Kind: captions
Language: en
hey everybody welcome to another episode
of health theory or i should say today
welcome to a very special episode of
health theory today i'm going to be
walking you through the daily routine
that i've put together in my life after
spending all of this incredible time
with these amazing experts on health
theory this is a lifestyle that is
designed to help me live as long as
possible maximize my cognition lower my
inflammation and make sure that i can
enjoy my day-to-day life to the max so
all right here we go this is health
theory in action
[Music]
okay now that the blinds are opening we
can actually see something so i keep my
clothes right there next to my bed
keep headphones right next to my bed
that way i am ready to rock and roll as
soon as i get out first thing i do is
put my headphones on
uh i start listening to a book or a
youtube video
then i would come in i would brush my
teeth
again i did all of this earlier because
i didn't want to wake up lisa
but just by way of recreation that's it
so i would come in brush my teeth then i
snatch up the dogs
feed them
then as of right now anyway it would be
off to the gym
the key part of any morning routine is
the order in which you do things so
for me depending on what's going on in
my life i may prioritize the gym or i
may prioritize meditation but one of
those two things is almost always going
to come first it's going to be pretty
rare that i don't do that now as the
time that we're recording this we're
going into the summer so right now i'm
really prioritizing the gym also coming
off of the quarantine where i was maybe
a little bit more relaxed hyper focused
on the business
the gym was something that came a little
bit later in the day the problem is
depending on what your priorities are
and mine is definitely marriage first
then business then physique
that if something crazy is going on in
the business and you know i'm trying to
get things done there then whatever i
haven't done first thing in the morning
it's possible that it just doesn't
happen so um right now because i'm
really focused on the gym even though my
ultimate priority list hasn't changed
the reason i'm recording this now is
because as you guys know i wake up so
early that there was nobody to film me
doing this stuff but the way that i
think about the gym right now it's the
first thing i do so i wake up i put my
gym clothes on i immediately beeline
to the kitchen if i'm completely honest
i feed the dogs and then i
will drink a bit of water and then i
head straight to the gym
i do a pretty simple workout routine i
do a push pull legs and abs so
push meaning i'm doing chest and
actually i do it in a different order i
do pull
then i do push then i do legs and abs
then i repeat the cycle so typically on
a monday i'm going to start with my back
and my biceps which are the pull motions
and i do that because historically i
have had a my back has been weaker than
the rest of my body so i'm prone to
getting injured if i don't really take
care of focusing on my back and my core
when i do that then i can avoid injury
when i don't then i run into problems
and this is one of those guys from a
health theory perspective you're going
to have injuries like let's take the
lower back
and you're going to think that well i
couldn't work out or i couldn't deadlift
because i have lower back pain now you
need to seek somebody that can actually
walk you through how to do this safely
because deadlifts in particular can be a
risky thing but i promise you that if
you haven't at least explored that
getting strong is the answer to your
pain that working out even though it
seems like the riskiest thing you could
do is actually the thing that's going to
solve your problem then you haven't even
begun to explore potential remedies so
many of the problems that people have
are not from working out they are from
working out in a way that creates
muscular imbalances or
where you're just not working out enough
to get strong
i have a hypothesis it's a hypothesis i
could be wrong but man in my own life i
am so arrogant about the following
thought
if you have lower back pain
it is for exactly two reasons
reason number one your diet it's an
inflammation problem change your diet
and suddenly back pain reduces so
dramatically this from experience
number two
you're just not dead lifting enough
you've got to get your legs your glutes
and your lower back strong and of course
there's the echo so then your abs better
be strong so you've got to get that
whole chain of things strong
every time my back is hurt one of two
things or both have been true my diet
has been off point so let's say it's the
holiday season i'm going a little bit
crazy all of a sudden i'll notice whoa i
