¶ Escaping Burnout with Mark Sisson | Rethinking Performance and LongevityIn this compelling second episode, Dr. Pompa is joined by Mark Sisson, a pioneer of theTL;DR (No Spoilers)Mark Sisson Social MeidaDr. Daniel Pompa Social Media
I was this crawny kid who wasn't, you know, fit enough to play or strong enough to play football or basketball or baseball or hockey. So that drove So that drove me.
If you anchor back to those feelings, I I can, I could.
And every once in a while, you're right, that comes up. Look, my last name is Sisson, S-I-S-S-O-N. So then you got that, you got, you know, the the bullies. So, um, you know, there was a certain, you know, irony when I became an Iron Man, which what drove me to do that, but you know, I finished fourth at Iron Man in Hawaii.
I wonder how many people something happens in our childhood that frames us in a false identity, right?
Most of the people who who engage in what you would call running now, I think they're doing it for their health, but they're probably doing it to prove something other than I did have finished a marathon. Okay, great. I mean, it's like, but you know, you're just not good for you.
Work on this premise of formesis, meaning that it stresses the body. If you adapt, it's great. But if you don't, it's really bad.
Mark Sistan, founder of Mark's Daily Apple and Primal Kitchen, and a true pioneer of the primal health movement.
From elite athlete to best-selling author and wellness icon.
He turned his own burnout into a mission that's changed how millions eat, train, and live.
Let's jump in and hear how Mark turned pain into purpose.
Mark, welcome. Uh listen, you are an absolute giant in this field. I mean, you inspire, I think. I'm gonna call you the forefather of the ancestral movement, whether it be diet, food, you know, all of it, even from a workout standpoint. So um thank you for being here. Yeah.
You know, it occurred to me uh a couple weeks ago that it was it's been 20 years since I wrote my first blog post, uh-huh, which was before the days of the ancestral health movement. Yeah. And it was a blog post I wrote for my mentor, Art Devaney. Do you remember Arthur Devaney? No. See, before your time.
Yeah.
And uh it was a it was a post called uh A Case Against Chronic Cardio. And it was me as a former endurance athlete coming out and writing this treatise on why people should not be running as hard and as fast and and as long as they and as often as they do. And that posted in um about this time in 2005.
So uh that predates my blog, which was Mark's Daily Apple, which I think many people in the space would recognize as one of the seminal blogs, one of the first blogs in in the ancestral health space. So yeah, um I I will take some credit for having advanced this notion that some of the best answers to longer life come from looking at the past.
Yeah, no, I I mean honestly, I I think every one of us in this space think of you as that forefather, you know, one of the first to be talking about it. I mean, the concept's been sure literally you brought it to the forefront at that point. Okay, that said, looking back at as a kid, what set you up for this, man? I mean, you know what I'm saying? I mean, literally, like I'm gonna go.
As a teenager, um, I grew up in a small fishing village in Maine. I lived about two miles from school. Uh, I wound up running to and from school to I could beat the bus, right? So it was a it was a matter of efficiency to get back and forth from school. So I started running a lot as a 12 and 13-year-old. Um my mother was into longevity in the 60s. Uh-huh. And so she was reading uh was she a hippie? She wasn't a hippie, but she was she was close. And she was reading Adele Davis.
I don't know if you may if you know that name, but Adele Davis was a health writer in those days. So I started reading the books that she was reading, and I started get I literally got involved in sort of thinking about health and wellness and longevity as a teenager.
Yeah.
And uh because I was a runner, because I was running and training, I went out for track. I I excelled at track and cross country and then road racing. So I became a runner, I became an endurance athlete. Yeah. And in pursuit of that goal of uh faster times, I was looking at ways in which I could inc increase my uh performance through either diet manipulation, supplementation, uh, or um uh the training strategies, training protocols. So that got me set on this path pretty early.
And then I was a I was a biology major at Williams College with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. So everything sort of came together with uh my pursuit of uh athletic achievement and performance. And then when I had to retire and I got injured and uh things kind of fell apart as a as a competitive athlete.
Yeah, we're we're we're gonna get there because that's part of the story, too.
Right. But as I as after that happened, I just took a step back and I went, wait a minute, I started this journey in terms of achieving better health, excellent health. Yeah. And uh and it sort of morphed into performance. And at what point does the pursuit of performance compromise health? Oh, okay. Which is a big topic. And uh, you know, those are the questions we have to ask ourselves.
Uh and so I I kind of diverted uh away from just straight performance for the elite athletes into what's the what are the ways in which the average person can improve their health? How how can we be stronger and leaner and fitter and faster and more productive without all of that pain and suffering and sacrifice and all the negative stuff?
It's funny, your history reminds me of mine. I I got into nutrition, I guess, you know, before I was even ever sick, which got me into what I teach now. But um, I was a wrestler and I was like, I'm not gonna just start cutting weight like they're cutting weight. So I started reading about, you know, everything nutrition related. I I literally remember reading like muscle and fitness, whatever I can get my hands on, right? Like what how do you lose weight?
And that that really kind of got me interested in health, period. Right.
You know, no, and wrestling's a great example of like a pure sport. Yeah. Wrestling's one of the purest sports. And then to take high school kids and go, I know you weigh 175, but we're gonna have you wrestle at 138 or whatever it is. Yeah, exactly.
That never made sense to me. So I was like, okay, how can I maintain strength? Right. And therefore it took me learning about nutrition, right, you know, and uh, you know, exercise, everything. So yeah. All right. So um fast forward, right? I mean, you know, you have this perfect background of setting you up for it, but there is obviously more to that.
That endurance training, you feel definitely led you to part of your perfect storm, if I put a name to it, yeah, of what kind of your health started falling apart, which took you to another level. Yeah. Tell tell me about that.
Well, so you know, in my in my late 20s, early 30s, um, I was uh thinking that, you know, the more you trained, the faster you'd be, the better the performance. Turns out that's not the case. Yeah. Um, I was an early adopter, not early, but I mean I was a I was an adopter like everyone else was of the high carbohydrate-based training uh table. So putting in all these miles to excel at the end of the yeah, I was too. You know, I was taking in 700 to 1000 grams of carbs a day.
Um much of it, if you go back and look at what it the the the source was, you know, grain-based or beer or you know, pe beer, pizza, bread, pasta, you know, any any calorie you could take in that was a carb calorie was sort of uh legitimate
¶ The blog post that ignited the ancestral health movement
as a source of fuel to both to be able to go out and do 20 more miles tomorrow.
Yeah, I mean it made a lot of sense to us, right? Because I was a cyclist, right? I and I raced mountain bikes at the expert level. I did a lot of road racing to train for that. It made sense to us because it would be like, well, we're burning all these this energy. We need more energy. Yeah.
No, and and and you know, to a certain extent at that level, um, it makes sense. Sure. But it's a choice you're making that you're going to be putting through a lot of sugar, a lot of reactive, you know, oxygen species, a lot of yeah, a lot of um um damage in the process of trying to create a uh you know a faster time or a faster.
So I mean you just said something, reactive oxygen species. Umxidative damage, yeah. Yeah, oxidative damage. So meaning like when you're eating all those carbs, burning all those carbs, all that, you're creating an oxidative state that you feel kind of led to.
Among many other things. So yeah, so now you're in a in a you know, you you've you've got um this stressful activity that you're engaging in every day, like you're creating a lot of cortisol. I mean, if we go back and look at the training methods of those days, so much of my training was done in what I call the black hole of training now. It was at a heart rate that was way too high to be developing the pure aerobic base.
It was too high to be encouraging capillary perfusion and mitochondrial biogenesis, zone two and below, right? It was zone three, zone four.
Like I trained in these zones, right? I I don't want to bore people with the training methodology that we use, but but you do train at different intensities to get to a higher level. Were you doing that then?
Well, so so sort of, but we we didn't spend as much time uh building the base as we need, as we know now know is most appropriate for not just um maximizing your yeah, it's like a foundation.
The more like slow, easy miles, the higher you can go in fitness. Correct.
So, you know, if I had to go over again, could I have raced a little bit faster um and lasted a little bit longer uninjured? Probably. I don't know. But I was out there, you know, practicing herding every day. So as I tell people, you know, about endurance pursuits, and I've written a lot about this since, um, you know, every day that I was training as an elite athlete, which was for a decade, um, there was no very few days when I was having fun. It was literally about managing discomfort.
