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[Music]
welcome back to the show Tom I love
being here in LA and just checking out
your awesome set thank you man so you've
got the new book smarter not harder you
talk in the book about how when you were
younger you did things not in the most
intelligent way I'm curious with all of
the hacks and stuff that you've put
together that you document in the book
for somebody that's at the beginning in
their journey and they want to do that
basic like I just want to lose weight as
a proxy for other things but let's start
with that what's the most potent hack
that you have for somebody that wants to
to Really trim down if you just want to
lose weight the most important thing you
can do is you can do intermittent
fasting
that was our last interview the problem
is that sometimes it doesn't work so
most people will go out and do what I
did when I was in my early 20s I weighed
300 pounds I said I'm going to lose
weight and it's the most important thing
in my life and I was an early adopter of
being obese but right now it's more than
half of people so I did my whole family
was early adopters it's crazy I remember
as a kid thinking my family is different
right because they were all obese and I
didn't have that word back then you can
guess the word that was floating around
oh yeah but I remember thinking wow this
is weird why is my family so heavy in
other people's isn't it was a strange
thing obviously that becomes a huge part
of what pushes me at Quest but being an
early adopter of that then because you
one of the things I found interesting
and I'd heard you say this before but in
the book you detail it out I think a
couple times where you like I was a size
46 waist I was going ham I was working
out I got really strong but I was still
a size 46 waist yeah now does have to do
with the energy
metabolism there are several things that
cause that to happen and one of them was
over training over training you can't
lose weight when you're over trained
because you can outrun a bad diet or
because you're breaking horizontally
your cortisol goes through the roof and
it perhaps the fat it absolutely does
there are tons of people especially
women today who make they do the same
thing I did and they say I'm just going
to work out every day and I'm going to
eat less and I know I'm going to lose
weight because calories in calories out
and then they don't it just doesn't work
and then they get frustrated so then
they work out even harder and they do
what I did oh I'll take the chicken off
the chicken side are they not in a
caloric deficit because so this is one
of the most fascinating arguments around
calorie in calorie out so are you saying
so there is for sure for sure complexity
yeah that we'll get to in a second but I
want to I want to attack this head-on so
do you have to be in a caloric deficit
in order to lose weight no
and if you are in a caloric deficit is
it possible to maintain your body fat
percentage and or increase your body fat
percentage if you're in a caloric
deficit you probably won't increase it
however the studies show that when
you're in a caloric deficit for long
periods of time you go crazy and these
are studies that were conducted you know
in caves with people where there was
really no level of control the guy who
wrote about them with the most detail
was Gary Tobbs and his classic good
colors bad calories so the idea that
you're going to just use willpower to
stay in a caloric deficit forever it
actually is cruel and it doesn't work if
it did we would all easily lose weight
when you say doesn't work though what do
you mean it does it break because people
just get fed up and they're going to go
eat yeah people will do that in fact the
number of people who are breatharians
who wake up with empty candy bar
wrappers next to them it wasn't me it
happens and what happens is the meat
operating system takes over and says
you're going to eat and if you want me
to pretend you didn't eat that's no
problem there's a separate intelligence
that runs your meat it's what I call the
meat operating system in the book it
does stuff before you can think about it
and if you've ever caught yourself
reaching for a cookie that you said you
wanted to eat who the hell reads for the
cookie it wasn't you dude that's one of
the most surreal things that happened to
me so I would be a stress eater if I
hadn't done a lot of work so we were
just talking before we started rolling
there was a period this last year was
working 120 hours a week
no one should do it it's terrible I
don't want anybody to be impressed it
was out of poor decision making that I
ended up working that much but it was
the first time in my life where I
suddenly I actually understood how
people end up eating out of stress
because I would find myself walking to
the cupboard opening it up to get
something because I only eat what's on
my meal plan right and I was like what
is happening so I would have gotten set
my computer down gotten up walked across
the room reached for the cabinet all
before my mind kicked in and I was like
whoa some part of me knew the way you're
feeling will be alleviated by eating
this thing it's a very discomforting
feeling of how much I could do sort of
in zombie mode
uh it's worse than that
we are all in zombie mode all the time
because when I snap my fingers right now
you picked it up right away right except
if we were to put electrodes on your
head and measure your brain waves it
takes for the average person about a
third of a second before the brain gets
the first electrical signal that
something happened so what was happening
in the third of a second between when it
actually happened and when your brain
got a signal and then you had to think
about the signal to figure out what it
was so we're all running with a third to
a half a second lag time on reality but
we can't see it and there is a system in
our body that is very much faster than
our brain and it does all sorts of
things
to you and then you take credit for it
and a lot of what is in smarter not
harder is how do we get a signal into
that automated system it's actually a
separate intelligence that keeps your
meat alive if you removed all of your
human stuff who's making you breathe
