Live Longer By Optimizing Your Immune System w/Mike Mutzel EP 1187

Today’s guest is Mike Mutzel. Mike earned his B. S. in Biology from Western Washington University in 2006 and completed his Master of Science degree in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport in 2015 and is a graduate of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He is a Functional Medicine consultant in the natural product industry and has worked as a nutritionist over the years. He runs the YouTube channel High Intensity Health where he talks about all aspects of health and shares what he’s learned in the medicine, nutrition and fitness industry over the last decade. In this episode we discuss the biggest benefits and negative effects of fasting, what you can start doing to reverse your age, why getting out in nature is so important, what happens to our body when we eat, how to make your immune system bulletproof and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1187The Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,187 with Mike Mutzel. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, my friend. Today's guest is Mike Mutzel, and Mike earned his BS in Biology from Western Washington University in 2006, and completed his Master's of Science degree in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport in 2015, and is a graduate of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He is a functional medicine consultant in the natural product industry, and he has worked as a nutritionist over the years. And he runs the YouTube channel High Intensity Health, where he talks about all aspects of health and shares what he's learned in the medicine, nutrition, and fitness industry over the last decade. In this episode, we discuss the biggest benefits and negative effects of fasting,

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  what you can start doing to reverse your age, why getting out in nature is so crucial and important, what happens to our body when we actually eat, and what is actually happening in the body as we're eating, how to make your immune system bulletproof, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, feel inspired by this, feel moved by this, then make sure to spread this message to a friend, share it on social media, make sure to tag me and let me know that you're listening, post a link out there as well, so other people can be inspired by this free message as well. And I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week from Miro, who said, "I have been on a healing process for three years now. Thanks to this podcast. I appreciate the insights one gets from each episode."

• 1:53Lewis Howes?

  And I think Lewis is one of the best interviewers there are, and manages to make powerful interviews with each one of the people in the podcast. Seeing a man so committed to his personal growth and helping people along the way by sharing his journey is quite powerful. Thank you for your work, Lewis, and Team Greatness is having a huge... Huge impact on so many. So Miro, thank you for the message and my team actually picks out the fans of the week. And I always tell them, even though people might be talking about me and some of these reviews, that it's really a team effort. We've got an incredible team here, our team greatness, who's helping with all the messaging, with all the content. So a big thank you to the team for making this possible as well. And if this is your first time here, please subscribe

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  over on Apple Podcast and leave us your review as well at any point during or after this episode. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Mike Mutzel.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone on the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Mike Mutzel in the house.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Hey, man. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here.

• 2:52Lewis Howes?

  Excited that you're here. You're a master and of research around a lot of these things and nutrition, health and wellness, but specifically fasting and longevity recently and just how to optimize our overall health through fasting and living longer. And it seems like everyone wants to know about fasting these days. And I saw a video of yours recently that said some research might suggest that fasting at the night could be better than fasting for breakfast, where everyone talks about just skip breakfast and go into lunch and do the 16 hour window of fasting, the eight hour feeding window, the intermittent fasting. But I saw a video that said skip dinner, not breakfast. Is that true?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  So how is fasting at night better than the morning?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, this is phenomenal. And it has to do with the circadian clock system. So have you talked about this on the show before?

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  Not too much.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Like how our body resonates with nature and the environment. And so we have these intracellular clocks that regulate gene expression and metabolism. And to me, it's just super fascinating. And it turns out that humans didn't evolve eating at night, because that's when apex predators, like back in the day, grizzly bears and cougars and cats and things that would hunt us would be out hunting.

• 4:03Lewis Howes?

  At night.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  At night. So we'd want to be cooped up in our safety. So we would eat when the sun's out and fast at night. Now, the only caveat to this rule is in Latin America.

• 4:13Lewis Howes?

  They eat at midnight. It's like you start your appetizer at midnight, right?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  So it's tough, you know, because that can eating. I think there's all these cogs in the wheels of health and socialization and connection is a major cog. So that's sort of the caveat when recommending this. So if you tell people, okay, eat, start eating at 8 a.m. and as the study that we'll talk about showed, they cut off the feeding window at two or four, that becomes socially impractical, right?

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  So they stop eating at four o'clock.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 4:40Lewis Howes?

  You fast all night.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Till eight in the morning. But they noticed a lot of improvements and not changing any of the diet. The control group ate the same amount of calories, but they started eating at eight in the morning and stopped at 8 p.m. But they didn't achieve all these longevity benefits. We'll talk more about autophagy, which is this process where your interesting other components of your cells are recycled. It's linked with various disease reductions, for example, myoclonal impairment, dementia, cancer, autoimmunity. So this is a favorable process that we should strive to increase. And the group that cut off their feeding window at, you know, between two and four, had a dramatic increase in autophagy and all these longevity biomarkers were increased. So it makes more sense just practically, if you can do it in most days. You know, if you're going to socialize on the weekends, maybe

• 5:27Speaker 01

  you eat a little bit later on the weekends, you know, with your buddies, your girlfriend, your friends, all of that. But during the week, if you can make it a habit to eat earlier and start your fast earlier, that's the important thing.

• 5:38Lewis Howes?

  So wait a minute, for those that do intermittent fasting where they skip breakfast, but maybe they eat until eight, nine, 10 o'clock at night, right? They still do an eight hour feeding window, but they finish at eight or 10. Versus those that eat breakfast and skip dinner. Which group overall would extend their longevity markers?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Probably the latter group, the group that ate breakfast and skipped dinner.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  That's what multiple studies are showing because it turns out that these longevity related processes, like we mentioned autophagy, we can talk about mTOR and these different pathways that are, that are signals that signal and enhance the processes that make us live longer and prevent disease initiation. Those increase and are kind of part of our circadian clock system. So the timing of your meals and your fasting really do matter. Now, let me just pause here because if if someone is getting good results, let's say someone listening is like, hold on, this guy's telling me to like now eat breakfast and I've I've lost all this weight. Please don't change what you're doing. For the people that haven't gotten the benefits that they expect with these intermittent fasting protocols. And this is common in the fitness industry to do the opposite of what you've been doing.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Like, change it up a little bit, don't. And this happens, you know, sometimes the guru on on YouTube or Instagram or whatever does something this way. We all want to do it exactly like the guru. But we are different than than the person than the guru. So do what works for you and your schedule. But there's a mantra, I come from, you know, I know you have a competitive athletic background. I did competitive cycling. And the mantra there, because

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  Is cycling competitive?

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  It's very competitive, actually.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so and it's all based based on power to weight ratio, right? So the lighter you are and the stronger you are, there's literally a metric, the power that you put out, watts per kilogram will determine who wins grand tours, like Tour de France. Anyway, so the mantra was eat early, sleep early.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  So eat early, sleep early.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That was it. That was like

• 7:37Lewis Howes?

  For cycling, like if you wanted to build more power, more endurance.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Be shredded, be lean, so that you're not carrying extra weight on the bike. So that means starting your fast earlier in the day. So you would go train in the morning, go train hard, eat fuel, have pasta, carbs, all of that. But you basically didn't have dinner. You had like a big lunch early and that was it.

• 7:56Lewis Howes?

  When did you usually stop eating?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Well, back then I didn't know much about, this was like early 2000s, but but this was like, you know, Lance Armstrong and even older, you know, generations, but this was like tacitly implied in the culture

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  of those sports is you want to like get a fast going because that will keep you lean.

• 8:13Lewis Howes?

  It'll burn, it'll burn the fat.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:16Lewis Howes?

  So, I mean, this whole intermittent fasting phenomenon has really blown up in the last three to four years. And there's apps for it and there's millions of people that are in communities around this. But what the research is saying is that to, is it to burn more fat? To live longer, potentially, the research is saying just skip dinner now, not skip breakfast. Simple as that.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Simple as that, or have an earlier dinner.

• 8:40Lewis Howes?

