The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 462: Max Lugavere - How To Become Smarter, Happier, & More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 for "Mindful Monday" Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Max Lugavere is the author of the New York Times best-seller Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life. He appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. His latest book is called Genius Kitchen - Over 100 Easy & Delicious Recipes to make your brain sharp, body strong, and taste buds happy. "A healthy person has 100 wishes. A sick person has 1." This subject became personal for Max when his mother, Kathy, was given a diagnosis of dementia, and he devoted himself to her care. She died in 2018. "Now that Mom is gone, I am even more obsessed with the topic." Shop in the perimeter of the supermarket. Reach for nutrient-dense foods. Lifestyle changes that will 10x the quality of your life: Getting 8-9 hours of sleep instead of 4-6 Eating more animal protein (especially beef and eggs) Less cardio, more strength training Regular heat (sauna) and cold (ice bath/cold shower) stress Daily sunlight Intermittent fasting – instead of eating 16 hours a day, eat 8. Drinking caffeine is "taking a loan out on energy from later in the day?" – Cortisol peaks in the AM. Wait 45 minutes after you wake up to drink caffeine. Stop drinking caffeine from time to time so that your body can reset. Willpower is a finite resource. Create your environment to make good decisions. Whole Foods - 3 Things to think about: Protein - #1 satiating piece. Greek yogurt, beef jerky, eggs Fiber - It stretches out your stomach. Helps fill you up. Greens, broccoli, whole fruit. Water - Get hydrated. Supplements - Protein shakes. Whey isolate. He uses muscle feast. Most bread is not useful. It's ultra-processed food. Alcohol - Most wine has a lot of sugar. Most alcohol does. Max drinks tequila. Wake up, hydrate... "I'm up somewhere between 7 and 8. I don't use an alarm clock. I go straight into the kitchen and drink a tall glass of room-temperature water. I may sprinkle a bit of mineral salt in it which replenishes electrolytes." Light... Air... "Whether it's winter or summer, I go out onto my terrace and do a few minutes of deep breathing, stretching, and meditation. I'm a big believer in getting in natural light in the morning because it aligns my circadian rhythm for the day.

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your weekoff. write, you'll also receive the tales and the ability to read an excerpt of my new book, The Pursuit of Excellence, for free if you text, Hawk, to 66866.

Now, on to tonight's feature leader. This is a really important one. It's the great Max Lugavir, author of the New York Times bestseller genius foods, become smarter, happier, and more productive while protecting your brain for life. Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz show, the Rachel Ray show, and the doctors. His latest book is called Genius Kitchen. Over 100 easy and delicious recipes to make your brain sharp, body strong, and taste buds happy. A few of the topics we discussed during this enlightening conversation.

Why you should only shop on the outer ring of the supermarket. Then how to prepare your meals for the week. the benefits of intermittent fasting, food that makes your brain healthier, what we should do about alcohol, why sugar is so addictive, and at the end of the conversation Max prescribes how to get started on this healthier and more realistic way of living. Ladies and gentlemen, this one again is so important and entertaining. It's the great Max Lugavir. All right, Max, it's great to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome, man. Hey, Ryan. It's great to be here. And it's an honor. Thanks. Oh, cool. So I was reading your most recent book and you dedicate it to your mom. And I was also reading that when you were younger, your mom was really big on having family dinners. So I would love to start this one. Could you tell me a little bit more about your mom and her story and the impact she had on you? Oh, absolutely. What a great place to start, Ryan. It's my mom is my why.

I, when I started college, I was on a pre-med track, but I ended up going into journalism. And I did that for many years, post-grad. But then it was about, I was in my late 20s and my mother was in her late 50s when she started to show the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a form of dementia, like a rare, rare form of dementia called Louis Body Dementia, which is akin to having essentially both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease at the same time. And I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative disease. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, these were not terms that were in my lexicon, because as I mentioned, I didn't end up going through the medical school route. And my mom was certainly not old. So I think like many younger people, I thought that Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's dementia,

these were conditions that were baked into your genes, which clearly, as I mentioned, they weren't. In fact, my mom's mom, my maternal grandmother was 96 or just on the cusp of entering her 90s at the time. And she was cognitively healthy. So it certainly wasn't something that I had a strong genetic predisposition for, at least from my vantage point. My mom was not an old person. She still had all the pigments in her hair. She was somebody who anybody would describe as being very much in the prime of her life at that point. And so it was like the Hiroshima bomb going off in my world, Ryan.

I mean, it was like, I'm the oldest child in a family of three kids and three boys and small family. I've always been incredibly close to my mom. She was the most important person in my universe. And as you mentioned, she worked really hard over the years to make sure that despite having a really small family, that we were all incredibly close. And one of the ways that she did that was she made sure that every night, for the most part, I mean, obviously there were some exceptions growing up. But for the most part, every night we ate dinner together as a family. That was like one of the most important tenets of our, of the family structure. And it's one of the reasons why my two younger brothers are now my best friends.

And I think why I had that bond with my mom and why I had that bond with my dad. Even though my mom and my dad, this is sort of tangential, but it's interesting now that I'm talking about it. My mom and my dad didn't have the best relationship with themselves. They ended up getting a divorce when I was 18. But despite that, we, the children, saw that they were great parents because of their, because of that. because of their desire just to make sure that me and my brothers were always so close. And so it was really that was the call to action for me to investigate to the best of my ability, why this would have happened to my mom at the age at which it did.

If there was anything out there that could provide some sort of disease modifying effect through the lens of diet and lifestyle, because when I, I got when I, it was at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where my mom was prescribed drugs for both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. And I realized for the first time that that standard pharmaceutical treatment is really like essentially it's a form of biochemical bandaid that you put on these conditions. But they have no disease modifying effect. They really are minimally effective, if effective at all. And especially with respect to these more niche forms of dementia like what my mom had. And so I dove into the medical literature and I became obsessed with finding answers.

I, as I mentioned, had a background as a journalist. So I was an investigator of sorts. And I, because I had been in a position where I was a quasi-public figure, I began to exploit that position. I had a blue checkmark on Twitter for the benefit of my family. So I started reaching out to scientists and researchers all around the world, really, who were ushering in this notion of dementia as as a condition that was responsive to diet and lifestyle and even as a potentially preventable condition because realizing that I had this risk factor for the first time, I also became interested in what I could do in my own personal life to prevent this from ever happening to myself. And so that's really the journey that began about a decade ago. And it's what led to all the

research that I put forth in Genius Foods, which was my first book and now Genius Kitchen, which is my sort of wellness kitchen guide slash cookbook. But all of my work is dedicated to my mom because my mom is really my why. And my mom passed away, unfortunately, three years ago. But this is a question. Trying to understand why my mom's health was so tragic is a question that I'll continue to try to answer until the day that I die. Because, I mean, she was really stolen from our family at such a young age. her lifespan was was short her health span was short um and we can unpack what that what that really

means especially in the context of the standard american diet and western way of life but um but yeah i want to do everything in my power to to run in the opposite direction um of that i like the fact that you're using obviously pain uh of losing her far too early as a way to to take ownership of your own life and try to help other people take ownership of theirs because in life, like, we don't get to decide a lot of things. There are some things, there are a lot of things outside of our control, but one of the things we absolutely get to decide is what we eat and then how we choose to move our body. So to bring this, I guess, selfishly max and how you've already impacted me, I'm a seven day a week, get in the weight room, run, lift, all the time. And I've

