WHOOP Podcast - Dan Churchill: How Food Fuels Your Performance

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

On this week’s episode WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by Performance Chef and Podcast Host Dan Churchill. The Australian native is now the Chef at The Osprey in Brooklyn and the host of The Epic Table Podcast. With a Master's Degree in Exercise Science, Dan blends his expertise in fitness and wellness with his passion for healthy cooking and has become the face of nutrition-based performance. Dan is here to talk about his latest book Eat Like a Legend and his experience running the Boston Marathon. Dan and Will discuss how Dan treats his body and mind (2:15), physical strain vs. mental strain (9:15), becoming a chef (11:58), moving from Australia to America (20:33), Dan’s new book Eat Like a Legend (24:45), top meals for performance (29:10), what’s next for The Osprey (34:18), running the Boston Marathon (40:27), and weight loss tips (49:04).Resources:Dan's WebsiteDan’s Instagram Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome back to the Whoop podcast where we sit down with very top performers. We've got a great one for today. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're interested in trying Whoop, don't miss your chance to save 10% on a Whoop membership signing up before our spring sale ends this Sunday. Today I am joined by Performance Chef and podcast host, Dan Churchill. The Australian native is now the chef at the Osprey in Brooklyn and the host of the Epic Table podcast. He also has a resting heart rate as low as 27 beats per minute. With a master's in exercise science, strength and conditioning, Dan blends his expertise in fitness and wellness with his passion for healthy cooking and has become the face of nutrition-based performance.

Dan is the author of three books and just completed the Boston Marathon. So we're going to dive into all of this. that. We discuss how Dan treats his body and mind, the difference between mental and physical strain, becoming a chef, and ultimately moving to America, Dan's newest book, Eat Like a Legend, top meals for high performance, Dan's work at his restaurant, the Osprey, and Dan's experience running the Boston Marathon. We also go deep on his Woop data. If you're thinking about joining whoop, check us out, Woop.com. You can try Woop for free for 30 days. That's a free trial. If you have any questions, you want to see answered on the podcast.

Email us, podcast.org.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here is Performance Chef Dan Churchill. Dan, welcome to Whoop Podcast. Dude, great to be here in person, my man. Amazing to be here in person. You just ran the Boston Marathon yesterday. I know. It's great to be sitting down, so I appreciate that, man.

We're going to talk about that. You've got a book coming out, Eat Like a Legend, which seems like the person. name for you and all you've been able to accomplish as a chef. I think the first thing I got to say right out of the gates is you have a resting heart rate of as low as 27 beats per minute. Do you have that right? Yeah, apparently. So that's going to like jump off the screen for people who are listening to this. Like what are you doing to have that low of a resting heart rate? You know, it's funny because I asked my dad what his resting heart rate is and it's nowhere near that i asked my brothers and my my older brother up until recently didn't have that low resting heart

right so i'm like you would think genetics would play a significant part in that but there's really no like relationship in any way there so i just think outside of potential genetics i i live at very early lifestyle and i obviously eat well maybe that's the main thing but yeah it's funny like i don't i'm not intentional about it well you are like go go go go like if I look at your data like you've got high strain you're not necessarily getting like eight hours of sleep every night so a lot of it must be about how you're treating your body yeah so you know I'd be actually curious to speak to you about this but my restoratives like I'll have a day where my strain's so high that I'll just go to bed or I'll even be sleeping

I'll be at a bar I'm not drinking with my mates and I'll be sleep I fall asleep because my strain has probably caused me to be so exhausted physically that I'll I'll shut out. So my body does it. And so when I get into my restorative sleep, it's very efficient restorative sleep. And so if I think about that and then all the modalities of hot, cold,

red light therapy, you know, rolling out mindfulness. Like I am intentional. It comes to that kind of thing for sure. So a heart cold. How often are you doing that? Easily three times a week if I can.

And you'll spend how long in the heart? What kind of heart? So like ideally getting up to 190 degrees. and I'm doing about 20 minutes in that and I'll do about five minutes in the cold and I'll probably do that two or three times a week where I'll in a change I could maybe the second time I'll do like 15 minutes in the sauna and then five again so in a single session I'll probably do around total of 35 minutes hot 10 minutes cold and I'll probably do that two to three times and the cold how cold do you go um I've done like as low as like 37 but really

I don't think you need to go below 42. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're in that zip code. Yeah. That's still on the colder side. Yeah.