  Earlier dinner, like six o'clock, five o'clock.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Totally reasonable with the family. You know, I have a young daughter, nine years old, and she's super hungry after school. So instead of like saying, no, honey, you're, we're gonna go play and do all this stuff and then we're gonna eat later. I just give her the food then. So then she's not even that hungry for dinner. It's not like I'm trying to get her to lose weight necessarily. I just want her to get into the habit because the most important thing, you know, for people listening right now, sleep is arguably, and I know you've talked a lot about sleep.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  It's key.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  It's key. When we eat a big dinner, you know, let's say you're doing the intermittent fasting thing. You fast till 2:00 PM, start having all this food. Your sleep is not as good if you start cut off your feeding window at 10:00 PM. You know, you're digesting the meat that you had, or the olives, or whatever, healthy foods, and you're not getting a good night's sleep. So then this sets up this vicious cycle. When you're not sleeping good, then all your appetite regulatory hormones, leptin, ghrelin, insulin are all skewed up, skewed. And then you wanna eat and consume ultra-processed packaged crap because that, your sleep was messed up. So, and our sleep naturally kinda gets a little wonky as we age. You know, people have sleep disorders, breathing. We should be breathing through our nose when we're sleeping, not our mouth. A lot of people, we gain weight, you know, around the neck and so forth, and that causes us to breathe through our mouth,

• 9:50Speaker 01

  which leads to all these changes we can talk about later. But anyway, so the point is, the way to remedy all of this, at least make a big dent in this, is to eat earlier.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Man, is there any negative side effects of fasting?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's a great question. You can overdo anything. You can drink too much water, you know? So fasting can easily get you into a calorie deficit. And so especially for women that come from a history of like disordered eating, anorexia, bulimia. If people are really lean, like, you know, for example, if you're 8% body fat, fasting for 18, 20, probably not good.

• 10:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  You're gonna start to tear away muscle. Now, fasting is unique and the rise, and if we talk about sort of the recipe, if we just back up a little bit, the physiology for people, one of the benefits of fasting comes through you're dropping your blood glucose levels, and that leads to a reduction in insulin, and that increases a related hormone to insulin called glucagon. So that signals your fat cells to start releasing stored energy.

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean, burning the fat?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Essentially burning fat, right? So that energy that's being released can go to your brain to make, help you think and make thoughts, and it can go to your liver to create energy and so forth. And that helps with fat loss, which is great. But it also helps with all these processes of longevity that we've been sort of talking about.

• 11:02Lewis Howes?

  Sure, okay.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And then in the process, when you're burning fat, your body makes ketones. Your liver makes these things called ketones. And they help suppress appetite and prevent muscle from being catabolized. So they're anti-catabolic. They're actually used in, or being studied to be used in individuals who are bedridden or have cachexia, to give them exogenous ketones. Like, let's say you have to get a surgery, you break your leg or something like that, and you're bedridden, you can't move. You don't want to, you know, catabolize all your muscle that you've spent a long time building. So you could take these exogenous ketones that would help prevent muscle wasting.

• 11:34Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  So that's kind of cool. Anyway, the point of me giving that backstory is with fasting, you naturally have a more of a suppressed appetite because these ketones help to suppress your appetite.

• 11:44Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  So if you're already underweight, it may lend itself to be more and more underweight. And as we age, we naturally lose muscle anyway. And muscle helps us burn fat. So you, the point is, it's a dance, it's a balance, figuring out what, you know, how much fasting you want to do. And then when you re-feed, try not to diet at the same time. So don't have the iceberg lettuce with boneless, skinless chicken, right? Like have like a ribeye steak or some good food.

• 12:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay. Don't be too extreme with everything in your life.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  That's not sustainable.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What would you say are the five biggest benefits of fasting?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  So the biggest benefit that I've noticed, and this is great for entrepreneurs, is mental clarity. You know, as we age, we, you know, are, everything atrophies in our body, but it's especially in our brain, too. We start to notice that words are harder to retrieve and, and memory changes. So that's, to me, the biggest benefit. Another benefit is a reduction in blood pressure. So especially for men, you know, heart disease is probably what's going to harm most men and compromise their lifespan. So you get a reduction in blood pressure. The third benefit that everyone wants is you lose body fat. So it's easier to lose body fat. So that's a huge benefit. And I think the fourth, and this could be depending upon who you are, the first benefit is more energy. You know, I love food as much as anyone, but after you, if I were to have, you know, we're

• 13:03Speaker 01

  filming this around two or three, 2:30, right? If I would have went and had a big meal, I would be lethargic right now, unable to really, you know, I'd want caffeine, which would have affected my sleep negatively tonight. So I just haven't had breakfast or lunch or anything. So I'm just going.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  You haven't eaten?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Haven't eaten today.

• 13:18Lewis Howes?

  Nothing?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  No calorie, no coffee, no tea?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Coffee. And I did have some mixogenous ketones.

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  What is that? You just put it in the coffee?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Just had it separate. So these are the-

• 13:28Lewis Howes?

  The powder, the pills?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Comes in different forms, but this one is a liquid. It's a ketone ester. This is pretty cool. I'll have to give you some.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Give me some. What is this?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Honestly, it lights up your brain. So it, because our brains obviously need a lot of energy, but if you're fasted, your blood sugar drops. So your brain relies upon fat for oxidate to make, you know, memories and to retrieve words. And these ketones just go right into your brain and like fuel the brain. And it's, they're pretty cool.

• 13:55Lewis Howes?

  So you, you haven't eaten today. You had black coffee. No, like no oat milk or anything, or no oat milk, just black?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Just black.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  Then some liquid ketones?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. I just want to make sure I'm showing up, right? To share good content. I want to thank you for having me on the show. And so it's like, dude, I want to make sure that I reciprocate and deliver value.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  What? Okay. And the, and the fifth thing, fifth benefit, what'd you say?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  We talked about energy, fat loss. Did we talk about blood sugar yet?

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  Blood sugar, clarity, fat loss, more energy.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Blood pressure, Alex says is one.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  Blood pressure, yep.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Blood sugar. Yeah. And then longevity. I would just say-

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  Longevity.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Many of the, the processes of aging, if we think about reframing how we think about aging, we think that aging is this sort of phenomenon that just happens no matter what, but we can dramatically influence the rate at which we age biologically. And part of the processes and these, these intracellular signaling molecules and switches and genes that impact our aging process are beneficially augmented, shall we say, by way of fasting. And so there's a lot of synergy and parallels between all those metabolic processes that are upregulated when we're fasting. And so we support our natural, we sort of turn the thermostat down on the rate at which we're aging.

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  Is there a way to reverse aging?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  It depends on who you talk to. If you talk to David Sinclair, there is some different ways to go about that. There's senolytic therapies, and so it's a way to change the way our cells are functioning, because there's this process known as cellular senescence, which means that our cells, we have a finite ability to sort of replicate in ourselves' function, and when they achieve the end of their lifespan, they undergo this process known as senescence. And when our cells start to senesce, they release all these pheromones, so to speak. I'm really simplifying this. They release pheromones that recruit other cells to become more senescent. So it's like this vicious cycle, like a snowball rolling downhill. So, once that process starts, it can become problematic. And that's why you see people, they might have a little prediabetes

• 15:59Speaker 01

  and high blood pressure, then they can't remember where their keys are, and then pretty soon they're in a nursing home. And we've seen this in our family members and friends. Well, we can augment that by purging those senescent cells. By killing the cells? Yeah, those particular cells. And you do that through fasting? Is that through autophagy, or what is that? Well, through autophagy, but also this emerging field in aging biology known as senolytic therapies. So, there's different drugs, actually, some drugs that are using cancer, but you just use them short-dose, like two days, with quercetin, disaptinib, and quercetin has been used. There's drugs like metformin, and there's drugs like rapamycin we can talk about, that have a really low side effect profile, that people are sort of microdosing. We've heard about microdosing

• 16:42Speaker 01

  LSD and mushrooms and all that. But these are, people are microdosing longevity drugs, to sort of pulse, to not totally drive down longevity, because we still want to grow, right? We want to build muscles. But if we can slow down this process of biologic aging, then we can just function better. And this is, I think, one of the most exciting, I think, honestly, you and I in like five years, we'll be taking metformin like every other day, or every fifth day, to just sort of put a damper on some of these pathways that are linked with. Cancer.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the top three ways to reverse aging then? Is fasting one of them?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Fasting is up there. And if you were to interview all these health experts, most people would say fasting is the number one thing, but I honestly think exercise is the number one.

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  To reverse aging?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  To reverse aging, because we talked about, and I know it's a big word, cellular senescence. So these are cells that have reached their end of their function. They should APOPTOS and die and go away, but they don't.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  And then they recruit other cells to become bad cells with them.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. It releases this secretome, secretory phenotype. And it can be measured, and this can be measured in the blood.

