The Tim Ferriss Show - #232: The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour: Controlling Stress, Nutrition Upgrades, and Improved Health

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

Welcome to the second installment of The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour. After more than 200 conversations with the world's top performers, you start to spot certain patterns. These are the shared habits, hacks, philosophies, and tools that are the common threads of success, happiness, health, and wealth. These commonalities were the premise of my most recent book, The New York Times #1 bestseller Tools of Titans -- a compilation of my favorite lessons, routines, and tips of many of my guests. In this particular episode, I've gathered some of the best advice from past guests about fitness, nutrition, and wellness. This includes conversations with: General Stanley McChrystal about thriving on one meal per day. Tony Robbins about morning discipline and routines. Wim Hof about consciously controlling his autonomic immune system. Dominic D'Agostino about nutritional strategies for peak performers. Without further ado, let's get started. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy. This podcast is also brought to you by Headspace, the world's most popular meditation app (with more than four million users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program -- 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello, boys and girls, Tim Ferriss here. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This is a Tim Ferriss Radio Hour, which is a special edition. I will come back to that in a second. As always, it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the habits, routines, breakfasts, or lack thereof, favorite books, etc. that you can test and apply in your own life they come from many different worlds entrepreneurship athletics entertainment special operations and so on and the goal is tactical practical it's very specific advice and suggested purchases or otherwise that you can immediately apply. Now, after more than 200 of these conversations, you can start

to spot certain patterns. These are the shared habits, hacks, philosophies, tools, and so on that are the common threads. This is very interesting to me and a very common question from you all, for instance. And this ranges from meditation to fitness to many different domains. You start to spot the common threads of excellence, even across many different disciplines. So these commonalities were the premise of my most recent book and number one New York Times bestseller, Tools of Titans. So thank you guys so much for making that possible, which is a compilation of many of my favorite lessons, routines, tips, and so on from 100 plus different folks. These episodes in the Tim

Ferris Radio Hour are a concentrated dose of the patterns organized around themes that you guys have requested. So in this particular episode, I've gathered some of the best advice from past guests about fitness, nutrition, and for lack of a better term, wellness. Although that term bugs me, but it's a good catch-all. In this episode, I talked to, for instance, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal to hear how he explains how he not only survived, but thrived on one meal per day for years. And I do find that there are certain days your body just says, eat and eat right now. And I used to keep a bin of those hard pretzels in my office in Afghanistan, and I'd grab a handful of those. I also talked to world-famous performance ghost Tony Robbins, one of my favorites.

Of course, I got started reading a lot of his stuff, even as far back as college. And I asked him to explain his morning discipline and routines. Because your brain's going, you're going to freeze to death. It sounds horrific. It really isn't. You'll find out it's not that painful. Going in my cold plunge at 57 degrees feels more jolting than this does even

it's cold even though it's colder then we dig into the habits of dutch world record holder adventurer daredevil and all-around crazy guy wim hof and discuss his ability to control or at least affect uh this is consciously affect his supposed autonomous immune system, which is fascinating. You are the Iceman. You do exceptional features, but nobody is able to do that without that proper training of so many years. And I told him, no, I can train them within 10 days. And we end the episode by getting down and dirty into the science of ketosis with Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, also known as Dom, as we discuss nutritional strategies for peak performers. And Dom, just in case you don't know, he can do a week-long fast and then deadlift 500 pounds for something like 10 repetitions

in front of his class that he teaches. So he's not only Bruce Banner, but the Incredible Hulk. So without further ado, let's get started. I hope you enjoy this episode of the Tim Ferriss Radio Hour. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates described Stanley McChrystal as, quote, perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I have ever met, end quote. That is high praise, certainly, and for good reason. McChrystal served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, shorthand is JSOC, you may have heard of that, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al- I want to say, about a two-hour conversation. One of the things that stood out was how Stan rewards himself with a large dinner at night because he doesn't handle smaller meals throughout the day very well. While this might seem odd, it's actually become a more and more popular approach to diet with the rise of intermittent fasting. And there are many different varieties of intermittent fasting. There's 5-2, where you eat normally for five days of the week. And then for two days,

you might eat subcalorically or even go down to say 500 calories or fast completely. So that would be intermittent fasting on a weekly schedule, which I've tested. Then you have, for instance, say 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating or the opposite. You could do 18 and six. There are many different ways to approach this. A lot of the male peak performers over the age of 40 that I've interviewed skip breakfast, a very high percentage. This includes Wim Hof, for instance, who's coming up later, and many, many others. There are exceptions, though, who do things slightly differently. Art Devaney, who's worth checking out, he's older than 80 years of age and shredded, still an athlete, an economist. And if you haven't heard his episode, you also should hear that one. But he does a reasonably sized breakfast,

trains a few hours later, and then fasts until dinner. So he does breakfast, no lunch, and then dinner. I have at least recently found this to be more effective for me personally, and particularly on training days. If I can time it such that I train earlier in the day, I find it particularly effective. When I skip breakfast, I would say 20% of the time or so, I find myself fatigued in the afternoon because I postpone lunch too long. So if I'm going to skip breakfast, it's important, A, that I wake up on the earlier side and B, that I have lunch, say, four to five hours after waking. Otherwise, I tend to have a slump in energy in the afternoon and then to self-medicate with caffeine, exogenous ketones, and all sorts

of other things. So at the moment, I find that I function best if I'm on, say, a weight training and athletic schedule, meaning I have multiple sessions of movement throughout the week, either breakfast and dinner, skipping lunch, or three meals a day. And I will do my intermittent fasting in a slightly different way. And I do think the term intermittent fasting is used so often to have almost become meaningless, but I like to do a contiguous three-day fast each month, generally Thursday dinner to Sunday dinner. And that should be medically supervised. And this is largely at the recommendation or based on my conversations with

Dom D'Agostino, which comes up later. Now, before I get too ahead of myself, let's listen to McChrystal's specific approach. I have a slew of questions, but the one that I have been asked to ask you, Stan, more than perhaps any other is why one meal a day? Do you actually eat one meal a day? I do. Um, and people ask me why is it some Zen connection with something? And no, what happened was when, uh, I was a Lieutenant in special forces many, many years ago, I thought it was getting fat and I started running and I started running distance, which I enjoyed. But I also found that my personality was such that I'm not real good at eating three or four small discipline meals. I'm better to defer gratification and then eat one meal. And for me, that's dinner. And so what I do is I sort of push myself hard all day, try to get everything done and then and sort of reward

myself with dinner at night. What time do you usually eat dinner? Well, whenever I'm finished work, it would be like 8 or 8.30. There's a challenge when you work really long hours because suddenly you start to eat very late, and then you go directly to bed, and you feel like you're sleeping with a football in your stomach. And do you drink coffee earlier in the day? I'm just thinking with the workout and that many hours, a lot of people would fade. How do you prevent yourself from fading?