heard like other past old football coaches tell me the reason they work out so hard and so much is so that they could eat pizza, drink beers and do all this stuff to have fun. And that offsets. But as you kind of get older, that stops working as well. And it's just not healthy. Right. So for a guy like me, and there's probably a lot of people like this that they go to the gym every morning, which which I'm one of those guys. On Sundays I go out, I work out outside and run. But other than that, I'm in the gym every other day. But I love pizza party Fridays with the family. I love Girl Scout cookies. I love some of these other things. And I love some of these other things. And I'm a lot. that are, I know are not good, but they taste amazing. For a guy like me, what are some general pieces of advice you'd say, hey, here's how we start down this path. I don't expect you to be perfect, but let's start down this avenue here to get you in the right direction to eating healthier, to living a more, I'd say a lifeful of wellness as opposed to just killing yourself in the gym, but then messing it up with your diet. Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, you brought up so many interesting jumping off points that what I first want to mention is that, you know, a lot of people work out and they follow this if it fits your macros mentality to dieting, which

basically implies that you can eat whatever it is that you want so long as you're coming in at a certain calorie goal for the day and therefore able to achieve the body composition that you want, right? But there's a significant portion of the population that are normal weight metabolically obese. Another way of putting that as skinny fat, but you don't, you're not necessarily, you don't even necessarily have to qualify as being skinny fat to have problems like hyper insulinemia occurring under the hood, right? And all this can be done while having a body that for all intents and purposes looks great in the mirror. I have a lot of friends that actually were former athletes, especially in college, where they were just eating all kinds of junk to get

in the calories, to be able to supply them with the energy for their training, which is obviously significant, right? You need like a significant amount of calories. So there is some benefit to that. But what happens is once they stop training and they haven't built those, the foundation of what it means to eat healthfully and have those habits in place, for knowing how to reach for nutrient dense foods and for foods that aren't going to send your blood sugar on these crazy wild excursions throughout the day, what happens is they blow up. Or they develop problems like, as I mentioned, type 2 diabetes, which you can, which or or components of the metabolic syndrome, whether or not you have full blown type 2 diabetes. Today, 9 and 10 adults have some component of metabolic syndrome, whether they're overweight or not.

I mean, if you look statistically, about two-thirds of the U.S. population are either overweight or obese, but 9 and 10 adults have some component of metabolic illness, whether they're overweight or obese or not. So for me, it's all about really reaching for food. It's optimizing for food quality to the best of your ability because what we're seeing now in the research is that food quality plays a role not just in the quantity of food that you eat by helping regulate hunger mechanisms and satiety hormones and things like that, but also provide your body with the essential ingredients for optimal recovery. I mean, this occurs with sports, no doubt, but it also plays a role in the ability of our brains to stay healthy as we get older. And this is something that I think becomes increasingly important for all people, typically as we age, right?

We want to make sure that we're ability to show up in the world and continue to be the leaders that we were yesterday, tomorrow and decades into the future, right? And so that's where I think food quality plays a large role. But just just real quick before. and I want to, I want you to finish in a second, but I meant to say this at the very beginning. The reason that I really wanted to talk to you and why I think this one is so important and why I hope that there are some leaders who are like, wait a second, are we going to talk about food? Are we going to talk about wellness? This is a leadership show. I want to talk about like running my team and building and culture and all this stuff.

That's fine. My point is, think about the times when you are sick or think about a time when you're sick or think about a time and you just feel awful for whatever reason. The only thing in your life that matters when you're sick is just not being sick. My point of doing this one, I think this is as important as any topic I've ever spoken about, about proactively taking ownership over taking care of your body.

Because if you don't take care of your body, you get one. You get one shot. That's all we get is one shot with this body. And if you don't do everything. Now, stuff happens. it, right? We've all had friends and stuff, stuff happens. But I think it's on us as leaders to take responsibility and ownership to do everything within our power to take care of it, to optimize it, to be there for the people that we're leading. So this is as important as it gets because if you don't

do that, literally none of the other stuff we talk about matters. It doesn't matter because you won't be here or you won't be able to do anything. So I think that's why it's critical that leaders really take this stuff as seriously as anything that they do. Because without it, the rest of the stuff just doesn't matter. Yeah, it reminds me of that of that quote. A healthy person has a hundred wishes. A sick person has one. Yes. I've certainly seen that in my own life with my loved ones. No, but it's true. So when it comes to leading, I mean, we rely on our brain, right? Our brain is the organ that makes everything happen. And the action, the business end of the brain for all intents and purposes, the prefrontal cortex. So it's just behind the forehead, that region that is responsible

for conscious thought, executive function. And executive function really is the aspect of our cognitive domain that handles things like planning, decision making, impulse control, being able to tune out distractions. And we've seen that thanks to studies like the finger trial, which is the world's first ever randomized long-term, randomized control trial, has shown us that that even for people that are in old age with at least one risk factor for cognitive decline, that adhering to a diet very much like the diet that I recommend in Genius Foods and in the new book Genius Kitchen, you can see an improvement in your executive function by about 83% and a boost in your processing speed by about 150%. Now, these are people that are already

in old age, right? So you think, like, what can possibly be done if I'm young and healthy? Well, the brain is highly plastic, right? I mean, for decades, have had this misconception that the brain develops and continues to wire itself and organize and reach a state of full capacity by the mid-20s, only to begin this long, slow, gradual decline that continues until the end of life. But we now know that our brains possess a quality known as neuroplasticity, right? We can grow healthy new brain cells up until the point in which we die. The issue is the onus is really on us, A, to provide the stimulus, that our brains, the stimulus required for our brains to do so.

And we also have to provide our brains with the building block molecule so that our brains can actually create new brain cells. Your brain can't create something from nothing, right? So the responsibility is on us to provide our bodies with the kinds of foods that provide our brains with the building blocks to create healthy new brain cells. And not only that, but some degree of stress is inevitable for all of us. You can be a pro-meditator living on a mountaintop in Tibet, but some degree of life stress is going to be inevitable.

And this is certainly true for people who are leading large organizations and companies, right? No doubt, life is full of stress, whether we plan for it or not. And so there are certain molecules that I talk about in food that serve as a sort of armory for the brain to be able to shield itself against these stresses as we age. Because stress really is a killer. Chronic stress shrinks the memory center of the brain, the memory processing center of the brain called the hippocampus. It also has an inflammatory effect. It can weaken our immune system, chronic protracted stress. And so the molecules that we eat from food or that we neglect to eat from food have a really powerful role in terms of protecting our brains and supporting our brain function as we age so that our brains can fend off against stress.

Because today, the modern world, it's essentially like the hunger games, where our brains are thrust into this battle where enemies are coming at it from all different directions. And it's unable to defend itself in the context of the standard American diet, where today 60% of the calories that your average person is consuming come from what are called ultra processed foods. So when it comes to the foods that are going to protect your brain, I mean, we can use some simple heuristics. But essentially, you find these foods around the perimeter of the supermarket. So most supermarkets are designed in the same way, right? You have the perimeter of the supermarket, which is where all the fancy refrigeration machinery can be found. And then it's the aisles of the supermarket where you find all the shelf-stable packaged processed foods, right? Supermarkets are typically designed in the same way.