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  Really? And this just makes you look older. It makes your organs older, your skin older, your face older, all those things, right?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. And it compromises, you know, your heart function, your blood pressure, poor memory.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Hurts your immune system, everything, right?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  The immune system's the biggest one. In fact, this is how biologic age is often assessed, is by way of the immune system. So the immune system, obviously it's hot with all, everything going on right now, but it's really involved in how we repair. So if you're not repairing when you're sleeping, and your immune system is repairing, you know, changing, say you damage your muscles by working out, right? Your immune system is going to help repair that. And our immune system can accumulate a lot of these senescent cells. We've heard about antibodies a lot on the media lately, but there's what's known as your T helper cells are really important for the immune system, but also aging in general. And these cells are prone to accumulate a lot of senescent T cells. But if you and I go out and burst train, if we go out to the beach and we lift weights

• 18:41Speaker 01

  and do some CrossFit or go hiking, we purge those bad T cells.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  Through exercise?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Through exercise.

• 18:48Lewis Howes?

  Any type of exercise, or is this more high intensity training? Can you just walk and this does this? Does that have to be?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  You know, this is a great question, because I don't want to prevent anyone from gardening and just walking. Any exercise is way better than no exercise. However, intensity matters.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  Really? How much intensity, how long?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  I would say at least, and this is what the research shows, 75 minutes combined over the course of a week.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  75 minutes of intense, what's that mean? Resistance training, training to failure, is that, you know, heart rate getting above a certain level, what does that mean?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  A very simple way to approximate the intensity is how well can you breathe? So if I'm talking, if I can't talk to you, then that's intense enough. So it's like an eight or nine out of 10. Now, again, this is just in short segments. This can be little sprints for 10 minutes here. This can be going up the flight of stairs instead of taking the elevator. This can be walking up a hill. So if you're going to walk, which is amazing, like so good for all many aspects of your health, try to walk up hills as well, not just flat. Try to increase the intensity periodically. Tell your walking partner, hey, we gotta speed it up. See that telephone pole down? Let's like, let's go as fast as we can. If you're functionally able to sprint, that's even better. So periodic sprints are fantastic.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  And again, there's all the benefits from the aerobics, the lungs, the cardiovascular system, but specifically since you asked about aging, that's where exercise, in my estimation, trumps, and I don't want to say it's better necessarily, but it seems that it has a lot of crossover. And here's what's good about exercise, it makes fasting more efficient. So, exercisers, we have one of several studies here, if people can't see, the several studies have looked at individuals who are overweight and sedentary and had them fast for 72 hours. Had individuals who were physically active and lean and had them fast for 72 hours. And they looked at the initiation of this process that we've sort of been talking about known as autophagy, which if I haven't defined yet, it's an intracellular way to break down

• 20:54Speaker 01

  accumulated proteins and stuff in our cells to recycle it. It's triggered by states of low nutrient conditions. So when we're fasting, when we exercise. Well, everyone thinks, well, we gotta fast for 72 hours or 36 hours. All the gurus have different opinions about how long you fast. Well, it depends upon how fit you are. So the more physically fit people are, the greater the initiation of autophagy is when they fast for the identical lengths of time.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  So what does that mean? So if I'm shredded, 8% body fat, 5% whatever it is, and I'm fit, does that mean I need to? Fast longer to get the benefits, short, less. Because I'm fit, I only need 24 hours, I don't need 72.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  18 is probably good.

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  18 hours to get the benefits. If I'm 40% body fat or 30% or whatever it is, I'm gonna need multiple days is what you're saying to get the same benefits.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Well, it has to do with the muscles. So if we think about what tissues are impacted by fasting, it's your liver primarily in your muscles and then your brain. But your liver and your muscles are sort of necessary in terms of the adaptations from exercise. So if you and I start training and then you look at sort of the proteomics or metabolomics, which is a way to see how bodily tissues are responding to exercise, you would see our liver and our muscles are like changing, right? And that's why exercise is so good for fatty liver disease because it helps to prevent the accumulation of fat in the liver. So yeah, the act of moving your muscles changes how your muscles function. And in a fasted state, they're already primed to deal with conditions of nutrient deprivation from exercise. So.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  So should we exercise and fast at the same time? Or is that too much where you're like, okay, I'm exhausted. Now I need some energy. Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it totally depends on. So here's my personal perspective on this. And again, my biases are I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm trying to preserve muscle as I age, you know, because I know that as men and you lose muscle as you age. So I'm trying to maintain muscle. So I do my cardio in the morning fasted.

• 22:55Lewis Howes?

  Cardio, so 30, 60 minutes of running, biking, swimming, jogging, whatever.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, it sounds silly, Louis, but I bike my daughter to school.

• 23:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  And we're sprinting, we're having a good time, we're joking around, hey, I'll beat you to that telephone. We're doing stuff, but my heart rate is like up. And that's enough cardio for me. And then we'll do some stuff later in the day, walking or things like that. And then I weight train after I've had some food later.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  After you eat.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  That's just my thing. But again, you know, I've been lifting since, I don't look like a bodybuilder, I'm not bragging, but I've been lifting since in high school, right? So I kind of, but if you're brand new to this, I would say give fasted exercise a try. See how it, you know, it's just like a different diet. Keto works for some people, plant-based works for others. I would say try fasted because you, that recipe we talked about, low glucose, low insulin, high glucagon, you accelerate that process when you do fasted exercise.

• 23:45Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Fasted exercise, gotcha. And what's more powerful in your, your mind or what is the research saying? Fasting or specific types of diets without fasting?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  It's an awesome question. I don't know that it's possible to disentangle it to you, you know, because to get the benefits of fasting, you get that metabolic switch, like low glucose and all that. And if you're eating McDonald's or Pop-Tarts and foods that jack up your blood sugar,

• 24:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  it's going to be hard to get some of the benefits and to trigger these autophagy-related processes that we've been alluding to, if you're eating that sort of food. Now, that being said, if that's all you can afford, or your whole family eats that way, and you're kind of stuck, still fast, like it's better than not, but you want to try to eat as much unprocessed, ultra-palate, like get rid of the packaged food and eat more real food. Like, if it comes in a box bag or a can, try to eat as little as possible of that and make your food from scratch. That's kind of the... But everyone responds differently. Some people love high carbs and eat rice and do well. I like more of a low-carb approach. It's, I don't think there's any one diet that's going to be applicable to everyone and benefit everyone the same.

• 24:56Lewis Howes?

  So how does the body create autophagy? Is that only through exercise and fasting? Or is that other ways you can do that?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. Well, autophagy is super complex. There's all these different subtypes of autophagy. But the autophagy that we're kind of alluding to with regards to longevity, I believe most of that is initiated by low glucose, low insulin environments. So if you do a fasted walk in the morning, you're going to see probably a bump in your autophagy. If you skip dinner, by the time you wake up, the autophagy initiation genes will have been upregulated. And this was actually a study, I think it was researchers at University of Alabama, actually. They stratified, kind of alluded to it, people in two different groups, one ate the same amount of calories over 12 hours, one ate between eight and two. And they did these microarray studies in the muscle tissue and the liver, and they actually found that autophagy

• 25:45Speaker 01

  was significantly increased in the group that stopped eating after 2:00 PM.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  They're eating this isocaloric diets and all that, matched for their body weight. So that just shows me that. Same calories, different times. Yep. And the autophagy was higher when people stopped eating at two. Right. And not only the autophagy was higher, but there was a bunch of other genes related to autophagy signaling like mTOR. And so this is a sort of a break on autophagy. It's a, it's an enzyme. It's a kinase and this inhibits the process of autophagy. Now, some people might say, oh my gosh, I want to inhibit autophagy all the time. You want mTOR to also grow and repair. So if you and I both go work out, we've been fasting, we would want to probably eat some protein. Well, part of how protein helps us recover is mediated through mTOR.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  So it's not this binary thing, like one of these things is always bad and one's always good. It's the context. Yes. And you don't want to over express mTOR all of the time. That can accelerate your aging. So snacking every hour, having protein shakes and then chips and cookie, like that's going to overload this growth process and lead to things like cancer, dementia, heart disease. Really? So eating frequently throughout the day is typically not good or is it okay for some people? Yeah, generally, so if you're a 20 something fitness model and you're training your butt off, you can get away with it. Right. But when you get older, and there's been several studies, what they call them like nibbling versus gorging studies where they have people just eat one meal versus all these small little meals. When you're eating all the time, you think about food all the time.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  And you're, you're digesting all the time too, right? I'm assuming, right? Exactly. And you're having this constant surge in glucose and insulin. And you're just preoccupied with food. I know a lot of your listeners are business owners or want to be business owners. So you can focus more on your business and your, your family, like things that matter in life as opposed to always like, well, it's two hours, I gotta have my shake and you become food obsessed. And that is a behavioral addiction that can compromise your, your life and productivity. So what's your routine look like on a, on a normal season of life?

