Coming up on the Ultimate Health
podcast. I've been a huge fan of people going Barefoot and I'm to this day. I just kind of roll my eyes. When people say, well, I couldn't, I couldn't go barefoot or I couldn't, you know, we're sort of Minimalist Shoes because I have, I have no arches. Well, the reason you have no arches is because you've been supporting your arch with an artificial Bridge, your whole life. And so your arch has atrophied. It's given up the ghost. It said I don't need to work anymore. The only way to build our judges.
Not the only way, but the best way is to walk Barefoot as much as you can. So one of the ways to do that is to walk, you know, in the in the shallow water, you know, if it's warm water, you know, on a coastal flat plane or in deep sand, is another way to do it.
Hello, and welcome to the ultimate. I'll podcast episode 416. I'm Jesse chapas. And I'm here to take your health to the next level each week. I'll bring you in depth conversations with health and wellness leaders from around the world. This week. I have marxists and back on the show. He's a health and fitness, expert entrepreneur, author, and the Founding Father of the ancestral Health movement. He's a former world-class endurance athlete with a two-hour. 18-minute.
One and a fourth place finish in the Hawaii, IRONMAN World, Triathlon championships marks, blog marks daily apple.com. And Primal blueprint lifestyle program, have paved the way for Primal, enthusiasts to break free from conventional wisdoms diet and exercise principles. His latest book is two meals a day, the simple sustainable strategy to lose fat reverse aging and break free from diet. Frustration highlights of our conversation include how to become metabolically flexible marks lifestyle.
Position after moving from Malibu to Miami. Why? Mark is a fan of the Barefoot movement. Mark hitting his entrepreneurial home. Run at age, 65 and metabolic flexibility. Includes mental flexibility. This interview is available on YouTube and full. So if you prefer to watch versus listen, you can get there by going to Ultimate Health podcast.com slash YouTube and be sure and subscribe while you're there. If you enjoy this interview and get a lot from it. Be sure and help spread the good word and share it with somebody in your life. I thank you so much.
Without further Ado. Here we go with Mark Sisson Mark, welcome back to the podcast. How you
doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back. Jesse
really looking forward to this. And the new book is great, two meals a day. And I read in there that you almost call this the one-and-a-half diet. So talk about what that
means. I'm coming at this after several decades of research into how we can optimize our health through diet, and exercise, and all these other, you know,
That ologies and things that we do in our lives, to improve our health, and to lose weight and to have more energy. And one of the AHA moments I had was this notion that we have that we wait too much food that there's just way too much consumption and we sort of assume that three meals a day plus snacks. Plus an evening thing, you know, is the way that our bodies are set up to receive energy. In the fact is we don't need to eat as much food as we think we do and for
Most part most of us eat far too much food far more than we require to thrive. So, you know, my iterations went from the paleo diet, which was basically based on eating real food to a keto diet which was basically centered around achieving metabolic flexibility through using. Ketogenic means and improving our fat-burning capability and reducing our dependence on carbohydrate and then it got to this point where like wait a minute. So much of
Of of what happens to the body. That's good happens when we're not eating. So, why is it that every time we eat the bodies of reparative, restorative mechanism, shut down, maybe we're better off eating less frequently and compressing that eating window. We call it intermittent fasting these days. But compressing, that eating window, and I do so well, quite often on one meal a day. I thought, wow, that's a bit much to ask for most people. So let's call it a meal and a half.
Right. One and a half a day and then my editors and my co-author Brad currents it. Yeah, we better you better start with 2 and that would be the title of the book two meals a day and then sort of inside the book will give you that one, added secret that maybe a meal and a half a day, is the ideal consumption pattern. So that's kind of how it came about. Got it and when it comes
to two meals, a day, is this something that everybody can Embrace or just certain
groups? I think it's something that everybody can embrace, you know.
Over the years, as we've again looked into different eating patterns different ways of eating looked at intermittent fasting for example, as as a means of achieving metabolic flexibility. There's been sort of this little eyebrow-raising. Well, it's not for everybody and particularly women have, you know, their particular issues with hormonal responses to food and timing and things like that, but I do feel like everyone has the potential to get to this compressed eating window. Now whether it's
Meals that start with traditional breakfast morning meal and a noon meal and then stopping or whether it's a noon meal in the evening meal and then stopping I think everybody has the potential to get to that point. A lot of people, you know, come to this from having been severely metabolically. Deranged, if you will metabolically damage through food choices, they've made their entire lives. So it's not like we can overcome this or counteract this or fix this in a few short weeks with some people.
Some people adapt very in some people, you know, can get into this to this way of eating this mindset, this compressed eating window. There's two meals a day, very comfortably in a week or two, you know, others. It takes a little bit longer, but I do think to your point, or to answer the question. It's available to everyone to get down to this sort of two meals, a day concept
and depending on where somebody's at. Let's talk about how they start to dip their toe into the water, and take this on. Starting with somebody who maybe is eating more of a
Book called diet high in carbohydrates. What would that look like for them to progress to this point? So they're going to do it in a form, that's going to be as gentle on them and set them up for
success. I think we start certainly by eliminating the big three, The Big Three would be, the sugars, added sugars, the added sweeteners, the pies, the cakes and candies. The deserts, the, you know, things like that, that I think most people are pretty aware. They ought to be cutting back on that tend to be problematic. So sugars.
Processed grains and in many cases, whole grains as well. So this would be bread pasta. Cereal things that are made with grains that convert to sugar glucose in the body pretty quickly. So, cutting way back on those and then ultimately, getting rid of the industrial seed oils. These processed oils, like canola corn oil, soybean oil which are showing now in the research to be more and more problematic for people. It may be that. These industrial seed oils are actually.
A problematic and say, sugar for most people. So by cutting back on those limiting. If you can, those and coming down to a list of real foods, this would be meat, fish fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables. A little bit of fruit, a natural food-based diet and national food based way of eating that sort of phase 1 and that's that was my original Primal blueprint. That was my original paleo version.
And of how we could clean up our diets, when you do that, when you get rid of those big three and you come down to this, pretty impressive list of very delicious, tasty satisfying Foods. You're probably 80% of the way there and your body starts to understand that it's going to derive energy from high nutrient density foods. That that also contain again, a lot of micronutrients, all the fat and
Teen the healthy fast you need. And with that, with that shift in diet, we start to lose the cravings and the hunger, and the appetite that drive our lives from one meal to the next from one day to the next and that frees us up to start think in terms of how hungry am I really right now and my really hungry. Am I really craving something? And I really starving or is that just my brain that had been so used to
to a bagel at 10 a.m. In the morning in a cup of coffee or starting the day out with a bowl of cereal and and some toast or is it the fact that I'm you know, so tied to mealtime that my brain is now thinking. Well, it's noon. I must be hungry and getting away from that sort of habituated tether to things that were largely addicted to and look in the way of carbohydrates or
Tethered to mealtime which is more of a habit than anything else and becoming intuitive about about our hunger. Am I really hungry? Am I really feeling? You know, tired and and like, I have low energy and therefore I need to eat. So these are some of the skills that we talk about in the book, how you once. You've cleaned your diet up, then you can start to identify what is really hunger. What is really, you know, and
Energy requirement. And so, one of the one of the many strategies we might use, is we wake up in the morning and you say to yourself, you know, do I really need to eat something immediately upon getting out of bed? Because if you've done this appropriately, the body has already set up these systems at start to give you energy from your own stored body fat in the morning and it's incredible. The amount of energy that we have access to on all of our bodies. It's incredible. The amount of energy that can be generated by your own.
