some positive benefit that gets them a little bit hooked. I know that for my wife, who never wanted to lift a weight, about three years ago when she

finally started doing it, the thing that got her most excited was that she could see her deltoids. To have that little pop of a deltoid, she was like, I love this. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today we have a phenomenal guest on this podcast on this show. and that is Peter Atia. Lauren and I have been trying to get Peter on this show for a couple years now. And recently, I read his book, Outlive, the Science and Art of Longevity and was blown away.

This episode had to be a two-parter. You know, we were recording when we started this about two and a half hours and we just felt, okay, we got to break this out. We get into so many different subjects around longevity and weight loss and health and muscle building and hormones and supplementation and just so many incredible things. and we knew this couldn't just be a single hour episode. So we made it a two-parter. This is part one of that two-parter.

The second one will be live this Thursday. Be sure to check it out. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Peter Otea, he's the founder of early medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their health span. He works with some of the world's biggest and greatest performers

across all spectrums, athletics, entrepreneurship, podcasters, all sorts of different people. And we just could not be more excited to do this interview with Peter. We covered so much ground, like I said. He's also the author of, like I said, the number one New York Times bestseller Outlive, which is a phenomenal book all around the science and art of longevity. With that, Peter Atia, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, Him and Her show, Part 1. This is the Skinny Confidential, Him and Her.

Peter Atia, I feel like we've been trying to lock you down for a while now. huge fan of your work, both of us, cannot believe we were just catching up offline that you go to Al Say in San Diego. Brad, why didn't you tell us this? We would have been posted up there, but it's so great to have you on the show. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

And I knew about you guys long before you knew about me because Lauren's parents would brag about you guys constantly over my elk Pazoli. Just for folks who don't know what we're talking about, San Diego, nice place to live, not so great on the food department. it's actually a food desert basically. But it does have this awesome restaurant in Salana Beach that my wife and I would frequent at least once a week, which happened to be your parents' restaurant.

That is the best plug, especially with the book that you just wrote. My dad is probably so excited. And just for anyone who's listening, he gets the elk pizole, but he gets it double. No, no, quadruple. So they make the elk pizole as a dish, but then they make like a shareable bowl. that's to feed four people. And I get that as my own. I'm literally doing that every single time I go. I might have a margarita with it. Is that okay? I think so. Okay. I'll do really light sugar. Yeah. So we were talking about, I was saying, you know, many of our audience may know you,

but I also think many may not. It's a new introduction for you to this demo. And there's so many directions we could take this. When you describe yourself and what you do now high level, because you do so many things, like what's the, what's the quick bullet point of exactly? exactly kind of how you work and what you do. Depends on the audience. So if I'm at a party, I weasel out of this as much as possible. I'm a shepherd is usually what I say. And usually enough people don't know enough about shepherds to ask good questions to prove

that I'm lying. And I can get away with it. And that's the end of the discussion. Race car driver, I got away with that last week. I was out at dinner. The waitress asked me what I did. Formula 3 driver. She was so sweet because she said, are you guys?

ever going to drive Formula One. I said, no, I'm never going to be good enough. And she was like, you got to believe in yourself. You can do it. I mean, she was so kind. But if I get boxed into a corner and I have to talk about what I do, I will begrudgingly acknowledge that I'm in the business of trying to figure out how to live longer and live better. So when you, I mean, there's so many things when you go to this, one of the things in your book, you talk about the difference between lifespan and health span. And I think that's a great place to start. The distinction between those two things because what Lauren and I try to do and the information we try to gather on this show talking to people like yourself is we're trying to not necessarily live till we're

a thousand years old but to just feel good every day that we're alive and I think that may be a decent place to start. Yes and I would say there's a caveat to that but so which I'll come back to but you're correct right so lifespan and health span are important concepts because the word longevity most people make synonymous with lifespan. So longevity is living longer, right? But that's not really true, at least not the way I define it. It's also a function of the quality of life. I think the quality of life tends to matter more, the older you get.

So I think when you're young, I'd put us all, certainly you guys in that category. I don't know, I'm certainly into middle age well now. But for someone like you who's very young, it's easy to say, look, all that matters is how good I feel today and how well I function today. And I would just push on that and say, true, but if you can set yourself up to really function well in your 80s, you'll do things now that might be even more demanding, but we'll pay dividends later.

And so really kind of my model is focus on health span at the end of life because that's the hardest thing to get right. And then everything else will flow from it. You'll get the lifespan. You'll get the health span today. But that's the ultimate goal. It's kind of like delayed gratification. Totally.

So what are some pillars of your sort of mission? Well, it depends. I have so many pillars in my life. Like my whole world comes down to pillars, right? So I have like the pillars of how we intervene, right? So nutrition is kind of a pillar of this, you know, exercise is a pillar of this. Sleep is a pillar, emotional health, you know, medications are all pillars. So that's one way that I think about it.

I don't know if that's the direction you want to go in. Yes, let's go in that direction. Let's start with someone who maybe comes to you that feels like shit. Maybe they're 30 pounds overweight. They're working their ass off. They're probably going to bed at 11 p.m. at night. They're eating protein, but it's not great. Where do you start with a person like that? If someone's listening, where can they start? So it's important to understand there's only a subset of people I take care of. So I take care of people who have bought into my thesis. And that's not a huge sliver of the population. So It's very important. So customer selection matters. So I'm interested in people who buy the idea that if I manipulate those five things that I just said, I have an opportunity to live a longer life and at a higher quality, physically, emotionally and cognitively. If they buy into that argument, and I clearly do, my life is centered around that argument,

then they'll have the patience to go really deep on. on how to manipulate all those things. If, however, someone comes to me and says, I have to lose 30 pounds and I have to have a six pack and I have to look good in a bathing suit in six months, I will always say to them, there are better people out there than me. That is, I'm not saying that's not a worthy goal.

It might be. It's just not something I'm good at. And therefore, I will sort of always shift them in that direction. So with that said, taking the example of your person, I always start by just learning as much as I can about an individual, right? So what can I learn about them biochemically? What can I learn about them, meaning looking at their blood work? What can I learn by looking at something like a dexas scan to understand how much muscle mass they have, how much fat they have and where that fat lies? Because some

fat is harmful, really harmful, and some is just aesthetically a nuisance. You want to know the difference. I would want to understand in detail how they're training, how they're eating, how they're sleeping, how they're managing stress. And I think only with that information could I begin to start to at least come up with the diagnosis of what are the, you know, relative strengths at which they need to pull on each of those levers we talked about. Just based on what you were saying, clearly nutrition, exercise, and sleep are going to be big components. You mentioned two different kinds of fats, bad and good. Well, it's more nuanced than that. It's subcutaneous fat is the fat most of us think about, right?