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  When you're not, you know, splurging or something or whatever. A cheat day, but what's like a normal routine look like?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Lewis Howes?

  In terms of feeding, exercise and fasting and sleep.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Awesome question, Louis. So I get up, meditate first thing in the morning. So I think mindfulness meditation is huge. I do a little Wim Hof hyperventilation retention breath work. I have a cold plunge, I go in that and that just sort of sets the day. And then I have some black coffee, but my rule is, is I can't have coffee before I meditate. So that's just my rule because I would obviously just want to have the coffee and then go about my day and not do any of that. But I just have espresso, black coffee. You know, our family, you know, we bike to school and stuff like that. I'll come back to like an hour or so of work. And by then I'm starting to get hungry. It's like nine, 10 o'clock. I'll usually have breakfast and, and that includes protein and fat for me. So I'll have two meals a day and my feeding window generally, again, and I'm not saying this is good for every single person, but it's between, you know,

• 28:48Speaker 01

  10 and something like 10 and 6 on most days. So it's like two meals a day. Now, if I train really hard or if I feel really hungry, you know, I'll have a snack, you know, maybe like one or two o'clock. And that can be some raw milk or a nut milk with some whey protein, something along those lines. And then dinner generally low carb, but you know, during the fall, that's when squashes and tubers.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  So I know it sounds weird. It's not really sexy to talk about eating seasonally. That's all humans ever could ever do.

• 29:18Lewis Howes?

  That's true. So you finish, you have dinner around five or six. You finish around six typically?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:24Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty good. It sounds like a good lifestyle.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  I mean, it's pretty simple. You know, you have two major meals a day and if you want a little snack, I mean, that's fine.

• 29:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  But.

• 29:32Lewis Howes?

  But stop at, stop at six, seven o'clock latest is what you would suggest.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. Now, if, if I have friends that are doing a cool dinner, I'm not going to be that weirdo like I already ate before, you know? So that's the thing. So balancing that with social connections because social connections, I think, are as important as, as any of the stuff that we've been talking about.

• 29:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So one, two nights a week, you know, if you're having a dinner at eight o'clock here, you're fine. You're just trying to eat quickly and then just like drink water the rest of the dinner or something.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Totally, or make sure I go for a walk after.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  You know, going on a walk after a meal is such a great way to drop that glucose level.

• 30:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  What does it do to the body?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Well, so after we eat, you know, I mean, it's funny. So I love food. So just want to preface this, but eating is stressful on the body. And so you're eating raises glucose, it raises cortisol. Everyone's scared about cortisol from adrenal fatigue and all of that. But, but when you eat, you disrupt the homeostatic balance. And, and, and so your body is trying to mitigate some of that. And walking can help do that and bring down that post meal blood sugar level. So I think, you know, one of the easiest things people can do, especially if they don't have the money to eat healthy food, or if you have a cheat meal and go to McDonald's with your buddies, you go to Chick-fil-A, whatever, go for like a quick walk afterwards and it can really kind of bring that glucose level down.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  What if you did a run or an actual workout right afterwards?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Well, okay. So if you do something super intense, maybe you haven't digested everything.

• 30:55Lewis Howes?

  That's not good, yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  So you might want to wait a little bit, but yeah, there's nothing wrong with, with necessarily doing that. But.

• 31:01Lewis Howes?

  Is there optimal times to work out during the day?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  So I think cardio in the morning is better and you're more powerful from a resistance training standpoint. You have more strength when your body temperature raises later in the day, so in the afternoon.

• 31:17Lewis Howes?

  So don't do lifting or high intensity in the morning?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Well, I hate to add all these caveats.

• 31:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  But dude, if that, if you have three kids and that's the only time you can do it.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  Do what you want to do, yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Like Steve Weatherford, that's it, right? He's out at five in the morning, just do it.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  It's a machine, yes.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Don't change what you're doing.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  But if you, if you have the flexibility to split hairs, sure, do your cardio in the morning or your walking and then hit the gym later in the day.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  And do you think it's good to do multiple workouts throughout the day? You know, a car, like a 20 to 30 minute walk, run, bike, swim in the morning and then 30 to 60 minutes, gym, class, whatever in the afternoon?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  If your schedule allows that, I think that's awesome.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Well, because you're training different energy systems. You give your body the ability. Because when you're doing cardio, right, what you're doing is you're using your mitochondria, you're tearing down, it's just different pathways. And and your body temperature is a little bit cooler. So I do think from a physiologic standpoint, it is good to split it up. And do two a day if you can. You can, yeah, maybe not every day, but like three or four days a week. I think that would be ideal and then. Well, how much cardio would you say for the normal person? Twenty, twenty five minutes. So jog? Jog, walk. It doesn't have to be high intense, like. No. As fast as you can push three mile run or something, it can be a jog. Okay.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  What will that do, just a twenty or thirty minute jog in the morning, first thing before you eat? Yeah, well, first of all, mental clarity is huge because you're going to clear the cobwebs. You're going to drop your glucose. It's good for the body's inflammatory response. You're going to decrease chronic inflammation. You improve the the distribution of your microvasculature. So as we age, our cardiovascular system gets compromised and we can get edema. We can get varicose veins and all that. So just moving, you're exercising this critical tissue. What are varicose veins? Those really thick veins that stick out in those. They're unsightly. What, what is that? Why do some people have that? It, the vascular integrity, the capillary integrity can be compromised. Like some people are just genetically prone to that, but it does happen more as we age.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  It happens to women after they give birth, they get hemorrhoids and all the pressure. So that's where walking is really critical because when you're moving your muscles, it massages all that that tissue. Interesting. And another facet of inflammation is when our lymph, so we have blood and we have our lymphatic system, which really mirrors our, our cardiovascular system. We want to move that lymph around stagnant lymph is a major problem. So if you go sit on an airplane or a train or even a road trip, it's good to just go for a quick walk, like five minutes. So last night I went in at Burbank and the rental car place is it's a good hustle. So I decided just to run because I've been sitting for so long, not that, but like three and a half hours. Right? And just to move that around to just like. Five, 10 minutes is good, right?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Easy, yes, I wasn't sweating, you know, it wasn't that big of a deal, but we don't think to do that stuff. We're like, oh, I'll get the Uber, I'll take the elevator, I'll take the escalator. These small little acts sprinkled in throughout the day. You know, it's just like, you know, if you ask someone, well, hey, when do you read about your bit? You know, if you could read 10 minutes, three times a day, it's probably better than sitting there trying to squeeze it in right before bed. You're going to be tired, you're going to have, you know. Sure, sure.

• 34:28Lewis Howes?

  So cardio in the morning, a little workout in the afternoon, fasting. What is the, what happens to the body when we eat?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  Like you said, it puts stress on the body. What happens to the body and is it better to work out before or after eating?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  These are awesome.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  Like before workout or like an hour and a half after, which one's better?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone has different perspectives on this, but, um, but again, I just want to clarify. I love eating and I'm encouraged eating. However, we need to realize that eating can be a stressor on the body. And that's how we can mitigate, especially eating on, more unreal food, more refined food, right? But, um, it's better.

• 35:08Lewis Howes?

  So what happens in the body when we eat? Say we have a, a big meal. What is the process of eating? Like what is, what does it do when we digest? How long does it take for us to kind of get back to focus? What is that process?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  This is a phenomenal question. Well, what's interesting in this leads into a tip, you know, practical tip with eating. Is the more mindful we are when we're eating, the better we will process that food. And the better our blood sugar will be in the post meal window. So if you and I start cutting up garlic and ginger and oregano right now. We're going to start to salivate, right? Just even thinking about this, right? That, that's known as the cephalic phase of digestion. Okay. So digestion really starts in your brain. And that cephalic phase, if that doesn't get initiated. So let's say you're eating, you're on Instagram. You're on your, you're on Instagram and you're driving and you're eating. I saw someone doing this on the way over.

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  So your, your brain's not thinking about processing food. So you could eat that same meal. When you're in a relaxed state and you cook the meal with your significant other or family member. And have a totally different post meal processing of insulin, glucose, inflammatory response.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  Because you're relaxed or you're preparing it or you're preparing forward to be ready.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Cause your brain is signaling to your gut, food is coming. So we're going to increase. And there's this whole field known as the incretin. So these gut hormones. They help, uh, insulin do its job in the post meal window. So they help mitigate blood pressure and these incretins are so important that they're actually a big target when it comes to managing type two diabetes. In fact, a lot of. If we think about bariatric surgery, I know I'm all over the place, but it'll come back to your question.