Yeah, I have a tendency. I'll drink coffee. I'll drink other beverages too, water and different things. And I do find that there are certain days your body just says, eat and eat right now. And I used to keep a bin of those hard pretzels in my office in Afghanistan, and I'd grab a handful of those. And other times I might be out doing something physical in the military like road marching, and suddenly your body communicates, eat pretty quickly or you won't keep road marching. And I'll do that. But otherwise, I like to stick to the idea of one a night.

Got it. This is a constant topic of conversation in the intermittent fasting world, and everyone has – Orrey Hoffmeckler has his thing. The Paleo guys have their thoughts, obviously. Are you – Chris, are you a one-meal-a-day kind of guy? Well, when I was working for then-General McChrystal as his aide-de-camp his last year running the Joint Special Operations Command, it was sort of by directive. There was no other choice. That was just what we call the battle rhythm of the organization.

And when the old man got up to eat, you did it then or you didn't do it at all. So, yeah, I've lived on that train. But I would be the first to tell others because, as Stan alluded to, it sort of became the driver in the organization. This is what we do. And I would tell people as his aide, he won't judge you if you eat breakfast. This is the way his metabolism works. He doesn't do this as a demonstration of personal strength. This is just what works. So don't think you're impressing him by not eating lunch or whatever. But there was

the classic story around this when I first joined the inner circle staff. we had this command sergeant major, well, called Jody, a legend in the community. He had been with Stan for about three and a half years at that point. And so I was asking him about the one meal a day thing. And he said, when he showed up for the first year, he's, you know, two feet from Stan for the entire five years they worked together. And he said, well, this is what the boss does. This is what I'll do. So he did a meal a day, and he does not have the metabolism that drives toward it. And we lived in these little crummy sort of Quonset huts next to where the headquarters was. Did you say Quonset huts?

No, just sort of wooden huts. Right. Pretty Spartan living. About 50 yards from where the headquarters was in Iraq. And Jody said about a year into the tour, that General McChrystal calls him and says, Jody, get in here. So he runs over to him. What's up, sir?

And he goes, and he said, I hadn't really looked through his hooch before. And he said, General McChrystal's pointing at this little tin of pretzels he has. And he goes, I think there's mice eating my pretzels. And Jody said, I almost whipped on my gun and shot him. And I said, you've been eating pretzels? I've been eating one meal a day for a year, and you had pretzels in your room? He goes, it was the most unprofessional I've ever been with a field officer. I just stormed out of the room.

You know, low blow trigger will do that. That was so funny. Makes cowards and men long distance running and low blow trigger. Working out. Do you work out every day? I do. What type of exercise and why? When I was younger and I got serious about working out, I was a second lieutenant.

And as I mentioned, I started getting fat. And I had a first sergeant in my parachute infantry company that liked to run. So we would do loosening up exercises and then we'd run. And so I started running. And so for the first 20 or so years, I ran. I had one period when I was a captain where I ran 15 miles a day, seven days a week, didn't vary, didn't take days off, wore lousy running shoes. It was sort of stereotypically all the mistakes you can make. As I got older and I started to have a series of shoulder surgeries and back surgeries, predictably, what I learned to do was to alternate. So I will run one day,

I'll lift weight the next day, I'll bike when I'm home and have that capable so I can round out. But for me, it's very important to do something literally every day. I'll only take a day off when I'm forced to because I've got some weird schedule thing that makes it impossible. And when you, what does your weight training, your resistance training workout look like? Yeah, I, I will start at my home if, if we're at home and I, I go down to my basic basement, I do four sets of pushups, uh, as many as I can do for four sets. And I alternate that with a series of abs exercises. So I'll do, starting with a set of sit-ups, and I'll do 100 sit-ups, and I'll flip over and I'll do three minutes of a plank. And then I'll do some yoga that I learned for about

two or three minutes. Then I'll do another set of push-ups. And then I'll go to my next abs thing, which is a crunch-like crossover. And then I'll do a two and a half minute plank. And then I'll do another set of push-ups. And then I'll go to my next abs thing, which is a crunch-like crossover. Then I'll do a two-and-a-half-minute plank. And then I'll do more yoga, slightly different. Then I'll do another set of push-ups. And then I'll do my third set, which is crossover sit-ups. And I'll then do a third plank of two minutes. I'm decreasing each time.

Then I'll do some more yoga. And then I'll do my fourth set of push-ups. And then I'll do my fourth, which is a flutter kick, 60 flutter kicks followed by static. Then I'll do my fourth plank, which is now a minute and a half. And then I'll come back. I've only do four sets of push-ups. So the last time I don't do push-ups, I then do one more set of the crunch-like and I'll flip over to my last plank, which is one minute, and then I'll do some final yoga. And that'll take me about 45 to 50 minutes. Then I'll leave my house and go to the gym, because my gym opens at 5.30. It's three blocks

from my house. I assume we mean a.m. Yeah. So I can do all this from 4.30. If I get up at 4, I can do all that from 4.30 to about 5.20, 5.25, go down to my gym. And then when I get to the gym, I do four sets of pull-ups alternated with incline bench press, alternated with standing curls. And then in that, I'll also do these one-legged things, balance exercises as the break between them. I was taught that was good for balance and whatnot. And I'll do a few other things in that. And I can do all that in 30, 35 minutes. So by 6.15, 6.20, I can be done at the gym, head back home, get cleaned up, and then be starting work.