Every workout is about managing discomfort.
Yeah, but what drove you then?
You know, let's go back to my therapy couch in my childhood and you know, being bullied as a child and beat up or whatever it was, which there was growing up in the station village in Maine. My my dyslexia. Yeah.
I was a little stronger, faster, so uh that becomes something that's a good one. Yeah, so ones an identity.
No, I I was the scrawny kid who wasn't, you know, fit enough to play or strong enough to play football or basketball or baseball or hockey. Okay. So that drove So that drove me, and that I found something I was good at, and then that uh led me down that path. Um and s and then it became a uh you know a singular pursuit.
Like, okay, now that I've chosen this pursuit, even though it's not fun in the in the context of like playing basketball with my friends or playing football or with a team, um, I'm good at it. And uh and that's that drove me.
That drove me. I have to go back, I don't I don't want to hang on this, but I have to ask a question because I just recently had um someone was making me do a teleprompter. And I was very difficult to get my eyes to go through this, and I I felt the way I felt
¶ Mark's early years, running to beat the school bus and burnout
in fourth grade when I was too dumb because I couldn't read, right? And the teacher was like, You can, you know, making me do it again and again and again. And it was the whole most horrible feeling. Like, do you remember those feelings like that? I mean, because you said you were made fun of. Yeah, no, no, no.
I mean, look.
Can you anchor back to those feelings? I don't know.
I don't I choose not to, but I could. Well, I too I choose not to, too, but I was just like, No, no, no, but I could, I could, and every once in a while, you're right, that comes up. Look, my last name is Sisson, S-I-S-S-O-N. Sissy. C C sure. So then you got that, you get, you know, the the bullies. I mean, literally, if you looked at uh a Christmas story, the famous uh uh movie that plays incessantly every year on TBS, the uh, you know, the kid getting beat up on the way home from school.
Yeah, yeah, it was I get you know, it wasn't pummeled, but it was like pushed around and whatever. So um, you know, there was a certain um, you know, irony when I became an Iron Man. You know, when I when I I don't know if that what drove me to do that, but you know, I finished fourth at Iron Man in Hawaii in 1982. That was a nice way to top off a career of endurance. But at some point, um, I did realize that this was this was sort of like banging my head against the wall.
Like, like, why am I doing this endurance uh pursuit? Why am I trying to improve my performance uh without having fun? Because you know so I kind of rededicated the rest of my athletic life from the age of 40 to like, okay, I'm gonna do stuff that's fun now. So I started inline skating, which I had to do.
Yeah, so that was a major transition. Yes, right. You went from, you know, okay, this pain is good because it's making me tough because of our when I wonder how many people something happens in our childhood that frames us in a false identity.
Most of the people who who engage in what you would call running now think they think they're doing it for their health, but they're probably doing it to prove something or they're doing it. That's what I'm saying. You know, I did I finished a marathon. Okay, great. I mean, it's like, but you know, you're it's not good for you. It's not it's not serving you in the long term. It's not it's not a good longevity strategy. Yeah, right.
Yeah, so you transition. Yeah. So now I'm gonna do things for enjoyment. Well, okay, hold on. What led to that transition, though? Like, I mean, that's a big thought process different. Some most people don't make that transition.
Most people don't make that transition. It took me years. So once I stopped competing, I continued to coach. So I coached elite athletes, I coached uh runners and triathletes, I coached a professional triathlon team. We traveled around the world. And because I was coaching them and I was training with them half the time, now I'm in my late 30s and I'm still wickedly fit. I'm not racing, but I'm I'm I'm wickedly fit and I'm doing their workouts with them.
Um and and at some point I'm like like I lost the mojo. I'm like, I don't want to go on a five-hour ride hard today. Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't there was something in my mind that flipped, and it took a long time. It took a long time to allow myself to not feel guilty for not doing it. It is right. So there's a huge guilt component to this. Self-inflicted. I mean Because that was your identity.
You were feeding that identity with the the training, the hardship, yeah, all of it, right? What did that feel like when you made that transition? Or right even right before it, then when you made the transition.
You know, it's I can remember getting to the point. The point for me, this is this happened. This actually happened. So now I'm 38, 39. Um, I'm training these guys, and I'm really I'm still really fit. So uh one day I get in a race. It's uh it was uh the Wildflower Triathlon, which is a half Iron Man distance, a beautiful race, uh a rugged race in the hills in Northern California, Central California. And um I get out of the water, um I I get on the bike,
¶ Oxidative stress, chronic cardio, and biofeedback
and halfway into the bike, I'm literally what the F am I doing here? What am I doing? This is I don't I don't feel it, I don't have it. And I I made it to the transition zone. I put on my running shoes, I ran about a mile, came back and threw my running shoes in the in the in the trash, and that was the end of it. That was the last effort that I ever made in terms of being competitive, in terms of of matching my you know, my current level of fitness against other people or myself.
I mean it still matched my level of fitness against myself. Don't get me wrong. But I but I'm not I don't compete anymore in that regard.
Did you have other influences in your life at that time that helped you make that?
Yeah, I had a family, I had a wife and two small kids. No, and I and I was you know I was trying to make a living and I was starting a business and I had other things that were um calling me. And you know, as an athlete, people if people look at what I used to do and what you used to do and go, oh my God, you're so disciplined. How can you do that? You're so disciplined. And in my mind, I go, No, no, the discipline is to go to work every day and grind it out and make money and build a career.
And it's for me and my mindset, it's it's completely undisciplined to get on my bike and go for a four-hour bike.
Yeah, right. Exactly.
Now, now at the end of the day, I will still internally feel like, oh, today it the day is complete because I got my workout in. Right. But it I had to get past that. I had to get past it.
I mean, do you still have some of that? I mean, I do. We we as we look at our day and go, oh, I did this, I did this, I did this. That was a good day. Yeah. Yeah.
No, dude, I'm I just came over here from a beach off of my buddy that I ride with every day, and he and he he you know, at the end of the ride today, and it was like, yeah, it's 85 degrees out, it's humid, there's no wind, and we're riding in deep sand for an hour and a half.
So you still enjoy torturing.
No, no, it's it but I'm with somebody, we're having fun. It's out, you know, we're not we're not up in the hill, you know, we're we're on the we're on Miami Beach. There's women walking around in thongs, you know, whatever. It's like it's the view changes every day. So there is but it's still the hardest workout I do every week. And it still takes a grind.
And everything I do during the week, the stuff I do in the gym, the stuff, the intervals that I do on the on the treadmill, the um, you know, the paddling, the stand-up paddling I do, it all contributes to that, to to this one ride that we do every week where I put it all together and we we grind it out.
So that's what you did today. That's what I did today. Yeah, coming off in here, sweaty. I thought you ran here. I yeah, okay. Uh yeah, we're gonna talk about what you do in a day. Let's we'll get there. You know, I I'm I'm so fascinated by that transition because a lot of people don't make the transition. You know, they they literally, you know, when I got sick, I always say part of my perfect storm, I had you know neurotoxic exposures, yes, but I was training at too high level level as well.
Yeah. And when I tell people that, well, I was training super hard, they kind of dismiss that as how I got sick, but it was part of it. You know, I I literally was just killing myself. And again, it was an identity thing, it was the the accomplishment, it was everything.
And no one else cared except me. Yeah, no one else cared but me.
Yeah. Matter of fact, my wife, to your point, was like the opposite. She I had two young kids at the time, and you know, it was like, what are you doing? Yeah, you know, and why? Yeah. Yeah. Didn't do anything except I thought was, you know, making me better. Yeah. But I came to a realization like you. So I'm trying to help people go.
No, I mean, it's so so that's my thing now. Is it's like, um, what's the minimum effective dose of exercise that you need to be strong and lean and fit and happy?
Man, I can't wait to unpack that more because uh I think that so many people that it it's they're overtraining, they don't know it, they're overdoing everything. And you and I really line on this. And it's a premise that's called hormesis, meaning if you stress the body and you adapt, you get stronger, faster, smarter, etc. etc. But if you stress the body, you don't adapt, bad things happen. Yep. And that was us. Okay, so we're getting there, folks. Hold on. Uh yeah, okay, so here you go.
