Max Lugavere || Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary

It's great to have Max Lugavier on the podcast. Max is a filmmaker, health and science journalist, and the author of the New York Times best selling book Genius Foods Become Smarter, happier, and more productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life, which is now published in eight languages around the globe. He's also the host of the number one iTunes health podcast, The Genius Life. Lukavier appears regally on The Doctor Oz Show, The Rachel Ratio, and The Doctors.

He has contributed to Medscape, Vice, Best Company, CNN, and The Daily Beast. Has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and in The Wall Street Journal. He's a sought after speaker and has given talks at South By Southwest, ted X, the New York Academy of Sciences,

the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, and many others. Max is excited to release his sophomore book, The Genius Life Heal your Mind, Strengthen your Body, and Become Extraordinary, a lifestyle guide to living happily and healthily with proven research based lifestyle tactics, and it is available now for pre order.

So great to have you on the show, Max Wilgovier. Hey, you know, as you were reading off you know, the my the accolades in my Bio, I realized that you're going to be speaking of the Biohacker Summit, are you not? I share, am. That's why I was almost going to be like a whoa hoo Biohacker Summit. Yes, that's awesome. Those are That's a great that's a great team over there. So yeah, yeah, thanks for having me. They're awesome. Shout out to Inca imminein Woo. That is awesome. I don't

know if you know her, she uh does great work there. Okay, cool, so let's let's dive into this new book. You know, well, I just want to ask why you decided to write this book was there so much overfull of material from the first one You're like, oh my gosh, there's so much more to have to more. I have to tell people. Yeah, it's such a good question. I mean, I did write Genius Foods, which was my first book to be comprehensive and thorough, but I mean, by and large, it's a

nutritional care manual for the human brain. So you know, I wrote it not knowing that I would ever get

the opportunity to write a second book. But in it, the focus really is on what we currently know about dementia risk mitigation, as well as this burgeoning field that you may have heard of called nutritional psychiatry, which really looks specifically at how food effects mood, and so anybody who interested in, you know, the dietarian lifestyle interventions that could potentially be used to uh, you know, treat symptoms of various types of dementia I mean, namely Alzheimer's disease

or in the risk reduction for Alzheimer's disease in other forms of dementia. I mean, it really is sort of a tone and it goes deep into ketogenic diets and why that's such a fascinating line of research. It talks about intermittent fasting and things like that. But lo and behold, what I discovered while writing the book and over the course of that journey is that nutrition really is just

one part of the story. That to live a sort of optimal what I call a genius life today really requires you to be cognizant of a myriad of aspects of how you how one lives. So nutrition is I

think a crucial part of that of that piece. But the Genius Life, it goes into nutrition with a sort of different uh uh different, with different sort of goals in mind and different a different sort of prescriptive approach which i'll i'll get into, but it also details what we know about how to you know, get the most efficient gains from your workouts in terms of cardio respiratory, fitness,

strength improvements, uh lean mass gain. It talks about the growing field of research that's being called circadian biology, so how our bodies and our brains respond to cues that let it know what time of day it is, and this is super important stuff. Talks about stress, mitigation, sleep, the relationship that we have with nature, and uh temperature.

So I think that thermo Thermal stress is another really important and crucial part of getting healthy today and feeling optimal, which is something that we kind of, you know, like, are are these ancient thermoregulatory systems that we have hardwire in us have basically become vestigial organs because of the fact that we all exist, you know, with chronic climate control,

you know, at our fingertips. So it goes into sort of all the different ways that you can sort of tweak your lifestyle to better support clarity, energy, attention, focus, better health and also uh in terms of the nutritional recommendations, and this sort of permeates the rest of the recommendations that I make in the book. It really goes deep into how to optimize your body composition and to lose weight and to shift your body composition to a healthier state.

So whereas the nutritional recommendations that I make in Genius Foods were really about giving your brain the nutrients that it's going to require to age healthily, what we now know is that any number of chronic diseases, whether it's cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, you know, these conditions we're

seeing sky rocket today because for the most part. They're tied to the fact that you know, we've just become so metabolically dysregulated due to our diets, and it makes recommendations in The Genius Life that are really all about giving you the most satiety for your buck, the highest level of nutrient density and your food, while also you know, helping with weight loss or specifically fat loss and the maintenance of lean mass, which becomes crucially important as we age.

