Hallelujah family, it's episode 153 of the genius life. Welcome aboard.
Happy Wednesday, everybody. How's it going? Welcome to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max Lou Guevara filmmaker health and science journalist, and author of The New York Times, best-selling book genius foods and the genius life today. We welcome to the podcast the Dave asprey Dave is an entrepreneur and an author. He's the founder and chairman of bulletproof 360 a high-performance coffee and food company and the created
Her of the widely popular Bulletproof Coffee. He's a three-time New York Times bestselling author and has been featured on The Today Show Fox News Nightline CNN and dozens more. He has a new book out now called fast this way burn fat heal inflammation and eat like the high-performing human you are meant to be first off. I couldn't have the originator of Bulletproof Coffee on without discussing what it is and why so many followers of Dave's around the world claim that it works for boosting energy and enhancing their weight loss.
Of course given the topic of his new book. We discussed the potential benefits of fasting as well as the common mistakes that people make when attempting to fast, he shares his top three hacks for making fasting easier and more effective. And lastly. I kind of go at it with Dave a little bit towards the end of the show about a recent post that he made on Instagram where he was trash-talking kale. I happen to like kale and so I let Dave have it a little bit. Of course, he defends himself and we're still good friends, but listening and form your own opinion. Dave is a super smart guy. I loved having this child.
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Fly limited time only. All right guys, before we plunge into this wonderful episode with the man the myth Dave asprey. How are you doing? Update me before we jump in today's episode. I want to share this fun DM that we received on our genius live podcast Instagram account Alex aldredge rides. Hi Max. I just finished listening to episode 149 with dr. Lyon and I am shook. I'm a longtime listener email subscriber reader Etc. And this episode has easily moved to my top three most important episodes to date as a current doctorate student to physical therapy. There were so many
Social points you to discuss that directly impacts my future practice and our society's current health dilemmas. I love how much Newfound knowledge was explored during this episode with the clinical data and experience to refer back upon them for reference. I cannot express the Gratitude I feel for people like you and dr. Lyon who make it your mission to educate people about their bodies and food / lifestyle choices. Well, thank you so much for your kind words and feedback Alex. I really appreciate it and heck. Yes, go get the doctor to PT slide into our DM's at the genius live podcast and let us know what you think of our most recent genius life s
Episode by texting me at 310 2999 401 I would really love to hear from you there. And I also want to give some love to our newsletter you guys a few weeks ago. I sent out an email with my favorite dry rub in rib recipe. It's a pretty damn good one if I say so myself. So if you want rib recipes and other fun stuff like that in your inbox join my newsletter at Max Luke of your.com in doing so you'll receive a free pdf guide to supplements that I use pretty much every Bay ribs and supplements. That's a genius left combo if I've ever seen one and with all that
It's not jump into episode 153 with the father of biohacking Dave asprey. Well, welcome to the genius life Dave asprey the man the myth the legend, it's good to have you here
Max. I'm happy to be on with you. I've been on my show and I think it's a turnabout time.
Yeah, man. Well, this is cool because we've been friends for a while and I've been on I've had the privilege and honor of being on your podcast believe twice. Actually you are an OG like early adopter of me like you had me on back in the day like it was
like
2015 and you're you're just getting going right just
kidding going. Yeah, so thank you for that. But I'm having nose for
talent you do
you you apparently do but I'm excited to have you here because you've got a new book out called fast this way which is all about the Art and Science of fasting and I'm excited to do a deep dive with you because you you've actually been I mean to your credit Dave you've been an early adopter of many things like you sort of were first to Market with collagen, you know, which has now become a huge industry.
Toi oil your you would regularly consume white rice over brown rice and that perplexity
and that made people so mad but basically grass-fed MCT collagen, you know butter instead of other seed oils. Those are very early bulletproof things before even all the studies were published enough studies were published we could tell but you know, that's if your exploratory and you experiment it's like it's your job to be right, even when the data is incomplete.
Yeah. It's been really cool to see
See you rise and sort of in popularity and reach Actually. I don't even know if you know this, but I remember we were both speakers at the bill conference years ago. I remember
build Ted and Bill.
Yeah. So for people that don't know there was like there's like the Ted conference obviously, but the bill conference to you know, make a play on sort of the Bill and Ted characters was sort of like this like adjacent conference. It was a lot more Niche and it would happen whenever the Ted conference was happening, but it would always have speakers that were just like that were to ahead of the Curve.