Um, you know, I I you know, I I watched a lot happen between 2015, 2018. You just exploded, man.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, as far what like how did that happen?
Oh, Primal Kitchen?
Everything. I mean, yeah, you became on the map. Yeah. I mean, Primal Kitchen, I guess,
¶ From pain to redefinition - the Wildflower triathlon moment
was part of that.
Well, no, so pr those are the years that Primal Kitchen took off. But I mean, I started the blog in 2006 and it grew and grew and grew. And so in 2007, eight, and nine, it became um, you know, we had three and a half million uniques a month uh coming to the site. It was the most visited site, other than Joe Mercola. It was the most visited health site in the world. Um, I wrote the book, The Primal Blueprint, which sort of launched the brand, all of the primal stuff that I did.
And what was the book written? Because I I that's I read the book. 2009. Okay, yeah. So that's about when I found you then.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh and that sort of, you know, I think it solidified all the these weird concepts I'd been throwing out there on my blog over the years. Um, and it put them into a cohesive program. It's a template for living a uh, you know, a better, um, more happy, productive, fulfilling life.
So where were some of the major pr things that well so the primal blueprint was basically looking at um it took um for the first time, I think, it looked at evolutionary biology and the history of how we evolved with this recipe that we have today for this that wants us to be strong and lean and fit and happy and healthy and productive. Um and and what what what had been missing was the um the proof in terms of genetic science of what how genes turn on or off in response to how to do it.
Epigenetics. Right. So the epig the epigenetic influence then, uh and now you look at every study that's ever done, looks at what is the influence at the level of gene expression. Well that that's only 20 years old.
Meaning for people watching, uh there the the old dogma was you got this diabetes, whatever it was, because your mom or dad had it. Right. Yeah. The the new shift is oh no, genes are triggered. They're turned on. And stressors, good or bad, can trigger those genes. Exactly.
Turn them on. Right. So my my my goal became to find these hidden genetic switches that we all have and and encourage people to understand how the body works so that they can choose whether to burn fat or store fat, whether to build muscle or burn muscle, whether to um enhance their immune system or suppress their immune system, uh, whether to get diabetes or or never have a shot at it, uh, all from the behaviors that we and the clues which we find in our history in evolutionary biology.
So that's when you say clues, yeah. So so that came or out of that came the template, the 10 primal blueprint laws, move around a lot at a low level of activity. All of our ancestors walked, walked, walked, walked, squatted, stood, lifted, lift heavy things. Primal blueprint law number two. They lifted logs, they lifted babies and carcasses, and they built things, and they climbed trees. Um Sprint once in a while. Sprint once in a while. Not every day. Once in a while. Once in a while.
And our ancestors didn't sprint every day, but but they had to sprint for their lives once in a while. And that's built into the human genome. This ability to summon all that energy in a split second.
Is long distance running built into that?
Sprinting is. No, sprinting is, and long distance is not. So we'll talk about that. Um another prime of Blueprint law was lot eat lots of plants and animals. Duh. But I mean, everybody eats, you know, processed food. And if you stick to plants and animals, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna trend toward your ideal body composition, regardless of how much exercise you do.
Um, you know, get plenty of sleep is one of the you know, we our ancestors went went to bed when the sun went down, got up when the sun came up, again, go figure, uh, and get plenty of sunlight is one of the primal booking bosses.
When I read it, I was like, oh, this guy's spot on. Everybody said that. This guy's spot on, however, however, where, you know, yeah, this makes total sense. Yeah, but how many of these, you know, ten are you doing is the question.
Well, and then there was a five year, ten year period where people went, yeah, it sounds good, but you know, where's the proof? Well, now the proof's in. And a lot of the studies that look at sleep bear out what I, you know, what I what I was saying. Uh sun exposure. You know, mm for decades we've been told stay out of the sun, it's gonna give you cancer. And no, you need some sunlight, right? And you need and you need direct sunlight on the on the skin. Um Um, you know, uh plants and animals.
Uh we ate plants and animals. So anybody who's a vegan out there, a vegetarian, God bless you, good luck. But yeah, but most, you know, our ancestors thrived on a largely meat-based, animal, animal-based diet.
I just recently told the story. I w I had the opportunity to meet a tribe that just came out of the mountains because of a drought in Africa. And I was the first white guy they ever saw, actually. And uh I it changed my view of diet massively because what I saw was they didn't accept what world vision was giving some of these other tribes. They came down and the and the chief was like, no way, we're not bad. And I was asked the question, yeah, they weren't they didn't accept any of it.
These people barely eat. How do they not have any of the diseases? Right. And literally, I saw people that they were guessing at their age over 100 years. The one gentleman like knew all about World War I. And you know, it's like, and this was all being translated to me. But it was amazing. When when they had no meat, they were eating plants, but the moment they had kill, they feasted.
Yeah. And it was like, and they were uh, yeah, it was remarkable to see, but it really changed a lot of my dietary. Yeah.
I mean, so there is a term fractal eating that I embraced a long time ago, which is um three meals a day is an artificial construct from the Industrial Revolution. Maybe it goes back to farming days before that. I don't know. But um, you know, the fact that that we are now patterned to have three meals a day doesn't mean that our bodies evolve that way or expect that of us. Yeah. So I've written books on the ketogenic diet, on how to get there. I've written books on intermittent fasting.
Um two meals a day is you know, one of the books I've written. Just said, okay, one of the easiest ways to cut back on calories and still get the amount of macros you need.
I always say don't eat less, eat less often. Yeah. Because if you just eat less, your body will eventually think it's starving, your metabolism goes to crap. Yeah.
Well, so my the shift I would put there is that, you know, I tell people, um, most people think in this in these terms of there's food is so abundant and it's so wonderful and it tastes so great. So what's the what's the most amount of food I can eat and not get fat? You know, what's the most amount of this meal I can eat and not feel like a glutton? What's the most amount of this dessert that I can have, still call it one serving?
Uh, and that's how a lot of people uh get through life, and they get some people get away with it, some people don't, they gain a two pound or two a year until you know they're in their sixties and now they're 40 pounds overweight. But my thought process recently was what's the least amount of food I can eat on a daily basis, have all the energy I want, maintain or build muscle, really important,
¶ Primal Blueprint: Evolutionary Biology & Epigenetics Explained
not get sick, and most importantly, not be hungry. So, so what's what's the what's the minimum effective dose of food that I need? Now, every once in a while I'll I'll eat a lot, I'll eat a ton, but not a ton. I never eat a ton anymore, because I can't. I'm it makes me exactly your body just shuts you down. If I go back to the days when we were training and I was I was consuming I'll tell you I'll I divert with a little story.
I love it.
Every one of my college buddies calls me Arnold. Um they never call me Mark, they call me Arnold. Because when I was in college, I weighed 142 pounds, 30 pounds less than I weigh now. Perfect cyclist. And I could, and I was runner, and I could, and I could um I could eat more than anybody in school. I could eat more um any of the football players, I was like shoving it down the pie hole. And so my name, Arnold, came from a TV show called Green Acre.
Oh, I remember where there was a where one of the Green Acres is the place. Exactly. And one of the characters was Arnold Ziffel, the pig, this giant pig. So that was my nickname, Arnold Ziffel. Oh, yeah. I thought it was gonna be Arnold. Oh no, no, no, no. Not even close. So so now it's now it's my because I could eat so much. I was such a such a glutton.
So I went from that to this sort of minimalist approach to food right now, which is um again, what's by the way, we just dated ourselves majorly, right? You know, yeah. How how old are you? I'll be 72 in July.
That's amazing, right? I'm 60 this year, so it's like, you know, I guess we're both up there, but yeah, you got me.
Got you.
You look great. Thank you. Um so do you. Um, but uh the the idea that that we have to eat every four or five, three or four hours to maintain energy and muscle. No, if you're and I I've promoted this concept for the last 15 years, metabolic flexibility.
The terms existed for a long time. Because you're spot on with it. Yeah. You're healthy at the cellular level if you're metabolically flexible. Right. And you mean you can burn fat, burn carbs if you eat them, right?
