How To MELT YOUR FAT & Get In The BEST SHAPE Of Your Life! | Mark Sisson

Mark Sison, welcome to Health Theory. This is round two for us. Thank you, man, for coming back. It's such a pleasure, Tom. It's been a while. It has. I was re-watching the first episode that we did, which I had a great time doing. And one of the things that we talked on or touched on that I wish we had gone deeper was your whole concept of living awesome. And I thought that would be a good place to pick up. I want to give people something that's that's really prescriptive. I know that you shy away from judging people. Uh I'll be in full judgment mode in terms of I'll make the assumption that people want to um they want to be healthy, they want to be painfree, they don't want to be starving all the time. Um and anything that moves them towards that goal makes sense to me. Anything that moves away, I will be highly judgmental of just because they're, you know, putting themselves in a in a position of punishment I had done to myself for a very long time. Uh so in wanting to help them get there. So, let's touch on do you have sort of tenants of an awesome life that you think are relatively universal? Well, yeah. I mean, um the I I guess the basic structure here is um I want to extract the greatest amount of enjoyment, fulfillment, contentment, pleasure, uh out of every possible moment. Now, look, sometimes that's just, you know, not going to be feasible or not going to be possible, but but to the extent that you can do it as much as possible throughout the day, that's what I'm looking for. So, I want people to be, as you said, painfree. I want people to be able to move around. I want people to be able to enjoy playing uh with their friends, with their loved ones, with their kids. Uh I want people to enjoy every single bite of food they ever eat. Uh you know, these are these are the basic tenants. And so my uh designing of my own life has been kind of structured around how do I create these opportunities uh to get that sense of satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment. Talk about fulfillment. Can you define fulfillment? You've been a pretty hard pushing um you said at one point you considered yourself type A. I don't know if you still do, but as somebody who has successfully built and sold a company, obviously you're you're very driven, a marathon runner, very driven. Um what do you think fulfillment actually is? Let me tell you, um when I when I discover what it is, I will let you know. Uh this is probably the the essence of a type A personality. So when I say I'm looking for contentment, satisfaction, enjoyment, those are all sort of hedonistic um aspects of uh like real time uh results, right? And I can talk to you about enjoying every bite of food. I can talk to you about the pleasure uh you know of a great relationship or sex or um you know even a even a good workout. Fulfillment however starts to get into this uh realm of self- judgment and you open this with with the concept of judging. Uh, and that's one of the areas that I'm really hardest on myself. So, I feel fulfilled uh when I when I feel like I've I've u made a contribution to someone's life. So, I've been an educator for as long as I've been in business, 354 years. I've been writing books. I've been doing seminars. Um, I've been doing a lot of podcasts. And nothing ever is more fulfilling to me than when someone comes up to me out of the blue and says, "Hey, Mark, I can't believe it's you. you've changed my life. That's fulfillment to me. Uh and I get that, you know, I'm I'm I'm u I guess I'm I'm I'm lucky enough to have that happen to me uh on on many occasions throughout my life. Uh so that's sort of a short-term fulfillment. The long-term fulfillment thing, as I say, it's really kind of a self-judgment thing. Like what is it going to take for me to just say, "Mark, you're done." You know, you've you've done it. You've done enough. Uh do you think it'll ever feel that way? Like wouldn't wouldn't that almost worry you? No, that's the point. It it's like so the fulfillment is now sort of a just a carrot on a stick in front of me, you know, for the rest of my life. And I think that's fabulous. I mean, I'm I'm chasing that high of fulfillment. And as I say, I get it in in brief moments, but but at the end of the day, as with all of this, it comes down to you. Like, are you able to recognize the accomplishments? Are you able to have the gratitude for what you've done and who you are and and and everything about your life? You know, are you able to congratulate yourself for the accomplishments and forgive the mistakes? That's really the essence of that sort of fulfillment and and it is in my mind an ongoing process. So, as I said, I'm I'm I'm still I think chasing it. And I I agree with you. It's like will it ever will it ever happen? I say, you know, check that box off. Probably not. Yeah. that to me fulfillment is the one to to really focus on because what what I always equate to people so I get a lot of people that follow me or whatever because I've had financial success and my thing is look that that's the wrong reason to look at my life and and think there's anything interesting because the money didn't change how I felt about myself and so all of the insecurities or or struggles that I had I still had when I had the money and so you know the question I always ask people is how many billionaires have to commit suicide before you realize that money is not the issue. And my thing is fulfillment is often born out of suffering. And it really feeds into the only notion that I think is interesting, which is how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself? There's nobody hyping you up. There's nobody trying to tear you down. Just like what do you think about yourself? What do you point about accomplishment? Like, you know, have you served somebody else? Have you done something rad for other people? And I'll even push it a little bit farther and say the thing that I find most fulfilling is when I've helped somebody in a unique way that was born of a skill set that I acquired through doing really hard [ __ ] And if the things had come too easily to me, I will discount whatever impact they have on people. Um, if I'm only able to help myself, I would discount it. So, you know, it's this weird thing like you're talking about of it's a carrot that's sort of forever in the distance. You might feel it when somebody comes up and says, "Hey, you impacted my life." But then the next day you you want to live up to that again. You want to keep pushing yourself. And it's the sincere pursuit of that that I find interesting even more than getting something or you know crossing a finish line or winning a record or something like that. It's just am I really going after it? I mean that's exactly uh the concept and it's and it's difficult to explain uh to some people. Um and and your you know your uh your notion of crossing a finish line you know the number of times that I've won a race or set a record um and then and the fulfillment lasted literally 10 minutes you know or a half an hour and then the mind immediately goes to okay you did that what's next. So there's a lot of this what's next thing. Um, again to your point, I sold my company and I think the last time I cried was when I hung up the phone from the closing call, right, which if you if you've done that is basically