So it's a different prescription. It's it's I think broader than just dementia prevention. I mean, that is certainly a big part of it, but it also you know, I mean, it's just going to get you healthier. So I guess like longevity and health span are are more of a focus in this book. It's a bit broader, I would say, excellent, And you're the type of person that that really does try to live what they preach. There's just so much you can't do, like one hundred percent of everything in

your book. You would be overwhelmed. Sometimes it's you need a break from hacking and optimizing. Yeah, yeah, no, you're totally right. I mean I do, I do walk the walk. I think that knowledge is power and that and that power becomes, you know, exponentially more useful when it's put

into practice. So what I like, I mean, what I offer readers of the book is the little simple things that you can do, and whether or not you do all of them or just a few of them, they're going to have big wins in terms of how you feel in the here and now, but then also in terms of health down the road. But I think that the low hanging fruit. I try to really kind of highlight what the low hanging fruit are for people. And so nutritionally, I mean, i'll just give you an example

or a handful of examples. One of the one of the nutritional recommendations that I make in The Genius Life that diverges from the recommendations that I made in Genius Foods is to prioritize protein. So we live in a time where experts are referring to energy toxicity being a

pervasive threat to our health and certainly our waistlines. The fact that you know, our diets have become saturated in ultra refined carbohydrates and added oils and you know, things like that, and our diets have become largely saturated with ultra processed foods. Sixty percent of the calories that we consume today come from packaged, processed convenience foods. And these

foods are usually deficient in protein. They're just carbs and fat essentially, and carbs in fat typify the standard American diet really. I mean, if you want to make any organism in a lab overweight, you feed it chow that is predominantly carbs and fat. It is really good at screwing up our metabolisms. It promotes hyperphagia, which is basically

the scientific term for overeating. And we can see this in our own behavior, you know, like take foods like pizza, ice cream, chips, whatever, I mean, any of the junk foods that are lining our supermarket aisles. They are usually combinations of both carbs and fat. Right, there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate and fat. While we do require for you know, essential fatty acids and things like that,

and fat is useful for satiety. I think protein is one of those things that you really should prioritize with every meal and even for your snacking. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. People who under consume protein tend to consume more carbs and fat. There's this idea called the protein leverage hypothesis that states that are or deposits that are hunger mechanisms are driven by our requirement for amino acids and ultimately nitrogen, and so at every meal, this

is a crucially important tool. And I think this is something that the fitness community has known for a long time, but the general population really has not, and there's all this conflicting There are all these conflicting statements that are made in the media, like you know, we're eating too much protein, we should cut down on our consumption of protein. But it's the most satiating macronutrient. So in terms of like you know, sniping down on hunger, you know, with ease,

it's crucially important. Protein is also the most important macronutrient in terms of growing and maintaining lean mass, which becomes increasingly difficult as we get older. Having larger and stronger muscles on your body is strongly inversely related to levels of inflammation insulin resistance, which is the hallmark of type two diabetes. So this is just like an amazing thing and it's something that I do at every meal. At every meal, I'm trying to get you know, as much

protein as I can. And contrary to popular belief, it's actually pretty difficult to over consume protein because it's so satiating. So you know, half of my plate will be either grass fed beef or chicken or wild fatty fish. I mean, these foods are so packed with other nutrients, but the protein I think is an important part of that of that equation. And then yeah, and then I love to load up with you know, produce, low starch fibers, veggies,

dark leafy greens, roasted vegetables and things like that. And that's like an amazing prescription. And then when I'm eating my food, it's crucially important as well to be present with it. So this is another thing that I think it's reflective of sort of the modern milieu where we're all sort of our faces are in our devices all the time. But research actually suggests that people who eat while they're distracted, whether it's with printed material or smartphones

or TV, actually consume fifteen percent higher calories. And so just being just putting away the phone and being more present with your food, it's a great tip to make sure that you're not over consuming calories and of course, calorie or energy excess underlies why we get fat. So the book, I think is like loaded with really simple things like that that are going to get people to think differently about their food, their surroundings, their environment. And yeah,