Stored body fat in the fact that you do not have to eat. So, you know, it's a bit of a leap of faith for some people to say. Well, you know, I wake up in the morning and I've always been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and now marks telling me as long as you can without eating don't, you know, don't starve. Don't force yourself to be miserable, but see how long you can go into the day without having to have that first meal and the longer you can go. The better proof that is
Is that you have become more metabolically flexible and buy metabolic flexibility. What I'm talking about is the body's ability to derive energy from a variety of energy substrates. So it could be the carbohydrate on your plate of food that converts to glucose. It could be the glucose already in your bloodstream. It could be the glycogen in your muscles. That is a stored form of glucose in the muscles. It could be the fat that's on your plate of food. It could be the fat that's on your hips and thighs, and belly. It could even be the key.
Jones that your liver makes in the absence of carbohydrate. When you're metabolically flexible, you're able to derive energy from all these different energy substrates that are typically available to us. If we have developed the Machinery to burn it. The problem is most people go through their lives without really undertaking the, the effort to really create the bodies. Need to build metabolic Machinery, to burn more fat to make more mitochondria. Where the fat Burns.
To be unburdened of, having to eat some form of carbohydrate, every couple of hours to maintain blood sugar because your brain is now so comfortable. In utilizing the ketones that your liver makes in the absence of carbohydrate It. Ultimately, it's the most empowering thing. A person can do I believe.
And what I'm hearing a saying here is the best place for a person to start, would be to skip breakfast or push that breakfast back and narrow that eating window throughout the day and what that's going to do over time.
I'm is build the metabolic flexibility or talking about here. Exactly.
So as we say, you know, the science sort of shows that all the good stuff happens to the human body, when we're not eating, right? All the repair happens, all of the building of, you know, these new fat, burning enzymes systems, and the metabolic Machinery. The increase in mitochondria to utilize that happen in the absence really in the absence of insulin. So when Wherever Whenever we eat our pancreas secretes insulin,
with the understanding of the insulins there to drive the storage of whatever those nutrients are that we just ate into the cells and that's great. That's part of our survival mechanism over millions of years, but the problem is, if we too much, we have to frequently and Insulin drives is constantly driving the storage of these nutrients. We never get a chance to take those nutrients out of storage and burn them. So we're always filling the gas tank, but we're never burning off the gas when we start to engage in.
A compressed eating window and allow maybe 16 or 18 hours of not eating throughout the day. That's when the insulin then drops, and that allows glucagon to rise and that allows fat to come out of storage. And that allows all of these processes that I just described to start to take place where the, we build more mitochondria, where we the cells tend to engage in a topology and literally start to consume the
It's of them themselves that have become damaged through, you know, excessive eating or through inflammation or oxidation and the cells can repair themselves. And even it appears that there's some opportunity for damaged strands of DNA to self-repair during these these periods of not eating. So it's a bit of a again a bit of a stretch for a lot of people to understand but but the truth is all the good things happen to us when we're not eating and
So, to the extent that we can impose that that period of not eating on to our daily lives with ease and Grace. I mean, not, you know, I'm not trying to make this difficult for people. I want to have it. Be something that feels normal and natural and intuitive, you know, and energetic and energizing. But that, yeah, that's what's going on.
So, earlier, you talked about the big three things. We want to remove the refined oils, the grains and the sugars. Would you say? That would be the first step and then would the next step be to generally,
Lee, take our gross amount of carbs, we're eating in a day and bring that down before we start compressing that eating
window. That's one way to do it. I mean, here's the thing. I'm no longer tied to Quito, as sort of the only way to do this, right? I used to think he do was and it probably is still the best thing and a ketogenic diet is one where you reduce carbs, significantly to say, under 50 grams of carbs a day. Now, what that looks like in a healthy diet, you can
Elite, you know, a good size salad, a couple of helpings of steamed vegetables, and those are all sorts of carbs. But those carbs are also kind of locked in a nice tight fibrous Matrix. So they don't just flood into the into the gut, into the bloodstream, as glucose. They sort of Leach in overtime, in a way that's kind of a time-release for carbs. But yeah one way would be to to say okay if I've gotten rid of The Big Three
But I'm still eating a lot of potatoes. Sweet potatoes, starchy carbs, tubers legumes, peace, things like that. Maybe the next step would be to cut those back and really start to see if I can stimulate not only the creation of more ketones. Because in the absence of these carbs, the body says, well, you know, we used to run on carbs. We've been running on carbs because that's how you set the system up over the past several decades.
Kids now you're withholding the carbs. So now there is this dearth of energy a little bit for the brain, but the brain loves ketones. So it just prompts the liver to make more ketones and the ketones in unburdening. The brain of having to have more carbs. The brain becomes used to the ketones. The liver becomes used to pumping out the ketones. The brain builds, the metabolic Machinery to kind of utilize them, very comfortably and conveniently and all. While this is happening. You're also improving
Your muscles ability to derive, most of its energy from fat and in many are most cases. This is stored body fat. So it's what people want to know, people want to lose their stored body fat typically. So cutting the carbs is one strategy. Now another strategy, which involves not even cutting carbs so much. It's just simply extending that frame of that window of not eating out. Just by using your perception of your energy levels.
And your hunger levels to say, you know what? I feel pretty good. I don't need to eat. I don't just because it's known, I don't need to eat lunch yet or just because it's 9 a.m. I don't, I don't need to eat breakfast yet, and it's really allowing people to understand that, as I said, probably in the first part of this interview, we too much food. And luckily, many of us can get away with eating over eating food and not gaining too much weight. A lot of us, can't get away with it, but even those of us who can get away,
It doesn't mean that it's the ideal scenario. So, you know, I did a sort of a thought, experiment, a bunch of years ago. I see, you know, people tend to because we're wired to overeat that's part of our genetic Heritage. That's part of what enabled us to survive the rigors of a hostile environment for millions of years. We are wired to overeat and then we're wired to convert the excess, calories of what we overeat into stored energy that we
Conveniently around with us, you know, over our Senate center of gravity on the belly in the hips and thighs. We are wired to overeat. And, and many of us use this idea that like, what's the most amount of food I can eat and get away with? What's the most amount of food I can eat and not gain weight. What's the most amount of this dessert I can have and not feel guilty or not, feel uncomfortable, later on and it's it's an interesting part of human nature to see what we can get away.
With to play right up to the margins up to the edges. Well, they sort of the converse of that would be to say, what's the least amount of food? I can eat. And still tend to maintain muscle mass or build muscle, have all the energy. I want not get sick and most importantly, not be hungry. What's the least amount of food? I can? I can consume and have all those benefits. I'm going to stress this the most important part of that statement is and not get hungry because hunger sort of derails, everything, right?