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  What is a surgery?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Gastric bypass. So to lose weight by manipulating the stomach.

• 36:46Lewis Howes?

  By making it smaller, taking out some of the stomach?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Correct. That's, so that's what a lot of people think. They assume that when you get bariatric surgery, the mechanism of action of how it's losing, how it's attributed or ascribed to losing weight is by making the stomach smaller. But a huge mechanism is changing these gut hormones and amplifying them. It's turning up the thermostat on these hormones that we can amplify by chewing our food, slowing down.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Talking, you and I talking, we put the fork down, we're engaged, we cook the meal together, we smell the meal. We're gonna have a much better post-meal processing of that compared to if we just shoved it down and we're driving on a 405 eating.

• 37:24Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So digestion starts in the brain.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  So it doesn't all just happen in the gut and just process all in the stomach and the intestines down here? It starts with the brain and the process before you eat?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 37:40Lewis Howes?

  And while you're eating, wow.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  There's even pre-meal insulin release. And so that's why when people are new to fasting, to dovetail it back, if they've been regularly eating at, say, they always eat breakfast at nine, they always have lunch at 12. If you skip breakfast, it's normal to be a little bit jittery because your body starts to remember Sally has a meal at nine. So there's a little pre-meal insulin release and that's going to drop your glucose. So if you suddenly skip breakfast, and this is a hurdle that people have logistically when they start fasting. They're like, I've tried it, I'm all jittery and I can't do it. Part of that is because there's this, what's known as the second meal effect and this anticipatory effect of eating. So your body adapts.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  So it just might take a week or two to get used to it?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. Takes some time. And maybe you just have, instead of a monster meal, maybe you have some macadamia nuts or cashews.

• 38:27Lewis Howes?

  Or half a banana or something, or yeah, interesting. Huh. I'm gonna have to try, because I love breakfast, but for the last few years, I've been doing the intermittent fasting more in the morning, obviously. And so maybe I'll try the not eating after seven or something. Tried out for a few weeks, yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would love to know, like, what you notice, changes. But again, if that's working for you, then maybe I'll change.

• 38:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if it's working.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Why is it so hard for so many people to lose belly fat? It's a good question. I don't know that anyone totally knows the answer. Like, five years ago, I would have told you it's all about the gut. It's all about your gut hormones, it's all about the gut microbiome. But now we know that stress and cortisol is an issue. We know that hormones, so if I give an overweight person testosterone, particularly if they're a male, they will start to lose more abdominal adiposity or fat around their fat tissue. So, and then it's stressed. You take two different people and you look at their cortisol levels. You know, one's lean, one's overweight, around the middle. Generally, their cortisol levels are a little bit higher. So, I think it's multifactorial. There's a lot of things going on. And that's why we can't just focus on just calories alone.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Of course, energy balance matters. But we need to look at the body as this interconnected network. And there's all these different pieces of the puzzle. And we now have some of the data to show that. So, I think if we focus on eating more whole grilled food, we cover sort of that microbiome piece. If we focus on stress reduction and eating in a mindful state, we sort of cover that cortisol piece. And going to bed and rising at the same time of the day, making sure we're getting enough sunlight. You know, as crazy as it sounds, I mean, there's good data to show that just 20 minutes of midday sun exposure can help you sleep better that night. Right. We never hear about it, right? People want to take the Tylenol PM or the antihistamines or the whatever. But very simple things are accessible and they're not very expensive. What about mitochondria? Why is this such an important thing now?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  What is it and why is it so important? Yeah, I mean, the way, the analogy, maybe it's not the best analogy, but if we think about our house and relate that to a cell. We have billions of cells. And our house has a furnace, it has a dishwasher, it has different appliances that make the house able to be hospitable. Well, your cells have these different intracellular components. And the mitochondria help take that energy. Like, we're gonna both eat dinner tonight. We can't directly utilize the glucose from a sweet potato or the fat in, say, an avocado. We have to break that down into a form of energy our body can use known as ATP. And it turns out that our mitochondria help facilitate, well, they they are what are needed to make that process work.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  What's ATP standpoint?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  ATP is like when I move in my muscles, adenosine triphosphate. It's how the human mammalian cells function, like that's the currency. If we think about cash, that this is the ultimate currency that enables transactions. By transactions, I mean movements, thinking, creating thoughts, they depend on this ATP. So we hear about, oh, the brain loves glucose. Well, the brain doesn't directly oxidize glucose, it needs it in the form of ATP.

• 41:32Lewis Howes?

  Mmm, good.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  So anyway, that happens mostly in the mitochondria. And it turns out that our mitochondria can become rusty and squeaky if we don't exercise, if we never fast, because we talked about autophagy is a way to, autophagy is increased when we exercise or when we fast. Where there's a way to sort of cause autophagy to our mitochondria, it's known as mitophagy. So mitophagy is a way to sort of take those rusty mitochondria that should be recycled. You know, it's like these papers, you put them in the recycle bin and we can use them for something else. Mitophagy helps to break down those intercellular components within the mitochondria.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  So exercise enhances that, fasting enhances that. So they're really important.

• 42:13Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing that you've learned in the last two years that's been a breakthrough for you in your sleep, your performance, your health, your emotional and mental wellbeing? What's the thing you've noticed? Cause you've been performing at an elite level for many years, you've been doing this since high school, you've been studying this, but what's something new for you in the last couple of years?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, you always get excited about the newest things, right? But I think really honoring the circadian clock system in the body and being much more vigilant, cause I used to stay up late and do research until like two in the morning, then sleep. And having these irregular sleep-wake cycles, especially as I age, I've noticed that I'm much more sensitive and I perform much better if I just say, look, Mike, you're going to bed at 10:00. And then in that process, if it's getting dark as we get into fall here, making sure that I'm cutting off the screens beforehand, at least two hours.

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, wow.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  So that, I mean, it sounds so simple, you're like, dude, that's it? Like, really? That's all I need? But how many people actually do it? That's the thing. You know, I, you know, had a late fight last night, I saw all these people on their phones, like just blaring, you can see the blue light, right? That is augmenting a lot of their aging process, their hunger hormones. It's impacting a lot of different things. So just being, I would say, be more conscious of how I treat my body's circadian clock system.

• 43:35Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying if we're looking at TV screens or phones, we're more hungry? Are we going to be susceptible to wanting a snack or something?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Probably the next day because it screws up your circadian clock system. And all these hormones, and all the men and probably all the women will recognize, men's testosterone rises in the morning, right? Like, it's very predictable. All these hormones rise on a circadian clock rhythm. They're influenced by our internal clock system. So when we're on these screens, we screw that up. So we might pivot it one hour here or two hours there. And so that then, leptin is another one of these hormones, like testosterone, that oscillates in this manner. And if we augment leptin, then you and I will start to crave crappier foods. We're going to want the cookies and the treats. Whereas we might have had the willpower to say, you know what? I'm not going to have that. If our leptin is off because we went to bed at 2:00 in the morning or we were watching Netflix too late,

• 44:27Speaker 01

  then we can succumb to those cravings that ordinarily wouldn't be a problem because our circadian clock system is off and leptin can be imbalanced.

• 44:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So. Because there's a few books out now about this Arcadian rhythm, right? Like the rising and sleeping with the sun and this and this. I mean, I'm not sure which, my mom was telling me about one recently. Actually, I'm not sure which book it was called. But how important is kind of this philosophy of, you know, once the sun goes down, like you start getting ready for bed and when the sun comes up, it's time to get up?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  To me, I think this is one of the most important facets of health. And if you go in nature and just look at what deer do, what bears do, even, and what drilled this home for me is we got backyard chickens a few years ago. And I was like, every night, no matter what, these chickens, when the, at a certain time of the day, they're, because they're prey, right?

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  Right. They're hidden in their little hut.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  And they go to sleep.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Every night. So it's like if mammal, if we want to survive, we can't circumvent this critical process. And we have, and the advent of screens, of phones, of Uber Eats, of all of this, we're seeing a worsening in our health. So I think it's one of the biggest things. And, you know, we've been talking a lot about fasting and autophagy and all that. Well, those, all these processes linked with longevity that we're all trying to hit and increase to make our aging processes slow down, they depend upon the circadian clock system. You cannot disentangle longevity-related processes from this critical circadian rhythm. So that reminded me of the importance then of time restricted feeding. As opposed to intermittent fasting, which focuses on the number of hours you fast,

• 46:08Speaker 01

  time restricted feeding focuses on when you eat and when you fast.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  Say it one more time, the last part.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So intermittent fasting, people hear about 16, 8, 10, 24, whatever. Time restricted feeding is a subtype of intermittent fasting that focuses on the hours that you feed and the hours that you fast.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  The time, sorry, the time of the day.