I'm pumped to see how people respond to it. Me too, Me too. I'm sure people responded prey darnwell to your first one, right, your freshman book. Yessay. Yeah, it's been. It's been amazing, Scott, because you know, I wrote it, not because I had this, you know, extensive background in academia. I wrote it because my mom, the most important person in my life, got sick at a young age and she ultimately passed about a year and a half ago,

and my condolences, thank you. A lot of people are ill, you know, I'm not alone in that, and my mom got ill at a very young age, and she was ravaged by disease. She had a form of dementia that lasted for seven eight years, and then in Labor Day of twenty eighteen, she was actually diagnosed with pancratic cancer, which you know, was just a horrific thing to witness. And I have no prior family history of either of

those two conditions. So in many ways, I think that my mom was the canary in the coal mine for

the Western way of life. And I you know, I have only hypotheses in terms of what you know, led to her demise, But but I think it's so crucially important to get this information out to people of all ages, especially younger people, and they're just they're just not getting great information today, you know, either they're not interested in it and they need a delivery person such as myself, somebody who they can relate to, or they're being fed

misinformation by the boatload. I mean, whether it's nutrition documentaries on Netflix or the media, which does a pretty terrible job of reporting on nutrition science. It's just it's kind of a sorry state of affairs. And I think in many ways my mother was you know, suffered from that sort of that echo chamber. You know, in her time, she didn't have the Internet. All the only information that she was able to glean was from you know, mainstream

media and things like that. And so I think people ought to know about health, they ought to under be able to understand science. Do you sho a good thing? Yeah, it's usually a good thing. I mean, you know this for sure. But so that's what I'm doing. I've been able to work with you know, researchers and scientists all around the globe and and you know, do interviews on my own podcast and do my own research and uh, and so yeah, I'm just very pleased that the first

book has done well. And but you know, it's nutrition and and how you know, longevity and health span and all this stuff. I mean, it's a continually evolving science and so there's always new stuff to learn and to think about and to reframe and yeah, like I was shocked to know how in writing The Genius Life, one of the chapters is all about environmental toxins that many

of us are exposed to on a daily basis. Uh, compounds like B P A or thalates or pfast chemicals or flame retardants, and uh, you know, I just think it's shocking the degree to which we, you know, our environment has become so mutated and we've just sort of inherited this environment with no roadmap, no operator's manual, and and I think it's no surprise that so many of

us are unwell. So I try to get people to open their eyes in a way to become more cognizant of their surroundings, whether it's light, whether it's you know, environmental toxins, whether it's food, whether it's you know, they're even their furniture. So uh so, yeah, it's a kind of what I call living the genius life. And wait, what furniture is going to make me a genius? Well, actually, there was a really cool study that came out and

I detail it in the book. It came out a few years ago and I wrote about it for Psychology Today, which is a you know, I have that blog actually thanks to you, and are you still writing it? No, I'm not, I'm not at this point. But but actually it was one of the first articles that I wrote for them, and it was about this study that found that when people were sitting at wobbly furniture, they tend

to project feelings of emotional instability. So it was it was a really cool crossover study where they took people and they sat them at tables and in the first arm the table was you know, stable on solid footing, and in the second arm of the study it was a wobbly table. And actually it wasn't I don't think it was a crossover study that wouldn't make any sense. It was. It was a randomized control trial, and and people were randomized either to the stable or the wobbly setting.

And what they found when they when they showed these people that were sitting at these tables photos of celebrity couples, they found that people were more likely to project feelings of emotional instability, meaning they were like, they were more likely to vote that the couples were not going to last,

sort of painting them in a negative light. And they also when asked about the things that they value, they tend to value when they were sitting at the wabbly furniture more traits that were related to higher levels of instability, so like spontaneity and things like that, and then at the stable furniture, at the state at the stable table, they valued, you know, more traits that were more related to stability, so like consistency and like long term happiness

and things like that. So it was a very cool, very cool study, and I think it just underscores basically how sensitive we can be to our surroundings, whether or not we're conscious of it, from the standpoint of psychology, and and you know this is certainly true from from a biochemical standpoint, from a health standpoint, and and yeah, so I thought it was cool. I detailed it in the book as well. Good it's good to know. Yeah doesn't it doesn't it kind of drive you crazy when

you're at a rest on the tables. Well, I actually get like it drives me nuts. It really does. I didn't need a study to tell me that it drives me nuts. I feel like that. There are a lot of studies that come out like that, you know, But I think it's always good to have data, you know, that's what these scientists tell me. No I do. Hi, everyone, just wanted to take a quick break and talk about my new book that's coming out April seventh. It's called

Transcend The New Science of Self Actualization. Really excited to present this book to you all. It represents the culmination of many, many years of hard work and synthesis. What I've been what I've done in this book is I've taken Maslow's classic hierarchy of Needs and I've revised it for the twenty first century, trying to bring back humanistic psychology.

