#11: Julie Gibson Clark- $150/Day Routine Beats Millionaires in the Rejuvenation Olympics

 In Episode #11 of Youthful Aging Secrets, Julie Gibson Clark shares her remarkable journey in the Rejuvenation Olympics, revealing how she outpaced wealthy biohackers with a $150-a-day regimen. Discover her approach to anti-aging, heavy metal detox, and nutrition that challenges mainstream health norms. From her $150/day anti-aging hacks to her unique insights on sugar, veganism, and hormone replacement therapy, Julie offers practical, budget-friendly tips to live younger, longer. Join us as we delve into Julie’s thoughts on healthspan vs. lifespan, the impact of environment on habits, and how she turned the tables on costly wellness routines with simple, actionable changes anyone can apply. 

Connect With Julie Gibson Clark: 
Website: https://www.juliegibsonclark.com/
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Twitter/X: http://www.x.com/julsg50
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/u/julsgc/s/wLJVFZtpvy

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Chapters

• 0:05 Meet Julie Gibson Clark: Biohacker Extraordinaire
• 2:30 Julie’s Journey to Beating Bryan Johnson in the Rejuvenation Olympics
• 7:48 How Diet and Stress Shape Health and Longevity
• 14:13 The Shocking Discovery of Heavy Metal Poisoning
• 15:43 The Power of Detox: Julie’s Nutritional Approach
• 38:42 Hormone Replacement Therapy and Navigating Menopause
• 45:04 The Impact of Alcohol on Aging and Health
• 46:23 Why Moderation Matters in a Balanced Diet
• 48:27 Julie’s Challenges with Certain Foods and Ingredients
• 49:38 The Benefits of Prioritizing Vegetables and Protein
• 53:48 Meal Planning for Health: Julie’s Daily Structure
• 1:09:48 Exercise Routines that Boost Longevity
• 1:21:10 Supplements for Health and Longevity Insights
• 1:26:04 Inside Julie’s Personal Supplementation Routine
• 1:27:23 Morning and Evening Routines for Optimal Health
• 1:27:58 Sleep and Relaxation Techniques to Support Health
• 1:31:43 Understanding Gut Health and the Microbiome
• 1:42:50 How Emotions Impact Physical Health
• 2:04:28 Julie’s Advice for Living a Healthier Lifestyle
• 2:08:44 Closing Thoughts: Julie Gibson Clark on Health and Aging

Transcript

 Welcome to youthful aging secrets. I'm your host, Ricardo Vasquez. And today's guest is Julie Gibson Clark. She's a biohacker who redefines what it means to age well. She's ranked as high as number two in the rejuvenation Olympics, which is an international leaderboard that tracks the biological aging pace participants based on DNA methylation tests.

She achieved it without the multi million dollar regiments of well known biohackers like Brian Johnson and Dave Asprey. Now while others spend enormous sums of money on cutting edge interventions, Julie optimizes her health on a budget of under 150 a month, and today she's sharing her secrets. We cover the simple but powerful habits that have slowed her aging pace to just 65 days for every 100, her approach to exercise, mindset, and the foods she eats and avoids, the affordable supplements she swears by,  how she uses DNA tests to track and improve her biological age without breaking the bank, And much more.

If you're curious to learn what Julie does to live longer and healthier without spending a fortune, this episode is for you. I really enjoyed this interview and I hope you do too.  Now before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly share something with you, which is my free five health hacks newsletter.

If you're someone who wants to live as healthy as possible for as long as possible, but don't always have the time to listen to every podcast episode or keep up with the latest health and longevity research. And this newsletter is for you  each week, I send you a quick, actionable newsletter, featuring an inspiring quote, a summary of the latest podcast episodes, a breakdown of a health topic backed by the latest research.

A few of my favorite discoveries and recommendations for that week. And a question to get you thinking deeper. It's designed to be read in the time it takes you to enjoy your morning coffee. If you're interested, please head over to youthful aging secrets. com word slash subscribe the droid for free and let's get it.

  Hi. Hi, Julie. Okay. So welcome to Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast. Thank you, Julie Clark, for being here. And uh, yeah, we can get started right away. So I have a million and one questions to ask you, but, uh, first of all, I'll ask you. Yeah, go ahead. I just want to say thank you for having me and I'm honored and thrilled to speak with you and all of your, your viewers.

So, uh, this is really exciting. Thank you. Awesome. You're welcome. Okay. Okay. So  why don't we start from the beginning? Okay. First of all, you came to my attention, um, because of the, I believe it's the rejuvenation Olympics. Is that what the name of it is? Yeah. Yeah. So you kind of came up and I'm in the whole longevity space myself, not involved directly, but I kind of follow it and I like to know what's going on in the field.

And so  you, you came out and so that's, that's where we are today. So I just, maybe just tell me a little bit about your background and. How it all started. As far as the rejuvenation Olympics, that, um, was something where I was part of a study for a company called Novos. And as part of that study,  they used a, a test from True Diagnostic called, um, I don't know if it's called True Age, but it's now it's the Dunedin PACE test.

And we were using that test to look at what was the impact of the supplement that they had given me to see if it had any impact on my pace of aging. And sure enough, it did. And somewhere in the middle, I think maybe six months into it, the Rejuvenation Olympics was created. And so they asked me,  I think at six months, do you want to, do you want to upload your scores to this?

And sure, let's, let's do it. Um, not thinking, you know, I, I looked at the Rejuvenation Olympics leaderboard. It looked pretty interesting. They're looking at people's different pace of aging and you could see what their first pace was. What maybe their second or third was, and you could kind of see this percent improvement.

And so those people that have like these big improvements, you could also see what protocol they were using. So it was really interesting, like, oh, what's this? What's that? So I was really intrigued. And I just really didn't think much of it. And then I, see I had my like one year, a little over a year, um, we posted that score too, of 65.

I didn't think much of it until journalists reached out to me and said, you know, you, you, you, you.  Do you know, like, like what are you doing? Cause your pace of aging is, is slower than this person spending 2 million a year. And at the time I, you know, obviously I know who Brian Johnson is now, but at the time I didn't know, and I didn't know what he was doing.

I just kind of briefly looked at blueprint, but I had no idea, you know, the costs involved and clearly I was not doing any of that. So it just kind of became a, a new story  from there. So that's how you probably learned about me because otherwise I would just be in my, my little world doing all my little health. 

Things that I've been doing for billions of years.  Yeah, definitely through that news outlet thing that popped. I don't even remember the exact one. Also, I follow Ben Greenfield. Yeah. And so I know you were, you were on his podcast, which I would imagine is, I mean, I'm a big fan of his. So that's really cool.

It was really neat to be on that podcast because my brother was a triathlete, my younger brother. And um, I knew of Brent, Ben Greenfield through my younger brother from Ben's triathlete days. Like that's how, like, you know, years back. Um, so it was really like, Whoa, this is full circle. Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, I would imagine it's an honor to be on Ben Greenfield's podcast.

So I want to ask you, how old are you right now? I am 55 and three quarters.  I'll be 56 in October. I've never been, I've never been shy about my age. You know, I've always been, like, I mean, I remember when people say, like,  I can remember, like, somebody reaching out to me on Facebook, this was back in my 40s, you know, accidentally asking or naming how old I was, and I was like, no, I'm happy to tell you, I'm, you know, I'm 40, like,  I feel like the older you get, the more wise you get, and we need to, we really need to embrace that, that side of it.

I know, you know, I mean, I've got all the more wobbly bits now than I did when I was younger and all of that, but  the wisdom, I don't know, there's just something about getting older and wiser that is so,  so much more interesting to me than, than looking pretty. Yeah, well, you look great and I understand with age comes experiences and not necessarily wisdom, but Yeah, oh, I got some photos.

This is true. My teenage son. I don't know. You know what? Let me tell you something. I have a daughter. She's 15 and she's a very wise in many ways. Of course, she's still a teenager and others. Yeah, there are some things that she said to me that blow me away. Yeah. So I do believe some people have more wisdom than others, perhaps,  I don't know where it comes from, but maybe some parts of them are more developed than others. 

But yeah, that's a very old soul, like very old soul. Sometimes he'll say things like, well, of course mom, you know, like, because, and it's usually related to some obscure piece of history that he has somehow memorized.  So Cool. Is this something that you've always been into, or you kind of alluded to that, you've been through your whole fitness and health thing.

So could you start, like, where does that start? Maybe start from the beginning as a child, perhaps into sports or Yeah, yeah. So this goes way, way back when I was, I started on swim team somewhere around age six or seven. I was a very hyper kid and my mom, thank God, got me involved in swimming. My sister is eight years older than me.

So she was actually the coach of my swim team. I would swim, um, and do. You know, most kids were doing one hour of practice a day. Well, it's Houston. It's hot  I might as well just be in the pool if I've got to be there with my sister all day And so I would I would do three hours of practice and then I'd get out go get a slurpee And meanwhile, and I'm practicing with like the older kids, you know to the point that the end after my slurpee I'd get back in the pool and they would tie my feet together to make sure I do butterfly properly and all this stuff And so then race day would come and I was pretty decent, you know, and so my dad was going to my swim meets with me and he was like, okay, you know, you have a race coming up in 30 minutes.

We need to give you this amount of, you know, it was always like, not the whole Snickers bar. I can always remember I couldn't have the whole, I could have like half the Snickers bar. We're going to give you a glycogen load. And I,  I love this. This is very cool. But it was impressed on me. Because when I would swim those races, I could really feel a difference, you know, in that I was definitely into the sprints.

I was definitely into butterfly. Those races felt very different than, you know, just kind of your average practice days. And so I knew, like, really early, there's something about what you eat impacts the way you perform. Fast forward, you know, I mean, obviously, I grew up, a teenager, do all the stupid teenage things.

But, Um, somewhere around, um, age 30, I went through a very, very stressful time. I was already on an antidepressant and I was  married, divorced, moved a bunch of times. I was told I had two lumps in my left breast. I, um, there's something more in there, but anyway, and then a man tried to kidnap me at knife point and I was like so stressed and I had this acid reflux that was just, it was just awful.

And I went to see the doctor again and she said, well, here, You know, here's a,  I can't, some antacid, prescription antacid. You'll probably just have to take this the rest of your life.  I just like, my intuition just said, I don't know, like, seems like if it's in my esophagus, like maybe it's something I'm eating, you know, I didn't realize that it was related to the stress at the time, but I just kept thinking,  there's gotta be another way to solve this. 

I also had another memory recently. I remember being in the grocery store at around the same time, around the same age, and looking at the food, I think I was going to buy like mac and cheese, I don't know, like your average, like some stupid  packaged meal. And it just like hit me like, this isn't food. This is not going to nourish, like there's no food in this food.

This is calories and flavor. And I just remember thinking, and  like looking around the grocery store with this aha moment, you know. So these things are all kind of happening around age 30. Um, and  so I just said, you know, I'm going to go see a naturopath. I was in Portland, Oregon. There were a lot of naturopathic doctors.

I was hearing about this through friends that were, you know, we're seeing them and having great success. And so I went to see this, um,  fantastic doctor and she said, yeah, let's, you know, for the acid reflux, I wasn't really thinking about the antidepressant, but she said, you know, let's try getting off wheat and dairy.

That's usually, you know, a big culprit of this stuff. And sure enough, within two weeks, all the acid reflux was gone. I mean, now mind you, the stress was also easing, you know, down as well, but it was still, you know, stressful. And so when I went back in the two weeks it was gone, I went for a two week checkup, she said, well, if you're interested in getting off the antidepressant, you know, I could probably help you with that too.

And I'm not  in any way speaking negatively about antidepressants. I definitely need them, needed it at that time. Um, I know people that, you know, I,  I think they're very appropriate, um, at certain times in your life. And so for me, it was very appropriate, but the, you know, like I said, that stress was dying down.

I was no longer in need of that. And um, so she gave me this, you know, nutraceutical protocol, which I won't get into because I don't want people jumping off their,  their medication and thinking they can solve. You really have to work with the doctor and you should be supervised. At any rate, um, And that was really successful and I just, like, I felt better than I had in years and years.

And I just thought, wow, like there is something to this.  Watching what you eat, nutraceuticals can be as effective as medication. Maybe I should try that always first  before I jump to medication. Because Transcribed Um, you know, as we all know when we're watching the commercials on TV, or maybe you don't have those commercials in Canada, but we do, you know, for medication, then they give you all the potential side effects in, you know, 20 seconds or less, it's like, Oh, so, um, so I just kind of vowed to always try nutraceuticals and, and watching what I eat, um, then, and I was also starting to work out.

I luckily, again, being a swimmer, I swim all the way through high school. We had to weight train as part of that. So I was always interested in, in that. Um, and I  created a world where I like going to the gym. I had this whole, I don't know, I'll, I'll have to write about it with people at some point, but anyway, I did create a space where I really liked it and I hadn't been going.

So I started going back to the gym and it's just, it was wonderful. I started losing weight naturally. I started feeling wonderful. So, fast forward now, I'm 40 years old, I have my son, who's about 2 years old, and my hair is falling out. I have no energy, I feel like this ghost of a human,  and I'm like, what's, like, I'm healthy, you know?