who's making you pull away from heat and
things like that there are reflexes in
there would it be true to say this is
the difference between the conscious and
unconscious mind or are you trying to
delineate something else
it's something else
the unconscious mind is a part of that
system but there's a distributed system
of decision making throughout the body
each
mitochondria and probably some of the
other subcellular parts is an
environmental sensor in and of itself
it's a tiny little computer that picks
up a signal from the world around it and
then it decides what to do and it does
that and it talks to its other little
friends they have a little system called
Quorum sensing which is like voting it's
similar to the way crypto algorithms
work so your little things are deciding
what's going on in the tip of my finger
right now
your brain is never going to get that
signal yet this is a part of your meat
and if they decide that there's
something hot there they're going to
send a little alarm signal up and
eventually all these different systems
that are made of tiny little compute
nodes come up with a consensus and
eventually it makes its way through your
nervous system up to your brain and then
your brain figures out what to do with
the signal and it's that lag time where
well the hand moved away so we've all
accidentally rested our hand on a hot
surface and we Jerk It Away good thing I
pulled my hand away before I got burned
you didn't your automated system pulled
the hand away and you took credit for it
so if we could acknowledge that there is
absolutely A system that does things
before our brain can do it and the
measure in the brain here is called
p300d and it's just how quickly can your
brain sense reality around you how fast
is your nervous system
young people say an 18 year old is
usually around 250 milliseconds and
people in their 30s 40s 50s gets a
little slower with age you get to about
350 milliseconds I'm still at 250
milliseconds because I've hacked my
brain I do all the weird stuff that I do
so my nervous system and brain's ability
to sense reality is a you know about 0.1
seconds faster than average for my age
but even so I have a meat operating
system it does things and a lot of our
anxiety that we think is emotional
anxiety it's actually physical anxiety
something's wrong in the system the
system maybe doesn't even know what it
is because it's some weird toxin that
didn't exist in nature or we're eating
the wrong stuff or we're in an endless
caloric deficit yeah so I want to
anxiety is interesting and we'll
definitely come back to that
um to to wrap the calories in calories
out oh yeah so
this is like one of the most hotly
contested things sort of like it seems
like it's getting more and more narrow
so what I want to understand from you
because as far as I can tell the people
that um get really agitated when you say
that it isn't just a simple math
equation I think what they're saying is
effectively that if you put a bit of
chicken breasts in a um
a bomb calorimeter that it is going to
give off however many kilojoules of
energy when burned
fine like that I I don't have a beef
with that I don't know if that's just
plain physics unfortunately it's not how
biology works but it's physics we'll get
into the statement it's not how biology
Works in a second so first I want to see
if I can neutralize some of the people
in this so what I would say is okay cool
I'm with you on that the body however
though is a chemical processing plant
that's influencing what you're calling
the meat operating system which can do
things like get people to do things
subconsciously uh and maybe that one is
even less interesting or controversial
than the idea of at a cellular level
they're coming up with a quorum they're
deciding what to do and they're turning
things on and off we had talked about I
think it was in our last time together
where mitochondria will actually become
less efficient depending on the type of
calorie that you consume and so getting
into the complexities of that so I'll be
interested to read the comments and see
if we just alleviated some of the yes if
you put it in a bomb calorimeter it's
going to kick off that much when you
burn it cool yes if you are chronically
in a caloric deficit you are going to
lose fat but once you get into the
day-to-day realities of living a life
the the one last thing I will plant
while you're here to steer me if I go
wrong is there are certain drugs that
you can take no even before we get to
drugs if you're a type 1 diabetic you
can eat and eat and eat and starve to
death because you can't store fat that's
the one that I I never I haven't seen
the argumentation I'm sure it's out
there and people will forgive me for my
current ignorance
so all right with all of that laid down
so the people hopefully argue with you
if they see differently that it's a
slightly deeper part of the argument so
did any of that strike you as untrue
none of it struck me is untrue the bomb
Colorimeter thing is interesting because
if you put a piece of chicken
in a in a chamber and you heat the
chamber with a known amount of heat
until it incinerates and then you
measure how much additional heat you got
that's great put the chicken in there
with some non-caloric flame retardant
and it's going to require a lot more
heat to get the heat out of the chicken
but they never talk about that what does
that mean you're saying that there's the
equivalent of that in the human body
yeah if you put a flame retardant on the
chicken it's hard to burn but they don't
question how much energy it takes to
burn the chicken they only question how
much energy they got from burning the
chicken
so isn't it reasonable that there are
things that inhibit metabolism even if
you eat X number of calories and there's
three things that absolutely destroy all
of these calorie trolls and the calorie
trolls are generally people who've never
been fat or people who have fetishized
starvation and they're unhappy people
they're usually people who spend an
enormous amount of time in the gym and
genuinely believe that you can cancel
out our Snickers bar with a Diet Coke
they are wrong and when they perpetuate
that stuff they're actually causing a