Ready to rock and roll. And why is exercise important to you uh when you both when you were overseas and at home maybe the reasons differ but why is it why is that routine ritual important i think it's several things um there's a certain uh self image you know i think that if I was struggling with my weight or if I was not as fit as I wanted people to perceive me and I couldn't perceive myself

that way I think my own self esteem would suffer and particularly over life now whenever I'm injured and I've been in a slight period it bothers me a lot so I think that's part of it second is the military there's an expectation if you are not a physical leader in the kind of organizations that Chris and I were in if you can't do those things physically, you don't have

to do it better than everybody else, but you have to do it credibly and they can look up to, then I think your status in the organization is going to go down. When I left Ranger Battalion Command in 1996 and I went off to spend a year at Harvard. And I remember one of my non-commissioned officers said, so what are you going to do at Harvard? I said, I'm going to study. He says, you're going to work out? And I said, yeah, presumably I will. And he goes, you know, you come back here with a PhD, but you're out of shape. We're going to have a word for you, and it ain't going to be doctor. And I just thought that was so good. It also puts a discipline in the day. I find that if the day is terrible or whatever, but I worked out, at the end of the day, I'd go,

well, I had a good workout. Almost no matter what happens, when the Rolling Stone article came out, it came out about 1.30 in the morning, I found out about it. I made a couple calls. I knew we had a big problem, and I went, put my clothes on, and I ran for an hour. Clear my head, stress myself. Didn't make it go away, but that was something that I do in those situations. Not long ago, I flew to Florida to interview peak performance coach Tony Robbins, who has long been someone I've looked up to and learned a lot from. He's very good at getting people to not only hear advice, but take action on that advice. Now, aside from asking him to palm my face with his massive hands, that was actually the very first Instagram photo I ever put up, which you can check out on Instagram. Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's, if you want to see a picture of his ginormous hands covering my entire head. But besides that, he allowed me to dive really deep into the various

routines and frameworks that he applies almost every day, if not every day. For instance, Tony believes that in a lowered emotional state, we tend to only see the problems and not solutions. Let's say you wake up feeling tired and overwhelmed or anxious for whatever reason. You might sit down to brainstorm strategies to solve your issues, but it comes to not, and you feel even worse afterward. Why? Because you started in a negative state. So you went from state to then strategy. And in this particular case, you attempted strategy, but you didn't succeed due to the tunnel vision on the problems. And then you likely told yourself self-defeating stories, right? So you want state strategy stories. For instance, I always do this. Why am I so wound up that I can't even think straight? To get the first piece of this chain

set up properly, the state, Tony encourages you to prime your state. So he calls this state priming. And prim priming my state personally is often as simple as doing five to 10 pushups, ideally with ring turnout on rings, uh, or on parallettes or getting say 20 minutes of sun exposure first thing, which is what legendary music producer Rick Rubin did to completely jumpstart and, uh, uh, resurrect his own health. Ended up losing more than 100 pounds after that. Even though I do my most intense exercise at night, typically, where I have a higher pain tolerance,

say four to six or seven before dinner, I've started doing one to two minutes at, in some cases at the very most, of calisthenics or kettlebell swings in the morning to set my state for the day. You can also use cold exposure and so on. So here's more on Tony's specific morning routine and his priming approach. What are your, some of your daily routines? For instance, what do you typically eat for breakfast? If it's up to you, I'm boring as hell. Um, because I just know it's fuel. Um, now, now I, before I met my wife, we've been together for more than

15 years. Um, I was completely anal. I was like, I hadn't had chocolate. I hadn't had ice cream in like 15 years. Right. I was just, just crazy. And then she came into my life and I forget, I thought, God, this woman's incredible. She's a phlebotomist and she does the blood. She's an acupuncturist. She's a nutritionist. We're having these green drinks and we have this lunch and that's where she ordered a hot fudge Sunday. And I thought, what in the hell are you doing? She goes, living, you bastard. So she loosened my ass up just a bit, which was great because I loved her. So I, you know, she calls it zigging and zagging.

We zig, zig, zig, and then she zags or we zag. And when I was first with her, I was like, you're zagging. We were traveling through Europe, you know, Rome and Italy and, and, uh, you know, various parts of, of France, south of France. And I was like, you know, you seem to be zagging every day. And she goes, well, I'm on vacation. And then later on we were traveling. I said, you know, the problem is we're always traveling. So you're always on vacation, but she's fit as hell in great shape. But I'm a, you know, uh, high greens, you know, protein type of guy, very low carbs. But my regimen is I start with something to strengthen and jolt my nervous system every freaking day.

I will sometimes ease into it. I'll go in the hot pools. I'm fortunate enough to have multiple homes. My home in Sun Valley, I have natural hot pools that come out of the ground just steaming hot. And I go in the hot pools, and then I go there in the river. Here, I go in a 57-degree plunge pool that I have. And I have it in every home I have. And this will be immediately upon waking up? Waking up.

It's just like, boom. Every cell in my body wakes up. And it's also just like training my nervous system to rock. I don't give a shit how you feel. This is how you perform. It's what you do. Even when I'm taking a vacation, I do it. It's just, I don't know.

Now I like it. I like that simple discipline that reminds me the level of strength and intensity that's available at any moment. Even if I'm relaxing, I can bring that up at will. It's my one. I also have a cryotherapy unit in all my homes. Have you tried cryotherapy? I haven't. You know what it is? Uh, maybe you could I can, I can put the two words together and probably guess. Oh, my God. With all that you do, you're going to love this. I'm surprised.

I'm glad I'm teaching Tim Ferriss something for the first time. I've done Ice Bath. Oh, not the first time. Ice Bath sucked. Trust me. I'm on stage on a weekend. I do my Unleashed Power Within program three days, 50 hours. You know, I've been to an event.

You've got to come as my guest to an event sometime. I would love to. But I'm going to give you an idea. People won't sit for a three-hour movie that somebody spent $300 million on, and I got Usher or Oprah going, you know, Tony, I love you, but two hours is the most I can do. And 12 hours later, Oprah's standing on a chair going, this is the most incredible experience of my life on camera. And Usher's like, dude, I'm in for all three days. But for me, one of those days alone, I wear a odometer and I'm a Fitbit and it's 26 and a half miles on

average. We start at 8.30 in the morning. I finish at 1.30 or 2. There's one one-hour break. People can vote with their feet. No one leaves. There's on average 20 minutes of just crazy-ass standing ovations, music stuff that happens at the end because people are just, it's like a rock concert. It's so much fun. But the wear and tear of doing, you know, basically marathon after marathon after marathon on the weekend back to back, it's pretty intense. And so over the years, like the inflammation in my body, the demands I've had to do everything I can to reduce it, nothing has come close to cryotherapy. Cryotherapy was developed in Poland and Eastern Germany and the Eastern Bloc countries. And what it does is it uses nitrogen, so there's no water. And unlike an ice bath, what you're doing, you get spasms and you've got to do them still,

right? If you're a boxer, you're a runner, you're an athlete, which is what I would do before, hated them. There's none of that process, but it reduces your body temperature to minus 220 Fahrenheit. And you do it three minutes and it's mind boggling. In fact, I have one here and I'll throw you in at the end. If you want, I would love to, I have a unit here. I'll do it for you. Um, but what it does is, and I do it about three times a week, usually. And when I, when I come back from an event, I do it, you know, a couple of days in a row. And what it does is it takes all the inflammation out of your body and you know what inflammation does to every aspect of the body and the breakdown.