I think that the field of humanistics cology in the fifties and sixties really got a lot right about humanity and the creative possibilities of humans as well as the humanitarian and spiritual possibilities. Really hoping this book can present a vision of humanity that transcends us all and helps us connect deeper with each other, but also help us

reach our greatest potential individually and collectively. So if you want to check out this book, you can actually pre order it right now in Amazon as well as other there's independent bookstores I think you can pre order it from and then on April seventh. Starting April seventh, that should be in bookstores. A lot of people in wondering throughout the years how they can support me and the

Psychology podcast, and here's the time. You know, you're always welcome to contribute money to the podcast, help support it. If you're a longtime listener or even short time listener, you want to not only support the podcast, but dive deeper into a lot of the concepts and idea is we talk about constantly on this show. This is a great way to do that by buying this book. So please check the book out and let me know what you think. Look, you know you mentioned a lot of

topics that your book covers. Let's go, let's try to go depth into some of these. Let's try to be organized here and go buy different categories. So let's start

by detoxing. How we can kind of detox effectively detox on our own if we want to without because you have ways of doing it without using supplements or tease, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the biggest charades in my industry, the health and wellness industry, that people are spending so much money they're being marketed these detox teas which are ultimately just like laxatives for the most part. But your body is so elegant and so capable of

detoxing on its own. I like to talk about the three p's of healthy detoxification, and that is, pee, poop, and perspire. So as long as you're doing all of those three things on a regular basis, and you'd be surprised how many people are not actually really yeah, I mean I hear from you know, people all the time, mostly females actually, who say that they don't you know, they go to the bathroom every other day, or you know,

they struggle with constipation and things like that. I mean, it's you know, I don't have any data to back that up. You know, the statement that it's a primarily problem that women contend with, but I think many people do. I think many people deal with digestive issues. And so you want to make sure that you're going to the bathroom on a daily basis. I mean, can you go to the other extreme being peeing too much? Yeah? Yeah, I mean you lose electrolyzed aspire. Yeah, if you're well,

you want to make sure that you're replacing electrolytes. You lose sodium when you perspire and when you pee frequently, like if you drink, you know, a lot of Coffee'll notice that you end up going to the bathroom a lot. You spill sodium that way, So that's actually a lot that's good. Tea's good. I talk about talk about I talk about the value of sodium in the book. Sodium is another, you know, one of these contentious compounds in the food environment. Sodium is actually a nutrient. People need

it for good health. It's a macro mineral. We need a relatively high amount of it to feel good and to feel energetic, and our needs for sodium increase when we do things that act as a diuretic. When we are on low carb diets, we need more sodium to feel good. And sodium is also the primary electrolyte that we lose when we sweat, and so yeah, this is something to become to become conscious of. But yeah, so any of those either all of those three things are

important means of detoxifying. So, you know, we release toxins that our liver has essentially neutralized through the gut, through you know, our bile acids that are released into the digestive tract, and when we eat dietary fiber, it helps to prevent some of those toxins from getting resorbed. This is one of the reasons why, or one of the mechanisms by which dietary fiber helps to reduce cholesterol. Actually because it helps reduce the resorption of bile acids, which

are made of you know, L D L cholesterol. So we release toxins into the gut which we then poop out. We also have got bacteria that can reduce the absorption the intestinal uptake of certain heavy metals like cadmium. So eating a diet that is rich in uh produce you know, colorful veggies, dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables incredibly important, you know, getting that getting that fiber, feeding the bacteria that live

in the large intestine crucially important. Also, certain veggies, cruciferous veget vegetables primarily also give our bodies sort of the raw materials for our own detox chemicals like glutathione. So when you eat sulfur containing veggies like broccoli, which you know you can easily smell that broccoli contains sulfur. If you've ever been in an office where somebody's microwaved broccoli, it just doesn't smell very good. But we need sulfur

to create gluethione, which is our body's master detoxifier. These vegetables also stimulate our bodies on detox pathways, which is important. So that's one of the dietary recommendations that I make, aside from protein, is to be consuming you know, copious veggies, and if you're not a vegetable consumer, starts slow. But then you know, I get a lot of people that don't actually enjoy vegetables, and I like to remind people that you can make them taste good, you know, use

salt season them. Well, that's majorly important, So that's crucial. And then when it comes to ping, you know, essentially the solution to pollution is dilution. So just making sure that you're drinking fluids, you know, whether it's water or tea, or produce which contain a significant amount of water, or broths like bone broth I'm a huge fan of. And then perspiration, So when we sweat, we excrete certain heavy metals,

plasticizing compounds like BPA thalates. You can actually look up they're called blood, sweat and urine studies, and what we see is that you actually release a significant proportion of certain of these compounds through your sweat, and I think this is one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why exercise is so beneficial from the standpoint of health, and also why studies out of Finland are now showing that sauna use is inversely associated with any number of maladies.