lot of harm to normal people who are
trying to lose weight and follow bad
advice I went to the gym for 702 hours
and went on a low-fat low-calorie diet
when I didn't lose 100 pounds and the
entire time I thought I was eating too
much or I wasn't working out in that 90
minutes a day of half weights and half
cardio it's not reasonable it may work
for some people here's three arguments
why colors and calories out don't work
number one
if you eat X number of calories from Y
type of food at noon
you'll get one biological response eat
it at midnight you'll get another why
because of circadian biology the body
does different things with the same
exact number of calories based on when
you eat it because that nutrition
partitioning meaning it's gonna burn it
or store it as fat or it'll store it as
fat you're more insulin resistant in the
middle of the night melatonin makes you
insulin resistant
okay so your blood sugar response varies
greatly based on that the fact that you
can gain weight from the same number of
calories depending when they're eaten
destroys calories and calories out it's
an oversimplified lazy way of thinking
about weight loss and it's actually
cruel to fat people the way I was the
second thing is the uranium has a
million
calories per gram actually more than
that I found the math on it once
so if you ate a gram of uranium you
should be really fat and be fine for
years right
you mean you can't process uranium you
mean oh how about coal Coal is a lot of
calories in it oh you can't process coal
oh
so it apparently isn't about calories
and colors out it has to be the right
calories that go in not the so wow
different colors do different things who
would have ever admitted that in a blind
calories and calories out sort of world
the third destruction of the calories in
calorie count myth is a drug that's used
in animal husbandry
it's called xerinol it's an extract of
zorena zarellanone which comes from
toxic molds it's a synthetic bio
xenoestrogen that's a thousand times
stronger than human estrogen they
concentrate this toxin they put it in a
cow's ear so it'll enter through the
skin where it's thin in the air
circulate throughout the cow and the cow
gets fat on 30 less calories it says
Ranchers a lot of money what's it doing
what's the it drives up estrogen which
causes you to gain weight on less
calories so if this drug can exist and
if they use it today to increase yields
in agriculture and if farmers who are
making hundreds of millions and actually
billions of dollars can measure feed
efficiency to see whether x amount of
calories from this food makes the animal
fat or not the calorie and calorie out
people are gym trolls and nothing else
okay that was very pointed so let's take
these one at a time so the first one
nutrition partitioning so the body is
making a decision as to what to do with
the calories that it's in taking and so
you have a lever that you can pull there
so the example that you gave is timing
of eating I'm sure there are others
that's probably the biggest one this is
based on Sachin panta's work at the Salk
Institute and I've gone down and visited
his lab interviewed him a while ago in
fact you should have them on the show
he's a fascinating guy and he writes
about how his mother in India just
stopped eating when it was dark and in
about 90 days her type 2 diabetes went
away she lost a ton of weight just from
changing windshield she didn't change
what she ate at all right so the body
has a system that says during the day
when it sees bright light directly
overhead
it expects the largest number of
calories and this goes back to billion
years to when we're basically bacteria
floating in the ocean you have the most
algae to eat and the most sunlight and
we're trying to figure out a timing
signal to synchronize all the systems in
the body
so when we are single-celled organisms
and we want to start working with others
of our little single-celled species we
all needed to agree on what time it was
so to this very day there's a timing
system in the body called the scn in the
brain that's primarily controlled
through five percent of the cells in
your eyes and when it turns on melatonin
because it's dark outside melatonin
makes you insulin resistant and when
you're insulin resistant what you do
with calories is different you don't
take blood sugar and put it in to
burning it to make electricities make
ATP and turning ATP to ADP the things
that we do you'll actually take into
storing fat and that's how it works okay
so very very complex process it is a
complex process it's not just nutrient
partitioning but it's circadian biology
there was a Nobel Prize for this kind of
work that was uh rewarded for I think
the clock or awarded for the clock Gene
sometime in the last five or six years
it's relatively new science but
circadian biology really does show the
timing of food changes everything
um
okay the second one can't process
certain nutrients is this where we get
into kale and things that have
anti-nutrient properties like would
there be a way to eat so that I could
cancel so if it's not a Diet Coke that
cancels out my candy bar are there
things that I could eat we had on the
glucose goddess she'll have to Jesse I
forget her last name she's interesting
uh and she basically talks about that
that hey if you eat your now I don't
remember if she said that it would
impact your fat accumulation but
assuming that there is a positive
correlation or a causation between the
amount of glucose in your bloodstream
and the amount of fat that you store she
says that you can blunt the glucose
response by eating your vegetables your
I would assume high fiber items prior to
the things with that would otherwise
have a high glycemic load that's using
protein first actually and fat just you
have have dessert for dessert not for
your appetizer and you will have less of
a blood sugar Spike which probably will
cause you to put on to put on less fat
but not always if you have a blood sugar
Spike and you've just worked out then
that drives something called insulin
which is similar to insulin like growth
factor which is related to human growth
hormone so bodybuilders actually will do
a heavy workout then they'll drink a
bunch of maltodextrin to spike their