Um, but it also, it's, it sends an emergency signals to your brain. It's like resetting your neurological system because your brain's going, you're going to freeze to death. It sounds horrific. It really isn't. You'll find out it's not that painful. Going in my cold plunge at 57 degrees feels more jolting than this does, even though it's colder because the fluid of water versus the nitrogen around you is different. Right, the connectivity. The connectivity, exactly right. And so what happens is your nervous system gets a signal. It's like everything in your body connects because it's like emergency. It's a reset of your nervous system.

You get an explosion of endorphins in your body, which is really cool. You get this natural high. You feel this physiological transformation, and you get the reduction of inflammation. What it was used for originally is for people with arthritis. I found my first one because my mother-in-law was calling up and she was just crying in pain and no medication was enough for her. And I hate somebody medicated anyway. And so I started doing this research and it just started to come to the U.S. And now the Lakers, most football teams, it's spreading like wildfire amongst the sports teams. And so that's where it took off. So I went

and got her one. And I mean, it took her, I think, three sessions and she's out of pain. And so that's where it took off. So I went and got her one. And I mean, it took her, I think, three sessions and she's out of pain. And now there's another day she's in pain. Now, most people can't afford to go buy a unit, but there are local places now they're popping up all over the United States where athletes go, where people go, where people go for rejuvenation. It's amazing for the skin. But it's one of the great things. I got it first. I got it for me. And then now I'm addicted. So I've got one every three minutes. What type of unit? Do you know the actual model or the brand that you use? Yeah, there's two of them, the best out there.

It's, what was it, Java? Junka, J-U-N-K-A, I think it is. I'll get it for you when we go downstairs. And I'll put it in the show notes for those of you who want to see it. Yeah, if anybody wants to do it. But also, like, if you're in L.A., there's a place there on, well, I'll give it to you and put it in your notes, a couple of the locations there. There's some great guys. I'm getting another unit. This is a brand-new home, and I'm building an additional guest house and additional-sized gym and so forth.

I'm getting a unit, though, that's better. This one just goes up to your neck, but I'm getting one that encloses you a full room. And the reason is about 70% of your nerve receptors are from the neck up. So when you step into one of those, it's even more powerful. But other than that, I don't do much unique or different with my life. I don't believe that entirely. I'll keep digging.

But, uh, the, so you have the, either the sort of contrast therapy that you mentioned, the hot, cold, the cryotherapy.

Yes. You have salad and fish. Yes. How far after? So what is the, if you were to kind of spec out the first hour of your day? Well, the first, the first every day, I do the water, I take in the environment. And then the first thing I do before I do anything else in my day is I do what I call priming.

And priming to me is different than meditating. I'm never really a meditator per se. I know the value of it. But the idea for me of sitting still and having no thoughts just didn't really work out for me. I was just a pain in the ass and I just thought it's not natural, right? It's like, that's what works. But when I'm in nature, I feel that form of meditation. When I stand on stage and someone stands up and my brain, it's done. I don't even know what it is, but person's suicidal. I've never lost a suicide, for example, in 37 years, knock on wood, doesn't mean I won't someday, but I never have it.

A thousand, so we followed up with them. So it's like there's something that comes through me, and it's quite meditative. It's like I experience it as a witness afterwards. It's one of the most beautiful gifts in my life. So I know that meditation. But for me, what priming is, if you want to have a prime life, you've got to be in a prime state. And weeds grow automatically. I don't give a damn what it is. My teacher Jim Rohn used to say that. what priming is if you want to be have a prime life you got to be in a prime state and uh you know weeds grow automatically i don't give a damn what it is my teacher jim rohan just to say that

and so what i do is i get up and i do a very simple process i do an explosive change in my physiology i've done the water already right cold hot then i do it with breath because i know you know all forms of eastern meditation all understand that the mind is the kite and breath is the string so if i want to move that kite i move the the breath. So I have a specific pattern of breathing that I do. I do 30 of these breaths and I do them at three sets of 30. That creates a profound physiological difference in my body. And from that altered state, I usually listen to some music and I go for, I promise myself 10 minutes and I usually go 30. And you do that in this room that we're sitting in?

I know I do it all of this one room is where I do it. This has got a great vibe. I'll do this one. I do it at night. I usually will go outside cause I love the wind on my face and I love taking the elements and so forth, but I do it in multiple places. I'm on the road. I do it.

It doesn't matter what day I always, I do not miss priming. The reason is I'm not, you don't get fit by getting lucky. You don't get fit by working out for a weekend. You know, you live your life that way. Fitness is because it's becomes just part of who you are. So what I do during that time is I do three simple things and I do it minimum 10 minutes, three minutes of it is just me feeling, getting back inside my body and outside of my head, feeling the earth, my body experience, and then feeling totally grateful for three things. And I make sure one of them is something very, very simple, the wind on my face,

the reflection of the clouds that I just saw there. But I don't just think gratitude. It's like I let gratitude fill my soul. Because when you're grateful, as we all know, there's no anger. It's possibly angry and grateful simultaneously. When you're grateful, there is no fear. You can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously. So I's, it's a, I think it is one of the most important power emotions of life. And also to me, there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman, you know,

somebody who's got everything and they're pissed off. I want to surprisingly high number that it is because they, they develop a life that's based on expectation instead of appreciation. Agreed. And I tell people, you want to change your life fast and trade your expectation for appreciation. You have a whole new life. So every day I anchor that in and I do it very deeply emotionally. Then the second three minutes I do is a total focus on feeling presence of God, if you will, however you want to language that for yourself. But this inner presence coming in and feeling that heals everything in my body, my mind, my my emotions, my relationships, and my finances, I see it as solving anything that needs to be solved. I experience the strengthening of my gratitude, of my joy, of my strength, of my conviction, of my passion.

And I just let those things happen spontaneously. And then I focus on celebration and then service because my whole life is about service. That's what makes me feel alive. So I flood myself with that with a breathing pattern that I take that does the opposite. It takes the breath down through my body and back up again. And then the last three minutes are me focusing on three things I'm going to make happen, my three to thrive. And I, I have some big things that I'll do. And sometimes I'll do things that are smaller, but I see them, feel them, experience them. So it's a really simplistic process, 10 minutes, But I come out of it in my power.