• 46:29Lewis Howes?

  Time of the day. Not 16 and 8, but when you do that.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  So again, we've talked, like, I think a really easy window for most people is like 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

• 46:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Like, if most people ate during those times, even if they're eating crap, they would probably improve their health.

• 46:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:45Lewis Howes?

  Don't eat crap, but if you just did from 10 to 6, and that's the only time you ate.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  You would probably notice your pants feel less tight.

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  You would probably notice that you're a little bit more on top of it mentally. You might notice better digestion and hopefully better sleep. You know, a lot of people can't sleep.

• 47:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So don't wait till 1 or 2, which is what most people have been doing with the intermittent fasting. It's like skip breakfast, wait till afternoon, then from, you know, noon till 8, or 2 till 10, eat. It's like 10 to 6.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Pushing it. It's the same, so it's the same.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  Because the research is showing that if you, you eat farther away from when you sleep, if you eat farther away, I guess, than when you're going to bed, the better it is for you.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  The closer you eat to sleep, what does that do to you?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  It makes it harder to burn fat. So there were several studies, actually, in overweight women where they had them have a little snack before dinner or after dinner or not. And just by, but they, but they had the same calories. What they did is they, they divide, let's just say it's like a thousand calorie dinner. They had, one group have an 800 calorie dinner and a 200 calorie snack. So it's the same amount of energy, but they had the dinner. One group, group A, will say, had the dinner, had the snack, went to bed. They tracked them for eight weeks. The group that just had the dinner, but no snack, lost more weight. Same calories, but it's just the timing and the distribution of those calories in relation to the sleep window.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Huh. So they had the snack, what, 30 minutes after dinner or something, or later?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  It was like an hour after.

• 48:16Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Interesting. Same amount of calories.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  So that's where, again, calories matter, energy matters, but when the so-called calories in, calories out model of obesity was sort of elucidated, energy balance, they call it in the fitness space, we didn't know about these circadian rhythms and circulating clocks. We didn't know about all the microbiome, like, so now that we understand this new biology, we should acknowledge and recognize that, you know, these things are influencing our metabolic health.

• 48:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow. If someone's listening or watching right now, thinking, this sounds amazing, but it also seems overwhelming, and to do it on their own just seems daunting.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:55Lewis Howes?

  What would you suggest? Are there, is there accountability or coaching they can get? Is there groups online where people are doing this for support? Like, what can they do to have a community to support them?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, this is a great question. I'm a fan of the apps, so there's a few different fasting apps. I like the Zero app. I don't know if you've used that. Peter Attia and company developed that one. So that's super simple. I think it's-

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  And you set the time then on that. You say, I'm only going to eat between eight and six.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  Is that right? Eight and six? Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that.

• 49:28Lewis Howes?

  And then what? It kind of reminds you of when to eat, or it has a community? How's that work?

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have, I think, an online Facebook group they do.

• 49:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of these, I used to have this Facebook group, this Metabolic Monday thing, but I don't, it just became logistically hard to like support it and all that. But I know there is fasting groups. There's a big fasting community, which is great. But I think an app is helpful. And then get your family on board, you know? I mean, I don't know anyone who doesn't want to lose weight and have more injury and feel better.

• 49:56Lewis Howes?

  Right, so just support each other and your family or find a friend who wants to do this with you.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  And how can they support this with each other? Just like check in once a day over text? Like, what's the best process you think for getting people on a four to eight week process of of doing this fasting cycle of going to sleep at a better time, eating earlier? What do you suggest?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  That's a phenomenal question. I suggest making the private public. That's what I've found with goal setting. So if people just keep it to themselves, like I'm doing this thing, but I'm not going to tell anyone, then they they don't really have any accountability. But if they like put their foot in the sand and say, hey, this is what I'm doing. So take a picture, even if you only have a hundred Instagram connections or whatever, it's fine. Just say, hey, this is what I'm doing. Here's why I'm doing it and post about it because, and you talk about this a lot. When you start to identify with the person that you want to be, you behave like that person. And so start to really, even if you, even if you're morbidly obese and you really have a weight, it doesn't matter, just start somewhere and make the private public. I've seen a lot of benefits doing that. And you can do that with business, with all these things. So, I mean, that's how I got into it.

• 51:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Started sharing the research, like, you know, just said, hey, guys, here's this new fasting study. And then when the time came to have cookies and ice cream, I'm like, I can't share the study and then also not do this thing, right? So.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  Do you give yourself a cheat meal or how's this work for you?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so I love like organic red wine and stuff like that. So like, like Saturday night, I have some wine. My wife used to have a raw food company. So we make like these almond flour cookies and this and that, you know? But it's not an everyday thing. But nutrition adheres to the 80 20 principle. So you don't have to eat like a monk or whatever every single day. You can have some buffer room. And this is where exercise and this is where compressing that feeding window comes in. It gives you a little buffer room to where I have friends who are like, dude, if I look at ice cream, I put on 10 pounds.

• 51:47Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So if you're eating like a standard American, that is true. But when you start compressing your feeding window, when you're walking, when you periodically do maybe a 24 hour fast, you can get away with more stuff. How often should we do a 24, 48 hour fast? Well, I think it depends on your body fat. I think it depends on your age. So it's more important for a 60 year old compared to like a 39 year old. The older you are, it's more important to fast for longer periods. For longer, because the risk of cancer, the risk of dementia, all of these diseases that are improved when we fast, the risk, you know, aging, aging is a disease. We've looked at it like an inconvenience, but it really is a disease.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  And we can decrease the prevalence of that disease by fasting more. So I think, I think everyone over 40 should fast at least one day a week.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Wow. It's tough, I know. 24 hours, once a week? Unless, unless you. Is that no food at all? Is that coffee? Is that just water? What does that look like? Well, so the studies allow for like up to 300 calories, even up to 500 calories. So you could do like a one meal a day, an OMAD one day a week. I think that's way better. I mean, if you look at that, and let's just back up a little bit, you know, some of the studies look at calorie restriction as a way to enhance longevity. So one way to get into a calorie deficit is, is to restrict how much food you eat. But that's, who wants to do that? You're like, oh my gosh, I'm at 2,000 calories or 17. It's, it's hard logistically to do. So one thing you can, you can get into a 20% calorie deficit over the long haul by not eating one day a week.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Super simple. You don't have to count calories on those other six days. Right. I think it's a huge. Is that what you do? Not, not every week. So I'll be honest with you. I would for like a year, I was every single week, every Monday. We'd have dinner Sunday night as a family. I wouldn't eat until Tuesday morning. Wow. So it was like 36 hours or something, right? Is that? Yeah, more, exactly. More like 36. Wow. And what do you do now? Once a month or something? I was doing that every, every, every week. What are you doing now? Oh, now, yeah, now it's like once, exactly. So like yesterday, like this will be my basically intermittent fat, like my 24 hour type fast. Really? Right. Haven't had food since. You know, um, it was like yesterday at 2:00 P. M. Really?

• 54:01Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So you'll have a dinner tonight or what?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll probably go for a hike after this and then go to Air One's or something like that.

• 54:07Lewis Howes?

  Or would you wait until breakfast the next morning and try to push it a little more?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. I noticed I was getting a little too skinny.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  You know, so it's that balance.

• 54:16Lewis Howes?

  Too lean, huh?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, I don't want to be the skinny guy. What's the point of being like, like having increased lifespan, but you're, you're a stick figure, you know? So muscle matter. So finding that balance, what like, what's going to work for you? So now it's more like a OMAD one day a week, meaning one meal that day.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  One meal.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Earlier, you know, and so, yeah, but finding that balance, you know, that, that's what I think is helping. Now, if someone is morbidly obese or prediabetic or has heart disease, maybe a 48 hour fast every week. And being consistent with that, like every week and as opposed to a lot of people get excited, this January, I'm gonna do a 72 hour fast.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Imagine like if you ran a marathon only once a year. You're, you're better off running like two miles a day compared to just one big event. Because that consistency. So that's my philosophy. I could be wrong on that.

• 55:08Lewis Howes?

  How old are you now?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Thirty-nine.

• 55:11Lewis Howes?