blood sugar so they can put on muscle
more but that's because there's high
demand for it if you're in a system
where there's not a high demand for
glucose and you spike a blood sugar
you're likely to store fat okay and how
far do you think that we can push that
so if I wanted to eat junk food let's be
honest that's what I would want to eat
sure but I want to
pretty dramatically blunt that effect
yeah let's talk about that this is
another great example for calories and
calories at
you could take something called olestra
have you heard of this isn't that what
makes you not metabolize fat yeah oh
yeah leaky anus or whatever it was in
the packaging of potato chips and I was
like I do not want anything that's
leaking anus but it does block fat
digestion you can also take various
carbohydrate blockers some of them are
plant extracts and they're basically
blocking any of the enzymes that break
down carbohydrates to release sugar so
now you've eaten calories but you didn't
digest them and I guess I guess we're
not bomb calorimeters oh right if such a
drug is possible in calories in college
out also doesn't matter and then the
trolls will say oh but those colors
don't really count because you ate them
but you didn't absorb them so I'm like
oh so it's about calories absorbed and
calories out but they don't ever talk
about that they don't care about what
you put in your mouth so yeah you can
also take binding things like citrus
pectin and some other things that slow
digestion or even prevent digestion I
don't think it's a good idea to take a
carbohydrate blocker a protein digestion
blocker and a fat blocker because then
you're going to have undigested food
that makes it through your system and
you're going to be pooping out pieces of
food oh you could just drink alkaline
water it'll do the same thing if it's
alkaline enough because it stops stomach
acid from working but whatever it is you
can control whether those Foods even get
digested and absorbed and the scary
thing is Mother Nature knows this and
this is part of what I'm writing about
and smarter not harder
plant proteins generally come packaged
with the protein blocking agent
striptase Inhibitors and they do this
why would that be a plant protective
mechanism so assuming that all the weird
stuff that plants do is because they
don't want you to eat them is it to get
the consumer to be malnourished yeah so
that you can't use my plant-based
protein so you won't eat me so most of
human plant eating throughout history
has been this is a great way to stop a
famine so I don't starve to death how do
I remove the most toxins from this plant
so it causes the least harm and provides
the most calories as apart from the most
nourishment because those are different
things Define the difference please
calories are something you burn to make
energy nourishment is things you use as
building blocks for your cells you need
minerals you need polyphenols you need
specific lipids and you need specific
amino acids you don't really need
specific carbohydrates to build cells
less than half a percent of your body is
carbohydrate at any one time okay so
plants I when I get this far in our
conversation we will get to the third
one here in a second but when I get this
find the conversation with you I always
feel like you're going to say Don't eat
plants but you don't no I do not believe
that not eating plants is smart and the
carnivore guys I actually predicted this
at the beginning I said you guys are
going to end up eating less inflammatory
plants because very few people do well
over long periods of time on a carnivore
diet or on a vegan diet I did the
carnivore thing when I was riding the
bulletproof diet book I went three
months with no carbs just ate meat and
eggs and I did have butter which some
people would say isn't carnivore some
people would they can't make up their
minds I gave myself
autoimmune issues I didn't have in food
allergies I didn't have because I gave
myself leaky gut because I was having no
soluble fiber and it's not a good
solution My Sleep Quality went down and
down I wouldn't push on that so why is
no soluble fiber going to break the
tight junctions and the epithelial
lining of your gut it's because of
bacteria that eats the mucus in the
lining of your guts acromancia okay so
you get rid of the bacteria that stops
them from doing that no the bacteria
doesn't have any mucus to eat anymore
because mucus is made out of
carbohydrates So It Goes to Town on your
gut lining interesting
okay
so what I would say is is going
carnivore for 30 days a great idea the
truth is hitting your career goals is
not easy you have to be willing to go
the extra mile to stand out and do hard
things better than anybody else but
there are 10 steps I want to take you
through that will 100x your efficiency
so you can crush your goals and get back
more time into your day you'll not only
get control of your time you'll learn
how to use that momentum to take on your
next big goal to help you do this I've
created a list of the 10 most impactful
things that any High achiever needs to
dominate and you can download it for
free by clicking the link in today's
description alright my friend back to
today's episode
hell yeah reset your gut bacteria get
rid of all the Bad actors in there it's
it's great and if you wanted to increase
butyric acid formation which is one of
the most important things your gut
bacteria doing you could eat lots of
collagen and I'm going to make collagen
a billion dollar industry I'm kind of a
fan right collagen can ferment in the
gut to become butyric acid it doesn't
always depending on what gut bacteria
you have they call that animal fiber so
if you're going to go carnivore you
should be just eating a lot like a lot
of collagen along with your steaks and
your organ meats and after
a month of that you're going to do where
it goes oh I guess I'll have some carbs
just have less less inflammatory carbs
there's a great argument for herbs and
spices as being Mother Nature's original
multivitamins that's why we had first
salt trading Roots through Asia that's
because salt is where minerals come from
rock salt and that was all we had as
supplements and our we are made out of
salt water like is in the ocean so