And what you find as you become metabolically flexible and you start to burn off more body fat and you start to be good at creating ketones and burning those ketones in the absence of glucose. You find that that you need probably thirty percent fewer calories than you were eating before hand. And you know, magically 30% less would be one less meal a day. So a lot of people would say, well, you know, okay, I get that two meals a day mark. But now instead of three meals of
Of 800 calories each for a total of 2,400 calories. You mean two meals? Mark, that's a better to meals of 1200 calories, right? Because I still need to 2,400 calories and I'm saying, no, you don't, you literally are getting rid of one meal and the other two meals are the same size that you would have been eating. And in many cases, now you choose to make them even smaller and you'll be amazed at how much energy you have, how you don't get sick because your immune system optimizes and how
Time you have this feeling of lightness and energy and the ability to go through a day and never really have to focus on classic meal times. Like, you know, I've got this project, I'm working on and well, we have to take a break at noon because I have to, you know, have to eat lunch. I can't not eat lunch and those sorts of thoughts, kind of disappear and you go. Well, to me. This was huge because I was a big eater my whole life. And and so I was one of those.
People could get away with eating a lot of food. And when I discovered that, I didn't need to eat that much food. It was transformative in, a lot of ways, and one of those ways was, sometimes I would be like, because typically, I'll eat lunch like one 132, and then I'll it's a small watch and I'll have what we would call a dinner at like 7:30. Well, quite often I find myself. It's 2:30 or 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm like, wow, I didn't have any anything yet. I feel great.
And now I feel like okay. Why don't I just extend this wonderful window of opportunity that my body has to repair itself and not eat until seven o'clock and have it have one meal today. And so I've had, you know, many days where I don't think in advance. Well, I'm just going to only have one meal today. I have these days where I'm like, realize and haven't eaten yet, and I'm going to have one meal for dinner and then I might do it again tomorrow because it felt so good.
Good and it's important? It's just I cannot stress enough how important it is to say that this isn't like it's a sacrifice. This isn't like I'm sitting here going on. She's if I can only make it through through the next two hours of misery. I'll be able to reward myself with with a meal with dinner. No, it's like, okay. I found this new amount of time that I can keep plowing through with my workload, or my productivity, or whatever it is. I'm involved it, because it's even a reading a book. And when it comes around to dinner time, I'll eat a meal.
And my body will be not just no worse for having skip the meal. It'll actually be better off for having skip the meal. Now do I do this every day? No, I like to eat. I do like to eat. So but it's just this metabolic flexibility, and this metabolic efficiency that I've developed. That enables me to not even have to think about planning a day around mealtime or around refueling.
Or any of these things that seem to run everyone else's lives. I'm
sure that's hard for a lot of people to understand. Even people that are eating a healthier diet, but still consume a lot of carbs, trying to Fathom, what you described there, where you're forgetting, almost eat your meal. So, I think the big thing for people to highlight here, from what you said is that, you know, take your time with this experiment, work your way up and and listen to your body as you're going through. Its, if you haven't been there, can be
Hard to understand how somebody could feel the way the satiation that you're talking
about. So people who have been eating a lot of carbs, you know, they've really driven a different form of Machinery. Depends on Parts all the time. So it's really difficult for people who have become carb dependent to Fathom, the idea of skipping meals because their brain is so used to getting a new source of carbohydrate, every couple of hours, a new source of glucose because of for those people, they never really get to the point where
They're good at burning fat. They don't become fat adapt, which is the term we use, and they also have an issue with using ketones. The brain just hasn't really ever been exposed to ketones in the absence of glucose. So the first couple of days the brains going like, where's my glucose? Like, where's my glucose and until you go through that process of withholding carbohydrates, the brain always wants to go back to its go to source of fuel, which is glucose. That's where it becomes a little bit difficult.
To do this without reducing the carbs and without, you know, increasing the healthy fats. And again, certainly reducing the sugary carbs, because a lot of people, if you look at a typical American diet, that's got, you know, pancakes or french toast or toast or cereal or oatmeal, Steven Steele cut, you know, for breakfast, and a sandwich or pasta, or whatever, for for lunch and some chips, and, you know, some fries and, and maybe it was that there was a
Eagle for a snack in the morning and maybe, you know, dinner is again, baked potato more pasta, some legumes, especially if you're a vegetarian and not a lot of fat, not a lot of meat. And that's that's a big load of carbohydrate. And yes, you can, you can live on that. I mean, I was an endurance athlete for 20 years and I thrived on 1200 grams of carbs a day sometimes. I mean, I was like a carb machine, but I had
To eat every couple of hours to keep my energy levels up to keep my blood sugar levels up because I never really developed a true fat burning capability, even though I was doing, you know, marathons and triathlons. Yeah. I was pretty good at burning fat, but I still needed to continually refuel with carbs because I had not built the enhanced metabolic Machinery to become metabolically flexible to derive. Most of my energy when I was racing from fats and used
Ketones to offset my brains requirement for glucose.
So for me, the way I go about fasting is through the week, typically all intermittent fast and Skip breakfast and do sort of like you, but usually I'll lead around noon and then on weekends all have breakfast with the family. Either will make like a bigger breakfast at home or usually on Sundays will go for brunch and it doesn't mean we're not eating healthy, but I'll allow myself to eat earlier on those days, including some healthy carbs again to maintain that meta.
Moloch flexibility being able to switch over to carbs as well.
That's the definition of metabolic flexibility is to be able to use whatever substrate is, is present at the time in concert with what the workload requirement is at time. So you're describing exactly what metabolic flexibility Maze. And you know, I don't want to get too deep into the Weeds, on the measurements of blood glucose levels, and Ketone levels. At the end of the day, all that really matters is. How do you feel and if you
Feel good doing that. I'm not going to put any sort of a correction into the way you're eating. It sounds like you're metabolically flexible. It sounds like because metabolic flexibility. Basically, again means that you have throughout the day, you have steady levels of energy that could be derived from the hike, our breakfast that you had. And now you're off doing some physical activity with your family or it could be from the fact that stored on your body because you didn't eat. But as long as you feel good,
And as long as you're not in a funk me, here's where it really manifested. So, for some people, some people get so deep in the keto and so into the concept of Quito, without building the metabolic flexibility that if they go back and they get, you know, out of ketosis to get out of this point where they're generating tons of ketones because they they had a day where they had 200 grams of carbs. And then they somehow they complain of feeling horrible, feeling like crap and whatever.
That's not metabolic flexibility. That's basically somebody who is able to engage in a ketogenic way of eating and produce ketones, but maybe there's something we need to work on with their work out strategy or exercise strategy. That isn't putting through is an exhausting the carbs the glycogen stores in a way that when they refill them by having a day of excessive carbohydrates. It isn't an automatic like bonus.
To everything else they're doing. When in fact, what they're doing is they're, they're still keto and they're still, they maybe have a lot of body fat that they're not. Now, they're not able to pull the body fat out of storage because they've overeaten the carbs. And they've turned off the ketogenic part of it, but they haven't done enough of the metabolic work in the gym, to be able to burn the carbohydrates, the glycogen efficiently, effectively, and quickly and transition from one energy source to the other, which is what this
These all about and Mark personally. Do you ever take a morning where you don't skip breakfast and maybe have a smoothie bowl or have something like a gluten-free pancake? Or do you ever have those not hej? No, but
do you can, I
mean, is that ever fit into the week
for you? Let's see. All its I was gonna say all the time. No, it's not all the time. But but it does fit in, you know, we my wife and I live in Miami Beach and there's a great place that serves brunch. I literally will have like the most decadent brioche.