a couple of lawyers saying, "Are you ready? Are you ready? Okay, wire the money." Uh, and and you know, I I'd been working on it for a long time. I I sobbed and then all of a sudden nothing changed. I just had a lot of money in my bank account, but I was still the same guy. And and it's almost like now you have to go, "Okay, you did that. Now what?" because you got a lot of life ahead of you and you know then this the sort of the questions you ask are do I need to top that to to you know to keep that carrot out there or can I pivot somehow laterally and still have you know the same sense of accomplishment but it's really interesting how how you know those I guess those of us type A's are kind of always chasing that high that we might label as fulfillment so it's um it's It's it's really quite interesting that it just it just comes back to who are you when you're alone with yourself. I love that for sure. So when you begin to break out some of the other elements of living the awesome life and I think about when I try to back into how did I have the energy to you know build the last company or the energy to build this company and to really see things through. I always want the answer to be just mindset. Mindset's hugely important, but diet and exercise have been these like massive weapons that I've wielded. So, as you think about optim because and and the reason for me is energy production, right? Just breaking things down to ATP, the ability to generate at a cellular level the energy that I need to do something is critically important. um as you begin to think about the role that diet and exercise play like so going back to wanting this to be super prescriptive for somebody right now who's taking notes and like I'm going to live an awesome life and so here are the things okay fulfillment we understand that the money isn't going to be the thing um how do how should they begin to think about optimizing at at a physical level so at a physical level um you know you still need to be present in the moment and you still need to have you know strong cognition you need to be uh you know have your thoughts about you. You need to have the energy as you described to get throughout the day. Uh you certainly don't want to lose downtime to being sick or feeling just, you know, crappy because of uh you know, a bad diet or a bad night's sleep. So, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs now recognizing that this health element of of entrepreneurship is a key component and it's not just some side thought that you have uh you know, after the fact. Uh I did a um I did a podcast with a an entrepreneurial coach yesterday and you know he spends two hours in the gym every day and he's focusing on his diet and that's part of his his thing and and I and I said look it might be 2 hours is a little bit too much uh and you may be you know over overdoing that there's a critical mass necessary to achieve good health but absolutely um you know my my focus throughout my entire career has been on my health and my my ability to be present whether it's for my family whether it's for my employees whether it's just to be present at the desk on the job. Uh and and this comes back to a basic prescription uh you know of diet and exercise which everybody sort of knows you know kind of intellectually I I need to eat better and I need to work out a little bit more. So the focus of my efforts over the last 2530 years have been how do I really tap into optimizing uh all aspects of my health and for me in the last even in the last 2 years uh my shift has come down to this concept of what I call metabolic flexibility. So you know I was I was a high carb athlete high performance athlete in the 70s and 80s and part of the '90s. Then I sort of got my my act together and I was a I I created the primal blueprint which looked at just natural foods uh and and getting rid of the sugars and pies and cakes and candies. And then I was a keto athlete which is even the highest level of that where you you get rid of a lot of carbs and you really train your body to become good at at burning fat. But what I realized about a couple years ago is that really what we're all after in terms of the like holy grail of health is this concept of metabolic flexibility. It's this metabolic health that allows you to extract energy from any substrate that's available uh in your body at any one time. Whether it's the fat on your in your in your fat stores, you know, on your thighs, your hips, your belly, whether it's the fat on your plate of food, the carbohydrate on your plate of food, the glucose in your bloodstream, the glycogen in your muscles, the ketones that your liver makes in the absence of glucose and all of these different uh energy substrates are available and we are wired to take to take advantage of them, but we have to train our bodies to do that. And so many of us have become carbohydrate dependent over the years that we've lost this ability to become metabolically flexible and metabolically efficient. And we're going to give people the the recipe on how to do that. Um restriction of carbs, some restriction of protein, I would imagine, um reasonable amounts of healthy fats, timerestricted feeding, like what are the what are the key ingredient? There you go. There you you you said what I was going to say. No, it's basically those are the elements. And the the other is a recognition that um you don't need as many calories as you thought you needed to thrive. So why why do people get the belief is because I I will say it's probably driven by what you're taught breakfast is most important meal that kind of [ __ ] But then it's also at a physiological level people have eaten so ridiculously their entire lives they actually have the cravings. They wake up and they're hungry as hell. Um so how do you is it just that? Is there more than that? How do you see people getting beyond? No, it's well, you get beyond that first of all by retraining, you know, by building the metabolic machinery to be really good at burning fat by increasing the number of mitochondria by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of those mitochondria where the fat burns. Can you do that just through diet or do you have to bust ass in the gym? You can do it just through diet. Now, it helps to do it in the gym, but I would say 80 to 90% of all you're going to achieve uh in that realm of of sort of reconfiguring your energy production comes from your dietary choices. And not just, by the way, um you know, macronutrients, how much fat, protein, carbohydrate, but how much of each of those you eat at a given meal, how how often you spend not eating anything for long periods of time, which then refineses that mechanism. Yeah, you got to go to the gym mostly to maintain muscle mass and to maintain strength and mobility and you know those other aspects of health that kind of define a healthy lifestyle and an awesome lifestyle. That ability to move through life and enjoy movement and access to places and people uh without being in pain and without being uh you know bedridden or or in a wheelchair. But but yeah, 80 to 90% of this. Do you know what's going on at a cellular level that makes because I if if anybody's ever said that to me before, I don't remember it. I've never I don't have any memory of anybody saying that through diet you can actually increase the number of mitochondria. Um what changes