getting enough of that salt was precious
the next thing they added on top of that
was spices and herbs so they were
trading these not just because they
tasted good their training is because
these were sources of Rare Minerals that
you couldn't get otherwise and
polyphenols that were useful for it so
all of herbal medicine is based on those
two things and I think eating no plants
at all is a bad idea I also think eating
a wide variety of rainbows without
looking at the pros and cons of each one
of those plants is a Fool's errant and
there is no historical record of humans
ever doing that we did not have frozen
blueberries from Peru when we were
cavemen we just didn't and we ate what
was seasonal what was around us and
there were a few precious things that we
traded with people who lived far away
for that provided things like manganese
or zinc or something that we needed and
those were herbs and it's so interesting
I don't know how people figure this
stuff out so okay you're you're back in
the day and you are just absolutely
slaughtering people to get their spices
yeah and what we're saying is there was
uh ancient wisdom I don't know what else
to call it around ooh eat these things
feel better or something and you're
saying that that is because you go
there's actually two sections of smarter
not harder that talks about minerals so
you're like load up on Raw minerals and
then charge up on Raw raw minerals
so can I not get minerals from eating
animal flesh you don't get very many
minerals from animal flesh you'll get
some iron but most of it is in the organ
mates
and because that's just as it processes
carbohydrate let me see if I understand
the process
I don't know how I don't know how the
minerals end up in in the soil other
than through excrement so this it
becomes a chicken and egg problem but
let's just say for a second that we're
at the level of healthy soil so the soil
has minerals in it the minerals get
absorbed by the plants certain plants
yep we eat those plants we thusly get
those minerals are from an evolutionary
standpoint our body has grown expectant
that we will eat these sources of
carbohydrate that do have these minerals
in them or from an evolutionary
standpoint so that that's option a
option b is same scenario up to the
animals eat uh the stuff with the
minerals so they eat the the plants we
then eat nose to tail so we're eating
the organs the organs and processing the
uh carbohydrates that it ate retain
trays minerals from what they ate they
use the trace minerals they don't just
retain them they have the minerals in
them because they need those minerals to
do their function as organs do we store
minerals in do animals store minerals
and body fat
not very many we store toxic Metals in
our body fat but there's not a lot of of
any metal in your body fat that I'm
aware of I don't want to derail on that
but is that to trap it uh yeah it's a
trap it so when you biopsy body fat from
people does poison get stored in body
fat absolutely okay it's one of the
reasons that I read about rapid I have a
protocol on Dave asprey.com where I talk
about the rapid fat loss protocol and
it's how to lose weight fast and you're
supposed to and it's got all these
warnings
um I had a guy lose a pound a day for 75
days and you just start releasing well
you have to take glutathione and
charcoal and all these toxin binders
because otherwise you get profound brain
fog because you're dumping metals and
pesticides and your fat is full of that
stuff it's ridiculous fat also though
creates estrogen it turns testosterone
into estrogen and I'll show you some
pictures actually I just found him when
I was moving to Austin a couple months
ago there were Polaroids from a photo
shoot I did for Entrepreneur magazine
when I was 23 when I weighed 300 pounds
and I can't believe I wore a double
extra large t-shirt but my estrogen was
so high and my testosterone was so low
because of the body fat and toxic mold
that I'm very androgynous in the
pictures that's weird
and that's what happens from fat but the
fat was storing mold toxins estrogenic
mold toxins rather than sticking it in
my liver and my brain
okay super interesting going back to the
organs are using the minerals in just
cellular function yeah so a lot of
biological processes use enzymatic
reactions and this is why bomb
calorimeters are a poor model for this
is in Biochemistry we take a reaction
that would have required a lot of heat
and we do it with very little heat using
what's probably Quantum tunneling but
using enzymatic reactions so enzymes
allow a chemical reaction to happen with
a lot less energy than otherwise would
be that's why biochemistry is different
than physical chemistry or just normal
chemistry and the people who are saying
well if I burn it in a chemistry well if
you wanted to get something done
chemically with just raw chemicals so
you want to break some down you pour
some acid in it it requires a lot of
heat but if you're in a biological
system and you don't want a lot of heat
there are more elegant solutions to do
this and they're almost always based on
enzymes and enzymes are almost always
based on something like Boron or zein is
that because it's a facilitated chemical
reaction we believe and this is outside
my official pay grade I don't have a
degree in this I haven't studied like
the wing it with me yeah I haven't said
like the materials science elements of
enzymes so you know guys if you're a PhD
please help I'm actually interested but
as I've had it explained from people who
are these kinds of people when we're
doing a reaction in the body say to make
body heat or something like that we're
not using it with a Bic lighter and
Flame and burning something and
oxidizing it at all we're using a more
elegant approach that requires moving
electrons around and we do that with
enzymes so that it doesn't make as much
heat so that it's the most elegant
efficient system that well probably that
you can evolve and it just works Works
differently than burning stuff so
burning stuff is a model for physical
chemistry but you actually take classes
in
biochemistry because we don't do it the
same way in life right there's a there's
a required Elegance if we had to light
ourselves on fire to do stuff we