Like 37, 42. Like some people do 45, 48. Yeah. I like to do 42. That's my zip code. 42. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So you've got hot cold. And then you said mindfulness. So what's that look like? So there's a couple things I do there. So I know cooking is huge for me. And I actually figured that out actually using the whoop up. So I looked at like my stress.

and I looked at the time when I was chilling and the most like relaxed moments when I'm just not cooking for anyone particular nothing going on but I'm just in the moment of like chopping and sauteing and so like I'm really intentional about leaving time for that throughout the week and you know it's noticeable as I always say to my community it's like when you're looking at stress management sometimes the obvious thing isn't so obvious

and so look at your stress monitor and see where you're low and repeat that cycle in accordance what the time was when you're doing something that was low stress. So I'm very intentional with that. That's such a good point, by the way. Man, it's like, you know, people say, one of the biggest hacks I use with Woop is simply that. If you just literally go to your stress monitor and see where you're low

and think about in accordance with the time of day you were low and think about what activity you were doing, it may surprise you what relaxes you didn't know before. And then all you need to do is when you are stressed or you've had a strained full day, the next day you can be a bit more intentional with getting into those routines because you know quantifiably what they are. As routines, it's also interestingly certain people, you know, there's certain people that being around makes you calmer or makes you a little bit more engaged, maybe even a little more

stressed. Yeah, no, 100%. Like, I think in general, you may know subjectively those people who they are for then to like, you know, hopefully they're not something you have to sit around more than often and the special lady or partner you have in my case lady uh is is that person who keeps you chilling and she and my dog like every time i go on a walk i'm chilling with maverick my dude like he's he relaxes me and that's why we do see you know um people who have dogs simply for those reasons and it makes total sense you mentioned red light therapy what are you doing in that category no more than 20

minutes but every morning so essentially i'll get out of bed and i'll make a coffee and sit in front of red light therapy, either reading, sitting with Maverick and just having that, you know, beaming in my face just in my underwear. So pretty much most exposure to my skin as possible. And statistically, you don't need to do more than 20 minutes. There's no scientific evidence to support further than that does anything. But every morning, you know, every morning. And it's like one of those four body. Yeah, we've got, we've actually got a smaller one, but you can, depending on how you lay it out and how you present yourself, you can get exposure. Obviously, you can have the full placard, which is like, I don't know, six feet high and the two big, you know, piece of material there.

But, yeah, the one that we have is definitely sufficient for us. And you're obviously exercising all the time every day, pretty much. And I think that's another thing. It's like I learned through whoop how important, not how important my recovery is. I've always known how important recovery is, but I've learned how my daily activity outside of just the, intentional exercise, how strainful I'm already putting it. So as a chef, I've noticed on a routine basis, if I don't do exercise for one day, but I'm in the kitchen, I'll still have a strain of 19. Even on the way over here, there was a guy, you hit me up, he's like,

hey, Dan, I'm a chef. How high do you have your strain on a non-cooking day, on a non-exercise day? And I was like, you know, I told him like a 19 or something. He's like, he hit me. He's like, dude, same. So like, I'm not the only one who has a situation. And I think that was huge eye open it to me. And not just for people in the food space. I'm sure if people have a look at their work to see what they're doing daily just through work, you'll be surprised how much strain you're already putting on your body. So with that in mind, you know, I've just come off a 12-week training block of trying to hit a sub three marathon for yesterday. And so, you know, I'm running up to 60 miles, sometimes 65 miles depending on peak week. So I'm already putting a lot

a load of my body. Outside of that, I've got my mental side for resistance training and things I need to do, and then you've got to cooking. So if I take them to account, I've got to be really intentional with not only recovery, but allowing my body to rest. So it was a really eye-pening experience to me to understand how much my strain was, just even on daily basis. Yeah, your baseline strain is really high. I mean, people like me who are working in an office environment very regularly like it's actually amazing how low our strain can be sure which is not good either you know and and and so like i have to consciously get up from my desk and walk around or try to walk around the office or go up and down the stairs because otherwise it's just like i'm so sedentary

throughout a lot of the day so do you find that's interesting so we're talking so that's the physical strain do you notice the do you notice the times when you have mental strain those those spikes or those days where, like, it might have been a bit more stressful. Do you notice that significantly in your data? I do, although I would say in general, my stress levels tend to be at the medium or low level. Like, I don't have a lot of high stress through whoop in the work environment. That's great. Yeah.

So, congratulations. Yeah, so some, you know, something along the way of running the company, I've gotten just more comfortable in that, in the chaos of it. Like, I'm in the eye of the storm, but I feel, like, calm, so to speak. You're super chill and relaxed. Yeah. That's great, man. Yeah.

So, I think, like, meditation's been a big one for me. I think doing things like hot, colds definitely helped. I also think there's just something of, like, if you've been running a business for long enough, and I'm sure you feel this, like, so many bad things have happened that you've overcome, that it kind of puts everything into perspective when the next. bad thing happens you're kind of like yeah okay it put you're right it puts thing to perspective yeah man it makes you realize what you can handle and so and also how to handle and so you know there's times where I look at you know not even just data I look at problems that occur every day

simple one for me as a chef when we get an order come in that we screw up or you know may have been lost whatever you have to then still find a way and you just go be like cool we still get this ticket out this is what we need to do and that can be stressful because it can especially on a busy day that's just a very small example but that actually just made me feel stressed because i was thinking about how infrequently i cook and like this idea of like oh i need it to be ready at this time or like my wife's like oh well like you got to get home early because i'm cooking and this idea of timing things perfectly to cooking is actually that is actually a very stressful concept yeah it's very challenging yeah so like that's when there's a number of factors to go into

making a dish and put it on a plate but everything from the ideation to execution to lay out of the kitchen you're constantly thinking about what you can actually handle consistently did you always know you wanted to be a chef i'd say i'd say growing up i thought i did initially and i jumped into the kitchen um even whilst i was in high school professionally and it wasn't wasn't the right environment of a kitchen that i should have been in but it was i'm glad that i did because it provided me with the understanding of what type of kitchen I didn't want to be in. So then I went down the route of doing my exercise science degree, my master's degree, because I just loved sport, movement, human performance.