have pain in my lower back but it feels
like nerve pain so i'm like what is
going on and then number two i haven't
been dead lifting when i am religious
about my diet and i am religious about
deadlifting my lower back pain is
exactly zero
so as somebody who has experienced lower
back pain that doesn't feel diet related
it doesn't feel related to working out
in fact it feels dangerous to bend over
and pick things up so i'm like whoa
what's going on maybe i'm just getting
older whatever and the punch line every
single time to unwind that has been get
my diet on point low inflammation
meaning i'm eating whole foods which
we'll cover in the diet section and then
to dead lift consistently now personally
i deadlift brace yourselves five days a
week
it's going to be way controversial so
let me tell you how i do it and why i do
it so first of all i'm dead lifting
lightweight high rep always i never i
used to focus on low rep heavy and it
felt awesome it was so cool i don't do
it anymore
i'm worried about just from a longevity
standpoint that just could be because
i'm not doing it well i'm super open to
that reality but now what i've realized
works extraordinarily well for me is low
weight high rep
and
i do
a single set
three days a week and i do
two days a week where i do multiple
three to four sets
so that i found works incredibly well
and when i reduce that to say three days
a week which i've tried i just find
every now and then i'll feel a little
twinge in my lower back something to
explore okay so let's finish going
through the
pull push legs abs so
on the pull day i'm doing things for my
back i'm doing things for my biceps
anything that's a pull now i separate my
legs so you could certainly say that
your hamstrings are a pull because they
are
but i isolate that to leg day just to
make sure that i give my back proper
time i do
four
exercises to one back to buy so i do a
lot of back exercises because i found if
i'm trying to strengthen my buys which
look cool
but if i'm focused on that i end up
hurting my traps or my scalenes so by
focusing on my back my back my back
especially my mid back
keeping that strong
then i can work out my biceps but if i
just focus on my biceps i end up getting
injured or just really tight really
uncomfortable so that's really important
then on push days i'm doing chest i'm
doing triceps i'm doing shoulders and
by grouping those up you're taking
advantage of the compound movements so
when you're working your back you're
also working your biceps when you're
working your chest you're also working
your triceps and your shoulders so by
grouping those up you're hitting them
really comprehensively on that day and
then legs obviously speak for themselves
so i'm doing quads i'm doing hamstrings
i'm doing calves i'm doing abs on that
day
not everybody groups them like that but
that's
been very easy for me
to remember sort of where i'm at my
cycle to make sure that i'm hitting
everything and of course within those
days i will vary the exercises that i do
from day to day but you know so for the
back you have you know a dozen or
whatever different exercises that you're
gonna rock through same for my push day
same for my leg day although if i'm
honest i'm far less varied on my leg day
keep that pretty basic
but by doing that you're making sure
that you're hitting all the different
little muscles in different ways so that
you don't get prone to a muscular
imbalance which i've struggled with
pretty profoundly partly just out of
laziness because i like to do
very simple things over and over and
over so i don't have to reinvent the
wheel every day
but yeah that's my workout routine i've
stayed on that routine which explains
why i don't look like a bodybuilder but
i've been on that routine now for
10 years
now i will say that is not optimal i'm
just saying for my lifestyle where that
falls lower in my priority list that's
been a great way to make sure that i
maintain i show up i put in the work
and i'm consistent and as they say the
workout that you do
even if it's a little wonky is better
than the perfect workout that you don't
do so that is my gym routine
meditation is one of the most important
things that i've added to my daily
routine i'm not joking when i say that
i always say it saved my life that's
probably a bit of hyperbole but whoa did
it keep me from getting myself into real
emotional trouble in the hardest periods
of my life and the most stressful where
there was the most on the line it was so
comforting to know that i was never more
than 45 minutes away from total
equanimity and the only way for me to
achieve that is through meditation so
meditation is a critical part of my
daily practice it is really simple so i
do what's called just breathe meditation
so i'm going to take my shoes off here