I'm not your average person. I was on a vegan diet. I was like, I thought I was doing everything right, and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. So, again, I go and see, um, what is, like, a functional medicine doctor, who's, she was an M. D. Uh, because a friend had said, you should just go see if you have eye heavy metals that can cause your hair to fall out.

And sure enough, my heavy metals were very, very high. And we did a, um, what do I think it was like 12 weeks of chelation therapy. And that was like  literally mind changing. I think it's somewhere around week six, I'm driving home from, from the, like that sixth round of  chelation therapy. And I just was like,  like, it was like the clouds opened up.

And my peripheral vision like opened, I didn't realize that I was kind of walking around like this and this low grade depression I had been living with  was just gone. It was like, wow, I like,  I could never figure out why I always felt just a little bit of depression and, you know, exercise and all of those things seem to combat it.

But this, uh, I think the heavy metals, I don't know what they were doing, but anyway, it was causing, clearly it was the, the root cause of some of that. And, um, so I just  felt amazing and we got to like week 12 and it was like, okay, you know, all your metals are in the safe, they're all in safe zones,  but there was so many.

And I just kept thinking, is there a chelative effect, but you can't, you can only do so much chelation. It's really not, you know, it's not, it's kind of hard on your body. So we stopped and I just became obsessed with researching how to naturally detoxify my body. Because that was also something that came up in our work together was that.

You know, maybe you just have genetics that don't, you know, have that MTHFR gene. Maybe you just don't detoxify naturally as well as other people. So although you probably, you know, had different reasons to be exposed to so many heavy metals, but I probably also just didn't detoxify them like the average person.

So, that's when I kind of really got into detoxification.  taking,  uh, care of my health. I don't say take control of my health, but, you know, really started researching these things. Um,  and, and from there, you know, the internet is now like a big deal, you know, from the time I was 40. Now you can find people online like Russell Glaylock was somebody, Dr.

Mercola, Richard Klinger, these guys were all talking about detoxification. And, um, so it was fault, you know, testing out their different protocols. And I just kind of got into this idea of, you know,  researching something and trying it out and seeing if it worked for me. Um, so that was part of it. And also, um, backing up during that, um, the chelation therapy, she was looking at, you know, that she was looking at all of my different vitamins and mineral levels as we're doing this.

And she's just kind of going. You know, this vegan diet is not working for you. You're not, you're not getting enough protein. I can, she just showed me here, look here, look here, look here. You need this, you need that. And I, so I switched my diet in the middle of that and you could just see, see everything.

So again, it was just like, what you eat really makes a difference in, you know, your performance, how your cells are working together. Um, it, it, it makes a big difference. And so that.  It came clear to me. So I just kept following that little path in the internet as it is, you know, and what was I think at that time kind of just alternative health, you know, and, um, trying the, all the different things in that world.

And then eventually I found my way to, um, Jason Thong. He was talking about fasting and then Walter Longo, who talks about the fasting mimicking diet. and how that impacts longevity. And that was the first time I heard about longevity. So we're talking like 2016 and then somewhere, I think it was probably 2017, I heard about David Sinclair and his book and I was just like blown away, you know, like this is so cool.

And I just, I couldn't get enough of it. And then when I heard about Sinalytics, which are all about detoxifying the zombie cells, I'm like,  Um, I need that. That's, you know, what's hanging out in my body from all the heavy metals. I don't know. So let's detoxify those.  Research that. And then, uh, researching, um, some of those ingredients, uh, Fisetin, I, everyone seems to say that word differently, but that's how I'm going to say it for now, Fisetin.

And found this company called Novos. And then that's when I went to order it, they asked if I wanted to be part of a step.  Interesting. I, I didn't want to interrupt. I have so many questions. Okay. What? As, as you're talking, I'm, I'm just jotting down notes so I don't interrupt you. So just so you know, in case you're wondering what I'm doing. 

Okay. So from the beginning, how do they determine your rate of aging? So like, I know there's a test, right? So I'll let you. Yeah. It's a, it's a blood test. And you were going to ask me about science that  nobody should ever take medical advice from me. Just want you to know. So like. I was a structural engineer and I had to take bonehead chemistry for structural engineers, and I had to take it, I think, three times just to get a C.

So nobody should ever listen to me. I will never understand this stuff like a doctor does. I just, you know, luckily have found doctors that can explain things in simplistic terms, so  better to go to true diagnostic and, and get a, a better explanation. But it sounds like it's testing your DNA methylation and.

Um, what I hear about really, I mean, for me personally, not be  like, okay, when I look at like the Dunedin pace, so they, they've followed, I think it's like a thousand people out of New Zealand over a course of life. And I think there might even be still people living and then looking at, you know, at what point did they pass away or are they still alive?

And then all these different blood markers. And putting all that information into some sort of, uh,  predictable model, and that's, that's how I understand that. What I really care about to me is, am I able to take that number, whatever, you know, whatever that number means, and reduce,  reduce it. And it's the difference that matters.

I care about more than knowing exactly how that whole thing works, because  quite frankly, it's just  not where my brain, brain goes.  I got you.  So ultimately you just want to know what's this number and how can I improve it and then test it over time and see how I improve it. Well, I certainly, I mean, it's like, I understand it a little better than I'm speaking about it, but I just, I can't speak eloquently in any way about the Dunedin Pace Study, but I did read it and it really makes good sense in how they've created this model.

It's just not something I know well enough to speak on in simplistic terms or, yeah.  So if you could live forever, would you want to? No, absolutely not. No. No. No, that's it. You know, there's that whole like yin and yang, darkness and light, and I, like, I do this because I value life so much because I lost my brother, and I know that, like, there's, like, I, I, I imagine, you know, he's in the spirit world, whatever we want to believe about what that is after you die, but,  Like, wherever he is, or wherever the soul goes, or, or doesn't go, whether maybe he's just warm food, I don't know, but, you know, we have this life that is meant to be lived and enjoyed, and, you know, the colors and the textures and the tastes, dancing, and  in music, and.

All those things are just so, like,  I just, like, I love this life, I've had a good life, and I want it, the party, to continue, uh, for as long as I possibly can, but at the same time, I don't think it would be enjoyable if I knew that I was going to live forever, you know? That doesn't, it kind of takes the sweetness out of it, so it's just not, that's not my goal.

I love that,  yeah. I'm sorry about your brother.  It's a tough one. Thirty eight. He was a triathlete and he was hit by a car. Yeah. It was not, uh, not a That's some, uh, it's one of those things, it's like, ain't that some bullshit? Yeah. Yeah, I think that Like, you gotta speak of irony in that. It's like  That's why I don't put a number Like, he got hit by a car, it's like, what the f Hmm.

Yeah. This whole thing is because my father passed and  I've always been into health and fitness and all of that, but this really changed my priorities.  And so  These are the conversations I want to have. This is what I want my life to be about. And, you know, I kind of stepped away from a, a career path that was, I don't know where this is going to go, but I'm much more than critical,  but I don't appreciate it.

I don't care because this is what matters to me. And like you said, I want the deaths to continue as well. I do. I do agree with the contrast, right? If we know, if you know that it's never going to end. It's almost like it loses it, it's juice, right? Mm hmm. It's a human condition, too, like, you know, I watch my dad, the way he says it is like,  when you know you've got more days behind you than ahead of you, you know, life kind of changes.

And I think I'm right at that midpoint right now, you know, I probably, it's unknown whether I have more days ahead of me than behind me, but I'm, you know, right in that midpoint. Right. And. That's the human condition and I want to experience all of life, you know, all that life has to offer. And that's part of it is knowing that, you know, I'm going to get to that last decade.

I just, my goal here is to, um, one, enjoy the, the, like the vitality and the mobility and the strength for as long as I can, you know, for that, you know, this idea is like You can just have this health span and then, okay, maybe the last two years of your life, you know, or maybe even the last year, you know, it's like, okay, boom, over and not like, you know, my mom has Parkinson's right now.

Like, you know, she's looking at years of. In mobility, I just, if I can avoid that in any way, if I could do anything right now to  curb dementia, Alzheimer's, any of those things, I'm going to do it. And then if, if that happens to me, at least I know I've done everything within my power to avoid that. And that that's just, you know, this must be my fate and  that's my life lesson.

I don't know, you know, I don't know. Who knows what the future holds, but I'm going to do my best to make sure that those are.  Yeah. Uh, sorry about your mom. My father passed away from complications of Parkinson's and well,  that's a tough one. Yeah. It's tough.  Yeah. And, and, you know, for me, it's tough. a lot of people close to me that died.

Even I had a friend that died really young with like heart issues, but you know, he didn't take care of himself.  And my father,  I don't think he lived an unhealthy lifestyle, actually. I think he may have done some things that are some things that he didn't do that he could have done. That's a whole other story.

But just like you, I tried to look at it like, okay, how can I. Be as healthy as I can for as long as I can. So I'm gonna be as healthy as possible for as long as possible. And do everything I can do. And that's, like you say, if the rest is in God's hands, you know, I believe in,  but I want to be able to say I did everything I can do.

And so these conversations are just as much for me as it is for whoever I share with, you know, cause I walk away with things, I, I've changed a lot of things just from conversation that,  or at least try, you know,  plus this inspires me too. These conversations are inspiring because you can see what's possible.

Yes. Yes.  I think out of all this thing, nutrition is probably the, the most debated aspect of all of this. I think most people can agree on exercise and, and rest and the importance of rest and stress and fat. But when it comes to nutrition and supplementation, man, that's some people, it's almost like, it's like religion, politics, and nutrition, like, Yeah, carnivores  and vegans are like democrats and republicans.

Oh god, yeah, it's definitely a landmine of issues, but, and you know, I just think it's because everybody, I think one or all different bodies. And I also think we're all different bodies in different times, like there was a time, I mean, being in vegan those first two weeks, man, they felt, it felt great. Um, and so I wouldn't ever like take that away from somebody.

I just, so like sometimes there's a time and a place for a specific diet. And maybe there's a time and a place for the carnivore diet. There's, you know, but does it mean that's the way you should eat the rest of your life? I think you have to decide for yourself how you feel. And I just think we all have such unique biochemistries.

We react to stress in different ways. That impacts, you know, what, like how we eat impacts that. I just, I think everybody's so unique that I just don't,  if anything, I hope we can crack the code on, like,  Different biologies need different diets, and I, I, we clearly have not cracked that code, but I also have a theory that they keep,  they, I, I don't know who they are, but you know, I do feel like there is this, um,  maybe not, it's not like a planned, it's not intentional, but these, I think these food companies make a lot of money by keeping nutrition very confusing.

You say. And I'm not trying to piss anybody off here, but I just feel like there's a lot of money to be made in the food and health space. And I just think, I don't think anybody is trying to like intentionally hurt people or anything like that. Um, but I don't think there's any incentive to really solve the problem.

There's more incentive to just keep it kind of murky and confusing. Um,  you know, people then will go on this diet and that diet, and they need these different packaged foods and that packaged food, and  I don't know, I just, at one point, I just really started listening to my intuition and, and what I needed, you know, after.

So after the. So I was on that vegan diet and then, you know, found out about the heavy metal poisoning and this is right around the time my brother died. And I remember thinking, okay, so like, he's gone.  I can't even imagine if that were me and like, I didn't have, because I was a gluten free vegan too, so like, I didn't have bread.

You know, I wouldn't have had all that. Ice cream? Like, I don't know. Like, I want to, like, that has to be part of my plan. Like, because that is something that brings a lot of pleasure to me. I don't eat ice cream every day.  I really enjoy it. And I really enjoy baking. I love baked goods. I love bread. I just made some homemade bread today.

You know, those things, I just, I was like, okay, we're gonna have to figure this out because I'm not going to go on the, like,  10 days to lose 20 pounds for the bikini bod kind of diet anymore. Like this, I got to figure this out for the rest of my life and this has got to work,  you know, in a way that supports me, um, in my health and I can have the energy to, that I need to, to do what I need to do.

And I just really kind of started listening to myself and how I felt, you know, after eating different kinds of food.  Yeah, I love that. I used to be a little bit extreme in my opinions, not in all subjects, but when it came to diet and stuff, I've gone through my phases where I was a little bit too strict and I've totally chilled out now. 

My belief now is the Pareto principle, which is like the 80 20 rule. And I think you're,  you know what I mean? Like you, you gotta also factor in the stress of maintaining something that's so rigid. It's probably not good for you. At least for me. If I'm stressing out, cause I'm at, at one point I was like, Oh, if it's not organic, then whatever.

And it's like, now I'm like, I don't even know if I believe organic really matters anymore. There's not enough data for me to say, I don't know. This could just be a scam. I don't know. It's like, the point is I try not to stress out about it because the stress in and of itself. It's probably worse than the thing that you're eating that one time that you're not going to eat every day for months on end.

Like it's, you know, you have to evaluate. So I, I, I believe in balance  and the ice cream, have, have some chips. It's going to be fine. You're going to be okay. The only, the other, there's like only one instance where I think that it's important to kind of go a hundred percent, which is if you have, if you have an addiction, you know, and so if you're talking about obviously an addiction to alcohol, there's no 80, 20 Yeah.

Um, and I do believe there was a time in my life that I was addicted to sugar. It was very much an addiction and, and I, I, I had made it my New Year's resolution, not, I was going to like, I'm not going to have sugar this whole year. Well, I didn't make the whole year, but I did make it all the way to August.

