Speaker 1: Today. It's great to chat with Dave Asbury, Founder and
Speaker 1: chairman of Bulletproof. Dave is a three time New York
Speaker 1: Times bestselling science author, host of the Webby Award winning
Speaker 1: podcast Bulletproof Radio, and has been featured on The Today Show, CNN,
Speaker 1: The New York Times, doctor Ozen Moore. His latest book,
Speaker 1: among many great books, is called Fast This Way, Burn fat, heel, inflammation,
Speaker 1: and eat like the high performing human you are meant
Speaker 1: to be. Dave, so great to chat with you today, Scott.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure. I'm a big fan of your work.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned to you multiple times when I talk about
Speaker 1: the four F words in Fastest Way, things that drive
Speaker 1: human behavior. But there's another one, you know, around transcendence
Speaker 1: and you know, being more connected to more than just
Speaker 1: yourself and all that. So thanks for the inspiration, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. You know, the feelings mutual. After I was
Speaker 1: on your gracious enough to have me on your podcast,
Speaker 1: I was left with this feeling of you know this
Speaker 1: this this is a cool cut. You know it was
Speaker 1: such an effortless conversation we had, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: there was no there was no like effort there. So
Speaker 1: I love when that happens. Yeah, that's the best podcast
Speaker 1: or conversations you want to have anyway, and you just
Speaker 1: have a few hundred thousand people listening in because they
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. Then everybody wins. Yeah, well so we
Speaker 1: want to talk about I hope I got your bio right.
Speaker 1: I couldn't actually see anything on the screen, so I
Speaker 1: was doing predictive text. But I hope, I hope, but
Speaker 1: I got all the words everything. But now it's four
Speaker 1: times in your time, so teller it fastest way. Just
Speaker 1: hit the list again for second week. So this is
Speaker 1: my fourth book on the list, which is kind of
Speaker 1: I feel like a real author. At a certain point,
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, I think I'm there, congratulations, thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this book, and I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of start at the beginning, if we can, with this
Speaker 1: vision because I had to be completely honest, I never
Speaker 1: even was I wasn't familiar with the phrase vision quest,
Speaker 1: and then it took me down. Yeah, I mean people
Speaker 1: are shocked by that. They're like, the author of transcend
Speaker 1: has never been on a vision quest with a shaman.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, this is a new territory for me.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that experience and maybe why I should try
Speaker 1: us a vision quest sometime. So tell me about what
Speaker 1: it was like. You know, why why did you look
Speaker 1: into it? I mean, you just were spontaneous. You went
Speaker 1: on to Google and you typed like you just went
Speaker 1: to the first shaman that showed up. I mean, I
Speaker 1: couldn't even imagine that that have a high having a
Speaker 1: high probability of turning out well in retrospect. The appropriate
Speaker 1: way to find a shaman who's a good fit for
Speaker 1: you is to ask around and to get a personal referral. Right,
Speaker 1: And I have been through Alberta Vodo's shamanic training, at
Speaker 1: least the beginning of his training program. And I did
Speaker 1: that after I did certainly after I did. I was
Speaker 1: kind I believe after I did the work in the cave. No,
Speaker 1: I did it before I did the work in the cave.
Speaker 1: But what it comes down to is, in some traditional
Speaker 1: cultures in North America, but not all of them, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, there are various rituals and as a
Speaker 1: coming of age or when there was a big change
Speaker 1: in your life, you would basically go out with a
Speaker 1: loincloth and a knife or whatever the traditional minimal garb was,
Speaker 1: and you would live in the wilderness fasting until you
Speaker 1: had a vision, and you'd come back with your vision.
Speaker 1: And quite often this was done for young men when
Speaker 1: they'd get to know age of adolescence, kind of to
Speaker 1: celebrate adulthood, and at various other special times through life.
Speaker 1: And if you're more on the medicinal side of things,
Speaker 1: more on the spiritual side of things, you might do
Speaker 1: regular fasts in solitude. And it's a long standing tradition,
Speaker 1: not even just in North America. You know, I have
Speaker 1: a encyclopedia of shamanism around here somewhere looks at these
Speaker 1: practices around the world. So there's a long history of
Speaker 1: doing this. And I don't think it's fair for any
Speaker 1: one culture to say that they own fasting, because you know,
Speaker 1: the people in India and the people in China. It's
Speaker 1: a global thing. In fact, one of the guests on
Speaker 1: the show, Dan Brown, who I believe is at Harvard,
Speaker 1: He's translated the thirteenth century text direct from Sanskrit. Looking
Speaker 1: at mystery writer. No, no, he has the same name
Speaker 1: as a mystery writer. This is a really experienced either
Speaker 1: psychology or psychiatry professor who also knows Sanskrit and translates
Speaker 1: thirteenth century cave yoga texts about how to do breathing
Speaker 1: and fasting in cave. So like, this goes way back
Speaker 1: and it's a universal thing. And in my case in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, you know, given I didn't quite
Speaker 1: yet know how to properly work with the spiritual side
Speaker 1: of things the way I know now, I just connected
Speaker 1: through serendipity with someone who could take me out and
Speaker 1: it was it was interesting, to say the least, because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect. And when you go
Speaker 1: on a spiritual path and do some kind of transformative thing,
Speaker 1: and it can be anything transcendent, right, you get an
Speaker 1: idea and it kind of sits in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind and it percolates and eventually you feel cold
Speaker 1: to do it. The same thing happened when I went
Speaker 1: to Mount Kailash in the very remote part of western Tibetan,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the Mount Olympus of the Mount
Speaker 1: Olympus of the East. You know where the gods live
Speaker 1: if you're Hindu or Buddhist, this is you know, the
Speaker 1: home of them, and no one would climb the mountain,
Speaker 1: but you walk into circle around two show respect. So
Speaker 1: I just heard about this southing for ten years and
Speaker 1: the opportunity presented itself when I was in New Poll
Speaker 1: and I'm like, all right, and I'm want a bust
Speaker 1: to lasa. It just happens, right. So this was one
Speaker 1: of those situations where I just felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I need to do this, but
Speaker 1: I knew part of it was I had issues with
Speaker 1: just afraid of being alone, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: have this. And what I learned through my personal development
Speaker 1: process of just becoming who I am is that fear
Speaker 1: is never a rational thing. Fear isn't a thought, It's
Speaker 1: a feeling, and so feelings don't have to have any
Speaker 1: reason for them. But this is something that will drive
Speaker 1: people to be in bad relationships longer than they should.
Speaker 1: It'll drive and sustain a job that's bad for them.
Speaker 1: It'll drive them, you know, to to not look inward
Speaker 1: because as long as there's someone else around, you can
Speaker 1: look there. So I thought, all right, I know I
Speaker 1: have residual stuff around that. I also know I'm eat
Speaker 1: when I eat when I'm lonely, and I'm afraid of fasting.
Speaker 1: I know that if I fast, I'm gon act like
Speaker 1: a jerk, and I've been three hundred pounds. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. So I'm like, Okay, this is great.
Speaker 1: Four days in the cave. There's a spiritual aspect to it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to push my loneliness fear. I'm going to
Speaker 1: push my hunger fear. But there's no people, there's no food,
Speaker 1: so there's no temptation and let me see what happens.
Speaker 1: And that was why I did it. It was also
Speaker 1: my first four day fast. Is your first four day?
Speaker 1: I mean to just jump into the deep end like that.
Speaker 1: You know, must have taken some courage there. So when
Speaker 1: you emerge from this cave, what insights did you have
Speaker 1: then about about how revolutionary fasting can be? The thing
Speaker 1: that just blew my mind. Okay, I was of the mindset.
Speaker 1: And this was before I wrote The Bulletproof Die, and
Speaker 1: I've been teaching people that are men fast for more
Speaker 1: than ten years. People lost a million plus pounds on
Speaker 1: the stuff that I do in my books, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know any of that, and so for me, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, I'm going to be so weak, like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get picked up at the end of this,
Speaker 1: and I'll probably just be a zombie on the fourth
Speaker 1: day when it was time to get picked up. During
Speaker 1: the fast, you have a cell phone but not a smartphone,
Speaker 1: and in the morning you wake up, you some to
Speaker 1: text that's basically I'm not dead, and then you get
Speaker 1: to a text thumbs up, and then you turn off
Speaker 1: the phone and you know you're all by yourself. But
Speaker 1: what happened is I got a text. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: be at the trailhead at noon or whatever, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll just walk to this other cave
Speaker 1: where I know there's another person. I'm feeling so good,
Speaker 1: so I poured down most of my water, I kept
Speaker 1: a canteen, throw my sleeping bag, my jack in my backpack,
Speaker 1: and I was just like glowing with energy, way more
Speaker 1: than I'd had in a long time. And I ended
Speaker 1: up getting lost in the desert and I climbed the
Speaker 1: wrong mountain no battery, and it's getting in the sun
Speaker 1: side his head and I'm like, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in the desert. I know survival and mountaineering and
Speaker 1: all water going to it's not going to be pretty
Speaker 1: I had. I had one canteen full of water. Who
Speaker 1: wants to carry three gallons of water with you? Right?