And then I realized I actually do have this love for cooking. And so I jumped into the right kitchens. And what I mean by that is essentially what happened was the first time. I was cooking in a catering kitchen for a very high-end clientele. And so all I would be doing, because I'm fresh, you know, they'd make me peel broadband for 90s. hours a week. And so it wasn't exactly the most creative thing on the planet. And so I was like, maybe I don't want to be a chef because that's what I had to do. I'm not, I think I can do more.

But then later on, when I jumped in the kitchen, just to, you know, start as cleaning dishes and you know, chop things when I can and eventually progress and progress and still strength conditioning throughout the day for elite athletes, I realized my affiliation with the cooking side, but also the human performance angle was like such a passion for mine. You know, I love it. how old were you when you were first in a kitchen first in a kitchen like in a professional setting so that first time i was telling you i was like 16 years old but when i actually got into the kitchens and started more consistently being there was until like 20 23 22 and then it started to ramp up and you started to get more comfortable yeah man so essentially what happened was

i'd be working for free so i'd be doing my my paying job job would be throughout the day with these elite athletes and then throughout the night I'd be going to different kitchens in this Sydney's area and I'd be like one night I'd be cooking out an Italian place and next night will be a Southeast Asian place and so and so forth I did this for about six months and this is Sydney Australia yeah Sydney Australia and what that allowed me to do is like one I didn't have the stress that I was having to be somewhere absolutely on time not knowing what time I would finish my workout I would go there and learn. And I knew more importantly than anything, the most important asset I had of that area was time to learn.

So if I was thinking about money at a young age, I wasn't really investing in myself. But if I learned from six different chefs over the course of that six-month period and different techniques and different cuisines, I knew that I'd have a really strong artillery of just understanding of cooking on a global scale. And so through that, I, I got to, you know, one of them in particular was like, Dan, we need you to stay. We actually need you to stay here tonight. And then over time went from me being a prep cook to a line cook and to paying me one night. And then like, okay, we want you to, you know, become a sous chef and all that stuff. And so that we progress.

And at the same time, I was essentially putting my first cookbook together to self-publish. and I realized that this is the start of something that I can, like I'm sure when you started what you had this feeling, you can see how impactful what you're about to do is and you know you're at the very, very start, the very first time that you put that bracelet in this very first iteration on. That's how I felt with like that moment going, I can do something here that's going to impact the world. And so I was like, okay, pretty sure I need to go all in on it. That's a powerful principle you mentioned. around, you know, being at a stage in your life,

we wanted to work to learn. I'm curious how you came upon that. Was that just super intuitive to you? And like, or do your parents tell you something like that? You know, dad and mom, mom's like the most loving person on the planet, the most, you know, just supportive individual. And dad's always been very, he's always very forward thinking in his ways of how he can help develop his three boys.

And he's very stern. He's a very stern male and like someone who his form of love is, you know, educating you and taking you to rugby games and all that kind of thing. And he's always talking about learning and learning learning. So I feel from him I got this appreciation for learning. And I've always just got an affiliation and interest in actually learning. I get more like I feel when I'm stagnant is when I'm not learning anything. So like when I'm thinking of a new dish to do, if I've already done something,

I have to be thinking what's next. And so part of me was like, well, I don't need money right now because I just look after myself. So I was like, okay, that's what's the best thing I can do to invest in myself and what I want to do. It's like, well, I love cooking. I love just learning about this. So I think my foresight was simply,

if I, this advice I tell people, it's like at a young age, the biggest thing is you don't have responsibility other than yourself. And the best thing you can do is invest in your time to learn so that you can be far ahead of where other people are. because they're not respecting their time for what they want their goal to be is. So a lot of it was definitely intuition. That's super powerful advice and great advice for young people. Like, I speak now at different schools.

I was just speaking recently to a bunch of entrepreneurs. I was speaking at Harvard recently. And similarly to what you were just describing, I think the equation for how young people assess risk is a little bit screwed up and it often comes from like a downwards adult pressure of to do the safe thing and really when you take on this new adventure or you try to start something at a young age there's a certain risk of yes how successful will that venture be but separately there's this whole phenomenon around what you're going to learn about yourself and what you're going to

going to learn in business or learn in your craft. And because there's such a pressure put on you under that microscope, you develop very quickly. And so even though the venture may not be as successful out of the gates or may ultimately fail, what you learn about yourself in the process is so valuable and such an important stepping stone for whatever you're going to do next in your life. And separately, to your point, like, you don't have that much responsibility outside of yourself at that young age. And so it is a great time to take on additional responsibility and risk and invest in learning. Whereas I think what often young people are told is to go on some specific track that seems safe, you know, quote unquote safe, but may not actually take a young person

way outside their comfort zone. Yeah, man. And to your point, like you've got the classic, going to go to college, going to do my degree, following my degree, I'm going to get a job and they get stuck in this nine to five.