No, too risque and you were one of the early speakers there when you were giving out your, you know Bulletproof Coffee and that was the first time that I've actually heard of you.
That was my first conference where I ever spoke about bulletproof in public was the bill
conference. It's amazing.
Like I'm going to tell my story in public for the first time. That was it. Yeah, that was a good 10 years ago.
So cool while many people are familiar with Bulletproof Coffee, but for listeners who might not yet be familiar with it. That's sort of like that was your first claim to fame. What is what is Bulletproof Coffee?
Is this idea that putting milk and coffee cancels out the good polyphenols and coffee and does bad things to you. So it's mold free coffee. It's grass-fed butter or ghee if you prefer and a special kind of MCT oil called C8 MCT oil and your bulletproof is now a sizable company Weaver's 80 million dollars in venture capital and you know helped hundreds of sold hundreds of millions of cups of Bulletproof Coffee helped people lose a million pounds of the bulletproof diet and I'd say this point it's tried and proven.
To work for all sorts of things but really you drink it you feel more energy than normal and you feel way less hunger than normal and it's it's something that so many people have tried now and it sounds seriously, you know me to put butter instead of something else you blend it into your coffee and I know about six or eight reasons, it works some of them we didn't know at the beginning but it was based on Tibetan Yak butter tea, which makes you feel amazing when you're at high altitude for reasons. No one could explain. I funded the research at u-dub where I
think I know one of the many reasons that it works that we didn't understand but it's become a Force and a thing and a daily ritual for millions of people
including me.
Yeah, super tasty. I when I drink it and when I'm fasted and I drank it. I really appreciate that. It slows the infusion of caffeine. I just feel like I'm less prone to Jitters and it does have a pretty potent appetite suppressing effect. And it just tastes delicious. Like it's if there's a very high sensation of reward when when consuming it.
There you go. It's it's something you can do instead of breakfast and you feel good and it's entirely tunable you can have a
Very small amount of butter and MCT and it still works amazingly well and you can especially we're just getting started on losing weight on passing. You probably need to use some of those fats as building blocks. You can put more butter in most people start out with a lot more butter and over time like my body upgraded itself and I just need less and less you're still drinking your coffee, but you just change from two tablespoons butter down to one down half a tablespoon. You just need a little bit. If you don't put any butter in there, it doesn't work as well because of some weird lipid water interaction chemistry that
Pollock unlocked in his lab. So the reason that I wanted to write my fasting bug fast this way is that after 10 years of teaching people to fast the very the my my first big book The bulletproof diet is intermittent fasting really matters again that was way ahead of the curve and since in Quito and bulletproof or sorry keto and intermittent fasting it both become trendy, but they've also been kind of dumbed down right where if you're in Quito all the time, it's bad.
For you and I said that in the book and I said if you eat you're doing ki do with the wrong fats and the wrong proteins it's bad for you. So you need to cycle in and out but to this day you and me both know people were like keto Bros. Like if you have another carb you're a bad person and everyone in carb again and six months later, they're bald and they can't get it up. You know, like I told you so fasting is about to go down the same path where people are going to say Well, if you know, if doing 18:6 fast where I'm going to go 18 hours without eating which sounds crazy it basically means have a late lunch you
Skipping breakfast, it's not as burdensome as you might imagine because the time your sleep counts, but if you're doing that, well, that means one meal a day must be even better, which is I'll just have one dinner every other day and I'll do it with unending things and what happens women break before men, but you can over fast you can over Quito you can over-exercise so as humans who want to perform. Well, we always want to do more and I wrote fastest way because there's actually two kinds of fast, there's the fast
For for performance and Metabolism where you get the performance now and you get the metabolic benefits now in overtime and there's another kind of fast, which is a spiritual fast, which is where you actually do a longer fast, but you stopped and you rest and you reflect and I my heart kind of breaks because I've done this when someone's like, oh I'm going to do a three day fast and I'm going to only have water and I'm going to work the whole time and like what's going to happen is you're going to severely stress the system and you're not going to get the recovery you need whereas traditionally you say.
To go fast on a couch or in an ashram. We're in a cave and you're going to chill and so to help people understand. Here's the right length and style of fasting that can work for you and you should mix it up and maybe you should do a longer one sometimes but there's no like there's no need to do it the same way every day. And so I wanted to talk about the philosophy in the spiritual side of fasting as well as the things to make it accessible for people who maybe aren't you and me you and me can both fast for 24 hours prior with our eyes.