If I lift my shirt up and you pinch a little fat on my belly, that's subcutaneous. fat. It's fat that is stored in part of the body, believe it or not, where we were designed to store fat. And I think this is hard for people to understand, but you have to take an evolutionary lens to appreciate it. The ability to store fat is a very good thing. If we didn't have that capacity, if we all had conditions called lipidistrophies, which is a medical term for people who can't store fat, our species wouldn't be here. So there would be a bunch of amoeba doing this podcast. right now. And it wouldn't be very good because they wouldn't have brains the same as ours. So only because we could store fat, could we as a species, you know, directionally like 250,000

to 500,000 years ago, kind of really start to showcase our capacity as the superior species on this earth. And the reason for that is our brains are so energy demanding. So all of us are sitting in this room right now, our brains are consuming 25% of our total calories. Wow. I didn't know that. Think about that for a second. So if you eat 3,000 calories a day, what is that? 750 of those calories are just going to your brain. The thing weighs 2% of your body weight and consumes 25% of your energy. And that's why we have the brain that we do. That's why we are sitting here doing a podcast and not rummaging around in the dirt. But that comes at a

very high cost. And the cost is we can never be without energy. And that's why our body's evolved to store energy. And we really only store it in the form of fat. You can only store about a day's worth of glucose and we don't store protein. So up until like, I don't know, a couple hundred years ago, this capacity to store fat was amazing. It's really only in the modern world where food is so abundant that the need to carry enough energy to survive for two weeks without food was no longer a liability. And now most of us have the opposite problem, which is restoring too much energy. But to go back to your question, only when the fat leaves these subcutaneous areas and goes into other areas. And the big ones are into the muscle itself. So if you look at a, you know, you

look at it ever see like a wago steak, how it's like fat is marbling inside the muscle. Well, we do that too, and that's really problematic. That's what leads to insulin resistance, which I'm sure we'll talk about. If the fat starts to surround the organs in your body, if the fat builds up inside your liver, inside your pancreas, around your heart, now the fat is very problematic. It starts to release inflammatory cytokines. That's the type of fat that actually leads to heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, all these things. And what are the main reasons the fat would start to go into those areas? Yeah, awesome question.

It basically is a genetic issue. So everybody has a different capacity for how much fat they store. So I'll give you one very obvious genetic difference is Asian to Caucasian. So specifically Asian to Northern European descent, you probably notice, or maybe you've heard the term skinny fat, right? Sure. That you will see that used to describe Asian populations where they don't really, you know, an Asian person who's metabolically unhealthy doesn't necessarily get fat. they'll just get type 2 diabetes, but on the outside, they'll actually look normal. And the reason is they just don't genetically have the capacity to store as much excess energy.

So they'll very quickly go from energy appropriate to energy abundance, but you won't see it, whereas people of Northern European ancestry can get a lot fatter first. And believe it or not, initially, stay reasonably healthy metabolically as they do. So the analogy I use in my book is a bathtub. Different people have different sized bathtubs. So a really big bathtub is a person who could get really, really fat, meaning lots of water could get into that bathtub and not cause trouble until at some point it overflows and then water leaks on the floor and that's problematic.

Yeah, I remember reading in your book you wrote about this where it's not necessarily someone, if you look at someone aesthetically and they're big, that doesn't mean they're necessarily unhealthy compared to somebody who's not. And it all, it comes down to this issue. Is there a reason why people of Asian descent based on genetics have more of that issue than a Caucasian? I can speculate, but it would be nothing more than speculation. I would assume that it might have to do with the fact that people of Northern European

descent, there would have been another advantage to accumulating excess fat, for, for example, for warmth. And maybe people of Asian descent, it would not have been an evolutionary advantage to create such insulation. So in other words, maybe there was another advantage beyond the energetic one. Maybe there was an insulation one as well. So for you, and this is a question, we asked when you were coming on, we asked the audience, like, hey, what questions do you have?

And a lot of it centered around what to measure, how to measure, what to look at, what to look at. And I think based on what you're talking about here, it's so important because Lauren and I both have different genetic makeups. I actually am a quarter of Japanese, which is I was wondering. God, damn it, though. I mean, God. But it's important, I think what you're saying, to know these different kinds of

markers because how you would potentially work with me is different than how you would potentially work with Lorne, even if we had the same goal. Well, yes, but I would also argue I wouldn't need to know your genetics to make that distinction. I think in the end, it's measuring what's actually in front of you. So sometimes it's helpful to know that. But like if you were adopted and let's just say you didn't do a genetic, like let's say you didn't know that from a family history standpoint and you didn't do a genetic test, which could reveal that through ancestry, we would still be doing the same test on both of you. For example, we would still do a dexa scan. And that dexas scan spits out four really important pieces of information that everybody should know about themselves.

So the first is your bone density. So everybody should know this. And interestingly, you know, people, your age, and my age, even, I'm 50, a lot of people don't really think much about bone density at this age. It doesn't really start to become a problem until, you know, people have fractures. falling becomes an enormous source of mortality and morbidity as people age. But if you recognize a person in their 30s and 40s with below average bone density, at least for their age, that's a red flag. And that has to be corrected. We can talk about how you would do that.

Second piece of information I want to know from that test is total body fat. And again, I think that might be the least important of the four, but it still factors into the picture of where do you rank in terms of, being on this kind of overnourished versus undernourished pathway, which is the way I sort of describe it. And do they take total body fat as just a comparison against the muscle? The way total body fat is calculated is because so a dexas scan can only distinguish between three types of tissue, fat, bone, and all else. Okay.

And the majority of all else or lean tissue, i.e. not fat, not bone is muscle, but it's also organs and stuff like that. So body fat is total amount of fat divided by total. total mass. Okay. And that's, so it's pretty accurate measurement. But then they can measure something called visceral adipose tissue or VAT, VAT, VAT. And that's something we care a lot about. And that's the amount of fat around the organs. And so we really care a lot about that. So if a person is at the 50th percentile for body fat for their age and sex, so trying to think what that would be. So, you know, that would be like a 40, like someone my age at the 50th percentile is probably 22, 23% body fat. So they're not super lean, but they're, you know, they look normal, right?