And it's the perish, the fresh food, the perishable food, that tend to be highly concentrated in with antioxidants. And in particular, the kinds of antioxidants that are particular relevance to the brain are fat soluble antioxidants. So we can talk about vitamins A, E, D, and K. These are the fat soluble vitamins that we know that we need to get from our food. Vitamin E is probably the most important fat soluble antioxidant because it protects fatty structures. And your brain is comprised primarily of fat. But not just any kind of fat. Your brain is composed primarily of fats called polyunsaturated fatty acids. And these fats among the most commonly consumed dietary fats are the most damage prone.

They're the most prone to a form of chemical degradation called oxidation. And these are the kinds of fats that your brain is comprised primarily of. We can talk about dcosa hexaenoic acid or dHA fat, which I think people are familiar with because you tend to get DHA fat in fish oil and in wild fatty fish like salmon, very easily a very easily oxidized fat. We can talk about the omega-6 fats, which today your average American over consumes because of the preponderance of grain and seed oils, like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil.

I actually recommend avoiding these oils. You're still going to end up getting all of the requisite omega-6 fats that you need, but these oils are heavily chemically processed. and usually damaged already by the time you end up consuming them. And wherever you find these fats in nature, you find vitamin E. So that's how we know that nature, wherever you'll find polyunsaturated fats in nature,

nature teams those fats up with vitamin E because we know that it's such a powerful protector molecule. Actually, vitamin E represents eight different iso forms of vitamin E, but generally when we say vitamin E, we're talking about all of them at the same time. But there have been studies that have shown that people who consume more vitamin E rich, foods have lower risk of cognitive decline. And there was even a really interesting study that

was published a couple of years ago, a very hope-inspiring study because we rarely see this from vitamins, that high-dose vitamin E was able to help maintain functional capacity for patients that already had Alzheimer's disease, which is amazing. I mean, drugs are minimally effective, right? But the humble vitamin E, right, that it could potentially play such a powerful role in terms of brain in a disease that begins in the brain decades before the first symptom. I mean, that was quite remarkable. So generally, you want to look for foods that are rich in vitamin E. And some of those foods are avocados, an amazing source of vitamin E.

Nuts and in particular, almonds, great source of vitamin E. Grass-fed beef. Grass-fed and finished beef has three times the vitamin E of grain-fed beef. And today, most people consume grain-fed beef. But grass-fed beef, I think, is a cognitive superfood. eggs, whole eggs. I mean, we've been scared about eating yokes and eggs for decades at this point.

But an egg yolk, I consider to be a cognitive multivitamin. It contains a little bit of everything required to grow a healthy brain. Wow. Okay. So shop at the perimeter of the grocery store. Obviously, it's really helpful just to, we're going to scratch the surface today. But I'm not a book salesman, but it is really helpful just to read your books because this will actually map it out.

Here's the ingredients. here are actually hundreds of recipes of things you could make, which there's a benefit, too, to, I think, making your own food, shopping for making. It takes time. But I want to get really practical as we go now, Max. So one of the fads that is out there right now is time restricted eating or IF or intermittent fasting. I've experimented with this from time to time. What are your feelings on this as it relates to overall health and wellness as well as your brain?

So yeah, with regard to the brain, a lot of the research on intermittent fasting traces back to Mark Mattson over at the NIH who did a lot of this early research showing us that in animals that withholding food for a certain period of time from an animal causes an upregulation of a compound in the brain called BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is considered to be sort of a miracle grow protein for the brain. It helps grow new brain cells. So going back to that concept of neurogenesis, BDNF is really a key leverage point for this process. And it also helps to ensure the survival of your existing brain cells.

So it's also like a guardian angel to your existing. So you're all in on this. Well, so there are some caveats, right? So as I mentioned, these studies, these early studies were animal studies. Okay. But in humans, the studies have been relatively small and they've been, they tend to utilize men of a certain age. So it's hard to extrapolate from studies that are usually done with young, healthy male college

students to other genders, et cetera. But the signal does seem to suggest that time restricted eating in humans is associated with all kinds of cardiometabolic benefits. which does help the brain. So yes, I am a fan. I think that you don't necessarily have to go extreme with it. But yeah, an eight-hour feeding window does seem to be... So maybe just skipping breakfast?

Yeah, what I tend to do is I don't eat my first meal until 1130 to noon every day. And I try to curtail the last thing that I eat at about 8 p.m. So that's an eight-hour feeding window, which is, by the way, in contrast to the 60s. 16 hours a day that most people are eating. So I think that this is a totally, totally beneficial thing to do. And the science is just, you know, again, just to be clear, it's beginning, it's just starting to show us that this has a number of important cardio metabolic and even neurometabolic benefits.

Okay. One thing I also read about is you stop drinking coffee and you talk about caffeine. I think the quote I read is taking a loan out on energy from later in the day. This is a huge problem for me. I'm not a coffee guy, but I drink. Not the ones with sugar, but I know the ones with fake sugar, maybe or even worse. The energies, the different powders, I've tried them all. I'm kind of embarrassed to even admit that to you being who you are.

But it's the truth, and I'm sure there are plenty of others who do too. I want to get off of this stuff. But I also feel like I'm probably addicted since I've been using caffeine for a very long time. So you've figured this out, it seems like. Help me out here. I don't care about coffee, but I do seem to like caffeine. What are some ways to be better in this regard? Well, I feel like many people listening to this probably are in a similar situation.

And just to be clear, I really enjoy coffee and I cut it out intermittently because here's the deal. Caffeine, first thing, most people drink coffee first thing in the morning, which is really not the smart way to do it because first thing in the morning, you have your body's own natural caffeine source, cortisol, peaking. It's the highest that it's going to be all day. And cortisol is your body's, your body's waking hormone. It's also a stress hormone. And one of the things that cortisol does is in the body, it helps to liberate stored fuels for use as energy. And so most people are at their most, should be at their most energetic first thing in the morning. And that's when we go down to the kitchen and we slam the first, you know, the first cup of coffee that we're going to consume throughout the day, which can cause an increase in the hormone cortisol as well.

And so what we're doing is we're caught where we're basically encouraging a dysregulation of this really important hormone that serves as nature's own caffeine. It's our own natural source of caffeine, right? So the best way to consume caffeine if you're going to do it is to not do it for at least 45 minutes after waking up because that's when that natural diurnal cortisol spike starts to come down. And that's when I think it's probably most optimal to consume coffee. You also don't want to drink coffee too late in the day. Some people are slow metabolizers of caffeine, and we know that caffeine can seriously impair sleep quality, which is not something that we want to do. So I try not to drink any coffee after about noon. But the reason why I think it's important to cut it out occasionally and to resensitize your brain to caffeine is because we very easily build up a tolerance to caffeine.

So it takes only about three days to start to build up a tolerance to caffeine. It's just a very powerful drug. It's a psychoactive drug, and we seldom treat it as such, right? We treat it almost as if it's like a vitamin that we need every single day, but it's a psychoactive drug. And you really notice that how powerful it is. Once you remove it from your diet and you bring it back and you start to feel the euphoria that you first had from that initial cup of coffee, right? That euphoria that you got, which is what made you a fan of coffee to begin with.

But today we don't really experience euphoria from coffee. What we're doing is we're treating our withdrawal from caffeine. That's what we do every single day. We're treating our withdrawal. And the problem with that is that whereas, the first time we had coffee, it led to a degree of performance that was probably above baseline. Today, what we need to do today when we're dependent on coffee is we need to drink coffee to bring ourselves back up to baseline level performance, right? Because we're in that withdrawal phase.