Ketones uh efficiently, effectively. Um and so any, you know, any activity that you're engaging in, you have that substrate available available at that time. So again, if you're doing glycolytic work in the gym, you have enough glycogen in your muscles and you can do well at that. Um if you're if you're doing anything even barely submaxable, it's all fat, it's all fat you're burning throughout the day.
If you're just uh you know not doing anything all day, you're just purely burning fat, not dipping into glycogen stores, not having low blood sugar because you run out of liver glycogen.
Yeah, look, I wanna I wanna unpack this a little bit because if people understood what you just said, right? How to become metabolically flexible, we just solved diabetes. We just solved obesity. Everything. We just solved most hormone problems that people are having. So when we talk about metabolic flexibility, start from the ground floor and set this stage, meaning your cells can only use two things for energy sugar, fat. Most people are stuck as sugar burners with the inability to burn fat.
They're not medical.
Yeah, how that happens is you know, we start from an early age. Our parents, you know, God bless them, didn't know what they were doing and started feeding us, you know, oatmeal and zwyback and and pablum and all the stuff that was uh soft carbs. And over the over the decades, we become so um used to burning sugar, uh, all of these carbs turn into glucose. Yeah. Glucose is a fuel that the body uses.
Cells can only use sugar or fat. Right. Okay. They break down the ketones.
I mean, they can use a little bit of ketones, but let's leave that alone for now. That's the brain. We'll talk about that. But uh so those, yeah. So those cells have become so good at burning sugar. And because the body is now um look, fat is a is is the preferred fuel for the body. It is the preferred fuel, but we never give it a chance to be combusted.
If we're continually feeding and feeding and feeding and storing glycogen, and then any activity that we do, however long it takes, maybe burns through the glycogen, but we're not good at burning fat yet. So now we get hungry because we've burned through the glycogen, so we eat more carbs. Right. And we can and it's this vicious sugar burning cycle.
And people are stuck there, just stuck there as sugar burners, and then what happens is when you take in a lot of sugar, then your your pancreas is producing a lot of insulin. You you'll understand that that glucose, while it's an it, while it's a key uh fuel, the the bloodstream can only hold five grams, one teaspoonful of sugar at one time.
And so it's a continuous um you know monitoring of uh glycogen and glucose in the bloodstream and insulin and leptin and ghrelin and all these other hormones, but insulin is sort of the one where you take you you you have low blood sugar. So you say, I've got to have a donut, or I gotta have, I gotta bring my blood sugar back up. Now you eat a lot of carbs. Now the body says, oh, there's a lot of carbs. There's too much glucose in the bloodstream, it's it's dangerous.
It's too much glucose, it's toxic. So we we we shoot out the we over-secrete insulin because insulin is a is a hormone that stores glucose and amino acids and everything else in the cells. And if the if the muscle cells are full of already have too much glycogen or enough glycogen, goes to the fat cells. Yeah. And so now the excess calories get stored as fat. But insulin, one of the things about insulin is it is it literally locks fat inside fat cells.
So high insulin, yeah, even you could be like out of energy and oh my God, I feel like I'm gonna die. It's locked in. And it's locked in the fat in and this amazing fuel that's sitting in your fat cells is now locked in there and you can't access it. So the only way to do this is to reverse this whole cycle and and and start to restrict carbs. And you can restrict carbs, you can actually do do it through fasting and restrict uh but but here's the problem, right?
I I'm in agreement with you here, but here's the problem people say, right? It's like, okay, because they're stuck as sugar burners with the inability to utilize the fat, it's locked up, right? And um even burning at the mitochondria level where you make energy, uh, they feel horrible. I can't go without carbs, Mark. I can't, I can't. Matter of fact, I have to eat five meals a day.
Oh, most people, when you ask them how many times they eat, yeah, oh, I just eat three meals, which you and I agree that's you know, trapped in our brains as well. But they eat more than that. Yeah. On average, 17 meals a day, meaning the handful of nuts, this, that, every time they pass the kitchen. So they have to eat and they have to eat their carbs. And if they don't, they feel bad, horrible. How do people break through that? Because you said just go low carb.
Yeah, they're going, I can't go low carb.
Yeah. Well, you can. You actually can. That's right. And the best way to do that is probably to first of all cut out the processed stuff first. And so all your carbs then become vegetables and maybe some fruit.
Step one, start processed, right? Get rid of processed.
So now just go what I would say full primal blueprint, which was lots of plants and animals. So plants and so you know, carbs, green leafy vegetables, uh, all of vegetables are sort of free carbs when you get to that level, right? And so you can uh and then and then you But they're not doing it for me, Mark.
I I I need the I at least need my potato pasta, something. I don't know.
Yeah, well, you can tighter it down so you can do uh, you know, 100 grams total one day of those starchy carbs and then and then drop it down. There's gonna be a point at which it might be uncomfortable. Okay. That's it's you just gotta power and it's not- Did you hear that? And it's not gonna be three weeks. It's gonna be three days.
It's gonna be it's gonna be a couple of days. All right. Right. Because when I fast people, right, uh, it's like I, you know, three, four days, you'll be fine after that, right? Because it what it's doing is it's forcing you to use fat. Yeah. Right. So the the bit best way to become metabolically flexible really quick is some fasting. That's it, for sure. But but to your point, though, let's say you cut your carbs, you're gonna have some bad days, but you'll get through it.
You just get through it, and it's uh it's gonna be it'll feel like a little, it's what they used to call the low-carb flu, right? It's just a feeling that you have. You don't have the flu, but it feels like you might. Then you're it that's your body, that's you signaling your body, okay, we've got to upregulate all those enzymes that take fat out of storage. We gotta we gotta increase mitochondrial biogenesis, which is increases the number of mitochondria, which is where the fat burns.
And we increase mitochondrial DNA. We we literally improve the efficiency of the mitochondria that we have.
Your body's reacting to the stress of changing hormesis.
Go figure. Exactly.
Go figure. It's adapting, it has to adapt or it dies. So it increases the mitochondria, the number of mitochondria. And the mitochondria, the bad ones start to die off and the good ones start to become more efficient at burning fat. Okay. So now we're metabolically flexible. And what you mean by that is if you don't eat today, what are you gonna burn?
Fat. And I don't by the way, my body, my brain doesn't know that I'm not eating today.
But but here's the here's the problem with someone who's stuck as a sugar burner, not metabolically flexible. If they don't eat today, they're tapping into muscle because they need sugar. 100% muscle down.
So what's funny is it's it's a nuanced, right? It's a nuanced discussion, and people have to understand that it that it this works, but you go, well, what about in the 80s when they said uh, you know, don't you're a bodybuilder, don't go more than two hours without eating your your boneless, skinless chicken breast and your rice. Yes. Okay. That was the bodybuilder diet. That was the bodybuilder diet in the 80s. And it was because you'll go in cannibal mode.
Yes. Like if you're eating your muscle. It'll you'll start eating your own muscle. That's because they're not metabolically flexible. The the whole thing about metabolic flexibility is the ability to burn fat. Did you term that? No, but uh Rob Wolfe and I started talking about this 15 years ago. I didn't I it it exists before I used it, but I I take credit for popularizing it because I've used it a lot over the years.
And I and I think it's so after all the discussion about way of eating, W-O-E, whether it's you know, carnivore or keto or low carb or high fruit, whatever whatever it is, the real holy grail isn't the way of eating, it's achieving metabolic flexibility. That's
¶ Sugar, Insulin, and Blood Glucose Explained
why I said let's unpack this.
Yeah, because you're right. Yeah.
So however you get there, you can get there, you can probably get there with a well, with a well-orchestrated vegetarian diet with some protein powders.
Um how I help people get there? My I have something I teach called diet variation. Making them change their diet actually creates flexibility. Yeah. Like so when people say, I can't break in through keto, I can't break in through keto, I say, okay, go back to healthy high carbs. And then in two months or a month, go back into keto. Every time they switch, they get better and more metabolically flexible. Yeah, but good. Finish that point.
Yeah. So that was the point. So there's no, there's no right way to do this. Um, there's a bunch of wrong ways, but there's no right way to achieve metabolic flexibility. You can do it through a combination of various, uh, like it's an equation, and there's variables that you can change.