Speaker 1: But it was uh. I didn't have a concern in
Speaker 1: the world. I'm like, things are, things are fine. And
Speaker 1: I was so full of energy I could have walked
Speaker 1: a marathon. I ended up walking about ten miles with
Speaker 1: no food for four days, and I wasn't sore, wasn't tired.
Speaker 1: I just felt great the whole time. And you know,
Speaker 1: right right as my battery was almost dead, of course,
Speaker 1: I just found my way to the right road, and
Speaker 1: you know, found actually found a road and found the truck,
Speaker 1: and everything was good. But the fact that I could
Speaker 1: walk around feeling fantastic, just enjoying the sky and looking
Speaker 1: at all the cactus and the snakes and the creatures
Speaker 1: of the desert, not a care in the world without
Speaker 1: any food, Like are you kidding? That was completely transformative
Speaker 1: because I realized, you know, that feeling that you have,
Speaker 1: that's if I don't eat, I'm going to die. It
Speaker 1: takes you three months to starve to death, maybe two months,
Speaker 1: depending on your metabolism. So if you skip lunch or
Speaker 1: just get breakfast, you're not starving. You're not even in
Speaker 1: the world of starving, but that's what your body believes,
Speaker 1: that's what your body makes you feel, and then you
Speaker 1: act on it. That helped me to see that it
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons that I felt really comfortable
Speaker 1: with intermitt fasting is one of the very early people
Speaker 1: talking about this as a thing you can do, and
Speaker 1: that was, you know, a big inspiration for the beginnings
Speaker 1: of the bullet of your diet. Now, why did you
Speaker 1: start bulletproof? What was the what was the what did
Speaker 1: you feel like it was missing in the market at
Speaker 1: that time? Wow, that's a big question. I know. In
Speaker 1: order to lose the one hundred pounds that I've lost,
Speaker 1: and I've kept off for a long time, I struggled.
Speaker 1: I mean I was a raw vegan. I did liquid
Speaker 1: diets of various types, even going back into the eighties.
Speaker 1: I'm talking like I'm sixteen and trying a liquid diet
Speaker 1: because I'm fat, and look, I can lose twenty pounds
Speaker 1: in a week and you gained thirty two weeks later.
Speaker 1: And these aren't eating disordering kind of things. These are
Speaker 1: a sincere desire to lose you know, fifty or one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds that need to go. I tried Atkins and
Speaker 1: I lost fifty of the one hundred pounds, which is
Speaker 1: an early form of keto. And it took me ten
Speaker 1: more years, in thousands of papers and just deciding to
Speaker 1: take control of my own biology to get the other
Speaker 1: fifty pounds to stay off. And I looked at every
Speaker 1: diet book out there, and all of them focused on
Speaker 1: just one thing, and the guys know. So I wrote
Speaker 1: the Bulletproof Diet because this is a diet that accounts
Speaker 1: for things that have become major trends. It had intermittent fasting,
Speaker 1: It had keto that cyclical. It had don't eat omegas,
Speaker 1: seed oils in steady grass fed animals and things like that.
Speaker 1: It had avoid plant toxins like lectins that are causing
Speaker 1: inflammation for you, and of course, you know, don't eat sugar.
Speaker 1: So it had five things that have basically become more
Speaker 1: and more trendy over the last ten years, all into
Speaker 1: one book, because you have to do them all if
Speaker 1: you want the maximum human performance. But that's why I
Speaker 1: wrote the book. I started the blog because I've run
Speaker 1: an anti aging nonprofit group in Palo Aldo in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley and I did it for more than ten years.
Speaker 1: I was the only guy under fifty in the room,
Speaker 1: and I'm learning so much precious knowledge from my elders.
Speaker 1: And we're four minutes from Google's headquarters and no one
Speaker 1: from Google ever shows up. I'm like, but don't they
Speaker 1: understand this is the stuff that makes your brain work better,
Speaker 1: this stuff that makes you stay young, Like this is
Speaker 1: so precious. And I realized the problem was the language.
Speaker 1: So I sat down with my board and I said, guys,
Speaker 1: we should start sharing this in a blog and me
Speaker 1: do some video and all this stuff. And they argued
Speaker 1: for three months over the name of the blog, and
Speaker 1: I just I was like, you know what, it's okay.
Speaker 1: This doesn't have to be nonprofit. Is just going to
Speaker 1: be my blog. So I started writing all of this
Speaker 1: knowledge accumulated from more than a decade of intense self
Speaker 1: experimentation and research. I'm just going to put it out there.
Speaker 1: Five people read the blog, and when they read the blog,
Speaker 1: it's going to help them not suffer the way I suffered.
Speaker 1: I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars recovering my health
Speaker 1: and becoming as healthy as I am now. Actually a
Speaker 1: lot of that on the upgrades. It's more than a
Speaker 1: million dollars, but a lot of that I didn't need
Speaker 1: to do. I didn't need to suffer for a decade.
Speaker 1: I didn't need to do all that. I just needed
Speaker 1: clear guidance. So I put it down. I know it's
Speaker 1: going to help a few people, and it turns out
Speaker 1: more than a few people were interested, and it took
Speaker 1: off with like developers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, then
Speaker 1: Wall Street, and from there it went to Hollywood and
Speaker 1: the recording industry. Because these are all people with high
Speaker 1: mental demand, who they want to look a certain way,
Speaker 1: they want to feel a certain way. But because this
Speaker 1: was what people learned, their brains to work. And sure
Speaker 1: they want to look good, but they want their brains
Speaker 1: to work because who cares if you look God, if
Speaker 1: you can't remember your lines right. And the entrepreneurs always
Speaker 1: have more work to do. And if you're sitting in
Speaker 1: a meeting and you're a zombie, it's a dead meeting.
Speaker 1: And you know it. I live that way growing my
Speaker 1: career in Silicon Valley, and I was faking it and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people faking it right now.
Speaker 1: I just want to sincerely not let people do that.
Speaker 1: I had a VP level job at a public company
Speaker 1: with stock options when I started bulletproof. It was not
Speaker 1: meant to be a business. When I decided to make
Speaker 1: coffee and MCT oil, but especially coffee that didn't have
Speaker 1: toxins in it, so I could find coffee that wouldn't
Speaker 1: give me a headache and make me want to punch people,
Speaker 1: like maybe one hundred people care. The market size for
Speaker 1: clean coffee was zero, and it's one hundred million dollar category.
Speaker 1: The market size for MCT was nothing. It's a billion
Speaker 1: dollar category for college and protein billion dollar category and
Speaker 1: I did all three of those because you couldn't buy it,
Speaker 1: And like that was it? Just make stuff you can't buy?
Speaker 1: Are you the one that made MCT like the thing
Speaker 1: to buy? Like, yep, that was me. I never heard.