wouldn't work very well we're not steam
engines that's really interesting so I
know nothing about chemistry but as you
were saying that that was sort of my
guess is I think of the body I was going
to be debated as to whether it's
conscious and intelligent I don't think
of it as conscious and intelligent but I
do think of it as they have their own
agenda they've got programming and they
run that programming and so if you need
something like a if a raw physical
chemical reaction is just two things
Collide and they will do the same thing
every time versus putting it in a system
that has little workers that move things
around and take care of they facilitate
that reaction okay that makes intuitive
sense to me though I'm sure I'm way off
the reality so I want to really
understand this using of the the
minerals so our our organs all animal
organs are using the minerals to
facilitate these trans
chemicals that allow life itself to
happen but you need those minerals to
make all of that work yeah you need
minerals to make your mitochondria work
if you don't have magnesium and calcium
and potassium at all in the body you
don't have a body you just have a lump
of gooey stuff like you actually they're
required for life and they're required
for thousands of different reactions in
the body and what is elegant and I would
argue intelligent in your meat your meat
is is blindingly fast and blindingly
stupid
and we are blindingly slow we have
that's like third a third of a second
delay we don't even know we have it
right but we're incredibly intelligent
so we have these these two opposing
systems which worked well in unison to
keep you from getting eaten by tigers
and to keep it from starving to death
because you saved some food for winter
right so it's kind of it's been a
successful system there's eight billion
of us floating around but you were
asking about some other aspect of that
around no just I'm trying to understand
minerals because I know it becomes a big
part of your the overall thesis of the
book but we I got it here's what what's
happening it's stupid but it has a stack
ranked list of important processes and a
signal for each one so it says I have a
thousand things that need magnesium but
this guy's only taking 200 milligrams a
day and he needed 1.2 grams so what do I
not do
right it's kind of like you know you're
playing with SimCity or something and
you're like okay I don't have enough
resources do I allocate it towards
building a muscle or do I allocate it
towards you know making more
mitochondria towards making the brain
work better we don't generally get to
say what happens there but what the body
will stop doing is getting rid of old
burned out zombie cells it doesn't need
to do that to stay alive now because it
cares about the now but if you give it
enough minerals it will do that as long
as it gets a signal that it's worth the
work
the thesis behind smarter not harder is
that our systems are elegantly lazy and
that we are lazy as a result and that
there's nothing wrong with that in fact
laziness has driven all progress in
humans yeah I'm going to paraphrase
something from the book which I found
interesting so when people come to me in
my sort of Realm it's always why do I
have this Grand ambition but I feel
super lazy yeah and I explain something
similar to what you go into in the book
obviously have a lot more detail but
that Evolution has given you two
impulses one go hunt and make sure that
you provide and the other is make sure
that you don't use more calories than
you absolutely need to otherwise you
have to go hunt too much it's too risky
um in the book you talk about how that's
actually embedded down at every single
cell it has that impulse which I thought
was a pretty useful Insight it's what
you open the book with why does this
matter so much how do we integrate it
um yeah it matters so much because
certainly when I was overweight and just
hitting at the gym and all that I it
constantly was I'm not trying hard
enough I I'm lazy right something must
be wrong with me because I don't want to
do this but when you understand that
that laziness motivates you to do things
better we have cars because we were too
lazy to walk we have fire because we
were too lazy to shiver under a blanket
we have blankets because we were too
lazy to shiver without a blanket like
everything we've ever made that makes
life good is because we didn't want to
do something yet we blame ourselves for
that have you ever
had someone come home and say I just
saved 400 on a pair of shoes
no no never not have that particular one
sure I get the idea okay good deal
how many times would that same person
not naming names say
I just spent 300 on the shoes of the
handbag
we don't focus on what we spend that's
effort we focus on what we save
and it's incredibly motivating and
companies know this save five dollars is
actually more important to us than
spending fifteen dollars like what the
hell
so you're unconscious and your meat
operating system values saving time and
money and energy because it's lazy so
why don't we use that as our motivator
and what I teach people to do and
smarter not harder is to say well the
history of let's take exercise is one of
the domains you pick up rocks or you run
away from Tigers all exercises is some
type of that but what if there was an AI
driven system like when we have at
upgrade Labs that allowed you to get six
times better cardiovascular Improvement
in a tiny fraction of the time of going
to a spin class would you do it and the
answer is most people say heck yeah I
only have to spend five minutes three
times a week and I get more results than
going to an hour class five times a week
I'm in well there is such a system it's
driven by AI it's customized for each
person and all that but when you do it
you're still not motivated to go do it
because no one's motivated to go to the
gym you could say I'm going to use my
willpower and form a daily habit I'm
going to Pat myself on the back and say
I'm a good person or you could say you
know what
I saved 55 minutes today and you focus
on how much time you saved and that
strangely motivates your hardware and
you're like oh I'm gonna do this I'm
gonna go save an hour so you're willing