And the caffeine merely brings us back to like to our baseline level of performance. So you're not actually improving your performance if you're dependent on caffeine and you drink it every day. You're just getting back to baseline, which I think. is a problem. And the other thing that caffeine does, I think, wrongly or that most people are not really that I'm conscious of is that it doesn't create energy from thin air. It borrows it from later. So one of the reasons why I cut it out personally is that I started to feel like I felt this, you know, I felt energized in the morning when I would drink coffee when I'd have that morning cup of Joe, that I would feel like a train hit me by two in the afternoon. So I was borrowing

energy from later. And that's sort of a layman's way of describing what happens. There's a, there's a physiologic mechanism here that caffeine basically blocks adenosine from, it blocks adenosine from reaching the receptor. And adenosine has the, has the ability, or has the, what it does is it helps us, it creates sleep pressure. So by the time we feel tired at the end of the day, it's because adenosine has essentially built up and it's created this phenomena called that sleep scientists refer to as sleep pressure. But if you block the adenosine receptors with caffeine, then that adenosine just builds up and builds up and builds up. And by the time the caffeine begins to wear off, you feel like you're now more tired than you would have been otherwise.

Wow. Are you currently on or off caffeine right now? So I actually found a brand of caffeine, a brand of coffee that's half-calf. So I'm doing a little bit of that in the mornings. So I'm so when I take when I cut caffeine out, I bring it back at the minimal effective dose. So I bring it back in really, really small doses. And I find that that yeah, it works right. Is there something else? Is there is there something better? Let's say like I don't want that caffeine anymore.

Or is it or what do you what would you suggest if someone's like, yeah, I just I just want to cut that out. Yeah. Well, decaf coffee. Decaf coffee. The caveat that most decaf is chemically processed and it's also not as good. It doesn't taste as good. And it lacks some of the phytochemicals that we find in coffee that are removed via the chemical decaffeination process. So the best decaf to buy if you're going to buy decaf is Swiss water process decaffeinated coffee.

It's just a minority of brands that use the Swiss water process to decaffinate their coffee. but you can easily find it at some of these more natural grocers. And it's a night and day difference. Like if you think that decaf coffee doesn't taste good, you've got to try Swiss water process decaffinated coffee. It's really great. And it still has a lot of the acids and other compounds in coffee that provide a health benefit. So, I mean, observationally, coffee, from an observational research standpoint, coffee seems to be

really beneficial from the standpoint of health. fact, there was a study that just came out that got me really excited showing us that coffee and caffeine specifically act like some of these newer cholesterol lowering drugs, PCSK9 inhibitors, that basically work not by blocking your liver's production of cholesterol, but by improving the way that your liver processes cholesterol, which is a really valuable, I think, especially for people who are prone to hypercholestraleemia. So this is one of the reasons why I think coffee consumption has been related to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. So it has an effect of helping the liver become more efficient as a cholesterol processing unit,

which is really exciting stuff. Okay. I want to talk about meal prep. So this is something that happens in my house every weekend where my wife takes the lead on this with preparing what we're going to eat, usually for our lunches for the week. it's super helpful, but I will say it takes a ton of time, both going and sourcing the food, the grocery store, and then making it and kind of, you know, we box it up or whatever and put it in the refrigerator.

What advice you give to someone who says, Max, dude, I just don't have the time for that, man. Like, I have a busy job. I got a lot of people reporting to me. I got all this stuff to do. I don't have time for all this stuff. What would you say to somebody like that when it comes to, to, because I'm a big believe. on the environment. If the Girl Scout cookies are in the house, which we're in that season right now, I'm going to eat them. Like, I'm going to eat them. The only way I won't is if they're just not there.

Same way with meal prep. If it's prepped, I will eat it. And if it's healthy, awesome. And it always is, which is great. But if it's not, then I'm like, oh, God, I got to go find something and then you usually buy something that's not good. What's your advice on how to set up your environment to help you make healthy choices when it comes to the meals that you're eating, specifically when it comes to meal prep. Oh man, it's such a great question. You know, I think like what you, that observation that you've had that if you're, that if it's in the house, you're going to eat it and you're and not just are you going to taste

it, but you're going to end up plowing through the whole box. Oh, yes. That's a, that's a phenomenon. I mean, it's that saying once you pop, you can't stop. That's a truism with scientific backing now at this point. We know this for a fact. Yeah. There was an NIH study that came out in 2000.

that found that when you gave average adults, right, access, it's called ad libidum. So it's like basically like, eat all you want of this ultra processed food environment. They found that adults ended up eating 500 calories over their daily calorie budget, right? So this is the kinds of ultra processed food that Americans now consume 60% of their calories from, right? This is the foundation of the obesity epidemic, right? These ultra processed shelf stable foods. There's no question about it.

The researchers also found in that same study, it was a crossover study, that when they cleaned up the food environment and they offered the subjects, subjects primarily whole foods, I'm not talking about the supermarket, I'm talking about minimally processed foods. And they were like, okay, eat these two satiety. They came in at an effortless calorie deficit of about 300 calories. So that's an 800 calorie swing. What foods, what foods do that versus the chips and terrible things that we eat? Whole foods. These are like single ingredient foods. These are foods that don't have extensive

ingredient. Chicken, broccoli, avocado, vegetables, you know, steamed or sauteed vegetables, uh, pot roast, fish, um, you know, even whole grains, you know, were included in that study. Okay. So, um, so it's just, it's just the foods that, that are not made, essentially not made in a lab, not made in a factory. Yeah. The foods that you, that you, that you, that are single ingredient foods, whole foods don't have extensive ingredient lists. They are the ingredients. So the foods that you would buy around the perimeter of a supermarket and then prepare for yourself. Yeah. It's like there's there's those little bars that have every single ingredient. I forget the brand name, free spot, free ad, I guess, but they have like the whole ingredients on the front. There's like three

of them. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. Which ones? But they have like, okay, we have this, this and this. It's like two or three things and that's the entire bar. I mean, it seemed like, okay, that's probably pretty good then. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I mean, that, but that's the difference. With ultra-processed foods, by the time you've eaten them to a point of fullness, you've already over-consume them. Whereas whole foods, you're allowed to eat for volume, which I think is so important, especially for people who want to feel like you want to feel that, that sensation of having your stomach full, right?

Like, it's one of the most gratifying aspects of eating that there is, I think. Like, we're not, we haven't evolved to curtail our consumption of food when, you know, that food is sitting right in front of us, right? Because a hunter, hunter gatherer, one of our hunter gather ancestors, we didn't have the degree of food security that we have now, right? Our food was scarce. So today, when there's food in front of you, you want to eat it and you want to make sure that that food is working to your benefit, right?

Not working against you. And ultra-processed foods work against you. So you want to make sure that when you're shopping in the supermarket, that those foods aren't even really in your shopping cart. Now certainly some people are able to crack open. the bag of chips or open the pint of ice cream and moderate their consumption of those foods, right? Some people are certainly able to do that. But willpower is a finite resource. You want to minimize having to use your willpower because, again, it's like oil. It's not something, it's like

we don't have this unlimited amount of it, right? Willpower is something that runs out. And trust me, if there's a bag of one of my favorite indulgences like sitting around me, it's going to take real mental muscle for me to pump the brakes, especially when I've had a day where I'm stressed out, right? Or like I've had to run from meeting to meeting and I want just something that's going to comfort me. Having those foods around is like kryptonite. Yeah, I'm a guaranteed loser.