Speaker 1: There was a point where I never heard about it before,
Speaker 1: and then there's a point where I heard about it
Speaker 1: all the time. Okay, but you knock it off and
Speaker 1: there's some subtle chemistry involved in making in the right way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I made MCT the thing, Dave, I did
Speaker 1: some this morning, and I'm too jacked up. What what
Speaker 1: do you recommend for it? I usually love it, but
Speaker 1: today I think I took too I drank too much
Speaker 1: of your coffee to my heart is powering this something
Speaker 1: is too much of my coffee. But cure is another
Speaker 1: cops guy? Is that so you could go off the
Speaker 1: cliff and then return back to normal. I'm totally don't
Speaker 1: do that. By the way, I'm not blaming your I
Speaker 1: mean I I'm not blaming your coffee. I'm saying and
Speaker 1: that's my own fault for taking drinking. I was so
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you today. I was so excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you today that I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna you know, I'm gonna wear the glasses. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have like five cups of MC you know of uh
Speaker 1: your coffee, five cups of bulgro did you? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I had a couple. I had a couple and then
Speaker 1: but I but both of them. I had MCT, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you gave me butter as well. You gave
Speaker 1: me all these things to put it. I put it
Speaker 1: all in. I put it on. Yeah. Yeah, Like, why
Speaker 1: is my heart wanting to beet out of its chest
Speaker 1: right now? That's just caffeine. Okay, you got overcaffeinated and
Speaker 1: that's a simple thing. What happens with MCT is your body,
Speaker 1: especially if you haven't done in keto diet or any
Speaker 1: intermint fasting ever before. Your body is like, oh, thank god,
Speaker 1: I finally got the ability to make more electrons in
Speaker 1: my mitochondria, and your neurons light up the same way
Speaker 1: I felt on that fourth day of fasting. I was
Speaker 1: running all in keytnes. That was part of the reason
Speaker 1: I was so energetic. You get that when you drink
Speaker 1: bulletrough coffee because the MCT that's specific kind that's in
Speaker 1: there turns into keytnes very efficiently in the body, and
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden, your neurons have more electrons
Speaker 1: than they did before. So now you've got too much
Speaker 1: caffeine and your neurons like, yeah, I got the energy right,
Speaker 1: and that combination is pretty potent. Yeah, I'd say. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, give me a marathon, Give me a marathon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you get too much caffeine like that, there's something
Speaker 1: called elphenine. It's an amino acid that helps you chill
Speaker 1: out of you know, I should have taken that. I
Speaker 1: have some rate. I'll take like three hundred milligrams of
Speaker 1: that it'll like a fit things out. I see it
Speaker 1: on my desk. But anyway, okay, so your your your
Speaker 1: story is very interesting. I mean you you said once
Speaker 1: to like on a Lewis House Uh interview, that like
Speaker 1: you had more estrogen than your mom or something and
Speaker 1: twenty six and then less testosterone than her, and and
Speaker 1: that was you know, you had health. The point here
Speaker 1: is you had I'm not like knocking people with the
Speaker 1: low testosterone, but the point here is that you had
Speaker 1: certain health situation condition that you didn't know. Tronic fatigue syndrome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like fibro miles, like every lime disease, every bad thing, toxic,
Speaker 1: put everything bad, a lot of things. I had arthritis,
Speaker 1: high risk of stroke and heart attack, pre diabetes. It
Speaker 1: was all in there before I was thirty. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it's okay to knock people or lower
Speaker 1: and testosterone guys and women. If you're low on testosterone
Speaker 1: and you know it in a lab test, you can
Speaker 1: fix it. You either change your sleep and change your
Speaker 1: saturated fat intake. And if that doesn't work, you can
Speaker 1: use external bioidentical testosterone the way I do, and it'll
Speaker 1: change your brain and it'll change your life. It'll give
Speaker 1: you your zest for life back right, And there's no
Speaker 1: It's just like taking a thyroid hormone or anything else.
Speaker 1: If you're low and your body's not making it, you
Speaker 1: can take control of your biology and you will love
Speaker 1: your life when you do it. And it has side
Speaker 1: effects where oh yeah, you might like your better activities better,
Speaker 1: but that's not why you do it. You do it
Speaker 1: because it makes you like you. Well. I find like
Speaker 1: weight I'm really into weightlifting, and I find that that
Speaker 1: just naturally increases my Testostering heavy lifting will do it.
Speaker 1: But but you know, there's like an insult that's going
Speaker 1: around though, like they call people like soy boys or whatever,
Speaker 1: like I don't like. I don't like that, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like insulting people. Insulting people is rude and
Speaker 1: it's unnecessary, and it means you're insecure in your belief system.
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious about my belief system. You know,
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong about something, I like to see the evidence,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll test it. What I recommend to
Speaker 1: people has been extensively tested and it's directionally very accurate
Speaker 1: and it's the test of time. But hey, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: there's some tweaks I could do. Yeah, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: need to take my glasses off at some point. Of course,
Speaker 1: I created the company and wrote the patents on why
Speaker 1: they work. So I'm pretty sure they work. But you
Speaker 1: show me they don't and I'll change my behavior and
Speaker 1: it's okay, right, yeah, so you yes, you're right. So
Speaker 1: you you you say something really interesting in your book.
Speaker 1: You say going without doesn't mean going without everything, and well,
Speaker 1: this is a common theme. I feel like you talk
Speaker 1: about that throughout this book. You know, like it you
Speaker 1: can still try this faster. You have this like rule, right,
Speaker 1: like a certain amount of days and a certain can
Speaker 1: you tell us this role that you that you talk
Speaker 1: about in your book and so people can get like
Speaker 1: started on the right foot. Sure. The definition of fasting
Speaker 1: is to go without. And what fasting is is to
Speaker 1: show the body that it's not going to die when
Speaker 1: you don't get something that you feel like you need.
Speaker 1: And for me, I felt like I needed to be
Speaker 1: around people all the time or I would get stressed. Right.
Speaker 1: That was my body thinking that I was going to
Speaker 1: die if I didn't have something else time. It was
Speaker 1: not a true thing, but it's a thing that felt true,
Speaker 1: and you feel like if you don't have lunch, you're starving.
Speaker 1: In fact, you probably say it like that, I'm starving,
Speaker 1: let's go eat. Well, you're not actually starving, it just
Speaker 1: feels like that. That's because you're having hunger cravings because
Speaker 1: you haven't learned how to eat the right stuff, or
Speaker 1: you haven't learned how to fast. And you can fast
Speaker 1: from masturbation. You can fast from alcohol. You can fast
Speaker 1: from carbs. It's called a cato diet. You can fast
Speaker 1: from animal products. It's called making yourself sick with a
Speaker 1: vegan diet. I mean, you can do all these things.
Speaker 1: But fasting is simply saying I think I need this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to show myself that I don't for some
Speaker 1: period of time. You can fast from air. It's called
Speaker 1: breath work. It's oh, I'm going to breathe out and
Speaker 1: hold my lungs empty for ten whole seconds. The first
Speaker 1: time you do that, it's going to feel really anxious,
Speaker 1: and eventually like, you know what, I can own this.
Speaker 1: I know that at a certain point air is the
Speaker 1: right thing. But your anxiety goes down. Every time you
Speaker 1: fast from something you think you need. It creates more
Speaker 1: free energy for the rest of your life once you
Speaker 1: show yourself that you didn't need it as bad as
Speaker 1: you thought you did. And even with the people who
Speaker 1: are really rich, you can only have water during a fast.
Speaker 1: I like, I don't know, guys. I know some people
Speaker 1: who think you can have water, the think you should
Speaker 1: have fasting without water. So which one is the real fast?
Speaker 1: And the reality is let's look at the biochemistry of fasting.
Speaker 1: So whenever you go twelve hours without food, you've done
Speaker 1: a little miniature fast, and a lot of people do
Speaker 1: that without knowing it, and there's evidence that says benefits
Speaker 1: start to kick in. But if you do fourteen or
Speaker 1: sixteen or eighteen hours without food, you get a lot
Speaker 1: more benefits. But you don't have to do it every day,
Speaker 1: and you might find that it works better every day.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people say, well, I felt really
Speaker 1: good on a fourteen hour fast, so I started doing
Speaker 1: eighteen hour fasts, and then I did them every day,
Speaker 1: and then once a week I would just only eat
Speaker 1: once a day, so I was doing twenty three hour
Speaker 1: fast and then every weekend I fast two days. And
Speaker 1: if it works for you, that's great, But for a
Speaker 1: lot of people they because it worked at first, they
Speaker 1: keep doing it more and more and more, and it's
Speaker 1: overfasting and it creates a lot of biological stress. And
Speaker 1: I see women messing with their hormones. First sleep, than hormones,
Speaker 1: then thinning hair, and with men it's sleep, then it's
Speaker 1: a different hormone. But you basically wake up without a
Speaker 1: kickstand and then you get thinning hair. And it's overfasting.
Speaker 1: So just because some is good doesn't mean more as better.
Speaker 1: So it's like a comfortable kind of fasting. And there
Speaker 1: is a working fast, and there's a spiritual fast. And
Speaker 1: we talked about the spiritual fast and there's some cool
Speaker 1: things that happen there. But in fact, I'll talk a
Speaker 1: bit more about the spirit side a minute. But a
Speaker 1: working fast, Okay, you've got two kids running around the house,
Speaker 1: maybe I do right and are not at school like
Speaker 1: you'd want them to be. You're trying to focus on
Speaker 1: this meeting, you're trying to get something done, and you've
Speaker 1: never fasted before and you had a glass of water
Speaker 1: for breakfast. What's going to happen is you're going to
Speaker 1: get angry, and you're going to be cold, and you're
Speaker 1: probably going to get shaky from hypoglycemia, and you feel
Speaker 1: like crap, you're not going to show up in your life.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to fast again because it's too miserable. Well,
Speaker 1: there are hacks for fasts that allow you to get
Speaker 1: the metabolic benefits of fasting, so your metabolism becomes stronger
Speaker 1: and more flexible and you're not even thinking about food.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, you develop a fasting practice.
Speaker 1: And you do that for a few months, and oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I could have just water, but I'll probably
Speaker 1: have black coffee, and oh tomorrow I was tired. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll make it a bulletproof. But the science about what's
Speaker 1: happening in the body, we understand it now in a
Speaker 1: way we didn't ten years ago. And you maintain this
Speaker 1: amazing system called autophogy where your body instead of digesting food,
Speaker 1: it digests old cells that are zombie cells or cells
Speaker 1: that are weak. Think of it. If you have like
Speaker 1: one of those old Las vegas on billboards, a couple
Speaker 1: bulbs are dem well, you'd want to replace the dim ones.