to go do five minutes but if you said
I'm gonna go spend five minutes you
wouldn't have been willing to do it and
that's the laziness principle and just
understanding it's a good thing that you
don't want to waste your life doing
stuff that doesn't work very well and
the reason that I spent a portion of my
life writing the book is that I want
people to have their time and their
energy back I am not happy that I spent
702 hours not losing weight at the gym
following bad advice because there are
things that are so much more effective
than what people do so most of us buy a
gym membership and we don't go and we
say well I have it I know that I could
go I know that someday later when I'm
not feeling this lazy I'll probably go
and this is why there's 400 million
dollars a year of gym memberships that
no one ever uses I want to close the
loop on weight loss so the third thing
just because I said that we would cover
it was the zoronal those are well known
yeah so you've got the cows getting fat
on less calories yep
um so we're able to what's the what's
the mechanism that's breaking down is it
just the increase in estrogen and
estrogen's job is to signals fat storage
and oh God okay so now I'm way beyond
what I actually understand but uh okay
so obviously women have women actually
have more testosterone than estrogen but
they they have way more estrogen than
men have correct it is my understanding
that women store more fat than men on
average and it is my understanding that
the reason they do that is if you think
about fertility they would need to have
extra resources around to be able to
carry a child nurse a child Etc so it
makes them store more fat they store
more EPA and especially DHA especially
in their thighs brain development for a
child yes that's where the first child
has a higher IQ in part because it got
all of Mom's fish oil that was throwing
her fat for the baby my first book was
on fertility so I went really deep on
this
okay super interesting so uh so we'll
put that in the bucket of hormonal
effects yeah so in fact going back to
just calories not a calorie am I correct
that if you were to put a woman on
artificially high levels of testosterone
that she would begin losing body fat she
would absolutely begin losing body fat
if she'd put on muscle mass as well too
right she might also get a little voice
and body hair if you did too much of it
but body composition is massively
controlled by the amount of testosterone
you have so you get these usually it's
the same calories in calories out people
and they're saying well if you just work
out hard enough then you'll somehow grow
testosterone even though testosterone is
related to the quality of your sleep and
eating enough saturated fat but
saturated fat has calories so they're
oftentimes opposed to that and you're
supposed to somehow eat low fat things
and gain muscle mass and raise your
testosterone it doesn't appear to work
that way at this point on a high
saturated fat diet with grass-fed
protein inadequate protein it's very
important if you're trying to lose
weight
it helps with the toxin flushing out
thing from the fat it helps with protein
helps with cell membranes and people
have lost more than two million pounds
on the bulletproof diet and yet pissed
off all their calories and calories out
people but it's a lot easier to not be
hungry all the time and to lose weight
and that's what I want people to
understand is if you're hungry all the
time you're probably doing it wrong
there's nothing wrong with being hungry
every now and then you should teach
yourself to not feel like you're going
to die when you're hungry that's what
fasting is for
but when you eat it's getting enough
usable protein and something we haven't
talked about that's also in the book
plant-based proteins have a lower
biological availability than
animal-based proteins so if you eat a
piece of steak that's at the very high
end and you eat eggs it's in the middle
and milk is about in the middle and
plant-based proteins like rice protein
and soy protein and all those things are
much much lower so a gram of plant
protein is not the same as a gram of
animal protein when you're looking at
putting on muscle or losing weight
okay so from putting on muscle
perspective I'm assuming this is an
amino acid profile question availability
and profile they're different okay it's
called diaa is the the measure of that
but especially digestive I'm going to
butcher whatever it stands for Digestive
digestible available
um amino acids something to do with
digestion yeah I just remember what the
acronym stands for but you can look it
up okay what what you'll find there is
that just because they're amino acids in
something if there's something that
blocks your body's ability to break the
protein down into them it's not a
digestible protein right and if if you
don't believe in your hair is made about
protein like have a hair solid you can't
digest it it doesn't do anything so like
we know intuitively that what I'm saying
has truth in it but what we don't know
is why can't you digest hair if you
don't have the enzymes to break keratin
down
interesting yeah
but if I did I could eat hair I'm sure
there's an animal out there probably a
worm or something that is totally happy
to eat hair otherwise or cockroaches
otherwise we'd have piles of hair built
up like we do artificial fur fibers
everywhere nothing can eat that wow okay
that's super interesting
uh okay so now we I think have a pretty
neat container on fat loss but now talk
to me about why why can't I work out
hard enough that I can meaningfully lose
weight like if I had a reasonable amount
of calories I'm I'm maybe a tiny bit
over maintenance we know it's not as
simple as I eat a hundred extra calories
therefore exercise 150 calories and
you're gonna lose weight so we know
there's complexity in there but why like
if somebody came to me and said Tom in
the next six months I have to lose
weight and I can either exercise or die
I'd be like all day diet amen right just
just I know and be able to explain why
it works like you can but it is
certainly anecdote totally just obvious
to me in terms of what I've done with
myself my wife everybody that I know
it's like if you clean up your diet