But if their visceral adipose tissue was only at the 10th percentile, I would say from a body weight, body fat perspective, you're just fine. Because you're just storing healthy. Yeah, yeah. And by all means, again, I don't want to minimize the person's goals. If they say, yeah, but like, dude, I want to be ripped, well, yeah, then you need to be less than 50% body, I mean, less than 23% body fat if you want to be ripped. But you're just not as concerned with that reading. I'm not as concerned with your health. This isn't impacting the length and quality of your life unless you tell me that the quality of your life is dependent on your abs. What are some things you are concerned about? When you see someone's labs with all these different people that you have

coming to you, what makes you say, hold up. On the Dexas scan, the three things that get me phosphorylated, which is the fancy word of saying wound up, is bone mineral density problems, high vat, and then the fourth thing we look at is muscle mass specifically. So we look at metrics of muscle. muscle mass and we look at two, but these are a little complicated to explain technically, but conceptually they're not. We just want to know how much muscle you have normalized to your height. And there's two ways to do that. The first is a metric called ALMI, appendicular lean mass index. So think about appendicular appendices, arms and legs. You take the total amount of muscle on the arms and legs in kilograms, divide by height and meters squared. So you get a number that might be as low

as five, which would be really, really low and might be as high as 10 or 11. That would be really high. That gives you a sense of what the range is. But we put these on a chart and it will spit it out. So I wouldn't expect you and you to be the same because you have different heights. You're male, you're female. You're probably about the same age. But all those things factor in.

What I care about is percentile. How do you stack up? And so I just looked at a new patient who's not starting yet. So a patient who's going to be coming on. I just got this person's Dexas scan to do. day, the ALMI is below the fifth percentile for this individual. So body fat is low. VAT is low. I don't remember what the bone density was, but I think it was average. But the fact that muscle mass is below the fifth percentile is a four alarm fire in my brain. So is that somebody that's

either under eating or undernourished or maybe not working out enough? Yeah, it's all of the above. So not eating enough, not training enough. And let's be clear, genes play a role here. This is a person who just, you know, is of diminutive stature and has, you know, this is a person who would never probably ever be able to amount to having an ALMI at the 95th percentile. But this is a person who could get to the 30th or 40th percentile over five years. So when you see that in your book, you mentioned this like for Horseman of Death, which is, tell me if I'm wrong here, heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes are related metabolic.

Yeah, all the metabolic diseases. So when you see that reading, what of those are you concerned that that leads to? So one thing I haven't seen in this patient yet, because they haven't started yet, and this is the first piece of data I have. I haven't seen other markers of their metabolic health. And I haven't seen their family history, and I haven't seen any of their chemistry. So I don't know yet. But what I do know is people with lower muscle mass have higher all cause mortality across the board.

And every one of those kind of functions. And everything that anything that can kill you, which is those things plus falling, you know, plus kidney disease. Everything that can kill you when your muscle mass is that low. So to put this another way, if you look at a study, and I think I cited this study in the book, if you took a bunch of roughly 70-year-olds and you broke them down into quoth, quadrants of like how much muscle mass they had by this metric, this ALMI. And you compare the top 25% to the bottom 25% and you follow them for 15 years. So 70 years old and on, the people in the top 25%, 80% of them are going to be alive in 15 years. Interesting. In the bottom, half of them

will be. It's a big difference in mortality. Okay. So maybe staying on the muscle theme is going to talk about it later, but, you know, Lauren and I, we weightlift rather frequently. She just started, what is it, two years ago now, for the first time ever. And I read in your book that, and tell me if I'm wrong here, that you are now maybe considering this kind of exercise maybe more important than diet and nutrition, muscle building. Is that, would you agree with that? Or is it just all part of one component? So if you asked me this question 10 years ago, of all those levers, which one's the most important. I would have probably said nutrition. But I think today that if I look at the data more objectively, I think that having a high VO2 max, so having really high cardio

respiratory fitness and having high strength and muscle mass is more strongly associated with a longer life than anything else, including having a really good diet. And by the way, this is not just me saying, I speculate on this. The data are really clear if you look at the hazard ratios associated with the absence of those things. Does that make sense? In other words, the easiest way to look at this is to say, what is the risk of having type 2 diabetes, which you could argue is the most extreme form of metabolic dysfunction associated with being the most overweight or all these other things? You could look at the hazard ratio of obesity. So you look at the hazard ratio, meaning the increase in the risk of death from all of the things that go wrong when nutrition is off the rails,

and compare that to the hazard ratio for death when you have low muscle mass, low strength, and or low VO2 max. And by the way, just for giggles, compare that to the hazard ratio of smoking, and compare that to the hazard ratio of high blood pressure and all these other things. And those numbers are really clear. So for example, you take a person who smokes and someone who doesn't smoke. So the same in all ways. And we're just going to march. We're going to look forward and predict their death.

The smoker in any given year has a 40% higher chance of dying from all causes. Okay. What about type 2 diabetes? It's about the same. Take a person maybe a little bit higher. So take a person with type 2 diabetes, compare them to an age, sex matched, everything matched, compared, you know, on the way. Same thing.

It's about 1.5 to 1.4 to 1.5, which means 40 to 50% greater chance of death. So those are big numbers. Now look at it with low muscle mass and low strength. So you take someone with high muscle mass and strength, low muscle mass and strength, but otherwise they're the same. The difference is 150%. Holy shit. Wow.

Now do it for very high cardiorespiratory fitness and very low cardiorespiratory fitness. So top 25% to bottom 25% it's 175% difference. 175% difference, not 75%. So on the scheme of the percentages, that is the bigger thing is the cardiovascular fitness. The cardio respiratory fitness, the strength and muscle mass are so much more important simply on the basis of these types of observations, which is when you compare good and bad on those fronts, the gap is three times larger than when you do it on the nutrition in front. Every night without fail, I get in bed. I have my red light bulbs, my 5-28 hurts, maybe some chimes,

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Or click the link in the description to shop my exclusive bundles, featuring the new lip products and some of my other all-time favorites for up to 25% off. Can you go into detail about cardio? Like, what should we be doing? How many days a week specifically? Great question. So, again, depends on the goal.

So if you said to me, so my wife's a marathon runner. So she loves marathons despite the fact that I've tried to get her to stop. Won't do it. Why stop? I mean, I just think, you know, look, she has nothing left to prove. She's run amazing marathons. She's run really fast marathons. And I think deep down, there's a part of me that's like worried, like at some point

she's just going to sustain an injury that is going to come back to bite her later on down the line. Just because it's so hard on the body. Yeah, it's just like, again, it's like I always say like, just run 10Ks instead. Like you could be very competitive at 10K. Why does it have to be the marathon? But that's also me. That's not cool of me. Like, I should just shut up and let her do her thing. But you guys should always just shut up.