So sweating regularly super super important, super important, Yeah, super important. So those three things, really making sure that you're you know, your digestion is on point, that you're consuming a nutrient dense diet, and also keeping in mind that what you know that the potential toxicity for any one of these chemicals, for the most part, is going to relate to the

overall nutrition status of the organism. So if you're eating healthily, if you're exercising, if you're in a positive nutrient status, which you know, unfortunately ninety percent of adults today are deficient and at least one essential nutrient. But if you do find yourself in a you know, nutritionally replete, then you're basically protecting yourself. And today, you know, we're exposed to these chemicals on a regular basis. In fact, many of them we've been exposed to for the entirety of

our lives. So I think it's just important to become sort of cognizant where they are and to get into a little bit of that. I mean, I think it's important to minimize our use of plastic I think the most treacherous of these compounds are what are called endocrine disruptors. They're pervasive, so BPA I think consumers are now aware of.

But the moment consumers become aware of any of these chemicals, it becomes like a game of chemical whack a mole where manufacturers will then place, you know, the chemical in question with something that is chemically related probably has a lot less research surrounding it, but it's something that consumers are not yet aware of. So BPA is now being replaced with BPS, and there's no reason to believe that BPS is going to be any safer than BPA. So

it's important to minimize your use of plastic. Drink out of glass, store your food and glass or stainless steel. Get rid of all the plastic tupperware in your house. Minimize your consumption of beverages in plastic because you don't know where uh, you know, those bottles had been sitting before they were ended up in your supermarket. They could have been in the you know, in a truck's hot cargo bed, and heat catalyzes the leeching of these plastic

compounds into our into our beverages, and so much more. Yeah, it was recently discovered that plastic tea bags, which they usually use in high end tees, release billions of nanoparticles into the water, which we then ingest. So making sure that if you're drinking tea, you're drinking you know that your tea comes in a paper tea bag. Peppermint is great,

It's great for digestion. I love it, so I go into kind of like and I do my best not to fear monger, but really just to kind of, you know, let my readers know about the most common of these sort of toxins in their environment and to just kind of have a more skeptical, you know, lens through which they view them. I think that's important. I think it's

not something that anybody teaches us. And so because my mom, she was homebound for so long, I just became very kind of, you know, critical of the compounds that she was, you know, exposed to on a near regular basis, whether it was the you know, the cost of cleaning products that her home aids would use to sterilize her home, or the compounds that she'd be exposed to in the hospital,

or I mean, you name it. I think a lot of us kind of just go through life ignorant to these compounds, and then we wonder, when we wonder, why we end up sick. So I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think that it's important to just to become more aware and so appreciate that. So I was really interested in reading your book. I learned a lot of things I didn't know. One thing I learned about health plants and their potential to purify the

air in a way, Is that right? Yeah, yeah, So I actually talk about the dangers of air pollution, and in part you know it this is air pollution is bad whether it's outside. You know, in the air, we're exposed to what's called fine particulate matter, which is particularly dangerous to the brain and the cardiovascular system. But our homes can be just as polluted, if not an order

of magnitude more polluted and outside air. And that's because the air in our homes we have dust that is basically sloughed off from furniture, from our plastic devices, or even the off gasing of our furniture which contained compounds like formaldehyde, and so home er can be just as polluted. And yeah, and so plants have a significant capacity to clean the air of various volatile organic compounds like formaldehyde, and and so I think it's worth having plants in

your house for sure. In the book, I detail the ten most effective and least high maintenance plants that you can have in your house that are going to be that are going to Yeah, well, because that's important too. You know, we don't want them to require lots of work to maintain. But there was a great book that I cite in my book, actually by a NASA research scientist named Bill Wolverton, and the book was called how

to Grow Fresh Air. Amazing title. It's a book that nobody read, but I bought it because I'm a nerd for this stuff. And so I cite the book in my book and I detail the ten the top ten plants that are going to be most most effective at cleaning your air and why this is so important, So even more important than buying an air purifier machine. An air purifier can be very effective. So I actually I have an air purifier. I have a dys in. Yeah,

those are great. Those are great. Air purifiers are are excellent. So is wet dusting. So if you're dusting, you know, in your house, you want to make sure that you're using a damp cloth or a damp paper towel, and then you throw that paper towel out when you're done, because if you're dry dusting, all you're doing is redistributing the dust which contains you know, microplastics and things like that. But yeah, an air purifier is great. So is having plants.