And, you know, it's like I see this every day living in New York City. Friends come up to me and go, dude, how do I do what you do? I'm like, well, man, like if you don't like what you're doing, you just got to work out carving out time for you to learn something else outside of your job and the the trouble thing is it's like if you're put into a position where

you've got to stay the status quo yeah of course it's going to be a bit of like a strain on your headspace because you've just been the thought process has always just been college job set but you know we've got they say you do three different jobs in your lifetime three major jobs or you do three major things and I feel no matter what your biggest asset in life is time your time and so you got to if you're not learning or not allowing yourself to have as much time to learn you better be doing something that you're loving because if you're loving something you don't you still need to learn but you're probably learning as you're going whereas if you're on a job you don't love you got to maximize the learning time to be able to transfer into what you actually want

to be doing it's really good advice so let's go back to being a chef for a second. So you, what, what gets you to the States? Yeah. So my first two self-published cookbooks got picked up by a publisher over here, Simon Schuster. And then I also got. And how old were you when that happened? This was, I got that around, first contact was around 25 years old. I think I'm, I moved to over here when I was 26 years old. So yeah, 26. And even that in itself is kind of an interesting concept that you self-published a book at the age of 25. You probably learned a lot about writing and learned a lot about marketing and learned a lot about promotion. And who knows whether it was your greatest book ever, but we're about to talk

about another one that you've got here that's probably going to be really big. Yeah, man. It's the best part. Yeah. Like you go from right when you're self publishing, the difference between publishing and self publishing is self publishing, you're doing everything yourself. So from writing it to proofreading it, so getting it shot to getting the design to going and getting it printed to then getting the hard. Then you got this. the best part. You're like, oh, see, you got these books. Then you got to sell it. Yeah, right. It's like, yeah, right. You learn so much about business and more importantly, yourself in that process. So when I was self-publishing dude for my very first book, I think

I was 22 years old. So I self-published that. And when I did that, that, I just had this naivety around like, oh, I got a book, I'll sell it. And unbeknown, when I was selling it, I was like, okay, go up to these people on the northern beaches of Sydney, these bookstores. This is a really good book to sell for a young male, but you're not going to sell it to a young male. You're going to sell it to a grandma or a mom or potentially a girlfriend for a guy. So, again, I had to learn who my audience was. And so this whole process is all because I did something and then, you know, naively learned from my mistakes. Like my first cookbook cost me $22 per copy printing.

The second set, my second run, $1.15. Wow, there you go. So, like, in itself, business, I was like, whoa, I learned for my first mistake there. So then the second cookbook I did, I knew straight away how to do things differently. That still wasn't perfect, but I knew what mistakes I did from the first one. And second time around, you're in the States. Second time around, I'm still in Australia, but that was the one that got me to the States. Okay, good.

And so then when I got to the States, I was also on ABC's Chew, which was a daytime cooking show. And so with those two things, I was like, I had the visa to get me in. into the country, which is really important, obviously, to live and stay here and work. Yeah, for sure. And over the last four or five years now, you've been working on this book. Yeah, man, it's a long process. So the difference between publishing, particularly over here, is like, if you publish a book, it takes two years to get it from ideation to actually print and then to publication. So when I first started writing Eat Like a Legend, I was, you know it was two years ago and then two years go by things like a long time but eventually

you get to the position from shooting or writing it getting it read proved shooting it together working the marketing team the sales team to then go to publication and now we're in that process but yeah it's like taking all information i learned from the book is eat like a legend dan churchill yeah it's like i can promise you you're not going to read a cookbook from a lower resting heart rate show that actually that's probably you might have the lowest resting heart rate of any chef in the world i'll take it that's pretty amazing if you think about you you you have the lowest resting heart rate of anyone on whoop for your age group wow what's the what's the lowest resting heart rate i think it's right around 27 like i think there's someone else who's like

26 or so competitive yeah but uh that'd be funny we should do like a like a whoop competition That would be pretty sweet. Get you all in a room, see whose heart rate can get the lowest. Let's start doing some deep inhale breathing and just relax. So tell me more about the book. Man, so this book was essentially taking into account all the years I learned as a professional chef and now working as the executive chef at the Osprey in Brooklyn Bridge, along with all my work as a, you know, having a master and exercise science

and working with some of the best athletes in the world to help people, people, you know, I essentially work with all these athletes to understand what's the best way for them to perform through food. My job was to get them ready for game day on a nutritional level. And now I'll take that and put into a book that's for the everyday individual to show that everyone can be their own legend. And that's where this book comes out. And for me, it was like, I wanted to touch on a number of different factors in the book. I want to talk about how we highlight protein fats and carbs too much and not enough on the micronutrients, which I've called the fifth macronutrient.