Yeah. Yes, dear. Yeah. So, but it's coming from a place of love. Admit it. Right. You guys. It is coming from a place of love.

I was saying, though, I don't know if I have a trophy wife right now because I've showed her that salad video just posted. I basically get a kale leaf and that's about it. That big ass salad you just got. I was like, Lauren, where's my big ass salad? Yes. I'm not a trophy. I get a piece of cabbage.

That's it. Go watch his Instagram. Why don't watch his Instagram. So if you said to me, I want to do what Jill is doing. The answer is different than if you say, I just want to be really fit and live a long life. So what we call sport specificity starts to matter. Sure.

And in the case of my wife, it's a hell of a lot of running. But if it's, if you're my patient and you're saying, okay, I, I want to get them, I want the, uh, most efficient path to get there. And I'm willing to do whatever. I'd say it's probably about four hours a week is probably that sweet spot. And what does that workout look like? Yeah. So it would be about 80% of that would be low intensity.

Like a zone two? Zone two. If we can talk about zone two, I can explain that in more detail. And then about 20% of that would be higher intensity, specifically geared towards V-O-2 max training, which means you are training in what I call intervals of hell. So like, those be like hill sprints or assault bike workouts? It could be anything you want provided it's about three to eight minutes of hard work followed by about three to eight minutes of recovery. And I think four is we usually have our patients do four on four offs.

That's the sweet spot. So you'll do whether you could pick your choice. So it could be a stairmaster, assault bike, treadmill. I like my favorite by far is just riding a bike on a hill. And you're, is it like, and when you're doing this in your body, like should you be like hands on knees like trying to recover after that? His hands can't be on his knees when he's riding a bicycle. No, he means in between. I mean, just like in between.

Like, are you, are you so gassed? I'm in a lot of pain after. Yeah. Okay. So you're like, but, but because because you have to do many of them, I'm not the most gassed. Okay. So I'm, like a zone like three, four. It's a four, five.

It's a four five. It's a four five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you want to get really technical, and this is a good question, because a lot of people who haven't done this type of training don't know how to pace themselves for this. A four minute all out is really unpleasant, but you, shouldn't feel awful until the third minute. Does that make sense? Yeah, you should be able to just like, so if I'm running up a hill, I could be able to do it. And then the last part of it is like

this. Yeah. So when I do them, there is the, the best hill I ever trained on. It was in Rancho Santa Fe where we used to live. And I haven't found a hill in Austin that's as good. But this one in Rancho Santa Fe was perfect because it was a six percent grade for 1.6 miles. And it, and it never went up or down. Like it was just perfect. And I remember distinctly, Because I knew every tree and leaf and thing. Like you just knew exactly what was going on. The first minute feels totally fine. At minute two, I'm like, this sucks.

At minute three, I'm in so much pain. And at minute four, I have to concentrate to make sure I don't make a stupid mistake on the bike. And then you have four minutes to recover. And that might get my heart rate down to 100. And then you do it again. And it goes through the same process. You do that four times? Yeah, maybe five or six.

Wow. Okay. So it's, so you're talking. That's like once a week. Okay. So this is like a 30, 40 minute workout. Call it an hour with your warm up. And yeah. Okay. And the rest of that on the zone two, tell me if I'm wrong. I've heard that zone two should be enough of an exertion where you're, you get your heart rate elevated, but not where you can also either breathe through your nose or carry your conversation. So a couple of things to say on that. For some people like my sinuses are relatively straightforward. My septum is straight. I can breathe through my nose and zone two. But I don't think that's a great litmus test because I think there are enough people who have septum pathology that makes it. I think the talk test is the better test. Okay.

I always tell people, if you're on your bike doing a zone two workout in the gym and your wife comes up to you and asks you complicated enough questions that you can't just grunt the answers. So it's not just, you know, are you cool if Susie comes over for dinner? If it's, you know, like, hey, my parents want to do this and we need to do this and da da da and you actually have to answer in full sentences. If you can't answer her in full sentences, you're going too hard. If you can, and it's actually not unpleasant, if it's actually easy to talk in full sentences, you're not going hard enough. If you're on the treadmill, treadmill, what is the incline and the speed if you had to tell us specifically? Well, it varies by your fitness. I can tell you what it is for me, but I don't

don't know what it is for you. What is it for you? It would change depending on for. Yeah. For me, I like to treadmill at 3.5 to 3.6 miles per hour and 15 degrees incline. Holy shit. That will put me at that level. 15 degrees incline?

Yeah. Wow. But then so, okay, so that is the majority, though, of the cardio for the week is you're doing that for, call it three hours. That's right. So call it like, I do four hour sessions like that. Okay. That's not too bad when you think about it.

So you do four hours of your treadmill and then you also do your house. I do it mostly on a bike. The only time I do treadmill is when we're traveling and they don't have a, but I do all my zone two on a bike pretty much. Do you like that just because it's easier on the body or? I mean, honestly, I think I don't have a great reason other than I used to be a cyclist. You wouldn't know it to look at my obese body today. When you're a wheel, you like cars and wheels.

It feels like more fun. But I think, yeah, cycling just is, it feels very natural to me. And I do spend a lot of other time walking outside. So I kind of feel like I get a good leg workout rucking, which is another pastime of mine. Now that you guys, we all live in Austin, you're going to write a passage with my friends as rucking with me in the heat. What is rucking? No, this weird. Our trainer that we work with was he, you just did a clip.

I can't remember with who. And we were talking about the weighted vest versus the ruck pack. Yeah, yeah. And you were debate with, we were talking about what was better. Yeah, I think the rucksack is significantly better. What is a rucksack? It's like a backpack with weight. It's just a backpack with heavy weight in it.

Yeah. I want a rock. It's awesome. You know, Lance Armstrong came out for a ruck with me yesterday because he's moving back to Austin. And so I brought him out. And I always do it as trial by fire. You just go middle of the day.

So 4 p.m. Oh, God. And I just threw, you know, 50 pounds on his back, 50 pounds on my back. And we just went out for an hour. And you're walking. Yeah. But it's a zone. So it's a heavy zone to.

Yeah, it's funny. He asked me the same question. He's like, like, what zone of cardio are we going to be in? And I was like, honestly, it's a top. It's somewhere between one and five, depending on what we do. It's almost never zone two, by the way. So, like, when you're on the flats and going downhill, it's zone one. Sure.