any couch will do anything that's
comfortable any chair wherever you're
going to be comfy and i sit just in a
nice simple
cross-legged style in a position that i
think i can maintain usually i can
maintain sitting like this for about 20
to 30 minutes
before my feet start going numb
and
i
found for whatever reason that when i
touch my hands together
that it creates this sense of like the
the energy looping i don't know that
feels so silly to say but it was one
where i started out doing this and then
i just found myself wanting to do this
to rest my hands not interlaced or
anything just really simply
in my lap i sit comfortably i don't over
try to you know
have like really strict posture i
actually find the more i sit up the
harder it is to breathe from my
diaphragm so i have a slight curve to my
spine
i sit super comfortably
and
then i just breathe now
the key thing for me is these bad boys
so i'm not sponsored by a headphone
company but
having the headphones over my ears that
really blocks everything out i listen to
the sounds of nature so i'll either do
if it's a rainy day outside i'll do a
thunderstorm if it's a nice day outside
i'll do the sound of waves crashing if
it's really early and so i sort of get a
pic what kind of day i'll usually do a
thunderstorm there's something about the
thunderstorm that i find
really locks me in i think it's because
the actual sound of the thunder comes at
random intervals and so that reminds me
to be really present with my breath to
not let my mind wander or start thinking
about things you're really just trying
to breathe
i do a simple four-part cycle that i
learned from mark devine
i do it differently than he does
what he does is a four equal parts
breath so you do an inhale an inhale
hold
an exhale and an exhale hold and i found
that by trying to make those four equal
parts which is known as box breathing
that i felt a little out of breath which
was not making me relax and so finally i
just said what if i tried to maximize
the pleasure of each part of the cycle
so i would hold the inhale hold for
instance for only as long as it felt
good i would exhale in a way that felt
good so for me it's just a release i
don't try to time it or prolong it
and then i found for whatever reason the
exhale hold was actually the most
pleasurable part of the cycle so on the
inhale i might only hold
i don't know four seconds three or four
seconds it's really quite brief
but on the exhale i found myself holding
for 10 15 seconds
and again i would just start breathing
again
the moment it stopped being pleasurable
to hold that exhale and by doing that
and so the the length of time may vary
as i'm doing the meditation but by doing
that and really being conscious to
maximize the pleasure of each part of
the breath cycle then i'm not my mind
isn't wandering i'm there with my breath
i'm there with the pleasure of just
breathing
and by doing that
sometimes if my mind is really going
crazy it might take me you know five or
ten minutes to get into a zone when i
first started and my life was incredibly
stressful like i said it could take up
to 45 minutes for me to finally get lost
in my breath
but the fact that i knew that if i just
sat there long enough
doing that just bringing my thoughts
back to the breath every time they would
wander back to the breath back to the
breath nothing complicated about it um
that i was good and that
has been transformative and is a big
part of why
i meditate every day five days a week
let me not lie
i'd only meditate on the weekends if i
was really in a stressful situation
um
but it's really a game changer so i put
the headphones on i use calm the app
again i'm not sponsored or anything by
them it's just what i use
and
i make my selection and then i meditate
and so i'll let you guys see what a
quick cycle looks like and we'll take it
from there
[Music]
all right everybody one of the most
important things that you were ever
going to do
in your routine is to get your diet
right
i think that this
outside of having a loving relationship
with my wife i think my diet is the most
important thing that i do
and focusing on
loving relationships
diet and sleep like those are going to
be your top three things so getting your
food right is critically important
because
[Music]
this is the easiest way for me to anchor
people around why diet is so important
so first of all you literally are what
you eat literally at a cellular level
you are made of the things you consume
so every cell in your body is from
something that you ate so let that one
sink in
um and then on top of that the largest
nerve in your body known as the vagus
nerve 85 of the signals traveling on
that nerve are from your body to your
brain not your brain to your body so we