specifically in in sort of that quick list that we went down or if there's something else, what is it that's triggering that? And if you know the cellular mechanism, what is it? So, first of all, let's let's just be clear that you said, "Do I has to spend, you know, hours in the gym grunting and groaning and and and and sweating and straining?" You still have to move, right? You still have to go about your life um moving throughout the day. That's one of the sort of main focuses, if you will, of of this uh awesome lifestyle. But it does not mean you have to grind it out in the gym uh to, you know, to get 80 or 90% of of the results. But what's happening is um you know your body is always requiring energy and if you continue to eat every couple of hours throughout the day and much of that is in the form of carbohydrate even if it's complex carbohydrate even if it's you know healthy you know whole grain whatever breads or things like that your body is still becoming dependent uh on this glucose supply and it's basically telling you're telling it through your choices is there's we're we're never really going to have to tap into our fat supplies. We're not going to have to go any any period of time and and and use the reserve fuel that we've been building up over the years because you choose to continue to eat whether it's your learn behavior because you were told that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and you got to eat three square meals and going back to the 80s and 90s, you know, if you go more than 3 or four hours without eating, you'll go into cannibal mode and you'll cannibalize your muscle tissue. These are all things, by the way, this was like acknowledged in the science community, um, you know, by those who didn't know any better for the longest time. Well, it turns out that that, you know, carbohydrates and glucose, which is what carbohydrates turn into, uh, is not the preferred fuel of the body. The body prefers to burn fat, loves to burn fat, would like to burn ketones to fuel the brain, uh, but we just kind of never give it the chance because of access to food. And again, these three square meals a day. So, in order to um affect a change in the body, you got to kind of trick the body in some regards because, you know, we're a we're an organism that evolved over millions, hundreds of millions of years uh to conserve energy. So, conserving energy for this body means um I don't want to I don't want to build any structures that um I don't need, that are unnecessary. Um I don't want to waste any energy doing stuff that is going to um you know, not help me survive. And so, uh, if you are presented with, uh, copious amounts of food all the time, the body says basically, I don't need to tap into the stored body fats, that's like that's for that's for later. That's my reserve. That's my that's my IRA account for the body, right? I don't want to tap into that. There'll be great penalties for doing that. That's what the body thinks because you're giving it food all the time. So, how to trick the body into doing this is you say, "Well, I'm gonna skip a meal here or there. I'm going to cut back on carbs. I'm going to tell the brain there's not going to be a lot of glucose for the next couple of days and we're going to have to take advantage of all of the instructions that are in our DNA that that provide for this plan B in the event of a lack of food. So, you consciously choose not to eat carbs. You consciously choose to skip meals once in a while. And by the way, you don't do this like again struggling and suffering. I have I've I've spent decades teaching people how to do this in a way that's easy and graceful. But you basically retrain the body to go, well, if there's not going to be that much glucose, we're going to have to build a metabolic machinery to burn fat more efficiently. And that's this mitochondrial biogenesis. So, the lack of glucose, the lack of carbohydrates, the the in at at times the the timed eating window where you go 18 or 20 hours without eating. These are all signals that our bodies, you know, that the genes within our body um use to say, okay, we got to build more protein. We got to build more uh enzymes that take fats out of storage. We have to we have to make the mitochondria more efficient. And within a very like relatively short period of time, like 3 weeks of doing this, you can reconfigure your body so that it becomes very adept at burning fat, very comfortable at burning fat for all of your motor activities throughout the day. your brain becomes very adept at using ketones for fuel instead of glucose. And so in the absence of carbohydrate, in the absence of glucose, you start to develop this metabolic flexibility. Now, keto has been like the big like tool in the toolbox to get there, right? But you can do it uh without going full keto. You can do it with a with a much more aggressive time restriction. Uh again the body if if you go 20 hours without eating uh there are a lot of adaptations that the body will make recognizing that um and by the way the body isn't like this is not new information to the body. This is how humans lived for millions of years. You know you got you got one meal once in a while you were wired to overeat at that meal because first of all you couldn't save it. You couldn't refrigerate the leftovers, right? You couldn't uh there. So, so we were wired to overeat and then we have this marvelous mechanism in our body that takes the extra calories and converts it to fuel that we carry around with us conveniently located right above the center of gravity on our ass and our and our and our hips and our stomach and our thighs. And it's it's such an elegant design. The problem is most of us retained this ability to store the extra calories cuz they're available all the time, but we never developed the skill to burn off those extra calories and the skill metabolically. One thing that was a huge breakthrough for me um and I think it it behooves people to really think about why you and obviously a lot of other people use the term metabolic flexibility is your your body is now able to use different things for fuel. So, it's got it can use the sugar that you're intaking with the glucose. It can use the fat that you have stored in your body. The big breakthrough for me was asking the question, why the hell do we store fat? Like, what what is the purpose of that? And when you were saying you can't store the food if you find it, you actually can, right? You're storing the energy potential anyway, you're storing it as fat in your body. So, if you think of the fat on your body as sort of a refrigerator that's keeping that that potential energy safe and in your body with you whenever the need might arise. And I remember one day thinking, "Oh my god, in in Western society for sure, you have some people they they could be in their 30s or 40s and never once have needed to click over into actually burning their body fat. They are constantly feeding themselves and the the the metabolic machinery doesn't exist. The potential for it is there and they could still trigger those genes and kick it into use." And I thought, "Oh my god, like the thought that I'm carrying fat with me now that I may have stored when I was a kid because I've never put myself into that kind of deficit to trigger that machinery to kick in to pull the fat out of um the the cells and use it for energy." I