We're talking like it's nothing. When you're going uphill and when we were running on the track, it's like zone five. Okay. So in that routine, so in that routine. But I'll come back and answer your question because you asked about weight investor rucksack and I have a strong point of view. Okay. Because he was, he had a strong point of view too.

And I think it was he was probably the opposite of mine. Yeah, but it was on kids with backpacks and issues. But, okay, so if you're doing that amount of cardio per week and then implementing weightlifting for building muscle, are you, how, how does that look like? Are you doing you person? How do I strength train? Yeah. Is that like, I do four days a week.

Okay, four days a week. And I do two days upper body, two days lower body. Okay. How do you, this is like really like getting in the details, but I love to know this from on seven days a week. What's your schedule? Like, tell us on Monday I do this. on Tuesday, I do that.

Yeah. So I do lower body Monday, Friday in the gym. Upper body Wednesday, Sunday. Okay. I ride Zone 2, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. I VO2 max Saturday. And I ruck at least three days a week. So this week, it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

But normally it's Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. So Saturday is your day where you got to find God. you know you're going to go and go all out on the cardio. Yep. So each day has something. Yeah. So Saturday is the hardest cardio day because you're doing that zone two followed by a V-O-2 max.

Fridays tend to be very hard days. It's like kind of my deadlift day. So that's like another go to the well. And let's be clear. Like I'm an old man now and I don't believe in hurting myself. Sure. So I'm also very quick to back off. If I'm not feeling great,

like there's not handing out medals at the end of the day for who hurt themselves. Why do you like rucking better than the weighted vest? Because as the weight gets significantly higher, which by definition it is, by the time you're rucking, you're really kind of working up to a third of your body weight. The ability of the rucksack to, because they have a belt on them, and you cinch that belt on the hip bone. And what that does is it takes the weight and puts it on your hip and not on your shoulder. Huh. And the weighted vest doesn't have that. Yeah, the weight of vest kind of just digs in. The backpack theory really doesn't make sense. Well, I understand where I think your friend is going.

Where he's probably saying is a backpack puts you into spinal extension. Yes. And he's saying, presumably, I don't want to put words on somebody's mouth. He's probably saying, well, kids spend enough time in spinal extension. They don't need any more. Yes, I would say adults spend too much time in spinal flexion. We're sitting down too much, right? When you're in front of your computer, you're in flexion.

You're hunched forward. So it's actually kind of nice to be opened up this way. But above all else, what it really comes down to is I just, I put that hip belt on so tight and it digs into my hips that I can almost take the shoulder straps off. You know, rucksacks also come with these little things that allow you to clip across your chest. I never use them. Like, I don't.

I'm going to blame you after this episode because you're going to go buy everything that you say. We're going to get all these Amazon packages. It's going to be so annoying. I can already see in his eyes he's getting a rucksack. I'm going to go look for a hill too. Yeah, yeah. Well, you can come, I have three of them first. So if you want to come and sample first, because there's different sizes and I have different sizes. I'm going to hold you to it. Okay. So for people that may not have direct access to you, which is most people listening, obviously, and they're thinking about putting together just a, you know, an optimal fitness routine for themselves. We've covered that four days a week. Well, by the way, this is, I mean, I'm also acknowledging like, I do more than most of my patients. Sure. Sure. And what I tip, the way I do this with my patients, is different. I go to them and I ask them the first question, which is, Michael, how much time are you willing to put into exercise in a week? Just tell me what that number looks like. So balance it with

time with your wife, time with your kids, time with work, time with whatever you do. And tell me what that number is. And they'll come back with a number. And it's always less than my number. I would say I'm willing to put in as much work as I need to put in to get to the next level. I don't think I would give you a number. Does anyone ever say like just you tell me what I should put in? I mean, I love your answer. I would continue to work with you on figuring that out and then better define what the goals are and say, okay. So, yeah, what I would do is say, look, your V-O-2 max is here. It's at the 40th percentile. I would like it to be at the 95th percentile in two years. This is what I think it will take to get there. That's a good, to maybe let you sort of show the goal,

me tell you the goal and then you work backwards to get there. Yeah. Most people, and I love that because then we can go through that and it's a tradeoff. Most people usually come into it with like, all right, I'm exercising three hours a week now. I'm willing to go up to six. But that's all I'm willing to do. That surprises me and I'll tell you why. It seems to me that you work with so many high performers.

I would think that the answer would be whatever it takes. Yeah, it's funny you say that we were talking about this. on a team call recently. And because I was sort of griping about it, to be honest with, I was having a little bit of a crybaby moment where I was bitching. And I was like, why don't these people want to do more? And one of the people on my team sort of smacked me into shape and said, hey, you're forgetting something, Peter.

Like our patients are very high performing people. They want efficiency. Well, like they're CEOs. They're this. They're that. Like in every dimension of their life, they're really high performing. they're kind of looking for minimum effective dose of everything. That's not universally true, by the way, but that's like, I guess it was a good way to help me kind of maybe have a little bit

of empathy for where someone's coming from. And by the way, if someone says I'm willing to do six hours a week, that's awesome. We can do anything with six hours a week. What's the best? Okay. So now it depends on what are you coming in with. So if you're coming in balanced, and balanced can be good or bad, meaning when I do my full evaluation on you, both from a card, and strength perspective, you're roughly the same, either equally bad, equally okay, equally good, then I will use that time equally, meaning I would have three hours on strength and stability training and three hours on cardio training. And of that three hours on cardio, I would have 80% of that being low intensity zone two, 20% of that being high intensity VO2 max. But for example, let's say you came in,

which is not uncommon, I have people that come in who are amazing runners, like super, super fit. They don't have an ounce of muscle on them. I mean, they're just. And probably vice versa. And vice versa. And then you get guys that come in that are really, really strong and they walk up a flight of stairs and they're out of breath. So when you get people who are extreme, I don't take their time 50-50. Now I have to really change the programming to offset their deficit their deficit.