Clothes in it just doesn't matter because our metabolisms are there but many people listening like I'm gonna get hypoglycemic. She I'm gonna get hangry. I'm going to feel like crap going to get dizzy. So how do you turn off the desire for food during a fast in fast this way there's three fasting hacks that are completely doable during a fast that still allow the big benefit sawed-off edgy and ketosis but you don't have to have only water and that was something that had to be said because the
Tourists like if you get another carb you're a bad person. That's a purest way of thinking that doesn't it's not real and with fasting the mice only had water when we ran the study. Therefore humans can only have water like maybe humans wanted better results in less time than the mice and maybe the mice didn't have espresso machines, right? So what actually are the pathways and fasting and how do we turn up those Pathways? And how do we turn down the hard parts of fasting because you know, you don't have kids yet and maybe you never will maybe
Will write shout out you guys are I should say you ladies now being interviewed by a very available Bachelor. I mean, just look at how cute he is those little dimples. I mean, come on. Thank you Dave. I'm blushing. You're gonna edit this out. I know you anyway, what what's going on here? I've used distracting me with your good looks man.
Well, we were talking about the Dogma that surrounds fasting sometimes and I'm glad that you bring that up actually because you know, there's been you know over the past couple of years that I've had my
Ear to the ground about fasting in the way that sort of the public perceives these health and wellness tools. Some people are even afraid to brush their teeth during that fasting window because of the metabolic processes that might occur, you know, if you perhaps sublingually absorb some of the some of the chemicals that are in toothpaste like that's something that some people are actually concerned with
it. It's fear it is what it is and what I like, okay, let's go on the metabolic pathways you want to push so
Let's say that you're a stay-at-home parent and or maybe I'm saying parent you didn't want to be a stay-at-home parent. But now there's a pandemic so you have a stressful job. You have two kids hanging off each arm distracting you and you're thinking oh, I'll just do my first 18 hour fast. You know, what's going to happen is you're going to have a voice in her head screaming cookies cookies cookies cookies and you're going to have a kid on each side going candy cookies your mommy and your head will explode and you're likely to yell at people or at least feel like crap and you're very unlikely to
Form the way you'd like to show up and you're likely to break your fast early because it was it actually was too much. So if you put on that perspective, okay, there has to be a better way and the three fasting Hawks in the book that make the water purists mad, but they're the ones that work for the vast majority of people who are 300 pounds the way I used to be right and it's number one just a cup of black coffee. I'm going to recommend mold free coffees being better, but the amount of
Caffeine and two cups of coffee doubles Ketone production according to a study from UC San Diego when ketones go up about two studies about this that I referenced in the book. You're with a go up just a little bit to 0.4 0.5 which is not full-blown ketosis and when that happens magically your ghrelin, which is your hunger hormone it drops and cck a satiety hormone goes up. So just black coffee is enough for some people to go. I fasted without pain the next level up from
That yeah, it's Bulletproof Coffee. It won't change my life. If every listener does or doesn't drink bulletproof at this point. It's a successful company because the stuff works, but I'm going to talk about it in the context of making a Fast easier and no you don't have to buy my stuff. You can take whatever butter and whatever like the results might not be identical but they'll be directionally accurate and what you do there is you put a little bit of grass fed butter and some C8 MCT oil. There are other brands who copied bulletproof, although I gotta say - special but whatever right?
You put it in there, you blend it now people saying but you had calories that can't be fasting the definition of fasting is to go without most traditions of how fasting would actually tell you. Oh drink some tea. It wasn't water. There were put some salt in the water or have some limit because all sorts of different ways of doing it. The reason this works is because your insulin stays constant third parties have validated that Bulletproof Coffee doesn't move insulin at all. In fact of 300 breakfast. They tested it was the number one breakfast that had no effect on insulin and keeping your insolence table as part.
Fasting the next thing that's part of fasting is keeping autophagy, which is when your body goes in and digests its drunk. You need to keep that high. Well, we know that if you don't eat protein on top of you stays on so now you have this coffee it might have had 20 calories of fat. It might add a hundred calories of fat. It doesn't really matter because what you did is you boosted your ketones you turned off hunger and you maintained autophagy now you can make it through the fast without any distractions and someone puts a muffin in front of you and you don't care whereas before if you have water you.