was like, "Whoa, this is how people really get into trouble." And so having that ability to if you miss a meal or whatever, fine. You just click over into grabbing the fat is is profoundly transformative. It is. And and in many ways, I mean, it's certainly going to u make you trend toward your ideal body composition as you as you burn more body fat. But as you become so adept at at deriving energy from your stored body fat um and using ketones, uh one of the one of the biggest benefits of all is hunger, appetite, and cravings dissipate. Because get get the fact that now your body is so good at burning fat, it doesn't care. It doesn't even know. you know, your muscles don't even know whether the fat that they're burning right now came off the plate of food that you just ate or off of your butt or thighs. It doesn't care. It doesn't know because that skill is is so good. And so over time, the the the panic sensation that the brain used to have of, "Holy crap, it's 1:30 and I haven't had lunch yet. I'm going to die or I'm going to get hangry or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to knock someone's head off." that that goes away and in its place you get this steady state of regular energy throughout the day which again fat is fueling most of the muscular activity and ketones are are fueling a lot of the brain activity and and people get a little bit you know they a little freaked out when they hear the term ketones and they hear about ketosis and it sounds like a disease and you know keto acidosis ketones are just this amazing super fuel it's like a superpower that everybody has and we don't most of us never get a chance to tap into it. As you as you said earlier, it's it's there. It's available. It's in the blueprint. Uh we can use it if if called upon and to demystify what ketones are, it's basically a byproduct of fat metabolism, right? You're pulling the fat out of the cells, turn it into a ketone, and then the brain, send it to the liver, it gets turned into a ketone, the brain can use it. And and one of the things that I find like really fascinating is um the liver has the capacity to make 750 calories worth of fuel out of ketones every day. And uh the brain, you know, you you will hear people say, well, the brain uses, you know, 20% of the body's calories. Well, um if you're, you know, if you're consuming 2500 calories a day, 20% of that is is 500 calories. That's about right. Um and that's that's a glucose thing. So, we have more than enough uh of the calories from ketones to fuel the brain. But really, the the exciting part to me is this notion that once you become metabolically flexible uh and you've used maybe a ketogenic diet to just manipulate for a couple of weeks to get there, uh you don't have to stay ke, you know, keto for the rest of your life. You just use it as a as a strategy to develop this flexibility. One of the things you recognize is that the um uh you know, if you go to the gym and you do like a heavy leg day, right, and you're going to you're doing lots of massive squats and deadlifts and things like that, your body's your leg muscles and the the major muscles in your legs are going to use 30 or 40 or 50 times as much fuel to get that work done as they would at rest. Meanwhile, how much fuel is the brain using? Just about the same amount as it was before. So the the fuel demands of the brain do not vary wildly throughout the day. It's just a steady steady state. And so interesting. I'd be I'd be curious to know if if that's true. Well, so what's making me um hit the pause button there is they were looking at the um caloric requirements of a grand chess master in the middle of a chess tournament. It's something like six 6,500 calories a day, which is insane. So, I'd be curious to see like if having a steady state of caloric consumption by the brain is actually not ideal. Um, have you looked at anything that sort of looks at um cognitive load and its impact? Yeah, I mean I I would love to see that study because that just you know you're you're you're talking about Michael Phelps type calories to fuel a what it amounts to is a sedentary albeit cerebral uh you know contest. Um, no, the brain the brain's usage of calories throughout the day does not vary wildly. And in the event that um, you know, you've got a uh a chess master who's, you know, doing multiple uh, games, you I suppose you could argue that if you sipping on a Coca-Cola all day, you know, and and wandering around and and nervous and building up all of this, uh, you know, pent up energy. So, you're calling [ __ ] on here. Here's the good news. I could definitely u, it could be a [ __ ] study. Who knows? Whatever. Um, I'm super curious to look into that. So, all right. So, your [ __ ] meter goes off on that one. I'll have to dig into just think about that. If that were the case, where would where would those 6,500 calories come from? Because the brain doesn't burn protein and it doesn't burn fat. It burns glucose and ketones. Full stop. So, like I said, you're you're either going to have to down like, you know, a a case of CocaCola to get that amount of glucose. um you know and if the limitations of the of the liver are 7 only I say only in a in a in a you know a joking way only 750 calories a day. Yeah. Well so so we'll uh Tom we'll we'll we'll handle this offline. Okay. So but in the meantime my point is that that the liver gets um comfortable making ketones at a steady state. So, in the early stages of going into ketosis or the early stages of uh of of um a long fast, for instance, um the liver tends to overproduce ketones and those spill out into the bloodstream and into the breath and into the urine. And you would see those as a as high numbers on a ketone meter on a ketone strip. Uh and you'd go, "Oh, I'm in ketosis." Because uh the definition of ketosis is, you know, 0.5 millmer or greater. And some people show 3, four, five millmer. um and they say, "Hey, I'm in ketosis. It's working. I'm doing great." But in terms of metabolic flexibility, that's not great because that's the body wasting energy. Like I said, doesn't want to waste energy. And over time, the body gets used to the the demands, the workload required of it. And so, the liver starts to just kind of trickle out these ketones in a way that's much more conservative and still able to feed the brain fully. Uh and and that's the metabolic efficiency in addition to the metabolic flexibility that I talk about. And you know why is that good? Well, over time you realize that Jesus, I didn't need to eat three meals a day. That's just way too much food. Um and the meals that I do eat tend not to be as big as they were before. And the good news is I'm not even hungry. I mean, I'm hungry. Look, I love, as I said, every bite of food I eat, I enjoy and I savor. But I also with that comes another benefit that not many people appreciate and that is now you know when it's time to put the goddamn fork down and say that's enough. You know it's it's the so now the difference between being satiated and gluttonous it becomes a very uh well- definfined boundary for most people. Now let's talk about the quality of the calories one thing. So, first of all, I love your um weekly link love for anybody that's not following Mark's Daily Apple, Get After It. Um that that's one of my favorite things that you put out and going through recently, you were talking about you were