So you can change out the macros, you can change out the timing of the of the macros, you can change out the amount of work you do and the type of exercise that you do, because you can use exercise to enhance to enhance that, right? So which is one of the reasons that like walking. I have this new book. Right here. Born to walk. Yeah.
Uh yeah, it does not say born to run, does it? Okay. It says born to walk for the reason that we're talking about.
Yeah, so one of the one of the things humans are are adapted to walk a lot. We're bipedal, we're supposed to be walking um a lot, a lot, a lot, like all day long. Um, and one of the things that happens when you walk, if you walk, you burn fat. You don't you don't burn glycogen unless you're really a horrible sugar burner. You burn fat when you walk. And as you do that, you become more and more fat adapted.
That this prompts it's zone one, zone two type activity, which prompts um uh not just the mitochondrial biogenesis, but capillary perfusion. So now capillaries start to grow oxidative capillary, you know, the oxygen provider.
Where blood flow is, health is.
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So all of this um is is a way to achieve uh to help us to assist with this metabolic flexibility. One of the things that people tell me is like, well, well, Mark, you know, like I like I can't go this long without eating. What do I do? And I like go for a walk. Because if if you're close to the refrigerator and you feel that hunger pang, it's really not, you're not dying. You're not starving. You're just you're just you know conditioned to be hungry or craving something.
So shut the door. Go for a 15-minute walk, and you will find that you will start to generate the energy. So movement generates the energy. You some people think you gotta I need energy to generate movement, but in fact, movement generates energy. That's true.
That's why we feel better if we just get out. You know, there was just a study done. I I think I did a um Instagram on it, that walking right after you eat, like, I mean, transforms what you do with that energy as far as storing it as fat, how you feel, right? It's like so as soon as you walk after, even if like five minutes, I think it was something ridiculous.
Well, even beyond that, the body uh the digestive process is a is one of motility and it and it wants, it craves that sort of movement, right? Just like the lymphatic system does not have a pump.
Yeah, it requires movement in order to uh So let's talk about walking and running. Okay, so you said earlier, okay, humans are meant to sprint and walk, not run really long distances. Yeah, so especially as something habitual. Correct.
So the the the concept here is we are born to walk, we're born to sprint, we're born to be able to run, but not every day, not metronomically, not at eight, nine, ten minute mile an hour per year.
So the people that are running five miles a day, you have a problem with that. I do. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think, I mean, I can show you. I wrote a book ten years ago called Primal Endurance. And it was out of frustration with all these people who say, um, because I've already I've been an anti-marathon guy for a long time. Like, why would you do that to yourself? But people say, Well, Mark, I want to do a marathon. Okay, geez, I'll write a book and I'll show you how to do it, you know, in a way that isn't gonna break you down.
And you can do one, and if you enjoyed it, I'll let you do one more. And if you're a guy and you haven't broken three hours, you're not a runner. So find another sport.
Yeah. Otherwise, you're just cannibalizing your your yeah. You you can tell, okay, if you took take a picture of a marathoner, or just a long distance run, right? It doesn't have to be a marathon. Take a picture of a sprinter. Yeah, yeah. Okay, if they never touched a weight, either of them in their life, they have two different body compositions. Why?
Well, because because the running is catabolic. So understand this. So when I say we're born to walk, walking is anabolic. At the very least, it's anti-catabolic. Bodybuilders, well, after a heavy leg day, if walking were catabolic, they wouldn't but they but they walk. They don't run, they don't jog, they walk on a treadmill. And some of the greatest bodybuilders in history would do 45 minutes on a treadmill after a leg day to because they knew it was.
The last thing they would do is run long distance.
Running is catabolic. So every time you run, it is tearing muscle tissue down. Like, make no mistake, it's not building it up. It's tearing every time you run, you know, more than a half an hour for I say more than 15 minutes, but but it is catabolic. So so the the the good news is your body builds it back a little bit over time. But if you look at every elite runner in the world, those guys are in the gym lifting weights. They're lifting weights.
I was the strongest marathoner in the U.S. for the time I was running. I was a 216 marathoner in the in the late 70s and and 1980. I weighed uh 140, which is probably 10 pounds more than I should have weighed. Yeah, for running.
Yeah, recycling is pretty good.
I'm 5'10. I weighed 140. Um, I weigh 172 now. So I weigh 32 pounds more now. Same body fat now, but I carry 32 pounds more of bone density, muscle mass, and some fat. And at 72. At 72, right. So so running is catabolic. So why would you do that to yourself on a regular basis? So what I say is if you want to run, okay, train anabolically, and then once a week, go run, go do your run and be catabolic. You'll recover from it. But day in and day out doing these these hard. That's insert.
And it's a horrible weight loss strategy. And so many people get into running because they want to lose weight. People sign up for a marathon, they're 40 pounds over.
That's why most people are doing it, by the way.
I exactly.
But the question becomes, what weight are you losing?
And that's a great, a great observation because what happens is running is a horrible way to lose weight. It's a horrible strategy for losing weight. Um, because most people train at a heart rate that's too high to be burning fat. And they go, but Mark, I can run for 45 minutes and my heart rate's 165. I'm like, great, you're burning sugar the whole time, you're catabolic, and then you get home and you're hungry. Now you're gonna now you're gonna overeat.
So over time, what's gonna happen is because it's catabolic and because you're eating to keep up with it, over time you're not gonna lose weight. But what's gonna happen is you're gonna lose four pounds of muscle and gain four pounds of fat. Yeah. And you'll you'll still be the same weight, but you'll now your body composition will have shifted.
Okay, so let me, if you contrast this to sprinting, okay, two things happen here. Okay, so when you let's hypothetically say they're doing it right, they're staying in the fat burning zone, as we're told, right? The heart rate's not high enough. So they're burning mostly fat while they're running with good form. With good form. With good form. Okay. So they're burning fat for an hour. But when you sprint, you're only burning sugar.
Yeah. But what happens for the next 36 hours, according to studies, is now you burn fat to replace the glycogen store so the body could save its life if it has to run, right? So would you rather burn fat for 36 hours if you sprint? Or would you rather burn fat for the hour when you're running? No, of course.
And to your and to your point, it's a great analogy. And so back to the sprinters and how they look, even if they're not lifting weights, even the sprinters are not lifting weights, and by the way, they are. They're lifting weights.
But even nowadays they are, because they've learned well, I mean, they've learned it obviously exactly.
They're not bodybuilding.
Even the endurance, the good athletes have good coaches that are lifting weights now. For sure.
Yeah, for sure. But running's still catabolic. So those guys are not. They're not trying to muscle. They're not adding muscle, they're just adding strength and power, which is a legit pursuit if you're an elite athlete trying to compete on the world scene. Um, but the but the sprinters are, to your point, they're they're they're doing this very uh high-end 30, 40 met glycolytic work.
It's 30 seconds, maybe it's a minute, and then they rest for 10 minutes. What we're saying is that when you sprint, you you you can only burn sugar. It's stored sugar, right? It's it's not like the sugar you just or pure ATP at that point.
Yeah, exactly.
So you're just dumping it out in the blood and you know, firing it up. Right. So how possibly could that make me leaner? Well, it does.
Yeah. And and because it's not it's because it's in and of itself, it's not catabolic, it's anabolic. That's right. So now you're you're keeping your metabolism up. Keeping the metabolism up, you're building muscle, not tearing muscle down. Right. Because the runner is tearing muscle down.
Part of that is is this um again, because they're because they're operating at the at the uh area of a heart rate, which we would call the no man's land or or the the black hole of training, which is too high a heart rate. It feels valuable, by the way. If you're a runner and you're, you know, you go out five, six times a week and it's you get the runner's high. By the way, the runner's high, the endorphan high, that's a survival hormone.
That's not a that that's a that's a that's your brain telling you, okay, you're not gonna die, it's gonna be okay. Great. I don't, you know, if I'm seeking that, may as well just shoot junk.
I mean, so cocaine might do it too.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Uh so so what is so we talked a little bit about minimum effective dose of exercise. Like what is what is that looking like?
Yeah, I was just gonna say, uh, did you talk about that in the yeah? Yeah, sure. Okay. So okay, I don't Mark, come on. I don't need to be I don't need a book to learn how to walk, bro. You know, born to walk. Born to walk. How do you how do you have a whole book? Okay, my point is is there must be some gems in the world. I haven't read this yet, admittedly. I'm going to.