Like shaking wanting the muffin and maybe it'll win maybe you'll win but your willpower was depleted. And so if we want to be nice, this is an acceptable fasting hack that works and the third fasting hack that is in the book that no one has written about in the context of fasting it because it's this it's almost like what's the word distasteful or it's cheating to basically say I didn't want to suffer like there's some sort of of Reason To Suffer more than is necessary. Well, it's
Biotic fiber so Prebiotic fiber cannot be digested by your body. So it doesn't raise insulin and it has no protein in it. So it doesn't change autophagy but Prebiotic fiber when you're fasting it gives you regular stools. A lot of people fast or dookie do have constipation issues. It'll solve that it'll feed the good bacteria and when they eat it, they make butyric acid, which is a short chain fatty acid that drives ketosis. So all the sudden if you're not fasting to change your gut bacteria would in which
You'd want to do something that doesn't have Prebiotic fiber, but for many people that actually is helpful during a fast because it suppresses hunger in many studies and it makes you live longer in something like 50 or 60 studies. It's a big part of my anti-aging book. So I'm like wait a minute. I got to put this in my my coffee or even into your water and if between Prebiotic soluble fiber not Metamucil not sawdust, but the stuff that just disappears into water plus a little bit of the right kinds of fat plus some caffeine if that means I didn't notice.
I was fasting and I got metabolic benefits of fasting and I did it over time which made it easier for me to do a water fast. If I decide to do that, why would I not take the easy Road and get the benefits? Why would I not turn down my risk of diabetes Alzheimer's cancer and cardiovascular disease without pain. That's the point of this and then the other point is there's a spiritual side to this we could talk about
two. Yeah. It's interesting that you bring spirituality into the into the fasting equation, but just before
Before we just before we leave this topic. So Prebiotic fiber I think few people realize this but coffee already has a little bit of Prebiotic fiber in it one or two grams usually two grams per cup. So what type of Prebiotic fiber as the third fasting hack to recommend experimenting with in you know, and putting your
coffee there are a bunch of formulas out there and I'll talk about the one I formulated for bulletproof. And again guys, you don't have to buy anything little proof for this, you know, you might want to you might not that's fine.
The one that I put together is called inner Fuel and then primary ingredient is Acacia gum, which is a sap from a tree that feeds good gut bacteria. It's got hydrolyzed guar gum where you take enzymes and you break down the guar so that it feeds gut bacteria and there's clinical studies for the amounts of water in there that say they feed the good species and there's also large a rabbinical actin which is another basically plant sap. So these are special plant soluble fibers that don't come with all of the other toxins.
As you know, if you eat the rind and scan of a plant you get lectins or you get oxalate you get things that actually make you hungry. This is just the purified parts of the plant that feed the bacteria. So you do that like how my body thinks I didn't eat but I'm not hungry. Yes, that's acceptable. And that's something you can do most mornings without suffering without pain without willpower. And then you take your willpower and use in your career used to support your family and it's a working fast and you will if you do that for six months at the ends,
Let's say you know what? I could take it or leave it like I built myself a healthy metabolism or maybe like me it's going to take you two years because you weighed 300 pounds and because you really I was a vegan for a while which really wrecked my settler metabolism. I had to recover so however, it is I know that if you do that regularly your ability to say some days I just have black coffee because I like it and that's it and I'm good to go other days. You don't for instance today for me. It's about one in the afternoon. This is book launch day. I started going on TV shows. I was on Good Day, New York.
At 6 a.m. I've had black coffee today because I didn't have time to make it mullet proof. Right and it's okay. I'm still on my brains working just fine. And I'm going to be going all day on interviews. That's because my metabolism is trained but this is my first day fasting I would be a complete garbage fire and I wouldn't be able to focus is so I I really want millions of people to do this.
Yeah something else. Go ahead. Well, I definitely
preciate that where do you how do you reconcile the benefits that you know can come from fasting with the you know, like what we know that we need to get during our feeding window in terms of like adequate nutrition and specifically also protein requirements, you know, so that we don't become catabolic and end up losing all of our hard-earned muscle for people that like to train for example
it what you want to do is during your eating window is eat the same amount of
of protein and same amount of fat that you would eat for whatever your your target is and it's not as hard as you might think because you're going to be pretty hungry at the end of a fast have a really big lunch and have a reasonable dinner and you can hit your protein requirements. It's it's very doable. You can put on muscle when you're doing this, but if instead you're saying, oh the fast kind of reduced my hunger and I just had you know, three ounces of protein for lunch. Okay, you're going to
Lose weight you lose fat, but you'll probably lose some muscle to and if your job is to Get Swole and you want to put on more muscle than you normally would carry in a normal life. You're going to have to eat more protein than you normally would now you'll look good for a while. But the the long-term effects of being excessively muscular. It means that you've elevated your mtor a lot which is going to probably increase your risk of cancer and aging so the ideal situation is fast for about 18 hours.