French toast there in addition to an omelet or whatever. I'm having a cup of coffee, but I love it. It's just not something that I would a that I would feel like doing every day. I literally, it's all those treats that I like to kind of work my way up to it, but I don't refrain from having it on a day where we might be out with with another couple with some friends who are visiting and say, let's just go do a nice brunch today and because I metabolically flexible, you know, I can have that French toast.
To not feel like crap later on. I mean, I might feel a little bit a little bit off because of the amount of sugar and maple syrup that might be on that. But it's, it's, you know, I have to choose, is it worth a slight amount of discomfort? I don't feel like I'm derailing my, my life goals by doing that. And in fact, you know, I love to eat. And so I love to, you know, I want every bite of food. I put my mouth tastes great.
Eight and sometimes that means a treat and I like to feel like, you know, I deserve it. And it's not something that it could be very easy to do that every day, right? Every meal, every day, but I know where the line is. I know where the line is that I'm going to enjoy the experience in real time and then get back on on the original plan. But that's what metabolic flexibility is all about. It's about feeling good. Feeling energetic, maintaining muscle, mass maintaining energy. Not getting sick.
And not being hungry.
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You mentioned Miami Beach there. And I know I think it was since last time we talked, you made a big move from Malibu to the other side of the US and Florida and now you're over in Miami Beach. So talk about what, what spurred that move because that's not just, you know, moving to another town or whatnot. You're making a big lifestyle shift with that. What spurred that on and how is that transition been
well, so I was getting ready to sell my company and I wanted to I'm not retired necessarily per se, but I wanted to have
Bit more of a feeling of retirement. I love warm weather, you know, I love high humidity. I love warm water. I like beaches in Malibu. I had beaches, but and I had, you know, I had Sam. And I had some warm weather but not warm enough. And the water is always cold in Malibu. I spent a lot of time the water now, neither paddling, or I have a, you know, electric foil board that I use and I love to ride a Fat Tire Bike on the
Sand on the beach. I play Ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of people here and in Miami Beach. So I'm I wanted that feeling of a little bit of retirement and then, you know, then the truth is, I'm I got really sick and tired of the governance of California. I feel like a, if we could. That's a whole different political conversation, but I don't have the feelings, the strong feelings, a warm feeling for California that I used to have. I think that between the taxes and the governance and the how
The state has made it for businesses to operate became a real issue for me. And I wanted to, I wanted to get away from. So, love the people love the Topography of California, but I'm really, really digging Miami Beach.
I know, one of the benefits he talked about in the book is that you and your wife. Carrie are getting to walk about quite a bit more. It's an area that set up more for walking, two different things throughout the day that you guys are
doing. Yeah. We were in Malibu 30 years. We raised our kids and
Now go and it's it was a great place. I mean, I don't want to I mean, I loved being a Malibu and I would not take it back but I sort of outgrew Malibu and one of the issues with a community like that, as we had to get in our car, to do to do anything with a drive to get anywhere. So, we were on a hill with great views, but, you know, you go buy a cup of coffee, get a newspaper, go to the gym workout. Even the height. You had to get a new car and drive to get there. The first year we were in Miami Beach. We didn't own a car. We walked everywhere and we have, you know.
Great restaurants. Within walking distance of the beach is right out our back door and you know, my board rack is right there. So I don't even have to put my board on top of Iraq and drive through a put in place. Same with the bike. So, everything about where we are in, Miami is conducive to my lifestyle of being outside. And even though Malibu was given it, for example, I mean, I didn't sound like it in Malibu because I was afraid to get on PCH the
If it goes Highway, which is become crazy with traffic and that just the dangers of just getting down the street, to get to a trail sort of scared me off. Not that way in Miami and right on the sand and right on the beach. It's a quick hop to be immediately into a beautiful work out very quickly. So it's been he was the perfect move for my wife and I to make when we did three years
ago and coming back to the walking. I think that's often and underestimate a form of movement and exercise.
Sighs. You talk about some stats in the book about our hunter-gatherers and how much walking the would have done in a day. And there's the whole 10,000 step thing that a lot of people like to quote and just having that as part of your day-to-day living situation, just just makes moving so much
easier. Yeah, so to that end, we did get a car and we've had it for two years and it has 3800 miles on it. So it's like we use it to go back and forth from the airport and if we go visit friends in a different town, but
Otherwise, we almost never drive during the day and we're either walking on the beach or walking on the hard-packed sand, which is one of the, you know, great joys for me is either walking or sprinting on at low tide on this and, you know, or walking to do our shopping and, you know, carrying bags home from doing grocery shopping. The downside to this was when I first got to our new place, I found, I was walking between five and eight miles a day.
And I developed piriformis syndrome because I've gone from know, walking in Malibu. Yeah, and I would drive to the gym and then I would do a lifecycle workout, or will spend work out or something like that and I'd hike once in a while, but for the most part, everything in Malibu was, was based on either driving or stand-up paddling and, but I wasn't walking. And when I started walking five to eight miles a day, I so overdeveloped my glutes in my pair of formats that I had a, the first I think three
Did I developed sort of a sciatic problem? Which went away completely, you know, knock wood, but it was from that transition from not walking at all to walking a lot.
And how did you go about treating? The
piriformis interesting story? So, I joined a group is an online site online called ultimate disc pickup.com, and it's basically, it has all the ultimate games in the country where you can, you know, if you're, if you're in a new town and you want to find
An ultimate game. Just go on here and it gives you pinpoint the location. So I joined the local Miami Beach ultimate group and the guy who was the commissioner half and also to do Bodywork and I told him about the piriformis and so he started using, you know, Thera gun and some and some roller, protocols and some stretching protocols on me and it took care of it within a couple of weeks. He was a perfect example of treating, you know, what would be a pretty debilitating.
I mean, sciatic pain, I would be in horrible pain, but I would wake up in the morning and it would take me an hour of warming up to where I could I could move without without that pain and understanding how the body works. And understanding the Kinesiology and biomechanics. My friend. August is his name, you know, he was able to completely eradicate. It
happy to hear that and hasn't come back
since it's been almost three years now and has not come back since but you know some of it
Was I started to think like I was walking in deep sand. I was purposely walking in deep sand thinking, it was a good workout strategy for me. But because I hadn't hadn't worked the other muscles around it. That was probably one of the contributing factors. So, I stopped, I stopped walking in deep sand and I can start up again, I guess, because now I'm sort of worked my way into it. But, you know, I now had so many things to do, so many things to choose to do. I mean, I wake up every day and it's like,
Mid summer camp. It's like, okay. Am I gonna swim today? I am I going to paddle, am I gonna e4l? And I got to ride my bike in the beach. I'm going to go to the gym and, you know, it's just such a great for me, the perfect. I'm going to say retirement lifestyle. Although I'm not really retired. I just I'm able to orchestrate my day so that I have a lot of time that I could spend outside.
That's great. I'm happy for you. And when you talked about walking through the deep sand, it got me thinking about Barefoot movement. Is that something you're big into if you're doing sprints?
Sore going for walks on the beach. Are you into being Barefoot to be more connected with the Earth?
And, and totally totally. Yeah, I think I've been a big fan of barefoot movement and Minimalist Shoes since day one. I feel like, you know, people lose touch with the, not just the Earth, but the haptic sense of how their body moves when they wear cushioned shoes. I think that sort of the response to the minimalist.