It's it's full of stuff. I mean, the first 80 pages is is the history of running and how inane it is, and how a perfect storm of marketing hype and uh and misapplied anthropology. Yeah.
Everything we're talking about is in there.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's crazy. Um but the point is if you ha So, premise number one, develop metabolic flexibility.
Okay.
Because your body composition happens as a result of how you eat, not of exercise from exercise. So 80% of how you look comes from how you choose to eat. Absolutely. Everybody in our field agrees on this right now. So if you can dial in metabolic flexibility, okay, good. Then once you've done that, you don't have to exercise away the fat. You just have to exercise enough to build muscle and to develop some VO2 max capacity.
Right. So I would say I don't know, 80% of the people in the gym, they're doing it to burn fat, whatever they're in the gym for, to jump, you know, aerobics, who knows. But you're saying they're doing it for the wrong reason. No, you do it to build muscle to keep your metabolism up and all the benefits we set.
Yeah. So once you've developed metabolic flexibility, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. That's your aerobic base. Okay. Okay. And you can walk with a vest on, you can walk uphill, you can do there's all sorts of walking strategies where you can work a hell of a sweat. You know, you can get your heart out to max if you want.
Can you walk too much? Can it become catabolic?
It can. I mean, it can, sure. I mean, anybody can do too much of something like that. I agree. Yeah. You know, um, but you know, I I go to Europe every summer. I walk anywhere from 10 to 14 miles a day, and and yet I hit the gym because walking, because it's not catabolic, I have the energy to go to the gym and and do anabolic work.
If you're a runner, most runners think they should go to the gym, but they don't have the energy because they've they've you know blown their energy in their run for the day. Not only do they not have the energy to go to the gym, they don't have the energy to play with, throw the football with a kid or rate the leaves or do take the trash out of anyone else.
Do those four-hour rides. I'm done. Take a nap.
Yeah. Yeah. So so the minimum effective dose of exercise is lots of low-level stuff. Walk, walk, walk. Move, move, move, move. Don't, don't count calories because it doesn't count. No, no, no. Just move. Do but put the body through all the ranges and planes of motion you can possibly put them through. And then twice a week go to the gym. Twice a week, go to the gym and lift weights. Lift heavy things. I love it. Because the body, if you do it right, the body needs, it's that hormetic experience.
The body needs time and nutrients to recover and build stronger from the workout. If you lift five days a week, you tear yourself down just like you would.
I agree. I agree. You know, the older I've gotten, the less time I spend in the gym because I don't need to. I don't need to. I can't. I can keep my muscle just by doing two days a week. Yeah. Because I travel. That's probably what I get.
Exactly. Same. So walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Twice a week go to the gym and lift heavy things. Once a week sprint.
Okay. All right. In the gym, because I I want all my lady viewers. Number one, you're not going to be the bodybuilder. People are like, they don't want to lift weights because they don't want to look like that. It's not going to happen. How many the I'm searching for the minimum. Yeah. Okay. I think they are too. How many sets? How many exercises per body part? Right. So, like, you know, minimum. Like to me.
Yeah, just no, you know, now we get into um such of the minutia and such of the granular granularity of one person to the next. And what is your like what is your brain allowing you to perceive as failure in a set? You know, uh, and so you know, three sets of of six different exercises, I could prescribe uh a routine of just that. Three sex, three three sets, ten repetitions, six exercises. Um you're out of there in 45 minutes.
Yeah, that's about me. I'm out 30 to 45.
Yeah, and uh and if you do it right, you're if you put yourself through the paces, if you know if you're a woman and you've got a trainer yelling you, you know, counting out reps and go, you know, two more, come on, come on. Um it's you're gonna you'll benefit from that. And you'll get stronger from that. You'll get stronger and you'll get leaner and you'll burn fat more efficiently, and you won't get buffed or amped or whatever the term that people are using now.
Yeah. So I mean you just prescribed literally something everybody can do. Yeah. You know, getting metabolically flexible. And by the way, the exercise you prescribe just helps us get metabolically flexible, plus the diet stuff that we talked about. But that is feasible. No one has an excuse anywhere. Right.
And but once a week, sprint. Once a week, sprint. Now, what does sprinting look like? It's it's it's anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds of all-out effort. So you warm up for 10 minutes, whatever it's gonna be. And by the way, it doesn't have to be running sprinting. Uh the term sprint means just high high energy output.
So it could be running on the beach, it could be running on the grass, could be running on the track, could be running um up a hill, uh, could be treadmill in the gym, could be walking, uh, you know, uh, it could be the elliptical machine, uh, could be the assault by, could be a roll machine, whatever it is, all out effort, a 10-minute warm-up, and then all out effort for a third I do 30 seconds, but yeah, 30 seconds to a minute, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, 10 seconds to a minute to a minute, with with 3x rest in between. So if you're doing 30 seconds, then you get a minute 30 rest. That's what I do. Go on the twos, um, six repetitions, eight of those total. And if you're true, if you do it right, you're like, you're like, oh my God, this was this, I feel so tired and yet so energized.
By the way, you get a hormone optimization. Sprinting, unlike running, right, is it raises growth hormones. Yeah. And puts you in that burning zone for 36 hours.
That's the that's the that's the anabolic nature of it versus the catabolic nature of the cortisol secreted in a 45-minute run outside at a heart rate that's too high.
Yeah. You said once a week, right? Um I hit high intensity training is what you know what people sometimes know it as um people are saying do it three every other day, three times a week. You're saying, hey, just do it once a week.
I like don't do it three times a week. I mean, you have various you know, you've got Jesus, you know, uh boot camps and orange theories and soul cycles. It's very high intense. It's two. And then, of course, not picking on women, but women in particular crave this, like, oh, if one is good, then two a day is gonna be really good. I did one in the morning, I did one in the afternoon.
Um, and and no, those are those types of workouts, if you do them right, are set up so that once a week, maybe twice a week, but once a week is sort of optimal for achieving not just fitness, but health. You want to stay healthy. And so I see a lot of people doing too much. This is where we we started talking about this, you know, do you can do too much of a good thing in terms of that.
So could people I talk about sprinting, nothing I say for 50 years, I said nothing cuts you up like sprinting, right? Well, okay, I'll do it every day then.
Yeah.
No, don't do it, don't do it every day.
See, because the the the premise is you have to adapt to the stress. If you don't adapt, it becomes a negative. Yeah. And uh the older we get, the less you need to do, should do, because your adaptation is we're not 20 years old. No, no, no, no.
So and then we could do a whole other podcast on the the effect on the central nervous system of these workouts, right? And so in many cases, it's not even the muscles that need to recover, it's the central nervous system that needs to recover from the workout. And people don't even pay attention to that. They go, Oh, I'm still tired from my workout.
And and then when you have emotional stress, how they go that that's another stress, and your stress might build up and overflow.
I'm so stressed, I think I'll take a cold plunge. Wrong.
Oh, okay. That's where I wanted to go next. Okay, so biohacking is a thing right now, right? I mean, um, and I I'm like this guy out there, and it sounds like you are, that's saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. Biohacks work, whether it be cold plunge, even saunas, they work on this premise of hormesis, meaning that it stresses the body. If you adapt, it's great. Yeah, but if you don't, it's really bad, right? So Yeah.
So now we there's a caution here on this, all these biohacks, especially cold plunging, which I've, you know, I started cold plunging 20 years ago in my unheated pool in my backyard in Malibu in the wintertime. Um, for me, it was just a head trip. I just, I, I was afraid of uh I I avoided cold water my entire life. Even though I was a triathlete and I've done many triathlons, I just hated water.
Yeah.
I gotta get over this. So I trained myself to be able to walk into a 42-degree pool and just, you know, and hang out there for a couple of minutes and get back out. Well, this became, and then over the over time, cold plunging became a thing, and now it's about brown fat activation and it's about uh, you know, it's about uh anti-inflammatory benefits. So now everybody's cold plunging, and I'm like, wait, I like I did that, I'm over it.