all have this illusion that we are this
consciousness that controls everything
when in reality the two work in concert
and that the vast majority of the
signaling
is coming from the body so your
microbiome is a huge thing and when you
disregulate your microbiome by eating
things that cause disruption then
you're now getting all these signals
that your brain is forced to interpret
okay this is one of the read lisa
feldman barrett's book how emotions are
made all of the things that you feel
whether it's happiness sad
anger frustration hopelessness all of
that stuff is your brain interpreting
the signals that it's getting from your
body from the outside world and once you
understand that emotions come from the
body first and then your brain goes hey
the last time that i got these
sensations from all over my body what
did that mean and then your body asar
your brain excuse me assigns
a story
to that feeling and now all of a sudden
when you have a dysregulated microbiome
and the microbiome is crying out for
this that or the other all of a sudden
your brain adds a story and i'll give
you an easy one anxiety in my own life i
will tell you that i've struggled
profoundly with anxiety only to at first
think this is entirely in my head and
then finally to realize no no this is
largely how largely
this is again a hypothesis but i have a
god instinct that this is
anxiety is probably
90 percent your diet and then
what you're thinking about meaning
what you think about is stepping on the
gas but if there's no gas in the gas
tank then you're not going to go
anywhere and by disregulating your
microbiome through the things you eat
you put gas in the gas tank of anxiety
and then your thoughts step on it boom
there's plenty of gas and now you're off
to the races so i'm not saying that your
thoughts aren't important or what's
going on in your life isn't important to
triggering anxiety i'm saying it won't
escalate the way that it does
if you
are eating a diet that keeps your
gut flora
nice and happy so that's something i
think a lot about
now we're filming this at just before
9am
and i'm still in a fasted state so
that's a really important part for me in
terms of how i live my life is i
intermittent fast every day seven days a
week 365 days a year even on christmas
i'm gonna intermittent fast that's the
one thing that for me i've found is so
profoundly impactful it's one of those
that oh my god would there have to be
some compelling science that would make
me move away from how it makes me feel
how it allows me to maintain my body
composition and how like i actually
discovered how profoundly impactful
intermittent fasting is during christmas
because i found that if i woke up
because during christmas i can eat
whatever the hell i want i'd let myself
totally go crazy and i found that i
would get an upset stomach if
i didn't leave big gaps in between when
i ate but if i left big gaps i could
actually get away with eating cake
cookies ice cream
chips literally whatever i wanted but i
had to leave say 18 hours gap between
my feeding wind or i you know eating in
a what would that be a six hour feeding
window so as long as i left 18 hour gaps
between when i was eating then i was
a-okay and it was
absolutely wonderful so i averaged
probably about 17 and a half hours a day
seven days a week
between my feeding windows i might
shorten that a little bit on the
weekends but you're still looking at
something north of 14 or 15 hours
on the weekend so that truly that lets
you know that some days i'm doing 19 20
hour windows so that over the week it
averages out to about 17 and a half
hours and that's year round
that's really impactful now my diet
itself
i eat in fact let's see if we can just
take a peek into the
yeah this will give you a pretty good
idea of exactly uh what things look like
so
irony of ironies
i won't i won't put them on blast but i
used to drink
a lot of
diet sodas and what i found was that
that was i can literally correlate that
to my anxiety so even though i have some
in the fridge i might have
five in a year so very very rarely do i
have that my main stay is eggs i eat a
lot a lot of eggs i eat a lot of um
butcher box so those full disclosure are
i am sponsored by butcher box but let me
tell you i've had a relationship with
those guys for a long time because of
the grass-fed
grass-finished nature of their meats
i would not have believed that that
matters
10 years ago until lisa went through
what she went through with her dysbiosis
which ended up putting our lives on hold
for a year it was absolute insanity
and so seeing how all the things we had
to learn and do to get her back on track
i realized that what your food ate
really does matter
so you have to be really thoughtful
about that so i eat a lot of eggs that's