Speaker 1: When you stop eating all the time, your body has
Speaker 1: the digestive energy to digest the weak bulbs and grow
Speaker 1: new strong ones. And it's a really powerful thing because
Speaker 1: you're not going to get diabetes if you get breakfast
Speaker 1: most mornings. And let's think return on investment. I spent
Speaker 1: no money, no time, no energy on breakfast. I felt
Speaker 1: better that morning than when I ate, and then I
Speaker 1: didn't get diabetes. Like I got paid up front, and
Speaker 1: I got returns that day, and I got returns next year.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic thing. That sounds amazing. It sounds amazing
Speaker 1: billion billion. Our question is how can you over when
Speaker 1: you feel that urge? You know, because you distinguished between
Speaker 1: hunger and craving, and that was actually really I mean,
Speaker 1: that was really important. It was a ca you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm not going to die, you know when I
Speaker 1: have this craving, you know, like if I don't satisfy
Speaker 1: it right and and even I can trade myself to
Speaker 1: overcome it in many different areas of my life, like
Speaker 1: you talk about, you know, like you know, we meditate,
Speaker 1: you say, because we're fasting from thinking. Like I like
Speaker 1: that phrasing. I like that. You know, there's various things
Speaker 1: we do to train us to give us the muscle
Speaker 1: to be able to not be ruled. Is it doesn't
Speaker 1: all this just come down to not being a slave
Speaker 1: to our cravings, you know. In a way, I think
Speaker 1: it comes down to not being a slave to your mitochondria.
Speaker 1: These are ancient bacteria. They're embedded in every cell in
Speaker 1: your body. They sense the world about a quarter second
Speaker 1: before you become aware of it, and they make decisions.
Speaker 1: They make neurotransmitters, they make hormones, then they make energy,
Speaker 1: and they believe that you are a walking Petri dish
Speaker 1: and they do not care that you're in there right,
Speaker 1: you're an unwelcome guest. That their job is to keep
Speaker 1: them meat alive and make sure you reproduce. So they
Speaker 1: follow the rules that every life form does. If it's scary,
Speaker 1: take all energy, put it there, run away from kill
Speaker 1: or hide. And then if you have more energy, use
Speaker 1: it to eat everything, which is why we eat everything.
Speaker 1: And if you have energy left after that, have sex
Speaker 1: with everything else, because that's what all life does, right,
Speaker 1: and pretty much that's everything everyone's ever done that they're
Speaker 1: ashamed of comes from one of those three things. And
Speaker 1: they're all driven by ancient code written in bacteria. And
Speaker 1: that means when you get that sensation of oh my god,
Speaker 1: I have to eat. It's you know, quadrillion ancient bacteria
Speaker 1: going you should eat right and why they're telling you that.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's beause your blood sugar is just regulated. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because you ate something in your last meal that
Speaker 1: caused a perturbation in the system, and they're saying you
Speaker 1: gotta have energy right now. And so a craving is
Speaker 1: intense desire to eat. I didn't know that you could
Speaker 1: feel hungry because I thought cravings were hunger, and like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling hungry, man, I really want some food. I
Speaker 1: can wait fifteen minutes, but I gotta eat really soon.
Speaker 1: That's a craving. What hunger is is, you know what
Speaker 1: my energy levels are, get a little bit low. I
Speaker 1: probably would be better off if I eat in the
Speaker 1: next couple hours, but I could wait a day. Hunger
Speaker 1: is a gentle thing and it's not a scary thing.
Speaker 1: But cravings are intense, and people eat a lot of
Speaker 1: things that cause cravings. And what you find from fasting
Speaker 1: is if you wake up in the morning, like, man,
Speaker 1: my stomach's growling, I have this gnawing hunger and I
Speaker 1: just woke up. Well, it's what you ate for dinner.
Speaker 1: That's what did it, so the meal before the fast
Speaker 1: causes cravings, and I talk in fastest way, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the five big classes of things that you can
Speaker 1: eat that cause cravings. It might not cosset cravings for you,
Speaker 1: but it probably does. So why don't you not eat
Speaker 1: any of those in your next meal and then see
Speaker 1: how easy your fast is? And then have some of
Speaker 1: those in the meal after that and see how easier
Speaker 1: fast is. And I've led about thirty thousand people through
Speaker 1: a fasting challenge where I teach them how to do
Speaker 1: this for free, just if you read the book, or
Speaker 1: if you don't read the book Fastestweight dot Com. It's
Speaker 1: a free course where I'm teaching the book to people.
Speaker 1: And the whole point there is and people can sign
Speaker 1: up for it like it's a gift. I just I
Speaker 1: want this knowledge out there. And what you find is wow,
Speaker 1: you know some days are really intense hunger and some
Speaker 1: days aren't, and it's totally totally up to you. And
Speaker 1: then you realize, I don't want eat that anymore because
Speaker 1: it's not compatible with me because it makes me starving.
Speaker 1: And if you eat food that makes you hungry, or
Speaker 1: the food didn't work. That's really good. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: it's profound. Does that mean everything? Does that apply to
Speaker 1: everything in my life? Everything in terms of cravings or yeah,
Speaker 1: like that principle you know of like does that apply
Speaker 1: to relationships, you know, to attraction to people? I don't
Speaker 1: think it does to relationships and attraction. I mean you've
Speaker 1: studied that extensively with relationships though, that basic mitochondrial thing. Look,
Speaker 1: your body is actively sensing in ways you don't know,
Speaker 1: like pheromones. And you know, there's studies I've talked about
Speaker 1: him on on Bulletproof Radio where men will smell good
Speaker 1: to a woman and then he's attractive. But if there's
Speaker 1: a phenotype mismatch, the guy won't smell right. But if
Speaker 1: the woman's on birth control pills that monitor that modify hormones,
Speaker 1: she can't smell the guy. And there's actually divorces that
Speaker 1: have happened because the woman goes off the pill and
Speaker 1: her all a sudden, she's like, my husband doesn't smell
Speaker 1: good anymore, Like I'm not attracted at all. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you know that's a big part of it, where
Speaker 1: like the physical attraction was This is why okay, Kupa
Speaker 1: should have like scratch and sniff option. I've said that
Speaker 1: for years. You don't have the time, right, Oh, were
Speaker 1: in the same wave once again? Are we in the
Speaker 1: same wave of the way mine bell mind mouth? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it needs to be a scratch and sniff option. No,
Speaker 1: you're you're absolutely right. But okay, I'll focus on on
Speaker 1: the principles in your book for a second, because you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many diets out there, and I was
Speaker 1: reading it going through your book, I was like, I
Speaker 1: wonder what he thinks of like the keto diet, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what do you think you know? So I would like
Speaker 1: to just hone in on that bouse. I tried the
Speaker 1: Keo diet and made me angry, it really did. And
Speaker 1: can you explain to me the science of this why
Speaker 1: it made me? Explain exactly why? Yay. So The Bulletproof
Speaker 1: Diet was one of the first modern keto books. But
Speaker 1: it said use keto as a scalpel as a tool,
Speaker 1: and use it selectively, and don't stay in katosas for
Speaker 1: long periods of time. Use MTT oil when you want
Speaker 1: to get some ketones that have a lot of benefit
Speaker 1: some days, go for three, four or five days without
Speaker 1: eating carbs, but then need some carbs, and the keto
Speaker 1: diet kind of evolved to if it's not a carb,
Speaker 1: you could eat it, and you know, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of the keto bro mindset, and carbs are Back's what happened.
Speaker 1: And then you get companies that like, oh, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make a coffee with milk protein isolate, which
Speaker 1: is a garbage protein. It's like a waste product. We
Speaker 1: can't even get rid of it. But they put it
Speaker 1: in there and go, well, it's keto. It didn't have
Speaker 1: many sugar. You're like, guys, you put canoa oil in there.
Speaker 1: You put like garbage proteins that cause cravings. In fact,
Speaker 1: some milk proteins break down and I talked about it
Speaker 1: in the book into something that sticks to the opiate
Speaker 1: receptors in the brain. You're gonna want more of that
Speaker 1: the next day. Yeah, Gluten does that as well. It's
Speaker 1: called gluteomorphine, right, And this is why you have a
Speaker 1: piece of bread, You're gonna want one the next day
Speaker 1: and the next day and the next day. And so
Speaker 1: you just realized some foods are craving masters and some
Speaker 1: of them aren't. And what you find is eating the
Speaker 1: right kinds of fat and more fat is incredibly satisfying.