So is wet dusting. Yeah, so this is all super you know, I mean, yeah, I'm a big fan of the of the air purifier. I also have a reverse osmosis water filter, which I think is really important drinking clean water. You don't know about the status of the pipes that your water from your tap is running through.

And while tapwater may contain some important minerals, tap waters all around the United States also contain plastic related compounds and non stick compounds like pfast chemicals, and other heavy metals like lead and the like. So rather than play guessing games with my water, I use a reverse osmosis water filter, which is the best kind of filter. It's going to basically remove everything from your water. And then what I do is I add back in Trace minerals.

Have you add that back in? You can buy? You can buy like Trace. I think there's literally called you drop a drop in. Yeah, I see, Yeah, if you go to Amazon. I have no financial affiliate with any Trace mineral manufacturer, but you can. I think you just search Trace minerals and what I what I use is in a little blue bottle and I just put a few drops into my into my into the water tank. Yeah, that's really cool. I drink like zero water. I don't

know if you've you know that brand it does zero water. Yeah, I have. I have the tester, the TDS tester, where you can actually make sure that zero pollutants are in there. Well but everything. Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you, but a TDS tester, because I have one of those as well, it doesn't let you know that there are zero pollutants in it. It It only lets you know that there are zero pollutants with the ability to

conduct electricity in your water. So it'll let you know about the mineral status of your water, but it won't detect things like you know, like pfo A or BPA or pharmaceuticals that end up in your water, so it's actually not super effective. Unfortunately, the best thing that you do is just run your water through reversusmos as water filter. So can we talk about how how I can look better? Yeah? The next category. You look great, Scott, thank you. I've

been hitting the gym. I've been been lifting weights lately. You were doing like the Keto diet. The last time I saw you, I did keto and I then stopped doing keto. It was it made it was making irritable. But I I've just gone to eating real foods, you know, as much as I posses. So here's the thing. I'm not a keto zealot, So I think that the keto diet can be very useful for certain applications. So I'm a I'm a fan of the ketto diet in certain contexts.

And I certainly know, you know, all of the science related to keto and how it can you know, affect brain health, and and I think it's crucial to be aware of that. However, when it comes to weight loss, the keto diet is just one road to losing weight. It's not the only road. And ultimately, you know, the finding a diet that you're able to adhere to is the most important determinant of whether or not your diet is successful, you know, making sure that you can actually

like adhere to it. And so that's why in my book, the recommendation that I make is to simply focus on protein because it's so satiating. So for anybody listening to this, just trying to get more protein and eating it first in the meal. Most people when they do that, when they shift to a higher protein diet, they'll usually experience spontaneous weight loss because they just tend to eat less carbs and fat, and that protein is more likely to go and support the growth or maintenance of lean of

lean mass. They're gonna you know, eat fewer calories. And then the other recommendation that I make is to stay away from ultra processed foods. I mean, this is actually a major recommendation. But ultra processed foods, which you know, as I mentioned, are usually just carbs and fat, you know, process permutations of wheat, corn and rice and unhealthy oils. These types of foods actually drive over consumption. So by sticking to a predominantly whole foods or minimally processed diet,

most people are going to again lose weight spontaneously. This was actually shown in a great trial, it's a crossover trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, where they found that people who were given an ultra they were able to eat is an ad libitum food intake consisting of primarily ultra processed foods. They consumed an average of about five hundred more calories every single day when they were given this diet and they were told to eat

to satiety. When given a whole foods diet, so a diet that consisted predominantly of foods that were minimally processed, they ate to satiety again, but they ended up actually coming in under by about three hundred calories their maintenance calorie requirement for the day, so they ended up being

able to lose weight. And so you know, again today, just to remind people, people are consuming sixty percent of their calories from these ultra processed foods, just excess energy that nobody needs from breads and rolls and wraps and hamburger buns and pizza dough and well, I mean I have Celiac disease, so all that stuff is bad. Yeah, all that stuff is bad. But I mean they even have gluten free alternatives now, which are just as unhealthy.