talking about in an older population, but I'd be curious to see if you think this applies everywhere, that animal protein is superior to plant protein for older people. Um one, why is that true for older people? And then does it apply downstream as you're younger? Uh so, yeah, it's it it applies across the board. It just applies more as you get older because as you get older it's more and more difficult to to assimilate and to get that amount of protein in. So is it the amino acid profile? Like what is it about? It's it's it's the amino acid profile, right? So um you know it it sounds simplistic to say like for like but if you want to build muscle you should probably eat muscle protein. If you want to build collagen you should probably consume more collagen. Um you know this is how the body similarities among mammals. So, so we consume meat and we consume mammal mamalian meat or even fish. It's it's fairly similar in in amino acid profile to human muscle tissue. So, that's one of the reasons it makes it an ideal uh source of animal protein is an ideal source of protein. Now, can you come close to it with some sort of a uh you know, a plant-based concoction where you're mixing pea protein and and beans and rice and I mean, yes, but some of the major um some of the some of the major amino acids that are present in meat are not just you don't find them in any appreciable quantities. Can you give me a breakdown on amino acids? So, one thing that I've always heard is that the amino acid profile in plants just is inferior to the amino acid profile in um meats. But honestly, I I have never pressed hard enough to really figure out like what are amino acids doing exactly like what's their role? Well, they're the building blocks of protein. And so, a lot of protein, you know, mo most of the human body is protein. when your genes uh are taking the information and prompting the construction of certain uh structures and and enzymes in the body uh almost invariably they're using amino acids to build these these structures. So some of the structures um don't require you know a full array of amino acids. We have this group of of essential amino acids that we must get uh outside of the diet. uh the non-essential amino acids the body can kind of manufacture uh on its own in the absence of of a dietary supply of them. But of the eight amino acids that we must have uh there that's why we need to to consume um you know quality sources of protein. So the amino acids different proteins use different uh amounts of different amino acids. So um you know uh arginine, ornithine, tryptophan u these are these are all amino acids that um you know muscles uh require u higher amounts of and if you don't if you don't get a full complement of them you're sort of rate limited by uh whatever the least prevalent of those ones required was. Hence this this notion that you can uh you know by eating animal protein uh you're going to do yourself the the best possible favor in being able to build muscle protein, lean body mass and and repair some of the tissues. Um and just really fast just to continue down that path. So you've got is there a mechanism in the body where they essentially know okay these are the different tissues and I guess I'm rounding it to tissues. These are the different tissues that we need to repair, create, build, whatever. And we know what the amino acid profile of each of those tissues is. So if the diet coming in does not match the amino acid profiles of the things that we need to address, then we just have to go, well, I guess we can't deal with whatever. Maybe it's connective tissue or we can't deal with muscle tissue, at least not as much as we want. No, that's exactly right. So I'll give you another example. Um, recently um bone broth has come on the market, right? has come on the scene and and collagen collagen supplementation. Um I uh had my first really uh bad experience with that, good experience with that. Um about six years ago I was I play ultimate frisbee and I and I played what exactly I'm sorry. Well so so um I after years of playing ultimate frisbee I was and and I'm you know was in already in my late 50s early 60s I was developing Achilles tendinosis. So, a thickening of my Achilles. Um, I wasn't able to scar tissue essentially. Like scar tissue essentially. And I went to a doctor and the doctor said, "Well, like one of the best, you know, orthopedic guys in Los Angeles." And he said, "Well, there's only one one fix for that and that is we got to take you in and we got to slit open the back of your heels and scrape your Achilles down and pack you in a cast for 3 months and then do 9 months of rehab and you'll be back to 80 85%." And I'm like, "Fuck that. But I I'm you know I went back to the drawing board and I and I and I I literally sm I realized that the Achilles uh is you know a collaginous material throughout the body. It's it's it's largely based on collagen peptides. Um I haven't been getting any I haven't been eating animals nose totail which everyone in human history did until 200 years ago. Uh and so for the last again for for millennia humans have taken in the raw material to rebuild tendons, ligaments, connective tissue, fascia, cartilage, all this uh all this cartilagebased uh protein in the human body. And in the absence of that raw material, the body goes, well, you're not you're not giving me what I need to repair the damage that you did when you went out and sprinted and played ultimate frisbee. And so I'm going to I'm going to go to plan B, which is I'm going to build some scar tissue and I'm going to lay put down a layer of protection because we can't build it back the way it was. So I recognized this and I started consuming 30 40 grams of collagen a day in my actually undo the scarring. It completely cured what was an otherwise untenable situation. Within 4 months, I was completely cured. and knockwood today. My Achilles both are probably my strong part of the strongest, you know, they're certainly not the weakest link, let's put it that way, in my life. Did you get an MRI or something that showed the thickening? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was It was visibly thick to the And, you know, I couldn't like like if I got a massage, I would not let the massage therapist go anywhere near my Achilles. Even just mildly touching them would would elicit pain. I was to the point where if I was, you know, going to jump off the last stair in a stairwell, I would think I was going to snap both both Achilles. It was it was horrible. So, the point is I I think what we're seeing now in in in sports across the board uh is a generation of athletes who who who don't eat nose totail. They eat the choice cuts of meat, but they don't eat any collagen. Um, at the very least, when they were growing up, they had Jell-O. Jell-O was a source of of these collagen peptides, but now with all of the, you know, associations with with Jell-O and sugar and sweeteners and Cosby, you know, Jell-O kind of fell off the fell off the uh the radar. And so we've we've got a generation of athletes that haven't been feeding themselves the raw materials they need to repair MCL's, ACL's, uh you know, meniscus, cartilage, fascia, um and and tendons and ligaments. and it's and it's showing up in these athletic injuries. Now, one thing I've heard you talk about in terms of getting the collagen into the system, which I've never