Speaker 1: But eating the wrong kinds of fat makes you hungrier,
Speaker 1: it makes you more inflamed, and so you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: who would have thought. It's not about how much fat
Speaker 1: or how many calories, It's about the right kind of
Speaker 1: fat and the right kind of protein. So when you
Speaker 1: eat keto, you were probably eating artificial sweeteners. You were
Speaker 1: probably eating low quality, cheap proteins. They put in keto,
Speaker 1: Keto mass Gainer five thousand, and all the products like that,
Speaker 1: because you can say keto and anything that's sugar free,
Speaker 1: but you should be on a moderate protein, high healthy fat.
Speaker 1: Keto and magic happens. You felt like garbage all the time,
Speaker 1: in part because if you lost weight, your gut bacteria
Speaker 1: got really stressed. They pumped out lip a polysacchride, which
Speaker 1: caused brain fog. Talk about how to hack that in
Speaker 1: the book. There's a couple of supplements that completely eliminate that.
Speaker 1: And if you're losing weight, your fat sales are full
Speaker 1: of mercury and pesticides, your abody actually stores it there.
Speaker 1: And so if you're losing weight and you're not binding
Speaker 1: the toxins. As you lose weight, you get brain fog
Speaker 1: from it. When people do the stuff that I've been
Speaker 1: teaching for a while, which is eating the right foods
Speaker 1: to be in katosis for brief periods of time, they
Speaker 1: don't get the kto flu well. I wish I knew
Speaker 1: you a couple of years ago when I tried this diet.
Speaker 1: You know, I said earlier there's something really profound about it,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't pinpoint it. And I think I can
Speaker 1: go deeper at a much neardier level about why I
Speaker 1: think this is really profound. It relates to, I think
Speaker 1: notions of free will in a way. Roy Baumeister wrote
Speaker 1: a paper that I'd love to send to you after
Speaker 1: this call. On the title of it is do smokers
Speaker 1: have free Will? And they did a large review of
Speaker 1: the literature amongst those who are addicted to smoking and
Speaker 1: those who were able to quit to actually just try
Speaker 1: to ask the question, like, you know, just how much
Speaker 1: are we a slave to those kinds of impulses when
Speaker 1: we're addicted to smoking. They found that people overestimated the
Speaker 1: extent to which they would never be able to quit.
Speaker 1: They over estimate, you know, they kind of in the
Speaker 1: moment when they were addicted. They said, there's no way
Speaker 1: in the world I could ever not be addicted to smoking.
Speaker 1: I'll die if I don't smoke for two three days.
Speaker 1: But you know, he found that that people were like
Speaker 1: ninety percent of his sample where they were shocked, like
Speaker 1: a week went by, two three weeks by. Eventually they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I even thinking about smoking anymore. It's just something
Speaker 1: I'm not even thinking about. So you just made me
Speaker 1: think of that literature, because I just wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a just like a mind bogglingly profound truth of
Speaker 1: the world here, which is that we need to trually
Speaker 1: not listen so much to our our our cravings about
Speaker 1: anything in a way, like we need to not take
Speaker 1: them so seriously, like they're they're telling us that we're
Speaker 1: gonna just die if we don't, like, oh, you need
Speaker 1: to watch that poor movie. You're gonna die. It's like no,
Speaker 1: It's like no, what, No, I'm not gonna die. But
Speaker 1: here's where that feeling comes from. And I talk about
Speaker 1: fasting from porn in here. I know. So there's like
Speaker 1: the Quadrillian ancient bacteria, and they form a distributed intelligence,
Speaker 1: and really complex behaviors emerge when you run simple rules,
Speaker 1: unfathomable numbers of times. And we've proven this mathematically. It's
Speaker 1: like a new branch of math around emergent behaviors. And
Speaker 1: what's happening is these little guys who get to see
Speaker 1: things and make decisions before it rolls up through your
Speaker 1: proofer cortex, and you even get to pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: And they're going, hmmm, if we don't reproduce the species,
Speaker 1: it's a bad thing. And every guy who's ever been
Speaker 1: in bed having sex going, I am not going to
Speaker 1: ejaculate right now. All of a sudden, right before it happens,
Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, it's a really good idea
Speaker 1: that right now the most important thing on planet, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it. And just five seconds ago you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Who flipped
Speaker 1: that switch. It's the same guy who when you lean
Speaker 1: on a hot stove and you didn't know it and
Speaker 1: you pulled your hand away, and a good thing. I
Speaker 1: pulled my hand away even though you didn't pull your
Speaker 1: hand away, it was automatic. It was that guy. They're
Speaker 1: in charge, right, and they really want to make sure
Speaker 1: the species reproduces. They really want to make sure of
Speaker 1: famine doesn't kill you because you might be the last
Speaker 1: human on earth and it would be the end of
Speaker 1: the species. So you're gonna eat the goddamn chips and
Speaker 1: that's how it is, right. And if that thing might
Speaker 1: be scary, it doesn't matter if you know it's just
Speaker 1: your boss telling you did a crappy job. But it
Speaker 1: feels like death. So you're gonna run away, kill or hide,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna yell at your boss. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: home and mope or do whatever your coping behavior is
Speaker 1: until you do your personal work. So the whole process
Speaker 1: of personal development is training the mitochondrial distributed intelligence to sit,
Speaker 1: roll over, beg and behave itself everything you do. And
Speaker 1: the reason it's so sneaky is it can hide things
Speaker 1: from you and also it can turn down the energy
Speaker 1: and will power comes from electrons. And I have the
Speaker 1: studies to prove that they're in I think in super
Speaker 1: you know, they're in Headstrong in my book, where there's
Speaker 1: actually like studies done. Will power goes down when the
Speaker 1: amount of free electricity in the body goes down. So
Speaker 1: these little guys like we can pull every trick in
Speaker 1: the book and we get to do it before you
Speaker 1: have permission, So of course it's hard to do it.
Speaker 1: But when you're like, guys, you're going to sit with
Speaker 1: that popcorn on your nose the way the dog does
Speaker 1: before he's allowed to eat it, because I'm not eating
Speaker 1: until two o'clock this afternoon. And you can do it
Speaker 1: with willpower and just muscle through it and it's a
Speaker 1: spiritual fast. Or you could say, tell you what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you an alternate fuel that will cause
Speaker 1: you to become stronger so you'll stop pestering me about food.
Speaker 1: Either one works. I love this. Can we get more
Speaker 1: into like the kind of mentality we can develop to
Speaker 1: sustain this food related lifestyle, Like let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to wake up tomorrow morning and be like,
Speaker 1: I'm a new man. I'm living the fastest way lifestyle.
Speaker 1: What are other things in my armor, my mental armor
Speaker 1: that I can do well? One of the things is
Speaker 1: just to ask yourself it is this true? And is
Speaker 1: this true? Question? Is like, Okay, I feel like I'm starving.
Speaker 1: I know it's not true, right, And that's actually for
Speaker 1: Byron Katie as the one who's done the most work
Speaker 1: on on that and most of the urges and cravings
Speaker 1: that you have around food are completely not true. And
Speaker 1: then you learn to ask yourself a question, is this
Speaker 1: biologically compatible with me? And there's a part of you
Speaker 1: this is your manter of concess, but it's flavorful and delicious,
Speaker 1: and I want to eat it, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be you know, crispy or whatever. And then there's another
Speaker 1: part of here that says, I always feel like crap.
Speaker 1: I want to eat that, right, but you eat it anyway.
Speaker 1: So eventually you cultivate a mindset that says, I eat
Speaker 1: food that's compatible with me, and then you have to
Speaker 1: find flavorful food that's compatible with you. Where most people
Speaker 1: get wrong. It's like, oh, I'll have the kale salad.
Speaker 1: Kale tastes like crap. Kale makes you hungry. Kale is
Speaker 1: full of toxins and doesn't have enough energy to power anything.
Speaker 1: It's not a very good food source. In fact, it'll
Speaker 1: make your fasts worse. And I talk about the two
Speaker 1: major toxins in kale and meant why that's biologically real
Speaker 1: in the book. But it's maybe not kale. It could
Speaker 1: be something else. But eventually you're like, you know what
Speaker 1: that looks like something that is going to nourish me.
Speaker 1: It is going to leave me full of energy. And
Speaker 1: after I eat that, I'm gonna have a food high.
Speaker 1: Not like the sugar caffeine food high, but the man
Speaker 1: I got everything I needed. I feel so good. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to think about food for six or eight hours.
Speaker 1: And you don't. And someone puts donuts in front of you,
Speaker 1: you just don't want them because you realize those donuts
Speaker 1: post compatible with me. It's positive. I could put donuts
Speaker 1: in front of you and be like, yeah, whatevers. You
Speaker 1: can measure my salvary output like mazlov'sas there is nothing,
Speaker 1: there's hope. They're not food like. And it's not that
Speaker 1: I have this wall power and there's no shame or
Speaker 1: guilter and that stuff. It's just that when you're used
Speaker 1: to running at your at the power, you're capable of
Speaker 1: The Limitless movie, The Bulletproof. The state of high performance
Speaker 1: was the first tagline for the It's hard to put
Speaker 1: words to having the amount of energy and focus and
Speaker 1: clarity and willpower and control and happiness in my life.