I've also touched on how important it is to eat for performance and not just for aesthetics. And in fact, when you start eating for performance, you improve your aesthetics because you can perform better, which is really important. We talk around foods that help improve your sleep. And then one of the biggest factors I have in general is that bioindividuality is ever present. But I don't think we as individuals truly treat ourselves individually. So our guts are our own guts.

brains our own brains and the way that we respond to food is different to the person next to you even genetically you know we've seen there's a there's a twins registry study is like looked at two guts and two lifestyle changes from individuals and we talk about how the phenotype which is the physical characteristics of an individual despite having the same gene code of identical twins can vary in terms of their physical characteristics over time just based on their lifestyle choices which include their food intake as well. So it's pretty interesting to see how food has such a big importance on performance for everyday people, not just athletes. Well, let's hit some of these foods. So you mentioned that there's foods that are specifically good for sleep. What do those

include? Great question. My biggest favorite one man is like this kiwi fruit, blueberries. So like even at nighttime, smacking on those is great. Like we've seen, I'd love to be more intentional with this four-whoop. It really could do a study on this to like get people. in a room and having blueberries and kiwi fruit, but particularly they have a way of getting into your deeper sleep much more efficiently. So, which is really important. Kiwis and blueberries specifically. Yeah, it's crazy, man. And how close to bed will you eat them? So I still stand by. You shouldn't eat more than, like, your last bite should be within two hours of bedtime. So if you're going to bed at 930, your last bite is at 7.30. You want to

give two hours rest. And simply because of that is your brain and your gut are connected directly via the vagus nerve and if your gut is digesting food even your physical body's asleep your brain's awake and you won't be able to get into that deep sleep it's really interesting on whoop you can track how late meals affect your body and for me personally uh i'll log it as a late meal when it's within three hours of going to bed and it has the second most negative recovery effect on me second to alcohol wow so it's like alcohol and eating close to bed do you notice this This is one I talk about, particularly to my community, it's restorative sleep, right? Yeah.

I notice when, yeah, if I eat too close to bed or if I have the foods that typically are not good for me, I know my, I always know consistently that my, particularly my deep, slow way of sleep is just terrible. And you can look at that. And I always say, look, as much as I try to get eight hours of time in bed, sometimes I can't just based on my shift that I have at the restaurant. but I always try to make sure I have a really good restorative sleep panel, which is the combination of REM and slow wave.

But sometimes when I eat too close to bed or whatever, I just know that that's going to be most affected. Yeah, I've started to feel that diet might be one of the most important factors for improving restorative sleep because I find personally, I think a lot of other variables in my life are constant. And so, whereas what I eat often changes. on a nightly basis and I just have this feeling like when I look at my data that there are certain foods that are clearly spiking my sleep. You mentioned before there's a lot of recipes

in this book that are geared towards performance. What would be your sort of top three meals for performance? Oh, I did. Well, I mean, for me, knowing that how well I perform on certain foods, taking into account the bio-individuality aspect, I know for me it's a certain amount of pasta. Now, not a people can take on pasta in a form like I, but I know I'm... And you're low percent body fat. I am. Yeah. What's your percent body fat?

It's gotten as low as six. So that's really low. So, in general, people who have lower percent body fat also benefit more from eating carbs like pasta. Exactly. So that's why I like the term of bio-individuality has to be... understood and you know people go i can't do carbs very well cool then like that's where you need to mix it up and understand like it's also a lot to do with understanding your gut health but going back to what you said the three things i would have are probably there's a shrimp linguine in there

i would also like my power bowl every morning that i have which is oatmeal uh peanut butter natural yogurt fresh berries chia ham seeds that sounds good dude it's honey it's every morning Alex has had it probably three times a week on a regular basis since he started filming with me. Alex is just filming in the corner right now. But he comes over every day that we're filming. I'm like, you hungry, bro? He's like, I could do a powerball. I feel like he's probably eating a lot in your kitchen.

He has out of it. Yeah, yeah, yes. Now, will you also do any supplements, vitamins, that sort of thing? So I have my agey one every day. Okay. I do that every day. I've been doing that for almost eight years now, nine years now. but I also take on I do protein just to just around my workouts if I need it outside of that

yeah classic way and also vegan if I'm doing two so I never doubled down on weigh twice if I'm going through a really hectic training cycle I know I need to up my protein intake I'll make sure I do one of each so I don't just do constant way the whole time okay so that's another thing is like keeping that variety is important too for me I don't want to get too much toxicity going on but also I love I love my body having the ability to digest everything and everything so I start of that man I'll take some fish oil but I really don't need much else after after having AG1 I do have electrolytes so if you would call them supplements around my particular my long distance runs and that load like big found sodium intake I would say that if you're in

the athletic space you definitely need to consider how much sodium you're probably not having enough of For the average individual who probably eats a lot of packaged foods, sodium intake is probably something you don't need to look at. There was a recent newspaper article in the New York Times that looked at like sodium and what's in certain foods we may not know versus like cheeses, you know, cured meats, just packaged goods. You'd be just shocked to see what's in them. But I would say that the average athlete doesn't realize how much sodium they lose per hour.