You movement was this maximal issue movement, which has these thick rocker souls and it's horrible for the feet. It's like, I think the worst worst thing you can do to your foot is to put it in a cast and then remove all haptic sense. All the senses that the sensory inputs, the foot gets from being Barefoot. And, you know, for the longest time, I played ultimate in Vibram, five fingers in those minimalist, by Finger shoes, and I never rolled an ankle, because I
That even on a filled with pot holes in it that as I was sprinting down the field. If I step on a, you know, in a hole or landed on a tilted thing before I transferred, all my weight onto that foot, my brain already knew how to adjust the rest of my leg to absorb that shock or that role. And every time I did that, every every time I would run on an uneven surface, that way my feet got stronger and stronger, the small muscles of my feet.
Came much stronger than they ever could have wearing cleats or even regular what we call Michael tennis or running shoes. So I've been a huge fan of people going Barefoot and I'm to this day. I just kind of roll my eyes. When people say, well, I couldn't, I couldn't go barefoot or I couldn't, you know, we're sort of Minimalist Shoes because I have, I have no arches. Well, the reason you have no arches is because you've been supporting your arch with an artificial Bridge, your whole life. And so
Our Arch has atrophied. It's given up the ghost. It said, I don't need to work anymore. The only way to build arches, not the only way, but the best way is to walk Barefoot as much as you can. So one of the ways to do that is to walk, you know, in the in the shallow water, you know, if it's warm water, you know, on a coastal flat plane or in deep sand, is another way to do it. So I do Sprints Barefoot. And even though I had an issue with my feet a couple years ago where actually tour
My plantar plate doing sprints. And so I had to wear cleats just for the stiffness of the shoe just to be able to get around on a frisbee if y'all didn't want to give up frisbee, right? So, I had to alter my my Footwear, but once the plantar plate repaired itself, I went back to doing sprints only in in Minimalist Shoes because I want that, I want that happenstance. And I want, I want the feet as an aside. I ran from the age of like,
18, I was a runner. And when I started running in, probably 19, 67 or 68, there were not many shoes available in the shoes that were available. Were very thin, sold shoes and the effect of those thin sold shoes was you couldn't run that many miles in a week because it was tough on the feed. It was tough on, you know, you were limited in your mileage to the small muscles in your feet and their ability to recover.
From one day to the next from putting in miles in the late 60s, early 70s, mid-70s the thickness of the shoes started to increase and then Nike came up with these waffle trainers and these Nike L DVDs, which were like almost an inch thick and then New Balance came out with you, is there were a number of shoe companies, Adidas and puma and they all came out with thick-soled shoes and the running boom took off. And people started putting in 80 90.
Miles a week, a hundred and twenty miles a week. And the irony here is that because these shoes were cushioning the footfall and the foot, the small muscles of the feet ceased to become the limiting factor in injuries and it bypassed that important haptic sense and put all of the pressure on the quads and that the Cavs on the quads, the hamstrings, and the and in many cases, the glutes and all the way up to the lower back and so people
Started getting different kinds of injuries, same kind of kind of injuries. So that the irony with these high-tech shoes is that the amount of injuries did not decrease over time. Just where the injury was got, moved further up the leg, all because somebody thought it was a great idea to cushion the feet and cushion the footfall and kind of remove that that natural ability that we have wired.
Was to adjust our stride to accommodate that sensory input and it
seems like the one running World in general is making a comeback towards the more minimalistic.
Yeah. I mean certainly, you know, the lighter-weight shoes, the minimalist shoe is now sort of a combination of lightweight, thinner soul, but also that Soul now has some kinetic Force has built into it. So it the soul itself.
Elf. If you were a good a great Runner, you're landing on your mid-foot, the way, the soul is constructed. Now, it absorbs the energy and transfers it immediately to the next push off. So, there's been discussion in the running shoe circles about whether that might even be an unfair advantage to people are wearing those type of shoes. It's one of the shoes that was used to to break two hours the marathon recently. Now, the recognition is yeah, you want to you want to utilize as much of the of the
Foot as possible. And that works really well for an elite Runner who's probably been running a lot Barefoot to begin with and trained, you know, the small muscles their feet and train their Achilles to be to be that spring-loaded action. Meanwhile, I think a lot of people are still who are sit what we call citizen runners or joggers or people who are maybe overweight try to run to lose weight. They're still I think flocking toward that maximalist shoe because of the cushioning that it offers.
Hours,
so we talked about the big transition a few years ago, moving to Miami Beach. Another big transition in your life over. The last number of years has become a grandfather. Yeah. I know. This is something you're enjoying. So talk about what that change has been like for you.
It's spectacular. It's Indescribable. And I've always figured I would love it. But I did, you know, I never until I until I actually got there. I never realized how awesome it is. So my granddaughter, her name is JJ Jalen.
Jedi wolf, she is. She's a year and a half right now and she's talking up, a storm. And when I say talk up a storm, she you know, she knows a lot of words and she's constructing three words sentences, and she's very communicative and, you know, bright and, and funny, and just great to interact with. So one of the downsides to being across the country, as we don't, we don't get a chance to visit as often as we like to. But we're we go from
Miami Beach to California where my daughter and granddaughter are located typically for one week a month. So it's not, you know, it's a pretty good stretch of time that we are able to spend time with him.
That's quite a bit. Congrats to
you. Yeah, thanks. Yeah.
So let's come back to fasting and you talked about earlier. Typically your day will be not eating till about 1:30 or 2:00. Let's talk about leading up to that. What time are you getting up? What, what different things do you consume in the morning? Are you having?
Tea or coffee or how does that? That morning routine look like
am a big morning routine person. So I like to have, I like to go go to bed at within a, maybe a half hour to an hour window, same time, every night and that might be 10:30 or 11:00. Probably not much later than 11:00. Usually get up around 7:00. I try to have eight to eight and a half hours sleep. If I get 9, I do not apologize for that. I'm a
A big fan of sleep and the restorative nature of sleep when I get up my makeup. First thing I do is make a big cup of, really strong coffee. I put whole cream in it and a tiny bit of sugar. I read a couple of papers and more actual, real physical newspapers. I can't, I just can't get into reading news on my, on my phone and try to figure out what's going on the world and, and try to understand my role in it, from what's going on.
Nose. And then I do a couple of puzzles. I do New York Times crossword puzzle. I do Sudoku is and can cans and whatever depending on what paper I'm reading and what part of the country. I mean, there's a lot of great puzzles. And so that's and I don't ever spend more than say a half hour total on the puzzle part of it, but it's a kind of fun way for me to get my brain cranked up first thing in the morning then I'll go do some work. I might write for a while. I might answer emails.
Make some calls or whatever typically break around 10:00 or 10:30 and do my work out. If I'm in Miami, that might be a bike ride again on the beach. Might be a stand up paddle session, might be down in the gym. I'm very fortunate to have a great gym in our building. It's awesome to just break. Go down, do a 35-minute, intense workout. Stop. Come back up. And pick up where I left off. Work a little bit more, maybe have lunch around, typically around 1:30. I have my first meal.