  What do you think will shift for you from 40 to 50? Is there anything you'll do differently?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Shoot, that's a good question. Um, I don't know the answer to that question, Liz. I, I mean, maybe I might crank the fasting a little bit more.

• 55:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Cancer doesn't run in my family, but I do have this tumor biomarker that's elevated. Just I randomly happen to test this and it could be nothing or it could be related to early cancer. So just to sort of keep an eye on that, that's what has encouraged me and inspired me to, you know, dive into this, the science on fasting, but also personally, I'm just interested, you know, because we know that fasting is a way to help improve cancer biology.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  And how important is? A strong immune system at all ages of your life. And what would you say are the key factors to enhancing the strength to make it bulletproof? Your immune system?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  This is a wonderful question. Well, not having glycemic variability. So if you and I go and have a soda right now and we test our glucose, we're going to go up to probably 140, 160 and come back down. That you want it to be more.

• 56:18Lewis Howes?

  More neutral, like a wave, not a big spikes.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. So less fluctuations.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  How do you do that? Cutting out sugary foods and processed foods?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  The processed packaged stuff. So sugar without fat, you know, is going to do that. So liquid calories, you know, soda pop, candy, things like that are going to jack that up. Milkshakes as well. So just having more real food. Reducing glycemic variability, improving our sleep. So making sure we're adhering to those circadian rhythms. I know it sounds like we're beating a dead horse here, but exercise is going to be one of the most important things. And I can share with you study after study about individuals who have poor outcome when it comes to viral infections compared to individuals who have good outcomes in their exercise habits. Kaiser Permanente here in Southern California did that. Forty-eight thousand subjects with COVID. They looked at their exercise habits and individuals who regularly exercise were much

• 57:11Speaker 01

  less likely to go to the hospital, end up in ICU or die. So.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  From exercise?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Just straight up exercising. This was another study in Sweden or yeah, Sweden found this and several studies in China and South Korea. So the data is emerging that being sedentary, it compromises your immune system. Because when we're sedentary, our baseline level of inflammation increases. And so if we think about it, you know, let's say we're playing really loud music in our, in this room, we're not going to hear if someone comes in or out. And that that person could be a burglar, for example, just hypothetically, right? So if you have more static background inflammation because you're not exercising, you're eating processed food, when that pathogen you're exposed to, whether it's influenza or SARS-CoV-2 or whatever, then your immune system is not going to have the bandwidth to do what it should do and take care of that pathogen early.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  That seems to be the problem with with these infections is the immune system is not mounting an appropriate initial response and the virus or the bug circulates and then it becomes a just a, there's a lot of collateral damage and our immune system freaks out. So if we can enhance, if we can prevent that smoldering inflammation.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  With exercise, with raw food, with stress management, with sleep.

• 58:22Lewis Howes?

  Yep. That's the key to increase the strength of your immune system. And what about gut inflammation? Because that seems to be a big leaky gut and gut inflammation seems to be a big topic these days. How do we, I guess, really clear up the inflammation in our gut? So that we can process our food better and be healthier that way?

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is an awesome, awesome question. Well, it turns out that when we eat a lot of processed fats with carbs together, that creates that inflammation.

• 58:52Lewis Howes?

  In the gut?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  In the gut.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Processed fats with carbs, are we saying?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Right. So let's think about the foods that are problematic. So if we think about french fries, fried oil, carbs.

• 59:01Lewis Howes?

  It's so good, though.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  I know, that's the thing. But if you just have a couple and then you go for a walk.

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, afterwards, go for a walk.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, and if it's a one day a week thing or whatever, you're with your significant other, I'm fine with that. If we think about pizza, so you got cheese, which turns into liquid fat, and carbs.

• 59:19Lewis Howes?

  My favorite food.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Corn dogs, right? Like, it's tough, you know? Or if we have a soda with something else, right? That's, that's like the ultimate disaster.

• 59:29Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean, soda with what, ice cream?

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Oh, you have a soda with ice cream, root beer float.

• 59:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Corn dog, like, dude, you're at, it's, you're just, look.

• 59:38Lewis Howes?

  You're stacking on inflammation.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  You are. And so you got to mitigate that. Now, if you train your butt off.

• 59:44Lewis Howes?

  If you work out, yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  If you're fasting, whatever, and this is like, you know, once a month, this is every other week. Not a big deal, you know? But you don't want to regularly do this. And sadly, people regularly eat that stuff. And it's reflective in their visceral adiposity, their belly fat. Their liver accumulates fat. So the liver is, you know, a lot of first absorption happens from the small intestine to the liver. And so it's this first target. And so if we start to, you only have one liver. And once it goes, you are really screwed. And a lot of people, there's a pandemic of fatty liver disease and most people don't even know.

• 1:00:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Because they don't test their liver enzymes, which are really accessible. You get your blood work, AST, ALT, GGT. Free tests, we should all know. And this is not esoteric. You go to any doctor anywhere in the world, you can measure these. Those are, and you asked about like, who should fast? If your liver enzymes are increasing, you should fast more. So liver is a huge metabolic organ. And by exercising and fasting, we can reduce the amount of fat that's stored in that organ.

• 1:00:43Lewis Howes?

  And what about?

• 1:00:45Lewis Howes?

  Eating before or after exercise, say we did the

• 1:00:51Lewis Howes?

  eight and six, right? We eat in that window. We do a little cardio in the morning. And then we say, you know what? We're gonna do a workout at whatever, seven o'clock at night. Is it good? Is it, is it, is it a bad thing to train hard on the muscles and tear them down and then not eat protein afterwards? Is that okay? Or should you work out at four and then eat at six?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  I would do the latter. That's what I would suggest.

• 1:01:16Lewis Howes?

  Work out if you have the time and the flexibility.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  Work out before and then have protein afterwards. Why is that?

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  To help repair. So in the post-exercise window, you're very insulin sensitive. So that's the other thing, you know, we talked about the soda and stuff like that. So if you just crushed a workout and had a soda, it's not going to have the same effect negatively on your blood glucose levels as compared to if you've been sitting all day and had that soda. So exercise causes your muscles to be like a glucose sponge. And what's cool about having like a post-meal, post-exercise meal, is you're much more insulin sensitive. So you're gonna take those amino acids and they will help repair the damage that we did to our muscles from that workout.

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  Got it. Okay.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  That's important. Some people do that. They, they train really hard, but they don't eat enough and then they wonder why they're not getting stronger. So again, it's this balance. It's tough and that's why it's so hard. It's like building a business. Like, you know, there's a lot of things that you gotta do right and, and you gotta ask, ask people, ask mentors, ask friends, hey, what do you do? What, what's working for you?

• 1:02:17Lewis Howes?

  Do you have a coach or do you just kinda do this all on your own?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  I don't have a coach when it comes to health.

• 1:02:21Lewis Howes?

  This is your obsession though. This is what you do.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I've been, you know, I have, I've had a lot of clients over the years, used to work with a medical doctor, helping overweight people and, you know, I was a personal trainer back in the day. So, yeah, and I'm not saying I'm the, I'm the world's reigning expert at all. Like I make a lot of mistakes too and, and stuff like that, but, I think, you know, with some of these approaches that we've been talking about, we can get a lot of people trending in a better direction, you know?

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  I love this, man. What else do we need to know? Anything else about optimizing for today's time where it's so much on our phones, so much late night TV movie watching, so much poor eating, you know, minimal exercise. Anything else you think we need to address here?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Well, I guess there's two things. And the first one, especially for the men listening, donating blood. And because our Why is that? Well, as men, our, we don't have a natural way to sort of get rid of blood, like women menstruate. And so they lose blood naturally. Back in the day, you and I would have been out hunting. We'd be exposed to parasites and ticks and we would naturally have thinner, less viscous blood. But I found, and this is, I can almost predict this with the clients that I work with. I would say about 90% of them have thick, hyper viscous blood. And we can easily help humanity and help our own longevity and health by donating blood periodically. What does donating blood do for us and our health? Well, it reduces the viscosity of our blood, the thickness. And so We don't want thick blood? You don't.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  It can be, it's more sheer stress for the heart and the blood vessels. The pumping in and out, right? Yeah, and blood's moving around and it's circulating and that can create sheer challenges there. And so we think about eating fat. This was the mantra people used to think about in the 90s. You eat fat, creates cholesterol in your vessels, narrows the vessels, you get a heart attack. Well, it turns out that when your blood is thick, that sheer stress can cause that same atherosclerotic formation, which is the formation of plaque and the narrowing of the arteries. That can lead to a heart attack or dementia or a stroke. And so a lot of men are in a better position health-wise if they periodically donate blood. How often do you do it? Once every six months. Right. But you might want to, you know, just get some blood work to see.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  So there's a test known as your hematocrit and hemoglobin. A lot of men, this is close to 50%. And so if you look at, say, we talked about cycling earlier and stuff like that, like those guys would do blood doping to get their hematocrit high. Some of them have more oxygen and everything, yeah. Someone stroke out because their blood is so thick. They would get a stroke? They would, a lot of people have died or had strokes and all that. Because their blood is so thick, they're placing so much stress on, stress from, and sometimes they'd be dehydrated. Wow. Some guys would stroke or.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Anyway, so the point is, we want thin-ish type blood. You want your blood at around maybe forty-two, forty-three percent.