Have you found that being a chef at all has worked? I mean, it obviously hasn't, but like has been as counteracted your, you know, strive for peak performance and like, because I'm just thinking about the number of dishes you must have to try and, you know, like extra calories here and there and desserts and things. Yeah, sure. It's like hard for me to, it's hard to process both the 6% body fat and like the world-class chef. Yeah, it's like, don't trust a skinny chef is the, yeah, is a term, right? Is it a thing?

Yeah, it is a thing. I was like, I don't know, I trust this guy. I'm not tasting his food. Yeah, dude, like I, because I move so much. And I've met a lot, I've really got a really cool group of chefs who are quite active now because you see the stage of life where people are really starting to value their life cycle. And they're like, as a chef, it's, it's like, you know, typically shift work. It's terrible hours.

But they really care about their health now. So they're putting their health first, which is awesome. And people like myself helping lead the way and showing how you can. can do that. So with that in mind, I find it really important to note how active I am. So when I do have to go through my like, particularly my tasting menus, I'm constantly tasting food, I'm less concerned about, you know, the amount of eating. And also the food that I'm tasting is my food, which is typically pretty good for you, you know. And if I look at my woup, it says my calories that I need to burn every day. That shows my calories that are burnt every

day, I need to eat regardless. So you just got a crazy eye guy. Yeah. Yeah. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com.

It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail. for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. What's next for the Osprey? We just launched spring menu. We're coming into summertime. So we've got, the hotel as a whole has got some pretty exciting things going on with respect to events. Like the Osprey itself being the Brooklyn Bridge One hotel looks over the best view of Manhattan. So you've got it right over,

looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, you got Statue Liberty, one more trade, and then also the grandiose Empire State Building. So new menu there. We can do a lot of content out there of storytelling. Paddy will be open. And then we're also, the one hotels opening up in Melbourne as well next year, so helping support that as well. How long you've been there? It would come up on a year in July. And has it been everything you've wanted it to be? Man, I'm so, I'm going to say fortunate because I've, you know, I'm really big on when people get to a position that they've earned. It's not luck. Like, they've really earned it. So I know I've earned this position, but I know I'm very fortunate to be in this position. And what I mean by that is, as a chef, being an

executive chef of a restaurant of this type of calibre, you know, you're typically there every day doing everything to, like, support the team. And so for me, it's like, I don't have that bandwidth based on everything else that I do with like center, AG1, whoop, everything, right? And so the team I have there are incredible to be able to go in there and they've operationally got sound down like the the you know the the team incredible and the brand is awesome and progressive and I am being challenged in the best ways creatively because I got these chefs that are there with me to like do certain things and it's this it's such an amazing brand to work with on a prestige level on a teamwork level but they also push which is what you want you don't want to coast what are your hours typically. there. So I'd say like I'm probably there sometimes like I haven't been there in about four weeks just because of travel and book promotion. But like I'll go back on Thursday. I'll be there for three hours in the morning and I'll be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I'll probably be there for six hours a day. But that's just because we've got a couple of events coming up. But then typically

I'd probably say on average I'm not more than 15 to 20 hours a week there. And you're deeply involved in the menu creation. Yeah. Yeah. So it's my menu. I work with the executive chef, the whole hotel, who's Aaron, and he does an incredible job just being the backbone, effectively. So I come up, I taste, I create ID8, and he comes and says, we can do this, we can't. And then he also, in times, helped create the menu when I'm not being able to be there. So, like, for example, I've been away, we did the tasting for, in front of the whole culinary director team for one hotels, and then I had to go away.

So any adjustments that they said from the tasting, he had to execute. Luckily, there's only one or two adjustments. But that's what teamwork is. You have a team around you to support everything you do. That's what I mean. I feel supported there. Yeah, it seems that you have pretty great, great setup with it. Yeah, man.

Now, do you like everything that's on the menu? Absolutely. Yeah, that's like really important for me. Because like if I'm talking about it, if I'm tasting it, if I'm cooking it, I have to. And so even if you look at like our new menu coming up, the hardest thing is like it's that you're their children. So when you hand over the menu, you're hard like, oh, I don't want to let go, you know. Okay. So here's where I'm skeptical that chefs always love everything on their menu.

Hit me. Because inevitably you have certain things like about your palate, right? And there's certain tastes that you gravitate to, certain types of food that you gravitate to. There have to be things, though, that a lot of people like that you don't necessarily. necessarily like as much. And you have to feel like almost like you're providing a hole in the market, so to speak, on the menu to have these sorts of dishes. Like, it's a good question. I've, um, I might like, I'm very, very, I'm very intentional with everything that I do and anything I put my name to. And so I would say, if you look at the cohort of dishes, there's definitely

ones that I'll have more than others. Right. So for example, I love that. I love that. I love chicken. I love our steak, but I wouldn't have steak as much for just another reason. It's freaking awesome steak. I just don't have as much red meat. That's a personal thing. How often do you think you should eat red meat? How often do I think I should eat red meat? I probably should eat it once a week. And do you think people in general shouldn't eat it more than that? No, I think it depends on everyone's, you know, essentially their nutritional levels and a lot of things. So there's some people who are super low on iron and they just don't have the ability to get it anywhere else or they you know they don't digest seafood as well and so they have to get