heard anybody else speak to, and I I found this really interesting. Um, so there's very little blood flow, or so they say, and it seems to bearing out in the research, but there's very little blood flow to tendons and other parts of connective tissue. Um, so why do you take collagen before a hard workout? So, it's there's this one really cool study done u four years ago, five years ago now. Uh they labeled collagen peptides in a in a drink. It was actually a gelatin drink and gelatin and collagen are sort of similar. uh and uh and they did 15 g I think 20 minutes before a 6-minute jump rope workout and they literally measured the uptake of these labeled collagen peptides into the Achilles and it was like more than like double the uptake uh versus the control group when when they um you know they drank the collagen before the workout and and the theory is that because there's no blood supply and yet this is a uh the Achilles tendon is a tendon like like most of them, while it doesn't have a blood supply, it's got it's got water sort of in it. It's got fluids in it and and as you squeeze it, the fluids come out and as you relax it, the fluids come back in. And it was almost by sort of this like massagy type thing that the you the peptides had access to the interior of the matrix of of of the tendon. So that's that's really interesting for another reason as well, which is when you get injured, people tend to lay off it, right? to not use it and that can actually end up creating its own source of problems which sort of putting that logic together. Now that makes sense. If you're not using it, you're not getting that sort of um um spongy effect of you know opening it up to let things in. That's interesting. No, it's interest. It's I mean again to further that that notion um physical therapy over the past decade has changed a lot. you know, it used to be uh, you know, rest, ice, compression, elevation, rice, right? And and now it turns out ice may not be, you know, beneficial to most people because inflammation. Yeah. Yeah. Other than maybe the first 10 or 15 minutes if it's if there's massive swelling. Um, and I've never responded well to ice, for instance. I've always responded much better with any sort of an itis or an an injury, a tenonitis, uh, to warmth, to heat. Um, and the other concept was using it as soon as you can, right? Up to the point of pain. So now people have uh, you know, knee replacements and hip replacements and they're like they got to be up and walking the day they get the the thing done. Uh so it's it's uh I you know my mother um you know who passed away a year ago but she she had a serious lung cancer issue probably six you know 6 years prior to that uh and she had her a lung removed and a breast removed a cancer and they had her literally as soon as she woke up they had her walking around you know with with her IV stand. So the the the whole the idea of recovery now has shifted from bed rest to literally do whatever you can as much as you can up to the point of pain to keep that body in motion and to prompt those healing mechanisms uh to kick in. Yeah, that's interesting to me when you think about the body as having the things that you already need. I mean this goes back to metabolic flexibility, right? who have all of these abilities already in you and it's about turning those on, flipping the the genetic switches or however you want to think of it um to to jumpstarting that. That's really interesting. Really interesting. And you know, when it comes down to injury, laying off the body, you're giving the body the signal that hey, I guess we don't need this anymore. And so you begin that process of atrophy, um which is the exact opposite of what you want to do, which is tell the body, no, no, no, there's still demands in this. You're going to need to address it. that you're going to need. And then if you've got something like connective tissue where you need that that squeeze, the tightening and the release um to actually get the nutrients into it. And then of course, this all started talking about um animal protein versus plant protein, making sure that you have the amino acid profiles that you need for the body to actually utilize those. Um and and I want to actually go back to the animal versus plant protein for a second. So um was it eight essential amino acids or eight total amino acids? Um eight eight essential amino acids. So these are the ones 20 22 some people say 21 but 22 amino acids that the body uses and and eight of them are essential. You have to get them from the diet. Okay. And can we get all 2 like if we're hardcore about, you know, creating just the ultimate plant-based diet, can we get all 22 or are is there actually some Sure. But you you're going to have to supplement like crazy. You know, you're going to have to go down to your G. I specifically mean without supplementation. No. Uh it's you can, but you don't again you don't get the amounts. you don't get the ratios and the amounts and so you're sort of you have this sort of rate limiting effect. Uh you can and how how some people overcome it like some of the uh plant-based bodybuilders for instance who by the way got most of their size while they were eating meat and and then decided they wanted to go plant-based because someone convinced them that that was the right thing to do. They just eat a lot. They just you know overeat like you know you might get 300 total grams of protein in in a day. um of which, you know, only probably 75 uh or 80 grams is maybe useful for repair and and and building. I'm actually pitching a reality show around called Carnivore Versus Vegan cuz look, I I don't care what the reality is. I just want to know what the truth is. And so what I want to do is lock identical twins uh in a house separated. So, you have one identical twin is going to be a carnivore, one identical twin is going to be a vegan, and then you put them through a battery of different things from uh strength tests, conditioning, just general, you know, like you talk about in your book, how do you feel? Are you hungry? Are you um agitated? Like where are we at? And then see like what what ends up happening to those identical twins? It would be utterly fascinating and so controversial. Give me what do you think is the the um real amount of time? Really that long? Absolutely. And I'll tell you why. Um I mean it's not that long to start to you know parse out or tease out some small discrepancies in attitude or you know sleep behavior or things like that. Um but but here's the the good news is the human body is is wickedly resilient. I mean look we survived horrendous conditions for millions of years. We happen to be pretty lucky in in our access to food and clothing and shelter and warmth and all the things we want right now. But we're really resilient. And so, you know, you go back to the Irish potato famine when people lived on seaweed and shoe leather for 6 months at a time, uh, you know, until they could get some actual source of calories into them. The body is is very resilient and and and the good news in that regard is that if you are someone who decides, um, I've eaten animals my whole life, I'm going to switch to a plant-based diet, you might get a good sixyear run until stuff starts happening. Um, and some people, you know, I'm not going to say everybody, you know, is going to suffer from a from a vegan diet, but if you're