I remember we were doing this show one time, and I forget what topic it was on something about like supplementation health. And we gave this kind of like laundry risks of the things that we, at least at the time we're doing. And one of the feedbacks was like, oh, this is unattainable. And I got it. And I said, well, listen to me to kind of lie and say whatever, but like all these guests come and say, I just have lemon water and wake up with the sunlight. And I like, well, I want to tell people all of the information. And then they can take that and decide what works for themselves, which is why I ask you these, you know, routines. again, like some people may not want to do it, but I think if they can get three or four days

of strength training in three or four days of this type of cardio, like that's not a bad prescription, right? It's just many people maybe won't get that time. I just, I always, I mean, patients always ask me this, by the way, every patient asks me, or almost every patient, Peter, what do you do? And I always preface it by, I'm happy to tell you what I do, but please don't let an aversion to what I'm doing be an impediment to your progress. Like, here's what I do, but I'm also a person who enjoys this a lot. There are some people who don't enjoy exercise. Sure.

And I enjoy it. Like I really, I would exercise if it was bad for me. That's unfortunately a true statement, right? Like if you told me all this exercise will shorten your life by five years, I'd be like, well, so be it. It's worth it for the quality of life.

So I feel so strongly that everybody exercise that I think we just have to find a way to make sure it becomes natural. And sometimes for people who, are not coming at it from a place of doing it, the goal is to do just enough to simultaneously accomplish the following, make sure they don't get hurt, and make sure they start to see some positive benefit that gets them a little bit hooked. And for some people, that's aesthetic. I mean, it sounds, my wife will be so pissed that I say this, but hopefully none of her friends are listening. And so I won't get back to her. But I know that for my wife, who never wanted to lift

to wait because she's just been a runner her whole life. About three years ago when she finally started doing it, the thing that got her most excited was that she could see her deltoids. Like, having that little, because she's a petite little thing, right? But to have that little pop of a deltoid, she was like, I love this. I will tell you the main reason I like lifting weights and I just got into weightlifting two years ago and it's changed my body composition and I love it so much is I feel more confident after lifting weights. And I recognize that the other day. And I can't explain.

Confident in activities of daily living. Like going to the grocery store. My posture feels more confident. I'm a confident person since I was born. I think I came out. But weightlifting just gives you this confidence. It's an energy. I can't explain it what it is.

But it takes your confidence up in the best way. And it is true. I would do it if it wasn't good for you. It feels good. Well, I imagine when I was a, when I was a young man and I discovered, you know, like being in my room just like watching Rocky movies doing pushups and situps and pull ups, like you start to see those results as a kid. You're like, oh, this is a confident.

It's like, you know, now you're discovering this as a woman, you know, older than I was when I started. And I imagine it's that same kind of feeling. It's like, oh, I can actually like change my body and do different things. And then you become more stable and you become more. There's just so many things that come along with building muscle. Weightlifting you love. I love it.

And I think it's important for everybody. It's important. If you're young, it's important if you're old. It's important if you're a man. It's important if you're a woman. You have the joke I always say. My team gets sick of it. So there have been a somewhere estimates of between 100 and 110 billion people have lived. Right. That's if you go back 250,000 years to the beginning of homo sapiens, there have been a little over a hundred billion of us. I'm willing to bet everything that not once in the history of those hundred billion people has someone at the end of their life said, oh God, I just wish I had less muscle. Sure. Wow. You simply can't have too much muscle and too much strength as you age. I am someone who travels a lot. And I'm constantly trying to be healthy when I travel, but it is a struggle. But leave it to the Weston hotels to fix this issue.

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we had somebody on the show right before you came in and we were talking about even like facial muscle and as you age and that depleting and you know if you're and you lose it like how that affects the aging process and how you look different and facial fat too sure is such an interesting thing like i i actually think this is i i'm sure there's a really good explanation for why we lose facial fat, but I mean, I'm sure you guys aren't old enough yet, but once you get to be my age, you'll start to notice you get bags under your eyes and people say, oh, it's just because you're tired. No, it's actually because you're depleting fat under the eye. And so you lose a bit of the puffiness here. And that's what kind of creates that shadow. That's very true. And you know what else?

Girls are getting fat taken out of their face right now. They're getting their buckles removed right here. And a lot of people are- Wait, I didn't know this. Tell me about this. What the heck are you talking about? So they want this look that looks like sort of like a model. Like a lot of people, a lot of celebrities are getting their buckle fat removed. And I've talked with a lot of different plastic surgeons and they say, do not do it because it's going to make you age. And when you do start to age, it looks even worse, even worse, even worse. You're sunken in. So you have to be careful of removing fat from your face.

You're 100% right about shadows. People do wild things these days. That's just the world I know little about. Optimal diet. What are your pillars when it comes to diet? I would like to know your pillars personally, what you eat besides elk, and then what you think is a really well-balanced diet for the general population. So I'll caveat this by saying the following.

Remember at the outset, I said there are like kind of five big things you can manipulate to impact the length and quality of your life, exercise, nutrition, sleep, mental health, drugs, hormone supplements, all in one bucket. If I have a superpower, it's exercise, what do you think my kryptonite is? Nutrition. Yeah. So I struggle more with nutrition than all the others combined. It's not hard for me to be disciplined about my sleep and regimented.

Now that I've kind of got a trajectory and a plan around mental health, I actually really enjoy doing the work and doing it. But there's something about nutrition that is just probably going to be a constant struggle for me for my entire life. I am so envious of these people who food is fuel. and they never get tempted by eating crap. Never heard him. And since I've known him since he was 12, he's never had a craving.

Yeah. So I'm not that guy. I have other weaknesses. Yeah, no, look. I mean, I think it all balances out in the end. So maybe I'll start with kind of the principles of good nutrition. And then I can sort of explain to you how I try to navigate that system. We're trying to basically address a couple things with nutrition, right?

So the overall state of energy balance, specifically the amount of muscle mass, and metabolic health. Those are really the big things that we're manipulating nutrition on. And when it comes to how do you manipulate nutrition, you're basically manipulating the total amount of energy. So how many calories are you eating? And what's the composition of those calories? Like, does it matter how much comes from protein, fat, carbohydrates? There's a fourth macronutrient, which is alcohol. Doesn't get enough attention. But it's important. Remember, it has seven calories per gram. K-cals to be more specific. I want to bucket alcohol too and like spend some time on that. We should, yeah, because alcohol is almost as energy dense as fat. So it's very important

for the person who's trying to lose weight to be mindful of that. It's very difficult to lose weight when you're having a bottle of wine a day. Because you're getting no nutritional value, but you're getting as staggering some of calories. In my view, very little is actually known about nutrition, despite how it's represented. And that includes maybe even how I was representing it a dozen years ago. Something to which I cringe at now was the absolute certainty with which I thought I understood nutrition, which I won't represent to now. If a person needs to be eating less, which truthfully is most of us, like most of us don't need to be eating more. We need to be either eating the same or eating less. You kind of have three ways to go about doing that. You can