And I, there, something shifted. I don't know if it was my microbiome, but whatever, I no longer have those, like, breathings after every meal. I don't. And so I do think there's a couple of places where it's important, again, for a specific, not like your lifetime, and again, maybe if you're an alcoholic, okay, that's a lifetime commitment.

But with diet, I think the only, maybe there's other addictive.  stuff. I just don't eat them. But, you know, like for sure sugar was something that I definitely had an addiction to. And I think I had to be a hundred percent. I just knew it wasn't going to be my whole life, you know? And when I had that, like I had a piece of cake in like August, it was like, Oh, this is like the best thing.

But I only needed like a very little bit, you know? I was like, Oh, okay. That's enough. I'm good. Which was never.  Yeah, sugar is one of those things, for me, speaking for me personally, when I eat it often, I want it more.  And when I stop eating it, after those initial cravings come up, because they do come up, for like, sweets. 

Once I get past that, at this point, maybe a couple of days, if I eat sweets on a weekend, a lot of stuff, like Christmas, for my, my, my culture, we have a lot of pastries and stuff.  So I'll, I'll go in, you know what I mean? It's Christmas, I'm not gonna be like, I'm gonna enjoy myself, so I'm going off. And,  And I know like two, three days after that, I'm thinking about it, but as soon as that passes, if enough time passes, two, three weeks, I no longer crave it.

And when I do eat it again, it, it kind of tastes overwhelmingly sweet to the point where it's like, ah, this is like, this is too much. Like my body wants water immediately. So, so now it's easy. Like, it's easy for me to go months without. Junk food because I just I don't really have the cravings. I don't have to like fight it So I think part of it is also habits, right?

And I'm a big believer in  I don't know if you read the book atomic habits  and you know, yeah Oh, yeah, I get his his week weekly emails and all of that. Oh, yeah big big James clear fan Yeah, he's awesome. And even I like tiny habits as well  Which is BJ fog. Yeah, he seems a behavioral scientist Um, he has a lab and yeah, a lot of the stuff he got came from that book too.

I would imagine some of the research, cause he's an actual behavioral scientist and he runs a lab at Stanford. So a lot of the data that comes from behavior science comes from his lab or, you know, a lot of the information. Anyways, long story short, they talk about how you set up your environment. 

Determines a lot of the times how you're going to behave. So obviously for me, when family comes over, everybody brings a bunch of crap, right?  And I'm very much like, take it, take it, take it when you leave, take it. Because if there's four bags of chips there, I know  it's a long day. I'm home. I'm hungry. I'm hired.

So my willpower is like zapped for the day. Right. Cause willpower like paints over, over the course of the day. They've shown that now you don't have willpower either that peak all day long. It, it, it's like a fuel tank, you know, it wears out. You need to sleep and  I'll eat the whole bag of chips. I'm an asshole like that.

Like I will eat the whole chair.  Oh, I totally get it. Potato chips are like my kryptonite, man. Oh my god, that wasn't Take it, take it, you know, because I, I know the power of environment. It's, it's there. So anyways, I try to do, I adjust my environment in a way that's conducive to the behavior I want. Like, I put my gym bag set up the night before.

Oh my God, me too. I set up my smoothie stuff for the morning. I like having a smoothie in the morning, whatever here and there.  But so I set these things up. So when I'm there, I don't really have to think about it. And then it over time, it's like habitual, right? So a lot of people don't,  don't you, they do that without even realizing it, but maybe in a negative way.

So they have like the chips right on the counter. The first thing you see is this junk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You have to set it up or, or the remote control instead of a book, you know, like it's, and, you know, I'm not judging anybody. It's just, it's just the way your environment is structured, I think makes a huge impact on how you behave.

And then ultimately,  we look at what the results are getting over time. It's just instilled habit. I think the important thing is if you want to make a change. And you're consistently not, you know, there's a goal that you've been really wanting and not reaching or a standard you're trying to set, you know, like I'm not going to eat  junk food anymore.

Well,  if the junk food's still in the house, then clearly it is a problem for you. So you gotta, you know, you gotta get it out, which is, is, it can be hard. I'd imagine for families, I mean, I, I have a teenage son, he, thank God, doesn't like a lot of junk food. So it would be really, you know, and he's really trying to  work on his health as well, which has been really wonderful to see.

So he, he, at one point, I think we were buying like a lot of potato chips and one point he said, Oh, mom, don't buy these. And it was, I was like, Oh, thank God, because that was same thing. You know, I would go to, I only have like a few, I just really like get these salt cravings, you know, and I was like, I'll just have a few and I got good about that.

But I, so I have this rule, speaking of the holidays. I am, I don't want to say strict, but I'm very, you know, regimented the whole,  the whole year. Um, I relax a little on the weekends, but I'm still pretty, you know, keep things pretty clean. But the last two weeks of the year, I just let everything go. And I just like, I eat what I want.

I exercise if I want, if I don't want it, I don't, I have like no commitments, no standards, nothing. And I just let it all go. And usually somewhere around like day after Christmas, I'm like,  Like, I'm ready to get back at it, but I'm like, so I kind of like slowly start exercising and eating a little better, but by New Year's, I'm like, I can't wait to just like hit the ground running.

I'm and I remember why I do all I do, but it makes it easier to get back to that because I've set it. You know, and we can get into like my daily schedule or all that, but like, I have this like schedule that I kind of just stick to, um, again, an 80 20 kind of thing, but, you know, for the most part, this is like the backbone of like, okay, this is how I'm going to structure my day, and I'd say, again, 80 percent of the time I So, um, yeah.

I get it all in. Just sometimes things come up, you know, life has been kind of busy lately and my son is home from the summer, so it messes everything up, but I just know like as soon as it's time to get back to that, oh, this is where I would be in my day. This is why I stay. I will do, you know, so, yeah, so, um, with this topic, I want to switch gears a little bit on the topic of menopause, I don't know if this is inappropriate, but have you gone through or are you going?

Oh yeah. Yeah. That ship sailed very early. Um, and I, you know,  like looking back, I think it probably had something to do with the heavy metals. Cause I, it definitely,  I was perimenopausal as soon as I had my son, I had him at 38  um, right after I had him, I became perimenopausal. And then. In the process of the heavy metal cleanup, we had some issues.

So again, people who are looking at, they, they think they have heavy metals and they want to do chelation therapy, do not do this on your own. You know, I thank God I had a doctor watching out for me, but, um, definitely  put my warm up. Like some, there was some complications with one of the rounds of the chelation and it caused, um, My, um,  hormones to kind of spin out of control and, you know, we got everything back to where it was, but  it was just maybe a few years after that.

I started menopause. I think I've been in, I think I've been in menopause for  anything since 20, 20, 13, 24. So almost about 10 years now, which is, I think kind of young, 46 seems to me kind of young.  Okay. And did you, did you notice a difference since you, you know, made the transition? Um, different changes since then to now, all the different things that you've been incorporating.

Have you noticed a difference in your hormones?  Yeah. Yeah.  Oh, I don't, you know, I mean, haven't changed. Um, like, so I'm on hormone replacement therapy and I, like, that was a godsend,  like I will never go off if I don't have to, but you know, uh, like sure there'll be time that I have to, um, at any rate. Right.

So when I'm doing everything that's super healthy and I'm not. You know, eat like I'm sure like sugar must mess with your insulin and insulin is a hormone. So then that, you know, these hormones all work together. So when I'm not loading my body full of sugar, messing with insulin, it definitely helps me feel a little better.

But  yeah, menopause just  used to be like, Oh, if I skipped dinner, I'd wake up the next morning and be like, you know, five pounds lighter or whatever. And now it's like. I mean, it's taken me, I've been trying to lose like four pounds, you know, it's, it's just finally, I think I've figured it out. I've been walking every day and, um, I finally lost two of those four pounds and I'm hoping the next two are to come up, but it takes, you know, it takes a month to lose that kind of weight that, that as, you know, pre menopause. 

So that, that's been the, the toughest thing and the, you know, kind of the, you know, a bit around the middle. Luckily, I have had a dexacanth scan, so I know that it's not visceral fat, and in fact, I've lost quite a bit of visceral fat, so that was a really nice thing to see on those scans, but you still get it around the middle, even, like, the subcutaneous fat is still around the middle more so than anywhere else, so it's just, it's not as fun, but whatever.

It is, it is what it is. And are you on any other Uh, I should say pharmaceutical interventions or pharmaceutical drugs. For example, hormone replacement therapy is not, I don't, I don't know if that's classified as a drug.  Well, I mean, you have to, it has to be prescribed for sure. Yeah. So let's hold it under the, the, the umbrella of a pharmaceutical, um, are there anything else?

I know we'll get into the supplementation. I think you mentioned the other ones, but are you on any other things besides that? 

I interviewed another lady and she had also, uh, Rhiannon Coles, she's, she's already, uh, you can find her on one of the podcasts, but she, um, she talked about, she went on bio with the article of hormones. Um, and she said it changed her life in a week. Yeah. Yeah. It's like amazing. Like, she's like, it was night and day her life changed as far as how hard it hit her.

And she's, you know, she looks great. She's into fitness and same thing, you know, she was really living that lifestyle, but it kind of kicked her ass, the menopause. And as soon as she went on that, she said it changed her life. And the same is reported with men, um, you know, men who have low testosterone and, you know, it seems to decline as you into your mid thirties and under, whatever, depending on if you're getting enough sleep and all these things.

But for men that have issues with low testosterone and they go on TRT, they say like, dude, I'm like a superhero, right?  It's like you get, you're so like, well, I don't know about testosterone and its impact. I'm on, I am on testosterone. But, um, in just a, you know, very small amount, but estrogen, when you don't have enough estrogen, it's like you have no energy.

I mean, you just, like, I would just, I would be like driving and I'd have to pull over. I was like, I think I just need to take a 10 minute nap. People are like, it's not safe for me to be driving right now. You know, you just get, and you just, I would just get so tired and I would sleep at night, you know, or then.

Or it would be that I wouldn't sleep all night, you know, or if you get woken up in the middle of the night, you can't get back to sleep. And it's just like everything was just so like, like I have a health just felt like eggshells, you know, it's just like, Oh, like everything. And I, this, I was,  I think I was like herium menopausal.

And this doctor said, let's try the hormone replacement therapy. Now I was in Dubai at the time I wasn't here in America. And I'm very grateful that I was because, you know, his standard of care was like, no, we don't wait until. This, that and the other to give you the hormones, like we're going to give you hormones now.

So then by the time I had moved back, it's like, well, I'm on the hormones. So like you have to keep giving them to me. So it was great. It was really great. Um, I didn't have to like wait until there was like absolute complete full menopause, you know? So that was, that was brilliant. Right. Um, okay. And, and so for, what do you, okay, so let me, let me.

Backtrack here. What do you eat and what do you not eat? Let's start with what you don't eat first. What I don't. Yeah. What, what are some things you stay away from as far as food  and even beverage? Food. I was going to say, so I don't drink alcohol anymore and it's just an absolute tragedy because I do enjoy the flavor of alcohol and those kinds of things, but I just, I stopped drinking. 

I think, um, stopped drinking  because my son was kind of, you know, looking at alcohol and I'm thinking, well, that's kind of a tragedy. crappy of me to say don't drink, but then I'm drinking, you know, so I was like, okay, I'm just not going to drink, you know, like we're just not going to drink in this house.

And so I stopped drinking and I, I've learned since then that there's like a  digestive enzyme, there's an enzyme you have to digest alcohol that you lose as you got older. And I think that that, like, I just lost whatever, because even now, like I, I would, I will have like the occasional glass of champagne if I have that early enough in the evening.

That doesn't seem to bother me, but even like, I was at my friend's house, it was daytime, I had a seltzer thinking up, that will bother me. It's like, the whole night, it's like, the most awful sleep. It's just, it's just awful. So I was like, this is so painful, it is not worth  this beverage that, okay, it tastes good, but I never would have, was going to drink tons to get drunk anyway.

So it's like, okay, I can just give it up. And so that's one thing that's an absolute no. Everything else I eat in moderation. Um, I, I just, I don't eat a lot of sugar anymore. Again, it just doesn't feel good to me. Um, I will kind of, you know, definitely over the holidays, I kind of, like you, it's like, you know, I start eating a little bit and then it's like, Oh, I'll have a little bit more, you know?

So then before I know it, I'm eating quite a bit. Um, and those few days in New Year's where I'm not eating anymore, I kind of do have to go through a little bit of the detox. And then I just quickly get back to eating. You know, how I feel now, which is like, I'm very, very satisfied with some berries, you know, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and all the fruits that are out now, too.

I love all the stone fruits. Peaches are like my absolute  favorite, favorite fruit of all time. So, I eat everything. I do subscribe to the whole everything in moderation, even moderation kind of thing, which is, I think Julia Child said that. Um, so yeah, I mean, every once in a while, like I think this Friday night, I'm not going out and I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to see my parents the next day. I'm going to bake. I was going to, I'm going to do some baking, you know, so I'll have a little, like a small thing, but I try to like, if I want to bake or anything, I'll bake it for somebody or it'll be for my son. And so I'm not really, if I have a serving of it, but.