Go back to a little bit of work in the afternoon now because I'm, you know, depending on what errands I have to run. Maybe in the afternoon. I might do some walking there too. Then at my day because of again, how I've constructed my life right now. I do what I call Fire and Ice at the end of the day. So I'll do 15 minutes sauna in our, we have a spa in our building to so I do a 15-minute sauna and then I do anywhere from four to six minutes and then
Old plunge and just up to my neck in a cold plunge. And that's very sort of. At the same time, refreshing and relaxing to me, leave the cold plunge. And now I try to play drums. Have a electronic drum kit in my apartment in our condo in Miami. So I'm able to, I wear earbuds and I can put some music on, on an iPad. And then I have headphones full on headphones that I put over the ear buds.
It's where the drum sound comes in so I can be rocking out to Metallica, you know, or Green Day or Petty and all you can hear is peta peta peta peta peta peta with the with the drum pad. So I'm not, I'm not upsetting anybody any of my neighbors or anyone else. It's a really cool thing. So, I just decided I wanted to learn how to play drums as one of my sort of Lifetime bucket list things. So I do that for an hour and then my wife and I
Our cook dinner together or we go out to dinner and then I will watch a little bit of TV. I think television has never been better in terms of its program offerings. It's TV show offerings. I guess you can't say program with TV anymore and then go to bed and it's a, you know, it's a great, a great lifestyle. I love it. And it's a good and it's good routine and I like to maintain that routine.
Sounds great. Yeah. I got a lot of want to get into within that. Let's talk about the Fire and Ice to start.
Art, so you have a sauna in the building. Is it an infrared sauna or a regular hot
rocks on a regular dry dry sauna hot rocks on? Yeah. Yeah.
Nice. And then the cold plunge. Is that something that's actually like built into the the
spa? Yes. So we at spa has men's and women's side. So they're separated. So my, when my wife does hers, we can't do it together, but they each have a Jacuzzi sauna steam room and a cold plunge. What? I like the best about it. Don't tell anybody is
Nobody. Nobody uses it because it's such a cold plunge, is such a so foreign to most people. And the people who do use it, go in for like, you know, two seconds, they jump in and they immediately scramble out and they can't can't believe they just did that and it's very available to me to go in there and spend some time in the plunge. There's all sorts of research on the benefits of these, both the hormetic response to eat for instance. So a lot of people would say, well,
I want to just do, you know, the heat by itself and then do the plunge by itself on a different day. And there's a lot to be said for that. It's sort of a side note. For instance. I don't think I would ever do a hard aerobic day with a hard lifting day. I mean, I want to separate those. I want the results of my aerobic day to stand alone and create the, you know, the biochemical responses based on the signals that I produced to have the greatest effect on an aerobic day and then if I'm in the gym, and I'm lifting
Got an anaerobic day. I don't want to mix those signals up. So I want just, I want to leave the body with just that and to repair the tissue based just on those signals. And you might even argue that if that's a similar concept with this Fire and Ice that, if you're going to be doing a sauna, why don't you just do the sauna one day? Just do the Heat and let that be the signal that you're left with in terms of whatever the hormesis you're trying to create. And on another day just do the cold for its anti-inflammatory effects, and it's other
Immunologic boosting effects, so that's a legitimate observation that you didn't even make. I predicted it. But it's, but it's interesting that I don't even do the plunge for the, the hormesis, or for the anti-inflammatory effects, as much as I do. The plunge for the, for the mind game that it is. I mean, just, you know, spending for five minutes sometimes more
In 48 degree water, trying to maintain breathing and not get freaked out and not get too cold, that you overdo the hormetic effects of that. I Almost Do it. For the mind that the head game, that it plays with me. And I started doing this years ago because I grew up in May. I grew up in in a small fishing Village in Maine. I learned to swim in a saltwater pool that's filled in with high tide, every high tide and then emptied out.
And so the water was always in the 50s. It was horrible. I was a skinny little, we 11 10, 11 12 year old kid, trying to learn how to swim at the YMCA. So I hated co-worker my whole life. I hate it. I would after these swim lessons. I would shiver my ass off for like the whole day and when I had to retire from competition as an as a marathoner Ike, and I elected to start training for a triathlon, had to learn how to swim again and learn in a
A public pool which was 81 degrees. And I got to the point where I even hated getting into an 81 degree pool. It was like that was, it was still, you know, 16 degrees colder than my body temperature. And so wasn't till years later when I long since retired from triathlons and long since retired from competition and I just realized this is stupid, like like my aversion to cold water is a, it's not serving me and it's there's something there that I need to deal with and so I started
Walking into my unheated pool in Malibu in the middle of winter and so it go out at like 9 o'clock at night and the pool temperature, be 52 or 46, or something like that. And and I just walk in and stay as long as I could and then get out and typically, I get out and get into a Jacuzzi after was just a warm-up. But that's kind of how I started doing this ten years ago just as kind of a kind of a mind game and it became interesting challenge to see you know,
How long I could do it and what thoughts were going through my head? And and my, my breathing techniques, did I need to breathe or not? So, that's kind of why I do it. I it's like it for me. It's not about the supposed anti-inflammatory benefits or the, or the brown fat benefits. It's more about just this sort of nice little space where I walk in. And the first thing I say is, it's not good or bad. It's just a sensation and that can apply to a lot of things in life. I think.
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You mentioned, the brown fat. I want to talk about that a little bit because the ice bath or doing a cold shower can be. So complementary to fasting, especially if somebody's goal fasting is to lose weight. So, talk about that activation. They just brought up in the brown fat.
Yeah. So Brown fat is just this mammalian adaptation. It's, I guess you're going to quantify or subjective. I fat as good or bad, you know, adipose fat white. That typically is.
Non metabolic tissue, which is stored energy, Brown fat is metabolically, active and burns off energy. And so you literally want to activate as much Brown fat as you can. If you're somebody who wants to optimize health and optimize body composition, for example, any of these things that we do that we undertake that are that are seen as challenging or difficult, or uncomfortable, we do because we're trying to
Pop the change in the body and prompting a change in brown fat. We want to, we want to submerse ourselves in cold water. Whether it's a nice bath or a cold plunge or a cold shower and to the extent that we can do that. The response of the body is to say okay if this fool is going to do this on a regular basis, we better start generating more heat in the form of this sort of built-in heating device that we have.
In the form of brown fat.
Okay, and how long does somebody need to subjects themselves to this cold water to get that, that brown fat benefit,
you know, all of these things are relative to who you are, how old you are male female, how much body fat you have already? You know, how much time you spent in cold weather with or without subjecting yourself to cold plunging. I mean, a lot of these things are so many variables here. So, when you say, how much time you have to spend, I
I'd say the most that you can stand, you know, without making yourself horribly. Uncomfortable, would be a good way to do it. And over time. If you become adjusted adapted accustomed to a particular temperature, you either extend the amount of time you can do it or you, or you lower the temperature with people who are taking a cold shower, again, depends, part of country. You live in. If you live in, in the southern parts of the country, your cold shower is probably 68 degrees or, you know, 65 degrees. It might be a
50s. But I doubt it would be much lower than that. If you're, in the Northeast, your cold shower might be, literally 38 degrees or 42 degrees, you know, you have to temper the amount of time with the amount of temperature that you have, and the amount of discomfort that you're willing to endure. So there's no real rule of thumb here. I think it's just basically you start with your own Baseline and try to improve your exposure by either increasing amount of time or decreasing.
The temperature
sounds a lot like fasting where again you want to it's different depending on the person and people need to build up a
tolerance and that's a great example that it's a great. But you know, that's I think that's how we do all things that are we know are good for us, but tend to be uncomfortable. It's how you train for a 10K, you start out easy and, and you push the level of discomfort to the point where you're able to run faster and run longer as a side note there.