I had Benjamin Hardy on and his book is called Willpower Doesn't Work. I know it's kind of a cheeky title, but it's because it's backed in science. So to me, I did a, as we were buying Halloween candy, Max leading up to Halloween, so the month of October, I noticed a bunch of Reesey cops and kick cats and things. I would just send them in and I would always, I could stave off like eating them for the meal, but I loved having them after dinner or after lunch.

You know what I mean? Like for some reason, you eat the chicken and broccoli and rice and then you see the Reesey cup and I'm just crushing them. So I did like no sweets November, but the reason I'm bringing up the story and why I did no sweets November is the first few days, it was hard. I addicted to sugar. Sugar is like the most addictive drug there is, I think, for me. and but like I don't know how what day maybe six or seven it's like gone there there isn't this feeling

of wanting it anymore I feel like you almost have to just overcome this addiction take it out completely when it comes to the that those types of sweets and then you have no craving for and even the thought of eating it makes me almost sick you know what I mean so can you share maybe the science behind that of how addictive things like greasy cups and sugary things are as well as all the that make them want you to keep eating more, but then once you're able to kind of cross the threshold of cutting them out, that you actually don't desire them anymore.

It's really bizarre. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not necessarily that sugar per se is addictive because it's not like you see people walking around mainlining straight sugar, right? But it's the combination of sugar and fat and salt, usually some kind of flour that makes a food, what food scientists refer to as hyper palatable.

So this is exactly, this is the dilemma right here, dilemma right here, the hyper palatibility of modern foods. It's food that pushes your brain past a bliss point, at which point moderation becomes impossible. And these are the foods like, I mean, dessert products, confectionary products, chips, greasy chips, French fries, pizza, hamburgers. These foods are hyper palatable because they combine all of these different flavor profiles and mouthfeel, mouthfeels that for a hunter-gatherer would have been it sends the signal of utter caloric density, right, which for a hundred-gatherer would have been a life-saving attribute of food. Because again, we lacked food scarcity for the vast majority of

food security for the vast majority of our evolution. So today, hyperpallitability is really a signal to our, to your brain, your primordial reptile brain that the food that you're eating is packed with calories, which indeed it is. In most cases, right? Like it's the ice cream. It's the fried chicken dishes. And so those are the foods that are really, I think, most addictive. They're the most difficult to stop. And I shared the NIH study, which found that, you know, that's an I think most people when they struggle with their weight, they hear this, the advice pushed even from our most esteemed medical institutions, right, that to lose weight, eat less, move more. So a lot of people, I think, they end up putting the cart before the horse by

moderating the quantity of food that they're eating. So they're taking the diet that they're typically consuming, which again is 60% by calories, these ultra-processed foods, and they tell themselves, oh, I'm just going to eat less of these foods, right? I'm just going to try harder to moderate my consumption of these foods. And maybe that works. for a day or two or three, maybe it works for a week or two weeks, but ultimately everybody ends up failing. It's the bigger, it's the, it was that show, the biggest loser phenomenon, right? By just focusing on calories, on the quantity of your food, you're setting yourself up for failure. Because again, willpower is a limited resource. So they end up failing, they end

of falling off the cart. They experience that sense of moral failure, which we all know too well when we can't keep up with our, when we fail at our goal, whatever, whatever that goal happens to be. And then they create this narrative that, oh, maybe they didn't deserve to lose the weight or that having the body that they want or the metabolic health that they want or the brain health that they want isn't for them, right? But that's because they put that they've adhered, they followed the wrong advice. The advice was always wrong. They put the card before the horse. By focusing instead on food quality, the quantity aspect works itself out because food quality is what, again, is going to help reorient your hunger signals.

It's going to fill you up. It's going to allow you to volume eat. And it's going to, and it doesn't push your brain to that bliss point where you feel insane for not being able to curtail your consumption of the ice cream or the or the bag of chips. And, you know, I think what the defining characteristics of whole foods that people really ought to know about, there are three aspects that make a food satiating. that are lacking in ultra-processed foods. And the three factors are one protein.

So protein is the most satiating macronutrient. Can you define satiating again? Yeah, so satiating is the ability of a food to fill you up. It's to make you feel satisfied. It's to make you feel full, right? And of the macronutrients, so of carbs, protein and fat, protein is the most satiating of the macronutrients. So if you're hungry and you reach for a food like Greek yogurt,

or beef jerky or a hard-boiled egg or you know any any of these foods that's high that's that's higher in protein that has a higher protein percentage um you're gonna you're gonna end up eating less but you're gonna feel as though you've eaten more got sure and at meal time that's where you want to really focus on protein so you want to focus on the chicken the fish the beef whatever that happens to be for you if you're a vegan or vegetarian you know legumes are a great protein source, they also are packed with fiber, which is the second aspect of food that makes it satiating. So fiber, we don't have a biological need for fiber. So fiber is not an essential nutrient. However, it does mechanically stretch out the stomach because it absorbs water.

So when you stretch out the stomach, you turn off the release of a hormone called grelin, which is known as the hunger hormone. So fiber, again, helps fill you up. Combine your protein with a salad or some greens, or, or, some sauteed veggies, fibrous, non-starchy veggies, like, I don't know, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts. These are all great, great options. Eat whole fruit. Whole fruit is a great, great natural fiber source. The third aspect of a food that makes it satiating is water. Now, ultra-processed shelf-stable foods are dehydrated because water attracts mold, right? So, ultra-processed shelf-stable foods, again, the foods that make you prone to over-consuming them,

the foods that don't fill you up, the foods that are at the foundation of the obesity epidemic, they tend to be protein deficient because protein is the most expensive of the macronutrients. Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, tend to be just carbs and fat, some combination of carbs and fat and sugar, right? They tend to lack fiber, because fiber you find in whole fresh produce for the most part. And they lack water because water would impede on the shelf stability of that food. Whole minimally processed foods, you want to stick to protein, you want to stick to fiber, and you want to stick to water. Water is satiating because if you think about it, when food ceased to be available, if somehow you ended up an environment where you couldn't eat, you'd probably

still survive for a month or two or three, right? But water, you couldn't go two to three days without water. So water is crucially important. And for a hunter-gatherer, when water, when a fresh source of water cease to be available, then the second best place that you would find water would be food. So oftentimes we feel hunger, not necessarily because we lack, because we are actually hungry because we want food, but we feel hunger because we're thirsty. And a significant portion of the population, I think about one in 10 adults doesn't consume anyone on a day-to-day basis. They get all the water that they, that their bodies need from, from food. So I, it's funny, uh, sometimes like 8, 30, 9 o'clock.

My wife will see me go to the pantry and she's like, are you hungry or are you bored? Yeah. And she's like, if you're bored, drink a glass of water. You don't need to go in there. And I'm like, it's a great point. It's like, I'm like, yeah, I'm not really, I don't know, I don't really, I'm not hungry. I mean, maybe a little bit. I'm sure I could eat something.

the chips, you know, that's the perfect time for the chips. That's why it's best not to have the chips in the house. But that's a big one that comes up. How about supplements? I want to, so let's say you're relatively healthy. You're eating, you know, you're paying, paying attention to what you're saying and you're trying to follow this. What about supplements? I mean, this was big for me growing up playing football, you know, big protein, chocolate milk, a whole deal, creatine. We did it all. What do you think now as we get a little older? What are our supplements good or bad? It's probably a gray area, I'm guessing, what would you say are helpful for people as additives to eating a good, good whole food diet?