Um, I eat bread. I just, I make my own sourdough bread, uh, which I think is healthier. I don't eat a lot of it as much as, I don't eat as much as I want to eat. That's for sure. That's for sure, like, a kryptonite. Same thing, like, potato chips. I love them, but they just are not allowed in my house anymore. Like, and if I get any, I'd get a small little bag, and That's it.

'cause I could just go to town peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with batan chips, like bologna sandwiches. Like I just, I love kid food, so I,  yeah, like pizza. So that's what I don't What,  oh, I don't, you know what? I don't like Nutella. I'm probably gonna lose a lot of people with that one. No, no. Like,  yeah, it's so, it's just so sweet.

I've made my own and I love that. 'cause I don't, I don't make it so sweet. But also, so I don't eat chocolate and not because I don't think it's.  Good for you. I think chocolate is very good for you, but for my body, it's not so good.  In fact, I, I thought I'm going to have some, you know, I got some for my son and I thought, Oh, I'm just going to have a few bites.

He loves dark chocolate. You know, I had like a few squares of dark chocolate and sure enough, like  maybe like a day, two days later, I'm like higher on my wrist, like my wrists to start hurting and then my knees start hurting, ankles, like my joints. It's like.  I don't know what it is, and it's just an absolute tragedy.

That and coffee. And it's like, same thing. I love the flavor of coffee, but I can't, like, even the decaf, I can't, there's something, and I had taken a food test actually recently, and that, no, I don't give a lot of credence to those food tests, but those two, coffee and chocolate came up, and I was like, here, I definitely, I feel that for sure.

So, I, I drink coffee only occasionally, you know, every so often.  Um, because I just, but I know I'm going to pay for it. Like my joints are going to hurt. So those are the things I don't have. What makes it easy not to eat all the bad stuff is I do, so I prioritize a pound of vegetables a day. Usually about half of that is greens, maybe four to six hours, four to eight ounces is greens.

And then in a hundred. I'm learning I might be needing even more protein, 100, 130 grams of protein.  Between those two things, I am so full that I am not interested in messing around with all the other stuff. So as long as, like during the week, my Monday through Friday, you know, I'm making sure I get whatever I do, I get those things.

It's just, it's just kind of hard to want  anything else if you're eating that. I think I've learned somewhere, I haven't really researched it, but there's some kind of ozempic like effect, you know, the vegetables are doing something, GLP 1 agonists or something like that.  So I don't know if that's what it is, but I definitely in full and in fact, many days, it's hard for me to get that 100 grams of protein.

I'd say it's like by the end of the day, I'm just like, I need 20 more grams of protein. Like, okay. You know, like I'll drink this shake, but I'm not, if you tried protein shakes because yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. I do a lot, quite a bit. It's it to be careful. They say now, like you said, where, where they come from, et cetera, in the, in the process. 

In and of itself, just pure whey protein, or you can do a vegan source as well, but pure whey protein can be very good for you, apparently.  I think whey protein is very good for you. I used to drink whey protein all the time, and now all of a sudden it is causing some gut issues for me. So, in fact, I'm just, like, I've been able to, um, be good on the goat milk yogurt.

And so I'm going to try goat milk whey. And I, I'm hopeful that that's going to be, because I've been doing the vegan proteins, but you know, it's not a complete protein. And I just, quite frankly, I love the taste of the, the whey protein. So I wish I could have that, but it just, it's just causing some gut issues that are not pleasant right now. 

So. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay.  Some people don't drink whey protein because it gives them gas and it's like, it's like dog farts, you know, but yeah, yeah, no, listen, they just kind of buy the stops everything. Everything just sort of stops and I'm like, okay, this is not even people when they walk. No, just like every, well, no, no.

I just like, I get it. And so I'm just like, I'm eating a pound of vegetables. I should not be like, I mean, like, That's a lot of fiber, you know, and my, my smoothies have the flax and all this. It's like, I should have, there's no reason for me to be backed up, you know, so anyways, I just thought, okay, well,  get off the whey protein and, and do this vegan protein.

I will say, um, I, I have learned, um, and people research this for yourself again, don't take any advice from me. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I did, I do remember learning very early on like, um, soy protein. Um, this was, again, this is like 20 years ago, so maybe they've changed their practices, but they were hammering the soybeans out on aluminum trays, you know, to turn them into power for the different powders.

And so there was quite a bit of aluminum in soy protein or like a big article in New York Times about this. And again, this is  20, 30 years ago back when I was, you know, um, like, yeah, so yeah, it was probably about 25 years ago. So hopefully those practices have changed, but it just kind of, That was one of those things that made me weary  of like, Oh, okay, I should probably always look at, you know, not only the food and its source, but then how is it processed before it gets to me to make sure.

I mean like, even like, I don't know if you know this, but like candy, a lot of candy has heavy metal poisoning because of the, the high fructose corn syrup on, you know, through the machines, I think picks up a bit of the metals.  Anyway. Fun, fun facts. I, I don't, I don't eat much candy anymore. I, I never really went and stayed on candy, but. 

I know, I know I have like a sugar thing when I start, like, Oh, I'm gonna get a candy bar. It's like, ooh, okay, you are having a problem now. That's what I know.  So, so typically, how do you, how do you plan for your meals? Do you, do you pre plan in advance, or how do you decide what you're going to eat?  Yeah. So I kind of have a structure to my day.

It's, you know,  my first meal is somewhere around,  well, actually I'm changing this a little bit because I've just learned, you know, like you should have, protein should be your first meal of the day. So I was just doing  this green, I had this powdered green drink, you know, it was like powdered greens. And then I've kind of gotten into this beet kvass and it's like powder greens and lemon, like juice of a lemon and this beet kvass and a little bit of water.

Um, I'm trying to think what else is in there. A little bit of moringa.  Like backed off moringa for a while and now I just kind of do like a teaspoon of that. I add naka to that too, because that's really good in menopause. Um, and  I've now been adding 20 grams of collagen protein to that so that my first, you know, whatever I'm first ingesting, that's kind of what I have after the gym. 

Before I come up to work because I have that first thing and then somewhere so that's like around 8 30 9 O'clock in the morning then about 10. I go down and I usually make a smoothie It's one of three things. It's either a smoothie. It's yogurt or all winter long I make this greens latte and I don't know if you want to provide links for people but the recipe is from this brilliant book and it's I just can't say enough great things about it.

This bone broth that you make, it's like bone broth and greens and the bone broth has all these spices in it. It's just, it's like the most delicious thing I've ever had and I like, I love it. So I drink that all winter long, but now it's a hundred degrees here and I really don't want anything hot. So I just do smoothies and it's just berries and greens and bone broth and protein powder.

Um, that's kind of that. Uh, and then. So that's 10 o'clock and then somewhere around 11 or noon, you know, whenever I kind of like, Oh, it's time to eat something, I'll just, I grab a bowl of vegetables and that's like, you know, a mix of whatever I found at the store that week. And it's usually around, I don't know, anywhere between six and 10 ounces based on what I think I'm going to have for dinner.

Um,  and then I get in a protein source and lately it's just been like soft boiled eggs, but, you know, it, it's been good. tuna, it's leftover meat, sometimes just cheese, or sometimes it'll just be a little bit more, um, goat milk yogurt, because the goat milk yogurt I have is pretty high protein. So, and that is it until dinner time.

And I just kind of nosh on that all afternoon. That's when I have my Novo Strength too, so that I'm kind of getting all the fats with it, whatever I might need. And then at dinner time, that is a complete mixed bag. It's, you know, whatever, um,  My son, if he wants, if he's going to be home, you know, uh, I try to make things like we were making roast lamb the other day, it was absolutely delicious.

And then  we made steak and Caesar salad a few days ago. And last night, I think I made greens and scrambled eggs and greens and mushrooms. I was just like, whatever this, you know, going to have that. So that's a mixed bag. But again, I'm just trying to like, whatever protein I still need, I try to make sure I finish that.

Um, and whatever green, you know, whatever greens or vegetables I still need, I make sure that gets in my dinner. And but yeah, when we sometimes we eat pizza, you know, I, again, I'm making it myself. Sometimes we just have a sandwich, you know, like  it's whatever, whatever my son kind of wants or whatever's in the house.

I try to keep it pretty easy. I don't like,  I love to cook. And so it's, luckily for me, I have been very into food and cooking. Like forever, forever, and so it is not a stressful thing for me to go down in the kitchen and, you know, face a new recipe. To me, that is very relaxing, and I feel very lucky that that is my, my end.

Yeah, that's dope. A lot of people  don't like to cook.  Yeah, I enjoy cooking myself, too. It's a cleanup that's annoying, but I still do it. I have no issues with it. Okay, okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna solve that for you.  Good, I'm gonna solve that for you. So. Tich Nhat Hanh, have you ever read his books, Tich Nhat Hanh?

Never even heard of him. He's a, he's a Buddhist, uh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He's recently passed away, maybe in the last five years. Uh, but he, um, Wonderful. He has a book called Peace is Every Step and one of the meditations in there is washing dishes meditation. And it's, you know, you're washing the dishes and you're focusing on the, the water, you know, and how it feels and how it felt to feed yourself this nourishing meal or you and your family and.

How good it is, like, you know, just all the, like to be very one with your thoughts as you're washing the dishes and it's like, it changed my world. Now I, I, I like to clean up too. Like I like the cooking. I like the cleanup. No issues.  I love that. Mindset is everything. There's something I learned really young that my dad taught me was attitude is everything.

He used to always say that to me and he had played this thing for me. It was by Earl Nightingale. I don't know if you've heard of him. He was one of the first original. Self help dudes. He came out with this recording called The Strangest Secret. It is all about like this whole like law of attraction stuff, which I'm wanting to say.

I think I've heard that title. I think I've heard. I'm on the fence about that whole topic, but we can go through that whole other thing. But I do believe, you know, our thoughts are definitely powerful and  we start to, to produce behaviors based off of our thoughts, et cetera. But one thing you talked about was this attitude and in anything you do.

Do it with a, with a positive attitude, do it with like, if you're gonna, my dad used to always tell me, if you're gonna do it, do it. Like, put your all into it, have some pride with it. And if you're not, then don't do it, but don't half ass it and don't do it with this like crappy attitude.  Because I, you know, I had moments as a teenager, maybe I had like a bad attitude doing something and he'd be like, if you then, if you're gonna have a bad attitude, then just don't do it.

Just, yeah, whatever you're doing, have a positive. So that did impact me. So even with the, the  something I may not enjoy, I will find a way to, to like enjoy it. Whether it's like putting out a audio book or a podcast, or even calling up, I'll call friends or my mom or something.  And, and using that as a, I think, I need to like talk while I'm doing it.

So it's more enjoyable. But yeah, I love that. I like that. It's, it's just reframing, right? Reframing the situation. Yeah.  Yeah. Shifting your intention. Intention is, it's like the same, you know, attitude, tension are so similar. And I do think, I do think our thoughts create our reality  simply because your thoughts create your feelings.

You know, your thoughts like shape how you see the world and how it happens to you. And so then that shapes your emotions and then your emotions.  Dictate your thoughts and it's like, I just kind of keep going  circular. So, you know, what I've learned is like, if I'm not feeling good about my world, it's like, okay, let's, let's back up what thoughts might've created that, you know, and can I, can I shift, you know, those thoughts?

And sometimes if you intentionally do, you know, or you can catch yourself like, Oh, I'm  thinking this. I think my objection with it is that. People get hung up in the thoughts and they forget about the doing.  We think it's a magic. And I think, I think it's cause and effect, I think there's a, a balance between, you know, planning and doing, or like thinking and actually creating something in the, in the real world, because I got stuck in that at one point, I got so into this whole,  it was only mindset, and it was only beliefs, and, and, but I wasn't doing shit, just like, nothing was happening, you know, like, oh, this stuff doesn't work, it's like, well, no, you're not working,  Yeah, you gotta meet them half wired.

Stream people just do do do, but they don't stop to like, get their psychology correct. So I think it's a balance. That's all I meant by that, is that. Yeah. I think it's hand in hand. You have to have both sides of it. That's just my, that's my, actually I'm not.  No, I 100 percent agree. At the end, like, there's not a magical wishing fairy, right?

You've gotta, you've gotta  say, okay, this  is how I'm gonna think about this. And now you go about your day, and guess what? Like, the world is gonna challenge you. You know, like, are you sure that's how you really think about it? Are you sure that's, you know, yes, I'm going to choose to think, see it this way.

I mean, you know, uh, so yeah, I'm not, I don't know. I think it's, it is a two way street, you know, what, there's a, there's a prayer. I have it up here. Pray, pray as though everything depends on God. Work as though everything depends on you. And I just think like, that's exactly, like, that's it right there. You know, like I'm going to  set my intentions.

I'm going to set my thoughts. And I'm going to go out and I'm going to do everything I possibly can, you know, make, make that happen. And it may not, you know, you know, who knows, but at least, you know, you've done everything you can. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And not to go off into this whole thing, but it's just, I, I knew a girl once and she, she was like big into vision boards and all these things that I actually think those are great tools.

I believe in, uh, writing and I'm a big writer and reader and I believe in having a visual representation of what you want to achieve or create. I, I love all of that stuff,  but she would have these things and that was where it stopped  and she would talk about, Oh, it's, it's not my time yet. And this, and I would probe and say, well, why do you say that?