definitely my mainstay i eat a lot of
beef but all grass fed grass finished
wild caught salmon i eat a lot of
sardines
that is
that's my mainstay from a meat
perspective and then i'm eating a lot of
green leafy vegetables kale bok choy is
a personal favorite colored greens
green beans asparagus
if i'm out i'll do broccoli but i almost
never cook broccoli for myself even i'm
not sure why
but
that is oh and carrots i eat a lot of
carrots whether that's good or bad i'm
actually not sure but i will say that
it it
cures my sweet tooth so my big thesis
with food is whole food only so monday
through friday
i don't eat anything that i can't
recognize from its natural state
so i'm eating my eggs i'm eating my
meats i'm eating my vegetables
all in like their
actual vegetable states so my bok choy
still looks like bok choy it's like all
bunched together i literally rinse it
off i cut that and then i put it
into a frying pan with a little bit of
extra virgin olive oil
and
then on the weekends i'll be a little
bit more lenient and i'll have some
things that are
processed foods that are hyper palatable
ultra delicious but i have to be careful
because i don't want to dysregulate my
microbiome because it then propels my
anxiety and as somebody that struggled
with anxiety and now realizing how much
of a diet connection there is i find
that by eating whole foods as much as
not humanly possible because of course i
could be on a pure whole food diet
but i find that on the weekends it's fun
to be a little more flexible um
but yeah during the week i don't have
anything that i don't recognize but even
like something like a nut um i won't
have much of that during the week now it
may just be that i have a particular
sensitivity to nuts
it may be that over the years because of
all the different
diet things that i did when i was
younger and didn't know anything didn't
even know the microbiome existed and
then taking antibiotics that i just
created enough dysregulation in my
microbiome that i am now sensitive to
them but i find that
that's not perfect
um if i'm absolutely dying during the
week for like a quick little snack i
might have a handful of almonds which
seem to be the thing that i can get away
with the most
but for the most part it is just
literally meat eggs vegetables and that
is the sum total of my diet oh my god i
eat a lot of avocados
a lot of avocados i keep my fruit intake
to a minimum i do have some fruit during
the week and some berries especially on
the weekends
that's sort of my big treat the reason i
do that even though there's fiber intake
and all that i wore a continuous glucose
monitor for about six months and fruit
even though it has um
the fiber in it it still does spike my
glucose not crazy like candy would but
it does spike it and it spikes it pretty
significantly so
for the most part i save that for when
i'm
what i call cheating
so i know that people are going to get
up in arms about me calling fruit
cheating but i would just say if body
composition is something that you're
thinking about if managing your glucose
levels is something that you think about
if not spiking insulin because you might
still even be able to regulate your
blood sugar but you could be spiking
your insulin more
than is necessary
if that's something that you care about
then i would be very thoughtful about
your fruit intake everybody is different
so i would highly encourage you guys to
wear a continuous glucose monitor so you
can see what affects you in what way
all right
that's my diet when i break fast which i
will probably do about 9 30 today
because i eat my last meal this is gonna
freak some people out i eat my last meal
at 1 30 p.m
so my window today will be from about 9
30 to 1 30 and then i'd eat literally
nothing
except water is the only thing that i
will intake in fact we should talk about
caffeine
you guys ready for the way that i
approach drinking because this is going
to be something that i think a lot of
people are tripped out by um so
i eat in that narrow window i have my
last meal at 1 30 so i'm i'm hard to
invite to dinner
uh
and then i stop drinking caffeine at 1
pm
and i stop drinking water in any
meaningful quantity at 2pm
now i find if i do that i sleep through
the night
if i drink later than that then in any
sort of meaningful amount then i'll wake
up in the middle of the night and need
to pee and then once i'm awake it's much
harder for me to fall back asleep so
that's something that i use to manage my
sleep i drink mostly carbonated water i
find that it fills me up
i won't be too surprised if somebody
comes out with a study at some point
though that that's problematic so i'm
just sort of holding my breath waiting
for that but as of right now
i feel good