Hours lift but not every day. So maybe every other day every three days lift at the end of the fast then eat and eat lots of protein some carbs, but not sugar lots of fat but not omega-6 fats and when you do that, there's something called tripling down an mtor. And this is my first big book in the bulletproof diet and I talked about it some more and fast this way with some of the newer science and mtor is this neat compound if it's chronically elevated your inflamed, but when it gets spiked up for brief periods you put on muscle.
And the three things we know that crunch it down, which is what you want to do. You suppress it suppress it suppress it and then it comes bounding forward and if you didn't suppress it, it doesn't Spike very much. So you're you're suppressing it with fasting you're suppressing it with exercise. So while you're exercising it goes down and when you finish exercising eat, it goes up and coffee also suppresses MTAR. So you're like, wait a minute you mean I skip breakfast have some coffee end of the fast I do.
Literally 50 air squats some push-ups maybe a couple pull-ups. Okay. I've got enough. Those are the major muscle groups and maybe you want to go do biceps or whatever but it doesn't have to be a long workout do resistant bands or whatever electrical stimulation. Whatever makes you happy and then like pound the protein have some carbs to get your igf-1 up but not spike it and then the mtor comes surging forth and you put on muscle faster than you would otherwise. That's the way to combine exercise and fasting there's a whole chapter in fastest way on how to do
that.
yeah, so you talked about fast or you talk about exercise at the end of your fast, which is very interesting is a lot of people I think are left wondering when reading about the benefits of fasting but the potential benefits of fasting where and when to fit exercise within that within that Paradigm, so you argue to fit it to try to do it towards the end of your fast so that immediately after your exercise you can then crush the
protein and also because of that mtor suppression and then rebound the other thing is if you exercise say in the middle of your fast, you probably can do it, especially
If you're young, right young people generally have a lot more called life force vital energy, whatever you want to call it. Just more resilience, right? There sells have taken less hits you accumulate less toxins and you can generally handle things. So if you do that, what's going to happen is the body's like, okay, I needed some glucose now because you just put a huge demand on me. How am I going to get glucose? How about I spit out some cortisol and adrenaline and that will break down muscle and raise your glucose. Yay. Now, the muscles are happy.
They got glucose those the brain except you just broke muscle down to do it. Not a good strategy that said if you have a choice between not working out and working out in the morning, you could just say okay today. I'm going to work out when I wake up and then we have breakfast and lunch and not have dinner and still do an intermittent fast. And that's okay, but I am not a fan of exercising and then staying fasted for long periods of time. Some people do it some people like it but it doesn't seem to line up. Well with our biology
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And.com to learn so much more and while you're there you can use promo code Maxell ten for ten percent off of an order of $100 or more of true nitrogen valid in the US only not valid on whole so order is not valid for current subscribers code expires, March 31st, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard time. And again, that is Maxell ten for ten percent off at true nitrogen.com. Yeah. I'm very aligned with that when I workout fasted which I actually quite enjoyed doing. I feel like I get some energetic benefits.
From you know the spike in catecholamine neurotransmitters in the cortisol, but immediately after the workout I am basically like running to get that meal that first meal to break my fast with a really, you know, a pretty high amount of protein generally like I prioritize protein and then I'll sort of fill in the rest with with fibers carbs, maybe like a sweet potato or something like that. Yeah. So that's awesome in your book fast is what you make a very important distinction that I want to touch on because I know we don't have a ton of time, but the
Jingxian between hunger and Cravings. Can you talk to me about that?
I didn't know there's a distinction when I started down this path and hunger is when you feel like you're going to die if you don't eat and you're just thinking about food all the time, and there's just not going ravenous hunger and for me, I didn't know there was something else because that was all I ever experienced and what causes Cravings is eating the wrong stuff before your fast. And what hunger is is it feeling that says you know, what?
I probably ought to eat in the next couple hours. But if I don't it'll be okay. So it's this sort of subtle sense. Okay, it's time to refuel and since most of us have been taught to eat stuff that radically triggers cravings and went through I picked out the the five classes of food toxins that are most likely to cause cravings and one of my favorites is kale kale is gross but no one on earth has ever eaten a big
Elsa eyelid keep in mind I was robbed again and afterwards God, I'm so full and satisfied I couldn't eat for four hours. What do you think? Is it could I have another piece of like deep fried kale or something or like is there some Walnut answers like it makes you not satisfied and this is because kale doesn't want you to eat it. And now that I live on an organic farm with chickens and pigs and cheap the pig spit out kale.