Speaker 1: And I know that there's some things, man, I eat
Speaker 1: that I'm going to enjoy it, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay way more than the vut of the enjoyment. And
Speaker 1: so I want to feel like this all the time
Speaker 1: because this is the most precious thing on earth. It's energy.
Speaker 1: Because think about it. Okay, there's three big things that
Speaker 1: we think about for resources. We think about dollars, we
Speaker 1: think about time, and we think about energy. But most
Speaker 1: people don't think that much about energy. It's kind of
Speaker 1: it's just there. It's not there. They don't manage it.
Speaker 1: So I know this because I had no energy by
Speaker 1: the time I was thirty. Like, I bought disability insurance
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't have hired myself. And I had the
Speaker 1: accelerator all the way to the floor and I was
Speaker 1: slowing down. I didn't know what to do. That's what
Speaker 1: motivated me to create the stuff I created. But when
Speaker 1: you have no energy, if you have time, you sleep
Speaker 1: all the time. That's all you do. Okay. When you
Speaker 1: have no energy and you have money, you spend all
Speaker 1: of your money. You get your energy back. And I
Speaker 1: did that. I spend all of the money I had
Speaker 1: and sometimes and then some because I was desperate to
Speaker 1: feel normal much less the way I feel now, which
Speaker 1: is a whole different level. And what you realize is
Speaker 1: that everything you do you invest some amount of energy
Speaker 1: and it has a return on energy because with energy
Speaker 1: you can make time and you can money. But if
Speaker 1: you have no energy, time and money become useless. So
Speaker 1: you start thinking about food, all right, what's it going
Speaker 1: to do with my energy right now? Oh? That's not it.
Speaker 1: So what else would taste amazing and be satisfying and
Speaker 1: delicious and fulfilling That is going to give me my energy?
Speaker 1: And you choose that and pretson. You're like, I don't
Speaker 1: want the skittles right because I won't I won't feel
Speaker 1: the energy. But what else could I do that would
Speaker 1: be really satisfying? Can of eat some high end dark chocolate?
Speaker 1: You know you can? And it's a much better choice.
Speaker 1: And it's not being perfect. It's about just making something
Speaker 1: that's a better decision than the one that you would
Speaker 1: have made before. And eventually you just get used to feeling. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know the right word for it. There's a
Speaker 1: it's ephemeral. How do you feel right now? And Okay,
Speaker 1: it's the end of the day for me. It's like
Speaker 1: four in the afternoon. I've been on a ninety minute podcast.
Speaker 1: I've been in management and things. I had some difficult
Speaker 1: HR stuff. I've been fundraising. I feel amazing, like I
Speaker 1: have so much energy. I had lunch a couple hours ago.
Speaker 1: It was twenty four hours after my meal before that,
Speaker 1: so I had lunch yesterday. I had lunch today, Oh wow,
Speaker 1: And I wasn't hungry. I didn't think about food. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm totally good to go. And if I hadn't had lunch,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, my wife made it for me.
Speaker 1: It was this lamburgers from our own lamb on our
Speaker 1: organic farm. Like I'm eating that. But I wasn't hungry.
Speaker 1: I would have waited until dinner just because I had
Speaker 1: a busy day. But it's the dialed in I don't
Speaker 1: grasp for words. I don't my mind can do whatever
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, and my body feels good. My
Speaker 1: joints aren't sore the way they have been for a
Speaker 1: lot in my life. Like everything's working, and it's working
Speaker 1: with so little friction. Why would I come up the works?
Speaker 1: And when you realize that you're capable of feeling that
Speaker 1: way and by the way. Try intermittent fasting. You do
Speaker 1: it the way I'm talking about with especially with the
Speaker 1: bulletproof stuff. You might feel it the first day. If not,
Speaker 1: you'll feel by the end of the week you're like,
Speaker 1: WHOA Like I am clearer than I have been in
Speaker 1: a long time. I had forgotten, in fact, maybe ever
Speaker 1: knew that I could feel like that. But in forty
Speaker 1: eight and I have more energy than I did when
Speaker 1: I was twenty eight. And I look at my brain
Speaker 1: response time on quantitative eg ske measures P. Four fifty D.
Speaker 1: You probably know what that is. I have the average
Speaker 1: brain response time for audio and visual stimulation of a
Speaker 1: twenty year old. What about your telomeres? What how old
Speaker 1: were you in terms of your telomeres? Well, it depends
Speaker 1: which once you measure teila mare measurement is a suspects
Speaker 1: science because they're pulling blood and blood tila mare is
Speaker 1: change in length all the time, so different tissues in
Speaker 1: the body have different telomere length. And the real way
Speaker 1: to get tela mares would be to basically do a
Speaker 1: muscle biopsy from different sites in the body, which is painful,
Speaker 1: and know what's going to do that sound you get
Speaker 1: a very different result than if you just do a
Speaker 1: blood one. So I have seen blood ones vary by
Speaker 1: up to twenty years taken one week apart. Well, that
Speaker 1: doesn't too much error. It's too much time. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of noise. So I've been younger and
Speaker 1: I've been as old as I am, but I don't
Speaker 1: really trust those. But I look at my arterial flexibility
Speaker 1: with pulse wave analysis, and I have the average flexible
Speaker 1: arteries of a twenty four year old. I have the
Speaker 1: grip's drink of an eighteen year old. And I don't
Speaker 1: train all this stuff like it's just natural. But all
Speaker 1: that's a side effect. I just want to feel freaking amazing.
Speaker 1: All that well, it's by choice, and this is coming
Speaker 1: back from a three hundred pounds like wrecked biology. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to finish this. I'm going to have another
Speaker 1: internal call for my company. I'm going to go in
Speaker 1: and it's Friday night. I'm gonna make dinner with the kids.
Speaker 1: We're going to have dinner, maybe watch a movie or something, right,
Speaker 1: and I'll be an intentive, awake, alert father who's not
Speaker 1: zoned down on the couch drinking a beer. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to sleep like a rock star. Tonight. Last night
Speaker 1: I got two and a half hours of deep sleep
Speaker 1: and two hours of rem sleep in seven hours of
Speaker 1: total sleep. And it's easy. This is easier than anything
Speaker 1: I've ever done before, because I have so much energy.
Speaker 1: This is why I wrote Fastest Way, because man if
Speaker 1: half the country learned dinnermitten fasting and learned to not
Speaker 1: maybe listen so much to that voice in her this
Speaker 1: says I'm starving, I'm afraid. I need this, I need this,
Speaker 1: I need this, which all eventually drives to fear. Imagine
Speaker 1: what the world looks like you have enough energy to
Speaker 1: take care of the people around you, not just yourself,
Speaker 1: Like I want that world. It's it's possible. Well, not
Speaker 1: only that, but all the less food that we'd be eating,
Speaker 1: we could give to throw road countries where people are starving,
Speaker 1: you know, in a dead, deathly, deathly way. You know
Speaker 1: you said someplace that you said, you know why, I'll
Speaker 1: live to be one eighty? Could do you think you
Speaker 1: still could be? Could you live to one eighty? It's
Speaker 1: at least one hundred and eighty. I don't want to Dave.
Speaker 1: You are you're like you're you're a cool cat man
Speaker 1: like you. You you think you don't think small, do you? Look,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. I'm okay to die trying. But we
Speaker 1: know people can do one twenty. In fact, a lady
Speaker 1: who was one hundred and seventeen just got COVID and survived.
Speaker 1: So if our current best, our current best is one twenty.
Speaker 1: These were people born when there were no cars. They
Speaker 1: fought World War One on horseback twenty years after they
Speaker 1: were born. I mean, it's it's a completely different world.
Speaker 1: There was no no antibiotics, no DNA because they couldn't
Speaker 1: spell it because they know it existed. We didn't understand anything.
Speaker 1: We couldn't share pubbed. I mean, I guess you use
Speaker 1: the pony express back then. I have no idea, but like,
Speaker 1: if they can do it and we can't do fifty
Speaker 1: percent better over the next one hundred and twenty years,
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty years of life, you know what,
Speaker 1: It's because a common hit the planet, or because we
Speaker 1: destroyed all of our top soil with synthetic beef production,
Speaker 1: or some kind of weird thing that we do to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I will not be alone. There are going to
Speaker 1: be many people who aren't just you know, hustled over
Speaker 1: or hunched over, you know, hollow shells who don't remember
Speaker 1: their name. I'm talking working brain, working memory, enough wisdom
Speaker 1: to finally have solved some of the things that I
Speaker 1: wanted to solve in my own life and others, and
Speaker 1: enough wisdom to share and give back, like we need
Speaker 1: our village elders. It needs to be full power. And
Speaker 1: it's happening. The tech is here. The tech is arriving
Speaker 1: every single day at an exponentially increasing rate. And I've
Speaker 1: been involved in that field for twenty years and it's
Speaker 1: finally happening. Man. Can you imagine, like me and you
Speaker 1: we do a podcast when we're both one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty years old, what we would look like. You would
Speaker 1: think our chins will know down to the we should
Speaker 1: look about like we do now, dude, I mean we
Speaker 1: are right now. There's things like peptide signaling and microelectric
Speaker 1: things and poles to electromagnetic very subtle changes you can
Speaker 1: make so we can drive collegen synthesis and scan already, right,
Speaker 1: So we are to the point now. Even David Sinclair,
Speaker 1: a friend from Harvard, it's like for the first time
Speaker 1: he stands up and says we can reverse biological aging
Speaker 1: and cells. And I studied this a lot. I went around,
Speaker 1: I did all the stuff that crazy, you know, billionaires do.