directly restrict the number of calories you're eating. You can, that's called calorie restriction or CR. You can start to restrict macronutrients. So that's what most diets are doing. They're kind of carbs or just like cut the, that's right. Yeah, I'm not eating sugar. I'm not eating carbs. I'm not eating fat. I'm not, I'm vegan, I'm paleo. Like all of those are basically forms of dietary restriction. And if you restrict enough, you will indirectly, start to restrict the total amount and you'll accomplish your goal. Of course, you have to be careful, right? Like if you go on the no lettuce diet, probably not going to lose weight because that's not restrictive enough from an energy perspective. And then you have time restriction, what people call

intermittent fasting, where you just say, look, I'm going to not eat during a large enough period of time during the day. And if you make that window big enough, you'll eventually lose weight. How do you feel about intermittent fasting? Because I know that you have thoughts on it. Yeah, I think there are some people for whom it works, but I get worried about it when people who are under-muscled do it. We watched that doc you did with Chris Thames with By the way, I thought it was phenomenal. It was really cool. That whole thing was cool. And I was watching that extended period of fasting that you guys did. Yeah, we just did four days of no eating. Which is like that's wild. Or at least for someone who's never done it. Well, it was wild for him. I mean, for me, I'd done that all the time. For Chris, it was tough because he'd never. I think I don't think Chris, I don't think Chris had. ever gone eight hours without eating. And then on top of that, he had to do all of these insane physical challenges while we were fast. Yeah, when he was like spear fishing at the end of it. It was crazy. Is that when he went in the freezing cold? Did he do that fast? That was the

next episode. Same documentary. I don't remember where. No, I know it's the same documentary. I'm saying did he fast while he went in that freezing cold lake. No, no, no, no. But, but we, he did some training for the cold while we were still fasting. Got it. I bet he was not a happy camper. Chris is a trooper You know what it was cool about that is you could like he put it in he put the work in on that

on that documentary he didn't phone it in like you I mean it's so funny you say that because we were talking about this oh I don't know God maybe it like a month ago

we were talking about something unrelated and I was like hey do you remember how this thing was pitched this would be done in two months was how it was pitched

right it was like two years later broken ankle like all of this shit I will say after that because he did that other Thor movie he was yoked up in that movie

so when he did that and a guy like that who's got a lot of muscle totally reasonable once in a while where I worry about it is you've got that patient who's at the 10th percentile for muscle mass

at the 70th percentile for fat so they're overnourished but they're under-muscled. So they do need to restrict calories, but they can't lose muscle along the way. Intermittent fasting is not a great strategy for that person. They need caloric restriction or dietary restriction.

Is there difference for fasting between men and women? I've heard over the years that maybe it's not as great for women as it is for men. But again, that's... I've certainly heard that as well. I don't think the data necessarily represent that. I mean, I think what the data, at least not the data that I've seen, I think what the data make pretty clear is there's no magical benefit of time restricted feeding in terms of the impact on body weight beyond the caloric deficit. But the problem is, on average, people lose more muscle because they're restricting protein more.

So what if there's a woman that does have muscle? Would you say to go to intermittent fasting or would that still be sort of last on your list? No, I mean, I guess it depends how big a fasting window she's talking about and whether she's willing to maybe have a protein shake outside of the fasting window. So if you could just get a little bit of protein in, let's just say she says, okay, fine, I'm only going to eat between two and eight, right? So that's a pretty tight window of six hours. I would say, look, if you could have a protein shake at nine in the morning and then have a protein lunch at two. and then a protein dinner at eight, I would say that would be worthwhile. And just make sure that that protein shake that you're having in the morning is very otherwise

low in calories. Because you could still get like 35 grams of protein in with virtually no fat or carbs. So do you like intermittent fasting more for disease prevention than for, I guess, weight loss? No, I think it's no more, I think there's no specific benefit that it has with respect disease prevention beyond the effect that has on energy balance. The reason that I did it for many years and the reason I still think it's a viable thing that people should consider as part of the toolkit is, frankly, it's the easiest. Like, I just think it's so easy. It's so efficacious. If you just say, like, I just think at the end of the day, we're very binary creatures. It's much easier to not do

something at all or to do it than to do it partway. That's true, I think, for most people, maybe not everybody. But if you just say, look, the only rules of engagement are don't start eating till two o'clock and wrap it up by seven, that's easier than don't eat carbs or just eat less total food. Sure. I think. Yeah, it's not overwhelming. How much protein do you like people to get? Is it different for men and women? It's different based on how much muscle mass you have. Are you trying to go up the muscle curve or is just, you know, are you just trying to preserve what you have or increase? How old are you? So the older you are, the more you need because of something called anaerobic resistance, basically, so, or anabolic resistance, rather, meaning the older you get,

the harder it is for you to turn amino acids into muscle. And, and then, of course, training volume. So the answer is somewhere between 0.7 and 1 gram per pound of body weight. Are you a carnivore diet fan? I mean, look, I've never done it. I have lots of friends who have who swear up and down by it. Rogan's all excited about it now again. And he just say he's doing it again. And he's better than ever.

He might be. Joe does it a couple times a year. Actually, no, the last time I saw Joe was just before he went on vacation. He was on it and feeling amazing better than he hadn't wanted. So yeah, he might still be on it. And then Jordan Peterson is obviously like he's been on it for a very long time. And Jordan's on the most restrictive. version of it I've ever heard of. I mean, Jordan, and again, I don't know. It's like salt and meat.