It doesn't matter if I had two hours sleep. I'm now ready. You know, it doesn't, and I do this even when I have no sleep. That's how committed I am. And as I say, I've always said, there's no excuse not to do 10 minutes. If you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life. And that's how I got myself to do it. And now that I've done it, you know, 20 to 30 minutes is almost always what it is because it actually feels extraordinary. And where can people learn more about the

breathing pattern or could you describe it? I'm putting a link online because I just started to share this just recently and I'll get it for you. And I don't know what it's off the top of my head, but it'll be up shortly, I think this week. Okay. Awesome. And, uh, I will also put that in the show notes guys. So that's just for our workweek.com forward slash podcast. And you'll be able to find this episode, uh, on the, I to ask, what type of music do you usually listen to? I have a variety, but for that meditation, I have one in particular, which is a oneness meditation that a friend of mine made at Foos from India that I find really profound. It has no singing in it or anything like that.

It's just the sound of a vibration that's going on, and I just love it. But that's what I'm doing currently. In the past, over the years, I've used all kinds of different piece of music but I don't use modern music or pop music or rock music I do that to work out you know rap I don't know it just feels weird to be doing rap while you're meditating but again what's different is I don't look at meditation because I look at it as it's priming courage love joy it's priming gratitude it's priming strength it's priming accomplishment it's priming gratitude. It's priming strength. That's priming accomplishment. It's priming You know when I'm doing my gratitude piece

I'm doing the circle of who's closest to me and you know circling that out to everybody I love and sending that energy and healing out to them as well So to me, that's if you want primetime life, you got a prime daily Well, I like that I like the term priming also because I think that most people who struggle with meditation or even attempt to use meditation are Utilizing it for that purpose. They're doing it in the morning. And, uh, you know, when you said, if you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life. It reminded me of something that Russell Simmons said to me,

which was, if you don't have 30 minutes to meditate, you need three hours. And I don't always do 30 minutes, but I do meditate in the morning. And it's been a very consistent pattern through among all of the people that I've interviewed so far on the podcast, practically a hundred percent. Uh, Practically 100%. Wow, that's wonderful. And, of course, we'll get to Ray Dalio, but also a very avid meditator. He's coming with me to India in a couple weeks. That'll be an amazing trip, I'm sure. For a week of this experience. Oh, man. Wim Hof.

Let's talk about Wim Hof. He's a Dutch world record holder who is commonly referred to as the Iceman for his ability to withstand extreme cold. For instance, in 2007, Wim climbed past the death zone altitude on Everest wearing nothing but shorts. He's a bit of a madman. In 2009, he completed a full marathon above the Polar Circle in Finland in temperatures close to minus 20 degrees Celsius. That's minus four Fahrenheit. He holds the Guinness World Record for the longest ice bath bath now set at one hour and 53 minutes and 12 seconds. Before I continue, I need to state a

very clear warning. You should never, ever, ever do breathing exercises in the water or before training in water. Shallow water blackouts are common after these types of breathing exercises and can be fatal and often are fatal. So do not do any of what Wim recommends close to water or in water. Now with that disclaimer stated very clearly, some of his methods can produce amazing before and after effects. After one in-person training session with Wim, I went from my normal 45 second breath hold or so to four minutes and 45 seconds with no perceptible side effects. This was a first for me. And this was in Malibu, in fact, at Laird Hamilton's house, who's also been interviewed. He's one of the kings of big wave surfing. Several months later, while in very deep ketosis,

about six millimolars or higher after eight days of fasting, again, never to be done without medical supervision, I did the same exercises in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at 2.4 atmospheres. What was the result? Well, there was a clock outside of the chamber and I held my breath for, and I know a lot of people aren't going to believe this, seven minutes and 30 seconds before I stopped because I was afraid my brain was going to melt. The power of breathing exercises is amazing to behold, which is why in part his methods have become very, very popular. Again, they are or can be as dangerous as they are powerful. Never do this stuff when you are not going to hurt yourself if you pass out. So do it in a chair or something

like that, laying down possibly. Don't do it while you're going up an escalator. Don't do it while you are preparing to go into water or anything like that so here we go with more from my conversation with wim hof you have such a fascinating story and you have a lot of accolades a lot of records i think more than 20 world records at this point it seems uh what was the first world record that you said the first was in paris uh just staying half hour in immersed in ice and uh 12 days later i repeated uh uh the record time and make it uh made made it uh an hour in Hollywood, actually. Yes. And I saw one also.

I mean, you've spent a lot of time in ice baths, and I've largely influenced by you and a handful of other people, Tim Noakes, Ray, and a huge fan of ice baths, and my fans always complain about it, but I've seen you in so many containers full of ice. I saw one where it looks like there was a lot of Chinese or Japanese in the background. What has been the most challenging cold exposure experience that you've had, whether it's for records or anything else?

Maybe losing my sight while I was swimming underneath a ice deck of almost one meter. I had no goggles on. So I lost sight at 35 meters, something like 40 yards. And I lost the hole. And yeah, things like that. Shit happens. It happened over there, right there. The meter ice deck above me.

So, yeah, that was some great experience. Another one was losing my way on Mount Everest in shorts and at like 18,000 feet in a blizzard, in like a wide out. So things like that happen, yeah. And they are challenging. But then it throws me back to, you know, the depth of myself, which is trust and confidence. And I got it. What do you say to yourself in one of those moments?

So I guess physiologically, did your retinas just freeze? Or when you were swimming under the ice deck, in a moment like that, when many people would panic, I mean, did you panic? If so, what was the mental self-talk when you realized that was happening? Very interesting. The stress level at that moment is absent. It's not there. I'm just dealing with the situation and it has been shown in the university that our stress levels the stress hormone levels are able to be raised lying in bed more than somebody in fear for the first time going into a bungee jump. Oh, going into a bungee jump for the first time.

Yeah, yeah. Not me, but because a bungee jump, you're attached. But very unexpected situations in nature, like a blizzard or swimming beneath ice and losing the hole because your eyesight is gone things like that or climbing without gear steep mountains and having cramps and what do you do at that moment and that's exactly what I learned, how to raise consciously the stress hormone level, purely controlled, and I'm able, very subjected to stress all the time, panicking, having fear and all that. And I learned in nature how to deal with that. And the cult brought me that science, brought me that knowledge, wisdom, actually. And the raising of stress hormones, so controlling something that has long been thought to be part of the autonomous nervous system, something that you have no control

over, right? And we'll get to the breathing, because breathing is very interesting since it's both autonomous, but you can consciously control it and practice different methods. I think it was certainly in the Vice documentary that recently came out, which I recommend to everyone and I'll link to in the show notes. But was it in 2011 that you were injected with some type of virus or bacteria to see if you could control the immune response? That was at the Dutch, I'm going to mispronounce this, the Radboud University? Exactly. Radboud University in Holland and the intensive care nuclear science. I underwent an experiment and they injected me with an endotoxin, with a toxin actually, which is a part of a bacteria.