you're gonna be way better off but why
like if I like when I think about a
marathon runner or somebody that's uh
and in fact let me make a statement I
believe to be true and maybe it's not
but
um I used to have an employee that was
an Olympic level swimmer so you know I
went to the Olympics but he was like one
place out from both right and he said
that he would just eat an unimaginable
amount of junk food and McDonald's
french fries all of it and he was like I
forgot I could be misquoting but it was
something like 10 or 11 000 calories a
day and he said tell them I had six pack
abs at all times but he was like the
amount of swimming I had to do was so
insane that's why so is it just that oh
you can get there but you're gonna have
to be professional athlete level of
working out or is he
lying wrong whatever
if you can do that level of exercise
you're already reasonably healthy so you
can keep up that regimen until you can't
anymore most people today are not
metabolically healthy enough that even
if they had all the willpower in the
world that they would be able to do that
amount of exercise were that unhealthy
but I have to ask a pointed question on
that I know you're going somewhere but
uh if you have somebody like that so
they're metabolically healthy they're
eating terribly but in my assumption
here is because their muscles are
screaming for glucose because you've
just beaten the life you've used them so
much it is my understanding that when
your muscles are in need of glucose you
don't actually need insulin to get the
glucose into the muscle tissue which
means your glucose levels would remain
low and whatever damage glucose does to
this or sorry insulin does to the system
making the cells insulin resistant
making it harder for you to put the fat
on making pre-diabetic so on and so
forth if I'm right about that that would
be why that person doesn't be become
metabolically unhealthy even though
they're processing a lot of food that
would make somebody else metabolically
unhealthy because the way this guy
described his diet if I wanted to break
somebody's metabolism I'd say eat 10 000
calories a day of McDonald's like just
go God I can feel the comments Lighting
on fire generically meaning you're
eating all the fried food the bun the
like everything everything so maybe now
you need either if anything I just said
is incorrect let me know okay so you're
just saying if you swim a lot
like an absurd amount yep exercise yeah
exercises I think swimmings in
particular an important part here
because of all the he's basically
teaching his body to make more body heat
by being in a cold environment so
swimming is is actually a form of cold
therapy as well as exercise and you can
get cold therapy without exercise that
does that when you drive more
thermogenesis that way it's called
mitochondrial uncoupling there's a
metabolic benefit to that but the
reality is this is a person who has
enough thyroid has enough testosterone
at the start and probably has one of
those genetic profiles that's less
susceptible to toxins in the environment
but they're not bulletproof I had a
friend who's like that he was a
semi-professional cyclist you know
friends with Lance Armstrong you know
wrote The 100 miles a day sometimes for
fun just hardcore Pizza beer hot dogs
junk food 10 000 calories a day
he wasn't doping he was just a semi-pro
cyclist okay um no he wasn't actually
competing he just rode with all the guys
competing and just just an amazing guy
he was also an early inventor of Blade
server technology it was a foundational
internet thing so he died on Sandhill
Road at 46 of a heart attack with abs
this is not uncommon for people who
exercise at that level who we junk food
if you exercise at that level you have
to eat even better because you're
putting an extra load on your system and
if you are blessed the way I was not and
you were not with a system that's
resilient to Mercury and resilient to
mold doesn't have systemic inflammation
doesn't have extra blood blood clotting
isn't susceptible to pre-diabetes all of
which I have
if you're blessed with one of those you
shouldn't abuse it you could probably
live a really long time if you were to
use a little bit of biohacking
techniques and you were to apply the
right amount of work for your body to
feel good and get the muscle you wanted
you'd also probably have a lot of extra
time left over but if you love swimming
for four hours a day and it's not just
endorphins driving you
then then you should do that but if you
do that and you combine it with junk
food the fact you can eat junk food
doesn't mean it's not harming yet the
fact you don't get fat from it doesn't
mean it's not harming you you look at
the labs of marathon runners of
triathletes these are not the labs of
healthy people they're Labs of people
who can be profoundly healthy if they
weren't over training and pushing
themselves over the limit so if you want
to run a marathon do it but don't
convince yourself that you're doing it
to be healthy you're doing it to prove
something to yourself and that's
valuable the first guy I ran a marathon
died that's why we celebrate the
marathon yeah yeah yeah no it's
interesting you talk about that in the
book if I remember I think I do yeah
um okay so we won just to to ask
directly am I off base with the if you
use the muscle you need less insulin to
get less insulin I don't believe you
need no insulin because a no insulin
person is a dead person and so it's kind
of important that's very important so
absolutely and if your muscles are
screaming for insulin or sorry screaming
for blood sugar
um they will need less insulin to get
the blood sugar in and they'll absorb it
quickly and this is why you know you can
eat some sugar and then do 20 squats
just air squats and your blood glucose
won't Spike yeah I I really have tested
this so this is really interesting in
fact let me I'm going to run something
by you so maybe you'll even know what's
happening okay so uh I was working 120
hours a week I start getting dizzy oh
yeah and I'm like well clearly a brain
tumor go to the doctor oh [ __ ] you
should have called me and uh got some
salt already yeah the the doctor was
like no no this isn't uh do they do all
the scans an