Long story short, it would be as an example, it would, this is just fictitious, but it's.  You want to have a meeting with this person? Have you reached out to set the appointment? No, no, I've, I'm intending on it. And I'm like, but we gotta  just make a call and like book the appointment, you know? And so  she was like, Oh no, it'll, it'll, it'll, it will manifest. 

Sure, maybe there's synchronicity and all that, but you could just call and book it too. And that's also part of the process. Like it's actually part of the creation process to do it. Right.  Have you ever heard that joke about the, um, the man  with the hat, like he was standing on top of his flooded house.

And he said, you know, God, God, I'll save you. You know that one? And then it's like, you know, Some people come by, I said, the boat. He's like, no, God will save me. He said, the helicopter. Yes. Like, and then he ends up dying. And he's like, well, I said, all things. Yeah, yes, died. Why didn't you save me? He's like, well, I sent a boat, a life raft, a helicopter.

Helicopter? You just sat on your roof thinking I was going to save you.  That's perfect, perfect example of, like, yeah. Forgive my Cantonese. It's a, it's a subject that irritates me because I was that person too. 

It took some, some, uh, somebody who was like,  called me on my bullshit and that really impacted me. So  I learned that you need the balance.  I want to, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions if that's cool. Yep. Okay. Cause I know we're running a little short. So as far as nutrition, you kind of give me a general idea.

Do you have a, a, a eating window? I think you may have touched on it, but do you fall for a specific eating window? Like intermittent fasting? Are you flexible? How, how does that work for you? I try to, I mean, I'm just not hungry. Um, I definitely do not like to eat before I work out. I absolutely just don't.

not my thing. I've never, and I've never been somebody who eats in the morning. Um, so I just never forced it. And so usually it's like 10 o'clock that I want to eat 10, yeah, 10, 11 some days. And then, um, at night I am,  I try to eat like five or six. I definitely don't like eating too close to dinner, but again,  depending on what I'm making and how long it takes.

And, you know, sometimes I am eating dinner a little later. I'll go to bed feeling so great, but, you know, we've had a wonderful meal and I know I'll have leftovers. So, but I try to keep it  like, if I'm making dinner at 5, hopefully we're eating dinner around 6, 6. 30 latest. But there have been a few times where we're having dinner at like 8.

It's like, I'm trying to get in bed at 9, and so it's not pleasant, but, but most days I'm done. You know, my eating window goes until about 6 o'clock. So it's, I guess that's an eight hour eating window and I haven't really, yeah, I just kind of naturally fell into that. That's just what I like. Right.  I'm currently, I, for the most part for several years, I've been in that kind of like eight hour window, nine hour window. 

It just became a habit. I don't eat. I wouldn't eat till later in the day, but right now my goal is hypertrophy,  so I'm trying to build some muscle.  And so I couldn't fit the amount of calories. That one, I wanted, and two, I needed. So, protein in an eight hour window was just tough. I wouldn't be,  I felt very stuffed.

And then it became this thing where it's like, it's becoming stressful now, I don't know. I'm just getting, when I'm hungry now, because I'm creating the stimulus, I'm like really going hard with the weightlifting and stuff.  And so now I eat in a more like almost like a 12 hour window, um, 12, 13, sometimes a bit more. 

Yeah, I, I feel great though. And it's, I just think it's the stage right now where I'm trying to gain weight and I need those extra calories. I can't, I cannot finish it in eight hours. Even if I take like two smoothies and load it with protein, it's not, I, I just can't handle, I'm not hungry enough. I need to deliver it in time, personally. 

Yeah, well, I, I think there's something, um, you know, there's a lot coming out about like women, uh, women in general that maybe that fasting window should be a bit larger. It's easier for me to kind of be on that six to eight hour being menopausal, but like you said, I'm just not hungry. So there, I think, is it Steve  Horvath?

One of the books I read, they were talking about the different clocks and you can kind of.  Oh, I know it was Jason Fung's fasting book, and how all, oh, and Sachin Ponda talks about this quite a bit too, in the, you know, each organ has its own clock, and those things can kind of, obviously they change, I mean, when I would go to Dubai and completely flip, you know, my day became night and my night became day, you know, eventually my body figured it out based on the sun and everything like that, but you can also, you know, if I started eating every day at 8 o'clock.

In the morning, my body would eventually start wanting me to eat at eight o'clock every morning. 'cause it would expect, think there's something to do with the, um, insulin, you know, it starts producing. It's like anticipating, well, you always eat at this time, so it's kind of a tell you like, Hey, you need to, you need to eat now.

So I know, I know. We can shift those things. I just, this has just kind of been the way I was built. I can remember even being a teenager, I just would go to school without.  And I always felt better on those days. So I just kind of thought, well, I should listen to my body, you know, it's telling me not to eat and I don't like to eat close to bedtime.

So  yeah. If you follow, uh, Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I loved her. Yeah. She's one of them early. Like, yeah. Oh yeah. She's awesome. Um, she talks a lot about intermittent fasting versus skipping meals. And she's like, there is a difference. And she goes into that, which, which, um, I thought was really important, especially for women.

And she, she actually. Explains why for women it's, it's very important to,  you know, to be mindful of those things. But anyways, okay. So on the topic of exercise, what, what's your routine like for cardio, if any flexibility and strength training,  I'm a believer in strength training as the like fountain of youth.

Yeah. Me too. Me too. I really like, especially as I've gotten older. Like you get the wobbly bits and you're like, I, you know, start lifting weights. And it was like, like, I was just kidding. Like,  Oh, this is going to sound awful. Like, but to any of the older women listening out there, if you're getting the knee wrinkles, like I was like, you know, I signed up for wrinkles on my face and I was like, what the heck is this on my knees, you know?

Like,  and so then I started like really lifting and working my legs and like. Work that out like gone, you know, I was like, okay, like I'm gonna keep this weightlifting So I'm now I'm working on my upper body But anyway, so it's definitely like it's nice to do because it makes you  like your body does look better And so then that makes you want to continue to do it. 

It is so good for end of life I mean again as I'm You know, watching my mom and  you know, she never lift weights. She wasn't somebody who worked out. There was a brief period where she was walking a bit, but she was, you know, just not, you know, she just kind of believed in, like she always worked on her feet.

She, you know, was naturally a little bit more energetic, but she was not an exerciser per se. And I, I do think that  maybe she would be better off if she had, you know, lifted weights. I don't, I just, I don't know, but I, I really am a big fan of Peter Attia, and it makes so much sense to me that if you're going to have this, you know, decline in muscle mass and decline in VO2 max that you want to raise it as much as you possibly can now, you know, so that you still have the energy and the mobility.

So, so as far as how I do, I, so the VO2 max, I do that first thing Monday morning. And again, going back to my dad, glycogen, I feel like, You know, I've probably cheated a little bit over the weekend or had a little bit more carbs over the weekend. So I thought, ah, my muscles probably a little more glycogen in them on Monday morning than they would on Wednesday or Friday.

So I make sure to do that VO2 max first thing. And I use, I do a, um, Rhonda Patrick talks about that and Norwegian four by four. And I, I do it on the step mill. That's just kind of my preferred thing. I can't run so much anymore. I've got like some hip issues that Not, it's just not a pleasant feeling for me, so I don't do that. 

I should try the bike, but anyway, so I, I do the step mill, and I love every second of that thing. I mean, I turn on my crazy music, and it's just like, it's awesome. And I, I work my abs that day, and then I will do a sauna. And if it's winter, I'm doing a cold shower. It's summer here in Arizona. So the cold water is like 80 degrees.

You can't get a cold shower to save your life, but it's still refreshing after a sauna. So I do that, that I, you know, get to work, but so that's Monday, Tuesday. I do a full, uh, full body weights and I use, um,  I use free weights on Monday and I'll just, you know, free weights and cables and all kinds of things that don't limit my range of motion.

And I'm. I try to be very, I don't, I don't work out with a trainer, but I do try to be very careful with my form, and I keep the weight probably lower than maybe I could lift just to make sure I'm not messing, messing my body up because you don't want to get injured. That's, so that's Tuesday. And then, Oh, and every one of these days, ideally, I stretch after the workout.

Some days I don't, but, you know, I try to. And then Wednesday, I used to be going, so it's summer now and I'm kind of switching things up. But so Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I will just do zone two cardio. And lately I have been walking in the morning instead of going to the gym because it's a hundred, it's already a hundred degrees in the morning.

It's like, I think it was 90, uh, this morning, but, and I've been walking, like I'm trying to get like 14, 000 steps in a day and see if that's, and that seems to be helping me take off that last bit of weight. There's some issues with cortisol and, uh, my doctor just said, well, maybe, you know, maybe skip the workouts and just go for a walk. 

That definitely seems to be helping. So in the winter I would be in the gym, just doing like a zone two cardio for like 20 30 minutes depending on the day, and then always like a sauna and a cold shower. And then one more day during the week it's, Lately, it's been Fridays. I will go to the gym and do another full body workout with machines that limit my range of motion.

And I just try to like lift as heavy as I possibly can because it keeps me a little bit more supported and, and just try to  up things that way. But so that's like a full body. And again, if I'm in the gym, I will go have a sauna and a cold shower and then after, let's see, I'm trying to, and then Saturday.

Oh, this is my new thing on Saturday. Again, it's hot. It's very hot here. Um, and I love hot yoga. It's one of my absolute, um, favorite forms of exercise, but it's like, one, I just hate taking an hour and a half and then like driving to a class. It's like, by the time everything's said and done, you know, you're looking at two, three hours.

It's like. Yeah. Oh my god. So, but in my garage, I just set up my yoga mat because it is like very hot in there and I'm doing hot yoga on Saturday mornings for, you know, the flexibility and it's just, it's like, it makes my back feel so strong and I, I love that. So, um, I'm just trying to switch it up. I, although I love my routines, I love to have periods of time where I don't follow those routines because it just makes me appreciate it.

When I'm back in it, uh, and again, my son being home for summer, it's just different, it, you know, the whole vibe around our house works differently, and so I just try to roll with it and not get too stressed out about, otherwise it's too hard to like, stick to this schedule, cause he's up very late, the sun's going down later, it's really hard for me to get to bed,  you know, in the winter I'm in bed at 8.

39, no problem, and I'm up at 5, and now it's just like, I'm fighting to get to bed by nine and I'm in bed, but it's like, I can't see you to get to sleep until 930, sometimes even 10. So I, you know, my alarm's set for 530 now. Do  you find that reading in bed helped you fall asleep? Because for me, when I have difficulty falling asleep,  it starts One thing I've learned is, is following some sleep experts, is that our sleep starts the moment we wake up.

So what you do when you wake up  sets the tone for what happens in the evening.  So trying to get some sunlight as early as possible into your eyes when you start to eat, et cetera.  So anyways, just as a little tip for me that really helps is keeping technology at a minimum minimum. I dim the lights, you know, I try to at least an hour or two before bed, not eating too close to bed as long as I'm not starving or something. 

And then putting the phone away, not looking at it, especially in the dark. And then reading with like a dim nightlight. I find that knocks me out if I'm a little bit anxious. Yeah, anyways, that's just a little tip, uh, one thing I will, I will say is the, the Norwegian four by four is I, we probably heard about the same thing I heard about as soon as the study came out. 

I read a lot of studies now, like I, I use AI to help me understand when I can. And I really love studies now. I never used to read them until last year. And now I do use examine. Do you use examine? I, I use, I use examine. I use consensus.  Uh, have you heard of consensus? The app? No. I'm going to write, I'm going to write that down.

Oh, check that out. Consensus is awesome. Awesome. It's, it's the best tool in my opinion. Dr. Lane Norton is the one who was promoting. He likes him. He's a counsel, he's a counsel, counsel for them. He's on the council or something. So he helps them. Yeah. It's, it's, it's awesome. It basically, it has AI scan, all these different papers.

And brings you the relevant ones.  And then gives you like a consensus summary of, let's say 15 studies, RCTs, randomized controlled trials or whatever. And it gives you a study. Like you can literally say, are bananas good for you if you're asking a yes or no, and it will cite all these different studies and it will, it will show you all the relevant ones, the best ones, like the strongest ones,  and it will answer 78 percent yes, or 90 percent yes.

And here's why it's pretty bad ass. It's really good. Sounds really powerful. I'm going to have to ask it about, um, this Dunedin paste, maybe like an AI to explain it to me a little bit better. Yeah. And it, it works best if let's say, for example, you find out what individual ingredients are, and then you can ask it, are these ingredients,  do these ingredients show,  you know, that people are gaining muscle or whatever it is you're trying to find out.

There's been supplements that I'm about to take  and I will look at ingredients  And a lot of it is like the data isn't really conclusive and I'm not saying if, if, if it doesn't show the data, I'm not going to try something. No, I'm not. I'm not that extreme, but I think there's a lot of bullshit out there too,  that I used to fall for myself.

And  there's just a lot of things, even so called experts say, there's a lot of people out there that say things that are like,  that's straight up just dog bullshit. Like they're either lying or they're just. It's marketing. It's, there's a lot of, a lot of people in the health industry are just marketing companies,  you know,  that have created products and they're not necessarily people with health backgrounds that created the product.