Yeah, I mean, I'm personally a big fan of supplements. I mean, but it depends on what your goals are. So creatine, I still, you know, will cycle creatine on and off depending on where I'm at with my, with my fitness regimen. Creatine also is a really important cognitive nutrient. So it helps support brain energy metabolism. Does it, does it like puff you up or you don't care about that or is that just a myth? I mean, no, it does, it does make you retain water.

It makes you retain water intramuscularly, so in your muscle. It's not like below this, below the skin water phenomena that you get sometimes if you eat too much sodium, for example. It's not, it's not the same as that. And it does make you gain weight, but it increases work output in the gym. It's one of the most well-documented sports supplements there is with a robust safety record. So provided you don't have any medical issues, I mean, creating is is extremely safe. Protein, protein shakes.

How about that? I'm a big fan of protein shakes. Um, yeah, I mean, personally, I consume way protein isolated. I probably have like a shake a day or I consume some kind of way protein enriched. Is there a certain one you recommend that you really like? Uh, I don't have any, so I don't have any financial affiliation with this company, but I typically like on, unfavored proteins. And I, and again, I like weigh isolate because it has, it's going to have less casein, less lactose in it. So it just makes my gut feel better.

But there's a brand called muscle feast. Again, no, no financial relationship, but they make unsweetened, an unflavored way protein isolate that I like. And they get their way from grass fed cows. What about people who say like, well, I don't want to add more calories. We need to come on Max. Like I'm trying to like not, you know, what about for the person who says that? Well, protein, the great thing about protein is that the thermic, it provides a thermic effect where about a third of the calories that you ingest from protein get burned off just in the process of

digesting that protein. So you get a bit of a caloric free ride with protein. that you don't get with carbs and fat. And when you are consuming animal source protein, whether it's way protein or chicken breast or beef, you're getting a, it's the most concentrated protein that there is. And again, it's very satiating.

So it's one of the best tools that there is for diet adherence is protein. Most people, when they just try to increase the amount of protein that they're consuming, even a little bit, they'll end up seeing a degree of body recomposition, right? Because when you eat more protein, you're eating less carbs than fat.

And carbs and fat are what you end up storing. And it's very difficult to store protein. It's very difficult. The body doesn't easily convert protein to fat. But it can, I mean, it easily will store fat as fat. And for most people that are sedentary and overconsuming carbohydrates, it'll also easily convert carbohydrates to fat. I had an actor named Josh Peck on recently.

And he lost over 100 pounds. a little bit earlier in his life. And he's very proud of it, obviously. And he said, so how do you do it? And he goes, I was doing the Atkins diet before the Atkins diet was cool. What do you think about? I mean, you're not talking about that. But I mean, some of what you're saying relates to that.

What do you think about this? Get rid of bread. Get rid of all of that. Try to focus more heavily on meats and vegetables. I think some of the problem with Atkins is just because they get rid of bread. They feel like they eat everything else. and that's not that's not perfect so so i know i feel like from what i've read you're not a big bread guy there's a lot of bad that goes with that what's your overall thought process on just like

on on foods to eat versus some of these fad diets no i'm i would i would place myself in the lower carb camp but i would differentiate myself from some of these like low carb keto zealots in the sense that i'm also not a big like added fat kind of advocate either you know i think i think I think when we're eating primarily whole foods, the carbohydrates from whole fresh fruit, you know, there's, I'm completely game with whole fresh fruit. Like, you know, so I'm not out here demonizing like some do, apples and bananas and things like that. I mean, I think that there's a time in place for fruit and I think it is, of course, possible to overconsume fruit. When it comes to bread, I see bread as being an ultra-processed food.

I think it's one of humanity's oldest processed foods, but it's a process food. processed food nonetheless. And then you take a food product like whole wheat bread, which masquerades is a health food. But it's really not. I mean, most breads in the supermarket are ultra-processed. They have added sugar in it, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup. A lot of them have added oils, whether it's corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil. So bread to me is not a health food. And ultimately, you've got to pick the plan that's going to be the most sustainable for you. For me, it's very easy to not eat bread. And when I do choose to have a food, and have something that's right bread bread is so good man when they bring in at dinner i mean it's yeah

it's you know what it is for me it's it's just it's very easy to skim those calories off the top and it's very difficult it's very hard for me to moderate my consumption of bread if they bring the bread basket you're killing it trigger that's a trigger food for me yeah like i know that like i'm if i have you'd like it but you're able to no just get it out of sight okay okay exactly exactly so it's important for people to know their trigger foods yeah but i i know that But for me, if the bread basket comes and it's really good bread, which oftentimes it is, right? Yep. And if I'm not going to be able to have one piece, especially if they put some nice soft butter

in front of me. I'm having one piece. No, I'm having three pieces, right? So it's a lot easier for me to just not have any. And I don't feel like I'm depriving myself. Like that's not something that I feel like I'm able to not eat the bread, but I'm then able to, I feel like, feel like I'm able to consume whatever protein it is that I'm able to I've ordered to satiety, to a point of fullness.

So I'm getting full at every meal. But by cutting out those kinds of foods for me, it provides a really effective way to control for those really calorie dense foods that I tend to be prone to overconsuming. What about alcohol? What's your take on drinking? Sometimes, no times.

It's okay. What do you think about alcohol? If you have a healthy relationship with alcohol, think I think it's fine. But ethanol, which is the component of alcohol that gives us a buzz, is a neurotoxin. It's also a carcinogen. And so I personally, I drink maybe like two to three times a month. Like that's it for me.

I never, you know, like when I was younger, I would feel certain triggers to drink. Like if I were in a loud bar that I didn't like being in, I would have to numb myself by drinking. If I was in a, if I was in a, had a work dinner that was like really not. fun. I would numb the, you know, I would, I would numb that, that, that sensation by having a drink along with it. Now, I try to be in, I try not to put myself in those situations, you know, or I try to just, I try to forego it and build a degree of mental fortitude where I feel like I don't need those, those drinks. But when I do drink now, it's to punctuate an occasion. It's where I, I, you know, I'm having a really good time. I feel like the alcohol or whatever

it would be additive and I have it. I also enjoy a good glass of wine now and then. I'm a fan of wine and the occasional spirit. But I don't kid myself in the sense that alcohol, from an observational standpoint, seems to be moderate consumption, seems to be beneficial to health, right? But it's not because alcohol is good for health. It's because people who consume alcohol moderately, usually that's a sign that that person is able to moderate things.

It's the ability the capacity to be moderate. Yeah. Might actually be something that's good for good for health, generally speaking. Are there certain drinks that are better than others? I mean, I assume. Yeah, I would say, I would say it's the clear sugar-free spirits, the gluten-free sugar-free spirits like tequila. Tequila is usually going to be my go-to spirit if I'm drinking. And then from a wine standpoint, it's really hard to say.

I mean, even organic wines have been found to be contaminated with glyphosate. It's, you know, to me, I will generally look for natural wines, biodynamic wines, lower sugar options. Those are usually my go-to. And then the best thing, the best way to drink responsibly is to make sure that you're hydrating while you're drinking and to sober up before you go to sleep. Because alcohol definitely compromises sleep quality. It decreases sleep latency. So everybody that has ever enjoyed a nightcap knows it's alcohol can help you get to sleep faster. but it does compromise sleep quality.