really going to go vegan, it's a full-time job to get that right. And and uh I see now on the internet on, you know, you see a lot of these plant former plant-based bodybuilders who go back to consuming meat because they're like, "Okay, I just, you know, I got a nice run. I was I got some some leeway. I got some runway, if you will, for a year or two before I started to notice that I was not as strong or that, you know, things were starting to fall apart. Uh, and that's again the resilience of a body that spent 20 years or 25 or 30 years building itself up to peak performance or a peak level or peak size at the age of 25 or 30 using animal products to get there and then kind of, as I say, coasting on a on a plant-based diet for a while. So your experiment, while it would be interesting, would probably take a year to kind of manifest itself in uh in in obvious changes, if at all. I mean, I'm not suggesting that it would that that that's the way it would be, but you know, it's a it's a it's a certainly a good thought experiment. Yeah. I mean, this is the kind of thing that um it it part of why I want to do it is is there's a religious element to it um that I find very unuseful. So, it's like there's there's an answer out there somewhere. And look, I get it from a a sustainability standpoint. Um, you know, we probably need to think about farming just entirely differently. Uh, certainly from an animal standpoint. Um, I know you one of the links that you posted was about that that, you know, the potential advantages of smaller farms, getting room into animals, that kind of thing. Um, and and you know, look, I I am not saying that the way things are now is in any way, shape, or form ideal. I'm just saying there is an answer. like this is an empirical question. Um, and and so there is a breakdown, but human metabolism is so [ __ ] complicated and this is why I wanted to have identical twins because of course different people react to different things. So it's like, you know, finding people that are genetically identical uh and then running them through. It's interesting. You're really [ __ ] me up though with the year thing. Uh that that is going to be wildly problematic. Would you think it was going to happen in six weeks? um not six weeks, but honestly I thought we would get really interesting data at three months and I thought it would be very compelling at six months. Um I never I originally pitched it at 6 months. People pushed back pretty immediately. Uh and I said, "Okay, we could probably still make this really interesting at three months." Um but there does need to be some element of real to it otherwise it's it's just people arguing. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Um and and I would say that you know um your your idea that there's an answer here that there there is not an answer. I'll just tell you that right now. There's no answer. There's no right answer in in in diet. What do you define right answer then? Um the one way that works better than all other ways, right? Do you think if we had a supercomputer that could run at down to every single cell is being tracked that there would be an answer and this is just a limitation of human and computer computation as of today or there really is for some reason no way to figure this out? No, I I say there's no way to figure this out. We're complex biological organisms and while we have um you know similar um processes that happen within each of us you know we all burn fat the same way we all build muscle the same way we all uh you know sequester uh um pathogens the same way we all deal with with uh you know immune issues the same way it's the degree to which we do that that varies among us and so with that notion that that there are varying degrees of of potential outcomes here. Um, one of the things we would have to ask ourselves is uh because you and again as a complex biological system um does optimum include um satiation, fulfillment, uh taste better in pleasure centers uh you know or are we just going to be relegated to drinking uh um soilent you know and and saying I'm open I'm I'm open to two different answers. Right. So, here's one for the most hardcore [ __ ] on the planet, and this is optimized for, let's say, longevity, which would be my sort of thing. And then there's here's the Mark Sison. You're going to love every bite that you ever take, but it's also, you know, good for um some amount of longevity, high performance, that kind of thing, right? A and maybe even possibly not optimal. Um, you know, I I still drink uh red wine. I love red wine. You know, ethanol is toxic to the human body. Although every study read on the dry the dry wines dry farm dry farm wines. Yep. Yep. Love that stuff. Um you were gonna say every study you read probably something positive about red wine. Yes. Says something positive about red wine. I'm like I'm looking for the one that says stop. It's interesting. One of your links was lowdosese alcohol seems to be beneficial to mice. And I thought what? Yeah. Now is that a hormis thing or is there something else? If not if it's an it's not hormetic if it's a daily thing right if it's a daily thing it's not hormetic hormmesis almost by definition is the is the short you know pulse of a potentially um you know acute uh insult if you will to to the human body that results in a positive uh outcome a positive adaptation if you will um so um yeah but you know so the idea see this is this is the the generational difference between the two of Tom. So, so like you know you're looking for the hacks like what's the ideal how do I live the longest and how do I live uh you know and how do I optimize that and and I have to take everything together and I say well first of all I don't care if I live forever I don't want to live for I don't need to live forever because what I'm of that mindset that what defines my enjoyment of life right now is partly offset by the knowledge that it ain't going to be there one day. M so um I'm trying to, you know, meat out the um the the pleasure over a finite period of time. Um again, I talk about like if there's if somebody said, "Look, you got to eat this, Mark. It tastes like [ __ ] but you're going to live 5 years longer and you're going to have to eat it twice a day." I'm like, "I'm out. I don't need I don't need to u to sacrifice the sort of short-term hedonistic experience uh that I crave, you know, whether it's serotonin or dopamine. It's just I want I'm looking for that. And if you tell me that it's been proven by science that it's going to have me live 5 years longer, I'm probably going to reconsider whether, you know, it's worth the sacrifice of the of the of the immediate experience because, you know, as you get as we get down to this, we can talk about what happens in 20 or 50 years from now, but right now, all that matters is is this moment. I'm hanging out with with Tom Billio and we're having a great conversation. That's all that matters to me right now. Uh, and I want to I want to be in that moment as often as I can. Um, and it takes it takes work uh for for as long as I can and not have to make a sacrifice of whatever today's experience or now's experience is because somebody did some research that said, you know, if you do it differently and and you sacrifice significantly, um, you'll live longer. I'm like, well, okay, quality of life has to factor into the equation. Uh, you know, you