I I yeah, I got my I got the head trip out of it that I that I needed. Um but cold plunging uh in the right context, okay, it works. But to have it as part of your daily routine without any sort of um thought behind when and how long and whatever you're doing. So I'll give you an example. Recently, uh they say, well, if you do a heavy leg day, don't do a cold plunge right after because you want the inflammation of the heavy leg day to prompt the signaling, the gene signaling.
Okay, it makes sense. So don't do a cold plunge right after a heavy leg day. But I'm an NBA basketball player and I'm I got a game tomorrow night. Good. Go do the anti-inflammatory benefits right after your game tonight because you're not trying to build muscle. Now you're trying to recover for the game tomorrow night. So there's a context to all this stuff.
So now, okay, I did my heavy leg day, and uh then I got home, I went to work, and Jesus, my boss was on my ass, and then my wife was, I think I'll take a cold plunge. Well, no, now you have the stress of the heavy leg day, now you have the stress of work and the family life, and now you think you're gonna de-stress with a cold plunge because it makes you feel no, it's more stressful. And the and the brain and the central nervous system doesn't know a good stress from a bad stress. No, no, no.
It has to adapt to every stress, including exercise. Exercise is stress, that's how it works. But if you do too much as the point of running, right, you don't adapt, it becomes a negative. Cold plunges are no different. Yeah, same.
So, you know, uh I think when you look at and we just in general, we look at the uh all of the modalities that people are engaging in in the in the longevity space.
What about red lights? I mean, people are uh everyone's going red light crazy too.
I'm I'm not a red light guy. Okay, yeah, why? I just I'm I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced on the research. Um I'm a I'm a sunlight guy. Um I'm and and even if red light has some uh wavelength um, you know, um some some specific guidelines with wavelengths and guardrails with wavelengths, sunlight's still what I go for. I go I'm I'm I'm old school.
Yeah, so I again you're coming from an ancestral point, right?
Yeah.
That that red light that you get in the evening or the morning is surrounded by the perfect combination of other wavelengths. Yes. And somehow you feel taking out of context that red light, there could be a negative that we don't know yet. Is that what you're saying?
No, I mean it could be, but but even then it's no, but even then it's what I call digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows.
Well, I have to process it. Digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows. Like I already got sunlight.
So, okay, if I'm stuck in a high rise in Chicago in the middle of winter and I'm gonna do red light therapy, great. But now there's discussions about red light uh saunas and versus regular old dry saunas or or sweat lodging, which is still a better, a better choice. So I think we're we're in many cases, um, you know, I look at the uh this movement, the longevity movement, and this biohacking movement. Like I don't wear the devices. So I'm an anti-device guy.
Like I don't need a something to tell me that I didn't sleep well last night. I know whether or not I slept well last night. Right.
Yeah, you listen to your body.
I listen to my body. And and so my my monitor is how do I feel? Right. So yeah, I mean I'll That's what I tell people all the time. How did you feel?
How did you feel the next day? How'd you sleep that night?
Yeah. I'll do, you know, I I I have an HRV, you know, app, but because I have PVCs from our from a lifetime of overtraining my heart, I have premature ventricular contractions. They show up on an HRV thing as, oh my God, your your variability is so great. I'm skipping beats, but yeah, but but uh, you know, so so I don't try like what I say is bad data is worse than no data. Good point. Okay. Yeah. So that's that's really where I'm coming from. And and then I see methylene blue.
Oh, geez, it's really and and all.
Yeah, what's your thought? I was gonna ask you that. You read it.
I'm not buying a lot of this stuff. Not a fan, yeah. Not a fan.
Yeah. Even like um, yeah, the research that shows, hey, it can help mitochondria, blah, blah, blah, but you think there might be something underlying that we don't know yet.
You know, it's yes, I do. And until it's something like that is really proven, I'm gonna stick with what I know. It's like the GLP1 agonists. No. Um, okay, they work, but so But what way do you lose it? But what A, what weight are you losing? B, you know, you know, B, um I you're telling me that it's uh that it's basically an appetite suppressant. Okay, I can tell
¶ Mastering Cold Plunging: Benefits & Tips
you how to, I can show you how to do that. I can fix that for you naturally just with become metabolically flexible. Become metabolically flexible. Um, you know, suck it up for a couple of days during the process, but your body will adapt. Um, so you know, what not to get too uh too far into the weeds on this, but I'm I'm just not I'm the anti-biohacking guy. I'm the anti um you know, wearables guy.
Yeah, look, I I have great suspicion and I I too have become that guy, you know, where it's like I I just run everything through that principle of hormesis and also, you know, the ancestral premise. Yeah. Right? I do. I run them through those filters, and then it definitely I start to question a lot of what's happening right now. I I have to ask you about the shoes. We're gonna get there in a minute, but I want to finish up this whole diet thing.
Yeah.
You know, um, describe your day, typical day. And do you do you change your diet um like our ancestors would? Yeah.
I mean so our ancestors ate fractally, which means they ate um, you know, they feasted when there was food available and they fasted because it quite often most often was not available. Uh so there is no magic to to regular mealtime. Um having said that, I get up in the morning, I have a cup of coffee. Uh and uh, you know, I generally I work out around 10, 10 o'clock. Uh today, again, it was a it was a hard ride on the on the sand in the heat.
Uh got my heart rate up to 160, which is a higher heart rate for for me. I I I wear a actual cardiac monitor, not a not a toy. Yeah, yeah. When I when I ride. Um and uh, you know, I've I haven't eaten yet. It's two o'clock. It's a big deal. Um I'll I'll eat a little bit later on. Um I'm going to that uh a book thing tonight, so uh there'll be some some food there. I don't care. I mean it's like I I don't I don't you know.
Well you're so fat adapted, uh metabolically flexible that like me, when I I'm busy, I I oftentimes I forget to eat because I'm burning fat. I'm eating. I'm eating, I'm just eating my fat.
So one of my one of my friends, um, you know Todd, Todd White, who typically uh Todd's a one meal a day guy. And I said, Todd, is that is that tough? Like you have to like try not to overeat when on that one meal. And Todd goes, No, the opposite. I have to remember to eat enough because I just am not hungry and I'm burning fat. And it's really interesting. Again, that's that minimum effective dose of food kind of thing.
So yeah, so I I work out fasted at 10 o'clock in the morning every day, whether it's lifting weights or whether it's some typically that's my my workout time. Um I do one or two podcasts a day. Uh I write uh still write, whether it's uh Twitter or Instagram or a blog post or a book. You're a great writer. Thank you. Appreciate that. A book that I'm working on or whatever it is. Um, you know, I have uh investments. I have oh, I have a shoe company that that I'm uh founder of.
And so I have meetings uh with that on a on a regular basis. So I'm busy throughout the day. Yeah and like we just said, I I don't I never feel hungry, I never feel uh cravings, I never feel uh a mood swing or a shift in energy because of this metabolic flexibility and metabolic efficiency. And the efficiency is, and I want to make a note of this.
When people started doing keto years ago, and they would all they they all got their ketone monitors, their blood monitors, and they go, Oh my god, look at me, I'm four millimolar or five millimolar, and they're bragging about being in ketosis. What's interesting is when you develop metabolic flexibility, you don't you don't get that sort of ketosis because um when you're making ketones, the muscles don't need ketones. It's you're you become fat adapted first. So muscles.
The brain is the only thing that needs the ketones, and the brain does not have this wild energy swing throughout the day. The brain is cruising along, you know, at about five to six hundred calories a day needed to keep the brain going, and all of it can come from ketones. And so that winds up being a few grams of ketones an hour. And so over time, when you become metabolically flexible and you become good at this, you don't go into ketosis.
Ketosis, it's an osis, it's an excess of ketones in the blood, which is not necessarily a good thing. So you will find people who are ketoadapted over 10 years who, when they take a test, they're like um 0.4 millimolar and 0.5, I'm barely in ketosis. That's because your brain, your liver's only making enough ketones to feed the brain. It's not spilling it out, it's not wasting the ketones, spilling it out in the urine or the breath or the blood in that way.
Well, and the brain becomes the body becomes so efficient at using them. So the blood levels lower. That's what makes acetone in the breath may go up. Yeah. In the showing that you're using them. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So when you look at the the difference of blood and and breath, sometimes you see that people that have low ketones, I'm like, well, do the breath.