I will tell people that my entire career as an endurance, athlete was just about managing discomfort everything. I did as a runner and then later as a triathlete, you know, is from cycling and running. And swimming was about putting myself in a position of uncomfortableness of discomfort by increasing the amount of work. I was I was putting out preaching my heart rate, increasing my breathing rate and becoming uncomfortable doing it. And unlike
Like a lot of other sports games in particular where you're having fun, you know, you're you're playing football. It's fun. Basketball, is fun. Hockey's fun. Soccer's, fun. Baseball. Is fun. Running is not fun. I'm sorry. You might say it is, you might enjoy it. You might get a little bit of a buzz from it and you might, you know, enjoy going out on a jog with your, with your headphones on but as an elite athlete, it's not fun. It's about managing discomfort. And the irony here is that we're not the irony, the game.
Here is that the day you line up at the starting line with 20 other guys were equally as trained equally as genetically gifted equally, as desirous of winning this race on that particular day. What it comes down to is the one person who's willing to create such discomfort for himself that he drags other people into it. And they become so uncomfortable. That they fall by the wayside. And that's what Endurance Sports is all about. It's about managing discomfort.
And as a metaphor for life, it's an interesting concept managing discomfort can be a great asset in business. It can get people through hard times and I'm certain that over the last year during covid. There's a lot of a lot of business owners who manage the great deal of discomfort others gave up the ghost because they were unwilling to manage that discomfort and those who managed it - they're going to survive and probably Thrive when we come out.
Other end of this, on the other hand in relationships managing discomfort might be a bad strategy, you know, you might want to identify what it is that's going on and and deal with it and not just manage the discomfort and not just hang in there. Yeah. I've thought a lot about this concept of managing discomfort and and how it serves us or not in different areas of life,
very interesting stuff. And do you think Mark and your case all those ears being a run or pushing through discomfort led to
That transitioning over into your business,
success, hundred percent, a hundred percent. I mean, business is difficult, as it is. I have one of the first things I say to anybody, who, who a young person, starting a business. I said, look if this were easy, everyone would be doing it. It's not easy, and perseverance is absolutely critical, you know, you have to have a great business idea. Don't get me wrong. You can't just be stupid thinking. The widget that you invented for yourself is something everyone else is going to
But if it is something that other people want, then then perseverance is one of your greatest assets. If you have that, and having been an endurance athlete, served me extremely well, and I've had a number of minor successes and a lot of big failures in business. The cool thing about business is you only need one home, run in your life to make everything you've done worth doing. It's really
Been an eye-opening experience to realize it. Where else in the World of Sports. Can you have, you know, a season where you only had one win and that was enough to set you up for the rest of your life. I think, managing the discomfort, when it occurs. And by the way, there's a lot of business is fun. And it's a game. And it's there are amazing amazing highs that you can get from being, even marginally successful from one day to the next and your business.
Over a course of a career or a lifetime. There's a lot of lows to you have to kind of persevere through those lows. But at the end of it, if you had again, one good home run in business. You can be set up for the rest of your
life. Yeah. It's interesting. I guess you have to have that home run within a certain period of time to, you know, like if you're waiting till you're 80 to have that home run, that's, you know, could be a challenge to have a ghost failures over the years.
And let me tell you something, man. I basically
with homeless, when I met my wife, I had made a lot of money and already lost a lot. I was discouraged. I was trying a whole new approach. I was a actor and a coach and a personal trainer and then I had some successes and then I had some more failures and my home run came when I was 65 years old. So you might say, you know, depending on how old you are. When is it depends on when that home run comes my home run? Could have come it.
27 and could have come at 35 and could have come at 48. It came at 65. Now what I'm telling you is it made everything I did up to then worth doing it wasn't like I needed to have it happen in my 30s or 40s or 50s. Even. I was successful enough that I could have. I could have eased back and you know, and not work much more but I kept thinking, you know, there's a there's a home run here somewhere and I want to keep plugging away at it and it
It was fun to do and it was about persevering. During those times. My message literally is I tell my kids, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was 47, because I did so many things before that, and then I changed my mind again at 61. And then I finally, you know, got my home run at 65. So everything I did, I would not take back. I would, you know, one thing that I did, I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't ask for a redo on any of that.
You had your big home run in your mid 60's, but you did have a lot of Base.
It's in and singles, doubles and triples Soldier. I mean, you've done a lot of things,
right? Yeah, but again, let's define what a base. It is. I mean for somebody who's got a regular job and is paying the bills. That's a double for a lot of people. Right? So, you know, everybody's base, hit everybody's double. And everybody's triple has a different, I think, different definition and I think it's important to not compare yourself to other people. You can only compare yourself.
Off to yourself. And what you? What do you want from life? And you want to focus on family and not so much on Career. That's a totally legitimate strategy. Right? And you want to focus on just being fit and healthy and playing games all the time and having an active lifestyle and not focus on Career. So much and not even folks with, that's a legitimate strategy of legitimate Choice. It's ultimately, while all we're talking about here like everything we're going to
Us today, Jesse's about what makes you happy. It's about your happiness. And we started out by saying if you know, if having energy and not being sick and being healthy and being vibrant, if that makes you happy, I know how to do that. I know how to make, you know, to help you do that, but if, you know, staying at home and sitting on a sofa and playing video games and weighing 290 Pounds. If that makes you happy, let's not argue with that. If you're at, you legitimately happy dude, I mean, I you know, I
I sometimes would envy that ability. You know, I sort of set standards my happiness that I sometimes think that's just an artificial thing that I put out there and doesn't really need to be that high, but you know, I chose it. So I guess I'm going for it.
We talked about the Grant from the running and how that translated into the business success. Another thing that popped into my head, just now is the fact that you were working in the health and wellness, ROM, and learning and sharing that information which
Really propelled you. I'm sure propelled you and your health which probably added to that home. Run, you eventually hit
a hundred percent. I mean, these are like I say, there are no coincidences here. These all in retrospect these random things all add up to like, oh my God, that's so perfect that it turned out that way. Like if I had understood much earlier about how much damage I was doing to my body by training over training in my diet and I've had adjusted that I would have had a
Longer athletic career. Now. What does that look like? I don't know, you know, a lot of my friends who were top runners in the country and in the 70s and 80s. And a lot of my friends who are top triathletes are now, they're not in a good way. It was never money to be made in those Sports. And so there are a lot of murder, you know, trying new things to make a living and maybe by passed an extra 10 or 15 years of what could have been a career building opportunity to continue down this path of racing. And I look, I
Racing. I'm glad I did it but I'm glad I retired when I retired. I could have been one of the top five triathletes in the world. If I learned how to swim. I was certainly the best runner that every transition over. I am so thankful to this day that I got injured and that I got sick and that I and I got tired of it and I couldn't do it anymore. I'm so thankful that I went on to find something else. You know, I as I started down this road of coaching other athletes, I realized that I didn't need to train that hard to be just as fit as they were, that
An aha moment for me when I stopped eating a lot of carbohydrates and started recognizing it. Fast were good for me and I didn't gain weight. It was like, oh my God. What an aha moment. That was I can. I can achieve a lot of my fitness goals, just by changing my diet around and not even working out as hard. That was great. And I wouldn't have come to that had, I not, you know, had irritable bowel syndrome and had to give up grains. Basically. It's my life. So all these things
Ins in retrospect, make tremendous sense. They didn't at the time it's like oh this isn't working. I've got a pivot. I've got to try something new but in retrospect it all lines up perfectly
and to bring us all to the same page in case anybody's wondering your big home run was selling your
business. Yeah. So in 2014, I had this pivotal aha moment where I realized I was writing so much about food and what makes food taste great. Basically if you've got
Rid of the sugars and the and the processed grains and the industrial seed oils. What makes Foods taste, great on the sauces, the dressing toppings, the methods of preparation and nobody was making truly healthy sauces. And so I started a company called Primal kitchen to make mayonnaise that you felt good about putting on your food and tastes great. To make ketchup that you mom's felt good about giving to their kids because it was completely unsweetened and tasted like all the ketchup it that they were used to making salad.