They know horses won't eat it like huh, but we eat it because we think it's good for us and I'm not just picking on Kale hair. There's other classes of foods, if you eat leftover fermented soy or leftover pork or leftover fish. You're probably going to get a food craving afterwards because it was full of histamine, which is a neurotransmitter. It's also something that triggers allergy. So after it's like man, I really want sugar I have a craving for dessert, right what's going on there? Well, it's something you did in your meal made you hungry if you eat.
Meal properly you shouldn't want food for at least four hours. And so this is also oftentimes missing if you wake up in the morning with knowing hunger. It's gonna be really hard too fast and you have the gnawing hunger because of what you did at dinner last night and and so bringing those two together for people to understand is is kind of an art but I wanted to put that in a book.
Yeah. I also feel like, you know, one of the you know, in fewer words you make the distinction that hunger is physiologic whereas Cravings are psychological.
And often can be influenced by food manufacturers and conditioning and emotional states and things like that.
I think that might be oversimplifying it Max Cravings are biological most of the time you give someone MSG that's not labels MSG. There's organic MSG, you know, it's 74 percent MSG by weight, but doesn't have to be labeled. That way you will get a physiological food craving and if you're lonely or bored
You make it an emotional food craving, right? So food cravings are slippery. But the vast majority of them the really intent. This one's are.
Physiological and then the ones that are like kind of always presents like, oh man. I'm not that hungry. But I feel like eating right now that's usually boredom and psychology and loneliness and things like that that that work in and those are both different Sensations than hunger and fasting the good thing. Is it teaches you how to feel the difference between whole and I guess I could eat and one of the things I'm doing Max for the first time is I'm teaching my book and I was a teacher for five years.
University of California and I love teaching and I've just realized I've been writing all these books but never taken the time to go teach its people so when people get fastest way and they read it, I'm doing a fasting training for two weeks. So I'm just teaching people for free as a gift how to do the fasting and we're doing this in more than 20,000 people all at the same time with the training every morning live Q&A is all that I'm not asking for money for it. I just want people to learn and doing fasting in community is really cool.
And I know a lot of your followers do stuff with you. You know, you're always just out there on Instagram like hey, this is what I'm doing like join me and so doing things like intermittent fasting with people is really important and I'd say guys if you want no coughs I'm not asking for anything got a fast this way.com and because the books coming out right now you pick up your book read it. I'll teach it to you and then you get to talk with other people as well as live qas because I think it's so important especially now when people are freaking out there's all kinds of stress.
What if we turn off food stress what if we turn off even some of the oh my God, if I don't eat six times a day, I'll go into starvation mode that takes it from food stress into fear stress and we just have too much of that going around. I want to turn the volume down a bit
Yeah. I appreciate that. I also like how in your new book, you know, you underscore that fasting is about flexibility. It's not about rigidity. And so many people I think approach fasting especially when they're when they're first getting started with it with this very rigid mindset, which we know is not the way it's
not the path forward to a healthy relationship with food let alone, you know, let alone wellness and well-being and having a having a sort of healthy mindset. So what are some of the way like, how do you recommend that people listening should get started with your method that you advance in your book?
The good news is I did not Rebrand 14-8 or you know, sorry 16:8 or you know, 1410 16-8 and there's a lot of people out there like
Going to you know, make up a cool name for this. This basic fasting. There is a fasting roadmap that is also free that has the the basic info that's in the book. You can get it's also on the fastest way website and the way to get started is let's say you're overweight and let's say that you've never fasted before there is good evidence that a 12-hour fast is a good place to start and you can work your way up to 14 and you don't have to do it every day especially for women.
With substantial weight to lose every other day as a really good way to do it and I've interviewed people on bulletproof radio who did studies even affect studies especially of women who found Monday Wednesday Friday doing a 16 or an 18 hour fast their ketones rise over the course of the week. They're getting metabolic benefits. This is a very gentle program which is a lot easier on your willpower, but it's also easy on your body as you get used to it. It's like starting an exercise program. You don't just like go start doing the CrossFit wad of the day because you're not ready yet. You got to get into it.
So the way you get started is have dinner a little bit early. I'm earlier is always better. So eat dinner at 5:00 or 6:00 instead of seven or eight Target at least three and ideally four or five hours before bedtime. And the reason you do that is okay you finish dinner at 6:00 you go to bed at 10:00. You got four hours before bed. So you sleep for 8 hours. You just did a 12-hour fast. Congratulations just by having an early dinner wasn't that hard? Right? And you say okay. I can do better. I'm going to have breakfast at 10:00 a.m.