when i drink it i don't experience any
problems that i recognize how about that
so that and then i have i do have a
little bit of caffeine so
um
what i do
is
i mix this is really going to trip
people out
i mix these two things again i'm not
sponsored by any any of these people
that's just what i do so
nitro coffee caveman coffee
it's i think three espresso shots in one
can so what i do is i
save
another can so that i always have two
cans going and i pour out a third
into an empty can
and then i pour a third out i know but i
pour a third out so in each can i only
have a single shot and because coffee
can mold i don't want to
leave it too long because it'll take me
a day to a day and a half to drink
one of the espresso shots because i mix
it with sparkling water now at first it
was weird now i'm so used to it when my
coffee doesn't sparkle i am sort of
taken aback
and yeah that's it and so as i sip on
this i'll add water back in
until i've probably diluted about one
and a half cans of water
to
the uh one espresso shot
and i just nurse it throughout the day
and again i stop i don't intake caffeine
after one pm after one from one to two
then i'm going just on the sparkling
water
um
and that's it that that is my beverage
routine i don't drink alcohol unless
it's like a special occasion
um just because it's so pro-inflammatory
and not even like pro-inflammatory in an
abstract way like it makes my joints
hurt
so as much fun as it is i really limit
my alcohol intake to probably four or
five times a year
um and and that's it so
water a little bit of caffeine and we
out
[Music]
okay any routine whether it's morning
your full day it all starts the night
before getting a good night's sleep i
cannot stress this enough as somebody
who absolutely resents needing to sleep
it's still the number one thing that i
prioritize
so
that is critical that you prep for that
so number one i start wearing blue
blocking glasses at least three hours
before bedtime i actually use a little
device that zaps me but i'll save that
for another video since i'm on the board
the advisory board of that company
but i
do everything that i can to make sure
that i sleep optimally including cooling
the room down
to very chilly so we sleep with our room
at 68 degrees
and that way you can snuggle up in your
blankies and there's something about
when your body temperature drops that
triggers you to get sleepy
so getting the room nice and cool is
another
big tip i go to bed at 9 00 pm every
night like it is a religion i should say
sunday through thursday night i go to
bed at 9 00 pm i allow a little bit
later bedtime on friday a little bit
later bedtime on saturday but other than
that 9 p.m and i don't
set an alarm
ever unless i have like a super early
flight or something like that
and i've been doing that for like 17
years now or something like that so i
built multiple successful companies
without setting an alarm so trust me it
is possible now the reason i do it is so
that i'm optimizing my cognition get as
much sleep as i need
so for me that's about
seven and a half hours probably on
average i sleep with headphones right
next to my bed in fact as you can see
they are right here
and i do that because i oftentimes wake
up in the middle of the night
put these bad boys in
and i can fall right back to sleep
listen to a book very very low volume
so that just so that if i put a tiny bit
of pressure on my ear
that i can hear it and then that way as
i roll around
it will come ever so slightly out
and then i just fall asleep and i forget
that the book is there so that was a
game changer for me i don't know if
that'll be as useful for anybody else
but i usually lie in bed for hours
in the middle of the night trying to
fall back asleep
this
has been a game changer
and that's it i sleep in nice loose
clothing um mouth tape
oh
yes so here it is i'm so glad
that you reminded me of that this is why
my wife is here filming it i tape my
mouth closed every night uh i did an
episode with james nestor you should
check that episode out he talks about
um
breathing through your nose and how
important it is so i literally taped my
mouth closed that also
significantly improved my sleep so i
wouldn't believe that until i tried it
so now literally every night
i kiss my wife
i tell her i love her and then
i put tape over my lips a single piece
about that long i'm gonna just
put it over my mouth shall we
all right
here we go
take
this is just uh medical tape first aid
tape
looks like uh
1.5 centimeters
and i do a piece about
that long
that's it
i tell my wife i love her and i love you
baby baby and then i type up
tape so all right guys until next time
be legendary take care
thank you guys so much for watching and
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