But trying to avoid those foods, trying to avoid ultra processed foods, and just sticking to like, if you're an omnivore, which I am, meat and veggies, that's it, you know, and prioritizing both of those, both of those foods. I mean, yeah, again, it's going to make weight loss so much easier. And I'm not saying that you have to be perfect an eighty twenty rule is great. I certainly overindulge sometimes, and in fact, even planned indulgences, what some people would call

like a cheat meal. Planned indulgences could be very useful for dietary adherents. But for the most part, if you're able to, you know, buy and large adhere to diet that is higher in protein, you know you're going to eat less carbs and fat and then predominantly whole foods. I mean, you're gonna You're just gonna get the most bang for your buck. I was interviewing a wonderful physician for my podcast. His name is David Kessler. He was actually on the team at the FDA who created the

Nutrition Facts label in this country. We had a great conversation where we were talking about the fact that, you know, the processing of food is essentially it's predigestion, and you can be sure that you're you're absorbing one hundred percent of the calories that you consume when they're in the form of an ultra processed food, even peanut butter or almond butter, which is a processed food, one hundred percent

of those calories are being absorbed by you. On the other hand, if you're eating whole foods like whole nuts, for example, a significant portion, a significant portion of the calories that are that you're consuming, even if you were to look at the label and do the math and add up your serving sizes and multiply that by the number of calories per serving, actually remain undigested through your

digestive tract. You're just you're the enzymes don't even have the time to go in there and break apart, you know, whether it's the proteins or the digestion of fats or whatever. And they've done this study they found actually there was a great study that the USDA just funded where they found it. It was kind of a gross study, but

needed to be done. They looked at the amount of calories that people consumed in the form of whole nuts, and then they looked at the amount of calorie residue that persisted in their stool, so the amount of calories in these subjects stool. And they found that when they consumed whole nuts, they actually a significant more so than had previously been thought number of calories ended up passing

through them undigested. But if you're taking if you're consuming the same number of calories from like almond butter, for example, which has been pre chewed, predigested essentially and processed. You're absorbing one hundred percent of those calories, so you get kind of a free pass when you eat whole foods. They're thermically expensive, they they take, they require calories to be digested, so it just becomes a lot easier to maintain. I think a healthy weight when you stick to those

basic principles. Awesome. Let's go to the gym for a second, Like, how can I make my gym sessions five times more efficient? It's a good question, Scott, who doesn't want to have a more efficient workout? Right In the book, I talk about high intensity interval training, which researchers have found can be just as effective at boosting one's VO two max, which is an important measure of how efficiently your cells use oxygen to generate energy atp the energetic currency of cells.

And what they find is that about a ten minute high intensity interval session can impart the same improvement in subjects in their VO two max as about forty five minutes of steady state cardio, which is I think in a insight because I personally don't. I'm not a huge fan of you know, cardio like running, getting on the treadmill and doing long bouts of cardio, and so high intensity interval training I think is an amazing chance to have workouts that are more efficient, make us fitter faster.

And the reason why they work is that they basically create a momentary energy crisis in our cells. So when we perform high intensity bouts of exercise, like pushing ourselves to our max for ten to twenty to thirty seconds and then stopping or you know, reducing the intensity and then doing another repetition, you're basically telling yourselves that, you know, you if they can't keep up, you're going to die.

And so what they do is they keep up, they adapt, and they create new mitochondria, which is the energetic h you know, it's sort of like the powerhouse of cells, like the power plant inside each cell. And so high intensity interval training is is a crucial exercise modality. Aerobic exercise also beneficial. I also talk a lot about resistance training. I think it's super important for anybody, no matter what age to I mean, even body weight is fine, you know,

it's a form of resistance training. But to gain strength and to grow muscle, very important. And then I also talk about another form of physical activity, which is actually called non exercise physical activity, which is a huge sink in terms of energy. It is a great way to dissipate excess energy. And what that implies that is not non exercise physical activity. Yeah, that is just sitting on your couch and being sedentary unfortunately. Yeah, but just doing

anything anything other than that is beneficial. So whether that's chasing your cat around the house, or doing laundry, chores, going shopping, taking a walk, dancing, having sex, whenever that opportunity arises. These are these non exercise physical activities an important predictor of you know, health span, lifespan, better brain health, great for the cardiovascular system, important for metabolic health. So