Instead of earlier look you just did 1416 hours and say oh, maybe I'll go till noon. Okay. Congratulations, you did an 18-hour fast, but you really just told yourself you skip breakfast right now. Most people including me when I was overweight at around 10:30 or 11. You get like cold shaky and everyone around you is turns into a jerk and what's going on with that is okay. You didn't have the metabolic resilience the blood sugar regulation all you needed so your body is freaking out and you don't feel good.
Now you're not showing up the way you wanted to because it's the middle of the work week. You're not at a fasting Retreat. So that's when the fasting hacks come in and you can use those to do that at eight do that. Whenever you are going to have your morning coffee and then you sail through the morning and then lunch time comes and you have the peace of mind to just say I'm going to choose what to eat versus the ravenous. Oh my God, is that a taco? Right? You know, the mindset difference is hard even put word just do it. And this is my first book where I like
I fasted in a cave for four days because I was afraid of being alone. I was afraid of being hungry and I hired a shaman to drop me off and I tell the story of it. But the reason behind writing a book on fasting did a book on fasting as you step one. Don't eat for a while step two. It's good for you. There's plenty of books full of science like that and the science is in here, but it's more about how do you actually do it that mattered to me? So that's the way to get started is due at least 12 hours three times a week. Everyone can do that and then go up from there. Do you people benefit from doing one meal?
Everyday, it's usually too much and that's the fasting trap, which is the same as the keto trap, which is same as the vegan trap. If some of its good more must be better in the truth with fasting the truth with keto the truth with even going on a low-protein kind of plant-based thing short periods of time mix it up. And that seems to be what works better for almost everything.
Yeah, I mean fasting is a stress on the body. It's a type of hormesis and I think that it one of the amazing things about it is that it can foster antifragility, right, but as you
I mentioned earlier in the interview if you're already dealing with a cup that's overflowing with stress, you know, if your allostatic load is already very high. You've got kids screaming, you know, you've got job stress you're in the middle of a move. Then those extended types of fast, like the one meal of day. Oh mad style fasting could be too much for you and that could actually, you know, push you in the wrong direction. It can actually cause Health, you know health problems.
It's all it does. In fact, I just said that Clubhouse or are
Your brother I'm at aspirin Clubhouse. Are you on clubhouse yet?
You know people I feel like you're talking about and I don't yet know what it is. So
yeah, I'll send you an invite just like it's Invitation Only I'll get you an after the show, but it's basically way to have it just as conversation with people who just want to like step up like if you're at a bar or something, it's pretty fun. But one of the ladies who came on. She's like Dave I did. Oh mad for two months straight every night when every day one meal a day check in every time my body starts to not feel good. I get acidic and I don't smell.
Well good and and I don't like my life. So I fail every time but I keep trying to do it and I'm like, well, here's the deal you're doing it wrong you're overdoing it. So if you do mad once a week or twice a week, or if you did slightly shorter fasts some of the time that mixing it up thing. Then it becomes a sustainable practice for decades will make you live longer but it's that just sort of jumping in all in it doesn't work. Just like when I worked out six days a week an hour and a half a day for 18 months to try to lose weight at the end of that. I still weighed 300 pounds.
I had sore joints like I was strong but I stayed fat because I was overtrained
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Instagram that a million people must have sent me it was a it was a photo of hummus and kale and she was cert very aggressively that Kellen hummus are not Super Foods. They aren't delicious. They aren't good for you. They want to kill you and I just want to have to bring that up because I actually happen to like kill I like kale salads. I just want to push back a little bit on sit
and it's okay to be week Max. I know we all have our I like heroin and cigarettes to write but I don't do them. Actually. I don't like either one.
But here's the deal man. Why would you do that to your kidneys? We know that high amounts of oxalic acid are not good for anyone. We know that they shred your gut and we know that kale accumulates thallium more than anything else what most people don't know is that when we took lead out of gasoline, we replaced it with Valium, which is a thousand times more toxic. So given that this one plant accumulates it even organic kale has high levels of thallium many people.
Who like kale by the way nice nice work of self-deception there. It's okay, you like chocolate more than kale. You know, you do. Anyway, that's true. I'm not is there any like, okay, you've got you've got problems like your thallium levels are up and I talked to functional medicine doctors all over the place where saying I'm seeing High thallium in my kale lovers. So like I don't know you could like punching yourself in the face, but can you find a better habit that you like more? Is there any dose that you
think that I can safely eat so that I can have my cake my kale cake and eat it, too.