And that creates a very dramatic immune response. And as we have no control over the immune response in our body, they thought I was not able to do it as well as expected because nobody showed to be able to suppress the immune response because it is part of the autonomic nervous system. And nobody is able to do that until now. I showed that I was very able within a quarter of an hour, instead of hours suffering from uncontrolled shivering, fever, headaches and all that, I showed within a quarter of an hour to have control complete over the symptoms

and also the cytokines, which are the inflammatory beings in the blood created by the immune response. And I showed in the blood and by blood results to suppress them dramatically within a quarter. And then they told me, OK, but you are an exception that confirms the rule because you have been training so many years. You are the Iceman. You do exceptional features, but nobody is able to do that without that proper training of so many years. And I told them, no, I can train them within 10 days. And then the professor was really challenged because if this group would show to be able within 10 days to be able to influence deeply into the autonomic nervous system related to the immune system, then that's for the first time in the scientific history. So, but he saw the indication of the possibility,

but still thought those guys are not going to be able to do that within 10 days. And you know what? It wasn't within 10 days. It wasn't with four days of training that I made them able to undergo the same experiment, that means the injection of the endotoxin and have them within a quarter of an hour completely control over their immune system related to the autonomic nervous system. So they showed a 100% score of everybody to be able within a couple of days to tap into the autonomic nervous system related to the immune

system and yeah and the training about the training be a prior to it we had our beers you know in the evening and a lot of music and very relaxed and their mindset i said hey guys uh probably you uh you guys are the new gladiators uh well we are going to win the the worst war ever which uh produced uh uh the much uh the most casualties pain, and all that. And that's the bacteria. That's the vaccine. That's the virus. And we're going to win this war.

Are you with me? That's the way I talk to them. And so they had a mindset. So in the evening, we had a relaxing. It was like a hippie movement. But this is a new revolution. And in four days' time, they were able, at the fourth day, without prior experience in the cold, they were able to go in shorts by minus 10.

That's about, I don't know, Fahrenheit Celsius. This is Celsius. I mean, it's freezing cold. Yeah, it's probably in the 20s. Yes, in the 20s. Below freezing, yeah. And then for hours and hours, we were going uphill and up the mountain. And we arrived at the summit after hours,

and it was minus 27. Minus 27 Celsius. That is more than minus 20. It's probably 10, something like that. And we danced the Harlem Shake up there. Then I knew these guys guys these guys are ready in four days time when they will be internalized in the in the hospital and uh and injected with the endotoxin they will be able because i feel when somebody is uh back into its natural state of his or hers physiology.

And I know how to do that. The cold trained me. The cold is my teacher. And with these subjects, I'm so curious to ask because I am certainly not as proficient as you are in any of these techniques, but I've enjoyed experimenting over the last 10 years and writing about these short experiments, whether it's related to breath holding with David Blaine or other aspects. Obviously, you're a professional and I am not, but I'd be very curious to hear you perhaps elaborate, for instance, on the first day of training with these subjects in preparation to be injected four days later. Sure.

What did the first day of training look like for them? Just in the morning at 8 o'clock without food intake, we do breathing and they lie on the ground all because that's the most relaxed pose and if you are relaxed you are able to store up a whole lot more oxygen than when in tension or in posture so I say to them just lay down and relax. Now we are going to begin. Just breathe in deeply and let go. Breathe in deeply, let go. Make it a rhythm. Breathe in deeply, let go.

Not fully out, but fully in. And let go. And repeat that about 30, 40 times until these indications or symptoms come by. And that means lightheadedness, loose in the body, feeling loose in the body, tingling, contractions. That's because carbon dioxide goes out. Oxygen is roaming freely throughout the body, and the pH levels rise. They are optimized, so they get to their best condition. And that's proven. That's proven. And they they saw when we do this uh they saw they saw all these results chemically then once you feel positively charged with all these symptoms of lightheadedness feeling loose contractions and tingling in the body ask them just breathe in deeply let go and now the last time breathe in deeply

let go and after letting go after exhalation stop reframe from breathing there's no need we get a whole lot of oxygen and measurement devices are not able to detect how much it's more than 100 that's my opinion but devices still are not able to detect that they only can go up to 100 as they say but the 100 that a body is able to store up more oxygen than measurement devices of now are able to measure. So then after one and a half minutes, then you see that the measurement device shows 100%. And then it goes dramatically down afterwards. And you're using a pulse oximeter, like something that you clip on your finger? Yes. Pulse oximeter. So you're using a pulse oximeter, like something that you clip on your finger? Yes.

Pulse oximeter. So you need a heartbeat. You have a heartbeat and you have the saturation of the oxygen inside the blood. So the amount of oxygen. So after one and a half minutes, you see with everybody that the saturation of the blood is going

down. And you know people with copd that that's lung diseases and all that they they suffer from real severe copd when they have 85 we go to 90 to 80 70 60 50 people die at 50 and 40 uh 40 percent saturation in the blood we go past we go even to 30 and then the device measurement device the oximeter shuts down it is not measuring anymore but we even go past that one now why don't, why don't the subjects pass out at this point? They don't pass out because they are alkaline. I see. Their pH degrees are really perfect at that moment. And instead of a person who's dying, he is very acidic. So that's the difference. So because we are so alkaline, people maybe sometimes are able to pass out, but just two seconds or three seconds because they are regained not only control in those moments and those situations. They win a new part in the brain. They get very deep in the brain.

And it's all new terrain. It's like a baby. A baby has no problem with her legs. But there are no motorical neurons to the legs yet. Right. So we are going into different parts of the brain where the guy or the girl never has been. Right.

So it's logic that people are are able to pass out but nothing happens because they are alkaline so they just wake up and mostly or mostly almost always they wake up very happy and it's like a drug experience so but that's besides of the real effect I'm trying to not try, which we showed scientifically, is to be able to tap into the immune system in all the layers. Those are three layers. And normally, we are not able to get into the second and the third layer. And I say now we have found a key to the second and the third layer. That means the nonspecific immune system and the specific adaptive immune system. And that makes us looking to disease completely different because our ability is so much more.

Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, Dom is one of my most popular guests I've had on the podcast. You guys ask for more and more and more. You just love him. He's appeared on the podcast a total of three times, although I recommend people start with the first. Dom is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida, Morsani College of Medicine. That's a mouthful. Much of his work is related to nutritional strategies for peak performers and resilience in extreme environments. For instance, he does a lot of work for the special operations communities in developing esters and exogenous ketones that can do things like prevent or mitigate brain damage in hypoxic environments, meaning lack of oxygen,

or even extend breath hold times and oxygen utilization and so on. He's a very impressive guy. He is a highly legitimate athlete in his own right and built like the Incredible Hulk. In this last segment that we're going to sample, we get a little into the weeds scientifically, but I know that you can get some great tips from it. So bear with it and a real understanding of the power of ketosis or at least the ketogenic diet. Most important, his information might save your life. There are certain circumstances within which that the ketogenic diet or ketosis can be used as a medical adjunct to say improve in the case of fasting the resilience of normal cells in prior to treatments

for cancer including chemotherapy and so on it is not intended to be a standalone treatment for cancer so do not spread that nonsense but as anjunct, many people I know who've been diagnosed with cancer have used it so that instead of being laid out the next day after, say, radiation or chemo, they are able to run 5, 10 miles in the morning. And his approach to ketosis has certainly changed my life and helped me to recover from very severe symptoms of Lyme disease. There's a lot of diet talk, but the supplements and fasting can be treated as separate tools. So you don't necessarily need to consume a lot of bacon and heavy cream to get into a ketotic state. Now, for those of you not familiar with his work, here's a very quick

primer. The ketogenic diet is often nicknamed keto. This is a high fat diet that mimics fasting physiology. In other words, what you do when you starve or you get lost in the woods, you start to break down body fat for fuel. Your brain and body begin to use ketones, which are derived from stored or ingested fat for energy instead of blood sugar, glucose. And that is the state of ketosis. The diet was originally developed for treating epileptic children, believe it or not. But there are many variations, including the Atkins diet, which became very, very popular.

You can achieve ketosis through fasting, diet, exogenous ketones, that means supplemental ketones, which can come in powder or liquid form, or some combination of all of those. One of the most common questions I get is, how do you know when you're in ketosis? I don't think the urinalysis strips, the keto strips are very reliable because as you become fat adapted, you excrete fewer of these ketone bodies. And the most reliable way at this point in time is using a device called the Precision Extra, XTRA by Abbott, A-B-B-O-T-T. You can buy it on Amazon and other places. This can both measure glucose and blood levels of ketone bodies, specifically beta-hydroxybutyrate. So you prick your finger and you feed it into this device.

And once you get a readout of 0.5 millimolars, M-M-O-L, that is the concentration of your blood, you can consider yourself lightly in ketosis. I tend to feel the most increased mental clarity and so on at one millimolar or higher. Now, here we go with more of Dom's wisdom. Please enjoy. Let's define ketosis. What is ketosis? I guess we could talk about nutritional and sort of fasting ketosis, but what is ketosis exactly? And what are ketones? Okay. I kind of like to start out with fasting, right?

Sure. Perfect. If we're on a normal diet and we stop eating all of a sudden, we will mobilize and use up our stored glycogen, mostly in the liver, right? And our central nervous system more or less demands that we have a steady fuel supply to our brain. And in the absence of glucose availability, we'll be depleting our liver glycogen. The insulin levels will be suppressed and we'll start mobilizing fatty acids for fuel. The fatty acids, the long-chain fatty acids don't cross the brain barrier very efficiently.

The liver, while you're suppressing the hormone insulin, you'll upregulate beta-oxidation of fatty acids in the liver. And an accumulation of products from fatty acid oxidation will start forming ketone bodies. And these ketone bodies are more or less like water-soluble fat molecules. And they're small molecules that can readily cross the blood-brain barrier and get inside cells into the mitochondria. And as we fast, within about 24 to 48 hours, we'll start registering ketones to the level that clinically is defined as being in ketosis, which is above 0.5 millimolar typically. Yeah, so a person on a high-carb diet would probably take about 24 to 48 hours to start even getting into mild ketosis.

But fasting is the fastest way to get into ketosis. And that's why if you have a child with drug-resistant seizures and they're admitted into a place like Johns Hopkins, the old protocol was to fast them. They're not exactly sure if that's absolutely necessary with things like more with ketogenic diets have MCTs and stuff. But fasting has classically been the fastest way to get into ketosis. So the ketogenic diet has a macronutrient ratio that's high in fat, typically 90 to 70. And by macronutrients, we're referring to protein, fat, carbohydrates. Yeah, yeah. And maybe ketones could be the fourth macronutrient, maybe, if you talk about exogenous ketones. So a ketogenic diet has a macronutrient ratio that mimics the metabolic physiology that you have when you're fasting.

So if you were to take the blood out of someone, do a blood sample of someone on a strict ketogenic diet, it would look like they're fasting. They've been fasting a few days. That changes your physiology incredibly. Like your metabolic physiology changes acutely. And then there's long-term changes that occur with that. Epigenetic changes. You know, we know that beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone body, can have interesting effects on gene expression. What types of effects? Well, there was a science paper showing that beta-hydroxybutyrate is an HDAC, class 1 and class 2 inhibitor, and can activate genes that play a role in enhancing endogenous antioxidant mechanisms,

specifically superoxide dismutase and catalase. So these mechanisms, when they're upregulated, it confers protection against the environment. It sort of enhances our cellular defense mechanisms. It enhances the robust kind of protective mechanisms that the cell has that can preserve the genome stability. So maybe being in a state of ketosis and maintaining that can protect your DNA from damage. So that's the implications. Also anti-inflammatory. So we published a paper, our colleagues actually did it at Yale. I developed the diet for them and sent it up to them. It was exogenous ketone. But the paper demonstrated that it activated or prevented the activation of a particular inflammasome that's linked to

age-related chronic diseases. So it inhibited a specific inflammatory pathway that is really associated with all chronic age-related diseases. And it was independent of the ketones' effect on metabolism. They did a lot of studies to tease out the mechanism and demonstrated that the effect of it suppressing this inflammatory pathway was completely independent of its metabolic effect. So we understand that, you know, when I got into this, I just knew that ketones were an energy metabolite. So now we know it's much more than a metabolite. You know, it's an HDAC inhibitor. And the- How do you spell that? I apologize. HDAC?