can't just tell me I'm I'm going to live forever and then say, but your life's going to suck and and you're going to some, you know, whatever. Right. So, no, I totally get it, Tom. I'm I'm rambling on here. Sorry about that. Not at all. That that's super interesting to me. I love that people come at this stuff from different angles. Um, so to that point, so you have a very specific way of looking at the world and and you just laid it out for us. If you could only have five ingredients, not five meals, but five ingredients. So, it could be filet minan, it could be asparagus, what are the five things that that you would want if that was all you could eat for the rest of time, and you wanted the the kind of life you have now. So, it's delicious, but it's also, you know, cognitively it's great. On and on. Well, no. What's interesting is because um there typically people ask me what are like what are some of the things that you wish you could eat every day, but you can't? And to me, it's peanuts and beer. Like, I could live the rest of my life on peanuts and beer, but that's amazing. I can't eat I can't I can't eat peanuts because they're horrible for me. And and you know, I I I still like beer, but I I'm limited to like a half a glass once in a while. Um, no. I mean, my my favorite food of all is lamb. So, you know, a lamb lamb chop would be one. Um, I'd probably pick, if I had to pick a vegetable, you know, broccoli is probably my favorite vegetable. Um, if I had to pick um some sort of a starchy tuber, uh, don't don't think I'm weird, but um um like either turnipss or rudabaggas with butter. I did not see that coming. No, nobody does. Um, I like I like the real bitter aspect of that. Um, but I'm I'm sort of picking one from from each of these categories, right? If I had to pick a fruit, if I had to pick a fruit, it would be um like Bing cherries I think are probably, you know, one of my favorite fruits. Um and um you know, and red wine and and I could live the rest of my life on those on those five things. Word th those are some fantastic choices. Respect. Um so we talked about this the last time we met. I was I did a rabbit starvation diet, which was basically 85 or more% of my calories came from protein. took my fat as low as I could. My carbohydrates were essentially zero. My doctor loved me was telling me I was going to live forever, but I felt like [ __ ] And when you talk about steer by how you feel and not, you know, worry so much about all the things you can measure, um that seems while I'm probably more into measurement than you, uh feeling certainly trumps everything. And one last thing I have to ask you about this. So, thinking of of how you feel. So, um I almost never drink, but my anniversary was this. Uh, in fact, it was yesterday. Um, but on the Friday before, my wife and I had some drinks to celebrate, and I mix it with Monster, which is it's a no calorie drink, but it's of course pickling me from the inside, there's no question. But going to how you feel. So, I I follow a very strict regimen when I drink. I drink very early so that I can sober up and I have many, many hours, probably eight hours before I go to bed. Um, and I'm I'm hydrating like crazy. 100%. I I don't [ __ ] with night drinking. That to me is a total mistake because you're gonna you're gonna be hung over and I don't play with hangovers. So, but when I have it with Monster, dude, I feel like a million bucks. So, when when I sober up, I don't get any fatigue. I don't feel tired whatsoever. And normally, I'm getting so tired. Like on a normal day, no drinking, nothing. Just my normal day by 8:30 I'm like, I'm ready for bed. And by 9:00 it's lights out. And this was I I didn't feel jittery, nothing. I felt so good at midnight. I didn't want to go to bed. And I was like, what what is this? So, why didn't you do it the next day and the next day and the next day? Well, so now I'll answer that question. So, there is in terms of um fatigue, it was amazing, but it it made my joints hurt. So, my hands achd. Uh my knees started to hurt and so from a it's clearly pro-inflammatory. So, I'm The alcohol is pro-inflammatory. The Monster though keeps me awake. So, I'm super curious. I would love to isolate like do and you probably just hate uh energy drinks so much you're not sure what's in them and neither am I quite frankly but I'm wondering if there's a supplement or something B12 vitamin I don't know that would give me that same level of like no energy drop uh you know as I get later into the evening um just the the crystal clear focus like when when I speak on stage about 45 minutes before I go on stage I'll have a monster because it it makes me so sharp. No, I mean I suggest I mean torine is is typically one of the ingredients there, the torine, a little bit of caffeine, but um no, I mean I like if I'm speaking on stage, I'll have a a ketone supplement. I'll have a beta beta hydroxybutyrate because I know what it's going to, you know, it's going to have a short-term immediate impact on on my brain, on cognition, um on being present, on being in the moment. So yeah, there's a there's an explanation. There's a reason uh that that works. on the other hand that might be more again uh of that hormetic effect that you can do it once or twice once in a while but if you did it on a regular basis uh it would catch up to you. I mean it's you know the examples are people who used to to use um ephedra to work out in the gym right and it just felt amped in the gym and they could do an extra couple of reps on everything they did but over time ephedra is an adrenal uh you know it just fries your adrenals. So, in the short term, you get a a mild benefit and a pump and but but you can't you can't incorporate it into a regular routine. Got it. Mark, I always enjoy time with you and whether it's actually getting something like this where we're, you know, sort of face to face or it's just engaging with your content, dude. It's amazing. Um, if you would tell people about your school, it sounds absolutely astonishing. Well, so I have a the Primal Health Coach Institute. It's an online learning experience. Uh, very robust. We certify people to become health coaches. Um I think if there were ever a time in this world where health coaches were necessary, it is right now. Uh especially if we're talking about the concept of of immunity and shoring up your immune system. Um so just Google Primal Health Coach Institute or Primal Health Coach. Uh it's um you I think we put like 5,000 people through the program by now. In addition to deep deep deep learning and and a real deep dive into the science behind all of the stuff that I've talked about for 20 years, uh we have some build business building modules if you want to build a practice or build a coaching uh practice. Uh and um very in-depth on how to coach, how to work one-on-one with people. So it's uh I'm very proud of this. It spent years, you know, putting it together and uh so that's kind of the the focus I have now. Amazing, man. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, dude. I I could do this for hours and hours, but I'm super grateful for the time. Uh, always a lot of fun. I look forward to when we can share some physical space again. Likewise. Thanks, Tom. All right. You got it. All right, guys. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. 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