That's what I'm learning. And I'm like, that's, you know, so like you, I'm, I'm careful and plus I've had so many different problems. Like, it's like the Moringa, right? And Dr. Patrick talks about that and I was  doing up to like a tablespoon a day cause I think she talks about that. Well, it was. I think it was messing with my thyroid because that's when like, like everything's just started slowing down and so then I started looking at, oh, there's goitrogens in there.

Okay. And so I  stopped doing a tablespoon. I just stopped completely and everything kind of stopped. Worked itself out and it was the same thing because I was also not cooking my greens So I was just having a significant amount of goitrogens which block the uptake of iodine in your thyroid So you need to start I wasn't developing a goiter, but you know, thank God But it's just like, you know, these are things you don't know And if it's something you're gonna eat or take every day, you should probably look at Is there any potential negative ramifications of that?

And, and also just tune into your body, but I'm, I'm like you, I like to look at like, Hey, is there, like, is there any reason to add this? That's why I try to keep things really, really simple. And cause I just, I do think there's a lot of marketing out there. I, you know, I always go back to like, there's these people in the blue zones.

They've lived long, healthy lives.  They are not on a bunch of different supplements. That's for sure. I mean, I'm sure their food sources. are full of micronutrients that we don't get in our food, but  You know, I just I just always feel like simple  is so much better You know just start very simply and then and slowly build a Program that is definitely works and if you're gonna do it every day and you're gonna pay for it You should you should take the time to research it.

I use  Consumer Labs, that's another one that I use to like research products that you know in many You know, many companies, reputable companies saying they're selling, you know, 500 milligrams of whatever is supposed to be in there. And then Consumer Labs will test it and they find, you know, 100 milligrams of whatever that active ingredient.

So it's,  if you're going to invest the money, you should make sure you're getting what you're paying for.  Yeah, absolutely. There is a great blog post by Tim Ferriss. I don't know the exact one, but if you, if you look it up, I'm sure you'll find it. But he has a saying, he says, there's no biological free lunches, if I'm not, I'm still here.

I like that. And it, it really opened my eyes. It was the first time I ever heard that. And the idea was, listen, just cause it's not medicine that a doctor prescribed, doesn't mean it's not making changes in your biology. He's like, so you got to be really careful if you're taking vitamins, mineral, whatever you're taking in supplement form.

He's like, there's no biological free lunches and it could mess you up even though it's quote unquote natural and  And I've never really been someone that popped a million pills and I'm not against supplementation. I think supplementation is great. I think it's necessary for a lot of people, but it's, there's a reason why it's called a supplement.

It's to supplement your diet, not replace it. And most people aren't doing the basics well.  Yeah. And, and it's like, I have a friend who doesn't sleep well and he's talking about magnesium and this and that. And I go, dude, Before you talk about TRT, why don't you sleep? Get the morning sunlight, get the, you know, get the exercise.

Sleep takes three hours a day.  And he go every week, listen, at least twice a month he goes over 24 hours without sleep, sometimes 48 hours and he blacks out. And I'm like, dude, TRT, all these things are not going to help you, man. Like you,  you need to sleep. And also you need to eat like you, you fast for a day, but then you.

Binge eat all day, like all these bad habits,  you know? And I, you know, he's like, Oh, I work out. He looks, he looks good. Fit. I go, but you're not doing the other thing. So I think you got to get your house in order first and then look out. Okay. What, maybe I'm low on a certain micronutrient. Let me look into it.

So yeah. Consensus. I can send that to you if you like, but it's, if you look up consensus dot, I think it's dot AI, or if you didn't. I wrote it down. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll look for it. Oh, it's my favorite. Cause I follow drama as well and I, I even canceled the exam because I just thought it was, it had a very complete, um, thing.

Yeah. Well, so it's good. Cause I'm doing some research like on, um, I'd been taking zinc and then, cause it looked like, you know, I mean, through, you know, my blood testing that I needed it in, um, and, but then I'm learning about like,  you know, Too much zinc you need to be watching your copper level because like that will reduce your copper And then an iron like those three all kind of work together, but then it's like I know there's some research on Taking too much iron can be very bad for, um, Alzheimer's if you don't need the iron.

It, but it depends on what you need, you know, like everybody, every body is so different and I'm  kind of thinking, I have a feeling I do need some iron. So I just, I'm researching like where to, you know, cause I know there's like specific ways to test for that. There's always, you know, tricky ways to, you can't just go like, Oh, in my blood it says I have enough because that doesn't necessarily, that's just what's circulating in your blood.

Yeah. Not necessarily what's getting uptaken in your cells. So anyway, there's all these things, all this to say, all this stuff works together. And so if you don't know where to start, I always feel like get some basics, you know, just, just take a multi then because that'll have like everything, you know, so I, I, as far as supplements, I, I don't take a multi, but I do take a B complex.

I take fish oil or, you know, a EPA and DHA, um, and Omega. And then I take vitamin D3, K2, and I've been taking 5, 000 IU for a week. over a decade and I've had no issues. Again, that's, you know, something I have regularly tested. It's never been, um, a problem. I also take, I wrote it down. I want to make sure I got this, um, right.

I don't miss anything, but yeah, the TRT or the TRT, the HRT, um, magnesium. So again, this is something specific to my body. I need about Four to six hundred milligrams of magnesium a day just to function. So I do that, and like I said, I was on zinc, but I've kind of stopped that just for now, and I will, Talk to my doctor about that and look, you know, to kind of do the research on the zinc and copper and iron and figure out how we can look at that.

I take the Novos and I take nicotinamide riboside. Um, during the Rejuvenation Olympics or the study that I did with Novos, I was taking NMN. Um, but before we had started it, I was taking NR and I just,  right now, I think I kind of feel a little better on NR. I'm about to take a break from NR and NMN and just, you know,  See how I feel, um, and add, you know, each one back and see what happens.

And then I have been experimenting, I added, um, quercetin, just like one little thing of quercetin in the evening. And then, and I'm gonna retest my, uh, pace of aging here and just see if it makes any difference.  And then, if I have some sugary meals or something on the weekends, I will have some berberine with it to just try to do whatever that can to offset the, You know, the, the, um, the glucose. 

So that's, but that's it. I don't do a hundred pills a day or anything. I try to get the basics right. Like you, like, so I, I am a big, you know, I learned that from Hooberman, right? Like the morning sunlight. So I'm kind of lazy in that it's just on the way to the gym. I have got the window to my car open and that's, yeah, that's my morning sunlight or I'm walking in the morning.

And then I also, my new thing with exercise, I've added an evening walk as well. Somewhere around seven thirty eight o'clock once the sun has gone down. It's still it's hundred last night I think it was like a hundred and one when I was walking So I feel like hopefully there's some heat shock proteins.

I'm getting from that because I'm not doing as many saunas But where's I go like that? Yeah And then at bedtime if I am if like say it's been a half hour and I'm still I still can't settle down I've been taking valerian root at night like 400 milligrams two to four hundred milligrams of um Valerian route, or if I'm like really stressed, that really, really helps.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else to take at night. I take magnesium 3 and 8 at night. That's about it. I'll give you a tip that worked for me. I don't know if it would work for you. Do you have a bathtub? Or a shower? Stand up shower? We just have stand up shower. Ah, damn.  Yeah. We just installed a bathtub, so I'm happy because I used to do baths, and I didn't for a while.

Anyhow, I found that for me, this was, Night and day difference, if I found I was unable to unwind at night, I would do an Epsom salt bath.  Yeah. It was really, really hot, um, you know, 15, 20 minutes, I would read and have like candlelight, whatever. It was like,  I would do that with, with, with water and some electrolytes.

And then I'm telling you, I could barely walk to bed. Like my legs were noodles and I would just crash. And I had crazy drinks. Anytime I did that, I would have crazy drinks. So, unfortunately, you can't, you can't go back. I can't go out now, but I am, I'm always hopeful that it's like, well, I'm out in a hundred degree heat.

And then I come in, in my bedroom is like 74 degrees. And again, it's like, I can't keep my house at 68. It would cost me a fortune, you know, to, it's just, it's just too expensive, but the AC is kind of blowing on you, so it feels pretty, it feels pretty cold. I've got fans going and, and so I kind of like hopeful that like that cool down, you know, that difference is like,  And most of the time it does, I just think it's more a function of, like, and I do have like some, um, blue blockering glasses, you ask me if I read, I, I'm not, I, I am a huge reader, but I'm a huge listener to books, I, I think I have a dyslexia that we just never really caught, and to sit and read, it's like the words are all over the page, and it's just very, very, it's more stress inducing than it is, you know,  So I don't, I don't really read, um, too much.

I do. I am very guilty of looking at my phone before bed. So that's probably not good.  I do need to stop that. And every once in a while I'll watch a TV show, but I don't watch a lot of TV. I like every once in a while, I'll watch, Something like maybe I'll get into something during the week or on the weekend and then it's like, oh, you know, maybe Monday or Tuesday night.

But it's usually pretty easy for me to just turn everything off and I lay down and I go right to sleep. But just occasionally I might be stressed out about something with my son or I'm stressed out about, I don't, you know, I don't know. I'm one of those people that just like the mind goes and ruminates and, and again, you add that the sun is going down later, so it just takes a little while for my, my body to,  to relax.

But I eventually do, and. Most nights I sleep, I'd say, pretty well. If I've had really, I've gone through periods of insomnia, I've gone through, like, your friend, like, I've gone  I mean, be even, I was even on vacation in like Italy and I was not sleeping for like five days. You know, I just, I couldn't sleep.

It was awful. I would, that was probably in my like, I think thirties, like early thirties, I would just go just have these random bouts of insomnia and it was just awful. It was absolutely awful,  but um,  yeah, my mom, my mom struggles with it. Yeah. My mom struggles with insomnia. I think it has a lot to do with anxiety and, and the way she. 

Organizes her thoughts in her mind, like she ruminates on things. And I think a lot of that for her is in her mind. She doesn't, and I know she's gone through a lot with the loss of my father and everything. Um, have you heard of Dr. Christine Bishara?  No.  Okay.  She's I follow her on Instagram. So if you go to my display, Christine, you'll find her, but I'm actually, I have an episode with her tomorrow actually.

And she's a,  she specializes in the gut microbiome  and  she wrote the first paper.  Uh, they published the first paper during COVID on the link between a specific bacteria, uh, sorry, a specific probiotic. And COVID, uh, core morbidity or so it was COVID mortality, I should say, or something. There's a big link between the gut microbiome and COVID outcomes, basically.

So she, she has a book coming out in the next few weeks and, uh, I'm excited to talk to her. So something, something that will, I'm sure you'll, you'll find fascinating. I have a lot of questions. I will. She's awesome. She's awesome.  She said the microbiome is fascinating to me. Like if I, if I could get through chemistry and biology and like, that's what I would go back to school and study that like, I mean, it just to me seems so fascinating.

I'm always like,  so my kitchen, like, I don't, I don't have, I'm in a, like a town home and I don't have a garden. But like that's like all the things I'm growing, you know, we've got kombucha and I'm making the beet kvass And I've got the sourdough going and I've made sauerkraut. No, you know, I'm always like making Always ferment, you know, my son, we were living in Dubai at the time, and he's like, yeah, we're, he'd tell all his friends, oh, we're fermenting things.

Well, you know, like, it's illegal to have alcohol there if you don't have, uh, um, you have to have, like, a special,  you say, like, uh, a special permit. Well, I didn't have that permit, you know. It wasn't illegal for me to, like, buy it when I, you know, Came from the airport or something like that, but for like, you know, to sound like, make it sound like, oh, we're fermenting things like we're not,  it made it sound like we were like, creating our own alcohol.

Like, dude, we're gonna get in trouble. Be quiet. I was just making like kombucha, you know, that's so funny. But yeah, that's like, that's the way I see is like, this is my garden, you know, and it's like the same thing. I think my microbiome is kind of like, I just always want to protect it. And I would love to know more about that. 

Even in our little chat we had, I was like, we got to save this for the call. Cause she told me some things that I was like, whoa, like  she, and she talks about simple supplementation, inexpensive, that things that people can do that can literally change their life. She has a lot of papers that are being published right now.

So.  I'm excited. So I'll definitely share that with you as well. Even before it's released, I can share with you the, my notes on what, what she recommends and different things she looks, she looks at. Um, so you, sorry, you, you were saying you mentioned Novo, so what are you taking with them specifically again?

Was it, you said there's two different things, right? Yeah. So Novo's, they make. I think they have three products now, but, um, I take Novo's core, which is a w was their original. This is the main thing that they made. So it was,  boy, it's got a lot of stuff in there and I'm gonna mess up what, what's in there.

But, uh, Cetin is one of them, you know, one of the ingredients, and that's for,  I'm gonna forget this, the name of this, what it does. Anyway, it's, if you tell me the real names, I can even look,  I can even look it up and put it into the notes, et cetera. And yeah, yeah.  So it's, there's like a bunch of different ingredients in there.

So let, let people research that there's glycine, there's alpha ketoglutarate, I'm going to, there's magnesium. Um, yeah. Mally in there. There's so there's a few different things in there. Like there's a mix and it's a wonderful formulation It was full like again. I was going for the feist in but then it was like oh, it has this and it has this These are these other things that I was like reading about.