Speaker 1: I've had a ton of my stem cells taken out
Speaker 1: and put into my brain and everywhere else you can
Speaker 1: think of. And what you find is that we know
Speaker 1: so much more now than we ever did. And it's
Speaker 1: so incredibly cheap. You get your DNA sequence for a
Speaker 1: couple hundred bucks. That would have cost one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars when I was starting my career. That's only in
Speaker 1: whatever thirty years. Thirty years, I'm talking about one hundred years, right,
Speaker 1: So our ability to change ourselves to be the age
Speaker 1: we want to be, to beat the energy you want
Speaker 1: to be, and to be the kind people that were
Speaker 1: actually wired in ourselves to be. It's coming, and it's
Speaker 1: better now than it's ever been. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: see that. If you're tired and sick and listening to
Speaker 1: this and you go to the doctor and he kind
Speaker 1: of sees you for three minutes and hands you a
Speaker 1: bottle of pills, that's not the future. Well, I really hope,
Speaker 1: I hope this is. I hope you're right. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do, a lot of work to
Speaker 1: do in this life. There is a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do, but man, the work is easier than ever before. Scott,
Speaker 1: we're different countries on opposite sides of the planet, or
Speaker 1: not the planet of a continent. We're looking at each
Speaker 1: other over a video right now, recording it. Do you
Speaker 1: know what a miracle that is? It's it's absolutely miraculous.
Speaker 1: So where are you right now? I'm in Victoria, British Columbia.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, no, I mean, it is absolutely miraculous.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if we're still going to go at the
Speaker 1: same rate you know that we have. We're not technology,
Speaker 1: it's exponential, So it's totally exponential. And my whole career
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley has shown me this over and over
Speaker 1: because the tech that's letting us do this is letting
Speaker 1: other people share information more quickly than ever before. You know,
Speaker 1: we're using artificial intelligence to learn things about biology that
Speaker 1: we could only dream of even five years ago. So
Speaker 1: it's exponentially getting faster and faster. The only question is
Speaker 1: whether you know, evil corporations or bad people will try to,
Speaker 1: you know, prevent stuff like that from rolling out they can't.
Speaker 1: That's why we have biohackers. Hackers find stuff, we share it.
Speaker 1: You know. Something does worry me though, is that stuff
Speaker 1: can be So that's the only ones that are going
Speaker 1: to be, you know, one hundred eighty years old or
Speaker 1: like the billionaires, you know, and like everyone else dies.
Speaker 1: Is that the kind of world we want to have
Speaker 1: to worry? So if you think about it, the first
Speaker 1: people to get cell phones were the billionaires. Right. They
Speaker 1: spend forty thousand dollars and took up the whole trunk
Speaker 1: of their Mercedes three hundred d right, and it's twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars a minute. And you see him driving down
Speaker 1: in LA. They're TV producer like, who is that guy?
Speaker 1: I think he is? And you can buy a cell
Speaker 1: phone for a dollar an Africa thirty years later. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: the billionaires will be the first people to live to
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty because they're going to spend billions
Speaker 1: of dollars to do it. And guess what they're going
Speaker 1: to do. Then they're going to say, hey, I think
Speaker 1: i'd like my kids who lived one hundred and eighty two.
Speaker 1: I have to commercialize this. And when people see that happening.
Speaker 1: If this technology does not get shared, there will be pitchforks.
Speaker 1: This is a fundamental human rights There should be There
Speaker 1: should be a pitchforks. Do you want to be one
Speaker 1: hundred and eight years old where everyone you know dies
Speaker 1: because you didn't share the stupid thing you figured out? No,
Speaker 1: they don't either. Some of these guys are my friends.
Speaker 1: I've met them because of bulldproop. A lot of them
Speaker 1: usable at Proof. I've sat down with them. They're putting
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars into research on aging. They
Speaker 1: don't want to keep it to themselves. They want to
Speaker 1: build companies out of it. They want to bring it
Speaker 1: to the world because, frankly, a world full of people
Speaker 1: who are old and sick and dying is not the
Speaker 1: world any of us wants to live in. And if
Speaker 1: you're going to be here for one hundred and eighty years,
Speaker 1: are you really going to throw that plastic wrapper in
Speaker 1: the ocean because you're going to eat it one hundred
Speaker 1: years from now? Yeah? No, absolutely, I completely agree. Do
Speaker 1: you think you'll live longer than Kurtzwell, given his weird diet. Probably.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's like a competition among like the
Speaker 1: I'm going to live forever guys like, yeah, I'm younger
Speaker 1: than he is. Yeah, so the younger you are, the
Speaker 1: more years you have for the technology to catch up.
Speaker 1: But the odds are pretty good there. And I actually
Speaker 1: have enormous respect for Raker as well. And he's been
Speaker 1: a transformative guy in Silicon Valley. He's a legend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a legend. Yeah, absolute legend. And I'm yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I was changed his diet, but his original
Speaker 1: ant aging diet didn't fly with most of the people,
Speaker 1: the anti aging and street that I worked with. But
Speaker 1: he's an innovator like me, right, like I would infect
Speaker 1: one of these. I'll pick his brand on my show,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, because he's a brilliant, brilliant guy. Shocked he's
Speaker 1: never been on your podcast. You know. When he wrote
Speaker 1: his last book, he was supposed to come on and
Speaker 1: something something came up and we never connected. Was his book?
Speaker 1: Was it his book Transcend? No, it was, uh, because
Speaker 1: we both have the same book titles. It was the
Speaker 1: one before that. It was like a Girl's Name. It
Speaker 1: was actually the best written book I've ever seen. To
Speaker 1: just explain to people, even to kids like here's how
Speaker 1: technology is coming. It was fantastic. It was like Lucy
Speaker 1: or something, I don't remember his name. Cool. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you talk about different types of fasting in your book,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you could explain the sixteen
Speaker 1: eight fast. To be sure, the sixteen eight fast is
Speaker 1: the most popular intermit fast. Youll scene. That means you
Speaker 1: don't eat for sixteen hours, even eight hours. And if
Speaker 1: you're new to fascinating, what except, here's what the means,
Speaker 1: have dinner, have a little bit early. In fact, eating
Speaker 1: dinner early makes you sleep better, It'll make you live longer.
Speaker 1: It's really good for you. So let's say you're done
Speaker 1: eating at six pm. You got a bed at ten.
Speaker 1: That was four hours. You sleep for eight hours, that
Speaker 1: was twelve hours. That's twelve hours. If you wake up
Speaker 1: at six am and by ten am, that was just
Speaker 1: sixteen hours. So I mean, have dinner in dinner by six,
Speaker 1: have breakfast at ten. You can do this. You had
Speaker 1: a late breakfast, right, have some black coffee. I can
Speaker 1: do that. I can do that, you can do. So
Speaker 1: that's a sixteen eight fast. But then again, what if
Speaker 1: you just waited to lunch right now, you've got an
Speaker 1: eighteen hour and an eighteen six fast, and that's more convenient.
Speaker 1: And what you do is you add in the three
Speaker 1: fasting hacks from the book, either at eight am or
Speaker 1: ten am, whatever you want to. And one of them
Speaker 1: is black coffee. One of them is bulletproof coffee, and
Speaker 1: there's various biochemical reasons, and the other one is pre
Speaker 1: by at a fiber. All of these tell your body
Speaker 1: are still fasting, but they give you electro, so all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're like, yeah, my brainer's better than
Speaker 1: it did before, right, But a sixteen eight fast is
Speaker 1: very achievable. And the better thing is, especially if you're
Speaker 1: metabolically unfit. I have a chapter in the book for
Speaker 1: you. You You don't have to do it every day. You
Speaker 1: can do it three days a week and you get
Speaker 1: great benefits. But you'll probably find you want to do
Speaker 1: it every day because you feel better than when you
Speaker 1: ate breakfast. You just eat breakfast, because one hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years ago, when we had basically
Speaker 1: the invention of industrial production, people would go to work
Speaker 1: in the morning and they'd work fourteen hours without a
Speaker 1: bathroom break. I mean like that was that, and you
Speaker 1: didn't get a lunch break and din't get any break,
Speaker 1: so they'd say the only time to eat was then,
Speaker 1: and then they'd go to bed. So eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: there were riots and whatever, and they got a lunch hour.