Or is it still? Okay Michael just open my mouth a little bit. And
that's the most horrible idea I've ever heard
of I there's a supermarket that I go to close to my house called arrow on you might have heard of it. I'm sure some of my
love arrow and they're the first place to ever carry bulletproof. I've forever hold them in high esteem.
There you go. So they make a salad to kill white bean avocado salad that I eat probably every day. I get a little bit of it probably a cup of it every single day. You're telling me that that's going to kill me
Dave.
I am telling you that if you keep doing that for long periods of time and we look at your kidney function over long periods of time. We look at your oxalic acid levels over time. I'm telling you it's not doing you any favors. No, it's not going to kill you. But you know what you can start smoking three cigarettes a day. It's not going to kill you. It might in 30 years. So what I am proposing to you though is that if you chose a different vegetable that you would be more satiated and you would have better nutritionals as a
result. Well, so eating kills the
You smoking according to Dave asprey? You heard it here folks eating french
fries is the new smoking and you study just came out about that. But eating deep fried kale, which is how most people have to eat it to make it palatable. They cover it in Sugar they cover it in basically nutritional yeast, which is another name for MSG much nutritional yeast has that problem and then they cover it in bad fats usually fried in sunflower oil or something on the go. Look I'm eating Health Food guys. Stop deceiving yourself. It's not a health food. My pigs won't eat it.
All right. Well, you know, I guess I still love you even if you kill. All right. Well, I guess I've I guess we've reached an impasse we can agree to disagree. I'm going to I'm going to keep eating that kill avocado wiping salt because I love it so much, but I will I will forget I will concede that. You know, there's probably some heavy metals in it that
Can I make a suggestion? Yes, you improve kale for everyone who wants to eat it. Let's hear it. When you if you can cook your kale and you boil it and you pour off the water that will remove a third to a half of the oxalic acid and probably some of the thallium, especially P use distilled water when you boil it and if you add either calcium carbonate or just baking soda or best of all be potassium bicarbonate to the water when you cook it that'll
potatoes out those little tiny crystals of oxalic acid the ones that get into your blood and stick to your calcium and cause those problems systemically the joint pain the foot pain and stuff like that the pain in your vulva vulvodynia is associated with high oxalic acid as well so you can get it out with cooking it and that's why raw kale which is like your self-flagellation salad there. It's like it's a hardest one on you. But even if you're going to do raw kale if you were to take a little baking soda or a little bit of potassium bicarbonate with it, so that in your
Stomach the crystals will form instead of the oxalic acid absorbing and forming crystals in your blood. That's a really good practice to stay young and then to have your kale and eat it
too. Well, that sounds useful. I'm going to give that I'm going to give that a shot. I always learn something new when I talk to you Dave. It's why I love being able to call you a friend. And I'm so grateful that you've taken time out of your busy book launch schedule to jump on the genius life with me. I'm sure my listeners very much. Appreciate it. I've got one last question for you. But before I let you go where can listeners find you on social media?
And working to pick up your new book.
I'm David Alaska and Instagram you can buy fast this way anywhere you like and if you go too fast this way.com, I'll show you all the places you can buy it, but more importantly two weeks of free training with me just because I really want people to learn the nuances of not over fasting not under fasting and just getting it right. So two weeks of quality time with twenty thousand plus people doing it together fastest
way.com. That's awesome. Last question. I guess everybody in the show. What does it mean to you to live a genius
life?
Wow, that is a really interesting question. And I didn't think of an answer out of time. Let me think of this. Hmm.
Well, it'll be a little philosophical and probably not a one-sentence thing, which would be really nice. But when you look at what a genius is people think about, you know Einstein these super smart people but Geniuses are weird. They always are they're abnormal and there's bad abnormal and there's good abnormal. So when I think about leading a genius life, it means leading a life where you do, what's right you do what works and you do it.
ethically
I love that. I got a goose bumps just listening to you answer that it's beautiful. Well, thank you for your Insight. This is really fun. And I hope fastest way is successful. I'm sure it will be thank you again for your time to all you guys out there and podcast land. Thank you for your attention and for taking the time out of your busy day to listen to this episode of the show. Text me to let me know what you thought of it. My number is 310 2999 401 share this episode with your friends and loved ones and I will catch you on the next episode
Peace.