And generally what it will do, it'll reduce the amount of time that you spend in REM sleep, which is really important for mental health. So that's no bueno from the standpoint of mental health. You talk a lot about sleep for your brain. And I was going to pull from one of the recent tweets, I mean, getting eight to nine hours of sleep instead of four to six. So this is one that's interesting for me because my dad's the same way, where we can go to bed. I go go about like a 10.30-ish and wake up at 4.15 to 4.30 and be feel pretty good and almost do it

without an alarm clock. My dad's the exact same way. I'm this way now. It's weird. My younger brothers this way. My older brother's this way. So is is is that bad though? Because it's not enough apparently from what I'm reading. But it's just what happens naturally without an alarm now. So what do you think of from a sleep perspective? Yeah. It completely varies from person to person. So I think the American Psychological Association recommends seven to nine hours, so somewhere in that in that ballpark. Everybody's going to be different, but generally, I mean, sleep is important. So I mean, if you're waking up and you're feeling refreshed, I would also, because you're an outlier, right, I would I would say that that's a good potential use case for one of these sleep tracking devices to see where your slow wave sleep is landing, where your REM sleep. is landing.

But generally, most people are going to feel best after seven to nine hours. I mean, I personally, you know, I love a good eight, nine hours of sleep. I'm almost 40 years old and I'm still able to get a good nine hours of sleep. And I, yeah, I mean, it makes me feel great. But I'm also happy waking up early when I have to, of course, when like real life, when like real life calls. But generally we know that earlier on in the night, the processes that support physical health are prioritized. So that's when you get that pulse of testosterone, growth hormone.

It's also when your brain begins to clean itself of proteins that build up over the course of the day that are associated with conditions like Alzheimer's disease. And we know that at night, they get those proteins get flushed away thanks to the activity of a system called the glymphatic system. So essentially cerebrospinal fluid flushes all throughout your brain, getting rid of these proteins like amyloid beta, for example. And then it's a lairisalus. on in the night where REM sleep tends to get more time in the spotlight, so to speak. And that's those are, REM sleep is when you dream. Yep.

It's why people tend to experience dreams most closely to the point at which they wake up. And it's also really important for fortifying mental health. So sleep duration is really important, as is sleep quality. Those are the two sort of variables that I think people want to. control for and you know sleep duration that's something that is not necessarily always under somebody's control right like if they

have to wake up really early for a meeting or if they have young kids in the house that that can impede on sleep duration but sleep quality generally is something that you have a degree of agency with regard to and making sure that your room is dark as dark as possible cool these are definitely variables that can that can I can help with the sleep quality.

You mentioned testosterone, a big thing that I know a number of people on TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. There's various ways to do this. What are your feelings on that now, especially as we're getting a little older? Yeah. You know, that's a question. That's one of the few questions that I don't really have a well thought out answer to. Okay.

I feel like, yeah, I mean, I know, I know, I have a few friends that are doing it and they think that it's a, that it's great. Yeah. I've not heard anything bad. I've heard all good. So I'm like, wow, maybe I need to check this out. I mean, I don't know. I haven't, you know. Well, I will say that I do also have friends that have, that have tested recently for low testosterone.

Yeah. And I don't think that low testosterone, well, obviously testosterone decline. to some degree in all of us as we as we get older, right? Sure. Sure. There's this concept of antropause. But I think a lot of people have low testosterone, not necessarily because of any physiologic effect due to aging, but instead it's due to environmental factors, right?

Like we're not getting appropriate nutrition. We're not, you know, getting the appropriate fats in our diet to support hormone synthesis. We are overexposed to environmental toxicants and namely endocrine disrupting compounds that act like estrogen in our body, right? So, plasticizing compounds. So this is one of the reasons why in my books I talk about reducing your exposure to plastic compounds by not storing your food in plastic, not heating your food in plastic. Because these compounds leach into your food, compounds like bisphenol A or thallates, which fast food, for example, has very high amounts of. These compounds act like estrogen in the body. So that's why one of the reasons why I think

a lot of people, a lot of men will see lower, lower than normal. levels of testosterone or overconsumption of water or beverages out of plastic bottles, right? This can all have an effect. People on low fat diets tend to have reduced testosterone. People who eat a lot of sugar have reduced testosterone. There was a study that found that just one sugary beverage led to a 25% reduction in testosterone that persisted for two hours. Yeah.

So it's not necessarily that, I mean, TRT is a whole different thing. thing, but like I think that a lot of men these days are experiencing reduced testosterone, this sort of like chemical emasculation due to diets that are aberrant, that are that have diverged from our biologically appropriate diet, right? Yeah. We got to eat foods that are rich in micronutrients like zinc, you know, like making sure that we're eating oysters that we're eating red meat, you know, red meat and and foods like, um, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, Brazil nuts, for example, which are a rich source of selenium, which can support testosterone production.

So, yeah, so I'm a big fan of trying to get it through your food. Do you have time for one more? Absolutely, yeah. So I remember vividly when I was told, eat six to seven small meals a day to get your metabolism going and all this, right? The reason I bring that up is because I'm wondering, what is being said right now that five years from now, seven years from now, like, remember when we said that thing? Oh, God, that was something. Because like, it made sense to me. Okay, yeah, I'll eat a bunch of small meals per day. And now it's like literally the opposite of that.

Intermittent fasting, don't do that, that type of thing. So is there anything that you used to really believe that was all like, yes, that's the thing that now you've completely changed your mind on anything like that? I think I used to believe what you did about eating many small meals throughout the day. And research, I think, now shows, especially from a body composition standpoint, that as long as you're getting the requisite dose of protein that you need throughout the day, over a 24-hour period, it doesn't matter how you dose that protein necessarily. And so for most people, what you want to aim for is 0.7 grams per pound of lean body weight or your goal weight. So if you're relatively lean, 0.7 grams of protein multiplied by your body weight, or if you're carrying significant fat on you, whatever your goal weight is, multiply 0.7 by your goal weight. And that's the amount of protein that you generally want to get every day, assuming that you're on some kind of exercise regimen, right? I think that we're going to start to see more and more research showing us that eating late at night is to the detriment of our health, whether it's from the standpoint of blood sugar regulars. or blood pressure regulation. These are all really important factors when it comes to good brain health, good cardiovascular health.

And I think that what we're seeing now, thanks to, we started talking about these, but these trials with time-restricted eating in humans that even when you control for calories and you take people that are not on a necessarily a weight loss diet and you compress their feeding window and you make them eat earlier dinners, you see that they have better blood-churchable. sugar responses that they have a, they have a healthier blood pressure. And these are all, these are all really important factors. I think eating late at night, it's, it doesn't make sense from a circadian standpoint where diurnal creatures were meant to eat during the day or somewhat soon after the sun recedes.