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  And the only way by doing that is donating, or?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:05:15Lewis Howes?

  Is there nutrition or exercise that allows it to thin, or no?

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  I mean, exercise would help because you're kind of damaging those red blood cells, and so they're gonna break down over time, so that does help. But for a lot of men, honestly, just periodic, just put it on the calendar, like, hey, you know, around Christmas, Fourth of July, donate blood. Now, if you're anemic, you don't want to do that. If you're a menstruating woman trying to get pregnant.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to do that, yeah.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Don't want to do it. But post-menopausal women, they're not menstruating anymore, their iron can creep up as well. And so, iron can be a pro-oxidant, it can accelerate degradation of the brain. It can lead to Alzheimer's and stuff like that. So it's just a good health thing to sort of get in the habit of doing.

• 1:05:57Lewis Howes?

  What was the second thing? You said donate a blood for guys. You said, you were to say there's two things. One is for men, donating blood.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, gosh, I can't remember what else I was gonna say. I think it was, was this, go out and go camping.

• 1:06:13Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Because it gets you more in tune with this whole chicanery clock system that we've talked about. And it gets you in tune with nature. And I think, and this sounds woo-woo, right? This sounds, but that has been the big, and you asked me, hey, Mike, what was the biggest thing that you've changed? Why, I've got with my family, you know, hey, we have the best conversations, we're not on their phones, we have no cellphone service. We're exercising, we're in nature. There's research in Japan, Shinran Roku, or forest bathing. Like, this is real, tangible, like, it reduces your inflammation. So, periodic, even if it's over the Fourth of July, or even if it's over Labor Day weekend once a year, getting out in nature, it just reframes your perspective. And it detoxifies you, so to speak, and all that word's been overused, from the news and the stress.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  And it puts you in touch with your rhythms, because when you're out camping, you might be having a drink or something around the fire. But you're not crushing buckets of ice cream on Netflix, right? You're watching the sun, you're watching the stars, so.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you typically get tired, because you're out in the dark all night, and you're like, okay, it's time to go to bed.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:07:17Lewis Howes?

  What about? Uh, grounding. What does that do for people?

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Look, it sounds totally woo woo, man, but there's data showing, and I did this before, you know, there's a building just south of here and I took my shoes off. They have little couches out there in the courtyard and I just got some sun and grounded myself.

• 1:07:36Lewis Howes?

  How often do you do that?

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  You know, I try to walk barefoot a little, like a little bit every day, you know, I don't make it like a, I'm not like fanatical about it, but I think it's just good periodically. All animals touch the ground. We're animals. Um, you know, I mean, I know birds stand on trees and stuff like that, but we should be touching the ground and we never do.

• 1:07:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  And we have cell phones on our hips all the time. We have wifi going on. So if nothing else, it's just a great way to help, you know, our electricity and our circuitry and our circulation. And again, it might sound crazy, but studies have actually shown improved circulation and blood flow in people who ground.

• 1:08:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  So there's grounding maths. There's all sorts of experts out there.

• 1:08:17Lewis Howes?

  The best thing is just go out in the grass and the dirt and just walk around barefoot for a little bit.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Take your shoes off when you're walking on the beach. Like it couldn't be simpler.

• 1:08:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  And we all know we feel better when we do this. You go on vacation, what do you do? You go to the beach, you take your shoes off, you're in the sand. You feel amazing. You think it's because you're having a mocktail or, you know, margarita, but it's all these things. It's the sun, it's the fresh air, it's the grounding. So, yeah.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  I like this, man. This is exciting stuff. Um, your site is highintensityhealth.com. What can we learn more when we go to your site?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  You know, Lewis, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate this opportunity. Um, I share a lot of the science details on these things, but I try to keep it practical. Uh, and just, what I found is there's so much good research, but it's not really being talked about. And I'm just like a weird nerd, like I love to read the research. So I just like to break it down and be like, hey, guys, so here's what the studies found. Here's, here's how we can validate healthy lifestyle change. So that's what we encourage people to do.

• 1:09:15Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Your social media is fun as well. You got a lot of cool memes on there, on Instagram, metabolic underscore Mike, uh, Mike Mutzel over on Twitter, Facebook as well. What's the main platform you're on the most? What do you like?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Probably YouTube.

• 1:09:30Lewis Howes?

  YouTube. What's your channel there? I didn't see it.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  High Intensity Health.

• 1:09:33Lewis Howes?

  High Intensity Health on YouTube. You're putting out videos once a week or?

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Like. At least five days a week.

• 1:09:39Lewis Howes?

  Five days a week, you're putting out a video?

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  I try to.

• 1:09:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man. Stepping it up. I like it.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I just found like the platform will push your video into the feed, right? With more frequency.

• 1:09:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes. On Instagram, it's like kinda gone after a day where this is stays more relevant frequently, which is cool. I'm a big YouTube fan. We've been going hard on YouTube. And if you guys are listening and you haven't subscribed to our YouTube, go to the YouTube right now and check out Mike's High Intensity Health on YouTube also. Anything else we can do to support you and be a part of your mission?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  This is all good, man. I mean, if anyone, you know, starts fasting and gets benefits, I'll check on the comments on this YouTube video to see. Like, I would love to know where people are at and how fasting or exercise, how that's improved their health. The comments, you can really get a good kinda pulse with those zeitgeist, you know? See what's working for people.

• 1:10:26Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Okay, cool, man. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. You live as long as you wanna live, but it's your last day on earth. And you gotta, you gotta turn the lights off. And you accomplish all your dreams and goals, but it's the last day. But for whatever reason, all of your content has to go somewhere else. It's not here on this earth anymore. No one has access to your five weekly YouTube videos and your content and this interview is gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons, I like to call three truths, to the world. And this is all we would have to be reminded by your work and your message. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I would say really value your relationships. People really matter. The person that I would wanna be with would be my daughter, you know? So relationships really matter. I would just, the second one would be slow down, you know? Like, anything great takes patience. You know, businesses and professional athletes develop over time slowly. The third thing that I would say is Is we are part of nature, you know, so whatever your business is, whatever you're, you know, if you're gunning it and you're, you're driving till three, four in the morning and you think that you can circumvent these biologic rhythms that we talked about, that's going to come up and bite you in the butt. So, living in harmony with nature, being patient, valuing your relationships,

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  that's what I would, I would say. That's a great question.

• 1:11:54Lewis Howes?

  That's good, man, I appreciate it. I want to acknowledge you, Mike, for, for showing up and constantly doing this research. I think it's important because there's so much information out there. A lot of us don't know what is accurate, what is helpful for us, what is beneficial for us now and long term. So, I acknowledge you for being obsessed with the data, the research, the science, and then teaching it to us in practical, fun, insightful ways for us to actually be like, okay, I'm not too overwhelmed, let me go do some of this.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Lewis Howes?

  So, I acknowledge you for doing that, man.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 1:12:25Lewis Howes?

  And I acknowledge you for walking the talk. You know, you do the research and then you're living it as well. You're not just telling people and going to sleep at 4am every night and all that stuff. So, I appreciate you showing up for, for your audience by walking the talk. It's really fun to see that, man. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew this was coming. I think being consistent, you know, so if we think about Kobe, we think about, you know, great athletes, great entrepreneurs, they just showed up every day, day in, day out, and they were just consistent. And everything that we've talked about here, just be consistent with your walking. They can achieve a great physique, a great health, great mental clarity. So, instead of trying to always jump onto the latest fad, just be consistent. Pick one thing that we talked about, you know, today, and just be great at that one thing. It can be exercise, you know, feeding, whatever. That, to me, is what I think leads to greatness, or it can, one attribute of that consistency.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  Mike, my man, appreciate it.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  My pleasure, buddy, really appreciate it.

• 1:13:30Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.