or chicken and their protein source has to come for red meat like there's it's it's very um unrealistic for me to sit here and say person x should not have more than this and put them in the same bracket as person why because then i'm going it's my form of bio individuality but also i don't know their data okay fair enough on the menu like i'm a leafy a leafy salad you have to have one on a menu because everyone loves a leafy salad that's probably what it is like we have a really cool leafy salad like it's got three different forms of lettuce and it comes with this confid shallot vinaigrette with a cheesy cracker it's delicious it's awesome but i love my brocolini which has been dunked in this beautiful honey drizzle and so like i'd probably prefer that over leafy for sure but that's just

me so you've so you've got strong preferences but everything on the menu you would you would order person. Yeah, exactly. It's like my, it's like every recipe I've made in any book. It's like, I'm going to have my favorites. Yeah. But what's your favorite? What's your favorite colored strap for wood? My favorite is blue and silver. Okay. And in part because a watch that I wear, actually, which I'm wearing, I wear often. And so they actually look very similar when I'm cool. That's cool. I got on a, like a master's green right now. Yeah, it's really, it's really cool master's green. Yeah. That's the ghost throughout its best. So, You just ran the Boston Marathon.

I did, man. Have you done a bunch of marathons before? Yeah, so I've done about six New Yorks. I've done a few hours, done Austin, a bunch of other small events as well. So, yeah, I'd say I've done that. I've done Leadville or attempted Leadville. I've done a lot of, like, ultras leading up to Leadville. But yeah, man, I've done a lot of running.

We've got some of your whoop data here, which you shared with us, which I'll bring up in a second. What was your, what was your, you know, sort of use of. of whoop going into this if if at all how did you think about using it so whoop was really good for me to know my chilled zones as I said earlier like going through a pretty hectic 12 week block I was really intentional with my downtime I knew that my coach set out like a really good training plan and if you talk have you told me to like work I'll be out of work if you said reps do the reps I do the reps where it's really important for me was helping me actually be really intentional with my goal, I had to be really intentional with my recovery.

So if I was going to a weekend and my mates were like, you're coming out, I'm like, yeah, but like I know that in my back of my head, I'm going to get up early because I want to go do this on a Sunday, or I want to spend time with my girlfriend, or I want to do these things that I know more importantly than just my recovery, but I know that it helped me relax and chill out. So knowing my stress monitor was a huge factor, knowing my daily strain was a huge factor. But also, like, I think in general, what people don't realize, and I said before, is restority sleep more than anything was what I was focusing on leading into this race. How much restorative sleep will you try to get a night?

Five hours. That's a lot. Yeah. So that speaks to probably, if I had to guess, I think that's probably the single thing I would point to now for why you have such a low resting heart rate and why you can take on so much strain every day. Yeah. So for people listening, over five hours of restorative sleep is very outlier level. So you probably spend seven hours in bed or something like that. So to get over five hours of restorative sleep on seven hours in bed is, that's almost like freakishly productive, which is awesome.

So I'm super efficient. Yeah. That's what we say. That's unbelievably efficient. And my girlfriend's really annoyed at me because Melana will get like, she loves eight hours of sleep. Okay. So she would look at her daughter and be like, you did like two and a half hours less time in bed than me and you had more restorative sleep. Yeah. Everyone, everyone listening to this who understands it should be jealous. That's pretty awesome. Five and a half hours or five plus hours of restorative sleep. No wonder you're so productive.

All right. So let's look at the breakdown of the race. So this is interesting. activity strain 20.7 that's not that surprising you top clicked max heart rate 183 average heart rate 153 your max heart rate's probably right around 183 I'd say so yep so you spent 76 percent of your marathon in zone four it's pretty interesting that's that's actually pretty impressive because that's probably the highest and most painful level you could be at for three plus hours, right? Whereas at Zone 5, you were there for like 2% of the time or roughly five minutes.

It'd be hard to be at Zone 5 for, you know, 45 minutes or an hour or something, right? Can I just say this is so interesting, having someone read your daughter, 24 hours off the completing event, buy back to you. This is what everyone needs after this is great. Your Zone 1 and 2 is very low, 9 minutes, 14 minutes, not surprisingly. zone 3 23 minutes so really most of the time you were in zone 4 and if we compare that to everyone who just ran the marathon that's pretty cool so we've got we've got the averages of everyone who just ran the marathon from yesterday on whoop that is and let's see we've got zone 4 was 49%

for everyone running the marathon and zone 5 was 22% so you were a little bit more more efficient, I would argue. Nice. Spent more time in Zone 4. And then Zone 3 was also higher. 17%, you were there for 10%.

Do you want to, do people know what zones are? Do we need to describe? Yeah, why don't you describe them? So zones are typically periods of where your heart rate is and is typically described by a band of heart rate ranges.