And it's just meat. It has to be beef. Like, he can't even eat other kinds of meat. So, you know, the short answer is it hasn't been studied. I'd love to see it studied. But there's really two issues at hand. Is it a viable weight loss strategy? Clearly, there are so many people that have done it and lost a staggering amount of weight. But undeniably, it's a viable source of weight loss. But But you could also argue, so too, would any diet that consists of one food? Right. I'm pretty sure the all potato diet would be just as efficacious for weight loss. So the more important question is, what are the long-term health consequences of it if an individual

decides they want to be on this diet indefinitely? On the other side of that for vegans, the vegan diet, how do you feel about that route? Well, again, it depends. I was just having this discussion today with our team, which was, look, when we have patients that come in and say they're vegan, my first question is, let's understand why. If you're vegan because you don't like meat, like you've never liked meat, you hate the consistency of it, you can't stand the thought of killing animals. I'm like, I think that's a good reason to be vegan, onward and upward, right? Let's come up with ways to work around that. If you tell me

you're vegan because you think eating animal products can't be healthy, then I think we should educate you because that's patently false. And there are lots of ways to eat animal products and be very healthy. And just like, you know, we wouldn't say all food is unhealthy. It's really a function of the food. Well, similarly, you can eat animals that are healthy. You can eat animals that are not healthy. You can eat plants that are healthy and plants that are unhealthy. So it's just really understanding kind of like what's a person's objective and then helping them achieve that. What did you eat for breakfast today? Well, it depends what you define as breakfast. But when I woke up pre-workout, all I had was coffee. Okay. And then no, no, no. I had some like cream

the coffee. Okay. And then post in workout, I had, on the bike, I had water, just water. And that's remember my zone too. And then, oh, there's one other type of workout I do that I forgot to describe. Two days a week, I do something called DNS, dynamic or muscular stabilization. These are stability workouts. So I did, so then I had my DNS after. And after that, I had six pieces of venison jerky. Six pieces of venison jerky. The reason is each piece is 10 grams. So I was getting like, Or nine grams. So I got 54 grams of protein. Is this a brand or is this at the farmer's market? It is a brand. It's called Maui-Newie Venison. And by full disclosure, I'm an investor in the company. Michael's going to be buying it. He'll be your biggest customer. Oh my God. He's going to be walking around eating jerky. My kids, everything.

Yeah, Maui-Maui-Ni-Venison is awesome. And by the way, this is really cool. This is a Venice. This is a food product that has probably got more vegans eating meat than anything I've ever seen. Because again, if you're a vegan who, opposed to eating animal products because of the way animals are treated, they very much come to see like, wow, this is the most humane operation in the United States. So it's a type of animal called Axis Deer, which are not native species in the United States, but they were brought to Hawaii in the 1950s for hunting. And then they proliferated like crazy because they have no natural predator. They then created such a problem. They were destroying so much land And they were basically everything from the grass to the cows down to the coral is being eradicated because of these animals. There's too many of them.

There's too many of them. And they have the Bengal tiger is their only predator and there aren't any Bengal tigers in Hawaii. So the Hawaiian government was basically left with no choice but to eradicate them from helicopters with machine guns. The same thing with like boars out here, huh? Yeah. And this friend of mine came along and said, no, no, no, we've got a better idea. First of all, it's the most delicious animal ever. And it's perfectly natural.

It just eats grass all day long. And we can harvest them in this insanely humane way at night using night vision. So they have snipers that basically harvest them at night from great distances. So the animals are under zero stress at the time of their death. So they're sleeping and they don't even know what happened. They're not sleeping because they're nocturnal. They're walking around and within an instant they're gone. Oh, I don't know they're nocturnal.

Wow. Yeah. So the jerky is incredible. And I've become totally obsessed with it. And it's my mainstay of snack. Coming to this podcast, is that what you've had? You said 10 or seven pieces. Six pieces.

So about 50 grams of protein. And so that would have been at 10 o'clock. Okay. And I did a bunch of work. And then just before coming here, I had a bowl of Greek yogurt with like, I don't know how describe it, but like it's sort of a, it's a granola, but it's like more of a nuts type of granola. Okay.

Your diet doesn't sound bad to me. No, but I mean, I'm eating okay today so far. No, I don't eat that bad. It's just, I mean, where I struggle is if my kids make brownies. Yeah. My wife can eat a brownie. I'll go two days resisting them and then I'll eat the rest of the tray. No, I'll do, so I'll do stuff like that.

Like the other day when you had the cookies out and I went, I had like two of them and then I've looked, I'm like this, if this stays in this house, I will, like, I threw Oh, you're the one that threw those cookies away. Yes, I told you because I know that if they stayed there, nobody was going to eat them. She's got the discipline. I will do stuff like that. I'll eat the cookies. Yeah.

So it's like I had a, so my wife and I were rucking the other day. By the way, husband, wife, rock. Awesome. So, it sounds so interesting. My husband and I were. My wife and I were rocking. You said rucking?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. With an R. Okay. Got it. So, then what? So, so, so, so, so we were out there rucking yesterday or not yesterday,

two days ago. And I really laid it out. I was like, I need your help. Like our pantry is getting out of control. There is so much crap in that pantry that is so tempting to me. And I just was like, we can't do this anymore. Like, it's not fair to the kids that they should be exposed to junk food. Just because they want it, we can't have it for them.

And it's not fair to me because I have no willpower. So it's like everybody's losing when we have Pringles. The number one skinny tip I've realized is to not have it in sight. The problem is when you have cookies in sight and bread, brownies. That's why for me, I just try to eliminate it all from my house and then I'll have like my huge chocolate bars like a piece at night so I can get something. You can't have it inside. People come over and are severely disappointed in our pantry. If I have a bag of flaming hot Cheetos in my pantry every single time I walk in or a McDonald's happy meal, I'm going to want it.

No, this is what, and this is where my wife and I had a little bit of a tiff on the ruck was I said, look, I preach this to my patients. Like the answer is default food environment. Default food environment. You only want to exert willpower in very brief spikes, which is when you're shopping. That's when you resist the urge to buy the crap. And you never go shopping hungry and you never go down the middle aisles. Or you just post made it and you have it all delivered to your house so you don't even have to look. Even better. But then the goal is set up the environment such that you don't have to exert willpower when you're in your home. Yeah. When you are hungry, when you are tired, when you are weak. Is that ever a lot of pressure to be who you are and have written this book and to have all these high performer clients? And then you feel like you have to be doing certain things because you're the doctor. I don't because I think I'm very transparent about my shortcomings and I'm very open about my struggles. And I never represent myself to be, you know, the master and the guy. Like I'm, you know, so yeah, I think if I if I were representing,

myself in that regard, it would be horrible. It would be like you'd feel like you couldn't, you know, let your hair hang down, so to speak. But no, I don't feel that pressure at all. I just feel like, hey, I'm frustrated because I shouldn't be eating any pringles. And yet every time I have, every time there are pringles in our pantry, I go in and get a handful of them. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to this episode. Be sure to tune in this week on Thursday on audio and Friday on video to part two of this episode with Peter Atia. Again, most of our episodes, typically around the hour, hour, 15, hour and a half range. This one spanned two and a half hour. So we wanted to make it a two-parter to make sure that we didn't fatigue everyone and that

we made sure that we got all the information in this well over two and a half hour conversation with Peter. So be sure to tune in to part two later this week.