Oh my gosh, you know, it's so high. Yeah. Yeah. You're burning. But you but the point being, over time you you even a body it adjusts to become efficient. Yes. So you're not only metabolically flexible, you're metabolically efficient.
Yeah. That's an interesting concept. That's a that's amazing. I've noticed that. I, you know, even in myself, um, that you know, your ketones, my ketones tend to lower. I thought perhaps, hey, I'm just uh, you know, I'm I'm older now. I don't burn as much fat. I don't know. I, you know, I uh who knows? I don't even know why, but I thought it's an efficiency thing. Yeah. That's interesting. Wow, good, cool concept. All right, let's get to the shoes. Okay, show them. We got to show them the shoes.
Okay, second second person on one of my shows with the shoes.
This is uh let me see. I'll show the side profile. Okay, there we go. All right.
Well, okay, look at the little toes. Yep. All right.
Uh this company's called Paluva. Look, I've been a fan of uh minimalist footwear for a long time. I was an early adopter of the original five-toed shoe. Um, I hated regular shoes my whole life. I hated the running shoes I had to wear. I hated street shoes. I always wanted to go barefoot. Uh so um when the first concept of minimalist footwear came around in uh 2007, I had nothing but minimalist shoes in my closet. Um, I totally understand it. Feet want to feel the ground.
You want to feel the bottom of the ground. You want the toes to articulate, you want the big toe, all the toes to splay outwardly, but particularly you want the big toe to abduct away from the other toes. It is the primary force generator when you push off on a run or a walk or whatever. The fact that we would scrunch it over into um against the other metatarsals in a regular shoe is criminal. And we've done that in the name of fashion for you know 400 years or so. Among many other things.
Bunions. I mean, just scrunching it over like that also cuts off blood flow, which so you so you get plantar fasciosis, which gets mixed misdiagnosed as plantar fasciitis in many cases.
Um about uh four years ago, my son and I decided look, we're gonna really address this issue with with that I have with footwear and create a the optimal shoe that lets the foot do what the foot wants to do and needs to do, which is articulate, feel the ground, and then provide the information through that ground feel to the brain so that every time you wait the forward foot, the brain has all the information it needs on how to organize your unique kinetic chain.
In other words, how much to scrunch the arch, maybe it's over that rock, or how to articulate the toe, maybe to accommodate the stone you're stepping on, or the pothole or the divot. How much to roll the ankle out, because the ankle's supposed to roll out a little bit to accommodate that chip that tilt, that texture. Um, and in so doing, um unburden the knee of having to tweak sideways to accommodate that torsion. Um, how deeply to bend the knee.
The brain needs all this information from the bottoms of the feet. And what we do, we wear these, those are awesome, fancy looking pradas you got on there. But they're but they're not serving your your foot. Yeah. So we created this this company. It's called Paluva. We make a number of different brand uh brands.
Where do they go if they want to buy these things?
Uh Paluva.com. So that's a that's a like a house shoe. That's the Zen. P-E-L-U-V-A. Um this is the sport, this is the sport mesh trainer.
Okay, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here, not not because I have these product shoes on. They have no support. Yeah, no support. Why? So I I would argue, okay, like when I went and saw that tri uh African tribe, right? Um, they all had Nikes on. No, I'm kidding. Uh no, they had no shoes. I mean, honestly, right? I mean, um, some of them had some leather things on, I think, but I I but the kids definitely didn't have shoes. Uh, and yet they could run like crazy. But so they're on dirt.
Yes. But we're walking on cement and hard floors because this is what shoe people would say. I'm just playing devil's.
It's a great point. So shoe people would say you need cushion, you need art support, you need to be this, you need a heel elevated. You need by the way, you need none of that. Those are what are causing the problems. So elevating a heel, which I Almost every shoe does. Uh it's most of the heels in the running shoes and the in the even some of the fashionable shoes they're like an inch higher than the than the metatarsal.
That shortens the calf muscle, which puts a strain on the Achilles and on the plantar fascia area. Um the fact that they're thick, you can't feel the ground underneath. The fact that they have an arch, which many podiatrists to this day will say, Oh, but you need to support the arch because you have weak arches. Dude, you have weak arches because you don't use them. You don't go barefoot. If you went barefoot or wore minimalist shoes, your arches would get naturally get stronger.
So one of the things that this shoe does is it helps you strengthen the in what we call the intrinsic muscles of the feet. So now your feet are getting stronger with every step. Now, can you run in these? We we say don't run in these. Walk in these, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. I mean, I did a sprint workout.
Yeah, but you could sprint it. Totally.
I did a sprint workout the other day.
But running long distance would be.
Well, I mean, and by the way, if you know how to run, it's the best running shoe you'll you'll ever wear. But most people don't know how to run. And most people shouldn't be running. So it's only we didn't say this before, but most people should not be running. It's only runners who should be running. Ectomorphs with large lung capacity and and high pain tolerance. Those are the only people who should be, and they should only be competing.
You can describe me, but I hate running. Yeah, yeah, so I was a psychologist.
Yeah, so I would allow you to run, but I wouldn't say you know that's a good choice for you to do. So anyway, so that's the um that's the trainer. The blue one is the sport mesh trainer. This is a um, that's uh that's called a Miami loafer.
Yeah, this is nice. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I I'm not saying all any of them are nice, but it it is a style that's gonna have you in there.
Jokingly convince your wife.
Okay, yeah. So okay, folks, my wife is a shoe person, right? Okay, that's that's why I have nice shoes because of my wife. Um, but if I came home in these, yeah, she's she's gonna be like, you know, I'm I'm not getting sex. I mean, this is bad. Yeah, this could be this could be really bad.
I'm still that before, and I we're gonna have to have send you to a men's group or something, but uh and then this is our trail shoe. So that's that's this is a trail shoe.
So it's a real turnoff. Oh, wow. Okay, see, that that's that's nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I have to admit, these are the best of these I've ever seen. No, of course.
And and I'll be my buddy Ben Greenfield has them. He wears them all the time, and he's a huge fan. And as do, you know, tens of thousands of people.
My wife made fun of Ben.
Yeah.
Right, Ben? Isn't that true? Yeah, yeah. I mean, but yeah, these are amazing. Yeah, these look amazing. Oh, everybody's got bad feet. Yeah. Well, beyond the feet, the knees, the hips, everything. It's the kinetic.
It's the kinetic chain. Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't, again, if you don't address the problem that starts at the feet, then it just moves up the kinetic chain to the weakest link. And it could be ankles in some people, it could be knees in others, it could be low back, it could be neck pain in other people.
Yeah, absolutely. Where where can people find out more about you? I we know where to buy the shoes, but to dive deeper. Dive deeper on all these tough subjects, obviously.
So the shoes are peluva.com. On Instagram, we're wear, W-E-A-R-Ware Peluva. Um, I'm Mark Sisson Primal on Instagram. Um, I'm on Twitter. I'm on I've got Mark's Daily Apple still. Uh so uh I'm all over the place. Get the book, born to watch Primal Kitchen.
You know the product. You sold that company how many years ago?
Six and a half years ago now. Oh, it's been that long. A long time, yeah.
Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, yeah. I I just uh I rated ketchups on Instagram. Yours was healthy, of course. Um, but there was uh the the taste issue was the issue for my audience, I think. But I loved it, yeah. Yeah, but anyways, good stuff you made. Great, yeah, appreciate it. So this is what I have to say. What did I forget to ask you that I should have asked you that you want to talk about? Because we hit some really amazing topics here.
Oh my goodness. Um I I feel like we've we've hit it all. Yeah, yeah. I don't think nothing left for me to say.
All right. Words of advice for the audience. Uh, metabolic flexibility. Yeah. Get started right now. Yeah. You know, out of everything you've taught ever, when I heard I because I got what that was. I didn't use the term. I said, man, he is right on. He's right on about this too. Get the book, man. I can't wait to read it. So awesome. Thanks for being here, brother. My pleasure. Hey, thanks for listening another episode of the Dr. Pompa podcast from pain to purpose.
You heard the pain, and look at all the purpose, man. Changing the world. But what's God doing in your life with your pain? Always, always look for your purpose and your pain. See you on the next episode.