So anyways, it's a mix and then during the study They also make Novo's boost, which is basically NMN. It's just their their own NMN and it's review, you know, like, I think there's some question about how much NMN is in different supplements, but there's this, you know, reviewed and tested and everything. So, so I, during the study was taking that as well because that was part of the, you know, their study.

So I just did that. And what else did you ask me about? What was the other one? Uh, Oh, that was it. I was just curious what, what the novus was again, I know you mentioned everything. So in your opinion, out of everything you've done, Or stop doing, what would you say is  the one that had the largest impact for you?

And it could be whether it's food or exercise, et cetera. What would you say is the one thing you've done or stopped doing that had the biggest impact  as far as longevity goes, as far as longevity?  That is hard because like I'm a big and big on sleep. I think like that's the magic secret sauce is getting the sleep.

I think, I mean, for me not to sound like an ad, but it is no like for longevity for that, that marker of longevity. Novos definitely slowed down my pace of aging for sure. Why, what was it like 8%?  And I was going through one of the most stressful periods of my life and not.  And not, you know, and I was just like, well, I'm in this study.

I got to,  you know,  take it as they've asked me to take it. And I didn't want to mess it up. They seem like nice people. You know, one of those, one of those people, you know, it's like, Oh, I told you I was going to do this. So I'm going to do this. And then I proceeded to go through a very, very stressful period.

And yet my pace of aging still. Slowed down. I mean, I wasn't eating vegetables. I wasn't I mean, I was going to In N Out Burger. I was, you know, maybe fasting, but only because like I was so stressed out. I was forgetting to eat and I was definitely not sleeping regularly. But again, I was like, well, I'm in the study.

I'm going to take it. And then when they asked me to take that second. You need to test after the first six months. I was just like, Oh my God, this is not going to be good. You know, I said are you sure you want these results? You don't want to wait another, you know, while I kind of calm down and know, you know.

So it had slowed down my pace of aging even with all of that by 8%. And so.  I, again, I don't work for them. I have, I have zero to gain. I don't know anybody there. I don't, you know, I have like nothing to gain by telling people this because like we've kind of alluded to, like there is a lot of junk out there in the market, you know, that market space.

And this is a really good product. And so I feel good telling people like, you know, like if you're going to take one thing for longevity. Take this but before you even take that get the basics, right? You know get get the sleep right and the sleep gets better if you exercise a little and you don't have to be a warrior Just go out and start, you know open, you know Use that James Clear kind of thing is like if you want to start working out just just commit to 10 minutes every day Don't commit to you know, I usually in there at the gym an hour and a half, but Like just start with 10 minutes and, um, open the space for that to happen.

And, you know,  doing that exercising will help your sleep and then your sleep will help you feel better and more motivated to exercise and then just slowly start, you know, turning around the diet. Like you already know what's bad for you. You know, you're doing something that's not, you know, like I think most people, if you just tune into your intuition, you know, what's the worst.

Like if you're eating a bunch of Doritos, well, you know, that's not good for you. So, okay, like get that out. But if you can't get it out, then focus on adding a bunch of vegetables and the protein, because then you will not be hungry for that junk. But anyway, they all kind of work together. You know, you've got the things for longevity, you know, sleep, exercise, diet.

And then that fourth little magic braid is the supplements. And if you're gonna To me, Novost is a, is a great supplement, but I, I would do that as a last, last piece of it. You got to get those other things right first. So I couldn't, I mean, as far as longevity in general, I would say Novost is probably the biggest impact, but as far as just general health and wellbeing, I'm, I'm a big proponent of sleep. 

That's a, you got to get that right and do whatever it takes to get it right, which usually means a little bit of exercise, eating right. You know, you have to get a bunch of things right to get the sleep right.  Yeah, the closest thing we have to, I would say, a magic pill that just solves everything would be sleep, I think.

They're not a, those things. And exercise, drink training specifically.  Yeah. One more thing I was going to add though that also really, really, really helped my sleep. I mean like insomnia and gone. I meditate every day at one o'clock. Um, so I learned transcendental meditation in 2019 when I was going through a divorce.

It was very, very stressful. I thought, I'm gonna go try this and it was like, Whoa, like, I was just shocked because you're meditating during the day, you don't sleep during the meditation. And yet it had such a big impact on my sleep at night, I couldn't, I still don't understand how that works. But I know, if I like on the weekend, sometimes I don't meditate, you know, we're out, we're busy doing things or like, say I'm traveling, like I was in  Spain, walking the Camino every day with friends.

Well, I wasn't meditating every day and it just. It definitely like cut into my sleep a little like my sleep just isn't as deep or as restful When I don't meditate during the day and it I still don't understand how that works, but they definitely go together So if you don't meditate and you don't have a lot of time it is hard to stop during the day But you know, there are a lot of apps out there even like binaural beats.

You can just Google that. There's a bunch on Apple music. Listen to some of those if you can't stop working, but it does kind of calm the brain down and helps you focus. So  nice. How long do you meditate for?  So, so I was doing transcendental meditation, uh, that's what I've learned and you're supposed to do it 20 minutes twice a day, but I don't, I just do 20 minutes once a day, every afternoon.

And then sometimes if I'm kind of tired and they have 10 extra minutes, I'll take a little break. Just. 10 minute power snooze,  . That's good. So meditation that. Yeah. I, I go off and on with meditation sometimes. I, I've had periods where I do it all the time, and then I'll go to times where I don't, and I, I just quiet my mind a little bit.

I guess it's meditation, but where I would say I have a meditation practice. I am up and down with it.  Yeah. Yeah. And I, I do notice a difference when I do just quiet my mind and just sit still and try and slow, slow the thoughts down. It makes a huge difference.  Mm-Hmm. , even like the next day.  Yeah. But it's stimulative.

It builds momentum. It's like a snowball. You know, it's. Over time you start to notice you're able to focus more, able to control your thoughts a little bit more, your emotion. On this topic of emotions, how important do you think our emotions, and I will wrap this up shortly, how important do you think emotions are in our lives?

In the whole, you know, how spend your health, all that  important. Well, I mean, as they contribute to stress, I mean, I think that that's,  I mean, I think we've all experienced, like, I'd imagine most realistic, you know, when you fall in love for the first time and just like, like really in love, you know, and like how  just that makes your whole body feel wonderful, like you're floating on air or whatever.

And then you've probably experienced very stressful times. I mean, we all, right. Yep. Maybe we've lost relatives or whatever, you know, things that are so, so stressful. Um,  so to that extent, I think they have a huge impact on our body and I'm sure, you know, there's researchers out there that have figured out, you know, this cortisol, dopamine and serotonin and all of that.

And like that whole symphony gets off, um, you know, either  starts working better in the case of like falling in love and maybe not so great when you're going through a loss or something like that. So I definitely think they have an impact. I mean, I know. You know, after my brother died,  and I, you know, I love my brother,  we were, I, I'm not going to say that we were like besties, we were close, I mean,  all of us in the family, we were very close,  and after he died, It took me 10 years to get my head around, like, this is what happened because it was so sudden and so violent and every, and this happened on New Year.

It was the December 29th. And so I had just seen him for Christmas and then he wasn't there for New Year's. And so  for the next year and for the next 10 years, every Thanksgiving, as soon as Thanksgiving would come around, I would get this burning in my throat. And. Like it was just like I couldn't I couldn't even control it even I would like, you know, try to meditate I would try to do all the things I could but it's just like knowing that this anniversary was coming up It just was so and I can't imagine that that doesn't have an impact on My body chemistry.

I mean it again it took like once I've I think I'd moved away and then when I finally came back and started  back home again and Celebrating like, um, Thanksgiving with my parents and,  you know, it had been 10 years and it's like now I don't, I don't get that anymore, but it is like for me, um,  for whatever reason, when I go through a stressful period, it's like I feel it in my throat, I feel it in my gut, and then I get this feeling inside my whole body, like there's broken glass, like the inside of my body is broken glass pushing out, and I, you know, I'm sure  that has an impact on my cellular biology.

Why else would I feel it? You know? Um,  so it just, it's always like when I start getting those feelings, it's like, okay, you gotta, you gotta calm down, you gotta meditate, you need to stop what you're doing, you know, just like focus, regroup and refocus. And um, I've just really learned to like pay attention to those things because as if you're, you know, you're asking me the question, like, yeah, I think it's, Like critically important that we pay attention to our emotions and, um, what they may or may not be telling us.

I mean, sometimes like we just have emotions. Like, like I said, I was walking around with kind of this low grade depression and then not having the heavy metals anymore,  literally removed that. I mean, not to say that I don't get depressed anymore, but I just don't walk around with it all the time. It kind of, what is this feeling?

But yeah, I think, I think there, uh, there are a definite signal. Like, I,  I know that like.  Again, we were talking about, it's like your thoughts create your emotions and your emotions create your actions and then your actions create your thoughts, which then create, you know, so there's a little loop that keeps going round and round.

Um, 

if we can manipulate those and manipulate somewhere along that chain for the positive. I think you can. Yeah, those, those are traumatic experiences that, that stay with us, you know, even, even they're beautiful. I have several of those in my life, you know, even the time with my father in the hospital, there was, there was definitely some moments that were like, I didn't realize how, how much of an impact it had on me until it like shows up in a dream or, you There's the, I still have moments where I, I grab my phone to call him  and I'm like, Oh, so I don't pick up.

I'll make a job, but I have a pretty like crude sense of humor. So like the asshole won't pick up.  And it's just  cause he would love that. Right. Like that's how you do, but it's like, so annoying. I want to call him right now. It's like, you know, but, um, I shouldn't, I've met, I'm going to suggest this for you.

I think you seem like a person that will look into this. Um, so there's this meditation called the Silva Method. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Like S I L V A? Yeah, the Silva Method. So it was, it was pioneered by this guy named Jose Silva. Um, he had like nine kids. And he used to try hypnosis on his daughters and he actually started to,  I don't know how true this is or not, but apparently she was able to like start reading, one of them was able to read his mind during the meditations.

And like, she had like clairvoyant thinking abilities and stuff during, during these like states, heightened states as little kids. Um, I actually believe, uh, him and what they talk about, but anyways, I did like a course and I read all their stuff. I went through a phase where I like, really like the Silva method.

It's just a form of meditation. The whole idea long story short is to slow your brain waves, which is what the whole purpose of all meditation is to slow your brain frequencies to like alpha or theta waves. Monks can go even to like Gamo. I think it is, which is like, you're basically dead.  So  Lobster is short.

They have this one exercise that's called the laboratory of the mind. And the idea is you go into, they call it your level, which is like you slow your brainwaves down. And you imagine this like laboratory where it's all these people there.  And the idea that came to mind for you is maybe your brother could be there.

And when you're there, you'd have a conversation. I do that with my dad. I do that with like people that I even haven't met that I like, admire alive in debt  and  I find that it's very helpful. Like there's times where I just need  help with work with creative. It's not, it's not always like a stressful thing.

It's just like, maybe I'm working on a project and I'm like, how did I, how can I put this together? And I'll. I'll go there and then I will go to sleep and it's a lot of the times I'll get something really inspirational comes to me and I'm like, I don't know where that came from, but that's interesting.

Oh, I'll have to try that for sure. I mean, I do know like, like after my brother died,  I remember like I would get up really, my son,  I was young, it was what, maybe three, and I raised him myself, and it was just like,  I would have to, like, I'd have to get up so early just to have a little bit of time. I just needed a little bit of time to myself, so I would get up at like 3.

30, 4 in the morning, and I would be sitting and drinking tea, and I'd get this feeling of like, oh, this is your life. Like, my brother was just sitting right there with me, and that, that went on for like, I don't know,  God, over a year, it was like, and as I call it, like, having tea with Joe every morning, you know, and I, I mean, like. 

For whatever reason, we have this silver spoon that was like his baby's food. My mom gave me that, so I'd have that, and like, I was Having tea every morning and it was just like, it was like having a, like conversation with my brother every morning, you know, like, Oh, like I miss you or  there just was a lot of, a lot of that.

Like he was, I just felt like he was sitting right next to me every morning when I was just kind of, you know, again, just gathering my thoughts for the day before all the three year old chaos started.  Yeah. Yeah. So it just came to mind. I thought maybe it would be, yeah, I'm going to check it out. That sounds really interesting.

This is really interesting. I think we talked, we touched on a lot of different things. We talked about your exercise routine, your diet, supplementation.  Emotions and what about a support group? Do you have any support group? I know now it's expanding with this whole new.  I think since we, you know, the three beating all these, uh, be multi. 

They've changed, they've changed the leaderboard. I don't know if you've gotten on there, but I'm no longer on the leaderboard. They're liars.  They just, they've changed the rules. I don't know. I don't really want to get into that. I don't, you know, I don't know. It's their game. They can do what they want with it.

I don't really, I mean, it's lovely, you know, it's been lovely to like, Get noticed and talk about  health and did to meet people like you and you know Like Dave Pascoe and I are talking now It's been really nice to like before this I had nobody to talk to about all the geeky health stuff I do and to be like, hey, did you you know?