So you've got zone, and this is still quite by, by individual based on your preference but zone one zones one is up until i can't have it the top of my head so in one zone two pretty much go up to like around 1 30ish am i right in saying that yeah you're in the right district so so a good way to think about it is as percent of max right so your zone 5 would be 90 to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate your zone 4 would be 80 to 90 percent your zone through to be 70, 80, so forth on down. So you were between like 150 beats per minute and like 170 beats per minute for most of the race. Cool. Yeah. Cooking. Yeah. So you,

you were moving. Your 90 days leading up to the marathon, you had an average day strain of 18, which is quite high. Your resting heart rate on average was 31 beats per minute. That's pretty amazing, HRV of 108 and recovery score. So 55%. You had 12 reds, 53 yellows and 25 greens. So you actually spent a fair amount of time in the red and the yellow. Yeah, a lot of travel. Yeah, you were pushing yourself. Yeah. What do you find causes your reds? May, that was just, I was in Australia for two weeks. Then I went to, came back to New York for two nights, went to L.A. for 10 days. and came back to New York for a night and then came here. Like, that was just like, you know, promoting a cookbook and trying to a marathon on a very

quick time. I don't, I don't recommend it to anyone, but if you want to do it, just do a lot of restorative sleep. You have the lowest resting heart rate out of everyone your age and you're in the top point three percent of strain. So you're really like the ultimate, like, you know, work hard. recover hard this is a good place to me dude and that's that's been your resume i like that do i just become the poster boy of like work hard play hard for whoop yeah yeah uh well

congratulations on on the marathon did you run in in a time you were hoping to no no i was trying to sub three but you know as you probably see from the graph um mile 15 onwards was tough okay yeah knee knee went out but also just uh it was very hot so i got a trophy i got a trophy i got a trophy dude i've got two i've got two majors now but i'll i'll get that third one man it's um it's interesting i probably would have done like a 303 if i uh that's what you're on pace for yeah i was on i was on i was pace for before having to succumb the injury but i did you had a real i just saw i got a really good video of me in front of the whole whoop team was great so i can't wait to share that on my socials as well we've got well hopefully is a longstanding tradition

of creating whoop corner yeah dude which is like a mile before the end of the race for people who listen who don't know and it's got our huge whoop sign on the building and now we've like plastered this enormous whoop sign around the building man you can't miss it you come through you're going you're running i saw it i'm like oh let's go running down i'm feeling it and i was like i don't know if they can see me like i couldn't tell but so i literally in front of it i stopped and started like pumping my fists and it was just so excited me in front of the whole squad it was awesome well definitely the folks on the balcony looking down at you from whoop saw you for sure for sure man it's good in front of family what's uh what's next so i got this man obviously this uh this awesome

cookbook being released which has been like my bread and butter the past two years effectively and then get back into new york and get the podcast up and more fun and games and some cooking shows so yeah more more do we had and obviously i've got leadville and um some more athletic events coming up. So if you were to advise someone to lose weight purely through nutrition, what would be your advice? Cut out refined sugar. Number one thing would be cut out refined sugar. It's amazing how much of an effect that has on our system. You know, and that's like if you think about it, I can't remember the exact stat, but in particularly in the states, It's like we see added sugar to everything, whether it be tea, coffee, you know, in your

syrups, you name it, cereal that is store-bought, packaged food store-bought. So, like, I just say, if you can just control that, control the controllable, don't add any refined sugar. So that's number one, and you'll already see dramatic change there. I would say that people argue the case between plant-based and obnivorous, and I can say you this firsthand when I look at athletes, which is probably the. extreme case, the biggest indicator on performance and including weight loss and all those things isn't actually whether you're plant-based or omnivorous, it's how much plants you are

having. Because we now know if you look at the gut, the gut has all these beautiful probiotics that need to be fed pre-biotics. Pre-biotics come in the form of either resistant starch or dietary fiber. And each one of those specific dietary fiber is corresponding with the receptor of the probiotic and their role. And once that probiotic breaks down the pre-botic, it creates a post-biotic. And so when you look at that, the post-botic has a number of different benefits, not only to our stomach lining, to controlling messenger systems and allowing us to know and we're full all these kind of endocrine response, the blood-brain barrier, allowing

things to pass through the blood-brain, into the brain properly. Look at all these factors. And all that is how you optim, is helps optimize every form. of process your body goes through. So simply having more plants, a wide variety of plants, will allow you to perform better. So I'd say cut out refined sugar,

eat more plants, and then move, just move as best you can. Just go on a walk. You'd be surprised at those basic principles and how much they can help you. Well, there you have it, folks. That's the advice that you need

if you're on your journey to weight loss. Now, but this has been awesome, Dan. And you've so much advice and just like such a wide range of categories. So congratulations on everything today. And it's great being with you. Appreciate you. Thanks for everything you do as well, man. And it's great to be part of the awesome company.

All right. Thanks. Thanks to Dan for joining me today to discuss all things health, nutrition, performance. Once again, our spring sale ends on Sunday. That's 10% off a WOOP membership. If you enjoy this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. If you have a question was answered on the podcast, email us,

podcastooop.com. Call us 508-44349.52. If you're thinking about joining Woop, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership. New members can use the code Will to get a $60 credit on WOOP accessories. And that's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast.

As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.