Speaker 1: But we started regimented eating because of industrialization. It's never
Speaker 1: been good for us. In fact, it's like this, if
Speaker 1: you had a think, Look, I go to the gas
Speaker 1: station every Tuesday and I fill up right now. If
Speaker 1: you didn't drive your car all week, you'd be stupid
Speaker 1: to go fill up. But you always fill up with
Speaker 1: ten gallons. So you go there and you just pump
Speaker 1: the ten gallons out. What are you to put in
Speaker 1: the back seat? I don't know. I pump it out
Speaker 1: on the ground, but you always pump at the same
Speaker 1: That's what we're doing. What if you didn't eat until
Speaker 1: you were hungry, what would happened? What happens you get healthier?
Speaker 1: Nothing bad would happen. It's mind bowling. Well, just people
Speaker 1: are on an autopilot. I mean, it's just it takes
Speaker 1: a book like yours from you to be like, wait,
Speaker 1: hold up, you mean I didn't I don't not eat
Speaker 1: that all the time. Yeah, you might feel the need
Speaker 1: to or you might want to eat it all the time,
Speaker 1: but then you're like, well, wait a minute, CUDA's doing
Speaker 1: It's like creamy and fatty and delicious. Would would that
Speaker 1: be nearly as satisfying as that, you know, low fat
Speaker 1: sugar treat? And you know, why do I want the
Speaker 1: salty chip that I know will make me hungry in
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes, I'm going to want more? Like what
Speaker 1: if I could have something that was salty like a
Speaker 1: fat bomb or you know, something that had more hef
Speaker 1: to it. That's the reason I make the Collejron bars
Speaker 1: I make for a bullet if I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: sell those there, But I wanted to get something that
Speaker 1: I could eat on airplane so wouldn't make me hunger again,
Speaker 1: because everything I eat on airplane makes me like starving
Speaker 1: in a half hour, Like I'd rather starve, So I
Speaker 1: eat those How do you do that? What I eat
Speaker 1: those bars? Oh? Yeah? I love the college. I love
Speaker 1: the collegeen bars. I feel like my my I look
Speaker 1: I always look younger than I am anyway, but I
Speaker 1: feel like I look even younger than I already do.
Speaker 1: Collegen makes a difference. I know, I know it's funny
Speaker 1: the fat. Look at this, Look at this, you look
Speaker 1: like a great beauty. It's not. It's not too shabby
Speaker 1: over here? Is it? Is it a zoom filter? Though
Speaker 1: there's no fil filter, no filter. You look pretty good.
Speaker 1: There is, though, a half life of fat in the body.
Speaker 1: It takes two years to replace half the fat in
Speaker 1: your body. Wow. And if you go on fastest way
Speaker 1: and you or you try the bulletproof thing where you're
Speaker 1: eating more grass fed butter, eating more saturated fats, your
Speaker 1: body actually will remake all of your cell membranes, including
Speaker 1: your mitochondria, and those become better light bulbs, better power producers.
Speaker 1: Over two years your place half the fat. But collagen
Speaker 1: takes seven years. Oh wow. So if you eat some
Speaker 1: collagen every day and your body starts incorporating the building
Speaker 1: blocks of collagen into your own collagen stares over about
Speaker 1: seven years, half the collagen, your body is going to
Speaker 1: be your place with properly made younger college. And shit,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I've been doing it for fourteen years now
Speaker 1: and you're one hundred good. So you're like a baby
Speaker 1: pretty much. I mean, that is incredible, And so I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep up like I do. I do. I
Speaker 1: do have collage in every single day. So it's a
Speaker 1: really important practice. Every every person around one hundred plus
Speaker 1: years ago hid in collagen every day because we wouldn't
Speaker 1: throw away parts of the animal like that. We would
Speaker 1: make soup from bones and skin and we eat everything.
Speaker 1: Now we just eat the muscles and throw the rest away.
Speaker 1: You need that collagen. So you say that some fasts
Speaker 1: are better than others. I mean, we just talked about
Speaker 1: the sixteen eight one. Can you could perhaps tell our
Speaker 1: listeners like one to stay away from them and do
Speaker 1: like do you warn against some particular a warning gets
Speaker 1: over fasting? Okay, so you know it's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite fast is called one meal a day or oh mad.
Speaker 1: It sounds, you know, all manly. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: oh mad today, very test right. What it means is
Speaker 1: you basically have that one meal and so ideally, if
Speaker 1: you were to be perfect, you have it around two
Speaker 1: or three in the afternoon, and that helps you sleep
Speaker 1: way better at night, and you do that dinner time questore,
Speaker 1: Oh I would normally no, but I'm truly not hungry.
Speaker 1: I actually don't want food. And you know, you hang
Speaker 1: out and have a good evening and you wake up
Speaker 1: the next day you don't want breakfast because I'm not hungry,
Speaker 1: and then lunch trolls a run. I guess I could eat,
Speaker 1: So I do that sometimes. But if you don't have
Speaker 1: a metabolism that works well, that it's going to totally
Speaker 1: be a stress or it's gonna overwhelm you. So fasting
Speaker 1: is like weightlifting, right, if you go to the gym
Speaker 1: every day and you lift heavy, you just get injured,
Speaker 1: you get tired, and you don't put on muscle. So
Speaker 1: with fasting, I tell people start gently. You don't have
Speaker 1: to do it the same way every day. If you
Speaker 1: didn't sleep well, if you're hungover, you're having a really
Speaker 1: rough day. Eat are you okay? Yeah? I just I've
Speaker 1: been talking all day. Okay, just had to have some water.
Speaker 1: But all I say is eat. It's okay to eat.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people fall in this rigid fasting.
Speaker 1: I have to follow the rules. I'm going to fast,
Speaker 1: and it's the same as eating three meals a day.
Speaker 1: Following the rules, especially for women, it's really important. Like
Speaker 1: if you're just blown out today, have some breakfast, but
Speaker 1: have protein in fat, don't have you know, the stack
Speaker 1: of pancakes and once a week, make sure you eat
Speaker 1: three times today. So that sort of unending, brutal, rigid fasting.
Speaker 1: It creates more biological stress than your body needs. And
Speaker 1: fasting should be a hormetic stressor that makes you stronger.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people, when they say I have
Speaker 1: to do a sixteen eight every day, women are doing great.
Speaker 1: And then it comes time for their period, and some
Speaker 1: women do great fastering. Some women do great fasting during
Speaker 1: their period, but a lot of times they're already in flame.
Speaker 1: There's already enough biological stress, and maybe that's a day
Speaker 1: when you do a twelve hour fast or a fourteen
Speaker 1: hour fast, not an eighteen hour fast, and just it's
Speaker 1: okay to mix it up on a daily basis. The
Speaker 1: trick is every day your stomach should be empty for
Speaker 1: at least twelve hours, and if you do that, you're
Speaker 1: going to be happy, and eventually you just get stronger
Speaker 1: and then you go longer. I think I do that automatically.
Speaker 1: If I stop beating at seven and I don't eat
Speaker 1: again until eight, I'm definitely doing that already. So that's
Speaker 1: good you are, But I can are longer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can go further. No longer is better. No, look,
Speaker 1: I'm sold, Dave. You know, I like at least sixteen.
Speaker 1: I could go sixteen, right like, yeah, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: if you did sixteen eight, like four or five days
Speaker 1: a week again, weekends, have brunch or whatever. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: it'll transform your brain. I mean, your body starts to
Speaker 1: just replace the dim bulbs. I am, You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of dim bulbs. I can tell. Is that a
Speaker 1: good thing? I just messing it. I'm like, I a bete, Dave.
Speaker 1: I was definitely not a yeah. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: look I was I was going to see something really kind.
Speaker 1: I was going to say. I am immensely grateful to
Speaker 1: have friends like you. I really appreciate you talking to me.
Speaker 1: I know you've been talking all day, and I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming to my podcast and teaching us. Not
Speaker 1: that you know that fasting is like the art. It's
Speaker 1: an art form, you know, and there's a science, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it also feels like it's kind of this art
Speaker 1: form that's not only about food. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a really mind boggling, you know, sort of realization that
Speaker 1: one gets from reading your book. So thanks so much
Speaker 1: for chatting with me. You are welcome, Scott. I. I
Speaker 1: really I'm a fan of your work and I just
Speaker 1: sat some fo on your show. You do really thought
Speaker 1: provoking stuff at time. Happy that we get to be friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Dave, Well happy fasting Well. Likewise, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to react in some way to something you heard, I
Speaker 1: encourage you to join in on the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.