Oh, yeah. Histone deacetylase inhibitor. So HDAC would be H-D-A-C. Got it. inhibitor. So HDAC would be H-D-A-C. And then there's class one, two, three, I think four. So class one and two HDAC inhibitors are a big, big, are of big interest to the pharmaceutical industry. So there are many, for example, we do a lot of cancer research. There's a lot of pharmaceutical companies focusing on histone deacetylase inhibitors for as targeting specific pathways for cancer therapy. So you have an endogenous HDAC inhibitor with beta-hydroxybutyrate. Not to interrupt, but just for people who want to keep endogenous and exogenous straight, I've always found thinking of exoskeleton as sort of outside, uh, as an

indicator of outside. So if you're taking exogenous, please correct me if I'm getting this, if I screw this up in any way, Dom, but if you're taking exogenous ketones, that means you are, you are consuming ketones from outside of your body and endogenous is something you're producing yourself. Uh, what was the study that you did on advanced lifters as it related to ketosis and what's, what's kind of the abstract on that? Uh, yeah, that's under review right now. And yeah, I'll, I'll give you a kind of like the synopsis of it. So we had, uh, 12 subjects and these were advanced, uh, resistance trained individuals, meaning that they could squat and deadlift, deadlift and bench a

certain percentage, you know, their body weight, which is kind of puts them in the range of, you know, the top 10% of lifters. Just out of curiosity, I got to go back. It was, it was some funky number and not like to, it was like, you know, 185% or 75% of their body weight squatting for, you know, seven reps or eight reps or something like that. So it was pretty, it would be, uh, it would be like me, let me see, squatting, you know, for 25 or something for a set of six or something like that. It's pretty significant. Yeah. Significantly advanced trainees. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, the gist of that is that we did a parallel, the control group was on a Western diet and which is pretty similar to kind of, you know, moderate protein, higher in carbohydrates and moderate fat. And the ketogenic diet had roughly 75% to 80% fat, restricted carbohydrates to about 20 to 25 grams per day.

And the fat was also supplemented to some extent with MCT oil and coconut oil. And all the subjects, it was two weeks they had to be on the diet and had to confirm ketone levels by blood and urine. And once they did, we only did a two-week adaptation, which is kind of another subject we could talk about, but they adapted for two weeks and then kind of trained the heck out of them. And every workout was done in the lab, in a human performance laboratory. And everything was recorded. The volume was controlled. All the parameters were controlled. Blood work was done. And the take home on it was that strength, body composite, or I would say strength and performance were maintained and increased. And there was muscle hypertrophy was seen with a ketogenic diet. And there was similar increases in power, in hypertrophy.

And the big difference was kind of the overall body composition was more favorable in the ketogenic diet group, meaning they had similar increases in lean body mass, but they lost proportionally more fat. And that's the study that we completed. It's under review right now. The first journal kicked it back. So we went in for another journal and did some followup work with it. Now, what is your, uh, what is your hypothesis or maybe you already know, but how would you explain the maintenance or even development of hypertrophy and power in the ketogenic group when a lot of people associate,

say, insulin with different growth factors and whatnot. And I had a conversation, I want to say it was with Stephen Finney, very short conversation. And I asked him this because I'd been in a ketotic state for two or three weeks and had experienced a non-trivial amount of muscle growth. And I was really surprised by it. And he explained in terms that I can't recall, but how the ketogenic diet might have a, I guess, like a branch chain amino acid sparing effect of some type. But is it possible to get very big and powerful on a ketogenic diet? If so, what's the mechanism in the sort of absence of higher spiking insulin levels? If that is the parent anabolic hormone, and I'm not saying it is, but a lot of people view it that way.

Yeah. So, you know, there's insulin and insulin signaling, right? Certain diet – like when you calorie restrict a rodent or even humans or any mammal, you will enhance insulin sensitivity, right? So you will be more sensitive to a given amount of insulin. And I think we're seeing some of that in the athletes. I mean exercise itself enhances insulin sensitivity. So in guys that are advanced lifters who've been at it for like 10 years may have a different response to a ketogenic diet than say a 15 year old kid, you know, who's trying to bulk up for football. You know, he would probably not be a good candidate for, uh, for the ketogenic diet. You know, your sensitivity to things like IGF-1 and insulin are much higher when you're

younger in your teenage years, especially. So you could compromise a lot of your potential development and strength if you're younger in doing that. But if, you know, say guys, the older we get, the less carbohydrate tolerant we get. So we lose, you know, our ability to kind of process carbs as we get older and our insulin sensitivity declines. Uh, no, it's going back to your question as it relates to being on a ketogenic diet. We know that ketones are anti-catabolic, you know, that's why we can fast for 40 days and the ketones have an anti-catabolic protein

sparing effect. And if our, our blood is flooded with ketones, we're less likely to liberate gluconeogenic amino acids from our skeletal muscle for fuel, because the ketones can more or less replace glucose as a primary energy substrate to maintain your central nervous system, which is like 3% of our body by weight, but sucks up like 20 or 25% of the energy. It's a big metabolic engine. So the ketones kind of drive a lot of that substrate, you know, energy need. So in a situation where you're at a caloric deficit, I think that's where ketones can shine. You know, if you're trying to make weight, if you're trying to preserve or even increase your performance and strength, you know, and alter your

body composition. So if I don't think the ketogenic diet is ideal, if your goal is maximum, a purely ketogenic diet, I think, you know, there's different, we have to kind of figure out what ketogenic diet we're talking about. But I don't think a purely ketogenic diet, as it's kind of described in the literature, right? A 90 or 85% fat diet is an ideal diet for growth and repair. The diet that we use in our study is actually a little higher in protein, like 25% protein, which is like really almost double that used by the Johns Hopkins group that developed the classical ketogenic diet. And it's really that protein level is important. So growing on a classic ketogenic diet would be pretty hard. I mean, kids do it. Their growth rates are a little bit less,

you know, with these kids that have drug-resistant seizures when they're putting on the diet. But if you simply just do what's called a modified Atkins, and there's a lot of literature coming out now on the modified Atkins. Eric Kossoff at Johns Hopkins, he's a colleague of mine and more in the clinical realm, and he's done a lot of work showing that a modified Atkins, which is about 70% fat and like 20% or 30% protein, has the same sort of ability to metabolically manage seizures. And I think that sort of diet can be used pretty successfully in the performance world and specifically for bodybuilders. I think with that amount of protein, you'd be able to grow muscle for sure. And it's calories too, right?

I mean, calories are the driver, your caloric intake. If you have a surplus amount of calories, you're more likely to push insulin up and drive anabolic processes. But a lot of times people, when they follow a ketogenic diet, because ketones have a really good appetite suppressant effect, that they will inadvertently restrict calories and may not even know it after a while and may be losing weight without even trying. And that's one of the benefits, I guess you could say, of the ketogenic diet.

You can lose weight and you can alter your body composition without necessarily even trying, just through the appetite suppressing effect. Well, there you have it, folks. That is the latest Tim Ferriss Radio Hour featuring some of the experts I've spoken to in and across more than 200 episodes. What of this podcast? That's crazy. The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour featuring some of the experts I've spoken to in and across more than 200 episodes.

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