Like nobody would have told me about the Silva method or anything like that I just didn't I didn't know anybody that was into that and my friends and my family certainly got sick of me saying hey Do you know you know where I'm trying this and he just threw me off They'll like, stop, you're crazy or, you know, um, so it's been really, really nice to have people that have that same level of interest in health and longevity to bounce all these things off of.

I've absolutely loved, um, Meeting everybody and, um, I hope, you know, there's more, there are new people on the leaderboard or maybe they're not confirmed verified members yet, but like, there are some really. Interesting, you know, like low paces of aging. We don't know what their chronological they don't list the chronological age anymore.

So, that is that.  I don't know what that is, but I do hope we can learn, like there was a, there's a woman on there and her pace of aging is 60%. Well, again, it doesn't say what her chronological age is. Because like, I don't know if your listeners know, but it's like to slow down your pace of aging at age 12, well, that's pretty easy versus as you, you know, you're 70.

It's like, it gets harder and harder to slow down your pace of aging. So it is.  To me, it's relevant to know what somebody's chronological age, but anyway, I'm hoping that we're going to learn some more stories and more, more about these people and what they're doing. And we can all kind of start looking at, you know, what are the commonalities?

Like, I mean, the one thing between Brian and I, that is pretty common. Like he's, I think he's following a vegan diet, but clearly he must be eating, you know, a ton of vegetables. Like I'm eating a lot of vegetables. I don't know exactly what Dave Pascoe's eating regime is, but I, I imagine.  He does that. So sorry.

Yeah. Sorry. I was saying, uh, he eats a lot of supplements.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He does a lot of supplements. That's way more than the thing with Brian, with Brian Johnson is. It's interesting and I admire what he's doing for the sake of documentation and whatever it is, the reasons behind it. I've seen a lot of interviews.

I, you know, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, I guess it's for a good cause. I'm not sure what his end game is or the intentions, the true intention behind it.  But I think people can take a lot from it. The only problem I have with these guys that are like ultra rich and all, it's like, It's not feasible for the average person, like no one's got, no one's retired  at, in their 30s or 40s and have access to like this team that works around the clock.

Yeah. So. Yeah, no, it's not accessible. That's for sure. But he is showing us what's possible. I mean, it's kind of a Goggins moment, you know, it's like you got David Goggins out there doing all this and showing us like, You have energy and stamina long past what you think you have. And so, you know, for Brian to be out there showing us, like, No, we could actually really reverse our aging and this, and here's what's possible.

Now,  do you have to be a billionaire to do it? I don't know. I mean, I hope that, like, my score is being as low as they are. Like, show people. I mean, I think everybody can do what I do. Again, you gotta apply the 80 80 20 rule, you know, and I'm sure that genetics plays a little bit of, you know, a role in this.

Okay, maybe they do, but still I've slowed down my pace of aging over the course of the year by 11%. Like, that's huge, you know, to do that. That's, that's huge.  That's a lot of, lot of extra, uh, life in your years, if nothing else, you know, a better health span. So, yeah, we've got to make this accessible. And I, I, I really, I'm big on health is a fundamental human right for every, everybody should have the ability to be healthy.

And so, you know, when we sort of obscure all the,  The data and what's healthy and what's not healthy as far as eating and this medication and that medication or this supplement and that supplement, and it's also mercury. It just,  I think it makes it that much harder for the average human to be healthy because they don't know.

They don't know. So they're like, well, I might as well do what I want because this study says this and this study says that.  You know, we've got to come out, we've got to create a way to say no, like this is the consensus and you've got to eat well and you've got to do this and I thank God for functional medicine doctors because I think they're You know leading the way in that or you know, was it Peter Atiyah calls it medicine 2.

0 or 3. 0 or whatever You know, whatever he's talking about. It's like Yeah, like this is the way forward and we're just, we're never going to get a neat clean study on what to eat. You're gonna have to, you kind of have to listen to your gut about that one, you know, pun intended. Yeah, absolutely. And adding life to your years, I love that.

The idea of like, maybe, maybe you're gonna live till let's say a hundred is the year, but do you want the last ten to be horrible or what if you could make those last ten amazing? So, for example, my mom got it back into like, She does Zumba and she does weightlifting. Now she started to lift heavier. So my mom increased the resistance, gets stronger.

She's lost like 20 something pounds.  Oh my god. Great. She's got more energy. She's stronger. She's like 20 30 pounds less, you know, and she's, she had a knee injury. She recovered so fast from it that even the, the, the doctor was like, it's incredible, she fell again,  uh, just slipped. We had ice, black ice or whatever, and she recovered miraculously.

She started to do this, like walking backwards on a, on a slant. I, I got from Uh huh.  And it It, you know, it made such an impact to her  and she's doing like arts and crafts and reading and writing. And so I can already see she, she looks and feels and performs better now than she did 10 years ago. Isn't it crazy?

Well, I know she slowed her rate of aging, but at least even if she did it, at least the quality is better  because she's dancing, you know, she's dancing with us. She's like playing around. She's.  You know, lifting weights. She's like, I want to learn how to deadlift.  Oh, Bob.  Musing to like, Oh, I'm old and I can't do this now.

She's like, no wife. Why can't I do it? I want to. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that refrain from my mom like oh, no, I'm just getting old. I'm just getting old Like I can remember her saying that as early as her like 40s, you know It's like, oh, I'm just old and I'm tired and it's like  no, I will not accept that I will not I will not accept that like I just I just won't and  And I realized that there will be a time in my life, you know That may be but I plan on climbing trees and doing stupid stuff well into you know At least a hundred. 

I mean, I want to travel. I want to go. I want to, you know, like, I'm hoping I will be blessed with grandchildren. I'm hope, hoping that I can be there for my son and, you know, whatever children he may have. I just, I, you know,  Inshallah, I will have that. But if not, you know, I still will be there for him. I will, I want to travel and see the world and I want to have like a whole new career, you know, based on all this health stuff.

I'm very interested in, you know,  Seeing where this takes me and I just love that I have the energy that I'm 50 almost 56 and I have energy from the moment I wake up to the moment. I go to bed. Uh, like, I absolutely love that. So I love that. That's awesome. I think I think if I were you, I'd be very proud because you're up against these,  you know, multi millionaires with  You know, they, they have a whole team surrounding.

Yeah.  Now Dave Pascoe doesn't have a team either. He's DIYing it, but he is doing a lot of the stuff. Like he's doing. Yeah. I guess I'm referring to more Brian. Um. Yeah.  It's a privacy. Yeah. I mean, this team ever reached out to, you know, people who were on the top leaderboard to figure out, extract the knowledge or routine to see, Hey, how can we adjust, you know, I don't know.

I don't, I don't really,  again, like you said, I don't know, I don't know what his intention is to do with all of this, but it is, um, I mean, I, I, he was talking about on one of his recordings, you know,  like this takes energy and focus, and it's nice to  kind of  put it in perspective and, and again,  I just find it interesting, like, what protocol are you using?

What protocol are you using? Like, and not so much your own overall pace of aging, but the difference. So like if I'm 60 years old and I can slow down my pace of aging by 20%, well, what protocol am I, like, what are you using? Cause that, that's clearly working, you know? Um, and  that's to me more interesting than what is your, absolute pace of aging, because I just have to wonder how much genetics plays in that.

Um, and how much time in, like, I've been doing this stuff for a very long time. And when I hear about Brian's story and starting Venmo, it, you know, sounds like it was kind of a junk food diet, you know, a lot of late nights, a lot of stress. I'm sure that had an impact on him. Right. You know, during those years when he was doing that, I was, I'm sure the time spent focusing on your health also has an impact.

Absolutely. Keep you out of effect. And I would also, I would also be curious to know what the 80, 20, in other words, what's the 20 percent of the things you're doing or not doing that's giving you 80 percent of those results? Because I think. There's, you know, people might be doing a lot of things that aren't really moving the needle. 

And you think we might think we are right. And really just spend a lot of money on them. They better move the needle, but they don't just literally be the, the increasing your VO two max could just be a huge proponent. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying you never know. Right. What could, or even the meditation slowing things down.

Who knows? Yes. That's it's interesting because there's so much going on in this world. I find it fascinating. Yeah. But for me, I think, uh, having a resistance training program that incorporates progressive overload, I think improving your VO2 max, I think getting a good quality sleep, avoiding processed food as much as possible  and having good relationships and, you know, laughing, enjoying the ride.

I think those are like the foundation and then filling in the gaps with supplements and pharmacology of whatever nature medicine or not needed. I think, I think that's really gonna hit most of the basis until we. Reach a point where science catches up and there is maybe a machine that you can go into that rejuvenates all your cells or Wouldn't that be nice?

Elysium  yeah, yeah, Elysium yeah, it's like a fountain in use you could go like into some tub 20 years old again. I  Don't know. I don't even know if I want that though, you know, I want that Yeah, that's like go get back Matt to that dark and light like no, but let's say here logically. I mean though You If you could have the knowledge you have now, but be in your 19 year old body or 20, I would do that for sure.

Oh, yeah, it's crazy. There's nothing ethical, unethical about it. I would do it. Why not?  I just always think like, okay, if I can live another 50 years, vital 50 years, not just, you know, in a walker and a wheelchair, but, you know,  having the wisdom that I have now, I mean, because think about it, like the first 50 years,  Let's face it, like those teen years, you're not wise.

I mean, you're gaining wisdom, you know, but there's no real wisdom and it doesn't start hitting until 30s and 40s, you know, and it's like now it's like how I'm  really gaining more and more wisdom. And I just think like, wow, to like go another 50 years and have the vitality. to share that with other people.

I just, like, I just think that's so cool. If we could have, you know, a whole society doing that, like, how much would that benefit mankind? Wisdom is so untapped in our culture. And I think that if we have these centenarians that are vital, I think we'll start valuing it a little bit more.  Yeah, I agree. Our kids are watching, you know, so to close off, I want to ask you a question.

What advice would you give to listeners? You know, we there's people who are already on this path, but there's also people who are skeptical or saying, you know It's just genetics or whatever. What do you have to say for all those people that  maybe they think they're too old to get started or I don't need to worry about that till I'm older.

Yeah, I would say first of all, we, I mean, our, our body was built to move. Uh, we were, we were built to move. So you've got to move in. You got to start somewhere and just, again, I, I just go back to just start with 10 minutes, you know, if you, if you believe that you just don't need it at all. I am so sorry, but I just think like, I just don't think we were built to sit in a chair and in a car and on a couch all day, every day.

I think that that's going to come back to haunt you. Uh, I do think we were, you know, we're, we are animals at the end of the day and we were developed by walking over, you know, I imagine we walked all day long and foraged for food and then the occasional hunt and, and whatever. So I think our bodies are built to move and to.

somewhat forage all day. And I think we were built ourselves or work in tandem with plants mostly, you know, and, and meat, obviously I, I'm not a vegan. I do think we need protein and I do think we need animal protein, but I just,  I do think that we were like, we developed in tandem with plants and the animals around us and the walking and all of those things.

It's like, There's just so much science that points in that direction. And I think if you really tune into your intuition, you'll, you'll come to that conclusion as well. And then it comes to, okay, well now, where do I start? And I would say, first of all, you just need to start. And maybe, you know, maybe if you're not doing anything, it's standing up from your couch while you're watching TV and doing some high knees, you know, just doing some marching in place.

Maybe it's just doing some, Air squats or some sit ups and, and whatever it is, maybe it's like, just make it so easy for yourself, like it's five sit ups and five push ups and five air squats and that's what you're going to do the first night and you're going to do that for like two weeks and then you're going to double that, you know, you just make it so simple, don't go out and try to be the warrior, you want to just exercise. 

Open the space for your health in some manner that's realistic and achievable to you that it's so easy and realistic and achievable. And then as you open that space, I think James Clear talks about this,  you know, then you've developed a habit. Now you've become a person who is working on becoming healthier.

And. You know, then you add the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing. But I think movement's a great thing to add first because it does help the sleep and then kind of looking at your diet. And again, if it's hard for you to, fathom taking out any junk food, then just try to add in a lot of vegetables.

And I do believe in organic, but I won't get into that. We talked about that, but I do believe that my son has glyphosate poisoning and it does impact his gut. So I do think organic is important, but if you can't afford it, don't. just do the best you can to wash your vegetables and get that fiber and such. 

But, um, those are, those are two things I think I would start with is, you know, the movement and then start adding some vegetables  and then look at your protein, you know, make sure, but it's always sounds like this, this whole industry sounds like a lot of information and it can be very confusing, but just The basics are, you know, movement, sleep, eat good food, and I think meditation, you know, and then a few supplements, but get those.

Three things right first, uh, add the meditation and then the supplements, but you just, you got to start somewhere on that chain. And I think just 10 minutes of movement a day is a great way to do it. And then, you know, add five minutes the next month so that that's 15 minutes the next month at 20 minutes.

And if it's starting to feel like too much, then just stay without 20 minutes until, until that becomes a habit. And then you'll start looking forward to it. I love it. Thank you.  Thank you, Julie. I really appreciate you and what you're doing and thank you for taking the time to talk. I hope we can do it again. 

Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you. Sorry. Sorry I kept you for so long.  It's okay. No worries.  It's working out great. My son's walking at home, so this is great.  Get an exercise.  Thank you, Julie.  Thank you.

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