just stay moving, that's important. That's awesome, awesome advice. Yeah, So maybe we can talk about how one can gain some health in the sense of mental health. So how can people boost their brain, like their memory, as well as reduce anxiety and depression. I take nootropics every now and then, which gives me some boosts. But are there more natural ways that you suggest? Yeah, Well, I'm curious

what neuotropics. Do you take what did qualitia qualia? Mind? Yeah, I'm not a big I mean, personally, I'm not a fan of those neuotropic supplements because I feel like they're not creating energy from thin air. You know. Usually it's sort of like the case with caffeine. I like to say that caffeine, you know, it's not creating energy from

thin air, it's borrowing it from later. So as much as I like my coffee and my caffeine, I try to moderate my consumption of it because sometimes it gives me that, you know, that late afternoon crash where I just want to, like, you know, lay on my floor and you know, wait for it to pass. But uh, but yeah, going back to mental health, there's a lot in the Genius Life. I mean, I do talk about how important exercise is, and we now have a strong

body of evidence to say that. You know, if you're if you're whether it's a gloomy mood, or you've got major depression, or you have anxiety, you know, which is different than depression. Uh, getting off your button. Exercising is medicine. It's a form of medicine for the brain. Whether or not that's aerobic exercise or resistance training. There's been a number of meta analysis published over the past year that are showing us that it really is a very powerful modality.

And you know, they've done head to head comparisons of exercise with commonly prescribed drugs to treat depression, and they find that exercise is just as effective in many cases as you know, drugs like SSRIs. I think that that drugs are useful with major depression there there's no doubt about that. But I the recommendation that I make is before getting on drugs, at least try exercise. Try cleaning up your diet. You know, diet can have a major impact on the way that we feel, you know, people

who are depressed. The depression and dietary link has been known for some time, but now finally we have literature coming out suggesting that when we clean up our diets, our moods improve to a significant degree. They're doing a lot of this research out of the Food and Mood Center at Deacon University in Australia. Really great stuff being

done there. I also talk about the value of thermoregulation for moods, so cold showers or even saunas all can be great in terms of you know, boosting mood, reducing feelings of depression and uh and yeah. And then sleep, I mean sleep is a big part of it as well. You know, sleep is important for emotional regulation. That's crucial. I mean if you're if you've ever been underslept, I

mean I've been. I I saw this firsthand when I was underslept because my work at the time, I was not getting very much sleep and I went through a breakup. The breakup on days that I was underslept was exponentially more difficult to have to like contend with emotionally when I was underslept. So making sure that you're optimizing for your for good quality sleep uh super important. And uh and yeah, I mean, I you know, the book goes into into detail a lot greater detail on many of

these topics. But needless to say, I mean, our moods are not you know, we do have some agency when it comes to our moods. I think a lot of the time we tend to feel that anxiety and depression is just happening to us. But I think that with the right knowledge, with the right tools in your toolkit, whenever that bout comes on which you know, as a human being living today, I think you know, none of

us are immune to or impervious to. You know, the tools that I offer in The Genius Life are going to give people really great agency too then you know, self treat. And if you can't self treat, then I'm not opposed to going to you know, more intensive therapies. But mental health is important and you know you deserve

to feel good. Thanks Matxel, Scott Barry Kaufman, thank you s b K, s B Kay the psychologists formally known as Scott Brek, So thank you for you know, covering and targeting kind of the whole the whole system there, the whole human as you do in this book. And thanks for being on the Psychology podcast today. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean one of the things about you know what with my mom what I at the end of her life, she was on eight different pharmaceutical medications.

And the problem with these medicines is that they're really designed to target a single chemical or biological pathway. The beauty of doing the things that I recommend in The Genius Life is that they work the entirety of the system as you just as you just you know, alluded to, you know, like whether it's exercise or taking a cold shower or sitting in a sauna, it's not just one

pathway being activated. All of these modalities each independently and then all together they're going to make you more vigorous as an organism. More you know, you're going to become an organism with just more rigor and more strength and more robustness. And so yeah, it's important to take a whole body approach, I think today, because the whole body

is being attacked from every conceivable angle. And to stand any chance of living a genius life, I think that you have to be comprehensive, and you know, the place to start is with knowledge. So thanks for having me. Always a pleasure, and I look forward to hosting you again on my podcast, also called the Genius Life. I can't wait. And yeah, thank you for dropping that knowledge on our show today. All the best of the book, my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode

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