That the more you put on your salad, the better it tasted and perhaps the better it was for you and this was kind of a new spin on sauces and dressings and food because we built the product first using the best possible ingredients and then we priced it later in some of these were relatively expensive but we realized a lot of people who are waiting for this kind of company, this kind of product to come out there and be on the market and I was fortunate to find.
A partner in Kraft, Heinz, they bought us almost two years ago, a little over two years ago. Now, they purchased us because they recognized that we were onto something. We were changing the way the world looks at eating. We were leaders in that in that Arena and they also recognize that they want it to be to play in that Arena as well. So they, they purchased us with the full understanding that we were going to keep doing what we were doing and do it even better using their resources and it's been great.
So was that a tough decision at the time when they offered to buy you out?
No, it wasn't a tough decision at all. I had already from the beginning of starting a food company. I knew I was going to be acquired by a larger strategic company and when craft came to us with their offer. It was exactly the partner that I was looking for somebody that because I realized that, you know, at my age I wasn't going to have the wherewithal or the means to grow it for years and years.
In the future, and I wanted to find a large company. That could take what we've done and leverage it and build upon that. So, it had always been my plan to to find a strategic partner. And it just they came in at the right time
and crafts and Heinz aren't companies known to, you know, get into the health and wellness. Space to say the least when you made that sale where you concerned at all that the Integrity would would decline
never because they bought us understanding that we knew what we were doing and we
We were leaders in this field. So it would be I need to come up with an algae and I won't right now, but I need for future reference because it's, you know, they weren't going to buy us and then and then ruin the very thing that they'd spent so much money acquiring, you know, there was never a danger of them diluting the product with cheap ingredients. We were all bit. We'll always based on the best possible ingredients. What they really have brought to us is a marketing budget that we didn't have access to Capital Growth, Capital Access.
Certain manufacturing places manufacturing facilities that we didn't have access to, and ultimately access to distribution that we didn't have. So it's, it was always my intention to have Primal kitchen. Be the preeminent better for you food, company in the world, and I wasn't going to be able to do that on my own. And it's been amazing to have Kraft Heinz as a as a part.
So since
You've partnered with them and you've let your baby. You've let you know the reins off your baby a little bit. You've been happy with the way things have
unraveled. Oh, yeah. I mean, we still have the same, you know, they didn't want us to fire any ones. We have the same. We've hired some new people, but say management team that that we grew from scratch. We have the same production, teams and same. Everything is the same except we have access to more resources from in, but nobody got fired.
I have two year Consulting agreement with them that they just renewed for another five years. Our team has all renewed and stayed on so it's you know, it's the best possibility for all of us. I think
happy to hear that and Mark, I know I gotta let you go assume, but I want to come back to the fasting and your protocol again a little bit before we part ways and you mentioned the coffee, you have. So up until that 1:32 p.m. When you break your fast, that one coffee is all you.
Have.
Yeah. And that's, you know, people there are purists would say, wait a minute. You're broke fast with, you know, a little bit of heavy cream. And some, in the coffee. I'm like, you know, it's, this isn't about the sanctity in the purity of the fast. It's about not eating real food and the coffee, you know, I can argue that the caffeine and the coffee is having its own sort of beneficial effects on fat metabolism. For instance, you know, and accelerating any fat burning that I might have.
Why's undertaken doing that. The one time I will say, I do something differently is on certain leg days. Maybe once every 10 days, if I'm going to do some heavy stuff that's going to really impact my joints like hex bar squash or something like that. I will do 20 grams of collagen protein, about 20 minutes before that work out. And so that's that sort of breaking the fast in that regard, but, you know, again, I'm not
Not my motivation. There is to provide raw materials for my tendons, and ligaments, and faccia to, to use to repair from the damage. I'm about to do in the gym and that to me has more benefit than one more day of a extended eating or not eating window. But otherwise, that's my routine is typically to have my first meal at like, 1:30. Got it and you
mentioned
Sugar in the coffee, what kind of sugar and why is that something you include
table sugar? I mean, that the number of different sugars that I see on the market, whether they're, you know, organic or brown, you know, package sugar or what sucrose is sucrose in my book. And it doesn't matter where it came from. It's the same chemical composition. Whether it came from corn or beets or actual sugar cane, I mean, I will say having said that, my wife keeps sugarcane
sugar in the house and it's organic and blah, blah blah, but I don't, I don't really it's that, that is so insignificant to me when you're talking about sucrose as a molecule and to think that you can identify them, came from a raw material of again, sugar beets or corn or whatever, kind of almost laughable. Because in the context of everything else, I eat throughout the day, you know, it's a tiny amount of sugar but I, you know, I like I like just
Bit of sweetness that it adds to the coffee and I certainly could be using month fruit or Stevie or something like that. I don't need to it's again, how do I feel? I feel great, so I'm not trying to live by specific numbers that I read out on my, on my wearables. I'm trying to live by what makes me feel the best what makes me feel satisfied and what gives me the energy to start the day and be able to go long periods of time without eating if I need to, or if I'm forced to or if I choose to
This is what we talked about from the beginning, its the metabolic flexibility includes mental flexibility to
okay. Well, we're going to leave it at that. The new book is two meals a day, other than listeners, getting a copy of that. How can they connect with
you? Mark's Daily Apple, was my blog been writing every day on that. Since 2006, Primal kitchen, provocation.com to find out more about the foods. We have about 80, new product, 80 products. Now, totally fancy new 80 products in total. You know, we're on it.
Grab with prime location foods with marks. Daily Apple as well and I'm Mark Sisson Primal on Instagram. That should be sufficient.
All right. I'm going to link it all up in the show notes. Mark. I really appreciate your time. Had a lot of fun here. Thank you.
Thanks for having Jessica to see you again. You two. Take
care. I really enjoyed chatting with Mark. Again. We really covered a variety of different topics. It was a fun conversation to help you got a lot from it. I'd love to hear what you thought of our conversation over on Instagram. You can tag marxists and Primal and add Ultimate Health.
Podcast, you can take a screenshot of the players, you're listening, tagged. Both of us. We'd love to connect with you over there for full show notes, head over to alt smell podcast.com slash 416. There's links are at everything we discussed today and so much more. So be sure and check those out and Before I Let You Go, I want to give some love to my editor and engineer. Jason Anderson over at podcast attack.com Jace. Thank you for all you do and thank you for listening to the show. Have an awesome week. I'll talk to you soon. Wishing you all timid health.