And what you see today is people eating 16 hours a day. They're eating every single moment that they're awake from the moment they arise to the moment they go to sleep. They're digesting in metabolism metabolism metabolizing some kind of of food. And so what I recommend for people is to stop eating two to three hours before you go to sleep. And you can obviously continue to drink no you know calorie free beverages or whatever after that. But yeah, earlier, earlier dinners would be something that I think we're going to see more more focus on in the coming years. Do you feel a weird sense of pressure to look really?

good all the time because you're in this health and wellness space of what you eat. Do you do is this something like it's actively in your mind like I got to look the part man. I got to look really good. That's a good. I've never been asked that before. I don't I don't feel a sense of pressure but the great thing is is that I'm not like obsessed. I'm not like a I'm not like a bodybuilder and I'm not in the gym six hours a day like some other more prominent people in the health and wellness world. I eat the way that I prescribe. and I work out three to four times a week because I enjoy it. And mostly I work out for my mental health.

Me too. That's why I'm in there. Like 100%. I feel like I feel terrible if I don't work out. It's more mental than physical, I think. Yeah. And I'm not, my goal has never been to be shredded. Like I'm not.

My body fat percentage oscillates between, you know, maybe 13 and 15%. But I feel good. It's a body composition that I'm happy with. I feel limber. I feel mobile. I feel like I'm able to indulge, you know, now and then on on on you know when I want to um and I'm not I'm not overly obsessed I think that having a having a maintaining a healthy relationship with food is one of the most important things

that there is right like food is not just and this is something that I focus on in my new book genius kitchen food isn't just a way to we don't just use food to sustain ourselves right and I mean unless you're a bodybuilder you're also not using food as as as purely a tool towards a towards an end goal right food is how we communicate with one another it's how we express love it's how we bond we do deals over meals right we express love we have date night over meals so food is so crucially important and we can't forget that and so you know I think you have to you have to eat in a way that is going to that is that is going to help you achieve all of those

goals right yeah and because that's the only way that it's going to be sustainable right if you're on if you have a diet that doesn't allow you to go on date night with your with your beloved then a you're missing out on on a on a really important aspect of of what it means to be alive and it's just not going to be sustainable for you in the long run so yeah yeah I'm with you 100 percent so action steps for somebody who let's say they're a complete rookie and their the podcast is ending they're getting ready to go there maybe they'll talk with their partner about how to like let's get this thing going you need to listen to this one too because we got to

get better here. What are the practical steps to take right now? Okay, we can get this started right now. I know we don't have all day, so I'm just curious. I want people to be able to take action on this. Yeah, focus on high quality animals, animal source products, whether it's fish, poultry, beef, I've been to love beef, eggs. Eggs are amazing, as I mentioned, a cognitive multivitamin. Focus on animal source products. I, you know, tend to, tend to focus on animal source products. that are on the leaner side, not necessarily lean, but leaner, because a cow is a man-made creation and it's way fattier than any wild game, you know, anybody would ever consume. And wild game is what we've evolved with, essentially. So, you know, our food environment is different. It's about hacking the

food environment to be more akin to what it was like for the vast majority of our evolution. So animal source products, I think are super important and whole plants. Fibrous, non-starchy vegetables, low sugar fruits, combining those two, and also making extra virgin olive oil, your primary fat, we didn't even touch that, but extra virgin olive oil is medicine when it comes to the brain and body. It's as anti-inflammatory as low dose ibuprofen, but without any negative side effects. So plants, animals, extra virgin olive oil, make sure that you're staying hydrated. Enjoy a glass of wine now and then if you want. And I really think that that is the ultimate prescription for good health.

In the most recent book, I forget what the ingredients were. I should have written in that Genius Kitchen. So Genius Kitchen, the reason why it's so good is because it makes this what we talked about so much easier because you could literally just copy it. You could print it out. You could say, okay, this is what we're going to make. There was a little extra virgin olive oil drink. You mix it with like three or four other things, right?

Or I forget the ingredients I was reading through. I'm like, oh, I'm going to make this now. That's a thing, right? Well, no, we have. So we have some extra virgin olive oil, really interesting extra virgin olive oil recipes. If you guys have never tried extra virgin olive oil ice cream or an extra virgin olive oil cake, so those recipes are all in Genius Kitchen. But the drink that you're talking about, we call it the Vinny Gambini.

Okay. After my cousin Vinny, which was a movie that I loved growing up. But it's an apple cider vinegar based. That's it. Okay. So what's all in that one again? Yeah. So that's a little bit of, you get a little bit of apple cider vinegar.

Okay. Some sparkling water and stevia and and a little bit of ginger this sparkling water you can also use regular plain water But what it does is it helps with digestion And it also helps with blood sugar so people that a lot of people have have problems with their blood sugar right Vinegar is has been well documented to help Improve blood sugar regulation so if you consume a little bit of vinegar with a show with a meal that has like that has a higher concentration of starch in it so like if you're having a having like if you're doing pasta night or pizza night, have the viny gambini with it. Studies show that a little bit of extra virgin, of apple cider vinegar or any kind of vinegar,

really, can help reduce the post-meal blood sugar spike and reduce the amount of insulin secreted by your pancreas. So it is a functional beverage, but it's also a delicious one because if people think about kombucha, which is now like a $600 million a year business around the world, the bite in kombucha and some of these now hard kombuchas is. oh, to vinegar. So you can make your own really tasty vinegar beverage, just with a few simple ingredients, and that's what that is. Love it, man. The most recent book's called Genius Kitchen. It's amazing pictures. It's super helpful. You can put it into play immediately. And then additionally,

I would dig into all of Max's work, Genius Foods, which is the big time book that puts you on the map, which is super helpful. It's been a part of my life, and it's been in my kitchen because of my wife Miranda for for a while now so I'm so grateful that you were here today max and I think as I mentioned before this is the most important thing if we don't take care of our body if we don't do everything within our power to try to to take care of ourselves the rest of the stuff doesn't matter so I really appreciate you being here man I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress man of course dude thank you Ryan and you've got to keep the most important thing the most important thing and taking care of your health, eating well, nourishing your body, and those in your orbit, your loved ones, the most important things.

No doubt, man. Love it. As you could probably tell, I am immensely curious and enjoy Max and his work. As he mentioned, it's so important for us to keep the main thing, the main thing, and nothing else matters if we're sick. A healthy person has 100 wishes. a sick person has won. And so I think it is our responsibility as leaders to try to do everything within our power to give ourselves the best chance to be healthy. And what we choose to eat and how we choose to exercise and move are within our control

for the most part. And in that case, we should take ownership of that. A few takeaways from my notes why drinking caffeine is like taking a loan. out on energy from later in the day. I am not good at this currently and need to work on it. And I like how he said he cycles on and off to help his body reset. I think that seems like a reasonable thing that we all can do. And then intermittent fasting, instead of eating for 16 hours a day,

let's create an eight-hour window roughly from noon to eight at night. and there's a ton of benefits, as Max mentioned. I've done this before in the past. I think this is very doable. It's really, like most things, about creating the habit and starting, and as you go, I think it gets a bit easier. And then as we ended, what should we eat? Whole foods, high-quality animals, lean meat, eggs, fish, beef, extra virgin olive oil,

don't eat late at night. Stay on the outer ring of the... the supermarket, don't even go in the middle, you don't need to. The outer ring is where we can really supply ourselves to help with our brain, to help with our bodies. Once again, I think this is one of the most important episodes I've done simply because if we don't get this right, nothing else matters. We can't be there for the ones that we love and the ones that we are serving. I want to say thank you for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, should listen to the Learning Leaders Show. This episode with Max Lugavir will help you in so many ways.

And because you continue to do that and because you continue to write reviews on Apple podcast and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to this soon. Can't wait.